#as if seeing yuki’s crying face on a big screen and then having to muffled my whimpers bcs its too embarrassing to join him crying

[tsu22]

-

[aterriblethought]

Acid Town fanfiction is up!

Alrighty, I finally managed to get all of the fanfiction up! You can read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20868263 ⬅️⬅️

As a preview, here is the first chapter... sorry if the read more link doesn’t work and you have to scroll past the whole thing, orz. In my defense this is the shortest chapter.

Fire - 火災

The moment stretched out between them, punctuated by the steady beeps of machinery, the echo of footsteps out in the hallway, and the distant murmur of voices. A suffocating cloud of lily pollen from a vase under the window masked the sharp scent of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the glass and gleamed off the polished tile floor and the crisp white linens of the bed. The boy’s tiny, frail hands clenched the folds of the sheets, trembling slightly. Yuki reached out to brush the top of the boy’s brown hair, ruffling the soft locks which reflected the sunlight.

“Don’t be silly,” he said, as the boy jumped in surprise. “We’ve already been through the worst, and we both survived, didn’t we?”

Yuki pulled his hand away from the sleeping toddler, tugging a tattered and dirty blanket up to the boy’s chin. He pushed himself up, his thin arms straining to carry him. The dark air sat warm and heavy on him. Outside the thin curtains of the window he could see a haze of red and white lights in the darkness. Even late at night, he could hear the distant rumble of cars, the thrumming bass of music, the whispers of muffled voices and moans and laughter somewhere in the building. A fan droned in the corner. Occasionally there was a heavy, grunting snore. Yuki flinched and glanced sideways over at the lump of a man, Ashiei, curled on a futon on the other side of the room. Empty bottles and convenience store wrappers littered the floor around the man’s head, and the mixed stench of sweat and alcohol and semen drifted off of him and stung Yuki’s nose. Shuddering, he slipped carefully out of the blanket away from his brother and rose to his feet. He padded across the room, his bare footsteps muffled against the frayed tatami matting, until he reached the cooler air of the doorway. Somewhere in the building, a door slammed, and Yuki stumbled backwards.

The front door burst open; the thin chain that held it closed scattered its links across the floor. His mother, Tsubaki, turned to get away and stumbled into a table, scattering papers and knocking over a tea cup. Tea splashed onto the table and soaked into the papers as the cup rolled off the edge and shattered on the floor. Yuki’s grandmother shrieked and pulled him out of sight behind her, so he had to lean around her leg to see.  Three men pushed their way through the door, and the room burst into chaos. Tsubaki yelled and his grandmother screamed, throwing whatever was within arm’s reach at the intruders as they struggled to subdue the two women. A man with wild black hair and a smirking grin swept the room with a piercing gaze and Yuki felt an extra burst of fear rip up his spine. He wanted to help his mother and grandmother, but his mind was screaming at him to run, run away, his mother was shouting, his grandmother was shrieking obscenities in Chinese, and without thinking he turned and ran into the other room, stubbing his toe on a futon and stumbling into a wall. 

His back hit the door, and the small rapping sound it made against the wall sounded like a gunshot in the dark room, making Yuki wince. He froze, waiting, but Ashiei kept sleeping. Yuki crept out of the room into a small living space, crowded with bags of garbage and stacks of old magazines. Half-eaten takeout boxes sat atop a small, boxy TV quietly hissing static. Yuki wrinkled his nose, stepping towards the kitchen, glancing over the stained countertop piled with dishes, looking for a glass that wasn’t too dirty. He pushed a few dishes aside and grabbed a cup, peering into the cloudy liquid at the bottom in the dim red light of a fire alarm on the ceiling above his head. His reflection swam in the glass.

His reflection flashed in a mirror as he ran past the futons to the double closet, trying to ignore the shouting and screaming in the other room. With the futons still out on the floor, the right one was mostly empty; he pulled at the heavy wooden doors and made a crack just big enough to slip his small body through. Once he was inside, he slid the door closed with his bare feet, and the roar of the noise in the other room grew muffled. His head rapped against a shelf above him as he struggled to fit in the space. He rubbed the top of his head and muffled a whimper, his heart beating so loud in his chest he was sure the men in the other room had to hear it. The noise outside was growing softer; Yuki could hear a low crying he thought might be his grandmother, and the occasional slam of a cupboard being thrown open or the crash of something hitting the floor. A tense argument was going on between what sounded like his mother and one of the men. Heavy footsteps started towards him, and Yuki shrank against a pile of boxes as best he could, his heart hammering in his chest. He slapped his hands over his mouth as the footsteps stopped in front of the door. The door of the other closet was thrown open, and he winced as boxes were yanked out, books and knickknacks colliding against the floor with a thunderous roar. His heart leapt into his throat as the door to his left was kicked open, illuminating the boxes there, and he pulled his legs to his chest and willed himself to withdraw deeper into the shadows. After a moment the door slammed closed. The door in front of him was ripped open, and a flood of light stung his eyes.

