Archive of Our Own

With Jo’s schedule growing busier by the day, Yuma saw the other less and less.

Jo would fly out early when they had schedules in Korea — sometimes he wouldn’t even be there at all — and he would come home late when the sun was just minutes away from breaking the horizon. 

Yuma knew his schedule better than Jo probably realized. He'd catch himself listening for the front door at odd hours, that specific sound of it, the weight of it opening and closing, and whether or not it was followed by Jo's particular set of footsteps moving down the hall.

Sometimes they were, but most times, they weren't.

Yuma didn’t mind it at first. He was a cat hybrid afterall, he loved his alone time. He basked in Jo’s heavily scented bed by himself, rolled around on his Nintendo Switch, and even spent more than enough time bothering the others. 

He would make his rounds up and down the hall, bothering each and every member in whatever particular way suited his mood. He'd drape himself across Fuma's legs uninvited. He'd steal snacks directly out of Nicholas's hands and dare him to say something about it. He'd slip into Harua's room and curl up without asking because Harua always made room for him anyway.

During one cloudy afternoon, Fuma and Yuma remained the only ones in the dorms. Jo and Kei were both gone for their solo schedule, while the others were out and about using their free time wisely. The dorm had that particular midday quiet that only happened when most of the members were gone — sounds carrying differently, every small noise somehow louder and more present.

Yuma found himself rolling out of Jo’s bed after slipping into it early this morning with his Nintendo Switch. He'd told himself it was just because the mattress was more comfortable. He'd mostly believed it for the first hour or two. By the time the morning stretched into afternoon and he finally surfaced, blinking slowly at the ceiling, he'd stopped trying to argue the point with himself.

He stretched loudly, his ears and tail going straight up into the air, a long full-body thing that pulled at every muscle from his toes to the tips of his ears. Then his muscles relaxed all at once, and he sat there for a moment in the quiet, in the scent of the room, before he decided he needed company badly enough to go find some.

He slinked over the Fuma’s room near the end of the hall, only knocking lightly before propping the door open a smidge.

“Hm?” Fuma mumbled from his bed, cocconed in layers of blankets as he remained stuck on his phone screen, which was being held up by an extremely long phone stand attached to the side of his bed frame.

Yuma shuffled in, closing the door softly behind him. His ears turned downwards, as if that would help with the quietness in the room.

Fuma glanced up at the lack of response. He took one look at Yuma — the flattened ears, the aimless drift of him — and something in his expression shifted, just slightly, into something gentler.

“Hey,” Fuma greeted softly. “Wassup?”

“I’m here to bother you,” Yuma stated matter of factly, already nudging the older to make room for him under the blankets.

Fuma let out a fake sigh of annoyance, already scooting over for the younger.

“Jo’s not back yet?” Fuma asked as he readjusted his phone stand so that it floated between the both of them, before he tucked himself back into his self made cocoon.

Yuma shook his head wordlessly, slowly sinking into the mattress. Their shoulders pressed firmly against one another as an intense action scene from Chainsaw man flashed before them. Yuma’s tail flicked lightly under the pile of blankets, grazing Fuma's side every now and then, but the older wasn’t ticklish in any sense — he barely registered it, just kept his eyes on the screen with the same unbothered calm he brought to everything.

After a while, Yuma's eyes grew heavy.

His eyes fluttered shut and a soft purr began rolling off his chest. Fuma’s strong sandalwood scent lured him into a state of peace, and just under it was Kei’s soft, clean scent of crisp soap that still clung to the pillow underneath Yuma. The two scents that Yuma had associated with security and protection since he was a kitten in training — older, steadier figures who had always known what to do with him when he didn't know what to do with himself.

But just underneath everything, there was still something missing.

He knew what it was. He'd known what it was for a while now. But with how their hectic schedules ran, with Jo barely home long enough to sleep before he was gone again, there was no room to ask for more. 

It felt selfish to name it. It felt embarrassing to even turn it over in his own head for too long, so mostly he didn't. He just slept in Jo's bed and pretended that was enough, and on most days it almost was.

