#takaishida

Yamato always questioned how he and Takeru could be related, because all things considered, they were so little alike. He realized this the moment he met him, wrapped in their mother’s arms and a baby blue blanket that matched his eyes. Their mother started to sing and their father gained a skip in his step. Takeru was their baby, their ‘little angel’ (while Yamato was always just ‘Yamato’.)

This is not to say that Takeru was an easy child — in fact, he cried all the time. But there was a sort of benediction about the boy that inspired one to believe that everything would be okay. One need simply send him the slightest hint of a smile, and in an instant, he would mirror the best of it back, the purest of all human grace reflected in his little eyes. (To this day Yamato would swear it was this quality of the boy that kept the family together for as long as they had been.)

They were so different that everyone was always surprised to learn that they were brothers. Yamato, so cool, so sharp, somehow from the same seed that blessed them with Takeru, the sweetheart, the charmer.

But it was better this way: that Takeru was not only so much different, but so much better than him. That the younger boy had inherited the best of both their parents — their mother’s heart, their father’s charm — while the older boy got everything else. It was well that Takeru inherited the softness of his mother’s eyes, and that they had not been hardened as his brother’s had been.

By choosing to live with their father,Yamato had spared his brother from witnessing the worst of the divorce: the chaos of an unkempt apartment, cold TV dinners purchased at the local kombini, and the long painful process of picking up the pieces of a broken man.

Instead the Takeru lived in sweet, suburban Setagaya.

Yamato had visited a few times, and though he loved time with his mother and brother — and they clearly loved having him too — the trips were always more painful than pleasant. The pristine apartment, the freshly pressed sheets, and the aroma of a home-cooked dinner filling each room — all things Yamato knew would haunt him when he went home.

And as painful as these always were, he was happy for his brother: so pleasantly provided for, so blissfully inexperienced in permanently losing the best parts of your life, and so protected from the harsh realities that had made Yamato who he is.

If for this reason the brothers might never truly look alike, Yamato could accept this.

“Thanks so much Yamato,” rings Hikari’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Don’t mention it. I’ll leave the tickets at the door in your name,” Yamato replies. ”Just come early so the ushers could have enough time to process them.”

“Got it, Mr. Superstar!” (He is sure she picked this nickname up from Taichi, and swears to smack him for it the next time they meet.)

The rest of the band is returning from their quick break and setting up once again for the rehearsal. Yamato is about to bid the girl goodbye when she suddenly says, “Hey, Yamato…”

“Yeah Hikari-chan?”

Without a word, a question is raised and hung in the silence that fell. Yamato isn’t sure if the girl was still on the call.

“Hikari-chan?”

“Ah, sorry, it’s just…” she says. “Have you seen Takeru lately?”

“Takeru?” Yamato is taken aback. “Not lately. Aren’t you two in the same class?”

“Yeah…” Hikari replies, the disappointment in her voice almost tangible. “He’s just been so busy lately. I’m just a little worried if he’s overworking himself.”

“Busy?” Yamato asks, having no clue what his brother could be busy about, considering it was summer break. Even basketball training wouldn’t typically start getting serious for another few weeks, but the boy mustbe busy if he didn’t have enough time for even Hikari.

“He hasn’t said anything specific, but I’ll check on him.”

“Thanks Yamato. I just hope he’s alright.”

“Don’t worry about it. Maybe the basketball club got busy a little earlier this year.”

“Maybe,” the girl replies, concern ringing clear even after the call ends.

Yamato makes a mental note to call Takeru. The least he could do is tell his brother to free himself up this weekend, if Hikari was going through all this trouble for him.

As if on cue, his phone rings, this time with his brother’s name across the screen. Their amps were warm and his bandmates waiting, but concern from the previous conversation pushes Yamato to take the call.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Nii-san, I need something. Are you busy?”

“I’ve got time. Whatcha need?”

“Nii-san, do you—”

Yamato's fist tightens around his phone.

“—still have tickets for your gig this weekend?”

The older boy’s lip twitches, before breaking into a smirk. If this is all his brother had on his mind, then it was not much to worry about.

“The Summer Starter?”

“'By the bay', yeah. Do you?”

“Hikari already got two tickets.”

Radio silence. A cicada sings alone in the distance.

