Notes: This is silly (just like the title implies). I have a cold and I wanted to complain and I also wanted Shinara cuddles — that's the only reason why this exists. Don't expect too much, I'll probably kick myself for posting this tomorrow.
Silly Ideas
When it comes to dealing with Arakita Yasutomo things aren't always easy. He's rude and generally annoyed and prone to complain — by the mountain slopes of Hakone, can he complain! If you ask Tōdō Jinpachi Arakita's manners (or rather lack thereof) can wear down the most patient soul and make even the King of the Mountains forfeit at times — which is funny, since Tōdō's tendency to talk endlessly has the potential to drive everyone out of their mind.
But Tōdō Jinpachi doesn't count when it comes to a list of the most aggravating people at school compiled by Tōdō himself, and if Arakita in general makes it among the top ten, then Arakita when he's sick is in first place and to be avoided at all costs. Luckily, Shinkai Hayato isn't Tōdō and neither does he go by the assessments of the climber and self-proclaimed Sleeping Beauty of the Hakone Academy biking club. So Shinkai has no problem with checking in after a day of school and training on his road racer when Arakita is tied to his bed with a horrible cold.
The knock he's giving the door is brief and quick. It's a formality that becomes pointless as Shinkai pushes the door handle down without waiting for any reaction of the person who is currently calling this dorm room his own.
Announcing himself with the words "I'm coming in" becomes just as pointless as he's already across the threshold when he utters them. That's something Shinkai isn't concerned with, however. The list of things he's actually concerned with is pretty short: being the fastest cyclist in a road race, always having something to eat, taking care of his rabbit Usakichi and — as of recently — his teammate Arakita Yasutomo. Everything else is of little to no interest to him.
Arakita would instantly complain about the invasion of his privacy — don't come barging in here, you moron! — but the room remains quiet. Shinkai is almost a little disappointed as he gets to close the door behind him in silence.
In the dim light that's falling in through the closed curtains he can make out the shape of Arakita's body lying in his bed. The duvet drawn up to his neck leaves only his head with the messy black hair sticking out. He's turned towards the wall his bed is up against and the sound of soft, mostly even breathing can be heard. He's asleep.
Shinkai's lips spread into a casual smile. So that's why he wasn't greeted with a wave of complaints. It would worry him otherwise.
Letting his gaze wander briefly through the semi-dark room, Shinkai can make out the state of chaos it's in. There are clothes are piled up on a chair and whether the things lying around on the desk couldn't be stored in a better place or a neater fashion is questionable. The main part of the current mess is centred near Arakita's bed, however. There are several bottles of Bepsi — Shinkai is hoping they're all empty or at least that the lids are closed properly — standing and lying around at the foot of the small nightstand next to the head of the bed. As if to top things off, a collection of used tissues is strewn around them. It's all looking very contagious.
Smile unchanged, Shinkai puts down his shoulder bag next to the closet with an amused shake of his head. He isn't very surprised at the sight, knowing his teammate for about one and a half years by now. Arakita isn't neat. Getting him to tidy up after himself at the club room required some effort. On the few occasions Shinkai stopped by at his dorm before he didn't find the room in much of a better state. The clothes draped over the chair in an unsightly fashion seem to be a constant — or maybe they disappear for a while when Arakita gets around to doing his laundry, though Shinkai cannot say how often that might happen.
If you ask the sprinter, however, things could be a lot worse — though Tōdō would probably disagree with such an assessment. Organised and fastidious as he is, the sight of Arakita's room would most likely cause him to go in shock. Luckily enough, Tōdō never has a reason to come here, so his thoughts on the state of this place are absolutely irrelevant.
Assuming that sleeping in Arakita's state isn't easy, Shinkai decides not to wake him. However, leaving isn't an option he even considers. Instead he starts looking around more closely in search for something he can use to put away the trash. It doesn't take him long to make out a crumpled plastic bag on the floor next to the desk. It probably got abandoned there after fulfilling its purpose of transporting groceries. Shinkai walks over and picks it up. It doesn't seem big enough to fit all the Bepsi bottles, but it's a start at least.
