Chapter Text
He always wakes up in the middle of the night, usually thanks to a fucking nightmare. They’re always the same, distorted images of the accident, of riding along the highway with his brother and the stupid risk he took and his brother’s sacrifice to save him and cradling his brother’s bleeding frame in his arms as he took his last breath… and as Mondo in the dream sobs and sobs, he flinches awake to find tears in his eyes.
Tonight is no exception. The fucking nightmare attacked him as he slept, and he awoke to a racing heart and damp eyes. And now he stares up into the darkness, listening to Chihiro and Taka’s heavy, sleeping breaths and not his own heartbeat, trying to force himself to remember where he is. He’s in bed with Chihiro and Taka in the rather big house they share together, lying beside his boyfriends over seven years after the accident. He’s not there; it was just a dream.
His pulse rate starts to slow, but adrenaline still throbs through him, leaving Mondo trembling and wide awake. How fucking pathetic is he?
Staying awake for the rest of the night seems likely, but to just lie in bed for several hour is an incredibly fucking boring prospect. But he can’t sit up and play on his phone lest he wake up Taka and Chihiro. So, in the end, Mondo decides to get out of bed.
He eases himself upright and slips out from under the blankets, trying his best not to wake them. Mondo pulls on a jacket over his bare chest and tiptoes out of the room, not caring that he’s only wearing his boxer shorts on his bottom half (after all, he never wears pyjamas).
It’s the middle of the night and the house seems so cold and quiet, his bare feet freezing cold against the floor, and Mondo suppresses a shiver. Although he isn’t sure if it is actually the cold that makes him shiver.
He trails through the big house (when Taka turned twenty, he got a fucking huge inheritance, explaining why a trio of guys in their early twenties can afford to living in such an impressive house), and stops when he reaches the back door. For a reason he can’t find, Mondo slips on a pair of shoes by the door (they’re actually Taka’s and so a size too small, but he doesn’t care) and opens the back door. Cold night time air stings his face and bare legs, but Mondo still steps out into the yard.
He walks through the backyard, always transfixed by how quiet the world seems at night; well, that’s how he sees night time these days, because when he was a teenager, he spent most of his life out after dark, driving around in the biggest biker gang in the whole of Japan. But these days, the dark just means time to sleep to him, just like most people probably feel.
Mondo walks to the end of their rather large yard, and slips out of the back gate. They live pretty close to a Shrine, so Mondo heads there. Also deserted, the Shrine looks so beautiful in the moonlight, and Mondo almost feels ashamed to come here dressed like this. But he still goes through the ritual and closes his eyes as he says a prayer for his brother, and wants to punch himself when his eyes sting.
And when Mondo opens his eyes and stares at the Shrine, memories of his poor brother send a single tear trickling down his face. Scrubbing at his eyes, he spins on his heels and heads home, glad nobody was here to see that.
---
Chihiro has never been very good at sleeping. He was called an insomniac as a child and even put on sleeping pills, but these days, Chihiro is more likely to not sleep because of his habit to overwork. He sits up at his desk late into the night, working on perfecting Alter Ego on a huge monitor that makes the dimly lit room glow green, and usually gets dragged to bed by his boyfriends, who worry he might get sick from his lack of sleep.
On this particular night, Chihiro was in his study at one minute past midnight, typing furiously as Alter Ego chattered at him, only to jump when the door opened.
“Hey, Chi, I think it’s time for you to rest, man,” Mondo said, wandering into the room.
Taka followed after him, already dressed in his smart blue pyjamas, and nodded. “Yes, we insist you stop working and go to sleep, Chihiro.”
As Alter Ego blinked at them, Chihiro spun his chair around and looked up at his boyfriends. “Oh, hi guys. Just give me a few minutes and I’ll join you.”
“No, you must come with us right now,” Taka said, rubbing his fleecy pyjama sleeves over his hands. “You need to rest.”
Chihiro looked at the two of them, a small smile crossing his face. “And what if I say no?”
“That’s the great thing about you being so small, Chihiro,” Mondo said, grinning. “Cos we can just do this.”
And Mondo darted forwards and slipped his arms around Chihiro, picking him up bridal style. Chihiro laughed and Taka rolled his eyes, and he let them take him to their bedroom. After all, he was so tired it would be an effort to have an argument.
So, naturally, when he finally got into bed, he realised just how tired he was. Snuggled up between Taka and Mondo, Chihiro fell asleep within two minutes, dead to the world.
