Chapter Text
Shin woke up first, which was weird.
Normally by the time he woke up, Hiyori would be puttering around in the kitchen making breakfast, or have it already set out for Shin before leaving for whatever his job was, leaving a stupid little note for him to wake up to about how if he was sleeping for so long he probably needed it—so the fact that the apartment was still dark and completely devoid of breakfast when Shin woke up was, well, weird. He checked his phone and it was past 10, Hiyori hadn’t sent him any messages about leaving early or being called back out in the middle of the night, and he’d definitely been home last night, too…and that exhausted all of Shin’s ideas. It really was weird. He never liked waking up to find that Hiyori was gone without a word—it always made him feel like he was never going to get to see him again.
He folded up his blankets, set them on the back of the couch, and then began his investigation—everything looked like it was in the same place as it had been last night, not that Shin had made any special effort to pay attention to that, and Hiyori’s shoes were still in front of the door. It wasn’t like there was all that much to investigate in the first place, but…leaving checking Hiyori’s room for last was the most polite thing to do, right? Shin quietly knocked on the door to Hiyori’s room twice, and…there was no response from within, not even any sounds of someone moving around.
Shin carefully opened the door and peeked in. There was a big lump under Hiyori’s blankets, which meant…his friend had just overslept for the first time in the four years Shin had known him.
He crept over to Hiyori’s bed, forgot to step over the part of the floor that always creaked when Shin was trying to sneak around, and Hiyori’s eyes fluttered open. “Shin…?”
“Ah! Um, sorry for coming in, I just…” Hiyori’s voice sounded a lot weaker than usual. “...Are you okay?”
“I feel awful, ” Hiyori grumbled, his voice rough and scratchy, before rolling over onto his side so he could look at Shin. “Everything’s too hot and too cold and hurts and…ugh…”
His complaining got cut off by a couple weak coughs, and Shin crossed his arms. “Sounds like you’re just sick.”
“What? No, that can’t be right.” Hiyori shook his head and then coughed again. “I shouldn’t be able to get sick.”
“Pfft, what’s that supposed to mean?” Shin laughed despite himself, and crouched down beside Hiyori’s bed, grinning. “You’re only human, of course you can get sick.”
For whatever reason, that made Hiyori start snickering, and Shin just rolled his eyes. He’d never seen Hiyori sick before, and he honestly wasn’t much different from usual, if a little bit more woozy, a little out of it. He didn’t really get to see Hiyori like this often, if ever, and…well, looking at his smiling face right now, he was…pretty cute. “Okay, well, need me to get you anything?”
“No, I can—” Hiyori tried to push himself up and failed, falling back down onto his pillow. He frowned. “Why can’t I get up?”
“Because you’re sick, idiot. Jeez, hold on…” Shin leaned over Hiyori and pushed his hair away from his face before pressing their foreheads together. He was absolutely burning up—it sort of felt like when Shin’s laptop was trying to overheat. “...Yeah, you’re definitely sick. You’ve got a fever.”
Shin sat back down and Hiyori just kind of stared at him for a moment, a look of uncanny fascination that had made Shin uncomfortable when they first met, but was now just…part of his daily life. Their eyes met and Hiyori said, “I thought you were about to kiss me.”
“Wh—” Now it was Shin’s turn to be burning up as he sputtered out denials. Now that Hiyori had made him think about it, god, it must have looked like he’d been about to kiss him—and it wasn’t like Shin had never thought about that before, like when Hiyori put his face too close to his own when he got excited about something, but he hadn’t been thinking about it now. “What are you talking about?! That’s just how my mom used to check my temperature when I got sick!”
“Well,” Hiyori said, his eyes feverishly bright, “today is Valentine’s Day.”