“... so you don’t?” Takeru asks.

“I do, but she already got your—”

“That’s for her date.”

“Exactly. And...?” asked Yamato, growing impatient with what wasn’t clicking.

”Keiji.”

“Huh, Keiji?”

“From Taichi’s soccer team.”

“From the soccer team?!” came an entire chorus behind Yamato. Only then does he realize his whole band had been leaning in, only inches away, listening to the entire conversation.

Yamato swats at his bandmates with his free hand, shouting “Fuck off.” (The guitarist grumbles “Hurry up then,” the drummer, “Don’t leave us hanging!” The keyboardist — who himself had some more invested feelings for the girl since middle school — entered some sort of catatonic shock, a single tear staining his forlorn face.)

“Excuse me?” Takeru replies, with clearly strained civility.

“Sorry, not you,” Yamato says, still trying to recover from the news. “Okay, so tickets, right? Is five enough?” he asks, counting the rest of the younger gang on his fingers.

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen?! What, are you scalping or something?”

“It’s for some friends.”

“Okay, how many of Jun’s friends does Daisuke need to bring?”

“Not them.”

“Not even Daisuke?”

“I’m taking the basketball team.”

“Really now?” Yamato says, raising an eyebrow.

Though Takeru was friendly with his teammates, it was the first time he seemed to be interested in hanging out with them outside the court. Takeru typically spent his free time with either Hikari or Daisuke, sometimes both (though recently Yamato had noted it was more of the former than the latter.)

“Your team still isn’t that large though, even counting subs,” Yamato pushes.

“We’ve got some… dates,” Takeru explains, with so much awkward weight on the last word. His brother struggles not to laugh.

“Okay, got it,” Yamato replies, clearly still straining to keep a straight tone. “You could claim the tickets tomorrow, after cooking me a full-course dinner. How about that?” he says, asking more for compliance than confirmation.

“I told Hikari to claim hers at the door, should I give you hers too instead?”

There is a pause on the line. Yamato could almost hear the gears turning in his brother’s head.

“I’m kind of busy this week. We could just claim them at the door too.”

“All fifteen? That’ll take a while. Even longer if the ushers are busy.”

“We could wait.”

“You sure? With all your dates?” Yamato teases.

“Yup. No problem,” the boy replies, almost too cool for his brother’s comfort.

“Okay then.”

“Okay.”

“If we’re all good could we get back to rehearsals then?” interrupts Yamato’s irate bandmate, guitar plugged and ready to play. (The drummer is still comforting the keyboardist, who was presently bawling his eyes out, crying Hikari’s name.)

Yamato shoots them a deadpan look before returning to the call to say, “Takeru?”

“Yeah?”

“You still owe me dinner though. Come over sometime.”

“I’ll do you one better. How about you come over and I’ll prepare the presidential suite?”

“After the gig?”

“I’ve already confirmed the reservation.”

Just then a furious progression of power chords blared across the rehearsal room — full volume, maximum overdrive, and plenty of feedback. The break was over.

The call ends and the band resumes their positions. (The keyboardist had not yet fully recovered, though he at least somehow managed to play through the tears, so long as he didn’t weep too close to the microphone.)

Yamato tried to keep his mind on the set, but he couldn’t keep from wondering about what was going on with his brother. He should have been happy the boy was branching out into new circles, but he couldn’t help but worry about what had happened with the old one. His brother was simply not one to leave his friends hanging.

In any case, they’d talk after the gig. Until then, Yamato could only hope that his brother was alright. But then again, this was Takeru after all, and between the two, if he could trust only one of them to have their shit together, Yamato knew which one it was.

From the spotlight on an evening concert, it is often difficult to make out faces in an audience. Everyone's features are usually so ill lit that it is near impossible to identify even the most familiar face, especially when one is preoccupied performing for a few hundred people.

That is, unless you are the only blonde in a sea of black and brunette, then it soon becomes abundantly clear where to find you.

This is how Yamato finds precisely where his brother’s group stood on the Odaiba bay. This is also how Yamato saw Takeru wasn’t even watching most of their set. His interest seemed elsewhere, and it wasn’t on any of his friends either.

The boy kept stealing glances across the crowd, away from the stage, and the party, who didn't even seem to notice their distracted companion.

