a lot, too much, not enough
To be a jujutsu sorcerer is to live like tomorrow doesn't exist. So, on New Year's Eve, she decides to never wait for one again and make her feelings known to a sweet, flustered boy that burst into her life unexpectedly. Years, missions, and one very long-distance relationship later, Yuta is still coming home to her, still loving her in absolutes, and still terrified of running out of time to prove it. Still, they continue to build their life on borrowed time, even on the worst of days, when neither of them is feeling brave.
Pairing: Okkotsu Yuta x fem!S/O Word count: 12,6k Warnings: YEARNING, hurt/comfort, angst, fluff, mild sexual content, established relationship, long distance relationship, aged up characters (in their 20's), general outline of the cannon timeline (events don't line up perfectly and i... dont care), very much self-indulgent, no use of y/n, 3rd person narrative a/n: It is that time of year again where randomly i come back, taken over by a hyperfixation and word-vomit as a solution 👍👍👍 this was supposed to be a short self-indulgent blurb but it just kept going… anyway, i had fun with this! Yuta is an amazing character to explore emotional intensity and yearning with, can't wait to see more of him animated:)
Hope you enjoyed xxx
To be a jujutsu sorcerer is to be selfishly crazy and crazily selfish. If you want to survive and emerge victorious, you have to be a battering ram, you have push and push and push, like a maniac. You have to lay a path and walk over others to get ahead. Even if the odds are against you, even if you are outmatched, outsmarted and understaffed (and you are always understaffed). No matter how dark and long the tunnel, and no matter how scared you are of things lurking within, you have to take the first step, and then the second, and the third. It’s not enough to control your fear. You have to actively seek danger, target it, and run straight at it. Jujutsu fights are all about ego, ignorance, and pure psychopathy. At least, that’s all everyone can see… well, everywhere.
To be a jujutsu sorcerer is also to live like tomorrow doesn’t exist. Because thinking about the future triggers planning, planning triggers caution, caution triggers fear, and fear triggers mistakes. And mistakes are the stones that pave the way to your grave. Most of the time, one is all it takes. There is plenty more space at the jujutsu cemetery but it’s not special, neither sentimental. It’s a potter's field. Being a jujutsu sorcerer is like standing on a morbid conveyor belt and trying to run against the current.
Living without a tomorrow also means not putting anything off. “I’ll do it later.” Or this is your last opportunity. “I’ll try this dish the next time.” Or this is the last time you will ever eat. “I’ll go on holiday next year.” Or there will not be a next year.
I’ll tell them how I feel tomorrow.
But tomorrow doesn’t exist.
That’s what she thought back in winter, on New Year’s Eve. The Night Parade of a Hundred Demons just passed, many people thought they would die. Many did. But her, and Yuta, and Maki, and Inumaki, and Panda didn’t. They went to the shrine and made a New Year’s wish (like it’s gonna fucking help with anything). They even went to a festival, played games, ate takoyaki, and watched fireworks. Like curses didn’t flood Tokyo and Kyoto a mere week prior. Like they haven’t fought with all they had, spilling blood and shedding bone, pretending it wasn’t one of the scariest days of their adolescence.
That’s what she thought, looking at Yuta, who was preoccupied with a golden sparkler frantically trembling, crackling, and burning in his hand. It shone bright, it looked pretty. It would fade within the next minute.
If I die tomorrow, I don’t want this to be one of my regrets.
She then stood up and called him aside, out of the garden and into the dorm corridor, their shadows floating away behind the Washi walls. They could hear Panda hooting and whistling behind them, along with Inumaki chanting Cod Roe, Cod Roe! When she faced Yuta again, he already was bright red. From being alone with her, from the winter cold, from his classmates’ teasing, from the darkness around them, from her intense gaze.
“Did you—,” he was hopelessly stumbling over words, trying to be the calmest and ending up being the exact opposite. “Did you need help with something?”
She found it endearing. He was still fresh blood, even though his fight against Geto was astonishing. So he still thought and behaved like a normal teenage boy. He hid his gaze, twiddled his thumbs, and hesitated. Like he had the time to adjust. Time that allowed him to prolong the fluster, the tension, the slow burn of tender, new feelings. Like he had a tomorrow to wake up to. But she didn’t. Before enrolling in Jujutsu Tech, she didn’t think she’d live long enough to have her first period. For all she knew, every day after that was a lucky coincidence. So now, she didn’t have time to waste.
“I like you, Yuta.”
Right through the heart. She felt his cursed energy wabble and tremble, like his soul was a bird that accidentally flew in through an open window and was hitting everything on its way, trying to fly back out. Nevertheless, she continued.
“I like you and I care for you, a lot. More, than a friend,” she paused, feeling her own heart beat frantically in her chest. No time for this. “I thought we would all die last week. I even wrote a note.”
She felt the urge to look away, to hide, to walk away and plan this moment better. But planning triggers caution triggers fear triggers—
So, she persisted.
“But we didn’t. You didn’t. You’re here, you’re okay, and I like you. I want to grow into loving you, I want to be with you. But I doubt I’ll live long enough, so,” she took a huge breath in and slowly exhaled. “I want to tell you everything that I can possibly understand and form into sentences that make sense to me right now. Because—” because I’m scared I’m gonna die and not get to.
But that’s too much for a boy who is still too normal. “Because you never know” is what she settled for.
“You don’t have to reciprocate, you don’t even have to say anything, to be honest. But I want you to know. If you need me as a friend, I’ll be a friend. Or a classmate, or a nobody. Just know that this is how I feel.”
With that, she walked back, desperate to get away, realizing her room was in the opposite wing of the building, through the garden. Retrospectively, that was a lot for a young, still relatively confused boy to take in. In fact, that’s exactly what Panda told her when she reemerged in the patio.
“Girl, that was a lot.”
“Salmon.”
“Are you about to go hang yourself or something? I feel like I should call a hotline.” Maki could not decide how to look at the girl: with concern, disgust, respect, or confusion.
She ignored the trio, steadily making her way into the corridor across the lawn. She could hear the conversation continuing behind her back.
“No, really, should I call someone? Is this normal?”
“Love is in the air. Not sure about the delivery though, that was crazy cuckoo town.”
“Bonito flakes.”
“Hey, wait!”
Yuta’s footsteps lingered on the cobblestone. She turned around and met his gaze: it took a lot out of him to hold it, his heartbeat was oozing in all directions, it was in his ears, his stomach, his throat, his fingers, his knees. He felt like a ceremonial drum. But he didn’t look away.
“You didn’t even say anything, Okkotsu! Who treats a girl’s confession that way?!” Maki changed her target to one who elicited a clear emotion out of her.
“N-no, I—"
“Yuta, we can’t afford high school drama, we don’t have enough people for that.”
“Tuna mayo.”
She held his overwhelmed puppy eyes in view for another second, before slipping away into the corridors and later, the comfort of her room. If she died tomorrow, would she regret not staying there? Maybe. But this was not about getting rid of regrets altogether. It was about having as little of them as possible, and now, she could cross another one off.
* * *
Although this was a recurring motif in Yuta’s newfound life, it was still surprising how quickly he caught on to everything. He had feelings for her, of course he did; he had a lot of feelings in general. It was hard to cope with them, to separate the positive from the negative into neat little compartments, discard the unnecessary emotional tinsel and move forward with confidence when all you have is raging hormones, raging cursed energy, and trauma that made it difficult to understand what exactly was normal and what wasn’t. But he understood—they didn’t have time to stall. When he came back to school after Geto’s attack and saw his friends, saw her, lying lifelessly on the cold pavement, he felt psychotic. He thought what he felt was hatred, raging anger for seeing someone hurt people dear to him. But instead, what he felt was love.
