Work Text:
Kannonzaka Doppo had difficulty sleeping. This wasn’t any particular surprise to those who knew him- in fact, it had become rather a facet of his personality over the years. Kannonazka, stumbling in bleary-eyed to work. Doppo, dreaming away his weekends only to wake with the certainty he’d been logging overtime in his forgotten nightmares, too. Though time had passed and the symptoms had alleviated, they had not been cured. Doppo doubted they ever fully would be. If anxieties were such an easy thing to cure, then Doppo would have been free of them the moment he’d first picked up a Mic.
And tonight was no different than so many of those that had come before.
“Doppo… Why’re you still awake?”
Hifumi’s voice floated into the bedroom, uncharacteristically soft alongside the light trailing in through the cracked door. Hifumi himself followed not a moment later, suit jacket draped over his arm and garish slippers on his feet- mismatched and utterly at home.
Doppo blinked at him dead-eyed, squinting against the light of the living room. “Can’t sleep.”
“Nervous?”
“Why would you think that?”
Hifumi tilted his head, still more silhouette and shadow as he shut the door behind him, then lowered his sights pointedly to Doppo’s hands, where he’d been gently curling strands of Jakurai’s hair through and over his fingers. He was probably getting it tangled. After a guilty pause, Doppo rushed to unwind the strands and returned to what he’d been doing originally- running his fingers through it, marveling at its softness. His secret little habit, an indulgence he still found so difficult to ask for in words but no longer found shame in stealing in snippets from the dark.
(As always, a dead giveaway to his worries.)
“Would talking about it help?”
Jakurai spoke, voice bleary and unexpected from Doppo’s side. He started, that momentary guilt roaring back like the tide to drown him in its chill.
“I woke you up. I’m sorry,” said Doppo, scrambling to release Jakurai’s hair entirely. He’d been foolish to grab it in the first place. He should have known combing would turn to tangling would turn to pulling painful enough to wake him-
Jakurai’s hand landed soft atop Doppo’s, chilled like the moonlight slipping through the just-parted curtains. “It’s nothing to worry about. I’m sorry I left you awake.”
And wasn’t that just the last thing Doppo needed- Jakurai feeling responsible for this. As if he’d left some obligation unfulfilled. (He should’ve just pretended to be asleep. Hifumi still would have noticed he wasn’t- but by the time he’d taken a shower and settled down to sleep, then perhaps the fates would have been kind, and Doppo’s alarm would have already gone off, first herald of the morning rush.)
“No, that’s not… You don’t have to apologize for that.”
“Then you don’t have to apologize for waking me,” Jakurai returned. Doppo forced himself to bite down the apologies that still sprang from him on instinct even now. Instead he tried for other words, grasping at the strength of the day that eluded him in these early hours.
He was just tired.
(He really just hoped dealing with the new department head was going to be less of an unending roller coaster than the last one had been. Not that his hopes were high.)
“If talking’s not gonna help,” HIfumi said, reading between the lines of Doppo’s silence as he shuffled across the floor, “Then…”
Before Doppo could so much as protest, Hifumi had wormed his way under the covers, between Doppo and the edge of the bed- just a sliver of mattress, nowhere near enough for a grown man to keep his balance on. But Hifumi clung tight to him, and Doppo was forced to either shuffle back towards Jakurai or let the both of them topple down to the ground in a heap. Which Doppo did consider, just for the briefest of seconds. The pain might have been worth it if HIfumi got what he was asking for. Though then he’d really be awake, and that would defeat the purpose of it all.
“Go take a shower,” Doppo insisted, trying to push HIfumi back off his edge of the bed even as a leg wormed around his, determined to take Doppo down with him. “You smell like perfume. And champagne.”
Someone bought a tower tonight. Doppo could only hope HIfumi hadn’t been made to drink too much. They still weren’t old, no matter what his doubts tried to tell him. But none of them wanted this to start taking its toll on him. Not when his work was still difficult enough as it was.
