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The stairs are neverending. Another flight, then one more, and another.
He’s fortunate enough to be in good shape, in one piece, given the career path he’d returned to, but Nanami considers his current predicament to be a form of evil altogether more horrific than any curse he’s ever encountered: a busted elevator.
It doesn’t help that his knees feel disconcertingly weak, like they’re wobbling, bones wobbling and muscles burning. Awful combination. It’s an unfortunate aftereffect of the evening’s bar hopping spree, an indulgence wearing the disguise of a professional meeting.
He goes over its key points in his mind, focusing on anything but the soreness of his joints. He keeps the parts he needs to commit to memory, the new regulations they’re all expected to adhere to come next semester, and discards the incessant blabbering that had come out of his loudest companion’s mouth in between bites of Wagyu.
When he finally reaches his landing, keys in hand, just about ready to collapse in the foyer the instant he’s inside his apartment, he’s entirely out of breath. Pointedly, he ignores the ache in his lungs, refusing to be bested by concrete. Monsters are nothing in comparison. He’s a wreck. It’s embarrassing, quite frankly. At the very least, there’s nobody around to bear witness to the state he’s in.
No, there’s—
He catches the slightest hint of movement to the left, just behind him, just over his shoulder, and whirls around on unsteady feet.
There’s a huddled shape on the staircase.
Nanami blinks. Meets a pair of mismatched eyes.
The curse’s presence is not as obvious as it had been the last time. Even so, Nanami finds himself flooded with shame at his own inattentiveness; it’s the sort of blunder that could seal his fate, cost him his life in a fight.
But Mahito isn’t here for that.
He’s curled in on himself halfway up the stairs to the next floor, his head slipping to the side like it’s too heavy, like he had barely been clinging to consciousness before Nanami jingled his keys and startled him out of his stupor.
For a split second, he looks afraid. Then it gets blinked it away. No threats. All good. It’s only Nanami. He’s safe.
His stare is glassy, unfocused, despite his unmistakable attempts at forcing himself out of his daze, and—he’s covered in blood.
Nanami remains calm. He isn’t surprised. Nothing about this is unusual. That’s his life. The minutiae change, of course, but a day doesn’t go by without some bullshit getting in the way of the serenity he so longs for.
He had hoped, though, that tolerating a moderately drunk Gojo and trekking up thirteen flights of stairs would be the extent of his troubles for the evening.
Instead, his least favorite curse, his nightmarish shadow, is blinking blearily at him from the stairwell, drenched in blood and gore.
“What do you want now?” he demands.
Mahito tries to right himself, but sways again, teetering to the right. His hand shoots out to brace against the step he’s sitting on, slapping loud against the concrete.
“I just—” he starts. It’s quiet. He’s so quiet. Too quiet. He shakes his head like he’s trying to dislodge something stuck up there, something clouding his mind, before looking back up at Nanami. “I—didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want him to find me and be mad at me again.”
“Right,” Nanami says numbly, eventually, figuring the curse either won’t continue without acknowledgement, or has lost his train of thought entirely. Still, he hasn’t exactly explained why—
“And you told me—last time—not to go inside again,” Mahito goes on, promptly answering Nanami’s unspoken question: why loiter here? Why not force his way inside and take up residence on Nanami’s couch, or curl up uninvited in his bed like the horrible thing he is?
“Don’t be mad at me. I didn’t go in. Can I just sit here, ‘nami? I won’t do anything, I promise. I’m not bothering anyone. They can’t see me, ‘nami. I’ll be quiet.”
Nanami fixes him with a blank stare, takes a nice, long moment to ponder over the direction his life has taken. He’s beyond exhausted, more than a little buzzed, the operational capacity of his mind so far from what constitutes peak performance it’s laughable.
He’s tired. He doesn’t care.
What he needs is a late dinner, easy reheated leftovers and hot tea to combat the series of atrocious drinks he’d downed on a mostly empty stomach. He needs to wind down. He needs silence. A scorching shower. Clean sheets. That sort of thing. Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.
He doesn’t care what the curse gets up to. He’s off the clock. Mahito isn’t his responsibility; he’s not the damn thing’s keeper.
And if he’s wrong, if the whole charade turns out to be a trap, a performance—he’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it. If it comes down to it. For the sake of his neighbors more so than himself, if anything.
But Mahito looks worn down in a way that’s impossible to fake, no matter how skilled of a performer he might be: pained and pale, bloody from a fight he obviously lost, his words slurring and his movements sluggish, eyes open just a slit. Not much of a danger to himself, let alone others.
Nanami trusts his instincts. If there’s one thing about Mahito he’s sure he can use to his advantage, it’s that he seems to crave Nanami’s favor, shying away from doing anything that would incur his disappointment. He won’t step out of line, in all likelihood, not with Nanami’s already meager opinion of him at stake. He wouldn’t outright lie to him.
“Knock yourself out,” Nanami finally says.
And it’s not until Mahito’s shoulders sag that Nanami realizes just how tense the curse was waiting for his verdict, how desperate to hear those words spoken aloud. Yes, you can stay. Nanami’s permission. No, I’m not mad. His approval. Unfathomable.
