Chapter Text
Natsuki likes the quiet of the river home he settles in, two years after the war. He lives alone, only a short walk away from his brother. It’s a new build he was able to buy with financial support from the Kamunabi, and he likes that he gets to make his own peace in this home. No brother laying around making him depressed, not even good enough for a quick spar. No parents nagging about marriage and grandkids. It was just him and the fish.
His favorite part is leaving his front door and walking across his yard to the dirt road with a fold up chair to the riverbank. He watches the sun set, headphones in and blasting music. Sometimes metal, sometimes ambiance noise on those days he wakes up unsteady from nightmares. It’s why he likes the secluded peace of his home. There’s nobody around to hear him scream early in the morning.
There are only five houses on the street, short fences keeping them apart. The house to his left has an elderly couple that minds their own business, which Natsuki loves. Although sometimes they check in on him to make sure he’s alive when they haven’t seen him in a few days. Natsuki fishes with the old man when he’s not exhausted from work, and his wife cooks up the fish for them. It’s not an often occurrence, but it’s nice to have some social interactions outside of his coworkers and brother.
The house to his right is empty.
Well, it’s supposed to be.
It’s been empty for the last few months since he moved there, and now he wakes up in the late afternoon and sees that there’s a moving truck out front. Natsuki looks through the window at the front of his home, but he doesn’t see any movement. He can hear voices in the distant, almost familiar. He’s irritated already, and he shuts his blinds.
Natsuki’s sleep habits might be shit, but he makes it a point to eat and exercise well to make up for them. He cooks himself a meal with some fish the old man next door gave him and allows himself some time to digest before getting ready for his regular jog along the river.
He exits his front door, and the moving truck is gone. Whoever moved in must’ve been there early in the morning, and Natsuki slept through most of it. He doesn’t hear anything anymore.
He stretches his legs, being careful with his bad knee, before he starts jogging on the dirt road.
He barely kicks up any dust when he hears an irritating and annoying voice say, “Yo, Natsuki.” Natsuki trips over his own feet, but he manages to catch himself on time before falling on his face. The only thing is he lands harshly on the bottom of his heel, sending a jolt up to his bad knee. He grits his teeth as Uruha Yoji laughs and says, “Woah, there. Watch yourself.”
“You watch yourself!” Natsuki says to him, pointing his finger at him. Uruha is draped over his fence, one that they now share, and he’s smiling even as Natsuki tries to make him implode with his mind. “What are you doing here?”
“I moved here,” Uruha says and points back at his new house with his thumb. “We’re neighbors now. Isn’t that fun?”
Kill yourself! is not an appropriate response for a former coworker, so Natsuki decides to continue to his jog turned furious run without acknowledging him further.
He hears Uruha shout as he leaves him behind, “See you around, neighbor!” Natsuki runs faster, ignoring the building pain in his knee.
“Did you know about this?” Natsuki asks his brother who is on his couch, flipping through television channels. He’s pacing around Ibuki’s living room, his feet almost leaving burn prints in his tatami mat as he stomps around. “Did he tell you he was moving at all?”
“I haven’t spoken to Yoji in months now,” Ibuki says. “I wouldn’t have known.”
“Why would he move next to me?” Natsuki asks and sits next to his brother. Then he immediately stands up again. “Do you think he did this to pester me?”
“He’s pretty fond of you. Thought of you as one of his closest friends,” Ibuki says. Ibuki always says this, but Natsuki has no clue what friendship Uruha could possibly be hallucinating.
“I don’t even have his number saved!” Natsuki paces around the coffee table in the center of the room. Ibuki leans his waist from left to right, trying to see if he likes the movie playing on the television screen. He doesn’t and changes the channel again as Natsuki approaches his fifteenth turn around the table. “This is so foul. The agreement was that if I survived the war, then I got to live a good, quiet life.”
“You do have a good life,” Ibuki tells him.
“You don’t even think that about yourself!” Natsuki yells at him. Ibuki’s face doesn’t twitch, but Natsuki can feel that he messed up. “Sorry,” he quiets down.
“It’s fine, Suki,” Ibuki says calmly. He turns off the TV and looks at him, a serious face on. Natsuki sits down on the tatami and places his chin onto his folded in knees, as if he were a small child bracing for impact. His hands cover his ears, but he can hear his brother’s voice through the death of thousands. “We were in a war. A lot of people died, and we didn’t. I don’t know why I survived and maybe when I can dig myself out of his hole, I’ll be able to figure it out.” At least he’s self aware. “But you’ve always known who you are.”
Not after Uruha. Not after Uruha took Kumeyuri from him. Natsuki had to wander through the battle fields as Ibuki’s kid brother instead of a Misaka brother. He barely made the Kamunabi cut. Ibuki says that’s not true, but he knows they only took him in because Ibuki wouldn’t join. He was a knock off consolation prize.
