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Fake It Till You Make It (Then Make It Real) || Ruggie Bucchi

You, S-Class Esper, hired a Guide to pretend to guide you. He took the job for the generous paycheck. Neither of you expected the "falling desperately in love" part of the arrangement.

or: Guideverse!

wc: ~18.8k

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The world was barely fine before the Gates opened.

Humanity had already been juggling enough catastrophes to fill a very depressing bingo card: wars for reasons that made less sense than a fortune cookie written by a sleep-deprived philosophy student, the ongoing debate about whether pineapple belonged on pizza (it didn't, and anyone who said otherwise was clearly a chaos agent), and the collective realization that nobody actually knew how to properly fold a fitted sheet. Scientists had confirmed in 20XX that fitted sheets were, in fact, a psychological warfare experiment that had escaped containment from a Cold War laboratory.

Then the Gates happened.

One morning, reality developed a structural integrity problem. Giant shimmering portals began tearing open across the globe like cosmic zippers being yanked down by an impatient god who really needed to use the bathroom. These Gates, as humanity unimaginatively named them (the committee had considered "Doom Holes" and "Monster Sphincters" but decided those wouldn't test well with focus groups), led to dimensions that were apparently having a fire sale on nightmares.

Inside each Gate lurked monsters. No, not the metaphorical kind that represented society's ills or whatever—actual, literal monsters with too many teeth and a complete disregard for architectural preservation. If a Gate wasn't suppressed within a certain timeframe, it would collapse, which sounded good until you realized "collapse" in this context meant "vomit its entire contents of angry interdimensional wildlife out onto the streets like the world's worst piñata."

Enter the Espers.

Espers were humans who had developed supernatural abilities, presumably because evolution looked at the Gate situation and said, "You know what? Fine. Here's some superpowers. Try not to blow up the planet before I can properly evolve you some better knees." They were humanity's frontline defense, diving into Gates before they could collapse, fighting monsters and generally having a worse time than anyone who'd ever worked in customer service during a holiday sale.

The problem was that using their powers drove Espers completely bonkers.

Their abilities were fueled by energy that human brains were absolutely not designed to process, like trying to run Genshin Impact on a calculator watch. After a Gate dive, Espers would emerge crackling with enough unstable power to level a city block, their sanity deteriorating faster than an ice cream cone in a sauna.

This is where Guides came in.

Guides were support personnel with the ability to stabilize Espers, neutralizing the excess energy before an Esper could accidentally turn a city block into a crater. They waited outside Gates like the world's most anxious pit crew, ready to tackle returning Espers and perform what was technically called "guiding" but which basically amounted to being a psychic shock absorber slash emotional support human.

Together, Espers and Guides kept the world stable.

Well. "Stable" was perhaps generous. More like "consistently on the edge of apocalypse but managing to avoid it through a combination of supernatural powers and the kind of bureaucratic incompetence that somehow worked out in humanity's favor." The world was basically being held together with duct tape, good intentions, and the hope that the monsters would eventually get bored and go back to wherever they came from.

They had not gotten bored.

In fact, they seemed to be multiplying, which suggested that somewhere in the interdimensional void, monsters had discovered the concept of franchising.

You are an S-rank Esper, which means you are theoretically living the dream.

The reality is more accurately described as living inside a washing machine that's been set to "apocalypse" cycle while someone throws progressively weirder items into the drum. Last week it was a monster that looked like a filing cabinet had achieved sentience and chosen violence. This morning it was something that resembled a horse if horses were made of screaming and had seventeen extra legs growing out of places legs had no business growing from.

S-rank means you're in the top percent of Espers globally. You can do things that make physics professors cry into their morning coffee and then switch to whiskey before lunch. You get paid enough money that you could probably buy a small island nation, except you're too busy diving into hell-dimensions five times a week to enjoy tropical dictatorships.

Your apartment is very nice in the theoretical sense that you own furniture and it exists in space. You have never been conscious inside it for more than six consecutive hours because Gates don't take vacations and therefore neither do you.

The problem, the absolutely teeth-grinding migraine-inducing problem, is the touching.

Guides can only guide through physical contact. This is a completely normal and reasonable aspect of how guiding works, according to every single person who has ever lectured you about it. You understand the mechanism. You have attended the mandatory seminars where someone in a blazer too tight for their shoulders explained the science with PowerPoint slides that had too many animations. You have read the pamphlets that explain how skin-to-skin contact creates the necessary channel for energy transfer and psychic stabilization, complete with helpful diagrams that look like they were drawn by someone who'd never actually seen human hands before.

You hate it with the burning intensity of a star going supernova in the middle of a kindergarten classroom.

The touching thing isn't personal (mostly). You don't have some tragic backstory that explains everything in neat little psychological packages tied with therapeutic ribbon. You haven't been wronged by touch in some dark and brooding way. You just possess a very sincere and deeply held preference for people to keep their goddamn hands to themselves, which apparently makes you the unreasonable one in a profession where someone grabbing your face and forcing sustained eye contact while whispering affirmations is considered standard medical procedure.

Also, your situation is completely different from that one SSS-class Esper who literally cannot be guided without causing psychic feedback to themself. That person has a medical exemption signed by four different doctors and a priest who may or may not have been legitimate. You just have what your last Bureau supervisor called "an interpersonal challenge" and what you call "a basic understanding of personal space."

The absolute worst part is what happens after a Gate dive.

Picture this: You stagger out of a portal that's been vomiting violet lightning for the past forty minutes, covered head to toe in something that used to be inside a monster before the monster experienced a catastrophic loss of structural integrity (your fault, entirely justified). Your power is crackling around you in visible arcs that are making the air smell like rotten eggs.

Your brain feels like someone has replaced all your thoughts with angry wasps wearing tiny boots, and the boots have cleats. You're already having the worst time. The Gate was full of monsters that had too many limbs arranged in geometries that violated several laws of nature and possibly one or two laws of good taste, and they kept making sounds like a fax machine being murdered by a dubstep artist.

And then, inevitably, some Guide materializes out of nowhere and grabs you.

They grab your arm, your shoulder or even your hand if they're feeling particularly ambitious. Their energy starts pouring into you like someone has decided to fill your skull with lukewarm oatmeal using a funnel that's slightly too small. They're doing their job. You understand they're doing their job. This does not make you hate it less.

"Breathe in," they'll say, their hands clamped around whatever part of you they've managed to latch onto, their voice doing that special Guide thing where it gets all soft and deliberately calming in a way that makes you want to bite something. "Breathe out. Match my rhythm. Focus on my voice and let the energy flow through the connection."

You don't want to focus on their voice. You want to focus on going home, standing in a shower hot enough to get minor burns, and then eating something that isn't a protein bar with the nutritional content of compressed sadness and the flavor profile of sweetened cardboard. You want to sleep for sixteen hours in a bed that isn't trying to heal you or stabilize you or do anything except exist as a horizontal surface.

But no. You have to sit there on whatever bench or chair or patch of ground they've herded you to. You have to tolerate their hands on your skin while their energy does its work. You have to pretend that the sensation doesn't feel like someone's running a cheese grater very slowly across the inside of your brain while simultaneously filling your sinuses with television static. You have to endure their murmured affirmations and guidance while they treat you like a spooked horse that needs to be talked down from a ledge.

"You're stabilizing really well," they'll lie, because you're absolutely not stabilizing well. You're tolerating a necessary medical procedure with all the grace and enthusiasm of a cat being forcibly bathed.

So you had done what any reasonable person would do when faced with an intolerable situation: you filed for a transfer.

You had heard rumors about this one Guide who was apparently some kind of freak of nature. Word through the grapevine was they could guide without physical contact, which sounded like the kind of miracle that usually came with a catch like "but only during a solar eclipse" or "while reciting the alphabet backwards in Finnish." The details were vague. The rumors were probably ninety percent bullshit. You filed the paperwork anyway because even a ten percent chance of salvation was better than your current situation.

You waited six weeks for the request to crawl through the Bureau's bureaucratic digestive system, which appeared to process paperwork at the same speed a sloth would process advanced calculus. You packed your entire life into boxes that you labeled with a Sharpie and increasing desperation. You said goodbye to nobody because you hadn't really known anyone at your old branch and they seemed fine with that. You moved across several time zones to a new city you'd never been to, full of hope and the kind of desperate optimism usually seen people buying lottery tickets.

The hope lasted approximately forty-five minutes.

That was how long it took for someone in HR to cheerfully destroy your entire reason for existing.

"Oh yeah, that Guide," the HR person said, squinting at their computer screen. "They left the Bureau three weeks ago. Went off to travel the world with their Esper partner."

"When did they leave?" you asked. Your voice was doing something unnatural, operating in a register that suggested imminent violence.

"About three weeks ago? Maybe four? Time is kind of a soup here, you know how it is."

Three. Weeks.

You had spent six weeks waiting for paperwork to process. You had packed your entire life into boxes. You had moved across multiple time zones and possibly several climate zones based on how different the weather was. You had done all of this for a Guide who had quit A MONTH AGO, and nobody had thought to mention this at any point during the transfer process.

The universe apparently had a sense of humor and that sense of humor was specifically dedicated to making your life resemble a comedy written by someone who hated you personally.

So now you're stuck. Stuck in a new city where you know absolutely nobody and the coffee tastes wrong in a way you can't quite articulate. Stuck in a Bureau branch that's already looking at you like you're a problem that arrived in a box labeled "FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH INDUSTRIAL GLOVES AND MAYBE A PRAYER." Stuck with the same terrible options you had before, except now you're having them in a location with worse weather and no familiar take-out places.

Which is why you have developed what you generously call a system and what the Bureau medical staff calls "a concerning pattern of noncompliance."

The system is stabilizers.

Stabilizers are the pharmaceutical band-aid solution to the guiding problem. Little bottles of liquid that taste like someone liquified a migraine, added artificial cherry flavor to insult you personally, and then charged you a lot for the privilege. They're designed to be a supplement to proper guiding, something you take between sessions to keep your energy levels from doing anything dramatic.

They work fine for lower-ranked Espers who aren't diving into Gates every other day. B-rank and C-rank Espers can practically live on the things. Even some A-ranks can get by on stabilizers alone if they're not diving too frequently and they don't mind feeling like they're running their consciousness through a filter made of steel wool.

S-rank? The efficacy drops off a cliff so steep it has its own gravitational pull.

For SS-rank Espers and above, stabilizers might as well be very expensive, foul tasting Gatorade that does absolutely nothing except drain your bank account and make your pee glow colors that don't exist in nature.

You are S-rank, which means the stabilizers work at maybe sixty percent of their intended effectiveness on a good day. When the wind is blowing in the right direction and you haven't eaten anything that disagrees with your intestinal fortitude.

Your Bureau-assigned medical officer has developed Opinions about your stabilizer dependency, which she expresses through increasingly passive-aggressive emails with subject lines like "Re: Your Health Metrics (URGENT - PLEASE READ)" and "Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Seriously We Need To Talk About Your Treatment Compliance."

