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aimfor-theheart · 2 years ago

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Chapter Three: Anew

Masterlist | <- Chapter Two: Anything, Everything | Satoru's Interlude: Bigger God -> | Read on Ao3

Pairings: Satoru Gojo x f!reader

Summary: And the form leans down, closer, as their voice drops to a murmur, all honey and thorns, the promise of something far greater than you. A storm to come. The future that you will bear upon the slant of your shoulders. And when they speak, you know they’ve cursed you;

“I will teach you how to make a God.”

(Arranged marriage, angst, hurt/comfort, dark content)

Warnings (specifically for this chapter): Parental abuse (emotional and physical), possessive behavior, unhealthy relationships, toxic dynamics, parental death, manipulation, smut; specifically, loss of virginity, first times, pushy Gojo? (Gojo is not as slow or empathetic as he perhaps should be/pushes the reader a little, but there is consent), oral (f receiving), mentions of shame/guilt in regards to pleasure and sex. Please be wary of overarching story warnings, too. Let me know if you think I should add any other warnings! **Please mind warnings overall and for each chapter**

Word Count: 21k......i am mentally unwell.

A/N: a day late but my apology is a huge fucking chapter. i wrote all this before i saw the leaks. i have many thoughts. but first, a huuuuge thank you to @lorelune for beta-reading this beast of a chapter and helping me through it. i feel like i struggled awhile and their feedback helped so much, as always. i also really appreciate your feedback! and would love to hear your thoughts on this chapter! thank you all for reading and thank you for waiting for this chapter!! enjoy!

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“Gods require isolation.”

In your vision, colors bleed and bend together in a waterfall of light. You can hardly make out the shape in front of you, can hardly make out the voice. It almost aches, somewhere in your teeth, in the core of you, to try and focus on them.

“Gods cannot have equals, otherwise they wouldn’t be Gods. Do you understand?”

“But there are so many–” you have a hard time getting out the words, chewing around them strangely, like cotton in your mouth. Your voice is just a croak, “there are so many Gods.”

“No,” there is a shaking, as if they’re denying you, “forget what you previously knew. Those are myths, not Gods.”

You blink hard, as if you could clear your vision. You feel like you might be sick, stomach turning over itself, twisting and churning–

“Gods are alone.”

“Lonely?”

A pause.

“Yes, lonely, at the top of their world.” The voice hums, like bees in your ears, like the vibrating of cursed energy that simmers low in your hearing, that sizzles to life when used. The person almost feels like–like a curse.

“Gods are lone stars that gaze down upon the earth, they shine brighter, they guide and shower and collapse inwards to become something else entirely.”

“Stars?” You garble.

“Gods devour everyone around them, so they are the only ones left. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” you say and you think tears are pricking your eyes.

“Don’t cry yet,” coos the voice, lullaby soft, the way a mother sounds, the way you wish a father would sound. “Do you understand, then?”

“Yes,” you hiccup, “Gods are lonely. Gods are very, very lonely.”

***

You know you will devour Suguru as he walks to you in the garden for a final time.

The last time you see him before his betrayal, he is in a strangely amiable mood, one that you aren’t often on the receiving end of.

And just as strangely, you allow yourself to indulge him. You aren’t as snappy or harsh, you aren’t posturing and snarling.

You’re just a friend for him, in his last few hours as a sorcerer and not a curse user.

“I think I’ll miss visiting you like this when you get married to Satoru.” He says.

“Satoru wants a garden when we move out. He’s fond of it now, too.” You tell him, “you can visit me in that garden.”

You know he never will.

(Well—once, he will. But he will not be himself anymore, not really, not ever again. Suguru has always been the type to grow out of his own skin, always chased divinity down until he was stumbling and panting for it, like a starved dog on a futile hunt.

And when he finally gets it between his teeth, he will have had to die for it, and it will not be him at all, but someone else.

He will just be the conduit. The possessed. The hollowed out. He’ll gorge himself on it only to still be left starving.

Because maybe that’s all divinity is; the empty stomach, the eternal hunger for something more than yourself. The emptiness of being more than just yourself.)

“Hm, I won’t have to deal with your father.” Suguru says and he sinks a little heavier into some of the taller, heather soft grass by the pond.

“Tell me about it. I have wanted to escape him for my whole life.” You say.

“Will you?” He asks.

Eventually, you nod.

Then you admit, “I’ll kill him one day.”

Suguru’s brows dart upwards and he turns his face towards you, towards the sun. He has to squint when he looks at you, he has to shield his eyes a little. The sun hallows you, swallowing you up in its honey bronzed light.

“You will?” He asks and there’s a strange note in his voice.

“After he kills my mother.” You don’t know exactly why you tell him this, only that it bubbles out of you, only that you know you are supposed to.

“How long have you known?” Suguru’s voice is almost gentle for you.

“Years now. I knew he would kill my mother the moment I received Foresight. And a year or so later, I looked into his future, too.” You lean back on your elbows, tip your face up to the light.

Suguru swallows. “Is he–I’ve always known he was controlling but–to kill your mother–”

“He knows.”

“Knows what?” Suguru asks.

“That I’ll kill him. I told him after he hit me the first time.”

You say it so plainly that all Suguru can do is stare for a moment.

But then he sits up and there is something dark in his eyes, unfathomable, “does Satoru know? And he just let’s this–for all of his fucking power and–”

A crackling sort of anger spits to life inside him. You’re so surprised that for a moment, all you can do is stare at him now.

“Suguru,” you say softly and you stop him from standing by catching his wrist in your slight hand, you stop him from going to do who knows what, “Satoru doesn’t know.”

“Why doesn’t he know?” Suguru hisses, “does Ieri? Anyone?”

You shake your head.

“Satoru would kill him if he knew. There is a version where he kills him days before our wedding.” You say and your own voice has taken on a hushed quality, stilling him.

“A version?” Suguru asks.

You nod.

“But I want to do it myself.” You admit and the confession is so raw and unkept that it startles you with its truth. “I have wanted to do it myself for a long time, I think.”

Suguru looks at you strangely, changed.

But when he says, “I always knew there was something horrible in you.” There isn’t any malice in it, rather he sounds deeply fond, a little heartbroken. You sidle up to his side, scoot in close so you can feel the warmth of him.

He drops an arm around you. He tucks you into his side.

“Don’t tell Satoru,” you nuzzle down into him, surprisingly compliant. Whenever Suguru has tried to touch you before, you have met him with teeth and nails and all sorts of fight. But now, you melt easily. “Don’t do a thing.”

You feel his fingers dig into you.

“How am I supposed to stand idly by and allow you to be–”

You turn your head against his shoulder, look up at him through your lashes, “please? I don’t ask much of you, do I?”

Suguru shakes his head. “I don’t like this. Why does it have to be this version? Isn’t there another? Where you’re safe? Where you aren’t–”

“I don’t think I would be so horrible if there was a different version.” You admit softly to him.

Suguru goes quiet.

Then, “I wouldn’t have you any other way, you know.”

The admittance is surprisingly tender. Your eyes sting with it.

He catches your chin between large fingers, tilts you up so you can’t hide your shining eyes from him. “Wretched as you are–I think you’re perfect. I only wish–”

“Suguru,” you almost don’t want him to say this part. You can feel it pulling at you, tugging and tearing at your tender heart, plucking at your insides.

“There was a version where you were safe. And you didn’t have to be horrible. And I didn’t have to be horrible, either.”

You’re startled by the tears that he catches, one with his thumb. “What’s this? Tears for me? But you hate me so terribly.”

You shake your head a little into his hands, “I don’t–”

“It’s alright,” he hushes, and you think he sees you in a different light now, you think something has shifted massively between you. And so close to the end. “Just tell me if there’s a version where we’re safe and–”

You swallow hard around the prickly lump in your throat, the sob trapped there. You feel more tears escape from the corner of your eyes, especially as they crinkle up into your sad smile.

Your vision blurs with him, with the man who wanted to be a god.

The lie comes easily, almost wistfully, to your trembling lips;

“Yes–somewhere out there is a version where we are safe. My father doesn’t hurt me. And Satoru is more than just a God. Yu Haibara lives. A Zenin boy doesn’t lose his father. Two little girls are not locked in a cage. And you don’t have to be so horrible, either.”

***

Ieri comes to you in the middle of the night.

You have not slept, because you know, and you’ve been waiting for her.

You padded out into the garden, barefoot, awhile ago. The night air has a nip to it. Moonless night. Starless night. Endlessly dark in the heavens tonight. The world seems to be hushed with the violence that’s happened, with the betrayal that has taken place. You wonder if every betrayal made the world go this silent; Set and Osiris, Caesar and Brutus, Jesus and Judas.

Ieri knows where to find you, knows you’ll know, knows you too well, and she joins you now in your garden.

She’s been crying. Eyes glassy and lined with red, makeup smeared halfway down her face.

You fold her into your arms and you can feel her shudder as she holds back another sob.

“You knew,” she gets out, “you knew the whole time.”

“Yes.” You whisper, holding her tighter to keep her from freeing herself, as if you could wrestle her anger or heartbreak still.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why wouldn’t you–”

“Was I supposed to condemn him?”

“Couldn’t you have saved him? You knew–you know all of it.” Ieri is shaking, perhaps terrified, perhaps furious, “will you do this to all of us? What good is your technique if you don’t intervene?”

“Not everything should be changed.”

She grabs you by the shoulders suddenly, viciously, nails chipped with burgundy polished digging hard into your skin. She wants to leave torn little half moons. She wants to hurt you. But she’s a doctor. She’s a healer.

Her eyes fly over your face, tears stream down her ruddy cheeks. Her gaze darkens, digs into you, tries to see what she perhaps missed in you. She tries to find her friend inside of you, tries to find your anguish or heartbreak, too.

“What am I supposed to do with you?” She asks suddenly and it is not fond but, devastated, “how am I supposed to–”

Her voice bites off into a strangled whine.

“Trust me?”

And when she says, “I don’t know how Gojo does it.”

It isn’t heated or mean, it’s just–honest. Tired.

And it hurts worse than you’re anticipating. The ache blossoms so fiercely that your breath catches with it, almost as if she’d struck you. It makes a lump form in your throat. Her eyes like dark moons look at you with a new form of disgust, mistrust. You want to seize her suddenly, you want to cry, you want to do what you do to Satoru where you cling and beg and whine.

You know it won’t work on her, though.

So you swallow and say, “I loved him, too, you know.”

And it’s the truth, more than you realized.

“Then why didn’t you stop him? Why didn’t you save him?”

Your mind catapults you into a memory of your own and you remember the ancestor of yours who looked too guilty to say he was trying to save you, but stop you.

Perhaps it is the same, after all.

“Ieri,” you whisper, strangled, “there was no stopping him.”

There is no stopping me.

“No,” she says and her eyes water, filling, “no. The Getou I know wouldn’t have–he killed his parents. He killed–”

Her hand comes over her mouth and she turns away from you. She holds her stomach with her free hand like she’s trying to keep it all inside of her, like she’s trying to keep all her grief and anger from spilling out.

You wonder how she will feel when you kill your father.

Will she understand? Will she hold her stomach again like she’s going to be sick?

Perhaps for both you and Suguru, you say, “I’m sorry.”

Perhaps you are admitting to parts of it. “I’m sorry.” You say again and she finally turns to look at you. And then she is grabbing you and she is teetering in your arms as you whisper, “I am sorry. I’m sorry for all of it, I’m so, so–”

A sob creaks out of her and she falls apart in your arms until Satoru walks to you on wary, unsteady feet, and does the same.

The three of you don’t sleep and instead sit in a garden that once held four, and watch as the sun breaks over the sky like shattered, red glass reflecting hot and hazy. The day turns on.

Life continues, even if it feels like theirs have ended, even if it feels like you’ve lost something greater than you can name.

Greater than you ever anticipated.

And you say to no one, perhaps the sky, your voice small like a child’s;

“I’m sorry–I’m sorry–”

***

Suguru Getou is condemned to execution.

And for all his power, there is nothing that Satoru can do to stop any of this.

