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nicknellie · 4 years

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Anonymous requested: Julie and the Phantoms are on tour and Juke are dating, one stop on tour Luke gets sick (woke up with fever, swollen glands, sore throat etc) and the doctor diagnoses him with strep and an ear infection and Julie takes care his stubborn butt back to the hotel because he doesn't like to let down the fans since they have to cancel few shows.

Anonymous requested: alive guys, out of school in the real world, now all living in an apartment together. The 5 Times Luke Was Sick, and The 5 Times Julie Cured Him and maybe add in the 1 time Luke returns the favour of taking care of Julie.

Anonymous requested: Luke and Julie are married and have a daughter (Rose, 3). Rose and Luke end up waking up sick with the flu and Julie takes care of them, and she gets worn down from doing everything and caring for them. And even with him being sick in bed he lays with Rose when Julie’s beat and cuddles her when she feels sick even though he feels the same. Cute family fluff basically.

We Will Fight To Shine Together

The entire week had been hectic. Julie – along with her boys, Luke, Alex, and Reggie – had finally got the keys to their new apartment and had spent the whole of the previous two days hauling their belongings there from their respective homes. Ray Molina, protective as always, had been breathing down their necks in a frantic and worried attempt to help them out, the presence of Willie and Flynn had resulted in less unpacking and more Cardboard Box Wars, and most of their things were strewn about in unlikely places after the chaos of unpacking; just that morning Julie had found Alex’s drumsticks in the fridge.

But they were finally there, they were finally home, and there was nothing to worry about. Everything in the apartment seemed to be in order, they weren’t set to go on tour for another six months so the stress of that was still a way off, and the band’s new-found sense of freedom and independence hung over them like a rainbow. There was nothing that could have gone wrong. Nothing except–

“Dude, you look sick! And not in the good way.”

Julie had been sat atop the kitchen counter, watching Alex prepare their breakfast, but she looked towards the door when she heard Reggie’s exclamation. Stood in the doorway, bundled in about four hoodies, his eyes bloodshot and his nose running, was Luke. Reggie was right – he looked as if he were about to keel over and die. His puppy dog eyes were wide and watery and he looked utterly dreadful.

“Luke,” Julie said, hopping off the counter and heading over to him. “Are you feeling alright?”

He shook his head and sniffled pathetically. “I’m sick,” he grumbled.

“Yeah, you look it,” Julie said. She took his hand and gently led him towards a kitchen chair. He collapsed into it with a relieved sigh as if he couldn’t have bared standing any longer.

To Julie’s surprise (and slight annoyance) Alex and Reggie were laughing.

“You must have the weakest immune system known to man,” Alex joked as he put the group’s breakfast onto plates.

“On the bright side, Willie owes me ten dollars,” Reggie said with a beam. “I bet him you wouldn’t last two weeks before getting sick.”

Julie put her hands on her hips and glared at the two boys who immediately ceased their laughter. She knew she could be quite terrifying when she wanted to and she didn’t like abusing that power too much, but this was a situation she felt called for it.

“You two are seriously lacking compassion,” she scolded, pointing to and from Alex and Reggie. “Your friend is ill and all you can do is laugh at him. It’s mean – he has it difficult enough right now.”

Luke, pouting pathetically, nodded in agreement.

Alex and Reggie, both looking suitably chastised, muttered, “Sorry Julie.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t apologise to me.”

“Sorry Luke.”

“That’s better,” she said. Julie took herself out of Mother Mode and returned to Supportive Girlfriend. She gently ran her fingers through Luke’s hair – he relaxed a little as her touch. “I’m going to take you back to bed, you’re going to get some rest while I look up your symptoms, and then I’m going to take care of you.”

Luke’s eyes widened. “It’s probably just a cold. You don’t have to do that.”

“I don’t, but I’m going to. Come on.”

Julie sent one more cutting glare to Reggie and Alex before helping Luke stand and leading him back through their little apartment to their shared bedroom. She eased him back into the bed, helped him make a half-nest-half-fort with the pillows and duvet, then grabbed her laptop and set up YouTube for him. Then, she pulled up a tab on her phone and sat beside him on the bed.

“Do you feel like you’re going to be sick?” she asked.

Luke shook his head.

“Are you feeling dizzy at all?”

“A little bit,” he croaked.

She smiled knowingly. “Sore throat too?”

