AN: So: hi, hello! I'm not dead, though work and various other things DID make a pretty grievous attempt on my life. I BEEN STROGGLIN, but also, I've been slowly plinking away at htis, too. This chapter is actually only one half of my INITIAL chapter that I was writing, but holy hell, the OG just got so long I decided to split it into two. The other half is already written, and I'm actually editing it right now. I'll probably post it later tonight or tomorrow. ️

Many apologies for being totally absent. I hate losing track of my schedule, but my brain has been in a creative rut lately due to lack of sleep kicking my ass five ways from Sunday.


017: in mud thrive these seeds.

Summer; 11 years.

Long before she rounds the corner of her grandmother's house in Chichibu and comes into his field of vision, Suzume can feel the weight of her brother's expectant gaze. It's as if he can see her through the walls of the house; like all the many thick-clustered trees and ramshackle stone fencing circling the property are made of the clearest and purest glass. It's always like this. Sometimes, Suzume wonders if he can't see her from even kilometers away, picked out from a crowd on the street or spied shackled by a reluctant responsibility to her desk at school.

Drowsy as she is in the heady, seasonal swelter that reminds Suzume of her brother – because everything does, doesn't it? – her thoughts are ever preoccupied with him. But then, they always are. Regardless of the weather, or the day, or the time, he's always there, in her thoughts, and Suzume wonders: is that the trick of it? Does thinking of him so much, all day, every day… does it open herself up to him, like some kind of two-way door she can't ever hope to close?

That, she thinks, uneasily, is a terrible thought. It's also nothing she'd put past him. It's exactly the sort of thing he'd do, if he could.

The effect, of course, is only intensified when she can actually see him looking at her. Sat cross-legged as he usually is on the back porch where he waits for her to come home, his eyes are electric when they come into view. Blindingly blue across all that sunny, summer heat stretching between them, they burn into her with an intensity that could rival several suns.

"Well, well, well," says her brother in his too-cool-for-summer voice. With his chin in his hand and his elbow perched haphazard on his knee, he is the picture of a cartoon villain languidly awaiting the arrival of his errant and, unfortunately for her, much less capable rival.

It's true that the oppressive summer sun pressing down on her reminds Suzume of her brother. Yet for all the fire that consumes him from the inside out, he reminds her most of a long, bleak winter. His expression now evokes exactly that. Very neatly absent of anything by which she could even begin to use to decipher his mood, it is as cold and still as a lake long frozen over. "Look who finally decided to show up."

Suzume rolls her eyes dramatically, and huffs a sigh with twice the drama to match. "It's not like I'm that late," she says. She's not! She knows she's not, and she's decidedly defensive about it. As she'd made her way down the hill to the house, deleting her most recent call to Hawks' from her phone with one hand and gathering her shopping bag up in the other, Suzume had made sure to note the time. Thirty-three minutes isn't that late. Ultimately, she decides she'd rather be defensive than anxiously queasy any day. "I had to get something from the store."

Of course her brother makes it impossible for her to tell what he thinks about all that. Watching her from out of his half-lidded eyes, his eyebrows loft incrementally upwards. That is, as usual, the only hint she gets.

Her gut reaction when he's like this is to observe him. She can even feel herself taking in a deep breath, as if in preparation, wanting to hold it in, wanting to stop and stare and wait for… something. Something to interpret. Something to understand. That's always a trap, though. If Suzume takes the time to study him, well, then she has to really look at him. That's always risky. He can be so scary to look at. He always stares back, and his eyes are always so overwhelming, so… interested, she thinks. Sometimes, they seem hungry. Voracious, even. Those moments always unnerve her the most.

Worse than that, though, and somehow more mortifying: Suzume really likes looking at him. She likes the lean cut of his face and the lines of his mouth and the ink-spill fiery mess of his hair, and just – it's too much, and it's unfair, like everything else about him is unfair. The staples and the scar-tissue don't do anything to make him less… god, she doesn't even want to think that word. No, no, not handsome; that's too serious, too raw. Too dangerous, even if it is true, and why can't she stop thinking about it? She shouldn't be thinking about it!

And, as if all that wasn't bad enough, if she studies him… well, then! He takes that same time to study her. Sharper and keener than her own, his eyes are like fine razor blades, peeling back layer after fragile layer until there's nothing left of her at all but her wounded pride and a stinging sense of bewilderment. Like many of the games they play, it's one she always loses.

So, she doesn't wait. She doesn't even really look. Shrugging out of her messenger bag, heavy with books and homework, she lets it settle down at the edge of the porch before toeing off her loafers. Hand falling away from his chin, her brother unfurls like an especially sinister cemetery flower, back straightening as she pads across the creaking wooden deck towards him with an unhesitating, if borrowed, certainty. It's one of so many things she's learned to mimic from him.

The distance is a short one, but her brother's gaze is plenty busy in the meantime. Sweeping her form, now as ever, it's nothing he bothers to disguise, because why would he? It darts quickly between points of what she perceives as fascination: there, now, on her face, and then there, at the rustling, small bag twisted between her hands. Lower, still, she watches it linger along the hem of her pleated school skirt as it moves in a whisper of fabric across her thighs. The cut is modest, longer than many of the other girls' at school, and it hides her bruises well. She wonders if that's what he's thinking about, but nothing in his inexplicable expression ever changes enough to really guess.

Then, as she comes up on him, nudging his bare foot with her socked one, his eyes drift back up and find hers. "Nii-chan," she says, softly. It's all she needs to say. Something very nearly imperceptible shifts in his face, and when his arms come up just as she expects them to, Suzume sinks wordlessly into them, heart a traitorously wild thrum in her chest. Letting him guide her down into the familiar throne of his lap, she settles against him and nests there with even more familiarity. With her head tucked against the firm muscle of his upper arm, she lets her legs hook over his opposite thigh, her knees pressed tightly together, ankles crossed beneath them.

Chichibu's summers are warm, but her brother – sat even as he is in a thick slice of shade cast by the house – is significantly warmer. Despite the double barrier of their combined clothing, the heat of him is a palpable and very near glorious thing. She feels a lot like how she imagines a lizard might feel, soaking blissfully in the ambient warmth of a rock baked hours-long by the hot, golden sun.

