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Natsumi makes four cups of tea on instinct these days. Even when she tries to stop, knowing full well that Tsukasa and Daiki are off getting in trouble somewhere, or that Yusuke won’t be home in time for dinner, she always ends up boiling extra water, and then she may as well just go ahead and make the full set anyway.
Today, she’s just finishing up Tsukasa’s sure-to-be-untouched drink (who knows what he’s up to these days? something about a secret plan with some guy named Captain Marvelous) when the door to the studio swings open with a rush of air.
“Daiki!” she gasps upon turning to look at the front door and seeing him half-collapsed against the doorway, beaten and bruised and covered in dirt. It’s unfortunately not the first time one of the boys has shown up on the doorstep this way, but what is new is that Tsukasa and Yusuke aren’t at his side, holding him up and carrying him in.
What’s also new is the way he looks at her, wild and angry and maybe a little desperate. Natsumi goes to help him in but he bares his teeth at her and she stops.
“Did you know?” he demands. “About Tsukasa?”
Her brow furrows. “Know what?”
She knows lots of things about Tsukasa, some that even Daiki probably doesn’t know. But, to be fair, he knows things about Tsukasa she doesn’t either. It’s funny, how much their lives and their hearts still revolve around him, even when he’s not here. Even when he doesn’t even know. Probably can’t even guess.
Daiki hisses, curling a hand around his arm, and shoves past her. “About his stupid fucking plan. With Captain Marvelous.”
Oh. Natsumi follows him into the main room with a sense of dread settling over her. Daiki in one of his moods is unbearable, especially when Tsukasa was the cause of such moods, but Daiki in one of his jealous moods is even worse than unbearable. And it’s not like he wants sympathy, either, which she can offer, uselessly.
No, what he wants is to punch Tsukasa in the face. Or kiss him. She’s never quite sure which one it will end up being.
“He didn’t tell me what he was doing,” she says, watching as Daiki collapses onto the couch. For all his posturing about being a free spirit or whatever, he sure ended up in her home more often than not. “I guess it turned out badly?”
“Doesn’t everything?” Daiki mutters darkly. “He just – ” He stops, shaking his head, then smiles at her, slow and vicious. “I wish you’d been there. You would’ve torn him a new one for that stunt he pulled.”
Natsumi opens one of the cupboards to get their first-aid kit out. “Would I?” she asks mildly. Daiki often underestimates how willing she is to put up with Tsukasa’s shit lately. At least, ever since she drove a sword through his stomach.
“Yeah.” Daiki seems absolutely certain of this, though. “He pretended all our friendship was useless, just to manipulate us into fighting for his stupid scheme. All so he and Marvelous could team up and beat the DaiShocker and Zangyack whatever together.”
He doesn’t sound jealous at all.
Natsumi hides a smile as she sits down next to him. Daiki grunts but doesn’t stop her as she pushes his jacket and shirt off to check his wounds. “You know it’s not the first time he’s done that.”
“I thought he was over it,” Daiki mumbles, wincing a little as she presses a hand to a particularly purple bruise on his ribs. “I thought – ”
He breaks off, and she notices his hands are shaking a little.
“You thought you mattered more to him,” she finishes softly, dipping her fingers in a bottle of herbal salve and smoothing it across the bruises on his stomach. “I know the feeling. But the thing is… you do. We do. You know we do.”
“Do we?” Daiki’s gaze slides to her, deep and dark and furious. “He didn’t even tell you what he was doing, he just left.”
Natsumi unrolls a bolt of gauze and begins wrapping it around his torso. “So did you,” she points out.
Daiki falls silent.
“You know I don’t…” he begins.
“I know,” Natsumi says, and swipes the blood off a cut on his chin. “You’re a free spirit.”
He rolls his eyes. “Don’t say that.”
“You say it yourself.”
“I don’t like it when you say it.” Daiki looks at her searchingly. “You say it like you want me to stay.”
Natsumi sighs and gets to her feet. Looking down at him, he all of a sudden seems small, curled in on himself, even though he towers above her normally. Whatever Tsukasa did to him really did a number on him.
“I want you all to stay,” she says with a shrug. “But you won’t.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“Why would it bother me?” Natsumi looks at the empty backdrop against the wall. “I know who you are, Daiki. And I know who he is.”
“Must be nice.” There’s that jealousy again, seeping through his voice. “I don’t know him at all.”