Yuta’s motivation, his inner engine, his catalyst for action, his reason to wake up in the morning, his entire life stimulus was always love. Love that went out in powerful waves towards the people around him. After Rika, he had to learn how to control and channel it, to prevent cursing somebody else or driving nearest and dearest away. And he found plenty of outlets: in acts of service, words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, physical touch. He did not need anything himself; he just wanted to see people around him happy, safe, and satisfied. So, he adapted, imitated, and accommodated to needs of others. Be it taking the fall, exorcising curses days on end, training until he was seeing double—he was happy to oblige because being useful, reliable, and important made him happy. Making people happy made him the happiest.
So, when someone like her gave him this immeasurable gift of passion, he knew he had to give back. He still lacked the straightforwardness required to get rid of hesitation entirely, which lost him time. He unintentionally avoided her the week after, cursing himself for it and therefore earning deserved comments from his classmates. But when he mustered up the courage — safe to say he returned her confession tenfold.
I love you.
Maybe it wasn’t love back then, but when it came to love, Yuta thought in absolutes so there wasn’t any space for middle ground.
I’m sorry I made you wait. And avoided you, I just—I had to do this right. I want to be with you and protect you and make you laugh. I’m sorry I wasted time. You deserve to have a tomorrow. We will celebrate when you turn 18. And 20. And 30, and 40, and 50, and 120. I will make sure of it. I will never leave you, even if you get tired of me. If the Jujutsu world demands us to give our lives away, I will change it. I don’t fully understand this world yet, but it doesn’t matter. If I need to bend reality for us to grow up together, I will.
It turned out, Yuta could be just as intense and just as too much as her. “You know what, you guys deserve each other,” said Panda then, an unwilling listener to their dramatic teenage emotional expressions for a second time. Thinking back, a lot of it was probably youthful idealism. Being in the deadliest profession by birthright conscription and suffering life-altering trauma before you hit the legal drinking age did little to help with the uncompromising nature of their beliefs. How do you cope otherwise, when your teachers send you on a trial by combat, your classmates drop like flies before finishing the school program, and the higher ups liberally use you like fodder to uphold the status quo? That is if you’re lucky enough to be a boy.
She was sure many of these thoughts would fade out with age if they would live long enough to witness it. But time passed. They grew older. And she watched in awe how Yuta’s stance did not change at all. He matured, gained strength, developed into a stunning young man and a special grade sorcerer but his perspective remained the same. He still loved her as intensely and turned impossible into mundane day after day. They celebrated their 18th birthdays. And their 20th. And year after year, Yuta abided by his love for her, where all she could do was reciprocate and love and love and love him back. Not that she wanted to do anything else.
But it wasn’t easy. Yuta started going on missions a lot, first hidden away by Gojo to avoid execution, then to find artefacts, information, train, and deal with curses. She was away as much. They were both dutiful sorcerers so their relationship, still young and blossoming, became one of long distance. And loving through distance is hard. Because your feelings, tender and intense, soft and hard, get held back and confused by time differences, schedules and by the physical gap in space between you. Centers of your lives, once joint together, get pulled apart by magnetic force, both in their respective directions. It’s heartachingly hard to love through distance.
Yet they defied that hardship. Yuta’s love, or his cursed energy, or both, spanned kilometers upon kilometers away from him and it would always reach her, no matter how far apart they were. He filled her up when she was out of fuel, she rescued him when he felt like drowning. He breathed easier when a new message from her buzzed in his pocket. When she video called him in the early hours of his morning to show the view from the hotel room she got late at her night, after a day of tiresome mission work. He’d take her with him through his morning routine, brushing teeth and making coffee as she retold her entire day. Then, after breakfast, he would tell her his upcoming plans, lulling her to sleep. Hours would pass, Earth would keep spinning and they would switch places. Then again, and again.
They were told that cursed energy originated from grief, sadness, and hatred. Perhaps. But it also sprouted from love, and the difference in strength was undeniable. Because love is undeniable.
* * *
Her mind wandered as she tried not to count seconds and minutes ticking away. She was standing at the zone of Arrivals for quite some time now (2 hours, 20 minutes, and 15 seconds but who’s counting?), frantically checking her messages. Surprises in long distance relationships are hard, if not impossible, to come by, however, she willed to challenge that statement. Yuta was finally coming home from Africa today, and he was supposed to be met by Ijichi and taken to the Headquarters for debrief. Instead, she stood in Ijichi’s place, fidgeting with her phone and constantly watching its screen for updates because the downside of such surprises was being in complete darkness about the whereabouts of the receiver of your surprise. She knew that Yuta texted Ijichi about his flight being late. She also knew that he landed safely in Japan after more than twenty hours of travel. Now he had to get through passport control and get his luggage, which could take anywhere from 20 minutes to a million goddamn hours. And, for some reason, he was not updating Ijichi on any of that.
Sent: is he still not through? pls ijichi you need to tell me (｡◞︿◟｡)
Received: Still no updates from Yuta, I’m sorry (◞‸◟；)
Received: But he will come out sooner or later, don’t lose hope! ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و
God, what if I’m at the wrong terminal? She thought. Not having any control over the situation anymore, her mind spiraled. What if he already left and I missed him? What if they held him back for questioning? What if he is too tired to see me? Oh my god, he probably is, he was on the road for almost an entire day of course he’s tired! This was a stupid, overcomplicated idea, it would never——
And then, her thoughts stopped. Or she could not hear them anymore over her heart going into overdrive. From the exit corridor, among many tired faces she saw one that was tenderly, heartwarmingly familiar. Yuta fixed the big bag hanging over his shoulder as he anxiously looked around, obviously trying to find Ijicji. His eyes, adorned with dark circles, scanned the crowd. He watched people left and right of him find their loved ones and rush towards them. She didn’t bring anything with her, like a poster, or balloons because her nerves were driving her crazy and she couldn’t handle something heavy or obnoxious she needed to manage on top of her own anxiety.
She took a step forward and his eyes finally landed on her. They grew so wide, like someone just shot him with an elephant dose of caffeine. He blinked rapidly a few times, rubbing his eyes as if he saw something that couldn’t possibly be true and looked again. She was still there, slowly walking in his direction. Someone pulled on his heart’s trigger wire and it jump-started with a roar. He forgot the torturous hours of travel, the long queues, the stupid movie he saw on the way here, the one you could only find yourself watching while on a plane, the lonely, boring hours in layover. She was there, smiling sheepishly and looking at him.
Her name escaped his lips in a plea.
“Surprise!”
This was all she managed to say. Yuta bolted across the hall and through the crowd, leaving his bag behind like it was some sort of ballast holding him back, maneuvering between other travelers as if one wrong touch would lead him astray. Would take her away from him. He practically crashed into her, wrapping his arms around her frame, both of his fists clenching the fabric of her sweater. She could feel his cursed energy pulsate and dance, it surrounded her like a heated blanket, and suddenly, she didn’t feel lonely anymore.
Yuta’s heart beat unrelentingly. She was here, she smelled like moringa, the skin in the crevice of her neck was soft and warm, god her skin. He wanted to melt into her, or fuse with her, or press her into his chest so she fits somewhere in between his ribs, close to his heart, protected by his sternum, and so so close to him. His hands were shaking.
“I thought you were in Hong Kong,” was all he mustered to whisper, without loosening his hold on her.
“I was,” she whispered back. “But I returned so I can see you.”