You delete these emails with practiced efficiency because you have made peace with your life choices and are comfortable disappointing medical professionals.

What you actually need, what you desperately require, is a Guide who will not force you to be guided.

You need someone who will take one look at you stumbling out of a Gate covered in fluorescent monster organs and crackling with enough unstable energy to power a small city, and they'll just nod. They'll go, "Yeah, that seems fine" and then they'll wander off to do something else while you handle your own shit. A Guide who possesses a healthy sense of self-preservation and a flexible relationship with Bureau protocol. Someone who can be bribed with cash or food or the promise that you'll stop making their life difficult if they just let you mainline stabilizers in peace.

You have not found this Guide yet.

The Gate today was supposed to be class A, which in Bureau terminology means "moderately dangerous but you'll probably survive unless you do something phenomenally stupid."

Except when you got inside, there was already an SSS-rank Esper in there, and he was having what could only be described as the time of his life.

You recognized him immediately because he had horns. This was that SSS-rank Esper that everyone whispered about in the break room. The guy who'd once decimated a Category 5 Gate while humming what witnesses swore was a lullaby. The Esper who was so catastrophically powerful that his own Bureau branch had a separate insurance policy just for him.

He was also, according to bureau gossip, kind of weird about not being invited to things.

Right now he was fighting monsters with the enthusiasm of someone who'd finally been invited to a party and was determined to make it everyone's problem. There was this creature that looked like a filing cabinet had achieved consciousness and chosen violence as its entire personality. This absolute unit of an Esper pointed at it almost delicately, and it exploded into green lightning and what might have been confetti but was probably monster viscera.

You stood there holding your weapon, which you had not used even once, feeling like the world's most useless party guest.

The Gate had maybe a hundred monsters in it when you'd arrived. Past tense. Had. He was systematically erasing them from existence so casually like he was doing a crossword puzzle. He looked thrilled about it too. Every time he obliterated something, he got this little smug smile like he'd just won a prize at a carnival.

"Oh, this one has an interesting defensive structure," he observed, examining a monster that looked like a crab fucked a chandelier and their offspring had severe emotional problems. He tilted his head. The monster exploded so violently that you felt the shockwave from fifty feet away.

The whole massacre took maybe six and a half minutes, and that was only because the dude had stopped to examine a few of the monsters before killing them. He seemed genuinely curious about their biology in the way a scientist might be curious about a new species, except his method of study was "turn it into atoms and see what happens."

By the time he was done, you were still holding your weapon, having contributed absolutely nothing.

"Oh!" His face brightened immediately, like he'd just noticed a friend at a party. "I didn't see you there. My apologies. Did you need assistance with any of the creatures? I'm afraid I may have gotten carried away."

You looked around at the devastation. There was nothing left. The Gate site was cleaner than it had been before the monsters arrived.

"No, I'm... I'm good," you managed.

"Wonderful!" He seemed genuinely pleased. "It's always nice to have company during these exercises. So many people forget to invite me to Gate raids. I always RSVP."

He said this with the innocent confusion of someone who truly did not understand that people were extremely terrified of him.

Then he just left, walking out of the Gate with perfect posture and his hands clasped behind his back like he was taking a pleasant stroll through a garden he'd just napalmed.

You stood there for another ten seconds trying to process what you'd just witnessed.

"Waow," you finally said, to absolutely nobody.

You walked out of the Gate feeling like you'd just been an extra in someone else's action movie, except the main character was overpowered to the point of absurdity and also possibly didn't understand social cues.

The outside of the Gate was the usual nightmare of bureaucratic chaos. Bureau staff were sprinting around with tablets and the desperate energy of people whose jobs depended on data entry. Medical personnel had set up their guiding stations, which looked less like medical facilities and more like ambush points.

And the Guides. Oh god, the Guides.

They were prowling around like sharks who'd smelled blood in the water, except the blood was Espers and the water was the designated recovery area. You watched one Guide literally sprint-tackle a B-rank Esper who'd tried to make a break for the parking lot. The Esper went down hard. The Guide was already on top of them, starting the guiding process while the Esper made muffled sounds of protest into the ground.

This was a nightmare. This was hell. You needed to get out of here immediately.

You started moving, activating what you'd mentally labeled Operation Absolutely Fucking Not.

You'd gotten good at this. Dodging Guides had become your primary skill, more refined than your actual combat abilities. You could read their body language now, spot the micro-adjustments that signaled a Guide preparing to intercept. That tall one with the clipboard was tracking you. You could see her eyes following your movement, her weight shifting onto her front foot. You ducked behind an equipment cart.

Another Guide was approaching from your left with a determined expression and a badge that said "SENIOR GUIDE" which probably meant they'd been doing this long enough to be extra aggressive about it. You pivoted, using a confused A-rank Esper as a human shield.

The A-rank gave you a look that clearly said "what the fuck dude" but you were already moving.

You were so focused on your evasion tactics, treating this like a stealth mission in a video game where getting caught meant immediate game over, that you almost missed him entirely.

There was a Guide leaning against one of the Bureau's portable barriers, and his entire energy screamed "I am being paid to be here but nobody said I had to care."

He had messy hair that stuck up in a way that suggested either aggressive bedhead or a complete lack of mirror access. His Guide jacket was technically regulation but he wore it like someone had put clothes on him against his will and he was still mad about it. His posture suggested that standing upright was a personal favor he was doing for gravity.

Most importantly, most beautifully, he was not trying to guide anyone.

He was just standing there, leaning, looking at his phone with the focused intensity of someone who'd found something way more interesting than their job. Every few seconds he'd glance up, survey the chaos with detached interest like he was watching a nature documentary about animals he didn't particularly like, and then go back to his phone.

The aura of "not my problem" radiating off him was so strong you felt genuine joy.

You changed direction so fast you nearly wiped out on some loose gravel, zeroing in on him like a heat-seeking missile that had just found its purpose in life.

He noticed you coming because you had all the subtlety of a car accident. His eyes flicked up from his phone, tracked your approach with the enthusiasm of someone watching a bird shit on a car, and then went back to his screen like maybe if he ignored you hard enough the universe would make you someone else's responsibility.

You essentially collapsed onto the bench next to him. Not close enough to be weird, but definitely close enough that anyone watching would assume you were his problem now.

You were breathing way too hard considering you'd done basically nothing in that Gate except stand there and have an existential crisis.

"Hey," you said, trying to sound normal and probably sounding more like someone who was one bad day away from a breakdown. "I need you to do me a huge favor that will require almost zero effort on your part."

He looked at you properly now, one eyebrow rising in a gesture that communicated "I'm listening but I'm already calculating what this is going to cost you."

The look in his eyes was pure mercenary interest. You loved him immediately.

"I need you to pretend you're guiding me," you said, words tumbling out fast. "Just grab my sleeve. You don't actually have to guide me. I don't need it. I have stabilizers. I just need it to look official so every other Guide here stops trying to hunt me down and perform involuntary medical procedures on me."

You stuck your sleeve out toward him like you were offering a handshake to a dog you weren't sure about.

There was a pause. A beautiful, considering pause where you could practically hear his brain working, running calculations about risk versus reward and effort versus profit.

"What's in it for me?" he asked, and somewhere in your chest, angels started singing.

This. This was the question you'd been waiting your entire career to hear from a Guide. This magnificent bastard understood that altruism was a scam and everything in life was a negotiation.

"Dinner's on me," you said. "Anywhere you want. Price is not an issue."

You watched his entire face transform. His eyes went wide. His pupils dilated. If he'd been a cartoon character, there would have been sparkles and possibly dollar signs. He looked like you'd just told him he'd won the lottery, except the lottery was food he didn't have to pay for, which was apparently even better than actual money.

"Deal," he said immediately, with the enthusiasm of someone who'd been personally blessed by a deity of good fortune.

He sat beside you, reached out and grabbed your sleeve with the delicate touch of someone handling a slightly damp receipt they might need later. His grip was barely there. There was no energy transfer happening and no actual guiding. He was just holding your sleeve while maintaining an expression of professional concentration that would have convinced anyone watching from more than five feet away that he was performing legitimate medical services.

You could have kissed him. You could have built him a shrine. You could have written his name in the stars.

Instead you pulled out your stabilizers and started chugging them like a college student on dollar beer night.

The stabilizers tasted like burned going down. They made your teeth feel fuzzy. They were working at maybe fifty percent efficiency, which meant you'd feel like shit later but at least you wouldn't accidentally level any buildings considering you didn't really do anything today except warmup.

But you were drinking them in peace. Nobody was actually touching you. Nobody was making you do breathing exercises. Nobody was murmuring therapeutic nonsense while making aggressive eye contact.

This was bliss. This was heaven. This was the best you'd felt after a Gate in years.

"Ruggie Bucchi," the Guide said, still pinching your sleeve with one hand while his other hand went back to his phone. He was looking at what appeared to be restaurant menus. He'd opened at least seven different apps. "A-rank Guide, if you care about credentials or whatever."

"I super don't," you admitted, downing another stabilizer and trying not to gag as it scorched its way down your throat, "but good to know I guess."

He laughed, and it was the laugh of someone who'd just scammed the system and gotten away with it. "Yeah, figured. You got that look about you."

"What look?"

"The 'I would rather die than let someone touch me' look. See it sometimes. Usually on the S-ranks who think they're too good for proper medical care." He said this with absolutely no judgment, still scrolling through menus. "So what're you, S-rank? Maybe A-rank with an attitude problem?"

"S-rank," you confirmed.

"Nice. That means you got money." He said this with the casual avarice of someone who'd just confirmed their lottery ticket was a winner.

You were starting to really like this guy.

"Yeah," you said. "I got money."

"Good," Ruggie said, and he tapped something on his phone screen with the decisive air of someone finalizing a battle plan. "Because I'm thinking that new steakhouse that opened downtown. The one where the cheapest thing on the menu is like fifty bucks. You said anywhere, right?"

"I did say that."

"Excellent. Love doing business with people who keep their word."

You sat there for another few minutes, the two of you creating what had to be the world's most half-assed medical procedure. Other Guides walked past, clocked that you were already being handled, and moved on. One Guide even gave Ruggie an approving nod, like "hey good job doing the bare minimum," and Ruggie nodded back with the solemn professionalism of someone absolutely robbing the system blind.

It was beautiful. It was perfect. You wanted to frame this moment and hang it on your wall.

A Senior Guide walked by and actually stopped to observe for a second. You froze. Ruggie didn't even flinch. He just adjusted his grip on your sleeve slightly and said, without looking up from his phone, "Energy levels are stabilizing nicely. Should have them cleared for release in about five minutes."

He sounded so professional. So competent. The Senior Guide made an approving sound and walked away.

You stared at him.

"What?" Ruggie said, still looking at his phone. "You think this is my first time faking work? I've been doing this since I figured out how jobs worked. The trick is to look busy enough that nobody questions you but not so busy that they give you more work."

"You're a genius," you said, and you meant it with your entire soul.

