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“Are you alright, Juza?”
Juza rounds Kazuha with a grin, only to bury his face in his elbow just in time to muffle a cough. He waves his other hand at Kazuha dismissively.
“I’m fine, fine!” he says, even though Kazuha can hear the crackling in his throat. “Think the wind might be getting to me today.”
Kazuha lifts his head to the sails, sunlight beating down as the wind soothes over it. After a time, he finds Juza’s eyes again
“There was more wind yesterday,” Kazuha says. “I think you should at the very least consider it further.”
Juza lowers his arms and straightens up, taking in a careful breath before grinning again. “Don’t worry about me,” Juza says. He sounds confident enough, with the exception of the tightness hugging every vowel. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll take a water break.”
Kazuha doesn’t say that it’s not about how he feels. He’s concerned, sure, but that’s not why he wants Juza to give this some more thought. “I only ask that you consider it, is all,” Kazuha says. “It could be nothing. But if it is something, please don’t ignore it.”
Juza’s grin slackens a little, sifting into something gentler. He tousles Kazuha’s hair and Kazuha takes it. “Alright, alright. I promise I won’t brush it off if I think it’s turning into something.”
“Thank you.”
Night falls. Kazuha takes watch between dusk and dawn—his favorite shift, though it means he has to go to bed earlier than he’d prefer—his eyes on the horizon line as the wind eases them through the ocean’s calm and sunbeams peel away the darkness.
An hour later, Kazuha joins Huizing and Little Yue for their morning chores; but Juza doesn’t show.
“Oh, Juza’s under the weather,” Beidou says when asked, turning from the galver to face him. “From the sounds of it, whatever he’s got is pretty nasty, so I told him to stay in his quarters for the day.”
Kazuha sighs. He hadn’t wanted to be right. “Is someone already bringing him meals and whatever else he may need?”
“Grub’s on it,” Beidou says. “But I doubt she’d say no to an extra set of hands if you feel like it.”
He does feel like it. He likes Juza, and Juza was the first of the Crux (with the exception of Beidou, of course) to treat Kazuha like just another sailor, which in turn helped break the ice with the rest. He finishes chipping the rust with Little Yue and Huixing, then finds Grub and offers his assistance. She takes it gladly.
The following day, she’s holed up in her quarters with a bad cough and fever. The sun has barely had the chance to rise before Furong is similarly down for the count. The next morning, Juza is still sick with little improvement, but now Little Yue, Huixing, Grub and Suling have fallen.
“Look on the bright side,” Xu Liushi tries, smiling thinly as the two of them take over three sets of chores, “at least it’s not everyone!”
Hours later, it’s everyone.
Everyone except Kazuha.
Beidou held on the longest, but eventually she, too, succumbed to it, and Kazuha had to drag her below deck to the infirmary, which has now become an all-inclusive sick bay for the entire crew. She waves him off, says she can walk herself; and he doesn’t doubt that; but he does want to make sure she actually rests once she’s there, and doesn’t try tending to the rest of her crew while she herself is ill.
“You worry too much,” she tells him, before turning away and coughing into her elbow. He steadies her until it passes, and she groans. “Shit. That doesn’t mean anything. You still worry too much.”
“I think I worry just enough,” Kazuha says, toeing the door open and tugging her in.
Most of the crew is sleeping; Juza and Furong are playing Pick-Up-Sticks with a box of matches while Suling judges. He’s pleased to see them rest, and glad they agreed to hold up in one room together. It’s easier to check up on them all this way.
“Captain!” Juza’s head snaps up, but he holds it with a wince, even as the surprise persists in his eyes. “You, too!?”
“I’m fine,” Beidou says, her voice thick. She ruffles Kazuha’s hair as he spreads two blankets on top of each other on an empty space of flooring. “You know how he is.”
“He’s right,” Furong says. Kazuha winces at the heaviness of his tone and the crackling words; he’ll have to bring down another round of tea, he can’t imagine how sore all the coughing has made them. “Forgive me, Captain, but you look like shit.”
