Chapter Text
“Are you on call again?”
Takao had asked the same question for weeks now, and Midorima, in turn, gives the same answer—a short nod, a dismissive wave of his hand, and a murmured comment on how he doesn’t need sleep. Every evening it’s the same question, though with every time that it’s asked, Takao sounds a little more concerned. It was proving to be a nuisance, and it was bothersome to a point where Midorima didn’t notice that the bags under Takao’s eyes were the same as his own. He never questioned why his nurse was always there to question whether or not he was on call for the umpteenth time in the past few months since he had began his residency. Takao was always around; it was as simple as that. Only now he was no longer passing him basketballs, but instead handing him clipboards and syringes.
“You’re really gonna mess someone up if you don’t get any sleep, y’know, Shin-chan.”
For a registered nurse, ‘gonna mess someone up’ wasn’t the most professional way of saying that it was only a matter of time before he ended up killing somebody. But, Midorima was entirely confident that tonight wasn’t going to be the night that he would ‘mess someone up’.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“Takao.”
Midorima rolls his eyes. Takao laughs.
“Your girl probably misses you, go home. Sheesh, what kind of boyfriend are you?”
The pen that Midorima had been tapping on his clipboard at the nurse’s station stills, and Midorima’s lips press to a frown. Takao was right. His girlfriend did miss him, and she let him know every time that he walked through the front door at the crack of dawn. She was always there to greet him, drowning in one of his shirts-turned-pajamas, and every morning she says that she loves him, and that she wished that he didn’t have to work on call so many nights out of the week. It was irritating as all hell to have redundant, pestering questions asked both at work and at home, but it was becoming routine, and Midorima could adjust to routine. Midorima doesn’t return the ‘I love you’s, and he doesn’t say that he is working on call because he wanted to and went as far as to pick up shifts to cover attendings every chance that he had. Instead he tells her the same thing he tells Takao every night at the start of his shift. He nods at the ‘I love you’ instead of returning with ‘I love you too’, he waves a hand in dismissal after slipping off his shoes, and he exhales a tired comment on how he doesn’t need much sleep. Midorima’s feet always drag on the ground as he’s walked back to his shared bedroom, and he doesn’t show any affection other than by gently brushing his nose through her hair.
Her hair is red, and if he leans in close enough, it isn’t too hard to pretend that it was the same shade of red hair that he learned to adore in the past.
“I will.” He’s lying. “Just not tonight.” Or tomorrow. Or the day after that.
* * *
“Akashi.” Midorima’s voice wavers, but he doesn’t let his anxieties show on his face. His grip on Akashi’s wrist doesn’t loosen no matter how much he squirms and yanks. “Please calm down, Akashi.”
It’s an unreasonable request, but Midorima could never think of much else to do when Akashi was like this. For the most part, it happened in the middle of the night. He had grown accustomed to waking up to see Akashi holding his head in his hands with the heels of his palms pressed to his eyes.
“It’s too much.” Akashi always spoke calmly at first when the weight of the bed initially shifted with Midorima sitting up to put on his glasses. “I hate this, Midorima. It’s too much.”
He never said what was too much, and Midorima never found it in himself to ask. Rather, he never thought that Akashi would cooperate enough for him to give a proper answer. Akashi could be terribly volatile, but Midorima loves him all the same. His chest aches when he watches Akashi pull on his hair and groan in frustration one moment, and cry, hyperventilate and scream the next. He would scream at him to stay, to leave, to hold him or to never touch him again all at once. There was nothing he could do but hold Akashi’s wrist so he wouldn’t pull out all his hair. Akashi is hurting, and Midorima hated that even as a doctor he couldn’t do anything. More often than not, he felt as useless as he did when Akashi first started falling apart in junior high. Eight years of medical school weren’t worth the student loans and the meager salary for interns when he couldn’t even get his significant other to come back to bed with him.
“Come here, Akashi.”
“No.”
“Akashi.”
“Shut your mouth, Shintaro.”
He always hated how his first name sounded off of Akashi’s tongue. No matter how many times he hears it, he flinches as if it were the first. His name didn’t sound any better when punctuated with Akashi whipping his head around to briefly shoot the harshest of glares.