Yuki closed the refrigerator door with a snap, and the kitchen was plunged back into darkness. Clutching a glass of tepid water and a half-eaten onigiri rice ball in a plastic wrapper, he tiptoed over to the couch and cleared off a pile of used tissues to make himself a space. He climbed onto the couch, pulling his legs up to his chest, and took a bite of the rice ball. The cold, sticky rice stuck to his teeth like gum. The soft glow of the television sparkled in the water of the glass in his hand. The continuous drone of static was hissing in his ears. His vision swam out of focus; he rubbed tears out of his eyes and sniffed. When the room came back into focus, he was no longer alone.

In front of him, a boy was sitting on his haunches, his head in his hands, looking up at Yuki with a bored expression. Yuki felt a momentary panic that he’d woken up his brother Jun, but after a moment he realized the boy was older than Jun, and his eyes were different. With a sinking horror, he realized the eyes he was staring back into were his own.

“Is this it?” the boy said.

Yuki turned his head down to focus on the remnants of his onigiri. Ignoring the boy worked in the past. Sometimes.

“Hey.” 

Yuki continued to chew slowly, the glass trembling in his hand. 

“I said, hey.” 

He could see the reflection of the boy stand up in the water of the glass, and Yuki looked up to see they were now eye to eye. 

“W… what do you want?” Yuki whispered.

The boy tilted his head. “What do you want? Do you want to keep living like this forever?”  

Yuki tossed the empty wrapper aside and set the water glass down on the floor. “Do I have a choice?” he muttered. “I have to protect Jun.”

“Why? He isn’t even your real brother,” the boy said, and Yuki’s head snapped up to glare at him. “He’s the reason Mom’s dead.”

Yuki leaned back against the couch, folding his arms over his legs. “That’s not true.”

“Sure it is,” the boy said, and threw himself down on the couch beside Yuki, kicking his legs. “If she never had him, she’d still be alive, wouldn’t she?”

Yuki said nothing, just stared and worked his jaw. The boy sighed, and leaned forward into Yuki’s face. “We’re going to die, you know. We’re going to die just like she did.”

Yuki buried his nose in his arms. “No, we aren’t. Boys can’t have babies,” he grumbled. 

The boy giggled. “If they could you would have definitely had one by now. How many men have been inside you?” 

Yuki felt a wave of nausea crest over him. He rubbed his forehead in his arms and groaned. No matter how much he bathed he always felt like he could still smell them on him. His whole backside always ached. 

The boy sat back, still chuckling. “We’re going to die, and they’re going to do all that to Jun, and then he’s going to die, too.”

“No…” Yuki whimpered into his knees. 

The boy leapt to his feet. “Well, maybe we could still save Jun. If…” Yuki looked up. The boy’s eyes gleamed with the reflection of the TV, and a smile stretched across his face. Yuki blinked, and he was staring into the static of the TV, and the boy was gone. 

He rose trembling to his feet. As he started to walk back towards the bedroom, his toes caught something metal, and it spiraled across the floor. Wincing from the pain in his toes, Yuki leaned down to pick it up. The glow of the TV screen flashed across the surface of the lighter as Yuki turned it in his hand. He stared at the blurred smear of his own reflection in the burnished metal. His thumb popped open the top of the lighter and fumbled for the flint wheel. It took a few tries turning the wheel with his shaky thumb until a spark caught the gas inside the lighter and a flame leapt from the top. Yuki watched, mesmerized, as the little flame flickered in the wake of his breath.

In the static, he could hear his screams and cries blending with those of his brother. He could hear the cackling of the men who abused them. In the swimming reflections on the lighter he could see a wash of blood, of sweat, of semen. It all blazed in the flames that would lick at their corpses after he and his brother had been squeezed of all usefulness and tossed aside in the gutter. The static intensified to a roar; the flames consumed them.

