scarf's cool 2019 fics.
this is where i'll put anything i write for noragami that's under 2k. 'upon the altar' was getting a bit unwieldy.
enjoy!

1. 'turn/return' - yatori, 1k

2. 'petrichor' - yatori, 1.5k

3. 'salt & silk' - kazubisha 1k

It is a mystery to Hiyori, how someone could be homesick for a person. She has felt the cloudy ache of separation: in her older brother's half-truancy, in the increasingly lengthy pauses before her grandmother remembers Hiyori's name.

Hiyori comprehends distance. But she does not really understand - not until recently - how to be sick with missing a person. How to withstand being halved.

Then Yato leaves, and Hiyori is handed a curriculum of this new, unfamiliar grief without speaking its language. She is thrust haphazardly into lesson one: how to breathe as though your heart has not been scooped clean of its meat. How to present wholeness to the world, when inside you are eggshell-hollow.

Which, coincidentally, is also the name of lessons two, and three, and all the rest.

"Are you all right, Hiyori?"

She hears this question quite often, though Hiyori thinks she's doing a fairly good job of not washing up on the rocks. But this time it's from her grandmother, who has the gentlest hands for braiding hair, and who has forgotten so much already.

So she just says, "No. Not really."

"Is it that boy?"

Hiyori jerks forward, shocked. Her grandmother's hands catch in the snarls of her hair, tugging her back by the roots.

"That pretty boy," her grandmother muses, working her fingers patiently through knots as stubborn as silk thread. "He was here before. I remember that."

"Yes," Hiyori says, barely above a whisper. "You wanted to shoot him."

Her grandmother chuckles. "Maybe I should have."

Hiyori's lips twitch, and for a short time the raw, throbbing void in her chest is less intense. Her grandmother works for a few more minutes, then pats Hiyori's head when the braid is finished. She kisses her grandmother on her furrowed cheek, and goes to her room.

; ; ;

Hours after she falls asleep, the hair on the back of Hiyori's neck lifts. The uncanny tingle of a fellow presence shivers across her skin. At the corner of her eye, something slips in through her bedroom window: a shadow only a shade more dense than the room's natural darkness.

Hiyori springs out of bed, hand flying toward the bedside lamp. In her haste she knocks it to the floor, where it rolls off into an invisible corner.

And then she is alone, in the dark, in her nightgown, with the shape of something tall and black blotting out the moon. Hiyori's lungs spasm; she is frozen right down to her blood.

"Hiyori…?"

Her name, spoken so softly, has the same effect as a slap. Hiyori's ears ring. The floor rolls under her like the deck of a ship.

She sits down, but entirely misses the edge of the bed and lands hard on the floor. Shock blunts her senses, and she barely feels the pain in her tailbone.

The silhouette crouches next to her.

"Are you okay?"

Yato's voice is worried.

She opens her mouth, wondering, even as she does, what might come out.

"You."

His eyes are easy to see now, even in the dim light. They widen at the force behind Hiyori's tone. He opens his mouth, but she cuts in before he can speak:

"You idiot."

There are tears in her voice. Her throat is thick with them, sinuses clogged and burning. Because upon the dim architecture of his face, her memory overlays that gentle, joyless smile: the hauntingly patient resignation she had seen him wear when he handed Hiyori's heart back to her and told her to take care of it.

"Hiyori," he says, reaching for her.

"Be quiet."

Yato sits back on his heels, empty hands outstretched. Hiyori drags her knuckles across her eyes, and takes a long, fortifying breath - which is a mistake.

The smell - almost too good. If she were half-spirit, Hiyori wouldn't be able to think straight. As it is, it's more than enough to break the floodgates. She sobs, deep and wet and unattractive, and Yato makes a terrible noise and moves toward her, but she pushes herself back against the side of the bed, away from him, and he stops at once. Her whole body curls in on itself: a quaking, wracked thing that has too long been denied its heartache.

He waits for her to pull herself together. With no small effort, Hiyori suppresses her moist hiccuping long enough to speak.

"You went to get yourself killed." Her nose is dripping aggressively, and she has to take a moment to sniff.

"You can't just...show up."

Yato's entire body seems to sag.

"I know."

His voice is heavy and scraped raw. Hiyori looks at him then, and her stomach flips when she sees the shine of tears in his eyes. There are other things about him, too.

Now that she's adjusted to the darkness, Hiyori sees the wicked stripes of new scars on his neck and hands. His face is thinner and whiter than she's ever seen it. The shadows beneath his eyes are deep, the sick violet of an old bruise.

Hiyori meets his eyes, and the fatigue in them summons stinging tears back to her own.

"I'm really sorry," he whispers, clearly expecting rejection.

Hiyori scoots forward on her knees. Her hands are shaking violently, the overdue panic from finding an intruder in her bedroom finally manifesting.

"Good," she says.

Then she launches herself forward, wrapping her arms around his neck. Yato grunts as her weight hits him, and they nearly tip backwards onto the floor. His arms tighten around her, squeezing her ribs almost painfully tight.

Hiyori buries her face in his shoulder, and his scent hits her system like a drug. Her galloping pulse slows. Her eyes flutter shut.

Yato gives a shuddering exhale against her neck, sending delicious shivers down Hiyori's arms and spine. He nuzzles his face closer into her, his nose pressed against her jaw, eyelashes skimming her cheek.

Before Hiyori lets herself think, she lifts her head from his shoulder, craning her neck so her lips meet his temple. She gets a nose full of hair, but the noise Yato makes - half-whine, half-sob - triggers a rush of adoration that is almost frightening in its intensity.

Hiyori is home now, arms full of her fragile, wandering god, to whom she whispers:

"Please - don't ever, ever do that again."