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Brothers, Rin reflected, were the
fucking worst
. They broke your heart, destroyed your childhood, and then they brought their loud, annoying,
pink
boyfriends into your apartment and showed them where you lived and now you never have a goddamn moment of peace in your life because you’re
trying
to get your relationship back with your brother even though you want to kill them both but murder charges will make it difficult to play football and that is
unacceptable
and -
Rin wasn’t having a good time.
Maybe that was to be blamed for his lapse of sanity in sitting down with Lukewarm and Bobcut at an outdoor table between classes.
He said nothing, simply crossing his arms and glaring until the conversation at the table dried up and two sets of eyes fell on him. He would not say the first word. That would be conceding defeat.
“Bachira,” said Lukewarm, his skin was awfully pale and Rin felt great pleasure at that. Maybe if he shocked Lukewarm enough, he would get sick and be all the easier to crush at football. That would make Rin’s life all the better. “pinch me. I think I’m hallucinating.”
“Rin-chan!” Bobcut cried cheerfully, he launched himself across the table and only years of finely honed football reflexes let Rin dodge his attack. Bachira’s arms grabbed at thin air and he was forced to flop onto the table like a dying fish instead of capturing Rin in one of those cursed
hugs
. Most people, after being denied affection so thoroughly would be shaken, but the bright monster just popped up and shone the brightest smile known to man on Rin. He resisted the urge to look away at such a display of happiness. What horrifying positivity, Rin was glad he had never been infected.
“Has Rin-chan finally decided to eat with the rest of humanity instead of shutting himself away in his boring apartment being boring?” Bobcut - colloquially known as Bachira Meguru asked Rin with no hesitation whatsoever. His smile was slightly deranged, but Rin was used to his shitty brother’s shitty boyfriend, and Bachira no longer registered in his mind as unnerving.
To the day he died, Rin would forever deny that he ever found the overly chipper boy at all terrifying. And no, he definitely never had flashbacks to Bachira’s monstrous smile the first time they played against each other, shut up. The only thing Rin would ever admit to finding monstrous about him was his dribbling and that was the only reason Rin even deigned to be seen in public with these two.
Lukewarm, also known as Isagi Yoichi, was still staring at Rin. He hadn’t blinked since Rin had sat down.
“Shut your eyes, Lukewarm. If you keep gaping they’ll dry out and your only useful feature will be ruined,” Rin helpfully informed him. Isagi was the worst, but he was good at football, so he had least deserved to live to be Rin’s stepping stone.
Isagi blinked. Good. At least now he was following orders, that was promising.
“Rin,” Isagi’s eyes were darting between Bachira and Rin’s face. He looked like a nervous bird about to be devoured. It was a good look on him. “Why are you here? I was under the impression you thought socializing was an asinine waste of your time and that we were weak for having friends.”
“You are,” Rin replied. It was true. Friends and bonds were useless. The last time he had a friend, he left Rin to play midfield. Traitor.
Isagi’s face scrunched up in confusion. “So why are you here…?”
Rin took a deep breath. He reminded himself that he needed this. He needed the pink demon out of his life and his brother’s happiness destroyed. Ever since the demon had followed Sae to Rin’s apartment, the demon kept coming back without his brother. It was a nightmare. Rin was constantly on edge in his own home, ready for the next time the pink demon would show up, his brother’s key in hand, and torture Rin. Rin
hated
it. His home was supposed to be a place of relaxation and unwinding, instead it had turned into a miserable trap ready and waiting to spring, locking Rin in its jaws and forcing him to interact with the pink demon. He needed the demon out of his life as soon as possible before he lost his mind. Unfortunately, Rin was not enough on his own. He would have to do the most horrible, nauseating, life-threatening thing on the planet.
Ask
Isagi Yoichi
for
help
.
“I…” Rin swallowed down rising bile. He was shaking, there was sweat on his forehead. Was he dying? “Need you to break up my brother and his shitty boyfriend.”
There was a moment of blissful silence. Isagi appeared to be blue screening. Rin noticed and curled his lip. So lukewarm he couldn’t even process a sentence properly.
“Oh my god, Rin-chan!” Bachira squealed, breaking the blissful silence with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer. “You want our help!?”
“No!” Rin shouted. He absolutely could not hear or say that word out loud. It was hard enough in his mind. “Lukewarm seems to actually have skills in breaking up partners, and I need him to do the same thing to my shitty brother so I can finally exorsize that shitty demon from our lives.”
“Demon…?” Isagi echoed shakily as he booted back up again. “Are you talking about Shidou?”
Rin’s eye twitched at the very mention of his name.
“Ha!” Bachira cried out, jumping to his feet. “I knew it! Chigirin owes me money!”