Ibuki tells him, “Just suck it up. You both work a lot anyways. You might not even run into each other that often.” Natsuki wants to throw a tantrum like he did when he was younger to see if that will finally get the flame inside of him to go out from exhaustion. He controls himself, but remembering Uruha’s face still ticks him off.
“He’s going to make it his life’s mission to run into me at any given opportunity. He’s been haunting me for years.”
“Get an exorcist then.”
“You’re so mean to me, Ibuki,” Natsuki says so easily. This feels like when Ibuki would take the side of whatever random kid Natsuki would get in a fight with. Sure, Natsuki was often the one starting fights out of small situations, but Ibuki is his brother. He’s supposed to side with him.
Ibuki laughs at the comment, knowing not to take him too seriously when he’s pissed, especially about Uruha. “God you’re still so dramatic,” Ibuki says and rubs his temples. “The deal was that if I survived the war, I would get to live a nice and quiet life,” he mocks his words and Natsuki glares at him. “Am I going to hear you complain about Yoji every time he breathes again?”
“Not if he leaves me alone.”
Ibuki looks tired. He always does these days. “I shouldn’t have let you buy that house.”
“Why? I thought you didn’t know he was moving there,” Natsuki starts to stand, ready to run at his brother. Maybe kick him a little in the head.
“I didn’t, sit down,” Ibuki says but Natsuki doesn’t listen. He starts pacing around again. “I just meant that you wouldn’t have such easy access to my house to come disturb my peace and quiet. I’ve been hearing about your Yoji obsession for years now.”
“It’s not an obsession!” Natsuki shouts, and Ibuki holds his hands up in defense. “All I’ve wanted for years now is for him to get out of my sight. He’s not even in the Kamunabi. Was there nowhere else in Japan he could go? There’s something seriously wrong with that guy.”
“Maybe you just need to fuck it out, Suki, I don’t know.”
“Kill yourself!” is an appropriate response for his brother.
Natsuki asks for more work from the Kamunabi, and they ignore his first few requests because they think he’s going insane and becoming blood thirsty. After having a talk with Ichiki and swearing to him that he just needs to stay out of the house, he gets shackled with desk work. He never asks for more work again.
He tests his luck by staying home instead. He looks outside his window before going on jogs, and if it looks like Uruha is home, he stays inside. He’s not sure what Uruha’s new job is, nobody does, but he leaves for days at a time. He then comes back and doesn’t leave his house for days straight other than to go on nightly jogs or sit at the riverbank for an hour or so. Natsuki figures he might be catching up on sleep because his lights stay off throughout the late afternoon and night. Not that he’s paying that much attention to him, really. He just wants to make sure he doesn’t run into him.
Natsuki manages to avoid speaking to Uruha for almost three full weeks. They run opposite schedules for the most part like Ibuki predicted, which ticks Natsuki off that he was right. But they do live next door, and Natsuki isn’t so lucky when he jogs out at the exact time as Uruha.
He stops at the dirt road and turns to look at Uruha’s stupid grin, right in front of him. He usually jogs in the mornings or late at night, so Natsuki has no idea what he’s doing outside in the afternoon.
Uruaha says, “Good afternoon, Natsuki.” Always with his casual greeting. That dunce.
“What do you want?” Natsuki asks. He pretends that he’s stretching his legs although he did that inside. He bends a knee back and holds his foot against his bottom, keeping perfect balance.
“Just going out on a run. Want to join me?” he asks as if this is not Natsuki’s time to run on Natsuki’s road along Natsuki’s riverbank. Uruha the Usurper strikes again because apparently stealing Kumeyuri was not enough.
Natsuki says, “I don’t actually.” Uruha laughs it off as if Natsuki is joking. Why doesn’t he ever take him seriously? Natsuki switches to stretching his other leg, more gentle because of his knee. “What direction are you running?”
Uruha points the direction that they both always runs, where a bridge will lead them to the other side of the riverbank and bring them to a second bridge that circles them back to their row of homes. It’s a loop that’s a few miles long and takes an hour or so to complete. Natsuki is faster than Uruha, for sure. Not to mention, that was his route first.
“Well, I’m going the other way,” Natsuki says.
“I’ll go with you,” Uruha says. The instant irritation goes to Natsuki’s fist that he clenches, and the force accidentally pushes his leg more into his bottom than he expected. The jolt in his knee is instantaneous, and he has to stop himself from toppling over. Uruha must notice that he’s wincing in pain because he doesn’t make a joke. “Are you okay? Is it your knee?”
“Shit,” Natsuki tries to stand straight on it, but he can’t anymore. Fucking Uruha. “Shit!” he says louder as the familiar ring of pain flares around his knee. He puts his hands in his hair, and sighs deeply, unable to put any weight on that leg.
