Work Text:
Winter
Haruo’s first memory of Akio is when his younger brother falls over in the yard and fractures his wrist. Haruo is four and Akio is three, and they don’t yet know anything much about Kagemoris and Daemons and the inter-politics of a village trapped in time. Instead, they are playing because that is what kids do. It’s winter but there’s no snow yet so they’re allowed outside. Akio is trying to balance the whole length of a beam and Haruo is nearby, kicking a soccer ball aimlessly around. They’re waiting for Natsuki and Fuyuki to get home from school, and just as Haruo’s about to wind up what will surely be his best kick ever, he hears a crack and a loud thud. He misses his kick and almost trips on his shoes, barely catching himself in time. His darting eyes find Akio instantly, sitting on his knees beside the beam and cradling his wrist with his other hand. It’s already swelling, red and ugly.
“Ah!” Haruo closes the distance between them in a few short seconds. “Your wrist! Oh no, I think it’s broken!”
“It cracked,” Akio whispers. He’s a quiet kid but that’s okay because Haruo is loud enough for the both of them. Though, if there’s ever a time to be loud, it’s this. Haruo cries when he skins his knees and when he stubs his toe and when he hits his head on the bunkbeds they share. Akio just cradles his wrist and blinks.
“I’m gonna call Granny,” Haruo decides. If he screams at just the right volume, he knows she’ll come running. He’s tested it before. “Aw, Akio, it looks really bad. Does it hurt?”
Akio blinks. “No.”
Haruo pauses. That…that doesn’t seem right. “It doesn’t?” He cocks his head to the side, screaming temporarily forgotten. “But when Fuyuki broke his fingers, he said it hurt.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Akio says.
“Maybe wrists are different than fingers,” Haruo says. He’s four, so this is sound logic to him. Plus, he’s starting to suspect that Fuyuki and Natsuki are lying when they say they know everything because they’re older and that makes you smarter. Then he remembers that he has to scream for Granny, because even if wrists don’t hurt when you break then, Akio’s wrist is now turning purple and it’s like, twice the size it should be, and Natsuki said that if you don’t fix things when they break then they go weird and stay broken.
Granny comes- not running because she’s cool like that and doesn’t panic- and takes one look at Akio’s wrist and tells him she’ll have to call for a doctor. Haruo decides he might start crying because doctors are scary and have weird needles and the lady who came to help Fuyuki’s fingers had weird hair and told Fuyuki it’s easier to treat dead patients. Akio holds his wrist and nods his head and whispers a shy thanks when Granny tells him how brave he’s being. Haruo gets so worried about if the doctor’s gonna be mean to Akio that he forgets to tell Granny that they’ve worked out some broken bones hurt and some don’t.
Two weeks later Haruo falls off the same beam while he’s trying to cheer Akio up by doing a trick and breaks his arm.
It hurts more than anything he’s ever felt in his four short years.
Spring
Haruo is used to sharing his space, has done it his whole life with Fuyuki and Akio and even Natsuki until Granny said something about girls needing privacy and moved her out, and so he’s quite happy when he forms a bond with Torty and Bunbun, because it finally means his room at the Kagemori compound feels less empty. When the Kuroya siblings had been brought officially onboard to the family (organisation?), they’d left the orphanage and moved into the sprawling halls of true luxury. Still, despite the vastness, Haruo had been prepared to bunker down yet again with his brothers and their bunkbeds, but Mr Jin had offered them all a place of their own, and Fuyuki and Akio had accepted eagerly. Determined not to be the annoying middle child Natsuki often refers to him as, Haruo had kept his mouth shut and focused on proving himself enough to earn making a contract as soon as possible.
And here they are. His new friends who he loves to bits already. Torty is shy and tends to hide away in a space between worlds that only Daemons can access, or under the floorboards, but Bunbun is clingy and Haruo is happy to be clung to.
He’s especially happy to have them with him at the moment, considering he’s on strict bed rest thanks to the several broken ribs and the concussion his latest job had earnt him. It had been his first time in the field with his Daemon pair, and perhaps that made him a little more reckless than usual because he truly hadn’t seen the hit coming, when he feels that normally he guards himself a lot more. Fuyuki had been out with him, and he hadn’t even got a pair of his own yet, but he’s come home with not even a scratch, so Haruo is feeling pretty sorry for himself and pretty lonely as well. At least it’s not summer or anything. There’s a cool spring breeze coming through the open window and whilst everything hurts, he can say with satisfaction that he’s not sitting in a puddle of his own sweat.
“Haruo.” There’s a knock on the door, and Haruo tries to sit up and look presentable, except fuck that hurts, nope, not trying that again. “Can I come in?”
“I’m decent, if that’s what you mean,” Haruo says. He’s smiling through the pain, because he knows that voice, has known it his whole life, and it always perks him up to see-
“I thought you might be sleeping.” Akio enters the room, ducking his head slightly to avoid knocking it into the doorframe, because he’s annoyingly tall like that and Haruo hasn’t grown since he was thirteen.
“Dontcha know people with concussions aren’t allowed to go to sleep,” Haruo says. “I think.” He has eyes on the plate in Akio’s hands, grinning already at the sight of the slices of apple cut to look like little rabbits. “Aw, thanks. Did you cut them yourself?”