And just like that –

"I got something for you," she chirps, nearly sedated out of her anxiety, and playfully sing-song. Rubbing her cheek against the rough scar tissue of his arm, Suzume fiddles with the bag in her lap, meeting his still inscrutable countenance with a dopey kind of smile. Already warm from the long walk home, she feels a little dizzy from the sudden flood of even more heat.

"Oh yeah?" There's a twitch in the corner of her brother's mouth, if only for a moment. A smile, a frown, she can't be sure. He might be mad. He might not be. Whatever he feels, his hand slips beneath the fabric of her school blouse, his rough palm fixed to the bare skin of the small of her back. The metal of his staples are so hot they briefly feel like they're burning, and she has to chew the inside of her cheek to keep from flinching away. It isn't long before she adjusts to the temperature, though –

Not long at all before the sensation becomes somehow wholly pleasant, instead. It's so pleasant, even, that when her brother looks at her from out of the bottoms of his heavy-lidded eyes and asks, "That why you're late, then?" Suzume finds she remains wholly unruffled.

She could argue. She'd been prepared to, only moments ago, bracing herself for a fight she was sure she was going to lose. Now, though, she finds she doesn't especially want to. All the rebellion in her has been scorched to ash in the comfortingly invasive heat of her brother's easy embrace. She can feel it falling away, cut loose between her weakly grasping fingers. There's no chance of getting it back for now.

"Uh-huh." Nodding along with the confession, she lets her free hand drift across the loose fabric of his shirt, fleetingly transfixed by the way it moves beneath her fingers like thick, white waves. It's a short-lived distraction; more than anything, she's struck by how hot his chest feels beneath the slight but curious press of her fingertips.

Suzume tells herself she touches him because she knows it occasionally has the effect of distracting him, but she's a bad liar. No, she touches him because she wants to. There's something thrilling about it, about touching him, and especially about the way he simply lets her. Absorbed as she is, it takes her a moment to realize he hasn't responded to her at all, and when she looks back up at him, she finds him watching her very intently. "Had to check two discount stores for the thing I wanted – " More than a little sheepish now, Suzume feels her cheeks prickle with a flush of shame. Just because she wants to be indulgent doesn't mean she should be. "The first, um – well, the first didn't have it."

Whether it's because she's looking at him or because she's happened to do and say the right combination of things needed to appease him, her brother inclines his head and lets a slight grin crawl its way across his face, all summer lightning across a dark, dark sky. Not mad, then. Probably. "Well, shit," he says, cupping one of her knees in his spare hand. There's that painful-pleasant burn of his staples there, too, now. "Let's see it, then."

There's only one thing in the small, plastic bag, and despite the sudden wave of shyness that surges through her, Suzume produces it with a little flourish of her hand.

Her brother's gaze pulls from her face and fixes itself to the bottle in her fingers. When his grin falters into confusion – or at least what passes for confusion, as far as he's concerned – Suzume can't help but laugh. Shaking the bottle for effect, it clacks softly with the movement, smooth metal tap-tap-tapping on the glass from within.

"The hell is – " Her brother squints. Surprise is a rare look for him, and Suzume can't help but savor it; it's distractingly cute. "Is that fucking nail polish?"

Thumping the bottle against the palm of her hand to further agitate the thick, roiling liquid, Suzume stifles another laugh. "Yep!"

When he looks back at her, he's regained his composure, his nonchalance carefully reconstructed. "Thought you said it was for me," he says, and for all his care, Suzume thinks that he sounds — just maybe — a little petulant. Just a little. "For the record, black would look like shit on you. Too try-hard."

"You're right," she agrees, breezily. "But it'd look real good on you, which is why I got it."

"Oh, right, of course. 'Course that's why you'd get it; for me. You know, 'cause I wear so much nail polish." He says it slow and deadpan, staring her down with eyebrows raised higher than she remembers them being in the last several months, at least. And then, again, in that same, affectless voice: "What the fuck, Suzu."

There's no holding back her own gleeful grin as she clasps the bottle between her hands in an overtly pleading gesture. "C'mon, please, I'll do it for you – please, please, please, I think it'd look so good – "

"Wait, wait – hold up there a second." His hand lifts from her knee just enough for him to snap his fingers, twice. Impossibly, his voice sounds even more flat. "This is about that guy from your game last night, ain't it – that edgelord in all black you were creaming your panties over. That guy had his nails painted, didn't he."

Suzume doesn't know what that weird bit about panty-creaming even means, but it doesn't sound good, not the way he says it, all sour-in-the-mouth. Probably bad, then — maybe even gross. Knowing her brother, it's probably both. Crinkling her nose at him, Suzume shakes her head. "It's – well, kind of, maybe, but also not – "

The problem, at least as far as what Suzume does understand, is that he's not exactly wrong. The character in her game last night had struck her as especially cool, and she'd immediately found herself fixated on his black painted nails, because, really: wow! A boy with painted nails!

As for why she'd thought the character was cool, though –

"Nah." Her brother's eyebrows have settled down from their previous height, knit loosely into a budding scowl. "I ain't about to go traipsing around looking like – not gonna – fuck –"

It seems like he's trying to remember a word, and it takes her only a half-moment to guess what. "Cosplay?" She suggests, trying to be helpful. She'd explained the concept to him a few times in the past before he'd eventually made the connection. ("Oh, yeah, I watch some videos that feature that sorta thing online sometimes," he'd said, vaguely. When she'd excitedly asked to see, that had become one of a hundred other things he'd promised to show her eventually, when she was nebulously older. The weird grin he'd worn had made her question whether or not she should even look forward to it.)

Now, though, he isn't smiling. Her brother snorts at the clarification, and there's no mistaking the open disdain seeping into his voice as anything other than a consciously cruel choice on his part. "I ain't about to cosplay some goth-lord cunt from one of your shit games, Suzu."

That, Suzume thinks, very nearly astounded, is unquestionably petulant. There's no mistaking it. Audibly and visibly, he is peeved. And it hits her, suddenly, and all at once:

"Are you… are you jealous?"

Much like touching his chest is a thrilling opportunity, this is an especially thrilling realization. Possessive, demanding, and utterly uncompromising; these are all words she could use to describe him. But her brother – jealous? She can hardly imagine it, both because he's usually way too cool for something as Normal and Vulnerable as jealousy, but especially because he isn't about to let her have the opportunity. The exceptionally dangerous look suddenly darkening his features mostly sobers her out of her ill-fated and unfortunately short-lived reverie.