He closed his eyes and nodded.

Julie asked him more questions, then determined that because of the stress of moving his immune system had utterly crashed and some nasty bug had seized the opportunity. According to the internet, he needed plenty of bed rest, he should have been kept warm, he needed a lot of water, and most of all he simply needed to not do anything for a while.

“But we’re supposed to go to the studio tomorrow to record a bunch of songs,” Luke protested when Julie told him. He sat up abruptly, but eased himself back down, a hand rested against his forehead, wincing.

“You’re not going anywhere like that,” Julie told him. “I’ll call the studio and let them know we’ll have to record your parts a different time. Don’t say anything,” she commanded as he opened his mouth to argue again. “I’m not changing my mind.”

He grumbled something she couldn’t quite hear but assumed was something childishly rude – it had certainly sounded as if he’d been mocking her voice. She ignored him and instead headed back out to the kitchen. Julie grabbed painkillers and a large glass of water and took them back to Luke who had started a long YouTube playlist of Bondi Rescue videos.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be sitting in front of a screen if you’re dizzy,” Julie contemplated, handing him the tablets and the drink. Luke looked up at her with a mixture of sadness and fury in his eyes.

“I’ve already lost my health, I can’t lose Bondi Rescue too,” he said.

She breathed a laugh and sat back down beside him. He immediately melted into her side, his head rested against her abdomen. She stroked her fingers through his hair and felt him sigh at the touch.

He was asleep within minutes.

Julie and the Phantoms were on tour. It was a moment they had all been anticipating ever since they’d inducted Julie into the band. The four of them had saved up enough money to buy their own tour bus emblazoned with their faces and the band’s logo and were spending nine months driving across the United States and Canada to perform their show to sold-out crowds. Julie could hardly believe it was happening.

Right that moment, part of her wished it weren’t happening.

Julie had been led to understand that before she joined the band and became the responsible one, Alex was the ‘parental figure’ who had kept Luke and Reggie (both far more boisterous by nature) in check. If anyone had told her that on the second leg of their tour, she would not have believed it for a moment. Alex was sat in the passenger seat beside her, but was leaning over the back of it to swat at Reggie who was kicking the back of his seat. Both were calling each other childish names and their hands were flapping about like they were having a catfight. Julie had given up trying to stop them about two hundred miles ago.

Looking after them sometimes felt like having a pair of toddlers. Though more often it was like having three toddlers because Luke would find a way to join in on the shenanigans. But right then, in the backseat beside Reggie, he was oddly quiet.

“Luke,” Julie called over Alex and Reggie’s squabbling, readjusting the mirror so she could see Luke behind her. “You okay?”

Luke nodded then tried to clear his throat. “Yeah,” he said, voice gravelly. “Sore throat, that’s all.”

Julie frowned. “Are you sure? You don’t sound good. Will you be able to sing for tomorrow’s show?”

His eyes widened frantically at the mention of the performance. “Of course! I’ll be fine, it’s just a sore throat.”

It was, unfortunately, very clearly not just a sore throat.

Julie pulled the tour bus into the parking lot of their hotel and the gang all headed to their rooms. Julie and Luke were sharing, partially to save money and partially because they wanted to. Before they went to sleep, Julie checked again with Luke to see if he was alright and again he told her in that rough voice that he was fine.

However, when they woke up Luke seemed distinctly worse for wear. He was radiating heat like the sun but shivering as if he were in the arctic, he was complaining of pain in his right ear, and when Julie looked down his throat she saw that his tonsils were swollen and covered in white spots.

“You’re not going on stage like this,” she said, shaking her head. “No way. I’m calling a doctor.”

“I don’t need a doctor,” Luke insisted, attempting to hoist himself into a sitting position but giving up quickly. “It’s just a sore throat.”

“You can try telling me that again when you can swallow more than a drop of water,” Julie said before picking up her phone and calling the nearest doctor.

Luckily, the doctor was able to come out to the hotel so Luke didn’t have to even get out of bed. The doctor took one look at his symptoms, then turned to Julie.

“Looks like strep throat,” they said, snapping their latex gloves off. “The pain in the ear is because of an ear infection that came after the bacteria travelled from the throat to the middle ear. I’m going to prescribe him a course of antibiotics, he’ll need to take them all otherwise the infection will come back stronger. I recommend he doesn’t perform for at least another month to give the infection ample time to heal.”

