lay down, you're slow

by Havenesc

Summary:

“This happens when you can’t sleep?”
Yuta laughs without a note of humor. “I usually can’t sleep.”

or. the one where inumaki curbs the insomnia.

Notes:

hi inuokkos. i'm a new addition to the jjk fandom and rusty at writing. i also am playing pretty loose with timeline/canon material so that's why i didn't tag it canon-compliant, but it's not a wild divergence.

just a heads up, there's a slightly graphic (violence) nightmare, and yuta has a panic attack.

Chapter 1: chapter 1

Yuta doesn’t get much sleep. It’s not for lack of trying; he knows that much.

Back when Rika lay dormant at night, undisturbed by the relentless tormenting Yuta received from his peers, the nerves still lingered. He would close his eyes, bury his head in his pillow, flip over, throw one leg out, shuffle two feet sideways, and tuck his leg back under the covers when the uneven level of chill versus heat woke him up even more. 

Most nights, he just tried not to think about the mortifying prospect of what life would have in store for him when his best friend’s soul would never rest again. Permanently tethered, always aggressively protective. It sometimes took days to actually succumb to dreamless exhaustion.

Now, it’s --

It’s something, is what it is. No less intense than what it was a year ago, when the real Rika still loomed over his shoulder and waited for a chance to show off her hostility, but for different reasons. For six years it was a rampant haunting, never alone, always lonely. Now he’s all alone, really alone, when he has people waiting for him to come back safe. He was back to special grade status. Back to going on missions that reflected that status. 

They took weeks, at minimum. He was gone so much that some days he barely had a chance to see any of his fellow classmates before Gojo-sensei was delivering him information in manila envelopes with an all-too-cheery smile and stuffing a plane ticket in his hand.

Yuta takes photos for his friends and texts them, trying to be mindful of the time zone changes now that he’s overseas, and they text back with equal enthusiasm. They tell him when Gojo-sensei is irritating them, when their missions are successful, and how much they miss him and can’t wait for him to be home. 

Nothing ever really feels better than the real thing.

Do they miss him when he goes on trips? Do they think about him as much as he thinks about them? Maybe. They all have their own jobs to go on, after all. Home is a place in Tokyo’s foothills; home is a fierce girl with an affinity for beating him up on the training field, a mediating panda who watches on the sidelines, and a quiet boy who murmurs onigiri ingredients while he offers Yuta a hand back up. 

Yuta is homesick for all of them, gut-wrenchingly so in the early hours of the morning sometimes. He hasn’t been home in so long. 

Until now. 

Jujutsu High campus is one of his favorites for a multitude of reasons, one of them being the atmosphere. Yuta’s head is rife with anxiety and what-ifs on it’s own; the crowds of Tokyo do him more harm than good some days. Here, in the quiet rustling of the trees and the swallowtails flitting about, he feels most at peace. His bedroom smells like him, even if a bit stale with lack of use and a thin layer of dust coating the furniture, but all the belongings and reminders of home are now tangible. When he sits back on his bed and rests his eyes for a moment, not even the buzz of nervous energy can stop the tension from bleeding out of his shoulders. 

It’s a breath of fresh air after stepping off the tarmac well into evening hours and having to be picked up by an overly-energetic teacher. Yuta’s used to tuning him out well enough when he finds himself over threshold, but really, the killer of it will probably be the jet lag. It’s late afternoon in Paris, but he was up early in the morning to make the thirteen-hour flight back, and it's already morning.

His brain is not his friend right now. But it’s fine.

That’s what his actual friends are for anyhow. 

“Maki. Maki, ” Panda’s deep, chiding voice echoes down the hall before the sound of feet slapping on the wooden floorboards follow suit. “He came in late last night, let him sleep.”

“He can sleep plenty later,” Maki’s voice grouses back, far too loud in the quiet serenity of the Jujutsu dorms, “--And don’t only yell at me when Toge’s here too!”

“Shake.”

The footsteps and bickering grow louder in equal measure until the door to Yuta’s room wrenches open. Maki darts in first, Inumaki close behind and borderline tripping his classmate in his equal haste. Yuta looks up from where he sits on the edge of his made bed, balancing a book on a pulled-up knee, and smiles.

“ Salut.”

The way both of his classmates’ eyebrows raise, they weren’t actually expecting him to be awake, much less functional. He can see it now: an unceremonious dogpile, surprise attack sorcerer style. Yuta can’t say he wouldn’t welcome it even if it came now, sans surprise.

Maki isn’t one to fold, though. She recovers quicker than Inumaki and scoffs, grinning. “Figures you would know better than to think we’d baby you today.”

“Never.” Yuta smiles back and tries not to feel the pull of each muscle behind his eyes as he does. He hasn’t felt the adrenaline of an exhaustion state in a long time, tempered by years of built-up tolerance.

Panda squeezes through the door shortly after, and then it’s a cacophony of sound. Most of it is information Yuta already knows, gleaned through grainy phone calls and frequent messaging over the last three months, but it’s completely different in person. Panda’s ears wiggle up and down when he talks about how his technique is getting stronger; Maki’s smile reaches her eyes when she’s boasting about the last errand Gojo-sensei had dumped-and-run on them. Yuta laughs, hard, when Inumaki poses ridiculously, and even harder when Maki threatens to beat him up while retelling the time he swapped their takoyaki. 

“Tsunamayo,” Inumaki says, to gain Yuta’s attention. He’s taken the spot to his right on the bed and turns to face him head-on so he can sign. " I want to see pictures."

At least twice a week, Yuta would get up at five in the morning to answer a video call from Inumaki to practice sign language. He would sit in his temporary boarding room, in low light save for the lamp next to him, and do his best to converse back and forth without talking at all. It was clumsy, and he was slow, but the sense of his accomplishment at being able to communicate better overshadowed any embarrassment of learning something new. 

“Oh, yeah,” Maki says, taking a seat on Yuta’s other side. “Show us your Eiffel Tower photos."

They don’t lament about how he gets to go to cool places. He’s thankful. The misery of it all is enough without being compounded by the guilt of ungratefulness.

Yuta shows them all the photos. When they lean in, shoulder-to-shoulder and pressing in on him, he shifts his weight and leans back into them. 

 

---

 

Maki’s practice staff cuts so strongly through the air where Yuta’s head just was that it whistles. 

“You’re slow,” She says, intending to land a blow with her elbow while Yuta ducks down, but he darts to the side and takes a swing at her hip. It doesn’t connect, not quite, but it chips at the fabric of her athletic shorts. Close enough.

Maki sends him on the defense again, trying to arc around his still-willowy frame, but he moves light on his feet to match her and parries a set of blows that would have sent him sprawling a few months ago. Now, he only digs his heel into the grass with a grunt and plunges, face set with determination as he forces her off the balls of her feet.

Sparring like this always sets Yuta’s blood running. Maki never held back, never pulled her punches; it was all or nothing, just like her.  Even in the early days, when Yuta barely remembered the best way to hold his practice sword, she still sent him packing with a sore body and bruised pride. He appreciates her for it. It’s saved him in more ways than one.

Maki lets his swipe set her off balance and arches her back to catch herself, channeling the momentum into a backspring as Yuta advances forward, mindful of her range. He takes another swing and it catches her ankle, rapt and strong enough that he can hear Maki suck air through her teeth at the contact. 

They break apart and put a healthy bit of distance between them, each one watching, waiting for a breakthrough. Yuta is stronger than he was when he was riddled with outward insecurity and gangly awkwardness, but Maki’s stronger too. More refined. Deadly.

Maki takes a soft step on the ankle he hit and Yuta startles, just for a second.

“Oh! Maki, did I--”

She rushes him, bringing forward her staff in a strong arc, but he knows better. She’s not going to stop just because she’s hurt -- if she’s hurt -- and he’s wisened up to falling victim to his own worrisome attitude in combat. Maki would use it against him if it were reversed, merciless and willing to make him fight through it, and the least he can do is the same. Fight like it’s real, she used to remind him. Shake it all off and just keep going. You’ll die if you don’t. 

Yuta steps aside as the staff comes down, feeling a sense of calm wash over him, and waits for the last chance to strike.

“Not slow enough, apparently,” Panda helpfully supplies from his perch on the stairs. His even tone is punctuated by the sound of Maki’s back hitting the grass a second later, Yuta towering over her. 

“Okaka,” Inumaki pitches in. 

The two of them take a moment to catch their breath. It’s a cool morning in the yard, but Yuta can still feel the sweat in the small of his back start to make his shirt stick to him. Maki stares up at him, mouth set in a hard frown, looking like she’s swallowed one of Fushiguro’s toads. 

Yuta can’t lie. It feels good. 

It isn’t the first time he’s beaten her, but he can still count the tally on one hand if he tried to scrounge for the points. Maki is still the best out of all of them, bar none. It pushes them to be better, chase after her, and culls the competition in close quarters. Once upon a time it would be hours upon hours of landing on his ass, begging let’s go again, one more time, over and over until she got bored of laying him out the same way five times in a row. 

He takes his practice sword away from her throat and offers her a hand, which is begrudgingly accepted. “Alright, alright,” Maki grouses, not particularly willing to admit defeat, but she still half-punches, half-ruffles Yuta’s hair all the same. “I’ll let you be lucky this once. As a welcome-home gift.”

Yuta laughs under the weight of her arm and slings his around her waist in a brief hug, which is allowed for two-point-five seconds max before Maki shoves him off. “Now go get a shower before we go to the station. You smell.”

“Huh? No class today?”

“Nah. That guy gave us a three day weekend. He’s fixing to be off on his own assignment and knew we wanted to spend some time with you.”

As Inumaki and Panda approach, she juts an accusatory finger at Inumaki. “And you! I’m not getting on the train until you shower, either. You’re the worst of all.”

“Sujiko.” The tone change is subtle, but Yuta knows Inumaki’s being fake-scandalized as he points at himself and quickly starts signing. “ You made me spar with Panda. That’s your fault.” 

“I already bathed, thank you,” Panda sniffs, batting his big bear paw at Inumaki’s head. Inumaki batts back at him. It grows into a full blown slap-fight with alarming speed.

Maki quickly cuffs them both upside the head. “ I said get going! ”

---

Hours later and deep in the heart of Shibuya, the trio of second-years wait for their turn at the register. Maki jostles the new armbands in her hand, and though Yuta needs no explanation by now, she gives it anyway.

“It’s so rare to find new designs in these little shops nowadays,” She says, peering at the shelves of tourist-trap-y gaudiness. “Panda has so many of them already.”

“Tsuna,” Inumaki mumbles beneath his street mask. “ I always feel bad when he can’t go. ”

“What? Don’t. He doesn’t wanna come anyways; Shibuya’s too crowded.” The teller calls them next and the group steps forward to be rung out. Maki crosses her arms once they’re freed up. “Besides, I always bring stuff back for him, don’t I?”

Inumaki shrugs. “ Fair point. ”

Yuta stands behind them, quietly watching the exchange with fondness. It feels good to absorb their mundane conversations. After months of only talking about things deemed above a certain level of relevance (and, of course, Inumaki’s memes) through text messages, it was a treat to simply hear about the upcoming weather forecast, or homework problems, or how Maki keeps swearing that the dryer keeps stealing her socks. It was all so trivial, a treasure in the everyday moments, and Yuta is content to keep listening.

Sort of listen. 

He’s been awake for — how many hours? First he was up early, and then the flight was almost fourteen hours, he got back late, and it’s… early afternoon now. They just finished up at the diner and trained that morning. He has a few hours to go. Or is it later? The jet lag is throwing him way, way off. It’s starting to make his head hurt. He feels like floating.

Fingers snapping within an inch of his eyes. He jumps. 

Oh. They’re outside.

“Oi, Yuta,” Maki says, peering down at him over the frames of her glasses. “I just saw your eyes come into focus now. You with us?”

Inumaki is hovering close, eyebrows lifted in concern. Yuta smiles and itches at the nape of his neck, embarrassed. “Yeah. Sorry. Got lost in my head a little. I’m fine.”

He means to dissipate their concerns, but Inumaki’s worry only grows. His hands start fast, but then with deliberateness slow down so Yuta can read. “ We can go home if you’re tired. It’s been a long day for you. ”

“Oh, no,” Yuta quickly tries to backpedal, willing himself to scrape the barrel of both social and physical energy in an attempt to revert back to the initial Yuta who was extra gung-ho about spending a day with his friends. “I want to hang out with you guys. I haven’t seen you in months. It’s fine.”

I don’t know when I’ll get chances like this again. It’s okay, really, he means to say. His brain doesn’t go that route, of course. Nothing could ever be so simple. 

“We’re basically done, anyhow,” Maki says, frowning. “The trains are going to be bad if we don’t get going now.”

“But—“

“Besides, no offense, but you look like shit. Let’s get you home so you can rest. One hour won’t make a difference.”

Inumaki doesn’t even argue that she’s being too harsh. Softness was never Maki’s strong suit. 

Yuta’s resolve folds like a lawn chair. He feels guilty, but she’s right. The foot traffic has already picked up considerably, and he already feels like a paper doll. 

Inumaki falls into step beside him, close enough to brush their shoulders when their footfalls align with each other. It’s like the slow tick of a metronome; each touch pulls Yuta’s consciousness back down to his body before it can leave, grounding him enough to function. The repetitive motion helps. It also makes the hairs on the back of Yuta’s neck stand up. 

Maki has good instinct; the station is packed. Students and salarymen alike mill about as they transition platforms, wait in line, and loiter before they go home. Yuta feels his social barrel crack at the bottom just looking at it.

“Ikura,” Inumaki murmurs. He must have noticed. He always seems to notice. Inumaki is perceptive in a way that only he can be, quiet and watchful over Yuta from day one. Seems like even distance hasn’t dulled his observant nature. 

Yuta’s hands are stuffed in his pockets, but Inumaki sidles up next to him and worms his hand in through the bend of Yuta’s elbow, looping them together. With his free hand, he signs, “ Just a little longer."

“I know. It’s okay.” 

“ Like your hair.” Inumaki reaches up and pulls gently at one of the strands that frames Yuta’s face, and it earns him a laugh for his trouble. 

“You two are cute when you flirt,” Maki deadpans, bags rustling as she crosses her arms. Inumaki jolts, finding something particularly interesting about the Yuta’s shoelaces. 

Yuta looks down, too, but doesn’t see the appeal. 

“But he’s not wrong. Longer hair suits you.”

“You think so?” Yuta asks, half-absent as their train rolls into the station. He supposes it is longer -- he stopped trying to keep up with it after his second mission abroad. It is heavy enough now that it falls in sections on either side of his face, rather than a greasy mess of over-fussing through anxiety-riddled behavior. 

The crowds start to move, and so do they. Inumaki still hangs off his arm, but pointedly looks anywhere but Yuta as they pile in. Maki rolls her eyes. 

“I know so.”

---

 

The train ride is uneventful, if crammed. By the time they make the walk from the station to their pick-up point, and from the car ride to the base of the faux-temple entrance, Yuta’s fatigue makes him lean into Inumaki’s side ever so slightly. 

Inumaki neither removes his arm from where it’s looped with Yuta’s nor says a word, onigiri ingredient or otherwise, when Yuta finally disengages himself from his side at his own door and stumbles clumsily into his room. His bed has never felt so nice.

Closing his eyes is never the hard part. Feeling the weight of his body decompress as it settles into the mattress isn’t the hard part. The bone-deep fatigue sits in between his shoulder blades, behind his eyes, makes his head hurt and his mind blur, isn’t even the hard part. But it doesn’t let go.

It’s not that his brain wakes up, per se. It’s already worn down from everything today — from the organized chaos of flying, to getting in late, to seeing his friends and sparring and spending a long lunch catching up in Shibuya. It’s worn out from working on a six week job, trying to exercise one of the only international special grades on the register. 

Now, though, his brain charts the information. Reviews it. Turns it over, like an overly studious pupil just begging for one more hour, and proceeds to replay moments back to him, a little distorted by hindsight perspective. 

Could have said this. Should have said that. Next time, go left, not right. Should have out-moved Maki two steps sooner, or let her beat you. She hasn’t seen you in so long. It’s probably rude, right? Maybe she hates you now and that’s why she tried to embarrass you in the station.

You two are cute when you flirt. Yuta hadn’t had the brain process to soak in the implications of it back then, but now there’s nothing to do but turn it over. Was that flirting? Really? Was he just stupid? Was she teasing? 

She must be. Yuta didn't think it was abnormal. Inumaki was kind. He seemed to know, even if he didn't always understand, that Yuta's brain was a little off-center, and tried to accommodate for him accordingly. Yuta would have made it through the station... fine, sure, probably. But Inumaki just knew. He knew Yuta was over his limit, and gave him a lifeline. It's not unlike the times when Yuta would call him just to hang out so he would be mired in his own homesickness.

Those video calls are the thing that regularly keeps Yuta sane during long missions away from home. The view of Inumaki trying to find a good way to level out his laptop with increasingly ridiculous measures simultaneously calms Yuta’s body and sets his heart beating a little harder than before. 

Like now, his brain has turned those moments over, latched on too long to the way Inumaki’s hands turn and fold when he’s signing over tinny cell reception. In those early hours of the morning while he tosses and turns in a foreign place, frustrated, he thinks about how the faster he can get rid of the curse, the faster he can count down the days until that grainy video turns into the real thing. 

Inumaki seemed embarrassed by Maki’s statement, though. Urgh. Yuta’s brain unhelpfully supplies the way that Inumaki seemed to retract even when he was so close, like a turtle abruptly rescinding into its shell. He hadn’t let go, at least. There was that. The warmth of their touch even through their long sleeves was still tangible. But he didn’t say much on the way back, even by Inumaki’s standards. 

Yuta wondered if, perhaps, Maki hit the nail on the head. Maybe the fact that Yuta let it go without a second glance hurt his feelings. Maybe Inumaki hates him now, too. 

Shut up, he says to his mind, sternly, because he has enough self-awareness and confidence now to weed out the intrusive thoughts from how things really are. But like a small campfire, the shadows only retreat so far. They buzz at the edge of his own self-scolding, never gone, but for now at bay. 

And still too loud to rest. 

But what if you’re wrong?

Yuta cracks open his eyes, agitated, and stares at the setting shadows on the wall until his vision blurs. 

 

---

 

 

He has to get up at some point. 

It’s been hours, and it’s late. Yuta has changed his laying position more times than he wants to count, has tried to will himself to be entranced by the sound of crickets swelling and dying as dusk comes and goes. At some point he got up long enough to change out of his streetwear and into sleep shorts and a ratty t-shirt. Enough is enough. He knows when to admit defeat.

As a general rule when he goes to bed, he pointedly does not look at any kind of screen at least thirty minutes before he tries to grasp the elusive bastard that is any kind of actual REM sleep. When Yuta sits up, sullen and bleary-eyed in the darkness of his room, the first thing he grabs is his phone. The clock reads 02:04 AM. No notifications.

“...Huh,” Yuta says. 

Because he has known his friends long enough to know that they would at least put something in the group chat. It’s posted in at least once a day, even when they’re all busy. A cat photo, a meme, the occasional roast of whoever fell at the hands of Inumaki's prank that day -- it’s always something. Similarly, they know how he puts his phone on silent when he wants to. It stops them absolutely zero.

But there’s no chatter at all. Suspicious, Yuta swipes up on a photo of them and taps in his passcode. 

There’s nothing. No contact information, no messages, nothing. Not even from Satoru, or Megumi. Yuta stares at the screen and swipes down, watching the little circle blip up and then disappear. No new messages. Again. Again. 

Wrestling the sudden surge of anxiety that lights him on fire, Yuta deliberately does not launch out of bed and race for the door. He rises and shuffles, trying to counteract his brain by thinking about how much it would suck to open the door to the unknown (his room) altogether, but in the end he can feel his pulse start to pick up speed with each passing second like a dog giving chase to a hare. 

The hinges are loud as Yuta turns the handle and pulls back the door, swinging with unnecessary noise, and it makes him wince. Was it always that bad? Has he really been gone from the dorms that long? 

The hall is silent as he peers out into the dim light, squinting for any sign of life. When he finds none, he heads for the common area. Surely there would be evidence -- Panda’s shedding, a water cup, dishes in the sink -- to indicate that his friends had left him alone to sleep. 

A piece of fuzz sits in the hall as he starts to round the corner. 

No. Not quite. Stuffing, more specifically. Yuta has gotten pretty good at helping stitch Panda up in the hard-to-reach spots the bear can’t mend himself. He knows the difference between a dust bunny and Panda’s cotton fibers. 

There’s more. Yuta’s gaze drifts down to the end of the hall where the common room should be, watching the small tufts of stuffing grow into larger clumps and sizes as it leads, instead, to a slightly ajar door. His blood curdles in his veins. 

