Chapter Text
The water was lukewarm at best, and the pipes rattled the entire time Jitsui spent in the shower. The heat was malfunctioning, so as soon as he got out, Jitsui’s teeth set to chattering. He dried himself quickly, with a worn towel, that was only half a step up from being threadbare, and smirked softly at the difference between life back here at D-Agency, and how life had been while living undercover at Shirahata’s villa.
It was good to be home.
Jitsui folded his towel and dressed quickly, in his sleepshirt and a comfortable pair of pants, and left the showers barefoot. As he passed by a window on his way down to the cafeteria, he saw the day’s first sunlight starting to shine through. That fit with his mental calculations for what time it was. Schooling Wind Agency had taken most of the night. Then rendezvousing with Kaminaga and Hatano, getting back to Tokyo, and debriefing with Lt. Colonel Yuuki had all taken more time too. So now it was dawn. And Kaminaga had mentioned that in addition to him and Hatano, Fukumoto and Amari were at the agency too. And hopefully Fukumoto had anticipated them all arriving home at this crazy hour and being hungry, and had made something for them to eat before straggling into bed. If not, Jitsui would make something. He didn’t really like cooking, but he was hungry. It had been a long night. A good meal before going to bed sounded just about perfect. Kaminaga had also told him to figure on having only a day or two of downtime before Yuuki-san put him through a month of reconditioning hell. So Jitsui wanted to make the most of it. With luck, Hatano would be in the cafeteria, snagging an early breakfast too. Then they could both go and sleep until lunch. Then eat lunch, and then Jitsui planned on shadowing Hatano with whatever he was doing. As long as Hatano would be around D-Agency for the day. Which he probably would be, since he’d been up all night last night, like Kaminaga and Jitsui had. Yuuki-san was tough on them, but he was no slave driver. Their boss made it clear that he believed they were Japan’s greatest assets. He made sure they had time to recover from their assignments.
Maybe Hatano would even have the day off too. Jitsui hoped so. They could go out around town together. Maybe stop for a drink in a café and catch up. Or just go for a walk down the streets, or in the park. That evening they could go to a restaurant with all the others who were around, then play cards late into the night.
Jitsui was looking so forward to it, he’d almost forgotten that this hadn’t been officially planned yet. It was just his wishes for how the day would turn out. But when he reached the kitchen, he saw that the first part of his plan was about to fall nicely into place. Hatano was sitting at one of the tables, slumped over it, actually, and resting his head on its hard surface.
Then Jitsui noticed something a little strange. There were cards spread out on the table, as though Hatano was in the middle of a game with someone else. But no one else was in the kitchen. Maybe Kaminaga had stayed up too? Maybe he’d stepped away for a few minutes to use the toilet or fetch something from upstairs.
Jitsui approached Hatano casually, not taking care to make any more or less noise than normal. By now Hatano already knew he was there. But he didn’t sit up, like Jitsui expected him to. Which meant he must really be exhausted.
“Hungry?” asked Jitsui, stopping by Hatano’s chair. “I was going to fix myself something to eat. Would you like me to make you something as well?”
Hatano still didn’t move. He didn’t even open his eyes.
That’s when Jitsui started to get the sense that something was wrong.
“Hatano?” he asked, and cautiously reached for his friend.
Touching Hatano when he wasn’t expecting it was always a little bit risky, because of two combined factors. He’d been abused as a child, and he was now a martial arts master. When he’d first started D-Agency’s training, any casual touch made him either tense like he was expecting an attack, or actually retaliate. A couple people had gotten unexpected flying lessons just for trying to tap him on the shoulder. Over time, he’d gotten better about his reactions to being touched, especially by Jitsui. And then by the other spies, since Miyoshi had launched a campaign to recondition him into accepting casual touches. Over time, Hatano even started casually touching them back. Tapping shoulders or arms to get attention, casually leaning against one of his friends on the train, and finally even going as far as to share sleeping space with Jitsui when the weather started getting cold, and Jitsui spent the whole night shivering under his stack of blankets, keeping everyone else awake, if he didn’t have someone to share body heat with.
But that had all been quite a while back. Jitsui had been undercover and away from D-Agency for over a year. And he knew Hatano had been away for a long time too. He didn’t want to startle Hatano now, and get a broken wrist for it. That would keep Jitsui from being able to start prepping for his next mission, and make Hatano feel horrible.
He was very careful when he laid his hand down on Hatano’s shoulder. But to his surprise, nothing happened. Hatano didn’t tense, like he once would have, or look up, or have any sort of reaction to Jitsui’s touch. It was like he was asleep.