“A month?” Luke tried to yell, but it came out as an outraged breathy whisper.

“Yes,” the doctor said, looking down at him over their glasses. “Your infection is particularly severe, Mr Patterson, and if you want to finish your tour then I suggest you take my advice.”

“We can’t cancel shows,” Luke protested weakly. “Think of how excited everyone’s been…”

Julie smiled to the doctor and saw them out of the room. “Thank you very much,” she said. “I’ll make sure he gets those antibiotics and plenty of rest.”

Once the doctor was gone, Julie called Flynn, the official manager for Julie and the Phantoms and Julie’s lifelong best friend. “Cancel every show for the next month,” she instructed. “Doctor’s orders.”

“Are you alright, Jules?” Flynn said, immediately sounding concerned. “I can come over and take care of you, whatever you need, I’ll book a flight right now–”

“I’m fine, Flynn,” Julie assured her. “It’s Luke. He’s got strep.”

“Oh no.” Flynn’s worry morphed into something akin to disappointment. “He’s literally the worst one of you guys to get ill right now.”

“Tell me about it. He’s furious that we’ve even suggested cancelling the shows.”

“He gets it’s for his own good, right?” Flynn asked.

Julie shook her head even though Flynn couldn’t see her. “He knows that but he doesn’t want to let everyone down. He’s been more excited for the tour than the fans have – he doesn’t want any of it to go wrong and this is about as wrong as it could go.”

“I’m sure he’ll get over it once the ‘get well soon’ messages start arriving,” Flynn said.

“I think that’ll just make it worse,” Julie countered. “Anyway, it’s fine. There’s nothing we can do. Just make sure everyone knows the next shows are cancelled.”

“You got it, boss. Good luck with Luke.”

“I’ll need it.”

Julie hung up on Flynn and headed back towards Luke. He was still sat up in the bed, looking very sorry for himself as he pouted with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Hey,” she said softly, crouching down next to his side of the bed. “I’m going to make you some hot honey and lemon water – my mom always made it for me when I got a sore throat. It’ll help, I promise. Is there anything else you want?”

“I want to do the shows,” he said petulantly.

Julie shook her head firmly. “You heard the doctor – none of us are going on any stage for another month. Flynn’s cancelling the shows as we speak.”

Luke looked aghast. “No!”

“Yes. You’re sick, Luke. And think about it; if this were me or Alex or Reggie in your position, what would you say to do?”

“I’d say we should cancel the shows until you got better,” he said as if the answer were obvious, then he seemed to hear his own words and deflated a little. “Fine. I suppose this is for the best. I… I just feel like I’m letting everyone down.”

Julie intertwined their fingers and held his hand tightly. She gave him a soft, reassuring smile. “You aren’t letting anybody down, Luke. It’s not your fault that you’re sick and there’s nothing any of us can do about it now. All that can be done is for you to rest and take your meds so that the next shows we do are as good as they can be. Okay?”

He rolled his eyes sighed, but there was the tiniest smile playing about his lips. “Okay.”

Julie had said it was a bad idea from the very beginning, but the boys had insisted that they’d done it before and it was perfectly safe.

It felt good to be proven right, but less good to be vomited on.

The first problem was that there was definitely not enough room anywhere in their tiny apartment for three grown men to attempt the famous lift from Dirty Dancing. Julie had pointed that out. She had pointed it out almost a dozen times. Every time, Reggie had told her that they didn’t actually need a lot of space, trust me.

The second problem was that their heights simply didn’t add up to a safe lift. Luke and Reggie were of a similar build, but Alex was much taller and there wasn’t really anywhere for him to go – if he held up one of the guys, they’d be held at an angle; if he were the one on top, he would likely crush the other two.

The third and final problem was that none of the boys were dancers and had no training or experience, therefore none of them knew how to do the lift properly and safely. Julie had stretched this argument to its breaking point but the three idiots had not heeded her warning.

And so they had done the lift.

It had started out strong. They had decided that Alex would be the one in the air, so Luke and Reggie had got into position with their hands outstretched and Alex had taken a great running start and leapt at them. To their credit, the boys held Alex in the air for a solid three seconds before Reggie lost his balance and Luke’s grip slipped, and the three of them went tumbling to the ground.

Julie watched in unsurprised horror as Alex fell flat on top of Reggie and scrambled to get off him, while Luke dropped far too close to the dining table and whacked his head on its corner with a grotesque thud.