“Fuyuki did,” Akio says. He finds a chair and sits in it, still managing to tower over Haruo who has gone for a western style bed with a frame that keeps him well off the ground, because he’s realised Torty likes to sleep underneath him, out of sight. Annoyingly tall Akio strikes again. “But then he and Natsuki had to go out to meet that woman about the daemon sighting at the lake.”
“Man, I was meant to go on that mission.” Haruo pouts. Being injured is the worst.
“Are you in pain?” Akio asks. He holds out the plate and wincing, Haruo reaches for a slice.
“Yeah, majorly,” he says. He bites into the apple. “My ribs are broken.”
Akio’s eyes get wistful. “I can’t imagine that feels good.”
“Sucks,” Haruo agrees. “You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with it.”
“Yeah,” Akio says. His voice is quiet. “Lucky.”
He has a bandage wrapped around his finger, a remnant of some cut or another that he wouldn’t have even noticed getting but had to take care of anyway.
“So,” Haruo says. He feels like he maybe he put his foot in his mouth. “Have you found a potential Daemon pair yet? Mr Jin says you’ve been doing good work.”
“No,” Akio says. “But I think I’d like something big.”
“But then you won’t get to cuddle with them and stuff,” Haruo says. Bunbun is pretending to nap at his side- everyone knows Daemons can’t sleep- and he snuggles further into Haruo.
“I don’t know many people who make that a point of contention,” Akio says. You might be an outlier with that one.”
“Someone’s gotta be.”
Akio gets up, leaving the plate on Haruo’s bedside table. “True,” he says, and then bows slightly. “I have work to do. Feel better soon, Haruo.”
He leaves, and Haruo feels like maybe he ruined something again.
Summer
“I’m dying,” Natsuki groans. She is sitting as close to the fan as she possible can, hair up and off her shoulders. Sweat drips down her forehead and the water bottle she’s been drinking from is long empty. They have a rare day off, but it doesn’t feel worth it considering it’s too hot to go and do anything.
“Think about how I feel,” Fuyuki says solemnly.
“Can’t,” Natsuki says. “I’m not empathetic like that.”
“I am,” Haruo says, just to be annoying. He gives Fuyuki an exaggerated look of pity, though he has to concede that Fuyuki has a point. It’s way too hot as it is, but Fuyuki is still healing from a bad burn on his back, courtesy of an encounter with a rogue Kagemori agent and their Daemon pair.
“Stop hogging the fan,” Fuyuki says. Natsuki edges herself even closer.
“At least you don’t have fur,” Bunbun chirps up. Haruo’s ever present companion is stretched out on the floorboards, jacket long abandoned.
“I thought Daemons couldn’t feel stuff like heat,” Haruo says. He wishes they were cuddling.
“I’m just special like that,” Bunbun says. Which, true. Bunbun and Torty are the most special Daemons in the whole world and that’s not just Haruo being biased.
They sit in comfortable silence for a bit. Natsuki’s an empathetic liar, because she shuffles out of the way of the fan soon enough, allowing the injured Fuyuki to enjoy the cooling sensation on his back. Her Daemon pair even waltz in with fresh water for everyone, because she’s a cool older sister like that.
“Burns are the worst,” Fuyuki says eventually, breaking their peace. He’s stoic, but Haruo has noticed all the uncomfortable shifting he’s been doing, and he can hear the pain in his voice.
“Are they?” it’s the first time Akio has spoken in a while. He’s been close to the window, keeping an eye on Mountain God as they laze about the yard. Haruo still isn’t good at being very quiet but Akio still isn’t very good at being loud. They suit each other in that way, and it’s probably why they get sent out on jobs together so much.
“They are,” Fuyuki says. “It’s the heat that’s the worst. Feels like it’s…trapped beneath the skin.”
Akio holds up a hand. There’s a section of his palm that’s lighter than the rest of his skin there, a remnant of a time he didn’t realise he’d been holding a burning kettle. Rather than scream at him to let go, Natsuki had tackled him to the ground and a panicked Haruo had thrown an entire bucket of water over them. A meaner sibling might have laughed but Fuyuki ran for Granny and then volunteered to clean up the kitchen.
“Trust me,” Natsuki says. She tips some of the water over her shoulders. “You’re not missing out with burns.”
“At least they let you know to back off,” Akio says. It’s a quiet musing and Haruo thinks he might be the only one to hear it. He tries to catch Akio’s eye but his younger brother is starting at his hand, seemingly miles away.
“I’ve never been burnt,” Haruo offers, because he doesn’t know where Akio goes when he drifts away in his head, but it feels like he’s leaving Haruo behind. “We both don’t know what it feels like.”
“Never say never,” Fuyuki says, because he’s an annoying big brother like that.
Akio gives Haruo a smile, but it’s weak and gone before it was ever really there.
Autumn
The leaves are changing and Akio is still gone.
It hurts like nothing Haruo has ever felt before. He pokes at his chest where Ivan’s sword had tried to cleave him in half, like he can reach beyond it to his heart where the real pain is.
It’s my fault, he thinks. It’s my fault, it’s my fault, it’s my fault.
He picks at that thought like it’s a healing scab, refusing to let it scar over. Natsuki and Fuyuki want to shoulder the blame as well but this is something only Haruo can hold. He wants to feel this shame forever because it’s what he deserves. He was the one who couldn’t convince Akio to come back. He was the one who couldn’t convince Akio that he wasn’t the outlier.
The leaves are changing and Haruo has lost his brother.