Shin just stared at him, open-mouthed, no words coming out. He’d completely forgotten about Valentine’s Day, actually—he sure as hell had never had anyone asking him out or delivering chocolates or love letters to his locker when he was still in high school, and being between jobs right now meant that he was cooped up in Hiyori’s apartment completely oblivious to what was happening outside it. Maybe if he’d known, he could’ve picked up some cheap candy to give to Hiyori, cheap enough to play it off as a token gesture of friendship and gratitude, but making the gesture anyway because…
“I, um, forgot about that,” he said stupidly.
“Ahaha… I figured!” Hiyori tried to prop himself up on his arm, and this time, he actually succeeded. His grin wasn’t as sharp as it normally was, dulled by the fever. “I had a whole plan in place to surprise you, but I guess now it’s going to go to waste… I got a reservation at a really nice restaurant, and I wanted to see the look on your face when I took you there while you were still in the same clothes you’ve worn for the last few days…”
Shin’s heart had clenched in his chest a little when Hiyori’d said he’d made plans for them today, only to get let down once again. Stupid Hiyori and his stupid pranks. “But you went and got sick instead. How much were you even going to spend on this plan of yours?”
Hiyori gave up on trying to keep himself upright and told him, and Shin’s heart stopped for a moment. He knew Hiyori had money—enough to keep this apartment and support Shin, even though he couldn’t hold a job for more than a couple months—but it was pretty easy to forget how much money.
“But you’re worth it, Shin,” Hiyori mumbled, his voice getting weaker. “It’d be fine if it was for you…”
…Hiyori was just delirious. His fever was pretty bad, after all. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t fall asleep again yet, I’m gonna bring you cold medicine.”
“...’s in the bathroom cabinet…” Hiyori’s dull eyes fluttered closed again, and Shin…didn’t immediately rush off to get his friend whatever cough syrup he had.
Hiyori never got sick. Shin was the one with the weak immune system, catching colds whenever the seasons changed or if he got caught in the rain for too long or just being in public places for too long, so it was usually Hiyori tending to him when Shin was the one running a fever, too tired to move. Hiyori never got sick. Shin never had a chance to repay the favor. And now he finally did. He was almost giddily excited that Hiyori was sick—that wasn’t too weird, was it?
Of course he wanted to repay the favor. Hiyori did so much for him, and Shin was grateful, of course, but it chafed so badly that he couldn’t do anything in return beyond being grateful. And he’d felt guilty about it this whole time, and now he was finally getting the chance to. He wanted to savor it, just a little bit.
Shin brushed some hair out of Hiyori’s face and his eyelids flickered again for just a moment, but Shin had already gotten up to go grab the medicine and a glass of water to wash it down. What all was it Hiyori did for him when he was sick? Got him medicine, sure, made him food that was easy to eat…made him stay in bed and rest… Shin had always been so woozy and out of it that he couldn’t really quite remember.
He found the medicine bottle right where Hiyori said it was, in the cabinet of other stuff that only Shin ever needed, like painkillers, pocket warmers, bandaids…and after thinking about it for a moment, he also grabbed the bottle of rarely-used sleeping pills—once again, which only got pulled out when Shin was exceptionally freaked out by some B-movie or another Hiyori’d made him watch—since he knew Hiyori was going to be stubborn about it. Shin finished up by putting on one of the paper masks Hiyori never used, confident he’d never catch whatever bug Shin had, and stepped back out. Hiyori never got sick, and he never got hurt. Shin was kind of jealous, honestly.
Hiyori was sitting up waiting for him, propped against piled up pillows, and he smiled not as brightly as usual when he saw Shin walk in again. “How are you feeling?”
“Terrible,” Hiyori said cheerily, his voice still hoarse. “I haven’t gotten sick in so long I forgot how awful it was… I feel like all my hardware is overheating…”
“Hopefully you get over it soon,” Shin lied, and then sat next to him on the bed and measured out the cough syrup into the little measuring cup it came with and handed it off. Hiyori downed it in one gulp, gagged a little, and when Shin offered the water he snatched the glass out of his hands and chugged the whole thing, looking absolutely miserable about all of it. “...You okay?”