He was out cold.

Julie muttered a curse and hurried towards him. Alex and Reggie gathered around slowly too, warily looking down at Luke, clearly feeling guilty.

“Luke?” Julie said to the unconscious lump in her lap. He was heavier than he looked – she privately understood why they had decided to lift Alex instead. “Can you hear me, sweetie?”

After a few more minutes, Luke came to, groaning and cradling his head.

“Hey,” Alex said, smiling brightly. “You’re awake! Sorry about that, we–”

Alex didn’t get to finish his sentence because Luke interrupted him by loudly and violently throwing up on Alex’s shoes. A little bit hit Julie’s dress and she quickly yanked the fabric out of the way.

Alex looked at his shoes disappointedly. After a long while he said, “I am going to the bathroom. Either to shower or be sick, I’m not sure yet,” and then disappeared.

Reggie was a deathly shade of green, staring at Luke and the vomit.

“If you don’t like it you can go, Reggie,” Julie said. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

Reggie nodded and followed Alex out of the room, wide-eyed.

“Let’s get you to bed, huh?” Julie said. Luke nodded vaguely, his eyes far away, and she led him through the apartment to their bedroom. She only just managed to get him into bed before he started slipping into unconsciousness again.

It was plain as day that Luke had a nasty concussion. Julie tucked him into bed, then switched off the lights and drew the curtains so that it was almost pitch black. She got him an enormous glass of water and readied all the painkillers she could find, as well as grabbing a large bowl so that he didn’t have to run to the bathroom if he needed to be sick again. Then she looked up concussion on her phone – it said that if he’d woken up after being knocked out then he needed to go to hospital; she wasn’t sure how she was meant to get him there now that he was unconscious again.

Julie decided to wait until he woke up again. She laid down beside him on the bed and pressed the gentlest of kisses to his forehead.

“You’re such an idiot,” she whispered. “I love you.”

Julie loved her boys usually, but sometimes she really believed they lacked the common sense necessary for general survival.

“You did what?!”

Luke, Alex, and Reggie looked between each other frantically, stuttering for excuses.

“Uuuuhhhh…”

“Nothing really out of the ordinary, I don’t think.”

“Pretty sure it was actually you who did something they shouldn’t have.”

Julie raised her hands and the boys silenced. She glared at them, half furious and half exasperated.

“Are you seriously telling me – or rather not telling me – that after all the times I specifically told you it would be a bad idea, you went and got hotdogs that were being sold out of the back of an Oldsmobile?”

“In our defence,” Reggie piped up, raising his hand like a kid answering a question in class, “they smelled really good.”

“Wish they’d tasted as good as they smelled,” Luke grumbled. Alex hit him.

“I have never met anyone with less common sense!” Julie yelled, waving her arms. “What is wrong with you? What made you think it’d be a good idea? How did you not think that it was the dodgiest set up for any fast food ever?”

“Relax,” Reggie said, “street dogs haven’t killed us yet.”

The highly questionable hotdogs did not, in fact, kill them. However, the next day all three boys were overcome with food poisoning so horrible that Julie simply could not take care of them all by herself.

That morning she sent a quick text to Willie to offload Alex to him: Come and get your dumb boyfriend, he and his idiot friends ate bad hotdogs and got sick, you can take one. Twenty minutes later, Willie showed up to take Alex back to his apartment, an ungodly amount of blankets in his hands when he arrived at the apartment.

Reggie was the least ill – he could pretty much take care of himself and at the very least he wasn’t throwing up everywhere. He stayed on the couch, watching some cartoon on repeat. Julie let him be.

Luke, on the other hand, was quite the task. He was feeling and looking absolutely dreadful, unable to move himself from his bed and being sick whenever he tried to do so much as drink a glass of water. Julie truly had her hands full trying to take care of him.

Despite his protests, she called the studio and cancelled their appointment with Luke today. He was in no fit state to record any hit songs right then; he could hardly even open his mouth without sick coming out of it.

Feeling particularly frazzled, Julie finally allowed herself a little break from rushing around after Luke to relax, just for a moment. She settled herself comfortably onto the bed beside Luke once his sickness had calmed down a bit and fired up Netflix. She could feel his doleful eyes on her as she selected a movie and let it play.

“I’m sorry,” he croaked.

