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elsecrytt · 6 months ago

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Your Heart is Spilling out, Babe

Pairing: Satoru Gojo/Reader

Summary: You and Satoru are friends with benefits. No feelings, that was the agreement from the start. Neither of you want anything more. Even if you did, it wouldn’t work out, anyways. Not that you care if it would.

Tags: fwb, smut, angst, YEARNING, requited unrequited feelings (or ARE they) but jk it’s totally no feelings, commitment/abandonment issues, not that it matters because you totally don’t have feelings anyways

“Mmmh… that’s it for me tonight. You can shower before you leave, if you want.”

“Oh? I can’t stay the night?” He asks, “Just gonna pump and dump me? So mean~”

A hum. “Knock yourself out. But you can’t shower in the morning, you’ll wake me up.”

“What a coincidence,” he lays down next to you, “I’m a late sleeper, too.”

You don’t say anything more, eyes already closed.

Satoru’s arm presses your form against his, just barely.

When he wakes up, you’re still laying there beside him, unmoving.

He leaves.

At first, Satoru tries to tell himself it’s a happy coincidence.

After all, isn’t it? His problem has always been the women (and men) who give him a certain kind of look before he gets up to leave.

The ones who text him back first, who read everything instantly, who always want to meet up again. The ones who always, inevitably, start to want something more.

Like him giving them the fuck of a lifetime with someone who could be a real-life supermodel and happens to be the greatest sorcerer on earth wasn’t enough. Granted, they don’t know about the sorcerer thing, but still!

It always turns out like this:

Things are good for a while. Sex is good, he gets attention when he texts them, they both understand this is totally casual, no commitment.

Sometimes he even brings up another hookup he’s going to, just to drive the point home, and he cheers them on when they’re getting some somewhere else, too.

(He’s got no reason to be insecure, after all. He would be anyone’s first choice.)

From there, he can admit some of it is his fault. It’s hard, being as irresistible as he is. Being so devastatingly good-looking and even better in bed.

Having so much humor and personality in his amazing texts (never mind that most of them just react with an emoji or a short haha or an unrelated compliment – he drinks it all up just the same).

They start to text him first, which is impressive, considering what a spammer he is. He likes to text them to fill his time, to talk to someone, have his notifications filled with messages of people who want him.

So what if it’s an ego boost? Isn’t that what they’re using him for, too?

But when they start texting him themselves, when they return his style of badgering, it’s not random and rambling. It’s affectionate, personal. They’ve gotten attached, and they want him to be, too.

It’s all nonsense like Saw this and thought of you, and You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever met, and I want to meet up again soon.

He has to stop spamming with memes or selfies or random observations throughout his day, stop talking about shops or cafes he’d like to visit. Sometimes he has to mute their notifications, because when he spams other people, they feel comfortable spamming him.

And then it’s just a matter of how long he spends lying to himself. Because as much of an ass as he is, it’s cruel to let them get attached to him when he can’t really open up entirely. When he doesn’t want anything serious.

In fairness, he had told them from the start. He usually breaks it off only after a few days. He always sends them a message and just blocks them – it’s cleaner that way.

Answering any desperate Please, we can still be friends or No, let’s just hook up again, would give them hope for things he can’t give them.

But you?

You text him You’re the most annoying man I’ve ever met, and leave him on read for two days.

Satoru thinks he’s in love.

Not literally, of course, but in love with the relationship he has with you, which is perfect.

Everything about it is perfect, except for that it’s not going on all the time.

You respond to his memes with your own. Chat with him about cafes and desserts and even keep a handful at your home to treat him with. You text him cat pictures, sometimes return selfies if he’s lucky.

Usually he gets those when he sends the thirst pics, sitting there with a grin that scares Ichiji, absolutely giddy as he watches you type, stop typing – he knows you’re looking for something special to send him back.

It’s surprising, how well he just knows things about you. Maybe that was to be expected, though, with your chemistry.

Sex with you is like nothing he’s ever felt before.

You have this way of tensing up, expression shifting as you’re right about to cum – he thinks by now he’s conditioned by it, that just seeing you make that face could get him over the edge.

He’s fucked hot people before but no one like you. Seeing the same clothes from your cute little selfies slip off, it’s like unwrapping a present he can’t wait to eat up. Makes him salivate like a box of chocolates, like the one truffle package you got one time and made him eat on his knees with his head in your lap, out of your hands.

Fucking you is one of his favorite things ever, right up there with kikufuku and making fun of his coworkers (and students!). You’re a beautiful bend of reactive and pliant, so fun to tease and edge and so rewarding to please.

God, fuck, he wants you. He wants you all the time. All his other hookups are silenced in favor of you, boring conversations abandoned in favor of debating tiramisu and tres leches, and all other sorts of inane things.

What your favorite school subjects are, oddly enough (he supposes he was asking for it, telling you he taught high schoolers).

You like literature, he likes math, and when he hears you talk about it, he almost wants to read some of those novels you like so much. Non-sorcerer politics has never meant anything to him but it matters when he hears you talk about it.

