#*autumn

Shirabu let out an exhausted sigh, stretched out his limbs and rubbed his tired eyes. He still needed to review ten pages today to prepare for the exam coming up next week. He was spending the past few days with constant studying so he would at least have the chance to keep his good grades in university. Being a medical student was not easy... Too many all-nighters, too much material to get inside his head. Shirabu could already feel his concentration slipping away.

He stood up, deciding that a break would be good for his efficiency. He stretched his arms and back, and walked to the window, pulling the curtains open and watched as people passed by their apartment building; some alone, some with others, some walking their dog. The autumn sky was dark and cloudy, it would probably rain soon and freshen up the dried soil and the polluted air. Shirabu let his thoughts swim, pulling him further away from the textbook that laid on his desk, waiting for him.

Shirabu sighed when he realized what he was doing. He did have a problem with concentration and found himself zoning out or distracted by irrelevant things way too often. That was another reason why his relationship with Semi somehow didn’t always work out well. Semi was a musician. He enjoyed playing whatever instrument he’d gotten his hands on, tapping with his feet or his fingers, listening to music on a loud volume. These all were extremely distracting for Shirabu. Semi promised to close the door of his “studio” they sat up in the room next to their bedroom, and use headphones instead of the speakers when Shirabu needed to focus on the upcoming exams but reality didn’t work this simply. Even though Semi tried his best, the music was part of his body and Shirabu’s senses were overly sensitive in the silence. Silent humming, an accidental exclamation, the drumming of ten fingers, he’d heard all of them.

Shirabu never outright mentioned this to Semi, he felt that he shouldn’t complain when his partner was already trying his best for him. In addition, it wasn’t like Semi was the only thing distracting him. A car passing by, a dog’s barking, his own thoughts.

Shirabu sighed, willing himself to go back to his desk and continue studying or he would never finish. The sooner he finished, the sooner he would be able to go to bed and snuggle up to his boyfriend as a small reward.

He sat down with a resolve, put on his glasses and-

Flinched when he heard a shout from the next room. He glared at the wall separating him from the makeshift studio but the sound of rapid footsteps tapping against wooden floor made his eyes soften before opening wide in curiosity as he expected Semi’s running form appear in the door.

“Kenjirou, Kenjirou, Kenjirou!” Semi called excitedly. He had his headphones and his phone in his hand as he hurried to Shirabu.

“What is it?”

“Listen to this!” Semi shoved the phone and headphones into Shirabu’s hands, a wide grin on his face.

Shirabu shook his head disapprovingly. “I can’t, I have to study. I’ll listen after I’m done.”

“No, I just made this for you,” Semi insisted.

Shirabu was unmoved. “Thanks but I’ll listen to it later, okay?”

Having a song dedicated to him wasn’t anything new. Semi wrote tons of songs about or for Shirabu, claiming that Shirabu was his muse or similarly cheesy lines. Shirabu received songs for birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, etc. It was not enough to prioritize it over his education. His exam had a deadline, his time with Semi was forever.

However, Semi seemed extra insistent today. Irritated, he took the headphone from Shirabu’s lap and placed it on the younger one’s head. “I’ve been trying to make a song that helps you focus better when you’re studying. It should be a melody that’s steady, tunes out the little noises but doesn’t distract you.”

“Does something like that even exist?” Shirabu stared at him skeptically.  

“Sure, it does. I’ve read a bunch of articles and a few books about it,” Semi said with a proud grin.  

“And you made a song like that for me?”  

“Well, we’ll see if I actually managed to do that after you listened to it.” Semi took his phone and played the melody, gesturing Shirabu to go back to studying while he distanced himself and sat on the bed.  

Shirabu listened to the melody that played on repeat. It was nice and calming and had something of that style Semi seemed to inflect into all of his creations, a certain atmosphere that screamed ‘Semi Eita’. An atmosphere Shirabu loved. It soothed his anxious mind and he made an attempt to read the biology text in front of him.  

Before Shirabu even realized it, he reached the end of the section he assigned for himself for today. He read through all of those ten pages without falling out of focus and stopping. He just read while the pleasant melody played in his ears, cancelling out every other noise and distraction. Shirabu felt touched. Semi really did make something for him to help with focusing in his own way. He almost felt like tearing up. He rubbed his eyes, telling himself that he was only too stressed and exhausted, he definitely wasn’t crying because he felt an overwhelming wave of love for Semi rush over him.  

He slowly took off the headphones and placed it on the table.  

“You done? How was it?” Semi glanced his way and sat up on the bed, looking at Shirabu expectantly.  

Shirabu didn’t say anything, just walked over to Semi, stood between his legs and hugged him tight.  

“Thank you,” he muttered, a faint blush dusting his cheeks.  

Semi smiled, “So, I take it it’s good, huh?”

“Mhm, it’s perfect,” Shirabu nodded.  