“Ah—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, Midorima.” The glare disappears the second that Akashi sees the startled look on Midorima’s face.
“I know you didn’t.”
Of course he didn’t. Akashi loves him, and Midorima knows it. He could tell by the way he kisses him every day.
“My head hurts.”
Acetaminophen would help with that.
“No, it’s my eyes.”
Prednisolone acetate.
“Get away from me, Shintaro. I can’t trust you, Shintaro.”
Haloperidol.
“I can’t sleep—it’s too loud. Midorima. Could you turn that down? The television. It’s not on? Do we have guests? Are people outside? Is the window open? There’s someone in our apartment, isn’t there? No, more than one person.”
Lorazepam.
“I just want to sleep, I want to sleep.”
Lorazepam.
He’s screaming into a pillow, he’s pounding his fists on the bed, he’s scratching his arms until they bleed and throwing things off of the bedside table as he gets up and paces back and forth. Over the past month he’s broken two lamps, countless drinking glasses, shattered his phone, and put a decent sized hole in the wall with his bloodied fist.
A lot of lorazepam.
“I’m so tired, Midorima. I give up. I’m exhausted. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
There is absolutely nothing he could give to someone who’s given up. It’s by that point that he stops throwing things. He stops screaming and thrashing, and the apartment falls uncomfortably silent.
His episodes never last more than half an hour, but Midorima couldn’t shake the feeling that one day, Akashi may never bounce back.
“I know, Akashi.”
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know the extent that he is hurting, but he’s hurting enough to cry and break Midorima’s heart.
“Come here.”
Akashi drags himself over, and Midorima pulls him down to lie on top of his chest. He’s shaking, but the shaking subsides after an hour or two, and he falls asleep every time. Midorima watches, and he watches until the sun comes up. Sleep, he decides, from here on out, isn’t something he needs anymore.
By morning, Akashi always claims he doesn’t recall his episode. He asks why the lamp is broken, why there’s broken glass on the ground, why his phone is shattered, why there’s a hole in the wall. Whatever it was he broke that particular night, he asks why it’s broken. From the shame in his eyes, Midorima doesn’t believe for a moment that Akashi couldn’t remember.
Midorima tidies their room, picking everything up off the ground while Akashi spews apology after apology. He’s gotten good at picking up broken glass without cutting his hands. Since Akashi started waking up in the middle of the night, Midorima cared less for keeping his fingers pristine. It wasn’t as though he would be playing basketball again any time soon. Work and Akashi came before running in circles and tossing around an orange ball. Though, he would have been lying if he said that he didn’t miss catching Akashi’s passes.
Midorima keeps his lips shut as he patches Akashi up once the mess is cleaned off of the ground. Bandages that were once used to wrap the fingers on his left hand were now used to tape gauze to Akashi’s knuckles.
Loving Akashi hurts, but he’s loved him since junior high, through high school, undergrad and medical school. There wasn’t a day in his life that he didn’t love Akashi, and he wouldn’t let go so easily. He just wished he had applied for more psychiatry residency programs.
* * *
Working nights in the emergency room wasn’t nearly as eventful as anyone would imagine. As a general practitioner occasionally stuck in the emergency room to tend to the patients with non-urgent problems, Midorima found himself taping sprained ankles and reassuring concerned parents that they don’t have to come to the emergency room every time their toddler swallows a foreign object. Occasionally, he felt a little jealous, having to stitch little cuts while his colleagues dealt with more interesting cases, but he decided against emergency medicine solely because he didn’t mind the menial tasks. It wasn’t often that he had to tell a family that their loved one was terminally ill, and he rarely made life or death decisions, which was a benefit as well.
“It’s kinda quiet today, huh?”
Now that Takao had dropped the subject of his girlfriend, Midorima looks around to see that there really wasn’t much going on. If that weren’t the case, he wouldn’t have been standing around the nurse’s station for Takao to make one-sided conversation with. Late nights and early mornings on weekdays were always a bit uneventful compared to the rest of the week.
