#and whats worse is how he starts to feel heat creeping up his spine as he sees that joy and satisfaction in your eyes in your smile and in

[fortheharbingers]

after learning about your crushes on certain fictional figures, narumi asks you to show him (or read him) one of those fics you seem to enjoy reading and writing

his plan is simple. he'll pay a close attention to any specific motif, kink etc in the said kink and make sure he fucks better than that next time so you'll never be resorting for the fictional stuff ever again

he doesnt account for the probability of a mpreg fic...

[sceletaflores]

I COULD PLAY THE DOCTOR (I CAN CURE YOUR DISEASE)

pair: logan howlett x fem!reader

wc: 4.1k

contains: 18+ SMUT MDNI, swearing, established relationship, logan's pov, written with origins!logan in mind, nat veering dangerously closer to a/b/o territory with every passing day, rut cycles, oral sex (fem!receiving), fingering (fem!receiving), multiple orgasms, gratuitous amounts of dirty talk, p in v, rough sex, biting, hair pulling, size kink, belly bulging, pussy pronouns, one (1) single use of the word daddy, scent kink, pain kink, breeding kink ofc, knotting (don’t look at me…), squirting, porn w/ plot, no use of y/n.

nat’s note: don’t look at me…i don’t know how many times i swore up and down i’d never write something like this but i’m a confirmed liar apparently so…here. i mean i just figured i'm in a rut artistically so therefore the only answer is writing logan in a rut physically...i can do what i want and i don't need to explain myself or my horny thoughts. also, i debated posting this in the wake of everything that's gone down over the past two days that is still escalating and will continue to escalate in the coming weeks, but i think everyone could use a little escape from how scary things may seem right now. take a break from all the terrifying news sites and read about logan wanting to breed you :) kisses!

divider by angel @saradika-graphics!

it's been another six months, and logan needs your help...

The burn starts on the walk home from work, a pulse of heat deep in Logan's gut that grows with every step.

It spreads slowly, sinking into his muscles and seeping up his spine as he rounds the last corner, your place less than a block away now.

It caught him off guard this time, an itch burying itself under his skin earlier in the day only to get worse and worse as he worked.

He usually knew the signs well enough to feel them start creeping in, and he was dead sure it wasn't for another few weeks.

Apparently, he was wrong.

Logan’s jaw clenches as he picks up his pace, every nerve ending in his body straining to break into a full blown sprint at the thought of you, all alone and waiting for him.

His fingers curl into tight fists, nails pressing into his palms to ground himself, though it’s hardly enough. The faint scent of you drifts up from his shirt, not even a long day at the lumberyard enough to drown it out.

By the time he reaches your door, his heartbeat is a heavy thud in his ears, syncing with the building ache of desire wracking through his body like the earth rattling boom of a raging thunder storm.

He fumbles through getting his key into the lock, hands unsteady as he tugs the door open with a little more force than necessary and finally steps inside.

The second he closes the door behind him, the heat surges, thrumming through his veins and flooding his chest. Your scent fills the air completely, stronger now, wrapping around him so thick and sweet.

"Darlin'?" His voice comes out rougher than he intends, but he's beyond caring.

Your voice floats from the other room, casual, warm enough to send a jolt through him. Logan drops his axe from his shoulder, leaning it against the door as he starts down the familiar path to your bedroom.

You're spread out on his side of the bed—oblivious, curled up with a book, wrapped in one of the flannels he must have left the last time he stayed over.

Just the sight of you does something to him, like a match dragged against a strike pad, damned on setting everything ablaze.

You glance up, and the soft smile on your lips falters as you catch sight of him.

Logan knows what he must look like, his eyes all dark and predatory, chest heaving as he rakes his hungry gaze over you like a wolf watches a lamb grazing too close to its den.

He doesn’t say anything at first, just stalks toward you with a purpose that’s as undeniable as the heat pouring off him in waves.

The book slips from your fingers, forgotten, as you lean back, the small sound of your breath hitching under the weight of his gaze is music to his ears.

Logan pauses at the edge of the bed, towering over you, letting himself drink in the way you look. So soft and serene, like some kind of invitation that begs him closer. His flannel draped loosely over your shoulders–shrouding you in his scent. 

The urge to pounce on you fights against his normal instinct to savor every second, to draw it out until the heat pooling in his gut becomes downright unbearable.

“Been thinkin’ about you all damn day,” he mutters, voice thick and dark as molasses, rough from restraint he’s quickly losing. His knuckles brush against your thigh, then tighten, holding you in place as he leans down, his breath hot against your neck. “Thinkin’ about what I was gonna when I finally got my hands on you.”

Your skin blooms with warmth beneath his touch, and he grins against your neck, the edge of his teeth grazing you just enough to make you squirm. He growls low in his throat, that itch he’s been fighting nearly all day clawing its way up to the surface with a vengeance.

The primal urge inside of him screaming to claim claim claim take take take mate mate mate breed breed breed.

You tilt your head to the side with a soft sigh, freeing up more space for him to nose along your skin. “Is it time?”

Logan's breath catches as your question hangs in the air, thick with anticipation. The soft simplicity of it ignites the wildfire burning in his gut, every ounce of restraint slipping away like sand through his fingers.

“Yeah, baby,” he growls, slipping his fingers under the worn cotton of your shorts, feeling the bare skin beneath. “It’s time.”

You shift, hands going to the buttons of his flannel like you’re going to take it off. Logan stops you, taking your wrists in his free hand.

“Don’t,” he breathes, shaking his head hard enough that his hair flows with it. “Leave it on.”

The thought of you covered in his scent, of his scent mixing with yours to claim you on a level only he can discern sends his mind buzzing.

You look up at him with those wide, trusting eyes, and something in him cracks wide open. The tenderness of your gaze pulls at him, like a tether pulling him back from the edge, but that heat still smolders in his blood, fierce and unyielding.

Logan runs his thumb along the racing pulse of your wrist before he drops them. His hands venture lower, fingers pressing against the inside of your thigh, tracing a deliberate path that makes your body tremble under his touch.

You let out a shuddering breath, the scent of your arousal swirling through the air is enough to make him crave more.

In one rough tug, Logan yanks you towards the edge of the bed as he falls to his knees. Your hips held tight in his hands as he lurches forward, burying his nose in the soft junction where your leg and inner thigh meet.

He inhales deep, greedy lungfuls of your scent. A guttural growl rumbles through his chest, his eyes screwing shut at the sheer amount of too much that courses through him. He feels dizzy with it, high on the pheromones pumping from you in waves.

You’re soaked already, the wet fabric of your shorts melded to the shape of your cunt. He can’t help but run his nose along the slick seam of you, reveling in the way your legs twitch on either side of his head, in the short gasp you let out.

“Logan.” Your voice is nothing but a mewl, pleading and desperate.

“Missed you,” he rasps, his voice rough, almost unrecognizable. The edge of need in him makes his hands shake, sliding up your thighs, urging them even further apart as he settles between them.

Logan’s fingers dig into your skin, he lets his thumbs brush up, hooking them into the waistband of your shorts to tug them down your legs in one sharp yank. He groans at the sight of you completely bare, no underwear.

“Fuck, look at you,” he grates, his thumb coming down to slip through your dripping cunt. Your hole flutters desperately around him, needy little clenches like it’s trying to suck him in. “She’s all ready for me, huh? Been waiting for me to come home and give her some attention?”

“Please,” you whimper, your voice thick with longing, the sound going straight to his head, clouding his thoughts. 

Logan’s pulse races as he watches your body arch instinctively toward his touch, the desperate need in your eyes igniting the raw urges coursing through him.

He can’t deny you; he never could. You’re a feast laid out before him, and he’s starving.

Logan leans closer, letting his tongue flick out to taste you like he’s wanted to since he left for work this morning. 

“Fuck,” he breathes, closing his eyes and losing himself in the moment. He licks a broad stripe from your entrance to your clit, savoring the way your body responds, the way your legs tremble and your hips twitch against his mouth, seeking more. “Tastes like fuckin’ heaven, sweetheart.”

The taste of you is intoxicating—sweet and tangy, flooding his senses with every drag and swirl of his tongue.

Logan can’t help but moan against you, the sound vibrating through your body as he dives deeper, his nose nudging against your slick entrance as he shakes his head back and forth like an animal—rubbing the plush skin of your inner thighs red and raw with each rough drag of his coarse beard.

Every flick of his tongue sends a shockwave through you, and he revels in the sounds you make—each whimper, each moan, a siren’s call urging him deeper. He laves his tongue around your clit, sucking it gently, pulling at it with his lips as you writhe beneath him, begging for more. 

He keeps your thighs spread wide, two strong hands pinning them to the mattress so he can devour you just the way you deserve, the sharp dig of your heels into his shoulders only spurs him on.

Your hands bury themselves in his hair, tugging him closer, and he groans into you, letting his tongue delve deeper, seeking out every bit of sweetness he can coax from you. 

It’s pure sin, each sound you make, each shiver that runs through you as he takes his time, drinking you down like a man starved. 

The ache in him intensifies, his own need growing, pulsing. He’s hard, has been hard since he walked through the front door.

His cock strains against the zipper of his jeans, need pulsing in time with each pump of his blood through his shaft, circling around the base, threatening to expand even without the tight grip of your pussy surrounding him. His hips jerk up on their own volition, desperate for any friction.

“Just like that, Logan,” you gasp, voice breathy and trembling with pleasure. 

The way you say his name—raw, desperate—makes his blood run hotter. He grips your thighs tighter, anchoring you to the bed as he drinks you in, wanting to lose himself in you completely.

Logan pulls away just long enough to catch his breath, looking up at you with lust-drunk eyes, drinking in the sight of your sweaty cheeks, your heavy-lidded gaze, the way your chest rises and falls with each shuddering breath.

The pulse of his cock intensifies, urging him to speed things along. The base desire of his own instincts is getting harder and harder to ignore under your adoring stare.

He feeds his fingers into your clenching hole with no warning, a satisfied smirk tugging his lips up at your sharp gasp. He runs his tongue along his bottom lip, the entire lower half of his face still shining with your essence.

Your cunt swallows him, two thick fingers sinking into the velvety heat like it’s nothing.

Logan groans as he feels you clench around him, your walls fluttering and drawing him in deeper. “That’s it, baby,” he mutters, his voice hoarse with need. “So fuckin’ ready for me, so ready for daddy’s fingers in your pussy.”

Your mouth drops open in another devastatingly desperate noise, your hands twist his hair roughly, soft breasts rising and falling each time you gasp for air. The dim light of the sunset filters in through the blinds, highlighting the curves of your body, slick and shining with a thin sheen of sweat.

Every clench of your walls around his fingers shoots a thrill straight to his cock, making him ache with the urge to bury himself inside you. The overwhelming need to take you completely, to mark you and fill you, pulses through his veins until he feels like he might explode.

But he’s not done tasting you yet. Not until you’re practically dripping onto the sheets.

He lowers his mouth back to your core, sucking your clit into his mouth as his fingers pump faster. The sudden intensity makes your thighs shake around his head, and he grins against you. He wants to see you fall apart—wants to feel it.

“Logan—please, I…” You can barely get the words out, voice breaking as your whole body strains against him, desperate and needy.

The wet slap of his palm against your spit soaked cunt is loud in the quiet of your bedroom, blending with the loud keens that fall from your parted lips. He crooks his fingers, rubbing at that soft, spongy spot inside of you.

“Come on,” he mutters, slick lips brushing against your clit as he speaks. “Give it to me, baby. Show me you're ready for my cock."

He drags the sharp edge of his canine against your pulsing clit with barely any pressure, and you're coming.

Your whole body tenses, back bowing off the mattress as you let out a broken cry of his name. The bite of your nails digging into his scalp feels harsh enough to draw blood, a feeble attempt at grounding yourself against the onslaught of pleasure. 

Your trembling thighs tighten around his shoulders, gripping him like a vice as your shaking cunt gushes around his fingers. Logan groans at the feeling, eyes slipping shut as you drench his wrist and chin in your juices.

Even then, he doesn’t let up, fingers pumping relentlessly as he draws out every pulse, every aftershock of your climax, every tiny spray of your release splashing against his wrist. 

He’s lost in the feel of you—slick and trembling under his hands, the scent of your release filling his lungs, thick and intoxicating.

You slump back against the bed, body limp and spent. His own need is a driving, aching force now, clawing at his insides, demanding more.

He slips his fingers free from your dripping heat, dragging them through the wetness coating his chin as he licks them clean with a growl, savoring every taste.

“Good girl,” he purrs, voice thick with pride and satisfaction as he pulls back, leaving your thighs twitching in the wake of his touch. But he still isn’t finished. Not even close.

You barely have time to catch your breath before Logan crawls up the bed, his eyes locked on you, pupils blown with need. He looms over you, hands planting on either side of your head. His cock grinds against you through the rough denim, and you can feel just how thick and hard he is, throbbing through the fabric, demanding to be freed.

With a low groan, he shifts his hips, dragging his bulge along your soaked cunt, sending another jolt of pleasure racing through you. His hands are all over you, gripping your waist, hot and possessive.

“Feel that?” he asks, pressing his lips the wild flutter of your pulse, the need to sink his teeth in the soft skin of your neck raises the hair on the back of his neck. “That’s what you do to me baby. Got me hard as a fuckin’ rock, just aching to be inside you.”

Your arms circle his shoulders, clawing at the fabric off his shirt. “Need you inside me, Logan. Please, want it so bad.”

The pure need lacing your words, your scent calling out to him, the way he can feel the front of his jeans getting soaked through with the slick pouring from your cunt all pull him deeper into the recesses of his hind-brain. 

The mounting desperation to stuff you full of his cock finally reaches a fever pitch.

With a deep growl, Logan rears back as far as he can bear, just enough to tear his shirt over his head before he fumbles with the heavy buckle of his belt to free his aching cock.

He shoves his jeans down, boxers quickly following until there’s nothing separating him from the cool air of your bedroom. His cock springs free, hot and flushed an angry red color, drooling from the tip enough that it drips down to stain the pretty floral sheets of your bed.

Your eyes zero in on him, mouth dropping open at the sight. His cock so heavy it doesn’t curve upward to slap against his stomach, instead it hangs down to sway between his thighs as he moves closer. 

Your legs spread as he nears, slick covered thighs parting to make room for him to slot between them. So obedient, so good, so well trained.

Logan takes himself in his hand, nearly wincing at the blazing temperature of his skin. He secures his hand around the base, squeezing where his knot threatens to pop before he’s even got in you.

He slips the angry head through the folds of your cunt, slapping it against your clit with a wet ‘thwack’ sound. He can feel the way it twitches and shakes, just as desperate as him.

“Look at that,” he mutters darkly, eyes glued to where he’s laid his cock flat against your stomach, leaking pre-come all over your soft skin. “How’s it gonna fit, baby?” He shifts his hips, sawing his length back and forth to see just how deep in you he’ll be.

Your glassy eyes drop, a broken moan passing through your slack lips when you take in the sight. Your hips rise off the bed, grinding your cunt along the seam of his heavy balls, along the prominent vein trailing up the underside.

“Don’t worry, baby,” Logan grits out, eyes hooded and dark as he watches you grind against him. “You’re gonna take it all. Gonna make you feel every last fuckin’ bit of me.”

He groans, gritting his teeth as he presses in further, each inch a battle against the tight, molten heat that grips him like a vice. Your body shudders as he fills you, your slick warmth pulling him deeper and deeper, and he sinks down until he’s fully seated, his hips flush with yours. 

The pressure is mind-numbing, your walls clenching around him in rhythmic pulses that make his vision blur. He stills for just a second, savoring the way your body stretches around him, hugging him in a way that feels like it was made for him alone.

Logan watches your face as you adjust to the stretch, your brows pinched together, each breath coming fast and shallow, your eyes glazed with pleasure.

Then, your hands come to his shoulders, nails digging little crescent moons into his skin as you nod your head, ready.

It’s all the confirmation he needs. His hips pull back before he slams in again, the force of it jolting your whole body. He presses his forehead to your shoulder, teeth bared as he muffles a snarl against your skin.

Logan thrusts again, and again, and again, hips setting a merciless pace as he watches the way your breasts bounce with each thrust, each little shudder.

His mouth waters with the need to taste, to sink his teeth into your supple skin hard enough to pierce clean through, hard enough to scar.

Sweat drips down the length of his spine, across his brow. It mats down the hair scattered over his chest, his dog tags slick with it when they bounce off his skin with each thrust. The grip of his hands tightens on your hips, it’s taking everything in him to hold back and yet he knows you’ll still bruise tomorrow. 

Pretty hues of dark purples and yellows in the shape of his fingers, ones he’ll catch you admiring in the bathroom mirror, pressing your own fingertips into them to feel the dull ache—to remember this moment.

“Made for this, aren’t you?” he rasps, his voice dark and possessive. “Made to take me, to be mine.”

The words barely leave his mouth before he’s bending down to capture your lips in a searing kiss, swallowing your cries as he drives into you, pushing you both closer to that sweet edge.

“Fuck, Logan,” you gasp, breaking the kiss as your body trembles under him. “Can–ah!–can feel you in my stomach…”

Your hand drops from his shoulder, slipping between your bodies to rest over the sweaty expanse of your belly. Logan’s eyes follow your path, a feral growl bursting from his chest before he can stop it.

He’s transfixed by it, sure that if he pressed his hand to the soft skin of your lower stomach right over your own, that he’d feel it. Feel the way his cock punches up against your insides, so deep it's like he’s rearranging your guts to make room.

“Fuck.” His voice is nothing but a gravelly rumble, hoarse and dark as midnight. His hips speed up impossibly faster, chasing the feeling of your clenching walls choking the length of his cock so tight he thinks it might snap off at the base.

The flimsy headboard of your bed slams against the wall, creaky mattress springs screaming under his ministrations.

You feel like salvation, like the first rays of light after too many years spent in the dark.

He feels it with each kiss of his cock against your cervix, in the way your lips fit in the junction of his neck, in the red welts your nails leave on the skin of his back. He feels alive, truly alive, for the first time in decades.

“Say my name,” he grates, his hand cupping the back of your neck, coaxing you to look up at him, lips close enough to taste the heat radiating from his skin. “Tell me who you belong to.”

"Logan," you gasp, your voice breathy, edged with desperation as he pushes you closer to the brink. "Yours. Only yours."

A broken, shaky noise falls from his lips as he buries his face in your neck. He mouths at your skin desperately, presses his nose to where your scent is the strongest. 

Flashes of his release spraying your insides play behind his closed eyes, thoughts of drenching you so thoroughly that it has to take only forcing his hips to slam against the rippling muscle of your ass like you have your own magnetic pull. He feels it building, the slow swell of his knot presses against your folds, ready to burst.

“Come on, honey,” he begs, thumb coming down to rub slow circles over your slick clit. “Come with me, soak my cock. Show me how much you love it, how much you love me.”

Pathetic little uh uh uh’s fall from you with every thrust, broken up only by the breathy whines of his name as he pounds into you hard enough to push your body higher up the mattress. Finally, with a loud roar, he stuffs his growing knot inside of your cunt. 

Logan’s teeth sink into your neck before he can even think twice about it, the thick spray of his come filling you as his hands pull your hips down even further over his cock. He needs to be as deep in you as possible, to press forward until he can’t anymore, until his aching balls are flush with your gushing cunt.

He watches with rapt attention as you come with a loud wail, just from the feeling of his knot slotting into place. The clamp of your thighs over his hips is nearly as tight as the way your cunt seizes around him like it’s scared he’ll leave.

He groans at the over stimulation of your cunt milking his cock. Your slick leaks around the base of him, your shaking hole plugged so full it can only slip along the creamy ring to splash weakly against his thighs and hips.

Logan licks along the spot where his teeth pierced your skin, planting one last kiss before he’s taking you in his arms and rolling onto his back atop the mattress. The plush comforter sticks to his skin, your own sweaty body slipping against his as he tries his best to not jostle you too much while keeping you stuffed full of his cock.

He holds you to his chest until your breathing evens out, until your body stops trembling on top of his, until you’re nosing along the column of his neck.

“Logan?” Your voice is tiny, hoarse and scratchy. He feels your hand drawing absent minded shapes along the skin of his stomach. A circle, a star, a figure eight, a heart.

“Yeah baby?” he says, pressing his lips to the crown of your head, eyes slipping shut at the content feeling that spreads through him.

“Love you,” you murmur, voice soft but sure, the words slipping out without hesitation.

It’s the first time you’ve said it today, and hearing those three words from you sends warmth flooding through him.

Logan shifts slightly, pulling you even closer, his hand moving to the back of your head, cradling you with a kind of tenderness he used to think he’d never be capable of. “I love you too, darlin’. More than you know.”

Your body relaxes against him, the lingering effects of your shared intimacy still buzzing through your limbs, but now there’s a sense of peace, of safety, and a deeper connection.

He can feel the way your fingers curl lightly against his skin, the quiet smile that must be tugging at your lips as you press a kiss to the side of his neck.

And in that moment, with everything settled around him, Logan knows that this, right here, is everything.

tags are now in the comments! if you want to get tagged for any of my works just fill out this form!

[candy69gurl]

POV: You are Sukuna's Vessel 2

Warnings- private touching

wc- 1.2k

Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

You sink onto your bed, your mind racing with thoughts of the future. With Sukuna inside you, you can't help but wonder what will happen next.

"If they find out the truth, they'll never look at me the same way," you think, your heart aching at the thought of losing your friends.

"Maybe I should tell them the truth," you consider, but the idea is quickly shot down.

"No, they'll think I'm crazy or worse, they'll try to exorcise me," you decide, your heart sinking into your stomach.

"I need to figure this out myself," you murmur, your fingers gripping the sheets, trying to come up with a plan.

But as always, Sukuna has something to say on the matter, "Don't bother, little brat. No one can save you from me," he hisses, his voice like poison in your mind.

"Why are you like this?" you question, your voice shaking with anger and fear

"It is what it is," Sukuna answers simply, his voice devoid of any emotion.

"You're a monster," you accuse, your heart pounding in your chest

Sukuna just laughs, a sound that sends a pain through your mind.

With a deep breath, you get up from the bed, your mind still spinning from your encounter with Sukuna.

You walk to the bathroom, feeling a bit of relief as you undress, shedding your clothes and stepping into the shower. The warm water cascades over your body, washing away the tension you've been holding.

"Ah, this feels good," you say, closing your eyes and leaning against the tiled wall.

"Mhm..", a deep voice echoes in your mind, "What a nice body you have."

Your eyes snap open, a gasp escaping your lips as you realize your mistake. Your naked body is now exposed to Sukuna, the realization making your skin crawl.

"Damn it," you curse, your hands hastily covering your most private areas, feeling heat rise to your cheeks

"So innocent," Sukuna snickers, his voice sending shivers down your spine

"Stop it," you demand, your voice trembling with embarrassment and anger.

"You can't make me uncomfortable like this," you continue, trying to assert your control over the situation.

"Oh, I think I can," Sukuna counters, his voice low and taunting.

"I want you out of my head," you hiss, your fists clenching tight with the effort to keep him at bay. "How am I gonna live like this?" you whisper, your voice breaking

"Go ahead, show let me see more of your body", Sukuna taunts,

Your heart races, your breathing growing faster as Sukuna's voice continues to torment you.

"No," you insist, your voice shaking with determination. You refuse to give in to his twisted games.

You quickly turn off the shower, the water disappearing in a rush of steam.

With shaky hands, you reach for a towel, wrapping it around your body. Your heart is pounding in your ears as you try to get dressed in the darkness, with the lights off to keep Sukuna from seeing your naked self anymore.

"Shy, are we?", Sukuna questions, his voice filled with amusement.

"Shut up," you snap, your voice shaky with anger and fear "You're the one who started this," you remind him, your hands balling into fists at your sides.

Sukuna just laughs, the sound echoing in your mind as you try to ignore it and gather your thoughts.

Exhausted and emotionally drained, you climb into bed, pulling the covers over your head in an attempt to block out the world.

You close your eyes, hoping for some semblance of peace, but it's not long before Sukuna's voice creeps back into your mind.

"Sleep well, little brat," he says, his voice a dark rumble in the darkness

"Fuck off," you respond, your voice tinged with anger and exhaustion.

"Good night," Sukuna replies, his voice hollow and cold.

With a frustrated sigh, you try to ignore him and drift off to sleep, hoping for a moment of solace in the darkness.

As you fall asleep, you can't help but wonder how much longer you can keep this secret from your friends. You cling to the hope that you'll find a way to control Sukuna and protect those you care about.

In the middle of the night, without warning, your body twitches beneath the covers.

Sukuna takes control, his consciousness merging with yours as you remain blissfully unaware, still asleep.

"Finally, some peace," Sukuna whispers, his voice dark and devious.

He moves your body, stepping out of your bed and turning on the lights.

"Now let's start with my experiments."

Without hesitation, Sukuna's control over your body quickly strips you bare, your clothes falling to the floor.

He guides you towards the mirror, standing you in front of your naked reflection.

"Well, well, well," Sukuna coos, his voice dripping with amusement. "Look what we have here."

He examines every inch of your body, his gaze lingering on your most private areas, making your skin crawl even though you're still asleep.

"Nice," Sukuna approves, his voice low and taunting.

He continues his inspection, running his hands over your body, tracing your curves and leaving goosebumps in his wake.

"Oh I really look so pretty," he muses, his voice turning thoughtful.

Sukuna, through your body, reaches for your breasts, gently cupping them in his hands.

A jolt of pleasure courses through him, your body arching slightly in response. The sensation is unfamiliar to him.

"Hmm, yes," he hums, his voice low and satisfied. "Feels so good."

With a hint of anticipation, Sukuna pinches your nipples, his touch sending a shock of pleasure through him.

He gasps, his eyes widening in surprise at the intensity of the feeling.

"So sensitive," he mutters, his voice filled with wonder and desire. "This is so much better than I expected."

Sukuna, through your body, moves towards the bed, lying down on it and spreading your legs wide.

His hand slides down your body, his fingers dipping into your wetness, your body trembling slightly at his touch.

"Ah, you get wet this easily?" he asks, his voice husky with excitement "Your body is so pleasurable."

He begins to stroke you, his movements slow and deliberate, his curiosity growing with every stroke.

A wave of pleasure washes over him, the sensation overwhelming him as he explores your body.

"Oh, this is amazing," he breathes, his voice a mixture of surprise and excitement.

"I want more," he says, his voice filled with determination "I need to explore every inch of this body."

He continues his exploration, his fingers sliding deeper, his touch growing bolder with each passing moment.

"Yes, yes, more," he moans, his voice filled with desire. "I could spend hours on this."

Sukuna's touch becomes more insistent, his fingers moving faster, your body responding to his ministrations even in your sleep.

"Shit this pussy's getting wetter," he muses, his fingers dipping deeper, his touch growing more demanding.

A wave of pleasure crashes over him, his orgasm pulsing through your body, your inner muscles tightening around his fingers.

"Fuck!" he groans, his voice filled with satisfaction "That point.. S-shit.. So tight, so good", he moans thrusting his fingers attacking your weak point.

Soon an orgasm surges through the body, his breathing ragged as he pulls his fingers from your body, leaving you slick and aching.

"That was... amazing," he says, his voice tinged with awe, "I can't wait to do this again," he promises, his voice filled with anticipation

With a final caress, he lies down, your body still trembling from the experience.

"Rest now, vessel."

As Sukuna relinquishes control, you slip back into a fitful sleep, your body still humming with the aftermath of his pleasure.

[whimsicalpolitical]

Stormy ride // Matty Healy x Reader

a/n: idk how it is with you but weather is so shit right now, I’m in a stormy mood

summary: you’re in the car with Matty but you have to pull over cause it’s storming too bad, now you have to spend your time otherwise

content warning: stormy weather, swearing, smoking, p in v, dry humping, fingering

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It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

You’ve been on the road for two hours now and still not at Matty‘s house. Usually it takes 50 minutes but it’s already 9pm and you lost all hope that you’ll arrive today.

„Oh for fucks sake,“ Matty cusses, hitting the steering wheel at the third red light in a row.

The rain is still pleasant, the windshield wipers are still set to the slowest setting but the clouds are thickening and getting darker while the sky is turning black.

„You’ve got to be joking,“ his right hands comes up to his face, to rub his forehead and sigh out. The second the light turns green you expect that you can drive immediately, however the driver in front of you doesn’t move at all.

„Start driving you wanker,“ Matty honks and screams at the driver ironically because he can’t hear him. You giggle at his impatience. Driving for a long time in the rain is annoying, especially when you’re not the only one on the road, having to stop a lot.

„Relax,“ your hand squeezes his thigh, resting there, which pulls Matty out of his angry state.

Matty’s hand comes on top of yours, his thumb rubbing slow patterns on your skin. „Sorry love, just wanna get home.“ He brings your hand to his mouth kissing every knuckle.

„Your hands are fucking freezing,“ he says mildly, bending his head to look at the way your nails are turning blue. „I already turned the heating to 71 Fahrenheit.“

He brings your hands up to his face and blows warm air on the blue tips of your fingers, massaging them with circular motions to force the cold out of them. Your heart picks up at the way your hands disappear beneath his, what’s visible of them looking small in his gentle grip.

„My hands are always cold but it’s worse when it’s storming outside, I don’t know,“ you shrug, „I feel the cold.“ You wink at the parallel to ‘girls.‘

Matty snorts at you quoting him. “Fuck off.” He shrugs his jacket off with one hand, keeping the other steady on the wheel. He drapes it over your lap, its warmth immediately soothing. “S’ should help.”

“Thanks Matty,” your heart swells with affection as you look at him.

The rain began as a light sprinkle, but now it is pouring, the sky dark and heavy with clouds. You glance over at Matty, his hand firm on the wheel, while the other still holds your hand, eyes focused on the road. The windshield wipers struggled to keep up with the rain, swishing back and forth.

“I don’t like this weather,” you admit, goosebumps spreading all over your body, shuddering at the dark road in front of you.

The storm outside intensifies, lightning flashes across the sky. You tense, trying to ignore the unease creeping up your spine. Matty's thumb strokes your hand in slow, soothing circles.

"It's just a storm," he says softly, his voice calm.

You nod, trying to relax. Suddenly, a loud clap of thunder booms overhead, shaking the car. You flinch, your hand tightening on Matty's thigh.

“Easy there, love. If you squeeze any harder, I might not be able to drive properly.” He jokes, glancing over at you for a second to make sure you’re actually alright.

“Caught me off guard, sorry.” You pull your hand from him but he finds your wrist to keep it on his thigh.

“It’s just a bit of weather,” he reassures, “nothing I can’t handle.” He has a smug grin on his face but you’re not really in the mood to smile at his jokes, feeling like the road is getting more slippery.

Right now you’re driving through the -well known- forest road which takes up to 20 minutes to drive all the way through. There is nothing but dark trees beside you, the lightnings lighting up the green color only for a split second.

Matty doesn’t seem really bothered by the weather, only annoyed that the ride back takes so long. You are too. The thought of laying in bed with Matty- a warm bed- makes you more excited to finally arrive. If you arrive.

“Love, you’ve gone quiet there,” he observes, your grip on his thigh also a bit loose. “Does the weather bother you this much?” He tries to find any concerns written in your face but it’s gotten also very dark in the car, just outlines to recognize.

You nod, hiding both of your hands under Matty’s jacket on your lap. “Maybe we should pull over, wait till it’s a bit better?” you suggest, your voice barely above a whisper, barely audible over the roar of the rain hitting the car.

“I wouldn’t mind to keep driving, you’re the scared one,” a smile tugs at his lips, “say the word and I’ll pull over.”

You flip him off and turn your head to observe the weather. You can’t see anything besides when the surrounding lights up. You hear however a lot, which is making you fucking crazy.

“Pull over?” You ask, turning your head back to Matty, who is already nodding and pulling to the side of the road. You didn’t see a single car in front or behind you since you’ve been on the forest road, but Matty turns on the hazard lights anyway.

“Anything for my girl,” he remarks, stopping the engine, the rain getting louder. “Didn’t know you hate storms so much.”

