Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Being alone is a terrible burden.

Choso pulls his useless jacket tighter around his shoulders and trudges onwards, regardless. The rain suits his mood, soaking straight through the thin fabric and draining what little warmth he’s allowed his cursed flesh to produce.

He doesn’t know where he is.

“Sendai!” says a voice, behind him.

Choso stops. He must have been more distracted than he thought, if a human had managed to sneak up on him. He hadn’t even noticed he’d been talking out loud— how pathetic.

…he sighs. Turns around.

Behind him, a little boy looks up, chin raised in a struggle to meet Choso’s eyes. How old is he… five? Six? Choso has never had much of a reason to interact with human children. The boy's jacket (a puffy red thing that dwarfs his small frame) looks warm, and the small umbrella he’s holding is patterned like an orange cat. His hair is bright pink, a color Choso didn’t realize humans came in.

“Sendai,” he repeats. His body knows where that is.

The boy nods vigorously. “Yeah, Nii-san!” The innocent expression pierces Choso’s heart like a knife, but the boy continues unimpeded— “how come you don’t know that, huh? That’s weird.” He pauses. “You’re weird.”

Choso allows himself a moment to breathe, shoves Nii-san into the box with the rest of his grief, and shrugs. “I don’t know how,” he says. “I just... didn’t. Thank you.”

He’s been walking for such a long time.

The boy looks concerned now. “That’s no good.” He cocks his head to the side, asks, “someone gonna pick you up?”

“No,” Choso says.

“That’s no good!” The concern intensifies— like ill-fitting clothes, the expression doesn’t seem to match his small face. “Um… I gotta get home soon, or Grandpa’s gonna be mad, but—“

The boy pulls up the hood of his puffy red jacket. Satisfied, he marches closer to Choso.

“Here,” he says, sounding proud of himself. “Take this!” The handle of the small umbrella is pressed into Choso’s numb fingers, the boy huffing in annoyance when Choso doesn’t grab it back.

He can’t take that.

“I can’t take that,” he says, but the boy presses the umbrella into his hand more insistently.

“Yeah, you can!” He says it like it’s obvious. If this boy has siblings, Choso wants to berate them. They shouldn’t encourage such misguided kindness. “—eh, you need a new jacket, anyway.” He cocks his head to the side, childish and considering. “...you look like a bum.”

He could be right. Choso doesn’t have much of a metric. Still, “I can’t take that umbrella. It’s yours.”

The boy narrows his eyes. “Nuh uh.Yuuji is giving it to you.” He— Yuuji— opens his mouth, like he’s going to say more, but his jaw clacks shut at the last minute.“Okay… okay. Um...” he stands straight, “then you can borrow it?”

Choso blinks.

Yuuji must take that as an aquistence, because he continues with even more enthusiasm. “Come here tomorrow! When it’s done raining. Then you can give it back. Um— but I gotta go now, so…” Yuuji pokes Choso with the tip of the umbrella. “Say yes!”

Choso has never borrowed anything before. Maybe that’s more in line with his nature, to take and not give back. Either way— it sounds like a terrible idea. He really can’t afford to stand still, not when the rest of his brothers need him so badly, not when he’d already failed Eso and Kechizu.

Still…

The boy pokes him again. It’s cold, and wet, and the longer they’re standing here the more both of them will regret it.

“Okay,” he says. He pulls the umbrella gently from the boy’s hands and exchanges a wane smile for Yuuji’s flashbulb bright grin. It’s too small to offer much protection from the elements, but it’s still better than the remains of his sopping wet jacket.

Choso is grateful. He bows his head.

The boy nods, satisfied— turns to leave, before something else must occur to him, because he spins back around just as quick. “Wait! Um— sorry. What’s your name, Nii-san?”

“Choso,” Choso replies. He hasn’t had much of a reason to introduce himself, lately, and it feels odd to use his own name. “...Thank you, Yuuji-kun.”

Yuuji-kun. A shiver races up his spine, a foreign familiarity he can’t make sense of.

Choso must be more tired than he thought.

The boy skips straight through the puddles as he races up the road. Choso hopes he doesn’t catch a cold.

==

‘Being alive’ was always, Choso suspects, destined to be annoying... but a lot of his current troubles could have been avoided if that woman had bothered to incarnate him into a body that wasn’t sixteen.

