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dandylovesturtles · 7 months ago

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alright, here it is: part 3 of the still untitled Room Fic! and boy is it long... this might be as long as parts 1 and 2 put together.

Content warnings for this part: vomit, serious discussion of food issues, internalized ableism, everyone being a little bit dumb

I am not a doctor and my meal plan for Leo is extremely lightly researched (mainly because it's hard to find information that would be helpful in Leo's situation but that isn't highly technical). in the end I went with what I like from a narrative standpoint. if someone starves as long as Leo did please get them to an actual doctor lol.

also I got tired and didn't proofread the last few sections.

just a warning that I'm going on vacation next week and will be out of the country for awhile so don't expect any more for this for quite some time. in the meantime, hope you enjoy this!

and if you're confused, start here!

-----

Leo wakes up.

The room is moving. His head is cradled in someone's lap. There's a furry hand stroking his arm, and a voice hums the notes of a lullaby he hasn't heard since he was a child.

-----

Leo wakes up.

He's lying somewhere soft and blessedly warm. There's a weight across his chest. Someone is chattering in his ear, happy and upbeat, saying something to him about Jupiter Jim on the desert planet Delta-5.

-----

Leo wakes up.

He's still somewhere soft but now it's too hot. He whines and pushes at the things on his chest. Near his ear someone tuts, and then a hand lands on his, giving it a squeeze.

"Nardo, you need to warm up. Don't-"

-----

Leo wakes up, and his eyes open.

"Leo?" comes Raph's voice. Leo blinks to clear his vision, then lets his eyes trail up, to find his big brother bending over him. "You awake for real this time?"

He isn't sure. Raph being here sure feels like a dream.

He lowers his eyes and looks around. He's not home. He doesn't recognize this place at all, actually. But the walls are beige (still unstimulating, but at least not white), the furniture is dark brown, the bed (not a cot) has a blue bedspread, the empty takeout containers on the table have a splash of red. It's not home, but it's not the room, either.

If he were going to dream, surely he'd just picture himself back home.

He blinks back up at Raph, and smiles.

"Wide awake," he says, echoing Raph from before.

Raph bursts into tears, immediately leaning down and wrapping Leo up in one of his signature hugs. For the first time in so many days (longer, longer, Leo can't remember the last time he got a Raph hug like this), Leo feels completely secure, fully enveloped in love and affection, held safe by his big brother where no one can hurt him.

The difference between this moment and the last week and a half is so stark it leaves Leo feeling dizzy. Like he hadn't even realized how scared and lonely and helpless he truly felt until all that pain was taken away. He's safe now. He's okay now. Raph is hugging him.

Leo hates crying in front of people, but even he can't be stoic for this.

"Oh Leo," says Raph softly once he realizes. "It's okay. We got'cha."

Leo sniffs, burying his face in Raph's plastron. He wishes he could hug back, but his limbs feel so heavy, like Donnie swapped them out for metal versions when he wasn't looking. So he can't hug back, but he leans in close and hopes that's enough.

They get about a minute to hug before Mikey is worming his way in between them, wriggling to push his arms past Raph's and around Leo for himself. "No fair, you got to hold him earlier!" Mikey declares, his voice thick with tears.

"You got to hug him earlier," Raph argues.

"He was asleep, it doesn't count!" Mikey hits back, and Leo laughs and shifts so Mikey can better get in the middle. Raph sighs exaggeratedly, but he gives Leo a pat and leans back to let Mikey in.

Mikey hugs even tighter than Raph, nuzzling in against Leo's shoulder. "I missed you," he says, then gives a choked sob he tries to bury.

"Missed you too," Leo promises, craning his neck so he can land a big smooch on Mikey's head. That replaces the sobs with relieved giggles that leave Leo feeling so much lighter.

After another minute, Mikey moves back and looks over at Donnie, who's been standing at the side of the bed wringing his hands. "Your turn, Donald."

Donnie makes a grumpy noise at having been perceived, but when Leo gets a look at his face he sees Donnie has tears shimmering in his eyes, too. They break free once Donnie's arms are around him, trickling onto the skin of Leo's shoulder.

"Crying over me, Don-ton?" he teases, even as his own voice is thick with emotion.

"Shut up, Nardo," Donnie snaps back, but his voice cracks at the end and he holds on even tighter.

"Alright, my turn," says April once Donnie starts to loosen his grip, and Donnie obligingly crawls off the bed, swiping at his eyes. Like he's looking for something to busy himself with, he starts throwing away the takeout containers on the table. They must be empty.

Leo tears his eyes away just as April swoops in to wrap him up in his fourth hug of the hour, giving him a kiss on his forehead as she does. "Hey, Leo. How're you feelin'?"

"Happy to see you," he says again, and she squeezes him tighter. "Kinda hot."

"That's the hypothermia talking," says Donnie. April shushes him.

"Hypothermia?" Leo asks. April pulls back so she can see his face.

"It wasn't that bad," she says quickly. "You'd started brumating, we think... Tromping around in the snow didn't help, though."

"Not to mention you used up the last of your energy portaling us out of there," Mikey chimes in. "It was really cool though!"

Leo laughs. "Thanks, little brother." Even with the containers thrown away, the smell of the takeout is thick in the room. Leo guesses they had Japanese. It can't have been that long ago. "Where are we?"

"Motel room about two hours down the road." April slides to sit next to him, keeping one arm wrapped around his shoulders. Her body heat is warm in a more pleasant way than the blankets, and he leans into it. "We wanted to go further, but we needed to get you warmed up."

"A motel...? Huh." Leo looks around again. This is his first time being in a hotel that isn't owned by Big Mama. He wonders how far it is from the Japanese place. Just, like, average delivery time. "What happened? It's... kind of a blur for me." He laughs.

They launch into the story without any more prompting. It all sounds like what Leo expected. Raph led the team. Donnie did science stuff. Mikey razzed his tazz. April used her investigative skills.

They tracked him all the way down to Colorado (that explains the snow) and broke him out. They floored it away from the EPF, got far enough they felt safe, then booked into a motel under April's name. That's where they've been since. Splinter and Draxum are out now, patrolling to make sure they weren't followed or discovered.

It's quite the story. And Leo knows he should be paying more attention than he is.

It's just, the takeout boxes. The smell coming from them is so strong, or maybe Leo is just abnormally sensitive to it. He thinks someone had steak, and someone else had fish. The fried rice had egg in it. His mouth is watering so badly he has to swallow every few seconds.

"Leo?" calls Mikey, and Leo startles, ripping his eyes from the trash can to look at Mikey's face. He's gripping the bedspread so hard his knuckles are cramping. He realizes this is not the first time Mikey said his name. Great, now they know he wasn't paying attention.

"Ah, sorry," he says quickly. "I didn't mean to zone out." He flashes them all the biggest smile he can, so they don't worry. "I was just, uh..."

He trails off, not sure of a way to say that he was completely distracted by the smell of their already eaten Japanese food without making it awkward.

"Sorry, Leo, we know you're tired," says Raph, reaching over and rubbing his head. "You can go back to sleep. We're not leaving for awhile."

Go back to sleep? Leo doubts he can, what with the hunger an empty yawning hole inside him. It had been muted while the cold and the exhaustion took over, but now that he's warmer and more rested his body is very painfully reminding him he still has another problem.

He's trying to come up with a casual way to approach the subject when his stomach does it for him, gurgling and growling loud enough that everyone hears it. Leo is very glad his blushes don't show up as easily as humans' do.

"Uh... heh heh." He scratches at his own cheek, then stops when he feels how disturbingly hollowed out it is. "Before that... are there any leftovers?"

Everyone's staring at him. Leo's too tired to puzzle out why they're all staring at him. Maybe there really aren't any leftovers? He did just watch Donnie throw everything away. Maybe there were some, but now they'd have to fish it out of the trash. Leo wants to say he'd happily eat it out of the trash, but that would be really weird and they'd stare at him even more.

(But he would eat it out of the trash. He may be too proud to say it out loud, but he can admit it to himself.)

"O-or," he says quickly, to fill the silence after his last question, "if... if it's not too much trouble, can you ask Dad and Barry to bring something with them when they come back? Even if it's just something from a gas station, or..." They're still staring, and Leo feels himself starting to ramble desperately, "Or if it's too late, I can just... I can just go back to sleep, hah, but... but can someone at least wake me up so I don't miss breakfast?"

His family stutters back to life at that. Raph gives a furious shake of his head and says, "Forget breakfast," which makes Leo's heart and stomach lurch painfully. Waiting until lunch? That feels like forever away.

But then Raph continues with, "Leo, why didn't you tell us you're hungry right now?"

Leo falters. "Uh... just... didn't want to interrupt the flow of the conversation," he says, which is true, but the way everyone is looking at him now, he's pretty sure it's the wrong answer.

"Please," says April, tone very close to exasperated, "interrupt the conversation."

"Will do," says Leo. But he's still not sure what to do, because no one has told him when food is coming.

(You want this? You beg for it.)

Before he can spin out on that thought, Mikey jumps off the bed and heads for the mini-fridge that Leo hadn't noticed until now. He yanks open the door and pulls out two takeout containers, a box and a cylindrical container.

"We weren't sure what you felt up to, so we got you steak hibachi and miso soup," Mikey says, waving each container in turn.

The thought of having to actually chew and swallow sounds exhausting, so Leo says, "Soup's fine." And then, just in case, he adds hastily, "Please."

"Okay," says Mikey, and even though he's clearly trying to sound upbeat, Leo can hear the strain in his voice. "Just give me a minute to heat it up for you!"

Leo would eat it cold. Leo would eat it frozen. But he bites that back and waits.

Mikey puts it in the microwave on top of the fridge. Every little tick down on the timer feels like it takes three eternities. The rest of his family seems to feel the tension as much as he does.

"April!" says Donnie abruptly, too loud to be natural. "You wanted to see what's on the sci-fi channel!"

"Thaaat's right!" she says, also a little too loudly. "I did. Hand me the remote."

Donnie gives her the remote. She turns on the TV just as the microwave dings.

Mikey yanks the door open as soon as it does, pulling the bowl out with no regard for how hot it is. He gives it a perfunctory blow to cool it down, then hurries over to the bed, pausing only to grab a plastic spoon off a little pile of utensils on the table.

He hands both the bowl and spoon to Leo, but Leo already knows his arms won't be able to maneuver the spoon, so he lets it fall into his lap, in favor of lifting the entire container to his lips. He hopes he doesn't look too pathetically eager as he tilts it back and takes his first sip.

It's good.

It's so good he starts crying.

It's not even the best miso soup he's ever had. In fact, it's a little too oily and nowhere near as good as the kind his dad makes, or what Mikey is capable of. But it doesn't matter. It wouldn't matter if this was the worst soup in the world, because right now it's the best thing Leo has ever tasted.

He may be crying more over this than he did over hugs from his family. Maybe he'll have it in him to feel bad for that later.

The TV is showing some old monster movie. His siblings pretend they're watching that and not watching him. He appreciates that, because it makes him feel less self-conscious as he desperately slurps down the soup, practically guzzling it, only pausing when he has to chew the greens here and there.

He eats until his stomach is full and warm. And then he keeps going. There's still soup left, and stopping feels impossible.

(Besides, no one actually promised him breakfast.)

"Hey, maybe you should slow down," says Donnie. Leo pauses, looking up at him, licking the remains of soup off his lips. The container is still about a third full.

Maybe Donnie is right. His stomach is actually starting to cramp. But... but...

He doesn't know what his face looks like right now. But something about it makes Donnie look sad.

He turns away, rubbing right between his fake eyebrows. "Okay, okay. Just... don't overdo it."

Leo sighs, grateful the soup isn't being taken away. He goes back to drinking it, feeling like the chasm inside him is finally beginning to fill.

-----

The next time Leo wakes up, it's because he has to puke. Unfortunately, he doesn't have time to communicate that before it's all over himself and the bedsheets.

"Whoa, Leo-" someone says, and then there's a flurry of activity around him. He can't keep up with who goes where and who says what. It's a lot to keep track of when he just woke up and is spewing half-digested miso soup and stomach bile.

"There we go... You're alright, Blue, you're alright," he hears once he comes back to his senses, and he blinks and looks over. His dad is standing on the bed next to him, and he leans in with a damp washcloth and wipes at Leo's face and mouth.

"Perhaps the soup was too much for your stomach," Splinter says as he finishes, tossing the washcloth into the floor. "How do you feel?"

"Mm... weird," Leo admits, leaning sleepily into his dad's shoulder. He shouldn't because he's gross, but Splinter lets him do it, stroking his cheek. "My stomach hurts..."

The loss of the food hurts; without anything in his stomach, he'll feel hungry again soon. Leo is terrified of that, of the deep empty chasm of his hunger returning, sucking him down into its depths. At the same time, the idea of eating makes him feel queasy.

He feels weird, and miserable, and scared, and he doesn't know when his dad came back, but he's so glad he's here.

"How much did you let him eat?" he hears Draxum ask. Leo finds the energy to feel offended that he's being talked about like he isn't in the room, but not enough energy to actually say anything about it.

"As much as he wanted," Mikey answers. Which, as Leo recalls, was almost all of the soup.

"And how much was that?"

"Here, look."

There's the sound of the mini-fridge being opened again. The pop of the takeout lid. Draxum hums in a way that does not sound pleased.

"Leonardo," he says, coming to stand by the bed now. "I have a very important question and I need you to answer: when was the last time you ate?"

Leo stares at him blearily. Then he raises a tired hand and indicates the mess all down his front.

"Don't get cute," says Draxum, ignoring the following grunt of warning Splinter directs his way. "You know what I'm asking you."

Of course Leo knows. But he doesn't want to answer. Not while his dad is holding him, and all his siblings are watching him expectantly. They aren't going to like what he has to tell them. He doesn't want to upset them.

But Draxum is unmoved and steely eyed. There's no way Leo is getting out of this without answering.

He sighs, shutting his eyes and leaning into Splinter so he doesn't have to be looking at the rest of them when he says it.

"Last time I ate was at Run of the Mill."

He hears a gasp, hears Mikey yell, "What!?" Feels Splinter's sharp intake of breath under his cheek, and then his dad shifts so he can hold him even closer.

"They... they didn't feed you in there at all?" asks April, like she doesn't quite believe it.

Leo nods.

"I should have leveled the whole building!" Donnie snaps, and Leo hears something get knocked to the ground.

Mikey comes closer, and puts a hand on his shoulder, drawing Leo's gaze back his way. He looks so upset, and Leo regrets looking. "Leo, why didn't you tell us? You didn't even say you were hungry!"

"Felt weird to bring it up in the middle of the happy reunion," he says. It's a weak justification, he knows. The look on Mikey's face just gets more miserable.

"Wait," Raph cuts in. "Wait, so... when Bishop said he gave you chances to cooperate for better living conditions, he meant..."

Leo swallows hard, not wanting to look at the distress on Raph's face. "Feeding me, yeah."

"What did he want out of you? What was he making you do?"

This part, at least, Leo can answer easily. "He wanted information. About the yokai and the Hidden City."

Raph sounds surprised. "He just... wanted you to answer questions?"

"Yeah." Leo nods again. "Like, how to get in, how many portals there are, what kind of defense capabilities there are, stuff about Draxum... That's what I remember."

"Why didn't you just tell them?"

Now Leo does look at Raph's face. He's staring at Leo with open horror and distress. But Leo doesn't understand the question, or the look. He did what he was supposed to, didn't he? He held out and didn't give Bishop any information. He did the right thing. So Raph has no reason to look so upset.

He smiles in a way he hopes is reassuring. "Hey, that's not what a hero would do, right?"

It's apparently not reassuring. If anything, Raph only looks more horrified.

He turns away from Leo abruptly and marches straight out of the room, slamming the door on the way out.

Leo doesn't understand that reaction. He did what he was supposed to, but Raph is mad at him, anyway. The rest of his family seems shocked, too, so at least Leo isn't alone.

"I'll talk to him," says April, the first to move. She leaves with much less noise, disappearing into the dark parking lot beyond the door.

Awkward silence envelops the room after that. Leo doesn't know what to do or say to break it. He made Raph mad, because he never does anything right, according to Raph. It's the same as always, but for some reason Leo feels even worse this time.

"...Well," says Draxum, cutting through the awkwardness when it becomes clear no one else wants to, "knowing this, we will have to be much more careful about what and how much you eat. I'll make a meal plan."

"Why you?" Leo grouses. "Let Donnie do it."

Donnie opens his mouth like he wants to agree, but Draxum cuts him off before he can.

"Me, because I have actual experience designing nutritious meal plans for children." Leo thinks of what he's heard about Draxum's lunchroom and makes a face, which Draxum ignores. "Besides, I can't trust any of the rest of you to actually tell Leo he can't have more to eat."

"I can handle myself," Leo argues.

"Clearly," says Draxum icily, indicating the mess still in Leo's lap, "you cannot."

Leo doesn't have a good response for that, and no one steps up to his defense. Back not even twenty four hours, and he already has multiple people mad at him. That has to be a new record.

"...Whatever," he says, because he doesn't know what else to say. Draxum nods like he actually gave approval.

There's another round of awkward silence. Splinter breaks it this time.

"Why doesn't someone call housekeeping to ask for some fresh sheets," he says, "while I help Blue take a bath."

"Ugh, yes, I'm calling them now," says Donnie. Leo notes for the first time that his most persnickety brother is as far from his bed as possible, having put the second bed and the table between them. "The whole room is starting to smell."

Leo cringes. "Sorry..."

"There is nothing for you to apologize for," his dad reassures him, patting his head. Leo isn't sure he'd say that, but he doesn't waste breath arguing. "Now, come with me."

It takes some maneuvering, but they get him out of bed without making a bigger mess. Mikey starts stripping the sheets, and he can hear Donnie on the phone with the staff across the room.

Leo's still not wearing any of his gear. It shouldn't matter because he's just in a room with his family, but he still walks to the bathroom as quickly as he can.

Splinter shuts the door once they're inside, then fills a little plastic cup with water. This he hands off to Leo, saying, "Drink this, and I will run you a nice warm bath."

Leo does as he says, and tries not to think too much about how Raph is mad at him.

-----

There's an old concrete barrier that stands between the motel parking lot and an open field. Raph hefts a piece of the crumbling concrete and chucks it as hard as he can, watching as it disappears into the tall grass beyond.

They starved him. They starved his little brother for over a week, because he wouldn't answer some questions. And he wouldn't answer those questions because...

That's not what a hero would do.

Raph's ninpo flares to life. Punching out another piece of the barrier is easy; he lifts the broken pieces and throws them after the first, watching them sail through the air.

"You better hope there aren't any security cameras out here," says a voice behind him, and he looks over his shoulder.

April is there, standing a few feet back, hands tucked in the pockets of her jacket. Raph's ninpo stutters out at the sight of her; he wonders if he looked scary.

"...What are they gonna do even if there are?" he asks. But he does stop his wanton destruction.

"I don't know, but just remember it's my credit card on file for damages." Her voice is teasing, though, and he knows she isn't actually mad. She comes over, turning so she can lean against part of the barrier that's still intact. "Come on, Big Red. Talk to me."

Raph doesn't turn around. He can't stand to look back at the motel, at the room where his brother is, tiny and weak and with a stomach that's been empty for days on end. He can't handle it right now. So he keeps his eyes on the field.

