– itadori yuji x f!reader; pacific rim!au, soulmates!au, character deaths, heavy angst, reader has ptsd, eventual comfort, smut (18+)
– summary: Itadori Yuji has dreamt of the day he could pilot Sukuna Gamma– the world’s quietest and fastest Jaeger; The most lethal of machines to both Kaiju Curses and man.
You dream of the day that the fucking machine would stop haunting you.
a/n: when i tell yall i write fanfics, i write fanfics. spent a month and a half on this bad boy.
big thanks to @keijiberry for editing and supporting and another huge thanks to @amalthea-000 for keeping me going on this. could not have been done without you two.
You’re sixteen the first time you see Sukuna Gamma, touring the Tokyo Base as a potential future candidate of the Jaeger Pilot Program. You choke on your spit as Nobara slaps your arm in excitement.
He stands dauntingly formidable at 280 feet tall, covered head to toe in a sleek design of metallic grey with gold linings on the inside of his arms and legs. His helmet, the most humanoid-looking helmet of his generation, is fixated firmly upon his broad shoulders with two gold marks underneath each eye. The metal shines blindingly in the direct sunlight and frighteningly shadowed in the night. An insurmountable figure standing proudly in the wake of mortality; One look at him and you felt all of your childhood fantasies come back to life.
Everyone speaks his name in rumors, dubbed as ‘The King of Curses’ not only for his regal appearance alone but the way he inhabited this still earth, swift in his justice yet terrifyingly vengeful. He is the most forceful of them all.
He’s the tallest of all the Jaegers, accentuated by his long arms and legs that sustain the brunt of his massive weight. He’s not the most fortified of his generation, ranking only six out of ten on the scale of panoply but that was never much of a concern— it wasn’t what he was made for anyways. He was built to be slender and symmetrical, his makers understanding that to become the world’s greatest weapon, they had to sacrifice some aspects of sheathing to compliment his mechanisms for speed. If anything, his lack of shelling was complimented by the two additional extending arms that folded into the casing of his chest.
That was easy to understand, at first. Sukuna Gamma is the fastest and the quietest of all the Jaegers, making him the most lethal of weapons to fight Kaiju Curses, and the most delicate. He’s complex and difficult, with the most sensitive of features and the most powerful of attacks, and anyone that decides to man that monolith of a machine must be the most fanatic, suicidal, genius.
They must know what it means to pilot a walking death trap, and yet desperately love it; They must be quick and decisive in battle while simultaneously patient in their strategy; They must know their weaknesses better than their strengths for he has a great many of them— and that is what makes him the best Jaeger.
Everyone reveres the ruthlessness of Sukuna Gamma in battle, but no one forgets how that lethality extends to his pilots as well.
He’s had fourteen pilots in his service, seven in total. All pairs except one dying simultaneously in his five years of existence, each duo falling prey to the complexity of his programming and finding a fate worse than they could have ever imagined.
All, except the one person who has survived the turmoil of Sukuna.
They used to say back in the Jaeger training program that the machines have minds of their own. They might be the best display of man-made exceptionalism, but they’re their own beings, capable of thought and wary with their trust. The machines must like you as much as you like them; They have to be comfortable with you, accept you to pilot them. And Sukuna Gamma didn’t accept anyone. He didn’t trust anyone.
You knew that going into him, expecting to face the same fate as all the others when they formally assigned Nobara and you as pilots Thirteen and Fourteen to Sukuna Gamma. In one mission alone— that truthfully should have been the end of your career as a pilot, that you desperately wished was the end— you were intricately and brutally tied to the legacy of Sukuna Gamma and his wicked hesitancy to trust.
A feat for celebration throughout the training grounds: The first pilot to survive the fatal test of the magnificent beast!
He chose you and not your partner— even though Nobara was the one that wanted him, not you. You couldn’t have cared less about what machine you were designated toward, but Nobara was the one that stood in complete reverence of the machine, determined to earn the King of Curses’ respect. She had repeated her goal like a sacred prayer from her spot on the bottom bunk late at night, a psalm you eventually found the most comfort in, imagining the most fruitful of futures to arise from.
Just wait, she used to say, He’ll accept us. He’s meant for us.
You followed along because that was what Nobara wanted. Because you cared for your drift compatible partner and the promised fate of success she imagined in that wretched machine. A future Nobara had explicitly tied to the two of you because she cared for you too.
It hardly mattered to him that you could feel all Nobara’s pain when he marched you both to her standing funeral; He didn’t care that your brain pathways and vision were to be forevermore inexplicably entwined with her chosen victim and the memory of her gruesome death.
Sukuna Gamma didn’t care for Nobara and you hate him for it. Feel nauseous at the sight of his sleek helmet and grow increasingly bitter at the tiniest mention of his name and any form of compliment that follows it.
Yet, the top brass wants you back in him, already having several candidates for you to select to be your co-pilot.
I already have one, you told them, hollow and aching and entirely serious.
She’s just lost at sea, her body sunk to the bottom of the ocean floor, having succumbed to the excruciating pain that wracked through her and jolted through yours by extension of the connection. Never to be recovered yet living everlasting in the phantom pains that keep you awake at night.
We need Sukuna, they said, and Sukuna needs you.
They pleaded, pointedly avoiding staring at the deep scratches that scattered across your face that were sure to leave scars and the puffy bags that sunk deep beneath your eyes that spoke more about the aftermath of the mission than any report could have.
You’re the only one Sukuna cares for. It’s why he let you live.
“You must lose to win; You must bask in the pain of the machine’s great power. That is the cruel fate of rangers,” you vaguely remember them saying in training.
This is what Nobara sacrificed herself for, Ranger. This is what she trained for.
You pushed your chair back, the legs scratching loudly against the floor silencing them all in their efforts. Sparing no glance, you left the boardroom of suffocating ignorance.
Fourteen pilots in his five years of existence— every single one of them dead. He knew the rules of the game and sacrificed them all to get what he wanted. And they wanted you to just get back in him, pretend that nothing happened, and hope that the next pilot won’t suffer the same fate.
They should just retire that fucking death trap.
one month later, hangar base
Sleep hardly comes easy these days.
The countless pill bottles do nothing for the pain that sets your body alight— a pain that feels so intense and crippling yet so distant. It barely grazes the surface of your skin, dragging its daggers in a teasing fashion against the fabric of your already scarred arms, and yet you writhe uncontrollably in your sweat-soaked sheets, unable to shake yourself free from its grasp.
You lose hours easily to the torture of it all and lose even more trying to psyche yourself into even the lightest nights of sleep.
So, you don’t try anymore, retiring instead to the hangar of the Tokyo Base and watching the assigned mechanics begin their night shift. They work on them all, expertise knowledge tweaking and patching the man-made metal gods. You spend a particularly long time watching a team of forty engineers work on Z Titan, a Mark-Four Jaeger, one of the stronger ones of the assembly. There’s no certain fascination to it, mostly a familiarity considering you’ve been coming out of your room every day for the past two weeks at this same time only to see this same team working on it tirelessly.
You’ve met its pilots— Fushiguro Megumi and Zenin Maki. Linked by the formidable tie of blood, yet bonded through a stronger force of skill entirely. They’re quiet and serious, taking orders without much question and always doing their jobs right. No errors, no extravagance, no innate “Pilot Need” to show off.
They spared you a brief nod after you returned from the incident and continued their way, which you appreciated. It was infinitely better than the fumbling apology and words of poor comfort uttered by resident big guy “Panda” (of which you still don’t know his real name) and his co-pilot Inumaki Toge. Hell, even their excruciating tone-deafness was leagues better than loudmouth Gojo Satoru who offered to take you for a ride in Purple Striker to show you what an “elite Jaeger can do”.
Any other circumstance and you would’ve taken him up on the offer. But Purple Striker looks a bit too much like Sukuna, and with that alone, you give him a hard no.
Speaking of, he stands loudly in the quiet hum of the hangar in his designated spot, like a sore thumb even though that’s where he’s meant to be. It’s unreasonable to think that, as that is quite literally his home. It’s where he’s docked every night, it’s where he’s worked on, and it’s where you and Nobara go when boarding him.
Went. It’s where you and Nobara went to board him.
You avoid looking in his direction completely, content to engage in this juvenile game of silent treatment with a fucking machine, but you know it’s warranted considering the intensity of his piercing stare. He calls for your attention, silently taunts you in the gentle hum of mechanical work belonging to the hangar.
You can usually resist him, instead, find more peace in staring at the overt display of strength that belongs to Z Titan with its thick armored plating on its chest and legs and the wide expanse of a shell that sits on the helmet—something Sukuna pointedly does not have. But on nights like this, when peace turns to envy at how a machine can protect those that reside inside of it, you end up acquiescing and meet the gaze of the King himself.
His stare is both achingly hollow and frighteningly heavy. He needs no words to accompany his beckoning, his shining silver and sleek ingot projecting the aura of fortitude and stability that you know he lacks. He’s unpredictable, and mean, and hateful yet stands so beautifully enticingly before you that you almost get nauseous.
“I’m afraid you can’t dismantle a Jaeger through a stare, even though yours is quite frightening.”
Too caught up in the staring game with the harbinger of death, you hardly noticed the arrival of another in your nightly residence on the top deck floor. Glancing to your right, you meet the steady gaze of Purple Striker’s other pilot.
Nanami Kento gestures a hand to the spot on the floor beside you, “Do you mind if I sit?”
They assign a fresh face to co-pilot Sukuna Gamma after he tests slightly above average in drift compatibility with you, two months after Nobara’s death. He’s straight out of Jaeger training and even if you hadn’t read his file, you would’ve been able to tell he’s new just from the way he carries himself.
His name is Yoshino Junpei. You know he won’t last. You say as much to Marshal Naga, borderline beg for him to reconsider the assignment.
“My hands are tied,” He says sadly, having already come to terms with the fate he was forcing upon this child, this boy who had just turned nineteen—only a year younger than you.
“We need to see results.”
He was the only one in his class that tested well in all subjects and had the potential for a positive result— albeit a slim one; Or so his file says. Which is why Marshal Naga and everyone he reports to present this unassuming offering to the King and awaits his verdict.
You already know his answer. Everyone who knows his modus operandi does.
You can see it in the way that Panda squeezes Junpei’s shoulder a little too tightly in passing and Megumi and Maki try and make considerable conversation with him. They’re giving him something before the higher-ups march him to his death in the name of human survival; The last semblance of positive interaction and kindness before you’re instructed to guide him through the excitement of entering a Jaeger for the first time and then subsequently drown in the pain of His rejection with him.
It’s an entirely selfish thought, but for a moment, you briefly consider that maybe this is the easiest fate. To know that he was going to die on his first excursion instead of being blindsided by false hope. You can prepare for it, mentally ready yourself for the physical pain you’ll feel and the despair that comes with knowing that you killed him.
You wonder if you should tell him. At least give him a chance to make his peace with the world before he goes.
You almost do, but then he tells you about his mom. He tells you the story of how Kaijus killed his father and destroyed his home, talks about having to jump around the government sanctuary housings, and how he was bullied in each one. He describes in detail with a wistfulness that only an aged poet has about his found purpose when he met a boy his age who was brighter than the sun and loved Jaegers more than life itself. How he joined the training program because of the boy with a wide smile and pink hair and how he wants to make him proud.
He looks at you when he says that, tears lining his eyes and a sad smile pushing weakly on the corners of his mouth and that’s when you realize.
Your compatibility with him isn’t as strong as it was with Nobara, but you found some comfort in the softness of his eyes and the shyness of his demeanor. He makes different kinds of jokes that you don’t find particularly funny even though you laugh anyway, and he talks about movies that you’ve never seen before, but there’s a familiarity in the desolation that sits in the silence of you both. He understands the sadness that seems to enshroud you these days and if anything, he takes solace in it. He knows that part of you better than most and that was before he saw your memories.
He knew not to force conversation when he found you staring at Z Titan late at night and knew not to ask why you do it. He just sat, unable to be convinced by the song of sleep much like you. Residing comfortably in the silence of his impending doom, a mutual space you both quietly acknowledged in those moments.
He’s the complete opposite of Nobara, who swung violently until her last breath. He accepts his fate with a sorrowful grace, and foolishly, you wonder if maybe that is what will finally appease that vengeful machine.
Because if He didn’t like Nobara, he must have wanted something completely different. And Junpei is completely different. Maybe he would find some respect in that and work in tandem with you in protecting him, instead of malfunctioning entirely too coincidentally as he did with Nobara.
You remind yourself to not put too much faith into that theory, but you end up doing so. Believing it for the briefest of seconds, hoping there might be some sliver of truth to it.
He dies a month after he was assigned to Sukuna Gamma. A Kaiju Curse’s tail punctures his side of the machine in one of his many weak spots despite your desperate instruction of him to please, move!
It’s a quick death for him, and ultimately that’s the best possible outcome, but it leaves you with a piercing ache that burns through your chest and closes your throat. Adding another scar to the plethora of stories that line your body and dig unforgivingly in the crowded, haunting spaces of your brain.
You drag Sukuna through the ocean and back to base, alone once more in the echoing chamber of her sirens and bright displays. You can’t see, vision blurred by the unrelenting tears that cascade down the length of your bloody face, but you only look ahead. Can only look forward because any slight glance elsewhere will only have your gaze trail back to the limp body that hangs morbidly in the co-pilot seat. Fastened tightly by the suit on his body and stained red.
You don’t understand why you cry, and in the way that the error signs displayed on your screen seem to increase in volume, almost intentionally trying to drown out your choking sobs, you assume Sukuna doesn’t understand either.
You knew this would be the outcome. You write that at the top of your report along with a strong recommendation to retire the machine.
They didn’t assign another mission to Sukuna Gamma for six months after that. They don’t let you retire either.
Itadori Yuji was seven years old the first time he saw a Jaeger in person.
He’s heard the fanatic stories about them from his classmates—even pioneered the discussions four or five times. He used to sit in complete euphoria whenever his grandfather told him of the sheer power of those machines and always paid special attention whenever they appeared on the news, cameras always following those magnificent machines from afar yet showing everything.
The strengths in their punches, the bright lights of their power cell reactors, the force of their prowess. Walking gods on Earth.
But what he loved even more than the metallic graces were the pilots—the tamers of those gods. Global celebrities that would give mission reports to the public at the end of every Kaiju battle, beat up and tired but smiling brightly in the name of victory. They stood before the cameras with their vehicles of awe behind them, the sweat of glory on their brow and the promise of hope on their tongues. Yuji found the pilots to be more magnificent than the Jaegers themselves.
So, when he sees Purple Striker in person for the first time after a Kaiju decimated the entirety of his hometown and left both of his parents and his grandfather in the debris of its destruction, he can only wonder who lies inside the armor of a machine that big and that powerful.
To tame a beast of such magnitude must be someone worthy of the approbation he displays so obviously in his stare. Yuji stands at the foot of the metal god, dirty and bleeding and agonizingly alone, unsure if the tears welling in his eyes were from the loss of his family or from how bright the sun shines and blinds him as he looks up. The whirring of Purple Striker resounds in the vacant silence of the finalized battle.
Yuji wonders if victory looks better from the pilot’s seat in the helmet because from where he stands leveled with the sky-high buildings he once thought to be indestructible, it’s horribly desolate.
It’s then that the truth of the situation comes to realization to the young boy before the object of his fanatic fascination. Purple Striker stands alone in the rubble and the debris of the city, and so does Yuji.
He doesn’t know where to go, doesn’t know if he should yell for help, if he should just sit and wait for emergency responders to find him amid the chaos. All he can do is look up at the indigo metal and wonder–
Who sits in the pilot seat of this Jaeger?
Like fate unraveling, he gets his answer. The panel of the machine’s large foot flips open, a hand appearing from the entrance to push it open. A body comes out, a man Yuji realizes quickly, and in his stupor, he clamors to try and get a better look. Yuji steps forward, head tilting upward even further to see the man of triumph.
His silhouette is circled with the golden glow of the sun, his body still clamored in the assigned suit and helmet obstructing his identity, but the image is burned into Yuji’s memory. This faceless pilot was a magnificent being, enshrouded in the light of the heavens as he emerged to bask in the glory of his win.
He surveys the environment for a moment, silent in his gaze. And then the man looks down, tearing his calculating stare away from the destruction of the city and to the dirty face of a young boy with ruined clothes and an even more ruined reality. Yuji crumples to the ground, entirely overwhelmed.
He sobs, shaking and heaving, and unable to stop the tears from rushing down his face. He cries so much that it hurts, and he cries even harder when he feels a hand on his shoulder.
Blinded by tears and weak in his effort, he meets the gaze of the man who has finally taken off his helmet. His face is hard, furrowed in his surveyance of the boy, but his eyes are soft.
“My name is Nanami Kento,” the man says gently, hand warm and safe on Yuji’s shoulder, making the tears fall even faster, “What’s yours?”
