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The alarm on the bedside table is blaring 3:36 AM in red blocky letters, and Shin shouldn’t be awake.
Usually he doesn’t have trouble sleeping, and for that he’s pretty damn lucky; he knows he could have it way worse than he does. Some nights really, really just wanna give him a kick in the balls, though. Y’know, just to remind him that why he’s in the Sorcerer’s Realm to begin with, as he looks out of the window and sees the sprawling city that he’s lucky to be a part of, in the apartment that’s lucky to own, on the bed he’s lucky to have.
Somewhere in his mind he sees the image of a man tied to a chair, beaten black and blue and bloody with golden-blonde hair still visible in the dim light, and Shin practically smashes his knuckles into his eyes just so he’s seeing anything else.
Lucky. Right.
He throws the sheets off his body with a huff, and he lets loose an involuntary shiver when his feet touch the freezing hardwood floor. En’s Mansion did have heating, and it extended to Shin’s suite, thankfully, but the chill crept in late in the night and seeped in through the walls. Shin really doesn’t have the patience to fuck with the thermostat right now.
He pads into the kitchen and opens the door to the fridge. Crouching down, he sees… a whole lot of nothing. A half-eaten sandwich, a six-pack of beer missing a bottle, some miscellaneous stuff that he suspects is going bad (or at least will be soon) and a bunch of condiments on the inside of the door that he always forgets are there. “I’m gonna need to go grocery shopping, soon,” he thinks. He sighs through his nose, closing the door with a soft foomph .
While he’s in the kitchen, he goes ahead and gets himself a glass of water, and before he even notices it, he’s drained the glass and is sticking it under the tap to fill it again. The next glass, he forces himself to drink slower, but before he’s even halfway down, something in his mouth tastes acrid. He dumps the rest down the sink, leaving the glass empty on the counter.
He walks aimlessly through the kitchen and back out into the living area, and shivers again. He gets brief flashes to earlier that day, with Noi grabbing his hand to take him to some silly little shop she saw. Truth be told, he couldn’t focus on whatever it was she was showing him when against the backdrop of the setting sun and the bright oranges and pinks and yellows she was warmer than anything there.
He looks down at his hands, and he clenches them to try and catch that phantom warmth, create a facsimile of that feeling, and he throws his hands at his sides when he’s left grasping at nothing. At smoke.
He looks to the door to his suite. “She’s only a short walk down the hallway, maybe I could--”
He cuts off that line of thought immediately. As much as he would certainly like to, he just… can’t. There were lines he shouldn’t, couldn’t cross, and this was one of them. They were colleagues, partners, friends , and close at that, but the most they’ve ever done was sleep over at the other’s place accidentally. Like, getting drunk and just crashing on the nearest horizontal surface, or after an exhausting job just saying fuck it and again, crashing onto the nearest horizontal surface. This would be different, this would be something deliberate , something new , and while Shin would like to think their relationship was stronger than that, the secret, scared-little-boy part of him has it ingrained that something bad will happen if he shows that- that weakness .
He looks to the door again. He looks down at his hands, clenches them experimentally, and looks back to the door. He lets his hands fall back down to his sides, and he sighs.
The scared little boy may not have won, but the man hopelessly in love with his best friend did. Without another thought, he walks over to the door, closing it shut behind him with a soft click, and he makes his way down the hall to the door marked “403.”
He doesn’t know how long he stands there in front of her door. If anyone were awake, he’d probably look like a fool, and to be fair he feels like a fool; he knows he looks like shit, his hair a mess,only wearing a t-shirt and boxers. He looks up to the ceiling, and after trying and failing horribly at making out any details, he exhales harshly through his nose and knocks on the door with three short, soft knocks.
He waits a minute. Two minutes go by, and then three. He waits there for a bit more before he feels heat crawl up to his cheeks and ears. This is so fucking stupid - he is a grown man, not a child! He should be able to handle nightmares-- hell, he practically works with and sees nightmares on the daily, this is nothing! Not to mention, it’s ass o’clock in the morning and this is the only day this week where neither of them have to get up stupidly early for one of En’s jobs. He’s about to turn around when he hears a hoarse and sleepy “Comin’, I’m comin’” on the other side of the door, and suddenly he’s completely rooted in place.
The door swings open to reveal a disheveled Noi, her wild white hair even more of a mane than usual, clad in a tank-top and underwear, and no, Shin is not staring at the portion of her stomach that’s visible under her tank-top, thanks.
She calls him out of his stupor with a soft “Shin?” and he’s never been more thankful that it’s dark as all hell so she can’t see him blushing.
“Uh, hi,” he starts, and then immediately regrets it. Noi, still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, tilts her head at him.
“What’re you doing out here…? It’s, like-” she looks back into the suite for a moment before turning back to him, “-really early. Is everything alright?”
