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He’s pretty sure he’s dying.
There has to be a limit to the amount of pain the human body can endure, and this has to be it. His head is bursting, his vision blurry, his joints aching, and that constant lack of air is driving him insane. There are bunched-up tissues all over his floor and his phone keeps buzzing with notifications from people he doesn’t have the energy to respond to.
In a brief moment of clarity, he managed to steam some water so he could make a cup of tea, but the mug he used for it now sits cold and forgotten on his bedside table. He can’t feel his tongue anymore. Is that normal?
At first, he considered it a blessing. Telling everyone he was feeling ill meant nobody had the heart to bother him, which in turn gave him the time to catch up on some reading and working on this expert-level, ten-thousand-piece puzzle of outer space he plans on hanging in his bedroom sooner or later.
And then it got worse.
Light headaches and the sniffles turned into an alien entity trying to force its way through his sinuses and out through his ears. Holding puzzle pieces is a challenge with a monster made of mucus pressing against his eyeballs.
Which is why he has resigned himself to spending his days in bed. By himself. Doing nothing.
It’s been a few days and he wants to say he’s gotten used to the constant solitude but he’s never been good at being alone, even when he’s been doing his best to pretend like he was. Silence and darkness are a breeding ground for unwanted thoughts and emotions, and his are always festering just below the surface where they can poke their ugly heads out whenever they get the chance. No matter the amount of flowers he’s been trying to sow above them, no matter how often he waters the garden in his mind, his cruellest anxieties are so good at finding an empty space to grow through.
When he stares at the ceiling long enough he can see them coming true. He can hear the laughter of his friends as they enjoy themselves more than ever now that he isn’t around, can see his brother moving on to bigger, better things, can feel the icy grip of isolation closing around his heart and squeezing until his lungs ache.
A coughing fit interrupts the dread flooding his veins. The sound of keys turning in his lock calls it back tenfold.
“Ikuya?”
He recognises his brother’s voice instantly and pulls his blankets over his head in embarrassment. His apartment is dark and musky, there are dirty dishes everywhere, and he can’t remember the last time he opened a window. Natsuya will take a single look around and see just how pathetic he is when left to his own devices. This is exactly why his brother thinks he still needs a babysitter.
There is the sound of running water and clattering dishes, then Natsuya swears under his breath for a while before falling silent again.
Ikuya squeezes his eyes shut and waits.
He hasn’t answered his phone in a while and Natsuya won’t be happy about that. Days of wallowing in mucus and self-pity are reflected in the state of his apartment, and Ikuya can barely breathe through the shame of it.
Footsteps come closer until the creaking of a door announces Natsuya’s arrival. “Fucking knew it,” he says quietly, to himself rather than to Ikuya. And why would he? Words typically fall on dead ears with Ikuya anyway, so what use is talking?
Curtains are drawn back and light flickers weakly through the fabric of Ikuya’s blankets, closely followed by a gust of fresh air when Natsuya opens the windows. He feels like a child when his brother’s fingers carefully peel back the blankets and reveal his pale, red-nosed face. Despite the number of times he finds himself needing to run to the bathroom, he has managed to expertly avoid looking in the mirror for days now, so he has absolutely no idea what he looks like, but he can imagine it’s not pretty.
His lips are chapped, the bags under his eyes swollen, and there is snot drying between his nostrils and his upper lip. He’s disgusting.
“Good morning, kiddo,” Natsuya says cheerily, like he hasn’t noticed the fact that it’s neither morning nor good around here. Maybe he’s drunk.
Ikuya tries to take a whiff of the air around him to discern any traces of alcohol, but all it accomplishes is the dreadful feeling of mucus running down the back of his throat. Where is the sweet release of death when he needs it most?
A hand is pressed to his forehead, then Natsuya reaches out to examine the mug of cold tea with a grimace. “How long’s this been here?”
Like Ikuya knows. An hour? A day? Three days? When was the last time his head didn’t feel like splitting in two?
The answer doesn’t seem to matter because Natsuya stands up and vanishes into the kitchen where he makes an alarming amount of noise for a few minutes before returning with the same mug. The steam wafting from it says the water inside it is hot again now.
“Thanks,” Ikuya manages to rasp out as he takes the mug and flinches from the heat it emits when his fingertips press against the rim.
Natsuya beams. “He lives,” he announces brightly, then throws himself onto the mattress, right next to Ikuya, like the bed isn’t full of germs. “You had us worried there, buddy.”