He tries to be as quiet as possible as he kneels down next to the bed and starts picking up the used tissues. He also tries not to think too much about what he's touching with his bare fingers. Shinkai doesn't have any fear of contact and a high limit of tolerance when it comes to dirty things, but that doesn't mean he has no reservations when it comes to picking up someone's used tissues — because really, who likes touching anything they know is overflowing with germs.
After getting rid of the first round of trash (the collection of empty Bepsi bottles will have to wait), Shinkai stops by in the dorm kitchen to brew some tea he got specifically for his sick teammate at the store earlier. It's a habit in the Shinkai family to drink lots of herbal tea when you're down with a cold and he decided to extend this treatment to Arakita. Whether that will be appreciated or not is another matter — and honestly, nothing Shinkai worries about.
Steaming cup in hand, he sneaks back into Arakita's dorm room. He's barely through the door when he can make out a lazy groan followed by some coughing. Arakita seems to be stirring awake which means Shinkai doesn't have to rip him from his dreams to pour the tea down his throat. Convenient.
Blinking his eyes open, Arakita turns around in his bed. His gaze briefly falls on Shinkai who's standing in the middle of the room, tea ready in his hand. But his brain only processes very little of the picture that presents itself to him.
"Oh, Shinkai?" he grumbles, voice sounding sore and sleepy. "When did you get here?"
"A while ago," Shinkai answers vaguely. His full lips are spread into his usual soft smile.
Arakita blinks again, still fighting to regain full consciousness. He has registered that Shinkai is standing in front of him, however his brain still has to make the connection between it and the fact that this is Arakita's bedroom and Shinkai has no place to be here, especially since Arakita has no recollection whatsoever of letting him in.
The realisation settles in and the drowsy high schooler sits upright in his bed. However, he used too much force and moved too quickly, so the dizziness coming over him has him pause and cover his eyes with his hand.
"Shit!" he curses, only to be shaken by a few coughs.
Once both the dizziness and the tickle in his throat have lessened, he squints at Shinkai who remained silent all this time with displeasure. "What are you doing here?"
"I wanted to check in on you," the unannounced visitor explains and starts walking over to the bed.
"And who let you in?" Arakita inquires with a sceptical frown.
"I let myself in," Shinkai declares as if there was nothing wrong with that. (Typical!, Arakita thinks grumpily.) He sits down on the edge of the bed and asks: "How are you feeling, Yasutomo?"
With a groan Arakita leans back against the wall.
"Crap!" he complains weakly. "I can't breathe through my nose, my muscles are hurting and I'm sweaty as if I've been racing in the summer heat all day. It's gross!"
Another coughing fit shakes through his body and forces him to lean forward. He feels like his lungs are about to break out of his chest and he's close to choking. It's painful, it's exhausting, he just wants it to stop!
"Did I mention the coughing is nearly killing me?" Arakita adds once he's able to catch his breath.
He sinks backwards against the wall again and grimaces, because the bedframe is cutting into the small of his back. Despite it being effort, he bends forward once more and stuffs his pillow behind his back to sit more comfortably.
Shinkai watches him with empathy in his eyes. Judging by how exhausted he looks, Arakita isn't even exaggerating with his complaints. This is why the sprinter wanted to do something for his sick teammate.
"I brought you something," Shinkai offers.
Arakita feels too weak to be very comprehensible. His body is too worn out for him to bother with trying to look over at Shinkai. Lids heavy, he's slumped against the wall behind him, not caring how pathetic he must look.
"Is it Bepsi?" he asks blindly. He could really do with a Bepsi right now, though the bitter taste currently occupying his mouth might diminish the pleasure of his favourite drink. "My supplies all ran out."
"I could tell," Shinkai notes with a look at the conglomeration of emptied Bepsi bottles next to his feet. "And no, it's tea."
Despite sitting still, another row of coughs grips Arakita. He has to wait for the surges to stop shaking through his body before he can blink away the tears that formed in his eyes from the strain and the force out: "Tea? What do I want with that stuff?"
"Drink it, so you get well soon." Shinkai presents him with the steaming cup in his hand, accompanied with a smile that might be considered encouraging.
