#kresnikcest

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Staring down at the box he’d placed on the kitchen table, Julius knows this one accident has screwed up his entire relationship with his little brother.

The package in the mail had simply been addressed to a ‘Mr. Kresnik’, and Julius had ordered their cat an assortment of toys that was expected to arrive that very week. So of course he opened the inconspicuous brown package without a second thought, and if he could rewind time, he’d punch himself straight in the jaw for being so hasty. What slipped out of the package was a thick, rectangular box wrapped in plastic, and as soon as his eyes landed on the cover, all Julius could do was stare in utter shock.

Across the top was the title ‘Your Sweet Love – Fan Disk – ENGLISH PC VERSION‘, and underneath it was a drawing of a man surrounded by several other men, their hands all over the body of the one in the center. His mind went blank for a good minute, and once he came to his senses he damn near dropped it in a moment of panic. After a quick catch he placed it on the kitchen table, and for a longest time all he could do was stare at from where he sat.

Running his fingers through his hair, Julius knows there’s only two options right now. One, he can put the game back in the parcel, seal it up as best he can, and pretend he’d never touched it in the first place. Or…he could confront his little brother about it and just get the awkward moment over with. Julius really, really wants to go with the former, but his mind screams at him that the latter is the correct way to go. Why? Because as hard as it is to admit, Julius knows NOTHING about Ludger.

Despite growing up together, he couldn’t think of one time when his brother picked up a hobby or expressed an interested in something. Well, except cooking, but that was only because Julius is an absolute disaster in the kitchen. He really didn’t know what his little brother like outside of the basics, and this is a golden opportunity to finally dig a little deeper. Ludger liked…whatever the game is enough to purchase it, so maybe he could get him to talk about it, if only a little.

He jumps upon hearing the door to their apartment open, and all he can do now is swallow hard as he readies himself for what’s to come.

“Sorry I’m late,” he hears Ludger say, “I stopped at the grocery store since they were having a sale. Is lasagna okay for tonight? I know we’ve had pasta two nights in a row already-”

“Hey, um, could you come here for a second?” Julius asks, and he’s really trying his best to hide the nervousness in his voice.

“Sure,” Ludger says before placing the plastic bags he’s holding on the counter.

Clenching his jaw tightly, Julius can hear his heart pounding in his ears which each approaching step Ludger takes. Oh god…he’s really going to do this…wait, can he really do this?

“What’s up-?”

His words are cut off by the strangled sound he makes once he lays eyes on the box on the table. Ludger’s eyes widen, and for a split second his face pales before it’s dyed a shade of bright red that manages to reach the tips of his ears. Julius has never seen him so embarrassed before. Damn, now he doesn’t know what to say, so he watches Ludger fidget in place like a kid that’s in trouble-

Shit…Another wave of panic begins to set in because Ludger thinks he’s done wrong; Julius hasn’t given him a reason to think otherwise, so that’s probably the first thing he should address.

“I’m so sorry, I thought the package was for me since I ordered cat toys for Rollo, that’s why I opened it,” he quickly says, “and um, it’s okay if you like cartoon games, really.”

Seemingly explicit cartoon games he wants to say, but he manages to choke that one back.

“Ah…” Ludger squeaks out, eyes on the floor.

They go silent, and it feels far more awkward than Julius had imagined. He wanted to know what Ludger is interested in, but how does he even start that conversation? ‘Oh hey, tell me more about this weird game’, ‘what are those guys doing?’, ‘it’s porn, right?’…None of those were going to work, and it’d only make him shrink back further. Julius really wishes he’d thought this through a little more, at least enough to get past this silence.

“It’s, um…a dating sim…” he says barely above a whisper.

“Oh…okay. So, you, uh…play a guy that dates other guys?”

Ludger lets out a groan that makes it clear he’s absolutely mortified, and as he covers his face with his hands, Julius feels terrible for making him feel like that. He should stop the conversation now.

“Please just tell me it’s weird, you don’t have to beat around the bush,” he says, voice raising a good two octaves as he does so.

Julius clenches his jaw again before answering.

“Yeah, it’s…it’s weird, Ludger, but…” he lets out a long, shaky breath before continuing, “It’s your thing. I may find it weird, but you’re an adult. And really, I want to know more about the stuff you like…because I feel so out of loop when it comes to your interests. I mean, if you really don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”

Silence falls between them again, but this time it doesn’t feel as heavy as it did before. Ludger slowly begins to drop his hands from his face, but his eyes are still glued to the floor. Julius opens his mouth to say something else, but quickly closes it. He’s said more than enough, so he leaves whatever needs to be said to Ludger.

“…Can we…talk about this another time? J-Just so I have some time to think and make a decision…”

“Yeah, of course.”

The moment he sees Ludger start to relax a bit, Julius begins to do the same. He quickly retreats into the kitchen without another word, so Julius takes this as a hint that the conversation is over.

