Chapter Text
Narukami Yu is seamless perfection and soft edges and everything Kurusu Akira has ever wanted to be. Yu so effortlessly fills the space left by his father, by his mother, and becomes everything neither of them ever were to him seemingly without even trying. He cooks, he works, he does well in school and in his social life and somehow he does all this and remains the good older brother. Akira can’t remember the last time he saw his brother as something less than perfect.
Now he watches as this stranger before him curls around a toilet and coughs and gags and spits, ugly sounds that start at the base of his esophagus and work their way up along with the contents. His skin has an unhealthy pallor and he’s thinner than he used to be, without the high-collared shirts to hide the way the muscle has faded and the ribs stick out when he convulses. But it’s still there—the ivy that winds and loops its way up his spine and across his back, the mark that is now slowly killing him.
Yu’s back shudders and he bends over the toilet once more, and the ivy tattoo stretches with his skin.
Finally, after what seems like years and years have gone by, Yu sits back, slumping against the edge of the bathtub and looking at Akira with tired, tired eyes.
For the first time, this person is Fallible. Imperfect. Vulnerable.
Akira wants to gather the shattered pieces and mourn them, even though he’s not entirely sure what he lost.
“Hananeduki,” his words are flat, empty, “How long?”
His brother won’t meet his eyes, and something between them dies, a little. “Two years, almost three.”
“Do you know how much longer you have left?”
“No.”
Akira takes a shuddering breath, and his composure is beginning to crack. But then, so is his brother’s. Maybe they were both more damaged than they had any right to be.
“You won’t get the surgery.” It was an accusation, a desperate stab right for the heart. Yu’s eyes get big in the way they do; sad and wide and a little like he’s watching his heart break. Maybe he is. He finally looks up, looks at Akira.
“I couldn’t do that to him.” And it’s selfish, really, and they both know it, and Akira knows that this person in front of him deserves to be selfish more than anyone else but he can’t sit here and let his brother pretend that he’s not the one losing something.
“You’re dying,” and his voice cracks a little, but he can’t pretend that something else isn’t cracked a little too.
Yu smiles and Akira hates that expression more than anything else in the world. “I’ll be okay,” he lies.
“But I won’t,” he says, because he’s selfish too, and the sound that comes out next is a little bit of a hiccup, a little bit of a sob, and very much a plea.
Yu holds out his arms and Akira cries himself to sleep in his brother’s embrace and wishes the tears were on another person’s face.
The morning brings sunlight to the long day ahead, and Akira ignores the offer for breakfast. He sees his brother and he sees skin-draped ribs and long ivy vines so entrenched they wrap around his lungs and climb up his throat.
Akira reaches for his mark, where woody nightshade twines up his arm and purple flowers sprout a reminder of his “truth”.
“Will you go to the doctor?” A plea, a small hope, because Akira isn’t strong enough to demand it. Yu knows this and he nods, and the smile on his face is one of someone that knows he’s going to die.
Akira knows they could afford a proper hospital, but ivy creeps into his mind at the thought of seeing Yu in the too-white rooms drenched in the smell of formaldehyde.
He knocks on the door to the examination room before entering, and Takemi Tae is waiting there with a clipboard in hand and a sly smile on her face. “Well, I haven’t seen you in a while.” Then Yu follows him in and his chest is rising in stuttering upheavals and Takemi has just enough time to pull him to the trash can before ivy leaves and the budding of flowers fall to the bottom, weighed down by saliva and the sound of dying.
When he finally stops, heaving in greedy breaths, (and Akira was struck then with the thought that maybe that air was going to the roots in his lungs, and maybe they were suffocating him not by constricting but by stealing the atmosphere that ran through his veins) Takemi looks between the two of them with a doctor’s eyes. Her eyes always knew too much.
“How long?”
Yu replies and Akira pretends those numbers are smaller than they really are.
“I don’t want the surgery.”
Takemi’s brows crease but she doesn’t argue.
The doctor pushes him out of the room and Akira stands there waiting for his brother to die. He closes his eyes and sees vines that wrap around lungs and roots that steal the atmosphere and leaves that climb up throats to escape.
He almost believes he can taste the pollen clinging to his tongue when Takemi finally lets him back into the examination room and Yu is still there, breathing. His shirt is neatly folded on the bed, vines crawling up his back, and Akira thinks of the miracle that lets his brother fill his lungs with air.