Mahito drops back against the wall, knocking his temple hard against it, and lets his eyes drift shut. He nods his head in apparent thanks; it bobbles to and fro like his neck can barely support its weight.
It’s the sort of pitiful picture that would normally ignite a flare of compassion deep in the recesses of Nanami’s chest. If it were anyone else.
With one final glance at the curse, Nanami gets his door open—he’ll be fine, he’s indestructible, the bane of Nanami’s fucking existence—and slips inside.
He shuts the door behind himself, locks it, double checks it, like that would somehow save him.
━━━
He startles again, slammed back into consciousness by an unpleasantly loud noise.
It takes some effort to lift his head from the wall. He doesn’t want to. The concrete is cool to the touch, soothing against his strangely warm skin. So warm, and he doesn’t understand why. He’s out of the sun. The corridor is cold. It makes no sense.
He blinks and blinks until his eyes stop burning and the shapes in front of him come into focus. The open door. The entranceway on display. Nanami glaring sternly at him, his warm, brown eyes narrowed in displeasure. They’re pretty. But he looks angry. Why—
“I didn’t do anything,” Mahito says automatically. It’s faint, his voice, uncomfortably hoarse. He feels like his mouth has been stuffed full of sand. His head, too. He’s full of sand. Everything is wrong.
He hadn’t been asleep, not really, but it’s as though he can’t quite shake himself awake.
“Get in here,” Nanami orders through clenched teeth. Like he doesn’t want to say it but says it anyway.
“But you said not to—”
“Get in.”
He holds the door open wider and gestures sharply with his head. Slowly, Mahito rises, as quickly as he can, fearful that Nanami will change his mind.
He shouldn’t, he knows he shouldn’t, he’s not supposed to. Go in, that is. But he does. He wants to. The longing overrides the wariness.
With an arm around his abdomen to keep his insides in, he makes it to the doorway with only a small stumble right by the threshold.
He droops against the wall as Nanami closes the door behind him, watches him lock it with meticulous care. He aches all over. The floor feels unsteady. Shoes, he remembers, then, and winces as he forces himself to lean down. He nudges them up against the wall with the side of his foot, in a neat row beside Nanami’s.
“You’re hurt.”
He looks up. That's right. He is. It hurts so much. “I’m—hurt,” he repeats. He’s used to tuning it out, but Nanami’s observation reignites the overwhelming extent of the pain, like simply saying the words aloud is enough to reveal to him how bad it really is. How bad he let it get. It’s his fault. He was too slow.
“The hell happened to you?”
His thoughts are a jumble. A mess. Mess mess mess. He can’t exactly feel his soul.
The pain diverts his attention, clouds his mind. He’s used to the sharp sting of it, the sort of burst that’s gone as soon as it appears—when he changes shape too carelessly, when he gets slashed up, when his opponent lands a particularly vicious blow.
This new kind of pain lingers. As he had dragged himself across dingy side streets through the rapidly descending dusk, he’d found that he was not able to heal, not all the way, not yet. It wasn’t too unusual to be so worn out that his regeneration couldn’t keep up with the extent of his injuries, but it was certainly the first time he’d very nearly gotten himself torn clean in two. Whatever that cursed technique was—he didn’t quite grasp the gist of it in between strikes—did him in well.
So when he opens his mouth to explain the whole string of events to Nanami, he’s not entirely sure whether what comes out makes the slightest bit of sense. He thinks, a little bit too late, that perhaps he shouldn’t be divulging any of this information in the first place, but once the words start, they don’t stop. He’s frightened by that. His body isn’t cooperating. They don’t stop.
“Some curses don’t—there was this one I was supposed to take out. It was drawing too much attention to itself. Not the kind—not the good kind. It was a stubborn curse and it wouldn’t die. And when I finally did get it, I couldn’t really heal anymore, and then I got reprimanded for taking too long and making a mess, and I just—and I just wanted to get away.”
“By whom?” asks Nanami. “Who does someone like you take orders from?”
“I didn’t say orders. They’re not orders.” He shakes his head. They’re not. They’re instructions. Good pieces of a good plan. Geto is smart. His plan is how they win. “Doesn’t matter. Can’t say. I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he repeats. He can’t. End of story. There’s a reason for the shroud draped over the individual pulling the strings, a surprise lying in wait for the perfect opportunity. Until then, it’s a secret he’s tasked with protecting with his very existence. A secret that, if needed, he’s expected to take to his grave.
“Why did you—change your mind?”
“I have neighbors,” Nanami says vaguely, after a moment. “You’re covered in blood.”
The chances of him being seen by anybody in the building are slim to none. He would know. He would sense their awareness like he senses Nanami’s. In all of the time he’s spent traipsing about the country, learning and observing, only a handful of times had he made eye contact with a seemingly average human and found them looking back.
So—not the neighbors. Nanami wants to keep an eye on him, most likely, make sure he doesn’t make a mess of things.
He understands that. He makes plenty of messes.
