Chapter Text
- Soushirou -
Hoshina Soushirou is in the middle of a routine training-run with his sentient combat suit when a piercing light and sharp ringing in his ears suddenly brings him to his knees.
When he opens his eyes again moments later, he’s outside, in the middle of a raging battlefield.
A tuft of white hair hangs in his field of vision, and an unfamiliar weight sits in his hands. A rifle.
“Captain Hoshina, your stats went haywire for a moment, what’s your status?” An unfamiliar voice speaks to him through his comms. “Your release power is acting up, it’s actively dropping.”
Captain? Captain Hoshina? What the fuck is going on?
Soushirou looks down at the rifle in his hands again as he struggles to his feet. His body doesn’t feel like it's his. It’s heavier, he’s taller. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong.
The kaiju before him roars.
No time to think, then. The weight of a single blade sits across his back, larger than a regular katana, heavier. He drops the rifle on the ground without second thought, even as voices protest in his ears.
He sucks in a ragged breath, and reaches for the katana resting between his shoulder blades. A lone blade. Ten is not in his head, his suit is a standard issue combat uniform.
Captain Hoshina. Captain Hoshina. Captain Hoshina.
“Captain Hoshina, status report?”
What is he doing in Souichirou’s body, anyway?
He draws the blade, the weight unfamiliar in his grip. His hands tighten as he falls into a practiced stance, and feels power flood back into his body.
Inhale. Exhale.
“Captain! Your released combat force is rising above your normal output! What’s going on? Did you remove your limiter?!”
No time to think. There’s a kaiju in front of him, and a blade in his hands. Nothing is right, nothing is familiar. But killing kaiju with a sword? That he can do.
He’s off in a burst of power, the Operators a white-noise in his ears as he pushes himself forward.
Yoju fall by his hands, sliced clean on his warpath towards the honju. He has no idea what he’s up against, but it’s far from a giant-type. Smaller, faster. He smirks. He can work with that.
First, the joints.
Then, a familiar voice cuts cleanly through the white-noise.
“Captain Hoshina?” The unmistakable voice of Narumi Gen rings clear in his comms, and Soushirou could cry. He jumps away from a clawed swipe, and reaches for his earpiece.
“Gen?” He breathes, desperate to hear the other’s voice. His anchor in the stormy seas. His sanctuary.
“Soushirou, is that you?” Gen asks, and his voice is a mix of relief and disbelief.
“Yeah, and I have no fuckin’ idea what’s goin’ on,” he responds, smiling behind the respirator mask as he steps in under another swipe of the kaiju, cutting off its arm. If Gen’s here, if Gen’s calling, Gen knows something is wrong. He’s not alone in this, then.
Lost, but then found immediately by the man he proudly calls fiancé.
Gen asks if he’s fighting in his brother’s body, calling him insane when he nonchalantly confirms it. It’s not like he has a choice. His job as a Defense Force officer is to protect people from kaiju attacks, and he won’t stop doing that just because he’s suddenly in the wrong body.
He’s surprised to hear that Ten tried to kill him, or rather, his brother. It’s intriguing to find that the kaiju seemingly has sensed something wrong, when the Operators of the Sixth Division seem none the wiser about the fact that he’s not their Captain.
It at least confirms it’s a clean swap, then. That his actual body hasn’t melted into a pile of plasma, that his brother is still alive. Gen tells him he’ll call back, that Ten might have intel on what they’re up against. “I’ll let you go back to your killing spree,” Gen says, and Soushirou grins ferally.
“Thanks, love,” he responds, clicking off his comms and cuts deep into the kaiju’s chest with his next move. There, he finally sees the core pulsing right where he’d hoped it’d be.
He’s never heard of a bodyswap in real life. He thought that was something of fiction, but here he is, wearing the skin of his older brother.
The core shatters as he drives his sword into it, and the kaiju lets out a piercing screech before it finally goes limp. A yoju approaches from behind, but as he turns to slice it in two, it immediately gets shot down.
The Vice Captain of the Sixth drops down in front of him, a look of confusion on his face.
“Captain, are your comms not working?” He asks. “What’s wrong?”
Everything.
Everything is wrong.
Without kaiju to kill, his hands are shaking, and he holds the sword with a white-knuckled grip.
A click in his comms.
