Halloween party in a few months. I'm going as a matching super villains duo with Makoto-kun, and you're going as the superhero that's secretly trying to seduce him. PLANS MADE.
hey rin it's me italy i miss you how are you i just invited makoto and i would like you to come as well we're having a dinner party at the park this saturday for germany's and my households and would really like it if you came too and friends are welcome as well
[ if their father lived gou does not know how different things would be. it falls under the category of unfathomable not because she does not wish for it (she does, quietly in that way people make impossible wishes not because they anticipate receiving them but because they are honest heart thoughts) but because she simply cannot imagine. the brother she knows now -- who has changed, grown, become so much.
so much.
she thinks their father would be proud. he would have all the pride gou has already -- love in steady beats, the reliability of being able to laugh after terrible things have happened, the transparency of being able to cry if one needs to. there is a saying for it: the heart on the sleeve or some such.
rin is like that. gou is like it in another way. matsuokas.
not long ago she stood with her brother at their father's gravestone and knelt. the breeze was soft, carding through their red hair like whispers, and the sun too had a gentleness unlike the rather brutal heat found here. for some time in the month gou found herself turning all sorts of colors, and alarm quickly became amusement when she realized the rainbow effect had no otherwise apparent results. ordinary again, yet if she wasn't, as she treads to her brother's room, hand raised to knock, she might be a pale blue -- the color of quiet.
it doesn't hurt the way it used to and some of this is just growing up -- the agency of being able to do things, to change things, to move forward which makes history less horrible. losing someone will never be okay but treating it differently can be.
she thinks they've come a long way if on different paths.
i hope mom is okay, she thinks to herself and knocks twice. rin is home; she knows, ate a low-dialogue dinner with him before they separated as per usual to do their own things. but she can't ignore the approaching date and wants to ask anyway:
what have you done here?
and depending on his answer to that, a follow up:
well, what do you want to do?
they can. together.
sometimes it's hard for her to remember their father. if anything still actively upsets gou about his death, it's that: the nagging worry that someday he'll be all imaginings and nothing concrete but she refuses to let herself be held back by could-be situations. day by day. year by year. she'll figure it out. as she waits outside her brother's door, she almost leans her forehead against it.
she's been tired, strangely. blame the heat maybe. summer cold oncoming maybe. well, it's hard to rest when it always feels so warm -- even inside. ]
Hello. I have been informed that I need to figure out who is all on which teams to earn some points. Please respond with your team's color so that everyone may benefit from this as I am doing some detective work to figure out who is on each team.
For instance, I am on the orange team. Please let me know your team's color, thanks.
[it's early on a sunday morning, the sun barely scratching through the curtains on makoto's window--pulled closed earlier during the night in hopes of keeping the light out anyway. it's chilly, though, autumn appeasing the heat wave they suffered through in the summer with cold breeze and low-hanging mist in the mornings, a quiet drizzle of rain barely registering on makoto's ears.]
[he blinks awake and notices his parched throat, and wanting to go to the bathroom. that's probably why he's awake before rin, sleeping in the bed somewhere behind him, a hand holding onto the back of makoto's shirt.]
[after making his way to the bathroom and then the kitchen for a glass of water from the tap, makoto maneuvers his way back into his room through the dim darkness and quietness of the house, past curled up cats and already-awake cats criscrossing around his ankles--to his destination: back in bed. instead of lying on his back and waiting for sleep to get a grip on him again, makoto lies on his side, facing rin, and snuggles up close to his boyfriend, bumping the crown of his head with rin's chin (possibly jostling him awake), but with touch so gentle makoto actually manages to settle comfortably, waiting for the predictable grumbled-out complaint about waking the other up.]
Page 1 of 3