"Leo let those guys hurt him," he says.

"No he didn't," says April. "He can't help what they did to him."

"If he'd just answered their questions, they would have fed him."

"We can't know that." April shakes her head. "You heard what Draxum said about those guys. You saw what they were like. Maybe if Leo had answered their questions, they would have just killed him. Leo was probably thinking that, too."

"But that's not what he said," Raph points out.

"...Look." April takes a deep breath. "Leo... just went through a lot. We don't know what he was thinking while he was in there, or what he's thinking now. And you know that boy likes to say flashy things. Don't take anything he says right now too seriously."

"But what if this is the most truthful he's gonna be? What if he just hasn't thought of a good lie yet?"

"Raph-"

"No, you don't get it, April." Raph holds his head in his hands, like he can physically hold the dark thoughts at bay, but he can't, and they keep coming: horrific images of what could have happened, if they'd been too late, if the EPF had been less patient. "I told him to stop thinking of himself! Right before he disappeared, I told him he needed to be a hero! But Raph didn't mean like this!"

"Hey now, you don't know-" April tries, but Raph cuts her off.

"I just wanted him to stop doing everything himself! All the showboating, all the running in without talkin' to us... Raph just wanted him to remember that we're a team!" He lets go of his head and grips the concrete instead, so hard it cracks and crumbles under his fingers. "What if he took that to mean he should risk his life for everyone else? That he had to sacrifice himself?"

"Oookay, slow down there, big guy," says April, turning around and putting a hand on his arm. "You're taking one thing he said and blowing it way out of proportion."

"But what if I'm right?" Raph shakes his head. "How do I live with that, if I am? Knowing I almost killed him?"

"Okay, you look at me right now," she demands, in a way Raph can't refuse. He turns, and she reaches up and grabs his face by the cheeks, yanking him down until he bends to her eye level.

"You did not almost kill him. That was those EPF guys." Her voice is stern, and her grip on his face prevents him from objecting. "And even if you are right, and it's what you said to Leo that kept him from answering... well, then that's something the two of you will have to work out together."

She lets him go, putting her hands on her hips. "But what's done is done. Right now, Leo is exhausted and starved, and he's not really in a state for big emotional talks. So let's just get some space and get your head on straight. Once we get him home and everything's calmed down, the two of you can hash this out."

Raph lets out a strangled laugh, slumping down against the crumbling barrier. "Yeah, because that's so easy."

"I'm not saying it's easy." She sits down next to him, putting her hand on his arm. "But you guys love each other, so you'll do the hard things you have to do. I know you got this." She gives him a wink. "You're Raph."

Raph isn't sure he has that much faith in himself. But April isn't wrong very often, so he thinks he should probably listen to her.

-----

The water feels nice on Leo's skin, pleasantly warm and soothing. He sinks down until all but his eyes are in the water, letting it swirl around him.

He still feels a little exposed, but it's only Splinter in here, and that helps. It's like he's a little kid again, getting a bath from his dad, but he has to scrunch to cram his legs in the tub and that ruins the illusion.

"My Baby Blue always did enjoy a nice bath," says Splinter fondly, rustling up hotel soap for them to use.

He wets a washcloth and lathers it up, then cleans off the top of Leo's head and back of his neck, then down to his shoulders and the ridge of his shell. Leo would normally protest this kind of treatment, but right now he's not sure he can lift his arms above his head, so he doesn't.

Besides, it feels nice.

"Float on your front," Splinter says, adding, "Deep breath." It's what he always said when they were kids and he wanted to wash their shells. Everyone but Mikey can hold their breath for a long time, but he always says it anyway.

Leo takes a deep breath and flips onto his front, closing his eyes as his dad washes the back of his shell. It's so soothing he could almost take a nap here. The world is nicely muted under the water.

Splinter gives his shell three pats with his hand, the signal to sit back up. Leo does, rolling onto his back to rinse off. Splinter hands him the washcloth and soap, and he cleans his lower half, taking care around the bottom ridges of his shell.

"Thanks for the bath, Daddio," he says as he finishes. "I know I was starting to get pretty ripe." He pulls up the drain plug with a pop, watching the dirty water spin away.

He tries to imagine he's watching the last of that place drain away with it.

Splinter retrieves a fluffy white towel, drying off the top of Leo's head before handing it off. "I wasn't thinking of that," he says. "But I know a good bath always made you feel better when you were sick."

It was never really about the bath, but the undivided dad attention. How Splinter would wash his shell and pat his head and dry him off, just like he's doing now.

It occurs to Leo that he almost lost this forever, and its like his breath is taken away. He buries his face in the towel and tries to ride through it - he doesn't want to cry again.

Splinter must pick up on it, because suddenly he's sitting on the side of the tub, rubbing the top of Leo's shell. "It's okay, Blue. You're safe."

He's safe.

He really is safe, isn't he?

He lowers the towel and turns into his dad instead, wriggling his head into his lap. Splinter welcomes him, patting his head with one hand and the top of his shell with another. Leo's breath hitches and the tears break free.

"I know," says Splinter, and his voice is thick with emotion. Leo knows he can't look or he'll start sobbing. "I... was very scared for you, my son. I am so glad you're here, Leonardo. I love you very much."

"L-love you too," he warbles. His tears are falling fast, now, and Splinter takes the towel and dries them away every now and then.

By the time Leo sits up and rubs at his eyes, the towel is totally soaked through from being in the tub. Splinter moves away to grab him a fresh one, which Leo wraps himself up in.

"Leonardo," says Splinter hesitantly once he is out of the tub, "I know you may not want to talk about it right now. But I need to ask you this."

Leo wonders where this is going. He sits down on the toilet lid, looking at his dad. "Uh, okay."

Splinter looks him up and down before asking, "Did those men... hit you? Or touch you in any way?"

Oh. Leo shakes his head. "No. They didn't... I mean, they just put me in that room. They weren't, like... torturing me or anything."

He thought that would reassure his dad, but if anything Splinter only looks more sad.

"Not feeding you is torturing you," he says.

"Oh, well, yeah, I guess." Leo rubs the back of his head. "But I mean, they weren't... you know. Shocking me or whipping me or... putting me in that medieval stretchy thing from the movies."

"I see." His dad sighs, but nods. "Very well. I'm glad, at least, that you do not have any injuries."

Leo nods back. "Yeah, no, I'm all good." He tries to smile, but his smiles aren't really having the effect they usually do.

"Are you ready to go back?" asks Splinter, moving to the door. Leo nods again, standing up. "Are you still cold?"

Leo blinks in surprise, then realizes Splinter is referring to the towel he still has wrapped around himself. He's not really that cold anymore, but he grabs onto the convenient excuse, anyway.

"Uh, yeah." He grins sheepishly. "Actually, did you guys bring any of my clothes? I'm a little worried about the ride home."

"Ah." Splinter taps his chin. "I don't think we brought any of your things. Your brothers brought their hoodies, I believe, in case they needed to go in a store..." He reaches up and pats Leo's hand. "There is a gift shop in the motel lobby. I will send Purple and Orange in the morning - I'm sure they'd enjoy doing some shopping!"

"Thanks. I just need a sweatshirt or something. Maybe some pajama pants." He shrugs. "Gotta stay toasty, right?"

"That's right. No more turtle-cicles." Splinter reaches up and turns the doorknob, gesturing for Leo to lead the way.

Leo shuffles for the bed, keeping the towel tight around himself as he goes. He doesn't drop it until he's under the sheets again, safely tucked away.

Raph isn't back yet. The realization turns Leo's stomach. But Mikey barrels into bed next to him, cuddling up against one side, while Donnie scoots in on the other, tapping away at his phone, and Leo tries to forget about it.

He's sure that, as soon as he's better, Raph will be back to yell at him.

-----

Leo doesn't realize Draxum left until he comes back. He did doze off for a bit there, though, so it's not surprising.

Mikey was snoozing against Leo's arm, too, but when the door clicks shut he raises his head, blinking sleep out of his eyes. Donnie looks up from his phone. Splinter's asleep in the other bed, only grumbling incoherently at the noise before rolling over.

(Raph and April still haven't come back. It makes Leo's heart thud a little harder.)

"Hey Barry," says Mikey, voice still a little sleepy. He pushes himself up to sit against the pillows. "Find what you were looking for?"

"Yes." Draxum walks over to the bed, pulling a bottle out of a pharmacy bag. He twists the cap loose, then holds it out and says, "Leonardo, drink this."

Leo can't help the way his face screws up as he takes it, eyeing the label on the bottle. "Eugh. What is this?"

"Vegetable juice," Draxum informs him dryly.

"Gross." Leo does not bring the bottle any closer to his lips. "Can I have soda instead?"

"Absolutely not." Draxum's voice is stern. "No sugar or caffeine until I say otherwise."

The next several days are looking worse and worse. Leo grimaces. "Can I just drink water, then?"

"You can and should drink water. But you also need to steadily reintroduce your body to nutrients. The vegetable juice will help, until your stomach can handle more solid food at a time."

Leo groans, eyeing the bottle warily. Anything labeled "juice" should not be this color of red-orange.

"Draxum's just trying to help, Leo!" Mikey chimes in. "Besides, vegetable juice isn't that bad."

It's not the most reassuring endorsement, given that Mikey loves vegetables in a way Leo has never understood. But with his little brother cheering him on, he can't back down.

"Fine. Down the hatch," he mutters, then takes a swig. It tastes just as off-putting as he was imagining, and he shudders and smacks his lips. "Yuck."

"Sorry, Leo." Mikey pats his arm comfortingly. "As soon as Barry says it's okay, we'll get pizza!"

"Please don't remind me of pizza right now..."

"Here." Leo looks up to find Draxum is holding out a handful of crackers. "Eat these, too. Be sure you chew them thoroughly before you swallow. And keep drinking the juice."

Leo takes the crackers in his free hand, putting them in his lap on top of the sheets. There's only six, and they look boring even for crackers. but his stomach perks up with interest, reminding Leo that everything he put in it before got thrown up.

Leo thought he was going to be waiting until breakfast to eat again. The crackers ease that tension, relief he hadn't consciously realized he needed.

Still, can't let Draxum think Leo actually appreciates all his bullying, so Leo still makes a face as he holds up one of the crackers and examines it.

"And these are...?"

"Are you going to react like this to everything?" asks Draxum with a scoff. "They're whole wheat crackers. They'll settle your stomach, and you need food in you so can take these vitamins."

He pulls a bottle out of his bag and shakes it, filling the room with the sound of pills rattling around. Leo scrunches up his snout.

"You didn't get me the chewable kind? Or those fruit gummy ones?"

"Are you such a child you need your medicine in the form of candy?" Draxum rolls his eyes. "You will be just fine with the pills."

"Okay, okay!" Leo groans theatrically, leaning his head back. "I can't believe you guys are letting him take care of him. He'll be feeding me bugs and leaves next."

"Stop whining. No one wants to hear it this late."

"I actually like these crackers," says Donnie. "They're delightfully bland."

This statement is followed by a crunch.

The sound sends a shiver up Leo's shell, and he turns his head in time to see Donnie, one of Leo's crackers in his hand, a big bite taken out of it. He chews and swallows with a slight smile on his face, clearly unconcerned that he just took one of Leo's crackers.

Leo only had six crackers to start. Now there's five. He doesn't know when he gets any more. No one promised him breakfast. And now he only has five crackers, and not six. And he can feel the hunger coming back.

Donnie turns his head and they lock eyes. Leo has no idea what his own expression looks like, but Donnie's turns startled and then almost frightened. He's so shocked he drops the rest of the cracker into his own lap.

Leo just barely stops himself from snatching it back.

Because that would be weird. What he's doing right now is weird. Everyone is staring at him, the room has gone silent, he's acting like Donnie just committed an unforgivable sin when all he did was take a cracker, like the two of them haven't been casually taking each other's food their entire lives.

He's being weird. He needs to stop. He needs to go back to normal right now.

Five crackers can be enough. It's enough it's enough it's-

Leo forces his brain to restart, his face and posture to relax, his fingers to unclench. He schools his mouth into an unserious grin, glancing back at Draxum. "H-hey, so... how many crackers do I need to eat? Since Thief-atello just stole one."

"I'm sorry," Donnie blurts out, an extremely rare apology. "I wasn't thinking."

Leo waves a hand. "It's cool, man," he says.

"No," Donnie insists. "I shouldn't have done that, I don't know why I did that-"

Great, first he pisses off Raph and now Donnie's freaked out. Leo's family came all the way to Colorado to save him and all he's done since then is upset them.

"Dee," says Leo, and he knocks one shoulder against Donnie's. "Seriously. It's fine."

Because it is. They take food from each other all the time. Leo's the one who made it weird, not Donnie, even if he did take one of Leo's crackers.

Donnie looks at him, uncertain. He still hasn't touched the remaining cracker in his lap. Leo wishes he would finish eating it now, so it isn't tempting him.

"...Still. I won't do it again," says Donnie finally, looking down at his lap and wringing his hands. He looks miserable, and Leo hates that he caused this.

Before he can do or say anything more, Draxum gets Leo's attention by holding out a new cracker. "Here," he says, waiting until Leo takes it, before handing a few to the still shell-shocked Donnie. "Both of you can have crackers. Now don't squabble, you'll disturb the neighbors."

Donnie puts the crackers in his lap and doesn't touch them again. The air in the room is stifling. And Leo wants to eat his own crackers, but now it feels awkward.

"I think you should steal one of his to get him back," says Mikey in an exaggerated whisper, a gallant attempt to dispel the tension. It doesn't quite work, but it breaks the silence enough for Leo to force out a chuckle and pick up a cracker.

"Everyone eat what you've been given and settle down," says Draxum, going to sit on the other bed. Splinter mumbles in his sleep again and rolls over. Everyone relaxes a little more.

Leo bites into the cracker. It tastes like all of nothing, but it has a pleasant crunch between his teeth, and he finds that he likes it.

Next to him, Donnie hesitantly finishes off his own half-finished cracker. Then he half-heartedly eats the others. Leo drinks his vegetable juice, then swallows the pill Draxum gives him.

Mikey does his best to fill the room with happy chatter, and the mood lightens, little by little.

Everything's okay. He just can't do that again.

-----

Everyone but Draxum is asleep when Raph and April come back into the room, just a little before dawn. Splinter is splayed out across the bed closest to the door, while all three of his little brothers are curled around each other in the bed by the bathroom.

Raph and April spent a long time sitting by the barrier, talking intermittently between long spells of silence. Then they moved to the tank, taking a nap together on the bench seats.

April has her travel pillow and blanket now, and she takes both and spreads out at the foot of his brothers’ bed, wisely putting her head by Donnie, who sleeps still as the dead, and not Mikey, who has already moved several times since they walked in. She yawns and then conks out almost immediately, glasses held loosely in her hand against her chest.

Raph wishes he didn’t feel quite so wide awake.

Draxum is sitting in one of the chairs by the table, phone in hand. He has a notebook open and scribbles into it with a pen. Raph comes over and takes a peek: it’s all notes about nutrition, the vitamins that are most critically needed after a long term starvation event.

Draxum’s helping Leo. That makes Raph feel better, and he sinks into the other chair, leaning his head back.

“You should try to get some sleep,” says Draxum, voice low. “We’ll be leaving in a few hours.”

“Raph’s good,” he says, staying where he is.

He feels Draxum’s eyes on him, for a moment. “I’m taking watch. Go to sleep, Raphael.”

Raph hesitates, then gets up from the chair and goes to lay down next to his dad. Splinter grumbles in his sleep, but rolls over like he knows to make room for a son crawling into his bed.

From here Raph can see Leo’s face. It’s gaunt and washed out, and even with all the sleeping he’s done there are still dark circles under his eyes. He looks so fragile, and the anger burns in his chest again, that anyone could hurt him like this.

He’s safe now, though. Mikey has an arm curled around his plastron, and Donnie flanks his other side like a guard. He’s able to rest, and eat, and get better.

Raph remembers what April said. Give Leo time to heal, then talk about what happened in there. He can do that. He can be patient.

He hadn’t thought he would be able to sleep, but lying still, with his sleeping family all around him, safe and sound, puts him under in minutes.

-----

"Morning, Leo!"

Leo blinks awake, taking in his surroundings. The walls are beige, the bed is blue, there's a TV playing the morning news on low volume, there's sunlight shining through the window.

He can smell food.

"It's breakfast time!" says Mikey. He's standing next to the bed, holding a tray. Leo wriggles until he's sitting up against the pillows, grinning as he pats his lap.

"Thanks, Mikey."

"You're welcome!" Mikey gives Leo a thousand watt smile as he sets the tray down.

Leo wishes he could feel as enthusiastic as his little brother as he gets a look at his breakfast. There's a large cup of white yogurt, and a little plate of scrambled eggs that don't even look like they have pepper on them. He's glad he has food, he just wishes it was something more exciting.

He lifts his eyes and takes a look around the room. Donnie is in one of the chairs by the table, tapping away on his phone. April is in the other chair, and she smiles and gives him a little wave when he meets her eyes. His dad is in the other bed, munching on what looks like a muffin and watching the news. He doesn't see Raph, but he hears the shower running.

Draxum is standing by the doorway, watching Leo. When their gazes meet, he sighs, rubbing the furrow on his forehead.

"Are you going to ask me what you're eating again?"

"Yes!" Leo points at the cup of yogurt. "What is this!? It's not even fruit flavored!"

"It's Greek yogurt. You can have fruit when your stomach is more settled."

"Ugh..." Leo sighs, grabbing the plastic spoon off his tray and scooping up a tiny bite of yogurt. It's not terrible, but without any fruit it's not very exciting.

"Hey, look at the bright side," says Mikey, holding out a plastic cup. "You get apple juice this morning! Since it had no sugar added, Draxum said it's okay!"

Leo musters up a smile. "Well, it's better than vegetable juice..."

"Don't get too excited," says Draxum dryly. "You'll be drinking more on the drive home."

"You're such a buzzkill, Drax," Leo huffs, taking a bite of his eggs now. They're unseasoned, but they're something. And there's the part of him that is just happy to have any food, simmering under the surface and demanding he eat faster. To keep himself from cramming the whole of the plate in his mouth at once, he turns to Mikey. "Hey, sneak me a muffin. Blueberry or chocolate chip."

Mikey grimaces. "I don't think Barry wants me to do that..."

Leo pouts, chewing his eggs slowly. "Who are you going to listen to, him or me?"

"He'll listen to me," says Draxum sternly. "If you're still hungry after that, you can have some more crackers."

Leo sighs, but part of him feels better knowing the crackers are still on the table. He crams more eggs in his mouth and chews as sulkily as possible.

There's an Old Navy ad playing on TV. Splinter sits up straighter in bed when he sees it, getting muffin crumbs everywhere. "Ah, that reminds me! Blue wanted some warm clothes to wear on the ride home." Splinter reaches out and pats Mikey on the arm. "Orange, Purple - why don't the two of you go to the gift shop and do some shopping? You can get a souvenir for yourselves as well."

"Oooh, yes!" Mikey bounces excitedly in place. "Dibs on picking out Leo's clothes!"

"Gasp!" Donnie stands up, pointing at him dramatically. "You know I'm the fashionable one in this family! Leo, tell him you want me to pick out your clothes for our return trip!"

"Mmm, I dunno..." Leo grins up at his little brother, giving him a wink. "I think Angelo's got this."

