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A job is a job, he reminds himself.
Nevermind if it is once again from the biggest name in the industry. Unlike his other career, he still isn’t in a position to look opportunities in the eye and walk away with this one.
For whatever reason, he's also gotten better at tearing off the band-aids from his dignity over the past few months about it. Or so he tells himself.
The big boss is nowhere to be found anyway.
Funny, that. He somehow consistently and conveniently seems to be otherwise occupied at the assignment meetings Shuuichi attends even when his clan is the one handing out the jobs.
They've been on significantly better footing as of late, if it can be called that, which is probably why Shuuichi is not about to take it personally.
This one is said to be something else then: a yokai too strong to exorcise in a nearly abandoned village two hours away.
“Needs to be sealed,” says the Matoba clan informant. Even through the mask, Shuuichi senses the disdain when he adds, “Our chairman recommended you for this one personally. Can’t imagine why,” and a snort of a laugh, “unless he wants you dead, I suppose. No one's successfully gotten near that thing in ages."
“What else?” Shuuichi asks, trying to conceal his impatience.
“Matoba-sama made it clear that he wishes to see you before you start the job.”
Does he now, Shuuichi thinks.
“Said he'll send you correspondence to meet. Had some further instructions or something he wanted to share directly.”
Shuuichi feels himself tense even as his curiosity is piqued.
And well, a job is a job is a job.
“Sending me out to die?” Shuuichi calls out, cheerful in spite of the context. “Didn't see that one coming.”
“Have some faith,” the Matoba clan head responds as they meet in a small park by Shuuichi's neighborhood. He doesn’t specify in which of the two of them Shuuichi is supposed to direct this aforementioned faith. “Thought you'd delight in a challenge. Surely, straightforward exorcisms must be beneath you by now," and there's that grin again. Once, it had been sharp as a knife. The edges have become softer, more playful as of late.
“Careful,” Shuuichi lilts back, can't keep himself from getting drawn into this dance. “That almost sounds like a compliment.”
Matoba chuckles and Shuuichi tries to push past the sudden flush of warmth blooming in his chest at the sound when he says, casual, “I heard you had some final words for me.”
“As a matter of fact I do.” Shuuichi only now fully registers the small bag at Matoba’s hip, slung over his shoulder. “They are of the written rather than the spoken variety if it's all the same to you, and we'll probably need to head somewhere a bit more private."
Shuuichi gives him a look, quizzical. "For you to simply hand over some talisman?"
Matoba pats the bag. "Who said anything about handing over?"
He'd figured some time ago he ought to get used to exchanging favors with Matoba Seiji at this point what with their recent track record. The world hadn't even ended after the last few times shockingly enough.
That said, Matoba sitting cross-legged in Shuuichi's living room with a pot of ink, a calligraphy brush, and a look of intense concentration on his face as he painted a script up Shuuichi’s arm wasn't even close to the direction he could have expected this day going in.
The ink is cold and the air is silent after Matoba had supplied that this was one of the yokai his clan had attempted to seal for years but a Matoba could not approach it directly. The next best thing was sending a designee essentially clad in the clan's armor.
"Okay," Matoba exhales, letting the brush rest a moment in its small porcelain holder. "Now your chest."
"My what?!"
"Oh, did I not tell you?" He feigns surprise, facetious as ever. "We only finished the first part."
"You didn't actually tell me anything," Shuuichi scoffs, feeling seventeen all over again though in a way that flusters him far differently from how it had back then. It felt like they were more or less back at his childhood home with Matoba whacking him with one experimental talisman after another, hoping something stuck.
Shuuichi hoped for his own sake that this round was a bit more sophisticated and empirical. He also wasn't oblivious to the years that had fallen in between them since the last time. "I'd just have taken off my shirt rather than rolled up my sleeve if you'd told me earlier. Won't it ruin the script?"
"This isn't regular ink," Matoba explains. "It's quick to dry and effectively tattooed on you now for some time until I undo it."
"More surprises," Shuuichi says, deadpan. "Of course."
Matoba makes a deliberate motion of swirling the brush in the ink, his lips twitching at the corners. "You always were a lot more fun when you were rattled."
Shuuichi pulls his shirt over his head and tosses it in a heap. “Our lives are suddenly making a lot more sense.”
"I'll walk you through it. I'll need to write over your neck, back, and the left side of your chest," and he sounds just a touch hurried in a way that most probably wouldn't catch. "It's an old technique, tried and tested over generations based on our archives, something of a cloaking spell."
Shuuichi tries not to overthink it, the words or the way that something feels slightly off-kilter today relative to Matoba's usual composure. Still, Shuuichi can't help but study him a moment and find there's something inexplicable reflected in his visible eye that makes Shuuichi huff and go, "You better know what you're talking about."
