Chapter Text
He wakes up doused in red.
Warm. Thick. Reeking of copper.
Ah.
Another lucid dream.
He’s been getting those ever since the psychiatrists started him on enough medication to tranquilize a horse.
At least he isn’t pregnant this time.
Ryei shudders and drags a hand down his face. He should probably be waking up soon anyway. Might as well see what fresh horrors his subconscious cooked up tonight.
The world around him is red.
Very red.
And very bony.
An arch of enormous ribs curves overhead like a cathedral ceiling.
…okay, admittedly, that’s kind of cool.
The floor pulses faintly beneath his feet like living flesh. The air hangs damp and heavy, unpleasantly warm against his skin. It reminds him of the one time he visited Ryou at the butcher shop he worked at after school—
The memory hits him sharp and sudden, straight through the chest.
Ryei aborts the thought before it can finish forming.
Yeah.
Not doing that tonight.
He scrubs hard at his eyes until stars burst behind them.
When he lowers his hand, the cathedral— no, shrine, his mind supplies— is still there.
Bones litter the floor in pale heaps. Mostly animal, he thinks distantly. Some definitely human.
That part doesn’t even surprise him.
Their apartment used to be full of bones too. Cleaned specimens wired together with obsessive care because Ry—
Nope.
Still not going there.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Ryei whips around so fast his neck cracks.
White robes.
Pink hair.
Black markings crawling across pale skin.
And a face that knocks every bit of air from his lungs.
“R-Ryou?”
The man’s expression twists instantly, sharp with disgust. Like Ryei is something rotten stuck to the bottom of his shoe.
He flicks his wrist.
For one impossible second, the world comes apart.
Something slices through him so completely that his body forgets what shape it’s supposed to be—
Ryei stumbles hard enough to nearly fall.
The man still stands exactly where he was before, hand half-raised.
Ryei swallows against sudden nausea.
Right.
Hallucination.
Probably.
His chest hurts.
(That hurt.)
(That hurt so fucking bad.)
The man stares at him now with open suspicion.
“What,” he says slowly, “are you?”
God.
Even the voice sounds right in all the wrong ways.
But it isn’t Ryou.
It can’t be.
Ryou is dead.
A drunk driver hit him at a crosswalk going one-twenty in a fifty zone. They’d identified the body through the teeth and—
No.
His vision blurs briefly.
Too tired.
He’s too tired for this.
This isn’t Ryou.
It’s a hallucination. A dream. Some grotesque construct his grieving subconscious stitched together out of old memories and worse fears.
Dr. Mariam warned him things might get uglier before they improved.
Apparently “uglier” involved psychological warfare.
Besides, Ryou never wore traditional clothing unless theatre club was blackmailing him into it.
Ryei exhales shakily.
“…you’re not Ryou.”
A blur of motion.
A clawed hand slams over his mouth.
For one horrifying instant, Ryei feels teeth split apart beneath sharp fingers. Feels blood flood his throat. Feels something tear loose inside his jaw—
Then—
Nothing.
The man looks almost puzzled now.
As though he expected a different reaction.
Ryei breathes carefully through his nose.
Okay.
Right.
Must've been a stress hallucination.
Those happen sometimes.
Usually not this vivid, but psychotropics were apparently a beautiful and mysterious field of medicine.
Besides, if his subconscious really wanted to kill him, it probably would’ve chosen something less dramatic than tongue removal.
Like a truck going one-twenty through a crosswalk—
No.
Stop.
Ryei straightens slightly.
Then, because modern psychiatry has apparently dissolved his survival instincts completely, he says:
“Hello to you too.”
Silence.
The man continues staring at him.
Ryei swallows.
He knows the drill. He's repeated it until he can do it in his sleep (Hah!). Step 1: Acknowledge.
“I think…” His voice catches slightly. “I think you’re a part of me.”
The words sound ridiculous out loud.
Still, he continues.
“I think you’re my angry part.”
Something flickers across the man’s face.
Too fast to fully track.
Recognition.
Disgust.
Suspicion.
And something strangely hollow underneath all of it.
Ryei knows those expressions instinctively.
He’s known them longer than he’s known language.
(He thinks he probably recognized Ryou scowling in the womb too.)
For one terrible moment, it really does feel like looking at his brother again.
Then the expression shutters beneath something colder.
“You speak,” the man says slowly, “as though you know me.”
Ryei huffs quietly.
“Hard not to.”
His thoughts feel sluggish tonight. Heavy around the edges.
“We’ve known each other forever, haven’t we?”
Ryei slumps heavily onto atop a jut of bone, elbows braced against his knees, trying very hard not to fall asleep upright.
“Since before we were born probably.”
The air in the shrine tightens.
The man’s gaze narrows onto him with sudden, terrifying intensity.
“Prove it.”
Ryei blinks.
“…what?”
“You claim understanding.” The words come clipped and cold. “Then prove it.”
Ah. Right. He's done this before.
Step 2: Validate the emotion.
Ryei drags a hand down his face.
