A broT4 housemate!AU that spiraled out of control so fast. Dumb AUs are my specialty, read that as an apology because I wanted them to be one big happy family where no one is dead and no one is hurt, 5000 words later, I still can't tell you what just happened.

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Pan Pacific Deluxe Condominium

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Between the four of them, there is one post-secondary education, six part-time jobs, and enough chores to go around the place. (They don't mention the anger issues, because that is all on Chuck.)

As far as they are concerned, the worst thing that can happen is a clogged toilet spluttering wet toilet paper back at them. And maybe Chuck coming home with rabies. But even then, they're all pretty sure Chuck's immune to that sort of thing at this point, working as a vet assistant and all. There better be some sort of benefits to stabbing dogs with needles all day long, karma aside.

In his defence, Chuck hasn't actually bitten any one of them. Well, not hard at least.

This kind of living arrangement isn't ideal, the one bathroom they share is all the proof they need. To be fair, Yancy is surprised the lock still works from the way Mako and Chuck bang at it in the morning when Raleigh's in there, taking his sweet time. But hey, they make do. And ideal has always been something for the dreamers with no worries of next month's rent, actually, make that this month's rent first and foremost. This is not ideal but ideal is overrated anyway, as well as being a concept that the Becket brothers haven't cared for since they realized that there is such thing as optimization.

And this is exactly that.

(No, that isn't an autocorrect from a misspelling of optimism or other big long words that starts with the letter 'o'. So maybe Rals looks like sunshine, with some resemblance to an idiot with his hairless chest and flawless abs, but he knows what spellcheck is.)

In all honesty, at least they haven't named their wifi: 3 guys, 1 girl.

(Not that the same thing can be said about someone else on this floor. Chuck blanches, Rals laughs, and Mako shakes her head. As for Yancy, Yancy wonders what happened to the generation after his own. He swears he hasn't been staring at Raleigh in despair when that thought comes to mind.)

Thirty is the new twenty-one. Or so Raleigh keeps telling him, totally not the fact that between the three of them, they couldn't find nine more candles in their drawer of ketchup and pepper packets to top the blazing cake.

But really, any more candles on that cake will have the smoke detectors blaring, if that ancient thing on their ceiling even works. And that is a big if right there, like most things in life are.

Or this is the story where the year Yancy turns thirty, Raleigh decides that Chuck Hansen and Mako Mori will make decent roommates.

No one is more surprised than Raleigh himself when it turns out that he isn't entirely wrong.

000

Chuck Hansen is a good person in the way that you have to squint really hard and wait to see it shine through all the other moments of well adjusted anger and daddy issues he holds close to heart.

He is a kid, all of twenty-two, working full time as a veterinarian's, more than capable thank you very much, assistant even without all the shiny credentials. He hates his boss, but he loves the job, so what if he likes the dogs more than he does their owners.

He hasn't killed anyone just yet.

Even though, Raleigh Becket is really testing his patience right this moment.

"Goddamnit Rahleigh, get the bloody fuck out of the bathroom already!" He lands a heavy fist on the door, nothing dents and that only infuriates him all the more. Chuck lets out an aggravated noise that is low and deep and goes through their thin walls just as easily as a shout.

He gives a relentless kick, throws another punch before the shower finally shuts off. Only then does the muffled reply comes through the wood. "It's Raleigh!"

Mako has long since resigned herself to changing before she fights anyone for the bathroom, not that she can't take on either of them, she can, both of them, at the same time too. She just chooses not to because sensei has raised her to be better than this, and even without her adoptive father standing over her shoulder, Mako refuses to disappoint.

Still, she rolls her eyes at their same, old routine every morning. Only allowing this because at the very least Raleigh always comes out of the bathroom, dripping wet with only a towel wrapped haphazardly around his waist before Chuck is shoving him out of the way.

Mako admits to being the better person among the rest, she never says anything to being without any kind of ulterior motives.

"Mornin', Mako." Raleigh greets her like it is Christmas morning every morning. And while she isn't like Yancy, Mako isn't the kind of morning person that Raleigh is either. She doesn't know how he does it, but it's like a burst of chocolate on your tongue and monster movies in the dark on her dull interning days between working on her graduate thesis as well.

