penpal | itadori yuuji ↳ it's just one summer. but...it's not just one summer. it's a whole three months, thirteen weeks, away from you. he finally has you, and now he's gonna give you up. but he finds that being away from you, while miserable and lonely and awful, does have its appeals. like the lovely, heartfelt letters you write him, and the sweet, knowing packages you mail him. the facetime calls that go on for hours. missing you is awful, but it's a bittersweet kind of ache. one he feels thankful to have. 5.4k words
a/n: this has been sitting pretty in my drafts for a while now. I like it a lot, but for some reason I've convinced myself it's not that good. not fishing for compliments, just genuinely don't know how I feel about it, so I hope you guys like it. and thank you to the anon who requested a yuuji fic, you inspired me to finally post this bad boy. semi-canon compliant, but I don't think the students actually get a dedicated summer break, so just pretend with me here :] I was lowkey shitting on megumi in parts of this fic...was not my intention, but it kinda comes off that way my bad. warnings/what to expect: fluff, kissing, cussing.
yuuji had known you for two years. he’d been in love with you for most of them, though he only got to call you his about a year in. you came to jujutsu tech like some serene little storm—not loud or messy like him, but quiet in your devastation. you weren’t flashy, but you were competent. focused. what you lacked in raw cursed energy, you made up for with an almost religious discipline. the way you trained—morning runs before class, late nights on the field until your knuckles bled, the way your hands shook from exhaustion but you never stopped—he’d never seen anything like it.
you volunteered for every mission. you never hesitated. you were the first out the door and often the last one back. gojo sent you on solo missions all the time, which made yuuji anxious in the beginning, until he saw just how capable you really were. it wasn’t jealousy, not really. that wasn’t his nature. he didn’t burn with envy—he just brimmed with admiration. reverence. he wanted to take care of you, not because he thought you needed it, but because he needed to do it. you were the kind of person who made him want to be more than he was.
he’d probably had a crush on you since the moment you met. and now, a year into dating you, he could still hardly believe his luck. he could talk for hours about how beautiful he thinks you are. write novels about the freckles scattered across your cheeks and shoulders like constellations. sonatas on the softness of your skin, especially in late spring when the uniform sleeves rolled up and your skin went golden and red from the sun. you made his heart ache in the most devastating, beautiful way. and he told you that. often.
he liked to joke about how he “tricked” you into falling for him, as if it hadn’t been the most careful, patient, sincere pursuit of his life. it started small—compliments slipped in between classes, during missions, after sparring. he always noticed when you styled your hair differently, or wore a new outfit when you and kugisaki went shopping. he was subtle, at first. quiet about it. you didn’t pick up on his feelings, not right away. you were too practical. too oblivious. you brushed off his compliments. squinted at him suspiciously when he offered to carry your training gear. tilted your head like a confused puppy when he gushed about you to gojo-sensei.
yuuji was nothing if not persistent. fushiguro, predictably, had no patience for any of it. “just tell her how you feel,” he’d grumble, usually while icing some injury he got in sparring. which was rich, coming from fushiguro—who’d been nursing an epic crush on a certain second-year for much longer than he’d ever admit.
but yuuji knew better. you didn’t like surprises. public affection made you uncomfortable. if he told you everything all at once, you’d fold into yourself and pull away. so instead, he built his love for you slowly. brick by brick. invited you to movie nights. asked you to study in his dorm (after cleaning it obsessively first). stayed up just to wait for you to come home from missions and pretend he was “just grabbing a snack,” ramen packet already boiling. he became your shadow. your biggest fan. a lovesick puppy who knew exactly who he wanted. and eventually, something shifted. his compliments didn’t go over your head anymore—they landed. you started to smile at him longer. laugh at his jokes. sit next to him without prompting. share an airpod on walks. choose his dorm to study in, instead of kugisaki’s or your own. you opened up like a sunrise—slow and soft, but radiant.