Somewhere, in the far recesses of his mind, he knows what he’s going to find on the other side of the door. It’s like the times when his father would get angry at him and not speak. The tension is tangible in the air, suffocating as he waits for the other shoe to drop. He knows. He knows, and it terrifies him, but not as badly as the way his mind seems to disconnect from the control over his own body. It lurches forwards without him, toeing around the white, fuzzy remains. 

The smell of copper hits him softly as he drifts closer, acrid and sweet and absolutely driving his pulse insane with terror. No. No, he doesn’t want to see it. Yuta trembles, hand shaking, as he turns the handle. His own breath is loud in his ears. 

A bedside lamp illuminates the scene, knocked over and scattered across the floor in the struggle. Maki is on the floor, face-down. She’s injured. She’s not moving. Blood stains the floor, seeping into the cracks in the wood, tinting the room a deep dark red. There’s spatters on the wall.

Rika towers over the bed in the corner, lit by the glow of the lamp, wide eye open, staring him down.

She’s holding Inumaki in one wide, razor-sharp hand by the neck. His feet drag uselessly across the sheets; he’s alive, clutching at the claws holding him in place, only visible from the bottom of his eyes upward. 

Rika’s shadow dwarfs the both of them.

“Rika,” Yuta hears himself murmur, stricken, “Put him down.” 

She stares. Inumaki kicks out a leg, trying to get some kind of purchase, but she holds him firmly. Yuta takes one step forward, then another.

“Please. Rika. I need you to put him down.” 

He takes one more step and freezes when Rika growls at him, watches as the muscles in her hand constrict when her grip tightens. Yuta puts his hands up in a last-ditch effort to placate her. 

“You’re hurting Toge,” Yuta pleads, voice eerily calm despite the overwhelming surge of panic. The more passionate he gets, the worse she reacts. That much he knows. “Don’t hurt him. He’s my friend. Toge’s our friend. Please, just let him go. Okay?”

For a moment, she tilts her head, like a dog hearing an unfamiliar noise. Her one eye blinks, slow. The air is full of the smell of fear and blood alike; it drowns Yuta’s senses, sets his instincts ablaze. But she looks like she’s listening. She’s processing his request. 

Yuta counts backwards ten seconds before asking one last time. Inumaki’s lilac eyes stare down at him, unblinking, wide with both fear and probably anger and a lot of other things that Yuta can spend the rest of forever feeling guilt for. 

“ Yuuuu…ta… ” Rika murmurs, hazy through the distortion. She begins to lower Inumaki, slowly. 

And then she snaps his neck. 

 

---

 

A strong grip is the only thing that keeps him from pitching completely off the bed when Yuta surges upright, gasping loud and shaking so hard he feels like a leaf in a hurricane. 

God, this is --

“Don’t, don’t, ” Yuta sputters, trying to break free of the hands that hold him as he panics. Rika will be here any second, hissing, clambering through the walls to pin the blame on something, anything, causing him turmoil. She will lunge and close her talons around the first thing she sees, and then—-

“Get away! She’ll hurt you, don’t—“

“Ikura, ikura,” A gentle voice soothes in his ear, and it’s both the one he wants and the one he doesn’t because there are tears in his eyes and the panic of guilt overwhelming him. Inumaki’s hands clutch at the collar of Yuta’s shirt, rooting him to the spot on his mattress. It’s terrifying.

They sit in stillness, frozen in terror, the sound of Yuta’s hyperventiling rebounding off the walls in the late night quiet. The walls don’t move. Inumaki watches him, wide-eyed and tense, as if waiting for the same thing. He doesn’t let go.

Rika’s gone, Yuta’s brain reminds him, gentle in the words of Shoko. You know that. She’s gone. 

When Yuta folds over his knees, scraping his hands into his hair and pressing his forehead into the mattress, Inumaki lets him. 

“I’m sorry,” Yuta gasps. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m--”

“ Okaka, ” Inumaki says firmly over him, close enough that the warmth of his breath fans over the back of Yuta’s neck. He releases his hold on Yuta’s collar and moves in favor of placing his forearms over Yuta’s shoulders, applying pressure there. “Yuta, okaka.”

The shock of his name under any other circumstance would put him dead in his tracks, but all it does is stop the slurred mantra of apologies. Yuta pulls at his hair, hard enough for the sensation to burn, but Inumaki keeps pressing down.

He hasn’t had a night terror in so long.  

They couldn’t touch him for a long time. Back when Jujustu High was new to Yuta, a blank, miserable slate, and he was still reeling from Rika’s newest displays of violence and aggression, he sometimes woke up gasping and retching. Rika’s cursed energy was like the sound of a klaxon to the entire dorm hall — jarring, angry, enough to even bring Gojo to the threshold of his door in preamble for intervention. 

Leave him alone, Gojo warned the first years jovially, who warily peeked from behind their sensei’s tall form. Rika’s warning growl overshadowed Yuta’s shivering, pathetic form. I doubt even I can save you from the Queen of Curses if she thinks you’re responsible.

Inumaki says nothing in regards to the way Yuta’s sobs come out muffled, his head buried in the duvet he had thrashed out of in his sleep. Says nothing as the shoulders he leans on jerk and rattle with each gulping breath as Yuta tries to break free of the lingering fear and sheer relief that it was just a dream, a dream, a dream, only a dream. 

The real Inumaki is here, alive, unharmed, probably wondering what happened to make Yuta lose his mind.

Even on nights where his insomnia relents, he usually can fall asleep into a dreamless escape. Rika’s soul had been released. She was no longer bound to him by his own grief, cursed beyond recognition, and he had truly made his peace with her passing months ago. 

But those months couldn’t overshadow the six years of confusion, misery, terror. The estrangement of his family, living life in near solitude, waiting for the day Rika somehow turned on him for not saving her from the oncoming car in time. 

“Konbu,” Inumaki murmurs, sounding clearer than when he has a face cover. Yuta slowly, slowly, begins to release the clenched grip on his own head, loosening with every passing exhale. It startles him when Inumaki pokes him, not unkindly, where his cowlick parts the wave of his hair, and lets up off his shoulders to give him some space. The initial panic has passed. 

Now he’s mortified.

Maybe if he just sits there, curled over himself with his head buried between his knees and hands in his hair like a child throwing a tantrum, the room will swallow him whole. Maybe the whole world will. No — that would be rude. Inumaki is owed an apology, at least, for possibly waking him up with things that have nothing to do with him, and even more so for disturbing an otherwise peaceful night. 

Rika’s big wide eye, unblinking and angry, staring at him flashes in his brain.

“I’m sorry, Inumaki!” Yuta finally blurts, bolting upright. Inumaki sits back, eyes wide. “I’m sorry — I must have fallen asleep, and I guess I was so startled I just—“

Just what? Tried to rocket launch himself off his bed in full panic, tears brimming over? Yeah. That will pair well with his story. 

I can depend on my friends, A small mantra in the back of his mind reminds him. He can. He should.

Inumaki watches his face, concern etched into every single part of him even as the surprise ebbs away and Yuta stops trying to pretend he’s fine. Slowly, Inumaki moves his hands. “ I was already awake, if you’re worried about that. It’s fine. ”

“...A little,” Yuta admits after a beat, shame crawling up the back of his neck. He scrubs his eyes. “It was just a bad dream.”

Inumaki curls his eyebrow up and presses the back of his hand against his own cheek, and before Yuta can ask what he’s doing, does the same to Yuta’s forehead. It’s brief, only for a few seconds, but those seconds are eighty-four million years long and Yuta forgets how to breathe once he freezes up. It’s gone just as fast. 

“Okaka,” Inumaki says. “ No fever. ”

And then he’s up, motioning for Yuta to follow. “ I was going to the kitchen for tea.” 

Yuta watches him pad across the room, clad in a soft t-shirt and sleep shorts. If he seemed unnerved by Yuta’s episode, it didn’t show — just the same soft glance back over his shoulder, waiting for Yuta to catch up and come on the late-night adventure. Here, in the flesh, alive and strong and not beneath Rika’s fingertips or the low-res feedback of a cheap laptop camera.

It’s okay. He’s home.

The walk to the kitchen is short and quiet. Yuta fights with the remaining dredges of anxiety and the silence around them, trying to rebrand it in his mind as calm, not oppressive. It’s familiar. It’s okay, he’s okay. He doesn’t have to think twice about walking shoulder-to-shoulder with Inumaki, doesn’t have to think about avoiding certain boards he knows will creak underneath his weight. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. 

Inumaki directs him to sit and watch while he heats the water and readies the mugs for steeping, quick with practice. Yuta watches him open a cabinet and, after staring at the different options of tea, pluck two different packets from their own brightly-colored bulk packaging. 

The clock on the wall reads just a little before midnight. Not terrible, both for the boy who careened into bed around five in the afternoon and for the one who has apparently yet to sleep at all. If Gojo really was out on an errand for the next few days, it wouldn’t do any harm. 

And Inumaki was a calming presence. Yuta didn’t have to talk if he didn’t want to, didn’t have to endure any air of expectation. They texted as often as they could while Yuta went overseas, but even if it was hours (or, in some difficult circumstances, days) before Yuta responded, Inumaki never held it against him. 

Even now, resting against the counter, Inumaki didn’t prod or poke him for a response while the water came to a boil. They sat in companionable silence, unaffected by the dull thrum of Yuta’s nervous energy sitting like a live wire, until Inumaki could turn the heat off and pour water into their respective mugs. 

“...What made you get up for tea?” Yuta asks tentatively as Inumaki sets down the mug in front of him. The smell of chamomile hits him almost instantly. His favorite. Inumaki remembered that?

“Konbu,” Inumaki replies, tapping his index finger lightly against his throat.

Ah. Yuta remembers. Even when his classmates haven’t been dispatched onto missions, Inumaki’s cursed technique makes him more susceptible to any kind of irritants. They were in Shibuya for a while in cough season, after all. Mountain air is different from the fog of subway trains and high-traffic city streets. 

Instead of sitting across from Yuta, he tilts his head towards the direction they came, back down the hall. “I was watching a movie. Come on.”

Yuta comes on. 

They shuffle past all the rest of the dorm rooms, past Yuta’s slightly ajar dark room, and into Inumaki’s. It’s nice -- the best way to describe it is haphazardly tidy. Whereas Yuta’s is still mostly cleared due to travel, with memorable photos of his friends thumb-tacked to a corkboard and schoolbooks neatly piled on his dust-covered desk, Inumaki’s is full of life. Books line themselves on shelves -- a good chunk of it manga -- and the walls are littered with movie posters or photos. A meticulous layering of blankets and pillows lay scattered on his bed up against the wall, primed for the ideal one-person movie-watching setup. 

The laptop screen has since gone dark since Inumaki left it in favor of hunting for the kitchen -- and subsequently the series of unfortunate events that occurred in between -- but he just climbs up onto the mattress and aggressively runs his finger back and forth on the track pad until it panics to life once again. 

He shuffles again and makes room for Yuta on the bed. He even gives the space he makes one firm pat, as if he knows that Yuta probably needs the extra invitation when his nerves are already being mean to him.

And Yuta did -- need it, that is.

Guilt had been squashed but not gone, scuttling like a shadow perpetually shackled to Yuta’s ankles. First he drags them all home from Shibuya early, and now he interrupts Inumaki’s one-man movie night because he needs the consolation. 

Depend on your friends. 

He climbs onto the bed with as much grace as he can muster while still holding a steaming mug of tea and sits, close enough but not quite touching his friend. It’s with a start that he realizes he’s still wearing his street clothes from when he first tumbled head first into bed. 

Inumaki seems to pick up on Yuta’s dawning realization and snorts, not unkindly. “ At least they’re comfortable?”

“Haha, yeah.” Yuta concedes. You know what. Whatever. He’s had a rough day. He’s not about to leave this nest of safety that Inumaki’s just offered him to go change into his actual nightmare outfit. 

Dredges of that same nightmare threaten to corrode his vision. He sips some chamomile instead. 

 

---

 

The movie is… good. Good. It’s good. “ I’ve seen it before, but it’s one of those you can always watch again, ” Inumaki signs by way of explanation. 

Yuta knows from experience that Inumaki is a talker through movies. His hands stutter-start for the first thirty minutes, as if he wants to say something and aborts the mission in favor of being a good host, but by the time Prince Ashitaka speaks with Moro he’s barely able to curb it at all. 

The move is a little too….on-the-nose for Yuta, all things considered, but he doesn’t mind. Truly. He gets to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with Inumaki, sipping calming tea and stare at his quickly commentating hands, after one more several-week international stint out of many several-week international stints. 

Inumaki, who made him that tea and certainly (probably) doesn’t hate him entirely for not debunking Maki’s flirting comment at the station. Inumaki, who held his arm to keep his mind from floating too far from his body like a helium balloon, keeping him grounded and awake in the final home stretch. T--

Yuta jumps as fingers flick him square in the forehead. The credits are rolling; the soft melody of the soundtrack warbles out of the laptop speaker. And Inumaki is staring at him expectantly. 

Oh god. 

“S-Sorry.” Yuta scrubs at his eyes with his free hand, careful not to elbow Inumaki in the jaw as he does. “Must’ve spaced out.”

Again, his brain helpfully adds. Must’ve spaced out… again. For the second time in less than the twenty-four hours they’ve seen each other. 

“Tsuna.” Inumaki shakes his hands out and signs, “ No big deal. ” A pause. “I was kind of expecting you to go back to sleep anyway. ” 

“Go back to sleep?” Yuta parrots back. Inumaki shrugs.

Going back to sleep would be nice, in theory, but…

“Nah. I’m pretty awake, actually.” Yuta rolls his shoulders. He feels relaxed, peaceful, a complete 180 degrees from where he started off two hours ago, but… not no, but hell no, would he be going back to bed. The chance of him having another dream was unlikely, but not zero, and he would rather be consumed by fatigue adrenaline tomorrow than risk it twice in one night. But..

“Unless you’re trying to go to bed, and I’m completely derailing it.” 

Inumaki doesn’t even reward him with a placating shake, just stares him down with an unimpressed look that says just how much Yuta should know better. Countless hours of text logs and video calls as evidence show that, yes, Inumaki’s ability to flip between complete night owl and functional morning person when it matters is equally as impressive as it is downright unnerving.

So, instead, Inumaki starts, stops, starts a sentence. “ Do you feel better? ”

Yuta watches his hands and can’t help the soft smile it brings him as he processes the words. 

Inumaki was a good person. Chaotic, certainly, in a very strategic sort of way, and powerful, but good. He texted Yuta reminders to eat and persistently kept to whatever scheduled time slot Yuta offered him when overseas. Even the time where, for a few days, Yuta’s brain just forgot time zones existed and yet still saw the ashy silver hair blip onto the screen when he rang, none the wiser. 

He didn’t make Yuta talk if he didn’t want to talk and always offered a hand up on the track when Maki knocked the wind out of him. One moment he’s stringing plastic wrap on the classroom door frame to catch Panda unaware and the next he’s doing damage control for a fear-seized Yuta after a dream where he died . 

Depend on your friends. 

“I..” Yuta starts, but it dies. He switches his gaze from Inumaki to the sideways edge of the bed, where their feet don’t quite meet the cliff of it. “Yeah. I do. Thank you for what you did.”

Inumaki leans against him and tilts his head just enough to rest against Yuta’s cheek. “ Always. ”

The touch is solid, grounding Yuta even when he didn’t know he was at risk of floating, and  Yuta easily leans back into Inumaki in kind. The closeness is comforting, and so are Inumaki’s words of affirmation. It’s okay. 

“Sometimes,” Yuta says, after a stretch of silence, “I get these really vivid, awful dreams.”

Inumaki shifts next to him, turning his head to watch Yuta try to fumble his way through his feelings through those long lashes. It’s clear enough that he didn’t expect an explanation, didn’t need one to justify looking out for his friend, but that alone makes Yuta want to confide in him more. It’s his choice. 

Yuta can’t really look at him, though, because it feels a little too raw to be this honest and staring back at Inumaki, so he just stares at their socks instead. “I always did. Ever since,” He pauses to swallow, “Ever since Rika died.”

“They’re not as bad now, but they still happen. Especially when I haven’t slept in a while. They usually involve her.”

Inumaki tilts his head, as if contemplating.

“It was so real. I thought I woke up, and I couldn’t find anyone, until I did.” Yuta feels the anxiety start to wake up, not to be forgotten easily, and it creeps up from his stomach. “And I just remember walking into the room, and Maki was on the floor, and you—"

Inumaki’s eyes, equal in anger and terror, staring at him over the top of her vice-like grip. Kicking at the bed for purchase, trying to find his way out of a hopeless situation. All at Yuta’s hands. 

“I asked Rika to let you go. I begged her. But.” Yuta’s voice cracks, more from fatigue than actual grief, but it makes him draw into himself. He brings his knees up and rests his elbows on them, runs his hands through his hair and grabs at the strands. But she broke you like a doll instead. “.... It felt so real. ”

Jujutsu sorcerers were never going to permanently escape the throes of death. Gojo was frank with them about that much, cheery about the whole topic of dying and execution as he usually seemed. Yuta had made his peace with the concept of death and dying the day Gojo coaxed him out of his own execution chamber, the twisted knife kicked out of reach in the corner. 

But now he had friends. Friends who stuck around, who loved him as he loved them, who didn’t always know how to handle his messy head and bouts of apathy but tried anyway. Who helped him rebuild after he didn’t even know what remained of himself without Rika’s looming presence. Friends who he could not bear to see fall, lest he condemn them to the same fate of possessive infatuation as his childhood companion. 

Gentle fingers close over the ones embedded in his hair, soft in their touch but insistent as they pry at his hand. Yuta doesn’t move, not at first, but Inumaki murmurs “ Tsunamayo ,” and proceeds to coax free Yuta’s fingers one digit at a time.

He grasps it in his own, once freed, and threads his fingers through Yuta’s. Yuta clutches at him.

He would be terrified to condemn Inumaki most of all. 

“Takana,” Inumaki says, squeezing the hand he holds two times in quick succession. It prompts Yuta to look at him, which is all he needs to sign with his free hand. It’s clumsy with just one free, but the way he’s holding Yuta’s hand makes it clear he’s not going to let up any time soon. 

“ This happens when you can’t sleep? ”

Yuta laughs without a note of humor. “I usually can’t sleep.”

Eye-roll. “ More than usual. ”

“Not always.” Yuta turns over Inumaki’s hand, taking in the feeling. It’s soft. “I think it’s just been -- everything. Being away from home so much, and the airport, and botching the first day back with you guys--”

Inumaki signs, fiercely: “ You did not -- ” He pauses, trying to parse how he can quickly supplement the word, “ Fuck up your first day back. You aren’t valuable to us only when you can go somewhere or do something. ”

“I know, Inumaki, I know,” Yuta replies miserably, unfurling and leaning back against the wall.

“But if I never did anything because I was too tired, I’d never do anything at all.

Inumaki stares. Yuta grimaces. 

The admission sucks. It does. He’s been trying, hard, to feel better. To grow around the hole that Rika left, never quite to be filled but for his body to expand around it instead. 

He wants to be stronger, both as a person and a sorcerer, for the sake of his friends. His family. He goes on missions and he doesn’t complain when it takes him away from that family. He travels the world for the greater good and doesn’t get to think about the homesickness that makes his stomach physically hurt when the group chats aren’t enough. 

It’s never going to be as bad as it was the day he stepped foot on the Tokyo grounds, hoping that the execution is quick and probably shouldn’t be painless. 

He will never be the anxiety-consumed, unsure, small version of himself again. 

But some days it feels like he could be.

“ Do you think it would work if I told you to sleep? ”

Yuta’s whole body jolts with how hard he startles, eyes flying wide open to Inumaki. His friend’s face is carefully calm. He lifts his hand again.

“ It’s a command, so maybe it will knock you out. No nightmares. ” Inumaki knocks on his temple and makes a click sound with the back of his tongue to accent it. “And if you do have bad dreams, I can wake you up the same way. I’ll keep watch.”

“But, your throat..” Yuta frets. The empty tea mugs are enough of an indication that Inumaki probably already wasn’t feeling the best. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself. It may not even work.”

Inumaki shakes his head. “Okaka.”

“It definitely won’t work if you don’t want it to. I can’t win against your level of cursed energy if you resist the command even if I tried. But,” Inumaki shrugs, “I think it wouldn’t hurt to see if it helps.”

Yuta mulls it over. Inumaki was smart; probably the sharpest out of their class, regardless of what scalding rebuttal Maki would have to say about that. He was highly respected by other sorcerers and sent out on jobs by himself for a reason. He thought quickly and acted quicker. It was what made him get away with murder on his pranks, forever undetected until the trap had already sprung into motion. Maybe it wasn’t a preconceived thought, but… Yuta trusted Inumaki. 

This just might work. Truly. 

