#char.🌧 gojo

[petrichorium]

it’s hardly subtle.

satoru doesn’t ease you into it; he isn’t coy. he all but storms into your chambers, after dark but before you’ve snuffed the candles keeping the room light enough for your reading.

he doesn’t bother to tell you why, but you know—instinctively, because you know him and you know his advisors and you’re well used to his moods when they’ve been particularly nagging about his duties as king—what’s set him off. the indication that it’s worse than typical is that he keeps that odd eye jewelry perched upon his nose, chain gleaming yellow in the light of the flames as he stalks over to your lounging form upon the bed.

his arm finds your legs over the nightclothes you wear, wraps around them firmly to move them just enough for him to perch on the edge of your mattress. they don’t leave, even as you set aside your book—you expect him to lay his head on it, anticipating the typical song and dance of his pouting and whining as you push him away only to relent and let him hold you as you both drift off into slumber.

instead he hovers. even sitting he looms over you, hand tightening on your thigh and thumb rubbing soft, meaningless patterns through the fabric of your dressing gown that soothe the nerves set on edge by your inability to see the look in his eyes.

a beat passes. you wonder if he’s calmed.

but when he speaks it’s terse, low, with the kind of simmering rage he keeps close to his chest for only those pitiable few he despises utterly, and he dips his head to look over the frames of those onyx lenses and regard you with irises dark with something terrible.

“i will not give you a child.”

the statement bowls you over. your breath hitches, if only because of the way he stares—deadly serious, royal blue eyes glowing in the candlelight.

“wh—what?”

“i will not allow you to bear my children. i might be amenable to a ward, if you so desire. but i will not seed you,” his grip tightens on your thigh, “and it should go without saying that once we marry neither will any other.”

you haven’t a clue how to respond to such a thing.

he speaks as if it’s a confession; as if he’s betrayed you somehow. he holds you like you’ll disappear, or flee—and perhaps, had he told you this months ago when you’d been flighty and diffident with his affections, your rigidity might have led you to. but it is now, and you haven’t fled yet, and your beloved is nothing if not unconventional and shameless in his eccentricity.

you ponder on that too long.

“say something,” he demands, sounding almost small.

“why?” spills from your lips without thought; not petulant, or angry, but confused. not just by him—by you. you ought to be devastated, no? you ought to be angry. you assuredly are not.

“my bloodline is a scourge,” he tells you readily. “i will do everything within my power to wipe it out. therefore, i cannot have an heir. not even one.”

not even one. not a single child. the thought washes over you like the temperate water of the lake on your grounds back home, the very one you’d once played in regularly as a child. the very one your mother had once mentioned taking your own children to, someday; children who you never fantasized about, children who never had faces or names, children for whom you never set aside letters or dresses or trinkets.

not even in those teenage years spent with your current betrothed, the only man you’d ever thought of kissing and caressing you, had you once envisioned a life with children. they’d only appeared once you’d been brutally introduced to reality, and had to accept the promise of a life with a rich man who doesn’t love you.

a life which your king has gallantly shattered, and replaced with something far brighter.

“i will bear the burden of prevention,” he tells you soothingly, as if your silence has been about the effort of this request. “you needn’t worry that pretty mind over it. over any of this, my queen—“

“i am not yet your queen,” you interrupt, instinct bidding you to speak where your mind remains miles away.

“my bride,” he amends, ”look at me.”

you do.

“i want you,” he says, as if it’s some known truth of the universe, written in the stars. “i want you fervently, ardently. i won’t have another. but i will not give you my children. if you cannot take that slight, then so be it.”

the emotion that has been welling within you since the first words he'd spoken has become so intense it’s impossible to listen properly. you cannot name it without ruminating; you lay beneath him, eyes widening, not quite seeing—or hearing the words he continues to say—as you let it all sink in.

but when his hands fly to cradle your face, you’re snapped from the daze, attention suddenly brought back to the man before you.

“oh, oh, precious girl, don’t cry.” cry? his thumbs wipe away tears from your cheeks. you hadn’t even realized they’d been falling. “don’t cry”—he almost laughs, yet his voice breaks—“you’ll break my heart.“

“no,” you gasp, “no, my king, i’m hardly sad, i’m… relieved.”

that’s it. you’re relieved. he’s removed a heavy weight from your chest and you hadn’t even known of it. you will not have to bear him children. the assurance floods through your veins like liquid joy. not ten, not five, nor two nor even one; none whatsoever.

“relieved?” he repeats, blinking in surprise.

you’d never even considered the possibility. from the moment you’d known of your place in this world you’d resigned yourself to the role of childbearing. only now do you realize how much you had been dreading such a thing. only now do you understand the fear, and the relief.

“i… don’t believe i want children either.” the statement feels so final it ought to be terrifying, but it settles into your bones with a tangible rightness.

your betrothed regards you in shock. his hands fall from your face—and then they latch to your body, one on your thigh again and the other behind your neck, pulling you up and flush against him as he kisses you harshly.

“you’re so perfect,” he breathes into your mouth, unreactive yet pliant against him. “made for me, just for me, i swear—“

you kiss back, making his rambling cut off in a strangled growl as he only tugs you in closer and deepens the embrace. he’s still speaking, but it’s unintelligible; praise, certainly, muffled compliments and manic devotion. he’s relieved too, you realize. foolish to think him confident in this declaration. foolish, you’re coming to understand, to think him sane in any circumstance which might take you from him.

(if you are made for him then he is made for you, surely. this relief would be impossible for any other to give you.)

he pulls away when he realizes you’re still crying. you catch your breath, blink back the tears, let him fuss over you until your voice is solid enough to speak.

despite the relief, there is lingering hesitance; lingering fear. “you say you will bear the burden of prevention, but what of the burden of blame? they will talk, as the months go by. they will call me barren, unfit to be by your side; they will demand you take on a mistress—“

“i won’t,” your betrothed snarls, grip on your thigh almost painful with how fiercely his fingers tighten, “i would never, and i’ll cut down all those who speak ill of you.”

your laughter is disbelieving, wet with the traces of saltwater. “hardly a sound plan to run a court, my king. unless its intent is for running it to the ground.”

“for you, my heart? anything. i would raze this kingdom if it spoke your name without awe.”

that shouldn’t be comforting. it ought to be terrifying. instead you reach up to hold his cheek, and his eyes flutter closed at the contact.

“kiss me again,” you command.

usurper!gojo masterlist

[mokonasenpaiposts]

Mmmaannnnn I love this scene~ 🥰😍😘

JUJUTSU KAISEN 0 (2021) created  by akutami gege

[petrichorium]

The King is But a Man Series Masterlist

in which crown prince gojo satoru, thought to be dead, returns to take back what’s rightfully his

the queen lets go of your hand for the first time since the captain of the guard had stormed into her room and told you all to flee. she orders her men to stand down; outnumbered as they are, it will be little more than a bloodbath. regally, she approaches, head held high, much to the amusement of the brute before her—his mouth stretches wide and he lifts a wicked sword, arm so long that he needn’t even step forward for the point to press beneath her chin.

“hello, auntie,” he says, grin flashing teeth sharp as the blade he points at your queen. “i hope you didn’t plan to run off before my coronation. we wouldn’t want to miss the festivities, now, would we?”

and you still want to disbelieve, yet with his free hand he reaches up, hooks his thumb beneath the cloth, and reveals a single brilliant blue eye—a gojo eye, the color of the sky and the sea, sign of the gods’ blessing, the physical marker of one born to rule. cold as steel and directed not at the queen but at you, stealing the breath from your lungs with the manic light within.

“not when everything i’ve wanted for so long is finally in reach.”

drabble 〉the reader and gojo spend years yearning/mourning while gojo is “dead”

drabble 〉usurper!gojo leads a coup

drabble 〉usurper!gojo finds the queen’s maid!reader after the coup

drabble 〉usurper!gojo sees the necklace reader still wears

one-shot 〉flower crowns: king!gojo and his attempts at courting

one-shot 〉shortcake crumbs: king!gojo is jealous of lord nanami

drabble 〉usurper!gojo doesn’t intend to have children

drabble 〉queen apparent!reader’s thoughts in the time between the coup and their marriage

one-shot 〉empty beds: king!gojo finds his bed empty after returning from a trip

drabble 〉a conspirator poisons queen!reader’s food

[petrichorium]

satoru tries to keep it from you, as if your reach in the court isn’t threaded more firmly even than his own. as if the royal guards do not prefer your company to his, as if you’re such a fool you wouldn’t notice how he’s come to bed long after you’ve gone to sleep every day for the past week—he tells you it’s dull financial advising, you know it’s because he’s been busy torturing a man. an assassin, you’ve been told; a poisoner who hadn’t even made it out of the kitchen before being caught.

you also know he’s back earlier tonight because he’s executed another man—the one who hired the hit, one of his own cousins. ordinarily such a thing would be dealt with swiftly, except that the food found dosed had been not your husband’s but yours, and your king does not take kindly to threats against you. the maids had told you all of that days ago; it’s the guards that tell you he assembled the court without you, hours past sunset, and made a display of cutting down his own kin for your sake. ruthless, they tell you, savage, lest there be any doubt in his affections for you.

he comes back to your shared bedchamber without a drop of crimson on his clothes, but the satisfied air about him and the heavy drum of bloodlust you can see in his eye tell you that your information is correct. still, you greet him casually and don’t bring up your discontent as he removes his blindfold and makes himself comfortable on the bed, unabashedly peering at you while you sit at your vanity pretending to ready yourself for sleep. he’s silent with his staring, and you are silent as well, busy ruminating on how you’re feeling until you come to the conclusion that the only action of his which has sparked your ire is that he has chosen not to share them with you—no, you’re not bothered by his barbaric display, but rather that he did it without informing you. with your opinion found, you are ready to initiate the conversation.

“so?” you begin casually, gaze flitting up to meet his eye through the mirror. “are the conspirators dead, then?”

at first he gives no response, but when you turn in your seat to face him he rises to stand and strides over to you. lacing his fingers with yours, he pulls you to your feet—holds you close, leans down to press his forehead to yours.

“can’t get anything past you, hm? not with your brain.”

“well, are they?”

“yes. of course. they’ve hardly earned the title of conspirators frankly, not with that pitiful display.”

“mm.” you purse your lips and pull away, turning your back on him. “lovely to know that you’d accept my death if it were at the hands of a competent man.”

he follows you swiftly, eases his arms around your waist and rests his chin in the crook of your neck. his tone is easy, light—amused, perhaps. “i don’t believe i said anything of the sort.”

“i do not find this amusing, my king.” despite your tone, you reach up to thread your fingers through his hair, drawing a contented noise from him which he buries into your nape. “i’m displeased by you.”

“are you, now?” his lips quirk against your skin, and he shifts, his whole body moving so that he can trace kisses along your jaw. “i’ll simply have to please you, my queen.”

“satoru.” the name makes him pause. you tighten your hold on his hair, pull him to rest against your shoulder again in an attempt to halt him. “you killed your kin for me and attempted to hide it. did you truly think i wouldn’t find out?”

“not this quickly,” he grumbles, petulant, entirely unsuitable for a king who had just slit the throat of his own cousin before an audience.

“people chatter, especially when you require the attendance of the entire court. but since we are being honest, i knew of the whole ordeal the moment it happened—i do believe i was made aware of the poisoning before you were, my husband. so tell me, why did you torture a man for a week and choose not to inform your wife? why did you so courteously invite my companions to witness this execution but neglect to extend that invitation to me?”

he doesn’t speak for a moment. his breath comes hot against your neck, not quite a sigh but certainly a deep breath—then he turns his face into your hand, leaves a fleeting kiss against your palm, and lifts his head.

“they need to learn, hm? how would they have learned if i’d let this go?” his eyes are manic, the closest you’ve seen to what they’d been that night—yet the moment they meet yours they soften, reverence seeping in. he stands to his full height behind you, hand coming beneath your chin to tilt your face upward so that he can loom over you and press a kiss to your brow; he’s gentle with you, but the steel at the core of his tone is more than palpable. “i won’t show mercy, certainly not when it comes to those who wish to harm you. you cannot ask me to be forgiving with such things.”

you realize with those words that he believes you’re balking at the brutality, that he thinks you timid and soft. he thinks you don’t know what he does to maintain his power, as if you’re not intimately aware of the monster he’s had to become—as if you hadn’t come face-to-face with it, with his blade.

you think you probably shouldn’t be as endeared as you are. you certainly shouldn’t turn around, wrap your arms around his neck, and tug him down into a real kiss to reward his actions, yet you still do. it’s addicting how quickly he melts to your affections; you know how intimidating his size must be to so many but it’s impossible for you to fear it when he’d drop to his knees for you at a single word.

when you pull away he doesn’t let go—he whines at you, a wordless protest, and buries his head into your shoulder to nip at your skin.

“i’m not angry with you for refusing mercy,” you mutter to him, “i’m angry with you for lying to me. i am your queen, your partner. you will not do this again, you will tell me the next time you intend to cut down a man in my name.”

he pulls back and opens his mouth, eyes wide, but you cut him off by lunging upward to peck at the corner of his lips.

“it’s in your best interest to comply, husband. you cannot hide things from me.”

“i know, wife.” his sigh is love-struck. “i’m a fool to have tried.”

usurper!gojo masterlist

[petrichorium]

he doesn’t expect to see you when he does. of course he knows you’re the queen’s right hand (he remembers the first time he’d heard of it, the pride that welled up within him. not surprise, though; he’d always been enamored with your vicious, angry ambition and combined with your brilliant mind it had been plain to see even then just how far you’d rise) but he had thought you’d be back at your home estate for the winter—it’s southern, a far more pleasant climate in the colder months, and your mother tends to fall ill.

but then you come hurrying out of the corridor, hand held by the queen like a lifeline, and he can’t find it within him to care that he hadn’t intended for you to witness the violence of his coup. he hasn’t seen you in years. you’ve grown; your skirts graze the floor with length that would have tripped you in your youth, the neckline is lower than your mother ever would have allowed. you hold yourself like a court lady, the very picture of regal grace, and when he lifts his blindfold to see you clearly your eyes widen with immediate recognition.

he’s always loved your eyes, expressive but only to him. he’s happy to find that he hasn’t lost the ability to read them; there’s fear, certainly, but that hunger you’ve always held is still churning within them, and it rears its lovely head the moment he sees the pieces click into place in your mind—that he is the leader, that he remembers you, and that he is staring right at you all but openly declaring his intent. it’s only when the queen moves that he tears his gaze away, and he only does it because she breaks the line of sight with herself, eye contact impossible with her hiding you behind her body. it’s maternal; precious, he’d think, if he weren’t so irked by an inability to see you.

