Chapter Text
The world was a dangerous place, Yahaba knew that; the fact had been ingrained into him the moment he was old enough to understand. The world was a dangerous place, filled with the monsters from their nightmares and creatures of the night. Werewolves, vampires, shifters, poltergeists, the undead, all of them, they were living and breathing and seconds away from snatching them away from their lives as they knew it.
There were mandatory defense classes and what everyone called “Monsterology 101” added to their classes in middle school, and every year from there on out. It taught them how to fight off attackers, showed them each monsters’ weakness and how to defeat it, taught them how to recognize signs of monsters’ whereabouts, and made them aware of how to determine if someone was human or a monster.
Yahaba was pretty confident about his understanding of the world he lived in; he thought he knew how to keep himself safe and as far away from monsters as possible, thought he could spot one a mile away and run for the hills. Some of those classes taught him that monsters could live perfectly normal lives and weren’t a threat, but Yahaba couldn’t see the sense in that; sure, okay, maybe not all monsters were bad, but there was no way they could be good.
That is, until Yahaba came face to face to one.
Yahaba didn’t really mind having a new neighbor, and it wasn’t really like he had a choice about things like this, but what he did mind was that their music blared almost constantly. He couldn’t make out the words, but he could make out the loud guitar and drums. He just thanked whichever god that was listening that it wasn’t that nightmarish techno shit, but this was still pissing him off.
So, he pulled on some shoes, and stomped the couple feet in between their doors. He knocked, well, more like pounded, on the door twice, and not a second later, the door flew open.
The man staring back at him looked pissed, golden eyes slanted as they glared and lips twisted up in what looked like a snarl. But Yahaba couldn’t take him seriously, not at all, considering that his hair was bleached blonde and had two stripes of brown over his ears. He looked like a fucking bumblebee and Yahaba couldn’t take it.
“What the hell?” the guy spits, drawing him away from staring at his hair. “You wanna break down my fucking door or something?”
“No, I want you to turn down your fucking music,” Yahaba shoots back, irritated. “I live next door and I can’t sleep, so please.”
Yahaba’s expecting a quick remark back, because if the guy can just come off angry at the get go, then there’s no way he would listen to him. But, surprisingly, his shoulders slump and his eyes cast downwards. It was almost like all his anger melted off of him, and all it left behind was something that looks a lot like embarrassment and nervousness, at least to Yahaba. The transformation leaves him blinking.
“Uh, sorry, I didn’t… mean…” he trails off, still looking at the floor as his hand comes up and rubs the back of his neck. “I’ll turn it off, sorry.”
“You don’t need to turn it off,” Yahaba says, still a little shocked at how quick the guy changed, “just… keep it down a little, maybe?”
“Oh.” The guy looks up now, an odd something gleaming in his golden eyes, and Yahaba has to swallow something that suddenly finds itself at the back of his throat. “Okay.”
“Yeah,” Yahaba says, nodding. “Well, uhm, good night, I guess? And sorry for, you know, yelling at you.”
“It’s fine,” the guy says, shrugging a little. “It happens a lot, I’m used to it.” Yahaba has to pretend that the words don’t hurt him, like the guy didn’t just admit to a total stranger that he was used to being verbally brutalized. “Well, night,” the guy says, shutting the door after giving him a small upturn of the corners of his lips.
Yahaba stands there for a couple seconds afterwards, completely dumbfounded, before turning back to his apartment. He collapses into his bed, pulls his covers over his head, and prays his heart stops hammering long enough for him to get some sleep.
Working at the convenience store isn’t the ideal job, Yahaba will admit, but it pays enough and gives him flexible hours so he can actually go to class. Fuck medical school. There were times like these, standing behind the counter in a dead store, where Yahaba questions his life choices.
But, he wants to help people. He hates the world he lived in, hates it because there are monsters made to kill and destroy, and innocent humans were killed all the time because of their lack of restraint. All he wants is help fight them, even if it means keeping the human death toll as low as possible.
Not that he wouldn’t physically fight in the first place. They all have to, at some point. At the thought, his hand flies to his hip, where his silver dagger sits in its holster, right next to the angry scar that rests above his waistline.
He was fifteen when he had his first fight in this stupid world. He fought for his life, fought the werewolf that attacked him as he waited for the train, fought with everything he had. He didn’t have a dagger then, didn’t have anything to protect himself. The only thing he could think of, while he was punching, hitting, flailing, was that a werewolf bite didn’t pass on the condition, and only the transmission of fluids did that.
He came out alive and well, but the scar stayed on his skin just like the resolve to do something about this bullshit stayed in his mind. A lot of people just go on with their lives unaffected, but Yahaba won’t. He can’t. He isn’t the best fighter, and he isn’t smart or brawny enough to be a hunter, so this is his only hope. He could do this, he could go into the medical field and help everyone who needs it.
He takes his hand off his dagger and busies himself with little things to do before he drives himself to boredom.
Something bangs onto the counter after a minute, and when Yahaba looks around, bumblebee guy’s there.
“Oh, it is you,” he says, his face expressionless as he looks at Yahaba. “Hi.”
“Uh, hey,” Yahaba replies, pulling on a smile before his manager gives him another rant about customer service. He flicks his eyes down to the things the guy threw down onto the counter and listlessly starts to ring him up. “So, I didn’t get your name yesterday,” he says, working deliberately slow.
“Kyoutani,” he says, and Yahaba smiles just a little. He opens his mouth, but is cut off quick enough. “Nice to meet you properly, Yahaba,” he says, like it’s a jab, and Yahaba doesn’t know which brings him up short, the playfulness in his voice or the fact that he knew his name. He stops, holding a package of raw hamburger up to the scanner, and stares at him. The smile on Kyoutani’s face widens a centimeter. “You’re wearing a nametag.”
