Shimazaki hadn't spent the night in the woods in the years.
Not since he'd figured out how to teleport home, and to remember where home was. It had been about fifteen…wait, no, seventeen? A lot of years. It had been a lot of years since he'd spent the night shivering on the floor of the woods. It would be a lot of years since he'd end up doing it again. He wasn't that kid anymore and he never would be again. He just had to remember that.
He did remember that.
He never had to feel small again, he never had to feel useless again, he never had to feel invisible again. He was here, he was Shimazaki Ryou, and he wasn't going to just disappear. He was there. He existed. He was everything that he wanted to be, exactly who he wanted to be, and he was never going back to what he'd been. Even if it had felt like it for…a minute? An hour? A day? It had felt like a lifetime. He didn't know what had happened. One minute he was fine, thinking about Toshi and the house full of dogs they now shared, and the next he'd been about ten and scared and hurting…and five and alone and invisible…small. He'd been small and weak and just…useless.
He was fine now.
He could feel the sun. He held his hand out towards it. He had heard of some people being able to tell what time it was based on the position of the sun. He had never been quite so talented…or maybe it was a smartness thing? He hadn't ever been that smart, either. Toshi was the smart one. They would have known what time it was, what had happened, and how to keep it from happening again. They would have known exactly where he was, too, and how to get back. This felt familiar but it had been so long and his powers…they were still there. They had been a little fucked up before but that had just been because he'd been a little fucked up before.
And not in the fun way.
It had started out fun. Joseph had provided plenty of entertainment and Toshi's new boyfriend was kind of…actually he was kind of an asshole but Toshi liked him so Shimazaki had no choice but to like him too. Toshi's feelings mattered, Toshi mattered, and he was never going to get them back if he didn't start taking them into account. That was what he loved about Mob, how she was always thinking about the people she loved, and he knew that he had to take a page or ten out of her book if he was ever going to get out of the hole he'd dug for himself here. He didn't like it, thinking about other people was boring and tedious, but for Toshi he would do it. For Toshi he would do anything. That was what love was, not whatever that Matsuo guy thought he felt for them, not whatever they thought that they felt for him. This was…
Cold. It was cold out.
He stood up and shook the dirt he was sure he was covered in off of himself. His barrier had at least kept up in his sleep. He had been protected from the worst of the cold but it wasn't like he wanted to make sleeping out here a habit. No, he had to kept back to Toshi. He had to get back and….and take that guy back, too. He knew that aura, he knew that body, he even knew that giant ass scar….fuck, he was barely even focusing and he could see that thing. He didn't have to focus to see Matsuo there, he was shivering like crazy, and making enough noise to wake the dead…heh…because he was a medium.
He was in bad shape.
He could have just left him out here to find his own way home. He would have frozen to death, that was always a possibility, but it wasn't like that would have been such a bad thing. Well for Matsuo, yes, dying would have sucked but for Shimazaki himself it would have been good. The there wouldn't have been any competition when it came to Toshi…but Toshi would have been sad. He hated it when Toshi was sad…when their voice got really high and they smelled like salt…when they pushed him away for real, not in the way they pushed him away now…when they closed themselves off from everything that didn't have roots and leaves…he hated it when Toshi got like that. It made him feel like shit and not just because they pushed him away when they got like that, because they themselves felt like shit…if he felt like shit when they felt like shit then they must have felt a hundred, no, a thousand times worse.
The things he did for love.
"Hey, wakeup asshole, camping trip's over." Said Shimazaki as he kicked Matsuo lightly on his side. He hoped Matsuo wasn't frozen or anything like that. Could you freeze someone solid when they were still alive? He didn't know, they'd never left anyone in the freezer for that long…though they did forget that guy in the meat locker all week and then at some point he'd died…
Shimazaki decided to kick him again, this time a little bit less lightly.
"Come on, before you freeze to death! I mean I don't care but Toshi would so…yeah. Wake your ass up." said Shimazaki as he kicked Matsuo one more time. That time he stirred. First his entire body tensed up, which was good, and then he started to sit up, which was even better. He wasn't nearly frozen to death and Shimazaki wasn't going to have to teleport his nearly frozen non-corpse to wherever the fuck Fukuda was and, best of all, Toshi wasn't going to be pissed at him.
