JE/NEWS- "Still Miles to Go"
Title: Still Miles to Go
Universe: JE/ NewS ( Gov AU)
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS (appearances by Tackey, Nakamaru, and mentions of Jin)
Warnings/Spoilers: Bad medical procedural this time. >>
Word Count: 2,720
Summary: On the inevitable day, a thousand blessings can still be marred.
Dedication: crystallekil! Happy anniversary, baby! A year ago today, I made an amazing friend, and that we were brought together by these same amazing people. Though I have to say that I'm sorry that this is only kind of what you wanted.
A/N: I was wracking my brain over what to do with this for so long but it suddenly came to me one day when I was thinking that this AU sure is getting to be a lot like a Korean drama. I was only missing one element. Well, not anymore.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
Koyama is the one who is there on the chilly mid-winter Monday afternoon when it happens, when the world-the very universe- suddenly and unexpectedly shifts and changes forever in a matter of millimeters, right in the palm of his hand.
Waking up that morning, it hadn’t looked like the kind of day that would be any different from any of the hundreds of Mondays before it.
But it is.
Uchi’s hand is firmly ensconced in the older agent’s while he is talking a mile a minute just like always, about this and that and nothing and everything all at once. It is their ritual for life and living, for all the things Uchi has missed while being stuck somewhere in-between.
Except today, Koyama feels it when-as if in response- Uchi’s fingers suddenly tighten in his.
It makes the explosives expert stop in his tracks, makes him forget to breathe. For a moment, it feels like he’s somewhere in-between himself.
A dream, he immediately thinks, because he can’t help it. It’s been so long and forever that they’ve been this way and no way else that a traitorous part of himself doesn’t believe it can all be real. Am I dreaming? Wishful thinking?
He’s still holding his breath-still too afraid to move and wake himself up- when it happens again.
It is just the slightest of movements, just the tiniest bit of pressure from one of those long, elegant fingers against his the inside curve of his thumb. Barely there at all.
To Koyama, it feels like the very earth is trembling.
Because every Monday for the past three and a half years, Koyama has taken Uchi’s hand and squeezed it in his own, just like this. Their ritual of life and living and everything in-between.
One miraculous Monday afternoon three and a half years later, Uchi finally, finally squeezes back.
~~~~~
Ryo’s heart is in his throat when he is the first of the team to storm into the hospital after Koyama’s frantic calls on Monday evening.
“You’re lying,” he snarls to Koyama instantly, when his teammate meets him at the door to Uchi’s room and sees his hopeful, fearful eyes. “You’re lying and I’m going to punch you right in the face.”
The sniper’s voice trembles when he speaks and his bottom lip is raw and peeling from having been worried between his teeth countless times on the long drive over here.
“I’ll break your nose for such a bad practical joke,” the sharpshooter insists again, and can’t look Koyama in the eye the entire time.
To Koyama, Ryo has never sounded so completely helpless.
The older agent reaches out and hugs his friend with a laugh; he doesn’t have to say a word because he knows exactly what Ryo means.
A moment later, the sniper’s smaller frame collapses against his.
Neither of them cries, but the way Ryo’s shoulders shake could have fooled anyone.
~~~~~
“It’s not like in the movies at all, is it?” Tegoshi murmurs thoughtfully the following morning, as he leans over Uchi’s peaceful face, touches his teammate’s pale cheeks with gentle, probing fingers.
Behind him, Shige snorts and tells him not to be a menace, to let Uchi alone.
“If it were a movie,” Tegoshi continues, singularly unmindful of Shige’s warnings as he smoothes down the top of Uchi’s hair with both hands, “he would have woken up right after he’d moved and told us to stop being noisy like nothing was wrong. He would have acted like he’d just been asleep all this time and having nice dreams. I wonder what he’s dreaming now.”
“Well I’m telling you to stop being noisy right now,” Shige retorts, because it seems like the thing to do. “Quit bothering him.”
Tegoshi pouts. “Didn’t the doctors say it’s better if we keep talking to him?”
