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When Yasu arrives at the small café that they agreed to meet at, they feel horribly out of place. The past decade, Yasu hasn’t lived in the worst neighbourhoods they could’ve lived in, not after accessing the massive amount of wealth that is theoretically theirs, rightfully. She may own a house, and she is certainly well off, but this café still is not a place they would usually go to.
Yasu lives in a way so that they can keep living off their wealth for the rest of her life, even if she does some free-lance writing here and there. She’d just rather not use the money she hates on needless things like overpriced cafés.
This café looks everything, but not cheap.
She gulps.
She has been excited for this meeting, but she has also been dreading it more than anything else ever before. Yasu isn’t sure whether she has hope that the person behind “Hachijo Tohya” is who she thinks she is. Well, she knows it’s both an “Ikuko” and a “Tohya”, but she thinks there might be more to it. She hopes there’s more to it, even if there’s not more to go by than the fact his name is ‘eighteen’, which is the age he was when…
If it’s even the same person.
Either way – Yasuda Sayo, nearly ten years after the Rokkenjima incident, barely having survived after Battler sacrificed himself to save her, has found out who is behind the forgeries that keep popping up.
She knows some of them aren’t hers. After all, Yasu spent so much time frantically writing away at them, a typhoon looming on the horizon, ready to swallow up their catbox. No way would she forget what she did and didn’t write.
After a lot of consideration, Yasu eventually concluded that there was only one way to get rid of their restlessness. They would have to reach out to “Hachijo Tohya” and make sure. She got an e-mail back relatively fast – “Ikuko” was willing to meet them.
And so, Yasu is here, in the richest neighborhood of town, about to meet at least the woman of the duo. They’re dressed in a clean white shirt, black pants and brown leather shoes, their cane firmly held in her hand to support her as she opens the door.
An attendant comes over to help; Yasu despises it when people help them, and they always have, unless it’s a very specific person. Ikuko is not that person, she realizes very fast, spotting a woman sitting in the corner of the café. She knows this is the woman she’s going to meet today based on not just her snobby looks – who else would find so much enjoyment in the suffering of others, if not someone snobby-looking like that – but also because of the fountain pen and notebook on the table in front of her.
Their eyes meet across the room. “Ikuko” smiles, and that’s how Yasu knows she’s correct.
She walks over, and, after Ikuko tells her to sit down, does so. Yasu leans the cane against their own leg.
“So, you’re The Golden,” Ikuko starts, a slight smile on her face that makes her look like a witch. Latest now would Yasuda understand that this must be her.
After all, witches recognize each other.
“Yes,” Yasuda answers. “And I am sure you know my identity.”
“I would dare say I do,” Ikuko comments, taking a quiet sip from her cup of coffee, her pinkie stretched out in the way the Ushiromiyas, did, too.
Before guns and bombs took them. Before all that was left of them was gold and ash and a single tooth.
“Let us cut right to the chase,” Yasuda sighs, already having decided that Ikuko is not the type of person she likes – after all, she is much too similar to themselves. “What do you want to know in exchange for the information I want from you?”
“I see. We understand each other. How did you survive, Yasuda Sayo?”
Even though she has taken that name up completely after the Rokkenjima Incident, Sayo still doesn’t like being addressed by it. Especially not by her. It makes her feel like worms are crawling deep below her skin, squirming, something that isn’t quite right and not quite wrong, either. Yet, it’s no use. If Yasuda wants to know about ‘Tohya’, then she better keep up her part of the deal.
She’s always known she’d have to explain herself.
And so, they do. Yasu explains how they got back on the boat, frantically looking for Battler in the vast ocean, not a single golden rose glittering at its bottom, but how they didn’t find him. How they got treatment for their injuries on Nijima, but later moved to the mainland. How she decided to keep writing (in a desperate attempt to find Battler, to have him know who she is, always clinging to that sliver of hope that he might have survived, too, if she has). How she followed the Witch Hunters for a while, deeming them to not understand anything at all – that was until she came across Banquet and Alliance of the Golden Witch, at least.
And from then on out, Yasu has been trying to track down the author, leading them to the here and now.
Ikuko holds up her part of the deal, too. She tells Yasu that “Tohya” is a man. That she found him, one day, half-dead. That he remembered nothing but his age, that the doctors later said he must’ve nearly drowned, his lungs still showing traces of damage. That his memory didn’t come back, at first. And that, when it did, in a flurry of rainstorms and gold ingots and crazed laughter and gunshots and magic brimming in blue and red, he reacted in much the same way Yasuda did when she found out about her body and heritage.
“Is he…?” she asks, and Ikuko nods.