Matty leans back, his hand reaching into his hoodie pocket to retrieve a pack of cigarettes. With a casual flick of his wrist, he flips open the lid, revealing the neatly lined rows of slender white sticks. He selects one and deftly tucks it between his lips, his movements smooth and practiced.

Then he pulls out his lighter, tugging the packet away. With a quick motion, he sparks the flame to life, holding it steady as he brings it to the end of the cigarette. The flame dances and flickers, casting fleeting shadows across his face as he takes a long drag, the tip glowing bright orange with each inhale.

You watch him, unable to tear your eyes away as he exhales a plume of smoke, the scent hanging heavy in the air between you. There's something undeniably alluring about the way he handles the cigarette, a sense of ease and confidence that draws you in despite yourself.

You unbuckle yourself and pull your feet up, Matty’s jacket wrapping around yourself, trying to keep you warm.

Matty takes a long drag, the ember pulsing with each inhale. He exhales slowly, the smoke swirling around him in lazy tendrils. “You know,” he says, his voice low and husky, "there's something about the quiet of the forest at night. It's like being in a whole other world.”

“Weirdo,” you laugh which is quickly replaced by a quiet inhaling sound when another roaring of a thunder is passing through the air. You shudder, your hands shaking in your lap.

“What are you on about,” he asks, taking the last drag of the cigarette before opening the car door, letting the cold air fill the car, to throw the end of his cigarette outside. “You’re still shaking.” He states.

Matty too unbuckles himself now, rolls his seat back and adjusts it so that there is more space in the footwell. Then he empties his pocket and puts his lighter, his cigarettes and his phone on the front of the desk.

You’re curious on what he’s planning, drowning out the sounds of the storm with watching Matty’s curls fall into his face when he looks around him to check if everything’s alright.

“Come here,” he finally says, pulling his jacket off of you to grab your arm.

“Matty,” you roll your eyes, thinking he’s just going to tease you about freezing and scaring your ass off.

“Come here,” he repeats, spreading his legs a bit, “m’not joking, hate to see my girl freezing.”

That does it. You climb over the console, wrapping each leg on each side of Matty, lowering yourself onto him, onto his warm body. You sigh contently, your head immediately resting on his shoulder.

Matty wraps the jacket he pulled off of you over your shoulders again, doing everything he can to keep you from turning into an ice block.

“There we go,” he feels you relax as his fingers brush against your skin, sending shivers down your spine, not from the cold, but from the electrifying touch of his fingertips. You tilt your head up, meeting his gaze, a silent exchange of longing and affection passing between you.

He’s smiling at you, and you don’t have a single moment to spare to register that he’s leaning in before his lips are on yours. 

You sigh into the kiss, pleasantly surprised to be interrupted in this way, and glad your hands are free so you can hold onto him. One second of it and you’re ready to collapse under the sweet weight of it all. His arms circle your waist to pull you against him, and your arms circle his neck, keeping him close. As close as you’ve really wanted him.

When you finally break for air, it’s only to press your foreheads against one another’s, not wanting to move too far. “Don’t seem so scared now.”

You hit his chest playfully before leaning in again to brush your lips against his. “Want me to make you forget about the storm? S’that it?” He asks between kisses, his hands resting on your hips, giving them a light squeeze when you bite his lower lip slightly. You just nod, too busy to answer him.

“Say it to my face darling, you haven’t got that tongue for nothing,“ he grabs your ass and starts to help your body grind against his growing bulge. You’re already clenching against nothing, huffing and puffing as Matty‘s lips travel down your neck and licking wet stripes on the sensitive skin there.

“Distract me Matty,“ you whisper, head falling back as Matty keeps sucking on your neck.

“Anything‘ for my girl,“ he growls in your ear, biting your earlobe gently right after, thus causing you to shiver.

Your hips stir over his, and Matty audibly groans. At last, he drops a palm to your ass and gives it a taut smack, and your whole lower half reverberates with the sensation—and a welt of pleasure.

“Fucking hell,“ he groans, your hips rolling over his again, this time with more pressure. His fingers trail from your thighs up to your pants opening your zipper. “Lift your hips for me,“ he pleads, puppy eyes looking up at you. “S‘ too tight in here,“ he mumbles.

You lift your hips, letting Matty pull your pants down, leaving your panties on before slamming you down onto him again. The friction of his jeans is now rubbing against your clit perfectly making you gasp into his mouth. “Needy little thing,” he hisses as you rock yourself on his bulge.

Matty slots his hand between your legs to rub against that dampened patch of fabric. You almost jump. His fingers slip beneath your panties and make swift, easy contact with your heat. You bury your face in the crook of his neck to try to muffle the sounds that are clawing their way out of your chest, while your hips tilted up.

“So wet f’me,” your hips rock back and forth over his fingers—sliding the two digits in and out of your cunt with each motion. He works his free arm under your body and pinches hard on one nipple, eliciting a soft moan of ‘Matty’ above him.

“Love your tits,” he has a boyish grin on his face, acting like it’s the first time he has touched your boobs.

“Oh, baby,” he breathes, watching you rut your hips for more friction, “use my hand to make yourself feel good— that’s my girl.”

If you would still be grinding on his bulge instead of fingers, he would’ve cum seconds ago, you’re messy hair and flushed cheeks enough to pull him over the edge as well as the friction on his cock.

“Matty,” His fingers curl up and hit that sweet spot inside you, your barriers beginning to crack with each thrust of his fingers.

“Make a mess baby,” he encourages, keeping the same pace hitting your sport, “show me how good you feel.”

Your hips are grinding erratically, Matty’s tongue is pressed against your neck, and your clit is twitching. Sparks linger in your vision as your eyes fly open and find lust-darkened orbs, watching you fall over the edge of your orgasm.

“That’s perfect,” he hums, kissing you while you’re riding out your orgasm, “always so good for me.” He pulls his fingers from you, a whine leaving your lips, your head falling back against his chest which is heavily moving up and down.

He takes his fingers into his mouth groaning around the sweet taste of you, “need to be inside you right now,” he groans, opening his belt. Your hand swats his away and he throws his head back, a grin on his face when you first palm him through his jeans.

“Baby don’t-“ he begs, his hips involuntarily thrusting up to meet your hand, “don’t want to fucking cum in my pants like a pathetic teenager.”

You listen and lift your hips again to pull his pants and boxers down, freeing his hard cock which is leaking with pre-cum.

You don’t waste another second. You wrap a hand around his length, slowly sinking onto him. Your cunt stretching around him and you both grown into each others mouth as the pleasure hits you. Matty pulls you into a kiss again, trying to keep his sounds as quiet as possible.

“You feel so good,” he has his hands pressed deep into your hips, helping you move in a fluid motion. You feel him hit your sweet spot as you make your way down, letting out tiny whimpers at the feeling.

“Fucking knock yourself out,” you can’t hold in the loud moan you had been holding, feeling your stomach flutter at his words. You feel a slight burning in your thighs and you know Matty’s shoulders hold tiny crescent shapes from how tight your grip has become. You feel one of Matty’s hands move to your clit, rubbing small circles on the bundle of nerves.

His cock twitches inside of you and he holds your hips down for a second, preventing him from coming too soon. When you lift your hips again he lets out a guttural sound, bunch of ‘baby’s’ leaving his mouth.

He grabs your chin, making you look him in the eyes. You look at him and grin, fucked out and eager before he thrusts up into you. “Close,” you whisper and he nods, “fuck,” is all he can say.

You rake your fingernails down his tattooed chest, lowering only to reach back behind yourself, and grab his thighs. Adjusting yourself before dropping back down and bouncing on his cock, feeling him repeatedly strike a deep spot within you that causes your eyes to roll to the back of your head. 

Fuck, you felt absolutely incredible around him, and not only that, but you looked beautiful the entire time. Breasts bouncing in that tight pullover, ass jiggling, and repeatedly smacking into his thighs, slightly sweaty with the scent of sex tainting each other's bodies. 

Your hips rocking at your own pace, it was starting to become unbearable on Matty’s side of things. His hips were trembling to the sound of your wet folds struggling to take him all the way down to the base. 

“Let go darling,” His tongue slides into your mouth, parting your lips as the rough skin of his thumb rubbed rough circles against your clit.

The new sensation is enough to drive you over the edge, and Matty is watching your body tense and tighten. The feeling of you squeezing around his cock, drawing out his own orgasm, his thrusts stuttering as he continued to ride out yours. 

“Christ,” he shudders, prepping kisses all over your face, his cock softening inside of you. “How are you feeling love?” You giggle at his attempt to focus his attention but he looks just as fucked out. Pupils dilated, curls sticking to his face and his chest flushed.

“Very good Matty,” you offer him a smile, sliding off of him, pulling your pants up and get Matty dressed before sitting down on him again. “Sorry,” you say, suggesting to his stained pants but he just chuckles, kissing you, rubbing your lower back.

“Don’t ever apologize for that,” he hums, your hand finding its way to his hair, wrapping a finger around his curls, “it’s wickedly hot.”

“And look at that,” he looks outside, only small thuds of rain hitting the window, most of the storm having passed. “Can finally drive home and take proper care of you.”

You get off of him, climbing back over the console to sit down in the passenger seat, fixing your clothes the right way and wrapping his jacket back around your thighs.

You lean your head over to give his cheek a gentle kiss and then resting your head on his shoulder.

The drive back is way more relaxed, no thunder, no lighting, you can finally drive your attention to Matty and his singing skills to ‘teenage dream’ by Katy Perry.

[impala-dreamer]

Crazy On You

A Tale from The MCU

~ On a trip up state, things get a little spicy when the rumble of Bucky's engine gets you going...~

Bucky Barnes x F!Reader

2,158 Words

Warnings: NSFW, Exhibitionism (Sex in a Public Place), Oral, Fingering, Sexy Stuff. 

A/N: For @feelmyroarrrr... I pictured Bucky from FATWS, but you can put this anywhere you'd like ;) - Also, I published this in Feb 2024, before we got Bucky in the Thunderbolts trailer, so I thought it was time to bring it over here finally lol

Wind is whipping around you with hurricane force, stinging as it hits your exposed cheeks. It prickles your skin and sweeps the hair off of your neck. It’s cold and invasive, but it feels good as the summer sun beats down upon your shoulders. The wind and heat fight for dominance and your body is the battleground. 

A bump in the road jerks your spine and you lean forward, arms tightening around Bucky’s waist. He’s steering the motorcycle with expert precision, but he’s no match for the pothole-marred blacktop of New York State. Another dip makes you gasp and he cocks his head back a bit, yelling over the wind. 

“You OK back there?” 

You give him a squeeze and press your chin to his shoulder. The metal beneath his leather jacket gives you pause, but it doesn’t bother you- it’s just another reminder of how remarkable he is. 

“I’m great!” you holler back. “But this road sucks!” 

He smiles into the wind and leans slightly to the left, following the curve of the road. The Sawmill River Parkway is treacherous and exciting. 

“Well, hold on, Doll,” he warns. “It only gets worse!”

The road winds around and back again, dodging towns and skirting the edge of the Hudson River as it leads them out of the city. Skyscrapers and brownstones give way to long stretches of trees and the bright green blurs in your peripheral. 

As you drive, arms clasped around his firm body, your thoughts begin to drift. The engine is roaring and the thin seat vibrates between your legs, setting off an array of images in your mind. You clench your thighs as the Bucky revs the motor, hold your breath as you feel the strong muscles in his back tense against your chest. Slowly, you unclutch your right hand and snake it up to lay flat against his heart. His heart is pounding; his body firm and warm. You close your eyes and let your fingers glide downwards, coveting the dips of his abs. Your mouth waters as you envision running your tongue over every bump. 

The road swerves and you hang on; centrifugal force and Bucky’s strong body keeping you in place while the bike leans to the right. Your nails dig into the soft gray fabric of his tee and he shivers. You can feel it as strongly as you can feel the vibrations through your jeans. 

He picks up speed, easily overtaking the white Mazda to your left. You let out a laugh and turn to watch the darkened windshield fade into the background. There’s nothing that can catch you now. No government agency giving chase in an SUV behind you; no preternatural force pinning for your blood beyond the cliff to your right. There’s nothing but the sun and the wind and the soaking arousal between your legs. 

You pass another car and your body starts to shake. Every rev, every bump, every tiny oscillation of the engine makes your pussy throb. The bike seems connected to you- it turns, you ease to the side with it. It screams, your body aches. It creeps over the jagged road top, your blood zings.

“Fuck!”

Bucky tenses at your shout, hands tightening on the handlebars. He holds steady.

“What's going on?” His voice is drenched in concern, evident even over the howl of the traffic.

“Nothing.”

You brush him off but he doesn't believe you. Something lies hidden in your voice and the way your fingers keep curling against his stomach tells him there's trouble. 

He growls your name through a clenched jaw. “Y/N…”

As a shudder of pleasure whips down your body, you lean into his back and press your lips to his ear.

“I'm good! But we should pull over soon…”

Before he can solicit more information, you drag a hand down his stomach and cup his jeans.

The bike swings a bit to the right.

Bucky clears his throat, gives his head a little shake to clear his mind.

“Hang on!”

A sign ahead tells of a scenic overlook two miles down the road, but you’re not sure you can make it. The rumbling has taken over any bit of nervousness from racing down the parkway on the back of a bike, and all you want to do is get his hands on you. 

The bike picks up speed and passes a black Camry. 

The trees have grown more dense so far from The Bronx and the stench of a hot summer day has long ago died away. 

Your desire is so intense that it’s taking all your strength to hold on, to not nibble at his ear or reach inside his tight jeans. He needs to concentrate even if you can’t. He needs to focus on the road even if your focus is on the heartbeat pulsing in your cunt. He needs to stay sharp even if your eyes are blurry and the scenery is sliding by like thinned paint dripping down a canvas. 

Finally, he signals and takes the exit, following a giant blue sign towards the rest area. 

Black top gives way to gravel; the noisy traffic fades away. Bucky pulls into a spot cliffside and cuts the engine. There’s a momentary shock as your ears try to readjust to the quiet, and then you hear his gruff voice and all is well. 

“What’s going on?” he asks, dropping the kickstand and moving to get up. “You OK?” 

Teeth stuck in your bottom lip, you watch him dismount, dragging your gaze down over his solid frame. His shirt is terribly tight; the leather jacket formed spectacularly around his muscular arms and shoulders. The jeans are soft and bite into him in all the ways you crave to.

“Oh, I’m good…”

There’s a sparkle in your eyes that makes him smirk. “Really? Ya seem a little… worked up.” 

Your mouth waters for him and you squirm over the leather seat, ready to attack. “Very.” 

Bucky grins and presses his tongue between his front teeth. You feel the urge to taste it and carefully climb off of the ride. 

“Very, huh?” He takes a breath and looks around. The outlook is clear; prying eyes are nowhere around. “You couldn’t have waited till we got upstate? We have a room, ya know.” 

All thoughts besides getting your lips on him are gone and your vision narrows in on your target. You lunge forward and pray he’ll keep his balance and not send you both tumbling into the river. 

His footing is sure. His arms are strong and his kiss is unforgiving. 

“Fuck, I need you so bad,” you moan, sunshine hitting your face as his tongue sweeps over your pulse. His teeth scrape the delicate skin of your throat and you claw at his shoulder. “Need you now!”

A hard shove to his chest knocks him back half a step and you drop to your knees in the dusty gravel. Bucky sucks in a deep breath and turns his back to the parkway. 

“You sure about this?” he asks, shooting a glance over his shoulder. Cars speed past in the distance, no one the wiser. 

You tugged at his belt. “So sure…”

One leather end flaps to the left. 

The buckle dangles over his thick thigh.

You fumble with the zipper and there's a hiss from above as Bucky fears for his manhood. Quickly, he closes his hand over yours and takes over, saving himself as you stare, drooling and impatient.

“You’re certainly all worked up, Doll,” he teases, licking his lip as you stare up in utter submission, silently begging for his cock. 

“Aren’t you? That ride… the engine… the-” 

A gasp cuts you off when his dick appears. Bucky pulls it free of his briefs and the sun strikes his velvety skin. He pushes his hips forward slightly and your lips open automatically. Without further invitation, you lean forward and land a wet kiss over the tip. Bucky sucks in a breath and you smile, finally getting what you’ve been dying for. 

You flick your tongue over his slit and then drag it slowly down, wetting his quickly growing shaft. 

“Fuck, Y/N/N… feels so good.” 

You look up with bright eyes and bob your partially opened mouth over his swelling head. Bucky’s upper lip quivers and he sneers with escalating desire. He dips his chin and smiles softly. A delicate finger sweeps over your forehead and curls around your ear. He urges you forward and you comply, sliding your lips down his cock. You can feel him harden on your tongue, taste the salty tang of him, smell his summer musk. It drives you wild and you swallow around him, wanting to savor every drop. 

“Damn it…” Bucky rolls his hips and your eyes flutter back. “You’re a needy little cocksucker, aren’t you?” 

Your mumbled response makes him moan and you pull back with a wet pop. 

He shakes his head teasingly and lays his metal hand on the nape of your neck. “Don’t stop.” 

The cold metal makes you shiver as he guides you back down. His touch is easy but you can feel the pent up force. He holds back with you, gentle but boiling with power. There’s never any fear when you’re with him, never a reason to think, even when he’s grabbing at your tits or fucking you on the vibranium, that he’ll do you any harm. Maybe a bruise or two, but it’s never something you don’t ask for. 

He sets the pace, jerking his hips and pushing at your head in rhythmic succession. Drool spills down your chin, puddling on the gravel beneath your knees. The sun beats down, hot and wonderful. Traffic flows in the distance, clouds drift overhead. 

Bucky fists your hair and snaps his hips, burying his cock down your throat. You gag and claw at his muscular thighs as his seed floods your mouth. He groans loudly as he comes and it echoes off the cliff like a roar in the jungle.

Before you can swallow it all, he’s got you on your feet, dragging you to standing and crushing you against his chest. He paws at your tits and locks his metal arm behind your back, holding you steady. 

“Bucky…” 

He kisses away your words, driving his tongue deep between your lips. He can taste himself there and it stirs his desire again. You can feel him push against your belly and your pussy leaks for him. 

“Please…”

Again, he shoves his tongue into your mouth, silencing your cries while snaking his free hand into your jeans. He pops the button without hesitation and eases his way into your panties. You’re already soaked and he hums at the feeling as your wet heat spreads over his fingers. 

His cold fingers splay open across your back and your body goes weak, cradled by his touch, safe from falling. 

He touches you with expert precision, jabbing two fingers deep into your cunt while his thumb rubs circles over your clit. You hold your breath, afraid to scream with pleasure and alert any passersby. Bucky doesn’t seem to care if you’re found out, and does his best to pull moan after moan from your swollen lips. 

“That’s it,” he whispers, staring down into your glazed eyes. “Gonna come for me like a good girl, yeah?” 

You manage a nod as he crooks his finger against your g spot. 

“Out here in the open where anyone could see.” 

“Yes…” 

Your voice is as shaky as your legs and the pressure of his hand increases. Pleasure swells inside and he can feel your body pulsing. 

“There you go, Doll.” He rubs faster, fucks a little harder. “Let go and come for me.” 

It hits like a crack of lightning and Bucky holds you steady, fucking you through the crest of your orgasm and sucking down your cry. He licks at your lips, caresses your aching cunt, hums in amazed approval. 

“You’re perfect,” he whispers, slowly removing his hand from your jeans. 

You grab his hand, still shuddering from the bliss, and tug his fingers to your mouth. He bites his lip, watching with darkening blue eyes as you lick him clean. 

“Goddammit, we gotta get to that hotel soon.”

You laugh and let his hand fall free. “Only a little longer, right?” You blink innocently and brush a finger over his new erection. 

He shivers and pops the tip of his tongue between his teeth, counting the miles till he can get you in bed. 

“If we rush, I can get us there in thirty minutes,” he offers.

Reaching up, you cup your hand around the back of his neck and pull him down for a final kiss. He moans and holds you tighter, wanting more, wanting to rip you apart and have his way. 

You push back after a long moment and wink. 

“Better make it twenty…”

[sky-kiss]

Yo, so, for the Coffee Shop/College AU; how about Tavista and Prof Raphael are out for a walk on a Wintery day, all cozied up after work, but the weather takes a turn for the worse and they get caught in a huge downpour. They have to run home and, well, what happens, happens 😏

A/n: HELLO, MY LOVE. HAVE SOME NOTHING.

______

R/T: Winter Mix

_____

By month three, the omnipresent gray and mist have worn out their welcome. The temperature toes the line above freezing, never dipping to the point of snow. It's a bone-deep chill, sinking through any coat or sweater. Down into the marrow. Tav shivers, pressing more tightly against Raphael's side. He's warm, at least. 

She looks up at him, chewing the inside of her cheek. The devil's blood is more evident in the winter. There's no hint of color in his cheeks, nothing obvious, just general ease. Heat radiates off him, a little hint of mist as it hits his skin. 

It's surreal—barely a hint of skin showing, just the face, wrists, a sliver of his throat. Tav doesn't want to be a creep, but she keeps staring at that…flash of Raphael's neck. A stray piece of hair curls down over his forehead, prettier than it has any right being. Par for the course for Raphael, but it still feels pretty unfair. 

They make it another three blocks before the rains starts picking up, growing from a gentle drizzle to a flood-like downpour. Tav goes from 'acceptably damp' to 'Jesus Christ help' soaked to the skin in seconds. 

It's instinct to grab his hand. Tav yanks him after her, turning down a series of roads until she's finally back at her front door. They're panting, soaked, as she fumbles the key from her pocket. Despite the discomfort, Tav laughs. What the hell can she do except laugh? Bright-eyed, alive, and brutally cold. 

"Look at you," Raphael mumbles, fingers stroking over her cheek, smoothing back into her hair. "Beautiful thing." 

She shivers, walking him back into her apartment. He has the presence of mind to kick the door shut, hands settling on her hips. Heat seeps through her soaked clothes. She touches his cheek, feeling his rumbling sigh in her bones. It's one of those sickly sensations. She's choking, frozen, hungry for heated air, and it's inside his lungs. Looking at him hurts. 

And the thought upsets her a little. It seems like one of those romantic cliches. The handsome professor, the devil, melting the ice of this erstwhile heroine? She's read enough novels to know the notes. 

Her hands smooth underneath his sweater, and he shivers, clutching her tighter. 

"We could shower?" she offers, pressing up on the tips of her toes to kiss him. It's a ghost of sensation, just enough heat. His skin tasted like cinnamon and the coffee she'd made him a few hours prior. Tav shivers, nuzzling into him. "Could be nice?" 

Raphael hums, hand smoothing down her spine. There's a tickling heat, promise, ghosting over her hips. She can't get closer to him. There's nowhere to go but back. Tav feathers her touch along his jaw, up over delicately pointed ears. 

"Stay here." She mumbles. "Stay with me." 

Raphael stares at her, eyes the color of burnt honey, touch bruising. He pulls her close, walking her the rest of the way towards the washroom. 

[olivyh]

Hi me again 😅, I hope it's ok if I make one more requests. Can we get a ruggie x reader, where the poor boy is sick and to try and cheer him up, reader decides to make him his favorite l,

donuts

And hey, they may not be the prettiest looking donuts he's ever seen, but at least they're the tastiest he's ever eaten.

( yes, they'd be edible, they're not Lilia, I think they know how to cook that much, I'm sorry batdad that it had to be said)

A/N: Welcome back!!! I love writing Ruggie so it's no biggie <<333!! Also Ruggie using really sweet pet names (darlin, sugar, honey) makes me so happy!!! I also got a burst of motivation so hopefully I'll be able to finish up most of these requests <<333

Ruggie swore he had never felt worse.

He knew it had been a problem when he woke up and he felt that his throat was scratchier than usual, no matter how many times he cleared his throat or drank water the discomfort never went away. For a fleeting moment, he'd tried to fool himself into believing that it was the way he'd slept. Maybe the cold night air of the Savannah crept into his throat and dried it out? Maybe he slept with his mouth open? whatever it was, he was determined to not let it ruin his day. He woke up at his usual time- 5:30 am- ignoring the heat that rushed to his head and made his hands shake as his entire body ached as though he'd just run a mile.

Throughout Magshift practice, Leona could tell that he was more distracted than usual- slower, out of breath easier than was normal. He'd been excused from practice early, something that wounded Ruggie's pride as he tried to ignore the jeers of his dormmates as he walked off the field, opting to spend the extra hour finishing up some overdue homework and patching up some of his peers' torn uniforms for some spare cash.

The rest of the day was a blur. After the fever and the aches came the coughing that nearly made him double over, followed by a runny nose that he would wipe out until his nose was raw and bright red against his freckled skin.

He had tried to push it off, going through the rest of his day in a haze as his body progressively shut down more and more, fatigue taking over his senses as he drug his feet to his final class and then to his shift at the Mostro Lounge. Ruggie swore that he could make it through his shift! He would only have to last a few more hours, then close the store and clean up. He would be done by 11 at the latest and then he could go back to his room and get some rest!

"Shark sucker!" Floyd's grating voice wasn't nearly enough to snap Ruggie out of his haze as he gazed over to the eel with bloodshot eyes. The taller man winced and his lower lip jutted out. "Gross."

"What is it, Floyd?" Ruggie was in no mood for jokes or games, his condition only serving to make him more irritable as he rested against the bar, taking a deep inhale as he allowed his eyes to slip closed at the wave of discomfort that ran up his spine at the action.

"You sound like an old man," The mer chuckled. "Are you sure you should be here now?"

"Whaddya mean?"

"You look dead and you sound even worse," Ruggie huffed, filling a tall glass with some water before downing it, wincing at the pain creeping up the back of his throat at the action.

"I don't," As if on cue, his voice broke as he was forced into a coughing fit that had him doubling over. He could barely make out Floyd's chuckles turning into surprise as his vision went black.

"Good morning, baby," He heard when he had finally started stirring. He could vaguely make out the roughness of his blankets and the scent of his lover beside him, followed by a hand cupping his cheek and a wet cloth placed upon his forehead. He groaned and tried to roll over, muscles screaming at the action. "How do you feel?"

"Like-" He cleared his throat and opened his eyes, allowing them to adjust to the soft light of his dorm room. He could hear the crickets chirping outside gleefully as the moonlight shone in through the open window, illuminating his plain room in streaks of silver and stardust. And above him, seemingly glowing as though they were sent from the sky just for him, was his beloved human. He smiled softly as he licked his lips, graciously accepting the glass of chilled water that they passed him, lightly smacking his hands when he tried to hold it himself. "Thanks," He takes a deep breath, relaxing against his pillows and relishing in the feeling of their thumb rubbing along his cheek. "I feel like I've been hit by a truck."

"Dummy-" Their attitude suddenly switched as they pinched his ear lightly, making him let out a soft yelp as his eyes shot open.

"Hey!" He pouted, pushing past the annoyance that rose in his chest at the action. "What happened to calling me 'Baby'?!"

"You get 'Baby' when you're not a dummy!" They sigh and sit back, brushing some of his hair out of his face gently. "If you were sick you could've just told me, you know?"

"I was fine," He muttered under his breath, pulling the blankets up tighter around himself as his body began to quiver with chilled that he couldn't force away.

"Floyd called me saying that you collapsed at work, and then he had to get Jack to carry you back to the dorm," The hyena's face flushed as he covered it with his hands, groaning.

"That's so embarrassing!"

"It could've been avoided if you'd just told someone," HIs lover sighed, sitting back and grabbing something from the desk. "I made you some soup. I used to eat it back at home when I was sick, so I figured it would help."

Ruggie chuckled. "Alien recipe?"

They rolled their eyes at his reaction. "Alien recipe, now open up."

Despite the way his stomach twisted at the thought of eating anything, he knew he had to get something in his stomach today. He'd had a light breakfast, and barely any lunch due to his illness, and his stomach was growling for anything but... it made him feel sick to his stomach to eat anything at the moment.

He opened his mouth hesitantly, allowing them to slip the warm spoon past his chapped lips as the flavors of vegetables and warm broth flooded his mouth; not strong enough to make him even sicker, but not bland enough to taste like warm water. As he swallowed, the warmth seemed to dull the chills ever so slightly, allowing him to relax more into his mattress.

"Thank you, Darlin'," He mumbles. "Really."

"Is it that good?" They hum. Ruggie's ear twitched as he heard more shuffling. He turned his head to see them hunched over in their chair, bag in hand as they wrangled something out of it. A sweet scent wafted through the air- one of vanilla and powdered sugar- and he hummed, heart racing in anticipation. "Here's another surprise."

He smiled warmly and reached up, cupping their face with his own calloused hand and giving their cheek a soft pat.

"But-" He groans softly, biting back a teasing smile. "You only get them if you promise to tell me next time something is wrong!"

"I promise!" Ruggie pouts, trying to make his eyes as wide as possible to deceive the human. "I'll be good!"

"Good," They hand over the bag as the boy reaches in, pulling out a small, round donut. The top was decorated in yellow and black stripes with small, messy paw print sprinkled scattered on the top. He peeked into the bag to see another four or five- some decorated fully, others sprinkled with powdered sugar, there were even two that were leaking jam out of the side and seeping through the bag, making his fingers sticky.

He took a bite into the first one he'd picked up, savoring the burst of sweetness as it made it's home in his mouth and settled within his raw throat as he swallowed. He tried to decipher the flavors within- almond, definitely. Lemon maybe? He could have sworn that he could also taste the familiar saccharine hints of honey within it as well. He hummed blissfully, taking another large bite and chewing slowly. They weren't the most beautiful donuts, no, but the love within them made up for it a thousand times over, rivaling even the most well-known baker in the world and making the flavors burst.

If Ruggie were in his normal condition, he was sure that he would burst into happy tears at the warmth that spread through his chest and sent butterflies to his stomach. His head felt as though it were spinning with the sweetness of the donuts and the person he loved sitting beside him. He wasn't sure if it was the fever or his bashfulness that lit his cheeks aflame as his ears flattened against his head.

He swore that the moment he got better he would pamper them just as much as they had to him, and ten times more. He would hold them and pepper their face with soft butterfly kisses and cook them a nice, warm meal that they could eat by Ramshackle's fireplace, just the two of them beneath a thick blanket and giggling quietly amongst the silence of the night.

"You spoil me too much, Hon," He chuckles. "I would give ya a kiss, but..."

"I won't get sick," They say suddenly, leaning closer in their chair and resting their arm beside his face, running a hand through his hair as he leaned into their touch despite the protests of his weary mind.

"Nah," He mutters, allowing his eyes to fall closed. "Beastmen are stronger than humans. If it knocked me out, it'll make you even worse..."

"I'll risk it for you," Ruggie chuckled, attempting to hide the way the phrase made his heart race in his chest, and tried to raise his head enough to press his dry lips to his lover's own soft ones, basking in their warmth before drifting off to sleep once more.

[justagingerwithredhair]

That night’s nightmare was the same as always. 

He was crouched dangerously close to the edge of the cliff, staring wildly up at his old partner. “Why, Darius!?” He sobbed, and felt a hand strike him across the face. He fell to his knees, head bowed. His breathing was ragged- he wasn’t used to the acrid air of the Clifflands. Neither was Darius. They had both hailed from humid areas, close to the seas and rivers and on land not dotted with dangerous drops that would surely lead to one’s death if they were to fall- 

Darius spat at Therion’s feet, and he flinched. 

“It’s simple.” Darius’s voice, once alive with mirth and pure joy, was now cold with cruelty and malice. 

“You remember that night we humiliated the Ciannos, don’t you?” Darius hissed, and it sent a chill down Therion’s spine despite the blazing heat. “...Of course I do,” he muttered, struggling to draw breath. Despite his guard, Darius had still landed a hit on him- a solid one at that. He could feel the blood soaking his once-white shirt, and he clutched the injury tightly in a vain attempt to staunch the blood flow. Darius cackled with delight at Therion’s answer. “Good!” He declared. Therion wanted to scream. “You told me they’d come for revenge, and they did-” Darius’s voice lowered to a rasp, a threatening tone that Therion had heard him use on victims more than once- a tone that never failed to strike terror into his heart. “More specifically, they came to me, asking for a favour. If I did what they wanted, they said they’d find a nice, high place for me in their midst.” The truth dawned on Therion like the creeping of a paranoid guard. He had turned around too late, gotten himself caught in a trap, and was now about to pay the ultimate price for it. He should have left Darius to rot in that prison cell, but ruminating did him no good with the dusty wind blowing his shawl up behind him. “That’s why you have to die. They want you gone… And so do I.” 