Shige is about to say something about how that’s really just a theory, but for some reason his jaw snaps shut before he can. Instead, he clears his throat and stands up, moves closer to the bed. “If this were a movie,” Shige admits after a beat, and reaches out to adjust the framed team photo Koyama has since put on Uchi’s bedside table, “our happy endings would have come along much sooner.”
Tegoshi laughs a little when he hears that and leans his head on Shige’s shoulder with a small yawn. “When he wakes up, I wonder if he’ll recognize me? My hair is real different now, ne.”
Shige bumps him lightly. “You haven’t changed that much, you idiot.”
“While Shige has aged considerably, both in look and demeanor,” Tegoshi responds with a mischievous smile, and earns himself a swat on the head just as Ryo comes back from the vending machine down the hall with a cup of horrible, overpriced coffee. The sniper snaps at them to stop crowding the coma patient.
The two younger agents obediently move out of the way to let him take up his perch at the bedside again, as he faithfully waits for something-anything-that will make this real to him, that won’t just be optimistic Koyama thinking he felt something and optimistic doctors predicting a favorable outcome because of that.
In the many hours that he’s there, Uchi doesn’t move an inch for him, but part of Ryo expects that the bastard is doing it on purpose, just to be annoying. It would be just like him.
Absently, Ryo wonders when he started to become so optimistic himself.
~~~~~
Halfway around the world, Kusano gets a message.
He’s in the gym playing a game of half court three-on-three with some of the other guys from the assisted living house when he hears his phone buzz in the pocket of his wheelchair.
He pauses mid-dribble and thinks to himself that if he makes this next shot over Big Dan he’ll tag out and check the message; if not, he’ll keep going until he gets at least a double-double.
From there he takes two more dribbles to the left and doesn’t hesitate for even a second before he throws up the ball right in Big Dan’s face from well beyond the three point arc, simply because he’s got a good feeling about today.
Everyone watches the ball make a pretty teardrop arc towards the rim before swishing through the net with a picture-perfect thwip.
“Damn,” Big Dan whistles upon seeing the shot fall like that, with an uncharacteristic soft finish from Hiro’s normally wild hands. “Enjoy that while you can, because that definitely doesn’t happen consistently, midget,” he scoffs. “I say lucky shot.”
Kusano just laughs at the larger man as he fumbles around in his wheelchair pocket for his phone. “What can I say? I’m feeling pretty lucky all of a sudden,” the former agent pants good-naturedly at his housemate, in-between breaths.
When he finally gets hold of his phone a few seconds later he sees a missed e-mail from Yamapi waiting for him in his inbox.
Sometimes he pauses whenever this happens, because sudden messages from Yamapi can be worrisome when they come to his phone in the middle of the day without warning. This is how Kusano usually learns about Shige’s broken ribs or Massu’s latest gunshot removal surgery or that Ryo has been missing for a week or that something else has gone horribly wrong and they’re still waiting for word that everything and everyone will be okay.
Today he clicks open the message without pause, and thinks it’s because today just feels lucky to him somehow.
What he sees on the LCD a few seconds later only proves him right.
~~~~~
Nakamaru watches Massu skeptically as his friend ambles up to their shopping cart with armfuls and armfuls of snacks. Across the aisle, a young couple with a happily burbling baby boy pause in their shopping to eye the two agents before sharing a knowing look and moving on. For a moment, Nakamaru can’t believe that this is how he’s spending his precious Saturday afternoon off.
“Massu,” Nakamaru begins gently to the younger agent as he nears, because he knows that this is a delicate time for the members of NEWS and that maybe it means he needs to have a little more patience than usual, “Massu, the hospital has food already, remember? You’ve been there. You’ve eaten it before. You even thought it was good.”
Massu blinks. “But still, they don’t give you very much,” he explains, and drops all of the snacks into the cart without pause.
Nakamaru sighs. “Uchi-kun doesn’t eat that much anyway, if I remember correctly.”
