Softness… isn’t something that they experience often in their lives. Many people at least had their childhoods to return to, but not them. The experiments had damaged all of them that way, and escaping them didn’t change much in that regard. For a trio of children all on their own, the world was harsh, and they’d shifted themselves to match it. Poisonous, animalistic, deceiving. Hard. They were constantly on defense against a world that would gladly smother them, even if Mukuro-sama believed that the best defense was a ruthless offense. Unfortunately, even Chikusa can recognize that this has leaked somewhat into their relationships with one another. If nothing else… Besides a limitless devotion, he knows he can’t offer either his master or his partner much more.

That doesn’t mean he has no interest in it. It’s the exact opposite. He practically aches to earn any tenderness from the few people in the universe that he can rest easy around. From Mukuro, distant and independent, especially.

So at even this small show of softness, for all his misgivings, Chikusa starts to relax in Mukuro’s grip. “It won’t cause trouble for you, Maestro?” It would destroy him worse than any torture to be seen as a liability in some way for him.