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summer masquerade - yuuta x reader

cw: long-distance relationship. canon-compliant. one mention of underage drinking. reader without cursed technique but can see cursed energy. reader implied to be of african descent. assumption that yuuta speaks limited english. a/n: a masquerade is the act of spiritual performance, often to chase away spirits or for political commentary. this starts in the time yuuta spends overseas in africa traveling the continent

A hot summer afternoon, years now in the past, Yuuta Okkotsu first sets eyes on you through the veneer of dust kicked up by frenzied footsteps, soulful ululations and the beating of drums that seemed to never cease, but you’ve been watching him long before he notices you, or at least demonstrates that he’s noticed you. Out of a clay bowl, you’re sipping on palm wine despite being clearly underage, but your parents are far at the other end of the crowd and will not notice, and once you’re deep in the brush, in the less strictly governed remote village where superstition and ritual reign, you’ve decided those kind of silly rules don’t really apply to you anymore. After all, you never want to come to these events, but you come from a family that honors tradition despite living in an ultra-modern mansion in the capital, and thus your presence at the masquerade is indispensable.

But Yuuta Okkotsu’s is not.

The two of you find yourself locked in an unspoken standoff of some sort. It’s difficult to read his expression, but his large dark blue eyes are looking straight at you, barely squinting in the hot overhead sun. You try to discern what he’s saying with his look, if it screams Stop looking at me versus I invite you to speak your mind, before deciding your next move, but it’s quickly evident that your only chance to answer the question is to ask. You hope you don’t look hostile because that’s not your intention in any way but he sticks out terribly, like a sore thumb, with his slightly bronzed but still pale skin, straight dark hair and his hoodie despite the sweltering heat.

He’s clearly a foreigner. It’s not good for foreigners to be at these types of masquerades. Bad juju, you think.

You tut to yourself then sip your drink one more time and decide to approach, wondering if the two languages at your disposal including English, will be sufficient to communicate. Most foreigners understand some English, after all. Yuuta doesn’t learn this from you until years later, but the first time you met him, you’d started wishing you were more worldly, so that you could speak to him in his native tongue, and he would tell you that he wished he was better at yours.

The then-teenager watches you approach with the type of curiosity one offers a person who is not yet a threat but can potentially be. From the way that you’re looking at him, you’re not hostile, and your smile is polite, but it’s not all the way warm, although he can imagine that you do have the capacity to smile warmly, to the right people.

“Hi,” you start. Your voice is honeyed sweet, and he doesn’t reply immediately but his facial expression goes from disaffected to flustered quickly, as though he didn’t actually expect you to walk up to him despite your visual exchange. You tilt your head slightly, wondering if he doesn’t speak English, but quickly you hear another voice next to you.

An older man, African but clearly not your countryman, and he raises an eyebrow at you. You’ll learn later that his name is Miguel, despite being from Kenya, and you won’t ask more details past that.

“Can I help you?” He’s also speaking in English, with a slight British lilt to it. You blink, surprised, then look back at your age-mate then back at him.

“Are you two together?” you ask.

The two of them immediately appear to not be on the same wavelength - one says yes, and the other says no - and you anticipate that it’s like this often. You soon find out that you’re right - Yuuta recounts that those years touring Africa with him were sink or swim, where he was more of an unwitting, hapless intern, rather than a lauded apprentice.

The way Miguel says no at the same time Yuuta says yes makes you giggle loudly, probably due to the warming of your skin from palm wine and your appropriately low tolerance, and Yuuta’s face seems to warm as though empathetically, the blush in his own cheeks less subtle.

Yuuta blushes often, even now, and it will forever be one of your favorite things about him.

“Are you from this village?” Miguel asks. You technically are, but you’re technically not, in some ways as much of a foreigner as they are. He’s information-gathering, clearly, and it intrigues you, but it’s not the only thing that does.

Your eyes draw quickly to the younger person’s hands.

“Yes, but remotely,” you reply to Miguel, then point to Yuuta’s left ring finger.

“You have a contract, don’t you? With a spirit.” you ask, and that simple question is where it all begins.

At the time you knew nothing about cursed energy, nothing about the world Yuuta lived in, that Miguel lived in, that you were just on the periphery of, but one thing was true. You could see spirits, ever since you were young and you could see a particularly strong one, emanating from that ring. Formless, but present and unmistakable. Yuuta looks at you with surprise.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lies in accented English. You don’t argue with him, instead turning to the dancers. The masquerade in their elaborate costume has started to whip at people’s feet and many are clearing the compound in fear and laughter. The three of you do not move. There are no real spirits here, aside from the one that is linked to Yuuta Okkotsu.

“I always knew they were frauds,” you joke as you watch the being that’s supposed to dispel evil spirits not turn one glance in your direction. Yuuta doesn’t understand your joke from the furrow in his eyebrow but when he looks at you now, it’s with curiosity rather than apprehension but you’d rather know more about him. He’s the real deal.

—

Miguel doesn’t get as much useful information as he can about your clan as he hopes when your family welcomes him like long lost brethren in your compound in the city just a week later. Yuuta listens intently and speaks carefully, and you wonder how much of it is his personality and how much of it is a language barrier. Miguel drinks all of your father’s finest beer and asks you to fetch groundnuts like you’re his own daughter and it annoys you, a joyous reprieve when your parents ask you to take Yuuta out on the city and come back in a couple of hours. Trailing a Japanese boy on the timid end whose heart and soul is impossibly linked with a monster is not what you’d intended on this summer, but it remains one of the most memorable summers of your life.

