It's a beautifully sunny Saturday afternoon, and unfortunately Kaigaku's spending it running errands. Gramps's regularly scheduled Wednesday appointment got bumped up a few days - the doctor's about to take off on a vacation, or something to that effect - and since it's the weekend, Zenitsu offered to accompany Gramps to the clinic.

Which was probably his way of getting out of today's stupidly long list of chores to do. Pick up the dry cleaning? Whose clothes had needed dry cleaning anyway? And who'd picked a dry cleaner on the other side of town to visit?

Zenitsu had, judging by the tag on the suit he picks up. For a hot second, he's tempted to toss everything into the river as payback for the hassle, but the thought passes quickly.

God, they need more toilet paper again? He shoves the list of errands in his pocket and throws two family-sized packs into the shopping cart, along with a bag of gummies for his troubles.

Next up is a trip to the gardening store for mulch. Gramps wants to start growing a peach tree in the backyard, apparently. As much as Kaigaku grumbles to himself while hefting the bag into the trunk of his car, he's not about to turn down fresh fruit.

His final stop is the library, to pick up something Zenitsu put on hold. It's one of those trashy romance novels; he's embarrassed just to be seen holding it as he waits in line to check it out.

On his way out of the parking lot, he gets a text from Zenitsu. He idles at the exit while he reads it and responds.

eta

10

The car behind him honks. He huffs in exasperation, pulls out of the parking lot, and parks on the side of the street.

can u get some stamps from the post office

we have stamps at home?

but i want the limited edition composers set ?

The nearest post office is in the opposite direction of home. He's going to strangle the everloving shit out of Zenitsu as soon as he gets back.

Though, the stamps do look nice up close. They're larger than the standard size, allowing for an impressive amount of detail in the stylized portraits. He squints. A few measures of the featured composers' pieces are transcribed in the background, and he hums them without thinking.

He glances at the price, then asks for a second sheet.

eta

holy shit im not gonna buy you a cookie or whatever the fuck you want now

eta

He grits his teeth.

15

actually a cookie sounds p good rn ?

IM GONNA KILL YOU

jk!

He drives maybe a little recklessly back home, but it's not like he's that much worse than the average driver out there. At the very least, he mostly stops at the stop signs.

help me get all this shit inside, he texts once he pulls up in the driveway next to Zenitsu's car. He sits in the driver's seat, tapping his finger on the steering wheel, waiting. Zenitsu takes his sweet time coming out.

Kaigaku climbs out of the car and opens one of the back doors. "Go get your suit." Nodding, Zenitsu leans in to grab the items out of the backseat, pausing as he notices the stamps.

"Oh, you bought two?" he asks, studying them closely. He doesn't seem as excited as Kaigaku expected him to be, which really makes his blood boil considering how much trouble he'd gone through to get them.

"They're both for me."

Zenitsu pouts, bottom lip wobbling comically and face scrunching up as he tries to squeeze out some tears. As if that's ever worked on him.

Ok, maybe it does. A little. In a "this is gross and annoying as hell, stop it" sort of way.

"One of them's for you, dumbass."

Now his face lights up. Kaigaku rolls his eyes - there's really no helping stupid. He opens the trunk, pulls out one of the packs of toilet paper, and tosses it at Zenitsu, who barely manages to catch it without dropping something else.

He picks up the second pack and considers the bag of mulch that still needs to be brought inside. It's heavy, but he might be able to carry it up to the door with one arm and grab onto the toilet paper with the other hand. No, he can do it. Only quitters take more than one trip to bring everything in.

"Wait, why'd you get two packs?" Zenitsu asks, glancing over as he shifts the things he's holding into a more stable configuration.

"We ran out so quickly last time, I figured whoever was wiping their ass with an entire roll would need all this."

"But we still have - " Zenitsu clams up in the middle of his sentence, eyes wide. Kaigaku gives him a smile that's all teeth and no eyes.

"But we still have…?" he repeats, gesturing for his brother to continue the sentence.

"Never mind. I remembered wrong." Which is so obviously a lie that Kaigaku's downright insulted to hear the words. But, it's not like he's going to drive all the way back to the store just to return a pack of toilet paper, so he sighs and lets it slide.

They do manage to make it in one trip, to Kaigaku's satisfaction. He balances the bag of mulch against his leg as Zenitsu pushes the front door open, internally screaming for his brother to hurry the fuck up.

As soon as he steps inside, he drops everything on the floor and lets out a loud breath. When he looks up, he does a double take. Gramps is standing in front of them, leaning on his cane, wearing a silly party hat.