“Yes. Tohya is alive and well, “Ikuko affirms, and the weight Yasu has felt building up inside of them finally starts to dissipate just a little.
Still.
The knowledge that he tried to…
It’s a lot.
However, Yasuda has always been particularly good at keeping themselves in check when the situation called for it. Right now, that is the case, too, even when they feel like they’re teetering on the edge of a cliff, not needing someone to push them off at all, knowing that if their concentration slips for even a millisecond, they’ll tumble off all by themselves.
“…Hachijo Tohya is Ushiromiya Battler, correct?”
The question hovers in the air between them, for a few seconds, like mist that cannot ever be cleared, has not ever been cleared for the past ten years. They felt longer than the thousand years the Golden Witch waited for her prince on a white horse, even.
“Yes.”
And just like that, the fog is gone.
“And no. He may remember, but he does not identify as such anymore, as I have previously said. He may be Battler, but at the same time, he is not. He may have all the memories, but he says they don’t feel like his.”
“I understand,” Yasu says, simply, her voice wobbling as she tries so, so hard to hold onto the last bits of her sanity. She does understand. She knows the feeling.
She knows what it’s like to be someone you’re not. The mental disconnect, the horror that comes with it, the comfort of it, too. If anyone understands, it’s them.
Ikuko nods, like she knew that Yasuda Sayo would understand Hachijo Tohya.
They haven’t met in a decade, and yet, it feels like they’re even closer now than they were back when they were young teenagers, still green behind the ears and chasing that innocent first love that was soon to be stained with blood and gunpowder and the stench of burnt bodies.
They have both tried to take their own lives and failed. They have both resorted to writing in order to keep themselves alive.
“I figured you would,” Ikuko voices, the slightest of smiles to be spotted in her smirk. “We are launching a new forgery soon.”
Yasu perks their head up. The tone in Ikuko’s voice implies she is yet to say more.
“He wrote it by himself. I think you’ll quite like it,” she says. This time, she mutters it quietly, flicking a few drops of ink onto her notebook with her pen, a small motion, the droplets of the midnight-black liquid looking just like that sea so deep down, where their hands met.
And then, in a much more casual tone: “We’ll celebrate its release in a little pub, just the two of us and the small team involved in proof-reading and releasing it. Well, everyone but its first reader, I suppose. How about you come join us?”
Yasu’s heart feels like it stops. (The thing it didn’t do, back then, when they coughed up water into sand and only didn’t jump back into the water because of him.)
They hadn’t thought as far. Yasu had thought only to the point of learning that Battler is alive, much like they had only ever thought to the point of receiving a letter from him.
Both times, she has instead received the whole person. Both times, she hasn’t had a single clue of how to deal with possibly seeing him.
“What?” she croaks out, which prompts an open and honest laugh from Ikuko.
“Well, do you not want to meet him? Do the two of you not have a lot in common?”
Mystery novels and dead mothers, the smell of black tea and old pages, of ink and fire, witches and sorcerers and the desperate attempts of finding one another through thousands and millions of fragments.
Yasu dares not answer.
“Meet him. On the night of Dawn of the Golden Witch’s release. He’s written it for you, Yasuda Sayo.”
For them.
A heavy gulp, and the desperate last try at avoiding their forever intertwined fates breaking, a red string woven so deeply into themselves, always coming close to snapping but never quite managing.
“Wouldn’t that… wouldn’t it hurt him, to see me? If he took such… drastic measures, when he remembered, wouldn’t seeing someone he knew as Battler break him completely?”
Yasu can barely take being the indirect cause of Battler – Tohya – not wanting to live anymore once. She could never do it twice.
“He’s not that easy to break,” Ikuko says, at last. She swirls her cup of coffee, the dark brown of it looking like it may contain whole worlds, but not as many as those few drops of ink on her book of yet blank pages, certain to be filled soon, if she’s anything like Yasu. “I think quite the opposite, actually. I think he’d quite like to meet you.”
And so, the cogs of fate turn once more, no matter how hard the two of them have tried to stop them in the past.
*
Later, when they’re home again, Yasu breaks down. The emotions get too much, and she’s left on the bathroom floor, shivering and clinging to the toilet in front of them. Their leg aches from the hard floor of the room’s tiles, and her stomach hurts from how often they’ve thrown up. No amount of tea and rice crackers can fix her, the usually comforting act of brushing her teeth after a breakdown like this useless in light of how soon, they’re going to meet him again.
Yasu and Battler are going to meet again.
The thought leaves them both horrified and giddy – but that’s better than back when they were still a servant on Rokkenjima. Back then, she only felt horrified.
Back then, Battler only felt giddy. Maybe he, as Tohya, now also feels horrified, if Ikuko decides to tell him.