Mostly. That it all but confirms her now deliriously gleeful suspicions only serves to set her off again.

Still, because it's her brother, she can't really be left to just enjoy the absurd idea that he likes her attention enough to be jealous at the thought of sharing it with a wholly fictional character. As Suzume sees it, she has two options. The most instinctual of the two – scrambling up from his lap and making a frantic, shrieking bee-line for the trees – is also the most foolish. Her brother is much faster than her. Considering the vice-like grip he has on her knee again, she suspects he's preempted that plan, anyway. There's very little chance she'd manage to make it out of his grasp in the first place.

That leaves only the second and, more than likely, equally fruitless option. "Wait," Suzume says, breathless with panicked and – she's surprised to find – almost giddy laughter. As certain as she is that her laughter isn't helping her dire situation at all, she just can't help it. Jealous, she thinks, wildly, and can't stop thinking; he's jealous! "Wait, please, lemme explain – "

Eyes blazing, his hand doesn't heed her plea, sliding from her knee up and under the hem of her skirt. The first pinch is too quick for her to even hope to stop it, awful and biting and distinctly mean. Even though she's nowhere near the trees, Suzume can't help but advance to part two of her doomed-from-the-start plan and start shrieking, her legs kicking out wildly into the humid, summer air.

"Nii-chan, please – god – stop being dumb, just – let me – let me finish, why are you so stupid and stubborn and pig-headed and – "

Her brother is merciless. His other hand joins the fray, abandoning the intimacy of the small of her back for her tender side. Clawing into the soft flesh there with some torturous combination of pinches and tickles, he leaves Suzume fitful with the way she full-body thrashes. Laughing and crying, crying and laughing, she glimpses flashes of his expression like a slideshow of movement in between her hysterical convulsions and hopeless attempts to dislodge his hands. It's not long before his scowl gives way to a wide, wicked leer.

"Stupid, huh? Jealous? Really?" Some of the ferality of his expression creeps into his voice. She can hear the grin in it, hear the might-makes-right of it, daring her to argue through her embarrassing, stuck-pig squeals. "That what you think, Suzu?"

And it is what she thinks! It is what she does, too. Even if might does make right in their very tiny, two-person world ninety-nine percent of the time… right now, in this moment, Suzume knows she's right.

"If you'd paid attention to me last – " Another sharp pinch, another keening gasp, and sweat breaks out across her body. " – last night you'd have figured out – god!" Laughter gone thick with hysteria over takes her, and she can feel the tears rolling down her face, her stomach cramping so much she feels a little sick. "The only reason I even – even liked the guy is 'cause – is 'cause – "

It's hard to process her thoughts when she's so hot and his hands are all over her. Her thighs burn, and her side stings, and her brain has gone to sloppy mush with manic, weepy-giggle delirium, but when his face swims into her vision only centimeters from hers, all scars and that slick, sly smile – oh, god, she thinks, all the breath gone out of her –

He's the worst. The worst! Why is he so terrible? Why is his face like that? There's his smile, and the white gleam of his teeth set cruel in his mouth, and the sun reflecting off his staples, and god, her stomach is sick, and her heart is going so fast, an arrhythmic beat that chokes and splutters wretchedly, pumping her full of dizzy, too-hot blood. Why is he so – so –

"I liked him 'cause – god, you butthead, you're awful, just stop – " She manages to find his chin with her hand, desperate to push his face away from her own. He's just too much. It's too much to look at him, to see him, all those awful and too-good shapes of his face, more familiar to her than anyone, more familiar to her than even her own. "I liked him 'cause he reminded me of you – you asshole!"

And at that, like a fire gutted and gone out from lack of oxygen, his hands immediately still.

It's the truth, of course. The character in her game had started the story as a villain, a stubborn thorn in the side of Suzume and her unlikely party of dubiously do-gooder adventurers. Even without the derisive, running commentary he kept up through each encounter, the fights against Mr. Black Nails had been particularly punishing. Always difficult and especially cruel, Suzume found she played worse for it. More than that, she was undone by it, and she'd struggled through each encounter with an especially rapt kind of excitement.

Last night, after a series of circumstances in the story had made Suzume's new fictional crush and the player character into unlikely if very temporary allies, she'd found herself gushing to her brother about just how incredible the villain-turned-antihero was.

"He's just so… mean," Suzume had said, awestruck, and wistful, and more than a little bashful about it. "He's all… I dunno. Like, a lazy-kinda rude? It's so… he's just so dark and sly and cool."

Setting his phone down on his chest, her brother had cast a quick glance at the television before he regarded her with a quirk of one incredulous eyebrow. "The fucking edgelord?"

(God, she'd thought, then, immediately agitated – her brother could be so smart, but he could also be so very, very dumb.)

With his messy, black hair and his dark clothes, his acid-tongue and the slouchy, roguish, devil-may-care way he handled himself, it was painfully obvious why she was so smitten with Mr. Edgelord. Admitting how much she liked the character to her brother felt a lot like telling her brother why she liked him so much, and god, her cheeks had burned so hot when she'd tried.

And so her brother had listened in a tense-growing silence to her sappy and rambling confession before, cutting her off abruptly, he'd waved his hand and told her, "Shit, Suzu, get his dick outta your mouth before you gag on it. The guy's so goddamn pretentious, I can't fucking stand it." When she'd meekly protested, he'd interrupted her again with, "I'd legitimately rather fellate a loaded gun than keep on listening to you try and choke it down, so do me a favor and come off it before you kill us both," which was strangely unlike him. Crass comments she only marginally understood, well, that was something she expected. But her brother had always humored her when it came to listening to her talk about pretty much anything and everything, and his outright dismissal had stung.

In retrospect, Suzume realizes he'd clearly not picked up on the real reason Mr. Edgelord had stirred her smitten heart. No, he'd been jealous then, too, and it's a realization that almost makes up for how much her thighs and side hurt.

Almost.

Her brother's face is still centimeters from hers, heedless of how much she's trying to push him away. He's so close she can see something quickly shift in him again, something stirring in the now smothered flames of his temper. Clicking his tongue against his teeth, it's like a switch has gone off, and another has come on. Still, through it all, that awful grin remains. "Oh, Suzu. You're too cute to use words like 'asshole'. Not fucking allowed."

