Chapter Text
He was close. So close.
Somehow a simple walk home had ended with Hiyori's back pressed against a wall, inches away from the face of a blushing god, his sharp blue eyes shifting to meet her gaze before darting away when it all became too much for a moment.
In between ragged breaths she recounted the moments that lead to this. When Yato offered to walk her home from their usual haunt, Kofuku's place, relatively sober for once, she didn't think anything of it. He'd walked her home a hundred times before. He can just teleport back, after all. How did we get here?
He had been teasing her about something as usual, of course, and they'd laughed and carried on like every other day for the past several years, aside from the times he'd gone missing of course. There was something akin to flowers that bloomed in her heart when they connected like that, with a warmth that she couldn't name swimming in her veins when he laughed a toothy grin.
She wished it could always be like that. Every day. Every single day, with Yato.
Oh, right. Hiyori had said the quiet part aloud. That's when Yato stopped walking. She had turned around to see him silhouetted before the glow of a streetlight, hands at his side, stilled and quiet. She'd asked him what was wrong. He didn't answer at first.
"I want to know what you mean by that," Yato had whispered, a chill swimming in his voice like a snake just below the surface of a still pond.
"Yato, I've told you that before, right?" Hiyori had said, with a fake brightness. "I don't ever want to lose you, or Yukine, or..." Her voice had trailed off. Was there something else that could be said? Should be said?
"You always say these things, and I need to understand them. I don't know if I'm reading this right, if I am reading you right." He spoke deliberately, remaining stationary, the light of the streetlight glinting off his sharp frame. "I..."
Hiyori had wracked her brain then, too, trying to unwind the situation. "I know you want to be with us too, right, Yato? You told me that before, too!"
And that's when he moved toward her, far faster than she had anticipated. Instinct kicked in and Hiyori had gasped and backed up before her rational mind could stop her. That's how she ended up with her back to the wall, the dampness from a recent rainstorm beginning to seep into her shirt.
To her surprise, the black-haired figure did not cease his approach, then. He appeared before her, an arm's length away. His sharp blue eyes were fixed, peering in to hers, reaching, clamboring for meaning. His hands were balled into fists and for a moment Hiyori wondered if she should feel threatened, although she didn't, because his smell, the familiar scent of a kind god, remained fixed in her nostrils and locked in her senses, and when she could smell it the world would always be okay.
"Yato?" Her voice came out more panicked than she meant for it to. He flinched and looked away instantly.
"Hiyori, please," came the response. "I need to know if..." He paused, as if reconsidering, then took another step closer. One of his hands moved to grasp at his scarf. "I need to know if you feel like I do, about me, the way I feel about you."
What? Hiyori felt something harsh in her chest, something between anxiety and pain, adrenaline pumping.
"I know it's wrong. I know it's completely wrong. I know... I..." Yato's voice was uncharacteristically wavering, and he moved closer still. It was the first moment that Hiyori felt his breath pepper her nose this evening.
"I can't dance around it anymore. I want you to be mine." He said finally, placing a hand on the wall beside Hiyori's head, as if to steady himself from falling, like the next word might hit him like an unstoppable force. "Even though I know it's crazy."
That's how we got here, she realized. While in her thoughts, one of her hands had made its way to the seam of Yato's jersey. Her fingers danced along its edges, neither pulling him forward or pushing him away. Another breath puffed across her cheeks and she realized she'd been holding her own breath.
"Yato, I..." Hiyori gasped a bit for air and could almost taste him. His scent was overwhelming up close, and blended with the pounding of her heart she was overwhelmed. "It's not crazy." She knew she must be blushing by the heat on her face.
He grunted, a strangled sound barely audible but vibrated through the scant air between them. "It is absolutely crazy. You are a human and I'm a shitty god. And someday maybe I'll be a great god, but by then you'll be..." His left hand tangled further into his scarf and the right pressed harder into wall behind Hiyori, making a crunching sound.
