Chapter Text
Like a dog, barking up a tree. He's drunk, and you're a monolith, towering, unflinching over him. Yasuo pushes up into your space, pointing, scowling, making every indication with his manner that he's trying to pick a fight. His voice is louder than it needs to be and rough with wear. He hisses out his syllables, and his words hit your chest in equal parts breath and spit.
But he's not even barking at you. Every slurred accusation is one of his own failure or inadequacy or any other negative trait that his brain can fish out of the liquor sloshing around inside his skull.
You blink down at him, unmoved. His breath is awful. You wish he would do this anywhere else.
He leaves more of an impression on your skin than your mind. Breath clings to your bare collar like the salt of a sea breeze, and his voice in your ears is the rolling and crashing of waves. Your gaze shifts down. From his narrowed eyes, to his spit-slick lips, to the bobbing of his throat.
He's warm. You don't have to touch him to feel it. His body heat surrounds him like a heavy coat– as thick as the scent of liquor and regret. Your tongue swipes the front of your teeth.
You lean forward– the tree bowing to harsh winds– and even in his state, he goes on guard reflexively. Your fist closes in the coarse fabric of his cowl before he can dash back. It shuts him up, and you can see his addled mind burning through its shit fuel trying to figure out what you're doing and what he should be doing.
He's waiting for you to speak, to rebuke him, to confirm every foul thing he's said of himself in your own words. You tug down on the cloth in your hand, and the expanse of his throat makes your jaw twitch. Your canines are so sharp, and his skin is so thin, and the two are meeting before either of you can process it.
There's more resistance than you were ready for, but it's still dangerously easy to pierce. Iron seeps onto your tongue. His blood tastes exactly like your own did. Somehow the thought makes you dizzy. You thought he'd taste like sake. Or you thought he'd taste like half of some bastard he'd never met. Or you thought he'd taste like a mouth full of salt water, swelling up into your nose, choking you out. Instead, he tastes like you.
Your mouth fills with it, and you swallow, and he exhales, and you jolt back. His eyes are wet and confused. You can feel his warm blood turning cool and sticky over your lips and chin. You still don't have anything to say to him, and it feels more like an insult at this point. How much more humiliating would this be for the both of you if you just left?
You release your grip on his cowl, but his hand is on your wrist before your arm can fall back to your side. His hold is firm, and his blunted, dirty nails bite back at you in pitiful retaliation. You can't tell whether it's meant to hurt or not.
"Hey." His tone is as commanding as it can be with what little breath he has. "What the fuck?"
No explanations or apologies rise to your tongue– no words at all, actually. You stare at the creases around Yasuo's eyes, the furrows in his brow, the turn of his lips. He's not as angry as he might have been and not as fearful as he should have been. Your gaze drops to the harsh mark you've left on his neck, seeping blood down his collar to soak the fabric draping his shoulders. You lick his blood from your lips, and Yasuo sways where he stands.
Your hand is on his bicep in a flash, steadying him. Concern and regret settle onto your face, but he's not looking at you anymore. Somehow, when you speak up, you sound worse off than he had. "A...zakana."
He scoffs, and the surge of his blood worries you enough that you press your palm firmly over the bite, letting his blood soak into the bandages that wrap your hands.
"Does this happen often?" He sounds darkly amused and levels you with a look that makes your gut turn.
You could lie to him. Diminish the whole scene as just another in a string of poor impulses. But you hate liars. And it would make you into yet another loathsome thing you never imagined becoming.
You shake your head.
"So your azakana has a special interest in me. Feeling flattered seems like the wrong takeaway." He leans ever-so-slightly away from your hand on his neck, but you make your grip firmer instead.. for his own good. You feel him swallow under your thumb.
"I would be a prime source of regret for you," he continues as if you were not actively squeezing his throat. He's turning red up to his ears, and you want to ease your grip so as not to severely cut circulation to his shitty little brain, but keeping him from losing more blood takes priority.
"We should tend the wound." You speak clear and steady, ignoring all of Yasuo's prior remarks.
"Right, right. 'Not by your hand,' huh?"
Your eyes narrow. "Not here, but we may get there yet."
Something flashes across his face. A lightness. You're going to call it humor. He found that funny. You clamp your hand down on the bite a little harder, and his mouth falls open in a heavy exhale.
"We should tend the wound," you repeat, and he just nods this time.
You ease up your hold and take a proper look at his neck. Or you try to. You've made a pretty good mess of him without much effort. The rich red smeared over his skin makes it hard to assess the damage. You tilt his chin up and lean in.
He tenses under the close inspection. You spare a glance up to his face, and it's even redder now. You drag your thumb over his throat, narrowly avoiding the gashes left by your teeth, and a shudder runs through him. He shoots you a glare for your trouble.
"The bleeding's stopped." Your voice is a low rumble inches from his skin. "That's a good sign."
He grunts in response, averting his eyes again and shifting his weight uncomfortably. A terrible, unsanitary impulse crosses your mind. You're close enough that you could act on it quicker than he could stop you– if he'd even try– but you don't think you want to ambush him like that. You tilt your head, part your lips, and let a slow breath wash over his skin. His fingers dig into your biceps, but he isn't pushing you away.
In the time since you've returned to him, there have been more important things to concern yourself with than the resolution of any particular breed of tension that had built in the years preceding your death. You might have assumed that some of these tensions died with you. But he's too easy to read, and your imagination is too vivid and persistent.
Your fingers itch with the want to pin him down, overwhelm him, pull his hair, shove him, choke him, ruin him. Your tongue drags over his neck, calm as can be. You can feel the way his breath hitches, the slight way his body shakes. His death grip on your arms remains, and you know you aren't imagining it when you're pulled just the slightest bit closer.