“You all do,” Kazuha says matter-of-factly, straightening up. He takes Beidou by the shoulder and guides her down. “Now rest.”
Beidou rolls her eyes, but he doesn’t miss the sigh of relief as she sits on the blankets, finally off her feet. He drapes a third over her shoulders and ignores her next annoyed-but-fond eyeroll. “Juza, Furong, Suling. Please don’t let her push herself.”
They give him a trio of thumbs-ups.
Beidou coughs into her fists and, still hacking, says, “Turning my own crew against me. Didn’t think you were the anarchic type.”
“I am a fugitive,” Kazuha says. He pats her on the shoulder. “Please rest, Beidou.”
She sighs, reaching up to settle her hand over his. “I know, I know. Thanks, kid.”
After checking to see if anyone needs anything, Kazuha sets down the passageway, up the ladder. Tea is always soothing to the cough and the soul. Surely it’d do them good to have something warm to drink while they recover.
The crew wakes and sleeps incrementally, though he never sees the same person awake for longer than twenty minutes or so at a time. Whatever sort of virus this is, it isn’t pleasant: settling in the chest as a deep cough, in the blood as a fever, in the bones as a tremble. None of them seem to be progressing further than wet coughs and burning brows, but he knows how easily that could change, and is determined not to let it. He’s going to ensure they rest and recover as smoothly as possible.
Huixing and Drake stir. The last time they were awake, he had them drink water, so now he forces them to eat a little soup and sip some tea. As he rises to his feet to refresh the basin of cold water, Drake catches his arm.
“You look tired,” Drake says. He has a rough voice anyway, but it’s rougher now that sickness has totaled it. Kazuha hates to think of how much it hurts to speak. “Have you slept at all?”
“I slept a bit this morning,” Kazuha assures.
Drake’s frown deepens. He doesn’t let go. “A bit? How long are we talking?”
“I didn’t keep track,” Kazuha says, “but I felt refreshed. Please, don’t worry about me. I’ll be right back.”
Drake is reluctant, but either he can’t find a reason to argue or he’s too tired to fight it, and it doesn’t go anywhere. Kazuha leaves with the basin, turns the humid water into the ocean and refills it with cold, fresh water, which he then takes below decks with an armful of clean washcloths. Drake and Huixing have fallen asleep again; he soaks two cloths and wrings them out to settle over their heads.
Then Suling stirs with a coughing fit, and Kazuha helps him sit up and drink water until it’s passed. Suling hasn’t eaten recently, if Kazuha’s memory is keeping up with him, and usually it does; he fetches a bowl of broth and has Suling eat as much as he can manage. Suling is the most compliant of the crew; most likely due to his being their medical intelligence. He manages almost the entire bowl and Kazuha helps him lie down again, waiting until he dips into sleep before checking his fever (same as last he checked, persisting but stable) and refreshing the cloth already over his head.
It’s Little Yue next, and then Xu Liushi. Little Yue sips some tea and falls asleep again almost immediately, but Xu Liushi snaps at him—not at him, at the illness, he knows, but it was directed at him—frustrated that she hasn’t gotten any better. He placates her with a promise that she will, and that he’ll take care of them all; and she apologizes relentlessly, right up until she sleeps. He didn’t take it personally and hopes she doesn’t still feel the need to apologize the next she wakes. Fevers make everything harder.
“Kid.” Beidou snags his wrist while he’s trying to leave. He meets her fever-bright eyes and finds a startling amount of steel behind it. Despite the gravel in her throat, she sounds serious. “Take a break.”
Kazuha could easily tug his wrist out of her hand—he left the kettle on the stove, and would like to cut the heat before it boils—but it doesn’t feel right, not when she looks genuinely upset. “I’m taking breaks,” he says. “Small ones, but I am taking them.”
“You’re not taking enough of them,” she says like she’d already planned the words beforehand. “Or you’re not letting them last long enough. You could still get sick, Kazuha. You need to—”
She breaks off, coughing hard into a handful of twisted blankets. His chest seizes.