It’s like hearing about a whole separate world with its own struggles. Your opinions are so well-thought out, he can tell just how much you care, and something hums along aside him as he asks questions, nods his head, really listens to what you have to say. It feels so surreal to hear someone whose goals are not so unlike his, when he thinks about it.

Maybe that’s where some of this fondness comes from. Maybe it’s humbling, thinking you want to change your world just as much as he wants to change his, and the only difference is how much people listen.

He can’t imagine not wanting to listen to you. People should listen more. You should run everything, he jokes.

(He’s joking. He’s joking. You don’t know enough to get why he says that twice.)

And then it’s not serious again – when was it ever, really? You talk about your favorite manga and anime and tease each other for your tastes. Maybe talk about episodes or movies you’ve seen together.

He’s admittedly a bit of a movie buff – it’s a real victory when he convinces you to watch one of his old favorites. When he finds out you watched it, he’s excited the whole day to hear what you thought.

You debate what animals you would be; you are definitely a cat – aloof and independent – and you’re quite insistent that he’d be a husky, energetic and annoying and – probably other words you say before he sends you a picture of his dick and you facetime him with some more interesting conversation.

Your days – weeks, months, really – they go on like that, they’re great. Everything is perfect, really.

So when he hears you casually mention you’ve got other dinner plans – when his mind instantly supplies we’re just casual, tease her and hope she gets lucky – the wretched, dark twist in his gut is wholly unexpected.

And he knows instantly. Immediately, really, because he’s just too smart not to.

He knows he doesn’t want you going out with other people. Touching them. Showing them the same faces you show him.

But if he wants you to be his, then he has to ask. And you – you make him wait to hear back.

You never reach out to him first. You open the door with a cool expression, like your heart doesn’t race at the sight of him like his does (he can see it is, he can see it, but his soul is withering at your look like you couldn’t care less).

Satoru doesn’t usually have to ask, not for anything.

People beg to be able to fuck him. They spam when he ghosts them, begging for scraps. He doesn’t have to ask for attention, people shower him in it.

Everyone wants him. They love him. They don’t abandon him along with all their morals and tell him to kill them if he doesn’t like it.

They beg him to stay, and he is the one who leaves.

He’s too much for them. Too much for anyone. You wouldn’t be able to hand him, anyways.

And he can leave any time he wants, he just… doesn’t want to.

(He never wants to leave. He wants it to stay like this, forever. But when does it ever turn out like that?)

Besides, you’re – you also want it to stay casual. Like he told you from the beginning. Probably trying to save your feelings from getting hurt – and can he blame you? Really, with his looks, anyone would be scared to lose him.

So this was just… a happy coincidence. You didn’t want it serious, he didn’t want it, either.

“Mmmh… that’s it for me tonight. You can shower before you leave, if you want.”

Satoru’s lip twitches, but it doesn’t manage a smile. It almost feels like you’re kicking him out.

But he knows you’re not, because even if you were the one person on earth who could resist his irresistible charm, he just gave you some absolutely mind-blowing sex.

“Oh? I can’t stay the night?” Satoru teases, “Just gonna pump and dump me? So mean~”

He says it playfully, casually, because it is casual. It wouldn’t bother him if you told him to fuck off right then and there. It wouldn’t.

You hum noncommittally. “Knock yourself out. But you can’t shower in the morning, you’ll wake me up.”

If he’s relieved that he can stay, it’s because he’s as exhausted as you are. Because you make him feel good, so fucking good, like he’s on top of the world. Having to leave would just be a mood killer.

“What a coincidence,” He purrs, laying next to you on the bed, “I’m a late sleeper, too.”

He is not and never has been. He sleeps three hours a night wakes up by 5am.

It’s never bothered him before. His dreams are not a place he wants to be. But they’ve never hurt him when you were there.

He wraps an arm around you, holding you against him, just barely. Not too tight.

You don’t say anything more. You lay there and let him hold you while you fall asleep.

When he wakes, you’re still laying there beside him, unmoving.

The thing is, you’re awake. He knows that. You’re a light sleeper. Always have been.

He knows you hate morning showers yourself, and always do it at night. Knows what you like for breakfast, how to make it. That you like to sleep in because you have trouble sleeping.

He knows what you think about late at night because you text him about it, because he’s always there texting you, because neither of you can sleep and someone ends up calling and whispering secret scattered thoughts in hushed tones and –

And he honestly doesn’t know, if it’s you or him that slips in the I want to touch you right now, or Want me to kiss it better. Who turns it into sex so things can’t get to be too much.

Satoru would really, really like to think that it’s him, but the truth is that he’s reaching the limit of how believable his lies are, even to himself.

He knows, he knows he knows he knows that if he stayed, you would let him –

(If he repeats it enough it will surely become true.)

– but you both agreed no feelings.

Besides, it’s not like he wants to stay, anyways.

(Why won’t you ask him to come back?)

You know what Satoru is the moment you meet him. It’s not like he’s made any secret of it, either.

