Chapter Text
“Making coffee is the only thing that I had to do.” Dojima confesses into Yu’s ear, his breath hot and heavy with their shared coffee but smelling of the alcohol that Dojima had drunk afterward. His arms trapped Yu against the kitchen sink. “And I’m the only one allowed to do it.”
His belt buckle presses against Yu’s back. The sensation of it burns - a wild thought - hyper aware in his perception.
A combination of things hit Yu at the same time, and each makes him more conscious of the metal digging into his back. Dojima noticed how good he is with Nanako, how clean the house had become, how he had taken his coffee with cream. There had been a little pause when Yu had made his request for coffee with cream. An intake of breath, before a laugh, hushed and resigned.
Dojima is rather handsome, rugged, and in need of a closer shave. His stubble presses against Yu’s neck, just over the collar of his shirt. Yu opens himself to the sensation. His head tilts away. The skin of his neck tingles from the scrape against it, sensitized and wanting more. If Yu closes his eyes, he can forget who it is standing behind him, breathing next to his face, pressing against his back.
It feels good.
Yu’s parents aren’t around much, both of them in high powered, high pressure positions. They would go overseas in the past, but it would be one parent or the other. This year was the first that his parents had both left at the same time. It left him a lot of time at home, alone, reading cook books, learning the best ways to clean and do laundry, where best to wait to see if tonight, his mom or dad would come in the door to say good night. He’d been a latch key kid since he was as young as Nanako. No wonder they got along so well.
It feels good to have someone else around. Yu is needed here. He takes care of Nanako and Dojima.
There’s a hissed intake of breath.
Oh.
Yu placed a hand on top of Dojima’s on the counter, his fingers - they look so slim and pale, like a woman’s - slotting between his. Maybe Dojima is thinking that too, because he stopped trying to move away so he can stare down at the image.
A swooping feeling overtakes Yu’s stomach. It’s like when Yosuke calls him “partner”, this fluttery fondness that trembles like a butterfly about to take wing. Belonging. Dojima presses against him again, his lips caressing the back of Yu’s neck with the nervous shiver and his tongue - warm, wet - slicing out to taste like a starved and beaten dog hesitant to take a meal offered to it.
“It was a promise made long ago.” Dojima’s voice is rough, and Yu can barely hear it with how it’s spoken into his neck. “Will you help me keep it?”
Yu takes the hand he’s captured and presses it against his stomach, over the button of his trousers. Dojima stiffens behind him. Bolder still, even Yu is amazed at his own words. “If I get all the benefits of that promise.”
There is no trapping Dojima this time when he moves away. “What?”
“Just… Think about it, okay. We are like a little family after all.”
Yu went back to washing the dishes as if nothing strange had happened. Nothing strange had happened after all. This was his household partner. They were raising a child together for the year. Nothing strange at all.
By the time Yu finished the dishes Dojima had retreated to his own room without a word.
“Geez, these shadows are just… urgh.” Yosuke’s performative shiver of disgust had the rest of them rolling their eyes. Except Teddie who, bless him, had no idea what exactly Yosuke meant.
It was perhaps fitting that the shadows that infested a bath house were all in the shape of grotesquely muscled human men. It was a parody of itself, just like Shadow Kanji - and it had to be a shadow - was a parody of Kanji’s most repressed emotions. At the same time, it grated.
“I know what you mean,” said Chie. She shook her foot, trying to force off some remnant that was left behind by a shadow on the sole of her shoe. “It’s like a bunch of bad dreams strung together.”
Yu knew himself enough to know that his flinch was fully internal.
“I found the stairs.” Anything to get them to stop talking. Yu loved his friends, he really did. They were dependable, and were all weird enough to cover up his own weirdness. Add to it they were all selfless, going to rescue someone from certain death that none of them really knew beyond hearsay.
Yosuke looked around a corner and sighed in relief. “Looks like the coast is clear of muscle men. I keep expecting them to do more than stand there, ya know what I mean?”
“Eww!” Chie pushed Yosuke into a new cloud of steam. He faked flailing around for a few steps before standing up fully with a hand on his chest.