“Beid—”
“We,” she wheezes, stomping down the fit, “are fine. We don’t need anything else right now, go sleep. That’s an order.”
She sounds like herself, enough that he knows it’s not the fever, but she does still have a fever, and the cough, and it’s settled deep in her chest too, just like everyone else. These things have a tendency to get worse left unchecked. If he doesn’t keep tabs—
“Kazuha.” Beidou squeezes his wrist tight, and it’s only now he notices the undercurrent of worry twisted beneath her gaze. “That’s an order.”
He relents.
Nightmares plague him when he tries to sleep, though, so he decides to rest by keeping watch atop the crow’s nest, just like he’d do on a normal watch shift on a normal occasion. He takes a cup of tea up with him, too—black tea, which isn’t the same tea he brewed for his crewmates. They got chamomile tea. But they need to rest. He needs to take care of them.
He didn’t lie about taking breaks, he did take breaks from tending them. He took a break to make soup, took a break to do laundry, took a break to sleep (and he really didn’t know how long it lasted, but the sun was in nearly the same place, so perhaps he should have been more honest about that to Drake), took a break to chip more of the rust away, took a break to lift the sails, took a break to sweep, took a break to keep a night’s watch, took a break to wash dishes. He likes tending to things above the deck, too, just because it’s so stuffy down below, especially in that congested room. He hopes they recover quickly. He doesn’t like the thought of them being confined down there in that stuffiness for longer than absolutely necessary.
So he has been taking breaks. He doesn’t feel any inner conflict about that at all. He finishes his cup of tea, checks the sundial (about an hour—that’s a good break, isn’t it? Five times the length of his usual breaks) and makes his way below decks again.
Beidou is asleep, but Grub isn’t. He makes his way over to her and settles back into his normal rhythm.
He can push himself for them. He likes being able to do this for them, to give back some of what they’ve given. Even if they hadn’t given him so much, they’re good people and he’s incredibly fond of them all and hates the thought of them ailing without care. He’ll catch up with himself once they’re back on their feet.
Nearly a week after first being confined to his quarters, Juza sleeps the night through without a single peep, and his fever breaks. He chats with Kazuha long-windedly, all bright expressions and wide gestures and engaged eyes. It’s too real to be a farce; he really has reached a near complete recovery. It’s a promise that the rest of them will recover in like manner, and Kazuha is relieved.
It’s not long before, just as suddenly as the sickness swept over them, recovery retraces its steps backwards, and Kazuha hears a lot more laughter in between fetching water and tea, and he has to refill the basin of cold water less and less, until that stops altogether. By then Juza, Huixing and Suling are on their feet again and have taken up their chores (in moderation, at Kazuha’s insistence). Beidou is the last to recover—just as she was the last to fall—and then, finally, the ship is back to normal. Still tired, sure, with a few lingering coughs, but with the shared, overwhelming relief that it’s finally over.
“This calls for a celebration!” Xu Liushi whoops, hoisting a handful of metal skewers over her head. Night has fallen, but the summer breeze is warm and welcoming, stars high and bright in the clear sky. “Roasted marshmallows over the campstove! Sickness, thy name is vanquished!”
Kazuha has half a mind to advise they still take it easy, lest they relapse, but though he has half a mind, he has none of the heart. Not when he’s finally seeing them as themselves again, joining in on Xi Liushi’s cheers if they’re that sort of person, or if they’re more Drake’s type, off to the side with fake eyerolls and arms crossed. Kazuha takes a deep breath and the rigidness in his muscles thins until it’s no more.
“Aye, Kazuha!”
He looks up, hand reacting before his eyes know what he’s catching. His fingers close around a skewer, and he finds Beidou’s grin.
“Come on,” she says, snagging his arm and dragging him over to where the others have already gathered into a circle around the bonstove. “Loosen up a little, alright? We’re fine.”
Kazuha lets himself be dragged along, looking down at the skewer—the firelight against it almost mirrors the stars. “But I have the first shift tonight in the crow’s nest.”
“What?” Beidou finds a spot to sit in between Huixing and Little Yue. “No you don’t. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve got at least the next three days off. Come on, sit down.”