"Nah. Just poor enough to get creative."

When the stabilizers had finally bullied your energy levels back into something that wouldn't cause property damage, and you felt less like a bomb and more like a person who'd just had a really bad day at work, you turned to look at Ruggie with the expression of someone about to propose a marriage of convenience.

"I want to make this a regular thing," you said. "Long-term deal. Every single time I come out of a Gate, you pretend to guide me. You don't actually have to do anything. Just grab my sleeve, look official, let me drink my stabilizers in peace. I'll pay you. Food, cash, whatever you want."

Ruggie's hand finally stopped scrolling. He looked at you with the expression of someone who'd just been told they'd inherited a fortune from a relative they'd never heard of.

"Every Gate?" he asked.

"Every single one."

"And you'll pay me every time?"

"Name your price."

You could see his brain working. He was doing math. Calculating how many Gates you probably ran per week, multiplying that by meal costs, adding in additional compensation, running a full cost-benefit analysis in real-time.

His grin started small and grew until it looked like it might split his face in half.

"Okay so here's what I'm thinking," he said, and he actually put his phone away so he could use both hands to count on his fingers. "Meals are great. Love meals. But also I want cash. Not a lot, Just like, enough to make it worth my time if you catch my drift. And also if you ever got extra food from somewhere, like leftovers or whatever, I will take those. I'm not proud. Food is food."

"Done," you said immediately.

"And if there's ever any special events or whatever where the Bureau is giving out free shit, you let me know first so I can grab the good stuff before everyone else takes it."

"Absolutely."

"And, this is important, if anyone ever asks to actually guide you for real, like really guide you, you gotta back me up when I say you're too unstable or whatever and need a specialist."

"I will lie so hard for you," you promised.

His grin was now approaching dangerous levels. He looked like he'd just won every lottery that had ever existed simultaneously.

"Pleasure doing business with you," he said, and stuck out his hand for a real handshake, not the fake sleeve-holding thing.

You shook his hand. His grip was firm and warm and slightly callused even through your gloves , the handshake of someone who understood that a deal was a deal and money was sacred.

"Same," you said, and you meant it with every fiber of your disaster of a being.

You had done it. You had found your person. Your partner in crime. Your Guide who would gladly watch you engage in questionable medical decisions as long as the price was right.

Somewhere in the distance, you could hear a Guide screaming as an Esper tackled them. You felt a wave of pity for everyone in the world who hadn't found their Ruggie yet.

Life was beautiful. The sun was shining. You had a contract with someone who understood that everything was negotiable and sentiment was for people with better insurance.

You were going to ride this arrangement into the sunset or into a medical emergency, whichever came first, and you were going to do it while maintaining your personal space and your dignity.

"So," Ruggie said, already pulling his phone back out. "That steakhouse tonight? I'm thinking we should get appetizers. Multiple appetizers. Maybe all of them."

"Get whatever you want," you said, and you'd never meant anything more in your entire life.

The steakhouse Ruggie picked was the kind of place where the menu didn't have prices listed, which meant the prices were definitely high enough to constitute a felony in some countries. The host looked at both of you when you walked in, took in your post-Gate appearance (you didn't technically do anything but you still looked like you'd had a rough day), took in Ruggie's obvious glee, and seemed to decide that this was none of their business.

"Reservation for Bucchi," Ruggie said confidently, despite definitely not having a reservation.

"Of course," the host said, because apparently confidence was all you needed in life. "Right this way."

You got seated at a booth near the back. Ruggie grabbed the menu with the enthusiasm of a scholar discovering a ancient text. His eyes went wide as he scanned the options.

"Oh shit," he said reverently. "They got the good stuff."

You picked up your own menu mostly out of politeness. You weren't really planning to eat much. The stabilizers had absolutely fucked your metabolism and tastebuds over the past few years. Food mostly tasted like cardboard now.

You'd been living off coffee and protein shakes, the food of people who'd given up on joy. Eating felt like a chore, like something you did because your body required fuel and not because you enjoyed it.

The waiter came over. Ruggie ordered an appetizer. Then another appetizer. Then a soup. Then he asked if he could get the surf and turf but with extra surf. The waiter wrote all this down without blinking.

"And for you?" the waiter asked, turning to you.

"Just water," you started to say, but then you caught Ruggie's expression. He looked personally offended.

"Nah," Ruggie said, shaking his head. "You're eating. You're paying for this, might as well get something."

"I'm not really hungry," you said, which was true. You were never hungry anymore. Hunger had become a theoretical concept.

"Don't care." He turned to the waiter. "They'll have the steak, medium rare, with the garlic mashed potatoes. And bring some of those fancy bread rolls."

The waiter looked at you for confirmation. You shrugged. Sure. Why not. You could just push it around your plate and pretend.

But then the food started arriving and something weird happened.

Ruggie ate like he was personally in competition with the concept of hunger itself. The first appetizer came out, some kind of thing with prawns and sauce, and he made a sound that was borderline inappropriate for a public restaurant.

"Oh man," he said, mouth full, already reaching for another prawn. "This is so good. You gotta try this."

He shoved the plate toward you. You took a prawn mostly to be polite.

It was actually good. Really good. You'd forgotten food could taste like something other than obligation.

"Right?" Ruggie said, grinning at your expression. "Told you."

The soup came out. Ruggie attacked it with the dedication of someone who'd been personally wronged by hunger. He was making these little satisfied sounds while eating, completely unselfconscious. He looked so happy in a way that was kind of infectious.

Your steak arrived. You looked at it. It looked back at you. You picked up your fork.

Ruggie was now onto his main course, the surf and turf with extra surf, and he was narrating his experience like he was a food critic.

"Okay so the lobster is fucking incredible," he said, gesturing with his fork. "Like buttery. Who made butter taste like this? This is illegal. And the steak..." He cut off a piece and popped it in his mouth. His eyes actually rolled back. "Yeah okay I'm in love. I'm proposing to this steak. We're getting married."

You cut off a piece of your own steak and tried it.

Fuck. When was the last time you'd eaten something that actually tasted good? The protein shakes were efficient but they tasted like punishment. This tasted like someone had remembered that food was supposed to be enjoyable.

"See?" Ruggie said, pointing at you with his fork. "You look less dead already. Eat more."

So you did. You couldn't really eat a lot, your stomach had apparently shrunk to the size of a walnut, but more than you'd eaten in years. And weirdly, watching Ruggie demolish his food with such obvious pleasure made it easier. He was enjoying himself so much that it reminded you that eating could be something other than fuel intake.

Ruggie ordered three desserts. He ate two and a half of them and then pushed the remaining half of a chocolate cake thing toward you.

"I'm gonna explode if I eat more," he said happily, leaning back in his chair with the satisfaction of someone who'd just won a war. "But you should finish this. It's too good to waste."

You ate the cake. It was absurdly rich and tasted like chocolate had achieved enlightenment.

When the check came, you didn't even look at it. You just handed over your card. The number was probably horrifying. You didn't care. This was the best you'd felt in months, and it definitely cost less than your monthly stabilizer budget.

"Oh hey," Ruggie said as the waiter walked away with your card. "Can I get some of this to go? Like, a lot of this to go?"

"Sure," you said. "Get whatever you want."

His face lit up. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. Why not. Order whatever."

He flagged down the waiter and proceeded to order what sounded like half the menu to go. The waiter's expression suggested this was unusual but not unprecedented. They came back with your card and what appeared to be multiple bags of food.

Ruggie looked at the bags like they were treasure chests. "You're alright, you know that?" he said, grinning at you. "Most S-ranks are stuck-up assholes. You're a stuck-up asshole with good priorities."

"Thanks, I think."

"That was a compliment. Take it."

You drove him home because you were pretty sure he couldn't carry all those bags on public transport. He lived in an apartment building that had definitely seen better days, maybe in a different decade. He got out of the car, struggled to grab all the bags, and then turned back to you.

"Same time next week?" he asked.

"I'll probably have another Gate before then."

"Even better. More free food for me." He paused. "You should actually eat something tomorrow too. You look like you're gonna keel over if someone breathed on you."

"I'll think about it."

"Don't think. Do. That's an order from your Guide." He said this with a completely straight face and then ruined it by cackling at his own joke.

You watched him haul his bags of food into the building, and then you drove home feeling something you hadn't felt in a while. Content, maybe. Or at least less actively miserable.

Your apartment was still exactly as you'd left it that morning- clean and impersonal. It was clear that its occupant was never home long enough to make it lived-in. You sat down at your desk, opened your laptop, and pulled up the Bureau's internal portal.

There was a form for registering a permanent Guide. You'd looked at it before and always closed it immediately because the thought of committing to regular physical contact made your skin crawl. But Ruggie wasn't regular physical contact. Ruggie was a business arrangement. Ruggie was someone who understood transactions and didn't try to make it weird.

You filled out the form. Name: Ruggie Bucchi. Rank: A-rank. Reason for assignment: Compatible working arrangement. You almost wrote "he doesn't touch me" but figured that would raise questions.

You hit submit. It was 9 PM. You weren't expecting a response until at least tomorrow, maybe later given how fast the Bureau usually moved, which was to say at the speed of continental drift.

Your phone pinged thirty seconds later.

The response was from HR. Their email was in all caps and had multiple exclamation points, which seemed excessive but also very on-brand for Bureau HR.

"REQUEST APPROVED!!! We're so DELIGHTED you've finally agreed to proper guiding treatment!!! This is wonderful news for your health and safety!!! Ruggie Bucchi has been notified of his new assignment and has accepted!!! Please report to medical for a baseline evaluation at your earliest convenience (we know you won't do this but we're required to ask)!!! Welcome to the path of proper Guide-Esper partnership!!!"

But the important part was: approved. You were immediately approved with no waiting period or review because apparently the Bureau had been that desperate for you to accept regular guiding.

If only they knew.

You closed your laptop and sat there for a moment in your quiet apartment. Ruggie was now your official Guide. You had an arrangement that would let you keep avoiding physical contact while maintaining the appearance of following medical protocol. You'd eaten real food and felt more human than raccoon in years. The Bureau thought you'd finally seen reason.

Everyone was happy. You'd scammed the system and the system was thanking you for it.

You got ready for bed feeling something unfamiliar. It took you a minute to identify it.

Peace. You felt peace.

You climbed into bed and closed your eyes. For the first time in months, you fell asleep without the background anxiety of knowing you'd have to endure unwanted touching tomorrow. Tomorrow you'd have Ruggie, who'd grab your sleeve, let you drink your terrible stabilizers, and probably ask what you were buying him for lunch.

Life was good.

You fell asleep with what might have been a smile on your face, which was concerning but you were too tired to worry about it.

The next morning, Ruggie sent you a text at 6 AM that just said "we need to go to HR."

You stared at your phone with the confusion of someone who'd just been told they needed to report to the dentist for a mandatory root canal when they don't even have teeth.

"Why," you typed back.

"Bonuses. If I'm your official Guide I can get bonuses for successful partnerships or whatever. Bureau pays extra for Guides who maintain long-term assignments with difficult Espers."

