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Yuri Briar’s dislike for his sister’s husband-slash-omega was no secret. Why should he keep his mouth shut about it? That man should know exactly how unwelcomed his intrusion and presence into the Briar family was. Yuri considered it his duty to make sure Forger knew he was on thin ice, how dangerously close he was to being one of Yuri’s interrogation victims.
If only he could openly threaten him with execution.
But, as much as he’d like to, today was not one of those days where he could spend all his energy on despising and plotting Loid Forger’s demise.
Unfortunately, Yuri was firmly in the middle of his pre-heat and set due to be in his actual heat within hours, possibly minutes. And he thought he’d outgrown his need for his big sister’s arms around him like she used to do when he was a scared teenager presenting for the first time but he’d spent the last week and a half involved in the most grueling mission of his career and all he wanted was a child’s comfort.
He hadn’t even spared a moment to stop at his apartment before dragging himself across town to the Forger’s front door. Yor once told him he was always welcomed to drop by whenever he wanted afterall. Although he was sure Yor hadn’t meant for him to show up with work still clinging to his skin and his pheromones barely concealed by his hastily reapplied scent blockers. He didn’t have time to take a shower, or, rather, he hadn’t wanted to wait.
His knock rang sluggish, his usual energy long since sapped away getting here, but when he heard footsteps come to the door he forced himself to straighten and paste on a beaming smile. Yor didn’t deserve to see him in such a pitiful state.
“Yor! Your brother is here to—” he stopped abruptly when he spied no red sweater in front of him, instead stood the last person he wanted to see.
Forger’s smile was strained. Good. This should be as miserable for him as it was for Yuri. “Hello, Yuri,” he greeted, holding the door open for him. Hmph.
“Forger,” Yuri replied icily. He strolled through the walkway and took a large whiff of the air. His sister’s scent heavily draped across the small apartment and he greedily sucked in her comforting perfume that reminded him so much of childhood and home. “Where’s my sister?” But his stomach was already dropping, the answer obvious in the empty home besides their beast of a dog laying on the floor in the corner.
“Gone. She and Anya went on a girl’s trip and won’t be home until late tonight. Although I could’ve told you that had you called ahead,” Forger finished dryly, eyebrows raised in a sickening way that made Yuri itch to smack that smugness away.
Usually, this was where Yuri made a huge fuss, kicking and screaming over Yor abandoning him for her new family. He was no stranger to his own dramatics. But he was exhausted. Exhausted and overworked and miserably dealing with his pre-heat which always left him more cranky and despondent than usual.
His shoulders hunched in on himself, resigned. Of course Yor wouldn’t be here when he needed her. Her time was so rare with her doting on her new family. But he had thought…
It was ridiculous. He was being ridiculous. He was no longer a weepy child, he shouldn’t be hounding and begging for his big sister’s attention like he did when she had her own life to live.
“Is something wrong?” Forger asked and Yuri hated that his concern seemed genuine. Stupid perfect Loidy. “Maybe it’s something I can help with?”
He scowled. “Unless you can magically turn into my sister and sit with me through my heat then I wouldn’t count on it.” God, mentioning his heat aloud to the enemy made him want to cringe but the larger part of him was past caring at this point and left him unfiltered.
Forger’s eyes widened and damn it, he couldn’t scrounge up an ounce of joy to feel over it. “Ah,” he said, rather dumbly, Yuri thought snidely.
If Yor wasn’t here then he wasn’t going to stick around while his heat was right around the corner.
As if on cue, the back of his neck prickled and he could physically feel his body temperature rising by the second.
He turned on his heel, ready to storm out, but pain exploded on his side bad enough that it caused him to hiss and clutch his abdomen. His eyes clenched shut and he barely stopped himself in time to prevent from swaying sideways across the floor like some green rookie who witnessed his first decapitation.
He sensed rather than saw Forger come closer but Yuri blindly threw a shaky hand in the air, halting any further movement.
“Not one step closer, Forger!”
“Yuri, please, let me help you—”
A bitter laugh bubbled out of him. “I thought we already established that you couldn’t do that.”
The pain was slowly ebbing away and he exhaled slowly, counting to four like Yor had taught him to do. Experience warned him he didn’t have much longer before another brutal cramp hit. He’d been a fool to rely on suppressants for so long. The doctor who had originally prescribed his medication informed him what would happen but he’d willfully ignored the danger so he could focus on rising through the ranks. His arrogance was costing him now.