“Are you apologising for being sick or for eating those hotdogs even though I told you not to?” she questioned.

Luke had the good grace to look a little ashamed. “Both.”

Julie shifted a little to wrap her arms around Luke’s midriff. “Don’t apologise for being sick. It is your fault, but don’t say sorry for it. I will accept your apology for disobeying me though.”

Luke rested his head against Julie’s shoulders, shuffling further into the covers. “We should have listened to you, I know. But if you could have just smelled those hotdogs…”

“Yeah, I’m sure they smelled great mingling with the stench of petrol,” Julie deadpanned. “I’m starting to think you three need constant adult supervision.”

“We are adults.”

“That’s why I’m so worried.”

Luke huffed a laugh, but then frowned. “I feel bad. You’re always the one taking care of me. Just once I want to take care of you.”

Julie raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying you want me to get sick?”

“No, no, I didn’t mean that,” he said hurriedly, even though Julie had been joking. “I just meant that you do such a good job with this every time. I want to give you a break.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Julie assured him. “But… if I ever do get sick, I’ll make sure to come straight to you and you can take care of me. Deal?”

“Deal,” Luke said with a soft smile.

It had been many years since Luke had been really sick. Julie had naively thought that maybe they’d get lucky and he’d never be sick again. Maybe his laughable immune system had finally caught up and had strengthened itself against what most people could avoid easily.

Wishful thinking.

Flu season was set to ruin Julie’s life. She had woken up one Monday morning and followed her usual routine, heading to her daughter’s bedroom to wake her up for preschool. She had shaken little Rose awake, but the three-year-old had been extremely hot.

“Oh, sweetie,” Julie had said gently. “Are you feeling sick?”

Rose, rubbing her teary tired eyes, had nodded and cried very quietly.

Julie had pulled her into a hug. “Okay, honey. You go back to sleep. It’s alright.”

She laid Rose back down, tucked her back in, and encouraged her to sleep. It took a long time and a lot of tears from Rose, but eventually the little girl drifted back into a fitful slumber. Feeling like all she wanted to do was go to sleep herself, Julie headed back to her own bedroom and shook Luke awake.

“Luke,” she whispered. “Rose is sick. I’m going to call the preschool and tell them she won’t be in, but then I’ve got to get to the studio. You think you can take care of her today?”

Luke sleepily opened his eyes and groaned as he shifted into a sitting position. He held a hand to his head – it looked far too similar to him steadying his balance for Julie’s liking.

She sighed. “Please don’t tell me you’re sick as well?”

Luke tried for a smile. “No, no, I’m alright. I’ll take care of Rose, don’t worry.”

He tried to swing himself out of bed, but Julie didn’t miss the way that the sudden movement made him wince. That and the fact that he clapped a hand to his mouth, the other held over his stomach. Unsteadily, he got to his feet and headed to the bathroom. A few minutes later, he came back to the bedroom looking sheepish.

“I’m sick too,” he said quietly.

Julie sighed haggardly and looked to the alarm clock on her bedside table. She needed to be at the studio to start her recording session in half an hour, but no part of her was willing to leave her husband and daughter alone while both of them were seeming awfully ill. She quickly made her decision.

“You get back to bed,” she said gently to Luke, taking his hand and leading him back to the bed.

“No, I need to get Rose,” he said, but he grudgingly followed her.

“I’m going to get Rose,” Julie told him as she sat him down and tucked him in. “I’ll bring her here and you can stay snuggled up together. I’ll call the preschool, run some errands, and I’ll check on you both later, okay?”

Luke nodded and lifted Julie’s hand to his lips as if to kiss it, then seemed to think better of it and dropped it. “Okay. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Julie went back to Rose’s room. The little girl was fast asleep, wriggling around a little as she dreamt, her black curls that were the same as her mother’s spread out over her pillow. Gently, Julie picked her up and held her tightly to her chest, pressing a soft kiss to the top of her head as she carried her to her own bedroom.

Luke smiled as Julie entered the room with Rose cradled in her arms. He lifted up the duvet so that Julie could lay Rose down beside him. As she put Rose down, the little girl woke up. She looked around, seeming surprised to have been moved. Then she began to cry very, very quietly.

“Dada,” she wailed, tiny fists clutching at Luke’s pyjama top. “Mama!”