(he holds little affection for his aunt but of all his remaining family she likely is his favorite, and the least culpable in the plot to murder him all those years ago. he’s inclined to attribute it to the fact that she’s married into the family, warped but not formed by its toxic nature. he doesn’t intend to kill her—never had—but you’re beside her, and she’ll have to forgive him for how he hasn't much mental capacity to focus on anything else the moment he lays eyes on you)

he wishes he could speak with you now, wishes he had the time. but he can’t, because he doesn’t, and he knows that he wants you alone as soon as possible so he orders his men to take you to the queen’s quarters. then he realizes you’ll have a room there—he specifies that he means the queen’s bedchamber, leaving no room for ambiguity in his intentions.

he’s distracted in the hours afterwards. there’s much to do, he hasn’t even found his uncle to relieve his head from his shoulders, yet his mind can’t stop straying to the thought that you’re up there pacing and wondering.

it’s a long night. by the time he’s taken care of everything and finally has the opportunity to ascend the steps to where his men have locked you up, it’s nearly sunrise. he has little doubt that you’ll still be up anyway; it’d be a miracle if you were able to sleep for even a few minutes.

he’s thought about this moment for a long time. seeing you again for the first time, that hadn’t been so clear; he’d anticipated having to search for you, anticipated you hiding from him. but he’d known the whole time that eventually he’d be able to have this conversation, at least once, no matter what.

you still take him by surprise by hitting him when he enters.

you’ve managed to find the queen’s crown—why it’s in her bedchamber rather than safely locked away he doesn’t know, though in the fleeting millisecond he witnesses it in your hand he thinks it belongs there. a point hits his forehead with enough force to maim, slamming his head sideways, and he’s thankful he thought ahead enough to dismiss his guards before entering. he’s so shocked it takes him a moment to turn back to you, finding you standing there with the same amount of shock on your face as he’s feeling. his lips part in a grin as he reaches up to press his thumb against the split skin now bisecting his left brow, already bleeding profusely.

“wow, suddenly i’m very glad we locked you up.”

“are you insane?” you yelp as he takes a step towards you, stumbling back a step of your own and dropping the crown out of shock. “don’t come any closer.”

“aww.” he pouts. takes another step.

you step back again, eyes frantic. “i’m not joking, gojo, don’t come near me, at least not until you explain—”

“the assassination failed, years ago.” he obeys you, mostly because he thinks you might escape into the bathroom if he pushes you too far. “but with my parents dead, it was safer for my attempted murderers to think otherwise. i bided my time until i was strong enough to retake my throne, and ah… get revenge upon those murderers, i suppose. you were a bit of a surprise, i’ll admit—a fortunate one, to be fair. i’d been preparing to search for you, but here you are. right before me.”

“what did you do with her majesty,” you demand, ignoring the ending that he’s tagged on as you take another step away so that you’re out of his wingspan as he reaches out to touch you, and the sentiment is so sweet that he can’t help but smile.

“no concern for her husband, hm? the king? haven’t heard of him?”

your sneer makes him laugh outright. it's instinct to lean in and flick the middle of your forehead like a schoolboy. it stuns you; you blink in surprise, then again in indignation, but he’s giving you a real answer before you can voice an opinion.

“auntie’s fine, she’s hours away from the castle by now. headed back to her kingdom—that’s where you were going to go with her, yeah? lucky i found you before you slipped away, would’ve been a real pain to court you from there.”

“court me?”

“uncle’s well and truly dead, though. with no sons it’s far less messy, i am the most blatant heir to the throne. of course any number of my cousins—the living ones, anyway—could dispute my claim but that would certainly take a level of backbone i don’t believe any of them possess.”

“gojo, do not ignore me—”

he snickers. “that’ll be hilarious once you bear the name too.”

you let out a strangled noise, “you are—too presumptuous, you fiend!”

“fiend, you say! oh, that’s a new one. i like it, say it again.”

“you brute.” it’s quieter this time, accompanied by a quiver in your lower lip—he decides he’s toyed with you enough. the night has been harder for you than him, and the morning won’t be much better.

“brute, is it? i’ll have you know i spent hours in the garden picking flowers before coming to you.”

he watches the realization dawn on you. you take a step back, heel hitting the bed—he doesn’t follow anymore, but he does finally reveal the bouquet he’s been hiding behind his back. your jaw drops as your eyes fall on it.

he’s never been one for tradition. if you weren’t you, he probably wouldn’t have bothered with the customary manner of proposal. nothing else about the situation is traditional, though, so he considers it more a favor for you; a betrothal gift, a little bit of normalcy. and though he thinks his lineage is little more than a curse, he can’t help but think the blue morning glories of his family and the deep purple ones representing his status as reigning monarch look striking sitting next to your family’s dahlias.

your movements are slow and dreamlike as you take the flowers from his outstretched hand.

“you cannot be serious,” you say, falling to sit slumped on the bed with the bouquet in your hands.

“you wouldn’t believe how difficult it was to find dahlias on those grounds, couldn’t your ancestors have chosen a different one? couldn’t the gardeners have grown more?”

“i grew them.” it’s little more than a murmur, dazed, as your finger comes up to stroke at the petals of the pale pink flower. “for—for whatever match the queen would give me.”

there’s a rushing fury that fills him at that. it’s foolish; he’s won, and he’s the best suitor in the kingdom now if there even had been competition (or will be, once he’s coronated in the morning), there’s no reason to feel jealousy over someone who doesn’t even exist.

yet it’s that burning which bids him to pull the blindfold off quicker than he can truly think about it—compels him to drop to his knees before you even faster, drawing your attention as he lays his head in your lap and wraps an arm around your covered thighs under the pretense that it’s for support rather than to feel you. if he weren’t well aware of how you’d react, and less than eager to be shoved away, he might have lunged up and kissed you when your eyes lifted from the flowers to his uncovered gaze.

“you’re not serious,” you repeat. your eyes are wide as they stare down at him, terrified yet ablaze with that hungry fire he thinks he’d let consume him if it would make you happy.

“everything i’ve wanted,” he tells you again, as if that could possibly get across how desperate he’s been to make you his queen. “for so long.”

usurper!gojo masterlist

[mokonasenpaiposts]

I really 💕 this series very much~<❤️.

The King is But a Man Series Masterlist

in which crown prince gojo satoru, thought to be dead, returns to take back what’s rightfully his

the queen lets go of your hand for the first time since the captain of the guard had stormed into her room and told you all to flee. she orders her men to stand down; outnumbered as they are, it will be little more than a bloodbath. regally, she approaches, head held high, much to the amusement of the brute before her—his mouth stretches wide and he lifts a wicked sword, arm so long that he needn’t even step forward for the point to press beneath her chin.

“hello, auntie,” he says, grin flashing teeth sharp as the blade he points at your queen. “i hope you didn’t plan to run off before my coronation. we wouldn’t want to miss the festivities, now, would we?”

and you still want to disbelieve, yet with his free hand he reaches up, hooks his thumb beneath the cloth, and reveals a single brilliant blue eye—a gojo eye, the color of the sky and the sea, sign of the gods’ blessing, the physical marker of one born to rule. cold as steel and directed not at the queen but at you, stealing the breath from your lungs with the manic light within.

“not when everything i’ve wanted for so long is finally in reach.”

drabble 〉the reader and gojo spend years yearning/mourning while gojo is “dead”

drabble 〉usurper!gojo leads a coup

drabble 〉usurper!gojo finds the queen’s maid!reader after the coup

drabble 〉usurper!gojo sees the necklace reader still wears

one-shot 〉flower crowns: king!gojo and his attempts at courting

one-shot 〉shortcake crumbs: king!gojo is jealous of lord nanami

drabble 〉usurper!gojo doesn’t intend to have children

drabble 〉queen apparent!reader’s thoughts in the time between the coup and their marriage

one-shot 〉empty beds: king!gojo finds his bed empty after returning from a trip

drabble 〉a conspirator poisons queen!reader’s food

[petrichorium]

the first time your king sees the pendant is weeks after the uprising.

you wear it constantly, even at night, hiding it beneath your collar. once it had been to avoid scrutiny from a court still so very hostile to the man who gave it to you, even after his presumed death. now you’re acutely aware that the one you’re hiding it from is that very man. a difficult feat, when he insists upon spending his nights in your bed.

you no longer shove him off your lap when he lays his head upon your thighs after the pair of you retire for the night, instead you resign yourself to using it as a bookrest. he allows it. relishes it even, you might boldly presume from the satisfaction that surrounds his very being. as night after night goes on like this you grow less stiff, more used to him and his touch and his quiet contentment.

(if your hand finds its way to his hair on occasion, if you run nails against his scalp to pull a pleased sigh from him like a purr, then, well. there is none but the flickering candlelight to bear witness)

this very routine is what leads to your downfall. stiff from maintaining the position for so long, you shift, and sink down deeper into the plush pillows behind you. in the process the necklace slips upward, just enough for his peering eyes to catch sight of the pendant—and widen with recognition.

you lurch upward again to let it fall back beneath the collar of your nightdress, but it’s too late. he’s rising from his position in your lap, pushing himself to sit next to you lounging over your legs, mouth widening in a grin that can only be described as smug.

“is that—“

“no!” you yelp, and then wince immediately at the knowledge that you’ve only confirmed his suspicions. his grin only widens.

“let me see,” he demands excitedly.

you shake your head. when you lift a hand to cover where the chain disappears into your décolletage he pouts, laying his head down upon your bent knees, drawing circles with his finger against the clothed skin of your thigh. you wonder briefly how he might proceed—you get your answer when he suddenly wraps his arm around your legs and yanks you towards him, sending you falling back against those pillows as you’d initially intended and drawing a shriek from between your lips.

now he hovers above you, staring down, one hand hot on your calf as if solely to feel your bare skin. a beat later he bends down to capture your lips with his own.

he never kisses you long. he’s pulling away moments later, though he lingers as he always does. it leaves you a little stunned anyway, eyes still closed when his hand comes to wrap around yours and gently guide it away.

when you open your eyes he’s closer than before, staring down intently.

“let me see.” this time it isn’t a command—it’s a request, low and rumbling, laced with something soft. his thumb rubs against your palm before his hand disappears, drawing up to cup around your neck. your acquiescence is silent, but he hears it.

he traces the line of the chain along your collarbone to where it dips down beneath your cleavage, taking hold and gently pulling, but it snags. that’s all the excuse he needs to turn his attention to the ribbon keeping your collar together; he undoes it with ease and a keen, covetous eye that watches eagerly as the fabric loosens enough to fall over your shoulders. your breath hitches, hand flying up to catch his wrist, but it's loose. any more and you’d have stopped him (as it stands it’s certainly unneeded) but he skirts the line of your tolerance skillfully.

his touch is gentle, feather-light, as he eases the collar down just enough to tug the necklace free. the newly exposed skin prickles with gooseflesh, hot where he brushes it with his knuckles while retrieving his prize, and you’re absolutely certain he notices it all—especially the swell of your breast as you gasp shakily—but he’s doing a fair job of playing coy.

“i’ve seen the chain nearly every day,” he says, a little in awe. the pendant is small but decorated enough to be expensive; shaped like a heart, the tiny hinges are expertly hidden amongst the swirling inlays. it’s dwarfed in his palm. “how long?”

“years,” you breathe out, because it’s all you can manage, overwhelmed as you are with such sensations and emotions. your hand falls away. “ever since i heard news of your assassination.”

his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “that long? even when you thought me dead?”

“especially when i thought you dead.”

a rasping chuckle, clear disbelief and a quiet undertone of longing. he thumbs over the metal, warmed, you imagine, by your skin, and then reaches up with his free hand.

deft fingers pry the metal open with ease, revealing the secret within: a single blue eye, just the same hue as the ones which drink in the sight of you beneath him, crowned with white lashes. undeniably royal; undeniably his. though he—being the one who gifted it to you—knew full well what had been hidden away, you still find yourself going a little hot as he inspects it.

“ah,” he says quietly, fingernail pressing just barely against the miniature, voice smug. “we’ll have to have it edited to include your claim, hm?”

though you hadn’t any doubt what he’d been referring to, his hand pulls back to touch the scar bisecting his left brow—the very one caused by your hand, weeks ago on the night you’d reunited, when you’d thrown the queen’s crown at him in panic.

it’s been silent for too long. that thought makes you realize you’ve been staring, a bit entranced, and that he’s awaiting a response. you shift, and nod, humming your agreement as you don’t believe you can trust your voice. he knows, you can tell from the airy laugh and the way he leans in to press an affectionate kiss to your own brow.

when he pulls back, he lets go and watches, owllike, as the open pendant falls to rest over your heart; atop the widened collar of your nightdress, you’re quite certain it draws attention to your breast and indecently exposed décolletage, and you squirm a little under his heated gaze.

his lips pull back at the sight.

“you should leave it open. and stop tucking it beneath your corset.” the look in his eye—the true ones, though they're still for you alone to see—is greedy as he meets your wide gaze. “don’t hide me away, show me off. let me witness everything.”