Uruha looks concerned, the look in his eyes is different. “Do you need help getting back inside?”
“No,” Natsuki says and looks at the distance to his door. He’s going to look stupid hopping over there on one leg, so he decides to take the more painful route and drag his leg across the ground. He drags it forward a few steps, hissing through the pain, before Uruha says, “I’m serious. Let me help you.”
“Fuck off!” Natsuki waves his hand at him. He swears he hears Uruha chuckle which pushes him to drag himself into his house sooner, slamming the door shut and throwing himself carefully at his couch. He hears Uruha’s front door close as well which means he’s also not going on his jog. He wishes he would’ve, so he could’ve slipped and fallen into the river.
Natsuki grabs his phone from the pocket of his joggers and dials Ibuki’s number four times before he answers. “I hate him so much,” he says before his brother even has a chance to say anything.
“I knew getting up to grab my phone wasn’t going to be worth it,” Ibuki says. At least he doesn’t sound drunk.
“You need to come over with pain relief patches. I hurt my knee again,” Natsuki says. Natsuki is allergic to most medications, including pain relief ones. Topical treatments and natural remedies that can be hit or miss is all he gets.
“Wow, what were you and Uruha doing?” Ibuki asks, voice laced in amusement.
“Fuck you, kill yourself,” Natsuki says and hangs up.
To his surprise, Ibuki does show up twenty minutes later with a bag from the local convenience store. He brought Natsuki the pain relief patches and a chocolate ice cream bar they both liked as little kids. Natsuki doesn’t reach for them anymore when shopping for himself, but he’ll eat them when Ibuki brings them over without complaint.
Natsuki sits with his legs stretched out on his couch, joggers rolled up past his aching knee and Ibuki places the patch on for him. The relief takes a few minutes to spread, but it comes. Ibuki sits in the armchair and licks his popsicle while Natsuki takes bites out of his.
Ibuki says, “If this doesn’t work, you need to see your doctor again.”
“It’ll work,” Natsuki says. He hears the stubbornness in his own voice sometimes. He ignores it and watches his brother. “Did you bathe today?”
“I bathe every day,” Ibuki says, rolling his eyes.
“You look good today. Maybe because you’re not rotting on your couch,” Natsuki says.
Ibuki’s face is a bit hard to decipher which is strange because Natsuki used to know everything he was feeling just four years ago with the twitch of an eyebrow or the wrinkle of their matching noses. His face stays blank most of the time now. “Maybe.”
Ibuki makes Natsuki dinner and watches a movie and a half with him before going home because he’s tired. It’s night when he disappears down the road, and Natsuki heads for bed. His knee isn’t bothering him with the patch anymore, and he lays in bed, able to sleep despite not exercising that night.
He’s not sure how long he stays asleep for, but he wakes up when he hears a knock at his bedroom door. He grabs the sword he keeps beside his bed and opens the door, finding a child huddled up and crying on a dirt floor. It’s Ibuki, sobbing with Cloud Gouger at his feet and asking him to help him hide.
Natsuki looks in all directions. The room around them is gone. They’re on the battlefield, and in the distance, he can make out Uruha screaming that they need to evacuate the children- that he is killing children.
Natsuki wants to run forward and fight, but Ibuki holds onto his pants, shivering. Natsuki says, “Let go. I need to go fight. You know how to fight, too. Get up!”
“Help me, Suki,” Ibuki cries, making a tight fist around his clothes. Natsuki looks up and sees that shrapnel is about to hit them. He kicks away Ibuki who screams in terror. It hurts Natsuki’s ears, and although the shrapnel should’ve hit him, it shifts and lands perfectly though Ibuki’s stomach. His wails stop. Natsuki is pissed that he was so weak he let himself die. And then the grief hits.
Natsuki wakes up, his heart in his throat. He’s half screaming, half choking. He runs to his bathroom, thinking that he might throw up but he just gags on his own heavy breath for a couple of minutes, trying to cough it out of his lungs.
He doesn’t cry with the nightmares usually but today, the image of young Ibuki gets him. He paces around his bathroom, holding himself. This is what happens when he doesn’t exercise. He can’t go on a jog right now. He remembers why he decided to live there.
He strips down to his boxers, ignoring the shake in his body and rips off the heat patch Ibuki meticulously placed on his knee earlier. He grabs a towel and marches out of his house, the limp somewhat lingering as he reaches the riverbank. He tosses the towel to the side and plunges into the water.
It’s cold. But it’s comforting. He needed this terribly. He submerges and floats. He’s able to meditate in the water without drowning but right now every time he closes his eyes, he sees child Ibuki dead. He decides on swimming laps until he’s tired.
He notices his annoying neighbor’s lights turn on, but he doesn’t think anything of it until he sees his figure making his way over in silence. It suddenly occurs to Natsuki that Uruha can hear him scream because their bedrooms are directly next to each other on the opposite side of the fence. He keeps swimming.