If he wasn’t sixteen— or if the human whose body he’d been fused with wasn’t sixteen, whichever distinction made the most sense— he wouldn’t have had to spend most of the next day hiding in the damp branches of the tree he’d slept in. It wasn’t ideal. Explaining his not-child status to ‘truancy officers’ was, unfortunately, even less ideal, not when— practically speaking— he can’t kill his way out of the problem. His brothers need him active, not buried under a twitching pile of sorcerer corpses when they come down on him like a sack of bricks.

Which is all to say the sun is high in the sky when he makes his way back to the spot he’d met the boy— a bus stop at the end of a winding street. Choso is alone: either Yuuji had already come (and left) or else he hadn’t yet arrived. Sendai isn’t small. Choso supposes he could understand getting lost without the ability to track back your own cursed residuals. Ah… his gut twists at the thought, at how terribly vulnerable the boy is, a frustrating sentimentality he shoves back to the source.

He’s not Yuuji’s older brother, he reminds himself— setting the boy’s umbrella down gently onto the ground next to the bus-stop’s bench. It’s not his business to care.

Choso sits. He waits.

Yuuji arrives not long after, settling the question of whether or not Choso had missed him— and skipping at a helter-skelter pace, fast enough Choso is concerned he might fall flat on his face. Yuuji doesn’t. He does stumble a bit when he stops, though, holding down his bright yellow bucket hat before it flies off with the forward momentum. The puffy red jacket had been traded out for a big black backpack and a sky blue button-up shirt, his name pinned carefully to the front: it is, if Choso isn’t mistaken, an incredibly typical school uniform for a boy his age.

His full name. Itadori Yuuji.

“Choso-Niisan!”

It’s just as painful as the first time, but Choso can’t manage to correct him, either. “Yuuji-kun,” he replies. “...I have your umbrella.”

The boy waves him off, letting the backpack hit the ground with a THUD so loud Choso questions how he managed to carry it. “Ah, thank-you! Um— here!”

He rummages through his backpack, pulling out a plastic bag of—

“It’s crackers!” Yuuji says, blatantly... anxious? “I mean, um… I brought snacks! To share. Want some?”

“Ah…” Choso looks between Yuuji and the umbrella, brows furrowed. “I brought your umbrella. You don’t… owe me.”

The boy freezes. “S’ not… cuz you… Y-yuuji means,” he rallies, “that Yuuji brought snacks for— for, my friend? Grandpa said that’d be—“

Choso blinks.

Yuuji looks down at the ground, face burning red. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

Choso’s stomach twists. “I would like some crackers,” he says, before his mouth can catch up with his brain. Stupid. He doesn’t have the—

“Here!”

The bag of crackers is shoved into Choso’s face, Yuuji having sprung up onto the bench next to him faster than Choso had frankly assumed humans capable. He drops down, suddenly, to sit next to Choso— small feet kicking the air. “Rice crackers are good,” he tells Choso, conspiratorially. “Like— really good. Like, really really good. Those ones are spicy! So they’re really, really really good.”

Choso breaks open the bag, and decides not to tell Yuuji he’s had crackers before. “Mmmm,” he says, deliberately. He hasn’t eaten any yet. “Very good.”

Yuuji claps, delighted, and plunges his own small hand into the bag. He pulls out a handful and tosses them into his mouth, chatting happily while he chews. Something about ‘Grandpa’ being ‘super smart’— around a mouthful of food, the details are difficult to make out. Choso nods along anyway, eating the occasional cracker.

He is hungry, though, so this is… fine. Even curses have to eat sometimes. Half-curses, more so.

“You got leaves in your hair,” Yuuji tells him, mid-mouthful. Choso lifts his hand up to his head, and picks out one of the foreign objects, holding it at eye-level. It’s a twig.

“I slept in a tree.”

Yuuji’s eyes go wide, like plates. “Wow,” he says. “That’s so cool.”