“I-itadori Yu-Yuji,” he sobs back.
“Hello, Yuji. May I call you that?” The boy nods, his chest hiccupping as he rubs his eyes. Nanami runs his gloved hand across Yuji’s forehead, wiping the dirt that stains his innocent face, and hopes that in the gentleness of the action he can convey some unspoken manner of protection.
“I would like to take you somewhere safe, Yuji. Do you know where your parents are?”
The boy flounders, words fumbling and a thick coating of spit lining his stuttering syllables, “They—they’re—Grandpa—”
Nanami stops him, knowing the fate of the boy’s guardians within the barely spoken confession. He doesn’t need him to face the truth of his life at this very moment, for it will, unfortunately, follow him for the rest of time. There will be time to cross that bridge later.
“That’s alright,” he tells Yuji, running a hand across the boy’s hair, “I can take you someplace safe. Would you like to come with me?” The eagerness in which Yuji nods has Nanami hoisting the boy up, carrying him with both arms wrapped tightly around his legs. He breathes a sigh of relief when Yuji quickly encircles his arms around his neck.
They enter Purple Striker while they wait for reinforcements to arrive and take them back to the Tokyo Base. It’s the first time Yuji ever sees the inside of a Jaeger. And it’s the first time he ever gets his answer to the question that echoed in the chamber of his traumatized mind: Who sits in the pilot seat of this Jaeger?
The kind Yuji vows in the drying of his tears and the wonder of his gaze that he will become. He will become the kind of man that Nanami Kento is. For that is the only type of person that is worthy enough to pilot a Jaeger.
And he will become a pilot.
Yuji practically grew up in the Shatterdome located in Tokyo Bay. Stayed in Nanami’s suite after each ‘goodbye’ and ‘good luck’ on a mission, roamed the hallways, and listened intently to the stories of each Ranger that fortunately indulged him in his incessant questioning. He always found himself sneaking into the debriefing room and eavesdropping on the mission reports, fully believing that there was no problem in him posing as a security breach if they couldn’t find him there. And they wouldn’t because he was the best of hiders.
That was until Gojo leaned far enough back in his seat and rolled his head to the right in sheer boredom, staring straight at the eight-year-old Yuji– who thought hiding behind the file boxes was the most inconspicuous of hiding places—and winked at him, before looking back at Marshal Naga.
He should’ve stopped then and there, but he would go on to do it for as long as his body could safely hide behind those boxes. Which would namely be for another four years.
Yuji has seen every Jaeger be deployed on missions and seen the aftermath of their victories and failures. He’s kept tabs on which machines held the most battle-win records and indulged shamelessly in the circulation of rumors surrounding each titanic being. He knows everything there is to know about each machine, has studied them, been surrounded by them, loves them.
Z Titan is the strongest of the Mark-Four Jaegers but only when it’s piloted by a member of the Zenin Family. It’s a combination of family mythology with ancestral funding in its initial construction that allowed everyone to accept the fact that the Jaeger belongs only to Zenin blood.
Cursed Animal, while responsible for a good number of wins against Kaijus, really excels as a supporting defender under the guidance of Panda and Inumaki, especially when paired with Z Titan. (He still doesn’t know Panda’s real name.)
Purple Striker currently holds the longest, uninterrupted record of wins against Kaijus, of which Yuji states proudly to anyone who will listen. It’s a powerful machine, but even more Herculean lies the pilots that man it.
Nanami and Gojo lead the world to a pathway of hope and prosperity from the threshold of their violet titan. Reporters trip over themselves for an interview, of which Gojo is all too willing to provide, but he’s quickly reeled in by Nanami. Grabbing the white-haired man by the back of his suit and providing a curt,
“All information will be provided in a press conference.”
The two shouldn’t work in terms of compatibility, but they do. They’re stronger together, balancing one another and carrying that dynamic through their connection in Purple Striker. They win, and they win, and finally, the world feels as though they can finally defeat Kaijus.
He clings to the two upon their immediate reentry into the base and watches with wide-eyed wonder as they engage in the familiar banter only those two could find normal. He laughs at them, instigates Nanami’s annoyance with Gojo, and compliments Nanami’s sharp jabs aimed at his co-pilot. They’re the unassuming antithesis to the dubbed title of “The World’s Strongest” and yet they’re the perfect fit for it.
And in the festering dream of Yuji’s own goals and hopes for the future, he imagines the day in which he will meet his own drift compatible partner. He hopes for an easier dynamic with them, but nonetheless, he hopes for parallels between his undecided future and his role models’ present.
He hopes he will inherit Purple Striker, and finally be able to repay the debt he owes Nanami, by letting him and Gojo retire in peace. He wants to carry on the legacy of “The World’s Strongest Jaeger” and finally put an end to this long war. He starts training early, much to Nanami’s chagrin. He studies the parts of the machines, familiarizes himself with battle tactics and strategies, he learns the science behind drift compatibility even though he’s not very good at it.
In compliance with Nanami’s requirements for Yuji’s studies, he goes to many sanctuary housings and meets the victims of Kaijus. He learns what the purpose of Jaegers is; Not to just fight Kaijus, but to protect people. He meets talent and potential and makes friends—particularly a black-haired boy who’s the shyest person he’s ever met—telling them all to keep an eye on the TV for the day that he becomes the next pilot of his first love, Purple Striker.
That is until he’s fifteen and he meets his true love. A new Jaeger that has been added to the roster of weapons in the hangar bay, tall and slender, shining a metallic grey that screams of modern innovation and has his jaw hanging slack.
He’s daunting. Frightening. And he looks—
“—bare,” Nanami says arms crossed on the top deck of the hangar watching with squinted eyes as a huge crowd surrounds his feet. No humor lies in his face as he scrutinizes the new machine that Naga had sworn up and down was going to change the tides of this war.
Nanami can’t imagine how, considering he barely has any armor plating and is concerningly slender for a Jaeger. One hit from a Kaiju could have that machine tipping over, causing more damage to himself and his surroundings than any regular Kaiju city battle. He predicts it before he ever sees him in action: this machine was going to cause more trouble than he was probably worth, but considering how much money they poured into him, there was no way they would let him go down easy.
Gojo hums, his arms leaning carelessly over the railing from beside Nanami as he too watches the new addition with a curious gaze, “Apparently, he ranks a six on the armory scale.”
Nanami scoffs, “That’s being too kind.”
Yuji stands between the two men and switches his stare between them, not entirely understanding why they weren’t staring in complete awe of his beauty like he was. He took enough lessons from the Jaeger engineers to understand the importance of sheathing on a machine, but the battle strategists in Room 3-AB also reminded him of the advantage that speed and agility could have in the heat of battle. So what if he doesn’t have as much armored plating? He’s fast! That should be more than enough!
“This won’t end well,” Nanami sighs, adjusting his glasses on his face.
“Who knows!” Gojo laughs, his hand gesturing upwards excitedly, “He might even beat us with the right pilot. How much do you want to bet that it’s you, Yuji?”
Yuji’s head snaps to Gojo, a smile growing wide on his face and mirroring Gojo’s playful excitement. Nanami sighs once more, hoping for the sake of everyone that he’s wrong about his prediction. Hopes for Yuji’s sake that he’s wrong when he sees just how impressed and how longingly he stares at Sukuna.
“Let’s see how he performs first, and then we’ll talk about that.”
Sukuna did well in the beginning, bringing in consecutive wins under the guidance of Miwa Kasumi and Muta Kokichi. It only lasted for four months, a miscalculation of his shielding on the fault of the pilots resulting in both of their deaths in the field. That was a solemn day, and a brutal funeral, but it doesn’t taint Yuji’s perception of Sukuna.
He still reveres Sukuna, still sees the future in the shine of his helmet. It doesn’t even falter when the next set of co-pilots die five months later on their first excursion into the water. It starts to wane after the fourth pair succumb to death as well, the rumor mill no longer attributing the simultaneous deaths of each pair of pilots so far to miscalculations, but instead the machine. The entirety of the world no longer viewing Sukuna as the titan of justice, but the King of Curses, able to fight against them and place his own on his pilots. He is meant to only come out in the most necessary of circumstances.
And yet, each special circumstance results in a pair’s simultaneous death immediately after being assigned.
Yuji still holds out hope, though. Still says to anyone who asks that he thinks Sukuna will show his true potential. He knows so. He just needs to find the right pilot, even though the entire base refers to each pilot assigned to Sukuna by the number of their entry instead of their names at this point. Believing there to be no use in remembering the name of someone who will just become another bullet point on a long list.
Pilot Seven and Pilot Eight die after fighting a Level Two Kaiju by themselves in the Indian Ocean. Nine and Ten after being sent on a defense mission with Cursed Animal and being torn into two.
But Yuji still believes deep down in his soul that Sukuna Gamma, in all his vengeful and unforgiving nature, was made for him. He just had to train hard enough to prove that.
He’s seventeen, about to turn eighteen engaging in a routine sparring session with the incoming pilot of Z Titan, a new friend of his named Megumi when Nanami interrupts them. Asking to speak to Yuji for a minute, their intense sparring is halted, and Yuji follows his guardian outside of the training room.
Yuji wipes his forehead free of the sweat with the bottom of his shirt.
Nanami only looks at him, a gravity that always seems to follow the older man seeming even heavier today. His shoulders are tense in his formal suit and his hands deep in his pockets.
“I went to the Global Council’s General Defense meeting today.”
Right, that was today. Yuji remembers Nanami telling him about it, considering that he’s one of the most heavily regarded pilots, it was required of him to attend the Global Council’s meeting alongside Gojo.
“Oh,” Yuji chirps, not entirely seeing where the graveness of the situation was coming from, “How did it go?”
“Sukuna lost Eleven and Twelve today.”
He knows he should feel sympathy and some kind of fatality at the words, but truthfully, Yuji feels nothing. No surprise, no joy, no sadness. Only the slight twinge of frustration that settles in his bones, not understanding why they keep assigning pilots to Sukuna when they knew he wouldn’t accept them.
Why couldn’t they just wait for him to become of age? Then they could assign him to the Jaeger and all of this would stop. And yeah, there’s no way to know for sure if Sukuna will accept whoever they assign him, but Yuji knows that it’s him. Knew it the moment the Jaeger was posted in the Hangar Bay and he stood below its feet, feeling the strength of its power in its stance alone and the pull of its trance to him. Knew it on the single occasion that Yuji snuck into its chamber after convincing Pilot Nine to let him in and felt the surge of electricity pulse through him just at stepping into the machine.
Knew it when the rapid blinks of the monitors steadied into a gentle beat upon Yuji’s entrance, as though the machine were tamed by the boy with just his presence.
There’s a reason He hasn’t accepted any pilot, and there’s a reason Yuji has felt so drawn to him since he came into being. He just doesn’t know how to prove it to the skeptical masses without getting into the pilot seat.
Yuji shakes his head, fully aware of the dutifully watching stare that Nanami had pinpointed on him, “Why can’t they just wait? Why do they have to keep sending pilots to die? Once I turn eighteen, I can join the program, and then it’s only a year before I graduate! And then I can pilot Sukuna and we can—”
“I don’t want you inside of that machine.”
Yuji blanches, taken aback by the cold and harsh words of his surrogate father.
“You know everything there is to know about Jaegers, Yuji. You’ll make a marvelous Ranger and an even better pilot,” Nanami says, conviction lacing his words, “But Sukuna Gamma is a lost cause. The Council is suggesting some new prototypes that will be almost ready by the time you graduate—”
“But—I can do it,” Yuji says pathetically, still too shocked to even form a cohesive rebuttal against the words. Unable to understand how his mentor, his savior, the man who saved him and gave him the resources into this world of Jaeger pilots and mechanical marvels, could suddenly take it away from him in an instant. Without hesitation.
How long has he been considering this? How long has he been waiting to yank the rug from Yuji’s feet?
He knows Nanami has never liked Sukuna’s design and certainly never liked the way the higher-ups have handled his management, but this isn’t just a machine. This is Yuji’s dream, his purpose, the reason he’s spent years and years excelling in strength and agility before he’s even properly entered into the program.
Was this the excuse Nanami had always been looking for?
“I don’t doubt you, Yuji. I doubt the machine.”
Sukuna Gamma is his dream. If you doubt Sukuna, you doubt Yuji.
Yuji shakes his head, surprise quickly being replaced with a fit of fueling anger that floods his veins, “I’ve been training for this! I’ve been training for Sukuna for years, Nanami!”
“I understand, Yuji, but I will not—”
“How can you take this away from me! I haven’t asked for anything Nanami, but this. I can handle him—I can do it! He’s what I need to become a great pilot and end this war and—”
“Have you forgotten what it means to be a pilot, Yuji?” Nanami hisses quietly, his voice never rising in escalation yet frigidly cold in the close space between the two.
“Jaegers don’t make the pilot, pilots make the Jaeger. If the existence of a machine and your need to be in it predicates the entirety of your pride and purpose, clouds your reason for logic, then maybe being a pilot isn’t the right thing for you. And I would ask you to heavily reconsider your options.”
Yuji stares at the older man, the crack in the boy’s heart audible in the empty space of the corridor. Guilt floods Nanami, but it’s something he can swallow with solemn acceptance.
Better to be the father of a resenting boy, than a dead one.
He sighs, adjusting his glasses on his face with his index and thumb, and speaks softly, “Sukuna Gamma will have another pair of pilots in half a year, and depending on the outcome, it will determine whether they retire him or not. Regardless, I won’t let you step foot into that machine. I am only telling you because I know you care for it. And I care for you. But there is more to this war, more to this world, than machines, Yuji.”
He steps to the side, standing perceptibly taller as he shoulders the blame and grief Yuji expels from his heartbroken stance. Standing shoulder to shoulder with his boy, Nanami speaks once more, delivering the final blow.
“We will discuss your entering into the pilot program later.”
And then he leaves, shoes echoing the hall with a piercing tap tap tap compounded upon by the residue of his words that reverberate around his shattered hopes. Dreams lie haphazardly along the tiled floor, unmended and desolate beside his feet.
Yuji stares blankly ahead, unable to understand what just happened nor what was just decided at that moment, but he does understand the heaviness that sits in his chest—he felt it once before when he was seven.
Grief. He’s reminded of the question that he so desperately wanted an answer to back then.
Who sits in the pilot of this Jaeger?
A good person, one who is devoted to the fight and the intent to protect. But as Yuji feels tears prick at the corners of his eyes at the loss of a chance for his true love, he wonders if he was ever that kind of person.
Or was he just hoping he was the entire time?
Per a dreaded discussion concerning the fate of his future and the truth behind his desires, Yuji and Nanami agree that same night that it would be better for Yuji to hold off on entering the Jaeger Training Program and instead be sent off to help in the construction of the East Pacific Wall for a year.
If only to give him the chance to see the world as it is, to understand if he truly wanted to be a pilot to help, or if he was instead only enamored with the machines they drove; Enchanted with the metal saviors that saved his life that day all those years ago.
“This will be good for you,” Nanami spoke to him gently, his hand resting lightly on his shoulder. Safe and comforting yet bittersweet. “You will know then what you truly want. And if a year passes and you still wish to be a pilot, I will do everything in my power to help you become one.”
He turns eighteen and sets off halfway across the world to build a wall to protect the east coast from being damaged. It’s the furthest thing from a paradise, but Yuji tries to make the best of it. Tries to be the best-damned wall builder there is, tries to meet people and learn stories and talk about how awesome it is to have seen Jaegers up close.
Only, that doesn’t happen.
Construction work is the hardest thing he’s ever done, especially on a wall that’s taller than any Jaeger and managed lackadaisically by a company that could easily replace him with some other poor soul. He gets stronger physically, his hands becoming broader and more calloused, his arms weathered from the changing seasons and taut from the aftermath of constant labor, but he feels the au fait of loneliness seep into him. The emptiness of his soul that prevailed occasionally back home at the Shatterdome, yet more frequently in his time here.
He only makes one friend, a big man named Todo Aoi—everyone else too repelled by Yuji’s forward demeanor and his attempts to make the long workday bearable. They would all rather sit in the silence of their providence than feel anything else. Even worse, the minute he talks about the great power of Jaegers and the kind of honor it must be to pilot one, he’s met quickly with the scoffs and groans of a scorned population.
He doesn’t understand at first. How can they not feel blessed to have those machines be their protectors? But then he learns because that’s what he does best. He learns of the many similar destinies each worker tells, the horror stories of the great titans of earth-destroying everything they’ve ever held dear to them, leaving them with nothing but the clothes on their back and the only option of working on a fucking wall.
“Protect me, my ass. All those damned machines have ever done was kill my wife and put me here!”
“I get it, Yuji, I do. They fight the Kaijus. We would all be dead without them. But am I supposed to be happy that all the money in the world goes to those things and not to help my parents find a place to live?”
