Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Denial was always his best strategy. Things would work out on their own or they’d fade away somewhere else, somewhere he didn’t have to think on it. There were quite a few things he didn’t think about, he supposed, but it worked so who could really judge?

As long as it wasn’t hurting anyone else, right?

Osomatsu lived in the moment, after all, focusing on the simpler pleasures and what could make him happy in the here and now. Bets, beauties, and booze. The three B’s of life.

Oh, and brothers.

Not that Osomatsu would ever admit to his five demonic, unappreciative brothers mattering that much to him. Not that it wasn’t glaringly obvious anyways. He was always a little overprotective, a little too needy, but really it just meant those pests should listen to him more. He’d always gotten them out of trouble in the past, after all, even if it was by his own fault they’d landed in trouble to begin with.

Sometimes he couldn’t always hide behind his wall of nonchalance- sometimes little insipid thoughts crept through the mortar. Sometimes, like when he walked into the kitchen when his mom was chopping vegetables and caught the glint of a knife. Or when he accidentally locked the door to the bathroom and turned the lights off too soon. Little things, brief lapses of moments. Sometimes they were even smaller; he’d just zone out for a moment in a conversation, but no one seemed to notice anyways, so it was fine.

Just don’t think about it. It’s fine.

The world had seemed alright, just as alright as ever anyhow. Choromatsu hadn’t bothered any of them with job hunting in a few months, their parents were working things out for the time being, the summer heat was pleasant and cozy and there was nothing to do but anything and everything they wanted. So of course, they’d all elected to do nothing at all. No need for headcounts, no need for checking his watch, no need for constructed facades. Just his brothers and the sunlight and his magazines.

Then Fappymatsu had to ruin it all.

He’d heard it be called a safety net before, a support network. Strands of people that made a guy feel alright, balanced even. Made it easier to ignore the things that didn’t matter.
Choromatsu had singlehandedly blasted it all apart as simply as breathing.

He remembered thinking at first that it was fine, mostly. No one else found a job yet and besides, it was just Choromatsu’s way- he’d been pushing them all forward from the start. He still had four at home, four pieces of his shaking web. But then the goodbye party sprung up on him, and all the heartfelt and honest happiness. Was he the only one who understood what had started? He’d been expecting the same half hearted bitterness as always, so he would blend in and they could all be angry together. He’d been expecting his brothers to convince Choromatsu to stay, not hand him his things and pass him out the door.

It was fine, except for the fact it wasn’t at all.

He refused to acknowledge it at all, none of it. If he accepted it, the situation would be unchangeable; it would be a fixed point that would never return. Osomatsu wasn’t himself, he wasn’t just one person. He needed the definition of the other vocal personalities nearby or what was he? He needed the vibrancy and the juxtaposition and the purpose and the noise of it all. This wouldn’t stick like this, it couldn’t. Choromatsu would change his mind. It was just a matter of time. If only they all hadn’t been so excited.

He’d been angry, he knew. Irrationally. Anger was his outlet. He reacted instead of thinking and bottled up his feelings until they exploded. He burned hot and fast, fading out as soon as the spark lit. Karamatsu understood that sometimes he lost himself in the heat of the moment and needed to be stifled out before it grew worse.
Choromatsu, though, was the only one who saw him after he burned down.

Osomatsu would like to say that he’d spoken the Jyushi later, that things had been resolved peacefully between them, but that wasn’t his style. After Shittymatsu dragged him out into the blistering cold he’d locked it all down and pushed it away; denial was easier, simpler. He’d shuffled up to his room and stayed there for the rest of the next day. Didn’t
mean he couldn’t hear the car pulling away or the tearful goodbyes, though, didn’t mean the ache in his chest hurt any less.

And Totty just had to make it worse.

Really, it wasn’t his fault, he’d swear. Totty hadn’t spoken until after he’d landed the first blow, and then simply exploded into harsh remarks and wild accusations. Things like ‘how he was a terrible older brother and never supported them’ or how he ‘was too selfish to realize he didn’t deserve a brother like Choromatsu to begin with’. Untrue, wildly untrue. That’s why they hurt so much, why he flipped out in response. Because he knew they weren’t true. Right?

He’d punched Totty, right in the eye. Hard enough for Todomatsu to fall backwards away from him with a suspiciously shiny light in his wide eyes. Hard enough to see the splintering cracks he’d just created between them both. Well, serves the youngest right for meddling anyways.

Osomatsu had fled right after, to pachinko first, then to Chibita’s, then wherever he felt. The night was strangely long, stretched out and twisted and he’d just wanted to forget everything and all of it and never ache ever again.

He’d thought, desperately, that if he’d forced himself to stay on the same track he’d always relied on, that things would magically glue themselves back together. Maybe he’d been a little too drunk, a little too desperate, but nothing in his world made sense anymore. His secure family bonds were fraying and falling and he felt too wild, too vibrant. Everything was slipping through his fingers, blowing away in the wind and he was only one man- he couldn’t stop this.

“Tch… you should just go home, idiot.” Chibita muttered, words floating harshly and blurred above him, but soft at the same time. There was something deeper there, something he didn’t dare trod near. Chibita was a good friend. He’d been around for as long as any of them bothered to remember. They didn’t have personal talks for a reason, though.

“… Mm.” He shook his head slowly. “Not yet. Totty’d… Totty’ll still be up.” The world was tilting at the edges slightly; he was close to nearing the limit of his tolerance but he chugged another glass anyways. Chibita frowned at the action and crossed his arms.

“Since when do you and that idiot have problems?” Right, he didn’t know. No one knew- well, except for probably his family by now. He sighed. It had all happened so quickly. They’d both been so mad and neither willing to back down. Osomatsu and Todomatsu weren’t the best combination on the best days, both too stubborn for their own good.
“Since he told me he’s moving out ‘n the mornin’”, Oso stated blandly, swirling the remaining alcohol in his cup. He refused to make eye contact with the other man, not that he was sure he could really anyways. Chibita was no doubt shocked, probably proud for Totty, probably disappointed in Osomatsu’s reaction. Judgemental ass.

Chibita said nothing, though, turning back to his fried food.

“Shop’s going to be closed soon. You should get going, ya idiot.”

Osomatsu reached into his pocket, mechanically searching for cash he, for once, knew he had thought to take with him. Chibita sighed.

“’S on the house. Just for today so don’t be getting any wrong ideas, you lazy NEET.” And Osomatsu froze, eyes making contact with Chibita’s just for a moment, and a multitude of emotions crashed into him at once. He saw a similar look flash across the other man’s eyes.

“Uh, thanks Chibita.”

He waved him away, “Don’t mention it. Really, don’t. I don’t want anyone thinking this is a regular deal.”

Osomatsu forced a single chuckle and slid off the stool.

“Take care of yourself,” Chibita called after him. Oso nodded distantly, feeling strangely empty and warm all at once. Who cared if he took care of himself anyway? Not his shitty brothers, that’s who. Still, Chibita’s kindness was a surprise, and despite his usual indifference, he appreciated the guy.

He glanced up at the sky, taking in the clear, pale moon and huffed a breath. It was getting a little cold, maybe. His cheeks were that side of too warm, as a result of his excessive drinking, but he felt the bite of the chill faintly. He should probably be heading home, despite the storm that no doubt brewed from within. Osomatsu stared down at his feet, concentrating on placing one foot carefully in front of the other.

His brothers were probably going to be furious with him--first Jyushimatsu and now Totty? Not that they both hadn’t aggravated the situation, but the words Karamatsu had spoken to him the night before still rang true. “You’re going to push them out faster than they can make up their minds, brother. You need to pull yourself together.”
Who would have thought Shittymatsu would be the voice of reason? He stepped up into the big brother role so easily, sometimes it was hard to believe he wasn’t actually the natural first born son. Sometimes it was hard to believe that Osomatsu ever thought he had to handle anything alone at all.

Osomatsu heaved a sigh, rolling his shoulders inwards. Regardless of how his family acted, he couldn’t go home shitfaced like this. He was already a livewire when sober. Adding alcohol to the mix would only make everything worse- well, provided it could get worse. He blinked up at a nearby sign for a 24-hour corner store and changed direction. Coffee, he just needed some coffee. After that he’d be able to face them all. Probably, maybe.

He winced at the sudden brightness of the store. Electric blues and whites assaulted his eyeballs aggressively, and he grunted a greeting to the cashier nearby. There were a few stainless steel machines near the back, probably with coffee. He couldn’t really read the sign, but the chill had sobered him up just enough to at least pretend he wasn’t drunk off his ass.

Grabbing a cup nearby, he thought back to the blurred lines of hurt under Totty’s eyes earlier. The red shine already forming around his little brother’s eye. Damn, he’d really made a mess of things if he’d attacked Totty of all people. He might have his own bruises but they all knew Todomatsu wasn’t nearly as aggressive as he liked to come across. He wasn’t fragile by any means either, but to sock him one in the eye was a low blow even for him. He wondered if Totty would already be gone by the time he got back. He wasn’t sure what he hoped for.

A few voices picked up near the front of the store, signalling other customers. Osomatsu reached for the lids under the counter, banging his elbow on the shelf of baking goods stocked closely beside, nearly knocking over a bag of flour. Oops. So maybe he was still slightly drunk off his ass. Oh well, not like the store clerk was paying him attention at the moment.

Choromatsu had left them already. It seemed almost anticlimactic. The first brother to leave and he was just up and gone out the door into a shitty van in a blink. Totty would likely be leaving as soon as he could now. The door had been opened and the youngest already had made it clear how he felt about them all. How he felt about Osomatsu, particularly. He wondered who would follow next. Not Jyushimatsu, and definitely not Ichimatsu. He couldn’t imagine Karamatsu leaving without them physically forcing him to, but Osomatsu supposed he kind of was without meaning to anyway. Yelling constantly and picking fights was going to stress Karamatsu out too much. The guy cared far too much; it was unhealthy.

He frowned, the voices increased in volume, and he reached for a stir stick.

It wasn’t his fault, though. It wasn’t. He wasn’t the one who wanted to disrupt their perfectly good balance. He wasn’t the one that was leaving. So what if Jyushimatsu had looked terrified of him earlier, if Ichimatsu had given him a strangely long look filled with something far too much like pity? That was just fine. If Todomatsu never wanted to look at him again, well, he didn’t want to see that asshole again either. Everything would stay the same somehow- he’d force it to if he had to. Ichimatsu and Jyushimatsu and Karamatsu would stay right with him and they’d be a better quadruplet bunch than they’d ever been as six, they’d all see. Choromatsu would see, and he’d get jealous and nagging like always, like when they were kids and maybe he’d even come bac –

“Hey!”

He blinked.

“I said give me everything you have, what part of that were you not listening to?”

Someone was really angry, he thought a little distractedly, turning slowly towards the source of disruption. Maybe he could just sneak past them to the front and avoid all of this drama; he was already doomed for the potential worst hangover of his life. Arguing customers was not something he could handle particularly well at the moment.

“I said empty it! All of it! I’ll give you to the count of three!”

That voice, he noted, it was…. strangely familiar. Distantly, just barely familiar enough for him to notice but the hackles were rising on his neck regardless. He wanted to shake it off as a drunken side effect but, there was an unsettling sniffling sound in the air that sounded suspiciously panicked. He crept towards the isle separating his sight from the commotion. Careful to take slow steps, focusing on placing one foot carefully in front of the other; whatever was going on up at the front he didn’t want to be a part of it, he just wanted to see.

“Alright, you asked for it! One!”

He peeked around the corner of the isle, leaning slightly too much to the side.

“Two!”

He saw everything in exacerbated detail, like it was playing out in strange cut snippets in front of him, hastily mashed together with too much focus on the irrelevant details. The keychain aisle in front of him, selling cute cats curled around tiny flashlights, the wall of baking goods in the corner of his vision, the bag he’d bumped earlier slightly lilting to the side. The way the light above him flickered in and out, as if it were about to burn out entirely. His arm that held the coffee, tilting too much and it spilling out in front of him, splashing against his wrist and reflexively causing him to flinch backwards. The yelp of pain that he couldn’t quite reel in. The figure, standing in front of the terrified cashier, waving a pistol out in the open, ready to fire. The slow turn of familiar eyes towards him, smirk just barely hidden beneath a scarf.
Oh god, he thought, I know that face.

The name slithered through his brain, an old demon or a childhood fear long defeated looming in front of him out of thin air, right as the bang from the pistol rang out and chaos broke loose in hyper speed around him.

Tougou.

When the focus snapped back into the world it was like a taut rubber band; it bent outwards, warped and paused, and then rushed forwards with entirely too much commotion at once. Then it all broke apart.

The gunshot was terrifyingly loud.

Osomatsu flinched, relinquishing the remaining grip he held on his coffee to cover his head instinctively. He heard a sort of wet thunking noise, and then a loud clang.

“Shit!” That familiar voice called again, and Osomatsu’s brain finally clicked into gear. He peeked around the corner of the aisle again, shakily, sobriety having forcefully pushed itself into his veins along with delayed adrenaline.

Tougou, his brain supplied unhelpfully again, was standing with his back to him this time. He appeared to be shoving something into a bag, probably money from the cash register, and there was a strange red mark on the wall behind him that Oso’s eyes kept skipping towards. A red paint smear? It was strange, he hadn’t noticed it before, with the cashier up front and all and…

Oh god.

Oh god!

Osomatsu clapped a hand across his mouth to suppress the fear-filled whimper that threatened to squeak past his lips and dragged himself quickly behind the aisle again.
He had just witnessed a murder. There was an innocent kid, a cashier who probably hadn’t been paid enough to deal with this, and they’d been shot right in front of him. Because of him, because he’d spilled fucking coffee on himself because he was fucking drunk and miserable and he startled the robber and –

God, he was going to pass out.

“Whoever is hiding over there,” Tougou shouted, and Osomatsu’s skin crawled. “I didn’t intend to shoot but, what would you know? I still have three bullets left anyhow.” Osomatsu gulped, fear spiking even higher in his chest.

“I’d suggest you come out of hiding immediately.”

What could he do? If Tougou saw him, he’d recognize him immediately, surely he would. It may have been decades since they’d seen each other but- when had Tougou been released from prison anyways? He should have heard about it; he should have known. Of course the man would jump immediately back into his terrifying habits, of course he’d stay in town. For all Osomatsu knew, Tougou had been waiting for him all along. And he’d granted his wish simply by stumbling in here, drunk and oblivious to the danger very obviously nearby.

He couldn’t run either, he’d already… Tougou had already… He had a gun, and he’d proven himself violent, intentioned or not. Osomatsu had seen the man in action with intentions. He wasn’t afraid to harass little kids, terrify innocents; and now he most certainly wasn’t afraid to kill. Especially with a witness, one who could identify him.
A loud bang rang out, he flinched hard in response. A neat hole appeared in ceiling above him. Shit, shit. Tougou wasn’t playing games. Osomatsu was going to die.

“You’re really trying my patience; did you think I didn’t hear you over there? I should really thank you- your temporary distraction took that cashier out of the picture wonderfully,” Tougou’s voice echoed. It stretched almost nightmarishly and filled everything around him.

There was nowhere to go. Tougou would find him and he’d have to go along with him again or risk his whole family and his own life. He’d have to endure it all again, and god, he wasn’t strong enough. He couldn’t go through that again. Never again. He’d sworn Tougou would never get his grubby hands on him ever again. He refused to give in now.
“Tell you what, I’ll give you the same offer I gave our unfortunately incapacitated cashier here. To the count of three, and then I start firing.” Osomatsu scanned the aisle- across from him was the coffee machine, and down to the left a row of freezers. The door was so far away and out in the open from where Tougou stood.

There had to be something, anything.

Please! He couldn’t die here, in the middle of a convenience store, drunk off his ass, nearly about to cry in pure terror like a child. There had to be a way out, Osomatsu was a fighter, he’d always been a fighter. He couldn’t just freeze up now!

“I’ll make it even easier for you, kid. I’ll start heading over to you- meet you halfway.”

The thud and click of footsteps across the tiles drew nearer and nearer and Osomatsu was sure he was going to pass out any second. His hand brushed across the still cooling puddle from his earlier coffee. Damn that beverage, honestly- if he’d never thought to come in here, if he hadn’t gotten so drunk…

“One…”

His hand tightened around the cup he’d dropped earlier, ready to cry or scream or beg for forgiveness and his life from the monster that had plagued his nightmares for so many years as a child. His hand reflexively loosened as the heat from the cup caught up to him, and he stared down at the offending Styrofoam. The cup had somehow landed upright when he’d dropped it. There was still coffee in it, scalding hot, fresh coffee.

“Two.”

The steps were so close now, tantalizingly slow like Tougou was having a grand old time. He probably was, the sick bastard. Osomatsu’s drunken resolve hardened. He wouldn’t go down so easily. He wouldn’t keel over for this asshole, not here, not ever. He shifted slowly into a crouch, facing the sound of the footsteps.

“Three!”

Three things happened in quick succession. Tougou popped out from around the corner, gun raised and wicked curving smile blazing. Osomatsu flung the cups contents towards the man’s eyes and used all of his remaining adrenaline fueled sobriety to shove himself into the aisle, leaping over it with a nearly graceful edge just as it tipped down low enough in it’s slow free fall towards the tiles.

Fate must have been on his side that night, as his projectile landed squarely on his targets beady eyes and the scalding liquid caused the man’s finger to tighten instinctively on the trigger. He cleared the jump in the same motion, eyes locked firmly on the glass exit doors across the gap, just missing the stray bullet that embedded itself firmly into the wall behind him.

So close, almost free.

Fate had also decided to be an asshole, as the floor rushed up to greet him mid leap, earlier than his drunken mind had anticipated, and he hit the ground, hard.

He bounced over his ankle, landing square on his knee and tumbling forward on all fours. He couldn’t help the gasp that punched out of him at the fire quickly careening up his right side. Osomatsu desperately fought against it, shoving the pain into the farthest corner of his mind, somewhere he could deal with later when there wasn’t a rampaging robber turned cold blooded murderer right on his tail.

Tougou’s angry yells had faded into more of an animalistic growl, and shit, he didn’t have much time before the man could see him again. He absolutely could not let Tougou see him, not if he wanted his family safe, not if he ever wanted to see daylight again.

But he couldn’t fucking stand up, god dammit!

His hands scrabbled against the tile, dragging himself in a backwards shuffle as far as he could away from the murderer, but it wasn’t fast enough. The tiles must have been mopped recently, as there was no way they should naturally be this slippery. His brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders either. He couldn’t get his hands under him or his feet coordinated, a mass of confusion and fear and drunken haze blurring edges together.

His vision focused on something dark on the tiles in front of him. Dark starkly contrasted against all of the too bright cheap store white.

The gun.

Somehow Tougou must have flung the weapon away from himself when he reached for his burnt face, chucking the weapon straight down the aisle from where he’d leaped. Directly between Osomatsu and him, as if in a strange standoff. It was glinting in the electric blue light almost innocently, almost tauntingly.
How many bullets had Tougou said he had? Three, not including the one fired at the beginning.

Two after the warning shot.

One after the misfire.

One bullet, but he only needed one bullet.

He lunged forwards, ignoring the hunching form of Tougou, ignoring the pain in his leg, ignoring everything. Osomatsu’s hand fluttered around the barrel of the gun and he snatched it closer to himself, cradling it inwards.

“You’ll pay for that, you brat!” Tougou screeched, and reflexively Oso flipped the gun outwards, warding. Protecting. All live wire edges and dangerous. He was running on terror at this point. He didn’t know what he was capable of.

He couldn’t shoot it, could he? Paint himself as the same fiendish and evil murderer as the man from his childhood nightmares? What other choice did he have?
Tougou was stumbling towards him now, somehow still seeming monstrous and powerful despite his still tightly clenched eyes and his growls of pain infused with anger. The skin around his eyes was pink and painful looking, it would probably scar.

If he saw Osomatsu now…

Oso’s mind flashed back to the slick shine of sharpened knives, the dark corners and closed spaces. The bruises, the fear. His family’s obliviously happy smile, his desperate attempts for help, for freedom, that went unheard. No, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t go through it again.

Osomatsu had always been a fighter. He’d always been the first one to throw a punch or react. He didn’t run, he didn’t freeze, he fought and kicked and broke his way through when he needed to. Curling over and dying wasn’t an option, and running away wasn’t going to work.

He raised the gun, saw the clench of Tougou’s eyelids like he was about to attempt to clear his vision. He cocked it in a slow motion, like he’d played around with guns all his life, like he wasn’t terrified and inebriated and nearing his wits end. Arm steady, target locked, easy as breathing.

Tougou would never see him, he’d make sure of it.

He fired.

Oso forced himself upwards, ignoring resolutely the electric fire that shot upwards from his knee and ankle, and staggered upright. He may have saved himself a couple of seconds, but that was quickly running out. He needed to get the hell out of here.

The cloud of exploded flour dust he’d created would only blind Tougou for a few brief moments, after all.

Overall, a decent shot for his first time firing a real gun while drunk. Even better, considering he could barely think straight. The alcohol was mostly wearing down now, however, allowing him to escape the inevitable vertigo he would have been dealing with in another universe.

The door was tantalizingly close, Tougou’s coughing and wheezing filled the air.

“Now you’ve…. gone and made me mad,” the man wheezed, and maybe it would have all been hilarious if Osomatsu wasn’t terrified beyond reason and there wasn’t still a blood splatter on the wall to his left.

He started forward in a flurry of panic, and yanked over a few post card racks and cigarette stands behind him for good measure. Maybe slow Tougou down if he started to chase. Fuck, fuck! He lurched forwards, nearly tripping over the entrance welcome mat and slammed into the door with his entire body weight.

The shock of fresh air outside made him stumble for a moment, only a brief moment.

He paused, just one second too long, before careening forwards in a direction, any direction and into the darkness of the early morning.
Police cars wailed in the distance, but Osomatsu didn’t slow down, his mind running a thousand miles per hour in every direction at once. He weaved down street corners, through alley ways and stumbled into trash cans, when finally, finally, the Matsu house appeared in his hazy vision. Something inside of him twisted sharply before he was suddenly heaving on shuddering, gasping breaths.

He fumbled with the lock and the keychain, pulling himself through the threshold just enough to click the door closed behind him and collapsed against it. The pain from his leg overwhelmed him, the adrenaline was fading and leaving him shaken, more terrified than he’d been in ages, and feeling very, very lost.

He realized he should probably call the cops. Someone had been murdered right in front of him, and the guy had probably gotten away. Tougou could be moving on to the next convenience store, gun toted with blood in the air. Tougou could have followed him back, be lurking outside, knowing exactly whose home this was.
Osomatsu tensed, breathing catching for a moment as a shadow passed across a window nearby. Tougou could be right outside the door, waiting to finish the job. Or trying to find a way to creep inside, right now while his brothers slept. What if Tougou had seen him somehow? His death certificate had been signed the minute he entered the convenience store the rest of this was just filling time.

He clapped a hand across his mouth, stifling a sob in the webbing between his fingers.

He suddenly felt impossibly small.

No, Tougou hadn’t seen him, he had to believe that. The man wasn’t quiet. He would have made a threat, would have shouted something after him. Tougou would’ve wanted to terrorize him into silence, just like before. But Osomatsu also couldn’t go to the police because then Tougou would know it was him who saw the murder. It wasn’t hard to put the pieces together. He’d have to be a witness and Tougou probably had connections in all sorts of scummy places.

He couldn’t endanger his brothers like that, or his parents. Totoko-chan, Chibita, all of them. They were next on the chopping block after himself. He might be angry at his brothers, hurt that Choromatsu had left him without so much as a personalized goodbye. Osomatsu may be a lot of things- self-centered, greedy, addicted- but he loved his brothers more fiercely than anything.

If they were hurt because of him…

Tougou would come here eventually anyways, wouldn’t he? Osomatsu knew it, somewhere deep down where he’d tried to deny it like everything else. Tougou was in the same city because he wanted revenge. He probably had a checklist with his name highlighted at the very top. They were to blame for his arrest to begin with- he was to blame. And he’d gone and made everything that much worse.

They were all dead, every single one of them. And it was all Oso’s fault.

“What do I do now?” He whispered to the darkness. Desperation crawled inside his throat, pulling sobs and hysteria along with it. He crumpled forward into his drawn knees and let out a choked off sob. “What do I do?”

The long silence after told him everything he already knew.

Chapter Text

It had been three days since Todomatsu left their home, four days since Choromatsu headed outside to a bright new future, and somewhere along the line he’d lost something else he couldn’t find a name for. Tossed out with all the rest of their brother’s belongings.

It was strange, living in a household with five noisy brothers day in and out, Ichimatsu never thought he’d miss the chaos. He’d always enjoyed the peaceful quiet of late evenings or lazy afternoons, but he found himself craving antics and stupidity. A break from the looming nothing that seemed to have gripped them all.

Somehow with only two brothers down, the house seemed uncomfortably large, hollow in a way that made the wind whistle through his chest and knock against his fingertips. Arguably, the two brothers that left were the two that had most of their shit together from day one. They were the two brothers they’d always secretly anticipated would leave them first.

Maybe it felt empty because Choromatsu and Totty had already paved the way, and the rest of them were only holding onto the inevitable. Not Ichi, though. Ichimatsu had no plans or future out there, never did. He’d always thought his future would be full of more of the same, maybe a little quieter, a little lonelier, but the same.

Maybe it felt hollow because losing two parts to their puzzle had swept something else along with it, if only Ichimatsu could figure out what it was.

It had been four days since Choromatsu headed out, three days since Totty left, and three days since he’d seen Osomatsu leave his room.

“Osomatsu-niisan?” He tried his best to bring his voice higher than his usual mumble, to at least attempt to drag inflection into his typical monotone drawl, but Osomatsu didn’t so much as turn towards him.  “I uh. I was wondering if…” He scratched his neck absently. He had no idea where he was going with this, why he’d suddenly barged into the room. Looking at his brother’s stoically turned back, it was like the words drained completely from him, draining from his tongue down to the bottom of his gut. Heavy, lead paint coating the words he meant and trapping them somewhere that felt suspiciously like anxiety.

Osomatsu didn’t acknowledge him, and Ichimatsu shook his head to himself. This was stupid. If their brother wanted to mope alone in his room for days on end, he was entitled to. It would be hypocritical of him to judge anyway.

Big brother nii-san just needed to get his head out of his ass. It was stupid.

“Nevermind,” he decided, and headed back downstairs.

Karamatsu and Jyushimatsu awaited him with cautious hope. Carefully, they both locked down their expressions as he shuffled down the stairs towards them empty handed.

“It’s fine,” Karamatsu grinned, but he pushed his sunglasses up higher and pulled his dumb leather jacket tighter.

“Next time!” Jyushimatsu exclaimed, but his eyes took on a slightly darker glaze.

Ichimatsu just nodded. The three of them headed out into the evening light, forcefully pretending that they didn’t instinctively save three spots at Chibita’s, or nearly call a missing brother’s name by mistake more than once.

Adjusting was difficult. Change wasn’t Ichimatsu’s forte. Jyushimatsu was just as unbothered as always, forever looking on the bright side, seeing connections that no one else could draw and pinning star charts left and right in his mind. Karamatsu was a little quieter. He’d lost his half of the buddy system in the drama of the move too, Ichi supposed.

Not that he’d notice though, because Ichimatsu didn’t notice these things. They just sort of happened around him.

Karamatsu and him had a friendship, somewhere beneath the years of teasing and Ichi’s own inability to draw words into the sunlight when he actually wanted to. He knew Karamatsu was hurting, but that he was built more like Jyushi and focused on what was next rather than what had happened. It was times like these that Kara really tried to step into the big brother role he usually let slip from him without much struggle. It was times like these that Ichimatsu almost saw something kindred in his most painful brother, almost.

“My brother, I cannot bear to see you in this state of disarray. It tears at my heart. I have elected, as your dearest and next oldest brother, to treat you to a night of your favorite pastime! That’s right, Osomatsu-niisan, I am offering to pay for your pachinko endeavours just this once!”

“…”

“I-I… er. That is to say, my Karamatsu girls will simply swoon at the sight of us- strapping men as we are taking to the streets at night. We are sure to be fawned over and adored!”

“…”

“O-Osomatsu-niisan?”

“Get out.”

Ichi winced, hiding in the shadows and peering through the crack in the door. He could physically feel Karamatsu withdraw, change tactics.

“Oi, Osomatsu. It’s really time we get out of this room, maybe the fresh air will help you sort out your thoughts, I really –”

“What part of get out do you not understand, Shittymatsu?”

There was a strange cold undercurrent to Osomatsu’s voice, not quite anger, but something more. Ichi sighed along with Karamatsu. Osomatsu was the most stubborn of all of them. If he wanted to sulk, no force on Earth would move him. It didn’t matter that the rest of them were struggling to deal with their new set up too, Osomatsu was Osomatsu. Selfish prick…

“Well, if you want to join us for oden, there’s always a seat available…” Karamatsu’s voice carried the same exasperation Ichi felt, the same concern he tried to smother. He must have come to the same conclusion. Typical Osomatsu fashion- he was ignoring the real world around him. Angry things could possibly shift from the picturesque world he’d conjured up.

Ichimatsu could understand, in a sense. He didn’t like imagining a world where he was left behind, but he also had accepted the inevitability of it all years ago. One day his brothers would catch onto the fact that Ichimatsu was utterly useless, that he had no dreams or goals, and they’d carry on without him. Simple as that. Karamatsu functioned differently, got anxious and fought back. It was strange to think that Osomatsu, endlessly fighting and spitting his words with too much fire, could ever be a pacifist like Ichi was.

He understood why Karamatsu tried, even envied his brother’s courage to face the battle head on, but they had other concerns at the moment.

Their dynamic didn’t work with three. It barely functioned with all six. There was a strain in them all every time they walked off to the bath house together, not enough room for pretend smiles and playful teasing. Everything was strangely sharper without the buffer of three other brothers.

Really, Ichimatsu had seen it coming from a mile away.

“Nii-san! Let’s head off to the bath house! Muscle hustle!” Jyushi flexed and did his usual array of flailing arm movements, and Ichi forced a small smile just for him. He wished he could have a fraction of the unlimited optimism that poured from his brother in every way, but honestly he wouldn’t know what to do with all of it. Plan for the future? Ridiculous. It was better that someone with energy and actual potential take all of it for himself.

Ichimatsu was in a strange mood that night, or maybe the night itself was strange. He wasn’t sure. They waited for Karamatsu, who had gone through the now daily motions of attempting to drag Oso along with them only to be harshly rebuked. He didn’t show it but Ichimatsu knew he was tiring; he couldn’t understand why Shittymatsu refused to give up after the first time anyway.

The path to the bath house was silver lined and dusted in navy, and it all felt out of touch. Ichimatsu kept feeling the hairs on his neck creep upwards, like eyes were tracing along them from the shadows. His brothers didn’t seem to notice, but he couldn’t help his distraction and rising nerves. He didn’t like eyes on him even in the best of circumstances. It made him antsy, irritable.

Jyushimatsu chatted happily about nothing and everything, but Kara seemed strangely distracted also, in a different way. The internal clock Ichimatsu had carried within his chest for years, since they’d graduated high school and entered the ‘real world’ began ticking down in its final throes.

He waited until the three of them were just outside the doors to the bath house before speaking up finally.

“If you have something you need to say, Shittymatsu, just tell us.”

He didn’t mean to be so blunt, honest. His nerves were firing in several directions and shot apart in several others. Karamatsu’s eyes widened even behind his damned shades, though.

“Non non non, bruzza. I have nothing to say except to speak of how profoundly glad I am that we are gathered here together this night.”

Ichimatsu huffed, rolling his eyes.

“Cut the shit, it’s just us.”

Karamatsu seemed to pause then, debating something. Jyushimatsu took the opportunity to take off inwards into the bath, sensing the storm before it struck.

The crackling skies were already above them. The first bolt had yet to touch down but Ichimatsu’s senses were telling him to duck out now. He stood his ground.