(Something tells Yasu that she won’t.)
Maybe this time, he also feels horrified and giddy in equal measure.
In 1998, twelve years after they so narrowly escaped the catbox, their feelings may finally line up.
*
“Tohya?”
“Hm?”
Tohya turns his head towards Ikuko, seated next to him, their physical copy of Dawn of the Golden Witch lying before them. It’s in his handwriting. He knows it’s different from Battler’s. Ikuko went to where he apparently used to live, once, and dug up some of his school material. She said it looked nothing like his handwriting does now. No one would recognize him from that alone.
It makes him relieved, in a way. To no longer be him.
Ikuko lets her glass of wine sink, gently placing it on the counter of the pub’s bar.
“Truth is, I invited someone here tonight.”
“Oh? I can’t see anyone I don’t know,” he says with a little look around. All the faces here are ones he knows.
“Hm. I didn’t tell you until now. I wasn’t sure how to breach the topic.”
“It’s not-“
“It’s not Battler’s little sister,” she assures him immediately, which is good. Tohya knows she’s alive. He has no idea how to face her. He doesn’t know how to talk to a person that’s both his little sister, and also a complete stranger.
He doesn’t think it’d do her any good.
“It’s someone else who really wants to meet you. A fan, so to speak. Someone who would probably really like to read Dawn. I haven’t invited them in. They said they’re not fond of these types of places. When I went to the bathroom earlier, I saw them waiting outside. Would you be so kind to greet them?”
“Ikuko,” he sighs, “you haven’t even told me who it is. What if it’s someone who wants to do harm? Just who’ve you invited?”
He doesn’t really mean it, though. As weird as Ikuko gets, as mysterious and aloof of a woman she is, Tohya doesn’t think she wants to harm him. Their opinions on the forgeries diverge, but that’s only natural.
Hachijo Ikuko wasn’t there, at the beginning of October, 1986. Hachijo Tohya, however, was.
“Ah, they won’t kill you! I’m sure, I’m sure. Please, Tohya?”
“…Alright,” he huffs with a little laugh, “where exactly are they?”
He’s already getting up, taking his cane into his hand. His legs are particularly bad today, for some reason. His wheelchair is parked in front of the pub, though, so if he truly needs it, he can go get it. Maybe he’ll be fine, though. He tries, some days, to get by without it. He doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s to prove a completely useless point to himself, in a way.
“In the park next to the pub. The last time I saw them, they said they would just stay by the pond.”
Tohya knows where the pond is. He nods, and makes his way out of the pub, his legs barely carrying him, but carrying him just enough today so that he thinks he doesn’t need his wheelchair after all. The person can retrieve it for him, too, if it becomes too much halfway through the walk.
He steps around the corner and towards the park – it’s just a small park, so his gaze very quickly sweeps over it. There are a few benches in the front, a flower garden behind them and in front of them, a few trees with a hammock in between, and then the pond.
In front of it stands a lone silhouette, its only neighbour a dark green lantern, casting its soft golden light into the pitch-black, bluish dark. They paint a skinny figure, their clothes barely even visible with how easily their blackness blends into the night, shorter hair swaying gently in the wind. When they hear his heavy steps approaching, they turn around, and even just the profile, illuminated by the lantern, flickering a little with the moths flying through the light, casting shadows onto their countenance with their erratic fluttering about-
Even just the profile would be enough for Tohya to recognize who this is.
She’s the last memory that he regained, at the end of this long, long flashback. That kiss on the boat, all the way back then, and then – nothing. Only the waves moving in a slightly unnatural way, like something had sunk into them.
He remembers even that smiling face from down below, and hears a voice in his head calling him an idiot again and again.
He remembers that boy watering flowers in the garden and the girl clumsily serving him, and the person cackling maniacally and teasing him for not yet having found the solution for the mystery novel they were currently reading.
It’s them.
Kanon, Shannon, Beatrice the Golden Witch, Yasuda Sayo.
Battler Ushiromiya’s first love – and maybe, Tohya’s first love, too.
His head hurts. It feels like a splitting headache, but worse, enough to make his stomach turn enough for him to think that he might throw up in all of the happiness and grief that seeps through him not just because of the man buried inside of him, but also because of himself.
He wrote Dawn in a haze, for a person he thought had died, for someone whose death he blamed himself for.
But they’re well and alive, the only indicator of something bad happening to them the cane they’re crouched onto.
Tohya sinks onto the floor, into the grass, still slightly wet from the afternoon rain. His legs give in, and he’s left there, with not a single chance of getting up again. Not by himself, anyway.
This time, he will require help. Tohya will not be able to lift himself up again.
