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It’s been a week since Osamu finally managed to find the river again and he has settled into a routine of sorts.
The little berries in the forest taste half like citrus and half like absolutely nothing but they are juicy and crush easily between Osamu’s fingers. The little pot in the bag is just big enough to hold a couple cups of river water and sturdy enough that it doesn’t melt in the crude fire he puts it over. It also doesn’t take a lot of time to get the temperature high enough to boil the mixture of the berries and some herbs in it.
It does smell almost overwhelmingly like the inside of a lawnmower but it really doesn’t taste too bad—although the first time he tried a cup, he burned his mouth three times before he lost his temper and chucked the cup across the clearing.
Osamu sighs and looks down at the guy next to him, the owner of the pulse under his irritably sweaty and overheated fingers.
It’s been three weeks since Atsumu hit his head. The wound on his head has almost healed.
In that time, he hasn’t woken even once.
Osamu’s been feeding him water and the liquid mix bird-style, hence the mouth burning. The first and only time he tried to tip anything straight into Atsumu’s mouth was a few days ago. He hadn’t gotten the hang of supporting his brother’s head and his aim was off because of his clumsy grip on the cup and he tipped it way too much and as a result, half the soup went up Atsumu’s nose without him realising.
In fact, he didn’t realise his brother was choking at all until he saw Atsumu’s fingers turning blue.
At the end of it, Osamu was drenched in sweat, his shirt torn at the bottom and the fabric used to wipe Atsumu’s face and neck, and Atsumu’s breaths scraping hoarse and heavy in his throat from Osamu’s nearly unsuccessful attempts to make him cough it up. And the near-choking.
And still Atsumu did not wake.
Sometimes his fingers would twitch, his face relaxing and tensing in the soft way of the sleeping—but his body is heavy and unresisting no matter how Osamu moves him, no matter how hard he accidently presses against somewhere that should have earned him a flinch, or even if he unintentionally puts him on a pointy stone or stick.
In the three weeks since they came here, the only times he has moved from his shitty bed next to the boulder are when Osamu’s periodically rolled him onto his back or to his side or sat him up against the rock, or when he’s taken him into the forest to relieve him, or the one time he took him down to the river for a bath.
The weather is stiflingly hot all day. Even the nights leave both of them sweating through their shirts. Despite that, Osamu is glad for it. Washing their clothes and drying off after bathing in the cool river takes almost no time—
Osamu pauses, half-way through feeding his brother a second mouthful of water.
Something is off.
He pulls back and evaluates his brother. Atsumu’s face is flushed in the heat. There is a slight crease in his brow. Nothing looks different. But something is definitely off. Osamu leans back in and touches their foreheads together. Recoils immediately.
Atsumu has a fever.
Osamu’s mind blanks. Panic wells in his throat, instant and blinding.
Atsumu’s temperature is high enough that Osamu is sweating just from holding him up. He’s been pressing his fingers to Atsumu’s wrist every so often but he had—stupidly—attributed the warmth of his skin to the heat. There’s no other medicine in the little first aid box except for the antiseptic that Osamu used on their wounds.
His brother has a fever and Osamu only just realised.
Atsumu has lost some weight—they both have—but Osamu hadn’t thought it was enough to hurt him. Even though he should have. They both eat a lot—a whole lot, even—and obviously they weren’t eating as much but at least they weren’t starving. They were both getting enough to be full. Or at least that’s what Osamu had thought.
He looks at his brother again but with new eyes—and he doesn’t see an athlete. He doesn’t see a man who relies on his body’s strength for a living, doesn’t see the peak physical ability Atsumu has worked so hard to develop, doesn’t see any of the health and vitality Osamu’s contributed to maintaining. Apart from the fever colour in his face, Atsumu’s skin is pale and gaunt, the blue of his veins starkly visible in his arms and his wrist bones jutting out as a result. The very same wrist bones that Osamu has constantly, almost obsessively, had his fingers curled around the last few weeks.
The bath he had given Atsumu had been so quick—what with trying to keep Atsumu’s head above water and both of them upright with the uneven weight distribution while keeping them both from drowning while also trying to actually, you know, bathe them—that Osamu had barely noticed these changes in Atsumu’s body. He had noticed the goosebumps on Atsumu’s skin after the bath but he had just thought it was the change in temperature and, stupidly, disregarded them.
