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That morning was a beautiful one, sunny and clear. The light woke Uruha and Fushimi early, but they didn’t get out of bed for hours. They often didn’t, on weekends, when there was no need to be anywhere. When they had all the time in the world to spend together.
Fushimi rolled onto his back with a satisfied smile on his face, and Uruha tucked himself up next to him, rubbing a hand up his bare chest. They used to do this at Kokugoku Fortress, when Fushimi had the day off from his guard duties, though of course back then they’d been trying their best not to let themselves get too carried away. They hadn’t been very successful at that. Now, though, they didn’t need to worry about a relationship getting in the way of duty, or complicating things. Now, they could enjoy it.
Uruha stretched, catlike, his hand brushing Fushimi’s hair. He wriggled onto him, making himself comfortable, resting his chin on his chest and looking up at him with half-lidded eyes. One of Fushimi’s arms went around him, the other beneath his head. He raised his eyebrows questioningly and Uruha smirked; Fushimi always knew when he was after something.
“What?” he said, brushing a lock of hair away from Uruha’s forehead.
“Nothing,” said Uruha, pouting.
“You want something.” Fushimi grinned. “Tell me?”
“Guess what I noticed at headquarters yesterday?” said Uruha. “Natsuki was sick.”
“Natsuki?” Fushimi seemed surprised. “No. Natsuki never gets sick.”
“He was!” said Uruha. “He was clearing his throat and sniffing. Then in the afternoon, I heard him coughing. It sounded pretty bad. And when I called his name, he didn’t hear me.”
“He might’ve been ignoring you,” Fushimi pointed out.
Uruha considered this, and nodded, conceding. “Probably,” he said. “But the rest of it was real.”
“Poor Natsuki,” said Fushimi, sighing. His fingers trailed up and down Uruha’s back, following the ridges of his spine, and it was clear that he was thinking this through.
That was good. Uruha closed his eyes and waited. He could be patient, because he was sure that Fushimi would come to the same conclusion as him.
And the conclusion he had come to was this; they needed to go and take care of Natsuki. In this new world, in the aftermath of everything that had happened, it seemed that everyone had someone but him. Though his anger had abated somewhat, he was still stubbornly trying to keep himself apart. He was lonely; Uruha could tell. He knew by the way his gaze would linger on him and Fushimi, by the way he snapped at the two of them far too easily.
Uruha and Fushimi had made more than one attempt to breach the barrier between them and him. They invited him for drinks, for meals. Sometimes he came and sometimes he refused. He almost always left early, though it seemed to Uruha that he never particularly wanted to. It always happened when they got too close; they would all be laughing at a joke, or Fushimi would sling an arm around Natsuki’s shoulders and Natsuki wouldn’t mind – he would lean in, in fact – until all of a sudden he realised what was happening, and his cheeks would go red and he would stand up and yell at them that it was too late and he wanted to go to bed.
Both Uruha and Fushimi were all too familiar with what it looked like when a person was protesting against their own feelings. They’d danced around what was between the two of them for long enough at Kokugoku Fortress before they’d finally crossed that line, and they knew that they were seeing the same thing here, now, with Natsuki. The problem was that he was never going to admit it on his own.
So, Uruha and Fushimi would have to help him. And with Natsuki sick, it was the perfect opportunity.
Not that Uruha was thinking of it like that. No, that would be insensitive. He wanted to help him! That was all. And if something else came of it, who was he to say no?
“Oh, Uruha!” Fushimi’s eyes lit up and a grin spread over his face. “We should go and take care of him, shouldn’t we?”
Uruha smiled, pleased with himself and pleased with Fushimi. “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what we should do.”
*
The cold had crept up on him out of nowhere.
Natsuki had ignored it at first. He’d told himself it was just a sore throat, allergies or something, that it would clear up on his own. In the morning he drank hot water with lemon and took a couple of multivitamins. Then, he’d gone to work at headquarters as usual.