Julie was exhausted. She could see a long day ahead of her, looking after both of the most important people in her life as they battled this disgusting illness. But as she looked at them – tearful little Rose snuggled up with Luke, who had his arms around her tightly, stroking her back soothingly as he whispered shushes – she felt a little bit of that exhaustion melt away, replaced with love.

She perched herself on the bed. “Rosie,” she whispered, tucking one of Rose’s stray hairs behind her ear. “If you quiet down, Mama will sing you a lullaby.”

Luke’s eyes widened. Behind the bloodshot sickness, Julie could see the love and admiration he had for her in them. She beamed at him, and he smiled back as if in awe of her. She felt her heart swell with love.

Rose hushed a little and Julie began the lullaby that her own mother had sung to her when she was little. It was a traditional little rhyme, simple and easy, but the beautiful melismatic notes strung together like bunting made the rising melodies sound ethereally pretty. It had always been one of Julie’s favourite songs.

Rose fell back asleep, huddled in Luke’s arms. Luke reached his hand out of took Julie’s hand.

“You’re perfect,” he mouthed, trying not to wake Rose.

Julie smiled, gently kissed his hand, and finally got up to phone the preschool.

Julie never got sick. It wasn’t in her nature. It just didn’t happen.

Except for that one time.

Julie woke up with the highest temperature the thermometer had ever recorded, her head was spinning like she was on a rollercoaster, and her muscles felt so fatigued that she couldn’t get out of bed.

And yet, she said to Luke, “I swear I’m fine.”

Luke, in a rare moment of knowledge and common sense, didn’t take her word for it. He seemed almost excited for her sickness – Julie wasn’t sure how to feel about that – and he pulled her into a tight hug.

“No,” he said firmly, “you’re sick. I’m going to take care of you.”

And he did. The very next thing Luke did was make Julie up a hot water bottle and bring it to her to help combat her chills, then he brought her three boxes of paracetamol and an entire pitcher of water. He called the doctor’s office for advice, then dragged the entire television set up to his and Julie’s room from downstairs. He got Rose ready for school and before he left the house he assured Julie that he would be back soon and she didn’t need to worry and, “If you need anything, just call me and I’ll come straight back.”

Julie couldn’t help but smile despite her tiredness and awful feeling. “I’ll be fine, Luke. Get Rose to school before she’s late.”

“I love you,” Luke said.

Rose, stood at the end of Julie’s bed, said, “Love you, Mama!”

“I love you, Rosie. Have a good day.”

Julie watched the love of her life and her perfect daughter leave the room and listened to their footsteps heading downstairs. Maybe she felt absolutely terrible and perhaps like she was going to be sick, but when she had someone like Luke looking after her it didn’t feel quite so dreadful.

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ikesenhell · 6 years

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Peeling Back The Mask

Bloodline, Chapter 5. You can find all other IkeSen works of mine here. NOTE: This was a LiveWrite! Thank you all for coming out! Fortunately, there isn’t a content warning this chapter. Thank god.

Ieyasu didn’t want to hand over the tape. He only relented after a fruitless night tossing and turning, his mother’s blood-streaked face burned in his nightmares. Was she still alive? Was she still out there, chained and imprisoned in some dark basement, captive to nothing more than the heartless blink of a video camera and the cold link of chains on her wrist?

But he needed details. He needed the where, when, how old, and so he handed over the CD, heart in his throat, to Mitsunari.

“Don’t--” He stammered, trying to think of anything to say to his least favorite person. Don’t fucking say anything. Don’t you dare be cheery right now. You can’t see me weak.

But Mitsunari just nodded and pushed his glasses up his nose, more serious than ever. “I’ll do my best to find the information you need.”

Ieyasu balled his fingers tight into fists and choked a strangled, “Thanks.”

---

The video was from around 1999. That explained the grainy footage. She’d gone missing around 1998, so that lined up. How was he supposed to feel? On one hand, it was very possible her situation was worse (though he honestly couldn’t envision how and didn’t want to)--and on the other, it felt very likely that the sweet embrace of death had taken her from her misery.

Ieyasu didn’t want to wish death on his mother, but he assumed in this situation, it was a mercy.

Later that day, his cellphone buzzed. A glance at the number and his stomach dropped.

“Are you alright?” She was doling out some pasta dish or another that she’d cooked tonight, poised with the pot braced between her ribs and elbow. “Someone calling with information?”