(you refuse him, though he pouts and pleads and never lets up, until after your wedding—until you appear at court on his arm as his wife, proudly displaying the gift from so many years ago, brilliant blue unmistakable even as a mere recreation of oil and canvas and even with the real thing hidden behind his ridiculous lensed jewelry.

within weeks courtiers begin wearing their own versions, eyes of their lovers peering out from opulent frames. none could ever be quite so striking as the original)

usurper!gojo masterlist

[petrichorium]

pluvi begging you to expand on gojo not wanting what happened to his mother to happen to you 🙏

warnings: it’s all a dream so nothing is real aside from the flashback stuff but pregnancy as horror, (sewing) needles, implied gore/eye trauma, implied child harm, gojo is messed up yo!!! and its bc of his mama!!!

he dreams about her.

it’s an odd thing, really. gojo isn’t much of a dreamer—not much of a sleeper, all things considered, but it’s difficult not to give in when you drag him to bed and curl up in his arms. the soft rise and fall of your chest, the steady thump of your heart, the sound of your breath; it soothes him into slumber.

and he dreams about her. she was always young. he’s older now than she ever got to be. frail, thin; borderline skeletal, robes hanging from her body like webbing. she sits in a chair facing a window, swathed in moonlight, the silver of her embroidery needle glinting with each stab. her face is veiled. her stomach is swollen with child.

she doesn’t turn to him, but she beckons without noise. his feet take him easily to her, and he kneels at her side as she sets aside the embroidery hoop to let him place his head on her knees.

her hand is cold as it threads through his hair. it’s gentle, at first. then harsher a moment later. she grips firm, tugs him up by those electric white threads, stares down at him through all that elaborate lace.

he imagines she’s weeping beneath it. his mother never wept before him, but she was pretty in the aftermath, eyes puffy and pink and shining. they were a cold kind of loving when they regarded him. she must have been beautiful once, elegant and lithe and willowy, cruel like the heartless sea and sharp like a brilliant diamond, but whatever was there is long gone. he thinks all sons must empty their mothers, bleed them dry from within, because his was always a shell.

she trails her hand down the side of his face, and he turns into the palm and closes his eyes, and she is silent as she sets down her embroidery to lift her veil. she is silent and hollow and eidolic as her fingers brush down his jaw and tilt his head up to look at her.

but it’s your face that he sees when he opens his eyes.

it’s your hand against his cheek, your eyes pink and puffy and pretty, your stomach bulging by his own doing. it’s your fingers that pluck up the needle, still attached to a thread of brilliant cerulean, and raise it to his eye.

his mother never was able to pierce him with that needle. she stopped herself, each and every time, dropping it and tugging him close in shame. she never doted, never was kind, but she never did manage to harm him.

you do. he lets you. it’s only fair. whatever thing is in your stomach can’t be human—whether god or demon what does it matter, at the end of the day—and didn’t he put it in you himself? if his mother never got the satisfaction of spilling his blood, shouldn’t you?

but he wakes just as the tip pierces his iris, and you hold him in your lap, eyes wide with concern and not puffy from weeping, and you hold no child within you. your hands thread through his hair and they’re warm, your lips plush when you bend to press a kiss to his brow.

he turns inward to press his face into your (empty, blissfully vacant) abdomen. the wetness he leaves there, falling from his so very coveted eyes, is colorless.

he thinks it ought to be brilliant crimson.

[petrichorium]

BAM: Empty Beds

in which king gojo satoru returns from a diplomatic mission to find his bed empty, and has qualms with it

gojo satoru x fem!reader

word count: 3k reader: fem (she/her pronouns, fem terms, fem clothing including dresses) tags: kinda hurt/comfort but mostly fluff, royal au, childhood friends to lovers, gojo picks up the reader, the end is a little bit intense emotionally but not super bad the reader just has intimacy issues and gojo confronts her abt it

usurper!gojo tag || masterlist

“embrace me,” he orders, muffled against your throat. it’s sullen, demanding, and you make no move to comply.

your husband whines wordlessly at you—it’s that noise which calms the tumultuous unease within you, an assurance that whatever mood he’d been in is quickly passing (or that your touch is so important he’ll cast aside any other thoughts in favor of pleading with you). he kisses up your throat, along your jaw, only to nose against your cheek like some affectionate cat. when he speaks it’s a beg; beseeching. “embrace me, wife.”

“talk to me, husband,” you retort. “your sulking is bad for my health. i was terrified.”

against your skin, his lips quirk into a teasing smile. “you’re adorable when you’re terrified.”

Someone has slipped into your room.

You’re asleep. You have been for hours, yet Satoru’s borderline paranoid insistence on you learning to defend yourself even while resting have led to a far less deep manner of slumber, and so you’re roused by the simple sound of the door opening and are made aware of this unwelcome visitor the moment they enter.

It’s all you can do to keep still, even out your breath. Your mind conjures thoughts of your guards slaughtered just beyond your door, your maids and your ladies-in-waiting massacred in your vast array of rooms meant to be a sanctuary, your king returning home from his diplomatic trip east to find your own body not even in your shared bed but in the lonely one occupying the queen’s bedchamber, yours in name but so rarely used.

You hear the figure’s footsteps approach you; they sound large, imposing, though you dare not open your eyes until the ornate dagger beneath your pillow is in hand and the possible assassin close enough that it can do you any good.

Your fingers find the heavy hilt, wrap around it securely just as the mattress beneath you dips with the weight of the trespasser. The motions are ingrained in your body from weeks of practice with your husband; you lash out, knife against the intruder’s throat before they can realize you’re not asleep, aiming to slash at the throat—but then you pause, thankful that you’d opened your eyes to see the face of your attacker before you spilled their blood.

“Satoru?”

Hardly an assassin at all, your visitor is your husband, back far earlier than anticipated. He looms over you in silence, one knee braced on your bed against your side, arms hovering where they’d been prepared to embrace you but frozen by the blade you hold against his neck. His damned blindfold remains tied over his eyes preventing you from knowing where they might be focused or what they might reveal of his thoughts.

“Wh—you’re not expected to return until tomorrow evening.” You remove the knife from his neck. Immediately, those hands are on you, tugging your covers away to pull you to him. “You frightened me, I believed you to be an intruder.”

Still no answer. For a moment, you feel him breathe you in, certainly allowing himself to bask in your presence after weeks without. But then, in one swift motion, wielding that stunning strength which has left armies in ruin, he slings you over his shoulder and starts for the door.

“What are you doing?” you shriek, squirming in his grasp. “Put me down!”

It wasn’t as if you thought he’d do it. But you at least expected a response; your king is nothing if not loquacious (and you hardly say so praisingly) yet he remains stubbornly silent even with your struggling form in hand as he passes through your doorway. Your guards stand alert just beyond your door, averting their gaze regretfully as if unwilling to meet your eye. You can hardly blame them, for it isn’t as if one can refuse a king—in fact, considering moments before you’d thought them dead by your assassin, you’re a little relieved to see them alive and well—yet the gesture feels too little too late.

“My king—husband,” you try, breathless, because reminding Satoru that you are bound to him for the rest of your lives never fails to make him preen, “what on earth has gotten into you?”

No avail. Not even so much as an arrogant laugh at stealing his own queen from her bed. You’re insulted at first; even your desperate attempts to free yourself don’t spark any form of response beyond a tightening of his arm around your waist. Insult gives way to concern the longer it goes, as he leaves your bedchamber and all but sprints through the intricate series of rooms which make up the queen’s chambers. The first time he passes by a room you know to be occupied by one of your ladies-in-waiting you decide that your valiant struggles aren’t worth rousing every maid and courtier you’ve allowed to take up residence with you. You’d rather they not see your husband’s indecent displays. This, at least, has occurred so late in the night that even if one were to open their door they’d likely be too groggy to understand what they might witness, and there is so little in the way of light that they might not even be able to see a thing.

At least your newfound resignation allows you to appreciate certain things your previous efforts had made you miss—you’re so enamored by his strength, his agility, and it’s admittedly thrilling that he’s so capable of manipulating your form with such ease. An inappropriate appreciation, certainly, but you’re coming to terms with how inappropriate everything about him is. And if you cannot allow yourself to enjoy how your usurper husband can steal you from your bed then you’re not altogether certain what the point of marrying him would have been.

He turns down the corridor leading to the door that connects to the king’s chambers and it suddenly seems to make sense: he’s bringing you back to his room, to his bed, where he’s insisted upon you spending your nights despite the absurdity of such a thing (not that you mind entirely, not that you aren’t flattered by his unabashed infatuation with you even all these months after you’ve wed). The room in which you’d slept during his absence had been used as more of a dressing room than one for rest, yet it had felt too odd to be sleeping in your king’s room without him present and had moved there after the first night. And you’d expected to be awake for his return, not for him to show up nearly a day early long before sunrise.

The mirrored halls, labyrinthine as your own, are empty; he hasn’t filled them as you have, not yet, though at times he receives visitors you recognize as his fellow conspirators from his coup. To an extent you appreciate the privacy it allows, and he remains so confident in his own abilities that he doesn’t bother excessively with guards. It’s hardly an undeserved confidence, either. His height is so towering that he’s forced to duck beneath the doorframe to his bedroom in order to ensure you don’t hit your head on the top. Once the threshold is crossed it’s as if his whole body breathes a sigh of relief; tense muscles relaxing, grip on you becoming less fervent and more adoring.

Satoru throws you to the bed with little ceremony. He spares a single moment to rip the blindfold from his face and toss it into some unknown corner of the room and then joins you hastily, hands upon you again in an instant, throwing the covers over the pair of you as he tangles his legs with yours, buries his face into your shoulder, and lets out the first noise you’ve heard from him in weeks—a sigh, sweet and self-satisfied, which rumbles in his chest and somehow reassures you.

The way he cradles you is halfway to suffocating, as if he were attempting to burrow into you simply to be closer, and between the silence and the manhandling you think you might have been terrified if not for how gently he carried you. It’s contradictory, certainly, yet despite snatching you from your bed with little regard for your wishes his hands had been so tender with you, as if you were some delicate thing to be handled with care. Even now you can feel he’s being cautious, deliberate with how much of his weight he puts on you and careful not to give you too much. You find yourself endeared by that, almost compelled to melt into him with the upwell of fondness that rushes through you and dizzies your mind.

Except that you’re still not willing to give him what he wants, not if he’s continuing to be so obstinate. You can’t find a reason for his stalwart lack of speech other than pettiness; it’s normally a trial of perseverance to get the man to silence himself. So you remain still beneath him, denying him his desires and refusing to return the embrace, rather choosing to lie limp as he holds you.

He groans in annoyance, lifting himself up to stare down at you yet still not verbalizing anything. His hair is long enough that it brushes against your face like this, mere inches away, and even in the imposing inky black of the enormous bedchamber beyond his eyes seem to catch on the most fleeting light and almost gleam from within.

One of his hands removes itself from where it was shoved beneath your back to find your wrist and drop your own on the back of his head. You let it fall, raising one eyebrow in simultaneous question and challenge that you can only hope he can see as clearly as you can see the exasperation in his eye—along with something else, something notably more desperate. Feral.

You don’t censor yourself despite that, pushing forward to explain yourself. “You’re grown, my king. You can speak rather than silently demanding things of me.”

Satoru’s eyes are drawn to your moving lips, the ice within them thawing and giving way to easy veneration. His lower lip pouts. His head falls back down and he nuzzles into you as his hold on you tightens.

“Embrace me,” he orders, muffled against your throat. It’s sullen, demanding, and you make no move to comply.

Your husband whines wordlessly at you—it’s that noise which calms the tumultuous unease within you, an assurance that whatever mood he’d been in is quickly passing (or that your touch is so important he’ll cast aside any other thoughts in favor of pleading with you). He kisses up your throat, along your jaw, only to nose against your cheek like some affectionate cat. When he speaks it’s a beg; beseeching. “Embrace me, wife.”

“Talk to me, husband,” you retort. “Your sulking is bad for my health. I was terrified.”

Against your skin, his lips quirk into a teasing smile. “You’re adorable when you’re terrified.”

“I nearly slit your throat.”

“With the knife I gifted you.” The words are crooned, a bit covetous; you wonder sometimes, when he says such things in such ways, about his sanity. You don’t think the phrase madly in love has applied to anyone more than him, though you might be just as deranged as he for how you adore it. “I wouldn't have let you, though. It’s sweet of you to worry,” his hands tighten swiftly where they rest against your skin, pinching hard enough to make you jump before releasing, “but you’re still no match for me.”

“No?”

“No.” He kisses you without pulling away, lips brushing past your cheek to press passionately against yours. “Though I’d very much like to see you try.”

You speak your response into his mouth, refusing his silent attempts to deepen the kiss. “You haven’t yet apologized for frightening me.”

Huffing at you, he removes his arms from your body and pushes himself up to hover over you again. He stays like that, staring intently as if simply watching you will suffice for what you’re demanding. You let him at first—then as the seconds pass grow tired of waiting, and open your mouth to pester him again only to be silenced by his own.

It’s fast, there and then gone, too quick for you to respond. He so likes those kisses, a perfect way to keep you quiet, but tonight he isn’t satisfied with it; he does it again when you inhale, then once more afterwards though you haven’t even indicated any further intent to speak. And then he moves on, pressing lips to your nose and your cheekbones and your forehead, dotting them across the bridge of your nose and along your jaw, featherlight and relentless.

He refuses to let up, covering your face with kisses as if to make up for each one he’d have given you if he’d been here. You attempt to dodge, out of sheer obstinacy, but he doesn’t allow you to. So you change course, lift your hands to embrace him as he’d begged you before—yet he catches you, using a single grip to pin both above you as his ministrations expand and he presses kisses to your neck, down your throat, along your collarbone.

“Imagine you’re me, hmm?” he murmurs, words barely comprehensible through his affections. “Lamenting after weeks without your company, rushing home faster than my party simply to see you sooner, arriving to my chambers expecting to find my darling wife awaiting my return”—he pulls up suddenly, heedless to your discontented whimper at the loss of his touch which peeters off the moment you see the way he’s looking at you; that feral tinge has returned to his eye, infused into the soft devotion he always regards you with—”only to find my bed empty, my exquisite queen missing. How might you feel, do you suppose?”

He's always been loose with his compliments but something about the way he says them now, so matter-of-factly and laced with a seriousness so uncharacteristic of him rather than a teasing tone, makes your face burn. Still you respond, unwilling to let the question stand unanswered. “Ah… concerned, I’d imagine.”

“Concerned?”

“Distressed. Fearful of misdeed.”

“You frightened me, too, then, did you not?”

“I apologize. You weren’t supposed to be back tonight, I hadn't thought there was any harm in it. But I'm safe, and I'm here with you now.”