Great. Even when Ikuya isn’t around he’s a burden to the people he cares about. Typical, isn’t it? By not responding to anybody he made Natsuya take time out of his day to come and check up on him, like a child in need of a caregiver. Maybe he does need a babysitter.
“Stop overthinking,” Natsuya says, ruffling his hair without any regard for the pounding pain in Ikuya’s temples. “We worry ‘cause we care. Asahi’s on his way, too.”
Unsurprising. Asahi probably didn’t want to be the first to arrive out of fear of disturbing Ikuya should he really just need some rest, but with Natsuya having completed reconnaissance he would be dashing this way at record speed. Ikuya hates the spark of affection that shoots through his chest and fills him with warmth for just a few seconds. Knowing people worry about him shouldn’t make him feel happy. What does that say about the kind of person he is?
Natsuya’s fingers rub circles into his scalp, and Ikuya can’t help the way his eyelids flutter shut at the feeling. It’s nice. He hasn’t had any company in days and had almost forgotten the comfort brought by the presence of someone he loves as much as he loves his brother. Not that he would ever say so out loud.
“You can let us help you out when you need it, you know?”
He knows. Of course he knows. His friends are nothing if not overbearingly meddlesome. Everyone would have jumped at the idea of bringing him tea or soup, or keeping him company, but he isn’t their responsibility. They have their own shit to worry about. Haru collapses twice a week, Rei is preparing for exam season, Makoto… probably lost another goldfish. Either way, they’re all busy with their own lives.
The front door opens with a bang that makes Ikuya wince. Frantic footsteps make their way through the kitchen and towards the bedroom. “How’s he doing?”
Asahi doesn’t usually sound worried about things. He’s the kind of person who can see the light at the end of any tunnel, even if the tunnel is a cave. There is an irrationally optimistic conviction in him that says there is a solution for any problem as long as one doesn’t stop to look for it. Nobody could match Asahi in emotional endurance, especially not Ikuya. It should be frustrating but if asked what Ikuya admires most about his boyfriend, it would be his ability to stand up again no matter how many times he’s been knocked down.
Which is exactly why it breaks him to hear the genuine concern in his voice. He should have called. Texted at least. He always learns his lessons after the damage is already done.
“He reeks,” Natsuya answers, which is rich coming from someone who smells like a brewery on any given afternoon, “but I think he’ll survive.”
Embarrassment might come to take him any moment now.
Asahi’s expression visibly brightens. His lips tug into a smile, and his right hand balls into a fist like he’s about to fist-bump fate for taking mercy on Ikuya. “He’s a fighter,” he says, which is funny because Ikuya is anything but. Half of his stamina training consists of running away from his problems.
“Right,” Natsuya says, pushing himself off the bed with a heaving breath. “Guess that’s my job done, then. Would’ve nursed you back to health myself, kid, but Asahi insisted. You’re in good hands.”
The best. “Wait,” he asks anyway, reaching a hand out to hold onto the sleeve of Natsuya’s bomber jacket. “Thanks, aniki.” For not commenting on the state of the apartment when he first arrived. For never making him feel like the burden he knows he is.
“You owe me a pizza when you’re back on your feet.” It’s as much of an ‘I love you’ as if he had said the words. Ikuya knows and flips him off on his way out the door. Natsuya’s laughter as he leaves the apartment makes the flowers in his mind garden bloom a little brighter.
Asahi has made himself comfortable on the edge of the bed, looking a little unsure about what to do to help Ikuya out of his predicament. Unless he knows a spell to remove the mucus monster from his sinuses, there is fairly little he can do, but Ikuya finds he just enjoys the company.
“What have you been reading?” Asahi asks, but his hands find the science fiction novel on the nightstand before Ikuya can respond. “Time travel?”
Time hopping, actually. There’s a difference, but Ikuya doesn’t have the energy to explain it, so he just nods.
Clamping the book under his left arm, Asah gets up and gently helps Ikuya out of his blanket cocoon to get him on his feet. “Come on,” he says as he slots his arm around Ikuya’s waist and slowly guides him toward the living room. “I’ll change your bedsheets later.”
He shouldn’t have to. Asahi is his boyfriend, not his housekeeper, but Ikuya knows it’s a losing battle, so he doesn’t argue. Instead, he offers Asahi a grateful smile and lets himself be laid down on the sofa. There is a purple quilt draped across the backrest he finds himself covered with instantly. “Thanks,” he says, because it’s really the only thing he should be saying today. Neither Asahi nor his brother had to come here, but they did anyway. Because they care for him. Because they love him.
