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“Hello, sweetheart! How are you today?” Hide coos at your granddaughter as she squeals with delight and pats his lined face with her sticky fingers. “You’re just as gorgeous as your grandma. A little heartbreaker in the making, aren’t you?”
“You shouldn’t do that, old man. You’ll throw out your back,” you say when she wraps her pudgy arms around his neck and he picks her up with a grunt, bones creaking with effort. “Chiyo, don’t encourage him.”
“I’m hardly old. I’m still young at heart,” Hide laughs as sticky fingers find their way into greying hair. “And Chiyo’s light as a feather. Right, sweetheart? Don’t let your grandpa give you a weight complex. You’re perfect.” Chiyo giggles, high and sweet, and allows Hide to drop playful kisses into her dark hair.
“You’re meant to be resting, Nagachika,” you remind him. He cheerfully ignores you, wandering over to the glass jar on the counter filled with coffee candy treats the human had made with care for the occasional ghoul child that wanders into his cafe. “You’re sick, remember? You need bed rest. Don’t make me call Emi and Asahi.”
“I have terminal cancer, Ayato,” he says after ruining your granddaughter’s dinner with coffee treats, a wink and a finger to his lips as she nods enthusiastically, coconpsirators. “It’s a matter of when and not if. Might as well spend what time I have left spoiling Chiyo-chan so she can grow up to terrorize you in my place when I’m gone. Languishing in a bed for an extra three months just isn’t how I want to go.”
You try to reign in your anger: Nagachika Hideyoshi infuriates you, drives you up the wall with frustration as he refuses to rest, too preoccupied with flitting around his tiny cafe and spoiling your granddaughter rotten. Nagachika Hideyoshi infuriates you as he breaks your heart with every beat of his; still alive but not for long.
He infuriates you. He does it with the way he confronts the simple truth of things with cheer and good humor. Dying in three months? The fool is still puttering around his shop, laughing and telling jokes with customers. He doesn’t listen –not to Emi, who alternates between tears and furious words, begging him to rest, not to Asahi and his calm, calculated suggestions as a doctor, not to Hina’s sad doe eyes as she asks him to sit down, to take a nap, he’s been on his feet for hours, not to you, when your patience snaps and you revert back to the sharp-tongued teenager he first met, ready and willing to wrangle him into bed with force. He doesn’t listen to Touka, who plays dirty and attempts to guilt him with selective name-dropping of children and grandchildren, of every single person who will miss him.
He doesn’t listen to Kaneki, because Kaneki hasn’t said anything, too busy wallowing in his own pity to even call his dying best friend and –
The truth is that what you want to do is take the train back to Tokyo and knock sense into that idiot. Because even if Hide has done nothing but smile ever since you and Hina arrived to take care of him, Chiyo in tow, you see the shadows in his eyes. He’s scared. Hide is scared.
You don’t have to fake acceptance, you manage not to say each time you notice it. It’s normal. You can talk to us.
It’s not like he doesn’t know he is surrounded by people who love him, by family.
When Chiyo starts getting cranky, Hide tucks her into his bed for a nap, and you pointedly eye the bed. “Now you hop in, too. You slept three hours last night. You’re not even going to last the projected three months if you don’t rest enough. You planning on abandoning us early, Nagachika?”
Hide grins tiredly. “Soon?” He sits down gingerly, disturbing the bed and Chiyo as little as possible. “I think we should have a little talk. Before Hinami returns with the entire store’s stock of health drinks and vitamin supplements.”
You want to push the issue –anything he has to say he can say in front of Hina. When has he ever kept secrets from them? When has he ever wanted you to keep a secret from Hina? But there’s something more, an unfamiliar slant to the other man’s shoulders, the unsure curl of his lips, the drawn brow, and you fold.
Why am I always so weak to you and Hina? you think sourly, remembering the days when the three of you were awkwardly huddled in Hide’s too-small bed, comforting the human as he tries to keep his heart from splintering even further. Those were the dark days when Kaneki and Touka were dating, when Hide was unable to fully extinguish the flickering hope.
Hope that, one day, Kaneki will see that Hide has always been standing there. Right beside him, waiting.
“Alright, Nagachika,” you say, relocating the chair from Nagachika’s small dinner table to the bedside. “Spill.”
Hide runs his hand through his hair, restless.
“I know what you guys think,” he says finally. “‘Why can’t Hide move on?’ You all think I should’ve found someone else, that ‘I deserve happiness too’.” You try not to squirm when his eyes settle on you, as if he knows of and has kept count of each and every time you have ranted as Hina listened, insisting that there are hundreds of people out there better for Hide. Millions who are better significant other material than Kaneki-fucking-Ken, conveniently ignoring the fact that said asshole is also your sister’s husband. That she loves him and he loves her, that he's an exemplary huband and father. “But, I’m not unhappy, Ayato. In fact, I can say my life has been deliriously happy.” You feel your lips purse involuntarily, disbelief too strong to contain.