And that was when Jitsui started to get really worried.
No D-Agency spy could naturally fall into a sleep so deep that an unexpected touch wouldn’t wake them. And it usually didn’t even take a touch. Very slight noises would do it. Yuuki-san had conditioned them all to be hair triggered in their sleep. Jitsui and Hatano, sharing sleeping space as they had, tended to be exceptions to each other in that rule, but that was if and only if they both went to bed at the same time. If one crawled into bed later after the other was already there, the first one always briefly woke up. But now here was Hatano, completely out of it, not even in bed, but sprawled out halfway on a tabletop, and not waking up even though Jitsui was talking to him and touching him.
“Hatano?” asked Jitsui, giving him a slight shake. “Hatano, wake up?”
Had he been drugged? Poisoned? And they hadn’t noticed? Had the Wind Agency bastards used some sort of slow acting nerve agent?
Jitsui put two fingers against Hatano’s throat to take his pulse. It was strong and steady. Not weak and erratic, as Jitsui had feared it would be. Which didn’t rule out poison, but made the worse ones less likely. So Jitsui took Hatano by both shoulders and pulled him up, then pressed back so that Hatano was sitting up in his chair. His head nodded forward, so that his chin was drooping toward his chest, making Jitsui even more certain that drugs were involved.
“Hatano! Wake up!” Jitsui raised his voice. He would have given Hatano a hard shake then, and if that didn’t work, his next step would have been to douse him with water. And if that still didn’t work, Jitsui would have shouted for help, and one of the others could get the med kit. But before any of that could happen, Kaminaga appeared in the doorway.
“Jitsui, stop!” he said quickly and hurried toward the two younger boys.
“Kaminaga! Hatano, something’s wrong with him,” said Jitsui. “He’s unconscious. He won’t wake up –”
Kaminaga gently seized Jitsui’s wrists and removed them from Hatano. “It’s alright, Jitsui. Don’t worry, nothing’s wrong.”
Did Kaminaga not see? Did he not get it? How could he not? He was a D-Agency spy too! He knew that for one of them to stay asleep through something like this meant that something was seriously, seriously wrong!
“He won’t wake up!” Jitsui said, finally raising his voice. “Don’t tell me nothing’s wrong! I’m getting Yuuki-san!”
“Jitsui, it’s alright,” said Fukumoto from the doorway. “I promise. Just let us explain.”
Jitsui looked at the tallest spy in confusion.
Kaminaga took advantage of his hesitation to dive into the explanation. “Hatano’s still recovering from a head injury he received in France,” he said. “You remember how he mentioned that he got amnesia in France?”
Slowly, Jitsui nodded.
“That happened because a German soldier hit him in the head with the butt of his rifle,” said Kaminaga. “He forgot who he was for a few hours, but it came back to him eventually.”
“And this . . . sleeping like this . . . it’s a complication from that injury?” asked Jitsui.
Kaminaga and Fukumoto looked at each other. Jitsui saw the look that passed between them.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“He’s going to find out eventually,” Fukumoto said to Kaminaga. “You can either tell him now or suffer for concealing it later.”
“Tell me what?” Jitsui let a bit of edge creep into his voice and was pleased to see Kaminaga swallow. Good. He wouldn’t have to reteach them why they shouldn’t vex him.
“That wasn’t the only head injury Hatano dealt with,” said Kaminaga at last. “A few days later, he rendezvoused with Yuuki-san, and they boarded the Hakusan Maru for its last voyage back to Japan. But before the ship could depart, German soldiers came aboard. They were looking for Japanese teenagers who matched Hatano’s description, because . . . Hatano kind of sort of started a riot, teamed up with the French Resistance, and blew up some Nazi soldiers while he was running around with no memories.”
“What?” asked Jitsui, more startled by this news than he’d been from learning that Amari had adopted a daughter.
“He actually started the riot when he had his memories,” said Fukumoto. “It was part of his plan to infiltrate the French Resistance. He lost his memories during the riot when he was hit with the German soldier’s rifle. Then he got them back when he was hit in the head by a member of the Resistance with a pistol.”
“He got found out by the French Resistance?” asked Jitsui.
“No, he outed a mole in the French Resistance, then her boyfriend decided to betray the cause too and pistol whipped him,” said Kaminaga. “Er, we’re not doing the greatest job of explaining. But, well, yes, he was hit in the head twice, hard enough to jolt his brain that day. And then a few days later, when the German soldiers boarded the ship, they beat him pretty badly. His head took enough abuse to leave him unconscious for three days, and when he woke up, his memories were gone again.”