They both knew that Hiyori would age and Yato would not. She, at 18, visibly appeared around the same age as the millennium-old Yato, but time wasn't so kind to humans as it was gods with believers. She would inevitably wither and die, presumably crossing to the Far Shore in a state not well-suited to remaining wherever a human-bound stray god stayed. That was a fact.
And he had already told her at least once before that he would not allow her to give up her life to be by his side. That she should enjoy her time as a human, in the Near Shore, grasping it until her dying breath, living the life taken so early from Yato and Yukine, and so many others.
But without the Far Shore denizens with whom she had grown so fond, what was left?
"Is there no other way?" Hiyori breathed aloud, a slip of the tongue.
She was startled from her thoughts when a second hand collided with the wall behind her, the air it displaced ruffling her hair. "I don't know!" Yato's voice was lower than she was used to, rough like gravel. "I've thought so much about it because I'm a selfish asshole, and I just want you to myself, and I just don't know."
They were close but never touching, his sweating hands on either side of her head and both of her hands now clasping onto his jersey, shaking. Hiyori was sure that if she took a deep enough breath that her chest would brush against his. The urge to pull him close and smash her lips on his battled with the equal drive to shove him away and run. He was grinding his teeth together, seeming to fight his own set of urges.
"I love you," she whispered, grasping to keep his eye contact. "I would... do anything to be with you, and to be yours." His eyes rounded out, shifting from one of her eyes to the other, drinking her in, as if trying to see the words she was saying.
"Don't say that. Let me be pathetic and unrequited. I won't let you give up everything else." When he spoke, his damp breath hit her in bursts with each intonation. Each seemed to creep deeper into her gut, blooming through her veins until she could focus on nothing but the sensation.
"It's my life. My dreams to follow. You don't get to choose for me," she replied, stronger than before. "And if there's some way to be with you forever, it means that I have... more time to figure out what those dreams are."
"I won't let you die for me." He leaned down even closer to her face as his gaze kept elsewhere. Hiyori could make out the flecks of darker pink on his cheeks. "I don't want you to have regrets."
It was as if something had snapped, and the barrier came crashing down. Hiyori's hands gained a new-found strength and cupped his face. The moments of tension without touch made the contact feel electric. Yato met her stare again, startled but yet still searching her face for an understanding.
"Then let me live for you so I can be sure I won't have regrets," she said with a confidence she didn't know she had. "Please, Yato. Let's find a way."
"Hiyori..." he breathed. "Please, tell me you mean that."
She pulled him to press her forehead against his. Soft black locks tickled her skin. "Every word. I always have."
If there was a world around them, Hiyori didn't notice it. Intoxicated by the moment and him, every way he penetrated her senses, there was only Yato and his hot breath. The urge to pull him into her in some ephemeral way was as visceral as the physical chemistry. (She briefly wondered if gods had pheromones?)
He slipped his face from her hands and slid his head past hers, resting it on her clothed shoulder. "I want to touch you, Hiyori." His voice was muffled but the sound that rang out seemed to pump that hot blood harder and faster to every inch of her body.
"Then touch me," she said, almost gasping for air that wasn't just him. "Do I have to make you a wish?"
"I can't, not yet. I don't know if I can bear it." Yato was panting as he ground his face into her shoulder, his hair tickling her neck.
She slid her arms around his shoulders, pulling him into her. "Then just hold me for now."
His arms were around her waist in a second, his fingertips pressing into the soft flesh of her back through her clothes like he needed the touch to survive another minute. The acute awareness of his hard body pressed against her chest made her gasp, instinctively pulling him ever more flush against her. Each breath he drew and released danced along the skin of her neck, which prickled with a chill and the yearning of fulfillment.
"Please, find a way, Yato." Hiyori barely recognized her voice with the desire dripping on every syllable. "Find a way to make me yours."
"Hiyori..." His fingers dug in deeper and deeper, grinding along her spine.
"Please!"
The tension snapped for him too it seemed, when he finally brought his head up to meet her gaze once again, those blue eyes seeming to cut right through the dark.
"I will."