Still clinging tight, Hifumi looked up at him and whispered- “And are you gonna be sleeping by the time I get back?”
“Once you stop bothering me, I can at least try,” Doppo hissed- and at last Hifumi seemed to be satisfied. Or not-
“And you?” Hifumi asked, throwing himself over Doppo to watch Jakurai, fighting lightly through the clutches of sleep that had forsaken Doppo entirely. And nearly jamming his elbow into Doppo’s ribs in the process, not that Doppo’s weak little shove did anything to pry an apology out of him.
“Unfortunately,” said Jakurai with a bit of ill-placed mirth, “my alarm will be going off soon.”
Hifumi wrinkled his nose in disgust. Doppo wondered if he could finally throw Hifumi off the bed, now that his guard was down. “Ugh. Morning shift.”
“How many times do I have to remind you that’s what most of the world does?” He said, attempting to roll onto his side and finally, finally forcing Hifumi to slide off the bed and onto his feet. Hifumi just laughed- though at least he had the decency to be quiet about it as he slipped away to the bathroom, taking a change of clothes and the last of the night away with him, summoning the rising sun in his wake like the waning moon.
And in the ripples following after, Jakurai asked again, weight belying its softness- “Are you sure this is nothing you’d rather talk about?”
It had so often been their ritual, the final push that Doppo had needed to rid himself of so much of what plagued him. On many days, it still was. (Though, Doppo still found himself marveling, how the context had changed.) And tomorrow- once he’d seen if his fears carried even a hint of truth- then maybe. But for today, this was his problem to face.
He turned on his side to face Jakurai, shook his head lightly atop the pillow. Jakurai met him there, draping an arm over him- a reassurance that would only last until the alarm pulled them away. But even that was long enough. “We will always be here if you do.”
“I know,” replied Doppo. Something about that felt almost as relieving as spilling all the words that had caught in the trap of his throat and the coil of his lungs.
“Good.” And that, it seemed, was that.
They didn’t manage to go (back) to sleep before the first of their alarms went off for the morning. No one save Hifumi, that was, who fell asleep using Doppo’s arm as a pillow and gave him a hell of a time trying to get up without disturbing him. But despite all his protests, that in and of itself was dear.
Doppo lifted his head, rubbing away at those familiar dark circles under his eyes- and turned to face the day.
Doppo was jolted from his dreams by a sudden movement, the awareness of pain that sliced through the dark and ripped his eyes open, peering uneasily into the shadows splayed across the ceiling.
The grip on his wrist was crushing; Doppo went deathly still until it had lessened. Just fingers resting lightly over his pulse, now, beating fast but slowing with every breath.
“You’re here.”
Spoken as a whisper, incredulous- as if he did not believe that he’d opened his eyes to reality and that this was not the dream. With a rustle of the sheets, Doppo turned on his side to meet his gaze.
Jakurai was not unnerved like this.
His sharpness, Doppo understood. There were days Jakurai woke with a mind that had never come back from the war- that had never untangled itself from the web it had been caught in near two decades before. His chill, Doppo had endured. There would always be the tiniest of distances between them- a crack in the earth that Doppo could pour all the sands of the world and all the waters of the ocean into, and yet never fill. Those were the details of the things they did not talk about. Knowledge that Jakurai refused to burden them with, no matter how the lost and longing parts of them were desperate to know.
It was better, that way.
A little bit of distance, allowing them all to breathe.
But this…
This fear didn’t belong to him. Not wide-eyed and frantic, a tenseness kept strong as to keep him from trembling. An old, old habit that no time would teach him to forget. A way of life that no amount of love would erase from his past. Just a hand around his wrist, words that he would not say, a request he would not ask. Doppo heard it anyway.
