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Naoya is over the moon when Toji returns to the estate.
It’s been years since Toji left, and yet Naoya still feels his stomach flip flopping at the sight of his older cousin. What is he doing back? Didn’t he swear off being a Zen’in for good?
Whatever the reason, Naoya doesn’t care. All that matters is that Toji has come home.
He was more than a little indignant (and perhaps just a bit crushed) when Toji abandoned the clan for good; didn’t Toji want him anymore? Wasn’t Naoya good enough for him to stay? He knows he was young then, but what does that matter? He would have begged Toji if it meant he would have listened, but Zen’ins beg for nothing and Naoya is nothing if not the Zen’in heir. But he’s not a child anymore; at just sixteen he’s already a member of the Hei and one of the most sleek and powerful of their entire clan, not to mention the most attractive by far. He’s drop dead fucking gorgeous and Naoya knows it. If Toji doesn’t want him now, there must be something wrong with him.
But Naoya refuses to grovel. If Toji wants him—he should want him, everyone wants Naoya—then Naoya expects Toji to come to him.
Easier said than done.
Toji doesn’t move for the longest time, simply sitting in the courtyard of the estate and staring vacantly ahead of him. What is he doing? Naoya’s patience is starting to wane. He’s been waiting for this for years, after all.
He folds his arms and hmphs, exasperated and annoyed that yet again he’s forced to pursue Toji, when it should be the other way around. Toji was the one who abandoned him, so it’s only fair that he should come crawling back to Naoya. Whatever. He’ll go over there and demand to know where Toji has been all this time, and then when Toji realizes his error, he’ll come to his senses. Right?
But when he blinks, Toji is gone.
Naoya frowns, stepping out into the courtyard. He peers around, walking up and down the path, but sees nothing—as if he simply vanished.
-
The next time he sees Toji, he nearly collides into him. He seems to appear out of nowhere as Naoya is stepping out of a clan meeting, just barely managing to keep from planting his face right into Toji’s shoulder.
“Toji-kun!” Naoya exclaims, perhaps a bit too eagerly. He quickly recovers his dignity, smoothing the surprise from his features and replacing it with haughty expectancy. “I mean—Toji-kun. You haven’t properly greeted me since you got here. When were you planning on finally saying hello to...me.”
Toji doesn't even turn to him, staring somewhere down the hall, and Naoya has to physically resist the urge to pout like a spoiled child. Instead he scowls, waving a hand in front of Toji’s face, irked by his cousin’s refusal to acknowledge him twice now. He’s not a kid anymore, hasn’t Toji noticed? The last time Naoya saw him, the man loomed above him—but they’re almost the same height now, only a head difference. Surely Toji should notice that, at the very least.
“Toji-kun,” he says, more sternly this time, trying to catch his attention, which he doesn’t, and Naoya stomps his foot. “Hey! I’m talking to you!”
Toji turns his head, and the hairs on the nape of his neck stand up. There’s something off, his lack of cursed energy and imposing presence somehow more menacing than Naoya remembers, but he can't quite place what it is.
“Say something,” Naoya demands, but it comes out breathier and less forceful than he intended. His mouth suddenly feels very dry and his heart seems to pound in his temples, thundering so loud that he’s certain Toji must be able to hear it. Does Toji know that Naoya still wants him, that he would strip down right now and let Toji take him if he said he wanted Naoya, too?
A shudder rolls down Naoya’s spine and pebbles across his skin, a shot of lust spearing through the strange feeling in his gut; he’s only fantasized about this very moment a thousand times, maybe more, and now the day has finally arrived.
“I…” Toji says slowly, his brows pinching. “I don’t know why I’m here.”
Well, that’s an easy answer. “To see me, obviously.” Why else would he be here? Toji doesn’t give a shit about anyone else in the clan, and it’s commonly known to everyone that Naoya is the only one who remotely gives a shit about Toji.