He missed Jo — more than he’d like to admit, and he’d probably never admit that outloud, but it was something he mulled over from time to time when he felt extra lonely. Even with Fuma by his side, he found his own scent souring and stinking up the room. 

It withered and wilted around the corners, faint enough that Yuma had to chase it, and every time he did, it slipped further away. His purr drew to a soft stop. He was glad that Fuma was a human — he went unbothered by the shift in Yuma's scent. He didn’t want to be read right now, just wanted to lie here and not think about it.

He shut his eyes, just trying his best to take a small nap, but thoughts about missing Jo ran through his head continuously, and he found himself unable to reach that full state of sleep he hoped for.  

He laid there for what felt like hours.

Then Fuma’s bedroom door slammed open.

Both of them flinched violently into each other's embrace, Yuma's claws coming out on reflex as they let out a matched pair of shrieks — Fuma's surprisingly high-pitched for someone his size, Yuma's more like the sound a cat makes when startled off a counter.

Harua stood by the door, white bunny ears high towards the ceiling, nose twitching in rapid little movements as his wide eyes swept the room.

"What's wrong?" Harua asked, gaze landing on and then narrowing onto Yuma specifically, with the particular focus of someone whose nose was doing most of the looking.

"Besides the fact that you just scared us shitless —" Yuma pressed a hand flat to his own sternum, waiting for his heart to stop trying to leave his body " — nothing." He glared at the younger over Fuma's shoulder, slowly untangling himself from the grip he'd grabbed Fuma with.

“Liar,” Harua said, and his voice came out soft rather than accusatory, which was somehow worse. “I could smell you the moment I got back.”

At that statement, Fuma shuffled beside him and peered at him with gentle, yet stern, eyes. 

“Yuma,” Fuma said sternly.

Just his name. Just like that. It was somehow more effective than a whole speech would have been.

Yuma whined, the sound escaping before he could stop it, his ears flattening fully on top of his head. His tail curled tightly against his waist, a self-contained curl, like he was trying to make himself slightly smaller.

“It was just a nightmare,” he muttered under his breath, eyes locked onto the fingers in his lap.

Fuma and Harua shared a look. They both knew the cat hybrid was lying — there was only one person who got easily swayed by his words, and it wasn’t either of them.

“You miss Jo,” Harua stated pointedly, a firm hand resting on his hip.

“No I don’t,” Yuma hissed. His cheeks flamed a bright red. His fangs showed at the corners of his mouth, sharp and unimpressive as a threat when his ears were doing what they were doing.

Harua only cooed in his face, while Fuma gave him a gentle nudge. 

“No hissing,” Fuma reminded him.

"Now scooch over," Harua announced cheerfully, already moving toward the bed with complete confidence in his welcome. "I want to join in on the fun too."

Yuma hissed one more time, mostly on principle, and then scooted over.

—

“Good morning,” Euijoo greeted Yuma when he finally decided to crawl out of bed the next morning. He dragged his feet with each step down the hall, hair untamed and sticking up at multiple angles, scratching absently at his stomach as he squinted against the kitchen light.

Euijoo was already at the kitchen island with a cup of something warm between his hands, looking unreasonably put together for whatever hour it was. He always looked like that. It was one of his more quietly aggravating qualities.

“Morning,” Yuma muttered back, plopping down next to Euijoo at the kitchen island. He slouched, blinking at nothing.

“Jo came back last night,” Euijoo informed him. He used that measured tone he always used when delivering news he already knew wouldn’t land well.

Yuma’s ears flicked up involuntarily.

“But left about an hour ago.”

They fell back down. He let out a slow breath through his nose, jaw tightening for just a moment before he smoothed his expression back out.

Unlike Yuma, Euijoo was an early riser. He almost always was awake to see Jo leave for his early morning schedules — Yuma, not so much. So he made it his duty to inform Yuma in the late mornings whenever the two had missed each other by a hair.

Yuma had never asked him to do that. Euijoo had never explained why he did. That was just how it was.

