Humble Love

“Shou-chan,” Akira grumbled, rolling over in his sleep once again and clawing at the empty spot behind him. Shoutarou had no idea how he managed to sleep through all this, but it seemed he was full of surprises. He whimpered as Shoutarou hammered the last nail in to hold up the sheet. His eyes finally starting to open.
“Shou-chan, why are you up so early?”
“The window blew in,” Shoutarou replied. “It was letting the snow in. You were going to wake up in a freezer.”

Akira blinked a couple times before his eyes went wide, darting from the melted drops of snow on the floor to the sheet over the window to the now-detached smashed window leaning against the wall. He curled the blankets tighter around himself, sucking on his bottom lip slightly.
“It must be a strong wind…”
“The house is falling apart.”

If a small snowstorm was enough to take one of them off their hinges, no doubt the rest were on borrowed time. They’d already spent so long booking renovations to try and get the house liveable and now they were going to have to add on replacing all the windows? It would be nice to revisit the idea of just knocking the place down and building their own home from scratch. But they couldn’t afford that. Even with Akira writing again, it still wasn’t like they had the kind of money to do even this level of work. Everything was going on loans or being put off until it was more affordable. Hayata and his girlfriend had offered to pitch in a little money - which Akira had accepted right away - and Kobayashi had offered to pay it in full - which Akira had rejected right away. They just had to balance it by what they could.

Shoutarou held back a sigh. It would probably be best to close off some of the rooms until they could afford to fix those windows. They’d get to it when they could get to it.
“Shou-chaaaan,” Akira whined again, this time lifting the blanket to make space when Shoutarou looked at him. It was still dark out. He probably was up too early, it wasn’t like he had a paper round anymore.

Shoutarou crawled back in with him, cuddling in as Akira wrapped his arms around him. Despite having not left the futon, Akira’s chest and hands were still cold. It wasn’t like he even had an excuse anymore.
“Shou-chan, you’re so nice and warm.” Not as warm as he used to be though. Though compared to Akira, he was practically burning up. Akira pulled him in closer till he was squished against his chest, face against Akira’s neck. He still smelled of sweat. Shoutarou closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. His heart rate started to pick up as Akira’s fingers rubbed at the small of his back, the familiar smell of him filling his head.

“Akira,” Shoutarou mumbled, his lips pressed to skin. “Do you want me to heat you up?”