Karamatsu took a long, measured breath and reached up to slide his sunglasses off. The vulnerability of the moment should have been inspiring or heartwarming, but Ichimatsu was already at his limit for emotional bullshit for one lifetime and he felt nothing but the tension in his gut worming violently upwards.

“Do you ever wonder, if our family is… unhealthy?” Kara finally looked up at him, wide eyes meeting his with a hint of desperation. Almost as if he was waiting for Ichimatsu to disagree, or to validate some train of thought he didn’t want to fully put into words.

Ichi snorted.

“I think that’s fairly fucking obvious. You saw Totty’s shiner the other day.”

He shrugged, as if speaking about the youngest didn’t hurt, in a weird echo of a way.

Karamatsu shook his head, “I mean, what if you saw the door in front of you and knew you were meant to go through it. Your name ablaze in flashing lights – “

“Shittymatsu,” a warning tone. This was certainly not the time for over dramatic bullshit. He blinked, seemingly caught off guard. A sheepish smirk graced his lips before it fell apart entirely.

“What would you do if you realized you could leave, that you should leave, but… You were terrified of leaving?” He bit his lip, Ichimatsu felt the distant sensation of eyes on him again. He bristled.

“You want to leave that badly?” He countered, something dark and sticky bubbling within him. This was an inevitability, he reminded himself, he knew they’d all leave from the start. It was just Shittymatsu, he knew how this family dynamic was pulling at his already obvious seams from the start, and yet.

“No, no! Ichi…” He reached an arm out as if to place it on Ichi’s shoulder and he recoiled, the darkness sparking, spiking outwards.

“Don’t ‘Ichi’ me. Just spit it out already, Kusomatsu.”

“I… I don’t know what I want. I’m afraid that you….” And suddenly Ichimatsu saw it, saw the words that Karamatsu was forming and saw how terrible they’d be. He saw his own anger flashing, the combination of stress and sorrow and worry pulling him too thin.

“Don’t.” He interrupted sharply. “You don’t get to pity me, never. We don’t rely on you so much we’ll fall apart without you.”

And he hated himself then, because the words he wanted floated so obviously up into his throat but he couldn’t speak them, wouldn’t dare.

Leave before this wrecks you too.

“We don’t need you, Shittymatsu. If you want to leave then just go. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

And, hating everything he’d ever done and said, Ichimatsu pushed passed Karamatsu’s hurt and tightly pressed lips and followed Jyushimatsu inside.

Karamatsu didn’t join them.

Karamatsu had headed out the following week, staying at Chibita’s for the time being until he could afford his own place. It shouldn’t have stung, it shouldn’t have pulled at his chest and the strings underneath, because he caused this. Ichimatsu had all but physically thrown Karamatsu out into the dark.

And most importantly, he didn’t regret it.

He hated his words, hated his tone, hated the way he spoke so violently and brusquely and could never seem to let them float gently. He hated that he’d hurt his brother in his attempts to care for him.

Further evidence that Ichimatsu should never try to care about anything, ever.

But he couldn’t deny that he was relieved. As much as Ichimatsu teased Karamatsu, perhaps more harshly than the rest of them, he could read his brother better than anyone. Karamatsu was the type to fix things, to refuse to accept things as they were if it meant someone was hurting. He’d keep trying to force his family to stay happy and keep them all from crumbling as long as he could, even if they took their frustrations and sorrow out on him. Even if it meant losing himself in the process. Ichimatsu could at least offer this small way out for him. He could at least ignite the fire under his feet.

Karamatsu didn’t deserve to fall apart along with them.

He sighed, shuffling down the streets usually made him feel so on edge, so exposed. Strangely, with the bustle of people around him, this one time he felt more protected. Everything was so backwards lately, changing like they’d all been thrown on an icy hilltop. Osomatsu and Karamatsu were clinging to edges and branches and trying to force everyone to stay right where they were. Jyushimatsu and the rest of them were happily sliding down the ramp, ready to see what came next. Ichimatsu was different. His feet were encased in ice all along; he couldn’t move if he wanted to. He’d seen the slope coming, had known it was approaching and that he’d be left right where he was.

It was still hard to see, especially in the two brothers who were free to leave, free to continue on but wouldn’t. Even Osomatsu- he had charisma of his own, confidence. He had a future he could chase after even if he’d never thought to look forwards before. If only he’d open his eyes, just once – just for a moment.

Which brought him back to his current objective, the flyer clenched in his clammy hand, resume in the other.

Ichimatsu had spent too many years convincing himself that things were alright as they were, that if he could live within the fantasy a little longer, it wouldn’t matter what inevitability whispered to him at night. It was high time he tried.

The building seemed innocuous, not too tall or new. There was a coziness seeped into the brown wood of the panelling and the warmth of the stucco walls. Nonetheless, Ichi clutched at his shirt – a newly pressed dress shirt, one his mother had bought him years ago but he’d never made so much as an attempt to wear. He smoothed a hand across his hair, the messiness of his bangs had mostly refused to be tamed but he’d tried anyways. It would have to be enough. He took one last calming breath, closing his eyes for a moment to steel himself.

“It’s for the best,” he told himself. Social anxiety or not, dammit, this needed to happen.

He pushed open the glass door, hearing the gentle tinkling of bells above him.

“Welcome! Can I help you at all, sir?” The receptionist was cheerful and friendly but it did nothing to loosen the knot of fear in his gut. He fought to speak around it.

“I’m looking to apply, for ah… a job.” Speak up, look lively, smile at all the right times, just like he practiced. The receptionist’s eyebrows shot up. She smiled.

“Ah, of course sir! Can I ask what your name is?”

He swallowed, his throat was uncomfortably dry like he’d inhaled sawdust and desert air. Things were changing, it was for the best he had to remember that. This was all for the best. His brothers couldn’t live like this, stifling each other and themselves. They needed to grow, they needed room to breathe, they needed the sunlight.

“Matsuno Jyushimatsu.”

Chapter Text

He was losing his god damned mind.

Every flicker of light looked like a shadow, every skitter of wind across the windows was a breathy laugh. He could even feel it sometimes, the cold press of metal against his neck, the cold press of metal in his hands, just the cold and the smell of blood.

His brothers kept leaving, one by one. Karamatsu had headed out earlier in the week, he didn’t know what had changed so abruptly. There was a heaviness to him, like an outline drawn too thickly on one side. The old Osomatsu would have asked, would have punched him playfully and tossed an arm across his shoulders and dragged him out to pachinko or to Chibita’s and they would have talked in their own strange way. The old Osomatsu would be able to read between the paragraphs he was given to pick out the obviousness of what was nagging at his younger brother.

The new Osomatsu had a difficult time even speaking.

Karamatsu had elected, it seemed, to do all the talking for him. He was weirdly grateful and annoyed all at once. Oso couldn’t just let the second eldest flicker and fade without attempting to talk to him, even if it clawed at his soul, but it had been Karamatsu that had given in first, dragging him up to the rooftop some weeks prior. Osomatsu couldn’t say he liked the rooftop much before, but it felt wrong now. Like chafing sandpaper, he felt exposed and raw, but far enough from danger he forced himself to tolerate it.

Karamatsu wasn’t wearing his sunglasses, his cheeks were tinged red and the little divot between his brows had formed. Kara needed support, and Osomatsu figured he could at least sit nearby and hear him out. He hadn’t known at the time that Karamatsu was planning on leaving them too, maybe he would have forced himself to be more talkative or more supportive. Maybe he would have been the same.

“Are you alright?” Kara started abruptly, unblinkingly staring towards him. Osomatsu had to repress the sudden desire to shuffle farther away, instead he frowned. Karamatsu didn’t give him the chance to jump in.

“It’s only been a few days so I suppose the wound is still too fresh, however, the house is,” he paused, turning towards the sliver of moon that hung in the dark sky. “Different.” He eventually decided, tongue clicking with the last syllable. Osomatsu’s shoulders rose almost defensively, he couldn’t handle the direction this conversation was turning towards. It screamed elusive waters and unseen hazards and he felt oddly outside of himself, as if he were watching events unfolding on a stage in front of him by an extremely similar stunt double. He saw himself stiffen, replacing his joints and soft bits with steel and molten ore like he was casting another mould of himself, another copy.

Karamatsu whistled, long and low.

“I guess there’s not really a proper answer for that, is there.”

Osomatsu was suddenly, vividly grateful for his brother’s tendency to ramble, to speak without any input at all from any of them. He wasn’t sure where his thoughts kept trailing off to, why he couldn’t contain them within himself, why everything felt like static across his skin but he knew he couldn’t possibly give his brother the answers he was looking for. He forced himself to shrug, dragged a lopsided helpless smile across his lips for Karamatsu to see.

“Heh,” Karamatsu returned the smile, a frantic sort of pain behind his eyes and edging around his teeth. “I’m overthinking again I’m sure, of course things are different.” He turned away from Osomatsu, eyes trained on the distant lights.

“If a star’s light can reach me here after such a long journey and still shine so bright, I shouldn’t lose hope either, right?” Osomatsu rolled his eyes, good naturedly bumping his brother’s shoulder with his. Kara’s smile lost a little more of the electricity, settled more naturally. Osomatsu felt a little more grounded himself, some of the steel behind his chest loosened at Karamatsu’s genuine smile.

“Of course, my brother. Of course you’re right. There is nowhere I belong more than here after all.”

Karamatsu nodded to himself, never taking his eyes from the stars, and Osomatsu willed all he had left in himself to force his brother to believe his own words. Sometimes Kara looked a little too wistful, a little too small within himself. Usually Osomatsu knew the exact string of words to boost him back up, to make Karamatsu square his shoulders and hike up his sequined pants and take on the world. He had them, still, on the tip of his tongue.

‘You know we all need you here, dumbass. Stop overthinking it so much.’

But he couldn’t speak, couldn’t get himself to do much more than lean some weight into Kara’s shoulder and hope his comforting thoughts would somehow sink in. Osomatsu regretted this moment, his cowardice, his measly half-hearted attempts that no doubt cracked Kara’s thin armor even more.

He hadn’t been enough. The balance had somehow slipped even farther away from them both, somewhere between the static in Oso’s lungs and the static on the radio he’d missed the tipping point. He only knew that when he thought back to the moment on the roof he’d been sure he saw a figure down below, avoiding the streetlights, and that Karamatsu had turned his back too quickly for him to keep up.

Karamatsu had left soon after.

The anger didn’t even have time to boil this time around, no frustration or hurt because he couldn’t bear it, or maybe it was just drowned out by the prickle of the knives in his throat and the nausea in his hear.

It was fine, it had to be fine. They were all fine, so long as he never went outside again. So long as he didn’t speak up enough for Tougou to hear him, so long as he didn’t breathe too loud.   

Karamatsu’s departure had taken a light from the house though, the final leg of normalcy the brothers had been relying on cracking apart without any fanfare or attention.

Jyushimatsu wasn’t as loud anymore, he noticed one day in the sort of disconnected way one might notice their furniture had been moved slightly to the left. It should have been off-putting at the least, panic inducing at the most, but he more or less just blinked at the notion and felt nothing. So what if Jyushimatsu wasn’t flailing and jumping and running off to practice anymore. What did he care. Everyone had left anyways, nothing was right to begin with.

A part of him was angry at them, possibly. Mostly hurt, and a little bitter at the thought they could all just walk away from the only home they’d ever known with a confident stride and a smile. Didn’t they know how dangerous strangers could be? Weren’t they aware of the eyes that caught them every day? Didn’t they see how shattered Osomatsu had always felt?

He supposed that wasn’t their problem, he was the oldest after all. It was his duty to worry about all of them enough for everyone. Although Choro had always been thoughtful enough to express that concern more openly than he ever could. Choromatsu had left him too though, eventually, so maybe he didn’t care as much as he pretended.

His mind flashed towards the news report he’d overheard that morning. He’d been avoiding anything related to the news the best he could, but the radio was loud from where his mother cooked breakfast happily, and it had hooked into his chest before he could think to block it out. The unsolved robbery case, they’d called it. Cameras in the small convenience store had caught two figures, one with the gun and the mask and the horrible smirk, and another mysterious one. A young man, they figured, who’d heroically faced down the gun wielder and disappeared in a cloud of flour smoke.

The reports said the cashier was in critical condition, a part of his heart loosened and then cracked at the thought. She wasn’t dead, he hadn’t witnessed a murder. Not yet at least, not yet. The reports said they weren’t sure if the young girl would make it, but that she was holding on.

Osomatsu’s brain played over those words too many times, not gone yet, still holding on.

He hoped, with the shreds of anything positive left in him, they could both keep holding on.

The news reports begged anyone with information to come forward. The man with the gun had escaped, and they needed witness reports, his witness report. Osomatsu, they begged, please speak up.

We need you to speak up.

The man could kill next time, could have killed, and you know his name, his face.

You could stop this.

He’d tried, briefly.

In a moment of courage, he’d gotten the nerve while his family had left for the day to stand. He’d tripped over his slow feet and lazy legs and stumbled all the way to the front door. Even went so far as to twist the lock enough to hear the gears and springs within shift backwards, hanging just on the edge before he lost it all.

‘Tougou is out there, he could hurt someone else’, the news reporter told him in a prim tone, piercing eyes. ‘It would be all your fault.’

But, Osomatsu argued back, he could hurt me.

He could hurt me too; he did hurt me.

Tougou hurt me, and nobody thought to help me.

Ichimatsu had found him hours later, pressed against the door with his hoodie drawn over his head and his forehead pressed so tightly into his knees a pair of pressed red moons painted his skin. Ichimatsu had said nothing, simply shook his shoulders and led him to his bedroom and unrolling the futon just in time for Jyushimatsu’s return. He didn’t ask the questions that Osomatsu almost missed flashing in his eyes, but Osomatsu was too tired to think on it.

He flopped down on the bed roll that was far too wide and far too empty for any of them and curled as small as he was able, never once closing his eyes.

It could have almost been peaceful, long weeks at home alone. It could have been nerve endingly boring, too simple too easy. Instead it was tense and horrible. He sat in their shared bedroom pressed against the wall away from the windows and stared. He couldn’t bring himself to speak, the words trapped along with the other confessions he should be making.

He used to have this same problem when he was younger, after the first time.

Words were fickle things, sometimes they slid out too quickly without much thought and rose up high in the sky. Other times they clung and stuck fast behind his teeth, behind his tongue, and he couldn’t shake them free no matter what he tried.

It seemed unfair to speak, considering. If he was too afraid to tell the police what they needed to know, he didn’t deserve to talk at all. If he spoke, Tougou might hear him. If he spoke, his brothers might leave faster.

Silence wasn’t better, but it was the only alternative.

Strangely, his other brothers seemed to agree. Sometimes it almost seemed like he really was all alone, if not for night time where they bundled closely together for warmth and something lonelier than any of them would speak, and the shuffle of Ichimatsu’s steps against the floor, he might think they’d both abandoned him too. Jyushimatsu in particular was eerily quiet. Well, when he was home.

The second youngest Matsu had always been active, always left the home for practice and didn’t return until later on in the afternoon. His hours outside had been getting longer lately, his excuses to head outside more wild and more transparent.

Jyushimatsu wanted to be anywhere he wasn’t; it was obvious enough. It might have hurt, in another life. Another time where Osomatsu wasn’t so enveloped by his fears and his silence and his blank stares at blank walls.

He saw a figure move out of the corner of his eye and almost leaped out of his skin, panic rising to his tonsils until he caught the yellow and the bob of dark hair.

Jyushimatsu, speak of the devil as they say.

Jyushi’s steps were methodically silent, careful like walking on eggshells. Like he was afraid of disrupting the cocoon of carefully constructed silence around the eldest. Like he was afraid, full stop.

Osomatsu nearly winced as he remembered the crushing blow he’d landed on the second youngest a few weeks ago. There was a chance Jyushimatsu’s demeanour could change he supposed. Enough of a chance that he should be cautious. His brother however, seemed to be more afraid of him. A sliver of ice crackled between his ribs, a heavy weight latching to his throat as he eyed the usually hyperactive matsu.

Jyushimatsu was edging the corner of the room, wide smile a little smaller, stance a little tenser. He kept hugging his arms to himself, a habit he’d picked up in early high school, the one year he’d been put in a different class from the rest of them. The same year they’d discovered bullies and how cruel kids could be with their words. Oso swallowed roughly. Jyushimatsu looked like he had something he’d come to say, he supposed he owed his brother enough to hear him out in his own time. Osomatsu stayed quiet, gaze trained forwards but carefully tracking the colourful shape as it shuffled around the room beside him.

A shaky breath filled the room, Osomatsu wanted so badly then to turn around, to ask and ramble and flail and bring Jyushimatsu back to himself. It wasn’t right to hear him so unsure, so nervous. None of this was right, the house had never been so quiet and god, Osomatsu wanted so badly for this all to be a horrible dream. He wanted to wake up and have all his noisy brothers tucked on the futon right beside him, he wanted to take them all out for drinks, he wanted them to yell and be angry and forgive him all at once.

He wanted.  

The moment passed, his shoulders that had unconsciously tensed to his ears, dropped. The fight left him as quickly as it came.

Tougou. He couldn’t because of the shadows playing tag in corners of his vision, because of the glints and the laughs that followed him into his restless dreams. It didn’t matter what he wanted, what anyone wanted. Osomatsu let out a long breath, shutting his eyes.

“What do you want Jyushimatsu,” the words rolled off his tongue, flat and empty. Monotone and disinterested. His heart hurt, the first time he’d spoken in days and it was cruel and pointed and he couldn’t find it in him to care.

“Ah! Um. Nii-san? You seem so quiet! Where’d your spark go?” And Jyushimatsu was so gentle in his own way, so blunt in others, it was so much. Too much. Osomatsu grit his teeth.

“Tch.”

Jyushi paused, and Osomatsu wondered what kind of expression would have fallen across the younger matsu’s face. What kind of reaction his icy words would have wrought. He refused to open his eyes to see.

“I got a job,” His brother nearly whispered, the quietest tone he’d ever heard from Jyushi in his life. It made him unspeakably angry.

Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to slam his fist into his brother’s gut once more, to pull him up by the lapels and demand answers, restitution. It wasn’t right that they were all leaving him here so suddenly, that he had to deal with the dark creeping nights alone. It wasn’t fair that they were going to be okay while he was drowning.

“Nii-san, it was magic! I didn’t even apply, but here it is! A letter, so very formal I can’t believe it’s for me!” He laughed in a strained wheeze that did nothing to soothe Osomatsu’s nerves.

“They even called me! I waited for five hours in front of the phone, Ichimatsu-niisan waited with me, instead of his cats! What a good guy.” His eyebrow was twitching now; he couldn’t reign this all in. Jyushimatsu had to know what he was saying, how he was destroying Oso’s very foundations. He had to see it and yet he was pressing against the weaker boulders, squirming between the cracks. Osomatsu wasn’t a patient person he couldn’t take this much antagonizing in one week, not when he was already on edge.

The door to their room slid open with the weight of a sigh, it was enough to pull himself back from the brink. He clenched his fists and released.

‘Fine. It’s fine.’ Hold it back, just hold it back.

“Ah, Jyushimatsu, Mom wants to talk to you,” Ichimatsu sounded the same as ever, and somehow that was the most annoying fractured piece of all of this. Jyushi seemed to have been waiting for an excuse to bolt through the door away from him, Osomatsu deflated immediately. The dark anger seeping into the floorboards and into the shadows below, crawling back to where they’d been born between the electric blue aisles and the memories he’d locked tightly away.

Ichimatsu sat down beside him, silently. He tucked his hands under his chin and drew his knees near, mirroring Osomatsu’s unconscious position. They both held their breath. Osomatsu weighted for the inevitable story, that Ichi was leaving somehow too, that he was paper thin like the rest of them. He waited for his brother to pass his judgements on how badly Osomatsu was handling everything, to scold him, to threaten him, anything. The tension wound his chest tighter still, a timer ticking down to something horrible and dangerous.

“The cats don’t seem to want to hang around much today,” Ichi muttered after a long moment, oblivious seemingly to the tightness of his brother’s shoulders or the sharp edge to his blank stare. “So I guess there’s nowhere for me to go.” And the fourth Matsu brother leaned into him, a gentle weight against Osomatsu’s arm and he didn’t know how to deal with this. Ichimatsu must have noticed something, more than he could form into words or dare to think on. The notion was nearly enough to make him fly apart at the seams, dangerously close to enough.

Finally, finally, Osomatsu moved. Just to lift his arm to his prickling eyes to cover the suspicious blurriness of his gaze. If he smiled, only the shadows and the steady beat of his heart could tell.

Chapter Text

Saying goodbye wasn’t so bad, Ichimatsu decided. At least, not painful in the way he’d anticipated. Maybe he had other concerns, maybe it was the knowledge that this was the last goodbye. Maybe it was the damn news reports blaring in the distance and the sirens in the background beyond.

Maybe it was just Jyushimatsu.

He didn’t know what it was about his younger brother, but everything always seemed a little bit brighter when he was involved. They were strange opposites, he with his assumptions and gloom and Jyushi with his wide open possibilities. It was the reason Ichi wouldn’t have let his brother rot here, not if he had to tear everything down to let Jyushi see the sun.

A baseball team was too perfect, ultimately impossible. Instead he’d settled for assistant coach. All it had taken was a bit of acting on his part, a phone call from the yellow toting idiot himself, and what was left of his savings to seal the deal. He’d have to rely on his stockpile of treats for his feline friends for the next little while, he hoped they’d understand. The cats had probably seen their fair share of wilting sunflowers before, they’d be glad he’d helped this one grow. Ichimatsu was happy for his brother. He’d thought a part of him would be wistful and sad, that he’d have to work up the energy to lie through his teeth but he’d seen the way the world was folding up around a particular pivot point and frankly, he was just glad Jyushimatsu would get out before there was no way to leave.

Before all of them were sucked into the steadily forming black hole in the very center of the eldest Matsu. 

Something was terribly wrong with Osomatsu. Beyond jealousy and bitterness, beyond hurt feelings. He’d seen it once before, but he couldn’t quite place when exactly. It left him with a cold prickling sensation up his spine when he tried. There was no point in Jyushi sticking around to get contaminated by his additional gloom, not when he was nursing his own hurts too.

He hadn’t forgotten the bruise on his brother’s side, or the tears in his eyes. Jyushimatsu should never cry, he refused to allow it. So, he supposed Jyushimatsu leaving was more of a rescue than an abandonment, and he was glad for his brother.

Ichimatsu stared blankly at his hand, raised to wave off a car that was no longer visible. His parents had already returned indoors, Mom a little tearfully, but not as terribly so as she had been. She was getting used to the constant erosion just like the rest of them. Too bad Ichimatsu was going nowhere at all.

He sat down on the front step, watching the evening sky begin to peek around the buildings in the distance.

Jyushi had been so excited, smile wider than ever, eyes twinkling in a way Ichimatsu had almost forgotten about. “I’m going to make the homerun game winning hit, nii-san!” And there hadn’t been anything forced in the goofy excitement in his tone, nothing fake or played off, just one hundred percent unadulterated happiness. A warmth had crept in from his cheeks and it made Ichimatsu reach out and hug his little brother close.

“Be good,” he said simply, and laughed lightly at Jyushi’s over enthusiastic nod in return.

Had it really been so long since any of them were relaxed and honest with each other? Had the underlying tension swept their thoughts so quickly from their heads they’d forgotten ever being happy at all? He watched his breath crystalize in front of him, silver clouds trailing through the wind before fading.

He pulled out his cellphone, a second hand out of date kind his parents had bought them all as soon as Choromatsu had decided to leave. “So you can stay in touch,” their mother had said. His phone was slow, had a spotty signal and couldn’t keep up with most modern apps everyone else seemed to pick up on. He loved it.

‘Jyushimatsu’s out in the world.’ He sent a mass text, carefully leaving out Oso’s number.

‘Good for him!’ Came Totty’s nearly instant reply, abundant with emoji’s and emoticons.

‘I knew he could do it, he’s a star’ Karamatsu’s text was riddled with an assortment of randomly chosen English words and sparkle emoji’s. Ichimatsu groaned out loud as Kara’s next text was accompanied by a selfie of himself, bare chested and covered in several filters.

‘Can’t believe my little Jyushimatsu is all grown up’

Despite himself, a soft smile crept across Ichimatsu’s lips.

“I can’t believe it either,” he mumbled. And finally, his heart clenched once, tightly, and the loneliness joined him in his quiet reverie.

There was no reply from Choromatsu except for the tiny reminder that the message had been read.

The stillness of the night was perfect, rare. He decided to go for a walk, maybe if he could steal enough of these moments he’d be alright. Maybe they’d be enough for his brothers too. A moment of silver glazed clouds for Karamatsu who’d always loved the spotlight, a moment of silhouetted streetlights across an empty street for Choromatsu who needed a reminder to take a break once in a while, a moment of dancing sparkles across the water to make Jyushimatsu laugh. A moment of peace for Osomatsu who seemed to be trying to bury himself whole.

Ichimatsu frowned, kicking a stone further down the path as he walked.

There had to be a reason for Oso’s behaviour, something to set the fuse or weaken the structure before the rest collapsed. Bitterness was one thing, something Ichimatsu knew well himself, but the rigid lines all pointed inwards on his brother’s shoulders and his lips pressed too tightly to be anger.

He’d tried asking his brothers earlier. Casualty wasn’t his strong suit so he’d gone straight for the kill with a ‘what the hell is up with Oso’. Classy like always. The responses had been varied, stunted. Jyushimatsu, who’d been home with him had flinched or very nearly at least, and his eyes took on a shakier quality, just for a brief moment. He didn’t ask him again.

Totty’s texted response had been immediate and outraged, but short and clipped all the same. ‘His head, up his ass. Probably.’ Ichi wasn’t sure what he’d expected from the youngest anyways, so he’d given up on that front also.

Karamatsu had been hesitant. He knew something was different, as well maybe. Or maybe the memories of Ichi harshly kicking him out the door were too freshly tender.

‘I’m sure his behaviour is unintentional of course, but… Our brother…. I’m sure it started just before Totty left home.’

Karamatsu and Osomatsu had always been close in a different way, an older sibling understanding, he supposed. Karamatsu often dragged the eldest away from situations that grew too dangerous too quickly, letting him cool off before he made the explosive situation worse. In turn, Osomatsu’s teasing was always far friendlier, softer in a playful way that didn’t draw furrows in the painful brother’s eyebrows. Ichimatsu noticed, trusted them both to balance each other when it came down to genuinely important matters and let it slide.

It had struck him as strange though, Karamatsu’s insistence that he didn’t belong home with them any longer.  That he’d given Osomatsu only a bare bones explanation as to what was going on before he left, rather than dragging the whole thing out like he usually would have.

Ichi took the blame for that, mostly.

Even if Karamatsu was quick to forgive, and probably understood his brother’s reasoning somewhere deep down, Ichimatsu didn’t enjoy it when his words filled themselves with poison without his meaning to. He was probably just as deserving of Totty’s comment as Osomatsu was.

He was snapped out of his reverie at a shuffling noise. The alley to his left was too dark to see, he squinted slightly and took a step forward.

“Is that a cat in there? I have one treat left, if you want.” He grabbed the small fish treat from his pocket, offering it to the shadows as he knelt down. Squatting in front of the alley to be at the cat’s level, he held the treat carefully still. The shuffling sound appeared closer; then, he nearly smiled.

“Here kitty.” It was nice he could still make feline friends at least, helped him feel less entirely horrible for a moment. If the cats still liked him he wasn’t entirely worthless.

The shuffling grew sharper still, and suddenly Ichimatsu heard the undeniable sound of a heel clicking on pavement. He blinked.

“Ah, not a cat I see.”  He rose back to his feet slowly, unperturbed for the most part. He would say it was strange for someone to lurk in an alleyway at night but, he himself had done stranger. Lurking in alleyways was practically a hobby of his at this point anyways. Ichimatsu just hoped the person would leave so he could quietly resume his moping in peace.

The shadow laughed then, a loud and unsettling sound. Alarm bells twanged brightly in the back of his mind, something about this was familiar in a way it shouldn’t be. Something about the darkness in that laugh, something about a wide eyed stare and shadows.

The heel-click resumed, closer yet. Ichimatsu knew he should probably leave, but he was curious and had missing self preservation skills anyways, and frankly he’d never been approached by a stranger before.

It was kind of morbidly fascinating, if it hadn’t also been deeply charged with bad vibes.

“It’s strange to see you again, Osomatsu. My how you’ve grown,” the voice was laughing in a humourless way, and Ichimatsu had the mind to step back a faltering pace.

“I’m Ichimatsu,” his tone still held the exasperation that came so naturally to them all when their identities were mistaken, but his pulse was quickening slightly. The stranger hadn’t done anything yet, why was he so sure this was a horrible place to be?

He took another step back, just as the shadow reached the end of the alley.

“I’ve been waiting,” it said to him, and he swallowed.

A bus came blaring down the road at the same moment that the shadow took one final step into the light. In the flash of headlights, Ichimatsu saw the glint of a blade.

“Get a grip,” he told himself firmly. The mirrored image of himself nodded far too frantically. He splashed a handful of icy water across his face and frowned. “Nothing happened. Dammit Ichimatsu, pull yourself together or I’ll kill you.”

His heart thumped painfully in his chest and he clenched a fist tightly. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to feel panicked after an unwarranted social interaction but this was ridiculous. His panicked senses had been off the charts in the mouth of that alley, sending him scrambling off into the distance with a hiss as soon as the bus cut off the stranger’s line of sight. All of it was stupid; he didn’t know the guy was going to do anything, didn’t know that the glint of light he’d seen was from anything more than a letter opener but it had all seemed so desperately ominous. He still couldn’t quite shake it.

The man had known Osomatsu’s name, had spoken to him like he’d known him at some point but Ichimatsu was sure he’d never seen the man before.

“So why did it sound so familiar?”

Ichimatsu scrubbed at his eyelids in frustration.

“Dammit, getting worked up over a meaningless conversation…” There’d been something in the tone, in the way the shadows stuck to his figure like they’d been plucked from the deepest corners of the alley and stuck to his soul with glue. Something more meaningful than he could piece together, he was missing a crucial fragment. He debated for a moment, bringing the encounter up with his eldest brother, but winced away from the concept. Osomatsu was not himself these days, and it was probably not worth the trouble.

A hesitant knock ricocheted off the bathroom walls around him and made him jolt backwards.

“Is everything alright in there?” His mother called, and he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Giving himself one last glance in the mirror, he ran a hand absently through his messy bangs. No worse for wear than usual he supposed; small miracles.

“Yeah, uh… Sorry, I’ll be out in a moment.” He placed both hands on the sink, leaning his weight forwards for a moment.

He brought his empty gaze upwards to meet his reflections.

“It was nothing,” he told himself firmly. “You’re fine. It was nothing.” 

He didn’t voice the thought that floated around him, you’re not worth the effort, fall apart some other day, but somehow he found himself stuttering on a sigh regardless as a half formed sob caught in his throat. He shook himself harshly, no room for that. No tears.

His mother was in the kitchen when he exited the shared bathroom, radio playing softly in the distance. She seemed smaller these days, always busy and fretting. Her hands fluttered around items before she grabbed them, hesitating and debating and worrying. Ichimatsu felt bad for her, it was probably too quiet in the house for her to handle, too.

He watched her chop up vegetables blandly, shifting around the room ghost like. Their father hadn’t been home too much lately, not with all the room for words and repressed thoughts and feelings. While the rest of them tried to settle themselves into a space that was suddenly too large, the words and thoughts had expanded. It was better when he was at work, for them both, Ichi suspected. Still, it was strange to see her cooking alone.

“Need any help, Mom?” He hedged, trying to sound casual. Really he wanted something to do, something other than sitting near his blank eyed unresponsive brother or contemplating dark shapes he was afraid to attach voices to. She paused, knife mid air and whirled towards him.

“Who are you and what have you done with my son,” she placed both hands on her hips. “Ichimatsu has never once offered to help with dinner. At least not in a completely counter active and unhelpful way.” She furrowed her brows at him, but her kind eyes twinkled mischievously.  He allowed a shy smile in return, ducking his head bashfully.

“Well, maybe it’s time this Ichimatsu character started being useful for once.”