(To stop the future you have set into–)

When Suguru kills one hundred and twenty one people, you know why he does it. Maybe he even sees you in them, kept away out of fear of their technique, maybe he is just horrible. You think he must understand then, when you’d mentioned two, little girls. It must've all slid into place for him finally.

You think he realized his fate in the blink of an eye, the inevitability; perhaps why you despised him and then loved him. He must realize what he is about to do to Satoru.

Still, Satoru comes to tell you–to seek your counsel. You’ve never seen him quite so lost. So–

You know he won’t listen to you when you tell him, “you will have to kill him.”

He looks at you hard and long, stricken like you’ve hit him or wounded him, like you’ve pulled a knife out and pushed into the tender parts of him. He looks at you like you’ve betrayed him.

“How could you say that to me?” He hisses and you can hear it in his voice, thick with emotion, with tears.

“I don’t say it lightly,” you respond and you’re startled to find your own voice failing, the sudden tears you have for the man you apparently hated so badly are still fresh. You don’t know why you’re mourning him like this, why it hurts so bad when you knew–you planned–

“I’m sorry,” you tell him and when he sinks into your embrace, you go down with him, “I’m sorry.” you say again and again and maybe you sound like your mother. Maybe you sound like someone else.

But you cradle his head to your beating heart, card your fingers through his hair, and let him be just a man in your arms.

***

Everyone steps in to help Satoru with Megumi and Tsumiki.

Nanami often is the one who stops by to drop them off to be with you in the morning or evenings, after the kids have gotten done with school. Sometimes Utahime, who is remarkably good with kids. She is also remarkably kind to you, more so than you’d ever imagined or thought. Ieri jokes that she pities you to have to marry Gojo, who is, to her, the most insufferable person alive.

You think it’s something more, but you can’t place what yet.

Megumi rushes past Nanami to disappear into the garden. Tsumiki lingers and greets you before loping after her brother.

“How were they?” You ask him.

Nanami pauses before saying, “they miss Gojo, I think. Megumi especially is–”

His expression pinches for a moment, before he schools it.

“Well, he’s acting out a little.”

“I’ll talk to him.” You promise. “What has he done?”

“He’s picking fights with classmates. His teacher told me and said–well, she said that it would do well for him to have a solid presence in his life and not,” Nanami is careful with what he says now, but it still comes out a little too bluntly, “rotating babysitters.”

It stings a little, but you swallow, nod around it. You know it’s true. But as they say, it does take a village and you and Satoru are hardly adults yourself.

You aren’t even yet, technically.

Still, you say, “I’ll see what I can do. Thank you, Nanami, I know it means a lot to Satoru, too.”

Nanami’s usually stoic features soften barely, before he nods and says, “of course.” And then he inhales slow and asks, “how’s Gojo?”

In truth, you’ve hardly seen him.

But you’d never let anyone know that, you’d never admit, in any way, that he is untouchable to you. So you look out into the garden to find the kid’s dark heads of shining hair under the sun, bobbing about, moving around the lush green.

The wind eases past you and finally, you say, “he’ll be okay.”

Nanami seems to understand, so he swallows, and nods. “Tell the kids I’ll see them tomorrow.”

“I will,” you promise and watch as he walks off, his figure in the spun gold light of the sun and seems to shine through him, almost, as if he were made of light entirely.

It really is such a shame, you think, as tears prick your eyes, of what will happen to him.

***

“The wedding is approaching,” your father says over dinner.

“And so is her birthday.” Your mother reminds him.

They’re planned for the same day–the wedding has been planned for your eighteenth birthday since the vow was created. The days have unspooled before you and turned to years. You have seen how this wedding in too many little futures of others, have known and anticipated it the way hospitals often have temples and churches inside of them

Your father pays her no mind.

“This is a huge moment for our clan,” he says, “and I have asked countlessly in the past but–”

“I’ve already seen his future.” You say.

His eyes round with surprise and then hope. The sick sort of excitement that comes from a ravenous sort of hunger.

“I can’t believe you–” he shakes his head, elated, “finally. What did you see? How can the clan–”

“Did you think I would tell you?”

His face falters.

“We want to destroy the clans. Why would I tell you anything that helps them?”

Your father’s face goes pale. It goes slack with disbelief. And then anger sharpens his eyes, slicing to you.

He stands from the table abruptly enough that your mother flinches so hard she nearly drops a bowl. “Don’t–” she whimpers, throwing her arm out in front of you to stop him, to keep him from grabbing you.

It breaks your heart, to see her hand, outcast over you to protect you, trembling like a leaf in a violent wind. She is horrified, but she is still trying to protect you.

You almost see red. You almost want to kill your father right now.

“You cannot allow this.” Your father seethes, “did you hear her?”

“She’s my daughter,” is your mother’s only response, half desperate, chest heaving.

“Mom–” you beg, but it’s too late, because your father lunges for her first. When he grabs her, all of your world narrows, and her strangled, pained gasp is the only thing you hear. Your father throws her into the wall so harshly that it leaves a dent and he goes for her again, while she is a crumpled mass on the floor and–

And you reach for the knife at the table like it has always belonged in your palm

You grab your father by his hair and yank his head far enough back to expose the fluttering line of his vulnerable throat. You are certain you have looked like this to him before, eyes bugging with his fist in your hair, mouth agape.

You put the knife to his throat and hiss, “I will do this now if you lay another hand on her.”

Your father begins to tremble the way your mother did. The way you did as a child.

“You won’t,” he croaks.

He doesn’t mean it.

“I will.” You vow.

And you wonder how Suguru felt, with his parents or the others he killed in the name of trapped, hurt children, you wonder if it felt like this. If it will be worse or better. You want to run to him now, you think, and ask. Is it worth it? Was it worth it? Will I ever get the smell of blood out from under my nose?

Your father goes slack, let’s you know he is done. Defeated for now, subdued enough that he will not hit her.

Your mother watches in horror.

He slinks away, muttering to himself, grasping at his head, his throat. You think you are driving him mad. You think you are haunting him, that you have grown into a curse and not a girl at all.

You toss the knife away and throw your arms around your mother and you rock her the way she used to rock you as a child, trying to quiet her cries, trying to soothe what you know will never settle.

***

Satoru hasn’t been the same since Suguru’s betrayal.

Though you knew this would pain him, it bothers you that it is able to affect him so greatly. Still, you remain doting, loving. You let him lay with his head in your lap, on your chest. You let him squeeze you too tightly, you let him bruise you.

Most importantly, you let him believe that you are all he can trust. Over and over again, you murmur it to him when he sleeps in the afternoon sun with his head in your lap, beneath you is a picnic blanket in the garden, you let it infect his mind.

And still, he pulls away from you.

He becomes more untouchable than ever. Distant to you the way that stars are, bright in your sky but unreachable, a thousand lightyears away. You sit by your window, waiting for him, hoping he’ll fall back down to earth sometime.

You think he’s avoiding you.

It makes you want to curse and scream and cry. It makes you want to throw a tantrum all over again and see if he’ll come running. It makes you want to tear down mountains and carve the moon from the sky.

You know what you have to do; it will cause a great deal of trouble for you, but you will do it. You will take it for him. Always for him.

You visit him at Jujutsu Tech for once.

You show up in his dorm and are mildly surprised that Megumi or Tsumiki aren’t here. You thought you’d at least be able to see them, too.

So instead you sit and wait for him to return in the quiet of his empty room. One hour turns to two, then three.

The sun settles high in the sky and then begins to sink.

You doze on his twin bed, in the last rays of the sun that manage to steal through the window, cut through the blinds.

When you wake, it’s to the shadow of Satoru in his doorway. You sit up, groggy, blinking sleep away.

“Not that I’m mad to return to a girl in my bed, but, what are you doing here?” He asks and instantly, you can tell he’s tense, on guard. He shuts the door behind him, he wades into the room, avoiding you. He doesn’t greet you with a kiss to the cheek or a secret smile. He falls into the chair at the desk.

“I haven’t seen you in over a week.” You tell him, voice still hushed with sleep. And then, “where are the kids?”

“With Shoko for a bit. She’s had them for the day, helping them study.”

“You could’ve brought them to me.” You tell him and perhaps it pains you that he didn’t.

“Your father let you out of the garden?” He asks in return, avoiding it. Avoiding you. You can feel the distance he is trying to force between you two. His voice is strange.

You don’t heed his warning. You don’t bother to backtrack.

“No. I snuck out. I’m sure they’re looking for me.” You tell him and in the dark lavender of evening, you catch a sliver of his smile. A ghost of himself. Your heart trips over itself in blind hope. You press on, “I missed you. I wanted to see you.”

When he doesn’t respond to that, you add, “I’m worried about you.”

Now he rises and finally comes to you. He stands, tall and towering over where you’ve sat up on his bed. He lifts a large hand, grown so large since you were kids, and carefully touches the apple of your cheek.

“No reason to ever worry about me, darling.” He says, but you can tell, even with the blindfold, that his gaze has gone hollow, unseeing you. He pulls his hand away and your cheek tilts, chases after the warmth of his palm; he’s untouchable, so untouchable. “I’m the strongest. You should know better.”

He turns away from you again, wanders to the window, gazes out at a dark courtyard.

“Satoru,” you say as gently as you can.

“I should get you back. Your father will be upset. I’ll take the blame.”

“Satoru.”

“I’ll smooth things over with him. I’m sorry to have worried you. Nothing’s wrong, though–”

“Satoru.” You snap.

He freezes, finally has the good sense to be quiet for a moment.

You stand from his bed, rise like a ghost (maybe that’s all you are these days–a ghost of a girl, a vow he can’t shake, the pressing of time that he can only feel, but not see), and drift to him. Your touch doesn’t match your tone or your anger; you are gentle, when you put your hand on his back.

“Look at me.” You tell him.

When he turns, your fingers skim over his ribs, all the way to his chest.

You lift your hand to his face, to the blindfold and deftly, you pull at it.

He frowns and for a moment, you think he might try to pull away and deny you, but he doesn't.

He goes completely still.

You tug gently, until the blindfold slips away and hangs uselessly around his neck.

His eyes are much sadder than you remember, the blue of them all sapphire dark, nightened and deep.

“Why have you been avoiding me?” You ask, now that you can see all of him. And he can see all of you.

“I’ve been busy.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

A grimace drifts across his features. You have always been able to see through the lies, the masks, the godhood he wears.

You wait with him, patient, and seemingly careful. You can feel the thrum of his heart beneath your palm, can feel the rise and fall of his chest, the simmer of his cursed energy. Of yours. You look at your hand, small against his broadening chest.

“I’m not lying,” he murmurs, then tries to sweeten you to him by covering your hand with his. His hand has grown so large since he was young. It engulfs yours now. “I have been busy.”

You think he realizes he wants affection, you can tell in the way he pulls closer. He’s deprived himself of it recently, so you aren’t surprised that a taste of it would make him suddenly hungry. But if he isn’t going to answer, you aren’t going to give into him. You won’t feed him.

You slip away from him with a disappointed sigh. Coolness rushes between you, separating you, starving him.

“You’ve always been busy. You always come to visit me.”

His eyes flash in the darkness.

“Have you considered that you can’t be the center of my life?” He asks and his voice is light, but barbed. He sounds like his mother. “That I have far more important responsibilities than visiting and playing house with you?”

You don’t flinch. He’s being needlessly cruel. You know how this plays out. You always know.

“Spare me,” you tell him, not particularly cruelly, but tired. “Don’t undermine me like that. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

He bristles. Opens his mouth like he might say something, then firmly shuts it.

Speechless.

(How did you do that? Suguru laughs, how did you get him speechless?)

The memory rushes to you, of that warm day. Satoru must think of it, too. It must settle over him like a phantom, because Satoru goes perfectly still. You watch any anger or frustration seep out of him, like it’d been punctured. It leaks from him now, so that he’s deflated, just a shell of himself.

“Is this about Suguru?” You ask him gently, when you think he can stomach hearing his name out loud.

His lashes flutter, a muscle in his jaw feathers, but otherwise he remains unmoved.

“Don’t you know everything?” He asks, voice cool, trying to remain untouchable, trying to remain frozen and far from you.

“You know I don’t.” You answer gently and it’s only half-true. You turn back towards him, step into his orbit once more.