“That tasted terrible.” Hiyori was scrunching his face up like he was a little kid. “I’m amazed you can handle that every time you get sick!”
“You just get used to it after a while.” Shin set the bottle and measuring cup on the table by Hiyori’s bed. “Trust me, it’s worse when you have to actually go out and do things like this.”
“Mm… I do have things I should be working on today…” Hiyori slumped forward, leaning against Shin. His whole body was warm and…there was a weird sort of whirring noise, like a computer fan trying to stop its circuits from overheating. “Shin, can you bring me my laptop?”
“What? No.” Shin put his hands on Hiyori’s shoulders, and…he’d meant to push him back, like back into bed, but he didn’t…quite…want to stop being Hiyori’s support yet. “You’re always telling me to stay in bed when I’m sick, so that goes for you, too.”
“I will be in bed.” Hiyori was mumbling quietly. Did he really think he could get any good work done in the state he was in right now? “That’s the whole point of a laptop, Shin!”
“You know what I mean. In bed not doing anything.” Shin finally pushed Hiyori back, laying him down. Hiyori could’ve resisted if he’d wanted to, and Shin definitely wasn’t strong enough to stop him if he did, but… “Go to sleep. I’ll get you something to eat for when you wake up. Alright?”
“But… I need to…”
Hiyori was already fading fast, enough that he couldn’t really muster up the energy to finish what he was saying. Shin just sat next to him and watched him fall asleep. His heavy eyelids closed, his breath evened out, and Shin got to see a very rare sight—a completely defenseless Hiyori. His friend was always so busy, always so brightly cheerful, always so… amazing that it was, honestly, sometimes easy to forget he was just a regular person too, just like Shin.
His eyelashes were very long, Shin noted.
It took a bit longer than Shin really wanted to admit, but he finally pulled himself away from staring at his sleeping friend like a voyeuristic creep. He knew Hiyori’d done the same—hell, his current phone background was a picture of Shin asleep against the arm of the couch after he’d fallen asleep when they’d been watching movies together a couple weeks ago—but that felt different, somehow. He wasn’t a fan of it either way, but it was worse when Shin did it.
He did consider taking a picture, the way Hiyori would have. Hiyori really didn’t like having his picture taken, yeah, but Shin wasn’t really a fan of the way Hiyori would whip out his phone and take pictures of him doing stuff either, so it would’ve been fair, right? He’d pulled his own phone out, opened the camera, stared at Hiyori’s peacefully sleeping face through the viewfinder…and…and couldn’t quite bring himself to actually do it. It felt like something bad would happen, something that would change their relationship forever if he did, and Shin just wouldn’t have been able to handle that.
So he just left and plopped himself back down on the couch to think about what he was going to do about food. He could get takeout easy peasy, but…it was Valentine’s Day, and doing that on holidays always felt kind of gauche. That meant he was going to have to figure out how to cobble something together from what was in the kitchen.
The kitchen was…not a place Shin spent much time in. His meals consisted of whatever Hiyori made for him, convenience store bentos, and instant noodles, although Hiyori was trying to break him of the habit of that last one—but of course that meant he didn’t, you know, cook. He’d figure something out, though. Hiyori always kept the fridge pretty well stocked.
There were a few pictures of Shin on the fridge, held up by magnets, and he made a face at them. He’d mostly stopped trying to duck out of the frame when Hiyori tried to take pictures of him, but he still didn’t get why Hiyori wanted to put them up everywhere, especially when these ones in particular were of Shin eating. Ugh. They didn’t look good at all.
He pulled them all off and was going to just leave them on the counter where he didn’t have to look at them when he saw what looked like the edges of letters on the back of one of them. He flipped it over, and there in Hiyori’s messy handwriting, it read:
Shin liked this recipe a lot!
Just look at that smile!