His mother's smile lit up the whole room. “If he’s so insistent, he can start with the carrots,” she pointed with her knife in hand to a cutting board beside her, and continued her chopping with a cheerful hum. Ichimatsu padded softly closer and picked up the knife warily.

“Uh, on second thought, maybe I should get the instruction manual first…”

His mom laughed, bright and airy. “My silly NEET.” She ruffled a hand through his messy hair playfully. “Just make sure you chop into small pieces, then chop those in half. I have full confidence that you can master this complicated art form.”

He bit his lip, shrugging. “Well, if I ruin dinner I guess I’ll take it as a sign I’m doomed forever.”

She snorted loudly, and continued her humming. Ichimatsu pressed carefully down with the knife on a carrot, sure to keep his fingers away from any sharp bits. The carrot separated with a satisfying thunk, and he caught his mother's raised brow, approval warmed his gut pleasantly, he smiled back. 

The rhythm came more naturally after the first slice, and the two fell into a comfortable quiet. His mind drifted, past the boiling water on the stove and the worry lines around his mother’s eyes, above the dim lighting above them towards his shared bedroom. Osomatsu hadn’t moved at all today, he noticed. Not even when he’d come careening home earlier in the afternoon and immediately shut himself into the bathroom. Not when he hadn’t crawled out after the first few hours. He knew what he’d find if he wandered up their however, the shell of his brother, strangely tensed and blank all at once. He sighed, and immediately tensed as the sound reached his mother’s ever so attentive ears.

“Is something the matter, sweetheart?” Their mother only called them pet names when she was worried, or knew something was wrong. He thought about briefly feigning a smile, but her razor sharp eyes could pierce through any armor he could meagrely present. Ichimatsu allowed his shoulders to loosen, realizing the façade had already been lost before he’d started.

“I was just thinking,” he started, the words trailing from him before he’d had time to mull them over. He absently poked at the carrot chunks in front of him with the knife, watching the dim light play across the blade. A thought struck him. “Remember when we were little, and Osomatsu used to get these fits?” He kept his gaze carefully trained, neutral, but he watched his mother from the corner of his vision. She sighed, pausing and placing her own knife down on the counter.

“Ah, yes. Your father and I were very worried about him back then; I remember staying up late discussing what we're going to do about that boy. He was always such a particular child. He kept a better eye on all of you than even I could.”

“I always remember him getting really upset if one of us wandered off. Locking himself in his room for hours, not talking much… Over dramatic.” He finished with a shrug.

His mother frowned thoughtfully, a sadness lacing through her gaze. “That’s right. Sometimes we couldn’t get him to even speak for hours. He’d lock his thoughts up really tight, an unbreakable seal your father and I could never open.”

She picked up her knife again, scraping her choppings into a pile, lifting the cutting board to let them fall into the bubbling water. Ichimatsu mirrored her actions, slowly, not willing to disrupt the fragile moment.

“I remember one time,” she spoke with a wistfulness, a tragedy. “he couldn’t have been more than fourteen at the time, Choromatsu had gone home with a friend to work on a project, or maybe study. He’d forgotten to tell Osomatsu where he’d be and the poor boy worked himself into such a state with his panic, we didn’t hear word from him for weeks. He’d sit in your bedroom unmoving, just staring forward at nothing at all.”

“What made him stop?” Ichimatsu asked quietly, almost fearfully.

“Hmm, that is a question isn’t it,” she turned her attention to the stove, fiddling with the heat for a moment. “I think it was Karamatsu, or maybe Choromatsu. Those two always knew how to talk your brother back down. They’d just talk to him for a while, about everything and anything. I suppose they were reminding him he wasn’t alone, keeping him company. Osomatsu, your brother, he has to work through these things on his own you see. He gets too stuck in his own mind, stubborn as ever.”

She laughed, and it was brittle. Ichimatsu’s gaze fell more distant, remembering something. A quiet room, a brother’s turned back. Karamatsu or Choromatsu, she’d said. But he remembered walking across the floorboards, sitting quietly nearby. He remembered his brothers talking loudly and missing all of it somehow, missing all the things he noticed. His eyes widened nearly imperceptibly, he’d been an observant kid, if a quiet one. He’d always noticed things.

It was tantalizingly close, on the tip of his tongue.

“Now that you mention it, I can’t recall his attacks ever happening when he was very small. They just sort of started one day, scared the life out of your father and I. It’s a good thing he grew out of them, though, right?”

Ichimatsu nodded, mind whirling somewhere far away.

That voice, from the alley. It had been so familiar, he felt like he was trying to make shapes out through a curtain. He was nearing some kind of answer, some kind of rhyme to the reason, a method to the chaos, but he couldn’t place it.

His mother’s knife flashed a strip of reflected light in his eyes and trailed upwards.

“Ah, I believe you have completed your beginners training for the Matsu household kitchen, however.” His mother's teasing tone snapped him out of his train of thought, and he blinked owlishly at her for a moment. The gears shifted and clicked into place, and he offered her a smile, faintly.

“Thanks,” he said, because his mother still seemed lost within all this space, because there were grey hairs peeking out around her temples and slipping between the darker strands, because her eyes were beginning to outline themselves with creases like storybooks and what else could he possibly offer. He inhaled sharply, wrapping his arms around her in a moment of courage before stepping away, quickly retreating upstairs.

Not before he caught the look of surprise on her face, or the shine to her eyes, however. Not before he heard her wavering ‘I love you’, following him up the stairs.

Some people in their household had been trying for years, he realized. Some of them had been working too hard to let it break apart. Some people deserved a moment of respite. He would figure this out, for his mother and no one else. He’d step into Karamatsu’s (painfully hideous) shoes and don Jyushimatsu’s sweater clad understanding and he would fix this.

He was beginning to believe he might be the only one who could. The thought was too overwhelming, too immense, and he had to slip out another text. One to Shittymatsu and another to the green clad brother, ‘do you remember when we were younger? When Oso hid in his room all day?’

‘Not really’ Karamatsu replied instantly. ‘What brought this about, brother?’

He didn’t answer, watching as the three dots appeared beneath Choro’s name, only to delete themselves. Read 7:27pm, the words blinked back at him.

He remembered, though. He remembered the long silent hours, the tense anger, the tears and the smiles. He remembered how the storms passed overhead, how the lightning flashed and flickered but never touched down and the clouds broke apart before they’d ever really settled.

Oh, Osomatsu, he thought, but there was nowhere left for the thought to grow.

Before he could think any further, he found himself opening the bedroom door and shuffling in beside his brother. Osomatsu hadn’t moved all day it seemed, he’d spread himself outwards with his back to the door and froze himself over entirely. Ichimatsu shuffled close, near enough for Osomatsu to see him and tucked his knees up under his chin.

The night fell quietly around them, two eroding figures in the breeze.

Ichimatsu didn’t know how to help this, but he could be near like he’d done when they were younger. He could sit close by and make sure Osomatsu knew he wasn’t alone, until he undug himself from his own thoughts and joined the surface world. He reached a hand out, carefully placing it on Osomatsu’s splayed one and held it gently. He felt the tendons twitch, as if his brother had thought about retracting it, as if he’d meant to move but gave up. It was okay, Ichimatsu wasn’t much in the way of strength or stamina, he wasn’t good with words or soft around the edges or wise, but he could wait. He could be patient.

He’d be the lightning pole for his brother to crash and rumble around if he needed to, if only it would bring Osomatsu back home.

Chapter Text

Static was everywhere; in his lungs, his chest, tucked up under his fingernails, playing across the backs of his eyelids when he blinked. It was harder to see beyond it, to feel anything outside of pins and needles and deep, animalistic panic.

He heard it buzzing through the air, lazily twisting up the stairs to meet him. Traitorously flitting between bands of sunlight as though it weren’t tearing him apart completely. As though the static wasn’t plucking at him, unraveling him strand by strand.

“Police are urging anyone with information to step forwards –“

“ – as the string of robberies increases, police believe the connection lies with this strange masked figure –“

“Video footage shows one witness, a heroic individual who scared off the attacker for a moment –“

“ – where could he be now?”

He hated it, all of it. The words were pointless, only restating and emphasizing that the police hadn’t caught Tougou yet, that the robberies were increasing and more people were going to get hurt. Video experts had determined the robber was an older man with a stockier build, but his face was covered and he wore gloves. He was translucent, intangible. The police couldn’t touch him.

Osomatsu felt like an inverse, he was only opaque outwardly; identifiable, contained, but empty on the inside. Where Tougou existed he faded away, polarized and dancing only around the edges of the gaps where Tougou might show up next. It was like Tougou’s mere existence was a parasite, it grew stronger with each passing day just as Osomatsu lost more and more of himself.

“The cashier, mortally wounded in the incident is still in life threatening condition,” the static whispered to him.

“She’s been moved to Japan’s top hospital, battling for her life. Our thoughts go to her and her family.”

Battling for her life, the static said, still fighting.

Osomatsu felt his own heartbeat flutter with the words, felt his soul flicker outwards then fade only to return. Hold on, he pleaded. I need you. The nameless girl could wake up, she could live and tell the police what she had seen and he would never need to step forward because Tougou would surely be caught then. If she lived, he didn’t have to feel guilty. If she lived she could carry the torch on his behalf.

Wake up. Wake up and tell them.

A part of him understood in a somber way, she wanted to take her time. She’d been through too much and wanted to sleep.

I can’t tell them, he needed her to know, I’m not strong enough. You have to wake up.

The static didn’t change.

A clink broke through his thoughts, distant but loud all the same. Ichimatsu settled closely nearby, and pushed the plate carefully towards him.

“Dinner,” his brother said simply, gesturing with a half shrug. Osomatsu didn’t know why Ichi bothered, food was overwhelmed with static too. It was bland and dry and Osomatsu could barely force a bite down before his stomach growled angrily. The panic squeezed too tightly on his stomach, roiled with the addition of anything other than more fear and more worry.

He stared at the plate, making no attempt to move.

Ichi’s sigh followed. His brother had been sighing a lot these days, he wondered if he should feel bad about it. Mostly he was just confused; Ichimatsu never sat so close to any of them before, usually tucking himself away into corners with a cat. Osomatsu wasn’t sure when he’d seen any of Ichi’s feline friends around lately.

Then again, Osomatsu wasn’t sure of much these days. Time was choppy, ticking away somewhere far away from him and the room and the static that clawed through the air. It passed him by in strange jumps, the light skipping to dusk so suddenly he hadn’t bothered attempting to keep up. Mainly he kept track through his brother. Ichimatsu was out in the mornings, probably feeding his cats and came back early afternoon. When it was late he’d shuffle towards the futon and try to pull Oso in along with him. The eldest was eroding steel and barbed wire, so mostly Ichi ended up alone.

He wondered if Ichimatsu slept at all.

“I know you’re hungry nii-san. You should try a bite.” Ichimatsu’s tone was so gentle, bending in ways he’d never heard before. Almost as if he were concerned, or even worried for him. Heartless Ichimatsu could never dare to show that much emotion, though, so Osomatsu mainly blamed the static.

He could have pursed his lips, maybe forced a shake of his head, something to let Ichimatsu know he heard but wasn’t interested. The thought left him, slipping away with the seconds before he could process any of it. Staring blankly only made Ichimatsu sigh more.

Ichimatsu’s face suddenly appeared in front of him, familiarly annoyed and disgruntled. Unfamiliarly strained, edges fraying and seams puckering; his eyes were wider than Osomatsu had ever seen and swimming with so much at once it sent a current through his entire being.

“I’m willing to wait you know. I’ll stay right here for however long I have to, idiot.”

A moment of clarity hit him with the force of a tidal wave, leaving him sputtering as repressed emotions and thoughts fought for the surface. Ice water coated his veins, fire burned in his lungs and he flinched. Ichimatsu looked so exhausted, a different way than he had before. There was wariness flashing in neon colours in the way his brother’s shoulders sat in stiff lines, a wise air hanging beneath the purple thumbprints near his eyes. Ichimatsu had grown up, it was stark in that single moment.

It was like he’d been staring through fogged glass, and for a split second he saw himself from the outside. A young man, shaggy and stressed sitting in a room far too big for his fragile bones. He felt stretched, thin beneath the weight of his brother’s stare. He felt and he felt all of it, screaming colours and noise in his heart and it was too much. Nobody had moved or spoke, nothing had changed but the room was abruptly too loud. He needed to breathe.

Ichimatsu had caught something in his gaze, what he couldn’t be sure, but his own stare morphed in response. “Osomatsu?”

“I can’t…” His own voice was so foreign, unused and scratchy and wavering in ways it shouldn’t. His head was shaking, his whole body and he scrambled backwards as his joints protested loudly.

“You can’t what?” Ichimatsu didn’t move, but his eyes were weighty in their analytical focus and it was too much. Osomatsu’s knee hurt, ached. He realized he hadn’t moved it since…

He forced himself to stand, ignoring the way it sent crashes of lightning through him, and ran out the bedroom door, careening down the hallway to the front door. He slammed into it, fumbling with the lock, flashes of electric blue lights and a click tap of heels following closely behind.

Osomatsu nearly fell out of the door as the handle finally turned. The evening sky was damp, the scent of rain still clinging to the earth and it wasn’t enough. Osomatsu gulped in the air but his chest constricted more in aggravation.

It was too open out here and yet not open enough, too many places to hide but nowhere to go. His eyes flickered to the shadows in the distance, to the sound of laughter down the street, to the rumble of an engine somewhere close by. Tougou.

“ –somatsu! Nii-san, can you hear me? God, you’re shaking…. Shit. Mom’s not home tonight either, should I… Osomatsu do you want me to –“

He turned towards his brother and it was too sharp, too fast. It was like the static had been brushed away only to be replaced with glass bits under his skin. Everything about him felt disjointed, all edges where it should be round. Ichimatsu’s eyes widened and he hissed in a breath through his teeth. He placed a hand on Oso’s shoulder, an anchor.

“Osomatsu, listen to me okay? I… I’m not good at this stuff but, you need to breathe. I’ll count breaths with you if that would, I mean. If you think that would help.”

He let himself be pulled downwards by his brother, sitting on the front steps with the glow of the hallway light illuminating their outlines. Something about this was so familiar, like these were practiced steps that had simply fallen out of tune. Ichi took a deep breath and he forced his chest to do the same.

“One…two… three, you’re doing fine nii-san, four, five. Okay now let it out slowly.” He tried, the air rushed out too quickly as if he’d been punched and the glass came back in full force. Ichi’s hand tightened on his shoulder.

“Shit, no that’s. That’s fine we’ll try again. Breathe with me.”

After a few false starts, Osomatsu finally felt the focus return to his mind. The elastic band against his lungs loosened slightly, and for the first time in weeks he could think clearly.

He wanted to say something, the words pressed against the backs of his teeth but he didn’t know where to start. Thank you seemed cheap somehow, Ichimatsu was still watching him with a warmth and a concern touched gentleness that he wasn’t sure what to do with.

“How did you know?” He blurted with a rasp. To Ichi’s credit, he only took a moment to catch the same train of thought.

He shrugged, squeezing Oso’s shoulder once before letting his hand fall away. “I used to get panic attacks too. When we were kids it was really bad, I can usually calm myself down now.”

Ichi had panic attacks? That didn’t make sense to him, surely he would have noticed. One of them would have noticed. At the same time, he could understand why Ichi might not have told anyone. Ichimatsu was always uncomfortable with emotions being near the surface, and Oso could still feel the fear laced tears prickling at his eyes and dampening his cheeks. He hadn’t even realized he’d been crying.

“Why?” He hadn’t meant to ask, wasn’t sure what he was asking for but the word slipped out with a pleading edge to it and he could only stare helplessly after it.

Ichimatsu glanced away, staring at his hand, clenching the fabric of his pyjama’s absently. “If you’re asking why I’m helping then you’re an idiot,” he said gruffly. “I’m not… Leaving you behind isn’t right. I won’t…. dammit.” He lifted a hand to his bangs, ruffling them in frustration. Osomatsu sat wordlessly, processing and trying to give his brother the courtesy of collecting his thoughts as well.

“Listen, uh. I’m no good with any of…this,” he gestured between them vaguely. “but you know that I’m… well, I’m here. For you. If you wanted to talk or… or anything.”

Osomatsu blinked in surprise, reading the heat of Ichi’s cheeks and the stumbled words and the distant gaze all at once. His brother was trying so hard, he realized. He had been trying, for weeks. Ichimatsu had been helping him in the only way he knew even when everyone else had left him to crumble away in his own devices. Heartless Ichimatsu, the brother who constantly shrouded himself in the dark and creepier side of life and hated even admitting that he didn’t mind being around them, was trying to get Osomatsu to know he cared. Oso’s heart hurt, it ached with such an intensity that left him gaping with wide eyes at Ichi’s embarrassed silhouette.

It hurt so much, suddenly, that he could give nothing back. He couldn’t offer a damned thing in response to all this kindness and unnecessary care. He couldn’t tell Ichi anything in the same way he couldn’t tell anyone else. His brother was worried about him, wanted to help and fix this and Osomatsu was completely overwhelmed by a desire to not bear this all alone, just for a moment, but how could he?

The pause stretched on too long, and Ichi began to box himself away in little ways.

“Or I mean, I guess if you’d rather not that’s fine too. I understand. I mean, I’m not…. I’m just trash so… I’ll just go back inside.” No! No, no, no, Osomatsu was chasing him away too. He couldn’t, he needed, this was too much and maybe if he just…

“Do you remember that one summer when we rented out a room,” he started, all in a rush before he could think or lose his nerve. He wondered distantly how his voice must sound, as Ichi gave him a startled look and nodded hesitantly.

“Mom and Dad decided we needed more money, and we rented a space out to T…this man… who seemed really great and wonderful at first, do you remember?” His voice shook but he kept his eyes locked on Ichimatsu’s, watching the surprise and realization dawning across his features.

“Osomatsu…” Ichi breathed, and Oso knew the moment when the memories hit his brother. The same ones he’d been avoiding, locking himself up inside to prevent them from leaking out, lest they taint anyone else in their home. The nightmarish weeks from their childhood, the threats and the constant fear. After it had all been over Osomatsu had pushed the memories into the farthest corner of his mind and refused to bring them out again, wanting only to return to normalcy at whatever price was required. The rest of their family had been forced to accept it, to never speak of it for fear it set Osomatsu off or reopened wounds that seemed ready to heal.

They’d all repressed the incident in some way or another, in order to keep living. In order to function at all.

Too many emotions flashed across Ichimatsu’s face, fear and worry, confusion and horror. Osomatsu waited silently as Ichi’s jaw worked, struggled to form coherent thoughts.

“W-why is this….. What’s going on?” He settled, eyes still wide.

And desperately, so desperately then Osomatsu wanted to tell him. He’s back, Ichi, he thought staring into his brother’s dark eyes. Ichimatsu looked so open in that moment; his palms turned upwards and posture loosened and every inch of him screamed that he wanted to help. Osomatsu was so tired of doing this alone. The man from my nightmares is here and I saw him. He almost killed me, he has a gun. I’m afraid he’s probably here.

A splash nearby made his blood run cold, made him realize he’d already said far too much.

“Oso-niisan?” Ichimatsu was reaching for him again, and he’d been so stupid. They were sitting outside, right out in the open and he’d almost said everything. There were eyes in the dark, he was sure someone was nearby and he’d almost said his name.

“It’s nothing,” he said quickly. “I’m fine, I just. Had a weird dream, and. That’s all there is.” He was standing now, eyes scanning the shadows and seeing the empty street only as a waiting trap. They needed to get inside, right now. He turned to his brother, still seated with confusion written across his drawn brows.

“Thanks,” he offered, the only thing he could offer. “I’m fine now, let’s go inside.”

And it pained him so much, to use a clipped tone and see the current of badly disguised hurt that made the barricades roll down once more across his brother’s eyes. Ichimatsu fell flat at his words, the softness buried back beneath a layer of sorrow. He’d never noticed how deeply unhappy Ichimatsu always looked, until he’d seen the spring of caring that flowed just beneath. Ichimatsu said nothing, nodding in a disjointed way, his own eyes flickering across the landscape as if to find what had flipped their conversation so abruptly.

There was a different air clinging to his joints, though. He remembered Tougou, now, and it showed in the way his hands shook before he stuffed them into his pockets. It clung to the corners of his dark eyes and made him check his surroundings twice before moving. He remembered being afraid and it had rewritten some part of Ichimatsu’s code, altering him to be just that more jaded and that more paranoid.

Osomatsu hated himself then, for making everything that much harder.

His brother cared so much, about all of them, about him. Maybe he reacted with anger more often than not but Osomatsu knew a thing or two about facades, he wanted to kick himself for believing a second of it. He wanted to hug his younger brother, to thank him for trying and apologize for the fact he could do absolutely nothing in return. Instead he turned his back on his brother and went inside, the only protection he could think to give and it was not nearly good enough.

Chapter Text

He'd been so close the other night to breaking through, he was sure of it. There was a war going on in Osomatsu’s dumb self-centered head, just barely concealed under the surface but he wouldn’t let it out. Ichimatsu didn’t understand why he couldn’t just be honest for once.

He wasn’t great with body language, with speaking kindly or using empathy in ways that were actually useful. Why should he? He had no advice to give, being basically useless himself. His brothers had never cared before, but he supposed that was probably more of a result of their strangely unspoken buddy system than anything. Jyushimatsu and himself had never needed words, often able to read between the lines and float on the reassurance that the other was always close by. Whenever Ichi had something on his mind, Jyushi just seemed to get it without a need for an explanation and would drag him off for practice or plop a kitten on his lap out of nowhere.

Maybe he’d done something wrong, maybe he’d seemed angry when he was supposed to broadcast concern. He tended to do that a lot, panic making anger an easier weapon than his own thoughts against him. Maybe he’d said the wrong thing- it wouldn’t be the first time. Osomatsu had opened up to him in a moment of bravery, and then just as quickly shut himself off. Ichimatsu would have given up, had this been any other situation. He would have allowed himself to wallow and bury himself beneath the weight of his false starts and avoided everything. But things weren’t set in their usual motion these days.

Everyone was gone, and Osomatsu was out of commission; Ichimatsu was the de facto oldest here. It wasn’t a role he’d inhabited many times, or ever really – small benefits from being nearer to the bottom of the totem pole than the top – but there was no one at all to pass the torch onto. The thought was both mildly comforting and entirely horrifying. He was the fourth brother, the unlucky brother, the useless matsu- being helpful wasn’t in his job description.

Although, he’d done it before. He supposed he could do it again.

The conversation on the front steps had ignited a forcibly forgotten memory, filled in a ragged hole in his childhood he’d never really allowed himself to think too much on. Unconsciously he’d avoided questioning the gap of about half a year in his younger days, and so had everyone else. As if they’d made a silent pact and abruptly it had been shattered apart.

He remembered the stranger that had come to live with him, even if he couldn’t quite recall the name. He’d seemed so great at first, showering them all with gifts and convenient excuses; it had seemed like a paradise. Slowly things had tilted off kilter, almost like it had always meant too. Osomatsu’s smile hinging more on desperation, mysterious bruises and scars appearing in more and more noticeable places, all before the rouse came crashing down around them. They’d all been so terrified after the fact; they’d nearly lost a brother, nearly watched him fade right before their eyes without anyone so much as lifting a finger.

Oso had been determined to put it behind them all, though. Changing topics at lightning speed, plastering denial across every crevice and divot and they’d all been forced to agree. He supposed their family had never thought to question it being all so desperate also to forget the nightmare had ever occurred. Ichimatsu had tried, a few times. When the nightmares had manifested in a much more visceral manner within the eldest, leaving him sleepless more nights than not, and then again when the fits started.

He wished he could remember what he’d done before that was different. When he was younger he’d been more willing to believe in fate and optimism, he’d been more able to let his heart show on his sleeve and voice emotions as they bubbled through him. Depression along with teenaged life had taken some chunk of his spark, left him bitter and jagged and constantly angry.

Dammit, he clenched his fists, irrationally frustrated with the stars and the universe and everything that had sunk its claws into the eldest Matsu’s heart. Frustrated with how close he’d been to figuring it all out, frustrated with his own ability to listen and hear the unsaid words Osomatsu couldn’t formulate. Frustrated with his own complete and utter uselessness at figuring any of this out before it bubbled over and left them all with hurt feelings and wounded prides.

He knew there was more to this than bad dreams, when they were younger Oso hadn’t slept much but he’d always tried. He didn’t buy that the nightmares would have spiked up out of nowhere, underneath years of repression and avoidance and flared so much worse than they ever had. Osomatsu didn’t even attempt to sleep these days, he didn’t even feign anything other than his blank razor sharp stare and the grim draw to his lips, like he had no energy for more.

Ichimatsu wished he could ask his mother. She had to have known, she wasn’t the type to deny reality despite how much it hurt. Karamatsu and Choromatsu had inherited her worrying and her attention to detail, there was no way their watchful mother would forget something that had played havoc within one of her sons. They were adults, though, and she’d been right earlier when she said Osomatsu was stubborn. He had to work things through on his own before anyone could attempt to help. Waiting was probably draining his mother too much; she’d gone to visit friends out of the city for the weekend and he didn’t blame her one bit even as the realization washed over him.

The weight of unspoken words and worries would probably crush her if she wasn’t careful, his heart rolled painfully at the thought.

The lodger had somehow wriggled between the cracks and was once again tearing apart their family, years after the fact. Ichimatsu had been here the entire time, what was he missing?

He walked through the city streets, nervousness and guilt tickling his gut until he couldn’t stand it, needing to stretch his legs. His cat friends had been timid lately, startled. He knew it wasn’t him, they were unsettled by something in the air. There’s been reports of a robber on the run, the cats probably had better self preservation skills than he did – they knew to stay away when someone was nearby with a gun. He couldn’t use the excuse of feeding his friends now, but it hardly mattered. Ichimatsu was too anxious for his friends these days. He heard a rustle to his left, and watched as a particularly skittish cat jumped from a nearby trashcan and scrambled away on the rooftops.

The memory of the man in the alleyway the other day drove through him like an ice pick, abruptly and painfully.

“It’s strange to see you again, Osomatsu.”

The shadow with the knife, the way his voice had tickled the back of his brain uncomfortably like he’d forgotten a bad dream, the way he’d spoke his brother’s name.

“My how you’ve grown.”

He’d spoken as if it had been years, not fondly but threateningly. Like he’d waited years for that particular moment.

It seemed too far fetched, too unreal. The shadow in the alley couldn’t have been the lodger, it was too conveniently horrible. And yet, what else could explain Osomatsu’s walls? What else could explain why his brother had brought back the nightmare they’d all lived so long without?

There was something horrible seeping into his lungs, sticky and slow like molasses, but heavy with too many connections and correlations.

Ichimatsu shook his head, containing the monster gurgling in his gut for the moment. He needed to talk to Osomatsu, that much was obvious, but what if he was wrong? What if he brought up a memory too painful for his brother to handle and he drew away from all of them completely? He had to be sure, had to have proof. Osomatsu was already fragile, a wrong blow and Ichimatsu could lose him forever.

Ichi was supposed to be the big brother here, as unfitting as the title was. He couldn’t hurt his brother like this unless he knew without room for error. Even if the dread coiling through him whispered that it was all too fitting, that there was no way this fragmented life could have splintered without a particular blow, that the lodger had been the final piece he’d been looking for. Even if his mind told him that he knew already that god, he knew, it wasn’t enough.

If only he could remember the lodger’s name.

He thought of texting his brothers, but it wasn’t quite as simple as whipping up a quick ‘hey remember that guy that traumatized our brother and nearly kidnapped him?’ He’d have to explain it all, the same slowly sinking sort of way he’d come to recall everything and he was feeling more and more like he didn’t have that kind of time. Osomatsu was nearing some kind of breaking point, nothing was getting any better so of course, damn them all, it had to get worse.

He settled with a text to Jyushimatsu.

He’d been missing the unflappable spirit his immediate younger brother held in his pocket like sunshine, the way Jyushi could take a situation and figure out how to tilt it enough that everything made sense in a completely different sort of manner. He always saw things from an outside the box perspective, figured out solutions nobody else could have possibly considered. Ichimatsu was stuck at an impasse, he saw no other routes but maybe Jyushi could. Maybe Jyushimatsu would see exactly what he was missing and fix all of it.

‘Brighten up that powerhouse smile!’ Jyushi’s enthusiastic text made him snort in quiet laughter despite himself.

Jyushimatsu didn’t live too far away, but his practices and games kept him busy enough that in the month or so since he’d moved out, Ichimatsu hadn’t seen him once. He tried not to think too much about it, tried not to dwell but everything was piling on his shoulders too heavily these days and he could only outrun his emotions for so long.

‘I know we’ll see each other soon!’ Jyushi texted, followed by a picture of a baseball with googly eyes, and Ichi’s heart hurt so strongly then he nearly lost his breath.

He missed his brothers, so much. Sometimes he’d wake up thinking everyone would still be at home, only to find himself alone in a darkened room with only the cardboard cut out of the eldest to keep him company, and it felt like a knife wound. It was funny how easy it was to overlook their supportive words and gestures and company when they were running rampant through the streets pissing people off left and right. It was so easy, when they were all there in front of him to pretend like he needed no one at all in the world when really, they were his entire world.

‘Oi, shittymatsu, let’s get oden.’ He needed to see one of his brothers, needed to know he wasn’t alone in this mess of trauma and emotions. Jyushimatsu was busy, Todomatsu wouldn’t be up this time of day – he liked his beauty sleep at the best of times, but his late night shifts had messed with the youngest sleep schedule enough he was sleeping more often than not these days – and Choromatsu… Well. Choromatsu hadn’t answered his phone in months.

He felt like he was sinking too quickly, too far over his head. He remembered a time when Karamatsu had a steady shoulder and a ready smile always waiting for his bad days, when he’d feel sticky with his own thoughts and Karamatsu would plop himself on the roof next to him and let him talk. He needed to talk, he needed to tell someone, anyone.

‘Sorry my brother, can’t.’ Ah, that was right.

He’d almost forgotten amidst everything else that Karamatsu was still licking his own wounds. It had been so long since he’d chased his painful brother out he’d nearly believed they were okay. But as much as Karamatsu was quick to forgive and forget, that process usually required an apology. One he’d yet to give, and probably never would for fear that Karamatsu would place himself right in the middle of all this darkness once again.

Ichimatsu sunk against a nearby fence, legs wavering too much for him to keep up his wandering path. He leaned his head backwards with a quiet thump.

He wished things could be simple again, that the eldest had never been forced to experience the things he had, that their parents had never rented a room out in the first place, that he’d never trusted the strange man to begin with.

His phone blinked with an unanswered text, then another, and another, and with one final buzz and blink it finally fell silent. Maybe four was really unlucky, all he’d ever seemed to do was make things worse.

As the day drew on, and the crevasse inside of his gut opened wider and wider yet, Ichimatsu remembered. There’d been a clog in the drain before, a magnetically repulsive one that kept him from digging too deep; but the cork had been popped, his thoughts were free to spiral and swirl as they wished. Once he’d started remembering he couldn’t stop.

“Hey, Todomatsu, did you notice the way Osomatsu’s been avoiding us?” Todomatsu gave him a strange look, like he’d grown a second head.

“Ichimatsu, he’s been basking in the lodger’s undivided attention. He’s probably just enjoying the special treatment. Really, we should be planning how we can snag his luxurious position. Hmm…”

He frowned, scratching his forehead. “I don’t think that’s quite it, Todomatsu. I dunno though, maybe you’re right.”

Todomatsu snorted, “of course I am Ichi nii-san!” But Ichimatsu’s gaze traced the outline of a peculiar ring of bruises around Osomatsu’s wrist at dinner that night anyways, the sense of wrongness permeating the usually relaxed atmosphere. He caught Osomatsu’s gaze once, caught the surprise and ringed exhaustion caught in the bags of his eyes, and couldn’t help the quiet gasp that wheezed through him. Osomatsu pulled his sleeve down with something akin to fear and didn’t look his direction the rest of the evening.

