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When Touya wakes up, the first thing that he notices is this: there is blood in his mouth.
That fact in and of itself isn’t unusual, but it's the second thing he notices that sets this situation apart from countless others, and the second thing he notices is this: he’s not in the training room.
He can tell because, instead of hard wooden paneling under his back, there’s something soft. Plus, it smells different - there’s no ever-present scent of ashes and burning meat. It's… weird. He doesn’t necessarily enjoy waking up in the training room, but at least it's familiar. So, yeah. It's weird, it's odd, and he doesn’t fucking like it.
Touya tenses and sits up, wincing at the way that his muscles protest the movement. They’re sore - no surprise there, at least - and he already knows that it's going to be Hell to get dressed in his uniform for school, much less actually go to school, sit down for hours, and come back home to get his ass beaten into the floor all over again.
Rinse, repeat.
But orders are orders, and Touya knows what his role is. He’s his father’s favored son, and that means that he comes when his father calls and he goes when his father points, and, if something in him longs for more, well.
He’s smart enough by now to know that nothing good ever comes from speaking his mind.
Back to the unfamiliar setting, though, he’s definitely not in the training room, not unless his father got drunk and hired a new interior designer. He’s not in his bedroom, either. Or anywhere that he recognizes. That should be enough to instantly set him on edge, but he’s so tired that he can only manage a kind of weary, muted shock as he traces his eyes across the pale pink walls, the posters, the dolls and stuffed animals gathered at the foot of the bed.
Blandly, to himself, he says, “What.”
He says, staring particularly hard at a teddy bear with bright green fur, “What the fuck.”
The door to the room creaks open, and Touya doesn’t turn his head quickly enough to avoid getting hit by a blur of white. He almost yelps at the contact, because the way the kid’s hands are digging into his back actually really fucking hurts, but he bites back the sound, settling on balling the sheets up in his hands instead. “Hey, Natsuo. What’s up, buddy?”
His sibling goes still in his lap, and Touya thinks for one terrifying moment that he’s gotten the wrong name, that it's actually Fuyumi who’s attacking him like this, but then Natsuo winds his arms around Touya’s neck, effectively choking him, and whispers in his ear, “I’m so happy that you’re awake.”
“Yeah,” Touya wheezes. He feels like he’s been run over by a truck, and Natsuo isn’t really helping matters, but he can’t quite bring himself to voice his complaints out loud. “I’m awake, yeah. What’s going on?”
“You were bleeding,” Natsuo tells him, and his grip gets even tighter, like he’s afraid that Touya will disappear if he lets up the pressure for even a second. “I thought you were going to die. Fuyumi thought so, too, even though she says that she didn’t.” He buries his head in the crook of Touya’s shoulder, and his voice is muffled when he says, “You looked really bad.”
Touya closes his eyes and tries to remember the events that led up to this. What was going on before he lost consciousness? He’d probably said something snarky to his father again - that was usually how he ended up being knocked out - but how did he end up here? And why was he bleeding? Burns didn’t bleed, they… well, they burned. The flesh was already cauterized, which was safer in the long run but still hurt like Hell, and so he definitely shouldn’t have been bleeding.
Maybe Natsuo was mistaken.
“Hey,” he says, jostling Natsuo to get his attention. “Are you sure I was bleeding?”
Natsuo leans back so that he can see Touya’s face. He nods and rubs at his eyes, which Touya is now realizing are rimmed with red. Like he’s been crying. Like he’s been crying because of Touya.
Guilt sinks Touya’s stomach like a stone, because, damnit, he thought that he was past making people cry because of him.
Before he can think of something to say, a flash of movement in his peripheral vision catches his attention. He looks over and sees that Fuyumi is standing in the doorway, and then it clicks - he’s in Fuyumi’s bedroom. Of course. Who else would decorate like an eleven year old girl other than an eleven year old girl?
Which begs the question, Why the fuck did he wake up in here and not the training room?
Like she can hear his thoughts, Fuyumi fiddles with the hem of her dress and says, “Dad told Mom to get you out of there so that he could get someone to clean the floor.” She stares down at her feet as she talks, a noted nervous habit, one that he doesn’t comment on. “My room was the closest, so we brought you here.”
Someone to clean the floor.
Ah, so he had been bleeding.
“Shit, Fuyumi,” he says. “Did I ruin your sheets?”
He shifts Natsuo off of his lap and moves to swing his legs over the side of the bed and stand, then pauses when he notices that there’s someone behind Fuyumi. The figure is shorter than her, so he hadn’t seen them until now. There’s only one person it could be, and so Touya says, amused, “Shouto, I can see you.”
Shouto shakes his head, a swirl of red and white, like he thinks that if he denies it enough then Touya’s observational skills will cease to exist. “No,” he says, simple as anything, and it's so unbearably adorable that Touya’s heart thuds painfully in his chest.