“You say it like it’s a good thing.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
Knowing his luck, it was only a matter of time before a dozen ambulances arrived and flooded the emergency room with bloody, mangled bodies for his colleagues to crudely tape together before pawning the patient off to one specialist or another. Sometimes the hospital acted too much like an assembly line for Midorima’s liking. Handing off one problem from one doctor to another while making the claim that the other person is more qualified may as well be a roundabout way to say that the patient has been given up on. Giving up on people, though, is something Midorima is more intimately familiar with than he would like to admit.
The proverbial calm before the storm was far from something to be comforted by, and yet Takao consistently remains blissfully unaware. Either that or he is more aware than anyone else in the hospital, but is just better at pretending that wasn’t the case. For someone whose job description entailed getting drenched in bodily fluids daily and doing the dirty work for doctors, Takao is awfully good at smiling. When he thought about it, Takao was the only person he knew that could smile while being vomited on by a drunken homeless man stumbling into the emergency room.
Just as he had gotten comfortable with the unusually relaxed ambience, Takao speaks again, and Midorima sighs. The clipboard in his hand was suddenly significantly more interesting than whatever it was that Takao had to say.
“So, when’re you proposing?”
Takao was far more interested in his relationship than Midorima was himself. Takao was a man with good intentions—which was more or less the only reason why he continued to remain close friends with him after graduating from high school. While he’s good company to have around, it doesn’t make it any less infuriating when Takao’s good intentions rubbed him the wrong way.
“One day.”
“Lame. You live with a hot girl that’s crazy ‘bout you, and you’re not even going to marry her? I’m a little jealous.”
“Don’t be.”
There was no reason to tell Takao about how his girlfriend felt more like a roommate, or how the sex is lackluster at best. It would be embarrassing and emasculating to confess that he would much rather climb into bed and lie down beside her with the excuse that he was too tired to do anything. She, like Takao, is nothing more than good company.
Midorima sees the smile on Takao’s face falter for a moment in his peripheral, and he lifts his head from the clipboard. It wasn’t often that he saw Takao with anything but a smile or a shit-eating smirk on his face. A break in a smile on Takao’s face always meant that he was about to say something terribly unnerving or astoundingly stupid.
“You’re not still hung up on him, are you? Hung up on Akashi?”
He flinches, and it was all the response Takao needed. As he expected, the question is simultaneously unnerving and stupid.
“It’s been years, c’mon. He’s gone.”
He isn’t. Akashi isn’t gone, and Takao knows it.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” His voice is strained; it’s weighed down with guilt that he had previously drowned in drink after drink at run down bars. Takao is good company, but he’s the best company when they were both a few too many glasses of whiskey into the night. He did have a nasty habit of revealing a bit too much to Takao when he was just a touch inebriated, but it was better than quietly discussing feelings while they were at work.
There’s a shogi piece he always carries in the breast pocket of his coat, and Midorima swears he can feel it cutting into his chest. It weighs a ton; it’s the cross he bears. It’s a bishop, and it reminds him of who he once worshiped.
“You wanna talk about it?”
“There is nothing to talk about.”
“You did the right thing, y’know. He wasn’t gonna get any better.”
“Takao."
“I mean, he was kinda bad for you.”
Takao is right. He hates that Takao is always right. He hates Takao, he hates Akashi, and he hates himself the most. There were too many sleepless nights spent thinking about how if he were just a little stronger and just a little more persistent, Takao would be wrong and Akashi would be here. Akashi would be here and wouldn’t be someone to be hung up on. That was the sole reason for the overnight shifts. If he was going to be awake all night, he would rather be awake at work than pretending that the weight on the other side of the bed wasn’t his girlfriend and was someone else entirely.
“We’re not discussing this right now.”
“You can’t ignore it for—“
The ringing of a phone interrupts Takao before he could finish his sentence, and Midorima exhales a quiet sigh of relief. Sighing was a bit inappropriate when a call meant that a patient was coming in, but in that patients suffering he found an excuse to cut short his conversation. His blood alcohol content was far too low to deal with Takao and his incessant pestering.