“Are you really here?”
“Why wouldn’t I be, silly?”
He finally detached himself from her, still keeping a firm grip on her shoulders as he looked at her upset, happy, a little too desperate and ever so hopeless. “I need to hear you say it. Please.”
She smiled. “I am here, Yuta. I wanted to surprise you. Moved a couple things around so that I can come meet you.”
His lips trembled. Yuta blinked rapidly to keep the happy tears from getting past his eyelashes, down his face and onto his chin, completely and utterly failing. Making a quick decision to let the emotion run its course, he hid deep in the crook of her neck again, letting her sweater soak up his feelings. She gently stroked the nape of his neck, her fingernails brushing over the dark hair locks. It got a little longer since last I saw him, she thought. Cute. She heard him sniffle.
“I can’t believe you’re actually here,” or at least that’s what it sounded like to the right of her ear, all while his face was still pressed tightly into her body. She softly peeled him off of her only to cup his red and tear-stained face and give it a tender stroke with her thumbs.
“Yuta,” her affectionate eyes traced his features, “I missed you so much.”
“I missed you more. So much more.”
He covered her hands with his and kissed her with desperation. He parted her lips further and further, his tongue seeking hers, like there was a ticking timer that would sever their connection and erase every trace of it. She grounded him, matching his pace and emotion, feeling a burning sensation grow in her throat, tears of her own trickling down, some of them hitting the curves of their lips. How did she live without him next to her? How did she survive without touching his face, kissing his lips, feeling his warmth engulf her?
How could she ever leave him again?
Reluctantly pulling away, still close enough for their foreheads to touch, they slowly replenished their breaths. She chuckled softly.
“It’s not a competition, you know.”
“No, it’s a fact. God,” he whined and squeezed his eyes shut as he pressed his forehead to hers, “I need to sit down, I think I’m gonna have a heart attack.”
“You can sit in the car, c’mon,” she grabbed his hand and tugged him towards the exit. He wiped his face and nodded zealously, following suit. She then did a double take, looking Yuta’s figure up and down and shook her head.
“I knew this would happen.”
Reaching into her bag, she fished out a big blue scarf and in a big swift motion threw it over his head and looped the scarf around his neck, smoothing the fabric and tugging at its tussles gently, making the sorcerer blush.
“Did you forget how cold it gets here?”
Yuta scratched his head sheepishly. “I mean, I was only going to be outside for a minute or two.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “And what about keeping people up to date on where you are?”
Yuta opened his mouth to say “I always update you on where I am!”, before realizing she was talking about Ijichi. After that, he winced in guilt. “My phone died and I didn’t have a charger on me… Sorry! I’ll apologize properly when I see him.”
She smiled. “I’ll text him when we’re in the car.”
Sensing he was off the leash, Yuta grinned in response and started practically skipping towards the exit, any fade of fatigue expelled from his body entirely. He then needed to pull his excitement back a little bit, after hearing her yelp behind him.
“Ah, wait, your bag!”
* * *
“You’ve gotten even taller, huh?”
They both sat in the backseat of a taxicab, close to each other, as the bright lights of night Tokyo passed them by. He gave her a flustered smile. “I don’t think people keep growing in their twenties, baby.”
“Well, you’re not ‘people’. You’re special,” she toyed with his hand, tracing its creases, discovering new ones and greeting the old ones. His hands had gotten more rugged; there was no insecurity left in the way his body looked. His shoulders broadened. Even though he still wore his white uniform jacket, which hid most of his upper body, the difference was unmissable. His forearms looked thicker, a lot more defined, likely from hundreds of hours of katana practice. Yuta moved with little to no hesitation, looked forward, and exhibited confidence of an experienced, poised young man. And yet, when she called him special, he bashfully waved her off and quickly hid his mouth with his free hand, while the one still in her palms squeezed them lovingly.
Gaining a bit of composure back, he closed the remaining distance between them and gently pushed a strand of hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear.
“I think Miguel just taught me to stop slouching,” he spoke softly. She hummed and nuzzled against his hand. Then reached upward and slowly tousled his locks.
“Is he also responsible for your new haircut?”
“I kind of just let it grow a little longer. Do you like it?”
“I like you.”
Streetlights flickered past, sliding across his face every now and then. She could see him in little pieces: sharp jaw, pink cheeks, blue eyes in the most mesmerizing hue she’s ever seen. They were looking at her. Only her.
He moved closer, leaving nothing but a couple millimeters between his lips and hers. “I love you.”
Always her.
Yuta wanted to kiss her. Every second spent next to her made it more painful to gauge the difference between now and then. Between coldness of an empty hand and warmth of interlaced fingers. Between void of loneliness and blessing of her presence. Between a ringing silence and the melodic rhythm of her voice. How did he ever fall asleep alone? Endure the isolation? Make it through the day? Where did he find the energy to fight, to walk, to blink, to breathe, if in this moment his entire existence felt possible only because she was in front of him?
Hotness of her breath sent him into another dimension. Reality slowly dissolved, shapes lost their edges and drooped into an intangible mess of colors, sounds, and movements. Yuta couldn’t remember a single thing he wanted more than for her lips to touch his, right here, right now. But somehow, the longer he spent with her, the less he knew what to do with himself.
“Uhm,” the taxi driver cleared his voice awkwardly, “we’ve arrived.” Yuta recoiled back, hiding his face and heavy breathing behind a fist pressed tightly to his lips. He heard her giggle.
“Thank you! Have a lovely night. C’mon, let’s go.”
Exiting the car, Yuta looked confused. He expected to see the old rooftops of Jujutsu Tech, or the towering arches leading to Headquarters. Instead, he saw a busy street somewhere in downtown Tokyo. Skyscrapers dominated the space and sky above them, reflecting neon signs and cars scurrying about. He was also mentally prepared for their little reunion to be over because every time he returned from a mission, it was debrief-sleep-depart and rinse-repeat.
“Uh, where are we exactly?” he slowly turned around, eyeing the surroundings.
“Remember that izakaya place I told you about?” She then pointed at the glowing sign in front of them. Yuta looked completely enamored, yet conflicted.
“Shouldn’t I report back?”
“You’re not doing anything before getting fed. You’ve been traveling for an entire day, Yuta!” She grabbed his hand and pulled him forward, and he felt flowers blossom in his chest again. “Besides, what are they gonna do? Fire you?”
Yuta folded like a lawn chair, quickly and gladly. With that, they went inside.
The place was as lively as ever. The room buzzed with noise: chatter and laughter, clink of glasses, dings from the kitchen pass, waiters greeting new guests, chefs announcing new orders. They settled in a little corner booth, and she immediately waved down a smiling waitress, who quickly nodded in response.
“It’s so busy,” Yuta said, fascinated, “every table’s occupied.”
“I know, right? Imagine if I didn’t have a booking.”
His eyes grew wide. “You made a booking? But my plane got delayed. That must’ve been a pain to manage.”
She shrugged nonchalantly. “I might have mentioned it was a special occasion and been a little annoying on the phone. Either way, it worked out great!”
Yuta’s heart swelled.
“I’m sorry, you didn’t have to.”
She snapped her eyes from the menu and looked at him like he just told her the Earth was flat. “Huh? What are you talking about? Of course I had to. The man I love is coming back after a long trip abroad and I was supposed to not do anything?”
