Chapter 17: Smokescreen: Egoist, Terrorist

The Uke Flu

Chapter Seventeen: Smokescreen

Monday morning Hiroki found himself being awakened by Nowaki before the man had even really tried to rouse him: Nowaki staggered into the bedroom after his shift and collapsed onto the futon, the impact jostling the professor from a distressing dream that involved teaching a class filled with tiny, drooling infants.

"Not too far from the actual reality of my life," Hiroki grumbled. He stretched and looked at Nowaki who was already more than half a sleep.

Tired blue eyes opened slightly when Nowaki felt the older man sit up. "I'm sorry, Hiro-san," Nowaki mumbled. "I think I only have enough energy to wake you like five times this morning."

"Funny, Nowaki." Hiroki rolled himself out of bed and stood up. "I am perfectly capable of getting myself up… See?"

Nowaki's soft snore alerted Hiroki to the fact that his pregnant partner had already fallen asleep.

Hiroki sighed and shuffled out into the main room of the apartment. He made himself a lonely breakfast, making sure to set some aside for Nowaki, in case the younger man wanted it later, and then got himself ready for school.

Before he left, Hiroki took a cup of tea in to leave on the nightstand for Nowaki, who had no more issue with cold tea than he did with cold rice. Looking down on him, Hiroki realized that Nowaki hadn't even bothered to change his clothes from work. The man even still had his physician's smock on.

"Okay, Nowaki…" Hiroki un-did Nowaki's pants and attempted to slide them off while his giant was still sleeping. "Come on."

"What are you doing, Hiro-san? Leave me alone, I'm tired!" Nowaki muttered.

"That's the first time you've ever said that to me when I've been taking your pants off." Hiroki quipped, ignoring Nowaki's sleepy protestations.

This comment was enough to turn up the corners of Nowaki's mouth slightly and incite him open one deep blue eye.

"Sit up and help me, Dumbass! I'm not leaving until you're in bed properly and you're going to make me late." Hiroki underscored this with a tug on Nowaki's trousers.

"Grrrrrrrr," Nowaki growled uncharacteristically, but not really fiercely. He grudgingly sat up.

Hiroki was hard pressed not to snort with amusement at Nowaki's mild surliness. He felt like he was changing the ribbon on one of Akihiko's giant teddy bears.

Nowaki struggled to extricate himself from his lab coat and then his shirt.

Hiroki left off the pants and tried to help by pulling Nowaki's top clothes over the man's inky head.

"Hiro-san…" Nowaki's tone was one of muffled complaint, his face hidden under his shirt.

"Shut up, idiot! I need to practice if I'm going to have to do this for our kid."

Nowaki blindly swatted his long, sleeve-encumbered arms, finally getting Hiroki to stop. He pulled himself out of his clothes, his voice becoming clearer as they fell away. "You do need practice, Hiro-san: you'll pull our baby's ears off otherwise! But I can do this myself."

Angry at being rebuffed, Hiroki stood there with his arms crossed. He watched Nowaki undress, until the man was down to his boxers.

"Satisfied?" Nowaki sighed.

"Under the covers," Hiroki ordered.

"Fine."

Nowaki clamored under the sheets and turned over peevishly onto his side. He took Hiroki's pillow and pulled it over his head.

Seven months of this? Nowaki groaned into the pillow.

Hiroki picked up Nowaki's clothes to take to the hamper in the bathroom. He closed the bedroom door and paused a moment leaning against it. Seven months.

Hiroki sighed.

Because he had gotten up the first time he woke up, instead of the twenty-fifth like he usually did, Hiroki actually made it to work early.

He sat down at his desk in the office that he shared with Miyagi. He needed to call the clinic and re-schedule an appointment to get the vaccine.

He and Nowaki had not been using any sort of protection since Nowaki thought he had gotten the shot. Hiroki was surprised he was not more troubled by this, but he'd learned quite a bit about the Flu by now, enough to have gotten over most of his early paranoia. Besides, he knew it would take months of symptoms, (none of which he had) before he would ever be at risk, and even then the window of time for conceiving was small (around two and a half weeks).

