Work Text:
...Hot. It was hot.
Aoba panted, his throat feeling raw as he pushed out another ragged breath. Hot. Through his half-sleep, he wriggled under the covers.
It was hot, so the comforter was an issue. He worked it off himself, kicking until his feet were free only to shiver violently as soon as the freezing air hit his skin.
“Aoba?”
Noiz sat up in bed, looking down at him. Aoba had the very faint feeling that he might have kicked Noiz in his pursuit to get the cover off.
“I’m just cold,” Aoba answered, knowing as soon as he’d said it that it felt wrong. Hadn’t he kicked the covers off because he’d been warm? In the darkness, Aoba thought he saw Noiz’s brow furrow as he came to the same conclusion.
“I’m turning on the light.”
With a click the room filled with a warm glow, Noiz’s silhouette illuminated by the bedside lamp he was leaning over. When he turned back Aoba noted he hadn’t imagined the furrow in his brow, and also noticed that it hadn’t gone away yet.
Aoba couldn’t dedicate much thought to that, though. He was busy getting the cover back over his feet, feeling waves and waves of heat crash over him. Except, hadn’t he just been cold? The thought alone made another shiver zip up his spine.
“Ugh, I think I’m sick.”
It wasn’t too surprising, all things considered. Noiz had whisked him away to Germany less than a month ago, and the culture shock had hit him hard. That coupled with trying to learn the language, meeting Noiz’s family, and contending with the sudden upheaval of his whole life…it was overwhelming, and the stress was likely taking its toll.
Still, this didn’t seem like a huge deal. He’d been sick plenty of times before. But when he looked up from his reverie he found Noiz’s face painted with concern, frozen in place.
“Sick…how?”
Immediately realization hit him: Noiz had grown up without anyone taking care of him, and even when ill he’d likely been all alone. He probably had no idea how to care for a sick person.
Of course Noiz would be more worried than the average person. Aoba pushed himself up, already rehearsing reassurances and step-by-step instructions of proper bedside care, but Noiz immediately pressed him back into the mattress.
“Don’t get up. Why are you always too quick to help, even when you’re the one who needs helping?” Still pressing down on Aoba’s chest, a comforting weight, he added, “The internet exists for a reason. Just tell me how you’re feeling, and I’ll look up what to do.”
The fear that had been in Noiz’s eyes was gone, replaced so thoroughly by determination that Aoba wondered if he’d imagined it in the first place. Aoba wanted to argue, eager to lessen the stress this might entail, but just falling back into bed had made his head spin. He let out a resigned sigh, reluctantly sinking back into his pillow.
“I’m pretty sure I have a fever. Could you get me some water?”
Noiz nodded, and the mattress shifted as he slid out of bed. That small movement was enough to make Aoba dizzy, and he hadn’t even moved; he swam in the feeling, and then in the waves of heat continuously washing over him. It seemed like seconds and years until a cold glass was placed into his hands and he surfaced again, tethered to the feeling of the condensation against his palms.
He blinked to consciousness (had he been asleep? spacing out?) and tipped the water down his throat, chugging it down and feeling no less thirsty. Shivers wracked his body again and he slid back under the covers, only vaguely aware of Noiz swiping through his coil beside him. Aoba wanted to stay awake, but his eyes were so heavy…
He blinked awake to the sound of Noiz’s voice, speaking low and soft into his coil. Only snatches of phrases drifted to him from across the room where Noiz was pacing:
“Yeah…I noticed around 5am…he’s, uh, flushed, and sweaty……..Let me check.”
For a few seconds Aoba was floating, dropped into an empty silence, before a refreshingly cold hand touched his face. He immediately leaned into it on instinct, sighing into the familiar palm. The hand caressed his cheek before shifting upwards to his forehead, lingering for a few seconds before moving back down to his neck.
“I…I think so. Temperature is still hard for me sometimes. I don’t know how warm people usually are.” Noiz spoke in a whisper, his words landing as softly as his touches. A murmur of noise buzzed quietly and Noiz flipped his hand over, retracing the path he’d made on Aoba’s skin with the back of his hand. Aoba wanted to think he could feel the familiar brush of Noiz's surface piercings grazing across face but knew just as easily that it was sleep swallowing him again, blurring the edges of his consciousness with memory.
(After all, Noiz didn't have those piercings anymore.)
The bed shifted as Noiz moved away, hand leaving his skin, and Aoba missed it immediately. Noiz said something else as he headed out the door but sleep was already overtaking him again, stealing his last moments with Noiz before he disappeared into the hallway.
The next things he saw were his parents' backs.
Aoba knew they were leaving again, like they always did, but knew with just as much certainty that this time they wouldn’t be coming back. It would just be him and granny all alone, the passage of days marked by a table of four set for two, the silent admittance that it was only them now.
He blinked and saw Koujaku, young, boarding the boat heading to the mainland. And Aoba knew he’d eventually come back, but in this moment he felt the ache he’d felt then—his best friend was going somewhere Aoba couldn’t follow, leaving him behind.
Aoba blinked again and he was in front of Noiz’s empty hospital bed.
This isn’t where it had ended before. Aoba had been with Noiz the day he’d been discharged, and they’d had their rhyme match shortly after. But now Aoba was in the hospital room and he knew that Noiz was already gone, not here and not anywhere else in Midorijima. He had disappeared suddenly and without warning, and Aoba was left with the emptiness of the bed and all the weight the lack of a thing could have.