He doesn’t see the expression on their face when they come closer, only hears their footsteps, his hand clutching at his face.
“I’m sorry,” they mumble, voice nearly as quiet as the wind, “I knew I shouldn’t have come to see you.”
Tohya shakes his head as vigorously as he can, the headache starting to improve a tiny, tiny bit at hearing their voice.
It’s the same voice as that shy ‘thank you’ in the rose garden, the small and embarrassed ‘Battler-sama’, the same voice as that ‘I want to kiss you again’.
“No,” he croaks out, using the entirety of his power to look up at her. “No. No. Don’t be sorry.”
But Yasu looks very, very sorry. She kneels down in front of him, raising her hands a little, like they’re trying very hard to comfort him.
Another day, Tohya might have thought to himself that nothing can comfort him, but the sole fact that this person is still alive. That’s enough for him. That’s comfort enough, but whatever more they offer, he’ll take it.
His heart feels like it’s bursting into pieces, dropping into the oceans like pieces of a mirror reflecting both the sunlight above and the abyss below, pieces that, if you put them together, paint a picture of red ink and blue ink and a cat walking across manuscripts and chewing on them, spitting them out. A painting of all emotions until only love remains.
Tohya’s heart hurts so, so much.
“Sayo,” he chokes out.
“I… Just ‘Yasu’ is fine. I don’t mind you calling me that name, if it’s you.”
“I’m not him.”
“I know. She said so.”
“I can never be him again,” he mutters, a silent plea accompanying it.
Please don’t make me be him. I can’t live with the pain he went through if I have to feel it as my own. I can accept him inside of me. I can accept his pain. But I can’t accept it as my own. Please don’t force me to be someone I have ceased being.
“I know. That’s okay. I can never be myself again, either.”
They understand.
Yasuda Sayo understands Hachijo Tohya.
He nods, to signify that Hachijo Tohya understands Yasuda Sayo, too.
When they reach out, Tohya lets them. He sinks into their arms, and starts to cry, and given just how they start hugging him, cradling him in their arms, too, their tears seeping through his greying hair, Tohya knows that they feel the exact same way as him.
It’s okay to be himself with her and vice versa, because they understand. They both lost each other, that day, seven years prior to the tragedy. They both found each other again, at the point of it, and then lost each other once more, a few days later, in the vast ocean of Japan’s coast.
Both of them cry, and they cry a lot. Both of their hands hastily swipe across the other’s body, here and there, as if to make sure they’re both real, even if they’re not the exact person they were looking for. Maybe it’s enough that the two people closest to the ones they were looking for have found each other, in their stead. It’s fingers in each other’s hair and on their backs, squeezing muscles in arms and intertwining hands. It’s all tears and snot, and at one point, Yasu takes out a tissue to wipe it for both of them, an awkward giggle released from the two at the very same time.
After that, they hug again.
Tohya doesn’t know for how long.
He only knows that the man inside of him is the one to break the silence.
“So, I lost that last mystery, eh?”
She laughs. It’s such a bright laugh. It feels like it lights up his entire world.
The hug breaks. The world comes back to both of them, but only surrounding theirs. They’re part of the world, but the world is not part of them. Not right now.
“You did… Tohya.”
The right name. At least that. He swallows.
“You should-“ his voice cracks, “you should pose another mystery to me, as revenge. I want another chance.”
Something like a cackle escapes them as they raise an eyebrow at Tohya.
“Oh yeah? You want a revenge after losing so embarrassingly?”
“…Help me solve one mystery,” he stutters, suddenly realizing something.
He looks down at their leg. The one with the limp. Yasu doesn’t need him to explain. Doesn’t need him to ask. She only shakes her head.
“I got washed up. You saved me. I searched for you – or, well, Battler – and I couldn’t find you. It’s what pushed me through. I wanted to find you. I’ve spent the past decade trying to find you.”
So did he, once he remembered. He thought they were dead, but Tohya tried to find at least their soul, their being, their love. He thinks he might have found it. He hopes his new forgery can prove as much. He hopes that his belief in the witch and magic can prove just how much he was looking for her, too.
“Ikuko told me about you,”, she adds, “so there’s… no need to explain. What have you been up to…?”
It’s a cautious question, one of testing out the waters. Clearly.
“Writing. Mostly. Rehabilitation, too. And… you?”
“I stayed… on Nijima for a while. I got treatment for a lot of things, too. Including…”
She looks down at her body. Yeah. Tohya, by now, from forgeries and memories, has put it all together. He can imagine just what’s happened, has a very, very rough idea of what their body must look like.
“I settled in the area here, then. I mostly write now. There’s no real need for money, as you can imagine, so…”
“It seems like we’re incredibly similar, then,” he smiles.
