A/N: Don't own SIH. Please enjoy chapter eight.
Chapter Eight: All in the Family
The three stepped into Nijiro's apartment together, simultaneously kicking off their shoes in the entryway. Marika headed instantly off to the side, to the bathroom, and Yuu and Nijiro were left alone standing in their slippers on the hardwood floor.
"Welcome back," the black-haired man told his brown-haired friend, leading him into the familiar room. He headed into the kitchen to get the tea he'd offered Yuu, and the man was left alone in the image-bedecked space again. A pair of maroon eyes scanned the room, coming to rest on new drawings of a familiar shrine. He remembered Nijiro had told him earlier that week he'd sketched the shrine that weekend, and he approached the pictures, inspecting them. One showed the arching, broad rooflines and strong pillars, another the proudly tall torii gate, the people drawn below for contrast looking up at its towering height, awed. They were sketched by a master hand, the emotions of the artist at the time of creation coming through as strongly as Nijiro must have felt them when he was drawing. Again he was amazed by the boy's skill; the attention to detail he put into the landscapes was much more impressive than Yuu's own. As his eyes drifting up to the Odori Park series hanging on the wall above the shrine illustrations, Yuu imagined he'd get tired of tracing in the same place again and again. A person he could do: he'd sketched Chiaki over and over, the beautiful man making the minutes feel like seconds. But a place wouldn't have the same emotional capture for him.
"Oh, right, those are the ones I did this weekend," Nijiro's voice came from right behind him, and he was jolted out of his reverie, surprised by the sudden realization of the man's proximity to him. As it happened, his startled jump propelled him back into the man, and his back thumped against Nijiro's chest, nearly knocking him down. He took another sudden leap in the opposite direction, reversing himself to face his friend.
Nijiro's face was covered in a smile. "Good thing I didn't uncap the tea," he remarked, offering the maroon-eyed man the bottle in his hand. Yuu took it gratefully, twisting the cap off and gulping down almost half of the beverage in one go.
"Someone's thirsty," Nijiro commented, his sly voicing making the words carry a double entendre, his eyebrows darting up and down in the blink of an eye.
"I think our motorcycle ride dehydrated me," Yuu replied, smirking.
"Got anything to eat, little brother?" Marika asked, joining them in the apartment's main room. She had taken off her leather jacket, revealing the loose J-Pop band themed shirt with elbow length sleeves she wore below it. It contrasted completely with the leather pants she still had on, creating a slightly disorienting impression as Yuu scanned her up and down. She'd twisted her long hair up into a messy bun and now looked much more like an older sister than the cyborg femme fatale he'd initially taken her for.
"Help yourself," her younger brother replied, gesturing towards the kitchen. "Grab me some while you're in there, too." He turned to his guest. "You hungry?"
Yuu nodded, and Marika disappeared through the door to excavate something from the fridge. Nijiro flopped down gracelessly in the swivel chair at his desk, grabbing a pad of paper with one hand as he spun around aimlessly from the motion of his collapse onto the chair. Yuu sat down rather more collectedly on the sofa, moving a stack of manga. As he did, he noticed it was the Bridge of Thunder volumes he'd leant his friend. He picked up the book on the top of the stack, flipping through it casually.
"How do you like it?" he asked, his back turned to his black-haired friend. Nijiro didn't reply, so he shifted and looked over his shoulder so he could see the man, setting his arm over the back of sofa as he did so.
"Nijiro?" he questioned.
"Hmm?" Nijiro asked, glancing up absently from a rough outline he'd just begun. He had set one foot up on the seat of the chair and propped his notepad on his knee, his face inches from the paper. Now, hearing the brunet's voice, he pulled his head back from the page, gently straightening his glasses, which had slipped down his nose slightly as he drew. His hand moved away from the page to hang at his side, the pen dangling delicately in his grasp. Yuu watched his friend's black eyes refocus at the switch from proximity to distance, their black hole-like gravity reaching out to engulf him.