He hadn’t realised Atsumu’s skin was burning, that Atsumu needed more than what Osamu was giving him, that he had fallen sick, even though it was Osamu’s one job.
Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid son of a—
Atsumu’s head slips down his shoulder a little and Osamu startles, tightening his grip.
His brother is sick. He can’t afford this.
He forces himself to snap out of it, swallowing the icy emotion back down.
He sets his brother down, arranges the bag back under his head and gets to his feet. He fetches the pieces of fabric he tore earlier, soaks them with the remaining water in the bottle, rings them out, and places them on Atsumu’s forehead and neck.
Then he goes about gathering sticks for the fire, more herbs and berries, and—after gathering the motivation to leave—finally rushes away to get water from the river.
Osamu can’t actually remember a time when he ‘took care’ of Atsumu (so to speak) when he was sick, and vice versa, because neither of them had ever gotten so sick that they needed it—especially after Atsumu started investing professional care in his health in high school and Osamu started making them both meals on and off.
However, one thing that hadn’t changed over the years was that no matter who got sick first, the other one would follow soon after—although the severity varied.
Another thing was that Atsumu probably still wouldn’t stay in bed even if he needed it. And he probably wouldn’t ask Osamu to look after him anyway, not only because he’s an egoistic fool, but also because look what a good job Osamu has done of it.
Atsumu would have realised.
Osamu knows this like he knows his own name. Atsumu wouldn’t have let himself be distracted or feel lost; he hadn’t before, after all. Even though everyone calls him idiotic and self-absorbed and totally insensitive with about as much of an attention span as a mayfly—because he is, and he does—Atsumu is also stubborn and observant and he never does anything by halves. Never has. Even when he should.
A crackle of the fireplace has Osamu realising the soup has been boiling long enough. Night has fallen and the only light is from the fire. The stifling heat is uncomfortable and Osamu’s been re-dousing the fabric to cool Atsumu what feels like every few minutes. Including the amount of water they’ve both had to drink, Osamu’s feels worn from rushing to the river and back, a fact he’s firmly ignoring.
Additionally, since he knew he couldn’t go back and forth at night time, he’d been doubting the amount of water they’d need throughout the night so he’d filled all the little containers they had on them, including the empty antiseptic bottle and the plastic packets that he kept, leaving them with hopefully too much water instead of not enough.
He gets to his feet to grab the soup—and stumbles. Just for a second.
His throat tightens but he shakes his head to clear it. He’s fine. It was just for a second. It takes another second but he makes himself push past it and move on.
He pours the soup into the cup and walks back to his brother. Atsumu’s expression hasn’t changed since morning. Every so often, his fingers twitch restlessly.
Desperate to ignore the tightness in his throat and the awareness of the heat in his face, Osamu takes a big sip of the soup.
The boiling hot soup that was just boiling.
Immediately he sputters, blind for a whole moment to anything but the fire inside his mouth.
Eventually he recovers, gasping. The only sounds in the clearing are the fire crackling and him, coughing. With the fire at Osamu’s back, the forest looks pitch black. Everywhere looks pitch black. It feels like it is just them in the whole world.
They are all alone.
Osamu grits his teeth, his eyes still stinging and nose running, and a similar heat rising in his gut. They are all alone and Atsumu is sick and he won’t wake up and Osamu has no idea what to do for him.
His gaze drops to the cup in his hand and an idea comes to him. A terrible, terrible idea—as terrible and desperate as the feeling that it comes from. As terrible as the burn in his mouth, the steam rising from the soup now clearly visible in the dark.
No one would be able to ignore it.
He sets down the cup beside him. Mechanically, unthinking, he lifts his brother—who does not feel a single degree cooler than before—and props him up against the rock, the shreds from Osamu’s shirt slipping from his forehead and neck.
He supports the back of Atsumu’s head with one hand, picks up the cup with the other, and pours a mouthful of hot soup directly between his brother’s parted lips.
Atsumu’s body does not so much as twitch. As Osamu watches, the furrow in his brow deepens slowly. Smooths out. Deepens again. He doesn’t make a single sound.
He doesn’t wake up.