The idea of getting some sleep, dreamless sleep, for a few hours sounded so unattainable even five minutes ago. He had already begun to doom the next off-day too. Inumaki was right; it wouldn’t hurt to try. 

“Okay,” Yuta concedes with a soft little nod. 

Inumaki tilts his head. “Don’t say ‘ Okay’ if you’re not comfortable with the idea. ”

“I’m not just saying it.” As if by way of confirmation, he squeezes Inumaki’s hand twice. “I’m tired of being tired.”

It sounded like a dumb little phrase now that he said it out loud, but it’s true. He is tired. All he ever feels like is tired. His brain never turns off, never stops running on the proverbial hamster wheel of nerves and what ifs or if i had justs. He wants to know what it feels like for a while.

Inumaki breaks free of him then, just to move the laptop up to safety on the desk at the foot of his bed, before gesturing to Yuta to turn longways onto the bed. Yuta complies, sitting crosslegged, and Inumaki resettles across from him so close their knees brush. 

“ We’ll try it, ” Inumaki signs, and then just points down, “ Here. ” When Yuta’s face turns puzzled, he explains: “ Nightmare prevention.”

“But where will you sleep?” Yuta asks, feeling the sudden gnaw of incredible overstepping on his behalf. He couldn’t just take Inumaki's bed — he still needed to sleep, too. Inumaki shouldn’t just be on stupid-dream-watch all night. Maki understood Yuta’s fatigue as a phenomenon that couldn’t be easily curbed. She’d ream Inumaki for being irresponsible for his.

Inumaki snorts, looking bewildered, and shakes his head. “Ikura.”

“Are you sure? I don’t w—“

“Yuta, shake. ” 

“ Inumaki, shake,” Yuta retorts. “You can— I can take the floor or see if there’s a futon. Or, I can just go back to my room. You need your--”

“Sleep.”

The cursed energy reverberates against the walls, disturbing nothing but Yuta as he sucks in a breath.

It feels like the same way an anesthetic takes hold: slowly, barely there to drip into his bones, and then floods him all at once. 

The physical response is immediate. It pries any resistance from his body, filling the empty space there with a heaviness that is hard to carry. The strength goes out of him, eyelids shuttering.

He can feel himself slump to his side, feels the heavy pull of Inumaki’s hands guiding him to rest his head without feeling a single ounce of human touch at all. 

Don’t fight it, Yuta tells himself, feeling the cloud of sleep bloom in his mind like smoke in water. Giving up control that fast means he can’t help the knee-jerk response of spiking his cursed energy, but he pointedly does not tap into any of it as he slides down beneath the surface of consciousness. Feels himself drown in it. 

Don’t…. Don’t fight.

He sinks beneath and into the depths below.

Chapter 2: chapter 2

Summary:

The weather is nice, the forest is quiet, and he’s with his friends. Yuta doesn’t have any complaints.

Sorta.

Notes:

sup. i had my wisdom teeth removed on tuesday and have not known peace since. if there’s any mistakes, i’m blaming the drugs.

It’s daytime. Yuta can feel the lightness behind his eyelids before he actually sees it. 

He comes back into the land of the living slowly — hazy, sometimes for a moment, just barely grazing the surface, before his body says no, not yet, and pulls him back asunder. It happens once, twice, three times. 

Now, on the fourth time, it doesn’t seem to want to drag him back down. Finding a single coherent thought is a long process he’s not sure he wants to really achieve. 

The first thought he has is: Huh, must have slept in. That’s new.

The second thought, following immediately after: I’m late for practice with Maki.

That wakes him up. Yuta inhales, deeply, and tries to identify which limbs are awake alongside him and how many he needs to get up and get going right this second. He draws his elbows underneath him and tries to shove himself off his stomach. She’s going to kill him. 

It works for about five milliseconds. Enough to get him off the mattress, but the grogginess of his limbs slows him down too much to correct the off-kilter feeling and he instead flops back down half-on, half-off the bed — and in quick succession the rest of him slides off, pulled down by his top-heavy sack of a body, and he crumples into an unceremonious heap onto the floor. 

God. He still can’t even open his eyes. 

The sound of a door clicking open catches his attention, followed by the soft pads of bare feet on the hardwood. “Tsunamayo.”

Inumaki. And he sounds particularly enthused right now. 

Yuta grunts back in kind, admitting defeat. I’m awake. 

But at what cost.

He feels not so much as sees Inumaki crouch down over him, a looming, mischievous presence. And he definitely feels the jab of a finger right between his shoulder blades. “Yuta.”

Another grunt — he’s getting there, alright, his body feels like it’s hundreds of pounds heavier — and another jab in turn, this time at the junction of where his head meets his neck. Reflexes snap his head back and makes his shoulders shudder. He finds the strength to bat at Inumaki, trying to will him away and stop the assault.

Another jab. 

“I’m awake,” Yuta slurs. “I’m up, I’m up.”

“Sujiko.”

“ I am. I’m waking up. That’s up.” Yuta peeks open his eyes, finally, and squints at the light pouring in through the window. “Maki’s gonna… kick my ass.”

Inumaki laughs and keeps strategically prodding at Yuta, flinching away with growing enthusiasm as Yuta comes back to full consciousness, and with it, his dexterity. He slaps at one of Inumaki’s hands and then feels his body shy away from a particular poke at his ribcage. “Would you --!” 

It devolves into this weird poke-slap-grab fight as Yuta struggles to sit up on his knees, evading a bombardment of Inumaki’s aggressive attacks and trying to equally pose a threat of his own. Okay, okay, okay, he’s REALLY awake, he’s up, he needs to get all the way up and he can’t because Inumaki won’t let him .

He snags one of Inumaki’s wrists in an iron grip. “I’m awake!” Yuta protests, lifting Inumaki’s arm high over either of their heads, but it’s a stupid, rookie mistake, because Inumaki jabs him right in the armpit. It’s sheer luck, not skill, that makes him able to grab the other hand while cringing away, and then it’s a full-out wrestling match. 

Inumaki is smaller than him, but he’s strong, even without his cursed speech. Weapons weren’t his flavor, but hand-to-hand was. Yuta has seen him in too many fights to not have already analyzed the way he moves, the way he favors his next steps. The sinews of muscle in his forearms flex as he tries to hook his elbow around Yuta’s neck, intending to put him in a hold, but Yuta turns his neck out of the trap with a breathy laugh. 

But then Inumaki twists his arm just so, breaking free his hand from Yuta’s grip, and it’s a scrabble to regain control lest he be the subject to a tickling match. Inumaki clearly thinks he’s winning — no, he is in the process of winning, and quickly. He sits up on his knees and hovers over Yuta, teeth bared as they struggle against each other. 

Yuta grits his teeth in kind, the both of them now laughing through their ongoing battle, and decides to throw his weight around. He shoves himself off the floor and flips them, still grappling to pin Inumaki until he finally taps out. 

Now he can win. He can make it happen, Inumaki’s trying to shove a foot in the bend of his knee to sink his balance and his brow is furrowed with concentration that would be cute if he wasn’t busy trying to impale him with his bony-ass little fingers --

Maki’s voice cuts through the air, annoyed, as the door kicks open with a violent jolt.  

“ Hey , Inumaki, you better not have fallen back aslee-- oh. ”

Maki stops dead. Inumaki and Yuta freeze.

Yeah. 

Oh.

Three things happen:

One: All the fight goes out of Inumaki so fast that Yuta slams his hand into the floorboards with a loud slap. This is directly above his head, where coincidentally Yuta had also pinned his other hand to stop the onslaught. 

Two: Neither of them do anything to correct this.

Three: Maki watches them not doing anything, stuck frozen in time like a deer in headlights, waiting for their inevitable fate of a fatal collision. Yuta can’t tell if she wants to throw up or drop dead or do both at the same time. 

You could hear a pin drop between the three of them. 

Or maybe it’s the sound of Yuta’s heart cracking out of his chest from beating too hard, too fast. Oh god. Oh no. He is not in his room. He’s not in his room, and he is on top of Inumaki.

Say something. Say something, oh my god, this is the second-worst day of his life. 

“Um.”

He’s a fucking idiot.

“Konbu.” Inumaki’s hair is fanned out as he stares up at Maki from his upside down position, hands trapped and shirt rucking up his stomach from the battle. He sounds perfectly fine -- why does he sound perfectly fine?! 

Maki’s mouth presses into a thin, aggravated line. Her fingers curl in and out of fists, as if she can’t decide if she wants to commit the homicide now or later, before she finally crosses her arms over her chest. 

“First of all, ew. It’s ten in the morning. Get your shit together.” She lifts one digit off her crossed arm. “ Second of all, go get dressed, like this bonehead was supposed to tell you like half an hour ago. We’re going to the trailhead today.”

“Th--that’s..”

“ Ten minutes. We’re already late.” Patience already wilted, she turns on her heel. “If I have to hear any more of Panda’s big sighing episodes, I’m killing both of you.”

And then she’s gone.

The only sound in the room that remains is the sound of their breathing, out-of-sync and slightly labored from the sudden adrenaline kick. Yuta makes the mistake of looking down at Inumaki. 

Inumaki stares back up at him through those light lashes of his, mouth slightly open and looking not nearly as frazzled as Yuta feels. He doesn’t make any effort to break free of Yuta’s grip, still, not even after Maki’s aggravated threat of violence. The seals on his cheeks stand out starkly against his skin. He looks --

He looks. 

The spell breaks so fast Yuta swears he hears it snap like a twig. 

He sits back on his heels, his palms splayed wide like a burglar caught red-handed, and tries to not think about the way his face is warming from the top of his temple to the nape of his neck and everything in between. 

He just got carried away and pinned Inumaki to the ground in Inumaki’s bedroom, looking like a lover’s tryst when in reality they’re being stupid and fooling around -- not in that way -- and looking terribly convincing of the former. He’s an idiot. He’s so stupid. 

“I should, uh -- yeah, I’m -- gonna --” Shakily, he stands up to his full height. Inumaki watches him, still on the floor and uncharacteristically still, probably analyzing the red in Yuta’s face that he’s desperately trying to hide beneath his overgrown bangs. Yuta’s done it now. 

“See you in ten,” He says, flashing a panic-induced peace sign, before bolting out the door.

 

---

The day is actually going okay by most days’ standards. 

The birds are out in full force, singing and calling to each other overhead as they flit from tree to tree. The wind is up but not terribly, enough to carry a breeze without turning the air chilly. 

Yuta likes to hike. That was a discovery he didn’t make until after he came to Jujutsu High, and upon a day when Maki decided that a good incline and higher altitude made for a better workout than any amount of timing him on the track would be. The temperate, evergreen landscape up close was a good change of pace for him, physically and mentally, and he had quickly made it a point to himself to go out when he could catch a good day to work his way up the spidering trails. 

The weather is nice, the forest is quiet, and he’s with his friends. Yuta doesn’t have any complaints.

Sorta.

He clings onto the straps of his into-the-woods backpack, focusing on the texture of the fiber and also where he’s placing his feet. He is also pointedly not looking at Maki and Inumaki, who are about three strides ahead and staring at each other as their hands sign back and forth out of sight. It’s clearly a private conversation. That’s fine.

“Feel better after getting all that rest?” Panda asks, keeping stride with Yuta. He stretches his paws tall towards the sky.

He does feel better, actually. Probably the most well rested he has felt in months, if not ever. Once he was out, he was out. It might have been only a few more hours, but it was more than he usually got to bargain for on his own. Inumaki’s curse technique was effective.

“I’m sorry for not stopping them yesterday. I know the time differences have to be hard on you.”

“Oh, it’s fine.” Time differences aren’t the hard part, and they both know it, but he appreciates Panda making conversation. Yuta smiles gently at him. “I’m sad I didn’t get to hang out with you more, though.”

“I figured you would crash. Don’t sweat it, Yuta. We have time. Like today.”

“That’s true.” Yuta says, before adding, “Did you like Maki’s present, at least?”

“I did.” Panda leans in close, covering his mouth to murmur in Yuta’s ear. “To be honest, I have the same one three times from Shibuya -- she thinks they’re all slightly different, but they’re not.” 

Yuta snorts, loudly, and he slaps a hand over his mouth just as Maki turns her head and raises her eyebrow at him in suspicion. 

“Causing problems back there?” She asks, appraising him from head to toe. Inumaki watches, impassive behind the face mask he wears today.

“No, no --” Yuta waves, still snickering. “Panda was just, um -- telling me about the last time you came out here.”

Maki grins. “Bird shit is not a good color on him.” 

“Is it on anybody?” Panda huffs, sounding like this has been a topic often-told and old news in his book. “I figured I would beat you to the punch.”

Yuta has heard the story already, too -- enough times that even his inability to tell the smallest white lie still flies this one under Maki’s radar. It probably helps that she’s still preoccupied with her conversation with Inumaki. She laughs, shakes her head, and keeps walking. The suspect is cleared. 

“Really, though?” Yuta asks quietly, still trying to temper the smile on his face. “The same one?”

Panda shrugs. “It’s always the thought that counts.”

Yuta couldn’t agree more with that. Having friends after being isolated for so much of his life was a gift itself. Building memories, having people to confide in, all of it. Anything beyond that — identical arm bands included — was an unexpected treasure. He would hang on to the same exact gift three times over, too. 

Panda is a good soul. He’s always been big and gentle in Yuta’s eyes — often the mediator to their class’ stupid arguments or the first to notice when someone in the group isn’t quite right. Yuta appreciates the level of calm he brings.

Like now, for instance. Panda keeps Yuta talking just enough to make sure the paranoia spooling in Yuta’s chest can’t find a foothold. Yuta has a feeling it’s very intentional.

“Hopefully it hasn’t been too difficult for you to adjust back,” Panda says.  “We like having you home.”

The unspoken piece of that bleeds through clearly enough -- it’s not quite a ‘ what happened’, but it is an acknowledgement. Something’s different in their little quartet. 

Yuta knows exactly what it is: Inumaki’s mad at him. Probably. Likely. Most definitely. They’ve been skirting around each other since they both met back up with Maki and Panda, even more so when the path narrowed and sectioned them off into partners of two. 

Inumaki hasn’t been avoiding him, not really -- he speaks his onigiri ingredient language and he casts glances back over his shoulder every so often, but it’s clear that Yuta messed up. 

It’s making Yuta insane.

I’m sorry that I got too wound up and didn’t think and didn’t explain to Maki fast enough that it’s not what it looked like, except that I don’t know how to tell you that at all because I don’t think I could handle it if you didn’t want to be my friend anymore since I made it weird. But you probably don’t want to be my friend right now anyways, so that’s fine. I’ll just die.

“Haha, yeah.” Yuta itches at his jaw and purses his lips. “I like being home. It probably sounds selfish, but I wish Gojo-sensei would take on some more of the international ones.”

Panda hums. “Good in theory, but I’m not so certain our teacher is the best for diplomacy. He’s level-headed, but he picks bad times to be serious.”

Can’t argue there. Gojo is…. “Carefree,” Yuta supplies by way of agreement. Panda nods in response.

“Oh, I never got to ask you,” Panda twists to look at Yuta as they walk, suddenly very serious, and slings a heavy arm around his shoulders. Yuta feels nerves spider up his neck. 

Did Inumaki tell him what happened? No, even if he did, Panda wouldn’t say anything. Probably. Definitely not while Maki and Inumaki are within earshot. “Uh,” Says Yuta, white-knuckling the straps slung over his shoulders, “What is it?”

“You never told me when I sent you a text.” Panda squints at him. “How are the girls in Paris?”

What?

Maki stops in her tracks and whips around. “ What?!”

Oof. 

Yuta feels the wave of instant relief as he realizes that it was not, in fact, about the morning. Maki gripes at Panda for asking stupid questions (“Why does something like that even matter? He was working, don’t be a creep ,” and, “You always hear that girls from Paris are the pretti-- stop hitting me, this is for your sake, ”) and it escalates enough that Yuta has to sidestep around the bickering pair to stand next to Inumaki. 

Some stupid arguments are better to sit out and watch the carnage.

Yuta laughs nervously, shaking his head as he stands nearly shoulder to shoulder with Inumaki, but it dies quickly in his throat when he catches Inumaki’s sideways glance. His classmate’s eyebrow quirks in question. Well? 

Well what? Yuta blinks as the pieces shift into place, waiting for the disconnect of Inumaki’s silent stare to translate over. It clicks like a lightbulb in a basement. 

If the lightbulb were to shatter with a loud, devastating crash, that is.

“The girls? ” Yuta’s voice cracks, incredulous, and Inumaki doesn’t elaborate, just waits for an answer. 

Paris had women. Sure. So did everywhere else. Yuta tries to think of one standalone example, just to get the question out of the way -- surely, something. A girl in a cafe, or walking down the street. He remembers them, but he just doesn’t remember them. His trips are rarely fun and absolutely never rife with downtime. 

“Uh. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t looking.” Yuta answers honestly. “Maki’s right. I was working. I don’t… I don’t really care about that.” 

Wake up early, have breakfast, meet whoever it was that either assigned him the work or was to mentor him on the job, spend a good chunk of it tracking the residual energy, and fight like hell when he could find the curse. Eat dinner when he had the time for it, make the time for his video calls and catching up in the group chat otherwise. 

Maki pinches Panda’s ear, triumphant as she holds him in a headlock and orders him to cry uncle. It’s so amusing that for a second, Yuta forgets that Inumaki’s even angry with him. He feels his head go quiet, for just a moment, and he wonders if this is what actual contentment feels like. 

In the woods, watching his friends bicker, not a single responsibility to do all day other than scramble up switchbacks and sit atop a mountain. 

Yuta feels the gentle smile pull at the corners of his mouth so easily. “I mostly cared about finishing the job so I could come back home to you, y’know?”

Inumaki watches him with a critical eye, searching his face for something. What it is, Yuta doesn’t know. 

He hopes he finds it anyway. 

---

Ashinako Overlook marks the three-quarter-way point up to the top ridge of the mountain. It is also one of Yuta’s favorite spots on earth. 

It’s one of the few trailways that’s actively maintained for and by Jujutsu High, it’s closed off to the public, and the large, wide clearing shows off the surrounding range and Mt. Fuji standing tall in the very far distance. Nobody knows who named it or how long it’s been here, but Yuta is grateful for its existence all the same. 

Yuta kicks his legs over the overlook cliffside and lays back, popping the front of his shirt to try to get air up underneath it. It’s not sweltering this time of year, but the hike up the ridge has been long, and he can feel the beads of sweat forming on his forehead. Going back down is going to be fun.

“Tea’s in my bag,” He calls to his classmates, who have taken their refuge away from the cliff edge. “Water and snacks, too.”

“You would bring the whole kitchen if you could,” Maki says, not unkindly. 

“I’ll take the compliment.”

She’s right. He’s a self-admitted chronic over-preparer. Short of a complete and total surprise mudslide, he could probably stuff enough supplies in there to rough it in the woods for a few weeks if they needed it. Snacks included.

 A few seconds later Yuta can hear the zipper on his bag and a quick holler of thanks. He raises his hand in a wave of acknowledgement, pops his shirt again, and closes his eyes. He wouldn’t be able to sleep even here, of all places, but he can still rest his eyes and enjoy the peace that the silence brings him.

Well, almost silence. The breeze is nice and Yuta’s mind settles into listening to his surroundings, enough to hear the rustling of fabric and the sound of skin dully smacking against skin. 

He knows, from enough experience by watching Maki and Inumaki get into fierce arguments over the course of his time at Jujutsu High, that it’s the sound of aggressive signing. They’re at it again.

At least, until Panda heaves a sigh, further away, and Maki growls, apparently at her limit. “That-- I’m not doing this, this is so stupid, ” She snaps, doing her best to be hushed. Yuta breathes in deep and pointedly does not move. “Take care of it yourself.”

It? Are they talking about him? Probably. Yuta exhales, trying to count the beats of his pulse that have started thundering in his ears. Yeah. It’s as good a confirmation as any that he messed up. 

Eventually, Inumaki seems to make his move. The sound of shoes shuffling in the grass doesn’t startle Yuta even when they sidle up next to him. Neither does Inumaki’s soft, quiet voice. “Shake.”

Yuta peeps open an eye at him. He’s not sure if it’s appropriate to smile, considering everything from the morning, and the fact that a weird tension sits between them, but he does anyway. “Hey.” 

He lifts a hand off of his abdomen to pat at the empty space off to his right, offering it to Inumaki, who quietly takes a seat and quickly offers Yuta his water canteen. Yuta gratefully accepts with a head nod in thanks, and the silence falls between them as easily as it always does as they each take a long drink. 

It looks like the mountains could go on forever. He wishes they could go on forever. Yuta lets his feet sway as he stares out to the last visible ridge on the horizon, counting the evergreens that sit in clusters along the rockbeds of the higher peaks. It’s hard for him to believe that Tokyo can be so full of concrete and skyscrapers when this exists just on the outskirts of it a few kilometers away.