By lunchtime, it was bad. It had felt as though there was something stuck in throat that he just couldn’t get out. Worse, he’d started coughing. And sneezing! He had to carry tissues in his pocket and he kept snivelling like some snotty little kid. Uruha kept yelling for him but Natsuki had ignored him every time, because he hated having to deal with him at the best of times and it was not the best of times. Eventually he gave up and went home early, so tired that he barely had enough energy to undress before he collapsed into bed.
That was where he was now. His cold hadn’t improved overnight; it had gotten worse. When he woke up his head felt foggy and heavy, and anyway he hadn’t even really woken up because he’d been up half the night coughing. His throat was ragged and raw and his chest was tight. He was exhausted. So exhausted, in fact, that when he tried to sit up he simply groaned and flopped back down onto his pillow. He was too hot and too cold at once. His throat was dry and he wanted water, but he didn’t have enough strength to get out of bed to go and get some. He had to find the strength, though, because he was on his own. Nobody else was going to get it for him.
Natsuki pushed himself upright and squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the headache and dizziness to abate. It did, after a moment, and he swung his legs out of the bed and planted his feet on the floor. Slowly, he got up. He put a hand to the wall and made his way to the kitchen, where he grabbed a bottle of cold water from the fridge before limping back to bed.
He drank.
He drifted off.
There was a knock on the door.
Natsuki jolted awake, having not even realised that he’d slept. He didn’t feel rested. He reached for his water and knocked it on the floor, then covered his face with his hands and tried not to scream.
The knocking persisted.
“Go away!” Natsuki croaked.
Then, the most unbelievable sound; a key turning in the lock. Natsuki sat upright, tense. Who had a key to his apartment? Ibuki had had one, which meant that the Hishaku could have stolen it, but they were all dead. Who else? Uruha? No. Natsuki wasn’t dumb enough to have ever given Uruha a key, but—
But he’d given Fushimi one.
Natsuki, again, tried not to scream. Several years ago, he’d given Fushimi a key so he could water some dumb spider plant that Kiri had forced on him as the world’s worst birthday present. He should have just let the damn plant die when he went away on that mission for a week. Why did Fushimi still have the key? And for that matter, why hadn’t Natsuki demanded it back?
And yes, it was Fushimi. He could hear him now, coming inside, chattering away to Uruha, who was – of course – accompanying him.
“Natsuki!” they both said at once, bursting into his bedroom like a couple of home invaders.
Natsuki glared at them. “What are you doing in my house?”
“It’s an apartment,” Uruha said infuriatingly.
“We came to check on you,” said Fushimi. “Uruha said you were sick.”
Ordinarily, Natsuki would have argued with them. He would have fought them. He might even have grabbed his katana and chased them away. But right now, he was too weak to do anything but lie back and pull the covers up over his face and hope that they would leave.
They did not leave.
It was Uruha who peeled back the covers, looking at him with a disgustingly pitying expression. “You really are sick, aren’t you?” he said.
“No,” Natsuki said, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“Oh, it’s bad,” said Fushimi. “Don’t worry, though. We brought supplies.” He hefted a plastic bag in his hand, and Natsuki noticed then that he had another one, too. It was steaming. Fushimi noticed him noticing and nodded. “We brought you some soup, too. I’ll put it in a bowl and Uruha can help you sit up.”
So, this was their strategy; they’d waited until he was too weak to resist them. Natsuki grumbled but he did let Uruha prop the pillows behind him so he could sit up against them, and he let him wrap a blanket around his shoulders. Uruha’s fingers grazed his bare skin when he did that, and Natsuki shivered.
“You’re cold,” Uruha said.
“I’m not,” grunted Natsuki.
Uruha smoothed his hair back from his forehead and rested it there, checking his temperature. Natsuki’s face grew warm. “You should have called me, Natsuki,” he said softly. “I don’t mind looking after you.”
“I don’t need anyone to look after me.”
“Everyone needs someone to look after them.”
