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If there’s one thing that’s unmatched in quick yet fulfilling validation, it’s singing the last note of the final song in a live performance’s setlist. Fans who had been waving their hands and neon light sticks, electrifying the air with their applause and screams came to a sudden stillness, seeing Yuuta and his brother wave their last goodbyes and giving thanks. In that stillness, there’s an unspoken sentiment of “Huh? What? It’s really over now?” that washes over the fans while they don’t seem to know what to do with themselves yet.
Yuuta would never be able to voice this out loud, he’s certain it’s more than a bit weird and no doubt due to his rather neglectful upbringing, but it’s one of his favorite parts of the live to see the crowd of sad faces that it’s over.
‘You missed me, huh? Gotta come back next time to see more!’ he’d love to tease, but since 2wink isn’t at the height of stardom yet, it may very well destroy their reputation to be so arrogant. And tonight when it’s a school-wide event — and maybe it’s a small crowd for a major group like fine — it was one of the biggest and loudest 2wink have had yet. Any other day, Yuuta would be itching to run back out and perform an encore to carry on the roaring energy that electrified the air, but not today. Not when his stomach is too busy knotting and twisting itself in dizzying dread as he walks off the stage, not one spare indigent glance to observe the neediness of the crowd cheering for him.
His heavy eyes dig into the back of his brother’s peach Setsubun outfit, swishing without a care in the world.
The live was good, one of the best they’ve had in some time. At least, Yuuta feels like it was a good one. The qualifications for “good” lately were “Aniki looked at me”, or “Aniki smiled for real… I think”. It’s shameful that he has to add on the uncertainty to it, that he can’t discern the expressions his two-in-one, his other half is making, but he hasn’t understood what’s going on in Hinata’s head for a while now.
Well, he didn’t before today . Before…
He squeezes the purple fabric of his own outfit with his hand, grabbing a fistful and willing the soft plum color to soothe the anxiety sifting throughout his gut.
“Yuuta-kun~! Lookie, lookie!” Hinata’s hand snatches his, pulling it away from where it was crumpling the fabric. His mouth is smiling, but the squint in his eyes is off. Not like fake glee, Yuuta doesn’t get the sense that it’s vacant like it has been lately, but something about this smile is ticking him off in a somewhat familiar way.
“What? What am I looking at Aniki?” Yuuta snaps.
Hinata’s smile peels back to show his teeth and he glances off to the side with a hum. Yuuta follows his eyes, but there’s nothing there. He looks around the impromptu dressing room they had been given, and still there’s nothing. He has a semblance of hope that his brother is smart enough to know he shouldn’t have planted any pranks on a day like today or else Yuuta’s going to be completely at his limit, fall to the ground like a disposed mannequin, and cry for five- no, maybe ten or twenty years. It’s hard enough holding it in this long already.
He forces himself to blink a few times and takes one final look around the cluttered room, the frustrated and tense sensation in his chest growing. Hinata’s finger taps against his knuckle, and really, can't his brother use his own hands for his nervous twiddling instead of using Yuuta as his personal drum?
It clicks in his head then, a little gate opening to the knowledge that he and Hinata share the habit of getting their anxieties out via their fingertips. Where Hinata expresses his nerves through movement like tapping fingernails against the table (and ever since they started painting their nails, this has gotten annoying fast ), Yuuta has always been more of the type to fiddle with his clothes.
It irritates Yuuta then, because with another spin of the gears in his head, that if he knows this fact then surely Hinata does too. So, his stupid, idiot , brother decides that he must quell Yuuta’s anxieties by grabbing his hands from tugging on his stupid purple clothes. As if it was a matter of life or death, as if his fists would actually hurt himself, as if that was more harmful or life threatening than sitting on a rooftop and talking about stupid giraffes and-
“Aniki, are you serious?” He decides to give Hinata the chance to retract his hands, to stop treating Yuuta like a child. If he goes back on this transgression and fesses up about it, then that’s still a step forward compared to where they’re at now.
Hinata’s smile falters, but instead of doing anything sensible, he instead lifts up Yuuta’s hand and starts pinching the fingers. “Yuuta-kun! Look at these little piggies~ This one went to the market.” A pull on his middle finger. “This one goes to the arcade.” A pull on his ring finger.
“You have got to be kidding me right now-”
“And this one went to the bathroom and clogged it and is too embarrassed to ask for help and doesn’t know how to fix it and is already messing up, huh~?”
A pull on his pinkie.
Yuuta takes a moment to sigh through his building rage, trying to push it all out in one single breath. It’s annoying, it’s frustrating, and even if they’ve talked about it, it still makes him upset that his brother can’t meet his eyes and say exactly what he wants.
But this is the closest he’s gotten in months, maybe years, so he can’t just punish Hinata for trying his best. His brother has always tried to do what he thought was best, and that was entirely the problem that led them to this point, and it’s what also made it so hard to get through to him before. It’s hard to try and dismantle someone’s love and genuine desire to do right for a loved one, even if that love nearly had Hinata throw himself away. So, even if his honesty is in the form of a poop joke right now, if it’s what he’s able to offer then Yuuta will take what he can get.
“That makes two stupid metaphors today, Hinata-kun.”
“Eh?!” Hinata’s eyes go wide, wider than normal for a jab from Yuuta. Must be because he didn’t say Aniki, but Yuuta has to keep him on his toes. Hinata barely recovers, sputtering out, “no, no, Yuuta-kun you’ve got it all wrong! I’m 2 for 2 today!”
Yuuta rolls his eyes, pulling his hand away to poke Hinata’s forehead with two fingers. “2 for 2 for bad metaphors. Put that on your clown school application.”
They dive into bickering about Hinata’s hypothetical application to only the most prestigious of clown schools, the pointless banter making Yuuta laugh out all the knots in his stomach. This is how it should be, these stupid conversations from nothing that have all bark and no bite, and no fear at the end of them that Hinata will pull away since he made Yuuta upset. Nothing of Yuuta feeling guilty by the end of it for being a selfish, spoiled brat.
He changes out of the Setsubun outfit, though putting on the black and red tracksuit has his nerves winding up a bit again, so he chooses to settle them by folding the plum fabric into a neat square. He takes care to press out the wrinkles, if only to have something to do while waiting for Hinata to finish up.
It doesn’t take long, his brother’s chants of ‘Yuuta-kun, Yuuta-kun~!’ ring in his ear and Yuuta turns to meet him. “I’m coming~ Hey, can we pick up dinner on the way home? It’s way too late to cook.”
“Hehe, I was just about to say we should do that. Let’s go to a buffet! We can just bully Sakuma-senpai to give us money to cover it tomorrow.” Hinata grins at his own plan, seemingly satisfied with whatever outcome he’s come up with about how tomorrow will go. Rei does make it just a bit too easy to be manipulated by the two of them going along with his old man antics, or maybe he genuinely cares about the twins' well-being. If today's events aren’t an indication of that, then who knows what else could possibly prove it.
It’s nice to be cared about.
Yuuta follows Hinata out the door, leaving the Setsubun outfit folded neatly in the room behind him. Today sucked, but he can at least be thankful to have been able to perform on a beautiful stage with his brother at the end of it.
And he can be thankful that now he gets to go eat dinner with him, and that tomorrow they’ll get to walk to school together, text about dumb stuff during class, and play pranks on their classmates. He’s thankful that at the start and end of each day, he knows his brother will be with him.
Yuuta is thankful that they’ll always be two unique individuals that will always make up one whole heart.