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Yakumo's fever hauls him to this familiar, mundane hell that the living get to experience. His throat stays dry, regardless of the water Matsuda brings him. His body is sore all over, too weak to move. Heat and cold flare in alternance under his skin and then dig into his bones. Pain in his head is thumping, and he can't think, but he can feel, so much, and all the wrong things.
Matsuda finally sleeps, it's a relief, it's the terrible vulnerability of loneliness, always perching close but usually kept at bay by pride and hard work, now getting closer and closer, ready to feast on Yakumo's heart.
And then he's not alone, and the loneliness's grip gets sharper, when he sees Sukeroku's ghost at his side.
The first thought coming to his mind is I'm sorry, and it's acceptable. The one following is You're beautiful, and this is wrong. He is, though. He always was, even when he was half-alcohol half-hurtful jokes. And now that he is death, he won't laugh ever again, and Yakumo longs to be in the arms of his own shinigami for more than one reason.
Sukeroku doesn't say anything. Yakumo wants to talk, to be able to communicate, to send his words like a fragile bridge between them. Even opening his mouth seems an herculean task. His eyes are taking in the light and shadows that form Sukeroku's figure, feeding off him. His gaze is sad and almost disappointed, as he glares back. Is it because Yakumo is sick, or because of all the other things he is?
Please, he thinks, please, take me with you. He feels like if he could just raise his leaden arm and touch Sukeroku's ghostly skin, then he would die right now, and everything would be finished. When he was young and didn't know that he was happy, every touch from Sukeroku made him jump from joy to fear to longing to shame. At the time, it had seemed that touching his skin forever would solve everything, a delicate and wild desire second only to the impossibility that was touching his heart.
Touching him into death and then immediately disappearing sounds a lot like forever.
A tear runs from his eye, blurring Sukeroku's image. When he can see again, the ghost of his hopes and his death and his love is just a fog already disappearing, a mist inside his eyes, an irresistible fatigue in his pained head that is both relief and falling. The fever slowly drops, throwing him away from death.
Please let me die, he finally manages to beg, like a magical prayer. But the room is now empty. Yakumo still has work to do, he always had, and his chance to decide it's not the most important thing in the world has passed a long time ago.