#I feel like Yuuji’s domain might have been a way to get Sukuna locked in one place for the prison realm to have its minute

[cherrywoes]

dark sun. (ryoumen sukuna x fem!reader x oc)

xiv. boketto.

— the act of gazing vacantly into the distance without thinking.

You came back into your body with a quiet crackling of the air around you. You could feel the way you acclimated back to your own body, having been pulled from it without Shion to occupy it while you were gone. You were stationary, your fingers still gently pressed to Yuuji’s forehead, and it took you a few moments of blurry vision and confused thoughts for you to realize the boy was very much awake and staring at you with a wide, surprised gaze. You lowered your hand from his face cautiously, wary of earning some sort of lash back for invading his mind, but all he did was look at you with slow, even blinks to convey his mental game of confusion.

“Um… What’s going on here?” He questioned, eyes flicking from you to Gojo and back again, as if his teacher had an answer for what you had just done. He watched you reach up and gently touch the baby at your chest, frowning for a moment. “Shiraishi-s...san?”

“I apologize for invading your mind without permission.” You smiled and bowed your head, trying to resist the way Shion was attempting to work your connection back. It seemed he was struggling more than usual and it was causing your chest to twist and ache unpleasantly; likely a result of his leftover anger. He was still likely angry, you knew, but he couldn’t resist staying away from you for too long. At least an hour was his record, at least, you believed it was an hour—you couldn’t be sure when domains worked differently in terms of time. It was probably longer, you supposed, but you couldn’t stand around and wait to see how long it would take him to establish that connection. “And I also apologize for… hurting you, before. You must know I didn’t mean it, Itadori-san.”

He looked more befuddled than before, eyebrows shooting upwards in surprise. You wondered if Sukuna was talking to him somehow, telling him to befriend you—or something along those lines. “Oh, uh… Yeah. The god in your body did it, right? Not you? So, consider it water under the bridge, I guess.”

You couldn’t blame him for his hesitance. He was, after all, a vessel, the same as you, and he knew as well as you did that sometimes the actions of vessel and curse aligned at times. You weren’t sure about Sukuna in Yuuji’s case, but Shion’s actions aligned with your beliefs and wants perfectly. He didn’t doubt you for a second, and nor did you him—except for recently, perhaps.

The tampering with your connection was growing too irritating for you to bear and you could feel bile cresting in your throat. It wasn’t much, but you were going to purge you stomach’s meagre contents, and soon, so you fixed Gojo with a grateful smile; one that was laced with warning for him not to stop you.

“I’m afraid I have to go now,” you said, bowing low to Yuuji and Gojo separately. It was only the polite thing to do, and well, it didn’t help settle your nerves in the least. Shion twisted at the connection again and your smile became a little more pained, a little more tenuous. “I apologize for the intrusion, Satoru-san. Thank you for bringing me here.”

With little else to spur you on than the pinpricks of pain crawling up your belly and chest, you breezed past Gojo and up the stairs, slamming the door when the wind vacated the space behind you. The basement was silent for a few moments, maybe more, with Yuuji and Gojo staring up the staircase where you had vanished, as if you had never been there to begin with.

“What was that all about?” Yuuji asked, reaching for a half drank can of soda. He grimaced at the flat taste and the sickly sweet artificial aftertaste that came after, putting it down on the table with an audible clink. “Oh, gross.”

Gojo hummed and declined to answer, pulling another move from the generous pile he had donated to the cause, and cracked open the case. He spun the disc around the holder a few times, thoughts whirling as he considered your words from before, about the higher ups. The distaste in your tone as you spoke. He didn’t think you would have been one to be loyal to the higher ups in the first place, of course, seeing as you had been hidden from the world for almost your entire life—it wasn’t such an issue to assume that you were, in fact, harboring the same ideals he was: get rid of the higher ups. Your views, however, might be inherently more selfish; you had no care for any of the other sorcerers, not even for the woman who had been at your side since you became a vessel. You seemed entirely focused on escaping the confinement, the pressing holds, of the old crones that made up the circle of higher ups; at least, that was what he was able to read from you. Without that god hovering over you like a ghost, you were surprisingly human, and vulnerable—not that he had expected anything less. Yuuji was much the same in that regard. However, while parallel in origin, you and Yuuji were not the same, not really; your curse would protect you until the day you died, that much was obvious. Sukuna was much more malicious in intention, without a doubt.

“Gojo-sensei,” Yuuji whined, drawing his attention back to his student. He huffed and slumped over on the sofa, almost knocking over a stray can. “Are you even listening?”

“Of course,” he laughed, inserting the CD into the disc drive. It was a low budget horror film, he recognized, but he didn’t watch it personally. He had scooped up the cheapest selections he could find, with some more widely known titles like Lord of the Rings, but Yuuji didn’t seem to mind them as much as he thought. “I was just thinking about our new ally.”

“Ally?” the pink haired male gawked. “Who?”

Gojo tipped his head to the side, a large grin on his face. “You just met her.”

While Gojo shoved his student back to the test, you were worse off—perhaps even more so—your eyes darting across buildings and streetlights to gauge your location. Your stomach rumbled unpleasantly and you almost swore Shion was doing it to you on purpose, but you could feel his anger preventing him from unraveling the block completely; or he was conflicted, and was going back and forth on his decisions. It was wreaking havoc on your body, that was for certain, and you almost wanted to reach into his domain and pull him out yourself. If that was possible, you didn’t know, but for now, you could be content with a toilet.