He blinks. For a moment you wonder if he’ll really apologize now—a foolish thought, you know your king better than that. Instead he pushes on. “Now consider that you leave your chambers, and you demand to know where she is, only to be told that she has refused to sleep in your bed and has instead insisted upon taking residence in an entirely different room. What then? Tell me, my love, what is so wrong with this bed?”

You swallow thickly, watch his eyes dart down to the bob of your throat before returning. He lifts an eyebrow in expectation, but your mouth is so dry you can’t find it within you to say what he wants to hear. Both wrists still held in his grip, he rubs his thumb against one, quietly contemplative as he scans your face—and this, you decide, is too much. You turn away, hiding your face, unable to take the way he peers at you.

“Why do you still pull away?” It’s barely audible. In fact you wonder if the question is meant for you at all, or if it had been entirely for him. His free hand comes to your face, gentle as it cradles your cheek and turns you towards him, forcing you to meet his stare. This time his words are undoubtedly for you. “Have I… misinterpreted? Is this truly too much? You say it is, call me too bold, but you never insist upon it. You seem happy and yet the moment you have time away from me you run, behind my back. You know I would do anything for you, yes? Even… let you go? If that is what you want.”

You can’t find the words to reply right away, can’t parse it all out within you fast enough. You realize quite suddenly that you’ve been unfair—selfish, even—in your passing acceptance of his pursuits. Simply because that has been easy, simply because it would be difficult to be even a fraction as bold as he. Simply because you do like his boldness, and you do like the way he chases you, and he does it so relentlessly that you’ve never found it necessary for you to return it. You’d have to retrain yourself to speak candidly, to reach out for his touch, and even behind closed doors such things are arduous. Yet now you see it—now he lets you see it, the chip in his armor, the one you’ve caused with your avoidance, the one you have the ability to mend. And you decide that you will.

The time that it takes to think all of that through, however, is too much. Satoru pulls back; his hand releases yours, his head turns away, his eyes no longer visible. It’s panic that makes you move, panic caused by the way his body turns to remove itself from you. In all the time you’ve spent with him since the coup he’s never pulled away like this.

You hook your leg over him, yanking him back down and clumsily swapping your positions. He lays in bed now, eyes wide with surprise as he stares up at you, and you straddle him with hands bracing yourself on his chest. The kiss you give him is an attempt to find peace of mind but it hardly works—too desperate to prove him wrong with your actions, too caught up in the sensations, your mind fogs. At least he kisses back, hands finding home on your thighs and pulling you close as he melts, though that’s perhaps part of the problem.

The words still don’t come when you pull away, and the way he regards you now is even worse than before, pure exaltation in his eyes as he looks up at you. On impulse you lean in again, brushing lips to that white scar bisecting his brow, and though his eyes flutter closed with the motion it doesn’t help the way you’re feeling in the slightest—a little restless, a little undone, far too seen for comfort. You bury your head into his shoulder in an attempt to quell it, feel the rise and fall of his chest beneath yours as he turns his face into you and breathes you in.

“It was too large,” you manage to say, small and quiet.

“Hm?”

“The bed. It’s too large when you’re not here. Cold. Empty.” You squeeze your eyes shut tight. His hand comes up to your head, stroking softly there, and of everything that seems to finally help. shoving your head even further into his neck, you say even quieter, “I miss you, husband, when you’re gone. I miss you so terribly it becomes difficult to bear.”

His laugh rumbles through you. It’s assured, arrogant, just like always—it melts away the lingering remains of that unease you’re still sifting through and allows you to finally relax on top of him, easing your legs down to lay tucked into the crook of his arm while he presses a kiss to the crown of your head.

“Then I’ll just have to remain here for your sake, wife.”

[petrichorium]

BAM: Shortcake Crumbs

in which king gojo satoru is prone to jealousy, and you are prone to refusing him

gojo satoru x fem!reader

word count: 7.6k reader: fem (she/her pronouns, fem terms, fem clothing including dresses) tags: hurt/comfort, royal au, childhood friends to lovers erm..... reader gets a lil violent w gojo in this one 😳 but its deserved imo. other than that gojo gets jealous and pushes the reader too far, public affection in the form of blatantly making out in front of nanami and then being walked in on by a courier

usurper!gojo tag || masterlist

you shoot up in the bed, eyes wide. satoru stands at the entrance to his bedchamber with his blindfold halfway off, staring at you in bewilderment, or perhaps something like awe. he doesn’t speak at first. instead he sheds his jacket, and then the loose cotton shirt beneath, without once breaking your gaze; in the candlelight you can see three sharp lines adorning his left cheekbone, the deep red of a scab, and the sight makes you wince.

“you weren’t in your bed.” he sounds almost dazed. “i had thought…”

shaking his head in dismissal—or possibly to clear it—he approaches carefully, as if you were a skittish, wounded doe. you shuffle over beneath the covers to allow him room to join you but he stops instead, right at the edge of the mattress.

and then he kneels.

“My, what have we here?”

Satoru announces his presence loudly as he enters the airy conservatory you occupy, sending the footmen and maids aflutter with movement. You turn away from your conversation towards the entrance and find him striding towards you, breaking the relative peace of the solarium and making you wince slightly.

You’d planned to meet him here, though it’d been meant as an event solely for the pair of you. His comment is, therefore, directed towards your current companion: Lord Nanami, one of your king’s only competent advisors, a stoic, reliable man who you hold dearly as a friend and who sought you out for advice momentarily before leaving to address an important matter on the southern border.

The lilt in your betrothed’s tone indicating concealed displeasure has you straightening, ready for any manner of antics sure to come from his umbrage.

He drapes his enormous form over the back of the chaise you sit perched upon, snakes those lengthy arms around your body to cage you in, pulls you back against the cushions and away from the man who sits across the table from you. Juvenile, you want to chide, yet you’re acutely aware of the maids bringing out carts of various confections; the servants retrieving chairs for your two companions; Nanami himself, politely averting his gaze by pointedly staring out the windows. An admonishment of your future husband, your king, would only bring more trouble than its worth.

Instead you reach up without looking and find Satoru’s face to cradle it in your palm. The tension in his arms melts as he presses a kiss to your temple, sufficiently placated by your affection.

In hindsight you should have sent Nanami away long before the decided time. Perhaps that would have saved you the trouble, though realistically your course of action ought to have been not to plan a rendezvous with Satoru in any public area. You should know better by now than to trust him to be anything close to courteous—well, ever, but particularly where you’re involved, and even more so when you and other men are involved. As if you would run to any other man when a king, when Satoru, is pursuing you.

“You’re early, my king.”

“A tryst with my beloved is more important than those dusty old fools’ pitiful attempts at advising. The company here is far finer.” He lifts his head from your palm but your fingers still catch a trace of the grin spreading across his face before it leaves your touch. It’s directed across the table at Nanami, and even without seeing it you know it’s sharp. “Though half is unexpected. Nanamin, aren’t you due to leave in an hour?”

Nanami is, you know, one of the scant few people Satoru would trust with his life—and one of the even fewer he’d trust with yours. You’re thankful to him, to the diligent efforts he put towards your king’s return from within the palace walls and the unfaltering loyalty to the crown he’d shown even when you hadn’t been aware of it, yet those were the exact things which prevented genuine connection between you and he in the years Satoru spent away from the palace. A spy, after all, oughtn’t get attached to those he spies upon.

Now, though, your roles are far different. You are his expected queen and he one of your future husband’s only truly trustworthy companions, and the two of you are connected by perhaps the most binding of human experiences: a shared annoyance in the form of your king.

Satoru’s respect is scarcely given yet Nanami is most assuredly someone who’s earned it. You cannot decide, therefore, if it is baffling or perfectly comprehensible why your future husband seems to be so guarded when it comes to you and your acquaintanceship with the same man. It’s subtle, cleverly concealed, but you can tell—and so can Nanami, certainly, with the way he’s become so stiff.

“I came seeking your bride’s command before my departure.”

A ridiculous form of flattery, simply reminding your king of his impending marriage to you, yet you’d never deny the results. He preens at the title. His head tucks back down against your shoulder to silently demand the return of your palm, though not before brushing lips against your cheek.

“And you were right to. My bride’s command is law. She has such a lovely head, I’m thankful she uses it in our favor.”

With that tentative approval, you return your attention to Nanami and the conversation you’d been having with him prior to Satoru’s arrival.

It’s easier said than done, however, with how incessant your betrothed is in his affections. You might count yourself lucky that he hasn’t attached his lips to your neck yet; that he’s merely nosing into you like some large cat, that his wandering hands are teasing rather than heavy. When he decides your response is too subtle he removes his hold on you only to round the couch and slide into the space directly next to you, large hands already grasping at your skirt-covered thighs to pull your respectably crossed legs sideways into his lap. Once he’s comfortable, with that iron grip never faltering, he turns his attention to the array of sweets he’d certainly hand-picked for this very affair the night before.

“And you’re quite certain the shipment was due to arrive last week?” you manage to ask, trying not to spare a glance at Satoru’s actions next to you.

“He was more than clear in his dispatches.”

“Send for the envoy, then, and—mph.” A forkful of cake is shoved into your open mouth, too large to speak around. You cough, gagging a little, solely from the sheer strength of your betrothed’s actions.

Satoru has kept his blindfold on. With Nanami and a multitude of servants still in the room, and the public nature of the location, you suppose you shouldn’t be surprised, however it’s bothersome that you can’t see his eyes when he’s just attempted to asphyxiate you with confectionery. You settle on glaring at him as you swallow before returning your attention to Nanami—and receiving another forceful bite for your efforts, silencing you before you can speak.

This time he doesn’t remove the fork. He gives you a smile instead.

“Good, yeah?” The tone of his voice is easy; chipper, lilting, simple in a way that might outwardly seem pure. Yet you know better. You might be unable to see the gleam in his eye but your king is anything but innocent.

You swallow again, and then pull away, refusing to answer out of sheer stubbornness. Nanami stands to the side—as visibly distressed as he could ever be—but you address him directly as you turn away from Satoru, even shifting yourself on the chaise to put a minuscule amount of distance between the pair of you.

“Send for the envoy, and if he continues to be evasive in—”

“The strawberries are better,” interrupts the man who you in all your intellect have agreed to marry, clearly made querulous by your silent treatment as he bullies his way into your view and shoves one of the very fruits into your mouth whole. He’s used his thumb, and he doesn’t remove it, instead gripping your chin and pulling you away from Nanami to face him before pressing the pad of it past your lips and between your teeth to rest against your tongue as you swallow the remainder of the berry.

It’s unnerving how poorly you can tell what he’s thinking with his eyes covered like they are now, even when his face hovers inches from yours and his finger is in your mouth. You hadn’t realized how easy it’d been to do that in your quarters where he doesn’t wear it, how much you’d come to enjoy being able to read his face without difficulty. Though he doesn’t keep his intentions a secret very long—he pulls his thumb away and captures your lips immediately with his own, already slipping his tongue into your mouth to chase after the lingering taste of the strawberry he’d shoved down your throat.

The first time Gojo Satoru had ever kissed you was in your youth, back when he’d been a spoiled rotten prince with far too much free time which he preferred using to beleaguer you.

In hindsight, nothing much has changed.

It’d been your fourteenth summer. He had stumbled upon you reading in the company of a shared friend—Getou Suguru, a boy of the same age as the pair of you whose father had been captain of the guard. It hadn’t been a conscious choice to tuck yourselves away in a quiet corner of the palace’s largest library yet it made sense, what with that being the most comfortable location and the two of you being cordial enough to find one another’s company pleasant. Satoru had found you together. Not indecently so, no, the pair of you sat meters apart with multiple chairs between you, yet that hardly mattered to the young prince.

He’d grabbed your book, holding it above his head and taunting you as you abandoned decorum in favor of desperately attempting to grab at it. A futile effort; fourteen was the year crown prince Gojo Satoru had sprung up like a young aspen, all lanky arms and sprawling legs with well above a head of height over you. You’d called him all manner of names with little regard to his status and he’d retaliated by cooing about how your indignantly puffed cheeks made you look like a chipmunk. Getou had slipped away sometime in the struggle, certainly too annoyed by the noise to remain.

A kiss was the demanded ransom, insisted upon with bright blue eyes glinting sharply and given without as much protest as you likely ought to have put up. It’d been clumsy and green as one would expect, the book still lifted well out of your reach up until he pulled away and ordered with pompous demand that you never interact with Getou again. Only then did he return the book, accompanied by a solemn vow to let his hounds loose in your mutual friend’s quarters should he catch the two of you together again—a threat which was never fulfilled though you’d obstinately refused to alter your behavior.

Truly, your king is nothing if not the same boy he’d been then, though the same could be said of you: he so prone to such intense jealousy it makes him stupid and you far too giving of kisses you shouldn’t relenquish.

Admittedly there’s a fairly large difference in that the kiss he engages you in now can neither be described as clumsy nor as green. It’s ravenous, entirely teeth and tongue, all-consuming as he yanks you into him. Perhaps you’ve been too lax in your attempts to avoid his affections behind closed doors, or perhaps he’s trained you far too well into ceding to his will, because all attempts at protest are dashed from your mind. You return the embrace with vigor, hands finding their way to clutch at the collar of his robes and sliding up beneath the back of his blindfold to lace into soft strands of platinum hair.

He makes a noise in his throat, pitched and a little strangled, and pulls you ever closer—yet the motion wasn’t thought through, and he realizes far too late that his unsteady perch on the edge of a cushion isn’t stable enough to hold the both of you. You topple back and he catches himself with a big hand on the couch’s arm just beyond your head, never once parting from you. The other arm encircles your waist, steadfast and taut. Your hand, still in his hair, tightens in response and it pulls another throaty noise from him.

It’s this noise which reminds you quite suddenly that this is wildly inappropriate, that you are not in your private chambers but rather in a quite public area of the palace and that you have quite pressing company.

You take your king by surprise when you grasp him clumsily by the jaw none too gently and bodily shove him away, but when you lift yourself almost upright you find that Nanami has taken his leave. You can hardly blame him. The irritation welling up within you cannot fully be directed at Satoru, however, considering you’d allowed the unabashed display as much as he had initiated it. He radiates smugness despite the way his lips pout through the splayed grasp of your fingers and the blindfold that still prevents you from seeing his eyes.