But, he thinks, regardless, he would rather sit back down on the stairs in the corridor. The chilly wall felt good. He feels dizzy. He wants to sit down, but he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to. Here. He doesn’t want Nanami to be mad if he does something he’s not allowed to.
There’s a prickling just behind his eyes, an uncomfortable, stinging sensation. His head feels warm, warmer, too warm. It’s not supposed to, he’s fairly sure. He blinks and his lashes are wet. He doesn’t understand what’s happening to him, and he doesn’t like it. He wants it to stop. He wants it to go away.
But he doesn’t want to do anything wrong. Mind your manners, he remembers. Manners, everyone snaps at him.
“Can I sit down here? I’ll be out of your way,” he promises quietly. “I don’t want to fight today. I don’t think I can.”
Nanami peers down at him, his expression unreadable in the scattered glow of pale light from the room just down the hall. He stares, and Mahito stares back, and the silence stretches on for so long that Mahito just about collapses from the sheer effort of keeping his eyes open.
“Come on,” Nanami finally says, and turns away from him without another word.
He has no choice but to blink the blurry film from his eyes and follow.
His head is killing him. He doesn’t understand why. It’s not his head that’s injured. It shouldn’t hurt.
There’s a single light on in the room that Nanami leads him to, a curved floor lamp in the corner, looming over a small table. There’s another warm light on to the right of him. There’s a table in that room, too, a bigger one with four chairs and a plate and mug on top, steam curling from the dishes like smoke.
“Sit down. Try not to make a mess.”
Mahito turns his attention back to Nanami, to what he’s gesturing at. There’s a blanket strewn all the way across the couch and headrest, a makeshift bed prepared especially for him, with a pillow on either end. Try not to make a mess. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. How is he supposed to avoid making a mess of things if he doesn’t know what Nanami wants him to do?
“Sit,” Nanami repeats. “Get some rest.”
Rest. A surge of relief washes over him. That he can do.
Obediently, Mahito stumbles past Nanami and slumps down. Pain rockets through his stomach with the sudden movement, and he bites back a gasp.
He scoots back until he feels the softness of the blanket against his spine and immediately his head droops, eyes floating to the smooth, white ceiling. He’s melting into the cushions. His body feels foreign. Wrong. He’s tired. He still doesn’t think he can heal. He can’t summon enough energy. Not yet.
Nanami’s footsteps recede, and Mahito looks up, trembling with the effort it takes to lift his head.
He sees Nanami settle at the kitchen table with his dinner. Steaming dinner. Fresh and hot. He had abandoned it to bring Mahito inside. A sorcerer inviting a curse into his home and turning his back on it. Having dinner. Silly. But he's grateful. Gratitude. Good manners. He should say thank you, he knows this, but his mouth won’t open. Nanami isn’t looking at him. The couch is more comfortable than the stairs.
He feels himself slipping and lists heavily to the side. He stares out at the room and he thinks it should concern him more than it does how rapidly it starts to lose focus. The furniture turns fuzzy. The lights become bright pinpricks, glowing, glittering. Nanami is swimming apart. Into pieces. One Nanami, two Nanamis.
He wraps his arms tight around his middle to keep his blood from spilling onto Nanami’s blanket. Oh. Don’t make a mess. That kind of mess. He’ll try not to. He’ll do his best.
And in an instant, the pain dulls, and his eyes drift shut.
━━━
It takes him a moment to realize that the curse has actually fallen asleep.
When he looks up from the novel he’s halfheartedly skimming through on his tablet, Mahito’s eyes are closed, his breathing suspiciously even.
Softly, Nanami says his name. Nothing happens. He hazards another attempt, and is met with the same lack of reaction. The curse isn’t pretending.
The bruising under his eyes looks so much like exhaustion, the kind Nanami is accustomed to seeing in the mirror, staring back at him. Hollows and shadows and paper-thin skin. Mahito’s hair is matted, unruly, streaked with as much blood as the rest of him. He seems to tremble, shaking uncontrollably not from the cold, but overexertion.
He’s obviously in pain, curled up tight, body taut like a bowstring. He has one arm slung around his abdomen, his other hand crushed between his cheek and the pillow, his bare feet tucked beneath the edge of the blanket at the opposite end. His breathing is even, infallible, but strained enough to be noticeable. It’s all so disconcertingly human.
It’s daunting, trying to conceptualize what might have happened to him, what kind of adversary he’d been up against. Anything that could do that kind of damage to a creature as wild and powerful as Mahito was not a threat to be taken lightly—whether it was brute strength that had given it the upper hand, a truly monstrous technique, or sheer persistence, wearing Mahito out little by little until an opening finally revealed itself and allowed it to land a strike.
Not that it matters—turns out Mahito hadn’t lost. In a way, Nanami considers, that’s his justification for allowing the curse inside. He’s thanking him for ridding the city of yet another menace he and his colleagues would be forced to go up against otherwise. A good deed, a debt to be repaid.
He tries again, impulsively, repeats Mahito’s name even louder.
And nothing.
Mahito doesn’t stir for the next quarter of an hour. Not when Nanami rises from the table, chair groaning, floorboards creaking. Not when he boils water for a second cup of tea, nor when he pokes his shrimp fried rice into the microwave for an extra two minutes to make it more palatable to pick at.