Even though it’s night and there are no streetlights around, it’s easy to make out that Uruha has his hair down under the light of the moon and the thousands of visible stars. He’s wearing a tracksuit, and he sits down at the edge of the riverbank with his legs crossed. He watches Natsuki swim without saying anything, and Natsuki is not going to say anything first.
It's not until his arms and legs are too sore to continue that Natsuki decides it’ll be safe to go to bed again after a hot shower. He swims back out to the edge of the riverbank where he left his towel and pulls himself out, careful with his knee that only has a small twinge of pain left. He dries himself lazily when he looks over at Uruha from the side of his eye and realizes that he’s sleeping.
Natsuki thinks it’d be funny to leave him there, but he’s not a total asshole. And he feels like the bad karma would deliver him another nightmare. He stands beside him and says, “Go home.”
Uruha startles awake and goes, “Huh?” He looks around and then up at Natsuki, looking a bit confused as if he forgot how he got there. He blinks his eyes a few times. “Was I really asleep?”
“Yes. You were snoring so loud the neighbor asked me to wake you up.”
Uruha quickly gets up on that note. “Oh man, how embarrassing.”
“Idiot, I’m lying.”
“Natsuki,” Uruha laughs at that. He still sounds half asleep, his voice a bit raspy. “You’re so funny.” Natsuki curls up the towel closer around him.
“Go home.”
“Yeah, I will. Let’s go.” Uruha steps forward and waits for him. It’s just a short walk and not a full jog at least, so Natsuki lets him have it.
They reach their shared fence and Uruha says, “Goodnight.”
Natsuki thinks there is no harm in replying, “Goodnight,” as well.
A second nightmare with Ibuki dying is all it takes for the night swims to become routine. Whether he worked that day or not, he trades his jogs for swims and finds them more effective for him to sleep dreamlessly. His knee is fine according to his doctor, but he shouldn’t be running full force on it for a month or two just in case. He gets shackled to desk work again for the time being, but Natsuki doesn’t complain. It allows him to train more in Kamunabi HQ after he rushes through the daily, almost meaningless paperwork.
There is one unfortunate thing about the swimming and it’s that Uruha watches him in silence when he’s not away working. He doesn’t say anything, and he falls asleep each and every time. Natsuki one day asks if he’s iron deficient, and Uruha just laughs but doesn’t say anything. The laugh almost doesn’t sound sincere, and although Natsuki wonders what’s really going on, he doesn’t ask. They’re not friends.
Uruha tries to talk to him more each time Natsuki gets out of the riverbank, but Natsuki is usually exhausted by then. Uruha seems to get the hint when there’s no reply, so he tells Natsuki things that don’t need answers. Little things like a sale at their local grocery store or thinking about getting his front yard cobbled. He once mentioned to Natsuki that he had dinner with Azami and Shiba as if Natsuki cared what he did on his free time.
And Uruha stares. He’s always had a staring problem and nobody seemed to have an issue with it. But Natsuki feels it as he stretches before his swims, Uruha sitting on the ground, looking up and watching him. It makes Natsuki’s chest warm, so he turns his back to him to avoid eye contact. He feels like a piece of meat on display. And sometimes, when he accidentally does catch Uruha’s eyes, he immediately lunges into the water when he feels like he might start blushing. It makes Uruha laugh, the sound barely audible as Natsuki swims away from him.
Sometimes Natsuki wants to tell him to go away and to let him have the river to himself. He thinks he’s actually going to do it when he realizes Uruha is missing. He goes into the water and every time he submerges, he’s not waiting for him at the riverbank, sleeping or even watching out for him. He must be at work. Natsuki floats in place for a bit, wondering why there is a longing feeling in his chest.
He grits his teeth and dives.
Uruha is gone for the next week, and Natsuki swears it’s the most peace he’s felt in so long. But after a long day at work and almost injuring his knee again in the practice room, he emerges from underneath the river and finds Uruha sitting there. His smile is visible even in the dark.
Natsuki scoffs and keeps swimming.
When he gets tired, he gets out of the water and realizes he forgot his towel. He shakes off the water the best he can, and Uruha laughs at him. Natsuki is surprised he didn’t fall asleep because although it’s night time, he looks exhausted. His eyes are red, and his under eyes are almost grey. He looks ghastly. Still, there’s this warmth Natsuki can’t deny he has.
“Where have you been?” Natsuki asks him.
Uruha stands up and asks, “Do you care?”
“Not really.” But he’s so nosy.
“Let’s drop it then,” Uruha says. He yawns deeply, stretching his arms. Natsuki stares at him blankly, his body wet and tired. Uruha looks at his abdomen, and he raises an eyebrow. He smirks. “I didn’t know you had your belly button pierced.”
