#this doesnt have ominous undertones if you take it at face value and not in the context of canon :D

[grimalkinmessor]

Sweets with afofa ♡

We did horror last time, so let's do something a little fluffier this time :3 (It's more hurt/comfort but what can you do with these two really)

AFOFA/???/Sweets

———

Yoichi crouches on the stairs of a decrepit apartment building, hiding half behind the railing as he waits to hear a familiar set of footsteps. He's a little sore from holding his position so long, but there's truly no other way.

He hears a door open somewhere below, and he holds his breath on instinct.

Footsteps, quick and heavy, begin tramping up the stairs towards him. The ones he's been waiting for. Yoichi goes deathly still. He waits ever so patiently until the footsteps are just around the corner—

"BOO!" Yoichi shouts, launching himself out from around the corner in a flurry of white sheets. He finds himself caught around the middle fairly quickly, hefted off the ground and twisted upside down in a quick, inhuman movement.

Yoichi yelps, his sheet falling off and his shirt draping into his face. He looks up at his brother with a pout, hair swaying just a few centimeters off the ground. Takashi smirks down at him. "Nice try."

"You're no fun," Yoichi complains, squirming in Takashi's grasp. Takashi is nineteen now, and he's already unfairly tall—hanging upside down so far off the ground is making Yoichi dizzy. "Put me down!" He flails.

"What are you all dressed up for?" Takashi prods, ignoring Yoichi's request and spinning him in a circle just to make him squeal. "Aren't you getting a little too old for ghost stories?"

"You're never too old for ghost stories," Yoichi proclaims, wiggling harder. "Besides, it's Halloween! I know you didn't forget; it's your favorite holiday."

"I don't have a favorite holiday," Takashi sniffs.

Yoichi gives him a deadpan look, which really isn't as effective as it would be right side up. "Uh huh. Just like you don't have a favorite color."

Takashi's ears turn pink, but he scoffs. He heaves Yoichi up and around, practically flipping him over his arm to set him gently on his feet. Dizzy, Yoichi stumbles and falls onto his butt with a soft 'oof!'. Takashi drops the fallen sheet back over Yoichi's head, deliberately setting the eyeholes backward so Yoichi sputters, blinded. "Espèce de jolie et déraisonnable chose... What exactly was your plan, hm? Scare your one and only brother down the stairs so you can become the sole heir to the Shigaraki fortune?"

"Hey, I'm not the one who gives off Count Olaf vibes," Yoichi retorts, pulling the sheet around so he can stick his tongue out of one of the eyeholes. "I still can't believe you laughed when their Aunt got eaten by leeches."

"It was funny!" Takashi insists indignantly.

Pulling off the sheet, Yoichi shakes his hair out of his eyes and smiles. "Besides, you're too late. My plan has already been enacted!"

Takashi raises an eyebrow at him, watching curiously as Yoichi scrambles to his feet and darts back around the corner of the stairs to retrieve his prize. This building is old and grimey, barely up to maintenance code, but their apartment is the sole one on the top floor, so they have it all to themselves. It's their first real, legally obtained home.

Grinning to himself, Yoichi pokes his head back around the corner and demands, "Okay, close your eyes."

Takashi closes them—

"And no using a metapower to peek!"

He groans, shoving his hands in his coat pockets and scrunching up his nose. Yoichi giggles.

Sidling up in front of his brother, Yoichi peers at him, just to be sure, before stealing one of his hands from his jacket and pushing a plastic handle into it. "Okay, now look."

Takashi opens his eyes, immediately zeroing in on the orange bucket in his hand. His brow knits, and he yanks the bucket close to his face, audibly jostling the candy inside. Eyes snapping up to meet Yoichi's, Takashi demands, "Where did you get this?"

"I went trick-or-treating!" Yoichi bounces on his heels a little, enthused. "I know you've never taken me because it's too dangerous but you always bring home candy for me on Halloween, and I wanted to give you some for once. I tried to get a lot of chocolate because I know you like ch—"

A hand clamps down over his mouth, an arm cinched tight around his waist as his brother hauls him up and practically teleports them into their apartment, slamming the door shut and pressing Yoichi against it. Furious crimson eyes glare down at him, and Yoichi is bewildered, his gut churning with sudden unease. This is...not the reaction he was hoping for.