Still, or maybe in spite of not being who we used to be.
Tohya takes a deep breath, then.
“So, I’m assuming you still like Agatha Christie?”
*
They talk the entire night. Well, not the entire night, but for a long time. They talk more about Yasu’s weird neighbours on Nijima (Tohya chuckles about them getting it on to Mozart or something), and that black cat, Bernkastel. Yasu knows her from his and Ikuko’s forgeries. She says that meeting the cat would basically be like meeting a celebrity. Tohya affirms that she does actively like dried plums and tea – they obviously don’t give that to her a lot though, because it’s not particularly good for cats.
They talk about food they like, novels they’ve read – especially mystery novels. Christie comes up a lot, but Doyle and Edogawa, too. Some more contemporary authors, and online novels. Their tastes are the same, except whenever they ask each other what chapter they found out just who’s the culprit, it’s always Yasu that wins.
Tohya thinks they might be lying. He doesn’t mind, though.
When the clock strikes midnight, they look at each other. They’re probably both aware that they should go home, go their separate way again, that it’d be the sensible thing to do. To calm down, take time to themselves, consider what they want to do. Whether they should meet again or not.
But, in between their fingertips touching and their smiles and laughs and tears, they make the only decision they shouldn’t be making.
Yasu helps Tohya back to his wheelchair, his legs weak from not just the weather and walk here. She makes a few unfunny jokes about it, but even those get him to laugh.
And then, Yasuda Sayo takes Hachijo Tohya home.
*
Yasu isn’t sure how they’ve gotten here, with their clothes coming off. They took him home with them, because they both wanted to keep talking, and that wasn’t going to happen if they had stayed in the park.
It was getting cold, and it was starting to rain again. Instead of feeling the rain on their skin, they instead hear its pitter-patter against the window of her bedroom. The only feeling on Yasu’s skin is his hands, mapping out their body, both over and under clothes.
At the beginning, they really only had talked. Yasu had shown him all the mystery books and crime novels she had accumulated over the past decade, and they got a whole pile of the ones Tohya hasn’t yet read so he can borrow them, even if it probably wouldn’t be much of a bother for him to buy them himself.
They had tea together, even, at two in the morning, over an hour after arriving at theirs. At one point, they had hugged again, and from there, things devolved.
Yasu doesn’t know why.
All she knows is that one thing led to another. They haven’t even-
“Can I kiss you?” Tohya asks them, all of a sudden, and Yasu freezes. Their black shirt is half-undone, only a single button clinging on for dear life at this point. His hands rest on her shoulders, naked by now, and his gaze is so horribly sincere when his eyes meet hers.
“Yes,” she whispers, no matter how wrong it feels, somewhere inside of her. The last time they kissed…
Afterwards, she had-
The thought gets drowned out in Tohya’s lips on hers, suddenly, as if this isn’t probably the first time he’s been the one taking the initiative to kiss her. Yasu isn’t sure whether he has kissed others. Tohya probably hasn’t. Battler might have. Has he? They were pretty certain that that kiss back on the boat had been his first.
The thought sparks something inside of her, a feeling she had long forgotten, suppressed over and over again until it left her burning.
She feels possessive.
Whether he’s Battler or not, whether she’s Yasuda or Beatrice or Kanon or Shannon, it doesn’t matter. Right now, she still feels like he can’t ever belong to anyone that isn’t them. They want him to belong to her, and her only. Battler and Tohya are both theirs alone. No other witch is allowed to have him.
And so, Yasu kisses back; their lips are dry against each others’, as hands start exploring again. Yasu’s fingers glide downwards towards his waist, grasping at it, and they take a shuddering breath against his mouth as the last button opens, too.
It’s three in the morning now. It’s dark outside. She knows he can’t see, but-
“You… you know, right?”
“I know,” he whispers, their lips getting wetter with each kiss shared. When they talk, it’s only ever in between kisses, eager and exploratory at the same time. Gentle and demanding, soft and rough, everything and nothing all at once, universes exploding between them.
“Then… are you sure you’re okay with it?”
“I am,” he mutters, lips tracing the corners of hers, then up to her nose and forehead. Then back down. “I have always been.”
He had always been. One of the biggest worries she had, back then, when she had taken that piece of gold with her into the ice-cold water of October oceans, is resolved. Just like that. Just by a few words that Yasu believes, because now she knows that he really and truly understands.
“Okay,” she responds, thus. “Then it’s- okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she whispers, and Tohya strokes the shirt off their shoulders completely now, dropping it onto the floor next to them.