A whore. A man-whore, if you will. A player. Whatever it is. He slept with people, drank in all the sex and attention and then went on his merry way.

You get it. This wasn’t the first time you’d met a pretty boy who fucked around, not by a long shot.

He says all casual, no feelings, you smile and nod, and you go back to his place fully expecting to be disappointed because pretty boys usually suck in bed.

And then he fucks you within an inch of your life.

He eats you like a man staved. Hands roving over your skin, groping and squeezing in a way that would be violating, if his beautiful eyes weren’t wild and desperate.

His body is toned and smooth and perfect, unmarred skin that he presses to yours like he’s trying to staunch the bleeding of some invisible wound.

You’ve never felt like this before. Sex has never been this amazing. He props his stupid pretty face up on his elbow and he gives you that stupid charming boyish smirk and asks you if you want to go another round, red-faced and eager. It’s overwhelming and exciting and amazing –

And it’s terrifying, because it’s always like this for him, isn’t it? He just came in and gave you the fuck of a lifetime, but this is just another lay for him.

(But he’s having fun. It’s good for him, too. So why don’t you take what you can get?)

So when he saves his number in your phone, That was awesome, babe, we should do this again sometime, you don’t put a lot of weight into his words. You roll his eyes when he blows you a kiss goodbye, but you don’t delete his number.

Even when he wakes you up with some silly cat meme (god, you hate morning people), somehow you find yourself smiling. You let him know he can get his dick sucked any time if he meows cute enough and woah, maybe you’re coming on too strong –

He sends you an attachment of himself wearing cat ears, striking an obnoxious pose, with a fake tail that he holds by the end in his mouth.

Satoru Gojo, that’s the name. And you do suck his dick, like you promised, but he comes to you determined to get in character, meowing at you, pressing his face into your hands, rubbing into your side, nuzzling your panties while he looks up into your face with a smirk.

It’s a fight to get him on his back and his legs open wide enough for you to settle in. He meows again like a kitty, and purrs like one too when you take his cock into your mouth, hands threading through your hair. Giggling at his own antics.

Your eyes water when you take him, deep, moaning and feeling him shudder at the feeling, long legs squirming on either side of you. He pulls away suddenly, with a pop, laughing when his dick hits the side of your face and you glare at him. Sticking out his tongue.

He looks so young. So heartbreakingly sweet and charming. He pulls you in to settle you on his cock, face-to-face this time, his smile melting into something soft and tacky, sticking to your lips as he kisses his precum away. Infectious delight.

Satoru holds your hands in his, palm to palm, as you ride him in his lap. Face tilted up to look at you with a blush on his cheeks. Blue eyes wide like they have to be, to take you in, as if they aren’t themselves oceans you have to stop yourself from falling into.

You can’t look into his eyes when you cum, when he cums. You’re not sure if he’s looking either.

But you feel him, oh, do you feel him – hands squeezing yours as if in warning, face buried into your neck, a moan that vibrates throughout the both of you.

When you wake up, the next morning, you don’t even mind the fact that he’s still next to you, cuddled up, right beside you. You don’t mind, until you feel him stiffen suddenly, like he’s realized you’re awake, immediately pulling away.

That’s… you’re not sure what it is, since cuddling was obviously okay, so why does he not want to do it while you’re awake? It is too close? Too intimate?

He’d held your hands while he stared deep into your eyes and rocked gently into you last night, but cuddling would be too intimate?

But he smiles that smile before he leaves, stumbling a little bit while he gets dressed, in that goofy way that lanky tall men sometimes do. You even overlook the fact that he’s renamed himself in your contacts. ~ Satoru ~ My Kitten.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid (you’re smiling already), unbearable man. You want to hit him in the face, with your face. Very hard.

Casually, of course. It’s casual between you. No feelings at all.

But then he starts texting you all the time. He double, triple, quadruple texts, with the infuriating shamelessness of someone who’s never been ignored in his life.

Like he’s never worried that the other person is losing interest. He carries himself like it, too, like he knows everyone wants him, and unfortunately, he’s right.

So you tell him he’s annoying and you don’t look at your phone again. Not until he shows up on your doorstep with that pout on his impossibly pretty face.

And you don’t turn him away. Why would you? If he’s going to offer himself on a platter, why not eat up?

You’re just being realistic here. If you fucked him once and never heard from it again, it would still hurt almost as much as it will now. You’ll just be a little lonelier without your texting partner, but you’ll get over it.

There’s other fish in the sea. Even if none of them are as pretty as him, none of them make them laugh like you do. You’re not exclusive. He can see other people, so can you. You’ve made it a point not to ask.

You don’t like what he’s doing now. How he pauses long, makes you wait before telling you to have fun on your date.

How the next time you see him there’s something strange in his eyes, something that leaves him with clawing hands, hungry mouth, eager to leave his marks all over you.

Satoru doesn’t stop texting you, doesn’t stop selfies, thirst traps, prodding little questions and jokes, doesn’t stop obnoxiously demanding (begging?) for your attention.

At first it was an ego boost. Now, it’s terrifying.