“Oh. Right! I knew that!” Yahaba says, ignoring the way his cheeks grow bright red. He gets back to work quickly enough, scanning everything else and tossing it orderly into plastic bags.
“Of course you did,” Kyoutani says.
“Hey, don’t get snarky with me,” Yahaba warns, handing him his bags. He takes them as he rolls his eyes.
“Sure,” he says, sounding like he doesn’t mean it all. “See you later, Yahaba.”
“See ya, Kyoutani,” Yahaba sings mocking as he walks out the automatic doors. He doesn’t laugh at the bird Kyoutani flips him over his shoulder as he leaves, and he most definitely doesn’t like the way his name rolls off his tongue like it’s fucking water.
“Honestly, Yahaba, you have to get this done at some point. What are you stalling for?” Watari berates as he raids his fridge. Yahaba slumps forward in his seat at the small dining table he has, his forehead hitting his textbook harshly, at the chastising.
“I don’t wanna do it, Watari,” he whines, his words slurred against the fake wood. “It hurts my head and there’s just so much to remember and I’m tired…” He drags out the last word, whining more, and Watari clicks him tonuge at him.
“You chose this, dude,” he says lightly as he comes and sits down across from Yahaba. He waits a second, so that Yahaba starts whining again, before he sets a can of soda down right in front of his face. He guffaws as Yahaba jumps up, back as straight as a steel rod, his eyes crazed as he looks at the can like it’s a threat.
“Oh, shut up!” Yahaba yells, snatching the can and threatening to throw it at Watari’s head. He puts his arms up weakly, still practically dying of laughter, like they would be any match against Yahaba’s impromptu weapon.
“Oh… oh my god… Y-Yahaba, your face,” Watari wheezes, slumping in his chair and almost falling out of it.
“It’s really not that funny,” Yahaba says, pouting, as he snaps open the can and takes a swing. He hums lightly at the taste of the cream soda, and smiles just a bit before frowning at Watari once again. “And you have no right to talk, Hunter-In-Training.”
“I told you, I’m not gonna be a hunter. It’s-”
“‘Specialist In Preventive and Supportive Actions,’ I know,” Yahaba says, mimicking Watari’s voice almost perfectly. “Trying to find those monsters is gonna be hard enough, you might as well be a hunter.”
“Yeah, maybe, but I’m not killing them, Yahaba,” Watari says reproachfully. “I’ll actually be helping them to identify problem areas and get them whatever they need-”
“What difference will it make, really?” Yahaba says, taking another swig as Watari flicks open his own can. “It’s in their nature, Watari, it’s not like therapy or whatever will change that.”
“But it could help,” Watari says fiercely, and Yahaba knows he touched a nerve. “And the more effectively I do my job, the less stressful yours will be, so just shut your pessimistic ass up.”
“My pessimistic ass?!” Yahaba yells.
“Yes, Mr. Nothing-Is-Ever-Gonna-Change,” Watari shoots him a playful sneer before he chugs almost half his can. “Anyways, didn’t you call me over to help you study?”
“Yeah, but it’s so-” Yahaba’s cut off by his doorbell, which makes the both of them freeze and turn towards the door.
“Expecting someone?” Watari asks, shifting his gaze back to Yahaba as he raises an eyebrow. “Two-timing on me already, Shigeru? Such nerve.”
“Shut up, Watari,” Yahaba says, getting up and throwing a hand towards Watari before heading towards the door. He throws the door wide open and is about to say something when he realizes who’s at the door. “K-Kyoutani! Hi!”
“Uh, hey,” he says, looking at him with wide eyes, before casting his eyes downwards once again.
“W-What’s up? Need anything?” he says, leaning against the doorframe almost awkwardly. Kyoutani blinks at him, and Yahaba can tell he’s chewing on the inside of his lip.
“Not really, I was just wondering if you could show me around town since I don’t know much-” He stops mid-sentence, his eyes trailing off Yahaba and past him. His eyes grow impossibly wide as he sees Watari eyeing him curiously from the table, and he takes a step back. “But I’m interrupting something, sorry, I’ll just, leave.” He takes another step back, looking a little embarrassed, and Yahaba knows that he just really, really doesn’t want him to leave.
“No, no, you’re not interrupting anything!” He says, waving his hands around frantically. Kyoutani freezes, looking at him and then back at Watari warily. Yahaba whips around, gives Watari a look, before turning back to Kyoutani with a smile. “That’s just my friend. And… you can come in if you want.”
Kyoutani’s mouth pops open, looking a little dazed, before he shakes his head. “It’s alright, I’ll just… go. Sorry.” He’s already making to duck back to his own apartment, when Yahaba leans forward and grabs him by the wrist.
“Uhm,” Yahaba says, looking down at their nearly-joined hands and letting go of him. “I have class tomorrow, but… afterwards, I can show you around. But only if you’re free.”
“Yeah… sure,” Kyoutani says slowly, nodding. “Thanks.”
“Anytime. See you later, then?”
“Later,” Kyoutani affirms. He sends him a smile that makes Yahaba’s heart melt, before walking back to his own apartment door.
“Wow, Shigeru. Wow,” Watari harps as he shuts the door. Yahaba jumps, almost forgetting his friend was there, before turning around and giving him a look.
“What? I didn’t do anything!” Yahaba says.
“You were totally willing to drop me, your studying, and your impending fear of your test tomorrow, for that guy,” Watari deadpans, and Yahaba scoffs at the remark.
