Chapter Text
Akane woke up to the slow, rhythmic beeping in his ear.
The sound was steady, methodical, a mechanical pulse that wasn’t his , but tethered him to the world all the same.
His head was full of fog.
His limbs felt like lead.
And his throat was dry —so dry it burned, like he’d spent hours breathing in dust.
For a few minutes—maybe longer, maybe shorter, he couldn’t tell—he just lay there, too heavy and too distant to move. His thoughts were slow, sluggish, tangled together like threads of half-formed memories and half-forgotten dreams. IIt was subtle at first; just a dull awareness, a sensation that sat heavy in the back of his mind. His body ached, but the pain was muted, distant, as though it didn’t quite belong to him. The air smelled sterile, too clean, too artificial.
Akane still tried to get his eyes to open as he inhaled slowly—or tried to inhale slowly—but the air felt thin, wrong, like he wasn’t breathing enough of it in.
It was… too quiet.
Not the kind of oppressive, suffocating silence that came with the Far Shore—not the hollow stillness of a place stripped of life. Somehow too loud at the same time with the whirr of unknown mechanical hums and beeps clogging his mind. One thing that stood out against all of it however was the subtle sound of pages turning.
His fingers twitched.
He could move, feeling a scratchy fabric against his fingertips… he was alive, then.
Didn’t quite remember why he shouldn’t be, but something deep in his chest told him there had been a moment—a split-second decision, a pull between one side and the other—and now he was here .
He wasn’t sure if that was a relief or a punishment.
He let the thought settle, tried to pick apart the heaviness in his chest, tried to figure out what else felt so strange—
And then, a voice.
“Sleep well?”
It was calm, casual—light and effortless, like the person it belonged to had all the time in the world.
Akane’s eyes fluttered open fully, slower this time, and through the bleariness came the blurry light, muted colors, white walls, and an IV line hooked into his arm. As the room came more into focus he could identify a faint breeze shifting the edge of a curtain across the other side of the room. His mind struggled to catch up, to stitch the fragments together, but the pieces weren’t quite falling into place yet.
Something shifted beside him. A quiet rustle of fabric, the faintest movement just within his peripheral vision.
Akane turned his head—or tried to. His body didn’t fully cooperate, but his gaze did shift slightly, just enough to land on the only other person in the room.
He blinked.
Oh. Of course.
Teru Minamoto sat beside his hospital bed, completely at ease, one leg crossed over the other, flipping through a book with all the casual grace of someone waiting for a train acting like Akane wasn’t supposed to be dead by now.
Like the last thing he remembered wasn’t Teru dragging him through the halls, pressing gauze to his stomach and standing over him as he lost consciousness.
Akane stared at him for a long moment, brain still sluggishly piecing things together.
“…What the hell,” Akane rasped, voice barely above a whisper.
Teru hummed, lazily flipping to the next page. “Good morning to you too, Aoi,” Teru said, sounding irritatingly casual, “I was starting to think you’d sleep through the whole week.”
Akane’s sluggish brain stuttered over that.
A week?
Had he really been out that long?
His mind tried to rewind, to remember , but the last thing he could grasp was Teru’s voice cutting through the haze—firm, insistent—telling him to “ stay awake” .
He opened his mouth to say something, anything , but his throat was so dry that all he managed was a hoarse, unintelligible sound of frustration.
Teru sighed softly through his nose and set the book down so quickly that Akane almost gathered the idea that he hadn't even been reading it at all, turning his attention to Akane. Teru grabbed the plastic cup from the bedside table and slowly pressed the straw to Akane’s lips without ceremony.
“Drink.”
Akane scowled weakly but took a sip anyway, throat too raw to protest properly, besides, he knew he couldn’t do it himself with how delirious he still was. The water was cold, sharp against his parched mouth, but it helped—grounded him, brought him back to himself.
After a few slow sips, he turned his head away, exhaling shakily as Teru set the cup back down.
For a long moment, neither of them said anything.
The heart monitor beeped. The book’s pages fluttered slightly in the hospital’s central air system. Somewhere outside the room, muffled voices drifted from the hall. His body felt like lead. His stomach ached—not sharp, not unbearable, but a dull, deep-set pain beneath layers of gauze. A fresh IV drip kept a slow, steady flow of something cold running through his veins.
Finally—Akane found his voice again.
“You—” he started, voice still hoarse. He swallowed. “What are you still doing here?”
Still, Teru raised an eyebrow in response, flipping another page. “Recovering people tend to need supervision. Would you rather have woken up to a nurse?”