He remembered now; why he’d been so welcome to the idea of forgetting it all had ever happened. Beyond the unreality of it all, beyond the looming sense of danger and lurking daggers in the smiles of strangers, he’d felt unbearably guilty. He’d seen it all happening. Ichimatsu had known something was wrong, caught onto the trailing breadcrumbs before anyone else but he hadn’t been quick enough.

He hadn’t spoken up nearly quick enough.

“Osomatsu-niisan, you sure are spending a lot of time with our lodger friend!” He’d spoken cheerfully, casually as he could but Oso’s shoulders had still tensed, his gaze still flickered over to the man almost instinctively. The lodger was out of earshot, Ichimatsu had made sure. He was just as excited about the shower of gifts and the obvious kindness of the man, but he needed to talk to his brother; Osomatsu wasn’t himself around the older man. Ichimatsu wanted to know why.

“Is he showing you even better things than he shows all of us? I’m jealous!” He said with a laugh. Osomatsu gulped visibly, his eyes pleading and Ichimatsu couldn’t understand any of this.

Even still his older brother’s words were forcibly upbeat, strained under the surface. “Yeah, a-all the coolest things! T… H-he says I’m his favorite!”

Ichimatsu playfully pouted, not satisfied with Osomatsu’s answer in the slightest but what could he do? He didn’t want to make Osomatsu uncomfortable just for his own curiosities sake, did he?

“I wish I was his favorite,” he grumbled. Maybe then he’d understand what was happening, he really hated being out of the loop. Osomatsu’s eyes flickered with horror, his mouth tightening and smile dropping into dust.

“Don’t say that, Ichi,” his voice was so serious, weighty in a way that made Ichimatsu wish he’d never brought up the conversation in the first place. “Don’t ever say that.”

Ichimatsu had been so close back then too, he’d had all of the instructions laid out in front of him except for step number one and he hadn’t known where to begin. He’d been young then, he knew, and the world hadn’t seemed nearly as hopeless or deplorable before. Ichimatsu had been more optimistic back then and it hadn’t helped anyone in the slightest. He’d let Osomatsu walk off with the man who hurt him everyday for months, even when he’d known something wasn’t right. What good was optimism when all it did was traumatize and scar your eldest, bravest brother?

“Heading out again, nii-san?” He rubbed at his eyes, sitting up blearily. A nearby clock read 1:35 AM in glaring red letters that made his eyes watered. He could still make out the shape of his brother, shoulders drawn up to his ears and frozen in place.

“It’s awfully late,” He allowed his voice to drop into a stage whisper, aware of the sleeping forms around him and the early hour. Osomatu didn’t move. “Are you going out with the lodger man again?”

Osomatsu’s shoulders slowly dropped, his fists tightly clenched at his sides.

“No,” Osomatsu’s whisper was nearly inaudible. “I’m leaving.” Ichi’s brows furrowed, moving into a sleepy stretch.

“Leaving? That’s silly isn’t it?” Osomatsu made no move to come back to the futon, Ichimatsu was suddenly acutely aware of the shoes in Osomatsu’s right hand and the bag in his left. A lead weight curled within his stomach, he didn’t know why exactly. He bit his lip, and tried again.

“I’ll come with you.”

Osomatsu turned his head, something in his eyes reminded Ichimatsu a little of an unexpected birthday gift and a lot like the expression of someone who’d just woken up from a terrible dream. It shifted, warped into something more pained, more desperate, and then locked itself down into a blank resolve.

“No, Ichi,” and the air was too heavy, too dry. “You can’t. You have to…. Have to watch out for them, okay?”

Ichimatsu had refused to think about the implications of those words, didn’t even stumble on them for a second because they were the stupid, lost words of someone who was scared. Someone who wasn’t thinking clearly because obviously Osomatsu would look after all of them, obviously he wasn’t implying he was going to abandon all of them. Obviously, Osomatsu’s heart couldn’t possibly be breaking in front of him like this, all open and vulnerable and far too impossibly terrified.

“Come back to bed, Oso,” his own words filled themselves up with concrete, clung to Osomatsu’s ankles like weights and chains because how dare he even think about setting one foot farther away from them. “We’ll figure whatever is going on in the morning, I’m too sleepy right now.” He’d paused, mulling over his next words.

“I won’t let anything hurt you, nii-san, okay? It’ll be alright, whatever this is.”

Osomatsu’s eyes met his, far too wide and watery, far too hopeful, and he’d smiled then. “In the morning…. Okay.” He nodded to himself. “Okay.”

Of course, the next morning the lodger had tried to run off with their oldest brother, tried to make him endure the hellish past few months for an eternity where no one could help him. The next morning Chibita had interrupted by accident and Oso, terrified and brave Osomatsu had captured his captor all on his own.

And Ichimatsu had nearly let the worst happen, because he’d been too tired to figure out what was really going on. Because he’d been too selfish to consider what Osomatsu might need over what he wanted for them all.  They’d all been so terrifyingly close to being five that day, all because Ichimatsu couldn’t work up the nerve to speak to someone about what he suspected was going on behind the scenes. Not that he could have known the extent of it all, not the blood or the bruises that painted their brothers side like some kind of Van Gogh display, not the sudden phobias or scars or night terrors that left him inconsolable. But Ichimatsu could have tried so much harder, he could have tried and maybe it would have been worse, but it could have also been so much better.

He'd never forgive himself for not piecing things together fast enough when they were kids.

He refused to make the same mistake twice.

Which was why, he resolved to try. Which was why he wouldn’t give up on the eldest and he would figure out a way to help him. If this was all about the lodger, if something had happened he had to know because he couldn’t stand this, watching his brother wither and shrink and die in front of him. He couldn’t stand how quickly the sand filled hourglass had flipped on him without any warning, and he refused to let it end like this. Ichimatsu wasn’t determined or motivated these days, he didn’t outwardly show his cares or demand answers or confront things head on but this wasn’t about today’s Ichi. This was about the younger Ichimatsu that hadn’t done anything until it was too late, this was about the eldest brother who had given up a chance at freedom for his sleepy, confused little brother. This was about today’s Osomatsu who thought he had no one to turn to because Ichimatsu had never so much as reached out a hand.

Well, he was reaching out now. He just had to make his brother see.

Ichimatsu was full of thoughts and plans, he’d call up his idiot brothers and stage an intervention of some kind. Or a drinking night, really get everyone to air their grievances so they could come back together and fix this. The thought of so much limelight was terrifying, anxiety already spiking in his chest but Osomatsu had dealt with so much more for all of them before. None of his brother’s could remember, though, because they’d forced themselves not to. He’d make them see, too.

When he’d made it home later in the evening to their darkened house and made his way through the kitchen, he’d been so focused on fixing and confronting, he’d almost missed the newspaper on the kitchen table as he grabbed a glass of water to calm his nerves. With all the thoughts of the lodger and his brothers shattered smile playing in circles in his mind, his eyes had instinctively narrowed in on the headline regarding the string of robberies, sliding past the poor victim of the largest incident who’d apparently passed away earlier in the day, and skidded towards the grainy image near the bottom of the page.

‘Have you seen this man?’ The large print asked him, and it felt strangely directed, like he was swirling around the drain at the start of it all and he couldn’t look away, couldn’t resist the call. Like this paper had been here for him, like the start and the beginning of everything was unfolding right at this very spot.

A man with a bandit mask, portly and outlined in blurry pale light from the electric lighting stood menacingly in the center of a tiny store. A familiar convenience store, one just around the corner from Chibita’s, the one that was open all night and sold cheap cat treats. The man had a hunch to his shoulders, a wide stance, and was pointing a gun towards something near the far wall.

The picture was pixelated, grainy and nearly too small but he could just make out the outline of someone hiding almost out of sight, between the coffee and the baking section, crouching with their face that side of indistinguishable. 

The glass in his hand fell, his grip slackening as the shock overtook him and his thoughts caught up with what his eyes were telling him. He barely acknowledged the crashing sound as the cup hit the hard floor, or the dangerous shards scattering around him because there was someone in the convenience store that night.

Someone hiding around the corner as a young girl was murdered, someone who witnessed all of it. 

Someone with a dark bob of hair and a familiar red hoodie he would recognize absolutely anywhere. 

Chapter Text

The cashier had passed away, he’d heard.

She’d been in intensive care for months, a coma they said, and then she’d just slipped away. It was tragic, upsetting, she’d been young and had her whole future in front of her. The static crackled and weaved a story of a young girl who’d been in her first year of university, who’d dreamt of becoming a doctor. She’d had amazing grades, good friends, and a scholarship to boot, and now…

Now she had a nice tombstone and a short blurb in the obituary section of the paper.

Osomatsu was a terrible person. He’d kind of accepted the reality somewhere between his whirlwind of hopelessness and panic. He wasn’t sad because someone had died, he wasn’t upset that it had been someone who’d had dreams and plans, no the fear that burrowed into his brain was selfish and cold. He couldn’t find it in him to be sad, only crushingly responsible. Only desperately alone, suffocating under the realization, under the blanket of how impossibly real everything had become.

The only other witness from that night had passed away, without ever being able to tell anyone anything. The entire weight had fallen onto his shoulders, the line between Tougou’s freedom and his own safety drew thinner and realer and he couldn’t breathe.

Tougou could escape, could run rampant without blame for the rest of his days if it weren’t for him. Worst of all, Osomatsu had no doubts that the man was thinking the exact same thing. Worst of all, the news reports had started showing bits of video clip now that they were no longer protecting the young girl’s identity. They’d probably figured he was too obscured, too generic for his identity to be in danger. Too bad Tougou knew what he looked like.

He knew now that his time was running out, but there was nothing he could do, either way he was dead. No matter what he chose, it was a matter of inevitability. Tougou would find him.

A part of him, the part that had felt strangely connected to the flickering heartbeat of the cashier – her name was Sumiye, she’d had a name – felt lost now that there was nothing more to hold onto. No more tethered hopes or dreams, no more wishful thinking only the cold, hard reality he’d been hiding from for so long.

He didn’t know what he could do to change it, or if there was a way to change any of it.

He slumped against the wall where he’d been propped up for the past few hours, a disjointed sort of wild panic crashing against his veins. It was only a matter of time, and he still couldn’t make up his mind. Osomatsu prayed, desperately, for help. To anything that might be listening, to the cruel fates that had brought him to his knees in the first place; he needed a sign.

The door across from him slammed open. Ichimatsu’s gaze was electric, his mouth outlined in some kind of horror, some kind of disbelief. His face hardened, then broke apart all together.

“Is it true?” Ichimatsu’s whisper was louder than any scream, Oso’s wide eyes trailed over to the paper clutched in his brothers shaking hand. There was a picture, grainy and grey and he couldn’t quite make it out. A sticky, dreadful thing like hot tar pooled in his gut.

He stared wordlessly at his brother. Ichimatsu growled but it crept out with half a sob and something in Osomatsu’s chest pulled at the sound. Ichi was distraught, clearly; he was loose and wild in a way he’d never seen his typically reserved brother. Even in Ichimatsu’s angriest moments he’d never seen him so shaken, like he’d been coloured with crayons that trailed outside of the lines.

Ichimatsu shoved the paper towards him, “This! That’s you, isn’t it? Isn’t it!”

All at once with a startling crescendo, the crumbling walls he’d built and foundations he’d placed came tumbling inwards, his eyes focused on the image with a funny hysterical lump stuck fast in his throat. The quality was poor, almost making the details illegible, nearly enough to fool anyone who didn’t know better but Osomatsu would remember that electric blue tile and fluorescent lights for as long as he lived. It was all laid out in front of him in a macabre sort of simplicity that left him aching; his worst nightmare, photographed and placed on the front page news.

Tougou, gun drawn and shadowed, the bloody scene just out of frame, and himself. Curled up tight behind an aisle, the camera angle was able to grab the scene nearly from the same perspective he’d seen it all. It was nearly enough to throw him back into the memory, nearly enough to make him fold in on himself entirely and give up.

Oh god, he thought, and his mind was traveling faster and faster, looping downwards in a sickening spiral. Ichimatsu knew, he knew. Ichimatsu was holding the damning evidence in front of his face and he knew that Osomatsu had been at the infamous robbery, now a murder scene, and that he hadn’t said anything. He knew that Osomatsu had been drifting farther and farther from himself for months purely because he couldn’t speak, and Ichimatsu knew that Tougou was going to kill him. Ichimatsu was beyond pissed off about all of this information, too.

Ichimatsu didn’t anger easily, he was more of a quick burn. A snap of anger, a threat maybe, and he was done. This was something all together, there was a shakiness to Ichimatsu’s grinding teeth and he looked unpredictable, like he himself didn’t know what would come next because he hadn’t counted out the steps. Osomatsu had caused this, too.

Ichimatsu seemed to deflate then, all the tension and current holding him upright shorting out. Osomatsu wondered what his expression had morphed into during the realization, if Ichimatsu could see now all of the jagged shards that comprised his soul.  

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ichi’s voice wavered and then broke, at the same time as a liquid steel filled in the cracks and sharpened his features. Resolve flooded into the dark spaces behind Ichimatsu’s eyes and Osomatsu flinched.

“You were there! You saw all of it, and that’s… that’s the lodger isn’t it? And you- and I was…” Ichi stepped back, running a hand through his hair in frustration, or maybe fear.

Osomatsu’s heart skipped, once, and he realized abruptly that Ichimatsu would make everything so much worse, he was going to make him go to the police and tell them. He’d make him face the man that had ruined the better parts of him and watch as he killed them both. Ichi didn’t understand how dangerous this was, he didn’t understand.

“I didn’t!” He yelped, the loudest he’d spoken in what felt like a decade. “I- I didn’t see anything, I don’t know wh –“

“Why are you lying?!” And this, this Osomatsu could handle because Ichimatsu was furious now, absolutely enraged, and he could deal with anger. Just not pity or horror or any of the other dark things that clung to his brother’s frown.

“I’m not! You don’t know shit, you know nothing!”

“Because you won’t tell me anything! I’ve been here, the whole time and I thought. I thought maybe you were depressed, or you were jealous, I was worried! And you’ve been lying and hiding here like a goddamned coward because you –“

Osomatsu felt the accusation like a slap, a coward? He wasn’t a coward he was… he was saving himself, saving his brothers! It was hopeless anyways, didn’t Ichimatsu understand? If he talked Tougou would find both of them and it would be meaningless!

“You don’t know anything, Ichimatsu!”

“Then tell me!”

Osomatsu’s fists clenched and trembled, he noticed distantly that he’d drawn himself into standing sometime during the conversation, that his posture was rearing for a fight. He grit his teeth, unblinking and staring down his younger brother.

“He’ll kill me,” he forced out, vindictively pleased at the way Ichi’s expression wilted around the edges, clearly taken aback. “He’ll find me and he’ll kill me. I know it.”

Ichi’s eyes flickered back and forth across his face, searching for something, a divot formed between his brows. Osomatsu noticed the faint impressions of wrinkles carving their way through his younger brother’s forehead, the way his hair was more frazzled than it had ever been.  He felt like a live wire, unhinged and unconnected to this reality, to this plane of existence.

“You don’t know that,” his brother spoke slowly, like he was sharpening his words. “You just don’t want to fix this, you’re afraid.”

“I’m not! I’m being realistic! There’s nothing we can do, nothing I could have ever done! He’s been waiting to come back here for over ten years, Ichi! Tougou is –”

“Tougou? That’s his name? Of course it is, how could I have forgotten…”

Osomatsu blinked, shrugging in a frustrated huff. “What does that matter?”

“He hasn’t been waiting,” Ichi flipped through the paper, cautiously, slowly. “Here.”

He pointed to a small subsection near the back of the paper, barely more than a few lines. ‘Ex convict, known as Tougou, turned gardener. Previously jailed for robberies and assault, after his release last year, the ex-con has changed his ways and picked up a green thumb! He is now on his way to becoming the countries best florist and landscaper, a blooming transformation.’

“He was released over a year ago,” Ichimatsu’s voice was far away, through a tunnel. Osomatsu’s gaze drilled through the paper and into the memory of the man at the convenience store. “Tougou hasn’t been waiting for you Osomatsu, you’re safe.”

Osomatsu’s brain caught somewhere on the dotted I’s, looped somewhere between the exclamation points. Tougou hadn’t been lurking around, hoping for him to slip up? He remembered the voice, it had to have been the same man, it had to! Didn’t it? The thought rose unbidden, abruptly, what if he’d misread the situation. What if the murderer from that night hadn’t been Tougou at all? What if he’d been cowering for weeks believing his death sentence was already sealed when he could have saved even more heartache all along?

“No,” he found himself whispering. “no, I know it was him. Tougou was the man in the aisle, I’ve been haunted by that smile for too long.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t him, Oso, I believe you,” Ichi said softly. “It would make sense, after the man in the alley –“

The laser focus in Osomatsu’s mind snapped on, his reverie and spiralling thoughts ground to a halt.

“What man in the alley?”

Ichimatsu looked surprised, like he hadn’t expected to have spoken out loud either. He glanced away quickly, guilt latched firmly to his lowered eyes. “N-nothing.”

There was ice in his veins, ice in his heart. Osomatsu was sweating bullets, but he felt far too cold. His world was narrowing inwards, greying and disintegrating at the edges. “You saw Tougou?” His words felt like sandpaper, saying the name took something from him every time. Chafed at him internally, bit by bit.

Ichimatsu looked cornered, flustered and angry like a feral cat, his voice dropping to it’s typical mutter. “No! I m-mean, it’s not like he knew it was me or anything, he asked me if I was you so –“

Osomatsu’s heart leapt all the way into his throat and he felt a powerful wave of nausea ready to bowl him over right on its tail. His mind went blank, his internal system hollowed out. Tougou remembered him. The small relief Ichimatsu had attempted to give him was meaningless, because Tougou remembered him. And Ichimatsu had probably led him right to them.

It didn’t matter if the man didn’t see him that late night at the convenience store, it didn’t matter if the picture was too incriminating; Tougou remembered who he was, and how Osomatsu had landed him in jail.

They were dead.

No, a whisper told him in the back of his mind, Ichi was dead.

And suddenly, that thought was so much worse than anything he could have imagined. Tougou thought Ichimatsu was him. Tougou clearly couldn’t tell them apart, but he’d seen Ichimatsu in his purple hoodie and he’d called him Osomatsu. He couldn’t keep his brother locked inside like he’d been doing to himself, he would inevitably run into Tougou again.

Maybe, a darkly insipid thought told him, it would be late at night with no one else around. Maybe Ichi wouldn’t have his new cellphone with him, since he wasn’t used to carrying it with him. Maybe Tougou would bring his gun and three more bullets and there’d be no time for dodging, no time for clever tricks, Osomatsu would be down a brother and have even more than blood on his hands. He couldn’t bear the thought, it made him even more frantic. Panic was rising within him, pushing his mind even farther outside of the dotted lines and he couldn’t find his way back.

“You ruined everything,” a voice said, and it was his but it wasn’t, couldn’t be. Not so laced with anger and hatred, he wasn’t that dark or cruel, was he? “You always ruin everything; why do you even bother?”

A wounded look flashed across Ichimatsu’s face, written in the faltering step backwards like he’d been struck, in the downwards pull of his lips. If Osomatsu’s heart still beat it was probably tearing itself apart at the seams but he couldn’t quite feel it. Ichi’s lips tightened and his stance became all stone and concrete.

“He hasn’t been waiting for you, he won’t be able to find you. We need to go to the police, just because he remembers who you are doesn’t mean it’s okay to hide Osomatsu,” and he spat his brother’s name a little too venomously, a little too harshly. His own temper flared up even more in response. “I’m trying to help, if you just—“

“You? Since when do you ever help?” An echo of remorse flashed through him, a line was about to be crossed but he was vaulting across it and there was no way to stop. “Don’t think I didn’t notice how you shoved Karamatsu out the door, you probably kicked Jyushi out too, didn’t you? You’re not that subtle, brother of mine. You ruin everything, congrats I guess on ruining this family too.”

He wanted to claw the words back in even as they hung, sickly and vile in their own making. That wasn’t what I meant, he screamed at himself. I just want him to be safe, he lied and lied again. This wasn’t the way to keep Ichi safe, this wouldn’t make him stay and he knew it, he knew this was broken and fragmented and wrong but he wasn’t himself at the moment. Wasn’t even remotely near to himself and he couldn’t find it in him to feel any remorse. His puppet strings had been snapped months back, there was no more fight left in him.

“I don’t care what the newspaper says or what you think, I know he’s out there. It’s not my problem if you’re too stupid and naïve to fill in the blanks. Or did you want me to face him down, all alone, just like last time?”

Osomatsu didn’t see the words as they sunk into their target, didn’t see the way they must have jammed right into Ichi’s ‘cold’ heart, but he could imagine it. The shattering heart behind his dark eyes, the way his smile would wobble and then seal itself over. The acceptance, laced deep within his brother’s dark expression that would haunt him, hovering right around terribly wrong and unsettling for as long as he lived. Osomatsu saw none of it, keeping his gaze towards the ground and face schooled neutral.

“If that’s what you believe,” Ichimatsu’s voice was strangely level. “I guess there’s no point in me sticking around either then.” His voice shuttered in on itself at the end.

“You know, Osomatsu. If you weren’t such a fucking coward I’d almost feel bad for you. Figure your shit out before someone else gets hurt.”

Osomatsu contained the wince, refused to show any regret for his words despite the way his heart pounded against his rib cage like a feral animal. His heart was screaming wait, his gut was telling him this was the opposite of what he wanted, but his mouth wouldn’t work quite fast enough and he refused to look up. He heard the shuffle of feet, the sound of newspaper hitting the ground, and the click of the door sliding closed. Osomatsu knew this was wrong, but he hoped, maybe, that Ichimatsu would get far enough away. Somehow Ichimatsu would leave the city, get far enough away that he’d fade out of sight completely from Tougou’s sphere and he’d be alright.

Mind games didn’t work on the fourth brother and he knew that, getting him to stay by sheer force of will was a failed mission from the start. At least he could hope he’d hurt his brother enough that Ichimatsu wouldn’t even want to stay in the city.

He let a long breath through his nose, nodding to himself. Swallowing around the steel lump of guilt and remorse in his throat hurt in a way nothing had ever hurt before.

Ichimatsu was going to be okay, it was better this way. If he left, then he wouldn’t be close enough to feel the fall out when Tougou eventually found him. Ichimatsu would be safe, he repeated like a mantra, he’d be safe.

It was all better this way.

Even if Ichimatsu never spoke to him again, if his brothers only ever returned to find an urn or a tombstone that would be just fine. At least they’d be safe and he wouldn’t have to live this half life full of static and crushing guilt anymore.

It all was familiar in a warped way, the loneliness and the desperation; he remembered now, the long weeks after the first incident when he was a kid. He’d been so determined back then to fake a smile and a skip in his step and show no weaknesses. It almost worked, his parents had nervously smiled back and turned back to their day to day lives and his brother’s had continued moving around the house, a little stiffly, life returned to normal.

Except he hadn’t fooled everyone had he?

There’d been someone nearby, even when he had blurry days where he couldn’t think in a way that made words or commitments and everything slipped away like drops of water. Someone always accompanying him on his worst days, holding his hand through the layers of dissonance between him and the world.

He laughed out loud, a short pained noise, and fell quietly to his knees in the silence of the now empty house. It had been Ichimatsu, hadn’t it? Ichimatsu with his understanding and sympathetic company, never pressing for answers or responses like everyone else, never expecting more from him than he could offer.

It was hard to think about, with so many years and so much distance between them, but Ichimatsu had once been the most empathetic one out of them all. He’d always been nearby when one of them was hurt and quietly supported them all from afar. High school had taken something from him, removed his soft edges and made him more brittle and prone to anger but it was still there, buried beneath his bleak exterior. Ichi had been trying so hard to regain himself in the past year, Osomatsu realized. He’d been voluntarily assisting in matters he didn’t have to, sacrificing his own self interests for the sake of his brothers. He’d pushed Karamatsu out of the house for his own sanity and helped Jyushi take his first steps to the outside world and never asked for anything in return.

And Osomatsu had thrown all of it back into his face along with a cruel smirk just for kicks.

He suddenly felt incredibly weak and tired. Hollowed out internally, sawdust in his bones and lungs. He couldn’t keep doing this, pushing people away and burying his secrets inside. Ichimatsu hadn’t ruined anything, he’d been kind and caring and so good to everyone – Osomatsu was so proud of him, it made his chest swell just thinking of how hard Ichimatsu had tried for their sakes.

If anyone had fucked up, it was Osomatsu; he’d been selfish to Choromatsu, he’d allowed his best friend to head out into a terrifying new future without so much as ‘congratulations’. He’d punched his youngest brother for calling him out on his shit, turned a cold shoulder to Karamatsu’s concerns, terrified the living hell out of Jyushimatsu and refused to look him in the eye even as he left. Worst of all he’d stabbed Ichimatsu in the back for bothering to care about him, he’d thrown the sharpest words he could think of at him and chased him out the door.

Right outside into the very alleyway where he’d seen Tougou earlier in the week.

Osomatsu’s heart squeezed and lurched and abruptly he was unbearably nauseous; icy and blistering all at once like a fever.

His younger brother was outside, with Tougou. Tougou who thought Ichimatsu was him.

He wanted to chase after him, to scream and cry and beg him to come back and tell the police everything and god, he was so fucking sorry for everything. All of it. All of the lies and half truths and cold shoulders and icy words, all of the torn seams he’d ripped open and the bladed words he’d thrown in desperation. It was all so vivid, so glaringly obvious and horrible and he couldn’t do anything about it.

Because he was a god damned coward. Because he’d rather hide and let his brother take the fall for his mistakes then deal with any of this. Because he was the worst big brother ever, and there was nothing more to say.

Except, something in him whispered. Except… He blinked up at the world around him, hating everything in himself and everything too intensely to think.

The light above him seemed fake, too bright and cheery and the world was too still. It should be rattled to its core, faulting apart and throwing everything else into dust; the calm quiet was nearly more deafening than anything he could imagine. The silence was blaming him. The lack of sudden static so starkly contrasted it couldn’t be anything other than a cold shoulder from the universe.

Go get your brother, it demanded, but he couldn’t! Why couldn’t anyone see that it was impossible, the odds stacked too high against him. He’d fail and they’d all be worse off than if he just stayed hidden. Really, it wasn’t so difficult to understand. All Osomatsu had managed to do for the past indeterminate amount of time was break everything apart and cut himself accidentally on the shattered fragments. He was too selfish, too weak.

A buzz of the radio met his ears, then. It must have been left on from Ichimatsu’s earlier morning attempts to make the house appear normal and friendly. Ichimatsu, for all his broodiness and anti-social qualities also didn’t much care for silence. It made him anxious, he’d said once.

“Police are once again at a loss, there seems to be no connection between the latest string of robberies…” the crackle cut out for a moment, Osomatsu found himself strangely straining for the sound.

“They encourage, once again….  anyone with information please step forward. There are more lives at stake and more innocents potentially in the crossfire, they implore anyone listening, that every bit helps. Make the difference, prevent this from happening to someone else.”

Two thoughts flew abruptly through his mind as the words cut out in a wave of static once more. First, that the news reporter should get a raise, and second….

He remembered, vividly, the fear. Being trapped in the darkness, enveloped in pain and terror and wondering if everything would ever be the same again. Pleading for just one more day, one more adventure, one more moment of freedom. He remembered crying, and begging, and being so paralyzed by the sureness that he would go after someone else if he didn’t grit his teeth and bear it. He remembered wishing desperately that he hadn’t seen Tougou slip up that afternoon, wishing he hadn’t figured out who their lodger friend really was, while being entirely entangled within the gratitude that it had been Him and not one of his younger brothers.

The second thought that wound through him was bright and electric, fueled by something –finally something –more than the fear that had won him over so completely for weeks. He wouldn’t let any of his brothers go through what he’d had to; he’d die a thousand times over inside if he so much as glimpsed the same internalized panic in their wide eyes. He couldn’t let Ichi potentially face Tougou alone, not like this or ever again.

He pushed himself quickly to his feet, his stiff knee only nearly giving out once, and slammed open his bedroom door. Tougou or not, Ichimatsu was coming home. Tougou be damned, Osomatsu was done living in the shadow of anxiety and silence.

For the first time in the long months since the murder, Osomatsu felt alive.

Chapter Text

Ichimatsu was livid.

“You ruined everything…” His older brother had spat at him, thinking his barbed words would tear Ichi apart. They hurt, down into the stickier parts of his heart, but not in the way Osomatsu had intended.

I know, he’d thought staring at his brothers clenched fists and downcast gaze, I know Osomatsu, I’m sorry. Because Osomatsu wouldn’t look at him, he didn’t want Ichimatsu to see how loudly he was screaming the opposite. Because Ichimatsu had unwittingly torn the only support system Osomatsu had left right out from under him. Because, worst of all, he didn’t regret it.

Stupid Osomatsu. Couldn’t ever seem to get it through his thick skull that in this family, none of them could ever possibly be alone. He seemed fixated on the concept that he had to fight his battles all by himself, or that he was the only one who could. Ichimatsu had been there for him last time, and he’d tried to be there this time too but it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough and honestly, it was fine.  Probably.

All it meant was that he’d have to get reinforcements.  

Ichimatsu had never been the type to fix things, he’d always assumed when people fell apart that destiny had decided it, something in their foundations that couldn’t whether the storm. Ichimatsu couldn’t rebuild a person, didn’t want to try really; they’d only break down again with the next gust of wind. People either solved their problems or let them consume everything, the law of the universe. He’d always been more comfortable on the sidelines, quietly supporting where he could and ‘politely’ ignoring where he couldn’t. Stepping up meant he’d be forced to react emotionally, that he had to be serious and discuss issues as they were and there was no room for avoidance. Ichimatsu wasn’t built like that, he was a clock with missing cogs and gears, time went on ticking away while the clock hands never spun. Being forced to be emotional usually meant he reacted with anger, because he’d get panicked and words would bubble out before he could think. Leaving was usually just a better idea.

It was better he didn’t try to fix things, usually.

This time, though, he’d been left with a faint impression of a brother and no way to fill in the dots. This time he was watching up front and center as a piece of their six-sided die cracked and crumbled away. He couldn’t leave this, couldn’t ignore it. Or else the next time he looked back there might be nothing left at all.

Really, Ichimatsu had no other choice. If his brother was incapable of taking action then dammit, he’d just have to do it himself. He wasn’t about to watch Osomastu’s ship sink into the waters without so much as a waving white flag in the distance.

He stormed out into the night streets, ignoring everything; the bite of the night air was miniscule, the light of the half moon was enough, the darkness meant nothing at all. Ichimatsu pulled out his phone, shaking fingers struggling to unlock the screen – he nearly threw the thing in frustration before the screen finally lit up.

‘Get the fuck back home’ he texted, then deleted it.

‘Our brother’s an idiot.’ Backspace.

‘Oso needs help’ he decided on, and selected the first four names in his shitty phone.

He shoved the phone back into his pocket continuing his angry pace, nowhere and everywhere at once. Maybe he could head to Chibita’s, but Chibita would ask a lot of questions. Chibita and him didn’t have the same friendship his brothers seemed to have with the guy. He didn’t go to Chibita’s alone, ever. Besides, he didn’t have any money and angering Chibita in the current mood he was in seemed like disaster in the making.

He could head to his favorite alley, but the cats were still strangely scattered and absent. He didn’t have any cat food on him either.

Ichimatsu huffed and checked his phone. No replies, but the little blinking ‘Read’ message at the bottom of his text flashed with three different names.

He growled. Fine! If that’s how they all wanted to be, who needed them. He could handle this by himself, somehow. Even if he wasn’t remotely confident in his own abilities, he could damn well try. It was better than they were all doing, hiding from their problems. Out of sight out of mind, right assholes? Yes, Osomatsu had been a dick the past few months but it was for a reason. He’d been… He’d witnessed…

God, Ichimatsu stumbled a step and paused. His elder brother had really seen a murder, hadn’t he? He’d seen the man from his very worst nightmares with a gun, and seen Tougou kill an innocent girl. Fuck, Ichi swallowed roughly, it was sandpaper against his heart.

