Chapter Text
Karamatsu stares idly at his half-empty bottle of beer, swirling the contents in lazy circles.
Chibita, unaccustomed to any of the brothers - Ichimatsu aside - being silent for any length of time, feels unnerved enough to comment. “O-oi, you sick or something, idiot?”
The bottle clatters against the table as Karamatsu startles, and the boy fumbles frantically to catch it before it spills. He succeeds (somehow) and rights it, adjusting his sunglasses on his face so they glint in the light. “Chibita, my friend, I do not get sick! When sickness knocks on my door, I send it packing, heh.” The second eldest Matsuno flips one leg in the air and crosses it over the other.
“Sure, sure. You must be fine after all,” Chibita grumbles, stirring his oden with a grimace. “You sound normal again.”
Karamatsu’s glasses slide down his nose slightly, and Chibita looks up in time to catch the boy with an uncharacteristic expression of dismay. “A-ah, I, ah, didn’t sound normal before…?”
Chibita shakes a wooden spoon at Karamatsu, his other hand on his hip. “You’ve barely said a word since you got here, you loud-mouthed idiot! In what world is that normal?! Definitely not this one, stupid!”
Karamatsu’s shoulders hunch upwards. “The oden was simply so magnificent that I was at a loss for words, of course! Your cooking has never been finer! Why--” Karamatsu cuts off with a sudden yelp as a sizzling lump of daikon radish hits him in the cheek. “OW, IT’S HOT!”
“I don’t want to hear fake compliments from you, idiot! If you tell me my oden is amazing, it had damn well better be because it is, not because you’re trying to dodge the subject!” Chibita crosses his arms, snorting. “Don’t make me waste some perfectly good oden by dumping it on your head. What the hell is going on in that painfully bedazzled brain of yours?”
Karamatsu sags suddenly, as if deflating, and Chibita almost feels guilty for pressing. Almost.
“I,” says Karamatsu, and then seems to choke on his own words for a moment. “I think…” He halts again.
Chibita raises one eyebrow. “Hmph, well that’s more than you can usually say.”
Karamatsu glances up at him, then back down at the rough, wooden surface of the food cart counter, an oddly crooked smile slipping onto his face. “True, I do generally try to avoid it.”
Chibita does a double-take. “E… eh?!”
Karamatsu shrugs in his usual melodramatic fashion. “Ignorance is bliss, as they say.”
“Ya mean to tell me you act like a moron on purpose?!”
Karamatsu laughs. “I’d like to claim that my stupidity is entirely acting, but I’m afraid that only accounts for some of it,” he says, and pushes his sunglasses up to sit atop his head. “Love makes you stupid, or so I’ve heard.”
Chibita is now both perplexed and exasperated. “The hell does love got to do with it?!”
Karamatsu curls a hand around his bottle of beer again, rubbing his thumb up the ridges of the bottle’s design. “Mmm. It’s stupid to pretend there’s love where there is none, for example,” he says, watching a droplet of condensation roll down the glass. “But pretending you’re loved by the people you love is a way of coping, I guess.”
Chibita falls silent for a moment. “What d’ya mean, pretending?” he finally ventures. “Is this about your idiot brothers? They’re assholes, sure, but in the end they--”
Karamatsu looks up at him, then, meeting his eyes, and Chibita is startled by the bittersweet smile he receives. Chibita stops talking.
“Aaah, Chibita, you’re always too kind,” Karamatsu says with a laugh, pushing the beer bottle aside and putting his head in his arms. His voice continues, muffled. “But let’s face it, I’m such an embarrassment that even a bunch of NEETs like them prefer to pretend I don’t exist.” He turns his head so that his cheek is pressed against the wooden counter, one of his eyes visible from under his bangs. “And to top it all off, I’ve made a fatal error - I’ve gone and fallen in love.”
“Haaa?!” Chibita puts his hands on his hips again, frowning. “Aren’t all of you nitwits in love with that precious ‘Totoko-chan’ of yours? Disregarding Choromatsu’s disgusting idol obsessions, she’s the only one the lot of you ever go on about!”
Karamatsu’s fingers make a scraping sound against the counter. “You make an excellent point, my friend, and therein is precisely the problem! I met someone, and have fallen head over heels for him!” He flicks the beer bottle, sounding exhausted. “And have thus foolishly dissolved what is perhaps the only remaining thing that I and all my brothers remained in solidarity upon. Our beloved Totoko-chan, as unreachable now as she ever was, a lovely childhood friend upon whom we could safely shower our collective affections, knowing full well that she would never find one of us worthy of our heart! She would never sow discord amongst our brotherly bonds by elevating the status of one above the rest! And with that painful honesty of hers that endeared us to her so greatly, she would never instill us with false hope! Everything was perfect.”
Chibita thinks it sounds terrible, actually, but he opts to refrain from telling Karamatsu so. He does, however, nearly fumble and drop his spoon right onto the ground. “H… him?!”