Takemi looks at Yu with too much knowledge. “It’s a miracle you’ve survived as long as you have.” She looks at Akira and her eyes are a doctor’s eyes. “The roots have become so intertwined with the bronchi I might not have noticed if I didn’t know what I was looking for.” She grimaces. “They’ve begun to entrench themselves between the vertebrae. It wouldn’t be unusual for you to lose feeling in your legs at any time now.”
The ground beneath him is crumbling but he has to ask anyway.
“How much longer?”
Takemi’s eyes are a doctor’s eyes, with too much knowledge and too much pity.
She replies and Akira pretends those numbers are bigger than they really are.
Yu stays behind at Takemi’s request and Akira returns to an empty house. The darkness creeps in and when Akira closes his eyes, he sees vines and roots and leaves and he almost believes he can suffocate. His fingers trail over the poisonflower that graces the inside of his wrist, a reminder of his “truth”.
He fumbles with his phone.
Akechi Goro arrives in record time, almost as if he can feel the emptiness that lurks under Akira’s skin and consumes his bones. Akira immediately latches onto Goro’s wrist, where his own “truth” winds up his arm, a mirror against Akira’s. The first time they touched, the first time Akira saw the poisonflower that graces the inside of their wrists, the breath escaped his lungs and he thought he could feel the vine crawling up his skin and the flower petals brushing his skin.
He wonders if that’s how his brother feels now, if he can feel the vine twisting up his back and digging into his body, or the buds of flowers against his bones. And it’s almost as if Goro knows him, because he looks at Akira looking at their marks, their brands, and removes his hand from his wrist to wrap it in his own.
“Akira? What happened?”
Akira doesn’t know how to explain the way the sun has fallen to the ground like Lucifer, surrounded by the fiery pain of everything breaking apart and shattering. He thinks he may know a way to show him, but that kind of cruelty would kill them both.
So Akira brings his lips to his soulmates as if physical connection could convey the way the ground is crumbling underneath his feet and his own mind is trying to steal the atmosphere in his veins.
Goro kisses him back and being in his arms is the only thing keeping Akira rooted to reality.
Akira doesn’t know when he started trembling, but Goro pulls back and holds both his hands firm. His skin is warm without the distancing presence of those gloves, and it’s a fire that keeps the tremor in his fingers to a dull vibration.
“Akira,” he says again, but it’s firm and grounding and so very Goro, “What happened?”
His eyes want to cry but the tears won’t follow.
“My brother is dying,” he answers, because there is no way to describe the enormity of those words.
But Goro understands, because he always does, because they’re both unwanted children. A blasphemy, because destiny is not in their blood, because the universe did not want them to exist.
Sometimes, Akira hates the marks that bind them to each other, even as he loves the person with the identical tattoo on his arm. He thinks of his brother and skin-draped ribs and ivy winding up his spine to slowly suck the atmosphere from his veins and the lifeblood from his heart. He thinks of his soulmate holding his hands and how his brother has to fall asleep alone and dying every night.
The darkness is suffocating and Akira moves just a little closer to the warmth that radiates off of Akechi Goro like a fire.
Goro understands, and he wraps his arms around Akira like he can absorb him, like they can become one and the same. Maybe they could, and maybe it would fill the emptiness that pervades just under a shell made of skin and bones.
Akira’s back shudders and his hands tremble, but still he doesn’t cry. He thinks he may have forgotten. Maybe his tears are on another person’s face, crying because he cannot; because they are both a little selfish and too selfless; because something is cracked and they are both breaking a little too.
His face is buried in Goro’s shoulder, feeling the muscle beneath rumbling and stiff as Goro speaks, because neither of them are good at this kind of thing.
“It’ll be okay,” he whispers, even though they both know it’s a lie, “It’s going to be okay, Akira.” Akira’s eyes squeeze shut in the way they do; desperate and shuddery and a little like he’s feeling his own heart break. Maybe it is.
Akira takes a shuddering breath, and his composure cracks a little more.
He wants to take the shattered pieces and mourn them, because for the first time he feels vulnerable.
Kurusu Akira is rough edges and too-sharp words and everything his brother is not. He skips school and breaks things and disappoints the people that are never around to be disappointed. He so effortlessly damages everything he tries to put back together and becomes everything everyone else is not. Yet, he has the one thing his brother does not, the one thing his brother deserves that he does not, and the good things in life become fragile, somehow. As if they were illusions made of glass, and the slightest thing could cause them to shatter. Akira remembers a time when his brother was perfect, but the illusion is made of glass and the cracks get a little wider every day.