The soup runs out of Atsumu’s gaping mouth and down the sides of his face, leaving bright red trails in its wake that Osamu can see even in the dark. No one would be able to ignore the feeling, even if they were sleeping.
A flurry of movement takes over Osamu as he puts the cups down and reaches for the cool water, pouring it into his brother’s mouth in the same manner as the soup. He keeps going until the water is gone and then slowly lowers his brother back to the ground.
Atsumu’s fingers spasm periodically. His closed eyelids twitch restlessly, contrasting the stillness of his brow now set in a frown. His mouth is open, tongue visible, both flushed a bright and bloody red.
He doesn’t wake up.
Moving on autopilot, Osamu puts the cooling cloths back on his brother and sits back. As he does, his eyes land on the empty soup cup.
In a movement that comes from somewhere deep in his soul, he picks it up and hurls it away from him as hard as he can. A faint and faraway thud reaches him from somewhere in the dark.
A second later, it strikes him that he is the one who will have to go hunting for it and strangely, this thought is the final straw.
He falls back on his ass, presses his fists over his eyes, and bursts into tears.
He breaks completely and utterly, his voice loud and hoarse with disuse. Huge, shuddering sobs wrack him, his entire body convulsing in the wake of each one.
“Sorry,” is the first word to leave him in weeks. “Sorry ’Tsumu, ’m sorry, sorry—”
Then his voice fails, throat clogging and breathing reduced to gasping as it hits him now, all at once. It has been building slowly, not just over the three weeks they’ve been here, but in every hour and minute and second of who the fuck knows how many weeks it’s been since this whole nightmare began.
Osamu hasn’t been thinking of Atsumu as sleeping, but he hasn’t been thinking too deeply about Atsumu’s unconsciousness at all…apart from the ever-present fact that he, you know, is unconscious. But the thought of it is always lurking. The thought of it is never not frightening. If Osamu lets it take over him, he’ll be totally useless.
The only times the fear dulls enough for his head to clear is when his fingers are pressed to the thudding in Atsumu’s wrist or when his back is pressed to Atsumu’s chest and Osamu can feel his heartbeat as clearly as his own; can feel the rise and fall of his chest; the steady sound and feel of his breaths against the back of his head. In those moments, Atsumu could be just sleeping.
But he isn’t, Osamu knows now. He can’t be.
In their whole lives, as far as Osamu can remember, Atsumu has never, never, never ignored Osamu calling him. He can’t—no matter how pissed off he is; even if they’re actively ignoring each other. One time Osamu had (accidently) given Atsumu a black eye in a fight in middle school and Atsumu had given him the silent treatment for a whole hour. It had only taken Osamu nudging him once to restart the whole thing.
Osamu doesn’t know if Atsumu’s aware of everything around him and just unable to move, like in the movies. Or if Atsumu is just…out completely, his body taking over to heal whatever’s hurt in his mind. Maybe both. But Osamu knows, Atsumu would wake up if he could. He wouldn’t leave Osamu alone here like this, in the dark.
Osamu presses his fists harder against his eyes and rocks back and forth.
It is so dark. He’s so alone. They’re so small out here under the looming trees and the open clearing and the big black sky. Atsumu can’t wake up, maybe just as lost in the black inside his own mind where Osamu can’t even begin to reach him, while his body is sick, has been sick for who knows how long and Osamu didn’t even notice.
After what feels like an eternity, he finally pulls himself together, sniffling, head swimming and chest seizing. He feels emptied out, drained to the bone, and swollen at the same time, inside and out. His skin feels hot all over, his throat like sandpaper.
He drains half the spare water bottle in one go and gives the rest to Atsumu in mouthfuls, eyes pricking again at the unnatural, nearly unbearable heat of his brother’s skin.
But Osamu wipes his nose and shakes it off along with the throbbing in his head and the exhaustion. His brother is sick. He can’t afford it.
He finishes feeding them both the rest of the lawnmower soup. Instead of stumbling around trying to search for the cup in the dark, he uses the small pot directly as a makeshift bowl, taking almost a Kita-san level of care before sips this time.
When the bowl is empty, Osamu changes the cooling cloths and rearranges Atsumu’s limbs more comfortably. Then he presses his fingertips to the inside of Atsumu’s wrist and settles in.