His head hurts.
The apparition is asking.
Admit it.
The anger has been clawing at him for years now, screaming itself raw against the inside of his ribs while Ryei kept forcing it back down every time it surfaced ugly.
Accept me.
Accept why I existed.
Why we became like this.
His therapist had spent months trying to drag words out of him through medication fog and shaking hands and long silences on leather couches.
Externalize it.
Acknowledge it.
Stop treating survival like shame.
And now his subconscious is apparently wearing his brother’s face and demanding testimony.
Right.
Okay.
Ryei exhales slowly.
“Well…” His mouth twists weakly. “We were angry because we had to be.”
Ryei stares vaguely at the fleshy floor beneath his shoes. And thinks of a heel breaking over his bruised back.
“Mother called us curses so often I think eventually we just…” His fingers twitch weakly. “Started believing it.”
The shrine seems to quiet around them.
“If people already think there’s something wrong with you, eventually it gets exhausting trying to act normal.” His voice drifts somewhere far away. “At some point you just become what hurts less.”
A long silence follows. Watching. Almost hungry.
Ryei keeps talking anyway because if he stops now, he might never start again.
“And being angry helped.”
Silence.
“Anger keeps you warm,” Ryei murmurs. “Keeps you moving.”
Cold pavement.
Freezing fingers.
Ryou squeezing his hand hard enough to hurt.
Keep walking.
Keep walking.
“Because if you stop…” He swallows. “Then you feel everything.”
The man says nothing. But he can feel eyes on him— probing, probing.
Ryei laughs softly under his breath.
“Which is kind of awful, honestly.”
The shrine pulses wetly beneath them.
“And later…” Ryei’s brow furrows faintly. “Later the anger just sort of stayed.”
His fingers curl against his knees.
“It made sure no one hurt us again.”
Teachers exchanging glances across cramped offices.
Social workers speaking too softly.
Adults smiling carefully, like frightened dog handlers.
“It felt safer if nobody got close enough to hurt us again.”
The words are beginning to slip now, thoughts loosening at the edges.
“But…” Ryei frowns. “I think I started treating you like something shameful.”
The man’s eyes sharpen instantly.
Ryei barely seems to notice.
“Like if I ignored you maybe we would stop hurting.” A weak laugh escapes him. “That was stupid.”
His head feels unbearably heavy.
“I shoved you away instead.”
His throat tightens unexpectedly.
“You kept us alive and I acted like you were something ugly for it.”
The silence that follows feels enormous.
Ryei glances up blearily—
—and freezes.
The expression on the man’s face—
God.
He looks—Not angry—Not cruel. Just..
Still.
And suddenly Ryei’s chest aches so badly he can barely breathe.
“Oh,” he says softly.
The realization arrives all at once.
Lonely.
God.
This thing is lonely.
Of course it is.
He stands before fully deciding to.
Immediately regrets it because the shrine floor shifts unpleasantly beneath him and his knees almost buckle.
He catches himself clumsily against white silk.
The man freezes.
Ryei stares at him up close. Ryou’s face, Ryou’s tattoo's, Ryou’s features that should never look this hollow.
His hand lifts before he can think better of it.
Cold skin beneath trembling fingers.
Freezing.
Ryou had always run cold too.
And now he'll never be warm again.
The thought slips through him before he can stop it.
Something painful twists sharply in his chest.
“You worked so hard,” Ryei whispers.
The man does not move. Ryei can not feel him breathe.
His thumb brushes absently beneath one of the markings.
“You kept us safe.”
His words are beginning to slur slightly now, thoughts drifting farther apart.
Guru leaving bowls of soup outside his bedroom door when speaking felt impossible.
Sato sitting in the waiting room for hours with him because he'd misremembered the time again.
New sketchbooks appearing beside his bed every time he filled the old ones.
Warm blankets fresh from the dryer draped silently over his shoulders.
Gentleness so patient it had once made him suspicious.
Ryei’s throat burns painfully.
“We’re safe now,” he says softly. “You know that, right?”
Nothing but those terrible eyes fixed on him.
“You don’t have to keep fighting everything anymore.”
The man’s voice emerges rougher than before.
“You are delusional.”
“Probably.”
He has it stamped on his medical file.
His vision blurs again.
He’s so tired.
But the thing in front of him still looks unbearably alone.
Like some injured animal that learned to bare its teeth before anyone could touch it.
And Ryei has never learned how to leave injured things alone.
The words leave before he can properly think about them.
“I’m sorry I left you alone.”
The man goes rigid beneath his hand.
Startled.
His thoughts are scattering badly now.
Need to say this before he forgets.
“Thank you.”
Something in the man’s expression falters.
Like the words physically hurt to hear. He doesn’t know who he's talking to now. Ryou. Not-Ryou. Himself. His heart hurts.
“I love you, okay?”
Simple.
“How could I not?”
Ryei’s knees finally give out.
The shrine tilts sickeningly sideways.
The last thing he feels is clawed hands catching him before he can hit the floor.