Chapter Text
It was a Monday afternoon when my world was completely upended.
I was in the bathroom, tie slung over my shoulder as I sorted my hair, running my fingers through it to shape it into perfection. I was due for work soon and was about to finish getting into my traveling suit to take the train to the studio.
In the hallway, the stairs creaked with Ushio’s steps. He’d been moving stuff up and down from his studio all morning; apparently, his friend had given him some new furniture or something and he was figuring out where he wanted it to go. I’d offered to help him carry some of the junk, but his ears were stuffed with cotton and he hadn’t given me even a second glance.
This was fine with me since it was his space and he was allowed to be picky with it if he wanted.
What wasn’t fine, though, was the loud crash I heard just as I was leaving the bathroom.
My stomach sank. It sounded an awful lot like a body tumbling down a flight of stairs.
I was in the hallway a second later, shooting down the flight of stairs to find Ushio on the fourth-floor landing, slumped against the wall with blood oozing from his mouth.
He was still conscious, thank god, but his mouth hung open dumbly, a hand lifted up to support his head.
“Ushio? Hey, can you hear me?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I just...”
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
“What? Why? I’m just—”
Ushio made to stand and sagged back against the wall. I rushed to his side, arm outstretched to give him something to grab onto. His grip was soft as he eased back into sitting.
“I feel like I’m gonna be sick,” He said.
Well yeah, no shit. You probably gave yourself a fucking concussion.
“Just focus on breathing,” I said. “I’ll be right back. I just have to get my phone.”
“‘Kay,” he replied.
…
…
I could hardly remember what happened next. I can only assume that I got my phone, called an ambulance, and helped Ushio into the back so they could drive him to the hospital.
I hated anything to do with medical problems—they scared the fuck out of me. I was lucky to never have any major complications. While I could tolerate something small like a paper cut, even scraping my knees was a big deal. After all, my body was sacred, and I didn’t like it to be tarnished or broken.
You could say the same for Ushio, though. I’d never let anyone lay a finger on him. It was majorly important that he live as long as possible, and any threat to that was a threat to my wellbeing, too.
The paramedics must have recognized me when they were moving Ushio into the back of the ambulance with me worriedly standing on the sidelines because they let me sit in the back with them on the ride to the hospital. I only remember keeping my gaze squarely set on him, watching the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, the pained looks on his face as paramedics helped him dab away the blood that had collected along his face and throat, like something out of a horror movie.
When we arrived at the hospital, Ushio was carted away to a room and I lingered in the waiting area nervously twiddling my thumbs. Certainly it wasn’t as serious as it had looked. Yeah, maybe he’d hit his head a little, but all of his internal organs were perfectly fine. Really, I was worried for nothing.
Some of the people recognized me and gave me second look-overs. There were more important things at stake than worrying about my looks, but given Ushio was already being taken care of and I didn’t want to get chewed out by anyone for presenting myself indecently in public, I snuck off to a bathroom to at least get the tie sorted.
This would have been a Hell of a lot easier if I had come in my tracksuit instead.
…
…
I don’t know how much time passed before I was permitted to see him. It felt quick, though, and by the time a nurse called my name and led me into the belly of the hospital, I had collected my nerves and put on one of my winning Kunieda Kei smiles.
The nurse was saying some useless shit about wishing she had met me under better circumstances.
Keep dreaming! I’m not here for you!
I couldn’t be too rude to her, though. After all, I had them to thank for helping Ushio. I was kind of useless at these things, which I hated. I should be perfect at everything.
As expected, Ushio was in good spirits when I entered his room. I had to stop from crying like a baby when I saw him laying there with a dumb smile on his lips. There was a plastic pulse reader on his finger and they had gotten him fully changed into a hospital gown, which only helped make him look even more pathetic.
Stop looking so damn happy! Thousands of people die from fatal falls on stairs every year!
The doctor came in after us and closed the door, gesturing me into a chair. I sat down and clenched my hands in between my thighs, the skin of my fingers hot with sweat as I worked them over each other and my knuckles.
“Tsuzuki-san is suffering from a minor concussion and a broken ankle,” The doctor said.
“What about his tooth?” I asked.
“We’ve already scheduled an emergency appointment for him at the dentist tomorrow, but it shouldn’t have any major lasting complications.”
“Thank you very much for taking care of this,” I said with a bow. “You have my full gratitude.”
“You are very welcome. Tsuzuki-san was a model patient.”
Ushio smiled, but I could taste the jealousy from here. A burst of some unidentified feeling rushed through my bloodstream.
“Is his bill of health clean enough for him to come home tonight, or does he have to stay overnight?” I asked.
A brief look of shock ran across the doctor’s face before she collected herself again. “Yes, I believe so.”