“You’re overreacting,” he says with a wave of his hand, grabbing his cream soda again and taking a measured drink. “He’s just my neighbor, and he’s new, so I thought I would help him. That’s all.”
“Yahaba.”
“And it’s not like I was getting anything done here, so a little break wouldn’t’ve hurt too bad.”
“Yahaba.”
“What?”
“You like him,” Watari says easily, draining his can, crushing it in one fell swoop against the fake wooden table, and pulling Yahaba’s text book closer to him. All the while, Yahaba choked on his own spit and sputtered until he could breathe again, glaring at Watari.
“W-What? Watari, what makes you think that I like my neighbor?!” he asks, scandalized. Watari doesn’t even give him a glance as he looks through the chapter Yahaba’s supposed to be studying.
“And I’m shocked that you would like him, of all people,” he says flatly.
“What are you talking about!?” Yahaba asks, his cheeks going a vibrant shade of red. “I do not like Kyoutani.”
“Of course you don’t, just don’t come crying to me when you’re in the middle of yet another gay panic.”
“That was one time, and not a gay panic!”
“And denial isn’t a river in Egypt,” Watari deadpans. Yahaba opens his mouth to correct him, but Watari points dramatically at a spot in his text book and cuts him off. “SIM TIME. You’ve sealed the open chest wound of a forty-year-old male who was mauled by a feline shifter. Your assessment reveals that he is experiencing respiratory distress as well as disc-like pupil constriction. What should you do?”
Yahaba groans, collapsing onto his table top and banging his forehead. Watari laughs at his distress.
Yahaba knocks on Kyoutani’s door when his class is finished, brain fried after the grueling test he had to sit through. He should have waited, or at least let himself relax for a couple minutes, but he was still standing there, waiting for Kyoutani to answer the door.
“You look like shit,” someone says behind him, and as he turns around his hand goes flying to his hip. His fingers ruck up his shirt and touch the hilt of his dagger before he realizes that it’s only Kyoutani standing next to him. He looks good, dressed in an iconic tee and ripped jeans, his sneakers scuffed but not unwearable. Yahaba tries not to let his gaze linger too long, and especially not when he sees Kyoutani’s impossible wide golden eyes and his jaw slack.
“Ah, sorry,” Yahaba says letting his fingers fall slack at his side. “I was sort of expecting you to be inside.”
“I-It’s… It’s okay…” Kyoutani stutters out, obviously shaken up but Yahaba honestly doesn’t know by what. It wasn’t like he was going to hurt him. He never gave him any reason to think he was going to hurt him, so why…? “I was, uhm… talking with the landlord, so…”
“Oh, Iwaizumi?” Yahaba asks, tilting his head to the side. “How’d that go?”
“Good, we talked a lot,” Kyoutani says, the corners of his mouth tilting up the slightest amount. “He said that he hates doing this landlord stuff, but his dad owned the property before, so he had no choice but to take over.” He sounded… amused, by the situation, but all Yahaba could think about was how strange it was.
“Iwaizumi… doesn’t usually make a habit of talking to his tenants, you know?” Yahaba says, making a frank face when Kyoutani gapes at him once again. “Especially about something as personal as that. You must be quite the charmer, huh?”
Okay, so maybe if he could take back that remark, he would. His face was practically burning, because why would I say something like that? Like he would really be flirting with our landlord, what the hell am I thinking?? But, Kyoutani’s face is better, and stops him from trying to control any damage that might have been brought along because of his comment. Wide eyes, red cheeks, and a stuttering mouth definitely looks good on him (even if his stupid bumblebee haircut makes Yahaba not take him too seriously).
“I, uh, no, that’s… that’s not… I didn’t…” Kyoutani tries to get out, his fingers twitching at his sides after every start of his clarifications. It was like he wanted to gesticulate, but he wasn’t letting himself. Yahaba thought it was a little odd, but didn’t think anything of it.
“I was kidding,” Yahaba says, shaking off his own embarrassment in order to dispel Kyoutani’s too. The bumblebee blonde immediately relaxes after that, and it’s almost like what he said were the magic words. “Anyways,” Yahaba carries on, waving a hand nonchalantly, “are you ready for that tour?”
“Of course,” Kyoutani says, ducking an inch back inside his apartment to grab a set of keys that he shoves into his pants pocket before stepping out and shutting the door behind him.
“Eager, much?”
“Kinda like to get to know where I’m living.”
Everything after that was… pretty smooth and pretty weird all at the same time. Yahaba easily guided Kyoutani through town, showing him the cheapest shops and his favorite books stores and one of the only blacksmiths in the area. But, throughout the whole time, Yahaba couldn’t help but notice Kyoutani’s quirks. He froze and peeked over every corner Yahaba turned, he chewed at the corner of his lip almost incessantly, and he flat-out refused to go anywhere near the blacksmith’s.
Yahaba can’t help but feel a little guilty for noticing all of them so easily. It wasn’t like he’s looking for something wrong with him (because the only thing he really thinks is wrong, is, well, bumblebee), it was just that he either had no clue he had so many quirks, or he was shit at hiding them all. And they were all so… telling, so unique to Kyoutani, that it makes Yahaba want to piece him together more.
What happened that made him so paranoid to walk down a street, let alone turn a corner? Why did he worry his lip so much, and why did he do it so unconsciously? Why wouldn’t he go into the only store that had what it takes to protect himself?
Yahaba feels stupid for wanting to know why his hair looked like a bumblebee’s ass, too.