Those four words, no matter how many years passed since they were first uttered, always stung worse than any hit Darius had ever inflicted on his battered body. 

Darius laughed again, and Therion stared at him. “...You… What…?” He whispered, unable to stay his tongue. EVen if he wanted to remain silent, his loud mouth always betrayed him. …An ironic term, considering the premise of his nightmare. “I hate to break it to you, but this was bound to happen, mate,” Darius gazed at him with false sympathy, and it made him sick. If he were any less of a coward, he would have spat at Darius’s boots and fled. But instead, he remained kneeling at his old partner’s feet like a church-goer in a cathedral. Though Darius was no god, and he himself hardly believed in such things. 

Darius pointed at Therion, lip curling in disgust. “Just looking at you makes me Tom and Dick!” He shouted, and Therion had picked up enough of Darius’s weird way of speaking to know what he meant. 

He made Darius sick. Well, Darius, that made two of them. He made himself queasy- every time he looked at the colour green, or saw a flash of ginger hair in a crowd, it made him want to curl up somewhere and wait for the current of the river to wash him up in some backwaters town. 

“You were blessed with such skill. I’ve never seen anyone as good as you,” Darius sneered, and the way he phrased it had made Therion despise himself and his talents ever since he’d fallen. “So when we met, I knew I needed you on me side. And you were so easily manipulated by cheap words!” Darius sounded so proud… Therion wished more than ever than he had left that green-clad scumbag to die in that cell, beaten and broken by the guards for his foul mouth and sour attitude. Darius turned away, expression solemn. “But then you started to doubt me, to question me…” He stamped his foot in the dirt, boot kicking up dust. “WHY COULDN’T YOU HAVE STAYED A NAIF!? EVERYTHING WOULDA BEEN FINE IF YOU JUST DID WHAT I SAID!” He shouted, voice reverberating across the chasms. Therion winced. 

Darius whirled back around to face Therion. “But you just had to prove yourself better, didn’t you?” Therion tried to interject, to tell Darius he never meant to make his partner feel inferior or less than, but the man continued. “Telling me to do it this way or that way. Well, I’ve had enough!” This time, he truly stayed his tongue, though his trademark sarcastic commentary still made its way to his mind. Pretty sure it’s called advice, Darius. I wasn’t trying to boss you around. 

“...So you’re going to kill me, and that’s that,” Therion replied instead, terrified at how hollow his voice sounded. He would have preferred for it to sound sarcastic, or terrified, or anything except solemn and accepting. 

Darius grinned wickedly, and Therion held his gaze. He refused to look away from the brown eyes he had so often shied away from. “Exactly! Without you around, I can do things me own way!” He yelled triumphantly, as though proud of Therion for piecing the puzzle together. Therion knew it wasn’t pride, though, but cruel validation. Darius felt validated that his old partner had figured out his plan. Darius felt happy that Therion knew what his fate was bound to be. 

Well, if his fate was to fall off a cliff, he would make his last moments perfectly accurate to how he used to be. Sarcastic and witty- not terrified of the man he once considered a friend and brother. “That’s a bit drastic, don’t you think… Partner?” He cocked an eyebrow, and rage flashed in Darius’s eyes. “Don’t call me ‘partner’!” He yelled, but Therion refused to back down. He stared at Darius, trying to ignore the feeling of blood soaking through his shirt. 

“We’re not equals!” 

Didn’t you say you thought I was better than you, though…? Therion thought. 

“You’re nothing but a stepping stool to me!” Darius roared, and Therion repressed a snort. 

So you’re too short to reach the top? 

“You’re worth less than the scum beneath me daisies, and I’ll prove it!” 

Therion tensed, prepared himself for the worst. 

What he didn’t think would happen, however, was Darius drawing his knife and slicing a jagged line down Therion’s left eye. He cried out in pain, his other hand flying to staunch the blood. He felt two strong hands place themselves on his shoulders, and suddenly- he was weightless. He seemed to float for a few seconds, pebbles and blood drops hovering in the air around him, before it all came crashing down, the sound of Darius’s cold laughter still ringing in his ears when he sat up soaked in his own sweat, the first light of dawn shining through the curtains of the room. 

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SO GOOD!!!!

Confession Time: I never finished Octopath 1 when I played it so I'm not intimately familiar with everyone's stories, but this painted Therion's betrayal so vividly! I love all his internal witty comebacks, the environmental imagery, and Darius's manic behavior! (Also Darius gives me Harvey vibes.)

But, I had a thought to counter your angst. Imagine if the raspy words, "I want you gone," haunts Therion and it echos in his minds every time he starts to make a new connection. One day when Therion and Alfyn are growing intimate, he pushes back from him because he refuses to be betrayed again. Then, while Therion starts to distance himself, Alfyn in his most heartfelt, full, and gentle tone says, "I want you here."

TAKE THAT! NO MORE ANGST!

[beantothemax]

That night’s nightmare was the same as always. 

He was crouched dangerously close to the edge of the cliff, staring wildly up at his old partner. “Why, Darius!?” He sobbed, and felt a hand strike him across the face. He fell to his knees, head bowed. His breathing was ragged- he wasn’t used to the acrid air of the Clifflands. Neither was Darius. They had both hailed from humid areas, close to the seas and rivers and on land not dotted with dangerous drops that would surely lead to one’s death if they were to fall- 

Darius spat at Therion’s feet, and he flinched. 

“It’s simple.” Darius’s voice, once alive with mirth and pure joy, was now cold with cruelty and malice. 

“You remember that night we humiliated the Ciannos, don’t you?” Darius hissed, and it sent a chill down Therion’s spine despite the blazing heat. “...Of course I do,” he muttered, struggling to draw breath. Despite his guard, Darius had still landed a hit on him- a solid one at that. He could feel the blood soaking his once-white shirt, and he clutched the injury tightly in a vain attempt to staunch the blood flow. Darius cackled with delight at Therion’s answer. “Good!” He declared. Therion wanted to scream. “You told me they’d come for revenge, and they did-” Darius’s voice lowered to a rasp, a threatening tone that Therion had heard him use on victims more than once- a tone that never failed to strike terror into his heart. “More specifically, they came to me, asking for a favour. If I did what they wanted, they said they’d find a nice, high place for me in their midst.” The truth dawned on Therion like the creeping of a paranoid guard. He had turned around too late, gotten himself caught in a trap, and was now about to pay the ultimate price for it. He should have left Darius to rot in that prison cell, but ruminating did him no good with the dusty wind blowing his shawl up behind him. “That’s why you have to die. They want you gone… And so do I.” 

Those four words, no matter how many years passed since they were first uttered, always stung worse than any hit Darius had ever inflicted on his battered body. 

Darius laughed again, and Therion stared at him. “...You… What…?” He whispered, unable to stay his tongue. EVen if he wanted to remain silent, his loud mouth always betrayed him. …An ironic term, considering the premise of his nightmare. “I hate to break it to you, but this was bound to happen, mate,” Darius gazed at him with false sympathy, and it made him sick. If he were any less of a coward, he would have spat at Darius’s boots and fled. But instead, he remained kneeling at his old partner’s feet like a church-goer in a cathedral. Though Darius was no god, and he himself hardly believed in such things. 

Darius pointed at Therion, lip curling in disgust. “Just looking at you makes me Tom and Dick!” He shouted, and Therion had picked up enough of Darius’s weird way of speaking to know what he meant. 

He made Darius sick. Well, Darius, that made two of them. He made himself queasy- every time he looked at the colour green, or saw a flash of ginger hair in a crowd, it made him want to curl up somewhere and wait for the current of the river to wash him up in some backwaters town. 

“You were blessed with such skill. I’ve never seen anyone as good as you,” Darius sneered, and the way he phrased it had made Therion despise himself and his talents ever since he’d fallen. “So when we met, I knew I needed you on me side. And you were so easily manipulated by cheap words!” Darius sounded so proud… Therion wished more than ever than he had left that green-clad scumbag to die in that cell, beaten and broken by the guards for his foul mouth and sour attitude. Darius turned away, expression solemn. “But then you started to doubt me, to question me…” He stamped his foot in the dirt, boot kicking up dust. “WHY COULDN’T YOU HAVE STAYED A NAIF!? EVERYTHING WOULDA BEEN FINE IF YOU JUST DID WHAT I SAID!” He shouted, voice reverberating across the chasms. Therion winced. 

Darius whirled back around to face Therion. “But you just had to prove yourself better, didn’t you?” Therion tried to interject, to tell Darius he never meant to make his partner feel inferior or less than, but the man continued. “Telling me to do it this way or that way. Well, I’ve had enough!” This time, he truly stayed his tongue, though his trademark sarcastic commentary still made its way to his mind. Pretty sure it’s called advice, Darius. I wasn’t trying to boss you around. 

“...So you’re going to kill me, and that’s that,” Therion replied instead, terrified at how hollow his voice sounded. He would have preferred for it to sound sarcastic, or terrified, or anything except solemn and accepting. 

Darius grinned wickedly, and Therion held his gaze. He refused to look away from the brown eyes he had so often shied away from. “Exactly! Without you around, I can do things me own way!” He yelled triumphantly, as though proud of Therion for piecing the puzzle together. Therion knew it wasn’t pride, though, but cruel validation. Darius felt validated that his old partner had figured out his plan. Darius felt happy that Therion knew what his fate was bound to be. 

Well, if his fate was to fall off a cliff, he would make his last moments perfectly accurate to how he used to be. Sarcastic and witty- not terrified of the man he once considered a friend and brother. “That’s a bit drastic, don’t you think… Partner?” He cocked an eyebrow, and rage flashed in Darius’s eyes. “Don’t call me ‘partner’!” He yelled, but Therion refused to back down. He stared at Darius, trying to ignore the feeling of blood soaking through his shirt. 

“We’re not equals!” 

Didn’t you say you thought I was better than you, though…? Therion thought. 

“You’re nothing but a stepping stool to me!” Darius roared, and Therion repressed a snort. 

So you’re too short to reach the top? 

“You’re worth less than the scum beneath me daisies, and I’ll prove it!” 

Therion tensed, prepared himself for the worst. 

What he didn’t think would happen, however, was Darius drawing his knife and slicing a jagged line down Therion’s left eye. He cried out in pain, his other hand flying to staunch the blood. He felt two strong hands place themselves on his shoulders, and suddenly- he was weightless. He seemed to float for a few seconds, pebbles and blood drops hovering in the air around him, before it all came crashing down, the sound of Darius’s cold laughter still ringing in his ears when he sat up soaked in his own sweat, the first light of dawn shining through the curtains of the room. 

‘THE TRUTH DAWNED ON THERION LIKE THE CREEPING OF A PARANOID GUARD’ IS FUCKING AMAZING LINE MAV WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i appreciate you explaining what ‘Tom and Dick’ means because I always forget

SND THE EDING????? THERION FGDBXBCB WAKING UP IN HIS BED THE SECOND HE HITS THE GROUND AND THE PARAGRAPH IMMEDIATELY SHIFTING TO HIM BEING KN THE ROOM!!!! AAAAAAAAAA

MAV MAV THIS JS. YEAH. I LOVE THIS.

[ohbuckie]

I’m thinking teenage Becca angst where she gets into a minor car accident and hits a pole or something bc it’s winter and slippery and she’s totally fine but the car is totaled but all Bucky hears in her phone call is “hit a pole with my car” and he’s losing it.

OKAY FUCKK (i literally did not even consider proof-reading this so if it's ass. Lol. we all have our moments i guess.)

Bucky sits next to you in bed, wearing just boxers, crew socks, and his charming wire-frame glasses. With soft muscles on display, you're thankful that Becca won't be home from her friend's house until later.

"I'm gonna smoke in a minute, if you wanna come out with me." He offers, and turns to look at you.

You stare at his lips, at his scruffy facial hair that makes him finally look like somebody's dad, and at the tattoos that creep up his neck and behind his ears. You almost forget to respond. "I'm okay tonight."

He nods in understanding and swings his legs over the side of the bed, sifting through drawers to find sweats and a hoodie to protect himself against the chilly winter weather. He takes a preroll from the nightstand drawer and leans over the bed to kiss you carefully before he steps out.

It only takes a couple of minutes before he comes back in, hysterical. He smells like weed, which is to be expected, but you know he couldn't have finished the joint he took with him so quickly.

"Bucky, what's wrong?"

"You have to drive- Rebecca crashed her car, she's-"

"What?" You stand from bed quickly, pulling on the first pair of pants you find, which happen to be Bucky's plaid pajama pants. All of the worst possibilities flood your mind. You start to choke up. "Is she okay? Where is she?"

"She's by, um, fuck, she's by the convenience store. Please, you need to drive."

"Bucky, is she fucking okay?"

"I don't know!" He shouts, and you forgive him quickly for yelling when his voice cracks and he wipes a tear from his cheek.

You slide on a pair of shoes and hop into the car, following Bucky's navigation instructions and screeching the car to a stop when you spot her car and then her, standing with her arms crossed on the sidewalk, analyzing the wreckage her poor CR-V has been reduced to.

Bucky's already holding her face, inspecting every inch of her, asking her if anything hurts by the time that you get out of the car. You take an extra jacket from your backseat and wrap it around her before Bucky envelopes the both of you in a massive hug.

He sniffles and holds her head against his chest while she cries, too.

"Are you sure nothing hurts? Not your head or your spine or your chest or anything? How fast were you going—did the seatbelt get you?"

"I swear I wasn't speeding or anything, it's just slippery, and I've never driven in the winter before, and-"

"It's okay, Becca, I know. It's alright." He kisses her head and squeezes her tighter. "That's not what I'm asking. I just want you to be okay."

"I'm okay, dad."

You notice Bucky's hand shaking almost violently when he moves it to zip her borrowed jacket, and you know it isn't because it's cold outside. "Can I go sit in the car?" She asks quietly. "I'm so fucking cold."

You nod and kiss her forehead. "Of course you can."

She climbs into the backseat and shuts the door, and you watch her reach into the front to turn up the heat. You turn to Bucky and wrap your arms around his neck. He drops his head and starts crying again almost immediately.

"I know, Bucky, I know. It's okay—she's okay." You rub his back and he quickly starts fully sobbing.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm not trying to cry-" He tries to breathe deeply but it hardly works. "I just feel like I'm gonna fucking throw up. I'm just always so scared for her and I was so afraid of this happening and I know that it could've been worse, but-"

"It's alright, Buck. We'll handle it. Right? She'll be okay."

He nods and swallows thickly.

After about another hour of reporting her accident, calling a tow truck, waiting for it to arrive, and helping Bucky quit imagining all of the ways in which it could have been detrimentally worse, you end up at the emergency room.

They examine her quickly and give her a Tylenol for the sore bruises on her chest from her seat belt. While Bucky's outside smoking a cigarette and you're waiting for the final results of the x-ray they took of her chest, she tells you that she just wants to go home. You agree.

She practically lays across the backseat when you finally make it to the car.

You arrive back at home almost three hours after you first left, with Becca half asleep in the backseat and Bucky anxiously holding onto the handle on the door. You say goodnight to her downstairs, but Bucky walks up to her room with her, bringing her a glass of water and an ice pack for her swollen—not broken, thankfully, just painful—ankle.

You brush your teeth and resume the position that you took a few hours ago, this time feeling significantly more tired. He joins you soon enough, resting his head on your chest silently, firmly planting a hand on your waist.

"I love you." He whispers against you, kissing your shirt softly. "I'm really glad Becca's okay."

"I am, too." You push your hand down the back of his shirt, rubbing your thumb across the soft skin of his back, mulling over the stress of the night.

He sighs. "I wish I'd finished that joint, though. Probably wouldn't have cried so much."

[just-a-creep-babe]

The creeps when their s/o is on their period? 👉👈

-tiny anon

Requests are closed but commissions are open!

Masterlist: x

Slenderman

The BEST support you could ask for

He always knows exactly what you need at the right time & place

You want some sweets? He’s already got five different boxes of assorted candies & chocolates

Your back’s feeling achey? There are already two tentacles working on your shoulders & two more pressing at that sore spot on your spine

It’s almost scary how well he can predict what you need

But then again, he is telepathic, so it makes sense

Part of his abilities also means that he can somewhat relieve any aches, pains & mood swings you might get before, during or after your period

So that whole monthly hassle you usually have to go through? Practically ~gone~ with him around

Only down side is that he’s pretty busy, so he might not always be there for you

No worse feeling than knowing that the one (1) person who can help you through this can’t be with you :/

Jeff the Killer

Absolute gremlin

Forgets some people have to go through this every 👏damn 👏month 👏

So when you start getting moody around him, he gets upset, frustrated & confused every single time

Someone help this clueless manses I stg 🙄

Seriously, you gotta spell it out for him

And even then, he won’t /completely/ understand why you get like this

You gotta ask for anything you want/need because he’s not gonna know what to do otherwise

Sometimes, he just straight up leaves for a few days because he doesn’t know how to handle it :/

Which, honestly, almost makes things easier, if not for the fact that you miss him n his cuddles :”(

If you text him saying you want him tho, he’ll prolly come back

On the plus side? The angry period sex is bomb 👀👀

BEN Drowned

Almost as clueless as Jeff—but not quite as much

He’s horrible at keeping track of time, so he also doesn’t realize what’s going on when symptoms start showing up

He tries to be as sympathetic as he can when you let him know tho

If you can pry him away from his games, he’ll gladly cuddle & eat a bunch of sweets w you :3

Homeboy’s excellent in that regard; he’s super cuddly n supportive of not doing anything if you don’t feel like it

And he’ll give you back rubs & foot massages & anything else that’ll help you feel better uwu

He might try to be goofy to cheer you up—and it does usually work

Overall? Pretty damn good support for when you’re Struggling™️

The only issue that might arise is trying to pry him away from his games when he’s in a Heated Gamer Match

But that’s an issue you’ll probably get used to when dating him regardless :)

Eyeless Jack

Demon boy can smell when your period’s approaching

So timing is absolutely not an issue

In fact, if you forget your period’s a thing, we all do sometimes lmfao, & you’re feeling the symptoms w/o realizing, he’s good at gently reminding you what’s coming & finding a solution if/when possible :)

And also, speaking of scents & hormones, the sex is wild when you get that PMS/period horniness—just saying 😳😳

He’s super understanding of what you go through because he gets similar bouts of strange cravings, random horniness, awkward discomfort & occasional stabs of pain

Being partly possessed by a demon = constantly PMSing: confirmed ✅

He is absolutely there for you the whole way through

He’s loving, attentive & caring—and he gets you what you need when you need it, no questions asked

AND with his study in a medical background, he’s great at administering the proper care you need

Unfortunately, he also might leave if he needs to feed, or if he’s going through his heat

But he always returns as soon as he can to help you through things <33

Masky

He… well… he’s not the best at helping you through it 😅

He’s got a pretty short temper, so if you get snappy with him because you’re feeling upset, well, he unfortunately will retaliate

But it’s not malicious!! It’s just kind of a knee-jerk reaction

He’ll feel really bad if he genuinely upsets you

And as soon as you explain what’s going on, he’ll try his best to make it up to you AND help you feel better any way he can

Honestly, he’s the kind of guy to download a period tracking app to remind him when he should take things easy on you (it’s pretty cute skdjdhsl)

He’s trying, I swear :”)

He’ll make you ~plenty~ of food & give you a bunch of painkillers because he doesn’t know what else to do

And he’s great at giving you tummy rubs/massages for when your cramps start acting up

He’s lowkey helpless but he’s really trying so it’s cute 🥰❤️

Hoodie

Honestly? He’s pretty good at helping you manage things

Keeps decent track of your cycle & always carries a spare pad/tampon/cup just in case—with plenty of painkillers if ever need be

He’ll give plenty of tummy rubs as well, and will let you steal his hoodie while tucking you in blankets/providing snacks AND heating pads for your comfort

He’s just,, the whole package,,,, how can you not love him? ❤️

He has to leave for jobs fairly often, but he’ll definitely text & call as much as he can to keep you company & check up on you

He’ll also try to crack some jokes to make you feel better when you’re in pain

He hates that you have to go through this all the time, but he loves how cuddly & affectionate you get

Uses your period as an excuse to spend more time with you ngl

Overall, he’s pretty wholesome when you’re on your period

I love him & you should too, thanks for coming to my ted talk 💞💗💕

Ticci Toby

The sweetest boy of all times

He can be a tad clueless, but he’s always sO understanding & always willing to learn

Will either go to EJ or some of the other period-having creeps for advice on how to help

He doesn’t feel pain, so he can’t really relate to what you’re going through

But instead of under-reacting, he’ll usually overreact

So you have to reassure him that no, it’s probably not fatal, and yes, you probably will be fine

Even then, he might still wanna take you to one of the docs just to make sure you’re 100% alright

Like I said; very sweet 🥰❤️

He sometimes worries a tad too much, but he’s a great listener & will help any way he can

Just wants to love & support you & give you all the affection you deserve <3

[kikixreverie]

Hi- may I ask for an angst-mix with Bucky x reader: she had her share of abusive/toxic relationships in her past, but it was nothing she spoke of, and not now when she had James. It wasnt like she thought she was gonna be triggered again, not by him, any other guy- buy not her Bucky! Some tiny bickering evolved to a large dispute, and before she knew what was happening, she shied away from him, making herself small, awaiting the blow - that never came... And instead she was overcome by shame...

Pasts and Apologies

Bucky x Fem!reader

Word count - 3k

Warnings - Mentions of domestic abuse from ex, some descriptions of abuse, angst, trauma

A/n - Okay I definitely went hard on the angst for this one. I kinda just went off on one so not so much bickering and more just a full blown argument but I've been feeling kinda angsty lately so I kinda accidentally made this darker than I expected. Please read the warnings and do not read if you think this could trigger you.

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Love had not been kind to you before Bucky. Every decent memory of your ex was clouded with uncertainty, you would walk on eggshells around him, terrified that saying the wrong thing would set him off and you'd be calling Sam again, sobbing down the phone, cradling another bruise at the hands of your 'partner'.

You were together for years, devoted to and unconditionally in love with the man that you had met in high school. Childhood sweethearts.

He always was quick to anger and he wasn't shy about that. He never had any issues with shouting at you when you pissed him off, just as he never had issues with shouting at his mother or younger brother, but at the time, you had always stood up for yourself and defended the poor woman, making him apologise, and he let you, he always let you clean up his messes.

The first few years were spent in ignorant bliss, you constantly ignored the fear that would creep up your spine when he got angry, but you could manage a screaming match or two, you could manage it all because you loved him, you depended on him despite that he wasn't at all dependable.

The arguments were tough, but you never expected it to go further than that, but eventually, it did.

The first time he was physically aggressive was on his 22nd birthday. He had insisted that he spend his birthday with his friends, calling it a guys night, and you were fine with that, you knew how handsy he got when he was with his friends anyway, so you spent the day with him instead, making sure to keep him happy and spoilt rotten.

As the night crept on, you had tried to wait up for him to return, just as he had asked, but as it passed 3am you decided that he wouldn't mind you going to bed since you had work the next day, so you crawled into bed and fell asleep, a mistake, at the time, you didn't know you had made.

When he returned half an hour later to see you unconscious, he woke you up with his shouting, angry that you hadn't stayed up for him, convinced that you were ruining his night on purpose. The loud awakening was enough alone to trigger your fight or flight but when he threw the duvet off you and grabbed your ankle so tightly you knew a bruise would form, you were terrified. He dragged you off the bed and pushed you towards the door, telling you to fuck off, and you did, tears streaming down your face as you laid awake on the couch till morning.

It only got worse from there, when he realised that he could hurt you and get away with it, it became his favourite past time, he'd look for reasons to shout at you, make you do things that would piss him off just so he'd have a reason to be cruel.

When Sam started noticing dark bruises on your skin, he was livid, and despite how often you'd try to convince him that it's just clumsiness, Sam knew better.

There were rare days that you would have long conversations with Sam, you'd talk about how you'd lost all your friends and distanced yourself from your family but you didn't blame your abuser, you blamed only yourself, and Sam would beg you to leave him but you'd be sobbing in his arms, telling him that you still loved the man who hurt you, that he didn't really mean to hurt you and you'd feel even more guilt if you ever got him in trouble for it.

It was a long and hard journey, but the moment you told Sam that you wanted out, he was there for you, offering you to stay at his place and helping you call the cops. He gave you all the resources he could possibly find through the VA and set you up with an amazing therapist and eventually you were living in your own place, talking to old friends again, and filing a restraining order against your ex.

It was nearly two years later when you met him. Introduced through Sam, you met the love of your life on a Sunday. He was quiet and focused, with hard eyes scanning the room, looking for escape routes, analysing people's faces.

You smiled gently at him when you met, opting for a small nod in greeting instead of a handshake. You stayed near him for the remainder of the gathering, not pressuring him to speak to you, just sitting in silence. You were drawn to him, his behaviour was so similar to yours.

You knew what it felt like to want to just blend into the corner, to stay unnoticed, you understood the need to know how to escape a room, and you saw the way he hesitantly returned your smile and then struggled to chase his smile away once you had sat down beside him.

You and Bucky soon became each other's rocks, always there for the other on the hard days, days that you would spend just walking or reading together in calm silence. There was no doubt that the two of you loved each other, and after months and months of trying to hide longing glances and blushing cheeks, you finally confessed to each other, and the rest was history. You trusted him like you had never trusted anyone before.

As your relationship progressed, Bucky started to notice some strange things in your behaviour, how you'd always ask his permission for you to go out with friends, how you were always quick to apologise in any situation and distanced yourself from him when he was the slightest bit irritated.

He had tried to ask you about it, but you always changed the subject as soon as it was mentioned, ensuring him that it was nothing to worry about.

To tell the truth, you were embarrassed, you were ashamed that your ex still had this effect on you, and no matter how many times you told yourself that he would never, that your Bucky would never, your brain refused to allow you to believe it and you continued with the odd behaviour that you used as a defence mechanism when in the abusive relationship.

You never spoke out of line, you never asked him where or who he was going out with, and you never let small bickering escalate.

It was only after you had overheard Sam and Bucky in a heated conversation, Sam scolding Buck for being reckless and stupid during a mission, that you had your first argument with him.

You had called Sam while Bucky was at the store, convincing him to tell you what had happened and after a few minutes of guilt-tripping, Sam finally confessed that Bucky had practically ran into open fire, endangering himself in an attempt to shut down a Hydra base, it could've very easily been fatal, and it wasn't the first time something like this had happened.

You knew it was wrong, you knew you should've just asked Bucky about it, but you couldn't help yourself, and you knew that Bucky would've downplayed the whole situation.

When he returned home you were pacing up and down in the living room, chewing the inside of your cheeks and your nails to pieces because you could've lost him, Bucky could've died and he was acting as if it were nothing.

"Doll?" You could hear the worry in his voice as he placed the shopping bags on the kitchen counter and walked over to you, standing in front of you to stop your movement, pulling your hand from your mouth and kissing your knuckles.

It was supposed to calm you, and it almost did, but as his soft lips grazed your hand, and his eyes met yours, your mind kept wandering to the fact that he could've died.

This moment could've never happened, instead, you'd have Sam or Steve at your door, trying to deliver the news of their best friend's death, your lover.

"Honey speak to me" He looked utterly confused, but the look only made you feel angry.

How could he be so reckless?

"I just got off the phone with Sam."

He froze, eyebrows furrowing and taking a step away from you, waiting for you to explain.

Your gaze didn't move from the floor, trying to even out the anger and worry rushing through you, settling like a heavy rock in your stomach.

"He told me about the missions, about how you've been acting."

"What do you mean, how I've been acting?" He scoffed, sounding offended, and you sighed.

"How reckless you've been acting. Sam said that Tony's considering pulling you out of missions! How many times have you endangered yourself like this? How many times is it gonna take for you to realise that you could fucking die out there, James."

Your voice was stern, and the tone felt foreign against your tongue. Bucky's kept his face hard, refusing to show any emotion, but you could see the way his jaw clenched harshly, eyes glued to the corner of the room, ignoring your fiery glare.

"Were you ever going to tell me? I thought that all the injuries you got were fairly normal for the jobs you do, but when I hear that you run into open fire, that you make decisions on your own before talking to your team, that you've gotten fucking stabbed in the past, and you never told me, how do you expect me to react?"

He sighed heavily through his nose, jaw ticking in annoyance towards his friend, angry that he had told you even though it wasn't his place.

"I told him not to tell you." His voice was gruff, the words spoken harshly under his breath and you felt your anger flair again.

"What and you think that's okay?!"

His gaze shot to yours, looking at you incredulously.

"Bucky we're partners! You're supposed to tell me this shit, you're supposed to tell me when you've nearly died on a mission, you're supposed to trust me."

"You think I don't trust you?!" His voice was slightly raised and you felt your annoyance spike, "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to worry."

"Of course I'm gonna worry, James. This is a big deal, I can't believe you've been getting seriously injured and not telling me."

"Well, I don't think it's that big of a deal, Sam shouldn't have fucking told you. This wouldn't be happening if he had just kept his mouth shut, but no! Of course not!" Bucky's eyebrows were drawn in tight with annoyance, wishing you'd just drop the subject, "I'm not stupid, I know what I'm doing."

"What the hell do you mean 'You know what you're doing?' You know that you're not supposed to endanger yourself to complete a mission, yet you do it anyway. I'm glad Sam told me because otherwise, I doubt I'd ever find out!."

"I don't see how what I do on missions is anything to do with you. Sam is exaggerating. I'm fine!"

As Bucky's voice raised, you started to lose focus, flashbacks of your past echoing in your mind and in his annoyance, Bucky didn't notice the way your eyes had gone distant, losing sight of the man in front of you, the man you loved, and forming the image of the man you still see in nightmares, the man you're so terrified of seeing in the street that you haven't stepped foot in Queens since leaving him.

You could almost feel the sting of his palm against your cheek, the burn of his hand, tight around your wrist, and you tried to remind yourself that it wasn't real. It had been months since you'd had an episode, and your steps to control them were hard to find with the false image of your abuser so clear in front of you.

"Are you even listening to me?" The statement dragged you back to reality and you felt yourself calm when your eyes focused in on Bucky, reminding yourself that your ex wasn't here, that Bucky wasn't like that, he would never, but as he raised his arm to push his hair out of his face, everything flew out the window and in the moment, you were 21 again and you were sure he was going to hit you, your exes face flashing behind your eyes again.

You flinched, a gasp falling from your lips as your eyes squeezed shut and your head ducked down, breathing heavily through your nose as you awaited the hit.

Time slowed.

Bucky froze completely, his eyes wide and frantic as he quickly stumbled away from you, shaking his head as self-hatred ran through his veins, disgusted at himself for making you think even in the slightest, that he would ever hurt you.

"Doll?" He sounded absolutely broken.

Your head shot up, panic flooding through you when you realised what you had done and pain replacing the feeling when you saw the agony on Bucky's face.

"Y/n, I- I would never-" He kept his voice at a pained whisper, not wanting to scare you further as he stayed at a distance.

You collapsed to the floor, sitting on your knees as the weight of the situation pulled you down. Your hands raised to cover your mouth as a sob threatened to tear through you, so fucking ashamed of what had just happened, so fucking ashamed that your ex had done this to you, and you had let him for so long, ashamed that he still haunted you.

"Babydoll I-" He struggled to find the words, terrified that he had just lost you, wanting to reach out and hold you but scared shitless of hurting you more than he already had, "I don't know what- I'm so fucking sorry y/n, I can't- I can't even fathom the thought of-"

His voice trailed off, unable to even say the words and you felt your guilt tenfold.