“I’m taking my leave.”
Takao huffs, and the look of pity in his eyes was beyond infuriating. It’s infuriating because he doesn’t need anyone’s pity, and it’s infuriating because he knew that he had given Akashi the exact same look in the past himself. Takao gave pity where Midorima needed companionship, and Midorima gave pity where Akashi needed love. The only difference was that Midorima knew that Takao had the decency to not give up on him, just as he had given up on Akashi himself.
* * *
Akashi is hot.
He’s sticky, he’s panting and he’s absolutely lovely when he’s catching his breath with his fingers still tangled in the sheets beneath him. It was nice to see him with his hair messy and plastered to his cheeks after having it combed back all day for work. It’s even nicer when Midorima knew that he was the only one that got to see Akashi so disheveled. When Akashi is bent over underneath him, it’s hard to remember any of the grief that Akashi had given him just the night before.
Midorima gives Akashi’s side a light squeeze and presses his lips to the back of his head while they both regain their composure. Akashi’s thighs are still shaking, and Midorima wants nothing more than to flip Akashi over, nudge his knees apart and kiss from his hips to his knees until the tremors stopped.
“Are you okay?”
Midorima breaks the silence after finding his voice between each ragged inhale and exhale. Akashi gives a slow nod before turning his head to press his cheek to the sheets and look up at Midorima from the corner of his eye. Akashi’s smiling. His smile is unbelievably intoxicating.
“Of course.”
Between work and conflicting schedules, it wasn’t often that they had time for making love. Midorima was no stranger to bending Akashi over his office desk, and after one isolated instance, Akashi was no stranger to the cramped on-call room in the hospital. But, the hasty rendezvous didn’t—and couldn’t replace the comfort of their bedroom.
Kisses run from the back of Akashi’s head to the space between his shoulder blades. Every inch of Akashi’s body was committed to memory in the past, both with his fingertips and his lips. He could name every tendon and bone in his body, but textbooks and diagrams did Akashi no justice. Textbooks say that his body is made of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus, but no textbook could even come close to putting a number on how many kisses Midorima had pressed against his pale complexion. Textbooks didn’t say how much love went into making Akashi fall back asleep at night, and there certainly wasn’t a textbook in circulation with a chapter on how good Akashi was at giving the love that he rarely received as a child. Akashi is a phenomenon that Midorima couldn’t explain, and Midorima decided years ago that he wanted to be an expert on him. He didn’t care about the stars anymore. Akashi, he decides, is more intriguing and far more beautiful than any constellation. There is no room for Orion and Canis Major in his head when he had to memorize the curve of Akashi’s jaw, the arch of his back, and the flecks of maroon in his eyes.
“I adore you.” Midorima murmurs, and Akashi squirms to roll over onto his back.
“Do you?”
“I do.”
For a man so reluctant to wear his heart on his sleeve, Midorima had learned to let down his guard to show Akashi just how deserving of love he really was.
“I’m awfully lucky, then.”
“I wouldn’t call it luck.”
Luck is four-leaf clovers found growing in the crevices of a sidewalk. Luck is carrying around knick-knacks and wearing certain colors on certain days because the stars said so. Luck is falling in love with somebody that will never leave, no matter how difficult things get.
“Then what would you call it?”
“Fate.”
There had to be a reason that Akashi came crashing into his life again and again no matter how many times things fell apart. It’s hard, loving Akashi, but it’s harder to pull away when he was so entangled in him.
Akashi laughs. His laugh sounds heavenly. It sounds so, so lovely compared to his screaming and crying the night before.
“I suppose you’re right. I never thought of it that way.”
Midorima responds with a kiss. Pillow talk was never his strong front.
Akashi kisses back, and Midorima slowly trails his hands down Akashi’s sides to find his hips.
“One more time.” Midorima exhales the words against Akashi’s lips, even though it went without saying that he wasn’t quite done for the evening.
Akashi nods, and his arms wrap around Midorima’s neck. His knees hook over Midorima’s hips, and they both fall in love with how their bodies fit together so perfectly. They’re absolutely exhausted, but the laziness of sticky skin sliding against skin had its own unique charm worth staying awake for.
