"Dad."
The voice is quiet, almost hesitant.
Yuuri does his level best to ignore it, hoping beyond hope that if he doesn't respond, they'll give up and leave him to his sweet, sweet sleep.
Unfortunately, it seems he'll have no such luck, as a few seconds later, there's a hand on his shoulder shaking him awake, and the voice says more firmly, more urgently, "Dad. Wake up!"
Groaning, he turns over and cracks his eyes open just the slightest bit. His 17-year-old son is leaning over him with a worried expression on his face.
"Five more minutes, Kenjirou," he begs, voice not unlike that of a whiny five-year-old.
"But daaad!" the teen protests, shaking him even more vigorously. "We need to get going soon! The moving truck is almost here!"
That finally succeeds in waking him up.
Yuuri's eyes immediately snap open as he remembers what day it is, and he jolts upwards so quickly his head crashes into Ken's, sending his son crashing down on top of him with a startled curse and knocking the wind out of both of them.
"Shit!" he gasps as soon as he can draw enough air into his lungs. "I'm so sorry, Ken," he wheezes, lifting his son's weight off him and holding him at arm's length to check him over for any serious injuries. "Are you okay?" he asks, running his fingers through the teen's hair, checking for any bumps on his head.
As soon as he's got his bearings back, Ken pulls back with a huff of laughter.
"Dad, I'm fine," he assures as he scrambles back to his feet. "Seriously. I was just a little startled."
As soon as he's upright once again, he offers a hand to help his father up.
Yuuri accepts it, feeling his back twinge in protest as he immediately begins to regret giving in to his earlier impulse to fall asleep on the floor of their living room, spooning one of their moving boxes.
"So, have you got all the boxes sealed and labelled?" asks Kenjirou, peering around curiously.
"I think so…" answers Yuuri, looking around, before correcting himself as he sees one of the smaller boxes set on their plastic-wrapped dining table. "Wait, darn, I forgot one," he says, already moving towards it.
Kenjirou follows him curiously, peering into it as Yuuri looks around for the roll of tape.
"Ah!" he exclaims, voice excited. "Photo albums! Man, I haven't seen these in forever!"
Turning around at the sound of the smile in his son's voice, Yuuri looks over his shoulder, and can't help the grin that spreads across his face at the sight.
"Ohh, look at the cute baby!" he gushes, squeezing his son's shoulders as he gazes down at the chubby infant in the picture, big brown eyes shining with tears and lips pulled into the biggest pout. His fine, platinum blonde hair is pulled into two tiny, messy pigtails and he's got half his fist in his mouth.
Kenjirou sighs mournfully next to him, running a hand through his golden blond locks – he's not had time to have them touched up recently, so his dark brown roots are already almost an inch long.
"Why couldn't my hair have stayed that colour?" he whines, already flipping to the next picture.
Yuuri laughs. "Sorry Ken," he says. "That'd be my genes."
They go through the rest of the pictures slowly, laughing and sharing stories as Kenjirou grows slowly older in each successive photo, his hair darkening until it reaches the deep chocolate brown it was before he first bleached it two years ago.
But then, as they reach the last photo in the stack, the lighthearted mood immediately vanishes, and Yuuri feels his breath catch in his throat.
He notices his son's hands shaking slightly as they both stare at the beautiful, laughing face of Yuuri's late wife.
She's sitting in a lawn chair in their backyard, with a one-month-old Kenjirou sleeping peacefully across her chest. They're drenched in sunlight, their matching platinum hair shining like freshly fallen snow. Her mouth is open in a silent lullaby.
Yuuri is staring at the picture intently, so lost in his own memories that he almost doesn't hear the choked gasp from next to him.
Turning to look at his son in alarm, he notices tears welling in those big brown eyes and overflowing onto bright red cheeks.
"I miss her," he whispers, barely audible, as if saying it any louder will cause him to fall apart completely. His hands are shaking, and he looks at Yuuri with an expression that completely shatters his father's heart.
"So do I," Yuuri whispers right back, pulling Kenjirou into his arms. He drops a kiss onto his son's head as the teen buries his face in the crook of his neck, sobbing.
Yuuri wants to say something, anything, to make his son feel better.
But he bites his tongue.
Because sometimes…sometimes, all the words in the world can't make a single difference.
Sometimes, things just can't be fixed, no matter how hard you try, and sweet words only manage to make the hurt so much worse.
Sometimes, you just need to be sad.
So he stands there, holding his son and just being there, and when the moving truck arrives ten minutes later, they both pull apart with watery smiles, and begin the long, arduous task of helping move their boxes.
It takes an hour or so before their old house is finally empty.
And as the two of them pile into their car, Yuuri doesn't mention the photograph Kenjirou still has clutched in his hand.
SkyGem: And that's all for now! Please do leave a review and let me know what you thought! Any guesses as to which characters will be dads, and which will be their children?
Heads up that there will be some OCs in this, because there simply aren't enough canon characters to fit into the roles of the children.
And I'd just like to remind everyone that this fic is not going to be exactly like the game! The first chapter was extremely similar because it was just setting the scene, but in the coming chapters, you should be seeing more of the YOI!verse.