He abandoned the question, more interested in what his dark-eyed friend was working on than what he thought of Nakajima's latest series. Getting up from the couch, he strode over to Nijiro, curious to see the emerging artwork.
"What are you drawing?" he asked, trying to crane his neck to catch a glimpse of the dark pen marks on pallid paper. Nijiro, who'd gone back to sketching in the moment he'd turned his back on him to get up, wrenched that paper back as soon as he saw how close Yuu was. Pressing the notebook against his chest, he looked up at his friend, his dark eyes locking with Yuu's maroon ones.
"It's not finished yet," he told the other man, his gaze coy and uncooperative. Yuu made a face, sticking his hand out stubbornly.
"Come on rainbow-man, let me look at it," he cajoled Nijiro, smiling persuasively.
"Good luck with that," a female voice came from behind them, and Yuu twisted around to see Marika had emerged from the kitchen, her arms laden with food. "Haru never shows something that's "not finished yet"."
Yuu's eyes returned to Nijiro just in time to see the black-haired man stowing the notebook away in a drawer in his desk.
"Come on, let's eat," he enjoined Yuu, giving him a gentle nudge in the direction of the couch. Reluctantly, Yuu obeyed, vowing to get another look at the picture later.
The three sat down on the sofa together, Marika arranging the food on the already cluttered table, pushing papers and books to the side. She passed Nijiro a glass of water and the man took it, drinking gratefully. It seemed he, too, had become thirsty from the hectic ride.
Looking in the direction of Yuu, she realized something, "Oh, Yuu-kun. I forgot a glass for you."
"That's okay," Yuu told her, rising to his feet, "I'll go get it."
He headed to the kitchen, Nijiro shouting, "The cabinet above the sink!" in his wake. Entering the room, it was a stark contrast to the main room of his host's apartment. Here, no drawings were hung on the walls, and the room looked bland and lifeless from the lack of artwork. The kitchen was remarkably neat for that of a man living alone–the only visible dishes were sparkling clean, a coffee mug and blue porcelain bowl drying in the rack beside the sink. Following Nijiro's instructions, he opened the cabinet above the sink, selecting a mug, and filled it with water. Turning to leave, he re-entered the main room, glancing as he did at the reassuring presence of the sketches plastered over every available space on the wall.
He resumed his place on the sofa next to Nijiro, setting his mug down on the tabletop. He turned to make some inane comment about how irrationally clean the kitchen of such a evidently messy bachelor when he saw it.
A tiny silver needle, glinting in the ray of sun that pierced through Nijiro's window.
Nijiro, sinking the point into the flesh of his stomach.
He shot back so fast he tipped over the edge of the sofa, his mind a whirlwind. Had he just seen Nijiro–his friend, someone he thought he knew–using drugs? He could hardly believe someone he trusted would betray him like this. More than that, he could hardly believe Nijiro, who seemed so normal, could be so completely hiding something that would destroy him. But, after all, it had been Nijiro who, the very day they met, had pointed out how well addicts hid their behavior, saying who suspects their artist of being a massive drug user. Sure, he'd looked disgusted when he'd said it, but he seemed perfectly calm and comfortable now, only a miniscule flicker of pain crossing his face as he sunk the needle into his side.
"What the fuck!?" Yuu exclaimed, uncontrolled in his reaction, his eyes blown wide with shock.
Nijiro looked over at him, confused, simultaneously removing the needle from his side. The sight of it made Yuu sick: he had never been good with needles, and in this context, his distaste and unease were only made worse.
"What?" the man asked, his brow furrowing. Then he traced Yuu's burning gaze to the injector pen in his hand. "Oh, do you not like needles? Sorry, I should have asked."
The realization that Yuu meant something more than a dislike of needles slowly filtered into his eyes, helped along by Yuu's stuttered, "You… you're… a drug addict?"