Here’s the recipe so you don’t forget:
And then a list of ingredients for corn potage, seasoned differently from what Shin had grown up with, but it was definitely true that he’d decided he liked Hiyori’s better. Hiyori knew his tastes way better than his family did. He flipped over another picture, this one featuring himself focused on a dish of curry, and once again it had a cheerful note about how much Shin had liked it and noting down the ingredients and special instructions about how to prepare it again. Shin flipped over another of the photos in the stack, and there was another little note about Shin, and another, and another. All of these pictures had notes, little scribbled messages about when and why Hiyori had taken the picture, telling himself not to forget about them.
Shin’s heart felt so tight in his chest, like he was going to cry. Hiyori could’ve just put all of these on actual cards and tucked them away in a little box, the way his mother had, but instead he’d gone through the effort of…this. Making them special. Tying them to the times when Shin had been happy with his cooking. And then Hiyori’d pinned them up so that he could see them all the time when he was in the kitchen—the photos weren’t there for the sake of the recipes, but the recipes had been important enough to save because of what was depicted in the photographs. Shin’s smile. Shin’s happiness. He hadn’t realized at all.
Hiyori Sou was…a lot of things. Shin had been downright scared of him and the creepy look in his eyes when they first met, the one that made him feel like a mouse being stared down by a coiling snake, but now…he knew what Hiyori was really like. It just took a while for him to see the kindness and care behind his creepy, sometimes downright morbid comments, the way he seemed to enjoy it when he made Shin uncomfortable or drove people away with his mere presence, and Shin still wasn’t a fan of it when Hiyori took his picture without asking or casually joked about how he was going to wither up and die if he didn’t eat better, but…but.
But Hiyori Sou was the person who had helped him so much through high school, who taught him so many things, who encouraged him and saw the best in him when no else even tried to. The person who let Shin live with him, who didn’t mind that he didn’t know much about living independently, and just taught him how to stand on his own two feet with that same smile he always had on his face.
It was…only natural that Shin would fall in love.
He’d always been convinced he couldn’t ever confess. He hadn’t wanted to ruin the best thing that had ever happened to him, since Hiyori obviously would’ve had better options than someone like him—but now, looking at these little notes, maybe it wasn’t so hopeless to think that maybe, just maybe, Hiyori might feel the same way that he did.
Hiyori had made plans for them today, on Valentine’s Day. And since they’d completely fallen through, maybe…Shin could do something special to make up for it. Given the day and all.
Shin flipped through the photographs-turned-recipe cards, trying to find something that’d be both simple for himself to make and easy for Hiyori to eat, and in the end settled on the corn potage recipe on the back of the first picture. He had a feeling it was the kind of thing Hiyori would grouse at him about not having enough nutrition as a standalone meal, but that wasn’t really the point, was it?
Hiyori’s notes hadn’t been exaggerating, either—as Shin poked through the cabinets, he found just about all of the ingredients that had been noted down on the pictures. Hiyori really had remembered to keep them all on hand, for Shin’s sake.
The cards really only had the ingredients, so Shin pulled up an actual recipe on his phone. He’d never been especially good at cooking, even when they’d tried to teach it to him—even when Hiyori had tried to teach it to him, actually—but even he could manage a recipe that mostly just consisted of boiling ingredients together. …Probably.
As he assembled everything, Shin let his mind wander a little bit. He’d known Hiyori for a long time, and there was so much about him that seemed perfect, even a little too perfect. He was strong and perfectly healthy, compared to how weak and delicate Shin was, smart, good at sports, or at least had more stamina than Shin did by a long shot, he was always cheerful and stayed that way unless Shin pressed his buttons on purpose, and…well, he wasn’t sure if other people would agree, but Hiyori was handsome. He wasn’t pathetically scrawny and twiggy like Shin was, he was tall and had broad shoulders, and the suits he wore for his job, whatever it was, were properly tailored for his frame. And his face was—
Shin cut his finger open while being a little too careless with a sharp edge of a can lid, and he almost dropped the can’s contents all over the kitchen floor, hissing sharply. Hiyori never got distracted like this when he was cooking; Shin had never seen him do something as stupid as that before. He sighed and, one bandaged finger later, was back to working on Hiyori’s soup, trying to think as little about the person he was making this for as he possibly could.