“Yes. Of course. Why wouldn’t anyone be thrilled to nurture a one-sided love for over fifty years?” Your heart chills as you say the words. Fifty years. Half a century. Nagachika Hideyoshi has been hopelessly in love with Kaneki Ken for over half a fucking century, has lived with the pangs of unrequited affection for every second of those years, has followed after the fool with his heart in his hands the entire time.
You deserve better, Nagachika.
“Okay, if you average everything out, it comes out as delightfully happy.” The blond shrugs one shoulder, his hand now stroking Chiyo’s hair as she sleeps, face soft and wistful. “I mean, it’s impossible to be happy one hundred percent of the time. Life has its ups and downs, you know? What I mean, though, is that –I’m content. I got everything I ever wanted out of life.”
Liar.
The human smothers a laugh, aware of Chiyo even as amusement shines clearly in brown eyes. “Oh, come on, Ayato. I mean it.” He pauses, smile taking on a rueful tinge as he regards you. “Yes, I still love him –am still in love with him. Yes, I would have been… overjoyed if he loved me too.” You glower and he amends, “And if he wasn’t married to your dear sister, and madly in love with her, I would still be happy if he came to love me now. But that’s…” He waves his free hand, unable to find the proper words. “All I ever wanted was Kaneki to be happy, you know? And he was. Is. I mean, once we all got over that bump in the road.”
Only Nagachika can call the all out war between the CCG, Aogiri Tree, and V a ‘bump in the road.’
You cock an eyebrow, cross your arms, and tap your fingers against one arm, face stern. Hina insists you can’t intimidate someone into revealing their deep, dark secrets. You, however, disagree.
Hide chokes on his laughter, both hands covering his mouth, tears clinging on for dear life at the corner of his eyes. “‘m no’ lyin’,” he insists as he gasps for breath, checking Chiyo to make sure he hasn’t woken her.
“I’m not saying you are,” you reply, eyebrow still raised. “But you wouldn’t make a big show of talking without Hina about this.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he agrees mildly. “You know me too well.”
Better than Kaneki, you think bitterly. How could he still think of himself as Hide’s closest and dearest friend when he didn’t understand the most fundamental thing about him? You deserve better, Nagachika.
A better best friend. A better love. A better life.
“I can see you thinking unkind thoughts about Kaneki, you know. You always get a particularly pinched look whenever you start badmouthing him in your head.” You roll your eyes and he smiles, bright and true. Your heart clenches. How can you still smile like that? How?
“I chose to love Kaneki, you know,” he says, startling you out of your thoughts. “I walked into all this with my eyes open. I made a decision to put my heart in his hands and I made a decision to leave it there, even when he placed his heart in another’s. And when he married, I had a choice: move on or continue as I always have.” His voice doesn’t falter when he says, “He still has my heart because that’s where I want it to be, Ayato. People say you don’t choose who you fall in love with, but that’s not true. I know why I love Kaneki, I’ve counted and recounted the reasons hundreds and thousands of times. They’re the reasons why I didn’t walk away.”
“That… makes absolutely no sense.”
“Of course it does,” he chirps. “It does to me. That’s all that really matters, doesn’t it?”
You grunt noncommittally, teeth biting into your tongue. You’re pretty sure that, with the power of Google and copious amounts of coffee, you could probably find the proper name for whatever psychological phenomenon keeps him tethered to Kaneki. But Hide does look peaceful as he bares his soul, as he lays out the schematics of his heart for you to see. Kaneki Ken has taken his heart, his love, his life; you won’t take away his dignity too.
“Why tell me?” you ask instead. Why keep this all a secret from Hina? you don’t say, because Hide is right, you do know him too well. As weak as you are to Hina’s large, sad eyes, Hide is twice as weak.
“Well,” Hide begins, a devilish grin forming, “I figured you deserved full disclosure. What’s the point of secrets after two men have spent many a night cuddling together, soothing old wounds?”
You kick his shin. “Ass,” you mutter under your breath, even as you rise from your chair to join him on the bed.
Your shoulder bumps his, the only comfort you know how to give at the moment, and he smiles as leans in, weight warm and familiar against you.
“Do you ever think your grandmother’s words cursed you?” you whisper, a secret he has only ever shared with you and Hina. His dreams, the dreams, and his grandmother's soft voice beneath the waning evening sun.
“Never,” he breathes, head bumping against your shoulder as he lets exhaustion overcome him.
You sit on his bed, your granddaughter asleep behind you, Hide passed out on your shoulder, and breathe. You focus on the way your rib cage expands with each inhale, the way your heart doesn’t fracture when you exhale.
You don’t cry.
This is his confession. With this, Hide will be able to pass on peacefully, regret-free.
This is the goodbye of Nagachika Hideyoshi.
This is your brother’s goodbye.