“Those things should have never been made. We should’ve just let the demons kill us all. That would be a kinder ending than this one.”
He’s always understood what Nanami meant when he said that being a pilot was not to kill Kaiju Curses but to protect people, in theory, but now he gets it. He believes it.
He realizes he does want to be a pilot, realizes he can be the best one out there; Not in the same way as before, when he desperately wanted to be one just for the chance to indulge in the splendor of the metal gods, but instead, counts down the days to the end of his yearlong contract so he can enter the program and finally end this war.
End the Jaeger Program and the suffering it’s caused.
But he’s got six months left in his contract, so he busies himself. Works harder than everyone else, smiles more than most, and reminds everyone of an end in sight. His days are routine, but he hardly complains. He gets a scar across his face, right between the bridge of his nose and his brow that leans more to the right side of his face and another on his lip, but he embraces it. Believes it to be the needed reminder of his purpose, of what he was brought here to do.
It’s a bitter pill to face when he realizes he may never step foot into Sukuna Gamma, but it’s significantly easier to swallow than he had expected. He’ll take whatever Jaeger they’ll give him as long as it works and he has a partner that can get the job done with him. He will sacrifice his first true dream for this new one.
Besides, he might even be retired by the time he gets back, depending on the fate of Pilots Thirteen and Fourteen.
He didn’t get a chance to see who was selected for the task, but he knows they were chosen. Hardly been kept up to date with the news cycle considering the cable is horrible in the middle of nowhere. But, by luck itself, he finally gets an update seven months into his contract.
Sukuna Gamma is back out into the water, the cameras following behind him as he marches his way towards a Level Three Kaiju. The waves break harshly against his steel legs, but Yuji finds himself focused on something else entirely. The banner at the bottom of the screen.
“SUKUNA GAMMA TAKES ON LVL 3 KAIJU WITH PILOT FOURTEEN AND FIFTEEN.”
Math has never been Yuji’s strong suit but even he can see the peculiarity in that pairing of numbers. Pilots Thirteen and Fourteen went into Sukuna when he left for the wall seven months ago. Now, it’s Fourteen and Fifteen.
So, Thirteen died. But Fourteen lived and was going back out into the water with another one. He chokes on his spit at realizing it.
Has Sukuna Gamma finally found a pilot?
Yuji runs to Aoi, begs him to take his shift today so he can watch this battle unfold. Promises the bigger man that he’ll take his next three shifts on the wall if he would do this one thing for him. Because he needs to know.
He needs to know the fate of Pilot Fourteen. Four hours later, with his eyes glued to the screen the whole time, Yuji learns the truth. Pilot Fifteen died in battle, leaving the last efforts of destroying the Kaiju to Pilot Fourteen, which they did.
Sukuna Gamma chose Pilot Fourteen. Half of the pair that is meant to drive a Jaeger. Yuji feels his heart thud faster in excitement.
There’s an excited chatter throughout the base this morning. It’s noticeable the moment you exit your assigned suite room, the corridors filled with Rangers and engineers, all of them with a bounce in their step and the voices louder than normal.
You continue onwards to the Mess Hall, hoping that if it were sincerely important, someone would fill you in eventually. It happens sooner rather than later, found in the waggling eyebrows of Panda and the small smirk of Toge.
“Did you hear?” Panda asks, settling in comfortably beside you as his movements in rearranging himself jostle your position on the cafeteria bench. You swirl a spoon around the beef stew once you get your bearings.
“Hear what?” You ask, particularly entranced with the limp green bean that floats around the broth.
Panda says joyfully, “Nanami’s boy is coming home today.”
You hum, still focused too intently on the food, “I didn’t know he had a son.”
Toge huffs a breath of laughter but otherwise remains mute. Only eating his meal with an amused glint in his eyes.
“It’s not his real son,” Panda explains, hands gesturing wildly, “But he’s taken care of him since he was a boy. He’s been working on the East Wall for the past year.”
Nanami isn’t just any individual, he’s a rather famous one with several benefits attached to his name. He has the money and resources to send his ‘son’ anywhere in the world, and yet he allowed him to work on the East Wall? The most laborious of Kaiju Defense projects to exist and truthfully, the most hazardous. A man with those resources would find his son the best of the best; And with the kind of tenacity that is embedded in Nanami, you highly doubt he would just let his son work in the pit of hell that is the East Wall.
“He let his son work somewhere that dangerous?” You ask, finally looking upwards from your food. Panda must find more entertainment in your questioning stare because he smiles terrifyingly wide.
Megumi stands before your table, holding his tray with both hands and a strange expression on his face. It’s rather stoic, his lips held in a thin line and his brows resting without a crease on his face, but in contrast to his usual bored expression, this one seems rather lively. He too, you gather quickly, is excited at the news of the arrival of Nanami’s son.
“I didn’t realize Nanami was so harsh,” You say, half-jokingly, but it falls flat at the realization that you don’t believe that.
“Not harsh,” Megumi responds, sitting down in front of you and settling minutely into space, “Just tough. But he knows what’s best.”
You nod, not necessarily in understanding, but out of acknowledgment. No, Nanami Kento isn’t harsh, but he also doesn’t ease how he says things. The lone night, the first time you met the revered pilot, all those months prior comes to the front of your mind.
Panda laughs, clapping his hand harshly against your back, thrusting you forward against the table, “He’s given us all the speech about being a pilot, and it’s a bit cheesy but he’s right. Has he given it to you yet?”
His hand hovers over the empty space beside you, eyes steady in their focus on you, awaiting your affirmation. Soft, yet intense. Achingly foreign and intimidating, yet simultaneously the most comforting thing you’ve seen this entire month.
You clear your throat, shaking the remnants of that night from your memory and resuming the swirling of your soup.
“Something like that,” you mutter, “What’s his son coming back for anyways?”
Panda sends Megumi a knowing glance, tilting his head to the side as a means of guiding him into saying the answer to the question you posed. Megumi darts his gaze between Panda and you, silence settling over the table uncomfortably. A prickling discomfort that already has the air of exhaustion pulling on your shoulders and the taste of fury burning your tongue. You have a feeling you know the answer already.
Megumi clears his own throat this time, shifting in his seat as though he must prepare for the aftermath his answer will provide, “He’s… going to be a co-pilot.”
Another aching silence, three pairs of eyes pointedly watching the way your jaw clenches repeatedly and the way you harshly rub your nose. A sight the three haven’t seen in the six months Marshal Naga held Sukuna Gamma on hiatus. The longest instance of peace you’ve had since being assigned to that particular Jaeger.
“Mine, I’m assuming?” You grit, narrowed eyes meeting Megumi’s still ones. He doesn’t flinch in your anger, but he certainly doesn’t revel in it. Only sits still and steady in the ferocity of your bubbling emotions in a composed manner that you’ve found yourself envious of on numerous occasions.
But the longer he stares at you blankly without granting you an answer, the less admiration you feel for your fellow Ranger.
You quirk an eyebrow in silent question and finally, he nods. Standing from the table, appetite lost entirely, you leave the cafeteria room, your tray, and the three pilots that watch with uncertainty. Each knowing completely of the disdain you hold for the tether to your machine, that forces you to mask the stench of death with a hollow smile and empty promises of fortune.
Try as you might assert that no one understands, they do. Try as you might push everyone away as you have been doing for the past seven months, they get it even if they don’t stop trying.
And they hate this as much as you do. But that, as they used to say in training, is the cruel fate of Rangers.
His hand hovers over the empty space beside you, eyes steady in their focus on you, awaiting your affirmation. Soft, yet intense. Achingly foreign and intimidating, yet simultaneously the most comforting thing you’ve seen this entire month.
You nod, partly in answer to his question but also out of unalloyed shock, having no ability to do anything other than nod in a complete stupor to one of the world’s greatest pilots. To one of your idols.
He sits with a small sigh, the most intimidating man in the entire Tokyo Base lowering himself down onto your pitiful level and sitting on the dirty concrete floor of the Hangar Bay overlooking his Jaeger. You can only stare in awe at him, watching him as he, in turn, stares out into the sea of late-night mechanics and the stormy clouds of machinery at work. Lulled by the distant whirs of tools.
His gaze hangs over Purple Striker, a level of content in his features as he watches his Jaeger. Then he flits over to him and the smoothness of adulation rescinds, instead replaced by a small furrow in his brow and a frown that’s deeper than his usual one. Apathy settling into the creases of his features.
If you weren’t already feeling the burden of Nobara’s death on your shoulders, you might have also felt shame at how your idol regarded the machine that is, unfortunately, yours. Shame that he’s caused so much ruin, shame that he’s taken another life, shame that he didn’t take yours.
Maybe Nanami regards you as a failure for being unable to save your partner, maybe he regards the machine as a mistake, maybe he reveres the ground it stands upon and instead finds you to be just another weakling that couldn’t handle his strength. You wouldn’t know. His face hardly reveals anything.
“I’ve yet to introduce myself,” He begins, tilting his head to you, “My name is Nanami Kento. I co-pilot Purple Striker and have been for the last twelve years. I hate this job—”
Your eyes widen at the sudden confession, stupefied as to how this man so utterly perfect for the role, can say he hates it. Especially when his partner seems to thrive in it.
He notices the shock on your face but chooses not to address it. He continues.
“I hate the destruction. I hate boarding the Jaegers and working unreasonable hours. I hate Kaijus and what they do to people. But most of all, I hate your Jaeger.”
Encumbered with the heavy silence his words leave behind, Nanami heaves a gentle sigh and removes the glasses from his face, folding them neatly onto the lap of his suit-cladded legs. His eyes meet yours once again, and this time you don’t doubt the existence of tears welling in your lashes nor his acknowledgment of them.
“To be a pilot is to man a machine meant to end a brutal war. It is to help people and in turn, be helped by people. That is what the Jaeger Pilot Training Program stood for. The creation of Sukuna Gamma marked a departure from those ideals, concerned more with the name of spectacle and prestige than the task at hand.”
His hand gestures out to the pantheon of machines. A slow gradient of generations starting with his on the far right—the great marker of a better future, a change, a hope against Kaiju Curses—and then… him on the far left. An ostentatious display of technological advancement and man-made pride, yet with nothing but dead pilots attached to its record.
“Sukuna Gamma has only brought havoc into this world. It has taken students of mine and threatens to take more than that one day. Its advantages have never been enough to convince me that it’s more than its cons. I hate its existence and I hate that just as it was set to retire, it finally decided to find a pilot.”
He sighs once more, his shoulders dropping with the exhale. You can only watch with rising contrition. “I hate that it chose you and that you are now set to suffer in the search for your co-pilot. No one will blame you if you choose to leave. I certainly won’t,”
His dark eyes meet yours and like a tide washing over you, the weight that has so unceremoniously been placed onto you feels ten times heavier on your shoulder—having finally been recognized by someone, instead of ignored. Having been seen and voiced into the air in a way that no one in this base has ever dared to do—everyone much too uncomfortable to break the fragile atmosphere of failure and grief to the person who held it closest to them. Too frightened to outwardly state their hatred and yet too bold in their affirmations that Sukuna was the path to progress. It finally feels real, rather than a secret you must pretend isn’t obvious. You can no longer brush it off like dust on your shoulder.
But of all the realizations, having been given an out feels the heaviest on the pardoning of your stricken soul; Something no one even considered before. Something you didn’t even consider possible.
It should be a relief, an unburdening of burdens, and yet you only feel like you’re that much closer to collapsing into the ground. Your chest pangs with aches left behind from Nobara’s death, the feeling of claws ripping into the skin underneath your ribs an acquainted nightmare.
Your throat constricts so tightly you can hardly breathe. You must chew out your words, and even then, it’s hardly audible, “Is…is that even an option?”
“No. But you can make it one.” He says softly, “They can try, but the only person who can make you stay is you. If you leave, they will put an end to Sukuna. If you stay, they will keep giving you pilots until you find your other half.”
A sob echoes out in the spacious room that you hardly recognize as yours. You don’t even realize you’re crying until Nanami pushes a handkerchief in your line of sight. You take it, placing the soft fabric against your face and just holding it there. The only semblance of comfort you can manage at this moment.
“Just—please, Nanami. Tell me what to do,” You beg, body sunken and tired, voice raw and unsteady; Your brain works overtime in trying to repel the haunting images of the past only to learn of how unsuccessful a feat like that is, splitting itself in two in the endless chase between self-defense and submission. Heart torn between wanting to be the pilot that ended Kaiju Curses as you’ve always dreamed, and wanting peace.
“Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I don’t—I can’t—”
“That is not a decision I am entitled to make. That is yours entirely,” His voice, in its steady cadence and factual tone has you drawing your head from the cloth to look his way once more. Stoic, he is, but he holds no aggression; No judgment, no pressure, only offering his words in a peaceful and even manner.
“I can offer you this, however,” His body straightens beside you, a degree of discomfort residing in the rigidity of his shoulders. He clears his throat, another telltale sign of his raging unease at this moment and you wonder if it has to do with the nature of your vulnerability, or his own—if you could even call it that. Yet, as he continues, you come to realize that it’s something else entirely.
He’s not troubled by the exposure of your hurt you’ve entrusted him with, he’s fraught with the culpability knowing that he’s about to take advantage of it.
“I think there is a pilot that is meant for Sukuna. He’s your age; he’s strong, fast, and an incredible learner. There is… a chance he might be the other pilot Sukuna is looking for.”
The tears have stopped trailing down the lengths of your cheek and instead, your face presents only a blank expression to the man before you. The paths of water have dried, shining slightly under the purples of your eyes, and Nanami can’t help but notice just how broken you look for a young adult.
No amount of rationalization could ease the guilt that weighs on him for what he is telling you. No amount of justification and remembrance of your age can justify the self-serving nature of his request in asking a child (because you are one. You’re the same age as his boy and he hardly sees his boy as an adult yet) to put their life and mental sanity on the line for the chance of fulfilling a childhood dream.
(A childhood dream that Nanami wishes he could crush, and even tried to when he sent Yuji off to the wall, only to prove futile when he received letters from that stubborn boy describing fanatically about his new understanding of the purpose of Jaegers.)
Yes, asking you to take a chance on Yuji is a selfish action on Nanami’s part—but it’s one he had to do. Nanami doesn’t get to indulge in personal desires often, but if this worked out, if there was the slightest chance that Yuji really was the designated pilot for Sukuna like he claims he is, then getting that boy into that pilot seat would be the greatest thing Nanami could do for the world.
Had you never been selected, Nanami would never even dream of putting Yuji into that metal graveyard. But now that Sukuna found a pilot in you? The chances seem wider than before.
Your voice is gravelly when you ask, rather numbly Nanami notices, “How do you know he’s the right one?”
Truthfully, Nanami doesn’t. He just… hopes. Believes in the conviction and desires of Yuji.
“To be in Sukuna has been his dream for a long time, and now that we’ve found you, I’d like for us to try with him.”
Us rings out rather loudly in the chasm of your still mind.
To be in Sukuna was Nobara’s dream too.
To replace her dream with that of someone else’s is not only a betrayal to her memory but an insult to you who must constantly live in it. To you, who at one point, also shared in that dream because it was with her.
You won’t ever claim Sukuna, would rather die a thousand deaths than do so, but here, as your tears dry cool on your face and your eyes harden in anger at the man in front of you—who has the gall to talk about replacing your partner not even a month after they told you they’ve stopped looking for her body, not even a month after you’ve had to bury an empty casket—do you think rather poisonously that you own Sukuna. Because Sukuna was Nobara’s dream too, and that’s all you have left of her.
That is what ‘us’ is. Not you and Nanami; Not you and the higher-ups; Only you and Nobara.
Only you and remnants of her that are found in Sukuna. You and Sukuna. That is ‘us’.
You decide who goes into that bastard and who doesn’t. Not Marshal Naga, not Nanami, and certainly not this boy with an idolization for false gods and vengeful titans who can’t even begin to fathom the meaning of loss.
If you’re to be tethered to this damned thing for the rest of your life, then so be it. But it will be done on your accord.
Nanami can sense the shift in demeanor, the change in your mood, and subconsciously leans his body away from you, lest you decide to get physical and grow fangs. With the way you’re looking at him, he wouldn’t be surprised.
“It wouldn’t be for another half a year or so—” He tries to explain but you cut him off, all anger and venom coated spit.
Nanami lowers his head. You hope it’s in shame.
“The answer is no. Don’t ever ask me something like this again.”
To win, you must lose, they used to say—and oddly enough, this feels like a win on your part.
january 2100, hangar base, 11:02 pm
In your rage-fueled haze, where thoughts are addled and vision is blurred, you are not at all surprised you find yourself back in your self-designated meditation spot.
Having sat there so many times night after night, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say you now own this space on the top floor of the Hangar Bay overlooking the mechanics working on the four Jaegers in the spacious garage. Your name, more or less, plastered to the grey concrete adjacent to the rails lining the platform that has the perfect center view to the chatter of the room and is located just out of the way of the usual traffic that fills this area of the base.