Massu smiles guilelessly, and while he knows that to be true, holds up a hand like he also happens to know a great secret that Nakamaru doesn’t. “But this time is different,” the younger agent insists, and starts to walk down the aisle again, picking up all the various and sundry that catch his eye as they pass because they look tasty. Nakamaru dutifully follows after him, pushing the shopping cart between them.
“Different, how?” Nakamaru has to ask after a beat, when he can’t figure out Massu’s meaning on his own this time. While his friend isn’t looking, he also takes one of the cans of preserved sardines out of the cart and fumbles it back onto the shelf on the opposite side of the aisle. He doesn’t think Uchi will particularly like those, even if he wasn’t just coming out of a coma.
“Well,” Massu begins, as he absently puts a few packages of canned curry-flavored ramen into the basket as well, “you know how every time you wake up in the morning before work, you feel really hungry and need a big breakfast right away to wake you up?”
“Yes? I guess?” Nakamaru replies, and makes a face as he surreptitiously slides the curry ramen cans back onto the shelves again.
Massu continues happily on. “By now Uchi’s been asleep for years ne. Think of all the big breakfasts he missed! It means that this time, he’s going to be the hungriest guy in the world when he wakes up!”
“I see…” Nakamaru murmurs, and supposes that it is a testament to their friendship when he kind of does. Massu never made this much sense to him back in their junior agent days. The explosives expert worries about his sanity sometimes, in moments like these.
In the meantime, Massu is just glad to be so well understood. “That’s why I definitely have to be prepared for how hungry he’ll be, ne. The others won’t be thinking about it because they’ll be worrying about other things, so this is my job to take care of, since I know this kind of thing best. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” the older agent admits, eventually. “It makes some kind of sense.”
Massu’s answering smile is so bright that for a moment, Nakamaru forgets to put the canned pickled leeks back on the shelf for him as well.
~~~~~
Come Sunday night, Yamapi’s phone is ringing off the hook in his office, and the stacks of paper along the side of his desk and all the other flat surfaces in the room have risen high enough so that it’s hard to see into the hallway anymore.
None of it feels important to Yamapi.
He knows it is, but it’s hard to think about, when there are a thousand other things to think about first.
The office is quiet and no one is here but him right now, as he sits with his office phone on mute and his cell phone diligently in front of him, pretending to finish typing up delayed reports while waiting for word from Koyama or one of the others. He doesn’t want to be here right now so much as he wants to be with them, but he also knows that there are only so many reports Jin can forge his signature on before Tackey gets suspicious of receiving forms that have Akanishi scratched out on the signature line and Yamashita etched in clumsily above it, after all.
A knock on his door a few minutes into his wandering thoughts startles the young team leader enough to make him jump a little; the motion sends a stack of unfinished papers tumbling to his feet.
Tackey blinks from the doorway, holding another ominous looking file folder in hand. “Any word?” he asks, after the fallen reports have settled again, in a fresh mess on the ground.
Yamapi shakes his head. “No. Nothing yet.”
Tackey frowns, looks regretful. He holds up the file folder in his hands reluctantly. “It can’t wait anymore,” he says, gently but firmly. “Time can’t stop for you guys anymore.”
Yamapi understands, thinks that it never really did. “Tomorrow,” he says, and pushes for just a few hours more in which his team can hope. “We’ll all be back here and ready to go tomorrow.”
Tackey nods. “There’s still work to do.”
That said, the administrator leaves the room while Yamapi looks up at the clock.
Three hours until midnight.
He wonders if something will change before morning.
~~~~~
Exactly a week after that first, tiny movement, Uchi’s condition has not changed.
“Work,” Yamapi informs them regretfully that morning in the waiting room. “It’s time to go back to work.”
“But,” Koyama starts, and is the first to speak up in protest, “we can’t let him wake up alone.”
Tired for a thousand different reasons, Ryo crushes his Styrofoam coffee cup in his hands and shakes his head. “Don’t know if he’s waking up at all,” the sniper reminds his teammate wearily, and proceeds to say the words everyone else has been thus far too afraid to utter. “Might’ve just been your imagination that day.”