An entire week goes by, and Ludger seemed to do everything within his power to pretend that their little talk hadn’t happened. The very next day he was all smiles as he went about his daily routine, but as Julius watched him, he couldn’t help but notice Ludger’s slip-ups. The two of them never held eye contact for more than a few seconds before his little brother averted his gaze elsewhere or quickly excuse himself. When not actively fleeing from him, Ludger looked lost in thought, which wouldn’t have been a problem if he wasn’t doing chores while it happened.

He’d ironed through three shirts, burned their dinner twice, and walked right into the wall next to his bedroom door. But when Ludger damn nearly cuts off a finger while preparing a meal, Julius realized he needed to put a stop to things. On his way home from work he was determined to tell Ludger that it was all right, that he didn’t need share anything with him if just thinking about it was causing him so much distress.

Well that was the original plan before Ludger grabbed his wrist as soon as he entered the apartment. Before he could get a single word out, he was quickly dragged to his brother’s room, the door shutting loudly as soon as he entered.

So he just sits on his brother’s bed, watching as he gives him a stern look. Despite the air of seriousness Ludger tries to give off, Julius can see a light dusting of pink on his cheeks. After a few seconds Ludger looks away, but he seems to gather his wits and look back. Now is probably a good time for Julius take a bit of that weight off his brother’s shoulders, but as he opens his mouth to speak, Ludger beats him to it.

“Did…did you mean what you said before…?” he questions, leaning forward a bit as he does so.

“Um, about what-?”

“About being interested in the things I like.”

Without hesitation he tells him that yes, yes he meant what he said, but more importantly he wants Ludger to be comfortable talking to him. Another silence falls, but this time Julius thinks it’s not from awkwardness but from Ludger taking what he said to heart. Julius might’ve been curious, but he would not allow his curiosity to win out at the expense of his little brother’s comfort.

“…I don’t think I’ll ever be totally okay with talking to you about it, I mean…” he averts his gaze, the blush on his face deepening a bit. “You’d be the second real life person I’ve talked to about it, and Nova barely counts since she was already in the know about this stuff.”

Straightening up, Ludger admits that having someone else to ‘rant to’ other than Nova would be nice, though Julius withholds feeling flattered until his brother gives him the okay. After a few seconds Ludger lets out a loud huff, and Julius doesn’t resist as his brother pulls him up by the wrist. They don’t go far; Ludger stops in front of his closet, a place Julius never ventured into so of course it’d be the perfect place to hide whatever. Ludger pushes aside a couple of shirts to get to the back, and he knows exactly what he’s doing.

With both their closets there’s a space for extra storage behind a sliding door in the back, and even though Julius thinks it’s not quite big enough to fit a bunch of stuff, Ludger has clearly made it work for his hobby. His brother gives him a quick look over his shoulder before he begins to open the door, and once Julius has a clear view of what’s inside, he’s dumbstruck.

The first three shelves are lined with what looks like books, and as he scans each row he sees boxes that resemble the one he’d accidently found in the mail. Some of the titles on the spins are in English while others are written in a language he vaguely recognizes; Ludger will probably explain it to him, so he simply moves on. The middle two shelves are occupied by figurines of various sizes, each one striking a different, dynamic pose. He stares at one positioned near the front for a few seconds, and then it dawns on him that he’s seen that character…on the cover of that PC game.

The last shelf holds plush toys of strange animals Julius can’t even begin to identify, though one does vaguely resemble a cat if he squints. Next to the toys are an assortment of keychains; some of them look like miniature versions of the figurines, while others looks like drawing printed on a thin piece of plastic. There’s just so much stuff that in front of him he can’t help but feel overwhelmed, and it’s amazes him that he’s never he caught a glimpse of any of it until last week.

“I like anime and manga…they’re basically Japanese cartoons and comics,” he mutters, blush reaching the tips of his ears again.

Julius doesn’t mean for the ‘huh’ he gives off to sound indifferent, so he clears his throat to give a proper response.

“I see…Wait, so you can understand Japanese?”

“Yeah, I’ve been teaching myself since middle school.”

That’s…impressive. As soon as he tells Ludger how amazed he is, his brother gives him a goofy, lopsided smile, but it disappears as quickly as it appears. He admits that learning a language just to further enjoy his hobby doesn’t seem like that big of an achievement, let alone something worth praising. Julius can’t help but feel taken aback, even if some part of him was expecting a response along those lines. Sometimes he forgets about his brother’s self-esteem issues, and it’s in these moments that Julius knows he needs to flex his big brother muscle.

“No, I mean it, I’m seriously impressed,” he says while placing a hand on Ludger’s shoulder. “I don’t think I’d have the motivation to learn a different language just because, let alone for as long as you’ve been doing it. I’m proud of you.”

Ludger looks skeptical, but as a small smile slowly spreads across his lips, Julius knows he’s taken his words to heart.

Once he relaxes a little more, Ludger goes over everything in his closet, from the comic books called manga and why they’re read backwards, to a brief history of what anime is. As he listens intently, flipping through one of the books as he does so, something catches his eye in the corner of the closet.

“What’s that?” Julius asks while motioning to the unmarked carboard box.

“Oh, that? I just keep my old OTP stuff in there. I mean, I still ship a lot of it, but newer stuff…takes …priority…u-um…”