“See, I’m a nubile youth. All these hulking older men around, been fearing for my virtue.” Yosuke pitched his voice high, his off hand flailing around limply until Chie pushed him again.
Yukiko snorted a laugh at Yosuke’s landing on the floor as he played dead from the pain of Chie not caring for his plight.
“If you stay down there, then we’ll leave you behind.” Yu warned, hiding the pinch of ice in his heart. There was not going to be a way for him to explain to them what he was thinking about starting with Dojima. Not if they were going to just laugh at it.
Not if they were going to maybe even turn on him.
They trusted him as a leader, as being the strong pillar that they could gather around and depend on. If he told them about the thin emotional ice he was stepping on to… Well, can’t be that type of strong leader if he was weak.
And… this whole thing. He wanted it. He wanted that place that he could depend on, even if the school friends broke down around him, like they always had in the past.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.”
Yosuke wrapped an arm around Yu’s shoulders, but had to pull away as a shadow came around a corner.
Yu stayed up after putting Nanako to bed. It was only right after all to Wait for Dojima to come home. There wasn’t anything pressing either with the investigation or at school. He took up his usual place at the living room table and did his homework.
The door slid open and shut quietly, but to Yu it was like a siren had gone off right next to his ear.
“I’m home.”
“Welcome home.”
Dojima started at the response before removing his shoes and hanging up his jacket with an almost exaggerated care.
Yu stayed where he was, rolling his pencil in his fingers. The notion that he was trying to attract a lost and hungry dog crossed his mind. He could be patient about this. By the time Dojima made it to his usual seat on the living room couch, Yu had switched to wiggling his pencil between two fingers fast enough that it looked like a wriggling piece of rubber.
“Did you mean it?”
Yu looked over at Dojima. He would let Dojima say it, elaborate it, process it. Still though, his stomach dropped to the lowest part of him. Having a place in this household, something solid that he could depend on, it was an illusion that felt more fragile than spider silk, and it all would hinge on if Dojima would allow it to happen. It was his house.
“What you said that night, about wanting… everything… if you helped me with that promise. Did you mean it?”
“Yes.” The illusion strengthened. A weave of spider silk instead of a single thread.
“Are you willing to prove it?”
“Of course.”
“Okay then…”
The illusion solidified.
Yu stood up and knelt between Dojima’s spread legs. His thighs were hot through his work slacks. Rather than feeling like his hands were brands on Dojima’s legs, Yu felt it was Dojima’s heat burning into his hands. The cold pit where his heart was warred with the warmth that pooled in other places.
Dojima gripped his chin, his fingers sparking bright points in Yu’s awareness. It wasn’t a tight grip. Dojima was not secure in what he was doing. That made Yu relax and press into the hold.
“Get ready for bed. Just… go to my room. I need sleep. Just sleep.” Dojima said, a shaky waver in his voice.
“That’s it?”
“For now.”
Yu let a shiver pass through him before he stood up. So, he just needed to figure out what Dojima would need for him to prove that he wanted this place in their home. Sleeping next to him was just a first step. A safe step. They could get used to each other in this way, as partners.
In addition to getting on his pajamas, Yu laid out the futon and blanket. He waited. And waited. And waited. Would Dojima come to bed?
Yu looked at the clock. Counting down the seconds strengthed the stranglehold of anxiety that grabbed him. Please. He said yes, the offer was taken. He meant everything that he said, but did Dojima really mean it? Did he really want this, want him?
The blindfold woven from that illusory spider silk loosened against eyes.
But the door opened. Dojima walked into the room, changed into his sleeping clothes, and slid under the blanket. There was a careful distance between them. That would not do. Yu shifted and reached around, taking one of Dojima’s hands and brought it to wrap around his waist. Innocent. Comforting.
Belonging.
The illusion tightened again, setting comfortably about both of them.
They belonged together. Yu could believe that. He would make himself believe that. If he believed in it and made it true, then Dojima could too. They would erase their mutual loneliness. They would make sure that they were happy, that Nanako would have all the support and parental care that she needed.
Yu had spent the first month and a half here sleeping cold. With Dojima at his back, holding him close as a lover, he was finally falling asleep warm.