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Even in the darkness of their shared room, next to the furnace of a man he loved, Ijincho's cold winters still chilled Nanba to the bone.
He laid on his side, staring at Ichiban happily snoring away under their shared blanket like the cold didn't exist. Nanba envied Ichiban and his endlessly heat-generating body, while his own body easily grew cold and stayed that way. If he was a refrigerator, easily growing cold would be a desired trait but, alas, he was doomed to being a cold human. Nanba's teeth chattered as he shifted onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. He sighed, he knew from experience that the cold didn't let up until the wee hours of the morning, so he was in for the long haul. Nanba wished that he could count out the minute details in the ceiling he stared at, but his poor eyesight said otherwise.
The ceiling like the rest of the room had doubled lines and was barely recognizable but not definite. The years of staring at tiny black words on a white paper in poor light to become a nurse had caught up with Nanba in his current age in the form of piss poor eyesight. It wasn't even worth it in the end, considering how he ended his nursing career. Miserable, dead tired, and narrowly missing jail time. How stupid he had been to let himself take the blame for "Mizue." He let the naive side of himself that wanted to play hero decide and the world crushed him under its heel for it. Reality was a strange being, for Nanba's naivety had been his own downfall but Ichiban's naivety had saved Nanba and his brother, the whole "party", and many others' lives. Ichiban's naivety wouldn't have saved all the people it did if Nanba hadn't had the knowledge he gained from being an E.R. Nurse, so in some fucked up way, the same job that chewed Nanba up and spit him out led to the current happy life he had with Ichiban. The ex-nurse sighed and turned onto his side once more, sick of staring at the blurry ceiling.
Nanba's eyes widened and he felt himself jump as he was met with a fully awakened Ichiban who turned to face him.
"Nanba..." Ichiban playfully drawled out. A childishly, angry pout on Ichi's face told Nanba that he wasn't going to like where this conversation was going to go. "Nanba... I can hear you thinking from here. What's up." The man sat up and onto his elbow gearing up to hear whatever Nanba had to say.
Nanba screwed up his face and groaned, it was too late at night and way too cold to be talking out feelings. "Nothing. It's just too goddamn cold to sleep." Nanba wasn't lying, he just was telling a half-truth. It was the stupidass cold that led Nanba down the depressive rabbit hole anyways. He watched Ichiban's face to see if his words were enough to fend off Ichiban's desire to take his loved ones' worries into his own hands. The man meant well, but it wasn't the time and place to discuss all the shit Nanba had festering inside of himself. Maybe over a few drinks was a better time.
Ichiban smiled, and Nanba let out the breath he'd been holding in. No talking out feelings today, thank god. "You've been cold? Why didn't you just say something, come here! Let's cuddle." Ichiban switched from propping himself up on his elbow to laying on his side once more with arms out, welcoming Nanba into his warm embrace. How Ichiban could have energy in the middle of the night escaped Nanba. The shrub-headed man was a year older than him and yet bounced around like he was actually half his age. Nanba didn't want to go through the song and dance he usually did when it came to receiving affection so he simply sighed and scooted over into Ichi's arms.
Ichiban's arms wrapped around Nanba and now the younger man was face first in his boyfriend's heated bosom. While several bells and whistles went off in Nanba's mind, telling him to push away from this embrace, the mop-headed man closed his eyes and focused on the warmth making its way to replace the chill in his bones. If there were any doubts that Ichiban was the one who made the sunrise that Nanba had, they were certainly dispelled after this. Maybe Ichiban wasn't the one who made the sun shine brightly upon all, but the goddamn sun himself. The man had unbuttoned his button-up shirt, exposing his chest to the open air. However, since Nanba basically had his face smushed up into Ichiban's exposed chest, he got a faceful of pleasantly toasty skin.
Ichiban shivered as Nanba's icy cold face touched his warm chest. "Jeez, you're cold to the touch, Nanba. No wonder you couldn't sleep." Ichiban put his chin to his chest and looked at the man currently using his bosom as a heated pillow. Nanba moved his head and looked back up at Ichiban. "The cold loves to settle in my bones, unlike you and the burning hot sun you got in your chest." He grumbled back, only slightly jealous of how hot Ichiban ran.