your dorm became his favorite place on earth. to anyone else, it might’ve looked boring—neutral tones, soft blankets, piles of books. but to yuuji, it was like stepping into your chest and hearing your heart beat. quiet. warm. steady. he saw you in it. the small comforts you clung to in a world that had given you so few. the little signs of a person trying to build something gentle, even when the world kept asking for violence. he wanted to be that place for you. and slowly, you started letting him. you let him brush your hair from your face after training. let him curl around you like a shield after a long, bruising mission. let him rest his head in your lap while you read to him, your voice soft and low, stumbling over the occasional word, especially when he stared up at you with that look in his eyes.
you never had a moment. no confessions. no breathless declarations in the rain. it just...shifted. somewhere along the way, you stopped pulling away from his affection. started leaning in. started trying. not because you felt like you had to, but because something in your chest cracked open and yuuji had rushed in to fill it like sunlight.
it wasn’t easy. it didn’t come naturally. love never had, not for you. not like it did for him. where yuuji loved in color—bright, bold, full-bodied—you loved in grayscale. yours was a quieter thing. but no less real. it made you feel naked, sometimes, the way he looked at you. the way he touched you without hesitation, like he was sure you wouldn’t break. the way he praised you without wanting anything in return. affection still made your skin prickle some days. made your chest tighten like your body couldn’t quite accept that this was safe. that he was safe.
but you gave it anyway. a hand on his shoulder. a thumb brushing the corner of his mouth. a quiet I missed you when he returned from missions. you couldn’t mirror his joy, his ease with the language of love—but you found your own dialect. one he understood perfectly. you let him into your space. your life. your rituals. he learned to love your quiet. you learned to love his noise. and somewhere in the middle, you fell for him. not in a rush, not in a whirlwind. but in soft, unshakable steps. one foot after the other. you showed up. that was your way of loving. not loud. not immediate. but steady. enduring. the kind of love that doesn't shout—but never leaves. yuuji never asked you to be anyone else. and that’s what made it so easy to try.
now, with the sun climbing higher and the days stretching long and hot, summer has arrived. and for the first time, he won’t be spending it with you. not a week or two apart. a whole summer. you’re headed home to see family. yuuji’s staying in tokyo with gojo and fushiguro. he’ll finally get to see this mansion fushiguro’s always grumbling about. you’ll be on opposite ends of the country. no surprise movie nights. no dorm room reading. no you. last summer, you’d stayed at the school for the summer. your family wasn’t the sentimental type. they’d sent you off to become a better sorcerer. but yaga had set up renovations to take place over the summer. so going home was just the sensible decision. fushiguro had annoyedly claimed the offer was open, but kugisaki wasn’t going. so you politely declined, you didn’t want to impose.
you seem unbothered, serene as always, just like you are before missions. you promise to call, and he knows you mean it, despite the fact that he knows you don’t like phone calls. but that doesn’t stop the dread in his chest. the hollowness behind his smile. he tries to act like it’s fine. that he’s fine. but god, he’s gonna miss you.
the train ride out to gojo’s house—sorry, gojo’s mansion—is quick. he lives just on the other side of tokyo, far enough out that everything slows down, quiets, turns rural. but you're taking a bullet train across the country. practically a world away. yuuji knows you’ll be fine. he’s seen you pin grade 1 sorcerers in a matter of seconds. watched you exorcise curses blindfolded and bound just for the challenge. he’s seen you survive things that should’ve left scars, and still come home with that same calm steadiness, as if you’d just run errands instead of dancing with death. but he worries anyway. he can’t help it. he downloads an audiobook on his phone—something dense, something you’d picked. the same one you’re listening to on your train ride. he texts you when something happens in the plot that grabs him, and you respond, just wait. it gets even better.