Ryo is careful to keep his gaze trained on the floor, while the rest of the team can see Koyama’s heartbreak at the thought written plainly in his eyes.
Yamapi is resolute because he is the leader, and as the leader, he knows that sometimes that doesn’t always mean being the good guy.
But it always means doing his job, and what is best for his men.
He thinks this quiet anticipation is slowly killing them.
“We’re going back to work. Tackey did us a favor for a week now, ne. He doesn’t owe us this anymore. He never did.”
The others lower their eyes when they realize it’s true.
They can’t spend forever waiting around, hoping for something to change.
In the meantime, there is still a job to do, whether Uchi is there with them or not. They promised themselves a long time ago that they would fight to give their teammates something to return to, at such a time that they should.
It’s their responsibility to each other.
And because he knows that they all understand that, Yamapi silently holds open the door as the rest of his team obediently shuffles out of the room with him, leaving Uchi behind them with a mountain of snacks, with a handful of cheerful balloons and flower bouquets and on the nightstand at his bedside, a small framed photo of eight people who existed happily together three and a half years long, long past.
The remainder of NEWS goes back to work, leaving all of those things with Uchi in the room behind them. They think that when Uchi opens his eyes again, even if it’s while he’s alone, at least he’ll know that they were there and waiting.
For now, they still have their own work to do.
~~~~~
On Monday morning, while his teammate’s cars are starting to pull out of the hospital parking lot just outside his window six floors down, a bag of chips from the top of the mountain of snacks in Uchi's room tumbles to the floor with a loud and sudden crackling of plastic.
It wakes Uchi with a start, and the first thing he does is complain about the noise.
When no one responds he yawns and stretches, before realizing that he can’t move his arm too well, that it’s hooked up to something.
As he blinks open bleary eyes in confusion, the first thing he sees on the nightstand beside him is a photograph of himself, smiling broadly with seven other people.
In a strange moment of loss, he wonders who they all are.
END
Universe: JE/ NewS ( Gov AU)
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS (appearances by Tackey, Nakamaru, and mentions of Jin)
Warnings/Spoilers: Bad medical procedural this time. >>
Word Count: 2,720
Summary: On the inevitable day, a thousand blessings can still be marred.
Dedication: crystallekil! Happy anniversary, baby! A year ago today, I made an amazing friend, and that we were brought together by these same amazing people. Though I have to say that I'm sorry that this is only kind of what you wanted.
A/N: I was wracking my brain over what to do with this for so long but it suddenly came to me one day when I was thinking that this AU sure is getting to be a lot like a Korean drama. I was only missing one element. Well, not anymore.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
Koyama is the one who is there on the chilly mid-winter Monday afternoon when it happens, when the world-the very universe- suddenly and unexpectedly shifts and changes forever in a matter of millimeters, right in the palm of his hand.
Waking up that morning, it hadn’t looked like the kind of day that would be any different from any of the hundreds of Mondays before it.
But it is.
Uchi’s hand is firmly ensconced in the older agent’s while he is talking a mile a minute just like always, about this and that and nothing and everything all at once. It is their ritual for life and living, for all the things Uchi has missed while being stuck somewhere in-between.
Except today, Koyama feels it when-as if in response- Uchi’s fingers suddenly tighten in his.
It makes the explosives expert stop in his tracks, makes him forget to breathe. For a moment, it feels like he’s somewhere in-between himself.
A dream, he immediately thinks, because he can’t help it. It’s been so long and forever that they’ve been this way and no way else that a traitorous part of himself doesn’t believe it can all be real. Am I dreaming? Wishful thinking?
He’s still holding his breath-still too afraid to move and wake himself up- when it happens again.
It is just the slightest of movements, just the tiniest bit of pressure from one of those long, elegant fingers against his the inside curve of his thumb. Barely there at all.
To Koyama, it feels like the very earth is trembling.