Donnie makes a noise of utter betrayal while Mikey cheers and stoops to give Leo a hug. "I won't let you down, Leon!" he promises, giving Leo a big smooch on the top of his head.

"I know you won't."

"Fine then! I'll just have to make you all jealous with my own selections." Donnie looks down. "April, do you want to join us?"

"Yeah, sure." April stands up, stretching her arms above her head. "Maybe I'll get a keychain or something."

The three of them file out of the room, Donnie and Mikey still arguing animatedly. Draxum takes one of the abandoned chairs, and Splinter goes back to watching the news.

Leo continues eating his bland breakfast, and tries not to spend too much time wondering when his next meal will be. At least he's been promised crackers.

-----

Raph comes out of the bathroom about ten minutes later, just as Leo's finishing up his breakfast with a few crackers. He nearly jumps when their eyes meet.

"Oh, hey, Leo," he says, voice a forced cheerful. "You're awake! That's great!"

"Yeah," says Leo back, trying not to sound too awkward and failing. He holds up his empty cup. "Just finished breakfast."

"O-oh, yeah. Was it... good?"

Leo grimaces. "Not really."

"Oh." Raph hovers in the doorway, practically vibrating with nervous energy. Leo wonders if he should apologize, but he still doesn't know what he's apologizing for, so he doesn't.

He'd know if Raph would just go ahead and yell at him, but Raph doesn't seem eager to start. Maybe he doesn't think Leo is healed up enough yet, or maybe he doesn't want to do it in front of Splinter. Either way, no yelling seems forthcoming.

Instead, Raph says, "Uh, where's everyone else?"

"Shopping for clothes for Blue and for souvenirs for themselves," Splinter answers.

"Oh, cool. Maybe... maybe I'll go join 'em!"

Raph pats Leo on the head as he goes by, then leaves the room like it's on fire. Leo is silent; he has no idea what to say or do.

He's out of food now, too. He's already asked Draxum for crackers once, and he's not sure if asking again will actually gain him anything. And with Mikey gone, he feels too anxious to try.

He settles back on his pillows and turns his eyes to the TV, lifting the plastic spoon in his hands. He slots the handle between his teeth and chews, relaxing at the feel of it. It's sturdier than the water bottles, so he can't flatten it down as easily, but the way he can munch on it endlessly has its own appeal.

The news drones on. His dad laughs at something the anchors say. Draxum scribbles away at a notebook. And Leo leans back on his pillows and chews on the spoon.

On the ticker at the bottom of the screen, he notices the tail end of a news item about a training accident at a military facility in Colorado Springs - one injured.

-----

The outfit Mikey has picked out is a sky blue hoodie with "PIKE'S PEAK" in big block letters and darker blue plaid sweatpants. They meet Leo's standards for softness and comfiness, if not quite his standards for style. It's fine, because he's after the former right now.

"Did I do good?" Mikey asks, bouncing on his toes.

"You did great," Leo responds, motioning him closer so he can rub his head affectionately. It lacks his usual punch, but Mikey laughs and wiggles away anyway.

"We also got," Mikey rummages around in the gift store bag, then pulls out, "matching fuzzy socks!"

The socks are in their signature colors and have snowboarders on them, and each set has a terrible pun like, "SNOW RULES!" and "COOLER THAN COOL!" Leo loves them immediately.

"I think this is the best gift you've ever gotten me," says Leo sincerely. Mikey beams and comes in for a hug that Leo gladly returns.

"Here, put 'em on!" says Mikey after he backs away, nodding at the hoodie and pants on the bed. "You don't want to be cold, right?"

"Right," says Leo, lifting the hoodie in his arms. A quick glance around the room shows that they're all looking at him now - Mikey, Donnie, and April by the bed, Splinter from the other bed, Draxum at the table, Raph hovering in the doorway. Waiting for him to put the clothes on.

He wishes they wouldn't.

It's weird. He's never felt self-conscious like this. He and his brothers have never really practiced modesty the way humans do, especially around each other. And yet the idea of standing in front of them now with no clothes, not even his mask, makes him feel strangely queasy.

He tries to tell himself it's because of how he looks now. Stick thin arms and legs, weird, unhealthy skin tone, dark circles under his eyes that a few hours of unconsciousness and one night of intermittent sleep have definitely not erased. That it's just his normal vanity.

But he can still feel it: that guard's eyes on him, any time he left the safety of his hiding spot under his cot.

He pulls the hoodie on over his head while he's still in bed. Then he crawls out of bed and pulls the pants on as fast as he can.

He looks around to see if anyone noticed, but their expressions haven't changed. Mikey gives him a thumbs up.

He relaxes. With the clothes on, the feeling of being exposed finally ebbs away. And it is warmer like this, which is a plus.

It's okay. In a day or two, he'll be over this weird self-consciousness and back to normal, and no one has to know about it.

"Well, how do I look?" he asks, grinning and turning in a circle. Mikey and April clap indulgently for him.

"Lookin' good, Leo," says April, and he gives her a wink.

"Well, even though you chose to forego my aesthetic sensibilities, I got you something, too," says Donnie, pushing his way forward. He holds out a pair of flipflops, which say "We're in" and "CO" on the toes and have cartoon giraffes on the heels. Leo can't help but grin when he sees them. "Trust me, you'll want these if we have to go into any gas station restrooms. Shudder."

Leo laughs, then reaches out an arm to pull Donnie into a hug before he can escape. To his surprise, Donnie doesn't even put up a token fight against it, hugging him back more fiercely than usual.

"Thanks, I love them," he says into Donnie's ear.

"Of course you do," says Donnie smugly, but his eyes are suspiciously shiny when he breaks the hug. Nothing feels awkward between them now, even given the cracker incident earlier, and Leo is glad.

“Okay!” says April, clapping her hands. “Checkout’s in thirty minutes - if you have anything else to do, do it now.”

“Wait,” says Leo, looking around. “Where’s my mask?” It’d be nice for hiding the dark circles.

“Oh, I think Raph grabbed it,” says April, but when she turns, Raph is gone. April presses her fingers to her forehead and sighs. “Okay, you can get it later.”

Leo’s mouth suddenly feels dry. He reaches around and grabs a bottle of vegetable juice Draxum gave him, draining the last of it.

“Checkout in twenty eight minutes,” says Donnie to cut the awkwardness. “Let’s go, people!”

Leo sits on the bed and watches his family prepare to leave, gnawing on the top of his juice bottle.

-----

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” calls a voice, and Leo blinks awake to see April standing over his cot. No, not the cot - this is the bench seat in the tank. If he’s going to be sleeping so much, he needs to stop waking up confused.

And he has been sleeping a lot. The only time they woke him up was to eat another snack of crackers with a little bit of mushed up banana, like he’s some kind of baby.

The banana did help break up the monotony, though.

Leo can’t help but hope he’s being woken up for food again.

Like she read his mind, April grins and holds out a hand to help him up. “Lunch time!” she announces.

“Oh boy,” says Leo, taking the hand and slowly getting to his feet. He’s stiff from lying in the tank for so long, and he stretches and pops his arms. “More flavorless mush.”

“Maybe we can convince Drax to give you a little salt this time,” says April with a snicker. She waits for him to slip the flipflops on, then leads him out of the tank.

It occurs to him that this is the first time he’s really been out in the sun in over a week, excluding times he’s been unconscious and the short walk from the motel room to the tank. He takes a minute to just lean his face back and feel the warmth of it on his skin. It hasn’t even been that long, and he’s used to life underground, but somehow it feels different this time, foreign and new and sweet.

When he looks back at April, she’s tearing up again. She quickly wipes at the bottoms of her eyes and pulls on a smile, linking her arm around his.

“Come on. We can grab a picnic table and sit outside.”

It's then that Leo actually takes in where they are: a big travel center, or that's what the sign on the building declare. The tank is parked at the gas pumps, and Donnie, with his hood up, is excitedly talking about it to some interested truckers who have come over. He spots Mikey over at the grassy space for dog walking, laughing while a puppy licks his face, a seemingly annoyed Draxum standing off to the side with his arms folded. He doesn't see Raph or Splinter, but April fills him in as they cross the parking lot.

"Raph and Splints are inside ordering food. They have a whole diner in there!"

"Let me guess: I'm eating soup."

"I think it's potato."

"Well, at least it's not more tomato." Leo makes a face. "If I have to drink any more vegetable juice I'm going to turn red and swell up into a ball."

"You know what pizza sauce is made out of, right?" she asks, playfully bumping into him.

"Actually, I don't," he says smoothly, bumping into her back. They fake tussle outside the door for a moment, until both of them are laughing.

Someone trying to get past clears their throat loudly, and April and Leo shoot them an apologetic look before going on inside. Leo visits the restroom and tries not to look too long at the arrays of snacks on offer. April goes to help Raph and his dad with the food.

They all end up back outside at a large picnic table. His family has a mix of foods: burgers, hot dogs, salads, chicken strips. He knows there was pizza inside, and it touches him that no one picked it.

Next to everyone else's large, full plates, his own bowl of soup feels ridiculously small and sad. But he doubts any amount of pouting will convince Draxum to let him have a burger, so he digs in. At least this has some flavor.

Lunch is nice, even if Raph is still acting weird and distant. It’s just good being in the sun and the fresh air. Leo is reluctant to leave as they finish up.

“Come with me!” says Mikey as the others go to throw their trash away and buy anything they need for the return trip. He holds out his hand, and Leo takes it and follows Mikey back toward the grassy area at the edge of the parking lot. They make sure there are no dog droppings, then lay down in the grass, looking up at the blue sky and the clouds going overhead.

“I thought it’d be nice to get a little more sun before we have to get back in the tank,” says Mikey, limbs splayed out in every direction. He’s taken off his hoodie - no one at the travel center has paid much attention to the peeks of green skin they’ve been showing off, and no one is nearby right now, anyway.

It is a little hot. But the idea of being shirtless where a stranger can see him keeps Leo fully swaddled.

He pushes that thought aside, closing his eyes and just trying to enjoy the feeling of the sun on his skin, the breeze blowing by, the grass under his fingers. He doesn’t get to touch a lot of grass in the city, but it reminds him of times they would sneak out to Central Park.

“This is really nice, Angelo,” he says. “Thanks.”

“Mmhmmm.”

They’re quiet for a few minutes, just laying there, with only the ambient sounds of the travel center keeping them company. Leo starts to feel like he might doze off again.

“…Hey Leo?”

Leo blinks his eyes open, craning his neck to see Mikey. “Yeah?”

“Are you… okay?”

Ah. Maybe he should have expected this.

“Of course I’m okay,” he says, voice nonchalant. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Uh, well…” Mikey hesitantly trails off, clearly trying to decide what he wants to say.

Leo takes care of it for him. “It’s over, Mikey. You guys saved me. I’m okay.” He turns his head and grins. “And once Draxum stops being the food police, everything will be back to normal.”

“Mmm…” Mikey doesn’t sound as convinced as he should. Man, Leo’s smiles are really failing him lately. “But… if something’s bothering you… You’ll tell us, right?”

Leo pats his head. “Of course I will.”

If it’s worth bringing up to them, anyway.

Mikey’s eyes rove his face for a moment, but in the end he must be satisfied, because he smiles and rolls to toss his arm over Leo’s chest. “Okay. But I’ll hold you to that.”

“Or what, I’ll get a visit from the doctor?”

“You know it!”

Leo laughs, which gets Mikey laughing. They stay there until Raph calls their names across the parking lot, and they go back to the tank.

-----

He manages to stay awake after they stop for lunch, curled up on the bench seat. He doesn’t have the energy to talk as much as normal, but he leans against Donnie and contributes where he can. He’s just happy to be back with them, hearing and seeing them all around him.

But there’s something always at the back of his mind keeping him from fully relaxing: he doesn’t know when he gets to eat next. And he knows it will be okay - he’s with his family, and they’d never let him go hungry. He knows that, but about two and a half hours after lunch, he keeps finding himself returning to the same thought.

He’s drinking on a sugar-free Gatorade they got him at the travel center; one of the only non-vegetable or fruit drinks Draxum approved. Mikey has just finished up a story from one of the many art vlogs he watches, and, in the lag of conversation, he tries to broach the subject casually.

“Sooo… what’s our plan for the rest of the drive? Are we stopping, or…?”

“We’re going to try to make it all the way back to New York,” says April. “We already have our shifts picked out, and the autopilot is helping.”

“We can stop in a few more hours for another bathroom break,” says Donnie, pulling up a holoscreen showing their route and the drive time remaining. “Unless someone needs us to stop sooner.” He glances at Leo, and the way he’s bouncing the rim of the bottle off his teeth.

“Oh, uh, I’m good,” he says quickly, lowering the bottle. "I'm just wondering, uh... what about stopping for dinner?"

His family does about as good a job being subtle about looking at each other as he's being subtle about his worry. "We were thinking we'd probably try to find something around seven," says Donnie.

Seven. It's a little after three now. Okay. He can wait that long. What's four hours? And at least he knows what to expect now.

His family hesitantly return to their conversation. And Leo does his best to pay attention. April is telling them about all the stuff she's been doing to prepare for college in the fall, how she's already chatting with people running the student paper. She's excited about it, and Leo is excited for her.

"Ew, Leo," says Donnie suddenly, tearing him out of his thoughts. "Why are you doing that?"

Leo looks over at him in confusion. He starts to ask, Doing what?, but when he opens his mouth to speak, something falls out of his teeth and into his lap.

It's the Gatorade bottle cap, chewed down flat. Leo can see the marks from where his molars snapped through the lip, and the dents where he's been gnawing at it with his incisors.

He didn't even know he was doing that.

Everyone saw him doing that.

Embarrassment flushes through him, and he scrambles to grab the lid and toss it into their communal trash sack. Maybe no one noticed how thoroughly he had chewed on it.

"Gross," says Donnie, his nose scrunched up. So at the very least he saw. "You don't know where that's been."

"Oh please, it's not that gross," says Leo, doing his best to keep his voice light and airy. "It's just a bottle cap."

"That other people have touched and that you put into your mouth."

"Don't knock it till you try it, bro."

"I'm good not trying it."

"Your loss," says Leo with a shrug. He leans back, cool and calm and collected and not a total weirdo who gnaws on plastic like it's candy. "Stop looking at me like that, I threw it away already."

Donnie stops looking at him, literally. Things feel tense again. Leo doesn’t know how he keeps managing that.

Mikey jumps up, walking to the front of the tank, where Draxum is asleep in one of the chairs. Mikey shakes him awake, smiling in the face of his annoyed grumbling.

“Hey, Barry, is it okay if Leo has a snack?”

“Why do you have to ask him?” calls Leo, folding his arms. “Besides, I’m fine!”

His protests go ignored. “What time is it?” asks Draxum, sitting up and smoothing down his robes.

“I’m fine!” insists Leo, louder.

“It’s three fifteen,” Mikey says.

“Mm… Yes, he can have a snack.” Draxum gets up, going over to their snack cooler. “Leonardo, do you want crackers or more banana?”

“I’m fine!” Leo tries one more time, but his stomach flips when it occurs to him that he may actually not get a snack if he insists, and he wants the snack.

He sighs, sinking back in his seat, and says, “Crackers.” He wants the crunch of eating them.

Draxum brings him his crackers. There’s only four. He’s not sure why he’s getting less this time. Maybe because he was caught chewing on the lid.

He doesn’t ask. He eats what he’s been given, and then decides the best thing for everyone would be if he took another nap.

-----

Raph would have driven them all the way to New York if he’d been allowed. But they insist on having him swap with Donnie, and he ends up sitting in the back on the benches with because the other front chairs are hard for him to fit in.

Leo is asleep. He’s been sleeping a lot, but that’s to be expected. His body barely has any energy, and going by the dark circles, Raph knows he didn’t get much sleep while he was…

When Leo is awake, his family are their lively selves, chatting and laughing and enjoying each other’s company. Once he goes to sleep, everyone quiets down, Donnie dims the lights in the cab, and a weird melancholy sets in.

Leo looks terrible. They haven’t talked about it, but they all know it. Raph is shocked Leo has even been able to walk on his own, but Draxum attributes that to their reinforced mutant biology. He’s swimming in a hoodie that is his size, his hands and feet are skeletal where they poke out of his clothes. Raph wonders how long it will take for him to start filling out again, to have muscle like he did before. He’s afraid to ask.

Splinter sits with Leo’s head in his lap, rubbing his shell any time he shifts in his sleep. Mikey curls up against Raph and sniffles, and Raph pulls him closer.

He has to keep reminding himself that Leo is here, and safe. He just ate a snack, and soon they’ll get another meal in him. Just give it a week or two, and they’ll have their brother back.

And then, he’ll make sure Leo knows he never has to sacrifice himself again.

-----

Home looks just like Leo remembered it, and feels totally foreign at the same time.

His family clap for him as he walks in, and he does a little bow, which is a poor decision because it leaves him feeling lightheaded after. Luckily Raph is there to catch him and carry him from the garage to the chair in the living room. Things are still weird between them, but at least Raph isn't totally avoiding him.

(Raph still hasn't yelled at him. He wishes they could just get it over with.)

They eat lunch, with Leo getting bland soup and crackers again. Draxum notes that he could have peanut butter if they could have it in the lair, which makes Raph look pointlessly guilty, so Leo changes the subject. After lunch, April gives him a big hug and tells him she'll see him soon, but she has to go back home before her mom gets too worried. Leo feels bad when he learns she's missed several days of class now, but she just laughs and pats his head.

"I'm a senior and it's May, Leo; that I show up at all is enough for them."

Everyone's tired from being on the road for over twenty four hours, so after April leaves they unanimously agree on a movie marathon/turtle pile in the living room. His brothers drag out their comfiest pillows and blankets and set up in the floor, while Splinter cuddles up with Leo in his recliner. Draxum actually stays, to everyone's surprise, and Mikey jumps at the opportunity to introduce him to the magic of Lou Jitsu and Jupiter Jim.

Leo drifts in and out the whole evening. He'll be awake for the whole first act of a movie, then blink and suddenly they're partway through a different film. Each time he wakes his dad is there, patting his hand and saying, "Hello, Blue," and his brothers are around him, quoting their favorite lines or jumping up to act along with their favorite parts. It's normal and it's familiar and it's warm and soft.

He eats more soup for dinner, and crackers and banana and a little pudding cup, as a treat. His family gets more sleepy as evening turns to night; his dad's snoring fills the room, and Draxum finally leaves to go to his apartment. His brothers settle in and fall asleep around the middle of Jupiter Jim's Last Trip to the Moon 17, curled up in a heap at the foot of the chair.

He's home.

He's really home.

It's over.

Leo buries his face in his dad's fur and lets that thought carry him to sleep.

-----

Leo's home and it's amazing.

Raph wishes that meant everything was back to normal.

He doesn't know how to be around Leo right now. Every time he looks at him, he sees the stick thin arms and the gaunt face and he hears Leo's voice saying, That's not what a hero would do, and he doesn't know what to say anymore. What if he accidentally says something that makes Leo feel like what happened to him was right? What if he accidentally makes Leo think he should do it again?

It's only been a day, he tries to tell himself. Leo's still spending most of his time sleeping, between his regular snacks and meals. Even when he's awake, he doesn't have much energy for conversation, seeming content to just sit and listen to everyone else. It's just not the right time. It'll get better once Leo is better.

He can wait until then.