Because now he likes you, doesn’t he? He’s interested now. Having fun. Making you feel like he’s jealous, acting like he’s on withdrawal if he goes too long without you, making you feel like someone as beautiful and rich and funny as him could possibly be in love with you.

But he told you in the beginning. Something casual.

Maybe these feelings are real in the moment. But one day they’ll fade, and everything will be yanked right out from under you.

You’ll wonder why he’s getting distant these days. You’ll remember that you never made it official, and sweat over the possibility that he’s seeing someone else. At the end of the day that’s all you’ll be able to do; worry and worry while you’re too afraid to ask.

You’ll wonder what you did wrong. What you did to lose him. How you could go from someone so fascinating, someone he so thoroughly adored and fucked like he was making love, to an afterthought and a stranger, unless you did something wrong? Unless you made a mistake, somewhere along the line?

The mistake of getting attached to him in the first place.

Fuck that. Satoru can develop feelings on his own fucking time. He’ll lose them just as quickly, you can tell.

This isn’t anything more than a hookup to him. He’s an attention whore who likes to hear himself talk, and you’re dumb enough to entertain him because you’re lonely and easily amused, at least when it comes to him.

There’s nothing real here.

You still don’t know where he actually works, outside of some nebulous high school teaching situation. Where he lives. What he does most of the day, what his parents are like. Where he’s from, even. You don’t know if he’s seeing anyone else. He could be married with kids, for all you know.

Not – not that you care. Not that you give a fuck what he’s doing, who he’s fucking, where he is when he’s not with you. You don’t care about him past his dick and what it does to you.

If you did care, you’d only suffer for it. So you draw the line.

You don’t need him, and you want to keep it that way. You don’t want to get attached, and neither does he. So you try to keep him at arm’s length.

Close enough to touch but not so close that your foolish, eager heart can leap out of your chest and into his hands.

Would he still give you that boyish grin when he rejected you? Laugh and let you down gently? Would he say yes and hold your hand while you walked together to the guillotine, the painful end to a relationship that wasn’t supposed to happen anyways? Would he skip away while your heart seized and trembled on the executioner’s block?

He’d look pretty even with blood on his face, you’re sure. But you wouldn’t come out so nicely.

So you don’t ask him to stay. You don’t ask him for anything. You take what you’re given and you savor it, but you try – oh, god, do you fucking try – to find someone else, something else to occupy your time.

But he’s just too good. You want him. And you don’t get to have him if you ignore his texts and don’t answer when he’s at the door. You don’t get to fuck him if you won’t even let him see you.

So even if you look away, even if your answers are short, even if you don’t let him stay (not that he even wants to) – you have to let him in.

And unlike you, he’s got self-respect. He’s got other options. If he can’t have you, he’ll just fuck other people, so you can’t push him away too much. You have to make him want to come back. You have to make him want to give you more.

But you can’t control what Satoru wants, and that is the problem.

It’s out of your hands, locked securely in his ribcage where you can never get to it.

He doesn’t talk about his life, his history, doesn’t even complain about work during off hours.

Really, it’s already over, isn’t it? Has been, ever since the beginning. You’re just waiting for the inevitable end.

“Mmmh… that’s it for me tonight.” You say, tired. So tired, and warm. Satoru always leaves you like this; loose-limbed and floaty, high enough to feel the drop. “You can shower before you leave, if you want.”

“Oh? I can’t stay the night?” Satoru asks, teasing, “Just gonna pump and dump me? So mean~”

You close your eyes, trying not to think of what his face must look like.

“Knock yourself out. But you can’t shower in the morning, you’ll wake me up.”

“What a coincidence,” He purrs, laying next to you on the bed, “I’m a late sleeper, too.”

Satoru’s arm around your form presses you against him, just barely. Not too close. Never too close.

You don’t say anything more. You lay there and let him hold you while you fall asleep.

You can feel it when he wakes up. How his breathing changes, how he stiffens and tenses against you, you tumble out of sleep instantly, lashes fluttering.

You shut them closed again. Relax yourself. You don’t have to get up. You don’t want to get up.

Why isn’t he leaving yet? What’s taking him so long?

There’s this tension that creeps into your chest. Like you can feel each individual breath he takes. Waiting for him to say something, shake you awake – but why would he? And why would you want him to?

You know what this is. You’ve always known.

So you lay there, still, breathing calm and even, until he leaves.

(…Come back. Please come back.)

#jujutsu kaisen #satoru gojo #gojo satoru #gojo x reader #satoru x reader #satoru gojo x reader #jjk smut #satoru gojo smut #lemon #female!reader #afab!reader #jjk x reader

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ckret2 · 2 days ago

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I remember you saying a lot of the characters you'd written for had a common theme of loneliness, is there any common theme between the pairings you like or is it just purely "the chemistry is good" ?

there are sooo many pairings with "good chemistry" that totally bore me lmao. no, i've got specific preferences.