I couldn’t really parse the look on her face, and I didn’t think I wanted to.
“Do you mind if I take a call outside for a second?” I asked.
“Of course,” she replied.
I hauled myself all the way back to the waiting room before I picked out a quiet corner and dialed Shitara’s number.
After two rings, he picked up and asked, “What is it?”
"I won't be able to come in tonight."
"Is everything alright?"
"Oh yes, it's fine now. It's just my..." I paused. The words lodged in my throat; I forced them out. "My partner fell down a flight of stairs and had to be rushed to the hospital."
“Is she okay?"
"Yes, he'll be fine. He broke an ankle and lost a tooth but is otherwise in good spirits. I'll be able to make it tomorrow—“
"Why don't you take the week? Rest up, take care of things at home."
"Are you sure? I'm perfectly healthy and able to come in."
"A word of advice? Don't push yourself. This industry will suck you dry if you let it, and I don’t need another Asou who’s married to his work. It's a terrible thing when you let work get in the way of family."
"Of course."
"I didn't even know you had a partner. You should have mentioned."
"About that. If you wouldn't mind keeping quiet about it, I would greatly appreciate that. I prefer to keep my private life private."
"I completely understand. Though it'd be greatly appreciated if you also never scare me with a bombshell like that again."
"Understood, sir. I'll see you next Monday."
…
…
There were a few more loose ends they had to tie up with Ushio’s care, and then they released him back into my custody. I put my Kunieda 110% into getting Ushio home such that, by the time I tucked him into bed, I felt like I had a foot in my grave from my anxiety alone.
It was like the shitstorm with Wakamiya Homare all over again. I’d spent all that time in the waiting room beside myself with worry that the idiot had gone and gotten himself brain damage. I didn’t pour all of my love and affection into him just for him to take my joking threats to “drop dead” seriously!
By the time I was even the littlest bit tired, the sun was already up again. I thought back on all the times that Ushio was sick in the past and refused to get help and felt my stomach drop. Why the hell did he have to go and make things so complicated for me? Why should I have to feel even the least bit guilty when it’s his fault for being such a pain in my ass?
I went back to the bed and watched him sleep. I’d trawled the deep recesses of WebMD for hours, looking up all of the things I could do to help—alternating heat and ice packs, elevating his legs, keeping the light out. By the time Ushio woke up, I was due my nursing license.
“What time is it?” he asked groggily.
“Two p.m.”
He tried to sit up, then flopped helplessly back onto the mattress.
“Fuck, it feels like I got run over.”
“That’s your own damn fault.”
“It’s not like I did it intentionally,” he said, pulling the largest puppy-dog eyes I’d ever seen. He definitely had brain damage.
“You’re a fucking idiot if you think you were gonna carry that whole thing up the stairs alone,” I said coldly. “Serves you right.”
In all honesty, I didn’t completely blame him. He was probably caught up in the moment and didn’t spare a second thought to carrying just one more thing up the narrow set of stairs to the sanctity of his apartment.
“Oh, boo-hoo! Kunieda-san is bullying me! What would my doctor say if she saw you now?”
“She would say I’m right for not trusting your little victim act.”
“I almost died and now you’re looming over me like you might finish the job!”
“I might still, if you keep talking like that!”
“I’m doomed,” he said with a smug smile.
This man was laying in bed beside me with a cast, a chipped tooth, and what was likely a throbbing migraine but was bickering with me like it was just another Monday morning. Wasn’t he supposed to be in severe pain? How did his big, empty head even have the room for bickering when he nearly died the afternoon before?
I grabbed the Ibuprofen off the bedside table and shoved it his direction alongside a bottle of water.
“Shut it,” I said, and stood up to retrieve the ice pack that I’d left freezing in the fridge.
“While you’re in there, could I have an omelette and some applesauce?” Ushio called after me.
Of course, I (begrudgingly!) obliged.
…
…
Ushio was much better at putting on a brave front than I gave him credit for. I'd never gotten a concussion myself, but I'd heard enough stories to know that they were serious. And that was beside the fact that he undoubtedly had some tooth pain, too.
After making him his breakfast, we went to the dentist, and it turned out that he just needed a dental filling for a chipped tooth, which was a lot less of a problem than I had expected. (The bleeding was apparently related to some trauma to his mouth, so he still needed to be on a soft-food diet for a week.) Aside from that, he'd slept through much of the day, still shaking off all of the pain meds the hospital had dosed him with, and I had a rough idea of when they must have worn off even though Ushio never told me.
Whenever I was sick as a child, others always coddled me. Mom would check in with me often, cooking my favorite meals and burying me in my favorite manga and TV shows. In short, I was appropriately treated like the prince I was.