Karamatsu lifts his head just enough to rest his chin on his folded arms, gazing at the bubbling oden cooking in front of him. “Ah, yes, the beautiful soul who has captured my heart,” he says. “I had finally summoned the courage to perform for the adoring masses on a sidewalk corner, which I of course selected very carefully for its perfect place in the sun, and no sooner had I begun to grace my sweet audience with the dulcet sound of my voice than I spotted him. The clouds had all but blotted out the daylight, just then, and it was as if the sun itself pushed them aside to shine down on him, highlighting the very essence of his glorious--”
“Sweet Lord have mercy,” Chibita says, clutching his stomach. “For the love of God, stop! I’m going to puke!”
Karamatsu flinches visibly and digs his fingers into the sleeve of his leather coat. “S… sorry. These mannerisms are, ah, rather like a safety blanket, I suppose…” He pauses to collect himself for a moment, then continues. “I took the train downtown to try performing with my guitar for a short while… I’ve been practicing at home, but I’m not… it’s, um, not particularly easy to tell how well I may or may not be doing, there…” Karamatsu drags a hand along the back of his neck, rubbing at the fine hairs there. “So I thought perhaps a city audience might be a helpful gauge…”
Karamatsu wears his signature smirk like a shield, pretending that his fingers are not, in fact, trembling slightly as they rest against the guitar strings. Part of him thinks that this would be worlds easier with any one of his brothers here to provide some sort of distracting commentary and/or spectacle.
Part of him is relieved that none of them is here to witness what is sure to be a spectacular failure.
He lets out a shaky breath and tips his head back against the brick wall behind him, feeling the rough texture drag against his hair and attempting to ground himself with it. It will be all right. He’s a performer, an actor, he was born for the stage and he is here to claim his rightful place upon it! Besides, as they say, geniuses are often never appreciated during their own time…
Karamatsu eases himself into the groove with a cover (far easier to fall back on a song he’s heard a thousand times over and could sing in his sleep than one he’s written himself and isn’t quite engraved into the callouses on his fingertips, not yet). It helps, it steadies him, and he plays another, and then another, and by the time he’s finished three songs he thinks he might be ready to try one of his own. At the very least, no one has thrown tomatoes at him yet, so he figures that a test run of his song will at the very least go off without incident, even if it perhaps is also unremarkable.
Two-thirds of the way through, however, he’s overwhelmed with a fresh longing for his brothers to be here, watching, even just to see that he can do it - that he’s brave, that he can change even a little, that he can put himself out there in front of others even if he’s nothing like a success, and his throat constricts and closes and he clutches his guitar like a lifeline, bending over it as his eyes grow hot beneath his sunglasses--
A bottle of water suddenly appears in his line of sight, and he looks up, startled.
“Sorry,” says the voice that seems to belong to the hand holding the water bottle, and Karamatsu finds himself locking eyes with a young man around his own age. His skin is a deep olive, his hair dark and curly, and his eyes a warm brown that strays far more towards golden than Karamatsu’s own. “I thought you might need a drink…” He smiles at Karamatsu, and Karamatsu finds himself smiling back at the stranger’s kindness.
“Ah, thank you, kind sir,” he says, and puts a hand to his chest. “But I was simply moved by the power of the music, I assure you! All is well.”
The stranger laughs and then sets the water bottle down next to Karamatsu’s guitar case. “I am glad to hear it,” he says, eyes twinkling. “But I’ll leave you the water anyway, if it’s all right with you. You’ve got to be careful about getting dehydrated in the bright sun, like this.” He crouches down suddenly, putting himself at eye level with Karamatsu, and gazes at the guitar with interest. “That’s a beautiful instrument you have… how long have you been playing?”
Karamatsu is flustered by the sudden engagement, and feels heat rush to his cheeks. “I, ah, I picked it up a few years back…” he says vaguely, remembering the day he laid eyes on it in the store and knew he had to have it, remembering the many days later when he had scraped enough of his allowance and money from odd jobs for his parents and a few relatives to get it, remembering his first venture onto the roof of the house with guitar in hand, handled with far more loving care than Karamatsu ever gives himself. “I’ve only recently started playing seriously… but I am determined to make up for lost time!” He thumps his chest, grinning. “With this guitar, I shall travel to the stars and beyond…!”
The stranger laughs again, looking pleased as opposed to scornful, and Karamatsu feels his heart do something strange in his chest. “Ahhh, that’s a journey I would like to see,” the man says, gazing at Karamatsu with a warm smile. “May I ask your name, Man of the Stars?”
“Matsuno Karamatsu,” Karamatsu says, his mouth strangely dry. Perhaps he is in need of that water, after all. “And you, sir?”
“Pleased to meet you, Matsuno-san. I’m Satsuki. Bianchi Satsuki.” The man extends his hand, and after a moment of startled inaction, Karamatsu hurriedly reaches to shake it.
