❝𝗳𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹, 𝗺𝘆 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗲❞ 𝗎𝗌𝗁𝗂𝗍𝖾𝗇

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 13

Semi had just arrived home.
Placing the small luggage he had brought with him on the bed, he thought about Satori.
He would have preferred not to go home in that moment, after seeing Tendou like that.
In a matter of three months the friend had gotten much worse, and seeing him lying on the bed and unable to move or talk too much due to his illness, didn't make him feel good at all.
When Semi met Satori, the second one, being a genetic disease was already ill, but he had always been quite an energetic person anyway.

The red-haired boy often went to see their trainings and Semi always noticed how his eyes lit up every time Ushijima attacked.
Tendou wished he could play, not have to spend whole days in the hospital, not have to carry that uncomfortable nasal cannula with him all the time.
Tendou didn't deserve all this, Semi thought.

Ushijima was in Tendou's room, lying with his stomach facing up on the red-haired boy's bed.
Tendou, similarly placed next to him, had his head resting on Ushijima's shoulder.
The two boys held a manga in front of them, that was given to Satori by Wakatoshi, and they were reading it.

Ushijima, however, stopped reading when he saw that Tendou had fallen asleep, and smiled.
When he moved slightly, to place the boy in a more comfortable position, he woke up, lifting his head up from Ushijima's shoulder.

"Don't go away." the red-haired boy said in a faint voice, keeping his eyes half closed.

"I'm not leaving Tendou, don't worry." he answered lying down next to Satori and holding him in his arms.
Tendou hugged back Ushijima, albeit with a rather weak grip, and in a few minutes he fell asleep again.

Moments like that had now become frequent.
The red-haired boy had begun to no longer want to be alone in the room, and even if Wakatoshi would never leave him, he was afraid that he would go away.

In fact, Tendou's conditions didn't improve.
Unfortunately, the antibiotics weren't working yet and Wakatoshi didn't knew what to do anymore.
He kept talking to the doctors, telling them to try something else, but the answer was always the same.
"Wakatoshi we know how you feel, we all care a lot about Tendou here.
Unfortunately, the Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection - the lung infection that Tendou has contracted, due to cystic fibrosis - is difficult to cure, and the effective antibiotics are those. 
We are doing everything possible."

Ushijima couldn't accept the fact that he couldn't do anything, that he couldn't make Tendou feel better.
The brown-haired boy was trying in every way to improve his mood or to help him when he started to feel worse.
Unfortunately this wasn't enough: a few days had passed and due to the last crisis, Tendou had now reached respiratory failure.

Now there was no longer a small nasal cannula on his face, but an opaque mask that covered his nose and mouth, connected to a small oxygen machine.

Ushijima no longer knew what to say.
Their days didn't change, except for the fact that Tendou hardly ever spoke, failing to do so.

The two boys were lying on the bed again.

"Tendou..." Ushijima said suddenly, without ceasing to caress him.

Satori looked at him and nodded, to let him know he had his attention.
Ushijima hesitated.

"Do you remember when, a few months ago, you asked me if I liked to visit you?"

Tendou nodded again.

"There's really nothing that pleases me more than being with you, Satori."

The red-haired boy was stunned for a moment.
Ushijima had never spoken directly to him, he didn't like to talk about how he felt.

Then he smiled and then mouthed a "Me too", since with the noise of the oxygen machine and the fact that his voice was now too weak, he wouldn't have been heard.

Then Tendou went even closer to the brown-haired boy with difficulty, to be hugged by him.

Ushijima wanted to express himself with Tendou as much as he could now, to make him understand how much he cared about him.

Being a very reserved boy, Wakatoshi never had many friends or people who cared about him, and he didn't even want to have them.
But since red-haired boy had approached him, he somehow felt protected, loved.
At that moment, however, he wanted to protect Satori, even though he had no power over this thing.
But he had to, Tendou had always been his point of reference, his home.