Which is why it confuses him when he wakes up. Eyes aching with fatigue, Chihiro rolls over and notices that Mondo isn’t here.
Wait – Mondo isn’t here?
He sits up, rubbing his eyes, and a glance at the clock tells him the time is 3am. Where could Mondo have gone at 3am?
Chihiro knows Mondo has nightmares (he sometimes gets woken up when Mondo jerks awake and ends up cuddling his embarrassed boyfriend, both of them pretending they couldn’t feel the tears on Mondo’s cheeks), so could he have woken up and gone somewhere? But where?
Still, Chihiro knows he has to track down Mondo, not wanting him to be upset alone. He reaches for the lamp cord and switches on the light, having to screw his eyes up against the sudden brightness, and Taka groans, waking up.
“What’s going on?” he mumbles, covering his eyes. Once he has adjusted to the brightness, Taka peeks out from behind his hand and looks at Chihiro. “Chi? Why are you awake?”
“Mondo isn’t here,” Chihiro says, hoping he won’t stop crying. “Do you think he’s had another nightmare?”
Taka eases himself upright, blinking slowly, and glances at Chihiro. Neither of them will make eye contact, but Chihiro knows he and Taka are thinking the same thing.
“We should go and search for him,” Taka says, getting out of bed.
Chihiro also scrabbles out of bed, putting a pullover on over his green nightshirt. As Taka turns to leave the room, he grabs Taka’s wrist and says, “He’ll be okay, right?”
Taka stares at his trembling lip, and puts a slightly awkward hand on Chihiro’s shoulder. “I’m… unsure.”
“Yeah, so am I.”
Reaching for Taka’s hand, Chihiro and his boyfriend head out of the bedroom and wander through their house. He adores their house, but it has always kind of creeped him out at night (Chihiro wonders if this is because he went to Hope’s Peak Academy, a huge school that always scared him despite nothing going wrong whilst there), and he squeezes Taka’s hand tighter.
They trail around the second floor and then down the stairs, looking everywhere they go for signs of Mondo, but they don’t find him. In the end, the only option is the backyard.
“But why would he be outside at night?” says Chihiro, who also gets freaked out outside at night.
Taka shrugs. “I don’t know.”
Fighting back tears, Chihiro opens the back door and they step out into the yard. Immediately, he spots Mondo, sat on the bench beside the sakura tree. He has his head bowed, and looks freezing cold, his legs bare.
“Mondo?” Chihiro calls, his tiny voice barely carrying.
“Bro?!” Taka shouts, his voice much louder.
That makes Mondo look up; he stares at them, his face barely visible in the moonlight, and Chihiro sees the pain written across his face. He darts across the yard and flings himself at Mondo, climbing onto his boyfriend’s lap without caring if it embarrasses them both. Taka catches up and sits beside Mondo, putting his arm around him.
“Are you okay, bro?” Taka says.
“Mondo?” Chihiro says, putting his arms around Mondo’s neck. He stares at Mondo’s face, at the red, puffy skin around his eyes.
Mondo sighs slowly, ruffling Chihiro’s hair as he slumps sideways against Taka. “Hey, guys. I… I couldn’t sleep. Went for a walk, visited the Shrine and, just, uh, sat here.”
“Did you have a nightmare again?” Chihiro asks, eyes starting to sting again.
Mondo nods. “Yeah.”
“That’s awful, bro,” Taka says. “Why didn’t you wake us?”
“What’s the point in us all being awake just cos my brain’s a piece of shit?”
Mondo’s voice trembles, and Chihiro’s eyes fill with tears. They spill over and he sobs into Mondo’s shoulder.
“Why’re you crying, Chi?” Mondo says, voice trembling slightly.
“Chihiro?” Taka says.
“It’s just… I wish you could have nice dreams for once, Mondo,” he mumbles, tears soaking onto Mondo’s jacket. “I don’t want you to suffer.”
Taka shifts his position slightly, reaching to kiss Mondo on the cheek. “Me neither, bro. Please, just wake us next time. We won’t mind.”
“Really, we don’t mind,” Chihiro says, reaching up and kissing Mondo all over his face, smearing his cheeks with tears. “Please.”
Mondo sighs shakily, but tightens his grip on both of them. “Okay. Next time, I’ll tell you.”
Chihiro smiles through his tears, hugging Mondo like he can’t let go.