Choso shrugs, unsure of how else to reply. It must be enough for Yuuji, because he returns to his previous chattering with barely a hiccup to account for the diversion. It’s... unexpectedly pleasant whitenoise. Soothing, like this boy’s simple joy alone was capable of unspooling the high-tension wire around Choso’s heart. That thought is-- confusing. Upsetting, almost, he certainly doesn’t deserve it, but mostly--

Confusing. Itadori Yuuji confuses him. Choso really shouldn’t care.

The boy tugs on the sleeve of Choso’s threadbare jacket, offering him his choice of the last handful of crackers. Choso plucks one from the bag and chews, slowly. Attempts to sort through his own thoughts.

“Sooo…” Yuuji says, stretching out the syllables. “Um,” he continues. “Nii-san?”

Choso meets the boy’s gaze and nods.

“Are you, um… are you having fun?” The boy looks away, the tips of his ears bright red. “Yuuji is— I am, having fun… But I could, um. Bring more... snacks?”

It’s an open invitation, childishly phrased. Choso opens his mouth to say… something. That he needs to leave. His brothers are out there, somewhere, hidden by some sorcerers curse, but he needs to look for them--

“It was fun,” Choso says. He reaches out an arm-- sets his hand gently on Yuuji’s head, patting down the hat. Yuuji laughs. “I would… enjoy the snacks.” He chews on the rest of his response. “You shouldn’t offer that to strangers, Yuuji-kun.”

It’s true, but Yuuji looks at Choso like he’d grown a second head. “We’re friends,” Yuuji says.

He takes the umbrella when he leaves, but not before pulling a promise out of Choso to meet the next day. Choso isn’t sure why he agrees.

==

Choso learns a lot about Itadori Yuuji.

Important things. Yuuji likes beef on rice and skipping through puddles, especially after it rains. Yuuji is good at running, and kicking, and throwing, better than any other boy in his class. Yuuji likes his grandfather, even if he smells funny.

Yuuji is picked first for sports, but last for anything else. People think he’s weird.

“Tch,” Choso bites. The thought that anyone picks on Itadori Yuuji pisses him off-- but he isn’t his older brother. It isn’t his business to interfere. Grinding his teeth, he picks up another shiny rock from the old riverbed, holding it out for Yuuji to inspect. “You aren’t.”

“You’re weird too,” Yuuji scoffs. He squints at the rock, and takes it from Choso. It’s too big for him to grasp with anything less than both of his small hands. “Got--” he glares at the rock. “--weird hair and no parents and--” he glares harder. “--and, and--” and the rock cracks, ground into two neat halves by the apparent force of Yuuji pushing it together.

Choso blinks.

“And that.” Yuuji drops both halves of the rock, and deflates. “...Shouldn’a called you a name, Niisan,” he mutters. An afterthought. “That’s mean. Your hair’s okay.”

Choso touches his hair. His buns are both intact. But, “you’re probably right,” he shrugs. “That’s fine for me, though.” He bends down and picks up one of the fallen halves, examining the edges. Shifts his gaze. Contemplates Itadori Yuuji. “You’re just a human,” he decides, “...probably. They shouldn’t say that.”

Yuuji gapes at Choso-- laughs. “O-kay,” he gasps, “weirdo.”

==

The boy keeps him tethered to the city.

Not literally (Choso is pretty sure) but the thought of going without prying into all of the whys leaves him... disquieted. It wouldn’t be enough of a reason if he had even the faintest idea where his brothers actually were, but that woman hadn’t given any details— and to his senses, their blood resonance is unclear. Scrambled.

Some days, he can’t feel them at all. Some days, it feels like they’re right there, like he could reach out and just…

But he can’t. So he stays. Quietly maps out the paths through Yuuji’s neighborhood, exits and entrances, who to avoid and who to wave across the street. And in the staying— in the stillness— Choso settles into his own skin.

It’s odd to have spent 150 years waiting to be born. He can’t discount those ages spent not-sleeping (and not only because that would discount his brothers) but it’s hard to argue that he doesn’t feel young, too. The flesh remembers what it used to be. Choso’s lived experiences are brief.

So, he’s not a child, mostly, but— there lives in him the desire to do childish things.

...whoever’s body this had been, they were very good at rhythm games. Choso thinks he’d like them even if they weren’t.

Chapter Text

“You did me a good turn, young man,” the old woman says. Knowingly. Choso isn’t sure why— he doesn’t think she knows much at all.