he asks where you’re sitting. back of the train, you text. he facetimes immediately, hopeful the quiet section means you won’t be overheard. you’ve got earbuds in and you speak soft and low, barely above the hum of the train. he misses you already, and he says so. he tells you about his short trip to gojo’s. how fushiguro ignored him the entire way there. you smile faintly—your relationship with fushiguro is... testy at best. there’s mutual respect, no question. you’re both composed, private, precise. but the difference is: you love yuuji without shame. quiet, but complete. fushiguro... well. he loves like it’s a secret. like it's something to be embarrassed about. you never talk about it. but it's there. yuuji pretends not to notice. you’re his two best friends, and you make it work.
he asks what your plans are when you get home. he wants to know about your family. your town. where you come from. a little coastal village outside of okinawa. you tell him it’s small—fields instead of skyscrapers. you grew up with dirt under your nails and windburn on your cheeks. your family isn’t loud. not physically affectionate. but the love’s there. just in your language. small, quiet, hard to spot unless you know what you're looking for.
your mother makes your favorite dinner the night you return. your sisters insist on sleeping in your room, one on either side. they barely touch you, but they’re close, and that’s enough. they want to hear everything about yuuji. all about him. you show them pictures. tell them about how he leaves little notes in your textbook margins, how he walks you to class even when it’s out of his way. about how he makes you laugh, really laugh. the kind you feel in your ribs. “he sounds so nice,” one of them says.
“he is,” you reply. you miss him, too. you just don’t say it out loud.
the next morning, you wake to three texts from yuuji. you reply to each one individually. he responds immediately. he’s up early—he knew you’d be awake. your conversations trickle in all day, a stream of consciousness that stretches like a string between you, humming with tension and sweetness. each message is a little love letter to the long, hot summer you’re spending apart. you keep busy—your days are full. chores. catching up with family. reading. card games at the kitchen table. you blink, and a week is gone. one down. twelve to go.
on the final night of the week, you sit at the small desk in your room. you pull out a blank sheet of paper and pick up your pen. and you begin to write. you write about everything. the pink tulips you repotted and set on the windowsill—they reminded me of your hair. the tabby cat you see every morning on your run around the property. the summer storm that rolled through the second night, drenching the ground and leaving everything smelling new. the dumplings you made with your mom, how you got flour in your hair and on your nose and she laughed, really laughed, for the first time in a while. you write about the paintings you did with your little sister—hers a pink unicorn, yours the sky, both ridiculous and beautiful in their own way. the two books you’ve already finished. how you miss him. how you even miss fushiguro’s grumbling. how you miss the taste of his overcooked ramen and the crooked grin he gives you when he tries to flirt and fails spectacularly. the two scars he lets you kiss each night before bed. his beautiful, expressive eyes. you’re not desperate enough to say you miss gojo-sensei. not yet. but you’re getting there.
you print out photos with your polaroid camera. one of the cat. one of the dumplings. the flowers. your paintings. the books. and finally—inevitably—a photo of yourself. you in his favorite red hoodie, the one that’s soft and stretched out and smells like him no matter how many times you wash it. it’s yours now. he saw you in it once and never asked for it back. you slip the pictures and the four-page letter into a thick yellow envelope. the next morning, you stop by the tiny convenience store in town. you find some spicy nori snacks, a box of matcha pocky. add them in. seal it. you drop it off at the post office without ceremony and go on with your day.
that night, you facetime. you don’t say anything about the package. he tells you how pretty you look. how lovely you are in his hoodie, flushed from a day in the garden. his voice is soft, reverent, like he’s seeing a dream and doesn’t want to wake up. you threaten to hang up the call. he grins and moves on. tells you about the new bruise on his arm—courtesy of gojo’s bright idea to use a basketball during baseball practice. he swung, connected, and got flattened by the rebound. you shake your head. you miss him. but honestly, you're glad you’re not at gojo’s house. a couple of days later, a package arrives on gojo’s doorstep.
