#(mom tag pending)
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loz-the-noob · 11 months ago
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“If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think Jake would ever have recovered from his shock.”
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punkeropercyjackson · 8 months ago
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Anarchy or Riot's first ever fanart by @coffeemilkcatz !!Full idea by him,me and @parkerpresentz ♡
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archived-diegesis · 6 months ago
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"This is why we don't run over IPC agents, Edan." Pats her head gently.
Space baby jail
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"....."
rattles her "cage"
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hopefromadoomedtimeline · 2 years ago
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does trunks want kids? bc that was a dad worthy joke right there
The answer is complicated.
He's not completely opposed to the idea of either adopting kids or having them the biological way, he's just really shaken at the idea of it.
He's had so much taken away from him, his mentor, his mother, his entire world- It's left him terribly uncertain at the idea that things will remain safe. That the things he loves will remain in this world.
Hell, even if we're talking Z-era stuff, he'd be more open to the idea, but still unsure about it.
He doesn't mention that he's terrified of losing any more in his life, as he's felt despair at the repeated failure to keep those he treasured alive and well.
He feels that if he ever had a kid and lost them, he'd snap mentally. He knows just wouldn't be able to handle the toll.
Unless his partner can give him that sense of ease and security that everything's gonna be okay, the idea of it all is going to be met with immense hesitation.
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geraniumshurricane · 1 year ago
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— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — » ( ✗ )@wolfcross || @millionsnife || @mortesmariae
❝ Well, I said sorry for calling him a Little Bitch Baby ... ❞
He motions to the left.
❝ He chased me .. ❞
He motions to the right.
❝ Then he caught me ... ❞
He motions to the left again.
❝ And then he threw me to the floor and said sorry wasn't good enough. ❞
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voidselfshipp · 2 years ago
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Supernatural F/os and the flowers that represents them.
"This Is stupid" Dean teased with a smirk. "Really? Flowers?" "Dude" Sam interjected "cmon they took the time to make a list" The oldest winchester shot a playfully annoyed look at jerico and said "alright then, go ahead"
Excerpt from s13 episode 24 "Quality time" (fanmade)
Lucifer: Hydragena (Gratitude for being understood; Frigidity and heartlessness) Snapdragon (Deception, Graciousness)
Gabriel: Lillies (associated with Gabriel in biblicall paintings) Red Carnations (Alas for my poor heart, my heart aches, deep love)
Sam: Aloe (Affection, also Grief) Clematis (Mental beauty)
Arthur Ketch: Chamomile (Patience in adversity) Edelweiss (Courage, devotion)
Crowley: Crab Blossom (Ill nature) Purple clematis (associated with royalty)
Balthazar: coriander (hidden worth/merit) peruvian Lilly (associated with wealth)
Death: white Rose, red spider lilly (associated with death/passing)
"Romantic love is nice and all, but what happened to platonic and familial love! You surely didnt leave us behind, did you?"Charlie whined. "Of course she wouldnt, dearie!" Rowena interjected, almost offended that Charlie would think jerico would leave them out. "Alright then!" Jack Chirped with gleaming eyes"tell us!"
Excerpt from s13 episode 24 "Quality time" (fanmade)
Charlie: Ivy (Affection, Friendship, Fidelity) Arborvitae (unchanging friendshipp)
Castiel: Dill (powerful against evil) zinnia (Thoughts of absent friends, lasting affection)
Dean: gladiolus (Flower of the Gladiators, Integrity, Strength, Victory) Oak (Strength)
"Okay then, what about family?" Bobby said "ya idjit didnt leave us out didja?" "Since when do you care about flowers?" Dean teased with smirk. "I can appreciate flowers, ya idjit!" Bobby replied with annoyance in his tone and s slight blush on his cheeks.
Excerpt from s13 episode 24 "Quality time" (fanmade)
Rowena: Sage (wisdom) Datura/ Devils flower (Power + pun bcs shes a witch)
Bobby: peonies (family) Marigolds (stubborness)
Jack: White Carnation (Innocence, pure love, sweet love) Lilac (Joy of youth)
Mary (mother in law): Lily-Of-The-Valley (Sweetness, Tears of the Virgin Mary, Humility) Carnation (Fascination, female love, mother’s love)
"So?" Jerico mused. "Thank you for putting the time and effort in doing this, babe" sam thanked with a smile. "No probs!" Jeri chirped.
Excerpt from s13 episode 24 "Quality time" (fanmade)
Only mutuals allowed to reblog.
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cryopathiic-a · 1 year ago
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[ slam ] pent up with frustration, sender leaves receiver and slams the door behind them as they exit ;)
Sometimes the lengthy clean up after holidays did not sit well with the least patient of members. Dōma would know, because they often preferred to skip on those aspects of life in the cult themselves. The festivals, of course, he would always attend; even if he could no longer indulge his past habits, the smell of grilled meat, honeyed desserts & sake was a delirious blend.
Alas, it seemed some were not as attunted to the spirit of solidarity as others. Dōma being a prime example, for his hands were well tucked in his sleeves, watching his people scrub the floor on their knees. But as he stood atop the wooden floors, beside a specific boy rubbing a drenched rag on last night's wine stains, his foot had accidentally tipped the bucket over, undoing all of Inosuke's progress with water & soap. Aaaand that had sufficed to evoke an explosion, apparently.
The girls surrounding the fussy kid were still squealing when he shot up with a yowl, forcefully brushing past the spiritual leader & stomping out of the room.
❝ Ora, ora! Inosuke-kun! What about the fl—❞
— SLAM!
The entire doorframe rattled with his force. Dōma towered above the others as they'd cup their mouths & hold their faces, shaken from the sudden display of Inosuke's notorious temperament. But the founder? He merely produced a sole golden fan to flutter before his face, arm crossing under the other as he watched the - now ripped - sliding doors tremble on the beast-child's wake.
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❝ Hai-yah... This child is so unruly. ❞ A provocatively loud sigh. ❝ I suppose, without him around, someone else will have to gobble down all this leftover onigiri from tonight...❞
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ofcrescents · 2 years ago
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@griefbuilt @crescentborn @ofchaoticminds
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Without you, man, we’re just three idiots who live together. You make us a family.
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mimikinyuu · 3 months ago
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(ooc post: building lore between my two pkmn irl blogs hehe more to come)
#op#ooc:#theyre cousins..#soups mom is the person who gave legion jeffrey as a kid ^^#soups parents moved around a lot as trainers before they came along so like. their parents have a family luxray#n she had sum eggs a while back but most were unhatched and stored to b given out within the family later#so legion got jeffrey when he started training#and soup got his shinx (name pending bc i just pulled jeffrey from my irl gameplay HFJSHF)#legions been saving up to go to paldea so i cn give him an excuse to have paldean mons#legion showing up in paldea w bean and jeffrey both at lvl100: hey everyone whats up#im just loredumping in the tags atp LFJSBFN#but legions been training for 12-13 years atp? i forget how old the s/m trainer is but thts why his aces r both so high level hes been Train#ing With Them For Years#besides bean was his starter. nonstandard starter but VERY unorthodox situation#bc bean wld just follow him home from school and stuff like a stray cat and legion wld give him pets#n then one day legions dad was like Hey. and caught bean n gave him to legion n was like theres ur starter kiddo.#NOT A GOOD CHOICE ESP BC BEAN WAS WILD CAUGHT. ABSOLUTELY AWFUL CHOICE. but it worked out bc bean is a fucking Baby#docile-natured and loves being pet. and legion loves Giving pets#but jeffrey was Technically bred so she was chill from the start and has been chill esp bc legion raised her from an egg#i cld go on but i must sleep. i have work in the morning#goodnite besties xoxoxoxo
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whimsykeii · 1 year ago
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Me, asking my mom what her ffxiv characters are like:
Mom: Novak (her Hroth) is into bad girls.
Me, immediately: I have just the woman for him. *Pulls up a picture of Yotsuyu*
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promiscxous · 1 year ago
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[ 𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐊 ] ― sender and receiver fall into bed together on silk sheets / ,,, they’re play fighting,,, 😭 kiwa called his mom sexy again
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♡ — NORMALLY HE WASN'T ONE TO MAKE A BIG DEAL ABOUT PEOPLE MAKING COMMENTS ABOUT HIS MOTHER'S APPEARANCE OR ATTRACTIVENESS, in fact, he often felt proud and was even flattered by such a thing, especially since he looked identical to her (thus meaning they also found him attractive by default). More compliments meant more possible clients for him to meet via his mother, so there wasn't anything to complain about! However, despite his acceptance of such a thing, he couldn't get over the fact Kiwa, his best friend, kept trying to flirt with his mother. After all, she was his best friend! She wasn't supposed to be interested in his mother! Being interested in one of his siblings was one thing, but his mother? It was simply unacceptable. Not only because of the fact he already has two fathers, but also because his mother wasn't exactly wired that way, nor was she ever really raised to be invested in anything other than he children.
♡ — She was supposed to be on his side, TELLING HIM ABOUT HOW GOOD HE LOOKED AND ALL SUCH THINGS, not flirting with his mom and trying to get her to spoil her. Besides, his mother wasn't the type to spoil people. She was all about disciple and making sure people didn't indulge in things they shouldn't, hence why him and his various siblings had tons of patience... or at least until she and his two fathers had vanished for such a long period of time — but that much wasn't important anymore. Thus why him and Kiwa were now fighting (more like playfully smacking at one another) within his room before tumbling down onto soft purple silk sheets, hands clasped together as they gently pushed against each other's own strength.
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♡ — "You know," HIS VOICE COMES FORTH IN A SOMEWHAT STRAINED FASHION AS HE PUSHES AGAINST KIWA, "as my best friend, it's your job to not flirt with my mother... or any of my parents for that matter!" There was a smile present on his face, though it seemed as if it was an irritated one, you know... in a playful sense of the way. If his bestie wanted to keep making comments like that at a woman who didn't fully understand her words, they were going to have to fight about it! This means war! "I'm not about to call you my secondary mother."