Rin batted his finger out of his face. “Knew what?” he hissed.
“That Sae-chan and Shidou-chan were kissy-kissy in secret, Chigirin said I was seeing things!” the excitable boy whipped out his phone and began texting furiously.
Meanwhile, Isagi seemed to have finally come back to reality and rounded on Rin. “Wait, you want me to do what? Is this about the NagiReo breakup?! That was
last year!
” his voice had risen higher and higher with every word and Rin almost flinched at that last screeched syllable. But he didn’t. Itoshis don’t show weakness. “I didn’t mean for that to happen! I didn’t seduce Nagi! I don’t even like him like that! Emotionally manipulative sloths aren’t my type! They’re back together now, so why are we still bringing that up!? And don’t listen to Ness! I hate Kaiser, he was the one who approached me!!”
Rin’s voice was frigid, “Are you done, Lukewarm?”
Isagi deflated and he mumbled. “I didn’t seduce anyone.” Bachira helpfully patted him on the back, gaze still glued on his phone.
“I don’t care,” Rin informed him haughtily. “You’re still going to do what I say.”
---
“What’s this?” The lilting voice of the demon floated through the hallway of Rin’s apartment like poison gas later that afternoon. The demon’s stupid tanned face stuck around the corner and Rin resisted the urge to throw a pot at him. The demon’s reflexes were too good to get hit, at least his shitty brother picked someone with football skills. “Am I seeing things? Does little Underlashes-junior actually have
friends
?” The demon clutched at his chest and Rin wished for a heart attack to befall him. Or at least get an eye infection from all his shitty eyeliner. “I’m so proud of my future brother-in-law,” he wiped fake tears and Rin wanted to
tear his throat out with his teeth
.
“Woah, Rin, calm down!” Isagi grabbed at his arms as Rin lunged at the demon. “Blood’s really hard to get out of hardwood! You don’t want your landlord mad at you!”
“I don’t have something as pathetic as
friends
,” Rin hissed at the demon. The only reason Isagi was at his apartment right now was because Rin
knew
the demon was coming over today to brag about whatever date he and Rin’s shitty brother were going on and Rin wanted them broken up
yesterday
. He had forcibly taken Isagi back to his apartment despite the lukewarm’s protests and cries of ‘
I have class!’
and
‘This is kidnapping! Bachira help!’
. Bachira, luckily, had allowed his partner to be taken with a wave. At least some people were willing to be Rin’s pawns.
“Sure,” Shidou the demon said. “Anyway, I was just here to inform you that Sae-chan and I are going on our thirty-seventh date tonight.” His stupid pink eyes filled with hearts and Rin wanted to barf as he rambled on. Stupid demon rubbing in his closeness with his brother in Rin’s face. Barging into his space and giving Rin a headache. God, he wished for the demon’s prompt removal from his life.
Wait! That was what Isagi was for.
Rin ripped his arms from the lukewarm grip and shoved Isagi at the demon. He didn’t actually know what Isagi had done to rip apart the copycat and white sloth, but he wasn’t doing anything just standing there. “Do what you did last time!” he ordered on Isagi’s way past him.
Isagi stumbled headfirst into Shidou’s chest. Shidou paused in his lovestruck yodeling to look down on him. “What’s up with you?”
“Uhh…” Isagi stared up at Shidou, who was taller, buffer, and had eyeliner that appeared to be drawn on with a knife. “Want to play football with me?”
---
“It didn’t work,” Rin snapped, dropping into a seat next to Isagi in the lecture hall after class.
Isagi stared at him like he had grown a second head. “Wha - where did you - you don’t even take this class!”
Rin ignored him. “The demon and my brother are still together. You failed.”
Isagi took a deep breath. “Look, Rin, I didn’t mean to break up Nagi and Reo and Kaiser was a freak. I don’t have special break-up powers. I don’t think I can help you.”
Another mention of the H-word, but Rin was magnanimous enough to ignore it. For now. “I. Don’t. Care. I need the demon gone and you are the only person I know with experience.”
Isagi looked constipated before he sighed. “Ugh. Fine. I’ll ask Bachira.” He pulled out his phone and began texting.
“What does he have to do with anything?”
“He got Ness to stop stalking me after the Kaiser incident, and you tolerate him, so I think he’s your best option,” Isagi pocketed his phone. “His class lets out about five minutes before this one so he’ll be here soon.”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than Rin was knocked forward by a clinging weight on his back, warm breath rushing in his ear as Bachira wrapped his octopus limbs around Rin and cut off all hope of escape. “Rin-chan, I heard from a little birdie you needed my excellent kissy-kissy-repellent help.”
“I do
not
need your help!” Not the damn H-word. Rin snapped. “Help is for weaklings and lukewarm pieces of shit! I. Do not. Need. Help.”