"Surprise!" he and Zenitsu exclaim, more or less at the same time.

"What's going on?"

"It's your birthday, dummy," Zenitsu says, grinning from ear to ear.

Oh. Huh. It sure is, Kaigaku supposes. He hadn't thought much about it all the years he'd lived by himself, so the realization hits him with a weird shock. Gramps motions him forward and puts a party hat on his head. He feels a little bit like a clown with it on.

"The bakery was late finishing up the cake, so I had to delay you," Zenitsu explains, pushing him toward the dining room. "Hopefully it wasn't too obvious."

"Uh, it's fine."

The cake is a small, cute thing decorated with triangles of white chocolate and artfully arranged fruit slices. In all honesty, it looks more like something Zenitsu guessed he would want rather than something he actually wants, but the fact doesn't actually bother him, strangely enough.

Zenitsu insists on taking a few pictures before Gramps sticks the candles into the cake. Kaigaku smiles for the first - just a little - but quickly loses patience.

"Is this thing for eating or looking at?" he grumbles after Zenitsu asks him to angle his face more to the left yet again.

"One last selfie," Zenitsu promises, plopping down in the seat next to him. "Say cheese!"

Gramps leans over and puts a hand on his shoulder. Kaigaku takes in the shot as Zenitsu holds the phone aloft, and there's a smothered feeling in his chest as he looks at his family's smiling faces, the fading dark circles under his eyes, the cake at the very bottom of the frame with "Happy Birthday Kaigaku!" written on it.

He smiles, more than just a little this time.

The "2" candle has clearly been recycled from Zenitsu's birthday last year; the wick is blackened, and there's a shallow depression at the top that's missing in the "3" candle. No wonder Zenitsu had wanted to get pictures before they were put on the cake. Except it turns out he also wants pictures with the candles burning, on top of a video of Gramps and himself singing. This party is quickly becoming an Ordeal.

"Make a wish!" Zenitsu finally exclaims when they're done and he's stopped the recording. Kaigaku closes his eyes. The smell of the cake is slightly citrusy; the blue haze in the back of his mind wavers as he replays the last few minutes.

This whole ritual is nothing more than dumb tradition and doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but he clenches his fists under the table and, against his better (more cynical) judgment, wishes for something. Quietly, the blue haze dissolves, leaving... something in its wake that he's not ready to acknowledge yet.

He opens his eyes and quickly blows out the candles before more wax can drip onto the surface of the cake. Gramps and Zenitsu clap as if there were something to celebrate in his act, and he holds his hand out impatiently for the knife.

The cake is slightly too sweet for his tastes, but he finishes the entire piece without complaint, savoring the last bite of fruit. Zenitsu asks for seconds, having inhaled his first slice. Begrudgingly, Kaigaku plops another one onto his plate.

"Oh, almost forgot," Zenitsu says, the fork stuck in his mouth bobbing up and down with each syllable. He reaches under the table and pulls out a paper bag, tissue paper bursting out of the top. "Gramps and I got you some stuff."

Kaigaku eyes the bag warily, thinking back to some of the "highlights" of birthday gifts past: a piggy bank that Zenitsu broke while cleaning, the ugliest tie he's ever seen (and has never worn), a stationary set that he's never used and isn't even sure where he left anymore.

And, well, the first novel he's finished reading in ages.

He lifts up the bag, which is surprisingly heavy, and pulls out a wad of tissue paper. There isn't a good place to put it, so he sets it down on the table next to his plate. Removing the next handful of tissue paper reveals the top of a hardcover notebook. He takes it in his hands, running his fingers over the embossed gold design on the cover, and opens it. The pages inside are lined with blank staves.

"For your next song." Gramps pats his arm fondly. "You'll play it for us, won't you?"

"I'm - okay," Kaigaku says, unable to meet his eyes. He rubs a thumb against one of the corners of the notebook. "Sure."

"There's more!" Zenitsu exclaims, nudging the bag closer to him. Kaigaku digs through the inordinate amount of tissue paper still left - this horrible packaging is probably all his brother's fault - and fishes out two smaller boxes. The first contains a phone case, one of the fancy ones with a pocket to hold his driver's license, and the other a lanyard decorated with electric-type pokemon.

Actual functional gifts; what a truly amazing world he lives in now. Gramps pulls everyone into a group hug, and this time Kaigaku doesn't protest, doesn't squirm in his seat, doesn't throw a fuss like he'd always done before.