It would take someone incredibly familiar with the base to be able to find this area, and even then, very rarely do people come up here. It’s why you’ve chosen it. In this space that remains relatively untouched by the intruding comments and demands of the entire world, you can sit at peace and stare.
No need to watch angrily for a blond man and a son that may look entirely too much like him; No need to be reminded in the passing duos or coupled friends that move by you in the endless corridors of this base of your lost connections; No need to engage in any trivial conversations about cafeteria food or mission reports and pretend that you aren’t dying for some semblance of normalcy.
Do you even know what normalcy is anymore? Or has it suffered the same fate as those who enter Sukuna?
You’ve stopped trying to figure it out at this point, just as Panda and Inumaki have stopped trying to find you since you stormed out of the lunchroom. You should probably apologize to them, but until you can get the anger brought forth by Nanami out of your system, it’s probably best that every person stays as far away from you as feasibly possible.
“You know, they say you can tell a lot about a person from their favorite Jaeger. Or at least that’s what I’ve heard from the engineers."
A voice interrupts the tranquility of your space and for a moment you wonder if that was the answer to your question— if this was to be your new normal for the rest of your life; To constantly be interrupted when trying to achieve some form of sanctuary and solitude. If your life was no longer meant for you to live, but instead a means to an end for everyone else.
You turn your head slowly, biting back the bubbling bile of anger and looking upwards at the person that dares to infringe on your space. You meet the brown eyes of a man, soft in their training upon you yet crinkling in the corners when he turns his head to look out onto the sea of machines before you both.
You can’t imagine that he’s much older than you. His skin is scarred and weathered and more than indicative of a toughened background, but there is still some kind of… youth to his features. A levity that graces his smile and wonder that settles in his irises as he looks onward in the darkness of this garage. Gentle light in this cave of darkness and neon glows.
He’s handsome. Magnetizing, even. You notice that quickly.
Realize it upon feeling your consternation at him settle before it had a chance to even froth over and out. Irritation and provocation wiped clean at the connection of his unassuming gaze, the fastest working medication for a turbulent mind and body that you’ve ever taken.
You shake your head at the sudden freezing of your mind. A sharp pang of fear? Unease? Shock? shooting through your nervous system at the fact that this one person, having said nothing more than a sentence, suddenly had such a paralyzing hold over you. Especially when you’ve been nothing but a human repellent ever since Nobara died, no one wanting to come within five feet of you for fear of disturbing some unspoken glass that surrounds you. Something you are partly to blame for, sure, but never has someone in this entire base looked at you without expectations as this man does. Never has someone spoken to you jovially without the shadow of the past hovering over the context of their words.
And never, in the entirety of your life, have you looked at someone and felt overwhelmingly drawn to them as you did at this very moment. Wanting, for the first time, to know more about him, to be more to him, to reach your hand out and touch this gentle luster glowing before you.
It’s… strange. And you find yourself staring a bit longer than is considered appropriate because there was only one time before where you felt something similar, but that was of considerably less strength than this is.
The man scoffs with a small laugh, barely noticing your bristling figure as his eyes remain fixated on the Jaegers before him. It finally serves to pull you out of your shocked trance. He shrugs his shoulders, hands shoved into the pockets of his black puffer jacket that makes his broad shoulders look even broader, "I just think it means you like big robots, but hey! What do I know?”
He looks down at your seated position on the concrete floor, his lips closed in a friendly smile that almost burns you with the warmth. His eyes are unrelenting, staring at you like he’s known you for years, and not at all just a stranger he happened to run into. And that essence of familiarity, that invisible string that seems to tie you to him, pulls.
How did he even find his way up here?
He tilts his head to the side and points his finger at a specific machine, "Apparently if you like Purple Striker, you’re a narcissist."
That catches you off-guard and you let out a wry laugh—add that to the list of things that have shocked you today. You can’t even remember the last time you laughed. A genuine one, not one that was emitted out of niceties or courtesy, but a laugh that resounds throughout the room and reverberates through your chest pleasantly because of something so genuinely stupid that your body feels no other compulsion than to shake in enjoyment.
You weren’t expecting something like that to happen and telling by the way that the man’s eyes fixate on you and widen alongside his smile, you imagine he didn’t either. But now that you have, you find that you’ve missed it.
"You believe that?” you ask amusedly. He shrugs his shoulders, the smile never lessening as he stares down at you. You meet him with one of your own and very quickly your cheeks begin to ache from their lack of use.
“No, but it’s fun to think about. What’s yours?"
You shake your head at the man—a peculiar one, so friendly, so eager to know—"What’s my what?"
"Your favorite one,” he says as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, and maybe it was.
You look forward, eyes lazily darting between each station that houses a formidable metal beast. The entire hangar is filled with them but standing out from the crowd are the big four. You hardly have much trouble picking one, pointing your finger at the second one from the right.
"Z Titan!” He exclaims, pleasantly surprised with the decision, “Excellent choice."
The conversation could end right there, as you are often prone to doing—ending conversations before they have a chance to go on, before there’s a chance for discovery of something deep and hidden within you. But listening to the airy and fluffy cadence of his voice that surrounds you and being in the presence of someone who doesn’t know you, doesn’t know Sukuna, and just wants to have a conversation about something—you let it continue. You indulge in it, if only for a moment.
"What… does that say about me?” You ask tenaciously, the recesses of your mind punching you inwardly at such a weird and desperate question to ask.
It was a stupid thing to say, and if he didn’t know you had no friends before, he definitely does now. You probably made him uncomfortable, because if it wasn’t the question that put him off, it was the way you said it. So awkwardly, so unsure of yourself. You can hardly look back up at him, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you do, you’ll see him backtracking and pushing some kind of excuse out of his mouth–
"Wow. Wonderful observation there Einstein,” It’s your turn to scoff, and this time his laugh rings out in echoes. You meet his gaze once more in the breadth of his grin and the radiating of his illuminance.
"Just calling them like I see it. Do you mind if I…?” He gestures down to the space beside you, the location and the mannerism oddly reminiscent of a specific blond man, the subject of your ire. You push his name from your brain, intent to not let your anger at him taint this one good moment: This one sliver of something close to ordinary.
You nod and he quickly settles in beside you, huffing out a breath as he wraps his arms around his propped knees. He’s not touching you by any means, instead is pointedly leaving a space between the two of you, but even then, it feels oddly intimate. The invisible string of fate drawing ever so slightly together, and you don’t even know his name.
You’re not sure if asking would ruin the moment, so you don’t.
He stares out over the Hangar Bay and breathes out in admiration, “They’re awesome, aren’t they?"
"Yeah,” you trail off, not the same strand of awe but certainly not devoid of it entirely.
You can feel his head turn to look at you, and when you meet his stare, you can see a bit of panic in his eyes. As if, there was a misunderstanding that he needed to remedy. He holds his hands up in a gesture that oddly looks as though he were trying to defend his body.
“I mean, they’re a means to an end! You know? We need to end this war, so really, we shouldn’t like Jaegers all that much. ‘Cause, they’re responsible for a lot of problems, and—and all the money goes to them and not people that need it, like sanctuary housing or the Pacific Walls. So, really–"
He’s interrupted when you chuckle exasperatedly. You shake your head good-naturedly at him and his confused stares only grow more in perplexion.
"You can just say you like Jaegers and go. You don’t have to defend yourself."
"I know, it’s just,” he stares at you, a little too intently for your liking that causes a low heat to stir in your chest, stomach, and face. You wonder what he’s thinking as his eyes fixate on you in a way that leaves you feeling uncomfortably bare and his voice quiets as he says, “There’s more to life than machines."
It’s obvious that there’s more to that meaning than he lets on, but you don’t focus on it for too long, instead quirking your brow in response.
(He’s grateful that you move on. It would be rather embarrassing to have to explain to a stranger that he, quite literally, got lost in the comfort of your eyes. That for a brief second, as he looked into you and you looked into him, he felt a whole new meaning to those words he uttered.)
"Sure,” You shrug your shoulders nonchalantly, “but isn’t life about indulging in what you like? Following the things that bring you joy, hope you find some kind of purpose in them?"
“I mean, yeah but…don’t you,” He pauses. Closes his mouth to recollect himself, “You don’t think that they’re… a waste? And that it’s wrong to like… a waste?”
“You said it yourself, they’re a means to an end. That doesn’t sound like a waste to me. Granted, we’re getting nowhere now but, hopefully, that’ll change with the right pilots.” His head perks up at that, excitement thrumming his heart faster against his ribcage.
His long-held beliefs and assertions in life having finally been met and voiced by someone other than himself. His mouth dries. He can hardly believe it, can hardly fathom that there is someone else who also understands the importance of the right pilot. Of what it means to be that pilot.
“They’re our best defense now, so liking them is honestly the easier route to life than not. It’s good that you know their faults, but it’s also okay to admit that they’re kinda cool.” You don’t know where this streak of sudden optimism came from, but you chalk it up as a product of this man’s presence. Which is simultaneously unthreatening and frightening.
"I… guess you’re right,” He feels breathless when he says it. Air sucked straight from his lungs as he grew more rigid in his belief that something is connecting you two. Something stronger than just friendliness and a mutual interest in Jaegers.
"If it makes you feel any better, I’m a fan of big robots too.”
"Yeah?” He laughs easily. It’s not the first time you’ve heard it tonight, but you’re quickly growing enamored with the sound. A part of your brain wondering if you can hear it again, and again, and again.
“Yeah. Have been for as long as I can remember. I found my purpose in them. Or at least, I thought I did for a while."
"That’s why you work here as a…” He drags on hoping you’ll fill the space. And you lie, not that there’s an overt reason to but, the conversation has been so nice. You would hate for another thing in your life to be tainted by the mentioning of the machine tethered to your fate.
“Jaeger Coordinator. I do all the–"
”–landing procedures! God, that’s cool.“ He completes you with a childlike shout, respect, and awe dripping from the tone that you almost wish you actually were a Jaeger Coordinator.
You huff out a breath of amusement, "And you?"
"Oh! Uh, they haven’t really figured out where to put me yet. I was just taking a, uh, tour! Yeah! A tour!"
“With a group? This late at night?”
You raise an eyebrow, “Are you asking me or telling me?”
He clears his throat, shuffling his body quickly, “Telling! I’m telling you. I am touring. By myself. All alone.”
“At 11:30 at night.” You say, unconvinced.
“At 11:30 at night.” He affirms with a nod.
“Right,” you respond, eyes narrowing at him which seems to make him shuffle more. The scrutiny no doubt starting to make him sweat, “Are you lost?”
“Not really,” He nudges his elbow into you teasingly, “I found you.”
Your breath stills, and you wonder… if—was he flirting? With you? And if he was… would you—did you—do you mind it?
Shoulders tense at the overtness of his comment, but the thought comes back into your head once more: He’s managed to find this place. By himself. With no guidance as a supposed ‘new hire’. “How did you get up here?”
His head shifts backward slightly, in a jolt of defense as he quickly tries to recover from the direct question. He stutters with a nervous smile, “Am—Am I not supposed to be here?”
“It’s just that it’s not easy to find this place. Takes someone with a thorough understanding of the base to find it.” If your eyes could narrow any further, they would have. He swallows thickly.
“Just… luck then, I guess?”
“Right,” you draw out, not at all convinced, of which you are sure he recognizes if the bob of his Adam’s apple is anything to go by, “Look, a second ago I thought that there was something special about you but now that you are getting all suspicious, I’m sure it’s because you’re hiding something. So, if you’re going to—”
His eyes widen considerably, and he points his finger, rather accusingly, at you with a gasp, "You feel it too then!"
It’s your turn to be taken aback—even further when he leans forward into your space, his nose almost bumping into yours had you not retreated. "W-what?"
"You feel it?” He says eagerly, borderline desperately, “The connection between us?"
“Kind of like… we’re meant to be?"
Your widened eyes narrow once more,”…is this your way of flirting with me?“
"What? No! That’s not what I was—well, hold on a second. I mean, is it—did that… work?"
Did it work? You can’t remember the last time someone actually flirted with you, jokingly or otherwise. But the way that you don’t immediately want to strangle the man in front of you and instead feel even more drawn to him—inexplicably—answers the question at hand.
You won’t let him know that, though. "Try again and I’ll let you know."
"Noted,” The left corner of his mouth tilts upward, his scar stretching across his skin, and you swear that he can hear your swallow, “but that’s not what I was talking about."
"What do you mean, then?” You know exactly what he means, felt it the moment you saw him. You just… you need him to say it. You need to know that it’s as real for him as it is for you.
He takes a moment, the alertness of his posture dwindling as he slowly wilts before you.
“I’ve always wanted to be a pilot, you know?“ His shoulders slump, a far cry from the exciting posture he held a moment before, "There’s just something about them that I’ve always wanted to have. They’re strong and powerful, and they’re good. They win and protect people. I’ve always liked that."
He sighs deeply, "And I’ve always liked the fact that, for pilots, there is a person in this world that completes them. That knows them inside and out, the good, the bad, everything, and still fits perfectly with them. I’ve always had people around me but ever since my parents died… I don’t know. I guess I felt alone, in a way.”
As though he realized he had said something wrong, he backtracks emphatically, “Don’t get me wrong! I had someone raise me and I have really good friends too! I just… sometimes I feel—”
“Different,” You interrupt him, finding the common answer between you two in the retreating of his words and the worry in his eyes, “Like no one understands you because they will never know how empty you feel inside."
"Yeah,” He breathes out, blinking once, then twice, then a third time in rapid succession. He curls his arms back over his propped knees, leaning his chin on them, “Maybe that’s why I like pilots so much. Because they know that there is someone meant for them who can help them not feel like that. Not just in their pilot, but the Jaeger too. So, when you said that I was special, I got excited because… this is gonna sound weird but I can feel something special about you too. I just looked at you and…”
He shrugs his shoulders again, looking at you briefly before looking down at the ground, “I don’t know. I guess… I just want proof that I can be complete.”
A shout resonates from below the suspended platform the two of you stay seated upon. It’s an odd reminder of where you are, but it’s the needed buffer in the increasing tension of emotional turmoil. It gives you a moment to breathe, a second for the man’s words to sink into the silence of the space; It grants you an instant for your heart to settle at the realization of being seen and heard by someone. Your brain spinning in circles in having finally been found by the man beside you.
He’s been through pain, seen the worst of it, and still grapples with it. He’s incomplete, unhealed, horribly broken—like you. What does one even say to that other than, thank god you’re just as fucked up as I am.
After a moment of fumbling through the entirety of your vocabulary in search of some string of words that could convey some consolation, you finally decide to talk about yourself.
“I lost my best friend a while back, and someone else who I… felt a connection with. They were the only people that I felt really knew me. One saw me at my best and the other at my worst. Both of them knew me inside and out and yet they still died. I didn’t know if I should blame the world for killing them or myself, because I got to live and they didn’t.” The breath you exhale lifts a hundred pounds off your shoulder.
A shudder ripples through you, truth raw and thick in your whisper, “I don’t want to go through that again. So, I guess I’ve made peace with the idea of being incomplete forever. I’d rather no one ever know me than to go through that again. But I understand why you want it. It… feels nice, to be whole. Even if it’s only for a moment."
Silence rolls in like a slow fog once more, but it’s a comfortable one. The kind that you don’t mind wading into and sitting in for a while. Natural, strangely not foreign even after having borne the entirety of your essence to some random man. It’s pleasant, the kindest response to the emotional vulnerability that he is no doubt also reeling through.
You clear your throat timidly, "I know it’s not like losing your parents but—”
"No, no!” He waves you off with a quick gesture of his hand, unperturbed at the sudden interruption of the quiet, “You… you said it perfectly. I guess I should apologize for the connection comment. That was… uncalled for. I was just too eager to see something that probably wasn’t there.”
He rubs a hand across the back of his neck, a sheepish look on his face but you can still see it. The remnants of disappointment that lace the cracks and the crevices; The furrow that pushes his eyebrow scar forward, and you decide to tell him.
"I never said I didn’t feel it.” Like a dog hearing its favorite word, his head perks up. You wonder how he isn’t so tired from the constant duality of his emotions that seem to yo-yo in each passing second.
“You do?!” The excitement in his physique is loud, almost overwhelming. Your brain tells you to go back, turn around, lie because you’ve been down this road twice before. It doesn’t end well. But, you don’t because he doesn’t deserve it.
(You hardly know this man and yet here you are, making decisions based on his wellbeing. Who is he?)
“Yeah,” You tell him quietly. His face softens, most likely in seeing the slowly rising fear that wells inside of you that you can barely contain, “It scares the shit out of me."
He shakes his head, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips, “Don’t let it.”
You scoff, looking everywhere but those puppy dog eyes of his, “Easier said than done.”