Yuma’s tail flicked wildly behind him as he slouched onto the counter, letting out a loud groan into his forearms. 

“Is this a I’m so sleepy groan,” Euijoo mused, tilting his head. “Or a I miss Jo groan.”

Yuma grunted, refusing to answer to save the last few pieces of his dignity.

“It’s kinda obvious, Juju,” Nicholas said as he appeared near the end of the hall with the particular energy of someone who had just woken up and was already mildly inconvenienced by the world. Eyes full of sleep, shirt missing, hair flat on the right side of his head.

When neither of them responded, only staring at him with blank gazes. 

Nicholas stopped walking. He looked between them, that flatness in his expression sharpening slightly into suspicion. "What?" His black tail puffed up behind him, the involuntary defensiveness of someone who had just walked into something and wasn't sure what it was.

“Nothing,” Yuma muttered. He adjusted his chin to rest on his palms, watching as Nicholas searched through the fridge.

Yuma silently threw a glance at the leader beside him. Euijoo had gone quiet, his eyes tracking Nicholas across the kitchen with an expression Yuma recognized as I am trying very hard to look like I'm thinking about something else. 

Yuma looked back at Nicholas. Nicholas pulled out the yogurt, turned around, and his eyes caught Euijoo's for approximately one second before Euijoo's gaze snapped pointedly down to his coffee cup. A small, knowing curl appeared at the corner of Nicholas's mouth — there and gone — and then he was looking at Yuma instead, expression neutral.

"Yogurt?" He offered, holding it out.

Yuma felt the secondhand exhaustion of it all settle over him like a second blanket. He groaned again and dragged a hand down over his face. "Please stop acting like you guys aren't dating already. It's exhausting to witness."

Nicholas rolled his eyes. He didn't deny anything. He put the yogurt on the counter near Yuma anyway.

“You didn’t eat dinner last night, Yuma,” Euijoo pointed out.

“I’m not hungry,” Yuma murmured, tracing idle circles on the table.

"Or the night before."

"I told you, I'm not —"

"Don't make me call Jo," Euijoo said, and his voice was mild but his eyes weren't.

Irritation grew at the mention of the man who he rarely saw anymore. His eyes snapped up from the counter. He almost hissed, caught himself, didn't — Nicholas was right there and he had an opinion about the hissing that he wasn't shy about expressing.

“It’s not like he’d be here anytime soon to care,” he said instead, and the words came out sharper than he meant them.

“Yuma,” Nicholas said disapprovingly.

Yuma inhaled deeply, pushing himself up from the stool. “I said I’m not hungry,” he repeated. His voice was quieter this time, flatter. He pushed himself up off the stool. “I’m going back to my room.”

Neither of them tried to stop him.

—

Yuma spent the next few hours brooding alone in his room with the lights off, curtains mostly drawn, lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling. A frown was set permanently on his face, even when he was reading through positive comments from fans or watching his favorite movie. 

Occasionally, he could hear doors open and close, feet shuffle down the hall, soft whispers being exchanged — all probably about him. That made his mood drop even more.

He didn't want to be the one they were quietly checking in about. He didn't want to be managed or worried over. He just wanted — he didn't want to finish that sentence, even in his own head.

He rolled over and pressed his face into his pillow and tried to sleep.

He was somewhere between actually succeeding and giving up on it when the knock came.

“Yuyu?” Harua’s gentle voice called for him.

“Hmm?” Yuma responded.

“I’m coming in,” the bunny hybrid announced. And when he heard no refute, he eased the door open slowly, like he was trying not to startle anything.

Yuma rolled onto his back. Harua stood in the doorway, wide-eyed, nose already doing that small twitching thing that meant he was reading the room in a way Yuma couldn't prevent. Behind him, Yuma caught the flash of a brown ear ducking back out of the frame. There was a poorly-suppressed giggle from somewhere to the left of the door.

Yuma looked at Harua. Harua looked back at him with the expression of someone executing a very important mission.

"Can we hang out in your room?" Harua asked, with the particular solemnity of a child asking a question they already know the answer to.

