Chapter Text
Benimaru decided for the hundredth time that he did not like mornings. He had never liked mornings. If he had it his way, he’d stay up until just before the sun rose and then sleep until noon, maybe even later, if he felt like it. But no, not a damn chance, once again he had to get woken up at the crack of dawn by Hika and Hina. He’d tried to go back to sleep, but they’d started climbing on top of him and tugging at his hair. Again.
He looked outside, eyes half open as he waited for his body to figure out that he was awake. The night’s misty chill still lingered around the guardhouse, and the sun was barely casting any real light on Asakusa’s streets. Shinmon Benimaru had never been quite sure how he felt about the sun. Anyway, early mornings sure as hell weren’t the time for that kind of thinking, he told himself. Well, at least he’d get a good breakfast.
Except for the twins’ voices as they ran ahead of him, the guardhouse was quiet. It didn’t mean much, as loud as they were being, but it was still odd enough for him to notice.
He let the twins pull him through the doorway - it was easier than resisting. There was only one person in the room.
“Where the fuck is everybody?”
“Waka, please, the twins are right here, there’s no need for that.” Konro looked up.
Beni shrugged. Hika and Hina had already run ahead, it wasn’t like they were listening to him anyways.
“The boys got an early start rebuilding the roofs you took out in yesterday’s fight. You should probably join them later.” In the same breath, “Do you want something to eat, Beni?”
Well, that did sound good.
Beni was halfway through his breakfast before he said anything else, satisfied to half-listen to whatever the girls were talking about now. Finally, he looked up, at least a little more awake than before.
“You look like shit.” In his defense, he didn’t actually mean for it to come out so harshly.
Konro waved off what he seemed to realize was probably meant as a concerned comment. “I’m fine, Beni. I might be coming down with something, but you don’t have to worry over me.”
“Dumbass,” Beni said under his breath, rolling his eyes.
A few more minutes of relative quiet: even the twins seemed to be calming down a bit.
“I’ll run any errands you were going to do today. You okay to watch the twins here?”
“We don’t need to be watched!”
“Yeah, we’ll beat you up!”
Actually, maybe they hadn’t calmed down. Beni ignored them and waited for an answer.
“It’s fine - you don’t have to change your plans for me.” The effect was ruined as he muffled a cough into his sleeve. It wasn’t like Beni had any plans anyways: well, he’d planned on sleeping later, but nothing other than that.
Beni winced - that sounded like it must’ve hurt. “Like hell. I know how your tephrosis acts up when you’re sick. You’ll be too sore to carry anything back from the shops, if you aren’t already.” He motioned for Hika to sit down.
“I’m not that useless, Beni. It’s not a big deal.” Konro reached over to brush a bit of food off Hina’s cheek, focusing on that instead of looking at Benimaru.
The captain winced again. I’m not that useless, Beni. There it was - he couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been to go from leading their master’s hikeshi to being unable to make a tiny flame without excruciating pain - in a day, which somehow felt worse in his mind. He knew Konro had never really come to terms with it, but he was never really sure what to say to him whenever it came up.
“Tch. I know that, dumbass. Maybe I just wanted to go for a walk.”
“…Thank you.” Once again he somehow seemed to figure out what Beni was thinking.
“Don’t mention it.” He turned to the twins, trying not to frown too hard as Konro started coughing again. “Hey, brats, you wanna go with me today? Don’t want you bothering Kon too much.”
He turned to the taller man who was currently trying to catch his breath. “It’ll give you a break. Go take a nap or something, see if you can sleep it off.”
He smiled gratefully, taking the temporary vulnerability of being sick more gracefully than Beni could ever see himself managing.
“Thank you. After you three leave, I might do that. Things are so busy right now, I don’t really have time to deal with a cold.”
Beni fought back a smirk as he stood up. Nah, they were both idiots, just in different ways. He put a hand on each of the twins’ heads. “Alright, Hika, Hina, let’s get ready to leave. You little brats better not keep me waiting, you hear?”
***
He let Hikage and Hinata run a few steps in front of him. As long as they stayed in sight, they couldn’t cause too much trouble. Probably.
The streets were crowded at this time of day, and they darted between the people, out of Beni’s sight for a moment. “Hey, don’t get too far ahead of me, brats!”
They reappeared a second later. Most everyone in Asakusa knew about the twins who lived at the guardhouse - no doubt because they’d seen some of the trouble they got into. Not that Beni was one to talk, but it was just as hard to deal with scrappy kids as it was to be one, he was learning.
He got the food he was supposed to buy with the least amount of speaking he could manage. Partly because he just didn’t want to make small talk, but someone had to keep an eye on Hinata and Hikage. It was easier if he wasn’t distracted by talking about the weather.
The man packaging what he’d bought looked up with a grin as Beni turned around to once again remind the twins to stay close.
“They’re growing up fast, Beni.”
“Just means they’re a bigger pain in my ass now,” he deadpanned. It was true, of course, but he didn’t actually mind them.
“Might be easier if they were out of your hair for a while, let them get some energy out and send them on some errands themselves.”
He did not want any damn advice on raising kids.
“They’d just come home with things we don’t need.”
The man laughed. Beni hadn’t actually meant for it to be funny. He took the food, now wrapped neatly in a package, and gave a halfhearted wave at the man’s goodbye.
