Oh god this is going to be a cheesy ball of enchilada gooey chocolate mush that makes everyone want to puke rainbows all over each other. -cracks knuckles- LETS DO THIS
It was raining, and Danri was having a shitty day. What a beautiful cliche, as his language arts teacher would say.
That was an internal rhyme. Three of them. God, he needed to get out of his school brain. He needed to get out of his head period. Really, today had been fine until lunch, when it had started pouring out of nowhere. He and his friends had unfortunately been sitting at their usual table, which of course meant they were sitting ducks, fully exposed to the rain as it started to come down in sheets.
Danri liked the rain, when he wasn’t in school. When he wasn’t outside. When the wetness in the air didn’t make his ear fur and his hair fluff out and his tail drip everywhere and smell like wet dog.
Yeah. It was a bit of a damn problem when you were a mix in public school and all you wanted was to blend in and maybe not be alienated by the entirety of the student body. Or even the faculty, for that matter.
His friends laughed, shoved each other playfully and flicked their wet hair at each other as they dripped off under one of the armadas and relocated to another table. Danri just followed quietly, feeling his doom silently and steadily approaching.
It pounced as soon as he sat down in his next class. Wet. Dripping. Miserable. Smelling vaguely of wet dog.
"Eeeeeewwwwwww what’s that smell? Is there a dog in he-"
A gasp, and muffled giggling, and some not so muffled laughter from the back of the room. Danri’s ears pressed back and he stared down at his desk, hard, like the intensity of his glare could make them all shut up. He didn’t hate people but sometimes they really sucked, and they really made him hate himself. A lot. It was better by the end of the day, but the damage was done, and he didn’t have an umbrella with him because it wasn’t supposed to rain. And it of course hadn’t let up. So he was going to have to walk back out in the pouring rain to get to Cameron’s car, which meant getting soaked again, and then he’d get Cameron’s car wet and smelling like dog, and even if Cameron didn’t get mad or annoyed about it, he’d still feel awful. Because he always felt awful when this stuff happened. Why couldn’t he just get over himself?
The bell rang and Danri hesitated, until he was the last one out of the room with the teacher giving him a strange, somewhat pitying look. She looked almost ready to ask what was wrong, but Danri was already out the door and hurrying away, ears pressed back and his stupid fucking wet tail trying to tuck itself between his stupid legs.
He stopped again at the doors, staring miserably through the glass out at the rain. Students shoved past him, someone yelled something about standing in the fucking doorway, and Danri let himself be pushed outside by the shoving bodies and out into the rain, as the umbrellas went up all around him or kids ran with their binders or hoods over their heads. He trudged along the sidewalk, suddenly hating how far out Cameron had to park, and hating his god damn ears and tail, and hating that he hadn’t even brought an umbrella. What was even wrong with him?
He didn’t bother to turn around. Whoever was coming after him probably only wanted to rub it in. He was too deep in his gloom to recognize his own brother’s footsteps. Until there was a red umbrella blocking out the shower and the grey, and he found himself facing Cameron, who was panting, trying to hold the umbrella steady over the two of them.
"You forgot your umbrella?"
Danri gave a mere nod in response, looking down.
Cameron frowned, quickly taking in the vibes coming off of his little brother.
"Come on, let’s get in the car and out of the wet. I have some towels in the back. Dad said you might have forgotten an umbrella so I brought them just in case."
Danri looked up in surprise, but Cameron merely nudged him to start walking. Danri started walking.
Danri didn’t reply. Cameron wouldn’t get it. He didn’t look like a freak. And he shaved the fur that did grow on his body. He didn’t have to deal with smelling like a god damned animal when he struggled enough just to prove that his mind was just as capable.
Cameron sighed, and he fell silent as they walked through the downpour, their shoes soaking through as they passed line after line after line of cars, slowly making their way to Cameron’s.
Danri kept his eyes down, watching as the puddles of water splashed and continued to soak his shoes and his socks. He watched as the rain fell and the red reflection of the umbrella blocked out the dim reflections of the sky.
Cameron watched his brother. Saw the pain and the numbness sink in. The numbness that he’d fought against for so long and had finally gotten a bit of a grip on. He hated seeing that overtake his brother.
It wasn’t until they were inside the car that it hit Cameron. The smell. The slight musk of animal, of wet fur, of Danri. If anything, he liked it. But Cameron knew that his opinion in this wasn’t going to just make the problem go away. Danri struggled so much. This wasn’t helping.
