Work Text:
K’Sante knew something was wrong when Yone began to forget things. It was nothing of any great consequence, and the first time it happened, K’Sante had chalked it up to the typical brain fog that descended with old age, but that internal reassurance quickly washed away as it continued to happen. Yone could not find his keys one moment, then his glasses another time, a handful of occasions occurred where he forgot he was even cooking dinner, and it ended up burned.
Yone didn’t forget things. Not once in all their years as part of Heartsteel, not in the time following when they’d retired, and, from what Yasuo said, not even when the Kazami brothers were growing up. He was the responsible one. He was everybody’s mother, mind always going, always keeping everything in check. Ezreal would forget his phone, but it didn’t matter because Yone would remember to check just in case and hand it over in the van. Kayn often forgot to eat, but worry not because there was Yone with a meal he’d made to make certain his younger bandmate filled his stomach.
Yone didn’t forget, and that is what scared K’Sante so much when he’d started.
It was no surprise when they got the diagnosis. K’Sante had known well before they’d gotten in to see a doctor what exactly was going on with his husband’s brain. It wasn’t exactly rocket science to fit the pieces together.
Yone accepted the news as he did everything else, with stony-faced neutrality. He didn’t cry or curse, not even when they arrived home. He simply got to texting his brother and their friends—those former bandmates of theirs that still visited every other weekend.
Their home was packed three days later by said friends, Yasuo and his partners, and a great many children and grandchildren—both his and Yone’s and the others’. They’d had a family meal with everyone that night. Luckily, it had been a good day when Yone’s mind was cooperating. He joked with the others and scolded Kayn like he had been doing for the last thirty-odd years. All was well, though every last soul in that house knew it wasn’t, not really. K’Sante saw how, at times, they’d force a smile or a laugh. Kayn’s jabs were softer, Sett wasn’t as boisterous as usual, and his and Yone’s children looked on the verge of tears.
“It felt like I attended my own celebration of life party after my death,” Yone had jested after everybody had left. K’Sante kept silent, not wanting to think about Yone dying. The man had been his rock for what felt like an eternity by now, and the thought of losing him made him want to scream until his throat was raw and his spittle turned bright red with his blood. But he didn’t, because he couldn’t do that. Not to Yone. In all of this, he would have to be the one who stayed afloat whilst Yone slowly drowned. He would hold on until the other slipped through his fingers, until he sank into the murky depths, lost to K’Sante forever. K’Sante had never prayed harder for an afterlife to exist because the thought of never seeing Yone again was too much to bear.
Would he die of a broken heart when it happened? When his husband breathed his last? He thought it was entirely possible because he felt as if he might at any second every day since the horrible truth about Yone’s forgetfulness finally sank in.
That was all a little over three years ago, and since then, Yone had only deteriorated. Some of their friends had suggested he put Yone in a care facility, but K’Sante couldn’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t want Yone waking up every single day to a strange place with strange people, even if his own brain kept telling him his home and husband were foreign to him. He had promised himself he’d be Yone’s rock, and he was not about to eschew that silent vow.
K’Sante heard the pacing from the kitchen. Yone’s footsteps weren’t as light as they used to be when he was as graceful as a dancer. He left it alone for a minute, waiting to see if Yone would stop, and when he didn’t, K’Sante got up from the table, leaving his half-empty mug of coffee behind. As he approached the guest room, he could hear Yone mumbling to himself from behind the door. Opening it, he found his husband frantically walking to and fro, biting nervously at the side of his thumb. It was a habit he’d had in his teen years and into his mid-twenties, from what Yasuo said. Yone had only ever done it when he got overly stressed.
“Yone?” K’Sante ventured gently, keeping his voice low and even.
“I can’t find him,” Yone mumbled, his own voice strained with worry. He ran his other hand through his already messy hair, white with a few stubborn strands of dark brown still clinging on even at seventy years old. His glasses were perched on the very edge of his nose, ready to fall off at any second.
“Who can’t you find?”
“He can’t be left alone, he’s afraid of the dark.” K’Sante’s eyes darted to the window behind Yone, where daylight streamed in to illuminate the space with a wonderful natural light. “He’s my responsibility, and I lost him. What if something happens to him? He’s all I have left, and I can’t find him. If something happens to him, it’s going to be all my fault. I can’t find him, I can’t find him, I can’t find him.”
K’Sante stepped into the room. “Yone,” he said again, even more gently, but it fell on deaf ears.