Yahaba settles into bed for the night after dropping Kyoutani off next door and boiling himself some ramen. He should feel guilty about how his last thought before falling asleep is how the bitten corner of Kyoutani’s mouth would feel against his own, too, but he doesn’t.
“You know, I still don’t get what you see in him, exactly,” Watari says noncommittally as he lounges on Yahaba’s couch, feet in the other’s lap and a psychology text book open and propped up on his chest.
“Who are you talking about?” Yahaba tests, trying and failing to shove his feet off of him with his couple pages of notes.
“Uh, Kyoutani, duh. Your neighbor,” Watari says easily, barely even looking up from his book. He does, however, peek at him discretely over the edge of his pages, only to see Yahaba’s cheeks darken.
“W-Watari! I don’t like him!” he tries to defend again, pushing his feet off him once again, this time with a little more fervor. He’s successful, but instead now he has Watari’s toes on the tips of his shoes. “What makes you think I like him? Give me reasons.”
“Well, first, you sound like you need a tank of oxygen before, during, and after you talk to him.”
“I do not-”
“Second off, I’m pretty sure you would do anything he told you to. If he told you to do anything, that is. He tells you to jump off a bridge and die, and you’ll ask him what kind of jump and fall, and if you should get a diving board to make it more entertaining.”
“I wouldn’t do any of that, and you know it!”
“And, finally, you always like things that are bad for you.”
“What?” The last remark brings him up short, since Yahaba was expecting another jab from his best friend and all he’s met with is with sincere concern. “He’s my neighbor, Watari, and he’s a normal. How can he be bad for me?”
“Sorry, I was wrong,” Watari says quickly to counter that, shutting up Yahaba in an instant. “The final thing is that you’re too fucking dense to figure out basic common sense or piece together separate tidbits of information.”
“You can get out of my house if you’re going to be rude,” Yahaba sulks, knowing he doesn’t mean it.
“In order for it to be rude, it’d have to be true,” Watari answers, moving his feet back up to rest on Yahaba’s lap, knowing that he would never mean it.
So, it’s not like Yahaba stalks Kyoutani or anything, but he’s pretty sure that he’s stalking him. He only comes into the convenience store when he’s working, and creepily enough, he does it so well that his co-workers don’t even recognize his face. And he’s definitely not stalking Kyoutani, even if he notices that he buys the same stuff almost every week.
No matter where he goes, no matter what, he always seems to pop up. Yahaba didn’t really know whether to be flattered, creeped out, or just plain annoyed. He wondered if asking if Kyoutani had a job would be insulting, but he decided against it. It’s not like he didn’t like the attention, anyways, Yahaba just wished he was more up front about it rather than hanging around corners and peeking at him through the store window from time to time.
But, besides stalking, they hang out a lot more. Well, “hanging out” would constitute more planning on both of their parts, so Yahaba can’t think of it as that. It’s more like tagging along with whoever finds the other first.
Yahaba catches Kyoutani going to the gym one morning, so he goes with. (They end up sparring for a long time, and while Kyoutani is shocked by how strong Yahaba is, Yahaba was impressed by how instinctual Kyoutani’s fighting skills is.) Another time, Kyoutani gets back from his “morning run” (which Yahaba thinks is disgusting, because who runs in the morning?) while Yahaba is leaving for his shift at the convenience store, so he walks him there.
It just keeps happening, and Yahaba can’t escape the nagging thought of Kyoutani’s stupidly fitting bumblebee head in the back of his mind.
“You could just ask him out and get it over with,” Watari says one night as he’s making the both of them pancakes for dinner. Yahaba almost spits out his water before swallowing it down harshly.
“I don’t even like him, Watari,” Yahaba defends. “Drop it already.”
“Shigeru,” Watari says, turning off the stove to turn towards him. (That’s when he knows he’s serious; Watari stops baking for no mortal man.) “Stop denying yourself. It’s okay to be gay, just like you told me it’s okay to be demi.”
“Being demisexual is a lot easier to accept than being gay,” Yahaba pouts. “There’s no one really to tell you you’re wrong.”
“No one is telling you you’re wrong,” Watari says, giving him a stern look. “I’m just saying that… well, you don’t need to push away who you are, that’s all.”
There’s an uncomfortable pause after that, one where Watari turns back on the stove and continues cooking, and Yahaba stares down at the fake grain of the table and traces a pattern with his finger.
“Sorry about the whole… demi thing,” Yahaba says sullenly, honesty feeling bad for the comment. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know you didn’t,” Watari says. “But! Besides that! I’m surprised!”
“At what?”
“At the fact that you haven’t asked me what the pancakes are for!”
“I thought you just wanted pancakes.”
“No, stupid!” Watari says, finally finishing up and handing him a plate. He sits, and both of them have at least five pancakes stacked in front of them. “I finally landed that internship I was looking for!”
“You’re kidding me!” Yahaba shouts, smiling so wide his face feels like it’s going to fall off. “Shinji, that’s great!”
“I know! Social work is incredibly hard to get into with internships but, here I am!” Watari says happily.
“Tonight we shall feast in happiness for the start of a new beginning!” Yahaba shouts as the both of them laugh and dig in.
Yahaba finds his life, soon after, to be inevitably, terribly lonely. Watari is almost constantly busy with his internship, and from what Yahaba gathers, he has at least three monsters’ cases to manage, care for, and check up on. He doesn’t really mind it, because he knows Watari has a lot on his plate and it’s important to him, but at the same time it would be nice to have his friend back for at least three minutes for a Skype call.