It's the afternoon now, the day after they brought Leo home. Raph just finished his workout and is making his rounds to check on everyone, just to make sure that everyone is... well, just to make sure. Splinter is in the kitchen making tea, a kind with no caffeine or sugar, as per Draxum's instructions. Mikey and Leo are in the living room, a half-asleep Leo watching Mikey play video games on the projecter.

Donnie isn't there.

His heart lurches, no matter how much he tells himself it's okay. Donnie is fine, Donnie is home, Donnie hasn't gone missing, not right after they got Leo back.

(He'd tried to tell himself Leo was fine in the beginning, too.)

He checks their rooms first, but Donnie's is empty. Then it's up to the lab, where he finds the door closed.

He knocks, and a robotic voice asks for identification. He sighs, not wanting to play this game right now.

"Donnie, it's me. You better be in there..."

The door beeps and then slides up, revealing a dimly lit lab. At first, Raph thinks he must not be here, and he's about to turn to leave, but then he hears a noise from Donnie's big computer desk.

A sniffle.

His big brother senses shifting into hyperdrive, he speed-walks over. The door slides shut behind him with a mechanical whir.

Sure enough, Donnie is there, legs pulled up into his desk chair, face buried in his knees. His goggles are off and laying on the desk, and his computer monitor shows a video, frozen on...

A white room, almost empty, save the cot that is for some reason propped up in front of the toilet, and...

Donnie sniffles again, and Raph tears his eyes away from one little brother to the other.

"Donnie...? What is this?"

Donnie sniffs and sits up a little more, rubbing under his eyes where tear tracks are already drying. "It's the surveillance video from the EPF base."

Raph gathered that much. "Why... are you watching it?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Donnie looks up at him. "I wanted to see what they did to him."

"You couldn't just ask him?"

Donnie's drawn on eyebrows go down. "I don't know, do you want to ask him?"

Raph imagines trying to ask Leo questions like that and can't help but cringe. "Okay, no. Raph doesn't want to do that."

"Exactly." Donnie gestures at the screen. "I got this footage from the base. And I erased it permanently from their systems, for the record, and destroyed the hard drives to be sure. But I kept a copy for us. I thought, if Leo wasn't in a state to... well, just in case. We might need it for medical reasons."

"But we know what's wrong with him," Raph points out.

"Do we?"

"Uh, yeah." Raph nods. "Starvation... right?"

"Well, yes." Donnie drums his fingers on the table. "But... he's different, now. He's pretending he's not, and he's doing his normal Leo thing of joking and smiling, but... he is." Donnie scowls. "And I already asked Michael to confirm my suspicions, and he said so, too, so I know this isn't me overreacting!"

"Okay, okay!" Raph holds up his hands placatingly. "So you wanted to watch the footage to see what happened. What'd you find out?"

Donnie wilts, resting his chin on his knees. "I couldn't get further than the first twenty four hours."

Raph feels a foreboding chill run over his spine. "You couldn't... or you didn't want to?"

Donnie reaches over and presses a button. The footage shifts to a different angle, so now he can see the wall Leo was curled up against. Donnie runs the footage back at a fast speed, and Raph watches as Leo gets up a few times, disappearing into the blind spot of the camera, or going to grab water from a little slot by the door, until Donnie freezes on a new scene: the wall opening up to reveal a large window.

He leans forward, putting his hands on the desk. "Raph saw that - they were watching his cell through that."

"Yes. And he would sit in that spot," Donnie runs the footage forward a bit, to where Leo is sitting against the now white wall, "because it's in a blind spot to the window."

Raph grimaces. "He didn't want them watching him."

"But it didn't matter," says Donnie, and he reaches over and taps the button to go to a new angle... and again... and again. "They have every inch of the room covered."

Raph's heart sinks. "Does he know?"

"Leo's not dumb," says Donnie, a magnanimous statement coming from him. "He knew they had to be watching him with cameras."

"But he still tried to hide..."

"He was doing whatever he had to to feel better," concludes Donnie.

Raph sighs. "I wonder if it worked."

Donnie clicks another button, and the video player closes. He swivels his chair to face Raph, his eyes shiny again.

"I don't want to watch anymore," he admits.

Raph nods. "I wouldn't want to, either."

"No, I mean... because he was trying to hide." Donnie rubs at his eyes again. "Maybe it is a little ironic for me to be saying this, but... it feels like it would be a privacy violation."

Raph turns that over. Maybe knowing what happened to Leo could help them. But what Donnie is saying feels more important.

He puts his hand on Donnie's shoulder, the part that's bare past his battleshell, and gives it a rub. "You love him and you don't want to hurt him," he concludes.

Donnie sniffles again, and then uncurls himself, putting his legs down on the ground. He doesn't have to do more than that for Raph to catch on, and Raph scoops Donnie up into a hug that is quickly returned.

"...I keep hurting him," Donnie admits, resting his head on Raph's shoulder. "I don't know how, but it keeps happening."

"...Yeah, well, join the club," says Raph sadly. He pats at Donnie's back. "Raph can't seem to say the right thing, either."

Donnie laughs miserably. "I thought getting him back would be the hard part. And then everything would go back to normal."

"Yeah..." Raph gives him a tight squeeze. "But you know what April said?"

"What?"

"That we'll do the hard part, 'cause we love him."

"Well, April is the only other smart one in this family," says Donnie, and Raph gives him a noogie with no actual pressure.

"Everything will be okay," he says. "Raph promises."

That seems to calm Donnie down. Raph just hopes he can actually keep it.

-----

It's his first night back in his room, and for the first time since escaping, Leo can't sleep.

He doesn't know why he can't. The sheets are the same as always. The dim lights from outside his subway car filter in through the windows the same as they used to. He's wearing his favorite pajamas, which have pants and long sleeves. The temperature is warm but not too hot. Conditions are perfect.

But he can't sleep.

At first he thought maybe it's because he's alone for the first time, but he doesn't think it's that. In fact, the idea of going to one of his brothers or his dad makes him feel even more exhausted. He loves them and he loves being around them, but he's had to work hard all day to not seem too weird. He caught himself chewing his spoon at lunch and had to stop. He paced the kitchen until Draxum gave the okay for him to have a snack. Mikey poked his head in while he was changing shirts earlier and he froze up, deer in the headlights. In the end, he went to the bathroom to change, because at least there aren't windows in there.

He's being weird, and trying to not be weird is taking all his energy.

So no. He's okay being alone right now. But something is still bothering him.

It's not the bed; he slept in the motel just fine. It's not the temperature, because they're making sure the lair stays nice and warm for him. And it's not the clothes, because the clothes are covering him up. And it's not the windows because it's not even like anyone is looking through them.

Right?

It's only then that Leo realizes he keeps staring out of them.

He tears his eyes away to look at the ceiling, taking deep breaths. What is he worried about? So what if the train car is full of windows? Who would even be looking at him? It's just his family outside, and if they need to talk to him they'll come in.

Besides, the windows are see-through. If someone were looking at him, he'd be able to see them.

Just to reassure himself of that, Leo looks around at all the windows again.

Yep. Still see-through. So it's fine. It's really not a big deal! No one is going to look through the windows at him here. No one is watching him. He's safe, and if he weren't, he would know, because he can see.

...Maybe he could hide under his bed.

Leo gives his head a hard shake. No. He is not going to hide under his bed, because that would be weird, and Leonardo Hamato is not weird.

Maybe he can just... put up some curtains in his room. Just, purely for aesthetic reasons. Yeah, that would look really cool. He could get some blue ones with some kind of sick design. Add some real originality to this place.

And then he could cover the windows and no one could look in unless he wanted them to.

Not that anyone is looking in, because he's home and he's safe and he's okay and he really wants to hide under his bed-

He takes deep breaths. His eyes land on the posters on the wall of the train car.

Maybe... maybe they would look better over the windows. Just... aesthetically.

He moves the posters to the windows of the train car, pressing hard to get the old tape to stick. It covers the immediate windows around his bed, but there are still others, and they're more in the dark, so Leo can't see who might be out there.

Not that anyone would be.

But if someone were, he wouldn't be able to know.

So he grabs towels next, and t-shirts, and anything he has lying around his room, and puts them on the bed. Then he sneaks to the kitchen to find a roll of masking tape.

It's not easy, but after about an hour he's managed to cover every window in the train car with something.

Just... a preview. For how sweet the curtains are going to look. And not for any weird reasons, like being scared.

Because he's not scared. He's home, and he's safe, and no one is watching him from outside the windows.

He lays down in bed and surveys his handwork. The room is even darker now, with every window covered, completely different from the stark ever-present light in that place.

It makes him feel safe and hidden.

No one can look in, and he's shielded by the dark.

(He has no idea how he's going to explain this tomorrow.)

But when he finally shuts his eyes, he sleeps like a baby.

-----

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (here) | Part 4 Part A

#rottmnt #dandy fanfiction #room fic #rise leo #rise raph #rise splinter #rise donnie #rise mikey #rise april #baron draxum #cw internalized ableism #cw vomit

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azsazz · 1 year ago

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A Snowy Starfall

Daddy!Azriel x Reader

Summary: Anon Req: Batbabies waging their OWN snowball fight imitating their dad & uncles. Some take it too seriously, others don't take it seriously at all, it's pure chaos that ends in cocoa.

Warnings: N/A

Word Count: 2,003

Notes: Happy Holidays my loves 💙

_________________________________________

“Come on, you three,” you tut towards your mate and his friends. They’re standing before the large glass windows overlooking your backyard. The sun casts deep oranges and reds across the snow-ridden land, your children shrieking as they play in the snow. A valiant snowball fight is running its course, and Azriel, Cassian, and Rhysand stand, faces pressed to the windows as they watch, quietly cheering their children on. “They’re going to notice you staring.”

“Maybe they already have,” Feyre adds from her spot at your kitchen counter. She’s concentrating intently on decorating a cookie, adding swirls of black icing to the gingerbread woman’s hand, creeping up her extended arm. The cookie’s dress is provocative, bare dough legs showing between slats of laced icing. She hardly glances up as she continues, “They’re probably imitating them as we speak.”

Curious, you peek out the window, too. Indeed, Wren and Baz have built a fortress in the snow to protect themselves from the onslaught of snowballs being thrown their way. Gideon and Nyx have joined forces against the two brothers, the latter packing the fluffy snow into tight, white balls, while Gideon launches their ammo towards your sons.

Your eldest daughter, Zuzu, and Nyx’s younger sister, Asteria, had joined the competition early on. They’d been a formidable team too, but grew bored of their brothers and cousin who were taking the snowball fight a little too seriously. Now, they are in the snow with little Castor, who had cried until she’d been let outside by her protective father, bundled up in so many clothes her wings nearly disappeared into the fabric. The girls are making snow angels, though Castor’s looks very much like a circle on the lawn.

Dark streaks dart behind the wall your sons have built and you frown, watching as Baz’s shadows help roll clumps of snow closer, creating perfectly circular snowballs. From what you’d heard from your husband’s friends, using shadows was against any and all snowball fight rules.

You cut Azriel a glance but he’s conveniently occupied, watching the game outside.

“Well, at least they’re both on the same team,” you comment to your mate, who refuses to let his gaze stray from the little boys. Good, he can watch them while he does the dishes then, since there’s a window above the sink. You pat him on the ass, nodding towards the mess of dishes in the sink. He nods in response, loping quickly over to peer out the window again. “So they’ll either both lose or both win.”

“They’ll both win,” Az responds immediately, a quick but pointed look your way. “They do take after me.”

Cassian scoffs behind you and you turn to see a scowling Nesta shooting him a look as he tries to steal a cookie. Jax giggles in her lap at his uncle's antics, but when Cassian hands him part of the cookie and its head falls off, Jax’s smile wobbles. He’s not outside due to the nature of his powers. As an empath, sensing the competitive nature of his siblings and the sting of a snowball to the face, it had been in his best interest to be inside around the luscious scents of cookies and warmth, instead of out in the bitter snow.

Nesta coos, bouncing him, and Cassian is thankful for the distraction, slipping further down the counter to where the High Lord sits, trying—and failing—to gain his mate's attention. The commander slips an arm around Rhys’ shoulders and glares at the back of Azriel’s head, continuing his complaining. “The only reason you’ve won so many is because of those damn shadows, Az.”

Azriel throws over his shoulder, wincing as Baz takes a snowball to the face, his face going red with fury. “How was I supposed to know they were unaffected by the magic restrictions?” he claims, sending said shadows out into the yard once he sees Baz’s slipping through the snow, headed for the icicles hanging off the railings of the porch. His intercept his sons in a display of authority, spearing them into blackened mist. Baz glances up to the window, locking eyes with his father, who wears a look of warning on his face, brow raised. Azriel watches his son visibly huff and take his anger out on the snow, building a ball and launching it across the playing field in frustration.

His gaze cuts across the yard, narrowing his eyes. Gideon and Nyx are crouched low behind their own pile of snow, looking like they’re scheming. He wants to trail his shadows in their direction, listen in on their conversation, but he’s alerted to Malos’ whines from the other room. If one of his youngest is awake, they either both are, or will be soon.

“Malos is up,” Az tells you softly, shutting off the water to the sink. He wipes his hands on a towel and kisses you gently on the cheek. You’re mixing color into icing for the cookies, getting ready for when it’s too dark out for the children to play. They’ll get all cleaned up and have some hot chocolate to warm their bellies, and you, Feyre, and Nesta have baked cookies for all of the children to decorate. “I’ll get them.”

“I’ll join,” Cassian answers, stealing another cookie off of a platter. He dunks it into your icing to the neck, the cookie dripping with sugary goodness as he lifts it to his mouth, shoving it inside. He ducks under your glare. “Gotta go get my baby.”

Cassian and Nesta’s youngest daughter, Sif, had been put down for a nap with both Knox and Malos. She’s still a little too young to be outside without supervision, and the eldest children of the Inner Circle demanded time outside without their parents, probably because they knew their fathers would try and take over their snowball fight had they been outside. They didn’t want any tips or tricks, not even your children, even with Azriel’s hundred of wins beneath his belt.

Jax climbs from Nesta’s lap over Rhys who lets out a harsh exhale when his knee lands a little too close to his private area, and then over to Feyre, who finally sets her cookie down to scoop your middle son in her arms.

“Pretty,” Jax comments, pointing at her decorative cookie. It looks just like her, and there’s one next to it that looks a little like Rhysand. Purple dots for eyes stare up at him. “Uncle Rhysie?”

“Good job, Jax,” Feyre coos, pressing kisses to his cheeks. They pink with a blush and he settles into her arms, looking utterly at bliss. He revels in the warmth of her emotions, the pride surging through her. It feels like warm bubbles in his chest, and he noses at her collar.

“Look who’s ready to party,” Azriel announces, entering the room, arms full with your two youngest children, Malos and Knox. Knox still looks a little sleepy, head resting against Azriel’s shoulder, cuddling into his warmth. His tiny wings are droopy with sleep, and his twin sister, Malos, is already reaching for the cookies.

Nesta is quick to scoop her away from Azriel. She claims not to have a favorite niece, but Malos and her have an understanding. You see more of Nesta in Malos’ personality than any of the children of the Inner Circle, and you’re extremely happy that they have such a close connection.

“Hi baby,” you greet Knox, who is signing mommy to you. You ease him out of Azriel’s arms, who promptly returns to his position in front of the window, pressing exaggerated kisses to his chubby cheeks. It makes him smile wide, flaring those wings that he hasn’t quite figured out how to control. “Are you ready for some yummy cookies?”

His dark eyes light with excitement. Of course your children are ready for sweets, they always are. They picked that up from Azriel, who has the biggest sweet tooth you’ve ever seen.

Cassian reenters the room with his daughter in his arms and Rhys pouts. Almost everyone in the room is preoccupied with a child in their arms, except for him. Maybe he can convince Feyre to have one more. The youngest children in the family are two now and he misses having a tiny babe around.

By the heated look in her eyes, his mate seems to be considering the same, sneaking past those shadowy walls in his mind to catch a glimpse of his thoughts. The High Lord smirks. He sends her over some imagery to go with his thoughts, and her cheeks go red. That hot look turns into one of warning, and she’s speaking out loud now, “Why don’t you call the children inside so they can get warmed up and decorate some cookies?”

“Of course, darling,” Rhys sweeps from his seat in a wisp of darkness.

Breaking a cookie in half, you give part of it to Knox, who signs thank you, munching on the sweet. The other half is passed to Malos as you head towards where your mate is finishing up the dishes, leaning against him for a moment, reveling in all of your family happily together.

“I love you,” Azriel murmurs into your hair, leaning over to sneak a bite of Knox’s cookie. Your son stares up at his father with wide eyes, and like this, he looks just like Az. It makes your heart warm, and Jax squeals in happiness in response, your happiness radiating to him. It makes your grin wider, peeking over your shoulder to see him so content in his aunt's arms.

“I love you too, Az,” you whisper back to him, resting your forehead against his.

It’s a nice moment, until the children from outside are wrangled through the door by Rhys. The boys are arguing about who has won their snowball fight, while the girls are peeling away their winter gear, excited to decorate cookies with icing and sprinkles and the edible petals Elain had given you before her trip to the Summer Court with Lucien.

“Now, now, boys,” Rhys starts, but the diplomatic tone he’s using does nothing to deter the cousins from arguing. “I’m sure we can come to a consensus without yelling and acquiescing.”

“But Baz used his shadows,” Nyx complains, wringing his gloves between his hands in frustration. “We all saw it.”

“Nyxie, don’t be mean to Baz,” Wren counters, brows furrowed. He doesn’t like it when his family argues, especially over trivial things. His heart is so kind. “You can win the snowball fight if you want, but Baz and I are gonna win the cookie decorating contest, right Bazzy?”

“No,” Baz says flatly, dropping his gear onto the floor. You give him a look but he almost seems un-bothered by it, done with the debate his cousins are currently having. “We won the snowball fight and we’re going to win the cookie decorating contest.”

You share a look with your mate, watching the scene unfold. Baz is quite the Stubborn Suriel, no matter what it comes to.

“Dad,” Nyx groans, “Can’t you do something?”

Cassian is the one who comes to the rescue, Castor reaching up at him for her sister. He helps the little one down and the older one with her undressing, peeling her thermals off layer by layer. “It’s not about who won, right boys? It’s about spending time and having fun with the ones you love.”

Feyre, Nesta, and yourself awe at his words, but Azriel and Rhysand are rolling their eyes and muttering under their breath at Cassian’s cheesy words.

“What a kiss ass.”

“Smug fucker.”

“Azriel,” you hiss, turning your body away from him, like that will hide Knox from his vulgar words. “Language.”

He winces, “Sorry love.”

It’s your turn to roll your eyes now, bouncing Knox in your arms a little as you turn fully from your mate. You poke Knox’s belly playfully before addressing the rest of the room. “How about those cookies, then? They won’t decorate themselves!”

#daddy!az #daddy!azriel #acotar #azsazz #acomaf #acowar #azriel #azriel x reader #azriel fluff #azriel/reader

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after-witch · 1 year ago

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Alone in the Dark [Gojo x Reader]

Title: Alone in the Dark [Gojo x Reader]

Synopsis: You’re training alone and Gojo has some… ideas for how to improve on your training.

