Relief washes through Erich’s body as he finally, finally stumbles into the little clearing where he’s made his current shelter, and then instantly fizzles out as he remembers that he still has to get Ukitake into his shelter.

“You are so much more trouble than you’re worth,” he murmurs in exasperation as he sweeps his gaze over his campsite to confirm that nothing has changed in the hours he’s been away; he has wards up around the area, but considering he barely sensed the asshole Shinigami when looking right at the man… well. He doesn’t want to take any chances that a surprise might be lurking around.

Ukitake, as expected, doesn’t respond, but Erich can still feel the little puffs of breath against his throat as the man breathes, so… he’s still alive, at least. And his campsite seems untouched, everything as it should be, which is yet another relief.

He crosses the little clearing, moving around the hides he has drying and the sheltered fire pit and towards the curtain-covered doorway into his shelter. He has to duck his head to enter, and has to turn sideways to get Ukitake through the door without slamming his legs into the wall, but he makes it. He’s home, he’s safe, he can—

Continue caring for Ukitake, instead of collapsing on his bed and sleeping for a century like he wants to, Erich acknowledges with a soft groan.

He doesn’t bother trying to be graceful about setting Ukitake down, just leans down and drops the man the last inch or two onto the pile of leaves and hides and fur that make up his bedding. It’s yet another relief to have the man out of his arms, and he has to resist the urge to just… follow the man down and never get up again.

(He’s so tired.)

(His body aches and his magic has been drained to the dregs and even the reishi he’s desperately yanking into his body with every breath is barely covering the exhaustion starting to spiral through him.)

(And yet… and yet—)

Erich groans and forces himself to straighten up and turn back around. Forces himself to stumble back outside. Forces himself to kneel in front of the fire pit and start rebuilding it, digging out his carefully banked coals and stacking wood around them in the pattern that’s become second nature after all these years. A few handfuls of dried grasses, a bit of careful prodding, and… he has a fire again.

A fire that he spends a moment just… watching, one hand one his knee and the other resting atop the hilt of the Shinigami’s blade, trying to bleed the stress and exhaustion from his body.

The Shinigami’s blade pokes at his senses again, drawing his attention away from the fire and to it again. Which…

“Sorry,” Erich huffs as he awkwardly pulls the bare blade from where he’d tucked it through his belt. “I’ll clean you once I have the strength,” he promises the blade as he twists around and stretches out towards his shelter, setting it atop a rock just inside the door. That seems to satisfy the blade enough for it to retreat from his senses again, which is… good. It’s very good, because he really doesn’t want to anger the… spirit?… inside the Shinigami’s blade.

And besides, he has much more pressing matters to deal with. Like food. And the making thereof. For both of them, but especially for himself, since he suspects Ukitake isn’t going to be capable of eating much for a while, even if he needs to. Which… how is he going to handle this? What can he even make out here in the middle of nowhere to feed to someone with a fever?

(Why did he not just drag Ukitake to the nearest town and wash his hands of the matter?)

(It’s a two day walk away, but he wouldn’t exactly be walking…)

(…no, he knows the reason, knows the lead building in his limbs and the crawling emptiness in his chest all too well.)

(He wouldn’t make it even half the distance, even if he left Ukitake behind.)

“Just a bit more,” Erich murmurs to himself as he reaches up to scrub wearily at his eyes, knocking his glasses askew. “Come on, you’ve pushed through worse,” he tells himself as he tiredly fixes his glasses. “Up, go to the river, come on.”

It takes him another few breaths before he can muster the strength to stand back up, and even then he has to immediately brace himself against the shelter behind him. He waits out the spots in his vision and the way his head spins, and the moment he feels steady again he pushes away and heads to the river; between the plants that grow along the bank and the fish traps he’s set up in the river itself, he can… hopefully produce something for them to eat. For him to eat.

(He has definitely not been eating enough.)

(There’s a reason he asked Alexis to steal his sealskin once the war started turning bad and rationing began!)

(He needs so much food as a free Selkie…)

Luckily, the river isn’t far, and his traps aren’t either. Even more luckily, his very first trap has a fish in it, which he hauls up and dispatches with a quick spike of hardened reishi. He stares at the fish for a moment, then at his hands which are already starting to tremble faintly, and snarls in frustration; like this, he doesn’t trust himself to clean the fish properly. It doesn’t really matter for him, but for the sick Shinigami…?

No. He needs to eat now, before he does something to make the Shinigami worse.

Erich tugs one-handed at his sealskin, freeing it from his belt and dragging it up and over his shoulder. He concentrates, feeling the sealskin start to merge with him… and carefully holds the shift where it is, not letting himself fully transform. Like this, he has no trouble biting through the fish — scales, bones, and all — and tearing it into pieces that his still human-sized mouth and throat can handle.

It’s not enough, not nearly enough, but even this small amount is enough to start helping.

His second trap has a few more fish in it, all significantly smaller than the first, and he doesn’t hesitate to haul the trap out, fumble it open with stiff, webbed fingers, and just swallow these fish whole.

(He’ll need to hold himself in this partially shifted state for a while, but at least this way he can eat something right now.)

The third trap only has two fish in it, both decently sized, and he quickly dispatches them before setting the second down and drawing his belt knife. With some actual food in his stomach, his hands are starting to steady and his grip feels more certain even with the heavy claws and tough webbing between his fingers; it doesn’t take long to rinse the fish off in the river and then slice it open and clean it out, followed by the second. The guts he just tosses back in the river, not feeling up to doing anything else with them at the moment. Removing the scales of both fish doesn’t take much longer, and he doesn’t bother to be exceptionally neat about it, just holds the fish over the river and drags the back of his knife down the body until there are no more scales clinging to the skin.