#.♡ ~ [ ' ʟᴏᴠᴇ ᴍᴇ ɪ sᴀʏ; ʟᴏᴠᴇ ᴍᴇ ɪ sᴀʏ; ʟᴏᴠᴇ ᴍᴇ ɪ sᴀʏ; ᴛᴀᴋᴇ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴏғ ᴍᴇ. ' ] - ✡ ɪɴ ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀ ✡#.♡ ~ [ ' sᴀɪɴᴛ ᴏғ ғᴇʀᴛɪʟɪᴛʏ; ᴄᴜʀsᴇᴅ ʙʏ ᴛʜᴇ sɪɴ ᴏғ ʟᴜsᴛ. ' ] - ✡ ᴋᴏᴜɪ ʏᴜᴍɪsʜɪ ✡#.♡ ~ [ ' ɪ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ᴄᴀʀᴇ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴇ ᴅᴏ; ɪ ᴡᴀɴɴᴀ ɢᴇᴛ ᴀʟʟ ᴅᴏʟʟᴇᴅ ᴜᴘ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʏᴏᴜ. ' ] - ✡ ᴋɪᴡᴀ ᴋɪᴛᴀɢᴀᴡᴀ ✡#.♡ ~ [ ' ʟᴇᴛ's ᴄᴀsᴛ sᴘᴇʟʟs; ʟᴇᴛ's ᴄʜᴀɴᴛ ʀʜʏᴍᴇs. (ʏᴇᴀʜ!) ʟᴇᴛ's ʙᴇ ɢᴀʏ; ʟᴇᴛ's ᴅᴏ ᴄʀɪᴍᴇs! ' ] - ✡ ᴋɪssᴇsᴘɪɴᴋ ✡#.♡ ~ [ ' ʜᴇʏ ᴘʀᴇᴛᴛʏ sᴛᴀʀᴄʜɪʟᴅ; ᴡᴇ'ʀᴇ ɢᴏɴɴᴀ ɢᴏ ᴡɪʟᴅ! ᴀɴᴅ sᴘᴀʀᴋʟᴇ ᴀʟʟ ɴɪɢʜᴛ ʟᴏɴɢ~! ' ] - ✡ ᴋᴏᴜɪ & ᴋɪᴡᴀ ✡#{ BnHa!AU tag pending. }#{ I figured that this could be set after all the shit will the villains and such is dealt with in BnHA. }#.♡ ~ [ ' ᴄᴏɴғᴇssɪɴɢ ᴏɴᴇ's sɪɴs ᴡɪᴛʜɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴏɴғᴇssɪᴏɴᴀʟ; ᴘᴇɴɪᴛᴇɴᴛs ʟᴀʏ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ sᴏᴜʟs ʙᴀʀᴇ. ' ] - ✡ ᴀsᴋs ✡#{ Since in that verse his mom and dads are technically missing (presumed dead) until after everything is over with. }#{ Then they're supposed to finally resurface. }#{ So Kiwa would be able to officially meet them. }#{ Like... in a time where everyone paid for their crimes and such so now it's peaceful. }#{ I figured it would be cute! }
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alygator77 · 4 months ago
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ᰔᩚ motherhood and matrimony - mlist ᰔ
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ꨄ︎ pairing. au ceo! satoru gojo x single mom secretary fem! reader
ꨄ summary. satoru gojo, the arrogant and irresistible heir to a billion-dollar corporation and the son of your boss, the ceo... but when satoru’s father dies unexpectedly, his inheritance hinges on a stipulation: he must marry and have a child, but the child doesn't necessarily have to be his, right? together, you strike a deal: a fake marriage that promises financial stability for you and corporate control for him. as the lines between business and emotion blur, you must decide if your partnership is purely contractual or if it could evolve into something real.
ꨄ︎status. ongoing
ꨄ︎ warnings/tags. 18+ MDNI, nsfw, enemies to lovers, opposites attract, fake marriage, slow burn, smut, fluff, bit of angst, reader is single mom who recently broke off her engagement, satoru being a cute step dad, naoya is your crappy ex, some triggers of domestic abuse (it is emotional but it can be a bit suggestive/interpreted as physical, note this is from naoya not satoru)
ꨄ︎ words: currently 67k
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ꨄ︎ a/n. hello ya'll, my name is aly and if you read my fic thank you so much from the bottom of my heart! this story really hit the ground running, originally it was a request from a lovely anon ♡ and apparently i cannot write short fics for the life of me because it turned into something big lol, halp.. i'm unsure how many chapters it will have because i am just seeing where the inspiration takes me :') i will update tags/warnings as the story progresses. thanks for reading <3 (also this will have a happy ending)
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ꨄ︎ taglist: closed (ao3)
ꨄ series tags #mhm #motherhood and matrimony
♬︎ playlist
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ꨄ︎ chapters
ch 1 // circumstances and commitments
ch 2 // under the spotlight
ch 3 // fractured realities
ch 4 // shadows of doubt
ch 5 // a leap of faith
ch 6 // drenched in truth
ch 7 // pending..
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ꨄ︎ extra chapters
autumn special // harvesting happiness (read after ch 6)
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punkeropercyjackson · 8 months ago
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Ok but imagine: hobie, percy, nimona, and katara in a band
idk jack about katara, but hobie would play guitar (obv), nimona and percy fight for the drums, and whoever doesn't get them plays bass
I like to imagine that none of them can actually sing- which is canon for percy and hobie- so it's just excellent instrumentals and the worst voice you've ever heard. I'd love it
HMMMM TGIRL PERCY WILL A VOICE THAT'S BAD TO CIS PEOPLE BUT LITERALLY ANGELIC TO NORMAL PEOPLE Also bassist Katara then!!!Thank you sooooo much for sending this,they've been living in my head rent free since @coffeemilkcatz sent me that ask so i'm making a bit of lore!
They're called 'Anarchy or Riot' because there is no sellingout,only CHAOS
All transfems yes including Percy and nobody know what Hobie's got going on EXCEPT them and they ain't snitches
Punk rock with metal elements
Hobie is the founder obviously but it was a team effort to get the ball rolling
They do basement shows
Katara's in charge of makeup
Nimona refuses to go a concert without crowd surfing
Percy is the Team Mom as per always and they frequently use her as a pillow and she makes sure they stay healthy physically and mentally(so they return the favor!!)
Hobie has a few gothic elements added to his design but the black kind of goth instead of generic white stuff yk,Percy is pastel punk,Katara's crustpunk and Nimona is scene punk
Aang's Katara's number one fanboy and idk who to ship Nimona with but i diagnose her with lesbian.Percy and Hobie are just vibing
Called pretentious tryhards by normies,widely beloved by everyone else
Song writing is always a group effort
Percy gets a lot of thirst because she's a tall drink of water and Hobie's like 'dehydrate then cunts'(younger brotherisms)
Katara has traditional tattoos of her tribe and people are shocked when they find oit it's not a punk thing and she gaslits them about it
Nimona likes sticking charms and stickers onto their gear and it sounds cute but only half the time,the other half it's tacky,horror or both
Use their platform for spreading awareness and getting people to join in on activism and protests obviously
LAST ONE CAUSE I GOT CARRIED AWAY:Percy's 19,Hobie's 18,Katara's 17 and Nimoma's 16.✨️Balance✨️
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archived-diegesis · 6 months ago
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musescfmusic @trailblxzer
"oh shit can we swear now-"
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This time she can't help the laugh that leaves her, she never stopped any of her kids from swearing she just hoped they wouldn't need to-
" I never said it was a rule to not curse but we do have young passengers every once in a while. Just be sure to watch yourself around them "
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dcxdpdabbles · 6 months ago
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DCxDP Fic Idea: New Management
It starts off small, in controlled, barely noticeable areas of Gotham.
Over days, the litter and trash vanish, the sidewalks are washed and cleaned, and even building yards long since abandoned are trimmed. No one notices at first because Gotham is so used to ignoring how dirty everything is until Poison Ivy makes a public announcement thanking the person who cleaned up Gotham's parks.
You know, while she was tearing up that one street with her vine monster.
After the Bats had her locked away pending a trial, they stopped to look around and realized, yes, someone had been cleaning house. No one really knows who, but things have started to change. Streetlights are replaced, graffiti is painted over, and cracked windows are fixed. It's a nice thought, but all this had the gangs up in arms, especially when their tagging disappeared.
To control the goodie-two-shoes, a few gangs burn down a few local parks- mostly the ones near or around Crime Alley- and they also loot the smaller businesses. It's a warning that the mystery housekeeper should be reminded of their station, but- well, it's all for nothing because, like magic, the following night, the damage is repaired and somehow better than before.
What's crazy is the water change. Everyone notices that right away.
Gotham's water system was just as corrupted and descriptive as its class system. If you were one of the elites- your water was clean and crisp- if you were one of the poor- your water was practically tar with how contaminated it was. Anyone in between got a fifty-fifty chance of drinkable water, depending on what side of the city they lived on.
It became an identifier, really. Depending on how often you were seen at stores buying bottled water, people could tell how well off your family was.
That's why, on a random Wednesday, Gotham lost their collective mind that the entire water system was fixed. Regardless of class, every household had clear, scent-free water from the tabs.
The few who wandered outside trying to figure out what in the world was happening were left stunned at the sight of Gotham's surrounding bodies of water.
They were clean.
All the rivers, the harbors, the silly little fountains found around Old Gotham- everything. It was safe to swim in them now. That was just wrong.
"What's happening?" Jason growls, crouching at one of Wayne Manor's main windows. His eyes are barely visible over the edge, allowing him to peek out into the yard, but he must not be fully visible, lest he become a target.
"I don't know," Tim hisses, taking a similar position on the second floor. He grips the communicator with a white-knuckle grip, trying his best to ground himself. "I just don't know. There are no witnesses, no evidence, no clues whatsoever on who's doing this to the city!"
"I don't like this!"
"No one does, Jason," Bruce intervenes; the accompanying sound of keys typing is familiar background noise. He's still in the cave, attempting to run through all reports of horrified Gothamites on social media, trying to find a pattern. "Babs? Do you have any new updates?"
"No!" She hisses, her typing sounding far more aggressive. "I can't find anything on those responsible. Nothing on the internet, nothing on public camera feeds, and nothing on rumors through dark web chats. It's like I'm trying to track a ghost!"
"This isn't natural, B," Steph cuts in. She's hiding in her bedroom closet, voice low in case her mom hears. After they realize some new lunatic is running loose in Gotham, her mom calls her back home to barricade them. If they had a bomb shelter, they would have been in it long ago.
"It's worse than we think," Duke huffs. He's somewhere near the top floor, having chosen a higher vantage point, hoping his meta powers would spot someone coming towards the manor. "I think I see glimpses of blue in the sky. If this continues at this rate, we'll have a clear blue sky in about two hours."
Multiple gasps of horror are heard throughout the communication lines. Bruce starts to type faster, barking orders for everyone to remain where they are and not go gather information. They had no idea what they were dealing with.
Damian stands with a confused Cass, Dick, and Alfred. The only bats not originated from Gotham, so while they can claim to have years in the city, none of them truly know. "I do not understand. Is this not beneficial to Gotham?"
"It may be too much at once, Master Damian." The Bulter tells him carefully. He only speaks that slowly when Alfred thinks of every word before saying it. "Whoever is behind this must not be from Gotham. If they were, they know that people would lose their collective minds upon the improvements."
"But who could be responsible?" Cass asks, watching Jason duck and army crawl to a new window once some sunlight manages to break through the clouds where he was originally hiding.
"I wish I knew Miss Cass."
Meanwhile, Danny Fenton leans back in his computer chair in a dimension of hope and a skip away. He laces his fingers together, bending them until satisfying cracks are heard. It was a productive hour of work, but he thinks now that his virtual city had cleaner water, his NPCs should start healing and developing better.
He was suspicious of Madam Gotham—a new ghost that appeared within his territory of the Ghost Zone—but after a quick conversation, he decided to befriend her. Danny is glad he did, seeing as she was in danger of fading away. Her core had suffered severe damage due to denying her obsession for so long.
Danny could do nothing for her. Madam Gotham needed professional help that only certain Yetis could offer. Although the Yetis usually turned away anyone not of their kind, with Danny backing her up, they had been willing to take in Madam Gotham.
She had been stubborn, though, refusing to get help because she was too busy playing her silly little game. The computer she played it on was unique to her realm and could not withstand the cold temeture of the Far Frozen. Danny was literally watching her melt—a horrific reminder of Dani and her siblings' disabling—before he could take it anymore.