“I’m beginning to question this arrangement, my king,” you lie, if only to disguise the way you’re still struggling to catch your breath.

Beneath your hold, his lips twitch in a grin. He doesn’t bother shaking you loose, not yet, as he calls out to the room at large, “Leave us,” and the resultant shuffle of footsteps and ruffling clothes lasts only for mere moments as the remaining servants clear the room.

It’s only then that he reaches up and removes the blindfold, though you have little time to admire those pretty eyes suddenly revealed to you.

Satoru is enormous, far too big even for the oversized lounge you both occupy, and you’ve known since his miraculous return that his strength is more than terrifying when he needs it to be. As such it’s no surprise that he proceeds to remove your grasp on the lower part of his face with little effort. It only takes a mere hand and a gentle push on your elbow to buckle your arm and then he’s crowding you, arms around you, trapping you between the plush chaise and his body.

When he speaks he doesn’t bother removing his head from where he’s buried it in the crook of your neck. “I refuse to believe you. You adore me.”

“You torment me.”

“You torment me.” There’s a whine in his voice, a pout to his lips against your skin, and despite yourself you give a little sigh—less exasperated and more content—that you know will only encourage him.

“I doubt we speak of the same thing, my besotted king. You are far too brazen, as I've told you profusely.”

“You blame me for my infatuation when you’re so sublime? Perfection made human right before me? The fault is your own, my lovely wife.”

“Not yet,” you correct as always, because it’s easier than addressing everything else he said; easier than thinking about the way he’d stare at you if he was able, eyes soft and hazy with lovesickness as they always are when he regards you. “Not your wife yet.”

“My bride,” he amends, punctuating each title with a kiss to your neck as he noses against your jaw. “My future wife. My inexorable queen.”

“You speak too much.”

“I could never speak enough, not about you.”

Funny, then, that rather than continue lavishing you with praise he chooses to occupy his lips with yours, though you find this more manageable. The kiss this time is easier, languid. He keeps his tongue to himself and his eyes are blissfully closed, entirely unworried now that everyone has left and he can enjoy your unadulterated attention.

And you have to admit it’s nice, perhaps a little picturesque in the vast, opulent room the pair of you occupy and the plush couch he’s pressing you down into. Perhaps you find a bit of indecent excitement in his ability to clear a room with two simple words. Your hands raise to pull him in by his shirt and he obliges happily.

Then you part from his lips in favor of trailing yours down his neck, letting teeth graze along his Adam's apple just to feel the shaky bob of it beneath them before he tenses and shudders and then collapses beneath your touch. Satoru slumps down into your embrace with his forehead coming to fall upon your shoulder and a low, satisfied hiss pulled from his mouth by the kisses you scatter along his collar.

The breathy laugh he lets out is just as content, a little smug. “Torment you, do I?”

“You speak too much,” you repeat yourself, though it’s admittedly affectionate. “One would think with all the kissing you insist upon doing it’d manage to shut your mou—”

The sound of footsteps halts the pair of you, freezing you both and pausing your words. Your breath catches. The mere possibility of being stumbled upon is one thing, but the actual act of it is another; it makes your hands fist in Satoru’s tunic. The action doesn’t go unnoticed by him.

He pulls up to brace himself awkwardly with a hand upon the couch’s back and glare at whoever interrupted the pair of you—and you realize with growing chagrin that his mouth is smeared with the rose-colored tint adorning your lips (the very color he’d gifted you weeks ago, had insisted you wear proudly, a request you’d once found baffling but now makes stark, horrible sense), tint which is additionally smudged along his jaw and down his neck. There’s little room for misconception in what you’ve been doing with him, a man who isn’t yet your husband, openly where anyone could see.

“Your majesty,” begins the shaky-voiced courier who has certainly been sent by one of the advisors, “I’ve been told to remind you of—”

“I thought I ordered you all to leave us,” Satoru interrupts harshly, entirely lacking in the carefree lilt his tone typically maintains even when annoyed, and it’s true that a part of you gets a thrill knowing that your discomfort is the very reason he’s fixing the poor boy with a glare enough to send him crying home to his mother, but surely even he can see that it’s far too late. The sound of that nervous voice stuttering out a yes, your majesty followed by frantic footsteps leaving the room does little to comfort you.

You’ve already pried yourself from his grip to search for a linen from the table. It’s easy enough to find one. Once it’s within hand you return to your spot and tug him down none too gently to seat him before you, gripping his jaw to tilt it harshly so that you have access to the skin of his neck you’d unwittingly decorated.

The hiss he lets out this time is pained rather than pleasured, though his lips are curled upward as if he’s still finding plenty of enjoyment. The look sparks rage deep within you.

“Have you no sense?” you spit out, rubbing intently at the sensitive spot just beneath his jaw. “Any brains at all beneath that blindfold? Anyone could have come across us. As it stands that courier will talk relentlessly, the entire court will hear of this within a day.”

“You can hardly blame me. How should I be expected to respond when my precious bride ignores me in favor of another man?”

“With enough restraint to protect my dignity at the very least. You may have none but I’ve yet to exhaust my own.”

“Ah, but you have an abundance, surely you can sacrifice a bit to indulge me?”

The silence you give him as answer is pointed. So is the increasing harshness with which you treat his neck; the skin is steadily being rubbed raw, nearly pinker now than the original cosmetic coloring had been.

“To indulge yourself, then, as you so clearly enjoyed it. Perhaps even more than I.”

“I do not by any means enjoy being dragged into humiliating, shameless public demonstrations of your infatuation. Your response to your own frivolous worries upon seeing me do nothing more than talk to a man other than yourself—one who, I might add, you would trust with your own head, so I cannot for the life of me discern why our conversation would make you so insufferable—is anything but endearing.”

“Worries? I had none. Nanami is hardly a proper match for you.” The look on his face is smug. You realize with ever increasing ire that your current actions—giving him the very attention he so craves by fussing over him with the linen in your hand—are only worsening matters, and your ministrations become exponentially harsher as a result. “He cannot give you what you truly desire. Comparing him to myself is absurd.”

Despite your tense actions and only building fury Satoru only coos at you and bypasses your ministrations in an attempt to kiss you again that you thwart by pressing the cloth to his puckered lips. It’s dismissive, demeaning. You’re tired of his insistence that he knows better than you about your own desires, tired of him refusing to listen to you, tired of him disregarding you when you insist he back down.

“You’re quite right, a comparison is no less than insulting,” you snap, pushed to the brink and resisting the urge to throttle the man before you—but his patronizing smile only broadens and the words spill from you as your vision goes red, determined to make him sting the way you have been since the moment you’d realized the entire court would know of this incident come morning. “He wouldn’t have cajoled me into such an impudent display out of petty insecurity—unlike some he isn’t so juvenile. Perhaps your fears aren’t so irrational and I ought to rethink my choice in betrothed instead of allowing some ill-mannered lout of a king to utterly ruin my reputation.”

And you punctuate the words by lashing out equally with your actions, wielding your nails like talons with a sharp rake to his cheek and then shoving him away with a knee to his stomach that sends him careening off the chaise to the floor.

The moment it happens you regret it, eyes widening and lips going slack just before you lift a palm to cover your mouth. The way his shoulders sag sends a pang of remorse through you, and it only grows firmer in the pit of your stomach as he stands and reaches out to gently pry the cloth from your formerly fussing hands.

“I— I did not—“

He turns away. In his other hand you see the black fabric of his blindfold and, in a motion which you ‘d never have thought would affect you so terribly, he lifts it to tie it around his eyes. For far too long you sit there, unsure of how to proceed, only able to watch him use the reflective surface of a platter to meticulously remove the smeared lip tint himself.

And not speak. He’s entirely silent as he does it, and you wrack your mind in a futile attempt to remember the last time his waking presence had not been accompanied by endless, ceaseless teasing and chatter. You can’t recall if there had ever been such an incident in the first place.

It only gets worse when he finishes and takes his leave. You still wouldn’t know if he parted with a lingering look, because he stubbornly keeps that blindfold on, and if he turned his head at any point to face you then you missed the action entirely.

You can only watch as he exits the solarium, leaving you shocked and contrite.

He doesn’t show up for dinner.

The head chef informs you that he’d chosen to take it with his advisors. It’s the first time he’s ever willingly given up a chance to spend time with you. Your mood, certainly, can be felt by every person in the room—your ladies-in-waiting, the maids, every server and chef. You try to ignore the pitying looks they exchange, instead solemnly staring at your food as you ruminate on your actions.

It isn’t fair, you think. He is well and truly aware of how you feel about his antics yet here you are pondering how to apologize to him when he’d spent the afternoon trampling over your boundaries with gleeful abandon for no reason beyond his petty, senseless jealousy—in your fury you’d taken it too far, certainly, but a part of you wonders how you’re meant to express just how helpless he makes you feel when mere words don’t do a thing.

When a cat is riled—or scared—it employs many indications thereof. If one ignores the hissing and yowling and insists upon handling it anyhow, one cannot be rightfully affronted if it proceeds to scratch and bite. Your hisses had been far more eloquent. He ought to have heeded them.

Yet that evening you sit in bed reading until the candles burn low, glancing up at the entrance to your bedchambers with every movement and low voice beyond. A second hand wouldn’t even be needed to count the number of times he’d slept in his own chambers since returning to the palace and taking the throne, and none of those instances had been by his own choice but rather because you’d briefly returned to your family estate. You’re not sure what you’ll do if morning comes and he remains away.

The wait becomes too agonizing to bear. It isn’t so late yet that his absence is altogether unusual but there’s a sinking feeling in your stomach that he might already be in his own bed. It makes you restless, keeps you from falling asleep, so you decide upon checking. The rest of the occupants of your quarters will be of no trouble—it’s far too late for anyone to still be up yet too early for servants to be readying for morning—but you have a constant duo guarding your door and they, certainly, cannot allow you to slip past them. Nearly half an hour passes before you determine that you cannot wait.

You steel yourself, and then push the door open.

The two guards stationed outside your room stiffen immediately. They exchange a look, then one turns back to you. “My lady, you’re awake?”

“We’re going to his chambers,” is all you say in response. The way they both immediately relax doesn’t escape you.

The queen’s and king’s chambers are connected by a door, mirrored in their twisting corridors and abundance of rooms. Yours are only slightly filled with your most trusted companions. His are entirely unoccupied.

You’re not sure if it’s better or worse that his bed is empty. Perhaps he still intended to have joined your bed after his work was done. Perhaps he’d stay out through the night. Either way, you’d feel foolish dragging your guards back to return, so you make yourself comfortable in his sheets.

And you won’t think about how they smell like him, faint but undoubtedly there, especially when you rest your head on the pillow. You won’t think about how it relaxes you immediately, how you fall asleep with ease, though you still find yourself yearning for a body rather than having to make do with a bundle of blankets. You won’t think about how you dream of him.

No, you’ll blame the latter on the manner in which you’re awoken. It’s sometime in the very early morning, the sun yet to rise; the door opening startles you awake.

You shoot up in the bed, eyes wide. Satoru stands at the entrance to his bedchamber with his blindfold halfway off, staring at you in bewilderment, or perhaps something like awe. He doesn’t speak at first. Instead he sheds his jacket, and then the loose cotton shirt beneath, without once breaking your gaze; in the candlelight you can see three sharp lines adorning his left cheekbone, the deep red of a scab, and the sight makes you wince.

“You weren’t in your bed.” He sounds almost dazed. “I had thought…”

Shaking his head in dismissal—or possibly to clear it—he approaches carefully, as if you were a skittish, wounded doe. You shuffle over beneath the covers to allow him room to join you but he stops instead, right at the edge of the mattress.

And then he kneels.

You’re moving back towards him on instinct as he lays his head on the edge and reaches out towards you with lanky arms. Soon you’re close enough to touch him, so you lace your fingers into his hair and watch as his eyes close, as he burrows his face into the soft give of your stomach.

“‘M sorry,” he mumbles against your nightclothes. “I shouldn’t have pushed you. I should have listened.”

“I ought to be the one apologizing. What I said was cruel.”

“Not untrue, though.”

You frown. “That hardly makes it less cruel. I, too, am sorry. For striking you as well.”

The low hum he lets out is dismissive, though not rudely so. “Didn’t even hurt.”

“Yes, well, I can’t imagine your advisors were pleased with the marks.”

“I enjoy it when you mark me up.” It’s an attempt at a joke, that teasing lilt present in his tone, but when you don’t speak, when you merely stroke his hair and give a little noise of discontent, he switches tactics. He pushes closer into you, presses a kiss that you can barely feel into your chest, and then speaks far more candidly. “When your bed was empty I thought you’d fled. I didn’t know what to do. I nearly slept in it alone, just for the fleeting warmth and the smell of you.”

You let out a huff of laughter, a part of your chest aching at the bitter irony of it—of how close the pair of you had come to spending the night miserable and lonely, in each others’ beds, yearning and longing—yet warmed by the fact that it hadn’t come to be. Whatever force had beckoned him to return to you, you thank it.

“I’m very glad you came to me.”

“I am, too.”

He falls silent. You think he might be basking, thankful to be in your presence, so you let the quiet simmer until, minutes later he breaks it. “I threatened the courier.”

“What?” Your brow furrows.

“I found him soon after, cornered him outside the kitchens. The boy nearly soiled himself from fright. He won’t have told anyone.”

“That hardly—” You sigh. “My king, it won’t matter. He wasn’t the only person who knew. Threatening the poor boy didn’t stop the maids and the footmen from talking. They already have. Servants talk, nobles talk, the court hears all. You cannot undo what’s been done any more than I can undo those marks on your face.”

He falls silent again, for a moment. Then, “I’m sorry.”

“I know. Remember this guilt you feel the next time you’re inclined to do such a thing and let it halt you before an apology is necessary.”

“I will.” His arms tighten around you.

“Are you going to share with me what set you off so terribly? Perhaps instead of inciting an argument which results in nothing but our misery you could tell me outright what troubles you.”

He refuses to speak. It’s funny, you think—with how freely he compliments you and professes his devotion, with how easily he gives you physical affection and seems to require your embrace and your kisses—how difficult it is for him to share with you his insecurities.