He saw it now, the thin blanket thrown aside and half-fallen to the floor, the sheets wrinkled so clearly that Aoba could almost see where Noiz’s hands had been when he’d gotten up. They were miraculously untouched, leaving nothing between him and Noiz’s absence. Somehow it would have been more heartbreaking if the nurses or custodial staff had already come in and fixed them, erasing every trace that Noiz had ever been there.
But he knew it would happen, so surely that those crisp new sheets were already on the bed in another corner of his mind, and it looked so much like his mother and father’s tableware being put away. Aoba found himself somewhere stuck between the boy sitting at the table, dinner for two, and the boy at the dock, Noiz a shrinking ship in the distance but worse, completely vanished altogether with no back to watch as it left somewhere Aoba couldn’t follow.
Noiz was not at the table with him, all those lonely days he thought he’d be sharing with the love of his life but instead it was just him and Granny, Noiz was not at the table and he was not on the island and he wasn’t in the bed he wasn’t in bed—
The sound of the door opening startled him awake.
Noiz was standing halfway in the doorway of their bedroom, coat still on. A plastic bag was hanging from the crook of his arm.
Noiz was here. Noiz had come back.
“Should you be up?”
It took a second for Aoba to process the words; he hadn’t even realized he’d sat up, but now that he was aware of it the weight of gravity felt punishing as it pressed down on him. Aoba slid back under the covers and watched Noiz walk across the room while the last vestiges of his dream peeled off in layers.
(Noiz was not in bed, but he was here.)
Noiz dropped the bag down on top of the covers. “I ran to the store and got some things…” He reached in and started pulling items out, their silhouettes only vaguely recognizable in the dark. A thermometer, bottles of water, cans of soup and instant porridge; each one was pulled out with a gentle rustle of the bag, crinkling that was both jarring in the quiet night and immensely comforting. “Your granny told me what to do, so I probably won’t suck at this. You’ll survive, at least.”
“Idiot, I’d survive even if you didn’t help. You didn’t have to go out of your way…”
His argument, which had already been tapering off with embarrassed gratitude, was further cut off when he saw Noiz start to frown.
“I wish you’d just let me take care of you sometimes.”
“You literally swept me off to Germany, where you’d arranged a house for us, which you’re paying for in full! How much more do you want to spoil me?”
“It never feels like enough.” Noiz started unboxing the thermometer, head hung to focus on the work of his hands. “You’ll never assume you deserve it.”
“If this is about me getting a job, I still fully intend to start paying part of the rent once my German is good enough—”
“It’s not about that. I don’t think you have to, but I know you’ll do it anyway.” Extracting the thermometer from its packaging, he held it to Aoba’s lips. Aoba obediently opened his mouth, only remembering a second after to hold it on his own and press it under his tongue. “That has to sit there for two minutes. Until then just listen.”
Aoba nodded his head; it’s not like he could argue anyway.
“You’re conscious of our ages, and you’re conscious of what kind of life I came from. I feel like you’ve spent so much time taking care of me, even when you didn’t have to. You’ve always been the strong one, trying to challenge my worldview and leading me forward. You saved me.” Hands empty now, Noiz moved until he could pinch the skin of his other arm. He lingered on the feeling for a few moments. “You changed my life. Nothing I do can compare to that. And how can I ever hope to compare when you never let your guard down around me?
“You saw me at my most vulnerable. Let yourself be vulnerable with me too. You don’t always need to be older, or wiser, or a savior. You can depend on me. I want you to depend on me. I’ve been working so hard to become a man worthy of you, so just. Let me." He paused to breathe, like just saying those words had left him breathless. "Let me be your strength,”
Noiz scrubbed a hand through his hair, letting it stay over his face. “And you sat by my bedside the entire time I was in the hospital, so the least you can do is let me take care of you when you’re sick. Otherwise I’ll never catch up.”
The thermometer beeped, its alarm cutting through the air between them. Noiz took it from Aoba’s mouth and read the screen with a frown. “Definitely a fever. I’ll get you some more water and then cook you something—”
“Wait.”
Noiz had started to get up, but Aoba had caught his hand before he could move away. Noiz stood still, waiting as Aoba collected his thoughts and cleared his throat.
“Stay. Stay beside me…at least until I fall asleep again.”
A second passed before Noiz lowered himself to the ground, moving down until he was sitting on the floor next to the bed. The whole time he never let go of Aoba’s hand, keeping it securely in his own.
The bedframe was fairly tall, so by the time Noiz had fully lowered himself to the floor he had to hold his arm partially up to keep from dragging Aoba over the edge of the bed.
“Hey, Noiz...when you went away for those three months, did you miss me?”
Aoba watched as Noiz’s eyes, which until that moment had been fixated on where their hands were joined, became distant for a moment as if receding back into memory. For a time his gaze remained stuck on the place where they were connected, but eventually he dragged Aoba’s hand over to his cheek.
Nuzzling into Aoba’s palm, he let out a long sigh before finally looking up. “...I miss you every time you’re out of my sight.”
Instinctually Aoba laughed, almost jerking his hand away. “Since when have you been so corny?”
“I even miss you when I close my eyes,” he continued. “Blinking is horrible.”
Aoba laughed again, and felt the stretch of lips as Noiz turned his own smile into Aoba’s palm. Then, so light he almost didn’t notice, Aoba felt a kiss there.
“Of course I missed you.”
Aoba once again wanted to rip his hand away, but didn’t dare. Instead he let the most powerful wave of warmth yet wash over him, not caring that he felt dizzy with it.