“I can’t find Yasuo. I have to find him. I’ve searched all over the house, but he’s gone. What if something happened to him? He hates the dark. He can’t be alone, he cries when he’s left alone in the dark.”
“Yone, it’s morning,” K’Sante said as he ever so slowly and carefully approached his husband, arms out in a placating manner. “It’s morning, and Yasuo is not here because Yasuo is sixty-six years old, and he lives with his husband and wife, Yi and Ahri, remember? You don’t have to watch over him anymore, Yone; you did your job of raising him. You raised a good man, your work is done now.” He reached out a hand to lay it on Yone’s arm, only to have his husband violently recoil away from him.
“Don’t touch me!” Yone shouted. “Was it you!? Do you have something to do with Yasuo being missing!? Give him back, now!”
“Yone, I don’t have Yasuo,” K’Sante pleaded. “Maybe I can help you find him, though, yeah?”
“No!” Yone fisted both hands into his hair, his frustration making him tear at it. “No, you can’t help, you’re so stupid!”
K’Sante let the comment wash over him like water off a duck’s back. It hurt to hear that, but he had to remind himself that this was the disease talking, not his beloved Yone. Yone would never and had never called him stupid. The disease got into people in ways that were hideous, twisting them into people they weren’t. Sometimes that hideousness manifested as cruelty.
“Okay,” K’Sante acquiesced. Arguing would only worsen the situation. Right now, he had to try and calm Yone down. His simple answer seemed to have some sort of placating effect as his husband’s harsh breathing began to return to normal, his hands dropping from his hair. He let the minutes trickle by, saying and doing nothing as Yone simply stood there, his once vibrant green eyes hollow and glazed over.
He counted three minutes before calling Yone’s name again. Yone didn’t respond immediately, but when he did look up, some lucidity had returned to his eyes. K’Sante held his breath as he waited to see just how lucid Yone was.
“Why are we in the guest room?” Yone asked, brows knitting together in confusion.
“You...had an episode.”
Yone sighed as he brought his hands up to rub at his eyes under his glasses, which got knocked askew as he did. He corrected them shortly after as his hands pulled away. “How bad was I this time?”
“You were looking for Yasuo. He was missing, you couldn’t find him anywhere in the house, and you thought it was dark out,” K’Sante explained, finally letting his breath out.
“He was six. I had come into his room that night to tuck him in and turn on his nightlight, but he wasn’t in his room. I practically tore our house apart looking for him. Even bothered our mother about him, not that she was any help.”
Yone’s mother had suffered a complete mental breakdown after losing her second husband, Yasuo’s father, and much like Yone now, she had slowly deteriorated. Yone had managed to avoid social services by learning to forge his mother’s signature for permission slips and checks, and had dug into their massive family fortune to see to his and Yasuo’s needs until he began to work. Their mother had died by the time he was sixteen, but that was all the time Yone needed to make certain he and Yasuo would be able to stay together.
It was doubly fortunate they’d been raised in Japan as well, where seeing a small child grocery shopping without their parent was not looked at twice, making it easy for Yone to keep himself and his brother fed and clothed and their other needs seen to without having an adult raise the alarm. Still, it hurt K’Sante’s heart to think about what he and his younger brother had had to endure for so long. All his life, Yone had had to mother other people. It wasn’t until K’Sante that somebody had begun to take care of him, too, and had been able to lift some of the burden from his shoulders.
“I was in a panic by the time I found him outside in our backyard. He had snuck out of the house, braving the night to bring some milk to a stray kitten he’d found. I took him and the kitten back inside. That cat ended up attached to me instead of him. You should have seen the way he pouted about it.” Yone laughed softly at the memory. It was good that he still had those. The older memories were typically the last to go.
K’Sante was smiling along with him, but that grin rapidly formed into a frown when Yone’s face twisted up and a deep, chested sob escaped his throat, tears falling from his eyes like a waterfall.
“Kuso,” Yone moaned out, voice full of heartrending despair. His head was in his hands, attempting to hide his anguish from his husband. “Kuso,” he said again.
K’Sante knew the word well. He hadn’t even needed all those Japanese classes to learn it. It was simple enough, and Yone had muttered it during plenty of stressful days of work that he’d picked it up long before he had decided to learn his husband’s mother tongue. Fuck.
“I know, Yone,” he said, finally getting into the other’s space and wrapping his arms around him, bringing Yone flush with his chest.
“I hate this. I hate losing my mind,” Yone sobbed. “Please, K’Sante, please make it stop.”