"N-No Bucky, I'm sorry I thought-" You struggled to speak through your crying, hot tears flowing down your cheeks as you rocked yourself gently in an attempt to self-soothe.

"Why are you apologising honey? This is on me, this is-"

"No, it isn't, I promise Buck this isn't you, it's.." You couldn't get the words out, you couldn't tell him, "Just come here, please."

You wanted him to wrap his arms around you, you needed him to know that it wasn't him, you know the way his mind works and you knew that by now he would already be drowning in guilt and self-hatred.

"I don't think that I should. I don't want to hurt you, I can't- I can't hurt you" You smiled at him gently through your tears and your chin wobbled as you saw the tears running down his cheeks too.

"It's okay. I'm okay Bucky, I just- I-I need you over here, I need you - I need you to touch me. I need you."

He was over in an instant, falling to the floor beside you and letting out a huge sigh of relief when you instantly wrapped yourself around him, tucking your head into the crook of his neck and crawling into his lap, needing to be as close to him as possible, to rid the memories of the pain, to remind yourself that his touch is good, his touch is safe.

Arms enveloped you and he held you as tight as possible, the both of you crying.

After the two of you had calmed down and a comfortable silence enveloped you, Bucky knew he would have to break it.

"Why did you think that I would hit you?" He asked, his voice tentative and gentle and you sighed, knowing that it was time for you to tell him.

"I didn't, I don't, I promise."

You lifted your head from his shoulder but still stayed on his lap, instead, resting your forehead against his.

"Then why-?"

"I thought I was better, I-I thought it was all over but I just- I lost myself again. Everything got all foggy and I lost where I was and I just, I thought I was there but-" The floodgates opened again and you knew that Bucky had no clue what you were talking about but the words just kept coming.

Bucky's eyebrows were furrowed tightly and when your vague, confusing explanation only made his worry grow, he felt himself pulling you even tighter against him.

"Doll, Did someone hurt you? Is that why you're always walking on eggshells around me? Is that what the nightmares are about?" He struggled against the words, not wanting to say them because he didn't want to believe them and he watched in agony as you swallowed hard and nodded slowly, your hands coming to rest on the back of his neck as you continued to hold your forehead against his.

He refused to let his anger show, he wouldn't do that to you, especially with you so fragile, but he couldn't hide the pained shaky breath he let out at your confession, "Fuck, I'm so sorry. God, I'm so sorry that that happened to you. Was it your ex? Did he hurt you?"

You nodded again, doing your breathing exercises, and calming yourself so that you could explain your situation fully to your partner.

"I should've told you, I know, I just, I'm so angry that I'm still like this, I just wish it would all go away and I could forget about what he did. I thought I was better. I can't stand that I'm still so haunted by that asshole" Bucky nodded along as you spoke, brushing his fingers up and down your back to help calm you.

"It's okay, Doll. Things like that don't just go away. Believe me, I wish they did too, but things will get better, I promise you that. Thank you for telling me."

You scoffed in self-deprecation, "I should've told you ages ago."

"That doesn't matter, you've told me now, and I'm sure it wasn't easy, so thank you for sharing" His voice was so gentle, his hands caressing your back almost making you feel sleepy.

"And Buck?" He hummed in response, letting you know that he was listening, "About the mission thing, I'm just worried about you. I can't lose you, I need you, and I need you alive."

A gentle smile lifted his frown and he nodded in understanding, feeling bad for getting mad in the first place, and you leaned back, looking down at him, your hands playing with his hair.

"I know. I'm sorry for being an idiot, It's just so hard to look at them and remember what they did to me and know what they've done to so many innocent people and I just lose it, all rationality out the window" You nodded at him, understanding how painful some of the missions must be.

"I'm sorry I got so upset with you, and I'm sorry I went to Sam instead of talking to you. Don't be mad at him, I kinda forced him to tell me" You gave him a sheepish look and he breathed out a small laugh, his nose crinkling like you always loved.

"It's okay doll, I'm sorry for being so careless and hiding the stuff about the missions, I promise I'll be more careful, I gotta make sure I always come home to my sweet girl. And don't worry about Sam, you deserved to know and I know what you're like."

You tutted at him and he smiled in response, the adorable, loving look on his face making you pull him into the sweetest, softest kiss which he instantly returned.

After sitting together in each others embrace for a while, the yawns eventually started. You were both positively exhausted from all the emotions you had both just experienced so Bucky wrapped your legs around his waist and lifted you both from the floor, discarding the groceries still left in bags in the kitchen and carrying you to bed, holding you as close as physically possible as you both drifted off to sleep.

[alltimesos]

Whipped Cream - Rafe Cameron

This is just pure porn, I'm so sorry.

Warnings: unprotected sex, dirty talk, ballgag, spanking, daddy kink, squirting, bondage

Word Count: 1k

“It’s a shame you had to disobey me, Princess.” Rafe’s thick voice enters the room. You shiver as he traces his finger down your spine. The panties in your mouth are starting to fall, covered in your saliva. Rafe tsks and pulls his hand away. He roughly grabs you and turns you over onto your back. Your eyes bug out of your head when your boyfriend displays a gag ball to you.

“This should keep your mouth shut, little whore.”

You didn’t know it was possible but Rafe’s eyes were even darker and he was sporting a boner in his sweatpants. He clasps the gag around your face, the ball resting nicely in your mouth. He takes the handcuffs off and replaces them with rope. It was obvious Rafe had been planning this delicious moment for quite some time.

“There,” he says tying the final knot. You gasped as Rafe attaches his mouth to your heat. “Rafe!” you try but it comes out a slobbery mumble instead. “What’s wrong? The little slut can’t talk?” he taunts. He works his mouth along your pussy, working two fingers into your dripping wet cunt.

Just as you’re about to cum, Rafe pulls away and slaps your cunt harshly. “No!” he barks. “Girls that disobey their daddies don’t deserve to cum.” And with that, he spreads your legs widely and lands six more slaps onto your exposed pussy. You cry out and start to shake, overstimulation overtaking you. Rafe quickly tugs his shirt off and drops his pants, letting his monster cock slap his tummy.

He had no intention of playing nice tonight. Rafe flipped over easily, slamming his cock into your hole with no warning, no prep. Your hands are tied behind your back, the ball gag preventing any noises. He presses your face into the mattress, pounding relentlessly in and out of you. Your body shakes with sobs, tears flowing freely as Rafe teases your clit. You tried your hardest to push and shove your boyfriend away as you felt an orgasm creep up. His actions stop, cock still inside of you as he lands ten hits to your ass cheeks. “Did you just try to stop Daddy?” You cry and bury your face into the cold touch of the sheets.

“You better straighten up before you make matters even worse,” he growls pulling your hair. He continues to fuck your hole hard, balls hitting your ass. You tugged at the rope, letting it rub your skin raw. Rafe presses a kiss across your back. “Feel so good around me baby, you’re doing so good. We’ll finish soon if you behave,” he praises.

Your body melts like an ice cube as you fall back into the sheets. “You’re mine, all mine.” He grabs your hips and carefully flips you over. His hands wrap around your throat, limiting your air supply. You wither and squirm underneath his touch, begging for a release. One hand stays pressed against your throat, the other gripping you as he fucks you hard. You moan and whine and beg from under the ball, trying your best to talk to Rafe

Rafe shoots his hot spunk into you, hips rolling as he rides out his orgasm. He slowly removes himself and sits back on his knees. He carefully unties the rope and takes the ball gag out, a long stripe of saliva dripping down from it. He lays you onto your side, positioning himself behind you.

Rafe hooks one of your legs around his, fingers grazing your pussy. One hand returns to your throat, holding onto it lightly. His plump lips are kissing your shoulder blade, two fingers pumping in and out of you. “You’re doing so well baby,” he whispers. You moan loudly and throw your head back as he hits your g-spot with these slender fingers.

“That’s it princess, cum for me. Show Daddy how good you can be.”

You clench around him, tummy muscles tightening up. You feel the warm press of your pussy juices start to flow. Rafe removes his fingers and furiously rubs them up against your pussy, you squirting hot fluid freely over the bedspread. “Ah!” you scream out, as another long stream comes flowing.

Your legs tremble and shake for a few moments, Rafe coaxing you through your orgasm. He is quick to grab a fresh, warm washcloth and some cream for you. He waltzes over to the bed, propping you up against the pillows. He takes his time rubbing your wrists and arms, kissing them all over. He wipes you up with a washcloth and gently rubs some cream onto your bright red pussy and bruised ass. Once he’s done, he carries you downstairs into the kitchen after wrapping you up in a blanket and panties. “

Are you with me?” he asks softly, placing you on the kitchen counter. You slowly nod your head, eyes were still blown wide. “How do you feel princess?” he asks, rubbing a thumb over your cheek. You giggle and reach out for him. “Floaty, daddy.”

Rafe chuckles and hugs you. You sigh and melt into his touch. Rafe perceives to be a badass, but deep down he’s a major softie, but you know he would never admit that. “Hot chocolate for my baby?” he asks sitting down your favorite pink mug. “With extra whipped cream?” you asked excitedly. Your boyfriend beams and kisses your lips.

“With extra whipped cream,” he promises.

[kashimos-hajime]

the colour yellow | jjk

summary: “You once said love manifests the most twisted curses. I never thought of it that way before, but I’m starting to think you’re right.”

WARNINGS: ANGST!! hanahaki disease but not an au, HOSPITALS, DEATH, DESCRIPTIONS OF DISEASE, UNHEALTHY WEIGHT LOSS, pining, unrequited love, complicated feelings, its just sad. there are some light-hearted moments, and happier/softer aspects in the ending but it is generally sad in the ‘what could have been’ department pairing: gojo satoru x fem!reader, past geto suguru x fem!reader, mentions of satosugu word count: 29.9k lmao

a/n: i just needed to get the hanahaki out of my system. it did not work. i took liberties w the timeline because idc about actual jjk canon in this fic thanks. 

playlist for this fic

crossposted on ao3 x

Your Innate Technique always gave you a green thumb. Meaning, similarly enough to Yaga, you could plant cursed energy into objects.

Where it deviated, Satoru knows, is the type of object. Plants—trees, leaves, flowers. 

Ironic, he thinks numbly as he walks through the hospital. Shoko had told him that at this point it was palliative care until you died—nothing else would work. Cursed energy only fed your sickness, and even her technique could not heal the damage fast enough. Stupid. Idiotic. Cruel.

Cruel. That was the word.

He hadn’t seen it himself but from how his old friend had described it, it could only be cruel. 

His footsteps tap along the linoleum floors, urgent, but not too fast. A part of him dreads what he will see—his mind swirls with the possibilities, and of guilt.

Why didn’t he just come sooner? Why did he think it was okay to wait, to dismiss Itadori when he said you’d been checked in for your coughing fits?

“She’s strong. She’ll be fine,” he had said. Itadori’s small frown. “A little feather in her throat isn’t going to knock her down.”

Why? Why? Why? Why did he say that?

Because it had to be serious to put you in the hospital. For fuck’s sake, you were still that teenage girl who stood outside his dorm window in the middle of a thunderstorm to bring Fushiguro a birthday present before you left for a curse expedition a thousand years ago, and the woman who welcomed him into your home unprompted on December 24th, your cheeks dry, lips pressed in a brave smile.

You had held him tight enough he could not see the blood, scrubbed him in a bathtub, ran your fingers through his hair until the sweat and grime was gone. You took care of him because he knows the belief that no one should be left behind to suffer alone has been engrained in you since the day he’s met you.

He should’ve known. A girl abandoned for being cursed had turned into woman with a saviour complex who’d barely even think about telling him you were dying. 

Dying, of all things, from a disease no one knows how to cure. And you’re a sorcerer.

He could’ve laughed. The irony is enough to make him smile.

Your room’s in a tiny corner of the hospital, down the hall from a nurse’s station, and as he walks through, he can see the grey sunlight streaming through the window, glaring against his glasses. He lifts them to rub the heel of his hand into his eye.

He doesn’t want you to worry when you see him, and mostly, he needs to stall. His heart is in knots in his chest, and he spots a chair beside the door with your name in the plastic slate, so he sits down. His knees feel gummy and he leans forward, the visitor’s pass clipped to the front of his shirt hanging. 

Satoru tugs the glasses off his face, fits his palm over his brow and squeezes his eyes shut. It’s chilling in this dead end, and he swallows tightly. Everything tastes so dry as he looks up and shoves his hand underneath the sanitizer dispenser, rubbing it all over his hands just so he has something to do.

After a few minutes, he gets up and sets a hand on the knob. 

It can’t be as bad as he’s imagining. At most, you’re a bit sick, but you’ll still be spritely, warm in the lips and with arms outstretched and, “Satoru, finally!”

He opens the door. 

You’re sitting hunched over in bed. Silhouette outlined by the white-grey sunlight from outside your hospital room, you’re trembling as you hold onto a receptacle. An IV is hooked to your arm, a hospital gown is barely hiding anything, and it feels immoral to even look so Satoru doesn’t. Instead, he pauses by the doorframe and closes his eyes for a moment as your gaze flashes to him. 

He feels it, to be honest. The heat of your stare until it is wrenched away by a violent cough you instinctually muffle by your palm, blood splattering over your hand, soft, velveteen purple petals falling from your lips and into the receptacle in your lap. 

You’re supposed to have a green thumb.

Vines bend to your will if you command it, you can summon forth thorns to impale your opponents, send thick creeping ivy to barricade a doorway. It doesn’t matter if there is no greenery in your immediate area. At the sweep of your hand, the ground could rumble with the sound of trees twisting their gnarled roots into feet to march at your command.

Just as long as they’re within range and you’ve touched them in the past few hours, they’re yours.

So, why can’t you stop this?

Plants are supposed to listen to you, right? As he stares at your shaking body on the bed, curved over the plastic tub, thick globs of bloodied spit drip from your lips and soaked purple blossom petals entwine with your life essence. His heart plummets to his chest. You retch, spit, choke, and every sound stabs him in the chest as he takes a weak step forward, hand stretched out limply.

Your name flutters, barely leaves his lips before you’re looking at him again, a bit of a mortifying image but nonetheless.

Even so, you smile, despite the blood painting your face, the exhaustion morphing your body. You look like you haven’t slept in weeks, and your hands shake around the receptacle. You look battered, bruised along the arms where the needles keeping you filled with antibiotics, medicine you need, had punctured you.

And still, you’re beaming at him. He thinks he’s going to be sick.

“Hi, Satoru.”

His hand falls. Eyes wide, he cannot take another step. You wipe at your lips, tossing the tissue into the trash before pushing the plastic receptacle onto the table and swinging your legs off the bed.

“Don’t—“ he croaks but you don’t listen, sliding your feet into slippers and grabbing your IV stand to take a step towards him. Your knees nearly give in but you stick out a hand before he can rush to catch you. Then, you’re pushing yourself up and walking over to him. It’s more of a shuffle, but Gojo finds he can’t care as you land on his chest, hands pressing into his back.

You’re a bit cold in his arms, and he wraps himself around you, trying to rub the heat back into your skin as you shudder, but your heart is still racing as it always does around him, and you…

You’re the type of person who can shift how the air feels and looks to his Six Eyes with your smile or your tears or your frown, and in that moment, the air bleeds yellow with your joy. It’s so bright in his soul that it makes his heart skip as you shift on your feet against him, hands sliding down so your arms can circle his waist and haul him closer. 

“Gojo Satoru turning off his infinity for little ole me,” you murmur, voice raspy, as he closes his eyes, cradling your head. Without another word, he sinks into you. “Talk about the world ending.”

Why didn’t you just call him? Why did you let him stay away for so long? He doesn’t want to ask why it’s happening, or how. He already knows you’ll just lie. But he wants to know if you think so lowly of him that you thought you didn’t matter to him.

After Suguru…

How could you think that? He’s screaming inside his mind as he touches your back, feels the faint protruding ridges along your skin when he pushes down. It makes your spine a bit more pronounced along the knobs, your shoulder blades a bit bumpy, but otherwise, it’s almost normal. One wouldn’t even be able to tell without touching you and actively searching for it. How could you think I don’t care?

This isn’t the work of a cursed spirit, that much he knows. It seems much more seductive, sneaking yet unhurried in its nature. This is agony in effigy. There’s something rotten inside you, but he can’t tell what it is. The energy is everywhere.

You pull back to look up at him with a soft smile, then tap his nose and tell him to join you before turning around and climbing back into bed with energy that betrays your earlier fits. You grab your robe that you’ve left on your bed before getting up again and walking around, shrugging the fabric back onto your shoulders.

He sits down in a visitor’s chair that is still cold.

“It comes and goes,” you explain first with your new, croaky voice, stretching your arms above your head and rubbing your neck. It doesn’t look painful, but you clear your throat a lot to see if it helps. So far, nothing. “So, it’s just like a really bad coughing fit, to be honest.”

“How long has it been going on?” Your hip cracks and you let out a relieved sigh. Satoru arches an eyebrow as you animatedly stretch your face. “What are you doing, silly?”

“It got worse a few weeks ago, enough that Nanami insisted I check myself in around two weeks ago?” you say, after counting on your fingers. Satoru’s heart plummets. “But it’s levelled out since I’ve been moved here and off-campus. And I’m stretching. When I get back out there, I have to remember how to emote.” You flash him a bedazzling grin and a bit of the weight lifts off his shoulders as you swallow down another cough. This time, it’s successful and you only let out a short, raspy breath before shaking it out.

You aren’t even doing that bad. 

The blood, the flowers, that must’ve been just a bad bout, but otherwise, you seem quite normal.

That’s what he tells himself, and he believes it.

With relief, he stretches out his legs, leaning his head back on his hands. Your room’s pretty nice—much nicer than an average hospital room. Plants on the windowsills, some get-well-soon cards and a desk in the corner filled books that you look like you haven’t even begun to read, some paintings hanging off the walls. 

You wave a hand to grab his attention again.

“Don’t look,” you chastise, tying the robe around your waist. “Some of these are works in progress.”

“So Itadori and Shoko were just exaggerating,” he assumes. You look up at him, quirking an eyebrow. “If you’re attempting to paint, I know all that’s happened is that you’ve lost your mind.”

“Shut up.”

“Well, they made it out as if you were dying. If it’s just a lung issue, they could probably just fix it and we can get back to exorcising curses and making fun of Fushiguro’s teen angst,” he says, crossing his legs at the ankles. You step over them to go to the window and examine your plants, and he eyes you in his peripheral, watching you inspect one of the leaves before looking next at some blooming flowers. You don’t answer, and the grey light makes you look melancholy until you shrug.

“The doctors say I need to rest, save my strength and all that,” you finally say vaguely. “And don’t make fun of Fushiguro.”

“I’d never do that.”

You tilt your head and arch an eyebrow skeptically before flicking his forehead with a sharp donk. “I’m not above slapping the shit out of you.” He opens his mouth to argue and you hold up a finger, shutting him up. “And you can’t hit back as revenge. Ill hospital patient rights.”

“You can’t take the moral stand. Vengeance has no gender bias,” he exclaims, sitting up but you merely smirk, leaning over and shoving your face into his space before turning your head to present your cheek. His eyes widen as you poke your own face tauntingly.

“Do it, then.”

Gawking for a moment, Satoru stares but you only wink and he pushes you away lightly. You stumble a bit and he jumps to his feet to catch you but you manage to right yourself up, shooting him a foul glare. He glares back in response.

“Well, obviously, I wasn’t going to actually slap you,” he says, indignant.

“So you pushed me instead? Gojo, in your words, you are the strongest. You never know how to control the strength you push out.”

“Yes, I do!”

“One time, you patted Megumi on the back and you sent him into the pavement.”

“He was nine.”

“It still happened!” you cry, although an impish smile is already curling at your lips and it isn’t long before it spreads to Satoru, warm bright yellow and enough that it absolves any of the remaining pain in his body as you straighten up, holding onto your IV stand for support. The metal rattles a bit as the wheels roll. Your feet brush the ground. You lift your head up wretchedly.

It’s almost like that weakness sobers you.

The expression that overtakes you frightens Satoru to fucking death. 

His face feels like it numbs, staring at the darkness that seeps the light away. You stare at the metal pole your fingers are wrapped so tightly around, and then you look at the bag hanging there, clear and round and soft to your touch as you straighten up.

“Satoru,” you say softly.

“Yeah?” His voice is so quiet he’s not sure he even speaks. He can’t remember the last time you had looked so dispassionate at anything in his life. Even death had left its mark—black frowns, long streaks underneath your eyes.

Your apathy is dark purple, an endless void colour. 

“When I die, make sure Shoko’s the one who cuts me open to find out what’s wrong with me.”

Something prickles at his fingertips. He touches your shoulder and half-thinks his fingers will go right through you.

“You’re not going to die,” he insists firmly. “It’s just a bad cough.” You look up at him and blink. Then you touch your lips and shudder down another cough.

“We all die.”

“It’s not your time, yet.” His fingers dig into your shoulder. You don’t even wince even though you’re clenching his jaw but he can’t find it in himself to loosen his hold. It feels like the Jaws of Death. A crocodile’s bite.

So much for not being able to control his own power.

“It’s just a bad cough.” He ignores everything Shoko had said. Sometimes she’s wrong—sometimes, it’s not even that bad. He’d just seen it, hadn’t he? You were stretching, jumping onto your bed, acting like nothing was wrong.

Palliative care? As if you needed it—

You blink, then, and look at him. Stare at him as if you’d never said those words, and he had never reached out. 

You jerk your shoulder out of his grip. It stings more than it should.

“Right. But I’m just saying. You know how you always say I’ve got a few screws loose. It just makes sense someone will wanna crack me open to see what was going on up there and I want it to be her.” 

You smile, and the yellow cancels out the purple. 

Colour theory. 

But Satoru doesn’t smile back.

“What about the flowers?” he asks after a while. You’ve climbed back onto bed and he’s sat back down. You’re blowing into a spirometer, and every time, without fail, the ball shoots up to the top, clattering against the plastic. He watches, hoping that the next time, it’ll do the same thing again.

You stop and look at him. “What about them?”

“Is it some optical illusion? Why are they in your throat?”

“That’s a harder nut to crack,” you muse. “I don’t really know. It’s like when you’ve got food in your esophagus and you’re trying to cough it up so it doesn’t feel stuck anymore except it keeps building up. That only started a few days ago, though, so maybe, someone drugged me or something.” He doesn’t laugh and you frown. “Not funny?”

He shakes his head. “It’s freaky.”

.

He sits on the bench on campus. 

He’s cancelled classes because he didn’t come up with a standard lesson plan and his students are glad to have a Monday afternoon off, even if they’d never say it to his face. In truth, he’d spent the whole weekend at the hospital until he reeked of antiseptic and pollen. 

You coughed up five petals, and without fail, a nurse would come in hourly intervals to collect them. Shoko came once, to check up on you and to collect the samples. If she was surprised Satoru was sitting in the corner on his phone, she didn’t voice it.

“She’s not even doing that bad,” he says to the air, more accusatory than anything. The woman standing by him doesn’t answer and sits down beside him uninvited. Turning to look at her, his eyes narrow behind his blindfold. “You said she needed palliative care until she died. The doctor said she could leave tonight.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive concepts,” she informs, not looking at him. Shoko looks a bit out of place in the warm colours of the garden. Half a corpse herself. Waif-like. “The doctor’s letting her relax in the comfort of her own home before she dies. That’s all.”

“She’s not going to die.”

She snorts. “Denial isn’t a good colour on you.” The words could’ve been delivered colder. Satoru is grateful that they weren’t. 

Shoko rests her hands on her knees, tilts her head up, and sighs. Her long hair is like warm chocolate in the sunlight, spilling down her arched back from the knot she tied. “If you have any idea on how to fix this, I’m listening with both ears.”

“I don’t even know what it is,” he says. “Coughing and flowers? I’ve never heard of a sickness like that before.”

“Nanami pointed out that it could be a curse someone placed on her. I don’t know why, but it’d be an explanation.” Satoru spreads his legs, plants an elbow on his knee and leans forward to look at the ants travelling along the cobblestone before his shoe. “It manifested on some negative emotion lingering inside her and it’s growing every day, but she won’t budge.” Shoko sighs. Her purple eye bags look worse in the sunlight, but he would never tell her that. “Maybe you’d have a better chance digging into her. With Geto gone, there’s no one else to ask, is there?”

“What about you? What happened to girls and their little secrets?” he jokes, trying to ignore the ache that begins to bloom in his chest. Shoko eyes him wryly.

“I have suspicions, but there are some things girls don’t ask other girls,” she retorts. “It’s never been my business anyway. My job is to treat her, and I’ve given her options. It’s up to her to take them. Grief is a birthing ground for curses, and if she’s letting them feed on her freely, you know what fate is waiting for her.”

With that, she gets up and leaves as quickly as she arrived. Satoru swallows the smell of flowers and feels sick.

.

Monday night, Satoru pulls up his laptop and looks through, searching up words he can string together in a coherent sense to get the answers he wants. As rare as it probably is, some research wouldn’t hurt, would it? Some curses had a trademark affliction—maybe this one does, too.

So he searches up flower coughing to see if there has ever been a record of strange deaths that have made the news. If not, he’ll go to the jujutsu databases, but for now, maybe some publicity could put some answers to this question.

He is surprised when one of the first results is flower coughing disease. 

When he hits enter, the white screen blasts into blue irises with numerous results all repeating the same two words.

HANAHAKI DISEASE

And Satoru reads, and reads, and reads. He reads two weeks to three months, he reads unrequited love, and removal, and disappearance of romantic feelings and capacity for romantic love.

He reads fictional disease and wonders how much of it really is fictional. 

His phone pings with a text, and he grabs at it, tilts it just enough to get a glimpse of the screen. It’s from you, and he hasn’t read a text from you in so long he almost doesn’t recognize who it’s from except he does because… who else could it be?

[Greenbean] 11:02 PM

hey!!! guess whos finally fucking free oh my god

ugh out of the hospital and forgot how actual air smelled like lol bitch im so hungry i could eat a zoo

Letting his phone clatter, he sighs and rubs his face roughy, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment before snapping his laptop shut and getting up. His phone buzzes again and he reaches for it blindly, the screen lighting up as he goes to bed.

[Greenbean] 11:03 PM

we should get smth to eat!! i wanna go to that new ramen place in ikebukoro

[Satoru] 11:03 PM

fine but you good???? who picked you up from the hospital? still insulted you didnt let me tbh

also what did the doctor say???

[Greenbean] 11:04 PM

bc ur a menace who doesnt know how to drive 

he said itd get worse before itd get better so still gotta go for checkups but yeah dont worry and nanami came bc he didnt trust me not to try and walk home lol but he did buy me dinner

wasnt enough though!!!

…

[Greenbean] 11:06 PM

ok but fr does he think im insane

clearly id flash some skin and hitch a ride duh

…

[Greenbean] 11:10 PM

youre just gonna leave me on read? yikes

[Satoru] 11:12 PM

i was getting ready to sleep silly

and yeah ill come pick you up on saturday for lunch?

[Greenbean] 11:15 PM

sorry making instant noodles rn but yeah that sounds fine

wait youre sleeping so early lmfao

[Satoru] 11:16 PM

im old :/

  [Greenbean] 11:18 PM

u sure are

(image sent)

look!!! my babies are still alive!!! idk how but miracles do exist im tellin ya

[Satoru] 11:24 PM

inumaki, maki, and fushiguro broke into ur home to water them but dont tell them i told u

[Greenbean] 11:24 PM

wtf

[Satoru] 11:25 PM

yeah idk when but i think u teaching inumaki how to pick locks has opened up too many possibilities but also its really funny thanks

now go to sleep u need to rest

[Greenbean] 11:28 PM

whos gonna make me lol youre not my dad

[Satoru] 11:29 PM

lol 

remember how i can teleport 

lol so cool

[Greenbean] 11:30 PM

dude

wtf

fine 

goodnight hoe </3

[Satoru] 11:31 PM

goodnight knock off poison ivy <3

.

“You’ve looked better,” Shoko says. Satoru raises his head wearily as he pushes off the wall. Shoko’s holding a cup of coffee, her lab coat fresh on her shoulders and eye bags looking more printed on rather than natural swelling. Satoru can’t help but feel the same exhaustion. “Definitely looked worse. What do you want? It’s early.”

“Have you ever heard of Hanahaki disease?” he asks. She shakes her head, and he pulls up the page on his phone and hands it to her. She takes it from him and her eyes scan the screen as he continues, “It’s this fictional disease, something that stems from unrequited love, and I think it could be related to whatever she’s experiencing.”

“I thought you were set on willing her to survive,” she replies dryly, shooting him a quick look and adjusting the coffee in her hand. “But this is definitely one of your stranger theories.”

Satoru ignores that last part. “It’d make sense. With her Cursed Technique, maybe it manifested in a way that links to it.”

She pushes into the office, setting the coffee on her desk and sitting down. Satoru sits down on the exam table closest and leans forward eagerly as she continues to read the page, scrolling down occasionally before scrolling back up and sighing. “This is a stretch. The timeline doesn’t match up to what this is saying.”

“This is a curse. It doesn’t have to follow fiction.” His body feels sore, janky even, everywhere. He barely got a wink of sleep last night and he knows he’s paying for it, now. “Hell knows life rarely does, anyway. But the symptoms matches too well, doesn’t it? The flowers—you’ve done scans, haven’t you?”

She deliberates his words carefully as she looks to the file cabinet and pulls out a binder. Satoru catches a flash of your name on the spine before she moves her coffee and his phone out of the way to flip it open.

“The scans we’ve taken have only just begun to show small growths in her trachea,” she allows, “and we don’t fully understand how cursed energy affects our bodies, so I suppose it could be something like Hanahaki, if the negative energy stemming from December 24th was what brought this on or if these symptoms started when we were still students, but she’s been experiencing shortness of breath a few months before Christmas.” Satoru’s lungs squeeze the last of the air out of them at that, and a cold sweat drops down his spine as she hands his phone back to him. “It only started getting worse Suguru’s death, which meant there had to have been a trigger before that.”

In the back of his head, he hears your voice, light and yellow, saying a few weeks. It got worse a few weeks ago. 

“Worse?”

“The first petal fell some time after Christmas. It’s been a slow, but steady progression since then. Sometimes, it’s two or three. When it’s not a good day, there can be as many as seven to ten.” Shoko switches on the lamp on the corner of her desk and adjusting the direction of the white light before flipping the page. “But if we can find the original trigger and alleviate that pressure it’s putting on her, we could buy her more time.”

“So it’s been nearly six months since the first petal,” he says. Shoko nods. Satoru is grateful for the blindfold—she can’t see how blank everything looks on his face. “It said sometimes, the disease can last for eighteen months.”

“As you said, this isn’t a fairytale.” She half-spins on her chair to face him and leans back into it, crossing one leg over the other and jiggling her knee. “I saw that one of the solutions is excise the growths at the cost of the attachment. That was one of the options I gave her when the growths first appeared. She said she wanted more time before she could decide.”

He frowned. “Why?”

“Because she’s smart, and likes to push her damned limits. And if this is truly the basis of the curse”—she gestures to Satoru’s phone. Her expression flickers—“those flowers are feeding off cursed energy. Cutting them out would remove those negative emotions, but at a cost of something else. Maybe whatever feelings she has regarding the trigger.”

Satoru looks down at his phone. It feels heavier than a thousand cinderblocks in his clammy hands. His fingers are numb as his screen dims and finally locks itself. Pressing the button, it illuminates again to reveal a picture of a cactus you gave him for his birthday years ago, blooming with delicate purple petals. 

His heart rends. That cactus is long dead now.

“But, Suguru’s dead.” 

“That’s why I asked you to ask her,” Shoko mutters. 

Turning to her binder again, she picks up a pen and clicks it, lowering it to the paper before pausing, and Satoru looks up as she stares at whatever words are printed into the page distantly. A strange affliction is on her face, almost tormented, and Satoru is not-so-kindly reminded that before Suguru and Satoru, Shoko was your best friend first. 

“Tell her how idiotic she’s being,” she enforces quietly. “The longer it lives, the more permanent damage is inflicted. With the unpredictable nature of curses, that won’t take long and by then, it’ll be too late to consider removing it.”