Word Count: 6000ish

notes: noncon blowjob, noncon cunnilingus (done on reader), degradation/humiliation, some misogyny, mentions of reader childbearing, Gojo being a nasty creep

There was no place in the world of sorcerers for someone like you. You were too kind, too sweet--too soft.

That’s what everyone (or almost everyone) told you, almost for as long as you can remember. Yes, you can remember being a child and hearing adults tut-tut at the way you served others before yourself; at the way you made everyone stop so that a group of ducklings could cross the road; at the way you fretted over your brother when he came home black and blue and scratched-red from fighting curses.

It was bad, they said, for you to focus so much on caring for others and not enough on developing the strong skills to do what is necessary. Even when what is necessary might not be what is just or kind or thoughtful.

If you were to lament about these frustrations to the average non-sorcerer, you imagine they might widen their eyes, put their hand to their heart, or maybe even rest a hand on your shoulder. You poor thing! They might say. How cruel.

Was it cruel? You weren’t sure. You didn’t have anything else to compare it with--this was how most generations-long sorcerer families raised their children. You had to excel, you had to be strong, there was no room for weakness.

Kindness, it seems, was a weakness.

But… maybe your sweet personality wasn’t a complete weakness. Because your family didn’t throw you out, as some families did with the weaker leaks in their formidable chains. Instead, they pivoted.

If you weren’t going to be a stony-hearted sorcerer who could take down curses with their eyes closed (no pun intended, they would say, if they had a sense of humor) you would serve the family in another way.

You must still be strong, yes, but you could keep your tendency to dote and devote yourself to others if you were to take on another role: a wife. More than that--a mother. Marry a strong sorcerer, have lots of children, continue the line until your body could no longer stand having children.

And so you grew up learning duties of a different kind. How to manage a household--from the servants you would be expected to order around to keeping track of linens and pantries; how to sew, because while servants would no doubt do any heavy lifting, you could at least be expected to fix your husband’s garments or embroider a family crest on them; how to dote in the right way, acquiescing to your husband while doing your best to maintain the honor and reputation of your old and new families. How to raise children--the right way, so they hopefully don’t end up like you, needing to be delicately placed into a niche.

All this, while strengthening your jujutsu, while practicing harnessing your cursed energy, while knowing that you were not what your family wanted but you weren’t entirely useless, and you had to make the best of that.

Now that you’re an adult of marriageable age, it’s only a matter of time before they find a suitable husband for you. He must be from one of the great families, of course. You were too important to marry off to some low-level sorcerer without a stellar reputation. Not only that, but marrying someone from a prominent family (a strong family) would increase the chances that your children would be strong.

Strong children--strong sorcerers. More sorcerers--more soldiers in the ongoing battle against curses.

And if you wanted to do your duty, then you needed to be strong enough to perform it. No sorcerer wanted a weak little thing for a wife, did they? Of course not.

That’s what brought you here, alone, isolated and tired but so damn determined to improve yourself. It was your idea to come here, which seemed to please your parents. Your cursed energy has been running a little too wild lately, seeping out of you, escaping in little trickles.

It’s your own fault. Admitting this also seemed to please your parents, though it made a low pit form in your stomach, and you didn’t dare divulge into why it was your fault that cursed energy was streaking out of you like a stubborn dripping faucet.

You have too much self-doubt. You’re too worried about letting people down. You’re not confident enough, strong enough, and if you aren’t strong enough then you aren’t good enough regardless of how well you might perform on the wifely front in front of the increasingly judgemental matchmaker your parents brought in to monitor your progress.

But, no, you couldn’t say any of this to your parents. It’s not that they wouldn’t understand. It’s that they wouldn’t care. Self-doubt? No room for that here. Get rid of it. No confidence? How could you lack confidence, given your heritage? Change. No no, to be more precise, they would say: shut up, deal with it, then change.

The only person you did explain any of this to was Satoru Gojo, a friend (or colleague? Or friend-colleague? Or colleague-friend? You were never entirely sure where you stood with him) who would at least listen without completely dismissing you. Not that he did much more than cluck at you condescendingly and offer to marry you--in jest--to get your folks off your back.

You’d laughed and swatted him in the shoulder (which he didn’t mind you doing, leading you to think friend-first-then-colleague is the more appropriate moniker) and asked him for advice.

Which is what has led you here to train, alone and hard. But training was meant to be hard, so you couldn’t complain. And training alone would give you the focus you needed to actually improve.

And you would improve. You had to--not just for your family but for yourself, and your future. The wife of a sorcerer (you tried not to think too far beyond that, to what your parents had been grooming you for: to become a matriarch in the continuing line of your family’s clan) still had to be strong enough not to let cursed energy seep from her so easily.

With the right training, you were going to get better.

Right?

Right.

This is what you needed: time alone.

Because although you plan to be here for much longer, you can already tell that you’re sewing up those weaknesses within you, preventing cursed energy from sneaking out like it had been doing so readily for the past few months.

Confidence was key, after all. Your family had never been wrong on that front. You just needed to get away from the stresses of life to regain that confidence.

You sigh through your nose. The air down here is stale, but it’s not surprising. It’s not like there was anyone down here but you and the darkness and--

“Hey!”

You and the darkness and… Gojo Satoru.

“How are your leaks?!” His voice rings out cheerfully in the empty space, almost echoing.

For a moment, you fracture, and you can feel something trickle out of you. But you hold your breath and regain your senses, forcing yourself to regrip the focus you’d been maintaining for hours now.

Breathe in.

It’s just Gojo.

Breathe out.

Coming to check on you. Which means he cares, in his own way, which is more than you can say for a lot of people. But you wish he’d told you that he intended on coming. It’s a bit jarring, and a whisper of embarrassment begins to build in your chest. He was, as he didn’t mind saying (it could not rightfully be called bragging)-- “the best.”

You hear his footsteps before you see him in the dim lighting. His slow, aimless walk might have even seemed a bit creepy, if you weren’t already used to it. Or if he hadn’t called out beforehand.

He grins when he comes into view, hands in the pockets of his trousers. He’s wearing his sunglasses today, his hair down and loose. He gives a short wave, and you bite back a sigh. You don’t want to stand up--you’re still training--so you merely straighten your back a little and wave back.

“Ah, Gojo. Have I really been down here that long?” You wonder if anyone in your family has bothered to wonder where you were or took the time to track you down.

“Ah, Satoru,” he says, idly. “Oh, it’s only been a few hours.”

Just like that, there’s a sting in your chest. A few hours? Why would he check on you so early? Did he think you were that weak? Were you that weak? No--you shake the thought away, willing yourself to maintain focus, maintain the layer that keeps your cursed energy from releasing.

No, he was just… concerned about you. This would be the first time you’ve done something like this, after all. And he was always telling you that he’d be happy to give you advice, and he didn’t have the same sarcastic twang in his voice reserved for people he didn’t care for.

“So…” Gojo crouches down, getting close to your eye level. “You think you’re doing well?”

You let a smile show. A shy little smile, the kind you gave when you were feeling genuinely proud. Those smiles were few and far between when it came to your family, but you didn’t mind them in front of people like Gojo.

“Mm-hmm. I think coming here is helping me regain a sense of…” Your eyebrows furrow as he stands up and begins walking around you in slow, lazy circles. “Purpose?” Your head follows him, but he doesn’t stop or acknowledge what he’s doing. “Or um, confidence.”

He stops only when he’s right in front of you, but instead of crouching he merely leans down and gets right up in your face, a smile with a hint of teeth showing. The proximity brings heat to your face, and you lean back. He follows your motion, blue eyes behind his glasses peering at you in an almost uncharacteristically serious manner.

After a few moments, he speaks--

“I’d like to conduct a test.”

You fidget in your seated position.

“A test?”

Your heart beats a little faster--one, two, three. But you’re not worried. It’s more like you can feel the first creepy-crawlies of self doubt making their way back up your spine. Why does Gojo want to test you? He’s smarter and stronger and there’s a reason he’s consulted so much on teaching others, so… so…

You swallow that “so” while you wait for him to answer.

He taps his chin in a dramatic way, and it makes you feel better. At least, until he starts talking and seemingly confirms those creepy-crawlies. Not intentionally, though--he wouldn’t do that.

“Yes, a test! A truly great jujutsu sorcerer must be able to maintain control in all situations, no?” He waves his hands around at the surrounding space, the emptiness except for you and him. “Not in isolation. You won’t be fighting curses in isolation, will you? You won’t be fighting curse users in isolation, will you?” He asks these last two questions slowly, kindly. It makes you feel younger and more stupid, and you make a note to talk to him later about that, since he wouldn’t knowingly hurt your feelings.

“I…” You lick your lips. You brought a case of water, but you haven’t yet opened it, and your mouth is dry. Too dry. But that’s not important. What’s important is that Gojo has presented you with a very realistic, all-too-true conundrum.

You shake your head too slowly for your own liking. “No, I… I guess I won’t be.”

“You guess?” He asks, voice taking on an almost sing-song tone at the end that plucks at one of your fraying nerves.

Your heart pounds just a little harder, you feel a trickle of sweat on your forehead that you don’t wipe away. You force your breathing to even, your muscles to relax.

“I won’t be,” you reaffirm, removing all traces of doubt in your face. “I know I won’t be.”

He already started the test, you think, he just didn’t tell you. You might be mad but you’re not, not really. It’s just like Gojo to pluck out your weaknesses so he can help you better them, isn’t it? That’s what he’s here for, what he’s always been here for. To help you improve. To help you.

And you? You can do this. You were born and raised, literally, to do this. To be the best sorcerer you could be, and if you need someone like Gojo to help you, who were you to reject him? Nobody.

And so, when Gojo hums happily and plops himself down in front of you, crossing his legs to mimic your own position, you take a breath and remind yourself how lucky you are to have someone like him ready to help instead of quietly watching you fail, waiting for your downfall and wondering if it would help boost their own family’s status to knock you down a peg.

Gojo wouldn’t do that, not to you.

You take another breath, and Gojo stares at you, blinks--once, twice.

“Ready?”

You smile a little, sigh a little, and nod.

“Let’s do this.”

It takes your brain a few moments to process what happens, because it’s like there is a disconnect between your brain and your body and your soul and you don’t know how to tether them altogether again.

Gojo kisses you.

Not a chaste peck, either, but warm and wet, his tongue sliding over your lips; a slimy feeling you’ve never experienced before.

You jerk back before you know you do it, your eyes wide, knuckles pressed to your mouth.

“What--G-Gojo--”

Gojo doesn’t move from his spot on the floor. He doesn’t even seem bothered by your reaction or anything at all.

“What’s the matter?” He asks, eyeing you through his glasses. He looks above you, around you. “You’re leaking again.”

Your chest seizes. He’s right--when he kissed you, what control you’ve been confidently rebuilding was completely lost.

“I… I don’t understand how this is a test,” you get out. The words are slow and you feel stupid for saying them.

“Oh!” Gojo grins, then. “Sorry. Guess I should have explained, huh? I bet you never had training like this. Ah…” He leans forward, leaning his elbow on his knee and resting his chin lazily on his hand. “You have to be able to control your cursed energy in any situation, right?”

He waits for you to nod, so you do.

“And curses or curse users don’t always play fair. They may do something you don’t expect.”

“They won’t kiss me,” you say, but as soon as you say it, Gojo’s expression makes you question yourself. “Will… they?”

Gojo sighs, and moves to stand up.

“I guess I was wrong about you.”

Your chest hurts.

“You aren’t ready for this type of training.” He’s almost talking to himself now, getting ready to stand. “Maybe in a few years. Or, ah, maybe your family would rather you get married and your husband can decide if he wants you to reach your full potential. Maybe they won’t care, if you have enough kids…”

You try to clamp down on a stream of energy steadily making its way out of you. It’s like soured milk, bitterness, self-doubt, all clawing their way up your spine and out of you.

“Wait--” You reach for him and grip his sleeve. “I-I am ready, it’s just, I wasn’t expecting… that. I’m sorry. Please train me.” If Gojo won’t train you, won’t help you, then no one will.

Gojo tilts his head at you, considering. Then he slowly sits back down.

“Ooo-ookay. But you have to let me do my job, okay? I know what I’m doing.” He pokes you above your chest, on a clavicle showing above your shirt. The touch makes you jump. Almost makes you forget the lingering warmth on your lips… almost.

“Control your energy,” Gojo says casually. “No matter what, okay?”

You nod. And you wonder if he’ll kiss you again, but no, he’ll do something else. Try to attack you without warning or bring up something strange or maybe even try to dig under your skin with some sort of verbal spitfire.

He doesn’t do any of that.

Instead, he grips the bottom of your shirt and begins peeling it upwards with such quickness and strength that your arms go flying up with the fabric.

A noise escapes you, something like an undignified squawk, but you’re too unprepared and Gojo pulls the shirt up and over your head before you can protest or even try to stop him.

You do, however, regain your reaction time when your shirt is tossed to the side and quickly cross your arms over your bare chest. You didn’t even wear a bra, wanting to keep yourself to as few layers as possible, although it was more uncomfortable to go without because of your larger breasts.

Your cheeks burn terribly hot and you don’t know what you want to say. You just know

“S-Stop, this is, that is--this isn’t…”

This isn’t training, is it? A kiss, okay, okay, that’s something Gojo might do to tease you. Even if he went too far. But your clothes? No, no, no--

Gojo doesn’t stop smiling. You want him to stop smiling, to apologize, and to leave. But you don’t get what you want.

“This isn’t what?” He asks. There’s a stickiness to his voice that is like a filmy layer growing in your gut.

He doesn’t wait for you to respond. Instead, he reaches out and grabs your wrists, pulling them down so you can’t keep them crossed over your chest. You gasp but he keeps them held down while he leers down at your bared breasts.

He’s faster than you, and his hands are underneath your breasts, pushing them up and jiggling them before you can blink.

“These are pretty bouncy, huh?” He murmurs, to himself or maybe you, you’re not sure which would make you feel worse. Your face burns hot and your feeble attempts at batting his hands away get you nowhere. “But you’re always hiding them…” He continues to bounce your ample breasts up and down.

You can’t take it. Your skin feels like it’s on fire and you’re being touched in a way you’ve never been touched, and it’s Gojo, he shouldn’t be, he couldn’t be, doing this.

“St-stop,” you spit out, finally getting the presence of mind to jerk your body away. Amidst the embarrassment and shock is a thready bit of indignity. You aren’t some… some floozy, you’re part of a highly respected sorcerer family. He can’t just--

“This--this isn’t training! You’re just being perv--”

He presses a finger to your lips, and you hush stupidly with it. He takes it away and regards you with an expression you’ve seen him use with particularly stubborn would-be sorcerers.

“Aren’t I stronger than you?”

“Yes,” you say, helplessly. “But--”

Your hands go to cover your breast, and he bats them away.

“Don’t I know more than you?”

“Yes, but--”

“Then let me help you,” he says, taking and squeezing your hands with such earnestness that it throws your mind off balance.

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” you admit, voice mumbling and stumbling. Your eyes widen and you feel hot tears working their way to the corners of your eyes. He shouldn’t touch you… he shouldn’t!

Gojo merely uses his grip on your hands to clap them together.

“But it’s working, isn’t it? The more distracted you are, the more likely you are to leak energy. And that’s bad, right?”

While he speaks, his fingers release yours, only to slither down to the waistband of your skirt. Your breath hitches.

“Y-Yes,” you mutter.

“What is it?” he asks, fingers latching onto your waistband and tugging it down. You squirm, but he persists.

His question only dimly registers until he yanks down your skirt, pulling it down your seated legs.

“B-Bad?” You should tell him to stop. You should leave. But he’s… Gojo… and you’re just--

“And if you can control yourself, that’s…” He drawls out these words,, placing a finger on your clothed pussy and dragging it down the middle.

“Good,” you squeak, voice tight and tinny.

“Right.” He grins, all praises.

Your legs do kick then, and you try to scoot backwards, away, away, away. But he presses one hand down on your bare thigh, and you’re stuck.

“This isn’t training,” you plead, mouth opening and closing like a fish, shocked and stupid.

He peers down at you from behind his glasses.

“You trust me, don’t you?”

Your heart lurches. It aches.

“I d-d-do,” you spit out, jaw trembling as much as your body. “But…”

He gives your thigh a good squeeze.

“Th-th-then just let me do this for you, okay?”

The growing knot in your stomach twists and pulls terribly.

“How is this for me?”

He doesn’t answer at first. Instead he grips your inner thighs and pulls your legs apart. You’re aware, suddenly, of how physically strong he is--stronger than you, certainly, enough that what feeble attempts at struggling you’re still giving do nothing at all.

“I’m helping you,” he says, pulling out the word so that it’s almost a whine. “You help people all the time. I just want to return the favor. Now try to focus, okay?” As he speaks, he finally pulls at the waistband of your underwear, pulling it down your legs that have begun to feel like jelly.

“Wow.” He pulls his glasses down his nose and stares directly at your naked sex. “You have a really pretty pussy. I bet it tastes just as nice, huh?”

If your cheeks got any hotter, they might be on fire. Sweat beads at the back of your neck, your arms, your forehead.

“D-Don’t,” you say, wishing you had the guts to shut your legs and leave. But you can’t, or you won’t, you’re not sure which.

“Shhh,” he says, kneeling until he’s sprawled on the floor in between your legs. You couldn’t close them now if you had the strength. “Try to focus. That’s why I’m helping you train, right?”

The teasing glint in his tone only makes you feel worse, but it’s nothing compared to the first puff of his breath you feel against your sex.

You make a sound almost like a squeak and Gojo lets out another puff of air, on purpose this time, murmuring something happily when you keep making those noises.

“St--” You don’t get to finish the word before his mouth is on you, not bothering with any tentative licks but sloppily eating you out.

It’s an entirely foreign sensation, wet and warm, uncomfortable and strange. The fact that he keeps making positively lascivious noises only makes you feel more incapable of ignoring the reality. You shake your head and dig your nails into your palm, trying to process what’s happening as an uncomfortable heat builds between your legs.

Before long, he pulls away, and there’s a sick sensation in your stomach when you see that his lips are glossy with... with… you.

“You’re leaking down here,” he says, with the utmost of seriousness. “But I guess you can’t clamp down on that kind of leak, huh?”

You press your lips together and refuse to acknowledge him with a response.

He shrugs and goes back down between your legs, lapping at your clit with short licks of his tongue. The direct stimulation is different--tighter and more intense, and the sounds you can’t help but make are wholly undignified, short gasps and high-pitched grunts.

“Has anyone ever done this before?” He asks, pulling himself away by a fraction of an inch.

“Of course not!” Your cheeks burn at the audacity of the question. “I-I don’t, I’m not supposed to do… that before marriage.” Why you can’t seem to explicitly talk about sex to the man who is currently devouring your pussy, you don’t know.

“Ohhhh,” he says. The words are practically spoken into your twitching clit. “That makes sense… well.” He looks up at you, and flashes a smile. “Maybe we’ll get married. Can’t say I haven’t heard that rumor before.”

Before you can utter any sort of response, he leans forward and pushes you onto your back. With his body in between your legs, your legs fold over at the knee awkwardly, almost making it look like you’re displaying yourself for him.

“S-Satoru,” you say, voice hoarse, “I want to leave now.”

He shakes his head and holds up a finger.

“No way! We’re not done with training yet. Look at all that energy just seeping out of you. Tsk-tsk.” He puts the finger on his chin. “But don’t worry. I have another technique that should help… remember to focus!”