It’s incomprehensible to realize that he had felt comfortable enough to let his defenses down so completely, allowing himself such utter vulnerability in the presence of someone like Nanami. A sorcerer. Someone who swore he would put an end to Mahito’s miserable existence the next time the curse let his guard down around him the way he did that first night.
But it feels wrong, repugnant, morally and otherwise, to kick him while he’s down. Hurting. So trusting. It’s messing with Nanami’s emotions, the pathetic sight before him, tugging at his innate human sympathy. Because that’s all it is. He’s hardwired to care. The microwave beeps. That’s all there is to it. Mahito sleeps on.
He doesn’t wake until after Nanami exits the scalding shower, changing into a soft set of home clothes, loose and comfortable. He shuts his closet door with just a bit too much force, a bit too carelessly, and when he emerges into the dimly lit living room, Mahito is upright.
He sways back and forth, yanked awake entirely too quickly, struggling to grasp his bearings in his disoriented state. His tousled hair sticks to his forehead, his neck, his pigtails cascading over his shoulders, strands poking out every which way.
It’s amusing. Endearing. Nanami grits his teeth. It’s unfair. Unfair that Mahito looks the way he does, the fact that it makes Nanami want to treat him like a person. Makes Nanami see him as a person, despite his best intentions. Pillow creases along the swell of his cheek, red rimmed eyes like he could use a few more hours of shuteye. It breeds sympathy, pity, an overwhelming desire to do something to help. It’s ridiculous.
“What happened?”
“You fell asleep,” Nanami tells him, relieved to be torn away from his thoughts. “Good job.”
“I did?” Mahito marvels—like he had never managed before, despite Nanami’s fairly straightforward instructions.
Wide eyed, he looks down at himself with childlike wonder, poking at the imprint the blanket left on his forearm, across the curve of his shoulder, excited so dearly by the most trivial of details.
“For an hour or so,” Nanami confirms. “Feeling better?”
Mahito squeezes his eyes shut, then blinks rapidly, and stretches his arms far out in front of himself with a waggle of his fingers to test his dexterity. He pats his chest and neck, then his middle, and winces, glances down, gingerly lifting the hem of his shirt up to expose the source of the blood still seeping sluggishly into the fabric.
Nanami watches as slowly, impossibly, the deep, angry slice across his stomach begins to knit itself closed, Mahito’s brow creased in effort and no small amount of concentration.
“Christ,” he mumbles, the word slipping out reflexively.
He had been right to assume that proper rest would help—sleep had been wishful thinking, but Mahito had managed after all. But it’s something else altogether to see it firsthand, healing like witchcraft, like magic, unblemished, pale skin stretching over the gaping mess of flesh and gore until no sign remains that the curse had ever been injured to begin with.
And subsequently, realization dawns—that Mahito had quite literally been holding his guts in while carrying out an entire conversation with Nanami in the hall, just about lucid enough to be perfectly coherent. Walking and talking and breathing and alive with a gash the size of Nanami’s forearm clean across him. A pain threshold so high it kept him conscious, even casual about the whole thing. It’s unnatural. He’s nothing like Nanami, he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, masking the horrors of his reality with sparkling eyes and broad smiles.
Mahito prods at the newly healed skin, poking at it with his index finger until he’s convinced it’s nice and firm and fixed. Not a scratch. All that’s left is the blood, smeared across him now like it’s somebody else’s.
He looks up. “Better,” he chirps. And with a small frown, a little nod to himself, words clumsy like he’s not used to saying them, he adds, “Thank you.”
A warm feeling settles inside Nanami’s chest. Good. Checks balanced. He’s done a good thing—even if the recipient of his concern isn’t entirely deserving.
With the uncomfortable weight finally off his conscience, gratitude expressed and accepted, he itches to tell Mahito to scram. To go back to whoever’s lapdog he is now that he’s all in one piece, and never show his face in Tokyo again—but curiosity gets the better of him.
The morbid kind, the professional kind, whatever it is. He wants to know more: what happened, why it happened, what the plan is, the curses’ grand scheme. He wants to collect information, yes. He wants to learn about their movements, their intentions, about—Mahito. He wants to understand him, too, Nanami realizes, separately from the rest, uncover what lies beneath the demon that meets the eye. Get to know him. Fix him. Change him. It seems silly. So what? Can’t be worse than taking him to bed, and Nanami’s already done that.
He does not try to deny his interest, not anymore. There’s no use in lying to himself. Baby steps. Clearing his conscience just a little bit more. He’s intrigued. He is. He wants to try.
“Do you want tea?” he asks.
Mahito cocks his head, interest piqued. Tea must be a novel concept, a fun, new opportunity to learn. Eyes wide and bright as ever, long, pale lashes, and—pretty fucker—soft, pink lips. Nanami knows how they feel on his. He’s lost his fucking mind.
Mahito looks at him like he hung the moon with his bare hands.
“Sure,” he smiles.