“Yeah,” Toji says absently, looking away. "Yeah, I guess I'm just...waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
Toji shakes his head, and Naoya wants to grab the front of his shirt, make Toji answer him—but to his dismay, Toji is already walking away.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Naoya calls, but Toji isn’t listening. He keeps going and Naoya hurries behind him, watching him round the corner, turning after him—
He skids to a halt, his heart hammering in his chest. The hall is resoundingly empty, but he was just here. Where did he go? How could he have gotten away so fast?
“Toji!” he calls again, but there’s no response. Naoya walks up and down the hall, peering into each room, equally puzzled and frustrated by his cousin’s sudden disappearance.
Just like in the courtyard, it’s like he was never even there.
-
He makes the mistake of asking if anyone else has seen Toji.
Of course they haven’t and even if they had, no one wants him there. It’s not even a surprise to see the level of utter disdain from even speaking Toji’s name, but how could no one in the clan other than Naoya have seen him at all?
-
Naoya is at the family piano when he appears again. His fingers hover over the keys as something blurs at the corner of his vision, turning just in time to see Toji sitting just a short distance from him.
“You’ve gotten better.”
“Of course I’ve gotten better,” Naoya scoffs, though he can’t help the way his cheeks warm at his cousin’s words of praise. So Toji has noticed him playing before, at least enough to have noticed his improvement over the years. “I’ve been playing since I was five, what kind of compliment is that?”
The scar on Toji’s mouth twitches up in a small smile—just like it used to, but…
A chill runs down Naoya's spine. Toji looks mostly the same, sounds the same.
But there's something wrong with his eyes. They're black, cold, as dark as the pit of curses they used to lock Toji in as a child.
“A shitty one, I guess.”
Naoya sniffs, straightening his shoulders, putting it out of his mind. The piano has been in the family for generations and every Zen’in is expected to have a cultural appreciation for it, but Naoya is one of the very few who actually knows how to play it well. His father taught him how to play; it was an integral part in teaching Naoya the finer points of his technique from before it had even fully manifested, giving him a working understanding of tempo and beats per minute before breaking that down into smaller pieces, over and over, until he fully grasped the concept of twenty-four frames per second.
So of course he’s good at it, it’s what’s expected of him.
“Where have you been?” Naoya asks, raising his voice slightly as he resumes playing. “No one’s seen you around.”
“As if they would want to.”
I want to, he thinks. “Are you finally coming home?”
The music stretches out between them, filling the silence. He doesn’t turn around, half expecting Toji to be gone if he dares to glance over his shoulder. This is the most they’ve ever spoken at length since Toji’s departure, and Naoya isn’t in a hurry to hasten the end of their conversation now that he has Toji’s attention.
But he’s also irritated that this is the first Toji has acknowledged him since his return, despite seeing him twice before this.
Naoya pauses his playing, lightly drumming the pads of his fingers over the keys without pressing down on them. “You haven't answered me, Toji-kun.”
Toji barely grunts in response. “Some answers would be nice, I guess.”
Naoya swivels on the bench to look at him, one hand still on the keys. “Yeah, they would.” And Naoya feels like he’s entitled to them; he’s going to be the next clan head, and no matter what Toji or anyone else says, Toji is a Zen’in and that means he answers to Naoya. “So let’s start with this one: why have you been ignoring me? I’m not a little kid anymore, I’m the heir to the clan and you should respect me as your superior when I’m speaking to you!”
Toji gives him an odd look, before his achingly familiar smirk twists his lips. “Spoken like a true Zen’in.”
The piano gives a jarring sound when Naoya squeezes the keys too hard, his temper flaring at the derisive amusement on Toji’s face. Doesn’t Toji feel the same way, hasn’t he thought about Naoya at all since he left? “Answer me, Toji-kun!”
His cousin shrugs, scratching the back of his head. “Don’t have any answers for you, Nao. Could use some myself.”
