Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Only five more minutes before Nanami could call it a day.

He leaned back in his chair and cracked his back excessively. His eyes wandered to the stack of papers that were building up on his desk with notes he had to get done from his last session with a patient but instead he sighed deeply, put his glasses down on the desk and rubbed his eyes.

The phone started ringing, sat on the corner of the table and Nanami felt the strong urge to tip it over the edge to make it stop. He only had three more minutes left before he could head home.

Nanami stared down at the phone and waited, his chin resting on his intertwined fingers, trying to make it stop ringing with willpower alone. The person on the other end of the line seemed pretty determined for the evening of a weekday because after his work phone finally stopped ringing his smartphone started.

Annoyed and defeated, Nanami picked up the call, answered with a heavy sigh.

"Hello, this is Child Protective Services. Am I speaking with Nanami Kento?" a woman asked on the other end, her tone was clipped but efficient. "According to our records, you are a registered and licensed foster parent. Would you be available for an emergency placement request for two teenage boys—twin brothers? Their older sibling has been hospitalised, and they need immediate housing. Would you be available to take them in?" Nanami's mood plummeted.

"We- I have not fostered before, are you sure that there is no other possibility?" Nanami asked, tight lipped. He had wanted to have his registration revoked already but had forgotten about it again and again and now it was biting him in the ass.

"I'm afraid not, these boys really need a place to sleep for the next few weeks," came the answer that Nanami didn't want to hear. Her tone was clinical but he could hear the stress underneath.

Nanami took a deep breath through the nose, closed his eyes for a second and ignored the pounding in his head. "Just a few weeks?" he asked and rubbed his burning eyes again. If he really had wanted to avoid this situation he should have taken care of the registration. These boys shouldn't pay the price for his laziness.

"Yes, could you pick them up at the Central hospital as soon as possible? You'll find us in the waiting area," the woman said and Nanami checked his watch. He was already three minutes into overtime.

"I can be there in fifteen minutes," he answered while stacking his paper neatly onto each other to not leave chaos behind on his desk for the next day.

"That is more than I hoped for, we will meet at the hospital then," she said with a clipped tone and Nanami only hummed in agreement. This was not how he had imagined his day ending.

He made it out of the clinic without much trouble. His colleagues and his boss knew he was no man for overtime, that he always headed home neatly at four.

He tried not to think too much about what he had gotten himself into. He could handle caring for two boys for a few weeks. Or at least he told himself that.

Traffic was as annoying and exhausting as always as he crept through the city towards a place that - he didn't know yet but - would change his life.

The universe meant it good with him today because it wasn't the one where he had worked a few years prior and where he had met Haibara years after drifting away from each other after school. Thinking of him always shot a painful blast through his heart and Nanami shoved the memories away forcefully.

After hunting for a parking-lot, Nanami stood in front of the big entrance and stared through the glass doors inside. Even when it wasn't the same hospital, at the end of the day they were all alike and Nanami straightened his tie, rubbed his glasses clean quickly and picked at the cuffs of his shirt, before he entered the building.

The heels of his polished dress shoes were clacking louder than necessary and Nanami couldn't remember a time when the hospital he had worked at had been as silent as this one was right now. He followed the signs to the waiting area.

Nanami looked around the room, between the men and women with their children and grandparents, he found two identical looking boys sitting next to each other. Behind them a woman having an intense phone call. Her white hair was in a braid over her back, exhaustion written into every crease of her face.

As she met Nanami's look she waved him  over to her and Nanami started walking, shooting a side eye to the teenage boys. They couldn't be older than fifteen or sixteen. Even though one of them looked significantly older than the other one.

Both had an untidy undercut and messy dark hair on top, one of them was staring into nothingness, nearly never blinking and the other one was leaned against his brother's shoulder, arms crossed in front of him and his chin had sunken on his chest, eyes closed.

The social worker was still on the phone when Nanami stood in front of her, raising one questioning eyebrow. The woman looked just as tired as the twins; the sleeves of her shirt rolled up over her elbows.

Nanami waited, growing impatient with every minute that the woman seemed to ignore him. He glared down on her until she finally looked his way, and her face froze as he saw Nanami's look.

"Wait a second, I'm gonna be right back." the social worker said into the phone and paused the call, finally giving Nanami her full attention.

"Nanami Kento? Alright, let's go get the boys," she said and walked over to the twins, Nanami followed her, clearing his throat uncomfortably. He doubted that this was the right procedure for these kinds of things, it certainly didn't feel right.

The social worker shook the sleeping twin awake, a rough hand with manicured fingers wrapping around the boy's thin shoulder. He flinched as she touched him and looked up alarmed. Nanami hadn't worked with teenagers often in the past, but everyone should know that acting like this around probably traumatised kids was a no-go.

"Yuji, this is Nanami Kento, you two will stay with him for the next few weeks," the woman said, not looking at Yuji but at her phone again. Nail's clacking on the display in a speed that was unnatural. Yuji met Nanami's eyes, and he tried putting a comforting smile on his face.

He probably didn't look the part of a trustworthy adult, with his slightly tinted glasses, the short blond hair and the grim expression that people told him he wore all the time.

"Nice to meet you Yuji, this is your brother I assume?" Nanami asked and stretched his hand out to Yuji. The boy looked up to him, black rings under his eyes, red rimmed as if he had cried not long ago and a general overwhelmedness radiated off of him. He looked back to his brother who was still only blinking and staring and not acknowledging anything around him.

"Yeah, this is Sukuna. Nice to meet you too Mister Nanami," Yuji said far too politely for a teenager and pointed to his twin, shaking Nanami's hand quickly and with a weak grip.

"You can call me Kento, if you like," Nanami offered but Yuji only nodded quickly and looked over to his brother again.

I worried over nothing; they are so calm and humble. This is going to be a walk in the park!

"Let's get you to my place, you look tired," Nanami said, he didn't really know what else to say. The social worker was already on the phone again and she had walked away a few meters, not giving him or the twins any attention. He sent a few glares at her back so leave the kids alone like this with a stranger.

Nanami gestured to Yuji to give him a second, while he tried talking to the woman who should be the twins' primary contact person but failed miserably at his job from Nanami's perspective.

The seconds crawled by as Nanami waited for her to pause the call to talk to him, but that didn't happen, so he decided to just gesture to the boys and himself and the social worker just nodded and waved, not even bother to pause talking. She was already asking someone on the line to take an emergency placement and Nanami only shook his head disappointed from the system.

He swallowed the rage and turned back to the boys. Now it was easy to tell them apart. Yuji had his brother's arms over his shoulder and guided him to the entrance. Sukuna was moving slowly, not really reacting to Yuji's quiet words of encouragement. He was a bit taller than Yuji and had broader shoulders. It looked a little bit wrong to see the smaller, thinner one carried the broader one.

From behind the two looked even more ragged than from the front. Both of their clothes were pretty worn and dirty. Their shirts and jeans had holes; the bottoms of their pants were frayed. Yuji's clothes looked two sizes too big and Sukuna ... Sukuna was a whole other problem that Nanami would figure out tomorrow.

As he showed them to his car, Yuji made big eyes at the black sleek spotless metal but didn't say anything, only helped his brother into the back seat and sat down right next to him. Nanami guessed that it was normal that the two were pretty close, in the end, siblings stuck together.

Nanami tried to think of something easy to talk about, something he could ask Yuji to get to know him without scaring or prying too much. He apparently took too long thinking because out of muscle memory, he parked and killed the engine and got out of the car.

The twins followed him silently inside the apartment complex. Sukuna again half in Yuji's arms while he guided his brother’s steps.

The women on the lobby desk gave him a confused look but Nanami only shot her a tightlipped smile while showing the boys to the elevator that brought him up into his apartment.

"How rich are you Mister Nanami?" Yuji asked suddenly into the silence of the elevator. Nanami cleared his throat.

"I get by comfortably I guess," Nanami settled on answering. Yuji only hummed and kept on holding his brother upright.

Before Nanami could say anything else, the elevator doors opened with a ping, and they got led into the wide-open space.

"I'll get started on food and you could get comfortable with your room afterwards, you have to share unfortunately, I didn't really have time to organise anything," Nanami explained. Only because Haibara had set up the room years ago, in case they got a placement, did he have the necessaries for the teens.

He gave the twins a searching look before he headed over to the open kitchen. "Don't you have any stuff?" asked Nanami confused, searching for a backpack or any other bag with clothes or other personal things.

"No, not really. We weren't planning on leaving, so everything is back at our place," Yuji explained, shrugging his shoulders as if it was not a big deal.

Nanami stared at him speechless, trying to wrap his head around how that could've happened.

"It's alright though, we don't really have much anyways," Yuji tried to calm Nanami but it didn't really make anything better.

Nanami pushed the problem away for tomorrow and turned to get started on food. These kids looked like they hadn't eaten a real meal in weeks, so he threw together what he had in the fridge.

Twenty minutes later they sat together at the dinner table and Nanami watched how Yuji quickly shovelled the food into his mouth while his brother ate in slow motion. Whenever a fine line of drool rolled down the corner of his mouth, Yuji quickly wiped it away like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Nanami had his head propped up on his intertwined fingers, not really hungry, watching the twins before he finally decided to address it.

"Yuji? Does Sukuna need any special care? They didn't tell me anything," Nanami said, and Yuji looked up confused, mouth full of food.

His look went between him and Sukuna back and forth before he shrugged his shoulders and answered, "No, he just needs to sleep it off."

Nanami furrowed his brows, hoping that Yuji would elaborate but the boy just kept eating while Sukuna was back to staring again, his plate still half full.

He showed the boys to their room afterwards and gave them a quick overview of the apartment,  grabbing some loose clothes of his for the boys to sleep in. The room wasn't much, two beds opposite each other, a desk, wardrobe and a basket of bathroom essentials of everything a kid would need for the first night. Haibara had always been the prepared one of them.

For a lack of words Nanami left the boys to their own and fled to the living room, putting on the TV to scare away the silence.

He was more exhausted than he had anticipated. The mumbling of the TV helped against his racing thoughts while he tried to organise himself. Running lists in his head of what he would need for the boys, clearly they needed clothes, school shit, did he have to enroll them into school? What was their latest school district? He didn't know anything about teenagers god damn it! What do kids need to survive?

Thinking about Sukuna he hoped Yuji would explain what his brother's condition was and how Nanami could accommodate him. The damn social worker could have said something about that! Didn't they check for special needs? Didn't he need some qualification to deal with this?

More and more thoughts were coming while Nanami kept thinking things through. It had been a long time since he fell asleep on the sofa but his back and neck and every other joint and muscle in his body wasn't thanking him as he blinked awake in the middle of the night, and he dragged himself into his bed.

The apartment was silent as Nanami made breakfast; he was still unsure if he should go wake them. All in all he was pretty unsure about all of this.

They are just kids that need a home! Get yourself together!

So he knocked on the door of the twin’s room and called that breakfast was ready, walking away as he got a mumbled response.

A few minutes later he decided to start eating and a moment later Yuji appeared in the doorframe of the kitchen. He was in one of Nanami's shirts and pants that looked way too big on him and only showed more how skinny the boy was.

"How's your brother?" Nanami asked after Yuji had started eating quickly just as yesterday.

"He's still a bit drowsy," Yuji said, not looking up to Nanami and kept his head down.

Again as a loss for words they shared a silent breakfast, but Yuji didn't seem to mind. Nanami made a plate for Sukuna then and slid it over to Yuuji.

"Take this for him," he said with a hopefully gentle smile on his face and Yuji only nodded silently.

"I'm working from home today, so I will be in my office but don't hesitate to ask for anything. Also just take everything from the kitchen anytime, this is your home now too, I certainly don't mind. Later today we can get you two everything else you need, but I can't cancel my appointments on this short notice," he explained.

"Yeah sure, no problem," Yuji quickly answered, finished with the conversation again and only grabbed the plate.

"I should go look after-" he pointed in the direction of their room again.

"Yeah sure," Nanami said, stacking the plates and the food together again to put the leftovers in the fridge.

"Or should I-" Yuji made attempts to help but Nanami only shushed him.

"No, it's fine. Look after your brother."

"Thank you, Mister Nanami,"

"You don't have to-" Yuji looked to the ground again, biting his lip. "You know what, it's fine," he  stopped himself and made another attempt at a smile, but Yuji was already turning away and the gentle shut of the door was heard a moment later.

Well, this went great.

Hours crawled by as Nanami worked off his virtual emergency consultation hours, he was one of the few neurologists that still took new patients and accepted anyone that sought help.

The last appointment went satisfyingly, and he wrote his last report quickly, before checking on the boys again. It was weird to have something other to care for than himself in this apartment.

It had been such a long time since he had shared his living space, but the late morning was suspiciously quiet. Too quiet for his liking. Didn't teenage boys do anything? Didn't they walk around, not caring about anything in the whole wide world? Didn't they were these loud, energetic beings that made messes all over the place?

Well, he wouldn't know. When was the last time he interacted with teenage boys before the twins?

So he went over to their room again, only to tell them he was off work now and they could continue their plans on going to the Mal. Without much thinking he knocked and opened the door, but his eyes were truly tricking him right now weren't they?

Because the first thing he saw was Yuji sitting on the windowsill, a cigarette between his lips, the window cracked wide open, and the room filled with smoke.

Praying this was his imagination tricking him, Nanami stepped back out of the room and closed the door. He took a deep breath and counted back from three slowly before he walked in again.  Unfortunately it wasn't his imagination tricking him and the scene hadn't changed at all. This couldn't be true; everything went so well!

"Yuji, what do you think you're doing?"

"Do I look like Yuji?" came the heated answer and Nanami felt dread drip into his chest as it fell from his eyes like shells.

"'Kuna be nice! This is Mister Nanami. Mister Nanami, this is Sukuna!" came from the other side of the room. Why Nanami hadn't seen Yuji earlier was a riddle to him, the boy was right there!

"Well," Nanami cleared his throat, "It's nice to finally meet you Sukuna. But I don't allow smoking in this apartment and you're also still underage," he tried as calmly as he managed. This could be true. Fucking universe!

"Sounds like a you-problem," Sukuna replied with a spiteful tone and Nanami glared at the teen. What the-

With wide struts he crossed the room, reached out for Sukuna, to take the cigarette away but the boy only jumped up, locked eyes with Nanami and took a fighting position that made Nanami stop in his tracks and freeze in his movement.

He fucked up. Of course this kid expected violence, he probably didn't know anything else.

Nanami stared at the boy, his face was the same as Yuji's but at the same time it was completely different. Were Yuji was soft and gentle, Sukuna seemed full of sharp edges. The silence weighed heavy between them until Yuji walked over to his brother, took the cigarette from his hand and threw it out of the window.

"I'm sorry. He is currently working on being nice, but it does not work all the time!"

Nanami's face was visibly tense as he walked through the doors of the massive shopping mall, both boys to his right. Sukuna had sulked on the ride, after arguing about not wanting to come. In the end he was walking next to his brother while Yuji held onto Sukuna's shirt with a light grip.

With horror Nanami watched how Sukuna's attention span was ridiculously attracted by anything and everything and he understood quickly that if Yuji wouldn't have held onto him like this, his brother would have been gone instantly.

What the fuck have I gotten myself into? Nanami asked himself, he was hanging behind the boys, not keeping up with the pace they had going. So he could only watch horrified as someone crashed into Sukuna, a whole-body flinch shot through the kid paired with a grunt and he instantly went up to the aggression level of a guard dog. He got uncomfortably close to the person that bumped into him until Yuji pulled him along with mumbled apologies.

At a loss for words because this was just too much and too sudden for him to handle, Nanami watched how Yuji stared down Sukuna at the exit of a shop with the words, "Put. It. Back." and Sukuna emptied his pockets with a scowl on his face.

How could he still have something in his pockets? Nanami asked himself. He had caught and stopped Sukuna with a glare every time the boy had tried to steal something. It must've been a dozen times by now and Nanami was exhausted.

As it came to looking for clothes, Sukuna was not paying attention at all, growling at everyone that was coming too close to him or his brother, while Yuji helped Nanami to pick out some much-needed shirts and pants.

"Yuji, you both need clothes," Nanami said as Yuji grabbed an armful of shirts that were clearly too big for him.

"Nah, we always share this is fine," he said and now the too big clothes on both of them made painfully sense.

He tried arguing with him a little bit longer, but it didn't do anything. Yuji was already uncomfortable with Nanami buying them new clothes. Always arguing that they had stuff back at their apartment they could pick up. But if these clothes were as raggy, dirty and worn down as the ones the two had on their backs, Nanami felt obliged to give them shirts without holes and faded colours.

Once Yuji handed Sukuna's hood that he was holding on over to Nanami - who only glared down on the boy - his nerves were more than tight with the problem-twin.

"I don't have to hold onto you like a toddler, do I?" Nanami said with a sharp tone, getting daggers thrown at him from Sukuna who only mumbled something to himself but stayed by Nanami's side until Yuji came back.

This kid was nearer to an animal in survival mode than to a boy.

But rock bottom of the shopping trip was reached, when Sukuna wouldn't stop changing the mannequin's fingers to middle fingers and grinned spitefully about it. The employees kindly asked him to stop, until all three of them were politely asked to leave the shop. The judging eyes of the people around him only made Nanami's want to sink into the floor right on the spot.

Why did he think bringing these boys to a public place had been a good idea? He should've just ordered everything on the Internet!

Finally on their way back to the car, the boys' hands filled with paper bags of clothes and other things they desperately needed, Sukuna suddenly stopped in his tracks. His feet suddenly seemed cemented to the ground as Yuji bumped into him and was unable to pull him along.

Nanami turned around with a sigh, only to see Sukuna stare at the blinking neon lights of an arcade shop.

"What is this?" the boy asked, always with that aggressive tone in his voice as if he was mad at the store for existing and daring to cross his path.

"It's an arcade shop, you can play games there," Nanami explained, his tone tense. He really needed to catch a break real soon.

Yuji's mood peaked as he stepped up to his brother, "Oh you love games, let's go!"

"You need money for that," Sukuna stated.

"Oh," if Yuji were a puppy, his ears would hang down now and his tail would've stopped wagging.

Without thinking about it, Nanami pulled out his wallet and held out two fifty bills to the twins.

Sukuna only eyed him with a hiss, "I don't want your money!"

A second later, Yuji carefully took the money from Nanami's hands, mouthed a silent thank you and pulled his brother along into the sea of blinking neon lights.

With a sigh as if several years had been taken from him over the last few hours, Nanami sat down on one of the benches in the area, the bags to his feet and his head landed in his hands only a second later.

A headache was building behind his eyes, and everything seemed too loud and bright. He really had won the lottery with those boys.

It was typical that twins could be the complete opposite of one another. Yuji and Sukuna, though? They were like night and day, Jing and fucking Jang, sugar and salt, water and gasoline, a family-friendly, children-loving golden retriever and an abused, unsocial Rottweiler.

He was no match for these boys. How could he have ever thought that he was up for this completely on his own?

Haibara though? He surely would've known what to do with Sukuna's attitude and Yuji's humble soul, but Nanami had no fucking idea.

So he pulled out his phone and called back their social worker.

"Nanami Kento? Yes, the Itadori boys of course. I apologise for the urgency of the situation yesterday. It was a complex case, and we needed those boys settled as quickly as possible. The department was at my ass- was handling multiple emergencies and unfortunately there was some miscommunication. It was truly a big shitsho- a paper war. And that they had to sedate one of the twins was also not really helping, but he just exploded after they denied him to see his brother," the woman dumped on him in one go and many things became clear to Nanami just in that second.

"It would've really helped to know that little detail!" he hissed into the phone and listened to another apology train of Misses Social Worker. She sounded tired, her words slipped into informal and too emotional outbursts now and then. Nanami almost pitied her and the chaos the department seemed to be dealing with.

"So, how long until another placement opens up? You said this would only take a few days, in the worst case up to a few weeks," Nanami asked impatiently. He clearly gave the boys enough money to be occupied for a while, but god knew what Sukuna would do with that.

"It's that bad?" she asked sympathetically and Nanami didn't hold back as he dumped everything of the last twenty-four hours on the poor woman.

"You know, it's quite common to feel overwhelmed by this. I'm sorry, I thought we told you but these two mostly grew up in the system. They never had anyone but themselves to protect each other. So it's going to be ... a  challenge."

"Sounds to me like they belong to someone who knows what they are doing!"

"You are a doctor aren't you?"

"I'm a Neurologist! Not a Psychologist!"

"Ah details, details. Right now you are their best shot at a normal, safe place to live. And anyways, who even knows what they are doing when it comes to children hu?"

Silence flooded the line as Nanami struggled to believe what this woman's line of argumentation was. This was ridiculous! He was supposed to be their best shot at a normal place to live?

The social worker cleared her throat, "Of course I could put them in a group home with twenty other boys, no privacy, no chance of education and no primary caretaker. If you want that and clearly feel unfit for this position, I could arrange that.  That could be arranged in a few hours when I make some calls."

Nanami's eyes wandered over to the boys. The big glass windows of the store gave a free view of them. They were standing next to each other, both of them at a game console, their eyes glued to the screens while their fingers pressed the buttons repeatedly and they awfully looked like fifteen.

"Fine, the guilt trip worked, congratulations. Until you find a better permanent solution I keep doing this. When is their brother going to be available again?"

"Their brother is seventeen."

Chapter Text

Yuji had stopped moving hours ago, breathing deeply while his face was turned to the wall, but sleep wasn't coming to Sukuna that easily. It never did. 

The space in the single bed was tight but it had always been like that. Yuji was used to him turning around endlessly, trying to find a position that would not be painful on his back. Every time Yuji had teased or asked him about it, Sukuna had spit something stupid back and eventually Yuji had stopped asking.

The presence of his twin gave him that needed familiarity to even make an attempt at sleeping in this stranger's home. The blond bull of a man had not been violent yet, but Sukuna wasn't that stupid to think that he was a kind man. He knew better. 

How the stupid nurses had kept him from talking to his older brother. Denying him to talk to the only other person he trusted besides Yuji. Blabbering shit about food poisoning that Sukuna wasn't listening to at that point.

How the fucking pricks of doctors had sedated him forcefully, rammed that needle in his arm to stop his fighting, to make him stop throwing chairs through the waiting room. Sukuna still didn't understand where they saw the problem. He had been mad. Throwing things was a very appropriate reaction in his opinion. 

Waking up in this god damn apartment after the enormous dose had knocked him out for the rest of the night, had left Sukuna with the need to punch something. Yuji had talked him down enough to only smoke that cigarette that the blond bastard had tried to take from him. 

The craving for a cigarette was scratching in his lungs and his back was burning tonight. Like being cooked on a low setting, right above the fire, the flames licking distant at his skin and Sukuna had tried ignoring it like he always did. But the scars that were giving him so much grief over the past three years were not done bitching. The sleep on the sedation had been the best sleep he had gotten in years and for a tiny weak second Sukuna wished for another dose. 

But before the pain could cloud is mind completely and the yearning for some relief made him go insane, Yuji suddenly moved. 

The bed creaked as moments later his brother was staring down on him, his face hovering right over Sukuna's, his eyes wide open without blinking. 

"That's pretty close," Sukuna commented dryly but Yuji didn't react and understanding dripped into Sukuna slowly but surely, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. 

Of course this was happening now. He gritted his teeth.

Yuji kept on moving, climbing over Sukuna who pressed down a yelp as Yuji pressed him into the mattress. His twin climbed out of bed with surprisingly safe movements. Sleepwalking, nightmares and night terrors were nothing new for Yuji and they all knew that under stress they only got worse. 

Sukuna should have been prepared for this, but he wasn't. He never was. 

So he pushed himself out of bed, trying to push down a grunt as he slightly rolled his stiff shoulders, and the scar tissue stretched tensely on his back.  He stood up slowly and followed Yuji with a grunt and a twitching eye. Trying to wake him was out of the question, that much he knew. Worst case could end in a panic attack, and he really didn't have the energy to handle a nervous Yuji-wreck right now. 

Again, as always, Sukuna was surprised how silent Yuji was when he sleepwalked. Even if they had only spent one night in this apartment, Yuji found the door of the room quick and walked outside in direction of the living room. 

One small lamp was igniting the living room, revealing a sleeping figure on the sofa and Sukuna only scoffed to himself. The man hadn't even made it to bed? Pathetic. 

Sukuna stood by the far wall of the room, watching the situation unfold in front of him, not knowing what to do. Rolling his shoulders hadn't been a good idea, he seemed to have pulled a nerve or something because now there were sharp stabs shooting through his right shoulder blade. Just standing was agony but he scolded his face to a stony mask. A skill he nurtured daily over the past years. 

He watched how Yuji bumped into the sofa and Nanami woke quickly. Of course he was a light sleeper, fucking perfect. The man stared up at Yuji and Sukuna watched how his face softened, but before Nanami could say anything Yuji started screaming. 

"LET GO OF HIM! DON'T TOUCH HIM! HELP! STOP! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?"

Yuji's words cut through Sukuna like a knife, let the scars on his back start burning again. The shirt suddenly felt scratchy on his scared skin, made him too aware of the thick and raised tissue. 

He hated it. He hated everything about this. He wanted to leave. Every fiber in his body screamed at him to get away immediately, flee the situation like he always had, let someone else handle this. Not letting the images, the memories, his stupid fucking cries of that night that lingered in the back of his head ring in his ears again. 

But he couldn't. He couldn't leave his brother to deal with this by himself or worse, let the blond asshole handle it!

So he stayed by the wall and stared. Frozen into place like a deer in headlights while the sharp knifing pain slowly reduced and the burning took over. He gritted his teeth. 

"Yuji? What's wrong?" Nanami asked, his face no longer soft and open but shocked and overwhelmed. 

"He can't hear you, he's asleep," Sukuna interrupted as Nanami tried talking to Yuji again who just kept yelling from the top of his lungs. 

"STOP IT! YOU'RE HURTING HIM! PLEASE STOP! TAKE ME INSTEAD BUT LET HIM GO! DON'T YOU SEE HE'S SORRY?" Yuji's cries were scratchy like nails on chalkboard. Sukuna's shoulders hurt from how hard he tensed them up. This night was really going to shit!

Nanami's head whipped around to Sukuna, not noticing him until now and he slapped his hand to his chest out of shock. 

"Go. I'll handle this," Sukuna pressed out, his voice not more than a dark whisper while Yuji kept on yelling, staring onto something that his mind was conjuring up from the past. 

Nanami visibly swallowed before he said, "I'm the adult, you don't have to do this alone. So how can we help?" 

Yuji was silent for a moment, suppressed sobs broke through his lips and Sukuna bit his lip, trying to relax his muscles so much that he could move again. 

"Don't know," he finally said, trying to ignore the sobs of his twin. 

"How long has he had this? Why don't you know?" Nanami asked, knitting his eyebrows together in confusion. 

"Our brother always took care of it," Sukuna snapped defensive and understanding slipped into Nanami's expression. Sukuna hated it. Who did this idiot think he was? Understanding their situation? Fucking prick!

"What happened to your brother?" Nanami asked carefully, pushing himself off the sofa slowly, not letting Yuji out of his sight while doing so. 

Sukuna stared Nanami down, not moving from his place at the wall while Yuji's talking started up again, "Please! Don't keep hurting him! He's bleeding! He didn't mean to! Take me instead! please please please-" Yuji was mumbling, voice broken, his eyes full of this heavy sadness Sukuna hated seeing on his face. 

If he let his mind slip back to the night that Yuji dreamed off too often, he would soon be on the ground too, unable to pull himself out of the memories. So Sukuna shut himself off. He shut himself off from his emotions, from the guilt, from the rage, from the panic. 

Too late he noticed he wasn't even looking at Nanami anymore, but at the opposite wall. There was a high-pitched tone in his head.

Moments later Nanami started rattling things off like he quoted a textbook, while watching Yuji who had started sobbing heavily now. 

Sukuna was frozen to his spot on the wall. He should be there for Yuji, should be holding him, talking to him, trying to get him out of it, but he couldn't. He couldn't stand getting any closer to his brother right now, not while Yuji was reliving the night that had fucked up Sukuna and his body so much. The night that had ripped him to shreds; shreds he tried to put back together to this day.  

He would rather rip his skin off than come near Yuji right now and the realisation fiueled the self-hate like gasoline a burning car wreck. 

So he could only watch as Nanami slowly made his way towards Yuji, mumbling shit and being all gentle. It looked wrong seeing this bull of a man tip toeing around like a child. 

Then Nanami stretched out one hand to grab Yuji's upper arm and Sukuna suddenly snapped, "Don't touch him!"

"Trust me," Nanami mumbled and looked back over his shoulder, keeping steady eye contact, "I got this." 

Sukuna only gave a frustrated grunt but there was no other option for him than watching and digging his fingernails into his upper arms while Nanami gently guided Yuji back to their room. Somehow Nanami managed to make him stop sobbing and bawling his eyes out without waking him up.

When Yuji was safely back in bed, sleeping soundly as if nothing happened Sukuna stared at his brother silently to avoid looking over to Nanami. He tried to ignore how unstable his own mental state was at the moment.

When he did finally look over to the man, Nanami was eyeing the second bed of the room that was untouched. Sukuna silently dared him to say something, but the man stayed silent and only gave him a tight smile. 

"Thanks," Sukuna mumbled as Nanami headed towards the door. He didn't look up as Nanami replied quietly, "Never for that." 

Yuji often told him that his people skills were shitty, but Sukuna highly disagreed with him. He was very good at reading people, especially at finding out what certain people found annoying. 

Finding out what annoyed Nanami wasn't hard, the blond bastard was an easy read. Maybe the adult thought he concealed his emotion adequately - he didn't. 

Sukuna had found out that it annoyed Nanami when he wasn't bringing the dishes back from their room. So he put extra effort into that, building towers out of cups and plates that Yuji dutiful brought back to the kitchen every time.

Wearing the shirt that Yuji had worn the day before was something that Nanami threw off into keeping them apart and Sukuna had a blast pretending to be Yuuji just to fuck with the man. 

Never closing the toilet seat and standing up while peeing wasn't even a discussion, every adult hated it and Nanami was no exception. 

It also became clear to Sukuna pretty fast that Nanami didn't approve of them being glued together all the time. That was something that Sukuna didn't really understand, they were twins and even when they were fighting the entire time they had to stick together. 

They didn't have anybody else to protect them other than Choso, so they had to protect one another! Sukuna had to protect Yuji, he was far too kind and gentle for this world and it was his job to make sure there was not a scratch getting on his brother!

One thing that took Sukuna a few days to recognise was that Nanami didn't like when Yuji was pushing his plate over to him and Sukuna finished it instead. It was something Yuji did for years now, he didn't even think about it. And for some reason Nanami was giving Sukuna hard glances every time it happened. 

More reason to stare right back at the man when he finished Yuji's plate. It was a delight to see the struggle on the prick's face whenever Sukuna did something to piss him off on purpose. It was his personal mission to push Nanami to the edge so he would finally drop the facade and show his real face. 

Right now Sukuna was pissing Nanami off while not paying any attention on what he had to tell them. Currently they were sprawled over the couches of the living room, had watched TV and Sukuna was actively turning Nanami's voice out completely since the man had crawled out of his office for once and joined them. 

His back was being a bitch today, he had already woken up with it all sore and stiff. His movements were careful today, because it felt like pain flare-up was lingering between his mangled nerves and Sukuna tried to not provoke it. Yuji had given him glances as he sat himself up slowly and carefully but hadn't said anything. 

Then Yuji suddenly turned the TV off. 

"Hey, I was watching that!" he complained loudly but Yuji held the remote out of his reach and Sukuna was too lazy to move much. The sofa was far too comfortable and the first piece of furniture in years that was making laying down nearly painless.

"Mister Nanami has something important to say, so listen!" his brother said, pointing to the adult but Sukuna only huffed and turned away like the brat that he decided to be. 

"As I already explained to Yuji, you're going to school from Monday on and I already have your timetables and uniforms," Nanami placed a package for each of them on the coffee table and Sukuna eyed it uninterested. There couldn't be something he was less interested in than fucking school. 

Yuji searched through his own package of clothes and papers, then through Sukuna's when a disappointing expression pulled onto his face. 

"Guess we're not going to the same school," Yuji said while he compared their timetables. 

"No, we just don't have the same classes."

"No, these are from two different schools," Yuji insisted and Sukuna shot up from his laying position, rage pooling into his chest. He ignored his back was bitching to him about it. 

"What the fuck? Who decided that bullshit?" he yelled and ripped the timetable out of Yuji's hand to see for himself. 

"I did," the blond prick said, standing in the middle of the living room, staring down on them with this stupid stoic expression of his, Sukuna wanted to punch him very badly. 

His heated glare found Nanami's face, his eyes hid behind the stupid tinted glasses he wore all the fucking time. He didn't even realise that he had jumped up from the couch until his hand was already balled into a fist, ready to collide with the bastard's ugly nose. 

"Kuna!" Yuji yelled but it didn't do anything. The rage inside of him was greater, hotter, burning him from the inside, pushing through his veins until it was unbearable. Nobody would rip them apart like that! Especially not Nanami! Who did the stupid asshole thought he was, deciding something like this over their heads? 

Before his fist could make that satisfying connection with Nanami's face and crush the stupid glasses, Nanami caught Sukuna's fist and effectively twisted his arm up behind his back. Pain exploded from his shoulder down his entire back as Nanami pressed his wrist against his scarred skin. For a moment his vision was blurred with black dots, dizziness creeped in on the edges of his vision. But Sukuna clawed his nails into consciousness like carnivore into his prey and held onto it, running on spite alone.

Nanami's fingers were calloused, his grip was too tight and the way his finger's closed around his wrist dragged memories up that Sukuna wanted to burn and rip to shreds right then and there. 

"You don't punch me. I don't accept violence in this house," Nanami said with a detached tone. 

Sukuna could feel the raised scar tissue on his back with his own fingers that Nanami was keeping there easily as Sukuna stayed as still as possible. The pain that shot down his back was making his breath come in uneven huffs. His shirt scratched over his oversensitive skin and a crushing desire to hurt somebody, preferably himself, overcame him. 

Sukuna screamed through his teeth.

He screamed with everything he had. 

It wasn't a conscious decision but rather a reflex of his body and with great effort he turned the screams into swears. His shoulder threatened to pop out of its socket and black dots dared to overtake his vision again as tried to not move a muscle.

Sukuna breathed through his pain, sweat was running down his temple and his breathing was fast and uneven. He was trapped, he couldn't move and Nanami was towering over him, his wrist gripped strongly.  One more notch upwards and the man would pop Sukuna's shoulder out.

His sight became even more blurry as his mind moved to the last mechanism he used to cope. Sukuna desperately tried to hold on, to stay present, to listen to his own rapid breathing and Yuji's mumbled words he couldn't understand right now. 

"Are you done? Can I let go off you now?" Nanami asked still with that calm tone that did nothing for Sukuna's nerves.

For a moment Sukuna cursed that he seemed to hide his pain so well that Nanami seemed oblivious to it. He cursed his stubbornness that prevented him from letting the words You're hurting me! and I'm in pain! pass his lips.

He locked eyes with Yuji who was anxiously watching the scene, stretching out a hand to Sukuna but knowing better than to touch him right now. 

"Yes," Sukuna pressed out and he hated how quiet his voice was. He was supposed to be the strong one, he needed to protect Yuji! He couldn't break like this, even when every muscle of his body was screaming in agony. He was used to this! Pain was part of him as much as his anger problems were, as much as his past was. 

Nanami let go of his wrist quickly after his words and Sukuna backed away from him as fast as his shaky legs allowed him, to positioning him in front of Yuji protectively. He hid how his hands were shaking, of how nauseous he was because of the pain. He pressed his arm against his side and rubbed his shoulder carefully, testing if it really had popped out. It didn't. 

"No violence allowed in this house. Not you, not me, no one!" Nanami stated, levelling stares with Sukuna who only scoffed at his words. The blond asshole didn't seem to recognise in how much pain he had put Sukuna in violently, just seconds ago! At the end of the day, all adults were the fucking same: Hypocritical Assholes!

"Why aren't we going to the same school?" Sukuna demanded to know, desperate to distract himself from how much he wanted to crumple together right there on the spot. Pushing himself out of the dizziness his mind wanted to sink into and pushed down the panic and itchiness of his skin. 

"Because you have to function as your own person. This is an easy first step," Nanami explained with the dryness of a professional and Sukuna hated him for it with his entire being.

"I can function as my own person!" he snapped, still holding his arm and standing in front of Yuji. His sight became sharper, his mind backed down from the dissociating, deeming the situation safe and Sukuna cursed his shitty coping mechanisms. Dissociating had never done anything for him!