The afternoon sun is still high on the world beneath it, but he’s sure that golden hour will hit before they see the temple gates of Jujutsu High come back into view.

“Tsuna.” Yuta feels the ghost of a touch on his arm. When he turns his head lazily to look at Inumaki, feeling oddly mellow, he watches Inumaki retract his hand quickly. 

As if he’s afraid to touch him. 

Cool. Great. Fantastic. Yuta thinks he deserves at least some kind of award for the way he keeps his face carefully neutral, in spite of the way his heart plummets through his chest and into the depths of the forest below. He guesses that at least the death of their friendship is surrounded by peacefulness.

“ I wanted to say sorry.” Inumaki signs. 

That.

What.

Yuta’s eyes must be the size of dinner plates. They must be, because Inumaki’s hands move almost quicker than what Yuta can comprehend as actual sign language. 

“ This morning I got carried away and I didn’t mean to. The misunderstanding with Maki this morning… I kept pushing and I…” Despite the calm look on his face, Yuta can see the slight wobble of Inumaki’s hands when they pause. “ I’m sorry.”

Wait. Wait. Yuta just spent the entire day — but —

He signs back, incredulous, “ I thought you were mad at me.”

Inumaki stares at him, looking dumbfounded. “ But you—“

“ Me?? I wanted to give you space, I thought— “

“ I embarrassed you and didn’t say anything.”

“I embarrassed the both of us. Look —“ Yuta’s brain is starting to kick into overdrive, so much so that the signage translation is beginning to overlap on top of itself and muddle it. “I guess it takes two to tango, but I would never be upset with you for that.” Yuta’s head tilts and he lets out a breathy, nervous jilt of a laugh, “It was funny, in the moment.”

Inumaki pauses, staring at him, as if trying to figure him out. “Mentaiko.”

“I’m serious.” Yuta feels his face soften, whether from sheer relief or affection or general release of holding so much tension in, he doesn’t know. “And besides, with the whole sleeping thing. You helped a lot -- you don’t even know how much. I didn’t even thank you.”

“ See !” Comes Maki’s righteous cry from across the clearing at Inumaki. Panda shushes her quickly with a warning, “ Maki, ” and an invitation to take a walk further up the bend. 

Yuta twists to watch them go, waiting a few moments to ensure for good measure that they’re not the subject of their own stupid school romcom, before he relaxes and turns back.

“Which reminds me,” Yuta says, mimicking the same gesture Inumaki used the night before by tapping his knuckles against his temple and clicking his tongue. “No nightmare. Or dreams at all, actually.”

Inumaki’s eyebrows raise. “Okaka?”

“None,” Yuta replies, pausing to take another sip of water before he caps it and lies back again. “It worked.”

Sorta. One night isn’t enough time to deduce if Yuta just got lucky or if Inumaki’s command just broke the barrier of insomnia and his body could finally start to play catch up. Maybe even a little bit of both, which, if neither include Rika’s violence in his subconsciousness, he considers a win either way. 

“Mentaiko. It may not always be like that, ” Inumaki signs, because of course he came to the same conclusion.

Yuta shrugs and stretches his arms up and behind his head. Somewhere in his low back, three deep pops sound off, and it punches a stilted grunt through him. That travel bag gets heavy. 

“No,” He says, exhaling through his relief, “But I think you’re onto something.”

Inumaki moves his gaze to the sprawl of the mountain range before them and Yuta watches the sun filter through his hair, silver in the light breeze. This time of day is a good look on him — this place is a good look on him, surrounded by all the greenery and nature, quiet save for the rustle of leaves in the wind and the occasional flutter of birds moving to and fro.

Enough of that, Yuta scolds himself mentally. He can’t be thinking about how nice Inumaki looks in the afternoon, long lashes of his be damned, when he just got through thinking Inumaki hated him for a badly misinterpreted situation. It’s not what friends do. 

They aren’t like that. It’s just nice to be outside and it’s even nicer to know you still have your best friend. 

Inumaki’s hands rise, as if to sign something, but then he bails. And lifts. And bails again. 

“Cat got your hands?” Yuta jokes, snorting through his nose when Inumaki shoots him a harrowing side-eye. It must spur him on enough to commit, though, because he turns his torso enough so that Yuta can read him clearly.

“Do you want to keep trying it out?” And then, a little quicker, “If it might actually work, I want to help you. If you want.”

Beat him to the punch, then. Yuta had implied it, but was too much of a coward to take the leap yet — yet, because he would get there eventually, but the relief is palpable. He doesn’t have to toss and turn and struggle with his insomnia until he gets the fatigue-driven courage to admit defeat and just ask.

Depend on your friends. Depend, depend, depend.

“Yeah,” Yuta says.  “I think it wouldn’t hurt to try.” 

They sit there together for a moment, comfortable in the silence. The tension is long gone, forgotten, carried away on the breeze that pushes Yuta’s wispy bangs away from his forehead.

If only it could be forever.

Yuta finally finds the will to gather his limbs and stand. “C’mon. We should probably catch up with the other two before Maki comes looking.” He offers Inumaki a hand, smiling wide. “Race you to the top?”

Inumaki’s wide gaze flickers from Yuta’s face, to his hand, and back up again. 

The evil little gleam in his eye — never dulled, but certainly never turned on Yuta before now — is Yuta’s only warning before Inumaki snatches his wrist and hauls him back down to the ground, laughing out a “ Shake! “ before he’s scrambling to his feet and making a run for the trailhead. 

Yuta hits the ground with a decidedly unattractive grunt, yells “Hey! “ right after him, and does absolutely nothing to wipe the grin off his face before bolting after him. 

Then: “Oh, wait — my bag! ”

---

The amount of popcorn thrown versus amount eaten is likely a very stupid ratio, but Yuta this that this is, undoubtedly, one of the best evenings of his life.

“Well, Panda’s out,” Maki states as the credits begin to roll, jabbing her thumb in the bear’s direction. His snores are soft but deep, rumbling low in his chest with each slow inhale. 

The common area is dark save for the glow of the TV and the light of the kitchen not far off. They’re bundled up each on their respective couch cushions. Pecking order had been established long ago -- more specifically, Maki had claimed a very specific corner of the couch, and left the rest of it for her classmates to figure it out themselves -- and Yuta sits now, content in the middle. He leans back into the cushion, resting his head on it. 

He’s tired, as he usually is, but in a deep, satisfying way. His legs hurt and his palms are scraped from climbing the last few yards up to the “official” summit of the mountain with Inumaki on a dare, teetering confidently on the loose rock beds as he chucked Maki his phone for a photo. 

By the time they spidered their way down and finished the long descent through the switchbacks, Yuta had been correct in his guess. Golden hour had just started to drift on the horizon, painting the sky and clouds overhead in varying hues of orange and pink. The separation of the crew was just brief enough to catch showers before they reconvened for takeout and a movie.

“Shake.” Inumaki burrows further into his hoodie, voice raspy. He shimmies deeper into his own cushion on the respective side, and Yuta can feel the subtle wiggle of his toes that have somehow made their way underneath his thigh. 

“Think we should call it?” Yuta turns to look at Maki, who in turn checks her watch.

“ Ugh, it’s barely past eight. Feels too early.” She yawns and draws her legs up onto the couch, twisting so that she faces Yuta. “But I guess so. Feels like there’s never enough hours in the day.” 

Her eyes narrow, both in suspicion and amusement, as she adds, “Or, there are, but you’re busy —“ Finger quotes, “ Sleeping in. ”

“Tsunamayo,” Inumaki grouches in defense, safely stuck behind the wall of Yuta, and he closes his eyes. There isn’t any real heat to it, tired as Inumaki is, but Yuta, on the other hand, feels his face burn red. 

He knows Maki is only teasing. She can be merciless at times, sure, but never about serious stuff, and especially not now when the walls are down around all of them. But he never did get to explain himself back then. Hell, he wouldn’t even know where to start now.

“Relax, Yuta. You’re in the clear.” Maki says, leaning her head on her palm. She can read him like a book, sometimes. It’s scary. “Toge already explained the whole thing. I’m just messing with you.”

“Oh.” Yuta turns to look at Inumaki, who looks like he’s slowly melting into his corner cushion. Shower-damp hair sticks to his forehead as he sinks further in. He’s wiped. “Thank you, Inumaki.”

Inumaki makes a half-hearted grumble of something purely unintelligible, and Maki tilts her head over Yuta’s shoulder.

“Oi, don’t fall asleep there. You’re going to complain about your back like an old man tomorrow and I don’t wanna hear it. Just go to bed.”

Another grumble. Yuta feels awkward being stuck between what feels like a war of wills: Inumaki’s will to stay, because he clearly looks cozy and unmoveable, and Maki’s will to make him move through a parental level of scolding that books no argument. The tension grows faster than the silence.

Before Maki can repeat herself, Inumaki folds first. His eyes creak open blearily as he shifts, slowly, into upright position, and retracts his feet from beneath Yuta’s thigh. His voice is gravelly with impending sleep as he murmurs, “Konbu,” and his fingers move lazily enough when he stands that despite the slow speed, it takes Yuta a full second longer to process each word. “ Brushing teeth. See you. ”

And then he’s gone, shuffling down the hall. Yuta watches him go. 

Maki whistles quietly, low and drawn out. 

She might as well have just shot Yuta, because he feels his whole body jolt like he just took a mortal bullet to the chest. 

That’s not -- 

“It’s not like that,” Yuta retorts quickly, almost a whine. It’s not. Hadn’t she just said Inumaki told her everything? A little bit of roughhousing constitutes absolutely nothing. “Inumaki is just -- we’re friends.”

Inumaki looked rough, anyhow. His talkative nature had caught a second wind somewhere during the middle of the movie, making fleeting commentary on the film, but by the final plot twist and subsequent let-down, he was already petering out. Yuta is sure that staying up -- for Yuta’s sake, no less -- didn’t help energize him for the almost seven-hour hike up and down the mountainside. No wonder he was exhausted.

Besides, it’s not a crime to be worried your friend might run smack into the corner. Panda has done it before.

Maki stares at him. “You are really easy to fluster. I hope you know that.”

Ah. Yuta feels the tips of his ears grow hot. 

“In all seriousness,” Maki continues, “Sounds like it’s been a rough homecoming. I’m glad he can help you with that.”

Yuta remembers the agitated signing, all the fuss with backs turned as Maki and Inumaki walked ahead, and feels paranoia begin its gnaw. 

“What did he tell you?”

“Mm, not so much told. I kept needling him about it and deduced it on my own at first.”

Maki is smart, but more importantly, persistent. Panda mediates the blow-ups, the loud arguments over who had the final hit during draws, or discussions for class that get a little out of hand, but politely sidelines when it’s the uncomfortable things being left unsaid. 

Maki doesn’t sideline anything. 

She takes the bull by the horns and doesn’t beat around the bush. Yuta should have known better -- both for believing, however few milliseconds, that Inumaki might have been a gossip, and that Maki wouldn’t be doing her best to squish the elephant in the room down to a small, tolerable size. It was in her blood, being the eldest sibling. 

Yuta loves her for it, even if it meant he often found himself at the brunt of her lectures about not hiding things “ because it will be inconvenient for us .” 

Of course she pestered Inumaki until he folded, or his non-answers gave him away just as much as being honest in the first place. She knew how to get under his skin. 

“Nothing any of us don’t already know. You can’t sleep and it sounds like you have a bad time when you do. I remember those first weeks.” Those amber eyes watch him, but it’s not unkind. She’s being earnest in the dry, frank way she knows best, but her tone is softer than usual. “Toge told me you’re test-running to see if his cursed speech can help the insomnia factor. I think it’s smart.”

“It worked when we tried it,” Yuta says, glancing down at Panda’s sleeping form. “I didn’t dream at all. Inumaki let me stay so he could wake me up if I had a nightmare, but I slept until morning.”

“They’re still pretty bad, then,” Maki says, “The nightmares.”

Yuta draws his feet up onto the couch, resting his forearms on them. “Not always,” He answers honestly, “They’re not as frequent as they used to be, but… yeah, they get bad.”

“Is Rika still bothering you?”

The question stuns him into silence for a beat, face pinched in a way he only knows must be shock, and vivid memory of the night before hits with each beat of his heart. Yeah. You were there. Dead on the floor. She killed you, and she killed Inumaki, too. 

But Rika’s not here, not really. Yuta has spent more than one counseling session with Shoko being reminded of that factor, especially after discovering that his ring was still imbued with a carbon copy. The real Rika is gone, no longer tethered to Yuta by his pearl-clutching conviction that she would never stop haunting him. 

“She was in the dream, if that’s what you’re asking.” Yuta smiles, pained. “She… wasn’t very nice to you. Or Inumaki.”

Maki raises one brow, face still resting against her palm, and blessedly does not ask him to elaborate. Pity isn’t her thing -- yet one of the many other attributes Yuta can appreciate when being honest with her -- so she doesn’t mince her words when she says, “Sounds possessive, if you ask me. Wonder why that is.”

Isn’t why the million dollar question. 

“Rika was difficult with people I spent time with, back then.” Yuta reaches his head forward and rests it on his forearms, contracting his long limbs together to make it work. “She didn’t like sharing my attention. I couldn’t stop her, so she kinda did whatever she wanted to them. Eventually it always would end where I had to cut myself off for their safety.”

Rika was his closest friend and confidant back then, but she wasn’t the only person. Yuta had other friends -- schoolyard boys, neighborhood kids, his sister. There was never any disagreement from Rika about spending his time with others, even though most of his time outside of school was occupied by her, but that all changed. Post-mortem, Rika bristled with aggression when Yuta found himself trying to find pieces of happiness in the company of others.

Soon enough, he stopped studying with his classmates. The neighborhood kids stopped ringing his doorbell, asking him to play. 

His sister couldn’t speak to him anymore.

“And you couldn’t tell anybody why, either,” Maki guesses quietly, “Because nobody would believe you.”

Yuta nods. Six years of it, nearing a year from it, and yet the memory must linger. 

He chuckles, trying to be appeasing. “I guess it’s a good thing, in some ways. You know how much you all mean to me, at least.”

Maki levels him with a stare that could compress coal into diamonds — or crumple the coal into dust altogether, so it can better scatter into the wind. 

“If you try to act cute about it again, I’m boxing your ears.” Her sternness is lined with a very real, knife’s edge threat. “Don’t do that shit. It bothers me, and it bothers you, too, else you wouldn’t be trying to skirt around it.”

“I’m not trying to be cute ,” Yuta protests as he leans away, wary. “It’s just how it is.”

“Color me flattered. You love us and the other stooges in our class enough to have debilitating nightmares.”

She’s got him there. He can’t formulate a deflection to that, so he doesn’t. 

“Listen,” Maki sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose with her index finger and thumb, “I’m not here to gripe at you. But take it from me, as someone who studies jujutsu out of sheer spite, I’m going to give you some advice: do what you want.”

Yuta doesn’t understand. 

Do what he wants? What does that even mean? 

He can’t, even if he wanted to. He’s contained to the world and work of Jujutsu High, perpetually in class or being sent overseas when the higher-ups begin to click their tongues at his power. 

In the context of Rika, he thinks he’s done about as well as the next person would probably be doing now. He pays infrequent visits to Shoko when he’s back from wherever Gojo sends him, he trains, he uses the power she left for him without spending three days crying from grief in his bedroom anymore -- yeah, he’s better than last December. He’s doing what he wants in that regard, at least. 

Fortunately -- or, rather, unfortunately -- for him, Maki has a finite amount of patience, and a short dose of it to boost. She doesn’t wait around for him to figure it out. 

“I mean: all that shit that she did when she was still here, do it. Hang out. Be a stupid kid. The real Rika doesn’t need to look out for Yuta Okkotsu anymore.”

Yuta’s brow pinches in confusion as he chews the fat of her words, gaze flitting around to nothing in particular as his brain turns it over. 

“Don’t be afraid to chase after what you want. The memory of Rika can’t stop you from that — especially if you and that idiot are working on a plan to stop it altogether.” Maki sits up fully, stern and supportive in equal doses, and she reaches up gently to flick him on the nose. “That’s it.”

If there’s a deeper meaning to all of it, he’s missing it. He’s not even the same ballpark — he’s standing somewhere outside of one, probably, wondering what the hell his nightmares and Rika and the six years prior had anything to do with… well. Anything.

Maki was laying it out like a trail to follow, he knows that much. The tone of her voice carried enough conviction that it wasn’t just simple life advice from a girl who has fought like hell to get to where she was. 

He doesn’t know if he wants to chase it. The uncertainty alone makes him balk. 

So, Yuta simply lets his legs drift back to the cushion, feet on the floor, and smiles. “I’m not sure what you mean, but it’s coming from you, so I should probably listen. Thanks.”

If Maki seems frustrated by his lack of ability to read between the lines, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she heaves a sigh that brews into a yawn and stretches. “Anytime.”

“You too, Panda,” She nudges Panda’s sleeping form with her foot, who startles at the contact, “C’mon. We’re tapping out. Go to bed.”

They make their respective goodbyes and see you tomorrow s and vacate the common room. Yuta staves off a chest-deep yawn as he goes through the motions of his night routine, no longer quite as jet-lagged and sickly as he felt the day prior, and drifts down the dorm hall.

Inumaki’s door is closed as he passes it; no light filters beneath the door. He must have forgot, asleep as he was, Yuta thinks to himself. 

That’s fine. Yuta isn’t about to knock on his door and interrupt his sleep so he can give Yuta his. 

After a long day like this, sleep will come eventually — maybe around midnight, or an early morning hour, but it will come. His brain isn’t buzzing with the need to make up for lost time or the overwhelming battery decay from walking around a busy Shibuya in the afternoon.

About five or six strides further down the hall, Yuta hears the click of a door latch being pulled open. “ Yuta. ”

He turns. Inumaki’s blonde hair falls over his tilted head as he leans sideways out of his door, squinting in the dimness of the hall. He sticks his hand out to gesture at Yuta, beckoning him back. “Takana.”

Yuta can’t help the little half-laugh, half-scoff that erupts out of him as he smiles. Inumaki looks ridiculous like this — his hair looks silly parted by gravity at his temple, bangs swept over his brow line, sleep-heavy eyes and mouth drawn into a pout. “I thought you were asleep already.”

Inumaki yawns and opens the door wider, enough to make his hands more visible. “ I texted you to just come in,” He says, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder and into the darkness of his room beyond, “ It’s fine. I was still watching videos and heard you walk past.”

Texted him? “Oh.” Yuta goes down the line of patting at butt and front pockets alike on his sweats before he fishes his phone out of his right front. Sure enough, when he pulls his phone out, Inumaki’s message sits above various notifications from his apps (which remind him to do things like drink water and get at least 6 hours of sleep that he has never opened once in the last three months, but can’t be bothered to delete).

The little oh must be enough for Inumaki, because he turns and disappears into the room without shutting the door behind him. Yuta moves automatically to follow like the outward bound tide of the sea, chasing after him with only a stutter-step at the threshold of the door. 

It’s dim like the night before, darker still without the glow of a laptop being sprung back to life. And it’s quiet. Inumaki is already shuffling back into his presumed spot on the bed, reorganizing the slew of pillows he keeps to deduce what needs staying and what needs to get kicked to the foot of the bed. Making room.

It’s a weird sort of intimate — awkward, because by nature Yuta is nothing short of criminally awkward, and the fact that Inumaki doesn’t appear bothered by it at all. It reminds him of a faint memory of one of his first sleepovers, when the laughter faded away as exhaustion set in; the feeling of sudden realization that yes, your friend was human too, cool and funny and still mandated to put their pants on one leg at a time, just like you. 

A sense of closeness. 

The door clicks shut quietly behind Yuta. Inumaki throws back the covers even further, opening them for Yuta, and he scoots towards the far wall and pats the mattress. Just like he did yesterday — a beckoning, an reassurance of Yuta’s infinity-loop of second-guessing. Which, actually, he needs right now.

Because the logical part of his brain, located beneath layers of nervous energy and thoughts that randomly catch his attention, tells him this isn’t necessary. Inumaki shouldn’t be coughing up space on a bed that, while not cramped for one person, definitely was not meant for holding two people on either side. The mattress creaks as Yuta puts a knee to it and hesitates.

“I can still sleep in my room,” Yuta half-whispers the offer, balancing the knife edge of commitment and fleeing to the safety of his own space. Inumaki, laying on his back in his own nested corner and still cycling through apps on his phone as he waits, eyes him with askance. 

Inumaki rests the phone on his chest. “ Do you want to? ”

Yuta doesn’t even have to think — his mouth does it for him. “Not really,” He admits, “But I feel bad. You’re all squished up against the wall.” 

