Chapter Text
Ford has traveled all over the world in the five years he’s been back. Of course, compared to thirty years in the multiverse, there isn’t nearly as much variety, but Ford feels way too old to dimension-hop like he did in his younger days. Earth has enough changes in scenery for him, and the likelihood of an island made of cheese is significantly lower.
Of course, he’s not doing it alone this time, either. He has Stanley. Ford would have killed for company during his travels, and now that he has it, he cherishes it. They’re both old, these days, but their thirst for adventure hasn’t been quenched. Stanley has been all over the United States, and sometimes outside them, and Ford has been all over the multiverse. They could use a change of pace.
The Stan o’ War II, lovingly named after the boat that started it all, has survived sea monsters, hurricanes, and things beyond mortal comprehension. It can handle anything the world throws at it. They’re a jolly little crew, the three of them, a trio of Stans.
It’s a pretty average adventure, as adventures go, when Ford spots the advertisement. It’s spray-painted onto the brick wall he’s leaning on in black, and from the looks of it, it’s been there for quite a while. ‘Yato,’ it starts, and there’s a crown scrawled next to the name. He wonders about that, and continues reading. ‘Hopen for business!’ Ah. Good pun. Stanley would find it much funnier.
Then, the phone number: 080-0919-8100.
‘I will solve all your problems.’
Huh. That's weird. Ford’s specialty.
He scribbles down the phone number in his new journal, snaps it shut, and catches up to Stanley.
He doesn’t remember the number for four days. That’s not a number he finds suspicious at the time, but it can’t be helped. He pulls out his phone, types in the number, and calls.
“Hello there, and thank you for calling,” an upbeat man replies immediately, as if he’d been waiting by the phone. “Fast and affordable—delivery god Yato at your service!”
Oh, Ford thinks, maybe he should put this in the journal. If this is really a god, which he isn’t going to write off right away, considering his life, this definitely belongs among the other weirdness inside. “Thank you, Yato. Can you repeat what you just said?” He already has the journal before him, pencil in hand. “Slowly, this time.”
Yato, clearly confused, complies. “Hello there, and thank you for calling,” he says, much calmer. “Fast and affordable—delivery god Yato at your service!”
“Thank you. I was not aware of what you offer, so I’m afraid I don’t have anything for you to do, but I would like to interview you. Are you capable of tele—”
There’s a flash of light coming from his phone. Ford drops it in shock, and suddenly there’s a man in front of him. He looks like he’s in his late teens to early twenties (he can’t quite tell), is wearing a tracksuit, and has the most striking blue eyes Ford has ever seen. He writes down ‘capable of teleportation’ in his journal.
“So,” the man—Yato, he assumes—sits down in the chair beside him at the desk. “You wanted an interview? That’ll be five yen, please!”
Now, Ford has met supernatural beings before, the most notable being Bill Cipher. But he can’t say he’s ever met a god from Earth. “Yes,” he adjusts his glasses, “I do.“ He gets up to dig in his drawers, he could have sworn he had—yep, there it is, five yen. He hands the coin over, and sits back down. “First question: are you really a god?” He has to make sure.
Judging from the look on Yato’s face, that was the wrong thing to say.
“Why does no one ever believe me,” he cries, and stands up to pace the room. The ocean rocks the ship. “Yes, I’m a god! A real god! Takamagahara-approved and everything!” Ford doesn’t know what Takamagahara is and what it means to be approved by it, and he intends to eventually ask. “Just because I share a name with some stupid snake god doesn’t mean—”
“So,” Ford cuts him off, because he really was being loud. “You’re a god. A delivery god?” The only delivery god that comes to mind is Hermes, from Greek mythology, but Yato doesn’t look even vaguely European. “Where are you from?”
Yato rubs the back of his neck, already calmer. “Well, ‘delivery god’ is more of a job description, if y’know what I mean,” he says, “but I’m working on becoming a god of fortune!”
If Ford wasn’t a genius, he would have missed it. But he didn’t. “Wait. If you’re not a god of fortune yet, and ‘delivery god’ is just a job description, what are you?” The fact that Yato left it out seems suspicious.
“Well,” he replies, continuing to seem suspicious, “my old job was really my old man’s decision, and since I was born from his wish, he had the last word on everything. I just did what he told me, since answering prayers is kinda my thing.”
Ford hasn’t gotten an answer yet. He says so.
Yato visibly winces, and apparently decides to rip the bandaid off. “I was a god of calamity.“
He doesn’t hear that word often. He writes it down in the journal. “What do you mean by that, exactly?”