"I'm not difficult."

"You're literally paying me under the table to NOT guide you. You're the definition of difficult. Anyway I want that bonus money. Pick me up in 20."

You picked him up in twenty. He got in your car holding a coffee that he'd definitely made himself because it was in a travel mug with a logo for a grocery store chain.

"Morning," he said cheerfully. "You eat breakfast?"

"Coffee."

"That's not breakfast."

"It's fine."

"It's not fine but I'm not your keeper. Just your fake Guide." He took a sip of his own coffee. "Okay so here's the plan. We go to HR, I tell them about our amazing partnership, they give me paperwork for the bonus program, I fill it out, we get money. Well, I get money. You already have money."

"Sounds fine."

"It will be fine. HR loves this shit. They live for successful Guide-Esper pairs. Makes their metrics look good or whatever."

He was right. When you walked into the HR office, the person at the desk looked up and their entire face transformed into joy so pure it was almost unsettling.

Then you actually looked at them and your stomach dropped.

You knew this person. This was the same HR representative who'd processed your paperwork when you'd first registered as an Esper, years ago. You'd been younger, significantly more naive, and not yet aware that your life was going to become a series of increasingly absurd situations held together with spite and caffeine.

They looked at you. Their eyes got shiny.

"Oh my god," they said, voice wobbling. "You've grown so much."

You froze. What the fuck was happening.

"I remember when you first came in," they continued, and oh god they were getting emotional. "You were so young. So powerful. So angry at the consent forms. And now look at you! You have a Guide! A registered Guide! You're taking care of yourself!"

They sniffled and actual moisture appeared in their eyes.

"I'm so proud of you," they said, and you desperately wished for a natural disaster to occur so you could escape this conversation.

This person had apparently decided that your professional relationship with the Bureau was some kind of weird fucked up child-growing-up situation and they were the emotional parent figure. You had no idea how to process this. You didn't want to process this. You wanted to leave.

"Uh," you said, because your brain had completely abandoned ship.

Ruggie, blessed Ruggie, immediately stepped forward with the energy of someone who'd sensed an opportunity.

"Hi! Ruggie Bucchi, A-rank Guide, newly assigned to this wonderful Esper here." He gestured at you like you were a prize he'd won. "We're here to register for the Guide partnership bonus program. I've got all my documentation, they've got their approval, we just need to iron out the details."

The HR person wiped their eyes and immediately shifted into professional mode, though they kept glancing at you with the expression of someone watching a particularly moving commercial about dogs.

"Of course! Yes! Let me pull up the forms. This is so wonderful. I'm just so happy you're finally accepting proper care."

You decided to focus very intently on anything that wasn't this conversation. You turned slightly and looked out through the glass wall of the office into the common area where other Guides and Espers were milling around.

There was a pair sitting on one of the couches. The Guide was a guy who looked like he baked bread as a hobby and possibly wore cardigans voluntarily. He had green hair and glasses and the overall vibe of someone who'd never raised his voice in his life. He was currently patting the back of an Esper who appeared to be vibrating at a frequency visible to the naked eye.

The Esper was talking rapidly, gesturing with their hands, bouncing slightly in their seat like they'd consumed their body weight in sugar and were now experiencing the consequences. They looked like a caffeinated squirrel that had achieved human form.

The Guide just kept patting their back with the patience of a saint. His expression was calm, almost serene, like this was just a normal day for him. The Esper said something that involved very aggressive hand gestures. The Guide nodded thoughtfully and said something back. The Esper's vibrating intensified.

Poor bastard, you thought. That Guide looked way too calm and collected to deserve being partnered with someone who had that much energy.

Then again, maybe he was into that. Maybe he found it charming. People were weird about their partnerships.

"Okay so I just need you to sign here, and here, and initial here," Ruggie was saying, and you tuned back into the conversation to find him surrounded by paperwork. The HR person was still looking at you with damp eyes.

"You've really matured," they said to you, unprompted. "Taking responsibility for your health and accepting help. I'm just so glad you found someone compatible."

"Yep," you said, because what else could you say? "Sure did. Found him. Very compatible. Much health."

Ruggie made a sound that might have been a suppressed laugh.

"All done!" he announced, straightening up with a stack of papers. "Bonus program registered, direct deposit set up, everything's official."

"Wonderful!" The HR person clasped their hands together. "You two are going to do amazing things together. I can feel it. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you need anything. Anything at all. I'm so invested in your success."

"Great," you said, already moving toward the door. "Thanks. Bye."

You basically fled. Ruggie followed, still clutching his paperwork, making absolutely no effort to hide his amusement.

"They really care about you, huh?" he said once you were safely in the hallway.

"Apparently I'm their weird emotional support project."

"Could be worse. Could be nobody giving a shit if you live or die."

"I guess."

Your phone buzzed. You pulled it out and saw a Gate notification. Grade S, downtown location, estimated threat level high, report immediately.

You jerked your head toward the exit and looked at Ruggie.

He saw your expression and grinned.

"Ooh, Gate time already? Man, I love this job." He started walking toward the exit with you. "Okay so today I'm thinking sushi. There's this place that does all-you-can-eat. And it's fancy sushi. You ever been so full you regretted your life choices?"

"No."

"Well today's your lucky day! You're gonna learn what true suffering feels like, and that suffering is eating so much salmon that you start to become the salmon."

You walked out of the Bureau building together, Ruggie already pulling up the map to the restaurant on his phone, you mentally preparing for whatever dimensional horror show was waiting in the Gate.

The HR person waved at you through the window, still looking proud.

Your phone buzzed with the Gate details. Ruggie was now showing you pictures of sushi platters.

The Gate was a Grade S, which meant it was really annoying but not immediately life-threatening unless you did something spectacularly stupid.

You did not do anything spectacularly stupid. You went in, you fought monsters that looked like someone had designed them during a bad trip, and you were handling it fine.

The problem was that there was another Esper in there with you.

He had red hair styled in a way that suggested he spent actual time on it, and his uniform was so perfectly pressed it looked like he'd ironed it that morning with a ruler and a protractor. Everything about him screamed "I have my life together and I'm mad that you don't."

You'd heard about him. Everyone had heard about him. He was the Esper who took discipline so seriously that he'd apparently once written someone up for breathing too loud during a mission briefing. He treated the Bureau rules like they were holy scripture and anyone who violated them was personally offending him.

You were wearing gloves.

This was apparently a problem.

"Excuse me!" he shouted over the sound of a monster dying in the background. "Are those extra layers?!"

You looked at him. You looked at your gloves. You looked back at him.

"Yeah?" you said, confused about why this was a conversation.

"Extra layers compromise mobility and are against regulation Gate gear protocols!" He was getting red in the face, which was impressive given that he was also actively fighting a monster. "Section 6, subsection 7 clearly states that Espers should minimize unnecessary equipment to maintain optimal combat efficiency!"

"They're gloves."

"They're a VIOLATION!"

This guy was really upset about your gloves. You'd been wearing gloves into Gates for months and nobody had ever said anything. Mostly because the gloves meant you could avoid skin contact during the initial Gate entry checks, but that wasn't something you were going to explain to this incarnation of a hall monitor.

You stuck your tongue out at him.

His face went from red to purple. "How DARE you—"

He actually swung at you. His power flared and you had to dodge before he took your fucking head off with what looked like a very aggressive playing card that had been sharpened to a molecular edge.

"WHOA," you yelled, because what the fuck.

"REMOVE THE GLOVES!"

"They're JUST GLOVES!"

A monster tried to eat both of you during this argument. You both killed it without looking, still arguing.

"Regulations exist for a REASON!"

"The reason is to make people like you feel important!"

You spent the rest of the Gate fighting monsters and also occasionally ragebaiting the world's angriest Esper. It was honestly kind of fun. He was so mad. So incredibly mad about your gloves. Every time you caught him looking at your hands his eye would twitch.

When the Gate finally cleared, you walked out feeling pretty good about yourself. You'd survived monsters AND a disciplinarian with anger management issues.

Ruggie was waiting on a bench near the Gate perimeter, scrolling through his phone. When he saw you, he straightened up and pulled something out of his jacket.

Your stabilizers.

He'd brought them. He'd remembered. You felt something warm in your chest that was either affection or the early stages of a heart attack.

"Rough one?" he asked, handing you the first bottle.

"There was this one guy who tried to kill me because I was wearing gloves."

"What?"

"He was very upset about regulations."

"Espers are fucking weird, man." Ruggie shook his head. Then he reached out and grabbed your gloved hand, his grip loose and casual. "Drink up."

You downed the first stabilizer and it tasted like Satan's cough syrup as usual. Ruggie just held your gloved hand to maintain contact for appearances while you suffered through your liquid punishment.

When you finished the first bottle and reached for the second, Ruggie shifted slightly.

"You sure you don't want actual guiding?" he asked, and his tone was different. "Like, I can actually do my job if you need it. I know the stabilizers aren't as good for S-ranks."

You looked at him and he stared back. There was no judgment or frustration in his expression and it didn't seem like he wanted to push you into it.

"I'll be okay," you said.

"Alright," he said immediately, and dropped it.

He accepted your answer and went back to holding your hand while you drank poison. You fucking loved that about him. The fact that he got it and didn't push.

You finished the second stabilizer, then the third. Your energy levels were dropping back to normal, the dangerous crackling feeling fading into something manageable. Ruggie let go of your hand and pocketed the empty bottles.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Yeah."

You stood up, stretching out the residual tension in your muscles. Your body felt like you'd been put through a blender and then reassembled slightly wrong, which was pretty standard for a Grade S Gate. Ruggie stood up too, already pulling out his phone to check whatever restaurant he'd picked.

"Okay so the sushi place is like fifteen minutes from here," he said, starting to walk toward the parking area. "They got this deal where if you choose the all-you-can-eat option, you can sit in front of the conveyor belt and go ham on everything. I'm talking salmon, tuna, eel, those little egg things, the whole deal. You ever had eel?"

"No?"

"Well you're having it today. Come on, car's this way."

He started walking ahead, already absorbed in his phone, probably looking at the options and planning his attack strategy.

You stood there for a second, just watching him. This guy who'd agreed to scam the system with you for the price of free food. Who brought your stabilizers without being asked. Who held your hand through gloves and didn't make it weird. Who offered real help but backed off immediately when you said no.

Something in your chest felt warm and full, and it had nothing to do with Gate energy or stabilizers.

You caught up to him in two quick steps and ruffled his hair.

He made a sound of protest and swatted at your hand, but he was grinning.

"Dinner's on me tomorrow too," you said.

His eyes lit up like you'd just promised him a winning lottery ticket. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. And the day after that, probably."

"Oh shit, are you getting sentimental on me?" He was still grinning, already trying to fix his hair where you'd messed it up. "Am I your favorite person now? Are we bonding?"

"Don't push it."

"Too late, I'm pushing it. You love me. I'm the best Guide you've ever had and you know it."