“Th… the pleasure is all mine, of course, Bianchi-san!” Karamatsu withdraws his hand and adjusts his sunglasses. “That name,” he continues after a moment, curious now. “Are you…?”
Satsuki laughs. “My father is Italian,” he says. He glances around at the passersby on the sidewalk and seems to think better of his positioning, standing and then shifting to crouch closer to Karamatsu’s side, out of the way of those walking by.
Karamatsu grins at this, gesturing grandly. “Ahhh, bon giorno, then, my friend!”
“Grazie, Matsuno-san.” Satsuki is smiling, again in that strange, genuinely pleased sort of fashion that is so unlike his brothers.
Karamatsu thinks that he cannot recall ever seeing such a radiant smile, and the thought makes his heart squeeze in a not-unpleasant sort of way.
“So do you come here often?” Satsuki asks, his eyes again on Karamatsu’s guitar.
Karamatsu chuckles, smoothing his thumb across a fingerprint on the guitar’s surface. “You have the honor of bearing witness to my very first performance!” he declares, sweeping a hand grandly out to the side.
“An honor indeed,” Satsuki replies, his tone warm and light. “I think perhaps you should make a habit of it, Matsuno-san. You have a wonderful voice.”
Karamatsu opens his mouth to respond, but comes up empty-handed, even as his traitorous blood rushes straight to his head, turning him a vibrant red all the way to the tips of his ears.
Satsuki laughs, taking the water bottle he’d set down and lifting it to press it gently against Karamatsu’s hot cheek. “And you are very cute.” He breathes out a puff of air, ruffling his curly bangs slightly. “On second thought, perhaps it wouldn’t be quite safe for you to visit here often…”
Karamatsu thinks his heart might just give out then and there. Not only is this angel in human form giving him the time of day, he is bestowing him with multiple undeserved compliments and Karamatsu has absolutely zero immunity to them. “Ah, no, it’s, I’m very strong!” he says, even as he kicks himself for the gracelessness in his stumbling words. He rests his guitar in his lap and flexes, staring determinedly at a vague point in the distance instead of at Satsuki. “A man such as I laughs in the face of danger!”
Satsuki eyes Karamatsu’s leather-clad arms admiringly, resting his cheek in one hand. “I see that you are strong, indeed. But even the strong should always have someone to rely on in a dangerous situation, I think,” and he gives Karamatsu a smile that could cure all ills.
“P… perhaps you are right,” Karamatsu says, suddenly extremely interested in whether or not his guitar is spotless enough. “Someday, I may yet be so fortunate!” He pretends he believes it as much as his inflection would imply.
“Someday may be closer than you think,” offers Satsuki, and Karamatsu thinks again that yes, his heart is going to shortly give out for good.
“W-we exchanged Twitter names,” Karamatsu tells Chibita. “And when I would go to play on that street corner again, he would come, every time.” For the first time in the entire conversation, Karamatsu smiles, a real smile, as he looks at his phone. “It’s been…” he gestures vaguely, looking as though he’s about to go off on some grandiose metaphor, before noticing Chibita’s irritable glare and catching himself. “It’s been nice. Really nice.” He idly clicks his phone screen on and then back off again. “We’re… going out for dinner tomorrow night.”
Chibita throws his hands up. “How can a man who’s got a date look so glum?!” he demands. “Karamatsu! Listen to me!”
Karamatsu’s back straightens, and he looks like he’s on the verge of saluting when he replies with a hearty “YES!” to Chibita’s order.
“I’m sorry about the way things are going with your stupid brothers, okay, and I know I’m no replacement, but look - I’m gonna be here no matter what you do or who you choose to be with, so just… let yourself be happy for once, idiot! Enjoy this for what it is, and worry about crossing those other bridges when you get there!”
Karamatsu looks ready to cry. He hurriedly shoves his sunglasses back down over his eyes and sniffles loudly, wiping his nose against the back of his hand. “Chibitaaa…”
Chibita looks uncomfortable and turns his back on the boy, crossing his arms. “Shut up. Just… go out there tomorrow and give it your best, y’hear?” He glances over his shoulder and smirks briefly. “And bring him here sometime, yeah? Dinner’ll be on me.” Chibita turns back around and ladles a few fresh helpings into Karamatsu’s bowl, which has been long-since pushed to the side. “Now quit gabbing and eat up, idiot!”
Karamatsu bobs his head gratefully and takes the steaming bowl into his hands, clutching it almost to his chest. “Thank you…” he says without a single ounce of dramatic flair, and Chibita finds himself rubbing his nose.
“It’s nothing,” Chibita says, closing his eyes and pretending not to be embarrassed. He opens them again and watches as Karamatsu sets into his refilled bowl with renewed vigor, and Chibita shakes his head with a laugh.
“Stupid.”