Yuri needed to get home quickly.
But where was home? His cold, lonely apartment with nothing waiting for him but a dusty old half-made nest? The house he grew up in, miles away and sold to strangers? Certainly not the Forger residence that was for sure. The only true place he felt safe was with Yor and she was gone.
The realization he had no true place to call home was breath stealing.
Tears prickled behind his eyelids but he resolutely refused to let them fall. He’d rather chop off his hands than show weakness in front of Loidy.
It took him a few painstaking seconds to catch his bearings before attempting to make it out the door. He made it as far as two steps before needing to stop again, silently cursing himself as he did so.
“Let me help you.”
A hand touched his shoulder—he must be really out of it not to have noticed Forger cornering him—and he snarled, sounding not unlike a wounded animal.
“I said no!” Yuri flung himself forward, a simple movement that any other day he would’ve executed fine, but today was not just any other day. No, he was in his heat, dealing with pressure building in his spinning head and spasms in his abdomen. He fell properly to the hard floor this time.
A part of him hoped he withered and died on the spot. This was the most humiliating thing to have ever happened to him.
“Damn it, Yuri,” he heard a voice mutter behind him before arms wrapped around his left side and hauled him up on unsteady legs. “Stop being so stubborn. What would Yor say?”
“‘M not stubborn,” Yuri slurred, and then he processed the rest. “Yor? Where’s…where is she?”
“You want your sister?” Forger grunted as he pulled Yuri somewhere. He didn’t have any fight left in him. “I’ll take you to her.”
He practically hung off him as the other man tightened his grip around his middle and tugged him along like some pet. His head pounded something fierce, thudding and stomping along the walls of his mind like a stampede. He lost the fight from resting it on Forger’s shoulder. Strangely, it helped dull the thud a tiny bit.
“God, you’re heavy,” Forger muttered as they trekked down the hall.
“‘M not heavy,” Yuri couldn’t help but retort childishly. “You’re just weak.”
Forger didn’t deign to answer as he pushed open a bedroom door. Yuri needed to squint in order to see against the harsh sunlight filtering from the window. He opened his mouth to complain about the cheap curtains, antagonizing his brother-in-law over his ability to afford anything of quality might've lifted his spirits, but before he could find the verve he was hit in the face with a smell that nearly made him drop on the spot from homesickness.
He was ungracefully deposited on the bed like a sack of potatoes and Yuri didn’t have it in him to care about Forger’s lack of care as he flopped over to press his face in the nearest pillow and inhaled.
Yor.
This must be her pillow, her side of the bed where her scent was most prominent. He exhaled shakily, clinging to the fabric like a child would with its favorite coveted teddy bear.
To him, Yor always smelled of the flowers that grew in the meadows of their childhood home. Snowdrops and cornflowers and freshly grown spring grass that they’d spend hours playing in until it got dark and the cold forced them to trail back home. She’d make her best soup to heat him up and he didn’t care that his tastebuds burnt off for the next week and his insides curdled into liquidy mush trying to digest it. Not when Yor doted on him with sweet smiles and warm hugs.
His heart felt painfully empty without her here. Yuri hated his heats for this exact reason. They made him weak and dependent when it was everything he promised not to be as an adult. He needed to be strong for his sister—to be there for her whenever she needed like she had for him when they were kids.
Another scent caught his attention when he slightly moved in the bed just to the right. Evergreen mixed with clean linen and, weirdly enough, like rain, or more accurately the streets after a steady downpour. It was Forger’s. He held back his grimace, unsurprised but not happy about it either. He hated it more because underneath it he could detect the faint smell of his sister’s signature scent, the meaning of why clear. How obscene.
He couldn’t believe he was here, rolled in his sister’s and her husband’s marriage bed—but the worst part was that he didn’t want to leave.
An unexpected cramp rolled through him and he wheezed, curling in on himself as he stuck his face back in the pillow to hopefully help him stave off the pain.
“I’ll be right back,” Forger’s grating voice floated from the doorway. “I’ll grab some water for you and extra blankets from the closet. Do you need anything else?”