.

Saturday comes too fast, yet not fast enough. By the end of the week, Satoru is all but finished with teaching, and is waiting outside your apartment, leaning against the car as he scrolls through his phone. He’s done a bit more research on this Hanahaki disease, but even the word makes him shiver with the implications. 

“Satoru!” Turning, he catches you loping easily towards him. You’re dressed in billowy, wide-legged dark mint green pants and a pretty white top that makes you look more nymph than human, with a canvas tote bag hanging off your shoulder. You flash him a smile as you fiddle with the fabric tie at the waistband of your pants nervously. “Hi.”

“Hey. Hope you don’t mind I brought Ijichi along for the ride since someone claims I can’t drive.”

“You don’t have your license, sir,” Ijichi says wearily as you bend over to wave through the window. "It would be illegal for you to be on the road in any capacity—oh, hello, ma’am. It’s nice to see you doing so well.”

“Thanks, Ijichi. I think I’m doing better after getting out of there,” you say as Satoru opens the car door for you and he smirks, eyes crinkling behind his sunglasses. You straighten up, looking at him before poking his chest and it’s almost just like the good ole days as you break out into a grin that crinkles your entire face. “What’s with you being a gentleman? It better not be because I was in the hospital.”

“Of course not,” he admonishes. “I wouldn’t dare dream of being polite to you of all people.” Still, he sidesteps and sweeps his arm, gesturing for you to climb in first which you do, exhaling a bit shakily as you settle in and slide over. By the time he’s settled in beside you, you have a fist over your lips and you’re clearing your throat testily.

A worm of unease wriggles into his stomach as he clips in his seatbelt, pulling the lapels of his unbuttoned green shirt free from the strap. Legs spreading, he lets his hands fold in his lap as Ijichi begins to drive them to their destination. You’ve lowered your hand by now, looking out the window, and it’s not bright enough that Satoru can read your expression on the glass.

It’s clear you don’t want to talk about it, but still, that nagging feeling bites at him as he rolls the divider up between the backseat and the front—a mock of privacy.

“The place we’re going to gives me the same vibe as that family-owned restaurant we went to when we were students. The one in Kagurazaka,” you say after a while, turning back to look at him. You’re wearing a bracelet that jangles when you move your hand to adjust the seatbelt across your chest. “I think you’ll like it.”

“Have you been?”

“One time, before I checked in,” you tell him, smiling still. “It was really good. The perfect last meal.” Satoru does well enough to hide his frown at your choice of words as you meet his eyes. “You know, you can ask. I’m not fragile.”

“I don’t have anything to ask,” he lies. “I’m just glad you’re out of the hospital.”

“Me, too. I’ve missed so much and it drove me insane. Yaga-sensei insists that I don’t work until I’m sure I’m feeling better,” you add. “But to be honest, there’s nothing much that can be done to make me feel better.”

“I see. So you’re still coughing up flowers?”

“Petals,” you correct, “and a bit. Don’t worry. It’ll get better soon.” You wave a hand and turn to look out the window and Satoru’s appetite all but vanishes. He doesn’t know why you’re so intent on lying to him about the severity of your condition, but as your knee jiggles relentlessly the whole car ride with unbridled excitement, he wonders if you’re even aware of how sick you could be. 

His Six Eyes scan your body for signs of a curse. Normally, those plagued have their little burdens hanging off their shoulders, prying their head open, biting into an arm or leg, but he finds yours lives inside your chest, just barely hidden by the yellow light brimming from your body as you reach forward to lower the divider and talk to Ijichi.

They reach Ikebukuro before they’re dropped off after Satoru insists on walking the rest of the way.

“Give us some privacy, Ijichi! We both know you’ll just eavesdrop for the juicy details,” he exclaims loudly, leading to the man to blush furiously, stuttering that he’d do no such thing, and earning Satoru a smack on the back of his head, knocking his sunglasses askew.

“Thanks for the ride, Ijichi,” you say warmly as if you hadn’t slapped a concussion into Satoru. The Assistant Director dips his head. “See you later!” With that, he drives off and the two sorcerers are left in the busy street. Satoru looks around curiously, but you tug him along up the main road of the district and immediately turn right into one of the smaller streets. A few cyclists race past, as well as cars, but the traffic seems relatively slow despite it being the weekend. There are people walking along the white lines separating the lanes, chatting merrily as you lead him to the restaurant.

“I forgot how actual sunlight felt,” you sigh, stretching your arms high above your head as if to touch the wind breezing through. Inhaling deeply, you close your eyes. Satoru waits for you to begin to cough, and you hold it in, throat tensing a bit. 

He looks away, and pretends he doesn’t hear your sharp exhale, the soft cough you try to muffle with your hand. Instead, he looks at their surroundings, traces the green roads, watches a man park his bicycle and take the plastic bags out of the basket before rushing into a store. The air smells faintly of smoke, and Satoru waves in front of his face to see if it’ll help dispel the scent, but it’s so engrained with the hint of meat, honey, sweets, and flowers, that he can’t.

“I saw Suguru here once,” you tell him suddenly. He blinks, head snapping to you, and you’re already regarding him with a faint smile, eyes a bit dimmer. The warm yellow energy has faded to a burnt orange as you look ahead. “A year or two after he left. It’s why I moved closer a few years ago. I guess I had this weird hope that I’d see him again, but I never really did.” A faint grin graces your lips again, as if you’re not even aware you’re smiling. Fondness overtakes you. “I think about him a lot these days.”

“Me, too.”

“Of course,” you chuckle a bit, rubbing at the back of your neck. “I’m being insensitive.” 

“No, you’re not. He meant a lot to you, too. I don’t own him, or his memory.”

“I know, but he was still your best friend.” Unbidden, a voice in Satoru’s voice finishes it for you. My one and only. 

“Did you guys talk about anything?”

“Not really anything important,” you say, shrugging, but by the way your eyes shift in the light, glimmer differently, he knows you’re lying. He knows it’s none of his business, but a part of him hungers for new parts of Suguru and it’s powerful enough to take control of his tongue.

“Nothing’s not important. He was a wanted criminal.”

“I think we both know somehow that part never mattered to us.” You look at him, and run a thumb under the strap of your bag. “To any of us. But…” You tilt your head to him and your smile grows tender. “…since you asked, we talked about us. He told me about what he wanted, the kind of world he was determined to create. He paid for my dinner, kissed me goodnight like it was normal, and then he was gone. Never saw him again until last December.”

It shouldn’t sting as much as it does. 

He remembers that day ten years ago in Shinjuku. The coldness in which Suguru had looked at him. He can’t imagine that same poison directed at you. He couldn’t even imagine Suguru looking at him like that in the first place until he did.

“Are you the strongest because you’re Gojo Satoru or are you Gojo Satoru because you’re the strongest?”

“I used to have nightmares about it,” you continue distantly. “Because I could’ve left with him, but I didn’t. And I could’ve killed him, but I didn’t do that either.”

“If you want to kill me, kill me. There’s meaning in that, too.”

Satoru’s chest tightens. His heart feels rotten to the core. “I didn’t, either, until I did.” You smile a bit more, at the irony. “Would you? Have gone with him, that is.”

“I didn’t, so what’s the point in debating it?” you ask before shrugging thoughtlessly and answering anyway. “I think tackling curses at the source is important. I just didn’t like the way he was doing it. If I thought I could somehow change his mind, just a bit, on his methods, maybe, but by then, he was too far gone.” 

Your eyes, chips of glinting sunstone, mellow as a cyclist trills at them with a bell to get out of the way. You step out of the way, away from Satoru for a moment, before returning to him, and when the back of his hand brushes yours, he’s startled at how cold your skin is. 

Satoru is quiet as he absorbs all of this. He doesn’t really know what to say, and you don’t prod him for a reaction as they turn the corner again. 

“It’s just over there,” you say, pointing to a small restaurant, people milling by the door. There’s a sign hanging over the door, off-white with black kanji painted on and your arm falls. “There’s a line. Huh.”

“We can wait,” Satoru says when they stop at the edge of the crowd. “I don’t mind.”

“Okay. I’ll go put our names in then come back.” You disappear into the crowd for a moment before resurfacing and joining his side again, something in your hand. “It should be, like, fifteen minutes. I said the bar was okay.”

“That’s fine.” Shoving his sunglasses up into his hair, he cracks his knuckles and migrates to the wall. You follow, and he slouches against the concrete pillar. You adjust the tote bag against your body and lean against the other side just around the corner. Their elbows brush, and you tilt your head to look at him, smiling. Your face has caught the sun perfectly, and Satoru can’t help but smile back.

He wonders how to bring up this Hanahaki disease theory. You look so perfect, so happy in this moment where their eyes meet, that he can’t bring it up. Maybe it’s selfish, but it feels like it’s been so long since the two of them even managed to see each other for more than an hour. With how overworked jujutsu sorcerers are, it’s hard to recall the last time they both had downtime at the same time that wasn’t spent catching up on sleep.

You look away, shoulders shaking, as if that’s enough to hide your coughing, and he thinks, Later. There’ll be time for that later.

“Here’s the menu,” you tell him once you’ve calmed down, extending your hand. He takes the paper, unfolding it as you cross your arms and tilt your head back on the concrete. Reading down the list, he keeps an eye on you out of the corner of his vision, and your fingers play at your lips as you swallow. Reaching into your bag, you twist the cap of a water bottle and chug half of it down.

“Do you have any medicine? For your coughing?” he asks casually. You hit your chest with a firm fist, clearing your throat and looking at him in surprise. The water bottle returns to your bag.

“Oh, uh, no. It doesn’t work. Just gotta keep hydrated and avoid any possible triggers,” you inform. You turn up the street as you speak, crossing your legs at the ankles and sinking against the concrete. 

“And what are those triggers?”

“And you say Ijichi is the one digging for gossip,” you snort with short, choked huff. Satoru rolls his eyes, but keeps looking at the menu. “Don’t worry about it. I’m avoiding them.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“If I wanted your dry wit, I would’ve gone to the original.”

“I don’t copy off Shoko. I take bits of everyone’s personality and twist it to make it my own.”

You shake your head. “Whatever you say.”

Your name is called a few minutes later and the pair push off the concrete pillar, heading through the crowd and into the small restaurant. It’s not too dimly lit, a bunch of natural light from the street streaming in through the open windows, and the air is rich with the smells of the kitchen as they sit down at the bar.

It’s not long before they’ve ordered, and Satoru has gone through his first bowl and is well into pouring his second into what remains of his broth before he remembers to even check up on how you’re doing. You’d been right—he loves this place. The atmosphere isn’t overly loud, but the mumbling of nearby patrons is enough to make him feel like he isn’t quite alone. It’s sheltered away from the world, and although he’s used to girls staring, no one has gone up to him which is giving him time to his own thoughts and food. Everyone here seems to mind their business—everyone likes to stay in their own bubble. 

Here, he isn’t the strongest, or quite so special. It honestly feels kind of nice.

You’re sipping on your broth, tilting the spoon towards your mouth and your lips are pulled into the warmest smile he’s seen since they were kids. The light’s hitting you just perfect again, more cool than warm, but it’s got you on the cheekbone, illuminated your lips. Satoru wonders if you know how to manipulate light, or if that’s just your natural blessing as you tilt your head towards him, eyes squinting from your own joy.

For a moment, another image flashes in his head. Him along the end of their group of four—you and Shoko, Suguru and Satoru. It’s almost poetry how much of a glimpse he can see in your smile. You would always be laughing, and Suguru’s cheeks would always be red, and Shoko would charm the guy over the counter to hand over a bottle of shochu. Satoru would tease his stupid best friend, and pay for their meal because “I’m friends with a bunch of goddamn freeloaders.”

But that moment ends as quickly as it came, and it’s so fucking heartbreaking that Satoru never thought their last meal together would be their last meal together. He would’ve cherished it more—done anything to make them stay in that ramen shop in Kagurazaka.

“Do you like it here?” you ask. 

He blinks. You’re studying him behind that smile of yours. Watching. Always watching. “It reminds me of when we were kids,” he replies. When he realizes that didn’t answer the question, he adds, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

You grin, delighted. “If I knew how stupid you’d look sucking up these noodles, I would’ve brought my camera like when we were students. I still have it, you know.”

“Next time, then.”

“Yeah, next time.”

Satoru pays. He insists despite your protests, and snatches the bill from you anyway, swiping his card as quickly as he can. 

After, they walk slowly around the district, looking at the other restaurants and stores for desserts or souvenirs to bring back, and it makes him so nostalgic, his heart wilts a bit in his chest. 

He is saying something about buying some soymilk for Megumi when you stop suddenly, deviating to the side of the road to cough. It grows so intense so quickly that your eyes widen as if you’re surprised, too, and you place a palm flat against your chest as he comes to your side. You wave him back, and he frowns, running a hand down your back as you finally manage to dislodge the petals in your throat and spit them into your palm.

Satoru sighs, staring at the cursed things. The energy emitted from the petals are raw, potent, and his nose wrinkles at the stench that comes from powerful curses as he softly asks, “Do you know what Hanahaki is?”

“Flower vomiting?” you whisper through your raw vocal cords. You shake your head, slamming your sternum with a tight fist and flinging the drenched petals to the ground with a wet slap. “Itadori… said something about it, once. Never really paid attention, I—”

Satoru squeezes the back of your neck gently. “Whatever this curse is, it could be something like that.“

“You don’t want to open that can of worms, Gojo, of what is causing this.” Straightening up, your eyes widen and your cheeks puff up as you choke down another bout. Wobbly, you spit out, “It’s under control. I swear.”

“Are you sure?” His fingers brush your chin to turn your face towards him so he can look at it more clearly, and the instant their eyes meet, you lurch over, slapping his hand away and succumbing to the wracking. Hands shooting out to grab your elbows, Satoru barely eases you to the ground as your legs give in.

You collapse to your knees, hard. A hand is slapped over your mouth but your whole body shakes with the seizing of your lungs. Eyes widening, your cheeks puff up as Satoru grabs your shoulders, falling to his knees beside you.

“Hey! Hey, breathe!” His fingers dig into your shoulders and your nostrils flare, trying to follow his instructions. Bloodshot eyes and blueing lips, your inhales are shaking and incomplete, gasps for air that do not take in any oxygen before you’re kneeling over, hand falling from your lips. Blood splattered over your palm, you let out a low noise of pain. Satoru’s hand glides down your spine, rubbing in soothing circles as red spit falls to the pavement in thick globs. 

People all around stop to stare, eyes masked with concern, but he can’t care less at that moment despite the burning scrutiny. He shoves a hand into his pocket, speed-dialling one of the top numbers of his list.

“Ijichi, I need you to take us to the hospital, now!” Letting his phone drop with a clatter, he scoops you close but you slam your bloody hand against his chest, pushing him away. You throw yourself away, hands twisted tight in the fabric of your white shirt and Satoru looks down at the red handprint on his tee before blinking. “What are you doing? We need to get—“

“I’m—I’m fine!” Your voice, broken, is drenched with ice as you continue to wheeze, grasping at your chest as if you could reach and tear out the growths with your own hand. “Gojo, I’m fine!”

“No, you’re not!” Grabbing his phone, he hears a loud car horn, and looks up to see Ijichi leaning out of the driver’s seat, waving his arm frantically. Without another thought, he scoops you up and runs out into the street, ignoring the tires screeching, the cars horns blaring at him and the angry shouts as he jumps into the car and slam the door shut. 

Ijichi sets off at a drive, no directions needed. Satoru is sure he’s breaking as many laws as he can as he pushes you back against the seat to buckle you in. Blood dribbles down your lips in bubbles as a thick, gurgling sound begins to grow in your throat and he wipes at your chin with his sleeve, clicking the buckle into place just as you pitch forward. He jerks back just in time as you retch, and, slowly, torturously, you gag out three petals, one after another. Your fingers claw at your own throat, panicking and desperate as you struggle to breathe.

The petals fall in wet pools between your feet, landing on the carpet, and he spares them not even a glance before forcing your head between your knees. You’re still hyperventilating and as Satoru sweeps a hand down your back and up to your neck, his fingers come into contact with something sticky. 

Sweat. It drenches through your shirt so suddenly that Satoru reels at the wet marks spreading through your shirt, making the fabric translucent. Your heart is racing, tripping over itself. When you finally stop coughing, you breathe in harsh pants as he keeps your head between your knees.

Your fingers lace at the back of your head and he grabs them firmly, reassuring that he’s still beside you. 

.

“She’s stable,” Shoko announces to the waiting Satoru and six students. The latter came when their teacher had told them of what happened, and Itadori still clings to Fushiguro’s arm by an iron hand, fingers clawlike into his friend’s bicep. Kugisaki chews on her thumbnail, a bit paler than usual and there are crescent indents along her forearm where she had dug her nails in. Maki’s hand rests on her shoulder. Inumaki’s on the phone with Panda, and he turns the screen around so he can see the Strongest Sorcerer who does not feel quite so strong.

Satoru’s assurances that you would be fine had done nothing but send them into a quiet that scared even him. 

“Is she okay? When can she get out?” the kids demand suddenly.

“We’re waiting for the updates on her scans from the doctors, but she’ll need to stay here under observation.”

Satoru runs a hand through his hair, smiling in a way that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Guess that means she gets a few more days off while the rest of us are working our asses off,” he teases. Maki shoots him a glare and his eyes close in a way he hopes arranges his expression in one of joy as he shrugs helplessly. “Well, that means I have another girl I have to spoil.”

“Aren’t you too busy with the four already blowing up your phone?” Kugisaki mutters sourly. Satoru pretends not to hear. His phone has been silent without your texts, and it’s cold and heavy in his pocket.

“Can we see her?” Fushiguro asks. Shoko nods, but holds up a hand and the kids skid to a stop.

“She’s resting. I’m unsure if you know, but certain topics of conversation or trains of thought can lead to more attacks, so stick to talking about your curriculum. Topics you think are safe.” The woman shifts on her feet, a wisp of brown hair swaying in front of her eye. “It’s unavoidable, but use your judgement.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The students walk off down to the dead-end hallway, and Satoru turns to Shoko who has her arms crossed over her chest. She steps up, scanning him like he’s got contraband, and he raises his eyebrows innocently.

“What?”

“It’s getting worse. I hope you managed to get answers,” she says. At once, Satoru’s facade drops, and a sober sensation overtakes his face.

“No, I didn’t. She’s heard of the disease, at least. We talked about Suguru, but it wasn’t like it was under lock and key.” The brunette shakes her head at his words, gesturing for him to sit down beside her. Doing so, he leans back into the uncomfortable chair as she crosses a leg over the other. “She said she thinks about him a lot.”

“She still loves him,” Shoko says bluntly. “She gets that far-off look when she talks about him. You two should trade secrets some time.” A shake of her head, and she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I healed what damage I could, but I can tell those growths inside are expanding. The attack only seems to have agitated and prompted them to take root.”

“How…” It’s hard to formulate the question. Luckily, Shoko knows him well enough.

“Without seeing the scans, I won’t know. Based on her last ones, I thought at least four months. Now?” Her lips press into a thin line. “She’ll be lucky if she gets two.” Shoko’s eyes flicker down Satoru’s front, and her lips press into a wry line. “And change you shirt. You look like a murder suspect.”

Glancing down, he looks at your dried bloody hand print, stark against white, and he gets up abruptly. Shoko doesn’t stop him.

He walks down to the dead-end hall. He can hear Itadori through your open door cracking jokes, Kugisaki relaying every detail of her shopping trips, and you’re wheezing your laughter despite Maki scolding you to save your strength. Satoru stops just outside your door, out of sight, and rests his head against the frame, content to just listen.

“Tuna mayo.”

“Is that right?” you ask Inumaki. “Lay it on me.” 

You sound exhausted, beaten to the bone, but still, when Fushiguro says something too quiet for him to make out, you still have the strength to tease him for worrying.

.

The night is warm, and he sets the last plant back into its place on your window sill before cracking the window a bit at your request. He’s busied himself making this place as homely as possible as quickly as possible, and in the process, had walked in on you staring at your own scans on the lightscreen mounted on your wall.

“Thanks, Satoru,” you say over your shoulder. He joins you by your side to stare at the scans. Granted, Satoru didn’t cheat his way through medschool like others have, so he doesn’t understand much, but he can tell what is and what isn’t supposed to be there. The floral-like growths situated right where the main bronchi meet the trachea, for one.

The roots spreading across your chest like cracks in concrete, for another.

“The doctors want to monitor this,” you explain, pointing at the roots, “to see whether or not it’ll grow around my lungs or continue outward, around the ribs and spine. If it’s the former, I’ll slowly suffocate and die. If it’s the latter, I’ll slowly suffocate, become paralyzed, and die.” You smile grimly. “Not quite a win-win.”

“Exactly the opposite.” He inspects the growths and through the blue-white-black imaging, he spots the tiny stems emerging from the main growth, sprouting into your lungs. He guesses, with time, those will grow into flowers of equal size before sprouting more shoots.

He wonders…

As if sensing his hesitance, you scratch your collarbone and look at the scans with a new glint.

“The doctors say if I avoid another attack like today, I’ll probably have two months, three if I’m blessed, but because of how big the growths have gotten already and its volatile nature, it’ll be impossible, so we’re looking at a month. Maybe a month-and-a-half?” You smile at him, throat bobbing. “Guess it’s good to have a number,” you add shakily, a short puff coming at the end of each breath as you struggle to fight the cough. “Being a sorcerer, too much uncertainty, I think.”

“You should tell Nanami that. Maybe this time, it’ll convince him to stay away,” he retorts, turning away from the scans. They’re burning his eyes and he doesn’t want to look at the real thing for much longer. You turn with him, walking back towards bed and climbing in. “Are you sure you don’t want the operation? Shoko could do it so fast you wouldn’t feel a thing.”

“No, not yet. There are some complications that’ll definitely occur and I don’t want that to happen.”

“But it would save your life,” he argues. “What risks are frightening enough that you’d even consider not having it?” Your gaze flickers as you take another wheezing breath. The strength seems sapped from your limbs—you’re a scarecrow hanging off its pole as you swallow tightly. Satoru leans against your window sill and crosses his arms over his chest so you can’t see the frustrated fists he wants to make. “If this is about Suguru…”

Resolutely: “It isn’t.”

“You’re going to die if you keep going down this road. I don’t understand why you’re hesitating.” In the back of his mind, klaxons begin to scream.

“Satoru, some things are just beyond logical reason.” He jerks his gaze away, pushing his glasses up his nose pointedly. You sigh. “I know it’s hard, but this is my choice. I just want you to be here so you know it’s okay.” 

Your hand stretches out. Blue eyes flash to your outstretched fingers and he takes it before he can stop himself. Your fingers curl over his palm, tugging him closer and he lets you, sneakers dragging over the tile until he’s sliding into the chair by your bed. It squeaks against the tile.

“Please don’t be angry with me.” That’s all. That’s all I ask.

A hard, heavy sigh, this time from his end. He tightens his hold on you as you sit there, smiling hopefully. His heart thunders in his chest. “I’m not angry.”

You perk up a bit, and his index finger unfurls to rub your wrist. It feels colder than normal. “Promise?”

He wishes he could lie half as well as you. Either way, he tries his hardest: “Promise.”

By the time it’s quarter past nine, you’re already getting ready to sleep. You have enough pillows to surround your entire body, and he fluffs them up, helps you arrange them until you’re sighing against the white sheets, burrowing in with a sedated smile on your face.

Satoru sits down again on his visitor’s chair and you watch him lazily through the dim orange light stemming from behind your bed.

“You don’t have to stay here and watch me, creep,” you mumble, turning your face away to stare at the ceiling. You cough dryly, but it subsides moments later. Your voice is nothing but a croak as you let out a tired groan, and Satoru smiles to himself, cheek to his fist. 

“I feel robbed of our afternoon together. Making up for it now.”

You look at him again incredulously. “We’re not even doing anything.”

“I don’t know when you were told that every second of us being together had to be us doing something,” he huffs. “I like being in here. Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s too much. You’re annoying me.” Even so, your voice turns fond as you roll onto your side, away from him to settle in to sleep and Satoru’s warm gaze lands on your shoulder gently rising and falling as you slowly drift off. 

He already knows you’re gone by the time he’s standing up and gathering his jacket. Walking around the bed, he glances at the bathroom to check the light’s off and catches a glimpse of his shirt. A coil wraps around his gut at the muddy red handprint pressed into the fabric and he turns away to look at you instead.

Your face is in perfect peace, half-buried into a pillow you’re hugging into your chest, and he only soaks in those features. His hand twitches, and his infinity wavers as he raises his hand as if to touch you. Your eyelids flutter and he freezes, fearing he might’ve woken you up, but you only mumble incoherently and turn into your pillow.

Satoru watches on silently just as a breeze sweeps into the room and he looks up where the window he had cracked open. The breeze takes hold of the plants, uplifts them until they sway like a tender dance. 

His chest begins to hurt. The smell of the antiseptic is starting to sting, so he moves his hand to the light switch instead. Flicking it off, he turns to leave.

.

Every time Satoru walks down to the end of the hallway, a different memory will play in his head until he’s playing a movie over and over every single day. Of the first time he met you, although that one is blurry. Your sixteenth birthday when the four of them had piled into your dorm room to drink themselves stupid.

One-and-a-half weeks go by before he realizes that he only replays the moments where you feature. Like his brain is preparing him, reminding him. For what, he doesn’t know. 

He can’t come every day—considering the low number of sorcerers has been taken down by one more, it means besides teaching, he still has to work for the Higher Ups as well as his own personal agenda—but when he does make it, he always makes sure that he soaks in every second. Even the horrible parts. Maybe, especially the horrible parts.

You have scans taken every other day to monitor your progress, so when he arrives at an empty room, he isn’t surprised. It’s when there’s movement in the bathroom that sends his nerves prickling until he catches a slab of golden hair and reading glasses flashing in the sunlight.

“Nanami,” he greets.

“Good afternoon.” His jacket’s off and his sleeves are rolled up. With a quick sweep of the room, Satoru notes that the windows are cracked open and the aforementioned jacket is folded over a chair sat in a square of sunlight.

“Do we need to be so formal?” he complains, bypassing the bathroom and searching for another chair. The one Nanami’s taken by the plants is still warm and Satoru isn’t keen on the idea of sweating so soon. During his search, he stops by the windowsill and his eyebrows rise curiously at the new plants and trash bin pressed up right underneath. “What’s happening here?”

“We were planting new seeds when she had to be taken for her scans. She insisted I finish potting the plants.” Noting the empty terracotta, Satoru bends over and prods at the moist dirt. “I have to go soon, though. I had hoped it wouldn’t take as long as it did and she would be back by now.”

“They started taking MRI scans when the branches continued to grow outward rather than inward,” Satoru informs. “It takes around forty-five minutes, on top of the CT scans they’re taking, too. That’s if she doesn’t start coughing in the middle of it.” 

“I’m guessing she does.” Nanami adjusts the glasses on his nose, wiping at his hands free of the last of whatever dirt might’ve been clinging to his hands.

“Yup.”

“I see.” Satoru looks at the plants again. The blond man across the room throws the towel into the dirty clothes basket.“Has she… spoken to you of what to do with her effects?”

Gaze hardening, he doesn’t move at the question. Of course, he’s thought about it, but those bouts of weakness have never been longer than a few minutes. There’s no use in wasting time on a reality that won’t come until it does.

Hopefully, it never does.

“I’m so sick of everyone talking like she’s signed a death sentence,” Satoru murmurs, turning around to look at the blond man at the door to the washroom. “She still has time. Not a lot. It’s not convenient, but it should be enough.”

“She’s already considered the benefits of taking the surgery, and yet she actively decides to postpone it. You know she’s stalling,” comes the steady reply.

“And what about you?” Satoru asks. His words are biting, icy, but Nanami seems unfazed as he begins to loop the tie around his neck. “Would you do it?” Blue eyes meet a stoic face, and the coldness seeps into Satoru’s body. Nanami sighs.

A part of Satoru wonders why he even bothered asking. He already knows the answer—

“No.” Eyebrows shoot up. His mouth drops open and a strangled noise escapes his throat. Nanami merely continues on, quiet as death. “Perhaps it’s because I’m willing to accept my death, but, to be honest, I don’t know how to let any part of Haibara go. I’ve accepted it, but he’s still in my heart and my head.” Lips parting, Satoru takes a step forward as Nanami slants his body away, continuing to fold the fabric into a tie. He looks statuesque, unmovable, and something tightens in Satoru’s throat at the stone-like mask taking over his face. “I’m unwilling to do anything to taint that memory.”

Wordlessly, the blond walks over to Satoru to take his jacket from the chair, rolling down his sleeves and slapping his watch back onto his wrist. Standing less than two feet apart, the two men finally meet eyes.

“Gojo,” Nanami murmurs. “I can’t say I understand your burden, but I am by your side. I do not always agree with your choices, but I still respect them. As your kouhai and as your colleague.” His lips pull in a facsimile of a wry smile and there’s an understanding Satoru doesn’t understand haunting his handsome face. “However, she is your friend before mine. I think your opinion matters much more than mine. Don’t abuse that power.”

Satoru’s eyes nearly reflect in the lenses of Nanami’s glasses. He wishes his friend would take the damn pair off. 

In truth, the reason he’s so irritated is because he knows. If he insists enough, begs enough, there will always be a chance that he can convince you. That you will give in, not because you are selfless, but maybe because you’re too selfish to let him stay mad at you.

An unstoppable force meets an immovable object, and sometimes, the force wins.

But he’d promised, hadn’t he? To not be angry with the choices you’ve made?

“Jeez, it’s somber in here. Who died?” you tease as Shoko pushes the wheelchair in after you. Both men look away from each other. You’re still walking steadily, but an IV is hooked into your chest now, and it’s so obvious you’ve lost unhealthy weight that looking at you is hard sometimes. Satoru does, anyway. 

Noting Nanami, you straighten up. Surprised, but pleased: “You’re still here.”

“I was just leaving,” he says. You frown, but don’t protest. A jujutsu sorcerer’s work is never finished until one stops breathing. “I finished planting the seeds you asked me to, and watered them.”

“Thank you.” He dips his head to you, then to Shoko, before departing, and you watch him go for a moment before your eyes land on Satoru and you smile. The air around you shifts immediately to a vibrant yellow. 

“You’re early, Satoru.” You head towards the bed as Shoko parks the wheelchair by the door. “It took way longer than I thought.”

“That’s because you threw up pistils today,” Shoko replies dryly. Satoru straightens up and looks at Shoko more carefully. Placid lookimg—usual for his mortician friend in the jujutsu world—but there’s a blanching in her knuckles that isn’t usual. “The CT wasn’t good. You know that.”

“Well, it’s still more time than I could’ve asked for, you know.” Shoko shakes her head, and meets his eyes before leaving the room, presumably to talk to your doctors. “Party pooper.”

“First day knowing Shoko?”

You laugh sarcastically, adjusting the hospital gown on your body before climbing into bed slowly, as if your joints ache. Satoru’s feet shift on the tile when he realizes his body moves to help and he freezes. You’re breathing audibly by the time you settle in and you meet his eyes, wondering if he’s noticed.

Of course he has, he wants to tell you. He notices everything about you.

Then, you sigh, and the yellow energy around you flickers into something darker, something grey, something that reminds him of summer thunderstorms.

“The roots have reached the edge of my rib cage and are encroaching on my stomach now,” you inform bluntly. “I probably won’t be able to keep food down in the next couple of days so they’re going to up the ante on this thing.” You gesture to the catheter by your clavicle. “So that’s not really fun. And, they want to start taking scans every single day because the growth is increasing exponentially. The doctors think something triggered the flowers to begin blooming in earnest. Like spring has come to my body, and I’m having the worst fucking time of my life.”

Despite your admission, your smile only falters in that it no longer reaches your eyes. Satoru shoves his hands in his pockets because he doesn’t know what else to do.

The word Hanahaki still burns, whispers coyly in his ear. It teases the tip of his tongue as he watches you look to your windowsill where your new plants are and get up, walking over to inspect your friend’s work.