Here's one very very specific ship dynamic that I almost always gravitate toward:

Enter a fandom. Find the most powerful villain (or villain-acting character) in this fandom. They must be completely OP, absolutely self-assured in their power and supremacy, all but unbeatable (unless it's by like the plucky hero or whatever). They are smug. They are confident. Their tag is probably filled with reader insert fics with plots like "y/n is dommed by [character] and calls him daddy." This is the Badass.

Find another character. This character is comparatively pathetic. Oftentimes, the fandom joke is that they could never win a fight. If the fandom isn't loudly proclaiming that this second character would get their ass handed to them by, specifically, the Badass, then it's only because the two of them are on SUCH different power levels that the idea of a fight never enters fans' minds. They may or may not actually be a wimp, but what matters is the fandom (and often, the narrative) sees them that way—at least when compared to the Badass, if not universally. This is the Loser.

Then have the Badass get kneecapped with love for the Loser.

They've gotta fall in love in a way that completely destroys them. It makes them fall from grace. It strips away their godhood. It topples their empire. It steals their power, their prestige, their dignity, their confidence, their sanity. It ruins their life.

The Badass would give up everything for a chance to crawl like a worm at the feet of their beloved Loser. They submit themself entirely to the Loser's will. They are but a sword, a toy, a dog, a piece of trash—whatever they need to lower themself to to be allowed to bask in the Loser's light.

The Loser might not even reciprocate.

This is a difficult ship dynamic to be into because even when the fandom DOES ship Badass/Loser, every one of the fics is like "Loser is dommed by Badass and calls him daddy" and I recoil in disgust.

And here's some other ship dynamics I'm into—borrowed from a couple of prior asks I've gotten here and here so if you wanna see me ramble EVEN MORE, I go more in depth in those two links.

the biggest thing that gets me into a ship is unhealthy obsession. Love to the point of self-destruction. Love past the point of all reason. Love like an addiction, love like a poison.

Forms this takes can include:

a worshiper toward their (personal) god. bonus points if the "god" isn't even that great, the divinity just exists in the worshiper's mind and the "god" kinda sucks (billford's a good example; I actually usually prefer the obsession going the other way around, but there's definitely still shades of this in how I write Ford's POV on Bill)

mutual rabidly codependent toxic obsession (example: comics Venom.)

"knight" obsessively in love with their liege. (canon example: Pearl toward Rose Quartz. headcanon example: Zim toward the Tallest. this is gonna be how i write Scaramouche toward Aku.) This can be extended to ships with similar power dynamics like henchman/villain.

your classic yandere. "I love you so much I had to kidnap you," "stay with me and I'll make you sososo happy, leave and I'll kill us both," "I will proactively murder anyone who likes you before you can like them back," "I will rewrite my entire identity to be perfect for you," "I'm so breathlessly euphoric with love for you that I kind of want to slit my own throat" yandere-yandere. (THE yandere: Yuno Gasai. a personal favorite: IDW Tarantulas toward Prowl.)

perpetually unrequited love. it MUST stay unrequited. if it becomes requited it stops being interesting. it must be quietly agonized over for an eternity. Bonus points if the couple once had a chance but the suffering lover sabotaged it. (I've done this with HashiMada, Starscream/Wheeljack, and radiosnake. you could easily do it with Gideon/Mabel or post-betrayal billford.)

"emotionless" characters (like in a "robot programmed without emotions" way, not a "mental illness" way) that somehow gain the capacity to feel love and it becomes their whole identity because they have nothing else. (i don't have an example lmao)

Various tropes I enjoy outside unhealthy obsession (although it can incorporate it):

Anything that lets me write a character romantically waxing poetic over the breathtaking beauty of something that normal people would never consider a potential object of attraction. Like a pteranodon, or a literal triangle with an eyeball, or a pile of black sludge.

The super genius who makes/does incredible things and their personal muse who inspires their work and is in awe of the brilliant things they do/make. they can both be geniuses but don't have to be. (Tarantulas & Prowl; Sir Pentious & Alastor; Ford & Bill)

Toxic exes who still know each other SO well that it's agony to be around each other because they can see everything they used to have.

Characters who make each other Worse. Like their relationship is good, but being together turns them both into terrible people. (Venom.)

#anonymous #ask

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egcdeath · 1 year ago

Text

how the cookie crumbles

summary: when you come back home to austin to help your sister with her bakery, you end up in an arrangement with your high school crush that ends up being far more than you bargained for.

word count: 11.5k

warnings: FAKE DATING, au: no outbreak, pining. so much pining and a touch of yearning, idiots to lovers, high school crushes to lovers, very hallmark-romcom esque, fluff, a touch of angst, more fluff, the reader has a sister but the sister doesn’t have a name, joel’s ex is kinda rude, alcohol consumption, cuddling, miscommunication kinda, unrequited love that’s actually requited love, no use of y/n, not beta read.

author’s note: this is my first fic back after taking my several month long break!! i want to give a big shoutout to my texas consultant and biggest cheerleader @cowgurrrl, who encouraged me to write, gave me helpful ideas, and let me dump my brain and my silly little ideas on her whenever <3

For as long as you could remember, you and your sister had been total opposites. As girls, your sister spent her time playing with dolls, experimenting with whatever new hairstyle on your scalp, and eagerly shadowing your mother in the kitchen, while you preferred to spend your time exploring the city on your bike, reading books in your hammock, and doodling whatever had caught your interest in your hourly. As you entered young adulthood, you were unsurprised as your sister married her high school sweetheart just months after graduating college before setting off to start her own business in Austin, while you moved as far as you could out of Texas and began a prosperous career in New York City.