But she wants an answer. He shrugs.

“Hah!” She clicks her tongue. “What, do you think I’m blind? You kids, I swear…” she clicks her tongue again and begins rummaging through her purse, a bag so large Choso is surprised she can carry it.

“I’m not a child,” Choso tells her.

The old woman pauses in her rummaging. “Well,” she says, “maybe you aren’t. But! You fixed my heavy shoulder....” she continues, pulls out a package, wrapped in brown paper and twine. “...which is more than I can say about those men in Tokyo, eh? Anyway— you’re child enough. And too skinny!”

She holds out the package. Choso blinks.

“Well, go on! I don’t have that much time left, you know.”

Choso takes the package gingerly, testing its weight in his hands. It’s light. Shifts when he holds it. “...thank you,” he says. “Old lady….?”

The old woman tilts her head back and laughs. “Oh, go ahead. Call me granny. That little brother of yours does.”

Urgh. “He’s not—“ Choso starts, “—not my—“ brother. “Yuuji-kun is...”

Well. He was something.

“Sure he isn’t,” the old woman chides. Choso grinds his teeth. “Well, that was all I had to say. You have a good day, young man. Oh— and if you see Wasuke around, tell him you fixed my shoulder faster than he ever did, back when he bothered. Eh? Well, go on!”

She shooes him off before Choso can ask who Wasuke is, vaguely overwhelmed and possessing one more package then he had before she’d pulled him aside. Loitering at the side of the road, he pulls off the brown-paper. It’s…

...a sweater.

The sleeves close around the palms of his hands like fingerless gloves, snug but not too tight. Choso wastes a minute of his life questioning why she knows what his size is— perfectly— before he decides he doesn’t care.

Really... he likes it. It’s soft.

==

Choso didn’t set out to do favors, let alone trivial ones. Like many things in his long-short life, it just sort of... happened.

Conveniently. For once.

His loyalty is reserved for his brothers alone; despite his nature he carries no preference for humans nor curses. Maybe even because of his nature. There were things he remembered. There were things he didn’t.

But: that’s a personal opinion, and a loose one. In practice, weaker curses are fucking annoying, and leaving anything stronger than a flyhead around where it could stumble into Itadori Yuuji—

(which is not loyalty, per se, but—)

So. He handles curses, and humans begin to request trivial favors, and— the police begin to ignore him and his so-called truancy, which is an outcome so unexpected and useful he’s almost tempted to try a bit harder.

“Oh-nii-saaaaan—“

Choso catches Yuuji by the armpits and swings him out of the way of a particularly troublesome spirit, a worm-like thing with many eyes and many teeth. Yuuji does not fully understand what Choso does— or, what he is— though Choso has made attempts to explain it. Still, he’d insisted on coming while Choso worked through a nest of curses in an old park. Yuuji doesn’t like to be left out of things.

He should probably be more annoyed than he is.

“Nii-san!” Yuuji wriggles in his grasp. “Didja get it? Is it dead?” More wriggling. “Didja kick it’s ass?!”

“Don’t swear, Yuuji-kun,” Choso chides. Adds, “but yes.” He pivots, slamming the thing into a nearby tree with a kick strong enough to splinter wood. It dissipates, too weak to bother with his technique. “I did kick its ass.”

Yuuji cheers.

There had been several of the things when Choso had started, and now he was fairly certain there were none. A boy had gone missing some days ago, from this area— older than Yuuji, but just as terribly vulnerable. It felt… good, to have taken care of it. Satisfying.

“Nii-san,” Yuuji asks, “do you know her?”

The boy’s head tilts curiously, eyes tracking something behind them. A heavy stillness fills the air. Choso can’t even hear the bugs. He says—

“Motherfucker,” he says.

He pivots and drops nearly to the ground, clutching Yuuji closer to his chest. Pale, grasping hands catch air where his head used to be, and Choso flips back to his feet, skidding a distance with the momentum. His opponent moans in loss-pain-agony, a white-faced woman whose long black hair hangs loose to cover her eyes.

Vengeful spirit. Powerful. What the hell.