Only after agreeing to watch her video game did she decide to be moved to the Far Frozen to receive medical treatment. Now, Danny never really liked those farming simulator games, but this was different in the sense that the city was already there.
His job was to further develop the city into a utopia. It was interesting to learn what modern issues the city had and how he could make decisions based on point costs on what to fix.
He gained points from making his citizens happier, supporting the Bats—the city's defenders—or choosing to develop options that significantly raised the value of his city.
It was rather addicting, really. He could see how Madam Gotham got so sucked in, even though it didn't really have much action for him to make. Mostly, he would let his citizens react to his new choices and use his points to delete trash and gunk.
There were some side quests he liked to work on, too, like helping certain citizens with drug addiction, depression, anxiety, or anger issues. Danny has no idea why Madam Gotham allowed so many to develop so badly, so every day, he would give them all one good luck point to brighten their days.
He had three full tabs of characters, a brief explanation of their lives, and whatever issues Danny could make them go through. He would tackle the number of homeless youth next by fixing up the city's affordable housing and infrastructure.
It was a bit narcissistic of Madam Gotham to name her game town "Gotham City," but it's better than any name Danny could have come up with.
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celestie0 · 3 months ago
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gojo satoru x reader | fake marriage au [18+]
in holy matriphony ch3. domestic encounters
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ᰔ pairing. fake marriage au - neighbor&realtor!gojo x nurse!reader (ft. choso x reader & suguru x reader)
ᰔ summary. gojo satoru is your extremely annoying next-door-neighbor who you're pretty sure is the most insufferable man you've ever met. given the fact that you exclusively work the night shift at a chaotic emergency dept, just got broken up with your boyfriend of seven years, n have been taking care of your sick mom ever since her multitude of diagnoses, yet somehow your neighbor is the main source of stress in your life should speak volumes. but when your mother's medical bills start to skyrocket more than you can manage, and you learn that said neighbor of yours has the best private health insurance in the country, you ask him to enter a matrimonial agreement with you for the spousal benefits all in the name of saving a few hundred thousand dollars. but you'll have to see if suffering cohabitation w him is worth any amount of money.
ᰔ genre/tags. fluff, smut, angst, enemies to lovers (sort of), annoyances to lovers (that's more like it), small town romance, fake marriage, next door neighbors, lots of bickering, suburban shenanigans, slow burn, mutual pining, mild love triangle(s), gojo likes to play house but you don't, hatred for the american healthcare system, gojo always forgets to mow the lawn, jealousy, an insane amount of profanity; btw gojo in this fic is in his mid 30s n reader is in her late 20s
ᰔ warnings. reader in this fic has a sick mother w alzheimer's & cancer so there is secondary medical angst!!
ᰔ chapter. 3/x (probably 10)
ᰔ word count. 14.1k (i like this number)
a/n. hello hellooo my ihm bb's :'') so good to see you all again. so this is actually the first half of an original 26k word chapter 3 that i had written lmfaooo i genuinely entertained the idea of posting a 26k word chapter but like gat damn. idk i thought it would be too much. so there is this first part which is 14k and then the next chapter will be 12k! anywho, this chapter was fun to write, there's still a lot of set-up tho hahah. ihm has been really fun to write for me cuz it's kinda chaotic but chill at the same time lol :0 i really hope you enjoy!! see ya at the bottom!!
nav. ch1 :: ch2 :: ch3 :: ch4 :: ch5 (pending)
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“Soooo…..ready to consummate the marriage?”
You turn fast on your heel, so fast that Gojo almost trips over his own Welcome mat at his doorstep in an attempt to not accidentally topple over you, which you’re sure by the sheer size he has on you would’ve killed you or at the very least paralyzed you from the neck down, so it’s a good thing his hands fly out of his pockets then brace himself on the wood paneling above the door. 
“Wha–” you stutter, “what?!”
He stands up straight before leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms, the sleeve fabric of his suit stretching across thick muscle but you refuse to give him the satisfaction of looking. “The marriage technically isn’t valid unless we consummate it.”
You roll your eyes and dig your finger into your heel to take it off and then do the same with your other, relishing in the freedom of your feet from the shackles of constrictive feminine clothing articles, although you’re a solid two and a half inches shorter again. “I would rather make love to one of those inflatable balloon salesmen at car dealerships that flail and flap around in the wind than let you touch me for the purpose of sex.”
“Fuck that’s harsh,” he laughs, like he’s genuinely impressed by the comeback this time, “so a dead bedroom then, huh?”
“Can’t be dead if it was never alive in the first place,” you mumble as you tread into his house and toss the documents envelope you had been holding onto the coffee table. You hear Gojo make his way across the hardwood floor behind you paired with the metal clanking of keys as he throws them into the paper mache bowl on the foyer table. 
“By the way,” you hear him say, and you turn your torso slightly to side eye him only to see that he’s casually taking his suit jacket off with a flip of it backwards, “who was that guy in the courtroom that was glaring daggers into my soul?”
Your eyes widen briefly. And then you sigh. “My ex.”
He pulls the jacket off behind him by the sleeves and tosses it onto the loveseat. “Huhhh. You used to date a cop? You don’t seem like the type.”
“What?” you say as you face him fully. He’s loosening his tie now with a tug. “Why not?”
“You’re kinda…delinquent. Figured a cop would like a more ‘docile’ woman,” he says.
“You sound creepy as fuck,” you say, grimacing a little as you narrow your eyes at him.
He sighs before tossing his tie off to the side as well. “I don’t agree with it. I’m just getting into their headspace. Everyone knows how cops are. Y’know, controlling.”
“Choso is different,” you immediately spat back at him, before your head can even run the words through a filter, and you realize it came off as defensive. Your cheeks warm, because now it looks like you’re not over your ex. And you want to be. Why were you still protecting Choso’s dignity?
Gojo blinks at you, a little surprised before he swallows slowly and he holds his hands up in front of him in surrender. “Alright. I believe you.”
You turn away from him and worry your bottom lip between your teeth, feeling awkward before you scratch your elbow and then turn back to face him again. “Well. If you run into him around town,” you say, “can you try to make him feel emasculated and jealous? He did me dirty.”
Gojo runs a hand through his hair. “Uhhh. How?”
“I dunno,” you shrug, “brag about how great our sex life is or something.”
“But we have a sexless marriage.”
“Oh, yes, speaking of this sexless marriage,” you start, jutting your hip out to the side as you cross your arms sternly, “there are some ground rules that need to be set between you and I.” You point between the two of you.
“Ground rules?” he mimics after you as he undoes the top couple buttons of his white dress shirt, “like what?”
You hold a finger up. “Like no touching.” You hold another finger up. “Obviously, no sex.” You hold another finger up. “No sneaking into my room in the middle of the night.” You hold another finger up. “No peeping in on me while I’m showering.” You hold another finger up. “No ogling me around the hou–”
“These rules sound incredibly one-sided,” he snorts. 
“Yeah, well, don’t break them, you creep.”
“And if I catch you ogling me around the house?” he asks. 
You roll your eyes. “Such a thing will not happen.”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” he sarcastically affirms, and he approaches you which makes you flinch a little but you realize he’s just walking past you towards the living room.
“Y–” you stutter, “you heard me, right? Once I start living here, you have to adhere to these rules.”
He waves his hand in the air dismissively with his back facing you. “Yes ma’am.”
Your eye twitches slightly, and you storm towards him only to watch him slump down onto his couch, knees spread wide as he leans forward with a small grunt to grab the remote off the coffee table before settling back again. He lays an arm up and stretched across the backrest of the couch before he turns the TV on and scrolls through news channels. 
You make your way in front of him, obstructing the view of the TV, and he leans off to the side to try to catch a glimpse at the screen but you reposition your body so that he still can’t see it. His eyes slowly move to you and he has an irritated look on his face. 
“I’m tryna watch CNN,” he says. 
“Punishment,” you say, “for breaking any of these rules will be severe.”
He raises an eyebrow, interested all of a sudden as he tosses the remote back onto the coffee table and leans forward, placing his elbows on his knees. “Oh? What’s the punishment?”
Honestly, you don’t know. You just want to threaten him to keep him in line. Forget the fact that he’s the one doing you the favor here with this marital arrangement, and yet you’re threatening him. But it has to be done. “You don’t want to find out,” you say, trying to sound as eerie as possible.
“Not knowing what it is makes me want to find out,” he tells you, his knee swaying side to side like a dog wagging its tail. 
You briefly glance down, and for fucks sake why is all of his clothing so perfectly fit and stretched taut whenever he does anything? You try not to eye the shape of his thighs as the black fabric stretches while he’s seated.
You clench your fists at your side, worry your bottom lip under your front teeth, furrow your brow and blink rapidly from not being able to come up with something to say, and Gojo seems to read this as worry before he laughs a little.
“Don’t worry,” he says, “I’m not gonna break any of your silly rules, despite how tempting it might sound to me.”
“I don’t believe you,” you mutter as you walk around the couch towards the kitchen, feeling thirsty all of a sudden. 
“Seriously. I won’t. You’re not my type,” he says from behind you on the couch, with a tone that tells you he’s trying to sound reassuring but it really just pisses you off even more, “I don’t really go after women with daddy issues.”
“Wha–” you gasp, offended, and you spin on your heel to glare at the back of his head. “Who the fuck said I have daddy issues?!?!”
“No one has to say it, I can feel it,” he says as he continues to clicks through channels.
You pick an avocado up out of the pile of fruits from the bowl at the center of the island, holding it over your shoulder to charge up as much kinetic energy as possible so you can chuck it at him hard enough to knock him unconscious, and it’s like he senses the malice radiating off of your body because he looks over his shoulder at you.
“What’s that in your hand?” he asks.
“A grenade,” you say, “that I’m gonna launch at you.”
“Oh, thank god,” he exhales in relief, “I almost thought it was an avocado for a second.”
You deadpan stare at him. “I don't find you funny.”
“I think I’m pretty funny,” he says mindlessly, like he’s just arguing with you for the sake of arguing.
“No. I have never once laughed at a single thing you’ve ever said. Only grimaced with disgust,” you say.
He sighs. “Look at us. We’ve barely been married for an hour and we’re already fighting.”
You abandon your empty glass on the counter, shuffling around the corner towards the front entrance of the house because you can feel the headache from your pure annoyance starting to creep up on you. You sense Gojo’s eyes on you from the couch as you shove your feet back into the uncomfortableness of your heels. 
“Where are you going?” he asks. 
“Back to my house,” you grumble, wobbling a little when you take a step towards the door and place your hand on the handle.
“When are you gonna move in?” he asks suddenly.
You freeze in your tracks at his question. You’ve never heard the question before, because you’ve never had the chance to live anywhere that wasn’t your childhood home next door. So the question is jarring at best, and threatens to make you cry a little at worst. 
“Once I get my mom into hospice,” you say, quiet enough to where it’s possible he might not have even been able to hear it over the sound of presidential election updates. And then you make your way out of his house. 