Yuri opened his mouth—
“Besides Yor,” Forger sighed.
He closed his mouth.
Forger nodded to himself. “Rest, if you can. You’ll need it.”
Before he could snap something witty back—trust him, he had plenty of witty comebacks—Forger had already left the room. Damn him.
Despite the poor situation he found himself relaxing into the bed. It was soft and comfortable and he wouldn’t admit it aloud but it was a hundred times better than the thin basic twin mattress in his own place. The sheets were a higher quality than his much scratchier ones and the blankets a thick material that would be perfect for a nest. Maybe if he moved the blanket to encase him in more snuggly and moved the pillows at an angle it’d be more—
What the hell.
There was no way he’d entertain the idea of making a nest in the same bed Loid Forger slept! The thought made him shiver in disgust.
So deep in his head over insulting Forger, he didn’t realize how sleepy he’d gotten, or the fact Forger took longer than what was strictly necessary to come back. One moment he was debating how quickly he could schedule Forger in for an execution and the next he was drooling into the pillow, sound asleep.
He woke violently, a snarl on his lips and hostility etched on his face, his body scrambling and hand reaching and gripping another’s before he could fully process what he was actually doing. Nails dug into the skin he’d caught and it was a hiss of pain coupled with his name that pulled him out of his haze of sleep.
“Shit, Yuri—Yuri, it’s me, it’s Loid. It’s only me. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Yuri blinked blearily, trying to understand what he was seeing. Forger was standing from the side of the bed, leaning over him with a wince as Yuri held on his hand in a vice more fit for SSS prisoners than his brother-in-law.
“Forger?” He mumbled, barely intelligible. “What’re you doing?”
“I was just trying to check your temperature. You’ve been sweating heavily the last half an hour and I wanted to make sure you weren’t overheating.” His eyebrows knitted together and nose wrinkled. Impatience colored his words, sounding short, “Could you let go of me now?”
He blinked again and stared for a beat or two. The request finally registered and he unclenched his fingers before letting his arm fall limply back on the mattress.
“Good. Now, may I?” Forger’s hand was lined with Yuri’s fingernail imprints, angry and red, but he still rose it carefully above him, safely out of reach and waiting for permission.
Yuri didn’t know what he was asking for but he gave a small nod anyway in the hopes that it would allow him to go back to sleep sooner. The back of his throat scratched like sandpaper with every swallow and his head felt like he was underwater yet he was unbearably hot under the blanket.
Forger gave him a brief reassuring smile before pressing the back of his hand to Yuri’s forehead. It felt nice and cool and Yuri sighed into it before catching himself and shooting a glare up at him.
“That’s not how you take temperature properly,” he rasped.
Forger hummed. “Who’s the actual doctor here?”
“Wrong kind of doctor.”
“Still got a degree, don’t I?”
If Yuri had the energy, he’d push Forger’s grimy hands away and send him packing but as it was, he felt like death had warmed over. “Tired,” he managed out. Admitting weakness to his nemesis felt like giving Twilight himself every intelligence report in Ostania but he had no choice but to admit it if he hoped to be left alone.
Forger’s hand left him and Yuri’s disappointment was immeasurable—only because he wanted the coolness back on his clammy skin.
“Well,” he murmured, more to himself than Yuri. “You’re warm but not dangerously so. You should drink some water before you go back to sleep.”
His words made him aware of how dry his mouth was and how heavenly the thought of water would be. His body on the other hand protested any idea that required movement.
“Sleep,” he repeated with what he thought was a sternful tone, and tried to burrow his way back in the blanket until annoying hands pried it from him. He whined, feeling as if were a little boy once again as Yor tried to make him eat while sick. “Give it back.”
Forger clicked his tongue. “Drink first and then I will.”
“No.”
“Come on, a few sips.”
His face turned into the pillow, wishing his sister were he to save him from her husband's evil clutches. “No.”
Forger let out an exasperated noise. “Not even Anya is this stubborn.”
He frowned at being compared to a six-year-old. The chihuahua girl at that. No way he was worse than that slow pink glob of a child.
Yuri pushed himself up with what bit of strength he had and shot Forger a baleful look. “Give me the water, Forger.”
He snorted but reached over for the glass of water sitting on the nightstand and dutifully brought it to his lips. Yuri stared unamused at the purple swirly straw sitting inside it.