Isagi’s eyebrows raised so far Rin momentarily though they might fall off his head. Bachira, because he was a monster, was completely unbothered. He let go of Rin and hopped onto the table, scattering Isagi’s things everywhere. “Okie dokie! Whatever you say, Rin-chan! What you need to do is simple: you need to scare Shidou-chan off. It’s easy!”
“Scare them off?” Rin repeated. “What are you talking about?”
“Wait, that’s how you got Ness to leave me alone?” Isagi broke in.
Bachira waved a finger in his face like he was imparting some great wisdom on them. Rin wanted to bite his finger off. “Listen closely, you two. It’s super easy, you just gotta make Shidou-chan so afraid he won’t wanna come near you anymore. With Ness I waited in the bushes wearing a mask and jumped him when he walked home, then I played really loud screaming compilations outside his door in the middle of the night, and wrote ‘Leave Isagi Yoichi alone or you’ll be next’ in blood-like paint on his door. My monster doesn’t need to talk to me about football anymore but he always gave me the best ideas when it came to that stuff.”
Horrified silence. Even Rin didn’t know what to say, he didn’t even know what was worse - what Bachira just said, or that he said all of that with the world’s sunniest smile on his face.
Isagi looked shaken to his core. “That explains why Ness looked so pale the last time we passed each other in the halls,” he muttered shakily.
Bachira laughed. “That’s not everything, silly.”
“Oh, god, what else?” Isagi whispered in a trembling voice.
Bachira carried on like he had never spoken. “I also told Chigirin what was going on and he threatened Ness with suspension. Just in case my stuff didn’t take. Better to be safe than sorry.”
Rin took a deep breath. “So you got Lukewarm’s shitty stalker to leave him alone by making him the lead in a horror movie and then making the shitty wildcard’s boyfriend deal with him?”
“Yuppers!” Bachira said with a nod.
This
was the method to remove the demon that he had to work with? This was ridiculous. Why did Rin even bother talking to people?
“Uh, Rin,” Isagi put his hand on Rin’s shoulder and Rin contemplated breaking it. Isagi seemed to notice Rin’s dark glare because he snatched his hand back quickly. “Before you…try this, maybe consider who you’re going to do this with?”
“What do you mean?” Rin asked.
“I mean, Shidou doesn’t seem the type to be discouraged by scary things or rules.”
“Ooh, yeah,” Bachira agreed, leaning forward. He got into Rin’s space, too, but he wasn’t Isagi so it was fine. “Shidou-chan seems like the type to enjoy the scary. And breaking rules.”
Rin was suddenly bombarded with flashbacks to the first time his brother brought his shitty boyfriend over and was regaled with the tale of how they met. Apparently, Shidou tried to bodily fight Sae’s teammate Aiku and then Sae got Shidou on his team because apparently his shitty brother had shitty taste in men! What a surprise.
God, Rin hated his brother. And his brother’s boyfriend. And his stupid not-friends who couldn’t even get his brother and boyfriend to break up.
“Uh, Rin, I know you probably won’t want to hear this, but have you considered just…asking Sae to keep Shidou away from your apartment?” Isagi tried, breaking Rin out of his flashback.
Rin had not thought of that. “...Why would I talk to my brother?”
Isagi and Bachira stared.
“Your brother probably could control him best,” Isagi said. “And, like, you wouldn’t be admitting defeat if you went to him, you wouldn’t even need us to do that. Plus, I think Sae is a lot more…sane than Shidou.”
“Yeah, definitely more sane,” Bachira agreed. “I heard that Sae was the only reason Shidou didn’t get kicked out of the last game when he tried to fight the ref.”
“Oh, yeah, Ego was pissed about that,” Isagi said. “Heard him mumbling about putting anti-riot shocks in our uniforms or something.”
Rin ignored them completely. Talk to his brother? Should he? The last time he had a serious talk with Sae the traitor brother left him for the midfield. But…they had been on better terms recently. They had dinner together sometimes and neither of them had insulted the other. It was progress.
Maybe Rin
should
try actually talking to Sae.
“And if you do, Rin-chan, and it works, you’ll buy us dinner!” Bachira said, throwing an arm around Rin’s shoulders, pressing his fluffy head into Rin’s neck.
It was too much physical contact for Rin, who was already running dangerously low on his tolerance for social interaction, so he did the rational thing. He threw Bachira off of him into Isagi, who staggered back with the added weight of his friend, Rin then flipped them both off, and stormed out of the lecture hall.
Talking to his brother wouldn’t require either of them, huh?
Rin was sold.
---
The next day, when Rin’s tolerance for social interaction had been replenished, Rin called his brother.