“That’s not true,” she says, frowning at him. “You know him better than you know yourself. That’s why you’re so mad, aren’t you? Because you thought, for one moment, that you didn’t really know him at all. Because he made you believe he didn’t care about you.”
“How do you know he cares about you?” Daiki demands, shooting to his feet and immediately wincing from the pain.
Natsumi doesn’t move to help him. “Because he comes back, Daiki.”
“I – ”
But whatever he’s about to say – and she doesn’t think he knows what it is himself – it’s halted by the opening of the door again, this time with a clink of keys. The only one of the boys who actually bothers to use the keys is Yusuke.
“Natsumi!” he calls cheerfully, swinging his bag over his shoulder. “I brought oden from the – oh, Daiki’s here.”
“You don’t have to sound so excited,” Daiki says dryly, but his lips quirk upwards for a brief moment.
Yusuke only beams at him. “I just didn’t expect you home so soon, that’s all.” The word home seems to strike Daiki, because his jaw works without sound. Yusuke glances down and notices his bandaged torso for the first time, and his eyebrows draw together in concern. “What happened to you?”
“Tsukasa happened,” Natsumi explains, crossing her arms and trying to hide a smile at Daiki’s mutinous expression.
“Ah,” Yusuke says with a noise of understanding, and crosses the floor to swing an arm around Daiki’s shoulder. The height difference makes this a bit of a challenge, but he manages eventually. “Well, I don’t know when he’ll be home, but until then, you’ll stay with us, yeah?”
Daiki’s gaze darts to Natsumi, then away quickly. “Yeah, I guess so,” he grunts, sounding reluctant as if he doesn’t come back here every weekend at the very least.
“I made tea for everyone,” Natsumi announces, breezing past the two of them to bring a tray of their tea mugs out. “And there’s oden, apparently.”
“You’re the best, Natsumi,” Yusuke says fervently, reaching for his mug – the sweetest and milkiest of the four. “What would we do without you?”
“Probably die,” Natsumi admits.
Daiki snorts, but takes his cup anyway. “You didn’t know I was gonna be here tonight, did you?” he asks suspiciously.
“I make them just in case,” she says with a shrug, setting the tray down so she can claim her own cup of tea. “You and Tsukasa both have a bad habit of popping up randomly and expecting food.”
He smirks at her. “Where is Grandpa, anyway? His food’s the only reason I come back.”
“Sure it is.” Natsumi rolls her eyes. “Just drink your tea.”
“You made it too bitter.”
“Only so it can match your personality,” she shoots back.
“Oooh,” Yusuke laughs. “Calm down, guys. Tsukasa isn’t even here to piss you off.”
“You think I need Tsukasa around to be pissed off at him?” Daiki asks, raising an eyebrow. Yusuke grins at him and Natsumi hides a laugh in her tea.
For a second, Daiki looks uncertain, like he’s not sure whether they’re laughing at him or with him, but then his face relaxes. The tilt of his lips isn’t quite a smile, but it’s not a scowl, either. It’s good enough, she thinks. It means he’ll stay.
.
There’s a knock on her bedroom window that night, quiet for once. She’s still awake, mostly because Yusuke snores, and he and Daiki are sharing the mattress on the floor of her bedroom. When she pushes herself up to see who it is, she’s almost a little surprised to see Tsukasa sitting in the branch just outside. Almost.
He smiles at her, looking sheepish. “Did I wake you?”
Natsumi punches him in the arm, soft enough that she doesn’t wake the other two boys but hard enough that he winces. “No. What are you doing here? Don’t you have a key?”
Of course, asking Tsukasa to use normal methods of doing anything is a futile task. He doesn’t bother answering as he clambers in through the window she’s opened and tumbles, not a little gracelessly, onto her bed.
“I didn’t want to…” He trails off, looking at the mass of Yusuke and Daiki on her floor. Both of them are sound asleep.
“Run into him?” Natsumi asks wryly. Tsukasa looks almost guilty, which is new. She can only think of one other time he’d looked at her that way, and that was when they’d been in his homeworld.
“I see you got the gang back together,” he says, swinging his legs over so he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. Natsumi faces him and sits cross-legged, watching him closely for any signs of how much whatever had happened with Daiki had affected him. Going by their past history, she’d wager it’d affected him quite a lot. And neither he nor Daiki are as good at hiding their emotions as they think they are – at least not from her.
“He showed up beaten to a pulp on my doorstep,” she says, crossing her arms across her chest. Tsukasa sighs. “I suppose that was your doing.”
“No,” he begins hotly, then stops, taking in the look on her face. “Maybe a little.”