Because every Monday for the past three and a half years, Koyama has taken Uchi’s hand and squeezed it in his own, just like this. Their ritual of life and living and everything in-between.
One miraculous Monday afternoon three and a half years later, Uchi finally, finally squeezes back.
~~~~~
Ryo’s heart is in his throat when he is the first of the team to storm into the hospital after Koyama’s frantic calls on Monday evening.
“You’re lying,” he snarls to Koyama instantly, when his teammate meets him at the door to Uchi’s room and sees his hopeful, fearful eyes. “You’re lying and I’m going to punch you right in the face.”
The sniper’s voice trembles when he speaks and his bottom lip is raw and peeling from having been worried between his teeth countless times on the long drive over here.
“I’ll break your nose for such a bad practical joke,” the sharpshooter insists again, and can’t look Koyama in the eye the entire time.
To Koyama, Ryo has never sounded so completely helpless.
The older agent reaches out and hugs his friend with a laugh; he doesn’t have to say a word because he knows exactly what Ryo means.
A moment later, the sniper’s smaller frame collapses against his.
Neither of them cries, but the way Ryo’s shoulders shake could have fooled anyone.
~~~~~
“It’s not like in the movies at all, is it?” Tegoshi murmurs thoughtfully the following morning, as he leans over Uchi’s peaceful face, touches his teammate’s pale cheeks with gentle, probing fingers.
Behind him, Shige snorts and tells him not to be a menace, to let Uchi alone.
“If it were a movie,” Tegoshi continues, singularly unmindful of Shige’s warnings as he smoothes down the top of Uchi’s hair with both hands, “he would have woken up right after he’d moved and told us to stop being noisy like nothing was wrong. He would have acted like he’d just been asleep all this time and having nice dreams. I wonder what he’s dreaming now.”
“Well I’m telling you to stop being noisy right now,” Shige retorts, because it seems like the thing to do. “Quit bothering him.”
Tegoshi pouts. “Didn’t the doctors say it’s better if we keep talking to him?”
Shige is about to say something about how that’s really just a theory, but for some reason his jaw snaps shut before he can. Instead, he clears his throat and stands up, moves closer to the bed. “If this were a movie,” Shige admits after a beat, and reaches out to adjust the framed team photo Koyama has since put on Uchi’s bedside table, “our happy endings would have come along much sooner.”
Tegoshi laughs a little when he hears that and leans his head on Shige’s shoulder with a small yawn. “When he wakes up, I wonder if he’ll recognize me? My hair is real different now, ne.”
Shige bumps him lightly. “You haven’t changed that much, you idiot.”
“While Shige has aged considerably, both in look and demeanor,” Tegoshi responds with a mischievous smile, and earns himself a swat on the head just as Ryo comes back from the vending machine down the hall with a cup of horrible, overpriced coffee. The sniper snaps at them to stop crowding the coma patient.
The two younger agents obediently move out of the way to let him take up his perch at the bedside again, as he faithfully waits for something-anything-that will make this real to him, that won’t just be optimistic Koyama thinking he felt something and optimistic doctors predicting a favorable outcome because of that.
In the many hours that he’s there, Uchi doesn’t move an inch for him, but part of Ryo expects that the bastard is doing it on purpose, just to be annoying. It would be just like him.
Absently, Ryo wonders when he started to become so optimistic himself.
~~~~~
Halfway around the world, Kusano gets a message.
He’s in the gym playing a game of half court three-on-three with some of the other guys from the assisted living house when he hears his phone buzz in the pocket of his wheelchair.
He pauses mid-dribble and thinks to himself that if he makes this next shot over Big Dan he’ll tag out and check the message; if not, he’ll keep going until he gets at least a double-double.
From there he takes two more dribbles to the left and doesn’t hesitate for even a second before he throws up the ball right in Big Dan’s face from well beyond the three point arc, simply because he’s got a good feeling about today.
Everyone watches the ball make a pretty teardrop arc towards the rim before swishing through the net with a picture-perfect thwip.