Wordlessly he reached over with his free hand, pushed back Jakurai’s bangs with gentle fingers to press a soft kiss to his forehead- a luxury offered to him side by side in bed more than anywhere else. Jakurai’s breath was thin and warm against his neck. If it was shakier than he would have liked, the both of them let it fade without mention. They were not here to harp on their weaknesses- only to turn them back into strength when it seemed they might falter.
“You are here,” said Jakurai again, the same and yet immeasurably different. This time wasn’t tinged with the shades his nightmare had been drenched in- the red of blood, the pure white notion of a solitary heaven or a pitch-black hell. This was just the gentle play of shadows with the moonlight, the dark of their bedroom and three breaths in sync, three heartbeats playing out in rhythm. And most importantly- the understanding that the worst of the secrets had long since been spilled, the scars talked down to white lines turned faint against their skin.
“We stayed,” Hifumi affirmed, lips soft at the back of Jakurai’s neck. When he’d woken, Doppo didn’t know- but he was grateful for it all the same. Reassurances always fell so easily from Hifumi’s lips. Not always the perfect words, but honest feelings better than any silence. Doppo just did what he dared- what he once never could have dreamed of- and took Jakurai’s hand, running his thumb soothing over the side of it.
A tiny consolation. Enough time to think to say, full of gentle force- “We’re staying.”
The words settled him. The tension he’d been holding to like a lifeline pulled away from his grasp, the last of a slow deflation. Jakurai took a long breath, warm in the air between them. “And I suppose you won’t leave now.”
“Of course not.”
The notion was laughable. As if they’d ever choose to leave now, having parted once and decided to return. To stay.
“You’re never gonna get rid of us?” Hifumi added, voice laced with sleepy laughter that turned his statement to question before he amended, “Like, ever.”
“I wouldn’t dream of trying,” replied Jakurai in a tone approaching his normal calm. Soon the dreams would be forgotten. At the very least, left behind. If only for the night.
“Good,” Hifumi said, and threw his arm over Jakurai, sounding significantly more awake than he had at the start of the conversation.
“Go back to sleep, Hifumi,” Doppo chided- though given the time, he’d only probably just crawled in. But it was only that he was the convenient target. The person that most needed to hear it was the one least likely to listen, were Doppo to try and tell him. That was why he left it to Hifumi to pick up the baton.
“Only if you come with,” Hifumi said, and pulled Jakurai gently close to him. But Doppo wasn’t one to be left alone on his corner of the bed- not anymore. Not after so many years. He followed them over, unwilling to let go of Jakurai’s hand.
It was far from the most comfortable way to sleep, the three of them thrown over each other without regard to whose space started where. But it was concrete, a warmth and an pile of limbs and bones that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than what it was- simple companionship. Unrelenting love. The promise of their devotion, even without the three rings scattered in their dishes about the bedroom.
Doppo kept watch as guardian as slowly Jakurai eased back into sleep. By the time he settled it was nearly time to wake- the sun peeking through the curtains just a hint of the day to come, a bad omen from the fates above. But it was just another one of them in the long line Doppo had never been able to shake. By now, he was more than used to dealing with them.
He’d be going to work sleep-deprived for the first time in a while. But that was alright- Jakurai wasn’t expected in until the afternoon, meaning at least he would get the rest dreams of a painful reality they hadn’t chosen had denied him. He deserved that.
Even as Doppo pried himself from bed, out from under Jakurai’s arm, praying all the while he wouldn’t wake at the disturbance- that’s what he believed.
(That’s what time had taught him was true.)
“Doppo? Doppo, wake up. Doppo, please wake up, please-”
It had been a long while since Doppo was woken like this. The thing no one ever explained to them was that even when a fear lessened, it was never truly gone- always did the memories linger. Forever were there aftershocks. In a scene, in a touch, on implications that struck too close to home and left thoughts reeling back to unpleasant days that never lost their vile heart no matter how far and how many years removed.
Doppo couldn’t say he knew this, but understood what Hifumi wouldn’t say. They hadn’t been together so long just for Doppo to fail to realize being okay didn’t mean like it never happened.
