Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandoms:
Relationships:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2023-10-14
Words:
2,546
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
35
Kudos:
861
Bookmarks:
183
Hits:
6,600

these are days

Summary:

(How dare they, how dare they. How dare that disgusting clan with their despicable sorcerers take Choso’s charge, his oath, his baby when he wasn’t looking and put him to labor that would break someone two or three times his age. How dare they tell Yuuji that it was all he was worth, that it was his place.)

Choso will show the Kamo Clan their place, and soon.

But first: s’mores.

OR

Yuuji and his brothers, one evening in a world where Yuuji was given to the Kamo Clan instead of his grandfather, and Choso was incarnated early to raise and guard his youngest brother.

Notes:

These are days you'll remember.
Never before and never since, I promise, will the
whole world be warm as this.

—10,000 Maniacs, “These Are Days”

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

“Would you like for your big brother to help you now, Yuu-chan?” Eso calls from his seat on the grassy bank.

“Eso,” Choso sighs reproachfully, sparing a glance over his shoulder at his younger brother. He looks like he’s settled in for the long wait, his trousers rolled up to his calves with his bare feet in the cool, bubbling water. He rests his chin in the palm of his hand as he watches Yuuji’s snail-like progress across the docile river winding its way along the border of the clan’s estate.

Yuuji was finally about to ask for help on his own. Probably. But now that Eso implied that the five-year-old needed the help, Yuuji would now say—

“No, thank you!” He beams at them from his perch midway through the crossing. He’s been stalled there for the last five minutes as he warily contemplates the distance to the next rock, which is about three times his usual stride away. “I can do it myself!”

“Yuu-ji! Yuu-ji!” Kechizu chants sportingly from his place in the vice grip of Yuuji’s arms. “You can do this, Yuu-ji!” His stuffed racoon paws wave in tandem with his cheers, striped tail swishing and curling about Yuuji’s knees and threatening to trip him as much as the slippery rocks.

Yuuji squats down, squinting so hard at his arch nemesis—the villainous rock that dared to be too far out of his reach—that his eyes squinch completely shut. His tongue curls over his upper lip, which is still somehow dirty from where Eso had snuck him a piece of chocolate when Choso wasn’t looking, despite their efforts to wipe it off before they were caught.

“Be careful of Kechizu-nii’s fur,” Choso gently reminds their youngest brother. “You know he doesn’t like it when his fur is wet.”

“Don’t like it! Don’t like it!” Kechizu laughingly echoes.

Yuuji huffs, immensely put upon, but he obligingly readjusts Kechizu in his arms, anyway. Choso’s just glad he’d thought to tie Yuuji’s yukata above his knees. The kid was robust, but he still didn’t want to risk illness if he were to get too wet and cold.

Or, worse (at least in Yuuji’s eyes): have to go home and call off s’mores in order to change.

(Next time, Choso will pack extra clothes. Just in case. He’d thought they were out of that phase, but apparently not. It was nice to be reminded just how baby-ish Yuuji could still be. He’s been growing up so fast lately.)

Yuuji sticks one arm out, thumb raised and fingers closed into a fist, tilting it this way and that for no discernable reason.

“What are you doing now, Yuu-chan?” Eso asks, trying to hide his amusement because Yuuji has a keen sense for when his big brothers are laughing at him. The outline of Eso’s broad shoulders is already starting to blur into the shadows of the forest behind him as the sun sets. They’re running out of time to set up camp before it’s full dark.

Also at a loss, Choso blankly gives Yuuji a two thumbs-up in response and tries not to dwell too hard on the white bandages that are already loosening from around Yuuji’s chubby hands and fingers.

(How dare they, how dare they. How dare that disgusting clan with their despicable sorcerers take Choso’s charge, his oath, his baby when he wasn’t looking and put him to labor that would break someone two or three times his age. How dare they tell Yuuji that it was all he was worth, that it was his place.)

The old Binding Vow that’s been imprinted in his blood since his incarnation stirs in whispered warning at his mutinous thoughts. It resonates in his veins, in the microscopic infrastructure of his cells. It’s a discomfort he lives, breathes, and sleeps with because his thoughts are always straining against the boundaries of it. Because he’s always, always angry. He’s angry every time the Kamo ridicule Eso, calling him ghoulish and noxious. When they force him to cover up his body and tyrannize him into the shadows as if he were the abhorrence to be ashamed of. Choso still rages each time he sees the profanation of Kechizu’s little, soft body because he can never forget how his brother screamed as he was unmade, as his soul was torn apart and sewed bit by mangled bit into the emasculated—and more palatable—cursed corpse. It’s been years of Choso being unable to feel his brother, whose blood was replaced with fiber, and he still daydreams of peeling the skin back thread by ragged thread on each and every one of the Kamo sorcerers. Of letting their blood leak out into the ground, until they were empty, until their husks were as dry and brittle as stuffing.

Choso will show the Kamo Clan their place, and soon.

But first: s’mores.