“That isn’t neces—”
“I’m your captain, it’s an order,” Beidou says. She smiles again, but the playfulness is gone from it and all that’s left is the heart of it. “Come on. It’s the least we can do for you.”
“Hell yeah!” Juza hollers, and at the same time grabs Kazuha by the arm and yanks him down beside him. Before Kazuha can object, Juza’s thrown an arm around his shoulders and is gesturing at the flames with his skewer. It’s warm, and embers float toward the stars. “Take a break, Kazuha.”
“You’ve more than earned it,” Drake says across the circle from him, arms still crossed. “Listen to your captain.”
His chest flutters, half in embarrassment at the attention, half in endearment because of how much they care. “I feel ganged up on,” Kazhua says.
“Honestly,” Huixing says, skewering a marshmallow and passing the bag along, “we’d give you the whole week off if we didn’t know you would never hear of it. Really, thank you for looking after us. It couldn’t have been easy.”
“Yeah,” Little Yue agrees, “thank you.”
The sentiment is echoed by the whole circle and Kazuha doesn’t feel embarrassed anymore, only… floaty. He smiles.
“Thank you for letting me tend to you,” he says, lifting his head. “It really was my pleasure.”
“Well, either way,” Furong says, settling his marshmallow over the flames, “let’s not do that again.”
“Here, here!” says Juza, hoisting a burnt marshmallow over his head. Beidou snorts. Kazuha can’t stop smiling.
He falls asleep easily that night, wrapped in blankets and relief, a warmth unfurling over and over again in his chest.
He wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, death in his mind’s eye and fire devouring the rest of him. Hands clasp his shoulders, feel his head; he fights, throwing punches that don’t land at an enemy that isn’t there, something in the back of his mind straying his hits. Even the shadows tip and lurch. His head pounds.
“Oh, kid.” Beidou’s voice, he thinks. It’s too dark for him to see her face, but her touch is careful when she sweeps his hair out of his face. “Just me, just me. Damn it, you’re burning.”
His throat itches and he tries to clear it, but coughs hard instead. The coughs shred his throat, make his head pound harder, his chest ache. Beidou rubs his back and steadies him, but it doesn’t help. He hacks into his elbow until he can breathe again, and she guides him under the blankets. Nausea slips in at the new angle. He feels dizzier lying down than sitting up, even if the pressure in his chest is less.
“Stay put, alright? I’ll be back.”
He trusts her. He nods and watches her go, moderately annoyed she forgot to close the door behind her, and then buries his face with a shiver and tries to breathe.
Before he knows it, Beidou is back and urging him to sit up, a hand against his back and the other pressing a mug of water into his grip. He grabs at it, vision too dark and too blurred. She helps him hold it steady while he drinks. He could only take a few sips before the nausea nearly undid it all. Was everyone else this nauseous when they were sick, too? Is that why they were so reluctant to eat? No one complained about nausea, so he couldn’t have known, but he still feels the stab of guilt.
“That’s it,” she murmurs, setting aside the glass when it’s half empty. She helps him lie down again, fussing to tuck his hair out of his face. “Gods, I knew I should have pushed harder for you to rest. I don’t think any of our fevers got as high as this.”
“F’Fine,” Kazuha croaks, unable to suppress a harsh shiver. His chest aches with it. “Don’t worry.”
“No, I am going to worry, damn you,” Beidou snaps, only half angry. The other half is worry. “I don’t care what you think your limits are, you pushed yourself way too hard. Huixing tells me you were still maintaining the ship while taking care of an entire ship worth of sick people? What the hell, Kazuha, you told me you were taking breaks.”
She’s still twisting his hair around, probably braiding it, and refusing to meet his eyes.
“I w’was taking breaks,” he promises. He didn’t mean to make her angry, but he isn’t sorry for what he did, so apologizing wouldn’t be sincere. “Did take breaks. I, I just, couldn’t relax when I was still worried about you and the others.”