“Damn,” Big Dan whistles upon seeing the shot fall like that, with an uncharacteristic soft finish from Hiro’s normally wild hands. “Enjoy that while you can, because that definitely doesn’t happen consistently, midget,” he scoffs. “I say lucky shot.”
Kusano just laughs at the larger man as he fumbles around in his wheelchair pocket for his phone. “What can I say? I’m feeling pretty lucky all of a sudden,” the former agent pants good-naturedly at his housemate, in-between breaths.
When he finally gets hold of his phone a few seconds later he sees a missed e-mail from Yamapi waiting for him in his inbox.
Sometimes he pauses whenever this happens, because sudden messages from Yamapi can be worrisome when they come to his phone in the middle of the day without warning. This is how Kusano usually learns about Shige’s broken ribs or Massu’s latest gunshot removal surgery or that Ryo has been missing for a week or that something else has gone horribly wrong and they’re still waiting for word that everything and everyone will be okay.
Today he clicks open the message without pause, and thinks it’s because today just feels lucky to him somehow.
What he sees on the LCD a few seconds later only proves him right.
~~~~~
Nakamaru watches Massu skeptically as his friend ambles up to their shopping cart with armfuls and armfuls of snacks. Across the aisle, a young couple with a happily burbling baby boy pause in their shopping to eye the two agents before sharing a knowing look and moving on. For a moment, Nakamaru can’t believe that this is how he’s spending his precious Saturday afternoon off.
“Massu,” Nakamaru begins gently to the younger agent as he nears, because he knows that this is a delicate time for the members of NEWS and that maybe it means he needs to have a little more patience than usual, “Massu, the hospital has food already, remember? You’ve been there. You’ve eaten it before. You even thought it was good.”
Massu blinks. “But still, they don’t give you very much,” he explains, and drops all of the snacks into the cart without pause.
Nakamaru sighs. “Uchi-kun doesn’t eat that much anyway, if I remember correctly.”
Massu smiles guilelessly, and while he knows that to be true, holds up a hand like he also happens to know a great secret that Nakamaru doesn’t. “But this time is different,” the younger agent insists, and starts to walk down the aisle again, picking up all the various and sundry that catch his eye as they pass because they look tasty. Nakamaru dutifully follows after him, pushing the shopping cart between them.
“Different, how?” Nakamaru has to ask after a beat, when he can’t figure out Massu’s meaning on his own this time. While his friend isn’t looking, he also takes one of the cans of preserved sardines out of the cart and fumbles it back onto the shelf on the opposite side of the aisle. He doesn’t think Uchi will particularly like those, even if he wasn’t just coming out of a coma.
“Well,” Massu begins, as he absently puts a few packages of canned curry-flavored ramen into the basket as well, “you know how every time you wake up in the morning before work, you feel really hungry and need a big breakfast right away to wake you up?”
“Yes? I guess?” Nakamaru replies, and makes a face as he surreptitiously slides the curry ramen cans back onto the shelves again.
Massu continues happily on. “By now Uchi’s been asleep for years ne. Think of all the big breakfasts he missed! It means that this time, he’s going to be the hungriest guy in the world when he wakes up!”
“I see…” Nakamaru murmurs, and supposes that it is a testament to their friendship when he kind of does. Massu never made this much sense to him back in their junior agent days. The explosives expert worries about his sanity sometimes, in moments like these.
In the meantime, Massu is just glad to be so well understood. “That’s why I definitely have to be prepared for how hungry he’ll be, ne. The others won’t be thinking about it because they’ll be worrying about other things, so this is my job to take care of, since I know this kind of thing best. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” the older agent admits, eventually. “It makes some kind of sense.”
Massu’s answering smile is so bright that for a moment, Nakamaru forgets to put the canned pickled leeks back on the shelf for him as well.
~~~~~
Come Sunday night, Yamapi’s phone is ringing off the hook in his office, and the stacks of paper along the side of his desk and all the other flat surfaces in the room have risen high enough so that it’s hard to see into the hallway anymore.