It’s easier to make Akashi fall asleep like this. He stays asleep through the night as well.
“One more time it is.”
* * *
The triage nurse doesn’t look terribly concerned. She does, however, look a touch disturbed when she hangs up the phone. She trots away, and Midorima knew to follow after her without a word. Nurses in the hospital were more intimidating than he thought they would be—with Takao being an obvious exception. He learned early on in his internship to hold his tongue and show as much respect towards the nurses as he would an attending.
“The patient is just one block down. Male, 26, possible self-inflicted eye trauma.”
“Possible?”
“He wasn’t the one on the phone.”
“I see.”
“Now isn’t the time to be making jokes.”
“I wasn’t— well, anything else?”
“I’ll find the psychiatrist on call for you. Just do your job.”
Midorima nods slowly, already bracing himself to tend to someone either strung out on drugs and/or in the midst of a psychotic break to burst through the doors holding his bloody, gouged out eyes in his hands. The job seemed more suited for an ophthalmologist, but the hospital was small and it was late enough that Midorima could imagine that they would have trouble trying to track one down.
“The guy must be insane.” The nurse mumbles under her breath, and Midorima frowns. While the comment is wildly unprofessional, Midorima would have been lying if he said that he wasn’t thinking the same thing.
“We’ve all seen much wor—“
Midorima flinches and stops in his tracks before he nears the doors to the emergency room. There’s screaming—a lot of screaming, which was much more appropriate for an emergency room than the peaceful silence he and Takao enjoyed just moments earlier. It’s the usual “Let go of me!” and “I’m fine—get away from me!” More often than not, the patients that scream that they are fine are the ones that cause the most grief.
On top of the screaming there’s blood. He’s seen blood spilled on the floor and splattered over his chest, but there was something uncomfortable about how blood stained the white collar of the patient’s button down shirt. It was smeared over his cheeks and stained the crudely wrapped bandages over his eyes. The man that he assumed was on the phone with the nurse looked like a bloody mess from holding the patient’s arms behind his back to drag/carry him inside.
Patients like these weren’t anything out of the ordinary, though it’s when the patient starts throwing punches and kicks that Midorima tenses and takes half a step backwards for the security guards to hold him down. With all of the thrashing about, he couldn’t see the patient very well at all, but there was something about his voice that made him nauseous.
“He’s my boss—he’s just my boss, I didn’t do this to him. I don’t know what happened—he’s always been… He’s just a little… I don’t know, I don’t know what happened.” The man that brought the patient in didn’t seem to be in any less distress. He spoke with one hand gripping the sleeve of Midorima’s coat, but he doesn’t budge. He wasn’t about to move until the patient stops kicking and screaming. It’s starting to get ugly, and Midorima watches as his mouth goes dry while nurses and security guards struggle to pin the man down to a bed.
He’s screaming that his eyes hurt. He’s screaming that he can’t see one second and that he doesn’t want to see the next. He’s screaming that his head aches, that everything is too loud—despite him being the one making a scene. He’s hurting. He’s hurting a lot.
Midorima takes another step back, only to be stopped by a palm pressed to the center of his back. It’s Takao, and his eyes are wide with concern. For once, Takao has the decency to keep his mouth shut.
Now he’s crying. He’s crying and begging for something—no, for someone. He’s hyperventilating, shaking and pounding his fists on the bed until a security guard grabs his wrist and cuffs it to the bed. His other wrist follows shortly after.
“Shintaro, Shintaro.”
The patient hiccups, and all the employees turn to look at Midorima.
“Get away from me! Shintaro—let go of me.”
Midorima’s fingers twitch, and he leans some of his weight against Takao. Time may as well have stood still. The hand against his back clenches. Takao couldn’t have been more than half a second from yanking him away from the situation.
“Don’t go—don’t go, please don’t go, Midorima. Midorima, please—“
Now that the security guards and nurses had a better hold on the patient, they lean back, and Midorima sees red. He sees red staining the patient’s shirt, smeared over his face and the bandages over his eyes, just as he saw before. But now he sees red hair, red eyebrows. There’s too much red.