Jolted by his statement, Nijiro looked horrified. "What?" He burst out, "No, this is insulin." He hurriedly capped the injector-pen, quickly and jerkily setting it down on the table, distancing himself from the object as a physical rejection of the insinuated drug use.
"What?" Yuu questioned, his brain performing an emergency rapid search as he tried to remember what insulin was. Finally, his brain-search engine returned a result. "Insulin? Like for diabetes?"
Nijiro rolled his endlessly deep eyes languorously, sarcastically replying, "Yes, Type 1 diabetic, pleased to meet you." He bowed mockingly. Marika, looking over his shoulder, gave Yuu a surprised and vaguely disapproving glance, supporting Nijiro's statement, providing familial proof the black-haired man wasn't lying.
"Wow, okay," Yuu responded, breathless from his sudden shock. "I'm sorry I reacted like that, assuming without giving you a chance to explain. It's just… I didn't know."
Nijiro cocked his head, "On that note, how did you never notice before? We must have eaten together twenty times by now, and I'd think you'd have at least noticed me testing myself." The gears in his brain turned as he thought back over all the meals the two had shared. "Well, I wouldn't have tested myself in front of Megumi, since she doesn't like blood, so that rules out every time we ate and she was there. And I generally go to the toilet to test myself when we're out in public to be polite. Even if everyone knows I generally do it under the table just to be discreet." He narrowed his eyes, continuing, "I try to be pretty unobtrusive about injecting myself if I do do it in front of other people, since most people aren't fond of needles." He paused, turning to fully face Yuu, who had settled himself from his disorganized state into a seated position on the floor.
Yuu thought back to their first dinner, when he had noticed Nijiro rummaging around in his bag, then wincing. He'd thought at the time that the man was checking how much money he had and finding, unfortunately, little, but now his mind rearranged the event with the new knowledge. That wince would have been Nijiro pricking his finger to obtain a drop of blood for his diabetic test strip, the rummaging reaching into his bag to take out his glucose meter. His mind darted to when Nijiro had left Chiaki's study to "wash his hands". Now, he knew the man had been respecting Megumi's fear of blood by leaving the room to test himself. Even one more piece of the puzzle was starting to fall into place.
"Artificial sweetener," he breathed, the light bulb in his mind flashing bright as full comprehension blossomed there.
Nijiro smiled. "Now you're getting it," he told his friend good-humoredly.
"It's in the family," Marika explained. "Dad has it, Haru has it. At least we ladies got spared–we take after Mom."
"In more ways than one," Nijiro commented, turning back to his sister. Yuu got the feeling he was only the newest participant in a conversation that had been held many times, over and over as Nijiro revealed his illness to those that surrounded him.
"Everyone else already knows, don't they?" he said resignedly, retaking his place on the couch and swallowing another drink of water.
"Yep," Nijiro retorted, grinning. "Otherwise they'd probably accidentally send me into hyperglycemic shock." Yuu, remembering Hatori's specification of which coffee was Nijiro's, sighed slowly, finally understanding what he had found most confusing and unexpected.
"You know, you probably shouldn't joke about that," Marika was chiding her brother.
"Ah, what's another hospital visit?" Nijiro defiantly joked, and Yuu worried suddenly at his light-hearted tone, wondering how many times his friend had been rushed to the hospital after passing out because of his unstable blood sugar levels. It couldn't be often, he told himself, the dyed-haired man was careful despite his carefree–sometimes even reckless–appearance. He was probably just making a joke at his own expense.
He tapped his friend's knee, capturing his attention. "Look, rainbow-head," he said, teasing with the nickname to throw off the discomfort and embarrassment he felt at having to apologize, "I'm sorry about what I said. Really. I was wrong to jump to conclusions like that."
Nijiro shrugged it off. "What's the incidence of Type 1 diabetes versus intravenous drug addiction? You were more likely to be right–all you could do was go with your best guess."
On the way back to his house, though, Yuu stopped by the supermarket and bought a box of artificial sweeteners. Just to be considerate.