And, then, the strangest thing happens: Kyoutani starts disappearing too. At first, it’s nothing, like missing him around the corner as they both leave for the morning. And then it becomes him intentionally dodging him. Yahaba thinks it’s strange, how Kyoutani’s door will open slightly before slamming shut once more, or how Kyoutani will sprint off faster than light itself whenever he sees him.
Yahaba knows he shouldn’t miss Kyoutani’s company more than Watari’s, his best friend, but then again, he doesn’t have a crush on Watari.
Ah, there we go. “Distance breeds fondness,” right? Or something like that.
So maybe he does have a crush on Kyoutani, maybe he doesn’t, it doesn’t matter because he’s fucking never around. Which pisses Yahaba the hell off.
So, he does what he always does. He throws himself into his studies, his training, and his work. His brain feels fried, his body feels like he was ransacked by at least thirteen vampires, and he honestly feels like he could kill every customer that walks in with a stupid question, but he’s good. No down time, no time to think about his stupidly attractive bumblebee neighbor next door, or his superbly successful social work intern best friend.
Maybe eating, drinking, sleeping, and general self-care are put on a couple backburners, because Yahaba finds himself awake at four in the morning, hungry as all hell, and wanting to make a fucking sandwich. But of course, his stupid self grabs a real knife instead of a butter knife, and all of sudden the peanut butter jar is being a dick. So, he decides that wedging the knife in between the jar and the lid will work, and now he has a bloody hand and a cut across his palm.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Yahaba curses, dropping the knife and diving over the sink and turning on the tap. The water looks like something out of a horror movie than anything else, water mixing with blood and circling the tiny drain.
He’s a med student, he gots this, he should be able to wrap up a single cut. But no. He keeps his hand under the tap, the water stinging his palm like mad, and hangs his head.
He’s fucked. So fucked. What the fuck. He doesn’t have anything, he’s so stupid, there’s nothing he could do to stop this, he could have done something else, he shouldn’t have let himself go this far-
And then someone is pounding on his door like it was a matter of life and death, and Yahaba nearly chomps his heart in half, it leaps so quickly into his mouth. He swears again, grabs a towel, and presses it to the cut before he walks over to the door.
The moment he unlocks the door, it flies open, and standing behind it is none other than Kyoutani.
“What the fuck? What are you-?”
“Let me see it,” he says immediately, walking in, closing the door behind himself, and pulling Yahaba further into the apartment.
“What are you talking about? Nothing-”
“You woke up half the complex with your swearing, so just show me the fucking cut.”
“It’s just a scratch its, its fine, really,” Yahaba tries to say, to brush it off, to get him to leave because there’s no way that Kyoutani can be in his house right now, no way.
“Are you a fucking idiot or somethin’? There’s blood running down your arm. Get the fuck over here,” Kyoutani sighs, exasperatedly, pulling him over to sit down on the couch. Yahaba almost scoffs at him, wanting to say something about being bossed around in his own house (and definitely not mentioning it that he kind of liked it, but that was the lack of sleep talking), but Kyoutani silences him with a look. The moment he was seated, Kyoutani grabs his hand, towel and blood and all, and slowly raises it above his head.
“Pressure and elevate, dumbass,” Kyoutani mutters, before letting go and moving away from him. Yahaba blinkes, wondering where he went, but the moment he looks again, Kyoutani’s right by his side, gauze and disinfectant in one hand and surgical tape in the other.
“H-How did you-?” Yahaba starts to ask slowly, disoriented, because there was no way he could have known where those were. It feels like the room is spinning and he doesn’t know why.
“When was the last time you ate something actually substantial?” Kyoutani grills. “When was the last time you slept like a decent fucking person? Fucker,” he swears, before throwing the towel halfway across the room and dabbing some disinfectant onto the gash.
Yahaba wants to say something, he really does, but words seem like too much, there was nothing he could say anyways. He couldn’t really flat-out say that since Kyoutani disappearance he’s been a mess. No, no, that’s not…
The next thing Yahaba knows is that he is waking up in his bed at noon, clean bandages on his hand, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on his kitchen counter.
It was only after scarfing down the sandwich that he remembers what happened the night before. And… he won’t even call it remembering. How could he? There was no way any of that could be accurate. Kyoutani couldn’t have known he was hurt, or helped him get fixed up, or… or actually cared, for that matter. He didn’t want anything to do with him, right? All that time was nothing, he wouldn’t actually be worried about him now.
Palm still stinging slightly, mouth still sticky with peanut butter, he swears to forget the whole thing.
It was nothing, right?
“You’ve got to get better than that, Yahaba,” Oikawa jeers as he lets Yahaba up to go grab his dagger. Yahaba snatchs it from the floor bitterly, giving Oikawa a little glare before shifting back into position.
“Would be better if you let my hand heal first,” Yahaba retorts, shifting his hold on the hilt, the dagger feeling awkward in his hand because of the bandages.
“You’ll be fine, I’m sure,” Oikawa says. “And, what? You think a werewolf is going to stop just because you’re hurt? No, no, no, they’ll look for you if you’re hurt. Fight through the pain, Shigeru!” He coos his name the moment he lunges forward, slashing and striking out with his short sword. Yahaba barely dodges his attacks, making quick work of dancing away from the blade and slipping into position for an attack.
“Easy for you to say!” Yahaba shouts, his voice reverberating in the empty training room. “Top Hunter, jack of all trades, enough weaponry for at least two small militias in your back pocket,” he lists, every point a slash, a jab, a quick step around Oikawa’s attacks, “every single fight you find yourself in, you win. So what odds do I have?” Yahaba says, touching the tip of his dagger to the small of Oikawa’s back. He gapes, gasping for air and reveling in his victory, until he blinks at Oikawa’s frozen form. “You stopped.”