Natsuki would have hit him if he could. Fortunately, that was when Fushimi came back in – and Natsuki had always found Fushimi slightly more tolerable than Uruha, if only because he used to call him Misaka before Uruha’s bad manners had rubbed off on him – with his soup. It was chicken broth, with vegetables and noodles and just a little spice. Fushimi helped Natsuki balance it in his lap, and he had to admit, it did help his sore throat and aching chest.
But then Fushimi sat on one side of his bed. Uruha was on the other. Like they were pinning him in. He shook his head and focused on his soup.
And as he ate, he tried not to think too much about what was going on here.
It was hard, though. Too hard. Normally when these thoughts crept into his mind he pushed them away, but just as he lacked the strength to do just about anything today, he lacked the strength for that, too.
Uruha and Fushimi had been imposing themselves on him ever since the fighting had ended. Natsuki had sort of accepted their friendship, which was something he’d been trying to do with people, because his brother had been avenged now and there was room in his heart for more than just hate. Though he’d never have admitted it to them, he actually didn’t mind Uruha and Fushimi. They could be annoying, but they weren’t the most unbearable people he’d ever met. And they were okay together, too; Uruha gave Fushimi confidence and Fushimi tempered some of Uruha’s more irritating personality traits.
That was the problem, though. That Natsuki didn’t mind them. Because at least when he’d kept everyone away it meant that he could keep his feelings in order. It meant that there was no confusion for him. But he didn’t mind Uruha and Fushimi, and not minding them might have turned into quite liking them, and that might have turned into something Natsuki didn’t want to think about, because how could he think about it? Uruha had always gotten on his nerves, but somehow he had also always drawn Natsuki’s eye, whether it was in the dojo or on the battlefield. Then there had been Fushimi, calling him Misaka, leaning over his desk with a grin on his face and a gleam in his eye. Anger had consumed Natsuki even then, anger at his brother leaving him behind and then letting himself go, and he had no time to wonder why Uruha liked to pester him so much or why Fushimi always perched on his desk even when Natsuki grumbled about it.
He did have the time now, though. There was no desperate need to prove himself to anyone and no killers left for him to bring down. He was free to let everything else in, and what did that mean?
Really, he ought to have known what it meant when he finally realised what was going on between Uruha and Fushimi and his heart had sank.
He was jealous. Of the both of them.
“Feeling better?” Fushimi said when he was finished eating his soup.
Natsuki grunted.
“I’ll make you some tea.” Fushimi took the bowl from him. “With lemon and ginger and honey. I always made it for Uruha when he got sick at Kokugoku.”
“It really helped!” Uruha said, nodding enthusiastically. “He makes great tea.”
The two of them shared a sickening look.
“I’ll make it,” Fushimi said. He took Natsuki’s empty bowl with him when he left.
When he left the room, Uruha heaved his legs up onto the bed and leaned back against the pillows, right next to Natsuki. Natsuki was aghast. How could he make himself so comfortable? Uruha looked at him with a smile.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” grumbled Natsuki.
“Doing what?” Uruha said innocently.
“Bothering me.” Natsuki shuffled down and rolled over, facing away from him, though that made it feel uncomfortably like they were moments away from spooning. It also made him uncomfortably aware that he was only wearing his underwear, since he hadn’t bothered to put pyjamas on when he’d collapsed into bed yesterday.
“I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“At least Fushimi’s making tea,” Natsuki said. “You aren’t doing anything helpful.”
“I can be helpful,” Uruha huffed. He swung his legs off the bed and hopped to his feet, and Natsuki tried not to think about the warmth of his body that had suddenly vanished. “I’ll clean up.”
He hummed as he did, and Natsuki complained about it, but he still didn’t want him to stop. Uruha scooped up yesterday’s clothes and dumped them in the laundry hamper. He plucked a few discarded tissues from the floor and threw them away. He opened the window – just a little – to let in some fresh air.
Then, he climbed back onto the bed and put his hand on Natsuki’s shoulder. “You don’t always have to be so stubborn, Natsuki.”
“He’s being stubborn?” Fushimi said, coming back into the room with a mug of tea in hand.