She is about to say something else, and he wants to hear it, but the coughing fit gets him first. He heaves into his blankets and Beidou yanks him upright, rubbing his back to try and ease it, but it doesn’t help. The coughs grate and add to his throbbing temples and heavy chest.
“Easy, easy,” Beidou says, unpracticed but solid, “easy—I’m not mad at you, alright? I’m not mad, just, take it easy, kiddo. You’re alright.”
He can’t breathe. It hurts to cough but he can’t stop, and he can’t breathe more than desperate little inhales between the fit pitches him harder. He coughs until he gags and throws up. His throat hurts and he’s so dizzy.
But the coughing stops, at least. His ears are ringing, but he isn’t coughing anymore.
“Alright.” Beidou’s voice floats over him again. “Alright, kiddo. I’ve got you, c’mere—c’mere. Okay.”
He’s lifted and pressed close. He sags into the warmth and fights to breathe.
“B-Beidou, I’m s’sor—”
“Don’t apologize.” She squeezes him. “Try to sleep if you can.”
He’s burning, but the warmth of Beidou’s arms is somehow… different. It doesn’t add to the fever. It doesn’t take away from it, either, just… settles his nerves. Distantly, he knows they’re moving—he’s being carried—but he doesn’t care enough to ask where to and is too tired to try and find out for himself. Wherever Beidou’s taking him, it’s for a reason, and he trusts her.
Purple lightning, dying screams, faded Vision. Kazuha lurches forward and vomits into a bucket someone shoved under his chin. It hurts. He coughs. Large hands grip his shoulders and keep him steady.
“Shit, you just can’t catch a break, can you?” Kazuha gags. The hands squeeze his shoulders. “You’re fine, you’re fine. Steady now.”
It’s over eventually, without an ensuing coughing fit, and the bucket is taken away before a pair of arms draw Kazuha in, awkward but certain. A hand cups the back of his head. The other is set at his shoulder, both arms warm and secure. He draws a shaky breath.
“Drake?”
“Yeah,” Drake says. Feverish chills trip across Kazuha’s skin, but he’s barely had the chance to shiver before a blanket is wrapped around him, and he melts. “Gods, should’ve known you weren’t actually taking care of yourself. You’re a lot more stubborn than people think you are.”
His voice is comforting—parental, but gentler and less clinical than his own father’s. Kazuha lets himself be held. “How st… how stubborn do people think I am?”
Drake huffs. “Not stubborn enough.” The hand at the base of Kazuha’s head disappears and returns on his forehead. Drake doesn’t have a discernible reaction, just shifts to settle in further. “You went down fast, damn.”
He’s starting to feel dizzy and a little nauseous again, and he doesn’t have anything to add that’s worth saying. Drake sighs.
“Sorry,” he says, “you must really feel like shit if you aren’t talking back. I’ll stop messing with you, now, you should rest.”
“No,” Kazuha manages, and his voice sounds dreadful, but he pushes on, “d—it’s okay, I… like the conversation. I do. I just… can’t contribute.”
His coughing fit was nice enough to let him finish talking, but that’s the only courtesy he gets before it has him in its clutches. Drake braces him until it’s over and Kazuha falls back into his hold, breathing hard and trembling.
“I get it,” Drake says, situating the blankets around him again. “But you need to sleep. Suling’s going to have a look at you in the morning.”
Kazuha settles in, lets his eyes close, and drifts. Drake hums an old shanty for a while, voice just barely touching the volume above a whisper, though never more, and Kazuha slips to sleep beneath the sound.
Suling does look at him the next day, but Kazuha is too out of it to remember much. Suling’s hands were gentle, professional but caring, and he seemed worried, but Kazuha was worried about him when he was sick too so he figures it just makes sense.
“Oh, hey, squirt! You’re awake!” Suling leans out of Kazuha’s line of sight, just long enough to return with a glass of water. “Here, drink this if you can. I dissolved some herbs in it, so if it tastes funny that’s why.”
Suling helps him sit up and tips the water down his throat. It does taste funny, but not unpleasant—it tastes how woodchips smell after rain, and reminds him of Inazuma. Suling settles him down again and draws a blanket to his shoulders.