Warmth crept onto his cheeks again, and he fell back into the couch, arms crossing over his chest, hands tucking into the crook of each elbow, as if to keep his heart from leaping out. Feeling so much within the last hour, after barely feeling anything for weeks, made Yuta’s head spin. Even though she was the dearest person in his entire life, one that he knew better than himself, every time they met after spending time apart turned him into a teenage boy again, nervous out of his mind, stuttering over words, with sweaty palms and a bodily reaction of someone who hit puberty yesterday and now saw the most beautiful woman in front of him. Woman that kept shooting him the sweetest smiles and was definitely rubbing her leg against his under the table.
“Is there anything else you want? Hey, Earth to Yuta!”
He returned to reality to see her and the waitress looking at him expectantly. Embarrassed, he quickly shook his head. “No-no, sorry. I trust you.”
She looked at him with care and a little concern. “You poor thing, you’re probably awfully jetlagged.” She then returned her attention back to the girl taking their order. “Okay, that is everything, thank you! Oh, and can the bonito flakes for the tofu come on the side?”
He quickly interrupted her. “It’s okay, I can just eat—”
“On the side, please,” she persisted with a smile, making Yuta drop his head in defeat. The waitress gave them a quick nod and walked off. He felt her gaze on him again and looked up, flustered, thankful and apologetic.
“I can handle bonito flakes,” he said, trying to plead his case.
“You hate them.”
“I don’t hate them! I just—they weird me out a little bit. I can eat around them.”
She smirked. “Yeah? Like the last time?”
Yuta cringed, defeated by an unwanted memory. It was back when he first joined their class. Gojo took them out to a similar izakaya place to celebrate his first successful mission. The food was ordered in a chaotic quick wave, and Yuta didn’t really seize the moment to ask for any alterations from their waiter. Not that he had any courage to. When the dishes came, he hesitated to reach for something himself, until being urged by their teacher.
“Here, have some okonomiyaki, Yuta. It’s very good!”
He agreed with a smile, but when the plate reached his side of the table, Yuta’s face dropped and twisted into a wrinkled-up grimace of fear and disgust.
“What’s wrong with you?” Maki asked, frowning in annoyance.
“Bonito flakes,” replied Inumaki in, perhaps, the most accurate and precise scenario of putting his permitted language to use.
“You don’t like bonito flakes, Yuta?” he glanced to his right and saw her looking at him with curiosity. For some reason, her question made him blush.
“No, I—It’s just—why do they have to move like that,” he muttered under his breath, looking for a piece of the pancake that looked safe enough to eat.
“You’re a jujutsu sorcerer now, Okkotsu! You can’t be fazed by a piece of food!” Maki glared at him angrily. “Hurry up and eat it.”
“Aw, come on Maki, don’t be so harsh. You don’t eat stuff too. Like daikon,” Panda took a small side plate filled with it and demonstratively shook it in front of Maki’s face.
“That’s cause I’m allergic, dipshit!”
As the commotion at the table intensified, Yuta noticed how the girl sitting to the right of him grabbed the okonomiyaki and pushed all the bonito flakes off of it and into her plate. He raised his hands in a panic, trying to stop her.
“Ah! You—you don’t have to do this, I can just eat around them.”
She looked at him confused. “I like bonito flakes and you don’t. Seems like an easy fix, no? Here, you can have the pancake now.”
That memory, although embarrassing for his sake, always made his heart fuzzy and stretched his lips into a smile. Ever since meeting him for the first time, she always took care of him. Like she was the only one able to see things from his perspective. While everybody else were busy telling him “Welcome to the world of jujutsu, this is normal, grow up”, she was always there to catch him when he lost his footing and offer kindness.
“I’m sure this is all new and scary. And it’s definitely not normal. So, it’s okay to take it slow.”
Even though Yuta knew that her own opinion was radically different. That she didn’t want to take things slow or mop around. Still, she was ready to do so, for him.
“Anyway,” she rolled her eyes and smiled, leaning forward and cupping his face across the table. “You can’t win this. Just relax and let me pamper you. Okay, baby?”
He sighed, nodded, and nuzzled into her hand. Baby.
The food came fast, and there was a lot of it. She didn’t let him touch the plates, swiftly grabbing his and filling it with a jeweler’s precision, asking what he wanted and how much, grabbing the best-looking pieces despite his pleas to keep some for herself. Yuta didn’t have a choice but to surrender and allow her to flutter around him, coddling and spoiling him to her (and his) content.
“I can do this myself, you know,” he said, watching her cut up the meat for him, “I’m not that tired.”
“So you’ve been saying,” she mused, keeping at it. “You are very capable, Yuta. I don’t think there is anything you can’t do. Besides, maybe, knowing your limits and saying ‘no’ to people. But that’s what I am for. Here,” she proceeded to give him his plate back, filled again with neatly cut slices.
Yuta wouldn’t call himself picky (bonito flakes excluded) but he sure missed Japanese food while abroad. Not that discovering new dishes wasn’t incredibly fun but nothing made him feel as at home, as eating the foods he knew and loved since childhood. And her, dotting over him the whole time.
“Wait,” she said, reaching toward his face. “You have a bit of sauce ri-ight here,” her thumb softly brushed across his cheek. She then withdrew and quickly licked the finger clean. Yuta erupted in a coughing fit, hastily covering his face, now bright red, with the back of his hand and looking away.
“Stop,” he whined.
“Stop what?”
“You’re making me blush.”
“I’m sorry, I just love looking after you,” she leaned on her palm and watched him softly, “I… You’ve been away for so long, and I missed you so much. Sorry if I’m overdoing it. I can stop if—”
“No!” Yuta was betrayed, by the beer and sake they’ve been drinking, or by travel fatigue, or by his pounding heartbeat, or all combined. Either way, his response came out a little too quickly, a little too needy, and definitely too loudly. “Don’t stop, don’t ever stop, please. I’m just—”, he groaned and covered his face completely. “I have not seen you in months… Or touched you. Please don’t take it the wrong way. I couldn’t imagine seeing you today, and now I—I don’t know how to act. God, I’m so nervous, I don’t know why.”
Through the deafening buzz of the restaurant, he heard something shift in front of him. Then the couch underneath him dipped further and a familiar warmth reemerged right by his shoulder. Two gentle hands wrapped around him, overlapping at his neck. He hesitantly uncovered his face, just to be met with hers, millimeters away. Her breathing created a vacuum around them, drowning out the noise. She could feel his heart going ballistic.
“I am also very nervous,” she whispered. Taking his hand, she placed it on her chest, revealing a rhythmic pulse to match his own. “I’ve gotten so used to our phone calls, I’ve kind of fallen out of practice with… this.”
She glanced down at his lips in silent elaboration, inching closer and closer. “But I think,” she continued, feeling him slowly turn towards her, his own breaths getting hotter and quicker, “we just need to take it slow and… trust the process.”
A ghostly feather-light sensation grazed his lips, so bare it wouldn’t even register as an actual touch, last confirmation to see it were real before he could let himself have it.
“People are watching,” he mumbled, shuddering at the phantom electric charge between their cupid bows.
“Do you want to stop?” she adjusted her head, anticipating his answer. Still, she looked him in the eyes one last time, grasping at the last straws of patience.
“No.”
It was weightless, hot as the sun, and it sucked him in with the power of a black hole. Final moment to breathe in before diving deep down, and Yuta came undone as her lips came crushing into his. Gasping, he let her deepen the kiss in an instant, parting his mouth and feeling the hotness of her tongue slip in. The restaurant was packed but somehow this felt more intimate than a minute alone in the bedroom. All the noise, all the tension thick enough to feel it settled around them like a wall, and suddenly Yuta’s chest was free of worry or stress, occupied instead by pure, unadulterated want. He felt paralyzed, unable to move his arms and embrace her; his hands were glued to the table’s edge and sofa cushion, holding on for dear life. She, on the other hand, thrusted forward, pushing him further back into the wall, almost making him lie flat to receive what she was offering in full. His lungs burnt with a lack of air, but he couldn’t stop until he was practically suffocating.