it hits him like summer sun on bare skin—sudden, bright, and a little overwhelming. the package shows up one lazy afternoon, thick air curling through the open windows of gojo’s place. the cicadas are loud. there’s something sweet in the air, like peaches or sun-warmed grass. gojo drops it on the kitchen counter like it weighs nothing, flipping through a magazine as he says, offhandedly, “hey. something came in from okinawa.”
fushiguro, halfway through slicing into a watermelon, raises an eyebrow. “who do you know from there?” but yuuji’s already moving—no, tripping over the side of the couch like it’s trying to keep him from the counter. a graceless tumble. he doesn’t care. because he knows. you. it’s from you. that’s who he knows in okinawa. that’s who he’s been thinking about every minute of every day since you left.
the package is plain. no stickers, no doodles. you’re not sentimental like that. but yuuji opens it like it’s made of glass, like the contents inside are too precious for fast hands. his fingers shake a little. inside, a few things sit nestled gently together, and suddenly his throat is tight. spicy nori. he’s never had it, but you must’ve remembered that. he’d mentioned it once—months ago, maybe. a craving, a curiosity. you remembered. matcha pocky. his favorite. he stares at it for a moment, like maybe if he looks long enough, it’ll explain how you know him so well it makes his chest ache.
and then photos. they look random. but he knows they’re not. they’re fragments of your days. slivers of moments he wasn’t there for. a garden. a messy dumpling attempt. a painting. a cat. he doesn’t need the stories behind them. it’s enough that you sent them. that you wanted him to see. and then—the one that knocks the wind out of him. you. at your desk. wearing his red hoodie and your pajama pants. your hair down, natural, soft the way he always tells you he loves it. you're making a little face at the camera—cheeky, just barely a smirk. like you knew if you didn’t include a photo of yourself, he’d pout about it for a week. and you were right. he would’ve. but now you’ve gone and outsmarted him again. now he’s staring down at this picture like it holds the answer to every question he’s ever asked about love.
finally—finally—he notices the letter. four pages, all in your handwriting. folded with a kind of neatness that’s distinctly you. he reads it too fast the first time, eyes skipping, hungry for everything. has to go back, start again, slow down. some of it he’s heard before, through facetime. little updates. passing mentions. but there’s so much more here. so much softness. so much you. he laughs out loud when you mention watching human earthworm 3 with your sisters. “they hated it,” you wrote. "I loved every second.” he presses a hand to his chest. god, he wishes he’d been there. you write about listening to his favorite song during one of your runs. you say it felt like he was there with you. and he can’t even handle how his stomach flips at that—like the laws of space and time bend for a second just to let him be close to you.
you mention your hair again. how when you’re not constantly out on missions, you can finally take the time to wash it and let it do its thing. he’d noticed, of course. could tell from the photo. but the fact that you thought to explain it to him? that you wanted him to know? he has to stop reading for a second. his vision’s gone a little blurry. because this letter—it’s not flowery. it’s not full of declarations or clichés. it’s not romantic in the way some people would call romantic. but it’s a love letter. god, it is. it’s so you. attentive. specific. steady. you miss him, and you say so. but more than that—you see him. you know him. and you care. deeply. completely. without needing to shout it. he reads the last line three times over before he can breathe again. "I love you, yuuji ♡”
he presses the letter to his chest and lets his head fall back against the couch. he’s quiet for a long moment. the summer breeze ruffles the corner of the letter. someone says something in the other room—maybe gojo, maybe fushiguro—but yuuji doesn’t hear it. his whole world, right now, is inside that envelope. and you’re not even trying. that’s the thing that wrecks him. you’re just being yourself.
he calls you immediately—eyes still suspiciously glassy, voice slightly too upbeat.
"umm, what is thisss?" he says, holding the opened package up to the camera like you might not recognize it. “you’re way too nice, baby. this is literally the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”
you blink at him, chewing a piece of ice absentmindedly. "what is?"
"this!" he rattles the package, then points dramatically to the letter like it’s a handwritten declaration of sainthood.
