Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tenn hadn’t intended to fall asleep next to Yuki, much less on the floor. He extracted himself from the blankets and drew himself up quietly, rotating his neck as he did and feeling his joints pop. The situation really hadn’t been ergonomic. 

“...an…” Yuki mumbled, rolling over and hugging Tenn’s leg. 

Right, of course. He thought Tenn was Banri. Why else would he want him close? Why else would he have, last night, in a sleepy haze, refused to come up to the bed properly but coaxed Tenn into curling up with him, huddled up with him in an odd display of friendliness… 

Well. Yuki couldn’t be found lying on the floor this morning anyway. Tenn picked up the long-limbed lump that sometimes tried to pass as his elder brother and hauled him onto the bed. Yuki grasped for the pillow like a newborn kitten with sealed-shut eyes feeling around for its mother’s milk and, after finding it, held it close to his chest and rolled over so he was face-first in the mattress. He would be dead to the world for the next five hours at least. 

In that dark room, Tenn changed into shorts and a T-shirt and laced up his shoes. Brushing his teeth could wait, and he’d use the toilet and wash his face in the downstairs lobby. He wasn’t going to do anything that could wake Banri, when he couldn’t sleep at the best of times. 

Tenn always went on a morning run. It was best for every human being to exercise at least thirty minutes a day, for their mental health. (No one else in the household did, which explained a few things.) Besides that, being an idol was strenuous work, and so it was important for him to build stamina and do cardio. 

Yuki never did anything like that, at least not voluntarily. Tenn kept hoping over and over that Kujo-san would see that, drop his obsession with Yuki and with Banri and just focus on him. Him, him, him. The good idol, the good child, the one who was right there, being everything he should be, all of the time.

For Yuki and Banri’s and Kujo’s sake, of course. Tenn didn’t want or need attention, it would just be best for them… 

Down in the hotel lobby, he splashed water on his face, a cold wake-up. Yes, you do want attention, he thought to himself. Stop that. Think logically. Just focus on what you need to do to become an idol. 

If he was an idol, Kujo wouldn’t need Yuki, wouldn’t need Banri to control Yuki, and everything would be better. And Tenn would have fans he could look after and take care of and make happy. Like as a kid when he’d sing to that boy. It had been his dream job since maybe before he even met Kujo-san. He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d wanted at ten and eleven and twelve and thirteen, but he’d loved music and dance and musicals and playing to an audience…hadn’t he dreamed of standing on a stage? 

Daydreaming of doing a fan signing, he went out to the parking lot. The air was cold and crisp and the light was gray, everything covered in the faint glow of an approaching, not-quite-there-yet sunrise. Birdsong was everywhere. 

Thank you so much for coming to see me… no… Good morning, are you doing well… 

Aaah, Kujo Tenn has such a soothing personali—

His foot hit something warm and solid. 

Tenn looked down. Blinked. Stared. 

Ogami Banri was lying on the ground. Hair strewn everywhere. Eyes closed. Arm half under a car.  

Something cold and terrified was clawing up Tenn’s stomach. 

Palms and elbows scraped, knees of his pants dripping wet and dark red. 

Eyelids twitching. Alive. 

“Banri-nii.” Tenn knelt down next to him. The car he was partly under had a dent in the roof. That car was right underneath their room’s second-floor balcony. Banri must’ve fallen onto the car, then the ground. “Banri-nii, can you wake up?” 

His eyes opened a crack, taking Tenn in. He didn’t say anything. 

Tenn felt around his head. No major bumps or cuts. He must have caught himself with his arms and legs. And so they were in bad shape, but god…thank god he’d protected his head. 

“Banri-nii, do you know who I am?” 

His nose was broken, with dried blood flaking off underneath his nostrils. The cold and terrified thing sunk its claws into Tenn’s throat. But then he remembered last night. So it wasn’t a sign of a head injury. It was just from when Kujo-san had hit him. 

Banri whimpered and curled up, burying his face in his shoulder. He tried to move the arm under the car closer to him, but winced hard and let it stay. The angle it was bent at was wrong, Tenn realized. 

Why was he out here? Tenn didn’t even know why Banri would have gone outside. Besides that, the balcony had a high railing. Even if he’d gotten dizzy, how could he have fallen off? Had he gotten confused, too? Thought it would be a good idea to climb up and over for, for some reason… 

“B-Banri-nii. I’m going to move you out to the sidewalk, okay? Then…” It would cause a scene in the lobby to drag him in. It would cause a scene when Kujo and Yuki found out, Yuki crying, probably, Kujo angry, an argument about his medical care, a whole mess… “I’m calling an ambulance right now. They’ll come and pick you up. They probably won’t speak Japanese, but don’t be afraid. It’s not your brain forgetting how to understand words. I’ll interpret.” 

“No,” Banri rasped. “Don’t call an ambulance.” 