Blissfully ignorant of his big brother’s macabre machinations, Yuuji gives Choso the most painful ‘no, duh’ stare to date. “I’m trying to judge the—the trajec—er. The tragedy. Yeah!”

“Tragedy! Tragedy!” Kechizu chortles before resuming his cheer. “Yuu-ji! Yuu-ji!”

“Trajectory, Yuuji,” Choso mildly corrects. “Let’s compromise.” He bends down to start tying up the hem of his own yukata. “Why don’t I stand between the rocks and you hold my hand when you jump? You’ll still jump on your own, I’ll just be the railing to make sure you don’t fall.”

Yuuji’s cheeks, still rounded with baby fat, puff out like a disgruntled little duckling. “But I wanna be strong!”

“You are,” Choso says without hesitation. “And you’re only going to get stronger. But would you let your big brother do his job? It makes me happy.”

He’s got Yuuji on the hook now. He can’t even feel bad about using the age-old trick, if it means getting out of this river.

“Besides, we wouldn’t want Eso to eat the s’mores without us.”

He regrets the words as soon as he says them.

“Choso-nii’s an idiot!” Kechizu crows, fluffy tail wrapping three times around Yuuji’s arm in an attempt to hold on as Yuuji, fueled by the fear of having his s’mores stolen from him, jumps before Choso has a chance to even step down from his own rock.

“S’mores!” Yuuji shouts squeakily, possibly as some sort of battle cry.

“He’ll make it!” Eso calls, even as he starts splashing his way toward them.

“He’s not going to make it!” Kechizu screams in shrill panic, little paws covering his button eyes.

But Yuuji is a boy born to defy expectations. He’s a living, breathing challenge to “but it’s always been done this way”.

He makes the impossible jump.

Only to be betrayed by the wet, slippery rock. His sandaled feet shoot out from under him as soon as he lands, and he falls hard and fast with a breathless, barely-comprehending “oh!”

Choso is there to catch him, just before his skull would crack on the rock.

The cheeky little thing has the audacity to grin up at Choso, as if he hadn’t been an unbearably stubborn brat about crossing the river on his own for the last ten minutes. As if he hadn’t nearly brained himself over s’mores.

“Choso-nii!” Kechizu and Yuuji cheer at the same time.

“What are you making such a fuss for?” Choso asks Kechizu as he puts Yuuji on his feet on the traitorous rock so he can check the youngest for injuries and straighten his clothes. “You’re not breakable.”

“Yuu-chan is so fast!” Kechizu defends, somewhat indignantly. “Don’t like getting wet. Don’t like it, don’t like it.”

“Besides,” Yuuji pipes up. “I knew Choso-nii would save us!”

Choso sighs. Yuuji and Kechizu, both grinning, throw synchronized peace signs at him.

“Well,” Choso muses, staring at Yuuji’s bare toes, already whitening from the cold water and twilight air. They’re on the cusp of autumn, and the dropping nighttime temperatures are still taking Choso by surprise. “I didn’t manage to save your shoes.”

“I got them,” Eso says, pushing through the water with two comically tiny sandals threaded through his belt for drying.

“We don’t have to go back, do we?” Yuuji asks with wide, honeyed eyes and a fat bottom lip. And Choso knows he’s being played, but he can’t resist the tug in his chest at the pitiful look.

He looks at Yuuji’s cold feet, and Kechizu’s damp left paw. His tail, still wrapped tightly around Yuuji’s arm, was mercifully spared.

“You did pack blankets,” Eso points out. “And the fire will dry out Kechizu and keep Yuu-chan’s feet warm.”

“The s’mores will help, too.” Yuuji says, very earnestly.

“S’mores!” Kechizu sings softly in the light, laughing way of his. “S’mores with Yuu-chan!”

“Will they help that much, you think?” Choso asks, feeling the corner of his mouth quirk.

“Mm!” Yuuji says.

“Mm!” Kechizu hums.

“Then I guess we better hurry and make some.”

His little brothers cheer. Including Eso.

“But,” Choso interrupts. “You have to let me carry you the rest of the way, so you don’t hurt your feet.”

Yuuji nods, both resigned to his fate and determined to bravely endure it. “For s’mores.”

Choso bends down and says, just as solemnly, “for s’mores.” Then he kisses Yuuji’s forehead and picks him up. Eso falls in step beside them, holding out his arm obligingly for Kechizu to hop over and situate himself on Eso’s back.

“Free ride, free ride,” Kechizu sings, and Eso laughs, indulgent as he reaches the bank first and hauls the bag with their supplies over his shoulder.

Yuuji tucks his head into the curve of his big brother’s neck more out of muscle memory than any real tiredness. Chubby, bandaged fingers wrap tightly into his clothes.

“‘wanted to do it myself,” Yuuji mutters.

“It was a powerful jump,” Choso concedes honestly. “The best I’ve seen,” he continues, a little less honestly. It’d been extraordinary, and it’d been easy for Yuuji, even Choso’s panicked eyes had seen that. He could have flown past his target, and kept on flying.