Natsuki instinctively covers it with his hand, eyebrows furrowed. “I’m surprised considering you never take your eyes off of me.”
Uruha doesn’t even deny it. He just says, “You always cover yourself up with a towel or turn the other way.” Natsuki scowls and starts making his way home, thinking that Uruha is right behind him. But he hasn’t moved from his spot. Natsuki finds himself waiting for Uruha who is taking one last look at the full moon above them before walking up to him.
Uruha, a shameless man, reaches out and puts his hand on a scar on Natsuki’s back. Natsuki freezes up and gets tense like a scared cat would, but he ends up curling into the unfair warmth of Uruha’s soft finger pads. Does he even train at all?
Uruha asks, “How did you get this one?”
“I got in a nasty fight when I was twelve.” Natsuki hates how quiet his voice got.
“Did you win?” Uruha’s fingers trace the long slash gently.
“Of course.” Uruha stops touching him, and Natsuki thinks he feels relieved.
Uruha asks, “Natsuki. Can I come sit on your couch?” Natsuki wonders what is up with the weird man next to him. Maybe he’s just that tired. He looks like he’s about to pass out if he’s being honest.
This will be his one good deed of the month. “Fine.”
Uruha follows Natsuki inside his house and takes off his shoes, going to sit on the couch like he’s apparently always dreamed of. Natsuki excuses himself to go shower and change and just like he suspected, Uruha is asleep when he comes back. Natsuki scratches his head, unsure of what to do with him.
Uruha is softly snoring, his arms crossed into himself as he curls up into the corner of the couch. Natsuki grabs a throw blanket he keeps in his linen closet and throws it over him. Then he feels bad that it’s blocking Uruha’s breathing so he fixes it. He turns off the lights and goes to his bedroom, swearing that this will never happen again.
When he wakes up in the morning, Uruha is gone. They don’t talk about it.
Autumn arrives within the next few weeks, and the temperature starts to drop suddenly. Natsuki is swimming his usual laps when Uruha comes out with a blanket wrapped around himself. He’s shivering.
He asks Natsuki, “Isn’t it a little too cold for you to keep swimming at night?”
Natsuki swims over to the riverbank to talk to him, “I can’t swim during the day. I don’t have time.” He has to be louder than the song of the river for Uruha to understand whatever he’s saying.
“You’re going to get sick,” Uruha warns him.
“Worry about yourself.” Natsuki swims away and although he thinks Uruha might leave, he stays anyways. Uruha watches him for a few minutes, his gaze lingering until he nods off to sleep like an old man. Natsuki rolls his eyes when he hears the snoring over the water and keeps swimming against the river current until he can’t anymore.
He pulls himself out of the river near Uruha’s sleeping spot, and he grabs his towel and wraps it around himself. He starts to shiver violently, and his teeth chatter as he says, “Wake up.” Uruha doesn’t budge. “Uruha, let’s go,” Natsuki says. He’s almost glad that Uruha doesn’t wake up because that made it sound like they were there together. Uruha just happens to invade in on his space. Natsuki nudges Uruha with the side of his foot, and Uruha immediately darts awake and grabs his ankle.
He looks up with wide eyes and lets go when he sees Natsuki. “Sorry,” Uruha says, the blanket falling off his shoulders as he pulls his hand into his body.
“Go sleep in your bed,” Natsuki says, trying to control his shivering, wrapping the towel closer to him. Uruha notices, and he gets a little smirk.
He says to Natsuki, “I told you it was too cold.”
“Whatever.” Uruha stands up and shakes debris off the blanket he brought before wrapping it around Natsuki. “I don’t want it.” But he’s too cold to move it off of himself because he might risk dropping his towel.
“Return it to me later,” Uruha says and starts walking ahead to his house. Natsuki clicks his tongue, forced to carry the blanket with him. He does feel warmer although the blanket smells horrific- just like Uruha. A borderline feminine cologne with traces of fig leaf and sandalwood. Natsuki sneezes. “Are you already sick?”
“No, your blanket stinks.” Uruha who had looked back at him laughs and then keeps walking until he’s on his side of the fence, and Natsuki is on his.
Uruha always says it first. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.” Natsuki forces himself to add, “And thanks I guess.” Uruha just smiles at him in response and walks inside of his house.
Natsuki wakes up feeling terrible. He drags himself to go to work, and he gets sent home an hour into his shift. It’s so bad that Shiba has to teleport him home because he runs into a glass door twice.
Shiba helps him onto his bed, and asks him, “Doesn’t Uruha live around here?”
“Unfortunately.” Natsuki coughs. His head feels so heavy, and he’s starting to sweat.
“Not unfortunately. I’m going to see if he can keep an eye on you.”