Suzume huffs at him, puffing her cheeks in exasperation. It's so like him to be this way, a hairpin turn from one flavor of crazy into another one entirely. "You literally just said fu– "

He is so impossibly quick. Suddenly, she's out of his lap and on her back, face up on the deck with her brother looming over her. Held tight against her mouth, his hand forms a hot, impenetrable seal. "Nah," he says, leaning down to shake his head at her slowly, his teeth flashing behind his very self-satisfied smirk. "You only get to use big boy words like that if you're – what'd you say, mmm? Dark and sly and cool?"

Suzume wants to scream. Now that he knows it was meant for him – now that it's a source of pride – of course he remembers what she said, exactly as she'd said it.

Behind the press of his rough hand, though, Suzume cannot scream, so she tries to seethe instead. It comes out as more of a low-throated whine than anything, pathetic even to her own ears. If his laughter is any indication, her brother clearly thinks the same. The boisterous, awful sound of it only makes her feel more flustered, and hot, and hot, and hot

So, more than a little agitatedly, she swats at his wrist and groans in what she hopes sounds like passive, inoffensive defeat, instead.

"Aww, Suzu," he coos, because it's apparently working, and really, she's not sure this is much better than pinches and tickles and clawed, cruel hands. "You gonna behave?"

When she rolls her eyes — this time with much less drama than before — his grasp tightens, but only a little. That, from him, is a kindness.

"Well?" Asks her brother, voice low and raspy, laughing quietly through the question. It gets into her, the sound of his voice, buzzy and settling into her like a primal, insect-like hum. It leaves her feeling impossibly woozy. Dimly, she's aware that it's actually her pulse, a rushing, cacophonous whirl through all of her body. "Are you?"

This time, she nods as best she can, trading the little grumbling noises in for something resembling assent this time.

Rewarding her with a wider grin, he uncurls his hand from her jaw and, with a gentleness that belies the unnerving look in his eyes, pats her cheek. "Atta girl," he says, as quiet as before, and the way he says it is warm and fine and almost sweet. "Keep that mouth pretty for me."

Above her, his eyes looking down on her are blue, and the sky behind him is blue too. The sweeping expanse of it is so very empty. As if she is falling, Suzume feels a sudden and intense sensation of vertigo. It's terrifying and wonderful, and she loves it and hates it in equal measure. Her brother always makes her feel like this. Eager for it, desperate for it, she wants to promise him anything, everything, the world, whatever he wants. If only he'd look at her forever. She wants him to take the breath out of her forever, leave her hot, drowsy, warmed over, falling always through the steady heat of all that endless, impossible blue.

It's just that… well, that just isn't fair. Shouldn't it be fair? Just a bit. Just a little bit. Just sometimes, Suzume thinks. Just once, she tells herself. Is that really so much to ask for? Is it?

So, blinking up at him once, and then twice more, she imagines herself peering into a clear, flawless mirror. There in the silvered glass is another girl looking back at her, countenance dark and serious and unyielding. When Suzume feels her own muscles working to imitate that face, brows gone firm and mouth pulled taut, she is able to regard her brother instead with that neatly constructed expression. "Okay," she says, as a concession. Her voice, too, is equally solemn. "But only if you let me paint your nails."

"Oh-ho, Suzu." Obviously amused, her brother's eyes narrow, his grin needle-sharp. "Is that extortion? From my little sister?"

She is the girl in the mirror, and she is prideful. Suzume lifts her chin, stubbornly. "It sure is."

"You're dumber than I thought if you think I'm the sort who'd negotiate with terrorists." His smile is a little mean. "Especially little pint-sized ones."

"You don't negotiate, ever, at all," protests Suzume, nose crinkling, "And if either of us is a terrorist, it's definitely you."

As smug as he ever is, her brother's face dips closer to hers. "Well, you sure as hell shouldn't be trying to negotiate with terrorists. That's tough-shit work for a soft, little girl like you."

No doubt he means that she should just go along with whatever he says, because that's who he is, and that's what he likes. She likes that, too, sometimes. Suzume likes it a lot, even – even if she knows she shouldn't.

But not now.

"Oh, don't worry, I don't," she says, nodding, and now she's pretending to be him, too, feigning his easy confidence as best she can. He's so close now that their noses are almost touching, just a hair's breadth away. "But… I'll make a special exception, just for you."

That gets a chuckle out of him, and she can feel it in the way his breath drifts over her face, feel it warm in her blood, in her heart, humming and too-hot. "Oh, wow. Get a look at you. That's real fucking suave. When'd you get to be so cool, huh?"

Whether her brother is paying her a genuine compliment or making fun of her isn't anything Suzume can hope to know; his mannerisms for both are astoundingly and infuriatingly similar. Bizarrely, she finds herself leaning harder into the idea that he's mocking her, if only so it doesn't fluster her so much.

There's no helping it, of course. She's flustered, nonetheless, and spider-web cracks run through the face of that girl in the mirror. "Nii-chan…" Lifting her hands, she cups his face, feeling her own cheeks warm. "C'mon… please?"

"Mm, there's my girl. That's how I like you. You must want it real bad, huh? And here I thought you said you'd gone and gotten something for me." Stubborn as he's being, the hard edges of his grin seem to soften, if only fractionally. "But it was really for you, wasn't it? You're a rotten little liar, Suzu."

Suzume opens her mouth and then closes it again. She had said it was for him, hadn't she? But in reality –

Frowning, Suzume lets her gaze slide away from his, fixing it to the side of the house instead. "Well… I do – I do want it real bad. And – and it's selfish, and it… I guess it really was for me. Is for me. I thought about it all night, and all day at school, and – and I was just… I guess I was just a stupid kind of excited to find it at the store, like – to find the right color. I didn't think I would. And it really wasn't that I wanted to make you look more like that guy in the game, it's just… I hadn't ever thought about boys wearing nail polish before, and I thought – I think your hands would look really good with…"

Her face is burning. Her eyes are too, just a little, and her throat. It all feels a lot like it does before she's going to cry. It feels dumb, feeling so vulnerable and raw over something so ultimately stupid. She'd just wanted to hold his hands. She'd just wanted to paint his nails. She'd just wanted to see them, all black and glossy, at the end of his long fingers –

Wanted to see how it looked when he put his dark-nailed hands on her.