She relinquished the kiss slowly and unwillingly, letting out shuddered breaths, her lips glistening with the trace of him.
“I feel like we’re on the first date again,” she rasped.
“We didn’t do half as much on our first date,” he parried.
“There was a lot less tongue, sure. But I certainly felt just as much,” her fingers found the way back to his curls. “Like my stomach was on fire.”
He felt embarrassment resurface again and let out a shaky sigh. “I feel like I’m going to explode.”
She laughed.
“So, definitely like the first date then.” She looked over his flustered, yet much more satisfied face. “Should we finish eating and get out of here before they kick us out?”
* * *
Air had gotten colder while they were inside. Evening was slowly transitioning into night, and the stars were the faintest bit more visible, although most of them were still drowned out by the big city lights.
“You shouldn’t have gotten the second round of beers, I don’t know how am I going to sober up before heading back,” he sighed in defeat, placing hands on his waist and bending backwards in a lazy stretch. “You know I can’t hold my liquor well.”
“But you’re so cute when you get tipsy,” she mused. “Besides, I need to quickly stop by my apartment, which is not too far from here. We can walk through the park and enjoy the fresh air? You’ll freshen up in no time. Unless,” she put her hands behind her back and shook her head left to right in pretend thought,” you want to say goodbye now?”
He smiled blissfully, coming up to her and resting his head on top of hers (no, he certainly did get taller).
“I don’t ever want to say goodbye.”
“Good. Then walk with me?”
It felt nice to find some distance from the busy street, among large trees and neatly trimmed bushes, adorned with colorful flowers. Yuta felt a little stupid now, as her hand sat firmly in his, about all the anxieties and little embarrassments from before. You’d think that one’s longing for another would not become an obstacle once the distance between them was overcome. Yet, when the emotions build up inside with no proper way out in time, you lose the ability to distinguish love from worry, excitement from stress. It all molds together and sends your body into tremor. And then you kiss again, and all the thoughts that burnt your body from inside out become distant memories of something you could never imagine doing.
With long distance, places became very important. They reawakened memories, held stories of important days past, kept all the happy triggers to be found on accident or purpose. Her room was one of those places. It looked just like Yuta last saw it: cozy studio, a bed with maybe four different blankets scattered around it, the biggest window in the room above it, small plants on every available surface that she would ask Nobara to come water when she was away. All the days they spent here flickered in front of Yuta’s eyes. First time she invited him, when he was stressed beyond belief and couldn’t find what to do with his body or himself. He got her a new plant as a gift then, and it was still here, sitting on a shelf above her bedframe. First time he stayed overnight. First time they slept with each other. There were a couple attempts made at the dorms of Jujutsu Tech but privacy was hard to come by with the paper-thin walls and some particularly noisy neighbors. That was one of the reasons she fought for living off the premises the first moment she could. She didn’t use the intimacy issues as a reason to Gojo, of course, but she did say it made her feel a little more normal.
The first time they were intimate... It was raining heavy that day. It caught them completely by surprise on a date in town and by the time they reached the entrance to her building they were both soaking wet. She insisted they both went upstairs to dry up because I know you, Yuta, you’ll probably try to just walk back and end up getting a cold. How do I know? Because it happened before!
The strategy was to simply dry up and wait until the rain was over. But when they both found themselves at the edge of her bed, all the plans or outlines of them went out the window. Yuta wouldn’t admit because it probably made him sound like a perv but he definitely imagined their first time in his head many times before. He had ideas, completely respectful ones of course, about how he wanted to do it and where. But now that they sat on her bedsheets, water dripping down both of them, he couldn’t remember what he had in mind at all. He couldn’t remember anything, actually. Her breathing was still a little heavy after the last fit of laughter, small strands of hair stuck to her face, the dress hugged her body tighter and revealed a lacy outline of her bra underneath. The air felt electric and Yuta felt like he’d been struck with some sort of venom because he was completely paralyzed. His head was spinning, his skin felt hot, all his breaths fell short as he desperately tried to look anywhere else but her or, better yet, get off the bed completely before he would do something on an uncontrollable impulse.
However, per tradition, she inched closer to him first. Without breaking eye contact, she took his hand and placed it on her breast, the place his eyes tried to avoid the most. She looked at him completely enchanted, eyelids lowered, as she brought her face as close as physically possible to his. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears. He also felt it at the tips of his fingers, in his stomach, in his feet, in his throat, and in his lower belly. Their bodies moved in slow motion, terrified to scare the momentum away, to scare each other away, even though they both wanted nothing more than each other. And as his lips grazed hers, fireworks exploded, the lightning struck so hard it left a crack in the concrete, and the sun went supernova. He must have blacked out for at least a minute because the next he remembered was her on top of him with the upper part of her dress down and a dizzying tightness in his pants.
“Wait,” he suddenly stopped her advancements with his shaking hands, “wait-wait-wait. Are you sure you’re okay? With—ah—with this?”
She stopped in her tracks. She watched his breathless and flushed face, felt his bulge underneath. All that, and he somehow still had the willpower to stop and ask this question. He even moaned a little in the middle of it.
She burst out laughing. Yuta looked at her confused. “What?”
“Yuta. I am straddling you. I’ve got my bra out. I’ve been making out with you. Of course I want this. Do you want this?”
“Yes,” he almost cut her off before she could finish that sentence. “Yes, I want this. A lot. Like—a stupid amount. I can’t tell you how many times I thought about this, I just—I don’t want to be too much.”
“Yuta,” she said his name again, sounding a little hurt. “Do I make you feel like you’re too much?”
“Never.”
“Good. Because you’re not. Nothing about you ever was, is or will be too much. You have a lot to give and I love that about you. Yuta,” again. “Do you want me?”
“Yes.” Say his name again.
“Yuta.” God. “Do you love me?”
“Yes.” He shot up and grabbed her arms in desperation, still keeping her on top of him.
“Then show me how much. All of it, Yuta.”
And that is all it took.
He remembered how Nobara called her soon afterwards in a panic. “I was walking past your neighborhood and there was a crazy burst of cursed energy! It’s like something exploded over there! Are you okay?!”
She giggled, playfully twirling her finger around Yuta’s naked chest, and said that she was home and everything was fine. Meanwhile, Yuta hid his red-hot face in a pillow, possibly trying to suffocate himself a little, if not a lot.
They were told that cursed energy originated from grief, sadness, and hatred. But it also came from other… things.
“You okay?” She asked him then, after hanging up.
“Kill me, please,” came his muffled voice from under the pillow.
“I wonder how many other sorcerers felt that. All because you were with me? Aw, Yuta, you sure know how to make a girl feel special.”
He whined. “We are never having sex again.”
That was, naturally, a lie. Yuta would not be able to keep himself from her, no matter how hard he could have tried. The only way he could imagine not being next to her is by being on another continent out of necessity and absence of choice, which was, unfortunately, a situation he found himself in way too often. Even so, he would have found his way back to her. Eventually.
Always.
Like now. He stood in the corridor like he was just here yesterday. There were the same plants, same little trinkets, same window, same smell. And she also felt the same.
“Alright, give me a second. Feel free to hit the couch,” she said, dropping off her shoes and disappearing down the corridor.
