aiko's otter den

raise your weapon - Dusk threw away his past, his life, everything, to become a spy to preserve order. He’s now got to don the look of a family man and get a wife and child, all to prevent a war! Meanwhile, Bam is a beleaguered law secretary, struggling with identity. Miseng is a child looking to stop running. Hijinks will ensue. SxF au

Now with art by yole!

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Chapter 7

It would be an understatement to say Hatz adores his older brother.

It’d be an even worse understatement to say Hatz worries about his older brother.

His status as a man is dangerous. Hatz knows, he watches the propaganda machine roll on, Jahad and his butthurt anger being a part of everything his then sister had suffered. If Bam ever found out the depths of Jahad’s bullshittery on why their parents died, he’d probably just fall apart. He keeps this secret. He keeps a lot of things from his brother.

But he loves him. He loves that older brother. He doesn’t remember his mother holding him through nightmares, or his father reading to him. Hatz knows these things happened. There are lots of old, faded pictures and one simple reel held safely in the care of a distant uncle’s old projector.

All Hatz remembers is Bam. Bam who came home with blood on his face and the book of maths he needed for school. Bam carefully patching his academy uniform so it didn’t look patched and used. Bam making his lunches when he came home and rocking him through a nightmare. Bam holding a certification and crying at his graduation, standing alone against all the rich families and beaming with pride.

Bam had thrown away his entire life for Hatz and his happiness and future and it was something he was going to pay back with, at the very least, Jahad’s money if nothing else.

So if in return his brother was no longer and never had been his sister, if he wanted to get married and live a normal life with a child of his own and all the love in the world, he would get nothing less than the best.

So when he’d just dropped the bombshell of ‘we had a long engagement and no wedding for sake of this man’s daughter’, it had… hurt, a little. Stung that he hadn’t said anything in their phone calls and let him go on worrying about when he was going to get a partner. He’d known getting a partner would be hard for him though. They wouldn’t just have to be okay with being gay but being with a… he believes the term is transsexual? Transgender? He doesn’t know what the correct terminology is. Hatz doesn’t even think Bam knows or cares.

But then, Bam probably had been holding out for the disappointment. Even before coming out, his brother had avoided most of people interested in dating him because they were strange, in his words, and wanted things he’d never give them.

Looking over at this… Khun, there are so many of them, what is special about this one? He read the file for him, just an ordinary person in the field of psychology, of all the subjects, at the hospital where people regularly are treated after run-ins with FUG or Wolhaiksong. They claim with these departments, that the mind can be repaired similarly to the body, only using different techniques. It sounded ludicrous to him but then, other marvels had been magical before.

Still, Khun Aguero Agnis, widower, child of six years who had been ill for the past year and change, now healthy and accepted into the Institute Bam had wanted him to join but couldn’t afford. Plus they had an obsession with traditional family values.

Hah.

Right now he’s going through the groceries (a chicken pasta dish with roasted broccolini, nothing Bam would struggle with and not that squid ink seafood pasta Endorsi liked that was absurdly expensive to make, and a plain pound cake with that lemon… thing Bam liked to pour on) and rummaging through the cabinets. He pulls out a wooden cutting board, all under the eyes of the supposed spouse.

Hatz risks glancing through the room. Bam still isn’t back yet, he’s probably busy putting on pajamas or bracing himself for the inevitable.

Then he looks at Khun once more. “My brother tells me everything.” He avoids the hostility, the anger, the deliberate test on the word brother. There are three possible options: this Khun knows and has helped him through it, which is unlikely because of the reputation of people like him, he thinks of his brother as a freak or a trophy or a fetish, or he didn’t know and Hatz telling him would spell the end. “He didn’t tell me about you. Did you ask for that secrecy?”

To the man’s credit, Khun only smirks. He probably thinks it’s a smile, the way all arrogant well-to-do people do. “I did,” he says. His voice is sheepish, painfully ordinary. Unlike a Khun at all. Maybe a disowned or bastard Khun, but unlikely, if he affords this lifestyle on his own so close to wartime. Psychology wasn’t exactly well-liked. “My daughter was ill and she’s still bearing the effects now.”

Said daughter is peering around the counter, brown eyes light with curiosity. They look right at him, like they’re going into his soul or something. Maybe children are ending up like that nowadays, who knows.

“She does look rather small for her age.” He can acknowledge that. He sets the vegetables out and the chicken. “Will Bam let you use the stove?”

“I’d rather he didn’t,” Khun admits without hesitation. “Boiled food and water is my limit.”

Hatz has a good sense of liars. He’s had to in the military, in order to work under a princess especially. This person is lying, but he doesn’t know where the lie unravels. Fucking Khuns.

The little one gasps suddenly, but when both the adults turn to look at her, she’s turrned away coloring. Cute.

“Fair enough,” Hatz says instead of suggesting that. “You chop, I can start the water.”

“Your brother said not to touch the stove.” Khun’s expression turns sly. “I get the feeling we should listen to him, for our own safety.”

Hatz doesn’t bristle. No, he refuses to give into this childish man. “Then I’ll chop.”

“Watch instead,” Khun says in what he thinks is a cajoling tone. “Bam’s not said too much about you aside from your grades and hobbies and that you have a government internship. Did I get that right?”