“Recovering people also tend to have family for that,” Akane shot back, his voice a little stronger this time.
Teru didn’t blink. “I didn’t see any family here for you when I visited.” He let the comment sink between them, as if a rock suddenly submerged in water. It slowly drifted to the bottom of the conversation until one of them dared to speak on it.
Akane wasn’t sure he wanted to go into the details of his home situation- mainly the fact he didn’t care to admit to Teru that he didn’t have any family that cared enough to even visit him in the hospital. If his sorry excuse for parents even bothered to know he wasn’t at home.
Akane wasn’t sure what annoyed him more—Teru’s presence, or the fact that he couldn’t immediately come up with a sharp reply to deflect the comment.
The truth was—Teru was right. There was no family waiting for him. No concerned parent sitting at his bedside, no frantic phone calls demanding to know where he’d been for the past week. His parents probably hadn’t even noticed.
And even if they had, it wasn’t like they would’ve cared.
That was just how it was.
He had accepted that a long time ago.
But having Teru say it out loud—so plainly, so casually —made something tighten in his chest.
He turned his head slightly, gaze dropping to the edge of the thin hospital blanket. “…Doesn’t mean you had to be the one sitting here.”
Teru let out a short breath, amused, flipping another page. “I didn’t have to. I chose to.”
Akane’s scowl deepened. “That’s worse.”
Teru actually smirked at that. “So ungrateful.”
He didn’t get it. Teru wasn’t his person. They weren’t close. They weren’t friends . Their interactions consisted of arguments, half-meant insults, exorcism threats, and occasional reluctant teamwork. Teru barely tolerated him—hell, he’d made that painfully clear every time Akane stepped too far into supernatural territory.
And yet, here he was.
Still.
After everything.
The thought settled in his chest strangely, twisting into something he wasn’t sure he had the energy to name.
“…How often did you visit?” he asked, before he could fully think the question through.
Teru tilted his head slightly. “What, feeling flattered?”
Akane rolled his eyes. “Just answer the damn question.”
Teru let out a thoughtful hum. “Every day.”
Akane blinked.
His breath stalled.
“…What?”
Teru didn’t elaborate. Didn’t smirk, didn’t tease—just flipped another page, voice as calm as ever. “Every day,” he repeated. “Would’ve been a waste to go through the trouble of saving you just for you to drop dead when no one was looking.”
Akane frowned slightly, studying him.
He felt like there was something more to it—like there was something just beneath the surface that Teru just wasn’t saying.
But he wouldn’t press it.
Not when his chest was already tight with something strange, something uncomfortable.
He had spent so long assuming that Teru didn’t really care—that despite working together, despite all the history, despite the arguments and the rivalry and everything else, Teru had always just tolerated him.
He was a nuisance at best. An anomaly Teru couldn’t exorcise.
And yet—
Akane swallowed thickly, forcing himself to focus on something else. “…What the hell do you even do when you’re here? Read that book over and over again?”
Teru glanced down at it, as if just now remembering it was still in his hands. “Well, there’s much else to do when you refuse to wake up. I was starting to think you were just doing it to inconvenience me.”
Akane rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. Because annoying you would definitely be the biggest concern on my mind.”
Teru smirked. “You’d be surprised.”
Akane still just couldn’t wrap his head around this. Not just the fact that Teru had been here every day —though that, in itself, was enough to make Akane’s brain short-circuit a little. But the idea he cared enough at all to visit him rather than dump him on the hospital staff and leave.
Akane hated how much that threw him. For a long moment, he just lay there, staring at Teru, trying to piece it together.
And finally, before he could stop himself, he muttered, “…I thought you hated me.”
Teru turned another page of his book, barely reacting. “You say that like it would’ve stopped me.”
Akane frowned. “That’s not an answer.”
Teru’s smirk faded and his eyes fell from his book as he almost frowned at Akane. Not entirely—his expression was still light, still unreadable—but the humor had faltered .
Akane watched him carefully, waiting for the answer, waiting for something that made sense.
Teru, however, only studied him in return, gaze unreadable.
“I never hated you, Aoi.” he said, voice calm, sincere.
Akane inhaled slowly, fingers curling slightly against the sheets.
The words shouldn’t have hit as hard as they did.
They shouldn’t have mattered.
And yet, for some reason, they did.
Because why?
He had expected denial. Some kind of deflection. Some half-assed attempt to skirt the subject entirely.
But instead, Teru had said it outright . Like it wasn’t even a question or like it was something obvious .