Hiroki was starting to wonder, with as many people as he knew who had gotten it, and especially now that he was aware Nowaki had fully exposed him, if he might not be immune. Still, he did not want to be too complacent.

After all, look at what had happened to Nowaki.

Hiroki had just finished dialing the clinic's number when Miyagi strode in. The senior professor's expression was dark, a far cry from his usual demeanor, and the man dispensed with his usual flirtatious greeting opting instead for a simple: "Morning."

Hiroki immediately hung up the phone, cursing Miyagi's timing.

"Good morning, Professor Miyagi."

"I don't know what's good about it, Kamijou." The senior professor grumbled.

As soon as Miyagi sat down at his desk he pulled out one of the drawers and took a cigarette out of the pack he had secretly taped to its underside, where Shinobu had not yet managed to find it.

He lit up and inhaled, luxuriating in the glory of nicotine.

"I take it things are still rocky at home?" Hiroki really didn't want to know, but it seemed only polite to inquire, given Miyagi's state.

"I have another week to go before Shinobu is out of the danger zone. Do you have any idea how hard it is abstaining with that damn brat trying to seduce me at every turn?"

Hiroki winced at Miyagi's bluntness. He sometimes wondered if Miyagi was truly Japanese, the way he discussed his private life so openly with him. Though he also supposed, being closeted as he was still, that Miyagi probably had no one else he could confide in.

"This is his second bout of the flu in the last year. I swear, it's like he's catching it on purpose." Miyagi grunted. "You should talk to him, Kamijou. Maybe you can convince him to get the vaccine like you did."

Miyagi exhaled and then took another deep drag on his cigarette. "I'm too old to think about being a father and Shinobu is way too young. He's barely into his twenties and hasn't even finished his undergraduate degree… He's at the top of his class." Miyagi said helplessly.

"I don't know what the kid's thinking. You had the right idea, Kamijou, telling Kusama-kun 'no'. Now both of you can just focus on your careers and each other, without any distractions"

Given his current circumstances, Hiroki just blushed and said nothing.

"I think that sometimes Shinobu is doing this because he still thinks I am going to leave him and if we had a kid it would be harder for me to do… You know one of the reasons I asked him to marry me was so that the brat would be less insecure."

"Ahem."

Miyagi and Hiroki both looked up to see Shinobu's lanky form leaning against the doorframe of their office. As usual, Shinobu's timing was impeccable. He'd arrived just in time to hear Miyagi last sentence.

It always astounded Hiroki how much the boy had changed in the three years that Takatsuki-kun and Miyagi had been together. Hiroki suddenly thought of how, the last time he saw Misaki, the man had looked younger than when he had first met him, in contrast, Shinobu was the exact opposite.

The honey-haired youth had changed so much. He had sprouted late but quickly and was now only an inch or two shorter than Miyagi. His shoulders had broadened, his face lengthened. The young man had become infuriatingly handsome, turning the heads of men and women alike when he passed.

The awkward skinniness of even two years past had been replaced by a sleek-muscled litheness. The face that had seemed perpetually scrunched in perturbation, now more often exuded a cool nonchalance. In fact, it often seemed that only thing that had not changed about Shinobu was the fierce love he had for Miyagi.

Miyagi blanched seeing Shinobu in the door.

"The other reasons you asked me to marry you, Old Man," Shinobu said as he walked confidently over, took the smoldering cigarette out of Miyagi's fingers, dropped it and crushed it under his foot on the floor. "Are because you love me desperately, and because you know you needed to lock my ass down before someone younger and quicker tries to steal me away from you."

Shinobu held out a beautifully prepared bento. He had also become quite an accomplished cook. "You forgot your lunch."

Miyagi reached out for it, a sheepish expression on his face that switched quickly to startlement when instead, rather than getting his lunch, he somehow found his arms occupied. Shinobu had quickly moved in and settled himself onto the older man's lap.

Shinobu set the bento down on Miyagi's desk and held one hand outstretched. "Okay, Elder, cough them up."

"What?"

"Cigarettes, Old Man. Don't play dumb."

"I only had the one." Miyagi somehow managed to look both guilty and sly.

"Liar." Shinobu wiggled his ass around slightly on Miyagi's lap just a bit.