This was shaping up to be a pretty damn good morning.
"What's happening?" asked Matsuo as he sat up. Shimazaki didn't have time for him to get his bearing, he reached down and pulled him to his feet. He was light, like Toshi was. Smelled kind of like Toshi too, probably because he'd been sleeping on the ground. He wasn't…that bad. Shimazaki could have seen himself with someone like this, maybe, then he and Toshi could have…well he'd have to see if Toshi wanted to share…and even then they might have still been mad about the whole Mob thing….
He couldn't lose Toshi, not any worse than he already had.
"Let me go!" said Matsuo as he began to struggle. Shimazaki let go of him. He fell, of course, but hey if this was what he wanted. He didn't know what Toshi saw in this guy…probably the fact that he hadn't fucked Mob…yeah…he'd fucked up there.
The latest in a long list of fuckups.
"What was that for?!" asked Matsuo
"You told me to let you go so I let you go." Said Shimazaki with a shrug. His coat felt heavy on his shoulders, or maybe he just felt heavy. Heavy and cold…he needed to get back to his own bed. Toshi's would have been better. Not to fuck them, just to be warm, just to be near them…
He was never going to be near them again, was he?
"You didn't have to throw me onto the ground!" said Matsuo
"I didn't throw you, I dropped you, there's a difference." Said Shimazaki
"Fine, whatever, you dropped me. I don't want to fight with you right now." said Matsuo
"Good, I don't want to fight either. I mean it would be fun but right now I need to go home and get some actual sleep." Said Shimazaki
"Are you crazy?" asked Matsuo
"Honestly I don't know. I mean I know that I have something going on but I have no idea what. I've honestly always been my own worst enemy, you know? It's like everything about me is wrong and when I try to fight against it I fuck up and then, yeah, even more about me is wrong and I don't know how to be right and it's hard to figure out what's right…you know what I mean?" asked Shimazaki as he ran a hand through his hair. He needed to comb it again. It was laying flat, mostly, aside from the parts that always stuck up no matter what he did. He needed a shower and to sleep and then…and then what? What was even the point. Sure he was here and…and being alive, living life, had been the point for so long. He had always told himself that it was enough to be alive even if he was alone but…but it had never been the case, had it? Even before Toshi he had hated it, being alone, and that was why he'd loved her…there had been a lot of hers, and hims, and one them so far…all he wanted was Toshi. She was dead, the other shes wanted him dead, and the less said about the hes the better. Mob was the only she who still wanted anything to do with him and even then…she avoided him…he had fucked up with her and Toshi and he just…he was always going to fuck up, wasn't he?
This was why he avoided sober thoughts.
"Uh…no? I mean, yes, you're obviously out of your mind but I have no idea what you're talking about right now and I just….we can't go home, ok? Not after what happened." Said Matsuo
"What happened?" asked Shimazaki
"Are you honestly asking me or are you trying to make some kind of point?" asked Matsuo
"It's too cold, too early, and I'm too tired to try and make any points right now." said Shimazaki
"You honestly don't get it? We nearly died. Whatever that thing was got the drop on us-" said Matsuo
"Of course I remember that part." Said Shimazaki. How could he ever forget. It had been like…like someone had poured ice cold…something ice cold and gross all over him. Fish guts? Congealed blood? That slimy stuff Mukai made sometimes? He didn't have words for it. It had been cold and gross and the more it had touched him the more it had…taken? Taken was a good word for it. It had taken everything from him. He had gone from high thoughts to stone cold sober thoughts in under a minute. Not only sober thoughts but the bad kind, the kind that made him do all kinds of painful and boring reflection on his life, the kind that made him want to disappear completely and never come back. The kind that reminded him just how much he'd fucked up….how he'd gotten too greedy or whatever and lost the most important person in his life…how he'd tried to have his cake and eat it too but the cake had been full of those ants that bit you and the ants had crawled down his throat and bitten his heart until all he had left was this raw space where his heart used to be and an ex who he still loved more than life it's self-
Of fucking course he remembered that damn spirit.