“I can call Ibuki.” Shiba doesn’t say anything, but Natsuki knows what he’s thinking. Ibuki isn’t the most reliable person right now. He might’ve come through with the patches that one time weeks ago, but it happened to be on one of his good days. Natsuki hasn’t spoken to him in a week to know what his mood is like right now. “I don’t want Uruha near me.”
“You still haven’t banged it out?” Shiba asks casually, looking at his phone.
“Don’t say that in my house and don’t fucking call him,” Natsuki tries to yell, but his throat hurts. “Ow.” Shiba isn’t fazed at all as his phone starts dialing someone. “I hate you.”
Uruha answers the phone and Shiba asks, “Hey, do you feel like playing doctor with your best friend Natsuki?” The world spins out from under him, so Natsuki can barely register the rest of their conversation. Just pieces of Shiba saying he’s really sick, allergic to most medicines, and that he’s either buoying or annoying. Shiba hangs up and says, “Get out of your uniform and go to sleep. He’s at work, but he’ll be over when he’s done.”
Natsuki isn’t even sure when Shiba teleports out. He lays there, his mind swirling. He’s running hot in the Kamunabi uniform and somehow while laying down, he’s able to shimmy out of it and toss it to the side of his bed. He lays on his stomach in his briefs and falls asleep almost instantly.
He wakes up with a blanket covering him. It smells like fig leaf and sandalwood, and he kicks it off. He hears a chuckle, and he instantly sits up, but his body is so weak he collapses back on his side, facing Uruha who is sitting on a chair he dragged in from his dining room and reading a book.
“Are you just watching me sleep you freak?” Natsuki asks him. A cough leaves his mouth, and he doesn’t have the energy to cover it up.
“I’m reading,” Uruha says and holds up the book. The words on it look like a foreign language but also Uruha looks strangely pretty, so Natsuki just concludes that he’s going blind. “They told me to keep a close eye on you.”
“It’s a cold. I’m not dying.” Natsuki starts to shiver when he remembers that he’s just in his boxers. Nothing Uruha hasn’t ogled at lately anyways. “You can leave.”
“I’ll feel better when your fever breaks.”
“I don’t have a fever.” Natsuki puts his hand to his own forehead. He’s burning up. “No fever.” Uruha is right to not believe him. He puts his book on Natsuki’s nightstand and puts the back of his hand over Natsuki’s sweaty forehead.
“You lie so much,” Uruha sighs. He sounds genuinely disappointed, and the tone goes to Natsuki’s throat, and he can’t stop his eyes from watering up. “Hey, wait. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Don’t cry.” Uruha starts to freak out, looking around as if he’ll find something to help.
“I’m not crying,” Natsuki fails to yell at him. It feels like there is razor wire down his throat, and the tears slipping down the edge of his eyes sting.
Uruha knows he’s uncomfortable, so he changes the topic and asks, “When’s the last time you’ve eaten?”
“Last night,” Natsuki says, rubbing his eyes. It’s then that he looks over at the clock on his nightstand and sees that it’s almost four in the afternoon. How did he sleep for so long? How long has Uruha been watching him?
“I’m going to bring you something to eat, okay? I made soup while you were sleeping.”
Natsuki says, “I don’t want it.” He’s probably stopped crying now. He thinks, but Uruha wipes the corner of his eyes with his thumb, and Natsuki doesn’t have the strength to move away from his touch. He shudders instead.
“I’ll be back.” Uruha grabs the blanket Natsuki kicked to the side and drapes it over half of his body. He should’ve tossed it back over the fence instead of leaving it folded on his drawer. “I know you’re burning up, but your house is freezing. I’m scared you’re only going to get worse.” Natsuki doesn’t argue with him even though he’d like to.
Uruha leaves the bedroom, and Natsuki fixes himself so that he’s sitting up and leaning against his headboard. He tilts to the side a few times unwillingly. How did he end up like this? He never gets sick.
Uruha comes back with a bowl of steaming soup and brings forward the chair to his bedside. It smells extremely herbal. A lot of Uruha smells like herbs and perfume flowers.
Natsuki asks him, “Why does the soup smell like you?”
“It’s a recipe from my village,” Uruha says. He takes a spoonful and offers it to Natsuki’s lips. Natsuki accepts it, and he fully gags once it goes down his throat.
“This is disgusting,” he says with no filter. “Are you trying to poison me?” Uruha looks a bit confused and eats a spoonful of the soup to taste himself. The thoughtless action stifles Natsuki a bit. “You’re going to get sick.”
“You’re just nauseous,” Uruha concludes, ignoring Natsuki’s last statement. “It tastes fine.”
“Did you really taste it?” Natsuki asks as if he didn’t carefully watch the soup enter his lips himself.
“Yes. You’re just not used to all the herbs, but this combination helps break fever. Come on, open up.”
“I hate you,” Natsuki finds himself saying.
“Here comes the airplane,” Uruha laughs, making the spoon go in a circle.