“I wish I could, me dɔ.” He could feel Yone’s body shaking like a leaf against him, the other’s sobs so strong that K’Sante was genuinely worried that Yone might pass out. “Shh, it’s alright, I’m here. I’ll always be here, I won’t let you go.”
They stayed like that, holding one another as Yone let out all his grief, until their legs grew sore from standing and K’Sante’s coffee had long gone ice cold.
Six more months down the line, and Yone’s good days and even mixed days had reduced significantly. They were already few and far between, but now K’Sante had taken to sleeping in that same guest room so as not to startle Yone in the mornings. The visits from their friends, their children, and their grandchildren had also dwindled to near nothingness. Kayn had come by three weeks ago, and Yone had shouted him out of the house, thinking he was an intruder; the knife he’d been wielding at the time had made Kayn move just that much faster.
The younger man had checked in with K’Sante later that day to make sure he and Yone were alright, reassuring K’Sante he didn’t hold anything against Yone and knew it was the disease making him act like that. Again, he’d brought up a care facility, and again, K’Sante had ignored him. Kayn had yet to text him again since. The only one who seemed to text regularly anymore was Aphelios, who had handled the news the best out of their former band. He had that in common with Yone, facing the rough things in life with a stiff upper lip.
K’Sante had been reading up on music and the effect it had on those with Alzheimer’s for the past handful of weeks. Apparently, it helped to bring back memories, offering up some precious moments of lucidity, especially if music had been a large part of the individual’s life. Yone had been a producer once, and he had lived and breathed music even before joining Heartsteel, save for that time he had become something of a recluse, stress and depression making him retreat from the world when his solo music started to become a hit.
“I thought he was going to end up like our mother.” That’s what Yasuo had said when he had shared what it had been like to see Yone crumble like that. One second, his brother was topping charts—a shock for an indie musician—and the next, Yasuo wasn’t having his calls returned, and nobody had heard from the elder Kazami for nearly a month.
“It’s like his mind had finally had enough and decided to shut down.” Yasuo had broken into Yone’s apartment, hellbent on seeing if his brother was even still alive. He found Yone’s instruments and computer busted all to shit, Yone having destroyed it all during a manic episode. There was a huge dent in the wall where he’d smashed his keyboard; the massive thing snapped in two and laying oddly neatly atop the rest of the pile.
Yasuo had found Yone curled up in a cocoon of blankets, and only his long, dark brown hair could be seen spilling from the opening at the top. He hadn’t eaten in days, his time spent only sleeping and occasionally getting up to bathe and use the bathroom.
He had been the one watched over his whole life, even into early adulthood, so Yasuo hadn’t really known what to do, but he had known his brother needed help. He’d forced Yone from that cocoon, ordered food that he watched his brother eat to make sure he actually did it, and then got him into therapy.
“I didn’t want to die,” Yone had assured K'Sante when he had shared his version of the tale. “I felt...lost. I guess I wasn’t ready for the fame at the time. I had kept everything locked behind a door, and that door eventually burst open, and it bowled me over.”
K’Sante remembered kissing Yone after that, and telling him it was okay, because he was here now and Yone never needed to carry a burden alone again. He could vividly recall the softening in Yone’s features as his eyes filled with a warmth he hadn’t seen before, as his mouth twitched into the barest but most sincere of smiles. And most of all, he could still hear Yone’s voice as he said for the first time that he loved K’Sante as the low notes of a familiar song played from the speaker in their old studio.
The memory settled the internal debate that had been warring within K’Sante for days. He knew what song to play for Yone now.
The following morning, Yone was semi-lucid. He remembered K’Sante at the very least, though he was surprised to hear how long they’d been together.
“Did we get married right after joining Heartsteel?”
“Pretty much,” K’Sante had laughed. It had been exactly four months after they'd met. They had fallen fast and hard, and as time revealed, it had been worth it even through all of this heartbreak. “You were hot.”
“I’m not anymore?” Yone asked, seeming offended at the prospect of no longer being deemed attractive.
That only made K’Sante laugh harder. “There’s that vanity I fell in love with. No, Yone, do not worry, you are still the most beautiful man I have ever seen.”
They joked lightly and talked about everything and nothing as they ate their breakfast: a simple fare of eggs, bacon, toast, and fruit. Afterward, they moved into the living room where Yone sat to read while his mind was still with him, and K’Sante went rummaging around in the attic for the CD he was looking for. Truthfully, he could have found what he sought on any number of music streaming services, but CDs had a certain quality to them that he appreciated.
