Work Text:
The mirror was always the hardest part.
Often, he can’t help but lay himself to sleep on the floor. Curled up against cold wood, his back aches – but his bed, their bed, reeks of him. He’s vomited, somewhere, he knows – it burns in the back of his lungs, his throat burns, and yet he can hardly drag himself to the bathroom.
They look so alike. His reflection, a mirror of Nayuta, stands there with the same tired, heartwrenched expression that bled into his own. He whispered, his voice trembles, not with anger this time – but agony. “Hey, Nayu.”
It was morning, a week since the night the world changed shape, town lights and the sun all bleeding grey. The house still felt lopsided, the hallways too long, his home too cold, without Nayuta to lean on his shoulder, helping him write songs, or his laughter echoing off the walls when they boast of victory, or try to ease the anger of defeat. Silence had a weight Kanata never noticed before — thick, like fog.
It’s hazy, hurtful, but he wonders if this– this harrowing feeling, the crater in his chest was what Nayuta felt. What his brother suffered through in silence every moment he was alone.
How had he been so blind?
Old habits die hard, even when the house is quiet, even when no one is left to shout. When he and Nayuta aren’t laughing hard under their breath, when they’re not fighting over something stupid, and apologizing on the verge of tears. Kanata often holds his breath until he’s dizzy– letting his lungs scream for him, everything his voice couldn’t bear to say.
He used to say he slept better knowing Kanata was still there. Kanata never told him he felt the same.
Sometimes wakes up expecting to hear the shaky breathing beside him— that soft, rhythmic sound Nayuta made when the night got too heavy to bear. Sobbing in his sleep, and often, Kanata would wake him, shake his brother to come too, when he woke– he told them where they were, away from that house, that place– that woman.
Nayuta wasn’t here for him to shake awake this time.
His eyes are red, rimmed with tears, the image of Nayuta in the mirror fades away, like it was made of rough water. Kanata stares at himself, and wonders – if he could tear his face off, unable to look at those eyes in the mirror. “You’re still here,” he shudders, nails digging into the porcelain of his sink. “In me.”
And for the first time in a long time, that didn’t hurt — but it burned anger in his chest.
He was older by four minutes. That’s all it took for Kanata to decide he was the protector.
When the belt came down, when the air got thick with the smell of whiskey and fear, he stood between Nayuta and everything cruel in the world. He called it bravery. Nayuta called it love.
He survived everything except himself.
And then he came back, him, in the flesh one warm autumn morning.
And maybe he realized the weight of a love he almost lost on his own, he ran, and they slammed into eachother like magnets clinging to their charge. Kanata tries to speak, he knows he does. He tries to breathe, wrap his arms around Nayuta a little tighter, cling to him as if it was their last, only, all of this felt like their first.
“I never want you to leave. Please, I was– it was horrifying.”
Nayuta says something, Kanata knows he does, he can feel the rise of his chest, feel his brother leaning against him as he always did, that weight, a reminder.
Neither of them knew how long they sat there. Nor, would they ever.