•┈┈┈••✦☽✦••┈┈┈•
It’s a beautiful sunny spring morning, clouds trailing by across the sky offering momentary relief from the heat reaching the pavement, and you’ve got a good marching band walk going on as you stroll down the sidewalk of your neighborhood for your morning walk. Well, that phrase implies that you go on morning walks often. You really don’t, you very rarely have the time or energy. But today you decided it was time to turn your life around (your running shoes will see you same time next month). 
You hear some commotion off at the right side of the street, and when you lift your head up a little to clear the obstructed view of your sun visor, you see a couple of cops standing on a lawn, chatting up your elderly women neighbors with their laughter bolstering in the air. One of the cops turns around, making eye contact with you, and—  of fucking course, it’s Choso.
“Oh, fuck me,” you mutter under your breath and try to walk faster down the sidewalk in Korean ahjumma style. 
“Hey! y/n! Wait!” you hear him call out and he jogs across the street to catch up with you.
You continue to military march down pavement. “What do you want, Choso? Why are you stalking me?”
He runs up in front of you to stop you in your tracks. You frown at him and cross your arms across your chest. “I’m not stalking you,” he says, “I got a call about a stray dog out here.”
“Oh. Wonderful. So glad to know our officers are keeping us safe from cute street dogs,” you say, tone dripping with sarcasm.
“The dog had rabies. It bit an old man. Had to put it down,” he deadpans.
“O-Oh,” you stutter, cheeks flushing, “well, then, leave? Your job here is done.”
“I just—” he starts, “I want to—” He sighs, looking flustered like he’s trying to gain some sort of courage. And you’re almost entirely certain he didn’t need to garner this much courage to face a rabid dog than he seems to be needing for you. “I, uh, I want to meet your husband.”
“W-What??” you exasperate.
“To say congrats,” he says, but through gritted teeth.
You roll your eyes. “Yeah fucking right. You just wanna abuse your po-po powers to arrest him then throw him into jail then kill him to leave me widowed so that I’ll get back together with you and make a fool out of myself all over again.”
“Your capacity for catastrophization never fails to amaze me,” he says.
You’re pretty sure your therapist said something similar to you last week, too. 
“Ahhh!! y/n!!” you hear a familiar feminine voice call from down the street, and both you and Choso turn your heads toward the source of the sound.
Amaya, your neighbor, who is roughly thirty-weeks pregnant at the moment and therefore waddling down the street to get to you, is waving her arms in the air as her husband as well as another one of your neighbors follows after her. She finally reaches you and takes your hands into hers. “I haven’t seen you in forever!! How’s your mom doing?”
“She’s doing well…just getting by,” you say awkwardly, as Choso’s cop partner also approaches this little group that’s forming here, along with the elderly neighbors that he had been talking to. 
“Doctors taking good care of her?” Amaya’s husband, Ren, asks you with a twisted expression on his face and arms tightly crossed over his chest like he was gonna beat the doctors up if they weren’t. 
“Yes…” you say, “although, I think I’ll be transferring her care to Kaiser.” Oh. Fuck. You should’ve kept that to yourself. Big mouth.
You can feel Choso’s eyes on you as he watches this interaction between you and your neighbors. 
“Oh! That’s interesting,” Amaya says, and as her hands soothe over yours, she feels the bump of the ring on your left hand. She glances down. “H-Huh??? Is this a wedding ring?!”
Choso crosses his arms and tucks his hands under his armpits in your periphery.
“Y…yeeeeesss…” you say awkwardly.
“You’ve finally married?” your elderly neighbors chirp out at the same time.
You shoot them a dirty look over the word finally. “Yes.” Please drop the subject, please drop the subject.
But Amaya has always been the gossipy nosy neighbor. “To who??”
Choso snaps his face to you, intently studying your body language. You take a deep breath.
“I-I didn’t tell you?? I married Satoru!!” you chirp, as if it was a normal thing.
“Ehhh?!” you hear multiple of your neighbors’ voices call out. 
“You married Satoru??? But you hate him!!” Amaya blurts out, her voice loud and echoing down the street of the neighborhood.
“I—” you stammer, ducking your head a little to hide behind your visor, “um, oh, y’know…those feelings just…snuck up on me!”
“Awwww good for youuu,” Amaya coos, and one of your elderly neighbors comes up to you with a cheeky smile to then rubs your arm approvingly, “he’s sooooo handsome, you’re so lucky!!”
Ren lets out a hmph over his wife’s flattery of another man, and you roll your eyes, wanting to put Gojo in his place even in the face of just your neighbors, but then you remember that a loving wife wouldn’t say something like his personality makes him an ugly rat. 
“But when did this happen?” Choso’s partner speaks up, his voice accusatory. Choso hits his partner’s chest vest with the back of his hand, as if to say cut it out.
You feel pissed off at that.
“Oh yeahhh, you and Choso only recently broke up!” Amaya says, pointing between the two of you.
You purse your lips together from the anxiety of this entire conversation. “Three weeks ago. Choso and I broke up three weeks ago,” you say, not even sure why you’re disclosing your personal matters to this group of congregated people, but the peer pressure was damning, and you’re pretty sure silence on this subject in front of your neighbors would only make Choso more suspicious, “and—” you had to get your story straight, “well…within those three weeks, Satoru and I just…got to know each other.”
“Eh?” Ren speaks up. “But he was out of town for two weeks. He only came back a week and a half ago.”
You blink at him.
“Ohhh yes, yes, that’s right, honey,” Amaya agrees with a slow nod in remembrance as she pats her husband's chest, “those chocolates he brought us were from London, right?”
Choso tilts his head at you, giving you a glare with the intent of having you crack under this pressure, because you’ve just been caught in a cold hard lie. More importantly, how the fuck did you not notice that Satoru had been gone for TWO WEEKS??? He was your next door neighbor. You’ve seriously been so damn out of it these days. Also, why the fuck didn’t he get you chocolates from London?!?!?! The fucking snake. 
“A marriage within three weeks is a little odd, no?” Choso’s partner speaks up, but with less of a casual conversation tone and more of a I sense something illegal going on here tone.
“Alright, alright, alright,” Choso sighs, taking a step to stand in front of you. “Let’s all get on with our days. She doesn’t have to share any information she doesn’t want to.”
You blink in surprise at Choso’s words, of which all your neighbors acknowledge albeit slightly reluctantly as they wave goodbye to you and start dispersing back to their homes. Choso’s partner gets some notice through his radio, and he pulls it from the velcro of his chest to speak into it before heading back to their cop car with a slight jog. Once everyone is gone and it’s just you and Choso again, he turns around to face you. His arms are still crossed at his chest while he wears a very skeptical and almost reprimanding look on his face.
“What are you up to, y/n?” he immediately asks you, and you feel goosebumps tickle your skin even in the heat. “I really hope it’s not something fishy. Or illegal.”
You swallow hard. You know the U.S. federal codes in the law for marital & insurance fraud like the back of your hand, since you read through them hundreds of times before deciding if your arrangement with Gojo would be worth it. 8 U.S.C. 1033 and 18 U.S.C. 371 provide for a penalty of up to ten years in prison for insurance fraud. And under that statute, you can also be fined up to $250,000. The best case scenario is that you just have to divorce Gojo, and forfeit your chances of ever recovering from your crippling debt. And while it’s hard to prove marital fraud, Choso had reason for a personal vendetta against you, and he has the resources to launch an investigation. 
“Why would I do something illegal??” you ask, as if to convince him that the possibility was absurd. 
He takes a step closer to you, and your breathing picks up. “People do illegal things all the time,” he says, “for the thrill, out of curiosity,” another step closer, “the most common reason that I’ve seen?” He’s so close to you now that you catch the familiar scent of his skin. “Desperation.”
You catch a small gasp of air from his imposition in your personal space, and finally, your weak legs manage to take you a step back. 
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about here,” you say with a shaky voice.
He raises an eyebrow at you. And then he sighs. “Stay out of trouble.”
Your eye twitches at him, annoyance resurging but you have to bite your tongue for self preservation. Gojo’s words about cops liking more docile women ring in your ears for a brief moment, and you have to physically shake your head to get his voice out of it. 
His partner yells for him from his car, something about a call they got for a robbery downtown, and Choso spares you a warning look before he turns on his heel and jogs back to the car. The sound of police sirens mimic the panic in your beating heart as you watch them speed off down the street and out of sight.
•┈┈┈••✦☽✦••┈┈┈•
You pull into your neighborhood at the early hours of the morning, skin feeling dry and eyes feeling heavy with exhaustion as you yank your hospital badge clip off your scrub top to toss onto the passenger seat along with your stethoscope, releasing it from your neck like pulling a noose loose. 
Before your shift last night, you had to take your mom to the hospital because she was have shortness of breath, and her oxygen saturation was low on her pulse oximeter. She’s stable now, it was just yet another flare up of her COPD, but given her other risk factors, the hospitalist admitted her to monitor her overnight and through to the evening today if all goes well. Which meant that you could have the house to yourself for once. It might sound selfish to say, because shouldn’t the more dominant feeling be I hope my mom will be okay, but the reality was that there’s only so much of that worry you can have at a time. It doesn’t mean you’re not thinking of her literally every second of the day. It just means you’re human. 
The weirdest thing about working the night shift is seeing everyone else’s days start while yours is just ending. There’s a bit of satisfaction with it. Like imagining laughing at their faces ha ha! You have to go to work now at seven in the morning, meanwhile I get to sleep! as if working the night shift doesn’t lead to substantially higher rates of cardiovascular disease and other chronic illness, as well as an early death. So who really got the last laugh? Day shift workers. Literally.
It wasn’t something you did because you liked working the night shift. You do it because you get paid a 20% differential for it. And you need all the money you can get right now.
Your brain seems to be working more than usual if you’re able to think about all these things after a shift. Swiftly pulling into the driveway of your home, around the hull of Gojo’s obnoxious boat in the driveway, you get out of your car with your purse hanging from your shoulder and just before you shut the door, you see one of your elderly neighbors waving at you from across the street. You’re pretty sure her name is Margaret, but you’re awful with names. You do remember that she was in the posse of neighbors that were flocking you yesterday and asking you pushy questions about your marriage in the presence of Choso. And your body stiffens a little. 
She tilts her head at you as you stand in your driveway, and you awkwardly glance over at Gojo’s house.
“Oops!” you chirp from across the street, “always forget to pull into the Hubby’s driveway instead! Silly me!!”
You grab your emergency overnight stay bag from the back of your car and hurry over to Gojo’s house, knocking on the door incessantly and ringing the bell so as to not arouse any more suspicion from your neighbors about why two married people aren’t living together. “Forgot my keys!! Hahahhahaha,” you exclaim while your pounding on the door intensifies. You’re sure you're just being paranoid, because why would sweet old lady Margaret (Janice? Patricia?) snitch on you? But you’ve been paranoid all your life. It’s one of your fatal flaws. 
The door opens suddenly, right as you were about to pound harshly once again, and you stop the motion in time to not sock Gojo in the abdomen with your fist. He blinks down at you, his face a little puffy from sleep, his hair shooting out in all different directions, and he scratches at his chest through the thin cotton of his shirt, one he clearly threw on last minute before opening the door considering the fact that he put it on backwards. And inside-out. 
“Huh? y/n?” he mumbles, his voice deep and kind of raspy with sleep, “what are you doing here?”