Then Yuta felt it, a bitter sensation in his throat. An unwanted tug at the back of his mind. All of this, although unbelievably nice and lovely and special, had to come to an end. Because he was always on the clock and the clock never stopped ticking. It took him all of the strength in his body not to take another couple of steps, to hug her in the kitchen, to drop onto the sofa and just lie around until sun came back up again. He could cry just from how appealing her apartment felt and how badly he wanted to stay. But he couldn’t.
He let out a loud sigh, on the verge of an exhausted yell, dropping his head back and squeezing his eyes shut.
“I think I should get going now,” he said, his voice heavy with exhaustion, “because another minute in here and I don’t think I’ll be able to. I still need to report back… sorry, baby.”
She reappeared in the hallway and leaned against the wall, looking shockingly content. There was a subtle glint in her eyes that Yuta could barely see from the darkness of the entryway. Like she was a fox and he just asked her where did all the chickens go.
“So-o,” she looked at her feet, stretching out the vowels, “remember how I bribed Ijichi to come meet you instead of him? I threw in a bit extra, because I missed you so much and just wanted to have a bit more time together, so…”
Yuta’s mouth went dry. Suddenly, he felt nauseously nervous.
“So as far as everyone is concerned… your plane comes tomorrow in the afternoon, which is when I’ll come to meet you proper and take you to HQ. Until then, nobody even knows you’re here, except Ijichi, obviously, but he knows how to keep a secret. And unless you need somewhere else to be… you can just stay here with me.”
Yuta’s legs froze to the floor. He just stared at her in silence, eyes wide and mouth agape, trying to ensure he didn’t mishear her. Didn’t catch something that wasn’t there. If only somebody could pinch him.
“Surprise,” she whispered at last, finally looking up to meet his gaze. “Don’t worry, I snooped around and there is nothing urgent happening, so don’t feel guilty, I know you. Also sorry for kind of keeping it a secret, I wasn’t really sure if you’d be up for it after all the travel and didn’t want to pressure you cause I know you would have said ‘yes’ even if you were—”
The rest of her ramblings disappeared into Yuta’s chest because as soon as he could feel his legs again, he bolted forward faster than a bullet to clasp his hands around her form. He was hugging her tight, tighter than at the airport, tighter than ever before. He didn’t have to leave her, didn’t have to go back into the cold, didn’t have to go be alone again. He could stay, he could hug her and kiss her and be with her.
“I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you,” he babbled in a frenzy, rubbing his face into her neck, the side of her head, her shoulder, just anywhere he could, “god I love you so much, I missed you so damn much.”
His cursed energy filled her room, fluttering like a wild flame. It fused with hers and submerged them both, seeping through their skin, muscle, and bone. Yuta felt a familiar burning sensation in his chest, like his heart was on fire and he finally felt at peace. He didn’t feel like he was imploding anymore, didn’t feel the scathing cold, the painful abysmal dread echoing in the back of his head, over and over again, how this wasn’t for long, how shouldn’t get too comfortable, how soon it would be time to leave again. Again again again.
Suddenly, his knees gave in and he slowly slid down to the floor, pushing his face into her stomach, arms wrapped low and tight around her not to sink further down. She gasped, catching his arms and trying to hold him up in a panic.
“Yuta!”
Feeling him nuzzle against her and coming to realize he wasn’t about to faint or drop dead, she sighed in defeated relief and ran her fingers through his hair. He shuffled at the touch, slightly pulling away so he could look at her from below. The apartment lights were off and she could see the soft glimmer in his puffy eyes illuminated by the moonlight. He wanted to be at her mercy, like a knight kneeling at an altar of a high priestess, praying for a blessing, or pleading for a consolation after a long demanding battle.
He watched her give him an affectionate, but slightly perplexed look. He had to be sure again, to confirm he wasn’t dreaming, because today kept being too good to be true. “Can I really stay?”
She cradled his face. “Of course.”
His hands slid to the backs of her thighs and gave them a soft push forward, making her knees slightly buckle toward him, until she was leaning into him, half-cradled in his arms, her weight settling into his palms. She grabbed onto his shoulders for stability and he felt elated, taking it all in.
“Yuta, stop, I’m heavy!”
“You’re not. And I don’t care. Want to feel you.”
He watched her from underneath as her hair hung around his face, shielding it from the outside like a curtain. Yuta needed nothing more than for her to lean on him, rest against him, let him prop her up, confide in him, depend on him. Let him carry her weight, carry her burden. His hands dipping lower, his muscles slightly tensing for extra support, all of it was proof she was there, next to him. Grounding him, filling his life with purpose. Not that he didn’t have a purpose otherwise; training, fighting with all he had so that the people he cared about could see tomorrow and have a better future was his purpose. If he could relieve his loved ones’ suffering even by a fraction, it would always be worth an attempt. But when there was no immediate task at hand and the days would start to drag on, and intrusive thoughts would start to flood his head, she was the one who always made it better.
“Why don’t you take a shower, hm?” she caressed his face fondly. “Wash all those hours of travel off, it’s gonna feel nice. Then we can watch something stupid on the TV, or curl up in bed… anything you want.”
He pouted.
“Wanna stay with you,” he mumbled.
Her relentless coddling worked: Yuta was getting all soft and putty in her hands, finally yielding to small bits of selfishness. She wanted to spoil him rotten, her heart laying heavy with every blister, every callus on his hands, every bruise and cut he’s ever gotten. Even though he healed almost all of them with his RCT, getting them still hurt. Getting punched, bitten, sliced, and pierced hurt. He hurt. And he always tried to hide it too. She had to fish those stories out of Gojo, or Ijichi, or Ieri, look for clues in mission reports.
“Yuta! ‘Nothing to worry about’ my ass! Your leg got cut off and you didn’t tell me?!”
“Wha—who told you that?”
“Do not change the subject, Okkotsu!”
“Yeesh, last name basis.”
“Bonito flakes.”
Yuta was a stubbornly selfless man with a stupidly big heart. Heart that kept getting caught in collateral damage from his constant zeal to jump on the grenade and soak up the impact. And if she couldn’t keep him from jumping altogether, then at least she’d always be there to pluck out all the pieces of debris, stop the bleeding and kiss it better. Because she was a stubbornly devoted woman in love.
She pecked his lips and smiled.
“Then I’ll shower with you.”
* * *
It did feel nice. A relaxing hot shower, so hot you could barely see beyond arm’s reach through the thick, warm steam. It clouded the mirror and the glass shower doors. Even Yuta’s head felt pleasantly clouded, fogging up his thoughts, making them barely discernible. He sat on a small stool with his eyes closed while she sat behind him on the bathtub’s edge, gently massaging shampoo into his hair. Her legs enclosed him from both sides as he gently stroked her knees. This was beyond sex, although the feeling of her naked form pressed against his back was absolutely tantalizing. Intimacy ridden of sexual intent felt like a sacred ritual. Every touch of her fingers drew Yuta closer to nirvana. The ability to hear all her quiet hums and purrs not through a phone speaker but right by his ear filled his heart with sheer, pure joy. He could touch her legs, her hands, her hair, her face. He didn’t want to waste a second, he had to make the most of every moment he could. Letting out a euphoric sigh, he leaned back into her, nestling against her wet, balmy skin.
“Come on, Yuta, I’m almost done.”
“Want to be closer to you.”
She chuckled. “I’m right behind you. Also, you’ll faint if you sit in this heat for too long.”
“S’fine. I handled worse,” he objected in the most mellow voice. She raised her eyebrows and looked at his blissfully relaxed face in playful disbelief.
“Someone’s being a stubborn cocky baby.” He nuzzled his head against her cheek, purposely getting some of the shampoo foam on her face.