“But did you know this one?“

“Yes.” You answer honestly, tip your chin up to look into his eyes, all dark heaven.

He moves so fast that you don’t even catch it. You think he may have even used his technique, caught you so fierce and quickly that you gasp, feel the muscles of his hand jump as he squeezes your face in his large palm.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” He begs and he’s trying to shroud himself in anger, but you can hear the grief in its footsteps. The heartache wells inside of you. “Why wouldn’t you try to stop it?”

“You don’t understand.” You hiss, “You have no idea–”

“You should’ve told me!” Satoru’s voice catches, “maybe I could’ve–”

“You couldn’t have.” You tell him.

“You don’t know that!” He snaps, “he–we–I would’ve done anything–”

His eyes well with tears and your hands instantly go up to his shoulders, his neck.

“Satoru–” you try to soothe, but he’s still gripping you so hard you’ll bruise.

“I would’ve done anything to stop him–”

When he falls apart, it is always you there to hold him, to put the pieces of a God back together again. You hold him tight around the middle and he curves over you like a drought-driven plant, desperate, bowed.

And you tell him again and again, that you’re here. He has you. He’s always had you. He always will. A vow made as children that is still carved into the both of you, written into your fates, and imprinted on your beings.

Your own religion.

You lay with him on his little twin bed. You run your hands through his hair. He soothes under your touch. He mouths at your throat in a way that makes you flush darkly, that reminds you you’re alone with him, for once. You’re alone with him in a little twin bed made for one, now holding two.

And when he admits, “I know you did what was best, but I can’t help but resent you a little.” you almost, almost feel guilty. You feel the lump in your throat, the splintering of your heart, that has always been so painfully, willfully, soft and vulnerable for him.

You have half a mind to start wailing, howling like you’re going to shake apart.

“Some days I loathe you so much that I love you more, or love you so much that I loathe you.” He admits, fingers bruising into your ripe skin, into the softest parts of you.

Instead you curl around him tighter, like a little asp constricting around its prey. You curl around him and think, I did do what’s best.

I did what’s best for us.

***

Your father is furious, but Satoru takes the blame, as he promised.

Your father wouldn’t dare lay a hand on you around Satoru.

But even after he leaves, your father doesn’t touch you.

He can’t even look at you.

He flinches when he does.

And you stand at the end of the hallway like he used to and you wonder if this is how he always felt.

You wonder if this is how it will always feel to surpass your parents, to take what they were and be more, to swallow them whole. You wonder if you should feel worse for garnering his fear.

But then you think of yourself as a child, looking up at him, desperate for his love and acceptance, and in the same way that he could not find sympathy for his own daughter–

You have no sympathy for the father that raised her.

***

Preparations for the wedding are a nightmare for both you and Satoru. Between dealing with higher ups that both of you would rather overthrow, your father, and his mother, the wedding hardly begins to feel like a wedding at all. Just a spectacle, a feat of the century.

It doesn’t help that in the midst of this, Satoru is still grieving Suguru, who lives and festers and grows. More than that, Megumi and Tsumiki also demand his full attention. Megumi is picking fights in school. Tsumiki is struggling in other, quiet ways.

You’ve told him to focus on buying a bigger space for the four of you, that you’ll handle the higher ups and the wedding planning and his mother.

You went many years rarely seeing her. As a child, she watched you and Satoru, always gazed at you a little too intensely, followed you the way a predator must watch prey. Or perhaps the way prey must watch a predator– you never know anymore, which you were. Maybe some horrible beast of both; a rabbit with jagged canines, antlers cut sharp and protruding from your poor head, a wolf with large ears and soft paws, a fox, if nothing else. Both hunted and the hunter.

You don’t know when you became accustomed to the taste of blood in your mouth.

But when his mother pushes, you finally push back. No longer a child, no longer fangless.

You’re taking tea with her, discussing further wedding plans, when she says, “you may have my son fooled, but I see right through you.”

She says this very casually, like she might be saying, the sky is blue, or I am the mother of a god. Both, you think, could ring softly in her melodic voice. She does seem like the mother of a god, all icy hair, now going silver, like a star. And oh, her eyes, her eyes are just like diamonds. Like her son’s, the god.

The tea is scalding, you cup it in your palm and let it warm against your skin, wait to bring it to your lips.

“Oh?”

“The moment I saw you, I knew.” She says, eyeing you over the rim of her own tea cup. “I knew you’d be his downfall. A shame, really. It’s too bad I didn’t have a daughter, sons can be so–”

“I have no intention of being Satoru’s downfall. Quite the contrary, I have done everything in my power to ensure that he will not have a downfall.” You respond coolly and you can feel her gaze, the way it tries to dig down into the tender parts of you, like a hawk sinking its talons around the fleshy bits of your heart.

She doesn’t particularly scare you except–

You don’t know this conversation. You know her fate, because Satoru will feel it and you know him. But this is new territory to you.

“I knew when I saw you,” she repeats, “but especially after your binding vow to him, that you were going to burrow yourself underneath his skin. You were going to be his own fault. The only mortal part of him. That’s why you will be his downfall.”

It strikes you as strange that she believes this. Besides, you know you have only seeded him, twisted and molded and shaped him into the boy-god he is now. You know who his real mortal parts are, know who they will always be, and it is the children in his care.Perhaps, Suguru Getou, too.

No, you were never lovely enough to be anything mortal. You were never normal enough to be anything so simple.

“I think you’re mistaken,” you say and the words come to you the way prophecy does, “I shaped him.”

Her eyes flash like the too-hot part of a flame and she says around her teeth, like she’s biting down into it, “I made him. And he almost killed me.” She collects herself then, but her mouth is twisted into this sickle curve of a grimace, “perhaps one day you will understand, what it’s like to be torn in two, and love them either way.”

You think you must know it already, at least a little.

“Do you love your husband?” You ask. “My mother does not love my father.”

Like your parents, she was arranged to marry Satoru’s father.

And easily, she says, “no. I never did. I learned him.”

“My mother fears my father.” You tell her.

“Many women do.” She responds, “I think we are more similar than you are to your own mother. She was always a little too sweet.”

You hum lightly and finally, dare to take a sip of tea.

“I don’t believe we are much alike at all.” You say before finally setting the tea cup down onto the table in front of you, palm still hot from it.

“You have been scheming your whole life. You were never content to be anything other than extraordinary. Trust me, I was once young and full of the same vigor.” She says dryly, gently tossing some of her long, silver hair over her shoulder. “The only thing that makes you special is that you will be Satoru’s wife.”

You can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of you.

“No,” you say.

“No?” she asks.

“Can you see the future?” You ask her.

Silence.

“I, too, have a technique–”

“But can you see the future? Are you invincible?”

She refuses to say no again.

“You have a technique, but it’s not like ours. Satoru and I have always been different. I am not like you. I wish the only reason I am special is because of him. I wish all I had to do was learn him.” You think you must’ve always known him, anyways, some part of you. There was no need to learn, when you were so interwoven, so intertwined.

“Spare me the self-pity, it’s unbecoming of a girl of your stature–”

“I love your son.” You say plainly, like one might say the sky is blue, or I am not only a god’s wife, but his godly wife. “And he loves me, too.”

“I didn’t think you were this naive–”

You set your hands against the table, lean forward in a way that must be vaguely threatening because her gaze sharpens. Predator or prey. Some wretched amalgamation of both.

“He’ll kill for me. That isn’t an exaggeration, that’s just a part of the future. He’ll do anything I ask of him. Would your husband, for you? Is he a god? Would a god do anything for you?” You watch her face carefully, the way it twists.

“I’m his mother–”

Your voice drops to a hush and the light catches the mismatched color of your eyes;

“More than that, I have killed for him already and no one even knows it. I will again. And that is far, far worse than if I was just some scheming wife.”

She sits back in her chair with a look on her face that might be bitterness. You think she tries to swallow around it. Perhaps, it is more akin to hatred. Maybe even, fear.

“Now,” you continue, and with all the grace of a god, you sweep your tea cup into your hand and take another slow, easy sip. “You wanted to talk about the flowers for the wedding?”

And you think she is smarter than she looks because she does not look at you the same way again. If you thought there was contempt in her gaze before, you have never quite seen loathing like this.

You talk of flowers, like you didn’t just admit murder to her. You’d like something blue. It will look nice, you tell her, with gold and silver.

When Satoru stops by later, with Megumi and Tsumiki in tow, you brush a kiss to his jaw in greeting in front of his mother. Perhaps to spite her. Tsumiki tucks herself up against your side and Megumi lets you smooth his wild hair down against his pouting face.

She gazes at the two dark haired children around you, at the way her son looks lovingly at the three of you and you smile, slow and knowing, asp-like.

“I will know, by the way, what it’s like to love them either way.” You tell her as Megumi tucks his face into your shoulder and you turn to kiss the top of his small head.

Usurper that he is, you’ll love him either way.

***

Life keeps turning, but you find yourself clinging to the past in a way you aren’t prepared for. You know you must go on, with the wedding, with adulthood, with what you have made but–

But sometimes, when you touch Ieri or Satoru, you let it drag you into the past. Into sweeter memories and the ghost that now haunts the three of you.

Suguru is there and he is lighter, before Haibara’s death, and he and Satoru toy and tease and play.

They follow you and Ieri around the garden like shadows. You burn with these visions of him, can’t understand, couldn’t foresee, why you relive it so much. You knew you cared about him but–

You always thought it’d be easier, since you knew.

You didn’t think you’d miss him or his half moon smiles.

The past tastes sickly and in it, he holds a peach over your head and lets you reach and jump and squabble for it. He slyly nudges you right into the pond and then he follows you in a moment later. He stretches out in the tall grass beside you, he lays his arm over you, he laughs when you yell and huff and bite. He talks about your wedding and the bachelor party he will throw. A future you will never see.

He simmers with a love for you and Satoru and Ieri that you feel as if you didn’t see in the present but can only see now, in Hindsight.

He says things like, “you’re such a curse of a girl.” with the fondest smile on his lips.

And he says–

In Satoru’s memories, he tells him–

Satoru asks him, “if anything ever happened to me. You’d look after her, wouldn’t you?”

And Suguru says, “of course. I’d do anything for her.”

Satoru smiles, boyish, infinitely happy and it guts you so thoroughly for a moment that you forget how to breathe, you forget how to stomach this.

“Careful,” Satoru laughs, “she is still my fiance.”

Suguru laughs, low and soft and the memory is souring, curdling inside of you in a way that makes you want to throw it all up.

“I don’t think there’s anything in the world that could keep the two of you apart.”

Except for you, you think, except for you, you wretch and cry and wail.

***

Your wedding takes place on the eve of your eighteenth birthday.

You wish you could say you’re prepared, in some way, for all of it. But you find that even a lifetime can’t prepare you for becoming the wife of a God. The ceremony itself is stuffy, rather tense, with uneasy truces between clans and political talk interwoven and murmured and laced into every other sentence. The only people there that you or Satoru genuinely want are his friends. Your mother.

Who cried the day previous. She apologized again, that she couldn’t stop any of it for you, that it all turned out this way, like it was her fault at all.

(Not your fault, it’s never your fault–you want to tell her, but don’t.)

She said she’s only glad you’re marrying someone like Satoru, someone you know, someone you love. Who loves you.

She said she takes great comfort in that, that at least you’ll know love like that.

You have to bite back a laugh–love like this? Oh, what it’s done to you. And oh, what you’ve done for it.

You are married beneath a setting sun on the top of their mortal world, high above the city. It is fit for what they believe are gods.

“A monumental day, history being made in front of our very eyes. Two of the most extraordinary sorcerers in hundreds of years, now bound together.” The officiant rattles on and on.

Satoru makes a face and even beneath the blindfold, you can tell it’s a rolling of his eyes. Your lips twist into a half smile.

Vows are such a tricky thing, you think.

There are the official ones they have you repeat. But then there are yours, his, ours that have always been there. The ones that have been etched onto your heart since you were a child.

And the world as his witness, without an ounce of shame, like he is again a child, he vows;

“I will always have you.”

And with a flash of your teeth, like you’re biting down into it, you repeat, you curse him, “I will always have you.”