"And if I say no?" Yuma rasped. He meant it to come out flat. It came out fonder than that, which he chose not to acknowledge.

A large head appeared in the doorway — Taki, with a frown so genuine it looked like it had been engraved. "Why would you say no?" He sounded wounded by the very concept.

Yuma felt the corner of his mouth twitch against his will. "I was kidding." He pushed himself upright and scooted back against the headboard, making room. "Come in."

Taki was already moving before the sentence finished.

"Maki too," Yuma added.

Maki appeared from behind Harua with a sheepish smile, puppy ears doing the thing they did when he was trying to look charming rather than caught. "How'd you know?"

"Because you have never once in your life successfully hidden anything from anyone."

Maki pouted, his tall puppy ears pressing down on his head. 

The four of them piled onto Yuma's small bed — Taki wedged firmly under Yuma's arm, Harua draped across the foot of the mattress with his legs hanging off the edge, Maki tucked somewhere in the middle, chin propped on Yuma's knee. It was warm and close and smelled like all of them at once, and for a little while, it was enough.

Yuma kept his eyes on whatever Taki had pulled up on his phone, but he wasn't really watching. At some point Maki made a comment about something he was watching and Harua responded from the foot of the bed without looking up, and Taki laughed, and the sound of it filled the room and sat there.

Yuma's tail moved slowly against the mattress.

His head felt heavier than usual. He chalked it up to not sleeping well.

He chalked it up to that for the rest of the day too.

—

By evening, it was harder to pretend.

His ears felt tender. Every door that closed down the hall made him pull them closer to his head without meaning to. He'd piled the blankets back on after everyone had drifted out, but the warmth didn't seem to be going anywhere useful — he was warm and cold at the same time, that specific awful split that his body did when it was building toward something.

The base of his tail ached. Low and persistent. He'd had enough fevers in his life to know what that meant.

He wasn't sick yet. He was almost sick, which was somehow worse, because there was almost nothing to do except wait.

He was laying in Jo’s bed once again — he'd migrated back here sometime in the late afternoon, when his own room stopped feeling sufficient — and pressed his nose into the pillow. The scent was thin. He'd been doing this for over a week and he'd replaced most of it with himself, which was almost insulting in its irony. He chased the last of it to the edge of the pillowcase and breathed slowly and told himself it was enough.

His purr came and went in short, broken stretches. Starting when he found it, stopping when he lost it again.

Harua appeared in the doorway sometime after dinner — Yuma hadn't eaten dinner, he'd heard them call for him and stayed quiet — and didn't say anything immediately. Just stood there, nose going, reading him.

"Yuma," he finally said.

"Sleeping," Yuma said into the pillow.

"You're not."

"Close enough."

Harua crossed the room and Yuma didn't bother objecting. The shorter gentle pinched Yuma’s fluffy ear with three fingers, humming under his breath. Yuma moved to swat at it but didn't have the energy to complete the gesture.

"You have a fever," Harua said.

"Barely one."

"I'm texting Jo."

"Don't." He heard his own voice come out rough and low. He kept his eyes closed. "He's busy. He has schedules. Don't make it a thing, Harua, I'm serious."

A pause. The sound of Harua's phone in his hand.

"Harua."

"I'm not texting him," Harua said. The tone of it was not quite convincing.

Yuma pulled the blanket over his head and decided that whatever happened next was not his responsibility.

—

Harua, in fact, did not text Jo. Instead, he texted the next best person he could think of.

Yuma must have drifted off at some point, because when he surfaced again the room was darker and someone had turned the hall light on, the thin line of it visible under the door.

He lay still and listened. The dorm had gone quiet — not empty, just settled. He could hear the low murmur of a television somewhere, and closer than that, the soft sound of movement in the kitchen. Someone making something. The smell of it reached him a few seconds later, warm and faintly sweet, and his stomach turned over in a way that wasn't quite nausea and wasn't quite hunger either.

He didn't move.

A knock came at the door — different from Harua's. 