“Do you both have to be so stubborn?” Natsumi sighs. Daiki stirs on the mattress, and she figures that’s a sign they need to take the conversation elsewhere. “Come on. I have a cup of tea with your name on it.”
“Really?” After all this time, he still seems surprised that she waits for him. He follows her out of her room and into the kitchen, watching as she heats up his mug in the microwave. “What did he tell you?”
“Oh, just that you broke his heart, crushed his spirit, then beat him up and sent him off,” she says lightly.
Tsukasa frowns at her. “That’s not what happened.”
“But you did break his heart.” Natsumi sets his cup on the table in front of him. Tsukasa’s mouth twists down as he stares into it. “I know he acts like he doesn’t have one but…”
“I didn’t mean to.” He sounds almost petulant now. “I was just… doing what I thought was right. Saving the world. Isn’t that my job? As a Kamen Rider?”
“I’m not telling you what you did was wrong,” she says, taking a seat in the chair next to him. “But you’re more than Decade. You’re one of us.”
She thinks he forgets that, sometimes, that Decade isn’t his whole identity, that he doesn’t have to constantly be working to absolve himself of his sins as the destroyer of worlds. That he has the three of them, as complicated and messy as they are. That he has a home here, and doesn’t have to sneak in through the window just to talk to her.
“You’re saying I should apologize?” Tsukasa asks after a silence where he seems to be taking her words seriously for once.
“I think you should stay,” she tells him. “And if he wants to punch you, let him punch you.”
He makes a face that’s dangerously close to pouting at her. “He’s the one who actually tried to destroy the world, you know.”
“Oh, okay, Mister Former Leader of Dai Shocker.”
“Shut up,” he mutters, leaning into her to shove her backwards. Natsumi laughs and steals his cup of tea before he spills it. “Are you going back to sleep?”
“Guess so.” She takes a sip of his tea and frowns at it; she always forgets how much sugar he likes in his. “Join us?”
“Yeah.” Tsukasa smiles at her, looking tired and warm all at once. “Guess I will.”
.
She wakes up late, having taken two hours to let Tsukasa’s breathing at her side lull her to sleep. The room is empty when she does, dappled with sunlight through the curtains of her windows, which means it’s well past her usual morning time.
“Morning, sunshine,” says Daiki when she pads into the main room. He’s lounging on the back couch, arm draped over the side, grinning like a cat. She glances at him, then over to the table where Yusuke and Tsukasa are engaged in what she presumes is a silent war of wits.
Yusuke wins.
“Daiki won’t talk to me,” Tsukasa complains, swiveling to face her.
Natsumi trades a look with Yusuke. “Did you apologize?”
“Five times,” Tsukasa huffs.
She walks over and sits down next to Daiki, who merely adjusts his arm so she can lean back against the couch. “How many times do you want him to apologize?”
Daiki taps a finger to his chin in thought. “Ten times,” he says decisively after a moment.
“Are you kidding?” Tsukasa demands. “You’re the one who – ”
“Yes, but it was your fault,” Yusuke interrupts with all the patience that years of being around Tsukasa and Daiki has given him. “Don’t look at me like that,” he adds defensively when Tsukasa turns his scowl on him. “You know I’m right. Who even is this Captain Marvelous?”
Tsukasa groans. “I’m sorry I made a plan with Marvelous instead of you.”
“That’s six,” Natsumi points out.
“I made you eggs,” Daiki says to her instead of acknowledging Tsukasa, whose scowl only deepens. He offers her a plate of scrambled eggs and toast from the table, which she accepts because it looks far more edible than most of the boys’ culinary masterpieces. There’s a reason they all mostly let Grandpa do the cooking.
“You didn’t make me eggs,” Tsukasa says, frowning.
“Maybe if you hadn’t gone and pretended to be the leader of the Dai Shocker again – ”
“You’re the one who nearly destroyed the world – ”
Yusuke looks at her over the two of them and grins. “Sure is good to have them home, huh?”
“I almost forgot what quiet sounded like,” she agrees wistfully. Daiki nudges her in offense and she smiles. “Why don’t you both just swallow your pride and admit you fucked up?”
“He fucked up way more than me,” Tsukasa says immediately.
“Only because you said friendship was useless.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in friendship.”
“I thought you didn’t – ”
Natsumi takes a bite of her eggs and muses that Daiki had actually made a good meal. There was nothing quite like everyone being home at once; bickering or not, she thinks she wouldn’t trade either of them for the world.