“Something’s wrong,” Oikawa says, sniffing slightly and immediately looking at his hand. “Who fixed up your hand?”
“I-I did, what are you-?”
“No one can bandage themselves up that neatly, not even you. So who did it?” Oikawa asks, voice carefully calm even though there was an edge he really can’t hide.
“Fine, my neighbor helped. Happy?” Yahaba says. “Actually… I wanted to talk to you about him.”
“Your neighbor?”
“Yeah. Because, well, I might have a crush on him, just a little, and so I guess that makes me gay. But I don’t really know how to tell him, especially since he hasn’t been around as much and I think he might be avoiding me.”
“You have a crush… on your neighbor… the same neighbor who bandaged up your hand?” Oikawa asks slowly.
“Yes, that’s literally what I just said,” Yahaba says, annoyed.
“You’re an idiot,” Oikawa scoffs, turning away from him and going to put his sword away.
“What?!” Yahaba says, jogging to catch up with him as he leaves the training room. “What are you talking about?”
“What are you doing this for, again?” Oikawa asks, stopping abruptly, and Yahaba almost crashes into him. “All the weaponry training, and medical school, and working? Why do you do it?”
“Because I don’t want to get hurt again, and I don’t want other people to get hurt like I did,” Yahaba says, his hand straying to his hip, and the scar underneath the cotton of his shirt. “I want to stop those fucking monsters, you know that, Oikawa.”
“Then you’re going to get yourself hurt,” Oikawa says, his voice steel. Yahaba squints at him, confusion written all over his face. “You don’t realize it, do you?” Oikawa asks, softening a little when Yahaba becomes more confused. “Then love really is blind. Go home, Yahaba, we’re done for today.”
“I don’t understand what you’re-”
“You will. And when you do, then you can come to me and I’ll tell you ‘I told you so.’ But right now, just go home and stay away from your neighbor.”
And with that, he walks out of the training room and leaves Yahaba standing there, alone, confused, and with the palm of his hand stinging slightly.
The walk back to his apartment is long and filled with things that Yahaba himself doesn’t really understand. He just doesn’t understand Oikawa at all. What was he even talking about? Nothing made sense. And now he can’t train, which means he had nothing to do. He sighs, and runs his uninjured hand through his hair. He’ll go for a run, then. A nice long run that’ll make his sides burn and leave him gasping for air-
He nearly bumps into Watari as he rounds the corner to go up the stairs to his apartment.
“Oh, shit, sorry- Hey!” Yahaba says, realizing who it is a second later. “How’s the internship coming along?”
“Yahaba!” Watari shouts, surprised. “It’s, uhm, it’s alright. It’s getting there. A lot of work, you know?” he says, looking up the stairs nervously.
“Were you waiting for me or something?” Yahaba asks, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. Maybe he didn’t have to go on that run after all! He could be with Watari and everything would be-
“Uh, no actually, and I think it would be best if you left. Like, right now,” Watari states, drumming his fingers against the clipboard in his hands.
“What? Why? You can’t really-”
“Look, it’s nothing personal, it’s just that one of my client’s stipulations is that no one else is here, let alone you, of all people, so if you would please-”
“Shinji, what are you-?”
“Yahaba.” The both of them look up the stairs, only to find Kyoutani halfway down them, eyes wide and mouth slightly agape in shock. “What’re you doing here?” There’s something in his voice, maybe an edge, maybe a tiny bit of fear, that makes Yahaba blink. He sounds defensive, in the worst of ways, and he doesn’t understand why.
“I sort of live here. What are you-?” Yahaba starts to counter, before his eyes shift to Watari. He looks nervous, tense, and he doesn’t under-
And then his eyes shift down to the clipboard in his hands, and the neat name printed in the corner of the page. “KYOUTANI KENTAROU”
Yahaba understands.
“You’re one of them?” Yahaba asks slowly as he shifts his gaze back up to Kyoutani.
“Yahaba, I can-”
“You can explain, right?” Yahaba finishes. “You can explain the fact that you’re a monster. What exactly is there to explain?”
“Wait, Shigeru, you really don’t understand,” Watari tries to mitigate, grabbing onto his shoulder to pull him back from Kyoutani, when he didn’t even realize he was advancing in the first place.
“I wasn’t understanding a lot of shit, lately, but now I understand perfectly,” Yahaba spits, shrugging Watari off of him and glaring back up at Kyoutani. “So what are you, huh? Werewolf, vampire? You can’t be one of the undead, they don’t move that fast. And you’re definitely solid, so you’re no poltergeist.”
“And you see why I didn’t tell you I was a shifter right off the bat, now, huh?” Kyoutani spits back, anger welling up behind his eyes as he descends down the rest of the stairs. “You even smell old-fashioned.”
“At least it’s better than smelling ass whenever you meet someone, mutt,” Yahaba says, and he doesn’t care about the lack of self-control shifters have when they get angry, he’s out to hurt.
“Better than being some wanna-be Hunter who can’t even tell when a shifter’s right under their nose,” Kyoutani says, eyes narrowing and shoulders drawing together. “I thought you were a decent person-”
“And I thought you were a person.”
“Well, its looks like we’re both fucking wrong, aren’t we?!” Kyoutani yells, hurt and rage laced in his voice.
“Alright, that’s enough,” Watari says, grabbing Kyoutani by his arm and dragging him away from Yahaba. They were nose-to-nose, ready to strike, kill. Watari could already see Yahaba’s hand twitching towards his dagger.