“Just let me in,” you hiss at him, glancing over your shoulder to your elderly neighbor's lawn for a second, and then duck under his arm that was holding the door open to get inside the house.
You turn around to see him shrug his shoulders and slowly close the door, clearly too tired to deal with the bullshit this early in the AM, and he turns around to face you before leaning back onto the surface. His eyes close, like he’s trying to preserve the sleepy feeling for when he gets back into bed.
“Can I help you?” he says. His head falls back with a small thump to rest on the door.
“I’m going to sleep here for the night. Er, for the day,” you say. “I will move in starting today.”
“Okay,” he easily agrees.
You blink at him. “Um. Show me to my room.”
“Yeah, sure,” he says, scratching the back of his neck as he heads for the stairs with the shuffle of his slippers across the hardwood floor. You note that he is very easily malleable and overall smooth brained when he’s sleepy. You try to ignore the fact that you find it kinda cute. 
You follow him up the stairs and he leads you across the loft into a hallway studded with a couple of doors. He opens one of them for you, his head drifting a little like he’s about to fall back asleep. “Here you go,” he says while gesturing inside the bedroom and rubbing his eye with a weakly closed fist, “guest bedroom. Uh, there’s another one near the master too that’s a bit bigger, but this one has a lock on the door. So that I don’t sneak into your room in the middle of the night.”
“Thanks,” you accept and head inside. You set your emergency overnight stay bag on the bed and then turn around to face the door to find Gojo still standing in the frame. He has his hands pushed into the pockets of his pajama pants as he squints at you. 
You feel…a little…nervous? Shy? Who the fuck were you to be shy in front of Gojo? You really don’t give a damn what he thinks about you, since a lion does not concern itself with the opinions of a sheep (you’ve been doing reruns of Game of Thrones this past week), but starting today, you’ll be in his territory, and this whole situation is so domestic that you feel vulnerable in front of him. Like the sheep somehow managed to splay the lion open this time, and now the real you is on display for him. You’re suddenly self conscious of the unruly state of your hair and the stains of IV fluid on your black scrubs and the fact that the allegedly flake-proof mascara you put on at the beginning of your shift has long since flaked all over your cheeks.
“Um. Can you leave?” you say in a small voice.
“Huh?” he responds, like he himself forgot that he was still standing there. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” He lets out a very long exhale. “Make yourself at home.” And then, still facing you, he walks off to the side veeeeeeery slowly until he’s out of sight.
You walk up to the doorframe and peak your head around to the left to see him still standing there.
“Satoru. Stop treating me like I’m some animal at the zoo. Leave.” 
“It’s just so weird seeing you in my house like thi—”
You slam the door on him, your breathing finally slowing down again as your palms lay flat on painted white wood. You move your hand down to the handle, thumb and forefinger lingering on the lock as you look at it for a moment, but ultimately decide against locking it.
The room has a bathroom attached to it which is nice. The bed is a queen size, fitted with light blue and eggshell white sheets, tucked neatly spare for one corner of the bed where the duvet is flipped over. To the left of the bed is a nightstand and to the right is a dresser that looks very new. You take a glance at your reflection in the mirror sitting above it, and let out a small gasp at your less than flattering appearance. 
A five minute shower does you wonders, and you pat yourself dry with a towel that matches the shower curtain. You find one of your floor-length vintage nightgowns, with the long frilly sleeves, after rustling through your overnight stay bag, along with a toothbrush and some moisturizer. 
As you brush your teeth, you pace around the room. There’s a little staggered rack near the window that is lined with plants and the blinds are angled perfectly for sunlight to get through to them. You poke your finger to one of the plant’s soil and notice that it’s damp. Been watered recently. Gojo is a plant guy? He really doesn’t seem the type. Well, actually, he’s pretty vain about his avocado tree. But houseplants were a different story. A whole different trope of person.
After getting ready for bed, you slip into the sheets and lay stiff despite the comfortable mattress as you stare up at the ceiling with the duvet tucked under your arms. It’s bright in the room. Back home, you have blackout curtains, which help you sleep because it blocks out the morning light. Here, you don’t have that. You don’t have your melatonin either. But you do have the exhaustion in your veins, making you blink slowly and slowly until the water in your eyes feels as thick as oil. You’re so tired to the point that you can’t even sleep.
You force your eyes to close anyway. You’ll pretend you’re a queen in a palace, here in a foreign land she has recently conquered under her empire. A daydream that you find doesn’t really help you drift off to sleep. But counting sheep never fails you. 
•┈┈┈••✦☽✦••┈┈┈•
You awake in the afternoon with a headache that pounds at your head like the FBI is trying to infiltrate your own mind. And all you can hear now is the FBI OPEN UP!!! meme as you groan and rub at your temples with one hand while leaning over the bed to pet at the nightstand for your go-to bottle of Tylenol just to–
Pet around at nothing.
“Mm?” you mumble, opening your eyes cautiously before harsh light makes you close them again. But even behind the protection of your eyelids, you’re still very keen on the brightness that finds you in this room. Finally, you’re able to blink the sleepiness away and adjust to the light, and when the blur of your vision subsides, you realize that you’re in a bed that is most definitely not your own. And then you remember.
You spent your first night (well, technically morning and early afternoon), at Gojo’s house.
You swing your legs over the edge of the bed, balled up fist rubbing at your eyes ferociously as you sit groggy from the sleep that enveloped you so performatively after your shift last night. You can’t even remember coming to his house, which is concerning, since that could mean you forgot to do a lot of other things when coming home. Like changing your clothes, and scrubbing your make-up off. But it seems like habit and routine has saved you, since you glance down and see yourself in one of your nightgowns and your skin doesn’t feel dry.
A loud thud! noise from directly beneath you startles you, jolting some of the sleepiness out of you, and you finally feel inclined to head out the door.
You make it across the loft and to the top of the staircase so you can peer over the railing to the downstairs floor. But from the top, you can’t see anything except for the entry area and the family room, but you assume the sounds you hear are coming from the kitchen, because it sounds like the closing of a fridge and ceramic on marble paired with footsteps on hardwood. Lifting the hem of your nightgown up so you don’t trip over it, you creep down the stairs, diligent in avoiding the 2nd and 7th step (you’ve since learned that they creak a little), and make steady progress in getting to the bottom of the stairwell to then stealthily peak your head around the rail and peer into the kitchen. You only have a view of one side, the long counter strip with the stove and the fridge, but you freeze when you’re met with the sight of a man standing there shirtless pouring orange juice into a coffee mug.
You’re temporarily shocked, your fight of flight immediately kicking in as you clutch the imaginary pearls around your neck in fear…but then…you slowly…find yourself starting to stare. This man’s back is huge, massive really…with tense and defined muscles, expansive smooth lines with ridges that meet bone. His shoulders are broad, rounding down into strong arms that are split with veins. And your eyes trail the way his waist narrows down to his hips, of which gray sweatpants very loosely hang from. Honestly, if the door in the movie Titanic was as large as this man’s back, then maybe Rose AND Jack could have fit on it and survived. (a/n. basically picture this)
And in the middle of your drooling, you realize. That this man. Is. Gojo.
Which should be a relief to you, because if it wasn’t Gojo, and there was just some random man in the house, then you’d have to start looking for a weapon of sorts. But instead you just continue to watch him silently without coming out of your hiding. Shirtless in his own kitchen (a crime, really) as he pours OJ into a black mug (who the fuck drinks juice from a coffee mug). He suddenly turns around to face the island and a small gasp leaves your lips before you duck your head behind the rail to hide yourself from his line of sight, and when you realize you’re in the clear, you slowly peak your head back out.
The sight of his chest and torso nearly knocks you breathless, because why is his skin so smooth…and taut across the defined muscles of his abs, glistening with a sheen you can only guess is a salty layer of sweat. His fringe is damp, sticking to his forehead and the sides of his face, a droplet of sweat rolling down from his temple towards his chin but he uses his bare shoulder to wipe the sweat off before it can get that far. He brings the mug of OJ to his lips and tips it back with a swallow, the thick muscles of his neck rippling and rolling with the bobbing of his Adam’s apple, a singular droplet of orange juice escaping from the corner of his lips, trailing down the vein on his neck and into the territory of his chest. Okay. You were being creepy as fuck right now. He can’t find out that you’re staring at him like this, you’d literally move to a different country if he ever caught you. And yet, for some reason, you just can’t stop either. 
He pulls the mug from his mouth, letting out a large exhale since he literally just gulped it all down in one go. He places his palms flat on the table, slightly distant from one another, as he takes in the sight of his counter, while you take in the sight of the way his biceps bulge and the veins on his thick forearms tense. He looks like he’s contemplating something. And then he shrugs his shoulders slightly before grabbing the carton next to him and chugging straight from it, like whatever he poured himself wasn’t enough to quench the thirst for citrus juice he seems to have after–you can only assume–the workout he just had. 
There’s a deep noise that’s muffled in his throat in the second before he pulls the carton away from his mouth and his eyes glance at something on the floor. You can’t see what it is, but you can see the marvelous shape of his ass through his sweatpants– I mean, you can see him furrow his brow a little and then he’s suddenly crouched down on the floor, ducked behind the island and out of sight, before he mutters something that you think sounds like damn fridge…
You stand on your tiptoes on the last step, trying to peer over the obstructing view of the counter, but you trip over the hem of your nightgown, losing balance and–
–fall straight onto the hardwood in front of you, on all fours. 
“Ah,” you exclaim blandly, and in your periphery, see Gojo suddenly stand up straight from his crouched position.
“y/n?” he calls out from the kitchen, his tone surprised.
“Sorry!” you chirp as you feel embarrassment creeping up on your cheeks, “just, uh, fell down the stairs!”
“What?!?” he exclaims in a panic, and you forgot that most people would panic if someone said that to them. He rushes over to you and gets down on one of his knees to peer at your face, his hand shooting out to grab your upper arm with little delicacy out of concern, and his eyes roam all across you to assess for injuries. “Are you okay??”
“Just!” you chirp as you yank your arm out of his hold, “Peachy!” You’re not able to make eye contact with him as he remains kneeled next to you, but you can’t find yourself able to move either. So you just relish in the ridiculous feeling of being on all fours in your vintage grandma nightgown in front of your shirtless and, breaking news: very hot, fake husband. God you can smell the musk and sweat from him when he’s this close, and it’s sexy. You have to be careful to not just straight up mount him on the floor right now. Much to your aroused dismay. 
“Um,” you squeak out, “can you put a shirt on.”
“Huh?” he looks down at himself, like he forgot he’s half naked. “Oh. Yeah.” He stands up. “Sorry, I’m not really used to having someone in the house anymore,” he says, and his use of the word anymore isn’t lost on you. 
He heads over to the coat closet, pulling a gray sweatshirt that’s a shade darker than his sweatpants off of a coat hanger and then pulling it on over his head. He pulls the hood off, and now his hair looks damp with sweat and sexily ruffled up. And he’s also in a comfy-looking sweatshirt. That was way hotter than being shirtless, for fucks sake. You wonder if he’d reconsider being shirtless again. He’s kneeling down beside you once more, and yes you are still on all fours just staring down at the hardwood floor like an animal paralyzed with fear. 
“Have some decency, please. Especially since I am to start living here from today onwards. I would appreciate modesty around the house,” you say as a tactic of self preservation. “Take note of my attire–appropriately covering all skin.”