“Satoru…” You sigh. “Confide your worries to me. I’ll be your wife in a matter of weeks, let me reassure you with honesty rather than mere actions.”

He lets out a little huff, but then with petulant chagrin painting his tone finally admits, “I found correspondence in your chambers the other week, left from the former regime. My aunt was wrapping up talks of an engagement between you and Nanamin mere days before I arrived. Admittedly… perhaps I find the idea more vexing than I can be proud of.”

You purse your lips. “I’m aware.”

“Of her meddling or of my vexation?”

“Both. The late queen was hardly meddling. She held my opinion highly, she’d hardly have taken such action without first discussing with me. Every man she considered in her matchmaking was reviewed by myself beforehand—if anything, she was merely allowing me to use her influence to propose courtship on my own behalf. Lord Nanami was a near perfect match. Naturally, I was intimately involved in those negotiations. As for you, I cannot say you’ve ever bothered to hide such emotions from me.”

“A near perfect match, you say?” The tone is bitter. Of course, you think, he’d fixate on that sentiment. “If this is an attempt to soothe my temper, my bride, you’re sorely failing.”

“A near perfect match for what I was searching for. You well know that I’ve never searched for someone such as yourself. You are altogether unanticipated, not some safe union to a companion who I will find as little issue with as possible. I should think that you’d enjoy such an admission.”

The noise he makes in response is low, gravelly; still displeased, though a little placated. You steel yourself to continue and shift your hold in his hair to one with hands on either side of his head, tilting it up to stare at you. The boldness of the action seems to shock him but he melts immediately into your touch.

“Let me make this clear to you here and now. It is true that Lord Nanami is a well-bred gentleman but I have never once considered him a marriage prospect for reasons beyond social standing and companionship.” You pause, suddenly flustered by what you intend to admit yet determined to say it anyway, and avert your gaze to avoid seeing the way he looks at you. “It should stand obvious, therefore, that you exceed him in title, and that I do not consider you a mere companion. I do adore you, my king, though I find it difficult to say, certainly where keen ears might listen in. I ask that you not fault me for that.”

“I could never fault you,” he murmurs in that lovesick stupor. “For anything, my wife.”

You choose not to correct him this time.

“Then know that my affections are true and vast, despite how I keep them to myself.” Pausing, you frown a little. “Perhaps, however, you should fault me for marring your pretty face.”

Satoru gives a throaty little hum, less smug like you might have expected and more contented. “You find me pretty?”

“Very.”

“Well, I suppose I’ll allow it, only because I find you breathtaking.”

You think perhaps you ought to protest that, insist that his beauty far exceeds yours, but you know that you’d never win such an argument, and you don’t believe your heart could take the compliments he’d shower you with in the process. So instead you allow the conversation to lull, and then shift in the bed to sit.

He makes a little noise of protest, reaches out with those long arms as if to push you back down, but your hands upon his head guide him to lay it in your newly created lap and he quiets, just like that, soothed by his chin in the crease of your thighs. His fingers shove beneath your legs with easy vigor until he’s holding them in a firm grip just above the knee and he gazes up at you, pale skin and white hair visible even in the dim light, those regal eyes drinking in the sight of you like you’re the most precious of every treasure locked away in his abundant coffers.

Though now that his face is directly before you, the trio of lines you’d inflicted are only made more stark. You reach down to cradle his head in your hands and inspect it, gaze running over his brow—catching on that stark white scar bisecting it, the only other time you’d injured him—and his nose and his lips, losing yourself for a moment in his gaze before finding the scratches once more.

His nose wrinkles. You watch, a little bemused and a little enraptured, as his eyes dart to the side and his lips purse like he’s holding something back.

“What?” you ask, yet when his eyes snap back to focus on your mouth with your words before averting again you think you might have an idea.

You use your hold on his face to turn him towards you and let your thumb brush against his wounded cheekbone. Pretty white lashes flutter in response. He shivers a little, presses into your hand, face melting into something sweetly rapturous.

“Does my king want me to kiss his wounds?” you coo.

His eyes open wide and his lips part in what might be a denial—for your sake, certainly, considering all that the two of you have been talking about—yet, while you appreciate the effort, you hardly mind giving him the affection he so craves behind closed doors. Before he can speak you lean down and simultaneously tug his head up to do exactly as you’ve offered: kiss the three hash marks your nails had created in his skin. When you pull back his eyes are closed again.

“Better?” you whisper.

“Yes,” he whines. “Again.”

You comply with a little huff of laughter, that familiar warmth blooming in your chest. This time you don’t stop at the wound. You dust kisses along the bridge of his nose and down his cheeks, pecking at the corners of his mouth and tracing beneath the swell of his lower lip.

He follows you briefly when you retreat, as if unwilling to let you go. It draws another breathy giggle from you.

“More?”

The nod you get is frantic, so this time you kiss him fully, bowing your head and capturing his lips. He lets you lead him through something slower and sweeter than he tends to lead you. There could be any number of reasons behind that—the conversation you’ve just had, his exhaustion, or perhaps merely the fact that you’ve initiated—but whatever the case may be, you savor it.

You wonder if he knows that all your finesse in kissing has been learned from him, and the moment that thought crosses your mind the answer is obvious. He certainly does, and it certainly is a point of pride for him that the skillful movement of your lips is something only he will be able to experience, and if you ever broached the subject aloud he’d tell you as much and continue to remind you for the remainder of your life. It hardly matters, anyway, when the very gift is something you can wield to down him just as greatly as he can you. In fact it only takes mere moments for the both of you to become breathless, yet you continue for far longer, unwilling to part and intent upon basking in the moment. Satoru certainly would never object—in fact it’s when you pull back for breath that he complains, gives a desperate little whimper, barely opens those pretty eyes to stare heavy-lidded up at you as he pants for air.

“Okay,” you breathe out, “okay, let me tend to the wound.”

“It hardly requires—“

“Let me tend to it.” You’re insistent. This time you think he understands that you need to do it, because he nods in acquiescence.

He keeps the proper equipment for tending to wounds (cleansing tinctures, salves, dressings) in his bedside table—you recall because you once stormed into this very chamber after hearing that he’d dueled three of his cousins simultaneously to find him, bloody and battered, attempting to treat himself, and wrenched the dressings from his hands with the intent to do it yourself, scolding him for his foolhardy actions all the while. Even now you doubt your words stuck, dazed as he’d been by both your presence and the blood loss.

Now he’s relatively clearheaded—as clearheaded as he can be around you—but he still hinders your attempts to retrieve what you need by tightening the hold he has around your thighs as you turn and move towards it. You’re inclined to think it’s less purposeful and more mindless desire to remain close, so you drop your hand to lace it into soft, pearly hair while the other reaches out to open the drawer and fetch a cloth, small bottle, and jar.

The cleansing tincture has the consistency of water, crystal clear and colored a pale purple, and the scent is faint and clean as you uncork it—not that you’d expect anything of lower quality in a king’s possession.

Satoru tilts his head without your guiding and presses his cheek into your thigh as you dampen the cloth with the liquid and apply it gently. The pained hiss he lets out is certainly just for show—you’ve seen him take all manner of blows without so much as a flinch—but you still fuss over him the way you know he wants, murmuring out an apology and pressing kisses to his hairline.

“Nanamin would never let you waste such quality medicine on an already healing cut,” he mutters.

You tsk at him, yet your hands remain tender. “Then I suppose it’s a very good thing that I do not intend to inflict such a wound on him.”

The laugh he lets out is a little husky. It trails off dreamily, and you’re reminded that while you’ve slept prior to his return, he hasn’t. You’re fairly certain he’s drifting off in your lap as you set down the cloth and pick up the jar of salve.

You’d almost feel bad at the way his nose wrinkles and borrow furrows in distaste when you open it if not for the fact that you find the motion heartachingly adorable. The paste is pungent, not entirely unpleasant yet far too strong; if you weren’t aware that the scent will dissipate as it dries to a shell upon his skin, you might have decided to forgo it altogether. The scab doesn’t truly need it—you’ve been told the salve’s hardening is to mimic the coagulation of blood, for wounds which bleed too profusely—yet you feel better as you gather a miniscule portion onto your thumb and apply it to the wounds made by that very hand. A physical apology for the physical slight.

“There,” you say finally. “Done.”

You move your hands away but not before brushing wispy alabaster strands of hair from his forehead and pressing your lips to his face one final time in a kiss upon his brow. He rises to his feet slowly, enormous frame looming as he eases himself between your legs, leans down, rests his forehead on your shoulder, and turns his face into the crook of your neck. His arms snake around you to pull you flush against him, and he takes a moment to inhale deeply and then let out the breath in a soft sigh.

After a moment, he breaks the quiet.

“I don’t enjoy returning to an empty bed,” he says like a confession.

“I don’t enjoy sleeping in one,” you retort.

“And I very much dislike arguing with you.” That admission is smaller, accompanied by a tight squeeze of his arms around you. “There are few things worse in this world than when you don’t wish to be around me. I think I might die of a broken heart if you never let me see you again.”

“You were the one hiding, my king.”

“Satoru,” he corrects. “Or husband, if you prefer.”

“Not yet.”

He pulls away from you to give you a pout.

“Oh, fine, then. A compromise.” You sigh exasperatedly, pulling back to once more give him room to join you beneath the covers which he now does readily. He doesn’t let you get far; his arms are around you again before he’s even settled in, holding you close with an air of expectancy to him that makes you let out a breathless little giggle before finishing your thought. “My love, hm? Is that satisfactory?”

“More than,” Satoru sighs.

“Only privately,” you amend, but then to mollify the blow, “my love.”

“For my ears alone, then. I’ll accept those terms.”

Just like that, as if your presence is enough to calm him in an instant, he’s nodding off; it’s thick in his voice, stretching and slurring the words. In the morning he’ll cling to you, refuse to let you leave as he dutifully ignores his responsibilities, and you’ll be forced to deal with the repercussions of staying in his bed until midday, yet you know that you won’t fight his grasp too heavily in the moment.

He speaks again then, one final last-ditch attempt to fight off sleep. His request is so quiet that you can barely discern it, that you wonder if you were meant to hear it at all.

“Promise me you won’t run?”

You tighten your hold on him. It’s a little strange, you think; he feels somehow small. Like this you ought to be keenly aware of his sheer size yet despite the broad shoulders and excessively long limbs he folds himself with such expertise that he fits comfortably nestled into you.

“I don’t intend to leave this bed tonight,” you say with mild amusement.

But he shakes his head, almost imperceptible, voice barely above a murmur. “I don’t mean tonight.”

You realize then that returning to your empty bed earlier must have taken more of a toll even than he’d said. You’ve never slept in his quarters before—not for his lack of trying but for your insistence—so the assumption of your fleeing had not truly been so absurd. Except that it is absurd, the idea that you’d choose to leave him. And he’s close enough to slumber that you’re willing to acquiesce and tell him as much.

“I won’t run. I swear it,” you promise, leaning down to place a lingering kiss on his lips. His eyes never open. “ Now sleep, my king, my love. I’ll be here in the morning.”

And every morning after that, if given the capacity.

[petrichorium]

BAM: Flower Crowns

in which gojo satoru, your beloved king and betrothed, knows his time is best spent in your company riling you up.

gojo satoru x fem!reader

word count: 2.5k reader: fem (she/her pronouns, fem terms, fem clothing including dresses) tags: fluff, royal au, childhood friends to lovers, once again hes pushy n the reader's a lil bit hesitant but hed stop if she rlly wanted, vague references to violence note: see i was gonna do a few lil scenes but the first one got away from me.... but basically the period of him courting the reader (which full disclosure isnt technically courting bc that should be happening before one proposes but this occurs while theyre engaged bc Gojo Didnt Get That Memo but i digress) is just him being WILDLY inappropriate for cultural standards, everyone silently pitying the reader, and the reader having a whole ton of conflicting emotions but ultimately rlly liking it 😭😭😭

usurper!gojo tag || masterlist

“they say you’re inhuman, you know.” you’ve finished the flower chain. his eyes don’t stray from your fingers as they nimbly connect the two ends and tie them together with a final stem into a thick circlet. “they said it a lot that night. they said you were the gods’ fury made mortal.”

he snickers. “how dramatic.”

you lift yourself up onto your thighs, shuffle towards him further and reach out, and he bows his head to let you place your creation upon it. your hand trails down when you let go, drifting over his ear and along his jaw as he lifts his head from its bow to look at you. you certainly mean to pull it away but his hand beats you to it, darting up to keep your palm against his cheek as you settle back down on the backs of your heels.

“i know why they came to that conclusion,” you say. “you terrified me when i saw you.”

“did you think me inhuman?”

you hum, eyes tracing along the band of flowers now gracing his forehead, falling to rest on his hand over yours. “no. never. monstrous, perhaps. odious. but very human.”

Satoru finds you out on the grounds, tucked away at the edge where the manicured gardens give way to rough forest. The weather has been turbulent, but for the first time since the coup there’s enough sun to stand being outside the castle longer than a scant few minutes. You’d said that morning that you planned to venture out, now that early spring flowers were beginning to bloom.

You’re cloaked in heavy furs, layers of skirts and wool protecting you from the cold, all elaborate garments that he’s gifted you. It's adorable (satisfying) to see you dressed up in his presents. He tells you as much when he finds you, delves into the treeline long before you see him so that he can sneak up upon you and whisper it into your ear to make you yelp and jump away.

“You mongrel,” you accuse with wide eyes and a hand on your heart as you work to steady your breathing. “Have you no respect for your future wife?”

“Ah, she admits it readily now? Progress.”

Your face twists as if someone has struck you. He chooses to ignore it and drops to sit sprawled out on the grass, beckoning unabashedly for you to join him on his lap. You won’t relent, he’s well aware, but he’ll have his desires known either way.

“Presumptuous,” you say. He'd die a happy man if you kissed him as many times as you called him that, but in lack of the former he’ll be content with the latter.

“Sit with me, my queen. I've missed you.”

“I am not yet your queen, Satoru,” you correct out of obligation. “You saw me an hour ago, we ate together.”

“Ah, but every moment apart is agony.” Satoru wonders if you know how serious he is beneath the breezy tone. From the way you wrinkle your nose, he doubts it.

