Work Text:
"Miyuki?"
Eijun looked absolutely pathetic with his face mask, buried under an approximate metric ton of blankets and still shivering.
Miyuki startled, looking up from his homework. “Yes, Eijun?”
He mumbled something Miyuki didn’t catch.
"Excuse me?"
"I said ‘I have to go to the bathroom.’"
Miyuki was confused. “Uh, are you asking permission?”
Eijun shrank even further back into the shadows of the bed. “I can’t go by myself because my legs aren’t working very well yet,” he said in a small voice.
And okay, Miyuki was a bastard and proud of it, but even he had standards of conduct, and they did not include humiliating sick people. Sick people couldn’t help being sick. Besides, if the sick person was one’s boyfriend it just didn’t make sense on an investment level to kick him when he was down.
Miyuki crouched down beside the bed where Eijun was now hiding his face. “Hey,” he said softly, waiting until the other boy reluctantly faced him. His eyes were soft with fatigue, and Miyuki was genuinely hurt to see wariness there. Like he still suspected Miyuki was fucking with him. “I didn’t know. This is the first time you’ve been awake when I was on Sawamura-duty, so I didn’t know. Okay?”
Eijun only hesitated a moment before his eyes cleared and he nodded. “Help me up, please,” he requested, still in that small voice that seemed so out of place on someone as vibrant as he normally was.
It wasn't that he disbelieved Eijun--Eijun was one of the most self-sufficient people he'd ever met, so for him to ask for this kind of help was proof enough--but Miyuki was still surprised when his legs really did shake, so badly that Miyuki actually had to put his back into keeping the other boy standing.
Influenza caused all this? Miyuki wondered. His own experiences with the disease were a few uncomfortably pukey days, a fever, and fatigue—there and gone in a week, two at most. It was hard to reconcile, even now having experienced how devastating a disease it could be, first hand.
***
They’d known Eijun was sick—really sick—the day he hadn't left his bed for training. Eijun didn’t skip training. He just didn’t.
So of course everyone worried, Miyuki especially, but they all figured he'd be fine in a few days. It didn't work out that way at all. A few nights later, Miyuki was shaken awake by a hysterical Kuramochi telling him that an ambulance was there to take Eijun to the hospital. It was all the more terrifying because Kuramochi never panicked. He was hot-tempered, but incredibly reliable in a crisis. Usually.
At this point, Miyuki got his first real taste of true fear.
Just a bad flu, Ooda said the next day, as half the team loitered around the coach’s office the next morning, and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.
But when coach came back from the hospital two frustratingly news-less days after that, he took Miyuki and his vice-captains aside and told them, very seriously, that it was not just a bad flu, but a very bad flu. Eijun's condition was stable, he said, but he would have to stay at the hospital for a bit longer. It was going to take him a long time to recover, and he would need the help of everyone in the dorm for a few weeks, at least.
When Miyuki quietly, but insistently, demanded to know just how bad “very bad” was, Kataoka looked him dead in the eye and said, “Dangerously so. He could have died.” Miyuki subsided after that, completely unable to process the idea that “could have died” had any relationship whatsoever with someone who was such a vibrant force of nature. Such a vital part of his own existence.
The administration of the school actually wanted to send Eijun home for the rest of the term, but Kataoka managed to convince them Eijun would be better off in the dorms, rather than taking rides on crowded trains or unstable automobiles.
That was a stroke of luck, for everyone. Miyuki would have committed cold-blooded murder before he let Eijun that far away from him. It was Miyuki who came up with and organized Sawamura-duty: a roster of times people living in the dorm would be available to stay with Eijun, in preparation for his anticipated return.
However, even with coach’s warnings, even knowing how serious this all was, Miyuki was not at all prepared for the first glimpse of his lover when he came back to school. Supported between Coach Kataoka and someone from the hospital, bundled up in clothes that should have been far too hot for the relatively mild mid-autumn weather, Miyuki thought he looked unbearably small.
Something in his chest clenched anxiously, he could have died, he could have died, an inescapable litany in his head, and he was finally forced to face the truth of it.
***
He'd slept most of that first week. Now, just into the second, he still slept a lot but the other babysitters had assured Miyuki that he was beginning to stay awake for longer periods. This was the first time Miyuki had witnessed it for himself, and he was completely unprepared. He was going to blister every last one of the other guys for not so much as hinting to him that his boyfriend still needed helped to the lavatory and thereby causing this awkward mess.
The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced they’d done it on purpose, never mind how batshit crazy it sounded, even in his own head. Probably as revenge for his bad sense of humor--well he was going to show them just how bad his sense of humor could get...
"Um," Eijun said, and Miyuki was concerned to see him already breathing hard, seeming more flushed than he had been earlier. They’d only gone a few feet! "I-I usually try to to time it so you don’t have to take me," Eijun said in a hushed voice. "But you switched with Kanemaru this time, so…so sorry."
Oh. That explained the flush, Miyuki guessed. Or blush, rather. And why no one had bothered to tell him about the bathroom thing. And why Eijun was still always sleeping during his watch, if going tired him out this badly.
Miyuki didn’t understand how, even unwashed and smelling strongly of sickly-sweat, Eijun could manage to be so unbearably cute. He kept that thought to himself, because he had a feeling voicing it might result in a violent and possibly unhealthy reaction. See, he could restrain himself when he needed to.
It wasn’t as awkward as it should have been to help someone he regularly had sex with go to the bathroom. Mostly because Miyuki was resolved to not let it be. This was something that was necessary, so there was no point getting all upset and embarrassed about it, which he patiently and repeatedly explained to a still-blushing Eijun as he did his business and they made their slow way back to his bed.
By that time, the cooler air was obviously getting to him, as he shivered violently. Eijun sank back into his terrifying nest and sighed.
"Thanks, Miyuki."
"Not necessary. Don’t avoid me anymore, even if it’s for something as small as this." Miyuki crouched in front of him once again. "Also, I just shook the pee off your dick without a single complaint, can't you bring yourself to call me ‘Kazuya’?"
Eijun reached out to smack him weakly. “Pervert,” he accused, though without heat. His exhaustion showed palpably, and Miyuki knew he was about to lose him again.
He grabbed the hand Eijun had used to swat him. “I’m serious.”
Eijun snorted.
"No, I—Seriously serious. Eijun, I…" Okay, Miyuki sucked at this. He pressed a soft kiss into the very center of Eijun’s palm, trying desperately to unstick the words from his dry throat. "I know I’m not a good person, not by a long shot, and that doesn't usually bother me. But it’s important to me that you know that there has never been someone as precious to me as you are. It’s important for you to know how close to insanity I’ve been driven by the fact that I’ve unexpectedly found something I can’t bear to lose. It is of paramount importance to me that you trust there are certain very specific and very fixed ways in which I will not ever harm you. Do you understand, Eijun?”
Eijun took his hand back, and used it to pat Miyuki on the head, before putting it back and giving a gentle squeeze. His eyes were already heavy and Miyuki could see his struggle to stay conscious. “Your words get too big when you’re scared, captain. Just say, ‘I love you, Eijun.’”
"I love you, Eijun," Miyuki responded dutifully, without having to think about it in the slightest.
"I love you, too, Kazuya. There, see? Not so hard.” Then he lost the battle to keep his eyes open and drifted off to sleep.
Miyuki held his hand for a long time after that. He just couldn’t seem to let it go.