Work Text:
“Hey, when this is over—”
here, yugo says, you can have rin’s room.
arms sweep grandly as he opens the door for her, but the early vigour he had exuded, an exuberance both radiant and infectious as he offered yuzu city’s lights, spiralling into the night and reflected across the water, was lacking. and yet, what lay amiss in vibrancy he more than matched with pride, the particular sheen of yugo’s protectiveness over this room and its occupants its own sort of wonder—
and yes, more than once throughout this strange, brief time together, yuzu wondered just what exactly it was that she had done to warrant this, to find herself warm within the fold of yugo’s life, counted within the sphere of yugo’s most important things, yugo’s beloved people, lit like fading sunlight by shaky lighting that wouldn’t quite conceal the absence of someone else, that third shadow haunting in its refusal to be spoken out loud.
oh, yugo, yuzu says.
she’s everywhere, she doesn’t say, but here, and you won’t let anyone tell you, not even yourself.
“Don’t.”
yugo doesn’t step away but already yuzu can see him shifting further from this space, distance in the slope of his shoulders and the bend of his hands as he tethers himself closer to yuzu instead, however reckless, however fleeting, the angle of his body slipping towards her own, silhouettes blurring indistinctly beneath them: a single, clumsily-shaped figure spooling over the floorboards.
this is okay, right? he says, and yuzu thinks how could it be even as she smiles, and nods, and hums:
thank you, yugo.
and then, because she couldn't let this, too, fade out from the foreground: you didn’t have to.
aw, c’mon, i couldn’t let you stay outside, yugo laughs. where else would you go?
—quiet, then. yugo doesn’t push for an answer and yuzu doesn’t prod at any of the unspoken things, hanging soft and sad between them, beneath them. fingers twitch, the hand closest to yuzu’s own curling outward before reaching up, instead, to fiddle with yugo’s collar, the hairs clinging to his nape. the floors creak. outside the chill of the night begins to sink into the room.
laughter, suddenly, sharp from yugo and helpless from yuzu, yuzu walking yugo out to the door as yugo takes his steps backwards, watching yuzu’s face, tension slackening from his expression though his focus remains, unwavering.
hey, she says, loud in the near unbearable-stillness, show me around some more in the morning?
—maybe even tonight, yugo cuts in, if you’re not so tired.
maybe, yuzu allows.
maybe, yugo echoes, sung so the words tiptoe upwards into a smile.
a weight within yuzu unfurls just enough to close the door without losing her own grin, small and unexpected, as she leans forward to rest against the wood, imagining the phantom shape of yugo’s grin, soft and seeking, curling into the recesses beneath her eyelids.
“—Okay. Okay, I won’t.”