"You're the only Guide who doesn't make me want to fake my own death."

"I'll take it!" He laughed, that slightly hyena-like sound that suggested he was deeply amused by his own fortune. "Okay boss, you got yourself a deal. I'll follow you forever if you keep feeding me like this."

He said it like a joke, but something about the way he said "boss" made you grin.

"Lead the way then," you said.

He did, practically bouncing toward your car while narrating his plans. You followed, feeling lighter than you'd felt in months.

The angry Esper from the Gate walked past you in the parking lot, saw your gloves, and made a sound of disgust. You waved at him cheerfully.

Ruggie laughed so hard he almost tripped.

You were watching Ruggie systematically demolish the entire sushi conveyor belt with focused determination like he'd been personally challenged by the concept of leaving food uneaten. He had plates stacked in front of him like he was constructing some kind of delicious Jenga tower, and he showed no signs of slowing down.

"Oh shit, is that the fancy tuna with the gold flakes on it?" he said, his eyes tracking a plate as it went by. He snagged it with the precision of a hunting bird. "Yeah, that's definitely mine. You see this? They put actual gold on it. I'm eating gold. I'm fancy as hell right now."

"You have rice on your face," you observed.

"That's how you know I'm doing it right." He shoved the gold-flaked tuna in his mouth and made a sound that was borderline pornographic for a family establishment. "Oh man, that's the good shit. Why does expensive fish taste so much better? Is it the suffering? Do the fish suffer more?"

"I don't think that's how it works."

"Well something's different because this tastes like the ocean personally blessed it." He was already reaching for another plate, this one loaded with salmon that had some kind of crispy topping. "And this one, oh this one's got the crunchy bits. I love the crunchy bits."

You were picking at your own considerably smaller pile of sushi, managing to actually eat some of it because watching Ruggie experience what appeared to be religious ecstasy through fish made eating seem less like a mandatory biological function. You'd gotten through maybe four pieces, which was practically a thanksgiving feast by your recent standards.

"Oh hey," you said, remembering something that had been lurking in the back of your mind like an unwanted dental appointment. "I've got my yearly checkup this weekend. The whole power measuring circus."

Ruggie looked up from his plate, still chewing what looked like an entire roll he'd just shoved in his mouth whole. He swallowed. "The one where they make you shoot lasers at stuff to see how dead you can make things?"

"Something like that. More like controlled energy output in a reinforced room while people with clipboards take notes and judge me."

"Sounds like a great time. Very fun. Much excitement." He grabbed another plate off the belt. "What time?"

"Seven AM. It's a whole thing that takes like two hours. They do the power measurement, then medical evaluation, then they poke at me some more just for fun probably."

"Cool, I'll be there," Ruggie said, like this was already decided and you had no say in the matter.

You blinked at him. "You don't need to come. It's boring as hell and also kind of depressing. You'd literally just be sitting there watching me get examined like a weird science experiment."

"Yeah but I'm your Guide now, right? Official and everything. I should probably show up to this stuff so it looks legit." He grinned at you, his teeth showing. "Plus breakfast is on you after."

"I just said you don't need to be there," you repeated, though you could already feel yourself losing this argument.

"And I'm saying I'm coming anyway. You can't stop me. I know where the testing facility is. I'll just show up and tell them I'm your emotional support Guide." He was already looking way too pleased with himself. "So you better give me a ride or I'll take the bus and show up anyway and then you'll feel bad."

"I won't feel bad."

"You absolutely will. You'll see me standing there all sad because I had to take public transportation at six in the morning, and you'll feel terrible." He pointed his chopsticks at you for emphasis. "Just admit defeat now and promise me pancakes after."

You sighed, because he was right and he knew it and there was no point in arguing. "Fine. Pancakes."

"Excellent!" He moved to high-five you but then seemed to realize both his hands were completely occupied with holding plates and chopsticks. He paused, assessed his options, and then just smacked your shoulder with his tail instead.

You stared at him. "Did you just tail-slap me?"

"Sure did! That's what happens when you make important business agreements while I'm in the middle of eating." He looked entirely too proud of himself. "Consider yourself officially tail-fived. Now shut up, there's more eel coming and I need to focus on my strategy."

"You have a strategy for conveyor belt sushi?"

"Of course I have a strategy. You think I got this good at eating by just randomly grabbing shit?" He was already eyeing the approaching plates like a general surveying a battlefield. "Eel first, then those little egg ones, then I'm gonna grab like three of the salmon because they keep running out. This is a science."

You watched him continue his systematic destruction of the restaurant's sushi supply and felt something in your chest that might have been fondness or possibly just indigestion from eating more than your usual nothing.

You picked Ruggie up from his apartment building at six-thirty in the morning, which was an absolutely criminal time to be awake, and found him waiting outside looking somehow more alert than you'd ever been in your entire life. He bounced into your car holding the same travel mug from last time.

"Morning, boss!" he said with the kind of cheerfulness that should be illegal before eight AM. "Ready to get poked and prodded by people in lab coats who are definitely going to have opinions about your life choices?"

"I hate everything about this already," you said.

"That's the spirit! Very positive. Great attitude." He took a sip of his coffee and made a face. "Man, this coffee tastes like it was filtered through someone's gym sock but I'm too tired to care."

The checkup facility was located in a reinforced building on the outskirts of the city, and the structure looked like it had been designed by someone who'd watched too many disaster movies and decided to prepare for all of them simultaneously. You'd been coming here once a year since you'd first registered as an Esper, and every single time you hated it more than the last.

The "doctors" were all retired Guides, which made sense from a practical standpoint because they needed people who could handle Esper energy output without immediately dying. What made less sense was why they felt the need to maintain physical contact during the entire goddamn process.

You walked into the examination room and immediately wanted to walk back out. There were three doctors waiting, all wearing expressions that suggested they were already exhausted and the day had barely started. The lead doctor was an older woman who looked like she'd been doing this job since before you were born and had seen enough shit to fill several horror anthologies.

"Good morning," she said in a tone that suggested it was not, in fact, a good morning. "Standard annual checkup today. We'll be doing power output measurement, energy stability evaluation, and baseline guiding assessment. The whole process should take approximately two hours. Your Guide can wait in the observation area."

Ruggie immediately sprawled into one of the chairs set up behind a wall of reinforced glass that probably cost more than most carsr. He pulled out his phone and settled in like he was about to watch the world's most boring movie.

"Right then," the lead doctor said, turning her attention to you. "Let's begin with the power output measurement. We'll need you to channel your abilities at progressive intensity levels while we monitor your readings. Physical contact will be maintained throughout to ensure you don't accidentally obliterate the building."

And there it was–the thing you hated most about these appointments.

They were going to make you unleash your power in a controlled setting, which was fine, you'd done it a million times. The problem was they insisted on grabbing onto you the entire time, their hands clamped on your shoulders or arms, their Guide energy flowing into you to keep everything stable. It felt invasive in a way that made your skin crawl, clinical and detached, like you were a dangerous lab rat they needed to study while wearing protective equipment.

You gritted your teeth and let them position you in the center of the room. Two doctors moved to either side and grabbed your arms after rolling your sleeves up.

The sensation of their hands on your bare skin made you want to peel your own arms off and throw it at them.

"Begin with twenty percent output," the lead doctor instructed, her tablet at the ready.

You channeled your power, letting it flow out in a controlled stream. The air around you started crackling with visible energy. The doctors' grips tightened immediately, their own power pressing into yours to keep it from going wild.

"Thirty percent."

You pushed harder. Your power flared brighter, distorting the air around you like heat waves off asphalt. The doctors were murmuring to each other in that annoying medical professional way where they talked about you like you weren't even there.

From behind the glass, you saw Ruggie look up from his phone. He caught your eye and immediately crossed his eyes while sticking his tongue out to the side, making himself look absolutely deranged.

Despite the discomfort and the invasive hands and the general awfulness of the situation, you almost laughed.

"Forty percent. Maintain focus, please."

The energy was building now, hot and uncomfortable under your skin. Your power at this level wanted to be used, wanted to destroy something, and keeping it contained while people grabbed you felt like trying to hold onto a live electrical wire. The doctors were channeling more energy into you to keep you stable, and the sensation was like being squeezed from the inside out by hands you couldn't see.

Ruggie was doing something new now, making his hands into little mouths that appeared to be having an argument with each other. One hand-mouth was clearly very angry. The other hand-mouth looked shocked and offended. He was doing voices under his breath that you couldn't hear but could definitely see based on how his mouth was moving.

He looked like a complete fucking idiot. It was helping.

"Fifty percent."

This was where it started to actually hurt. Your power at half capacity was not something that enjoyed being restrained, and your body was very firmly suggesting that maybe you should stop listening to these doctors and start listening to your basic survival instincts that were screaming. The doctors had their eyes closed now, concentrating on keeping you stable, their energy wrapped around yours like chains.

Ruggie had apparently abandoned the hand-mouth theater and was now making faces that suggested he was watching something deeply disgusting. He looked like he'd just witnessed a crime against nature. His whole face was scrunched up in exaggerated horror.

Your concentration wavered slightly. The lead doctor said something sharp and medical-sounding. You refocused.

They pushed you up to seventy percent before finally calling it quits. By the time they released you, you were shaking slightly, your power subsiding back down into something that wouldn't accidentally level the building. The doctors immediately turned away to consult their tablets, comparing numbers and graphs that probably meant something terrible.

"Alright," the lead doctor said after a moment, her professional mask firmly in place. "Power output is consistent with last year's measurements. No significant degradation in your ability levels. Now we need to perform the baseline guiding assessment to evaluate how your energy system responds to external stabilization."

This was somehow even worse than the power measurement. At least when they were testing your output you were doing something active, channeling your power, staying engaged. The guiding assessment was completely passive. You just had to sit there like a lump while they poked around in your energy pathways and made judgmental observations.

You sat down in the designated examination chair, which was about as comfortable as sitting on a pile of rocks. The lead doctor positioned herself directly in front of you and placed her hands on your temples with the clinical efficiency of someone who'd touched a thousand foreheads and was tired of all of them. Another doctor moved behind you and put their hands on your shoulders. The third doctor stayed at the monitoring equipment, watching screens that were probably displaying your imminent demise in graph form.

"Try to relax," the lead doctor said, which was possibly the most useless instruction anyone had ever given you.

Their energy flooded into you like water being poured into a container that really didn't want to be filled, seeking out the pathways in your system, checking for blockages and damage and whatever else they were looking for. It felt like being turned inside out and then examined by someone with ice cold hands. You could feel them encountering the rough spots, the places where your energy didn't flow quite right anymore, the patches of your system that had started deteriorating like old pipes.

The lead doctor's expression changed. Her eyebrows drew together in a way that suggested she'd just found something she really didn't want to find. She looked distressed, which was concerning because these people were supposed to be professional enough to maintain their poker faces.

It was always like this. Every single year, the same progression. Initial examination, growing concern, that specific look that meant they'd confirmed whatever terrible thing they'd suspected.