“Go die somewhere else before I kill you.”
“Come on, you like me,” Uruha insists. He isn’t put off. He’s probably heard worse things said to him being a sword bearer. Or thinks Natsuki is joking. He never takes him seriously.
Natsuki reaches over and puts his hand around Uruha’s neck. He doesn’t squeeze. He just holds it there. He doesn’t really know how or why his brain instructed his arm to do that, but it happened without any brain signals stopping him.
Uruha says gently, “Your hands are very cold.” Uruha’s skin is so warm in comparison, and Natsuki didn’t realize that he was freezing until he touched him. He curls up his hand into Uruha’s collarbone, the heat pressing into his clammy skin. Uruha swallows. “Do you have a heater I can turn on for you?” His voice is much more quiet.
“No.”
“I have a space heater.” Uruha says and places the soup down. “I’ll be back.”
“No-,” he doesn’t know why he stops him, grabbing at the collar of his shirt before he can fully stand up. Uruha smiles, but not in a teasing way. It’s reassuring. Comforting. He gently grabs Natsuki’s hand.
“It won’t even take five minutes.” Uruha sets Natsuki’s hand down on the bed before he walks out of the room. Natsuki feels horrified, and he covers his ears, trying to replay what just happened without the fever warping it all. What is wrong with him? Why did he do all of that? He wants to call Ibuki over to break this tension, but Ibuki will never let him hear the end of it once he’s healed.
While he waits, Natsuki downs the soup, so he doesn’t have to be fed. His brain doesn’t let him forget that Uruha used the same spoon which is stupid because they’ve seen each other naked when they were at war. Why is sharing a spoon suddenly so intimate? Natsuki’s feverish brain only shakes it out when Uruha is back with his space heater as promised.
He plugs it in in the outlet closest to the bed as Natsuki finishes the rest of the soup. It didn’t taste bad. The first spoonful just surprised him. Uruha takes the empty plate from him without saying anything and leaves again. There’s noise in Natsuki’s kitchen where he has made himself at home.
Natsuki pulls Uruha’s blanket up to his chest and curls up under it, laying on his side. His forehead and upper lip are sweating, but he doesn’t feel as horrible as he did before. Maybe he just needed to eat.
Uruha returns and sits on the chair, starting to read his book again. Natsuki watches him from the warmth of his bed. He asks him, “Why did you move here?”
Uruha’s green eyes find him. “I told Azami I wanted somewhere quiet to live, and he helped me find my house. Nobody mentioned you were next door until I signed the contract.”
“Did they think I’d scare you off?”
“You don’t scare me, Natsuki,” Uruha says, a bit amused.
“I know.” He coughs. “I wish I did.” Uruha laughs and goes back to his book. Natsuki’s eyes start to close. He blinks a few times to steal a few more glances of Uruha before he falls back asleep.
It’s dark outside when he wakes up. Uruha is asleep in the chair with the book on his lap, and Natsuki gets out of bed. He still feels sluggish, but his fever is gone. He goes to the bathroom and takes a shower, walking out in fresh pajamas and finding that Uruha is gone from the chair.
He walks out to his kitchen, and Uruha is making tea with herbs Natsuki doesn’t recognize. Uruha navigates the stovetop like he uses the kitchen daily. Natsuki sits at the breakfast table he has in his kitchen, and Uruha walks up to him and places his hand back on his forehead. Natsuki looks down and away from him.
Uruha speaks, “Your fever is gone. I knew the recipe would work.”
“Yeah. Thank you.”
“You should blow dry your hair,” Uruha says and sits across from him. “Sleeping with it wet won’t do you any favors.”
“I don’t own a hair dryer.”
Uruha raises his eyebrows. “You’ve been going to sleep with your hair wet this entire time?”
“I don’t have the patience for that after long swims.”
“No wonder you got sick,” Uruha says. Natsuki wants to fight back, but he ends up with a coughing fit. “The tea I’m making should help you with your sore throat and cough.”
Natsuki clears his throat. “Is it also from your village?”
“Yes. My grandfather was a well known healer in the area. He wrote down his recipes for me.”
Uruha eventually serves them both a cup of tea, and Natsuki thinks it tastes horrible, but he doesn’t make a scene out of it this time. Instead, he asks, “Where do you work?”
Uruha thinks about it for a second, and he gets a devious glint in his eyes. Natsuki already doesn’t like this. Uruha says, “Admit that we’re friends first, and I’ll tell you.”
“Ew,” Natsuki says on impulse. Uruha doesn’t take it personally.
“We hang out, and I spoon fed you soup. I think we’re really friends now.”
“You just watch me swim until you fall asleep, and it was one spoonful,” Natsuki tries to erase history. He knows he can take it too far, but Uruha has really tough skin. He’s tougher than Natsuki, who is suddenly remembering that he cried in front of him. This an entire day has been a humiliation ritual meant to make him want to move to the other side of Japan.
