He takes a deep, calming breath, rubbing at his temples before dragging his hand over his face. This is not going well at all, and Koujaku isn’t as good a talker as this brat is.

“How the hell did you even convince yourself of that?” he demands. Alec is not a monster, after all. At least, that’s his working hypothesis. He’s really just winging it at this point, desperate to understand and yet afraid to tread new territory, to foster intimacies where they might not be warranted. “What would your friends think if you tried to leave them all behind like that?”

Because that sure is the only thing that even kept Koujaku from killing himself the first and second times around.