“I haven’t been waiting for you to come into my life just for you to turn around and run,” That pulls you back to him, a slow side glance his way in search of any teasing feature in his tone or face. You don’t find one; Only find a deadly serious man. Quick breaths wrack your chest, the ache between your ribs starting to pulsate once more.
He holds his pinky finger out to you, the rustle of his puffer jacket adding much-needed noise to the silence that is now starting to turn horribly pointed at you, “I won’t run from it if you don’t.”
Your mouth dries, “How do you know I’m the one? You don’t even know my name!”
“Because you’re right. I don’t know your name and for the first time in my life, I don’t feel completely alone.”
His pinky stands still in the air in front of you, waiting, beckoning. You take it.
“I won’t run if you don’t.”
With a quick shake of the intertwined fingers, a contract is sealed between you and this stranger—no, your fate presented in a man. You don’t know what it means, but you know it’s too big for you to ignore.
He looks from you to your still intertwined pinkies and laughs gently, "Maybe we should be pilots. We could take over Sukuna Gamma and show these people what real pilots look like."
You roll your eyes and remove your finger from his, "Don’t even joke like that."
"Why not! He’s my favorite Jaeger after all! And with our connection,” He wags his eyebrows for emphasis, “I think we could do it!"
"Sukuna is your favorite?"
"Oh.” You, subconsciously, shift your body a bit more to the right. Away from him and his air of warmth and back into the shell of solitude you inhabited once before.
“Ah! Don’t do that.” He tells you sternly.
“Do what?” You reply incredulously.
“That! You’re running again when you just promised me you wouldn’t.” He inserts his finger in the belt loop of your standard uniform cargo pants and tugs, pulling you closer to him and closing the gap of space you had just made.
Suddenly closer to him than you have been all night, you feel your mouth flounder repeatedly, opening and closing, only to open and close shut again. His scent fills your nose and even in the dim lighting, you can see his scars even better than before. They make him look even more attractive.
If he notices the flicker of your eyes on his lips—which you’re sure he does—he doesn’t say anything.
“Obviously not. You’re scooting. If you’re mad, you’re going to tell me why.”
It’s so painfully obvious that he’s watching you intently, tracking every twitch of your features and every noticeable movement that indicates your current state of being. All of that serves to be brick upon brick in laying the foundation of just how serious he is about this connection; an affirmation into just how much he believes it to be true.
And he doesn’t know why, he doesn’t know you—at least, not really. He doesn’t have anything to prove the validity of this connection but his firm belief that it’s real. Were evidence needed, he would point to the ache in his chest that throbs whenever you frown at him, would label the acceleration of his heart whenever your smile finds its way to your eyes as ‘Exhibit A’ and swears up and down that the incessant need to have you look at him in approval is enough confirmation to just how deeply this runs for him.
Garnering from the fact that despite the slight discomfort that permeates you at the closeness of your body to his, you still haven’t moved and instead can only dart your eyes across every visible aspect of his face, he knows it runs just as deep for you too.
“Tell me,” He prods, voice lower than before and horribly tingling. Your brain short-circuits.
“I… why him?” You try not to let the hurt bleed through your words, but in the haze of his proximity and the intoxication of his scent, your emotional filter has decided to take leave and allow the floodgates to open.
“He’s—well, he’s not nice—”
"Don’t have to tell me twice,” you mutter underneath your breath.
“But he’s special!” He interjects, hoping his enthusiasm will serve as enough fact-finding for his defense, “and he’s got a lot of potential. He just needs the right pilot. And he found one of them."
"Yeah, after murdering thirteen people."
"Look, I said he wasn’t nice,” He tries to joke but it doesn’t land. Only results in a painfully hollow stare from you.
The man sighs, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck, “He just knows what he wants. And I know he’ll blow the whole world away when he finds the other pilot. I know he will. Yeah, he’s difficult, but he just needs someone to reign him in. Makes you wonder how special of a pilot Fourteen must be for Sukuna to choose them. So, imagine him with two equally special pilots!"
He looks your way once more, his excited eyes of brown meeting your skeptical, narrowed ones. It has him swallowing thickly. He shrugs his shoulders sheepishly, "You know?"
"No, I don’t.” The monotony of your tone makes him blanch.
“Well, Sukuna chose Fourteen for a reason,” He tells you incredulously, his voice borderline frantic as he explains himself. He’s passionate about this you realize, and were this any other circumstance, you would open the walls of your mind and listen eagerly to this magnetizing ball of energy with no problem. But you can’t, not when it’s about this. Your brain in its rueful and hateful state of untreated wounds seems to only close further. It works overtime to reject the man before you and spit on previous admiring thoughts you may have had for him.
"I think Fourteen just got unlucky,” You tell him. You don’t mean to sound so biting, but you can’t help it. Every part of you seems to display warning signs both physically and verbally, in hopes that he can get the message and just back off this topic.
He doesn’t. He only makes it worse.
"I think Fourteen is the luckiest of them all!"
And like that, the string tying the two of you strains intensely. Shakes almost violently as you stare horribly and nastily at the man. If your stare could, it would’ve grown arms and cut the imaginary tether with no remorse. "You think being the sole survivor of two lost drift compatibilities is lucky?”
You sit back, body tensing and displaying full defensive maneuvers that he almost mistakes you to be a snake about to charge. At him. He thinks he hears the haunting sound of a rattle in the distance, and he really realizes at that moment that he’s said something wrong. Horribly wrong.
You make a move to retreat from him once more, and his fingers move back to your belt loop, keeping you close. “Woah, hey. I didn’t mean to—”
"Sukuna Gamma plays an evil game of God against those he is meant to protect. How can you call any pilot that is meant to man that monstrosity, special? Especially when they’re chosen by him and have to go through a whole roster of other pilots just to find another that he might like. That makes the pilot equally, if not more, complacent in his executions of people. Sukuna isn’t special, and neither is his pilot. They’re both nightmares."
It’s then that he decides to take a step back from the conversation and look at you. Really look at you.
Your face is weathered and scarred, much like his, a permanent look of exhaustion folded into the crevices and creases of your skin. You look the part of a battered Ranger more than you do a Jaeger Coordinator. Resembling a soldier that has seen war rather than an employee that sits in the control room reading coordinates out loud.
You’re smart, he knows that just from the way you talk, and analyze, and just from the way you look if that’s even a viable answer. You’re tough, hold your emotions on a tight leash like a battle-battered veteran and he punches himself in the gut for not seeing it earlier. You’re much smarter than he can probably ever hope to be, but he does have one advantage over you.
Yuuji has lived in the Shatterdome his whole life; Far longer than you have. He’s seen all walks of life and types of people that occupy this base.
He knows a pilot when he sees one.
In the pulsating heat of your anger, it’s his calm voice that ends up breaking its steady increase.
Your head snaps to him, anger broken by his disruption and instead replaced with pure shock at his audacity. "Excuse me?"
"You said it yourself. Fourteen is the sole survivor of two lost drift compatibilities. I heard that losing one is crippling enough, but to lose two? And to still be standing today? That’s the definition of a special person."
He leans back on his hands, his gaze turning to the brute in question.
"Like it or not, Sukuna chose Fourteen for a reason. I like to imagine it’s because of how strong they must be, how tired they must feel and still be able to get up in the morning. To still look at that machine every day, knowing what it put them through, and still make sure it’s taken care of."
Your heart stops pumping altogether. There are very few people that know that intimate detail, a fact that you’ve tried to keep tightly under wraps. A secretive truth that only the most connected of individuals would be able to learn, not men who are just wandering around a base and manage to find themselves in one of the most secluded spots of the biggest room in this entire base.
Not for the first time tonight you ask yourself: Who is this guy? And why does he make you feel like this?
He continues, the lilt of his cadence and his own honest belief in his words perceptible, "I heard engineers wanted to add more armored sheathing to his chest plates but Fourteen stopped them. Said it goes against the entirety of his design. That it would weigh him down too much.”
He looks to you once more, warm eyes and smile falling upon you, and you can feel the stinging of your waterline.
“It takes a special person to look at the machine they hate, the machine that killed two of their friends, and still not want to tear it down to the ground by fucking up his design.”
Your voice is hoarse and small when you respond, “Or a stupid one."
"Nah,” He laughs, head tilting to the side then looking back at you. His gaze piercing through you, “I don’t think you’re stupid. Just scared, and that’s okay."
A tear rushes down your cheek. He waves his hands in front of him, panic flooding over him.
"Whoa, whoa, hey! I didn’t mean to make you cry!” His hands hover over you protectively, not touching you but ready if, should you ask, he could.
“It’s fine.” Your laugh is watery, but it’s a genuine one, nonetheless. You wrap the sleeve of your jacket over the heel of your palm, wiping your face free from the long held-back tears that flow unabashedly. “I don’t do it nearly as much as I probably should, so thanks for that.”
His hands lower but his focus never lessens. If anything, it grows more intense as the air between you two grows silent save for your gentle sniffles. You wish he would stop looking at you like that, with so much honesty and recklessness instead of the guarded and uneasy manner that you’re used to. It feels too intimate, too vulnerable; Like he knows you too well despite not knowing you at all.
He feels like how Nobara used to feel. Only stronger.
He breaks the silence after a moment, his face relaxing and with it, the string tugs even more, tugs you closer to him despite your already close contiguity. “I think you’re going to do great things with Sukuna, Fourteen."
You’re not surprised that he figured it out. He managed to get up to your sacred spot, managed to make you cry in record time, and made you feel the safest you’ve felt in a long time. There’s something about this man that simultaneously keeps you on your toes and yet, doesn’t surprise you at all.
Only feels incredibly familiar, incredibly healing.
You don’t know anything about this Yuji, hardly know if he was telling the truth about his eventual purpose here, but your sentiment still stands when you say it. Because you mean it.
"I hope they don’t put you someplace too far away, Yuji.”
He shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly, as though the heaviness of your conversation were water running off the surface of his back. Merely an object meant to be experienced, “I’ve been to faraway places before. I always end up back here."
You snort, wiping the remnants of your tear stains with the heel of your palm, “Maybe we are meant to be in Sukuna.”
He laughs, “Now you’re getting it!”
"Will I… see you again?” You ask, not even hiding how much you hope the answer is ‘yes’.
“We’re partners now! You can bet you’ll see me again. I’m the one with pink hair, you can’t miss me. And you better not run from me again. You promised me.”
A comfortable silence falls once more. The two of you basking in the comfort of one another before the objects of your mutual fascination—understanding the extent of the connection between you two and rolling the word you’ve been so frantically looking for around on your tongue. Finally finding the right term to describe how Yuji makes you feel.
Only a few minutes pass when Yuji breaks the silence.
"Is now a bad time to say that I’m a huge fan of you?”
“You look rejuvenated this morning.”
Sweat drips down the side of your face, the staff held with a tight grip in between your taped fists. Facing the fading beige walls, you hardly glance backward as you point the end of your staff in the direction of the door and the intruder that had the audacity to enter through it.
It’s respectful in acknowledging their presence, but enough of an insult for not paying them direct attention, as your mother taught you to do.
Your limbs are tired, every part of you sore from sparring against the sand punching bag in front of you since dawn broke, but hearing his voice lights a volatile flame in you that awakens the entirety of your soul. Electricity and burning wrath injected into your veins, dispelling the exhaustion that plagued you a moment before and replacing it with the incessant need to punch something.
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t act like we were friends.” Twirling the staff elegantly behind your back, you thrust the wooden stick rather heavily against the punching bag, relishing in the painful slapping sound that echoes throughout the room. You hear the door close gently behind you and the body shuffles forward. He steps into the room but maintains enough distance to avoid the immediate radius of you and your weapon, and you smile. Message received.
“Your anger is warranted—”
Your turn your eyes towards the man, daggers sharpened and pointed at him and his stupid leopard print tie, “You’re fucking right it is, Nanami. I told you ‘no’. If my opinion didn’t even matter in the end, why would you pretend to give a damn about what I want? Why give me hope that I even had a way out?”
Nanami folds his arms across his chest, his usually stoic face returning a blank yet leveled stare and it only pisses you off even more. For him to remain so nonchalant about this, to look at you as though you were a petulant child and him the responsible adult only adds fuel to the flames of your ire. You really shouldn’t be surprised; he is part of the top-brass after all. He must have had to adopt sneaky techniques to last this long.
“Of course, what you want matters—”
“Oh yeah? Is that why you went and brought your son in to be my co-pilot? Seems like the only person whose ‘wants’ matter here, is you.”
Nanami sighs. He looks off to the side for a brief second and it’s then that you’re reminded of just how tired he looks. His shoulders weigh heavily and his eyes crease with wrinkles of age and weariness. A pilot for over a decade and still dealing with the same issue with no change—no wonder he was so quick to disregard his fellow pilot’s desire if he thought there was a chance for survival. No matter how minuscule that chance may be.
Nanami adjusts the glasses on his face, “It sounds much worse than I intended it to be.”
You snort and place your staff against the floor, leaning against its length, “Nepotism sounds bad no matter what way you intend for it too.”
Nanami laughs a humorless laugh, his breath exhaling for a second too long. His stress and worries intertwine with the air he expels. He gives you a small smile that doesn’t reach his eyes—you can tell that even if they weren’t obstructed by his tinted glasses, “I guess you’re right.”
The man before you loosens the tie around his neck then places both hands in his pockets, a punctuated finality to the stillness of the sparring room. He waits, granting you control of the conversation. It’s a meager attempt at an apology but you accept it anyway. If only because you dish out an equally tactless statement that he definitely deserves.
“He’s going to die if you put him in that Jaeger.”
Nanami’s shoulders rise and fall slowly in response to the sentence, a gravity he has held near to the ever-changing current of his mind; Has wrecked himself thoroughly in the countless hours of his self-dwelling to reconcile himself to that particular possibility. Almost convinces himself once more to abandon this plan, but then he sees the face of a heartbroken boy with shattered dreams and a lost desire to do more; To be more.
“How do you know if you won’t give him a chance?” Nanami says despite himself, a twinge of sorrow in his words.
Tilting your head and sending an unamused look to the older pilot, you cushion your words with as much care as you can muster. “There are only so many people in the world that I can be drift compatible with.”
Briefly, the image of a man with pink hair and a scar between his brow flashes in your mind. The connotation of the connection you held with Yuji presents itself and you feel only more averred in your previous statement. You’ve felt a strong connection with three people now; The chances of Nanami’s son also being compatible with you are low.
Yuji might think you’re lucky, but there’s no way your luck can run that far. And even if there was something, there’s no saying as to whether Sukuna would accept him. You don’t want to risk it; Hell, you don’t want to even risk putting Yuji in that machine, no matter how strongly you believe in him.
“You said it yourself, Nanami. You hate him. He’s not worth it.”
“I wouldn’t have brought him if I didn’t think it was possible, (Y/N).”
Padding your bare feet across the cushioned mat on the floor, you head toward the shelf of mounted staffs, placing your own amongst the array. Pushing it into the empty holder, you pause, back to your idol, and exhale.
“I know it’s his dream to be in this Jaeger, but sooner or later he’s going to have to learn that it’s better to have a dead dream than to be dead. I won’t be responsible for another lost pilot, Nanami.”
“I believe he can do it.”
“Yeah, you also believed One through Twelve could do it. You believed Nobara could, you believed Junpei could and look where we are. How many more people are you all willing to sacrifice before you learn that Sukuna won’t take anyone else? He is meant to be incomplete for the rest of his days. Accept it.”
His rebuttal dies on his lips when you turn to face him. He expects callousness to radiate off of you, boiling anger ready to spit his way, but all he sees is defeat. Tenacious, Nanami has been known to be—persistent, even—but never lacking in compassion. Never evil enough to force you through something your expression clearly says you cannot handle.
It doesn’t take much for him to acquiesce, even if the prospect of Yuji’s disappointment hovers over his thoughts. He won’t cause you any more harm or grief. You’ve been through enough.
“Okay,” Nanami nods, and the room gets noticeably more breathable, no longer choking at the rising tension, “I’ll tell him.”
You scoff, “Waiting to ambush me?”
“No,” He shakes his head slightly with a wry smile, “Just eager for an answer.”
There’s a pang in your heart and truly, you feel bad. You remember what it was like to have a calling, to want something so bad you would do anything for it. You wanted to be a pilot once upon a time, not the harbinger of crushed hopes and dreams. You resign yourself to helping clean up the mess you made; It’s the least you can do.
“Send him in. I’ll explain it.”
“No, I’m not asking you to do that. I don’t want to make you feel obligated to take care of this—”
“Well, you did when you brought him here. Send him in.”
Nanami shuffles beside himself, unsure of whether or not it would be a wise idea to do as you say but he eventually decides to just go with it, considering your face isn’t getting any more disturbed and he isn’t getting any younger. Besides, he can practically feel the vibrating energy that waits outside the door.