The lighter snapped shut. His trembling stopped. The sound dropped out. His head seemed to turn on his own, his body took one step, and then two, his hands pushed through the debris and garbage to find a small canister of lighter fluid. He rolled the canister in his hand and pocketed the lighter. One step, two steps, ten back to the bedroom door where Ashiei lay sleeping in a pile of empty liquor bottles and wrappers and used condoms. 

Ashiei’s face appeared in the light, squinting into the darkness of the closet. He caught sight of Yuki and grinned.

The lighter fluid poured out of the bottle onto Ashiei’s blankets. As they soaked into his clothes, Ashiei grunted and turned his head into his pillow, but didn’t wake up.

Ashiei leered at him as his thumb brushed Yuki’s lips. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the good old times?” he sneered, and the bag of books Yuki was carrying dropped to the ground.

The empty bottle of lighter fluid bounced off the tatami mat. Yuki fumbled for the lighter in his pocket.

“Yukio! Don’t you forget!” Even as he ran, Tetsu leading him by the arm, he could still hear Ashiei screaming behind him. “You are hopelessly filthy! Don’t bother trying to live a clean life like a normal person!”

One click, two, and a flame burst from the lighter. He dropped the lighter, watching it spin from his hands.

A large hand reached for him and he tried to kick it away. Ashiei cursed and grabbed him by the leg, dragging him out of the closet, as his mother screamed somewhere in the other room. He yelled and hit at whatever he could reach, but Ashiei was much bigger than him. The light from the doorway danced in front of his eyes as he struggled.

The flame caught the lighter-fluid-soaked blankets and burst into vivid life. Yuki backed into the wall, as Ashiei roared awake, his confusion giving way to screams of pain. He struggled to put out the fire but it was crawling up his arm, fanning out across the bed onto the old tatami mat. The noise and the smell of smoke and burning flesh woke up Jun and he began to cry. Fear burst back into Yuki’s awareness and he rushed to Jun’s side, and his arms closed over Jun just as a hand grabbed the back of his shirt.

Ashiei dragged Yuki by the back of his shirt kicking and screaming into the living room. Yuki could see his grandmother kneeling with her head in her hands, and a man pinning Tsubaki’s arms behind her back, who was struggling to reach Yuki. With a heave, Ashiei tossed Yuki into a table; the explosion of pain silenced Yuki and he crumpled to the ground. 

Yuki rolled to get away from Ashiei, trying not to crush Jun in the process. The fire that engulfed Ashiei’s hand had skipped to Yuki’s shirt, and distantly Yuki was aware of a searing pain spreading across his back. The whole room was bursting into flames now; Ashiei turned and ran for the bathroom. It was difficult to see anything other than brilliant flames and the black smoke stinging Yuki’s eyes. He hefted a sobbing Jun, slapping a hand to the toddler’s mouth to block out the smoke, and ran blindly for the front door. The fire alarm in the kitchen was flashing as the flames licked at the garbage bags and consumed the television. As Yuki ripped open the front door and skidded into the hall, a chirping, wailing siren filled the air. There was a rush of half-dressed people trying to escape the building, crushing in on him from every side.

His grandmother wailed as Tsubaki and Yuki were pulled from the room and out into the hall by the three men. It was a blur of heads peeking out of doors that snapped closed as they passed. 

The crowd poured out onto the street. Yuki held Jun close as he ran past gawking onlookers, past convenience stores and massage parlors and nightclubs and soaplands, the crowds a sea of faces fixed on a distant plume of smoke and whirling flame. His legs ached, smoke burned in his lungs, and the pain in his back was so overwhelming that he made a sharp turn into a dark alleyway and collapsed to his knees, coughing, Jun tumbling from his grip. He stared down at his hands shaking in the dirt, but he could only see

Ashiei’s hands, the skin curling away from the rush of fire, the fingertips turning black

Ashiei’s hands stretched along the ground, scars peeking out behind dark gloves, a pool of blood seeping beneath his fingers from a hole in the back of his head, bits of hair and skull and brain matter floating in the blood like the blood smeared across

Yuki’s hands trembling in the dirt in front of him as Jun cried, and a fire engine siren wailed, and people shouted, and he sank down into the dirt in a haze of pain, and he didn’t see or hear or feel anything for a while.