Easily, he promises, easily, he gives himself to you, “You will always have me.”

Almost viciously, you vow, “you will always have me.”

Murmurs ripple. His mother is white knuckled. Your father is lock-jawed in anger. Your clan worries and hushes. His does, too. But you don’t see any of it, just Satoru, when he leans down to seal his lips to yours.

It’s a little harsh, vicious in the way that love is. In the way that your love is, horrible little thing you are, there is nothing and no one now–

Nothing and no one who will take him from you. Who will stop you now.

***

The reception afterwards is mostly for politics. You and Satoru are supposed to play nice but–

He’s being a shit. Smarmy. You don’t ask him to stop, so he doesn’t. You don’t particularly care to be polite or good, to not frighten the other sorcerers and the clans. In fact, you think Satoru is flexing a little bit, as if to say ‘you wanted this, you wanted this our whole lives. As if to say, we will not be as obedient as you thought. As you hoped.’

In hindsight, you think they regret your arranged marriage.

You don’t know what they expected, forcing two of the most powerful sorcerers together. Did they think you wouldn’t band together? Did they hope you would still hold loyalty to them above all else, and not each other?

You spent your whole life being reared and raised to be their perfect weapon, their perfect wife, their perfect god. To fit alongside Satoru. Were you not groomed for this? Are you not perfect for it?

You can’t fathom their shock.

Still, you can tell he is trying to enjoy his evening, if only with you, if only for you.

“It is our wedding,” he’d said to you just days prior. “It’s for us. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be,” he’d said, “but now it is.”

You can tell many disapprove of his blatant affection for you, disapprove of the way he’s teasing them to make you laugh. They hate that you laugh, that you won’t scold him. They hate what they have created.

His arm has been around you nearly the entire evening. Whether on the crux of your waist or the small of your back, around your shoulders or fitting his fingers to the bend of your torso along the lines of your rib, he has clung impossibly close to you.

“What do you say?” he asks, dropping kisses like falling stars over your cheek, your jaw, tickling along your neck playfully. “Should we find Shoko and Nanami and the kids? I don’t want to spend anymore time with these geezers.”

“Yes,” you agree, letting him catch you in a fuller kiss, one that bleeds warmth into you, runs a thrill down your spine as you feel the soft brush of his teeth, a little tongue.

You pull away before he can deepen and he grins at you, a little raucous, a little knowing, before you can pinch his side and get a little yelp from him, before you can spirit him away to where you know everyone waits for you.

“Finally,” Shoko says, leaning back in her chair, “I was going to die of boredom just watching you two greet all of them.”

“It’s horrendous,” Satoru agrees before Tsumiki, who’d been in Nanami’s care for the evening, bounds straight into Satoru’s arms for a hug.

He laughs and catches her easily, picks her up even though she’s a little too old for it, and spins her around.

Megumi leaves his seat next to Nanami to ease himself up to your side, wrap his arms around your waist and peer up at you with those eyes so deep.

“You look nice,” he mutters into your hip and you know it means a lot coming from him. And then, he peeks up at you through his long lashes, “are you happy?”

The question catches you by surprise, for some reason, and your heart suddenly swells. Tenderness bundles itself up, knots your heart over itself. You think about the question; are you happy?

Can you be?

Are you allowed to be? After everything you’ve done? After everything you will do?

Tears prick your eyes.

But you are happy, you decide, you are happy now. You are happy for tonight.

And you nod to him, running your fingers through his unruly hair, “I’m very happy, Megumi.”

He studies your face, squeezes just a little tighter around you, and says, “then I’m happy, too.”

Satoru suddenly gets his big hand on the top of Megumi’s head. “Look at you, Megumi, you look so handsome in your suit.”

Megumi starts to fuss, like he always does with Satoru, batting at his hand, trying to scrap with him, even when Satoru laughs. Perhaps especially when he laughs. Satrou pushes his little head around in his palm, tormenting him.

Tsumiki eases up to your side as the boys scrap and you welcome her into your arms as if she could have always belonged there.

When she looks up at you, you can tell she’s debating on saying something. You smooth out a piece of her hair, swiping it behind her ear, “what is it?” You ask and maybe you remind yourself of your own mother finally.

“I don’t remember my mother’s wedding to Megumi’s father much. I was really young.” She frowns, “I wish–”

“I wish I remembered more of it. Of them. I wish Megumi remembered them.” You can sense the tears in her before they even well. You can feel your own caught in the back of your throat for her.

For everything inside of you, you cannot fathom how an unending well has opened inside of you for this child. For Megumi. You always thought, your whole life, the only space inside of you would be an infinite void and only the one who possesses Infinity could ever control that.

But it’s as if they’ve made a new space.

You swipe her tears away with your thumb before they can fall. “Tsumiki,” you try to soothe. What can you say? What would you want to hear? What will you want to hear when your own mother is gone?

How do you not fall apart for her–for everything–of all that will happen to her, here and now?

Instead, she says, “I hope we remember this one, at least.” And she gives you her best and brightest smile. The one that sparks and brightens a room.

You hold her tight to you, you clutch to her, perhaps unsure if it’s her who needs this or you. You hold her until you feel as if you can pull away and won’t burst at the seams, until you are certain that you can smile back at her.

“You will,” you assure her, voice thicker than you’d like, and then, “and it’s okay–Satoru has already taken far too many pictures.”

She laughs then, overspilling from her in a way that is lovely and young and beautiful.

You feel arms wind around you from behind, the smell of tobacco, of plum, and smile when you see Ieri’s manicured fingers fasten themselves around you.

She hooks her chin over your shoulder and smiles at Tsumiki, too.

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” you respond, turning your cheek into hers.

“What do you say, Tsumiki? Should we go dance the night away?” Ieri then says, her smile lazy but genuine and you think, perhaps, she sensed, or knew that Tsumiki was feeling tender.

You find you are grateful for her, not for the first time in your life, but you realize how much and how grandly Ieri has been there.

“I’d like to dance!” Tsumiki says and you smile as Ieri unwinds herself from you.

“I’ll get a glass of wine.” She says, “and then we can hit the dance floor.”

“Do I hear dancing?” Satoru perks up, Megumi caught underneath his arm, kicking and thrashing a little.

“Satoru, put him down,” you tell him.

“Oh, you’re lucky, Megumi, my wife has set you free.” And he sets the boy back down onto his feet, who looks ready to scrap again with the little scowl on his face, but you take hold of his wrist before he can.

“Come on, Megumi, we’re going to dance.” You say to him, tugging lightly and his frown deepens, but he does allow you to pull him towards the dance floor.

No one is dancing because it’s a stuffy room of jujutsu higher ups, sycophants and clan leaders. There is music, but no one is dancing.

“Nanami, you too!” Satoru cries, throwing his arm around the poor young man. Freshly eighteen as well.

“I’m going to need a drink,” he mutters and it makes you laugh, blossoming out of you.

“Where’s Utahime?” Satoru then asks, “let’s get everyone.”

It is a small struggle to grab everyone, but once done, the dance floor welcomes you.

Nanami and Utahime need at least two drinks, before they give in and begin to dance, Nanami bobbing along and Utahime beginning to sway and move. Ieri, you think, has been tipsy this whole time and you don’t blame her. Megumi takes a little bit to drag out of his shell–

But you take his hand and you dance with him, letting him lead you, ducking beneath his arm when he spins you. You bring him out and back in, spin around the room with him until he’s cracking a smile, until you’re laughing, genuinely, with all the love inside of you.

Murmurs spread around you, people gossiping, passing judgment at the group in the center. But Ieri pours wine into your mouth carefully, laughing when some gets on your chin, wiping it away quickly to not fall any further. You and Utahime work to get Nanami to loosen up–you make him dance with you, too, can see the flush of pink high on his cheeks as he looks to Satoru, who only laughs merrily in return.

And suddenly two drinks have turned to four and perhaps people are scandalized.

By young people, being young for once.

By the way the kids are running around, laughing, and screaming. Dancing and singing. You and Satoru let them terrorize the place. Satoru bends down to Megumi and tells him to go steal sweets for him, to go trip that man there, and go ahead and bump into her as well.

They’re mortified by the way Satoru grabs you, curls a broad hand around your waist and pulls you close, sways with you to the upbeat music from the DJ Satoru specifically requested despite everyone’s disapproval.

The night blooms.

Your father tries to convince the DJ to stop. Satoru’s mother is scowling from across the room but–

When you catch your mother’s eye, she is smiling. Nodding her head along subtly.

You pull away from Satoru suddenly.

It was never in your mother’s future, this moment, but you can’t help but feel like you need it now, more than anything. Maybe she needs it more than anything. There’s a questioning look on Satoru’s face, before he sees where you’re already headed off to.

And then your hands are in your mother’s and she’s shaking her head no a little, laughing nervously, but you don’t let her go.

You don’t want to let her go.

“I can’t–” she says to you but you don’t listen, dragging her out to the dance floor.

You know her time is rapidly approaching, quicker than you could’ve ever realized. You’ve blinked and suddenly you are not just a child who knows what will happen to her, but a new adult, on the night of your wedding, not even a year out.

All at once, you realize how rapidly everything has approached. The world turns and you just wish you could still it, place one hand over Time and capture it between your fingers, wrestle it still.

Instead, you spin around the room with your mother. She’s shy and it occurs to you that she probably never got this at her own wedding.

So you give it to her now.

Satoru dances with her. Let's you dance with her until she laughs a little.

And she tells you she loves you. She’s happy for you, if you’re happy.

She still slips from your hands and recedes to the edges again, but she watches you with shining eyes, overjoyed and lovely.

You look at all of your friends as they dance and drink and shout and sing, watch Megumi and Tsumiki, and perhaps at the same time as Satoru, you realize there is one missing.

(Perhaps three, in total, because you wonder about a future with Suguru and the two little girls. Two little girls like Megumi and Tsumiki. You think they should’ve been friends, that it would’ve been nice to have them around–)

You look at Satoru the moment his face falls a little, as his brows pinch into a sort of mourning that you know well.

You slip your hand into his.

“I wish–” he starts.

“I know.” You tell him, “me too.”

He shudders a little, a rocky inhale, a slow exhale like he’s trying to stabilize himself.

Grief lingers in both of you, stitched into your existences, melded down to your marrows.

Perhaps for all gods, it is. Perhaps it is a requirement of godhood.

You squeeze his hand.

You pull him back into life, into your friends, and evermoving Time. The world spins and so do you, late into the night, when everyone has gone home.

When the stars sing and Nanami’s tie has been lost and Shoko’s hair is a mess and there are lipstick smudges on Satoru’s cheeks and the kids are tired.

Megumi is sleeping on two chairs put together and Tsumiki is trying her hardest not to nod off as well.

“I’ll make sure everyone gets home safely,” Utahime promises, a little weary herself, but sober, and still walking. Which is more than the rest can say. And for once, she hugs Satoru and gives him a genuine smile. She tells him she’s happy for him; she’s glad he was able to have fun, at least, on his wedding night. She hugs you, too, and you don’t know Utahime well yet.

But you will, when Satoru becomes a teacher alongside her.

Nanami gently wakes Megumi, eases the drowsy boy into standing alongside his sister. Megumi is tired enough that he lets Nanami hold his hand to usher him out. Tsumiki tucks up next to him, too, and your heart aches watching them.

Ieri kisses your cheek sloppily, and then Satoru’s, who laughs at her antics, who shoos her into Utahime’s waiting arms.

Until they’re parading out and it is just you and Satoru, always just you and Satoru, at the end of a night. At the beginning of a day.

Your shadows cast tall and wide behind you in the last lights of the venue.

He looks at you and smiles and says;

“Let me take you home.”

***

In front of you sprawls your new home.

You have yet to see it in person, until tonight.

Satoru had whined about wanting to surprise you, how it was impossible to do so, since you’d already seen the future.

I’ve already seen the home you will give me, you tell him and you want to tell him, I see it in my dreams. I see it in the softest, most shuddering parts of my heart.

Still, it is hard to put into words what you feel as you gaze at the front door, at the windows that line the place; wide and glittering and will certainly let in enough light to drown the place in it.