Yes. No. Better now that you’re here, he doesn’t say. “Not... not really,” he says, without thinking, and the minute the words are out of his mouth, he regrets it. Noi’s hand droops a bit from her face and she looks a good deal more awake than she did when she first opened the door, and she’s staring right at him. Shin doesn’t think he’s ever wanted to run away more in his life than he does right now.
Maybe he could go back to Hole. Leave the manor, grab a magician to do some magic on him to change his appearance, and live out his life there. Or maybe run away to Mastema, and hide among the mushrooms. Something, anything, other than here--
“Hey,” she says, laying a hand on his shoulder, and then Shin does the number one thing he shouldn’t have. He’s already going out on a limb, being here to begin with, admitting that he’s not okay (granted, not on purpose), but just now, he… flinches.
Shin just flinched in front of Noi.
It wasn’t anything big or drastic. It wasn’t violent. But the minute she lays her hand on his shoulder, any and all warmth drains from his body and he goes stiff, and he knows Noi knows when he sees her eyes go wide even in the dark of the En Mansion hallway, the only light being the gentle moonlight coming in from the window behind her.
“Did… Did you--”
“Goodnight, Noi,” He cuts in, before she can finish her sentence. Turning on his heel he begins to walk back to his room and not look behind him at who he’s leaving, but he’s stopped when he feels a hand on his shoulder once more. This time, it’s a lot more insistent on stopping him, and he surprises himself for the third time tonight. He lets her stop him. He doesn’t think he could fight out of her grip even if he truly wanted to.
He doesn’t turn around to face her, though. Not until she forcibly turns him around, and even then, he won’t look her in the eyes. He knows that if he does, he won’t like what he sees. Instead, he focuses on the nearest bit of decoration on the wall next to him, and her hand squeezes a little harder. It’s not a malicious squeeze -he would know if it were- but he knows what she’s trying to do and he can’t .
“Senpai,” She tries. He doesn’t respond.
“Senpai?” She tries again, and still he refuses to respond. She lays both hands on his shoulders, and he feels the guilt rising like bile in his throat.
This time, she surprises him , and her hands move up from their places on his shoulders, losing their forcefulness as they come up to caress his neck and up further to cup his cheeks in her palms, gentle and calm. Like she’s afraid he’ll run from her. Like he’s something worth being gentle with.
“Shin,” She whispers, and he doesn’t think he’s ever heard her voice so quiet, and that alone is enough to cause her to look into her eyes. He can barely see a damn thing with how dark it is, but he feels the warmth of her hands on his face, rough thumbs sweeping unevenly across his cheekbones, and she’s being so fucking gentle with him, and after his nerves being shot all night, it’s enough to make him sag into her. His forehead comes to meet her shoulder and the moment he does her arms wrap around him, one hand at the back of his head to keep it there, and the other wrapping around to crush him to her chest. It takes a moment for his arms to catch up with everything else, but they begin to snake around her waist, and then they tighten, and tighten, and tighten , and he doesn’t need her hand at the back of his head to burrow his face into her shoulder and keep it there. He can’t help but think that at every point where they connect makes him feel like he’s on fire, and he can’t help but wonder if she’s feeling it, too.
He’s not sure how long they stay like that. It could be minutes, hours. He doesn’t care much, honestly. All he knows is neither of them pulls away, even as he speaks for the first time in… a while.
“Sorry ‘bout that, Noi,” he mumbles, face still buried into her shoulder. He feels more than he hears her laugh at him, but what he can hear sounds nothing but fond.
“Dumbass, don’t apologize. You’re not doing anything wrong; I’m your partner . You’re allowed to rely on me just as I rely on you, you know that, right?”
“I… yeah, I know, it’s just,” his voice drops to a whisper, “hard to remember, sometimes.” She hums, and Shin isn’t sure whether it’s an agreement or just a hum, but it’s not something bad as far as he can tell. She gives an affectionate bump to Shin’s temple with her chin, and he takes it as his cue to bring his head up from her shoulder.
When he looks at her face, he can’t see much, but he suspects she’s probably smiling at him, and so in the dark he returns the smile, though he knows it’s probably tired. He finally feels tired, though he still doesn’t… particularly want to go to sleep again. Doesn’t want to leave Noi, and their weird whatever-this-is in the middle of the hallway, where it’s warm and nice and, and-- safe . Shin doesn’t remember the last time he felt safe.
She breaks him out of his train of thoughts for the second time that night --Morning? Whatever fucking time it was-- by stepping back a bit out of his space. He looks at her quizzically as she places one hand around his upper back, bends down to swing her other arm under his knees, and Shin has barely enough time to throw his arms around her neck before she’s hoisting him up into a bridal carry with a quiet oof .