He found it in the bottom of a box listed ‘Yone’s Old Crap,’ courtesy of Yasuo when helping his sibling to move into the house. The song tracks had been scribbled on the back in black marker in Yone’s almost unnaturally neat script, but K’Sante did not need that guide; he knew what he wanted and where it was on this one-of-a-kind disc.
Yone was still in his favorite armchair when K’Sante came down; he’d made a surprisingly big dent in his book already. He’d always been a fast reader, but it was good to see him so quick when the disease had escalated to where it was now.
Silently, K’Sante crossed to their stereo and popped the disc in, where he clicked next until he got to track five. Yone’s voice bled out of the speakers some seconds into the song, melodic and hypnotizing. He had mostly stuck to simply being a producer during their Heartsteel days, but he had lent his voice a handful of times to their songs, and before that, when he was solo, he’d sung more often, though the majority of his music remained instrumental only.
Despite having a wonderful voice, Yone had always been self-conscious about his singing. Whenever one of their tracks would play that he was featured in, he’d leave the room, a blush clear across his face. Singing was him getting out of his comfort zone, but that did not mean he wanted to hear it after the fact.
Yone was looking at him now, his eyes sharper than they had been earlier. Perhaps it was working.
“I told you I loved you to this song,” Yone said suddenly. His eyes sparkled as he recalled that day. “You told me I would never have to carry my burdens alone anymore.”
“I did.” K’Sante stepped over to where his husband sat, reaching out a hand. “Dance with me?”
Yone smiled at him as he took K’Sante’s hand. He left the book behind on the seat of the armchair as K’Sante swept him along to the center of the living room. Yone was still tall and lithe, his body hardly changed from when they’d met when he was thirty-five to now that he was rapidly approaching seventy-one. K’Sante had changed more than him, muscles softening, his stomach giving way to what the kids called a dad bod because of how well Yone fed him, coupled with age keeping him from being able to hit the gym like he used to. That was fine by him, he considered it a well-loved body and oh, it was, because not a day went by that K’Sante did not know how cared for he was, even when Yone did not recognize him, because he knew, somewhere in there, was the Yone that told him everyday how much he loved him. The Yone that had shown him most nights how much he adored K'Sante's body, just as much as K'Sante had shown him how much he was captivated by his.
Yone’s arms were around his neck, his own hands on Yone’s hips as they swayed back and forth to the music. Silence hung between them as they enjoyed that forty-two-year-old track.
“You should leave me,” Yone said as the song ended and picked up again, K'Sante having hit repeat before stepping away from the stereo.
“What?” K’Sante’s eyes flew open, and he stared at Yone with a deep frown, his brows pulled low. “Why would you say that?”
“I’m only getting worse, K’Sante. You shouldn’t worry yourself over me. Put me in some care facility like everyone has been telling you.”
“I won’t do it.”
“Why?”
“Because I promised that I’d be your rock, that I would stay with you until the end. I won’t abandon you,” K’Sante argued.
“There’s no shame in it, K’Sante, and I wouldn’t hold it against you. You shouldn’t have to deal with all of this alone; the people in those places are equipped to handle those with my condition.”
“I know they are, but I don’t want to let you go.”
Yone smiled sadly at him. “You’re going to have to...sooner than you want.”
“And when that time comes, you’ll at least be in our bed in our home, with me by your side holding your hand.”
“You are so stubborn,” Yone said, fondness coloring his voice as he shook his head.
“That’s one of the reasons you love me.”
“Is that so? I don’t seem to remember that bit,” Yone joked.
“Much like you won’t remember this conversation in the morning,” K’Sante jested back. Yone laughed, his nose crinkling in that way that K’Sante found insanely endearing. He leaned forward then, capturing Yone’s lips in a kiss that he poured all of his being into. He wanted to tell Yone everything in that kiss, how much he loved him, how he’d miss him, begging him not to go, but telling him it was alright to sleep when the time came. Mostly, he wanted to tell Yone he’d never leave him. No matter how difficult it got, he'd be there by Yone's side. His lighthouse in the dark.
“Thank you,” Yone whispered as they parted. “Thank you for everything.”
“Always.”
And on that day, with the sun spilling in through the windows, bathing them in a honey-warm light, they continued to sway gently to the song, and when Yone did go, K’Sante would hold onto this moment for the rest of his days. Their last dance.