"oh. that?” you say, frowning. “that was nothing.”
you’d honestly forgotten you sent it.
it had taken you half an hour to throw together. less than 1000 yen. you’d picked up the snacks while buying shampoo. you’d stuck in the letter because the envelope felt too light. you’d printed the picture because you figured he’d whine otherwise. it wasn’t much.
but he’s gushing. twenty whole minutes. you can barely get a word in. he’s complimenting your handwriting like it’s calligraphy. he’s pointing out specific phrases from the letter and repeating them back to you in a dreamy voice. he’s asking if the cat from your run has a name yet.
eventually you settle into your usual facetime routine—quiet, warm, full of long pauses that don’t feel empty. your mother calls you down for dinner. normally, you’d say goodbye and hang up.
but tonight, you don’t.
you just…carry him with you. down the stairs, to the kitchen. your sisters have already eaten. your plate is waiting for you under cling wrap in the fridge. you heat it up, sit at the counter, and start eating with the phone propped against the sugar canister.
you barely say anything for the first five minutes. just the soft clinking of utensils, the occasional sigh.
“do you want me to leave you be?” yuuji asks gently.
you look up, surprised. “no. I don’t want to eat by myself.”
it’s not a big declaration. you say it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
but to yuuji, it might as well be a marriage proposal.
because he remembers you two years ago. the girl who used to apologize for having freckles. who stiffened at compliments. who lived curled up in the corners of her dorm like a ghost. and now you want to share your dinner with him across two time zones.
he doesn’t say any of that. he just smiles and goes to grab his own food. he makes fushiguro come eat too, plates already lukewarm from gojo’s microwave. he sets the phone in the center of the table like a centerpiece.
you ask megumi how he’s doing. if he’s ready to kill gojo yet.
"I am always ready to kill gojo,” he deadpans. but it’s half-hearted. you all know the truth.
you talk about what you want to do when you’re back on campus. yuuji lights up.
“let’s add kugisaki to the call!”
you do. she’s annoyed at first, claims she’s busy. but she stays. and suddenly it feels like another night in the dorms. like you're not scattered across japan, separated by obligation and summer heat. for a little while, it just feels like home.
—
the next day, yuuji sets out to write you back. he opens to the first page with the same energy he once reserved for exam questions or curse exorcism strategies. serious business. except…he struggles. a lot. your letter was perfect. it had felt effortless. this? this is like trying to write a poem in a thunderstorm.
but once he stops trying to match you, and starts writing like himself, everything spills out. he writes about the baseball-basketball hybrid gojo invented. (“it’s dumb. I'm obsessed. we play everyday.”) he tells you how he and megumi tried to cook that soup recipe you mentioned. he describes the exact moment the fire alarms went off and how gojo’s first words when walking into the smoky mess were “you guys better not be cooking something healthy.” he tells you about the kyoto girl megumi is clearly in love with, and how you need to help orchestrate something. “maybe he can trick her into dating him. worked for me.” he thanks you for the spicy nori. “it was amazing. buy some more. facetime me when you try it!” he compliments your hair. rants about it, really. summer humidity is a miracle, and your hair is living proof. he asks for pictures of the ocean. says you must be able to see it from your family’s house, or at least on your morning run. says he wants more pictures of your paintings—especially the pink unicorn one your sister did, which he describes as “abstract and terrifying and amazing.” he asks for more pictures of you, too. “one is a total disservice. I deserve at least five. maybe ten.”
and then, because it feels right, he says it. over and over again. I love you. I love you. I love you. the words tumble out. not in some neat little line, but smeared across paragraphs, tucked between snack reviews and bad doodles. they’re everywhere. just like he is. just like you are, in his world. the letter is a mess. his handwriting is a disaster. ink is smudged. words are misspelled. there are crossed-out sentences and strange margin notes. he’s doodled a weird little version of you in his hoodie with stars around your head. he’s drawn a cat that looks more like a potato. he loves it. he knows you’ll love it too.