“HaVe YOu SeEEN M--”

Her voice is nails on a chalkboard, soft and painfully loud, and Choso should have noticed she was here. Hissing, he digs into the meat of his palms with his fingernails and manipulates a razor-sharp stream of blood, already sprinting down the path in the opposite direction. He’s holding Yuuji-- he can’t use convergence without both hands-- he can’t drop Yuuji. Can he? She howls behind them.

“--MMMyYYYyy SSssON--”

Pale hands erupt from the ground in front of him. Pale hands erupt from the ground behind him. Pale hands erupt from the--

Shadows.

So that’s where she’d been hiding.

“Yuuji-kun,” he hisses, “hold on.”

Choso releases Yuuji, who yelps and clings onto Choso’s sweater with a grip as strong as iron. Blood streams from Choso’s freed palms, from his fingertips, from that mark on his face; he directs his arms to follow the flow of the liquid with fluid precision. Palms clap together, are forced apart-- blood manipulation: convergence. The summoned orbs pulse, compression charging the blood with barely-stalled kinetic energy.

“SOo NNnNNNNN -- S-- S--- SSSSSSS--”

Blood manipulation: supernova.

The orbs explode, shredding the hands surrounding them. Choso tears through what remains, solid-edged blood gliding besides him at lethally sharp angles. They need to keep to the light-- it isn’t sunset yet, but they won’t have long to get out of the park before it creeps behind the treeline at an unfavorable angle.

They just need to keep going. They just need to get out of her territory. Then Choso can come back alone and finish her off.

“BEHIND YOU!” Yuuji shrieks.

A full manifestation erupts from Choso’s own shadow, his vision consumed by stringy black hair and her pale grasping hands burning burning burning where they make contact. Yuuji—

—wails, cold hands like fire against his skin where she has him where she’s pulling and

“MyYYYyY bAAbY—“

Choso

screams because Yuuji is screaming because

no no no

what is

whaaaTT IsSSSSSS TH

yuuji is in DANGER because yuuji is

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS

yuuji is dying. and.

(a memory of an event that never happened:

it is sunny and calm and eso and kechizu are laughing as yuuji gets food over his face as his other brothers bask in the warmth in their glass wombs and all is well, is well, is well.

yuuji says— “nii-chan!” he says—)

and.

and.

==

Yuuji is sobbing.

Choso feels dazed— like the foundation of his universe had shifted dramatically in the space between one moment and the next. His sweater sticks uncomfortably to his skin when he moves, probably ruined with blood and other liquids. It sucks. His body aches. Really— Choso just wants to roll over and go back to sleep.

Yuuji is sobbing. Choso opens his eyes.

“CHOSO!” Yuuji shrieks, “Yuuji th-thought you were gonna— were gonna—!”

Yuuji burrows into Choso’s aching side, sobs petering down into sniffles. Choso doesn’t stop him. He would never. Yuuji is his—

It shouldn’t be possible. It’s true.

“Otoutou,” he breaths. The world corrects itself. This is why he was here, he understands, this is why he couldn’t leave. He sits up, laboriously, and pulls Yuuji into his lap, arms curled around his youngest brother. “Yuuji,” he says, trying to be reassuring, “shh, you’re safe.”

“You got hurt.” Yuuji clings onto Choso, small arms like bands of steel. “Nii-san— you got hurt saving Yuuji.”

Choso can’t remember doing that, but it sounds good, so. Whatever. He must have dealt with that curse… somehow, while he was… incoherent. If he thinks hard enough, the anger surfaces readily enough.

Well, it was dealt with. That’s good. “You’re my little brother,” he tells Yuuji, “so don’t worry about it.” He never would have brought Yuuji if he’d known there was a vengeful spirit lying in wait. Stupid. “Nii-chan is stronger than he looks,” he adds.

He was damaged, but not so damaged a few days wouldn’t resolve the issue… probably.

Yuuji perks up a little, head popping out of Choso’s ruined sweater. “Um. Wh-at?”

Injured as he is, the smile still stretches Choso’s face to its limits. “Otoutou,” he says. “I didn’t know before, but I do now. You—'' one of his brothers found, even if he hadn’t known about him. His little brother. His little brother. Itadori Yuuji was his little brother. “—we’re brothers. So I’ll take care of you.”