He moves to sit half-on, half-off, one foot on the floor and the other folded beneath him. Baby steps. Inumaki shakes his head, huffing, but not frustrated. 

“ I started this whole idea. And part of the point is making sure you don’t have nightmares. So… supervision. I’m good,” Inumaki shrugs both shoulders, then adds, “ Unless you’re a blanket hog. I’ll just dump you on the floor.”

It gets a laugh out of Yuta, which in turn makes Inumaki also huff out a laugh, a sound that is both endearing with how sleepy it is and a confirmation that yeah, this is okay. Inumaki has always been kind, but he’s not endlessly altruistic — if this was past a line, Inumaki would say so. Or, better yet, not offer at all.

Yuta pulls himself the rest of the way onto the bed and only flinches a little when Inumaki flings the blankets over him. They’re warm already and have a heft to them, which instantly bleeds the small pockets of tension out of Yuta’s back. He shuffles to get more acclimated and rests his head on the pillow.

It smells nice. Yuta has lived in the dorms long enough to know that the traces of peach and shea are Inumaki’s trademark. (Why that’s a factor he both did not notice the night prior, or chooses to notice now, is beyond him. But it smells nice all the same.)

There’s only mere inches between them, shacked up on Inumaki’s double mattress as they are. For a moment it’s only the sound of their breathing, off-sync but quickly matching pace the longer Yuta lies there. 

By this point, surely, his brain should — will — start dragging out the red carpet of stupid mistakes soon. The should-have-done-this dog and pony show. The rewind of all his mishaps, there to run wild and torment him. God knows he has enough of them from the day alone to choke a horse. 

Yet, when he waits, eyes staring up at the ceiling and trying to envision how he’s going to put up a fight against the battering of his own mind, the thoughts don’t come. Even now, lying in Inumaki’s bedroom, the thoughts of the past several seconds don’t come.

“Tsuna?” 

Perhaps he’s too apprehensive. Getting too amped up for something that may or may not come to pass doesn’t seem productive for what he’s trying to accomplish. He’s here, safe, in the company of his best friend. There’s no reason to let the anxiety through now.

“Yuta.”

When Yuta turns his head to face Inumaki, even in the dim light, he can see the dark rim of Inumaki’s irises bleed into the light lavender color the sunlight likes to show off. Inumaki’s hand hovers between them, close, and at Yuta’s smile of mild confusion he rests the pads of his fingers against Yuta’s temple. 

To his credit, he doesn’t even flinch. 

In fact, instead of cataloguing his wrongdoings, his brain hones onto the fact that Inumaki’s fingertips are soft — equally worn from climbing the rock beds, but cool against his skin as they slide down and tuck his growing bangs back behind his ear. The gesture is so comforting that Yuta closes his eyes and breathes in deep. 

That’s right. He’s here for a reason — and Inumaki is helping him. 

Yuta exhales, pressing his face further into the pillow. He trusts him.

“Yeah. Do it.”

The fingers still rest against his ear.

Inumaki’s voice is rough but gentle, ghosting over Yuta like a veil. “ Sleep. ”

Like before, he feels it spread through his body like a rolling fog, prying him apart from the over-thinking parts of his brain and leaving him heavy on the bed. The curse embraces him, shushes him, shepherds him away from the surface of consciousness.

For the second night in a row, Yuta drifts to a dreamless sleep.

Notes:

Yuta “haha yeah” Okkotsu.

there was going to be a lot more to this chapter until i realized that it would be like a 15k chapter. made more sense to break it up here. Either way hope you enjoyed!

Chapter 3: Chapter 3

Summary:

On the third morning, he wakes slowly to the roll of thunder.

Yuta Okkotsu thinks he could sleep forever if he really tried. 

Now, logically, he knows it’s not true. His restless mind and restless dreams on a usual night have statistics that stack against his general hypothesis. Peaceful was not usually a word cataloged in the dictionary of his own personhood, similar to the way outgoing and confident usually didn’t fit the bill either. It was in his nature to toss, and turn, and think, and never get any sleep at all.

But there are times when he feels at ease. Times where he is content enough to sink into sleep, to exist in it for the next half of eternity while his brain tries to soak it in. Those times, he never wants to leave; he wants to rest, enjoy the moment of respite.

On the third morning, he wakes slowly to the roll of thunder.

The room is still dark. Yuta’s natural clock is still scattered, pieces of it still stuck somewhere in the flight route from Paris, France to Tokyo, Japan, but it’s patchworked together enough to recognize the distinct feeling of dawn. Early. 

Way, way too early on a day off like this. Even with his eyes closed, Yuta can feel his brow pinch as he grouches something unintelligible to the air. The mountain climate makes the mornings chilly, and he has no desire to get up and face the day so soon. 

He is comfortable, buried beneath blankets; it would be a shame to curb it early.

Something — some one — shifts next to him. Yuta chases the feel of the springs moving beneath him and rolls over to face the dark. The soft fabric of a sleep shirt slides across his forearm as he moves.

“…Yuta?” Inumaki’s voice murmurs in the din, sleep-slurred and barely awake. The ghost of an exhale blooms over Yuta’s collarbone.

“Mm.” Yuta may or may not be back asleep. He must be. He adjusts his head on the pillow, burrowing deeper into the soft down stuffing, and feels fine hair tickle at the hollow of his throat. The first drops of rain hit against the window in sharp, quiet taps, far in between, but steadily increasing.

Opening his eyes is too much effort. It’s so… peaceful. His brain is sinking back to the depths, addled and content to chase the sleep, and who is he to deny himself the luxury? Yuta can feel the weight of sleep embrace his bones, working his motor function out of the list of things he can accomplish. It’s safe. He’s an opportunist at times.

Thunder cracks a more violent sound overhead, angry and intimidating, but smooths itself out with a rumbling trail. The body in Yuta’s hold flinches at the sound. 

“S’okay.” Yuta breathes in deep, sinking further into the warmth of another person, and feels the ridges of ribs shift beneath his bicep. “S’just loud.”

And then he goes out like a light.

 

---

 

When Yuta wakes again, he’s alone. The rain comes down in earnest now, a steady downpour, heavy against the window. He blinks open his eyes blearily into the dimness of cloud cover, mildly disoriented and heavy-limbed. 

What time is it? 

Had minutes passed? Hours? The rain would have curbed any of Maki’s attempts to get him out of his room for morning training. She’s been spartan enough for it in the summer months, but not so adamant to make herself stand in the cold and wet on the training pitch on a lazy day off. 

One minor detail: not his room. Yuta turns his head to the side, sighing, and rubs the residues of sleep out of the corners of his eye. Where Inumaki had rested lay a big hole, sheets mildly disheveled and blankets peeled back. Experimentally, Yuta stretches his hand out to that side of the double and runs his fingers over the space. 

Still warm. Inumaki must have left only a little bit before Yuta woke. 

Yuta lets his hand rest there for a brief moment. The realization dawns on him, at some point in the brevity, that he had passed back out while encroaching on Inumaki’s space; mumbled something stupid and half-lucid about the storm and noped out of consciousness. 

It doesn’t bring a dramatic response out of him that he expects. Actually — he feels pretty at peace, still buried under Inumaki’s ridiculous amount of blankets and smelling Inumaki’s shampoo on the pillow and yep nope those aren’t thoughts good friends have about their friend. What is wrong with him?

Yuta retracts his hand from the empty space that Inumaki vacated and throws it over his eyes. 

Shit. He just finished apologizing yesterday and now he’s done it again. 

The rain is loud enough against the window that at first, he doesn’t hear the door handle turn, but the soft close reaches him. Yuta turns his head out from beneath his forearm and nearly jumps out of his skin when the bright screen of a phone is thrust two inches in front of his nose. It’s a harsh, blinding contrast against the dim room; he has to blink a few times to adjust, squinting.

“Tsuna, tsuna.” Inumaki arches a hand over Yuta’s head to tap once, twice before the video on the screen jolts into action. Yuta has to crane his head back into the pillows and take the phone from him, lest his eyeballs be roasted out of his skull. The excitement from Inumaki radiates through the silence.

It looks like it’s a trailer for a new anime -- no, a second season. Yuta squints as his brain tries to catch up. “Is this…?”

“ Shake. ” The emphasis rings loud and clear, and Inumaki plants a knee on the mattress to swing up and roll over Yuta to his previously vacated spot. The movement is so fast Yuta doesn’t even worry about it -- what he worries about is the proximity of which Inumaki suddenly puts himself in, leaning in close so he can also see the screen too. 

Good to know there’s no hard feelings, he guesses. 

They watched this shounen series back when Yuta was somewhere in Italy, balancing his laptop on his knees and hopelessly waiting for an extra thirty minutes on the buffer just to promise Inumaki that it wouldn’t skip on him while they dual-watched. It was a once-a-week release, which meant that while most of their endeavors were limited to what Yuta’s revolving door of hotel wifis could handle, there were some weeks where they had the luxury to watch it from opposite ends of the common area couch. 

The plot was -- well, it would probably be better if Yuta could remember the first half of it, or the last three episodes before the finale, but the point is that it looks good. As the trailer comes to a close with the title card, Yuta gives Inumaki his phone back. 

“It looks just as good as the first,” He says, voice earnest but rough with sleep. “We should watch the first season again before it airs.”

Inumaki drops his phone into his lap to free up his hands. “ Did I wake you? ”

“Mmph— no.” Yuta full-body stretches, arms extending far above his head, and feels at least three deep pops somewhere along his spine and hips as he does so. The hike had made him surprisingly body-sore, ouch. “I just woke up.” He pauses. “I am pretty hungry, though.”

Inumaki laughs at him then, a soft sound, too wary to make it loud in the comfortable quiet. “ I left to scout out the kitchen. It’s only Maki making coffee right now.”

“Think she’ll share with us?” Yuta’s eyebrow raises, skeptical.

“ No. But we could trade. I’ll make natto and she forks over the coffee. ”

“Fair enough.”

Yuta, thankfully, does not have to suffer the experience of Inumaki climbing back over him, but he can’t help the twinge of loss as he sits up and disentangles himself from the bedding enough to swing his feet to the floor. 

Maki incredulously does share her pot of coffee with them, hovering over Inumaki’s progress on breakfast mostly to flex her height over him just because she can. They eat over morning chatter — all idle, cozy conversations, easy for sleepy minds to slowly accustom to the land of waking. The weather, the week ahead, where Gojo was off to next.

“Glad you slept well,” Maki comments at one point, face half-hidden by her mug, “You look way better than your first day back.”

“Really?” Yuta touches his face automatically, swiping his middle and ring finger over the space beneath his eye. “That obvious, huh?”

“I mean, I’m pretty sure the eyebags are permanent, but overall? Sleep does you wonders.” Maki smirks at him, letting her gaze flit pointedly between Inumaki seated across from her and back to Yuta. 

It’s a stupid ploy to get him to blush and even stupider that it works. “Who would’ve thought?”

“Ikura,” Inumaki murmurs, squinting at Maki in suspicion. “ Leave him alone for five seconds.”

“No can do,” Maki fires back easily, sitting back in her chair. “You all terrorize me on the daily. Only fair I get to fire back. Especially, ” She adds, jabbing an accusatory finger at Inumaki, “After yesterday. ”

Yuta thinks he likes it better when she just whoops his ass on the practice field instead. The chances of the grass opening a chasm to swallow him whole with weren’t high, but they weren’t zero. 

Inumaki seems to know when to pick his battles; he sits back in his chair, sulking into the neckline of his hoodie. Maki laughs, smug and satisfied at her victory, and Yuta tries to not think too hard about anything until the caffeine has a chance to stick.

The rain continues well throughout the morning, and it turns into a complete dog day. Maki lounges around with them as they cut through a few episodes of their show, good naturedly ribbing at times where real world logic couldn’t possibly apply, but after a couple of hours she retreats into her room. 

“Don’t have too much fun,” She calls over her shoulder, much to Inumaki’s aggravation.

They spend an abundance of time in the afternoon trying to work on homework. More accurately, Yuta does, because he’s been shoving off the assignments Gojo sent him to Paris with until the very last second and he can’t really remember the information he needs to answer the questions. He pours over the textbooks with a grimace at the common room coffee table while Inumaki sits on his Switch beside him.

“I hate school,” Yuta gripes at one point, burying his face in the crease of his notebook. The numbers have blurred long ago; he’s incapable of staring at them a second longer. “Why are these so difficult?”

Inumaki glances over at his work, leaning in to get a better look when he skims it and must see something off. He gestures for Yuta to slide the homework over, who gladly relinquishes the past hour’s worth of jumbled problems and haphazard scribbling. 

Even behind his face mask, Inumaki’s expressions come out clearly with his eyes. Yuta watches the way his silver eyelashes flutter as he squints over the homework, flitting back and forth as he tries to figure out what logic rabbit hole Yuta had led himself down. It’s hard to believe that at one point, Yuta was terrified of him -- of his judgment, of his stoicism, his limited vocabulary. 

He simply hadn’t understood, back then. Inumaki was smart and compassionate, taking care to put Yuta at ease even if they hadn’t met their stride of friendship yet. Even when Yuta had only been amongst them for a few months, plagued by his own insecurities and self-pity, Inumaki had watched out for him. Brought him into the fold, little by little. 

Inumaki picks up Yuta’s discarded pencil and writes out the correct formula in the top corner, and again next to a problem that Yuta has botched. He draws circles over the numbers Yuta started with and makes little arrows at each place to plug them into.

“ It’s kind of tricky, ” He signs, before pausing to scratch down the proper page numbers on the textbook, “ But you would have had the right idea.”

Well, that’s comforting at least. “Good to know I’m not a total wash,” Yuta says, taking back the notebook, and Inumaki laughs at him.

It’s a nice sound. Breathy, careful, soaked in pretty mirth even if it’s at Yuta’s expense. 

Yuta gets through the next problem set without issue and much more efficiently, trying not to curse the fact that he’d probably have finished up at least thirty minutes ago had he even remotely plugged in any numbers right. Inumaki watches him work, head propped up on his hand in quiet solidarity as Yuta erases at least three other incorrect answers and starts again.

“ You’ve got it. Good job, ” He signs eventually, turning his attention back to his paused game. 

For a moment, Yuta wrestles with a foreign feeling of envy -- towards the handheld console, of all stupid things. 

Am I a lunatic? Maybe I’m still struggling with jet lag? Yuta thinks to himself immediately, guilt flushing the red to his cheeks as he pointedly turns back to this homework. He needs to focus. It’s the last assignment he needs to submit to appease Gojo tomorrow. 

Inumaki turns and promptly guts Yuta’s focus by leaning into him, resting his back against Yuta’s upper arm as he continues pressing buttons in rapid fire motion. Yuta isn’t even sure if a position like that would be comfortable — he’s sure his bicep isn’t a great pillow, and the way Inumaki’s neck sits is sure to make him cramp. 

He looks pleased though, like he belongs, unflattering slouch and all. The pencil in Yuta’s hand stills indefinitely as he watches Inumaki’s hair, watches the game on his screen half-hidden from view. 

The deliberateness of it is shocking, but not unwelcome. They’re friends; friends who have established that it’s okay to be close, to encroach on the other’s space. Yuta has seen girls on the train do it, or athletes who see no difference between teammates and family. This is the same — Inumaki is allowed to lean against Yuta, just as Yuta is allowed to wrap his arms around him, muttering sleep-drunk nonsense in the early hours.

It’ll just take some time getting used to it. That’s all. 

“Sujiko?” 

Oh. Inumaki’s looking at him. Yuta blinks as he looks down at Inumaki’s lilac eyes, bangs ruffled at the way he slides his head back on Yuta’s arm. The inquisitive look, even upside down, twists something in Yuta’s chest.

They were close enough. He could…

He could what? 

Yuta’s brain stutter steps over the concept, but he’s no fool to it. He has felt it before; back then, when he was ten and dumb and wearing a new ring on his finger. 

His mind won’t let him say it, but some part of him understands.

All he knows for now is they’re close. Really close. He can count Inumaki’s silver eyelashes if he wanted to. 

Inumaki forgot to pause his game. A monster descends on the hero, fanged and winding its talons back for a swipe. 

Yuta feels that something in his chest turn sour, warning him away from whatever cliff edge he hadn’t known existed. He shrinks back from it, suddenly careful.

“Watch out,” He says, nodding towards the handheld, and immediately Inumaki jolts back to stare at the screen as the monster slices apart the armored protagonist with ease. It cuts to a death cutscene, prompting a do-over; and with a hissed “Mentaiko, ” Inumaki slouches back down even further to aggressively thumb to the Restart. 

Yuta dutifully focuses on his homework instead. 

---

 

The return to school is, blissfully, uneventful. Class is still class, which means some mornings Yuta would sooner close the sliding glass door on his head than go, but for a rough long weekend and a rougher few weeks preceding it, he’ll take it. Gojo’s rampant enthusiasm no longer intimidates him as it once had. It’s the most “normal” he’s ever going to get in his life, so might as well make the most of sitting through tedious lectures.

If only his classmates and his own teacher wouldn’t drag him. 

“Wow, Yuta!” Gojo comments at one point, leaning far too close into Yuta’s personal space. He angles his jaw, inspecting closely with that fox grin. “You don’t look as gloomy as usual! What’s your secret?”

“Uh,” Yuta replies, dumbfounded. 

Gloomy? Is that what he looks like? He knew he had his bad spells of under circles, more prominent several months ago than they were now, but he didn’t think he necessarily looked gloomy. Maybe Gojo was trying to rile him up. 

“Is it being back with all of us?” Gojo guesses, tilting his head to the other side of Yuta. “The power of friendship? I’d believe that.”

“I’ve… been sleeping a lot more,” Yuta admits, wary. He can’t come up with a lie on a good day, and besides — what’s the point of evading honesty? A half-truth is better than Gojo spending the rest of the lesson trying to worm out the truth from a false statement entirely. “I always rest better at home.”

In Yuta’s peripheral, Inumaki tilts his chair back precariously on two legs, hands shoved in his uniform pockets as he watches the conversation unfold. Yuta doesn’t dare look at him. 

Gojo hums then, apparently satisfied with that response. “I’m flattered you think of this as home.” He turns away and makes his ascent back to the blackboard. “Keep doing what you’re doing. Who knows — maybe those dark circles will disappear in a few years!”

Maki snorts behind her hand off to Yuta’s right and, yeah, Yuta can die.

Because now this thing is routine.

Inumaki makes room for him in the barely-large-enough mattress every night, waits for Yuta to come to bed fatigued from the day but still too awake to ever sleep on his own. They watch a movie, or Yuta scoots close to watch Inumaki work on his Animal Crossing house, or they go down a rabbit hole of cave spelunking info that had to be stopped three videos in because they were both getting paranoid. 

Inumaki’s voice is always tender even in his onigiri language, velvet-smooth and quiet in the late hours. When they both sink lower into the mattress, bone-tired from training or assignments or all of the above, Yuta finds he appreciates the last moment of his evening being Inumaki’s soft-spoken command. 

Yuta doesn’t dream of Rika. 

He doesn’t dream much at all, really. Not anything that he remembers anyway. Sleep hits him hard when Inumaki’s cursed speech calls it forward, and he blinks awake a few hours later, well-rested and comfortable in body-warmed layers. Fine by him. As far as he’s concerned, dreams are a product of a restless mind, and his tend to be nothing but trouble. 

They usually end up a mess of limbs in the morning — partially due to the discovery that Inumaki clings in his sleep, the other half the fact that Yuta rolls into his space often. It’s not uncommon for Yuta to blink awake to the sound of his chiming alarm with his head buried in Inumaki’s neck, or Inumaki pressed into the ridge of his spine with one of Yuta’s ankles trapped between his knees. (Venomous as an early-morning Inumaki can be, it’s better to leave it exactly where he wants it.)

It’s all innocent, regardless of the running commentary Maki has on their arrangement. 

By the end of the first week Yuta doesn’t even bother apologizing — Inumaki sure doesn’t. The casualness of their closeness hasn’t seemed to bother him whatsoever, and he hasn’t brought it up.

Yuta is secretly glad for it. 

He’s not ready to face the revelation sitting in the corner of his heart, not yet. 

For now, he can memorize the scent of Inumaki’s shampoo and recognize which pillow he favors and experience the feel of Inumaki’s hair as he tucks himself under Yuta’s chin, but the pin drop of a three-word internal confession to himself will consume him. 

He doesn’t know how long this is supposed to go, or if they really had a timeline at all anyhow. It’s probably not healthy to be so dependent on Inumaki’s cursed speech; Yuta knows it has to irritate his throat to give the command, and there’s going to be times where Yuta won’t be able to depend on Inumaki for a well-rested night. In theory, Yuta should work towards the independence of sleeping on his own. He can’t do this forever.