When Suzume returns her attention to him, he is looking at her with one of those expressions she can't begin to translate. His smile is gone, but it doesn't immediately strike her as a bad thing; if anything, it's a bit of a relief. Sometimes – most times, really – his smile is just too much.

But he's really looking at her now. The heavy-liddedness of his eyes is gone. Instead, they've gone slightly wide, more white now than blue.

"You're so – " He pauses, as if thinking, and she sees his tongue move between his teeth. "You're so fucking honest."

"Is that… bad?" She isn't sure why it would be. He's always the sort to demand everything of her; her feelings, her secrets, everything. And yet, with the way he's looking at her –

She can visibly see him swallow, see the muscles constrict in his throat, see the way his eyes narrow. For once, there's no real cruelty to the gesture. He looks at her, drinking her in, and there's that sense of him doing as he always does: peeling her away, layer by tissue-paper layer.

"No," he says, finally. She thinks he sounds a little thoughtful. "I just can't imagine it."

"Imagine what?"

"Being that open. It's dangerous." He shakes his head at her, and his smile is back, sort of. The ghost of it flares, there and then gone, in the corner of his mouth. "But fine."

She isn't sure what to do with that first part, really. There's no condemnation to the observation, even if his smile is a little uncanny. So, Suzume blinks up at him, watching as a hot breeze works its way through his dark hair. "Fine?"

"You can paint my nails," he relents, a little louder now. "But we're gonna have to find where your second-store nail polish got off to, first."

Reflexively, Suzume pats herself down, suddenly aware that she has no idea where the nail polish has gotten off to. It's neither in her hands or on her person, and a quick glance around the deck– as good of one as she can get pinned beneath him, anyway – reveals it's not there, either.

Out from the sideline of her vision, Suzume can see her brother's expression go slack again, his eyes bright with amusement as she feels around beside her desperately for a bottle that simply isn't there. "Where did – "

Peeling back and away from her, she watches her brother raise his arms up to the sky, back arching with a stretch. The loss of his overwhelming heat is both a relief and a terrible, terrible thing, and she finds herself shivering in his absence.

Smirking down at her, her brother finishes rising to his feet. "It's hot as hell, Suzu. Can't tell me you're cold," he says, holding a hand out for her. Her hand slips in between his fingers, so much smaller than his own, and then he tugs her to her feet, too.

"It's just – the temperature change, that's all," she mumbles, minutely irritated. It is, she thinks. It has to be.

"Sure," her brother says, and his voice is too-level and amused and completely, absolutely impossible. With burning ears, Suzume ducks her head, the spill of her hair shielding her hot face from view as she goes to peer over the edge of the deck for the lost bottle.

It takes them five minutes of vigorous searching before her brother finally discovers it nestled in a thick outcropping of weeds a quarter of an arm deep under the deck. He holds it out towards her victoriously in his long fingers, peering down at it with a spectacularly smug grin. "So, two stores, huh?"

Feeling a little called out for her frivolity, Suzume crosses the deck and snatches it from his hand. It's a genuine surprise when he lets her with little more than a further uptick in the corners of his mouth. "Yeah – the first only had… like – just pretty colors, I guess you'd call them?"

"What, didn't think a pretty color would suit me?" He bats his dark lashes at her. It's an absurd gesture. It clashes with his undisguised smirk, with the sunlight gleaming broadly in all the staples set in his marred cheeks.

Her brother is pretty, though, just in the way of a graveyard at midnight, long abandoned and choked thick by thorny weeds. Not that she's about to tell him that, of course. "I just think there's something about the black," she mumbles, feeling suddenly very bashful again. "On your hands, I think – well…"

Her brother reaches out and takes hold of her chin, and oh, when Suzume imagines him doing that in the future with fresh black nails, it makes her toes curl into the wood of the deck.

"So you said," he says, his voice a little sly, his grip a little tight. "So let's get started, then. How d'you want me?"

With the heat of his hands a familiar vice around her jaw, Suzume thinks about that. She's only ever painted her own nails a handful of times. Always on breaks from school, usually sat cross-legged with her brother in the common room, watching some show or movie or complaining to her brother about something at school, and well – she's never really thought about it. It'll be different, painting someone else's nails. Maybe a table would be best, she thinks –

But painting his nails is already a selfish endeavor on her part, and in a way, it feels good to let herself be selfish.

It feels even better to be given leave to be selfish by him.

With his hand already directing her attention up towards him, she only has to lift her eyes to his. "Can I sit in your lap while we do it?" She asks, shyly.

It's not a request she imagines he'd forbid because it's one he's never forbidden her yet. Still, it makes her happy to ask. Makes something warm blossom inside of her when he regards her with his toothy grin, lets go of her chin to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, and tells her, "Oh, Suzu. 'Course you can."

So, he sits down again. Taking hold of her for a second time, he pulls her down into his embrace, and there's the warmth of his body settling over her like a well-worn blanket, smothering in the best possible way. This time, she sits in the cradle of his crossed-legs with her back to his chest, her own feet flat against the deck so she can make a little table out of her own lifted legs. Trying to ignore the way her skirt slips slightly down her thighs, she picks up his right hand first and lays it flat against her leg, the tips of his fingers just cresting her knee.

"No pinching," she warns, grave as a tomb. Her skirt has slipped far enough that a few of the bruises he'd left in the days prior are just peeking out, blossoming sick in hues of blue and purple and yellow.

Against the top of her head, she feels her brother snort, his breath stirring in her hair. "You know when you say shit like that it has the opposite effect, right?" With his free hand, he lets his fingers glide across that sliver of exposed, bruised flesh, so light she can only just barely feel it. "'Cause now, I wanna. Real bad, too."

Still, obligingly, his right hand near her knee doesn't move. Banishing a flicker of trepidation, Suzume hums to herself, unscrewing the lid of the nail polish as she does. "That's 'cause you're a bully, nevermind the worst," she says, marveling briefly at the glossy polish that coats the bristles of the tiny brush. The smell of it is pungent but exciting for all the promise it holds, and she can't help but smile, even as she warns – or rather, begs – him, "But really, please don't – just for a bit, pretty please? You'll make a huge, gross mess of everything if you do."

"That's kinda my job as the worst, isn't it? Making a mess of you?"

Lifting his hand from her leg with her left hand, she bows her head so she can concentrate, beginning to work the tip of the brush down the nail of his pinky. "You'll make a mess of yourself, too."