That was just one of the many reasons I couldn’t fathom how Ushio was okay with the minimum levels of care he was getting from me. Of course my treatment was exquisite, but I usually kept a wide berth from Ushio when he was sick given a longstanding agreement between us that that would be the best way to protect my throat from hazards like the common cold. (And, beside the point, Ushio always insisted to me that he preferred to be left alone when he wasn’t feeling well.) It was honestly a part of my partnerly responsibilities that I was okay with shirking until today, where I desperately wished for more experience.
He had really scared me. And with work being off the table because of Ushio’s injury, his recovery from it became my new job. And both of us knew I didn’t fuck around when it came to work.
I grabbed him cold packs throughout the day and tracked when he should take all of his prescribed medicine. Things were so serious that he didn’t even make fun of me once for it, and I was fine with skipping the usual formalities in favor of shoving the pills down his throat and being done with it all.
Ushio had been avoiding screens all day—also part of healing from his concussion—and as such it took some time to realize that it had gotten late.
It wasn’t until I was helping him back from the bathroom and into bed when he asked, “Don’t you have work tonight?”
“I’m on family medical leave.” I said it matter-of-factly, even as I felt my cheeks burn.
“Oho?” Ushio asked, surprised. “How did that conversation go?”
Even after all these years, Tatsuki was the only one who knew about Ushio. Every time the counter of people who knew went up, a little more of me died inside.
“Shitara’s orders,” I said.
“Aw man,” Ushio said with a dreamy sigh. “I have only gratitude for him. Definitely my favorite person on Asabi TV.”
“Fuck off,” I growled. “Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping eighteen hours?”
“Do you have any of the NyQuil left? The Benadryl makes me nauseous.”
“Ungrateful bastard,” I grumbled as I rose to my feet.
“Love you, too~”
…
…
I returned with the medicine and Ushio downed it with a glass of water.
I wanted to sleep beside him, mostly for my own comfort and to remind myself that despite being vaulted down a flight of stairs, he'd still survive. But I also didn't want to hinder his recovery. As much as I hated to admit it, Ushio's needs superseded mine, despite how much the pain scared me.
I stared at him a bit, not wanting to outright ask him if he needed anything. He knew the agreement by this point; it'd be up to him to ask for what he wanted.
Something must have given me away because Ushio stared at me for a few seconds in silence.
"I'm a little cold," Ushio finally said. He even sounded a little tired, peeking his head out from beneath his pile of blankets.
"You look plenty warm to me," I said stiffly.
Ushio peeled the bedsheets back and patted the space beside him. Without another word, I was in bed in a second, tucked warmly against the curves of his body which I knew so well.
I knew he wasn't some fragile thing that would break from something as small as a little fall, but I'd had moments throughout the day where I thought: I could have lost you. What would I have done? Can I honestly say that I've treated you well enough to deserve you after everything's said and done?
The thoughts rapidly turned me into a sad sack of shit wiping my eyes on Ushio's shoulder. He consoled me with a gentle hand pressed against the back of my head, which set my pulse racing.
"It's okay," Ushio said. "I'm fine."
"You got a concussion,” I said. “And broke your tooth.” Ironic, considering it was supposed to be me with the snaggle teeth.
"I know. I hope you can still love me despite being ugly. You'll have to carry the good looks for both of us."
"Bold of you to assume you weren't ugly before. Shut up and sleep already so you can recover swiftly, idiot."
"I've been sleeping all day and I'm not feeling tired anymore."
I huffed into the crook of his shoulder. I'm sure I lost a few pounds just ferrying shit to his bed for what felt like hours.
"Then just close your eyes and pretend," I said.
"I think there's something else we could do instead."
I already knew where Ushio's mind was going before I felt the hand snake around my hips and pull me flush against him. I blurted out a "No" as I squirmed, still cuddling, but grabbing his hand to draw it away from my waistband.
"None of that until you're better. You probably taste like cough syrup anyway."
"Knocking a sick man while he's down! Now that's cruel."
"I wouldn't want that doctor to come after me for not looking after you," I retorted.
"If only she heard the sort of verbal abuse I tolerate from you on a daily basis."
"I feel bad enough that all of this happened, so let's shut up for a while so I can sleep."
It wasn't often that I could bare my feelings like that, but if it was going to happen, it was definitely more likely in the throes of one of our near-endless bickering sessions. This was exactly what had happened when I spoke to Shitara. The words were out of my mouth before I could process them. They always seemed to have a way of doing that when it came to Ushio.
A cold silence followed. My heart hammered clean through my chest, right up to my sleeve where Ushio could see it as clearly as a tattoo. He stroked my arm thoughtfully, then whispered, "I'm sorry for scaring you. Honestly, I don't know what I would have done without you."
"Probably died a long time ago," I said.
