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Rei eased into the chair next to Shinichi’s hospital bed, steadying a cup of lukewarm coffee on his knee. Shinichi’s private room was quiet—the whole wing was quiet, finally, except for the soft beep of the machines tracking Shinichi’s vitals. His stats weren’t quite normal yet, but they were good, especially for a kid who’d had heart surgery yesterday. Akai said he might be out for the rest of the night. But Akai didn’t know everything. Whatever his gushing profile in the Journal of Modern Cardiothoracics implied.
His phone buzzed—all of his closest friends, the doctors who’d been his fellow interns four years ago, sounding off.
Everyone still alive? Matsuda asked.
Pretty sure we should be asking that, Date countered, since you and Hagiwara were in the transplant heli when the hurricane hit.
Hey, we got that liver where it needed to go, Hagiwara piped in. You can’t kill transplant surgeons that easy.
Me and the NICU kids are all accounted for, Hiro said—sweet, stupidly compassionate Hiro, who had chosen a pediatric specialty even though it would break his heart. Zero? You headed home?
Home being the dilapidated old house the five of them shared, just a mile from the hospital. Rei hesitated. His shift had ended hours ago; his trauma patients were all stable. He should really go with them, sleep off the adrenaline rush. But he already knew he wouldn’t get any sleep unless he could be right here: listening to Shinichi’s soft, shallow breathing, close enough to reach out and touch him.
Get a head start, he typed back. I’ll be here a while.
Since his first day at Tokyo Metropolitan General Hospital, Rei had known two things. That there was something unusual about Kudou Shinichi, the boy in room 1102, under the long-term care of cardio fellow Akai Shuichi. And that it was fundamentally screwed up to keep a teenager with a rare blood type and a life-threatening chronic heart condition in a hospital that had natural disasters, bomb scares, and serial killers more often than board meetings. Not that his rich parents seemed to care. They rarely even seemed to be in the country.
Rei didn’t really like people, at first blush—and most people didn’t like him, either. But Shinichi had. Or maybe he was just looking for a new sucker. Shinichi had told Rei his favorite drink was a hazelnut mocha, but he’d left out the part where he was on a strict limit of two cups a day, not within six hours of each other, so the caffeine didn’t spike a heart attack.
That was the first time Rei met Akai Shuichi in person—not just a name on a chart, but the man leaning against the doorframe with a GQ smirk, which did not in any way make Rei’s stomach turn a backflip.
“So you’re the one who’s been sneaking him extra coffee,” Akai said, sounding amused.
Rei flushed. “What? He didn’t…I…you didn’t tell me this was contraband!” he accused the cheeky brat licking foam off his upper lip.
“Hey, you asked if you could bring me anything,” Shinichi pointed out. “You didn’t ask if I was allowed to have it.”
“Rookie mistake,” Akai said. And then had the audacity to add, “Interns,” and throw Shinichi a wink on his way out.
Back then, Rei just thought Akai was an arrogant asshole. Which he was, absolutely. But he also played chess with Shinichi, and took the night shift every year on Shinichi’s birthday so he could lounge in the visitor’s chair and talk Sherlock Holmes. And he was almost, almost as good as his reputation. Luckily for the boy lying next to him.
Rei bent forward in his chair, holding the coffee cup too tight. He’d spent so much of his life alone—fighting for everything, scrapping to get to the top. He’d sworn he was never going to let anyone get close. So of course, he’d gotten completely, hopelessly attached to this brilliant, snarky, irreplaceable kid who kept trying to die on him.
As soon as Shinichi was conscious, Rei was going to chew him out for ducking the team evacuating his floor during the hurricane yesterday, just so he could call out the three bank robbers who’d been brought in after their getaway car went off a bridge. He had managed to identify them in front of the entire ER—right before he blew his fragile stent and collapsed in Rei’s arms.
Every second in the OR was still in his head—the hot glare of the lights, the frantic beeping of the machines, the smell of disinfectant, which was better than the smell of Shinichi’s blood as Akai bent over his open chest cavity, trying to piece together the heart that was just falling apart in his hands.
For the forty-three seconds Shinichi flatlined, Rei felt the world end. And then start all over again, erupt like a supernova, when Akai shocked him back into sinus rhythm and caught him before he bled out. Rei thought his knees were going to crumple, when Akai shot him a tiny smile, eyes crinkling above the mask, and said, I’ve got him, Rei.
Every time Rei thought he was about to lose Shinichi forever, Akai managed to put him back together. Which might be why Rei had dragged him to the on-call room and torn his shirt off, as soon as they were out of surgery. But Rei was telling himself that was a one-time, heat-of-the-Category IV-hurricane kind of thing.
Just like the last…six or seven dozen times.