Natsuki had to sit up to drink it, and Fushimi sat on the other side of the bed again. The two of them, on either side of him. What did that mean?
Sometimes, he did think that they were doing it on purpose. That they were trying to mess with him. When they hung out at their apartment and they would sit on either side of him on the couch, and Uruha would put his legs over both of their laps, or Fushimi would rest his head on his shoulder. When they went out for drinks and Natsuki would feel a thigh bumping against his own under the table, when they would crowd in close to talk to him and he would see the flush of alcohol over their cheeks and the low light of the bar glimmering in their eyes. Was he making that up? Yes, he had to be, because it would be crazy if he wasn’t.
Uruha and Fushimi were together. They were a couple. They lived together, they were in a committed relationship. They weren’t—
They weren’t interested in adding Natsuki to the equation.
Were they?
Natsuki sipped his tea. It was good; sweet and hot, and soothing to his sore throat. No, no, they weren’t interested in that. They both just liked to piss him off. Uruha had always liked doing that and Fushimi must’ve picked up the habit. That was all it was, right? Because—Because Natsuki couldn’t fathom the idea that it was more. What kind of a coincidence would that be? He just happened to be weirdly jealous of the two of them, and there was no need for him to be? No. Things didn’t just work out like that for him.
When he finished the tea, Fushimi took the cup from him and put it on the nightstand. Then he grabbed Natsuki’s hand and squeezed it.
“How’re you feeling?” he said.
Natsuki looked down at their hands, Fushimi’s fingers laced with his. “Sick,” he said, and after a pause; “Maybe a little better.”
“You should get some sleep,” said Uruha.
For a moment, when Natsuki shuffled down and made himself comfortable, he thought that they were going to stay there with him, and maybe even sleep beside him. But he closed his eyes and he heard them – and he felt them – get up off the bed. He felt Fushimi let go of his hand.
Natsuki hated being sick. If he wasn’t sick then he wouldn’t have let himself hope for something so stupid.
*
Natsuki’s dreams were less dreams and more memories. Snatches of time with Uruha and Fushimi, moments passing by before he could take hold of them.
Uruha, in Shirakai’s dojo, meeting him for the first time. Natsuki angry that Ibuki was leaving him to go and talk to Samura alone, that he had to keep this annoying kid company. Uruha slung an arm around his shoulders and laughed, and he said that the two of them were going to be great friends.
Uruha again, during the war. The two of them crossing paths when they were on separate missions, the both of them too young really to be doing this. There was a wildness in Uruha’s eyes that Natsuki hadn’t seen before, and he couldn’t decide whether he liked it or not, but either way it made his heart skip a beat as he passed him by.
Fushimi, a new recruit at the Kamunabi, eighteen and far too confident. Natsuki was prepared to hate him from the outset, but then he called him Misaka, and he told him that he’d appreciate any advise he asked to offer, waiting there and looking at him with puppy eyes and a smile like butter wouldn’t melt.
Fushimi, years later, wearing a new confidence which was more than just the arrogance of youth. He jumped up onto Natsuki’s desk and leaned down, his golden eyes almost amber in the afternoon sunlight, his blonde hair wavy at the ends. Natsuki didn’t know why he noticed that, and that might have been why he agreed to go out for drinks with him and his men.
Then the both of them, after the fighting, and the moment they reunited. Natsuki was there; Uruha’s fingers had been reattached and he was wearing a bandage like an enormous gauze mitten. Hagiwara told them that they had someone to join their little rebellion, someone they thought was dead. The car door opened and Fushimi stepped out, and Uruha let out a cry of delight or shock or sorrow before he ran over and flung himself at him. How Natsuki didn’t realise then what was going on between them, he’d never know.
And after.
After, when it was all over, and a group of them all went out for drinks. Walking down the street afterwards, Uruha and Fushimi lagging behind. Natsuki glanced over his shoulder and in the warm orange glow of a streetlight he saw them kiss, softly, like this was the thousandth kiss they’d shared together, and his breath caught in his throat like it could choke him.