“What, don’t like purple?”
He couldn’t stop himself from pouting. “‘M not a child.” He didn’t need a straw to drink a simple glass of water. He was a twenty-year-old SSS agent for Christ’s sake! The last thing he wanted was Forger looking down on him worse than he likely already was in this situation.
Forger rolled his eyes. “No one’s treating you like a child. You can barely keep yourself sitting up right, I’m not trusting you with the cup and spilling water all over my bed.”
Yuri eyed him, looking for any sign of dishonesty, and then huffing when he found nothing but Forger’s even and expectant gaze back. He had his pride but he couldn’t deny how his arms were no better than jelly at the moment. He allowed Forger to hold the cup as he drank from the straw, the indignity of it not lost on him but he was too focused on how wonderful water tasted on his parched tongue. Before he knew it the cup was three quarters of the way gone and he was sinking back into the bed with a relieved sigh.
His eyes fluttered shut but not before he saw Forger’s smug look in his direction.
“Shuddup.”
Forger let out a bark of laughter as he placed the cup back on the nightstand with a soft clink. “I didn’t say anything.”
“‘Dont need to, ‘can see it on your stupid face.”
Just to infuriate him further, Forger chuckled. “You can go back to sleep now.”
Sleep was already tugging him further in its embrace, like sweet relief, but he refused to succumb right after he ordered him to. “‘Not the boss of me,” he mumbled.
He didn’t hear his reply but he felt accomplished knowing he didn’t let Forger get the last word.
Yuri woke up wishing he hadn’t.
He groaned and rolled over, wincing as every part of his body screamed with aches and chills wracking his body. Opening his eyes felt like an uphill battle, breaking apart the crust that had manifested during his slumber, and it took far too long for his vision to focus.
Panic bubbled inside him when he realized he was in an unfamiliar room but slowly his memory came back and his heart settled back down. He was in his sister’s marriage bed—that already put a bitter taste in his mouth—but the fact it was Loid Forger who was tending to him made him wish he’d never bothered to seek out his sister in the first place.
Yuri groaned again, this time even louder, his suffering clear.
He didn’t want to leave his self made cocoon but the pressing urge to relieve himself was annoying.
Grumbling quietly to himself, it took him a few tries to throw the blanket off. Leaving the safety of the bed sounded worse by the second but he managed to sit up and swing his legs off the side.
It was actually standing on his two feet that the real problem presented itself.
His head went lightheaded and the next he knew he was on the floor, blinking dizzily at the ceiling above.
Yuri didn’t remember much of what happened next, how exactly long he laid there, but it couldn't have been that long he was sure. He thought he heard the sound of footsteps thundering closer.
“—nd then what would I tell Yor? I thought diplomats were supposed to be smarter.”
Somehow, his brain processed that last part and became affronted. “Don’t talk to me like that,” he garbled. In his mind he sounded clear and articulate but going by Forger's unimpressed look he guessed he failed spectacularly.
“What was your plan anyway? Waltz out of here with a fever, barefoot and dehydrated?”
What was a little fever and some thirst? Yuri had gone through worse as a child when they had no money for medicine. Barefoot though—he frowned and wiggled his toes, feeling discomforted when he realized he had only socks on. Had…had Forger undressed him in his sleep?!
Forger sighed heavily. “I’m going to help you sit upright, alright? Then we’ll get you back in bed.”
“No,” Yuri blurted out without thinking, then, when Forger raised an eyebrow, muttered embarrassingly, “I need to use the bathroom.”
He expected Forger to let out another sigh and closed his eyes to prepare himself to feel the ever present shame hit him after. He resented being a burden. He resented being helpless. And he hated the fact Forger had the power to make him feel that way.
Yuri was surprised however when Forger let out a hum of acknowledgement. “Very well,” he replied calmly. “Next time though, call out for assistance so I don’t have a heart attack running here and seeing you passed out on the floor.”
Yuri floundered a bit with a response and settled for nodding dumbly, feeling like an idiot bobbing his head while looking up at him.
There was a warm feeling building inside him. It wasn’t quite a friendly feeling but it was the closest thing to positive he had ever felt for his brother-in-law.
Wow, what having to desperately pee does to a person. Mentally, he jotted a mental note to himself to suggest this as a future interrogation tactic.