It was in a similar manner that Yamato soon found what was stealing his brother’s attention. In the dim lantern light, she stood out among the soccer team with her bright summer cap, a crown of yellow flowers fixed upon its brim. Yamato recognized it immediately, as this was the very same cap he himself helped Takeru choose for her, just last year, for the gang’s last summer trip.

At first Yamato wasn’t sure. After all, his brother could have simply been admiring the ambiance, the summer air, or the paper lanterns glowing gently in the night sky. He wouldn’t have given it another thought, if, as the band was exiting backstage after the gig, he didn’t catch the precise moment Hikari turned to catch Takeru’s sight herself.

Perhaps she was surprised to see him, for she squints for a second, before flashing him her brightest smile and waving broadly at him from across the crowd.

It was at this moment Yamato knew something was wrong, because he sees his brother freeze, then swiftly turn away, disappearing into the faceless crowd.

Hikari is heartbroken.

What an ass, Yamato thinks. This was not okay.

Yamato considers approaching the girl and apologizing on his brother’s behalf, but quickly thinks better of it. She wasn’t alone. She’d be fine, but he had to find his brother. This evening raised only more questions, and Yamato was going to get to the bottom of it, if he had to drag the answers out of his brother himself.

“You are fourteen. Where did you even get the alcohol?” Yamato yells as he drags his heavily drunken brother through the Ishida doorway.

“Maybe somebody’s cool brother,” Takeru taunts, sticking his tongue out.

After the gig, a few phone calls, and a heated series of texts, Yamato found his brother at one of the concert afterparties, thoroughly intoxicated and about to toss his shirt into an indoor pool for a cheering crowd of fellow high schoolers.

It took all of Yamato's physical strength to haul both his gig gear and the heavily wasted boy into a taxi to take him home. (It took all his mental faculties on the other hand to explain to their mother why she would no longer be expecting the two that night, while he navigated how to keep her from hearing her younger son, who of course started making sex noises the minute he saw Yamato pull out his phone.)

Back at the apartment, Yamato chucks Takeru onto the living room couch with as much force as possible without causing any permanent damage.

“That’s just a sample of what you’re in for if you so much as take a sip of alcohol before you're twenty,” Yamato roars, taking his brother by the collar and throwing him back onto the couch (though Takeru is too out of it to feel any of this yet.) “How much did you even have?!”

With the most satisfied grin the youngest boy proudly lifts two fingers.

“Cases?!” Yamato is almost impressed.

“Nahh,” Takeru says, with the same stupid smile, just when Yamato thought he couldn’t get more disappointed with his brother tonight.

Rolling his eyes, Yamato heads to the kitchen to prepare an unholy brew of tea leaves, sports drinks, a whole clove of garlic, and a single potato — among other unmentionable ingredients. He pours it into a mug to serve his brother.

“Drink this,” he says, holding it up to his brother.

Takeru struggles to sit up, barely beginning to regain muscle control. Once he whiffs the offensive fluid though he almost gags.

“Hey! Not on the couch!”

“The fuck is this?” Takeru demands, thoroughly disgusted.

“Hey.” Yamato says sternly. “When’d you learn to talk like that?”

“When’d you learn to cook garbage?”

Yamato rolls his eyes. “Just take it. It’ll help.”

“...How do you know?”

“I’ll be asking the questions here,” says the older boy, standing above his brother. “What’s up with you?”

“From this angle, you.”

“I’m serious!”

“Hi serious, I’m—”

“So everything’s a joke to you now? Is that how you lost all your friends?”

“I have friends.”

“You mean those creeps who would have let you strip to a cheering crowd? What about Daisuke? Hikari?”

“We’ve got other friends.”

“Is that what it is? Cause Hikari has ‘another’ friend?”

“No...”

“What’s up then?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing. ‘Nothing’ is why you’re avoiding everyone?”

“I’m not.”

“Why Hikari had to ask me how you’re doing?”

“Stop.”

“And why you couldn’t even look at—”

“SHUT UP.”

Yamato hears the crash before he realizes what hit him. It was Takeru’s fist. His brother punched him clean across the face and tackled him to the ground, overturning the tiny coffee table on the way down.