Osomatsu had nearly been killed himself. The newspapers could have been spotted with pictures of his brother’s untimely demise, his gruesome murder scene the inside of a shitty convenience store with no one left to catch the man who caused all of it. His brother could have died.

For some reason the thought made him even angrier. Didn’t Osomatsu know how devastated they all would have been? Didn’t he know they’d lose a part of themselves along with him? Yet he was locking himself away and rotting from the inside out and not talking to anyone. And now his other shitty assed brothers thought Oso was nothing more than selfish and violent and they couldn’t even bother to help him.

All because they couldn’t remember, refused to remember the hell he’d been through as a kid. All because every single one of them were more content to shove their heads in the sand and their hearts under steel cages and forget.

When had Ichimatsu stepped into this role, when had he decided to try? Since when was he the one that cared so much? Heartless Ichi, yeah, right.

His phone blinked once, Jyushimatsu sent a series of sad emojis and promised they’d all play baseball soon. Empty words, but at the same time, Ichimatsu was reminded of the large welt painted across his younger brother’s ribs and the forced smile Jyushi had painted just as brightly across his own features. At least Jyushi was trying.

He sighed.

Sad emoji’s seemed painfully unreal, trivial, like a band aid slapped across a crack in a dam. Like a ‘sympathy in this difficult time’ card during an apocalyptic event. Pointless, blunt in its ineffectuality, insulting, almost.  But at least he was trying.

Wasn’t that the most frustrating part of all of this? They’d all been trying in their own ways. Choro trying to have a future, to be an adult like he was supposed to. Totty tried to knock some sense into Osomatsu before he fell too much into his own self absorbed wallowing. Jyushi had tried to keep the happiness even when everyone else was determined to burn out all the lights. Karamatsu was always trying to fix them, trying to keep them together and here Ichimatsu was, doing the same god damned thing he’d always made fun of Shittymatsu for failing at.

He was trying to be supportive and caring and the stupid part was, once he’d let himself start it was just so natural to keep it up. He worried and tried and even now, even after all the shards of words that his brother had thrown at him knowing how they’d burn, he still cared.

The irony of it all was bitter and coppery on his tongue and he was sure somewhere the fates must be mocking him. You ruin everything Ichimatsu, even when it’s already ruined.

Ichimatsu knew Osomatsu was full of shit, that he’d been panicked and cornered and had just wanted Ichi to leave so he’d said whatever he could to beeline out of the tension. Frankly, Ichi was more pissed off that Osomatsu really thought he was that fragile. Sharp words laced with fear did little to pierce his iron defenses, and Osomatsu should know that by now. He’d been there during their high school years and after, he should know better. He was angrier that Osomatsu was so easy to read, that Oso thought he had a remotely solid poker face at all. As if.

But really, what had Ichimatsu done to help? Empty thoughts and words and anxious fluttering. All pointless in the long run, because guess what dumbass? Nice thoughts wouldn’t change the fact that his brother had witnessed a literal murder scene.

He couldn’t suppress the sympathy shudder that tumbled through him. It was insane, ridiculous even but it was so sickly real all at once. How had their lives split apart so unfairly? How did Osomatsu always manage to pull the short straw in some fashion or another? Why did Ichimatsu believe he could do anything positive in the first place?

Ruined everything indeed.

Ichimatsu frowned to himself, shaking himself from the dark thought. He couldn’t leave Osomatsu to deal with this alone, beating himself up over and over would only ruin his temporary motivation. He needed to pull his brother’s shit together for him, somehow. Maybe he could run to the police? But he hadn’t seen anything, he couldn’t make it up. Maybe he could give them Tougou’s name, but how could they prove any of this?

The world felt so uncomfortably large in the moment, and he himself so incredibly miniscule. He was used to feeling worthless, used to feeling like he amounted to nothing but a puff of breath in the long run. Ichi wasn’t ready for the hopeless frustration that lurked so close nearby, however. It was greedy and stole bits off of him with every pump of his heart. There was nothing he could do was there? No way to help, no way to shoulder any of this; everything he tried would only make it worse.

Osomatsu didn’t even want his help, what was he even doing any of this for?

He hunched his shoulders further, he supposed even failing to help was better than admitting he had no purpose at all.

A trash can’s metal ding rang out nearby, and Ichimatsu realized in a slow blink sort of manner that he was farther from home than he’d meant to wander. A little boy was staring at him with wide eyes, Ichi pulled his expression back to a careful neutral, wondering what he must have looked like while lost in thought. The kid seemed to square himself up in response, mirroring Ichi’s own pretend nonchalance with the edged nervousness he always bottled up underneath.

The streets were emptier here, Ichi must have instinctively stumbled towards side roads rather than main streets and the boy was alone. He felt a little annoyed that the twerp was just staring at him without moving, but he attempted to swallow the feeling.

He pulled his hand from his pocket and offered a half hearted wave, hoping the kid would maybe scurry on his way. The boy mirrored the action, an anxious smile twitching at his lips.

“Are you lost, mister?” The kid grabbed his other arm, uncomfortable but trying to be polite he supposed. Ichimatsu forced himself to shrug.

“I’ll find my way back,” he offered, glancing to the side. The sun was getting a little low anyways, he should probably figure out what to do before trying to deal with his brother; his emotions were still too frantic for normal conversation.

“When I get lost I just retrace my steps,” the kid’s voice was just above a whisper, a little shaky in places. “I know a lot of places though.”

Ichi couldn’t help the eye roll.

“Yeah, so do I.” He snorted. “Doesn’t help when you go new places.”

The kid seemed to consider the words, Ichimatsu wondered if he often had completely stupid conversations with strangers on a regular basis. It didn’t seem like the best plan for self preservation.

“When you go new places you just gotta bring things from the not so new places.” The boy nodded to himself, as if his words made any god damned sense in the least. “Like people! Then you won’t get lost.”

Ichimatsu felt something defensive in him flare at the words, like a quiet fire that had mostly burned out and the kid was fresh kindling.

“I don’t have any people, that’s why I’m walking alone dumbass.”

“Everyone has people, stupid.” The kid rolled his eyes at him, Ichimatsu was dangerously close to growling. Correction, he wondered if the kid had any self preservation skills at all, picking fights with strangers was a very obviously bad idea.

“Yeah? Then how come you’re out here walking alone then?”

The kid smirked, full on cocky, carefree smirked at him and Ichimatsu was taken aback. It was an echo of something, like looking at an old photograph shaded in tones of nostalgia; it stifled the fire in his lungs immediately with the starkness of ice water.

“Tch, I’m not. Obviously.”

Suddenly another boy appeared, crawling through a gap in the fence nearby. The two were very similar, bobs of dark hair, gap toothed grins and matching baggy sweaters, both lighting up upon seeing the other and giggling at an inside joke as they ran off. The first boy hesitated near the end of the street for a moment and cast him a strange stare, “The main roads just straight ahead to the intersection and to the right, just in case you are actually lost and not just a weirdo!”  

Ichi huffed.

Kids these days, weird as hell and annoying as ever.

Straight ahead and to the right it was, then. It was getting late, he better make up his damned mind.

He felt his phone vibrate, once, twice and sighed as he fished the damn thing out of his pocket once more. One new message from Karamatsu, the phone read. Ichimatsu looked up upon reaching the intersection and noticed he’d somehow managed to get himself lost over by the junkyard of all places. I guess I could just throw myself in with the rest of the trash, he thought wryly, before glancing down at the awaiting message from his idiot brother.

“Excuse me, are you Osomatsu?” A man's voice interrupted him. He instinctively replied that no, he was Ichimatsu, just in time for his brain to click in that the voice was familiar somehow and for his gut to clench with dread as he looked up and saw nothing but the empty road in front of him and felt a hard cold metal slam into the back of his head.

Darkness swallowed him up with the fading pinpoint of a far too wide grin trailing after.

Ichimatsu wasn’t at his usual alley, which was Osomatsu’s first thought. He wasn’t at the pet store either, or at pachinko. Growing up with his brother’s had always been an unfortunate series of realizing none of them knew each other nearly as well as they assumed they did, but frankly, Osomatsu was a live wire and now was not the time.

He was all impulse at the moment, if he thought too much he’d break his nerve and all of his false bravado would collapse inwards like a failing star. He needed to find his brother, make sure he was okay and then drag him home by his stupid ear to talk everything out. That’s what Ichi had wanted wasn’t it? A chance to talk it out? And Osomatsu would be lying if he pretended his soul wasn’t aching towards the thought like some twisted craving, begging to finally have someone else to shoulder this nightmare.

Mostly though, he was just terrified.

He must have really fucked up, said the words that Ichimatsu would take the hardest and now his brother was gone completely. Maybe he’d taken a train or a bus and really, entirely left. Maybe he was already standing in the upturned dust cloud and exhaust fumes and there was nothing he could do.

He had to try, dammit.

He’d been letting everything pass him by for too long, somewhere along the line his fists and red highlighted passion had faded into passivity and blank stares and his fight had become one of those sad songs he hated so much. Maybe it had been the static or the day horrors or the shadows in his vision but it had all gone too far. Like a scream stuck in his bones he needed to stop, let it out or else combust once and for all.

God, but what if Ichimatsu had found it? What if he’d already gone to the police and strung up the neon lit up target sign above his own head? What if he’d said too much and his own noose was being filled by a brother who didn’t deserve any of this at all?

Worst of all, what if someone else had already found him?

Osomatsu had never been so full of motion, he jolted across town faster than he’d ever thought possible and flickered from fear to determination like a light switch stuck on a loop. The evening light was already fading, the world revolving too quickly just to spite him and he couldn’t find Ichimatsu anywhere.

He wished he had ever actually used the phone his mother had bought all of them when Choromatsu had first mentioned moving out before all of this. Maybe then he’d know how to work the stupid screen to get a message out to anyone, everyone. He wished he’d never been so consumed by his own selfishness and vanity and that he’d tried harder and spoke kinder and he wished and he wished.

But Ichimatsu was still gone, and Tougou still had a gun and he was only one person but there was no option to quit. The panic stole his train of thought and the fear replaced his muscles with something undefined and elastic and he kept moving.

He found himself at Chibita’s, feeling like an old VHS tape rewinding too quickly. It had been months since he’d been here, and it had been dark then too. He shook himself, finally working his own locked screen and flipping through the preregistered numbers his mother had thankfully typed in long ago. He sent a message to Karamatsu, they were still on good terms weren’t they? He typed far too slowly, frustration taking him over like grinding gears inside his jaw.

Typing was stupid, fruitless, he needed answers now.

“Have you seen Ichimatsu?” The words spilled from him like hot tar, too thick without a proper inflection to make it seem like an actual question. He sounded robotic to his own ears, but he didn’t care.

Chibita seemed shocked to see him, almost paling like he’d witnessed a ghost, he didn’t care about that either. The man scratched his cheek and laughed, the sound was a little too high pitched.

“Osomatsu? Is that you? Tch, you look more like your creepy idiot brother I almost couldn’t tell you apart!” Osomatsu shook his head, he didn’t have time for this.

“Ichimatsu. Was he here.”

Chibita’s grin collapsed into a shocked ‘o’, the brusqueness of his voice combined with whatever expression had plastered across his face must have made quite the picture. Oso was getting impatient; it was too open here.

“Uh, no I haven’t seen him. I mean he usually doesn’t come this way without the rest of you idiots so –“

“Okay, thanks.” He started off down the street, gut clenching in disappointment.

“H-hey! Wait!” Chibita called, Oso didn’t bother turning back, not until he felt the man’s hand grab his forearm. “Osomatsu! What the hell! I haven’t seen any of you idiots besides Karamatsu in months, you show up looking like complete hell and you’re just going to leave?” Chibita looked a little frantic, brows drawn so tightly together the little furrow between them was practically a carved out chunk on his forehead. A different time Osomatsu might have felt something about how concerned the guy looked, he might have wanted to explain and apologize and make it up to the only real friend any of them had held onto for so many years.

“Chibita…”

“Listen, I-I know all you idiots come here for is cheap food and… and don’t think I’ve forgotten about your tab, heh… but… If anything was going on, if you needed anything you know you can always come to me, right?” He was so earnest, so nearly bursting with emotion that it hurt for Osomatsu to look directly at him. He thought, briefly, about telling Chibita everything, about getting him to help look for Ichi and then, afterwards, maybe they could talk about how to put his life back together. He thought, briefly, about all the times he’d vented his problems to the man and the advice Chibita had given in return and all the free drinks he didn’t need to let Osomatsu have but did anyways.

But there was so much to explain, so much going on that made the realities between the last time he’d been in this very spot to the present seem unrecognizable. Incompatible. Like a freshly painted building that had been hit by a hurricane, there was nothing left here for him to put back together. The times he’d gone to Chibita’s for emotional support seemed so stupidly trivial now, his anger so forced and fake and empty. The Osomatsu Chibita was pleading to wasn’t here anymore, and this Osomatsu had no time left to spare. The realization was faint, an imprint of a thing that might have been paradigm shifting but instead had all the impact of a rain drop.

He pulled his arm from Chibita’s hold without a word and continued forward. Chibita had looked a little lost in the halo of the streetlight, nearly hugging himself, nearly heartbroken, but Osomatsu couldn’t care about that either.

This Osomatsu had already broken everything apart, one more fracture was just part of the package deal. It didn’t matter if he somehow lived through all of this and had nothing left at all.

He probably deserved it anyways.

It ached anyways, no matter how hard he pretended it didn’t, everything was shifting so far from where he started he didn’t know how to reconcile this information with everything else. The dread and fear bubbling under his skin sent waves of anxiety coiling throughout him, there was no time to dwell on anything at all. Ichimatsu was in horrible danger, everyone was in danger, and waiting only meant more blood on his hands.

He glanced down at his phone as it beeped cheerily at him, noting that more time had passed while he had fallen into a strange automated fugue. ‘Osomatsu what’s going on? Ichi isn’t answering’ His phone beeped again, a series of panicked texts as Karamatsu realized who he was speaking to probably, a thousand questions waiting on the other side of the line. It had been a while, hadn’t it? So much to catch up on no doubt, murders and missing brothers for one thing.

‘Need to find him. Danger’ he typed back, and threw the thing into his back pocket. Danger for all of them if he didn’t hurry.

He’d run out of places to look, and in his brief lapse of focus he’d ran off towards the junkyard without thinking. The dim sunlight was falling away as hues of blue and purple seeped inwards and the timer in his head screamed that the countdown was in its final throes. Something had to happen, the other shoe had to drop sometime, he’d just been preventing it. Delaying it.

With Ichimatsu hanging in the balance Oso was a dangerous man, he had nothing left to lose and he was reckless. He needed a hint, a clue, something at all to tell him where to direct his energy. He felt like a time bomb with no direction, desperation inciting his fuse to burn even faster.

A small meow directed his attention towards the darker shadows of the junkyard itself. A cat, he noted distractedly, strange. He hadn’t seen or heard a single one in the mess of hours and minutes he’d been rampaging through the city. It leaped down into the light from a streetlight, towards him with a plaintive meow, orange and gold fur flashing with a beacons brightness in the gloom, goggled glasses covering its half lidded eyes.

ESP Kitty.

Osomatsu didn’t believe in his good luck anymore. In another lifetime he must have done something horrible, and in this one only kept the bad choices rolling because frankly his life was too full of strange misfortunes and failures to be normal. The fates had frowned at him once and the rest had followed, everyone else only getting swept up along for the miserable ride.

However, ESP Kitty was waiting for him in a junkyard alone. ESP Kitty, the very same cat that was nearly attached to Ichimatsu at the hip and who hadn’t been near him in weeks, and yet there it was. Staring at him and meowing in a sort of urgent manner and Osomatsu would be damned if he didn’t take the sign in front of him.

Ichimatsu was nearby, he had to be.

Osomatsu didn’t hesitate a moment longer, didn’t think with the self driven fear for his own safety that had been hanging off of him like chains for the past few months, he just stepped forward. He was thinking of Ichi, thinking of all the kind efforts his brother had been placing in front of him like meals for a starving man only to have them all shoved back in his face. He was thinking of a little boy with wide eyes and a nervous smile and patient words sitting nearby and holding his hand without a question. He was thinking of ways to say thank you, of things that meant more than I’m sorry, of a happier ending than the one he’d been haunted by.

Osomatsu didn’t believe in good luck, but he believed in bad luck.

“Well, well, well. Look who finally stumbled into our little nest.” Everything in him solidified into cement and ice, he tripped and stumbled out of himself, watching distantly in horror. The voice from his worst imaginings slipped outwards from the shadows like serpents, solidifying as the man stepped forwards into the pale moonlight.

Tougou, the boogeyman himself, stared at Osomatsu from the corner of the junkyard with a twisted toothy smirk, holding a gun casually in one hand trained towards another shadow. As he stepped forwards the shadows fell away, unwilling to relinquish their second captive, but finally revealing a battered and bruised and familiar face– Osomatsu’s mind reeled and spun away, far away this can’t be real this can’t be real.

Ichimatsu sagged in Tougou’s grip, trapped under his iron like chokehold and seemingly barely conscious and Osomatsu’s world splintered and shattered into a thousand pieces.

“Nice of you to finally join us, Osomatsu. Now the fun can really begin.”

Chapter Text

Ichimatsu was having a wonderful time.

The night air was comfortably warm, the overheard orange glow was soothing in an aesthetically charged way that made him almost sleepy. He glanced to his left and was met by six grinning faces and another round of laughter. Steam rose lazily from a fresh batch of oden and Chibita seemed strangely pleased with all of them, no trace of his usual disgruntlement or playful anger.

Another cozy night of drinking with his brothers, the perfect end to a calm summer day.

If everything moved a little slower than it should, and the sound seemed a little more muffled than it had any right to be, Ichimatsu didn’t focus on it. It didn’t matter, he hadn’t felt this at peace since… since a long while, since before… whatever it was that had happened.

There was something he couldn’t recall, a skipping stone across his mind’s still waters leaving only the barest ripple. He’d been upset before and now he wasn’t, a strange effect without a cause, a missing page of resolution to connect him to the happy ending. The thought seemed so insignificant, the sound of underwater laughter swept past him and the almost concern faded away into nothing at all.

“You seem quiet Ichi,” He turned, slowly painfully slowly and met Osomatsu’s raised brows and cocky smirk. For some reason the sight made his chest tighten briefly, like seeing an old friend for the first time in a long while. “Something bothering you?”

Normally the sentence would piss him off; firstly, he was always quiet and calling him out on it only made him withdraw further –Osomatsu of all people knew this. Second, something was always bothering him, what was the point in asking?

But it was Osomatsu, his big brother who always had his back in some way or another. But the way his brother was smiling seemed so rare, all for him and so pure he couldn’t find it in him to be annoyed. But the air was so still and the moment so gossamer thin and he didn’t want to press too hard, lest it all slip away.

He offered a small smile, and a shrug. Osomatsu’s smirk melted into a warm soft thing and he bumped his shoulder into Ichi’s companionably.

“It’s been a while since we’ve been here, huh?” Osomatsu took a sip of his drink with the kind of casual air that always made Ichi a little jealous. Oso was always so sure of himself, so relaxed and confident in a way he himself could never be.

“Yeah,” he nodded, though he couldn’t remember why. Had it been a while? They usually came by every other night, or even every night if they had some cash and hadn’t pissed Chibita off too much that week. It felt like it had been only yesterday they’d been out for drinks, but he couldn’t remember how long ago yesterday was.

Jyushimatsu peeked over behind Osomatsu with his typical goofy grin. “It’s been too long! Far too long! We need to drink way more to keep it up!”

The brother’s chuckled in response, Ichimatsu felt his own lips tug downwards for a reason he couldn’t quite place. Why was hearing Jyushimatsu’s voice making him feel so intensely homesick?

“I propose a drink,” Karamatsu spoke up. “to finally beginning on the paths we were always meant to follow.”

“Here, here!” Todomatsu’s sing-songcheer followed, as he lifted his half finished cup. Ichimatsu felt himself raise his glass along with the others, though his brain felt stuck, clogged with cotton or sap and fifteen steps behind the conversation.

Choromatsu chimed in, “to finally changing our shitty lives around!”

“To new adventures!” Jyushi added enthusiastically.

“To new friends!” Totty laughed.

“To forgetting the old!” Karamatsu drank again, and Ichi felt the wind shift slightly.

“To never looking back!” Jyushi cheered, but his voice was starting to sound farther and farther away and Ichi couldn’t see the flash of his yellow sweater anymore.

Osomatsu slowly reached for his glass beside him, the light had faded away without Ichi noticing. It was night time, maybe, but the darkness seemed so inked in and thick and sudden, and he couldn’t see his brother’s smile.

“To ruining everything, to loneliness and loss. Most importantly, to never ever,” he took a long slow drink, Ichi felt wind whipping around him but he couldn’t look away from the shadow where Osomatsu had been. “seeing your brothers again.”

A lightbulb flickered above them, but it wasn’t Osomatsu anymore.

He was gaunt and pale, sickly, death written in every concave turn to his stocky frame. His mouth was turned downwards, pained and twisted, and Ichi felt a scream filling him up from the inside when Oso stepped closer and his eyes, oh god his eyes, were glazed completely over and devoid of any spark at all. They were so dark, dark enough to see his own horrified expression in the dim reflection and endlessly, unfalteringly, staring.

“Look what you’ve done, Ichimatsu. Look what you’ve done.”

He spoke but it was Ichi’s own voice tumbling from his brother’s too slow lips, Ichi’s own disappointment pulling at Osomatsu’s brows and his hands and suddenly he was reaching for him, grasping him by the shoulder and Ichi couldn’t move couldn’t speak – he wanted to fling himself as far away as he could because this, this was not his brother, this was a bad puppeteering job and someone needed to cut the strings – before finally Osomatsu smirked and  shoved him backwards off his stool and down, down into the inky darkness.

Ichimatsu woke up in layers.

First he heard sounds, disjointed and fractured. Someone was laughing but the tone was off, it was glass slivers where it should have been round and bubbly and it was unfamiliar. The sound was so close, too close, it pounded in his brain and he must have groaned his pain aloud because it cut itself off abruptly.

Next the words floated through. Words like “waiting” and “revenge” and “brother”. And Ichi knew something was wrong, horribly so, but his head throbbed off tempo to his heartbeat and he couldn’t process thoughts beyond it. The talking only made it worse, he wanted to tell whoever it was to shut up and let him sleep, or to thank the voice for distracting him from his own brain.

After a moment he began to process that he was in fact standing up, or being propped up anyways. There was something heavy and stiff and far too warm pressing down and inwards on his shoulders and finally his brain began to stutter to a start.

Someone was holding him up, someone with big beefy arms who smelled coppery and greasy and distressingly sweaty. He attempted to shift, to push the arm off of him and was met by more resistance and the press of something cold to his heated skin.

“N-no,” he groaned in aggravation. “I’ll kill you…” His brother’s usually paid the threat no heed but he couldn’t get his thoughts to sort themselves into proper boxes and he needed whoever’s smelly arm that was locked around him to get the hell off.

Finally, as the laughter started up again, he thought to crack his eyes open. The violets and blues told him nothing, maybe it was late? Maybe he was inside somewhere? Totoko’s maybe? He heard she was heading back from her trip soon, maybe he’d visited and he couldn’t remember. A little more of a peek told him he was in fact standing, that someone’s hairy arm was draped around him, and that someone was standing across from him in the spotlight of an orange filled halo.

Someone in a musty red hoodie, with the terrified eyes of a caged animal and who was trembling all over. He frowned, then winced.

“O-osomatsu niisan?” He tried, the words slurring together nearly intelligibly. The laughter from somewhere behind him increased, the cold thing pressing almost painfully against him. He grumbled and tried to pull away only to realize there was nowhere to go.

His brother’s faint outline trembled harder, taking an aborted step forwards, then backwards. Ichimatsu couldn’t remember any time he’d seen his brother seem so indecisive, like he was trapped. Through the fog, like a beacon, his heart ached.

“I can be a reasonable man,” the laughing voice behind him spoke, each word sending daggers through Ichi’s skull. “I know when it’s wrong to split a family apart.”

The metal bit into his skin and he let out a yelp instinctively. He was jostled forwards, the man's arm pulling him farther upright from where he hadn’t realized he’d been drooping. It was so hard to think, god his head hurt. If he could just nap it off for a brief moment, if the word would stop turning so fast maybe he could figure out what was going on.

Maybe he could figure out why his older brother looked so completely horrified, so reminiscent of a dream that hadn’t quite relinquished its grasp. Something sticky was sliding down the back of his neck he realized faintly as the humor from the mysterious voice dropped abruptly.

“I have enough bullets for the both of you.” A strange sliding noise like a gear being compressed accompanied the cold press of metal.

“No!” Osomatsu’s voice cut him to the quick, sent a shiver through the air and a touch of reality through him.

He sounded off, like an elastic just on the verge of breaking or a tea kettle about to boil over. Ichimatsu forced himself to open his eyes again, he wasn’t sure when they’d closed.

“No…. please…. Please I’ll- I’ll do whatever you w-want I swear. Just like last time.” Osomatsu was taking small steps forward, arm outstretched and he was shaking so hard it looked almost painful. Ichi’s brows drew together in concern, or maybe confusion, maybe a combination of the two. There were rusted scraps of metal in the distance, just beyond Oso’s teary, wide eyes. The junkyard? Why would they be in the junkyard? Last he remembered, he’d been in an alleyway, he was sure of that much at least.

The man snorted, shifting Ichi’s weight again as easy as a ragdoll.

“Like last time? Last time when you tried to leave little notes and warnings behind? When I ended up behind bars for far too many years?” He laughed, it was hollow and dark and filled with the edge of anger that often followed horror movie villains. “No, no this won’t be like last time.”

Osomatsu gulped, his gaze flickering to Ichi’s own half lidded stare, something pleading and so desperately apologetic stitched across the rounded darkness of his eyes.

“Please… anything, I’ll do anything just… Just let him go, Tougou.”

Tougou? That name…. The name was it’s own memory. Like a message on a chalkboard that had been hastily erased, he could almost see it; it was on the tip of his tongue, just out of reach.

“There’s nothing for you to hide behind, none of your little tricks to save you now. Did you think I didn’t know it was you? Did you think you were safe? Silly boy, I always knew it was you that night. Only you would be stupid enough to try to hide from me.”

His head throbbed painfully, enough to make his stomach churn dangerously and his vision swim.

Ichi’s hand, the one not awkwardly squished between himself and the frightening shadow looming beside him, fumbled awkwardly towards his pocket. His phone, if he could just grab his phone… He remembered… he’d been texting; he’d gotten a message from Shittymatsu. Something about Osomatsu  and… and… his fingers brushed against a hard plastic ridge, Ichimatsu blessed the high heavens and his mother for constantly and aggressively reminding them all to treat their new phones like glass because she would not be buying them a second one. He must have instinctively shoved the thing back into his pocket when he’d been… when he’d…

He couldn’t quite think, the thoughts kept fading like fireflies and scattering off into the wind before he could catch them but he knew. He knew that the look on Osomatsu’s face was unbearable, that he’d stop the world right on it’s axis if he had to because his niisan should never look so hopeless and desperate and broken. A careful shift of his hand and he hoped with everything in him and every thread along the patchwork made night sky that he could just do this, just this one thing.

Ichimatsu watched a familiar orange cat leap down from a pile of dusty tires, and trot towards a circle of light on the nearby alley road.

J-U-N he typed, hoped he typed. The screen should be still open to his last conversation, it should have been open to the keyboard and unlocking the thing should have been as easy as hitting the button on the side with his thumb. Ichimatsu wasn’t sure if he believed in fates or luck but he needed everything he could gather at the moment, everything that would keep the fragile night sewn together.

The metal press shifted away, K-Y-A-R, he’s holding a gun his mind supplied unhelpfully once more. The press of cold steel like a kiss to his temple had been a gun, a loaded one at that. Through the curl of mist in his bones, a tendril of fear dredged its way into his throat, enough to allow him to hit the final letter and an approximation of where the send option should be in quick succession.

Please, please, he repeated in his mind like a mantra before the thoughts slipped out of focus.

“Don’t worry. I’ll send your brother after you. I’ll be sure to find the other four as well, to give them your best regards.” The gun was pointing away from him, towards Osomatsu, and the edges of his vision were blurring together in a strange slow motion.

Ichimatsu realized abruptly, that this was what had been haunting his brother for months. This man, with this same gun, staring down the long side of his own short end. Somewhere in his attempt to help, Ichi had managed to stumble directly into Osomatsu’s worst fears and breathe life into them.

‘You ruined everything,’ Oso’s voice blended with his own voice, and it rang with more truth than he could handle.

There was nothing he could do, not with his wobbly knees and pulsing vision. There was no way away from this, but he could see home in his head anyways and he wanted it, so, so badly. Another life in a room filled with the yellow light of morning and surrounded by smiling faces that mirrored his own and it ached, like a drilled space in the center of himself because it seemed a thousand miles away, unreachable and already faded.

There was nothing Ichimatsu could do to avoid the blood splattered torn edges of this scripted act. There was nothing except the gun and a bullet and nightmares, here. He couldn’t fix this.

But he could try anyways.  

There was a gap between the seconds that didn’t belong, a strange slow inversion to every moment. He had too much clarity as he twisted in Tougou’s distracted hold, biting down on the arm constricting his neck and shoulders, jamming his feet downwards and ducking with everything in him. As the man flailed in surprise, releasing his death grip, Ichimatsu stumbled forwards and sent a sharp kick backwards as hard as he was capable. The satisfying connection of his heel was enough.

The look of something nearly hopeful flickering across his brother’s expression as he looked up and ran was enough. For a long moment, he let himself dream of nights on futons surrounded by pleasant snores and cheerful, sunny afternoons. He let himself imagine the pure, untampered happiness and wholeness they’d chase after, the way everything would work itself out just fine and they’d all be together and alive and laughing again. Because the man, Tougou had underestimated him, because he was stronger than he looked and because he refused to leave this moment fractured and dead at his feet.

Then the moment clicked outwards and released with a loud bang, like the pop of a bubble, or the rush of a bullet, and Ichimatsu didn’t have time to think he simply bowled into his brother’s surprised arms and pushed. He felt a punch land on his right shoulder as he hit the dirt, felt the soft oomph of his lungs as he smacked into the dirt beside his brother, and felt the ring of his ears wail out louder than any alarm bells he’d ever heard.

In the sudden stillness, he’d nearly allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief. They’d still have to run, Tougou still had a gun but they could run together, they could fight back, and the dizziness sticking to his gums didn’t seem so unbearable. Ichimatsu sat up, the slowed tempo of reality around him warping confusingly around his shoulder and he rubbed the joint absently, thinking only of their freedom hanging so closely nearby. Thinking only of home, and his very alive, very traumatized brother.

But as he looked over, Osomatsu’s wide eyed stare had melted from hope to something horrible, something like a scream and his mouth was rounding out into a circle like the punctured hiss of a balloon. But Osomatsu was whispering his name in the quietest, shakiest whimper, and Ichimatsu’s attention was fluttering to the sharp fractures and dead screen of his phone that had landed between them both during his desperate tackle.

Ichimatsu couldn’t say which realization swept the final curtains in his mind across the stage. The now broken last chance at safety lying almost poetically in the dirt with his last desperate text floating somewhere in that shattered electronic void, or his own outstretching hand—reaching to comfort Osomatsu somehow in any way that he could—covered in a painting of vivid, red blood.

The first licks of agony rippled, finally, with the sound of a gasped ‘oh’, just as his vision blurred once more and Ichimatsu collapsed gracelessly across his brother’s lap. His fading gaze locked only on the figure of Tougou, stepping slowly towards them with the grace of a jaguar hunting its prey as he gave into the swirling grey in his mind once more.

“Ichi! Ichimatsu come on, y-you… Wake up! Please, oh god, no… Ichi…”

Everything was splitting apart atom by atom, rolling out and up and he couldn’t breathe because his brother had just been shot and Tougou was still right there. Osomatsu didn’t know when reality had somehow splintered into a parody of his worst imaginings, when the dim light around him had grown so cold and viscerally real. The feeling of existing outside of himself— of watching from a distance as he cried and shook his brother desperately, as Ichimatsu’s eyes glazed over and fluttered closed—combatted against the sheer revulsion broiling in his gut.