It took some time and more grumbling and hissing than Yuri liked to admit but they carefully made their way to the bathroom. He had some pride though and kicked Forger out of the bathroom itself when it came time to relieve himself, not that Forger was enthusiastic either to stay with him, but Yuri survived two minutes alone.
After washing his hands he took the time to splash water on his face, grimacing at his harsh complexion. He looked sickly pale, darkened circles weighing heavily under his eyes, and his hair laid limply along his cheeks. Shivers crawled throughout his body and curse himself for not taking the blanket with him. He would’ve fought Forger on that.
A gentle knock pulled him out of his thoughts. “Are you okay in there?”
There was a part of him that wanted to snap back. How dare he rush him after all. But he chose the more mature path this time around. Yor would be proud.
“I’m fine,” he called back out as he moved toward the door. “I’m coming out now.”
Forger tried to help guide him back to the bed but Yuri pushed himself to make it on his own. He was determined to prove he could do it, that he wasn’t completely useless. He thought he saw Forger roll his eyes from his peripheral vision but he was focused on his every step to really take notice. He watched his feet hit the wood floor at a snail’s space, which helped the dizziness, and they made it back in one piece.
Yuri practically collapsed back in bed, inexplicably tired deep seeded down to his bones. He hated heats. How did Forger do this?
He wasn’t one to pry into another person’s life, especially when it included their secondary gender, but considering Forger was married to his sister that gave him a bit of leeway, didn’t it?
“How do you survive like this every time you have a heat?”
The question came out resigned, borne from his despair over this whole miserable business. If Forger of all people could do it, then why couldn’t he?
Forger paused halfway across the room from where he was about to exit. Yuri peered over, he could see the tense line of his back and his curiosity piqued, the officer side of him knowing there was a story in there, but just as quickly Forger relaxed and turned around, a pensive expression on his face.
“Do you really want to know?”
Yuri bit back his scoff. Of course he wanted to know! That was why he asked in the first place. Why would he ask it rhetorically?
Yuri’s parents had died when he was young, too young for his mother to teach him anything about being an omega. His big sister had tried her best but there wasn’t much wisdom she could impart as an alpha herself, not to mention she had to learn everything on her own. Books only did so much. There was little recorded and knowledge was inaccurate as it was researched. The surface was hardly scratched in the medical field and most people relied on their family elders for guidance. And Yuri had none of those in his life.
He’d never had the chance to ask another omega anything.
Forger stepped closer until he stood at the foot of the bed. Something flashed across his face, as if debating internally about something, but seemed to come to a conclusion as he opened his mouth.
“To answer your question—surviving is an apt way of putting it. I spent years on suppressants since I was young and it ended up ruining my body’s hormones for a long time when I decided to stop taking them.” Here, Forger let out a wry laugh. “Well, I didn’t actually decide, it’s more like they decided to stop working and I knew if I tried taking them again they wouldn’t work.”
Yuri froze. His story—it sounded almost exactly like Yuri’s. His years long suppressant usage, his body rejecting it when it became too much. It was scarily similar. Like looking into a mirror.
“And…and what was it like, after?” He asked tentatively, thankful for the large blanket hiding his fidgeting hands. His attention was solely on Forger as if he held the answers. A student’s interest toward their teacher. A sibling’s captivation toward their big brother.
“Awful,” Forger replied bluntly. “A lot like you are right now. Feverish and weak. I was confused for the majority of it as well. It lasted over a week too and by the end of it all I wanted to do was curl in a ball and never leave my bed but at the same time I wanted nothing more than to leave after nesting in it for so long I forgot what the sun nearly looked like.”
Yuri deflated like a balloon. It certainly wasn’t the answer he’d been hoping for.
“But, I had Yor to help me with my heat.” At Yuri's disgusted look, Forger rolled his eyes as his cheek dusted with a light pink. “Not like that. The first heat after long use of suppressants is your body’s way of resetting. So the entire time I craved to nest and be around my family, not…whatever you’re thinking. Yor didn’t mind but I think after the third night of sleeping in the same bed it wasn’t as fun for Anya anymore.”
Yuri hummed to himself. He’d been feeling the pull to nest but stubbornly been pushing it away. This wasn’t his home. The one thing he knew about omegas was that they were territorial about their nests. They felt safest making theirs at home.