"Stop bullying him," she tells him, but it is said with a soft smile curling over her lips. One that has Raleigh grinning, "Chuckie can take it."

She gives him a raised brow just as Chuck lets out a shout from behind the bathroom door, "call me that again, you bastard, and I swear I will—"

There is a loud thud, it is one that they have all heard before. One that has Raleigh bolting back into his own room, locking the door as he goes, because Chuck has just slipped on the bathroom tiles, still wet from Raleigh's shower. Mako sighs and runs a hand through her unkempt hair, thinking, at the very least the curses coming from behind the door is a good indication that Chuck hasn't broken anything important. Like say, his neck.

And it goes to show how well Mako knows all of them when she doesn't even question how Yancy can sleep through all this.

000

If you have told Yancy Becket that he would be living with his brother and two other strangers, splitting rent like they are all college students when he turns thirty, he would laugh long and hard at you. And then maybe decked you in your stupid face because god, who needs a gym membership to punch a sandbag on a regular basis when there is someone's face just asking for it.

Now though, Yancy may just admit that he is wrong.

"If this is your way of protecting me, Yance, cut it out."

Raleigh barges into his bedroom with the kind of tightly coiled anger he reserves for a special kind of asshole, namely the kind of brothers who keeps secrets because they think they know what's best for everyone.

Yancy looks up from the papers Raleigh tosses to his bed, he doesn't need a second glance, he knows that those are their bills. And then the letters warning them of their eviction if they don't pay up.

"Rals—"

"Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately, Yancy?" And Raleigh wants to be mad, he really, really does. But it's just a little hard to keep that up when he can finally see the extent of just how much Yancy has taken upon himself to keep the two of them comfortable. "You look like crap."

"Thanks, Rals." Yancy doesn't look away, he knows how he looks in the mirror, sunken eyes and a kind of tiredness that seeps into the bone. He works three jobs, alternating nights and days, seven days a week with no days off. But he continues with the same kind of conviction that he has always known when it comes to Raleigh though. "I don't want you working construction all your life. I want you to have what mom and dad couldn't give you. I want to save up enough money so you can go back to school, get a good education."

The silence that falls over them is unsettling.

"…What if I don't want to go to college, Yance?" Raleigh looks away, his question almost tentative when he finally gets it out, pass the lump in his throat. "...What if I like construction?"

Yancy stills, blue eyes blinking slowly at his baby brother's admittance. Putting a hand over his face, it is only his soft laughter that gets Raleigh to look at him again. And he laughs just a little harder at the face Rals makes at him.

"Of course you do…"

There is no malice or sarcasm, just exasperation and so much love lining every word. Raleigh's smile comes just as slow but it is one that tells Yancy everything he needs to know.

"Hey, Yance."

It has been years, close to a decade since the two of them have shared a bed. Even if they are a lot bigger than they used to be, it feels just right when Raleigh shoves the papers from the bed and lies down, pulling him along. That has been a good hour ago, and he is half asleep when he feels Raleigh turning over from beside him. "…What is it, Rals?"

"Let's just move, you know. Get a cheaper place, find one or two roommates to split the rent."

"You want to do that?"

"Yeah," Raleigh tells him, curling around him like he is eight years old once more and nothing is scarier than the darkness beneath his bed. And for a moment, Yancy is almost reluctant to agree.

There is only so many ways that Yancy Becket can come to terms with the fact that his baby brother has grown up just fine, reassurance that he hasn't royally fucked up the one thing that matters the most in his world. That hey, maybe this time, he doesn't have to be alone in taking care of someone else, maybe this time, they can take care of each other because that's what brothers do.

"…We're going to be alright, Yance."

That is the last thing he remembers hearing before falling asleep.

(The next morning, Yancy wakes up alone in his bed with a note next to his alarm clock, telling him that Raleigh has already called in sick for him. He flops back on the bed with a soft sigh that escapes from between his lips, and is asleep again within the hour, sleeping better than he has since the letters have been coming through their mailbox.)