He tells you about Rika over skewered suya from the street merchants, and you don’t bat an eyelash as you chew, and tease him about her.

“Will she eat me if I’m too nice to you?”

“Rika doesn’t eat people,” he defends. The spooky monsters of your country are always hungry - eating adults, kids, children, the like. You nod, popping the cap of a bottle of soda on the edge of a table. You miss and pout, and Yuuta, to your surprise, takes it for you, repeating the motion but successfully.

You look at the underside of the cap and lament the lack of prizes. Yuuta watches you drink the soda, and neglects his own malt drink.

“You can keep being nice to me,” he mentions before the night ends, as though the reminder is crucial, as if it hasn’t been hours since you made your joke. Miguel doesn’t hear him, drunk and boisterous, thumping your father’s back a little too hard. Yuuta’s attention is back to his companion before he can notice that your cheeks are warming again, and this time not from the alcohol.

—

Yuuta leaves your country, then soon your continent and you don’t think you’ll ever see him again, just wisps of him every time you see a vengeful spirit in the distance and pray that it behaves before you call onto your family to dispel them, but months pass and you receive that first email.

He’s awkward with his words, a few of his phrases don’t make complete sense and you can tell the thesaurus is up in another internet browser as he asks you how you’re doing, but you reply kindly just the same, and he’s better through text, better still through video chat.

Yuuta starts off telling you little, but soon he doesn’t skimp on the details of his frankly terrifying life and in some ways you wish he would, but Rika protects him and he’s strong in his own right. You learn of all his friends, deaths and not; you learn of all his triumphs and his failures. Your heart flutters with every email, mostly because you're glad he's still alive.

That's just part of it.

Yuuta comes to see you again when you’re on the cusp of turning 21, and it’s the second time he’s come to see you, but the first time he’s come alone, without Miguel flanking, without the pretense of dispelling spirits and getting stronger.

He’s there for you, and only you.

You no longer live in West Africa but instead in Europe, in a small apartment that you’re lucky to afford while furthering your education, and your Japanese is now middling but enough to make him laugh.

He still speaks to you in English, improved over years of vid and voice chat.

“Happy birthday” is whispered over lit candles and followed by your first real kiss.

—

Rika doesn’t eat you, regardless of how kind you are to Yuuta over the next few years.

The day before your wedding, you press your forehead against hers and thank her for protecting him all this time, you thank her for meeting him first. She doesn’t make a single sound, but as you press your hands against her monstrous face, you can feel the wetness of her tears before she vanishes. You’re unsure if she’s just as thankful for you as you are for her, but you love her just the same.

You touch down to the country where you first met just hours later to begin the traditional portion of the wedding and your father asks Yuuta to bring his ‘village’ - Gojo, Miguel, Maki, Toge, Yuuji, Megumi and Nobara, among others, touch down before the end of the night.

Yuuta does not like the taste of palm wine but chases it down with the taste of your lips by the end of the ceremony, which he finds much sweeter.

—

Your wedding band sits in the same spot as Yuuta’s childhood promise ring, one enveloped by the other. You hiss as your ring finger slips and you accidentally drop a box, Yuuta’s faster reflexes catching it before it makes it to the ground.

“Shit, sorry,” you pout and he smiles, patting your cheek gently.

“Just be careful okay, sweetheart?”

You’ve lived in Japan for three years now, settling in two years before you got married and now moving from your first home to this new one. Housewarming gifts abound and are waiting to be unpacked, and you and Yuuta have been working tirelessly to organize everything before your friends burst into your house and ask you why there are boxes settled as high as the ceiling in one corner of your living room.

You glance at Yuuta as he tries to decide the best position for his katana, holding it in his right hand. Finding your way over to rest your chin on his shoulder, you whisper in his ear,

“Let’s take a break, actually.”

Yuuta turns and looks at you, a gentle tilt of the head appraising how serious you are before he chuckles to himself.

“You know, Maki will literally not let us hear the end of it if this place is messy when she gets here.”

Despite this, he’s following you to the couch which is the only piece of furniture you have set up now. The two of you plop down and Yuuta sighs in relief, and soon you’ve rearranged your positions, and your head now lays in his lap as he pets your hair.

A moment passes where the two of you relax, your breaths synchronized as your pulse slow, and then suddenly Yuuta speaks.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” you ask. Your eyes flicker up to his, and he leans down to look at you more closely, a soft smile on his face.

“For approaching me first.”

You blink, then laugh.

“It’s been over a decade.”

“Still thankful,” he replies. You stop, your gaze steadying as you look at him, your heart rate picking up in speed, your soul calling out to him again. There’s an unspoken standoff of some sort, once again, but Yuuta moves first this time, his lips pressing to yours.

If you hadn’t approached him that day, the ten years of your life would have been different. Your chin tilts upward as you kiss him more, your hands cupping his face, then wrapping around his neck.

“I love you.”

Neither first nor in any way expected, but true nonetheless.

#mimi……….

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