She pulled back, removing her hands from your temples like you'd burned her. The other doctor let go of your shoulders and stepped away.

"We need to discuss your results," she said, and her voice was doing that thing where it was carefully professional but you could hear all the concern lurking underneath like a shark under calm water.

Ruggie had straightened up in his observation chair behind the glass. Even from this distance you could see his expression shifting from bored to alert.

"Your energy pathways are showing significant deterioration," the lead doctor said, pulling up something on her tablet and turning it to show you. The screen was full of graphs and charts and numbers that were probably meant to convey something important but mostly just looked like evidence of your bad decisions rendered in visual form. "Specifically in your primary energy channels. This pattern is entirely consistent with long-term stabilizer dependency without adequate guiding supplementation."

"Okay," you said, because you already knew this and had known this for a while now.

"This level of deterioration is not sustainable," she continued, and now she was doing that thing doctors do where they explain terrible news in calm measured tones like maybe if they say it gently enough it'll hurt less. "At your current rate of decline, within approximately two years you'll experience one of two outcomes. Either your pathways will collapse entirely and you'll lose your abilities permanently, or you'll experience catastrophic energy overflow that your compromised system won't be able to contain."

She said it all clinical and professional, but what she actually meant was: your powers are either going to disappear or they're going to kill you, pick your favorite.

"I know," you said.

Her expression shifted to something that looked like frustration mixed with concern, which was apparently the standard medical professional response to patients who acknowledged their problems but refused to fix them. "Then why are you continuing to rely primarily on stabilizers? You need regular proper guiding sessions. Real guiding, not whatever arrangement you have with—" She glanced at Ruggie behind the glass. "Multiple sessions per week at minimum. This isn't optional anymore."

"I know," you said again, because what else was there to say?

She looked like she wanted to argue, wanted to lecture you about responsibility and health and all the things that responsible Espers did to not die horribly. You could see her gearing up for it.

"Thanks for the checkup," you said, standing up before she could get started. "Same time next year?"

You didn't wait for her response. You just walked out of the examination room, through the hallway, and out toward the parking lot with a purposeful stride, fleeing a conversation you qbsolutely did not want to have.

Behind you, you heard Ruggie scrambling to grab his stuff and follow.

He caught up to you in the parking lot but didn't say anything. You could feel him vibrating with unasked questions, could sense all the words building up behind his teeth like water behind a dam, but he kept his mouth shut and just walked next to you in silence.

You drove to the pancake place. The silence in the car was so thick you could have cut it with a knife and served it on a plate. The waitress sat you at a booth with a cheerful greeting that you barely managed to reciprocate, completely unaware that she was seating two people who were both having internal crises of different varieties.

Ruggie ordered his chocolate chip pancakes with extra whipped cream and enough butter to constitute a heart attack. You ordered coffee that you had no intention of drinking.

When his pancakes arrived, he picked up his fork, ate a few bites, and then put his fork down and pushed the plate away.

Ruggie Bucchi, the man who treated food like a religious calling, the guy who'd nearly cried tears of joy when you'd first offered to buy him dinner, was leaving pancakes uneaten on his plate.

"Not hungry?" you asked, even though you knew the answer.

"Nah, I'm good," he said, which was such a blatant lie that you didn't even bother calling him out on it.

The silence stretched between you and Ruggie kept looking at you, then looking away, then looking back like he was trying to solve a puzzle but couldn't find the right pieces. His tail was doing something anxious and twitchy that you'd never seen before, moving in small jerky motions that suggested his body was expressing the agitation his mouth was holding back.

You paid the bill without looking at it. You drove him home with the radio off and the windows up and the silence pressing down on both of you like a weighted blanket made of discomfort.

When you pulled up outside his apartment building, he didn't immediately get out. His hand was on the door handle but he wasn't pulling it.

"Look—" he started.

"Don't," you said.

"I'm just saying, maybe you should—"

"Ruggie. Please."

He went quiet. His hand was still on the door handle, gripping it tight enough that his knuckles were going white. Then he turned in his seat, reached over, and squeezed your hand.

His was hand on yours with no gloves between you, skin to skin, warm and slightly callused and real.

You should have hated it. You should have jerked your hand away and told him to back off and reminded him that the entire point of your arrangement was avoiding exactly this. That was your whole thing, the reason you'd gone through all this trouble in the first place.

But you didn't pull away because you didn't feel disgust.

Because this wasn't some Guide performing their job duties. This wasn't clinical therapeutic contact meant to stabilize your energy or fix your problems. This was just Ruggie, who'd clearly been freaked out by what he'd heard in that examination room, trying to offer some kind of comfort in the only way he could think of.

The contact lasted maybe three or four seconds. Then he let go, got out of the car, and headed into his building without looking back, his shoulders hunched in a way that made him look smaller than usual.

You sat there in your parked car for a long moment, staring at your hand where he'd touched it, feeling the residual warmth fading from your skin.

Then you put the car in drive and went home.

You didn't let yourself think about the doctor's words. You drove home, parked in your building's garage, took the elevator up to your floor, unlocked your apartment, and sat down on the floor next to your couch in the growing darkness as the sun set outside your windows.

Two years, give or take.

Two years before your powers either disappeared entirely or killed you in some dramatic energy-related disaster that would probably make the news.

You'd known this, obviously. It wasn't new information. The doctors had been hinting at it for the past few checkups, getting progressively less subtle about their concerns. But hearing it stated outright as a medical fact, seeing it displayed on graphs and charts, watching a professional look at you with barely concealed pity while delivering your prognosis, that made it real in a way it hadn't been before.

Your phone buzzed in your pocket. You pulled it out to find a text from Ruggie.

"Thanks for breakfast boss"

You stared at the message for a long time, your thumb hovering over the keyboard, before finally typing back.

"anytime"

You meant it more than you'd meant anything in a while.

You put your phone down, leaned back against your couch, and stared at your ceiling in the dark, trying very hard not to think about anything at all.

The Gate energy readings had pinpointed a location in the industrial district, which meant you were currently standing around outside a garage that smelled like old tires, waiting for a dimensional rift to tear open reality so you could go fight monsters.

Ruggie was sitting on a concrete barrier next to where you were standing, scrolling through his phone with a focus that suggested he was either reading something very interesting or avoiding thinking about something very concerning. You were betting on the latter based on the way his eyebrows were doing that worried furrow thing they'd been doing ever since the checkup.

You were grateful he hadn't brought it up again or tried to lecture you about your health or your terrible life choices or the fact that you were apparently speed-running your way toward either power loss or death. He'd just gone back to the normal routine like nothing had changed, showing up when you needed him, grabbing your sleeve, letting you drink your stabilizers, and then taking food as payment.

But you could see the worry on his face. It was there in the tightness around his eyes, the way he kept glancing at you when he thought you weren't looking, the unusual quietness that had replaced his normal running commentary about food and money and whatever else popped into his head.

Some absolutely deranged part of your brain looked at that worried expression and thought, "I want to kiss that away."

You immediately slapped both your cheeks hard enough that it made a sound.

Ruggie looked up from his phone, startled. "The fuck was that?"

"Nothing. Impulsive thought. Had to murder it."

"You good?"

"Extremely not good but we're not talking about it."

"Fair enough," he said, and went back to his phone, but the worry was still there on his face and you had to look away before your brain produced any more thoughts that needed to be violently suppressed.

There was another Esper standing nearby, a B-rank rookie who looked like he took his job very seriously and also possibly did his own stunts. He had dark blue hair and an earnest expression that suggested he still believed in things like justice and doing your best. You'd heard he'd gotten in trouble recently for something spectacularly stupid, but he'd apparently learned from it and was now trying very hard to follow all the rules.

He was looking at you with concern. "Are you okay?" he asked, his voice doing that thing where it was trying to be casual but came out worried anyway.

"I'm fine," you said. "Just tired."

"Oh! Okay, well, you're doing great!" He moved like he was going to clap you on the back in a gesture of camaraderie, his hand already coming up, but then he paused mid-motion like he'd suddenly remembered something important.

He'd remembered your reputation. The fact that you were the S-rank Esper who hated being touched and had a whole thing about it.

The pause was kind of adorable, actually. Here was this earnest rookie who'd been about to make a friendly gesture and then stopped himself because he'd done his research and knew about your boundaries. Most people either didn't know or didn't care.

You waved him off. "It's fine, go ahead."

His face lit up and he patted your back with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever who'd just been told he was a good boy. "You're gonna do great in there! We're all gonna do great! I've been training really hard for Gate scenarios!"

You saw Ruggie's eyebrows furrow even more, his expression shifting into something that looked almost annoyed. You were about to ask him if he was jealous, because that would be funny and also completely ridiculous since there was nothing to be jealous of, when the air started doing that thing where it felt like reality was about to have a structural failure.

The Gate opened and it was a swirling vortex of purple and black energy that made your teeth hurt and your eyes water and generally made you regret every choice that had led you to this career.

Everyone straightened up immediately. The Guides started moving away from the Gate perimeter, heading to their designated waiting area where they'd sit around being anxious until the Espers came back out either victorious or dead. Ruggie stood up from his concrete barrier, gave you a look that clearly meant "don't die in there," and walked off with the other Guides.

You and approximately fifteen other Espers, including the earnest B-rank rookie, headed into the Gate.

The inside was a mess.

There were monsters everywhere, which was expected, but they were respawning, which was significantly less expected and much more annoying.

You'd kill a group of them and then thirty seconds later more would just appear out of thin air like the world's worst magic trick.

"They're respawning!" someone yelled, which was obvious but people tended to state the obvious when they were stressed.

"We need to find the core!" someone else shouted, because apparently this Gate had a core that was generating the monsters and if you destroyed it the respawning would stop.

What followed was approximately two hours of the most tedious combat you'd ever experienced. The monsters themselves weren't particularly strong, mostly low-rank creatures. But there were so many of them, and they kept coming, and finding the core required actually exploring this fucked up dimensional warehouse while fighting off waves of angry goat adjacent nightmares.

You used your power constantly. You didn't have to keep it at high output because you didn't need to blast everything into atoms, but the constant sustained use of your abilities was like running a marathon where every step required you to punch someone in the face. Your energy reserves were draining steadily, and you could feel your body starting to protest the extended exertion.

The earnest B-rank rookie was doing pretty well, actually. He had some kind of ability that involved summoning things that hit really hard, and he was using it quite well.

Eventually, someone found the core. It was this pulsating crystal thing that looked like it was having a very bad day. Everyone converged on it and hit it with everything they had. It exploded in a very satisfying way, and suddenly the monsters stopped respawning.

Cleaning up the remaining creatures took another twenty minutes. By the time the Gate stabilized and you could leave, you were exhausted in a way that went beyond physical tiredness and into something that felt like your soul was tired.

You stumbled out of the Gate and immediately knew something was wrong.

Your vision was blurring at the edges. Your breathing felt strained, like someone had replaced your lungs with smaller, less efficient lungs that were really struggling with the whole oxygen thing. Every step felt like you were walking through mud.