"Yuma." Kei's voice, low and unhurried. "I'm coming in."

He didn't wait for an answer either, but he opened the door slowly enough that Yuma had time to arrange himself before he appeared. 

He was carrying a small tray — a bowl of something, a glass of water, what looked like the soft rice porridge he made whenever anyone in the dorm was under the weather. He took in the room without comment. The darkness, the pile of blankets, Yuma's ears flat and his tail tucked under the covers.

He set the tray on the nightstand and sat down on the edge of the bed, unhurried, like he had nowhere else to be and hadn't considered that he might.

"I'm not hungry," Yuma said, preemptively.

"I know," Kei said.

He didn't push the bowl toward him. Didn't make a thing of it. Just sat there, and the sitting had a quality to it — settled, undemanding — that made it very hard to resent.

Yuma looked at the ceiling. "Harua told you."

"Harua tells me everything." A beat. "He's worried about you."

"Everyone keeps saying that."

"Because it keeps being true."

Yuma's tail moved under the blanket, a slow restless flick. He pulled the covers up slightly higher and said nothing, which was its own kind of answer, and Kei had been doing this long enough to know how to read it.

"How long have you been feeling this way?" Kei asked. His voice was even, careful. Not a doctor's question. Something more like a father's, or the closest thing to it — the kind of question that already knew the answer and was asking anyway because being asked mattered.

"Which way," Yuma muttered.

Kei looked at him.

Yuma looked away. "A few days," he admitted, and it came out smaller than he intended. "The fever's new. The rest of it —" He stopped.

"The rest of it," Kei said, not as a prompt, just quietly completing the space.

Yuma's ears pressed flat. He stared at a fixed point on the wall, and the words came out sideways, aimed at nothing in particular. "I know he's busy. I know how schedules work, I'm not — I'm not upset about it. It's not like he's doing it on purpose."

"No," Kei agreed.

"I just." He exhaled. Something in his chest felt compressed, too full of something he hadn't named out loud yet. "I'm fine when he's around, even if it's only for a little while. I can manage fine. But it's been —" His voice dropped. "It's been a while."

Kei didn't say anything immediately. He reached out and rested a hand on the top of Yuma's head, between his ears, with the particular steadiness of someone who had done this many times and knew exactly how much weight to use. 

Yuma's eyes closed without permission.

"You don't have to manage it alone, you know," Kei said, gently. "That's what we're here for."

"I know that," Yuma said. And then, quieter, "I know. I just —" He turned his face slightly into the pillow. "It's not the same."

"No," Kei said. "It isn't."

He didn't try to make it the same. Didn't try to talk Yuma out of the feeling or redirect it somewhere more convenient. He just kept his hand where it was, warm and still, until some of the tension went out of Yuma's shoulders by degrees, a slow release.

After a while, Yuma's purr started up again. Thin and unsteady, not the full rolling thing it was when he was content — more like the sound of something trying to comfort itself. Kei didn't comment on it.

"Try to eat a little," Kei said eventually, nodding toward the bowl. "Even a few bites."

Yuma opened his eyes and looked at it. The porridge was still steaming faintly. He pushed himself upright with more effort than it should have taken and reached for it, and Kei passed him the glass of water first without being asked.

They sat together in the quiet while Yuma ate — slowly, without appetite but without resistance either — and Kei stayed until the bowl was half empty and Yuma was listing sideways again, eyelids heavy.

"Sleep," Kei said, taking the bowl back. He stood, straightening the blanket over Yuma's shoulder with one easy motion. "I'll leave the hall light on."

Yuma didn't answer. He was already mostly gone, his breathing evening out before Kei had even reached the door.

He didn't hear Kei pause in the hallway. Didn't hear him take out his phone.

Didn't hear him type: I think you should come home tonight if you can.

—

Jo came home close to midnight.

He was finishing up his last scene when he received Kei’s text. Immediately, he knew what it was about — who it was about.

Jo had barely seen Yuma all week. The other few times that happened, Yuma either didn’t talk to him in retaliation or the shorter had fallen ill after going too long without scenting.