And as Hifumi shook him awake, as Hifumi stood at the side of the bed, looking very much as if he’d rather just throw himself beneath the covers and never poke his head out again- it was the least Doppo could do to understand once more.
“Hifumi.”
His countenance was crumbling; the second Doppo sat up he was met with an armful of Hifumi, burrowing in as close as he could, hands clinging tight to the back of his old sweatshirt. Doppo hardly minded the way he pulled, but it was going to make everything that came next difficult. Resigned to the work of it, he rubbed a soothing circle over Hifumi’s back and asked- “Here, suit off. Shoes? Did you get your shoes?”
Hifumi shook his head into Doppo’s shoulder, hair brushing light and perfumed against his neck. Doppo glanced down, wondering just how he was to do this with hands full of Hifumi- only for the answer to come from a hand pressed lightly against his lower back. A reassurance, a silent everything.
Jakurai slipped off the bed and knelt at Hifumi’s side, telegraphing his movements widely- not that Hifumi would be alarmed by them here and now, but simply because it was the least of the things they could give him. Gently he pried off Hifumi’s shoes, leaving them at the bedside to be moved in the morning, back to the entrance where they belonged. “Do you want to sleep? Or be awake?”
Hifumi considered it a while, head still pressed into Doppo’s shoulder. When his answer came, it was easy to blame its wavering on the way it was muffled by the fabric of Doppo’s old sweatshirt. “Awake.”
It seemed they were getting up early today, then. Not that they hadn’t gone to sleep late the night before, but Doppo was hardly going to bring that up. Not when this was far more important.
“Shall I make us something to eat?” asked Jakurai lightly- knowing that the sun was soon to rise. They’d have time to make something extravagant, to enjoy it long enough for the last traces of panic to fade and the normal rhythm of the day to return before they’d have to leave for work.
“Don’t let… don’t let Doppo make eggs,” Hifumi replied, still stumbling over his words with what Doppo might first have thought to be sniffles but was clearly laughter- a little hysterical, the kind that came after a rush of safety, driven by the desperate brand of coincidence born of knowing there was nowhere to go but up and into the morning.
“I didn’t burn them last time.” Though what good it would do to protest, Doppo knew not. Hifumi really could open a restaurant after his twilight years as a host, and Jakurai was a more than apt student. He’d outpaced Doppo’s lifetime of admittedly minimal efforts in what felt like a week under Hifumi’s watchful eye.
(He’d be a touch jealous, if he didn’t also happen to be the prime beneficiary of all their efforts. It was hard to feel anything but gratitude when almost always was there something home-cooked warm and waiting for him at the start and end of his long days. Especially not when the alternative was burnt eggs and whatever he could scrounge up from the convenience store’s two AM leftovers.)
Slowly did Doppo move to switch their spots, to try and get Hifumi up on the bed properly so he could at least attempt to be of help to Jakurai- but Hifumi’s quiet words stopped him in his tracks.
“Stay a little longer?”
For the first time since he’d pressed his head to Doppo’s shoulder did Hifumi look up. His eyes were still wet, but beyond that, they glittered with something resembling their usual mirth. And there it was, thought Doppo, the strength they’d relied on so many years. The spirit that kept them going when nothing else seemed quite worth returning to. Their Hifumi, beloved as ever.
Doppo glanced up at Jakurai, who returned it with a nod, hair falling unbrushed and wild over his shoulders. (Certainly Hifumi would love to brush it for him once the morning came- and certainly Jakurai would let him do as he pleased with it, if only for the day.)
“Stay as long as you need. I’m sure I can handle the kitchen for one morning.”
“Unlike Doppo,” Hifumi insisted once more, and thought Doppo patted him sharply on the shoulder, accompanied by a hey of token protest, it was nothing more than that. Hifumi never really meant his words, like this. Doppo would gladly be the butt of a thousand little jabs if that was what it took for okay to return.
