When I'm With Them, I'm Free

Chapter Twenty: Love Is Being There?

warning: (mentioned) manga spoilers

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Shoto stepped out of his bedroom, sleep still hanging onto the ends of his messy hair like the hands of hungry predators would their prey.

His eyes fluttered, his head circling around the room he slowly entered; it was a failed attempt at waking himself up, a terrible stab at forcing awareness into his system. He itched a spot on the crown of his head, squinting at the natural light that sunk through the half-closed blinds. There were lines on the wooden floor, white rectangles formed a few feet from the windows. Some of the spots tainted the couch, though the shapes on the chair were a nearly transparent white.

He had been sleeping a lot lately, his body continuing to sink further every night, drowning him in the amount of slumber he'd never gotten before. Even as a kid, there was never a time Shoto could remember sleeping as much, unable to recall a second in his life when he slept heavily, his body numb and deaf to any disturbance during the night.

The male was never one to sleep very much, especially after tragic events in his life. And with the war still hanging over his shoulders like a ghost, breathing warm puffs of air down his neck every second of his life, he originally thought sleep was going to be more a struggle than it already was.

But for some reason, it was all he could do, the only action he felt was controllable in his life. Shoto believed that sleeping was the only outcome in his life that was predictable, and he found comfort in his thin covers.

And Shoto wasn't sure why he slept so much. He wasn't even sure why he slept so easily. There had never been a moment in his life where he had slept more than eight hours, each second in that timeline empty of deep, wakeless sleep. Somehow, the only slumber he gained these days was at least ten hours and never had a lick of dreaming or restlessness. It was like he blacked out every night, feeling refreshed and mostly energetic every day.

In saying that, however, the slumber was occasionally interrupted by a vivid nightmare. Sometimes they correlated with the things of his past, sadly familiar, almost giving him a feeling of home, normalcy. Like the tormentful dreams he had of chasing his mother and never catching her, the ones where his father punished him or all the things he didn't achieve in a short amount of time, or even the ones when all of his pent-up emotions exploded in the false, dream reality, and he ended up breaking everything in front of him.

Other times, they correlated with his fears. It was a new development, to see you slowly fade away in a thick cloud of smoke, or to see a knife in your chest because Shoto couldn't run fast enough to stop the faceless attacker.

"Hey Shoto," Fuyumi called from the kitchen. Her hands were in the sink, cleaning up a large pile of potatoes with water and her fingers. She wore an apron, the ends of white fabric reaching past her knees. Her glasses were in need of being pushed further up her nose bridge, falling to the tip of her tiny snout as she stood half-bent over. "How are you feeling?" she asked, twisting her head around to face her younger brother.

"Fine," he replied monotonously, stepping into the kitchen before leaning his lower back against the countertops. He stood a foot away from Fuyumi, his eyes on her before footsteps carried into the hallway, and his attention was stolen. The sounds were heavy-footed, and Shoto could hear the sounds of plastic rubbing against boxes and glass.

"You wanted those original-flavored rice cakes, right?" Natsuo asked, trudging through the doorway with several small, dark-green grocery bags in each hand. His elbows were bent, the plastic bags leveled with his fingers. He was grimacing as he stepped a bit quicker into the kitchen. He huffed when he bent over, laying down the groceries at the end of the cabinets, a few of the bags piling up next to the white outlet.