“Are you gonna stand up?” he asks you.
“No. I shan't.”
“What? Why not? And why are you talking like that?” 
“It appears I am frozen.”
“Are your knees okay?”
“I believe so.”
He sighs and gets up from his knelt position, then suddenly comes up behind you, bending over to wrap his arms around your waist tightly before picking you up with the same ease in which someone would pick up a plastic lawn chair. You gasp, still retaining your four-legged creature formation, until he shakes it out of you and then sets you back down onto your feet. 
“Don’t be so dramatic,” he says with a sigh as he heads back towards the kitchen, and he’s back to crouching down somewhere behind the counter.
You shuffle your feet over to the kitchen and peer over the kitchen island to see that he’s examining the floor in front of the fridge.
“What’s wrong?” you ask.
He scratches at his eyebrow. “The fridge is leaking again.”
“Oh.”
He clicks something on both sides of the fridge's feet and then grips the corners of its body, pulling it out from the wall with a small grunt leaving his lips. Even with the baggy sweatshirt, you can see the curves of the muscles in his arms as he works. 
You place your elbows on the island and hold your face in your hands as you watch him. “How are you gonna fix it?”
He’s dabbing at the wet hardwood with a very worn out rag to get it dry. “I just have to shut the water valve off for a bit.”
“How do you do that?”
He points over his shoulder with his thumb, and you trace the line of it to the cabinet under the sink. 
“Really? You’re gonna get under the sink?”
He dusts his hands off and tosses the rug off to the side. “Uh-huh.”
“Are you sure you can fix it?”
“Yeah. No problem.”
“How long has this been an issue?”
His gaze flicks to yours briefly before he stands up. “About a week.”
“Don’t you think you should just call someone?”
“What?” He turns to face you and crosses his arms across his chest while raising an eyebrow at you, like you’ve just deeply offended him. “Why the fuck would I call someone for a job I could do myself?”
You tilt your head at him, trying to hide the smirk that threatens to tug at your lips. “Well you said it’s been a whole week.”
“Yeah, I’ve–...I’ve just been busy. So I haven’t had a chance to really take a look at it.”
“Ohhhh okay okay,” you say in a teasingly skeptic tone, poking your tongue to your cheek as it’s getting progressively harder to hide your grin.
“What?” he says to you, impatiently.
“Nothinggg,” you purr, and you watch him with a cheeky look on your face as he glares at you before he disappears off towards the garage.
He comes back with a tool box and you spend some time poking around in it curiously as he grabs a couple of tools before crouching down in front of the sink.
For some reason, you feel shy watching him. Maybe it’s because when he’s laying on his back, the top twenty-percent of him ducked underneath the sink, and he’s working his hands on some pipes that you can’t see, his sweatshirt rides up a little and you can see the very lower part of his torso. And then when he yanks particularly hard on something, it rides up more and you can see his abs tensing and relaxing with almost every breath he takes and every move he makes. You’re just grateful he can’t see you, and the urge to clench your thighs together is almost stronger than your brain’s disposition to convince yourself that he’s not attractive just because you think he’s annoying most of the time. 
“y/n,” he calls out to you from under the sink, and you jump a little. He tilts his head a little so he can make eye contact with you from under. “Can you hand me those slip-joint pliers?”
“I have no idea what that is or where to even begin to know what that is.”
“The pliers that have the serrated edges,” he tries.
“Huh?”
“.........shark with sharp teeth.” 
“Oh! Yes. Yes, of course,” you grab them and then shuffle over to him before crouching down, balancing on your toes, “here you go.”
“Thanks,” he says in a flat tone, slowly taking them from you. 
“You’re welcome!” you chirp. You feel very useful. 
His head disappears back to deep underneath the sink again to work on stuff again. Even though this whole thing is probably just his masculine ego wanting to fix things around the house by himself rather than just call a person that is literally paid to fix these sorts of things, you have to admit that you’re not complaining for getting to watch him do something handy. 
“I’ve just– gotta–” he grunts a little and you hear the creaking of pipes, “tighten this up a bit–” he lets out another gruff noise, his voice strained with effort, and you’re ashamed to say it sounds hot. “Alright!” He pulls himself out from under the sink and stands up back onto his feet with a bounce in his step as he dusts his hands off. “Fixed. For now.”
The fridge starts making a strange whirring noise. You raise an eyebrow at him. He quickly reaches behind it and clicks some button before the eerie whirring stops.
“Okay. Now it’s fixed.”
You give him a very skeptic look. “Sure, Jan.”
“Don’t sure jan me. Trust. It won’t leak anymore.”
“Whatever you say,” you respond before heading back up the stairs to freshen up. 
By the time you go back downstairs, Gojo is nowhere to be found, and you take the opportunity to sit on his couch in the living room to then peruse which streaming services he has on his TV. It isn’t until about ten minutes later that you hear someone coming down the stairs, because he makes no effort to avoid the creaky steps.
You put your elbow up on the couch backrest and twist your torso to look at him. He’s wearing pajama pants and an unmatching black short sleeve cotton T-shirt that’s loose around his torso but tight at the arms. He’s ruffling his hair up with a hand towel, attempting to get it dry from the shower he clearly just took. As he makes his way towards the living room, you catch a waft of the clean soapy aqua fragrance of shampoo lingering in his hair. He stops about four feet behind the couch.
You glance down at his feet. “Why the fuck are you, as a grown ass man, wearing bunny slippers inside the house?”
He opens one eye to glance down at his slippers as he continues to tousle his hair dry, “oh, Juno got them for me for Christmas last year. She wanted me to wear them ‘all the time or else uncle toru’s feet will burn off from the floor lava.”
A small smile makes its way onto your face. 
Juno is Gojo’s five-year-old niece, and from the interactions you’ve seen between them, and from the way My Little Pony was the first thing that popped up when you turned the TV on, you know that Gojo absolutely adores her and vice versa. You’ve met her a couple times, even babysat her once in an emergency, and she’s a cute and bright little kid that you certainly have way more fondness for than her obnoxiously annoying uncle who is also now your fake husband. Wait, does that mean that Juno is your niece now, too?
Gojo lets out a sigh before hanging the towel over his shoulder, his hair apparently adequately dry enough for him now. He looks younger when his hair is messy and a little damp, falling over his forehead flatter than usual. It’s kinda boyish and dare-you-say charming.
He looks down at his slippers again with a pleasant reminiscent look on his face before placing his hands on his hips like he’s a baseball dad of three. “Y’know, when I was growing up–”
“Ah yes. During the Great Depression.”
He gives you an annoyed look. “Quit it. When I was a kid–”
“Back in the 1800s.”
“Aren’t you pushing thirty?” he asks you.
“Aren’t you in need of some new dentures?” you ask him.
“Fuckin’ rude,” he mumbles as he walks towards the foyer table to rip open some of the mail that was scattered across it.
“What happened when you were a kid?” you ask.
“Forget it,” he says, tucking some of his bills back into envelopes.
“What!! I wanna know,” you say.
“Yeah well I don’t want to tell you anymore,” he responds.
As you two fully grown adults continue bickering like toddlers for the better part of two minutes, your phone is ringing upstairs unbeknownst to you. 
“Wait. Shut up,” Gojo cuts off your next insult as he snaps his head up-right suddenly. 
“What?! Did you just tell me to shut u–”
“Shhhhhh,” he hushes you, turning his ear towards the stairs with a concentrated expression on his face.
You silence yourself, and then you hear the ringing coming from upstairs.
“Fuck,” you mumble as you scramble off the couch and jog to the bottom of the staircase, Gojo’s eyes on you the entire time as you run up the steps back to your room.
You hear your phone ringing on the bed somewhere but you can’t find it so you rummage through the sheets before finally spotting it, swiping on the call and bringing it to your ear without even checking the caller ID.
“Hello?” you say.
“Oh! y/n, hi there. It’s Dr. Johnson calling. I was prepared to leave you a voicemail,” he says.
“I’m here,” you say hastily, holding your phone to your ear with both hands as you feel your entire body tense up. 
You never knew what to expect with any sort of phone calls these days, especially when you’re at work or when your mom isn’t home, because a phone call could be something as simple as approving a refill on some of her medication, to something much worse than that. Something much more final than that. 
“It’s not an emergency,” Dr. Johnson says on the other line, like he can sense your fear and anxiety through the phone, “just wanted to reach out to let you know that I spoke with the hospitalist who admitted your mother to the hospital and she’s doing better now. They’ll likely discharge her by the end of the day.”
You slowly let out the breath you were holding. “Oh, that’s wonderful. I know she needs to come in for chemo tomorrow, so it’s perfect timing.”
“Yes, we’ll see her tomorrow.”
“Uh, Dr. Johnson, I do want to let you know…I’ll be admitting my mom for hospice in a couple of days,” you tell him. You wince a little, because you know it’s probably something that you should’ve discussed with him prior to all of this. “It’s…likely that you won’t have to continue her care anymore, since she’s been approved for Kaiser insurance, I’ll be transferring her care to Kaiser physicians.”
There’s a moment of silence on the other line, the briefest moment of hesitation from a self-assured doctor who always had something to say right away. “Really? That’s–...wow. I can’t say I won’t be extremely sad to not see her anymore.”
“I know…” you say, worrying your bottom lip through your teeth, feeling a sudden wave of guilt overtake your senses, “you’ve been following her progress ever since her diagnosis, even got her into remission…it’s just a little complicated with some insurance stuff and some bills as well. If I could have things my way, I would continue care with you and your team.”
Even though you can’t see it, you can tell he’s nodding on the other line. “I understand, y/n. I know that there’s more to healthcare in this country than just…receiving care. But I don’t have to explain those things to you, since you’re a nurse. Do what’s best for you and your family. Give me the details for the hospice, and I’ll have my MAs send over your mother’s chart.”
“Thank you, Dr. Johnson,” you whisper, your voice cracking slightly. “Really. For everything.”
“You’re most welcome.”
“Oh–” you stutter, in fear he might hang up right as you remembered to ask him something.
“Yes?”
“I know I’ll see you tomorrow so we can discuss it then too, but I was just wondering if the scans were back from my mom’s brain MRI she had done? I know they usually take three weeks to come back but just wanted to check.”
He lets out a low chuckle. “I had a feeling you’d follow up about that. No, there are no scans that have come back. I’ll let you know right away when they do.”
“Okay…” you say.
“I know you’re worried about a possible glioma,” he speaks up, “but let’s just try to stay positive until we see the scans, okay?”
“Yes. Sounds good. Thank you, doctor.”
“Alright. I will see you and your mom tomorrow.”
“Yes. Bye,” you say and hear his word of farewell too before hanging up. 
You stare down at the screen of your phone, taking in slow deep breaths to calm down your nerves. You just wanted these scans to come back already so that you could feel at peace knowing that your mom’s worsening neurological condition is due to her Alzheimer’s and not a tumor in her brain. The average survival length of a person with a brain tumor is low, and even worse if it’s a glioblastoma, ranging at around 12-18 months. You can buy her a few years at least with the stage of cancer progression she’s at right now, even with the possibility of remission, but if it becomes severely advanced disease then–
You gasp softly and cover your mouth with your hand, unable to even fathom the thought without feeling a feverish chill run down your entire body. Now's not the time to spiral. Deep breaths. One, two, three. Now is the time to stay positive. Just like Dr. Johnson said. 