“Ichi… please…”

He’d caused this. His silence, his cowardice, his unwillingness to face the truth had allowed for the gunshot and this dark stain of blood across the dirt. It burned like a torn hole against his heart, and that too was too much. Ichimatsu had ended up tangled up in this hell along with him because he’d been stupid and selfish and how he was bleeding out into a shitty junkyard in the middle of the night, all because he’d cared. All because he’d tried to help.

 And there was nothing Osomatsu could do, because Tougou was still standing there, calmly reloading his gun with the same wicked grin as before, as if all of this was simply a slight miscalculation to his original plan. As if he were about to whistle a calming tune and cheerfully stroll back into the shadows that had breathed his existence into Osomatsu’s life, and drag his bleeding brother along with him.

Osomatsu had been ready for it, before Ichi had abruptly sprung into action. There was something about finally staring down the barrel of the gun he’d been dreading for so long that was almost akin to relief. Something about facing an imminent end that made him suddenly brave; tilt his chin upwards in defiance and curl his fists and allow his trademark smirk to break across his lips. He’d been ready before this, but the blood on his hands was too vivid. The gasp of pain from Ichi’s lips too visceral. He was scared now, scared of Ichi leaving him here, maybe. Scared because he was alone.

He’d seen the light from Ichi’s cellphone, seen the shot at survival in every shaky thumb press and it had made him brave. He’d thought maybe Ichi had a chance and it had been enough to make him stand tall against the boogeyman across from him.

But it hadn’t been enough for Ichi, he supposed. Ichimatsu, for all his pessimism and negativity, had refused to settle, refused to lie down and accept their given roles and had fought back.

His brother had been struggling, he’d noticed, consciousness pulling in and out and displayed painfully across his weak knees and dazed eyes. It had nearly killed Osomatsu to hear the faint moans of pain ripping gutturally from somewhere deeply instinctive within his little brother. And yet, somehow he’d found the strength to pull and kick and lash out and he’d broken free.

The only consolation for his last ditch efforts, a bullet wound and a temporarily delayed death.

He was screaming, he thought, he must be. But it was quiet around them, only punctured by Ichimatsu’s pained breaths.

“Ichi…” Osomatsu pleaded, begged around the silence stuffed into his lungs. He felt compacted, closed in with a desperate sob welling in his throat, but his brother’s eyes remained closed, the pool of dark dirt beneath him only growing steadily larger. He shifted his brother from his legs, as the steady clicks and steps of Tougou’s approach grew louder. He bent his head low, pressing his shaking brow to Ichimatsu’s grimy, bloodied one. No, no. God, please, no.

“Ah, I missed didn’t I?” The man spoke, a dark pleasure lilting his tone to something sickly and sweet. “Well that is a shame, isn’t it? I’ll make sure I aim for the heart next time, wouldn’t want to drag out the poor boy’s suffering any longer would we?”

Osomatsu’s skin crawled, his mind locked somewhere far away as he hunched his shoulders and pulled himself upwards, staring at the pained furrow between his brother’s eyebrows, the faint rise and fall of his chest, the dark tear across his shoulder. This wasn’t how it was meant to play out. Ichimatsu was never supposed to be hurt. He swallowed, his mouth too dry and his heart too close to breaking apart entirely.

He didn’t know what to do. He pressed his palm to Ichi’s cheek, rubbing his thumb across too warm skin gently. “I’m sorry, ototo,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

He’d thought of what he’d do when he encountered Tougou again so many times, he’d thought of begging and crying and sobbing, of rolling over and allowing the inevitable to sweep over him. He’d imagined it would be in a dark alley, alone and unguarded, and he’d close his eyes and wait.

Now, with Tougou’s wicked grin slashing a gap right through the quiet stillness of the night, with the failing brightness of a cracked cellphone in front of him- their last dwindling hope, broken in front of them- with his brother’s stuttering breaths echoing in his heart…

Osomatsu felt empty. He’d been so abuzz with conflicting emotions and fears and panic for so long, dulled with the static and noise from reports and distant sorrow. He’d been manic and stifled but always, always terrified for so long, there was nothing left in him. The worst had already happened, the climactic sharp turn reached. He was somewhere else. Somewhere far away from the junkyard grime and the dirt, somewhere quiet and safe with Ichimatsu tucked carefully into his arms.

He was lifted up to his feet by a fisted hand in the front of his hoodie; he felt like he’d fallen this time, finally, too far away from himself. He wasn’t there with the demonic, beady eyes and the press of the gun to his chin. The parts of him that were singed and unravelled and feared death so terribly that it coated his teeth in a strange sour panic were gone elsewhere. All that remained was a deep unrelenting love for his brothers, and that was more than enough.

He looked up, staring directly into Tougou’s furious eyes, with the gun cocked and loaded and dangerously close to the thin skin of his neck, and he smiled.

“It’s… beyond troublesome to think how you’ve continued to be a thorn in my side. Even ten years later, you’re stumbling in and ruining everything.” Tougou’s voice was a sneer, a manic thing twisted around barbed wire. Osomatsu’s smile didn’t falter, his glazed stare didn’t crack.

“Did you know I was going to leave you and your pathetic family alone? Yeah, that’s right. I wasn’t going to bother with any of you, allow you to live your miserable lives. But then, ha. Then you had to be there, hiding in the background like always, finding out far more than you should.”

The metal of the gun was ice cold, a stark contrast against the comfortable warmth of the summer night. A pinpoint of sensation against Osomatsu’s trailing thoughts.

“I won’t go back to jail again; I won’t be caught by you again. You miserable Matsuno, scum of this city, seeping in and ruining— Did you know you are the only thing that stands between me and my freedom?”

Osomatsu thought of Totoko, of Iyami and Dayon and Hatabo. He thought of their mother, their father who would come home to an empty house. He thought of Karamatsu’s painful smile, Todomatsu’s playful eyerolls, Jyushimatsu’s enthusiasm and positivity. He thought of Choromatsu, of how much he missed his nervous brother’s analytical mind to balance out his own impulsivity. He missed their late night talks and teasing banter, the way Choro would flip completely out of control when he pushed too far, the way they’d shared secrets and stories over the years.

He thought of home.  

 “Unlucky for you, I’m a little too desperate.”

He shifted his faraway stare back to Tougou’s, taking in the hinge of fury creeping around the edges of his wrinkled eyes.

“Stop! Smiling!” Tougou jammed the gun farther up under Osomatsu’s chin, eliciting a gasp, and shook him. Osomatsu grinned wider. Somewhere in the distance he heard a rhythmic tapping, a faint meow, almost something like voices.

Tougou growled, the sound like a revving chainsaw. Lights were beginning to flicker on in buildings nearby as the man lost his temper. His voice was too much for the empty space of the junkyard, each metal bit and rusted hinge working against him to send his booming anger into the night sky.

“Do you not understand, you idiot? You’re going to die here, along with your brother,” He dragged Osomatsu closer, enough to feel the heat of the man's fevered breaths splash across his face. Somewhere in him, to the tempo of the looming tapping, his heart began to thump again. It felt like daybreak.

“I think you’re the one who doesn’t understand,” Osomatsu whispered. “But then again, you’ve always been pretty stupid.”

“You dare –!“

Osomatsu placed a hand calmly against the fisted hand in his hoodie, the other against the gun.

“You must think I’m still afraid of you, that I’m still the little boy you bullied and terrified and beat up. You’re thinking that I haven’t changed at all. It’s just funny,” he barked out a laugh. “really it’s you that hasn’t changed. Not one bit.”

He pressed his thumb into the release on the side of the gun, allowing the magazine to drop heavily into the dirt between them. He could give Ichimatsu this much, he could give him a few seconds for the footsteps drawing near to save him. Tougou only had one bullet, now.

Tougou’s eyes widened, then narrowed, his finger itching downwards ready to fire the bullet still firmly loaded and waiting. One bullet, one target. Osomatsu closed his eyes and tilted his head back and waited for the inevitable, waited for that hairsbreadth more of a second.

He felt, rather than heard the pop of the gun resound, like a crack of lightning across the darkness.

Chapter Text

Someone was shaking him, he felt an animalistic groan rip through him, a firewall of agony driving him from his half sleep into wakefulness once more. His gaze fluttered open, a guttural pained sound following.

Familiar, worried eyes stared down at him.

Ichimatsu’s brain was too far gone; wrapped within layers of bubble wrap and cotton, unable to process anything other than the faint brother that trailed around him.

Someone was speaking, splinters of sentences stabbing into his aching skull and pulling more agonized sounds from his lips.

“ –matsu! There’s too much I—“

“You have to stay awake, okay? You’re going to –“

“Ichi!”

“—bita, I don’t think he can hear me, can you –“

Something pressed against the embers that made up his shoulders and instinctively he arched away from it, feeling his spine creak and crackle as a weak scream worked its way up from his chest. It felt worse, so much worse, it was all pain. He couldn’t breath it felt like someone driving a hot poker into an already gaping wound and his mind scuttled away, fleeing in sheer terror of how badly he hurt.

The press shifted, driving less like knives and liquid agony and more like a muffled wall of sparks. He gasped in a breath, fight leaving him and warmth spilling from his eyes. Words trickled back through the haziness, he tried to focus on their sounds, desperate for something other than pain to hold onto.

“Oh, oh god… Shh…shh…” The voice was smooth and soft and desperately clattering, shaking apart before the words could formulate. The worry was palpable. A hand pressed gently against his clammy forehead, dragging his sticky bangs back in a slow, soothing gesture.

“Ichimatsu, my little Ichi… you’re going to be okay, I promise. My brother... Just breathe slowly, okay? Breathe a-and… and focus on me.”

A part of him felt an accustomed pang of annoyance at the phrase. Simply from an old memory, something he couldn’t dredge up at the moment but knew was there. The words were spoken far too gently and sincerely and scared this time, the confusion and worry won out and he forced his eyelids to open once more.

This time, with the pain lowly burning and the drowsiness temporarily distant he could focus more. He took in the tear streaks, the watery smile, the absolute horror tied into worry lines and creases.

“K-karamatsu?” His tongue felt heavy, fuzzy and foreign and clumsy. His mouth was too dry, he tried to swallow and winced as the movement sparked a reminder of pain in his skull. Confusion bled into his being, slowly filling with worry and panic because, hadn’t something been happening? Hadn’t he been thinking about something only moments before? Karamatsu hadn’t been here, shouldn’t be here, he knew as much. Time was flowing backwards maybe, or sideways. He’d missed something important. Concern and fear must have lit in his eyes before he could attempt the struggling movement he’d instinctively desired, needing to sit upright and understand what was going on. Karamatsu looked distraught, he’d only ever seen any of his brother’s look so deeply afraid a handful of times, and god, why did he hurt?

A careful hand pressed against his chest, holding him in place. “No, no don’t sit up, shh. It’s going to be fine…” Karamatsu sounded more like he was convincing himself; his Big Brother instincts locked Karamatsu’s voice tightly. Karamatsu never stepped into the leadership role unless he had to, unless something was horribly wrong, and—

Abruptly, he felt incredibly weak. Distant, a bare impression of a person. He forgot what he’d been thinking, worrying about, watching the stars distantly above them both. A smile tugged at his lips. It was cold for a summer’s night, for Karamatsu to be out without his sweater.

“S’okay,” Ichimatsu breathed, his voice heavy and slurred. He wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but Karamatsu looked so worried and a part of him needed to set everything right. “Missed you, all ‘a you. S’weird seein’ you all… grown up. Who’d a thought, huh?” He laughed, and a pained cough stole his breath for a moment. Karamatsu was shushing him, softly, brokenly, he had to keep going. He didn’t know why it was suddenly so important for him to finish his scattered thoughts- yes you do- but he yearned to erase that desperate fear leaking from Karamatsu’s features so badly- he was losing his brother of course he was afraid; you’d be too if you hadn’t pushed Oso- it hurt. Like the faint fire in his arm but more twisted up and jagged and closer to his heart.

Ichimatsu swallowed roughly, “it’s…. okay. You’re gunna be…okay. Love you.”

He tried to keep his gaze focused on the teary brown ones above him, but he was so tired. So drained, like he’d been emptied out and replaced with cotton balls. The silver stars were so captivating, cold and far away, and he could feel it, could almost be one of them. Karamatsu was crying in earnest now, the tears on his cheeks felt like rain, everything hanging on like a puff of silvery breath in winter.

Fading, fading, and finally. 

Quietly vanishing into the dark. 

The gun pop left his world inverted, a hollow concave where sound no longer bubbled outward in arcs but crashed inwards upon themselves with only a distant thump.

He hadn’t expected this.

Osomatsu hadn’t expected to be alive at all, let alone staring in surprise as a fried dish launched out of the darkness to smack Tougou across the face for a second time in the span of a few seconds. The pink scalding mark from the earlier assault—the sudden impact surprising Tougou enough to instinctively draw his arm towards his face in defense, an aborted half motion, but enough to direct his final stray bullet away from Osomatsu’s chin— was reminiscent of their first encounter. The lack of coffee permeating the air, the lack of electric lighting and the fact that the man’s face was far too close, separated the two moments enough for Osomatsu to grab his bearings.

Not a second too soon, as Tougou yelled in frustrated rage and pain and lunged for him just as he jolted backwards.

The second broiled dish had allowed for a moment of reprieve, but the third only served to aggravate Tougou even further.

Osomatsu temporarily escaped the brunt of Tougou’s rage, gathering himself and his shaky knees and disconnected thoughts enough to process that he needed to leave. Now. Bullets gone and all, Tougou’s threat had significantly dropped, but he was still irrational and livid and dangerous. Enough of a reason for Osomatsu’s self preservation instincts to kick in and send him scuttling backwards.

He traced the trajectory of the continued hot foods back to the origin, somewhere enveloped in too much darkness to make out. The glow from the streetlamps highlighted ESP Kitty, licking its paw contentedly, settling its rising hackles. Beyond the dim orange light, two silhouettes charged forwards, one of them touting a large object.

A…. cannon? Chibita’s oden launcher, to be specific.

He definitely hadn’t expected this.

A faint groan from behind him snapped his attention from the unfolding scene. Ichimatsu!

Osomatsu scrambled closer to his brother, lying in the dirt, far too still and far too pale. The blood from his shoulder had soaked through a large portion of his hoodie and the ground around him, leaving a ghastly scene that Oso knew would haunt him for the rest of his short life. He didn’t know how to help, how to keep his brother from paling further or prevent the strange blue tinge to his lips, but he had to try.

Tougou howled in furious pain once more and the tapping of footsteps drew nearer, distant shouts accompanying them. Quickly, Oso pulled them both behind a nearby stack of rubbish, out of sight for the moment. Safe, temporarily.

Osomatsu pulled off his hoodie, relatively clean despite everything, even if it hadn’t been washed in a few days. Shakily he bundled it up into a ball, and lifted his brother slightly, enough to push the wad of fabric underneath the exit wound and ease Ichi’s weight back on top of it. He didn’t know much about bullet wounds, about injuries this extreme, but with the strange chaos of their lives he’d picked up a few tidbits of information here and there. Enough to know how to unload a magazine clip from a handgun, enough to know that an exit wound was good but also meant more blood loss.

Enough to know Ichi was running out of time.

He whispered endlessly, words of comfort and shaky attempts at comfort but Ichi couldn’t hear him, too far gone already with the stress of his earlier trauma. He needed another miracle, another chance, anything. Ichi didn’t have the time for this.

The phone! There’d been a cracked phone in front of them before, Ichimatsu’s phone. But then, where was his phone? He’d had it earlier- a quick pat of his back pocket told him it was missing currently.  If he could grab that he could call the police, get an ambulance to pack up his brother and breathe colour back into his skin. The blue hues were terrifying, amplified by the pale purple of his brother’s hoodie and the juxtaposition of vivid red pooling out and away.  Red that couldn’t possibly be all Ichimatsu’s, there was so much of it, surely he’d be dead if that…

He shook himself, dark thoughts wouldn’t help them now. He needed the phone.

Osomatsu made sure to tuck his brother into the shadows, as best as he could, and rubbed a shaky hand across Ichimatsu’s clammy forehead.

“We’ll get out of this yet, little brother. You’ll see,” he sniffed, the forced bravado of his tone ruined slightly by the burning tears still streaming down his cheeks. But Ichimatsu wasn’t awake enough to notice anyways, hadn’t offered much more than a weak pained groan at his fussing, a weak toss of his head when he’d been jostled, a weak furrow of his brows at Oso’s words.

Ichimatsu had always been gloomy, a little lazy and slow moving perhaps, but never weak. He had a hidden strength underneath all his soft cat loving side and dark expressions, and he’d always been just as ready to join in on their antics as the rest of them. Osomatsu had always admired his little brother’s talent for displays of sudden ferocity, his sudden passion; it always took people by surprise. Ichimatsu had never, ever, been weak though. He’d pull through this, he had to.

“Love you little brother,” he brushed a knuckle across Ichi’s cheek and glanced upwards.

Osomatsu gulped nervously, trying to swallow back the looming dread for a brief moment of respite. He had to find his courage again, Ichimatsu needed him.

He peeked out from behind their shelter, watching as Tougou reeled back once more as a strange food like object splattered across his enraged face. The silhouettes were close enough now that he could almost make out their features, part of him knew he should be curious about who could possibly be running to his aid but the thought wasn’t prevalent. His mind was firmly locked into instinctual danger mode, his vision narrowed only on the faint reflection of a phone screen just outside the circle of streetlight glow, an uncracked phone screen. A cell phone Tougou didn’t realize was still in play.

“I don’t know who you think you are,” Tougou growled, every ounce of him predatorily livid and edged outwards like the shoulders of a jaguar waiting to pounce. “but if you take one more shot, I will kill you both where you stand.”

Osomatsu hedged out around the pile of junk, his vision flashing with memories as the similarities clashed within him.

He saw fluorescent lighting and too bright tiles, stacks of keychains and baking goods on his sides. The night was still fresh, quieting still into a heavier darkness. The touch of summer lingering between the cold trailing breeze and reminding Osomatsu faintly of holidays and vacations in his younger years, when they’d play in trees with flashlights and catch fireflies in glass bottles.

He needed to be quiet, had to be careful because through his hazy mind there was still an ever present feeling of danger, of something irrevocably not quite right. Though Tougou was distracted at the moment, waving his gun in a show of power at the two newcomers, Osomatsu knew he was the real target, knew that in a moments notice the man could spring at him and it would be the end. The end for Ichi, the end for him, and the end for his potential rescuers. He refused to let that happen without a fight, he was a fighter deep down wasn’t he? Always had been. He couldn’t give up now, not when he’d already caused all of this. Not when Ichimatsu was on the line, and potentially the rest of his battered and breaking family.

He could see the door in the distance, freedom tantalizingly close but out of reach all the same. He could see the look of fear on the young cashier’s face, the glint of metal in the strange shadows hand. Osomatsu wanted to lunge for the phone, wanted to run towards it and hit the emergency button he’d heard his mother explain a thousand times to his siblings. Help was so close, invitingly and frustratingly out of reach. He stepped carefully towards it, heart pounding and eyes twitching from the stupid, electronic saviour to the unhinged older man across from him.

The world suddenly tipped in slow motion as he overbalanced, the two figures in the distance shifted, one of them stepping closer into the light and Osomatsu’s heart clenched, he saw the coffee in his hand tip and spill out in strange half time, he saw the way the man’s eyes lit up in surprise and worry before his brain processed who the man was, watched as Tougou’s confusion traced the line of sight towards the new distraction and noticed, suddenly, with horror that the magazine clip was still sitting in plain sight in front of him, he saw the man’s gaze flit towards him just as the bang of the gun rang out and the world snapped back into focus in shock, and his entire world fell to pieces along with it.

But this wasn’t last time, Osomatsu wasn’t going to let himself passively wait for the end to spring up while he covered in fear.

He wouldn’t win this with tricks or split second luck, because luck wasn’t on his side tonight. Not with Karamatsu, somehow impossibly here and unarmed and so directly in danger, not with Ichimatsu bleeding out in a shitty junkyard alone. 

Osomatsu changed momentum, ignoring the freedom waiting on the other side of the flimsy phone case, ignoring the easy freedom, and leaped towards the magazine clip. And as luck would have it, he jumped just as Tougou sprung into action as well.

“Osomatsu!” Karamatsu yelped, but Oso didn’t have time to process why his brother was here, why another part of his family was directly now in harm’s way, because his hand wrapped around the magazine clip at the same time as a much larger one wrapped around his. He couldn’t think about where Karamatsu had sprung out from, who the other figure was that had bravely charged forwards with him because he was full on tackling Tougou with everything he had, punching and kicking and clawing to keep the man from reloading and injuring anyone else.

He managed to connect with the man’s nose, feeling the cartilage underneath give way with a sickening slump. Oso felt his kicks connect with Tougou’s shins, his stomach but Tougou was so much larger, so much stronger and Osomatsu had never been the best fighter just the easiest to anger. He’d never been the strongest, only the most aggressive. He’d never been ready for this kind of intensity, this kind of high stakes, but he’d always been the one to try.

Tougou slammed his fist equally as hard into his gut, elbowed him in the chin and they were rolling over each other, the magazine clip falling out of reach as Tougou reared back to punch him in the cheek hard enough that Osomatsu could feel copper in his mouth. Osomatsu wheezed in pain, Tougou laughed. He hated this man so intensely, suddenly, even as his vision spun out of control briefly.

“Pathetic! All of this,” he was breathing hard, but the manic glint in his eye hadn’t died regardless of the blood pouring from his nose. “for nothing!” He slammed another punch into Osomatsu’s face and another to his chest, Oso’s thoughts disconnected themselves in a daze. There was yelling in the distance, something high pitched and wailing, but Tougo was reaching for the magazine clip almost casually, almost as if nothing else could possibly take his victory away and Osomatsu couldn’t do anything to stop him.  He clicked the clip into place, laughing nearly hysterically and cocked the gun once more.

“You can never do anything the easy way, can you?” Tougou’s knees were digging into Osomatsu’s arms and he could feel blood coating the insides of his teeth. “And would you look at that? Another brother stumbles right into my lap. That’s, what? Half the family? It’s almost like a reunion isn’t it?” Tougou was talking to someone else, leaning up and away in a cocky display and laughing. Osomatsu could hear the choked sobs of someone nearby, probably Karamatsu. The tension, palpable and electrified, as Tougou smiled.

“It’s a shame we can’t get the other three to join us, killing all of you at once would be so much fun, don’t you think? Like reliving an old memory. We could act it out, I suppose. But, ah, time is running so short, isn’t it?”  

Osomatsu had never been the best fighter, he threw punches and kicks with too much weight behind them; his downfall was always that he left too many openings against any enemy that knew how to look. Karamatsu was the quickest and the best of them all, Jyushimatsu the strongest due to all of his baseball practicing; he was always just the first to throw a punch. The first to wind up with a black eye, the first to bite off more than he could chew. He’d been in the most fights out of all of them, been hit with punches and marred with broken bones and bruises far more than any other Matsuno.

Osomatsu could take a hit, and after a while, learned how to fight dirty.

Osomatsu knew how to win.

He gathered the coppery blood coating his tongue and spat, the mess splattering across Tougou’s face, turned away in distraction. The way the man had leaned backwards combined with the disgusted surprise allowing him to slip his arms free, he used the split second advantage to the best of his abilities, slamming his arm into Tougou’s side and twisting with all of his strength. Taken by surprise, the momentum caused him to flip, Osomatsu now on top and sending quick punches in succession.

The gun slipped out from Tougou’s hand as he reacted in defense, covering his face instinctively, and Osomatsu snatched it in one fluid motion as he stumbled to his feet.

The air around him stilled, surprise and uncertainty dimming his vision into a tunneled view. He heard, distantly, Karamatsu’s cry as he followed the blood trail to Ichimatsu, felt in his chest as they realized the weight of their situation.

But strangely, terribly, he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

Adrenaline kept his arms locked, straight and firm as he held the gun out, pointed directly at Tougou’s bloodied and dazed expression. Straight towards the divot between his brows. Straight through his worst nightmares very center.

The man had been struggling to sit up, fury clenching his teeth tightly. His expression dropped, a hint of fear sparking within him. Something dark unfurled around Osomatsu’s heart at the sight, something immensely pleased and wreathed in too much anger. This man had shot his younger brother, he was bleeding out in the darkness around the corner and might not make it through. He’d shot Ichimatsu. This man had threatened his family, implied that if he ever broke free again he’d never stop, he’d continue seeking them out and hurting them and trying to kill them. He’d basically spun out his entire plan, painted a gory and violent picture with a smile as he taunted and teased and endangered everything that mattered to Osomatsu’s wildly beating heart. Tougou wouldn’t stop, not even for a moment. He’d be more prepared next time, he’d sneak up on them and wouldn’t give them an out to survive. He might go after the youngest Matsu’s, and work his way up and leave Osomatsu truly, completely, alone. He’d kill them all if he so much as had the sliver of a chance.

But, Tougou wasn’t in charge at this current moment. But, nobody was around to witness anything. But, it could be self defense, it could be his choice, it could be all over.

Tougou had killed that cashier, the one with the bright future and the friendly smile who’d done nothing to deserve any of this. He’d injured his brother who’d never asked to be involved in any of this, who’d only wanted to make his brother live again. And, with the feeling of liquid ice behind his eyes, he realized. Osomatsu had only been a kid when this all started. Tougou had killed his childhood, taken his confidence and his happiness from him for far too many years and had tried to do the same thing again. For the first time, Osomatsu allowed himself to realize that none of that had been his own fault either.

It had all been Tougou’s. All of it had always been Tougou.

“You’re right,” Osomatsu spoke slowly, in a voice that didn’t sound like his own. Too calm, too cold.  “Time is running short.”

He made sure the gun was cocked, and thought of an innocent dark haired child with wide eyes and far too much fear.

Time to fight, Osomatsu.  

“And I’m going to make sure you never hurt my family ever again.”

Chapter Text

Osomatsu had been ready to pull the trigger. When, after everything was said and done, he thought back to it, his willingness to kill scares him almost the most out of everything. Almost.

Oso was a violent person, for sure. He thought with anger and aggression and reacted to losing much like a child throwing a temper tantrum. But he’d never genuinely wanted to kill anything. Never thought he could possibly understand what drove people to kill other living human beings.

Not until Tougou.

His finger had nearly twitched with anticipation, the typical smirk on his lips jaded and warped itself into something sinister and hungry. He was hungry, hungry to see the man who’d decimated so much finally pay for what he’d done. Hungry to make Tougou feel all the hurt and pain he’d inflicted on so many others. The fear in Tougou’s eyes awoke a dark thing in his chest, he’d wanted Tougou to be terrified of him.

He remembered being twelve, and being petrified of his own shadow. He remembered being eleven and hiding in closets and in dark spaces and not daring to breathe. He remembered being ten and believing that the devil himself had a smiling face.

“Go on, do it,” Tougou’s voice was a shaky whisper, his bravado vanished into a puff of thin air. Osomatsu knew he could see it then, too. That Oso was walking a thin line and he himself didn’t know which way he’d fall.  

An orange cat stepped calmly in front of him, disrupting the progressing disease spreading in his lungs. The goggled cat sat, curling it’s tail tightly against itself, staring at him plaintively with a bored expression.

Ichi wouldn’t want this.

The cat meowed, a stretch of it’s jowls that seemed so lazy, so stark against the tense night.

“Why’d you stay?” A younger Ichimatsu asked him. He was curled up on a police bench, a shock blanket draped across both shoulders and a warm mug in his hands. He blinked, glancing over at his brother wordlessly.

“That night, you were leaving weren’t you? Because of…” Oso felt himself pale, Ichi grimaced. “Because of him. Why’d you stay?”

Osomatsu looked down at his hands, watching the ripples in his tea form and reform from his shaking hands. He swallowed roughly.

“You could have left,” Ichi continued, but his voice had gone tighter, higher. “You could have been safe, but you stayed. Why?”

Osomatsu shut his eyes, squeezing them as hard as he could to forget, just forget.

“You asked me to,” he forced out.

He heard the slight inhale, could picture the way Ichi’s eyes would widen. His drink was shaking harder now.

“I couldn’t leave you behind. I-I couldn’t. You wanted me to stay.”

Ichi wouldn’t want this.

“Go on!” Tougou yelled now, but the sound was strangled, pathetic even.

Ichi wouldn’t want Osomatsu to be corrupted by Tougou’s plague, to paint himself with the same darkness he’d been running from his whole life. He’d already won. He’d stood up against Tougou and fought him and he’d won.

He didn’t have to be afraid.

“No,” his voice was stronger than he felt, “that’s what you want, isn’t it?” He’d never be able to move on if he pulled the trigger, never be able to be more than this moment because he’d have made a choice. He wasn’t ten and trapped in the dark anymore, he wasn’t afraid. He’d chosen, before, already in the convenience store.

 One bullet, and he’d chosen to miss. All on his own, he’d chosen to be better than this.

“Just do it already!” The man across from him wasn’t the collected and calculating nightmare he’d been haunted by. He was bleeding, snivelling. There were bruises forming along his cheekbones, his hair hung in messy strands, caked with dirt and grime.

He shook his head, eyes wide and unblinking, the gun lowering slowly, carefully.

“I’m not afraid of you.” Osomatsu watched his words hit Tougou, watched the way frustration and defeat won out and his expression flattened out into hopelessness and snot filled despair. Tougou was just a man, after all these years. Just a man with too much anger tucked up where his heart should be.

“I’m better than you.”

In some part of his mind, he pictured himself, younger and kinder. Jutting out his chin, balling his pudgy fists up tight, and standing his ground. It felt like power, like finally filling in a shard of himself that had been gaping all this time. It felt like closing a book, a chapter, like stepping free of an ocean current and running on dry land.

“Oso…” He flinched, the voice beside him snapping him from his reverie. He blinked, tearing his gaze from the gun and his own thoughts to meet Karamatsu’s.  

“Kara— what are you…” His thoughts stalled and froze, pin wheeling in place.

Karamatsu looked absolutely grief stricken.

There were tear tracks, fresh ones still carving their way down his cheeks, and oh god what happened Ototo.

The intensity of the moment between him and his forgotten demons had closed off the rest of the world. He’d missed the police sirens, rolling up behind him, the yelling voices, the splash of red and blue against the darkness that threw a strange reality into the unreal hole they’d stumbled through. Help was here, they weren’t alone anymore. They were safe, and yet Karamatsu’s voice sounded so paper thin.

And yet, Karamatsu’s eyes still pleaded with him so gravely he couldn’t look away.

Kara was sobbing, pleading and he looked so, so wrecked. So desolate and broken from the inside out. Osomatsu’s throat tightened, his lungs constricted.  “Karamatsu…?”

“Oso, it’s… he…” His eyes swam with tears and he looked away as if he couldn’t bear to continue the train of thought and, abruptly, with the weight of the other shoe finally dropping, Osomatsu knew.

He took a stuttering step backwards, gun falling from his fingertips with a heavy thud into the dirt. Police officers were shouting things around him, streaming in and around and pulling apart the strands of the evening with handcuffs and stern orders. There was a bubble around him and Karamatsu, a break in the sea tides and he was shattering apart under the weight.  

“N-no…. Ichi! He’s not… he can’t be…”

Karamatsu’s sobs hitched, his gaze was all heartbreak and helplessness. “Oso…” Kara’s voice cracked and splintered apart, and nothing else mattered. Not the gun, not the blood in the air, not the chatter around him, none of it.

Ichimatsu was fine, he was hurt but he’d be fine, there was no other reality. It wasn’t possible. The ambulance had arrived, cavalry on their shining horses. They were going to be fine, now. Everyone was.

But Karamatsu was shaking his head, his palms upturned and achingly small. But Chibita was still hunched over the figure of his brother in the distance and the night was so cold.

“No!” He gasped in a breath, panic and horror overwhelming him. He’d only been gone a few moments, how could it…. How could he have failed so spectacularly, so horrendously.