"Then why in the hell do you think-I mean…you know we can't just go home after that, right? We have to check in about what happened, figure out where in the hell Joseph is, regroup-" said Matsuo
"Pretty sure Joseph's dead." Said Shimazaki with a wave of his hand. Matsuo's aura shrieked, there, like a teakettle that had been on the fire for too long. Shimazaki didn't know why this came as such a surprise to him. That thing had been dangerous, a lot more dangerous than either of them had been led to believe, and it had eaten their fallen comrade. There was no way in hell Joseph was getting out of that one. He made walls, big deal, it wasn't like walls meant anything to spirits.
That thing had been hungry, hungry in a way that Shimazaki had only known a few times in his life, and there was no way it had let Joseph get out of there with his life.
"That's…that's not good….fuck! I mean I know that President Suzuki didn't like him but I lost someone on a mission…I'm in trouble….I'm in so much trouble…" said Matsuo as he began to pace back and forth. He kept on putting his hand on his spirit belt. Shimazaki took a step away. The last thing he needed was to deal with those things. He'd had his fill of spirits for the rest of his life, thank you very much.
"Suzuki's not going to kill you. If he didn't kill me and I slept with his favorite daughter then there's no way he'll kill you over this. Maybe kick your ass, maim you a little, leave you to die in some hole somewhere, but he won't kill you." said Shimazaki. Matsuo stopped pacing, thankfully, but he gave Shimazaki his full attention…attention that for once he didn't want. He didn't want to be invisible right now but he knew how it looked when someone was getting ready to fight you and, no, he wasn't going to fight the guy Toshi cared about. It would have been great to be able to kick his ass, to make him feel even a tenth of what Shimazaki felt, but Toshi…they wouldn't have liked that.
And he cared about Toshi.
"I just lost someone, he may have been as big of a piece of shit as you are but I was responsible for him, and I nearly died…and now you're going to remind me of what you…can you just take me back to HQ, please? I just…I can't fight you. We both know that even if I hadn't spent the night here after meeting that spirit I wouldn't have been able to beat you so just…can you please just take me back?" asked Matsuo. Shimazaki put his hands in his pockets and sighed. He could feel the actual city from here, it wasn't exactly easy to miss, and from there he could navigate….this was the same part of the woods dad would dump him…huh. Well that must have said something about him psychologically. Maybe he was crazy…Toshi would have been able to tell him….even if they didn't tell him if he was crazy or not he just…he needed to be near Toshi right now.
He wasn't going to leave Matsuo out here to die but he didn't have to be his personal taxi service.
"I'm going home and you can come with me if you want, or you can hitchhike home, your choice." Said Shimazaki
"Why can't you just teleport me to HQ? How much effort can it really-" said Matsuo
"Because I don't fucking feel like it, ok?!" shouted Shimazaki. Matsuo took a step back…good. Shimazaki had, honestly, had enough of him for now. It was too early and too cold and Shimazaki was too…he was too himself, right now, much too himself.
He needed Toshi
"Ok, ok, just so long as we get back to the city." Said Matsuo, his hands up like he was surrendering. Shimazaki didn't know what he had to surrender about, it wasn't like they had been in an actual fight. If they had been then there wouldn't have been any surrendering. Shimazaki did good work, that was one of the few things in life he did right, and he wasn't just going to…actually, no, he'd fucked up at….no! He wasn't a fuck up! He was…he was….
He was going home.
Matsuo had said the city and, technically, home was in the city. Just a part of it that Shimazaki still wasn't intimately familiar with. The first jump had taken him to where home used to be before it burned down…before he burnt it down. On accident, of course, he never would have burned the house he'd stayed in with Mom…the last place they'd lived together. Even if Mom had been the one to leave him to rot in his room when he'd been too little to do anything about it. Mob had said that, she had told him right to his face that if Mom had loved him then she would have taken him far away and…and Mob hadn't been there and she hadn't known….Shimazaki didn't know where these thoughts were coming from, he didn't know what was wrong with him.
He didn't know why it had taken him three tries to get home.