"Mmm. Some things are worth the sacrifice," he says, and even though his voice is quiet, she can hear the strange note of humor in it.

Huffing against his hand, head a little woozy from the smell of the nail polish and the heat of him plastered against her back, Suzume shakes her head. "Not this, you jerk," she says, inwardly cringing as her hair falls over her face, drifting dangerously close to his wet nails. "If you want me to – want me to 'keep my mouth pretty,' or whatever weird, dumb thing it was you said, please just… don't do anything mean. I've never painted anyone's nails before and I – I wanna make sure it looks good."

Without moving his half-painted hand at all, her brother pulls back, just a little. Then, Suzume feels him gather her hair away from her face and sweep it gently behind her shoulders and out of the way. When his fingers brush lingeringly across the nape of her neck, Suzume is forced to hold her breath to repress yet another shiver. Settling back up against her again, his head slides beside her own, his mouth moving against her temple when he asks, "Wanna make it look good for me, or for you?"

There's no suppressing that shiver, try as she might. Groaning a bit at the way he laughs, Suzume has to pause in her work to gather her bearings and settle the sudden flip-flopping of her stomach. In that stolen moment, she takes time to wonder: who is she trying so hard for? It's a stupid question, really, and she imagines his hand slipping through her hair again, imagines the long, wavy strands of it twisted between his black-tipped fingers. Shaking her head, Suzume can't force her voice over a whisper when she answers, finally, "For me."

"Aww, my little Suzu is so selfish, isn't she." There's not a hint of reproach to the statement. If anything, he sounds delighted. Suzume huffs an agitated breath through her nose, a lump wedged painfully in her throat. She's not even sure why.

Surprisingly, her brother behaves as she asks him to, and it's not long before she has a base coat primed across all of his nails. The black is as stark as she'd expected it: a little splash of night at all the ends of his fingers. Suzume finds it serves to highlight the sharp angles of them. Somehow, the ridges of his bones look more pronounced and especially hungry now as they slide beneath his skin.

"It looks good," she breathes admiringly, of her work and his hands, both.

"That was fast." Wiggling his fingers, her brother nuzzles his face against hers. "All done?"

It's moments like this that Suzume loves most. The open affection, the patience, the feel of him against her, so close, and hot –

"No." She shakes her head, just a bit, more to shake off that sense of haziness than anything. "I gotta do another coat or two after this one dries."

"Making me suffer, and for fashion of all fucking things."

"You put me through so much worse," she reminds him, lightly, taking a moment to blow on his fingers. The breeze working its way through the trees and her hair is too weak to offer much in the way of helping the polish dry, so she has to make do with what she has. "And it's not for fashion, anyway. It's for me."

"I hope you know," her brother says, and she can feel his breath in her hair, feel his mouth move against the edge of her forehead, "That I'd only put up with this sorta shit for you."

Closing her eyes, Suzume struggles again, trying hard to swallow back that fist-like lump caught thick in her throat, still. "I thought you said you couldn't imagine being that honest?"

"What can I say? You're just so soppy, and sometimes it gets me feeling a little generous."

Suzume grimaces down at his hands. "I'm not soppy."

"Oh, Suzu," he laughs, and she sucks in a breath when he clips her ear with his teeth. "You're soppy all the damn time."

She wants to whine. She wants to tell him not to do that, not to press his mouth against her, not to fix his teeth to her ear, or to let all his hot breath out in her hair – even if she likes all those things. Suzume's hands tremble with how much she likes them. She wants to say: you're going to mess this up, because he will, because it's time for another coat of paint and this is just as bad, if not worse, than pinches and tickles.

But getting him to agree to any sort of amnesty is a rarity. Asking him for further concessions, she knows, is a fool's errand. So instead, Suzume closes her eyes, searching her memories for anything that might work as a distraction. And, then:

"Hey, Nii-chan," she says, suddenly. "Can I ask you a question?"

More than likely wise to her plot, her brother is still for what seems like an age, as if considering this request. "Well," he says, very careful, "You can ask me anything you want. Whether or not I answer it, though – guess we'll have to see, hmm?"

At the very least, it has the effect of distracting him enough to stop working at her ear with his teeth and mouth. Suzume has to take her wins where she can get them.

"Earlier, you said – you said something about creaming my… well." She can't bring herself to finish. "You know."

Against her, her brother stiffens briefly in surprise before snorting out a bit of pointedly derisive laughter. "Sure did," he says, and there's something weird in his voice, something sticky and hot. That's absolutely not a good sign. "What about it?"

Regardless, Suzume presses on, driven deeper into her curiosity, even as she actively regrets it. "What's it mean?"

Tucking his head down so that his mouth settles against the spot where her ear blends into her jaw, her brother hums, closed-mouthed. The vibration of it gets into her spine, ticklish almost. Tensing, Suzume shifts her shoulders as if to shake it off, wriggling in his lap.

"That's one of those things you'll figure out when you're older," he says, slow and strangely subdued. Against the tender skin of her jaw, the feeling of his mouth as he talks, damp and warm, is especially pronounced.

Fidgeting, Suzume gulps down a single, shaky breath, her expression souring. "I hate that."

"Oh, I know. Poor baby Suzu. It's so hard being a kid, ain't it?" As if the heavy mock-sympathy wasn't enough, her brother laughs, his breath pluming against her neck in hot puffs that leave a few goosebumps rising across her arms. "All these exciting, adult things you're forced to miss out on. Don't worry though, little princess. You'll get there eventually. I'll show you when the time comes."

Show, he says, and that gives Suzume pause. More often than not, the when-you're-older is some infuriating vague pacification and little else. But this –

"Show me?"

"Well, y'know." His voice is cavalier. His breath, so hot against her throat, is not. "Some things are better demonstrated than explained. Like… hmm. Like riding a bike, right? I could tell you how to do that, and set you out on your own, neat and pretty with your very own bike. And maybe you'd do okay, but more likely, you'd tumble and fall and bust up your cute little face, and that'd be a right-fucking-tragedy. Much better for me to be there with you, yeah? Get behind you, hold one of the handle bars for you, help you get your balance. No sense breaking yourself when you don't gotta do that."