None of it feels important to Yamapi.
He knows it is, but it’s hard to think about, when there are a thousand other things to think about first.
The office is quiet and no one is here but him right now, as he sits with his office phone on mute and his cell phone diligently in front of him, pretending to finish typing up delayed reports while waiting for word from Koyama or one of the others. He doesn’t want to be here right now so much as he wants to be with them, but he also knows that there are only so many reports Jin can forge his signature on before Tackey gets suspicious of receiving forms that have Akanishi scratched out on the signature line and Yamashita etched in clumsily above it, after all.
A knock on his door a few minutes into his wandering thoughts startles the young team leader enough to make him jump a little; the motion sends a stack of unfinished papers tumbling to his feet.
Tackey blinks from the doorway, holding another ominous looking file folder in hand. “Any word?” he asks, after the fallen reports have settled again, in a fresh mess on the ground.
Yamapi shakes his head. “No. Nothing yet.”
Tackey frowns, looks regretful. He holds up the file folder in his hands reluctantly. “It can’t wait anymore,” he says, gently but firmly. “Time can’t stop for you guys anymore.”
Yamapi understands, thinks that it never really did. “Tomorrow,” he says, and pushes for just a few hours more in which his team can hope. “We’ll all be back here and ready to go tomorrow.”
Tackey nods. “There’s still work to do.”
That said, the administrator leaves the room while Yamapi looks up at the clock.
Three hours until midnight.
He wonders if something will change before morning.
~~~~~
Exactly a week after that first, tiny movement, Uchi’s condition has not changed.
“Work,” Yamapi informs them regretfully that morning in the waiting room. “It’s time to go back to work.”
“But,” Koyama starts, and is the first to speak up in protest, “we can’t let him wake up alone.”
Tired for a thousand different reasons, Ryo crushes his Styrofoam coffee cup in his hands and shakes his head. “Don’t know if he’s waking up at all,” the sniper reminds his teammate wearily, and proceeds to say the words everyone else has been thus far too afraid to utter. “Might’ve just been your imagination that day.”
Ryo is careful to keep his gaze trained on the floor, while the rest of the team can see Koyama’s heartbreak at the thought written plainly in his eyes.
Yamapi is resolute because he is the leader, and as the leader, he knows that sometimes that doesn’t always mean being the good guy.
But it always means doing his job, and what is best for his men.
He thinks this quiet anticipation is slowly killing them.
“We’re going back to work. Tackey did us a favor for a week now, ne. He doesn’t owe us this anymore. He never did.”
The others lower their eyes when they realize it’s true.
They can’t spend forever waiting around, hoping for something to change.
In the meantime, there is still a job to do, whether Uchi is there with them or not. They promised themselves a long time ago that they would fight to give their teammates something to return to, at such a time that they should.
It’s their responsibility to each other.
And because he knows that they all understand that, Yamapi silently holds open the door as the rest of his team obediently shuffles out of the room with him, leaving Uchi behind them with a mountain of snacks, with a handful of cheerful balloons and flower bouquets and on the nightstand at his bedside, a small framed photo of eight people who existed happily together three and a half years long, long past.
The remainder of NEWS goes back to work, leaving all of those things with Uchi in the room behind them. They think that when Uchi opens his eyes again, even if it’s while he’s alone, at least he’ll know that they were there and waiting.
For now, they still have their own work to do.
~~~~~
On Monday morning, while his teammate’s cars are starting to pull out of the hospital parking lot just outside his window six floors down, a bag of chips from the top of the mountain of snacks in Uchi's room tumbles to the floor with a loud and sudden crackling of plastic.
It wakes Uchi with a start, and the first thing he does is complain about the noise.
When no one responds he yawns and stretches, before realizing that he can’t move his arm too well, that it’s hooked up to something.
As he blinks open bleary eyes in confusion, the first thing he sees on the nightstand beside him is a photograph of himself, smiling broadly with seven other people.
In a strange moment of loss, he wonders who they all are.
END