"God damn it, Shu, that's not fair!" Miyagi groaned.

Shinobu held the older man's uncomfortable gaze with his smoke gray eyes and licked his lips seductively.

"That was the only one I had. I swear." Miyagi stuck to his lie, but his voice had grown husky with want.

"Kamijou-san?" Shinobu looked over at Hiroki for confirmation.

"I'm going to be late for class." Hiroki mumbled. He got up, grabbed his bag off the corner of the desk, and headed for the exit.

"Traitor!" Miyagi whined behind him.

Hiroki turned around. His brow furrowed, seeing the desperate Miyagi and the smug Shinobu tangled together.

Shinobu shot Hiroki a wicked wink.

Hiroki thought of all the work he had saved Miyagi over the years and decided this was one job the man was going to have to deal with himself. So, he responded to Shinobu with a shrug and walked out into the hall making sure to lock the door as he closed it behind him.

On his way to class, Hiroki's cell phone vibrated in his pocket. It was Nowaki.

"What?" Hiroki barked, though he his first response was panic that something might be wrong.

On the other end of the phone, Nowaki sighed with relief that this at least sounded like his old Hiro-san.

"I forgot to tell you, Hiro-san." Nowaki's voice was still sweetly sleepy. "I have an appointment with Dr. Suzuki tomorrow in the morning. Do you want to come?"

"Yeah, sure. I'll see if I can get Miyagi to take my class tomorrow and if not, I'll just cancel." Hiroki's stomach was suddenly filled with butterflies. "Do you have to work tonight?"

"Uh huh."

"Look, Nowaki, I told Akihiko I would meet him to go over a new manuscript after classes, I don't know how long it will take. If you want, I will call and postpone this and come straight home."

"No!"

Hiroki was taken slightly aback by the adamance in his partner's tone.

Then Nowaki added, his voice softer, "I mean, I'm fine, really, Hiro-san. You should go. Usami-san counts on you for his work and it's good for you too."

"Okay, then," Hiroki said. "Look, I'm at my classroom, I have to go."

"I love you, Hiro-san," Nowaki ended his declaration with a yawn.

"Yeah, yeah. Me too."

Nowaki smiled as he closed his phone and drifted back to sleep. At least some things never change.

After class, Hiroki returned to his office. He was just about to open the door when Shinobu did this for him. The youth looked barely disheveled and incredibly self-satisfied, he was putting Miyagi's cigarettes into his breast pocket.

"Kamijou-san," Shinobu said in greeting.

"What? You're just leaving now?" Hiroki was appalled to think about what the two men had been doing in the office to keep each other occupied since he'd left them.

Shinobu shrugged casually. His skilled pink tongue licked the corner of his sensual mouth. "I decided to take an early lunch."

"Perverts," Hiroki muttered under his breath as he walked into the room. The smell of sex was heavy in the air and he moved quickly to the window to open it. One would think after three years he would be used to this by now, but Hiroki still found it difficult at the moment to look at Miyagi without blushing.

"Professor Miyagi," Hiroki decided to get straight to business before the older man decided to fluster him with some incredibly embarrassing detail.

Miyagi was leaning back in his chair, with a peaceful look on his face. "Hmmmm?"

"I wondered if you would take my morning Intro class for me tomorrow? If not, that's fine, I can cancel."

Despite his lack of cigarettes, Miyagi's normally buoyant mood seemed to have been restored. "I can take it, Kamijou, but what's up that you'd cancel a class? You haven't done that since your mother visited, more than two years ago."

"Nowaki has a doctors' appointment and said I'd go with him," Hiroki replied without thinking.

Miyagi's face became suddenly grave. "Nothing serious I hope."

"Umm no," Hiroki stammered. He silently cursed his openness and tried to locate a reasonable lie. "He just hasn't been feeling well lately, but I'm sure the doctor will just tell him its exhaustion."

"Just be glad he can't catch the Uke Flu." Miyagi, tickled by the thought of a pregnant giant, suddenly burst out laughing. "Now that would be something!"

Hiroki rubbed his forehead as he watched his senior try and regain his composure. Yeah. Fucking hilarious.

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