He didn't know exactly when it had happened — Yuma becoming scent dependent on him specifically, the way he had. It had probably been gradual, the kind of thing that settled in so slowly you didn't notice until it was already fully true. But it became impossible to ignore a couple of months ago, during the holiday break.

Yuma had gone into Jo's closet without asking — Jo had watched him from the doorway, unhurried and systematic about it, pulling out shirts and pressing his face briefly into each one before folding the ones that passed and setting aside the ones that didn't. Like he was doing laundry, except in reverse. Jo had leaned against the doorframe and said nothing, and Yuma had never looked up, and that was that.

Then, two nights later, his phone rang at two in the morning. Yuma's name with a carefully selected cat emoji on the screen.

He'd answered already knowing the shape of what was coming, and sure enough — Yuma's voice on the other end, tight and thin in that way it got when he was trying to hold something together through sheer stubbornness, blaming Jo for the shirts, for washing them apparently, which Jo hadn't done, but that wasn't really the point and both of them knew it. 

Underneath the words was something that sounded like the middle of the night somewhere unfamiliar, and missing something specific, and not knowing how to say either of those things plainly.

Jo had kept his voice even. Told him he hadn't washed them. Told him he was planning to head back to the dorms earlier than expected if Yuma wanted to come back too.

Yuma had shown up twenty minutes after Jo, which meant he'd already been packed. He'd walked straight into the dorm and directly into Jo, pressing his cheek against his sternum and dragging it slowly side to side, exhaling like something in him was finally decompressing.

Jo had stood there with his arms loose at his sides for exactly a second before he put them around him. He hadn't said anything. Yuma hadn't either.

From there, Jo knew that his and Yuma’s unlabeled relationship had become something more.

—

Yuma heard the front door. He always heard the front door when it was Jo — some animal part of him had been cataloguing the sound for years, the specific way Jo moved through a space, unhurried and low to the ground and quiet in that way that was still distinctly him. He'd been tracking it for days without consciously choosing to, and he heard it now through what had become a light, shallow sleep.

He heard the hushed exchange of voices in the hall. Jo's cadence, lower than usual with tiredness, and then another voice — Euijoo, maybe, or Harua — he couldn't make out the words. He heard his own name once, very softly.

Then footsteps, and a door down the hall creaked open, then shut quietly. Jo had gone looking in the hybrid’s room, but here Yuma was, cocconed up in Jo’s bed without a care in the world. 

Then, his footsteps stopped outside the door.

Yuma closed his eyes and arranged himself into the shape of someone deeply, convincingly asleep.

The door opened anyway.

Jo was quiet about it. He moved carefully, which meant he'd already been told something, or guessed it — he wasn't turning lights on, wasn't announcing himself, just moved through the dark and found the bed by knowledge of his own room. The mattress dipped as a weight settled on the edge of it.

Then a hand, warm and steady, pressed gently to the top of Yuma's head, between his ears.

Every muscle in Yuma's body went rigid.

"I know you're awake," Jo said. His voice was low and tired. Careful in the particular way it got when he was managing something gently.

"Go away," Yuma said into the pillow.

"You have a fever."

"I'm fine."

"Yuma —"

"I said I'm fine." He pulled the blanket tighter around himself, ears pressing flat. They gave him away every time, he knew that, he'd always known that, he couldn't seem to stop doing it. "You didn't need to come in here. I was sleeping."

“In my bed,” Jo said pointedly.

“I was sleeping,” Yuma repeated.

"You weren't sleeping."

"You don't know that."

Jo didn't argue the point. The hand between his ears didn't move — just stayed where it was, warm and present and completely still, like it had all the time in the world and no particular interest in going anywhere. And Yuma lay there with his face in the pillow and his tail curled tight against his waist and thought about all the things he wasn't going to say.

He wasn't going to say that he'd been sleeping in this room for days trying to hold onto a scent that kept getting thinner. He wasn't going to say that being sick was worse when it was this kind of sick, the kind that came partly from missing someone, from his body just quietly deciding that the absence of a specific person was something it was going to take personally.