“I’ve got good and bad news. How’s the kaiju?” Gen’s voice slices through the turbulence in his mind once again. Soushirou latches onto it like a lifeline.
“Very dead. Hit me,” Soushirou reaches for his earpiece to respond, and averts his gaze from the Vice Captain’s perplexed face.
Gen explains the situation, explains that Ten told him of a kaiju race that can swap the minds of its foes to disorient them. Specifically between those of the same blood. It’s unbelievable, unheard of. He doesn’t really have a choice but to believe it, though, when he reaches up and brushes white hair out of his eye. Dread settles in his chest like cement, making it hard to breathe, when he finds that they don’t know how long the effects will last.
In the corner of his eyes, he sees the Vice Captain flinch and stare at Soushirou with wide eyes, hand reaching for his earpiece to respond. He’s grateful for the efficiency of which his fiancé gets shit done, truly. He’s not sure how to even begin to explain the situation, but that seems to be taken care of.
Apparently, Ten has done a number on his body, on his brother, though. It makes sense that they need to go ensure the man wearing his skin doesn’t die, but he wants to beg for Gen to not leave him here. To not leave him alone. The urgency and dread he feels is uncharacteristic for him, but he chalks it up to the panic of being in the wrong body.
“Love you,” Gen tells him, and Soushirou closes his eyes. Don’t leave. Don’t leave. Don’t leave.
“Yeah, love you too,” he says instead, and feels unmoored when Gen’s connection disappears.
He rolls his shoulders, exhales deeply, and turns to his brother’s Vice Captain. The other man stares at him in disbelief, and they stand locked in a stalemate in the aftermath of Soushirou’s carnage.
“You’re not Souichirou, are you?”
Soushirou shakes his head and pulls down the respirator. “Hoshina Soushirou, nice to meet’cha,” he introduces himself with a mock salute, forcing his usual brightness into his tone and contorts his brother’s face into something akin to a smile.
He has no idea what his brother has told his squad about him, but last time he checked, his brother hates him. He’s not too excited to spend time with the people the man surrounds himself with, but hopes that duty and professionalism will keep the scorn to a minimum.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” the Vice Captain says, and drags a weary hand over his face. Then he steps forward, and holds his hand out. “Nice to finally meet you, Vice Captain Hoshina. Even though the circumstances are rather.. perplexing.”
Soushirou furrows his brows, but hesitantly accepts the firm handshake with a nod. The man seems genuine, and he doesn’t quite know why.
The man clears his throat, and motions for him to follow along. “Let's get you through a medical eval, so we know if you’re in immediate danger. Then, we’ll see how to.. handle all of this. For the time being, though, welcome to the Sixth Division.”
“Thanks,” he says, and follows the other man, sheathing the katana as he goes.
The feeling of wrongness, of anxiety clawing at his lungs, remains.
- Gen -
Gen’s comms click on in the middle of a weekly meeting with his Platoon Leaders on an otherwise uneventful Thursday.
“Captain Narumi, you’re needed urgently in Ten’s testing chambers, something is wrong!” Okonogi’s voice says in a rush.
Soushirou is at the Ariake base for routine training with his personal kaiju, and the symbiosis he’s reached with the suit has gotten stable to a point where they’ve started making arrangements to transfer the suit permanently to Tachikawa. It’s stable to a point where supervision barely feels needed, but is still required.
And oh, is he relieved that the supervision is required, at this moment.
“Okonogi, fill me in. I’m on my way,” Gen is sprinting out the door before the Operator has even finished her initial summoning, grateful he’s wearing a combat suit under his uniform to boost his speed, and tears through the corridors of his home base with an urgency rarely seen from him.
“All stats were normal until he suddenly dropped for a brief moment, and before we even found what was wrong, he woke up and the entire system started rejecting the synchronization. Ten is calling him an impostor, and is overriding the shutdown of the suit. Ten is going to kill him if it isn’t stopped,” Gen feels blood drain from his face, and he pushes his body to run faster.
Over the years, Ten has come to accept him as Soushirou’s mate, and he hopes whatever odd relationship he’s built with the kaiju will be enough to save his fiancé from whatever’s made it snap.
The doors to the testing chamber open for him before he even has a chance to request it, and he gets inside to a scene he’s going to have nightmares about.
“Impostor! Impostor! Give Soushirou back!” Ten’s rumbling voice growls, enraged.