You had to sprint to make it to your building before your stomach betrayed you. You had sense enough to lean over in a group of shrubs and hide your evidence, heaving your stomach’s contents onto the grass, and when you opened your eyes, spent, tears glazing your eyes, you noticed that it was entirely black; as black as ink, as black as the night sky in full midnight. You didn’t think you had eaten anything that color and when you rolled your tongue in your mouth, you tasted something sickly sweet and with the tang of iron.

Blood.

You wiped your mouth with the back of your sleeve, feeling it smear across your cheek. You couldn’t be bothered with it now; you had to get back into your room and make sure Shion was none the wiser to what you had been up to. Your stomach cramped painfully and you barely made it up the tree and across the roof, biting the inside of your cheek to prevent yourself from groaning at the pain. You wern’t certain if it was Shion or the blood you had vomited up that made you feel so awful, but you could attribute it to both if you wanted, and you did. You slipped through the window once more and locked it behind you, snatching up a book and cradling Ayako to your chest despite wanting nothing touching you at the moment.

Cold sweat dripped down the back of your neck and you were certain it had nothing to do with Shion now. You felt… ill. Sick. Diseased. Your heart was beating a little too fast; your pulse pounded in your ears; you felt anxious, panicky; you half wondered if you were having a panic attack, but pushed it aside when the connection finally unraveled like the petals of a lotus—slowly, and then all at once.

“Shion,” you croaked, breathy and light. You sensed his alarm at the growing pain in your body and a flush of energy breezed through you, dulling the pain bit not completely suffocating it. “Thanks.”

What happened? He materialized almost instantly afterwards. His hair was haphazardly put into a knot at the back of his head and stuck up in a million different places, as if he’d spent hours running his hands through it before tying it back up and leaving it as was. His horns even protruded from his skull, longer than you recalled them being, and he had dark circles under his eyes, deep and ominous against the pallor of his skin. He looked almost as sickly as you did, if not worse. Your gut told you that something more was going on here, something deeper. “[Name]?”

His vocalization of your name ripped you out of your thoughts and you looked up at him, sweat beading your brow. “I… I don’t know. I threw up, and then my stomach started—then the sweating…”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, gathering you into his arms. Your book flopped to the floor, uncared for, even as the page fluttered open to the ‘A’ section, the name ‘Ayako’ highlighted by a streak of moonlight. “If I had known my anger would make you so ill, I would have never cut off our connection. I could have stopped this.”

Your own guilt overpowered his. You patted his arm, just above the crook of his elbow, and grimaced at the way your skin stuck to his with the cooling sweat. “It’s alright, Shion. It isn’t your fault—your emotions, while new, aren’t something to be brushed aside. You can’t just ignore them for me. You have to overcome them. I think not sharing them is… making it worse every time.” You silently omitted the fact that his failed attempts at unraveling the connection had started it in the first place. You deserved this pain for betraying him. You deserved everything he gave you, even if it was unintentional. It was the only way you would succeed. “... Help me up?”

When you were safely tucked away in your bed, your clothes changed into something more cooler to deal with the sweat, you allowed Shion to sequester Ayako away in a pillow barricade and steal her side for himself, likely having learned it from passively observing you. He was careful not to jostle you too much, highly aware of the way your stomach was still churning, and rested his ear against your heart, tapping his fingers to the rhythm on your hip. You didn’t fight him off, no matter how uncomfortable you might have been, and played idly with his hair, pulling it from the knot and twisting it around his horns. Other than your breathing and Ayako’s quiet sounds of grunting and squeaking, the room was quiet. You could feel him gearing up to speak in the way his jaw was working.

“You don’t have to say anything,” you reassured him, throat flexing over the gag reflex you were trying to repress. A moment later it was gone, magically repressed—but you could still feel it resisting his power, strangely. “I don’t expect you to explain everything to—”

“But I want to,” Shion interrupted you. He never looked up at you, but continued to tap to your heartbeat still, even noting the slight stutter when your thoughts came to a screeching halt. “That was a… sensitive time in my existence. I admit that. But… I don’t believe I’m ready to speak of it just yet. When I’m ready, I’ll let you know.”

You waited for a moment to see if he would say anything more, to even hint that he was as angry as he was before, but all you felt from him was guilt, guilt, and more guilt, which made no sense; you were the only one who had to feel guilty about anything. His secrets didn’t have the ability to break hearts and fragile trust, after all.

“Alright,” you said, once it was clear he had nothing else to say. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Shion.”

“And if one day, I want to?”

You frowned slightly at his change in tone. Something was different. Something had… shifted. You couldn’t put your finger on it and shifted uncomfortably, reaching up to thumb the prongs of his horns thoughtfully. “Then that’s your decision, not mine.”

A pause. Then,”I see.”

“Are you alright?” You asked, finally, when waiting became too much. He looked up at you then, green and gold eyes flashing in the moonlight, and though his gaze was gentle, every instinct in you warned you to flee. But like a lamb to a lion, you were doomed to a careful existence with him. “You look, well, awful. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sick before.”

He frowned, almost similarly to how you did, and his eyebrows drew down. “I’m not sure.”

“I’m sure it'll be fine then.” You yawned, pressing your fist against your mouth to smother it. You snuggled into your pillow and shifted Shion to be a little more comfy, eyes flicking to Ayako, who was as placid as ever. Shion turned his head again and pressed his ear to your heart once more, obscuring your view of Ayako completely. You were blissfully unaware at the way his eyes narrowed at the child when you slipped into a deep sleep, mumbling,”Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Shion whispered. “[Name].”

Ayako froze underneath his stare, dark eyes wide, and remained that way until the god finally vanished upon the first rays of the sun.

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