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“'Tori, take my room. I’ll sleep in my office tonight. As for you three...” As Hatori bade goodnight and disappeared for the stairway, Shigure turned back to them. “Need an escort upstairs?”
Tohru shook her head, Yuki just stared, and Kyo said flatly, “What do you think?”
He shrugged. “Just wanted to ask. In that case, good night. Don’t forget your blankets; you know how cold it is.”
Tohru called for him as he made for his office. "Thank you."
He paused, and nodded, and said, "Get some rest."
Then he slid shut his office door.
***
Things that fill Tohru's exhausted, half-awake mind: the easy, familiar way Kyo and Yuki leaned into each other, wrapped in a blanket. How, yes, they had stopped fighting, when she'd been getting worse and they hadn't begun to yet.
How they're alone in this room in the liminal space of after midnight. A thousand things could happen, there's so much Tohru wants to happen, all of it so new that her lungs constrict in a different way.
Less then ten minutes ago, Tohru was on the verge of dying. They all were. She felt unmoored, except for Kyo and Yuki curled close, transformed.
That feeling lingers now, colored by what she said and her strongly-beating heart into something warm, precious, something secret for the three of them.
She looks at Yuki. Heat rushes to her face when she sees him looking back. She stands, wobbles; he starts to get up, but she's already pushing her futon up against his. She straightens then, trying to catch Kyo's eyes.
Still swaddled in the blanket, he's staring at her.
She's too tired, too unsure, too full of nameless need to use words.
He stumbles to his feet, keeping hold of the blanket, and shuffles to connect his futon to her empty side.
Tohru feels weightless, and this time it feels good. Her cheeks hurt; she realizes how wide her smile is. She kneels back on her futon, arms wrapped around her middle, and watches the boys returning to their futons.
They lay down all at once. Kyo gets the blanket around them.
She wants to kiss each of them. For real, this time. But she is too scared of the exhilaration she feels at that thought, at what that feeling might lead to. Her body trembles from it.
Then Kyo leans gingerly up against her side with his back to her, and Yuki links an arm through hers, and sleep claims her like a door slamming shut.
***
She doesn't dream. Doesn't remember anything other than the echo of a feeling, the imprint of an endless image: hugging them, finally, both of them at once, and they remain human.
When she wakes, tears on her cheeks, she wipes away the tracks before Kyo and Yuki awaken to notice.
And when they wake, they each take one of her hands. Silently, and like it's just the same as always. The sunlight beaming in through the closed shoji seems full to bursting with possibility, and her heart feels ready to beat out of her chest—
But she lies still, squeezes the boys' hands. She shifts her eyes to take in their faces.
Kyo is smiling, a tiny soft one. Yuki's eyes are warm.
Instantly she realizes two things: it hurts somehow to look at them, and she is praying, deeply, for something she can't name. She turns her gaze to the ceiling, squeezing her eyes closed.
What she's praying for happens.
In the same moment, against both her cheeks, the boys' mouths, gentle. And then their forehands linger against her temples, and it feels so miraculous she almost forgets how to breathe.
Tohru opens her eyes, pulls their hands to her ribs, and takes a deep breath in.