They gulp as they watch him watch her. Yasu can feel their chest rising and falling. It isn’t flat anymore now, and it feels better that way. But the scars around her torso; they’ve never disappeared. Of course they haven’t. How could they?
“You’re beautiful,” he whispers, leaning in for another peck against her lips. “Can I…?”
“…Yes. Stop asking. You never used to be like this.”
“Maybe there’s advantages to me and him not being exactly the same,” he laughs, but Yasu doesn’t get to answer, because he’s kissing her neck instead, shutting her up.
His tongue darts out here and there, like he’s also uncertain what he’s meant to do, but doing it anyway. It’s like all shame has gone out of the window as soon as they found each other again, both in spirit and in body.
He licks a long stripe up from her collarbone to her ear, and Yasu shudders.
“You like this?”
“Hm,” she makes, her voice too weak to say anything else. He seems to understand, though, and repeats the motion while his hands wander. They both grasp at her chest, but in a way that doesn’t resemble Battler’s weird obsession with boobs at all. Instead, it’s soft, a loving touch, like he wants to make her feel good.
Yasu still isn’t used to their body being allowed to feel good, or to someone wanting to make her feel good to begin with. But Tohya does, and she knows she would do the same for him.
When his thumbs brush her nipples, she twitches away a bit, getting a small glance up until she nods. It was the good kind of flinch. Yasu enjoyed this, and Tohya clearly seems to have caught on. His tongue keeps licking away at her, and her nipples soon grow hard under his ministrations. Small, breathy noises start to escape them, at one point, midway through. They tug at his hair, unsure of when her hands have landed in it, but keeping ahold of it anyway. Tohya lets them, leaning above them, with gentle hands and lips.
He takes her apart.
His hand glides lower.
“Can I…?”
“…Yes.”
She trusts him. There’s no reason Yasu shouldn’t trust him, when they still share the same favourite books, still live in the same world.
Tohya is gentle with them. She has no idea how he can be, when he probably doesn’t even really know what to expect, but he slides his hand between their legs, into their pants and underwear, and no matter what Yasu does and doesn’t have, it feels intense.
“Is this okay?” he asks again, just keeping his hand there. Yasu nods, and now, finally, tears spill from their eyes again. How could it not be okay? If he is okay with it, how could she not be? Her lungs start hurting, as she realizes she’s been holding her breath.
“You can relax,” he mutters, and when Yasu looks into his eyes, leaning over them still, they see nothing but love and sincerity. “If anything hurts, you tell me, okay?”
At this point, Yasu can’t do more than nod. After that, things blur together. Tohya tries a lot of things, ever-considerate, swiping his fingers up and down, from left to right, going in circles, grabbing her whole, in a way that feels just as possessive as she feels of him, too. It’s a lot, because everything feels good, and Tohya keeps asking her what’s best, as if she could ever decide. As if not everything is amazing, as long as it’s him. Those fingers working away at them that have written a tale for them, which Yasu hasn’t yet read, but is sure she is going to like.
Love, even.
The word sends a quiver through her body, alongside Tohya’s thumb rubbing them. The flatter, smooth surface feels amazing, making the quiver even worse until she starts trembling.
“This?” he asks, and this time, Yasu has the answer.
“Yes,” she gasps out, releasing a shaky breath, and then a moan, unable to hold it inside of them anymore. “Yes.”
It doesn’t take long until she comes, like this, unable to hold back. They don’t even get to warn Tohya, who she hasn’t even touched. Mid-orgasm, her body twitching completely out of control, tears rolling down their cheeks over and over again at how heavy the pleasure feels as it travels through their entire body, she decides that after this, they need to do… more.
If his legs are good enough. She wants more. All of their life, Yasu had thought that something like that would be impossible for her. In a way, it is, but once she had come back alive… well. Internet cafés and computers and the internet have taught them a lot of things.
Maybe she can’t ever bear children.
But they can still become one. If he’s alright with it, then…
“Tohya,” she whispers, as soon as she comes down enough to grasp at a single rational thought. Their teeth are chattering. The sound is loud in the now otherwise quiet room, accompanied only by Tohya’s own heavy breathing. Yasu looks back up at him again, his flushed cheeks, his eyes not telling of only love now, but also lust. The thought that it was her doing this to him is a lot. It weighs upon her just as heavy as her orgasm itself.
Yasu reaches out to touch his cheek. It’s probably embarrassing to ask, but they don’t care. Not right now. Not right here. Not when they haven’t only created a new universe, but they are a new one.
She’s missed him so much, even if he isn’t the exact same. Neither is she, so it’s alright.
It’s like they were never really made for each other, right up until now.
“Hm?” he makes, “we can… stop, if you want, I…”
A snort.