“Do you like it?” Satoru prompts, nervous, “the outside, anyways?”

A laugh springs from you, “yes,” you gasp, “of course I do.”

He unlocks the front door then and before you can take another step, you’re suddenly airborne.

You yelp.

“It’s tradition somewhere, isn’t it? To carry you over the threshold of our new home?”

This time your laugh is full and bursting, clutching tight to his neck, the silks of white that drape over your body flutter and twist in his big hands. It hikes up and you can feel the cool brush of night, just before Satoru kicks the door shut behind him.

And then he sets you down and–

You take a few, fawn-like steps, into your new home. It’s open with dark wood but he’s decorated it with soft creams and silky flowers on low tables. It’s surprisingly put together and surprisingly warm.

Homey, almost.

You think it looks nothing like his childhood home of marble and steel and clean, shocking white. Nor yours, brooding and stiff and vacant. It looks comfortable, like you build something here.

It looks painfully, viciously, human.

Your chest tightens. Your vision blurs.

“There’s a garden out back, not quite as big as the one you grew up in but there’s a pond still and–and Tsumiki and Megumi finally have their own rooms upstairs.” Satoru says, watching, enamored, as you move about the space.

It isn’t huge, not long and sprawling, but it isn’t small, either. And for this area, so close to the campus, you know it was no small lump of money.

You have seen yourself here for awhile now, in Satoru’s future, living and sleeping and humming to yourself as you move about the space. You have seen your life here already but now it truly blossoms in your vision.

You turn to him and you realize you’re crying, tears finally brimming over and onto your cheeks. This will be the first time away from your parents, from your garden, from the small world you’d been isolated to all your life.

It will be your first night with Satoru, the first of many, of forever.

“Don’t cry,” he hushes but you can tell, perhaps, that his voice has gotten thicker, tighter with emotion. He takes your face in his great, broad hand and curls it around you protectively. There’s an inkling of possession in the act, the sudden firmness, the way he guides your face up to his.

Then, soft as midnight, dark as the sky, “I always told you I’d take you away, didn’t I?”

You shiver, feel it race up your spine at the edge he has in his voice. Like he was always planning it, like he’d thought about it so often it turned him inside out, like it was an inevitable part of your future.

You nod into the warmth of his hand, nuzzle into the cup of his palm.

“And I have.” He says, “you don’t ever have to see your father again, if you don’t want to. Any of your clan.”

You know you will see your father once more.

Satoru swipes away a tear before it can fully cascade down your cheek.

“Don’t cry,” he says again.

You reach up to slip your fingers, cool and soft, against his cheek, to dip under the fabric of his blindfold. He wore it the whole night, you missed his eyes the whole night.

You let your fingers explore the soft part of his under eye, careful as you feel his lashes tickle, as you creep up towards his brow bone.

The blindfold comes off in a heap.

His eyes are glassy, too, like he may cry.

“I love you,” you say, perhaps for the first time so plainly. It falls from your mouth as easily as stars falling from the sky.

He seems to shudder with it, before he eases forward, brings your face up like a flower seeking sun, and presses tender, little kisses to your cheek.

I love you, too, they seem to say, to scatter like petals, I love you, too. I’ve always loved you.

You turn your face, seeking, and his lips catch yours in a deeper kiss. Slow and warm like honey, ambrosia poured hot down the body of you, feeling it slither deeper. You have rarely been truly alone with Satoru throughout all your years; it didn’t stop you from kissing or touching, if not carefully, if not always with one eye open.

But now there is no one but you two.

And you feel confident in pressing closer, in tangling your hand in his hair, silky and soft between your fingers. You feel his hand flex, before sliding along your hips, pulling you closer still.

A soft nip of your teeth, testing, letting you flex your nails in his shoulder.

You feel his hitch of breath.

Your desire sharpens, digs its claws into you. You’ve always wanted him in some way; wanted him near and to be yours, wanted him weak and strong, wanted him desperate and assured. You have wanted him in the marrow of you, since you were a child. Since the moment he told you that he would always have you.

“‘Toru,” you murmur and your voice is perhaps softer than you’ve ever heard it, higher in a way that is just shy of a whine. You flush with embarrassment. Heat burns your ears, your neck.

For all your own strength, you are always rendered horrendously hopeless for him. It’s like an affliction, some illness you can’t shake, something that has overridden you your whole life.

“What is it?” He hushes back, lips hovering over yours, “what do you need?”

It’s almost mocking, in that sweet, lullaby voice of his.

You seize him, by the hair, by the front of his clothes, “don’t be cruel.”

Your voice wavers, though.

And he huffs out a laugh, reaches one hand up to untangle it from his shirt, soothes until you release the hold on his hair, too. “I’d never be.” He lies and then he ducks his face to the crook of your neck.

You’ve felt him here before, felt him nuzzle and kiss softly, felt the tickle of his hair on your cheek. But now you feel the wet warmth of his mouth, open, tongue soft against your skin. The strike of teeth. You always knew he was holding back with you before; in fact he’d done so deliberately at points.

If you’d crawled over him, he’d pause, and ease you off. His cheeks had always been so pink. He’d had to explain it wasn’t rejection but rather a thread of his control.

Not to be a traditionalist, he’d say, but I’ll only have you when it’ll only be us and all the time in the world.

You wish your technique was time bending, rather than sight. You wish you could manipulate it more than you do now, wish you could manipulate the actual length of it. Freeze it. Hold it.

Rewind it.

You push at him a little and for a moment, he doesn’t relent, and you are reminded of how strong he’s become. Broad and tall. Lean with muscles, grown into himself in a way that you have always known and yet, are still surprised to feel beneath your hands.

Finally, he eases away from you and you step away, slip from him to wander further into the house without a word.

He watches you for a moment, the way he always has, explore the garden, wander around a new place that is yours. His. Each other’s. It’s a strange dance you both know well, this sort of give and take, push and pull where you make him chase. You make him wait. You make him come to heel.

You ease around the banister of the stairs and slowly begin to climb them when he finally moves from his spot. He comes to the side of the stairs and you are only just as tall as him, two steps up, with the railing between you.

Just as he had earlier to you, you put your finger beneath his chin and lift his face, tilt it up into looking at you. Pretty boy that he is, he gazes at you from beneath lashes like snowflakes.

“I want to see the rest of my house,” you say softly.

His smile is fond, if not amused.

“Yours?” He asks.

“Mine.” You agree with a sharp, small smile of your own and his laugh is a welcome sound.

“Everything is yours.” He agrees.

“Mine,” you agree again and this time you kiss him soundly as a reward.

Only briefly though, a lick of heat, before you slip from him and disappear up the stairs. Quicker than before, you take the stairs, as if to run from him.

In the blink of an eye, Satoru shudders to life in front of your vision.

(You know this moment, have cherished the memory in his future before it became a memory at all.)

He catches you before you can get past him and you still yelp in surprise.

Funny, you think, he’s never done that to you before. He usually lets you lead and run and stray from him. He follows dutifully.

“Cheater,” you gasp, looking up at him in surprise.

“I didn’t know there were rules.” He smiles, but you duck out from beneath his hold and he allows you to escape, wandering deeper into the hallway.

You know the first room on your left is Megumi’s. And then Tsumiki’s is on the right. You know they will share the bathroom beside Megumi’s room. And if you go straight down the hallway, at the end of it, will be your bedroom.

So that is the first one you pick, it’s the first door you open.

Dark wood and pale blue. Gold. Cream. The bed is set low into its frame, larger than you even thought they made. There is a balcony attached, draped with curtains of off-white, hiding the night sky from you, hiding the small table and chairs he’s placed out there, that you will spend many mornings and evenings on. The room is–

Perhaps a flex of his money, more than the other places of the house (despite the kid’s room, with all the toys in the world he could ever give them, with more than they know what to do with but Satoru has always been a spoiler, an indulger–)

And you can tell now that he is trying to spoil you.

You turn to face him, just as he comes up behind you, and before he can ask another question, you pull him down into a fierce kiss.

He makes a startled noise against your lips, before you taste the smile at the corners of his mouth, feel it, perhaps it’s smugness. Satisfaction that he’s pleased you.

For a moment, you think you have the lead on him, but he suddenly nudges you backwards. Blindly, you let him lead you, steps tentative and small, but he demands more, and he takes the space that you relent eagerly.

You pull away, to gain your footing, to slip from him again and this time, when you dart away–

You know he will warp in front of you, have seen this moment many times before, so you dance away from him, as if to prove something to him.

He laughs, “cheater.”

The smile you give him over your shoulder makes him follow, trail after you as you wander around the room.

There is an attached bathroom, large and spacious. Luxurious. The tub is deep and wide, overlooking a window of the gardens. It’s beautiful.

When you turn back to face Satoru once more, he’s seated on the edge of the bed. He’s loosened the top several buttons of his shirt. Opened himself up further to you. You keep away, as if to tempt him.

“The bath is huge,” you say.

“Needed to fit both of us.” He says so plainly it takes your breath clear from your lungs. The idea of it, the two of you, bare and in the tub together, force heat down into your face, your neck.

He laughs a little and if his ears are pink, too, who's to say?

“Are you shy about it?” He asks, and then, “are you scared?”

Your fingers twist in the silk white of your kimono, the beading catching against your skin. Carefully, tentatively, you nod.

“Are you?” You ask.

“Not really.” And then, “a little. I want to please you.”

For a heartbeat, you almost ask if it’s his first time, if he’s sure, since he’s not so nervous. But you know his future better than anyone. You know he means it when he says, “I want to–”

He swallows around what could be glass or pride or rationality;

“I want to consume you.”

He laughs but it seems strange, a little off kilter, “I want revenge, with how you make me feel, you know?”

You can feel your chest quicken its cadence, rise and fall sharply, your heart squeezing and pumping as hard as it can inside of you.

“I’m sorry,” he shakes his head, “I don’t mean to scare you more.”

“I don’t believe you.”

His left eye glints when he tilts his head back to regard you.

A God will try to consume me tonight.

A thrill goes through you, vicious and exciting in equal measure.

“I’ll be good to you,” he promises. “I’d never hurt you.”

You hum in acknowledgement, but you don’t promise it back, nor do you fully believe him.

“Come here,” he says and he spreads his legs a little, perhaps subconsciously.

You realize somewhere along the line he’d become a man. And he’s always kept his desires hidden from you previously, or perhaps far from you, almost untouchable. So to be confronted with them now, you feel a little unstable. Wobbly on your feet.

You pull at your wedding garments, silky beneath your fingers, but aren’t brave enough to take it off. You swallow hard. You know if you go to him, you’ll be undone.

“We don’t have to, either, if you don’t want. We’ve never done anything by the book, anyways.” He says and you feel as if he’s peering into you, into the squirming, soft, terrified parts of you.

You realize you know intimacy with violence; you’ve only been able to express your desire for him with tooth and nail. You have never been able to melt or be delicate, but met his affections with violet bruises and tender-pink scrapes.

You have never been able to swallow around gentle love. Or…pleasure.

Shame seeps in at the idea of it, pleasure; your pleasure from him.

I want to please you.

You always assumed when you had him, it would be a sort of claiming, you always saw it as another way to sink your claws into him. Of course, you want him, perhaps more than anything, but you never saw your own pleasure in it. Just, the pleasure of knowing he was yours, all yours.

“No,” you blurt, “I want to. I want you.”

“Then come here,” he says again, slower.

And the way he says it, low and soft, lilting almost, turns you into just a girl. Disarms you so easily you almost sway with it.

Instead, you drop to your knees, easy, and plant your hands on the floor.

The moment you make the first move to crawl to him, he curses softly. You feel your cheeks burn and burn and burn. It isn’t like–

He’s seen you crawl a thousand times before, in the garden, over him and Ieri, roll around in grass and hill. He’s seen you be wild and untempered and free.

But now you willingly follow his command, no less like this. You force yourself to pick your head up, to catch his eyes, to crawl easy and slow to him like you have a thousand times before.

And when you get between his legs, he takes you by the face and kisses you fiercely, with more violence you’ve ever felt from him before.