Arakita gives the tea being held in front of his face a long, sceptical glare. He looks over at his teammate's face, then back to the the hot drink. A frown has formed on his forehead and his lips are tightened.
"No," he rejects the offer like a petulant little child.
That isn't enough to discourage Shinkai however. He doesn't move or pull back his hands, he just cocks his head sideways, smile unaffected.
"Come on," he coaxes.
He's played this game many times by now. Arakita says no to a lot of things. It seems to be in his nature to reject. But Shinkai has made it his task to convince him that sometimes things are not so bad or worth trying.
Arakita pulls up the cover to his shoulders, because his room is currently too cold for him or he's currently to feverish to consider room temperature warm enough. The sight of Shinkai looking at him like that is more than he wants to put up with right now. The sprinter seems close to breaking out his puppy eyes, that manipulative shit! Arakita crosses his arms in front of his chest and looks away pointedly.
"I don't want to," he declares, remaining obstinate.
"Yasutomo,"Shinkai persists.
Arakita is familiar with that tone. He doesn't have to look over to know that Shinkai is pouting now with sad, maudlin eyes. Arakita knows the tactic well; he's been subjected to it many times by now over ridiculous things. Each time he told himself he wouldn't fall for it and each time he failed and gave in. But not today! He just has to avoid looking at him until Shinkai gives up. It's easy.
Arakita is dead-set on ignoring Shinkai's act, even if his neck ends up stiff from looking away. But his willpower is being tested. It's quiet in the dorm room — too quiet. Arakita can feel the pressure of blue eyes on him. The voiceless begging of full lips is occupying the back of his mind. He's hyper-aware of Shinkai's presence. He can't stop himself, he glances over. It's only for a brief moment, but it's enough to confirm the picture he's already imagined in his head. Bad idea!
Still, Arakita remains persistent. He won't give in, definitely not. Shinkai and his pouting lips be damned! He'll put him in his place. But the image won't leave his head now. It gets harder and harder to ignore the boy sitting on his bed frame. He shoots Shinkai a dark glare. By then he already knows it's too late.
"Oh fine, give it to me," Arakita relents, reaching out for the cup.
Shinkai regards him with a satisfied gleam in his eyes as he brings it to his mouth takes a quick sip. However, Arakita didn't anticipate the temperature of the hot drink and ends up nearly burning his tongue.
"Fuck, that's hot!" he exclaims, pulling the cup away from his lips to get as much distance between his lips and the boiled liquid as possible. "I can't drink that!"
"It's supposed to be hot," Shinkai points out, simple and plain. "There's little point in drinking it cold."
Arakita shoots him an irritated glare.
"Yeah, but there's 'just about drinkable'-hot—" another cough forces its way out of his throat, leaving his voice weak "—and then there's 'it's going to burn away the inside of your mouth'-hot — and this is definitely the latter!"
Shinkai chuckles lightly. "Just drink it slowly in small sips and you'll be fine."
"Well, thanks for the warning," Arakita grumbles with displeasure, because why didn't Shinkai say so right away, but he's still heeding the advice given to him.
He isn't one for tea, definitely not herbal tea. He grimaces at the taste of it with every sip he takes. But he does have to admit that it seems to help. It's soothing his irritated throat and it's washing away some of the bitter taste in his mouth. So he gradually empties the whole cup without any further complains.
Unfortunately, sitting up in his bed has exposed Arakita to the cooler air in the room and his body reacts with a running nose and sneezing. While Shinkai is putting down the emptied cup on the desk for the time being, Arakita reaches blindly next to his bed. Somewhere between the Bepsi bottles on the floor there should be another package of tissues which fell from his nightstand earlier.
Shinkai watches as his teammate is groping a package from the floor and pulling out a tissue. After heartily blowing his nose, Arakita throws it on the pile of Bepsi bottles without a second thought. Shinkai is rarely closed to sighing, but in this case his amusement is a little dimmed. His brief cleaning earlier seems to have been in vain. Maybe he should get another plastic bag, before the pile on the floor expands again.