The first try had taken him to where his old house had stood, the second try had taken him to the graveyard where….where she was buried. The third try had taken him home. To the kitchen, not his bedroom, but at this point he wasn't going to try again. He was tired. He was cold. He was thinking the worst sorts of sober thoughts. He needed Toshi…and if he didn't have Toshi then he at least needed to go to his own room and sleep. Preferably with all the dogs he'd stolen…saved…
Dogs that weren't around.
"Well here you are. HQ is…somewhere, I don't know off the top of my head, I just go where all the auras are." Said Shimazaki as he felt around his cabinet…of course someone else had been here…and of course someone had let all of his dogs out. He couldn't feel them anywhere. It must have been Shibata, he had been such an asshole lately, though Mukai could have set them free just because she was nice to animals like that…well he wouldn't have been pissed at her if that was the case. He just had to go around tracking his dogs down and brining them home.
He hadn't been planning on spending his day teleporting around the city shaking a box of dog treats but he also hadn't planned on almost being spirit murdered either.
"I can figure it out…uh…thanks." Said Matsuo as he shifted in place. Shimazaki pulled out a box that vaguely felt right…nope, not dog treats. Human treats, some kind of cookies…he took a bite.
Oatmeal. Gross.
"Then go and figure it out." Said Shimazaki as he put the cookies onto Toshi's shelf. They were the only person he knew who would have willingly subjected themselves to oatmeal cookies. Well, them and Tsuchiya, but Tsuchiya never messed with his shelf. Not that he counted Toshi using his things as messing with them, no, what was his was theirs…he kept looking.
He had an audience.
"If you're waiting for breakfast then you can either wait somewhere else or wake Shibata up." said Shimazaki
"I'm not waiting for breakfast." Said Matsuo quickly. Shimazaki did that head motion that people did when they rolled their eyes. He hoped that the effect wasn't lost.
"Then why are you staring at me? And yes, I know when I'm being stared at. Do you need me to teleport you to the door, too, or something?" asked Shimazaki as he felt around his shelf. He heard a door open somewhere in the house. Good, he knew that it had been daytime. He couldn't focus on which door that had been right now….that might have been a dog in his room too….no, no, one thing at a time. He didn't have it in him to focus on multiple things right now.
He walked into an open cabinet door.
"No, no, it's not that." Said Matsuo
"Then what is it?" asked Shimazaki. He heard the bathroom door open. That felt like Toshi…he couldn't yell at Matsuo even if he deserved it. He had to take this well. He had to…he couldn't piss them off. He also couldn't teleport right by their side and hold them until they either held him back or kicked him in the chest…if he was lucky.
"Do you need…help…or anything? I-I just wasn't sure how to ask…if I could ask." asked Matsuo. He sounded like he was asking Shimazaki if he wanted one of his kidneys. Normally he would have loved to put someone through their paces, to see just how far they'd go for poor, helpless, him but right now he had things to do…important things…important things that had nothing to do with the thoughts still swirling through his mind like shampoo down a storm drain.
"I thought you didn't like me?" asked Shimazaki
"I don't but you're looking for something and-" said Matsuo
"You're a nice person like that?" asked Shimazaki
"-it just seemed like you needed help." Said Matsuo. Shimazaki closed his cabinet.
"I'm looking for dog treats but obviously they aren't there. It's fine…it's whatever. I'm too tired to look right now so just…either get the fuck out or wait for Toshi or…I don't know. If you want to submit a mission report or something go next door and talk to Mob? I don't know-" said Shimazaki. He had been so focused, and unfocused at the same time, that he hadn't been able to see past Matsuo. He hadn't been able to sense Toshi until they stepped into the kitchen.
The moment they stepped into the kitchen he lost the ability to see anyone, anything, but them.
"I don't know what's going on in here but it's stopping. Ryou, I know you don't like Matsuo but you didn't have to kidnap him or whatever this is." Said Toshi as they stretched and rubbed their eyes. Their t-shirt had ridden up over their stomach. Their socks didn't match, one was longer then the other one, and they smelled like Tsuchiya's deodorant. He could see more, too, he could see the toothpaste at the corner of their mouth and the sleep goo at the corner of their eye. He could see the way their hair was longer on the back left than the right, the way they'd parted their hair slightly to the right this morning, and even the knot of their pajama pants coming undone. He could see everything about them and…and they were the most beautiful sight that he had ever sensed in his life.