“Noi! What the hell are you--”
“I’m carrying you back to bed! You need sleep, right?”
“I-I mean yeah, but why are we heading back to your room?”
“Isn’t that why you knocked on my door to begin with? You wanted to sleep with me?”
His face feels like it’s on fire again, and he only barely resists the urge to remove his arms from around his partner’s neck to cover his face instead. He doesn’t even dignify that statement with a proper response, ‘cause if he does he thinks he’ll actually combust, but he does at least grunt back an answer at her that she’s free to do with as she pleases. Judging by her snort and another affectionate nudge to his temple with her nose, he thinks she knows what he meant.
She starts her way back to her room, briefly letting him down to open the door to her suite and then immediately picking him back up. He doesn’t even complain this time; just puts his arms right back around her neck like they belong there as they go through the threshold into her home. She kicks the door closed behind her, and they head through her living room, with all the pictures of her and him and the people she holds close to her heart plastered all along the walls, and there’s a part of him that’s equal parts embarrassed and smug about the fact that the majority of those photos are of the two of them. He doesn’t get long to think about it, though, given that as she tries to maneuver him into the bedroom she accidentally whacks his head on the doorframe.
“You could just let me down, you know,” he grumbles, removing one hand from Noi’s neck to rub lightly at the spot that was hit. If he’s honest, it really doesn’t hurt all that much, especially in comparison to the numerous other injuries he’s sustained in his life including, but not limited to: chopping off his own arms, getting his lower half blown apart, getting his arm melted off my magic, just to name a few. This was nothing more than a tap to the head, really, yet Noi still opts to blow a puff of lukewarm smoke into Shin’s face and within seconds the minute pain in Shin’s head is gone and replaced with an even-briefer dizziness before returning to normal. Shin blinks a few times at the wall before turning to face Noi, raising an eyebrow.
“You didn’t have to do that, either. I’m not helpless - it wasn’t even bleeding!”
“I know, I just wanted to!” She counters, and he knows that she’s telling the truth, even if he isn’t sure what to do with it. She continues to pad into her room, and gently, like before, she deposits him onto her bed. She wastes no time in clambering in behind him, the bed creaking ominously under their combined weight. She’s got an arm thrown over his waist, her hand splayed lightly across his chest keeping him to her, and with their proximity he can feel her breath on the back of his neck making a small shiver run down his spine. The two of them adjust a bit more to get comfortable, the blanket creeping and eventually tumbling off the edge in the process. Once they’re done, they lay together in silence.
Usually, Shin doesn’t mind the quiet, in fact, he prefers it to the natural hustle-and-bustle that comes with being around a group of people a lot of the time, but... right now, with just him and her lying in her bed, he can’t help but feel like the lack of noise is stifling, somehow. Her hand is damn near searing where it rests over his heart, and there’s no way she can’t feel the way it began to pick up its pace again, thumping underneath her palm.
“Hey, Noi,” he whispers to the air, and he breathes a small sigh of relief when he hears a mostly-awake “What’s up?” against his nape.
“Thank you,” he says, voice still quiet. “For tonight.”
For a brief, brief moment the cold begins to settle in his ribcage again when she doesn’t respond right away. If the silence before was stifling, this time it’s straight dreadful until the dread is replaced by confusion when he feels her other arm, the one not resting on top of him, shimmy its way underneath his waist and her subsequently squeeze him to her, bringing the two of them even closer than they were before.
“Senpai,” she says, and her voice is soft like it normally isn’t, to match his, “You don’t need to thank me. You don’t need to apologize. We’re partners, right?”
“I know that, that’s not--” he cuts himself off in his frustration, and he squeezes his eyes shut. His heart beats a little bit faster, a little bit harder. Noi’s hand is still carefully open over the expanse of it.
“Do you remember a couple of months ago, after all the crazy shit went down, and I told you that I had no lingering attachments to Hole because I had everything I needed here?”
“...Yeah, I remember.”
“And do you remember a little bit before that, when I, uh,” he coughs a bit, a flush rising up his neck in guilt, “When I cut you up, ‘cause I wasn’t gonna let you die if I had anything to say about it, basically?”
“That’s kinda hard to forget, senpai, but yeah,” this time she laughs a bit, and the cold in his chest begins to warm over. Carefully, so carefully he lays one of his hands over Noi’s, over the one on his heart. He just keeps her hand there, slotting his fingers in between hers.
“So, do… do you know, then?”
“Do I know what?” She’s really gonna make him say it, isn’t she? Now, his hand begins to gently squeeze hers.
“That I love you? Care for you? Don’t want to leave you? Don’t want you to leave me?”
“That you’re my most treasured person?” He says, and he feels Noi stop breathing for a moment behind him, and the cold in his chest comes back full force. Eternities pass before she crushes him impossibly closer, and devils below she’s so fucking warm he doesn’t know what to do.