Ikuya couldn’t thank them enough for it if he tried for the rest of his life.
“Scoot over,” Asahi orders, and Ikuya rolls onto his side to make some space. “Think you’re fit enough to finish this chapter?”
Probably not, but he knows what Asahi has in mind, and he’s not about to say no to it. Hearing Asahi try to pronounce Ganymede might actually help speed up his recovery. “Yeah,” he says with a short nod and waits with bated breath as Asahi sits down, close enough for Ikuya to wordlessly rest his head on his thigh.
A gentle hand cards through his hair, then massages a knot out of the back of his neck. He has no idea why he insisted on denying himself this feeling for days. Would have continued denying it to himself without his brother’s arrival.
“You called him, didn’t you?” he asks without accusation. He’s not mad.
Asahi opens the book to the bookmarked page and hums. “No,” he says. It’s true because Asahi can’t lie. Especially not to Ikuya. “He asked if I heard from you and when I said no he insisted on checking up on you.”
Oh. Maybe he does owe his brother a pizza.
“I should have checked on you, too. We all know how you get.”
Great. Every one of his friends must have talked about the degree of decay he let his apartment fall into over the past few days. He’s not sure he can show his face at the Marron again.
Fingertips tickle the soft skin behind Ikuya’s ear. “I didn’t want you to feel like I thought you can’t take care of yourself,” Asahi explains, which is. Well. Pretty much what he’d have felt like if any of them had invaded his apartment any earlier. It’s still what he thought when Natsuya first arrived. It’s still the truth, anyway. Nobody is as incapable of taking care of themselves as Ikuya.
“Aren’t you missing practice or something for this?” he asks because he loves making himself feel guilty for things nobody else blames him for.
Asahi’s hand wanders from the back of his neck to his jaw like he’s not at all grossed out by the fact that Ikuya’s skin is crusty with dried mucus. “I can miss a day or two,” he says easily. “Have you seen a doctor?” He shakes his head before Ikuya can answer. “Of course you haven’t. I can head over to the pharmacy if you need -”
“Just stay,” Ikuya requests. He doesn’t have the energy to pretend like he doesn’t want Asahi here with him. He’d ask for a kiss if he weren’t acutely aware of the risk of Asahi catching whatever is currently eating away at his brain. Ikuya is much less of a natural caregiver than Asahi, and confronted with someone else’s snot he would douse any and all germs in his surroundings with disinfectant.
Comfortable silence falls between them in which Asahi returns to carding his fingers through Ikuya’s hair and prepares himself for reading out loud by clearing his throat too noisily.
“I can’t believe you don’t need a dictionary to read this,” Asahi says after a while, voice filtering through the beginnings of sleep dimming Ikuya’s senses. “It’s like a foreign language.” And then he starts to read anyway, like he always does, because somehow Ikuya managed to win the lottery of boyfriends. He spends every single day trying his best to convince himself that he deserves it, that he didn’t accidentally end up in someone else’s life.
The familiar voice, paired with the sound of rustling pages lulls Ikuya to sleep before he can process what’s been happening in the story, but it doesn’t matter. He can hear Asahi’s whispered ‘I love you’s as he drifts into the first restful sleep he’s had in days, and that’s really all he can ask for.
____________
When he wakes, he’s back in his bed.
The windows are closed again but the curtains are still drawn, welcoming the flickering light of a streetlamp outside. It’s dark, which means he must have slept all afternoon while Asahi obviously changed his bedsheets and hung some fairylights around the room that cast warm shadows across his bedroom walls.
Next to him, a familiar warmth shuffles to wrap an arm around his waist. “Go back to sleep.”
Ikuya murmurs his disapproval. “You’ll catch my cold, idiot,” he points out, but it’s not enough to shake Asahi’s embrace. “I’m not nursing you back to health.” He will and Asahi knows that, but he won’t be good at it. His only hope is that he knows a place in their area that delivers soup.
“Worth the risk,” Asahi decides.
Pulling a grimace, Ikuya notices the lack of resistance on his skin, which means that Asahi cleaned up his face while he was asleep. Guilt and shame well up inside him, but it’s quickly extinguished by the warmth flooding his senses when Asahi presses a kiss to his forehead.
They stay like that - Ikuya on his back, Asahi wrapped around him like a koala - until a coughing fit separates them and Ikuya beats angry fists against the mattress. He hates this. Hates it. A few hours of sleep should have fixed him, shouldn’t it? Maybe he didn’t drink his tea, but the steam alone should have had healing effects, right?