“Didn’t know Yu— I had a brother,” Yuuji says, apparently calm enough to correct his own grammar. He rubs a grimy hand over his nose, wiping away snot. “Grandpa didn’t say. …Really?”

“Really.”

Yuuji hums, like he’s thinking, before nodding once and burrowing deeper into Choso’s arms. “Glad,” he mutters, filling Choso’s cold heart with a warmth he hasn’t known since Eso and Kechizu had been murdered.

“I’m glad too.” Choso ignores the discomfort and clamors to his feet, swinging Yuuji out in front of him. He needs to know what damage that bitch had managed to do. “I need you to tell me where you hurt, okay?”

Yuuji’s legs kick wildly. He doesn’t seem pleased.

“Lemme down!”

“…okay,” Choso agrees. He sets Yuuji down. Well, it’s not like he’s going to run off. “Where does it hurt?”

Yuuji frowns and turns away, before he pulls up the right sleeve of his jacket. Choso hisses. The handprint is a vivid red against the boy's skin. “Grabbed me,” Yuuji mumbles.

Choso remembers. Wherever that curse would have taken Yuuji— into the shadows, maybe— he has a terrible feeling he wouldn’t have been able to follow. “Let’s get you home,” he decides. “We’ll take care of it there.”

Yuuji doesn’t have any more comments, but he does look pointedly at Choso’s own injuries.The warmth returns. Choso doesn’t think he could ever get enough of it.

==

Choso has never been to Yuuji’s house before, but he’s aware of where it is— he doesn’t need to be directed, and as they walk to their destination Yuuji is lulled to sleep against his chest. They get a few strange looks (Choso is covered in blood) but mostly the local humans ignore him, which is even more goodwill then Choso assumed he’d had. Probably too much goodwill.

Whatever. It gives him time to think.

Yuuji was Choso’s little brother. Choso knows this. And it explains quite a bit— the mysteries Choso had not cared to follow up on solved neatly by the understanding that Yuuji wasn’t human, even if he didn’t seem to perceive curses any more naturally then a non sorcerer would, let alone the embodied curse he probably (?) was.

But Choso’s parents were extremely fucking dead. By at least a century.

So.

Yuuji was Choso’s brother, and at least one of his parents must be alive to make him so.

It couldn’t be his mother. It probably wasn’t the curse who impregnated her— even if it had reformed since, because Yuuji was stable. And Choso was only stable because of that third party, the one who had forced his blood into the mix.

It could be that somebody else had committed the same monstrous act with the same curse, but… he remembers what he can of Noritoshi Kamo. The vague image of him. His dark hair. His flat eyes. The stitches on his forehead. The— his breath catches. Stitches. Could that be—?

…Hadn’t it been a woman with stitches on her forehead who’d woken him up? Woken Eso and Kechizu up? Sent his brothers to their deaths?

The rage runs hot in his blood. In his arms— Yuuji winces. He shoves it back down again.

Not now.

Not… now.

“Yuuji,” he says instead, “you can call me Nii-chan, if you want.”

Silence. Then, Yuuji scoffs. It’s not very effective, since his face is still scrunched into Choso’s destroyed sweater. “Not a baby, Choso-niisan.”

“…I’m just saying.”

==

It didn’t occur to Choso that he should have had a plan in place for confronting Yuuji’s grandfather until after they’d made it to the man's front door.

Oops.

“Lemme talk to Grandpa first,” Yuuji tells him. Choso narrows his eyes. “He doesn’t know I gotta brother,” Yuuji adds. “Um, I don’t think. Also, you’re kinda scary looking. Cuz the blood.”

Those are good reasons, so Choso nods. “Alright. You can go first. But don’t take too long, okay? Nii-chan needs to look at your arm.”

“Yuuji’s not gonna call you that,” Yuuji tells him, undercutting his own point. Choso shrugs— they’ll get there eventually— and lets the boy down, ignoring the uncomfortable prickle in his gut as Yuuji scrambles into his grandfather's apartment, door swinging shut behind him.

On a base level, he obviously doesn’t want to let Yuuji out of his sight. But he’s still right there, and the reasoning was good. Choso didn’t want to alarm his grandfather. It would upset Yuuji.

…and Choso had little desire himself to upset the human who had taken care of his little brother. It was possible he even knew Yuuji’s true nature— though if he didn’t and didn’t take well to the news Choso would have to kill him. Obviously.