“Your fault.”
“More like accomplishment. And I’ll gladly take credit.” She kissed his temple and playfully bopped his nose. “Let’s get it over with, alright?”
Even with being away for quite some time throughout the years, Yuta spent as much of it as possible in her apartment. As a result, a lot of his clothes actually sat in her closet, not that he had much of it to begin with. Still, it was convenient and always gave him leeway to stay overnight, even if they did not plan it in advance. And although these clothes were his, they smelled like her. And she smelled like home.
He barely waited for her to finish dressing up before scooping her in his arms and going through the corridor and to the bed. She jokingly protested, before clinging onto him like a monkey and wrapping her legs around his waist. Upon reaching it, Yuta turned around on his heels and fell back on the mattress without looking, plopping into the comfort and warmth of her assortment of blankets.
“Careful!” was all she managed to yelp before inevitably going down with him and ending up on top of him. “Did you actually overheat?”
“Only with love,” he replied in the most delighted tone. She rolled her eyes dramatically.
“My God, Yuta,” she shook her head and laughed, “you are so corny. You’re lucky I love you.”
“I am. The luckiest in the whole world,” he muttered, slightly propping himself up on his elbows and closing the distance between their faces, glancing down at her lips, eyes downcast. She gladly lowered her face and kissed him, placing her hands firmly on his chest. Yuta didn’t need time to adjust anymore: he finally felt the urge to take initiative and slid his tongue inside, while one of his hands snaked to the back of her head and got lost in still slightly damp hair. He felt her whimper travel from where their lips connected to the back of his throat and his eyes rolled back in ecstasy. She slowly lowered forward, without breaking the kiss, and Yuta’s hand traveled lower to grasp at her thigh, as if to lock them both in place. She rocked against him in one teasing motion and moaned while his hips shot up on reflex, chasing the friction, hungry to create more. The only source of noise in the apartment, besides maybe a soft buzz of the fridge in the kitchen, were their bodies. Ruffling of fabric underneath, wet smacks of lips connecting and separating over and over again, soft whines and gasps for air in between. Their skin smelled like shower gel, still a little warm, and every touch to it felt exhilarating. Her hand snuck down to find the band of his pants, grazing his groin in the process and extracting a lewd whimper out of him. God, he could just—
Suddenly, there was a ring. Annoying, repetitive, and loud. They broke apart, both breathless and flustered, and Yuta watched in confusion, his head all fuzzy, as she covered her face and shook her head.
“Shit, sorry,” she smiled in disbelief, reaching to her bedstand.
“Wha—what’s that?” Yuta asked, still gasping for air.
“It’s my alarm. I started staying up late way too much, so I set this alarm up to remind me when it’s midnight. Not sure it’s helping though… anyway, where were we?”
She turned back with a flirty smirk but stopped midway after seeing Yuta’s face. His expression unexpectedly changed: he was looking away now, his brows furrowed, in visible distress.
Midnight. It was already midnight. They could afford another hour or two before going to bed. Then, it would be morning, and he would need to go to HQ and then leave again, god knows for how long. Their time together would be over and he would have to survive off their phone calls and text messages again. Anxiety flared up in his ribcage. He was so happy a mere hour before, it felt like he had the entire world in the palm of his hand, and now it was slipping away again
Why did time fly with her and drag without her? It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, never enough. What could he do? What could he do to stay with her forever, to be like this forever, to not waste another second apart? He could find a sorcerer whose technique was time control. He could copy it and stop the planet from turning, stop the sun from switching with the moon, stop the evil from festering in the remote corners of Japan and the entire world. Stop their phones from ringing, stop people from talking, stop curses from multiplying, stop, stop, all of you, just stop, just give him this one moment, please, allow him this one simple wish, one small act of selfishness this once. Stop, so he could quit looking around, quit being so vigilant, so careful, so observant, so watchful. Stop, so he could hear one more of her laughs, receive another of her kisses, feel the warmth of her hand again, feel the heat of her body again, watch her be and be with her again. Again again again, just one more time, just one more stupid time.
“What’s wrong?” Her voice pierced through the thickness of his thoughts. She studied his face nervously, looking for hints. “Talk to me.”
He refused to meet her gaze.
“I just—I need a minute, it’s okay. It’s gonna pass, please, just ignore me.”
“And let you get in your head? Nope. Now please, talk to me. What is it?” She touched his cheek. He felt a sharp crack somewhere in his chest and winced, looking away, trying to fight the tension building up in his throat. He didn’t want her to see him like this, not after all the trouble she went through, not with how much time they had left together. He just couldn’t waste it on this.
“I don’t know, I just feel…it’s—it’s too much. I don’t know how to put it into words the right way.”
“Then say it the wrong way. Say it however you can,” she said softly. “I can handle it, I promise. Don’t sit with this by yourself.”
“I don’t want you to deal with this,” he whispered, sensing last bits of his composure crumbling away.
She looked over his face, distorted with emotional turmoil, and let out a bittersweet sigh.
“That’s literally why I’m here, love. So that you don’t need to deal with this stuff alone.”
“What I want to say is bad.” He grabbed his own shoulders until his knuckles went white. She noticed it and covered them with hers, making him ease the tension of his grip.
“It’s okay,” she murmured, urging him in the gentlest of ways. The little crack he felt before turned into a shatter. He felt like splitting in half. Then, her thumb gently grazed one of his fists and whatever was hidden behind that barrier started trickling through.
“I hate when we’re apart, I hate that we have to be apart,” he finally spoke after a prolonged silence. She nodded calmly.
“Me too. But sometimes, we just have to endure it.”
“I don’t want to endure it, I don’t want a life where I have to endure it. Why can’t I live a life where I just have you and don’t need to let you go?”
Yuta finally looked back at her and his breath hitched. A lump kept forming in his throat and it got more painful to hold it from escaping. He hated how he sounded. Pathetic, desperate, unreasonable. Like a child. But he couldn’t stop anymore, the dam in his chest had a breach, and the fracture was just too big. But she never wavered. She continued to sit on top of him, she listened to everything that was spilling out of his mouth. And she took all of it in.
“I want that life too, Yuta. It’s what we fight for. What we’ve been fighting for.”
“Why do we have to be the ones fighting? Why does it have to be us and not someone else?”
“Because we’re special.” Grades. Sorcerers. People.
First tears treacherously escaped past his eyelashes, dripping down the sides of his face, onto his ears and soaking into the bedsheets.
“I don’t want to be special. I just want to be with you.” Yuta had to bite his lower lip, because a sentence he thought of a million times didn’t hurt half as much as it did right now, forming from a fleeting thought into words with actual weight.
Speaking it into existence made him want to recoil. The leaking fracture turned into a gaping wound, fully exposed to her. It hurt more with every second being left in the open. He felt a desperate need to curl into a tight little ball and press all this pain and resentment down, bury it somewhere dark and deep, make her forget about it, make him forget about it. But as he felt like sinking, she kept holding him above the water level, never allowing him to miss a breath.
She cooed at him, gently cupping his face and wiping the tears away. Her touch was light and cautious, like he was a hurt kitten she didn’t want to scare away. The sound of her breathing felt intentional, inviting him to follow it along.
“Well. You're both. You're with me. And you're special. So, so, so special. So precious.” She pressed her palm flat against her own chest. “And when you're not here, you're still here—” then she reached over and laid it against his, “—and I'm here.” Yuta sniffled. “I miss you terribly. I hate not being able to see your face, or touch you, or just—be in the same room as you. But it's not forever. In the end, I know you will always come back to me, and I will always come back to you. And until I can have you forever, I'm just gonna have you for as long as I can.”