“Was lying to me a part of your internship, too? Keeping secrets from your best friend?” Yahaba tests.
“You’re irrational, Shige-”
“I didn’t want you knowing because I knew you would be like this, you ass!” Kyoutani explodes, throwing his hands in the air.
“Oh, so I’m the ass when you’re the one who turned my best friend against me?” Yahaba says.
“He didn’t turn me against you, it’s just-”
“Maybe I did that so our relationship wouldn’t get fucked up, but I guess that failed, too!” Kyoutani yells. “Go ahead, Yahaba. Tell me everything I fucking did wrong, starting with not telling you I’m a shifter! But you’re the one that’s wrong when you were perfectly fucking fine with me when you thought I was human!”
“That’s only because you-”
“THAT’S ENOUGH!” Watari yells, yanking Kyoutani’s arm and pulling him farther away from Yahaba. “The both of you, that’s enough. We got to get going anyways, Kyoutani.”
“Sure, run away again. I bet he’s the reason why you haven’t been talking to me, too,” Yahaba spits.
“Fucking mental…” Kyoutani breathes, already turning around and walking away. Watari looks between the two of them before Yahaba scoffs.
“Go with him, I don’t give a shit,” Yahaba says, making his way up the stairs.
“We’ll talk later, Shigeru,” Watari swears, before jogging to catch up with Kyoutani, and Yahaba pretends that he doesn’t hear him.
Yahaba tries not to stew on this for too long, he really does, but the more he thinks about it, the more things start making sense. Kyoutani stayed on his other side, the one away from his scar, the one away from his dagger, his silver dagger, one of the only metals that would do serious damage on any kind of monster. Kyoutani always bought some kind of meat when he came into the convenience store. He heard when Yahaba cursed when he cut himself, something that wouldn’t have been heard through walls, something that wouldn’t have been heard in the other room.
Kyoutani walked him places but didn’t let Yahaba follow him. He never looked tired after work outs or runs.
He wasn’t blacking out when he got hurt, Kyoutani actually was that fast.
His aggressive nature, the way he calmed down just as quickly, the way he looked ready to fight at a moment’s notice, but never when it came to Yahaba.
(The way Yahaba feels lonely without Kyoutani but not without Watari, the way seeing him made him feel better, he way he looked for him when he wasn’t there, the way everything was empty without him…)
They were Bonded and Yahaba didn’t even know.
Bonding, the trickiest subject when it came to monsters, when it came to their very being. It was never researched, the monsters they captured never lived long enough to ask questions about bonding, but everyone knew it was important. Killing one Bonded monster was basically like killing the other; all that was left was an empty feeling with nothing else to lose.
The only thing anyone ever knew about Bonding was that it was something that had to be built, that a Bond was the product of a deep relationship or something neither monster wanted to lose or jeopardize.
Even now, Yahaba is practically burning with anger, with a desire for answers, with a desire for the truth, but there’s a small sense that he would want nothing else but to hash this all out with Kyoutani now.
Yahaba was Bonded. The reality of it made him want to punch something. Human and monster Bonds was unheard of. Even if things were “better,” even if there were no longer Hunts, even if there was barely any judgement left. And here Yahaba is, Bonded with his shifter of a neighbor, not even knowing it.
Oikawa was right, he really was an idiot.
An hour later, Kyoutani is banging on his door, hollering things that Yahaba memorizes, that he runs through his head over and over, things that will probably live in his worst nightmares.
(He sounds so desperate, so scared, so tentative to move on but not wanting to have a rift between them like before. He sounds like the world would end if they don’t solve this now.)
Kyoutani yells himself hoarse. Yahaba can hear the catches in his throat, the stutters in his words, the faltering of his knocks, the things that, even if he hasn’t seen him like this before, let Yahaba know that he’s crying.
Yahaba doesn’t open the door, and doesn’t wipe the tears off his face. That would mean admitting he was crying in the first place.
Watari arrives at his door the next day, and Yahaba begrudgingly lets him in. Watari sets the muffins he brought on the small excuse of a dining table before sitting down next to Yahaba on his couch. It’s an awkward minute before either of them say anything, Yahaba refusing to meet his eye.
“Are you okay?” Watari treads carefully, leaning forward to at least be on the edge of Yahaba’s vision.
“Okay with the fact that Kyoutani is a shifter? Oh, yeah, totally,” Yahaba scoffs, not enough bite in his voice to be anything more than a weak attempt at sarcasm.
“I’m honestly so sorry that I couldn’t tell you,” Watari rushes to say, shifting closer. “I really wanted to say something, but he told me not to tell you, and confidentiality is part of our policy-”
“It’s okay, I understand,” Yahaba says.
“You… you really didn’t know, though?” Watari asks. “I thought you of all people would be the first to figure out that he was, you know, a canine shifter.”
“He’s a canine?” Yahaba says, slightly shocked by the revelation. But it makes sense, the lingering around, how he was always in the general vicinity, it was the possessiveness canine shifters usually develop on things important to them. The revelation doesn’t sit well in his stomach, and it feels like the world is lurching ever so slightly.
“You, you of all people, should’ve been able to figure that one out,” Watari said, almost laughing as he hangs his head and shakes it slightly. “I could tell the moment I saw him.”
“What?” Yahaba practically yelled, glaring at him. “How? What gave it away?” What he was really wondering was how could he have been so blind, but the words were too much to say and, honestly, he didn’t want to know the answer.
“The hair.” This time, Watari did laugh at Yahaba, because he gave him such an incredulous look, it was hard not to find it funny. “All shifters have an unusual hair color or pattern, because it matches their fur in their Shift. Kyoutani’s hairstyle is so unique, I knew he was a shifter.”