Uruha says, “It’s fine if you don’t think we’re friends. But I like to think of you as mine.” The way he phrased that last sentence makes Natsuki blush, and it’s annoyingly embarrassing. “Is your fever coming back?”
Natsuki is blunt, “No. I’m practically healed.” He keeps drinking the fragrant tea that warms his throat. Uruha props his head up on his hands and watches Natsuki, a small smile on his face. It irritates Natsuki that he’s not strong enough to keep eye contact with him for more than a second. He blames it on being sick.
When Natsuki goes to bed for the third time, Uruha finally goes home. He leaves behind his blanket and heater despite Natsuki saying that he didn’t need them. Natsuki’s body is comfortably warm when he falls asleep that night. Although, he hates to admit, he feels a little lonely.
Natsuki is trying to cut an apple in half with the pocket knife in his hand, but it’s a toy blade. Ibuki, who looks like he is nine years old, tells him that he can handle it. He unsheathes Cloud Gouger and motions for Natsuki to hand over the apple. Natsuki hesitates. The skies fill with thunder, and he looks up, and the lightning strikes down next to them. Natsuki jolts back. Ibuki is calm.
Ibuki says, “Give me the apple. I’m hungry. I promise I’ll share.”
“Eat the whole thing,” Natsuki says to him.
“You need to eat, too, Suki. You haven’t eaten all day.” He seems unlike himself. He was a wild child at that age. Right now, Natsuki doesn’t recognize him. He seems changed. A war veteran at elementary school age.
Natsuki hands him the apple, and all hell breaks loose. Bugs start crawling from out of the stem of the fruit, centipedes and spiders growing larger and larger by the second. Natsuki tries to stab them to death, but his dull blade can’t break into their steel carapaces as Ibuki screams in terror, unable to get a grasp at Cloud Gouger on the ground next to him. The bugs cover his small body, but they don’t mask the screams. Natsuki reaches for the enchanted blade, which now looks like Kumeyuri, but it’s not his to hold. No matter how fast he thinks he’s moving, he’s shuffling in place, hearing his brother die.
He screams out Ibuki’s name, loud and from his chest, loud enough to wake himself up and feel a hand on his shoulder and hear the worried yet soft whispers saying his name. “Natsuki, Natsuki, wake up, it’s fine. It’s just a dream. It’s not real. Ibuki is fine.”
Natsuki sits up, chest heaving and maybe he’s crying again and it’s so mortifying that he struggles to get out of his bed to run, and he ends up standing up on his mattress in a tangle of Uruha’s blanket mixed with his sheets, trying to get away, only to fail. He collapses onto Uruha who catches him and holds him, torso wrapped in the blanket like a baby. He cries into Uruha’s chest, covering his ears, and Uruha soothes him, patting his back and reminding him that it was a dream.
He might prefer the nightmare over this. He’s never going to live this down, and he doesn’t have the power to get away. Natsuki pleads in between crying, “Please don’t tell anyone. Please don’t tell anyone.” With his ears covered, the begging sounds like it’s underwater in his mind. He judges himself. He’s never been so disgusted with himself.
He can barely hear Uruha reply, “I won’t, I promise. It’s okay. Just breathe, and you’ll forget about it. It’s okay. Your brother is okay. You’re okay. I’m here, you can go back to sleep. The war is over.” Natsuki doesn’t have the fortitude to admit that in some twisted, fucked up way, Uruha is helping. Uruha is making him feel calm and his breath is catching up with the drumbeat he feels against his ears and palms, and he’s feeling more relaxed. Uruha squeezes him close, and Natsuki is able to let the nightmare go.
When the tears have stopped sinking into the fabric of Uruha’s sleep shirt, and his arms are sore, Natsuki stops covering his ears. He doesn’t want to say anything. Uruha is hard for him to read, and Natsuki doesn’t want to gamble on what he’ll say. He doesn’t want to have a serious conversation right now when his ears are still ringing, and he feels like he’s been wrung out dry by both fever and nightmare.
Uruha’s hands go to his forehead, and Natsuki flinches, making Uruha apologize. “Sorry, you just feel hot right now. I think your fever is back. I should call over a doctor. Maybe he can find a medication that you’re not allergic to?” Natsuki’s throat is too dry to attempt to argue or save himself. But he finds himself giving Uruha such a pathetic look, and unfortunately, as disgusting as it is, Uruha can read him. “Okay. Just go back to sleep, and if it’s not gone by the morning, I’ll call a doctor over. Okay?”
Natsuki wants to say whatever and get out of Uruha’s arms and sleep on the other side of the bed, but he doesn’t. He blinks once as if to acknowledge it, and on the second blink, his eyes stay closed.