Hopefully not. If the sorcerers caught wind of him now, with his brother in tow… no, hopefully not.

Yuuji’s taking a while.

Choso digs his nails into his palms, hard enough to draw a little blood. Exhales. “Yuuji?” he calls at the door. If he strains his ears, he can hear murmured conversation— but it cuts off when he speaks. “…Itadori-san?”

No response.

“I’m coming in.”

He pushes the door open. A bat swings for his head– not with enough force that Choso can’t catch it.

“Get the hell out,” says the man Choso assumes is Yuuji’s grandfather. Choso can feel the faint sparks of cursed energy channeled through the bat– enough that he narrows his eyes, though at this level the man would have trouble exorcising even a flyhead. A window? Nobody could be stupid enough to attack a special grade curse head-on on purpose. Could they? Shit. “Get out, get out, we don’t need this shit–”

A small shape blurs across the room, lunging at the older man's legs with a speed and strength that sends him staggering back. Choso plucks the bat fully from his grip. “GRANDPA!” Yuuji shrieks. “Listen!”

“...I’m Yuuji’s big brother,” Choso says. He chews on his words. Decides to keep the conversation civil, because Yuuji is still in the room, and half-crying, and Choso is dangerous. Not to Yuuji. But he is. It’s good that his grandfather is cautious– and, he decides, probably not a professional. “Hm.”

“Nii-san is nice!!”

It’s impossible for Yuuji’s grandfather to break his grandson’s deathgrip, but he contorts to block Choso from access to Yuuji as much as he can. “You can’t have him! He’s my kid!”

That answered one of his questions. “You know where he came from.”

Heavy breathing. No response.

“Itadori-san,” Choso says. “I’m not with,” this was a guess, but– he had a feeling, he understood– “her. I won’t let her touch him.” The bat splinters in his grip. “I won’t let anything touch him.” Never again never again never again never again never again never ever ever, and he means that, means that more than he means most anything.

That’s his duty as a big brother.

Maybe Yuuji’s grandfather can tell, because something in his expression shifts– just a bit. Less hostile, by degrees.

And—

“Nii-san?” Yuuji sounds very small and very upset. “Where Yuuji… came from?”

“Fuck,” swears Yuuji’s grandfather. “Goddammit.”

“Don’t say that near Yuuji,” Choso says. Goddammit.

==

Itadori Wasuke doesn’t welcome Choso into his home, but he does let him use the shower. It’s nicer than anything Choso has been able to catch with public facilities, at least. Bloody as they are, his pants are still wearable– though the sweater the old woman gifted him is a lost cause.

That’s…

“Put on a shirt, kid,” Wasuke snaps, throwing what must be one of his spares at Choso’s head.

Choso puts it on. “I’m not a kid.”

The old man considers him, hand curled around a lukewarm beer. Yuuji is sleeping next to him on the couch, arm carefully bandaged where the vengeful spirit had touched him. Wasuke had been– acceptably contrite, that he’d missed the injury in his panic. Tch. He’d better be. “Ya look like a kid. Yuuji’s a kid.”

“...I’m not.”

“I’m not letting you drink.” Wasuke sighs. Changes the subject. “What a fucking mess.”

Yuuji had tired himself out, after a hesitantly posited explanation for where he came from, and why it was a bad thing. Barely in the mood to examine his own gender– let alone that bastard’s– Choso had told the boy their ‘mother’ wasn’t very… ‘nice’. “Yes.”

Wasuke drinks deep. “Not gonna leave, are you.”

“No.”

“Great.” The old man motions at the only empty spot on the couch, at the other side of the curled-up Yuuji. “I know– not much. She was bad news, sure. My idiot son… he–” Wasuke cuts himself off. Choso sits, hand fluttering near Yuuji’s hair. His little brother. “Well, you can probably guess.”

He could.

“That thing stole Kaori’s– face, everything else. That was his wife. You say you’re Yuuji’s brother– where the hell did you come from?” He shakes the can, his own hand shaking with it. “Don’t cut corners.”

Choso’s hands migrate to his lap, where he folds them. “I am,” he begins, “the eldest of nine brothers…”