Ichiban laughed a little and gave a bright, yet snarky smile. "Ohohoh, I and my dragonfish will take 'the burning hot sun' as a compliment. I guess you really do agree that I'm the sun guy after all!" It took a few seconds to remember what Ichiban was talking about, but sure enough, the cringe-worthy memory of Nanba without thinking comparing his boyfriend to the sun and regretting it came back.
"No. I don't. I didn't mean it like that. That wasn't praise." The ex-nurse quickly retorted back, his voice deadpan and short. That only made Ichiban laugh louder and the arms holding Nanba squeeze him tighter.
"Sure, you don't mean it. Just like how you're not enjoying this." Ichiban let out a huff of air and shook his head. Nanba couldn't find a good response to that and just buried his face back into Ichiban's warm chest. Despite being held by Ichiban like this, the cold still tried its best to make his night miserable. They were still underneath their shared blanket, Nanba now basically hugging a man-sized warm water bottle and yet, the cold persisted.
Ichiban's playful mood and banter gave way to some quiet time between the two, one of Ichi's hands rubbing circles through Nanba's thin shirt on his back in an attempt to warm the man up. Nanba let his eyes close to focus on the gentle rise and fall of the chest he was currently face-first in. Maybe he could lull himself to sleep with the comforting sound of his boyfriend's steady breathing and back rubbing.
Rise and fall, rise and fall once more, circles being completed then reversed. The actions and feelings of Ichiban's efforts listed off in Nanba's head like some sort of constantly updating list of comfort. The action of taking in the feelings and events around you, making your brain aware of them in an attempt to accept the unsettling thoughts that previously inhabited it aka Mindfulness. Nanba remembered thinking it was just a way to get those dealing with panic attacks out of his way in his days at the ER, but he never thought it would work for anything else. As the adventure with Ichiban proved, there was always a time for trying something new and now was the time. Amidst the mental list Nanba had in the void of his mind, past thoughts that he had been struggling with while staring at the ceiling filtered in one by one. He ran through those thoughts like one would with a list of things to do. Yes, the reading of tiny text for many years probably contributed to his not great eyesight, but at least he could look smart with his horn-rimmed glasses like Saeko once talked to him about. And yeah, his nursing career had gone up in flames because of an unfortunate idea at the time, but it led to that fateful encounter at the homeless camp with Ichi, his boyfriend, of all things. Saying all of the things out mentally seemed incredibly stupid and unhelpful, only leaving himself with dull emotional pain, but Nanba assumed it was like medicine that you had to keep on taking for it to work. It vaguely hurt right now, but in the future, it will probably not even hurt at all.
The soft sounds of Ichiban's breathing giving way to snores took Nanba out of his mindspace. The man was asleep again, once more leaving Nanba to his thoughts. The same self-doubts tried to worm their way into Nanba's thoughts, but this time it was almost like Ichiban had hopped into his brain and used some sort of video game power to beat them back.
"No worrying thoughts for now, Nanba! Rest easy!" The little Ichiban in Nanba's brain said in a confident, high-pitched voice while wiping away sweat from his brow and winking.
In reality, Nanba really just thought over his current situation and decided letting those same thoughts back in wasn't worth it. He had his whole life to worry, he was sure of that. However, it wasn't guaranteed that he could enjoy Ichiban's warmth the next night or any night after that. Living in the moment would be better in the end than worrying about any other time in his life.
Nanba let out a sigh, the warmth from the man underneath him finally settling in and making itself at home despite the cold night's best efforts. The feeling of their shared futon and blanket seemed to disappear and the tiredness that his late-night thoughts had been holding back finally hit the mop-headed man. His body felt light and his eyes heavy, consciousness fading. One last thought burned bright in his mind before Nanba finally fell asleep: "If Ichiban could always warm me up like this, I think I wouldn't mind being constantly cold."