“Are you s…” Kazuha’s voice fails him, but he doesn’t care. He tries again. “Are you still feeling alright? You haven’t—”
“Kazuha.” Suling presses his palm to Kazuha’s forehead. “You took care of us until we recovered— all of us. There’s a lot of people on this ship! I wouldn’t have had that much patience, and I’m supposed to be the medical person. So, let us take care of you for a while, alright? It’s only fair.”
His head pounds and pins and needles teeter across his hands, nerves alight with fever. His chest seizes up at Suling’s words and he tries to swallow the thickness in his throat.
“But, I…” Kazuha swallows again, trying to down the coughs before they start. Suling leans back into his line of sight, worried but attentive, and Kazuha curls his fingers into a trembling fist. “You’ve all d… done so much for me,” he says, pushing against what feels like tree sap in his throat. “I’ve never had the—-th-the chance to, to do anything for you back, and I… want to.”
Suling sits back with a thoughtful hum, wringing out a rag over a basin of cold water. “I get the heart behind it,” he says, wiping the sweat off Kazuha’s face. It feels nice, but Kazuha is too frazzled to relax just yet. “But you’ve got it wrong. We love you a lot, see? You being you is enough, we don’t need or want anything else from you. Well, except now we all need you to get better—we’ve missed the crap out of you, it’s so weird without your weird poetry all over the place, and Huixing tried to understand the wind for like, an hour before she gave up. But that’s not the point, I—”
Kazuha coughs. It doesn’t turn into a fit, thank Archons (not his Archon, though, she wants him dead), but it does hurt, and Suling trickles a little more water down his throat.
“That’s just to say,” Suling says, settling the cloth over his head and pressing it there, “you’re alright. You wanted to take care of us, right? Well, now we wanna take care of you. Let us have this.”
He…
Kazuha is going to have to sift through that another time. But he doesn’t want to argue, and even before he’s fully processed them, the words already nestle deep in his chest close to his heart and he doesn’t want to let them go. He nods, letting his eyes slip shut, and falls asleep just as Suling tells him that it’s okay for him to rest.
Kazuha drifts, a lot. But he’s never alone.
He wakes up sometimes and Xu Liushi is there with clean blankets and way too much enthusiasm to cocoon him with, her chipper voice lowered into something softer for his sake. She knows he can’t fall asleep to silence, and talks nonsense until sleep has taken him away.
Other times, Little Yue is there, helping him sit up and pushing him to drink some tea. He falls asleep under her attentive gaze with her hand on his shoulder.
He jolts awake from memories turned nightmare and Huixing hugs him until he can breathe again, helps him through the ensuing coughing fit, and then somehow manages to make him laugh with a joke.
Beidou is at his side most often, each time with one hand on his forearm and the other settled over the crown of his head. He wants to apologize for worrying her—it was never his intention—but each time he’s nearly gotten the words out, she hushes him and says they’ll talk about it later. He trusts her on it, and drifts off easily.
Other times still it’s Juza or Drake, Grub or Furong. No matter how early or how late it is, how much sunlight or how little moonlight, he’s never alone, and no amount of fever or nightmare or coughing or trembling ever makes any of them leave. He wonders, once, when he’s coherent enough to wonder, if he’d ever been alone since falling ill. Given that someone’s always there whenever he opens his eyes, his guess is no.
Even when he’s recovered enough to sit up on his own, and sleep without coughing fits rousing him every quarter hour, and maybe even read a little, there’s always someone at his side. Bit by bit they slip back into easy banter and non-committal conversation; but still tug blankets around his shoulders or bring him tea and soup.
It’s… nice.
Nearly a week after first coming down ill, Suling agrees to let Kazuha sit on the deck while they work, the compromise being Kazuha doesn’t so much as ask if he can help, brings a blanket along and sleeps if he needs to. With a steadying hand Kazuha manages to climb the ladder and find a spot to sit out of the way, pressed against the taffrail with a blanket. He’s barely been there two minutes before Grub presses a cup of warm chamomile tea into his hands.