Asahi’s hand rubs soothing circles against his back. “It’s alright,” he promises, but it’s not. It isn’t alright, and Ikuya is going to die right here, in this bed, with a mucus monster tearing his insides apart. “You’ll be fine.”
He doubts it, but Asahi sounds so sure, so how is he supposed to argue?
Instead, he pulls his knees to his chest and hugs them close, hiding the evidence of the mucus monster trying to crawl out of his throat in the fabric of his joggers. “Yeah,” he says without any conviction. Two weeks from now his brain will have dissolved into snot, but if Asahi thinks some miracle will save him before it’s too late, then so be it.
“Are you hungry?” No, but he knows he should eat anyway. Asahi knows it, too. “I’ll boil you some rice.”
Ikuya’s stomach protests at the thought of food, his nose twitches and his ears clog up, but an Asahi on a mission won’t be stopped, so he sits and nods and waits until he’s presented with a bowl of plain rice and the chopsticks Akane got him for his birthday last year. Next to his food now lies his phone, unlocked and opened on his messages. They’re bursting with texts from friends and family wishing him a quick recovery and asking him to let them know should he need anything.
He could have answered to every single one of them days ago and gotten the help he might have needed, but the thought of asking for help gives him an allergic reaction and he’s already feeling bad enough.
“I let them all know you’re fine, but you better expect some visitors over the next few days,” Asahi says, which is a nightmare. He knows his friends will arrive with cards and gifts and medicine he’ll refuse to take anyway.
Swallowing down as much of the rice as he’s physically able to in his current state, Ikuya places the bowl on his bedside table and shuffles closer to lean against Asahi’s side. “Thanks for being here,” he murmurs. “And sorry for worrying you.”
“Don’t think I’ll ever stop worrying about you,” Asahi says. That’s probably not a good thing. He must notice Ikuya’s expression because he quickly waves his hands through the air. “I love it,” he points out like that’s not a weird thing to say about being worried. “I want to worry about you. It means you’re letting me get close enough to see you’re not okay, and that’s - I mean, not that I want you to not be okay, I just -” He interrupts himself with a deep breath. “You don’t have to be fine all the time. And when you’re not, I want to be the person that gets to be there for you.”
His head already hurts, but it feels close to imploding when tears start to prick at the back of his eyes. “You’re so dumb,” he whines through another coughing fit that breaks loose a few tears running down his cheeks.
Asahi laughs and reaches out to wipe the moisture from the swollen bags beneath his eyes. “Guilty,” he agrees with a smile that might just be the cure to all of Ikuya’s ailments. “Come here.”
They curl up together like passing germs is no concern for them, and Asahi presses kisses into his hair at random intervals. It makes up for the way his head is pounding and the lack of oxygen he has to deal with.
Asahi says “I love you” like it’s written in the stars. There is a certainty to it that won’t allow for an argument; The grass is green, the sky is blue, and Asahi loves Ikuya. Returning the sentiment is barely enough, but it’s all Ikuya is capable of doing, so he does.
If he only has two more weeks, this is exactly how he wants to spend them.
____________
It’s Natsuya who finds them in Ikuya’s bed two days later, coughing, and snotty, and gross. He doesn’t say anything as he boils them some tea and orders them soup, but there’s a smile on his face when he watches Ikuya rest his head against Asahi’s shoulder while sipping on his tea.
“Thanks, aniki,” Ikuya says, because he appreciates everything his brother does for him, even if he’s not so great at showing it. “I owe you another pizza.”
Natsuya ruffles his hair, then pulls back and squirts disinfectant on his palm. Ikuya can’t blame him. “Three,” he argues. “One more because there’s two of you now.”
“You rob me,” Ikuya protests, but he would get his brother a wagon full of pizza if he asked for it. Natsuya just doesn’t need to know that.
Next to him, Asahi groans. “Get as many as you want,” he says while rubbing the palm of his hand across his eyes. “Just stop talking.”
Natsuya laughs, but he takes pity on Asahi and his newly formed headache, and leaves, but not without offering Ikuya a grin and a thumbs up. “Call if you need anything.”
He will, because Asahi won’t let him isolate himself the way he tends to when given the chance. It’s so obvious, now that he thinks about it, with his mind garden blooming despite the mucus monster feasting on his insides. There’s a reason for why the garden in his mind kept being invaded by the murky roots of his darkest thoughts, no matter how many flowers he tried to plant.
The sound of Asahi urging him to finish his tea makes him turn his head and smile.
Every garden needs a bit of sunshine to thrive.