The night before the next morning, Rin had been pretty sure that there was no possible way he would get any worse. It only took him about 3 seconds to realize how fucking wrong he was when he woke up at 6 am. Rin turned his head to the side, wanting to ignore the churning in his stomach badly. It was far too early for another throw up session.

The rag on his head flopped to the side and fell on top of Kuro. He didn't see a bucket anywhere near him. 'Fuck' he thought. The churning in his stomach was growing much too hard to ignore and inwardly sighing, Rin slowly stood up on shaky legs, making his way to the next best option to a bucket; the window. Looking back he wasn't quite sure how the hell he made it to the window in the first place, considering by then the pain from before had only spread from his back to his limbs and head.

Crawling from the heavy futon to the window whilst avoiding everyone's futons made Rin feel like he had won an Olympic biathlon competition. It made him wonder why they would even put them in the same room as everyone else, if they could get sick too. The unsatisfying victory was short lived as water and something thicker made it's way up his throat. As much as he tried to be quiet, several yells of "ack!" and "who's dying?!" rose from behind him as he woke up several people by throwing up out of the window and into the conveniently placed trashcan outside the window (lucky him). After three waves of putrid stomach strain, Rin flopped on the window frame, his useless meat sticks (translation: legs) unable to support him any long. He could barely keep himself from falling over as it was.

Various voices flitted around the room, working their way into his skull and slamming against it. The floor seemed to rock like the deck of a boat beneath his feet and Rin briefly wondered if there was an earthquake going on or if he was just going crazy. The latter seemed the most accurate when he thought about it. Footsteps and a door slamming open registered in Rin's muddled mind.

"NII-SAN!"

Ah. Yukio must've heard him puking out his guts.

He could feel two pairs arms hooking themselves around him and lifting him off the window. Rin hadn't had any energy to stand last night and neither does he have any today. After setting him upright, the hands pulled him to two shoulders and dragged him off. Rin thought that it might be Yukio and Shima, since they were there. To his surprise, Shiemi's voice rang near his ear. He was gently laid back into his futon and a hand reached out to stroke his hair away from his forehead, presumably to gauge how bad his obvious fever was. Rin could hardly understand nor process what Yukio said (or was it someone else?) before a rather frazzled Kuro sat on his face and curled up as if to protect him with the force of his cat butt.

'It could have been worse.' Rin blearily thought to himself. Kuro was lifted off his face, placed in the crook of his elbow (who meowed indignantly and Rin caught something along the lines of "GET YOUR PAWS OFF RIN, YOU HEATHENS!" somewhere within the cacophony of hissing), and a wonderful, cool, damp washcloth was draped across his forehead. The futon was tucked around him tightly, making him a little too warm as several steps vibrating over the floor. The sensations of, well, everything warped into pain and Rin could only whine at the contrasting ones with blurry eyes. For a moment or two he thought about asking Yukio to shoot him and put him out of his misery. Throwing up everything, coughing, all the weakness, and having feverish fits every half hour was bad enough; a heat stroke from being wrapped too tightly in the futon was definitely a nasty ingredient to throw in the mix.

He felt too hot in the futon and too cold outside of it (leaving him to use the one-leg-out technique). His churning stomach acid sent pain riveting through his lower half and made his hands tingle strangely, and his throat and vocal chord were wrecked to the point of only small amounts of water being able to help. Rin didn't quite remember when he fell asleep again, but next thing he knew, he was waking up once more. Rin opened his eyes and looked around, seeing that no one was in the room. He felt light-headed and his swimming vision was giving him hallucinations.

Feeling a bit more confident in himself, he rolled to his side and leveraged himself on his elbow and other hand. Slowly sitting up, he saw the door being slightly open.

'Ah, what a peeeeeeeeeerfect opportunity to go take a nice, refreshing walk!' Despite his better judgement screaming at him, it was drowned out by deliria from being overheated and Rin swayed to his feet. Blearily, Rin stumbled for the door. "You know what, I REALLY need to talk to Suguro about something."He paused." But what?...

Eh, I'd remember later."


Twiddling his thumbs, Suguro faced his Dad. Rin was already putting his stress meter through the roof, but he had to do this before tackling what to do about his friend. First and foremost, he would be alleviating the tension between him and his dad by talking about the past years and resolving past issues like civilized, mature human beings. That didn't stop his father's piercing eyes from being any less intimidating as he questioned why Suguro had brought him to this private room.

"Ryuji? What's the matter? Why did you want to talk to me?"

Suguro took in a much needed breath and collected himself, clearing his throat. "I brought you here because I wanted to discuss old issues with you in hopes of...somewhat fixing our relationshi-"

"Uuuuuuuughhh..Some - someone..."

"...Did someone just moan?"

"I think it came from outside, but I'm sure that we're the only ones that know about-"

"Et mortuus est, et ego Deus..." repeated the same voice.