000

For an apartment complex called the Pan Pacific Deluxe Condominium, there is nothing remotely deluxe about it. Hell, it's a blatant lie that even their landlord doesn't try to hide. Or it is the epitome of the perfect kind of irony that Yancy's been told young hipsters eat up. The walls are paper thin, the tiles are scuffed and cracked, and the blinds are mangled when they have just moved in (they still are). Even the basement, where the coin slotted washing machines are, creeps Chuck out. Or maybe that is just his arachnophobia acting up.

The apartment complex is bordering on the bad side of town but Tendo Choi is a decent enough landlord. He doesn't raise their rent, and in appreciation, they know where their loyalties lie.

(Even though they are all relatively sure that there is a handful of apartments scattered in the building solely devoted as grow houses.)

By eight thirty in the morning on a regular weekday, the entire apartment tends to empty out, unlike the garbage that neither one of them ever wants to take out. Chore wheel be damned. But a Saturday morning is a whole other routine that come to them as something more like an acquired skill.

It is close to eleven o'clock, the sun filtering through the opened windows in cascades of ridiculously bright sunshine that is by no means an accurate reflection of how any one of them feel on the inside.

"You've got the list, Mori?" Chuck asks with his head in the fridge, one hand reaching out in disgust to poke at the container of leftovers that seems to have been there since for-fucking-ever.

Mako makes an annoyed noise at him as she is pulling on her shoes. "Don't doubt me, Chuck."

"There's no more pasta!" Raleigh calls out from where he is struggling on a sweater, and if they weren't so immune to the sight of Raleigh Becket's bare chest, they would think he is some kind of exhibitionist. Not that he isn't, but the general consensus is that he could be worse.

"I know." Mako picks up her bag from their couch, an old worn ratty thing that is in constant competition with Raleigh's sweaters to being the lumpiest existence in this entire apartment.

Yancy just shakes his head and shoots her an exasperated look from over Raleigh's shoulder, standing there, pushing at the kid to move. "Let's go, kiddo! I've got work at five."

He works nights on the weekends. By day, Yancy manages to hustle them all out the door in less than 20 minutes, a feat all on its own. Taking the usual bus to the grocery store and making the weekly run for almost expired but not quite food from good ol'Chinatown.

The door to the supermarket opens with a clean swish that has the Wei triplets looking up in tandem. One from the cashier counter, the other at a shelf he is restocking, and the last one standing in the back sweeping. The three of them don't own the place, but they may as well with the unholy amount of time they work here with the less than minimum wage.

Because who really wants to pay taxes when you can get paid in cold, hard cash, under the table notwithstanding?

Raleigh waves at them with a grin and makes his way to Jin, who has his signature shades perched on top of his head and a can of baby corn in one hand.

They are good kids, all three of the Weis, even if they do end up on the wrong side of the law more often than not. Marked up records with minor offences, but Yancy knows they never hurt anyone who isn't deserving of a good punch in the face. So he always sets aside enough bail money for all four of them (because of course, Raleigh is right there with them, good friends since high school and all).

He doesn't know the street corners of Chinatown like the Wei triplets, but Yancy does know that there is no one else looking out for them. And what are three more Raleighs when he's already handled the kid all his life?

"Cereal first." Mako says as she pushes a cart right by Chuck, handing off the list as she goes. She has it memorized because she is brilliant that way, but Chuck is the kind of person that needs something more substantial than having her reciting it back to him.

And Mako Mori has always liked Chuck Hansen enough to do this for him.

"Where does it say cereal on the list, Mori?"

"The shredded wheat, Chuck." He hates that she can enunciate his first name like it's a reprimand without bringing his last name into it.

"How is shredded wheat cereal?"

"Think of all the fiber you're getting." She brushes him off and points at the top shelf. Chuck rolls his eyes but still reaches up and over the top of her head before handing her the family-sized box, the cheapest of the bunch. He may make a face but he will sit down at the table in the morning and finish off a bowl of shredded wheat before heading in to work.

Mako lets Chuck cross off the item on the list.

Rounding the corner, Raleigh has an armful of spaghetti, fusilli and penne pasta, just as Yancy walks over from the other end of the aisle with an armful of fruits, discount stickers on everything.

