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Fingertips splayed over Nagito’s cheek, shower soft and warm. He felt the comforter get tugged to his chin as a kiss planted itself on the crown of his head.
“Alarm didn’t wake you up this time, huh?” Hajime spoke in a dulcet whisper. His breath smelled like spearmint. “See you later, bud. I love you.”
Nagito tried to will himself to open his eyes, or at least grab Hajime’s hand, but his brain felt too foggy and sluggish for that. All he could manage was making a disoriented noise from the back of his throat, a pathetic little “huh?” as Hajime’s paraffin heater hands lifted from his face.
Loose strands of Nagito’s hair got brushed away and tucked behind his ear as Hajime shushed him. “Go back to sleep, Nags, kay? Sorry, didn’t wanna wake you.”
“But…” Nagito huffed, feeling groggy despite the anxiety pangs he always endured whenever he was awake to see his husband off. He wiggled his handless arm out from its entanglement of sheets and gently knocked it against Hajime’s, his brow crinkling when he felt the scratchy fabric of his dress jacket. “Arm…?” he croaked.
Hajime took hold of Nagito’s curtailed arm and kissed the blunt scarring at its end. “On the coffee table. Need me to get it for you?”
“No, no… s’kay.” Nagito winced at his own sleep drugged rambling. He could feel the way his body was sinking back into the mattress, consciousness slipping, and all inhibitions lost as he whined and heard himself mumble a request for a goodbye kiss, which Hajime seemed more than eager to give.
Nagito drifted to unconsciousness to the tune of Hajime whispering that he’d text him, that he loved him, and all Nagito could focus on was the familiar smell of tangy citrus bath wash lulling him to sleep.
The best rest that Nagito could ever get was the dreamless kind, and that was exactly what he was lucky enough to get. A black curtain draped over the cradle of his skittering brain and created a few hours of sensory deprivation that only the strongest of drugs could get him these days.
He woke up to the buzz of his phone. Groaning, Nagito peeked open an eye and reached for his nightstand.
The bedroom was hazy and grey from the sunlight that leaked through the curtains, and the AC had kicked off to flush away air that had turned stagnant and rank. His clothes clung to his sweaty skin like tissue paper. When had he showered last?
Sometimes it was difficult to remember.
His prosthetic hand was resting next to his phone, along with a glass of water and a half-filled pill case divided by the day of the week. Hajime had left this cornucopia of self-care, yet another act of devotion that made Nagito feel fuzzy and burdensome all at once.
Another text buzz churned against the nightstand’s surface. Nagito slowly reached out to grab his phone and dart it back under the covers to check messages from Hajime (because no one other than his pharmacy texted him).
There were a couple of messages of the usual weekday variety, a “got here safe” and a reminder to take his medication capped off with a “love you” that would have been curt coming from anyone else, but Hajime had never been one to mince words. He spoke shortly, genuinely, with a searing honesty that Nagito found infinitely sweet and endearing.
Slowly, he used his thumb to type out a tiny reply. He had always been a slow texter, though that was more from only being able to tap out messages with a single hand.
After sending a quick message to let his husband know he was up and living, Nagito moved to sit up. His arms shook from the strain of it, feeble as he was to do a task as simple as that. What time was it again? He had already forgotten.
Nagito felt how his nightshirt had pasted itself to his back. Clumped locks of hair fell over his brow like moldy wool. Shower. He should shower. He probably smelled. The sheets under his body felt stiff and damp. Disgusting. Vile.
Why did his teeth hurt? Ah, his jaw was tight. Grinding again? The dentist had finger-wagged him on that when he saw her last. “I’ll need to fit you for a mouth guard before too long,” she had told him as he swished fluoride around his mouth with a plastic smile.
The popcorn ceiling seemed to move. A man next door was yelling. The apartment walls were just thin enough to carry loud voices and angry tones, but not the words. Just heated rumbles that baked the bedroom like a furnace of malice.