“Rin?” Sae picked up on the first ring. It was eight in the morning on a Saturday. The demon wouldn’t be up for another four hours, Rin knew. He almost gagged at the realization he knew such things about the demon. Whatever, he could purge that knowledge later. “What’s wrong? Why are you calling me?” Sae’s voice was a touch away from his normal cold apathy, verging on audibly worried and Rin realized with a shock that this was the Sae version of panicking.
Rin then acknowledged the one problem with talking to his brother: they did not call each other. Of course Sae would be distressed if Rin called suddenly out of the blue.
But sacrifices had to be made in the name of finally getting his apartment back and winning the war between Rin and the demon.
“I…wanted to talk,” Rin forced out through gritted teeth.
“Talk?” Sae echoed. “About what?”
Alright, this was it. Rin just needed to bite the bullet and get it done. “Can you keep your demon away from my apartment?”
Silence on the other line. Rin felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach. Right. This was why he didn’t want to talk to Sae. The fear that Sae wouldn’t do anything at all, that he was enjoying seeing Rin in distress. That he cared for Shidou more than Rin.
Of course Sae didn’t care. Rin was a fool for even trying. Now he had revealed his weakness and humiliated himself in front of his brother. This was the opposite of finally becoming better than his brother, this was just sinking back to being a stupid kid, looking up to the shining light of his brother and expecting everything to work out for the better.
Why the hell did Rin keep falling for this? He thought he had learned his lesson after his brother left him the first time, but now he was just putting himself through the same thing all over again. And this time over something as dumb and shitty as Shidou.
Pathetic.
Rin was pathetic.
He was about to hang up when Sae’s cold voice came from the other line. “Ryuusei is going to your apartment without me?”
Rin blinked. What? Didn’t Sae know? “Yes,” Rin said carefully. He didn’t know what was happening. This was uncharted territory and Rin was terrified. This almost felt like…his brother cared.
And that was a dangerous road to go down.
“How often?” Sae asked. His voice was still cold, but Rin couldn’t tell if this was normal Sae-cold or different in some way.
“Every few days,” Rin replied. “Usually to brag about your dates or to annoy me.”
“I see,” that chilling line was delivered in such a way goosebumps shot down Rin’s spine.
When he was a kid, people used to tell him in hushed tones how scary they thought his brother was, that Rin was the cute one. Rin had never understood what they meant, how could his Nii-chan be scary? He was the coolest, most amazing person ever.
Rin may have lost his admiration, but he still never understood why people were afraid of Sae. He wasn’t like Bachira, whose too-big eyes and smile made you feel like he was planning your murder in his head, Sae was just overwhelmingly good at what he did. There was nothing scary about that.
But now, now he understood. That tone was colder than the seventh circle of hell, causing frostbite to crawl down Rin’s ears and ice to form in his lungs. That must have been the fear all those other people talked about. In this moment, Rin understood completely. Sae was terrifying.
Rin almost hung up then and there but Sae spoke before he could. “I will deal with it,” Sae informed Rin, his tone just as freezing but the ice forming inside of Rin cracked. This tone, he realized somewhat dazed, wasn’t directed at him. It was…for him?
Rin was taken aback. What. Just like that? Sae was going to deal with it? Was it that easy? “R-Really?” Rin winced internally at the stutter in his voice, at the tendril of hope that had wormed its way into his core. Crying out for the big brother that had once abandoned him, but was now, despite everything, was helping him.
“Yes,” Sae said. “I was unaware Ryuusei was doing that. I shall get him to stop.”
“Oh, okay,” Rin felt breathless. “Thank you.”
Silence. Then. “...I’m sorry that he was doing that. Thank you for telling me.” Sae’s voice was soft. Not just a hint of softness hidden in his perfect cold neutrality, but actually soft. The kind of soft that Rin remembered from his childhood. Warm summer days, salty sweat, and a smile on his face as he chased after his dream with his brother. It was a tone straight out of Rin’s memories.
It made his chest feel warm, something that hadn’t happened in years.
It felt…nice.
“Goodbye, Rin,” Sae said, and then hung up.
Rin’s arm dropped to his side, phone forgotten and chest tight with that warm feeling. He felt like a kid again, secure in the knowledge that his big brother would help him. This was progress, Rin thought. That maybe, one day, once Rin crushed Sae, they could go back to the way things were. They wouldn’t hate each other.
One day.
“Thank you, Nii-chan,” Rin said aloud to the quiet apartment. It was empty, blissful in its silence and solitude. The demon was finally gone, and Rin had the reassurance of his brother in his ears.
With the barest smile on his face, Rin picked up his soccer ball, and left the apartment. It was time for practice. After all, he still had a long way to go before he could crush his brother for good.