Naoya narrows his eyes at how unnecessarily cryptic that sounds. He turns back to the keyboard, scowling, his fingers stabbing at the keys as he resumes playing once more. “Whatever,” he says loudly. He’s willing to forgive Toji’s indiscretions, as long as he returns to the clan (and to Naoya). “Just…don’t do it again, okay?”
Toji doesn’t answer, and Naoya knows before he even stops playing that it’s because he’s already gone.
-
Naoya is called to the main portion of the estate to receive a visitor, and part of him flip flops excitedly at the thought that it might be Toji. He lived in the estate long enough that he could have simply come to Naoya’s wing of the house to see him, but perhaps a bit of caution and manners might bode well for him upon his return to the fold of the Zen’in clan. Maybe Naobito won’t be so harsh on him this time; maybe he’ll afford Naoya this small allowance, letting him keep Toji around for his own entertainment, or at least that’s how he’ll frame it to his father…
His little fantasy starts to curl at the edges the moment he sees Satoru, not Toji, and goes up in a great gulf of flames when Satoru gleefully informs him that the clan reject is dead —dead because Satoru killed him, which he then proceeds to describe to Naoya in graphic detail.
He nearly stops Satoru a dozen times in the middle of his story as he recounts the fight between him and Toji, the way he blasted Toji’s arm off and left a massive crater-sized hole in his torso. He feeds Naoya all the grisly details of being stabbed multiple times, of being on the brink of death himself, of bringing himself back to life just to snuff out Toji’s in exchange. It doesn’t feel real—but it has to be, his story is too detailed not to be.
“When was this?” Naoya asks, cutting him off mid-sentence. He just saw Toji a few days ago, and now he’s dead?
“Three weeks ago.”
Naoya’s brow furrows, which Satoru interprets as an invitation to continue talking, though Naoya isn’t really listening anymore. How could Satoru have killed Toji three weeks ago, but been at the estate only a few days prior?
-
Naoya insists on seeing the body. How can what Satoru says be true, when Naoya has seen Toji for himself?
Of course Naobito doesn’t understand why he would care enough to confirm Satoru’s story. “Good riddance,” Naobito scoffs, but Jinichi agrees to go with him.
“My brother deserves a proper burial,” Jinichi says once they’re out of earshot, though his face remains impassive. “He should be treated as one of our own in his death.”
Naoya quirks an eyebrow. It’s the most he’s heard Jinichi speak of Toji since he abandoned the clan, and far more positive than he expected. Isn’t that so typical, though? He’s only saying that because Toji is supposedly dead—if he was still alive, Jinichi wouldn’t even care.
“Thought you hated Toji,” he sneers. “Admit it, you thought he was a worthless dog, just like the rest of—”
He ducks as a giant hand swipes at his head, Jinichi’s thick brows drawn low on his face. “Do not speak ill of the dead, Naoya,” he scolds, and Naoya folds his arms. If anything, Naoya is the only one who ever spoke positively of Toji, and besides—how can he be dead, when Toji is still at the estate?
-
There isn't a body.
It had been badly damaged upon arrival, organs slopping out of his chest cavity, and the man who claimed the body—a broker by the name of Kong—had requested Toji be cremated and his ashes kept until he returned.
Jinichi is perturbed that not only did Kong not return for Toji’s ashes, but that he was cremated and stored without any sort of funeral ceremony. Naoya briefly considers telling him about seeing what must have been Toji’s now-cursed spirit in their home, but decides against it when they’re given the urn since Kong hasn’t returned for three weeks.
Naoya holds the urn—Toji—on their way home, his face stuck in a frown. He can hardly believe that his larger than life cousin is now reduced to a pile of ash and kept inside a small container, and that he saw Toji’s spirit just a few days ago.
He drums his fingers against the lid, thinking back on the things Toji said; that he didn’t have any answers, that he didn’t know why he was there, that he was waiting for something. If that doesn't sound like a curse, Naoya doesn't know what is.