Cheeks numb. Eyes wide. Nagito ripped away the comforter and felt himself stand. The neighbor’s voice was louder, more incensed. Hands shaking. Lips tingling. What was there to scream about so early in the morning? Was it early? Was it lunch? Oh god, what if he had missed Hajime’s noontime call? That was the one thing he was good for.
Somehow his phone was back in his hand, but his grip was scrambling and unsteady. He needed to get his arm on. Wait, no, he had to shower before that. What time was it? Check the phone. 10AM. The man was still yelling. Nagito thought he could hear a child crying, but who knew if that part was real or not? The bathroom. It was quieter there.
Brandishing his phone in a death grip, Nagito scuttled to the bathroom, shut the door behind him and flicked on the light. It still smelled like Hajime in here, the shower stall walls pin-pricked with droplets and the air muggy feeling. It helped the racing of his heart notch down and the wheeze of his breath scrape his throat just a little less.
His phone was buzzing. Nagito’s hand trembled as he scanned over the message.
(10:03AM)
All-hands was long as hell, but it was worth seeing Hiro get chewed out and put on the hot seat for not cleaning out the 2nd floor microwave haha. Can’t wait to give you the details. Doing okay? I know you said you just got up, but remember to take your stuff when you can. On the nightstand. Love you.
Stuff? What stuff? Word soup. Nagito blinked and read over the text again and again, but the letters kept getting rearranged in his head and wouldn’t stick, an adhesive bandage that kept peeling from filthy skin. His stomach churned and lurched to his throat, but that was okay. It wasn’t like he had anything to vomit up. He wrapped his arms around his torso and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, self-soothing that did anything but soothe. Too cold, too bony, and not Hajime.
But the yelling had either stopped, or the bathroom door was doing a decent enough job of blocking the sound. Nagito took some relief in that. He would have ripped up shreds of toilet paper and stuffed them in his ears otherwise.
His phone vibrated from the crook of his armpit. The movement was jarring enough to make him yelp and curl even further in on himself, knees creaking as he knelt to the cool tile floor and pressed his back against the cabinets under the sink to ground him to something like Earth before taking his phone and squinting at the screen.
(10:23AM)
KOMAEDA-HINATA, your prescription MX is ready for pickup. See when your pharmacy is open or set up delivery at…
It wasn’t Hajime. Of course, it wasn’t Hajime. Hajime was working. Busy.
Unlike some people.
Nagito tasted copper. He must have been gnawing on his lip again. Bad habit, a holdover from a nervous stim he’d do when he got too bored at Sunday services with his foster father, but it was even more annoying nowadays when he took blood thinners.
“Crud…” Doing his best to ignore the rattling in his chest, Nagito sucked his lower lip in his mouth and felt blood puddle over his tongue as he stood on shaky legs. He made a point not to look at himself in the mirror, preferring to keep his line of sight locked onto the sink and Hajime’s neatly kept contact case.
His lip was still bleeding. Nagito swallowed the blood that gathered in his mouth and slowly plodded back out of the bathroom to grab a washcloth from the adjacent linen closet. Maybe it was selfish, but he was glad that his husband wasn’t around right now. Hajime had an annoying tendency to blow little things like a cut (or a dog bite) out of proportion. All Nagito had to do was get a warm damp cloth and staunch the bleeding.
He heard his phone rumbling against the bathroom floor, but ignored it. With a quivering hand, he grabbed a random washcloth and went back to the sink, taking care to close the door behind him.
The phone was still jittering. Strange. Text notifications usually came in a quick burst. Maybe the pharmacy was doing an automated call alongside with the text to remind him of his prescription. They did that sometimes, but usually not so close together.
Water spots made the faucet cloudy and little rings of crust haloed around the handles. Nagito winced in shame. The least he could do was keep a clean house while his spouse sacrificed the entirety of his weekdays for the both of them. Really, how selfish of him.
