since it is on the brain tonight. have one of my favourite (very very long) scenes of desire path backstory (happened in both versions of the fic, og and current)
(tw implied child abuse and incest)
background: you've just been adopted into the itoshi household and have had a really hard time opening up. sae hears you crying in your bedroom every night. here, he finally decides to try and help you. you're about 6 here, sae is 8.
___
Still, you had your bad nights. Progress has never been linear with you, not now and not back then. Sae recalls one midnight where you had a crying fit that disintegrated into a violent string of coughs, each one so powerful that it made him wince.
He wondered how the whole house wasn't awake, listening to your pain. Rin always slept like a rock—Sae could see him snoring away in the other bed, so it made sense that he wasn't bothered—but surely their parents were hearing this? But then he decided not to linger on it for too long.
It didn't matter since he was going to help you anyway.
He ended up knocking on your door with a glass of water. Almost immediately, all the shifting in your room stopped, almost like you were trying to silence yourself. But Sae could hear the coughs being torn violently from your throat, even though they now sounded strained and muffled.
"Hey," he called out softly. "It's me. Are you awake?"
Silence. Sae knew to give it a moment before he tried again.
"Can I come in?"
If it had been anyone other than you, you told Sae years later, your fingers running lazily through his hair, lifting the bangs out of his face, I wouldn't have said anything. I'd have pretended to be sleeping. But I let you in because it was you. You squeezed his hand, then, and your eyes were close—so close, heavy on his own and weighed down by the vulpine flick of your eyeliner, by the mascara sooty and thick on neatly curled lashes, by your childhood shadows. Your strawberry gloss shone next to his lips, and your heated and tender words kissed them: Do you understand what I'm saying, Nii-chan? If it had been anyone else, I wouldn't have been—
"...okay."
When Sae crept into your room, found an empty bed. You were hiding underneath it, curled up in the tiny space between the floor and the mattress, hugging the quilt he'd handed to you weeks ago. He crouched down, showed you the glass of water. Sae wasn't sure if the offering would be enough to draw you out from under the bed, but another coughing fit—this one strong enough to make you teary-eyed—had you crawling out. You mumbled a little thank you as you took the glass from him and drank.
"You haven't cried like that in a while," Sae commented, and you gave him a stricken look. After a long moment of unadultered panic in your eyes, he heard you string more than two words for the first time:
"...s-sorry. I'm really sorry." You were looking down at the floor, and it was like all the progress Sae had made over the past several weeks had gone up in smoke—you looked petrified, small, a cornered animal with nowhere to run. "I didn't know you could hear me."
"Don't apologize. I don't mind it."
"...you're not mad?"
Sae thought it was a funny question. "No. Who'd get mad at something like that?"
You didn't reply, just looking away, and Sae felt a little frustrated, then. He'd been working so hard to make you feel comfortable and thought he'd finally made some progress—but now he was seeing you regress in real time. Back into the fragile little thing that his parents had decided to adopt out of the blue, looking like you couldn't trust anything around you. Like you couldn't trust him. Sae couldn't help but think—
"You don't like it here, do you."
Even at that age, you had a distinctly doe-eyed look when you were confused, and he remembers staring at it.
"No," you said. "I do."
"Then how come you don't wanna talk to any of us?"
Maybe his voice was a little too harsh. Or a little too blunt. You flinched, your body retreating into the turquoise shell of your quilt.
"Sorry."
"That's—" Sae paused, chewing his lip. Tried to make his voice as gentle as possible, because he knew his usual tone would scare you. "...you don't need to be sorry. I'm not mad. I just wanna know what's been making you so upset. Like—how come you always cry at night?"
You got that nervous, uncertain look in your eye again, and Sae got the distinct feeling that you were wondering if this whole conversation was some kind of trick. He added, "I just wanna know how to cheer you up. I don't like seeing you so sad all the time."
You blinked, gave him a surprised look, but it was fleeting, quickly making way for another gloomy expression. "You don't need to worry about me… I don't think I'm going to stay here for very long."
Sae's brow furrowed. His mom had made it sound like you were going to be his little sister just like how Rin was his brother—that is, permanently. "Why not?"
The face you made was so miserable that it startled Sae. He hadn't had a lot of experience with sadness as a kid—most of what he'd witnessed revolved around soccer, when the opposing team lost, and Sae never felt very sorry for them. Sometimes Rin would throw tantrums or cry over silly things, but those were easy to handle. Sae supposed that the worst sadness he'd ever seen was in his mother, who tried her best to hide it—
—but not even her saddest expressions could compare to how shattered you looked in that moment.
"...your dad doesn't actually want me here, Sae-san."
Sae's brow creased. You have a new sister, he recalled. You need to take care of her, OK? It's your job as the eldest.
"That can't be right," Sae replied. "Dad said he wanted you to be part of this family. He even said I should look after you."
Instead of responding, you looked long and hard at Sae, and for the first time, he experienced the strange feeling of being dissected by you. He felt translucent and naked under your eyes—keen for such an innocent age, seeing everything in the dark.
"We have the same father, but different moms. You know that, right?" you asked quietly.
He hadn't.
"Your dad didn't like my mom very much, and that's why he didn't want me. He's only being forced to take me now 'cause my mom decided she didn't want me either." Your eyes started to shimmer, and you hid them in your blanket. "My stepdad and my brother also left 'cause they didn't want me. And I don't think your mom likes me very much, either. So"—you breathed in deep and whispered, and Sae felt like he was watching a vase tip over the edge, a sandcastle crumbling into dirt, his mother crying as she fumbled for her cigarettes when she thought no one was watching—"it's not gonna be very long 'til your parents throw me away too."
Sae went silent. If his heart ached for you when he first laid eyes on you, then it was being crushed right now. He didn't think very hard about it when he placed a hand over one of yours.
"They wouldn't do something like that," he said.
Your fingers twitched under his, like you wanted to pull away.
"They want to. I can tell."
You're just imagining things, Sae nearly replied, but then he remembered that he'd never once heard his parents come here at night to check on your crying, and then he went quiet.
"...it doesn't matter," he eventually decided. "I won't let them."
A little sniff. "No?"
"No. I'll make sure you stay with us."
You blinked the saltwater away from your lashes, then gave him a curious look. "Why?"
"Because I'm your brother, and it's my job to take care of you."
"Really?" you asked, voice watery.
His eyes softened, his usual impassivity crumbling for you.
"Really. I would never let anyone throw you away," he said, and the words felt so ugly in his mouth that he couldn't fathom how anyone had done that to you. How anyone could have done anything to you. You were so sweet, and so kind, and so vulnerable, and it left him feeling sick when he imagined you being hurt in any way. "I'll keep you safe. Promise."
Sae nearly jumped when he felt something move in his hand. He looked down, saw your little fingers prodding at his own, and he offered you his open palm. You took it readily, Sae found himself transfixed by the latticework of your entwined fingers.
"Thank you, Sae-san."
"It's nothing," he wrote off. His thumb rubbed the back of your hand, gentle in a way that his voice wasn't. "But I'm your brother now, remember? You should address me properly."
You smiled a little, studying your interlocked fingers, and Sae felt a peculiar warmth in his chest, an uptick in his pulse.
"Okay, Nii-chan."
Nii-chan. Sae's always loved hearing that title in your mouth. Not out of a demand for respect the way Rin obsesses over it, but because you've always seemed so happy to say it, the syllables sweetened by your adoring tongue. Okay, Nii-chan, you've always said. I'll listen to you, Nii-chan. I trust you, Nii-chan. I love you, Nii-chan. I love you, I love you, I love you.
So please don't leave us again.
Please don't throw me away.