“You have a meeting with your advisors now. You should not be out here.”

He pouts. “But you’re out here, and if I have to spend more time with those old fools than you today then I'll throw a tantrum tomorrow.”

You roll your eyes, let out a sigh that sounds long-suffering, but you shift your skirts and ease yourself down to sit gracefully before him with your legs tucked next to you. His threats aren’t empty and you know it.

“Fine.” You look down, as if inspecting the grass, spreading fingers along the blades as you begin to pluck wildflowers. Then you pause and glance up at him. “Remove those… oh, whatever they are. Let me see your eyes unhindered, at least.”

“Anything for my darling bride,” he coos at you, immediately doing as asked. He’d have done so anyway, if only to watch you lose yourself in staring when he reveals his eyes, catching yourself once he blinks and snapping your head back to the ground to busy yourself once more with plucking your blooms.

“How do you see a thing through those,” you grumble lowly, certainly just to break yourself from being flustered. It works too well; Satoru immediately jumps on the chance you’ve given him.

“Would you like to try them?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for a response, mind already conjuring an image of you draped in every golden chain and precious stone gracing his chambers.

He removes them from his face, pulling the chain from around his neck, and swiftly transfers them to yours before you can refuse—tilts your head up to look at him and tugs your hair out of the way with deft fingers, eases the gilded extremities onto your ears and lets the pads of his digits linger on either side of your head before pulling away. Pausing in your work and tilting your head back down to peer at him over the top of the frames, you blink at him owlishly from behind the glass, unused to staring through it. Precious, he thinks, and wishes briefly to kiss you—but he has to be smart about kissing you, calculating. Too much attention too fast and you have a tendency to pull away from him like the ebbing tide. It's agony for him, wanting nothing more than to hold you as much as he wishes, but as much as he wants there’s very little he hates more than when you tense under his touch and turn away from him.

“They suit you better,” he tells you, because they do. You look good adorned with jewelry of his design. “You oughtn’t wear them in public, though, or all the courtiers will be scrambling to get themselves a pair. Just for me, I suppose.”

Your nose wrinkles at the mention of your newfound influence, eyes darting to the side and lower lip pouting, an expression that makes him cast aside all his convoluted schemes to ease you into his affections. He leans down to peck at your lips, kiss away the pout, gone before you can complain. It’s fast enough that you don’t immediately recoil and give him a lecture on decorum, or perhaps you’re simply getting more used to it.

Satoru’s attention doesn’t stray as you return to your work. You’ve gravitated towards flowers with long stems, he realizes; collected them in a pile on your skirts, which you seem to have deemed large enough as you pick a notably long one up and begin to string them together in a chain. You don’t bother removing his glasses either, simply allowing them to slide down to the end of your nose. The golden chain clinks softly with every movement of your head.

He wonders when you learned to make them. You’ve always been so careful about the skills you acquire, but he thinks perhaps your mother might have taught you. Or his aunt, for how much she loves flowers, and for how much of her time as queen (he’s been told anyway) was spent doing such frivolous things as making daisy chains in the gardens. You’re so very meticulous with your actions, every choice carefully constructed. He knows you’ve been doing that less and less around him—perhaps it’s finally sinking in that he cares very little about your actions, that he finds everything you do to be enthralling. More likely you’ve exhausted yourself trying. You’ve certainly exhausted yourself attempting to rein him in, though he’d like to believe you’re beginning to allow yourself to enjoy his antics.

Posterity, he thinks, will paint him as you do—bold, brash, uncaring of tradition, unapologetic in pursuit of a woman far beneath his status. There are a great many reasons you hesitate to marry him, he doesn’t blame you for your doubt. Certainly when he was younger he’d never imagined himself the type of man you’d end up betrothed to; he couldn’t count on his fingers the number of more suitable matches for the both of you in the eyes of society, but whereas in his youth he might silence himself and go along with the whims of his advisors he’s lost all sense of decency now. His close call with death and the coup he’d spent years preparing for had rid him of any desire to compromise, and he stands now in a position where he can certainly refuse the very people who once held sway over him. And you appreciate all of that, he knows it. It’s one of the reasons he adores you so; beneath your veneer of decorum lies not a lady but a queen with desires all too different from those you’ve been forced to portray. He’s always known this, and to an extent he can’t find it within himself to regret the events that have led him to where he is today because if they hadn’t transpired he wouldn’t have you.

Satoru remembers a time in his youth when his mother made a passing mention that she enjoyed a certain hairstyle on young girls—two long braids, tied with ribbons. For months afterward all the upcoming court ladies wore it diligently, yourself included. He found it painful to see on you until he discovered that they made a lovely way to pull your nose from a book and fix your attention onto him, and that he could tug on the ribbons at the ends until they unfurled and he could pocket them to return later by tying them around the necks of one of his hunting dogs and sending it after you.

(If he were the kind of man you’d marry without hesitation he’d feel remorse for his childhood actions. Instead he’s the man you will marry, and he plots how to steal one of your hair ribbons again and return it in the same way. For memory’s sake.)

“They say you’re inhuman, you know.” You’ve finished the flower chain. His eyes don’t stray from your fingers as they nimbly connect the two ends and tie them together with a final stem into a thick circlet. “They said it a lot that night. They said you were the Gods’ fury made mortal.”

He snickers. “How dramatic.”

You lift yourself up onto your thighs, shuffle towards him further and reach out, and he bows his head to let you place your creation upon it. Your hand trails down when you let go, drifting over his ear and along his jaw as he lifts his head from its bow to look at you. You certainly mean to pull it away but his hand beats you to it, darting up to keep your palm against his cheek as you settle back down on the backs of your heels.

“I know why they came to that conclusion,” you say. “You terrified me when I saw you.”

“Did you think me inhuman?”

You hum, eyes tracing along the band of flowers now gracing his forehead, falling to rest on his hand over yours. “No. Never. Monstrous, perhaps. Odious. But very human.”

“You wound me. I might die by your cruelty.”

“Die, then.”

Satoru makes a show of it just for you. Falling back to sprawl on the ground, he gags violently, stabbing at his own heart with an invisible knife and convulsing with his tongue hanging out until you shriek for him to stop, voice filled with giggles. He takes that as a cue to still, to fall limp as if truly dead with eyes fluttering shut—then beckons you closer.

“I need…” he rasps out, barely audible.

You indulge him and do so. “My king?”

“…iss…”

“What?”

“True love’s kiss,” he repeats louder, pursing his lips expectantly. He doesn’t truly think you’ll do it, and you don’t—you lean in like you will, but bypass his lips entirely and bite his cheek instead.

He yelps, just for you, just so you’ll feel accomplished. And so he can see your smile, hear the smugness in your voice as you say, “It’s a miracle, you’ve come back to life.”

But he doesn’t give you weakness for free. No, he snakes his arms around your waist before you can pull back, and uses the grip to all but pull you on top of his lap as he sits up. Perhaps it’s his lack of insistence on you giving him a kiss, or perhaps he’s simply started to break down your walls enough, but whichever it is you don’t protest. Instead you seem to find flaws in the flower crown you’ve gifted him. Your lips purse, hands coming up to fiddle with the blooms. He realizes that he can’t stand a single moment of your attention on anything other than him, even if your fingers are nearly tangled in his hair.

“If I return to court with a crown of flowers made by my lover still on my head, do you suppose they’ll think me less inhuman?”

Your face falls at the suggestion, eyes widening in mortification. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“It's far more comfortable than that heavy gold. And I happen to personally adore the artisan who made it, so—”

“I don't trust you anymore, take it off! You’ve lost the right!” You attempt to remove it, but he reacts with the very reflexes that make him so inhuman, uses that monstrous height to lift his head higher than you can reasonably reach, though it doesn’t stop you from trying.

“It'd be rude of me to refuse a gift, my queen.” Laughing, Satoru holds you back with ease, eager for the excuse to put his hands all over you while you’re too worked up to feel self-conscious.

“Not yet,” you wail. “Not your queen yet, you knave!”

“Mine either way, though,” he replies smugly with a playful tug to the chain you still wear. “Covered in my presents. It’s only fair that I get to display a token you’ve given me, no?”

“No, it is not. You’ve stolen all of my outerwear and replaced it with these, I've no other choice. But you will not return to your advisors displaying that—that childish trifle, I won't allow it, you will not expose to the court that I made such a thing for yo—oh!”

He tackles you to the ground, careful not to even knock the wind out of you, though he steals your breath the moment you’re safe in his arms by pulling you into a kiss to keep you from talking further. He’d intended it to be faster, but his nose crashes into the tinted spectacles still upon your face and he’s filled with such ardor that he can’t help but deepen it.

Your hand slides behind his head, threads through his hair. He feels you snap a single stem between your fingers. The crown comes apart just as he takes a moment to pull away, and the flowers fall to scatter in the grass beneath him, a halo around your head. There’s a little smile on your face, your chest huffs with quiet laughter, and your palm slides down to the base of his hair. You use that hold and your other hand, which has fisted his tunic, to yank him down and connect your lips again.

Above, a cloud passes. Satoru can feel the sun shine warm on his back, hear the wind in the budding trees, smell the bite of melting snow and the petals of your wildflowers, yet there’s nothing that could distract him from the feeling of your kiss. His eyes close, he pushes closer though he hardly needs to with the way you still tug on his shirt. His arm comes up to brace next to your head, just to make sure he’s holding his own weight rather than crushing you, and the other leaves your waist to trail down your thigh and grip beneath your knee, shifting your leg to hook around him. If your mouth weren’t occupied he thinks you’d be lecturing him for such an obscene display in a place where anyone could stumble upon you—so he does well to keep it occupied, refusing to part even as your grip on his tunic loosens and he’s forced to grab your newly freed hand to pin it to the ground with fingers intertwined.

It's the first time you’ve ever kissed him. He already plots how to push you into doing it again when he finally pulls away, eyes locked on your swollen lips.

[petrichorium]

it’s a whisper that rushes through the guards as they lead you through the twisting corridors of the castle’s dark, claustrophobic escape routes—a frantic, hushed whisper, full of incredulous tones and wild-eyed glances at her majesty whose side you never leave, whose hand you never let go of.

gojo satoru, it hisses, and it makes your blood run cold.

the leader wears a blindfold, they say—to cover up his eyes, that distinctive blue, marking the gojo family lineage and last seen on the former crown prince, only child of a king who passed of a fever mere months before his son’s assassination. or so the whisper says, by the dim light of the torches, bouncing off the low ceilings of the corridors, spilling from the mouths of the very people sworn to protect you until their last breath.

your queen is aging, greying at the temples, wrinkling at the eyes; her hearing has been going for years yet the name rings for her clearly enough that her manicured fingers tighten their grip on yours. it surely would, for it belongs to her long-deceased nephew—not by blood, no, she has married into the family, princess of a neighboring kingdom.

your memory conjures up boyish laughter, long fingers tugging on your hair, striking blue eyes soft with first love. you dare not measure it against the terrifying description painted for you of their commander—brutal, enormous, swift, cutting down swathes of men with ease. inhuman, say the whispers, a beast, a monster.

the sounds of battle echo through the claustrophobic tunnels—the clanging of metal, the dying cries of men. behind you, two of your companions weep, clutching onto each other and barely keeping pace. this corridor will open up near the entrance to another, in your favorite library, and from there will be the final stretch beyond the walls. steeds await, one for each courtier and most of the guards. you will escape to the east, the queen’s homeland, where her family is sure to take you in.

you do not get that far.

there are men waiting beyond the bookshelf. too many; they swarm around you like wolves to a downed doe, so dense and armed, push past into the corridors to surround you. and their leader stands at their front—towering over even the tallest of men and holding himself high, blood streaking his tunic and his silver hair, eyes covered with a black cloth.

a war god sent to punish, to consume, to destroy, say the whispers—the ones in the back of your head. the guards are silent.

the queen lets go of your hand for the first time since the captain of the guard had stormed into her room and told you all to flee. she orders her men to stand down; outnumbered as they are, it will be little more than a bloodbath. regally, she approaches, head held high, much to the amusement of the brute before her—his mouth stretches wide and he lifts a wicked sword, arm so long that he needn’t even step forward for the point to press beneath her chin.

“hello, auntie,” he says, grin flashing teeth sharp as the blade he points at your queen. “i hope you didn’t plan to run off before my coronation. we wouldn’t want to miss the festivities, now, would we?”

and you still want to disbelieve, yet with his free hand he reaches up, hooks his thumb beneath the cloth, and reveals a single brilliant blue eye—a gojo eye, the color of the sky and the sea, sign of the gods’ blessing, the physical marker of one born to rule. cold as steel and directed not at the queen but at you, stealing the breath from your lungs with the manic light within.

“not when everything i’ve wanted for so long is finally in reach.”

usurper!gojo masterlist

[petrichorium]

his eyes are what you focus on the most, in that strange set of weeks that gojo, the newly crowned king (formerly the presumed dead crown prince turned coup leader turned heir apparent), spends courting you.

for a time, you wonder if you’re as simple as the rest, as easy to please. they’re beautiful, undoubtedly; you can see why his ancestors held them to such esteem, it’s difficult not to believe they must be a sign of divinity. he hides them most of the time behind that damned black cloth or an odd adornment upon his face—a pair of circular lenses colored deep black, connected with a frame of gold, an ornate chain attached to the earpieces and hanging around his nape. yet he takes off such things when he barges into your chambers, removes the blindfold and drops the jewelry so that it dangles from his neck like the pendants he so loves gifting to you, and with the way those eyes trail you relentlessly you wonder if it’s so that he can watch you unhindered.

soon enough you realize that you like his eyes for the same reason he hides them: because they give him away.

or rather, you suppose, because they give him away to you. you’d be surprised if he were so careless with his expressions around others—he’s smart, this you know, smart and strong and capable. certainly too smart to wear his emotions on his sleeve in court as he does around you, eyes soft and adoring every time they’re cast upon you. he hasn’t a taste for subtlety or reservation, not when it comes to you or anything else he covets. greedy man, you call him one morning, when the sun’s rays shine through the curtains and cleave great fissures of light across your bed which most resolutely should not be occupied by another. his long fingers curl around your wrist and bring it to his mouth. only for you, he whispers against your pulse, lies to you with blue irises glinting and tone dripping with saccharine syrup as if he hasn't toppled a regime with the very hands he holds you with.