He wonders if he can bring it up again. If he can insist that there’s a way to save you—

But Nanami’s words linger, too, and he bites his tongue until he tastes iron. 

“Oh, look.” He blinks at your voice, turning to look. Your fingers sink into one of the pots and before he can ask, blue energy flares up around your hand and into the soil and a shoot breaks through the dirt, unfurling as it grows higher and higher into the air.

“What is it?” Petals are beginning to form, the shade of a warm, gentle red that fades in shade as it reaches the stem. Satoru comes up next to you as the first flower blooms and his eyebrows rise. “Tulips. Huh.”

“I used to love them,” you tell him, picking it off and extending it to him. Eyebrows furrowing in surprise, he takes it as you sink your fingers deeper into the soil, sending more cursed energy into the seeds. More stems to replace the one you had picked continue to grow and you pull your hand out, wiping at your fingers with a towel.

Satoru tilts the flower towards his nose, taking a whiff.

“Used to?” he repeats, and you nod.

“Trees and flowers have their own language.” Your eyes do not meet his as you watch the plant continue to grow. Your muscles go slack, and your fingers touch the petals, mind not quite aware of how you’re moving. “Red tulips mean eternal love, and fame.”

Blinking, he looks down at his own bloom. 

Suguru. He hears you say his name, even in the silence, and remembers years ago, walking through Tokyo. A neighbourhood he doesn’t remember, his best friend looking at the florist’s shop and immediately perking up to head inside and buy a bouquet after something had caught his eye.

“For a girl,” he had admitted sheepishly. 

“Only one?” Satoru asked, horrified. “You can’t settle down! We’re meant for so many more women than just one!”

A sharp nudge to the ribs. Raucous laughter. “Shut up!”

Quietly, Satoru’s fingers tighten around the stalk as you tilt your head to the sun, inspecting something he won’t understand. He doesn’t have a green thumb, and although you say you aren’t the smartest, he’s seen you grow the college’s gardens in a way that has amplified the beauty already lingering on the grounds. You had dismissed it as a little side project, but seeing you water your plants dutifully, spread feed and root out weeds, makes him wonder if you know how to put half-efforts into anything.

When you garden, you never take the easy route. You labour for the satisfaction, and pour sweat and tears into the soil.

When you love, you love with all of yourself and more. 

It’s what makes whatever he wants impossible.

Because he is the same, and they will never change.

When Satoru goes home, he places the tulip in a vase and the cursed energy prickles at his fingertips.

.

You get worse and worse with every visit. 

Each day brings him another raw wound, salt on blood. You slowly grow more and more ragged, even though you stay in the hospital, confined to your room. 

There are days Satoru walks into your room to you hunched over the toilet, spitting blood and flowers into the bowl and vomiting all you ate the night or day or hour before and he already knows what he has to do. A cold, damp rag to your forehead, a crouching stance beside you as your grip on the toilet seat becomes rigid like steel.

Other days, you’re still asleep because the night before, you’d been hacking up half a lung and half a bouquet. Sometimes, you’re curled around a plastic receptacle already full of your half-attempts to dislodge the pressure building in your chest. 

Or, you’re crying into your hands, breath coming in rapid bursts as you try to force your head between your knees to stop the world from spinning and Satoru holds you when you beg him to, and stands in the corner of the room when you push him away.

Afterwards, you always grab onto his sleeves, his arms, and sink against him, shivering. For hours after, he’ll curl around you on your hospital bed, no matter how much his body cramps, until you insist you’re fine.

“It’s a little like touching death,” you told him once, voice raw and fatigued. “When it’s a pretty bad day, and I think I’m going to die alone, it happens, so all I have to do is not think about it.”

There’s a flawed logic there, but Satoru was too busy pressing his nose into your hair and feeling the warmth of your body to reply any more than, “I’ll be there. I promise.”

Two weeks pass (fourteen sets of scans, a different pair hanging from the lightscreen every day tell him that) and Satoru watches as the branches spread through your body, past the reaches of your ribs, and the flowers have spread to your lungs so quickly he’s sure the time for you to decide is running out. 

You’re near-passed out against him on the bathroom floor one evening, and although it’s not closet-sized, it doens’t make the arrangement any less awkward. He’s up against the bathtub, legs sprawled all around you as he holds you in his arms. On the edge of the tub, there is a bar of bodysoap and a bottle of lotion he recognizes as the same one Shoko used to buy when they still had time. Your sink counter is filled with your toothbrush and cup, handsoap and a microfibre towel hanging off the edge smeared with lipstick, foundation, and black streaks of who knows what.

Shoko must have spent the night while he was out hunting a curse in Sendai. Good. He doesn’t like the nights when you’re alone and he can’t be there.

His fingers brush over your shoulder blade, and he travels over something rigid cloaked by your skin. Your eyes are closed, and you’re nearly asleep as you curl deeper against him. Looking down at you, he presses curious fingers into your shoulder blade only for you to let out a soft groan.

“Did that hurt?”

“No. It just feels like you pressed down on a big sore muscle,” you mumble slowly. He trails his fingers over, feels the bumps of the roots curling around your bones before following it towards your spine. It disappears the closer it reaches the trail of knobs that go down your back, and he moves back to your shoulder again. “Doesn’t hurt, though.”

“Does anything?”

“Mostly my stomach,” you tell him. “I’m so hungry all the time, but I can’t eat.” He glances at the IV stand, the only other witness to the events in this bathroom. It leads down through your gown and past your clavicle. Monitored every day in case the growths dislodge it, it’s one of the only things keeping you alive. “And my throat. It feels like I’ve scratched it out until it’s bleeding.”

He tilts his head. His lips barely brush your sweaty scalp despite how cold you feel in his arms “No surgery?”

You shake your head, what remains of your strength slowly coming back. “They say the flowers and roots have taken up sixty-five percent of my chest cavity. It’s not only inhibiting my lungs, but my heart and stomach, too, so it’d be kind of hard to get rid of it all. Not impossible, but it’s really risky. That, on top of the already-present consequences—”

“So let’s say we start with the lungs,” he cuts off, trying to not sound too desperate but these past few weeks have worn him down to the bone. Although he thinks he’s managed to hide it from his students, Shoko has offered multiple times to prescribe him sleeping pills just so he can shut his mind down.

He said no every time.

Your legs draw up and he squeezes your shoulder carefully, looking down. “Are you ready to get up?”

You nod. “I think so.” He wipes at your lips with the rag he left on the counter and you roll your eyes as he makes sure no blood is left on your face before throwing it back up and carefully adjusting you against him.

“Do you want my help?”

“My answer does not matter to you,” you shoot back teasingly and he lets you pull away from him before reaching up with one hand to push yourself up. Your arm wobbles, your feet kicking back underneath you and slowly finding theirselves on the floor. Satoru withdraws, ducking underneath and back up so he can stand, hands floating around your body as you draw the IV stand towards yourself and grab on. When he’s sure your knees might give in, he grabs your elbow, but you shake your head. “I think I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay,” you breathe, raising your head to look at him. Your lips curl in a soft smile, and you clasp his shoulder. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t even do anything this time,” he says.

“Not everyone stays for the pathetic girl on the floor of the bathroom floor,” you quip. Turning around, you begin to head back to bed and he trails behind you carefully.

“If the girl’s you, then I think exceptions can be made.”

“Hospital bonus.”

“It adds that you’re in the hospital, too,” he agrees. “My morals are just.”

“Isn’t that a relief?” 

It is. It is a relief that you still have the strength to joke with him. 

You climb back into bed. Satoru returns to the bathroom to make sure the bathroom is flushed and it’s clean before returning and perching on the edge of your bed. Pulling out his phone, he shuffles his shoes off and tucks his legs to his chest, leaning against the foot of your bed and scrolling through his messages.

Not much to miss, to be honest. 

“There’s supposed to be a lunar eclipse on the morning of the 28th,” you say suddenly. Satoru looks up. You’re leaning back on the mountain of pillows, exhaling and inhaling measuredly in a way he now knows is your way of fighting off another bout. Squinting against the orange glow of the sunset, there’s a longing in your gaze. “I want to see it. Outside and everything.”

“You’re not supposed to leave the hospital.”

You don’t miss a beat. “Oh, we’re abiding by rules, now?”

“If it keeps you around, yes, we are.”

“When did my best friend turn into such a party pooper?” Looking at him, an impish glint lives in your eyes. He balks.

“Don’t you dare insinuate that I’m not fun.”

“Then… take me to see the eclipse.”

“No. There’s nothing to even see.”

“I want to see the moon disappear, Gojo,” you declare. “And if you won’t take me, I will definitely sneak out.” 

It paints a pretty pathetic picture, and he can’t help but arch his eyebrows at your determination. The air purifier drones on. The nurse turned it on after dinner, he guesses, and he has the strange urge to kick it as you fix him with a fierce stare. 

“You probably won’t be able to walk by then,” he says.

“That won’t stop me.” He knows it won’t. The corner of his lips pulls into a slight smile as you continue, “I just want to go outside one last time. Is that really too much to ask?” Your words are tinged with a fine dusting of humour, and he shakes his head.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Big word for you, Satoru.”

“I still mean it.”

“And I learned that from you.”

He rolls his eyes and sighs. “Fine,” he caves. Your face lights up, and he sets down his phone, legs unfolding to brush the floor as he leans over to flick your forehead. Your eyes squeeze shut at the contact and you slap his arm away sluggishly before he soothes the smarting spot over with a smear of his thumb. “I’ll come by, and we’ll sneak out.”

You beam and he slips his feet back into his shoes and pockets his phone so he can focus his attention on you. 

When visiting hours end, the nurses offer to set up the cot for him like they always do. You pretend not to look at him out of the corner of his eye, awaiting his answer behind your laptop screen, and he spares you a quick glance before saying yes.

“She likes you,” you tell him after one particular nurse with dyed purple hair who always wears a fishtail bids them goodnight. Satoru fluffs up his pillow ceremoniously, having shed his jacket and taken off his jeans to hide underneath the blankets. The fabric is cold against his bare chest, and he pulls his glasses off, sets them on the stand right behind him.

The black frame holding up his mattress rattles a bit as he punches his pillow one last time and lies down. He turns on his side and looks at you. You’re turned on your side, too, and your brow is furrowed as you fight the sleepiness.

“Is that so?” he asks carefully. “What do you think about it?”

“I think if you wanted someone with a hectic schedule, you could pick someone else,” you say vaguely.

He raises an eyebrow. “Does she have a bad attitude or something?”

“I dunno.” There’s a subtle fire igniting in your words. You look a bit more awake, and your eyes are shifting the air into a smouldering red. He squints up. Your face is shadowed, but you’re still silhouetted by the orange light behind your bed as your shoulders rise and fall greatly in staggering, weighty breaths. “She wouldn’t understand. I guess.”

He hums. “So I should find someone who understands me but can’t be there for me? Sounds like the set up to every tragic love story ever.”

You laugh, and it’s the saddest sound in the world.

.

Friday, July 27th arrives in clouds.

Satoru scouted a spot before where they can watch the eclipse. He settles on one of the highest buildings on campus with a balcony where they can sit against the railing and watch the moon disappear. You can’t eat, but he still buys your favourite food from all over Japan, travelling to different prefectures in hopes that they still have your favourite dessert or drink that you mentioned once—he even gets you a new polaroid camera. He doesn’t know exactly how well the eclipse will show up on it, but, memories, right?

Maki makes a dry remark about how much he’s running around lately, probably to make amends to a girl he’s scorned. Satoru deflects and says he’s actually trying to impress one this time.

It’s been a five days since his promise to bring you. You lost your ability to walk steadily two days ago and to speak effortlessly only yesterday. The roots have extended through your body, pushing the muscle of your back and shoulders, and it’s made even moving painful, so he intends to carry you everywhere he can, holding your IV bags if he needs to. 

The doctors say eighty-five percent of your chest is now occupied with foreign growth. Satoru wishes they’d just tell it how it is—you’ll probably be dead by next week.

He arrives at the hospital and walks the path he’s walked so often over the past few weeks that he is sure he could do it with his eyes closed. The nurse’s station, and there’ll be the purple-haired one and the one with a double helix piercing on call at this time. Then, twenty-five steps to the end of the hall where the window often lets a lot of natural light in. Today, it’s grey and not much, but it’s enough to cast his shadow long and blurry.

He stops in front of your door to sanitize his hands when he hears voices within and hesitates.

Your door is closed, which means you don’t want people to interrupt, and he moves away from the rectangular window, back pressing against the tiny slab of wall between the frame and the corner of the hallway. Glasses slipping down his nose, he tries not to listen but he can’t help of himself.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” you say weakly. You sound awful. Satoru wonders if he’s missed one of your panic attacks and curses himself. “If I don’t sound sure, it’s because I’m dying… and sounding like a fragile piece of shit… comes with the territory.” Your words are coarse, and a harsh anger grates his ears as you cough violently, a terrible retching sound ending with a splat following right after. 

“I wasn’t doubting you,” Nanami replies calmly. “But this could be done in so many other ways.”

“Look, Nanami. I’m not… brave enough to say any of it. Now, sit down. Your standing… it’s making me nervous… Thank you.” Satoru’s legs feel numb as he sinks down to the floor, tilting his head just enough to listen clearer through the sliver underneath the door. Resting his elbows on his knees, he runs a hand through shaggy white hair. It feels dry and lifeless. 

He can’t remember the last time he took a shower that was longer than ten minutes and more than ice-cold bordering on just beginning to warm.

“Take care of him for me,” you croak and his fingers tighten against his scalp. Nanami doesn’t answer, and you let out a sound that can only be described as pure agony as another bout grasps you tightly. You’re wheezing by the end of it, gasping painfully for air, and the monitors start beeping rapidly, a dinging that echoes in his head as Nanami’s low voice soothes you, tells you gently to calm down. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Breathe with me,” Nanami orders, and everything falls silent. Satoru stares at his lap. His head is beginning to pulse with the monitors when the beeping finally starts to fade. “Good. No sense to waste your strength.” 

Wobbly, spitting: “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” A pause. “It’s not your fault.”

You laugh, as if Nanami’s cracked a funny joke, and it’s gut-wrenching. “Remember how… we can curse each other? Ourselves? True curses.”

Faintly amused, immeasurably strained: “I thought it was still a hypothesis regarding those who don’t have the correct bloodline and the ability to curse through their own will.”

“No…Not a hypothesis. Real, Nanami. Real. No one knows how cursed energy affects us. Not really. Since, in my opinion, it’s entirely based on how we process things… it’s so difficult to say but when you know someone…” You break off to clear your throat. “The curse of adulthood… some of us got that too early… but we can survive that and even if it’s not a curse by… definition, we still feel it, right?” 

Satoru clasps his hands together just so he doesn’t rip the door open at the hinges.

“Right.”

“And… knowledge… can be a curse. Even if we can’t see it.” A ragged breath. Then, another laugh too loud for the grey light outside, too bright, a spark before it fizzles into, again, pained choking. “Nanami, remember last year… the job out in Yama… Yamaguchi?”

“Yes.”

“And we came back… Okkotsu was beginning his first year at the college… what I—what I told you?”

“…Yes.” A beat passes. A chair shifts on the linoleum floor and Nanami clears his throat. “I see.”

“I don’t want him to be so alone. I know I was never the strongest or the smartest or the most talented but I liked to think he let me in because I was there. Not because I understood. Maybe… Maybe because I didn’t. Nanami, please… he always try to stay so far away from the people he thinks he can’t love. Tell him… tell him—“

You break off and Nanami assures you with a steadfastness Satoru has counted on so many times before: “I will.” 

“…thank you.”

Eyes shutting tight, Satoru rests his brow against the heel of his hand. His head is aching, and a hard fist grabs his chest, squeezes his heart until it feels like it’ll burst. So this is how you’re really feeling. When you’re not smiling, this is what you are. Angry at the world, and heartbroken.

So terribly heartbroken.

And you couldn’t trust him with it? Because you thought he couldn’t handle it? 

He can take it. It’ll be okay because he’s the strongest. He has to be. 

I’m the strongest. I should be okay. I’m the strongest.

I’m the Strongest.

The headache gets worse so he gets up from that corner in the dead-end hallway, all the while three words replay in his head like a goddamn gramophone.

Nanami doesn’t come out of the room for a while. When he does, Satoru walks down the hall with takeout and a smile plastered on his face as if he had heard nothing at all.

.

At just past one-thirty AM, Satoru sits up from his cot and rubs at his eyes. After dinner, the both of them had forced themselves to go to sleep in order to have enough energy for their little late night excursion. He glances at you, a slumbering shape on the bed, and gets up, slowly sliding on the lights. They burn a dim orange, glowing on your face, and your eyebrows furrow as he touches your cheek.

“What?” you mumble, vexed, and he smiles.

“Are you ready?” he asks. A backpack is situated at the end of his bedframe and he reaches for it, unzipping it carefully as you crack your eyes open. “We’re going to go see the eclipse, remember?” Pulling out clothes he robbed from your room in the staff facility from when you used to work full time, he grabs your shoulder and shakes you gently. The gnarled roots under your skin feel strange against his fingers as you groan weakly. “Do you want five more minutes, Sleeping Beauty?”

You don’t answer, burying your face into your pillow and he shakes his head to himself. It’s going to be all right, he thinks. I planned for this setback.

Slipping into a dark long-sleeve, he parts the black-out curtains to let light come in. He checks his reflection in the bathroom mirror before running a hand through his hair and washing his hands with a cold stream of water. By the time he leaves the bathroom, you’re sitting up already, heel of your hand rubbing against your brow as you groan. In your other hand in your lap, there’s a splash of blood and a lone petal, and he rushes to your side instantly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t even hear—“

“It came out easy,” you assure as he grabs a tissue to pick it off your hand and throw it into the receptacle at the table just beyond the foot of your bed. Wiping at your mouth roughly, he hears your complaints and your hand shoves against his shoulder to tell him to quit it. “Ah, I can do it myself!”

“Shh! Do you want every nurse storming in here while we conduct our super secret getaway?” he whispers, and your eyes fix on his. Dark circles mark your face like bruises, but that light is still the same—glimmering, bright, like twin suns and just as warm. Making sure your hands are clean, he wipes the invisible streaks of blood just to be sure before grabbing your clothes and setting them at the end of the bed.

You glance around the place sluggishly, at the paintings you never got to finish, and the books you haven’t finished reading, before settling on him. “What are we going to do about the… about the machines? And my IV…” 

“Oh, trust me. I may have bribed a nurse or two,” he confesses and you send him a scandalized look. He shrugs. “What? You told me a woman liked me and I couldn’t help but turn on my natural charm.”

“You’re awful,” you say without meaning it and he smiles as he moves your bed into a sitting position. You cough lightly, but sit up straighter as he carefully unhooks the huge bag and pump from your stand and gently slides it into the pocket in the backpack, resisting the urge to squish the pouch a bit. Strapping the pump in, he makes sure it’s secure as you peer around him to catch what he’s doing. “Is this… safe for me, you—you know, medically-speaking?”

“Nope.” He adjusts the tubing to avoid any kinks. “But, Purple gave me this backpack and she will come as soon as we come back to make sure you aren’t dying. And, if anything goes wrong, I promised her I’d come back as soon as possible.”

“Promised her?” you echo “I see. So that’s what Purple… was doing before my afternoon nap. I thought you guys traded suspicious looks.”

“Yeah. I’m pulling big strings. Now, c’mon, silly. Let’s get you dressed.”

You roll your eyes with a whistling breath. “Watch the tube… and c’mere, then, Gojo.”

He grabs the jacket first and does exactly as you order. Wrapping it around you, he helps you thread your arms through before zipping you up carefully as your shoulders begin to shake. Bending over, you reach blindly for the receptacle at the end of the bed and he hands it over to you.

A wad of saliva mixed with blood slips between your lips and you let out a low noise before forcing yourself to cough harshly again and again. Satoru watches. No matter how many times he sees you rip your throat up just to breathe with a bit less pressure in your chest, it doesn’t get any easier.

You manage to get up a whole magenta blossom. It blooms from your mouth like something out of a horror movie and lands in the receptacle before he’s wiping your mouth.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

They continue on.

Coat, next, zipped up, and a scarf, then he’s scooping up your legs to help you twist on the mattress until your feet are dangling off the edge. He weaves your legs through the sweat pants, careful not to let his gaze avert from his task even as the hospital gown trails up your legs. You shiver at the exposed skin and gooseflesh pimples your thighs as you lift up your hips to help with the effort. He pulls the hospital gown free from the waistband and lets it fall over the hem so you’re completely covered before falling back.

In a crouch, he pats your knees and makes the mistake of looking up only to find your eyes already on him, searching, nearly mystified. Satoru’s throat tightens. The faint light streaming from the window catches half of your face, as if half-divine. There’s a curiosity there, lingering, and the way you look at him makes him freeze in his spot.

Is this how Suguru saw you a thousand times before, a thousand lifetimes ago? Is this what he felt? 

Did he see the way your pupils dilate, the flare of your nostrils as you exhaled so quietly that it felt like a feather against his lips despite the distance between them? Did he see galaxies in your irises, home in the softness of your stare? Is that why he kissed you the last time he saw you? To memorialize their love for himself, to remember what it looked like when you loved him?  

Did he feel like he could fight dragons, crush demons, rip their world apart at the seams and rebuild it again with bloodied nails if it meant you would never cry again? Is that part of why he did it? So you would never be lonely again? 

Because if so, Satoru understands. 

Because if so, Satoru would do the same.

Because he always saw you as just pretty, because you had always been just his friend, and then his best friend’s girlfriend, and then his best friend, so there were always lines drawn in salt, scuffed and distorted over the years, but…

But in the light, tired and lost in his gaze, you’re nearly ethereal. The only reason he knows you’re not a goddess is because he’s still touching your knees, and your breath quivers, as if you’re just as disconnected from the world as he is in this moment.

Lips pressing together, he looks away, and the moment’s gone. 

He glances at the clock. 

How long has it been since he moved? It feels like hours.

Twenty-seven seconds.

Twenty-seven seconds of temptation, and then Satoru turned away. 

He slants to grab a pair of thick woolly socks to give himself something to do. You’re still watching him, head tilted down just so, and he carefully takes hold of your ankle.

He focuses on the little things: the iciness of your skin, the way you pick at the fabric of your sweatpants absently as you watch him work, the way you shiver a bit when he touches you.

He rubs heat back into the arch of your foot as you reach into your jacket slowly to carefully remove the nodes monitoring your vitals. You seem stiff to the bone, and your fingers are rigid with anticipated pain as you peel off the stickers. In the back of his mind, he remembers the days that feel like yesterday when you weren’t hooked up to so many machines to assure both you and him that you’re still alive.

Removing the cap for the oximeter from your finger, you shake yourself out a bit, clearing your throat. He slides one sock on, and then the other.

“How’re you feeling?” he finally utters.

It takes you a moment to answer. “Bottom half feels tingly. Usual these days. My body feels like a big giant bruise,” you inform quietly. Your voice is nothing more than a rasp. “Very warm and toasty, though… Thank you.”

“Just gotta get the shoes on and then we’ll teleport there.”

“Okay.” He helps you slip your feet in, something straight out of Cinderella, and then he stands up to take your hands. Your fingers slip into his palms, and he holds you so tightly as you slide off the bed. The instant your feet hit the floor, your grip intensifies and your head snaps down to the floor. You find your footing after a moment, and he lets go to crack open your window. Moving your plants aside, he climbs out to glance around. 

The air is crisp and cold, but not too bad for him. Even so, he’ll probably slip on a hoodie before they leave and he ducks back in to your room to do so, tugging it down his waist before grabbing the backpack.

“Arms through,” he instructs, slipping the backpack onto your shoulders. Guiding you closer, he helps you shuffle as close as possible towards him before turning around and bending over. “Alright, climb on. We’re going.” 

Your arms touch his shoulders, his hands shoot out behind him, and you fall.

Fingers hooking on your thighs, he boosts you up and your arms wrap around him, your own fingers wrapped so tightly around his collar that it nearly chokes him. Haphazardly stepping through the windows, his fingers sink into the fabric of your sweats. Your breath is warm against the shell of his ear, and he can feel your heart pulsing against his back as he turns to look at you. 

He smiles. “How’s it feel?”

“I’m still not sure if you’re going to let me die.” You press your face closer to his head and your arms tighten. “But the wind feels so good. So, so good.”

“That’d be too undignified,” he teases, and then he jumps. Time seems to slow as it always does when he’s about to teleport. He imagines the staff facility on the campus, quiet as a cemetery at this time of night, and his heart lurches forward. For a moment, his senses leave him all at once. He can’t taste or feel or see anything for a fraction of a second, then it comes to him in blinding speed. His hearing, as always, is first, then his eyes, smell and then touch and smell.

His foot lands on stone, as if he’s just finished a small skip, and he grins as he sweeps the courtyard. No one, as planned. The building’s to his immediate right, and he climbs the steps, using your knee to nudge the door open.

“That was fun,” you comment. “Convenient, too. Blink of an eye, and you’re somewhere else.”

“You can’t even begin to imagine how many lines I’ve skipped because of it,” he comments. The lights are all off, and he heads for the kitchen immediately to grab all the food he’s bought. Setting you down on the kitchen counter, he takes out another canvas bag and stuffs all of the food in.

Daifuku with of all kinds of fillings in the fridge, fresh dorayaki, canned coffee and aloe drinks, sweet soymilk and other wagashi they used to feast on when they were younger. Mostly because Satoru would buy enough to feed a kingdom so he always had something on hand for his overactive brain. You watch him with wide eyes as he moves around with such purpose one could think he was preparing to fight an army, but as soon as he finishes, he flashes you a smile.

“I think you’re going to like where we’re going a lot, silly.”

“Didn’t have to buy stuff,” you mutter, fingers playing with the tube leading into your backpack for a moment.

“You haven’t eaten in weeks. I thought maybe we could at least try. Maybe not now, but at the end of the night, before we go back. Just in case.”

“I can’t eat, though.”

“Don’t know until I stuff it down your throat,” he replies cheerily, and you smile at him so brightly it’s almost like you aren’t sick. Then, that smile turns into a cough, a fist in front of your lips, and your expression is frozen into one of exasperation before it flickers into strained. He sets down his bag, already knowing what comes next.

You make a hacking sound, deep in your throat, and he shifts you closer to the sink so you can lean over and throw up. Gagging, it comes in red and clear torrents, the cursed energy spilling out of your body nearly making it incinerating to even touch you as you clutch the edge of the sink basin. 

You fall to your elbows, and Satoru eases you off the counter so he can hold you up instead of the cramping body contortion you sink into. Cupping the juncture of your shoulder and neck, his thumb sweeps soothingly over your root-invested spine, tossing the ends of the scarf over your shoulder and out of the way.

Settling a hand on your hip, he presses you against the countertop so you don’t fall, and hopes your legs can hold you up long enough for him to reach for the hand towel. You spit just as he manages to grab it, snapping back into position and peering over your shoulder to inspect how much you’ve coughed up. You shudder and a tortured moan wrenches out of your throat as you sink, forehead against the cool metal.

You’re scorching to touch, but he tightens his hold on you anyway, setting the towel aside for just a moment. Carefully, he pulls you back up and you let out an drained whine, but he shushes you quietly, turning you around and guiding your head over his shoulder so you don’t stare at the rot any longer.

Satoru knows you would, even if you pretend like you aren’t plagued with morbid, self-destructive curiosity.

Looking into the sink, he counts a few petals and three whole flowers, and you’re quivering against him as he wraps his arm around you. 

“Alright, lean back for me,” he whispers into your ear, and you obey. His arm around you crooks so he supports your head, the other grabbing the towel again. Exhaustion seems to have sluiced through you, and your eyes are nearly unfocused as he dabs at your mouth carefully. His blue eyes focus on the gentle curve of your lips, and your cheeks puff up before you swallow tightly and let out a shaking breath.

“You’re really close,” you mumble in that exhale. He tilts your chin to the light to make sure he hasn’t missed a spot, and your eyelids flutter as the corners of his lips quirk up. His Six Eyes pick up a muted yellow emanating from you, and it’s so warm against his skin that he can’t help but relish in the feeling. “You smell nice.”

“Good. I took a shower before I came today. Well, yesterday,” he amends softly. “Alright, let’s go before you hack up your other lung.”

“Funny.” Nonetheless, he scoops you back up onto his back and he rinses down the sink as you rest your head against his. He feels you breathing steadily, much easier now than before. Red swirls down the drains, and he watches the magenta petals slowly reveal their true colours. There’s a flash of white in the center of each one, and he wonders silently what flower it is and what it means.

Maybe he’ll find out some day.

When the kitchen’s back to the state they entered, he grabs the bag of food and holds onto your legs tightly as your arms around his neck shift and pull him closer. 

This time, when he teleports, it’s not as jarring. Walking around the balcony, he makes sure no one’s in the area before checking that the door to the roof is locked and heading back out into the night air, towards where they can see the moon clearest.

“Hey, open your eyes,” he whispers over his ear, and your head shifts.

“Hm? Oh!” He feels you wriggle, but he doesn’t let you go as he walks closer to the spot he’s set up. Near the railing, a blanket surrounded by pillows is laid out surrounded by a few space heaters. The moon is hanging perfectly in front of them, and the light illuminates the forests in silver as a gentle wind whistles through. Tranquil, the only sound is his footsteps on wood as you manage to pull your legs free with a harsh twist of your torso. Your hand slaps against the railing and he whirls around to hold you up but you grit your teeth. “I can do it.”

Breathing in deeply, you pull yourself past him using mostly your arms. Your feet drag as if they’re not really attached to a living body but you still move steady onward, and he walks ahead to turn on the heaters and set the food down as far away as he can so it doesn’t spoil too quickly.

“Satoru,” you breathe as if for the first time,” it’s so fucking beautiful up here.” Looking up, his heartstrings twinge. Your face is bathed almost entirely in silver, and it drapes down your body like silk, illuminating the cord of your throat he can see above the scarf, the strength of your hands. A smile brighter than even the most blinding sun rays comes across your face and he finds that the moon pales in comparison as your knees begin to give.

Reaching forward, he helps you sink down slowly, and then sit down, legs hanging off the edge and then you’re leaning to rest your elbows on the middle bar of the wooden railing. You can’t stop staring at the moon, and Satoru can’t stop staring at you as he opens the box of daifuku and pops one into his mouth. 

“The eclipse should be starting in a few minutes,” he says, checking his watch. 2:10. Four minutes to go. You finally tear your eyes away from the moon to look at him.

“I forgot…” you muse. “I forgot how bright… the moon was.”  

He settles in beside you and offers a canned coffee, but you shake your head. He cracks it open for himself. 

“We’re about to watch the moon change,” he notes. “But I read that it’ll last six hours.”

“Really?” Excited, you look up at the moon again. The lunar rays outline your already-pronounced eye bags but it also makes you look more beatific. “That’s just proof… our time here on Earth is so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. It really makes you—makes you think how much we really matter. Which doesn’t seem like a lot, compared to things like a… fucking lunar eclipse.”

The moon’s opinion doesn’t matter more than mine, he thinks. “Well, while we’re waiting for your next epiphany to hit you,” he says instead, “you never answered my question.”

You smile, intrigued. “What’s that?”

“What if we removed the flowers bit by bit, rather than all at once?” he asks. Your gaze snaps to him, but he only regards you honestly. “That gives you a fighting chance.” Your eyes widen imperceptibly, and he grabs another mochi ball and takes a bite.

“The roots and flowers are too entangled in my chest to be removed safely. It’s either they remove my lungs completely, or not at all, and finding a… match for one lung is hard enough, much less two perfect lungs…” You trail off and shrug. “Well, that’d take forever… and I wouldn’t get much… longer, anyway. I’m a sorcerer. I always knew… I was going to die, so why not die on my own t-terms?”

He frowns. “Why not try?”

“Give me your phone.”

He does so, and watches you type in a query you must’ve typed before with how quick your lethargic fingers fly over the screen before you’re shoving it back towards him and leaning forward on the railing, chin to your forearms. You don’t even look at him, as if you don’t want to watch him crumble.