he doesn’t have a polaroid, which is tragic. he makes a note to buy one. but he still manages to include something tangible—a couple bags of tea from gojo’s pantry that he’s pretty sure you’ll like. (if not, you’ll bully him, and he’s fine with that.) he puts hearts all over the envelope. big ones. lopsided ones. he considers sealing it with a kiss, then decides that’s weird, then does it anyway. he sends it off the next morning. and with it, he sends the part of him that hasn’t stopped missing you since the second you left.
it spirals, gloriously, hilariously, heart-wrenchingly from there. the rest of the summer becomes an exchange of laughter folded into letters, fingerprints smudged onto snack packages, love woven into bubble wrap and twine. you trade days the way people trade baseball cards. one sweet little offering at a time.
yuuji sends you candy bars from the corner store with scribbled notes like “tastes weird. tell me if I'm crazy.” he includes half-baked recipes clipped from magazines, fully aware he’ll never pull them off. you try them. you lie and say they’re amazing. (“don’t worry, I didn’t burn the soup. unlike some people.”) you send him a miniature basketball plushie because he will not shut up about gojo’s cursed frankenstein sport. he opens the package like it’s a sacred relic, then immediately facetimes you to introduce it to the world. “this is mikey. he’s our son now.” he gives it a place of honor on his pillow. fushiguro scoffs and sighs for a full ten minutes. you make matching bracelets. twine and a little metal charm you found at a beach stand. you keep one. mail the other. he acts like he made it, flashing it dramatically on every facetime call. “check out this artisan craftsmanship.” you let him have it.
one afternoon, you call and he’s asleep. megumi answers, caught somewhere between suspicion and resignation. the air between you two is awkward, delicate. you don’t say much. until you grin and say, “go get a permanent marker.” megumi blinks. then smirks. yuuji wakes up to a full mural on his cheek and something profane scrawled across his forehead. he groans, squinting into the camera. but you're cackling. megumi’s barely holding it together. he can’t be mad. not even a little. he receives more pictures from you. candid, sleepy, sunlit. some with your sisters, some with your fingers half-covering the lens. one of you holding a seashell to your ear like a dork. he sets them on his nightstand in the guest room like they’re family heirlooms. sometimes he looks at them before bed and just whispers, “you’re so cool,” like a man cursed by affection.
he makes you explain your hair routine in painstaking detail. wants brand names. ratios. “like, how wet is your hair when you use the curl cream?” he’s convinced that if he studies your methods, his hair will someday be as majestic. you’re losing your mind. he’s so serious about it. it’s infuriating. you love it. he sends you postcards from tokyo with captions like “wish you were here (i mean you practically live here but still)”. you keep them all in a shoebox under your bed. there’s already too many to count. you start watching movies “together.” he’ll call, and you’ll sync up your streaming services like you’re detonating a bomb. “3...2...1...play.” the audio never lines up perfectly. the subtitles sometimes glitch. but it doesn’t matter. you talk through the whole thing anyway.
and it’s...gross. sickening, even. soft and sappy and too gentle for a world that rarely is. but it’s yours. built slowly, lovingly, from nothing more than stamps and signal bars and the occasional haunted snack box. and it matters. because you didn't used to believe in this kind of thing. and yuuji—yuuji believed in you even when you didn't believe in yourself. he made room for you. made space for this. for love. for warmth. for something that doesn’t sting when it touches you.
he still misses you, of course. but it’s different now. not aching and hollow. it’s…sweet. soft around the edges. like the kind of longing you get for a favorite song, or the smell of your mom’s cooking when you’re away. he thinks about you every morning. every night. every time he passes that stupid unicorn drawing or tightens the bracelet on his wrist. he misses you. but he’s grateful to miss you. because missing you means he has you. and that is the best thing that's ever happened to him.
