Title: Gradual Developments
Fandom: Cardcaptor Sakura
Rating: General
Length: 650ish
Content notes: canonical magically-induced chronic fatigue
Author notes: Somewhere just off the end of master of the clow. Touya/Yuki
Summary: He had no idea how Yuki had kept his grades up like this; focusing enough to read a full page of a textbook was as wearying as the school's annual long-distance race had been before.

oOo

Touya had accepted the inevitability of feeling like trash for a long time, possibly forever, well before he actually managed to give his power to Yuki's - well, to Yue, however you wanted to describe the relationship between Yue and Yukito. With Yuki sleeping all hours of the day and night and eating impossibly, combined with Sakura's bouts of exhaustion every time something happened - he'd been aware that giving his power away was going to have a physical impact.

The particular grey exhaustion of being constantly, achingly tired, though… that had to be experienced to really understand it. He had no idea how Yuki had kept his grades up like this; focusing enough to read a full page of a textbook was as wearying as the school's annual long-distance race had been before.

It did, however, have a few silver linings, beside the fact Yuki was still with him. That was more than a silver lining, that was a purpose he was thoroughly dedicated to. No, the silver lining was when your ridiculously cute boyfriend, having managed to drag you home even through bucketing rain, demanded you go have a shower and get in the bath and warm up at once, and he was going to come with you to make sure you didn't fall asleep and drown, you were too fatigued to actually have a libido anymore.

Not that he wouldn't like exploring things with Yuki, some time, if Yuki was interested, but- they weren't exactly alone in this. And from the short amount of time Touya had spent in Yue's company so far, he got the impression intimacy was not going to be something Yue was easily comfortable with. Even if he'd taken Touya's magic from him with something very like a kiss.

(Prickly as a cat and more beautiful than Touya had words for, that was Yue.)

Spending time with Yuki was easier like this.

Still. It was best when Yuki wasn't fretting at him. "I can clean myself up," Touya insisted, around a yawn. "I'll sit down and shower, that'll warm me up, then you can clean up. Then we can have cocoa and watch a movie. Dad's not home for hours, and Sakura's over at Tomoyo's house for the night, so you may as well stay over."

Yuki blinked at him, and then the slowest smile curled around his mouth. (Anyone who thought Yuki was innocent had not been paying attention to things like his gleefully plowing his way through the whole basketball team at least once a year.) "Why, Touya," he murmured. "I might think you just want to get me all to yourself, with an invitation like that."

"Go pick a film," Touya told him, waving him out of the bathroom. "Something you like." Because Touya would fall asleep on Yuki's shoulder before it was half-way through, and they both knew it.

"If you aren't out in twenty minutes, I'll come back and wake you up," Yuki promised, before setting down the stack of towels he'd fetched, beside the clean pyjamas he'd also found, and Touya couldn't remember a time when Yuki hadn't known this house as well as his own, but the comfortable way he moved about now, without waiting for permission to go in the cupboards or the fridge… that was new, and he loved it.

"Shower!" Yuki reminded him, slipping out.

Touya was so tired his bones ached and his head felt like it was falling off, and he was probably going to catch a cold from standing here in his drenched uniform. (The slightly weakened immune system wasn't an effect he'd been expecting, either.) But he wouldn't trade it for anything; this slow and sweet life with Yukito was his and he was going to keep on clinging to it with everything he had, even in his sleep.

oOo