"Alright, go to a separate room and don't talk to Yuji for an hour," Nanami challenged and Sukuna gritted his teeth. The stupid bastard knew that this was a rigged challenged! How could he leave Yuji when there was a threat of an adult present? Stupid idiot! 

So he stayed where he was, frozen on the spot glaring at Nanami who took the glasses from his nose and cleaned them in steady circles.

"No? Well, separate schools it is." 

Monday morning came quicker than Sukuna had anticipated and he was still furious with Nanami but the bastard just ignored his glares and heated comments and moved on with whatever he was doing. 

It felt like screaming at a cement wall. No reaction, no comeback, no reason to start a fight and it was getting on Sukuna's nerves big time! He really wanted to fight the bastard! Didn't matter how much his own body would hate him for it afterwards!

The school uniform that Yuji had talked him into wearing was suffocating. He had the first two buttons undone and the tie was hanging loosely around his neck, but it was still straining his nerves. He rolled up the sleeves of the white dress shirt, trying to push them up even further.

The car pulled up on the curve and Nanami turned around to them.

"This is your stop, Sukuna," Nanami said, and Sukuna wanted to punch him again for making them do this. But he restrained himself, looking over to Yuji who stared at the building with torn open eyes. Then his twin looked over to Sukuna with that puppy look.

This sucked ass! 

His hand landed on top of Yuji's head and rumbled his dark hair with a rough movement before he said, "Don't be a pussy!" 

"Sukuna!" Nanami called out but he ignored the man and only started to get out of the car. The backpack Nanami had bought him thrown over one shoulder, alongside his dark blue uniform jacket. His back didn't like the weight, but he wouldn't carry it in one hand like a complete idiot, so he just bit his cheek and moved on.

He felt way too fancy in the completely new uniform Nanami had bought for them. In the past school uniforms had been something Yuji and him shared, like they shared all their clothes. Most of them time hand-downs from their older brother, worn, ragged and far too big. 

"Don't get detention on your first day please," Yuji countered and swatted his hand away to righten his hair and Sukuna only huffed at Yuji's words. 

"How could he possibly get detention on his first day?" Nanami asked. 

"Oh easy, punching a teacher, jumping out the window, throwing rocks at-"

"Okay bye," Sukuna said while Yuji was still talking and the more he said the whiter Nanami's face became. 

Sukuna straightened his shoulders while he walked through the gate of the school, not looking back because when he did he would only walk straight back to Yuji's side. This was far harder than he had imagined. 

To his right and left students were swarming towards the main entrance and he glared at everyone who came too close to him. It worked wonderfully. He was way too fucking tired to deal with any of these shits, running on only a few hours of sleep. 

Pretty quickly the stream of students thinned out and Sukuna saw a boy with black messy hair and a sign that said "Ryomen Sukuna Idatori". A cold shiver ran down his back as he read his first name. 

Sukuna headed over with a glare on his face and an insult on his tongue. The boy had dark bags under his eyes and nervously looked around him the entire time, he seemed jittery and mumbled under his breath. As Sukuna stood right in front of him and stared down, the boy stopped and looked him up and down. 

"What the fuck are you doing?" Sukuna snapped. His nerves were already fried, he didn't want to be here. 

"Oh are you Ryomen?" the boy asked, the two silver piercing in his bottom lip moved as he talked.

"It's Sukuna!" if Yuji had been with him he had probably scolded him for being mean. But Yuji wasn't here. So he could be as mean as he fucking wanted! 

"Oh alright sorry, I'm Yuta. Yuta Okkutsu! I volunteered to show you around and be your student contact person on your first days!" Yuta said, trying on a smile on his face but it looked forced and nervous. His uniform jacket was baggy, just as his pants as if it was a few sized too big and nervously fiddled with the sign in his hands.

"Why would you volunteer for this?" Sukuna sneered and Yuta became slightly smaller under his gaze. Yuta backed away from him a bit and finally took that stupid sign down. Sukuna wanted to rip it from his hands and into a million pieces. 

"You get points for it and Rika wouldn't stop bothering me so..." Yuta's head jerked slightly behind his right shoulder and it looked like he wanted to take the words back the moment he said them. 

"Points?" Sukuna asked and looked behind Yuta but there was nobody else and most students were already inside on the way to their classes at this point.

"Yeah we have an Achievement point system here and you can-" 

"Stop talking. I don't fucking care."

Yuta didn't seem fazed by Sukuna's rude tone and only started walking, making a gesture to follow and showed him around school. Now and then his waterfall of talking was not addressed to him, while he kept turning to his right side were nobody was. 

Sukuna was too fucking tired to deal with any of this!

Whenever a group of students came towards them or they entered a new hallway, Sukuna out of reflex turned back wanting to say something to Yuji before he remembered that his brother wasn't here. Every time it drove a heated blast of rage through Sukuna's chest. He was already so fed up with this shit! Right after school he would yell at Nanami some more! 

"Oh do you have a Rika too?" Yuta asked as he noticed Sukuna's searching for Yuji and he sounded weirdly excited, brushing the black messy bangs out of his face.

"I only have a Yuji. He's my brother," he said utterly confused and Yuta's excitement died on the spot.

Class was something Sukuna would immediately abolish if he had the world power. The hard wooden chair was torture on his back. Sitting still and listening to some old fuck in a dull room with nothing to do and twenty other bored out of their mind students, that's how Sukuna imagined hell.

He couldn't even remember what class he was attending because he was already distracted and bored after a minute of monologue from the teacher. 

The girl behind him had kindly asked if he could stop wobbling his chair on the back legs because she couldn't see anything. Luckily he didn't give a fuck and kept balancing his chair from one back-leg to the other. 

The work sheet the teacher had given out was ripped tiny little piece after tiny little piece. He rolled them into balls and threw them across the room. Trying to aim at the trash can had become boring after twenty hits so he aimed for the necks of the students before him and grinned when they turned around annoyed and levelled him with glares. 

When there was no more paper to rip he chose one of the pens Nanami had bought him and played the finger knife game so loudly on his table he was thrown out a minute later. 

"Finally!" he grunted as he jumped up from his table and wandered whistling towards the door and then along the empty halls. 

At lunch Sukuna followed the stream of students into the cafeteria. He scanned the room, nearly all the tables were occupied by groups of students, talking and laughing loudly. He wanted to lay down so fucking badly!

One of the not so crowded tables at the far end of the room seated Yuta and another boy. He headed over and sat down without a word. Yuta looked up at him excitedly and started talking about all kinds of things. 

He didn't seem bothered by the lack of Sukuna's responses. The boy next to Yuta didn't engage at all in the conversation and didn't even bother to look up at him. He was absorbed into a book, occasionally eating from his boxed lunch. 

Under Yuta's talking Sukuna finished the lunch Nanami had sneaked into his bag in a matter of minutes and looked around the cafeteria bored out of his mind and still hungry. 

"You can have the rest of mine," Yuta offered and pushed his own lunch over to him. Sukuna stared at him, looking confused from the food to Yuta and back. 

The only one that had ever offered free food to him where his brothers. His stomach growled again, he hadn't been able to stomach anything after waking up, exhaustion and pain killing his hunger. After another encouraging push from Yuta he took the box and shoved the food down his throat just as fast. 

It was only then that the other boy looked up to him, met his eyes and without a word pushed over his lunch to Sukuna too. There was a moment where Sukuna was staring at him just as confused as he had at Yuta. 

Why were this people not sharing, but giving their food to him? He hoped they wouldn't be any repercussions to this and slowly pulled the boxed lunch over and finished it in a few bites. 

"Thanks," he mumbled towards the other boy between bites, a few crumbs flying from his mouth while talking and eating. 

Sukuna didn't get a response from the boy, he wasn't even looking up anymore, eyes already guarded back to his stupid book. Why did this motherfucker acted so high and mighty up on his damn horse that he couldn't bother to look at him? What a fucking asshole!  The next words were so fast out of his mouth that his brain couldn't keep up to intervene. 

"The fuck? Why are you ignoring me you dipshit? Are you deaf?"

"Yeah, actually Toge is," Yuta said, he didn't even seem bothered by Sukuna's rudeness. 

"Oh ...sorry," Sukuna mumbled, shoving the last bit of sandwich into his mouth and chewed slowly. He didn't really do sorries but the comment did drove an unfamiliar feeling up his chest. 

"It's fine, he can't hear you," Yuta smiled, even chuckling a bit and Sukuna wondered how this boy could be so damn unbothered and lighthearted about everything? 

"So how do you-" 

"Hey Yuta!" a group of teenagers their own age was strolling through the cafeteria and the one at the front was smiling dangerously over to them. He was built like a bull, black hair in a bun and a scar cut over his eye. 

Yuta looked up and instantly curled in on himself, avoided looking up to the boy at all while Toge was blissfully unaware of what was happening. Sukuna watched how the boy walked over to him, his group of followers grinning sadistically.

"Where's your wife today? Right or left side? Can you tell her something from me? I would do it myself but-" 

Yuta made himself even smaller while the boy kept on talking about Rika, making jokes Sukuna thought weren't funny at all and the lighthearted smile vanished from Yuta's face completely. 

"Looks like you made a new friend Yuta, good for you!" the boys look snapped over to Sukuna and back to Yuta, "Did you finally grew lonely of your wife and dumdum over there?"

Sukuna didn't know what exactly drove him to push himself up from the table and stood up right into the boy's face. 

"You have a problem with them, you have a problem with me," he stated with than grin on his face that Yuji called manically creepy. 

The bull-boy stared back at him at a loss for words as Sukuna moved his face even nearer into the boy's space. As their foreheads were only inches apart the boy flinched back.

With mumbled nonsense he and his group that had grown very quiet over the interaction hurried away and Sukuna scoffed after him. 

"So much bark and no bite, disappointing," he sat back down, bored again. 

For a moment the opportunity of a fight had tingled in his fingertips. Something to take his mind off the constant burning of his back and the tiredness that was lingering behind his eyes.

"Does this mean we are friends now?" Yuta asked, his voice still unsure and small. 

"I don't like to label things but .. you could put it that way if you want."

The day ended uneventful but as Sukuna walked through the gate in direction of the street where Nanami and Yuji would be waiting for him, there was a weird light feeling in his gut. 

He pushed it down, fastening his pace to get to the car. He ached for a nap on Nanami's couch. Hopefully Yuji had not let himself be pushed around like Yuta did. 

He hoped his brother had stood up for himself for once. 

"How did it go?" Nanami asked as soon as Sukuna opened the door and checked Yuji up and down for injuries but came up clean. He ignored how the steady uneasiness vanished completely as soon as he looked eyes with his twin. 

"I got detention!" Yuji called out happily instead of a greeting with that challenging tone of him having something that Sukuna didn't. He stared for a moment; a mix of jealousy and pride took over immediately.

"I got friends," he countered, feeling the need to raise and win.

"I got detention and a friend!" Yuji shot back.

"First of all, detention is nothing to brag about and second, this is not a competition!" Nanami interrupted with a tired sigh.

"It's always a competition," Sukuna and Yuji said at the same time with probably too much dedication and Yuji continued - nearly vibrating out of glee - with, "and I won this time!" 

Chapter Text

Watching Sukuna leave for the school without turning back drove a sharp sting through Yuji's chest. He watched his twin disappear in the sea of students and suddenly felt utterly alone and vulnerable.

'Kuna and he were glued together from birth on, rarely doing anything separately, even when they spend half the time tearing each other's heads off while doing so.

He didn't know if Sukuna felt the same. If he did it was probably rage filling him instead of the heavy sadness that Yuji felt. The dickhead had always been quick to anger and rage. Sometimes Yuji wondered if their spectrum of emotions had been split and divided at birth. Leaving Sukuna with an unexplainable amount of rage and hate and Yuji with too much softness.

"It's gonna be fine," Nanami said, they were already driving to Yuji's school which Nanami explained was only an eight-minute drive away. The adult probably tried for some reassuring words, but it did nothing for Yuji's nerves.

Yuji avoided Nanami's look through the rear mirror and stared out of the window, trying to fight down the anxiety that swirled in his chest and grew with every mile they left Sukuna behind them.

"Hey, Yuji?" Nanami asked, but Yuji was too up in his own panic to react to him. Nanami kept on saying a few more things, his voice always in this steady calm tone that Yuji found quite relaxing but right now he couldn't follow him along for one word.

The view out the window started to blur as Yuji's breathing picked up and the only thing he could think about was how he could get back to Sukuna, about how far away from Sukuna he was, how long he would take to get back to Sukuna.

"Yuji? Yuji can you breathe with me? Yes, like this, good," they weren't driving anymore and Nanami was squatting in front of him, car door opened wide.

"Alright good job, one more time, in ... and out, very good," Nanami was squeezing his thigh gently, the touch grounded him and pulled his mind back into the car and to Nanami.

"Did this come from being apart from Sukuna?" Nanami asked as Yuji took another shaking breath. Nanami had taken off his glasses and searched for eye contact.

"I think so," he whispered and Nanami gave him a soft look, squeezed his knee again and kept up his deep breathing while Yuji followed him doing it. His breath came still a bit shaky but the panic in his chest wasn't as suffocating anymore.

Silence settled over them as Yuji's heart slowed down further and wasn't pounding in his ears anymore.

"Did Sukuna and you were apart at all these last few years?" Nanami asked after a few more minutes of silence and Yuji didn't have to think to answer the question. He only shook his head from side to side, not meeting Nanami's eyes.

"Alright. I understand that this is pretty hard for you right now, but I promise that it will get easier."

Yuji looked up at those words, his eyes must have mirrored the instant panic and confusion that had rose up in his mind.

"Oh Yuji, no. I'm not trying to keep you from your twin, I just- damn it has been so long since I worked with teenagers. Listen - I just wanted to say that this anxiety you're feeling right now will not be this intense the entire time, okay?" Nanami took a deep breath, as if he needed to calm himself down.

"But you did enrol us in different school Mister Nanami," Yuji said, his tone thin.

"Yeah, I did."

Yuji waited for any further explanation but there were none.

Nanami had offered to accompany him to the principal’s office as Yuji had found himself unable to move out of the car. Out of reflex, he had checked over his shoulder for his twin, but the car was empty, and it send another rush of panic through him.

After another round of breathing and soft words from Nanami, Yuji was walking the hall alongside the adult. It didn't give him the same rest of nerves that Sukuna would have but the broad shoulders and stern expression of Nanami did something for his anxiety.

In front of the principal’s office was a line of chairs, only occupied by one boy with dark unruly hair, that stood up in all kinds of directions who was staring at the opposite wall with a bored expression. He was wearing an oversized dark hoodie under his uniform blazer, face half buried in the fabric and hands hidden in the sleeves.

Yuji was so caught up in observing the boy further - long neck, greenest eyes he had ever seen, and porcelain perfect light skin - that he accidentally bumped into Nanami's back when the man stopped walking.

The principal stood in the doorframe of his office, talking with Nanami about something Yuji didn't care to listen to before turning to the boy on the chair. Yuji caught the question the principal was asking him then.

"Is your father showing up this time?"

"He probably forgot again," the boy answered, his tone bored and tired, as if this had been a situation that had happened before.

"Then we're gonna reschedule and you can show our new student Yuji around school, what an amazing coincidence! I'm pretty sure you are in the same grade too," the principal said, and Yuji could nearly watch how the man patted himself on the shoulder in his mind about being such a good teacher.

With a taxing look from the black-haired boy, who stood up at the principal’s words Yuji left Nanami's side reluctantly. He felt how the man patted his back softly, as to encourage him.

Leaving Nanami and following the boy felt like losing his lifebuoy in the middle of drowning in the wide turbulent ocean. Waves of panic crashed over him, threatening to pull him under as he made his legs move and follow. His eyes were set on the slim back of the boy knowing if he would look back to Nanami he couldn't stop himself from running back to his side.

Don't be a pussy! Sukuna's words echoed in his head.

His brother didn't know any kind words; he wasn't walking around caring about other people's feelings. Most of the time he wasn't even acknowledging his own feelings - so Yuji didn't expected any codling from him.

Don't be a pussy! This was Sukuna's way of reassuring. Of reminding Yuji that he could do this, that he trusted him to keep himself safe.

Or maybe Sukuna really was just the biggest asshole on the planet, and all of this was just wishful thinking. Many times, even Yuji couldn't really understand how his twin's mind worked. Especially after that horrible placement that had changed Sukuna into the aggressive, blunt person that he was today.

Yuji dragged his mind back into the halls of the school, tried to listen to the sparse explanation of the boy with the unruly hair, as he was shown the cafeteria and the different building he would need to learn to navigate.

Eventually the boy - who introduced himself as Megumi - stopped in front of a row of colourful painted lockers and started to open one.

Yuji, unsure of what to do with himself, stood behind him and waited. Clutching the strap of his backpack like a lifeline.

"Don't you have a locker?" Megumi asked with an annoyed tone and looked over his shoulder back to Yuji.

"Oh yeah," Yuji quickly pulled out a piece of crumpled paper Nanami had pushed into his hands as they had entered the school. He looked down on the combination of words and numbers and back at the row of lockers, trying to find the one that was assigned to him.

He apparently took too long for Megumi taste, who walked over to him with a heavy sigh and gave the paper a look, showing him to the right locker. Yuji wondered if the sighing was Megumi's default reaction to everything.

Yuji thanked him but stood in front of the locker with his heart beating too loud in his ears as to figure out how the lock worked.

"Look, who do we have here. Did we get the Pussy or the Psychopath?" a familiar voice called out mockingly from behind Yuji and a cold shiver ran down his back. Yuji looked over his shoulder searching for Sukuna as the most natural reflex but remembering yet again that he was on his own.

That there was nobody to have his back, that he was now alone and suddenly too aware of how his hands started shaking.

"Bullying new students is a nasty trait and a sign of insecurity," Megumi stated with a bored tone, pulling open his own locker while not even looking in their direction.

"I see," Mai looked Yuji up and down, a snakish smile pulling onto her face, "We got the pussy."

Megumi was slamming his locker shut with more force than necessary, making Yuji flinch before he headed over to them. Mai was looking from left to right, probably searching for Sukuna too but smiled even wider when her search came out empty.

Megumi stood between Mai and Yuji, with his back to her and levelled him with calm look.

"What class do you have next?" he asked and as Yuji couldn't press out the words, Megumi took the timetable from his hands and checked it himself.

"I got that one too, let's go I'll show you the way."

They left Mai behind, luckily without another comment from her and Yuji slowly let out a shaky breath. He fought the urge to look for Sukuna again and concentrated on setting one foot in front of the other.

"Don't let Mai get to you. She's an insecure bitch." Megumi commented as he watched Yuji out of the corner of his eye and Yuji wondered if it was his own hallucination or if there had been real worry in Megumi's look for a second.

Sometimes Yuji wished he had the confidence of his twin. Had the same apathy about others as Sukuna had.

A few years back Yuji had asked Sukuna if he was ever sorry for punching people. Sukuna had only given him a confused look, his brows had furrowed deep as he denied, acting as if Yuji was being unreasonable crazy for asking a question like that.

Why should I? He hadn't stopped saying shit about us and I even gave him a warning. It's his own fault really, he had answered and since then Yuji had learned to accept that Sukuna had a moral compass that was unshakable and not interfered by society driven constructs. He had his own understanding of right and wrong. If someone was hurting him or someone he cared about, Sukuna would hurt back.

Yuji however couldn't. He couldn't be as disciplined as Sukuna when it came to things like this.

Choso had often referred to him as Sukuna's conscience because most of the time Yuji was caring too much when Sukuna wasn't caring at all.

So, it came that of course Mai was sitting in the same class as Yuji and Megumi. And it came of course that she had hell of a time throwing little pieces of rubber in his hair while sitting behind him.

Yuji tried ignoring the chuckle and laughter whenever a piece of rubber was sticking in his hair or fell into the collar of his shirt. He tried to ignore the shame spreading into his chest and tried to find the courage to stand up for himself.

Don't be a pussy!

I'm sorry Ryo.

As Mai walked up to the teacher to solve an equation on the board, the laughter died down for a moment. Only for her to walk back to her seat, pass him and smile down spitefully

Yuji couldn't really blame her. Sukuna and she had a history of fights and bullying. It was only fate's doing that she seemed to have changed schools and end up where he had.

But before Mai could sit down on her chair, there was a loud crash and Yuji turned around quickly as laughter erupted from the whole room. Mai was sitting on the ground, her chair a few meters behind her and she was furiously staring at Megumi, who quickly pulled his long leg back with which he had probably kicked the chair away.

"Not so funny anymore, is it?" Megumi stated with a bored tone and stared down at Mai who's face changed colours quickly.

"Fushiguro! That's the third strike you just got yourself, so it's detention again!" the teacher called out, of course he had seen what happened.

Without thinking for another second Yuji jumped up from his seat and stared at the teacher. The confused looks and eyes on him made his skin crawl but he couldn't let Megumi take the blame for something he did to help.

Or Yuji was pretty sure Megumi had done it because of Mai's behaviour towards him, but then, Megumi was pretty hard to read, and he had known the boy for not even a full hour.

Yuji mind was blank as everyone was watching him, the teacher gave him a confused look as Mai sat down at her own table without the spite from just a few moments before.

Quickly Yuji swiped everything from his desk to the ground in one solid movement.

"What was that for?" the teacher asked, sounding tired now.

"Well ... she's a ... insecure bitch!" Yuji stuttered, in need of something mean to say he reused Megumi's words and the teacher was pinching his nose with a groan.

"That's detention for you too then. Megumi can show you the way after class, he knows it very well. It's only Monday morning guys!"

"Why did you do that?" Megumi asked as they left the classroom behind after the bell announced the end of the lesson.

Yuji looked to the ground; he wasn't really sure how he felt about getting detention on his first day. This was normally Sukuna's job.

"Someone told me to stand up for myself."

"I don't think he meant it literally." Megumi's tone was flat, but it nevertheless pulled a smile on Yuji's face and he grinned over to the gloomy boy.

The rest of the day Yuji attached himself to Megumi's heels. It turned out they had nearly every class together and Yuji couldn't be happier about it.

"Why are you following me around like a lost little puppy?" Megumi asked as both boys made their way towards the cafeteria to get lunch.

"I'm not used to being alone," Yuji answered truthfully and Megumi gave him another one of his side glances.

The cafeteria was packed with people and Yuji had lost Megumi in the first three minutes. Now he was running around, panically searching for his only anchor point.

He pumped into shoulders and annoyed looks were thrown after him, before he saw Megumi waving from his spot at a table.

"I'm here," Megumi called and a boulder was moving off Yuji's chest. There was something Yuji would call defeat showing on Megumi's face, but it quickly changed as Yuji grinned at him full power.

Megumi stared at his grin for a moment before his ever tense eyebrows relaxed a bit, and it almost looked like he was smiled.

"Homework? How old do you think we are, Grandpa?" Sukuna called out as soon as Nanami asked them to finish their assignments right after coming home.

"It's not a question of age to do your work properly," Nanami said as he hung up his coat and walked towards the kitchen while Sukuna was staring after him.

Yuji was staying silent, there were no words that would calm Sukuna down right now. So, he only nudged him towards the living room carefully, ignoring the glares he got for it and continued on.

It had been a while since somebody had ensured they would do their homework. It had been a while since somebody had cared.

So, Yuji could understand that Sukuna felt weird about it. He did too, but he couldn't deny himself the warmth that spread into his chest.

Yuji sat down at the kitchen table, pulled out his books and started working on his assignments. Sukuna slumped down on the chair opposite of him, he had already thrown off his uniform jacket and rolled up the sleeves of the shirt. The tie was nowhere to be seen, and the first few buttons were undone so the collar flopped around his shoulders somewhere. There as a heavy sigh leaving Sukuna as he moved around on the chair. He did that a lot and Yuji had stopped asking if he was okay a long time ago.

Whatever triggered his twin's behavioural quirks, he would never give Yuji a straight answer, leaving him to wonder and puzzle about what it was exactly that circled his brain at the moment.

To Yuji's surprise Sukuna pulled out his own books and reluctantly opened them, scanned the pages for the assignments all while mumbling under his breath and rubbing his eyes aggressively. A smile was tugging on the corners of Yuji's lips.

"What are you fucking grinning about?" Sukuna snapped and Yuji only chuckled.

"Nothing."

"My ass nothing! Tell me!" now he had disrupted Sukuna's attention, and he wouldn't turn it back to his homework until Yuji would tell him.

With a sigh Yuji locked eyes with his brother, "I'm just enjoying the view of domestic life on you." The words made Sukuna uncomfortable immediately and Yuji grinned even wider.

His twin had never been good with open displayed emotion.

"Oi, shut the fuck up!" Sukuna muttered and propped up his chin on his hand, looking down on the book with a tired look in his eyes.

Yuji knew Sukuna wasn't sleeping well. Hadn't for years at this point and the exhaustion his twin hid at all times was ever present in the way he held his body.

Yuji turned back to his own homework, and they worked silently for a whole ten minutes.

It started like it always did, with Sukuna sighing and groaning more and more, moving around his chair more, rolling his shoulder and stretching his back now and then. Until he started looking over at Yuji's tasks but getting frustrated because they didn't have the same assignments.

Sukuna's leg bounced so hard it sometimes hit the table, but Yuji ignored it every time it happened. Then he started balancing his chair on the back legs and looked around the room to find a way to ge out of the situation.

Just in that moment Nanami joined them in the kitchen.

"Sukuna, stop wobbling, you could fall over!" Nanami said, his tone calm and Sukuna actually listened to him.

Yuji looked over to him confused, watched his restless twin change his sitting position every five seconds. When there was nothing else to fill his attention with Sukuna turned back to Yuji and started pestering him.

It started harmless with question about his day, his school, his classmates and everything else Sukuna could come up with while playing with his pen and paper. He had written down maybe three sentences.

"Guys, are you only talking or working?" Nanami asked, while he was starting on dinner.

Sukuna took that comment on happily and started a pointless conversation with Nanami. Eventually he was not sitting anymore but walked around the kitchen, got in Nanami's way and talked to no end.

"Sukuna! Are you done already?"

"No?"

"So, stop your chattering, sit back down and start working! The quicker you finish this the quicker you can leave!" Nanami tried again but Sukuna only huffed angry and annoyed. Yuji watched how his twin's look hushed towards the living room.

With as much attitude as possible he sat back down but the chair couldn't hold him very long and he was half sprawled over the table only moments later.

"Sukuna! Are you kidding me?" Nanami called out, the calm tone he had managed so far gone now and the frustration was building.

All while Yuji was calmly working on his homework.

He knew all of this. Back when they had lived with their brother this homework dance had happened daily, and Yuji was used to it. Used to Sukuna's restlessness, his inability to concentrate for a longer period of time without any breaks, his not exciting attention span and the frustration that even built in Sukuna because he couldn't really do anything against it.

"Who cares about homework anyways?" Sukuna called out, he was suddenly laying on the floor, eyes closed and breathing deeply in and out.

"Everyone except for you! Now could you please stop this nonsense and just sit down again?" Nanami pinched the bridge of his nose.

With displeased muttering Sukuna did sit back down. For whole two minutes he managed to pretend like he was reading, then he started pushing over one of his work sheets to Yuji. It was a summary exercise and Yuji took it without saying a word and began to work.

"Are you two fucking serious?" Nanami's voice was louder than they had ever heard before. The man was staring them down, an expression of unbelievement on his face and Yuji immediately folded into himself.

"What are you making this a big deal? As if anybody would care!" Sukuna called out, standing again.

"Why would you think nobody would-? Okay, what do you need to actually being able to finish this?" Nanami asked, taking a deep breath to calm himself and set his tinted glasses on the counter.

Sukuna stared at him flabbergasted.

"I don't need anything from you!" he snapped then. Nanami clicked his tongue.

"You're clearly not getting any work done like this, so what do you need?"

"Are you fucking deaf? I said I don't need any-fucking-thing from you!" Yuji bit his cheek as he watched how Sukuna became more irritated by Nanami's offer to help. He opened his mouth to say something but was short on words.

"Sukuna. I'm just trying to help here." Nanami's anger from before was now gone completely as he observes Sukuna closer. Yuji watched how Sukuna rolled his shoulders again. His twin didn't do patience. Never. So, it was no surprise that he snapped the next words angry. The words he said though, surprised Yuji more than anything.

"I just need a fucking break!" Sukuna yelled and stilled after the words left his mouth. He didn't seem to want to say this out loud.

"Alright. Let's get this done afterwards then," Nanami agreed without a beat, his face unreadable and Yuji and Sukuna stared at him in silence.

"Seriously?" Sukuna pressed out, still standing in the middle of the kitchen while Yuji's homework lay forgotten on the table in front of him.

He hadn't expected the turn this conversation had taken.

"Of course. It's obvious you can't concentrate right now, so there is no point in trying to push it. Take a break. We can get this done later," Nanami said, leaning against the counter behind him, looking at them as if this was a very reasonable problem to deal with.

Sukuna stared for another moment. Yuji couldn't imagine how confused his twin might be, when even he was doing mental Olympics about Nanami's quick adjustment to the situation.

Sukuna's look wandered over to Yuji, his eyes bored into him and Yuji only nodded. He would be fine here and the bags under Sukuna's eyes were dark. He really should lay down for a few hours.

Sukuna understood his nonverbal answer but hesitated for another second before he nodded wordlessly. Odd, Yuji thought as he watched how his twin left the kitchen without another sound and a moment later the door to their room was being closed with a loud bang. Of course.

Silence settled over them as Yuji was left with Nanami in the kitchen. The man took another deep breath before he looked over to Yuji.

"Do you need a break too?" Nanami asked gently and Yuji only shook his head. He was nearly done anyways.

Nanami acknowledged his answer with a nod and turned back to the stove to continue making dinner. Yuji turned back to his homework, but his mind was over by Sukuna in their room.

It was normal for him to nap throughout the day, to Yuji's knowledge it was because of his lack of sleep at night but he would never confirm it. It was so natural to him that he didn't even think about it anymore. Sukuna was tired a lot. He had no patience because of it. It had become a personality trait at this point.

"I'm sorry for snapping like this, I'm ... still adjusting," Nanami suddenly said and pulled Yuji out of his thoughts.

He looked up the man. Did an adult just apologised to him?

"Oh ... it's fine, he's adjusting as well. Gets some getting used to ... him," Yuji said unsure. He forbid himself to feel as if half of himself had just left the kitchen, he forbid himself to give in to the itching that would only go away when he set eyes on his twin again.

"We will figure this out," Nanami replied and shot him a soft smile that drove a warm feeling into Yuji's chest.

"Thank you, Mister Nanami," Yuji whispered.

"Just Nanami is fine Yuji. I also have a first name, but whatever you feel comfortable with is fine with me. Also, there is nothing to really thank me for, this is the bare minimum," Nanami added and Yuji only shook his head.

"No, it's really not. Not many have ... treated Sukuna with kindness," the words made it over his lips faster than he could hold them back and Nanami only turned to him again with a heavy look in his eyes.

"I take it that counts not only for him?"

Yuji swallowed. This conversation was taking a turn he didn't like.

"We've ... been through a lot of different placements," he answered as vague as possible.

Nanami nodded again.

"Is there something I can do, to help you two getting more comfortable here?" he asked, and Yuji couldn't believe this man. He stared at him with big eyes. What else could they possibly ask for when Nanami already had bought them new clothes, put food on the table on a regular basis and even cared that they did their homework?

"Maybe something you enjoy doing? A hobby maybe, to have an outlet in your free time. It must be boring sitting in this apartment all day long," Nanami said, and Yuji had never been slapped with kindness like this.

He opened his mouth and wanted to reply, but there were no words. He only stared.

Nanami gave him a gentle smile again.

"Let's start with what you two enjoy doing," he said

Yuji blinked before he answered truthfully, "I don't know."

"How don't you know?" Nanami gave him a confused look.

"Well," Yuji started, playing with the cuffs of his sweater, "There was never really the chance to have a hobby, I guess."

As he looked up to Nanami again, there was this unbelievement on his face, but it quickly vanished and gentleness took its place.

"We're gonna find you a hobby then. We're gonna find what you enjoy doing."

"Thank you, Mister Nanami!"

"Never for that."

Chapter Text

There were these few seconds. These few seconds after waking up, when Megumi's mind was still a bit slow and life seemed quite okay.

It only lasted a few moments, and when reality hit with all its force, Megumi wished that his brain wouldn't pretend everything was fine only to crush him with the truth a second later.

The truth that his dads had broken up, Geto had moved out and Megumi was switching homes every two weeks. Switching Dads and switching lives, he had stopped unpacking his backpack because it had become exhausting.

His rooms - because he had two now - were barer than they were before because he was not taking all his shit from one house to the other.

Right now he was stuck at Gojo's. In a house that screamed Geto at every corner, every plant, every cozy blanket and pillow and rug. His dads being high school sweethearts showed in how one of them had grown a taste and one of them still liked to throw his money at expensive shit.

Geto had turned the modern cement block the house had been at first into something closer to a home. The white walls were full of shelves with plants and picture frames, the entrance hall dedicated to the yearly school picture that both of them made him pose for every first fucking day of school. The adoption papers hung there, right next to a clay print of his child-sized hands from kindergarten.

Megumi had just woken up from his after-school-recovery-nap and slowly dragged himself down the stairs, from his room on the first floor to the kitchen downstairs. It was only late midday and he knew Gojo wouldn't be here any time soon. He wouldn't be there until late into the night, like it was his habit nowadays.

So Megumi dragged himself further through the house into a kitchen that was way too big for two people. It had been too big for three people too, but they had filled it with life so it had been fine.

Now it was just a too big kitchen with an unstacked fridge and an empty fruit bowl on the massive kitchen island. Megumi was way too sleepy to cook something, so cereals in front of the TV it was.

Followed by his two big dogs, five year old German Shepard's, Megumi buried himself under too many blankets on a too big sofa with too much space and watched a too dumb TV show that was surprisingly very entertaining on that too big TV.

Since Geto left everything felt too big. Too much. Too empty. Too lifeless. This was not a home anymore, it was a too big space with too many memories about better times.

Just as he wondered if he would see Gojo at all before going to bed, a key was turned in the front door and Megumi listened how the white haired man draggechad himself inside the house with a series of groans and sighs. Cloud jumped away from Megumi's side, the ball of white fur vanished out of his sight and greeted Gojo with a lot of yapping while Shadow stayed behind, only throwing glances. Megumi buried his hand in the dark black fur of the dog and the low humming of Shadow calmed his nerves.

Megumi turned down the TV but didn't pull his attention away from it completely as Gojo made his way through the house loudly. He was like that. Always had been but since Geto had moved out it had become worse. As if Gojo needed to scare the silence away or else his loneliness would hit him too hard.

"Megs? You still up?" he yelled from the hallway and Megumi only gave a grunt of acknowledgement. A moment later Gojo stepped into the living room. "Why are you still up? It's like ..." he shook the sleeve of his white dress shirt upwards and wiggled his arm until he could look at his watch.

"Nearly half past eleven!" he called out and Megumi finally looked up to him with the most judging look he managed. As if Gojo was someone to talk about going to sleep late.

"Don't give me that look now, work was hell! Too much new cases and too many clients that annoyed the hell out of me! And don't get me started on the new baby lawyers we hired, fresh out of uni and nothing but book knowledge in their brains! I had to do everything for them and their job is suppose to make my life easier!" Gojo complained as he dramatically folded himself into the sofa next to Megumi.

He pulled off his tinted glasses a moment later and he rubbed his eyes with a groan. Megumi tried to ignore how irritated Gojo's eyes were - the visible red veins crawling around his pupils, the teary corners, the irritated skin around them because Gojo had rubbed them too much and too hard - and turned his attention back to the TV.

"You forgot again," Megumi mumbled, stubbornly looking away. Gojo stopped rubbing his eyes and gave him a side eye. After a few heavy moments of silence he finally asked with a small tone, "Shit, that was today?"

"They don't expect you to turn up anymore and finally called Dad," Megumi stated with a flat tone. This was not affecting him. It wasn't!

"No no I can do it! Just make a new appointment and this time I'm gonna remember!" Gojo quickly rambled on, opening the first buttons of his dress shirt and pulled the collar loose.

"We're making a new appointment for months now, Dad it is. They tired of waiting for your ass." I'm tired of waiting for your ass. His jaw hurt for how hard he was clenching it.

"Why don't they just call me?" Gojo called out frustrated, throwing his arms up into the air as if the answer would fall into the palms of his hands if he stretched them far enough towards the sky.

"They did. You never pick up."

Silence settled between them and Gojo pulled his ridiculous long arms back against his chest, picking at his finger nails.

"Well. Then they should call him I guess," Gojo said, plucking at a shred of dry skin on his middle finger, before he continued forcefully upbeat," So how was school today?"

