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Kaito is starting to wonder if it was a good idea to begin with to arm Yuma with a knife. As he watches him stab as carefully as he can manage into the pumpkin, trying his best to follow the lines he had drawn on beforehand as a guide, he finds his results inconclusive. “Do you want me to?” He asks from where he stands in the kitchen of his private quarters in Heartland Tower. Yuma just shakes his head, sticking his tongue out as he hyperfocuses on the task at hand.
The other boy sighs. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to distract him while he’s still wielding a sharp object, so Kaito sets about fixing dinner. Something simple, something Haruto will eat too, so he settles on katsudon. He washes the rice with nimble fingers and pounds out the pork, chopping up an onion while he’s at it. Slowly, while the cutlets are frying, the stock he’s mixed with soy and sake begins to thicken. He’s so absorbed in his own cooking that he doesn’t even realize Yuma’s finished until he feels his arms snake around his waist, resting his forehead against Kaito’s back. “Finished the pumpkin?” He prompts, turning off the rice cooker and fishing the cutlets out of the oil and into the sauce, one by one. Yuma breathes out a laugh against the back of his shirt, and says, “I tried my best.”
Haruto wanders in just as Kaito has finished preparing the third bowl, and slides into his seat at the table with all the practice of a child who’s never made noise in his life. Kaito’s heart tugs at that, and he wishes Haruto would knock over his glass or scrape the china with his chopsticks, just to remind him he’s there, if for nothing else. Yuma seems to notice his inner turmoil as they eat in relative silence, and he kicks his foot over to where Kaito’s is, patting his shin awkwardly through his sock. He takes a sip of his water while Yuma chows down, only to choke when Haruto coughs quietly and says, “Nii-san.” Kaito takes a moment to recover while Yuma looks about two seconds away from bursting out laughing, and responds in kind. His younger brother’s cheeks fill with a rosy hue, and he gestures vaguely to his bowl. “Can I have another?”
Kaito is out of his seat in record time, and in a minute flat Haruto’s digging in again. The void dug by his own clothes in his chest seems to lessen, just a little bit, watching the youngest of the three eat his fill. Yuma kicks his foot against his shin again, and Kaito picks up a piece of sliced pork and puts it in his bowl. Yuma smiles at him, bashful as he ducks his head to his meal again.
They don’t exactly have a porch to display the carved pumpkin on (‘...What is that supposed to be?’ ‘A dragon, obviously! You need glasses, Kaito!’), so they settle for perching it on the sill by one of the long windows. Kaito hands Yuma a tea light to light it up, but Yuma kneels down to where Haruto is watching them with wonder and asks, “Do you want to light it?” The younger boy looks a bit surprised he’s being given this honor, but he nods vigorously at Yuma’s encouraging smile. Kaito thinks his own face must be broken, from the soft expression he feels spread across his features for the nth time that evening. Haruto lights a match on the box and carefully touches it to the wick, then blows out the match when he turns to the side. He presents the box back to Yuma, who looks proud as punch if Kaito’s ever witnessed that. “Great job!” Yuma exclaims, and goes to tuck the matches away in a kitchen drawer again. Haruto looks to Kaito next, and it’s all he can do to not bend down and hug his brother like he’ll never do it again, but he settles for ruffling his hair affectionately. Yuma watches out of the corner of his eye.
By the time Haruto has been tucked into bed, it’s already nearing nine pm, so Yuma drags him over to the couch and queues up his personal favorite horror movies. “I never knew you liked horror.” Kaito remarks, and Yuma flashes a peace sign. “I can like horror and still be a pussy about it, we exist.” He says as the opening to Hausu flashes on the TV. Kaito can already guess that by the end of the night his arm will be numb.
They’re only halfway through the second movie when Kaito notices a comfortable weight on his shoulder, and when he turns he realizes Yuma has fainted, either from fear or plain tiredness. He pauses the blood gushing on the TV screen and lugs the other boy up into his arms, struggling to make it all the way to his bedroom but managing somehow. He collapses on the bed once Yuma has been deposited, who’s already curling into Kaito’s blankets and nuzzling into his pillow and wow, he really has it bad. The night lights of Heartland that never quite go out scatter across his hair and face, manmade constellations lighting him up like he were an alien himself. Kaito debates with himself for a moment before leaning down to press a kiss to Yuma’s brow, and tosses himself in bed beside him without another thought, allowing himself to succumb to sleep near immediately.
(He still reprimands Yuma in the morning for leaving the tea light in the pumpkin burning all night, but something in Yuma’s expression tells him that he knows what Kaito really wants to say.)