“Yeah,” he says, smiling. “I can.”
Shouto shakes his head harder, then actually peeks around Fuyumi’s legs to stare Touya dead in the eye. “You can’t see me,” he insists in that way that only toddlers can, like his word is law and anything that goes against it is obviously wrong. Babies and egotistical maniacs, they’re the same. They think they rule the world.
“You’re looking right at me, bud,” Touya says.
“No.”
Natsuo huffs, yanking on Touya’s shirt to get his attention. “Anyways,” he says, clearly irritated that Touya hadn’t been focused on him, “you were bleeding, and -”
“Oh!” Fuyumi says, ignoring the way that Natsuo snaps, I was talking! “Shouto, didn’t you want to give Touya something?”
She stares down at Shouto, expectant, and Shouto stares up at her, uncomprehending. Fuyumi smiles at him with the patience of a saint and prompts, “To make him feel better?”
Touya can see the moment that her words process in Shouto’s head. Realization dawns across his face, and he nods so hard that Touya’s worried that his neck will snap. He detaches himself from Fuyumi and wobbles toward Touya in that drunken old-man way that little kids walk, and Touya raises his eyebrows when he sees the first-aid kit held in his baby brother’s hands. He glances up at Fuyumi, questioning, and she nods, making gestures for him to play along, and so when Shouto slams the box down onto the bed, Touya obligingly asks, “What’s that?”
Shouto crawls up onto the bed so that he can pat Touya’s leg through the sheets. He says, very matter-of-factly, “Magic.” He grips the latch of the kit with both hands and tries to pry it open.
After watching him struggle for several moments, Touya asks, “Do you need help?”
“No!” Shouto says, offended, like Touya’s offer was a direct insult to his pride. “It’s mine!” He fights with the box for another minute or so, then scowls and shoves it towards Natsuo, demanding, “Do it.” When Natsou flicks it open in less than a second, Shouto’s frown only deepens. He glares at Natsuo, and Natsuo stares back, bemused. Finally, Shouto huffs, irritated, and turns to Touya, holding out his hands. “I want your arm.”
When Touya hesitates, Shouto huffs again, louder, and repeats, “I want your arm!”
“Okay, okay, jeez!” Touya gives him his arm. He watches, eyebrows raised, as Shouto - with great flourish - lifts a roll of bandages from the first-aid kit and starts to wind it around his forearm in a way that honestly does a really shitty job of covering the cut that Touya hadn’t even noticed until now, what the fuck.
“Wow,” Fuyumi murmurs. She’s sidled up behind Shouto and is peering over his head, admiring his handiwork. “How’d you get that?”
Touya shrugs.
Fuyumi sighs, obviously unsatisfied with the answer, but she drops the subject.
Natsuo, though, isn’t quite as considerate. He presses himself to Touya’s side and stares up at his face and asks, with all the enthusiasm of a little kid watching a movie villain get defeated by a hero, “How do you get hurt all the time, anyways? Do you get into a lot of fights? Are you going to have scars?” He grins, giddy. “Scars are badass!”
“Natsuo,” Fuyumi admonishes. “Don’t curse.”
“You’re not my mom,” Natsuo says, smug. “You can’t tell me what to do. And even if you could, I’m faster than you. You can’t catch me.” He looks up at Touya again, the grin still firmly in place, unwavering. “Have you seen me run, Touya? I’ve gotten really fast. I bet that I could even beat you! You need to play with us more - you used to play with us all the time, but now you don’t. Why’d you stop?”
Touya blinks down at him, stunned into silence by the onslaught of questions. Before he can come up with an answer to any of them, Shouto smacks the flat of his hand against Touya’s arm and loudly proclaims, “Finished!”
Touya looks at the bandages and says, “Oh.” They’re certainly… unique. “It looks great, Sho. You did an awesome job.”
Fuyumi and Natsuo nod their agreement, and Shouto beams at all of them. “I did it by myself,” he says, proud, then clambers up to Touya’s lap and grabs his face. Touya forces himself not to tense - this is a rare moment in which they can all be together, happy, and he refuses to ruin it just because of his irrational reactions to literally everything. Shouto presses their foreheads together and peers into Touya’s eyes. “You feel better?”
Touya takes a deep, deep breath. “Yeah,” he says, and pulls his baby brother into a hug. Shouto squirms a little but then settles in surprisingly quickly, even reaching up to wrap his arms around Touya’s neck, and Touya has to press his face into Shouto’s hair to hide the fact that he’s inexplicably close to tears.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Breathe.
He holds Shouto a bit tighter. He loves him so much. He loves all of them so much. He loves his entire fucking family even though he can hardly be considered a part of it save for the moments like this, where he can spend time with his siblings and talk to them and remind himself that they’re real, like he’s real.
“I feel better.”