"I make a point to," says Matoba, but it's devoid of his usual swagger.
Per instruction, Shuuichi knows he needs to direct the yokai back inside the cave from where it once escaped and effectively seal the entrance with reinforced charms.
The yokai is a large, dark, shadowy thing covered in vines and seemingly made of rock.
It is also...entirely unable to see Shuuichi.
It takes a few tries and Shuuichi feels so certain that the spell will not hold or there must be some flaw in it but, ultimately, he gets the job done with far less trouble and time than he'd anticipated.
He continues to think back on the job on and off in the coming days and as he heads to the next gathering later that week to report back and accept his payment.
This particular meeting is hosted by another well-known clan and Nanase is present as the Matoba representative.
Shuuichi tries to stave off the vague taste of disappointment. He tells himself it's because he wanted to understand better what he'd gotten himself into as well as how to go about undoing the spell.
"So you made a clean escape," she calls out, approaching from his side. "Impressive if I say so myself. Many from our clan did not have confidence that you would but our boss seemed to strangely enough."
Shuuichi greets her with his celebrity smile. "I don't know what the fuss was about. It was nowhere near as much of a challenge as everyone was making it out to be. Made me almost wonder if I had the wrong job."
A few other exorcists join the conversation and commend Shuuichi for his work.
"Well done completing a most challenging sealing!"
"Young Natori-san is truly rising amongst the ranks!"
Shuuichi smiles and exchanges pleasantries, trying not to feel like an imposter due to the lack of his own effort with this last job, until the others step away to mingle with the crowd. As they do, Nanase turns towards him, steps closer, and her gaze drops to his neck. When she steps back, her voice goes low and her brows go high. "I didn't get a proper look before but, huh, our boss has really outdone himself this time."
Shuuichi feels suddenly self-conscious, remembering the markings he still wears. He fights the urge to cover his neck with a hand which is the only exposed part of his body with the ink still visible, barely creeping past his collar.
"Apparently it's some defensive spell," Shuuichi says, sheepish. "He said it was like a cloak. I suppose it came in handy. I probably need to ask him about undoing it now."
"Understatement," Nanase says, deadpan, and then, after a pause: "Wait...you really don't know."
Shuuichi's blank face must be confirmation enough for her to take pity on him before she continues. "It's far more than a cloaking spell." She shakes her head, and there's a sort of weariness in it. "How long will the two of you--" and she seems to catch herself here. "You should probably ask him."
He finds his patience is running out of steam fast and so it comes out a tad more aggressively than he'd like when he says, "I know my name and standing doesn't always grant me much choice in my jobs but, at the same time, I don't particularly enjoy being treated like the Matoba clan's lab rat with no clear answers in sight."
Nanase gives him a look tinged with sympathy now that sours his mood even further. She sighs and guides him to a slightly quieter part of the large hall, close to the entrance. "How do I say this? It's...quite the opposite in fact. It's a spell that doesn't typically work outside the family. It necessitates the scribe to have a bond of blood, of marriage, and anecdotally," she pauses, as if considering whether she should be sharing this at all, "in the rarest cases, which there are no documented records of success to date, a bond of unconditional and unequivocal--"
Shuuichi can't be sure if she finishes the sentence or not because his head buzzes so loud that it doesn't really make a difference at this point.
His feet move of their own accord, tearing him away from the gathering, out of the building, his mind going blank and his throat going dry.
Surely, this is a terrible joke, something Matoba is playing at to get yet another kick out of later at his expense because wasn't that just what he did?
Well, Shuuichi is tired of being rattled.
Shuuichi had done such a good job of putting the whole thing away so nicely and neatly in its bespoke airtight box that it couldn't dare come back to haunt him and run circles in his head.
Matoba had worked diligently, carefully, with precision, the day he'd painted the spell. He had been quick, efficient, but there had been nothing rushed about his movements.
"What do you want to ask me?" The clan head had offered, unprompted, as he'd paused in between strokes to wet his brush.
The ink was cold and Shuuichi had clung to the sensation to keep himself grounded as he had let his eyes fall shut. A single word had come out: "Why?"
"You're doing a dangerous job for my clan." The answer sounded simple enough. "It's in our best interests that you succeed."
Pragmatic, Shuuichi had thought, and then supposed he should have been clearer with his question. "Why me?"
"Because you're the best suited. Because I know how you operate."
It had felt unsatisfactory. Shuuichi let it go.
(The real question had hung in the air, unspoken and understood.
Do I trust you?
Do you trust me?
The answer lay similarly between them, unspoken and understood.)