You rise up to twine your arms around his neck as arms band around your waist and just like that, you are in his lap once more. Just like that, you are kissing a god open mouthed and feeling it burn and twist inside of you.

His hands slip up your sides, greedy in a way he has never allowed himself to be, catching on fabric and folds. He pulls you tighter to him, so you can feel that he’s–

You flush darkly. Moan softly with the realization and then feel the urge to hide in him, in the crook of his shoulder. He doesn’t let you, though, when you try to shy away, holds you still over him. So you have to feel him, so you have to try and keep from panting.

“I had no idea you were so shy,” he breathes, almost laughing when you squirm, “I always saw you as unabashed.”

“I never–” you don’t even know how to say it, and you hate how your voice pitches when you add, “I don’t have any experience with this.”

“Neither do I, really.” He agrees, “but it’s just me.” He cooes, “it’s always been me.”

This time he does allow you to hide in his neck, to duck down into him and let him soothe you with a big hand up and down your flank, your back. You’re near trembling with it and he must realize it, because he adds, “you really are nervous.”

But he isn’t exactly being comforting.

You sink your nails into him, “you’re enjoying this.”

He laughs into your hair, “a little. I’ve never seen you this way before.”

You nip at his throat a little, just the nick of your incisors, and feel him shudder beneath you. You feel his hips flex up into yours and with your legs spread, knees on other sides of his thighs, you can feel him, hot and hard at your center.

You cling to him.

His hands flex around your waist, squeezing gently, before he suddenly urges the soft rock of your hips against his.

It makes you gasp, it makes you terrified.

Again, he moves your hips for you, guiding. Again, it’s startling to feel him, feel and know that there is so little fabric between you two. So little between you; no more clans or parents to stand in your way.

He kisses you again, hard but sweet, still guiding you, moving your hips back and forth over him. Back and forth, until–

A moan startles out of you and this time, you feel yourself twitch your hips into him on your own accord.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, “do what feels good. Doesn’t it feel good?”

Another rock of your own hips, another push of his own and you nod, hovering above him slightly, lips parted over his.

Then, you don’t need his hands at all, don’t need them to guide you at all. So he lets you learn and explore, lets his own hands wander over places he previously never allowed himself. He lets himself touch you in a way you have never felt; there is a sudden urgency to him now.

You arch your back a little, encouraging, allowing, and his hands ease up onto your chest, all warmth from his palms seeping into you. It’s a surprise, almost, the heat of him, the way you fill his hands.

He groans behind his teeth, squeezes lightly, as if afraid to hurt you and then bolder, harder.

Your breath hitches when his thumb catches on the peaks of your breasts from over the fabric. So he does it again, firmer, and again, until you’re keening softly. Until you’re bucking a little more involuntarily against him.

He suddenly pulls at the silk ribbon wrapped delicately around your waist, twists it around a hand until you feel the knot come away, feel the fabric give the way your stomach does, dropping slightly.

You fist your hands in his shirt again, perhaps afraid.

“Easy,” he murmurs, holding the front of your kimono closed still, if only for you, if only to give you a moment to adjust. The silk in his hands looks small, smaller than all of it swathed around you, drowning you in its starlight.

When you’ve lessened your grip on him, he opens you up to him, painstakingly slow, bares you to him, pulls it down enough to pool at your waist.

You feel the urge to hide again, to sink your nails into his skin, to fuss under his gaze.

But then his bare palms are on your skin, warm hands, solid, real, burning hands that scorch up your torso to cup your breasts again.

He watches your face now, lips parted, as his thumb sweeps over your nipples again, watches the way your features twist up. The feeling turns lightning hot, burns itself down to the wick inside of you, pooling low in your core.

And Satoru is–enchanted. Enamored. Eyes a little rounded, hands eager.

Without warning, he suddenly dips forward, lips parted, and fastens himself to the bud of your breast.

Your hand disappears into his hair, shocked, fiending for an anchor and he groans against you when you tighten your hand into a fist. You pull, but it only encourages him, tongue laving over you, pink darting out against your flesh.

You think he’s thought of this before, thought about doing this to you, wanted it for awhile now. You think it’s going to unravel you, as he drags his lips over to your other breast, as he latches on there, too.

You can’t help but squirm in his embrace, pushing your hips into his, before arching your back into his seeking mouth. You can’t decide what you’d rather have, don’t think it matters because he’s the one in control now, holding you to his mouth, ducked down to your chest.

You feel the graze of teeth. The sudden littering of kisses, nips. When his eyes flick back up to your face, he looks a little dazed, eyes all blue haze, glassy.

He suddenly lays back, onto his elbows, hands falling back to your hips and you feel them squeeze, feel them guide you again.

And he just watches a moment, with you on top of him, half bare, wedding silks petaled and pushed to your lower waist. His cheeks are flushed, lips stung pink, lashes fluttering as he watches you.

He curses under his breath.

You don’t think you’ve ever heard him curse this much before.

“Angel,” he says, unbridled, from some deeper part of him, in a tone of voice that makes you flush. “Angel,” he says again, softer, more loving, breaking open on his lips like ripe fruit, “look at you, angel.”

You tip forward, unable to keep from him, unable to remain up and so bare. So you press yourself to his chest, press your lips to his frantically, desperately seeking his solace, whatever comfort he’ll give you. Hide your bare chest to his, feel him hum against your lips, big hands all over your lower back, dipping lower still.

“Lift your hips for me,” he says against you, rewards you by peppering kisses across your cheek, the corner of your mouth, your jaw, when you listen to him. He eases more of the fabric off of you, until his hands are running against pale lace, thumbing along the waist band of your panties.

You shiver with more skin exposed, with your kimono gone.

You pull at his own clothes desperately, if uncoordinated, just grabbing and fisting. You feel his laugh, taste it against your mouth, more than you even hear it. And his hands finally come up to help you, to ease off buttons, pull the fabric of his own out of the way until you can feel his bare chest. His bare arms. Muscled beneath soft skin. He’s so—

Sometimes you wonder, when he got so large. When did he become so strong? He was once so lanky.

You keep pulling, until his entire torso is exposed to you, until you’re perched on his lap with your hands on his bare stomach.

The dipping of his hips, the sculpted lines, draw your interest, eyes cast down as you finally take him in, too.

You inhale slow, grow brave enough to let your fingers brush against the button of his pants.

“Go on,” he urges, watching you raptly. Eyes darting between your face and your nimble fingers.

You swallow hard and carefully pull the button through. Let it pop open easily with the tension there, can feel the heat of him, the hardness. Before you can falter, you take the zipper in hand and tug gently as well, until it reveals the dark briefs and—

The outline of him.

You look back up to him, perhaps for guidance, perhaps to gauge his own reaction, and he must sense your sudden uncertainty.

“C’mere,” he soothes, bringing you to him in another kiss, heated and slow and deep. Tongue dipping against yours, licking softly into you until you’re distracted.

Too distracted to notice where his hands are going, until you’re suddenly rolled onto your back, underneath him.

He slots his waist against yours. You can feel him more clearly through his briefs now, can feel the way he twitches as he pushes all tight up against you.

When he breaks from this kiss, it’s messier, spit dewy and wet between you. And his mouth eagerly trails down your jaw, sloppy kisses, and drags of his tongue down your throat, back to your chest.

He lingers here again, suckling, humming against you contently. Your hands sink back into his hair, moan bursting from you sweetly when he flicks his tongue just so. His eyes light up with the sound, working over the bud again and again, making your hips arch and ache.

He makes you sore with his own inexperience and eagerness, makes you fuss, until he relents and heads—

Lower.

“Satoru,” you call and the anxiety that picks up your voice doesn’t even make him pause. As if he’s expecting it.

His lips trail over your stomach, scattering wet little kisses.

You tug at his hair, trying to urge him back up, but he doesn’t listen.

He sidles down lower, manhandles you open so he can hook your legs over his shoulder. You try to shut your thighs but he easily keeps you parted, like you’re hardly trying at all.

“Satoru,” you say again, in warning, voice trembling, “don’t—please—“

He arches a brow, considers you, before completely disregarding you.

You make a noise of irritation.

“Stop being so shy,” he coos, “this is how I want you—this is—“

He glances down between your legs with a reverence that makes you hide your face in your hands, “this is what I’ve dreamt about.”

He sets his lips to your inner thigh.

“You’re so embarrassing!” You gasp between your fingers.

He laughs and you can feel it, against the crux of your leg, so close to where you’re aching and hot and— “I haven’t even done anything yet.”

He dots warm, open mouthed kisses to your skin, up and down your thighs. The sharp press of his teeth make you jump and squirm away from his hold, but he keeps you still and near.

He takes his time, too much of it, as you begin to fuss again. You cry out to him, pull at his hair meanly, and all he does is muffle his laugh against you again.

“I’m being cruel, aren’t I?” He says.

You don’t know where he’s gotten his confidence, but it makes you want to hide or scream or drag your nails across his skin until it comes away torn and tattered.

You think it’s something he’s always been rather content with, eager for, brave around—you. Your touch. Touching you.

As if to say, since I am touchable to you, I will ruin you for any other touch. As if to say, well if I am not allowed to hide from you, you are certainly not allowed to hide from me.

You nod your head, bleary eyed.

“Okay,” he hushes, “okay.”

The sudden hot press of his mouth to your core, through the pale blue panties, makes you gasp all strangled and tight.

“Satoru—“ you whimper in embarrassment, and you want to close your legs and just disappear. You want to twist away from him and hide.

He hums against you, low and soft, and you can feel him mouthing and kissing over the fabric, where you’re most sensitive.

He hooks a finger in the waistband of them and pulls, tugs gently and this time you really do sit up and try to get away from him.

“Calm down,” he says and there’s still an insufferably handsome smile at the corner of his lips, “it feels good, doesn’t it?”

“It’s so—“

Vulnerable, terrifying, horrible.

As if he can read your mind, as if he knows this moment the way you do, “what are you scared of?”

You swallow and look down at him and he peers back up at you, eyes all heaven blue, a little lovestruck, a little too hungry.

You can’t even form the words, shaking your head a little, hands coming up to hide your face again.

“Ah, come on now,” he muses and he sits up with you now, too. He pulls your hands away from your face and holds them in his, trapping them so you can’t run from him. “Tell me.”

“Being bare.” You manage to get out, “being so—“

“Open to me?” He asks, “it’s a horrible feeling, isn’t it?”

You realize he means that you have always been able to see every aspect of him; every aspect of his future and past and know it and have it and claim it. You know perhaps more about himself than he does at points.

And maybe that’s all intimacy is, is knowing someone, very horribly, in ways that they may never know themselves.

You don’t know yourself like this, desire-driven, flayed open, a live wire of sensitive nerves and squishy, soft terror. You don’t know and won’t know what he sees or feels or tastes, you don’t know what he thinks.

In the same way that he has never known what you see or feel, what you tasted when you bit down on his future, what you think or know.

I want revenge.

There’s a certain delight in his eyes, when he says, “I think you’ve gotten away with being very guarded for a long time. And I won’t have you guarded with me anymore.”

You try to move your hands, take them back, or maybe suddenly cling to him and beg and simper and remain guarded. You want to try and manipulate him, you realize sharply, so that he’ll do this your way.

But he holds fast.

“Lay back down,”

“Satoru—“

“I’ll only ask once more.”

Tentatively, you lay back onto your elbows and he allows your hands to slip from his because you’ve obeyed him.

You feel strange, experiencing this moment where you had previously only seen in the future, skipped over it almost, out of—

Shyness.

He settles back down into the crux of your hips and this time, when he pulls the sweet, lace panties from your hips, all you do is let out a shuddering breath. Defeat, maybe, or anticipation, you can’t tell.

His hand comes up, soothing, giving you the smallest comfort, before you feel his thumb, as careful as ever—

Slipping through ribbons of silky flesh, slick with desire, so sensitive that you squeeze your eyes shut.

He makes a soft noise, intrigue or affection, and adds a little more pressure.

“How do you touch yourself?” He asks and when you chance a glance down to him, you feel as if you’ll shake apart.

His eyes are so dark and lust-blown, pools of blue ink.

“I don’t know—“ you gasp.

His eyebrows quirk upwards in surprise, “you don’t know?”