And dang, it looks like there might be something to birthday wishes after all because that night there's a new email in his inbox, and it's a tick, tick, ticking bomb. He hovers over it, rereading the subject line for the tenth time. His teeth worry away at his bottom lip. Does he want to ruin the rest of his day?

He clicks.

Dear Mr. Kuwajima, the email starts. Congratulations! We are pleased to invite you to audition in person on -

To his secret shame, he cries a bit. But only a bit.

He manages to negotiate some shift changes through thinly-veiled threats, and come Tuesday, he shows up early to the practice room with the family violin and a folder of freshly-printed sheet music in tow. To his relief, he's played a good portion of the audition repertoire before, so he warms up (though not for as long as he probably should) and launches into learning one of the new pieces, having listened to recordings the entire drive there.

The door opens as he's picking apart the bowing for a particularly tricky section. He stops with the bow hovering slightly above the strings.

"We didn't discuss adding that to the set," Ume says, frowning and gesturing at him. "You think you're some kinda big shot who gets to make all the calls?"

Kaigaku sets the bow on the music stand and runs a hand down his face. "No, dumbass, this isn't for the show. I got here early to practice for an audition."

"Can't you do this at home or something?"

Kaigaku lets out a long, long groan. Gyuutarou gives him a look that's equal parts concern and disgust.

"It's embarrassing," he finally says.

Ume raises an eyebrow and smirks. "Wanna play something for us, then? Go on. We'll wait."

Gyuutarou drags over two chairs as Kaigaku looks off to the side and reconsiders every decision he's made that's culminated in this. So many little things he could've changed to avoid each pitfall he's encountered, and yet here he is, knee-deep in the consequences of his own actions. His bandmates give him near-identical expectant looks. He admits defeat and shuffles some pages around.

This piece is one of the last ones Gramps had coached him through. He'd always been praised for his spiccato technique, but the notes aren't as clean as they used to be. He frowns as he continues playing. There's more to work on than he'd expected; the time in the practice room won't be enough, he realizes with growing horror.

"Shit, man," Gyuutarou breathes after he's done, "you're good. How'd we ever get you to join us?"

Kaigaku points at his bandmates with the bow. "You got lucky. Don't ever forget that."

Ume laughs. "We're gonna miss you when you're off playing in whatever fancy-ass symphony you're auditioning for."

"I haven't gotten in yet."

"Maybe not. But as soon as they get one good listen to you," Gyuutarou says, poking his shoulder, "they're not gonna be able to say 'no.' Make sure you spare some time to visit us, okay? Play a song or two together for old-times' sake."

He doesn't quite know what to say. He'd only stuck around for the money, or at least he had in the beginning. But now there's all this mess and sentiment to sort through right as he's thinking about leaving, and it just isn't fair.

So, he puts everything - all the chaos and commotion and unwanted cerebral chemical reactions - on hold as SixthMoon enters into the final, frantic stages of preparation for the performance.

The big day comes, and it turns out the venue they're playing at, that promised land, is this hole-in-the-wall that really puts the "dive" in "dive bar." Kaigaku does his best to avoid stepping on the peanut shells littered all over the floor (which he's told is a feature, not a bug), but the unpleasant crunching is tragically unavoidable.

"This is a 'real fucking venue'?" Kaigaku asks Ume, side-eyeing her as they set up their equipment.

"Shut the fuck up. You saw where we used to play."

True. This place is an upgrade from that. They don't get jeered at, which is always a plus, and someone even buys them a round of drinks during one of their breaks. Well, offers to buy Ume a drink and ends up paying for all three after she very politely insists.

"God, that guy was pathetic" she says, exasperated, as they loiter in the corner away from the patrons. Kaigaku rolls his eyes and throws back the last of his gin and tonic.

"One more set left, let's finish this up."

He's almost bored by this point, playing the same couple of songs for the third time. Peak hours are coming to an end, and the crowd starts thinning out as they reach the end of their performance. Daki holds the last note especially long, her voice ringing crystal through the room, and he matches it on the keyboard.

She gathers him and Gyuutarou into a hug afterward, which Kaigaku's not expecting. With all their height differences, it doesn't work too great, but he pats the siblings awkwardly on their backs as they celebrate.

"Good job!" comes a familiar voice from behind him. He jumps as if he'd been given a strong electric shock.

"Zenitsu? Gramps? What're you doing here?"

"DaKi told us you were performing!" Zenitsu chirps. His cheeks are flushed, the big grin across his face goofier than it normally is. Did Gramps let him drink?

"We wouldn't have missed it for anything in the world," Gramps says warmly, taking his hand. "You always work so hard, but you never let us see the fruits of your labor."