(or perhaps it’s not a lie, perhaps all his greed truly does lead back to you)

you like his eyes, too, because they remind you of childhood. you recall countless times where he’d tug on your hair to drag your attention from a book, your gaze going from letters to that piercing blue. he still looks at you like that now, and you think you might hold his childhood in your palms just the same as he yours. yet despite that familiarity there’s something more you like in the changes—he’s grown so monstrously large, not simply in stature, and there’s a mature air about him that compels you. he's grown, which should be unsurprising; the surprising part is that you're not altogether turned away by his adult self the way you should be.

you still remember the first time you saw him again, that horrible night, and the way that single eye had stared at you. you don’t believe it’ll ever truly leave you. crazed, bloodthirsty, entirely devoid of warmth—unrecognizable to you, the eye of a man who had lost everything and come back to reclaim what was rightfully his. you’d be lying, frankly, if you said the prospect that you were among that list didn’t send a thrill through you, even back then; lying if you claimed your breath caught at the sight of his eye out of pure fear and not something much more shameful.

(your queen had been the first to notice—or rather the first to act, for his eye upon you had been plain for all to see. she’d offered herself for you; her throat or her hand, without fight, to let you go. you remember how he’d covered up that eye once more, how his smile had dropped, and how he’d left no room for misinterpretation of his intent. you think an old hag like you is a fair trade for her? sorry, auntie, no deal. i’ll have whichever of your ladies i desire)

you, to name the lady of his desire. you still don’t know if you’re flattered by it—whether the part of you that simpers at the thought of being special to him, cherished by him, outweighs the part which resents him. it’s difficult to detangle the threads of your feelings, anger and attraction and hurt and sentiment and more all roiling within you so turbulently that you’re never sure which will be most prominent the next time you meet that piercing blue gaze. you wake up in your bed to see his sleeping body next to you and you ponder whether to run off to the east, then you surprise yourself that evening when he returns by tugging him down by his collar and pressing lips to his cheek in greeting. you’re more than conflicted and you know he’s well aware, those eyes piercing like they can see every clashing emotion.

not fear, though; never fear, you’re not all that afraid of him anymore. not when he’s so careful with how he touches you, not when looks at you like you’re the most important thing gracing the halls of his newly acquired castle. when he’s in your chambers it’s like he’s the same satoru you grew up with—the utter disregard for tradition had practically been signature, and he so adored exasperating you with it. if someone had told you back then that you’d end up years later with him courting you, the fact that he’s so bold as to spend the night with no chaperone would likely be the least surprising of the circumstances.

and perhaps you ought to be more careful, more suspicious; your teachers, your parents, they’d all tell you that you’re a fool for allowing such a man to court you. he barrels through etiquette, has no concern for modesty, throws decorum to the wind—not that one would expect anything less from a usurper. he could ruin you, just as he has left the court in ruin, should he decide that playing with you is no longer amusing and choose to cast you aside.

and it’s a frankly foolish decision to marry you, to make you queen over any of the other more eligible candidates. you are good at working the court, this is undeniable, but your talents are certainly far more suited to an advisor than a queen and your title is so very low that you’re practically ineligible—not legally, but socially. he can marry you, in technicality, but you’re practically a commoner despite how indispensable you'd made yourself to the former queen. certainly not somebody to choose in the already turbulent political landscape he’s created. he’s been crowned in the aftermath of a coup, one which he led himself—he ought to be wed to a proper match, a zen’in or a kamo to appease the families or a princess from a nearby kingdom to reforge allyship.

of course when you’d brought this up he’d merely cooed, cupped your face in a large hand and rubbed soothingly at your cheek with his thumb.

“nobody in this castle can tell me what to do,” he’d told you cheerfully. “except for my darling betrothed, of course.”

the unsaid implication there is hardly subtle—nobody can stop this union, except for you. he’d break it off if you insisted.

but… you don’t want to. you’re not sure what it is exactly. ambition, perhaps; the allure of the crown—or affection, the allure of him, because despite how you ought to feel (he’s upended your life, thrown the court into disarray, imprisoned or killed nearly a quarter of the peerage including more than a fair share of his own family members) you find yourself charmed by him; his easy smiles and his schoolboy teasing and even his incessant need to touch you despite your endless lectures on propriety. it’s likely both, to be frank with yourself.

(perhaps he’s rubbing off on you, selfish man that he is, taking what he wants without thought for what might come of it. perhaps you are looking before you and what you see is a man more devoted to you than you’d ever dreamed you might find, who also happens to be a king, and though you know it isn’t what’s best for your country it is what you want for yourself)

in the end you don your ornate wedding dress and you bind yourself to him and you don’t regret it—in fact you’re pleasantly giddy throughout the whole ordeal. you don’t think about how many men he’s cut down with the hands that take yours at the end of the ceremony, and you don’t wonder how much blood he spilled in these very halls with the same grin on his face that he gives to you now, and you don’t ruminate on the number of lives likely lost in the king’s chambers as he’d stormed it. in fact your mind is quite clear when he tears that blindfold from his face, lifts you easily with a single arm around your thighs despite the extravagance of your skirts, and carries you through those connecting rooms to the bedroom where, he swears to you against your skin, you’ll spend the rest of your nights until your dying days.

and if it weren’t he’d surely have dashed any thoughts from your head when his lips met yours, searing and fervent and hungry.

usurper!gojo masterlist

[petrichorium]

the news comes to you by messenger.

it doesn’t come to you, exactly. it comes to the academy you’d been sent to, a week away from the royal palace but only a day’s ride to your family’s manor in the south. it’s announced suddenly at midday: the king is dead, and the crown prince assassinated.

your fellow students mourn, as is appropriate. more than a few had been potential matches—their visions of marriage and queenhood dashed in a moment, you find it difficult to relate. you mourn a person, you mourn your first love, you mourn your best friend; they find you pretentious, and conceited, and they make snide comments from the other side of your closed door, behind which you spend a week in your bed reading through the letters you never sent him, staining them with tears.

when you finally emerge it’s with a silver pendant around your neck, hidden beneath your gown. a token of affection from many summers ago, a miniature portrait depicting the vibrant, unmistakable eye of the spoiled prince who’d gifted it to you. it remains hanging upon your breast long after you return to the palace, older and wiser and more determined.

it remains there even when invaders storm the walls, even when that towering figure appears and those regal eyes fall upon you.

gojo wakes up in a strange estate located, as he comes to learn, just outside the border in a neighboring kingdom. his injuries are numerous. he’s in such pain he can hardly sit up for the first month. you are all he thinks about because you are all he has left; his parents gone, his crown and country stolen, yet you remain, waiting for his return though you don’t know it. the thought of you is what keeps him going—it’s the tether to his sanity when his rage threatens to consume him, the reminder that there is still something to live for, to fight for.

throughout the years he keeps up with your status, informed in more and more depth as time goes on and his gossamer thin web within the palace grows thick and sturdy. he knows when you return, knows when the queen first notices you, knows how you claw your way up to become her close friend and most trusted confidant. he’d give you help where he could, but you hardly need it, and his faith in your abilities is unending.

he grows dahlias in the gardens of the hidden manor, and he tends to them meticulously. each one, he imagines, must be perfect; he knows they won’t be the ones he uses to propose but he refuses to let even one wilt before it’s time.

they’re for you, after all, even if you’ll never see them.

usurper!gojo masterlist

[petrichorium]

Having a child is gojo’s greatest fear for much of his life. But then you show up. You fix that! He’s not scared of just bringing a baby into the world anymore!

Because suddenly the hypothetical woman he might impregnate is you, and that terrifies him more than anything else in the world.

[pluviophile-imagines]

i can't help but wonder about the "i'm gonna marry you but i don't want kids" with gojo. because he probably would be the one to bring it up

omg im sorry this took so long but,,,,, here we are 👀 as always linking the usurper!gojo tag and the masterlist for this au warnings: the no kids talk!

it’s hardly subtle.

he doesn’t ease you into it; he isn’t coy. he all but storms into your chambers, after dark but before you’ve snuffed the candles keeping the room light enough for your reading.

he doesn’t bother to tell you why, but you know—instinctively, because you know him and you know his advisors and you’re well used to his moods when they’ve been particularly nagging about his duties as king—what’s set him off. the indication that it’s worse than typical is that he keeps that odd eye jewelry perched upon his nose, chain gleaming yellow in the light of the flames as he stalks over to your lounging form upon the bed.

his arm finds your legs over the nightclothes you wear, wraps around them firmly to move them just enough for him to perch on the edge of your mattress. they don’t leave, even as you set aside your book—you expect him to lay his head on it, anticipating the typical song and dance of his pouting and whining as you push him away only to relent and let him hold you as you both drift off into slumber.

instead he hovers. even sitting he looms over you, hand tightening on your thigh and thumb rubbing soft, meaningless patterns through the fabric of your dressing gown that soothe the nerves set on edge by your inability to see the look in his eyes.

a beat passes. you wonder if he’s calmed.

but when he speaks it’s terse, low, with the kind of simmering rage he keeps close to his chest for only those pitiable few he despises utterly, and he dips his head to look over the frames of those onyx lenses and regard you with irises dark with something terrible.

“i will not give you a child.”

the statement bowls you over. your breath hitches, if only because of the way he stares—deadly serious,

“wh—what?”

“i will not allow you to bear my children. i might be amenable to a ward, if you so desire. but i will not seed you,” his grip tightens on your thigh, “and it should go without saying that once we marry neither will any other.”

you haven’t a clue how to respond to such a thing.

he speaks as if it’s a confession; as if he’s betrayed you somehow. he holds you like you’ll disappear, or flee—and perhaps, had he told you this months ago when you’d been flighty and diffident with his affections, your rigidity might have led you to. but it is now, and you haven’t fled yet, and your beloved is nothing if not unconventional and shameless in his eccentricity.

you ponder on that too long.

“say something,” he demands, sounding almost small.

“why?” spills from your lips without thought; not petulant, or angry, but confused. not just by him—by you. you ought to be devastated, no? you ought to be angry. you assuredly are not.

“my bloodline as it has been for generations is a scourge,” he tells you readily. “i will do everything within my power to wipe it out. therefore, i cannot have an heir. not even one.”

not even one. not a single child. the thought washes over you like the temperate water of the lake on your grounds back home, the very one you’d once played in regularly as a child. the very one your mother had once mentioned taking your own children to, someday; children who you never fantasized about, children who never had faces or names, children who you never set aside letters or dresses or trinkets for to gift on birthdays.

not even in those teenage years spent with your current betrothed, the only man you’d ever thought of kissing and caressing you, had you once envisioned a life with children. they’d only appeared once you’d been brutally introduced to reality, and had to accept the promise of a life with a rich man who doesn’t love you.

a life which your king has gallantly shattered, and replaced with something far brighter.

“i will bear the burden of prevention,” he tells you soothingly, as if your silence has been about the effort of this request. “you needn’t worry that pretty mind over it. over any of this, my queen—“

“i am not yet your queen,” you interrupt, instinct bidding you to speak where your mind remains miles away.

“my bride,” he amends, ”look at me.”

you do.

“i want you,” he says, as if it’s some known truth of the universe, written in the stars. “i want you fervently, ardently. i won’t have another. but i will not give you my children. if you cannot take that slight, then so be it.”

the emotion that has been welling within you since the first words he'd spoken has become so intense it’s impossible to listen properly. you cannot name it without ruminating; you lay beneath him, eyes widening, not quite seeing—or hearing the words he continues to say—as you let it all sink in.

but when his hands fly to cradle your face, you’re snapped from the daze, attention suddenly brought back to the man before you.

“oh, oh, precious girl, don’t cry.” cry? his thumbs wipe away tears from your cheeks. you hadn’t even realized they’d been falling. “don’t cry”—he almost laughs, yet his voice breaks—“you’ll break my heart.“

“no,” you gasp, “no, my king, i’m hardly sad, i’m… relieved.”

that’s it. you’re relieved. he’s removed a heavy weight from your chest and you hadn’t even known of it. you will not have to bear him children. the assurance floods through your veins like liquid joy. not ten, not five, nor two nor even one; none whatsoever.

“relieved?” he repeats, blinking in surprise.

you’d never even considered the possibility. from the moment you’d known of your place in this world you’d resigned yourself to the role of childbearing. only now do you realize how much you had been dreading such a thing. only now do you understand the fear, and the relief.

“i… don’t believe i want children either.” the statement feels so final it ought to be terrifying, but it settles into your bones with a tangible rightness.

your betrothed regards you in shock. his hands fall from your face—and then they latch to your body, one on your thigh again and the other behind your neck, pulling you up and flush against him as he kisses you harshly.

“you’re so perfect,” he breathes into your mouth, unreactive yet pliant against him. “made for me, just for me, i swear—“

you kiss back, making his rambling cut off in a strangled growl as he only tugs you in closer and deepens the embrace. he’s still speaking, but it’s unintelligible; praise, certainly, muffled compliments and manic devotion. he’s relieved too, you realize. foolish to think him confident in this declaration. foolish, you’re coming to understand, to think him sane in any circumstance which might take you from him.

(if you are made for him then he is made for you, surely. this relief would be impossible for any other to give you.)

he pulls away when he realizes you’re still crying. you catch your breath, blink back the tears, let him fuss over you until your voice is solid enough to speak.

despite the relief, there is lingering hesitance; lingering fear. “you say you will bear the burden of prevention, but what of the burden of blame? they will talk, as the months go by. they will call me barren, unfit to be by your side; they will demand you take on a mistress—“

“i won’t,” your betrothed snarls, grip on your thigh almost painful with how fiercely his fingers tighten, “i would never, and i’ll cut down all those who speak ill of you.”

your laughter is disbelieving, wet with the traces of saltwater. “hardly a sound plan to run a court, my king. unless its intent is for running it to the ground.”

“for you, my heart? anything. i would raze this kingdom if it spoke your name without awe.”

that shouldn’t be comforting. it ought to be terrifying. instead you reach up to hold his cheek, and his eyes flutter closed at the contact.

“kiss me again,” you command.