It was the fault of the hospital’s shallow dating pool, really. He didn’t have time to meet anyone else. Everyone in his intern class had gone through the sleeping-with-an-attending phase. Granted, Rei was the only one who’d stayed in that phase. But his attending looked really good shirtless, so.
Rei leaned back in his chair and sipped at his hazelnut mocha, the dregs cold and bitter in his mouth. He still remembered his first surgery on Shinichi’s case—the first time he’d strong-armed Akai into an experimental procedure without parental consent, Rei seizing him by the collar of his white coat and shaking him because, “You can’t just give up on him! You’re his doctor, and you know I’m right, but you’re going to roll over and play dead for the board just to protect your career—"
“It’s not my career. It’s yours,” Akai cut in—so close Rei could taste the bite of his aftershave, those jade-green eyes staring into his from point-blank range. “You have the potential to be an exceptional surgeon. I’m not going to let you throw away everything for one kid.”
“That kid is everything to someone,” Rei ground out. “Or he deserves to be.”
Rei’s mouth bent into a crooked smile. He hadn’t known when he said it that he was that someone—that Rei himself was the person Shinichi would be everything to. But he was. And the day this heart stopped for good, Rei knew his would stop with it.
“I don’t remember Heizo clearing you for coffee.”
Rei turned. Akai was in the doorway again—tall and striking in his white coat, one eyebrow quirked at the takeout cup in Rei’s hand.
Rei rolled his eyes, taking a deliberate sip. “Dr. Hattori’s a hardass. Besides, it was a minor concussion.”
“It didn’t seem that minor, when you were trapped under the gurney that blew out of the ambulance.” Akai’s voice was light, though, his body warm as he leaned over Rei’s shoulder and lifted the cup out of his hand. “Breaking the rules already?”
“Bite me,” Rei said. And then regretted it, remembering the hickey that Akai had left on his collarbone.
Akai smirked, like he was remembering the same thing.
The only thing more embarrassing than what he’d already said would be clarifying, so Rei scowled and pushed it aside. “What are you doing here? I thought you were off hours ago.” Ignoring that Akai could have asked him the same thing.
“Just wanted to bring him this.”
Akai laid something on the sheet over Shinichi’s legs. It looked like a real estate one-sheet—a professional photograph of a four-bedroom house, surrounded by lush trees, a yard, a wooden swing on the front porch. Akai eased onto the edge of the bed, smiling faintly.
“Closing just went through. If he was up, I thought he’d like to see a picture of his house.”
His house. Rei swallowed, wondering if that thing he was choking on was his heart.
“So he’s…he’s leaving?”
It was good. It was supposed to be good. A life outside of the hospital—that was what a kid Shinichi’s age deserved. But something inside of Rei felt iced over, like he’d just taken a shot of lidocaine straight to the chest. He couldn’t imagine this room empty—no cheeky kid trying to weasel Rei into breaking his caffeine limit, just half of yours, or into taking him to the Spirits soccer game, or tossing peanut M&Ms into each other’s mouths while he helped Rei study for his boards. He couldn’t just…disappear.
“He can’t.” Rei didn’t realize he’d said the words out loud until Akai blinked, surprised. But the words just kept coming, his blood pounding as Rei jerked out of his chair and paced next to the bed. “His parents can’t just yank him out of here and shove him in a house to make themselves feel better about jetsetting around the globe! Are they even going to take care of him? And what if something happens…if he has a cardiac event in a hurricane again, and the ambulance can’t get through, and—”
Akai cleared his throat. “It’s only six blocks from here. If something happens, I’ll carry him in.” Rei must have looked as bewildered as he felt, because Akai got to his feet, anchoring his warm palm on Rei’s hip. “The Kudous didn’t buy that house, Rei. I did. He’s coming home with me. He’ll be in good hands.”
Rei’s chest churned with relief, and something else—a hot surge of jealousy. Which vanished when Akai leaned close and murmured, “Besides…I’m hoping a brilliant up-and-coming trauma surgeon will be living there, too.”
He had to mean…he was talking about Rei, right? But he couldn’t be. Rei shook his head, trying to force one coherent thought to fall out.
“You can’t buy me a house. We’re not even dating.”
Akai leaned back, looking faintly amused. “We’ve been dating for three years, Rei.”
Rei’s mouth fell open. “Wha—since when?”
“Since we had that septal myectomy together and then I asked you to coffee.”
“You didn’t ask me to coffee,” Rei shot back. “You said, Coffee? and brought me a double-shot cappuccino from the cart in the lobby. That’s not a date.”
Akai’s eyes twinkled. “So you do remember.”
Rei remembered a lot of things. Like kicking Hagiwara in the shin when he saw Rei nursing that cappuccino, fighting a microscopic smile, and said, When’s the wedding?