Cameron tapped his wheel with his fingers, glancing over at his brother in the passenger seat. Danri was still and silent, staring down at his hands, playing with his nails.
Cameron looked back up at the sky, and then decided that they weren’t going home after school.
Danri didn’t even seem to notice they were going in the opposite direction of home until they’d left their familiar area and were out on the road.
Danri needed to talk. Cameron wasn’t going to let him just slink off into his room and lay there in darkness.
He didn’t even ask where they were going. He just looked at Cameron.
Cameron sighed and turned on his blinker, switching lanes. The windshield wipers swept the shield. Swish. Swish. Swish.
"Danri, is it because your fur got wet?"
Swish. Swish. Swish. The slightest movement in his peripheral vision. The shadow of a nod.
"And you know that doesn’t make you any less human than the rest of those shitheads?"
Swish. Swish. Swish. Swallow. Shrug.
Cameron bit into his cheek, and tapped the steering wheel.
"They are literally shitheads. Okay?"
Cameron let out an exasperated breath. He wasn’t good at this and he didn’t pretend to be. But he had to get through somehow.
"If anything you’re more human than they are. Who fucking makes fun of someone for something they can’t control?"
No reply. Not even a breath.
Oh fuck. Shit. The kid was about to cry. Shit, no. That wasn’t what he was trying to do. /Fuck/- focus on the road and try not to kill him while you’re at it dipshit!
Cameron cursed under his breath and pulled over. A truck honked as it roared on by, but they were fine.
Danri was not fine. He was covering his face and struggling to breathe. Shit. Fuck. Not what Cameron had intended. He was really bad at this “supportive big brother” shit. God damn it. He put the car in park and leaned over, placing one hand on his brother’s arm, the other on his chest. It wasn’t the first time Cameron had had to get Danri through a panic attack.
"Danri. Breathe. Watch me okay? Inhale, exhale."
Cameron opened his mouth and breathed in deeply, and exhaled, making sure Danri’s eyes were on him, just on him.
"Breathe. In. Out. Like that. Open your mouth and breathe that way. Slow. Good. You’re okay. It’s okay. I shouldn’t have said that, it’s okay, it’s my fault."
Danri’s eyes stayed on him as he slowly began to get his breath back, his heart pounding beneath Cameron’s hand.
"It’s okay Danri. You had a bad day. You’ll be okay. I’m here, I’ve got you. Just breathe and keep your eyes on me. Don’t think about anything else, just listen to my voice."
He’d started really paying attention to the way that their dads got Danri to calm down, and he’d done a little bit of research on it himself. And it seemed to be working. Danri’s eyes were streaming though. But he was calming down.
"That’s better. I know it was a rough day and I know it probably hasn’t been a great week. It won’t last forever, we’ll get out of that shithole and then you’ll go be amazing and fucking own everyone in whatever high up university you end up at, and then you’ll change the world with your science stuff, and you’ll leave everyone looking like assholes for being assholes to you. Okay? That’s what’s going to happen. You’re too great for it to not work out okay for you."
When the fuck had he gotten so optimistic? God, trying to help his brother was turning him into some kind of motivational speaker or something. He didn’t even know if this shit was working or if he sounded like an idiot, trying to help Danri like this. Cameron knew how useless words could be. Otherwise he wouldn’t have wasted most of high school and middle school getting drunk off his ass, fucking around with people whose names he never bothered to remember.
Danri’s eyes were so fucking sad.
"Look, the rain stopped."
Oh, what a fucking cliche. Danri’s tears weren’t even dry yet and somehow in the time between Danri nearly hyperventilating and Cameron trying to optimist his pants off, the rain had slowed to a drizzle and the sun started to peak out.
If there was a rainbow out there, Cameron was going to fucking punch someone. It didn’t work that way. Danri was still a little broken and he didn’t know how to help him cope with this. Danri was so much more sensitive than anyone else Cameron knew and he still barely knew how to deal with him sometimes. How to make him smile. He was still learning. Still trying to get to know his own brother, who he’d ignored and put down for five years because he was trying to destroy any chance of happiness or normalcy or fucking stability in his life.
Cameron’s jaw nearly dropped when Danri sniffled and murmured a quiet, “Thanks Cam.”
Woah that was going to be gooey fluffy love sickness and it turned into this instead. Guess angst is more fun to write »