“Could you stop, Tohya? Really?” she asks, with a glance down at his crotch. She reaches out. He catches her hand midway through.
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to,” she says. She looks into his eyes saying it, keeping the eye contact, the exact same eyes she fell in love with all the way back then. There’s some stubble on his cheek, she realizes as her hand meets his face. His skin is soft, though. “I want more. If you want to, if your legs are good enough, then I want you to…”
“Right now?” he asks, voice suddenly coming out awfully rough.
“Right now.”
“I- my legs. They’re good enough.”
Yasu can’t help but laugh at him properly, this time; yet, they don’t deny him. After all, they brought it up first. They’re not scared of it. They’re excited, if anything.
They show Tohya to the lube, and offer to do it themselves, but he shakes his head, clearly all embarrassed and also very, very aroused. So is Yasu. It’s okay. They don’t mind coming multiple times, and Tohya looks like he’ll come very fast right now, but-
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop,” he whines, when he’s already got three fingers inside of them, the rhythmic motions bringing Yasu damn-close again. She’ll hold out, though, just for him.
“That’s okay,” she mutters. “I don’t want you to.” Then. “Please. It’s enough. You won’t break me.”
He can’t break them. Yasu is unbreakable, they’ve found. They cannot be shattered. They cannot die.
Eternal witch, alright, they think as the three fingers slide out of them, coming back with four for just a second, stretching her out even more. It doesn’t hurt.
“Hurry,” she says, voice bordering on a sob. She knows she’s horribly desperate, but it doesn’t matter. Just how long have they waited for this?
“Okay,” he responds. She hears him open his pants, only now, after such a long time, a sigh of relief escaping him. “Okay.”
And then, Tohya first presses against them, and then into them, hot and heavy and so much, and Yasu comes on the spot. It’s not even as much the physical sensation as it is the realization that she can become one with someone, even if neither of them are just one, exactly. It’s the realization that maybe she’s able to love, that they’re not furniture after all, that they’re human.
Almost instantaneously, Tohya comes together with them, pushing further in the entire time, twitching and throbbing inside of them.
By now, Yasu is full on crying, unable to keep themselves from it. It’s all so much, but it’s the good kind of ‘much’. They don’t mind this. They don’t mind the oversensitivity of their body at all, even when it feels like fire is burning throughout their back and legs and arms when Tohya starts moving. Yasu wonders, mid-orgasm, their mind a haze, a swirl of colours, whether his orgasm is already over, or whether he’s moving on instinct.
She hears the wet sounds of their joint bodies, which aren’t just made up of lube now. Instead, it’s a mixture of that, and the inherent proof that Tohya is also feeling good.
Yasu is making someone feel good. Somehow, that feels like it could fix them. Not now, but one day in the future. The thought that they’re desirable after all, that someone who’s met them for the first time when they were children, and then again for the first time today, could feel like this because of her.
“…Ah!”
She only realizes a second later that she was the one to make that sound. How long has she been moaning that loudly? While coming? Before, already? Did they only start when Tohya started thrusting into her, in slow, careful little strokes, yet looking like he’s tethering on the very edge of losing control completely?
She wants that to happen.
And so, Yasu grabs him by the shoulders, and starts moving her hips in tandem, Tohya above her. Sweat drips down onto her, somewhere, but they don’t really mind it. Neither does Tohya seem to mind how loud she gets with every single time he pushes back into her.
He speeds up, once she nods at him, and starts pleading, small little noises in between the loud moans, bordering on both sobs and screams. On the inside, Yasu thinks that she really wants to ask how the hell he can keep going after already having come, how he hasn’t flagged down yet at all, but they don’t get to.
Not with the pace Tohya sets, after a while, as he seems to realize that Yasu isn’t in pain at all. Quite the contrary, actually.
They’ve never felt this good.
They come again like this, with Tohya leaning over them, which the other must feel in the way she contracts around him. That hurts a little, for a second. Yasu gets so tight he has to stop moving, too.
“Are you okay?”
“More,” she gasps, and he nods, but lets out the tiniest of pained hisses. So, Yasu takes charge.
In a motion swifter than they thought they could’ve pulled off, she pushes Tohya off herself, and then into the bed. Then, they sit back down on him.
Gravity pulls on them, like this, and their leg feels a tiny bit uncomfortable, but they decide that they don’t care at all. Tohya did all the work until now, so next, it’s her turn.
She can feel cum dribbling out of herself at the motion, too. It feels awkward, but in a way she finds she genuinely loves.
Like this, he feels so much bigger, and the groan that leaves their throat at the feeling sounds unholy.
“You- you’re so pretty,” Tohya gasps, below her. His hands come to grasp at her waist, keeping them in place, and helping them move up and down once they’ve found a comfortable position.