He's not surprised. After all the awful things their family did to him, of course Toji has become a cursed spirit.
Despite that, he almost doesn’t want to bury him. If they give him a proper burial, will the curse break? He’s already not quite sure how to deal with the news of Toji’s death, but how is he supposed to deal with knowing that he won’t ever see Toji again at all?
-
Naoya doesn’t get a choice in the matter. Jinichi has Toji buried with their father and the former clan head, despite Naobito’s sneering protest that he should be buried off the Zen’in compound. Jinichi brings up the point of potentially angering Toji’s spirit even further, that if he’s not properly laid to rest, he might return to finish the business he began years ago. They all remember the day when Toji could and would have massacred the entire clan if not for an apparent change of heart, up and leaving everything behind instead of slaughtering them all in their own home.
Naoya doesn’t say anything about seeing Toji’s spirit at the estate already. If Toji is angry or appeased by Jinichi’s words, he doesn’t know.
Toji isn’t there.
-
It’s several months before Toji appears again.
Naoya is training with the Hei when he sees him, losing his momentum and crashing into Ranta when a pair of haunting green eyes lock onto him from only a short distance away.
So he hasn’t left after all. He’s been here the entire time.
“What happened?” Ranta asks, rubbing his shoulder where Naoya slammed into him. He frowns and looks in the direction Naoya is staring, then back at Naoya. “Is something wrong?”
Naoya brushes himself off, straightening up. “Of course not,” he snaps. “Go back inside the dojo. I have something more important to take care of.”
Ranta blinks in surprise, but shrugs it off and heads back inside. Naoya waits until he’s gone before turning to berate Toji for fucking him up, for making him look like a fool, for leaving him—but he’s already gone.
-
The days grow shorter as winter creeps up on the Zen’in estate, the air turning cold and crisp and the nights long and dark. Naoya visits Toji’s grave on the eve of his birthday, burning incense and leaving an offering of food and a single flower, silently hoping that it will be enough to bring Toji to him. He knows Toji is still around, that he’s been cursed to listlessly drift through the estate, and Toji knows Naoya is waiting for him, that he's been waiting for him.
He waits, and waits—all night he waits, until the incense has long burned out and his fingers have gone numb from the cold, and the only thing keeping him warm is his rising irritation. He can’t believe that Toji didn’t show his face—he can’t believe Toji is dead, that his anger is directed at a ghost.
And he is angry—angry that Toji died and left without saying goodbye, that he left Naoya behind in more ways than one, in every way that matters. Now he can never return to the clan and come to his senses, fulfilling the fantasy life Naoya dreamed of sharing with him so many times. He can never explain to Naoya why he left so abruptly, and they can never have the chance to be together the way Naoya wants.
It’s not fair.
-
The next time he sees Toji is over a year later, when he’s playing the piano again.
Toji appears on the bench beside him this time, startling Naoya hard enough to miss a note. “Thought you said you’ve been playing since you were five,” Toji teases, and Naoya isn’t sure if he wants to slap him for that comment—and everything else—or throw his arms around him. Why hasn’t he come back at all in the past year? Naoya had hoped to see him continually wandering the halls of the estate, but after an entire year had passed he’d nearly given up on ever seeing him ever again.
“I’ve missed you,” he says instead, the words forced out of his mouth by something bubbling up from deep inside his chest. It swells, choking him, before suddenly popping—and bitter anger floods his veins like a poison, swallowing back the urge to scream at him like bile coming up his throat. Where has Toji been? Why hasn’t he spoken to Naoya at all since he found out about his passing?
Toji huffs a small laugh. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Are you?”
Toji’s laugh dries up, and suddenly it’s too quiet. The lack of response is nearly unbearable, so Naoya forces his fingers to glide across the keys once more. Toji’s Heavenly Restriction made him impossible to sense when he was alive, but where there was the scent of soap and sweat on his skin before, now there is nothing—no body heat, no shadow on the wall, nothing to tell Naoya that he’s there aside from the sight of him and the sound of his voice.