“Satoru—“ It comes out as a warning.

Don’t tease, don’t be mean, don’t be cruel.

“Don’t you touch yourself?” He asks and he glances back down to the way his thumb moves through you slowly, up and down, easy, with its slick glide.

In truth, not often. Or much at all. You explored, a little, you know, technically.

But you just—neglected yourself. Your desire. You thought, in the scheme of things, there was so much more to worry about than pleasure.

You don’t know when, but you became shy of your own body unless it was pain, unless it bloomed to bruise or fit to bleed or made you cry. You thought it strange to chase pleasure, especially at your own hands.

Did you even deserve it?

“Not really—“ you get out.

“You know what sex is, don’t you?” He teases and this time you flick his ear and make him laugh, warm and blossoming into the skin of your thigh.

“I just didn’t—I don’t know!” You snap and now he sees that he’s pushing you perhaps a little too far because he softens.

“Alright,” he says, “then we’ll find out.” And then his eyes catch yours, glittering in low light, “but you have to tell me what feels good. Can’t get shy on me.”

And then as gently as possible, you feel his thumb press fractionally inside you. His hands and fingers are bigger than yours so the sensation is strange and a little startling.

You gasp.

He draws out, then gently back in. His eyes fixed on where your body swallows around his finger.

Again, he repeats it and this time, pushes a little deeper.

To feel someone inside you is horribly vulnerable. Especially with his gaze fixed so squarely on where you’ve hardly seen yourself—

You always understood that this opening was a little unreachable. Even to yourself.

It’s why we keep our children there, isn’t it?

So as the feeling blossoms and Satoru murmurs softly to you, you find your hips twitching a little towards him.

“There,” he coos, “does it feel good?”

You nod, soft, small, and are rewarded by getting more of him. You throb, can feel it, the little pulse in your body and catch the cry that threatens to burst out of your throat behind your teeth. Trap it. You’re still scared to let it out or to give into pleasure.

His thumb disappears to run outside of you again and you think he’s being a little indulgent now. He’s exploring, gently, watching, fixated.

Until he finds the bundle of nerves that makes you jolt.

He laughs a little, “right there?”

“Yes,” you breathe, chest tight, knowing this is where, of any place you’ve felt pleasure, it was from here. And you know, technically, what he’s found and what he wants with how he sets his attention there now.

Your body tenses but you don’t know—

When he dips forward to lave his tongue gently over your folds, you finally let go of that cry.

You aren’t expecting it, can hardly process the wet heat of his mouth, as he makes another noise, low and needy and presses his mouth to you again.

Again, his tongue rolls out, and then he kisses, and then he’s open mouthed again and he’s experimenting. Tasting. Testing. And you’re just forced to bear it, your desire and his, in the small space between your legs.

You can tell he’s inexperienced, if not infinitely earnest and enthusiastic. And perhaps with your own inexperience and sensitivity, it makes it all worse. Or better. It feels—

You tangle a hand in his hair again and he groans against you when you pull on silver strands. You can feel the sound in your core and you tremble with it, shudder.

His mouth is slick and shining and pink.

He looks a little wrecked, a little uncertain and wobbly finally, too.

“So good,” he murmurs, almost to himself, “you’re so good. Better than I imagined. How does it feel?”

You whine a little, throwing your free arm over your eyes as you flop back onto the bed and he makes a displeased sound. You’re trying to hide from him. And he won’t stand for it, just like you never stood for it with him.

“Use your words for me, angel.” He torments, he just about sings in that stupid, lovely voice of his.

“It—“ you get out, “it feels good.”

And then his mouth is back on you, bolder, a flash of wet tongue opening against you, messily devouring you as a reward. His eyes go soft lidded, desire-filled, all hazy newfound lust.

You realize, dazedly, that his hips are pressing into the mattress, his own desire on a tight leash.

“It feels good—“ your voice pitches, hips arching up into his grasp as everything turns molten and—and—

Good.

It feels so good, you realize with a jolt, this strange heat.

Like nothing you’ve ever felt before.

You feel his finger then, easy and slow, dip back inside you. Feel yourself cling to it. You can feel the way his tongue comes back up to that bundle of nerves to lick broad and slow over it.

Sloppy, but determined, eyes pitching back up to watch your face contort.

You’re a fragile thing in his hands, you realize, teetering towards a precipice that frightens you, but that you know will—

It’ll feel good.

“Toru—“ kitten soft, pulling fitfully at his hair, “I’m going to—“ you can’t even say it, can’t get the word to form in your mouth because it feels so strange there, but he groans against you and pushes a little deeper, gets a little more firm with you.

Your breath gets caught in the tangle of your throat, all knotted up, and the pleasure crashes on you swiftly and firmly. Takes you in it’s jaws and makes you squirm and cry out, whimpering as you feel—

You can feel the pulsing in your core against his eager mouth, feel the way it tightens and sucks at his finger.

You try to shut your legs again, involuntarily, and he keeps you open.

Forces you open.

It is a horrible feeling.

Even worse when he’s being—lewd, licking broad stripes, letting translucent spit and, and—

Your desire drip and fall from his shining mouth.

You whimper, try to squirm away from him now as your pleasure gains a sharp edge and a vicious side to it. He must finally take enough pity on you or come out of his own haze, to notice, and finally draw away.

And he looks at your face, perhaps disheveled, perhaps a little hazy in your own way, seeking and lost and desperate and he smiles.

“Look at you,” he murmurs, coming up the length of your body, pressing his lips against yours before you can even think about it. Doubt it. Fret about it. You taste yourself on his mouth and it makes your heart trip up over itself, messy kiss that it is, it makes you shy again. But he doesn’t allow you to be. Still, you duck your face into his throat, peppering kisses there, nuzzling up against him, desperate for his affection suddenly. To be praised and stroked and adored. “So sweet when I strip you bare.”

As if to counter him, you sink your teeth into his neck, and he laughs against your temple.

You feel a little braver now or perhaps, needier, because you wrap your legs around his waist. Fix yourselves together like you were always meant to be, let him feel you, bare and warm and sticky, through the last bit of his clothes.

He moans, a little shamelessly, and presses his hips into yours even more.

And since he’s been so desperate for your desires, you murmur, “want you–I want you.”

You can feel his chest heave a little with it, the weight, the sound of your voice against his ear.

“How do you want me?” He murmurs back, though, as if to make it worse. “How did you think of this night?”

In truth, you’ve always known it. So you know, when you twine your arms around his neck and hitch your legs a little higher on his waist, it will be just like this.

Belly up and vulnerable, pliant on your back for him, for once in all your life.

“Like this,” you murmur, pulling him in tighter, little vice grip that you’ve got, “just like this.”

“Okay,” he breathes, maybe at the desperation in your voice, the sort of raw honesty that could break him apart, break him open. “Okay.” He says again, as if he could ever truly deny you.

There’s some fumbling then, to get the rest of his clothes off, to reveal milky skin and the corded muscles of his thighs, his–

Your hands, uncertain, but desperate to please him, wrap delicately around his cock.

He shudders a little, surprised, but hips push into your hand eagerly.

He’s longer than you expected, but smooth in your palm, hot to the touch.

“Getting brave?” He asks but you kiss at his jaw, his throat.

“I want you to–” you unstick the words from your mouth, syrupy, and earnest, “I want you to feel good, too.”

He makes a strangled noise, lets his head drop against your shoulder.

“Listen,” he murmurs, “I’m not–” he laughs a little, trembling when you squeeze around him, when you fumble and stroke him. “I’m not going to last long.”

And this time, you laugh, and it shakes some of your fear off of you, opens you even further to him somehow.

“That’s okay,” you sigh, wiggling your hips, suddenly eager to know he wants you this badly. You guide him until he’s found the heat of you, slippery and soft. “We have all night.”

You can taste his smile, taste the groan, and can imagine the way his brows pinch together in pleasure.

“We have our whole lives.” You tell him when he pulls away from the kiss.

“I have so much I want to do with you,” he says and though it makes you flush deeply, it also feels as if he’s saying–in life, I have so much I want to do with you.

I have so much of you, and so much of life, and I want them both. I want it all.

He takes himself in hand, lets your own hands fall away, slips himself, back and forth, between your legs. His face slackens a little, blissed out, and a higher noise gets pulled from him.

“I’m really not gonna last long, angel.” He says again even as you let your head fall back, laughing, and his lips immediately follow to your throat.

You buck your hips a little and the head of him catches and it makes you both freeze.

You seize up.

“Satoru–” you get out, nervous again, seeking, but this time he doesn’t deny you.

“I know,” he hushes, “I know–you’re so tight. Just breathe.”

You suck in a sharp breath as you feel his hips flex, feel the way you part around the tip of him, muscles so foreign, now being stretched, fitting snug around the shape of him.

Your walls flutter.

“Relax,” he breathes, and it’s almost a hiss against your lips, and you don’t think it’s for you this time, but for himself.

You try to breathe, though, in through your nose, try to loosen your legs a little around him enough to let himself press a little deeper. A hiccuped breath.

Satoru kisses you hard, perhaps as a distraction, as you squeeze around him. As you feel the real burn and stretch of him, feel the way it carves inside of you and–

Tears prick your eyes. You don’t know how anyone does this easily or without someone like Satoru to you. Someone to call your own, who calls you his. Always has.

He presses all the way into the hilt of him and you swear you can feel him in your stomach, feel your muscles clench and throb around him in painful little squeezes. He pulls away from your lips to let you breathe, to let his forehead drop to yours, his hair tickling against your cheeks.

You whimper and he immediately coos at the sound, instinctive, as he’s done his whole life for you. You realize, perhaps dumbly, that this position is a familiar one in the sense that you bury yourself in the crooks of his body, cling to him like a child, and cry. And he has always soothed you.

And right now seems, in many ways, no different.

“Wrap your arms around me,” he murmurs and you wind yourself around his neck, wind yourself tight so that he might never untangle you. So that you might choke him.

And then he lifts you, sits back, and settles you gingerly in his lap.

You’re stretched wide over him, holding yourself up desperately, and he’s aiding, hands at your waist.

But then, gently, he lets you slip down.

You hiss, but then find the back of your legs kissing his thighs, sitting snug.

“There,” he conjoles, letting you sit with him deep, deep inside you. Still. He kisses at your tear-stained cheeks, wet and soft, “that’s it. Just sit still for a moment.”

You feel his tongue against your jaw, your throat, the flint strike of his teeth, of pain. You whimper into his shoulder and he continues to hush you, calm you, pull you closer so that he can run a broad hand over your sides, over your back.

He pets through your hair, carefully, pushing it from your face to see your tears. The way you sniffle. He forces you to peer down your nose at him, lashes fluttering.

You nuzzle into his cheek now, scattering wet, little kisses along his skin. He hums and you feel him twitch inside of you, feel the way his hands flex on your waist.

“So sweet now, aren’t you? Usually so mean, suddenly so good for me.” He says against your jaw, “just falls apart in my arms, don’t you?”

“Stop,” you mutter, pushing your face back into his neck to hide.

“You just melt with my cock inside of you, huh? Is that it?” His voice goes soft and low and–

This time, you bury your nails in his shoulders. “Satoru!”

But he can feel you flutter around him and he can feel the way your breath catches against his throat.

“Why don’t you try moving, angel?” He coaxes, “just like earlier.”

You shake your head, if only to spite him, so he begins to kiss you again. Hands dipping over your skin, moving up to your chest once more where he cups and squeezes. You can feel him again, deep inside you, throbbing. So desperate himself, held back by his own control.

And then his mouth is again dipping down, to the peak of your breast, and he groans when he latches onto your nipple again.

If you were braver, you’d have half a mind to comment on how he needs to keep his mouth busy.

But for now, it only makes you loosen up finally, warmth a slow roll in the depths of you.

You can feel yourself, dripping over him, rooted so deeply inside of you. It’s horrible but it’s–

It feels good, you tell yourself again, it feels good.

Through the haze of the initial pain, there is pleasure that blooms.

Your hips rock towards his, keeping him buried to the hilt, but you watch as his lashes flutter against your skin, cheeks hollowing with a suck that makes you keen and it’s–

It’s like lightning.