Tenn couldn’t say the words why not. His brain was getting way too close to the obvious. Don’t think about it. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

“Tenn. Please. I’m sorry. Um. Starts with a K.” 

“K...calm down?” 

“Please. You should kill me.” 

What the fuck what the fuck what the FUCK! 

“You’re just confused,” Tenn said. “Banri-nii, you’re just confused. The hospital will help you.” 

Banri dragged himself into sitting upright, using Tenn as support. “No. I’re not just confused. Never—not as much as you think, I haven’t been!” 

It made no sense! 

Banri was quiet, he was kind, he got emotional sometimes but he never did anything like this, he didn’t do crazy things, because—he thought slower than an ordinary person, he was brain damaged, he went along with everything and every little kindness was like gold to him, all he wanted was his Yuki and medicine and sleep, that was how he was—

“How could you—why would you want to commit suicide?” 

Banri laughed, cracked and bitter. “My life is the best, yes? My life good is so?” 

“That’s not…” 

Banri took one of Tenn’s hands and put it around his own throat, the left side, thumb over his windpipe. Tenn wrenched it away. 

“Hello, this is an emergency, I have someone who suffered severe trauma from a fall, he’s alive and conscious but…yes, one second, the address is…and we need mental health professionals, too…yes, I do think it was an attempted suicide, but more than that, he’s not mentally sound in general, he’s had, ah, like shikouteishi—yes, disordered thinking, for years due to a traumatic brain injury…” 

“No,” Banri said, and started to cry. 

That was what made him cry? “Yes, you do! And yes, I’m calling the hospital!” 

“Listen to me.” Banri grabbed at Tenn, tried to get at the phone, scored lines down Tenn’s arms with his fingernails as Tenn held the phone up out of reach. “You don’t listen!” 

Tenn slapped him. A second later he regretted it but he was angry, and anyway—seeing Banri cringe away, hand on his face, tears in his eyes—he’d forget it anyway—fuck! “I don’t want to listen, you idiot! Why did you think it was okay for you to make that decision, you fucking retard?” 

Banri swayed, unsteady, and lowered himself back to the ground; pressed his cheek to the asphalt and turned away, body shaking in heaving sobs. 

Tenn sat down next to him and waited for the ambulance to come. But a second later Banri looked back at him, made eye contact, took Tenn by the collar and made him keep eye contact. Tenn just barely managed to keep himself from flinching—maybe he was a hypocrite, but that strangling grip, too much of that desperate violence Banri did have sometimes—don’t push him off, he’s too injured. You can’t hurt him more. 

“Tenn,” Banri rasped. 

“...What is it?” 

“Tenn. You’re so brave, and kind, and strong. Okay?” 

Banri could never usually put sentences together like this, especially in a time like right now, inarguably a bad day—unless he rehearsed them. 

Of course he’d rehearsed those words. Lying out here all night, prepared to ask Tenn to kill him, what would he be doing except practicing his goodbye? 

“Be quiet,” Tenn said. “Don’t worry about talking.” 

“Tell Yuki, too. That he’s kind, and capable, and I love him, and…I love his music. Sorry.” 

“Tell him yourself.” 

“Then please tell Kujo-san to jump off a roof.” 

Um, no. “Lie back down.” 

Banri leaned up and kissed Tenn on the forehead. Dry, hot lips. “You’re such a good boy. I love you too, okay?” 

The ambulance arrived then, in a whirl of bright lights and sound that made Banri cry out and cover his head. Tenn explained things to the paramedics and followed them up into the back of the ambulance. 

“You can do anything,” Banri said. “You don’t need me.” 

“Yes I do!” Tenn said. “What are you talking about! Of course I do!” 

Banri laughed a little, and then put his hands over his ears and closed his eyes, and didn’t say anything else, not even when they reached the hospital, or when Kujo and Yuki eventually found out (Banri refusing to sign any papers—”How old are you?” “I’m seventeen.” “Do you have a parent in the country…” and so on and so even having Kujo’s credit card information didn’t cover everything); and they came and had an argument. 

In the end, Kujo-san decided that they were sending Banri back to Japan, on his own. Then, Banri finally communicated something again. A quick little nod—a smile he seemed to be trying to repress. 

Don’t go. 

Why do you want to be alone? Why do you want to be dead? The answers to that were too apparent. 

Don’t you dare go, Banri-nii! The most pathetic thing he could say, the most pathetic thing he could be. 

“If you try anything again,” Tenn whispered, gripping his hand tight, “I’ll find you in the afterlife and make it hell.” 

“See you then,” Banri said, which was about the worst thing he could have responded with. 

Plans were made, and Yuki cried and argued and made an embarrassment of himself, and the doctors insisted some things had to be done before sending Banri away, and tickets were booked, and three days later… 

He was gone. And Kujo started treating everything like a messy, forgettable blip. He was gone. A kind brother who had existed just in a dream… 

“I want to debut. I’m good enough now. Send me to Japan, please.”