“No,” he managed. “It’s… it’s my ‘Uncle’.”

They fell silent. The phone buzzed loudly on the wood grain table three more times. He couldn’t clue anyone in that he knew what was happening. If his mother was still alive (if, that was a very big if), then her safety hinged on his cooperation.

He flipped the phone on and pinned it against his cheek. “Hello?”

“‘Yasu!” The man’s cheery voice roared through the speaker. Once his Uncle’s inability to use a normal volume was funny. Now it was just awful. Ieyasu braced himself in his chair and screwed his eyes shut, swallowing the waves of venom rising in his throat. “What are you doing?”

“Having dinner.”

“Having dinner? With someone?”

Ieyasu cast his eyes over at the Princess, who just finished scraping the pasta into bowls and returned to the kitchen. “No?”

“Huh.” A beat. “Well, your Aunt misses you. You should come by tomorrow, have a bit of dinner. We might even go to the movies. How about it?”

A sickening twist of I know who you aren’t and sure, yep, sounds great surged through him. This man--this stranger--had raised him. How could he separate that from the truth grinding in his ears? How could he reconcile the lies to the reality of the past two decades?

“Y’okay there?” His Uncle asked.

“Yeah,” Ieyasu lied. “Trying to think of my schedule. Hold on.”

“I thought you had a normal nine-to-five?”

“You know that’s not the case in practice.” He made an audible show of getting off his chair and pattering into the kitchen, squeezing past the woman with a hand to the small of her back. She jumped and blushed, but he pretended not to notice, just rifling through his calendar. It was always possible that the man really was asking him to hang out, but the more cynical part of him assumed that wasn’t the case. There was an angle somewhere.

Come to think of it…

“I’m on call tomorrow,” he answered, more surprised at himself for having never thought of this. “How does Thursday sound?”

“Hmm.” Apparently his Uncle wasn’t convinced, but he just sighed. “Well, Thursday will probably work. I’ll let your Aunt know. We love you, ‘Yasu.”

No you don’t. No, you don’t. He swallowed his feelings like broken glass and replied, “Love you all too.”

The line went dead. God, he needed something, anything to distract him now--and fortunately, he had just the thing. Ripping open the calendar, he started making marks. “I might need you to do a little research while we eat.”

“Mmm? What’s up? Are you okay?” Her voice was comforting and soft.

“Yeah, yeah, just thought of something.” He unpinned the calendar from the wall and took it back to the table with them, eating with one hand and highlighting with the other. “I need you to run a few dates for me through my hours log.”

“Sure?” She pattered into the office and emerged with the official laptop they’d set her up with, opening it and logging in. The poor woman had gone to so much trouble with dinner. Guilt flashed through him and he speared a bit of grilled zucchini harder than he meant.

“It’s good,” he mumbled.

“Hm?”

“The food,” he snapped, very on the spot. “Good.” Wow, could that sentence have been more mangled? “Tastes good. Thanks.”

Her smile was kinder than he deserved. “I’m glad.”

“Right.” He cleared his throat hard. “Okay. I’ll run off some dates. Tell me if I got called in for something major on the same day, alright? August first, twenty-seventeen.”

“Yes.”

“August twenty-eight, twenty-seventeen.”

“Yes.”

And on and on they went. Ieyasu dutifully listed each date his Uncle and Aunt conveniently wanted him to visit them, and on every single one, a major incident was recorded back in the base--with him being called in most of the time. He didn’t even need the last few months to confirm his theory, but he did it anyway. Maybe it was to cement the anger and rage, that betrayal burning hot in him, packing all of his sorrow and grief together until it formed its own wild star.

“Ieyasu?” She asked eventually, folding her glasses against her chest. “Are you okay?”

“What do you fucking think?” He snapped.

A pause. She nodded and folded the laptop shut. “Sorry. Stupid question.”

“He knew,” Ieyasu managed, breathless from anger. “He knew. This whole time, he knew. He guilted me and made me feel like shit and dragged me away from work intentionally. He knew something. This isn’t coincidence.”

Nothing more was said. With a resounding click, she just shut the laptop.

---

Nightmares woke him. Gasping for breath, he felt his way along his bedside table until he yanked on the chain of his lamp altogether too hard, watching it crash to the floor. Still, it did the job. Light lanced around his small room and provided him the meagre reassurance that he was alone after all.