━━━
He sits across from Nanami at the kitchen table in a soft, black shirt that Nanami had let him borrow. That means he has to give it back. It’s not his to keep. That door there is the bathroom. Clean yourself up. Water, soap, like this, it makes bubbles. No, don’t put it in your mouth. Green towel on the rack by the radiator to dry off when you’re done. And put this on—yours is filthy.
He encircles his mug of tea with his palms. Not quite touching. He wants to see how close he can place his hands before he feels the heat.
The silence stretches on for minutes and minutes, but Mahito doesn’t mind. He likes it more than the constant chattering, the arguing among Jogo and the others, likes it even more than reading book after book all on his own with only the sound of dripping water for company.
Nanami’s company is better. He is an interesting subject to observe. He sips his tea, reading a digital book, and Mahito can’t take his eyes off him. Earlier, he had asked if Mahito could read, and had looked surprised when Mahito told him he could.
He doesn’t think it’s strange. He reads a lot. Watches things, too. Movies, televisions, videos on the Internet.
It started with Geto thrusting a book into his hands to shut him up, back when they first met. He’d been a bursting ball of energy and Geto had wanted silence. To think, to work, to scheme.
Mahito went on to browse unseen through bookshelves in shops after that, making off with whatever caught his attention, slipping like a ghost into libraries, cinemas, theaters, any place that could teach him something new.
But books are his favorite—they’re a window to humans and their thoughts, those secret ones that don’t make it out of their mouths.
The only thing better than that, he supposes, is the real thing. The real deal. Nanami, a real human, existing in his element in front of him. Mahito doesn’t get very many chances at interaction of this caliber; the majority of humans pass him by like he doesn’t exist, and those who are trained to see him rarely hesitate before going in for the kill.
“You’re staring.”
Mahito looks up. “Yes,” he says.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he says on impulse. “Is that wrong?”
“Staring? Makes most people uncomfortable.”
“Oh.”
He didn’t mean to do that. He thinks he should apologize, or at the very least justify his actions. Yes, that. Because he isn’t sorry. There’s no guilt; that’s not something he bothers with. But he does want to explain—so that Nanami isn’t angry at him. He wants to explain that the way humans look has never been of particular interest to him. Until now.
“I like to look at you,” he says. His thoughts feel strange in his mouth. Perhaps he understands why humans keep them on paper. “Your hair looks soft. And I like the way your hands move when you—”
He trails off, lacking the right words. He mimics the flick of Nanami’s wrist, the swipe of his fingers as he turns the digital pages.
Nanami stares at him in turn, blinking slowly, peacefully. Mahito doesn’t feel especially uncomfortable. It must be different for humans.
After a moment, he clicks a button on his tablet book and Mahito’s gaze flicks to the screen just as it goes black. Nanami sets it down on the tabletop, and Mahito’s attention returns to his face.
“Last time—did you really just come to talk?”
“I don’t know,” Mahito repeats. This time—he really doesn’t know. Honestly. He doesn’t. He just— “I just wanted to see you again, I told you. Our fight was fun. I had fun. I kept thinking about it.”
He'd kept thinking about Nanami. He isn’t sure what that meant then, what it means now, what it is he’s looking for down the line. He did have several questions about Nanami’s technique, but he can’t quite remember any of them now. Now, he—he hasn’t been able to stop feeling Nanami’s hands on him.
“The fight was fun,” Nanami echoes. “Sure. But that night, I don’t think you were looking for a fight. And now—why did you come here?”
“I didn’t want to go where—”
“Yeah, you said. Avoiding trouble,” Nanami interrupts. “Why here?”
Mahito doesn’t know. Again. He keeps not knowing things. He’s tired, and his body may have knitted itself back together, but it doesn’t feel all the way right yet. Something is missing. He’s still drowsy. A little bit dizzy. He likes Nanami. He wants to be around him. He feels good when he’s around him. It’s simple, isn’t it? He doesn’t get why Nanami doesn’t understand.
“Same reason,” he finally says. “Wanted to see you.”
“I’m not your friend.”
“I know.”
They can’t be. What he is, what Nanami is—they can’t possibly be friends. It’s unheard of. Frowned upon. But that doesn’t mean that Mahito can’t—
“So what is it that you want from me?”
It doesn’t mean he can’t try.
For as long as he gets before he’s faced with the choice that isn’t really a choice, before he has to kill Nanami, he wants to try. For all he knows, it might not come down to that at all, in the end, and he’ll regret not having tried while he had the chance.
Nanami is different. Charming. Addicting. Even when he’s curt or quiet or scowling at Mahito in displeasure, there’s a calm aura about him that Mahito can’t help but be drawn to. Against his best judgement, he feels comfortable in Nanami’s presence. He doesn’t feel pressured to do better, to be better. He can just be.
He can sit and absorb every minuscule aspect of human life, enjoy the people things Nanami does, marvel at their simplicity, their mundaneness. It’s relaxing, he’s discovered, that not every action has to have consequences. Washing dishes, brushing hair, hanging pictures up on walls, buying colorful little pastries and tearing them to crumbs with friends in quaint locales. Not everything is life or death, part of a larger, grand scheme. Not everything needs abundant meaning.