Arakita, of course, isn't concerned with that. Actually, he didn't notice that the contents of his bedside trash heap have reduced. (He hadn't even noticed how it had grown in the first place.) He just feels exhausted and hazy and wants to sleep. But he remembers what a hassle it was to fall asleep in the first place, so he's leaning against the wall in defeat, his eyes half shut, duvet covering his whole body except for his aching head. He feels like a radiant heater.
When Shinkai sits down on his bedside again and puts a hand to his forehead, Arakita blinks his eyes open. But he doesn't even have the energy to question what the other is doing. He's in a state of simply existing in misery, only feeling Shinkai's fingers cold against his burning skin, but unable to do anything about them.
"Wow," the high schooler with the distinctive mane of red hair comments. "You're really hot!"
Arakita frowns at him. For one thing, that's a weird thing to say to your teammate — if you ask him anyway. For another thing, Shinkai is remaining with his hand stuck to his warm forehead for way too long — not that it isn't refreshing to have something cooling against his feverish skin.
When Shinkai pulls away he's nodding to himself, as if he just assured himself of something. The smile has currently faded from his face.
"Indeed I can confirm that it's best for you remain confined to your bed for now," he concludes in a tone that sounds way too serious to be earnest. And indeed a shiteating grin surfaces as he adds: "The boys and girls would swoon if we let you out like that."
"Shut up!" Arakita snaps and glares at him. "Don't make shitty puns! Do you even have a concept of sexual attractiveness?"
He doesn't know what caused him to ask that. But Shinkai started with the weird comments. You don't just randomly tell your friend that he's hot, not even for the sake of a pun — at least as far as Arakita is concerned. What the hell?
The sprinter chuckles lightly. No one knows how he takes delight in throwing off others with the things he does or says sometimes. He just likes to test people's reactions — especially if it's a big-mouthed, dark-haired cyclist who he's taken way too much interest in recently. Shinkai wants to see him unguarded and enjoys every moment he comes close to it.
He avoids answering the question by returning it in a teasing tone: "Do you?"
"I don't," Arakita declares, having no issues with admitting to it. He never saw a reason to bring up his lack of sexual attraction to anyone, but if he's being asked directly like there's no point to him in hiding it, even if he seems to be different from the people around him in that aspect. "But have you ever heard me crack some overused joke about sexual stuff?"
"No," Shinkai confirms. "And I think that's such a waste."
The annoyed eye-roll at that statement is already an automatism. Arakita probably couldn't stop it even if he feared his eyes would end up stuck in his sockets facing the inside of his head, leaving him blind for the rest of his life.
"Pah! Go away, shithead!" he exclaims with a vehemence that has him end in another coughing fit.
Exhausted, Arakita slides down beneath the covers and curls up on his side. He's so sick and tired of this. He wants to cleanse his body from this cold or move out of his skin until it has passed. Or if he could at least sleep properly. He groans woefully into his pillow to express his suffering.
"What's that?" Shinkai asks, leaning over his teammate. His hand touches the shoulder of the ball of misery wrapped up in his duvet.
"I'm dreadful, make it stop," Arakita speaks up, his voice muffled by the pillow his mouth is pressed against.
Shinkai starts rubbing the upper arm of his teammate with sympathy. He's seen Arakita in many situations: annoyed, complaining, exhausted, big-mouthed, stubborn — and even sheepish or relenting sometimes. Yet the abrasive demeanour was always there like an iron wall surrounding him and it was hard to find any cracks to peer at what lies beneath. He's that gruff guy still, but now he seems less guarded, like he's showing more of his vulnerable side — or is too worn out from his sickness to hide it.
It's something Shinkai's wanted for a while now: to touch Arakita, to get under his skin and discover his core. Yet when he decided to come for a visit today it hadn't been for that reason. You could call it an unexpected opportunity to find that the cold has worn down Arakita's defences so much.
Shinkai leans closer, just because he wants to try it, and whispers: "Unfortunately I can't do that."
"Figures," is all the sick high schooler grumbles.
He doesn't say anything about the hand rubbing circles into his arm, his shoulder and even parts of his back through the duvet. There's no comment about how coming this close isn't necessary. He just puts up with it. Or maybe he's feeling too horrible to complain about it, his teammate thinks.