But Inumaki doesn’t ask him to go, and Yuta doesn’t ask if he can stay. They just exist in each other’s orbit for now.

 

---

 

They get three weeks. 

Yuta figured his luck only ran so deep.

Inumaki rushes at him the same time Maki angles her sweep down towards his shins, aggressive and fluid in their joint attack. Yuta drops his head the same time he jumps, curling in on himself, and feels only the scrape of Inumaki’s foot over the ridge of his back as Maki misses entirely.

The catch-but-still-miss contact from Inumaki throws off his momentum by a hair. Yuta turns his attention to the off-kilter feeling, wild-eyed with adrenaline and serious, and wraps his arm around Inumaki’s knee in a vice-like grip. The impending twist and kick gets blocked by Yuta’s other wrist, and he throws his classmate a good ten feet away.

Maki catches him with the brunt of her practice bo staff almost instantly, nailing him with a hit to his temple hard enough for stars to ghost over his vision. “Don’t forget about me just because he’s here,” She bites, lunging with a swing that Yuta narrowly blocks. 

The two sorcerers advance on him with tag-team efforts, graceful and fluid from the time spent going on co-op missions together. Yuta is used to fending for himself; his missions are often solo ventures, deemed too easy for a special grade to need backup, and only against one powerful opponent to boot. He had left his sword on the sidelines to hone his unarmed combat, and his classmates were testing the limits of it to the fullest.

He is also thankful his sword is not in use, because Rika would absolutely have had enough of their “playing” by now. 

Yuta feels the light touch of Inumaki’s hands on his shoulders from behind and twists, intending to grab his smaller opponent, but Inumaki is fast. Inumaki’s knees have already settled heavily on his shoulders, hooking into place as he drops his body weight backwards and to the side. As he shifts, Yuta feels Inumaki’s hands wrap around each of his wrists, wrenching them upwards together over his head. 

Shit—

They both land hard in the grass and Yuta feels the wind go out of him, punched out of his ribs at the impact. He hears the soft oof of his assailant, but he holds fast, easily fighting against Yuta’s bigger body and subsequent strength.

Inumaki has him. He struggles against the hold on his arms, not ready to admit his defeat yet, but Inumaki interlocks his ankles and squeezes. Yuta changes direction and does his best to scrape his feet beneath him — yet Maki is in on it now, though, and easily kicks his legs back straight. 

She plants one foot on his sternum. Inumaki still has Yuta’s neck trapped in a vice-like grip as Maki butts the end of her polearm into Yuta’s forehead. 

Game over.

“Yuta loses,” Panda announces helpfully from the safety of the sidelines, happy to sit this one out and watch the carnage unfold. 

Yuta feels his chest wheeze as he gasps for air like a fish, but it’s not until he taps out with a light, useless smack to Inumaki’s hip that he lets him go. 

“Good effort,” Maki says, stepping off of him. She must feel at least a little bad, because she offers Yuta a hand up. He waves her off in lieu of taking a moment to catch his breath.

Inumaki sits back, breathing equally hard and scrubbing the sweat from his face with his high collar. “Yuta?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Yuta reassures him. “You got me with that one.”

“In fact, I’d say if I didn’t know any better, you were trying to kill him.”

Gojo crouches in between them with his elbows on his knees, clapping in congratulations. 

“ Impressive, Inumaki!”

The trio stares at the sudden apparition of their teacher, showing up suddenly unannounced — and uninvited. Yuta had been so wrapped up in recovering from his near-blackout that he hadn’t even felt Gojo’s cursed energy reservoir materialize. It hums at their feet now, subtle beneath the unintentional loudness of Yuta’s. 

“ Hey. Don’t just show up like that,” Maki grouses, bringing the practice staff up to rest across her shoulders. “And don’t commend him for that. It was sloppy.”

“ Okaka, ” Inumaki’s eyes widen in betrayal as he looks up at her, feigning shock as he places his hand over his chest like a startled housewife. “Sujiko.”

They start quarreling, a half-sign, half-onigiri mess of pettiness. Yuta pointedly chooses to watch them until Gojo hums — and then, turning back to his teacher, tries his best not to let his face fall. It wasn’t that it was never a good sign to see Gojo out and about this early, but at this point in their training, he mostly let Maki take over the early-weekday sessions. 

The fact that Gojo wants his attention doesn’t bode well. And he knows.

“I’m borrowing Yuta,” Gojo announces, cutting through to the other second years. He stands to his full height as Yuta begrudgingly stands to his, dusting off grass and dirt stains. “There’s an assignment I need his assistance with in the north.” 

Of all his sensei’s peculiar behaviors, Yuta is thankful Gojo doesn’t play coy when it comes to taking him away from his friends. It still doesn’t help the anxiety that sprouts in his chest.

“An assignment?” Maki asks, pulling Inumaki into a headlock, but Yuta catches the way that he doesn’t struggle and she doesn’t squeeze. “Surely you don’t need his help. He just got his ass kicked.”

“Shake,” Inumaki confirms, much to Yuta’s chagrin. 

Gojo claps Yuta on the back. “Much as I am loathe to take him away from you,” He says, sounding all too chipper, “It’s only for a week. Then we’ll be back.”

“Don’t tell me you’re taking him today.”

“Tomorrow.”

“That’s still barely enough notice.”

“It’s fine! He’s been sent farther places faster than this.”

Yuta would like to point out that he’s still here in front of them, lucid and capable of pitching into the conversation.

Maki looks disgruntled, but they all have come to terms with the fact that this is just an unfortunate part of their lives now. Yuta will leave again because he has to. He will leave again and fight again and do whatever it takes to keep the higher-ups content. 

It’s why he doesn’t protest at Gojo’s announcement. Instead, Yuta sighs, carding his fingers through his hair and shaking out the longer strands. 

It’s only a week. It’ll be fine. 

“Guess I’ll go pack.”

---

 

“Yuta.”

The soft voice doesn’t even startle him as he turns his head, folding a sleep shirt into his smaller travel bag with practiced efficiency. Inumaki stands half-in, half-out of his doorway, fresh out of the shower. 

Maki had kept the other students late on the pitch to continue practice. Yuta had heard her barking at Inumaki about his choking stunt — you’ll get killed doing that in a real fight, idiot — on his way back up the steps, Gojo leading the way and filling him in on the details. 

“Hey.” Yuta motions for Inumaki to go ahead and come in and turns back to his packing. The list of items he has to bring is ingrained into his head at this point, but he still thumbs at the Notes file on his phone as he tries to get back on track. 

“Hope Maki didn’t pummel you too hard while I was gone.”

“Oka ka, ” Inumaki bites, padding across the floor, and Yuta laughs even before Inumaki’s bony elbow jabs him in the ribs. He flops down, boneless on Yuta’s bed, and signs, “ Just for that, I hope you like a wet comforter. ” He shakes his water-damp head back and forth, and Yuta swats at him with a pair of jeans.

“Not like I use it much now anyways,” Yuta answers honestly, fixing the fold and putting the jeans into his bag, “But don’t be gross.” 

Inumaki huffs out a laugh and watches him.

They sit in comfortable silence as Yuta concentrates on wrangling the mess he’s made of his dresser. A week is a week, so small in comparison to his other trips that he doesn’t really have to turn his brain off of the autopilot it sets itself on. He checks off the boxes as he gets to them, reminding himself to not forget his toiletries in the morning when he’s up early, while Inumaki scrolls on his phone and kicks his feet absently. It feels comfortable. Normal. 

If only Yuta could stay like this all the time. 

“We’ll be in Sapporo,” Yuta says, as if explaining it made him feel less unnerved about it. “I think it really will only be a week. Gojo says there’s a curse that other sorcerers can’t exorcise. They just evaluated it as a special grade.”

Inumaki sits up, frowning, and sets his phone down. “ Shouldn’t Gojo be able to handle it by himself? ”

Yuta shrugs. “It’s not his assignment, actually.”

“Ikura? It’s yours? ”

“Supposedly. But he thinks it’s weird that the higher ups insisted I go on this one. So who knows what they’re planning.” 

Inumaki lets that sit for a moment, contemplating. Yuta doesn’t. He has yet to find a curse he couldn’t handle since leaving home, regardless of the efforts of old men trying to make his life difficult. Rika’s favorite activity is ripping into something — she looks out for him, has the time of her life doing it.

Gojo being along for the ride will be interesting. 

Yuta zips up his bag and drags it to the floor, occupying the new space on his bed with a half-amused snort. “That curse is going to have a bad day when Gojo shows up.”

“ When you both show up,” Inumaki signs, nudging him, and Yuta retaliates by leaning into him. Inumaki leans back instantly.

“Either way. I hope we can find it fast.”

They continue the silence for a few moments. 

Yuta appreciates the ability to sit without speaking; before, he might have chattered, eager to fill up the space, but he’s not the same unnerved mess he used to be. He can sit and enjoy the calming presence of Inumaki fully, without his brain tripping over itself to do the mental math on if they were friends.

No matter the distance, this close or far apart, Yuta knows. 

His own yawn surprises the both of them when it comes, wide and slow. Inumaki snorts as his eyebrow raises, amused. 

“ Tired?”

“A little,” Yuuta admits, laying back. It’s not the most comfortable spot like this; his legs dangle over the short side of the bed, kicking lightly, but now that he has resigned himself to being stationary he can’t make himself expend the effort to move. “Getting all the travel information together from Gojo was… a lot.”

That’s putting it lightly. The mandatory itinerary was one thing — the wakeup time, the departure flight, the latest update on the curse and the hours they’d likely spend hunting it. The nonessentials, however, were what got Gojo most excited. Their teacher was a glutton for merchandise and delicacies no matter how many times he’s been to a place. 

It also consequently drained Yuta’s social battery the most to wrangle him back to task.

“ Gojo is a lot.”

Yuta huffs out a laugh and closes his eyes. “Yeah. He is. Maybe I’ll take a nap after all — if I can.”

The silence settles in again, this time a little heavier; even behind closed eyes, Yuuta can feel the atmosphere shift. Somewhere they stand in no man’s land, unsure of the footing there. This time tomorrow Yuta will be put to work, either tracing curse residuals or dragging his own teacher away from a souvenir stall. 

“...You can stay, if you want,” Yuta offers carefully. 

He’s both too much a coward and suddenly too tired to open his eyes, but this may be the closest they get. Inumaki sits so still that Yuta is worried he might leave after all. 

This place that they’re at — it’s difficult to acknowledge, much more difficult to navigate it at all. Certainly, this is still well within the realm of their own brand of friendship. He thinks. He hopes.

Inumaki lets out a small sigh above him and the mattress shifts. Yuta feels a small weight press against his shoulder; the exhale against his sleeve tells him Inumaki’s made his choice, and isn’t waiting for sleep to be the reason they end up holding one another.

Fine by Yuta. He rolls to his side, curling into the space between them.

Turns out naps come easier than he thought.

 

---

 

When they both wake a few hours later to the sound of Inumaki’s alarm, it’s mere seconds before Maki’s call to dinner. She knocks at the door, loud enough to bring it down, but wisely does not turn the handle. 

“ Hey, I went out and bought stuff for curry,” She calls through the door. “Stop sucking face and come and get it.”

Yuta’s brow pinches as he shifts, eyes still closed as he lifts his head to the door. “ I will be out in a few minutes,” He calls back, sleep-heavy and irritated.

“I already checked that little goblin’s room, so try again, ” Maki argues back. “Few minutes.”

Touché. 

Dinner is a lively affair, riddled with subtle accusations and a threat from Inumaki to actually use his cursed speech to get Maki to shut up. The food is good, the company is better, and they end up sprawled on the common room floor like it was any other night. 

Yuta retires first, laughing at Panda’s running commentary of the battle between Maki and Inumaki for first in Smash that can be heard long after he turns down the hall. Getting ready for bed is a hasty affair; he can’t help but feel the buzz of nervousness under his skin, the anticipation of dread. 

A week is a week. 

“It’s going to be a long week,” Yuta whispers to himself, staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. 

He looks good. Or. Well. Better. 

The dark undereyes are permanent, he’s pretty sure at this point, but they’re far removed from the deep bruising he carried with him for years. They’re less puffy, less haggard-looking, and the perpetual anxious pinch of his brow is nearly relaxed. 

Well-rested. Happy. 

Inumaki enters the communal bathroom just as Yuta goes to leave, catching his forearm in a gentle but firm grip to get his attention. 

“ Your room? ” He signs, tilting his head. “ All your things are already there. ”

“Oh,” Yuta murmurs, surprised. 

He supposes that would make more sense. The location isn’t super relevant; while he’s grown accustomed to — and rather fond of — the atmosphere of Inumaki’s bedroom, it’s the cursed speech that puts him to rest. Not the ambiance. It would be more practical to have all of his things close by and at the ready the moment he awoke. It’s not like he could really argue against that.

“Yeah. Probably.” Yuta runs his hand through his hair. “—But you don’t have to come with me. I’m going to be up really early to meet Gojo and Ijichi.”

Inumaki stares at him, just as unamused as he was three weeks prior when Yuta tried to save him the inconvenience of helping Yuta sleep at all. “Okaka,” He replies, deadpan, and waves Yuta to the hallway while he turns to run the tap. 

Well. There’s his answer. 

Inumaki enters his room ten minutes later, silver hair warm in the bedside lamp glow. Yuta smiles at him. He’s been preoccupied with filling the void by scrolling mindless apps on his phone, trying to find something to quiet his mind as he staves off the morning, but nothing quite eases his nerves like Inumaki padding across the room and climbing onto his usual side of the mattress. It’s the same, but it’s different. 

It’s just a week. Another job amongst many he’s already seen, amongst many that will come after this one. This isn’t a big deal. He’s being ridiculous. 

“Tsuna?” Inumaki asks, still shuffling as he gets settled in the unfamiliar environment. 

“I’m good,” Yuta replies, jaw stretching as he’s suddenly hit with a yawn. “Not ready to get up at five, but it’s fine.

Inumaki huffs, disgusted by the waking hour. Yuta doesn’t need any kind of sign language to understand that. 

Tomorrow he will get up, pile in Ijichi’s car alongside Gojo, take a short flight to Sapporo, and dive deep into the city to root out a theorized special grade curse. He will get up early and go to bed late for approximately six nights and seven days, and worst of all, he’s not even sure he’ll sleep at all. 

You’re going to have to, Yuta tells himself. Inumaki’s eyes search him as they face each other, still pretty in their lilac color even in the dim lamplight. You can’t just depend on him forever. 

“It’s just a week,” Yuta says out loud, making an effort to do something about the heavy silence that sits between them. He doesn’t know how to handle it. “I’ll be back before we know it.”

Inumaki watches him, face impassive, before slowly nodding into his pillow. It ruffles his bangs. 

He reaches out, then, like so many other nights in the last few weeks, and places his hand over Yuta’s temple. 

It’s not necessary. They both know it isn’t. Speech isn’t tactile, after all.

But, not unsimilar to the familiarity of Inumaki’s room, Yuta suspects they both prefer it like this anyhow. Inumaki’s fingertips are gentle against his skin, smooth and light as a feather. 

He’s close enough to kiss.

Yuta doesn’t know how to handle that sudden, world-altering confession to himself either.

“ Sleep, Yuta, ” Inumaki murmurs, and very quickly Yuta doesn’t have time to think about it at all.

---

He’s not in Sapporo. 

Or maybe he is. The air is cold, and the mountains look right. But what remains of the city street is not Sapporo anymore. 

Rubble litters the open street as Yuta walks down the beaten path, a myriad of brick and drywall dust as the air struggles to settle. He doesn’t know the details, he doesn’t know the target. Clearly a battle has already progressed more than necessary.

No veil, either. He squints up at the sky and frowns.

He’s dreaming. 

He has to be. 

“Rika,” Yuta calls, instinctually flexing his left hand. His cursed energy feels real enough as it rolls to the surface, but Rika doesn’t show. The silence lingers, haunting in her place, foreboding enough to make his hair stand on end. 

He tries again, at a loss for what else to do. His dreams always involve her. 

“R—“

The ground several yards away explodes, upending the rubble of houses that had already been destroyed. Yuta narrowly sidesteps rebar as Rika emerges, furious, clawing into the innards of a curse with a shriek that could shatter glass. The curse is snarling back, taking swipes at her, attempting to break bone and tear into ivory skin. 

“ Rika! ” Yuta shouts, reaching for his katana as he starts to give chase. His special grade curse snaps her razor-sharp teeth, narrowly missing the junction of her opponent’s neck. The curse scrapes bloodied fingernails down her sternum, leaving a trail of black ichor in its wake. The cry it earns is one of pain.

“This is a dream. This is a dream,” Yuta growls, mostly to quell his own panic as he sprints.

He’s never seen Rika challenged like this; Geto Suguru might have wanted her for his arsenal, but he had not been above trying to wear her down in the process of attempted murder.

One of the old phone poles still remains standing, crooked and cracked. Yuta bolts for it as the curses have at each other. His sneakers scrape against the wood as he runs up it, kicking off with more force than he’s ever used in his life. 

Killing the curse will end it, he’s sure. Yuta braces for impact as he angles his katana, gravity pulling him into his trajectory into the curse’s head. It turns to him at the last second and he arches away, far but not far enough to escape a tooth searing open his calf.

“ Don’t Move. ”

Yuta sees the cursed energy take it’s hold over the curse, muscles jolting into a dead stop as he plunges the katana into it. The momentum carries him like he needed it to; he carves from jawline to opposing hip, cursed blood spraying into the air as he makes the cut. 

It’s not clean, and it doesn’t kill it — but the curse roars, much more wounded than before. Rika screeches and digs into her opponent with a vengeance, energy renewed now that Yuta had stepped onto the stage.

He wasn’t the only one. That wasn’t his cursed speech.

Yuta hits the ground and tries to roll out of it, feeling the protest of his limbs. 

“ Yuta!”  

Inumaki’s arms are under his, wrenching him away from the spot he had landed. Yuta is bigger than him, nearly twice his size and likely not very helpful in the moment, but Inumaki moves him out of direct harm’s way with ease. 

“Ikura, mentaiko,” Inumaki says, his usually neutral voice thick with fatigue and panic. There’s blood everywhere. 

In his hair, his eyes, pouring from his mouth and down his chin, spattering it as he talks. His voice is raw and broken, undoubtedly the product of his shredded throat, but Inumaki looks to him, places his hands on either side of Yuta’s head and holds his gaze. The special grades still fight, overshadowing anything else Inumaki tries to say with the sounds of pain and fury and chaos incarnate. 

It’s not safe here. 

“You’re bleeding.” Yuta reaches up to Inumaki, intending to press his hand in the hollow of his throat, but Inumaki elbows him off, unwilling to let Yuta touch him. “Let me help, I—“

“ No, ” Inumaki’s voice carries a note of sternness regardless of the raw sound, shying away, but Yuta’s panic at the blood on his friend drives him forward and into Inumaki’s space. Why won’t he let me?

His fingers brush against Inumaki’s jaw, and he discovers why as two things happen in quick succession.

One: Rika reels suddenly like she’s been shot, curling her spine backwards to avoid a blow from the other curse still coming heavily at her.

Two: She turns her head so sharply her eye snaps open, angry and betrayed, and locks onto the pair of students huddled against a slab of broken concrete. 

“ Doooooonnnn’tttt, ” She hisses. 

Yuta has never had the ire of his ex-fiancée turned against him — never. For a moment, Rika turns towards them, like a dog finding a new rabbit to chase, but the other special grade takes the attack of opportunity and goes to grapple a spindly hand around her neck.

Yuta fights to stand, pulling Inumaki up with him. “ No!”  

“Yuta,” Inumaki coughs beneath Rika’s indignant shriek, clinging to his taller classmate. 

Yuta has to go help her. He has to — he has to go, before Rika gets herself killed. But how? They’re too dangerous to get close now, not without another leverage point. Yuta feels his pulse spike as he turns the information he can see over in his head, trying to come up with a solution, and fast. 

“Yuta , ” Inumaki pleads again, desperate, and Yuta looks down at the boy in his arms, gripping one another by the forearms. 

“ Wake up. ”

The speech hits Yuta and he winces, staggering back. Wake up? Wake up? “I can’t, I —“

Inumaki coughs, then, spattering blood down the front of Yuta’s dirtied uniform. “ Wake up. ”

“But Rika, she—“

The hands grasping at his forearms latch onto either side of his head, squeezing as Inumaki shakes him. His face is pinched in pain, blood flowing freely now. Yuta’s startled gasp sounds foreign in his own ears, the sight horrible. 

Inumaki doesn’t have another command left in him. He needs to listen. 

Dreaming. He was— he was dreaming. Yuta understands now.

Struggling to keep his feet beneath him now, Inumaki trembles in Yuta’s grasp, staring half-lidded through silver eyelashes. “ Please, ” Inumaki mouths.

“ Wake up.”