He wasn’t a bad guy, Beni thought - more agreeable than some. He just didn’t want to listen to advice he didn’t ask for.
“Hika, Hina - I’m leaving!” He tucked the package under one arm.
He wasn’t being irritable, exactly, but he’d prefer to leave the socializing to…anyone other than himself, really.
Beni considered the list of errands Konro had given him - he’d made sure to mention that Beni should help rebuild the damaged houses, at least for a little while. He didn’t actually mind the work, but right now it was just one more thing to do.
“I’m not buying that.” He stared at the twins for a moment, hoping they weren’t going to be stubborn about the candy they were looking at.
Hinata grabbed Hikage by the sleeve and pulled her across the street to look at something else. Problem solved, at least for a little while.
He walked around a group of people standing in front of one of the shops and talking. Hopefully he would be finished with these errands soon enough. He should take the food back to the guardhouse, check on Konro. Maybe he should drop the twins off there too - there had to be a few people around by now to keep them entertained, and it wasn’t like he could take them to a construction site.
Fuck, there was paperwork to do, too. Damn Empire and all their red tape - why was there so much work each month to just confirm that, once again, there was nothing to report? The Seventh used their own equipment and didn’t have to worry about matchbox maintenance - at most, they’d have to get approval to use their funds for building supplies and the guardhouse’s upkeep, but why was it the same stack of paperwork every month if it was always the same?
***
Benimaru worked in silence - once again, the whole place was quiet. Everyone had either gone to bed or they were out being rowdy somewhere they couldn’t be heard. Damn, he could use a drink too.
He’d spent a couple hours working on support beams and roof shingles, and he’d been able to work most of the soreness out of his hands, but he could still use some sleep. Or a bit of a buzz, maybe - not like that was in the cards for tonight, though.
“Okay, I’m done. Can you feel the medicine working yet?” Beni brushed his fingers over the ends of the bandages where they were secured together, checking gently to make sure they wouldn’t come loose.
Konro rolled his shoulders back a little, his breath catching as he stretched too far. “Ah - not yet.”
“Damn. Raise your arm if you can, I need to check the rest of the bandages.”
He placed his hand on the taller man’s shoulder. “That feels okay? It doesn’t hurt too bad?”
“I’m fine, Waka, it’s nothing I’m not used to.” He bowed his head a little - tired or resigned, Beni couldn’t tell which.
There was a beat of silence as Benimaru checked where the bandage was tied. His hand lingered on Konro’s shoulder, lightly resting against the wound dressing pressed flat beneath the wrapped bandages. The dressing held a salve against the charred skin to dull the pain, in addition to the usual anti-inflammatory medicine. He didn’t have to like Haijima, but at least their medicine worked well enough.
He leaned back, satisfied with his work. “…I’m going to bed. Anything else I can do?”
“I don’t want to keep you up, but - ”
“Stop acting like it’s a problem, dumbass.”
“…I can’t raise my arms enough to fix my hair.”
“That’s all? Sit still a minute, I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you think it would be a big deal? I do the twins’ hair every day, don’t mention it.”
Benimaru shifted to kneel on his knees again, reaching for the strip of cloth holding back Konro’s hair.
“You still just braid it back at night, right?”
“Yeah. Sorry for the trouble - ”
“Shut up. I won’t do it if you keep moving.”
Konro found himself smiling, embarrassed as he was at his inability to do something so simple himself. Asakusa’s King of Destruction made a habit of doing the twins’ hair each morning. It was a nice thought…Konro still wasn’t sure how he got the girls to sit still long enough, though. He felt the tie being loosened and finally slip away from his hair altogether.
“Damn - just realized I don’t have a brush.” Beni reached over Konro’s shoulder to hand him the purple tie. “Hold that.”
“You don’t need to do that - it doesn’t need to be perfect, just enough so it isn’t a mess in the morning.”
Even so, Benimaru started trying to work a few of the knots out with his fingers, gently enough that it wouldn’t hurt. “What, like it was when it was shorter?”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Remember what you looked like back then? Makes me think of that topknot brat from the 8th.”
“Beni, that’s not fair,” he couldn’t help but laugh.
“For who? Him or you - hey, turn around, I’m trying to work!”
The laughter turned into coughing, more painful than the usual breathless ones that came from trying to force air into his lungs.
“Shit.” Beni touched one hand to his back as the coughing subsided. “I shouldn’t be keeping you awake, you need to sleep more than I do.”
“I told you I’m fine, it’s hardly even a cold. It just sounds worse than it is - you know how it is. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried.” He was. It was kind of obvious, not that Konro felt like pointing it out. “Give me a second to finish this, you should get some rest.”
Beni’s hands lingered at the nape of his neck, even after the few loose tangles had been worked out. He wasn’t a sentimental man, but at least he could offer a little bit of comfort. Finally satisfied, he started a loose braid, making a quiet noise somewhere between a hum and a sigh. He wasn’t much for communication either, really.
A few more seconds and he was finished, reaching his free hand over Konro’s shoulder again instead of asking for the tie. In another moment he had worked it through the last inch or so of the braid and knotted it together snugly.
“…There, I’m done.” He paused another second, fussing over a shorter strand of hair that had already come loose, and then suddenly stood. Beni tilted his head to each side, a satisfying pop from each movement. He yawned.
“Go to sleep. I hope you’re feeling better in the morning, I’m not doing all that paperwork by myself.”