You don’t know exactly what he means until you watch warily as he lowers his finger and presses it against your wet entrance.

“No--”

But he doesn’t wait. He pushes his finger inside of you and your breath is taken away at the sudden intrusion. There’s pain and ache and the unusual foreign sensation of something inside you. You can’t help it, you clench around his finger and he coos appreciatively.

“I appreciate it,” he tells you, all honey, “but save that for my cock.”

“S-Satoru!” You whimper the words out, squirming, wiggling your legs in the air like it might actually stop him. You can feel cursed energy seeping out through you, like there’s a hole you can’t quite patch up. You fight between acknowledging what Satoru is doing--pushing his finger in and out now, sliding inside you, it hurts and feels weird but there’s a warmth, too--and keeping your cursed energy inside.

“Don’t worry,” he teases. “Not today. Don’t got the time…”

You squeeze your eyes shut, hating the hot tears that leak out, and stare up at the ceiling. Focus… focus… focus. You do focus, then, on keeping your energy from leaking out. Not because this is training--it’s not, you’re naive, not stupid--but because maybe it’s easier to bear all of this if you keep part of your mind elsewhere.

“That’s it,” he praises. “Keep concentrating… gee, you’re doing great.” The snicker in his voice makes your stomach lurch. You wish he would stop pretending this was training. It only makes it worse.

And then suddenly there’s another sensation of intrusion, and you look down to realize that he’s pushed another finger inside you.

“Hmm,” he muses. “You know, I wonder…”

Your jaw trembles as he pushes his fingers in further and wiggles them around, almost like he’s feeling for something. And then--

You shriek, your body jolts upward, and you sit fully up and instinctively grab his wrists.

“That’s the spot!” He grins, laughing, and pulls his fingers out only to bat your hands away. Then he gently pushes you back down onto the ground. Your thighs are trembling and you can feel wetness trickling out of you, slow and uncomfortable.

“I bet you’ve never been able to reach this far with your little fingers. Don’t worry, I’ll help you…”

You push yourself up on your elbows and shake your head.

“No… you, you don’t have to. You don’t need to, I’m--”

He interrupts your pitiful pleads by pushing his fingers back inside, and your breath hitches at the sensation.

“’Course I do! Gotta teach you everything. What kind of sorcerer would I be if I left you in the dust?” He watches you intently over his glasses, the blue in them agonizingly beautiful, and he finds that spot again.

But this time, he doesn't graze it in curiosity. Instead, he presses down and strokes it and it’s like an immediate shock to the system. A burst of almost painful pleasure, causing your legs to aimlessly kick and shudder without you controlling them and you let out a primal groan, not words exactly, just mumbled pleas. You feel something squirt out of you and hear Gojo’s surprised sound, a little pleased exclamation.

He doesn’t stop, though, but keeps going. The white-hot pleasure is like being touched in all the right places in all the wrong ways, and you can’t stop your thighs from quaking.

“Too much too much too much!” You get the words out, just barely, drool dribbling down your lips.

Mercifully, he pulls his finger out. You can see him look down at them through his tears, and he tsks lightly.

“You know, for such an innocent girl, you're soaking. Or is that why you’re so wet? Because I’m the first one to touch you?” He leans in and presses an almost chaste kiss to your lips. You can taste something on them, salty and almost earthy. Yourself.

“I hope I’m the last, too.”

When he pulls away, you eventually sit back up and, arms shaking, reach over for your underwear.

At this, Gojo tilts his head.

“What are you doing?”

It’s your turn to tilt your head, though you can’t tell if you’re mirroring him intentionally or not.

“My… clothes,” you say, slowly. “I’m putting them on.” Because this is over, right? He’s had his fun and you can leave and never talk to him again.

“We’re not done yet, silly.” He grabs your underwear and shoves them into his pocket, then stands up and stretches his arms casually.

You stare up at him, naked, warm wetness between your legs. Feeling dazed and spent and tired.

You’re about to ask what he means when he simply unbuttons his pants and pulls them down, boxers and all, without a word or a warning.

He grins, like he’s just shown you a present. What he’s shown you is his erect cock, glistening at the end with a wetness of its own. You’ve never actually seen a man naked before, a few photos in a pilfered naughty magazine that you snuck out of a friend’s house notwithstanding. It’s fleshy and slick, thick.

“Now,” Gojo says, looking down at you in more ways than one. “Here’s the real test!”

His name comes out of your mouth pitifully, but he just pushes a finger to your lips and smiles.

“C’mon. You’re sweet, aren’t you? Always helping everyone else. I helped you just now, so now you return the favor. Easy.”

Your face screws up in a grimace. You can feel hot tears still pricking at your eyes, threatening to fall again. Then you look up at his face and down at his cock and then back at his face.

You’re not entirely ignorant of what he wants you to do--you just know that seeing a picture or reading about it in a spicy novel is far different than experiencing it for real. Especially like this. Especially with him.

“I don’t… I’ve never…”

He pats the top of your head gently, but strangely, keeps his palm on the back of your head afterward.

“I know, I know. But I’ll teach you. Besides,” and there’s that awful grin in this tone again, “it’s not enough to control your energy while things are being done to you. You have to control it while you do things to others, right?”

He shifts forward and his cock is right in front of your face. You can’t really look away. You can smell him, even, a musky smell. Not wholly unpleasant but like the taste on your lips from his own, there’s an earthiness to it. A primal sense.

You want to run. You should. Others would in this situation, wouldn’t they? But he’ll just bring you back, if you do. Or worse, let you go and… who knows what he might say to others? At least if you do what he wants, he can’t do anything worse than this.

You hope.

“What do I do?” You whisper.

He releases his grip on your head only to clap his hands twice.

“There’s my girl! You’ve got the right spirit.” He beams down at you and you hate how the blue of his eye peeks through the top of his glasses and the way his smile should make you feel good, but only makes you squirm.

He shifts forward again until his cock brushes up against your cheek. You gasp and lean backward, only to find that his hand is back against your head, keeping you in please.

“Open your mouth,” he says, almost sweetly.

And you don’t want that thing on your face anymore so you do, opening just a little.

“Wider. Like you’re at the dentist. Watch your teeth.” He sounds more serious. Like he’s instructing you--and he is, isn’t he? you think, sickly.

You open wide, feeling stupid, feeling sick, as he guides his cock into your mouth. He lets out a sigh of appreciation as he pushes inside, and you instinctively make a muffled noise of protest--this isn’t right, this isn’t right. In front of you are his naked hips, the base of his cock, a smattering of pubic hair.

The taste of him is vaguely salty and warm, but it’s the sensation of having something--having him--filling your mouth that makes you back your head up, wanting him out. But the hand on the back of your head keeps you in place, pushing. His cock hits the back of your throat and you gag. Tears stream down your cheeks from reflex and the realization of what’s happening.

He snickers, but pulls back a little.

“Sorry, sorry, I’ll be more gentle.”

He begins to move, then. Slowly at first. You don’t do anything but keep your mouth open, keep your tongue pressed flat to avoid touching his cock, though you soon find this to be an impossible task. You can’t help but gag a little when he pushes, but at least he seems to be trying to avoid doing it on purpose.

It’s a small mercy, you think, though what counts for “mercy” right now is highly debatable.

Your cheeks are hot like fire as you begin to taste more of him, feel more of him. He’s inside you, all flesh and warmth, an extension of himself that he’s using to--to what? Tease you? Use you? Something else?

He begins to move faster, and you gag, trying to mumble his name in plea around his cock. He groans and the hand on your head grips harder.

“Oh, fuck, don’t do that. I won’t be able to control myself.”

You want to sob but you’re afraid of moving your mouth so much. The tears fall down your face, regardless.

“Good girl, you’re being so good… you were born for this, weren’t you?”

When you look up, Satoru is looking down at you the way you think someone might look at a nice collectible figurine. A precious item to be touched and dusted at whim.

“Born to be a good sorcerer’s wife,” he continues, and it’s almost as if he’s talking more to himself than to you. “That’s what we’re doing now, aren’t we? Practicing that? There’s all sorts of training for sorcerers, you know…” His thrusts begin to get less controlled, quicker. “Practicing controlling energy… controlling techniques… all those little nuances of life as a sorcerer. Like this.” The thrusts are so quick that you start making helpless noises around them, little grunts. “You’d be a good wife, m-maybe--” His breath hitches, the first time you’ve heard him lose control. “Even a good mother, after a while.”

You make a sound of protest--it’s the last thing you want to be thinking of right now--but he shushes you and starts thrusting sloppily, clearly lost in his thoughts. “You’ve even got nice big tits, don’t you? Perfect for breastfeeding or, fuck, holding onto while we fuck…” He sighs, languid. “I’ll try that next time, okay? Gotta be patient.”

His words seep into you like cursed energy, confusing (it is true, you were raised to be a wife, raised to have children,--but this?) and hurtful and twisting in your stomach.

Suddenly he pulls himself out of your mouth. Your lips make a wet plop and you open them to start to ask what he’s doing, but you don’t have the time to ask, because there’s suddenly something warm and thick all over your face. Something lands on your lashes and you blink, feeling a salty sting on your eye.

Your pussy clenches and you don’t know why.

As you sit there, shocked, dazed, you hear a click.

Oh.

He took a picture.

You wipe at your eye, cringing at the feeling of something wet and globby on your hands, and look at him with wide, teary eyes.

“Just for safekeeping,” he says, tucking the phone into his pocket. “Wouldn’t want this to get out, would you? Would definitely put a damper on your marriage prospects…”

There’s no reason you shouldn’t sob, now, without Gojo in your mouth. So you do. Your face crumples and everything that just happened hits you all at once, until you’re weeping pitifully in front of him.

You’re dimly aware of him leaning down before he pulls out a handkerchief and wipes his cum off your face like he’s wiping at a bit of stubborn dirt. He wipes at your tears with his fingers, at least.

“Don’t be so glum! You did great!”

He presses a kiss to your cheek and straightens up.

“I’ll be sure to tell your father about your improvements in cursed energy control. He’ll be happy, don’t you think?”

You don’t answer, because you don’t have words anymore.

He leaves, his footsteps receding loud. You don’t watch him go. Instead you sit there in the same position, naked, wet, feeling sticky and used.

And like that, you’re alone again.

You don’t try to dampen down the energy that leaks from you this time.

#gojo x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #gojo satoru x reader #afterwitch writes

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stargazedwinchester · 12 days ago

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Lame ♡ Dean

This is a rewrite! It might not be amazing but I tried lmao, the rest of my rewrites are linked here

Guys icl I've been looking back at my old writings and they're so EXCRUTIATINGLY BAD I could die. There will only be a few of these and the rest will be locked up somewhere on my onedrive so no one has to read them anymore. I'm deadass they're so bad

Summary: Dean thinks he's hilarious whilst drunk and tries pick up lines on you.

Word count: 710

The pair of brothers dedicated a day off specifically to rest and recharge. They both had previously agreed to go down to a dingy dive and drink the pain away, but then changed their minds to stay at the bunker.

Sam gave up after sharing a bottle of whiskey with Dean and headed off to bed by 9. Dean, however, was clinging to you like crazy. You sat comfortably reading a large tattered book, researching for your own knowledge. He sat beside you, his usual shiny green eyes now dim from how much alcohol he’s had, and from how tired he is. He gazes up at you, admiring you.

“Y/N…” He starts, dragging your name out, tucking a piece of hair behind your ear. “Dean…” You copied him, still focusing solely on the book. His cologne had worn in since this morning, the faint, musky smell you can’t get enough of. Whatever cologne this is, it drives you crazy. The mix of that and the scent of whiskey are attractive in a way that you can’t explain.

“You’re not going to bed yet? You’re drunk as hell.” You say, glancing up from your book, your eyes meeting his. You await an answer. “Dean?” You ask him again, and he shakes his head insolently. “No. I want to stay here with you.” He inches closer to you, and you turn to face him. His pupils dilated and huge.

“You’re staring.”

“I can’t help but look at pretty things,” He mumbles, making you look at him. “And you’re a pretty thing.” He smiles childishly. “You’re proud of that one, aren’t you?” You laugh, his cheesy grin warming your heart.

“Did that work on you?” He asks genuinely. “Honestly Dean, not yet. You’re drunk and I’m not insinuating anything.” You pat him on the shoulder, unfolding your legs and standing up. Placing your book on the end table, Dean follows suit. “Wait, wait, wait.” He stops you in your tracks. “If I flip a coin, what are the chances of me getting a kiss?” He sneers, and you tut.

“What about now?”

“You’re drunk, stop it.”

“I’m not drunk. I’m just intoxicated by you.” Dean smiles at how smooth he thinks he’s being. You laugh at his awkwardness, and he plants his hand on your hair again. He chuckles and you roll your eyes. You guide your hand toward his, interlocking fingers so he can’t let go. “Come on, you need to go to bed.” You insist, and he yawns. He hunches his back like an elderly man, and you interlock arms. “Come on, oldie. It’s past your bedtime.” You laugh to yourself, and he gasps. “I’m not old.”

“You’re 30.”

“That’s not old. You’re a liar.” He raises his voice and you shush him.

Yourself and Dean had been an ‘almost’ couple for a long time. The hunter's life has never been easy, so you both had agreed to keep things on the down-low. This excludes the odd hookup and, of course, you both have needs.

Dean inhales as if to yell more, and you shut him up by pressing your lips to his. Pulling away, Dean looks shocked. He smirks, raising his eyebrow. “I know where this is going,” he chuckles, the top of his tongue just touching the bottom of his teeth. His cheeky demeanour makes you laugh. “Shut up.”

Arriving into Dean’s bedroom, he runs over to the bed and dives onto it. His face lands first into a pillow. You remove his flannel, then jeans, then t-shirt. You lay his clothes on the floor, then climb on top of the bed with him. He waits for you to get comfy before he digs his face into your neck. Dean keeps his mouth close to your ear.

“What’s you’re favourite silverware?” He asks, a smile in his voice. You know another stupid pick-up line is on the way.

“I don’t know, Dean, what’s yours?”

“Spoons, ‘cause I like spooning!” He chortles, and you roll your eyes but join in with his childlike laughter.

“Shut up, you’re so lame.”

“But you love me.”

“I do.” You smile. After a while, there’s silence. Thinking he was finally asleep, he mumbles; “There’s a party in my pants, and you’re invited.”

“So lame.”

#supernatural #spn #spn imagines #supernatural imagines #dean winchester #dean winchester imagines #spn imagine #supernatural imagine #dean x reader #dean x f!reader #dean x you #dean x y/n #dean winchester x y/n #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester x f!reader

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jemjams02 · 8 months ago

Note

Could you write Solomon and Diavolo dating headcannons, both nsfw and sfw?

Also, have a good day!

-anon 🪼

I got u anon <3

Diavolo

Dia is a very cliché lover, I'm talking pulling out all the stops from the worst romance movies

The first time you stayed the night at the palace with him as his lover, the room was filled with as many rose petals as he could find, candles too! He had several things prepared for your stay as well! There was a gift basket in the bathroom with shower/bathroom items with your name on them, as well as your favorite products. There was even a brand-new toothbrush on the vanity next to his! Needless to say, he's over the moon about you.

PAMPERS you!!!

he uses his status to get you anything you ask for! You could ask him for the heart of King Tut, and he'd figure out how to get it for you

you're certainly one of the only people in the entire Devildom that will even consider asking the Demon Prince for a piggyback ride, and he will do it no questions asked! He loves using his demonic strength to carry you, even if you really only ask when you're tired

he's very proud to be your partner, he would shout it from the balcony every morning if he could

doesn't let anyone speak ill of you, he has eyes and ears everywhere, and if someone dares use your name negatively, they will often disappear. You usually don't even know you're being talked about.

Unfortunately, his status also gets in the way of many things, he's often very busy with royal demon matters, but once your relationship has become public knowledge, he doesn't mind having you at his side during meetings! He'll also gladly have you seated nicely on his lap while he does his daily paperwork, reveling in your company

Dia's a very lonely demon, so he's quite clingy, asking to spend any and all free time he may have with you! Although, he also asks you to keep him company when he doesn't have free time, which he'll understand if you're not up to it that day

NSFW

Diavolo, surprisingly, has very little experience. Often times, no one dares to flirt with him, and when they do he has to consider their motives. That being said, he is also absolutely shameless about asking for advice from the brothers (probably Asmodeus)

Your first time with him was straight out of a romance novel, he pulled out all the stops from mood lighting to incense; he even made a playlist after searching "best songs to have sex to"

He's a large demon, so he takes his time with you, starting with kisses. Lots of kisses; and the moment you find yourself unable to stifle a giggle, he sinks his teeth into your skin.

Possessive, and will mark you up like no tomorrow, be prepared to walk around with very visible hickeys

Likes lingerie, and has bought a couple of lovely sets, mostly consisting of a deep red color. However he finds himself unable to resist those teeny sleep shorts and tank top you have in your pajama roster; especially if you have nothing on underneath

Has you cum on his fingers several times before even attempting to fuck you. Enough that you're often exhausted by the time he deems you prepared enough

The first time he sank into you, his demon form came out, it felt so good. He also just likes fucking in his demon form, and can certainly tell you do as well.

Sex with Dia lasts hours, usually just short of you passing out, so aftercare is a huge part of the evening! He carries you to the bath, and everything smells like lavender. He's very gentle as he cleans you off with a warm washcloth, and you're often lulled to sleep by the warmth and comfort

Solomon

He likes to annoy you, but in the cute boyfriend way. Like randomly dabbing you up

Casual dates galore! He needs to go grocery shopping? Why don't you come with him! Wanna go to the bookstore? Oh? You're craving Akudonald's? He'll go! He's not one for anything super fancy, although he will take you somewhere nice every once in a while

Very attentive and giving, but like you think he's not paying attention, and he actually is. That book series from the human world you'd been keeping up with? He hands you the newest volume one day! That bracelet you considered at a sop the other day? It's on your wrist the next week. You're struggling with a class? Oh look, a detailed study guide for the whole year.

Not one to really initiate PDA past handholding, but isn't opposed to it! If you wanna make out at this café right now, feel fucking free baby

Bad texter. He often gets so engrossed in his work/experiments that his phone goes ignored for hours

Consistently tries to cook for you (you never let him in the kitchen)

He's not very clingy, and can go at least a day without seeing you, but he likes your company, and wants to make sure you know you're loved! When he's off doing something far away, he'll call you every morning when he wakes up, and every night before he sleeps. If somehow you're unable to answer due to time zones, he'll leave heartfelt voicemails for you to wake up to

Definitely uses your proximity to Lucifer to try and make a pact with him. It's worth a try, but ultimately gets him nowhere.

NSFW

Being a human in a land of demons can make a man feel...insecure to say the least, but what he lacks in demonic traits, he makes up for with magic. It's hard to go a night with him without a little sorcery; perhaps he whispers an incantation that will heighten your sensitivity before he assaults your senses with him. His voice, his hands, his scent; they all envelop you until the only thing running through your head is his name

His stamina isn't like a demon's but it's better than the average human's so he's often tired when you are, and is more than happy to just fall asleep and clean up later, unless you insist upon washing up right away (he may protest a little, but he always relents)

A little more blunt about what he wants than some others. Outright asking to fuck during makeouts is a frequent occurrence.