 

---

 

Yuta jolts to the land of the living with a gasp, held in place by the familiar hold of hands on either side of his head. 

Inumaki looms over him in the darkness. “Yuta.” He looks pale, even in the low light of the moon. 

There’s no blood. Yuta blinks up at Inumaki and corrects himself. A little blood. It pools at the corner of his friend’s mouth, dark and fresh, but not nearly the horrifying sight he had etched into his eyelids. 

It was a dream. Only a dream.

Inumaki had pulled him out of it.

“I’m okay,” Yuta breathes, trembling a little. “I’m -- thank you.”

There’s nothing but the sound of their breathing, equal parts labored and out of tempo as they watch each other. With a shaking hand, Yuta reaches for the bedside lamp cord and blindly pulls it, bathing them in a soft orange glow. 

It was only a dream — he’s fine. They both are. Yuta focuses on slowing his pulse, counting backwards from ten, anything he can do. 

There aren't any tears this time, so that’s an improvement. 

Inumaki still rests on top of him, thighs bracketing Yuta’s waist and fingers smooth against Yuta’s jaw. When it looks like Yuta is calm and officially away from the threshold of an anxiety attack, Inumaki sits back just a little and frees his hands.

“ You were having a nightmare. ”

“Yeah.”

“ I’m sorry. ”

Yuta blinks. “What? What for?”

Inumaki worries at his lower lip and swallows. Yuta can see the dusting of blood still in the corners of his front teeth as he does, the dull red a shock to see. “ I was asleep. I should have caught it, but-- ”

“Wh-- Inumaki.” Yuta halts his friend’s signing, equal parts stern and pained. “Don’t apologize for sleeping. Or anything, ” He adds, sliding his grip up from Inumaki’s wrists to his hands.

Inumaki roots his gaze down to the contact, unwilling to look Yuta in the eye. 

How could his friend blame himself? Yuta can’t wrap his head around it. Inumaki was perhaps the only person in the world that Yuta trusted enough with this. He is good, so good, better than Yuta and the lot of them. He does his best to protect others — from soft-spoken onigiri ingredients to bleeding for his friend who simply can’t sleep. 

He cares about his flower beds and his friends and cooking good food and never wants for anything other than a second season on an anime.

And he’s apologizing.

“Inumaki,” Yuta tries again, indignant on his friend’s own behalf now as he lets go of Inumaki’s hands to lift his chin. He watches as Inumaki’s eyes blow wide, feels the body over him go tense like a wire being pulled taut. “ Thank you.

“I don’t even know what I would have done if you weren’t here. I don’t really remember what happened, but I know it was bad.” Flashes of his bloodied friend were supplemental, but fading quickly, distorted so far in Yuta’s head that he knew it couldn’t be real. 

He’s sure it probably felt real in the moment. “ Really bad. And you hurt yourself -- how bad is it?”

Inumaki glances at the floor. 

When he speaks, his voice is shredded, sanded down to a hoarse mess of barely-audible syllables. “Mentaiko,” He grumbles, wincing at the sensation, and Yuta winces with him. 

Bad enough. 

Carefully, Yuta lets his hand drop down a little lower, gently cupping over Inumaki’s Adam's apple. It’s hard to ignore the way Inumaki shivers, but Yuta can’t tell if it’s pain or the touch itself.

RCT is old hat to Yuta at this point. He enacts it quickly, a soft glow at Inumaki’s throat and a brief cough from his companion the only two indicators that anything had happened at all. Inumaki shifts in Yuta’s lap as the technique stitches him back together, relief clear. 

“Better?” Yuta asks, watching Inumaki’s face relax. The warmth in his chest spreads.

“Shake.”

“Good. Thank you, again.” When Inumaki’s nose wrinkles in protest, Yuta squeezes the hand that had drifted to Inumaki’s hip. “And I’m going to keep saying it. That could have turned out way differently. But you stopped it.”

He has no idea what time it is, but the way Inumaki’s body sags against the gentle hand at his throat says it’s late. Yuta doesn’t want to imagine what travel is going to be like tomorrow. 

He doesn’t want to imagine leaving Tokyo, the school grounds, the dorms.

The boy in his lap. 

Proper etiquette between friends would probably direct them to let go of one another. 

They don’t. 

Yuta watches Inumaki sit tall on top of him as they lapse into silence, painfully aware of how Inumaki’s pulse thrums harder under Yuta’s fingers. Inumaki’s hands rest on his chest, lightweight but warm through the fabric of Yuta’s shirt, and the weight of him is all-encompassing.

He could balk. Pat Inumaki’s cheek and roll out of bed in search of water before going back to sleep. It would be the easier option. He could stay safe in his own denial, keep Inumaki safe outside of it.

But his heart doesn’t want to. Hasn’t wanted to. 

He runs his thumb along Inumaki’s jaw, just a ghost of a feeling, and watches the bodily shudder of the boy above him. Inumaki leans into the touch, leans into Yuta, hands sliding up as their chests press flush.

He’s close. He’s so close. 

Not close enough.

“Toge,” Yuta whispers.

A week is a week. 

Inumaki kisses him.

Notes:

Oh boy.

Chapter 4: chapter 4

Notes:

If you notice, I upped the chapter count again. NEXT chapter will be the finale of finales. And sorry! I have been running around like a madman trying to work on 20 different things at once.

NOTE: i also upped the maturity level. bc teenage boys.

Gojo has a terrible time minding his business. Yuuta knows this — the first indicator being that the man made it his habit to take on students deemed as problems to society — and yet still finds himself surprised when Gojo tries to mind his.

“Rejection, huh?” Gojo says, waiting for their bags. He must have been holding on to this one. “You’re so cruel.”

Yuuta only just manages to meter his reaction from horribly mollified to a mere raise of his eyebrow. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“That’s worse."

Yuuta doesn’t know how to respond to that without absolutely incriminating himself, and he’s already in a bad mood as it is. So he doesn’t.

The airport sucked. The flight was delayed, and then the flight sucked too. 

Ijichi could only manage so much at once, but his nervous chatter on the phone as Gojo told him the update sent Yuuta’s nerves halfway to sensory overload. Two hours worth of turbulence, in which Gojo happily told Yuuta that they’d be fine if turbulence finally decided to bring down a plane, had consumed the rest of his tolerance for the day. 

Sleep deprivation was not a new friend, but a month of not seeing it had made it hit with a vengeance — and they still had work to do before the sun set. 

Yuuta rubs at his eyes, not feeling patient enough to deal with Gojo’s meddling. He’s not feeling patient enough for anything, really, but the innocent people of Sapporo have done absolutely nothing to him— unlike one needling teacher.

For a long, harrowing ten minutes, it almost looks like his luck has decided to include the trip eating his baggage, but the inconspicuous black duffle shuffles through the carousel port long at last. Gojo watches him expectantly as he goes to grab it, waiting for him to crack, but Yuuta’s rare stubborn streak has come out to play.

“Wow, you didn’t even check.” Even Gojo’s long-legged stride, airy and confident, is bothering the shit out of him as they start their journey to the exit. “You sure it’s yours?”

“Positive.”

“How?”

Inumaki had attached a keychain onto the zipper without him noticing. It was the main character of their show; the one they had spent an abundance of lazy mornings or late nights catching up on in the time Yuuta spent at home. Apparently he had pulled it from a blind box, and had sent Yuuta on his way with it for a good luck charm. He didn’t discover it until the morning he was set to leave. 

It bounces against the canvas of the bag, and the acrylic charm clinks with each hit.

Yuuta isn’t about to tell Gojo any of this. The ammunition is already enough. He adjusts his grip, looking straight ahead. 

“I just know.”

---

It was good.

Better than good. 

His hands had automatically slid beneath the thin cotton of Toge’s shirt, steadying him as Toge pressed down on him. His lips were soft; a steady weight against him, experimental and unsure, but there. He kissed as gently and beautifully as he said the few words he spoke.

Finally, Yuuta thought, eyes fluttering closed. It was all he ever wanted and more. 

Yuuta’s experience could be clocked down to the time Rika held his hand with intent to cross the street. Neither of them, in their adolescence, had thought to do more than that. 

Nothing wrong with that, as he was still all of gangly seventeen years and stupid with emotion, but he wants so badly to be good. He feels like he stole something, like a bandit with something he’s not allowed to have. He wants to make it worth both of their whiles.

This is new ground, unfamiliar territory, but Toge leads him into it and he follows with a bleed of enthusiasm. When Toge’s sealed tongue traces Yuuta’s lips, he opens his mouth and can’t stop the reedy whine that spills out as Toge licks into him.

It was shocking, electricity running like a riptide in his veins, hot and cold and exhilarating all the same. The feel of Toge’s fingers pressing divots into Yuuta’s face and neck, comfortable and desperate to hold him, to touch him — it was all so much. Beneath his palms was a steady, lithe set of muscles, chorded from Maki’s training. 

Toge is strong when he wants to showcase it. Soft and gentle-hearted as he is, Yuuta has seen first-hand how intense he can get. In training or in missions, he gives the opposition everything he has. Not a single cruel streak runs through Toge, even though he would have the right to wield it; he fights to win, but he still cares. 

Yuuta looked up to him from the moment he was only his silent and intimidating second-grade classmate, and he looks up to the semi-grade one sorcerer now, who can exorcise three second grade curses and still makes time to bring home sushi for Panda. 

Toge is one of Yuuta’s biggest heroes, and he’s here, in his room, in his bed, kissing him for all he’s worth. Kissing him like they couldn’t bear to be apart. Kissing him with soft, pliant movement, growing quickly in intensity as they egged one another on.

The first hesitant rock of Toge’s hips against Yuuta made him aware of the constriction in his shorts, and that it felt really, really good to feel that friction. 

The second, a little more confident, set off a voice in the back of his head as he chased the feeling: Not bad for a first kiss.

First kiss.

Yuuta turned his head away suddenly, pulling away from Toge’s lips with a strangled gasp and a hoarse, “— Stop.”

Toge froze. 

The air suddenly stilled, nothing else save for the sound of their heavy breathing as Yuuta struggled to catch his breath and rein in his surge of terror. 

He’s so stupid. He’s so fucking stupid. 

Because he wants this so badly; probably has for a long time, longer than he’s ever realized. He wants to kiss Toge, slot their mouths together and hum into him, wants to slide against him and get off to the lithe body sitting on top of him, wants to be held and go to sleep to a boy tucked beneath his chin and wake up to a phone shoved in his face and do it all over again. 

He wants their routine to mean something, for there to be a way forward that isn’t simple longing glances and the awkward no man’s land of friendship and something more that they’ve cast themselves into. 

It’s here, right in front of him, handed to him on a platter ornately engraved with snake eyes and fangs, and he can’t.

He can’t. He’s leaving.

“Wait,” Yuuta amended, his regret thickening his words as he tried to soften the blow. Toge stared down at him, eyes wide in the soft illumination of the bedside lamp. Yuuta may as well have hit him.

“ I’m sorry,” Toge signed with trembling hands. He sat up on his knees, moving to get off of Yuuta in his newfound embarrassment, and instinctively Yuuta reached for his ribs to hold him in place. He can’t let it begin, but he couldn’t let it end like this, either.

“I— it’s not you,” Yuuta started, and then immediately winced, because ow, even to his ears it sounded like the worst trick in the book, “I swear, Toge, I’m not — I — I like you so much. ”

So much it scares him. So much it gives him horrifying nightmares. So much that Rika, who is only a mere ghost of the soul who haunted him for loving too much, has taken it upon herself to be jealous. 

His love could kill Toge. 

Worse, his love could keep him. 

The higher-ups can’t control him or his power, but they can find what does control him. If he committed, it would be like condemning Toge to a marionette’s strings; forever attached, only existing to pull Yuuta’s bones into a mold. 

The thought terrifies him. 

“I like you,” Yuuta said again, just to drive it home. Toge still watched him with apprehension. “ I should be saying sorry. Not you. Never you.”

“But I’m leaving tomorrow, and I’ll leave again after that, because I always do, and—“

“That’s work,” Toge argued, brow pinching as he frowned. His lips were kiss-swollen, seals on full display. “I leave too. We all do.”

“It’s not the same.”

“ It is! ”

“It’s not, ” Yuuta pleaded, feeling the heat behind his eyes start to burn. “I — the heads of jujutsu society want me dead. They’re so afraid of me the only thing they can think to do is send me on missions like these and hope I die in the process.”

“ They could have just —“ Toge paused, wincing, balking at the word Yuuta knew was coming, but the momentum carried him through the motions of his hands eventually. “ They could have just executed you. ”

“Not if they wanted Gojo to stay on their side.”

“ But Gojo is on your side. ”

“ Toge ,” Yuuta breathed, exasperated and near tears, and he felt the sting as the boy in his lap flinched at the use of his first name. “I don’t want to drag you into the middle of it.”

“ Don’t make decisions for me. ” Toge’s hands moved so rapidly that Yuuta could barely read them. “ I don’t care what the higher-ups think. Just like I don’t care about what my family thinks.”

“And what about Rika?” 

The silence cut like a knife, hilt to skin and blade to bone. Toge stared down at him, confusion hinted at in the tiniest scrunch of his nose. Yuuta hates that he knows what that scrunch means. He pulled his right hand off of Toge to fish the chain from underneath the collar of his shirt, and felt the cursed energy reservoir perk up as he pinched the ring beneath his fingers.

It’s the pinnacle of what his love — even if constructed of a promise made by a just-turned-ten-year-old — could do to a person. Toge knew all of it by then; the accident, the bullying, the destruction of Yuuta’s life. 

“You think Rika is a special grade.” Yuuta managed to stifle the sob that threatened to hitch his chest, but he couldn’t stop the cracking of his voice. “What if I did that to you? ”

He didn’t ask for any of this. He was trying not to be difficult. Yuuta could have just kept kissing him, let them goad each other on until they were sweating, gasping messes, blinded by euphoria and lovesickness, and Yuuta would leave with a kiss goodbye instead of whatever the fuck he’s doing to them now.

Yuuta knows that Toge would still choose this. Toge wouldn’t fight Yuuta’s brain this hard if he didn’t think it was worth it.

But the idea of Toge coming to haunt his dreams, of Toge being the one he traps with a curse he can’t let go of — it would be the end of him. 

Toge seemed to understand, then. The cloudy expression he wore softened, beautiful in its resignation. His weight settled heavier against Yuuta’s hip bones as the second sob threatened to strangle Yuuta.

“I don’t want to lose you,” He warbled, shutting his eyes as Toge placed a gentle hand on his cheek. “Toge, you mean so much to me. I can’t—“

“Yuuta,” Toge murmured.

“You’re so kind. The kindest person I’ve ever met in my life. I see it all the time. Even when I ramble, you never complain or get annoyed, and you love your flowers and put so much care into your garden, and you give Maki as good as she gives but still check on her when she’s upset from her clan.” He’s a mess, but it’s too late to stop now. “And you’re so smart,  you never even have to pay attention in class. I never felt like I belonged until I went on a mission with you. Please, please don’t think I don’t want to still be your best friend—“

“ Yuuta. Okaka.” Toge’s voice was a little firmer, even if laced with an emotion Yuuta couldn’t identify. He felt Toge’s lips on his forehead, gentle and soft, and didn't shy away when it lingered. It shut him up. 

God. He was rejecting Toge and yet somehow he was the one having the panic attack. Typical. Shame burned deep from his weepy eyes, down his neck and spread through his body. Toge was hurting, and yet he still looked out for Yuuta. It’s a kindness he didn’t deserve, but was too weak to turn away. 

He may be a special grade sorcerer, but he’s no stronger a person than the weakest of curses. 

Fingers tapped gently at Yuuta’s face, prompting him to open his eyes. Toge was so close for the briefest of moments before he reared back and signed with equally aggrieved emotion. 

“I would never stop being your friend.” Toge bit his lower lip. “I don’t want you to think that. You mean a lot to me, too. Clearly.” He gestured from himself to Yuuta, their positions, which earned him a wet laugh from Yuuta. 

“ I hang out with you because I like to spend my time that way. Not because I only wanted more. You don’t give yourself enough credit.”  

“Stop being nice to me,” Yuuta whispered, miserable in spite of the increasingly bashful smile that pulled at the corner of his mouth. Toge shook his head. 

“ You have a heart bigger than you know. You care so much and you put everyone before yourself without even thinking about it. You’re smart, too, even if you don’t think you are. You never complain even when people are being unfair to you. And you’re always unfair to yourself. ”

“Toge.”

The waterworks had stilted but then came back with a vengeance, bittersweet and painful. Toge was wrong, but Yuuta didn’t have the heart to tell him. His heart hurt instead, a bleeding mess that seeped into the mattress, staining it an invisible, fatal red as he turned away the one thing he so desperately wanted and can’t be brave enough to lose. 

It would be easier if Toge was mad at him, he thought — but then immediately realized that no, no it wouldn’t. 

“ I’m here for you no matter what. That’s what friends do. It’s unconditional.”

Yuuta didn’t deserve him. 

Yuuta doesn’t deserve him. 

Toge shifted off of him then, moving to fit himself against Yuuta’s side and stretch so that their bodies aligned. He slung an arm over Yuuta, and when Yuuta didn’t pull away, Toge squeezed his chest and rested his head against his shoulder. There was nothing more to say; they laid there for who knows how long until Yuuta stopped wiping at his eyes, frustrated and sniffling. 

When Toge moved again, it was only to readjust his hold on Yuuta. He lifted his hand briefly to make an “OK?” sign with his hand in question, to which Yuuta laughed again. 

“No,” He had answered, horribly honest, and Toge’s rumbling, sad chuckle vibrated against his shoulder. 

“But thank you —um. For understanding. For not hating me.”

Toge lifted his head, his expression sharp with disagreement as he pinched Yuuta. “Oka ka, Yuuta. Ikura.”

“ Ow— I know, I know. I just.” Yuuta sighed, long and weary, and felt fatigue start to pull at him. His mind was far too restless for sleep now, buzzed by the whiplash of the evening. He didn’t even have anything lined up to continue the sentence. 

Toge knew, though. Weeks of sleeping in the same room — same bed — had put him in tune with the modes of Yuuta’s brain and all the maladies that come with it. Sometimes Yuuta was dead tired and needed the gentlest push to send him over the line, other times he was a live wire, anxious for a reason unbeknownst to either of them, and needed the cursed command to shake him of his nerves.

It’s why Toge smoothed his palm over the spot he pinched, settling back down for comfort, and didn't even hesitate to follow the routine. It’s late. Yuuta is leaving in only a few hours at most. 

They could have that, for now. The little moment in time, understanding that whatever came in the morning, it wouldn’t be togetherness. Yuuta had felt like a coward.

Toge’s voice had been gentler than any lullaby. “ Sleep. ”

Yuuta went asunder.

---

 

The first day was a wash. Utterly and completely. 

Yuuta adjusts the katana wrapped securely on his back as they get back to the hotel, and tries not to instinctively snap, “ What? ” as his phone chimes three times in rapid fire succession. 

It’s late. The room is dark as Yuuta hunts for the light switch, tired and sweaty and coated in a mild layer of city-grime from combing through the “seedy underbelly” of the mountainside city. Tokyo was warming up but Sapporo is still cold, wet from fresh rainfall, and they came up empty handed. Not even Gojo’s sixth eye provided some kind of use; tracking the residuals had them chasing their tails.

He hasn’t been in this ugly of a mood in a long time. Probably ever. 

Get your shit together, Yuuta scolds himself, breathing through his nose as he peels away the disgusting outer layer of his white school uniform. Gojo, whether by empathetic response or just knowing better from the track record of the day, leaves him well alone.

“You can shower first,” He offers. “You did most of the dirty work today. Good job.”

Yuuta nods, grateful, and flees to the bathroom without fanfare. 

The water is warm and does wonders for Yuuta’s fatigued muscles, washing the grit and dirt away, and he stands underneath the spray for probably an ungodly amount of time before willing himself to turn off the tap. 

He woke up alone. 

Inumaki had been nowhere in sight when the chime of Yuuta’s phone violently disrupted the quiet, and his door had been closed when Yuuta walked through the dorms. 

It wasn’t abnormal for Yuuta to wake up alone, especially on Sundays when Toge had adopted breakfast duty for the group. Toge did what he wanted and went where he wanted, sometimes dragged out of bed by Maki’s insistence or struck by the realization that the forecast would call for him to protect his peonies. It never bothered Yuuta before; it shouldn’t bother him now.

But it did. It felt like a period in a sentence that was still being said, the closure of a book he didn’t know he was reading. Inumaki had been kind, graceful in his acceptance of Yuuta’s fears, but it was so early in the morning and they went to bed so late. His absence was deliberate. Yuuta knows he doesn’t have a right to be hurt, but still feels the snakebite anyways. 