Regardless of the different paths your lives had taken, the minute your sister had even suggested that she might’ve needed help at her bakery, you were booking a flight back home. The holidays were a notoriously busy time for her business, with people wanting cakes and pies to display as their own labors of love at their family gatherings, or to have their children wake up to a dozen expertly decorated cookies under the guise that that was what their Elf on the Shelf had been up to that night.

Given that you had no holiday plans other than drinking Bailey’s-spiked hot chocolate and watching reruns of your favorite season of The Bachelor, it seemed like a no-brainer to come back to Austin. Part of you was excited for your homecoming, to return to the vibrant personality of the city that was a far cry from the east coast city you’d grown to know and love over the years. The other part of you dreaded your return, not feeling particularly excited to have to run into peers from your adolescence while you were trying to peruse the shelves of your local Costco.

You were welcomed with warm arms the moment that you walked through the door of your sister’s home—metaphorically and literally. She practically hugged you the entire way as you dropped your items off in her guest bedroom, then even more so as she directed you to her car, giving you all sorts of updates about your parents and her husband, but not allowing you to forget the whole reason that you’d come home in the first place.

“You’re not hungry or anything, right?” she asked as she hopped into the driver's seat next to you.

“I think I’m good. I ate at the airport,” you replied, slightly amused by your sister’s eagerness to get you to work immediately. Then again, you couldn’t exactly blame her when you thought about how busy she must’ve been.

“Good! I’m gonna put you right to work then. How does frosting cupcakes sound?”

It sounded fine, and it was fine for the first few hours, until the angle of the piping bag started to make the newfound cramping in your hands unbearable, and your sister had to give you an impromptu tutorial on how not to make your rosettes look so… depressing.

“Look, the Girl Scouts need this order in like, an hour, and my cashier is going home in a bit. Give yourself a little break to shake your hand out, or pee, or do whatever it is you have to do, then you can ring customers up. How does that sound?” she finally huffed, clearly just as frustrated with you for your inability to do a task that was practically second nature to her.

“Anything’s better than frosting these damn cupcakes,” you commented as you tossed your gloves into the trash. “If I never have to frost a cupcake again, it’ll be too soon.”

“I love you, which is why I have to tell you that you will be frosting so many more cupcakes in the next few days,” she laughed aloud, looking down at the army of baked goods in front of her that she was still working on meticulously frosting. “But you’ll get used to it. I’ll have Ben give you better instructions. He’s really good at this, for some reason. I’m convinced it’s because he went to art school.”

You groaned dramatically as you exited the kitchen, only to bother your sister if nothing else. After all, wasn’t it your job as a younger sibling to annoy your older sibling?

As much as you enjoyed doing random tasks that your sister needed done in the back, working in the front was definitely one of the better aspects of working at the bakery. There was far less technique involved in doing anything, and when there was downtime in the storefront, you got to passively scroll on social media, turning your brightness down so you could secretly cyberstalk people from your high school in peace.

Being that you were distracted by the phone in your hand, you paid no mind to the shrill sound of the door’s bell as it opened. As you finished up looking at someone’s engagement pictures, you glanced up once before doing a complete double take.

“Hey, I’m just here to pick up the Girl Scout order-”

There was no way.

You hadn’t seen that face in years. Hell, you hadn’t thought about that face in years, despite your mild obsession with him as a teenager.

Joel had been the definition of so close, yet so far. You seemed to always be in his orbit, butterflies in your stomach every time he leaned over his desk to ask you a question about the material or to poke fun at one of the weirder quirks your teacher had. Yet, just as you’d finally worked up the nerve to confess your feelings to him, word got around the school that he was becoming a father. After many pints of ice cream and late nights of your older sister comforting an inconsolable teenage you, you’d finally gotten over the man, letting his memory become a funny anecdote you shared to friends to display your terrible luck in love.

As much as you hated to admit it, he looked good. Obviously, he was much older now, but much to your dismay, he’d aged more like wine than like milk. Donning a new beard that somehow managed to make him even more handsome and biceps that strained against the sleeves of his shirt, he looked far more attractive than you could ever even remember him, his mature look a good one. You were sure his wife loved looking at that striking face in the morning, before she set off to take care of their adorable young daughter. Their perfect little family, still holding up despite the test of time.

You had gotten so caught up in your thoughts, you’d barely registered the fact that Joel had said your name in a tone that held a mixture of excitement and disbelief.