When Shuuichi had finally opened his eyes, the proximity was downright disorienting.
Matoba had not looked anywhere except the space where his brush had to move next to ink Shuuichi's skin. He only narrated where he needed to go and what he needed Shuuichi to do: Turn a bit here...lift your arm...move your chin. Still, there was something about being the recipient of this sort of undivided attention that made Shuuichi's heart gallop.
He'd attributed it all to uncertainty about the spell, to anxiety about the job.
Matoba had continued to ink a script that was largely unrecognizable from anything Shuuichi had ever encountered in any of his own research, the brush dancing over his shoulder blade, gliding over his ribs, his upper chest and finally curving below his collarbone, which was the only point at which he'd felt the slightest touch of Matoba's knuckle under his chin.
It was clearly an accident.
Shuuichi's breath had caught and betrayed him nonetheless.
The ink was cold.
"Finished," Matoba had announced, breaking out of his laser-focus and meeting Shuuichi's eyes only at the very end.
Shuuichi had shivered and then shifted around a little to gloss past it.
"The ink is cold," he'd said out loud, by way of explanation, of cutting through the still silence of the room, of rerouting his mind from dangerous side roads.
Shuuichi practically storms into the main Matoba compound. It is after business hours though he knows in Matoba Seiji's many worlds, that probably means little.
"Yes, it's urgent," he says, in clipped tones, to every personnel at every possible checkpoint. "I'm happy to wait around if he's out."
After much fanfare, he's shuttled into a small, nondescript sitting room where he's told the head of the house will be with him shortly.
Shuuichi is on his feet, unthinking, when the door opens and before Matoba's barely inside.
"Back in one piece?" The clan head says, his expression impossible to read.
"Thanks to you, I suppose," and Shuuichi takes a pause, takes a breath, lets it properly fill his lungs for when says, "I was informed that apparently it wasn't just any defensive spell."
If Matoba is caught off-guard, it does not show. There's no hesitation in his voice when he says, "No, it was not."
Shuuichi looks at him, waits, though he's not sure for what. This is the one person who has been making his heart lurch for years now with something he can't ever properly name. In his mind, he'd called it aggravation, intrigue, admiration, envy, and a whole host of other things until not that long ago.
It's a rollercoaster he wants off of half the time.
And the other half? He doesn't think he would even know who he would be anymore without it.
Matoba Seiji faces him, raises his chin, like it's a standstill, like it's a dare.
It's heat at the base of Shuuichi's spine and an ache stretching all the way to his fingertips.
Shuuichi swallows. "Is there something you want to say to me, Seiji?"
"I think," Seiji answers, measured, "I already have." He remains very still. "It's your move now."
Like it's a battle.
Like it's a game.
Shuuichi lets it sink in for a moment, and then, he moves.
He closes the distance as he moves towards Seiji, moves them both towards the wall that's right behind Seiji, a hand on his jaw and the other at the back of his head, cushioning it from the impact as much as twisting into his hair, and Shuuichi kisses him, reckless and unguarded and a little outraged.
Seiji can stage all the cryptic games he likes but Shuuichi decides he is done playing, done decoding, done overthinking. If this is too much then so be it.
He half expects a firm shove away and a gentle strike at his dignity.
He doesn't expect Seiji to kiss him back, doesn't expect that when it happens that it could ever be this fervent and hungry, and certainly does not expect every last bit of his sensible thinking to go right out the window with it.
When Shuuichi pulls away, he's lost track of time, of himself, and is very much in a daze.
Before he can say anything, Seiji beats him to it with a smirk. "It was a good move."
Shuuichi drops his head against Seiji's shoulder, lets out a small, exasperated groan, muffled by the fabric of Seiji's haori.
It serves to only makes Seiji laugh, a soft noise, close to his ear.
Seiji traces a fragment of his earlier handiwork on the side of Shuuichi's neck with his fingers.
Shuuichi does not move, lets the touch linger. "You said you'd need to undo it eventually."
"I could," Seiji hums, "but it will wear off itself in a few more days. Are you in a rush to get rid of it?"
Shuuichi feels his face burn at that. He'd thought he'd hate it, being branded both secretly and publicly, by the head of Matoba no less. And yet, there's something almost freeing about giving into it, even if just once, for a moment.
"It's fine," Shuuichi murmurs. "We can let it wear off."
"Good." Seiji continues to trace the path of the ink, slow, deliberate, dipping below the collar of Shuuichi's shirt. "You wear it well."
Shuuichi tells himself that just because he relishes in it doesn't mean that he's Matoba's.
Though maybe, he thinks, inhaling sharp as Seiji's mouth chases the point of contact on his neck from mere seconds ago, he could be fine being Seiji's.