Megumi pointed with his foot towards the sheet of paper that was lying on the coffee table. "You actually need to sign this." He had planned just to leave it there for Gojo, like a late birthday present.

Gojo reached for the paper and squinted at it. Yeah, he didn't take care of his eyes at all the last few weeks.

Before Gojo could finish and say anything, Megumi freed himself of the blankets and Shadow, who was jumping out his lap and followed him excited. "I have to go with the dogs," he mumbled but Gojo had already finished reading. At the word go both boys started barking, Cloud straying from Gojo's side and came to Megumi who told them both to quit it with a short command.

"Wait wait wait! Again?" Gojo called out, holding the sheet of paper in his hand that said Megumi had been fighting again and any further acts of violence against his classmates would result in a suspension. Megumi stopped, one hand on the doorframe, turning with a sigh and leveling Gojo with a bored look.

"Did you win?" was the only thing Gojo asked and Megumi huffed.

"Don't I always?"

"That's my boy!" Gojo called out and threw the sheet back on the coffee table, "But of course this is not okay!" he remembered his parental obligations.

"Yeah yeah." Megumi played with Shadow's ear, who was standing right by his side, tongue out and waiting excitedly. His brother Cloud was already somewhere near the front door probably.

"No I'm serious this time! Fight one of your classmates again and you get grounded!" Gojo tried pulling out his strict tone.

"I literally never leave the house willingly." Megumi said, leaning against the doorframe with one shoulder and waited with what Gojo would come up next. He was shitty as this part of parenthood and they both knew it.

Gojo stared at him for half a minute. Megumi could nearly see the wheels turning high-speed in his head before he finally said, "Then ... no TV!"

"You would suffer more from that than me."

"Then... for fucks sake, no going out with the dogs!" Gojo became desperate at this point and Megumi knew he had already won this argument.

"Who's gonna do it then? You?"

Gojo groaned dramatically and rubbed his eyes again, "Shut up and ... just go!" Megumi stared at Gojo's fingers that had rubbed his eye, there weren't coming back bloody so it was still fine.

"That was my plan before we started this," Megumi stated, gesturing between them and the argument they were having.

"You're a brat, you know that?" Gojo said, sinking back into the fluffy sofa, kicked off his fancy suit shoes and stretched his legs out on the coffee table. His knees popped loudly as he did so, and Megumi only clicked his tongue.

"You raised me, so that's really just your fault," he turned and walked down the hall.

"If Geto calls, I grounded you!" Gojo yelled after him and Megumi yelled back, "Yeah I know, I'm not stupid!"

-

The cold air stung in his lungs as he walked Shadow and Cloud the next morning before school.

The streets were clear of any other life and Megumi used the time to prepare himself for a day of socialising. Well, the amount of socialising he did at school. Which was not much.

But he would see Yuji again, so maybe he would actually say a word or two today.

His phone started vibrating, like it did mostly on his morning walks and he took the call from Geto without hesitation.

"Morning Megs, how're you doing?" Geto asked and he sounded way too awake for six in the morning.

"I think I saw Nanami yesterday. But I think he didn't really recognised me." Megumi started, wondering if Geto would notice him evading the question about his mood. He hated lying to Geto but the truth was nothing he wanted to share right now.

"Oh wow, where did you saw him?" Geto actually sounded surprised but took the bait.

"School. And he had a kid with him. Annoying brat. Followed me around like a puppy all day," Megumi huffed, thinking of how lost Yuuji had looked the entire day. How angry he had gotten by watching how Mai had treated that poor boy. He didn't understand why she had it out for him like that, yes she was a bitch who pretty often actually let out her own frustration and family problems on the ones around her but the stuff she had done to Yuji was just big asshole-energy.

"Aw but you like dogs! And this sounds like you made a friend!" Geto said way too happy. On the phone it was especially hard to tell if Geto's happiness was just put on as a facade for Megumi or if he was genuinely happy.

"Eh... wouldn't call it a friend. He's just a classmate." Megumi kept kicking a rock in front of him while walking. Cloud and Shadow were walking on either side of him, perfectly behaving like the good trained boys that they were.

"Megs, it's important to make new friends you can't just sit in your room all day." Geto sighed heavy and Megumi noticed how the happiness from before was only a facade that was now crumbling to pieces.

"Watch me, I can!" he argued stubbornly and called Cloud back to his side who was sniffing at some food scraps that were laying on the street. The white one had the attention span of Gojo. Sometimes Megumi asked himself if the dog and his pops were not only sharing the same hairstyle but also the same braincell.

"Yeah look at you, you depressed noodle," there was an amused tone it Geto's voice again and Megumi was confused. Figuring out his dads mental state was like sudoku, exhausting, complicated and frustrating.

"You're no one to talk and don't fucking call me that!" Megumi huffed, kicking the rock further and accidentally hitting a back leg of Shadow. The dog jumped slightly to the side and Megumi have him an apologising head pat.

"Don't you swear at me!" Geto reprimanded him and Megumi's tense shoulders fell together like sand castles.

"Sorry Gojo's influence."

Silence flooded the line and Megumi could nearly see how Geto was chewing his bottom lip.

"How is he?" Geto finally asked and Megumi gripped the leash in his hand tighter. Could was looking up from the patch of grass he had been sniffing at and stared directly into his eyes as if he could sense Megumi's tenseness. The blue eyes of the dog came close to Gojo's and again Megumi wondered about the potentail share of braincells between the dog and Gojo.

"Ask him yourself!" he shot back angry.

"Megumi!" Geto pulled out his full name, dipping the words in that complicated pool of emotions between the three of them since Geto had moved out.

"Just call him!"

"Megs, just fucking tell me!"

There was a smile tucking at one corner of his mouth as he said, "You just told me not to swear."

"Sorry, Gojo's influence," the ghost of a smile was on his lips and the silence dragged on before Megumi gave in. "He's ... working a lot. Too much. He forgets to eat all the time and always falls asleep on the sofa. He not taking care of his eyes, they ... look like they could get infected any day by now so, as always. Can't you two just talk?" Megumi denied himself to hear the begging tone in his own voice.

"Megumi, we went over this."

"Yeah, but this sucks!"

"I know," the regret and guilt in Geto's tone was as evident as ever, "I'm sorry. But it's better this way."

"It's not better this way!" Megumi called out and the words were too familiar, "You both are just pretending to be okay and you both suck at it!"

There was a pause before Geto answered and Megumi's heart sunk like it always did when he said, "It's gonna get better. I promise."

"Mh, sure."

The silence was heavier this time.

"I have to go, Shadow is shitting on the street." Megumi lied and Shadow's black ears peaked up at his name and the dog looked up to him with the tongue hanging out of his mouth.

"Yeah of course, I'm gonna pick you up next week." Geto accepted the exit of the conversation Megumi provided without resistance.

"Yeah, bye Dad."

"Bye Megs."

As Megumi clipped off the leashes from Shadow's and Cloud's harness the house was still quiet. On his way to his own room to get ready for school he passed Gojo's bedroom. The door was open and Megumi peaked inside.

The enormous double bed was empty, blankets and pillows unmade on one side and perfectly made on the other. The room was cold and untouched, clothes were laying around on the floor and on every other possible surface and Megumi wasn't surprised as he found the man still sleeping on the sofa downstairs.

It had been half a year, but Gojo rarely used the bedroom, sleeping on the sofa or in Megumi's bed most of the time. And Megumi couldn't even be mad at him for it.

His pops was just as lost and in denial as Megumi was. So with a heavy heart and a sigh he draped a blanket over him, put his prescribed eyedrops on the coffee table hoping he would take them before getting to work, cleaned Gojo's dirty-ass tinted glasses and left to get to school.

It's gonna get better. I promise. Empty promises that fit perfectly in this empty house of broken people.

Chapter Text

The first week of school for the twins was behind them, and Nanami felt as if he had aged ten years in the last seven days. He had already gotten three letters and one phone call from Sukuna's teachers, complaining that he was disrupting class with unacceptable comments, his restless behaviour and aggression towards his classmates.

Nanami didn't want to imagine what Sukuna was like when forced to sit still for half the day, considering that even the homework sessions after school were draining him of so much energy.

A fragile routine had established itself over the week, where Yuji would work on his homework straight after school while Sukuna, three out of five times, took a break first. Nanami was pretty sure he was taking a nap, if the way he looked dead on his feet after school was any indicator to go with.

He didn't know why the boy was so tired all the time, why he was so restless and quick to snap most of the day. He had tried asking Sukuna. That had ended in a screaming match and banged doors.

Asking Yuji had only ended with vague frustrating statements that could mean anything. "That's just Sukuna being Sukuna," had been one of those statements and Nanami suspected even Yuji didn't really know why Sukuna was acting the way he did half the time.

Until now, Nanami would have called himself a quite patient person. He worked with frustrating people all the time, but Sukuna had taught him the true meaning of patience.

He knew he wouldn't be able to convince either of the twins to join him for a doctor’s appointment yet, whether for a physical or a mental check-up to find an answer for their list of problems.

Yuji tried playing mediator as often as he could, when a well-meant conversation went south but with Sukuna still mad as hell that Nanami had made them go to different schools, every conversation was doomed to end in swearing and insults on Sukuna's side and silence on Yuji's.

So, the plan of action for their second week together was finding the boys a hobby. Something they could occupy their free time with after school and in the best case enjoy doing.

Nanami had looked up the soccer club in their neighbourhood, they had training today and he hoped one of them would jump at the opportunity.

Sukuna was sulking, as always, because Nanami had forbidden him to smoke in the car or the apartment. His smoking was a problem Nanami wasn't ready to tackle yet. Sukuna was already on a high aggression level; he didn't really need a teen with nicotine withdrawal right now. Pick your battles.

So, the rule they were currently working on was no smoking inside the apartment. Nanami still wondered where the kid got the damn cigarettes.

As they got out of the car and headed over to the field, Yuji's eyes doubled in size and he called out, "I'm calling dips on this one!"

Nanami stared at the boy, then back to the field. There were boys and girls just playing soccer and he didn't really understand why Yuji was being this euphoric. Sukuna looked just as confused as Nanami did.

"Are you sure? We can look at a few more if you want."

Yuji just shook his head from side to side and started walking towards the soccer field. Nanami stared after him in confusion until he looked to his side where Sukuna was clearly sulking, staring after his brother with a glare in his eyes and a pound on his face. If Nanami wouldn't know any better, he would say Sukuna was jealous. Of what exactly? No damn clue.

Shaking his head Nanami followed Yuji and left him at the field where he had already strung up a conversation. Nanami entered the clubhouse to get some information about the team and see if he could sign Yuji up for it.

The woman behind the bar was friendly and it only took a few moments to get his answers. He had to fill out a form with both Yuji's and his own information. As it came to Yuji's birthday, birthplace and other personal stuff, he urged Sukuna to help him who was still sulking by his side, watching his twin through the window of the clubhouse.

"He is there," Sukuna suddenly hissed, his eyes glued to the field where Yuji was meeting the rest of the team.

"Who?" Nanami asked.

"The spiky haired idiot?" Sukuna huffed, his arms crossed in front of his chest, his fingers drummed on his upper arm restlessly.

"What did he do?" Nanami asked back, turning his attention back to the information sheet.

"He is there! All the time! Every time!" Sukuna snapped and Nanami followed his look outside, scanned the boys and girls to find about whom Sukuna might be talking about. Then he recognised the familiar unruly black hair. It had been years since he had seen Megumi the last time and a smile was tugging on the corners of his lips.

"That's Megumi. He's so grown up now, wow." Nanami answered and watched as Megumi showed Yuji a trick with the ball.

"Megumi? What an idiotic name. Fits him ... because he is an idiot!" there was such hate in the boy's voice.

"He is not an idiot. Let's meet him, come on!"

"I don't want to meet him!" Sukuna argued truculent like a toddler.

"Alright, then keep sulking here, fine by me," Nanami mumbled more to himself and finished signing the document, handed it over and headed back to the field.

He stood at the railing of the field and watched the kids play. At some point he catched Megumi's look and waved, the kid waved back with a small smile on his lips. Nanami wondered if he was still that animal obsessed. Back in the day he had only ever asked for books or plushies about all kinds of animals that he had currently been obsessed with. It was adorable. He had wanted to be a vet and Nanami wondered if that was still his plan.

Back in the day when their old friend group was still going strong, Megumi had always been at the centre of it and watching the teen play, woke a lot of memories he had buried years ago.

It didn't take long until the training ended but before the kids made their way over, a familiar voice called from behind, ripping him from his melancholic thoughts, "Kento? Is that you?"

"Suguru?" Nanami turned around, meeting eyes with Geto who he hadn't seen for several years. His hair was a lot longer and there were bags under his eyes, but his smile was as charming as ever. With an annoyed look he craned his neck to look behind Geto before he asked, "Where is your worse half?"

"Gojo? Oh, we're getting a divorce. I moved out half a year ago," Geto said with a strained tone and the smile on his face wavered for a moment, but he caught himself pretty quickly.

Nanami -who never made any secret of his dislike against some specific white-haired man - said with a clearly too happy tone, "Good for you!"

"Yeah," Geto stepped up to his side, pulled a strain of hair behind his ear and gestured over to Megumi, "Not so good for him though, he's not ... adjusting well."

"Divorces are always hard on kids."

"Yeah," Geto agreed and for Nanami's taste there was a far too heavy tone in his voice.

They stood in silence for a few moments.

After Haibara had died four years ago, Nanami had cut himself off from their friend group. The hole Haibara had left in their group and in Nanami's heart had been too painful to confront. So, he had asked the other two to give him space and time, had blocked their calls and retreated further and further into himself.

Looking back Nanami wasn't very proud of it, but Haibara was still gone, and his heart was still hurting. So instead off starting a new conversation Geto and him stood there and watched the kids play, until Megumi headed over to them.

"Hey dad, Yuji joined," Megumi leaned on the railing with his elbows and levelled them both with a flat look.

"Who?" Geto asked and looked over to the bunch of kids.

"Yuji from school, I told you about him."

"Yeah, he's mine," Nanami said without thinking about it and was met with two very confused eyes that stared holes into his skin.

"I mean, he just lives with me for a few weeks, we were- I was still in the system from when ... Haibara registered us," he explained quickly and Geto started smiling that heavy smile again.

"Good for him!" he said, giving Nanami one of his soft looks and he quickly looked back to the kids on the field.

After a beat of silence, Megumi started talking again, but there was now a heated tone in his voice, "He is there." Nanami and Geto followed Megumi's glare over the field towards the clubhouse.

"Who?" Geto asked, straining his neck, swiping his long hair out of the way.

"The smoking idiot!" Megumi snapped with a heat that was very out of character for him and as Nanami understood that he was talking about Sukuna he asked himself if the universe wanted to fuck with him today. Where had the kid gotten that damn cigarette?

"Is that a kid smoking?" Geto asked curiously but was luckily interrupted by Yuji who was jogging over to them.

"Nanami, did you see? I scored!" Yuji called out, a big fat smile on his face that Nanami hadn't seen on Yuji face before, and it warmed his heart in seconds. Then the kid's eyes flicked past him and the smile faltered for a moment.

"Actually, I think we should leave now!" Yuji said instead and climbed over the railing with a quick movement.

"What? Because your possessive boy is waiting for you?" Megumi whispered to himself so quietly that only Nanami heard the words.

"What?" Yuji asked but Megumi only deflected with, "Nothing, nothing."

"Why do you want to leave so suddenly?" Nanami asked, even if he had a pretty good guess why Yuji wanted to leave.

"No reason," Yuji said with a tone that probably should have sounded carefree but was way too strained. If Sukuna would just be half as bad as Yuji was at lying, Nanami's life would be so much easier.

With a heavy sigh Nanami looked over to Sukuna, who was still sulking, glaring and smoking. "Alright, guess we can't keep ignoring that problem."

With Yuji successfully signed into the soccer club, his uniform arriving a few days later and training scheduled several times a week, Nanami was eager to find a hobby for Sukuna too.

Something that would get the kid out of the house, train his social skills and gave him an outlet for all this energy and anger he never seemed to get rid of. Throughout the week though, Nanami's hope to find something that suited him died slowly after every attempt ended in a catastrophe.

It started with Sukuna's refusal to change into any sport clothes they offered to him when arriving at the several sport facilities. Nanami accepted his statement with a nod, forcing himself to not be annoyed about it, by the way how fidgety Yuji became whenever it came up.

There probably was a reason and it was fine that they didn't want to open up about it to him yet. Just another bump in the road they somehow had to navigate around.

They tried basketball first, but Sukuna only stole the ball from his teammates and gave a fuck about any step rules. Handball wasn't any better, since he didn't make any attempt to catch the ball and instead shot it away with his foot, breaking three balls in one practice.

With Badminton Nanami should have known that it was doomed from the start, but he gave it a shot and was stuck with paying for several badminton rackets because Sukuna had hell of a time breaking them and making it seem like an accident.

Eventually, Nanami dragged Sukuna to a Martial Arts studio, hoping fighting would be more up his alley. It ended up being the worst of all because not even five minutes in Sukuna had broken the first rule he was given and clocked the trainer in the nose during a one-on-one match.

Every time they were kindly asked to leave and after a long week of searching and failing, Nanami was at the end of his rope.

Geto had just picked up Yuji for Soccer practice a while ago, because Nanami had an appointment at the mechanic, and he made his way towards the living room.

"Come on, let's go," he called over to Sukuna who was sprawled over the entire couch and watched a show about renovating houses. Watching TV seemed to be the only instant the kid was able to sit still for more than one second. His entire attention was caught by the show while he sprawled his body over the cushion without any shame. More often than not it was the place he fell asleep but woke as soon as someone entered the room.

Now Nanami had had to call his name several times before Sukuna was answering him.

"Where?" Sukuna asked, not even looking at Nanami, inhaling a box of oatmeal cookies. The eating habits of that kid were ... weird. Some days he seemed like a vacuum on whatever he could find laying around. On other days he didn't stomach anything else than cigarettes.

Nanami was currently on his secrete quest of getting decent food into both the twins, leaving fruit and halfway healthy snacks around. He hoped Yuji would start picking up snacks now and then, but he only saw the kid eat when they had dinner together and even then, he always shoved his plate to Sukuna when he was halfway done.

Another thing on the list Nanami saved to tackle when they were more comfortable. Wait ... since when did he had a list?

"I have an appointment at the mechanic shop," Nanami explained, searching his wallet and key together.

"Then why do I have to come?"

After three weeks of dealing with this, Nanami wondered when his patience would finally expand. Now he could only take a deep breath and count slowly to ten in his head. "Because I like my apartment a lot."

"So, you don't trust me?" Sukuna called out, his eyes still fixed on the show on TV as if it would stop exciting when he would look away for a second.

"Do you trust me?" Nanami asked with a bored tone and Sukuna finally looked over to him. They stared at each other for a moment before Sukuna had the audacity to pull out a cigarette and a lighter, starting to light it while not moving an inch from the sofa.

"Alright, okay," Nanami took the deepest breath he could manage and headed over, plucking the cigarette from Sukuna's fingers. "I thought we talked about this," he said, stumping the death stick out on a plate on the coffee table.

"No, you talked, and I wasn't listening," Sukuna replied like the brat that he was and Nanami flushed the cigarette down the drain in the kitchen.

"There is no discussion about this, you're still a minor." Nanami stood by his point, hands on his hips as he stared the teenager down. At the start of the week, he had tried breaking to Sukuna that he wouldn't allow him to smoke at all in the apartment anymore. It had gone as smoothly as he had anticipated. With a hole in the door of the twins.

A deep groan started in the back of Sukuna's throat as he rubbed his face with angry movements.

"Now get up and get going!" Nanami said and turned away from the dramatic suffering of Sukuna.

With an angry sigh, as if Nanami asked for some great sacrifice, Sukuna finally got up from the sofa. The kid gave him a heated glare, brushed the cookie crumps from his pants and hoodie and dragged himself to the door.

Nanami followed, biting his tongue. One day Sukuna would be the reason why all his hairs had turned grey before hitting forty!

The drive to the repair shop was silent. Sukuna was sulking like a toddler on the passenger seat, staring out the window with the mission to not look over to Nanami once. Out of the corner of his eye, Nanami watched how the kid was moving around in the seat a lot. Rolling his shoulders seemed like a tick he had, since he did it a lot when sitting somewhere. But Nanami knew better than to bring it up right now.

Over the last three weeks Sukuna had evolved from the aggressive overprotective guard dog of his twin to a fifteen-year-old boy with an attitude problem, probably insomnia and a nicotine addiction while being on the mission to make Nanami's life miserable.

Nanami had asked the internet if all teenagers were on a mission of making their par- ... guardians' lives miserable, and the internet had given him a big fat YES!

Of course, he was a man of science and chose to ignore all the scientific papers and studies and guides for dealing with teens for the sole purpose of sulking in self-pity for a moment.

Theoretically he knew that these kids were struggling, that they probably never had a stable home to build stable and safe relationships to adults around them. Never had a support system or a social network around them in which their social skills could grow. That they probably had to deal with problems no kid should deal with at that age. That they probably had a hard time accepting rules and boundaries when before they had been free to do what they wanted all day long.

He theoretically knew all of it, but he also knew he couldn't start treating them like his patients. He needed to treat them like fifteen-year-old boys, which meant he had to suffer.

Why was he doing this again? 'Right now, you are their best shot at a normal and a safe place to live. Fucking damn it. When had he gone so soft?

Nanami pulled onto the parking lot of the mechanic's shop and gestured Sukuna to follow him as he headed into the shop. Sukuna stayed a few steps behind him, dragging his feet and looked around the shop.

Nanami pulled ahead of him towards the office, Sukuna couldn't really destroy anything in here, so he felt safe leaving him out of his sight for a moment.

He greeted the boss with his business smile, and they talked the reason over why Nanami was here. At some point he heard one of the employees calling through the shop, "You look like someone who - uh - can help me carry this thing over here!"

As Nanami handed over the keys and turned to organise their ride back, Sukuna was nowhere to be found, and panic exploded in his chest. The boss had already vanished and Nanami followed the noise into the big main hall of the shop.

He recognised his problem teen on his broad shoulders and undercut, brown hair pushed back out of his face like always. But for whatever reason Sukuna stood completely unmoving and stared down at an employee who was leaning over the open hood of a car, explaining something to Sukuna.

Nanami approached slowly, he didn't want to disrupt the moment the two were having and watched further how Sukuna nodded along the mechanic rumbling of the other boy. He recognised him as one of the youngest employees, Takuma Ino. A boy of eighteen, just finished with his training as mechanic. The top of his shoulder long hair was up in a messy little ponytail, many strains fell into his face as he looked up to Sukuna to show him something.

Sukuna nodded along and asked a question Nanami couldn't understand but Ino's face lit up and his mouth started moving faster as he pulled Sukuna to his side, pressed a screwdriver in his hand and gestured to something on the motor of the car.

Sukuna quickly leaned over, reached into the hood and did exactly what Ino told him too and Nanami was amazed by the focus Sukuna had and that he was doing something on someone's instructions without an attitude. He never did that and if Nanami wouldn't see this with his own eyes right now, he wouldn't believe it.

After he watched the boys for a few more moments, Nanami headed over to them and Ino greeted him with that big smile of his. He talked a mile a minute, about what they had to do with Nanami's car, and he nodded the info dump just off like he understood what the boy was saying.

A side eye to Sukuna he saw how he was nearly hanging on Ino's lips, asking a question with far too many mechanical words in it and Nanami had to control his face to not grin too wide.

"Hey Ino, would it be a problem if Sukuna would come over and help out now and then, if I get your boss to agree?" Nanami asked and Sukuna froze next to his side but didn't start complaining.

"I don't see the problem. He's pretty smart, catching up fast," Ino said, grinning over to Sukuna.

"Great, I know your boss quite well, shouldn't be a problem. Only if you want of course," Nanami said, looking over to Sukuna who only stared. There was a spark of something light shooting through his look, something like excitement that washed the tired expression off his face.

It was gone a moment later and the kid only shrugged his shoulders as he grunted dismissively, "I take it, if it means getting away from your annoying ass."

It was a lie. And they both knew it. Sukuna had multiple possibilities of getting out of the house, but Nanami took his agreement without complaint.

Chapter Text

The sofa in Nanami's living room was Sukuna's favorite spot by far.

It had a ridiculous wide sitting area, far too many pillows and a backrest too soft for this world. Sukuna would never admit to anyone out loud that he liked all of that but if he could choose a place to spend his free time in, it was Nanami's sofa.

The side effect the couch had on his back was something Sukuna tried not to think about too often. Laying down was always a pain in the ass for longer amounts of time, every position hurt in some way eventually. The random pain flare-ups were the worst, and Sukuna had found that the soft cushions did wonders to the sharp stabbing pain that haunted him in the worst moments.

The last days had been a bitch, Sukuna suspected he was growing again. His scars always bitched around when that happened, and no amount of nicotine would be able to give him some pain relief.

It had gotten so bad he had secretly stolen some painkiller's from Nanami's medicine cabinet in the bathroom. And when the adult knew, he didn't say anything about it.

So it came he was sitting on his favorite spot, the long part of the L-shaped couch and pretending to work through the mechanic book Ino had lent him. It was one of his old schoolbooks he didn't need any more and Sukuna had happily taken it. Right now though it lay in his lap and his eyes were falling shut every few minutes. The exhaustion sat deep in his bones.

Yuji was off fucking around somewhere in the kitchen, probably doing dishes or something else to help around the apartment. Little sucker that he was.

And they’re both heard Nanami on a call with someone, his office door not completely closed because he was on break. They suddenly locked eyes while they listened to a weird phone call.

"No, I didn't call you .... three times? ... no I don't know anything about that. I'm so sorry. Yes.... of course ... all right .... Yes, good day to you too."

They were both too slow to flee because a moment later Nanami walked out his office, a phone in his hand and a tight expression on his face. Yuji's eyes were as big as the ones of a deer in headlights, and it wasn't the first time Sukuna wished that his brother was better at lying.

"I just got a call," Nanami started, standing in the middle of the living room, his look jumped back and forth between Sukuna and Yuji before he continued, "From a group home employee because somebody called them three times asking about one of their kids? And ... I'm not mad but she called me back on my work phone," Nanami paused to give them some more tight looks and Yuji was folding himself together like a fucking lawn chair, smaller and smaller each time Nanami's eyes wandered over to him.

"From my work phone. In my office. My office is locked for a reason, for confidential reasons, because I'm under oath to have all this information locked away, so nobody can get into it," Nanami paused again, if for dramatic effect or a loss for words Sukuna couldn't really say.

Couldn't he choose a day when his back wasn't tortured with fucking electro shocks to have this conversation?

"So you can never do something like this again. If you need to call someone, just tell me. Understand?"

Sukuna and Yuji answered at the same time, but unfortunately did Sukuna answered with, "It wasn't locked." while Yuji said, "We are so sorry!"

Nanami levelled Sukuna with a look, before he said with a flat tone, "It was locked. It is always locked. I could lose my job and get sued if it's not locked." The man paused, letting that sink in and even Sukuna felt a tiny little bit of regret in his stomach. Until now he didn't know he was capable of that emotion.

Nanami cleared his throat before he asked, "Why did you call them anyways?"

"Oh it's just-" Yuji started, but Sukuna closed the book in his lap loudly and Yuji shut up. He had creeped over from the kitchen to Sukuna over the span of Nanami's monologue and now they whisper-argued about Choso while Nanami put down the phone with a sigh.

"Can I please be part of that conflict you have going on over there?" Nanami asked, crossing his arms in front of his chest and leaned with his hip against the table behind him.

"No, it's family business!" Sukuna snapped defensively, grabbing the book in his lap tightly, his fingers tense and his leg began bouncing up and down. It shook shots through his back, and he willed it to stillness.

"Alright family, about your brother then," Nanami concluded with a dry tone and Sukuna became even more fidgety.

"Fuck!" he called out angry and turned over to Yuji, the first person that had to suffer under his anger, "You told him!" The abrupt movement teared at his sore skin and he bit back a grunt.

Yuji's scared expression changed to similar anger in only seconds, "No you just did, you turtle brain!"

"Fuck you!"

"Boys!" Nanami called out with a tired tone, rubbed his eyes and pinched his nose.

"He started it!" Sukuna called out, pointing to Yuji and getting his hand up into Yuji's face, who just slapped it away angry.

"No, I didn't!" Yuji argued, staring Sukuna down.

"Fuck you did!" his leg was bouncing again, and his voice was loud, Nanami's staring made his skin crawl but Yuji was quick to meet his volume.

"You're such an asshole!"

"At least I'm not-"

"So," Nanami was levelling them with a stare. They were all sitting at the kitchen table now, Nanami opposite of them while Sukuna denied himself to look over to Yuji who was sitting next to him. His back was in agony, and it didn't help that his pain ate away at his patience.

Both of them were pounding after Nanami had broken up the yelling between them with louder yelling from himself and made them sit down and have a civil conversation about this.

Fuck this man and his therapeutic approaches!

"What were you trying to achieve with calling that group home?" Nanami asked calm and quiet, hands interlinked and his tinted glasses on the table next to him.

"We were trying to find our brother."

"Yuji!" Sukuna snapped angry, they had never talked about this with any adult, because when they did it always ended up being worse than before.

"He would have found out eventually!" Yuji argued, not impressed by Sukuna sharp tone who kept sulking and turning away from his brother again. He wanted to lay down.

"Why won't you talk about your brother with me? I could help," Nanami asked, his brows furrowed in confusion and Sukuna had to press his hands into fists top not act on his anger and frustration.

"We can't tell you," Yuji said and Sukuna was hopeful for a moment that Yuji wouldn't spill everything like he always did.

"Why?"

"Because he could get in trouble," Sukuna's hope died on the spot and he only slid down further on his chair, arms still crossed defensively in front of his chest. Bad decision for his back and he sat back up straight, avoiding leaning against the hard back rest. Nanami gave him a look about it but Sukuna only glared back.

"Why would he get in trouble? Where is he?" Nanami asked, still confused and kept on staring as the boys stayed silent.

"Come on, it can't be that bad," Nanami tried to get something out of them, and it only took a few seconds until Yuji started talking again. That boy didn't have any fucking backbone!

"We think he isn't allowed to have contact with us,"

"Yuji!" his elbow found his way into Yuji's side and concealed the flinch it brought him. It made his skin crawl that Yuji just laid everything open to Nanami without resistance. Sukuna watched Nanami's body language closely, waiting for the moment where he finally snapped. Hell, he needed a cigarette!

"What? He said he can help!" Sukuna cursed his twin and his stupid faith in people!

"Why wouldn't he be allowed to have contact with you?"

This time Yuji didn't hesitate at all, before the words started spilling out of his mouth, "He would have already tried. We would have heard something from him by now. So he probably landed in a terrible place for troubled teens or something, just because he couldn't finish school and got a record because he had to care for us after we just got out of that other horrible place where they hurt-"

"Stop Yuji! Stop now!" Sukuna interrupted him forcefully, staring at the tabletop while he felt Yuji's and Nanami's eyes on him. It made his skin crawl. The scars on his back started itching now, a reminder that they were there - stretched across his entire back, impossible to hide. As if he could ever forget; the way the pain followed him every damn second of every damn day.

His shoulders had tensed up so hard it added to the already existing pain and his teeth were gritted, but he refused to meet anyone’s eyes.

The silences weighted between them, before Nanami finally spoke again, "I have to call someone. Give me a minute."

And he left the kitchen without another word, closing his office door behind him softly.

Sukuna moved around on the chair, trying to find a position to relief some of the agony, rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck, throwing a heated look over to Yuji, "Congratulations, you did it again! You said too much again. You should finally learn when to shut the fuck up!"

There were tears in Yuji's eyes a second later and Sukuna cursed his brother for being so emotional all the damn time.

"I didn't mean to," Yuji sniffed, his voice was wobbly.

"Stop crying, for fucks sake!" Sukuna snapped but it only made Yuji cry even more, sobs shaking his body as he buried his face in his hands and Sukuna sighed heavy.

He looked up to the ceiling, hoping Yuji would just stop and get himself back together, but of course that was not the case. So he turned towards his twin and roughly pulled him against his chest. His shoulders were not happy with him.

"I said stop crying," Sukuna said, his voice softer now, "He would say it will be fine but I'm not him, so I won't."

Yuji's sobbing slowed down a bit as he pressed his face into Sukuna's chest.

"I miss him," Yuji whispered and if Sukuna would have a heart that would be able to break, it would have right there.

"Yeah, me too," he admitted.

"Did you just admitted to having feelings?" Yuji chuckled, wiping his cheeks with his sleeve.

"Shut the fuck up, you dickhead."

Sukuna let go of Yuji before Nanami came back, the man was still on the phone and his eyes became panicked the moment he saw them. Sukuna wondered how broken they must have looked in that moment, when Nanami's reaction was as strong as it was.

"What happened? Are you fine?" he asked, scanning them both up and down.

"You can't just leave like that! Sukuna cried!" Yuji stated, sniffing his nose and Sukuna only slapped him against the arm.

"I did not! You're the crybaby!"

"Turtlebrain!"

"Cricket-mouth!"

Yuji only point his tongue out at him and Sukuna debated with himself if he should pinch it with his fingernails.

"Boys!" Nanami called out, sounding tired again, "I just wanted to ask Geto to look into your brother’s case but I need a name first."

This time Sukuna was faster answering, "It's Choso."

Nanami only wrote it down on a piece of paper and left again, talking with Geto on the phone. Sukuna snuffed out that little flame of hope that flared up in his chest as he watched Nanami leave, asking Geto about Choso.

The man had again done the opposite of what Sukuna had thought he would do. As he looked over to his twin, Yuji was looking after Nanami with the biggest smile on his face Sukuna had seen in a long time.

During dinner the following Friday after Nanami's call with Geto, Yuji had asked holes into Nanami about his call with the social worker and if there were any news. Of course there weren't but Yuji wasn't getting tired of asking.

While Sukuna didn't talk much, being busy to shovel food into his mouth, he watched how Yuji questioning died down after he got a text from someone.

After the incident with Nanami's work phone, he had gotten them both their own phone without any words. Just dropped two completely new smartphone, with Nanami's and each other's number already saved, into their laps.

They both had stared at him with torn open eyes. Yuji had taken his new phone carefully, inspecting the shiny glass.

"No ... Nanami, we can't accept this-" Yuji had started but Nanami cut him off.

"Yes you can. It's only a phone. You both need it." he had said, and Sukuna had taken it slowly into his hands and turned it around. And that had been that.

It had been weird taking that gift from the man, knowing how much those things were worth. Back when they had been still with Choso, they had two beat up flip phone for emergencies. One for Choso and one for the twins.

He glanced at Yuji's display and the jealousy was eating through him immediately as he saw whom Yuji was texting.

"No phones at the table!" Sukuna called out one of the rules Nanami had established after they both had fallen victim to the addictiveness of the small technological device. His mouth had been full of food while talking and Nanami gave him a look about it.

"But it's Megumi!" Yuji called out and while he said it he pushed his plate over to Sukuna. Yuji had grown to do it more sneakily after Nanami had called him out on it a few times.

This time it didn't work though, because Nanami pushed the plate from Sukuna back to Yuji with a hard look.

"Yeah, that's the damn problem," Sukuna mumbled to himself, but was ignored by the other two.

"He's asking if he can come over tomorrow?" Yuji asked, deflecting what Nanami had just done. His eyes glinted far too much, and Sukuna attacked the food on his plate more aggressively.

"Of course he can come over. I'm at the Gym in the morning though," Nanami answered, and Sukuna gave him a glare. Why did he allow this? Why did the stupid idiot had to come over so much? It had happened so many times over the last weeks and Sukuna was tired of seeing his ugly face in the living room multiple times a week!

"I don't want him here," he snapped.

"But-" Yuji started, the smile dying on his face instantly, but Nanami interrupted him, looking at Sukuna as he said, "You could come to the Gym with me."

"At fucking five in the morning? Fuck no." Sukuna snapped, pushing the panic down. He couldn't possibly hide his pain at the fucking gym!

"I leave at seven," Nanami corrected him with a dry tone.

"No fucking way! I don't enjoy sweating over machines and being gawked at by strangers for it!" It was a lie. Sukuna had forbidden himself to mourn his inability to do sports of any kind a long time ago.

"Let's push it to nine then," Nanami said, his tone had taken a challenging turn and Sukuna stared him down. It felt too much like a fucking test!

Nanami had started picking up on some habits of his that he very much disliked. He didn't need Nanami interfering with his pain problem. He didn't need him paying attention to it! It the end Yuji would find out and that was the last thing he needed.

His twin already felt too guilty for something he didn't took any part in. Sukuna didn't need him bawling his eyes out or pitying him for something that couldn't be fucking changed. He was fine!