…All of Hiyori’s notes had talked about how happy Shin was with the meals he made, but he’d never gotten distracted enough while thinking about that to screw up the way Shin had by just thinking about Hiyori a little. Maybe he was reading into the pictures a little too deeply.
In the end, the soup ended up…fine. It didn’t quite taste the way it was supposed to, but it was close enough. Shin had made enough for both of them, although he realized, as he carried both bowls into Hiyori’s room, it wouldn’t really be fair to wake him up again about it, no matter how much Shin preferred it when they ate together. He just settled for sitting on the floor and leaning back against Hiyori’s bed while he sipped his soup and scrolled mindlessly through things on his phone.
The first Valentine’s Day he got to spend with the person he liked on purpose, and it hardly even counted. Getting dragged to some fancy, high-class restaurant in the clothes he still hadn’t changed out of would’ve been preferable to this. Shin sighed and took his empty bowl back to the kitchen and washed it out—he could at least do that much—and then…
…returned to Hiyori’s side. He was out cold, his chest moving up and down evenly, rhythmically, perfectly fast asleep. If Shin…if he, right now…Hiyori wouldn’t know about it. The mask he’d put on in a vain attempt to keep himself from catching whatever bug Hiyori had would make it so it didn’t count. He knew he shouldn’t be doing this, but he just couldn’t stand it anymore, not after those pictures had gotten his hopes up and dashed them all at once.
Shin leaned over his friend, one leg up on the bed, hands on either side of Hiyori's shoulders, his heart pounding in his chest. He’d changed his mind. He really couldn’t ever confess. He was going to take these feelings that were twisting him up inside like nothing else could to the grave. For all that Shin was stuck on Hiyori, it just wouldn’t make sense that Hiyori felt the same way—he was everything Shin wanted so badly to be, all wrapped up in a kind, handsome package. So this was…just this once…and then he’d go back to sitting with these feelings in silence. Shin brushed a bit of hair out of his friend’s face, fingers lingering on his cheek.
He pressed his lips against Hiyori’s, separated by the paper mask between them. It didn’t count. It wasn’t a real kiss. He wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Hiyori’s fingers wrapped around his wrist and Shin almost screamed, partially from how startling that was and partially because he’d been caught, he’d gone and ruined the best thing that had ever happened to him because he couldn’t just sit still and deal with it like everyone else in the world with unrequited feelings—
And then Hiyori pulled him down, into his arms—
…and fell right back to sleep. Shin could hear how his breath was still even, especially this close to his face. He sighed a little bit—as much as he didn’t want to get caught, he did still kind of wish Hiyori’d been awake for that, so he could know just what Shin thought of him.
Hiyori’s arms were strong, or at least stronger than Shin’s, and warm, or maybe that was just the fever. Hiyori did hug him a lot, always hanging off of him whenever he got the chance, but this was still…nice. Normally Shin griped about it when Hiyori had him in a vicegrip like this, but that was really just a ploy to get him to do it more often. He wished he always got to be so close.
Shin adjusted himself a little to get more comfortable, and then let his head settle on the pillow next to Hiyori’s. If Hiyori questioned why Shin was in bed with him, he had an excuse. If Hiyori remembered the not-real-kiss, Shin would just come up with something for that, too.
…Or, just maybe, like in the fantasies that had started swimming around in his head, fueled by Hiyori’s arms around him, maybe everything would turn out the way he wanted it to. Shin closed his eyes, draped one arm over Hiyori’s waist, and let those fantasies turn into dreams.