He wasn’t even going to mention his jealousy towards Kei and Fuma for being humans and not having this sort of separation scent anxiety, or Nicholas and Euijoo who were rarely apart enough for Nicholas to even miss the leader in any sense. 

The smell of him was filling the room now. Actually filling it, not the thin ghost of it that Yuma had been chasing through the pillowcase. Real, and warm, and right there.

Yuma's throat felt tight in a way that had nothing to do with the fever.

"I heard you missed dinner," Jo said eventually, into the quiet.

"Euijoo's a snitch."

"And the day before."

"I wasn't hungry."

The hand moved. Just slightly — a slow, small circle between his ears, one time, and then it stilled again. It was such a small thing. Yuma's resolve developed a crack that started at the base of it and spread to every edge.

He turned over.

It wasn't graceful. He shoved the blanket down and rolled onto his back and looked up at Jo with his ears still flat to his skull and his expression arranged into the particular closed-off set of it that meant I am feeling too many things and I refuse to be perceived doing it. 

Jo looked down at him. He looked exhausted — properly, bone-deep exhausted, still in his schedule clothes, his hair loose in a way it almost never was, that particular quality of tiredness that came from too many early mornings stacked against too many late nights with not enough space between them.

"You look terrible," Yuma told him.

"You have a fever of thirty-eight and a half," Jo said. "Harua sent me a thermometer reading."

"I knew it." Yuma looked away at the ceiling. His jaw was tight. "I told him not to."

"He was worried about you."

"Everyone is always worried about me. I don't need anyone to be worried about me."

"I know," Jo said.

"Then —"

"I wanted to, Yuma."

He said it simply. Not as reassurance, not as an argument — just as a fact, stated plainly, the way Jo stated most things. Like it was the most obvious conclusion in the world and he wasn't particularly concerned about whether Yuma found it convenient.

Yuma looked back at him.

His ears came up. Slowly, not all the way, but enough. Enough that Jo would see it, and they both knew Jo would see it, and Yuma was too tired to make them stay down.

Jo reached out and pulled the blanket back up over Yuma's shoulders, tucking it with the same matter-of-fact care he brought to everything. "Move over."

"This is my room," Yuma said. "I mean —" He stopped. "It's your room, but I was here first."

"Move over, Yuma."

He moved over.

Jo settled in beside him on top of the blankets and Yuma lasted exactly four seconds before he closed the distance — but not to his shoulder, not yet. He pressed his nose to the side of Jo's neck first, deliberate and unashamed in the way he could only manage when he was too exhausted to perform indifference, and breathed in slowly. Held it and let it settle somewhere deep in his chest where ten days of absence had left everything scraped and raw.

Jo went still. He didn't say anything. He didn't make it a thing. Because despite it being a common occurrence between them, he still couldn’t get used to Yuma being this close to him at times. Him and only him.

Yuma exhaled against his throat, and then did it again because once wasn't enough, because his body had been running on fumes and it wanted to be sure, wanted to confirm what his nose was already telling him — he's here, he's actually here, this is real — and Jo let him, one hand coming up to rest at the back of his head between his ears, not pressing, just present.

After a long moment Yuma shifted, turning his face into Jo's shoulder properly, cheek dragging slow against the fabric of his shirt. His tail uncurled from where it had been wound tight against his waist and found Jo's wrist, wrapping around it loosely. His purr started low in his chest — unsteady at first, searching, and then finding itself as the scent settled fully around him, warm and complete and exactly right.

The room smelled right. 

"Missed you," he murmured into Jo's shoulder.

Jo's hand tightened at the back of his head, fingers resting light between his ears. The arm under Yuma shifted, drawing him in slightly closer.

"I know," Jo said softly. "I missed you too."

Yuma didn't answer. He pressed his nose briefly into Jo's shoulder one more time — one last quiet confirmation — and then let his eyes close, and the purr evened out into something long and steady, and he stopped tracking anything at all.

Jo stayed exactly where he was.

Yuma slept like a baby that night.