“It’ll be quite nice to eat as the sun rises,” Jakurai said, lingering in the doorway just a moment more to watch them with care. Doppo held back his groan. He wouldn’t call it nice, exactly. But it was certainly going to be something.
Hifumi managed, having regained just a spark of his trademark energy- “We’ll help, too. Later.”
“As soon as we can,” Doppo added, and Jakurai slipped away to the kitchen with the hint of a smile.
And as Doppo clutched Hifumi just that little bit tighter, he thought- the kitchen would certainly be cramped with all three of them together. Something was bound to end up burnt or underdone (which, admittedly, would probably be Doppo’s fault unless Hifumi went and got distracted) and they’d probably end up eating far too much first thing in the morning.
But they’d be doing it together.
And that alone gave it worth.
Doppo bolted awake to the distinct taste of fear- the sun was up; it was clearly a Wednesday, either he hadn’t set his alarm or it hadn’t woken him- and neither had Jakurai, for that matter, which was unheard of, no matter how much he knew Jakurai valued him getting a full night’s sleep so he’d be ready for…
Work? He was late for-
Doppo scrambled against the embrace of the covers, tossing them about without regard to where they’d land. Hifumi would just have to make them when he got home. For now Doppo would have to call, and apologize, and just hope he wasn’t about to get reprimanded for this, too- though of course he was going to be. He was late for work, of all things. His phone, his phone, where was his-
Doppo snatched up his phone from the side table, pulling the charging cable out form the wall unintentionally as he went. But there was no time to fix it; he left it dangling as he scrambled to unlock his phone, watching the time flash up at him an alarming 9:30 and the date an even more alarming May 15th-
Doppo paused, blinking down at his phone without comprehending, the racing of his heartbeat still too much to fight. May 15th.
May 15th..?
Doppo knew that date. That was an important date. Because… Because…?
All the tension left him in a shaky rush of breath, His hands going slack enough that he nearly lost grip on his phone. Paid vacation.
Doppo flopped backwards onto the bed, paying no mind to its disarray. He plucked the cable boneless from his phone, dangling it over the side of the bed a pointlessly entertained second dropping it to the ground with a tiny thump.
How Hifumi had ever talked him into taking one of his vacation days for something as trivial as his birthday, Doppo would never know. How his request was actually approved was even greater of a mystery. But he did, and it was, and so Doppo found himself here,
With perfect timing- or, much more likely, having heard the commotion of Doppo jolting awake- Hifumi poked his head through the open door. “Uh, Doppo-chin? Did you just wake up…?”
Doppo just groaned and threw his arm over his eyes, wondering if this rush of relief was enough to knock him straight back out or not. If he had a day off, he at least wanted to sleep in until noon. The answer, of course, was bound to be no. But he could still daydream.
(Until he was expected up, at least.)
At the doorway, there was a flutter of motion. “Jakurai? He woke up!” A pause, then- “Yeah, okay! Here, Doppo, wait a second! Be right back!” And then Hifumi was gone, flit back to Jakurai’s side. It didn’t take more than a guess to figure out where they were, either. The sounds of clatter echoed into the bedroom from the kitchen, the distinctive sounds of plates on the counter and silverware being set. Doppo supposed he should wake himself up properly- to join them at the table, given that they’d done all the morning’s work.
When Hifumi appeared at the door a moment later, Doppo hauled himself up- just to freeze once more at the sight that greeted him. A tray in his hands, overflowing with dishes. Jakurai just behind him, smiling gentle and pleased at their surprise, two neatly wrapped packages in each of his arms.
And they chorused, a homely refrain-
“Happy birthday, Doppo!”
(After the presents, the softness, the food, and the simple domesticity of a day spent doing nothing in particular but indulge in the comforts of their shared home- after every last surprise and every last word of gratitude from Doppo, who, despite a lifetime’s worth of evidence to the contrary, may just have started to consider himself the world’s luckiest man- the three of them slept peacefully through the night.)