Soushirou is on the ground, his own hands around his throat, slowly squeezing the life out of him. Ten’s clearly in control of the entire suit, and Soushirou is going to die.
Gen is on him in the blink of an eye, straddling his fiancé to drag the twitching hands away from his neck. “Ten! Beastie, hey, you know me,” Gen greets the kaiju urgently. “Stop trying to kill him, tell me what’s wrong.”
Ten pauses at his interruption, and lets him push the hands away and pin them to the floor. Soushirou gasps and coughs, desperately sucking in air with a wheeze that doesn’t sound very good.
“Gen! Gen! Gen!” The kaiju chants. “Worthy mate! Use my brethren’s eyes, look! See the impostor!”
Dread settles heavily in his chest. He hadn’t been expecting Ten to cooperate so quickly. If anything, he’d been under the impression that the kaiju had finally gone berserk. If Ten is still cooperating with him, still protective over Soushirou, something is truly wrong.
So he activates RT-0001, and looks into his fiancés bleary eyes.
He immediately flinches back.
“Who the fuck are you?” Gen gasps, and pins the man below him down more insistently. Ten crows at his tonal shift.
“Told you! I told you!” The kaiju shouts and drapes its synthetic tail over Gen’s back and just.. leaves it there.
The Operators ask questions in his earpiece, but Gen can barely hear them, fully focused on the stranger wearing his fiancé’s skin.
The impostor sucks in a shaky breath, and meets his eyes. “Souichirou,” the man wheezes. “Hoshina Souichirou, Sixth Division.”
“You- what,” Gen doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but it’s not that. “What the fuck?”
“Got hit by some shockwave mid-battle and ended up here, contact my unit,” the stranger that alleges to be Soushirou’s older brother wheezes.
Gen turns on his comms. “Get me the Captain of the Sixth Division now,” he commands and waits for his earpiece to connect with a click.
“Captain Hoshina,” Gen says gruffly, keeping it neutral and respectful, just in case.
“Gen?” The Captain of the Sixth Division gasps. They are not on a first name basis, and Gen’s eyes grow wide.
“Soushirou, is that you?”
“Yeah, and I have no fuckin’ idea what’s goin’ on,” his fiancé confirms in his brother’s voice. The tell-tale sound of battle rages from his end of the call.
“Are you fighting?! In your brother’s body?” He asks, baffled.
Said brother tenses underneath Gen at that, eyes going wide. “He’s doin’ what?!”
Gen ignores him.
“Well, yeah, had to drop the rifle ‘cause that thing was killing my release power, but his sword ain’t too bad to fight with,” Soushirou comments breezily, and grunts as he most certainly slices something in half. “Not sure if his unit has realized I ain’t him yet, though.”
“You’re literally batshit insane,” Gen comments, laughing in disbelief and some amusement. He really shouldn’t be surprised at this point. He’s known Soushirou too long to believe his fiancé wouldn’t jump headfirst into battle. He’s just glad the other is okay.
“Pot, meet kettle.”
The banter is familiar and a relief, but there’s an undercurrent of tension in Soushirou’s tone. His fiancé is more unsettled than he’s letting on, but he can’t address it at the moment, not when they still don’t know what’s happening.
“Well, I just stopped Ten from killing your brother in your body. I have to see if your pet kaiju has any intel on what the fuck could’ve caused this, so I’ll let you go back to your killing spree.”
“Thanks, love,” Soushirou says, and then clicks his comms off.
“Did you hear, Ten? You can’t kill the impostor, because then we might not be able to get Soushirou back in his body,” Gen says, looking into the glowing eye on the chestplate and pats the tail still resting over him.
Ten growls, but doesn’t argue against that.
“The impostor is also Soushirou’s brother, and he doesn't want him dead,” he adds.
Ten huffs, and it almost sounds like a snort. “His brother makes him feel bad, I don’t like his brother," the kaiju declares. If it wasn’t a giant lizard monster, Gen imagines that the statement would’ve been accompanied with a pout.
Souichirou flinches at the kaiju’s statement, jaw tensing, and Gen realizes they’re going to have to open the can of worms that is the family drama between the Hoshina brothers. He can’t quite believe that this is what he’s marrying into, but he has never claimed to be sane.