He changes quickly, feeling like a somewhat-new person, and Gojo mercifully does not chirp at him for taking too long when he emerges. When his phone chimes again, staunchly reminding him that he never checked the first triad of messages, he feels much more composed to see what it is.

New Message: Inumaki 🍙

9:22 P.M.

maki is bored without u

by bored i mean beating our asses in smash

long week ahead (jk)

 

And then, a more recent notification:

 

New Message: Maki ⚔️

10:04 P.M.

Hope your plane isn’t in a field somewhere bc toge is moping since you haven’t replied

I dont wanna deal w your boyfriend being sad

He’s not my boyfriend, Maki.

Precisely. 

Just let him know you’re alive. I feel like I kicked a dog.

Yep

Yikes. 

 

New Message: Inumaki 🍙

10:06 P.M.

Sorry, we just walked into the hotel and I needed a shower

How bad was it?

Inumaki 🍙

you don’t even wanna know. i’m embarrassed

disgraced

have to flee the country

Haha

Inumaki 🍙

how was the flight?

For a moment, Yuuta starts to type out the laundry list of issues he’s had from the first second he came back to consciousness — the drive, the flight, Gojo himself and their lackluster start to the investigation — but it’s too much to type. It would just irritate him all over again, and he’s still hovering around the threshold between just grumpy and extremely overwhelmed. 

Inumaki must see the three dots appear and disappear from his end, because after a few minutes passes with no message from Yuuta, he sends another. 

Inumaki 🍙

i know it’s late, but

[...]

Inumaki 🍙

you can call if you want

Yuuta chews his lower lip, contemplating. Gojo was in the shower, so his teacher overhearing him was unlikely, but he didn’t want to get caught off guard or invite more unwanted nosiness from his mentor. An idea strikes him.

Give me just a sec and i’ll call

He snags the complimentary room notepad and scrawls a quick note to Gojo, saying he’s out to wash his uniform and be back soon, and then grabs one of the hotel keys and stuffs his disgusting school attire in a bag. The door has barely shut behind him before Toge picks up the video call on the first ring.

“Konbu,” Toge says, and Yuuta feels the tension run out of him almost immediately. The reception sucks; it’s tinny and pixelated, and lags when Toge runs his fingers through his bangs, but it’s Toge all the same. 

“Hey.” Yuuta smiles as he walks. 

Yuuta gives him the rundown of the day as he heads outside and finds a laundromat in minutes, oddly devoid of people at this hour. He details everything — almost everything, from the cheery, passive aggressive demeanor Gojo held for Ijichi, to the flight being delayed, to the unlucky first leg of the investigation. As the story unfolds, Yuuta feels himself get lighter, happy to simply just see Toge on the other side nodding or giving one-off ingredient replies of acknowledgement. He even holds up his white uniform tunic to show off the disgusting, sad state it’s in, pinched between two fingers. When Toge’s nose wrinkles, he laughs. 

The wash is short and the drying shouldn’t take long, considering the load, and Yuuta perches on the dryer as Toge signs out his day. It feels like old times. Miguel could walk in, chastising him for sitting on the machine, and Yuuta would feel like nothing changed at all. He’s always on the move, always onto the next big thing by force, but Toge’s calls are always the constant. 

“ Did you find anything good to bring back to us?” Toge asks, only skipping a few frames from the stellar reception. 

“Not yet. Knowing Gojo, though…” Yuuta shrugs. “I’ll probably bring something back whether I want to or not.”

“ Fair.”

Toge yawns, then, and it prompts Yuuta to yawn right along with him. He supposes it’s late — not late enough for Toge to be tired on a normal night, by far, but they had an emotional morning. Yuuta knows he’s to blame for that. 

“Tired?” Yuuta asks gently. Toge shakes his head, but it’s interrupted by yet another yawn. “It’s okay if you are. Just go to bed.”

“Okaka,” Toge grumbles, stubbornly sitting upright even though he’s itching at his eyes. 

It’s adorable. The pout, the scrunch of his face as he runs his hand across his forehead, the petty, wide blinking of his violet eyes as he sits straight to prove just how awake he actually is. 

Yuuta’s heart turns over like a dead motor. 

You did this to yourself, he says internally. You gave this up.

And really, beyond the events of the waking hours, the next biggest discussion would be the elephant in the room. The wound they’re politely ignoring bleeds sluggishly, but clearly, neither of them feel ready to stitch it for now. 

Yuuta is trying to think of something to say, something to keep their momentum going, but right as he opens his mouth the buzzer sounds off for the dryer beneath him. He jumps at the noise. 

Well. Now he doesn’t have an excuse to linger, to waffle for something else to talk about. It’s past 11 and he has to go back up to the room, lest Gojo has to go hunt for him. Toge must realize it, too. The look on his face is one of resignation.

“Let’s see.” Yuuta jumps off of the dryer and sets his phone up so Toge can watch him pull the white shirt out first and snap it a few times. It’s much better than it was before, stainless and fresh and warm, and he proudly displays it for Toge to see. “Oh, yeah. I’m an old pro at getting this clean.”

It’s a stupid thing to say, but Toge still humors him by snorting. They linger in silence as Yuuta folds the uniform up. 

He loves it. It’s comfortable. He hates it. It’s terrible.

“Yuuta,” Toge says finally, soft into the quiet of the laundromat. When Yuuta lifts his head, suddenly apprehensive, Toge signs, “ Be safe tomorrow. Come home soon. ”

The smile hurts, but Yuuta does it anyway. 

“Yeah. Always. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

The goodbye is short and simple, but Yuuta misses him when his light hair cuts to a dark screen. He misses Toge even more when he has to trudge back to the hotel with only the city ambiance to accompany him. 

He keeps telling himself he’s being unfair, because he is. Only Toge — not a person like him, because there is no other in the world — would have the kindness to pick back up after being shoved face-first and still invite Yuuta to call. It’s selfish to accept that kindness, and still Yuuta did it anyway.

He sleeps like shit.

---

The second day is as uneventful and frustrating as the first, but Yuuta’s temperament is markedly improved from Toge’s phone call. Gojo doesn’t needle him unnecessarily for information; he sits back for most of the trip, content to offer advice should Yuuta ask for it, but otherwise on standby and no more a nuisance than he would be in class.

Yuuta still has to find something to do outside of the hotel room to call Toge. They talk for a bit, enough to discuss their days, and Yuuta is in a marginally better mood. It’s Toge’s turn to let him go when he starts yawning too badly, nevermind the fact that Yuuta won't be able to sleep and the both know it, but they’re better. More normal. 

It still hurts, but Yuuta has put the first stitch in. Each day adds one more. 

The curse sucks. Without a pinpointed location of its latest whereabouts, tracking has been a nightmare. Rika helps as best as she can, but the most recent trail backs up into the outer edges of Sapporo, where the outlying resort houses are still emptying out for the year. 

Is it the worst time he’s had finding a curse? Absolutely not. Is it the worst time he’s having in his life? Maybe.

On the fourth day, Yuuta is ecstatic when the veil actually takes hold.

“Good,” Gojo says, smug behind his blindfold. “I can tell you all the ways you could have found it faster when we’re on the plane home.”

Yuuta had a sneaking suspicion that he knew all along, but he chalks it up to a learning experience. Gojo was a teacher first, after all — even if he was also a major nuisance.

“Sure.”

The young sorcerer lifts his hand to the air, marveling for a moment at the way the warped lighting of the veil glinted off of his ring. He can feel Rika’s restless energy, humming, ready to break from the gate and get to work. 

“Rika, come on,” Yuuta says, calling forth her power.

She doesn’t manifest fully, but his cursed energy billows out gently as she peeks her head up from the ground. “ Yuuta ?” She asks, turning to look at him. 

The curse residuals burn a deep red in the dirt, scattered and venomous. Yuuta watches them for a moment, seeing if he can pick up a sense of direction, before he crouches down and rests a light hand on her head. “See if you can flush it out.” He points down the alley ahead. 

Rika sits unmoving for a moment and calculates her options. Finally, with a murmured, “ Okaaaay, ” she dips below the earth. Yuuta feels her pull like a lifeline away from him. 

“We should get you a dog,” Gojo says, stretching. At Yuuta’s raised eyebrow, he adds, “Less special grade.”

“Please don’t imply that Rika is a pet, Sensei.”

“I would never. Hence the dog.”

Yuuta ignores him in favor of trudging forward after Rika. 

He doesn’t see her as much as feels her pull him along. Occasionally, Yuuta can see her poke through an object, spindly teeth gleaming in the dying light of day as she swivels her head, but she otherwise stays on task. The residual gets thicker -- on the ground, the walls, the air. Yuuta coughs beneath his breath as he reaches for his katana, coming to a rest before a row of back roads intersects. 

Any moment now, Rika will sound the alarm. She has to be closing in. The veil is enclosed; the energy is too strong to be anything less than at least a first grade. The sooner they finish, the sooner he can go home and sort out the mess that is his life. His blade’s steel glints off the brick of a privacy wall. 

“Do you feel it?” Yuuta asks Gojo, glancing over his shoulder. 

He’s met with silence. 

Now. Yuuta considers himself a very patient person. 

He’s not quick to anger, and even his temper when triggered is mild compared to the likes of Maki, or Todo. As he twists around, only to be met with an absent alley, he can feel the strain of his self control wearing him thin.

 “Sensei,” He calls, mouth pressed into a thin line to keep the snarl out of his lip. “Just tell me if you’re going to sit back, don’t hide.”

Despite the way his voice rises into the empty space of the neighborhood, he is still met with nothing but the dull echo of his own voice. 

The hair at the back of his neck stands up at the exact same moment he feels Rika’s cursed energy separate, suddenly pulled from him like a knife from his stomach. 

Instinct is the only thing that saves him. Yuuta leaps into the air to narrowly avoid the snapping maw of a special grade curse as it slams through the side of a house. 

It’s wiry, built long and narrow like a dragon, or a ferret. Yuuta pulls himself onto a neighboring rooftop and has to dodge in quick succession again as it follows him easily, hissing and spraying debris in its wake.  

“ Rika! ” Yuuta shouts, slamming the butt of his sword square in between the curse’s eyes as he jumps. 

He can’t feel her anymore. He can’t — why can’t he summon her? He tries again as he slashes a long arc up the side of the curse, opening its skin with a spray of black ichor, and again when his opponent clips him by the arm. 

Where Rika should be thrumming alive with cursed energy, all too eager to manifest into full strength, there’s nothing. His excess of cursed energy is nowhere he can reach. 

“Shit—“

The curse is fast but he is faster, barely, collecting himself enough to strike out and draw blood. The hits come graciously in spite of how discombobulated he feels, how terrible a feeling sits at the bottom of his stomach and blooms into the rest of him. Surely, Yuuta would know if this thing killed Rika. Certainly. He feels her absence like a missing limb, off-kilter and worrying.

There’s no time for that, however. The curse descends upon him, putting him on the defense, and Yuuta trades a rapid series of blows as it attempts to find the best angle of attack. He leaps straight in the air when it tries to grapple his feet with a huffed, “Nope,” and his katana impales it in a heavy, fatty little limb.

The curse shrieks in its outrage and lunges for him, but Yuuta is always playing three moves ahead. He lets go of the katana as the special grade’s head winds around, open-mouthed and angry, and lights it up with a solid hit of cursed energy pouring from his fist. The black flash cracks over the rooftop like a thunderclap, loud and heavy, and the curse crumples with a wounded keen as it nurses its jaw.

Yuuta can’t count even on a single hand the amount of times he has felt exhausted of energy. It’s never happened before. 

But as his body sags forward, teeth bared and sweat clamming his skin already. It was as if a string had been unwound from a spool rapidly, too fast and incapable of being put back without becoming tangled. 

He’s running out. He’s never run out. 

What the fuck.

Focus. Yuuta resumes his stance, widens it, turning the situation over in his head as he restrategizes. His katana, dripping with onyx gore, feels heavy in his grip as he retrieves it from his feet. It’s not his worst fight. It won’t be his worst fight. If he can keep the fog in his head from getting worse and finish this fast, he can get home with only a few new scars to show for it. 

The curse seems to be reassessing him, too. 

It tilts its ugly head, eyes swiveling in different directions. Rika would have axed the opportunity — her enthusiasm for bloodlust wins over any tactical advantage he can bring, but at least it stops his opponent from having time to think. Yuuta can’t afford mistakes here. 

“Come on, then,” He growls, lifting his katana. 

It’s bad news. Strength drains rapidly from his limbs, pouring out like water from a funnel as he matches the curse step for step. Being light on his feet is a trait he has had to earn, fought tooth and nail by Maki’s advances. It’s the only thing that saves him from getting outright bodied when the curse tries to corner him on a rooftop.

But he’s tired. 

Poison, Yuuta realizes, too sluggish for the alarming kind of clarity reserved for that epiphany. The curse had been trying to wait him out for who knows how long. It feasts on him now, eating away at his cursed energy as it makes its advances, and Yuuta finds himself barely parrying blows or blocking sharp teeth. His sneaker squeaks, sharp and piercing against slick tile, and the split second of surprise is all the curse needs to grab ahold of his shoulder and bite down.

Bone cracks beneath back molars, blinding and molten in its furious agony as Yuuta shouts through gritted teeth. The steel of his katana rattles harshly as it falls from his grip, suddenly pliant and useless, and he’s left trying to cling to the snarling maw of the curse as it does its best to shake him with all the same banter as a dog with a new doy. 

Not here, Yuuta thinks, landing a feeble hit square in the eye of his opponent and groaning as it shakes him again, Not here. I can’t. I have to go home. 

Inumaki’s smile will await him: the one hidden behind a mask, but still comes out in his eyes, because when they crinkle with glee it lights up a room. The plane ride will be as short and miserable as the first, and Yuuta will probably lose his luggage for real this time, and none of it will matter because he needs to give Toge a souvenir like he asked. Tell him how this week has been the most miserable week of his life. Feel the silver, silky smooth hair brush against his chin as he envelops his best friend in the longest hug of his life. Yuuta wants to never, ever let go again.

The curse adjusts its grip on him and red pulses down his chest through his clothes, up his neck and soaking his shirt. 

Yuuta wants one more stolen glance, one more stolen kiss. One more evening with his friends, where he can glance over and see Toge’s comfortable laugh, seals on display.

The seals. 

Wait. 

The seals. 

Yuuta’s eyes fly open, and his cheeks burn.

He scrabbles to angle his face down towards the curse, awkward and desperate as his tongue alights with the last remnants of his cursed energy. It swells, and buzzes, and crackles at his disposal far unlike what he has ever felt before. Panic takes away poeticism; before he realizes what he’s even doing, he grabs a fistful of curse and yells for all he’s worth. 

“ DIE. ”

Time pauses. The single second it takes for the syllable to fall from his mouth stretches on for a minute, an hour, an eternity, and with it only the desperation of survival and the swell of cursed energy dripping from his lips. This is the last resort. 

His throat shreds to ribbons. 

The curse lets him go over the roof overhang, shrieking and wailing as its body implodes in on itself section by section. Terrible booms like cannonshot echo over the neighborhood, over Yuuta laying in the street, shaking the ground beneath him as he sucks air. 

One, two, all the way to five shots ring out, and a blind wail of indignance is the last remainder of the curse’s existence. Black seeps over the roof, pouring over the gutter systems and into the street. The macabre scene unfolds as it pours in the street, blackening the back dirt walkways of the neighborhood.

It’s over. It’s done.

The veil begins to lift as he stares half-lidded up at the sky, face pinched with the feeling of his obliterated throat tugging at every breath. The dark tint gave way to a pretty, early dusk, cloud cover dusted in hues of pinks and oranges over Yuuta’s head. It’s so peaceful. He almost doesn’t want to move. 

But he has to.

His sword, he thinks. He needs his sword.

Yuuta wills himself to move — first with the drag of his foot up, urging his expended hamstrings to carry him as he half-rolls into sitting upright. His right arm hangs uselessly, mauled and separated, but by some miraculous feat he manages the effort to stand. 

He takes a step.

Then another.

Yuuta can see the gleaning metal down the street, dirtied with blood and dust. It’s a long walk. He hurts all over. It’s a triumphant feeling. It’s agonizing.

The sooner he gets his sword, the sooner he gets back home. 

The sooner he gets back to Toge . 

Someone calls his name, but Yuuta takes another step. The ringing in his ears, once a soft sound, grows sharp to the tune of his own spiking pulse. It roars, begging him to stop, but yet Yuuta trudges forward once more.

He needs his sword.

His knees hit the ground instead.

---

 

“You with me?”

Silence. 

“Hm. He looked like he was waking u— oh, there he is. C’mon, Okkotsu. Open your eyes for me.”

Yuuta’s eyelids flutter heavily, unwilling to cooperate. Gojo’s shockingly vivid eyes are the first thing he sees, glittering and cerulean as his teacher leans in too closely for comfort. He’s talking to someone on the phone. 

“ Geesh. You’ve looked better.” 

The shock of white bangs blurs in Yuuta’s vision as Gojo leans back to resume his phone call. “Give me five, and I’ll — yep. I’ll send him. I figured dropping him out of the blue like this would be difficult. Aren’t I thoughtful?”

Everything hurts. Not in the dull way pain feels after a long rest; everything hurts, actively, acutely, from his nose and his throat all the way down to his toes. Especially his right side. Each breath, slow and shallow, feels like the drag of a grater behind his tongue. 

Gojo always carries himself with an air of nonchalance with everything he does. Yuuta gets the vague sense that it’s performative; for all his bravado and intentional inattentiveness, his teacher knows how to wield his rare seriousness like a chess piece.

There is no board to play on, however, and Yuuta’s arm is too shredded to make a move. Gojo’s concern is real, unfiltered, but oddly calm. A mentor and his student, too far and secluded for the clawing fingers of the executives to reach.

“Yes, alright, we can talk about that later.” Gojo says, smiling thinly. He says, once more, “He’ll see you in five!” and hangs up quickly to tend to his student.

“Do you remember what happened?” 

No. Yuuta doesn’t know what happened five seconds ago. 

When he doesn’t make an effort to move, Gojo starts talking away, about hallucinogenic residuals and venom that stole cursed energy. Something about multiple doses, from teeth and claws, unimportant now -- “Good thing I was here,” Gojo says, somewhere in the middle -- and it all blurs together beyond anything Yuuta can stand to comprehend. He hurts. He just hurts. 

Wait. Rika . 

That gets Yuuta to move. His hand flexes against his stomach where it sits in his lap, and the silver band sits flush and cool against his hand. A familiar, gentle wave of cursed energy hits him, no more different than a cat headbutting his shins. Relief floods through him. 

Gojo notices. “Bet it was the hallucinations,” He says unhelpfully. Then, more cautiously, Gojo tilts his head. 

“Though it looks like you didn’t need her technique in the end. Did you?”

A gentle hand takes Yuuta’s jaw, twisting it side to side in examination as Yuuta sputters and coughs up copper. Gojo rescinds his hand when the fresh blood starts flowing again, shaking it slightly, and heaves a big sigh. Yuuta watches him through heavy eyes, energy waning, as Gojo retreats to draw a circle in the dirt of the alley. 

“Yuuta. I’m going to give you a bit of life advice. Straight from your dear teacher.” Gojo scuffs one sigil away, and redraws it. “Don’t get so wrapped up in what those old geezers want that you forget how to live your life. You’re seventeen.”

Yuuta blinks.

“Make dumb mistakes.” Gojo draws the rest of the various symbols in quick, practiced succession. “Try new things. Leave the worrying to the adults, because before you know it you’ll be my age wishing you hadn’t wasted your childhood either. Be selfish.”

Those were….shockingly mature words, coming from Gojo Satoru, and a rare display of sudden vulnerability. The special grade sorcerer, one of a kind and utterly unparalleled, spoke with a sort of frankness that Yuuta didn’t know he had in his arsenal. Perhaps he believed that Yuuta was already unconscious, or at least too concussed to remember. 

He may not be wrong yet, but the words still burn in Yuuta’s ears the same way his breath scalds his throat. 

“I think you’ll regret not living for yourself before you have to live for others.” 

Finished, Gojo steps back, and the moment is gone. He lifts his hand, pausing before his fingers cross.

“Tell Shoko I send my regards.”

Notes:

"haven, what was that," you ask. i shake my head. i don't even know either. what has become of my sleepy, domestic inuokko fic?

i gave it a horse tranquilizer of drama, that's what. you're WELCOME. (in all seriousness, this fic has just straight up gotten away from me, and don't look at me like i'm driving the bus no mo'. this was supposed to be a one shot. it probably should have stayed a one shot. now look what i've done to it. look at it. it's got anxiety.)

i'm excited to bring this journey to a close, and that's exactly what i plan on doing next chapter. thanks for reading my wild bird's nest of a plotline, as always! looking forward to that good ole finale!

Notes:

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