Yet, the thought of making a nest here didn’t feel wrong.
The silence in the wake of Forger’s words left a certain way in the air. As if there was more to say but one of them was holding back. In any case, Yuri was feeling charitable toward him.
“Thanks,” he said, a tinge of awkwardness hanging between them.
Forger smiled. “If you need something, just call for me. I’m going to go reheat the soup I made earlier and bring you some so don’t fall back asleep.”
Yuri didn’t know how to respond to that. Kindness from Forger in the past always seemed like a trap but now it made his stomach flip uncomfortably.
Thankfully he didn’t wait for him to reply before leaving the room and Yuri let out the exhale he’d been holding. A minute went by. Then two. By the third, he was practically tearing his hair out from boredom. Twisting and turning in the bed didn’t help. There were only so many times he could stand to stare at the floral pictures hung on the walls—his sister’s touch he was sure.
With a long sigh, he decided to scratch the itch that had been bothering him all day. He was going to make a nest.
He moved around the room carefully, wary about flailing over again on shaky legs, and painstakingly grabbed some of Yor’s shirts from a nearby dresser. Yor wouldn’t be upset, she knew what to expect during his heats. No one could turn down an omega nesting. He created a pile of blankets and garments on the bed and then set to work.
Half way through he realized, a bit too late, that he had accidentally grabbed a few of Forger’s shirts too. They must’ve been mixed with Yor’s things and Yuri hadn’t noticed. He debated throwing them onto the floor but they were well mixed into his work in progress so he let it go. They weren’t doing any harm anyway, the scent was so well covered that he couldn’t detect any unpleasantness.
He also realized too late that perhaps Forger might be mad he was commandeering his bed for his heat. That he didn’t particularly care too hard about. On one hand, there was a fear of being kicked out and that his heart skipping a beat for a brief tumultuous second, but then reason kicked in. Perfect Loidy would never abandon an omega nesting, not to mention the fact he was his wife’s brother. Yor would never forgive him for it.
Yuri was too busy focusing that he didn’t hear Forger’s footsteps walking back in, nor how he’d set the tray he’d brought in with a clink on the dresser. Sweat beaded down his neck and he could feel another round of cramps around the corner. He’d work through that. He’d work through worse. A bullet was worse than a measly cramp.
He was wrong. He hissed sharply, hunching over the bed as he gripped his stomach and swearing under his breath.
Yuri nearly jumped out of skin when a hand gently nudged him back onto the bed until he found himself laying on his side. The pain was brief but intense and it made his clenched eyes water for comfort.
“Lay down, Yuri, it’s alright. Breathe through it,” Forger’s voice said encouragingly. “It’ll pass, trust me. Eating will help though.”
Yuri blindly shook his head. The thought of eating made his stomach roil. What he wanted to do was finish what he'd started with his nest. He needed to feel safe.
“Need to finish,” he whined. “Need protection.”
“I’ll finish it for you and after that you’ll eat.” His tone left no room for argument.
Yuri's eyes snapped open. “What—no!” He flipped around and tried to sit up. It resulted in him flinging himself back down with a grunt as another spasm hit him in full force.
“The sooner I finish, the sooner you can eat and help the pain you’re in.”
“B-but you don’t know how I like it! You can’t! Don’t you know omegas are very territorial. You should be lucky I’m not biting your head off right now for touching it!”
Forger paid no attention as he started to shift though what Yuri had brought over. He paused briefly, his eyes widening slightly, when he spotted some of his own things mixed in but otherwise made no mention of it to Yuri’s humiliation.
He tried one last time to stop him. “Forger, you don’t have to—”
“Just shut up, Yuri, and let me do this.”
Yuri fell silent, watching with no small amount of hesitation as Forger continued to neatly pile blankets and clothes around him to make a nest. He bit back the retort to complain that he wasn’t layering it right. Yuri had his own system, his own routine of how he laid the sheets down but he found himself refraining from saying anything. He laid there quietly, watching, feeling an odd sense of calm wash over him.
“This changes nothing, Loid,” he bit out meanly.
Forger smiled as knowing something he didn’t. “Of course.”