In your life, you didn't care for the taste of blood. You won't think too deeply about this. Not now. When your tongue presses the tears in his skin, he flinches. Must be painful. You don't look too closely at the warm feeling that gives you, either.
You go about "cleaning” his neck firmly but gently. All your worst impulses swarm in a cloud of white noise at the back of your mind, but your body is behaving how you tell it to, now. Yasuo's breath is heavy in your ear, and his blood is heavy on your tongue. It smears over your lips again as you press in closer.
"Yo– nnh." He stops himself before the word fully forms.
"Yasuo," you reply anyway, sinking his name directly into his skin.
Your wrapped fingers graze his abdomen and feel the way his body convulses with that, your lips feel how his voice wavers. He's making great efforts to contain himself, and you're simultaneously surprised by the level of reaction and impressed by the uncharacteristic self-control.
You want to push him further, and the urge is almost frightening to you. You'd forgotten the way that he pulls you out of your head and into the moment. You've been so disconnected from your emotions for such a long time– longer than you've been dead– and a few short minutes with Yasuo under your hands pulls so much, so quickly to the surface.
You could stop yourself if you chose. You always did in life. But one of you has already slain the other. Any other taboos seem to shrink next to the length of the lines already crossed.
Your thumb follows the lower curve of his breast. The sensation of his skin is dampened by the cloth around your hand, and the fact irritates you. Your hands leave him and you lean away in spite of the bruising grip of your brother.
"Unwrap my arms." It's not a question. "The bandages are soiled."
He blinks up at you through his thick lashes, processing your words. Processing the command. His hands are already so close to where the wrappings have started to unravel, baring your broad shoulders to the light of the moon. His fingers slide down that last inch to intertwine with the loose ends, and you see the mourning flood back into his dark eyes.
You weren't... witness to your own funeral. But the fact that your body is wrapped in ceremonial bandages at all means that you were given a proper one. You can feel the phantom sensation of Yasuo's rough hands carefully twining the soft cloth around each finger. You know exactly the scene that is playing behind his eyes as he stares through the body in front of him.
"You've practiced the motion once already," you say without a shred of mercy. "The reverse shouldn't prove much more of a challenge."
You used to hold your tongue more often than not. Think your words through carefully to speak constructively. Guide and correct instead of demean. You had prayed so earnestly that it would bear fruit or that he would be otherwise guided onto the right path, were your efforts to prove futile. He wasn't, and they were.
"Even to you," you continue, despite his hands moving down your arm obediently. "Even in the state you're in."
You've not become disinterested in helping your brother, but you do believe it is time for a different approach. His bad habits are many, and the root problems grow down deep. There's no true change to be made in pruning the leaves. You need to be more aggressive. If your aggression happens to vent itself in some of your baser impulses... it's nothing he doesn't deserve and nothing that could twist your soul into any worse of a shape than it holds now.
You'll allow yourself to become worse in the attempts to make him better.
Yasuo's teeth are bared like he's grimacing through the pain of a fresh wound. No tears fall down his cheeks, but you can see them catching the moon in his eyes. You wonder, idly, if he's holding his tongue now in fear of further bloodshed. Maybe your neighbors had been right from the start. 'Spare the rod and spoil the child.' You remember Yasuo's bright eyes and full, dirt-smudged cheeks. His small hands clinging onto you, the quick tap of his short strides as he tailed you around religiously. You couldn't have raised your hand to him. Not for the promise of perfect behavior, and not for the promise of true peace for the whole of Ionia.
Your skin prickles up where Yasuo's fingertips graze your arms. His motions are smooth, methodical, trance-like. Even through the hurt that weighs down heavily on his brow, he's intensely focused on the task at hand. When your left arm is freed, his fingers linger on your own for just a moment. You pull him from his reverie.
"Good. Now the next."
His eyes flick up to your face as if he had forgotten you could speak. That the corpse before him was no longer content to lie dutifully still. He takes to your right arm with just as much care. You turn your eyes to your now-freed left hand, curling and stretching the fingers. You pop each knuckle one by one in a manner that had always been reserved for the dark, isolated hours of study– the gesture was far too rude for mixed company.
The coarse hair that shapes his jaw feels exactly how you expect. Your fingers follow it from his cheek to his chin. You allow a quiet sigh. The feeling is so much more... intense? It sends a tingling all the way up your forearm. Your thumb pushes up to his lip, and his eyes plead with you.
A tug down on his lip is all the permission he needs to slide his tongue over the digit. You're certain it tastes like soil and sweat and even more certain that he wouldn't care if it tasted far worse. You push further into his mouth, and he lets you. The hands on your arm only falter for a second, and when they resume their work, it's at the same, steady pace. You're proud of him for it. You give him an approving quirk of the lips– not quite emotive enough to call a 'smile,' but it's the closest you've gotten to one in years.
The last stretch of cloth uncurls from your fingers, and Yasuo keeps the length of it balled tightly in his fists. Your thumb pulls from his mouth and drags a trail of his spit across his cheek.
"You've done well."
Both hands feel over his jaw in subdued admiration. "Aren't things so much easier when you listen?"
"I'd listen more often if only I was given advice worth heeding." He seems to have found his voice again. You were starting to worry you'd broken him.
"We both know that's bullshit." His eyes light up when such a crude and common word falls from your lips. "You've got a head hard enough to crack stone."
His face tilts in your hands, and he opens his mouth to respond before evidently thinking better of whatever retort was going to jump to his lips. Knowing him, there aren't too many things it could have been. You gracefully continue to ignore it.
"Were I to tell you to bare your throat to me, would you consider that advice worth heeding?"
Yasuo inhales sharply. "Are you telling me to bare my throat to you?"
"I am."