God, he needed to get it together.

Kicking off the sheets, he righted the lamp and headed for the kitchen. It was chilly in the living room. He could still smell the distant scent of pasta and vegetables that he hadn’t appreciated in the moment. He poured himself a cup of cool water and gulped it down, refilled it, drank all that too, and got a third. Thousands of thoughts swirled in his mind and he crushed them all down. Nighttime was a time to sleep. He couldn’t stand and waste himself with worrying in this moment. He needed to quiet himself.

On his way back to his room, he saw the faint blue cast of light from the office. Was she still up? Ieyasu automatically tried to check his phone and realized he’d left it on the bedside table. Curious, he rapped his knuckles against the door.

“Come in.”

He eased the door open with a tap of his foot. There she was, clad in some white pajamas and settled into the office chair, a series of sticky notes littering the desk before her. Pale light from the laptop backlit her face. Not for the first time, Ieyasu realized she was really very lovely.

“What are you doing up?” She asked, pushing her glasses back up on her head. “It’s very late.”

He huffed. “Speak for yourself.”

The faintest of uneasy smiles flickered over her lips. “I was having nightmares.”

Part of him wanted to admit that he was, too, that the same things that haunted him no doubt ghosted her sleeping footsteps. He couldn’t bring himself to do that just yet. Instead he crossed to her side and peered at the computer screen, a thousand different searches on different individuals on a myriad of tabs. “What are you doing?”

“Hunting down your ‘Uncle’s’ real identity.” She threw up the finger quotes. “I figured it was high time that someone peeled back that mask.”

How could he even respond to that? He stared at her for so long that apparently she grew uncomfortable under his gaze. “I’m sorry, if you don’t want me to--”

“No, that’s not what--”

“--I don’t mean to intrude on anything--”

“--I’m just kind of--”

They both lapsed into silence again. After all the crosstalk, quiet was just funny. Ieyasu snorted, and she snickered, and finally they were quietly giggling in that dark room.

“No,” he managed, “sorry, I was just… surprised that this was what you decided to do.”

“Of course. It’s what I’m here for, and frankly, I got sort of… pissed about it.” She shrugged. “So I decided I was going to take a little time and expose him.”

A surge of foreign affection bloomed hot in his chest. Why was she here? After all this time, he was pretty sure he didn’t deserve to have someone so kind in his house. Without thinking, he reached out and took a hold of her hand.

“How about…” He struggled with words for a moment, trying to get past the look of surprise in her eyes, “Do you like Youtube videos?”

Wow. Wow. In retrospect he wanted to smack himself. What an inane question was that? But she pinned her lips between her teeth to stop from laughing and just smiled at him.

“Yeah,” she answered. “I like them alright, depending on what they are.”

“No shit,” he snipped, angry at himself still. “Uh, well, how about we just, um, hang out in the other room and watch something stupid? Not cause I want to, but you won’t be much use to me if you spend all night doing this and can’t work in the morning.”

“Right. That makes sense.” But she was smiling at him. “You’re probably right.”

They slipped back into the living room together and flopped down onto the grey couch, elbows and shoulders knocking together. He was more exhausted than he’d thought, or had to be--the contact didn’t bother him so much. After a moment he remembered he’d forgotten his phone in the other room, peeled himself back up, snatched up a blanket and the device, and returned to her, draping it over them both as he sat back down.

“You’re too cold,” he mumbled by way of an excuse. “What kind of videos should we watch?”

“Maybe something stupid, like a Vine compilation?”

“You’re right. That is stupid.”

But he thumbed Youtube open nonetheless and cast it onto the TV. Mercifully she held her tongue when the app told on him and revealed that one of his favorite things was to watch Vine compilations with Masamune. Throwing his most-watched one up there, he lay in the silence and felt her rumble with laughter at his side.

Somewhere along the line they both fell asleep. He woke around six only to find himself lying down, her head resting on his chest and his arm wrapped around her shoulders. He considered moving.

But he didn’t hate it.

Taking a deep breath, he stilled his mind again and drifted back into a dreamless rest.

#Ikesen #Ikemen Sengoku #Ikesen Spy Au #Ikesen Ieyasu #Ieyasu Tokugawa #Tokugawa Ieyasu #Ikesen fanfic #my writing #Bloodlines #Peeling Back The Mask #Spy Ieyasu #Angst #Fluff

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