He hated to admit it but Forger didn’t do that bad. He shouldn’t be surprised that he excelled at nest making too. What a perfect omega he made. Yuri felt no bitterness over this certainly, and he definitely didn’t compare himself.
And now he sat here eating perfect homemade chicken soup made from the man himself in his bed that Yuri had taken over and Forger didn’t even bat an eye over it. Ugh, it made Yuri mad. It made him shiver in outrage. He bit his cheek with hatred. Forger and his stupid, ridiculous kindness and care that he didn’t deserve because Yuri had been nothing but rude and suspicious of him since the day they’d met.
He chewed furiously and swallowed harshly every spoonful that tasted like each noodle had been cooked with love.
“Chew slower or you’ll choke,” Forger said offhandedly as he read his book in the corner of the room. He deemed it important to make sure Yuri ate and had brought a chair into the room, making himself at home.
Yuri shot a half-hearted glare but he found himself unconsciously following the order. Maybe it was because Forger’s tone hadn’t been pushy or, more likely, it had to do with how he reminded Yuri of Yor taking care of him.
Forger definitely couldn’t compare to his big sister. She had a better bedside manner for sure and she gave him hugs and kisses like candy. Yuri reveled in her attention, sucking it up eagerly because he knew he wouldn’t have it forever.
His brother-in-law on the other hand was blunt and strict. But not, Yuri was realizing, unfeeling. He made sure Yuri was taken care of. He made sure he had his nest. And never wanting for blankets or water or food. He asked Yuri if he had to use the bathroom once he’d finished the soup and, when Yuri gave a reluctant affirmative, silently put his book down to walk over and offer his arm as leverage to get up and walk like some kind of human cane.
There was a sick feeling sitting heavily in his stomach and it had nothing to do with his heat and everything to do with how Yuri felt about Forger’s generosity.
“The girls should be coming back in a few hours,” Forger commented as Yuri settled back in his nest from his trip to the restroom. “You can rest and by the time you wake up Yor will be here.”
Yuri welcomed the distraction from his own thoughts. “Perfect!” He stopped. In a rare fit of vulnerability, he asked in a small voice, “she’ll be okay with me being here, right?”
He wanted to smack himself for asking. Yor told him herself he had a table at the Forger’s table whenever he wanted. But that didn’t necessarily include her coming home to her little brother taking over her marriage bed, he thought with a shrinking feeling.
Forger frowned, tilting his head to study him and before Yuri could snap at him to cease immediately, a soft look flitted over his face.
“She’ll be ecstatic,” he confirmed. “She told me the other day she was going to invite you to dinner as soon as you got back from your assignment. We didn’t expect you to come back early, as you can tell.”
Despite there being nothing accusatory in Forger’s tone, he still buried his head under the blanket for protection. “I didn’t expect this to happen either,” he said glumly.
Forger chuckled. “Well, you know what they say, happy accidents and the like.”
Yuri pulled the blanket off to shoot him a disbelieving look. “In what world is this happy?”
His eyes twinkled with hidden meaning. “It’s about perspective.”
Yuri rolled over in the nest, facing away from Forger. “Wake me up when she gets back.”
“I have a feeling I won’t have to.”
Yuri snuggled against the hand brushing through his hair. Someone was humming a lullaby, the kind from his childhood and his body knew before his brain that it was Yor with him. He let out a contented sigh. He didn’t bother opening his too heavy eyes and instead relished her attention.
Yor let out a soft giggle. “Even when he’s sleeping he’s still so cuddly. He’s been like this since he was a child.”
Distantly, he knew he shouldn’t be talked about in third person, as if he wasn’t here, but then nails scratched against the back of his scalp and he went boneless. He’d been through a lot today. It was okay if he let this go.
“He definitely wasn’t like this around me,” a voice murmured in the back.
“You just got to know how to handle him,” Yor whispered fondly. “How was it? He didn’t snap at you, did he? His heats were always tough on him as a kid considering our parents…”
“No, no. Nothing I couldn’t handle. I think it helped us understand each other a little better, at least for me.”
“Oh, Loid, that makes me so happy to hear. He needs someone to look up to and I’ve always said you two have more in common than you think.”
“I—maybe. He reminds me of Anya.” A beat. “But mostly me.”
Yuri was weightless. He was safely encased in snowdrops and evergreen showers. He was home.
He slept on.