“He can’t be… he’s not dead! We won, he… No, god, no!”

His head was swimming, he swayed to one side and Karamatsu was suddenly beside him, catching his arm and speaking, shaking, but he couldn’t hear it. Everything was swimming, bathed in molasses and a strange filter that separated all of the colours and sounds and muted them. He saw police blues and reds, heard muffled yelling, saw Chibita, with crimson red seeping into his fingertips standing beside a wheeled stretcher.

He saw Ichi, blue tinged lips and ashen skin, looking for all the world like he was already a ghost.

I just wanted to help, Ichi was saying, had said, his corpse reaching out with pale fingers. I just wanted to help. His face was too calm, sleeping, but his purple sweater was soaked through with blood. Blood that still stained his own hands.

Oso’s vision inverted and swallowed itself whole and he retched as someone, Karamatsu maybe, held him upright.

I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, someone mumbled, and he was screaming maybe, sobbing, and he couldn’t breathe. His chest was so empty, so shattered and concave he must have been dying too. It hurt so much, so intensely, he couldn’t manage to gasp around it, couldn’t think beyond the realization that Ichi was gone.

He heard his name, heard someone sobbing, but his lungs wouldn’t open up and it didn’t matter anyways. The dark swirl of his vision that swept him towards the cold dirt was a mercy he didn’t deserve.

When they were really little, the brothers played in their room a lot. Big bundles of toddlers stumbling to and fro between toys and blankets and diapers and causing their own brand of destruction even then. They’d understood each other on a strange level, then. Not the clichéd ‘twin sense’, but a connection nonetheless.

If one of them was upset Karamatsu would be upset also, Ichimatsu would be nearby, cooing and humming to calm them down, Jyushimatsu would just hold on tight without making a sound and Choromatsu and Totty would scream and cry to get attention.

Osomatsu had never really a place, just supervised. Sat idly by watching the business around him. He was the rock, in a few ways he supposed. Always had been. The one the others ran to, the one that always looked on the bright side, the one with a soft punch to the shoulder and a hair ruffle that could brighten up any of their bleak smiles.

When the first incident with Tougou took his confident gleam from his smile, he’d been lost. What was a big brother without unflappability? Without his carefree antics how would Osomatsu be Osomatsu? He’d lost his footing and slid down the rabbit hole, saw the world inside out for once.

His family needed him to always be himself, to flatter himself in the highest form by imitating his trademark smiles and smirks and showing for all the world that nothing could ever get under his skin.

Even if inside he’d been dust and cobwebs, Osomatsu’s façade wouldn’t crack.

“Osomatsu nii-san? Are you awake?” Karamatsu whispered, rousing Osomatsu from his sticky slumber. A strange nervous concern hung from Karamatsu’s words like cement, Osomatsu grunted lightly. It was late, or early, his thoughts were reluctant to leave their careful warm nest of dreams.

“How do you do it?” Karamatsu’s voice was light, faint in the buzzing silence of the middle of the night.

He’d been confused, groggy but ruffled slightly at the warble in his immediate younger brother’s voice. “What do you mean?” His mouth felt dry, fuzzy near the tip of his tongue down to his gums.

Karamatsu swallowed roughly, the room was dim, just light enough to make out the way Kara’s gaze flittered down to his nervously twitching hands.

“How do you… how are you so strong?”

Osomatsu blinked, a loss for words stilling the ire at his sudden loss of sleep and sparking a new leap of his heart. Karamatsu’s expression was vulnerable, shy and folded inwards like a flower about to wilt. He held his breath.

“You never seem upset by anything… you don’t care what the people at school think of you… How do you do it?”

Karamatsu was having a rough time in their new school year; couldn’t make friends like Todomatsu or spend time alone like Ichimatsu and Choromatsu. He didn’t have a desire to play on team sports like Jyushimatsu, or join any of the other school events. Karamatsu had thought of their new school life as the beginning of a new chapter, where he’d have lots of friends and adventures and giggles. None of it had worked out quite the way he’d hoped so far, Karamatsu was painfully anxious in social situations and ran away more often than he stayed and chatted. But Osomatsu knew how desperately he wanted to be liked, how achingly he’d hoped for new friendly faces. His heart clenched for his little brother.

“Karamatsu… don’t worry these guys just need to warm up to you, they’ll like you in no time I promise. I mean ho could they not? You’re the coolest guy I know.” He smiled and yawned, hoping the issue had been resolved for the evening. Karamatsu shook his head.

“No I mean… You don’t let it get to you, even when you get sad you don’t show it. I want to learn how to be cool like you are nii-san.”

And Osomatsu winced, then forced a weak smile. Karamatsu was always emotional, always at the brim with thoughts and feelings and passionate concerns. Osomatsu was often jealous of how open he was, how he could keep getting back up even after he’d been shot down.

“Karamatsu,” he whispered back. “you’re already far cooler than I could ever be.”

The week afterwards, after the immediate fallout had been dealt with— after their mother had signed and dotted her I’s and Osomatsu had agreed to attend a weekly counselling session and everything went carefully away into reports and manila folders— had been rough.

Everyone was afraid, cautious. So what if Oso didn’t want to do much, he was allowed to after what he’d been through. If he didn’t want to eat that was only understandable too. Maybe he didn’t talk, but really who could blame him. Gentle, far too gentle.

Osomatsu could feel the guilt in the air, then. Feel the way his family scrambled all over themselves to make it up to him, to prove they were attentive, that they cared. Osomatsu ignored it all, mainly.

His family hadn’t done anything wrong. They hadn’t missed clues or signs, they hadn’t pushed him off into the side and passed him off, they hadn’t let his cries go unheeded. He hadn’t wanted them to know. The guilt was stupid, unnecessary. But he didn’t have the energy to fight them on it.

He didn’t have the energy for many things at all.

Mostly, everyone left him alone. But he could feel their eyes on him, their careful checks and double checks, their worry palpable in the air and thrumming under his skin.

He didn’t talk to anyone about it, couldn’t. Didn’t have the words, but even when he was dragged off to his counsellor, didn’t see the point. It was over now, wasn’t it?

Why couldn’t it just be over.

Choromatsu had pulled the words out of him, somehow. Without him ever speaking. Told their mother what foods he needed to eat, what objects would scientifically give him the most comfort, how much space and time he needed to heal. He never asked Oso anything, just bustled around in the quiet backdrop, fixing and mending. Like he knew what Osomatsu didn’t.

He never hung out, never stayed long, never talked to Oso but that was alright, mostly.

Osomatsu knew his brothers, he knew they all processed guilt in different ways. Ichi cut himself off, much like Oso did, but offered silent comfort. The least he felt he could do, since words weren’t his strong suit. Totty blubbered and clung originally, and then when the shock wore off, he carefully planned movie nights and outings as a family and never really seemed to stray too far from home. Jyushimatsu amped himself up to a whole new level, trying to be the sunshine for all of them, trying to drag them all out of themselves just to enjoy the daylight. Karamatsu fussed, beat himself up internally and it showed in the bags of his eyes and the worry lines around his eyebrows; he cared viscerally and vociferously.

Choromatsu ran.

He couldn’t blame him for running, not really. Things in their house were too immense, too much for their young minds to really process in a way that wouldn’t drastically change everything. Their mother cried at the kitchen table most mornings, their father had given them all a long hug while choking on his own tears. It was all too serious for any of them to conceptualize. So Osomatsu had elected instead, that he wouldn’t. That everything should go back to the way it had always been, pretending none of this ever happened.

He couldn’t fault Choromatsu for running. In his own way, Osomatsu was running too.

“Osomatsu?”

“Yeah, Ichi?”

“Why did you stay?”

Why didn’t you run, Oso? Why didn’t you fight back? Why won’t you let me help Osomatsu?

Because of this, Ichi. Because I was scared of this.

Chapter Text

He’d been floating, somewhere on the edge of a cloud maybe. Or cocooned inside a wreath of static.

There was a haze of red around him, a gentle pressure against his palm, and voices. Muted, muffled. Bits and pieces filtering through, phrases about shock and exhaustion, stern sounding words he instinctively shied from. Mostly, just static.

He fell into a dream, a memory of a pillow fort with five giggly little brothers. Ice cream smeared cheeks on a sunny day and sticky, pudgy fingers baked warm in the summer heat. He smiled back at all the laughter and the dream floated away.

“Osomatsu, sir? Are you awake?”

‘You’re the best brother ever, ever, Oso nii-san!’

His lips twitched, watching the summer light brushing itself away like the crumbs from a picnic.

“Osomatsu?”

Sensations pounded into his brain, removing the fog from his limbs and replacing it with a deep muscle kind of throb that tore him into awareness. Osomatsu groaned, blearily peeling his eyes open. He winced, immediately slamming them closed again as the bright walls and lights stabbed a headache like a stamp in his temples.

“Lights…” He rasped, and heard the murmuring voices bicker as the bright shocking white dimmed.

He cracked his eyes open again, cautious of the pounding residual ache in his head and let out a small breath of relief when the duller room came into focus. A friendly looking lady hovered nearby with a smile.

“Good morning! How are you feeling?” Osomatsu frowned to himself, and shifted upright.  The nurse shook her head, and placed a hand on his sternum with a purse of her lips. His muscles cramped, strained like strung out elastic bands and he gave up the fight without struggle, readily relaxing into the starchy pillow beneath him.

“Been better,” he admitted with a lopsided and slightly pained flash of a smile. The lady hummed, and checked him over with a flutter of cold fingertips. She bent his arm slowly, flashed lights across his eyes and made little clucking sounds to herself as she went. He couldn’t tell if any of it meant something positive or not.

“Well, dear, you did have an awfully frightening evening from what it sounds like. Feeling a little sore here and there is to be expected with a couple of cracked ribs. You really did a number on yourself.” She turned away to another nurse in the doorway of the room, and Osomatsu let his bleary gaze travel across the small space. White sheets, curtains, lights, all of it distinctively and meticulously hospital themed. He wasn’t sure why he’d be in a hospital at all, let alone with his own bed, or what the lady had meant by a frightening evening come to think of it.

“Not to worry, though! You’ll be right as rain in a few days, and we’ll be releasing you later tomorrow, now that you’re awake, if you’re up to it at least. Being up and about is a great sign, though and—“

Osomatsu interrupted, an unsettled bitter sting on his tongue. Like he was forgetting something. “What happened? Did I… did I get into a fight?”

She tilted her head, a slight pull to the corners of her tightly pressed lips. His gaze absently traced the strands of grey pulled backwards into her carefully woven hair bun. He missed his mother, intensely.

“Can I call my parents?” He asked after a moment, and watched her expression shift dramatically. A softer wistfulness wound through her eyes, and she gave him another small smile.

“No need, dear. They’re out in the waiting room. Your mother just stepped out for a moment, but I’ll go grab her for you, alright?”

Osomatsu tried for an appreciative upward twitch of a smile and the lady bustled quickly out of the room, another younger woman following after.

Alone in the expanse of light colours, he took quick stock of his memories. His brain felt like a cog stuck on a particularly rusted gear, he remembered walking around at night, looking for something, and feeling very afraid for an indistinct reason. His head hurt, along with his ribs and his jaw, and as he clenched his fists in frustration, so did his knuckles.

The skin of his hands was purple, bruised around the ridges of bone like postmarked letters. He flexed his fingers and watched the pressed violet circles dance across his skin in confusion. He’d been in a fight, definitely, but he’d been in worse shape before. He’d never ended up in the hospital from a fight before.

Everything within him felt aged, as if it had been removed and covered in dust and placed back inside, like he was an aged bottle of sake that had been opened and then immediately stowed away for years. He felt removed from himself, like his thoughts were resting in a cloud while the rest of him battled his own bones from the inside out.

He wondered how his parents were going to pay for all of this.  

“Osomatsu?” His gaze snapped upwards to see his mother, red eyed and exhausted, standing in the doorway with a tear filled wobble of her lips. Before he could speak, she was wrapping him in a bear hug so tight and emotion filled he couldn’t think for a moment. She pressed kisses and mumbled apologies into his hair that he couldn’t quite hear or understand.

“Mom, what happened?” The pecks and smooches halted, her warm hands carded through his hair stiffly. She sighed, giving him one last squeeze, and sat down on a chair beside him, taking hold of his hand carefully.

“Osomatsu, my brave eldest… I love you, so very much, you know that right?”

Oso managed a full smile, but his blood pounded. His mother was only sappy and sweet when something had happened, and he’d only seen her looking this fragile a handful of times. Once when Jyushimatsu had gotten into a terrible accident while he was out playing, another when Totty had nearly gotten hit by a car as a kid, and then again when Oso had been…

She loved them all dearly, but they were grown men and he’d told her himself on multiple occasions that her pet names were embarrassing.  She saved them for the hard times these days.

“You know you can talk to me whenever you need me, right? I’m always here.”

Osomatsu wanted to roll his eyes, laugh it off but something in him was pained. Wanted to wrap her up in his arms and apologize endlessly. Something in him was grating, grinding on his heart because he’d somehow been longing to hear those words for far too long. He didn’t understand any of this.

Her hand tightened as she took a steeling breath.

“Do you remember that man, the lodger we let stay with us when you were young?”

Why did you stay, Oso? Why didn’t you fight back?

Osomatsu’s eyes widened instinctively, a memory they never spoke of, one he’d buried himself and forced himself to never think of again and they’d all followed suit but—

Somehow it wasn’t as shocking as it should have been, somehow there were pieces of a puzzle resurfacing in his mind and somehow he knew. The night he’d been looking, the vague panic he remembered. Ichimatsu, and there’d been a cellphone and…

Karamatsu’s heart breaking into dust in front of his eyes, Chibita in the distance with blood under his fingernails, and a blue tinted Ichimatsu, his closed eyes fanning gently across dead cheeks. He felt his breaths hitch and pause, locked up in his throat.

“He came back. Tougou. He found you and Ichimatsu out by the junkyard and—“

Months of staring at breathing shadows, of sitting on glass edges and cliffs and the hairsbreadth of a moment flashed through him like the pages of a flipbook. Fear and panic, shutting himself down and not running fast enough and all of it narrowing down and slipping downstream into one blazing train of thought that stung tears into his eyes and sang panic into his heart.

He’d forgotten, momentarily. He’d forgotten all of it, woken up for the first time in almost half a year without the familiar feeling of dread and loathing. Without the distant thought that today might be his last, without the guilt, without the fear.

He'd woken up and just for a split second, believed everything was alright.

His mother was still talking, explaining the night to him but he knew already. He’d heard the sirens, held the gun, stared straight into Tougou’s eyes and wanted to pull the trigger. He’d heard the fault in Karamatsu’s voice, he remembered why the world had crumbled apart and his heart had died along with all of it.

She should hate him, should be disappointed in him and heartbroken but she was looking at him with so much love and concern, it made his gut broil with self directed disgust. Did she not know?

Did she not know Ichimatsu was…

“—shoulder and there were fragments. Complications, they said, but he went into surgery and…” His mom was sniffling as he forcibly tore his thoughts away from the grim bleakness surrounding them both. Tears poured from her cheeks, Osomatsu couldn’t handle much more pain, much more suffering from his family. He didn’t want to be here, to witness any of this. His mother had always been so strong and caring and god, she didn’t deserve this. Didn’t deserve to bury her son, didn’t deserve to come back from a trip to all of this, didn’t deserve the inevitability of Osomatsu’s slow descent afterwards.

“Ichimatsu is—“

“Mom,” He couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t bear to hear her say the words he knew were stitched in burning embers across her heart. Ichimatsu is dead, he’d killed him. He couldn’t bear to watch his mother come undone along with everything else. “Please.”

He didn’t know what he was asking, for it to not be real. For her to spare him any last dredges of pity she’d scrounged together because he didn’t deserve it. He’d failed, and now Ichi was gone.

It was the worst part, the truth of the matter that separated out and slashed at every part of him; Ichimatsu never would have been out that night if it weren’t for him. All of this was his fault, it was unfair. Desperately unfair that he could wake up and briefly forget his brother was dead, forget the burn of tearing sobs in his throat, forget the black hole in his chest. Unfair that in his attempt to save his family he’d destroyed it so thoroughly; unfair that he was a coward, that he could have let everything cascade so simply through his grasp.

It was unfair that he could wake up at all, when Ichimatsu would never get to, ever again.

“I’m sorry,” it was just a breath, just a measly insignificant apology that would never change any of this. He couldn’t tear his eyes from her but all of this was killing him. He needed to see the hatred in her eyes, needed to feel the last shard of his hopes combust and implode within him.

He needed to have the confirmation, in a morbidly fragmented sort of way, like watching a train crashing or a plane burning apart, that Ichimatsu was dead and it was all his fault.

She shook her head, biting back another choked sob as she glanced up at him. She was smiling, and he couldn’t understand how she could be smiling when—

“He’s okay.”

The freefalling plunge of his chest held judiciously still. “What?”

“Ichimatsu’s okay, he’s going to be alright. The doctors said he’s had a lot of blood loss, it shattered his shoulder in several places and nicked an artery. It was a…close call for a while. He,” she shuddered on a breath, steeling herself. “He stopped breathing several times on the way to the hospital, but our Ichi is a fighter after all. He’s not going to be able to use his arm the same way again, from what they tell me but,” she sniffed again, tightened her hold on his numb fingers. “He’s okay.”

Osomatsu couldn’t speak, relief and confusion sweeping away his thoughts from his lips. His mother cooed, softly and somberly, a bittersweet thing. “Oh my boy, my dear son. You’ve been through so much, my little Osomatsu…” Her hand fretted across his, her thumb running across the underside of his wrist and squeezing. Anchoring.

The past few months, like years as they slipped through his veins and splashed outwards through his fingertips, had left a weight in him. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been holding, how terrified and anxious and worried he’d been until it was all crashing through him. He was shaking, now, he was sure of it.

“I want you to know how proud I am.” She reached to his forehead, brushing his bangs back and nails gently pushing through his hair again. His gaze locked onto hers, drinking in every word and trying desperately to process this, to understand any of this.

The image of a younger boy, with ice cream stained cheeks and a wide grin, and an older boy with solemn dark eyes calmly holding his hand against the dark, flashed across his mind and he gasped on a breath.

He’s okay.

He shook his head. His thoughts were careening and spiralling upwards like fireworks because Ichimatsu was alive. Because they had won, because Tougou hadn’t taken this one last thing from him, because Ichimatsu had always been so strong. And he was alive.

God, Ichimatsu was alive.

All the months of fighting, of losing and losing again, of feeling helpless and small against a backdrop of so much horror. All of it had taken so much from him, he’d been so sure it wouldn’t let him have Ichi too. He’d been so sure, so sure that he’d lost everything. Having it back, having everything back all at once was too much.  Fate and the universe and everything else holding those twinkling lights aloft in the night sky, had, after everything, let Ichimatsu live.

He couldn’t help the wild grin that sparked through him from the chest upwards, or the tears rolling down his cheeks. He stared at his mother, so full of relief and guilt and joy, he couldn’t think to do anything but whisper, “Mom…”

She bit her lip, fat tears pooling in her own eyes and god, she looked so small. So thin and tired, but so, so loving. Osomatsu laughed, a burst of happiness working through his chest but it broke through like a whimper.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart, so sorry. You should never have gone through all of this alone, not again.”

Osomatsu thought of Ichimatsu’s quiet presence, of the plates of food and level stares that asked for nothing at all but everything at once. He thought of Karamatsu’s wildly desperate cry of his name as he dove and kicked and punched, of his brother’s trust in him, that he could handle fighting on his own because he needed to, because he could.

You’re the best brother ever, ever nii-san!

“Wasn’t alone,” he sobbed, and his mother swooped in to pull him tightly against her once more, her own shoulders heaving with emotion. Euphoria and the crashing tides of exactly how much they’d fought against mixing and convoluting in his chest, he wrapped his arms around his mom and held on tighter.  

“I wasn’t alone.”

Osomatsu spent most of the day sleeping, or in an in-between exhaust fueled haze that certainly felt a lot like sleeping. He’d been in shock, he was told. He had three cracked ribs, a fractured cheek bone, and a couple of deep bruises that felt a lot like broken bones whenever he moved. All in all, he took it all as evidence that Osomatsu had indeed won, that he’d fought hard and with everything in himself, and he’d won.

The idea was so vague and unbelievable; he didn’t feel like much of a winner. Not with so many close calls filling the cracks of his own chest. Not with the memory of so much red seeping through purple fabric; it felt a lot more like luck. And he wasn’t on the best terms with luck and fate on a good day to begin with.

He’d been desperate to see Ichi, to hear any tidbit of information. He needed to see the rise and fall of his brother’s chest for himself, a small something to combat the rising night terrors waiting on the edges of every blink. Osomatsu was exhausted, though, it weighed on him like sandbags tied to his wrists and Ichimatsu was still unconscious, still in surgery last he’d heard anyways.

“Osomatsu, there are some boys that would like to see you, if you’re feeling up to it.” His mother called softly, and he wrenched his eyes open. He hadn’t realized he’d been dozing off, time was flowing wrong and skipping in strange ways. He’d been thinking about convenience store lights and dirt a second ago, falling asleep without being consciously aware of it was unsettling. It had been dark last he’d remembered. The yellow light streaming across the bright white room stung, slightly.

He stared owlishly up at his mother, he was still exhausted, it hung off his elbows and his kneecaps and tied itself in a knot under his tongue, but he nodded anyways.

She gestured vaguely behind her before stepping out of the room, and Osomatsu was suddenly abruptly aware of three sets of teary expressions peeking out from around the hallway corner. It was strange, seeing his brothers after what felt like an eternity and a day grown between them—an expanse of time that spanned so much and yet, strangely so little— they’d all changed in little ways, it seemed too. Jyushimatsu was the most noticeable, his hard work playing baseball drastically shaping him— he’d been coaching, maybe, or playing professionally, he couldn’t remember— his workouts showed in the broad sweep of his shoulders, in the flex to his arms and in the squared stance he held. Jyushimatsu was taller, too. Broader. Todomatsu had sprung upwards just slightly, but it showed in the narrower draw of his cheeks and highlighted itself with the coifed hairstyle he’d adopted. Totty looked sophisticated, mature in some respects, like he’d grown into the big attitude he’d carried with him since high school. At the same time there was a telltale wobble to his lower lip, and his eyes were as wide and emotional as ever and he knew the same Totty was still present.

Karamatsu he’d seen briefly already— with a crushed, heartbroken, defeated expression, with blood smeared across his horror struck expression because it was still laced on his hands and— Karamatsu looked quieter, somehow. He’d grown taller also, his shoulders widening like Jyushi’s but subtler. He looked for all the world like a business man, like a one-day lawyer or a doctor. Osomatsu noticed the dark rings under his eyes, the tight press of his lips, the way his hands fidgeted at his sides and knew that Karamatsu still lived under his own nervous energy.

They all looked… hollowed. Imprints of themselves that had lost their vibrancy. Jyushi and Totty looked anywhere but at him, and he’d forgotten somewhere along the line that he’d messed everything up between them, too. It had been months, many months, but his parting gift to his two youngest siblings had been violent and cruel and he’d never even tried to make amends.

They probably hated him, and he deserved every ounce of it, too. The absence of the third eldest only pronounced his darker assumptions, like a stamp of judgement across his skin. He shrunk in on himself, shoulders hunching upwards instinctively. Like he was trying to block out their inevitable words. He forced himself to uncurl after a second.

“M’sorry,” he mumbled, electing to shift his gaze to the bedsheet as he twisted the fabric between his fingers.

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, maybe silence, maybe the telltale shuffle of feet out the door. Maybe for them to all take turns pointing out his every mistake over the past few months, to demand answers and apologies from him that he couldn’t possibly give, that wouldn’t possibly be enough.

Instead, he heard only a sharp and shaky intake of breath, and felt arms carefully and tightly wrapping themselves around him.

“I’m so sorry nii-san! I-if I knew… If I’d asked I—“

Totty was sobbing. Todomatsu was hugging him, and apologizing, and he blinked wide eyed even as instinctively, his own arms pulled his brother closer.  

“I was… I was so selfish! I was a-angry and stupid a-and, and…”

His mind was reeling; he stared across the room at Karamatsu, plaintively begging for an explanation, for reassurance, for anything at all and everything at once. He rubbed a hand across Todomatsu’s shaking shoulders, almost robotically. He didn’t deserve this, not the endless forgiveness and apologies pouring out of Totty, from Karamatsu’s soft expression and Jyushi’s frantic nods along with every word. It was too much and yet, he was hugging back, and his heart felt so, so, overwhelmed and nearly full he couldn’t help but sob along with them.

“I-I’m… I don’t…” He couldn’t speak, not around the emotion filled cement caking his vocal cords. Todomatsu huddled in closer, his sobs fiercer and words more jumbled. He swallowed roughly. “It’s a-all my fault, I couldn’t… Tougou w-was there, he was there and I… and Ichi…”

Karamatsu’s expression folded, flattened out and the pained furrow to his brow dug into his skin. Todomatsu froze, pushing back to stare at him with an infuriated burn in his wide eyes and Osomatsu flinched.

“You’re so silly, nii-san!” Jyushi called out, stepping closer slowly, broadcasting his every move. “You think we’re angry with you, don’t you?”

Osomatsu’s shoulders tilted upwards once more.

“W-why would he think that? Oso, what do you mean?” Todomatsu hadn’t moved but his hands were locked tightly against Osomatsu’s chest like a barrier and he didn’t dare breathe.

“He almost died… because of me.” The words were barbed wire, drug up, and up again against his fragile, fractured heart but they were honest. The pause afterwards felt like ice against his wounds.

Karamatsu’s face was still pinched, soured, but he was suddenly charging forwards and pulling Osomatsu forwards. Oso’s brain flashed a memory of Tougou, gun loaded, pulling him up by the front of his shirt, but he was crashing forwards now into a warm chest and arms wrapped tightly, comfortingly.

Karamatsu was trembling, minute shakes flickering against his desperate hold. Karamatsu only shook when he was panicking, when he was nearing a panic attack or when he was desperately fighting back emotion and losing.

“You almost died too, you idiot,” He whispered, brusquely but not unkindly. “We almost lost you, too.”

Osomatsu’s heart lunged and broke all over again, realization sweeping through him in a different way. One that stole his remaining fight, remaining barriers and he was already crying but this felt different. Vulnerable. Todomatsu lunged forwards again, careful of his ribs and buried his face in the crook of his shoulder.

He was nearly hyperventilating, so cocooned and safe.

Jyushimatsu suddenly nudged his way into the hug, his typical grin missing but replaced with something even more fierce and loving. Osomatsu drew his younger brothers in tightly, something unnameable and wild cascading through him.  

“We’re sorry,” Karamatsu’s voice was tight, like this was a hurt so close to his heart it hurt to speak. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to do that alone, a-and, they told us he was the robber on the news and. I know that was you. I should have known then but—you tried to help and brother, you can’t blame yourself, please, you can’t. Ichi’s okay, y-you saved him and… I can’t take hearing you apologize for this, I can’t.”

He sounded younger, like the little boy who’d asked him how to be strong late at night. Like a boy who’d nearly lost two brother’s in one night right in front of his own eyes. Like a boy who’d watched his younger brother stop breathing and hadn’t been able to help.

Oh, Karamatsu, his eyes welled again. He didn’t know how many times his heart could break in one day, how many different ways he could feel it snap and reassemble.

Totty sniffled. “T-they told us you kicked his ass,” Totty sniffled but it sounded more like himself, wirier and pointed like always and god, he loved his brothers so much.  “You were so brave, we’re so proud of you.”

“The best, the very best big brother ever,” Jyushi stated, like he was discussing the weather or a simple fact. The Earth travels around the sun and I love my big brother.

“So please, please stop apologizing.” Karamatsu buried his own face into the pile of limbs, absolutely wrecked and shaking apart. “Ichi’s okay, you’re here. Everything is alright, please…”

Osomatsu thought of Choromatsu, the stark gap in their bundle that left them lopsided and lost. He thought of their father, away on a business trip who’d be coming home to all of this. He remembered the pieces he’d left behind before, the last time, and the way they’d all closed it off to forget.

There was so much room left, so much to fix, but he sniffed loudly and nodded anyways and pulled them all that much closer.

 “It’s going to be alright now, nii-san. You’ll see.” Jyushimatsu said simply, and the smile was so strong in his voice, so light and loving.

“Okay,” he said, voice warbling and weak.

“Okay.”

Chapter Text

The room was quiet, dimmed and still. Peaceful, maybe, but it felt too somber. Too much like an omen of what could have been. He shivered.  

“Are you sure you don’t want one of us to come in with you?” Todomatsu spoke softly, in case Ichimatsu was sleeping— he slept a lot, on and off in little bouts. The doctors had reassured them all it was a good sign, right before admonishing Osomatsu for not resting more himself.

‘Shock and broken ribs are nothing to scoff at. You were half starved for months and you need to take care of yourself better.’ He could practically hear their nagging tone already. Or he actually was hearing it, from down the hall at a particularly grumpy older doctor. Oops. Time to get a move on.

“Yeah, I’m sure. Not that I don’t want you guys here but…” He shrugged, Totty gave him a pitying, soft look. He’d been doing that a lot lately. Jyushimatsu too. The softness twisting their smiles into half grimaces, their gaze wobbling and skidding away. It was unsettling, considering that the fallout between them all had been his fault entirely. But his youngest brothers wouldn’t hear anything of it, wouldn’t take his apologies longer than a brief moment or for more time than it took for them to sweep him into another bear hug.

If his brothers wanted to smother him with love, even after all the mistakes he’d made and the way he’d treated them, that was fine by Osomatsu. He was honestly just happy to be near them at all.

He tried to voice as much, to tell them how deeply undeserving he felt, how guiltily relieved he constantly was, but their faces were all so red rimmed and puffed outwards. He’d imagined it, the way their faces would crumple inwards once more as he told them all plainly that he, frankly, thought they should string him up on an abandoned island and leave him there. It wouldn’t go over well, he knew.

“Okay, I told Mom I’d have you back home by 6 tonight though. I can probably push for 6:30 if you’re on your best behaviour,” he winked. “I’ll just be in the cafeteria if you need me. You have my number, yeah?”

Osomatsu smiled, waggling the device in his hand. “Yes, Totty.”

“And you remember how to send messages, right?”

He rolled his eyes with a playful huff. “Yes Totty!”

“And you know that the emergency button is right there on the side, like it’s just there. That green one. That’s the one, just hit it and—“

“Yes Totty! I got it, I’ll be fine I promise.”

“Alright, alright. Get in there before the doctors yell at us again then.”  

He laughed and waved Todomatsu off, carefully stepping into the room and shutting the door behind him. Ichimatsu had swung a private room, probably due to the publicity surrounding the entire Matsu family at the moment. Being at the epicenter of one of the largest strings of robberies in the past decade as well as a witness to a murder and another attempt brought with it quite a large spotlight. One they’d been appreciative of— people had been extremely generous in offering to help pay for their hospital bill once it had been revealed that they weren’t exactly swimming in wealth. Having funds to pay for two stays as well as the surgery and the physical rehab Ichimatsu was undergoing was a huge stress relief to say the least.

None of them could handle any more stress at the moment.

The spotlight was also concerning. Tougou was in jail once more with a restraining order and various specific rulings in place to keep him away from their family, but there was only so much a piece of paper and a sentence that wouldn’t be permanent could do. Eventually, the man would be released. Eventually, he’d want revenge again.

But the thought wasn’t for now, as his therapist had been teaching him, thinking and focusing on the what if’s and the maybe’s wouldn’t make the now last longer. Count to ten and breath in sync, find five things around you that you can see, that you can touch, that you can smell, all the way down until the fear passes. Live here and now, you’re safe.

Five things you can see, Oso. One, his brand new sneakers to replace the old dirty ones that had fallen victim to far too many memories. He wiggled his toes to watch the fabric shift.

Two, the pale walls around him, adorned with simple pictures of daisies, of robins and bluejays. Three, a crisp and starchy looking bed across from him, tilted upwards just slightly, near a moderately sized window.