“Well, you like Soushirou, so you can’t kill his body,” Gen reasons. The kaiju growls, but when Gen loosens his grip, Ten doesn’t make a move to try to kill Souichirou again.
Okonogi confirms in his ear that Ten is no longer actively killing Soushirou’s body, relaxing its hold on the man’s mind to ease the strain. Gen sighs in relief, and then looks back into the kaiju’s eye.
“Good, now tell me about your brethren that can swap minds between bodies.”
Ten rumbles, thinking it through. It brings up a couple of suspects, and Souichirou startles at the description of one of them. “That’s the one,” he points out.
“Shut up, I don’t like you,” the kaiju growls, and then elaborates on what it knows, pointedly talking to Gen.
He can’t help but snort at the petulance, and opens his comms link to Soushirou again.
“I’ve got good and bad news,” he tells his fiancé. “How’s the kaiju?”
“Very dead,” Soushirou immediately responds, and there’s relief in his voice. “Hit me.”
“Good news is that it’s not permanent, it’s apparently some fucked kaiju mind thing for this one race to disorient its foes,” Gen explains, and summarizes what Ten told him about the bodyswap. They’ve never heard of such a thing before, especially never heard of an instance where it has affected humans. Kaiju remain a mystery, even after all this time.
“Alright, cool. The bad news?”
“Ten has no idea how long it can take to switch back. Said it should be reversed fairly quickly, but considering your ‘puny human flesh’ it could take days, weeks. We’ll definitely want to take in the remains of that kaiju for our research team to go at it, just in case.”
“Fuck,” Soushirou swears.
“Yeah, Okonogi’s currently syncing with the Sixth’s Operators to brief them. I want that kaiju corpse in our labs immediately. And then we gotta figure out what to do with the two of you,” he sighs.
A hand taps him on the thigh. “Can ya get off me?” Souichirou asks with a look of discomfort, and Gen really hasn’t even considered the fact that he’s still straddling his future brother-in-law.
He wordlessly rolls off, and Ten loops its tail around him further. It’s odd, seeing a kaiju look for comfort in something it considers familiar, but then again, the bond Ten and Soushirou have is unprecedented. He’s a bit smug that Soushirou has so much affection for him that it has rubbed off on his kaiju.
It could also just be Ten’s way of threatening him, but he can’t say he’s feeling very threatened.
“We gotta go make sure Ten didn’t do any permanent damage to your body, good luck over there. Talk to you later, love you,” Gen says, and notices the way Souichirou immediately whips his head over to him with wide eyes at the casual words of affection.
Oh shit, he thinks. Seriously?
“Yeah, love ya too,” Soushirou responds after a moment too long, and then the link turns off. Something is wrong, and it’s not just the fact that there’s been a bodyswap. He’ll have to deal with this situation quickly, so he can contact Soushirou in private.
His fiancé’s brother stares at him in disbelief. Gen clears his throat and addresses Ten instead. “Alright, beastie, will you let go of him now? We’ll get Soushirou back, and then he’ll come see you immediately.”
Ten doesn’t respond, just uses its tail to squeeze him around the waist briefly. It might be meant as a threat, but mostly comes across as a hug. Then the tail goes slack, and the entire suit goes offline.
“Get me some medics for an eval,” Gen commands the Operators, and then finally turns to the man wearing his fiancé’s skin to hold out a hand. “How’re you feeling, Captain Hoshina?”
The man reluctantly accepts the helping hand, and staggers as he gets on his feet. “Been better,” Souichirou responds, voice rough. Gen nods and wordlessly helps him over to the containment mechanism for the suit.
It’s difficult to not reach out and touch, when removing the armored pieces reveals the hints of already darkening bruises around Soushirou’s, no, Souichirou’s throat. He crosses his arms, and tries to keep his concern to himself.
The moment Ten is locked down, medics rush in to whisk away Captain Hoshina. Gen watches them go, and is torn on whether to follow or not. Had it been Soushirou, he would’ve stayed by his side without second thought.
But it’s not. It just sounds like, and looks like, the love of his life.
Gen slumps against the wall outside of Ten’s testing chambers, and slowly slides down to the floor. He drags shaking hands over his face, and then runs his fingers through his hair.
He’s not religious, but he clasps his hands together, and leans his forehead against them. He prays to anything that might hear him that Ten’s conclusion is correct. That he’ll get his fiancé back in one piece. Sooner, rather than later.