“I haven’t seen you in years! Since high school?” he asked, despite already knowing the answer. The surprise of seeing him, let alone seeing him looking so good led you to smile dumbly and shrug. “Wow!” he remarked.

“It has been a really long time,” you grinned involuntarily, practically feeling yourself revert back to your younger, immature self simply at the sight of the man standing across from you. “How are you? How’s the family?”

“We’re good. Sarah’s turning 13 soon, which is really exciting,” Joel explained, setting a hand on his hip as he did so. You swore you could see the fondness for his daughter as he spoke. “It feels like just yesterday I was feeding her bottles and carrying her around in a sling.”

“I know, they just grow up so fast,” you agreed, as if you’d had any sort of experience in the field. The fact that Joel still had this effect on you, one that made you want to follow him around like a lost puppy and agree with every word that came out of his mouth was mildly concerning to you—particularly because he clearly had a wife and a child.

“They really do. You have any of your own?” Joel asked, looking deep into your eyes and making you want to melt into a puddle on the floor.

“Me? No,” you dismissed before following it up with,. “I’ve been pretty focused on my career, so it’s not exactly the best time for a family. To be quite honest, I think my cats do the trick plenty well.”

“You’re still so responsible,” Joel complimented, stirring something up deep inside of you that you promptly wanted to push right back down. “Clearly, I didn’t do any family planning. I’d say it worked out pretty well, if you don’t count having to get divorced just a few years after getting married.”

This piqued your interest. You could almost feel the teenage version of yourself cheering internally at the news that Joel and the mother of his child had split. She’d always been a bit of a bitch to you, so to hear that the two of them had split had sounded like music to your ears.

“Man, that’s too bad. I always thought you two would be the one couple from our school to make it,” you lied through your teeth, hoping that your entertainment wasn’t too obvious.

Joel chuckled and shook his head, smile lines appearing seemingly out of thin air, and unfortunately making you melt on the inside, just the slightest bit.

“That’s really too bad. I mean, what happened with you guys? If you don’t mind me asking,” you were definitely taking a risk with this question, but you were hoping that the reward of the answer would be worth every bit of boldness you put together to ask.

“We just had… different ideas for our futures,” Joel explained what you could only assume was a very condensed version of what had actually occurred. “You know, she’s actually in town right now.”

“I hadn’t realized she’d left town. Should we keep our voices down then?” you asked jokingly, although it would be quite awkward if his ex wife walked in while the two of you were talking about her.

“No, we’re good,” Joel chuckled. “Sarah really wanted to see her for the holidays, and it wasn’t like I could say no to that request. Although, getting Naomi to actually come was a bit like pulling teeth. I’m sorry, this is way too much information. What about you? Any special people in your life?”

“No, Joel, you’re all good. You know how much of a gossip I was,” you offered him a genuine smile. “Unfortunately, no. Funnily enough, the thing I was dreading most about coming home is having my mom constantly on my ass about bringing home a good man.”

“I get it. It’s exhausting seeing all the PDA whenever Naomi and Henry come back. It’s like they’re rubbing in that we’re so happy together and you’re still all alone.”

“Assholes,” you remarked, rolling your eyes to show Joel just how on his side you were. “I’m sure you’ll find someone someday. I mean, both of us will. Then maybe my mom will stop bothering me and your ex will finally stop acting all high and mighty for being in a relationship.”

“I can only hope,” Joel sighed. “Well, I apologize for dumping all of my holiday woes on you when I really should just be picking up some cupcakes.”

“Oh no, I apologize for holding you up. I’ll go grab that order for you,” you said before walking off to the back, where your sister had just finished putting the final touches on the order.

“Perfect timing,” she remarked, stepping back and running her arm against her slightly damp forehead. “Who were you talking to back there?”

“Oh, no one,” you dismissed, not ready to hear her reaction. “Just giving good customer service.”

The look she gave you told you loud and clear that she didn’t believe you, but it would be a conversation for another time. Since she didn’t seem interested in pressing, you took it as your opportunity to grab the large, pink box, and bring it out to Joel.

“Here’s that order for you,” you said politely. “It was good seeing you today.”

“Yeah, you too,” he said, happily taking the slightly heavy box when you offered it to him. “How long will you be in town?”

“Into the New Year, I think? Maybe earlier, maybe later,” you shrugged.

“We should get together sometime. Maybe get a coffee or something and properly catch up? I would love for you to meet Sarah, too.”

“Yeah, that sounds great,” you grinned, begging yourself not to revert back to your younger, naive self, but not exactly being able to fight it at the same time. “Well, if you ever need me, I’ll probably be here.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said as he headed to the door. “See ya!”

As soon as the door jingled, announcing Joel’s departure, you let out a deep breath that you hadn’t even realized you’d been holding.

Fuck. You could not be feeling this way about a man you had a crush on in high school.

Your sister always seemed to have a sixth sense for when you were getting antsy, so one evening as the two of you worked on closing the storefront, she pulled you from the monotony of sweeping the floors while listening to the sound of her new favorite pop artist to send you to the grocery store and retrieve a few items that she needed more of.