"When there is a reason you can't come to the gym with me, health-wise I mean, I can always make a doctor's appointment to get that out of the way." That bastard!

"Fine!"

Nanami gave Sukuna a look as he joined him at the door already in sport clothes while Nanami was wearing his typical Jeans and white T-shirt combination that he deemed his casual clothes.

He didn't offer any explanation and Nanami didn't ask. The man had given them a lot of looks and Sukuna wondered if someone was paying him for it.

Sukuna would rather swallow razor blades than change in the fucking gym in front of strangers or God behold, Nanami. He didn't even let Yuji see them. He wasn't going to give Nanami a reason to bring it up or force him to go to a fucking doctor about it!

There wasn't anything he could do about it. He learned to live with it. It was fine!

A sharp stab drove through his back as he twisted his torso the wrong way and Sukuna grit his teeth. Fucking damn it!

He waited until Nanami was changed and they headed into the big open space of the Gym. It was unsurprisingly empty, since it still was a Saturday morning.

Thinking about Megumi at their place made hot anger bubble in his stomach.

His plan for this trip was simple. No weights. He could raise his arms over his head on a good day without a grunt but only in his imagination would he be able to stem any fucking weight without being crushed by the pain.

So he would stick to running. Would be a bitch but it was possible.

Nanami eyed him closely before he said with a dry tone, "No stretching? You gonna have sore muscles later on." I always have sore muscles you bastard! Sukuna wanted to punch him so bad right now. What was his fucking mission?

"Sore muscles build character!" he pressed out as he punched the buttons on the treadmill.

"You don't need any more character," Nanami teased and Sukuna grit his teeth and started jogging.

Fifteen minutes in, Sukuna realised that this had been a really shitty idea. His eyes were locked on the timer that ran down until the program was done and never until now had he realised how long a fucking minute was!

The repeated jolt that traveled through his body with every step rubbed the damaged nerves in his back raw. Suddenly a sharp knifing pain shot from his right shoulder blade to his lower back and dizziness washed over Sukuna for a second.

Black dots blurred his vision, and he needed to grab the handles of the treadmill for half a second to not stumbled over his own legs and flaceplant under Nanami's watchful eyes.

He knew the man was watching him. He wouldn't give him any fucking indication that something was wrong! Over his rotting, exhausted, nicotine-stained corpse!

The sharp pain was gone a second later and he pulled his mind together quickly. Sukuna forced his breathing back to normal and let go of the handles, adding a few minutes to the program just out of spite.

Heaving for air he sat down on a bench after completing one of the programs on the treadmill. His back was burning but it was fine. He had been worse.

He watched how Nanami ended his rounds of lifting a ridiculous amount of weight and Sukuna was not at all surprised, looking at Nanami's biceps. Jealousy spread into his stomach, and he nipped it in the bud.

A look at the clock and Sukuna sighed loudly. Nanami joined him on the bench a moment later and wiped the sweat from his neck with a towel.

"He's probably still there, isn't he?" Sukuna spit angry.

"Who?" Nanami asked confused as he took a big gulp from his water bottle.

"Him!"

Nanami nodded and sat down next to him and Sukuna sighed again, knowing he was in store for a conversation about this and thought about ditching right then and there.

"I wanted to ask you this for a while now, why do hate him so much?"

"I just hate him," Sukuna replied without meeting Nanami's look which he felt burning into his skin.

"That's not a reason. Did you ever meet him? Talked to him?" Nanami pushed further and Sukuna's skin started to crawl.

"I don't need to talk to him, Yuji talks to him enough for both of us!"

"Sounds like you're jealous," Nanami stated, and Sukuna's head whipped around to the man.

"I'm not jealous! Why would I be jealous?" he glared at Nanami, wishing that the man would just shut the fuck up for once.

"Oh I don't know," Nanami had this innocent, slightly taunting tone and Sukuna wanted to throw something after him, "Maybe because you're scared of being replaced? That Yuji has someone other to talk to than you? Maybe because it's a lot of change from how it has always been? That can be quite scary too. Maybe it's your codependency and strong bond as twins and that you have never been in this situation before," Nanami paused, and Sukuna stared stubbornly at the wall.

"But what do I know, I didn't study this stuff, just a wild guess," the man added, and Sukuna hated his apathetic tone.

"If you know everything, why even ask me?" Sukuna asked, still with spite and anger in his tone and avoiding meeting Nanami's eyes.

"Because I care about your feelings Sukuna."

"Well, don't."

"No can do. But if you want to talk about it, I'm here."

Sukuna found Yuji in the aisle with hair dye, staring down at the various colours.

"You're ready?" Sukuna asked as he stood next to his twin.

"I would like to color my hair sometime," Yuji said, not looking away from the colours.

"Just do it," Sukuna said, not understanding why Yuji was so unsure about this.

"I don't want to do this alone!" he called out, giving Sukuna a side eye as he took a pinkish colour out of the shelf.

"I'm not gonna color my hair pink!"

"You're just scared," Yuji teased and Sukuna glared at him.

"I'm not scared, you're scared!"

"I bet you're too insecure to do this color with me!" Yuji said with an evil smile and Sukuna hated that he knew him this well. He gave Yuji another glare, before he took the color from his hand and moved towards the entrance of the store.

"'Kuna we have to pay first!"

Chapter Text

Walking the dogs on the weekend was always different than walking them in the middle of the week.

For one, there were definitely more people around and Megumi had to navigate other dog owners who were very much bored watching their dogs run around in the dog park all day. The past five years he had them, Megumi had enough conversation with other dog owners for the rest of his life. He personally had no problem watching Cloud and Shadow run around for hours - sitting there, occasionally throwing a ball, enjoying the silence of the dog park for hours.

He had made it an art to evade other dog owners who saw in him an opportunity to cure their own boredom. Megumi had wondered one time too many why people got dogs when they clearly hated a very big part of owning a dog.

So it was a welcoming distraction as Megumi walked down the street he walked down every weekend, both dogs on his side as he recognised Yuji's now pink colored head coming out of a store a few meters in front of him.

They locked eyes after a few moments and Megumi slowly raised his hand and waved at him.

Yuji from the distance froze, before he started to wave back slowly. While he was waving though his hand morphed into giving Megumi the middle finger. He was too far to make out Yuji's face and a moment later he turned his back on Megumi and started walking into the opposite direction of him.

Megumi definitely hadn't raged about Yuji for the rest of the day. He definitely hadn't thought about what he would say to Yuji the next day at school. He definitely didn't have a discussion with himself in the shower, repeating the wave-to-middle-finger gesture Yuji had pulled on him.

Could he have just called or texted Yuji? Maybe.

Was he raging silently instead and ate all the frustration up into himself? Definitely not.

Unfortunately all of those arguments and raging heat in his gut evaporated as soon as he saw Yuji the next morning, heading his way with a thousand-volt smile and an energetic toddler wave.

Megumi waved him back and his body all on its own pulled the same gesture Yuji had hit him yesterday with and watched how Yuji face crumbled together like a sandcastle. Glee turned to confusion and hurt in milliseconds and Megumi was regretting his actions only a moment later.

But Yuji surprised him yet again. Instead of turning away, he came running, immediately asking what was wrong.

"Don't know, I thought this was our normal greeting now!" Megumi couldn't get the passive aggressive tone out of his voice and deep down he really didn't want to. He wanted to be mad, that it wasn't only Yuji's fault and mainly a completely different topic that fueled that rage in his gut Megumi ignored like Gojo the dishes in the sink.

"I don't understand. Why are you being so mean?" Yuji called out, holding Megumi back by his blazer who already wanted to head into the school.

"Yesterday this was totally fine for you!" Megumi shot back, trying to rip his arm out of Yuji's grip but he was holding on too tight, and Megumi wasn't really trying for serious.

"I didn't see you yesterday! Why would I flip you off? That's so mean!" Yuji argued, his looks a bit too hurt.

"Don't lie! I saw you!" Megumi noticed that this was getting ridiculous, but he didn't know how to stop. The anger was there, and it needed to get out somehow.

"I was home the entire day! Nanami witnessed!"

"Then what?" Megumi stared Yuji down, "someone stole your face?"

Yuji huffed. "That's none sense! Where did you see me?"

"The park? I was with the dogs."

Suddenly Yuji's face was lighting up as if a switch had been flipped. "You probably saw Sukuna then!"

"What? You're twins or something?" Megumi huffed, finally pulling his arm out of Yuji's weakened hold.

Yuji was totally unbothered by Megumi's sarcastic tone and only nodded like crazy, "Yeah actually we are. But we look nothing alike!"

Megumi groaned and pinched his nose while he groaned, "Yuji! You didn't think about telling me something important like this?"

"But you know I have a brother!"

"Yeah a brother!" Megumi called out but Yuji was still fixing him with that empty brain look. "A twin is a completely different situation!"

"Well, I see him like ... eighty percent of the day I don't need to talk about him when we're apart," Yuji said, pulling his hard thinking face in which his eyes always rolled up to the sky and he crunched hid brows together very hardly.

And suddenly Megumi couldn't hold onto the anger any longer and a shy smile was stealing itself on his face without his permission.

Megumi had always been amazed by how silky and smooth Geto hair had been. Whenever he was wearing it open and Megumi had planted his toddler body over Geto, he had played with his hair.

His own was always unruly and never did what he wanted it to do, it stood up in weird places and Megumi had been convinced his hair had its own will and wouldn't bow to him.

For as long as Megumi could remember, Geto had taken meticulous care of his hair, handling it with a dedication Megumi had never understood as a child. There was not a day where Geto's hair didn't look cared for, it was either in an artful way braided out of his way or when he didn't have the time, falling down his back and over his shoulders like a damn waterfall.

So it was even more devastating as Geto picked him up for staying with him for the next two weeks and his hair was up in a messy bun. Long strains all over his face, randomly pinned back with way too many bobby pins as if he had slept with that bun and only pinned the strains out of his face that had gotten out and bothered him.

Megumi didn't say anything about it. Geto's forced gleefulness and the slightly more cluttered apartment told him more than Geto ever would. Depression was a word that Megumi had only heard behind closed doors. Gojo and Geto always tried to shield him from that side of their lives, not realising it didn't work like that. Megumi had learned early to pay attention to the little things.

Little things like that Geto's work files were scattered more through the apartment than usually. That in Megumi's bare room was a little layer of dust that had never been there before because Geto always paid attention to keeping his room clean when he knew Megumi would get here. That the trashcans were filled to the brim, ready to be taken out several days ago. That the fridge was only filled with one glass of mayonnaise and vegetables that were begging to be relieved from their suffering. That the sofa looked suspiciously like Geto had spent most of his nights there rather than in his bed.

Megumi took all of that in with a glance, mimic cold and showing no sign of noticing those things. He didn't know if Geto was noticing how Megumi - in his opinion - smoothly, tricked Geto in going shopping and putting his folders away.

As they cooked together in the evening, the fridge was stocked, and the trashcans were empty, and Megumi wondered not for the first time why Geto was always doing better when Megumi was around. Why could he do those things with Megumi together but not on his own?

Cloud was currently snoring on the sofa, exhausted from their hours in the dog park while Shadow had stayed at Gojo. Geto's apartment was not directly tiny, but it was way too small for two grown German Shepards.

At the end of the week everything was back to the way it had always been with Geto and Megumi could breathe a little bit lighter. He even was so out of his mind and not thinking about the chaos his family had turned into over the past half year, he even invited Yuji over who jumped on the opportunity immediately.

"Hello Cloud, it's so good to see you again!" Yuji said in this high-pitched tone everyone always used with dogs and cuddled the big white fluff ball for a solid minute before he even said hello to Megumi.

"You joined me on their walk last week!" Megumi stated, standing behind Yuji with his arms crossed in front of his chest and watching how Cloud turned on his back and demanded belly rubs from Yuji immediately.

"Yeah! Last week! That's seven days!" Yuji stated before he went right back to coddling the dog.

"You want some snacks?" Geto called from the kitchen and Megumi groaned.

"No! Stop asking if we want shit!" Megumi shouted back annoyed. Geto had been hovering and dancing around them, far too excited about Megumi bringing a friend home.

Eventually they made it into his room, Cloud followed on Yuji's heels waiting for the pets to resume and Yuji was more than happy to oblige. It didn't even take Geto more than five minutes to knock against the door and hand them a plate of snacks that Megumi hadn't asked for and purposely left the door open as he left, shooting Megumi a look that said enough.

"Well, your room is so ..." Yuji turned around himself and took in the bare walls and the lack of personal stuff, "...nothing."

"Wow, don't say that I spend hours on these bare walls!" Megumi slapped a hand to his chest as if the comment really hurt him and Yuji made that soft chuckle he always did when Megumi was being sarcastic like that.

"No, seriously, why does this look like you moved in yesterday?" he asked after a few moments.

"It's kinda exhausting to bring all my stuff with me when I switch every two weeks," Megumi explained and sat down next to Yuji joining him on petting Cloud who was probably in dog heaven right now.

Yuji gave him a confused look, "What do you mean, switch?"

"Homes? Dads?" Megumi answered, confused because he was pretty sure Yuji had already caught up on that.

But instead Yuji's eyes went as wide as plates as he asked, "You have multiple dads?"

"Unfortunately."

"That's so not fair! And why don't I know this stuff about you? We are friends for a month!" Yuji complained and Cloud whined heartbreakingly as Yuji stopped petting him. Dutifully he went right back to it and Megumi watched the soft smile that the white fluff ball was able to conjure up on Yuji's face.

"What do you want me to say?" Megumi started lost in thought, staring down on his dog while speaking, "Hey I'm Megumi and my dads are getting divorced, nice to meet you?"

"Well..." Yuji evaded his eyes too, using Cloud as distraction just as Megumi had before he continued, "... yeah kinda. Like not immediately but isn't that what friends talk about?"

"How should I know?" Megumi shrugged his shoulders, and the boys looked at each other for a moment before they started laughing.

"But seriously!" Megumi started, trying to stop laughing, "You didn't tell me you had a twin brother until last week!"

"I thought you knew!" Yuji was still laughing and wiping little tears from his eyes.

"How would I know?" Megumi called out, a smile still on his face and Yuji groaned.

"We are everywhere together?" he made a pause as if this would explain everything but as Megumi stayed silent Yuji continued, "And we look so alike that our brother had to draw on Sukuna's face when we were little to tell us apart!"

As Megumi imagined this scene the grin on his face went even wider and he said, "He always wears that stupid hood of his hoodie, I could never see his ugly face!"

"Hey! You talk about my face too!" Yuji called out playing hurt by those words and Megumi felt how his smile turned into something even more gentle.

"No. Your face is much softer," he said without thinking and Yuji's eyebrows nearly shot up into the sky. "Aww, you like my face!"

"I never said that!" he could feel how the tips of his ears grew hotter, and his mouth went dry.

Just in that moment - of course because anytime else it would have been only half as embarrassing - Geto reappeared in the doorframe.

"Do you boys need anything?" he asked, a smile on his face Megumi hadn't seen in month.

"Megumi said he likes my face!" Yuji said instead, beaming up at Geto like Cloud always did when someone told him he was a good boy. The wagging tail was the only thing that was missing ... and maybe a little bit more fur.

"Aww Megs!" Geto called out, pushing his bottom lip forward and made that teasing face of his. If Megumi hadn't wanted exactly that expression on Geto's face for the past month, he maybe could have been mad at Yuji for spilling secrets like this.

"I never fucking said that!" Megumi's voice got louder as he tried saving his pride, but that train had probably left the station hours ago.

"Hey, we don't swear!" Geto scolded but the smile wasn't leaving, and Megumi desperately wanted to take a picture and show it to Gojo.

"Dad leave!" he said instead making attempts to stand up and push Geto out himself.

"Aww look at him blushing!" Geto teased and Megumi didn't hesitate to throw a pillow at Geto what made him finally retreat into the hall while laughing full heartedly.

It had been a long time he had heard Geto laugh like that and right now in that moment, everything seemed like it would eventually be okay.

The two weeks at Geto flew by faster than Megumi anticipated and before he knew it, he back at Gojo's. The permanent switch of homes made Megumi feel like he didn't belong in either one. Always a pilgrim between the two. Every time he thought one of his dads and him had found a routine or a groove, the time was up, and he had to pack his bags again.

So it was no surprise to him that the first morning back at Gojo's Megumi felt like someone had poured cement into his bones. Cloud and Shadow were already whining, wanting to go out pretty badly and wouldn't it be for the consequence of cleaning up their mess in the house Megumi probably would've not been able to make himself leave his bed.

While dragging himself through the streets half asleep he called Geto, asking about nothing really and only making sure he was getting up.

When Megumi got back to the house, Gojo's car was still sitting in the parking lot, and he headed inside confused. Normally Gojo would be gone when Megumi was getting ready for school but now his pops was sitting at the kitchen table, the tinted glasses on the table next to him and his chin propped up on his hand, eyes closed.

Megumi sat down next to him without a word, his bowl of obligatory cereal in front of him with zero appetite and joined Gojo's suffering.

"I don't want to go to work today!" Gojo suddenly whined and his body crumbled down onto the kitchen table as he began to rub his already irritated eyes. Megumi only slightly huffed at the drama queen Gojo often was.

"I don't want to go to school either," Megumi said, spinning his spoon around in the already soft cereal.

There was a pause and as Megumi glanced over to Gojo the man was giving him a mischievous side eye. But it took another second before he finally said something.

"Wanna play video games and order pizza for breakfast?" Gojo asked with an evil grin on his face and Megumi pushed the bowl away from himself, "I thought you never ask."

"I'm gonna call work and the school!"

"I'm gonna call the pizza place. Same as always?"

"Hell ya!"

Megumi didn't know how many rounds of Mario Bros they had played but his eyes slowly started to burn, and he felt like there was a dent in the shape of his ass on the sofa.

Gojo died again and nearly threw the control across the room. Megumi could luckily pull it from his hands just in time. As if stung by a bee Gojo jumped up from the sofa and went all sugar rush on Megumi.

"I've got so much energy right now!" he said, while making jumping jets through the living room.

"You ate too much sugar again!" Megumi stated and stole another cookie from the coffee table that was covered in fast food and all kinds of snacks.

"Yeah I did! Why didn't you stop me?" Gojo asked as he moved over to push-ups.

"You're still the parent," Megumi stated unimpressed and watched as Gojo was out of breath after five push-ups.

"Shit yeah I am," he said, sat up but let himself fall back on his back and stare up to the ceiling as he complained, "But I don't want to be a parent today!"

"Yeah. I noticed."

Silence weighted between them and Megumi couldn't pin down how he felt about Gojo's statement. But before his mind could take him on a wild drive into overthinking-city Gojo called out, "We have to do something!"

Megumi looked over to where Shadow was dozing in his crate.

"Well, the dogs need to go out," he said as unmotivated as in the morning.

"YEAH! Let's go with the dogs!"

Megumi gave Gojo a look, "Together?" he asked disbelieving. Gojo was never coming on a walk out of his own free will.

"Fuck yeah! Together!"

Megumi debated for a moment before he made up his mind. "Nnn-yeaokay."

In the dog park Megumi watched how Gojo played fetch with Could and it was one of the most hilarious things he had seen in a long time. The white-haired man was chasing the white dog with far too much enthusiasm and when Cloud let Gojo catch up to him their roles reversed, and the white dog chased the man through the park. Megumi decided he could watch this for hours and he didn't even notice the little smile that poured onto his lips.

He was surrounded by other dog owners, the average age around forty to fifty and it didn't take long until one man asked him, "Don't you need to be at school kid?"

"I'm here with my Dad." Megumi stated, the leashes of Cloud and Shadow slung over his shoulders while Shadow was lazily trotting through the park, making friends with other dogs now and then but mostly sniffing around on his own.

"Where is your Dad?" the man asked, as if he was really caring and not only doing it for a good look in front of the other people around them.

"That nutcase over there," Megumi said, pointed to Gojo, who was currently running away from Cloud. The man followed his pointing and watched Gojo for solid five seconds before he turned away with an uncomfortable "Ah."

"He can be quite the amazing Dad sometimes," Megumi mumbled to himself.

Chapter Text

Sukuna would never say this out loud but being at the repair shop changed something. It would be too sappy to admit to himself, that probably for the first time he actually felt competent at something.

Every question that he made himself ask was met with Ino's kind nature to share all the knowledge he had collected during his internship.

There was an acceptance towards not cleaning and running around covered in grease that Sukuna was enjoying to the fullest. Sometimes he felt like a kid again that was allowed to play in the dirt, and nobody was giving a shit.

But the thing that really turned his life for the better was Ino pulling a brightly coloured can out of his backpack and opened it with a hissing sound. Sukuna watched him confused as he took a sip and offered him the can next.

"Never had one? Love that shit, keeps your focus straight and wiggles that part in your brain, you know?" Ino said and held the energy drink out to him. Sukuna took it curiously and sipped. It was as if chugging acid down his throat and from the very first second on Sukuna was hooked.

Ino had surrender the can to Sukuna with a chuckle as he saw the expression of enlightenment on his face and pulled out another one out of his backpack for himself.

The caffein hit Sukuna like a fucking monster truck and squashed his exhaustion with its massive wheels. Someone had suddenly turned on the lights in his brain, after he had stumbled through the dark his entire life.

Currently, Ino and him had the repair shop to themselves. The boss was already out, and it was a lazy afternoon where only a few customers found their way in. The two of them worked on their assigned jobs and being two energy drinks into his four hours shift his brain was working like a fucking laser pointer. While Sukuna was leaning over one engine of a car and Ino over another, he was already raging. His tongue was looser than usual but it didn't really matter, Ino and him had become used to talking bullshit and none-sense all the time when they worked together.

"And then after Yuta was gone he complained to Nanami about it and acted like I was the crazy one!" Sukuna complained loudly, not having to regulate his voice.

"He did what? How dare he!" Ino called out indignant and looked up from his work to give Sukuna his full attention.

"Yeah! That's what I thought! And then I had to pull out this old story about the man and his ghost dog!"

Ino's supporting face turned to confusion as he asked, "His what?"

Sukuna turned back to the engine and tightened a screw aggressively as he explained, "We lived in this shit-hole with too many apartments in one house and the neighbour always dragged a dog leash behind him, acting like there was a dog, talked to him, threw treats at him and that shit and he said to everybody around him how cute his dog was and I always petted it."

Silence filled the shop, and Sukuna looked back up to Ino, who was staring at him, more confused than ever. "You petted what?"

"Well, I petted ..." Sukuna bit his bottom lip, not so sure anymore he wanted to share this with Ino, his mouth had worked like on autopilot until now, no space for rational thinking in his bee-hive brain at the moment. "The place I thought the dog would be."

Another tense moment of silence before Ino was working very hard to control the grin on his face as he asked, "So you petted the air?"

"Yeah. I don't see the problem in-" Ino started to pretend to pet a dog and it looked so ridiculous even Sukuna had to bite down on his lips to not start grinning.

"So you petted-" Ino continued his air-petting, "the air? And acted like there was a dog?" At this point, Ino couldn't hold back the laughter anymore, and Sukuna clicked his tongue with an annoyed huff.

"Oi shut the fuck up! It made the man very happy; you know!" he turned his attention back to the engine and hid his smile from Ino.

"No, no it's cute!" Ino tried talking in between his laughter, "Can you... can you show me?" Ino asked while he needed to hold his stomach because the idiot laughed so hard.

Sukuna locked eyes with Ino as he started to pet the air but turned it mid-pet into giving him the finger and Ino threw a dramatic hand over his heart in played hurtness.

"You're so rude! Why are you not petting the air for me?"

"I hate you!" Sukuna mumbled under his breath, pretending to turn his complete concentration on the engine in front of him. The drink gave him the energy to ignore the burning on his back from sitting on wooden chairs at school all day long.

"No," Ino waited until Sukuna finally looked up to him again before he said in a teasing tone, "You love me!" There was a beat of silence in which Ino was not breaking eye contact, his eyes weirdly wide and hinting at something that surpassed Sukuna completely.

The moment was only disrupted by a certain song that came on. Ino had his phone connected to the speaker of the repair shop. Only when it was the two of them had Ino the control over the music, since otherwise the older employees of the shop claimed that right.

"I LOVE THAT SONG!" Ino screamed and one of his hands landed hard on Sukuna's shoulder and squeezed it sightly. Sukuna flinched as the burn traveled from his shoulder across the center of his back. Ino have him a look before he retracted his hand quickly, a "Sorry," already on his lips but Sukuna only turned away from him quickly. He reached over to the music box that stood in his arm's reach and turned up the volume until ear shattering pop drove through his head.

It did what he hoped it would and Ino forgot all about his embarrassing flinching and started to yell along.

"NICE TO MEET YOU WHERE YOU'VE BEEN I CAN SHOW YOU INCREDIBLE THINGS!" it wasn't the first music performance Ino had given him. Sukuna had learned one thing very quickly about Ino. He loved loud music and he loved Taylor fucking Swift.

The screwdriver Ino had used only moments ago was misused as a microphone and Sukuna wiped his hands on his overalls knowing Ino was not stopping any time soon.

"MAGIC MADNESS HEAVEN SIN SAW YOU THERE AND I THOUGHT", Ino was coming closer while singing, holding eye contact the entire time, "OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT FACE!" he took Sukuna's face in both of his grease covered hands and shook it around without any hesitation. If there was any tension building up in Sukuna during that interaction, he heavily denied himself to feel any of it and only pushed Ino away from him annoyed. There certainly was no heat rising to his cheeks after Ino had stopped touching his face!

"YOU LOOK LIKE MY NEXT MISTAKE, LOVE A GAME WANNA PLAAAAAAAY AAY!" Ino had the screwdriver back in his hand, still standing only inches away and stretched out his hand holding it to Sukuna like he would with a microphone. Sukuna only stared him down and there was another moment of weird tension that Sukuna didn't know how to handle.

So he stood frozen and stared until Ino took the screwdriver back and yelled, "I CAN MAKE THE BAD BOYS GOOD FOR A WEEKEND!" He did a weird gesture, as if to swipe a strain of hair back behind his ear and Sukuna had to swallow the tightness in his throat.

"I GOT A BLANK SPACE BABY AND I'LL WRITE YOUR NAME!" Ino leaned half over Sukuna while singing, writing something into the dirt on the hood of the car Sukuna was working at. He glanced down and his eyes nearly pooped out of his head as he saw that Ino had written his name.

"Oh my fucking god!" Sukuna groaned annoyed and deeply embarrassed and turned away from Ino, out of the tight space he had pressed him into and walked away from him.

The song kept playing as Ino laughed the loudest and freest Sukuna had ever heard him laugh and he forcefully ignored how his heart started nearly jumping out of his chest. That was definitely a side effect of the energy drink and nothing else!

Sukuna had taken the public transportation more in the last few weeks than he had in his entire life before. Maybe because Nanami had gotten them bus tickets or maybe because now he actually had places to go.

The drive from the repair shop to the apartment was not far, but far enough to make Sukuna punching up the volume of his ear buds to get the damn song out of his mind.

It was useless though, because as he took the elevator into the apartment he was already back to humming Blank Space against his will.

As he passed the living room, Yuji shot up from the sofa and Sukuna nearly threw something at him out of surprise.

"Since when are you a swifty?" Yuji called out accusing, throwing him a look as if the devil himself had walked through the door and not Sukuna.

"Bless you." Sukuna shot right back, recovering from his shock and working hard to not let Yuji know that he had straddled him. He definitely wouldn't hear the end of it.

"Ha?"

Sukuna groaned, throwing his jacket on the sofa as he said, "What is a fucking Swifty?"

"Taylor Swift." Yuji stated as he still watched him with that horrified expression. "You just hummed a Taylor Swift song!"

Sukuna looked away and continued walking. "No I didn't. Your ears are broken."

"Don't gaslight me!" Yuji shot right back, standing on the sofa now and looked down on Sukuna still with that accusing look.

"Gaslighting?" Sukuna asked in that played dumbness, "What's that?"

"No!" Yuji called and pointed the finger now like a twelve year old. "We are not going to do this again! You're not going to gaslight me into not knowing what gaslighting is!"

Sukuna gave him a cheeky smile, slapping a hand dramatically over his heart as he said, "I would never do that!" That he only had Ino in the back of his mind who had done this exact motion only hours prior, Sukuna ignored like he had everything else Ino-related the entire day.

Yuji would call him out on just ignoring and deflecting what he didn't understand but Sukuna thought this was a very valid handling of the situation.

Yuji shot him a look but dropped the topic and Sukuna pulled out the can he had sneaked away from Ino with a sweet smile. The older boy had only given him a dramatic sigh but hadn't argued.

The can opened with a satisfying clack, and he chugged half of it down in one gulp. Yuji looked back up from his place at the couch and eyed the can in his hand with a frown on his face.

"Adding another addiction to your shelf?" he teased and Sukuna huffed.

"Jealous?" Sukuna shot back and Yuji only snorted and lay back down on the sofa.

"Where did you even get that?" Nanami was suddenly standing in the door frame of the living room. Where he fuck had he come from?

"Wouldn't you like to know."

Sukuna had successfully established his favourite spot on the sofa so far that neither Yuji nor Nanami were asking him to move his ass anymore. It helped that he had never did when they asked.

Only downside of that was, they casually joined him on the sofa when turning on the TV. Rationally it was still Nanami's sofa, and everyone could sit down if they chose too, but as Yuji and Megumi were sitting down to watch a movie and continued to ignore him completely he thought that it was getting a bit too far.

As a statement and to make Megumi more uncomfortable Sukuna decided not to move, watched how they chose a boring ass movie to watch and sat next to one another with more than an inch between them.

Sukuna regretted his decision to stay when they both began to slowly-as-fuck inch towards one another. Yuji was constantly looking over to check on Megumi who's look was locked on the TV where two sappy teenagers were dancing around each other in the most cliché way possible.

The painful to watch slowest slow burn of all time was happening right in front of Sukuna's eyes and it nearly drove him mad to watch how his brother finally worked up the courage to scotch up a notch and lean against the other one. At the contact Megumi froze up and relaxed a moment later, looking down on Yuji with something that came near to a smile.

Both of them blushed bright red and Sukuna clicked his tongue in disappointment. Even he was getting impatient and he wasn't even part of the slow burn.

Since the boring ass movie on TV was not catching his attention in the slightest. The energy drink in his hand was empty again and his thoughts were racing, he started drifting away back to the repair shop and a certain idiot.

It had been a month since he had started working there a few hours a week. A week past since the Blank Space incident and his mind wandered back to last weekend.

He had been at the shop, working alongside Ino who had weekend duty, discussing the new car job that had come in. Ino had send him to the storeroom to get a tool he needed.

"It's not here!" Sukuna had yelled from the storage room, looking through the metal shelfs but not finding what Ino had described to him.

"It has to be! Left side, on the middle shelf!" Ino had yelled back and Sukuna had pressed his eyes aggressively wide open, staring at the place that Ino described to him.

"I tell you, IT'S NOT FUCKING HERE!" Sukuna had yelled louder, patience running thin. He had heard how something metallic was thrown to the ground and heavy steps had come towards him.

Sukuna had crossed his arms in front of his chest, tipped his feet on the ground waiting for Ino, who came bursting into the storage room that was way too small for two people and pressed into Sukuna's space, reaching for a funny looking tool.

"It's right here you dipshit!" Ino said, pressing the tool into Sukuna's face.

"Well if you would have described it to me better I would have found it!" Sukuna snapped. Ino huffed and held the tool up again.

"I said, the metal bar with a hook on one side and a funny looking end on the other!"

"That description fits to fucking half of the tools in this fucking room you idiot!" Sukuna shot back with as much heat as Ino had started with.

They went back and forth like that for a few minutes, Sukuna didn't even remember half the stuff he had thrown into Ino's face who had casually picked up Sukuna's aggressive attitude and turned it right back at him.

At one point Ino had said something that made the speech region of Sukuna's brain freeze up and he had no words. Which Ino took as a fucking victory over their discussion, so Sukuna had done the only grown up thing he could think of. He pushed Ino into one of the shelves.

It had taken the other one a moment to comprehend what Sukuna had done and for a second he realised that maybe it hadn't been the best thing to do, but Ino had surprised him yet again as he came right back at Sukuna.

The storage room had been far too small for two people standing inside and it was way too small for two people fighting inside it.

Quickly Sukuna found himself right in front of Ino, inches apart, slightly looking up to him since Ino was still a bit taller, pushed against a shelf. He had Ino's hand pinned above his head, trying to keep his finger's away from his back, Sukuna had caged him in. They stared at one another heaving heavily.

The room fell silent, the tension was so thick and tight even Sukuna could feel it buzz over his skin and just in that moment - pressed against Ino - it fell like shells from his eyes.

Without another thought, running on caffeine, nicotine and spite alone, Sukuna grabbed Ino's face with one hand, and their lips crashed together like the Titanic into the iceberg. Later Sukuna had red scratches on his upper arms and hips and Ino discovered only as they left the storage room that he had a bleeding scratch on his neck.

At one point Ino had wretched his hands out of Sukuna's grip and made attempts to pull him closer. Sukuna had ripped his lips of Ino's and stopped his movement. He grabbed Ino's wrists once again and planted Ino's hands on his neck.

"Only here!" he had rasped, dangerously low and Ino had given him an unreadable look before his finger's clawed itself into Sukuna's hair at the back of his neck and stayed there.

"What is he doing with his face? It looks weird," Megumi's whisper ripped Sukuna out of the better place he had conjured up in his mind and got dragged back to the living room.

"That's..." Yuji started and had another look at Sukuna's face before he continued, "Oh I didn't see that one in a while but I think he's smiling." Yuji was grinning at him with that teasing expression and Sukuna drifted back completely and blinked. Realising his cheeks hurt from how long he'd been grinning to himself.

Now Megumi and Yuji were staring at him and Sukuna did the only grown-up thing he could think off - stretching lazily, his shirt slipped up just enough to show his stomach. Locking eyes with Megumi, he teased slowly, "If you keep undressing me with your eyes, I'm gonna catch a cold!"

Megumi's blushing red cheeks were worth every damn word and Sukuna had only laughed loud as Yuji's face had squeezed up in disgust and he made a retching sound.

Sukuna didn't know why Nanami always seemed to spawn in the most annoying moments.

He was currently leaning against the railing on the balcony, cigarette hanging between his fingers as he downed the rest of his new favourite energy drink. A white can with neon colours as assaulting as it tasted. This one made his teeth hurt, his brain vibrate and the first sip felt like his soul was leaving his body for a second. It was a great distraction to the knifing pain in his back. His scars had been tight since morning and Sukuna suspected another growth spurt that made the scar tissue all tight. The more he grew the more limited his mobility became, it mostly took some days before his skin stopped feeling too tight to fit him. Today though, he hadn't even been able to raise his elbows higher than his fucking shoulders.

"How many of those did you had today?" Nanami asked, suddenly standing by his side eyeing the can and the cigarette with this disapproving look on his face.

"Dunno. Lost count," Sukuna said, tapping his restless fingers against the metal can.

"That's not a good sign."

"Well, neither is your face, old man."

Nanami sighed deeply, before he went on, "You know they're not a substitute for actual sleep, right?"

Sukuna clicked his tongue. It was barely eleven pm. It was not as if Nanami could hear the headache that split his skull open, or see the fried ends of his nerves jumping around like cut electric cables.

"Yeah, yeah whatever," he took another sip and felt how Nanami's look was burning holes into his skin.

"You do realize caffein in those amounts can cause heart problems, insomnia, anxiety-"

"Cool. I already have all of that," Sukuna cut him off.

That finally shut Nanami up for a second and Sukuna took it as a win. That was until he glanced over to the man and groaned annoyed, because there was no longer only disapprovement in Nanami's face but also worry. Fucking great!

"If you're doing this to cope, as an attempt to deal with other things, I can-"

"Yeah, this conversation is over," Sukuna snapped, took a last drag from the cigarette and threw it over the railing before he headed back inside. Nanami didn't follow him, didn't even say anything. The only thing Sukuna heard was a long, tired sigh. Yea, feel you on that, old man!

Yuji looked up as Sukuna waltzed into their room, throwing himself right next to Yuji, moving around until he found a position that didn't hurt as much.

"Dude, you look like a zombie. When was the last time you slept?" Yuji said, concern bleeding into his tone.

"I'm trying to sleep right now, you dickhead!" Sukuna snapped and balled his hands into fists to stop them from shaking.

"How are you planning to do that with five liters of caffeine in your body?" Sukuna looked up at Yuji at the comment.

He glare. He knew it. Because Yuji's judging look was crumbling together like a house of cards, snipped over with a flick his a wrist. Maybe if he didn't feel like growing too tall for his own body to fit him, he would've felt guilty about it.

"Fucking watch me!"