Yasu can’t go as hard and fast as he can, but it still feels good. Neither of them come, for a while, but that just makes sense. He’s come once, she’s come twice. Instead, it’s only the quiet rocking of bodies against each other, noises of pleasure from both where they’re connected, where they’re one, and their mouths both. Yasu takes his hands, at one point, and clings to them. He lets her.
He lets her do anything, almost like this is a punishment, but they both know it feels too good to be that.
He looks beautiful below her, like this, and Yasu makes sure to tell him, too.
Neither of them accept the compliments, even if they both mean them.
After a good amount of time, Yasu does feel her leg growing too weak to raise herself back up; Tohya catches her, and pulls her back down instead. Like this, they can kiss again. He puts his feet onto the mattress, and starts fucking into her from down below instead, embracing her.
Hands come to thread through her hair, and Yasu leans into the motion, like a place of sanity in the absolute insanity that is all of this.
They can’t believe they’re actually doing this right now.
With a long, throaty drawl, Tohya comes inside of them, once more, stilling inside. Twitching again. Yasu thinks they don’t want to do anything else ever again, as long as they can keep just doing this. As long as she can feel the evidence of his feelings inside of her, can plead for more again.
“I want you-“ he starts, and Yasu is just about to start laughing and tell him that he already has them. Has had them for a thousand years, actually. However, he continues. “I want you to come again. I want to feel you coming around me again.”
“Can you- again?” she asks, and, a bit ashamedly, Tohya gives a nod.
“I- I think so.”
Dear God. Just what kind of beast has she unlocked here?
“…Touch me,” she asks, quietly, and he nods.
She’s turned again, pulled into the mattress below her with a small squeak; this time, she finds herself on her side, Tohya behind her. Like this, their legs can at least get a break, she supposes.
If only they hadn’t tried to take their lives, when this night exists.
“Okay,” he mutters into their neck, peppering it in kisses, licking it again, sucking on it, until Yasu realizes that this has got to leave marks. They want to leave marks on him, too. They don’t want to stop. Even if they have to stop after this, they don’t want to.
Tohya sets a rough pace again, this time, and he does that same thing with his thumb again. Yasu damn near screams this time. His voice gets louder and louder, too, more desperate, like he’s going to come again, and Yasu thinks that it would be perfect if they came together once more. It felt so good the first time. So right. like they were waiting for this for years.
The wet slap of skin against skin is loud like this, accompanied by the one of hands rubbing over skin. He wraps his other arm around her, around her scars, and doesn’t comment on it. If anything, a few seconds after, he whispers another ‘you’re beautiful’ into their ear, and Yasu can’t help but believe him.
If Tohya finds her beautiful right now, then they’ll believe him. At least for now. Maybe they’ll stop believing him tomorrow morning.
It doesn’t matter.
All that matters right now is the magic of all of this; him inside of her, telling her that she’s beautiful. At one point, the words move into another few syllables, with a different meaning, but synonymous to everything he’s said in this tone already.
It’s then when Yasu comes again, feeling like she’s going to overflow with all of the emotions inside of them at this point. Maybe they do. They don’t know. She feels Tohya orgasm together with her again, feels it in the way he nearly slips out of her and then rams back into them instead the next, desperately, like he can’t stand the thought of being separated from her at all, just like them.
They don’t disconnect after this, either.
Instead, he gives a small sigh.
“…Are you still okay to continue?”
She cackles, a high-pitched, happy little sound, and reaches behind themselves to place her hand on his lower back.
“Are you?”
“Hm.”
“…Okay. Then so am I. Tohya.”
“…Yasu.”
Just their names, in that small universe between them.
It’s more than enough.
*
When Yasu wakes up, it’s because Tohya is snoring into their ear, and the sun is high up in the sky, and their entire body hurts. They’re tightly wrapped in his embrace, but even like this, they can still see all the hickeys on his throat and neck, knowing her own must look much the same.
He’s sleeping. But he’s alive.
Yasu slides their hands down to the small of his back and cradles him in the same way, taking a deep breath of just him, and then exhaling it in a huff, nuzzling further into him.
“I love you,” she whispers; not the first time she has said it, not after they went at it all night, but the first time he hasn’t heard it, the first time she feels safe in the knowledge that this moment belongs to her and him and everyone else, but mostly just to her.
Everything hurts when they move. She’s sure it’ll be the same for him when he’s back awake.
It’s okay.
Yasu closes their eyes again, letting tiredness wash over themselves, safe with someone who is so much like her and yet different enough to make a universe with her.
She’ll just get some more sleep.
The pain is just fine.
It’s just proof that they’ve finally found each other again.