"I," Kaigaku starts to say, trying to pull words out of the space in his head. He wishes they'd given him a warning, a call, something to let him know that he needed to figure out what he's supposed to be feeling. What he wants to be feeling. "I didn't think you'd care."

Which isn't exactly true, but nowadays saying things like I didn't want you around because you were too embarrassing and I didn't want you around because I was too embarrassing leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Truly, having emotions is the worst of all possible human experiences.

"Of course we care! I mean, this place is kind of, uh." Zenitsu waves his arms around. "They didn't even try to card me? But congrats! It's really exciting!"

Kaigaku looks between them and his bandmates, stomach tensing as he searches for the sarcasm in Zenitsu's words. There is none. Not so subtly, Gyuutarou gives him a thumbs up and jerks his head toward them. He takes a breath to prepare himself, then pulls his family into a tight embrace.

"Thanks," he says, his voice muffled against fabric. Someone squeezes him. He lets it happen, just this once.

The owner gives Gramps and Zenitsu permission to stay after the bar officially closes, and they sit at one of the tables near the stage as SixthMoon finishes cleaning up. Zenitsu's typing away at his phone as usual, giggling to himself every once in a while, and Gramps looks as though he's on the verge of falling asleep.

"So, how'd you get here?" Kaigaku asks as a particularly dreadful thought enters his mind. He hopes he's not right, but he doesn't have much faith in Zenitsu's judgment.

"I drove us here?" Zenitsu says, looking up from his phone with a quizzical expression. As expected, realization quickly dawns on his face. "Oh my god, I drove us here."

Kaigaku buries his face in his hands and sighs until the last of the air in his lungs leaves his body. He's not going to get in a fistfight, not when Zenitsu's tipsy and looking at him with sad eyes like an overgrown, hyperactive puppy.

"You're lucky we came here together," he grumbles. "You gotta drive me over to Ume and Gyuutarou's place tomorrow to pick my car up though. Also, you owe me an entire tub of ice cream. And fifty bucks."

"Twenty. And I get to pick the brand."

"Deal."

Zenitsu and Gramps are both out like a light less than five minutes into the drive home. Kaigaku glances at them in the rearview mirror as one of them (probably Zenitsu) snores loudly, and in the stillness of the moment he turns toward the new something that's gross and warm and soft and weak in the middle of his ribs. He pokes at it with a stick, metaphorically, and leaves it be when it refuses to budge.

Oh well. He'll learn to accommodate it.

Maybe, Kaigaku contemplates in a rare moment of peace and clarity, there are simple pleasures in life. Like a dryer that dries his clothes fully, or a hot meal he doesn't have to scrimp and save for, or Gramps's cancer going into remission. Then Zenitsu comes home and his mood sours, or he thinks it ought to, but if he's honest with himself (which he's trying to be more often), he's just going through the motions.

He's cooking tonight. It's a pain in the ass and the food isn't going to taste as good as Gramps's or Zenitsu's cooking, but he shuts his mouth and does it anyway. Curry. Vegetables. Soup. Rice. Good enough.

Zenitsu's already set the table, so Kaigaku plates the food as presentably as he can and places portions in front of each seat, covering up the remainder in case anyone wants more later.

The meal starts as usual, with Zenitsu excitedly relaying some new fact or another that he'd learned from class that day. The most abundant protein in the world is rubisco! Who even cares?

"So, I, uh," Kaigaku starts, and the conversation stops with an air of surprise. All eyes are on him. He looks off to the side.

"I'm auditioning for a chamber orchestra next month," he says and then immediately shoves a chunk of rice into his mouth. It's a little underdone, which he really doesn't understand because all three of them are using the same rice cooker, right? Is there some setting he doesn't know about? Does it just hate him? Is he cursed?

Oh, the conversation started back up while he was contemplating the secret malice of household appliances. Everything feels a little fuzzy and distant behind the pounding of his heart, behind the part of him that desperately regrets saying anything. He can read pity in their expressions; correction, he can read pity into their expressions. As uncomfortable and foreign as it feels, he forces himself to consider their words at face value.

Gramps is proud of him. Zenitsu is excited. No one thinks that he should've achieved so much more by now. No one compares him to some indescribable, undefined standard and says "your accomplishments, you, mean nothing in the face of this." No one but himself, of course.

It's hard to accept, and he doesn't know that he fully believes his family's words in the darkest recesses of his heart. He doesn't know what to say to the ghosts of Kaigakus past, doesn't know how he's supposed to comfort a scared child, an angry teenager, a lonely adult. So he just mumbles things that vaguely take on the sounds of "I'll do my best" and "Yeah, can you give me pointers?" that feel like teeth getting pulled out, teeth rotten to their roots that have been paining him for years.