Four, a purple blanket folded neatly against the white sheets, a punch of colour in the soft evening light. He breathed in; five, a pale, lightly snoring young man curled up in white bandages and a blue hospital gown, connected to a faintly beeping heart monitor and an IV stand. He breathed out slowly, taking a seat by his brother’s bed and watching the slow rise and fall of his chest.

It had taken a while to wrap his mind around the fact that Ichimatsu was here still, that the blood and the gun and the dirt hadn’t swallowed up his brother that night. That for all of Karamatsu’s tears and Chibita’s heartbreak, he’d lived. It had been close though, mere minutes away from a point of no return, but they’d made it through.

He reached out, placing a warm palm on top of his younger brother’s hand, feeling the fluttering heart beat on the underside of his wrist. Breathe in, breathe out.

Osomatsu was exhausted, if he were really honest with himself. It had been a handful of days— maybe weeks, time was skewed and shifted lately—since… the incident… but it had all been a whirlwind of nurses, doctors, papers to sign, police investigations and so on. There’d been pictures, statements, interviews; it was too much. He sighed, pressing his forehead to the clasped hand beneath him.

“Ugh, quit it, I can hear you thinking too much from here,” Ichimatsu grumbled, eyes fluttering open with a somewhat playful scowl. He looked exhausted, still. A side effect of the medication he was on, probably, but he looked two seconds away from napping already.

“Sorry,” Osomatsu snorted. He glanced around the room, at the series of cards and balloons and flowers gifted by strangers sitting atop various shelves. Ichimatsu probably hated all of it, he realized with another laugh. “How are you today?” He glanced at Ichi’s thick bandage and cast across his arm with a wince he couldn’t contain.

The bullet had hit a bone, nearly nicked a major artery and caused quite a bit of nerve and muscle damage on it’s way out. There’d been fragments, multiple specialists, and a lot of physical therapy. It had been a briefly terrifying moment when Ichi had first awoken, unable to move his fingers properly. He hadn’t been there, still amidst a tornado of interviews, but Jyushimatsu told him. His voice had been scarily even, and nearly a whisper.  

“He cried, nii-san.”

They’d told them all not to worry, that the feeling would likely return soon enough. Nerve specialists said that he’d be able to regain most of his fine motor control with hard work.

Osomatsu really didn’t like all the what if’s and maybe’s in their wording. All the most likely’s and the mostly’s made him nervous.

Ichimatsu hadn’t complained even once to any of them; even rolled his eyes and grumbled at Karamatsu when he’d brought flowers from what he’d heard. But they knew he was hurting anyways. Strong and emotionless as always, of course.

“Same. Tired as hell of this shitty food and all the poking and prodding.” Ichimatsu scowled to himself, a strangely fond burst of affection ran through Osomatsu like a warm drink.

“How’s the shoulder?”

“Eh.” Ichimatsu glanced away. Probably hurting then. He sighed.

“Hey none of that. No beating yourself up in my room, I’ll throw you right out.” Ichimatsu, bundled up in bandages, still pale and with dark bruises under his eyes, looked about as intimidating as a newborn kitten but Osomatsu straightened in his seat regardless. “Don’t let this shit fool you, I’ll kick your ass.” He waved his good hand at the mess of bandages.

Oso huffed fondly, and held his own hands up in defeat. “Nope, no negative thoughts here. Not at all.”

Ichimatsu rolled his eyes, and patted the side of his bed impatiently. Osomatsu didn’t so much as hesitate, propping himself up on the side gingerly, avoiding the bandages and fragile parts as best as he could.

They hadn’t had much of a chance to just, be. Osomatsu had seen Ichimatsu, briefly a few times. In between room changes and therapy and teary smiles. Everything had been in commotion though, from the news of Ichi waking up after surgery, to the hushed and far too serious reports from their other siblings, there hadn’t been room for conversation. Not the kind Kara or Totty or Jyushi would want to hear, anyways.

“This is probably a terrible idea; the doctors are going to yell at both of us.” He remarked, Ichi grumbled but didn’t so much as shuffle in response. Osomatsu settled in further. Ichimatsu would never let any of them get so close on a typical basis, it must be the painkillers making him sappy, or the hospital in general maybe. Oso wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to dump heaps of affection on his little brother, however, especially not when he was as injured as any of them had been. Especially not when his concussed, shot, little brother had nearly bled out in a shitty junkyard twenty feet from him. He shuddered.

“Hey,” Ichimatsu muttered after a pause, his tone gentle, quiet.  “You know it wasn’t your fault, right?”

Oso bit his lip, unsure how to answer. Wasn’t it obvious that everything had definitely been his fault?

“I’m serious, idiot. You didn’t make me wander off alone like a moron. You didn’t force me to be at the junkyard, or any of it. I’m the one that kicked him in the junk.”

Oso couldn’t help the surprised bark of laughter at that. “Yeah, heh, I guess you did huh? Leave it to you to kick a deranged asshole right in the dick while he’s waving a gun in your face.”

Ichimatsu smirked. “Damn right.”

It felt weird to laugh at such a terror soaked memory, but he snickered and wiped away a tear of mirth anyways. Something in his chest was wounded too tightly, he felt it catch and click slightly. 

His good hand snuck its way to pat Osomatsu’s, then hold it tightly just because he could. The fingers twitched weakly, an improvement already.

“I’m proud of you.” Ichi whispered, looking anywhere but at him. “You were really brave, and you kicked his ass. I couldn’t have stood up to him like that.”

“No, you only bit him and took a bullet for me. Obviously nowhere near as brave.” Osomatsu snorted derisively, poking him gently in the side.

Ichi huffed a breath. “I mean it, asshole. You did good.” Oso mulled the words for a moment, not daring to voice the cacophony of thoughts that weighed down his gut from the inside out, a sickly molten tar that seeped from his every pore.

I’m not brave, I was hiding. I would have kept hiding if you hadn’t stepped in. I could have gotten you killed.

“I’d do it again, you know. All of it.” Ichi whispered, his fingers twitching again.

Osomatsu winced, his heart lurching. The what if’s catching up to him before he could derail them. What if the bullet had been more left, closer to the artery? Or even farther and hit him in the chest? What if Tougou had aimed like he’d meant to and hit Ichi between the eyes?

“Please don’t say that,” he managed, around the lump in his throat.

“Hey,” Ichi turned slightly towards him, his eyes glittering with something fierce and unnamable. “idiot, I’m fine.”

But he might not have been. But he almost wasn’t. Osomatsu shut his eyes against the wave of thoughts.

“Let’s just think about going home. Totoko’s been feeding the cats, right?” Oso nodded, unwilling to open his eyes quite yet.

Home. It was nearly too fantastic to think; they’d all be going home. Karamatsu had quit his job during the chaos of the past few weeks; they’d been unwilling to let him take the time off to be with his family, even after the months of hard work and extra hours he’d been pushing for them. Todomatsu had said something about not sleeping well, not much of an explanation but his belongings had appeared abruptly in their bedroom regardless. Jyushimatsu didn’t so much as speak of his job, but hadn’t been too far out of sight since that night. They’d all assumed he was staying nearby, at least.

The only one Osomatsu hadn’t heard from was Choromatsu.

Ichimatsu had muttered something about him reading their texts, but not answering, and then suddenly he wasn’t reading them at all either. The vicious part of his brain told him Choromatsu didn’t care, that Oso had burned and torn and blown apart that bridge so immensely, there was no place left for either of them to return to.

‘He’s probably just very busy’ Mom would say, uncertainty causing her smile to wobble. Yeah, busy.

Choromatsu wasn’t coming back, probably Oso’s fault as well.

He hated how immature, how angry and unwilling to listen he’d been. He hated how stupid and self centered and unsupportive he was, how easily he’d thrown everything away because for once, the attention wasn’t on him. Because for once, one of them was finally accepting responsibility. In the harsh light of the events of the past few months, it seemed so insignificant.

Younger Osomatsu didn’t know how quickly all of it could be thrown out the window. Younger Osomatsu didn’t know how loud the lightning strike of a bullet could be, how quickly it could punch a hole through the center of his own universe and kill the world around him. Younger Osomatsu didn’t deserve the mounds of support he’d constantly had within arms reach, the mountains of support and care he’d taken complete advantage of.

“Osomatsu.”

Ichi’s broken down tone pulled at his heartstrings, he looked over at his little brother and read the pleading and sincere gratitude written in bold font across his every feature.

“I’d do it again.”

Something about the way Ichi’s eyes shone, the honesty in his tone that wasn’t purely a result of the painkillers and the love that beamed from every part of him was nearly too much.

I’d do it all over again, because it would be worth it.

“Why?” He hated how small his own voice sounded, how fragile. Because that was what he was, fragile and small and too weak to stop anything.

Ichi gave him a lopsided smile.

“I remember, this one scared little boy. He was facing something terrible all by himself, he couldn’t tell anyone about it but he did it anyways.” Oso’s vision blurred, abruptly. “One night he woke up another little kid, when he finally couldn’t deal with all of the bad shit anymore. By accident but, the other snot nosed idiot begged him to stay. Didn’t know what was going on, or how much awful stuff the kid was going through, but he asked anyways. Guess he was scared or something.” He shrugged, awkwardly with one shoulder and turned his gaze away.

“Thing is; the kid should have left then. Would have avoided a lot of bad times. But he stayed because his idiot younger brother asked him to, because the younger brother was scared. The kid was probably terrified, traumatized at this point, but he stayed because his little brother was scared of being alone.”

Ichi levelled him with a long look.

“Why did the kid stay?”

Why didn’t you run, Ichi? Why didn’t you fight?

“The kid’s an idiot. Couldn’t even stop any of it from happening,” Oso spoke in a whimper, almost.

Ichi paused, voice straining when he picked it back up. “That little boy remembers it differently. He remembers his big brother protecting all of them, even when it was too much for him to take.”

“He remembers his big brother as a hero.”

Osomatsu squeezed his eyes shut. 

“I’d do it again, for the same reason you’d do it too.”

“We’re kinda stupid, huh?”

Ichi snorted in response.

“Hey, Ichi?” He hummed, and Oso ever so slightly shifted closer. “I’m really glad you’re alright.”

He didn’t say that he’d thought, for a moment—a horrible, long moment—that he’d never have this quiet happiness ever again. That he’d gladly have traded positions with Ichi if it meant he’d be the one with the ruined shoulder and the cascading waves of pain. That he’d be the one they’d thought might slip into a coma when he hadn’t woken up at first.

“And I’m really glad you stayed.” Ichi said simply, leaning his head against Oso’s careful of his bad side. Osomatsu felt like crying; he squeezed Ichi’s hand gently.

They must have fallen asleep, tucked carefully beside each other. The nurses, surprisingly, didn’t disturb them. A small curtesy, no doubt, due to the tear tracks painted on both of their cheeks.

Ichi woke up first, waves of pain battering against him like a lighthouse on a rocky coast. It was getting close to 7:30, he knew the doctors and nurses would be milling about with their trays of medication soon. His meds made him drowsy, they sapped his strength along with the pain and he knew his day was coming to a sleepy ending soon enough.

He glanced down at his brother, frowning even in his sleep, with dark and furrowed lines drawn around his mouth. 

What am I going to do with you? He thought with a jaded mirth, a sad thing that floated on unspoken apologies. Ichimatsu had his own guilts, buried beneath his air of indifference. Oso’s came first, though. He’d caused enough of a ruckus purely with his shitty arm. They needed Oso to be alright, first.

Instinctively, he attempted to curl his fingers around the hand still clasped around his own. His fingers twitched uselessly as a sharp twinge of pain worked its way through his spine. Dammit. He knew the complex doctor lingo that surrounded his injury was bleaker than most of their family let on. They’d told him and his mother, behind doors and curtains and hidden away from the tearful reunions outside, that he might not ever be able to lift his arm properly again. Too many tendons in the meaty part of his flesh, too many nicked bits and pieces.

He could almost feel the bolts and plates shift with his breathing, the patchwork of seams that made him feel a bit like Frankenstein’s monster. It was nearly nauseating.

But still, like he told his big dumbass brother, he’d do it again. A thousand times over.

If the world had offered him a choice; pain and a bit of helplessness and dependence for the rest of his life, along with the mental trauma that was no doubt lurking around every corner, in exchange for his brother?

He’d agree, every time. Without hesitation.

Osomatsu deserved more happiness than he allowed himself. He’d do anything he could to foster that. 

Ichi glanced around the hospital room, taking in the stretching orange and purples beyond the window pane, the array of quietly buzzing machines, and lastly, his brother’s hand tangled tightly between his own limp ones. It was an anchor, a patch resewn on a wrecked and tattered fabric. A space to regrow from, to plant roots and shoot upwards into the sun once again. They’d be fine, Oso and him. He was sure they would.

He’d been unconscious for most of it, but he’d heard bits and pieces, seen the heavy horror in Karamatsu’s eyes and in the clench of his fists. Ichimatsu had always been better at reading his brother’s than he’d ever admit. Somehow, after everything, it felt easier to let down his own guards anyways.

“Kara,” he tried to ebb the flow of his thoughts, keep them from spilling viscerally into his tone. Being gentle used to be impossible for him, his pride fighting every laced word and calm breath. Now, he just had to take his time. The exhaustion and medication helped loosen his tongue. “Karamatsu, sit down before you hurt yourself.”

Kara looked stunned, caught in his own thoughts no doubt. Probably forgot where he was for a moment too, standing awkwardly at the foot of Ichi’s bed. It was early, the rest of their family split between work, helping Osomatsu sort through paper work and statements and fend off hungry reporting vultures. Karamatsu had just slipped into his room, without really consciously meaning to it seemed.

Karamatsu sat, stiffly. His fists still curled and white with tension.

Ichi sighed.

“How’s he doing,” it wasn’t really a question.

Kara shrugged, still staring down at his hands. “Better, mostly.” It wasn’t really an answer.

They hadn’t talked about the junkyard. The night was still a myriad of biting pieces, a black hole in the center of their universe they’d all just barely managed to skirt around. It hurt, all of it. But if the months of silence and separation had taught Ichi anything, it was that wounds tended to fester when they were left un-mended. And avoidance only made the fallout that much worse.

“And you?” Karamatsu finally glanced upwards, with a confused blink. “How are you doing?”

For a second Karamatsu almost looked furious, before it smouldered apart into something more suffocating and inwards. His expressive eyes shuttered, like drawn blinds and Ichi could see the obvious lie waiting on the tip of his tongue.

“You haven’t been sleeping,” Ichi noted flatly. “You’ve barely been home enough to shower and I know you haven’t talked to anyone like you were supposed to. So don’t tell me you’re fine, Shittymatsu. How are you, really.” To his credit, in spite of the exhaustion beading in the edges of his vision, he kept his voice from cracking.

Kara slumped in his seat, a wince crossing his features. “I keep seeing it. I keep thinking about it and… I thought you were…” He took a shuddering breath and Ichi swallowed roughly.

“They told me I stopped breathing.”

Karamatsu shuddered, a full flinch causing his fists to clench once more, now pulling at the fabric of his jeans. Jeans, his brain noted unhelpfully, Karamatsu was wearing plain jeans. Surely a sign of the end times.

“You were talking to me, before you… before. Do you remember?”

He remembered agonizing burning, curling outwards and shattering inwards. He remembered the stars and fading silver clouds. He nodded.

“I keep thinking. You were smiling, like it was fine and. I couldn’t help you, and I thought…”

“Karamatsu,” he couldn’t reach out to his brother, not with his shoulder and his useless arm. His brother was falling apart right beside him and he couldn’t reach him. He was immensely glad Tougou was likely far, far away from them at the moment. He wanted to launch that man directly into hell where he belonged, thank you very much.

“They told me you were there, at the right time. That you slowed down the bleeding. I wouldn’t be here right now otherwise.” He paused, needing Karamatsu to understand, and oh, this felt familiar somehow. He ignored it. “I… Thank you, Kara.”

Karamatsu cut him off in a typically dramatic move, eyes welling dangerously with unshed tears as he nearly launched himself towards Ichi’s bed. “I was so scared,” he sobbed. Ichi’s aches and wounds pulled with the sudden jostle but he ignored that too. He’d never apologized before, for throwing Karamatsu out and slamming the door behind him. There were so many damaged paths and bonds between the Matsu family, and he wondered how any of them had let it get so bad.

“Me too,” he whispered back, surprised at the emotion stuck within his own throat. “But we’re here now, right?”

“You said before. You said goodbye. Don’t do that to me, okay?” Karamatsu’s eyes were saucer wide and trembling as he stared up at him, and Ichi felt like he’d been adrift at sea and had finally found his way back. Maybe the stars and clouds had been leading him all along. “You can’t say goodbye, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.” He nodded, and bit his lip because they both knew it was a promise neither of them could keep. And he hugged his brother tighter, his other hand limp beside him, like a warning, or maybe a bargain.

It was easier to admit now, his weaknesses and failings. He guessed it was because they’d already seen it now. They all knew he wasn’t invulnerable because he had been just that, immensely vulnerable. The not-secret was ruined now, the guise torn down, the man behind the curtain brought out and shoved under a spotlight.

But all that meant was that Ichi didn’t have to try so hard, that he didn’t have to pretend he didn’t care immensely anymore.

Osomatsu’s breathing caught, his eyes fluttering open slowly.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

“Mnn,” Oso replied intelligently, for a moment it was like before. Osomatsu smirking faintly and looking rumpled and child-like around the edges. Ichi saw the moment Osomatsu realized where he was, saw Ichi’s bandages and remembered. It was like a landslide, a sealed door crashing down in the form of downward quirking lips and guilt that had no right to live behind his brother’s teeth or dance in the depths of his eyes.

Ichi looked away.

“So, what are we gunna do about that, huh?” His chest was translucent at this point probably, his emotions too close to the surface in a way they hadn’t been in decades. But Osomatsu was still Osomatsu and he was still trying to pull too much into himself without ever admitting anything, and something had to give.

“How many times do I have to tell you it’s not your fault, Oso?”

He didn’t answer.

Ichi thought of star maps and chopping waves and lighthouses, he thought of Osomatsu on a tiny ship, close to land but never directing himself to safety. Convinced he could fight the waves, all by himself.

Osomatsu was beyond companionship, he needed the stern talking to Choromatsu usually had waiting in the wings. He needed lists and rules and steps to follow and dammit, Choro had conveniently decided to step out during all of this and of course that was right when everyone needed him. Asshole.

Ichi couldn’t offer advice or guide books, he was fighting off his own rising tides of guilt and he couldn’t even get his fingers to curl properly, couldn’t anchor like he used to.

He could try anyways.

Ichi opened his mouth again, to offer something, anything but was interrupted by a cheerful call of ‘knock, knock!’ at the door.

He whirled around to see Karamatsu and Jyushimatsu, both grinning and breathlessly emotional. Todomatsu peeked in around them, teary eyed and radiating glee.

“Surprise!” Totty warbled and Osomatsu, still tucked up against his side, instinctively grabbed his non-functional hand once again, glancing between them all and radiating confusion. Without any preamble, suddenly there were more smiling faces peeking in. Totoko, Chibita, and Iyami, all in various states of emotion and relief.

Totoko barged in first, seating herself primly at the chair beside their bed. “You silly boys have to get better soon, alright? I have a performance coming up and it just won’t do if I’m missing my most important fans.” Ichi felt his cheeks warm, stunned into silence himself.

“Heh, of course Totoko.” Oso sniffed, and Ichi felt the death grip on his palm loosen slightly.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again, you idiot brothers!” Chibita shouted, valiantly attempting to appear anything but teary eyed and sappy. Ichi had heard he’d been there in the junkyard, that he’d been right there when the ambulance reached them. Chibita had been holding pressure on his shoulder even after they’d thought he’d passed. Chibita had basically helped save his life, and Ichi hadn’t so much as thanked him. He tried to make eye contact with the shorter man across the room, and Chibita gave him a small smile and a nod.

“Chibita, I…” Oso was shaking, he realized. Ichi’s fingers twitched again.

“Tch,” he stepped into the room, waving a hand in a failed attempt to appear nonchalant. “Don’t think this erases any of your tab at all, you hear me? You idiots still owe me.”

Ichi coughed, a surprised and watery snort of laughter peeling through him. Totoko giggled, reaching out to pat Osomatsu's stunned shoulder, and Iyami sniffled loudly from the corner, a big dumb grin spread across his face. 

“Oh! There’s still one more surprise!” Totty sing songed, and Jyushi flapped his arms excitedly, dragging someone else into the room with a loud bark of laughter. 

And, like the frazzled mess of anxiety and nerves Ichi remembered, suddenly Choromatsu was peeking out from behind them all.

“Uh, hi.” He rubbed a hand across his neck, the very picture of contrition and embarrassment. Serves him right, Ichi thought ruefully, even as his heart warmed and soared at the sight. 

“Choromatsu!” Oso squeaked, stunned to see his brother after so many months and so many unanswered calls. Choro looked clean shaven, stressed, bags hung under his eyes and he was still wearing a suit. Rumpled and wrinkled up in places, like he’d been traveling in the thing for days.

“Sorry, I’m sorry.. I—work was… I was stupid I guess or, maybe I… I…well…” Choromatsu was crying, pushing a hand through his already messy hair. There’d be time for explanations later, he was sure, right now he was happy to even see his brother. Choromatsu looked like he’d been working himself to the bone for weeks.

“I’m the worst, I ignored you all and…I was so scared. I thought— “

The sentence hung above them, they all had thought the same thing. Like a cold ice bath, like the end of their beginning. But it didn't matter, not right now. Not here with all of them.

“I called a lawyer, I. I got us the best one I could buy, and. I’m covering the remainder of the bill, just in case. You, um. You don’t have to forgive me, but I just thought I might—“

Ichimatsu huffed, rolling his eyes.

“Just get over here already.”

Choromatsu nearly stumbled, nearly tripped, but he was flinging his arms across the both of them and holding on so tight he was shaking. Or maybe Osomatsu was shaking, it was hard to tell. Their family, his brothers, they were back. His ship, sailing in the dark tides, lost at sea, could finally find land. Ichi’s heart felt new, younger. Everything that had broken them down over the past months suddenly seemed like a hurdle, like a cracked and beaten portion of the path they'd been blazing all on their own anyways. It wasn't insurmountable, just difficult. And in spite of the obstacles, their foundations were gluing back together anyways. In spite of everything, in spite of Tougou, Choromatsu was here. 

“I love you guys, you know that, huh?” Choromatsu sniffed, and god what was with everyone crying on him lately? But he was probably crying too so, really, it was mostly fine. Osomatsu was whimpering, almost, his hands like frantic claws around both of them, and Ichi could hear the shuffle of footsteps as the rest of their guests gave them a moment of privacy. 

Choromatsu came home. Their last puzzle piece, the first tumbling domino and he'd climbed all the way back to them. He wrapped his good arm around Choro's shoulders and dug his hands just as fiercely back. Choro belonged right here, with all of them. The time between them all was irrelevant because this, this was home. 

“We know,” Ichi answered for them both. Because it just made sense. Because of course they did. Because Choromatsu hadn’t spoken to any of them in months, but Ichi could see it in every line on his face that he’d never meant to stray so far. Never meant to lose sight of land and forget the way back home. He’d been swept up in the tides like the rest of them, busy making a name for himself and saving money for his own new life and now he was spending it all on them. All his months of draining work, just for them. Choromatsu couldn’t prove that he’d never really abandoned them in a more heartfelt way if he tried.

Choro snuffled against his shoulder and buried his face further into the side of his neck.

“Ew, never mind. You stink like ass. Get away from me.” Ichimatsu complained, and the brothers all laughed, teary eyed and still burned, still shaken, but finally. Finally.

Together.

“It’ll be okay,” Osomatsu whispered after a moment, and it was like rain in a desert, like a rainbow at the end of a storm. It was sad and shaky and so, so broken. But it was real.

“We’ll be okay,” he whispered back.

Chapter Text

None of this had been easy.

Reminding himself, pulling his shorn armour closely around himself, breathing in deeply.  Every step of the way, every tooth and nail climb had been harrowing and impossible. And now, standing on a brisk hilltop in the early morning, he wondered if he’d leapt off of a clifftop without realizing. If all of this hadn’t been a plunge, a slow freefall downwards. He wondered if he’d just been waiting for the crash.

It had been months, he had to remind himself every few steps. Each inhale, a thought. An exhale, a mantra. None of this had been remotely easy.

“Hey,” Ichimatsu’s shoulder bumped into his, he sucked in a sharp breath. The wind whipped chill stung his teeth. “Here, remember? What mom said, five things and all that.”

Five things he could see, touch, or hear. Anchors to pull him back from the vague unsettled fringe of static. One, grey toned and fog touched grass. The fields were beginning to turn yellow with the fall, the colder air leaving a fine silvery dust behind. Two, gloomy dark skies. Well, less dark, more apathetic. It was a horrible day, by his usual standards at least; today it was comforting. A shield, or a comforter wrapped around his shoulders. Three, Ichimatsu to his side. Typically gloomy himself, his eyes lined with faint purple rings and a bunched up tension on his side he couldn’t ever seem to quite shake off. He’d traded his purple hoodie in for a greyer one, weeks ago.  The purple sent too many thoughts whirling through them all; flashes and double glances led too many of them to see red splashed across the front. It helped that both his and Oso’s own hoodies had been ruined, he glanced down at his own dark orange jacket. Four.

“Jeeze, why does it have to be so cold?”

“Ah, my dear brother, do not fear! I can warm you all with my dazzling smile!”

“Ugh.”

“Man, Totty you must be cold, that was the biggest shiver I’ve ever seen!”

“No, that was the last shred of my faith in humanity escaping through my skin.”

And, five. His brothers.

“Oso, do you know where it is?” Choromatsu asked softly. It was another tactic, he remembered. Asking him simple questions to get his mind focused on the here and now, and not the what if’s.

He licked his lips, cracked in the cold breeze. “Uh, yeah. Right over this hill here.”

Ichi took a subtle step away, giving him space to find himself once again. He was grateful, for his brothers and for their endless understanding. It had taken a while, a lot of conversations and hushed whispers with tears hanging underneath. They always had the best intentions, but it was a Matsu thing in many ways. To be blunt, to lack tact. To charge in and demand solutions immediately or else pretend everything was exactly the same. His brothers had wanted to help, but Osomatsu wasn’t great with words and he’d nearly fallen back on his old ways without realizing. He just…. wanted to forget.

But forgetting had gotten them all in this mess in the first place, hadn’t it? Forgetting had changed things, made it impossible to ever forget again.

Ichi’s accidental winces, the way his arm hung in a sling, still. Months later, barely progressing. The way Oso flinched at loud noises, lost himself for brief moments only to find his way back, shakier and carved out. Things had changed, in subtle ways. The Matsu’s had to change with it.

“It’s so… creepy here.” Totty clung gently to his arm, telegraphing his moves beforehand so Oso could expect it.

He hated feeling like this. Like his brother’s had to be careful and cautious, that he was broken somehow. Choro had assured him, time and time again; he wasn’t, it was fine, all of them were okay. Nothing was so simple, though. Every time he pulled away and saw the hurt flash across someone’s eyes. Every time he stayed home, declined invitations. Every bad day, where his thoughts wouldn’t align and his emotions existed outside of himself just out of reach and he couldn’t find it in himself to be anything other than empty. It all felt like a splintered seam in his shaky clay shell, like a test he continuously kept failing on how to be normal. On how to be whole.

He hated that things couldn’t be the same.

But, Osomatsu, the mantra repeated, none of this had been easy. Every step had been difficult and draining and he’d wanted to curl up and cry more times than he could count. Every interview, every lawyer meeting, every time he’d had to relive it all had taken something from him. And every day he made it through, he gained a little more back.

“Totty! You can’t call a graveyard creepy, that’s so disrespectful,” Choromatsu chided, but he couldn’t quite infuse anger into his tone. Everything his brothers said these days carried an undercurrent of relief, still.  He crunched his way across the last mound of earth.

He hadn’t expected anything grandiose, nothing dramatic, but yet part of him still felt humbled by the sight. A simple block of granite, a white stone against the gray backdrop. Some part of him felt she would have liked it.

Ichimatsu huffed, “it’s… nice.”

He hummed in agreement. For a moment, the brother’s stood in a quiet somber thought.

“It’s weird. I didn’t know her or anything, but…” His words slipped past him. He grappled with the strange connection he felt in his chest, the effervescent pull like an anchor within him. “I feel like we uh, went through all of this. Together, somehow.” And he felt an itch under his skin, an uncleanliness at being the one who lived. The one who came away from everything unscathed, at least physically.

Survivor’s guilt, they’d told him.

“I think she would have been proud,” Ichi muttered beside him, shoving one arm into his front pocket and shuffling his toes through the crisp leaves. He quirked an eyebrow, though Ichimtasu kept his gaze firmly on the ground below him.

Karamatsu sniffed, a wide grin stretching like a yawn or daybreak across his features. “She would have been, definitely. Osomatsu got her vengeance after all!” Totty elbowed him, a squeak resounding from Kara’s lungs across their quiet field.

“Idiot, you can’t just say shit like that—“

“It’s fine,” Oso found himself saying, his vision distantly locked on the blurring letters on marble stone.

“He’s right, though.” Choro pipped up, mirroring Ichi’s pose. “You gave her peace, in the afterlife and all that. I’m sure she was watching out for you too.”

The thought was strange, but nice nonetheless. To think the kind, smart cashier girl had been helping him. Maybe she’d been the fire in his veins, the determination in his bones that finally allowed him to stand and run after Ichi in the first place. Maybe she’d kept Ichi breathing, maybe she’d allowed Kara and Chibita’s feet to run that much faster. Maybe it had never been fate at all.

It was.

Nice.

He smiled, a faint fleeting thing.

Oso took the last few steps, placing a palm on the frigid stone marker. His leg protested; the cold weather awakening the old, unhealed injury from the first night. From the convenience store, from when this all started. It felt like symmetry, like a beginning meeting an end. He breathed.

The poor girl had deserved more than this. She’d deserved the chance to live and laugh and love. Her parents— his therapist had organized a meeting, suggesting it would help him to forgive himself or something— had thanked him for allowing them a closure. Her parents had been kind, too. But also hollowed, weary.

It had reminded him of who he could have been, what Tougou had almost turned them all into.

It also reminded him, that he’d been brave in the end. He hadn’t hidden, hadn’t forgotten. Hopefully, they could all find peace in that.

Her family could only find peace in knowing there was nothing more they could have done. Oso knew he could have done more, though. Oso knew, what they didn’t. That he’d dropped coffee, that he’d startled Tougou. That the masked murderer had never intended to pull the trigger in the first place. Sometimes he thought back to the silver metal, the gunpowder in the air. Sometimes he remembered the splash of red on white tiles and the red rims around tired, thankful eyes. Sometimes his fingers twitched when he thought of dark, beady eyes and a nighttime that went on too long.

Sometimes he wished he’d made a different choice.

“I wonder what she was like,” Jyushi spoke up.

“Was she funny? Did she like to collect stamps? I wonder what her favorite colour was. I bet she was really fun to talk to!”

Their brothers exchanged nervous glances. “Jyushi, maybe this isn’t—“

“Her parents said she liked white, like um. Pale flowers, I think.”  Oso shrugged.

“Let’s get her some! Lots and lots! Hydrangeas are pretty, let’s get her those!”

Jyushimatsu’s arms swept out in a large circle, and he laughed. “She should have her favorite flowers, it’s too gloomy here!”

Osomatsu couldn’t help the faint twitch of his lips, or the sudden instinctual desire to rub his nose. He laughed, and maybe it sounded a little like heartbreak still, but there was hope there too. Like he was breathing out sawdust and ash to make room, finally, for something more.

“I think,” he turned to look at his family, staring at him half cautiously and, in the case of Totty, with suspiciously watery eyes.

And maybe it was his palm, still pressed to the marble stone. Maybe it was the tension that fell from his shoulders in that single moment, maybe it was the biting wind at his cheeks, but felt a laugh sweep through him. Like it were carried in the wind and he was simply a kite caught in the breeze.

“I think that sounds perfect.”