After his short little breakdown, he fishes out his phone from his pocket. He’s pretty sure he’s never actually called Ashiro Mina in private, but today’s a day for unprecedented events, it seems.
“Captain Narumi? What can I help you with?” She picks up after a short moment, sounding surprised.
“I have no idea how to say this without it sounding insane,” he says with a sigh, and runs a hand through his hair again. At her hum of confusion, he breathes in. “Some freaky kaiju power has caused the Hoshina brothers to swap bodies. Ten managed to pin-point a race that would be capable of doing it, and Hoshina Souichirou confirmed it’s what he was fighting before the switch suddenly happened. Ten said it isn’t permanent, but we have no idea how long the swap is going to last, or how it can affect humans.”
“..What,” she questions, voice uncertain.
“I’ve got Captain Hoshina under medical supervision right now, if you want to come confirm for yourself. Soushirou is over at the Sixth Division headquarters, wearing his brother’s body. We’ll try to work out some temporary transfers and get him back to Ariake so we can run tests on them both. This is going to affect your division as well, so I just wanted to warn you before hell breaks loose.”
“I trust your judgement, especially when it comes to him, Narumi,” she says quietly. “I’ll make arrangements to visit Ariake when Soushirou arrives, and cover for him here. Let me know if there are any updates. Thank you for calling me.”
Gen barks out a laugh, and feels embarrassingly close to tears. The stress of the situation is slowly starting to settle as a weight on his shoulders, alongside the realization that Ten really could’ve killed Soushirou’s body if he had been a bit slower.
“Yeah, no problem,” he says and hangs up.
He sits there for a moment, before he manages to pull himself together. He inhales deeply, gets to his feet, and steels himself to go have an awkward conversation with his future brother-in-law.
And the man is lucky he’s wearing the skin of someone Gen loves, because from what he’s gathered over the years, he doesn’t actually like Hoshina Souichirou.
“So, you and Soushirou, huh?” Souichirou asks, giving him a critical once-over.
Gen’s briefly surprised that the gossip of their unconventional engagement has seemingly been contained to the First and Third Divisions.
But in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Gen has no patience to humor the forced brotherly banter of someone who hasn’t been there for his younger brother for all these years.
He wordlessly reaches over to the other man’s hand, and ignores the way he tenses up in favor of lifting it carefully, holding his own right next to it, so the man can see what he’s trying to show. Their matching silver bands shine in the artificial light of the medical observation room, and Souichirou’s face goes slack in shock.
“You could say that, yeah,” Gen confirms, deadpan.
“You- but he.. you're..? Huh," The older man stutters, eyes flickering between his face and the rings.
“We’re engaged,” he clarifies, taking pity on the other man’s loss for words and lets go of his hand.
There’s a significant pause. Then, Souichirou sighs, the whole playful facade shattering.
“How long?” The man asks, sounding tired, and averts his eyes.
“Five years now, engaged for almost two,” Gen says and watches the man’s face crumble. It’s painful to sit by and watch when he would’ve been rushing forward to hold Soushirou in his arms if he ever had an expression like that on his face. He digs his nails into his palm and reminds himself that this isn’t Soushirou, even though it looks like it.
“Five years?” Souichirou repeats, voice faint. “Yeah, that certainly makes it hard to fool myself into thinkin’ I can still mend our relationship.”
Gen feels his jaw clench, brows furrowing at the statement. “I thought you hated each other,” he says.
Because that’s what Soushirou has said, even though that’s not necessarily true either.
Soushirou doesn’t hate his brother as much as he feels deeply betrayed by him. He thinks his brother hates him, and that fuels his hurt more than anything.
Souichirou laughs bitterly.
“Nah, I was cruel to him when we were growin’ up ‘cause I was a fucked up kid scared of my little brother surpassin’ me,” the man says, and then looks over to meet Gen’s gaze. “He did anyway, went no-contact with me before I had a chance to try to amend what was broken, and I’ve been too scared to try to reach out since.”
“You love your brother,” Gen says, and it’s a statement as much as it’s a question. A realization.
“Of course I do,” Souchirou says with a sigh, as if it’s obvious. As if it’s easy for him to admit.
And Gen suddenly feels furious.