Or the far-too-knowing look in Shinichi’s eyes, the first time Rei and Akai had accidentally traded stethoscopes in the darkness of the on-call room, and that kid asked, So…are you guys like a thing now? Rei blamed his flush on the plague making the rounds in the pediatric ward.
Or last Valentine’s Day, when Matsuda and Date were busting his ass for not coming out to the bar looking for hookups, until Hiro took pity on him and broke in with a gentle, Come on, guys. He’s out of the game.
Or the time Akai kissed him so hard his mouth felt bruised, after they’d defused a bomb in the elevator shaft. Or more like, after Shinichi walked them through defusing it over the phone. Though everyone in his life was a doctor and he spent his whole life in a hospital, Shinichi was dead set on being a detective.
Or the thing he had been deliberately not thinking about. The day of the earthquake, five months ago—the two of them trapped under the rubble that used to be the parking garage, choking on diesel and concrete dust, Akai crumpled in his lap and bleeding out from an ugly laceration on his forehead, those green eyes that were always so sharp and bright suddenly, sickeningly dull. Still fixed on Rei’s face, though, as Akai started to fade in and out—quiet too long until he asked, out of nowhere, “Why won’t you let anyone love you?”
“Maybe I’ve just never found anyone who’s worth the risk,” Rei told him, trying to keep his voice steady.
“No one? Not even Shinichi?” Which Rei didn’t have an answer for. Or for why his heart nearly went into arrhythmia as Akai turned his face into Rei’s chest, breath heavy and slurred, and murmured, “You don’t know how to be loved. But I think I’d be pretty good at it, if you’d give me a shot.”
It was just adrenaline—misfiring synapses. It was just the kind of thing people said, when they thought they were dying. That’s what Rei had told himself. And he hadn’t spent any time thinking about it since. Especially not late at night, staring up at the dark ceiling of the on-call room, wondering what it would feel like to fall asleep with Akai’s heartbeat under his cheek.
For four years, Rei had been telling everyone they were seeing things. But maybe he was the one not seeing something.
“We are not together,” he insisted. Just to be stubborn.
Akai stepped him backward. “You go drinking with me.”
“I go drinking with a lot of people,” Rei said, as his back hit the wall.
Akai braced an arm on the doorframe. “You have breakfast with me,” he countered.
Rei huffed, poking him in the chest. “I have breakfast with Shinichi. You just refuse to get out.”
Akai leaned close, eyes dancing. “You sleep with me.”
“I— Well—” Fine, he didn’t have a comeback for that. Rei hadn’t been sleeping with anyone else. But he would be, if Akai wasn’t so annoyingly good at it.
Akai seemed to notice he was tongue-tied. He laughed. “If you want to blame someone, blame Shinichi. He’s been playing Cupid since your first day—told me to keep an eye out for the hot blond.”
The hot blond was not how Rei was introducing himself. He crossed his arms, feeling utterly off balance.
“So, what? I’m just supposed to tell people I’m moving in with my favorite patient and my least favorite coworker?”
Akai chuckled, his eyes warm. “Well, you could marry me, if that simplifies things.”
Rei’s heart rate jumped through the roof. And so did the heart rate on the monitor, a sharp blip like Shinichi was going into v-fib. Or just eavesdropping.
Rei grappled for composure. He slipped under Akai’s arm to perch on the edge of the mattress. “And exactly how long have you been awake?” he asked drily.
Shinichi cracked open one eye, then the other. “About five minutes. But I didn’t think you’d want an audience.” Rei thought he was trying to look sheepish, though that was next to impossible when his eyes were so bright. “But it’s real? The house?”
Akai nodded, resting a hand on his bed-mussed hair. “All yours, kid.”
“So…we’re going to live together? All three of us? Like a family?” Shinichi asked. Which was hugely manipulative. But Rei was sure he knew that. Shinichi held up the picture of the house, blinking at Rei over the close-up of the kitchen. Just the right size for a table and three chairs. “Yes?”
His friends were going to give him so much shit for this. But all Rei could do was sigh, tossing his hair out of his face with a smile. “Fine. Yes. To you—not you,” he added to Akai, trying not to blush. “Not…yet, anyway.”
Akai smiled. “I’ll take not yet.”
When he woke up in the on-call room that morning, Rei could never have imagined his day ending like this. But maybe this was where he’d been heading the whole time—the three of them stitched together like a three-way domino transplant, perfect and inevitable.
Shinichi inched up in the bed, looking hopeful. “Now that it’s official, maybe we should get something to celebrate. Like…hazelnut mochas?”
“Cheeky,” Rei said, flicking his nose—and relishing that he got to do that for the rest of his life.