Work Text:
The first thing Yoh noticed was the taste of copper on his tongue.
The second thing he noticed was the ceiling. Their ceiling. The same water stain shaped like a lopsided rabbit that he'd been staring at for two years while trying to think of panel layouts.
"Yoh."
He turned his head too fast. The room swam, and he pressed his palms flat against the mattress to anchor himself.
Mizuki was sitting on the edge of the bed. Still in his work clothes—the navy suit, the loosened tie. His forecast had been for clear skies today. Yoh remembered that much. He remembered watching it on the television in the convenience store down the street, the one with the flickering screen, because their television at home was—
*Our television at home.*
Why had he been at the convenience store?
"You fainted," Mizuki said. His voice was even. Careful. The same voice he used on camera when the typhoon reports were worse than expected. "At the station. Low blood sugar, probably. You haven't been eating properly again."
Yoh blinked. His hand drifted to the back of his head without thinking, and his fingers found a tender spot. He flinched.
"You hit your head when you went down." Mizuki's hand caught his wrist. Not hard. Gentle, even. His thumb pressed softly into the pulse point. "Don't touch it. I cleaned it up, but it might bruise."
"I fainted," Yoh repeated.
"Mm."
"At the station."
"That's right."
Yoh tried to piece it together. There was something—the convenience store, the flickering screen, Mizuki's face on the broadcast saying *clear skies across the Kanto region*—and then what? He'd been walking. He'd been walking somewhere with purpose, he was sure of it, his bag had been heavy on his shoulder and he'd been thinking *I'll do it today, I'll actually—*
The thought dissolved like fog.
"I don't remember," Yoh admitted. His voice came out smaller than he wanted.
"That's normal." Mizuki released his wrist and stood. He moved to the dresser, where a glass of water and two white pills waited. "The doctor said short-term memory loss is common with head injuries. It should come back gradually."
*Doctor.* Yoh looked at the pills. "You took me to a hospital?"
"I called Dr. Kadowaki. He's a friend. He came here." Mizuki brought the water over. "Sit up slowly."
Yoh obeyed. The room tilted, then steadied. He took the pills and the water and drank, watching Mizuki over the rim of the glass. Mizuki's expression was composed. Concerned. The slight furrow between his brows that Yoh had drawn so many times he could probably do it in his sleep—the precise angle, the exact depth.
Something felt wrong.
Not the kind of wrong he could name. More like the wrong of a panel that was one millimeter off-kilter. The reader wouldn't notice consciously, but their eye would catch on it. Would feel uneasy without knowing why.
"Your bag is by the door," Mizuki said, reading his mind the way he always did. "Your wallet, your phone, everything's there. I checked."
*Why would you need to check my bag?*
Yoh didn't ask it aloud. Instead, he said, "What time is it?"
"A little past nine."
"At night?"
"Mm."
He'd lost—Yoh tried to calculate. He'd watched the noon broadcast. That was six, almost seven hours. His editor had called that morning. *Tanada-sensei, we need the next three chapters by the end of the month or we'll have to suspend serialization.* He'd hung up and sat on the floor of their apartment and stared at his manuscript pages and felt absolutely nothing, which was worse than feeling despair.
Despair at least meant you still cared.
"I made dinner," Mizuki said. "But you should rest first. I'll bring it to you later."
"You don't have to—"
"I want to."
The way he said it. Quiet and final. Like a forecast that left no room for argument.
*Mclear skies. No chance of rain. Trust me.*
Yoh lay back down. His head throbbed dully, a metronome keeping time he couldn't follow. Mizuki pulled the blanket up to his chest, tucking it under his chin the way he'd done a hundred times before, and Yoh let him because it was warm and familiar and because right now the world felt like a drawing where all the perspective lines converged at the wrong vanishing point.
"Mizuki."
"Hm?"
"I think I was going somewhere today."
A pause. So brief Yoh might have imagined it.
"You were probably going to the art supply store," Mizuki said. "You mentioned needing new screentones. I found your list in your bag."
That made sense. Yoh did need new screentones. The ones he had were peeling at the edges, leaving sticky residue on his pages. His editor had complained about it last month.
"Okay," Yoh said.
Mizuki's hand settled on top of his head. Warm. Heavy. His fingers carded slowly through Yoh's hair, careful to avoid the tender spot at the back.
"Go to sleep," Mizuki said. "I'll be here."
Yoh closed his eyes.
---
He dreamed of a door.
Their front door, specifically. The one with the lock that stuck if you didn't lift the handle while turning the key. He was standing in front of it with his bag over his shoulder and his shoes on and his hand on the knob, and behind him the apartment was dark and silent because Mizuki was at work and wouldn't be home for hours, and this was his chance, this was the only chance he'd have, because he'd been thinking about it for weeks now—no, months—and he needed to leave before Mizuki looked at him with those eyes again, the ones that saw through every page he drew, every expression he faked, every *I'm fine* that was a lie—
He turned the knob.
The door opened.
And then a hand was on his shoulder, and a voice was saying his name, and he turned around and Mizuki was *there*, home early, still in his suit, and his expression wasn't angry, it was worse than angry, it was *sad*, and he said—
*"Yoh, why are you trying to leave me?"*
And Yoh said, "Because I can't breathe."
And Mizuki said, "I can fix that."
And then the hand moved from his shoulder to the back of his head—
---
Yoh woke up gasping.
The room was dark. The lamp on the nightstand was off. A sliver of light came from the kitchen, where he could hear the quiet sounds of dishes being washed.
His hand went to the back of his head again. The tender spot was still there, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
*You hit your head when you went down.*
He stared at the ceiling. The lopsided rabbit water stain stared back.
In the kitchen, the water shut off. Footsteps approached, and then Mizuki appeared in the doorway, silhouetted by the kitchen light. He'd taken off his jacket. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows.
"Bad dream?" he asked.
"I think so."
"You were talking in your sleep." Mizuki crossed the room and sat on the bed again. The mattress dipped under his weight. "Something about breathing."
Yoh's throat tightened. "I don't remember."
"That's okay." Mizuki's hand found his in the dark. Their fingers intertwined with practiced ease. "Do you want dinner now? I kept it warm."
"In a minute."
"Okay."
They sat in silence. Yoh could hear the refrigerator humming, could hear the distant sound of traffic from the street below, could hear his own pulse in the tender spot on the back of his head.
"Mizuki."
"Hm?"
"The door lock sticks. You have to lift the handle."
A pause.
"I know," Mizuki said. "I fixed it."
"When?"
"This afternoon. While you were sleeping."
*While I was unconscious, you mean.*
The thought surfaced and Yoh pushed it back down, down into the dark water where all the other uncomfortable thoughts lived—the ones about how Mizuki always knew where he was, how Mizuki's schedule at the station seemed to rearrange itself around Yoh's movements, how Mizuki's *I'll be here* sounded less like a promise and more like a statement of fact.
"The weather tomorrow," Yoh said, because if he thought about any of this he would drown in it. "What's the forecast?"
Mizuki's thumb traced a slow circle on the back of his hand.
"Clear skies," he said.
And outside, the moon was bright and full and the clouds were nowhere to be seen, and Yoh thought:
*He's always right about the weather.*
He pulled his hand away, just slightly, just enough.
Mizuki let him go.
For now.