Kaigaku's phone buzzes for the sixth time in a row, and it's finally enough to make him pick up the call because whoever this asshole is clearly isn't going to offer him any peace until he does so. And when he sees the name on the screen, it makes perfect sense.
"What the fuck do you want?" he snarls. There's silence on the other end of the line for the longest time. Typical of his dumbass brother to waste his time like this.
"Kaigaku?" Zenitsu's voice is shaky in a way that he hasn't heard in a while. Which isn't saying much; it's been over three years since they last talked, after all.
"Can you get the hell on with it? I swear to god, if you're just calling to waste my - "
"It's Gramps."
The rest of his threat dies in the back of his throat. A weird sort of buzzing noise fills his ears, and he's suddenly, so awfully, aware of his own heartbeat.
"He, uh, he - " Zenitsu coughs. "He has cancer."
"What."
A staticky pressure forms behind his eyes. He presses his fingers against his forehead, willing it to go away.
"He got the diagnosis this morning," Zenitsu explains, his voice breaking on the last word. There's another pause. He continues, strained, "They said they caught it before it was too late, but I can't take care of him on my own. It's halfway through term, and I'm already on the verge of failing as is."
"Then drop out," Kaigaku spits. This farce of a family has never been on his side, and now he's supposed to be on theirs? Fuck this.
There's heavy breathing over the phone for a moment, then a quiet, "Kaigaku, please." And Zenitsu starts crying. Not the loud, uncontrollable bawling that plagued Kaigaku's late teens, but a soft, barely-suppressed sobbing.
Balling his free hand, he slams a fist down on the table. The mug of coffee next to him jumps but luckily doesn't tip over onto his laptop, which is currently open to his bank statement.
He tries hard not to look at the numbers. He tries hard not to tally up how many months he's been working two jobs and still going to bed hungry.
"Fine. My fucking lease isn't up for another two weeks though."
He tries hard not to think of this as admitting defeat.
Zenitsu's weeping grows louder, to the point where Kaigaku has to hold his phone several inches away from his ear. God, he sure doesn't miss this. Three years of freedom, and now all the tolerance he'd once built up against this shit has melted away, leaving him to feel the full brunt of unresolved adolescent rage.
He hangs up without another word, only to have his phone buzz immediately after he does. He ignores it - and the next dozen calls - until Zenitsu gives up.
Opening a blank document on his laptop, he drafts a resignation letter for the job he hates slightly more. It's pretty much the best experience he's had at the place, and it takes every ounce of his self-control not to reply "Fuck you" when his manager begs him to stay a little longer because they're short on hands even with him there. Somehow, with a lot more courtesy than anyone at that hellhole deserves, Kaigaku manages to wrestle his thoughts into a much tamer shrug and "Not my problem."
In two weeks, he has everything he owns packed up into boxes (courtesy of the dumpster) and shoved into his beat-up car. Despite the fact that it represents the sum total of his life so far, his possessions take up so little room he could've driven another person or two and still have had space to stretch out comfortably. The thought isn't pleasant.
He parks across the street from Gramps's house and sits there, staring at the building. A creeping, gnawing apprehension takes up residence in his chest, and he can't bring himself to move out of the driver's seat. His nails dig into the steering wheel.
This isn't a sign of weakness, he tells himself. This isn't asking for help. He's twenty-two-year-old Kaigaku now, and that's a different Kaigaku than the one who grew up here.
He watches as Zenitsu exits the house. He watches as Gramps exits the house in a wheelchair, looking gaunter than ever before. Right, there's a ramp up the front steps now that didn't exist three years ago. Seems like a few things have changed around here since he left, and so has he.
Though it's hard to really believe that, deep down, as he looks on from his car, watching the two of them from the same old distance that's always separated them.
Finally, he unbuckles his seatbelt and steps out of the car, making sure to slam the door as loudly as he can. The two of them turn their heads at the sound. They freeze, and he freezes too. The resentment bubbles up, burning more than it used to, and he wants nothing more than to hop back in his car and drive far, far away.
Gramps says something he can't quite make out and spreads his arms out. Zenitsu, the dumbass, straight-up runs across the street without looking either way. A car just barely misses him (unfortunately) and honks angrily as it drives away.
"Kaigaku!" Zenitsu cries, and before Kaigaku can protest, he's wrapped up in a hug he desperately doesn't want. The tears are already soaking through the jacket he's wearing, and at some point after Kaigaku had left, Zenitsu had managed to grow just a little taller into an unsightly, stretched-out stick of a man. His shoulder now rests uncomfortably against Kaigaku's neck, adding to the ever-lengthening list of his personal flaws.
"Get the hell off me," Kaigaku growls, pushing Zenitsu's face away and attempting to wriggle out of the hug. Despite his brother's lean frame, the embrace is inescapable, and Kaigaku accepts his fate when Gramps wheels himself over to join in.