That, of course, is logical. On its own, the comparison is innocuous. But Suzume knows her brother, and there's something else there, a shadow lurking just beneath the surface of all this reasonable sensibility. None of this is helped, of course, by the fact that she has exactly zero idea what creaming her panties is even supposed to mean and how it could possibly relate to bicycles.

"I bet I could've figured out riding a bike on my own with – with just verbal instruction." Suzume thinks about that a little more. "With training wheels," she clarifies, before adding, preemptively, "Without breaking my face."

"Oh, sure," he says, his jeering tone all he needs to openly disagree with the notion. "Baby-wheels for the baby. That suits you."

"I wouldn't need them forever!"

"Uh-huh." His obvious doubt in her capabilities is vexing and it's similarly obvious that he's more than enjoying her mounting frustration.

"God, never-mind." Suzume heaves a sigh. "Forget bike riding."

"Why?" The question is treacherously innocent. "'Cause you're shit at it?"

Flustered again, Suzume decides to pursue another direction than rise to that conspicuous bait. "So – so is it… bad?" She asks, suspiciously. It had sounded bad, when he'd said it earlier. Bad, and most probably gross, and that raises more than a few alarms at the possibility of him showing her anything.

"Is what bad?" And that question is treacherously innocent, too.

"You know what I'm saying!"

Her brother hums, and she feels it in her tendons, in her muscles, in her bones. "Do I?"

"The… the cream thing." Bad, Suzume thinks again, darkly, and: probably gross. "With the – with the – "

"With the what?" He mimes genuine curiosity so well, but oh, she knows better.

"Oh, please!" Incensed, Suzume lets out a big breath of air. "Quit being a butthead!"

"Mmm." In the silence, she can picture the wheels in his head turning, weighing the pros and cons of pushing her to further frustration before he ultimately – and surprisingly – decides on charity. "Guess it depends."

"On what?"

Chuckling very quietly, her brother angles his head further and presses the faintest kiss to her jaw. "That'll be another thing you'll have to wait to find out. But don't worry; it'll be good when I show you."

This, of course, clears up literally nothing. If anything, it's made everything even more confusing, both because it's so annoyingly vague, but also because it's hard to process her thoughts between the way he's touching her, kissing her, much like it always is. Frowning down at the shadows stirring across the deck, it's impossible to ignore the slight tremor set deep in her hands. She supposes it's her fault for asking.

Evidently, her brother notices too. "Gotta keep your hands still before you ruin all your hard work, Suzu. Didn't you say I needed a second coat?" Despite the note of mockery that's crept into his voice, he sounds just as pleased.

"I can't help it when you – when you get so weird," Suzume whines, trying very hard to breathe in and out, nice and slow, just like he's taught her.

"Is it really such a sin to be affectionate with my cute little sister? " His laughter stirs in her hair again. "You're the one who asked. I can be quiet if you want."

Suzume doubts that very much, but elects not to argue. If she does, he absolutely won't be. Behind her ribs, her heart is a fierce, hammering fist, twin to the one in her throat. It threatens to burst out from her chest, and so she thinks about breathing again, in and out, in and out, willing her errant heart down, and back, and quiet.

In another spectacularly rare act of mercy, though – she is absolutely unused to so many in one day! – her brother does maintain his silence, and after a time, both her heart and her hands settle enough to continue. Flexing her fingers as if to work the last bit of nervousness out of them, Suzume dips the brush back into the little bottle to refresh it and begins work on the second coat in relative peace. There's a comfort to be found in the mindless but methodical dip and swipe across the now shiny, black surface of each of his nails. It's a consuming thing that pushes a lot of her other thoughts from her mind, something blessedly easy to focus on that isn't the feeling of her brother with his cheek to her temple, or his chest to her back, or his heat seeping into her, or –

"Oh, yeah." Right as she's finishing up with the second coat on his final finger, her brother's voice wheedles its way through her concentration. "There's something I forgot to tell you."

Barely registering the statement, Suzume picks at the edges of his thumb's cuticle with her own nail to clear away a few specs of wayward polish, asking, distractedly, "Forgot to tell me what?"

"Tomorrow night, I gotta go do something. I'll be out late."

That, unfortunately, completely has her attention. In his lap, Suzume goes perfectly still, the nail brush held aloft in one hand, his hand in her other. "What?"

"Yeah," her brother says, as if this is all he needs to say – as if this is in any way any kind of valid explanation. No doubt he thinks it is exactly that. He never thinks he owes her anything.

Suzume stares at his much larger hand held up in her fingers, worrying her lip savagely with her teeth. "How late?"

"Late. After you go to bed, probably."

There's a prickly, raw feeling at the back of her throat, and she suddenly feels as if she has run a great, long distance. "Will you be home when I get home from school?"

"Nope."

Suzume wants to blame the way her head feels like it's spinning on the acrid smell of nail polish, but she knows better. In her periphery, the world shifts. Then it tilts into a wobbly, impressionistic blur of color, and she closes her eyes, suddenly feeling very nauseous.

She knows her brother goes out sometimes when she's at school. There will be food that wasn't there before, in the fridge or on the counter. Sometimes, there's the occasional take-out box in the trash, or gifts for her that she knows he would never have delivered. Yet since coming to live with her, he's never not been home when she's come home from school, and he's most definitely never been gone at night.

"Why?" She can't stand the way her voice cracks with the question. More than that, she loathes the dull but mounting feeling of panic welling up in her, suffusing her whole body with an awful chill, and she thinks: all the heat in every summer she's ever known couldn't hope to chase that coldness away.

"I got things to do." Despite the vagueness of the answer, her brother is markedly firm in that way that indicates he will absolutely not be entertaining any further questions regarding the matter.

"Oh," Suzume says, hushedly, staring dumbly down at his dark-nailed hands. "Okay."

When her brother blows air sharply into her ear, it doesn't elicit much more than a very slight flinch. Everything feels so awfully numb. "Oh, poor Suzu," he says. While low enough to match her own now, there's an awful, selfish note of pleasure to his voice that he just can't be bothered to hide. "So sad, and over a single night. You're a big girl. You can handle being alone for one night, can't you?"

Of course he'd be thrilled by her reaction. Even without looking at him, Suzume can perfectly imagine his face, settled into that horrible grin that gets into him when she's done something to inadvertently feed his already monstrous ego. Even the imagining of it is something she can't stand.