"Who the hell-"

A series of sloppy footsteps sounded down the hall, a slumped shadow falling over the traditional thin shoji paper door and, Suguro realized with a jolt, coming alarmingly close as the figure seemed to sway and fall. Suguro could hardly think 'Oh shit' before there was an almighty ripping noise before a figure fell through the fucking door itself, it's head slamming against the wooden floors with a horrible THUD!

Now, who was the only person Suguro knew who was stupid enough to walk around with a fever, pass out, and break through a paper door, thereby ruining what was supposed to be a meaningful and cleansing conversation?

The answer was obvious.

Rin Okumura was slumped on the floor, collapsed against the wood. Suguro could feel his blood pressure reaching dangerous levels.

"Um, Ryuji? Isn't that your friend?"

Suguro slowly counted down from ten, breathing deeply between the numbers.

"Ryuji?"

"Ooooooowwwwww. Wha' jus' happened?" Rin's tired voice slurred from the ground.

Composing himself, reminding himself that freaking out and screaming at people wasn't very effective, Suguro turned around and knelt down next to Rin.

"...I'll...go get his brother." Tatsuma awkwardly said, scurrying out of the room in search of Okumura-sensei.

"Go ahead." Suguro sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Now, you." Suguro sent a pointed look at the very disoriented and confused Rin on the ground.

"Me."

"Why on earth are you so insistent on ruining everything I try to do with the power of your sheer stupidity?"

"Wha'?"

"I was trying to talk to my dad and YOU just ruined it by falling through the fucking door. Why are you out of bed?!"

Rin's head fell on the floor and he slurred something unintelligible into the wooden floorboards.

"I can't understand you."

Rin rolled over only his back, his hand making a pleasing plopping sound on the wood. He stared up at the ceiling and said:

"How did I...get here?"

Suguro resisted the overwhelming urge to face palm.

"You tell ME! I DON'T KNOW!"

Rin seemed to suddenly remember something and sat upright, swaying a bit and brightly saying, "I went fer a walk!"

And just like that, Suguro (figuratively) exploded.

"YOU TOOK A WALK?!"

"Yea!"

"YOU ARE LIKE, DEATHLY FUCKING ILL! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

"I dunno."

"WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!"

"I dunno."

"YOU BROKE THE FUCKING DOOR!"

"I did?"

Rin craned his neck to look at the door and stared at it as if surprised by the chaos he'd already caused. "Oops."

Oh, good God, Rin was delirious, wasn't he?

Rin suddenly brightened as if remembering another thing and passionately gripped Suguro's shoulders.

"Wai'. I jus remembered somethin'. S-Suguro."

"What?!"

"Just... Jus- fuckin listen you shit."

"I'm listening dumbass,just let me kick you back to your bed!"

"No, don' do tha'. Look, look. You're a cool dude and you shouldn't kick meh back t' mah bed. You also shouldn' be mean ta yer dad. Ya only got one, man. Treasure him."

"Wha-"

"LISTEN!" Rin made a shushing noise.

What...the hell was he going on about?

"I don't need to hear that from you!"

"YES YOU DO. I'm the one with daddy issues. You aren't allowed to have them too. That's my job."

"What the actual fuc-"

"LISTEN TO ME. Listen. NONONO. BAD RYUUJI. BE NICE TO YOUR DAD. You don't got three spare dads in your closet. You got one. I might have twoish, maybe one a half, but I still fucked up and I gots some mean daddy issues. That ain't cool. No being me."

Suguro's mind was swirling. 'What in the world is going on' he thought.

Rin stared at Suguro with fever glazed eyes and said: "M'kay?"

"...yeah?"

Rin held up a thumbs up, waited until Suguro held one up in return awkwardly, and proceeded to pass out once again.

What...the hell was that?

"NIISAN?! WHERE ARE YOU?!" Yukio's voice sounding from the hallway.

Awkwardly, Suguro approached Rin's body, gingerly lifted him up, and stepped into the hallway, looking to his very, very befuddled dad as if to say "we'll talk later."

"Okumura-sensei? He's...um, over here."

Yukio rushed to general vicinity to see Rin passed out with his clothes loosely hanging off his shoulders, laying limp in Suguro's arms.

"Oh, thank GOD! We've been looking everywhere!"

Yukio ushered Suguro to Rin's designated room, fretting over his twin all the while.

Dear lord. Rin just chewed him out for being a dick to his dad and now Rin's back was sweating and he wasn't even conscious. This was not how he imagined today, not in the slightest. Well, at least Rin had somehow managed to get to the bottom floor without breaking his nose on the stairs so that was a good sign. It meant that he was hopefully getting better and the medicine was helping. Suguro pondered how the hell Rin had gotten to that secluded little room whilst climbing the stairs, carrying the halfling in his arms and thought about their conversation, if you could even call it that-

-Wait a minute. Did Rin say he had...daddy issues?