“Senpai-- Shin ,” she corrects, “That makes me… really happy to hear.” She laughs again, a giddy sound that seems to resonate from her chest and outwards, and soon enough he’s laughing with her. Her forehead comes to burrow into the meat of his shoulder and the hand over his heart clenches lightly into his t-shirt and all of the tension drains out of him in one fell swoop.
“So does that mean I have to say it back now?” She asks, and there’s no sense of shame or timidity in her voice as he shakes his head no.
“Nah, you don’t have to, I think I already know,” he replies, and this time she awkwardly and abruptly shifts so she’s looming over him, her hands placed on either side of Shin’s head and looking incredulously down at him through her hair.
“How do you already know?”
“Remember when you were transformed into a lizard person by Ebisu’s smoke, Mister En and I had to go to Chota to turn you back?” She nods at this, “Part of the magic to turn you back was taking some of the intestines of whoever your most treasured person was, and well. Since we fought before then, mine were free game. I don’t think the spell would’ve worked, had it been Mister En’s entrails.”
Another bout of silence as she blinks down at him to process that information before she flops onto his shoulder with a groan.
“I’m really glad it was you, Shin, but that was so long ago , and I wasn’t even the one who got to tell you” she grumbles, and he snickers. After a beat she brings herself up onto her forearms, effectively caging Shin in and bringing them nearly nose-to-nose.
“So, wait, if you knew all that time, what made tonight different?” He can’t see a damn thing, but he can feel the weight of her stare on him, and so he opts to look at anywhere but her face. He focuses on her hair, and his eyes trail up through silvery wisps, to fluffy bangs, and when he thinks about how much he would like to run his fingers through her hair he realizes just how doomed he actually is.
“There wasn’t any reason why it was tonight, it was--” he flounders for a second, hands gesturing vaguely at his sides before he lets them fall back to the mattress. Normally he’s the more diplomatic of the two of them, opting to at least try and talk before he has to bash someone’s brains in, but right now it feels like the majority of his words are completely lodged in his throat and whatever words were on his tongue die there. His heartbeat begins to pick up again, and he twists his head to look at the wall as he feels his face heat.
It’s a beat of awkward silence before he hears her laugh - it’s a loud, free, happy laugh, warmer than the sun, and when he looks back this time he can’t bring himself to look away. He sees her eyes closed, delightfully crinkled at the corners and her mouth curved into a smile, and he feels one form on his own face. He continues to watch as her laughs gradually slow down, and he feels her lean her forehead against his. She’s so close to him they’re practically sharing breaths, and his eyes flicker down to where he thinks her mouth would be in the darkness, and when he thinks he sees her eyes do the same thing to him he reaches a hand up to tuck her hair behind her ear.
“Shin?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I…?”
“Yeah--”
He barely gets the word out before he meets her halfway for a kiss, and it’s both everything and nothing like he expects. Her mouth is soft against his, their kiss tentative and unsure. Neither of them know what the hell they’re doing, but that’s okay; she tastes faintly like her favorite cherry chapstick and even fainter is the bit of perfume she had on earlier that day and even as their teeth knock together he doesn’t think there’s anywhere he’d rather be.
He’s not sure how long they stay that way, exchanging easy, unhurried kisses, finding their rhythm in the dark. One hand threads through her hair and the other curls around her bicep, and he feels one hard come to sift through his own hair as the other stays firm near his head to keep her steady. When they finally part, they still barely leave each other’s space. They exchange a few more, shorter kisses --still gentle, still easy, still sweet-- and when they break apart Noi chances a look at her bedside table (presumably her own clock, that he knows reads in the same red, block-like letters as his own in his room). She apparently doesn’t like whatever she sees if the comical groan she releases is any indication.
“We should probably go to sleep soon, senpai,” she says, a pout evident in her voice, “it’s nearly five in the morning.” Shin hums in agreement, though honestly he can’t say he feels differently from her. One more kiss, and when Shin begins to shift under her she reads him like always and shifts with him. They get into their position from earlier - Noi softly curling around him from behind, with one arm tucked under his waist and the other across his chest, and the length of her body pressed to his own. They shift a little bit more to get situated, and when they do they both let loose a sigh of contentment.
“Goodnight, senpai,” she whispers to his neck, placing a featherlight kiss to one of the vertebrae peaking above the collar of his shirt. He gives another hum, and he finally begins to feel the lull of sleep.
“Good night, Noi,” he whispers back, and he can tell by her breathing she’s already passed out. He snorts before closing his own eyes. Even without blankets, he’s the warmest he’s ever been, and Shin goes to sleep and wakes up with that warmth at his back and now he knows the meaning of “lucky.”