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The thing about oden weather was that it wasn’t necessarily human being weather. Those cold, wet days that encouraged customers to stop by Chibita’s cart for a bellyful of comfortingly warm oden were great for business, but not necessarily as great for the proprietor. Chibita was no stranger to the creeping chill of an autumn evening or the way that it sank into his bones and lingered there. He was used to packing up his gear with fingers that trembled from cold and exhaustion both, and knew all about walking home with leaden feet.
So that morning when he sat up in bed and felt the world spin, well, that wasn’t much of a surprise to him, either. It wasn’t exactly the first time Chibita had managed to bring home a cold. He sighed heavily and started to force himself up out of bed. There were still some masks in the cupboard, right? Germs were not one of his many secret ingredients.
Next to him, still all tangled up in the sheets, Karamatsu stirred. His eyes slipped open, hazed like they always were in the morning, and his lips twisted in drowsy confusion. “You’re hot,” he said, sounding almost mystified by the phenomenon.
“Thank you,” Chibita said dryly. Had he remembered to put his socks away after doing the laundry the day before? He wasn’t sure if he had the energy to look for them in the basket.
“No,” Karamatsu said, sitting up in bed and grabbing at Chibita’s wrist. His eyes hadn’t gone all that sharp, not really - they rarely did - but they were swiftly losing that soft sleep warmth that Chibita would never admit to loving. “Your skin is too warm.”
“I’m fine, idjit,” Chibita replied automatically. Then he stood up, and his knees wobbled beneath him. “I’ll be fine,” he amended.
Well, that got Karamatsu’s attention. “You’re sick,” he said, and if Chibita hadn’t been trying to put his stomach back where it belonged, he might have made some kind of sarcastic remark about Karamatsu’s powers of observation.
“And I have work,” he said.
“Wha-- No, you can’t,” Karamatsu said, and then he was clambering to his feet as well. “You need to take care.”
“Of the bills, of my customers, of your sorry ass--”
“Of yourself,” Karamatsu cut in. And then, as if fate itself was determined to indulge all of Karamatsu’s stupid whims, Chibita stumbled backward, limbs moving slowly as if through molasses and in not quite the right directions. He landed, of fucking course he did, right in Karamatsu’s waiting arms. “See?”
Chibita scowled up at him. “I have been taking care of myself for the past twenty years. Idjit. I think I know myself a little better than you do,” he said.
But that, that just brought those lines back to the skin around Karamatsu’s eyes, those lines that Chibita absolutely hated. He wasn’t even sure what he’d said this time to put that look on his face. “What?” he asked. As if the answer was going to be helpful to either one of them.
“You aren’t alone now. You don’t have to keep taking care of yourself,” Karamatsu said. And then, goddamn him, he had the nerve to redden a little. “Let me take care of you, too.”
Chibita swallowed. That was probably the worst idea in the entire history of ideas. Chibita had been standing on his own two feet for years and years and years, and they had been the only sure thing in his entire life. Even if he wanted to entrust his life and physical wellbeing to another person now, Matsuno Karamatsu probably wasn’t the wisest choice in the world. But his heart was beating fast, and not just because of the way his boyfriend was pressed up all against his back. The room was shifting and his mind was melting and Karamatsu’s hands were sure at his waist. “Okay,” he said, and his grumble was undercut slightly by the rasp in his voice. “But just for one day.”
Karamatsu’s idiotic eyebrows bounced up along with his idiotic smile, and he ducked his head down to press a messy, idiotic kiss to Chibita’s cheek. “Let me tuck you into bed,” he said, and Chibita internally groaned.
* * *
Chibita hated to admit it, but he really did feel much better once he was horizontal. Karamatsu was hovering, though. He was perched just at the edge of their futon and trying to pretend like he had one ounce of confidence in his nursing skills.
“There is no land too far, no mountain too treacherous to scale for you, darling,” Karamatsu said with a wink, and gave Chibita a smooth smile that wobbled at the edges. “I’ll hike to the farthest reaches of the earth to find the best medicine for a cold. Who knows? Maybe during my travails I’ll also find the elusive cure for heartache.”
Idiot. Karamatsu started to move away, but then he stopped short. Chibita frowned, confused for just a moment before he realized that it was his own hand fisted in Karamatsu’s jacket that had given him pause. He didn’t even remember moving, but things were admittedly going a little hazy now. “Don’t go,” he said, and shit, he hadn’t exactly meant to say that out loud, either.
Karamatsu looked down at him, and Chibita could see his eyes widen even behind those stupid glasses of his. “But I-- I need to-- ”
“There’s cold medicine in the cabinet, idjit,” Chibita said, and tried to sound matter-of-fact instead of miserable. He wasn’t sure he had really succeeded based on the torn expression on Karamatsu’s face. Still. It wasn’t his first cold. He had to be prepared for self-treatment for when there was no one to go to the drugstore for him. Which, up until this exact moment, had been always.
“But you deserve the coolest, clearest water--”
“Tap is fine.”
“--and the softest down pillows--”
“I sleep on this pillow every night, Karaboy.”
“--and broth made only from the finest ingredients--”
“Karamatsu, there is plenty of broth in this apartment, and you better not be insulting its quality.”
“Never, my love,” Karamatsu said automatically. Maybe not so stupid after all. He reached down, and with a gentleness that Chibita hadn’t known he was capable of, he disentangled Chibita’s hand from his jacket and held it between his own. “But there must be something I can do to ease the suffering of a pure heart.”
And silly as that was, as stupid and cliched and utterly false, Chibita’s lips still quirked upwards in response. Pure? Hardly. But it was a sweet thing to say. “Just stay here. With me,” he said. “We can watch daytime tv.”
Karamatsu didn’t say anything for a moment, instead rubbing one of his thumbs against Chibita’s fingers, an absentminded caress. Then, “I do like daytime tv.”
“I know you do, idjit,” Chibita said. He’d caught Karamatsu watching those morning dramas more than once. More than twice, even. It explained a lot.
A couple hours later, full of his own homemade broth and a few tablets of year-old cold medicine, he lay there in their living room with his head in Karamatsu’s lap and listened to him pretending he wasn’t sniffling at whatever scrape the plucky heroine had landed herself in this time. And, well, maybe this wasn’t so bad. It was nice, not being alone. It was nice having someone cluck over him and refill his water glass and drape cool cloths over his brow. Karamatsu had tucked his hand under the blanket so he could link his fingers with Chibita’s, and the warmth of his skin, the steady rhythm of his breaths, kept lulling him in and out of sleep.
Chibita closed his eyes and sighed. He could get used to this.