"How've you been?" Gramps asks as Kaigaku piles up boxes in Zenitsu's arms. His voice is gravelly, and the question sets off a string of coughs that doesn't sound so good. Kaigaku's stomach ties itself into knots.
"Fine," he replies gruffly. An incoherent jumble of words and emotions passes through his mind, whirling like a storm. None of which makes it out of his mouth.
"You've been eating well?"
"Yeah." He hopes the baggy clothing he's wearing is enough to hide the weight he's lost; he's just arrived, but he's already tired of answering questions.
"How've you been the last few years?"
Enough. He yanks out the box labeled "toiletries" and thrusts it at Gramps. It's light and Gramps accepts it without any complaint, but Zenitsu's expression immediately sours. Kaigaku glares back, daring him to say something. He doesn't.
"I've got the rest, so hurry up and get inside." Kaigaku shoos them away impatiently and then, in their absence, takes a deep breath to steady himself. At this point, he can't really turn back, so all that's left is to make the best of this bitch of a situation as possible. Which is to say, business as usual. He tugs his suitcase out of the trunk and locks his car.
His whole life willingly uprooted a second time, right back to where he started. A sum total of zero spatial displacement. It sure as hell feels like he hasn't made any progress.
The house is just as he remembers it on the inside, cramped and haphazardly decorated with mismatched knickknacks. The traditional painted scrolls and tacky motivational posters hung side by side, the display case full of lumpy ceramic bowls he made for an elective class in high school, the trophies from music competitions he's won and next to them the even larger collection Zenitsu's won.
Disgusting. He wants to set something on fire.
His room is exactly as he'd left it that night, except the book he'd thrown at the wall has been carefully placed on his desk. There's no dust anywhere, and even though he hadn't left anything of personal value behind, the thought of someone going into his room without his permission still makes his skin crawl. The air smells different, like citrusy cleaning products, and he opens the window to let the odor out.
It doesn't feel like home, but that doesn't really mean anything when it hadn't felt like home for so many years anyway.
He sits down at his desk and opens the drawer. The mess of papers he'd hoarded away is still there, and he idly rifles through them. There's an essay he'd written for music history, "excellent job!" scrawled in red pen at the top. An old report card from sophomore year. The chemistry final he'd gotten a perfect score on.
God, does any of this matter anymore? Did it ever?
He dumps everything into the trash can.
Some number of hours later, as he's lying in bed and mindlessly scrolling through his phone, someone knocks on the door. He guesses from how light and timid the knock is that it's Zenitsu.
"Go away," he grumbles, not bothering to raise his voice. Zenitsu's freak-of-nature hearing will pick it up anyway, if it is him.
"Kaigaku, it's dinnertime." Yep, that's him alright.
"So?"
"So?" comes a confused echo. "We - we're eating. I made chicken today, isn't it your favorite?"
Kaigaku groans. They're still doing this whole "sit together for dinner and pretend to be a functional family" garbage? He'd been planning on digging through the fridge for leftovers later and calling it a day.
"Not hungry," he just says instead.
"Not hungry? I've been hearing your stomach growl all day. Are you eating enough?"
Fuck.
"Just come to dinner, okay? We'll wait for you."
Kaigaku runs a hand down his face as Zenitsu's footsteps fade away. It's going to be the same as it always was, he already knows - nothing else about their dynamic has changed, and he doesn't see how this would've either.
As he sits at the table silently, fuming, listening to Gramps and Zenitsu chat animatedly about the most meaningless bullshit that's going on in their lives, he wonders if starving alone was really so bad. Sure, the food here is delicious, but the knowledge that Zenitsu had cooked it kills his appetite. When did his idiot brother acquire useful life skills? And why, in contrast, had he still been stuck eating instant ramen and whatever he could cobble together from discount ingredients?
There's a break in the conversation as they ask him yet another personal question he doesn't want to answer. How's work? Do you hang out with friends often? Seen any good movies lately? The words bounce around, bumping against each other and overlapping in his head, but nothing coherent forms from the messy primordial soup of his thoughts and emotions. He pushes his chair back with a loud scrape.
"Thanks for the meal," he says flatly, pointedly ignoring them. Conscious of the stillness he leaves in his wake, he stalks over to the kitchen to wash his bowl and chopsticks. The drying rack is full; he balances the wet dishes on top of the pile.
He doesn't sleep well that night, which his body isn't too thrilled about the next morning. Gramps's appointment is at nine o'clock five cities over, and of course Zenitsu can't drive because he's too busy "attending lectures" and "trying not to fail" when that's all he's good for.
"Where is it?" Kaigaku asks bluntly as they cross one of the bridges leading out of town. "The cancer," he adds after a second's pause, as if his question needed clarification.
