#for now enjoy not so canon posts about the saiki brothers: the anthology. 1/? posts

[pseudoincestuous]

people don’t see Kusuo and Kuusuke’s relationship for what it is because the format isn’t what they’re used to. They speak the love language of metered resistance, push and pull, harsh words and empty spaces where the emotions go. They can’t say what they are feeling. They can’t do it either. They do everything else instead. Brothers’ love languages are fights. Strangers’ love languages are kind favors and nothing asked in return. They occupy that liminal space between the two. They don’t realize how much they mean to the other. They don’t realize how much the other means to them.

Kuusuke pulls at Kusuo, trying to break his walls down and trying to break all of him down with it. Kusuo threatens to do the same to him, all the while trying to figure out how not to hurt him. Neither of them really mean it. Except when they do. Kusuke provokes kusuo, Kusuo hurts kuusuke, again and again and again. kuusuke comes to understand this is the only kind of contact he will ever have with his brother. He pulls away. Kusuo tries to forget; estranges him in his mind. Kusuo sees kuusuke as a stranger at their next meeting; Kuusuke has never known Kusuo so well as he knows him that day.

There are hard feelings that seem insurmountable. Kuusuke knows things that Kusuo doesn’t. Kusuo doesn’t know this, but he can sense it. He doesn’t understand, now. Kuusuke does. Kusuo had loved him all this time. And Kuusuke has loved him more than Kusuo could possibly understand.

You wouldn’t hurt someone you didn’t love. you wouldn’t hurt them because you wouldn’t see them as some part of yourself. they would be someone different to you. but hurting your brother is just self harm, contextualized. it gives meaning and structure to what doesn’t make sense in your life. He can suffer like I can. he feels what I do. and yet he isn’t you. he is the other person you could not become.

He is your equal; your mirror and he is who you are not. He is a perfect stranger. he exists on a different plane. He reminds you of yourself.

He is your brother.