Hatz makes a face. He knows Bam said more than that. Bam once bragged to Endorsi while he was right next to him. Hilarious but so embarrassing. Bam would freely talk a person’s ear off about his family if he could, not to mention that Bam wanted him to see to his own future “before I’m old and gray”. It was half-joke, half “do it for both of us”.

Hah. Fuck this city.

Hmph. No wonder he hadn’t mentioned marriage for a year. Hatz swallows the annoyance and says, “That’s a good amount of information.”

Hatz promptly wipes the thought from his mind.

“What’s your focus?” Khun says instead of responding to that, which… fair enough. He’ll behave a little, there’s a child in here.

Said child continues to stare at him. Why?

“Finance law,” he says with a low, worn sigh. Khun keeps washing the vegetables, listening intently. “It’s uncommon, but I intend to go into policy and educational reform. There are too many private schools and the public school budgets are often handled poorly. They were at my school, and it was a private one. I can’t imagine how it is in public ones. The government internship was a lucky accident.”

“That’s what happens when you study, as I recall.”

Hatz hmphs “Something like that.”

Bam comes out as Khun finishes chopping the vegetables. He’s dressed in his comfiest sweater and pants, the kind he wears, Hatz knows, when he had been upright for too long. Even before discussing… gender with him (and boy had that been a sit down conversation), Bam had preferred pants as loungewear. Not that they usually had guests, but that was besides the point. He goes to check on Khun first. “Remember to flip the board,” he says, leaning just over Khun’s shoulder.

Khun doesn’t react at all to that, but puts the knife down and nods. “Thank you. I can keep going if you want some time with you brother.”

“I can cook and we can talk,” Bam replies with the familiar no-nonsense that he’d grown up with. Khun seems unsurprised by this as he puts the knife down and steps away, hands comically up to show his harmlessness in the situation.

Bam only laughs and swaps spots with him. His hair is tied up a hairstyle that emphasizes the sharpness of his cheekbones. It’s a good look, but most things are on him.

Khun stands back and watches. Not Bam, but Hatz himself.

Thankfully, Bam doesn’t notice or be offended by the staring. He was focused on the conversation. Which was fine. He missed his brother.

---

Dinner isn’t a quiet affair.

Not that Khun had expected it to be, even with Miseng subdued from punching a kid in the face. She didn’t even get to be proud of it. Even Khun, in both fake and real backstory, had gotten to be proud of it once or twice.

It sounds like Prince is a handful too.

But there’s time. They can work on it. He’d seen worse and weirder situations for a child to get out of.

For some reason, Miseng’s still hunghin shoulders relax a little as she babbles to Bam about… something. Her friend Verdi and her interest in dolls and stuffed animals. Bam nods along, genuinely interested.

That reminds me. “So, Hatz,” he says with a light, easy drawl. “Did Bam ever have to visit your school?”

Bam turns. He blinks at them both.Then he laughs at the look on Hatz’s face. “Oh you’re going to embarrass him I see.”

“Well,” Khun starts casually. “I can’t imagine you haven’t told him something embarrassing about me.”

HE’s sure that Bam hasn’t, actually. Bam doesn’t talk badly about any of the people he talks to, not even the princesses who are all various levels of insufferable and would deserve it. That may be because they would figure him out or because he’s just a nice person.

Bam gives Khun a look as if to say, I know what you’re doing and I don’t appreciate it, masked behind a cute (cute??? What??? Cute??? brain???) smile and a casual hand wave. “Not yet, but you are fun to watch flail about in a kitchen.”

“Gee, thanks dear.”

Bam laughs, soft but brimming with something. He should be careful, this mission can’t go on for that long. He can’t get too invested here.

Hatz clears his throat. “Well, there were times where someone insulted my family’s honor and since they couldn’t do anything about it, I stepped in.”

“Children can be petty,” Bam explains to Miseng. Miseng is nodding along “Like the boy you beat.”

“Don’t say that to her,” he groans. “She’ll get ideas.”

“She already has ideas,” Bam replies lightly. Miseng nods along, though Khun doubts she does have ideas. She’s six, the sadism is reflexive, not planned out. He’s met enough Khuns to know that himself. “We may as well be realistic about them.

Hatz snorts. “She does. I know children, much better than you, apparently.” He shoots a look at Khun, who only raises an eyebrow, nonplussed.

“Miseng is a good kid,” Khun says with a wry smile. “Maybe a bit too curious for her own good, but it’s something to encourage.”

Miseng brightens up and beams at them both. They both smile back.

Hatz clears his throat. “So yes, he did have to help me. That was more embarrassing than the fights.”

“Which you won,” Bam says smoothly and Hatz scoffs.

“Private school kids don’t know how to fight.”

This Khun does know from experience. “It must have been humiliating.”

“On all fronts. But Bam always handled it like an actual adult, unlike them.”

Bam merely sighs, face pink. “I did nothing special, relax, Hatz.”

Hatz looks pleased with himself and opens his mouth to speak. Then Miseng distracts Bam with a wave of her hand and a story and Bam turns away.

Hatz pauses, looks that over, then looks at Khun and says, “You aren’t very affectionate.”

“Most Khuns aren’t,” he says smoothly. This is definitely true. A sweet Khun is uncommon at best. “Bam hasn’t complained.”

“Mm.” Suspicion lingers in those dark eyes. “Kiss him then.”

What. “What?”

“You heard me,” Hatz says. “My brother enjoys kisses, forehead or cheek. If you were really in love, you’d know that and do it.”

What the fuck?

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