Work Text:
yokohama. a busy place, with bustling streets, and nightlife that left more to be desired in terms of “safety.” this city, swarmed with its men in black and machine guns. yokohama, where they told civilians old and new to lock their doors and windows by sunset. because in yokohama, the port mafia came out to play in the nighttime, crawling out of the towers that dared to slice the sky. yet for a particular two - still clad in black - yokohama was just home.
the older one, he coughed and wheezed, every breath he took a battle to gasp. even after he’d adjusted to his newfound vampirism and tried to return to his daily routines, his lungs still rattled, begging for more oxygen than he could provide. because of his frail body and failing lungs, his voice rarely came out louder than the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. ryuunosuke. in his private life, most tended to call him ryuu for short.
ryuunosuke - he had a certain uniqueness to him. when he walked into the room, everyone turned to look at him, to watch him float across with an elegance that couldn’t be replicated or trained. ryuu, who was glamorous without needing any riches, surrounded by whispers of “who is he?” “what does he have that i don’t?” he only looked confident to those who didn’t know his authentic demeanor, didn’t see past his perfect façade. those who could never understand his internal nightmare or didn’t have the heart to try.
not everyone knew how ryuu often woke up screaming in the middle of the night.
or how ryuu could be raw and sensitive, fleeting in his emotions like a cold autumn breeze through messy morning hair. ryuu, who cried so easily, he called himself a crybaby in embarrassment. ryuu, who expects everyone to forget his birthday, because it’s still so foreign to him when people care. ryuu, who blames even the slightest inconvenience in his life on himself as a response from the abused and neglected inner child inside him.
ryuunosuke, who loves like open heart surgery. fiercely passionate, loyal to a fault, unable to be tethered down even by the grave. he lives, breathes, to adore the people closest to him, to give them nothing but his best, sometimes forgetting they love him for who he is. ryuu, who might be labeled as “too much,” but is just perfect in the eyes of the people around him.
especially to the black lizard’s battalion leader - who knew ryuunosuke best by “nii-chan” - a nonbinary woman named gin.
the younger one, with a calm head, strong will, and a soft candy-sweet voice. something about gin had a sparkling charisma, a natural pull towards leadership. growing up in the male-dominated field that was yokohama’s port mafia, gin strategizes with both a masculine and feminine lens, slowly carving their own shadow with the influences of chuuya nakahara and paul verlaine.
gin, who was a lioness in their anger, who kept tallies of all the wrongs, because they’d be damned if they let someone else be their hero. gin, whose venomous wrath for osamu dazai’s sins shows in their pointed silver eyes whenever they saw him, a murderous rage threatening to tear him apart. gin akutagawa - who believed revenge was a dish best-served cold.
but in ryuunosuke’s eyes, gin was still a little girl, at least on the inside. gin, who dreamt of opening a shelter to help get the less fortunate off the street, even if it was just animals. gin, who excitedly browses baked goods at the store to try finding something, anything, to bring back for coworkers in the mafia. not even mafiosi would turn down little single-serve pies explicitly purchased for them, would they?
gin akutagawa, who never woke up ryuunosuke when he talked in his sleep, cause it meant he was breathing. gin who used to cry when they thought they were alone, but ryuunosuke would hear them and never mention it. gin, who loves like a warrior, never thinking of themself, always the people around them. because gin akutagawa would be damned if they ever considered what they wanted. ryuu knew this, so he stopped asking, because his actions spoke louder than his hummingbird words. finding a random sweet treat by gin’s pillow never stopped surprising them. a good brother remembers well when your favorite snack is maraschino cherries.
there’s something special about growing up in yokohama, though if you asked the akutagawa siblings, the only notable thing about it was each other. all the cold nights, the hunger, and being raised by the mafia - they’d both insist they couldn’t do it without each other. even when one is wrong, both would defend each other with no bounds. to them, blood would always be thicker than water.
a sibling is like a built-in best friend.