Thread by @annaofaza

cw: parental abandonment, post canon, Tadashi and Ainosuke have fucked off + have a place of their own | tadaai:

It's when Tadashi brings in the mail that Ainosuke knows something is wrong.

He puts down his phone, stretching his arms above his head, feigning boredom. "What? Another suit from my aunts? An invitation to another idiotic party? A lost birthday card?"

Tadashi wordlessly hands him an envelope, and Ainosuke turns it over.

He does not recognize the return address or the handwriting, but his heart seizes on one word: Aimi.

Ainosuke rips the side of the envelope and out slides a thin sheet of paper.

The message is simple: His mother wants to see him.

He scans it once, twice, and throws it onto the table. Tadashi's already at his side, hand on his shoulder. "Ainosuke," he says softly.

"Don't," he snaps. He's on the razor's edge of laughing and crying. "Why now? After all this time?"

Tadashi doesn't answer, but Ainosuke doesn't expect him to. He shakes his head, reaches for the pack of cigarettes on the table, then his lighter. "She doesn't send me so much as a postcard or even leave behind a fucking /letter/, and she wants to see me? Face to face?"

The lighter clicks, but no flame comes out. Frustrated, he thumbs at the wheel, but nothing but /snap snap snap/ comes from the fuse. "Damn it! Damn it!"

Tadashi wordlessly takes it away from him and reaches into his own pocket for the spare. With a single flick, the cigarette is lit, and Ainosuke snatches it from him, taking a single drag, exhaling smoke through his mouth.

He's technically not allowed to smoke in the apartment, but rules be damned. He'll deal with the consequences.

His chest tightens. /Love, your mother./ His mother. She hasn't been a mother. Mothers don't walk away without a word.

Logically, he knows the power his father wielded. He could have exercised extreme measures to keep her from seeing him. And still, he wonders, /Why didn't she fight harder for me? Why didn't she stay for me?/

His aunts had a different tale: she couldn't handle being a member of the Shindo family, so she gave up. On prestige, on stability, on /him/.

/She was not worthy of the household,/ they said. /She wanted nothing to do with us, do with you./

/We love you. She left and we stayed, didn't we?/

Ainosuke's chest tightens, and he begins to cough. The damned smoke.

"Ainosuke," Tadashi begins.

"Fuck," he curses, "fuck. How could she do this to me? I thought I was done with the Shindos. That..." He stubs out his cigarette, grinds the tip into ask, continuing to cough. Tears spring into his eyes. "Damn it. Damn /her./"

"How could she?" he gasps. "How could she?"

During his childhood, he had no fairy tales of tears or last hugs. He thought he could stand another person not thinking he was worthy of love. But this...

He only knows her from scraps. A certain perfume, a lot of sugar stirred into her tea, an unfinished lullaby, a book in the library with her name inside the cover. She had been the only one to use the pool, he remembers his aunts mentioning idly.

Ainosuke can know more.

But now, he can't fathom it. "How could she, Tadashi?" he repeats. "Does she want to make amends? Apologize? Tell me she /loves me/, even after this time? My father died years ago; she could have reached out then!"

Tadashi doesn't bother with worthless platitudes or soothing falsehoods. Instead, he says, very quietly, "I don't know, Ainosuke. But whatever your choice, I will be by your side."

Ainosuke allows himself one choked sob, then another, then another, until tears are running freely down his face. Tadashi presses a handkerchief into his palm, strokes his hair. /He's all I have,/ Ainosuke thinks wildly. /All I have and all I want./

But he knows there's something missing, something he has searched for all his life, a journey that never ends. Something his family withheld from him time and time again.

The truth.

Even if it's not love, he wants to know the truth. What happened, why, if there was a good reason or not.

But he can't think about it just now. Instead, Ainosuke leans backward, into Tadashi's touch, and lets himself go.

/end 😭

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