On impulse Yamato thrusts Takeru off and pins the boy to the living room floor, quickly raising his own fist in retaliation, Takeru braces for the punch he knows he deserves, when they pause a moment to catch their breath, both surprised at the turn of events.

Yamato could have thrown that punch. He’d bloodied faces for less (sometimes even for kicks) but somehow, looking down at his brother, he can’t help but notice the clear crack in his voice and his Adam’s apple that was only beginning to form.

It is his eyes though that are most striking, baby blue and full of uncertainty, brow furrowed with a fear that Yamato knew all too well. The older boy couldn’t claim to know what his brother was going through, but he knew this feeling: the doubt, the withdrawal, and the awful conviction that you had to deal with it all on your own.

In his brother’s eyes, Yamato sees mirrored all the familiar fears he himself held — perhaps holds still. In that moment, he realizes that maybe they weren’t so different after all.

So, with his brother pinned beneath him and his fist poised for a punch, Yamato slowly unclenches his hand and lowers it to the floor, before pulling his brother up into a tight hug.

It only lasts a second, and by the time Takeru’s still tipsy mind catches up, Yamato has already stood, leaving the younger boy stunned and seated on the living room floor. Takeru watches as his brother fixes the upturned coffee table, and makes for his bedroom. He pauses there with his hand on the knob.

“Listen,” Yamato says, “I’m sorry.”

“Whatever’s happening with you, you don’t need to tell anyone. Not your friends, not mom or dad. Not even me. If this is an issue or if this is just who you’re turning out to be, you don’t owe anyone that explanation.”

“But you owe it to yourself to admit if you’re hurting, or in trouble. If you could use some help. ‘Cause if you do, then we could all figure out what we could do about that.”

Finally turning the knob, he says, “We’re worried about you.”

“I’m here if you need anything,” he concludes as he enters the room, leaving his brother to think on the living room floor, bedroom door slightly ajar.

Takeru wakes up on the couch in the morning, with the worst headache of his young life. Yamato is at the stove preparing breakfast: a stack of pancakes, a kettle of tea, and another batch of the offensive hangover remedy bubbling atop a back burner.

By the time he finds the strength to stagger to the dining table, breakfast has been served. Yamato casually sips some fresh tea.

Placing the cup back on its coaster, he looks up at the boy to ask, “So, wanna talk?”

Slowly, Takeru nods, as his brother pours him a cup of tea and its comforting aroma fills the apartment air.

note: THE CHAPTER ENDS THERE BUT @eveangelleicalarcher INTRODUCED ME TO MCU SO HERE'S A POST-CREDITS SCENE NO ONE ASKED FOR I JUST WANTED IT TO HAPPEN

"Thanks for dinner," says Yamato, clapping his hands after the hearty home cooked meal.

"So tired. So full," replies his absolutely exhausted brother.

"Would you say you've eaten enough?"

"You emptied the rice cooker. On. My. Plate," Takery retorts. "I've had enough for the next month."

"Great. Now for the next item on our agenda."

"What agenda?"

"Mom isn't expecting you til Monday right?" Yamato asks, casually walking back to the kitchen.

Takeru nods. "Why?"

"My dear baby brother," Yamato says, closing his eyes for effect. "Someday, I won't be there to save your wasted ass." He grabs a handful of grocery bags from the refrigerator. "But until then, I will do everything within my power to prepare you for that day."

'What are you talking about?"

The older boy pulls out a collection of shot glasses Takeru was not even aware they owned. "Tonight, we find your limit."

Before Takeru knows it, the table is lined with a dozen bottles, several shot glasses, two shakers, and an overly ornate stein Takeru has never seen before.

"I already swore I'd never —"

"We both know that's bullshit." Yamato cuts. "But I'll prepare you. Train you. Take you under my wing." He continues pilling cans on the table.

"You're freaking me out."

"Don't worry. I've done this with Taichi. He covered this," Yamato says, raising a bottle of shochu.

"You told Taichi?! What if he tells—"

"Shh! Focus, Takaishi."

Takeru begins to sweat as he reads a Johnnie Walker label. "I don't think dad would approve of this."

"Dad covered that one."

Sheer terror.

Yamato finishes unloading the last grocery bag and marvels at the bounty before him. "Every solution your young mind could ever think to consume. And then some."