And in that moment, Mako and Chuck decide that the Becket brothers have never been more alike.

000

Chuck doesn't talk about the big argument that made him move out once and for all.

Or the fact that it has been that same infamous Hansens' pride keeping him from apologizing still. Even though he will never say, Chuck loves his old man between all the moments where he is angry at the man. The rest of the time, he just showers their dog, Max, with all the love their joint custody allows on the days he goes back to Herc's place for dinner, read as takeout because neither of them knows how to make a decent meal that doesn't end with one or both of them in the hospital with food poisoning.

(Chuck hates that this apartment complex doesn't allow pets but hey, the rent is actually affordable between the four of them, and he can finally be something of an independent.)

Like clockwork, there is a knocking coming from the front door on a Tuesday afternoon.

Neither one of the apartment's occupants is surprised anymore when they open their door to the sight of Chuck's dad standing there at the threshold, two takeout boxes in a white plastic bag as an offering, a kind of thank you for taking care of my son that the man doesn't know how to say, in hand.

The other hand is clutching on to Max's leash.

"Hey, Herc." Raleigh waves him in, taking the food from his hand with a thanks. (Because um, free food is just not something anyone has ever been taught to turn down.) "Chuck's in his room."

Hercules Hansen is a man that screams ex-military. Raleigh doesn't know the details but no one heads up Stacker Pentecost's security without some kind of extensive background, or so Yancy's mentioned on the off chance that he actually stays awake during his shifts as a security guard there.

"…He hasn't been a brat, has he?"

Raleigh laughs, shakes his head with a grin. "No more than the usual, sir. Chuck's Chuck."

Herc nods with a half smile.

"I heard that, Becket." Chuck steps out from his room with his eyes narrowed, Raleigh only rolls his eyes because of course, Chuck times his entrances just perfectly.

Herc turns to his son, "you ready?"

"Yeah, just let me get my boots on." Chuck answers before he is kneeling down to Max. His hand goes to pet his dog, voice softening into something that is never rough around the edges, and from where Raleigh stands, he can also see the smile and the dimples over Chuck's face when he lets the dog lick at his hand. "Hey, handsome, I've missed you. Did the old man treat you right?"

"Told you not to call me that." Scowling, Herc gruffly kicks Chuck's boots over to him. An act that is actually kind of sweet in a passive aggressive way only the Hansens have perfected into an art.

Raleigh doesn't imagine Herc can see Chuck's smile stretching wider when he pulls on boots that look so much like Herc's own. Raleigh only lets out a soft laugh as he shuts the door after the trio: a man, his son, and a bulldog that somehow manages to bridge the two separate entity into one single unit, like how all families do.

Like clockwork, Herc comes by on Thursday evenings and does the same.

(It's a simple act, walking the dog. And the implications behind that is also just as simple. It's love.)

000

Yancy leaves for his night shift with a short shout of bye, don't do anything I wouldn't! And just as soon as the door closes after him, the rest of the house bustles out from their rooms to fit themselves into their little kitchen, pulling flour, eggs, and sugar from their respective shelves.

"Are you sure we can do this?" Chuck asks as he skims over the recipe Raleigh's printed off of the Internet. Dubious is not even an adequate description for the way he glances from the paper to Raleigh, who is tying on his damned apron.

The one he insists on wearing without a shirt underneath.

"Yancy's turning the big 3-0, wouldn't want anything less than special for him."

"…Food poisoning is damned special, that's for sure."

Raleigh punches him in the arm, not as hard as he could because he still needs Chuck's impeccable ability to measure raw ingredients without a measuring cup. (Of course they can knock on Newt and Hermann's door and borrow one, but who knows what's been in their measuring cups? They do science and they've all seen the state of that apartment, well, Newt's half. No one is allowed to step over the tape and venture into Hermann's space. Not unless they are Mako Mori.)

Chuck takes the flour to the kitchen table, just in time to escape the ridiculous noise Raleigh makes as he turns to see Mako tying off her own apron, the matching one to his own. Chuck doesn't know how he manages to make the same damn noise every time she puts it on, like it's any surprise when Raleigh's been teaching her how to cook since they've moved in. She isn't terrible but they also learn that she is great with a knife, like suspiciously good with a blade.

