Work Text:
It's alright now.
"It's okay…"
Easy for Kazuki to say; Toi shakes against his chest on an out-breath, and his lungs practically crackle with expansion as he sucks in another shuddering breath to howl out his misery.
"Niisan," he cries, "Niisan!"
Trapped in a mire of the past, it's felt like hours have slipped by since he balled up his fists in Kazuki's cotton shirt and broke into sobs that seem neverending.
Enta’s bed is empty, his roommate is out for now at a football club committee meeting. Kazuki’s eyes dart across to it, keenly aware of the spring scent of their laundry detergent in the sheets against the peppermint prickle of whatever 2-in-1 shampoo Toi uses, acrid against his nose.
Thinking about offering Toi a space to stay over for the night. He thinks about the morning, he thinks about the recovery, but as though Toi hears the thought – the concept – of space between them he tightens his grip in his shirt and the sob rips through the two of them like a retch for the way it scrapes out of his throat. Kazuki worries he might, actually, be sick from crying. Again.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs, patting his back, not that he thinks Toi can hear him one bit. “It’s alright.”
It’s anything but alright.
This time he has no idea what’s brought this on. No movie with a dramatic sibling scene, no conversations accidentally turned from “I’m fine” to when it was very much not fine, like peeling off a plaster that has been stuck to the wound all this time that tears as you tug. They were just hanging out. And this…
Kazuki thinks suddenly of Haruka. Harukappa. The way his little brother sneaks his little associations into his mind without permission; fragrance pouches, particularly colourful wheelchairs, daily luck forecasts. Pedestrian crossings. Boxes, even.
So what must remind Toi of his brother…?
Well… life, right?
"It hurts, huh…?"
Toi howls. He howls, long and smooth and sad, into the night.