It might be better for Yuji to hear it from the source itself than him. Stepping towards the door, he slides it open and turns his head to the left.
“Come inside.” He tells his son, and your heart beats with the anxiety of what you must do to the boy still obstructed from your vision. You hope he takes it well, otherwise, you have no idea what you would do with yourself.
A slight echo of footsteps is heard throughout the room and then finally, a figure steps in. Brown eyes meeting yours, pink hair obnoxiously vibrant in better lighting, and a smile horribly, horribly bright and warm and safe upon seeing you. Your stomach flops repeatedly and your throat closes.
You can bet you’ll see me again. I’m the one with pink hair, you can’t miss me.
“Yuji?” You breathe out, shock is written plain and clear along your face.
With both hands tucked into the pockets of that damn puffer jacket, he shrugs his shoulders endearingly, “Hey Ranger.”
A glance at Nanami shows that he, too, is confused by the turn of events. He gestures a finger between the two of you, “Have you two met before?”
“This is your son?” You ask stupidly, even though the answer is standing right in front of you.
“Not my biological, but yes. He is. How do you two know each other?” Nanami responds, his eyes darting between your emotionally stunted self and Yuji’s intense fixation upon you. Very clearly, there was a memo here that Nanami missed.
All of the moments of reference suddenly come flooding back to you, the clues as to who Yuji was being so obvious that you’re so ashamed you missed them. Panda’s explanation about Nanami sending his son (that you now remember him saying wasn’t his ‘real’ son) far away, Yuji’s odd familiarity with the base and getting up to your secluded spot, meeting someone new on the day that his arrival had made such a ruckus of. It all makes sense and the chance of Nanami’s son having a drift compatibility connection with you becomes overwhelmingly greater. No longer is it an exclusive chance, but a very solid, very real possibility.
Your gaze turns from Nanami back to Yuji, the face that allowed you to have some semblance of a good night’s sleep last night, and everything crashes all at once. Especially when he just can’t stop staring.
“I can’t do this,” You whisper hurriedly, pushing past the two men, avoiding one completely, and rushing towards the door. Leaving your shoes and any mode of logical thought behind. You hear footsteps fall behind you.
You don’t get a moment to run, not that you could in your furiously discombobulated mind. Yuji wraps his hand around your forearm, pulling you back and into him—into the breadth and warmth of his chest, inhaling the safety of his scent.
“I’m not—” you heave, struggling to breathe as Yuji steadies his hands on your thrashing arms, “I’m not letting you get in there. I can’t—You—”
“Hey! Hey! C’mon! You promised me last night you wouldn’t run from me!”
Out of instinct, you hit him in the chest, feeling only solid muscle beneath the flat of your hand but he still recoils from the action. “Ow!”
“That was before I found out that you—Before you wanted—”
“I told you that Sukuna was my favorite!”
“Favorite doesn’t mean that you want to be in him, idiot!”
“You said that we would be a good team for him!”
“That was because we were joking about it, Yuji! It’s different!”
“Why? You’re here, I’m here, we have a connection. We can do it!”
He grimaces when he sees the intense repugnance scrunch your face.
“Is that all this is to you? Just some ambition of yours that you think can just ‘work’ because we get along? Do you even care at all about what I told you last night, or was that your plan this whole time?”
“Find Number Fourteen and use her to get to your dream, right? Fuck the fact that she lost two pilots already, let’s put her back into Sukuna and hope she doesn’t lose another! All because you want to be a pilot!” You push roughly against his chest, making him step back in surprise.
“Do you even feel a connection, or were you just saying that to get to Sukuna?”
“Now, hold on a second, I didn’t make that up,” he says sternly, intent to get your train of thought and the number of grievances you held against him corrected. Because, yeah, in hindsight this does seem problematic, but he wouldn’t lie about feeling something with you. Couldn’t even fathom doing something that malicious to you, not when it would equally hurt himself. “What I feel is real. I would never take advantage of you like that.”
“Well forgive me for not knowing because you’re doing it right now!”
Yuji’s brows furrow, his hands balling into fists beside him. “How long are you going to keep living in fear of this?”
“You heard me. You were chosen, that’s a fate you can’t deny anymore. And yeah, you’re hurting, but you have this defense of fighting back whenever someone asks you to confront what you feel, when someone tries to give you another option, to help—”
“I have every right to not want to step back in Sukuna with anyone. Connection or not.”
“You do! You have every right to. But you also have the right to move on, to let go of your fears!”
“Move on?” You scoff incredulously, face scrunching up in disgust, “You and Nanami are exactly the same. Get away from me, Yuji—”
As soon as you take a step back and away from him, he steps forward. His hands reach out, grabbing onto yours, “Let me help you. Sukuna or not, I want to help you not be afraid anymore. Of life, of people, of you.”
“You can help me by getting away from me,” You try and shove his holding hand off, but he only yanks you forward, now holding both of your hands in his.
In the struggle of your thrashing body, Yuji ends up walking your intertwined limbs back to the wall, caging you between it and his lean figure. He presses up against you, the weight of himself leaning against you and grounding you. Involuntarily, your body responds pleasantly to his action, the quick pants of your hyperventilating breath lessening under him and your arms losing all will to continue to fight him. You succumb to him, against your better judgment.
His head hangs beside you, fixated intently on your distressed features and watching intently for any sign of escalation or de-escalation. The steady and repeated hit of his breath on the side of your neck shouldn’t be as comforting as it is, but it steadies you; Gives you something to focus on. Each wrist of yours is held tightly in his hand and you feel like a wild animal being held under observation and all you want to do is cry.
You tug your lip between your teeth and bite, willing yourself to control the franticness of the surge of emotions that dominate your brain and not break before Yuji.
“Don’t run from me, don’t hide,” He murmurs against the side of your face, his lips gently ghosting over your cheek, body still pressed tight against you, “I’m not gonna leave you. I’m here.”
If it were possible to drown without water, you were doing it. Throat closing and mind struggling to stay above the swell of waves, you end up stretching out in reach of your life preserver. Your fists ball into the fabric of Yuji’s jacket, pulling him even closer and attaching yourself to him.
The string lays loose between you, happy and unrestrained as the two of you embrace in the empty corridor—fate resigned contently in the wake of its work. Even in the fit of anger, you can’t deny the existence of your bond with him; Not when it feels so right to be in the comfort of his arms and held so tightly, for once, believing the words of reassurance someone was giving you. If they were lies, then you would drink them in, accept them wholeheartedly, and never question them, for they were mouthed by his lips of high esteem and his alone.
He holds you tightly, wishing that in the strength of his arms he could squeeze out all the hurt and ache that plagues your fragile soul. Wishing that within the hushed murmurs of his loving statements, he can convince you to trust him and his intent to protect you; To trust yourself, and stop cowering from the power you hold and the damage it has caused.
But all he can do is hold you and be held in turn. Even if this is where it ends, his long-awaited path to self-actualization and the existence of his dreams, he would be fine. More than fine, actually, because he found another part of himself in the process. Another piece that settled into the space of his emptiness that he hadn’t anticipated.
He felt complete having you near him, even as you sniffled and sobbed into his shoulder, riddled with the fear of your past and the unknown. He felt whole.
He doesn’t know how long you two stand there, doesn’t really care all that much. Nanami was kind enough to grant the two of you some privacy and retreated off to someplace, but Yuji hadn’t noticed. Only continued to focus on you, nuzzling his face into the crook of your neck and running his hands along the planes of your body. After a moment, he hears the hoarse croak of your throat.
“If you get into Sukuna, you’ll die because of me, because he chose me and no one else. I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose you, too.”
Pulling back from your neck, he stares into you, boring his eyes into your watery, red-rimmed ones. “If you don’t want to do it, I won’t force you. But I won’t let you keep running away from what you’re scared of, either. Not when you can do so much good.”
He wipes a stray tear away with the pad of his thumb, “You won’t lose me.”
“You can’t promise that,” You whisper, unable to raise your voice any higher.
“No, but I can believe it.” He tries, noses bumping as he rests his forehead on yours. He inhales your sigh, consuming the stress and worries you eject in the air, making it his. Making your issues his own; Two bodies working tandem off one another, inexplicably tied to one another in the string of fate’s embrace.
“You’re wrong about me, you know.”
Lazily, you pull your head away from him, if only to look at him confusedly.
“I don’t want to be in Sukuna because it’s my dream. It was, once. But not anymore.”
“Then what is? Why do you want to be in Sukuna so badly?”
“To end this war. To end the Jaeger program and send all these machines to the scrap yard. I want to end it so people can be free.” His hand runs across the side of your face, soft in his touch yet so powerful in its meaning, “I want to end it, so you never have to step foot into another Jaeger for the rest of your life. So you can finally be free.”
His thumb runs under your eye, touching the purple skin that sits under the red-rimmed irises that beg for peace. He hates how tired you look, but God, if you don’t look like the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
“But I can’t do it without you.”
You can’t put words to the feelings that sink like an obstruction in the depths of your stomach when you see Yuji enter the interior of Sukuna a month later.
He’s suited in the designated uniform, obviously altered to fit the dimensions of his body you gather as you linger a moment too long at the width of his chest and trail downward. Meanwhile, he looks around the chamber of Sukuna’s helmet in complete rapture, the grey helmet held tightly between his gloved hands and his steps precautious in his treading of the ground; As though he were entering into a sacred church that required the entirety of his focus and reverence. His mouth is agape, only moving to mouth a silent “wow” as his eyes dart from the holographic screens to the display of instructional graphics that blink rhythmically to the mechanical body tethers that are meant to house the pilot’s bodies.
That will soon house his and yours.
He had asked you to sleep on the decision about Sukuna—never pressured you, never alluded to it, only waited for an answer you knew he was tripping over himself for. Yet dutifully, he stayed patiently silent.
Instead, he took the time to learn; about you—your likes, dislikes, how you make your coffee, what time you take showers—about Sukuna’s system, about Nobara and Junpei.
You learned from him too, inadvertently. No matter how hard you tried to maintain your distance and some level of protection, you couldn’t escape him. He was always in the sparring room with Megumi, laughing loudly in the Mess Hall with Panda, sitting outside your door, waiting for you to come by.
Always waiting; Eventually, your defensive heart lost the battle against his warm smile and patient eyes and you opened the door for him—allowing him to enter more than just your room; Which became his too, as he entered it one day and then never returned to his.
You learn that you both had known Junpei; Yuuji at the beginning of his life and you at the end of it. It was a weird thing to bond over, but you did, nonetheless, sitting in silence at your regular spot (that now became Yuji’s regular spot, too) watching the Jaegers and reminiscing in the memory of the boy.
He asked how you and Nobara met, you asked him about his parents. You found out his favorite food is rice bowls and he once forced Megumi to go to a karaoke night with him in downtown Tokyo on their first night of being legally allowed to drink. You told him about the time that Nobara snuck in a girl she was dating that did tattoos (“Not a tattoo artist,” you clarified when Yuji raised a brow, “There’s a difference.”) and got matching Jaeger helmets on your ankles.
You learn so much about him that you can’t imagine how there is any more space in your brain for anything else, but when it comes to trivial facts about Yuji, your heart immediately makes more.
You realize that you both enjoy watching dramas, and he always gets emotional whenever a dog is involved; He always asks you to watch the sunset with him and never gets too upset when you fall asleep in his lap (because he knows that’s the only way you get the most sleep. With the gentle tracing of his hands over your face lulling you into the longest period of uninterrupted rest you can manage).
His laugh quickly becomes your favorite sound in the world and his favorite activity is making himself look stupid just so he can hear that snort of laughter he heard once before on accident.
And any second not spent with the man of your affections starts to feel like a waste of time.
You’re falling in love with him, you realize. Alarmingly fast. A truth that you’re struggling to admit for fear of weakness alongside all the other things you’re deathly afraid of. A weakness that comes in the form of the acquiescence of your hesitation and approbation to make room for his dreams. Voicing these feelings, the validity of your connection, and the strength of your affection for him would surely work against you; Would have you eat your words and harbor resentment for the rest of your life. But then he looks at you, in passing, directly, any kind of way, and you have to fight the words from spilling out of your mouth.
(You shared your first kiss when you finally gave him an answer about Sukuna. You barely had the ‘yes’ out of your mouth when he crashed his lips onto yours, and that was enough to make you think that you made the right decision.
Or maybe it was enough to make you not think at all.)
Yuji’s excitement and the way it crinkles the heavenly features of his face are all too familiar. His eyes stare in awe like Junpei’s did once upon a time, and the unabashed grin he wears pushes rather intensely on the apples of his cheek and you’re reminded of Nobara’s cheekbones and their elegance. That pit in your stomach worsens, becomes almost unbearable when he steps into the body molds beside you. You’ve done this twice before and they both ended the same way.
Who’s to say that he won’t face the same fate as those two?
Even though in the back of your mind a tiny voice shouts that this is different, that he is different, the pain that you have so intricately associated with Sukuna worries its way into the forefront of your mind. It nauseates you, almost has you bellowing out to the control center to end this right here, right now.
Because Yuji is different; You’ve known that since you first saw him and every ache was soothed in the upward tilt of his lips and worries reassured in the softness of his voice. If he dies in this machine, unable to gain the approval of this godforsaken Jaeger, then you would too. You decided that last night as you tossed and turned in the bed you shared with Yuji, anticipation keeping you horribly awake.
(Nobody questions when Yuji retires to your room for the night, anymore. All pointed comments and questioning stares cease when the purple that ran so deep under your eyes only a few months before, seems to disappear in the span of a few days with him. If anything, they encourage him to stay the night with you.)
You will sink the entirety of this billion-dollar entity into the depths of the ocean if Yuji dies, will walk yourself into your self-made casket of the sea, intending to be buried alongside him because you wouldn’t be able to live another day to trudge through that pain.
And yet, those thoughts are dissuaded in the slightest when you realize just how much he looks as though he were meant to be here. Like the very definition of a pilot, highlighted by that confident smile of his and the slight crease of that scar between his right eyebrow and lashes. The kind of pilot you used to stay up late to watch, sat eagerly beside the television with your mother, awaiting their mission report and the tales of their victories.
As much as it terrifies you, knowing rather bluntly that this moment was the fulfillment of either his prophecy or demise, it sends a sharp voltage of acceleration through you. Before you reeks of strength and capability, this magnanimous man and you understand what a pilot is meant to be.
For the first time, you want to take Sukuna out into the waters. You want to fight a Kaiju Curse. And you want to do it with him.
The drift compatibility test is monitored heavily by the control center, their countdowns echoing loudly in the speakers beside your ears coupled with Nanami’s reminders and advice to stay calm and keep breathing.
Yuji laughs, explaining with fleeting huffs of amusement when you send a questioning look his way, “Is he telling us that, or himself?”
In the background noise of the occasional intercom instruction, you can hear the shuffling and low muttering of your other fellow pilots—Gojo’s voice the most recognizable—as each one of them watches with peeled eyes and bated breaths to see if Yuji is strong enough to last through the trials of Sukuna Gamma. To see if he’s worthy enough of being chosen by the maniacal beast; To see if he’s worthy enough for Sukuna—worthy enough for you.
Yuji can’t deny it, it’s a daunting task. With everyone watching him so intently, so keen to see the results of his efforts, to have you standing so stoically and seemingly unperturbed beside him, he wonders if this long-held dream of his even has any credibility to it. Cause god, look at you! Your face has hardly betrayed any emotion other than pure boredom (at least, he thinks it is) whereas Yuji is starting to feel the sweat pool in his pits and bile rise up the column of his throat. Doubt creeps up his neck steadily.
Is he even cut out for this?
He’s bursting at the seams with anxiety like an absolute child and you… are not, even though he knows you’re equally as worried. You stare ahead, listening to the intercom with deep, steady breaths. And you look so beautiful, like the very definition of a pilot. Strong, formidable, intense and the answer is clear.
Who sits in the pilot seat of a Jaeger? It’s you, you, you that Yuji’s always been dreaming of. The partner he’s always longed for, the pilot he’s always wanted to be.
He hopes that Sukuna will choose him and that this drift sequence will go well. Not so he can finally pilot the Jaeger of his childhood dreams, but so he can stay near you and bask eternally in the essence of your grace. Intertwine the path of your providence windingly with his for now and evermore.
“Initiating Drift Sequencing in five—”
The buckles of Yuji’s mechanical tethering rattle as he adjusts himself, a startling sound that jolts you in comparison to your completely still body. He turns his head to face you.
His brown eyes meet yours, their gentleness soothing the turbulent ache that thrums rather painfully throughout your chest today and your faith in this man is bolstered entirely when his smile, somehow, lessens the pain that constantly plagues you.
His teeth shine brightly in their grin, reassuring the fears that were clouding you and instead, replacing it with his own affirmation. You return the smile, nervously. He tilts his head back, the appearance of his sharp jawline sending flutters into your stomach, and he laughs beautifully.
