Work Text:
It was a warm summer afternoon in the Woods household. The two brothers, Jeff and Liu, were laying next to each other on Liu’s bed, just enjoying each other’s company. A comfortable silence filled the room, but it wouldn’t last for long.
“Liu?” Jeff spoke. There was something on his mind, a question he couldn’t ignore.
Liu, with his eyes closed and his hands rested on his stomach, only gave out a soft hum in response.
“If someone were to offer you let’s say…” A pause. “A billion dollars, to kill me, would you take it?”
Liu opened his eyes, and looked over at Jeff in confusion, “...What? No, of course I wouldn’t. I couldn’t kill you, Jeff.” Liu answered, as if Jeff had asked the most stupid question in the world. “Why? Would you kill me?”
Jeff shook his head with a serious expression, “No! No. But, okay, forget the money. What if I was trying to kill you? Like…” Jeff tried to think of a situation where he would be motivated to kill Liu, he couldn’t. Jeff would never hurt Liu, not in his right mind anyway. “If I had lost my mind, or something like that. Would you kill me to save yourself?”
“Why are you asking me this?” Said Liu, sitting up, concern laced in his voice.
Jeff shrugged, “I’m just curious.” Truthfully, Jeff had no idea why he was asking these questions, or where they came from. They had come to him earlier in the day randomly, and just wouldn’t leave his head. He found that he couldn’t relax until he let them out.
The concern in Liu’s face only lessened slightly as he paused to think. “No. I wouldn’t kill you, even in self defence. I would talk you out of killing me.”
“What if you couldn’t?”
“I could-”
“No, what if you couldn’t?” Jeff repeated, feeling oddly frantic. It was as if he couldn’t stop the words from coming out. “Like, I had gone completely mad and wouldn’t listen to you at all.”
“Then… I guess I’d die.” Liu shrugged. He turned to look out of his bedroom window. “Like I said, I couldn’t hurt you, Jeff. I love you.” He turned back to look at Jeff.
Jeff felt his throat close up at the thought. Liu wouldn’t even defend himself from him, he would just let himself die. “I-I love you too.” Jeff spoke softly. Another pause. “Would you do it if you hated me? Like, I hurt you a lot and you were so angry at me for it. Would you do it then?”
“Jeff.” Liu said firmly. The tone caused Jeff to turn and look at his brother. “You would never hurt me, I trust you, and I would never hate you either.” Liu sighed. “But, if you did, if I did hate you, I still wouldn’t. No matter how angry I was, I wouldn’t kill you.”
Tension that Jeff didn’t know he had left his body, and he nodded wordlessly.
Liu looked down at his brother. He still had no idea what prompted the questions, and he wasn’t sure Jeff knew either. He did know, however, that Jeff often got into weird low moods, and would need Liu’s help to be brought out of them. He gave a sympathetic sigh before moving to lie flush next to Jeff. He put his arm over Jeff and rested his head on Jeff’s in a half hug. Jeff curled up against Liu and put his head on Liu’s shoulder, his body relaxing fully as Liu pet his back.
Jeff fell to the cold forest floor with a thud, wheezing as he came into contact with it. His freshly bruised left eye hurt like hell, and there was a gash on his forehead that was slowly oozing blood. While he had no major wounds, Jeff’s whole body hurt. More than that, his heart hurt.
“L-Liu-” He coughed, “-I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!” Tears fell from Jeff’s eyes. He knew that Liu didn’t believe that he was sorry, how could he? Even if he did, a simple sorry wasn’t enough. He had practically ruined Liu’s life, no amount of words and apologies could fix that.
Liu towered over Jeff, now so much more taller than his brother. His coat and scarf blew in the breeze, making him look even bigger than he was. Jeff’s words made his eyebrows twitch slightly and his whole body was subtly shivering. “Shut up.” He spoke, voice strained but cold. Liu raised the gun that he was holding tightly in his grip, and pointed it at Jeff.
Defeated, Jeff let his head fall to the floor and looked up at the shaky gun pointed at him. If this was anyone else he’d try harder. He’d fight, he’d run, he’d do something. But no. He couldn’t hurt Liu, not again, and he didn’t deserve to run. This was his punishment.
Gritting his teeth, and trying to ignore the frantic beating of his heart, Liu put his finger on the trigger. One bullet, that’s all it would take. One bullet and it would all be over, he would get his revenge. Liu tried to steady the gun. Jeff, his murderer (his brother, his best friend,) would be dead. Liu watched Jeff cover his eyes with his arm, as if he couldn’t bare to look at him. Liu tried to ignore it, tried to ignore everything. He just needed to focus. This needed to happen. Liu took a deep breath.
The seconds ticked by…
Confused, Jeff moved his arm to look up at his brother. Liu was still pointing his gun at him, but something had changed. Liu’s arms were shaking, he probably wouldn’t be able to hit Jeff even if he did pull the trigger, and the grip on his gun had loosened. Liu’s face was still angry, but his breathing came out in shallow breaths and tears began to fall from his eyes.
Jeff pushed himself up on his arms. “Liu?” He said, concerned.
And that’s when Liu broke. His gun fell from his hands, and he fell to his knees. He doubled over as quiet sobs wracked his body, and he buried his face in his hands. “I can’t, I can’t…” Liu spoke so softly, Jeff could barely hear him.
It was almost surreal to see Liu cry, Liu rarely ever cried, Jeff could probably count on one hand the amount of times he’d seen his brother cry like this. The novelty of it wasn’t important to Jeff, however, and he pulled himself closer to Liu. Cautiously, Jeff reached out a hand and touched Liu’s shoulder.
“Hey.” Jeff whispered, but said nothing else. He had no idea what he should say, so he didn’t say anything. He wanted to hug Liu, but he didn’t know if Liu would want that. Thankfully, Jeff didn’t have to wonder for long, because Liu pulled him into a tight hug. Jeff paused only for a moment before returning the hug and stroking Liu’s back.
The two brothers held each other for what felt like hours, not caring about anything else but the other.
After a while, Liu’s sobs began to lessen and he tried to speak. “I-I, I couldn’t. I couldn’t.” He pulled back to look Jeff in the eye, but didn’t let go of him.
Jeff said nothing, afraid to ruin the moment.
Sniffling, Liu shook his head slowly. “I can’t kill you, Jeff.”
Jeff’s breath caught in his throat and his tears began to fall once more. He hugged Liu tightly again and felt Liu do the same. Jeff didn’t know what would happen in the future, how they could move on. But at that moment, Jeff found he didn’t care. He was content to stay hugging his brother for as long as he could.