It leaves him with scales clinging to his hands and arms and even clothing, but the first two he can wash off in the river and the third can be a problem for later him; right now, he needs to get back to camp and set the fish to cooking.

By the time he returns to camp, his fire has burned down to a level perfect for cooking on, and he gladly sets his cooking stone over top it, sets a pot on that, and hauls at his nearly empty reserves of magic to partially fill that pot with clean water. The fish he sets aside on another cleaned stone to wait for the water to boil, and then…

And then he’s left with nothing to do but wait. Wait and see to the sick Shinigami currently laying in his bed.

A Shinigami he really shouldn’t have just… left like that, Erich acknowledges tiredly, as he pushes himself back to his feet, grabs one of his cups, and takes the two steps back to his shelter.

With his partial shift still in effect, he can see better into the gloom of the shelter than he normally can, and it’s more than enough to see how Ukitake has moved, curling onto his side and pressing his face into his sleeve. It does not look like a comfortable position to be in, and Erich sighs and ducks back inside.

“Hey,” he murmurs as he crouches next to the man. A soft, tired noise is all the answer he gets from Ukitake, which at least tells him the man isn’t unconscious, but rather little else. “Come on, sit up a moment, you need to drink something,” he says as he sets the cup aside and reaches out, pressing the palm of one hand to Ukitake’s forehead to roughly estimate how feverish he is; his palms are currently one of the only bits of him without a seal’s thick, dense fur beginning to sprout, and so his only real way to judge human temperatures until it’s finally safe for him to release his partial shift and retake his more human shape.

What he feels isn’t… well, it isn’t exactly great, but it does feel like Ukitake’s fever has settled down at least a little.

When he pulls his hand away again, Ukitake’s eyes are open and the man is staring at him; his gaze is a bit hazy with fever, but he’s definitely aware and also very definitely taking in Erich’s changes with fascination.

Erich grimaces and casts a sidelong look at the entrance to his shelter; the sun isn’t at the right angle to actually reach too far in, but it’s certainly enough for humans to still have fairly good vision. And while the dimness and shadows will hide at least some of his changes, others are… not so easily overlooked.

(Hopefully, the man will think his fever is the cause of these memories.)

(…hopefully…)

“Up,” Erich repeats as he reaches out again, sliding a hand under Ukitake’s shoulder and pulling the man up and over to lean against Erich’s side. A careful twist of magic fills the cup with water, and he brings it over, wrapping one of Ukitake’s hands around it and bringing it up to the man’s mouth. “Drink.”

Ukitake sighs at that, but at least he drinks without complaint, swallowing down at least half the water before he turns his head away and lets himself slump further against Erich’s side. His head comes to rest on Erich’s shoulder with another sigh and his eyes start to slip closed and… he’s trembling. Tiny little shivers are running through his body, even as Erich can feel the way the man’s clothing is starting to become damp with sweat.

“I need to get you out of these,” Erich tells the man, tugging lightly on the long white coat the man is wearing. The soft, agreeable noise he gets, accompanied by Ukitake starting to fumble at his clothing, is answer enough, and Erich does his best to jostle Ukitake as little as possible in the process. There’s no helping the fact that Shinigami attire is long and Erich needs to lift Ukitake up a bit to pull bits out from underneath the man, but… he thinks he does well enough.

At the least, Ukitake isn’t complaining at him, even when Erich strips him down to his inner clothing and helps him lay back down. Nor does he complain when Erich unties his footwear and sets the straw sandals aside, followed by his socks. He just… lays where Erich put him, eyes nearly closed and breathing strained, clearly feeling miserable.

Erich grimaces at the sight and leans over to grab the couple of blankets he’d left folded at the foot of his bed, dragging them up and over the man to offer some manner of warmth; his little shelter is often a stable temperature, given the way he built it, but he’ll be the first to admit that stable temperature does not often mean comfortable temperature. Better, then, to give the man blankets for warmth despite the fever—

Fingers brush against his chin, shattering his line of thought and making him stare at Ukitake in surprise. Surprise that only worsens as Ukitake lets out a small “oh” and strokes his thumb along Erich’s cheek, carefully moving it in the direction of his fur, and then repeats the action, like he’s… like he’s petting him!

“Beautiful,” Ukitake murmurs as his fingers move along Erich’s jaw, tracing the grain of his fur and—

Erich yanks his head back. Catches Ukitake’s wrist in as gentle a grip as he can manage. Keeps his claws carefully away from Ukitake’s skin. Guides the man’s hand back down to the bed.

(His chin and cheek burn with remembered touch, like Ukitake’s hand is a brand able to sear his skin even through the layer of fur he’s grown.)

“I need to tend to our food,” he forces out as he lets go of Ukitake’s wrist and scrambles back to his feet. “Get some rest, I’ll wake you when it’s ready.”

He ducks out of his shelter feeling more hunted than ever; even if it’s just the fever talking, the fact that Ukitake would touch him, would pet him, would call him beautiful in this in-between form—

He shakes his head. Focuses on what he needs to do.

Ignores the feeling of eyes on his back as he sets to it.

(Surely Ukitake won’t remember any of this…)

(…surely…)