Whether out of a need for further comfort or to showcase your acknowledgment of the severity of this moment, you hold out a closed fist. He looks at it, then you, and grins even wider. He bumps his fist into yours.
There aren’t many words that can properly describe the feeling of engaging in a drift compatibility sequence with someone; Scientists have been studying it for years and still find the concept to be so elusive. Hell, you’ve done it twice and still can’t put it into the right terminology. Megumi once said it felt like his head was being dunked underwater; Panda said it felt like hot ice being injected into his veins—whatever that means.
To you, it feels like the world’s most exhilarating whiplash—your entire body being jolted with electricity and an intense pressure applied to the surface that makes you feel like you’re flying. Then suddenly, you’re immersed in the memories of your co-pilot in a euphoric high and you see everything.
A baby Yuji so excited to have lost his first tooth, a Yuji emphatically explaining the importance of Jaegers and pilots to his classmates; You see his house get demolished and his parents and grandfather get stuck under the rubble. A blinding light and a silhouette of purple clouding your vision, then the smell of grease and rust, a boy with black hair, laughter, and Sukuna followed immediately by heartbreak.
Your thoughts and his intermingled so intimately, so tightly within the cramped space of your mind that you have no idea where you end, and he begins. Have no idea if that heartbreak belongs to you or him, only that you feel it within the depths of your soul as though it were entirely your own, and yet his presence looms over you, preventing you from experiencing it alone.
Yuji and every part of him surrounds your mind, like a turbulent tide—encapsulating you in the pull of its waves and throwing you under and over and under and over. Even as the memories of Nobara float past your sight, a trauma that you so pointedly experienced alone, they are tainted by the presence of another; A pink hue and warm light mingling with the flatness of your past. The images yours entirely, hardened in the wake of your past truths but altered now in knowing that he was watching, listening, understanding.
The excitement of learning that you were 92% compatible with her and the dread that drowned you at learning you were only 84% compatible with Junpei in reading the drift sequencing reports. He sees it all. A scream rips throughout the chamber when you relive the moment that Nobara died, but it was Yuji who shouted in pain.
It’s overwhelming, it’s too much. There are too many lights and images and feelings all in this one moment and you’ve got half a mind to scream at Nanami to end this—that you can’t do this, you can’t breathe, can’t think, can only feel, feel, feel the past, and Yuji, and—
“Drift Sequencing completed.”
Your body slumps forward, held only by the mechanical tethers that manage to keep you upright. Chest wracked with deep gasps and breaths; your eyes almost bulge out of your skull in realizing the kind of intensity that came from that connection. It wasn’t nearly that disorienting with Nobara, nor was it that impassioned with Junpei.
There is nothing that you have ever known that has felt remotely like what being with Yuji has made you feel.
Yuji fares no better beside you, his physique leaning exhaustively against the tethering, shuddering breaths fanning out loudly. He stares widely, only meeting your gaze by happenstance, but the message is translated clearly through mutually blown-out pupils.
“Are you two alright?” Static rings throughout the chamber, Nanami’s worried voice filtering throughout the speaker system.
Taking his helmet off sloppily, Yuji wipes a hand across his sweaty forehead—his pink hair plastered to his skin that only draws you in further. He remains fixated on your collapsed figure.
“Nanami,” Yuji breathes out tiredly, “The percentage. What’s the percentage?”
“Why don’t you two come out of there first? Take a break before we—”
“No!” He shouts, his fist slamming against the right metal bracket that holds his arm, “I need to know! What’s the percentage?”
Crackling silence emits over the intercom, the man beside you waiting on the held breath for the results he’s waited so long for. You can’t imagine after a connection like that, that has your mind still swirling and stomach queasing in nausea, there can be any percentage less than 95. You wouldn’t believe it if it were, you can’t. Because if Yuji wasn’t your chosen other pilot, then who the fuck was?
“Well?!” You ask impatiently, filling in where Yuji’s voice couldn’t. He bites his lip, looking at you once more with hope and desperation and panic settling into the depths of those pools of brown.
It’s a few more seconds of silence before Nanami speaks up once more.
“100 percent. You two are 100 percent drift compatible.”
Fighting with Yuji is deliciously easy, you find out.
He understands the mechanics of Sukuna better than you do, filling in the spaces of your errors with his strength and complimenting your talents with his own. Your initial fear of losing another pilot is dissuaded in ten minutes when a harsh thrust of a tail from the Kaiju is expertly evaded by Yuji without a warning having to be uttered from you. He just knows.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it does leave you weak in the knees when the Kaiju falls dead in the middle of the ocean floor, a fragment of its brain collected for research and a sigh of relief by you and Yuji.
The base erupts into cheers when Sukuna steps inside, the pride of a nation shaking the titanium walls of the terminal with the repeating chants of your name. Not Pilots Fourteen and Sixteen, but your names. Claps are placed firmly on your back when you exit the Jaeger, commendation accompanying the action as you and Yuji wade through the crowd of enthusiastic spectators.
You can’t hide the honesty of your smile even if you tried.
From the swarm of excitement, you feel a large arm wrap around your head, pulling you tightly into the softness of a large body. You’re not able to breathe properly and would usually begin to panic at the restriction of your movement, but the booming voice stills the unease in you and replaces it with love. A glance to your right shows that Yuji is in the same predicament as you.
“I knew you two could do it!” Panda jeers, his voice louder than the eager chatter of the surrounding mob. He pulls your heads closer to him, “We have to celebrate! Toge! Pull out the karaoke machine! I want to see Megumi sing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ again!”
Finally letting the two of you go, Panda places a hand on each of your shoulders, turning your bodies to face him and steadying you beneath his gaze.
“I have never been prouder to call you both fellow pilots. Especially you, (Y/N),” The sincerity of his words stuns you, has you turning your head from Panda’s unbroken stare to Yuji’s satisfied smile; The two men fixated on you. To attribute this victory to you seems incomplete; To attach any pride to this win as a method of your doing doesn’t feel right—especially not when Yuji was the missing puzzle piece to it all. He was the gear needed in the great machine of Sukuna, he was the rock tethering you to the ground; Yuji was the hope, action, and evidence behind this victory.
“After all you’ve gone through,” Panda continues, his hand squeezing your shoulder gently, “There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that you are the strongest of us all.”
You open your mouth to refute, ready to correct Panda’s wildly incorrect assumption when someone else chimes in, “He’s right, (Y/N).”
Looking to the right, you meet the tender admiration of Nanami who is flanked on either side by Megumi and Maki—each of them holding their own small smiles.
“You represent the best of us, for maintaining yourself when I, and everyone else, tested you unfairly.” He bows deeply, “I don’t ask for forgiveness, but I hope you understand how sincere I am in apologizing for all that I put on you.”
He rises, standing to his full height and it takes a minute to sink in—the fact that the pilot you idolized so much is apologizing to you, is calling you the better pilot. It’s not quite exactly ‘joy’ you feel, instead tainted with the fade of bittersweetness.
You hold your hand out for a shake, “Thank you, Nanami.”
He grasps it, closing the distance between you two and shaking firmly. He leans forward, lowering his voice slightly, “And I know it’s unreasonable of me to ask you for another favor, but I must.”
He waits for you to meet his gaze before he continues.
“My son, he worships you. Not just as a pilot, but as a partner.” There’s a hidden plea behind his words, one that carries a shadow of worry and the unspoken message is more than apparent between you two. A relinquishing of his guardianship that he no doubt struggled with.
Please, take care of him.
“Nanami,” you breathe out upon noticing the slight quiver in his lips, “I’m in awe of your son as both pilot and partner.”
You had hoped Nanami would receive some consolation at your words, but you hadn’t anticipated that he would seem so relieved. So relaxed, and finally, that burden that has always sat upon him seems to lift—permanently.
He can rest easy now, knowing that he did what was best for the world. Not putting Yuji into Sukuna, he couldn’t take credit for that; But for putting him into your life.
Yuji stares at you so devotedly, and you blossom under his gaze. And for once, Nanami doesn’t have to worry about tomorrow. Not when the world’s greatest pilots have finally found each other.
The night is filled to the brim with celebration, everyone singing high and low and very much indulging in alcoholic beverages. The room erupts into a plethora of ‘booo’ when you announce that you’re turning in for the night.
“One more songgggg!” Panda exclaims sloppily, his large body slung haphazardly over Toge. He meets the enthusiastic agreement from some other stray pilots who cheer alongside him.
“Alright, alright! There’ll be time for singing later. Let ‘The World’s Strongest Pilot’ get some rest,” Yuji stands from his seat with a laugh, moving to stand beside you without hesitation. It’s an overt display of his alliance to you, complemented by undertones of protectiveness as he stands tall beside you— almost challenging anyone to go against you. Alert and ready to defend.
He stands so proudly next to you, so unconvinced and firm in standing by what you want that you have no doubt you’re swooning unabashedly. Feel dizzy at the fact that you have someone so clearly on your side, through and through, without question or further prompt. Not because you asked him, but because he wanted to be.
It makes him a good man. And it makes him infinitely more attractive that you can hardly believe you’ve managed to tear your eyes from him.
“Oh, I see!” Gojo sings from his place sat beside the karaoke machine, Nanami beside him, “Put (Y/N) to ‘rest’, huh? Well, go on then lovebirds! Don’t let us stop you!”
An exasperated groan is pulled from Nanami as the rest of the other pilots laugh in a knowing tone; Each of them pointing at the harsh flush that floods Yuji’s face and laughing even harder when you, very clearly, avoid their gazes. The cheers don’t stop as Yuji places a hand on the small of your back and leads you out of the common room. The hoots and hollers only grow more loudly when you finally escape their field of view, a stray “Use condoms!” echoing throughout the hallway.
The walk to your suite is silent, both of you still too overwhelmed from the success of your first endeavor and the teasing that you were subjected to, to do much more than smile shyly at one another and amble to your door. There’s no conversation, too much awkwardness still palpable in the labyrinth of corridors to compensate for that, but your hands keep bumping into his, pinkies brushing against one another one too many times.
The first time resulted in a quick retraction of Yuji’s hand and a mumbled “sorry”, but the sixth time? You bit the bullet and reached a pinky out, wrapping it around his and smiling gently when he quickly reciprocated.
The awkwardness is still palpable as you approach your room, fingers interlocked still and you both clumsily glancing at one another and the door.
“I hope you know that I didn’t—”
“If you wanted to come in—”
You cut each other off, laughing breathlessly at the building tension in the hallway. This man has seen the worst parts of you as you have him, your futures intertwined for the rest of time and yet here you are, fumbling like a teenager in front of him.
“You can go first,” Yuji offers, his hand not holding yours rubbing the back of his neck.
“No no,” You shake your head, gesturing towards him, “I interrupted you. Go ahead.”
“O-okay. I, um,” He looks down at your interlocked hands and clears his throat, “I just wanted to say that you did great out there today. Like, really great. I heard Fourteen was a great pilot before I met you, but man, you blew me out of the water today. Literally. And not just fighting, but, you know… in everything. Doing this whole thing for a third time, you just— you really amaze me.”
If you could have turned to mush at that moment, you would have, heart, melting quickly within the cavern of your chest, “Thank you, Yuji.”
“And, um,” He clears his throat again, swaying back and forth on the balls of his feet, “I don’t want you to think that I walked you here so I could… you know, sleep with you, or anything. I mean, I know we’ve been sleeping together, and—and I don’t mind that! At all! I love sleeping with you! I just didn’t want you to think that I’m trying to get into your pants so I’m, uh, gonna sleep in my room tonight. Unless! You want me to sleep with you! Physically. Not—I meant, like, side by side, not—”
“Yuji,” you interrupt his monologue of pure mistakes and he seems eternally grateful for it.
“Yeah?” He asks, his shoulders slumping from their place held tightly by his ears. The pink still resides cutely on the surface of his cheeks, whether the blush from the teasing, his fumbling, or the alcohol still in his system, you’re not sure. But it only adds to your attraction to him and clears the fog of awkwardness to the monumental realization you’ve come to at this moment.
Looking at his flushed face, his eager eyes, and his slightly parted lips, you realize just how much you’ve wanted him since you met him— in all possible ways.
“Do you want to come inside?”
His eyes widen, his mouth dropping further in shock. He separates his hand from yours and nervously wipes both of them on his pants. Quickly, he nods his head and swallows thickly, “Y-yeah. I do.”
Your second kiss is much gentler than the first, with Yuji using the lightest of touches as he cups your jaw in his hands, slotting his lips even more delicately over yours in the safety of your room. Wrapping your hands around his wrists, you reciprocate, tugging his bottom lip in between yours and sucking gently.
The faintest breaths are exhaled from him, his enjoyment audible in the pants, and it shoots a thrill through you. A marvelous jolt that feels even more exciting than piloting a Jaeger, knowing that it’s you making him feel good with the simplest of actions; Knowing that you’ve only been kissing him, gently, for a minute or two and his only response is to gasp feebly into your mouth and pull you closer.
Every huffed breath makes you more desirous as you’ve never felt before, as though only he could set you alight and have you hanging off of his every touch and minute noise. As only he could make you feel so prideful in being able to elicit such sinful pants and only you could make him feel so enraptured and drunk off of pleasure.
Butterflies fill your stomach and travel lower as his hands move from your jaw to your waist, large hands spanning across the surface of your hips and he draws you in. Your own travel up the expanse of his clothed chest, up the planes of hard muscle, and up to his neck, wrapping your fingers in the pink tufts of hair, pushing him further into you; Deepening the kiss, of which he gladly follows suit.
You don’t realize that he’s been slowly walking the two of you backward until the backs of your knees hit the bed frame, but even then you’re too absorbed in the way his tongue licks inside your mouth to care. Kissing Yuji has put the most intoxicating of hazes over you, heightening every sensor and nerve ending, making even the lightest of his grazes feel like insurmountable tingles of euphoria.
He finds that out when his hand lowers itself to rub your backside, a breathy whimper floating from your parted lips before you dive back into the kiss once more—too needy to be sundered from him for even a second. Noticing your response, relishing in it, he grabs the fat of your bottom and bites your lip when your mouth opens in surprise. Smiles maliciously when you tug on his hair, but never ceases his kneading of your ass, instead taking a more eager part in the action.
The wake of fire his trailing hand leaves behind moves lower, his palm discovering the clothed skin of your legs with mild-tempered fervor. He moves down the outside of your thighs, then inward and up, his fingertips lightly running over your sensitive mound. He’s testing the waters, nonverbally asking for a sign of praise or dismissal. You give him one in the form of an emphatic pull of his wrist upward, forcing him to cup your sex, inviting him to feel your warmth that so desperately wants to be touched.
He doesn’t listen, however, removing his hand and laughing quietly when you whine from being left on the precipice of heightened fulfillment. Fingertips move towards your shirt instead, playing with the hem as he separates his lips from yours, his nose still rubbing against yours.
Lifting the shirt slightly, he asks, “Can I?”
Cool air hits your exposed chest, goosebumps erupting on the exterior, but it’s his steady stare on you that quickens the pace of your breath and heats the entirety of your body. You stand half-naked before him, body on display for his consumption, and yet he seems more transfixed on your eyes—staring endlessly into the depths as though your irises were the source of his lust.
It wouldn’t be the most outrageous theory; His carnal gaze was doing more than wonders to you.
“So beautiful,” Yuji’s voice has dropped an octave lower, his usual light and airy cadence lacquered with a thick coat of dripping eroticism. Just a moment before you were facing a stuttering boy who was wiping the sweat of his hands on the fabric of his pants, but now? Now, you stand before a man who looked like he was one request away from eating you whole.
Even through the tremble of your hands, you’re able to get his shirt up and over his head, revealing the broad, muscled chest that you’ve—frankly—fantasized too often about. It’s better than you expected, abs protruding deliciously, pectorals wider than the size of your hand, and looking incredibly sturdy. Built in agility practice and utilized for fighting purposes, of course, but also, rather advantageous should you need to affix your weight.
To plant your palms on the wide tendon of flesh and to lift yourself up on him, then down, watching his face all the while. Keeping notice for every scrunch, breath, twitch that shows so prettily on his face as you ride—
“You still with me?” A push to your chin has you being torn from the fantasy of his body and back to his curious yet cautious look. “If I do something, and—and you don’t like it, you need to tell me, okay?”
That won’t be happening, you think rather acerbically. There is no part of this that you don’t want, and while you appreciate the consideration infinitely, a part of you just wants him to throw all caution out the window and take you onto the bed; Ruin you for life physically as he has already done emotionally. For he already owns every thought you think and lives eternally in the walls of your slowly healing heart—mended by his own kindness and consideration.
You want all of him, as he has all of you. The question, his request, seems all for naught as you’re sure there is nothing he could give you that you wouldn’t automatically love, but you indulge him if only to grant him well deserved ease. You nod, “I promise.”