You looked around for Ruggie and found him about thirty feet away, apparently in the middle of yelling at another Guide. The other Guide was shorter than Ruggie, had lavender-purple hair, and was holding what looked like a Guide emergency kit. Ruggie was gesturing aggressively and his face was doing that thing where he was clearly furious but trying to keep it professional. You couldn't hear what he was saying over the general noise of Espers and Guides and Bureau personnel doing their post-Gate routines.

Ruggie saw you approaching and his expression immediately shifted from angry to guilty to worried in the span of about two seconds.

You made it to a nearby bench and basically collapsed onto it. Your breathing was getting worse. You could feel your energy levels fluctuating wildly, unstable and chaotic, because you'd used too much power for too long without proper stabilization and now your system was having some kind of crisis about it.

Ruggie sat down next to you immediately, close enough that his shoulder was almost touching yours. "That fucking rookie Guide put apple juice in the stabilizer kit instead of actual stabilizers," he said, his voice tight with barely controlled anger.

You'd stopped buying and bringing your own stabilizers. The official Bureau-provided ones were supposed to be better quality, more effective, and you'd been relying on having access to them after Gates recently. You were really regretting that decision now.

Your vision blurred more. You had to press a hand against your chest because breathing was becoming actively difficult, like your ribcage had decided to stop cooperating with the whole respiration process. You were taking gasping breaths that didn't seem to be getting enough oxygen.

"What's wrong?" Ruggie asked, and his voice had gone from angry to worried. "Hey, what's happening?"

You tried to answer but all that came out was another gasping breath. Your energy was spiraling out of control inside you, too much of it with nowhere to go, and your compromised pathways couldn't handle the strain. You felt like you were going to shake apart from the inside.

"Okay, fuck this," Ruggie said, and there was decision in his voice. "Let me guide you. Right now."

You managed to nod, because you were too busy trying to breathe to argue and also because you were pretty sure you were going to die if someone didn't stabilize you in the next sixty seconds.

"Okay," he said, and then his hands were on you.

His hand took yours, fingers interlacing, the other hand moving to your head. "C'mere," he said softly, and guided your head down to rest against his shoulder, your face ending up in the crook of his neck.

Then he started guiding you.

His energy flowed into you and it was completely different from every other time you'd been guided. The doctors in the examination room had felt invasive, clinical, like being examined by someone wearing rubber gloves who didn't particularly care about you as a person. The Guides who'd tried to stabilize you after Gates had felt impersonal and rushed, just doing their job and doing it efficiently.

This felt warm. This felt safe. This felt like coming home after a brutal exam to find your mom had made your favorite meal and was waiting to tell you it would be okay.

Ruggie's energy wrapped around yours carefully, almost gently, finding all the places where you were spiraling out of control and slowly, patiently, bringing everything back into balance. His hand in yours squeezed slightly, grounding you. His other hand was petting your head in slow, soothing strokes that you would have found condescending if it was anyone else but somehow just felt comforting.

You could feel your breathing starting to even out and the painful pressure in your chest was easing.

You pressed your face further into his neck and just breathed. He smelled like coffee and something else you couldn't quite identify, something that was just him. His hand kept moving through your hair in steady, rhythmic strokes. His energy kept flowing into you, warm and steady and safe.

When he finally finished, pulling his energy back slowly and carefully, you felt better than you had in years. You felt better than you'd felt since you'd gotten your powers. Your energy pathways felt clear, your power settled and calm, your body relaxed in a way you'd forgotten was possible.

"You okay?" Ruggie asked quietly, and his voice was right next to your ear because your face was still pressed into his neck.

You pulled back slightly to look at him, and he was so close, and he was looking at you with those eyes that were worried and relieved and something else you couldn't quite name, and your brain decided that now was the perfect time to stop thinking entirely.

You kissed him.

You leaned in and pressed your mouth to his, and he made a small surprised sound and then immediately kissed back with an amount of enthusiasm that suggested he'd been thinking about this too.

You pulled him closer and he came willingly, one hand coming up to cup the back of your head, the other still holding your hand like he was afraid if he let go you'd disappear. His mouth was warm and he tasted like the coffee he'd been drinking earlier and something sweet, and when you deepened the kiss he made another sound that went straight to somewhere in your chest.

When you finally pulled apart because breathing was once again necessary, he immediately hid his face in your neck, and you were almost certain you could feel him purring. Like, actually purring, a low rumbling sound that you could feel more than hear.

"Are you purring?" you asked, unable to keep the amusement out of your voice.

He bit your neck in retaliation, not hard enough to hurt but definitely hard enough to make a point. "Shut up."

"You are! You're purring!"

"I said shut up," he mumbled into your neck, but his tail was doing something happy and his whole body was relaxed against yours in a way that suggested he was extremely okay with this situation.

You wrapped your arms around him and just sat there on that bench, holding him, feeling more satisfied and fulfilled than you could remember feeling in your entire adult life.

Around you, other Espers and Guides were finishing their post-Gate routines, people were filing reports, the Bureau machinery was churning along as usual. Nobody was paying attention to the two of you sitting on a bench in a increasingly intimate embrace.

"We should probably talk about this," Ruggie said eventually, his voice muffled against your neck.

"Later," you said. "Right now I'm enjoying the part where I feel like a functional human being for the first time in months."

"Fair enough," he said.

You sat there together as the sun started to set, and you thought that maybe you'd finally found something worth pushing on for.

Ruggie Bucchi had learned early that nothing in life comes for free, and anyone who told you otherwise was either lying or trying to scam you.

When his Guide powers awakened, some Bureau representative had shown up at his tiny hometown and offered him a spot in the city training program. They'd talked about duty and service and protecting humanity, but what Ruggie heard was "guaranteed income" and "escape from poverty." He'd packed his bags that same day.

The city was expensive in ways that made his hometown look like a charity case. Everything cost money. Breathing would probably be monetized if the landlords could figure out how to charge for it. But Ruggie was determined to squeeze every possible advantage out of his situation, so he lived frugally in a shitty apartment that had character, which was realtor-speak for "things are broken and we're not fixing them," and he sent most of his paycheck back to his grandma.

Being a Guide paid okay. Not great, because Guides weren't the ones diving into hell dimensions and fighting monsters, but okay. The problem was that Espers made significantly more money and also got significantly more respect, which Ruggie thought was bullshit because Guides were the ones keeping those maniacs from leveling cities, but nobody had asked his opinion when they were setting up the pay scale.

The Espers themselves were a mixed bag of psychological issues wrapped in superpowers.

Some of them begged for guiding, practically throwing themselves at Guides after every Gate like they were desperate for someone to hold them and tell them everything would be okay. Others acted like they were too good for guiding, like accepting help was beneath them somehow. And then there were the ones who only wanted extremely high-ranked Guides, who'd turn their noses up at anyone below S-rank.

Ruggie had watched more than one Esper try to request Vil Schoenheit specifically, despite the fact that Vil was bonded to his Esper partner and literally could not guide anyone else even if he wanted to, which he definitely didn't because he'd made his feelings on the matter very clear in several public statements. Idiots, all of them.

Ruggie's strategy was simple: show up to as many active Gate sites as possible to collect the attendance bonus, but stay far enough back that he wouldn't actually have to exert himself guiding anyone unless absolutely necessary. He was getting paid to be present, not to be helpful. If someone specifically requested him, fine, he'd do his job. But otherwise he was perfectly happy to stand around looking official while scrolling through his phone.

This strategy had been working great for months.

Then you showed up and ruined everything by being weird.

Ruggie had been minding his own business, leaning against a barrier and contemplating whether he could afford the good instant ramen this month or if he was stuck with the cheap stuff that tasted like salted cardboard, when you'd approached him with an expression that suffested you were about to ask for something insane.

"I need you to pretend you're guiding me," you'd said, and Ruggie's brain had immediately gone "what the fuck?"

He'd seen Espers do a lot of stupid things, but he'd never seen one actively try to avoid being guided. Most of them were desperate for it. The fact that you were an S-rank, clearly in-demand based on the quality of your gear, made it even weirder. Why would someone with your power level want to fake it?

Then he'd actually looked at your face and recognition had hit him like a truck.

You were that Esper. The one who'd almost thrown a Guide across a parking lot for grabbing you without warning. The incident had made it into the Bureau gossip network, complete with eyewitness accounts and speculation about your psychological issues. Everyone knew you had a thing about being touched.

Which explained the request, actually.

"What's in it for me?" he'd asked, because Ruggie didn't do charity work and he wasn't about to start now.

The promise of dinner had sealed the deal. Free food was free food, and you'd said "anywhere you want" which meant Ruggie could pick somewhere expensive and you'd apparently just pay for it. He'd grabbed your sleeve, you'd drunk your stabilizers, and it had been the easiest money he'd ever made.

The ongoing arrangement you'd proposed afterward was even better. He got to sit around doing absolutely nothing, you got to avoid actual guiding, and Ruggie got paid and fed on a regular basis. He could send more money home to his grandma. He could buy himself nice things occasionally instead of living on nothing but instant ramen and spite.

It was perfect.

At first, your stabilizer dependency seemed like a preference thing. Some Espers were just weird about guiding and would rather rely on the pharmaceutical option. Ruggie didn't care. It wasn't his body being slowly destroyed by inadequate medical treatment.

Then he started noticing things.

The way you'd wince sometimes when you thought nobody was looking. The slight tremor in your hands after particularly tough Gates. The fact that you looked like you'd forgotten what a full meal was and had been surviving on coffee and protein shakes that probably tasted like despair.

He realized this wasn't just a preference. This was bad. This was actively harmful. Your system was suffering and you were choosing to let it happen for reasons Ruggie couldn't understand.

But also, he wasn't your mother or your lover. Why would he care? If you were determined to make terrible life choices, who was he to question you? You were an adult who was paying him. His job was to grab your sleeve and look official, not to fix your life.

When he'd asked you to come register the partnership officially at Bureau HR, he'd expected you to say no. Rich people usually didn't go out of their way to do things that benefited the people they were paying. But you'd just agreed and driven him there without complaint.

The HR person had gotten weirdly emotional about you having a Guide, which was uncomfortable to witness but also kind of funny. You'd looked like you wanted to sink into the floor.

The more time Ruggie spent with you, the more he realized you were actually a decent person.

You seemed to understand his nature, the fact that he wanted things and wasn't ashamed of it. Most people either judged him for being mercenary or tried to take advantage of it. You just accepted it and worked with it. You spent freely on him, taking him to expensive restaurants and letting him order whatever he wanted, buying him things when he mentioned wanting them.

And it didn't feel like bribery. It felt like you actually cared about his quality of life. It was almost like you cared about him as a person and not just as a convenient accessory to your medical avoidance.

The sushi place had been when Ruggie started suspecting he might be in trouble.