He reads: The first year after the transplant is the most critical period wrought with surgical complications, chances of rejection, and infection… Although there are some reports of some people living for 20 years post-transplant, many people do not make it past 10 years and only half make it past 5…

His stomach curdles. “Five years is better than nothing.”

“Five years worrying when my lungs are going to… kick it,” you correct. “Besides, my ribs are mangled by the roots. And my heart. My stomach. My spine. I’m undernourished, exhausted, and everything in here”—you gesture slowly around your abdomen—“is doing overtime. My body’s too weak to handle any kind of surgery that wouldn’t heal me… immediately.” 

Your eyes find his, and it’s as if lightning strikes through him like a spear—piercing cold and electrifying. You’re beginning to blue in the lips like you’re freezing to death, but he’s sweating under the blast of the heaters. 

Pulling off his hoodie, he drapes it around your shoulders. You don’t react anymore than: “Sucks, but that’s how it is.”

A few more minutes pass by in silence. Their knees knock into one another, and Satoru can’t stop looking at you as you breathe in the home you left months ago, head lifted to the inky universe.

“You know I can tell when you’re—when you’re angry with me,” you utter, not looking at him. “No matter how much you smile at me, you’re still too passive aggressive to cover it up.”

The words spill out of his mouth as you lower your gaze to him. “I’m sorry.” No sense in lying. 

“That’s okay.” You smile for a moment, like he hasn’t said something worth ruining a night over, but when you look up at the stars, it fades. Wistful, you cock your head at the moon that hasn’t gone away just yet and lower your chin to your arms again. “It’s not really something that was… fair of me to ask anyway.” 

.

Just as the moon turns yellow, he remembers something. Bending back to root through your backpack, he excuses himself. You frown. “What are you—“

“I got a camera for this occasion,” he announces, withdrawing the camera and a plastic bag, leaning back to snap a quick picture of you. You squint at the flash, mouth opened in an incredulous smile and face half-turned away, before the photo rolls out. “Like the one you used to carry around.”

“Some memories to hold on to, huh.” You reach for the camera and your fingers wrap around it, aiming it right at him. A flash and two peace signs later, another image joins the one of you Satoru slides into the plastic zip bag. “Hold on. I want to take another one.”

“We should do one of both of us.”

“Ugh, fine… I don’t look good at all, though.“

“Too late.” He snatches the camera from you and sticks out his hand, dragging an arm around your shoulders and you lean into him, temple against his cheek as he snaps another photo, and then another of him making a stupid face. Another of you mid-laugh. You’re wheezing for air as he keeps grabbing the polaroids as fast as he can with the arm that’s around your shoulder, leading to a bunch of jostling that has you in stitches at his frantic panic whenever the new photo chugs out of the slit.

When he’s had his fill of making you laugh, Satoru leaves you alone to look at the moon. He can’t stop grinning stupidly with every photo and while you watch the moon slowly descent into the earth’s shadow, he shuffles through the photos he just took of them together, trying to brand them to memory.

The way he looks at you in these photos makes him believe in something. In something that could’ve been there if they had more time, and he could convince you to open your heart up to a new possibility.

.

Another hour passes. The moon hangs a strange transition between black and blood red and a paler peach orange. A glimmering yellow dot sparkles below it, and he wonders if that’s Mars.

The forests seem almost hauntingly quiet, and no one has spoken in the darkness. You regard the moon, so enraptured, and more photos have joined the zip bag, but they’re mostly of you. He’s managed to sneak them in by turning off the flash and upping the brightness settings so it’d still be visible, and he hopes you never realize that he’s got them. 

Satoru has never been interested in astronomy, but the stars in your eyes are changing his mind.

He’s dug his hand into the bag of dorayaki already. He remembers it’s supposed to be for you, too, but his hands are too empty without the camera, his brain going a mile a minute and the air absolutely quiet with nothing. 

Twenty minutes ago, you asked him to help you take off your coat so you can pull on his hoodie, and haven’t moved since zipping yourself back up. The air smells only of canned coffee and the stinging wind carrying the scent of cedar. Feet swinging, he drapes his arms over the railing and looks up at the red moon.

It is pretty. Magnificent, and ominous, almost. The night is so much darker without the moon. Sheesh, colder, too. I wonder if you’re feeling okay. Maybe I should check, but you don’t seem to be shaking. Worst comes to worst, I could up the level on the space heaters…

“I don’t think I ever got to hear his last words,” you muse quietly, voice cracking, rousing him from his monologue. His head swings to you. Your eyes are barely open as you rest your cheek against your forearm, and you don’t look at Satoru despite your head turned towards him. Instead, he can watch the pieces of you fall apart without your scrutiny. “I used to think… that I didn’t care.”

“Do you want me to tell you?” he asks slowly as you continue to stare blankly over his ear. Your chest stutters in its inhale and the exhale is just as shaky as you smile a bit to yourself. He takes that as answer, and as he speaks, he sees Suguru’s smile—bright against the darkness of the alleyway, and a reminder of a simpler time. Satoru’s heart quickens from the memory “‘At least curse me a little at the very end.’”

You’re quiet for a moment, as if soaking that in. Then, you draw yourself up and sigh. “That sounds like him.”

You say it fighting off a laugh, even though it wracks your body with such intense pain you can barely breathe. You begin to wheeze not even a second in, and still, your face is cracked into an agonizing smile as you blink, tears slipping down your cheeks. Your eyes squeeze shut and your body goes stiff as you cough, hands flying over your lips. Your shoulders shake so uncontrollably it’s like an earthquake in your body, but Satoru cannot find it in him to calm you down as you hunch over yourself.

It comes in its own course, until you’re nothing but a gasping body, crying into bloodied palms cupping purple flowers, and the low sobs that spill and stutter out of your throat makes Satoru wish he never told you.

“‘At least curse me a little at the very end,’” you repeat to yourself, voice raw and iron-like, and your eyes finally rise to meet his. Nothing but hollow purple pierces through him once more. “Yeah… Yeah, that sounds like him.” 

An apology bubbles at his lips, but you continue before he can even begin. Your hands fall to to your laps, and you look at the decaying flowers, thumbs stroking the petals. “I could never make him truly happy… could I? Just like he said… nothing would’ve been good enough for him while we lived in this kind of world. No matter how many times I sat by him while he swallowed… swallowed those curses, held his hand, held him, I would have never been… enough to make him laugh from his heart.” Your tears cast dark shadows. “I held him, Satoru, with all my might… and I still felt him slip away between my fingers.”

That’s how Satoru learns you were there that day, December 24th, not a snowflake in sight. Just a few metres away, you stood for only a moment before you walked away from the man you loved so he could die without any regret, at the cost of your own guilt eating you alive.

No one speaks after that. Satoru cleans your hands slowly, carefully, giving attention to each finger, before swiping your lips, and then he wipes your tears away but you’re not crying anymore.

You just look up at the moon emptily and he scoots closer in hopes to keep your returning trembling at bay.

“Ten years is a very… long time to love someone.” You break the silence. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. Fifteen, thirty minutes? He looks at you, and your lips press into a thin smile. He lifts his arm so you can scoot up close next to him. Your eyes never leave his face, regarding him with new clarity. “I just… realized.”

“Ten years is a very long time for anything,” he replies quietly, their faces very close. Their noses brush, and a warmth spreads through his cheeks as he presses the tip of your nose against his. You don’t pull away. Instead, you almost lean closer. Your nose is cold against his hot face, and he rubs it slowly with his own, trying to send heat back into your skin.

“A very long time to… wait.” Your eyes flutter shut, and your breath is warm over his lips as you slowly tilt your head so their foreheads meet. His hand squeezes your waist. You smell like the hospital, but there’s still the fragrance of the fresh-cut grass and herbs clinging to your skin as he moves his head just to the side so his nose presses into your frozen cheek. Your arm moves as if dragging through honey until it’s wrapped around his neck, palm flat against his shoulder, just as their brows press against one another. 

Something ignites inside his chest, incinerating the rot that seems to grow inside his own chest—it’s his dread, he realizes a moment later. An ugly knot of dread for what’s to come, the guilt, the cold grief that’s just out of reach. 

It’ll unfurl soon, he knows, but for now, he welcomes the relief you bring him.

In this moment, you are his, and he is yours, and that is all that matters.

His eyes close. His cheeks are burning hotter than the heaters surrounding them, and he feels a smile pulling at his lips as your fingers curl against the back of his neck.

“When will people… stop waiting?” you ask him, hushed like a secret.

Eyes opening, he answers you in the same soft voice, “Probably when they die.”

Your eyes crack open once more and he catches a sliver between your heavy lids. You’re so close he sees every detail of your irises, the pores of your eye bags, the way memories flicker through your pupils like fish in a river.

Your exhausted smile grows more genuine—something inside you seems to rear its bright little head, but it’s sad, and he realizes, then, what you must’ve been thinking. Words fumble at his mouth, but he doesn’t let anything slip as you lift your face away to rest your head against his shoulder.

.

You’re dozing against him. Satoru is staring up at the moon in your stead. It’s nearly fully that famous shade of dark blood red, but not quite. He can’t hear anything except the buzz of the space heaters and your breathing. His arm is still wrapped tight around you, holding you flush against him. He’s wished he’d done it so many times before that now, he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.

You’re dying. Even as you rest against him, he feels it. The weakness in your body, the way you’ve turned ghost-like. The strength of your Cursed Energy has become more prominent now that you don’t have the energy to channel it properly, and it’s centred so strongly in your chest that he can feel it poking curiously at him, leaving little marks, a souvenir for when you’re gone.

His fingers dig into your side. You let out a noise, head shifting, and he rips his gaze away away from the sky as your hand falls away from where it had rested around his neck into his lap.

“Satoru?” you whisper brokenly, and he nods, smiling. He pulls you closer, but their bodies are so pressed against each other that it only serves to make you huff a bit.

“Hey. You’re still with us, don’t worry,”

“Not worried,” you mumble, lifting your head with difficulty. “Just glad you’re here.” You tilt your face to the moon. “It’s still… red, huh…” You shake, your hand at the hem of his shirt twisting tightly. He reaches to squeeze your arm and hopes it’ll be enough now. “Pretty.” Throat dry, he does not answer. His white hair falls into his eyes as you look up at him, and he decays at the vulnerability in your gaze. “Aren’t you glad… that we saw the eclipse?”

Jaw clenching, he nods and tries his best to smile. Your hand lets go of his shirt and you shuffle up close enough that your other arm sneaks around his waist. Touching his chin with trembling fingers, your eyes glitter in the darkness of his shadow.

“I’m going to miss this. The moon, stars, how… fucking short… ’n’ beautiful life is,” you finally whisper, throat tight. “Makes shit worth living for. Maybe… won’t miss it… the most… but, top three.”

“Top three?” he echoes. “Top three sounds pretty good to me.”

“And, y’know what, Satoru?” you continue in the same low, husky tone, as if you’re about to change his world one more time.

He drops to the lowest, quietest voice he can manage and moves his head closer. Their noses nearly bump into each other again, and you smile as he quirks an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“You’re… going to miss me… more.” 

Your hand on his waist travels up his shoulder and he feels the last of your strength in your muscles as you pull him towards you. Letting you, his arms wrap around your waist as your other arm shoots around his neck, clinging on so hard that he’s sure his spine might break. 

Flattening his palms against your uneven back, he closes his eyes and slides a hand to cradle your head close.

“And promise… me something,” you breathe into his ear. Your lips brush the shell of his ear, and a shiver shoots down his spine.

“Anything.”

“When I kick it,” you whisper, “take my body, and bury me… yourself.”

Throat swelling shut, Satoru’s glad you can’t see the way the blood drains from his face as he nods and holds you tighter. “I will.”

.

“One more photo for the road?” he asks. You lift your head from his chest, and he looks as you reach to sweep his lips with cold, trembling fingers. He smiles, his hand on your thigh squeezing meaningfully even though you can barely feel it now. Your arms are bundled between your chest and his, and he hauls your legs on his thighs more securely up his lap, arm tightening around your torso.

“Satoru,” you murmur, tilting your head to him. His eyes never move from yours as he picks up the camera, and your hand falls from his lips. “I’m glad… that it was you.”

He snaps the shot and the only sound that fills the silence is the camera chugging out the polaroid. Your eyes are dark, murky and unfocused, and he feels your stammering inhale in his very lungs as he presses his forehead against yours.

“I’m happy it was you, too,” he whispers. You search his gaze for only a moment, and then turn your head to the moon once more. 

Lowering the camera to the floor, he sneaks his other arm around you and rests his chin atop of your head, eyes sliding shut.

.

Nanami, Yaga, and Ijichi approach, dress shoes tapping against linoleum floors. Satoru and Shoko say nothing to them as they join in watching through the glass doors.

Satoru doesn’t like the room they’ve moved you to. It’s too full of machines, too open to passersby who could just look in if the curtains aren’t drawn, and even then…

It smells too clinical here. Too full of artificial light. The ICU is a mechanical sort of silence than the quiet peace of the dead-end hallway. There is no warmth, no books, no paintings. Your plants have been removed, and Nanami has taken all of them into his apartment except the red tulips which rest on the dinner table in Satoru’s kitchen.

You stopped being able to breathe on your own only a day after the eclipse. That was two days ago, and the ventilator is doing nothing more than prolonging your agony. Soon, the growths will block your lungs entirely, suffocating you from the inside out. 

The doctors have stopped taking scans.

“It’s only a matter of time, now,” Shoko had said. “Her directive says we let her go as soon as she can’t come back.” Quieter: “Her pulse ox has been dropping. It won’t be long.”

Ijichi’s face is stony. Satoru doesn’t know why he focuses on him out of everyone. Leaning against the nurse’s station, he stares blankly at the Assistant Director’s. Maybe because he thought he’d be a wreck. Out of all of them, Ijichi’s the most emotional, but his lips are set firm from where he stands between Nanami and their principal.

Maybe Satoru’s just looking for permission to fall apart, but that’d be stupid. 

I’m the strongest. I’ll be fine.

“I’m going to go in,” he announces. No one protests. Nanami sits down and crosses one leg over the other, fingers steepled and eyes indecipherable. Shoko sits beside him. There’s the faint scent of smoke clinging to her lab coat. 

Ijichi dips his head, but doesn’t sit and Yaga excuses himself to talk to the nurse about your condition.

Satoru sanitizes his hands, approaches the door, and pulls it open before stepping in and sliding it shut behind him. 

Click. Hiss. 

The sound of the ventilator is the only thing that occupies the room. That and the monitors. It’s very dark, despite it being the middle of the day. Mostly because you can’t open your eyes wide enough to withstand the sun anymore, so Satoru had asked the nurses to bring the same blackout curtains from your room here. The lights are dimmed until it’s only an orange glow right behind your bed. 

Click. Hiss.

Sitting down, he doesn’t take hold of your hand just in case you’re sleeping. The intubation tube rests on a pile of towels on your chest, and it takes a long time before your eyes open and your head tilts just enough to look. Your hand twists on top of the covers until your palm is tilted open.

He slips fingers in, takes hold. The feel of your skin making everything worse. You’re colder than you should be—it’s sweltering in this room, enough that Satoru is already beginning to sweat even through his short-sleeve—and your fingers just barely twitch against the back of his hand, tracing strange shapes.

You blink, tapping his knuckle, and he frowns.

“What’s up?” Withdrawing, he feels your nail scrape against his flesh and he looks down. Curiously, he takes your hand and places it on top of his so your fingers can touch the lines of his palm. “Are you spelling something out?” he asks, amused, glancing up again.

Another blink, slower this time.

He leans forward on his elbow to touch your cheek before resting his cheek against his fist.

“Alright, give it your best shot.” 

Your eyelids flutter, lips trembling in a weak smile. Your index finger begins to trace shapes, kanji, into his palm. Your chest rises and fall slowly, pumped full of air by a machine hooked to your lungs, forcing breath into you as your writing grows sloppy by the passing second but you still persist.

ANGRY?

“Angry?” he repeats, and you blink slowly again, fingers insistent on grabbing his palm. Folding his fingers over yours, he arches his eyebrows. “If I was angry at a terminally ill patient, that’d make me the asshole here.” Your eyes squeeze shut, eyebrows rearranging in what he recognizes as your laugh in silence. More seriously, his hold on you tightens and he lifts his head to brush his fingers over your brow. You tilt your head more to him, gaze murky warm. “How’re you feeling?”

It takes a while, but he feels your hand shuffle back to trace your answer on his hand.

BETTER

“Better. Yeah?”

Another lethargic blink. Yes.

“It’s because of me, right? I knew it. I knew it. We should tell Shoko—I’m the newest medical innovation in town,” he proclaims, and his smile begs to slip off his face but he only forces it back on, shoves it into place. Your eyebrows move again, like you’re struggling to hold back your laugh. Your eyes slip shut and do not open again. 

Your face goes lax a moment later, and your fingers loosen a bit, but he doesn’t let go. He just wants to touch your face and trace the lines into his memory. 

Satoru stretches his thumb along the swell of your bottom lip while carefully avoiding the tube. He runs his knuckles down your cheek. His fingers brush your pulse point along your neck, and he feels the slow, weak beat.

Click. Hiss.

He thinks you’re asleep for a while, until your finger drags over the flesh of his palm and he looks down, hand lifting from your face. 

“Hey, I’m still here,” he whispers, and your face turns towards him slightly, the tube in your mouth shuffling. He reaches forward, cupping your face and holding you still. “Hey. Don’t move. Your lungs are weaker than the rest of you and I’m not about to watch you die.” Something grabs onto the front of his shirt near his stomach and he looks down to see your fingers hooking on the cotton of his tee, twisting it weakly. “Oh, sorry.”

He draws back and slips his palm back into yours. Your index finger taps against the heel of his hand before your nail drags deliberately. One stroke. Then another, and another. Gojo wishes your eyes were open, because then he would be able to determine what the rest of the sentence could spell out before you’re done, but he’s patient. 

HERE

“Here?” You tap on his hand. Yes. “What’s here?”

YOU AND ME

“You and me,” he repeats thoughtfully. “Yeah, I get that. At least… now you can see Suguru again, right?” Your hand goes still and he looks at your face, reaching to touch your cheek again. You’re placid—doll-like, eyes shut, living dead. “I’m a bit jealous of that, but you should rest easy. It’s been a hard few months, hasn’t it?”

Another weak twitch of your finger on his hand.

“No matter what happens, don’t think I’m angry at you, or the choices you’ve made,” he continues. “As long as you let me stay here, I won’t waste a single second of it, okay?” Tap. He squeezes your hand so tightly your eyebrows twitch, even as you slip away from him. “For all your saying that you’re weaker than me, I never thought that. Not really.” Satoru raises your hand to his lips and he closes his eyes. “Being the strongest is pretty lonely. Used to be so fucking cocky about it, huh. Thought no one could touch me or the people I cared about because everyone would be too scared.”

Your fingers curl against his palm and he lowers his head to press your knuckles against his brow.

“I was wrong. I’d give anything to have you both back, but I can’t, and I hate it. You’re supposed to be with me at the top. I don’t want to be alone again.” His eyes are burning from the strain of keeping them open, but he refuses to miss a second of you being alive when the time is trickling like sand in an hourglass. He feels it like a heavy stare on his back, wondering if this next breath will be the last one before your brain finally decides to shut down. Your organs have been shutting down for nearly weeks now. He knows it’s out of pure selfishness that they’re dragging precious moments into agonizing hours. 

He knows you’re exhausted. 

Resting his chin on your fingers, he swallows. “I don’t know how to let you go. I wished I’d come sooner. I was careless. I know that. We could’ve had more time…”

Your fingers squeeze his as tight as you can before letting go. Somehow, he hears your voice in his ear. Something about being grateful for the time they did have.

“You were right, silly.” He chuckles to himself, bitter, anguished, and lowers your hand back to the bed, not letting go yet. “Ten years is a long time to wait. I let you down, but I’ll make sure you go easy. I promise.”

Satoru lays his head down on his forearm and he swears he catches your lips pull into the faintest smile. He stays there for hours, watching your face, stretching up to touch your unmoving face. The only sound is his steady breaths, the beep of your monitors and the click-hiss of your ventilator. 

It’s 1:04 PM when he falls asleep to the sleepy circles you trace into his wrist

It’s 6:22 PM when only one of them wakes up.

.

At 11:00 AM the next morning, during one of the hourly tests, they declare you brain-dead. With the announcement of your directive being honoured by your chosen proxy, Satoru himself, classes are cancelled and they are scheduled to take you off life support at six.

Ijichi brings them lunch and dinner. Satoru doesn’t eat. Only sits by your side, leaned back into the chair and looking at you while he still can until the clock ticks and ticks and ticks towards doomsday. The kids come to say final goodbyes while he watches on. Inumaki, as always, brings Panda through his phone, and Satoru wishes there could’ve been some way to sneak Panda into a high-class hospital just so their last moments together aren’t cheapened by a screen.

Shoko enters five minutes before it’s time, hand finding his shoulder and he looks up just long enough to catch her blank stare resting on your face.

She doesn’t say anything, only moves to the other side of the bed and sits down in the other chair.

The doctor pumps you full of sedation drugs, so you won’t feel any of the pain, unhooks the machines, and extubates you, explaining all the while what he’s doing just to fill the silence. As he pulls the tube from your throat, something in Satoru turns icy when a purple petal is plastered to the side of the plastic, but the doctor does not acknowledge it any more than murmuring that he will give them privacy.

Your rattling breaths echo in his ears as he watches the numbers slowly drop, but even your inhales fade to nothing more than soft, slight wheezes. The tape has left a strange mark around your mouth, and you’re unmoving otherwise. Shoko gently reaches and touches the eye bags that are, for once, worse than hers before shaking her head and pulling back. Everyone else waits outside.

Hours pass by in torturous years. 

Satoru wears the same stony expression the whole while, finally surrendering into his desire to hold your hand. 

His heart hardens. He goes completely still. Shoko talks but he can’t really hear anything except the slow beeps of your monitor once you pass certain thresholds. 

There are nurses waiting outside. They’ve grown used to the company, he thinks. He thinks one or two are crying. Soon enough, they’ll come in to turn off the machines tracking your vitals so the sounds don’t drive them crazy, banging in home that you’re dead, dead, dead.

After a while, Satoru realizes you aren’t quite breathing, although your chest moves. Sometimes, there’s a gasping sound, like someone surprised the breath out of you and you’re inhaling sharply to replace it, and he imagines your fingers twitching against his hand one last time.

It’s very slow. Much slower than he imagined it to be. Maybe you’re still fighting. Maybe you don’t want to go.

Satoru can’t imagine why. Where you’re going, there’s no pain, or exhaustion, or blood. Where you’re going, Suguru waits.

He leans against his hand, elbow on the slight incline of your bed. Letting go of your hand, he touches your face, feels the soft puff of your breath, the curve of your jaw. You’ve lost so much weight from the sickness you barely look like yourself, but you’re still you. The cursed energy is still yours. His Six Eyes sees it. His soul feels it.

It tangles with his own where he touches you, and a wave of exhaustion washes over him. 

He wants to sleep, let time pass, and wake up to you dead.

It seems a much better alternative to watching you slip away, but he’s always been selfish when it came to personal affairs.

.

You die two hours later.

Shoko closes her eyes and leans back into her chair as the nurse comes in to turn off the droning monitor. Her face is dry and she takes long, measured breaths as if trying to temper something swirling inside her. Satoru’s hard heart cracks as he squeezes your hand to see if you’ll wake up. It doesn’t quite sink in, even though he can hear someone crying outside, and when your limp hand doesn’t react at all, he shakes his head and gets up, pulling his sunglasses off the collar of his shirt and sliding them back onto his face.

He shoves his hands into his pockets and rakes his face over your body, your face.

He’s seen a dozen dead bodies before, maybe more. You look just like he did on December 24th. At peace, younger. Like you’re glad the suffering is over, and Satoru turns his face away sharply and leaves the room. He doesn’t know what to say and he’s not sure if his voice is still here. 

Everything feels dry and dull and grey.

“Sensei,” Itadori whispers wetly, reaching out a hand, making him stop. The students are all sitting in a small area, but they stand upon seeing him leave the room, and he gives them a plastic smile that makes all of them flinch. Maki is scowling furiously at the ground as Inumaki takes hold of her bicep but she flings the hand off and stalks away, hiding her red face.

“It’s going to be okay,” he tells them as Kugisaki runs after Maki. He watches the two go before turning his attention back on the students. “The important thing is that she didn’t suffer. Arrangements will be made, but there won’t be any rush, alright?” The words feel lacking, but he still manages to smile. “It’s been a long day. Go home. Rest, shower, eat. Let’s remember that she doesn’t want us to be here, slumping around looking like idiots. She wants you to all to take care of yourselves.” He arches his eyebrows insistently at his students, but they don’t seem to hear him.

They’re only looking through the glass doors at your coolling corpse, at Shoko who stands, and speaks to the doctor when he comes back in.

Fushiguro is the only one really looking at him, and the teenager has a silent question in his stare. 

Satoru shakes his head, and Megumi nods.

“Classes are cancelled for the rest of the week,” Yaga adds. “Ijichi will drive you all back to the college in thirty minutes. Make sure you tell the girls.” He directs this to Inumaki, who nods.

“Salmon.”

Later, Megumi finds him smoking a cigarette leaning against Shoko’s car. Satoru’s never liked the taste of the stuff so he doesn’t really know why he’s smoking other than the fact he doesn’t know what to do. 

Up is down, left is right, and you’re dead. 

Nothing seems right, but Megumi gives him a good excuse to stop. Flinging the cig to the ground, he stomps out the ember and re-arranges his expression into that shielded smile of his, but it feels a bit weaker. Sharp, janky, wrong.

“Why haven’t you gone home yet? Ijichi should’ve taken you all back by now,” Satoru says wearily as Fushiguro stops before him, hands shoved in his pockets.

“I stayed behind to look for you,” informs Megumi. He looks a bit fractured, but the boy’s never been one to wear his heart on his sleeve. Satoru makes a mental note to dig into his psyche at a later date, and stretches an arm out to wrangle the boy into a hug against his side.

For all of his complaints and mumbles and scowls, Megumi’s body still relaxes a bit against his, and even though he doesn’t hug him back, when he tells him, “You should go home and get some sleep, too. These past few months haven’t been easy on you, either,” Satoru feels a part of his old self raise its bloody head. 

Glancing down at a head of spiky hair, he knocks his knuckles into his student’s skull. “Have you been keeping an eye on me?”

Megumi crosses his arms, glares over Satoru’s elbow, but even his voice is quieter. “You need to take care of yourself.”

Satoru smiles again. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “But you’re not worried about me, are you, Fushiguro?”

Megumi ducks his head and doesn’t answer any more than, “Someone has to pick up the slack, now.”

.

“Thanks, Ijichi,” Satoru says with a huff, digging the shovel into the ground and stepping on the metal edge. “Not every day you help me carry a dead body and dig a grave, huh.”

“No, sir,” Ijichi replies. He sounds a bit hoarse and tired as he wipes at his brow.

It’s been two days since you’ve died. The college grounds feels a lot less lively. He took a walk in the gardens yesterday, and saw Yaga planting new flowers. He had strode past and ignored the tears on his sensei’s face, and absently wonders now why he hasn’t cried yet as he grabs the shovel and yanks it out of the dirt, tossing it to Ijichi.

It feels kind of stupid, but despite how eviscerated everything inside him feels, he just can’t.

Either way, he’ll deal with it when it becomes a problem.

Satoru wipes at his brow, too, with a heavy sigh, and heads to where a cloth-covered shape is resting on the ground. Your corpse is light in his arms as he bridal carries you to the hole he’s just dug into the grass. It looks suspicious as hell, but it’d probably be even worse if he’d been walking around with a dead body over his shoulder, stitched back together after an autopsy by your best friend. 

Good thing they’re only in the forests outside the college campus. There won’t be any civilians for miles.

“You can go,” he says over his shoulder, setting you down by the hole they’ve dug. He takes in a deep breath to calm himself and Ijichi’s footsteps hesitate before beginning and fading away moments later. Falling to his knees, Satoru begins to carefully unfold the cloth just enough that he can see your face and chest. 

He squints behind his blindfold at the ripples of energy still seeping from the stitches along your chest. Sinking his hands into the lush, cold grass, he twists the blades with rigid fingers at the stench of rot coming from the curse before he draws back.

Hands on his lap, he stares at your face. You look frozen in time, eyes closed, skin clean, and there’s that unnatural stillness about you that only comes with the dead. It’s strange. He probably couldn’t have imagined someone so vivacious could be so motionless if he hadn’t seen it first with Suguru.

He had asked not to hear the results of your autopsy. Not now, maybe not ever. It’d be fresh lemon juice in a weeping wound. All he knows is that the curse clings to your corpse, and Shoko could only remove the growths that were no longer being fed for examination.

“Weird that this is where we’ve found ourselves,” he begins humourlessly. “With how we were living, Suguru always said I’d die first. Doing something stupid, being too cocky.” He slides a hand into his pocket and withdraws something he’d snipped this morning from the last plant you had grown with your Technique. A red tulip with a short stem that’s a bit crushed, and beginning to decay, but… everything can’t be perfect.

“I never thought I’d outlive you.”

Reaching forward, he places the tulip gently on your chest, takes your cold arms that are just beginning to loosen up again from rigor mortis, and folds your hands over the stem.

“Eternal love, and fame,” he repeats to himself. The energy nearly swallows up the tulip, but as it radiates from your chest, flickers in the slight breeze, Satoru sees flashes of red and green, much brighter than everything else around him, and knows that it won’t be consumed. Sitting down, he hugs his legs to his chest and stares at your dead body blankly, chin on his knees.

He had had a plan. He was going to just… put the flower there, exorcise the curse inside you, and bury you so you could finally rest. He wouldn’t hesitate because this is something you entrusted him to do.

But this is the first time in months he hasn’t had a cloud hanging over his head, and his body feels so much ligher without the burden of your disease hanging off his shoulders, that he can’t help but relish in it. Speak to you without worrying about saying the wrong thing, of people overhearing. He’s finally… free. 

It feels fucking awful.

“You were right, by the way.” His voice is dull, resonating deep in his chest. There is no August sun breaking through the trees above, only from behind him, and the golden beams touch your chin, down your throat and chest. It sets the red of the tulip on fire. “I miss you. And I wish I could’ve said so many things, but we ran out of time.” A faint smile. “No matter what you think, Suguru loved you. It’s why he came to see you one last time. I knew him better than I knew myself, and I know he was happiest knowing you were at his side.” Closing his eyes, the ache in his heart swells as he utters out, “So was I.”

Burying his his face in his forearms, a cup inside him seems to tip over and everything feels too hot for him to breathe in. Ripping his blindfold off and tossing it away from him blindly, his eyes snap open wide as he tries to breathe. His ribs constrict his lungs, and he presses his eyes into his arms, hands shaking as he sinks his nails into his biceps. 

Harsh pants puff against his face as he tries to reign in his shuddering, but he can’t. The knot in his heart twists until he thinks he might die, and distantly, he hears soft footsteps so faint he’s not sure if he imagines it. Gritting his teeth, he stifles the bruising feeling welling up in his throat.

Gentle hands brush down his shoulders soothingly, sending a wave of nausea through his body, and he jerks away.

“Damn it, Ijichi, leave me alone!” Wrenching his head up, his eyes widen at the figure crouched in front of him.

Arms falling lax to the grass and his knees widening, his jaw drops as a thumb teases his parted lips. You step between his legs and crouch down, limber and strong. You look healthy again, bright eyes and full cheeks, young like spring, and when you smile, it fills him utterly with light. In your hands is his blindfold, and you ruffle his hair, tilting your head curiously.

“I’m not Ijichi, but… do you really want me to go so soon?” you ask as he rakes his gaze up and down your body. There is still a purple shell encasing your legs, but as you shift your weight on your feet, it falls like fragile eggshells to the ground and sinks into the dirt, disappearing for good. Peering around you, his eyes widen when he sees shards of a purple shell in shatters all over your corpse.