“Shintaro, did you hear what I said?”
He looks good in red, though. There’s just too much of it.
“Midorima, I’m sorry—I’m sorry.”
He’s beautiful, actually. The curve of his jawline is beautiful and familiar, even when he’s screaming and crying. The arch of his back is also beautiful, even though he’s thrashing and writhing. He’s the most beautiful person he’s seen in his life, and he’s caked in blood. He’s lovely, he’s breathtaking, he’s familiar, and he’s so goddamn mesmerizing that it burns.
No more than five minutes have passed since the patient was dragged through the sliding doors of the emergency room, and in those five minutes, Midorima learns heartache all over again.
“Are you just going to stand there?” The triage nurse has Midorima snapping back to reality, and he blinks behind his glasses before steadying himself on his feet without Takao’s support. Now she had blood staining the front of her scrubs, and her cheek looked swollen from a swing of the patient’s fist.
“Let me sleep—let go of me and let me sleep. I can’t sleep like this—get these things out of my head!”
Thankfully the patient’s eyes were still in his skull and not already gouged out. The eyes behind the bandages must be gorgeous. It would be a shame to lose them.
“They hurt so bad—“
“Lorazepam.” Midorima mouths the words to himself, and he glances at Takao. “Intramuscular lorazepam… Four milligrams... Takao…”
He watches silently as the triage nurse pulls back the bandages from the patient’s face, and Midorima reaches back to brace against Takao, but he’s already left. The bandages were gone, and underneath them he sees even more red. The damage wasn’t terrible. A few stitches would be more than enough. They looked like scratches, and from the blood caked beneath the patient’s fingernails, he knew that the patient wasn’t brought to the hospital just for a few stitches.
The patient had stopped thrashing violently now that his wrists were restrained, but his chest is still rising and falling heavily and his shoulders are shaking. He’s gone still enough for the nurses to jot down his blood pressure, his heart rate, his temperature—everything needed for a properly filled patient report.
After blinking away the blood on his face, he opens his eyes. He squints beneath the fluorescent lighting of the emergency room. He looks at the ceiling, then at his wrists, and then forward. Eye contact was made instantaneously, and Midorima reels backwards. His eyes are red—they’re both red, or perhaps one is orange? From where he stood a safe distance away from the patient, he couldn’t tell.
What he could tell is that his eyes are as breathtaking as he expected them to be. They make the crimson of his blood look dull in comparison.
There was a brief moment of lucidity when the patient stills. He goes silent. He stares at Midorima, and Midorima stares back.
He doesn’t need medicine—at least, not now. He needed someone to crawl in bed with him and hold him until the tremors went away, but holding and falling in love with someone is a horrible treatment plan. In hindsight, that never worked in the past. Midorima doesn’t bother to entertain the thought that he may need that treatment himself. Still, romanticizing that kind of suffering didn’t do anyone any good.
“Akashi.” Midorima rasps. The name tastes like saltwater on his tongue.
The name triggers more screaming. He’s screaming “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and his voice sounds raw. He’s begging not to be left alone, that he’s gotten better, that he doesn’t want to be left alone again.
Midorima’s feet remain cemented to the ground, even as Takao shoulders past him with the ordered medication and the nurses yell at him to come help with the patient. All at once he feels like he’s drowning and burning. He aches but he’s also numb. He wonders if that’s what Akashi feels like every day.
Thankfully Akashi’s words are starting to slur before he damages his vocal cords. The thrashing and jerking slow enough for Midorima to remind himself how to breathe.
Takao is always so good at doing his job; he’s the best nurse anyone could ask for. Midorima takes a mental note to buy Takao a drink the next time they went out together. Did he drink scotch? Sake? Should he just buy him a beer? There’s blood on his scrubs. Maybe it would be more appropriate to buy Takao a new set of scrubs instead—no; he probably had hundreds of spares at home. Now is hardly the time to be thinking about what Takao’s drink of choice and clothing size is, but it’s the only thing that doesn’t hurt to think about.