Her words were steeped in tenderness and they penetrated the thick haze of his disjointed thoughts and soothed his mind. She could only imagine how long he had been carrying this tension within him, pushing it further down not to put a damper on things, not to make her worry too much, not to upset her. He never thought of himself, straining his heart and mind to keep shouldering this emotional burden alone. But going too far just made his body forcefully remind him of its vulnerability, and what Yuta thought was a fly he was trying to ignore would then turn itself into an elephant and crush him underneath its weight.
She pressed her forehead to his, and Yuta sobbed. His heart was getting lighter with all of the feelings bursting into the open but it hurt like hell. He didn’t even realize how much there was pent up inside until it was pouring out.
They stayed like this for a little while. She stroked the back of his head delicately, twirling the baby hairs on his neck, as his breaths slowly became deeper and calmer. She never stopped, until his body steadied. The wound in his chest closed, bit by bit. He could almost see her using RCT and stitching it back up until there was no way to tell it was ever disturbed before. And she always told me she was bad at reverse curse technique, he thought.
Gradually, the world returned to its normal spinning pace. He could feel his body again, the weight of hers on top of his. His mind was not screaming anymore and the silence that came back felt delightful. She pulled away to check up on him. He looked calmer and a lot more collected, although his eyes were still puffy and red.
“How do you feel?” She brushed his forehead as if to check if his temperature was high.
“Good,” he rasped, getting used to speaking again.
“Promise me you won’t ever keep these thoughts from me again,” she extended her pinky to him. A childish gesture, backed by a deeply emotional ask. Yuta smiled faintly and hooked his pinky with hers, after sniffling one last time.
“Promise,” he answered solemnly. She retracted her hand in satisfaction. As she tried to lift herself off of him, he grabbed her waist.
“Don’t go,” he pleaded, “stay. Please.”
“Wasn’t going anywhere, baby,” she replied softly, caressing his cheek, “but I think you should get some sleep.”
“No, don't want to,” he lifted himself up and hugged her close, “don't want tomorrow to come yet, need to be with you more.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want you to force yourself.”
Yuta felt like he just left a hot spring and went into freezing cold. He couldn’t fall asleep, he wouldn’t be able to even if he tried. Her words made him feel a lot, and her body made him feel even more. He needed to do something, needed to feel her close, needed to feel her skin against his. This intense craving would not go away otherwise.
“Yes,” his voice was sharp and serious. “I don’t want to waste any more time. Wanna be with you. Need to be with you.”
She chuckled. Wonder who he learned this from.
“It’s okay, Yuta. We can take it slow.”
“I know,” he smiled lightly at the familiar phrase, “thank you. But I don’t need to take it slow anymore, I just want to be with you. Need you.”
Sadness was gone from his dark hued eyes. Instead, they were gleaming with desire again. She watched him for a moment, making sure he was being deliberate and not in a state of delirium. Yuta held her gaze, giving her the confirmation she needed.
“Then lie down for me.”
He obeyed and hastily leaned back, letting the blankets envelop him again. She caressed his face and he muttered her name in a fervent plea. Her palm traveled lower, to his chest, as she gauged his heartbeat.
“What do you feel?”
Her voice entranced him.
“Love,” he answered honestly, “pain.”
“Why pain?”
“Sometimes, I love you so much that it hurts. Is that normal?” He answered his own question with a breathless laugh. She smiled and he gave her a pitiful gaze.
She then moved her hips and he instinctively grabbed onto them, seeking stability. Yuta drew in a sharp breath and his ears went crimson again. He watched her lick her lips.
To give pleasure to a people pleaser… is there an experience more fulfilling?
“The more you love, the more it hurts.” Both of her hands traveled lower and slipped underneath his t-shirt. “And that fucking sucks. But a lesser love, a convenient love, can never feel this good.”
She grinded her hips against his and he moaned, his fingers digging into her thighs. “And something that can never feel this good can never feel this bad either. Because the swing goes both ways. “She accentuated her words with movement, sliding forward and back on top of him, never taking eyes off his flushed face. Yuta whimpered, gasping for air.
“You have to go back and forth to reach one and be inevitably hit by the other.” Involuntarily, Yuta retracted his hand to cover his face but she grabbed it and reattached it to her hips, making him feel every motion, every faintest shift.
“And I would rather say goodbye to you, spend my days missing you, crying, and hurting over you, if it means I get to be loved by you like this, love you like this, see you like this. Have you like this.”
She brought her face to his and kissed him, entrapping one of his whimpers between their lips.
To please a people pleaser… felt like heaven on earth.
* * *
Morning sunlight snaked through creases and wrinkles of the bed linen covering their bodies. It danced on their faces, beaconing the way into a brand-new day. As her eyes flickered open, she saw Yuta already sitting up, his bare back soaking up the sun. Hearing her shift, he peeked over the shoulder and returned her sleepy smile with one of his own. She propped herself up and leaned against the smooth curve of his spine.
“Sleep well?” she asked.
“Yeah,” his voice rumbled in his chest.
Then, she practically felt it coming: a thought that was probably circulating in his head before she woke up, triggered by her touch to be formed into a sentence and spilled out in self-inflicted shame. I’m sorry for yesterday. But her skills of anticipating these thoughts got better as years went by. She pinched the skin of his side and he yelped.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“Do not say that.”
“I did not say anything!” Yuta argued in disbelief, rubbing the sore spot.
“I know you’re thinking it.”
She raised her eyebrows at him, as if trying to pry his head open and show him the proof. He caught the hint and sighed.
“But I am so—”
“Okkotsu. Do not finish that sentence.”
At the sound of his last name Yuta drooped like a puppy whose toy just got taken away from him. But he did not dare disobey her orders. She watched him for another second, ready to parry his words, were they to come out but nothing followed, so she let her guard back down.
“We don’t have nearly enough time together for me to be souring the mood like that,” he finally said, audibly upset at himself.
“Our time together doesn’t have to be happy all the time,” she moved closer and hugged him from behind, pressing an ear to his back to hear his heartbeat. “We can be sad together, or angry, or apathetic, we can be whatever. As long as we’re together, every second spent like that is worth it. Would you rather cry with me or cry alone?”
“With you.”
She had a way with words that always stripped him of any ability to conceal or complicate his thoughts. The way she spoke, the way her voice resonated within him, always left him clear minded. He turned his body completely around to fully look at her. He was at her mercy, his heart felt full and his eyes stung from the overwhelming emotion she gifted him every time Yuta heard her talk.
She looked at him quizzically. “What?”
What did I do to deserve you?
What would I do without you?
How do you always say the perfect thing to keep my heart from aching so much?
How have I ever lived without you?
“I love you,” he said instead. His voice was sweet, fragile, sad, and joyous all at the same time.
Why are you always so kind to me?
Isn’t that obvious, dummy?
“I love you too.”
Their lips met again. They could allow themselves a bit more of egoistic indulgence in each other before properly stepping back into their duties and steeling their hearts again. To be a jujutsu sorcerer was to be selfish, right? And sometimes it meant creating a tomorrow, even if it felt like there wasn’t one.
When Yuta parted with her then, he was a rejuvenated man on a mission. She always gave him so much, more than he possibly thought he deserved, so all he wanted to do was to give back. They had many more birthdays to celebrate together, and not nearly enough time to falter and shy away from the path ahead. He would pave the way, take her hand in his, and lead her into the future where they would never have to be apart again.
Even if he had to bend reality to make it happen.