He’d only seen this once before, eight months ago, with a certain student of his and the cursed spirit of the girl he loved and who loved him.

Face burning, his gaze snaps back to you as you poke his cheek and continue to grin. Leaning back on his hands, he tries to stop the intense shattering of his walls by clenching his jaw, but the shudders overtake his body, his chest, his throat until he’s letting out an ugly sound and blinking hard as if that’ll hide it away from you. Something devastatingly warm immediately shoots down his cheeks. Covering his mouth with the crook of his elbow, he turns his face away but your warm hands cradle him carefully, thumbs brushing underneath his eyes.

“Yuuta, you’re right. Rika isn’t cursing you.”

“No,” he whispers, arm falling. His fingers sink into his shoulder as if that would be enough to wake him from this nightmare. “No. I can’t—Did I—Did I kill you?” You squint studiously, not letting go of his face as he lifts the hand from his shoulder and reaches to touch you. It shakes, and he snaps it into a fist to stop it, looking at his fingers that have done so much harm—shed so much blood. “Did I do this to you?”

“You cursed Rika.”

You chuckle fondly, like he’s said something silly, and set a hand on his fist, pushing it down firmly. “You can’t control how other people react to your words, Satoru.” Your voice changes, and your eyebrows draw together in something bittersweet. “And you can’t change something you didn’t know. The chances of you cursing me and me cursing myself are irrelevant. It doesn’t change anything about where we are, now.”

Satoru watches you, lips parted, as you tie the blindfold around his neck. You feel so real, so close, and as you slide your hands down his shoulders, to his chest, he jerks his head down to stare at your shoes in the grass. 

So he did. 

“I see,” he murmurs.

That’s it, then.

“Satoru, please look at me,” you whisper, fingers stretching to his chin. With the gentlest of pressures, you prompt him up and he finds your face, your smile, where all colours begin and end. For a moment, the world seems to inhale all of its life back into its core—the leaves whistle, the sun is warm and golden, and he lifts his hand to touch you again, but you pull back before he can. 

“I can only thank you for being my friend. For staying with me until the very end.” You laugh quietly to yourself and lift your hand from his face. “I would make a joke about a curse, but I know it still hurts, so I’ll save it for when I see you on the other side, okay? When it heals a bit more.”

“It’s never going to hurt less,” he croaks. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know how much you mean to me.”

Your smile softens. Satoru tries to eternalize that expression forever. “I’m honoured, but, I hope it does heal. I don’t want you to learn how to carry so much pain around. I don’t want you to be numb.” You touch his cheek again, as if you’re trying to soak in as much of him as you can, too. 

“Do you have any last words?” he manages to ask raspily, and you chuckle, tilting your head and running your hand through his hair again. His eyes flutter shut at the scratch, the sensation of your nails against his scalp, and then there’s your hand at his jaw, holding him all together. He wants to hold you so badly he thinks his muscles might cramp into stone at the desire.

“What does it matter?” you ask curiously. “You already know how I feel. That will never change. And if you ever want to know what I think, or what I’d do, you can just ask Shoko and think about it yourself. You know me well enough to not need me nagging about it.”

“But, it won’t be enough.”

“It never will be,” you agree. “But isn’t it wonderful that we even got to know each other at all?” You lean forward, and his eyes flutter shut as you hold him to your chest. He can’t hear your heartbeat anymore, but your warmth is almost the same. The echo of your voice rumbles in his head as you speak, and maybe that is enough. “If you want my last words, you already have them.”

You draw him back, and give him one last smile. The air shifts golden yellow to his Six Eyes, for the last time. 

“Until we meet again, my Satoru.” 

You fade without giving him a chance to answer, taking all the colour with you. 

Staring at the empty air where you had been just a moment before with wide, burning blues, he whispers your name brokenly before burying his hands in the dirt, squeezing his eyes shut, and letting boiling tears scald his face red.

.

“If you want my last words, you already have them.”

Spinning the key ring on his finger, Satoru looks dully at the door knob he had just unlocked. There’s no one in the hall, and he debates whether or not he should turn around, but Shoko had insisted. There’d been something left for him in your old apartment, and according to her, it would be spoiled soon if he didn’t go.

“Oh, what the hell,” he mutters, catching the key in his palm and shoving it into his long coat. Tugging it tighter around himself, he twists the knob and pushes it open. He can’t remember the last time he was in here. Maybe five or six months ago, when they both had a day off that didn’t need to be spent at the college.

There aren’t any plants anymore. He supposes Nanami, Ijichi, maybe even Yaga have taken them. He swears he’s seen a few in the gardens lately, but who is he to say? Toeing off his shoes, he makes his way down the hall. 

 Everything is just as you left it, with clean counters and empty tables. The curtains are spread, letting in so much September sunlight. It hits random display pedestals of different sizes, all the surfaces big enough to fit a pot on. Your watering can sits by the sink. There are photos hanging on the walls, propped up on the desk, on your shelves, polaroids taped to the walls. 

Reminders that someone did live here. That there is a whole life unknown to strangers but evidence enough that whoever used to be here, they had people who would miss them.

Walking up to the counter, he drags his fingers along the surface, feeling the dust collect up to a square of pale light. A clean circle is all that’s left as a clue that there used to be something there, and his heart twists.

Who knew he could miss fucking plants of all things?

Sweeping his gaze around, he brushes off the dust on his jacket and hooks a thumb on his blindfold, sweeping the area with an eccentric eye. The TV is off, your bookshelves are in their usual untidy state, but even the reaching vines of the bean plant is gone from the highest shelf.

 “They really scooped this place dry,” he muses dryly to no one. He can still hear the music you’d play for late nights, the smell of dumpling soup. He walks down the hall and still remembers how many steps it takes to reach the bathroom that guests would use. 

He had hunched over that bath on December 25th, and let water soak through his hair as strong fingers worked the sweat from his scalp and skin.

Four more steps to the guest best room on the right, and another three to the end of the hall where a door leads to your room. It’s already open, and he steps in easily, tugging his blindfold all the way down off his face. Hair falling over his eyes, he sweeps it aside and surveys the room. The walls are still that pretty shade of cream, and your bed is made carefully, dark olive blankets resting atop your white sheets. He smiles to himself, despite the twang in his chest.

Walking deeper, he approaches the cabinet by your bathroom, and picks up the photo you have by your jewelry stand.

A smile curls his mouth. He remembers this one. First year, their first September. All four of them had gone together to Sapporo for the autumn festival. 

He sets the photo back down and looks into the bathroom. Your toiletries are all lined up, waiting for their next use, and he swallows as he raises his gaze up to the mirror. His blue eyes look a big too big on his face from the past month alone, and there are red-purple half moons printed onto his face that have only just started to fade. He swears it only looks worse because of how much pale light is streaming in from the windows, and he tugs at his collar uncomfortably, clearing his throat.

Turning around, he looks at the offenders for making him look so awful, and finds a medium-sized pot sitting on the window seat. It’s the only thing sitting on the flat, wooden surface, in partial shade and almost unfurling before his very eyes.

Satoru frowns, walking around your bed to inspect the plant. 

The flowers are a warm magenta colour, and his eyes widen at the flash of white he can see leading to the center of each bloom. Brushing a thumb over the petals, his jaw sets as he tilts his head to get a better look at the plant. So this is what was growing inside of you. Huh.

There’s another slip of white near the dirt, and his eyebrows furrow, fingers seeking the thing. It crinkles when he touches it, and his frown deepens as he manages to grasp it, pulling it free underneath the leaves and stems of the plants. Sitting down beside the pot, he dusts off the dirt clinging to the paper, and reads his name along the front in your print before flipping the envelope around. There’s something sticking out of it, a sloping shape that’s hard but not too big.

Curiosity peaked, he tears the envelope open carefully and peers inside. A binder clip is inside, holding something together, and he flips it upside down, letting everything fall. The letter slides out first, followed by whatever the binder clip is holding together and he squeezes his thighs together so it doesn’t fall to the floor.

Setting the letter aside, he picks the bundle up. 

Polaroids.

They’re polaroids of different sizes that have him smiling despite the heavy sorrow twisting his entire chest.

Various pictures of Satoru, Suguru, Shoko, and you together, and he finds most of them are of him and you. Pictures of him hiding behind plants of various sizes, a picture of him drinking soju, because Suguru liked it the most and insisted he try, while leaning against Shoko who was knocking back a shot of tequila. There is a shot of Suguru, wet with mud and smiling like sunshine, while a drenched Satoru was in the background, flipping the camera off in the middle of a storm. 

More and more pictures, enough to spill out of his lap, and he picks up each one, desperate to remember when or where you took them.

And, sometimes, he can’t. Sometimes, they are just moments that he’s lost because he never thought they’d be important, and now moments he’d give anything to remember.

There are pictures of a fern he had named their first year, little annotations on the bottom of some others. Dates, but with no context otherwise. Names scribbled in black ink. 

You’re in a lot of them, your smile timeless, your joy infectious even through film.

Arms slung around Suguru, face smushed against his, artfully blurry perhaps on accident, and annotated with scrawl that read: I call this masterpiece “Dumb Sweethearts” by Gojo Satoru :)

A picture of him and Shoko and Suguru, of them in one of Tokyo’s night markets, you behind the camera, the lights flashing and warm and pink, making them all look like they’ve transported to some other kind of cyberpunk world. 

You and Shoko lounging in the gardens, having a tiny picnic at your insistence, and in Suguru’s handwriting in black: JUST GIRLS BEING PALS

Satoru stares at Suguru’s writing the longest, not even at his words, just the strokes of his pen. This is a new part of him Satoru thought had been destroyed, and he starves for it. It’s like his one and only lives and breathes in the ink, in those snapshots of him caught in eternal youth. When they’d been happy and unaware and not innocent, but cocky enough to think they could rule the world. 

It’s hungry, the way he goes through each photo, searching for another glimpse of you, of him, of them together, until Satoru is all out of moments to feed on, and still, he feels empty, flicking through the last few photos.

You in a pool, arms wrapped around Shoko and beaming like the sun.

A shot of Satoru and Suguru climbing trees shot from below, your eyes and skeptically raised eyebrows in frame, captioned big dumb monkeys

And the last one…

He holds it to the sunlight and his gaze softens.

A selfie of you kissing Suguru on the cheek. It’s mostly dark, but they were definitely in the bathroom, and the flash made Suguru’s outstretched arm look pale as a ghost, but even so, there’s no mistaking the happiness captured there. He was sticking out his tongue, winking, and red as a beet so he was either drunk or you had said something or both. Your arms were wrapped around his neck, nose squished against his cheek, eyes squeezed tight as he took the shot.

Turning it over, Satoru’s heart plummets into his chest. In Suguru’s clean, blocky writing:

THE GIRL IM GOING TO MARRY ONE DAY <3

And crossed out is your reply followed by a little note:

dummy doesnt have the nerve to propose SHHH!!!! ONE DAY C:

One day.

It sounds so much emptier now.

He lowers the photo back to his lap, and glances around him, at all these scattered moments captured forever. Gathering them up again, he relives them all over again, looking at each photo for longer to see if he’s missed anything, but mostly his stare lingers on your face, and on Suguru’s, and his own, too, because he can’t remember what it felt like back then, but he is sure it feels so much better than now.

The polaroids come together a neat stack and he is careful not to scratch any of them when he clips them together. The top photo is of you with your arms wrangled around Suguru and Satoru, your face split in a maniacal laugh, their mouths open in shock, eyes bulging in how you must’ve scared them witless. 

Shoko’s messy writing at the bottom, for it must’ve been her who had taken the photo: BREAKING NEWS: Japan’s Strongest Conquered by a Woman.

A smile cracks his weary face and he runs a thumb over their faces before sliding the photos back into the envelope for safe-keeping. 

Then, he grabs the letter. His name is written again on the first flap, and he reads it three times over before unfolding the paper, not quite ready but also not sure if he ever will be.

Immediately, a faint, herbal-like scent slashed with antiseptic flows from the page and his stomach curdles as your script pours down the page. 

Swallowing, Satoru shifts and leans against the wall, hiking a foot up onto the seat and holding your inked characters to the light. There’s a date inscribed at the top.

Thursday. 

The first Thursday after you had been released from the hospital. Your last Thursday before you were back in for good.

“Shit.”

He folds the letter again and tilts his head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling.

Does he want to read this? Does he really want to fucking read this? 

Taking a deep breath, he clears his throat and lowers his gaze to stare determinedly ahead of him. The purple flowers greet him warmly and he shakes the shiver out of his body before tightening his grip on your letter and unfolding it again, forcing his eyes on the page.

My Satoru,

I sent all the pictures I had of Shoko to her, and she has some of Suguru, too. Now that I’m gone, there’s no use if I keep them. Maybe you two could share some time, laugh it up over these old memories. I know she says she can’t stand you, but to be honest, who else is there that will remember us now? Who else is there to remember Suguru for more than his bloody hands and me as more than that girl too sick to do anything but die? 

Some legacy we said we’d leave, huh.

I don’t think I told you this, but with this disease catching up to me, it’s hard not to form hypotheses on why it’s happening or how. I have quite a few theories, and, unfortunately, none of them are pleasant or unriddled with angst. By now, you’ve probably figured out it’s a curse, and if you’re smart enough to ignore how much I’ll probably deny it, that it’s some love bullshit. If you didn’t know, now you do.

I know it’s weird. Suguru is dead. It shouldn’t be happening, right?

That’s what I thought, too

You once said love manifests the most twisted curses. I never thought of it that way before, but I’m starting to think you’re right. I don’t want to curse you by dying, but I can’t help but wonder if we can control who we curse. If I hadn’t heard you say that, would I still be here? Healthy? Okay? 

I don’t know. I can’t predict alternate timelines, because I got to live one life, and that’s more than most people get. But, because I know you, you want me to entertain you. I’m sighing as I write this.

Look, I know the pain would still be there. I know I still wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for what I did, even if it was what had to be done. I know I would still miss him. I know that I would still long for the day I didn’t feel guilty for loving someone else.

If you didn’t curse me, I cursed myself. It drives me crazy that this is how the die was cast, even now, even after months where I could’ve accepted this, but at least this physical manifestation almost makes me… calm. Like seeing what this life has done to me makes me brave enough to fight it. If anything at all, the curse brought me a greater understanding of how powerful our world is in comparison to people who… are normal. The people we have to protect.

I’m sorry. Reading this back, it sounds like I’m the one cursing you now; telling you all this knowledge that can only bring you more anguish. I promise, this isn’t what it is. I just want you to understand. You couldn’t have saved me, Satoru. I couldn’t have given you the absolution you wanted, and if that’s how it is, then I just hope that one day you can look back on this and it won’t hurt anymore.

It’s always been so complicated between us, after what happened to Suguru, and after what he did, even ten years ago. What we couldn’t stop and what we had to do that day. There was always a line that I thought I couldn’t cross, or a line you didn’t want to cross, and it was shaped a lot like him. I don’t know if it was just in my head, but there was something holding us back, and I was fine dancing around it because I saw how you felt about him and I understood. Your eyes always changed when you looked at him. When you spoke of him. Even after.

Always after.

Don’t think I’m angry. I’m not blind. I know how much you two meant to each other, and I could never be angry that Suguru is so cherished. Missed. It makes everything so much harder, so much more painful.

Look, in the end, I loved him, and you did, too. And if we both still do, that’s okay. He deserved love. 

I guess it just feels like a stab in the back that it wasn’t enough. 

But life isn’t a fairytale. None of it really matters. To be honest, I wouldn’t trade any of it for a second, and I hope you wouldn’t either. 

Maybe life isn’t supposed to be lived happily, but lived contently. And I did. I am satisfied with what I’ve done, even if I wanted to do so much more. 

I’m so grateful to have known you, to have had you by my side. I hope you can say the same. 

Don’t regret my death. Remember how much fun we had when we were stupid kids, and smile. Because I don’t want you to think your best years are behind you. I want you to be happy, even if I can’t be there to see it. I want you to be excited for your future, even if I can’t be in it.

I’ll always be watching over you, so smile for me every once in a while. Even if it seems like you’ll never feel anything again. One day, I promise you will, and it won’t feel so bad.

Yours forever and ever and ever,

(Name)

.

Throat crushed, he reads one line over and over the most. He’s memorized your letter heart, but he still carries it around with him, anyway.

“I know that I would still long for the day I didn’t feel guilty for loving someone else.”

Sometimes, he just wants to imagine your hand whispering over the page, the pen tapping against your chin, your face as you wrote, the sigh that you said you heaved. Because he’ll never hear you laugh again, see your smile. Your voice will never tease his ear, your fingers will never touch his face. There is no more laugh-wrinkles set in a face always perfectly hit by sunlight, and this is all he has left. His memory, and what you’ve left behind.

It makes him laugh how almost lovestruck stupid he’s being, but… he doubts anyone blames him. As long as he’s still doing his job, as long as he’s still the Strongest, what does it matter if he carries a dead woman’s letter in his pocket everywhere?

“Warm weather, even in the evenings. That’s a bit unusual,” Nanami observes, startling Satoru and he looks up at the blond who stops by him in the gardens. The man is wearing his grey suit, as always, and his watch glimmers in the fading gold light. “How are you?”

Satoru’s fingers tighten around the letter in his hands. As usual, the urge to crumple it up, throw it into the garbage to never see it again, has reared its head after his latest re-read, but he’ll stave it off. He always manages to.

“Fine,” he replies, glancing at the startling blood red and burnt orange leaves casually. Colours seem a bit brighter, and Satoru still squints a bit against them, despite the soft light of the sunset. He doesn’t know when his Six Eyes got so sensitive to that kind of stuff, but it almost feels good to be distracted by something so trivial as sensitive eyesight. “It is a bit warm for October.” 

Nanami hums. “How are your plants doing?”

“Mine are doing good,” he says, smiling. “The tulips have gone dormant, so nothing to worry about there. The one with purple flowers, though. It’s a tough one. It took me a while to figure out what it liked, but it didn’t go dormant or anything as long as I gave it enough water and paid attention to it.”

“That’s good.” Nanami adjusts his green lenses and sighs like he’s bracing himself for something difficult. “Gojo,” he begins, but Satoru merely folds your letter up and slides it into his breast pocket, holding up a hand.

“Whatever you’re going to say, Nanami, I don’t need to hear it.”

“Are you sure?” he asks skeptically, gaze following as Satoru stands, patting his jacket. Adjusting the lapel, he turns to his friend and when he grins, it feels like it reaches his eyes behind his sunglasses for the first time in two months.

“I’ve done this before, Nanami. I’ll be fine.” He waves it away. Nanami frowns. “I’m gonna get some dinner, though. Care to join? There’s a real good ramen place in Ikebukuro that you have to try.” The blond man observes him for a moment, before shaking his head, saying he had dinner already. “Suit yourself. Next time, I’m treating you, though.” 

Lips puckered in a whistle, Satoru turns around and begins to walk away. 

A breeze sweeps through the gardens, rustling the leaves in a discordant harmony, and sneaking into his jacket, sending a slight shiver up his spine as Nanami’s voice follows after him.

“The flower she left you is the sakurasou.” Satoru stops, hands in his pockets, but he doesn’t turn around as Nanami continues, “I wasn’t certain if if you knew.”

“Nope, I didn’t. Thanks for the info.” Lifting a hand, he barely looks over his shoulder before saluting with two fingers and smiling cheekily. It’s not as forced as it used to be. In fact, it comes quite easy as he reaches into his pocket for his phone. He knows what he has to find out now. “See ya later, Nanami.”

“Good evening,” he replies, and in a blink of an eye, Satoru is gone.

On the windowsill of his empty apartment, the sakurasou soaks in the last remnants of the day before wilting against two photos.

One of four students, arms entangled, and faces framed in eternal youth.

And another immortalizing what could’ve been longer than a few shaky months if someone had been just a bit braver.

a/n: satoru’s google search result: the meaning of sakurasou - desire and long-lasting love. 

and yes, there was an actual lunar eclipse on july 27th, 2018 (28th in japan time). it was very pretty. i researched a bit about both the lunar eclipse and the medical stuff, but excuse any inaccuracies! tis but a work of fiction <3 also, fun fact: the polaroid camera is supposed to be the instax mini 90 but ive never used it so excuse those inaccuracies as well SKNDALSDKN

ngl i did wanna write an alternative ending, but i can’t see this ending any other way. this is it. this is the canon, and we got a bit of happy feelies at the end as a treat. thank you for reading!

[hereforhalstead]

Love Languages

*Gif not mine, credits to the owner*

• Pairing: Jay Halstead x Reader.

• Requested: No.

• Warnings: Pure fluff besties

• Summary: A look into your relationship with Jay and the love languages you portray.

• Words: 1400.

• A/N : I’ll be honest, I just wanted to write some straight fluff because I was craving soft Jay and came up with this ramble/long drabble. No plot or real thought went into this I just started typing and let myself run away with it... One to try and put a smile on my besties face @halsteadlover ily sis😌

Hope you enjoy!

***

When it came to love languages, you and Jay were quick to work out what the other liked. Your love language being gift giving and his being touch and affirmation, the pair went hand in hand with the both of you being more than happy with the way affection was shown in the relationship. 

You were constantly picking things up for Jay if you’d see something that reminded you of him or simply something you know he’d like. A shirt of his favourite american football team, a new pair of sunglasses as he’d broken his others a few weeks before or a cheeky guesture of a new pair of grey joggers as he moans you constantly steal his. At this point, he was always on your mind so you could see a bottle of water and be taken back to the time where you’d seen him pick up the same one at a gas station on route to work. Maybe you’d pass someone in the street and get a whiff of their cologne and be reminded of the many mornings it would be the first thing you smelt as you’re awoken to soft kisses being pressed into your skin as he engulfs you with his arms within the imprinted sheets.

It didn’t matter how big or small it was, you wanted to show your affection by proving to him how often you thought of him, luckily this perfectly matched his affirmation desires so you were more than happy to ablige. Something so small as a cute keyring you picked up on vacation as it had a certain phrase on it that caused him to flash through your mind. He would instantly attach to his keys so whenever he looked at it he thought about how you’d gone out of your way to buy it for him, and how he must’ve been in your thoughts, it meant alot to him. You’d even bought him an ice scraper for his truck as he was constantly moaning he didn’t have one and felt bad about always borrowing yours and to this day he still uses it, even though it’s in a pretty worse for wear state he still can’t bring himself to get a new one as it wouldn’t give him that little boost of serotonin to picture you strolling through the store and the smile on your face as you took it to the checkout. 

At first, you felt you were being over the top with the words of affirmation towards Jay. Did he really need to hear you tell him how much you love him, multiple times a day? Surely he knows by now and didn’t need you to tell him this much but he basked in your expressions and was constantly looking forward to the next time the words he craved fell from your lips. 

'I’m so glad you made it home safe’

‘Did I tell you how much I love when you cook for me, baby?’

‘I’m so proud of you, Jay’

‘Thank you for everything you do for me’ 

The glowing feeling you get to see the heat creep to his cheeks, the doting looks he would give you and the way his grip on you would tighten at the smallest of affirmations confirmed how much he loved to hear it. He wouldn’t even have to verbally respond, a simple kiss to your temple or a content hum would be enough to acknoweldge that you knew exactly what he wanted and needed to hear.

His love language of touch was something you had to get used to. Jay was your first proper boyfriend, you’d dated on and off in the past but he was the only one who’s stuck around. He on the other hand, had more expeirence in the dating world so seemed to know more about it than you and with that came more things that just felt natural to him, but was a shock to your system. 

He without a doubt Jay had to have his hands on you in some way, these desires varied depending on the situation you were in and what he felt was necessary. In public his hand would be pressed into your lower back as he guides you through a crowded place, his grip falling to your waist as you stood next to him in a que at the mall or his hand finding yours as you strolled along the street just to name a few.

His lips would press into your temple as you rested your head on his shoulder, the way he runs his fingertips up and down your back whilst you lean into him. Planting a soft kiss to the back of your neck as he creeps up on you pouring yourself a glass of water in the morning, him pulling you into him to place a chaste kiss to your lips just to show you his love took you by surprise. 

You’d never had someone be so consumed by you that they needed to almost be a part of you but you loved it. Behind closed doors he was equally as attentive, fingernails grazing your arm as you lounge around watching a film, his hands finding their way on you as you cuddle into him. He would abscentmindidly fiddle with the ends of your hair as he concentrated on the TV, his mind fully on the screen but you were so much his main prioroty that he didn’t have to even think about it.

Even in his sleep, he needed you close to him, you’d fall asleep on the edge of the bed and wake up lying of his chest with the soft grazing of his fingernails down your spine, zero complaints but also no memory of how you got there. If he opened his eyes and he wasn’t holding you in some way, he’d automatically shift to intertwine your bodies under the sheets to sooth himself back to sleep. 

If he was jealous, you’d know about it in a matter of seconds. The intenstity of his grip on you would tell you someone else was eyeing you up, before you got to see for yourself. The way he would pull you onto his lap and wrap his arm tightly round you to keep you in place. How he’d pull you inbetween his legs as he sits at the bar in Molly’s, grabbing at your waist as he settles you in front of him. Even so much as a heated kiss being placed upon you to firmly deter the eyes of another man wasn’t unheard of and again you had zero complaints. 

Jay would find it adorable in the beginning of your relationship, noticing the way you’d glance down as he reached for your hand while you walked, trying to hide the smile that was spreading on your face. The chills you would get as he tangled his hands in your hair, the little quips you’d make at his sudden forms of intimacy were what spurred him on more. He loved the effect he had on you and moreover, he loved that you’d grown accustom to his love languages without a shadow of a doubt and were always there to accept them.

The little giggles you gave out as he pinned you onto the sofa to cover your face in light kisses, him digging his fingers into your sides as you were concentrating on something to make you jump. Reaching to tuck a piece of stray hair behind your ear had him always craving more as you leant into his touch. 

People around you loved to comment on it too. Will would always dig at Jay whenever you were together with the familiar comment of ‘Will you just leave her alone for two seconds man’ as Jay responded with a scowl. He hated people telling him what to do and especially when it came to you, if anything it would give him more motivation to hold you closer. Adam would often joke about how if you needed to find Jay, just to look for you as you he would ‘follow you round like a lost puppy’, to others they thought it was cringey and annoying but you wouldn’t have it any other way. You were his weakness, he wore it like a badge of honor and he wanted everyone to know.

***

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[free-boundsoul]

Seventh Day of Christmas: Sweets

“Okay, I got gingerbread, and sugar cookies…snickerdoodles, peanut butter blossoms…thumbprints, cornflake Christmas wreaths…meltaways… Alright, all that’s left is the fudge and then I can get the platters all made up-“

“Lovely? What are you- woah… um, how many platters are you giving out?” They blinked, turning to see Vincent in the doorway, his hair dusted with snow that was starting to melt.

“Well, I know vampires don’t need to eat, but I thought Will and Sam might like one each. And then I’m making one for my friend at school and their partners, so it’s gotta be enough. One for my therapist… and then we need some.” They listed off, looking back at the mounds of cookies that took up the dining room table. “I still have the fudge to make… did I overdo it?”

Strong arms wrapped around their waist as they were pulled back into his chest, his lips planting a kiss at the top of their head. “Nah. I just wished I’d known how much so I could have helped.”

“You were at class. I couldn’t sleep, so… baking. If you want, we can make the fudge together? It’s a lot of stirring and watching.”

He hummed, fingers toying with the strings of the apron they’d put on, “I would like nothing more. Though once it’s done, we really should try to get you some sleep. You don’t have class tomorrow, or, should I say today?”

They tapped at his hand before they started to oil the saucepan they were going to use. “I’ll sleep…in exchange for cuddles?”

“Oh? Are we negotiating now?” His chuckle reverberated in their ear, sending a shiver down their spine that they tried not to show. And failed, if his lips curling against their neck was any indication.

“Well, it’s… easier to fall asleep with you holding me.” They admitted quietly, though their voice sounded so loud in their ears. They started to pour in the ingredients and start the stove, trying to busy themselves with the task at hand instead of focusing on the vulnerable feeling that was trying to crawl up their throat.

Cool, strong fingers covered theirs on the spoon they were stirring with, the arm still around their waist tightening just a bit. “Thank you, Lovely.” His lips pressed against their cheek, that creeping sensation falling away as they leaned into his touch. “I’m grateful that I can help you sleep. Even if it’s just my rambling that bores you so much you pass out.” He teased.

They rolled their eyes, still stirring as the ingredients started to melt. “You don’t bore me. You just… your voice is soothing and it helps me relax… you help me relax.”

They let out a small hum as his lips trailed down their neck, leaving gentle, soft kisses in their wake. “I can really help you relax once we’re done with this. How long do we stir?”

“About twenty minutes? It’s low heat so the sugar doesn’t burn too fast.”

“Twenty minutes? Of just stirring? How do people make this all the time without losing their sanity?” Vincent chuckled against their skin, the hand on their waist splaying out right below their navel to pull them in closer.

“I guess not everyone has their boyfriend to distract them from the menial task.” They tried to keep their tone dry as the sarcasm called for, but their voice wavered when his teeth grazed against the fluttering beat at their throat.

“Oh, those poor people… well, it’s a good thing I am well versed at multitasking.” He murmured, his pace never slowing as he stirred even as his lips wrapped around that spot and sucked. Embers flickering to life beneath his hand as he pulled back just enough for his breath to graze against the sensitive skin they knew he’d left his mark on. His chuckle snapping them from the haze he’d induced in their mind, “Though I guess you might be having a little trouble with that?” His hand squeezed theirs, their arm having gone limp and just following his direction.

Heat crept up their neck at the call-out, which only got worse when he chuckled lowly in their ear again as they tightened their grip on the spoon and focused on the bubbles that were just beginning to form. “There’s the blush I love so much. It’s a wonder I can still fluster you. I thought you’d be immune to my charms by now, Lovely.”

If anything, he was able to fluster them more since the first time they met him. Getting to know the man behind the flirty, seductive charade; learning about the sweet, caring soul that had his moments of dorkiness that could make them laugh, along with that teasing side that could make them weak. They leaned back against him, that cool strength that was ever-present not faltering as he took their weight. Their lips grazing his jaw in a featherlight kiss before they smiled, “I doubt there will ever be a day where I won’t be affected by you. Every day I just fall more and more in love with you, Vincent.”

There was a pause as they pulled the spoon from the pot, using the candy thermometer to check the temperature before Vincent was peppering them with kisses. Small, light pecks to wherever he could reach, their neck, their jaw, their shoulder and even some on their cheek when they turned to him, spurring a fit of giggles out of them. “Vince! It’s gonna burn...”

“Sorry, little one, it’s just...god I love you so much.” He murmured against their skin, so soft and so warm that it made them feel so light. “You can’t just say things like that when I’m trying to seduce you, that’s not fair.”

“All’s fair in love and war, baby. The fudge is done, can you grab me the pan right there?” They asked, pointing to it as they turned off the heat and lifted the saucepan off the heat.

“Aww, I have to let go of you?” He teased, pressing one more kiss to their jaw before releasing them to grab the pan and put it where they nodded to.

“Okay, now, just gotta pour this in, try to keep it even. With fudge, you shouldn’t scrape the edges of the pan to get it all, since the edges could have more crystals and we don’t want that to mess with the consistency.” They got as much out as they could before they spread it, “And then we let it cool. And we can enjoy the leftovers.”

They scooped up a bit of the still-warm fudge from the pan’s edge, going to lift their hand to their mouth before their wrist was caught in a gentle grip. Vincent’s silver eyes glinting with mischief as he took the digit in his mouth, tongue dragging against the pad of their finger to lick the confection off. The edge of his teeth scraping against the tip had those embers at their core flickering to life again before he pulled back, but not before he pressed his lips against their fingertip in a light kiss.

“Mmm, so sweet, Lovely... though I’m not sure if that was the fudge or you.” His eyes growing darker at the shiver that went through them at how his voice practically purr out. “How about we partake in a few taste tests in the bedroom?”

“The bedroom? Why in....oh. Oh...Okay, yeah, yep. The bedroom sounds great.”