It had been a fruitless attempt really. Sukuna kept moving around in the little space of the single bed, trying to breath away the pain. His back wasn't even his only problem anymore. The nausea in his stomach felt like an empty pit, yawning for more of everything. The exhaustion sitting deep in his bones locked his limbs up, he was too tired to change his position every twenty minutes. But instead of being allowed into the savouring valley of blacked out sleep, Sukuna's mind was racing, blinking and beeping like an arcade hall.

Yuji hadn't said anything more, instead he had wordlessly brought him a glass of water after a while and some white pills. They looked like some of Nanami's pain meds and Sukuna downed them without saying anything.

His twin gave him a wide-eyed look and Sukuna tried to ignore that this might've been the clearest admission he ever made to Yuji regarding his pain. His emotions were a tangled mess right now. They always were and trying to put anything into coherent explanations knotted up his tongue and sewed his mouth shut.

Sukuna tensed for a second as he felt Yuji's hand on his neck long after they had shut the light and said goodnight. He couldn't bite down the sigh that left his dead weight body as Yuji carefully started to massage the muscles in his neck with gentle fingers.

How many hours until this stops? The thought shot through his racing brain in a weak second, as he let himself lean into Yuji's hands for just a tiny moment.

"Where're ya goin'?" Sukuna mumbled out, feeling all floaty from how Yuji had managed to work out the knots in his muscles. He felt how Yuji stated moving away from him and got out of the bed.

"You need more space. Stretch .... slowly, slowly ... yes like that, go on! Alright ... I'm going to be right over there, okay?" Yuji whispered back into the darkness of the room as he moved into Sukuna's bed on the other side.

Sukuna stretched his limbs slowly, testing if it did anything. It felt weird having this much space but he felt how his back muscles slowly started relaxing. His skin started to calm down, started to get used to his grown bones and muscles.

He let Yuji's breathing calm him down, strained his ear to hear every single one. Remembered himself that his twin was right there, even if he wasn't pressed up to his side anymore.

Chapter Text

Nanami had never been able to relate to those parents that were complaining about how time was running away from them. Passing through their hands like sand, unable to hold onto it. How their kids seemed to grow up so fast, it was flashing past their eyes in a blur if they weren't paying enough attention.

For him personally time had been a lazy thing. Slowly crawling forward, leaving him with too much time on his hands and nothing to fill it with, since his life had become so silent and slow.

That was until he checked his calendar one day and suddenly, he could relate. Because suddenly it had been two months since the boys had moved in with him. It felt more like two weeks rather than two months and Nanami wandered aimlessly through the apartment, trying to process the thought.

He walked the hall, something he often did when he needed to sort his mind and savoured the silence of the apartment for once, with the twins still at school. As he passed their room a cloud of stale air hit his nose and Nanami stopped in his step and carefully tapped the door with his foot.

An awful smell of teenage boy hit him, and Nanami clicked his tongue, debating for a moment if he really wanted to put himself through this. Eventually he headed into the room and took in the mess on one side and the less messy opposite side. Nanami had always thought of the cliché of twins being these two sides of a medal, more different than two people could be and at the end of the day still quite the same person. A concept you could only understand when seeing it with your own eyes.

Sukuna's side of the room was cluttered with dirty clothes, used dishes piled on the desk he was supposed to use for homework and the bed was in contrast to Yuji's not made.

Surprised Nanami dug through the last few weeks and tried to pin down a moment when Sukuna and Yuji had stopped sleeping in the same bed. He had never said anything about it, since he knew they needed the comfort of the other one to cope.

Now though they seemed slowly detaching themselves from each other. As an effect from feeling safe with Nanami or just because there were so many new things for both of them to try, Nanami couldn't quite say. He only observed silently, and with a tiny smirk on his lips, how Sukuna was less and less obsessively glued to Yuji's side and how Yuji started to find confidence in himself without using Sukuna as his crutch and back bone.

Nanami fetched the laundry basket, which seemed to only be used by Yuji and started picking up Sukuna's clothes from the floor. He wasn't that surprised and only mildly annoyed as he picked up Sukuna's trousers and clutter like screws, nuts, screwdrivers, cigarette butts and tobacco residue clattered out of the pockets to the ground. Whenever he came back from the repair shop, the rattle of metal against metal was heard from his pockets.

Nanami continued picking up clothes, threw them into the washing machine and headed back for the overflowing trash cans. He pulled out the plastics bags and he shouldn't even be surprised anymore because underneath the crumpled papers, that made a pathetic disguise, the bag was filled with empty cans of energy drinks.

He stopped counting at twenty-five and sat down on Sukuna's bed with a sigh. The kid had looked better the last days than the whole last week, but after two months of growing accustomed to one another Nanami started to see the cracks. He saw the flinching, the careful movement, the exhaustion, the constant napping in weird places, heard the pained hissing sound, the very quiet groans when Sukuna thought no one was listening.

What exactly was wrong, Nanami couldn't say. Sukuna had blocked every and all conversation that just slightly headed into that direction. Even Yuji was tight lipped and unhelpful.

What Nanami was now watching was a teen, clearly in pain regularly, trying to cope and function on nicotine and caffeine alone, stubborn as a fucking three-year-old and unable to accept any help. He couldn't stand to the side and let Sukuna drink and smoke his health away, he didn't want to know what happened when those things weren't enough anymore, and stronger substances would take their place.

Any remotely forceful things ended in chaos when Sukuna was involved. He hated authority like the plague, any slightly parental action was blocked, mocked and casted to the side like a burned down cigarette.

Nanami eyed the trash bag again, then his eyes glanced over Sukuna's nightstand. In the middle of the chaos a mug, reused as an ash tray and rage shot through his veins as he saw which mug it was. The one Haibara had gifted him after they had been freshly married.

He didn't know! Nanami tried to calm himself down. He couldn't have known, since you never talk about it! the more scolding voice, a voice that sounded a lot like his husband's, whispered in his ear and Nanami pushed himself up from the bed and started without a second thought.

He grabbed the mug, the trash bags and came back for a sweep of the room. He found a stash of around eight more energy drinks in the back of Sukuna's closet and two more packets of cigarettes in his nightstand. He kept searching and found a few more of each on Yuji's side of the room, not doubting that Sukuna thought he wouldn't look there.

Hands on his hips, Nanami eyed the room. It was still chaos but after second thought Nanami preferred it this way. The room looked like somebody was living here, somebody used this space. He preferred seeing the clothes on the ground and schoolbooks flying around, crumpled up sheet as indicator someone had slept here.

Five years ago, his apartment had looked just like this, and his thoughts wandered to Haibara. How his husband had always been a bit messy too, cluttering the apartment with his personality and life on every surface and corner and how Nanami had never been annoyed cleaning up after him. How it had not bothered him when he sat down on the sofa, and he had found an abandoned sketch next to him or a half drunken cup of coffee discarded in a random place because Haibara had forgotten about it.

With a dull arching in his chest Nanami realised that Haibara's death day was coming closer. Only a few weeks and his husband had been dead for five years. Five painful lonely years.

Nanami's knees went weak for a moment, and he sat down on Sukuna's messy bed. A memory of Haibara and him setting up the two twin beds after their registration had gone through, almost six years ago.

They had a competition about who could set up their bed faster and the memory of Haibara's smile after Nanami had let him win, was driving a knife through his heart. Memories he had actively shoved away from his mind for years, resurfaced as if he opened the box, broken the seal and whatever crawled out of it too strong to be forced back in.

He remembered how they had fought about the instructions, because it had only contained pictures and instructions in Swedish which were not helping at fucking all.

"How long do you think will it take until we get our first placement?" Haibara had asked as they had finished off the room.

"I don't know but I hope we don't get teenagers. They are exhausting, loud and difficult," Nanami had said with his hands on his hips.

"You are too negative! You only ever look at the bad side," Haibara had complained with a chuckle, while pulling a sheet on one of the beds.

"Tell me the good sides then."

It had taken Haibara a moment to reply. "The most kids that need placements are teenagers because nobody wants them. Everybody always wants those sweet innocent toddlers that don't make any problems. They want kids they can make their own, without any reminder that someone had been there before them. They want kids were nobody will think oh that's odd! when one acts out of line. Teenagers though, are already halfway there to be their own person. They will have more problems, because there was no support they could lean on. Mustn't it be the best feeling in the world to help them become the person they want to be but couldn't?"

"I can't imagine how hard it must be when people don't want you because you were forced to grow up faster than anyone else. When you bring a palette of mental health problems with you, because the adults that were supposed to help you develop were not there. It's no big surprised they turned out the way they did. It's not their fault. And they shouldn't take the fall for something their parents did. Every kid deserves a family," he had said it in that thoughtfulness tone Nanami remembered without fail.

Even if it was said that the first thing you forget about someone was their voice, Nanami always remembered the longing in his husband’s voice during that conversation.

Nanami had hugged Haibara from behind, trying to pull him out of his deep spiralling thoughts. Head laid on Haibara's shoulder Nanami mumbled after a moment, "Yeah ... okay, maybe teenagers wouldn't be that bad."

He remembered too well how many times he had caught Haibara sitting on one of the beds, looking around the room with that soft look in his face, eyes distant as he had probably imagined who could live in this space in a few months or years.

Nanami hadn't noticed that silent tears were running down his face, wetting his cheeks and blurring his sight until he heard the front door being opened and the silence from the past hours was quickly scared away by yelling and swearing. Quickly Nanami dried up his face and stood up from Sukuna's bed, heading out of their room with an arm full of dirty dishes.

The twins were too distracted with their own bickering that they weren't paying Nanami any attention as he passed them and watched how Yuji was grinning into his phone. It only took a moment before Sukuna was throwing a pillow at him, yelling something about a spiky haired idiot and the smile that pulled up on Nanami's face lifted some of the weight from his heart.

Nanami wouldn't lied to himself, he knew Sukuna would notice he went through the room in minutes only and he prepared himself for the fight that was coming.

The door of their room was being banged open minutes after Sukuna had vanished into it. Yuji had headed for the kitchen to finish up his homework.

"Where the fuck is my stuff?" Sukuna yelled, marching towards Nanami who had headed back from putting the dishes away and faced Sukuna in the living room.

"Gone," Nanami said, crossing his arms in front of his chest and stared down on the teen. The deep-rooted exhaustion that always swam in his eyes was still there, surrounded by anger and hot rage. Nanami forced the pity expression off his face as he met the red rimmed eyes of Sukuna, blood vessels blown and irritated. How does his body even function anymore?

"Gone? What the hell does that mean?" Sukuna built himself up in front of Nanami. It might have looked intimidating if Nanami wasn't watching all the tells of how done Sukuna was.

His hands were shaking, eyes flying around restless, his shoulders were hunched as if stretching them out would hurt, he was breathing shallow and fast.

"It means exactly what it sounds like!" his tone was warning, calm but strict and, like it always did, only riled up Sukuna more.

The kid saw red, started yelling profanities Nanami didn't even saw a point in commenting. Sukuna started pacing, cursing and Nanami could see how hard he was fighting to not punch anything or throw something at him. It was an urge Sukuna normally went on without thinking twice.

"Why do you get into business that's not yours to fucking get into, huh?" Sukuna yelled and Nanami, still standing still and watching, started talking again.

"I tried to let you handle this on your own. I tried to talk to you. You refused to listen," Nanami stated, and Sukuna stilled, glaring at him with hot flaming rage of all seven hells. Nanami wasn't impressed. Over the last two months he had become used to the look and Sukuna's rage. "So now, we're doing it my way."

"Your way?" Sukuna spit, venom dripping from his tone, his face turned into a mocking expression.

"Yes, my way. No more money, no more smoking, no energy drinks."

"You act like I'm a fucking addict!"

"Sukuna, you are," Nanami stated, at a loss for words. Did the kid really was so delusional? "You're not just drinking one or two. You're living off them. You're actively killing yourself, and I will not stand by and watch that happen. You have a problem, Sukuna."

"I don't have a problem; I have a solution!" the kid spit back and Nanami raised his eyebrows.

"A solution for what?" It was that moment, a chance for him to open up and explain and Nanami pleaded he would take it. Sukuna stilled again, probably catching up how he tripped himself and landed here. Another glare. Another huff. Biting on his bottom lip and rolling his shoulders again.

The tension was tight. Nanami didn't dare to breath, didn't dare to look away and watched the battle going on inside Sukuna.

"I don't have a problem!" Sukuna grunted and Nanami felt how his shoulders sacked.

"Then we do it this way. You won't talk? Fine. But I will not let you keep doing this to yourself."

Sukuna glared, standing a few feet away from Nanami, anger pulsing off of him in waves.

"If you can't stop yourself, I'll stop you," Sukuna glare became even darker, but Nanami went on, "You don't want my help? You don't trust me? That's fine. But this ends today."

-

The days following their argument were ... tense. Sukuna wouldn't look his direction. He wasn't smoking or sneaking energy drinks into the apartment, but Nanami knew he wasn't stopping completely. He could still smell the cold smoke that clung to his clothes. Could still see his skin buzzing from the caffeine. But he saw signs of withdrawal too and it pained him Sukuna wouldn't let him help.

He kept a pack of headache medication in the bathroom at all times, alongside something for nausea. Whenever Sukuna was laying on the couch in the living room Nanami would hand him a bottle of water. It would be a fight, like everything was with Sukuna these days. He would be even more irritated and short-tempered than he already was, but Nanami kept at it.

Even if this was giving him grey hairs every time Sukuna broke an argument off the fence.

"Sukuna, you're not 'built different', you're dehydrated!"

"You're ruining my life!" the kid would throw at him, while laying on the couch, eyes closed and hands shaking.

"No, I'm saving it!" Nanami replied dryly and handed him an ice pack for his head.

The next time the social worker of the twins called him Nanami was working from home again, pushing paperwork around to avoid doing them and glanced at the clock again and again, waiting to be able to finish up already.

The woman's words I have found a placement in a group home for the boys and I can finally take them off your hands and I appreciate the time you have bought me and I know they are a hand full but you did a great job, she could have poured an Ice bucket over Nanami while sleeping and it would have had the same effect. A sudden realisation washed over him, filling him with dread and unwillingness to continue to listen to her.

He asked her about the group home, maybe asking too many questions for someone who only agreed to watch the boys for a few weeks. Not even watch them, just given them a place to stay.

The social worker woman - which name Nanami didn't even remember so little she had contacted him - was answering his questions with a weird tone. As if she knew what Nanami was doing, and she didn't seem surprised at all as he dismissed the placement and stated that he rather keep the boys a little bit longer until she found a good placement for them.

She accepted his decision without any argument, "Alright. I will contact you as soon as something acceptable turns up."

"No, no wait!" Nanami said and silence filled the line as she waited for him to say something. "Do you know anything about their brother? Choso?" It had been on his mind for quite some time and the only reason he had contact with Geto again, but he had found nothing about the twin's brother, and he knew they were devastated about it.

"Yeah of course, I'm his social worker too," she said.

"Where is he?" Nanami asked, watching the door of his office since there was sudden loud movement in the apartment that was coming towards him.

"Choso is currently accommodated in a home for troubles teens. We had quite the rough start with him after he got out of the hospital. He fought a lot, but he seems to settle down now," she informed him, sounding more casual than she should and Nanami had to take a deep breath. A second later the door to his office was ripped open and Yuji and Sukuna dashed into the room and watched him with big eyes. He met their silent pleading and for the first time he saw something like hope in Sukuna's eyes. They both looked awfully fifteen in that moment.

Fuck.

Nanami bit his cheek and looked down on the desk, detecting movement from the twins out of the corner of his eye who were pressing themselves against his desk now, desperate to hear what the woman was saying about their brother.

"Alright, can I maybe- I don't know, talk ... or meet ...him?" Nanami asked slowly, rolling his eyes as Sukuna started punching Yuji's arm in excitement.

"Yeah sure!" she replied directly with an upbeat tone in her voice, "Does next Tuesday work for you?"

Nanami panicked, met two overly happy teenager boy's faces and couldn't stop himself from replying, "Yeah ... great!"

"Amazing, so it's a date then!"

He yelled at Sukuna and Yuji for not throwing his paperwork around but there was nothing he could do to get them down from the hype train.

I am so utterly fucked.

Tuesday morning arrived faster than Nanami would have liked. The past day's the boys had been asking him none stop about Choso, where he was and when they finally were able to go visit him. If Nanami would have gotten a penny every time one of them asked "But why can't we go visit him now?" Nanami would have enough pennies it would be awkward going to a bank with them. Because really why would anybody have so many pennies?

The only positive thing about this was probably that Sukuna stopped looking like a walking corpse and started talking to Nanami again. His tone was still filled with anger and his temper was as short as ever, but Nanami saw it as progress, nevertheless.

The morning started off stressful since both of the boys were confused why Nanami made them wear their school uniform. His appointment with Choso was already pushing Nanami's nerves and the useless discussion Nanami thought they had finally left behind them didn't help in the slightest.

The car ride to Yuji's school was silent, Nanami was paying aggressive attention to the traffic, knowing a stressed mind was the first thing towards a car accident. Something Haibara had been very particular of, since he had seen it every day on shift.

But now was definitely not the time to think about Haibara, so Nanami went back to concentrating on the cars around them.

"Oh, that's the same way to school!" Sukuna called out after a few silent minutes of driving and Nanami shared a confused look with Yuji. Then understanding shifted to Yuji's face and his weirdly gleeful expression vanished in the moment they locked eyes.

"Yeah funny, same way, what a coincidence," Yuji said, looking out the window now and said nothing else while Sukuna was still in a surprisingly good mood.

As always did Nanami pulled up on Yuji's school first, the teenager practically jumped out of the car before it had completely come to a stop.

"Bye!" he yelled, threw the door shut and hurried over the street towards the entrance of the school.

"What the fuck? What the hell Nanami? This is fucking bullshit! I don't fucking get why this fucker is-" Sukuna started and Nanami stared at the street in front of him.

The last thing he needed right now was a raging fifteen-year-old on his backseat that was getting louder and angrier the second, all while Nanami didn't understand why. The only thing on his mind right now was that he had cancelled work for this and was going to visit Choso, who somehow ended up in the hospital and with no one to take care of his little brothers and was now stuck in a home for troubled teens because he had been fighting his social worker.

Saying Nanami was stressed would be an understatement.

He was stressed to no end because the twins had been driving him up the wall for the past days about this. Staying on top of the Sukuna-addiction-recovery progress was more exhausting that he had ever imagined it to be.

So as Sukuna wouldn't stop throwing curses and swears around in a volume that could nearly deafen Nanami, he finally snapped.

"Sit your ass back down right now!" his fingers were cramping around the steering wheel so tight he clutched the leather as he gave Sukuna a look through the rear-view mirror.

"What the hell is wrong with-"

"Sukuna!" Nanami yelled and turned around to stare at the teen. They locked eyes and Nanami hoped Sukuna would notice how fucking done he was right now and how Sukuna was ripping his nerves into none existence.

And he seemed to understand, because without a word Sukuna sunk back into the seat after a moment of intense staring. Letting out a deep slow breath Nanami turned back around and started up the car.

The few minutes to Sukuna's school were dead silent.

Nanami could sense the anger that came stewing over from the backseat. He stopped in front of the entrance to Sukuna's school.

Nanami gave him another look through the rear-view mirror, Sukuna was meeting his eyes with trouble written all over his face.

"If you're not here when I pick you up, you don't want to know what I'll do next," the words were out without that Nanami was really thinking about what he was saying.

He watched Sukuna, as his face did something weird, but it was gone before Nanami could really identify what it was, and Sukuna got out of the car without another word.

-

As the navigation system lead Nanami to the address the social worker had given him, he had to double check if he really was at the right place.

This Home for Troubled Teens was not something he would describe as a home but more a sad looking concrete block, surrounded by a high metal fence that went all around the building. If Nanami hadn't known any better, he would have guessed they kept convicts here.

Something that maybe wanted to be a basketball court was to the left of the building, but the ground was littered with broken concrete blocks. One of the pillars was completely crooked to one side and the other one had no hoop to throw a ball through.

A big open space that maybe, when generous, could be described as a schoolyard housed four tennis tables but all of them were missing the metal fence in the middle to separate the two halves’, to actually play table tennis.

With clammy hands Nanami rung the bell on the outside of the metal fence and he was buzzed in a moment later. The door fell shut loudly behind him and the fence rattled from the force. He was buzzed in at the front door too and Nanami saw the electronical lock system he knew from his workplace. Only people with an electronical key could open those doors.

In the little entrance hall, he was met with a woman behind a thick glass pane, asking him what he was here for and if he had an appointment. He had to fill out a form and identify himself, it all felt more like he was checking into prison than into a facility that dealt with kids.

Nanami was told to sit and wait, and he did just that. Sitting and waiting while stewing in his thoughts thinking about what kind of person Choso was and how this whole thing could go down potentially.

It only took a few moments until the twin's social worker was coming down the stairs and welcomed him. She was not wasting much time on pleasantries, not asking about the twins and only waved him to follow her.

The edges of the concrete stairs were smoothed out, so often people seemed to walk up and down here. At the top Nanami could look through the glass panel of the door opposite from the stairs. The sight was disturbing at first glance and worrisome on the second.

A massive room was filled to the brim with rows and rows of bunk beds pressed up against each other. There was no space for closets or desks, or other furniture and the room was bursting with teenagers. Many of them were sitting on each other's beds, others were standing in circles around the bunks. He could snatch a glimpse of what looked like some fighting at the very end of the room. The smell of cold cigarette smoke was lingering in the air, mixed itself with the smell of too many teenager boys in one room that hadn't been aired in the past hours.

The door with the glass panel was not very sound isolated and Nanami could hear the volume of the room while passing it. The boys were loud - yelling, screaming, laughing and if he picked it out right from all the noise, there were even a few crying out for someone.

They passed the sleeping room and he followed the social worker down the tiny hall. The next door on his right was open and throwing a glance into it the room seemed to be a really sad community room. But the room lacked its community since they were no kids inside and a thin layer of dust had settled down on everything.

The social worker led him to the only other room on the hall, an even sadder looking visiting room. He was told to wait again while she was grabbing Choso.

Nanami sat down at the only table in the middle of the room and looked around to pass the time. The only other furniture in the room was a bookcase with only three books in it. One was a thick, old looking atlas, one a dictionary and the last one a bible and even from this distance Nanami could see that there were a lot of pages missing.

Nanami didn't have to ask himself why those pages were missing. His friendship with Gojo during High School years had taught him that those thin bible pages were excellent for rolling cigarettes and joints.

Nanami's nerves were running up the walls the longer he waited and the more time he had to worry about the talk that lay in front of him. He hadn't asked the twins about Choso, the way they were looking whenever the name came up made it was clear that they adored their older brother. What Nanami was the most worried about was Choso's attitude, Sukuna's anger problems had to come from somewhere and it wasn't that far off that maybe he had learned that behaviour from his older brother.

The door was creaking like it wasn't used very often as the social worker re-entered the room, a teenager following on her step. Nanami stood up from his chair and nervously looked over Choso.

He was supposed to be seventeen, but he looked way older, like Sukuna did. His longer jet-black hair was tied up in a messy bun and Nanami couldn't decide if it only looked messy or was actually a bit matted. The dark, nearly purple eye bags under his eyes told long stories about sleepless nights and the black beam that seemed to be tattooed over the bridge of his nose, was in strong context to his pale skin.

Nanami reached out his hand to Choso to greet him, but the teenagers only looked him up and down with a defensive look and sat down on the opposite side of the table. The clothes he wore were far too big for him and hung down his bony shoulders like rags. There was scrap over his knuckles and his fingernail were dirty, the skin ripped so much there were bloody patched next to his nails.

Nanami cleared his throat, pulled his hand back and sat back down on the chair opposite of Choso. Before either of them could say a word, the social worker's phone rung and she excused herself out of the room and closed the door behind her.

Nanami panicked slightly but tried to get his nerves under control. This was a teenager; he was an adult! Calm the fuck down!

"Nice to meet you I'm Nanami Kento, I'm fostering your brothers right now," Nanami started the conversation, took off his tinted glasses and placed his hands on the table trying to look casual.

"Where are they?" Choso only asked, arms crossed in front of his chest while he was still observing Nanami closely like Sukuna had the entire first weeks. He had hidden his hands and knuckles away and Nanami redirected his eyes back to Choso's face.

"The Twins? At school," Nanami answered confused. Where else should they be?

"Ah." was Choso's comment and uncomfortable silence was falling between them. The teen was fixing his eyes on Nanami's glasses, before his look wandered over Nanami's hands and up to his shoulders until he finally reached his face.

Nanami cleared his throat uncomfortable and gestured to the room, "So ... nice place."

Choso clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes annoyed and Nanami couldn't ignore how Sukuna did it exactly the same way. "No, it's not," the teen stated with venom dripping from his tone. He couldn't really blame him for it.

"No, it's not," Nanami said with a sigh, this place was a shit hole and there was no point in trying to talk it better than it was.

Silence filled the room again and Choso's leg was starting to bounce up and down while he was staring into Nanami's eyes now as if he could look right into his soul.

This time Choso was the one who broke the silence, "Is Sukuna really going to school?"

"I drop him off in the morning and pick him up afterwards, so technically he is going," Nanami explained with a tense chuckle. Talking about the twins was easy and it was probably something Choso wanted to know.

"Is he participating?" Choso asked with an unbelievable expression on face, leaning slightly forward.

"No, that's too much to ask, he-" Nanami's phone cut into his sentence and he quickly pulled it out to swipe away the call. But the caller ID was someone familiar, too familiar at this point and he looked up at Choso with an apologetic look.

"I'm sorry I have to take this, speaking of the devil this is his school," Choso only leaned back against the backrest of his chair as Nanami stood up and left the room to take the call.

Listening to the principal explain the situation, he wished he hadn't taken the call in the first place and leaned against the wall with a defeated sigh and nodded off what the man was saying.

The call only lasted a few minutes and Nanami headed back to Choso with the words, "So, Sukuna got himself suspended for a week."

"Yeah, that sounds more like him, what did he do?" Choso asked and his stoic expression softened as bit as he talked about his little trouble-brother.

"He smoked inside the school again. We're having this smoking conversation for weeks now and he's just being a little bi- he's being stubborn about it," Nanami cut himself off and Choso had to laugh out loud because of Nanami's slip of words.

"Yeah sorry, I never should have picked up that shit," Choso apologised, and he loosened his arms from his chest and laid them down on the table.

"How did you get the cigarettes? You're still a minor?" Nanami asked confused and sat back down at the table, far more relaxed than five minutes ago.

"Well, we had this neighbour who had an imaginary dog, and he would buy me cigarettes now and then," Choso explained a bit hesitant.

"Did Sukuna really petted the air?" Nanami asked curiously, he had wondered about this story for some time now.

Choso raised his eyebrows in surprise and his posture became a bit more loose too as he said, "Yeah he did. He told you about that?"

"Unfortunately," Nanami replied, he thought back to the conversation about Sukuna's school friend Yuta. He hadn't heard about that boy since and Nanami wondered about the reason for a moment. It had sounded like Sukuna and Yuta had become quite good friends.

"I tried making him stop doing that, but he wouldn't listen to me. He always said it would make the man happy. He was a lot more like Yuji when he was younger, now Ryo is ... a special snowflake," Choso chuckled, and his eyes became all soft and distant as he probably thought about them.

"Ryo?" Nanami asked interested, leaned forward again, propped his elbows on the table and Choso suddenly tensed.

"Ah ... yeah, I mean Sukuna, he .... it's his first name, Ryomen I mean," he stumbled over his words and Nanami kept his expression open and waited, hoping to get more out of Choso.

"I thought Sukuna was his first name," Nanami only stated, hoping it was enough to keep Choso talking.

"Nah. A few years ago, he kept insisting that we start calling him Sukuna instead of Ryomen. He claimed some dumb ass reason I don't even remember anymore, but I'm pretty sure he just thinks his first name was dumb and childish. He was being so annoying about it; Yuji and I went with it. They didn't tell you?" Choso asked confused.

Nanami huffed and swiped his hair back from his forehead, "The twins don't tell me very much about anything personal. They are still quite closed off, but we are getting there. Slowly but steady I would say. Very slowly," Nanami stated, thinking of all the times he had tried asking them about the past and how every time they had frozen up or deflected.

"Ah, yeah makes sense," Choso said, his tone flat and he looked down on the tabletop. "Not even the social workers told you?" Choso asked then.

"The social worker is more than incompetent, she told me hardly anything," Nanami said, throwing a glance towards the door wondering if she would ever come back from that phone call.

"Yeah, she is, they all have a lot to deal with. A lot of kids, many of them don't really care," Choso said as he looked past Nanami distantly and played with the raggy sleeves of his too big shirt.

Silence settled over them again and Nanami observed Choso. How the teen was getting twitchy, fiddling with his sleeves and bouncing his leg again, swiping strains of black hair out of his face.

"How did you even end up with that neighbour anyways?" Nanami decided on asking. He had so many more question, but it wouldn't be fair asking Choso for personal things about the twins they obviously didn't want to talk about with Nanami.

Choso stared Nanami down again, sized him up and Nanami saw how the teen debated with himself on what to share with the unfamiliar adult. He slowly started telling Nanami about their grandpa who had taken them in as their mother had died giving birth to the twins. Their father had died two years later.

"The doctors told us he had a weak heart, but I think he died of grief. After mum died ... he was different. As if every day was agony, but I was like ... four at the time so ... I didn't really understand," Choso faded off, scratching and picking at the skin around his nails again. Nanami had a knot in his throat, thinking panicked about what to tell this kid but Choso kept on talking before Nanami could come up with any words.

"Our grandpa though? He took us in - was my dad's dad - he was kinda rude all the time? But he only wanted the best for us. I know he loved the twins, but he was shitty in articulating his feelings. So, I tried my best to translate his swears and curses into more age-appropriate language. Didn't work that well though, I'm pretty sure that's were Sukuna got his dirty mouth from," Choso chuckled, a distant smile on his face as he thought about his grandpa and Nanami gave him a soft smile back.

Their grandpa had died when the twins had turned ten and Choso had been twelve.

"He died in the hospital; some social workers picked us up from there as soon as he was admitted. They called us a few days later, we didn't even have the chance to see him again. Apparently, he had tried calling us but nobody at the hospital had the number of the place where we had been staying or the one of our social workers. We've been in the system since," Choso explained, and it sounded like he would tell the story of someone else. Someone he didn't have any connection too. He was too distant, too pragmatic and Nanami wanted to hug him very badly as hurt flashed through the teen’s eyes for a second.

"I'm so sorry Choso, that must've been hard," Nanami said instead, fighting the desire to take Choso's fidgeting hands into his from across the table.

"The placements were harder. They ... they fucked up Sukuna big time, Yuji too, that's why.... he has those night terrors?" Choso asked and Nanami only nodded. "Yea he has those and- and Ryo- I mean Sukuna is- well you know how he is. He wasn't always ... this one placement was a shit hole, and I wasn't- ... it was bad," Choso stumbled through his words and Nanami listened. Trying to give silent support. How much he wished he had Haibara by his side to tell him what to say to this.

"So yeah- sorry this was a lot," Choso said, his whole defensive demeanour from an hour ago gone now, leaving Nanami with this shadow of a kid.

"It's alright, thank you for tell me all of this, for trusting me," Nanami settled on saying, not knowing if it was the right thing to say.

Choso looked up to Nanami again and took a deep breath, before he rubbed his eyes forcefully.

"So when can I see them? Or can I see them? The twins I mean. I would very much like to see them. Please?" Choso mumbled out a little bit shy and Nanami's chest squeezed itself together from how tight these brothers must've been before they were ripped apart.

"Yeah, sure thing. I'll bring them next time," and his words brought the first real smile onto Choso's face.

I am so utterly fucked!

Choso waved Nanami goodbye from the window of the visiting room since he wasn't allowed to follow Nanami outside. The social worker was nowhere to be seen again and Nanami only made another appointment with the women behind the glass in the entrance hall to bring the twins.

Sitting in the car again and finally letting all that tension go, Nanami was dead tired. He needed to pick Sukuna up next and deal with his suspension again.

With a probably forced expression on his face Nanami head into the school, collected Sukuna from the principal’s office, made another round of damage control talk and was twenty minutes later on the way back home with a sulking teenager on the backseat.

The entire ride was silent and Nanami neither had the brain nor the nerves to deal with this yet. Choso and their story was still on his mind. What he had said about the placement being hard, how they had fucked up Yuji and Sukuna. Nanami's head was spinning with this new information, and he had more question than before.

Sukuna though seemed to understand his silence in a completely different manner and as they got into the apartment and already headed for his room to take a very needed nap, Sukuna yelled "Well, DO SOMETHING!"

Nanami turned back to the teenager confused, who was standing in the middle of the apartment, guarded and defensive like he had been in the first week.

"Do what?" Nanami asked, his tone maybe a tad too annoyed but the man was tired.

"You wanted to do something to me! So do something! Don't wait it out it's driving me nuts!" Sukuna yelled. Nanami took a step towards the teen and Sukuna jerked away from him. That tiny reaction jerked Nanami out of his exhaustion right away.

"What did you thought I would do? Hit you?" he asked confused, and Sukuna only glared.

"Sounded like it." he snapped then and Nanami pinched his nose.

"Sukuna, we talked about this," Nanami started, dragging a hand through his hair, "No violence in this house. Not me, not you, never. I would never hit a kid. I would never hit anyone! Well maybe Gojo, but that doesn't matter right now. I need to lay down. You're grounded because of the smoking at school shit but we're talking about that later!"

Sukuna stared at Nanami without saying a word and Nanami waited a moment longer, to see if there was anything he needed to add but as the silence continued, he only nodded and finally reached his room to lay down.

He kicked his shoes off and fell down into his pillows, staring at the ceiling. His mind was processing everything he had learned today.

Choso was completely different than Nanami had anticipated. Choso was in a shitty placement without any support that he seemed to desperately need. Choso cared a lot about his little brothers. Choso was only a god damn kid himself.

Every kid deserves a family! Fucking damn it Haibara!

A very light knock ripped him out of it, a carefully whispered, "Nanami?" shook him out of the light sleep he had found himself in and Nanami slowly cracked one eye open and saw Yuji standing and waiting in his doorframe.

"I really don't want to interrupt, but could you drive me to soccer practice?" Yuji asked, still whispering and making himself small.

"Since when are you home, we only have ...." Nanami shock his shirt away from his wrist to look at his watch, "Quarter past four? You have soccer practice!" Nanami called out and pushed himself off the bed too fast that his circulation was kicking him in the ass, and he needed to slow down for a moment.

Later in the car Yuji broke the silence with, "Choso isn't dead, is he?"

It took a few moments until the words were reaching Nanami's brain, "He ... what? No, of course not! Why would you think that?"

"Well Sukuna was acting weird, and you were acting weird! What was I supposed to think?"

"And death was the first thing that came to your mind?" Nanami asked unbelieving while trying to keep concentrating on the traffic.

"I don' know. It's a cruel world!" Yuji said and Nanami only sighed deeply. Fucking teenagers. He hadn't been this tired in a long time.

As Nanami parked the car Yuji was out and on his way a moment later, joining his friends for soccer practice and Nanami was following behind him like a damn zombie. Autumn was giving them wet days with cold winds, less sunlight every day and Nanami wondered where the kids took the energy to go to practice during these temperatures.

As he headed for the booths with the seats Nanami made out a very familiar white head of hair from the distance and his day was just getting longer and longer. He thought about heading back to the car and waiting inside to avoid Gojo, but the man had already seen him and was waving like an idiot.

Nanami slowly headed over to Gojo.

"KENTO!" the man called out with far too much glee and energy.

"Satoru." Nanami replied with a short nod.

"Aww still Satoru hu? We know each other since High School and it’s still Satoru? You really hurt my feelings Kento!" Gojo said dramatically like he always did. Fucking Drama Queen!

"You have feelings?" Nanami decided on shooting back tiredly and Gojo clutched a hand to his heart, playing hurt before he reached out and pressed a second coffee in Nanami's hand.

"Here, you look like a dead person on legs," Gojo stated, fixing his tinted glasses.

"And I feel like one too," Nanami replied, taking the coffee and warming his hand on the hot paper cup.

"Ah," Gojo said immediately uncomfortable because ever since Nanami knew him he had always been uncomfortable with displayed emotions that weren't his own or the ones of his husband. But Gojo had seemed to finally grow up a bit because after a beat of silence he asked, "So what happened?"

"I apparently have kids now. Two kids. Twins even. There were supposed to stay for two weeks but it's like two months now and ... I was okay with it but today... heaven help me, today I meet the third one, their big brother, because two apparently wasn't enough and of course he told me all about their terrible depressive childhood and if that wouldn't be enough, I get a call from the school and one of them is suspended! Again! Because he smoked! In the fucking school! He is fifteen Gojo!" Nanami ranted before he could stop himself.