Gramps sighs. "In my left lung. They don't think it's spread anywhere else yet." That explains the coughing, Kaigaku supposes.
"Is it bad?"
"It's worse than I told Zenitsu."
His grip tightens on the steering wheel. In the rearview mirror, he can see the car behind tailgating despite the fact that he's already going above the speed limit. He slows down.
"Why're you telling me then?"
They get off the bridge, and the lane splits in two. The car behind revs its engine and shifts into the other lane, screeching past them. He honks and flips it off.
"You were always better at handling the serious things than he was," Gramps replies quietly. Kaigaku just grunts noncommitally, and they sit the rest of the drive in a heavy silence that the songs on the radio struggle, unsuccessfully, to smooth over.
The clinic sounds like the slow drip of life toward death. There's the neverending rustle of paperwork, the bell that dings every so often to get the receptionist's attention, the back and forth of the nurses' footsteps and the faint beeping of instruments he can hear whenever the door opens. Gramps brings a book with him when he gets called in, and Kaigaku wishes he'd had that foresight as he twiddles his thumbs in the waiting room.
He needs to pee, but someone's crying in the bathroom and he's sure as hell not having any of that.
After what feels like an eternity but is actually closer to two hours, one of the nurses wheels Gramps back out into the waiting room. His face is paler than usual, but he's all grit and determination like he always was. They stop by the pharmacy to pick up his prescriptions, and the sheer number of bottles, the rattle of the pills inside them, makes Kaigaku's stomach turn unpleasantly. He tries not to look at them.
Later in the day, he goes to his shift at the job he hates slightly less (now his only job, come to think of it). He manages to make it through without running into any Customers, only customers with a lowercase c, but even without anyone screaming in his face or threatening to have him fired, he's so tired of this crap. Turns out quitting one job frees up some of his time, but the other simply ends up draining his soul twice as fast.
Three weeks in, and between the silent drives to the clinic, the awkward "family" meals, and his shit job, Kaigaku's tired of existing like this. Dead tired all the way down into his bones, in a way that makes every part of him ache in every way possible.
His second resignation letter is already drafted, modified only slightly from his first. All that's left is to line something else up.
Or try to, at least. During this new attempt, as was the case for every attempt before, he finds himself staring blankly at the job listings he has pulled up, the bullet points of required experiences and typical responsibilities and meager benefits tumbling in and out of his attention. He blinks, and fifteen minutes are gone, the slow movement of the sun across his room the only indication of the passage of time. His resume still hasn't been edited.
Something inside him snaps and he slams his laptop closed, tossing it next to him on the bed. Two hours until Zenitsu comes back from his classes and three until his next shift starts. Blink. Now it's an hour and two hours respectively. He scrolls on his phone through his social media accounts even though nothing really registers as he does so. There's news - some good, some bad; some things he can laugh at and others not so much. The usual.
He stretches, stands, and walks around aimlessly to get rid of the pins and needles in his legs. Without much conscious thought, he finds himself in the living room, standing before the piano. A couple of his old sheet music collections are still lying on top of the lid. He picks one up. Chopin. And a couple of pages in, one of his old favorites.
He flips through the score, the notes ringing phantom in his ears, before setting it down on the music rack and propping open the lid. Even after all these years, he still has seventeen-year-old Kaigaku's muscle memory to play it through, and the richness of the grand piano's sound envelops him in a way his digital keyboard couldn't hope to replicate. The resin of the keys is cool under his fingers, the wood providing a satisfying resistance he's missed.
It's not good, by any means. He's out of practice, and the challenging technical aspect of Chopin's composition doesn't lend itself well to warming up. Still, as the last chord fades from the air, some of the restlessness and agitation inside him calms.
"Beautiful, as always."
He jumps. Gramps is sitting a ways behind him, been sitting there for who knows how long. The blood rushes to Kaigaku's face.
"What do you want?" he growls. Some part of him, some other self, desperately grasps at his sleeves, begging him to stop, but it's weak and he ignores it in favor of the wave of rage that rises up in his chest at having been spied on.
"I missed your performances," Gramps says with an unreadable smile on his face that's almost completely hidden behind his mustache. "I missed you."
Kaigaku glares at him for a second. "I'm going to work," he says angrily and storms off, though secretly Gramps's words have set off a minefield of explosive memories and thoughts he doesn't want to navigate. Doesn't want to learn to navigate. So, he flees from the battlefront instead.
He sits in his car, stewing, for the hour and a half he has before his shift. The ghost of Chopin haunts him, as does the look on Gramps's face. He tries to get both out of his mind.
Neither attempt works.
A/N: aggressively projects onto a minor character and writes fix-it fic to try and deal with my own issues (^・ω・^ )
all chapter titles are lyrics from the naked and famous... ch. 1 is from rotten, ch. 2 and 3 are from bury us, and ch. 4 is from sunseeker. give them a listen!