Enjoys cockwarming, it's relaxing. Plus, he gets to tease you to no end, which he also very much enjoys

Speaking of teasing, it's endless. He particularly likes edging you, feigning pity when you start begging to cum before giving you what you want; over and over again.

Needs a breather after he cums, his heart is pumping in his ears, just give him a second and he'll be fine :)

Wants to fuck your throat

Into choking, both getting choked and choking you

Doesn't mind letting you take the lead

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me!#obey me swd #obey me headcannons #obey me smut #obey me solomon #obey me diavolo #diavolo smut #solomon smut #obey me solomon smut #obey me diavolo smut #obey me diavolo headcannons #obey me solomon headcannons #diavolo obey me #diavolo om #solomon obey me #solomon om

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lov3-lik3-ghosts · 3 months ago

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Baby Vamp

Request: The Cullens hc with a newborn reader (vampire not baby)? by 🥝 anon.

Pairing: Platonic Cullen’s x vampire!reader.

Warnings: Not beta nor proofread. No Bella mentioned. Platonic!!!

Word Count: 324.

Note: I’m so sorry, this is definitely not my best work :(

| mother m-list

• Emmett finds it funny when you feed. Trying not to be a messy eater as a vampire is hard, you can’t help it, he should leave you alone.

• Esme mothers you much more than the others, except maybe Jasper. Jasper actually feels closer to you because of that.

• Alice loves to take you shopping. You’re a new you, you should dress like it too; at least that’s what she tells you as she drags you to the car.

• Rosalie is sceptical of you at first and then you say you like her car. She decides if no one else will take an interest, she can make you. You love it.

• Carlisle adores you. You make his family happy and you like to sit with him in his office while he does his paperwork, he likes that you take an interest.

• Jasper chooses the car with you in it nine times out of ten. He likes your music taste, it makes him feel human.

• Edward’s great when it comes to teaching you how to hunt and authentically control your thirst.

• He’s also great at making sure you don’t have emotional blockage via your thoughts; Jasper’s a big help.

• Esme cleans your mouth like you’re a toddler when you come home with your food around your mouth; she tuts and coos as she does.

• Carlisle has you a room ready for you to decorate the second Alice has a vision. (Esme helps decorate.)

• Emmett’s in full on annoying brother mode, headlocks and noogies all the time. (He’s in for a big surprise when you break a window shoving him off of you.)

• Alice has a whole photo album of just you in over the top outfits; most while you hunt which isn’t ideal but they call them your baby pictures.

• Rosalie babies you (she thinks she’s being discreet but you all know).

~ 𐀔 ~ 𐀔 ~ 𐀔 ~

Likes, comments and reblogs are extremely appreciated and very encouraging!

I do not give permission for my work to be translated or reposted on this site or otherwise!

#🥝 anon #twilight x reader #twilight #the cullens #cullens x reader #platonic #emmett cullen #rosalie hale #carlisle cullen #esme cullen #edward cullen #alice cullen #jasper hale #vampire reader

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wxstros · 5 months ago

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dream a little dream of me - aegon & aemond targaryen

summary: There were many things you regretted doing; drinking milk on a hot day, letting your dickwad of a boyfriend lie to your face... and creating a dr after reading a dark romance and subconsciously modelling traits after morally grey men; because unlike Wanda Maximoff, they followed you to the real world.

warnings: morally grey characters. dark themes. typical targc*st. jace was supposed to be the love interest but aha! smut. cursing. oral.

pairings: aemond targaryen x reader, aegon targaryen x reader.

notes: this is probably an prologue or a synopsis or a test chapter one! just had to write it so the plot isn't lost!!

"Dōna mandia.." Aegon whispers, brushing a ghost of a kiss on your own; his breathing was slow, as if savoring your closeness, "let me drink wine from your lips alone." he uttered in a low voice, making a noise from the back of his throat as your lips part, wispy lashes brushing against his cheeks as you trembled beneath his fingers.

"Such a jumpy little thing, aren't you?" Aemond tuts, a hint of a smile on his lips. "We barely touched you and still..." your breath was caught in your throat at the feeling of his kisses on your neck; his arms wounding atightly around your waist, fingers splayed around your stomach.

You could hardly breathe from their seeking, probing touches, let alone move when they pinned you inbetween them. Your throat closed up and you struggled to breathe when Aemond's fingers breached your nightwear, his forefinger brushing against your folds, "Is this for us, dōna mandia? Our sweet sister, dripping... aching to be fucked by her own blood." He mocked, repeating your own words with disdain.

Aegon smirked, cupping your face with a firm grip, "What? That strong bastard not doing it for you? Do you regret choosing him already?" you whimpered as Aemond thrust a finger into you; slipping in with ease from your own wetness. You hated how your body reacts to their proximity, and their damn, filthy words! You were both humiliated and aroused. Ashamed and.. unbelievably turned on. Fuck. Wasn't this ironic? For all your unspoken convictions, when it came down to it, weren't you as weak and pliant in their arms? Your only consolation was weak; this was merely a fantasy. A fantasy. A fanta....

"Fuck!" Your cry was genuine, as you felt Aegon's lips suckling on your pearl; lapping up at your cunt with invigorated will, while Aemond worked in tandem, thrusting in and out of your sloppy cunt.

"Cry out, mandia. Louder. Let the servants hear you!" Aemond coos, nipping at a sensitive spot in your neck. Your breath came out ragged, leaning most of your weight behind Aemond, as his brother lifted your leg to his shoulder, opening you more to his mouth. Your eyes were half lidded from pleasure... a distant ringing echoing in the back of your head... an anxious purr... a clamor and a yelp escaped your parted lips as he flattens his tongue on your core—

You jolted awake, scrambling to turn off your screaming alarm, and cursing altogether. You didn't know wether to thank the alarm rang when it did, or be frustrated from being sexually frustrated. It was merely a dream, of sorts, yet you felt the uncomfortable heat inbetween your legs as if it was real.

Forget about it, you muttered to yourself. You hadn't planned for the plot to go south, when you'd imagined it; it was supposed to be wholesome, and sweet, a sort of fix it for your own relaxation. Something to comfort yourself as the series completely tore down any sort a happy ending for your favorite characters on television.

But as it stands, just like in the series, you had little control over what your characters did; it was as if they have their own free will, and desires independent from what you had thought them as. They could hold conversations properly, engage in witty banter, flirt— you were incredibly baffled when the first hint of attraction had come to light with your so called brothers.

Nevertheless, you chalked it off to circumstances. They were unloved; neglected and lost with the expectations of many before their shoulders. It was natural they would hold on to affection and tenderness without any sort of ill motive; it was human nature to seek love, afterall.

But your designs were clearly intended for Rhaenyra's oldest son... how come, there was a side plot, in the realization of your love story with Jacaerys? Was there some manual, you should have read when constructing a desired reality? You thought it was more on feelings!

Shrugging off the night's exciting festivity, you rose from your bed, and took to the shower as swift as you could. You still had classes to attend, assignments, papers to write... dreaming was a stress relief, so you shouldn't think about it as deeply as you should. You couldn't dwell on it with normal, society accepted, morals. It wasn't real.

And the Targaryen brothers? Fucking easy on the eyes. Who can blame you from deviating from the plot? You would climb them like a tree, surely.

You had to laud the whole casting team for casting such delicious villains. Ewan Mitchell and Tom Glynn-Carney are so gorgeous, you could cry.

You dressed for the day, skipping breakfast, as you were already too late, and leaving your dorms to attend to the real world..

#hotd x reader #hotd x you #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon ii targaryen #aegon ii targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #yandere hotd #hotd #hotd fanfiction

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simplyraeblue · 2 months ago

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hunter and hunted (jjk)

college (summer) break au: a fic in which y/n is pining over Yuji's older brother Sukuna, while unbeknownst to her, Choso is doing the same thing for her. contents: sukuna x reader, choso x reader, modern college AU, yuji and choso are brothers, sukuna and yuji are brothers, smut warning, fem reader

chapter warnings/tags: mild angst, swearing, filthy raunchy smut, oral (reader receiving), squirting, p in v, creampie, i was diabolic writing this, choso's an oral god, use of "angel" A/N: oh my god I can't believe we've come to the end... how? how how how? it feels like just yesterday I started this hot mess of a fanfic and now it's complete. if you hated it; sucks for you. if you loved it; thank you so much. THANK YOU to all who have commented, reblogged, and showed continous support for this mini series! ദ്ദി(ó﹏ò｡) i love you all so much muah muah MUAH! I've got a little treat in store at the end of this for you, so stay tuned!

index part fourteen | the end no more sorry

master list

part fifteen word count : 5,764 (+ 635 in bonus content)

two months later

school was in full swing again, and the weather was shifting; sandals were swapped for boots, and ball caps into beanies. students flooded the campus in heavy coats, clutching their textbooks, but not everyone could adapt to the change.

your breath formed a fog in front of you as you hurried through campus, realizing you were late. oh so fucking late. Yuji was already waiting for you at the library, ready to scold you for neglecting your studies – though really it would be Megumi doing the actual scolding.

your phone buzzed in your pocket, and as you pulled it out to check the message, you let out a frustrated sigh. of course, Nobara was skipping the study session. she always preferred wild Thursday nights to hitting the books. honestly, you kind of wished you had done the same.

after rushing (silently) through the library, you finally spotted Yuji and Megumi in a study room. you pushed through the door and immediately felt Megumi’s disapproving gaze. “you’re late.” he said with a tut.

Yuji groaned, sliding him a small bill, and your jaw dropped. “you bet on whether I’d be late?” you asked, setting your things down a bit harder than necessary.

“not if you’d be late, but how late.” Yuji clarified as you took a seat. you quickly flipped open your textbook, trying to catch up to where they were while both of them just stared at you.

you glared at them, eyebrows furrowed. “what? you’re looking at me like I committed a crime by being late.”

“we were just wondering…” Yuji started.

“…if you wanted to skip studying and join Nobara.” Megumi finished.

you gasped. “Megumi Fushiguro, you want to party instead of study? what has gotten into you?”

Megumi rolled his eyes, but there was a hint of amusement in his expression. “don’t act so surprised. you know how important studying is to me, but even we need a break sometimes.”

you crossed your arms, pretending to be annoyed. “sure, but you’re the last person I expected to suggest ditching our study session. what’s next, are you going to start dancing at parties?”

Yuji chuckled, nudging Megumi playfully. “hey, maybe we could both use some fun. besides, Nobara always knows how to make things exciting. it could be a nice change of pace.”

you hesitated, glancing back at your textbook, then at their eager faces. “but what about grades?” pfft yeah right.

“they’ll still be there when we get back.” Megumi said, his tone surprisingly persuasive. “just one night won’t hurt.”

you took a deep breath, weighing your options. part of you wanted to dive into your studies, but the thought of a spontaneous night out with friends was tempting. finally, you sighed, a smile creeping onto your face. “alright, but only for a little while! we’ll come back and study after.”

“no we won’t!” Yuji joked as he patted Megumi’s back and stood from his chair.

so now, here you were, three shots deep into a bar with your friends. “I can’t believe you convinced Megumi to come out!” Nobara shouted over the music, arm slung around your shoulder.

“actually, it was his idea!” you responded with a grin. everyone was surprised, truly, but you weren’t complaining.

the last two months had been nothing short of dreary, and you didn’t mean the weather.

moving out of Yuji’s house had been the right choice. it felt like you could finally breathe again, even though each breath still carried a twinge of pain in your heart. while you were relieved to escape the heavy tension between Sukuna and Choso, you missed the latter with every fiber of your being.

it wasn’t for lack of effort on his side. for the first month, Choso had begged Yuji for your address, but found that his brother was under strict orders not to share it. he called and texted constantly, yet you couldn’t bring yourself to respond to any of it.

you were determined to stick to the belief that he would find someone better without you.

Sukuna, on the other hand, had been much more persistent. by the third week of living in your new apartment, he showed up on your doorstep. despite your protests, he somehow ended up on your couch, enduring nearly an hour of your yelling.

in the end, he accepted defeat. you vividly remember the relief you felt when Sukuna asked, “can we just be friends?”

friends. yes, you could manage that. any feelings you had for Sukuna had faded away during your relationship with Choso, and while you hadn’t fully realized it at the time, you were sure of it now.

now here you were, being nagged by both Yuji and Sukuna, urging you to reach out to Choso. how had you gone from hating the eldest brother to listening to him go on about how you’d made the biggest mistake?

“do you realize how this has affected him?” Sukuna asked one night over a pint of beer at a pub. “while I could drown out my heartbreak-“

“oh, sure.” you rolled your eyes.

“-excuse me. get over my bruised ego, then.” Sukuna smirked at your reaction, though he meant what he said. he understood now wasn’t the right moment to delve deeper. “I could go out, pick up a woman at the bar, and bring her home. Choso, though? he hasn’t done any of that. I haven’t seen him talk to a woman once.”

“yeah, right. Choso could walk down the street and charm any girl.” you joked, but the thought made your stomach churn.

Sukuna chuckled. “doesn’t matter. he’s barely left his room.”

“oh.” was all you could manage.

since that day, the calls and texts from Choso had stopped. whether he had given up or found happiness elsewhere, you chose not to think about it.

instead, you decided to spend tonight drowning your feelings with Nobara, Megumi and Yuji. no thinking of Choso, no thinking of Choso, you repeated the mantra over and over just as you’d done over the past two months.

Nobara spent half the night shoving you gently in the direction of other men, trying to get you to flirt and have fun. no matter how many times you tried to dissuade her, she kept telling you that it was time to move on. but even when a guy would be trying to sweet talk you, you kept having to shake away images of those twin black buns and tattoo striped across the nose. how could anyone compare?

Yuji and Megumi tried to lift your spirits as well by forcing you to dance with them. but eventually, their sweet romantics would make you feel even worse, to no fault of their own. you were just remembering the night Choso saved you from that creepy guy in a bar.

“Yuji…” you whined, leaning heavily against the bar with your head in your hands. the music blared around you as Nobara tried to slide another drink your way, but you waved it off, no longer in the mood. “did I really fuck up? just be honest with me.”

Yuji offered a sympathetic pat on your head, a gesture that only irritated you more. he’d taken to doing it since your breakup; it made you feel like a helpless child, vulnerable and lost. “I think you did what was best for you.” he said softly, but the words felt hollow and you could see past the fake bullshit he was spewing.

“but… I don’t know anymore.” you really didn’t. the weight of uncertainty settled in your chest. moving out had felt like the right choice, but breaking things off with Choso? that was a different story. “I just really miss him.

“then why haven’t you talked to him?” Megumi interjected, his expression neutral as if he were presenting the most logical solution in the world.

“I can’t. he’s better off without a brother-fucking girlfriend.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” Yuji grimaced, shaking his head at your remark. the thought of you being… intimate with either of his brothers still made him a little queasy. after a moment, he leaned in closer. “he’s not better off without you. trust me, I know my brother. he might act like he’s fine, but he’s a complete mess without you. his music’s gotten louder – like he’s trying to drown out the silence – and he spends all his time in the dark in his room. I haven’t heard him touch his xbox in weeks. he’s just… an empty shell now. honestly, he’s even more emo than before, if that’s even possible.”

maybe Yuji was right. maybe you hadn’t necessarily made the wrong choice at the time, but the long-term effects felt crushing. you wanted Choso to be happy, that was why you left. if you were happy, great. if Choso was happy, even better. as you often reminded yourself, it was with or without you. but the idea of him suffering made your heart ache.

“I just keep thinking about the good times.” you admitted, your voice barely above a whisper. “I remember how he used to smile when I’d surprise him with his favorite snacks, or how he’d get lost in his music for hours. it’s like I can still hear him playing those songs in my head.”

Yuji watched you closely, his expression softening. “but it’s not just about you and him any more, it’s about what you both need. sometimes love means taking a step back, even if it hurts.”

“I thought I was doing the right thing.” you said, feeling the sting of tears threatening to spill over. “but now it just feels… empty. I thought I’d feel better, but I don’t.”

Nobara returned with yet another full drink, her eyes flickering between you and Yuji. she placed it in front of you, but you just stared at it, not ready to take another sip but not pushing it away either. “you can’t keep punishing yourself for wanting what’s best for both of you.” she said, her tone more supportive than judgmental. “I don’t see why you can’t just talk to him.”

“but what if he doesn’t want to talk to me? what if I end up just making things worse?” the anxiety twisted in your stomach, each possibility feeling heavier than the last.

Yuji suddenly placed both hands on your face, squeezing slightly to get you to turn and focus on him. “listen, you are my best friend in the world – sorry Nobara – and you deserve to be happy. I won’t sit here and listen to you agonize over whether you made the right choice. obviously, if it still bothers you, then you didn’t. I can say with certainty that Choso would want to talk to you, he’d probably cry if he got the chance for one minute to see you. so, get off your ass and talk to him.”

Nobara and Megumi’s jaws dropped, and you could only nod in shock. “I’ve never seen Yuji be so firm.” Nobara muttered to Megumi.

“I know, it’s hot.” Megumi felt the sharp jab of Nobara’s elbow in his side, causing him to chuckle.

finally, after your little pep talk from Yuji, you were stumbling back to your apartment alone, and all you wanted was to think about Choso. what was he doing right about now? was he blaring music through the speakers in his room? maybe he was playing video games or watching a movie. Yuji had said he wasn’t doing any of that, but you could only hope for the best.

you grew nauseous at the thought of him with anyone else tonight.

as you dug for your keys in your purse, you tripped over something right outside your door. fuck, had someone’s food delivery got sent to the wrong address again? “oi, what the hell?” you grumbled as you looked up from your purse, only to stop breathing.

Choso shot up from the ground, buns tousled and eyes puffy. he opened and closed his mouth, struggling to find even a simple “hello” only to give up and shut his lips tightly.

“what are you doing here?” you asked, your voice trembling as your palms grew clammy at the sight of him. your heart raced in your chest, aching for him.

“I had to… I needed to…” Choso stammered, caught off guard that you were speaking to him. he hadn’t expected to run into you; he thought he’d just swing by and maybe catch of a glimpse of you if luck was on his side. “I don’t know what to say now that you’re right here.”

you couldn’t help but chuckle, unfazed by his awkwardness. “do you want to come in?” you slid your key into the door, and Choso nodded firmly.

maybe it was the alcohol, or just the shock of seeing him after two months apart, but your resolve was slipping.

he followed you inside, mentally letting out a sigh of relief at just being able to speak with you. Choso had begged Yuji every day for even the smallest hint of your new address. to his surprise, it was Sukuna who finally let it slip.

you moved to the kitchen, trying to give Choso a moment to gather himself. “can I get you something to drink?” you asked, glancing back at him.

he shook his head, still looking a bit shell-shocked. “I just… I didn’t think I’d actually see you.”

you turned to face him full, leaning against the counter. “why did you come, then?”

Choso took a deep breath, his gaze dropping to the floor. “I can’t stop. I can’t stop thinking about you, about everything that happened between us. I can’t move on from you.

“Choso…” you whispered, your heart sinking at his words.

he stepped closer, his hand reaching out but hesitating halfway, as if unsure of how to bridge the gap between you. “I can’t move on from us.” he continued, his voice trembling slightly. “I’ll never be able to move on from you.” his hand slowly moved until it rested just above yours on the counter. “I think…” he took a breath, and the vulnerability in his eyes made your heart race. “I think I’ll love you forever.”

your resolve crumbled, scattered like leaves in the wind, as the warmth of his presence enveloped you. “I think… I’ll love you forever too.” you confessed, the words spilling out before you could hold them back.