You'd been watching him eat with this expression on your face, open and fond, like watching him enjoy food made you happy. When he'd said he'd come to your power checkup in exchange for breakfast, your whole face had lit up in a way that made his heart do something uncomfortable in his chest. You tried telling him he didn't need to but the ways your eyes lit up made him abandon the thought of taking it back.

He'd hidden it with humor, smacking you with his tail and pretending he was too busy with food to properly touch you, because the alternative was acknowledging that he was developing feelings for his Esper which was definitely a bad idea.

The power checkup had been horrible for Ruggie in ways he hadn't expected.

He'd sat behind the glass watching them test your power output, watching you endure their invasive touching, watching them guide you for the assessment. You'd looked miserable the whole time but you'd done it because it was mandatory.

And then the doctor had said it.

Two years. Maybe.

Two years before your powers either disappeared or killed you.

Ruggie had sat there in his observation chair feeling like someone had punched him in the stomach with a fist made of ice. What the fuck did they mean you'd die in two years? How could that be? You were strong and powerful and yeah you made terrible choices but surely that didn't mean you deserved to die?

But you'd never stop being an Esper. That was clear. This was your job, your identity, your entire life. Which meant you were going to die.

You were going to die and you knew it and you were just accepting it like it was inevitable.

The pancakes had tasted like ash in his mouth. He'd barely managed three bites before pushing the plate away, his appetite completely gone. You'd driven him home in silence and he'd squeezed your hand before getting out, some desperate attempt to convey something he didn't have words for.

For the first time in a long time, Ruggie had cried that night.

He'd sat in his shitty apartment with its broken heating and water stains on the ceiling, and he'd cried for you. For the fact that you were going to die. For the fact that you'd accepted it. For the fact that he couldn't do anything about it except watch it happen.

The next few Gates passed in a blur. Ruggie tried to hide his concern because he knew you hated it when Guides tried to overstep, when they pushed and prodded and insisted they knew better. You'd chosen him specifically because he didn't do that. He wasn't about to ruin the best thing in his life by suddenly developing opinions about your medical care.

But it was hard.

It was hard watching you come out of Gates looking progressively more exhausted. Hard watching you chug stabilizers that he knew weren't working well enough. Hard knowing that every Gate was bringing you closer to that two-year deadline.

The Gate in the industrial district had been particularly bad.

You'd been waiting outside with him before it opened, and that earnest B-rank rookie had asked if you were okay. You'd said you were fine, and the rookie had moved to pat your back in what was clearly meant to be a friendly gesture.

And you'd let him.

You'd smiled at this kid and told him it was okay and let him touch you, and Ruggie had felt something bitter and hot in his chest that he recognized as jealousy.

Why couldn't you let Ruggie guide you properly? Why couldn't you let him touch you without the barriers of gloves and sleeves? Yes, you'd let him squeeze your hand that one time, but you were smiling at this rookie like he was harmless and friendly and meanwhile you were going to die because you wouldn't let people help you.

Then the Gate had opened and you'd gone in and Ruggie had spent the next two hours trying not to have a panic attack.

He'd checked the stabilizer kit out of nervous energy and found apple juice. Actual fucking apple juice because that rookie Guide had apparently grabbed the wrong bottles and not bothered to check.

Ruggie had been in the middle of crashing out on him, explaining in very clear terms exactly how badly he'd fucked up, when the Espers started coming out.

They all looked tired and beat up, which was normal. What wasn't normal was when you came out and sat down on a bench and your eyes were unfocused in a way that made Ruggie's blood run cold.

He'd explained about the stabilizers while watching you, and then he'd seen you press your hand to your chest. Your breathing was labored, gasping, like your body had forgotten how to process oxygen. Your energy levels were probably spiraling out of control without stabilization.

"Let me guide you," he'd said, and it had come out more desperate than he'd intended.

You'd nodded, and Ruggie had never moved faster in his life.

He'd taken your hand, interlacing your fingers with his, and guided your head down to rest in the crook of his neck. Then he'd started channeling his energy into you, trying to make it as gentle and non-invasive as possible.

He loved you. He loved you desperately. He'd known it for a while now but he'd been avoiding thinking about it because it was complicated and messy. But he loved you, and he wanted you to stay alive, and he was going to guide you properly even if it killed him.

Your energy had been a mess, chaotic and painful, and Ruggie had carefully wrapped his power around yours and brought everything back into balance. He'd petted your hair because it seemed to help, keeping his touch steady and soothing. You'd pressed your face into his neck and just breathed, and Ruggie had felt his heart doing something complicated.

When he'd finished and pulled back to check if you were okay, you'd kissed him.

Ruggie's brain had short-circuited for a solid three seconds before catching up and kissing back with all the enthusiasm he had because he had been wanting this for weeks and had finally gotten permission.

You'd pulled him closer and he'd gone willingly, completely unable to resist, one hand coming up to hold the back of your head like he could keep you there through sheer determination.

When you'd pulled apart he'd hidden his face in your neck because he was definitely purring and he didn't want you to see how stupidly happy he was.

You'd teased him about it and he'd bitten your neck in retaliation, but he couldn't stop purring and honestly didn't want to. You'd wrapped your arms around him and just held him, and Ruggie thought that maybe he'd finally found something worth more than money.

You were warm and solid and alive, and your energy felt stable and healthy for the first time since he'd known you. Maybe this was fixable. Maybe you didn't have to die in two years. Maybe if he could just guide you properly on a regular basis, your pathways would heal and you'd be okay.

Maybe he could keep you.

"We should probably talk about this," he mumbled into your neck, because they definitely needed to discuss what had just happened.

"Later," you said, and Ruggie decided later was fine.

His tail was doing something happy. His whole body felt warm and settled. For the first time since the checkup, Ruggie felt like maybe things would be okay.

Life was significantly better when you actually let yourself be guided properly. It also helped that the Guide was your partner whose touch was something you welcomed.

Ruggie guided you regularly now, real guiding with actual energy transfer and physical contact, and the difference was frankly embarrassing. Your energy pathways had started healing, slowly but noticeably. The constant background ache you'd gotten so used to that you'd stopped registering it had faded. You felt more stable, more grounded, less like a disaster waiting to explode.

You'd also weaned yourself off the stabilizers entirely, which meant you no longer had to drink liquid suffering. Your last checkup had shown significant improvement, enough that the doctor had looked genuinely shocked and then immediately launched into a lecture about how you should have been doing this the whole time. You'd nodded politely and let Ruggie drag you out before you said something deeply mean.

The other major change was that you had an appetite now. You were eating real meals, plural, sometimes multiple times a day. It was still a work in progress because your stomach had apparently shrunk to the size of a walnut during your years of coffee-and-protein-shake existence, but you were getting there.

Ruggie was insufferably smug about all of this.

"Remember when you were all 'I don't need guiding, I'll just slowly kill myself with stabilizers'?" he said for approximately the fifteenth time this week. "Remember when you were basically a suicidal emo teenager with a death wish disguised as professional preference?"

"I was not emo," you protested from where you were standing in the kitchen of the apartment you now shared, which was significantly nicer than either of your previous apartments.

"You were absolutely emo. You had the whole tragic brooding thing going on. Very 'I must suffer alone for the greater good' energy." He was sprawled on the couch looking entirely too pleased with himself. "I'm pretty sure if you'd had a diary it would've been full of sad poetry about the burden of your powers."

"I'm going to bite you."

"Promises, promises."

You abandoned your juice and walked over to the couch with clear intent. Ruggie saw you coming and his grin got wider, the menace. You grabbed him and pushed him down into the cushions, and he laughed with the delight of someone who'd absolutely been trying to provoke exactly this reaction.

"What're you gonna do, boss?" he asked, still grinning up at you. "Gonna punish me for being right?"

You leaned down and bit his cheek, not hard enough to actually hurt but definitely hard enough to make your point. He made a sound that was half-laugh and half-something else.

Then you kissed him properly, and he immediately melted into it with the kind of enthusiasm that suggested he'd been hoping this would happen. His hands came up to grab at your shirt, pulling you closer, and you let yourself sink into the kiss and the warmth of him and the general rightness of this entire situation.

When you pulled back slightly for air, Ruggie looked up at you with eyes that were doing something soft and fond that still made your chest do weird things even though you'd been together for months now.

"Bond with me," he said between kisses, his voice doing that thing where it was trying to sound casual but came out sincere instead.

You looked at him. He looked back. Bonding was permanent, the kind of commitment that meant your energy would be linked forever, that you'd be each other's designated Guide and Esper until one of you died.

"Yeah," you said, because of course the answer was yes. It had always been yes. "Yeah, okay."

His face lit up in a way that made your heart do acrobatics, and then you were pressing him back into the couch and kissing him harder, channeling your energy toward his in the specific way that would initiate the bond.

Ruggie arched up into you, his hands gripping you tight enough to leave marks, and the bond snapped into place with almost audible click in your mind.

It was overwhelming and perfect and you kissed him through it, swallowing his sounds as the bond settled and solidified into something unbreakable.

When it was done, when you were officially bonded and linked forever, you collapsed onto him because your bones had temporarily stopped working. Ruggie made a pleased sound and immediately curled into you, tucking his face into your neck and wrapping himself around you like a particularly affectionate octopus.

You lay there together on the couch, breathing hard, feeling the new bond thrumming between you like a live wire.

Then you remembered something and groaned out loud.

"What?" Ruggie asked, his voice muffled against your neck.

"We have to tell our assigned HR guy about this," you said with the tone of someone contemplating their own execution. "They're going to be so emotional. That same person is going to cry again and tell me they're proud of me."

Ruggie started laughing, his whole body shaking with it. "Oh man, they're gonna lose their shit. They're gonna think this is the best thing that's ever happened. You're their weird emotional support project and now you're bonded to your Guide? They're gonna throw a party."

"I hate this. I hate that you're right."

"You love it. You love me. You literally just bonded with me forever." He propped himself up slightly to grin at you. "Can't take it back now, boss. You're stuck with me."

"I know," you said, and you couldn't keep the smile off your face even though you were trying to maintain your dignity. "I regret nothing."

"Liar. You definitely regret the upcoming HR conversation."

"Okay yes I regret that specifically, but nothing else."

Ruggie kissed you again, soft and sweet and lazy, and the bond hummed contentedly between you. You could feel his happiness mixing with yours, amplifying it until you felt like you might burst from how good everything was.

He was your home. The person who'd agreed to scam the system with you for the price of free food and had somehow become the love of your life. The Guide who'd saved you from yourself without ever making you feel like you were being saved.

You wouldn't trade this for anything. Not for unlimited stabilizers, not for a promotion, not for all the money in the world.

Well. Maybe you'd trade it for the ability to skip the HR conversation, but that was it.

Ruggie snuggled back into your neck, and you wrapped your arms around him and decided that the HR conversation was a problem for future you. Right now you had a bonded partner who loved you and a really comfortable couch.

Life was good.

Life was really, stupidly, embarrassingly good, and you were going to enjoy every second of it.

"Love you," Ruggie mumbled into your neck.

"Love you too," you said, and meant it with every fiber of your being.