And, well—he would be lying if he claimed he didn’t crave a repeat of last time, too. The sex. That was good. It made him feel good. He had disconnected from his body for a moment, he thinks, towards the end. Like sleeping, but his eyes were open. He couldn’t move. His soul kept slipping out of reach, like a slick bar of soap dropped in the sink.
But Nanami is not his friend, let alone—whatever the relationship between people who have sex is called. Mahito can’t expect him to tolerate his presence if he vehemently does not want to do so.
Of course, he could stick around regardless, against Nanami’s wishes, but he thinks Nanami would become truly angry with him if he did. It would hurt. Genuine anger would hurt. Not the kind of anger a sorcerer directs at any old curse, that kind of bothersome, righteous fury. A more human one, he imagines, more personal. He doesn’t want Nanami to be angry with him in a human way.
“I don’t know. Just to—sit here. With you. But I’ll go away, if you want,” he says finally. He tears his eyes away from Nanami and looks down at his mug. The tea smells like berries, infinitely better than the sort of bitter leaves Geto and Choso steep. It tastes like berries, too, nice and sweet, though he had burned his tongue in the process of making that discovery. “I’ll just finish this and go. It’s good. Thank you. And for helping me, too.”
“I’m not kicking you out,” Nanami says. Stern and clipped. “I’m asking you a question.”
Mahito’s response bursts out like an explosion then, frustration reaching its peak. “I don’t know—what I want. I don’t know how to answer your question. I don’t know why I came here. I needed someplace to rest, like I told you, and I like you, so I came here. And you told me not to go inside your home, so I didn’t. I listened. I kept out of your way. But you told me to come in, so I did. You did. Why did you do that?”
He sucks in a sharp breath. Unclasps his fingers from around the hot mug. His palms burn. His eyes sting again.
Nanami’s gaze on him feels heavy, suddenly.
━━━
He feels bad about the last time.
He hadn’t really allowed himself the peace of mind to think about it until now, afraid of what he might discover if he dug too deep—but he’s known all along it wasn’t his proudest moment. It was egotistical, using Mahito. Using his inexperience, his curiosity, his willingness, and twisting it around for his own personal satisfaction.
So that’s part of it, he supposes.
It had made him feel a bit unsettled, too, sitting at his table and poking at the contents of his plate in tranquil silence, knowing full well there was a special grade cursed spirit lingering in the stairwell of his building. He couldn’t put innocent lives at risk just to be spiteful. He’d had to intervene, plain and simple.
Most of all, though, more than anything, it was his humanity that had led him down the hall, that had forced the front door open and urged the curse inside. Nanami was raised to be responsible. He was trained to protect the weak and helpless, no matter the circumstance. And out there, Mahito had been weak. Badly injured. In need of assistance, a helping hand to reach out and grab onto. He hadn’t given Nanami any concrete reason to believe he was after anything else.
Suddenly breaking into a beaming smile, Mahito jerks upright, startling Nanami out of his melodramatic trance.
He bends one knee and props his foot roughly up on the lip of the chair. He leans forward. “Were you worried about me, Na-na-mi?” he asks—once again, like he’s read Nanami’s mind. “It’s okay. It wasn’t enough to kill me. Probably not. I think, though, without sleep it would have taken longer, so that was a good call.”
And he quickly leans back, then forward again, and grabs at his tea like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands anymore, overcome by a sudden, random burst of energy he can’t possibly hope to contain. He takes a sip and winces hard when he swallows. Too hot. Not a shred of sense of self preservation in that body of his in the slightest.
But—it’s undeniable he’s developed acute observational skills. A bit conceited, perhaps, his assumption that Nanami’s concern had been tied to his earlier predicament, but not altogether incorrect.
“Or did you want to fuck me again?” he asks then, idly rolling the tag of the tea bag between his fingers—and Nanami nearly chokes. “Humans do so love to do things for their own gain. And it was good, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just me?”
The expletive, the whole thing, sounds unnatural coming from the curse’s mouth. That kind of language doesn’t belong with him, in a way. He shouldn’t know what words like that mean. It’s a completely irrational observation, Nanami’s aware. He knows Mahito knows about sex. In theory, in practice, he knows very well. He isn’t actually a child, despite his behavior. And yet.
“No,” Nanami eventually replies.
Mahito peers up at him, crestfallen.
“Not now or not ever again?”
“Never again,” Nanami insists, and it tastes like a lie. It is a lie. He knows it in his heart, his mind, his bones, he knows it all over. He knows he wants this, and he knows it’s absurd, making a plaything of a curse that’s more than likely to be the death of him in the end.
“It was a mistake?” Mahito asks, tone flat like he’s reciting a line he’s memorized from somewhere. A histrionic breakup on television. A row in a classic novel. That sort of thing.
“Something like that,” Nanami confirms. He’s saved from having to meet Mahito’s troubled expression by the shrill ding of an incoming text. He swipes eagerly at the notification, grateful for the brief respite, a message from Shoko—you get home all right lightweight?
But as soon as he responds and looks back up, Mahito looks different, and it stalls his brain function entirely.