You move again, squirm in his lap, until he pulls off your chest with a ragged groan, disheveled and half out of his mind. His hands help your hips, guide you slow, up and down over him until you’re dropping them all on your own.

And he’s half mad with it, letting his head fall back, letting his hands grab and squeeze greedily. Greedy.

Gods are greedy. And they will devour you.

You moan, clutching at his hair, his shoulders, feeling yourself become something else entirely–someone else entirely.

New being, new creature born out of something more than your pain, and the guilt, and the violence. New god, with the roll of your hips, and the way you feel him in the depths of you, all around you.

Satoru suddenly pushes you back again, so you’re belly up once more, finally sets his own pace and it’s a little more desperate. Teeth sink hard into your neck, capture you, make a high noise come out of you that you haven’t quite heard before.

He grabs at you, pulls your hips up, hits somewhere deeper that makes you yelp. It makes tears well again and he can’t help himself anymore, hips beginning to stutter, lose their rhythm.

When you tip your head back, he suddenly grabs your face, bringing you back to face him.

“Say it for more,” he gets out, voice wrecked and cracking at the end and–

Of course you know.

“You will always have me,” you tell him, against his lips, spit slick and the whine caught in his throat.

“You will always have me,” he promises.

You sink your nails into his shoulder as if to emphasize your next words, feel him keen now, “I will always have you.”

And he gives you a harder thrust, as if to retaliate, just to feel you whimper, just to feel you cling to him. Settles himself deep inside of you, almost cruelly, as he gets out, his voice darker than you’ve ever heard it before;

“I will always have you.”

Your cry is almost strangled, a hiccup of it, as you pulse and shatter around him like you were always meant to.

He can’t help himself then, can’t help the bitten off groan that’s turned half into a whine, or the way he keeps himself buried, snuggly inside of you, as he fills you with warmth.

It’s more soothing than you thought it’d be, the feeling of him like this.

He leans heavier into you, mouths at your chest again, gentler now, more content.

And he tips his head up, so you can see the catch of his starlight eyes, and he murmurs, “I love you. More than you’ll ever understand, I think. In a way I can’t even properly express.”

But you sift your hands through his hair and look down at the man you’ve known all your life and think, I changed all of time for you.

You smile softly, watery, and he leans up to clear your tears away again. And again. Like he always has.

I did everything for you, you think.

Then you say, gently, and you think your voice has a newer quality to it, more honeyed–it almost sounds familiar to your own ears;

“I think I understand more than you’d know.”

And he laughs a little, but it’s off kilter all over again, and he’s kissing you and you swear you’ll let him devour you in every way he likes, for the rest of your life.

You realize it isn’t so bad– to be devoured by a God.

***

Your life has transformed before your eyes.

At once, it was an endless cycle of your childhood home; your father’s violence and your mother’s scurrying and you, somewhere between them. You, some horrible form of both.

But now you live with Satoru and Megumi and Tsumiki. And Ieri visits and Nanami pretends he doesn’t want to visit, but does, and Utahime brings flowers.

Satoru and her become teachers together.

And you walk Megumi and Tsumiki to school and walk them back home, too. You watch the sun in the sky and you think about trying to preserve this time forever. You think about trying to get the sun to stop. Or to swallow it whole.

You fall into bed with Satoru, (in countless ways, over and over, like you’ve discovered a new world together, another part of yourself, of him, that yawns open inside of you), and miss him tremendously when he’s away.

Megumi, as if he knows, always seems to ask for movie nights when Satoru’s gone, or perhaps he just misses him, too. You think Megumi struggles more than Tsumiki or Tsumiki is better at hiding it. You can only imagine, with what they’ve been through, how they’re doing. Their life has been unstable, uprooted, and now they finally have a home. A place that they will reside for longer than a few weeks, a few months, a few years. You know it might be hard, though, and you know they’ll struggle. You and Satoru watch them closely, perhaps too closely.

“How do you think they’re doing?” You ask Satoru one night after putting them in bed, as you begin to strip your clothes of the day. Immediately, you feel Satoru’s hands sliding along your stomach, eagerly pulling you pack into his chest. He’s warm, his hands, his body.

“I think Tsumiki is doing alright. Megumi is…” He trails off but you understand, “I don’t think he’s doing as well.”

“He struggles with change.” You respond, “but I think it will be good for him, to finally have a stable home.”

Satoru looks at you for a moment in his arms, against his chest, his eyes softened, before he says, “I never thanked you, you know.”

“For what?” You ask, turning your face to find his eyes.

“For taking them in, without a second thought.”

“I’ve always known them, Satoru.” You tell him, “I’ve always known that we’d–”

He nods like he knows, but he still says, “it’s a lot to ask of you.”

“It’s not a lot to ask to love them.” You tell him, “it’s hard not to.”

“I know,” he agrees and he swallows around something. And then he asks, “you wouldn’t let anything happen to them, would you?”

You tilt your head and hear the real question in his words, the way he trembles with it.

“Never.” You agree.

“Even over me?” He insists, “I want you to pick them–over me.”

You think Satoru has always known more than he tends to let on.

You swallow hard. You don’t even want to think of it, don’t want to think about–

“I won’t have to.” You tell him softly, shaking your head as if to clear your mind of the memory, the version of this life where you have to pick. But you’ve been so careful and you’ve played it all so well, so perfectly that there’s no way now. Is there?

You have the urge to suddenly reach for your necklace, swing the pendant in front of your gaze and tear through time, just to be sure.

“Say you did,” he murmurs, “I want you to–I want you to say you’d pick them.”

“Okay,” you say, if only to get him to leave it, let it drop from you. You want to forget. You want to shake your head, harder, until it all rattles out of you.

“No,” Satoru says softly, holding you to him before you can dart away, “I need to hear you say it.”

Something inside of you squirms.

You glance upwards to find the mirror hanging across the room as decoration, catch the way he’s holding you, the look in his eyes. His reflection looks strange to you now, towering, darker than ever before.

He fastens himself tighter to you, “I know that you’ve put me before everyone until now.” He says softly, “that between me or Suguru, it would always be me. If it came down to it, I think you would let everyone burn, so long as it saved me. I know it’s–”

He stops himself.

And then he says, “but it can’t be for them. Do you understand?”

You can feel tears welling in your eyes.

“So just say it for me now,” he soothes, “promise me, you’ll put them first.”

You feel as if two intrinsic things inside of you stretch and pull, struggle with one another. The urge to do as he asks, or the urge to finally, after everything, put others before him, when there’d been no one else.

Both feel counterintuitive. Confusing. Your head begins to throb and if you didn’t know better, you’d think–it almost tastes like cursed energy, the air tangy with it, sharp.

Satoru turns you towards him and he takes your chin in between his fingers delicately and forces you to look up at him. “Promise me,” he murmurs.

You swallow around the hard lump forming in your throat. You don’t know why you’re crying. It’s not as if–

It’s not as if you don’t love Megumi or Tsumiki.

It’s just–you’ve only ever known Satoru, in the deepest, most ruthless, most tender parts of you.

“I promise,” you whisper, “I promise to put Megumi and Tsumiki before you.”

“No matter what–” He urges. And even though it burns and aches, sticks like thorns in your throat, Satoru Gojo makes you give him your second binding vow;

“No matter what.” You choke out, “no matter what.”

***

The day your mother dies, you spend the morning holding Tsumiki. She’d had a nightmare. She said she used to always sleep with her mother when she had this dream and now she is in your bed. And you are holding her the way your mother used to hold you when you had visions.

Satoru has gone away on a mission. Your bed had been empty until she’d filled it.

You try not to cry or let her know you’re crying, but you lay in bed with her beside you and you think of your own mother.

And this was–the fixed point. The one you could never fix. In countless versions, you tried to stop this day, and in all, you failed.

You wonder then, if there are moments that are so certain, no one can touch. Not you, not fate, not a thing.

You think the inception of you created her death, in the way that you are forcing it to create your father’s.

If there is anyone truly damned, you think it must be your mother.

You wonder if Tsumiki will think the same of you one day. If Megumi will look at you and realize, at some point, you were never going to be anything other than damned.

After you walk the kids to school, you return to your childhood home.

You stand outside its doors and know what will meet you beyond them. For a moment, you feel like screaming, screaming bloody and howling, wailing in the streets, crying out to the heavens. You think about what is on the other side of that door and you wish you’d never seen it all. Out of all the lives you’d peered into, you wish your mother was not one of them. You wish you had no idea what will meet you or what you will do.

You think of Suguru suddenly, if he stood outside his parents door and knew, too, that he brought death. That the creation of him, brought the death of them.

You suddenly miss him so sharply and keenly that you want to run to him. You wonder if he would open his arms to you now, or if it’s all over, so torn to shreds that there is not anything he could want from you anymore. Perhaps not anything but your divinity.

You stand outside their door like a reaper.

You know you have to enter. And that time will not stop, you can never force it still.

You inhale.

You push open doors that have never felt heavier.

The bloody tilt of your mother’s head makes you feel like a child again, terrified all over, and sick to your stomach. She is still alive now, gasping, and shaking.

When she finds your eyes, she is almost relieved to see you, like you were the only and last thing she could’ve ever wanted to see.

You feel something inside of you, already splitting, come away from its seams.

“Mom,” you say, like you’re a child again, crawling to her on bloody floors.

Still, she reaches her hand out to touch your cheek, as if she may comfort you. Even during death, she tries to comfort you. You choke hard on the sob working its way out of you.

“You s-shouldn’t be here,” she whispers, mouth cut open with blood. “You need to–”

She’s trying to save you from your father.

But you couldn’t leave her like this, couldn’t leave her to die alone.

You shake your head, cupping her palm to your face, keeping it there, “it’s okay, mom. I’ll be okay.”

And I want you to be okay, you want to say, I want you to live longer. I want to have you for longer. You feel the tears rush hard and hot down your face.

At least you had longer than Tsumiki or Megumi. At least you had her this long.

But for all your power, for everything that could’ve happened, you just couldn’t. Save. Her.

You’ve known from the first moment you opened a gold bled eye.

“I love you,” your mother gets out, as clearly as she can, as if she needs you to know, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” you whisper, squeezing tighter to her hand.

You can hear your father’s footsteps, somewhere down the hall. As if you’ve heard them a thousand times and for this final time.

“You are the best thing i-in my life. Always.” Her voice is hoarse, it looks like it hurts her, to get the words out, but for you, always for you, she does, “always.”

Your mind burns and blurs and there are a thousand things you wish you could say to her now. A life that you wish you could unwind and reverse, a life you wish you could’ve saved, a child you wish you could’ve been.

Your father opens the door to the living room for the final time.

And when he sees you, it’s as if he knows now, too, that it is the time.

He doesn’t tell you he loves you, when you kill him, he doesn’t say a word, when you are covered in his blood, too.

(You gut him, the way Zeus did to Kronos, and crawl back to your mother, bloodied.)

And all you can think to do is press up against her, like you are a child again in the home you grew up in. To be held by her for the last time of your entire life.

You don’t know how long you stay like that, only that at some point, the sun is setting, and smolders bronze, casts all the world in a fiery glow.

And eventually, your husband lifts you, bloody and silent, from your mother’s arms, to carry you out of that house for the final time.

You watch, quiet as the dead, in his arms, as it slowly rises to flames.

(When the higher ups of the sorcery world investigate, they will say your father killed your mother, and then himself, by burning the place down. They will say he couldn’t handle your disgrace, that he was never well, anyways. He was a haunted man.)

And the garden you grew up in burns and the house you called a home cracks beneath hungry flame. Your father’s body burns away and releases you and your mother’s body falling to ash makes you want to tear out your own heart.

It all burns and you watch, silent, knowing that your mother or father will never turn to curses now, they will never haunt you or hunt you again, knowing that you are the last curse left of that house.

And it will be a long, long time until you are burned with them, too. No, now you are born anew, born again, covered once more in your mother's blood. You do not scream this time. The fire burns hot and bright in your vision.

Gods are very lonely, you think again, and you watch your childhood go up in flames.

***

Masterlist | <- Chapter Two: Anything, Everything | Satoru's Interlude: Bigger God ->

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