The exhilarating feeling of success washed over Semi and he felt like he was flying over the moon. Finally, after so much trial and error, he managed to create something on his own that would help Shirabu. It was the best reward for his hard work.  

“Then I’m glad,” he sighed, unable to stop grinning, and he tightened his arms around his boyfriend before falling backwards on the bed with Shirabu landing on his chest.  

“Hey!” Shirabu yelled but Semi pushed his head back to rest in the crook of his neck.  

“Sleep. You worked hard today,” he said, brushing his fingers through Shirabu’s soft locks and the other man slowly relaxed.  

Shirabu inhaled Semi’s scent that he started to associate with home and closed his eyes. “Make me more songs for studying?” he mumbled against Semi’s skin.  

Semi’s breath got caught in his throat. He created so many tracks about or for Shirabu but this was the first time that he was asked to make more.  

The reminder that time has continued since it all happened, and will continue on yet, nearly collapses him.

Eris keeps walking.

He will never be able to say for certain how he knows that the clearing he comes upon is the one. There is no stench of blood on the air, coppery and violent, familiar in itself as it is of their bodies. No overt trace of conflict mars the land. Any snapped branches have swept away or mended themselves, and any fallen trees are covered in lichen and moss, such that they could have been that way at the conception of the land. Even the small shrine the forest constructed seems a thing of natural order, meant always to be this way.

But of course it is not. It is not meant to be this way, and it will never be the way it was again.

Entering the clearing feels no different from stepping into a tomb. The stagnant mourning sweeps the breath from him, and he feels the rageful beast stir in its place, lip pulling back, canines glinting.

Then his gaze falls upon an oak sapling sprouting proud from a verdant, body-sized patch of ground, and that brief reprieve flees him. His lungs stutter. He swallows against them.

Marius carried Silas home. Or so Eris was told afterwards. He had not been conscious to see it for himself, the terrible way his brother clung to the body of his twin, both of them covered in gore, both of them empty of life. He wishes he had been, if only to watch Marius unleash himself on their father in his demand for a bloodprice to soften the loss of Silas, though that battle was forfeit before it began.

Too much blood had spilled here to find its match.

As he must, Eris walks beyond the sapling and over to the shrine: a bowed latticework of branches and foliage, curved around like hands. The forest parts its palms for him as he nears.

There is nothing in his stomach to expel, so he heaves only bile onto the ground. It stings the back of his throat and up into his nose. He spits, but the sensation remains.

The land tried to make Ronan presentable. It arranged him on his back so that his empty gaze could marvel always on the canopy overhead, and it drank down his lifeblood so that none remained to mar his skin, and it kept the insects away, and the animals, and the creatures so that his pallid flesh would not be eaten. There was nothing it could do for the yawning gape of his chest or the split of his jaw but to patch them over with moss.

Again, Eris feels his stomach heave, a cramp in it that refuses to ease. Nothing more comes up, so he lowers slowly beside his brother, moving with the caution of a youngling who does not wish to be caught peering wonderingly into a cradle.

Eris stares for a long while. He knows this only because of the dappling of sunlight arcing steadily across them both: time happening to them, inexorably. All else has fallen away, save for this brother of his and the gaping wound of him.

"Come," Eris says, pulling this biggest of their skulk into his arms and holding him close, "I have you now." He cannot bring his voice above a rasp, torn through still from his own screaming, choked around by something else besides. A final lie: "Everything will be alright."

It seems, as Eris smooths at Ronan's hair, that there is life in his brother yet. His body is moving in his embrace—heaving, as though with breath. There is noise between them, gasping, shuddering. Tears, too, trickling down his broken face and gathering in the moss like dewdrops. Blurry-eyed, Eris stares at him and wills it true.

But there is only so much the forest can do.

"Take him," Eris asks more yet of the wood. "I don't want him seen like this." Softly, cracked down the middle, "He will rest easier, here with you."

Their mother will loathe him for this, he knows—for even this, the closure of a last look, taken from her. But he knows, too, that it will ruin her more to see yet another of her sons damaged beyond hope.

It is better for her to remember him whole.

The forest opens its arms without expectation or urgency. It alone knows what an agony it is for Eris to lay his brother down into them, to accept, with such astounding finality, a truth that he has never been able to before: there is nothing more that can be done. It waits patiently as Eris runs his dazed fingers through Ronan's hair, the clumps of filth in it impossible to unknot; for him to recall himself from his shock and magic away the grime, the rends from the clothes, until Ronan almost looks only to be in repose; for him to plait a lock of Ronan’s cleaned hair, sever it off, pocket it away. It waits.

And when at last its heir cedes the body of his kin to its keeping, it wishes its vines might be fingers, that it could wipe the sorrow from his cheeks. The best it can give him is another oak, just beside the sappling, this one grown full and strong with the might of the offering.

Often, in the time that comes after, Eris makes the long, wending walk along the river, following the opposite bank until he reaches a clearing, where he is the closest to his fallen brothers that he will ever be again.