"Aww you called me Gojo!"

Nanami snapped again. "Shut the fuck up and concentrate! Didn't Geto teach you any social skills?"

"Nah he divorced me instead." Gojo's tone was way too flat and emotionless for that particular topic.

"Oh ... sorry. I forgot that happened," Nanami bit his cheek, not knowing what to say further. Gojo had never needed any damn emotional support. Nanami was damn shitty at emotional support.

"Yeah ... but your life sounds way worse right now, so keep talking."

"Shit yes ... I don't really know how to keep going. Haibara would, this would be his dream, and I can't even handle it. I can't even do that for him," Nanami watched how the kids ran around the big soccer court and the heavy sadness from a few days ago knocked against his door again.

"You're doing great, you know?" Gojo said, his tone weirdly serious, "Parenting is hard, I only have one and I know him his entire life and I still feel like you sometimes. You're still human. It's fine to struggle - just don't give up now. I met Yuji, he is amazing, and he talks about you a lot so you're doing something right!" Gojo said quietly while not looking at Nanami.

A small fragile smile was pulling on Nanami's lips.

"I didn't know you could be like that," he said and Gojo chuckled.

"Like what?"

"An Adult."

Gojo huffed disgusted as he argued, "Please don't. Stop that! That's disgusting!"

Now Nanami clicked his tongue and looked back at the kids, "And the moment is gone, you ruined it!" he joked. Feeling a little bit lighter than ten minutes ago.

Chapter Text

In the past half year, Megumi could count on one hand how many times he and his dads had shared a meal together. One of those had been the one where they told him that they were getting a divorce and Geto would move out.

So, forgive him for not being very enthusiastic when Geto and Gojo had told him that they would have a family dinner this evening. Megumi had watched Gojo run around the house, trying to tidy up as much as was humanly possible in one afternoon.

Gojo had also ordered food last minute, and Megumi was pretty sure they had originally planned to cook something - because Gojo was shoving the containers into the trash can with way too much force, hiding them under other trash so Geto wouldn't see when he would throw something away.

Eventually Geto arrived, wearing his hair down and Megumi's suffering began as they started to eat in uncomfortable silence. The last thing Megumi wanted was start a conversation, his dads made him be here and he physically was but mentally he was at Yuji's. Far away from his family drama.

Then came the phase of the even more uncomfortable small talk. Geto stumbled through a few questions about Gojo's firm, about how his cases were going and Gojo info dumped a lot of lawyer jargon explanations none of them understood. In return Gojo asked about Geto's work and he said a few words about work being stressful and exhausting. Something he always said these days.

They went back and forth for a bit, trying to rope Megumi into conversation but Megumi actively decided to be any part of this weird family dinner and remained passive aggressive and grumpy.

"I'm done," Megumi explained as his plate was finally empty and he started to get up and leave but both his dads made him sit back down again.

Silence ruled over them again and Megumi sighed loudly and annoyed, before he asked, "Are you getting back together?"

Gojo and Geto stared at him for a solid few seconds before both of them called out, "No, why would we?"

The tiny flicker of hope that this awkward dinner had any positive outcome was squashed and Megumi asked even more grumpy, "Why do we all have to suffer then? What is this for?"

On his question both of his dads reacted differently. First, they shared a look in their typical way they always did back in the day, then Gojo casted his eyes down and crossed his arms in front of his chest and Geto leaned forward to Megumi, taking reign of the conversation.

"Well, there is something we need to tell you," Geto pulled out his calm gentle voice, the one he used for his gentle parenting shit that never worked on Megumi, "It's quite hard and I know you don't want to hear it, but it's important. We love you and we're standing by your side, and we respect your decision, but we want you to really think about this, because you could regret it in a few years. Gojo will try his best, but you know how these things are very complicated, and it will take some time but-"

Megumi needed to cut into Geto's senseless chattering, or he would go insane, "I understand, you don't want to deal with me any longer."

Geto stared him down shocked, before he found his voice again and called out, "WHAT? NO! Why would you think that?"

Now Gojo was clinking himself into the conversation too, "Of course not, don't be an idiot Megs! Toji is just going on death row."

"Gojo!" Geto called out with a sharp tone.

"What?"

"We agreed to do it gentle!"

"What am I supposed to do, he thought we want him gone and back in the damn system! I'm not going to let him believe that for one fucking second!"

Geto shot back something about breaking agreements with a heated and angry tone while Gojo huffed at him and got right into the argument. Megumi took a deep breath and swallowed the knot in his throat before he quickly slipped out of his seat and left the kitchen without another word. Geto and Gojo were too occupied with their fighting to notice that he was leaving.

Megumi had quickly and silently sped up the stairs, closed the door to his room and sat down on his bed, staring down on his hands that were clutching a pillow to somehow get rid of all the anger and rage in his chest. It wasn't working and he threw the pillow across the room, knowing throwing anything else wouldn't go as unnoticed.

Only moments later Geto knocked shyly against his door. He knew it was Geto because Gojo never knocked. Megumi waited if he would go away, but he wouldn't and only creeped into his room a moment later.

"Are you fine? No?" Geto asked, slowly came towards Megumi and sat down next to him. Megumi really couldn't deal with Geto's gentleness right now. It was only ever making him more angry than anything else, always had.

"Well, we really need to keep talking about this ... but you need a few more minutes? Okay yeah, meet you in the kitchen." Geto stated and Megumi grit his teeth.

"No."

Geto took a deep breath, calming himself before he continued speaking with that damning gentle tone, "I see that you're quite angry right now and I understand, I'm angry too over a lot of things. But we need to have this talk and when you finished with your anger you need to come down to us alright?" Geto waited for a response from Megumi, but they only ended up staring each other down before Geto pat his knee and made his way back down to the kitchen.

Geto had left his door open, and Megumi listened as he sat back down, straining to hear what they were talking about, but he couldn't make out the words.

For a long moment there was silence and Megumi wondered if he was getting out of this talk. Only for another minute of silence to go by and suddenly the legs of a chair were scratching over the tiles of the kitchen and Geto was groaning a tired, "Gojo, don't!"

But it didn't do anything because Megumi heard how Gojo was coming up the stairs, probably taking two at a time because he was damn fast, and Megumi tried to rush to his door and close it before Gojo could get there but he was too slow. His Pops was already there, standing in his doorframe and glaring Megumi down, his glasses off and in his hand to give his dad stare the full effect.

"Nope, not happening. Kitchen. Now." Gojo stated with this tone he rarely ever pulled out. The one Megumi really feared because it was calm, collected and strict and the complete opposite of who Gojo normally was.

But Megumi stood his ground, he would rather do anything else right now than have this talk with his dads. So, he made attempts on pushing Gojo out and closing the door, but Gojo was standing his ground too. He was still giving Megumi the dad stare that felt like he was looking deep into Megumi's soul, until he snipped his fingers and pointed down the stairs towards the kitchen.

"Move."

Megumi crossed his arms in front of his chest to hide his shaking fingers.

"I don't want to talk about this!"

Gojo put his glasses back on before he said, "I know. Me neither."

Megumi sat back down at the table, his arms still crossed in front of his chest and his leg was bouncing up and down while Gojo was sitting down right next to Geto, opposite of Megumi.

Silence haunted them again and it seemed like nobody really wanted to talk about this. It made Megumi's skin crawl, and he snapped impatient, "You wanted to talk about this, then talk!"

"Watch your tone there Megs!" Gojo warned him, still in that collected calm tone that made Megumi's skin crawl even more. He always felt so out of control when Gojo was being this weird adult version of himself, and Megumi didn't like it. Out of spite because he really wanted to be difficult right now Megumi locked his eye on a point over Gojo's head and kept staring at it.

"So," Gojo started, taking a deep breath, "They put Toji on death row, because of new developments regarding his case. He asked to see you. I said I would ask you and I- We know it's a lot to ask but we agree that you should think about this ... for the worst case. I'm still fighting this of course, it's not right and we have a few options of what we can try but ... inmates often spend years on death row without being sentenced to ... but I'm not sure about the outcome this time. It's serious and- Can you please look at me while I'm talking to you Megs?" Gojo said, his tone tight and Megumi knew he only needed one more reason to get Gojo's temper going.

"No, no keep talking. I'm just watching my tone."

"You- oooh," Megumi saw how Gojo was fighting to not lose his temper, the rage was bubbling under Gojo's skin, how he rubbed his eyes and unclenched his hands and Megumi decided to get the last nail into his coffin and seal the deal.

"No really, keep talking, I'm watching it very closely." he said while he kept staring at a point right above Gojo's head.

Gojo jumped up from his chair, turning towards the entrance of the kitchen and Megumi wondered if Gojo was really able to walk away from this. But he knew his Pops and halfway out of the kitchen Gojo turned back to Megumi and pointed his finger down on him on every word while he yelled, "YOU ARE A DISRESPECTFUL! LITTLE! BRAT!"

"And here we go again," Geto sighed and rubbed his face, staring into nothingness but Megumi couldn't think straight right now. The words Toji and death row and see him circled through his head and the panic that settled into his stomach made him want to retch until there was nothing else in him anymore.

So, he did one of the only things that could push those thoughts away. He fought with Gojo.

Megumi pushed himself up from his seat too, mimicked Gojo's finger pointing and called out, "And. You. Raised. Me." Gojo's temper was going off the rails and he again walked towards the entrance of the kitchen, throwing his hands in the air, "No. No, I can't- I won't-" halfway out he turned back.

"ALL WE WANTED WAS A CIVILISED TALK ABOUT YOUR BIOLOGICAL MAKER AND YOU JUST HAD TO BE A BRAT ABOUT IT, DIDN'T YOU?" Gojo yelled and the pit of panic in Megumi's stomach slowly subdued the longer he continued his yelling match with Gojo.

He could do yelling, anger was easy. It was far easier than this collected calm talking they had tried to accomplish before.

"Well, you're being a dick about this too!" Megumi called back, locking eyes with Gojo who was staring shockingly at him. But before he could find any words to throw back at Megumi, Geto's chair scratched over the tiles as he stood up forcefully, he turned his back to both of them as he started to walk away. Before he completely left the kitchen, he stopped, one hand on the doorframe and said calmly, "I'm very disappointed in both of you."

The kitchen was dead silent, and Megumi listened how the massive door fell shut behind Geto. It ran like a gunshot through the massive house and as if the spell was broken Gojo crumpled together into himself, down onto one of the chairs and buried his head into his hands. "Fuuuuuuuck," he cursed under his breath and his fingers scratched over his skull. White hairs poking out between his fingers as he kept scratching.

Megumi stood frozen to the ground as he quietly added, "Well that went amazing."

Gojo looked up to him for a moment and wouldn't it be for the emotional chaos in Megumi about the whole Toji situation, maybe he would have felt guilty for sabotaging the talk like he did.

"Just go. Leave." Gojo sighed tiredly, the fire and rage from half a minute ago completely gone and Megumi clicks his tongue annoyed.

"Finally. That's all I wanted to do from the beginning," he stated annoyed.

Megumi walked through the kitchen, but as he stood in the doorframe Gojo said quietly behind him, "This is not a joke, you know? This might be your last chance at closure."

The week following the talk didn't get better. He didn't saw Gojo much and when through coincidence they met in the kitchen Megumi was ignoring the man as if it was a competition.

The things Gojo had said about Toji wouldn't leave him alone. It had been years since Megumi had last dreamed of that night it had all went to shit and what led to him ending up with Geto and Gojo. It was not an awaited reunion and Megumi started to avoid sleep again.

Throughout the week, Gojo yelled at him a few more times, and Megumi yelled right back. He didn't care about the damn fights at school he kept getting into, the detention notices that piled up on the coffee table, the fact that one weekend Megumi had left his bed only for going to the bathroom.

His mind wasn't quieting down, it was turning around the words, the facts, the things Gojo had told him about Toji and his case. It was exhausting and led him to nothing than a bigger pit of rage and anger growing in his stomach because anger was easy. Anger was easier than confronting the shit he had pushed away from him for all those years.

The only one that didn't seem to be affected by Megumi's faul mood was Yuji. Yuji, the one who even after Megumi had pushed away and yelled and cursed him out for an entire week was inviting him to come to his home and hang out for the day.

And because Megumi could never say no to anything Yuji suggested, he found himself in Nanami's living room with Yuji who was talking a mile a minute about that stupid movie he was obsessed with while they planned to only watch something to distract themselves.

Yuji was in the middle of summarising the plot of that stupid earthworm movie as Megumi's nerves snapped and his Pop's temper broke out of him. "Can you shut up for a fucking minute? I can't hear myself think! The entire fucking day, it's just ... talking! Do you know how fucking exhausting that it?"

A heavy silence fell over the living room and Megumi looked back at Yuji; his eyes weirdly glassy.

Then Sukuna was yelling from the kitchen, "Don't you dare talk to him like that! He's about to cry you asshole!"

Megumi bit his lip and guilt rushed over him, but his mouth was faster than his brain, "Yeah well happens! Grow the fuck up!"

Now Sukuna was emerging from the kitchen and threw a towel after Megumi while calling out, "What the fuck is your damn problem?"

Megumi jumped up from the sofa, the rage too much to contain any longer and it all spilled out of him.

"Oh, I don't know maybe my fucking farther is on death row apparently and after my entire life without him he asked to see me and they just want me to go and talk to that FUCKER as if he didn't kill my mum because he just WANTS TOO? What about what I want? So what? I'm just visiting him in JAIL and suppose to make Smalltalk about what? The Weather? School? Grades? As if he would FUCKING CARE!"

It was so silent Megumi only heard his own heavy heaving breath and stared into two confused twin faces.

Of course, Sukuna was the one who first found his voice again as he asked, "Gojo killed your mum and is in jail?"

Megumi sniffed and rubbed the tiny tears at the corner of his eyes away, "Are you fucking serious right now?"

Yuji intervened, "Oh no he's just a turtlebrain, if he thinks too fast his brain is freezing up, like literally."

"Here I come and save you and this is what I get for it?" Sukuna called out annoyed, shooting his brother glares.

"Can you just fuck off please?" Yuji asked now, stood up and walked towards Megumi who was still standing in the middle of the living room, clenching his fists as if he wanted to punch the TV from the wall.

"I was just trying to help!" Sukuna defended himself and Megumi really wanted to punch rather him than the TV.

"Ryo please!" Yuji's words followed silence again and Sukuna's glare became darker the second Yuji had used that weird name for him. The twins stared at one another for a moment, before Sukuna left without a word and threw the door to their room shut behind him.

Yuji sat back down on the sofa and rest his head in his hands while he groaned a quiet "Fuuck."

Megumi rubbed at his still running nose again as he sat down beside Yuji and asked, "What was that about?"

"I just fucked up, he's being difficult about it ... long story, so what was that about your father?" Yuji swiped his hair back and studied Megumi with a look.

Megumi pushed out a breath and leaned back against the sofa. "He's not my father, he's Toji."

"And he...?" Yuji carefully prodded and Megumi continued, "Geto and Gojo told me he was put on death row, and he asked to see me."

There was a beat of silence, Megumi stared down at his hands fidgeted with him. Words were hard right now. They always were when Toji was involved.

"And you don't want to go because....?"

"Because the last time I saw him I was five and it was the night he got arrested after my mum died," Megumi hadn't talked about this in ages. It was weird how unfamiliar the words felt on his tongue and how easy it was to tell Yuji this shit.

"And when you think about going, you feel...?"

"Stressed? Definitely confused, angry ... overwhelmed."

"Because...?"

Megumi pushed another sigh out, pulling his legs up on the sofa and crossing them under him. Yuji also made himself comfortable, giving Megumi is entire attention.

"Because Toji is not my dad, Geto and Gojo are," Megumi stated, looked up to check Yuji's reaction but he was just attentive listening without making a face, so Megumi continued.

"I don't know what he wants to talk about or what he wants me to do. I don't want to talk about the night or why he is on death row now. And I don't want to build a relationship when he's gonna die anyways. I already have two amazing dads, and I feel like I'm betraying them when I go see him. It's just a big mess I don't want to get into. There is so much more shit going on between my dads, we definitely don't need fucking Toji drama right now," Megumi stated, swiping at his running nose again and Yuji handed him a handkerchief.

"What did Gojo and Geto say about all this?" Yuji asked as Megumi blew his nose and rubbed his eyes free of any resting angry tears.

"They- they wanted to talk, kept saying I could regret not going or not getting closure when really I have finished this topic years ago! But I was being a total brat about it. It's easier ... to make Gojo yell at me for being a brat than talk about any of that," Megumi admitted embarrassed and looked down on the handkerchief he was ripping apart slowly.

But yet again Yuji was surprising him. "Gojo can yell?" he asked, his eyebrows raised high into his forehead.

Megumi chuckled relieved, "Yeah, it's quite funny. He's only scary when he is calm."

Silence fell over them and Megumi was too scared to look at Yuji again, see pity or disgust in his eye for how broken and fucked up Megumi's family was. As he finally made himself meet Yuji's eyes, the other was only pulling his hard thinking face and Megumi needed to bite his lips to not laugh.

"You should talk to them about this, because I really don't know what to say to this. But I can imagine how hard this all must be," Yuji said then Megumi became soft for him again.

"Yeah but talking sucks."

"I know, but it's important."

Megumi chuckled again as he said, "You sound like my therapist."

"And I feel like it too," Yuji teased, bumping his shoulder against Megumi's and a warm feeling spread into his chest and stomach as he watched Yuji smirking.

"But I like you way more than my therapist," was out before Megumi could stop himself.

"Aw you like me! Probably because I have a soft face!" he got right back to teasing.

"Oi shut up I said that one time!" Megumi defended himself but it wasn't doing anything because he was now smiling as much as Yuji was.

"Yeah and it was amazing," Yuji stated.

"You are too fucking soft!" Megumi said but leaned closer to Yuji, letting his head fall on Yuji's shoulder.

"And you like that," Yuji said as he made himself more comfortable and his hand wandered in Megumi's hair.

"Yeah ... I really do," Megumi mumbled, suddenly exhausted from all the talking and Yuji turned on the TV as they were both getting sleepy, pressed into each other.

"Thank you," Megumi mumbled before he completely drifted off and Yuji's words were the last thing he heard before he fell asleep in Yuji's lap.

"Anytime."

Chapter Text

The last time Choso had been in a hospital, he had been the one in front of the bed, not the one in it. He had watched how the nurses had hooked up his grandpa to the beeping machines and put a long needle in the back of his hand.

His grandpa had told him not to worry, that the needle in his hand didn't hurt and was giving him the fluids he needed to get better and come back home. His grandpa had never come home and the only thing Choso could think about as he stared up into the blinding lights on the ceiling was that he needed to get back to Yuji and Sukuna!

Choso pushed himself up from the bed and looked around the hospital room, there were three other beds filled with people but no twins in sight and Choso began to panic. The heart monitor began beeping quicker as Choso tried to get out of the damn bed and find his clothes and his phone, he needed to get to his brothers! How had they even gotten him to the fucking hospital? He had been retching and shivering in their shoebox of an apartment, telling them not to call an ambulance.

It was the last thing he remembered.

"Hey kid, you need to calm down now," there was a nurse in his personal space, putting her hand on his chest and gently but firmly lowered him back into the bed.

"My brothers? Where are my brothers?" Choso asked, reluctantly letting himself be pushed back into the bed.

"Right now you need to worry about yourself and no one else!" the nurse said, and she probably meant it in the kindest way possible, but Choso couldn't stop the panic that was rising again, threatening to drown him.

"No, you don't understand, they are minors, and I need to talk to them, see them, are they alright? One of them can be a bit difficult, but he's a good kid, I swear!" Choso rambled on, worrying that Sukuna had made a scene, or social services were already on their way and-

"You say a bit difficult I say completely out of control!," fucking damn it, Sukuna!

A woman was walking towards his bed, clipboard in her hand and white hair in a thick braid on her back. She nodded to the nurse who was mumbling something soft about breathing and calming down that Choso wasn't paying any attention to, and she finally pulled her hand from his chest to let him sit up.

"What did he do? Can I talk to him? To them? Where are they?" Choso asked, stumbling over his own words because he was talking too fast.

"He threw a chair after the doctor who told him he couldn't see you right now," the social worker answered in a clipped down, and Choso groaned while rubbed his face. The needle in the back of his hand twinged and the IV pulled on the band aid.

"He's just ... protective, not violent or something, can I please talk to them?" Choso pleaded with the woman who was giving him looks he couldn't read or place.

"Your brothers are already taken care off, I've found a temporary placement for them. You've been sleeping two days straight, the doctors say food poisoning, with all the vomiting, fever, blurry sight, dizziness et cetera. They've given you fluids and antibiotics for the germs that caused this. You've been flying under the radar for some time now Choso," the woman said in a tone Choso couldn't decide if it was meant to be boredom, indifference or annoyance.

"We've been okay on our own!" Choso stated through gritted teeth. They had been on their own since Choso had been able to break the two out of that horrible placement.

"I’m not sure about that yet," the social worker said and wrote something down on her clipboard.

"When they’re in a placement, can I please call them? I just really want to see if they're okay!" Choso tried again and the woman sized him up with a look.

"I don't have a phone number on me right now, but I can look if I can find one," she finally agreed and Choso took a deep breath.

Choso hadn't seen his social worker for another two days now and he was getting restless. Nobody seemed to be able get her on the phone and Choso's self-restrain to keep lying in this bed while his little brothers were off somewhere with a stranger made his blood boil.

The last time Choso had left Sukuna and Yuji alone in a placement, they had come out of that more shattered than he had ever seen them before. Both of them were struggling with the aftereffects of what happened in that placement to this day and Choso would never forgive himself for that.

So in the morning he asked the nurses to try to get in contact with his social worker again. They came back with the same sorry look and the same apologies as every other day and Choso would not keep laying here and do nothing.

He ripped out the needle, freed himself of the other cables that hooked him up to machines, and marched straight out of the room, ready to get his brothers.

He came all of two feet along the hall until a nurse stopped him, ordering him back to bed to wait for his social worker. Choso cursed him off, fought off his hands and kept walking towards the entrance.

More nurses and doctors came storming towards the tumult he had caused.

"Let go of me, you fucking pricks!" Choso yelled, trying to keep going, telling himself that if he just reached the glass doors he would be all right. If he only could get rid of those hands that kept him from leaving, he would find them. And if he had to turn every stone in this godforsaken city, he would not stop, he wouldn't give up, not this time, not when he knew what could happen in the worst-case scenario. Because they already did worst case. It sucked. And he would rather die trying to find them than sitting around waiting until the adults who he knew didn't give a fuck would finally start pretending to care.

So he kept pushing off the hands, the arms, blocked out the words they yelled at him and as he finally fought them off enough to take a few steps forward another hand screwed itself around his wrist. He didn't even realise his fist flying towards her face.

He didn't realise the ripped skin on his knuckles until they pressed him to the cold tiled floor and called security.

He hadn't wanted to break her nose. He only wanted to save his little bothers.

Mahito was probably the craziest person Choso had ever met in his entire life. And he had met a lot of crazy people.

Mahito seemed to be the boy who had been the longest at The Home for Troubled Teens that his social worker decided Choso to send to, after he had broken that nurse's nose and bruised up most of the staff on that day. Combined with his track record of arrests and days spend in police custody overnight before bolting, there was no point in trying to convince her of anything different than what picture she had painted of him herself. Her opinion couldn’t be swayed. Their opinions could never be swayed because they cared far more about the numbers and notes on paper than what Choso tried to tell them to their faces.

"With you acting like this, how can I possibly let you be around your brothers Choso?," that bitch of a social worker had asked him as she had parked the car in front of the home. He tried explaining to her, that he never had the intention to hurt anyone, that he only had wanted to fucking talk to his brothers, but she was already busy reading incoming E-Mails on her phone.

Choso had been in many placements during his time in the system, but this one was definitely one of the worst.

"Yeah, no electronical devices for you, it's our policy" the man who had looked through his trash back of clothes had said as he had taken Choso's phone away and showed him his bunk bed afterwards.

He had felt like walking into the lion’s den as he followed the ... was he another social worker? A Security Guard? The Head of the Home? Choso didn't know what the man was, he hadn't introduced himself. He only knew there was someone sitting in front of that door during the entire day and the entire night, not caring what was going on inside.

And hell was there going on a lot inside.

As soon as he was shown his bunk bed, a circle of boys had crowded itself around him, staring, pocking, asking question as if Choso was the most interesting attraction that had happened here in a while. Like bored socially traumatised zoo animals who had forgotten or never learned how to behave like one of their kind and only lived according to the system they had developed among themselves.

And at the top of that system was Mahito. Probably a couple years younger than Choso himself, long grey hair that fitted his patchwork scared pale skin and the crazy look in his eyes. Mahito laughed a lot and whenever he did, it sounded like he lost total control over himself.

They had taught Choso pretty quickly how their system, their hierarchy worked. It was fairly simple. New boys were scum under their shoes. You were only worth the time you've spend here; you were who you surrounded yourself with and nobody fucked with Mahito's group of wanna be kingpins.

At the end of the day they were lonely, traumatised teenagers who tried to fill the holes in their chest - that non existing mothers and farther had left there - with beating and humiliating the one's around them.

Mahito liked hurting people, he liked pitting the boys against each other, he liked taking things away from everyone around him. But the biggest problem was that Mahito liked pain, and he didn't only like to inflict pain on others, he liked being in pain himself. One couldn't win when fighting with Mahito, because the more you hurt him the more he was enjoying the fight.

And between all the noise, the crowded room, the nonexistence of privacy and the constant need to keep his guard up, Choso could only pray that Sukuna and Yuji had ended up somewhere different. That he got the short end of the stick this time, paying karma back and suffering for his sins and all that crap. It was the only thing that kept him sane as he lay in his tiny bunk, feeling every spring of the sagging mattress with a blanket that had more holes than actual fabric.

He had made a deal with the bitch of a social worker the last weeks. When he stopped making drama in the home, what literally meant taking what Mahito decided to hand to you that day, and kept himself clean and out of trouble she hinted at making arrangement to a meet up with his brothers.

It was a cruel deal in Choso's opinion. Because the boy's around him had long found out about his weak point, about his best hidden secret and they were using it to make trouble.

They were like the pigs in their too crowded cages, their sharp teeth and tails taken so they couldn't harm each other but they did it anyways. Because being crammed into too little space with too many others eventually lead to problems. Boredom and insanity were the fuel for the burning dumpster that was The Troubled Home for Teens.

Maybe one of your brother's landed in those homes where the parents especially ~love~ teenagers! I've been to one of those once. He should go to the doctor to get a check-up when he's out of there! for that Choso had broken one of Mahito's fingers.

Jo Choso, you ever thought about taking your little brother from behind. Because with my little sister- that boy hadn't been able to eat solid food for a few weeks.

Choso had thought that as some point he would be able to just not listen to their comments anymore, to their shameless usage of their names as soon as someone had found them out.

The month after their discovery of their names was the hardest. Choso had been so far from the worst cases of the system that he had forgotten how broken all these kids where. And he had told himself he didn't belong here, had tried to tell the social worker that he really wasn't a violent person.

He couldn't really blame her distrust of those statements since every time she came around to check on him there was another bruise, another black eye, another scar from a razor blade knife.

And then, after two long months she had spoken the words he had longed for so long.

"Their foster father reached out to me, he asked about you," she said as they were sitting in the sad excuse for a community room.

"You placed them with a man?" Choso asked, tried to control his breathing and temper. This situation was as fragile as a damn butterfly wing, he couldn't grab it hard and forceful, or it would evaporate into thin air and hidden from him sight for the next year.

"Yes I did, you got a problem with that?" she asked, sizing him up once again and he tried to hide his split knuckles as best as he could.

"How many kids are placed with him?"

"None. He's new," Choso bit his lip. New fosters were always a coin flip. They were dangerous because you didn't know what you would get.

"You meet him next Tuesday."

The moment he had walked into the visiting room and had seen that man, who introduced himself as Nanami Kento from the other side of the table, Choso didn't really know what to think of him. At first sight Choso thought of Nanami as a strict person because of his straight posture, straight back and shoulders and a firm handshake to greet each other.

He thought of him as uptight because of the spotless suit he had shown up in. The fact that he actually turned up in a suit to this shit hole was beyond Choso's understanding.

He thought of him as buttoned up with a stick up his ass because he talked so damn formal the entire fucking time. He had tinted glasses that didn't seem to fulfil any purpose beside looking like a rich asshole.

He thought of him as wealthy in a dangerous way. As if he knew that money meant freedom in this world. Money meant control over others and it scared Choso because people with money could literally do anything they wanted with his brothers, and nobody would give a shit.

His brothers. His damn weak point. Because the moment he talked about them he stopped thinking about Nanami as a thread. That Nanami was an unfamiliar adult that Choso knew nothing about, except that he was new in the foster system.

And as soon as he had started to talk it was hard to stop. It was hard to stop because there had never been anyone Choso had been able to tell this too. Because he always was the big brother, the strong one, the one who handled the problems the world had thrown at them without realising that the only shield these two kids had been a kid roughly two years older than them.

At the end of their talk Choso was still thinking about Nanami as uptight and buttoned up, but maybe that stick in his ass had evaporated during their talk and the fact that he had money maybe only meant that he had gotten lucky in life.

Nanami had promised him that he would bring them next time. And maybe Choso was being far too trustful, or he liked to manipulate himself into misery, but he had believed every single word.

Maybe it was wishful thinking maybe not, but Choso didn't care.

He hadn't acquired any new bruise in a few days and the boys were slowly growing tired of the same teasing and began to lose interest. Mahito had found a new victim to pay his attention to and Choso for once didn't get into business that wasn't his to get into.

The visiting room had exactly one positive quality: one could see up and down the street and the way from the door in the fence towards the front door of the home. Choso had his eyes glued to the street, waiting for a car to park somewhere.

The social worker bitch was still lingering in the visiting room with him, had even organized the warden that was normally standing in front of the sleeping room to be in ear shot and Choso had only rolled his eyes at her. She still believed he was bad influence for his brothers. Maybe he was. Choso had been having enough time on his hands to contemplate how much of a maniac he really was and how much he scored on the maniac Skala of the home.

The buzzer of the front door ripped Choso out of the hateful spiral regarding his social worker and giddy excitement poured into his stomach. He had been told to wait until Yuji, Sukuna and Nanami would come into the visiting room, he remembered a few of her words being protocol and regulation but as he heard how two very familiar voices bickered loudly on their hectic way up the stairs he couldn't care less about any fucking regulations.

He sprinted towards the closed door of the visiting room and ripped it open, alarming the man who was standing in the middle of the hall.

He heard how two people were sprinting up the stairs, followed by a tired sounding, "Booooys!" from Nanami but they weren't slowing down.

It only took seconds, in which Choso was unable to move, frozen to the ground in the hall and eyes glued to the corner they should emerged from any second now.

His eyes couldn't even comprehend them fast enough, take in their faces or anything else, so fast Yuji and Sukuna had been sprinting through the hall and had thrown themselves into his arms.

Yuji was openly sobbing as he pressed himself into Choso's chest.

"Fuck, I missed you guys too!" Choso said, his throat tight as he slung his arms around his brothers’ shoulders and pressed them close, scared it was all just a dream and as soon as he would let go they would evaporate into thin air.

They had grown over the last two months. He was sure of it. Sukuna was nearly as tall as he was and as Choso finally let go of them to look at their faces, Sukuna was rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt.

"Ryo, are you crying?" Choso asked sniffing up his own snotty nose, noticing too late he had used the name Sukuna didn't want to hear anymore.

"No, I have something in my eyes!" his little brother mumbled, his voice far too tight for it not being tears.

"What? Emotions?" Choso teased, reached out to swipe a tear from his cheek that had escaped Sukuna's rubbing. Sukuna only swatted his hand out of his face and shoved Choso away with too little force for it to be serious.

Sukuna slipped into the visiting room behind Choso, since they still were standing in the hall. Yuji was still sobbing slightly and Choso pulled him into his arms one more time, propping his chin on Yuji's head and met Nanami's look.

The adult had kept himself a bit behind, gave them the space they needed and Choso send him the tiniest smile that softened Nanami's stoic expression in seconds.

As Yuji was master his emotions again, they headed into the visiting room and as they sat down Yuji had started talking and he didn't stop for the next twenty minutes.

Choso didn't mind, he wanted to know everything that had happened in his little brother's life’s since they had been split apart.

Choso smiled dumbly as Yuji told him about soccer club and beamed as he told him about Sukuna's job at the repair shop. Yuji threw a lot of names around Choso couldn't remember - both of them had separate friend groups and Choso wondered how each of them had accomplished that.

Yuji information dump continued and Choso tried to take everything in he was told. His and Sukuna's school - only an eight-minute drive apart - and their room at Nanami's apartment - big enough for two bed and desk - and the big living room with the biggest TV they had ever seen - with all paid streaming platform because Nanami had the money for it - and that Sukuna apparently learned a bit of sign language from a friend of his that was deaf and taught him.

At that particular piece of information Sukuna suddenly became all embarrassed and silent, when he had loudly added shit, that Yuji had forgotten to name only minutes ago. Yuji pushed him to present a few sings, and Sukuna reluctantly did but was eager to change the topic as soon as possible.

"And Sukuna joined a school club!" Yuji called out excited then and Sukuna shot a glare to Yuji who was not caring at all and only continued his thousand-watt smile. Choso turned to Sukuna, eyebrows high and with an unbelieving expression he asked, "Which one?"

He really wanted to know! Sukuna had always claimed school clubs were stupid and a waste of time and he would rather do homework than join a club.

His brother became all uncomfortable and silent again and Choso decided he enjoyed this side of Sukuna very much.

"Oh.... just a club," he evaded the question and drummed his finger's impatient on the table.

"Tell him! You were so excited!" at this point Choso didn't know if Yuji was teasing and joking or if Sukuna generally had been excited over the club.

Sukuna only sighed annoyed as he argued, "I was not excited Yuta was! He was excited for both of us because now we're three and you need three members to be an official club so..."

Choso watched how Sukuna was mumbling the last words into himself before he said, "That's amazing!"

And Choso had the time of his life watching how Sukuna became even more uncomfortable and moved around on his chair as he mumbled, "Ah ... uh ... yeah well, it's just a club .... Yuji has a boyfriend!"

Choso whipped his head around to his other brother and the smile was definitely more genuine than before as Yuji only nodded excitedly.

"We didn't make it official yet, but kinda yes!" he said proudly and Choso felt his protective older brother energy rise up in his chest.

"You have a boyfriend?" he asked alarmed and shot a disapproving look to Nanami. But the man only waved it off with a relaxing smile and whispered, "There not even touching, it's fine."

But Yuji didn't seem to notice his little exchange with Nanami because he was already completely into telling Choso everything about this apparent boyfriend of his. Choso listened and it seemed like Yuji was really happy with this Megumi-kid and he couldn't bring himself to be mad about it.

While Yuji was talking Choso glanced over to Sukuna now and then who had made it his mission to not meet Choso's eyes once through the whole time Yuji was talking. As Yuji was finished info dumping about his boyfriend and Choso told him that he was happy for him, he turned his attention over to Sukuna.

"Sukuna, what's with you? Any relationships in sight?" it was really just a question to maybe rile him up a bit about something Yuji accomplished before him but to Choso's shock he seemed to have hit point blank.

Because Sukuna was shrugging his shoulders, not meeting Choso's look as he said, "Nah, you know me, I don't like to label things."

The thing was, Sukuna could lie very well. Every time he had watched him do it Choso had been amazed how easy Sukuna had made it look. But his little brother could only lie so well because he had learned it from the best. Choso himself. He knew his brother like he knew his own mind and he wouldn't be fooled by his expressionless face and his distant look or his distracting fidgeting.

"So you need to label something? This was not a no," Choso stated, feeling the anger and the need of protectiveness rise in him again.

Sukuna still evaded Choso's look, and his eyes quickly jumped across the room, mumbling something under his breath that he maybe wanted to sell as an answer but knew it wouldn't work.

"So... when are you gonna get out of here?" Sukuna instead changed the topic and Choso shot him a glare, letting him know he saw straight through him. But Sukuna only smiled like the little shit he was as Yuji jumped on the topic change without wasting a second.

"Oh we have to get a third bed into the room then! Or no, Ryo and I can just share again, and you can have my bed! And Sukuna's desk! He always does homework with Nanami in the kitchen anyways and the room is easily big enough for the three of us, it's not a problem at all. At the apartment is plenty of room and the High School district is very good, there are a lot of art classes you can pick up drawing-" as Yuji kept talking the smile on Choso's face froze up and became still and lifeless like a fish on ice and locked eyes with Nanami.

But the man looked just as panicked as Choso was.