“Good girl,” Yuji mutters before attaching his lips back to you once again. Truthfully, you don’t think he meant much by it—just felt compelled to utter it at the moment—but the praise goes straight to the depths of your core and you instinctively push the plushness of your thighs together in excitement.
It’s a few more minutes of half-naked exploration and sensual kissing. It does what it’s supposed to do in getting you worked up beyond belief. Almost rip the hair out of Yuji’s skull from how needy you’re getting, from how much you ache for his touch to move downward, for the building pressure to be released. A brush against Yuji’s front reveals that he, too, is feeling the effects and is in dire need of some alleviation.
Pushing your hand downward, feeling the swell of his bulge underneath your palm and the emanating heat from it, you tear your lips from Yuji, pushing against his chest gently when he tries to chase after you, “Yuji?”
“Yeah?” He questions breathlessly, his lungs wracked with the need for air but every part of him wanting more from your broken kiss. More of your touch, more of your pressure, more of you.
The words you say are like a holy grail, permanently ingrained in the span of his thoughts from this point forward. Blood rushes straight to his groin, propelled further by your soft ministrations, and he bites his lips roughly to stop himself from cumming right there in his pants.
“I need you,” You whisper, practically pleading. It takes everything in him to control the innate urge to grab you and throw you onto the bed, give you everything he has and absolutely ruin you—perfect, formidable you that consumes his thoughts in every waking moment. You, with the beautiful smile and the compassionate heart, that stole his own the moment you looked his way.
The small voice of reason reminds him otherwise; Especially when emotions have been running high all day. He wants this to be special, wants to treat and do right by you, not be swept up in the antics of his urges. He wants to do what he does best and learn everything about you: What makes you sigh with heaven in your eyes, what makes you drip, clench, and salivate; What way he can run his hands over you, crook his fingers, lick over you to make you rise faster, shake harder. He wants to know it all.
He plays with the hem of your cargo pants, dipping a knuckle under the open space and rubbing his finger over your skin, right below your belly button. He doesn’t miss the shiver of teasing anticipation that emits from you. His finger dips lower, flickering over the edge of your underwear that he so badly wants to see; So desperately wants to push down your legs and reveal the oasis that sits between them. He waits, looks at you with a question.
You nod and gently, your pants are being shimmied down the length of your legs, Yuji leaving small kisses at each new inch of skin revealed to him. In turn for the reward of his loving attention, he lets you do the same, removing his pants and admiring the limbs and muscles presented to you.
Left in only your underwear is when Yuji finally sits on the edge of the bed, bulge mouthwateringly apparent in his briefs as he spreads his legs, and he beckons you forward by tapping his thighs. Clambering over, elegance thrown out the window in favor of sheer eagerness, you settle onto the corded muscles, settling your throbbing heat over his.
A blushing virgin you are not (a one-time mistake fueled by the troughs of loneliness and too much alcohol in Osaka), but inexperienced you are. Yet, the nerves hardly impact the excitement, only tainting the rose-colored haze in your vision by a fraction. Nerves hardly exist at all when Yuji places his hands on your hips, pushing you downward and forward, gyrating your hips against his covered length, and attaching his lips to your bare shoulder.
It’s not the pressure you need to alleviate the building ache, but it’s enough for the moment—something you won’t take for granted. Indulging in the pull of his thick, veiny hands you follow his movements, settling your weight downward and satiating your desires by rubbing your sex over him. Wetness spreads around in the increasing friction, the ridge of the head of his cock bumping over your sensitive clit and a dull twist begins to churn in your stomach.
Exacerbated further when in a fit of impatience, complimented by a frustrated huff, Yuji removes a hand from your hip and shoves it into the front of your panties, his middle finger rubbing heavy-handed circles around your nub. Collapsing forward into the crook of his neck, you let out a cry of surprise, the enjoyment of having Yuji finally touch your most sensitive part quickly overshadowed by the bite of burning pleasure. It almost hurts, just how aching and needing that part of you is in finally being paid attention to.
The rolling of your hips has halted altogether, but Yuji doesn’t mind; Instead, takes great advantage as his finger moves further into your folds and teases your entrance with a quick circle of his pad. Gathering the wetness on his finger, he moves it upward, circling your nub for a second, and then moves back down. Repeating the teasing nature of building your heated delectation and then moving away, only to do it again and again and again.
You don’t realize just how noisy you’re being until he pushes the one finger in, the stretch of his thick finger pulling the most throaty of moans out of your mouth. Your body pleased as he finally gave you a semblance of what you’ve been waiting for. Yuji takes it as a sign to continue, pushing his finger all the way in and crooking it forward in the tight heat of your gummy walls. Wet and warm muscle tightly contracting around him and he almost grows lightheaded from how much blood rushes to his groin. Because if you are this tight around his one finger, he’ll cum before he even has an inch pushed into you.
It’s a struggle to get his second finger in, one that he almost abandoned had you not pleaded so prettily otherwise (“No! Keep going. Please.”), but you do; Like the strong, pretty, good girl Yuji thinks you to be— that he whispered so huskily beside your ear, causing a surge of wetness to push out from you— and in the slight forward lean of your body against his, Yuji can curl his fingers even deeper in you.
Restricted in pace by the barrier of your panties, he quickly pushes them to the side with the hand that isn’t buried in the wetness of your pussy, and he resumes his task. Only this time, with more ferocity.
“There we go,” he mutters and his pace accelerates, two curled fingers thrusting rapidly in and out of your entrance and his palm bumping into your pulsating clit. “That’s what I want.”
The muffled click of your wetness against his hand reverberates throughout the room alongside your panting breaths, but it only heightens your arousal, a pathetic, “Yuji!” escaping your lips.
It only makes him go faster and faster and faster until the tight coil that has been building in your stomach erupts, and you shake uncontrollably in Yuji’s lap. His name a prayer chanted repeatedly on your swollen and bruised lips.
Yuji swears he’s never seen anything so beautiful. The way your eyes shut and your brows furrow in overwhelming ecstasy, the way he has to wrap his arms around your thrashing body just to hold you steady on his lap. You curl so invitingly into him—exhausted and relieved and totally unguarded in his presence, trusting him completely to take care of you and your pleasure.
It’s a feat that Yuji wears with the highest of pride as he beams in absolute awe at your convulsing and writhing body, heaven glistening on his fingertips, and the tamer of metal gods—a goddess herself—seated on her throne. Too tempted by the stickiness on his fingers, he pushes them into his mouth, giving an audible moan when the taste of you hits his tongue, which earns him a feverish kiss from you, and Yuji wants to do this forever.
He wants to bask in the altar of your body for the rest of time; The greatest of honors, he insists it will be, and to even be privy to your accelerated pleasure must be a blessing in and of itself; Good luck will forever bless Yuji because of it, he’s convinced.
He’s content where he is, rubbing his wet fingers down the sides of your body in watchful care, placing gentle kisses on your skin still riddled with goosebumps, riding the waves of your orgasm with you, whispering endlessly on how good you are, how good you did as though his own heart wasn’t beating erratically out of his chance at the prospect of making you cum. The night could end here, and he would be fine; Happy and proud at his efforts and knowing that he’s made you his, but then your hand tugs on the band of his briefs, body still wracked with pants and eyes half-lidded as you finally look at him and say,
“I want you inside of me.”
And he doesn’t really know what happens next. His head is swimming with arousal and your scent, mouth flooded with the taste of your lips and wetness from where he licked his fingers, and he doesn’t know what happens. Only that there’s a fumbling of bodies, a pushing of clothing and then suddenly, you’re sinking on the length of his cock and he’s seeing stars.
Lips meeting each other once more, like lost lovers finally reuniting, your kiss distracts him from the slow descent of your warmth onto him. He knows it needs to be slow, two fingers only granting so much preparation, but each inch of him that slips into the warmth of your caress has him twitching further and digging his blunt nails into the fat of your skin.
You seat yourself on his length with a groan, eyes glued to the place where you two meet, “Fuck, Yuji.”
In the awe of his stare, desperate to know how you’re feeling, he asks breathlessly, “What, baby? Tell me. Talk to me.”
You look up slowly, biting your lip and the haze of pleasure written on your face, “‘m so full. You’re so big.”
Yuji chokes, his dick twitching inside of you. You almost made him cum from your words alone. Fuck, no wonder you’re special.
Your hands scrunch in his hair, your thighs seated on either side of him and you begin to move your hips against his. He’s so heavy, so full inside of you, so addicting. You can’t stop; Don’t want to. Not when he feels so good.
His veiny cock rubbing against all the sensitive parts of your pussy, feeling lodged into your throat, completely overwhelmed by him as his hands run over every free space of your skin. So intertwined with him, so latched onto him in mind, body, and spirit, you’re not at all surprised when you feel the familiar rise of an orgasm approaching—propelled further by his thumb circling your clit.
Intuitively, he can feel it coming; Your walls contract tightly against him and he’s grateful for it as his climax is right around the corner. He pulls himself from your kiss, hovering over your agape mouth, and breathes hotly against it. Your parted lips bumping into his with each gentle rock of his hips into you, “Let go, baby. I got you.”
Even in the trance of pleasure, your mind and body submerged in the taste of his rapture and the rhythmic sway of his body moving against yours, the hurt of the past still prevails through the clouds. The ache of loss and the fear of another coupled with the erratic pleasure racking your body had every nerve ending set alight with fire. Overwhelmed, you halt the rise of your hips on him, his tip weighing heavily still in your entrance and you tighten your grip on the back of his neck, pulling his forehead against yours.
You shake your head, your sweat combining with his on every surface of connected skin, voice thick with emotion, “Please—”
His right arm snakes tightly around your waist, his hand settling on your right hip and lowering you down onto him, pushing your body into a faster pace. His length fills you to the brim once more, replacing any mode of thought with the overwhelming feeling of being so full. So thick inside you, stretching you repeatedly even as your entrance drips copious amounts of wet slick down the side of him and onto his thighs. Sticky, and hot, and so, so, good.
The pace he sets has him biting down on his lip and contorting his brow in hedonism. His warmth burns deliciously on your skin, and with a push of his hand on you that angles his cock to hit against a particular spot, tears prick in the corner of your eyes that you try to prevent from falling by shutting your eyes closed tightly.
And maybe it’s from the overwhelming nature of being stimulated so much and being so surrounded by Yuji, or maybe it’s from the residual high of realizing that he was meant to be a co-pilot alongside you, destined to be yours for the rest of your tenure in some capacity that has you gripping even harder on him and fighting your demons a little bit faster.
“Please,” You beg, voice dropping to a whisper, “Pleasepleaseplease don’t leave me.”
He stops his thrusts, and you cry out in impudence. The stillness of his motions only adds more proof to the cursed feelings of abandonment in your head.
Yuji removes his hand from your hip and your eyes snap open, ready to beg him to put it back, to continue making you feel so good, so whole, so complete when he cups one hand on the side of your face and another around your back. His thumb rubs gently against your cheek, wiping away the tears that disobeyed your desires and fell to his whims. The tears that no longer wished to be held tightly by you, but instead fled to find sanctuary in him and his touch.
His brown eyes bore into yours, worry and lust addled in the oceans of his iris. His brain, even in its one-track train of thought, seems to scramble at your reverent confession. It’s aching to realize that even in the most conjoined physical aspect of your bodies, his hands and mouth and tongue working tirelessly to remind you of just how intertwined your bodies and souls are, you still don’t believe it to be true. Your mind can’t rest and submit to reality, it still fights the nightmares.
But he won’t let you fight them alone.
You see him make the decision, and you feel it happen almost instantaneously; His lips press into yours and he laves gently on your bottom lip. It isn’t the first time it’s happened tonight but in the desperation of your aching pain and pleasure, you savor it religiously, pulling him even closer. It’s gentle at first, but upon your acceptance of his affection, it quickly turns rawer and more open. The pressure increases as he pours his reassurance into the kiss because if you can’t believe his words, then maybe, you could believe his actions. Maybe you could believe him when he says that the connection is real, that he is real, and he would force himself to live even through the most painful of tortures just to keep you sane.
Lifting your body on your knees, you sink on his member, resuming the halted grinding of your hips against his. It should be frightening how you find so much pride in the quiet gasp and muffled moan that emits from him, but you only want more. He breaks the kiss, a string of spit connecting the two of your mouths as he pulls away.
“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere,” He says, a hot gaze and equally hot touch sending flames down the entirety of your body. He can see the effect it has on you—he must be able to—in the way that you throw your head back in sheer delight. He must equally take enjoyment in it considering he immediately dives in to suck at the newly exposed skin.
“I’m with you. Are you with me, hm? You gonna cum with me?” He murmurs against your neck, licking then placing a small, loving kiss on one spot before moving to the next. You moan breathlessly, and he laughs gently along the column of your throat.
“C’mon pretty girl. Answer me.”
His fingers trail up to the back of your neck, holding the base of your head in his hand and tilting your thrown back head to face him. The dazed look on your face, the blissful, deference displayed unabashedly on your features has him throbbing in desire, twitching inside of you that has another moan drawing from your mouth.
“Yes! Yuji, please, wanna cum with you.”
“Then do it, baby. Take it. I’m yours. I always have been.”
And like a crack in the final wall of your defensive heart, the dam breaks and you convulse once more in the arms of the man of your fate. He follows, hot spurts of himself filling you, his body spent as you both lean tiredly on one another. Chests breathing heavily and sticky with sweat, it isn’t until he flops backward onto the bed, you following on top of his chest, that he lets out an airy laugh.
Your favorite kind of laugh that has a smile tugging on your face and adds levity to break the tension of the room. Placing his hand on your sweaty back, he rubs his fingers along your spine.
“What’re you laughing at?” You ask drowsily, voice absent of the pointed malice you had tried to put in.
He exhales a happy breath, the falling of his chest bringing you down with him, “’m just happy.”
You laugh, pull your head up, and lean your chin against Yuji’s sternum. Drawing circles on his bare chest, you ask, “Post-sex bliss get you that good?”
He quickly shakes his head, that dreamy smile and ruffled hair making him look revoltingly sweet. Especially when his fingers raised to brush away at the flyaway hairs that float around your face. He’s quiet in his surveyance of you for a moment, composing his thoughts before he utters them; Tells you exactly what he’s been thinking since the moment he knew the connection was real. Since before you were both tethered to one another by a machine and a fate absent of all kindness, but hopeful in the future of you two.
The widening of your eyes would usually have Yuji fall backward in panic, that deep incessant need to have your approval wracking through his body and would have him stuttering now if he wasn’t so confident in it. If he wasn’t so sure in what he felt, what he believes and knows to be true. And he doesn’t think twice about it, considering his beliefs got him to Sukuna like he always knew it would, got him and the rest of the world a step closer to ending this war, got him to the partner he’s always wanted—got him to you.
“You don’t have to say it back,” He continues, and there’s no hurt in his words, only understanding and ease. Knowing the difficulty of your heart and the war in your brain, knowing that where you remain unsure, he can sit in certainty without issue. “I don’t want you to. I just want… I just want you to know that I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want to go anywhere where you aren’t. Kaijus and Marshal Naga be damned.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Yuji,” You remind him softly, heart aching at his confession. Not because you can’t reciprocate, but because you do.
“I know,” He says and he pulls you gently upward on his chest, so your lips hover over his and he can look into your eyes properly, “But I wanna keep this one. For the rest of my life.”
“That sounds like a marriage proposal,” You laugh against his lips, pressing yours to his for a quick kiss.
“Is that a yes?” He asks eagerly.
“Let’s end this war and then we can talk about that.”
“Aha!” He exclaims and moves an arm to rest behind his head, the other wrapped tightly still around your waist, “So you do think we can do it! C’mon babe, just say it. We make a great team.”
You only shake your head in response, a loving roll of your eyes sent his way before you settle yourself into his neck and rest comfortably on top of him. The rise and fall of his chest lulling you into the security of sleep that has for so long escaped you, mind enticed by the prospect of rest only because of him. Eyes finally able to stay shut because you know without a doubt that if Yuji is by your side, you can do anything.
Maybe, even, voice the words you’ve been feeling and not feel frightened as they sit in the air.
“Start planning now, pretty girl. This time tomorrow, we’ll have kicked all the Kaiju ass in the world, and we’ll be getting married. Do you think Megumi should be my best man or Nanami?”
“Yuji—” Your voice has a twinge of something in your voice that Yuji can’t pinpoint—exhaustion, exasperation, hesitation, something—and Yuji relents. Knowing that the sudden energy he acquired from just having you near him needed to be dampened to allow for some sleep; Sleep that you only get with him, he notes rather confidently. His smile doesn’t lessen even as he acquiesces.
“Alright, alright. I’ll sto—”
“I’m in love with you too.”
end note: if you got to here, thanks for reading. feedback is so appreciated
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