Akane wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
Teru was an exorcist. He was the golden boy of the Minamoto clan, perfect and composed, always standing on the opposite side of the supernatural world Akane had spent years tangled in.
And Akane—he was a problem. A loose thread. A half-supernatural mess that Teru should have exorcised years ago if not for the technicality that Akane was still, technically , human.
He exhaled the breath he was holding in slowly, trying to shake the strange, twisting feeling in his chest. “…Could’ve fooled me.”
Then, Teru leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees as once again that insufferable grin appeared on his face. “I could hate you, if it makes you feel better.”
Akane snorted weakly. “You don’t need to fake it, Pres.”
Teru gave him a look—one of those amused, unreadable ones that should’ve been irritating, but Akane was too tired to be properly annoyed.
“If I hated you,” Teru said, almost conversationally, “I wouldn’t have bothered dragging you to a hospital and staying here.”
Akane wanted to say yeah, I noticed , but something about the way Teru phrased it made his brain short-circuit for a second.
Because it wasn’t just I wouldn’t have saved you .
It was I wouldn’t have stayed .
And that was harder to wrap his head around.
“…I don’t get you,” Akane muttered after a long pause, letting his head fall to the side again.
Teru smirked, folding his arms over his chest. “Good. Keeps things interesting.”
Akane rolled his eyes—or, he tried to, but he was still too exhausted to put much energy into it. Instead, he just exhaled sharply through his nose and tried to shift into a slightly more upright position.
Bad idea.
Pain immediately shot through his stomach, a sharp reminder of just how not healed he was.
His breath caught in his throat. His body stiffened.
Teru noticed immediately.
“Don’t move, Aoi,” Teru said, and before Akane could register what was happening, a firm hand was pressing against his shoulder, keeping him from straining any further. “You’re lucky you didn’t tear anything just now.”
Akane grit his teeth, forcing himself to relax before the pain got any worse. “…Not a fan of lying around all day.”
Teru rolled his eyes. “Well, too bad. Doctor’s orders.”
Akane huffed weakly, turning his head to glare at Teru. “Are you a doctor now?”
Teru smirked, fingers finally lifting from his shoulder. “I am the one who kept you alive long enough to get here. Would you rather I’d just left you in the school hallway?”
Akane clicked his tongue, irritated but unable to argue with that. He hesitated, gaze flickering slightly.
“…The severance,” he muttered. “What happened?”
Teru was silent for a moment.
Then, he leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms, watching Akane carefully.
“It’s over,” he said simply.
Akane swallowed thickly. He had already known that—had felt it the moment he woke up—but hearing Teru say it, final and certain, made something settle heavy in his chest.
“…I thought I wouldn’t make it,” he admitted quietly.
Teru’s expression didn’t change. “You almost didn’t.”
Akane closed his eyes for a brief second, inhaling through his nose.
So, that was that.
The severance was over. The supernatural presence in Kamome was gone. And he—he was still here, somehow, even when it felt like he shouldn’t be.
But—
His throat tightened.
Aoi was still gone.
That fact sat at the edge of his consciousness, heavy and suffocating, like a weight pressing against his chest that he couldn’t shake. His hands curled slightly against the hospital sheets.
She wasn’t coming back.
He had known that. Had felt that, too. The moment it had happened, the moment she had slipped beyond his reach—
But now, left with the aftermath, with the sheer emptiness of it—
He forced himself to swallow again, shifting just enough to glance at Teru.
The other boy was still watching him—calm, composed, too steady for Akane’s liking. Like he had already braced himself for whatever Akane was going to say next.
Akane studied him for a long moment.
Then, finally—
“…What happens now?”
Teru hummed, leaning back slightly. “You rest. You recover. You stop trying to sit up like you’re about to walk out of here.”
Akane scowled, rolling his eyes. “That’s not what I meant, Pres .”
Teru’s smirk flickered slightly.
Ah. So he did know what Akane meant.
Of course he did.
Akane exhaled slowly, fingers twitching against the sheets. “Ao-chan,” he muttered. “What’s your plan to get her back?”
Teru was silent for a moment.
And that silence told Akane everything .
His breath hitched slightly. His chest tightened.
Because that meant—
“…You don’t have a plan, do you?”
Teru’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I never said that.”
Akane’s scowl deepened. “You didn’t say that. Which means you’re dodging the question.”
Teru clicked his tongue, glancing off to the side, as if carefully picking his next words. Akane hated that. Hated the way he always did this, always acted like he had everything under control, always kept things to himself until it was convenient for him .