"Yuji!" Sukuna interrupted his twin, and his brother shot him an annoyed glance, "He's not gonna stay with us." Sukuna's tone was cold and distant and Choso wished the talk hadn't taken this turn.

"What? Why?" Yuji asked indignant and looked confused and angry from Choso to Sukuna.

"Because it's just temporary. It always was." Sukuna stated and his tone became even colder than before, his hands were pressed into fists and Choso desperately wanted to keep the wound from ripping open even wider.

Yuji's expression fell together, and his eyes became sadder than Choso had ever wanted to see them again, "Oh. Right."

The room became dead silent. The noise from the sleeping room two doors down was muffled and the wind that hunted around the corners of the building outside was filling the room with haunting noises.

"Well-" Choso started, his hands now cold and sweaty as he tried scaring away the haunted looks on the faces of his little brothers, "In a year I'm eighteen, out of the system and- like we always planned right? I'm gonna get the guardianship and a job and a nice place to live and everything is going back to normal alright?" he stumbled through the sentences with forced hope and glee.

On his words Yuji and Sukuna nodded like puppets on strings while they’re both mumbled, "Right, right the plan. Yes, of course."

"Yeah," Choo's voice was shaky and thin, "the plan!" and evaded the eyes of the twins, looking any and everywhere except their faces and landed on Nanami who had been holding himself back for the entire time of the talk but was now knitting his eyebrows together. Choso met Nanami's struggling and debating look but quickly looked away again as Nanami caught his stare.

He asked the twins to give them a moment to speak alone and with a nod from Choso they both slowly creeped out of the room reluctantly.

Nanami pushed himself slowly up from the chair he had been occupying a bit away from the table. With a sigh and a tight expression on his face he pulled one of the chairs back, the legs scratched over the floor and Nanami sat down.

His eyes were casted down on the tabletop and he stared downwards for a moment, his tinted glasses hid his eyes and Choso suddenly felt the need to run and hide.

His finger's started shaking and he pressed them into fists. Whatever Nanami's plan of action was, he would not-

"Tell me your plan," Nanami said, looked up with his hands intertwined on the table and his face unreadable.

Choso stared, before he found his voice again. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Nanami sighed and pulled the glasses from his nose. The metal frame hit the tabletop hard, as if he had thrown them a bit and Choso flinched.

"Tell me your plan after getting out of here," Nanami made a vague hand gesture to The Home and Choso forced himself to unclench his fingers. His throat was dry as sandpaper as he felt Nanami's eyes boring into him.

"Well-" Choso chocked his own spit and cleared his throat under painful coughing. Nanami waited patiently. "I'm gonna get a job," Choso continued, his throat scratchy now as if he hadn't drunken anything for the past two days.

Nanami's eyes narrowed, calculating and sharp, as he replied, "A shitty one, because you don't have a school diploma."

"Right," Choso stated, clicking his tongue but Nanami's expression wasn't changing, it almost felt as if Nanami was putting Choso on trial.

"And a record," the man added in a dry tone and Choso took a deep breath through the nose.

"Sure."

"And you're eighteen. Then what?"

"I'm gonna get a place to live," Choso said and Nanami squinted his eyes at him again.

"A small one, in the slums because of low income and no savings," Nanami said as soon as Choso had finished his last word.

"Right. A small one but small is okay. We can work with that," Choso felt the need to justify his plan that sounded more and more like a children's dream.

"Yeah sure. Then what?"

"I'm ... gonna get the ... guardianship?" it sounded more like a question than a statement and it definitely felt like the trial he was apparently put on went spectacularly down the fucking drain.

Nanami huffed in disbelieve before he said, "Sure an eighteen-year-old with a shitty job, low income, a track record and a shitty place to live is going to get guardianship over two teenage boys just because you're brothers. Because the world works like that. Then what?"

Choso glared at Nanami, his arms defensively crossed in front of his chest, his leg jumping up and down nervously. "We're gonna make it work."

Nanami gave him another look he couldn't read and there was a heavy pause before the man asked, "And how did that turn out for you before?"

Choso had to look away. His anger would rise up too quickly and too hot for him to be able to control it if he looked longer into Nanami's judging face.

"What am I supposed to do? Ditch them?" he snapped, angry about Nanami giving him such a brutal reality check.

There was another pause with silence haunted them yet again and Choso looked back at Nanami. He was shocked to see the softness in the man's eyes, the unsureness and nervousness that he had concealed before.

"Let me tell you my plan," he said, his voice so much gentler than before, "You come live with us. I have a spare room, you can go to school again and get your diploma, just like the twins and when you have a safe basis to work with, you can decide how to go forward."

It felt like being handed a golden ticket. Too good to be true and too bright and blinding to see the catch that was attached.

"Why would you do that for us?" Choso whispered after he had to make sure he hadn't hallucinated those words.

"Because you are the child, and I'm the adult. It's my job to prioritize you over myself," Nanami said, and it didn't sound like his words. It sounded like he would cite someone else, someone who had planted those words carefully into Nanami's chest, waiting patiently for them to grow.

"Nobody ever did that for us," Choso still whispered because he didn't trust his voice to not break.

"About time someone should then," Nanami said whole posture far more relaxed now, as if the whole speech had stressed him just as much as it had stressed Choso.

Without his permission Choso's body started moving. He rounded the table and quickly hugged Nanami tightly, trying to put in all those words he couldn't say yet into a tight squeeze.

"Aw, are you crying?" Nanami asked teasingly gentle as Choso had to sniff his nose again.

"No, I just have something in my eyes," Choso replied but made no effort to part from Nanami who was hugging him back gently.

"What? ... Emotions?" Nanami asked again in that teasing gentle voice and Choso couldn't stop himself from chuckling into Nanami's shoulder.

Maybe ... just maybe ... this time, Choso and the twins hadn't gotten the short end of the stick.

Chapter Text

Never in his life had Sukuna been excited to clean something up. Never before had he not hesitated when Yuji had told him to come along to help clean up.

Because the clean-up was for Choso. Because Choso would be living with them in a few weeks and - his ego be damned - he just couldn't shake the jittery glee that bounced around in his chest when he thought about it.

He would never say out loud that his big brother was the coolest person he knew - Sukuna blamed genetics for that. A result of being younger and most of his life shorter than Choso. He blamed Biology for imprinting that picture he had of Choso, from being forced to physically look up to him for years. That Choso had been the only constant in both his and Yuji's lives was something Sukuna tried not to think about very often.

Yuji in contrast, was not hiding at all how cool he thought Choso was, and he didn't hide the excitement that made his twin as happy as Sukuna hadn't seen him in years.

Sure, that Megumi-idiot had been able to conjure up a smile on Yuji face from time to time, to make Yuji chuckle into his damn phone when another texts from him would come through - the moment Sukuna always wanted to ram a pencil into his eyes and ears repeatedly to never see and hear that giddy excitement ever again.

But with Choso it was different and it made even Nanami give them a worried look as he called them over to help and it only took them a handful of seconds. He didn't say anything though and Sukuna was thankful for it.

Maybe he didn't say anything about it because he was able to read their minds - Yuji had laughed for whole ten minutes as Sukuna had shared his theory regarding Nanami's eventual superpowers of mind reading.

"Stop laughing cricket mouth! How else would he be able to know so much about us?" Sukuna had snapped at Yuji, but his twin had only wiped the tears from his eyes while laughing and had said, "Because he pays attention and remembers shit? 'Kuna, come on, Nanami can't read your mind just because he knows you like salty popcorn!

So, the mind reading theory was off the table and Nanami was maybe not saying anything about their unusual enthusiasm because his eyes were weirdly dark and sad. He opened the door to the room neither Sukuna nor Yuji had set a foot in since they lived in this apartment slowly.

Not that Sukuna hadn't tried, but the room had always been locked and the one time he did try picking the lock Nanami had caught him do it. But instead of being yelled at or hit, Nanami had only given him that same heavy look and had explained that this room had been his husband's previous hobby room.

The way he said it Sukuna didn't have to ask why it was locked. He knew grief when he saw it and had never tried to enter the room ever again.

Not even out of spite after Nanami had taken his cigarettes and energy drinks away - he still had a little bit of decency.

It was just a room like every other one was. The sun was shining through the window and highlighted the thick layer of dust that was sitting on the surfaces. Boxes of packed up shit were sitting around but other than that the room looked ... lived in.

Ignoring the dust that showed how long this space had been undisturbed, there was - once lively, now dead - chaos all around the room.

An easel was occupying the middle of the room with a canvas propped onto it and a half-finished picture. There were acrylics and something that looked like oil paints, used dried up brushes, dried in painter's palettes, sketchbooks, half-finished sketches with pencil and a lot of other funny looking art shit Sukuna had never seen before lay around on every surface.

He roamed through the room, picked up sketches here and there. The longer Sukuna dived into the amounts of stuff, the more he could understand why Nanami hadn't cleaned this up after his husband had passed.

Nanami hadn't talked about that man at all in the last few months, maybe a side note there or a heavy look here but in general Sukuna couldn't remember a situation where he had learned anything more than the name Haibara.

Just by going through this shit Sukuna learned more about Haibara than Nanami had ever told him and if Sukuna would be an emotional available person he maybe would have grieved with Nanami for a bit. Because Haibara seemed to be a man full of passion and love, he mostly had painted and sketched people. There were sketchbooks filled with people in various situations looking like quick rough outlines done in just a couple of minutes.

Sukuna never had thought of himself as someone who was into art at all - someone who would stare at a painting and relate to anything, God forbid feel an emotion while looking at some paint on a canvas. With Haibara's sketches though - there was something special about them and he only really understood it as he found a sketchbook which seemed to be dedicated to Nanami alone.

Opening and looking at the drawings felt forbidden and far too intimate as for Sukuna to be seeing them. There were drawings of a far younger Nanami, a young man with a smile that didn't spoke of any worries, eyes that sparkled full of adoration while he was probably watching his husband draw. Every perspective of Nanami was carefully crafted and even Sukuna could see the admiration in the pencil strokes.

He only managed to look at two or three before he closed the sketchbook and placed it back in its place, not difficult to find since it had left a perfect square imprint in the layer of dust. His fingers lingered on the sketchbook a moment longer, wondering for a second what kind of man Nanami had been with Haibara by his side.

Sukuna looked back to where Nanami was standing in the door frame, eyes empty and far away, heavy with grief and the entire way he held his body screamed that he wanted to be anywhere else than here. So, Sukuna decided to do the only adult thing he knew to distract Nanami from his grieving, he started a pointless fight with Yuji.

Pointless banter and bickering were something Sukuna had perfected over the years and Yuji was fully on his ass after only two sentences. He didn't even remember what bullshit he had said that had riled Yuji up that much. Sukuna only remembered that the next time he had looked over to Nanami - who was immediately trying to stop their bickering and put them to work - his face didn't look that sad anymore.

An hour into cleaning up and airing the room out Nanami suddenly started to tell them about Haibara without them asking about it.

"He was an EMT, but he always wanted to be a painter, he had this connection to this little art gallery downtown and every few months they would let him do his own art exhibition."

Sukuna only hummed in acknowledgement, rolling his aching shoulders but Yuji was more than happy to get into the conversation.

"Choso wants to be an artist too! He's really good at drawing people! Just like Haibara seemed to be! He could've learned a lot from him," Yuji said in that soft tone.

Nanami agreed with a slow nod and a sad smile on his lips but otherwise stayed silent.

"How did he die?" Yuji asked as he closed up another box and shoved it towards the door.

Nanami stopped lingering on some painting and cleared his throat before he answered too quickly, "Ah, it was on duty. Big mess. People being stupid." Sukuna knotted his eyebrows together at that vague explanation, but he was in no place to prod since he had given Nanami half assed explanation ever since they met.

"I'm sorry," Yuji said sincerely while holding a picture frame in his hand and smiling down on it a moment later. Sukuna craned his neck to look at the picture and it showed a significant younger Nanami, probably teenager-age and Haibara, just as old, holding their High School diploma proudly in their hands. Next to them were two other boys, one with white spiky hair and another one with long black hair.

"You were High School Sweethearts?" Yuji asked, held up the photo and Nanami looked up to him, his eyes fell on the photo, and it took him a moment to answer.

"No, not exactly. I ..." Nanami started, before he headed over to them and took the picture from Yuji's hand. His thump gently swiped over the dusty glass and the softest smile Sukuna had ever seen pulled up on Nanami's face.

"I’ve always had a crush on him during school, but he was so obsessed with Geto - Megumi's dad - always saying how cool and kind he was, that I was sure he had a thing for him. We lost contact after school but met again years later when I was still working at the emergency room, I met him the first day I was on the job," now Nanami was chuckling, lost in memories and Sukuna watched how the man, he had gotten a glimpse of in the sketchbooks, was showing himself again.

"I was so stunned seeing him again, in full shape and gear. He wouldn't stop teasing me whenever he came to the emergency room on his shift. It didn't take us long to eventually start dating. When I worked up the balls to ask him about Geto he laughed at me and said he had thought that I had a crush on Gojo. Disgusting! And stupid since Gojo and Geto had been together since they were ... sixteen I think," now Nanami was really smiling, and Yuji was looking up to him with the puppiest puppy look Sukuna had ever seen on his brother.

Nanami swiped over the glass of the picture again, before he placed it back on the table and started cleaning again, the heavy grief reduced to something Sukuna didn't understand. It was still sadness, but it was lighter, not as suffocating as before.

"Haibara always wanted to be a parent. We registered just six months before he died. He would have loved to meet you," Nanami said completely lost in thought and the warm fuzzy feeling that had spread in Sukuna's chest the entire last hour froze up and ice nearly busted his veins like it would an old frozen up water pipe.

He looked over to Yuji, searching for the same panic that had just punched him in the face, but his twin was only grinning up at Nanami, listening to more stories about Haibara.

Without a word Sukuna slipped out of the room and when Nanami or Yuji noticed him leaving, they didn't say anything. God he needed a cigarette!

Sukuna didn't need friends.

He didn't.

But after Ino had come around to supply him with the needed cigarette and a walk around the block to calm his nerves after just a quick request, Sukuna could admit to himself that maybe having friends wasn't that bad.

Sukuna hadn't told him why he needed to get out of the apartment for a moment and Ino hadn't asked. He had made curious attempts but had stopped after all he had gotten was glares.

Eventually they made their way back and ended up on Nanami's amazing sofa. The man himself was still busy cleaning out the room for Choso and Yuji was nowhere to be seen.

Ino was apparently more than fine with just existing on the sofa for a moment, his eyes only half open. While Sukuna occupied himself with brain-numbing videos there were occasionally little snores coming from the other.

Sukuna's eyes wandered over to Ino more often than he wanted to admit to himself. Ino was wearing his black beanie that seemed attached to his head most of the time, longer brown strands of hair were peeking out on the back of his neck and curled around his ears. He said he was growing them out again and Sukuna hadn't complained, Ino's hair was always soft between his fingers.

His oversized black T-Shirt had pulled up a bit and a stretch of skin was showing, a fine line of hair was disappearing into his pants and-

"If you keep undressing me with your eyes, I'm gonna catch a cold," Ino suddenly said, his tone teasing and voice gruff from sleep. Sukuna flinched and - on reflex - threw a pillow at him.

"You stole that line from me," Sukuna grumbled, demanding that his body reduced the fucking heat in his cheeks immediately.

"It's a good line," Ino hummed, far too satisfied with himself while Sukuna could feel Ino's eyes on his skin. Moments of silence ticked by as Sukuna forced his mind back to the videos on his phone.

Then, "What is going on, are you nervous or something?" Ino asked and shot him a different look that Sukuna couldn't place.

"No? Why would I be nervous?" he snapped back, still embarrassed how Ino's comment had fazed him and rearranged his legs again. Had he been moving?

"I don't know, you're just," Ino made a hand gesture towards Sukuna's whole being, "doing a lot," he finished. Sukuna didn't do shame but in that moment there was a little bit of something that looked very much like shame creeping into his chest.

Self-conscious Sukuna changed his sitting position again, trying to ease the aching in his shoulder from the cooked position in which he was sitting and fidgeted with the pillow to his side.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he deflected and ignored Ino's look.

"You're, like, moving every second," Ino stated, and Sukuna only clicked his tongue. He thought this was about the company seeking from earlier or his obvious embarrassment, but Ino seemed to head down a completely different road and Sukuna was eager to join and derail from their previous topic.

"And? Problem?" Sukuna shot back way more tempered than he actually wanted to and Ino locked eyes with him for a second.

Sukuna prepared himself for some heated words back, but Ino didn't do that. All he did was pulling a smile on his face a second later and even if it was very distracting, Sukuna still saw how Ino's look had snatched towards his back for a moment.

"I would be restless too, having to sit right next to me and not being able to-" Ino started, his voice way too flirty.

"Alright, no. Not at my fucking home!" he shoved Ino's face away that was too near and froze mid movement. Home? .... what? When had Ino even come this close?

"Why? There's nobody here to-" if Ino had noticed Sukuna's brain had just frozen up for a moment and he needed a reboot, he didn't show it.

"Enough of this now, shut the fuck up!" Sukuna snapped, trying to hide the uncomfortableness with anger as usual. The fucker only chuckled and settled back into the cushion of the sofa. Sukuna took a deep breath; it pulled a bit on his back, but he didn't even acknowledge the burning anymore.

"Well, there is this party on Friday at a friend's of mine," Ino said then, throwing a sheepish look over to Sukuna who was giving Ino his full attention after the word party. "You wanna go? You could stay at mine ... if you want," he mumbled the last words shyly and Sukuna enjoyed the embarrassed look on Ino's face for a moment.

He shrugged his shoulder then like it was no big deal, "Sure. I just have to think about what I tell Nanami."

"Just tell him the truth?" suggested Ino and Sukuna only gave him a look as if he was out of his mind. "Hell nah!"

"Why?"

"He's gonna say no?" Sukuna stated confused. Even if Nanami had eased up on the control -'This is not about control Sukuna, it's about keeping you alive!' Yeah keep telling that to yourself grandpa! - it was still tense between them. Sukuna was still pissed at how Nanami had taken action. He would never admit to him out loud that cutting back on the energy drinks and cigarettes may have helped, so he wouldn't feel that shitty the entire time.

But Nanami still kept going on trying to find out what Sukuna was hiding. He did it subtle, careful and smart. A comment here, a comment there, trying to find Sukuna in situations where he was most likely to drop his walls.

He wouldn't though. He didn't need Nanami's help! He didn't need anyone's help! He wouldn't ruin the best thing that had happened to them - with Choso joining them soon - ruin because he was in a little bit of pain every second of the day!

Nevertheless, did he ignore the little voice in his head that was accusing him of being a wimp for avoiding Nanami after they cleaned out Haibara's room.

"No, he doesn't! Are you ... are you scared of your dad?" Ino asked and stared Sukuna down with those clear brown eyes.

Again, there was something sharp cutting through Sukuna, the same freezing panic that shot through his veins like it did earlier as Nanami had talked about being a parent. He didn't understand it, but it was as if his whole being curled itself away from the perspective of having an adult claiming the title of Parent. The title of Dad. It was a foreign concept that had only been abused by cruel people in the past and Sukuna would not let that happen again!

I am your parent! voices from the past broke out of that box in his head again, creeped into his brain and the scars on his back started burning up, scratching against the fabric of his shirt.

I know what's best for you! the voices whispered; a distant crack of a belt echoed through his mind.

Sukuna forced the voices back, stuffed them into that box they came from, chained them away and buried them twelve feet down. He covered the shock of the memories the only way he knew. Anger.

"I'm not scared of anything you dipshit!" he snapped far too intense and threw the pillow he was fidgeting with right into Ino's face. "And he's not my fucking father!"

"Yeah right, because he's Nanami," Ino made a weird thing with his voice as he said Nanami's name.

"Damn right!" Sukuna stated far too tense. Ino seemed to notice the shift in his posture and a confused look shifted into his look.

"What's that about by the way? Why do you always call him by his last name?" he asked, and Sukuna stared him down.

"What the hell else am I supposed to fucking call him?"

"He's your father? Why not call him that?"

"Did you even fucking listen to me? He's not my damn father! We've only been living with him for ... what, two months?" Sukuna asked, his tone heated. He didn't like where this conversation was going.

"Wait ... what? What are you talking about?" now Ino was just as confused as Sukuna.

"He's fostering us. Yuji and I grew up in the fucking system!"

"You-" now Ino was the one staring and Sukuna could nearly watch how his brain was working through all of it at a lighting speed. "Oh... that ... explains so much about you," Ino said more to himself, and his look was thoughtful. Silence settled over them and Sukuna was suddenly sweating; never before had he told a friend about being in the system because that would entail having friends to talk to in the first place.

Suddenly Ino's face lit up as he said, "Oh now the whole thing you told me about your other brother makes so much more sense!"

"You mean Choso?"

"Yeah! It makes sense now that he's joining you! And I was so confused about the whole situation!" Ino laughed and relief flooded his face.

"Why didn't you ask you dipshit?" Sukuna asked, trying to calm the uneasiness in his chest.

"Well, if you haven't noticed you are quite touchy about this kind of questions," Ino chuckled and gave him the softest smile.

"I'm not fucking touchy about anything!" that was a lie. And Sukuna knew it, but he clung to his fragile front of an ego like a lost man on sea to a passing driftwood.

"Of course not. Just like you're not scared of asking Nanami about the party," Ino teased, and Sukuna longed for something heavier to throw at him. A pillow had to do but the fucker only dared to laugh as it hit him, and it pulled Sukuna right out of the spiral of violence he found himself in.

"I just don't want to fucking ask him!" Sukuna crossed his arms in front of his chest and glared Ino down but the hot rage that so suddenly shot up his bloodstream seemed to seep away as quickly as it had come. His glare had no fucking effect anymore and the fucker only grinned wider.

"It's alright. I'm gonna ask him for you then," Ino stated and got up from the sofa so fast that Sukuna wasn't able to grab and stop him.

Sukuna panicked immediately and quietly yelled after Ino who was already yelling through the apartment on his search for Nanami. "Ino! Don't! Come back!"

"Kento? Where are you?" Ino yelled, completely ignoring Sukuna who wanted to be swallowed by the sofa right then and there.

"Stop yelling, I'm right here!" Nanami answered not far from Ino at all.

Sukuna watched from the sofa how Ino casually leaning against the door frame of Haibara's old room that Nanami was still clearing out even if him and Yuji had fucked off a few hours ago.

"How's the car? Doing fine?" Ino asked casually.

"What do you want?" Nanami only asked back and Ino huffed amused.

"You're such a dad!" Ino stated and silence followed his words. Sukuna could nearly see Nanami's glare perforating Ino.

"Spill!"

"So, there is this thing at my friend’s house, just a little get together and I was wondering if Sukuna could come too?" Ino asked casually, as if he would be asking about the weather.

"When?" was Nanami's only question.

"Friday?" Ino asked and his tone sounded unsure.

"How are you gonna get back?"

"It's just ten minutes from my flat, we can walk, and he can stay with me, I have a ... couch."

Silence followed his words, and Sukuna was too fucking tense for this shit. Even if Nanami would forbid it as of Sukuna wouldn't give a fuck-

"Sounds reasonable. Sure." Nanami said and Sukuna forced himself to relax.

"That was way easier than I thought," Ino mumbled.

"What?" Nanami asked, his tone sounded as if he had his eyebrows raised at Ino and was staring again.

"Nothing, nothing!" Ino deflected and quickly made his way back to Sukuna.

The party was everything but not a small get together!

Sukuna could hear the music from two streets down and he was baffled as he followed Ino through the front garden, up the porch and, confident as if Ino himself would live here, through the front door and inside.

The bass shook the entire house and rattled his bones against each other. Stale used air hit him in the face as they entered, and Sukuna could nearly taste the alcohol and sweaty people on the tip of his tongue. He loved every second of it.

They made their way through a thick crowd of people who were dancing, drinking, fucking and smoking without a care in the world. Sukuna couldn't stop his gaze from trying to take everything in that happened around him. He had never seen so many diverse people, boys in skirts and girls in suits, some looked just clean genderless and the amount of extravagance between the everyday boring people was tugging his interest more than he had ever imagined.

Sukuna's followed Ino closely while pushing his hair away from his front head as it tingled his skin uncomfortably and he was already sweating in his jacket.

It only took them a few minutes to find Ino's friends and they brawled Ino's name as soon as one boy from the group laid eyes on him. The group of four or five hugged and slapped Ino's back energetic, shook him and screamed at one another to be heard over the music.

Ino was smiling wider the more friends he greeted, and Sukuna was towering behind him, arms crossed in front of his chest uncomfortable. They were probably all older than him, the average age around twenty and he hated meeting new people. Something that hadn't passed his mind as he had agreed to come along as Ino had asked. Somehow that boy managed to make Sukuna's head plain empty, not that there was going on a lot most of the time, but it was still a skill he hadn't come across yet.

Sukuna was losing himself into overthinking way too quickly so that he was startled as one of the girls came up to him and introduced herself. The other's joined her pretty quickly and not a minute later Sukuna found himself in the kitchen with the whole group arguing over drinking options.

"No no don't come at me with this bullpiss of a beer, I need something stronger!" Sukuna demanded as Ino pressed a beer in his hand and one of the guys took it from him with a chuckle.

"He is hot and he has opinions, good catch Ino!" the guy teased, and Sukuna would've not hesitated to break his nose for that comment if Ino wouldn't have started laughing too. Sukuna shot him a confused look.

Ino was rubbing his neck and he looked uncomfortable, evading Sukuna's look and tried to make the guy shut up with a tease that included an ex-girlfriend. Sukuna learned that the guy's name was Taito.

"And by the way, we are not..." Ino stuttered as Sukuna nipped at the plastic cup that had found its way into his hand, it was something mixed with an energy drink and Sukuna felt like coming home. He watched how Ino clumsily gestured between him and Sukuna.

Taito was starring Ino down with something in his look that Sukuna couldn't place. For a moment he wondered if this was how people felt when he and Yuji communicated without words.

Two girls from the group which names Sukuna had already forgotten were casting looks between them before they broke the tension and pulled them all back to the living room to dance. Sukuna watched with a sting in his chest how Taito and Ino shared a few mumbled words. Why did they seemed to be so fucking close?

As Ino looked up they locked eyes and stared at one another for a moment before Sukuna's eye became slits. He chucked down his entire cup in one go before following the girls to the makeshift dance floor.

-

Not having a baby face like Yuji paid off big time this evening because Ino's friends were going at it and they got round after round without slowing down, resulting in a steady stream of new drinks for Sukuna.

That he kept throwing his drinks down his throat on ex every time he saw Ino flirting with basically every person next to him had the wonderful side effect that he was praised for it every time from the whole group. The cheering slowly turned to concern as he stumbled into one of Ino's other friends and snapped at him for touching.

His senses were packed up in fog but the sudden hands on his back that aimed to stabilise him made his skin crawl, nevertheless.

"Dude, maybe you should slow down before-" one of them yelled into his ear but Sukuna only pushed him away.

His eyes were pinned on Ino who was leaning down to a girl in an oversized T-Shirt, she jingled her eyelashes up at Ino and Sukuna wanted to rip the tiny black hairs out of her eye lids one by one.

"I'm going over there!" Sukuna mumbled.

"Go get him tiger!" one of the girls cheered him on and Sukuna marched, half stumbled through the crowd.

He threw himself on Ino's shoulder from behind and glared at the girl.

"Fuck off to the hole where you came from!" he snapped at her, baring his teeth like a fucking animal and even Ino's smile, and apologies couldn't keep her by his side. Sukuna threw glares into her back, imagined they were daggers and chuckled at the imaginary knifes sticking out between her shoulder blades like crippled wings.

"Can you just stop talking-... to everyone around you? I'm like ... right here!" he slurred the words, his breath hot against Ino's skin. His fingertips were buzzing. Colours were popping and he could hear his own heartbeat. Strange.

Ino had lost his black beanie quick after entering the house and had his hair half tied up in a bun, little strands curled itself around his ear and tingled Sukuna's lips as Ino turned his head and stared at Sukuna. There was a smile on his lips, no anger about scaring off the girl. Sukuna was satisfied with that particular fact.

"Sukuna are you jealous?" Ino asked with a teasing tone and Sukuna only huffed.

"I'm no jealous! But I thought we were ..." Sukuna stopped, biting his lips and trapping the words behind his teeth.

"You thought we were what?" Ino asked a shit eating grin on his face as he relished himself on Sukuna's misery.

Sukuna sighed dramatically and laid his head down on Ino's shoulder, hiding his face. He closed his eyes, suddenly too aware of everything around him.

"I don' know, I don' like to label things but we ..." Sukuna fought with his mouth to not let out the words that were waiting impatiently on his tongue, but he had already lost that fight the moment he had decided to scare away the girl from Ino's side. "...we're not nothing!"

Ino chuckled softly and Sukuna was still hiding his face in his shoulder. He could feel every single drop of sweat rolling down his back. The music was crawling into his bones, wiggling into his synapses and shooting along his nerves through his entire body.

Why had he come over here?

A wave of awareness rolled over him, he could feel his teeth stuck inside his jaw and the air that travelled over his tongue as he took a deep breath through the mouth. He could taste the fucking tension in the air. What had he said a moment ago?

Everything was too real, muted at the same time. What the fuck was going on?

"Correct. So, what are you gonna do about it?" Ino asked and Sukuna stared him down. What the fuck were they talking abou- He would be falling apart any second. His skin was too fucking tight. Where had he put his fucking drink?

It felt like hours until Sukuna worked up a response. Why did his eyes burn? Right, he forgot to blink.

Memories of the past were flooding his brain, pictures from their childhood were passing his mind.

"Genocide," his mouth decided to say, and Sukuna couldn't restrain the giggle that followed.

Ino turned his head again, sizing him up with a confused and maybe terrified look. Terrified? Why was that fucker terr-

His body was working on its own and Sukuna's arms were suddenly wrapping itself around Ino's head, his hands forming a complicated looking gesture in front of Ino's face as he said, "Domain Expansion. Malevolant Shrine."

"Alright we're getting some air, come on," Ino took Sukuna's hands in his and started pulling him towards the front door. It felt like he was ripping his feet free out of the ground where they had started to grow roots. "How much did you drink?" Ino asked, a worried tone in his voice as he slowly made his way through the crowd.

Sukuna followed. Where are they going? Making out maybe? He giggled again.

Nothing was real right now. Was it ever? Was if the world was just a- someone bumped into him from behind. He felt his scars too much, could hear the belt again, the pain, it felt like his skin was ripping apart.

"FUGA!" Sukuna yanked his hands out of Ino's grip and made another hand gesture that felt too familiar.

"Sukuna!" Ino called out, pulling him forward quicker shooting an apologising look to ... someone? Why was he looking at Sukuna so angry?

Where are they're going again? Making out maybe? Sukuna giggled.

"I can't believe you just did that! What the fuck did you drank? Did someone give you drugs?" Ino yelled over the music in his bones.

Where the fuck was Ino pulling him?

Ah ... outside.

The air sounded white.

Aw ... stars!

"Sit down! You look like you're gonna fall over any- alright, that works too... easy now!" Ino was- where was Ino? Ah there. Handsome boy.

How does sitting work again? Ah yea like this ... damn that hurt! Rude stairs! You wanna fucking go? Ha?? Fucking bitch!

"What is happening?" Ino's voice was- purple? No, blue!

"Hey there again Stranger! Looking for another smoke?" a female voice called from his side and Sukuna made great effort to move his head from staring at the ground to staring at some girl with a cigarette in her hand. She looked ... familiar?

"Another round?" Ino asked the girl, inspecting the cigarette in her hand. "Fuck! Sukuna are you high? Did he smoke with you?" Ino turned back and forth between them like ... what where they called? These bouncy ... balls ... HA ... balls! Sukuna was giggling again.

"Yeah, he was acting all angry and gloomy. Now look at him!" the girl said with her voice too fucking bright.

"Great! Just great!" Ino tugged his hands into his hair and stared down at Sukuna with worry in his eyes. Damn he had pretty eyes! How are eyes like this even real? Like- what is an eye even ... doing?

Sukuna turned his head back to the ground; everything was zooming out too quick.

"Are you gonna be sick? 'Kuna? Hey!"

"Mada mada!" Sukuna grumbled, his voice felt weird in his throat and his hand felt like cement as he waved at Ino to calm down.

"Fuck, Sukuna! What the fuck are you saying?" panic creeped into Ino's voice and a moment later there was a hand in his neck. It felt nice. Warm. Like forest green. God he needed some water!

"Ganbare Ino-kun, ganbare ganbare!" Sukuna chuckled, closing his eyes and mourning as Ino pulled his hand away from his neck.

"I'm gonna take you home! Fuck! I should've-"

"No no, not home!" Sukuna mumbled.

"What?"

"Not going home! Adults are there! Adults suck! They have like ... rules and loud voices and ... most of the rules don't make any sense like ... why can't we take food from the fridge you know? We need to eat! Yuji is almost never eating! It's becoming a problem!" Problem? What problem?

"What are you talking about?"

"What am I talking about?" Sukuna asked confused and Ino groaned frustrated.

"Sukuna don't pull this stoner shit right now! Have you ever been high before? Do you feel okay?" Ino asked, still sitting next to him.

Sukuna gave him a side eyes through strands of hair that were falling in his eyes. It took hours before he could form the words, "Put your hand back!"

Ino stared. Those damn eyes.

Sukuna made an impatient sound deep in his throat and gestured to his neck.

"Up here! Don't touch my back tough. Too many scars. Hurts."

Where his words making it past his lips?

"Are you in pain? Did someone hurt you?"

Seemed like it. A hand was on his neck a moment later and Sukuna sighed.

"No don't think so. Feels weird but not like ... bad. Belts leave this ... sting you now? It stays ... even though it doesn't have legs, isn't that funny?" Sukuna giggled again.

Silence was heavy now, weighing down his shoulders, cracking his spine in half. Why was nobody talking? Wasn't Ino- ah he was right there. Right, his hand was still on his neck. Why does Ino look so sad? Did someone say anything?

"Is Nanami hitting you?" Ino said after what felt like millennials.

"Why the fuck would you think that?" No really, why would he fucking think that?

"Alright, let's get you ho- back to my place." Ino tried to slowly pull him to his feet.

"I think my bones are asleep!"

Waking up in an unfamiliar place was nothing new for Sukuna. There was the very familiar panic during the first few seconds of waking up, followed by coming up with brain power to remember and understand where and why he was.

Coming up with brain power drove a pain through his head as if someone was splitting it apart like a lumberjack a log of wood. Sukuna hissed and shielded his eyes from the rays of sunshine that assaulted his face.

Slowly he looked around. He was laying in a bed, pretty far to the ground, surrounded by clutter. The walls were plastered with random not matching pictures and posters. The empty space next to him was cold. It looked like a person had been sleeping there and Sukuna's skin crawled at the thought of having someone close to him while sleeping, that wasn't Yuji or Choso.

Slowly he sat himself up. The shirt he was wearing was a tad too big and not one of his own. But it looked familiar.

A faint smell of stale cigarette smoke layered itself over the room, underneath something that smelled a lot like ... Ino.

Right.

The party.

Fuck!

Sukuna tried to remember how the night ended but his memory became fuzzy the moment he had decided to head over to Ino. Trying to think further through the night he only found blacked out nothingness in his mind. Fucking great!

Turning his body from side-to-side Sukuna found no other pain than the familiar one, no bruises, no hurting ribs or knuckles. Couldn't be that bad then. Slowly his fingers ghosted over his face. No split lip, no hurting eye socked. That's a first.

Slowly he got out of the bed. It was a pallet bed, and his head throbbed as he straightened himself up to his full height. He made his way out of the bedroom, the door was not completely closed, left open with a gap.

Ino's apartment only seemed to have this one bedroom because stepping out he was in the kitchen and saw Ino sitting at the table. A mug was clutched between his hands while he was staring at Sukuna without saying anything.

Sukuna grunted something indistinctly as he made his way over. Only now realising he was wearing just Ino's shirt and boxers. He couldn't care less.

As he reached the table Ino still wasn't saying anything. There was a plate of scrambled eggs in the middle but thinking about eating only made Sukuna nauseous and he followed the smell of coffee to a coffee pot on the counter.

He poured himself a cup and didn't bother to look for milk or sugar. Sitting down on the table the silence was continuing. He didn't mind. His head was still heavy and banging and Ino only pushed over a blister of pain meds over the counter.

Sukuna grunted again before he downed two of them without a big gulp of coffee.

Time was not existing right now and Sukuna felt like he was floating up from the chair he sat down on heading towards the ceiling.

He couldn't say how long they sat like that. Hours maybe. Maybe just five minutes. It certainly felt like days until Ino broke the silence.