“Satoru-kun said he killed you,” Naoya says finally, daring to glance at him again. “You died, Toji. I held your ashes—we buried you.”
“I guess,” Toji says, like the word death means nothing, as if it simply rolled off his shoulders without touching him. “This better not be some sort of karma thing, ending up stuck in this place forever after all the shit I’ve done.”
Naoya’s mouth falls open indignantly. What the hell does that mean? “You should consider yourself lucky if you died and ended up…here,” he bristles as Toji laughs before he’s done speaking.
“Lucky, uh huh. Maybe, if it was you.”
“I’m not the one who’s dead,” Naoya sniffs. “I waited for you to come home—you never came. And now you’re dead.”
Toji purses his lips, but doesn’t respond. Of course he doesn’t, why would he? Naoya knows he doesn’t have any answers; not for Naoya, not even for himself.
“At your grave, too,” Naoya tacks on. “On your birthday. I wanted to see you, and you didn’t come.”
“Didn’t realize we had a date,” Toji muses, and Naoya smacks his arm—only to pass right through him. Toji doesn’t seem fazed or to have even noticed, so he reaches out again, staring hard at his fingers as they pass through Toji’s arm and torso. He held Toji’s ashes, buried them in his grave, but sticking his entire hand through Toji’s lack of a body makes the awful truth all the more real.
“It’s been over a year, Toji.”
“Has it?”
Naoya withdraws his hand, resting it in his lap, a painful longing deep in his chest. He’ll never be able to touch Toji again, will he? And judging by his responses, Toji doesn’t seem to have any concept of the passage of time. It could be another year, possibly even longer, before Naoya sees him again.
“If you’re going to be…here,” Naoya says, choosing his words carefully, narrowly avoiding stuck here forever. “You should visit me sometimes. Isn’t that why you’re here? To see me?”
Toji snorts, but there’s a certain fondness in his voice when he says, “Yeah...I guess it is.”
“You better,” Naoya says, giving him a pointed look. “Don’t make me wait for you, or I’ll have to kill you again.”
Toji laughs, and the sound of it makes his heart simultaneously soar with joy, and hurt more than it ever has before. “Yeah, okay. It’s a date, then.”
-
Naoya leaves the same offering on Toji’s next birthday, waiting, wondering if he’ll show up. He promised he would—he said it was a date.
The smoke curls and drifts, and Naoya watches the ash drop as it starts to form a little pile. He sits beside Toji’s grave and brings his knees to his chest, folding his arms and resting his chin on them. “Hurry up, Toji-kun,” he mumbles, heaving a sigh. Just how long is Toji going to make him wait? He knows Naoya is here, so where is he?
Just like the last time, Naoya waits until his fingers are frozen and the incense has long burned out. The night stretches into morning, the first rays of the sun starting to peek over the horizon, and still there’s no sign of Toji.
He almost nods off a few times, snapping awake as he hears a crunching sound behind him. Naoya turns, holding his breath, hoping to see Toji—but it’s only Jinichi.
“Have you been here all night?” Jinichi asks, frowning.
Naoya scowls without responding, turning forward again. What does it matter? It’s not like Jinichi would understand that Toji has somehow found a way to disappoint Naoya from beyond the grave, that he's been stood up by a cursed spirit in their own home.
“Strange to think he’s never coming back.”
“He said he would,” Naoya insists, realizing too late that he said that aloud. He doesn’t bother to correct his statement or explain himself beyond that, scowling further into his folded arms instead. He’s the heir to the clan and he doesn’t owe anyone any explanations for anything; if he wants to sit by his late cousin’s grave all night, he will.
Jinichi sits beside him, and Naoya avoids looking at him. The birds in the courtyard start to chirp as the sun comes up, and Naoya shivers from more than just the cold. Toji’s birthday is over, and he didn’t show up at all.
He should have known.
