#sorry for the multitude of commas and em-dashes

[unrestedjade]

If you're taking writing requests, i'd like to request something COMPLETELY self indulgent on your part! Writing something that makes you hAPPY is a great warm-up!

Bless, the majority of my output is self-indulgent, but I will take you up on the “completely” part. This was, in fact, a great warm-up, and I may expand on it at some point on my AO3 or something, since I know most of y’all were here for Undertale and now I’m foisting all this 90s weeb shit on you. :V

Incidentally, to the surprise of no one, this kind of thing does make me extremely happy:

It isn’t seeing the small crowd gathered outside Urameshi’s apartment that does it, or seeing Urameshi’s mom sitting by the wall, dead-fish staring at nothing. Or even the casket, the little shrine, the photograph of a teenage boy no one liked all that much.

It’s when Okubo and Sawamura are dragging him back out to the street, that transition between the apartment— bright, too warm, choked with the scent of incense— to the night outside. That’s the moment it fully hits Kazuma that Yusuke Urameshi is dead. That Urameshi isn’t going to push the casket lid open, sit up, flip him off, and tell him what a gullible moron he is. That it wasn’t a stupid rumor or a prank. That they’re never going to get their rematch, ever. That before Kazuma’s nose had even stopped bleeding that afternoon, Urameshi had already stepped off the curb in front of that car.

Okubo and Sawamura’s hold on his arms is the only thing keeping the ground from swallowing him up. He’s beyond rage, the engine that had propelled him all the way here to this piece of crap apartment building on the edge of Kaidan flying apart into something scary, incoherent. He’s aware he’s screaming and can’t stop himself, doesn’t want to, doesn’t care. He’s moving, his friends manhandling him down the sidewalk, away from the wake they weren’t invited to, putting distance between the unhinged scene he’s causing and what’s supposed to be quiet, respectful, adult.

Let them stare. Urameshi’s fucking dead. Like they even care. Fuck all of them.

Fuck everything.

Fuck.

After a block, or maybe two– he can’t tell, time and distance have lost all meaning now– he can’t keep his footing any longer. The bones and cartilage and muscles of his legs are all the same useless mush. He sinks down out of Okubo and Sawamura’s hold, their fingernails scraping and snagging along his jacket sleeves. His throat aches sharp like he’s gulped down a handful of broken glass.

“C’mon, Kuwabara,” Okubo says, his own voice quavering, kind. “You gotta get up.” He tugs on Kazuma’s sleeve.

Fuck Okubo.

Sawamura lays a hand on his other shoulder. “It’s okay.” He’s calm again already. Like always. “Let’s get you home, huh?”

Fuck Sawamura, too.

Kazuma is aware of the ugly, animal noises coming out of him. He’s out of energy to scream, his sobs punctuated by a high, keening wail that slips out from between teeth clenched hard enough to crack. It’s all he can do to drag air into his burning lungs. He sits there shivering in the middle of the cracked, grass-overgrown sidewalk, head in hands, watching through his fingers as tears and runny snot spot dark patterns onto the cement.

Far above him, he can hear Sawamura and Okubo talking. Something about finding a pay phone, calling Shizuru. Getting Kuwabara home. Getting home themselves, before they’re in too-deep shit with their parents. Practical things. How can phones and curfews and houses possibly matter now?

Why did he do it? How could he let it happen? Hit by a car— that’s something that happens to a stray dog or something, not a person! Not Urameshi, who can take out half a dozen guys on his own, who’s somehow one-fifty-six for zero on Kazuma, who’s a human force of nature and the devil himself. It’s not natural. It’s not right. You can’t have Mushashi without Kojiro. You can’t have Ryu without M. Bison.

It’s not fair.

It doesn’t make any sense.

He’s supposed to be here.

Okubo’s footsteps recede down the pavement, off in search of a phone, and now it’s just him and Sawamura and the streetlight and the moths and the hole in the world where Urameshi was until a few hours ago.

“I just…” Kazuma finds himself stammering, words dragged up through the sludge in his chest, his vice-clenched throat, “I j-just saw him.” His bruises are still fresh. His black eye isn’t even as dark yet as it will be by tomorrow morning. He shifts his fingers slightly against his face, pushing on the bruises. It pushes him back into his body, back onto the sidewalk, back into the past. Back to this afternoon, when everything was normal and fine and good, and Urameshi was still giving him that cocky fucking grin that Kazuma was definitely going to wipe off his face tomorrow, this time for sure.  

Sawamura crouches down next to him, not looking at Kazuma but ahead, down the street where the wake is still going. “I know,” he says. That’s all he says. He reaches out to rub circles into Kazuma’s back, between his shoulder blades. Kazuma half wants to push him away, even though there’s no reason to and no point. Sawamura’s trying to help, but nothing can help. Nothing can fix this.

His eye is swelling up a little bit more from crying, making it hard to see anything on his left-hand side. Thinking about his black eye reminds him that he’ll wake up in the morning with it swollen shut, and everything will still be like this. The sun will come up. School won’t be canceled. Urameshi won’t be waiting on the side street where they usually fight, and everyone else will go about their lives like it’s no big deal the light’s gone out of the world.

For a moment, he doesn’t want to wake up tomorrow at all.