“But Yuuki-san was there, and took care of him until he got them back again,” said Fukumoto.
Jitsui’s eyes were wide and glassy as he looked from the two older spies, down to sleeping Hatano, back to them, and then back to Hatano.
“He was able to mostly recover on the voyage home. But, well, you know what repeated head injuries can do to someone,” said Kaminaga.
Jitsui did. He’d taken the same medical classes as them. And head injuries were monsters. You never knew how one could turn out. And Hatano’s head had suffered abuse on three separate instances in a short amount of time. Brain damage would have been almost inevitable.
Fukumoto took pity on Jitsui. “He’s recovered well. Yuuki-san wouldn’t let him out of the house if he wasn’t. Let alone allowed him to participate in the confrontation with Wind Agency. Right now the only remaining effect is that he sleeps a lot and he sleeps very deeply. Which is a good thing, in actuality, because you recover the most while you’re sleeping. Yuuki-san is putting off reconditioning him until next summer. He doesn’t want to be pumping his brain full of chemicals while he’s recovering from brain damage.”
“But one of the new house rules is that if Hatano’s asleep, you let him sleep,” said Kaminaga. “The penalty if Yuuki-san learns anyone has woken him up is that person gets to swim five miles in the ocean that night. ”
Jitsui frowned down at Hatano and reached out for his friend. He let his hand settle on top of Hatano’s soft mop of hair. “We should take him up to bed,” he said softly. “Sleeping in that chair isn’t good for his back.” Then he bent down and wrapped an arm around Hatano’s mid-back, intending to slide his other arm underneath Hatano’s knees and pick him up.
Fukumoto stopped him. “Let me.”
As much as Jitsui wanted to argue, he knew he shouldn’t. He knew he could lift Hatano, but Fukumoto could do it much easier. Fukumoto was much bigger, with stronger arms, and was less likely to wake him. So Jitsui stood aside and watched as Fukumoto gathered Hatano in his arms and lifted him as easily as if he was a child. Hatano didn’t so much as stir throughout it all. And even though he now knew the reason for this, Jitsui couldn’t help but be unsettled by it. It just wasn’t natural for a D-Agency spy to sleep like that. Jitsui followed them back to the dormitory just in case. He didn’t know in case of what. Just in case.
He almost protested when Fukumoto put Hatano down into the bed that had always technically been Hatano’s. Because in actuality, Hatano and Jitsui had always shared Jitsui’s bed. Even since before completing their training and moving into D-Agency. The two had never once slept in separate beds in this dorm. During the cold months, Jitsui’s shivering kept everyone awake if he didn’t have someone to share body heat with. And during the warmer months, well, they’d just gotten used to it, and it was too much trouble to switch things up.
But at that moment Jitsui realized that maybe it was time to. As much as he wanted to keep sharing sleeping space with Hatano, who he’d loved using as his personal sunbeam, he saw now that might not be what was best for Hatano anymore. In sleep, they had a tendency to get tangled up with each other, in ways that would be awkward for most anyone else. Jitsui often ended up sprawled on top of Hatano, unconsciously crawling halfway on top of him in the night. Usually that resulted in him using Hatano’s chest as his pillow, but now and then they woke up cheek to cheek. What if they ended up clonking their heads together while they were both unconscious? It wasn’t worth the risk, Jitsui decided, as he watched Fukumoto tuck Hatano in.
Once he finished, Fukumoto looked to Jitsui. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “I’ll fix you something.”
Jitsui shook his head. His appetite was gone now.
“No thank you,” he said. “I’m tired. I think I’ll just go to bed.”
His sheets had been recently laundered, Jitsui noted, as he crawled under them, and the huge stack of blankets on top of them. Someone had taken the time to make sure they were freshly cleaned for him. The thought should have warmed him. He did appreciate it. But his sheets just still seemed so cold. Even when he curled into a ball and hunched in on himself as much as he could, Jitsui still found himself starting to shiver.
Notes: First chapter of my new fic! Readers of my previous fic “The Voyage Home” will probably recognize that this fic follows the same continuity, but reading one of them isn’t necessary for understanding the other. But if you want to read about Yuuki-san catching fatherly feels and taking care of Hatano when he’s vulnerable, then by all means, feel free to go read The Voyage Home too! :) But for now I hope you enjoyed the start of this new story.