Putting one step ahead of the other, you leave the room, cross the loft and slowly make your way down the stairs and stop at the very last step when you see Gojo rushing across the foyer with his dress shoes on, wearing a dark blue suit, save for the tie, and he looks like he’s pressed for time.
“Are you going somewhere?” you ask from the last step, your hand curled around the rail still.
“Hey, uh, yeah,” he scrambles, grabbing his keys from the paper mache bowl on the foyer table and then pats at his pockets for his wallet only to notice it’s absent. “Fuck.” He disappears somewhere into the house in a hurry and then returns with his wallet in his hand before shoving it in his pocket with the jingle of his keys too. “I had to push a couple house viewings from this afternoon up, so I need to leave.” He finally turns to face you and exhales slowly to regain his breath. “Small favor?”
“What’s up,” you say.
He rubs the back of his neck a little guiltily. “Well, Sana called a few minutes ago asking if I could watch Juno since she had to pick her up early from school, and I said sure, but I have to leave now, so–”
“I can watch her,” you say.
He claps his hands together in prayer form and holds them up to his face, “I owe you one.”
“Mhmmmmm,” you hum, watching as he resumes his haste to leave the house. And just before he heads out the door, you say— “Collar.”
“Huh?” He turns around to face you. “Oh.” He takes a second to flatten the collar of his shirt. “Thanks.” And then he’s out the door.
You sigh, relishing in the emptiness of the house. Maybe you should raid his pantry, or play porn on the TV super loud so all the neighbors think he’s a creep. But perhaps that is not appropriate, given that his sister will be bringing his niece over very soon.
You quickly head over to your house to change into something more appropriate than your nightgown, just some blue jeans that honestly make you look like a soccer mom, and then a T-shirt. You walk back to Gojo’s house and only get about five minutes to peruse his pantry when the doorbell rings.
When you open the door, you’re met face-to-face with Gojo’s sister, Sana. How would you describe Sana? Well, first of all, she’s beautiful, with all the same features as Gojo except in female form. Striking round blue eyes, silky white hair that shimmers silver underneath sunlight (you would describe Gojo less poetically than this, though). Her hair is pin straight, falling down just past her shoulders. She’s sweet, or at least has been the couple of times that you’ve met her, but she can also be a little serious and strict. The type to not really laugh at the dinner table if you make a pointed joke about the current political state of the country, but maybe it’s because she didn’t even understand the joke to begin with. Either way, she’s very different from the annoying and irritating temperament of her older brother, and how their mother managed to give birth to such two different kids is beyond you.
“Hey,” you greet her at the door with a small smile.
“Hi, y/n,” she returns with a polite smile of her own. She’s holding onto Juno’s scrawny shoulders as the kid stands in front of her, barely to the height of her mother’s hips. Juno was toying with the light pink baseball cap on her head, her hair pulled through the opening in the back and tied up into a ponytail. “I’m so sorry to bother you with her.”
“Oh! No, not a bother at all, I love getting to see her,” you say as you crouch down to get at eye level with her. “Hi Juno!”
Juno has curly white hair rather than the pin straight that her mother possessed, a feature that more closely resembles her father’s hair, along with her hazel eyes. You’ve only met Sana’s husband, Jun, once before. From what you know, he’s some type of businessman, and the first thing you noticed about him was that he was the same height as Sana. But his wife was blessed with supermodel height and was probably taller than most men, so it wasn’t surprising. Jun was hearty, almost suspiciously kind, laughed boisterously loud, and in the small amount of time you met him, it was easy to see that Sana very rarely humored his ill-mannered and awkwardly-placed jokes, but they seemed very in love with each other regardless. Apparently he and Gojo go golfing every other weekend. Information that you seem to know despite any desire to know it. 
Juno hugs her water bottle to her chest, shy as she makes eye contact with you. “Hi, auntie y/n.”
“I loooooove your baseball cap! It’s so cute, where did you get it?” you ask her.
She blinks off to the side timidly, her fluffy white lashes fluttering over her bright eyes. “Um. Uncle Toru.”
“Ohhh I see, I see! It suits you.”
Sana nudges her a little with her knee. “What do we say, Juno?”
“Thank you, auntie y/n,” she immediately squeaks out in reflex.
Your eyes catch a glimpse of the white bandage wrapped over her tiny arm and your brow furrows before reaching out to gently hold it. Juno winces a little from the sensation. You stand up straight.
“What happened to her arm?” you ask Sana.
Sana sighs as she tucks some of her hair behind her ear. “She fell on the playground at school today. It’s a pretty large scrape and it’s been hurting her a lot.”
“Did you disinfect it?”
“Oh…I just–...washed it with some water. The school nurse wasn’t there today so I just had to pick her up early.” 
“Mm, I see,” you say, “I can take a look at it. I have some neosporin in my purse.”
She lets out a relieved sigh, like she was secretly hoping you would make the offer. “Thank you. Really.” She gently pushes on her daughter’s shoulder. “C’mon Juno. Go inside and set your homework up on the table.”
Juno cranes her neck up to look at her mom. “Mommy, can I have a snack first? Pop-tart!”
“If your uncle has them in the pantry, then sure,” Sana says, and immediately upon hearing those words, Juno rushes inside the house with giggles filling the air. “But only one!!” Sana yells out to her in a strict tone, and you watch with amusement as Juno skips off before returning your attention back to Sana.
“Sooo…” she starts, a small hint of hesitation playing on her usually prim face, “I suppose we’re sisters now. Sisters-in-law.”
Your eyes widen and your shoulders stiffen. It was at least a good thing that Gojo told his family already that you two are married, because it seems that most of his extended family live here in this town. At least, you know that his sister’s family and his parents live here. Better to be heard from him directly than to run into you randomly living at his house all of a sudden when they drop by. You’re sure his family has questions about this extremely sudden marriage to say the least. You’re not sure how much they’ll try to pry, but you hope it’s not much, because you’ve never really been a great actress. “Yes. Yes, we are.”
“Mm,” she hums pleasantly at you, nodding slowly and peering off into the house beyond your shoulder, “say…I’m, um, just a little…surprised by how sudden this all is.”
“Hmm?”
“With you and my brother,” she says straightforwardly. “Obviously, you must know he’s been married before, but it’s…a little odd, it feels like just yesterday when he told us he was…getting a divorce. And now he’s married again.” She trails off when she has some sobering thought that flashes through her head. “Oh gosh, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m blabbering about this. I’m just–...I’m just thinking out loud. It must be a sore topic.”
“Oh, no, no, not at all. No worries,” you say with an awkward laugh, “I’ve, um, come to terms with it?” You try your best to come up with a believable response.
“That’s good,” she says while she runs soothing circles with her thumb over the skin at her elbow, “well, some love moves faster than others.” She displays a well-meaning smile on her face. “I’m really happy for you two.”
For some reason, your heart warms. Like when the lines of reality and imagination blur, and so you’re left here with a truly comforting feeling. Only it’s fleeting and temporary, like escapism. “Thank you,” you say softly. And after a moment, “by the way, I’m really sorry for…Satoru and I not having a proper wedding. We just wanted something simple.”
She lets out a small scoff. “Oh, gosh, don’t apologize for that. I’m sick of weddings. I was so glad I didn’t have to peruse yet another wedding registry this year. There are only so many toaster ovens I can buy.”
You’re a little surprised by the humor from her, but the two of you let out small laughs in unison at the doorstep.
Sana glances at her watch. “I have to get going. Call me if you need anything, okay?” 
You nod. “Sure. Thanks.”
You close the door slowly, watching her briefly through the stained glass window as she heads towards her car and gets inside before promptly driving off. 
There’s the sound of ruffling heard and then the sound of things falling off a shelf towards the kitchen. You turn on your heel and head in the direction. “Junooo,” you call out, “where are youuuu?”
“In here!” she chirps from the pantry room. You turn the light on to see her standing in the center with a couple boxes of cereal fallen around her. She’s holding an empty box in her hand. “The pop-tart box is empty,” she says with a pout and sulk of her shoulders as she makes the most :(( face you’ve ever seen a child make.
“Oh no,” you say, grabbing the box from her and inspecting the inside, “your devious uncle must’ve eaten them all in a manic episode.”
“What is a manic mean?” she asks you as she looks up, rubbing her ankle with her other foot.
“Oh, it’s like…crazy? He went crazy?”
She giggles at the thought.
“If you’re hungry, I can make you something,” you offer.
She shyly nods her head but her grin fully rounds her cheeks before she darts off towards the kitchen. 
You find her standing near the kitchen island, trying to get up onto one of the bar stools but to no avail. You come up behind her to pick her up then set her down on the seat, adjusting it so it’s a little higher. 
“What do you want me to make?” you ask her as you come around to the other side of the island and set your elbows up on the cold marble, leaning over to place your chin in your palm. 
“Um…” she brings her index finger up to her bottom lip in thought, “pancakes? Can I have blubbery pancakes?”
“Huh?” 
“Um…” she starts again, “last time, when I eated them at your house. Um, when I ated them at your house,” she tries to correct herself, “I really liked them.”
“Oh!” you perch up from your bent over position, “I remember! The blueberry pancakes. Aww, Juno, you remember that? How sweet.”
She becomes a little bashful and glances down at the her lap.
“Okayyy,” you say, placing your hands on your waist as you look around at the kitchen, “well I’ll have to see what ingredients I’m working with here, but hopefully I can make them for you.” You tilt your head at her before pointing a finger. “Have you ever seen the show Chopped?” 
She sits up straight with excitement. “Yes yes! Me and mommy love it.”
“Good. Let’s pretend I’m working with a mystery basket here,” you say, and then you turn around to open Gojo’s fridge. 
You can learn a lot about a person based on what the inside of their fridge looks like. You’re surprised to find the inside of his looks…sparkly? That was the only way you knew how to describe it. With clean shelves that reflect the bright lighting off the plastic, plastic that looks as mirror sheen as glass. As your eyes take in the contents inside, you notice he has some leftover thai food at the front, most likely leftovers from as recent as last night. One of the produce drawers is filled to the brim while the other is mostly empty, and you notice he separates them by leafy stuff vs. veggies. The leafy stuff is the drawer that’s filled to the brim, and you just know he’s stressed out over how to use all of it up before it starts wilting. Must’ve been on sale, you think to yourself. To the right of the fridge, there are an insane amount of orange juice cartons, and you notice he drinks the same one as you–pulp free with the added vitamins and calcium that’s made for kids. Although maybe he has an excuse for it, since he has a five-year-old niece. There’s a few containers of meal prep stacked up at the back of the fridge that look like some sort of arrangement of quinoa, chicken and Mediterranean vegetables. And then there’s just a bunch of assorted cans of beer throughout the fridge, which you assume are to appease the diverse preferences of his friends whenever he has them over. 
You grab a couple of eggs from the egg carton, placing them on the counter along with a stick of butter plus a half-full carton of milk, and peer deep into the fridge past the wall of condiments to eye for any fresh fruit such as berries, but you don’t see any. You try the freezer and are relieved when you see he has some frozen blueberries in there.