“He’s not coming, is he?” Naoya mumbles, more to himself than anything.
“He’s dead, Naoya,” Jinichi says, and Naoya sighs. He knows Toji is dead, but he isn’t gone. He was here, he’s been here.
So where is he now?
-
For the next eight years, Naoya visits Toji’s grave in the hopes that he’ll remember he promised to come back.
And every year, Naoya grows more upset that he doesn’t show.
Why did he bother to say anything at all, Naoya thinks bitterly. Why would he taunt Naoya like this, make him wait around knowing that Toji is out there somewhere , only to never show his face again? Of course Naoya will wait for him—he’s always waited for Toji, but how much longer is it going to take? He can’t have left Naoya behind again and disappeared forever.
Can he?
-
At twenty-seven years old, Naoya is now the head of the Hei and the most talented member of their entire family. He has everything he’s ever wanted; wealth, power, prestige. He’s set to inherit the entire clan and everything within it, and though it’s somewhat of a hollow victory without Toji at his side, Naoya is still pleased with how things have turned out overall.
At least until it’s all cruelly ripped away from him.
He loses his sight in one eye during the battle with Maki, manages to crawl away to try to heal his wounds—only to feel the sharp steel of a blade bury itself in his back, the heat of his own blood soaking into his kimono as his vision flickers in and out. He feels like he might be dying, blood filling his lungs faster than he can reach for his cursed energy, and he wonders if this is what it felt like for Toji—except Naoya can’t be dying, it can’t end like this…
-
Naoya wakes to a familiar pair of green eyes above him, a scarred mouth pulled into a smirk he’s sorely missed for the past eleven years.
“Toji-kun,” he rasps, his vision suddenly blurring and his chest tightening so hard he can barely breathe. Toji promised to come back eight years ago and never did, and now he’s finally here. But why now? Why not any other time before this? “What are you doing here?”
Toji vaguely gestures around them. “Not every day I get to witness the fall of the Zen’in clan.”
“Don’t remind me,” Naoya grumbles, pushing himself up into sitting, his memories jostling as he gingerly touches his injured eye. The last he remembers he was profusely bleeding, desperately trying to fill his wounds with cursed energy as the clan fell one by one around him…
He frowns when he pulls his hand away and there’s no blood, when his depth perception isn’t so horribly skewed as it was with the use of only one eye. He lightly touches it again, confused when no pain registers in his brain—unless he’s lost all the nerve endings in that side of his face, something isn't right.
But he doesn’t feel the knife in his back anymore, either. He twists to look behind him and sees nothing: no blade, no blood, but he knows it was there. Maybe his mind is just playing tricks on him, erasing all his injuries from his memory as he tries to save himself from a grisly death. Or maybe…
Maybe he’s already dead.
“Still want that date?” Toji jokes, offering his hand.
Naoya’s mouth nearly drops in an indignant squawk, but he reaches forward to accept Toji’s outstretched hand—and his fingers slide into Toji’s, as solid and warm as Naoya remembers from all those years ago.
“You’re eight years late, asshole,” Naoya chides, but he throws his arms around his cousin’s waist and buries his face in his broad chest. “I waited for you, and you never came.”
“Think you got it backwards,” Toji snorts softly, but his strong arms circle around Naoya and hold him flush to his chest. He brushes a kiss to Naoya’s hair, and Naoya doesn’t think he’s ever been so elated in his entire life—a shame that it’s over, but what kind of life is there without Toji in it?
Naoya lifts his head and looks up, into the emerald eyes he’s missed so fucking much.
They're not black anymore.
“Is that why you ended up here?”
“Why else would I be here?”
Naoya tightens his hold around Toji’s very solid form. “Take me with you this time.”
“Dunno where we’re going, exactly,” Toji says. It doesn’t really matter where they go or what happens now—all that matters is that they’re finally together. “But yeah, I will. Been waiting for you.”
“Yeah,” Naoya smiles. "Me, too."