His tone was clinical, "Is Nanami hitting you?"

Sukuna had apparently closed his eyes because now he had to open them to give Ino a confused look. What the fuck?

"What? Why would you think that?" he asked. His voice was gruff from sleep, scraping like skin over gravel through his vocal folds.

"I just need a straight answer!" demanded Ino. He was still clutching that mug, his face cleaned off of any emotion while he was staring.

"None of us is straight here," Sukuna deflected, taking another gulp from his coffee - it wasn't hot anymore.

Ino's expression changed from clinical unbotheredness to fury in the blink of an eye.

"Sukuna this is not a fucking joke! This is damn serious! When Nanami is hitting you I-"

"No, that fucker isn't hitting anyone. He's always pulling this no violence in this house bullshit," Sukuna mocked the phrase Nanami had been using from day fucking one.

"Alright alright. Good." Ino settled down again. The fury was gone but he was lost in thought while staring down at the tabletop.

"Why would you ask that? You know Nanami," Sukuna said confused. But instead of giving him an answer Ino only stood up and turned towards the kitchen counter, trying to flee the conversation.

"Nah ... no, it's nothing ... just-" Ino busied himself with pouring himself another cup of coffee, taking far longer than needed, "It's- because you .... maybe I understood you wrong .... but you- you might have ... ah said? some- something? And it... is made too much sense with- with- ah ... some- some things you do?" Ino stumbled over his words like a drunken man over his own feet.

An uncomfortable heat spread into Sukuna's chest. He demanded his brain to tell him what had happened, but it denied him, only leaving fuzzy situation and nonsense conversation that didn't tell him fucking anything.

"What did I say?" Sukuna pressed out through gritted teeth.

"Ah ... no nothing really- I ... I actually forgot-" Ino tried, leaning against the counter now and faced Sukuna again but didn't meet his eyes.

"You didn't forget. Tell me!"

"If you don't remember, how should I-"

Sukuna slammed the palm of his hand down on the table as he yelled, "Ino!"

The other one flinched. There was a bit of guilt in Sukuna, but he pushed it aside, he had far bigger problems right now!

"You- ... you...." Ino coughed, fidgeting with his mug, rubbing his neck uncomfortably before he continued, "Might have said- .... something about- about not wanting to go home? and ... about Yuji not eating? And something about scars and .... a ... about a belt?" he mumbled the last words into himself, and a cold shiver ran down Sukuna's back.

"Ah." Sukuna stared into his empty coffee cup. His leg started bouncing without his consent and the table started wobbling with a quiet squeaking sound.

Silence settled over them. He had fucked up! Big time! Why the fuck had he spilled this shit to Ino? What the fuck had he said? The burning of his back pushed itself back into his consciousness after he had become too good at not feeling it anymore.

As he looked up again he saw exactly what he had anticipated: Ino stared down on him, eyes full of pity.

"Fucking ask already and don't look at me like that!" Sukuna snapped; his fingers clutched the mug so hard his joints popped.

"How am I looking at you?" was this fucker even real to ask that question? Sukuna glared up at him.

"With pity! As if I'm something that has to be fixed!" memories of the past pushed into his brain, in front of his eyes, blurring his grip on reality. No! He wasn't triggered by this! He denied himself to feel how his back started itching again, how his hands slightly started shaking. It was years ago, get the fuck over it!

"I'm not broken!" Sukuna yelled, losing control of his volume. There; anger was always easier, and he didn't hesitate to dip into the pool of rage that gathered deep down in his stomach.

"I don't think you're broken," Ino whispered but the pity in his face made the words sound hollow and fake in Sukuna's ears.

Sukuna scoffed in disbelief. "Then you would be the first one!"

Ino slowly made his way back to the table and sat down carefully. It took a few moments before he finally said something. Sukuna observed him with narrowed eyes.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Ino asked, letting go of his mug and shoved his hands over the table towards Sukuna, offering contact. Sukuna stared at the offer, fingers of a mechanic, full of little nags and marks, rough skin patches on his fingertips.

"About what? Nothing happened!" Yuji called him too stubborn often enough. Unyielding and relentless in his rejection of acknowledging what happened in that stupid placement. Because nothing fucking happened! It wasn't worth it to talk or think about it! Not when it resulted in his mind deciding that it was time for a break down every time he, as much as, glanced at the memories.

"I'm- I'm not stupid 'Kuna. I haven't said anything about..." Ino started, took a deep breath before he continued. Sukuna was horrified of what he would say next. "About the flinching and- and the smoking and- the energy drinks and .... I know there is something going on, you don't want to talk about, but ... I just want to help! I just don't know-" Sukuna shot up from his chair and in one solid movement shattered the mug against the nearest wall.

"Fuck you!" he snapped and the voices, pictures and scenes that had been knocking on the door to his conscious relentlessly, finally broke the lock and flooded his mind.

His back was on fire, the shirt was sandpaper on his skin, rubbing away layers and layers of protection he had built up ever since that time.

Ino didn't even flinch when the mug shattered, and the bit left in it stained the wall; tear tracks of coffee rolled down to the ground. Sukuna couldn't care less.

"What was I supposed to do huh?" he started yelling, overthrown by memories that weren't quieting down and he gripped his hair by the roots, trying to silence the noise. "We were fucking stuck in that horrible place, more kids than beds and no fucking food! Yuji was so skinny I thought he would dissolve into thin fucking air! All I did was trying to get us out of there!"

He rolled his aching shoulders, trying to stop the burn and the cramping up nerves on his back but it didn't do anything.

"Sukuna I'm not blaming you for-" Ino tried but the noise in his mind was breaking his brain apart.

"No, you shut your face! You wanted to know so fucking listen!" Sukuna felt how his eyes became treacherously wet, but he dared one tear to climb over his water line and spill. The threat seemed to work for now. "The only way to get us out of there was getting in so much trouble that they would take us out and ship us off to somewhere else!"

Long oppressed memories of painful fights, nights with bruised and broken ribs, mornings with hunger cramps, days filled with yelling and beatings infested Sukuna.

He pushed himself further, no way to turn back now, he had broken the dam, and the only thing left to do was holding his breath and let the waves crash together over his head. Praying he would make it to the surface just in time.

"The motherfuckers of fosters were liking that foster-money though, which would have been gone if we'd be taken out! Twins are jackpot, double amount of money." his tone had become mocking, too hysteric to be coming out of his mouth. Ino was unmovingly sitting at the table, giving Sukuna his whole attention, a suffering look in his eyes.

"What do you do with children that are acting out, that you need to have in line to pass yourself off as great fosters? Come on, guess!" Sukuna yelled and Ino only shook his head, opening his mouth to say something but nothing came out.

"Let me tell you, you force them into fucking line! And when fists are not working anymore because pain is something you can get used to, you take the fucking belt! And what do you do when they won't stop fighting back? I tell you; you just tie them to the fucking heater! Leave them there for some time, eventually they will stop-" Sukuna voice broke. He needed to breath. His chest hurt. His lungs were not working properly. Fuck this!

"You happy now?" he pressed out, rubbing his wrists that joined his itching back. There were no visibly scars from the cable ties they used, no burns from the heater which Sukuna back then had thought would melt his skin right off his bones.

A violent sob made Sukuna look over to Ino, he was clutching his upper arms with his hands and tears were running down his checks as if they raced each other.

"Why are you crying?" Sukuna snapped but there was no bite to his tone. He made his way over to Ino who couldn't catch a break from the sobs and mumbled something between his hitched breathing. Sukuna stood himself in front of Ino and pulled his head against his chest. "Stop it, you idiot!" he whispered as his fingers played with Ino's hair.

"I'm so sorry that happened to you!" Ino said into Sukuna's shirt as he calmed his breath down enough to talk.

"Nothing happened," Sukuna repeated, but now his words felt hollow and fake.

"I'm so sorry I made you talk about it! You have scars don't you?" Ino whispered, his face still in Sukuna's embrace pressed to his stomach and Sukuna stayed silent.

"They still hurt you, don't they?" Ino kept whispering and Sukuna pressed his eyes together.

He had never told anyone. He never had spoken the words to a single soul. Yuji suspected, just like Choso but Sukuna had never addressed it. Ino knowing felt like he had opened a trap door he had been standing on for years, dreading the day it would fall away under him.

The day had come, but he didn't feel like falling. Ino was holding him to tight as for him to fall.

Sukuna hummed. "I never told anyone before. I feel weird now." The noise in his head had stopped. Instead, quiet humming filled his mind, muted the world around him while adrenaline was pumping through his body. He felt weirdly detached, playing with Ino's hair brought the feeling back into his fingertips. His hands were so cold the small movements hurt.

"Talking about weird," Ino whispered after a few moments and Sukuna couldn't stop the tiny smile that tugged on the corners of his mouth over this terrible topic change. "You said another weird thing, well actually a few weird things."

"Oh shit, more childhood trauma?" Sukuna mumbled and Ino chuckled weakly.

"If I remember correctly you said: Domain Expansion with something like this?" Ino softly pulled himself out of Sukuna's hug and formed his hands to a butchered version of the original and Sukuna bit his cheeks. "You also said a few more things in ... Japanese, I think?"

"I did?"

"Yes!"

"Well," Sukuna debated if he should just explain, but it would take them another round through Itadori-childhood and right now there was nothing he wanted to do less.

"I'll tell you another time," Sukuna said then, waiting for Ino's reaction with a bit of doubt but the boy only smiled softly and nodded.

With slow movement he pulled Sukuna down on his lap and Sukuna followed, spreading his legs left and right to sit with his chest facing Ino. His hands stopped being so damn cold and he kept playing with Ino's hair as the other took a deep breath. He had slung his arms around Sukuna's neck and his fingers slightly brushed his shoulders but not his back and Sukuna couldn't understand how Ino could even exist in his life.

"You know what I need right now?" Ino said after some quiet moments.

"Mh?"

It took Ino another hand full of seconds before he started, "Nice to ... meet you ... where you ... been? I can show you incredible things!" Ino sung quietly, his voice a bit shaky, unsteady like a cardboard house.

"Ino, shut the fuck up!" Sukuna grumbled with a chuckle and let his head rest on Ino's shoulders.

"Magic, madness, heaven sins, saw you there and I thought...." Ino continued singing, his voice steading itself.

Then he stopped and his hands were on Sukuna's cheeks a moment later, holding his face only inches from his own as he continued with, "Oh my god, look at that face! You look like my next mistake! Loves a game wanna plaaaa-"

Without thinking too much about it - because, really, thinking was a bother right now - Sukuna closed the few inches between their faces and shut Ino’s lips with a kiss.

His eyes were glinting as they separated again, and Sukuna ignored the flutter of his heart as he saw it.

"What?" Ino asked, "You're gonna do that every time I start singing Blank Space?" he teased.

Sukuna chuckled, a dark sound from deep out of his throat, "I just might."

"NEW MONEY SUIT AND TIE-"

Chapter Text

Leaving that god forsaken place behind felt like getting the first real deep breath in fucking months. There hadn't been any kind words or hugs or gifts as reward that he finally made it. Instead Mahito had given him a couple of bruised ribs and a split lip as souvenir from his time here.

As if he could ever forget these gruesome weeks of constantly having to watch his back. Having his hands balled into fists and never letting the scrap on his knuckles heal because the next fight just waited around the corner.

He had been standing by the window of the visiting room for the entire morning, a black trash bag with his belongings by his feet as he impatiently waited for his social worker to pick him up.

He had been standing at the same spot for so long that Choso feared his feet had become one with the ground and he wouldn't be able to move when the moment actually arrived.

The clock on the wall kept ticking, the ticking tapped steadily against the inside of his head like some dripping faucet. Every time he allowed his look to fade from the street to the clock on the wall it shocked him how much time he was losing.

It had been two weeks since Nanami had brought the twins to visit. Two weeks of gruesome waiting for a phone call, for a message from his social worker to inform him how the process was going. Of course they kept him out of the loop, like they always did. At the mercy of the fucking system yet again, all he could do was wait.

It drove him insane. Drove his thoughts into a messy tangle of doubt and blurring his grip on reality.

Every time someone walked along the hall, passing the visiting room, Choso expected they told him to get back to his bunk. To stop this at once, because he had hallucinated all of what happened. Because actually he was not going anywhere. That his mind had only made-up things because life had finally broken him enough that his body had to cope somehow.

His fingers were so cold they hurt. He was fidgeting with his too long sleeves without noticing, the frayed threads of cloth winding around his fingers aimlessly. He hadn't moved his legs in hours, and it felt like he was standing on Jello.

Then his mind wandered to Nanami. Wandered to questions that were too dangerous to really think about.

What if he joined his brothers and they realised they didn't need him anymore? Just these past few months, both of them had changed significantly. What if he was not fitting into their already formed lives? What if he was the one who destroyed the best thing that had happened to them these past years? What if they were better off without him?

What if he really belonged here?

Between all those lost causes and destructive personalities?

What if that crowded room with that tiny bunk was the best he deserved in this life? What if this was the end of it? His final destination. Doomed to lay awake during the night, feeling every spring of the sagging mattress, listening to snores, crying, kids waking from nightmares with a scream, being told to shut it because nobody cared, and everyone just wanted some peace.

Choso didn't allow himself to avert his eyes too much from the window, scared if the blinked too long he would wake up in that bunk, being the one to wake from a nightmare. The nightmare of hope. The nightmare of daring to want more from life.

A car pulled up to the fence.

A woman made her way towards the entrance of the home.

His social worker had actually showed up and Choso took a shallow breath. Preparing himself for reality.

"Choso move your ass and get in the car!" her voice cut through the fog of his mind and he was suddenly outside. The fence of The Home fell shut behind them with a loud noise, buzzing could be heard as the electronic locks locked into place.

He looked up from the concrete ground, the grey facade of the home looked weird from this perspective.

"I'm really leaving this place?" his voice was detached. Like his whole body, as if he wasn't really there. Left his mind back behind that window of the visiting room and only his body made it out.

"What else did you think would happen? We've been getting this into motion for weeks, now get in the car!" she demanded, her eyes already casted down on her phone answering texts in an inhuman speed.

Choso gave the grey block of concrete another glance before he got into the car. The door of the car slammed shut, quick and loud. She started the car and the trash bag between his leg rustled as he moved his body to look one final time.

The drive flew by in a haze, city lights washed together as they sped through the midday traffic.

It took her maybe fifteen minutes until she hit him with the usual social worker bullshit.

"You have something good here Choso, don't mess this up!" she said, eyes glued to the street, both manicured hands on the wheel and Choso clicked his tongue.

She worked through a few more phrases of keeping his shit together, of not pulling his usual behaviour - as if she knew fucking anything about him other than the facts from the files!

"Don't you dare make me more paperwork!" and Choso couldn't decide of this was a half assed attempt on a joke.

"Yeah yeah, got it," he mumbled, not tearing his eyes away from the city that flew by his window. It had been so long since he had been in the real world.

His nerves tightened the deeper they headed into the fancy rich parts of the city. Parts Choso hadn't dared to set a foot in his entire life, because seeing how other people lived only dragged his mood down and made him angrier at the world.

She pulled up in front of a high, fancy and expensive looking building and cut off the engine.

"You sure this is the right address?" Choso asked as he looked up at the building with its enormous window fronts.

"Yes, get your stuff," she answered and already left the car.

Choso followed her slowly, feeling more than misplaced with his trash bag and raggy clothes as they entered the polished foyer. They headed for the reception desk with a too polite and polished looking man behind it, who kindly explained where they had to go.

Her heels clacked loudly on the marble floors and Choso gripped his trash bag tighter, hating the rustle of the plastic. The lighting was soft, too soft, as they headed for one of the several elevators.

Every one of those minimal décor pieces that were placed throughout the hall could have brought Choso through a month of food and rent.

Even the ping of the elevator sounded expensive.

Choso had guessed that Nanami was loaded, but this amount of being loaded was something he had been unable to imagine two minutes ago.

The elevator music politely filled the silence, a cheap attempt at making you feel comfortable and relaxed. For Choso it was just another way of showing how little he belonged here. The elevator doors opened, and the social worker headed for the only fucking door in this entire floor. What the fuck?

Before ringing the bell, she hesitated.

For the first time since he had met her, she put her phone away and turned to face him. As if for show - because every tiny hair and every piece of clothing she wore was always effortlessly perfect and preciously put together - she swiped a strand of hair behind her ear and levelled him with a look.

Choso readied himself for another lecture. In a matter of seconds his brain was convinced she would now finally disclose that all of this was a farce, and he was dreaming and behind that door weren't Sukuna and Yuji waiting, but only the overcrowded sleeping room with his bunk still waiting for him.

"You really have a shot here. Don't let this go to waste," her tone was lacking the usual social worker sharpness, and she looked almost ... tired?

Choso stared. His mind going a hundred miles a minute, what the-?

"What is your name?" came out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

"What?"

"You never told me your name."

"Oh." her look softened even further and Choso now really wondered if this was all a dream. "It's Mei Mei."

"Mei Mei, you've been a real bitch!"

She chuckled, a smile pulled on her lips, and it looked so wrong that Choso wanted to swipe it off her face like an ill placed line on a sketch. It made her too human.

"I've been a social worker for over a decade, I guess along the lines I must have lost my ... empathy now and then. But I rarely place kids, especially teenagers in a home that could potentially be permanent," she sized him up again but now her look had lost all business. "For the majority of kids in the system this stays a dream, it doesn't work out or goes to shit. So, I'm really glad this is happening."

Choso gave her another distrusting look.

"Because this is happening Choso! This is not a dream alright?"

A boulder was moving down Choso's throat as he swallowed and nodded quickly.

"Then let's hope to never see each other again."

"Yes, please."

And with this parting words she rang the bell.

The second the door opened there were two loud bangs and confetti flew all over the place, raining down on Choso like a fucking glitter bomb. It took everything he had in him to not flinch and pick up his fists because there were Yuji and a black-haired boy holding a banner which said, "Welcome Home!" and everybody was yelling the same words.

The moment Choso crossed the threshold he saw Sukuna and another boy he didn't know holding party poppers and suddenly the confetti in his hair made sense. Fucking extras! Choso thought with a tiny smile. He couldn't do or say much else because Yuji was barrelling into him a second later and knocked all the air out of his lungs.

"What took you so long?" he complained into his ear and Choso hugged him back quickly. "The elevator ride was very long," he attempted a joke, but his voice sounded too distant, too detached. Yuji only chuckled and let go of him and pulled him further into the apartment.

Sukuna was hovering by his side and Choso dishevelled his hair with one hand like he did so often. Sukuna groaned and snapped but his eyes were too bright as so conceal that he was just as excited as Yuji was - but too proud to show it.

Nanami was somewhere in the background, giving the boys the room and held himself back. Choso only shared a few quick looks with the adult, who was watching them with a soft smile.

Before any of them introduced the two boys he didn't know, he was pulled through the entire apartment and Yuji talked like a yet on a mission. It was a nice apartment - big open space, comfy looking furniture, a little cluttered with life here and there.

It was a lot to take in and Choso nodded, kept his replies short as Yuji showed him the living room, kitchen, the room he and Sukuna shared and finally his room.

"It's so not fair you get your own room when I have to share with that dork," Sukuna mumbled as Choso stood in the door frame of the space they allowed him to call his own.

"We shared a womb; you can take sharing a room with me turtlebrain!" Yuji shot right back.

"I should have eaten you in the fucking womb cricketmouth!"

Yuji only did the very sibling-thing of sticking his tongue out to Sukuna who tied to pinch it with his fingernails. Maybe the two dickheads hadn't changed that much in the last few months and suddenly breathing came a lot easier.

With useless banter the twins made their way back to the living room. Nanami was currently speaking with the older looking one of the two unfamiliar boys, but Choso didn't even had the opportunity to say anything because now Yuji was pulling that other boy in front of Choso and presented proudly, "This is Megumi."

"Ah, the friend," Choso remembered, and Megumi stretched out his hand to greet him.

"Yes, it's very nice to finally meet you. I'm glad this all worked out," the kid said in a matter-of-fact tone, his mouth in a tight smile and Choso was baffled. On second thought, it was very Yuji to find himself a moody looking friend.

"Yeah, it's been a wild couple week," Choso replied, and Megumi nodded understanding.

"I hope we didn't make you uncomfortable, this all can be a lot," Megumi gestured to the living room and Choso took a deep breath.

"They're like that. I'm used to it," he said with a forced chuckle and Yuji was nearly jittering with excitement.

"I can imagine. Yuji has been talking about this for weeks; he also made a countdown. You have no idea how many times I had to hear 'only three more days!'" Megumi said, the tiniest smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"It was important information!" Yuji defended himself with a grin and Megumi only gave him a hopeless but real smile.

Choso stared again. He made a countdown? For him? Another boulder was moving down his throat. Fuck.

"Yeah, he likes those. Back when he was little-"

"Choso, nooo, don't do that to me!"

"Back when he was little he had a phase where he would make a countdown for the most ridiculous things, like how many days until the weekend or how many hours until dinner or shit like that," Choso joked, and Yuji only groaned embarrassed. Tension was leaving Choso's shoulders slowly.

"This explains so much," Megumi commented and Yuji groaned even more. He pulled Megumi away before Choso could spill more embarrassing childhood stories.

He turned around. Hoping to be able to catch a break and have a talk with Nanami but before he was able to move from his spot in the middle of the living room, the other unknown boy was suddenly in front of him.

Brown messy hair was curling around his ears, and he looked even older than Choso himself. His offered handshake was far more enthusiastic than Megumi had been.

"Hi, I'm Ino! I know a lot about you - I mean, I heard a lot about you!" Ino introduced himself, stumbling over his own words and shook Choso's hand excited. He seemed far too nervous to meet him and rambled on a few more things. Choso kept his replies short and distant and finally Ino backed off and found his way back to Sukuna's side willingly. Choso watched how Sukuna turned to Ino, and they started talking and gesturing immediately.

He seemed kind but Choso wasn't so sure what to make off him yet. Instead of overthinking that Sukuna seemed to finally have made a friend on his own, Choso made his way to the very comfortable looking sofa. As he sat down and fell into the soft cushions it felt like sinking into heaven.

Yuji and Megumi were somewhere behind him, talking in hushed voices. Choso closed his eyes and let his tense muscles relax one by one. His joints arched from how tense he had been for the last hour. His hands were cold, probably from his over strained nerves and he hid them in the pocket of his hoodie to not start biting his fingernails.

After a few minutes he felt another sack in the cushion that made him open his eyes. Sukuna and Ino had sat down on the other end. Where their thighs touching?

Nanami reappeared into Choso line of sight, and he had a glass of water with him. The adult sat down a few inches from him.

"How are you holding up?" he asked, holding out the glass of water to Choso. He took it with a thankful nod.

"A bit tired, else I'm fine," he answered, sipping at the water and his eyes wandered over to Sukuna and Ino again. They were completely caught up into an argument and bickered like an old married couple.

Suddenly Yuji was leaning against the head rest of the sofa from behind and leaned over to Choso.

"They're always like that," he complained, gesturing to his twin and Choso crooked one eyebrow at him. Hu?

He kept observing the two for the next hour.

How they were gravitating around each other as the evening progressed.

How they would banter about the pizza.

How Ino was allowed way too much into Sukuna's personal space - he had never seen a friend be allowed to be so close to his little brother. He was more the type to bite your hand off when accidentally bumping into him.

How Sukuna would laugh over dumb jokes from Ino.

How he would search for contact now and then willingly and completely on his own.

How Ino would react as if this would be the most normal thing in the world.

Suddenly it clicked all together. There was something going on between the two and the protective guarding older brother energy rose up in his stomach quick, hot and messy. Something about this rubbed him the wrong way. No, not something. It rubbed him the wrong way because Ino was significantly older than Sukuna!

It took Choso half an hour to find an opportunity to catch Ino on his own. He headed over, trying to look casual.

"So, you're working at the repair shop with my little brother I take it? Part time I guess?" he started off and Ino got into the conversation starter without a second thought. He looked way too happy about Choso approaching him.

"Nah, I work full time but yes, we met there," he explained far too eager.

"So, no school?" Choso asked further.

"Nah, university is not for me, started my training there just after I finished school."

"So, you finished school early?" Choso tried to make his earlier suggestion turn out wrong.

"No, normal." Ino was still very unbothered by all of this and answered without thinking for a second.

Choso bit his lip before he asked the next question. "Ino how old are you?"

"Eighteen. You?" Ino asked, totally missing where Choso was heading.

"Seventeen."

"Ah ..." Ino said, finally thinking for a moment before he continued with a confused expression, "Aren't you supposed to be two and a half years older than the twins?"

"Yes, I am," Choso stated, his tone clipped and waited until Ino finally caught up.

"So, the twins are...."

"Ah-ha?"

"Fif- fifteen...?" Ino stuttered and panic shot into his eyes.

Choso's lip was in a tight line as he tried to conceal his anger. "Yes. Exactly."

At that exact moment Nanami joined their conversation, "So, what are we panicking about over here?"

"Oh, great timing Nanami, did you know Ino is eighteen?" he asked, and he crossed his arms in front of his chest, glaring at Nanami.

"Yeah, just a little older than you I think," Nanami answered just as unbothered as Ino and Choso clicked his togue in disappointment.

"Yees ... and you're fine with that?" he asked, taking a deep breath to calm himself which grew to be harder by the minute.

"With what? Yuta is seventeen too I think. So, Sukuna just got older friends," Nanami stated, clearly not getting why Choso was so pissed.

"But he is not fucking Yuta!" As Choso looked back to Ino the boy was currently making himself smaller and smaller. Good!

"Sukuna!" Choso called his brother over and it took him two seconds to appear right next to Ino. Of fucking course!

Good to know he still nailed that tone that made Sukuna all nervous and fidgety.

"So ... got a problem?" Sukuna asked, rid of all his usual attitude and he looked a lot like the five-year-old that had broken Grandpa's favourite mug.

"Explain something to me, would you?" Choso asked and at his glare Sukuna shrunk an inch before he remembered to uphold his act and tensed his shoulders.

"Yeah sure," his little brother cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"Explain what he is to you," Choso said and pointed over to Ino. Sukuna looked back and forth between the two before he said, "He's Ino to me. To you too actually. That's his name."

Ino made a pleading sound as he whispered, "Sukuna please."

"Don't you dare play dumb right now!" Choso said, his voice getting louder and he saw out of the corner of his eye how Yuji and Megumi were watching them from a safe distance.

Nanami was now inserting himself back into the conversation, "Choso come on, calm down. I don't understand why you are being this rude. Your brother was so excited to introduce you two!" he said, and Sukuna was groaning at the words.

"Yeah I can imagine!" Choso huffed, crossed his arms in front of his chest and gripped his upper arms way too tightly to conceal how fucking mad he was. He couldn't be fucking serious right now!

"Choso I don't know what your problem with Ino is here, but I don't like this kind of talk in my house to my and your brother's guest and-"

"NANAMI ARE YOU BLIND OR JUST STUPID?" Choso yelled, not being able to hold back anymore. This was ridiculous!

Nanami was taken back by the outburst, and he needed a moment before he replied, just as calm as before, "Excuse me? That was very uncalled for!"

Choso ripped his fingernails out of his skin and gestured wildly to Ino as he yelled, "HE IS FUCKING MY LITTLE BROTHER! WHO IS A FUCKING MINOR!"

Behind him Choso could hear how Yuji choked on his drink before he yelled over, "YOU HAVE SEX AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME?"

In an instant Sukuna yelled back with, "I DON'T HAVE SEX I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU!"

The silence that followed was more painful than all the fights Choso had been in back at The Home, heavier than Mahito's fists and more uncomfortable than the bunk with its sagging mattress. Hell, it was even more uncomfortable than waking up in that forsaken hospital bed all those months ago.

The sound that cut through the silence was the opening and closing of a door. Megumi had left.

Nanami pointed to Sukuna, Ino and Choso as he said with more authority than Choso had ever seen in his life, "You three. Kitchen. Now."

Choso would be lying if he said he would not feel guilty about causing a scene. He would also be lying when he said that this was not justified. Because it was fucking justified! Because apparently his fifteen year old brother had been in a relationship with a fucking adult for God knows how long - and no-one had noticed???

Describing the feeling as anger would not do it justice! He was so much more than angry!

They had sat down at the kitchen table, Choso on one side, Sukuna and Ino on the opposite. Nanami was doing something at the counter, mumbling something under his breath that sounded a lot like Take in teenagers they said. It will be easy, they said!

Then he sat down at the head of the table and levelled them all with his best disappointed dad look.

"Alright, since I'm the adult here-"

"Not the only one," Choso mumbled, and Sukuna groaned pissed off, "Oh Choso, grow the fuck up!"

Choso slammed his hands on the tabletop and pointed a finger again as he tried to stay seated on his chair, "Since when do you talk to me like that?"

"Since you're being an unreasonable brat!" Sukuna shot right back, and the yelling began.

Nanami voice boomed over them and made them shut up.

"I have the speaking spoon!" Nanami said into the silence and held up a tiny spoon in his massive hand. All three of them just stared at him and Choso wondered if this dream had turned into a fever dream. It certainly felt like it.

"The one who has the speaking spoon is speaking, that's why it's called the speaking spoon. Now, we are all lowering our voices and talk about this like civilised people alright? Great!"

Choso only clicked his tongue, crossing his arms in front of his chest again, "That's fucking stupi-"

"Nah! Are you allowed to speak? Do you have the speaking spoon? No?" Nanami stared him down for a moment and waited for a response. Choso bit his cheek until he tasted blood.

"Right! I don't appreciate how you all handled that situation earlier. In this house we try to talk kindly and respectful to each other. We don't yell or attack one another. We hear each other out and we don't lie. So, who wants to starts?" Nanami asked and Ino raised his fucking hand like a damn toddler while Choso and Sukuna tried to reach for the spoon.

The fucker of a blond man held the spoon up into the air, unable for the brothers to grab and gave it to Ino instead saying again, "Kind and respectful!"

Ino took the spoon and Choso glared him down, but Ino wasn't meeting his eyes as he started speaking, "I'm sorry, I really didn't know, and we didn't- and when- we ... we would be safe. But we didn't. Thank you. That's all. I'm sorry," his voice was tiny as he pushed out the words and Sukuna planted his forehead onto the table and groaned embarrassed. As he looked up again, he swiped his hair out of his face that had fallen out of his normal slicked back position.

Ino gave the spoon back to Nanami and this time Choso raised his hand as Sukuna tried to grab for it again. "Kind and respectful!" Nanami mouthed as he gave the spoon to Choso who wondered how Sukuna didn't explode in rage already.

"I think you are too young to be in a relationship, certainly-"

"We are not in a relationship!" Sukuna called out but was hushed by Nanami.

"Yeah yeah keep lying to yourself Kuna. Certainly not with someone who is that much older than you! So, I would suggest that you break up!" Choso said matter of fact, his mind buzzing.

Nanami took the spoon from him before he could say anything else.

"Choso," Nanami started, his tone kind and calm and Choso hated it, "I understand that from your position this is hard, seeing your little brother in- like this," Nanami saved himself, "I can see that you're quite protective of him and that's very reasonable but you're not in a position to make decisions or demands like that. I agree that there need to be rules, for the sole purpose of keeping the two safe."

"This is bullshit!" Sukuna called out, his jaw was tense, shit his whole body was tense from his toes to his eyebrows, "I don't get why you are making this such a big deal! It's unfair that you act like this is your business. It's not!"

"It's our business because we're just keeping you safe," Nanami said, and Sukuna hissed angry.

"No one ever did, why start now?" he snapped and the words that were laying on Choso's tongue slipped back down his throat. Guilt was waving at him from a distance, making its way towards him like a fucking train. He wasn't there when Ryo got hurt, he got hurt just because Choso wasn't there. It was all his fault.

As he looked over to his little brother again he saw how uncomfortable Sukuna was, he was biting his fingernails excessively and his leg was jumping up and down so hard it hit the table top several times.

Nanami's face became soft as he spoke again, "Because you're still a child and you deserve to be protected."

That only made Sukuna even angrier, and he yelled, "Nobody fucking cared I was a child back when-" he cut himself off and bit his nails until one finger started bleeding. There was nothing in the world Choso wanted more than to hug him right now, pull him against his chest, apologise and promise that everything will be okay. But as he reached over the table to take Sukuna's hand he slapped it away.

"Don't fucking touch me right now!" Sukuna snapped and Choso withdraw his hand, keeping to himself on his side of the table. It felt like there was so much more that separated them than just the fucking table.

He watched how Ino's hand vanished from sight, he must have put it on Sukuna's jumping leg because it hitting the table slowed down. Eventually he took Sukuna's other hand in his, slowly and gently, waiting for permission and pulled it away from his teeth so he would stop hurting himself.

It was at if the rational part of Choso's brain started working again as he saw how tender and careful Ino was. He watched how Sukuna accepted his comforting, his closeness and contact. It had been years since Sukuna had been able to do that. And he was sitting here telling them to break up, telling Sukuna to turn his back on the one person who had managed to lower the thick and high walls he had built around himself since that horrible placement.

"I need a minute," Choso mumbled, glancing over to Nanami. The man gave a small, unreadable nod.

"We are allowed to leave?" Sukuna called as Choso stood up and headed for the entrance of the kitchen.

"Sukuna, just give him a minute," Nanami said, his tone as calm as ever.

He found the door to the balcony quick; the cigarette founds its way into his hand quicker and the nicotine shot through his nerves. He took a deep breath of cold air. It had become night already, clouds hiding the stars and the city lights were casted off into the night life.

Choso was halfway through his cigarette as the balcony door behind him was opened. Ino was creeping through it and slowly came towards Choso, leaning against the railing with enough inches between them. Choso offered him a cigarette.

"Thank you, but I don't smoke," Ino said, his voice still small, quiet and careful.

"Of course you don't," Choso sighed, and silence settled over them.

Ino cleared his throat before he said, "I'm sorry for interrupting your reunion. Sukuna has been excited about this since Nanami told him," Ino's words only drove the knife deeper into the wound. He was a horrible brother.

"This is really not your fault. I've been a dick."

Ino let out a breath, as if nervous how this talk would go. "No, you're not a dick. You're the big brother, I know that feeling, it's hard."

"It's just been a fucking lot these last few weeks, seeing them grow up so much and I was not around for it. I'm sorry," he sighed, taking one last drag of the cigarette before stumping out the butt and taking out another one.

"I'm really not the one you need to tell this to," Ino said, staring at the cloudy sky.

"I know."

Choso turned around then, leaning his back against the railing and looked inside, Ino followed his movement.

It took only a few moments before he locked eyes with Sukuna, glaring, angry eyes who were slits, his whole face wrapped up in anger.

Choso slit the cigarette between his lips, keeping eye contact with Sukuna as he slapped his hands together over his head with stretched out arms, lowered them slowly, pointed as Sukuna and mumbled, "Piercing blood."

Sukuna only needed a few seconds before he made the familiar movement and probably mumbled, Fuga! Choso chuckled.

"Not this again. You too? What is this about?"

Choso broke eye contact with Sukuna and looked over to Ino, crooking one eyebrow at him. "Again?"

"Long story," Ino sighed and Choso chuckled again.

"He didn't tell you? Typical. It's from this weird violent manga we found in one placement years ago. Completely in Japanese, we could only look at the drawings and the characters always fought with this cool hand movements. We made a game out of it," Choso explained, thinking back to the placement. There hadn't been much good things happening at that place and the manga was the only thing worth thinking about.

"How did you make a game out of-"

"We tried to kill each other," Choso interrupted him, his look turning back to the living room.

"Sounds fun," Ino replied disturbed.

"Yeah it was," Choso said, already lost in memories again, "Yuji always lost and died, he hates this game."

Now Sukuna's eyes locked on the cigarette between Choso's lips, and he speed-walked outside to them and made needy hand gestures towards the glowing cigarette.

"No Sukuna, you stopped two weeks ago! Nanami is going to kill you!" Ino called out.

"I didn't stop, he just found all my stash and threw it away. And he is not going to kill me!" Sukuna stated.

"He is already on his way. Furious dad alert," Ino stated, leaning back against the railing and crossing his arms with a smirk.

Choso saw how Nanami made his way through the living room towards the balcony, the look in his face very much like he would smack them right over the railing.

He quickly plucked the cigarette from Sukuna's lips who had stolen it from him and threw it over the railing, with his own package.

Nanami stopped right in front of the glass door, threw some glares at them and pointed that he would be watching them. Choso only gave him the smile of an innocent saint.

As the adult finally backed off Choso took a deep breath and turned back around to watch the city lights.

"Alright, I'm sorry I guess, let's go back inside," he rushed out the words under his breath and immediately headed for the balcony door.

Ino only chuckled and Sukuna was dumb struck before he called after him, "Wait what? Can you repeat that?"