“Midorima, let’s go.” It’s the first time that he’s heard Takao call him anything other than ‘Shin-chan’. Even in front of patients it was always ‘Shin-chan, Shin-chan’ and never ‘doctor’. “Someone else is gonna take care of him.”
He wanted to go. He wanted nothing more than to let Takao take him somewhere that wasn’t so red. Now seemed like the perfect time to buy Takao that drink—and buy himself a dozen more, but he couldn’t move no matter how much Takao tugged on his arm.
“He’s not gone.”
“Yep, you were right. Come on.”
“Is he okay?”
It’s a stupid question, and Takao had every right to reply with a stupid answer. But Takao simply thins his lips.
“He’s just a little scuffed up.” Takao exhales. Midorima couldn’t quite tell if it was a sigh of relief or of annoyance and frustration. “He’ll live.”
* * *
“Do you love me, Midorima?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions, Akashi.”
“But is it? Is it a stupid question?”
“It is.”
“How so?”
“If I didn’t, I would have given up on you before we even entered high school.”
“So, does that mean you won’t give up on me in the future?”
“Of course.”
“Even if I drive you insane?”
“Yes.”
“Is that a promise?”
“I’m a man of my word, Akashi. You ought to know by now.”
Akashi’s laugh is what Midorima imagines heaven sounds like. He would forsake every star in the sky to hear Akashi laugh every day and never hear him scream and cry again.
“I suppose you are.”
“I love you. If it gives you any peace of mind to hear me say it more than I already do, I’ll repeat myself as many times as you’d like.”
“Just once more, then.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
* * *
Midorima watches as the security guards return to what they were doing before Akashi came crashing into the emergency room. His eyes wander back to the nurses standing by Akashi, presumably waiting for another doctor and the psychiatrist to arrive. He wanted to snatch the clipboard from their hands to read what the nurses had jotted down earlier to reassure himself that his vitals were fine and stable, but walking towards Akashi was impossible.
After another drawn out moment of staring, Midorima takes a step backwards before letting Takao walk him away. The last thing he wanted to do was turn his back to Akashi again, but he could kick himself for it later. So long as Akashi wasn’t screaming and in pain, he could walk away without too much of a guilty conscience.
Midorima turns on his heel to walk beside Takao, and he tugs his wrist away from him. He doesn’t need someone to hold his hand while he walked. A ring of red stained the sleeve of his coat where Takao grabbed him. It wasn’t like Takao to forget to wear a pair of gloves when handling a patient—especially when administering medication, but there was some sick irony to him getting blood on his hands. It shouldn’t be Takao with his hands bloodied. Midorima knew he should be the one with Akashi’s blood on his hands and not Takao. But, he could settle for his wrist.
“Takao.”
“Mm.”
“I think I’m going to propose to her.”
The words leave Midorima’s mouth before he could think them over. Still, he doesn’t bother to take them back. Without that kind of commitment, Midorima couldn’t quite trust himself to not go chasing after Akashi all over again.
Takao’s initial lack of a response is disconcerting. He’s silent as they walk towards the locker room to gather their belongings, but eventually the smile does return to his face. It’s strained, and the corners of his lips twitch uncomfortably. The attempt doesn’t go unappreciated, though. It’s obvious that Takao is more than aware of how terrible of an idea it is, but sometimes his optimism could get the best of him.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I better be your best man.”
“We’ll see.”
It’s brief, but Midorima catches the frown and look of pity on Takao’s face before he goes back to grinning like an idiot.
“She’s crazy about you.”
“Yeah.”
“You two are good together.”
“Yeah.”
“I knew you’d come around.”
“Yeah.”
“But you love her, right?”
This time it’s Midorima’s turn to pause, and the pause alone gave away that, no, he doesn’t love her. There wasn’t much room in his heart for anyone after Akashi came into his life. The shogi piece in his breast pocket constantly reminded him of how hard he fell for a boy that couldn’t fall for anyone but his own mental illness.
“Yeah.” Midorima swallows thickly. The words both feel and sound awful. They taste even worse. “I love her.”