That has been a good half year ago.

(Chuck sets the table, chopsticks for Mako, forks for Yancy and himself, and a spoon for Raleigh, because the guy is special like that. That or he has hurt his left arm during a construction accident years back and has never had it healed right.

Chuck also does the dishes with too much dish detergent and bright yellow rubber gloves hanging by the sink. He has done it a million times but it will take a miracle before he manages to walk away with a dry shirt.

With a smirk, Yancy always prompts that he should go at it shirtless, like Rals.)

"Get me the sugar too, Becket!"

Nothing explodes and no one dies. Well, not during the process of making the cake (eating it is a whole other gamble on life itself). Standing around the kitchen table, flour dusting over their cheeks and hands and hair as they look down at the cake, it even looks a little bit appetizing if the three of them do say so themselves.

"Guys, his birthday isn't until midnight." Raleigh is licking the frosting from the bowl, fingers tasting of chocolate and batter.

"He comes home at nine."

"He raids the fridge at nine thirty."

"And then a shower at ten."

"How'd you know that?" Raleigh whips his head to Chuck, and asks with a kind of concern that makes both of their skin crawl. Chuck scowls at him but it goes to show how far he's come when he doesn't punch Raleigh in the face and tries with his words instead, "my room is right across the bathroom, asshole. And your brother doesn't exactly sing in the shower with an indoor voice either."

"...Newt." Mako proposes with a half smile, ignoring the two beside her.

Newton Geiszler isn't at home when they knock but their friendly neighbor, Hermann Gottlieb is. And by friendly, Chuck and Raleigh mean not at all. Like it is any surprised, his scowl is pointedly directed at everything other than Mako. They don't ask where Newt has gone, probably watering Tendo's many green houses within the building, but they can make an educated guess. (Like that one just now.)

Hermann looks at the cake in Raleigh's hands, points them in the general area of the kitchen and turns back to the work he has spread out in his half of the living room. They open the fridge, peers in, and— Newt either really likes blue jello, or that isn't blue jello at all.

"Is this safe?" Chuck murmurs, eyeing all that neon blue.

Raleigh shrugs. "Gotta risk it for the surprise, man."

And then he is shoving the cake into the space between the containers of blue.

000

Really, it could have been funny if it didn't look so much like a train wreck happening in slow motion right before his eyes. And they would know about those. Yancy would laugh, he really would, if the man stepping through the threshold of their door isn't also the boss of his boss.

"No." Stacker Pentecost stands in the middle of their cramped living room, the edge of their lumpy couch digging into the back of his shin. His perfectly tailored suit looking out of place among this crowd of twenty-somethings with their graphic tees and shirtlessness, at least Mako has wrestled Raleigh into a tank top before her dad arrived. "You're not staying here, Mako."

Mako's eyes harden, her lips pursing into a thin, tight line.

She doesn't look resigned, but neither is she fighting.

Raleigh steps up, just a little too quick for Yancy to catch him around the wrist, pulling him back. With the same kind of horrific astonishment Yancy usually reserves for those natural selection specials on the Discovery Channel, he watches him go. It takes little imagination to know who is the cheetah and who is the baby gazelle tumbling down into the tall grass with teeth closing in around its trachea.

For safe measures, Yancy takes a step back. He will not be the collateral damage in this, he still has bills to pay.

"Sir—"

"Did you not hear what I just said? My daughter will not be living here." He makes a point of looking around like there is actually more to see than a lumpy couch that doesn't actually fit four people no matter what position they tried (and oh, they've tried plenty), a window with mangled blinds that they have never bothered to fix, and of course, the bulky excuse of a television that they picked up off of the streets a few years back.

Pentecost's voice carries, like his presence isn't enough.

But it seems like Raleigh's on death row today with the way he walks even closer to the man. Yancy might as well get Chuck to take the bag of frozen peas out of the freezer now because Raleigh will need an ice pack at the rate he is closing in on Pentecost.