Choso’s expression shifted, a longing flickering across his face as he fought the urge to pull you into his arms. he wanted nothing more than to kiss you, to hold onto you tightly and never let go, but he held back, willing to let you lead the way. if you wanted him to leave, he would do it, even if it meant breaking his heart all over again.

but standing so close, you felt that pull to him that was impossible to ignore. you didn’t know if you’d regret it, but your body was responding to his proximity, urging you to bridge the gap. “are you going to kiss me now?” you asked, your voice barely above a whisper.

Choso’s breath caught at your question, his eyes widening with surprise and a flicker of hope. “is that what you want?” he asked, searching your face for any sign of hesitation.

you nodded, a nervous excitement fluttering in your stomach. “yes.”

that seemed to break whatever restraint he had left. in an instant, he closed the gap, cupping your face gently with his hand as he leaned in. his lips brushed against yours softly at first, as if testing the waters. the kiss was tentative, filled with months of longing, but it quickly deepened, igniting a warmth that spread through you both.

you melted into him, your hands finding their way to his shoulders, pulling him closer. it felt like coming home after a long trip – a familiar warmth that wrapped around your heart.

Choso broke apart from you, breathless, as he rested his forehead against yours. his eyes searched yours, looking for something within them. “this can’t… I can’t handle it if this is just a one-night stand.” he murmured, breath warm on your face.

you shook your head against him, a small smile forming across your face. “I don’t think I can let you go again.” as you whispered the reassurance, Choso groaned out in relief before pressing his lips to yours again.

where the first kiss had been cautious, patient, his lips now moved against yours with a fervent need to feel every inch of you. Choso’s tongue dipped past your lips to tenderly caress yours as he pulled you closer into him, heaving chests flush together as your hands fisted the back of his shirt.

“angel…” he moaned lowly, his teeth nipping at your bottom lip as you panted into his mouth. you felt like you were on fire, his hands leaving trails of flame on your body while they roamed and grabbed at whatever he could get his hands on. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too.” you whimpered as his lips found purchase between your neck and jaw. he peppered kisses along your skin before you felt his teeth bite into you before sucking a mark. “missed you s’ much.”

the two of you became a tangle of limbs as he tugged you toward your bed, so conveniently close in your studio, until your legs hit the bed and you both tumbled backward onto the mattress. Choso landed on top of you with a thud, causing you to let out a laugh with the extra weight.

“somethin’ funny?” Choso asked with a grin as he tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear. “I missed that laugh. thought I’d never hear it again.”

looking up at him, your heart raced, urging you to speak before thinking. he was so beautiful, watching you with a love-filled gaze, that you couldn’t help but melt under him. “I love you, Choso.” the words slipped out softly from your lips but you had no regrets – you did love him, with your whole heart.

Choso’s eyes went wide, shining so bright that you were blinded by the emotion pouring out from his expression. he was shattered when you’d left. you’d taken the sunshine with you, leaving him to hole up in the darkness of his broken heart. but with those three words, you’d started to piece him back together.

his lips crashed into yours, teeth clattering together with the force of it, as his eyelids fluttered close with furrowed brows. “I….” he started between your lips “… love…” a nip at your tongue “… you.”

nothing was holding him back anymore from pulling his shirt over his head with one fluid motion, before latching his lips onto your neck and dragging out the sweet little moans he loved from your mouth as he marked you with his teeth. he’d heard them in his dreams, through his blaring music, every day he heard your voice, and now he wanted to make sure he’d hear it until he went deaf.

Choso trailed kisses down to your collarbone before pulling your shirt off and then unclasping the back of your bra. needy lips found your perked nipples, latching on roughly as he sucked one into his mouth. he made sure to leave bruising red marks on the plushest part of your tits as well – just in case the one on your neck hadn’t taken. this skin was softer, easier to brutally bite and suck, dragging the most incredible noises he’d ever heard from you. with every scratch of his teeth against your skin, you moaned out in a mix of pain-pleasure, and your pulse raced under his touch, shivers running through your bones as he continued his path down to the hem of your pants.

it felt like the first time all over again; the need and desire taking over both of you. he was relentless with his hands dragging over your body, scratching and gripping everywhere they paused. but his hands would only pause for a moment, before moving on to somewhere else, desperately aching to touch you, feel you, taste you.

“wan’ t’… need t’ taste you, angel.” he murmured against your skin as his fingers worked apart the button, then the zipper, ultimately forcing the pants down your legs and ripping them from your ankles to toss them somewhere on the floor. he had a one-track mind right now – tasting your sweet cunt on his tongue. “miss the taste of you, been goin’ through withdrawals.”

your face flushed at the filthy words babbling from his lips as he kissed your inner things, making sure to leave bite marks there too. “Choso, that’s so gross baby.” you whined in embarrassment and tried to shut your thighs, only to have them forced open by his hands pushing your knees apart. “it’s not that great, I’m sure.”

Choso looked up from where his chin was nestled between you, eyes half-lidded as if he was drunk off you already. “it is that great, it’s perfect. could do this all day if you’d let me.” and with that, he licked a stripe up your already slick folds and let out an animalistic groan at the taste. “s’ good, tastes s’ good angel. can’t get enough.”

as he began to eat you like a man starved, spit and arousal coating his mouth and chin, glistening over his face tattoo you loved so much, you fisted his dark hair in your hand at the overwhelming pleasure he was giving you. it had been so long – too long – and you were overly sensitive to every nudge of his nose against your clit as he pressed his face deep into your core.

“Cho, s’ too much.” you whimpered when he plunged a single-digit knuckle deep into your warm walls and curled it into your g-spot. your hips instinctively bucked against his mouth, and he let out a pleased hum at your reaction.

he pulled his mouth away from your clit with a plop! and smirked up at you through his lashes. “feelin’ good, angel?” he asked, but he could feel the answer on his fingers as he stuffed another one deep into you. your gushy walls were as tight as his pants were around his constrained throbbing cock, no doubt already leaking with pre-cum at the sight of you coming undone from his tongue. “wan’ you t’ cum on me, need t’ taste it before I get inside you.”

“please – hah – please wanna cum s’ bad!” your moans were pornographic at this point as the hot knot in your abdomen tightened into a coil ready to be snapped. as you practically rode his tongue to chase your release, Choso’s eyes rolled to the back of his head at the addictive taste of your cunt, deciding that if he died with his head between your legs and your cum on his tongue, it would be the perfect end to his life.

“that’s it, cum f’ me ‘kay?” Choso urged before his tongue caressed your clit in circular motions while his fingers curled against your g-spot just right. your orgasm came crashing through you, two months’ worth of pent-up need for him and only him coursing through your bones as you came on his face with wild thrashes of your hips.

he had to wrap his arm over your hips, forcing them to be still as he didn’t give up his pursuit of the most spectacular orgasm he could give you. even though your body felt like it was on fire, he was unyielding in his torment on your sensitive clit. you were still coming, screaming his name as you tried to scramble away from him in a desperate attempt to escape the overstimulation, but he kept you pinned in place with his bicep, growling into your dripping heat every time you tried to move.

“s-stop, ‘s too much!” you yelped as he continued scissoring his fingers inside of you, forcing open the tightness of your walls as he slurped your clit into his mouth and sucked repetitively. you were going to explode, maybe even die with every wave of release that just kept crashing, the warmth tingling through your body traveling down down down until you felt like a dam had burst, and you heard the squelches of your cunt squirting all over him.

Choso was ecstatic, and absolutely feral to feel your pussy juices spray onto his face and coating his tongue. you tasted heavenly, his cock twitching at the sight of you writhing at his touch – he wanted to lap up every bit of you, but even then, he knew his need wouldn’t be fulfilled.

just as you were coming down, body still twitching with overstimulation, Choso stood up and shoved his pants down to reveal his leaking dick, red and irritated from the confines of his pants, ready to feel you wrap around him. “please, need you to fuck me, Choso.” you begged as you reached for him, wanting him inside of you this instant or else you’d implode.

“don’t worry, gonna make you feel real good again, baby.” Choso pumped his cock with the same hand that was coated in your release before lining up his tip with your cunt. he kissed your lips, and you tasted yourself on his tongue. of course, he’d never wipe his face of your delicious juices. “missed this s’ much, been dreaming ‘bout it every day.”

with one deep, steady thrust, Choso bullied his dick through your wet walls and bottomed out, balls deep within you and letting out the loudest groan you’d ever heard come from his lips. you gasped at the fullness, somehow forgetting just how large he was when he was pressed against your cervix and filling you so deliciously. he took no time in rolling his hips into yours without pause, ready to feel every inch of you coating his cock.

“fuck, Choso it’s been too long.” you gasped as his tip continuously kissed your cervix, loud and wet squelches coming from your cunt with every thrust he drove into you. your hips bucked to meet him, need, desperate for him to keep going keep going keep going. without a doubt, you’d be sore and achy tomorrow, but you couldn’t give two shits as long as he was fucking you this good.

your name was a panted-out prayer on his lips as his hands cupped your face to look at you while he fucked into you, primal instinct taking over and urging him to fill you with his cum over and over. every ignored ache of his cock from the past two months had built up to this, and he wasn’t going to let it go to waste. no, he’d pull more orgasms from your pretty cunt, and fill you up over and over until you could never forget the feeling of him.

“shit – hmph – missed feeling your cunt wrapped around me. look at you, so pretty underneath me, like my own personal angel.” Choso murmured through his pants as his thrust became sloppier. to compensate for his lack of control and quickly oncoming orgasm, he slid his hand down, fingers pressing against your clit in slow, deliberate circles to get you to cum on his cock.

as the knot began to tighten in your stomach again, your eyes snapped open to look at Choso above you – black hair already sticking to his forehead, twin buns coming loose, pupils blown out from pleasure, and mouth agape as he watched you move underneath him. “I love you.” you whined, turning your head and softly kissing his hand that was against your cheek. “holy shit, I love you!”

at your confession, Choso’s pace on your clit picked up and brought you over the edge, your second release racking your body as you trembled beneath him through it. he could not only feel it, but he could hear it too. your warm walls clenched around him like a vice, lewd wet squelches echoing with every thrust of his cock, and your slutty moans of his name had him crumbling. god, you were perfect to him, so soft and pretty and you felt. so. fucking. good.

he felt like an animal, rutting into you with all of his strength to get himself off, desperate to release himself inside of you. his orgasm found him as you were halfway through yours, and he groaned out, “I love you!” before smashing his lips into yours as his hips stilled to be as deep as he could inside of you, spirts of his hot cum coating your walls as he shuddered on top of you. “I love you I love you I love you!”

he fucked you through both of your orgasms before crashing down on top of you, head buried in the crook of your neck as you both struggled to catch your breath and come down from the high. “I love you, Choso.” you whispered now, brushing his bangs from his sweaty forehead and kissing him.

“I love you, angel. forever.” Choso murmured back in response, a soft smile taking over his wet lips as he nuzzled closer to you, breathing in deeply through his nose against your skin. “never gonna stop loving you.”

“that’s okay with me.”

it was Christmas time now, fresh white snow coating the ground as you hurried down the sidewalk. you were late, oh so late, again. you could already picture Megumi’s disapproving glare, and you almost lost your footing on a particularly slick patch of ice at the thought.

when you finally burst through Yuji’s front door, panting and flushed from the cold, Megumi gave you the expected side-eye. but then Yuji bounded over, a huge grin on his face. “you made it! thank goodness. if I had to deal with mr. grinch for one more minute, I might’ve pulled my hair out. and I like my hair – everyone likes my hair!” he rambled on, tugging you in the living room and practically forcing you to sit on the couch beside Megumi.

“who’s the grinch this year? Megumi?” you asked playfully, a teasing grin spreading across your face as you glanced at the raven-haired boy. you then turned your attention to the other side of the room. “or is it Sukuna?”

Sukuna, lounging comfortably in an accent chair with a mug that you guessed was filled with heavily spiked eggnog, shook his head and let out a low chuckle. “take another wild guess.”

you raised an eyebrow, confused, until Choso rounded the corner wearing the most hideous Christmas sweater you’d ever laid eyes on. the sight nearly made you gasp. “oh my god.” you breathed, struggling to stifle your laughter.

“don’t. say. a fucking. word.” Choso grumbled, shooting a pointed glare at Yuji who was wearing a matching outrageous sweater.

“you look so cute!” you exclaimed, unable to contain yourself. you jumped off the couch and rushed over to him, planting a fat kiss on his lips. “I’ve never seen you wear so many colors!”

Choso’s face turned pink as his gaze dropped to the enormous, puffy reindeer on the front of the sweater. “you like it?” he asked quietly, a hint of shyness creeping into his voice as he rubbed the back of his neck.

“I love it.” you replied sincerely, and when he looked back up at you, a radiant smile broke across his face. “and I love the man wearing it even more.”

“of course, when his girlfriend shows up, he’s no longer a grouch.” Yuji huffed, arms crossed and feigning annoyance as he watched the exchange between his brother and you.

“you know you love it.” Megumi teased, wrapping his arms around Yuji’s shoulders and planting a soft kiss on his temple, a playful smirk on his face.

“I think I’m going to be sick.” Sukuna declared, pinching the bridge of his nose in exaggerated annoyance before taking a long gulp from his mug.

you settled back onto the couch, still riding the high of Choso’s blush, when he reached into the pile of gifts stacked beneath the tree. his eyes sparkled with excitement as he pulled out a small, wrapped box with a red bow on top.

“for you.” he said, a shy smile spreading across his face as he handed it to you. “Nobara helped me pick it out, so I can’t take all the credit. she also threatened me to make sure I told you that.”

you snorted out a laugh and took the box from him. you carefully peeled off the wrapping to see a small velvety box hidden underneath, and your breath caught in your throat as you opened it. inside lay a delicate, silver necklace featuring a mountain with two stars atop it.

“Choso, it’s beautiful!” you gasped, tears pricking your eyes as your fingers brushed over it.

he smiled and gently took the necklace from the box. “while it’s not wall climbing, I thought it would remind you of our first date… and, well, us being the two stars. since… y’know, we went climbing, even though we didn’t do it on a mountain and -”

you looked up, meeting his gaze and causing him to pause his rambles at your expression, and felt hot tears freely sliding down your cheeks at the sweetness of it all. “it’s perfect. I love it.” Choso softly smiled before leaning closer and carefully helping you clasp the necklace around your neck. the pendant settled just above where your heart raced beneath your skin.

Yuji and Megumi exchanged knowing glances, and Yuji elbowed Megumi playfully. “look at you two, all sweet and mushy… makes me sick.” Megumi teased with a tiny smirk.

“I’m sick of all of you.” Sukuna grumbled from his spot, but beneath the mug pressed to his lips, you could see his mouth curving up into a small smile.

Choso’s cheeks flushed again, but he didn’t take his eyes off you. “I just wanted to give you something special.” he said quietly, the sincerity in his voice making you melt. “I love you so much, angel.”

you sniffled slightly, reaching up to touch the necklace that you knew would never be taken off. “I love you too, Choso.” you replied before placing a soft kiss to his lips.

in that moment, everything felt perfect. you were in love, surrounded by some of the people that you cared about the most on the holidays. and for now, you knew that everything would be okay – more than okay.

Sukuna’s POV

months later

he’d never say it to anyone else, but Sukuna’s therapist knows damn well to take the secret to their grave. sure, he’d been in love with you, or some semblance of love at least. so forgive him for being a tad heartbroken that he wasn’t the one chosen after everything.

his therapist had told him not to ruminate over it, that he had sought forgiveness and worked towards being a better person. but had he truly? he’d spent the better part of the cold season getting over it, and while he ultimately had, he was still nagged by the dread of never finding someone to look at him that way again.

he was happy that everyone else was happy. he’d royally fucked up, he knew that, and he deserved to not be the one chosen in the end. all he could do now was move forward and continue trying.

try try try.

it was the mantra he’d carried into the new year, seared in his brain every second of every day. it’s all he ever did nowadays.

well, that and drink himself into a drunken stupor whenever he got the chance. and tonight was no exception – having ditched Yuji’s little party at the house to escape the suffocating romance between everyone but him, he found himself at a quiet bar two pints in, desperately hoping for a mild buzz at least.

he felt like a pitiful fool, drinking away his feelings. this wasn’t like him, or it used to not be. he wasn’t so sure anymore. he still felt the same – angry at the world, annoyed by those lesser than him, but in a way, he was more mature. mindful of the people around him and how he affected their lives. he guessed that was what growth did to a person.

but he couldn’t let his old attitude consume him. he’d try and try and try to be better for everyone else around him.

that was until he met her.

“oi, get your fucking hands off me!” he’d heard a voice shout from just outside the bar. it sounded distressed yet confident at the same time. he wasn’t sure what was going on until he heard two other deep voices, chuckling and hurling derogatory insults in the air as if it didn’t matter.

today, it would matter to him.

Sukuna abruptly stood from his stool, causing it to fall to the ground with a loud crash as he stormed out the door of the bar. underneath the streetlights, he saw her – small and fragile, surrounded by two drunken men reaching their hands out for her. and yet, despite her predicament, Sukuna couldn’t help but smirk at her, rearing back a fist, ready to knock someone out.

she hadn’t even heard the crash from the bar, focused solely on the annoying assholes bothering her. all she'd been doing was walking home, alone, like an idiot of course. but a little recklessness never stopped her. she doubted her punch would do much damage, but it was worth a shot anyway.

“I said leave me the hell alone, twatbags!” she shouted, fist shaking but staying firm in a pulled-back position. if they made one more move, she'd muster up the courage and hit one of them. she hated guys like these, her office was filled with them and now she couldn’t even get a reprieve walking down the street.

suddenly, both men went wide-eyed in front of her. hah, so her scare tactics worked, she thought. she'd have to pat yourself on the back later for this achievement. “aw, little ole me got you boys scared? looks like you’re about to wet your pants.” she smirked, crossing her arms in triumph.

until their eyes traveled from hers, to over her head.

“these guys bothering you?”

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. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . taglist: @nighttwingg @sweetsformysoul @casualpoetrytaco @lvingd3adg0rl @haikomaiko @csolya @deathlypink @sad-darksoul @elisedylandy @jinxiewritings @aldebrana @ravester @futuristiccurlyhair @san-it-is-i-guess @marie-is-in-the-dark @llovergirlll @iseeyouuu @makingtimemine @spicykimchii @shxhari @ratcoone @mollyrocks420 @willybillyletsgetsilly @distinguishedpenguinbread @ren-ni @sugar504 @runfrme @sukuna-for-life @theclassbookworm @avidreadee123 @tibibibi123 bro. just... BRO. we're at the end ｡°(°.◜ᯅ◝°)°｡ i can't believe it!!!! I really really hope I did the end of the story justice, and that everyone is happy with the ending! if not, at least I'm happy about it. THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO'S FOLLOWED, LIKED, REBLOGGED, AND COMMENTED through this whole short story!!!!! and to everyone who's requested to be tagged you have my WHOLE heart. ugh, I'm getting emotional again... but it doesn't make me too sad considering... Sukuna spin off coming soon! (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧ obviously her will turn into you in the next writing, was that obvious enough? no? damn. anyways, hope to see you all later! ദ്ദി(｡•̀ ,<)~✩‧₊ . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ .

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