“Why… why did I not know that?” Yahaba asked, holding his head in his hands. This is bad, so so so bad on so many levels. Everyone knew but him, and now… now they were bonded…? He was shocked out of his thoughts by Watari’s hand on his shoulder.
“Because you’re so caught up in your hatred for all things ‘Monster’ that you don’t even try to learn the basics about them outside of Monsterology 101,” Watari says, and Yahaba raises his eyes to meet his. “I know what happened all that time ago shook you up, I get that. But at the same time, not all ‘Monsters’ are the same. You just haven’t opened your eyes yet.”
Yahaba wants to look away, wants to kick Watari out, wants him to leave, because he’s right, because he wants to say everything he knows he can’t say out loud. But he can’t bring himself to. Instead, all he does is sit there and chew on the inside of his cheek while he stares at Watari’s warm smile.
“We’re Bonded.” He hears the words in a voice other than his, and then he realizes that he’s crying, throat closing and eyes watering. His resolve shatters, and soon Watari is holding onto him as he sobs. He babbles incoherently about one thing or another, and if asked what he said later, he probably won’t remember.
All he remembers is how Watari calmed him down, muttered “it’s alright, you’re okay,” over and over until he believed it.
Watari leaves a couple hours later, when Yahaba is calm and he’d cried all he needed to and Watari had made him all the pancakes he could ever hope to eat in his lifetime. He leaves, though, with a warning tone and a forceful suggestion that Yahaba should talk to Kyoutani soon. The prospect sits heavily in his stomach and makes him procrastinate for three hours.
Yahaba plucks up the nerve to see if Kyoutani is even home when the moon is high and the stars are bright. He’s tired of the pleasant warmth in his chest that comes and goes whenever he thinks of Kyoutani, is tired of the irritating clamminess of his hands when he thinks about the issue at hand, can’t stand the idea of sleep when there’s something big like this to face. And so, he slips on his shoes and leaves his apartment.
He’s stopped by a hulking yellow dog sitting at his doorway, front paws folded neatly under its jaw as its great golden eyes stare at his front door. Yahaba freezes as it perks up, eyes growing wide and body tensing, before flying to its feet and darting out of his way. The light falls better on it now, and Yahaba can see two brown stripes starting at the corner of its eyes and trailing down to the tips of its tail. On a smaller scale, it would look like…
“K-Kyoutani?” Yahaba stutters, his heart awkwardly banging in his ears, so loud that he’s sure Kyoutani can hear it, too. The dog nods slightly, its ears pressing against its head, before it closes it eyes slowly. For a second, Yahaba doesn’t know what’s going on, until the dog isn’t a dog anymore, it’s a blur, and the blur moves out of his sight.
The next thing he knows is that Kyoutani’s apartment door opens and closes rapidly, and then Kyoutani is standing there in a red tank top and a pair of blue basketball shorts.
“Uh, sorry, I couldn’t… I just…” Kyoutani tries to explain, not looking at him; the “I just wanted to be closer to you” goes unsaid.
“We’re Bonded…” Yahaba breathes, voice too soft to be heard, but the way Kyoutani’s eyes widen, he’s sure he heard.
“I… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for any of that to happen-” he rushes to say, before he stops himself and looks away again.
“Is that part of the reason why you didn’t tell me, too?” Yahaba asks, hugging his arms closer to himself.
“I didn’t want you knowing because it’s weird,” Kyoutani says, finally looking at him fully. “Bonding isn’t… it doesn’t work like this. It’s not supposed to be a shifter and a human. I didn’t want either of us in trouble if it, you know, got out that we were Bonded.”
Yahaba feels so much worse now. All he was trying to do was keep them both safe, and he yelled at him and was terrible, horrible, to him.
“I’m sorry,” Yahaba blurts out. “I treated you like crap, and I shouldn’t have and… I’m sorry.”
“You’re… okay? With being Bonded, I mean,” Kyoutani says, taken aback by the sudden topic change.
“It’ll take some getting used to,” Yahaba says, “but I’m not opposed to it.” Kyoutani hesitates for a moment, but a second later he surges forward, hugging Yahaba so fiercely that Yahaba’s thrown off balance. He topples over, and expects pain, but the only thing he feels is the lightning-quick movement of Kyoutani sliding his hand to the back of his head, keeping it from hitting the ground.
“Holy shit, sorry! I didn’t mean that, I swear,” Kyoutani rushes to say, propping himself up so that he’s above Yahaba instead of sprawled out over him.
“What did you mean to do, then?” Yahaba asks, cracking a smile.
“Uh, hug you?” Kyoutani answers uncertainly.
“So you tackle me?” Yahaba chuckles. “Have you hugged anyone before?”
“Yes!” Kyoutani retorts, rolling his eyes at him. “What do you think I am? Some hermit that doesn’t do anything more than take extra shifts at work and slave over casework?”
“I did that because of you, idiot,” Yahaba says, sitting up. They shift, so that they’re sitting side by side on the floor in between both of their apartments. Nothing really needs to be done, not now, not when their hands are brushing and the moon was shining down on them like it was made to shine for just this moment.
“Now what?” Yahaba asks. “We kiss, get together, and live happily ever after?”
“Probably not,” Kyoutani says, shaking his head. “We need to figure out how this is going to work, and probably find some way to hide that we’re Bonded, and then there’s the Association we need to worry about.” Kyoutani meets Yahaba’s confused gaze, and rolls his eyes. “I’ll explain later. We can start with that kiss, though.”