Yato shrugs, trying to play it cool and failing. “A god of disaster. I’d get sent out to some random village, kill everyone, destroy everything, and leave. My job was granting every wish that shouldn’t be granted.”
Ford remembers that there’s another question that hasn’t been answered. “Where are you from?”
“Oh, you mean what country I originate in? Japan, a little over 1000 years ago. Back in my day,” Yato begins mimicking the stereotypical old person voice, “people were building shrines for minor gods all the time. No one left behind! Except me, because again, god of disaster. No good luck for me.”
Ford asks a question about Takamagahara, and the reply he gets fills half his journal.
”You’re home late,” Daikoku says when Yato finally returns. “We were about to send Yukine after you. He’s pissed you didn’t take him with you, by the way. You know how he feels about you being alone, after everything.”
Yato sighs, “I know.” He rubs his chest, where he used to be able to feel Yukine’s fear. “But he had homework to do. He must be worried.”
“Worried about you,” Kofuku replies, kicking her legs from her spot by the table. “He takes his job as your Blessed Vessel pretty seriously!”
He makes his way upstairs, ignoring any further chewing-out Daikoku tries to dish, and knocks on the door. It’s the door to their bedroom, so he shouldn’t technically need to, but if he’s going to give Yukine the childhood he deserves, then he’s going to respect the rules of teenager-parenting.
When no grouching emerges, he opens the door. There’s Yukine, hiding under the covers, nightlight switched on. “Hey,” Yato breathed, “I’m back.” No response. He reconsiders, for the hundredth time, his parenting strategy. He has no idea how to do this. What if he just messes everything up?
He sits next to where Yukine’s head should be. “I already know how you feel about it,” he doesn’t have a choice, he knows his regalia too well, despite his current inability to feel it anymore, “but I’d like to hear it from you.”
That does the trick. Yukine pokes his head out, dried tear tracks on his cheeks. Yato hates them for existing when they shouldn’t. “You left me behind,” Yukine’s voice breaks, because he was murdered at 14, why can Yato never get this fatherhood thing right, “and you didn’t say goodbye. It—it felt like I was being abandoned all over again.”
Damn it, damn it, damn it. No. No. “Yukine,” he says as softly as he can, because if anyone deserves their name to be spoken like it contains the world, it’s Yukine, “you know I would never abandon you. Not willingly. None of what happened is your fault.”
“But then I thought ‘I deserve this’,” Yukine continues, and now the tears are coming down. “Because I left you first. You named Kazuma to kill the sorcerer, but I—” let him name me, Yukine doesn’t (can’t) say. Hagusa feels like acid on his skin, and the idea of saying it brings bile up his throat.
Yato feels old. He doesn’t feel old often these days, surrounded by so many mortals, but every now and then he remembers. The tears on (his son’s) Yukine’s face are more precious than diamonds, and nothing in his 1000+ years of experience can help him say it. He searches desperately for the right way—any way—to say it. “Yukine, do you know what naming means to gods?”
Yukine wipes away his tears with his shirt sleeve, snuffles, and shakes his head. Right. No one’s ever explained it to him, have they?
“The night I first saw you,” Yato tries, “there was an early snow. Tomone had just quit on me, I had an ayakashi on my tail, and Hiyori wouldn’t leave me alone. You were floating by the mailbox on the side of the road, and you were so small that you almost blended in with the snow. I could tell that you were a teenager, and a boy, and nothing else. And—I joke about it with the others, but I mean it when I say it was love at first sight.
“So there I was, standing on a pole, and I named you. I wrote that name on my heart, and I wrote it in the tiniest writing I could, because I was so sure you would leave and take a piece with you. And even after the ablution, you refused to leave. You stayed with me, and you grew on me.” Yato huffed, “Your name took over my entire heart behind my back, you little rascal.”
He takes a moment to breathe. Yukine’s hand is pressed to his collarbone, where the name had inked itself on his skin as surely as it had on Yato’s heart. He never wants to see it cracked again.
“You can leave me whenever you want,” Yato continues, “because you deserve a better god than I could ever be. But the loss of you will destroy me.”
Yukine is shaking. Yato can feel the emotions (where Yukine’s heart beats in his chest, safe and sound), but doesn’t know what they are. He’s not good with mortals, never has been, but he tries. He tries.
There are arms around him, and a trembling body lands in his lap, and Yato thinks he might have gotten his point across. He hugs Yukine back, and he doesn’t intend to ever let go. If he squeezes tightly enough, maybe he can say ‘I love you’ without scaring off his extremely traumatized teenager.
Maybe.