Nagito cranked the faucet and ran the towel under the stream. Taking the time to wait for the water to get warm was a luxury he didn’t deserve. His lip was still oozing blood, and his phone was still buzzing. At least the hollering from next door had died down, but his breathing sure hadn’t.
Wringing out the washcloth, Nagito kept his gaze away from the mirror and used the nub of his left arm to press it firmly to his cut. It felt like an icepack, chilly and comforting in its own way.
His phone still vibrated at his feet. How odd. Nagito felt himself drop back to the floor and reach for it.
(10:45AM)
Did you fall back asleep, Nags? It’s slow here if you need to call, okay?
According to the current time, Hajime had sent that text over twenty minutes ago. The two missed calls from him were more recent, but still troubling. It didn’t feel like that much time had passed, a trick to the brain that made Nagito’s breath start back up all over again and turn panicky.
Hand shaking, Nagito tried to type a reply, but his thumb kept slipping over the screen and pressing different keys and the backs of his eyes were burning like nettles.
Hajime was calling again.
Before he could tell himself to stop, Nagito pressed the ‘accept’ button and raised the phone to his ear. The washcloth against his lips was less cold and more just lukewarm.
“Hey, Nags? Sorry, are you okay? You weren’t answering.” Hajime was doing that low-pitched ‘caring’ tone of his. Nagito didn’t know if his husband did it consciously or not (sometimes he wondered if that mattered).
Throat bobbing, Nagito forced himself to swallow as he drew the towel from his mouth and let it drape over the end of his arm. He couldn’t stop from focusing on the neat circular bloodstain that was left to dry and turn brown. It was a good washcloth, too. Hajime had bought the original set.
“Nagito?”
“Huh?” Nagito drew his bare knees up to his chest. “Sorry…” His voice seemed to come from everywhere but his own mouth. His forehead, maybe? It didn’t sound like him, all slurred and woozy, like someone who had just had a stroke and hadn’t realized it. Maybe he had. It was hard to say.
Hajime was talking to him. “Hey, you don’t need to be sorry.” His tone had taken on a strained edge. “Are you in bed?”
“Uh… no?” The bloodstain on the washcloth was blurring at the edges. How odd. “In the bathroom.”
That must have been the wrong answer, judging from how he heard Hajime’s breath hitch before leveling back to that taut false calm. “Okay, the bathroom. Did you throw up?” he asked, and it was a sound question for him to default to. Vomiting always sent Nagito into panic attacks and dissociative episodes alike. “Whatcha doing in there?”
“Sitting.” Nagito tried to pluck a more substantial thought from his head before adding, “I was going to shower.”
“Yeah?” Hajime prodded. “No throwing up, then? All good there?”
The rusty washcloth bloodstain was shaking, and it took Nagito a few too many minutes to realize it was from the trembling of his own arm and not a distortion of the room. “Mhm. Very good,” he mumbled.
Hajime’s sigh warped into static over the phone line. “You were gonna shower? Pretty sure your chair’s next to the door if you need it, and if you’re not up to it, I can help you when I get home.” A pause. Nagito thought he heard keystroke clacking before his husband continued. “Or I can come home now… how does that sound?” There was a smile in his tone. “I still have a decent bit of PTO left, and I can just comp Hiro for the gas and trouble to take me back.”
“I…” Nagito clammed up. The prospect was enticing, but that enticement was selfish at its core. Was he not a perfectly functional adult? He knew how to take care of himself. Or could he? Like some spoiled house pet, he was nothing but trouble, a tumor that sucked away at Hajime’s life.
“Nags? You gotta stop thinking for a sec for me, okay?” Hajime cut through the fog like a lantern. “Did you take your meds earlier?”
The bright red coal in Nagito’s abdomen seared. He flicked the washcloth away from his arm and let it crumple to the floor. It wasn’t like he could make the room messier than it already was. “N-Not yet… Sorry.”
If Hajime was frustrated with him, he didn’t let it show through the phone. “Hey, that’s okay. Do you think you can take them while I’m on the phone with you?” That nurturing cadence of his was in full-force. “You might wanna stagger them with the noon stuff by a couple hours, but that’s doable. No big.”