She’s slighter, with a narrow jaw and high cheekbones, plush lips curled into a sultry smile. She pushes her chair back and rises halfway, leaning her elbows on the table. Back arched, ass in the air, in a position that she knows would put her tits on full display if her shirt were any looser than it already is.
She runs her tongue over the seam of her lips, over her perfect teeth, head tilted so innocently to the side. With a wink, she reaches out to pluck a piece of shrimp off Nanami’s plate, and pops it in her mouth. And Nanami finds himself stunned for a moment—he wasn’t sure whether curses bothered with food, if they could eat the sort of things humans did. He’s never seen it happen before.
Between that and the sudden terrifying arousal coursing through him, Nanami can’t help but feel frozen. Stunned. Trapped. He clenches his jaw and his fists in his lap, nails sharp against his palms, and takes several deep, bracing breaths to center himself.
The allure of this new Mahito quickly fades, though, when she smirks—wide and toothy, that trademark fucking annoying smirk, and Nanami finds it’s easier to exhale, just like that. He rolls his eyes. Shameless. She’s shameless. A relentless brat desperate for his attention no matter the cost. It reminds him of someone else he knows.
“Like what you see?” Mahito teases. “You know, that’s also what you said about not wanting me to step foot in here—you said never, ever again—and then you invited me in yourself. Maybe you’ll change your mind about this too, hm, Nanamin?”
Her voice is low and seductive, the fire in it just about rehearsed, and Nanami spirals all over again, back to square one.
He clasps his mug in his hands and grips it hard, and when that isn’t enough, he takes a defiant sip, burning his tongue. It’s an effective distraction. A deterrent. He keeps his legs uncrossed under the table, unwilling to give her the satisfaction of having such a markedly profound effect on him with so little effort.
“I had so much fun. I think you did too—no, I know you did. You liked doing all of those bad things to me. It made you feel good. And I bet there’s more where that came from, isn’t there? Do you have any other tricks you want to show me, Na-na-mi?”
“Stop that.”
Mahito grins. With one final, resounding laugh, he shifts back, soft features growing sharper, harder once more, his shape warping in front of Nanami’s eyes until he’s himself again.
“Whatever you say. Maybe another time,” he muses. He pauses, contemplative, before adding, “I’ve never been fucked like that before, you know.”
“Stop,” Nanami repeats, harsher, an order directed at himself more so than Mahito.
Because he’s thinking about it now. Grabbing a fistful of her hair and shoving her face first into the table, pushing her skirt up over her thighs and her soaked panties to the side. The pretty noises she would make, the desperate, needy way she would push back against him, fucking herself on his cock like she was made to take it.
“That’s not a happy face.”
Nanami blinks. Mahito is sitting down now, his eyebrows pinched in concern.
“Are you mad at me?”
Mad? He’s not—
Nanami takes a breath. Schools his expression. Realizes his teeth were clenched to the point of pain, the heat in his gut painting pure frustration across his features.
“Was that too much?” Mahito keeps talking, trying to read between the lines, interpreting Nanami’s human reactions to the best of his ability. “You don’t look happy that I’m here anymore. It’s dark—are you going to sleep? Are you tired? Did I do something wrong? Do you not like girls?”
No, he didn’t do anything wrong. No, Nanami isn’t tired. Yes, he fucking likes girls. He’s confused, is what this is, just about panicking all of a sudden, and he wants Mahito to shut up, and he wants him gone.
He’s frightened—because the ache is spreading to his chest, twisting his lungs, wrapping around his heart. There’s too much, he feels too much, and it pisses him off, quite frankly, the fact that he feels anything at all. He’s an idiot. An irresponsible, impulsive idiot, letting things progress this far. He’s let the curse in, treated him like a friend, a guest, a clandestine lover, of all goddamn things, and it’s all gone too far.
And all the genuine hurt in Mahito’s tone does is drive the point home. Nanami cares. He’s in too fucking deep.
He forces his head to the side, gazing out the window at the lights of the city twinkling like stars against the black backdrop of night. Just to look away from Mahito for a moment. To clear his thoughts. Collect himself. Screw his head on straight.
The curse is a curious thing. An enigma, a puzzle begging to be solved. A formidable, ruthless enemy. But a living, breathing contradiction to that, too: intimidated when the consequences of his actions catch up to him, upset when things don’t go his way, when Nanami shows the slightest hint of displeasure, of disappointment, burning with frustration whenever he fails to understand what to do, how to act, how to fit in with the humans he’s so endlessly fascinated by.
Too deep. He should not have played around. He should have exorcized Mahito the first time he laid eyes on him. He fucked up. His chest feels too tight. He fucked up.
“Okay,” Mahito says, when it becomes clear that Nanami is in no mood to entertain him any longer. “I don’t think I did anything wrong, but I think you want to be left alone now for some reason. So, I’ll go. Is that right?”
Nanami exhales. He turns back to Mahito and nods, somewhat apologetic. He doesn’t owe the curse anything, no, but he recognizes how abruptly he’s lost control of his temper, how suddenly he’s cut the evening short, and he doesn’t think he’s able to offer a logical, coherent explanation for it, not yet, not when he himself doesn’t fully grasp the extent of the mess he’s made.