More than that, though, she can't stand how very un-big she feels. The idea of coming home to an empty, brotherless house fills her with an intense and particularly shameful sense of almost panicked-animal desperation.

She wants to push his stupid hands away. She wants to stand up and slink off into the house with her metaphorical tail tucked between her legs, blinking and blinking away the looming threat of hot tears that prickle like thorns in the corners of her eyes. She doesn't want him to know, doesn't want him to see, doesn't want to nurture that terrible arrogance of his any more than she already has. When her mother had worked late, Suzume had gone to bed every night, entirely alone. Now that she's older, and ostensibly more mature, what's a single night like that without her brother? Just one night? Alone in their shared futon, without the press of his body to hers, or his arm over her, or his warmth –

"Okay," she says again, screwing the nail polish brush back into its bottle. Initially, she'd planned for three coats. Now, though, she finds that all the energy has bled out of her.

"That bad, huh?" The question is so fraught with wry amusement that Suzume wishes hopelessly that she were big enough to turn around and fight him with any actual hope of winning.

"No," she lies. Though she tries very hard to keep her voice level, it comes out a little too snappy and childish to be convincing. "Actually, it'll be nice having the place to myself."

"Oh, yeah?" There's no hiding that touchiness from him. His tone is knowing, amused and sharp. "Good thing, that. Wouldn't wanna go breaking your tender little heart over something as dumb as a single night."

Suzume is lying, and he's lying, too. He would and very clearly does relish the idea of breaking her heart over something so pathetic. She knows that very well. He's all but preening with it, and she hates it. She hates herself. It's impossible not to feel stupid for being so desperately sad about him being gone for one lousy night. She knows she shouldn't care. She knows it's not a big deal. She knows, she knows, and yet –

Already, the thought of it makes her feel terribly lonely. It's hard enough going to school most days. Extricating herself from the secure if often suffocating cage of his arms is never pleasant. Regardless of how much he torments her, the idea of being without him for any extended period of time feels infinitely worse. It's never been something Suzume can even begin to reconcile in her head. Isn't she always wishing for space? Doesn't she really want it, sometimes? Why, then, can't she look at this with a sense of relief, wave her hand earnestly, and send him off to do whatever sketchy thing he probably wants to do with her genuine blessing?

But he won't even tell her what he's doing.

Secrets, secrets, and more secrets. Her brother, stealing away for the day, refusing to tell her what he's doing or where he's going. Her brother and his stupid, awful you-don't-need-to-know-secrets. As if they weren't the worstl already. Now, they're taking him away from her, too.

And in that yawning and terribly hungry space left behind, a monstrous doubt takes roost with a great flapping of fluttering, red wings.

It's been a few weeks since Suzume had told Hawks that she'd think about meeting with him. As guilty as she'd felt for even entertaining the idea, she'd found herself clumsily dodging his gentle proddings regarding the whens and wheres of it since. To his credit, and in a move very unlike her brother, Hawks seemed placated by whatever flimsy excuse she managed to produce, and only asked after their potential 'date' every few days. Calling him regularly on her walk home from school seemed like it satisfied him well enough.

And, until now, it has kept Suzume satisfied, too. Whatever it is, her relationship with Hawks – as a friend? a confidant? she refuses to think of him as another big brother figure, because she really doesn't need any more of those – is one especially big secret that has helped alleviate her stark feelings of injustice over just how much her brother keeps from her. Just talking to Hawks has been enough. Laughing with Hawks has been enough. And truthfully, even that little stolen bit of interaction often leaves her feeling so guilty that she almost cannot stand herself. It would be one thing, she thinks, if she didn't enjoy herself at all. The fact that she does really like talking to Hawks, though… Well, it makes the whole thing feel like something more than just a secret meant to balance out all that endless unfairness.

It feels like a betrayal.

Besides the fact that her brother never really affords her an opportunity for a visit with her maybe-friend-Hawks without some very involved lies, Suzume has found herself too anxious and guilt-plagued to cinch the deal. But her brother leaving her for the night with zero explanation also feels like a betrayal.

It is also most certainly an opportunity, too.

Ironically, it's one her awful, mean, terrible big brother has unwittingly tipped into her lap. And if he's going to run out without so much as an explanation, well, isn't turn around fair play? There's nothing to feel guilty about. Nothing to regret. Nothing at all, she tells herself, bile at the back of her throat and acid in her mouth. Nothing at all.

"Cool," she manages to choke out, swallowing back that wave of nausea desperately. The gotcha feeling of self-satisfaction she barely feels is no real relief from the anxiety of sneaking around on her brother, but isn't that fair? Isn't it? She tells herself she has to take what she can get.

More than that, though, Suzume really doesn't want to come home, alone, to her grandmother's empty house.

Hawks might not even be able to do something on such short notice, anyhow, she tells herself. It's a thought that comforts her, and one that makes her feel so impossibly sad, too.

As if he can read her thoughts – because when can't he? – her brother's mouth moves close to her ear. "And what'll you get up to, while I'm gone?"

"Me?" Suzume stares down at his drying nails. "I guess I'll be around."


AN: So, this was a very silly indulgent chapter on my part. I wanted some kinda fluff (you know, fucked up fluff, because it's Dabi, what can you do) and I really just liked the idea of Suzu painting his nails a lot, cause like, really, what's more intimate than painting someone's nails? It was supposed to be a small scene. It ended up being a very long scene because I have no sense of self control and I just like writing them interacting. Also, I don't have a lot of time left in this whole "calm before the storm," before a lot of things really start to swing into (scary) gear, and there isn't gonna be a whole lotta places for fluffy stuff to happen in the future, so I wanna take what I can get, selfishly! 😭

Besides writing this chapter, I also wrote like a 15k extremely smutty one-shot that is very much related to the story (it's basically bonus content) because I was like, MAN, I WANNA WRITE SOME PORN RIGHT NOW. That certainly didn't help with my personal deadlines, lmao. 😭😭 Sadly, I don't wanna post it until we're past a certain point, because it kinda spoils something big I don't really want super spoiled. The CURSE.

Anyway, the next chapter is basically ALL Hawks and Suzu. I had a lot of fun writing him, and I hope he's up to snuff, cause I love that birb boy. 💖 He'll be around in a couple of hours or tomorrow since I didn't want to sit on the half of the chapter that actually progresses the story. Please take this like, nearly 20k words as an apology, lmao.