"Mako belongs here." Raleigh says, with a soft conviction that mirrors Mako's quiet stance. "You protecting her like this isn't doing her any favors."

Pentecost turns to him, eyes narrowed with a raw kind of anger that Yancy actually understands a fraction of. He isn't a parent but he has been Raleigh's guardian for nearly as long as Rals' been alive. "Don't you—"

Mako pauses him with a touch to the cuff, her eyes cutting towards Raleigh who steps back immediately. He almost looks chastised, not enough for him to bow his head to Stacker Pentecost when she leads him to her room, but just enough to keep him from overstepping his boundaries once again.

She sits him down on the edge of her bed, where her Totoro sheets sink beneath his weight and drags her chair over to her bed so she can face her adoptive father. Physical contact has never been a thing of theirs, so she doesn't reach out for her father's hand when she bows her head.

"I apologize for Raleigh." She has both hands clasped in her lap. "What he said, that was out of line."

Stacker shakes his head, accepting her apology with the way he hasn't chewed Raleigh Becket out for the disrespect. "Come home, Mako. I can't have you living here."

"I like it here, sensei." She tells him with a sparkle in her eyes, the kind that he hasn't seen in a long time. She isn't unhappy with her adoptive father, she loves the man, but she also needs to cut her own name into a slice of the world she makes for herself. "The people, this place, I might even have an affinity for Ukranian Hard House thanks to the Kaidanoskys down the hall.."

It isn't the honesty in her voice, or the way her whole life already seems to settle within these four walls, covered by blueprints, schematics and posters of some Tokyo Pop group he knows she loves.

It is how she turns her head to quirk a soft smile at the three men standing right outside her door, grinning back at her with the same contentment.

It's not approval, it is never going to be that if he has any say in the matter. But it isn't a no either.

(Pentecost throws a glare their way, and has the three of them scattering back into their respective rooms. And for one tempting moment, he wonders how upset Herc would be if he castrates Chuck along side of those Becket brothers.)

000

In all honesty, he has kind of forgot what day it was.

Yancy works on a seven days schedule, where odd days meant one job, even days meant the other, and then the part time on weekend nights. He doesn't keep track of anything else, so it really is a surprise when he walks out of his room to Chuck calling him from the kitchen, thinking the kid must be struggling with fitting a new bag into the garbage can.

He glances at the calendar, the clock on the wall, and then the cake set in the middle of their kitchen table. Mako, Chuck, and Raleigh turn to him with a quiet kind of anticipation that makes him smile.

Yancy turns thirty at midnight, blows out too many candles on the dot.

And lets Rals cheer something loud and obnoxious when Yancy doesn't turn blue in the face with that very first bite of their attempt at cake. It's sweet, the chocolate frosting melting at the tip of his tongue. He doesn't have the same kind of sweet tooth Rals or Mako have, he's caught the two of them sharing a chocolate bar or a handful of hand candies more often than not, but he loves it all the same. Chuck swipes a bite off of his plate and nods his approval.

"So what'd you wish for?" Raleigh asks when he drops down next to his brother, after the initial rush of a planning a surprise party that is more impromptu than the time he decides roommates would be the solution to their problem.

"He can't tell you that, Rahleigh. Otherwise it isn't going to come true, everyone knows that."

Yancy takes the offered beer from Chuck when he sits down on the armrest of their ratty couch. Taking a swig, his lips can't help but curl into a grin when Rals rolls his eyes at Chuck's statement.

Mako comes over with the last slice of cake and settles herself at the edge of their wobbly coffee table. One that supports her weight better than he imagines it could with the way one leg keeps falling off like it's a bad habit. One that they keep because there isn't anything else they'd rather have.

"Happy birthday, Yancy."

She holds out her bottle in a simple gesture, one that they mirror.

The year Yancy turns thirty, there may or may not have been a wish or two made in there, among the smoking candles. What he doesn't say, what he will never tell, is that wishes come true before he's ever even made them. Raleigh and him have always made the best of what they have, and sometimes, the best really is just that.

"Thanks, kiddos."

Their bottles clink, something sharp and loud and perfect. Much like them.

XXX Kuro