“Finish your tea,” he says, extending an olive branch.
Mahito blinks. Then smiles, pleased enough. Accepts it.
It doesn’t take long before the mug is empty. Nanami swats Mahito’s hand away from the tea bag for fear he’ll attempt to eat it, and takes the dishes to the sink before settling back down at the table.
He’ll read a bit more, a chapter or two, and turn in for the night, accompanied by the mindless chatter of the television. He doesn’t want to think anymore. He’s had quite enough for the time being.
A minute passes in silence, then as promised, Mahito stands to leave. He lingers by the table once he rises, fingertips tentatively caressing the edge. Back and forth.
Finally, he asks, “Can I get a kiss?”
Nanami scoffs. “No.”
But Mahito doesn’t look too dismayed by his response, as though it was to be expected. Instead, he nods.
“Okay,” he trills, perfectly cheerful. “But you have not seen the last of me, sorcerer, know that.”
He begins a childish backwards shuffle towards the entranceway. Just like that. Walking to the door. No violence, no destruction, no puff of smoke or shattered glass. Horribly, deceptively human.
He bows his head at Nanami like he was instructed to do it but had never gotten the chance to try before, like a gracious guest taking their leave. He offers Nanami one final smirk, in the shape of a promise, like a lover slipping away unseen.
━━━
It’s not until he’s already got one hand on the doorknob that he decides to turn around. He kicks his shoes back off and swivels on the slippery tile, returning to the kitchen.
Nanami glares at him as he approaches, confused and wide eyed, his brows all the way up by his hairline.
With a small bounce, Mahito crouches down in front of him, settling his hands flat on Nanami’s thighs for balance. He goes tense at the sudden contact, like most everyone does when their personal space is invaded, but Mahito can’t help himself.
“Please, can I get a kiss?” he pleads. He’s whining, it’s a whine. Like the little girl he saw at the corner shop earlier that week, begging her mother for lemonade. She’d succeeded. He will, too.
He isn’t leaving without a kiss from Nanami, he decides. He wants it so much. He thinks he might die without it.
He ducks his head and scrunches his nose up, uses his puppy eyes—is what the curses have dubbed them—to try and get his way.
And he does.
“Please kiss me, Nanami,” he repeats quietly.
The heavy silence stretches on for so long that he begins to feel itchy. Restless. He understands now. Staring is bad. The scrutiny makes him feel small and uncomfortable. He hates it.
But finally, Nanami leans down.
It’s one, two, three seconds, a warm palm at the side of his face, and then it’s over. It’s electric and Mahito feels dazed, his knees going weak, like he would slide to the floor in a mess of bones and melted flesh if he wasn’t already sitting. He feels like he’s dreaming, but he doesn’t dream. It isn’t a dream. It can’t be.
When they part, concern is etched plainly into every little line of Nanami’s face. It’s fear, almost. Something like fear. He doesn’t know why he did what he just did, why he gave in to Mahito’s needling. Maybe—humans understand far less about themselves than they let on. Even Nanami.
Mahito smiles at him in a way he hopes is comforting. He doesn’t want Nanami to be scared. He tries his best to curl his mouth just so. He’s not sure how to offer comfort. It’s a foreign concept. He doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t know anything either. They can figure it all out together.
The wariness softens gradually into something more akin to annoyance. But fond. Mahito doesn’t know the name for that feeling, but it doesn’t much matter, not when he feels so warm inside, so grateful for Nanami’s attention. It makes his soul feel too big for his body, and that’s wrong, that’s not how it works. He might burst, he thinks, but it feels too good to care.
Happy. That’s what happy is like.
“Until next time,” he quips.
“Don’t come here again,” Nanami teases back, and Mahito can’t help but laugh.
The good sorcerer trying to uphold his upstanding morals—and failing. He’s a liar. He doesn’t want Mahito to stay away at all. Not too far away, at least. He does, but he doesn’t. He’s afraid of the consequences. Good people care about consequences. And Mahito is the enemy, after all.
It makes sense now. It clicks into place all at once. Nanami likes him, Mahito is sure of it. He likes Mahito, and it bothers him to no end that he does. The thought makes Mahito giddy, makes everything tingle from head to toe.
He springs to his feet, and this time when he leaves, he doesn’t look back. He yanks his boots on and calls out in farewell, slips out of the apartment and takes three, four stairs at a time, exploding into the brisk night air.
He breathes, filling his lungs with deep breath after deep breath until it starts to hurt.
The realization comes once he gathers himself enough to start heading in the direction of wherever he’s going—his hammock, he decides, he might try to sleep some more—and he laughs again, unrestrained and exhilarated. Happy happy happy.
Nanami didn’t mean it. He’s a liar. He does want to see Mahito again. But—even if he didn’t, he left a loophole wide open for Mahito to exploit should he want to, whether it was intentional or nothing more than a fortunate accident.
The latter, Mahito thinks. But he’ll exploit it regardless. He has to. So that Nanami doesn’t get mad at him. So that he proves he can be responsible. That he can be good.
He has a shirt to return.