He likes sitting on the deck more than the cramped stuffy room below decks. The calming lull of the sea and carding of the wind; the bustle of his comrades as they go about their dailies, Furong and Juza competing on who can sweep the deck the fastest while Drake mans the Galver and Huixing perches on the crow’s nest, eyeing the clouds. Kazuha isn’t sure where everyone else is exactly, but even knowing they’re well and present is all he needs. Shivering, he pulls the blanket closer and buries his face into his knees.
“Hey, kiddo.”
Kazuha opens his eyes just in time to see the tailend of Beidou’s approach.
“Suling said I could sit up here,” Kazuha says when she opens her mouth. “For the fresh air.”
“Don’t worry, he told me,” she says easily. “Mind if I join you?” Kazuha shakes his head and she takes a seat at his side, heaving a sigh. “Gods, these past couple of weeks have been fun,” she says, leaning back. She props her knee up and uses it as an elbow rest. “How’s your fever?”
“There, but not as high.”
She presses her hand to his forehead and lingers, her brows furrowed. “You still feel pretty warm,” Beidou says. “Nowhere near as bad as it was, though. I’m sure you’ll be back on your feet in no time.”
Kazuha nods, but then a tickle scratches the back of his throat and sends him coughing into his fists. She wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him to her side to brace him.
“Easy,” she says, “easy.”
The fits have been getting shorter, though. It isn’t long before he’s able to breathe again without the risk of falling into another one—though, Beidou still doesn’t let him go, and he leans into her shoulder, shivering. His body still can’t decide if he’s hot or cold, so the combination of Beidou’s warmth and the cool breeze is calming.
“Your cough doesn’t sound as deep, either,” Beidou says. “That’ll probably be the last thing to go, though. Always is.”
He groans, and feels her chuckle.
“Thanks for letting us fuss over you,” she says, running her hand up and down his arm through the blanket. “I know you’re used to taking care of yourself, but I want you to know we were more than happy to look after you. Still are.”
He remembers what Suling told him, settling it side by side with his feelings of warmth and safety and contentment.
“... I know,” Kazuha says softly. “Somehow, I… I do believe you and the others genuinely want to look after me, and don’t mind doing so.”
Beidou’s arm stills a moment before continuing. “Feelin’ a ‘but’ coming along.”
“But,” Kazuha confirms, “even though I believe it, I don’t think I know how to take it to heart yet. I don’t know if that makes sense; my thoughts are still a bit scattered. I haven’t had the chance to really think about it.”
“I think I get the gist of it,” Beidou says. “You believe it but it doesn’t come naturally, right? Something like that?”
“Something like that,” Kazuha says. He runs Suling’s words through his head again and sinks further into her side, letting his eyes shut. “I believe it but it hasn’t set in enough that I can live it out.”
“Yeah, the living-it-out’s always the catch. But believing it is step one. You’ll get there.”
She says it, casually but so sincere, and he focuses on her hand on his arm and his head on her shoulder. His thoughts are calm. His heart beats. The wind is gentle.
“Thank you, Beidou,” he murmurs.
She nods, and Kazuha lets himself drift.
Drowsily, he listens to the crew bustle about, holler back and forth, whoop and wave and chart new courses. Someone drapes a second blanket over him at one point. Beidou doesn’t leave his side. The crew made him feel so wanted to easily, and it wasn’t because he trusted easily. They were just trustworthy people. Good people, with good hearts and good heads. They made him feel safe and cared for just by being the people they were. They made him feel wanted. They made it all seem so simple.
He never thought that, maybe, just maybe, they felt the same way about him that he felt about them, without his needing to earn it by anything more than being himself. That maybe they feel cared for by him; safe with him; that they could put their trust in him. That he wanted them, too, and precious little else.
For now, it’s not something he knows how to whole-heartedly accept. But he’ll keep it close, and keep pondering it until he learns how to take it to heart. It’ll be a while before he’s ready for that, but until then he trusts their word and their hearts, and knows that when the day dawns and he finally understands the depth of their care, they’ll still be there for him to embrace.