Because this wasn’t just some supernatural problem anymore. This wasn’t just another exorcist job to handle.
This was Aoi .
“Teru.”
The name slipped out before Akane could stop himself.
And that— that —made Teru pause.
His gaze snapped back to Akane’s face, his usual amused expression flickering for half a second, just long enough for something unreadable to pass through his eyes.
Akane inhaled sharply. “You don’t have a plan.”
But when Teru finally spoke, his voice was steady. Certain.
“I have a plan.”
Akane didn’t believe him. Not entirely.
“Bullshit,” he muttered.
Teru smirked slightly, setting the book aside. “Now, now, Aoi. No need for such language in a place of healing.”
Akane’s eyes narrowed. “If you really had a plan, you’d be halfway through executing it by now.”
Teru tilted his head, amused. “You really don’t trust me, huh?”
Akane let out a breath. His mind was still foggy, still slow, but he could tell—whatever “plan” Teru had, it wasn’t solid.
“Don’t think too hard about it, Aoi,” he said smoothly, trying to turn the conversation light again “You might hurt yourself.”
But Akane couldn’t just let it go, his brows furrowed and he struggled to sit up more to meet Teru’s face so he could tell him off eye to eye. “Minamoto—”
“Aoi.”
Akane faltered.
Teru’s voice had softened—not by much, but enough that it threw Akane off balance.
Enough that he wasn’t sure how to respond.
“…You just need to focus on getting better,” Teru continued, taking Akane by the shoulders gently, maneuvering him back to a lying position. “That’s all that matters right now.”
Akane clenched his jaw although he could feel his strength was spent. “That’s not all that matters.”
“I have a plan.” Teru asserted once more, “But your biggest concern should be to rest. Afterall…”
Teru stood up and backed off as he smiled off into the distance to himself, his hand on his chin as a mischievous smirk came to his face, “If you’re still stuck here in the hospital because you couldn’t let your wounds heal, I’ll be sure to tell Akane-san how useless you were when I save her.”
Akane’s eye twitched.
It was a weak reaction—he was still too drained to properly glare at Teru, still too groggy to shoot back the kind of sharp remark he wanted to. But damn it if that didn’t light a fire somewhere deep in his exhausted bones.
“What the hell are you—” Akane started, voice still hoarse, but Teru was already taking a step back, lifting his hands in mock surrender.
“Careful, Aoi,” Teru said, a teasing lilt in his voice. “Nurses might have to sedate you if you get too worked up.”
Akane clenched his jaw. Smug bastard.
Teru turned slightly, reaching for his jacket draped over the back of the chair. He shook it out once, smoothing out the fabric before slipping it over his shoulders in a way that was just so casual , so calculated , like he had already won whatever unspoken game they were playing.
Akane scowled, struggling to push himself up again, but before he could shift so much as shift, Teru pointed a warning finger at him. “Don’t even try it.”
Akane huffed sharply through his nose, falling back against the pillows, irritation burning at the edges of his exhaustion. “You’re so full of yourself.”
Teru flashed a grin. “I prefer to think of it as confidence.”
Akane exhaled, tilting his head away. “I hate you.”
Teru chuckled softly, his voice carrying an infuriating amount of amusement. “Mhm. Get some rest, Aoi.”
Akane didn’t respond. He just closed his eyes and let his breath settle.
He could feel Teru’s presence lingering for a few more seconds—like he was making sure Akane wasn’t about to say something else, or maybe just waiting to see if he was truly finished arguing.
Then, at last, quiet footsteps moved toward the door.
There was the soft click of it unlocking, the faintest creak of hinges, and then—
“Aoi.”
Akane’s eyes cracked open just slightly.
Teru was still standing in the doorway, one hand on the frame, glancing back over his shoulder. His expression was unreadable again—not playful, not smug, not teasing. Just… composed. Calm.
“I meant it.” His voice was steady, unshaken.
Akane studied him, he wasn’t sure what the blonde was referring to–assuming he meant the fact he insisted he had a plan–or perhaps the fact he said he didn’t hate Akane at all. He searched for any hint of dishonesty, any sign that Teru was just saying that to keep him pacified.
He found none.
“…Tch.” Akane let out a breath and turned his head away. “Fine. Whatever.”
Teru didn’t say anything else.
With one final, almost lazy wave of his hand, he stepped out into the hall, the door clicking shut behind him.
Akane let his eyes slip closed again, his fingers twitching against the sheets.
I have a plan.
He wasn’t sure if he believed it.
But he wanted to.
He had to.
For now, though…
He let himself rest.