—
he’s jittery. he’s always jittery, sure, but this is different. yuuji’s not just bouncing his leg—he’s halfway to vibrating out of his skin. the entire bullet train ride he’s cracking knuckles, chewing on the corner of his lip, refreshing your last text like it might suddenly change and say “surprise! I'm here early! come get me now!” it doesn’t. you said your train left at 3:00am. brutal. typical you—always the cheap ticket, always the one who makes do without complaint. you don’t mind early mornings or sore backs. he minds for you. his ride is short. unfairly so. which means he gets to be alone in his dorm for a few hours with all this energy and nowhere to put it. he bugs kugisaki within twenty minutes of unpacking. fushiguro? emotionally exhausted, allegedly. but yuuji knows better. fushiguro loved hanging out with him this summer. he’ll never say it, but he’ll miss yuuji’s endless talking, his stupid pool games, his bad movie taste. they’ll both pretend otherwise.
yuuji’s a livewire. can’t sit still. he finally channels it into decorating, if you can call it that. every picture you mailed him gets stuck on the wall in a wild, crooked constellation—no rhyme or reason, just instinct and affection. the letter drawer gets a place of honor in his nightstand, already worn from being opened and reread too many times. then he gets mischievous. he grabs mikey, the plush basketball, and heads to your dorm. he’s plotting. you’ll come in later and find the plush sitting on your pillow, possibly with a dramatic note about “co-parenting.”
he knocks, ready to annoy kugisaki into letting him in. but the door swings open—and it’s you. you, with that sly, soft look on your face, like you know exactly what you’ve done. "I was waiting for you to come up here,” you say. “wasn’t sure you would.” liar. your train hadn’t left at 3:00am. you’d found a late-night deal, and you took it. you’d been here since last night.
and yuuji? he short-circuits. he doesn’t freeze—yuuji itadori never freezes—but he ignites. he barrels through the doorway like a storm surge, lifts you off your feet, spins you around like some cheesy k-drama protagonist who’s waited thirteen weeks for this moment. (which he has.) he tucks his face into your neck and inhales. he missed this—your perfume, your shampoo, your skin. he missed you. his lips find every freckle like they’re dots on a map he’s finally coming home to. he squishes your cheeks in his palms and baby-talks at you like he’s trying to imprint your face onto his soul. which, to be fair, he probably is.
you endure it with only mild suffering. arms loose around his shoulders. a soft grumble of, “okay, okay, yuuji…” but you don’t pull away. when he finally sets you down, your hands come up—gentle—and you press your lips to the matching scars on either side of his eyes. a habit now. something quiet and reverent, like you’re acknowledging everything he’s been through without saying a word. then you look at him. just…look. wide, steady eyes. hair undone. that calm, quiet sort of smile that he’s never been able to resist. "I missed you too, yuuji.”
and that’s it. that’s the sentence that breaks the dam. he’s kissing you again, not even properly—just barely-there little pecks over your cheeks, your temple, your hands, your eyelids, whispering things like “you’re so pretty, holy crap,” and “I'm so lucky, I'm so stupid lucky,” and "I love you, I love you, I love you.”
you’re calm. he doesn’t know how. he’s been vibrating with anticipation for thirteen weeks and you’re just…serenely unpacking, like he didn’t just get metaphorically hit by a train. but that’s who you are. steady. quiet. warm in a way that sneaks up on him. he decides, right then, next summer he’s going with you. nakijin or bust. you don’t argue. you just nod. he wraps around you like ivy as you organize your desk. follows you like a puppy while you reset your dorm. it’s not hot—there’s a breeze drifting through the cracked window, and a hint of fall in the air. soon there will be class schedules and curfews and missions and real life.
but for now, it’s this. just this. warmth and laughter and the smell of your perfume on his shirt. and sometimes—just sometimes—when things settle again and days start to pass like normal, yuuji finds himself missing what it felt like to miss you. because even that was beautiful. even that was yours.