(Choso knows something is coming for his little brother, and that there might be a day Yuuji will fly and fall where Choso can’t catch him. He wants to take Yuuji and run and run, but the Binding Vow howls in his marrow, threatening to unravel him from the inside out. Choso doesn’t mind being unmade for his brothers, but he can’t leave them alone in Kamo's clutches.)

“I’ve been practicing with Toshi-kun—ah,” Yuuji breaks off and lifts his head to stare wide-eyed at Choso. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that,” he whispers. And then, very cutely if a little bit ineffectually, puts a finger in front of his lips and goes shh.

Choso carefully tries to keep his face blank even as he grinds his molars down to the tender quick at the thought of that spoiled little heir with that man’s name anywhere near Yuuji.

“Izu-nii was with me!” Yuuji exclaims, pointing at his brother, who tries his absolute best to put Eso between them.

“Tattletale!” Kechizu hisses, baring felt tooth and claw.

“I was with them, too,” Eso interrupts, absently catching Kechizu when his scrambling causes him to lose his grip and fall.

Yuuji gasps, affronted, and moves his accusing finger to Eso. “You spied! You broke your promise!”

“I believe you broke it first, Yuu-chan,” Eso says gently, but Yuuji still recoils in despair, curling back against Choso’s shoulder.

“Sorry, Choso-nii,” Yuuji mumbles. “I just—um! Toshi-kun is small. Like me. And he gets manga for me, and told me about s’mores, and…” he goes quiet as he buries his face into Choso’s neck. “And I want him to be my friend.”

Choso feels the sharp echo of Yuuji’s loneliness as if it were his own. He holds Yuuji tighter against him, as if to pull him inside his chest and tuck him neatly next to his heart.

“You cannot trust the clan.” He says, low but not unkind, not when he can feel the brittleness of his brother’s isolation so fragile and real in the bow of his tiny spine. “However, a… friend,” he sounds out the word with a grimace he can’t control. “A friend is acceptable.”

The little uptight Kamo brat is the last thing from acceptable. But Choso has long understood that he’ll never be able to deny his brothers anything he can give them.

Yuuji launches himself up so fast he nearly tips right out of Choso’s arms. “Really? Do you mean it? No take backs?”

“There will be rules, Yuuji—” But Yuuji is already slapping his sticky palms on Choso’s face and landing a wet, equally sticky, still-somehow-chocolate-y kiss on his cheek. (Were all children this…glutinous, or was it just Yuuji? Fool on Choso for believing that they were past the bib and baby wipes stage as well.)

“Do you think now is a good time to mention that I think the little heir has a big, fat crush on Yuu-chan?” Eso asks, rather innocently and conveniently an extra two steps away from Choso, just out of arm’s reach.

“What.”

“No take backs!” Kechizu chortles. “No take backs!”

Eso tilts his head back, laughing to the sky. The black sclera of his eyes blend into the rising dark, his eyeshine glowing pinpoints in the shadows on his face. The mouth on his back cuts a wide grin, sharp fangs gleaming from the moon’s reflection off the river.

“Now is probably also a good time to mention that Yuuji absolutely wiped the floor with Toshi-kun during their last sparring match.”

“What.” Choso repeats. Were his brothers conspiring to put him into an early grave? Sparring? With that self-righteous little punk?

“It was a breathtaking beat down,” Eso continues.

Yuuji shoves three fingers in Choso’s face so fast he nearly takes out an eye. “I won three out of three!” He proudly declares. “We were gonna do best outta five, but Eso-nii said it was nap time.”

Choso sighs. “We’ll go over the rules later.”

Yuuji rewards him with another sticky kiss, and whines when Choso chases him down with the inside of his sleeve to try and get the last of the chocolate out of the corner of his mouth. Mortally offended, Yuuji buries his head against Choso’s shoulder again in an attempt to hide from the rough grooming.

They walk like that for a few minutes—silent but for their footfalls in the grass. Animal sounds, even bird song, had long abandoned the area, their instincts too wary of the uncanny threat coiled within Choso and Eso. So the only sound in the world was Kechizu’s quiet humming, Eso’s light steps, and Yuuji’s breath against Choso’s throat.

“‘m gonna get stronger,” Yuuji declares, voice syrupy, lulled to tiredness in the warm, familiar hold of his big brother. “One day I’ll be strong enough to carry Choso-nii. I’ll carry all of you.”

“You will,” Choso agrees, though the last thing he wants to be is a burden to his brothers. He holds Yuuji closer, wraps his arms and the blood within them around him tighter, and tries to tuck him next to his heart.

“But let me carry you just a little longer. It makes me happy.”

end.

Notes:

Choso out here trying to make seven-year-old Noritoshi Kamo his arch-nemesis.

This was the first thing I started and finished in months, and I'm ridiculously happy about that. Probably because baby Yuuji and Big Brother Choso are just too dang cute.

Thanks to Goose for flailing about JJK with me for the past month or so, I know it definitely helped me write this. ♥ Feel free to chat with me about jjk!

Kudos/comments are always welcome! They help me feel like I'm part of the fandom community!