"I've told you not to go outside without me!" Takashi hisses, his forehead pressed to Yoichi's as he holds Yoichi's thin wrists tightly, like he might try to run. "You know how dangerous it is out there with the political situation the way it is—what if someone saw you? What if they had called the police and I had to come home to an empty house because you got sent to one of the damn camps!?"

"No one saw me!" Yoichi protests, pushing back against the instinctive urge to make himself smaller. Takashi isn't usually one to swear; he's been breaking the habit for the past few years. It's only when he's really angry that it bleeds back into his vocabulary. "I was really careful, and I used a full body costume so no one could see my hair or eyes! I'm not stupid—"

"I beg to differ when you pull stupid shit like this," Takashi snaps back.

Indignant, eyes tearing up, Yoichi rears back and shouts, "I can't do anything! Everything I do is useless and stupid to you! I try to do something nice for you, to give you the same thing you've given me just once, and you can't even—I can't...I can't even..."

Takashi blinks.

Yoichi turns his head away, sniffling. He hates how easily he cries, how any sort of negative emotion has his eyes watering and his throat closing up. It's awful, and just one more thing that makes him difficult to deal with. Takashi says he gets it from their mother.

Yanking his wrists out of Takashi's grip, Yoichi buries his face in his hands, frustrated. "You give me...everything, Takashi. You've always given me everything I could ever need or-or want, but I can't do the same for you and I hate it. I hate that I can't do anything for you, I hate that I just sit here and struggle to even breathe by myself while you're off doing things that are actually important. I just wanted to show you that I can do things! That I can give you things too, because I love you and I don't want you to think that I don't because then you'll just get sick of me one day—"

"Hé, hé—ne pleure pas, trésor," Takashi blurts, dropping to his knees on the floor so he can hold Yoichi's arms again, pulling them away from his face. Brow furrowed, Takashi gently brushes away Yoichi's tears with his thumbs. "Where's all this coming from? Yoichi, you know I could never get sick of you. Hey—look at me."

Yoichi doesn't want to. His surprise has been ruined and now he's made a fool of himself. Takashi doesn't give him much choice, however, because he cups Yoichi's jaw and turns his face to meet his eyes. Takashi searches his face intently, looking a cross between bewildered and amused. He pets his thumb down Yoichi's pulse before drawing him into a hug. "I'll never get sick of you. And I'll never, ever leave you—I promise you that."

"But I'm—" Yoichi starts, a thousand ways to finish that sentence flashing through his mind. Sick. Frail. A burden. Useless. Deadweight.

"My one and only little brother," Takashi interrupts, carding his hand through Yoichi's hair. "My family. Mon coeur. And I don't need anything else from you other than for you to be here; alive, where I can hold you."

Yoichi buries his face in Takashi's shoulder, hands fisting in his brother's thrifted black trench coat. He smells like dying embers and ozone and the most caustic types of sugar. Yoichi closes his eyes but doesn't say anything, unable to quite make himself believe it.

Sighing, Takashi shifts back and plops down on the floor, taking Yoichi with him. Then he hauls the plastic candy bucket between them, the poor orange pumpkin trapped, squished, between their arms.

Rifling through Yoichi's haul, Takashi fishes out a king sized Hershey bar and tears off the top of the wrapper with his teeth. Then, when half the bar is bare, Takashi waves it temptingly in front of Yoichi's sullen face. "Share it with me?"

Yoichi can't help the wobbly smile that tugs at his lips then, rolling his eyes. After a moment, he nods. Takashi snaps the bar in half and hands a piece to Yoichi, still half wrapped around him on the floor. They eat their chocolate together, before dividing the rest up between them as they always do.

It's nice. It's sweet.

"But really, Yoichi. If you do something dumb like that again, I'm going to start locking you in a dog crate before I head to work in the mornings."

....That's...about what he expected.