"You're probably right. Of not having a brave, intelligent Kunieda Kei to save me from my father."
"He wasn't going to kill you."
"It definitely would have been an ego death at the very least.”
He really wasn't going to sleep, was he?
“Sleep,” I whispered exhaustedly and closed my eyes one final time, ignoring any further efforts to engage in conversation with him.
…
…
“Kei… Hey, Kei…”
When I woke again, it was to the sound of Ushio’s voice and a hand gently rocking my shoulder.
“Wh— huh?” I mumbled as I wiped the building crust out of my eyes and sat up.
I was somewhat used to the song and dance of being pulled from my sleep at inconvenient times, having worked on breaking news for a year or two at Asabi TV. I was on my feet in a second, helping Ushio stand, clueless to the puddle of blood in his mouth until we made it to the bathroom and he spit it out.
I swear I almost fainted on the spot. I felt like someone had zapped my insides with an atom gun and rearranged all my nerves until they were quivering.
“Do you need to go back to the hospital?” I asked. I was already mentally dialing the number in my head to summon another ambulance.
“No. I think it’s mostly residual.”
“Don’t lie to me or I’ll kill you.”
“I know, I know.”
He didn’t turn to me as he spoke, too preoccupied making the sink look like a crime scene. He ran water through his mouth until it was clear when he spat in the basin, then I handed him another few pills of Vicodin which he diligently swallowed.
He meticulously dabbed gauze at his bleeding gums while I helpfully stood there and did nothing. Anybody would be grateful to have the supportive presence of Kunieda Kei at their side during such a time of hardship!
…Unfortunately, though, I wasn’t feeling energetic enough to offer him more than my arm to lead him, limping, back into bed.
…
…
I didn’t understand how Ushio did it.
Getting through the days without being able to work or even watch TV sounded boring as hell. There was no way I’d let him borrow my manga either (unless he asked nicely), and to get outside would require him to take the trip down the stairs in crutches. It was tough enough getting him up to the fifth floor in the first place; I wasn’t really interested in helping him all the way down just for the sun to make his headache even worse.
Ushio was a grown man, and I wasn’t going to force him to do anything. I was too busy catching up on last night’s newscast and watching the other channels—basically, diving into my usual habits as Ushio watched from the couch. It felt a bit like being in a nature documentary, the way he stared at me so intently as I wrote in my notebook and switched the channels.
We’d co-worked for years by that point and it didn’t really bug me. I’d spent plenty of nights doing the same to him: Staring at him as he worked on one of his time-consuming projects, meticulously arranging little figurines on a set or sewing stitches into a piece of fabric.
When I finally looked up from my work again, he was asleep.
I stood and pulled the patchwork quilt resting across the back of the couch over his resting body. The way I saw it, the more sleep he got , the better. Especially after all the tossing and turning he’d done last night with that stupid cast around his leg getting in the way.
I was just considering which of the five recipes I knew how to cook to prepare for dinner when a phone rang. It was Ushio’s phone coming from his bedroom. Given how little he’d used it yesterday, I was surprised it hadn’t died.
“Hey, Kei?” Ushio called.
“Yeah?”
“Can you get that for me?”
“Only if you beg.”
“I would get on my knees, but I’m afraid that’d be kind of difficult.”
I scoffed and went to fetch his phone for him. It was still ringing when he picked it up, sitting up on the couch with the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. I turned my attention away from him to work on dinner but lent a healthy ear toward the living room to pick up every last syllable.
“Hello? ...Oh yeah. I fell down the stairs. But don’t worry, Kei’s been taking good care of me. …It’s mostly a broken leg. I’ll be back on my feet in no time. Oh, that reminds me that I should let my contracts know I might need to push some of my projects back.”
I glanced back at the right time to see him pull out a notepad and write something down.
As soon as he hung up the phone, I asked him who had called even though I already knew the answer.
“Tatsuki,” he said. “Apparently, word has been going around that you took some family leave.”
“And what about it?” I snapped.
“He sounded a little doubtful,” Ushio said, amused.
“That what? I have a family?” I asked.
“Well… yeah.”
“Dinner’s ready.”
“Can you come get me?”
He managed to make his tone sound so pitiful that I had no choice but to relent. I crossed the room and offered him my arm.
“My prince,” Ushio swooned.
“At some point you should start learning how to use your crutches and stop being so clingy.’
“You know you like it.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” I said.
I dropped him into the chair across from me.
We ate quietly. I spared Ushio glances now and then, making sure he was actually eating and not having any trouble with his food. If I had to, I would start siphoning food into his mouth through a tube.
Ushio caught me the third time I did this, his lips quirking up. “Are you studying me?”
“You wish!” I said. “Shut up and eat your food!”
“As you say, my prince,” he hummed.