He’s never had a family that loves him, not before his found family of recent years. The fact that the man in front of him mourns a relationship with his brother that he at any point could try to fix if he wasn’t a fucking coward has Gen seeing red.
“You know he thinks you don’t love him, right?” he asks, voice hard. “He thinks you see him as a failure like the rest of the Hoshina family, and that you’ve never bothered reaching out to congratulate him on his achievements because you genuinely don’t care. He refuses to see you because he thinks you’ve fucking disowned him.”
He watches Souichirou contort his borrowed face into a series of expressions he’s never seen on Soushirou before. The man flinches from the harsh words, as if they’re physical blows. Good, hope it fucking hurts.
“I.. didn’t know that,” the older man admits.
Gen takes a deep breath and feels his patience snap.
Brother-in-law relationships be damned, this man has hurt the love of his life in ways he doesn't even realize, and Gen won’t accept that.
With that thought in mind, Narumi Gen proceeds to yell at Captain Hoshina Souichirou for so long his voice turns hoarse.
- Soushirou -
At the same time, Soushirou is in an unfamiliar military base, going through medical checkups and awkward pleasantries as he’s debriefed on the situation at hand, all while he wears the face of the brother that has disowned him.
The biting loneliness that has plagued him since he was a child creeps up on him and makes his shoulders tense. He yearns for the company of familiar faces, of Gen and Mina and all his soldiers that respect and trust him.
He’s slightly off-put by the lack of malice that his brothers’ soldiers show him, even when they find out who’s walking in their Captain’s skin. Maybe they don’t know that his brother hates him.
That must be why.
Even the Vice Captain treats him kindly as he guides him around the base, and leads him to his brother’s private quarters for him to shower and rest. For a moment of solitude.
His brother’s quarters are clean, minimalistic and organized in the same way Soushirou’s apartment is. Or used to be. Narumi Gen's chaotic presence has been seeping into the decor over the years, and he’s been dragged into building each and every Gundam that lines his shelves.
Either way, it's clear he and Souichiro have been raised on similar principles.
So he paces, jittery and wrong-footed, an unusual amount of anxiety coursing through him, while he looks around and wonders how he’s supposed to survive for god-knows-how-long in his brother’s skin.
He pauses as he spots a framed photo standing on the bedside table. He approaches it, curious despite his growing discomfort. He almost drops the frame the moment he sees the picture, and sits down heavily on the bed, cradling it in his (too big) hands.
There, framed and clearly tended for judging by the lack of dust, is a picture of the Hoshina brothers. Soushirou sits on his older brother’s shoulders, lifting his little hands in delight, a bright smile to match that of his brother. The frame is old and worn, it’s something that’s clearly been kept for many years.
“Why do you have this?” He whispers in his brother’s voice, lips quivering.
In the corner of his eye, something else draws his attention.
Another old framed picture, this one displayed on the wall. It’s a crayon drawing, clearly done by a child. It features two little stick figures, one small with purple hair and one tall and with long two-toned hair, wearing matching capes. The two of them as heroes, Soushirou remembers telling his brother as he gifted him the drawing. They had been young, and it had been long before Souichirou had started pushing him away.
Back when they still were brothers.
He had no idea Souchirou had kept it when they were young, and can’t even fathom why it’s been kept until now. His brother hates him, doesn’t he?
He’s feeling vaguely nauseous, and wonders if it’s some kind of cruel prank. He doesn’t quite know how it possibly could be a prank, though, when he’s currently stuck in his brother’s body.
Soushirou fumbles to find his brother’s phone, and is grateful that it uses fingerprint verification. His breathing is speeding up, and his hands are shaking as he taps in a number he knows by heart. He does notice his brother has the number saved, as regulations require from the Captains of the Defense Force.
Gen picks up immediately. “Soushirou?”
Just hearing his voice makes the tears threaten to overflow.
“Hi Gen,” he greets, and tries to keep his voice steady. He clearly fails, because he can hear his fiancé immediately excuse himself from wherever he is.
“Sou, what’s wrong?” Gen says, and his voice is gentle in that special way he saves for their private moments. It sounds like home. Like safety.
Soushirou breaks.
He tries to form the words to describe what he’s feeling, and instead sobs out loud as he curls in on himself and tries to muffle the sounds behind his hand.