Truthfully, Nagito’s immediate impulse was to lie, pretend to take his pills, and then flush them later. It wouldn’t have been the first time he had gotten (and even given) into the urge for it. Not this time. Instead, he made himself stand up and whisper, “I can…”
“Alrighty. I’ll be right here, okay? Take your time.” Another beat. “You’re not keeping me from anything either, yeah? Just boring intranet upkeep shit.’
“If you say so.” Nagito had no actual choice but to trust his husband on that. It was hard. Easier than it used to be, but still hard. “I’m sorry to be so–“
“Cutting you off there,” Hajime said. “I just wanna make sure you’re okay, bud. This stuff happens and, like, I dunno, I don’t want you to have to get through it alone. Simple as that.”
Nagito hummed and wobbled back to the bedroom. The glass of water and pill case was still up on the nightstand, his prosthetic laying limp alongside them like a metallic crescent moon. “You didn’t have to get all of it together for me,” he murmured.
Hajime sighed. “I wanted to.”
“Hm.” Nagito took a seat at the bed’s edge and put Hajime on speaker before grabbing the pill case. He stared at the labeled tops. “Ah… Haji?”
“Yeah?”
“What day is it?” Nagito felt tears form at the corners of his eyes, but he refused to let that show over the phone.
Hajime, oh bless him, he didn’t even chuckle or laugh in his reply. “It’s Thursday, buddy.” Just a simple, warm answer, devoid of judgement, and that just made the tears come in earnest.
“Thank you.” Ignoring the wetness on his face, Nagito braced the pill case with his handless arm and popped open the tab for his Thursday morning pills, a menagerie of fruity lemon tablets and pale blue dots.
“Can you try to eat something after you take them, bubs?” Hajime asked. Nagito didn’t like the desperation he heard in the question.
So, he lied.
“I’ll try.”
And the relief in his husband’s voice was a salve to the ears. “Okay.” Another pause. “I love you so much, you know that?”
Nagito cupped the tablets in his palm. The underside of his chin felt damp and tacky. “I love you, too.” He brought the meds to his aching lips before grabbing the glass of water.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come home early?” Hajime asked. Over the speaker, his voice took on a tinny edge.
Taking a drink, Nagito washed the pills down a parched throat. “I’m fine, bug.” Another lie, but it was all in kindness, just like the first. “I took them, by the by.”
“Okay, good! That’s really good,” Hajime said. “You’ll let me know if you change your mind?”
“Of course.” Nagito forced himself to smile. “I’ll see you this evening?”
“Yeah. Text me?”
“I might fall asleep again,” Nagito said.
“That’s okay. You need it.”
Nagito felt a warm rush seep from his eyes and trickle down his face. He hoped his nose wasn’t running. “I love you, Haji.” He has to whisper to keep the sniffling from breaking free.
“Love you, too, Nags. So much.” Hajime cleared his throat. “See you?”
“Mhm. Bye!” Nagito tapped his screen to hang up before the sobs came in full force.
How lucky.
Crying or not, Nagito wanted to read something to pass the time, but he knew from experience that it wouldn’t have been worth the effort to try. Too often brain fog made it hard for him to focus on written text much at all. He’d reach the end of a paragraph, pause, and realize that nothing had stuck. It didn’t matter how many times he tried to reread. Nothing clicked.
So Nagito didn’t read.
He did little at all, really. He stayed in a nest of covers that made him swelter the further along the day went. Maybe he drifted off a few times. At some point, he carved himself away from the mattress to use the toilet and kept his eyes from the mirror the whole time before immediately scuttling back to bed soon as he was done. He forgot the noon doses.
The daylight bled into a rosy sunset. Nagito kept himself curled under a comforter, arms wrapped tightly around a pillow that still had hints of Hajime’s smell.
He must have fallen asleep again at some point, because it wasn’t long before two calloused hands feeling at his collarbone woke him up.