He's in his room a few days later, absentmindedly plucking the strings of the violin while binge-watching a show on his laptop, when a familiar sound snakes through the hallway and into his room. The intonation isn't the same anymore, but he knows if he plays his part it wouldn't be the same either. It still bothers him though, in the way a bug bite isn't going to kill him but still itches uncomfortably.

He makes his way over, as quietly as he can, to the living room. Up comes the trill Zenitsu played incorrectly at the recital, that final one they'd done together, but this time he plays it perfectly and glides smoothly into the arpeggio that they'd mistimed. Their hands had crashed into each other, and that had been the last straw for Kaigaku.

If he concentrates hard enough, he can hear his part superimposed on Zenitsu's, the melody trading off between them as it soars and dives. Something aches inside him. He'd left in the middle of the piece, in the middle of the concert, and Gramps had scolded him afterward. Only him! As if Zenitsu hadn't skimped on practicing too.

Though, if he digs up the actual memory, maybe Gramps had been more sad than angry, and maybe Zenitsu had been unusually subdued the next day, as if he'd been mulling over something too.

"It's a lot better than the last time, isn't it?"

Kaigaku jumps. The piece had ended while he'd been lost in his thoughts, and Zenitsu's twisted around to look at him now. His fight response kicks in. His flight response kicks in. He doesn't follow either.

"Sure would've been nice if you'd sucked even a bit less back then," he says, crossing his arms.

Zenitsu has the audacity to smile wryly and nod.

"Yeah, I felt pretty bad about that. It was your senior concert and all. So I never really stopped practicing it afterward. Even if it was just once a month or something." He sighs wistfully. "I dunno, I thought it'd be nice if we could get a chance to play it together again. Like, actually play it. I owe you that much."

Kaigaku grunts in response. He can't say he's done the same, thought the same, or wished the same, and for whatever reason that kind of incongruity brings up an anxiety in him these days.

Silently, he sits down on the bench next to Zenitsu, who grins at him like an idiot. Flipping through the sheet music, he quickly scans the bars, the timing of the page turns refreshing themselves in his memory. He sets the book back on the rack, positions his hands above the keyboard, and lifts them ever so slightly to cue Zenitsu in.

They don't even manage to start at the same time, but at least Kaigaku knows what tempo Zenitsu's aiming for, and they manage to sort it out within a few measures. The last time he'd even thought about the piece was years ago, so it's hardly surprising that he stumbles several times. But, through it all, Zenitsu remains steady, a point to reorient himself to, no matter how far he strays.

He faintly hears Gramps settle down in the armchair next to the piano. That familiar armchair from which he'd taught them, in those years of Kaigaku's life that he doesn't want to revisit, that he wants to do over again, that shaped him and are behind him and out from whose shadows he's learning to step.

He's eighteen again, practicing for his senior recital.

He's sixteen again, he's nineteen, he's thirteen and feeling like he's worth something for the first time in his life as Gramps tells him this will always be his home. He's fifteen, Gramps is adopting Zenitsu and twenty-three-year-old Kaigaku holds onto his past self's hand and tells him that everything will be okay, even if it doesn't feel like it in the moment.

Because it does feel okay now. Maybe not all the way okay, but more so than ever before. Zenitsu sits next to him on the bench, and Kaigaku no longer wants his brother gone. Gramps leans back in the armchair with his eyes closed, and his approval is no longer the inescapable black hole at the center of Kaigaku's universe. There's a three-part harmony resonating out from the piano now, and with it a comforting certainty in the word "family" that he can finally, finally begin to understand.

A/N: i didn't really know how to write gramps and i think i did him dirty ;-; the kaigaku + zenitsu interactions this chapter were really fun to write though

thanks for reading to the end! this fic was an attempt to put into words some of the loneliness and purposelessness and frustration that i've felt at various points in my early 20s. i've never been particularly close to my family, and lately that's been bothering me more and more (especially how distant i am from my younger brother, compared to my roommate's relationship with their sibling). when i visit home i often feel like an angry teenager again so i don't really like visiting, but i also don't like emnot/em visiting (when that was legally possible lol), and i don't exactly know what to do about it because things are Complicated and Messy? so i wrote something for myself where everything turns out alright at the end. hopefully things irl will also be ok, in the grand scheme of things.

lastly - imagine if we got rare kaigaku lore, such as when his birthd