After a while Shinkai halts the movement of his hand, leaving it to rest on the duvet before pulling away.
"Hey, who said you could stop," Arakita demands.
A surprised laugh escapes full lips. Blue eyes watch as two lanky arms reach out from under the duvet. Arakita wraps them around Shinkai's hips and starts pulling, but he has no strength in them to move anything. Shinkai can't help being amused.
"What are you doing?" he questions.
"Get over here!" Arakita demands without giving a direct answer. "If you can't make it stop, at least you can try to make me feel better."
Another wave of coughs surges through his body. He's forced to let go and sits up to wait it out. Shinkai uses the time he's distracted to chute over and slip into the bed next to his teammate. The invitation is very unexpected, but he wouldn't pass it up. He wouldn't have thought Arakita was one to demand this kind of attention, definitely not directly. Nothing about his demeanour ever expressed anything closely to "give me affection". He even rejects any form of acknowledgement if it doesn't come from Fukutomi.
By the time the coughing fit has passed, Shinkai's sitting diagonally behind Arakita. The sprinter slings his arms around the slim frame of the other's body and rests his chin on his shoulder. He wondered what it would be like to hold Arakita, but he never thought he'd get the chance to touch him like this.
"So, you want to cuddle?" Shinkai questions playfully. He's not willing to let his fellow cyclist just get away with this request, though it's already decided that he's following through with it. "With me? I'm flattered."
Arakita shrugs, as if he's trying to get rid of the head weighing onto his shoulder. But there's no real effort behind the gesture. Shinkai pulls his head up anyway.
"Don't get so full of yourself!" Arakita rebukes. "About anyone would do right now."
Shinkai won't settle for that. He knows it's not true. Arakita wouldn't just ask anyone, he's not the type. It's not that Shinkai just happened to be here and Arakita grasped the opportunity to request some cuddling. For one, Arakita doesn't get along with most people. Besides, just because he gets along with someone, doesn't mean he's willing to let them hold him.
Trying to imagine how Arakita would ask the same of Fukutomi made Shinkai almost chuckle and shake his head. Though Fukutomi is the only one Arakita really respects — or at least respects the most — he doesn't have the personality to give out hugs. No, Arakita asked Shinkai, because he knew the sprinter would comply.
There's a mischievous gleam in Shinkai's eyes as he asks: "Then...should I get Tōdō?"
"Don't you dare!" Arakita growls warningly and his teammate is satisfied. So much for just anyone.
Arakita coughs a few times and sinks weakly against the chest of the one holding him. He lets out a sound that seems to be a mixture of a groan and a whine to express his soreness. His body is aching and he just wants some comfort and rest.
Turning around, he cuddles against Shinkai's body, making it difficult for the latter to chute into a cosier position. But eventually the sprinter is leaned back against the wall, legs sticking out from under the duvet where the heat of his teammate's body is trapped. On his lips is a satisfied smile. Who would have thought his sick bed visit would turn out like this?
Arakita is curled up against Shinkai, head with messy black hair resting on his chest, lanky arm draped loosely over his hips. His body is covered completely by the duvet so he doesn't get cold. His breath is going evenly again, so he's either asleep or close to drifting off. Shinkai is rubbing his back in steady circling movements. He enjoys intimacy of their bodies being entwined like this.
It wouldn't surprise him should Arakita warn him not to tell anyone about this. But he has no intention to share this moment with someone else anyway. And if Arakita claims that this is a one-time-only matter and will never happen again, he'll have his doubts. Yet even if it remains true, he'll have this moment to treasure.
Out of a spontaneous suggestion Shinkai bends down his head and places a kiss on top of the black strands of hair.
"Oi," Arakita mumbles. So he's still awake after all. "Who said kissing was allowed?"
Shinkai smiles, not bothered by being told off. "Who said it wasn't?"
Arakita doesn't argue. He's too tired and beyond caring. His mind isn't concerned with the consequences of dragging Shinkai into his bed like a big teddy bear to help him get some rest. He's occupied with letting the rise and fall of his teammate's chest lulling him in and carry off to sleep.