Clearly a breakdown isn’t what Gen is expecting over the phone, and it’s sweet, it’s so endearing, how he panics. “Sweetheart, baby, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong,” his fiancé pleads, and his voice is soothing, even in his stress. “Breathe for me, my love, you need to breathe.”
Soushirou takes a shuddering breath, chest hurting and hands shaking.
“He has a fuckin’ framed picture of us as kids on his bedside table, Gen,” he manages to choke out between his sobs.
“Oh,” Gen responds, understanding dawning on him.
“And-! And,” Soushirou forces himself to take another shaky breath. “And there’s a drawin’ I made him when I was like five framed on the wall,” his voice is breaking around the words, but he needs his fiancé to understand.
And Gen understands. He always does.
“Oh, Soushirou,” Gen whispers, and he sounds so sad for him. “I’m so sorry, my love.”
“What the fuck am I supposed to do with this, huh?” Soushirou asks, and he can’t decide if he wants to be furious, or just sit down and cry some more. It feels like thorny vines are restricting his lungs.
Gen doesn’t have an answer for him, and he doesn’t expect him to.
“All these years he’s let me think he doesn’t give a shit about me, all the while he comes back to a room he’s decorated with memories like I’m somethin’ he treasures?!” Devastation makes way for anger, and Soushirou can’t help but snarl around the words. “What kind of bastard even does that? Isn’t that fucked up?”
Gen agrees with him, and whispers soothingly in his ear as he cries, allowing him to feel while never leaving his side.
“I kind of yelled at him earlier, actually,” Gen admits as he starts to calm down. “Threw a whole bunch of insults at him, really tore him a new one.”
It makes Soushirou pause. A tentative smile twitches on his lips.
“Yeah? What’d you call him?”
Gen snorts. “I was at it for a good while, I don’t even remember everything I said. A piece of shit, good for nothing, horrible and cruel excuse of a brother, to mention a few.”
Soushirou laughs despite his tears. “Damn, ya really showed ‘im.”
“Sure did,” Gen agrees. “Made him cry, actually.”
“Fuckin’ serves ‘im right,” he sniffles, and then laughs wetly. He uses a sleeve to wipe away his tears.
“It was a bit hard considering he’s wearing your face, but I pulled through,” Gen says.
“My knight in shinin’ armor.”
“Only for you.”
They sit in silence for a while, and Soushirou slowly calms his breathing. He lets Gen’s presence, even if just over the phone, soothe him.
“I don’t know what to do,” he whispers, feeling lost, adrift. What he’d thought was a certainty is suddenly unclear, the rug has been pulled from under him.
“We’ll figure it out, won’t we?” Gen says gently. “We’re in this together.”
People sometimes wonder how Soushirou could’ve fallen for such a childish and petulant man, but they don’t know what Narumi Gen hides under his facade. They don’t know how gentle his hands can be when he holds someone he loves.
“Well, ya were plannin’ on marryin’ into this mess, weren’t ya?” Soushirou says. His hand feels too bare without the familiar weight of a silver ring hugging it.
“Yup,” Gen agrees. “Still am, in case you were wondering.”
He lets out a breath of relief, tension seeping out from his shoulders. It’s impressive how Narumi Gen of all people has learned to read him like an open book. How Gen manages to quell his worries before they even have a chance to form with pin-point accuracy.
“Good.”
“We’ll get through this, Sou.”
A pause. Then:
“I can’t do this alone,” he admits.
“You can, but you won’t have to,” Gen responds firmly, with unyielding certainty. “I’ll push to have you back in Tokyo as soon as possible, and I’ll send reinforcements to the Sixth to make up for their Captain’s temporary absence. We’ve got the best research facilities out of all divisions, it makes sense for us to take over. Kikoru’s already on it.”
He slumps in relief, and lays down on the bed. Breathes in deeply, and then exhales.
“I love ya,” he says.
“I love you too,” Gen responds. Then he sighs. “We’re probably going to need to keep your brother around as well to run tests on you both, you know that, right?”
Soushirou puts an arm over his eyes. In the darkness he can imagine Gen is right by his side, and that nothing is wrong.
“I know,” he admits. “Seems like he has somethin’ to say to me.”
“Yeah, I’d hope he does,” Gen agrees.
Gen stays with him on the phone the rest of the evening, all the way until he falls asleep.