Toshi was there. Everything was going to be ok.
"He didn't kidnap me, he-" said Matsuo
"I don't care what he called it, he's going to put you back where you belong." Said Toshi
"Toshi, God, there are so many things I want to tell you-" said Shimazaki
"Ryou, you put Matsuo back where he came from or so help me-" said Toshi
"I didn't kidnap him, I mean I brought him here, but that's just because I kind of freaked out and lost a bunch of time and woke up in the woods with him, that's all." Said Shimazaki. There was a moment where Toshi only sighed. Then they took a step forward. He knew what those steps meant, those heavy steps. He got a glass down from the shelf and handed it to them.
"Toshiki, listen, I need to tell you-" said Matsuo
"Toshi needs a drink first." Said Shimazaki
"But…it's six in the morning…." Said Matsuo
"Toshi can drink whenever the hell Toshi feels like drinking." Said Shimazaki as Toshi dug around in the fridge and pulled out what felt like a can. Probably beer, though Shibata had been drinking that hard soda water shit lately…and somehow Shimazaki was the crazy one. It had been a beer, he had been right, he smelled it as soon as Toshi opened the can. They poured their beer into their glass. Shimazaki waited for them to finish.
There were times when Toshi really needed a drink and, clearly, this was one of those times.
"Toshiki-" said Matsuo
"Wait." Said Shimazaki as Toshi began to drink. He knew them and he knew when they did and did not want to be bothered. Matsuo, obviously, didn't. Well how could he? Shimazaki had been with them for longer and he loved them more and even if they didn't love him back they were still…he didn't care what the two of them were, he was just happy to be near Toshi.
They handed him their empty glass. He was even glad to be the one to put it in the sink for them.
"Whatever the hell is going on here it had better be over soon. Mob just dropped the worst bombshell on me and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do…even kicked me out of a sleepover…whatever. I have Mob to deal with. Is whatever happened something that needs my attention." Said Toshi. He opened his cabinet and dug around until he found a bottle of something harder than whatever cheap beer they had in the fridge. They sounded like they needed it.
"Toshiki, listen, there's this dangerous spirit, the one I was chasing, and…and just stay inside, ok? Stay here until I figure out what to do. It nearly killed me and….and it got Joseph. I mean I didn't like him but still so just…stay safe, ok?" asked Matsuo. Toshi nodded. That was all. They didn't run to him and see if he was ok. They just nodded and took the bottle from Shimazaki.
He couldn't help but feel like he won somehow.
"I don't deal with spirits, you know that, but thanks for warning me. I'll warn Mob…if she's planning on listening to me today…stubborn little…it's early, alright? You two deal with what you need to deal with, alright?" asked Toshi
"It's not that I need help, I just need to know that you're alright. This thing is bigger and more powerful than I ever even imagined. It got Joseph and all of my pets. It just…it isn't safe here. I'm going to ask President Suzuki to evacuate the whole HQ and we could-" said Matsuo
"Can do." Said Shinmazaki, he even gave them a salute. They smiled…at him. Not Matsuo, boring, worried, overly fearful Matsuo. It was a little smile, the kind that mostly showed on their aura, but he was going to take it. It was for him.
"And Ryou? I had the Awakened give the dogs back. I saved the one you liked best but, please, no more dogs. I had to listen to Tsuchiya and Shibata complain all night about the noise. This isn't a dog shelter." Said Toshi
"Whatever you say." Said Shimazaki, meaning every word of it. It didn't hurt…much…that Toshi had given away his dogs. It also didn't hurt that Toshi had let Matsuo follow them to their room. And it certainly didn't hurt when Shimazaki found himself all alone in the kitchen with just his useless mind and his useless feelings for company…it didn't hurt at all. He was…he was with Toshi in some way and…and these thoughts would pass on their own.
He hadn't been planning on thinking these thoughts, or feeling these feelings, or almost dying but plans were boring. He was going to live life and that meant living with whatever the fuck life threw at you.