“Okay!” you shut the fridge. “Just need to grab a few more things from the pantry room and then I’ll make you your pancakes, okay?” 
Juno nods enthusiastically. “Um. Can I get my backpack?”
“Sure.” You pick her up off the bar stool to set her down on the ground and she runs to the coffee table in front of the TV to grab her things as you head to the pantry room. 
Flour, sugar, baking powder, all tucked in your elbows as you carry the ingredients back to the kitchen before dropping them onto the counter and picking Juno up to place her on the barstool again. She starts to lay out her glittery pens and pristinely sharpened pencils in front of her as well as a packet of papers. 
“I can’t believe they’re giving Kindergarteners homework these days…” you mutter under your breath as you grab a bowl. “Juno, wanna help me crack the eggs?”
“Yes!”
“Let’s go wash our hands then.”
As you mix all your ingredients together and Juno continues to stare at her papers with her face awfully close to them (does she need glasses?), you think to yourself what a nice little life this is. Although you haven’t been able to spend the day at your house like you were hoping you would, since you could finally have it for yourself, it was nice to spend it at Gojo’s. It was something different, something refreshing, something grounding. An escape that you needed. 
“Um. Auntie y/n?” Juno calls from behind you as you flip a pancake at the stove.
“Yes sweetheart.”
“How is mommy?”
“Hmm?” you hum. “My mommy?”
“Yes!”
“Oh you are just the sweetest thing. She’s doing okay. She’s just a little sick still.”
“When I’m sick,” Juno speaks up with a childlike enthusiasm in her voice, “my mommy gives me grape soor–...stir–” she struggles with the word, “shrup, ah, syrup! Grape syrup. It makes me better.”
“Ohhh honey, I know,” you coo as you try to match her enthusiasm, placing two little pancakes onto a plate for her. “When you get the sniffles, right?”
“Yes! Maybe your mommy will be better too if I give her some of my grape syoorup?”
You stop in your tracks, staring down at the food you were just plating.
The innocence of a child. It was hard to stay strong in the face of it. When you were younger, you probably would’ve thought that a magical potion would make your mom all better, too.
You turn around to face her. “Well,” you say, clearing your throat a little to fight the knot that you find is twisting it, “I think,” and now you’re blinking away the faint sheer of tears as you press your lips into a thin smile, your soft soft above a whisper, “that that is a wonderful idea.”
Juno gobbles up her blubbery pancakes with the extra maple syrup on them and you watch her take every bite. There was something satisfying about seeing a little kid eat so well. The sight made you feel well-fed on their behalf.
“Alright,” you say with a small grunt as you pick Juno up and set her down onto the ground, then take her hand to lead her over to the carpeted family room. “Let me take a look at this scrape of yours.”
Juno’s hand tugs slightly when you try to pull on it, so you turn around to see that she has stopped in her tracks halfway through the trek to the other room.
“What’s wrong?” you ask her.
“I don’t want you to see it…”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s ugly.”
“Juno,” you tug on her hand a little, “I have to see it so that I can clean it. Otherwise you might get sick. A type of sick that even grape syrup can’t fix.”
She looks up at you with curious eyes, not fearful ones. 
“There is sick like that?” she asks you.
“Yes. Now give me your arm.”
Juno follows you to the family room and stands still, the front of her jutting out slightly as she pouts, a display of her remaining disapproval for you taking a look at her scrape. You get down onto your knees and slowly undo the bandages, unwrapping the layers one-by-one before the end falls off and you’re staring at a 4x2cm superficial abrasion on her arm, and when your thumb lightly swipes at the skin underneath it, Juno winces from the pain.
You also notice she has a bruise on her left upper thigh, right below where the hem of her shorts end.
“You…only fell onto your right side, right?” you ask her.
“Mhm,” she nods.
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“How come you have a bruise on your left thigh then?”
Her eyes widen slightly with shock and her head quickly snaps down to look at her thigh. “Um. Um. I don’t know. Um. Um.”
“Juno,” you say, trying to muster up a strict tone, but she refuses to make eye contact with you anymore as she stares at the carpet beneath her. You gently grab a hold of both of her wrists. “Sweetheart. Look at me.” Her eyes slowly lift up to meet yours. “I want to help you, but I can't help you unless you’re honest with me.”
Her big eyes blink at you slowly and her bottom lip quivers slightly.
“How did you really hurt yourself?”
She immediately starts bawling. Full on sobs that echo throughout the room and startle you slightly as the tears freely fall down her cheeks and she struggles to wipe them off with her left arm, but they only drip down her elbow.
“Oh–” you stutter, holding her by her shoulders, “Juno–”
She sniffles. “They–” she hiccups, “they pushed me…they always push me.”
“Who pushed you?? Who always pushes you??”
She sucks in a deep breath as she continues to cry and you struggle to wipe at her tears for her with the pad of your thumb. “The–hic–girls at school. They’re so–hic–...wahhh…they’re so mean.”
“They pushed you on the playground and that’s how you got this scrape and bruise?” you ask her.
She nods as she slowly begins to come down from her outburst, her remnant sniffles and short sharp inhales showing that she was struggling to breath. You run to grab some tissues and then come back, holding them to her nose before she blows into them.
“Oh sweetheart…I’m so sorry,” you say to her.
She suddenly runs into you, hugging you tightly, and you’re momentarily surprised before wrapping an arm around her too and then gently patting at her back.
“How long has this been going on?” you ask her.
“Mm…ever since I–hic–ever since I got on T-ball team…but they couldn’t get on.”
“Oh…” you coo, gently rubbing her back now. You’re not a mom, you’ve got no fucking clue how to navigate this sort of situation. But you can try your best to give some advice. “Juno, you have every right to feel happy and safe at school.” You gently pull her away from the hug so that you can look at her face. “And it’s okay to stand up for yourself and against anyone that is being mean to you. Don’t let them take that power away from you.”
She nods slowly, her lip quivering slightly again.
You sigh slowly before giving her another hug. “And we’ll work out something with your mom too, okay? She can talk to the teachers.”
“No!” Juno shrieks, pulling away from you suddenly. You blink at her. “No. Please don’t tell my mommy.”
“W-Why not??”
“Because–” she stutters, “um…I want to tell her myself. Because I lied, and mommy always says to me to not tell lies. So I have to fix it myself.”
You tilt your head at her, frowning slightly. You’re not exactly sure how much autonomy over such things you should be granting a five-year-old, but you decide to give her the choice. You hold your pinky finger out to her, “you have to promise me you’ll tell her though, okay?”
She nods and wraps her pinky around yours. 
After getting her scrape cleaned up and tended to, Juno spends the next hour or so watching My Little Pony on the TV as you clean up the mess you made in the kitchen. And as you’re staring out into the backyard while wiping down the cutting board, the sound of the doorbell ringing makes you jump with a startle and breaks you out of your trance.
You were prepared to open the door to find Sana standing at the entrance, but instead you’re met with the sight of a different woman.
Much older, and with all the same features, it doesn’t really take you long to figure out who she is.
“Ah! There she is!” the woman chirps out. “I’m—”
“Juno’s grandmother,” you finish the statement for her.
“—Satoru’s mother,” she instead says.
You both blink at one another.
“Well,” she chirps, “I’m both!”
Gojo’s mother appears to be a kind woman, and it’s evident that being gorgeous must run in the family. Although she has aged features, they’re still beautiful in a graceful way, where people would take a look at her and think of aging as a privilege and not a curse. Her eyes are somewhat feline, different from the roundness of those you’ve seen in her family, and her hair is a shimmering silver all around with a pretty silk press layered hair style that flatters her frail jaw. She was wearing a French-style button up dress with a rather gaudy belt around her waist, and you catch the scent of her lilac perfume even while she’s standing three feet away.
She puts her hands on her hips and has a forced smile on her face. “My son gets married and he doesn’t even tell me a peep about it, or introduce me to his new wife! I have to come all the way over here myself!” she exclaims, and her tone is like she’s trying to play it off with nonchalance but the stiffness of her features makes it look like she’s losing her mind. “Well,” she clicks her tongue, “he’s always had the penchant for never sharing anything he ever does with me.”
“Ah…I’m so sorry, Mrs. Gojo,” you say to her, unsure why you’re apologizing, but there was this energy to her that made you realize she had a skill for making people feel apologetic in her presence.
“No worries! Not your fault. I’ll deal with him later,” she says, her smile growing to where it almost fully crescents her eyes in a frightening way that almost sends a shiver down your spine, “anywhoooo,” she takes both of your hands into hers, “you’re very beautiful, and you have a very lucky-looking nose!”
“Lucky?”
“Yes, yes. You will bring luck to our family.”
“Thanks?” you say, trying to manage a smile.
She takes a step closer to you. “Tell me, what do your parents do for a living?”
“Oh! Um, well, my mom is retired, but she used to be an art teacher. My dad is in the food business, but uh, I haven’t spoken to him in years ever since my parents got divorced.”
“Ah,” she says curtly, her face blank as if she couldn’t think of a single thing to follow up with after that. She peers past your shoulder. “Where’s the little princess?”
“She’s just inside grabbing her things.” You gently slip your hands out of her hold and turn around to face the inside of the house. “Juno!! Do you need help?”
“No!!” she calls from the kitchen.
“Say, my dear,” Gojo’s mother speaks up, “why don’t you and Satoru come by for dinner this weekend? Jun and Sana apparently have some important news they’d like to share with the family, and I offered that we all hear it together over a meal. This way you can meet your father-in-law too!”
You take a deep breath in, realizing that this fake marriage agreement involves a lot more deceit than you ever thought it would. “Sure. Yes. I’d love that. Let me know if I can bring anything.”
“Wonderful!” she exclaims, just in time for when you feel Juno brush past you towards her grandma, hunching over slightly with her backpack’s weight. Gojo’s mother pulls you in for a hug which entirely startles you and you slowly wrap your arms around her as well. “It’s so lovely to have a daughter-in-law. Oh, I am just so happy to have you in our family.”
She lets go of you but still keeps you close by a delicate hold of your elbows, a gleeful smile on her face as she looks you up and down slowly.
“Bye, auntie y/n!!” Juno squeaks out, hugging your leg, and you pat at the top of her head. Her grandmother finally lets go of you and takes Juno’s tiny hand in her frail one, and you see them off to the car.
By the time you make it back inside the house, you let out a deep slow breath, one that you didn’t know you were holding in, as you lay your weight back on the front door. You feel a pressure in your head from your dwindling social battery and all these tricky encounters.
So, you’re part of a whole other family, now?
That. Is. Frightening.
.
.
.
[end of chapter 3]
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a/n. ah!! hope you enjoyed this ihm chapter :’’) sorry if it seemed like a bunch of random scenes lolol i swear it’s all set up for stuff that will happen down the lineee. i just be yappin so the word count ends up kinda high. hope to see you in the next one!! <3 love u all. also it’s my frank ocean anons bday today so i dedicate this chapter to themm 🫶🏼💕 manifesting dilf gojo for u bb for anyone curious about why reader is a bit paranoid w potentially being busted for her fake marriage, i had another reader that was curious about this too so i answered them here if you'd like to check it out :)
➸ take me to chapter four!
note: please do not ask me for updates or when i will next update (read rules)
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