*
It was evening when Natsuki woke. The sun was beginning to set, and his bedroom was painted in pink and orange. Though the window was still open, it wasn’t cold.
He wasn’t cold.
When he lifted his hands to rub his eyes, he realised why. Uruha and Fushimi were both lying on the bed with him. One on either side, like before, and they were both asleep. Napping. They were fully dressed and each of them had an arm over him, holding him. Snuggling up to him.
Natsuki sat bolt upright with a yelp and woke them both up.
Fushimi yawned. Uruha blinked tiredly.
“Oh, you’re up?” he said. “How do you feel?”
“How do I feel?” Natsuki said, appalled. “Why are you both in bed with me?”
Uruha and Fushimi exchanged another one of those looks. Natsuki didn’t know what it meant. He hated the way they seemed to be able to read each other’s minds, like they were somehow having a conversation that he couldn’t understand. And wasn’t that what he was jealous of? That he couldn’t be a part of that conversation, when he so desperately wanted to be?
There was no point denying it. He did want it, desperately. The way the two of them clung to each other like nothing else in the world mattered; the way they knew each other and moved through the world in some kind of harmony; the way that their happiness seemed so simple, so easy. He wanted that. For it to be easy.
And he wanted it with them.
Not just anyone. Not someone else. Not one person. Both of them. Insufferable Uruha and warm Fushimi. He wanted to slip into that easy happiness and have them welcome him with open arms.
“Well?” said Uruha. “Are you better?”
“I’m not—” Natsuki stopped. He cleared his throat; it wasn’t as sore as it was before, and he didn’t need to cough. He could breathe through his nose. “A little,” he admitted.
“Good,” said Fushimi.
They were still lying there, propped up on their elbows, looking at him like this was totally normal.
“Why were you both sleeping with me?” Natsuki asked.
They shared yet another look and Natsuki clenched his jaw.
“Because,” Uruha said slowly, “we want to take care of you.”
Fushimi took Natsuki’s hand again. He brushed his thumb over his knuckles, drawing circles on his skin that made him shiver. “Will you let us?” he said, his voice low. “Lie down.”
Natsuki lay down. Would he let them? They were still propped on their elbows, looking down at him, and Fushimi still had hold of his hand. Uruha’s arm was still draped over him, and he trailed his fingers up over his chest to his chin and took it in hand, tilting his face towards him. His eyebrows were raised expectantly, waiting for an answer.
“You want to take care of me,” he said.
Uruha nodded.
“While I’m sick?”
A playful smile tugged at Uruha’s lips and he shook his head. “After, too,” he said.
If Natsuki hadn’t been sick, then maybe he would have found a way to talk himself out of it. He would have convinced himself that what he thought was happening wasn’t happening. But he was sick, and so the only thing he could think to say to himself was, Oh. Maybe I wasn’t wrong to hope.
“Then,” Natsuki said, “I’ll let you take care of me.”
Uruha leaned down and pressed his lips to his. Softly, gently. A kiss for a sick person, a kiss that promised more to come, once he’d recovered. When he pulled back he let go of Natsuki’s chin and Fushimi squeezed his hand. Natsuki turned to look at him, wondering if he really could read Uruha’s mind, if he was okay with this, and Fushimi leaned down to kiss him as well. Another soft kiss, another kiss full of promises, as sweet as that tea with honey he’d brought him.
“We’ll stay the night,” he murmured when he pulled back. “Keep an eye on you.”
Natsuki had just kissed Uruha and Fushimi both. They wanted to let him into their easy happiness, and he could barely even process what had just happened. Despite that, he managed to summon a little bit of his old irritation towards the both of them.
“Did you plan this?” he asked.
“No,” Uruha and Fushimi said at once.
Yet again, they shared one of those looks, and this time, Natsuki knew exactly what they were saying.
They’d planned the whole thing.
Assholes.
But in the spirit of letting go, and since he’d gotten what he wanted, Natsuki supposed that he could forgive them.