With her company card safely secured in your wallet, a short list scribbled out on a pink post-it note, and your hands closely grasping the handlebars of the cart, you amaturely navigated the grocery store, unfamiliar with the locations of the items that lined the shelves after years of not visiting Austin.

The evening in the grocery store brought you a sense of serenity, with the rush of urgent people looking to pick up the one ingredient they forgot for dinner mostly gone. After packing your cart full of sticks of butter and bags of sugar, you headed off to the get your final item, relieved to have had a mostly successful trip without running into anyone you knew in your youth.

But just as you had this thought, you caught a glimpse of someone out of the corner of your eye. Dark hair and beard imprinted in your mind after your brief interaction with him just one day ago. You did your absolute best to pretend you didn’t see him as you inspected a bag of flour, keeping your head lowered, and gaze averted. Yet, your efforts were futile, as just moments later, you heard your name called aloud as the man approached you.

“Hey!” he said cheerily, blissfully unaware that you were attempting to use the ‘if I can’t see you, you can’t see me’ method on him just moments ago. “Long time no see.”

“Yeah, it’s been like forever,” you added on, looking into his eyes and almost immediately regretting your decision as your gut was immediately consumed with a swarm of rabid butterflies. “What’re you doing here?”

“Grabbing some groceries,” he answered sweetly, despite that being the obvious answer to your not-so-great question.

Duh. What else did people come to the grocery store for? What a stupid question. See? Joel just made you so… stupid! Even after all of the years you’d spent apart.

“Sarah wanted to try making some Christmas cookies to bring to her mom, so…” he trailed off, gesturing down at the flour that was now in his hand. “Got any tips on the best flour to get?”

“That’s definitely more of my sister’s wheelhouse. I just do whatever she needs me to do, like go and get,” you glanced down at your list before continuing for comedic effect, “White miso paste.”

Joel smiled fondly at your joke, only making your insides melt further.

“Remind me to stop by and try whatever has that white miso paste in it. Sounds interesting,” Joel grabbed a package of all-purpose flour and tossed it into his cart, before leaning on his cart.

Fuck. Why did he have to be so endearing, with his smile lines and his kind eyes, and his insistence on treating you like you were the only other woman in the world, despite the other woman customer just standing feet away from you two.

“I definitely will. Has your number changed in the past thirteen years?” you asked, not sure what had gotten into you with the slightly flirty move.

He shook his head, his eye briefly catching on something and causing him to pause in his movements before he returned to the conversation, now looking slightly off in a way that he hadn’t looked just a moment ago. You were so stupid. Of course you trying to flirt back would’ve backfired. You needed to excuse yourself before you managed to embarrass yourself any more than you already had.

“It has not,” he confirmed, smiling at you once more, but not looking like his heart was completely into it. “Any chance you’re checking out?”

“I am!” you said a little too enthusiastically, which Joel responded to by somewhat urgently beginning to walk to the check-out lane. Given that he hadn’t told you goodbye, you followed him like the lost puppy that you were around him.

Just as the two of you stopped in line and had mostly finished checking out, Joel finally seemed to unclench from whatever he’d seen (or whatever you’d said) that had bothered him before. Yet, as soon as it was over, you noticed that same tension washed over him once more.

“Oh, Naomi. Henry,” Joel said, his tone taking a complete 180 from what he had just had with you moments ago, and his change in demeanor suddenly made sense to you. “Didn’t realize you two were in town yet.”

You glanced over to the woman who had seemingly appeared out of thin air to ruin your moment with Joel, just like she had done in high school a million times over. Who you hadn’t recognized was the man next to her, looking a little too put together for someone who had likely just gotten off a flight and was headed to the grocery store.

“Joel,” she said artificially sweetly, the one singular word drenched in annoyance. “We just got in. We’re grabbing groceries for the hotel.”

“I didn’t realize chocolate chips were groceries,” Joel muttered to himself as he evaluated their basket. You were slightly surprised by the sass he had seemed to equip out of nowhere, a far cry from the southern charm he had displayed with you in your past interactions. You desperately wanted to leave the situation, which was clearly none of your business.

“Surely, you remember your ex-wife having a sweet tooth,” the man on her side replied defensively, wrapping an arm around her protectively.

“Something like that,” he replied, glancing over at you with an expression that you couldn’t quite read.

With tensions boiling over with just a few words stated, you finally decided to step in, impulse and instinct guiding you.

“Hey honey, I think we need to get going,” you said, internally cringing as the words left your mouth. Joel’s now wide eyes made contact with your unsure ones and your furrowed brows as you attempted to tell him to just go with it without a single word.

The good thing for you was that Joel was a quick learner, and his hand quickly found the small of your back. Something in Naomi’s expression changed, just for a moment, before she went back to her stone cold facade. You hoped that Joel caught it, the same way that you did.

“Yeah, we don’t want to keep you too long, since we’ll be seeing you plenty this holiday season,” Naomi replied, flashing you a fake smile. “I didn’t realize you two were together. I’ve never heard Joel say anything about you.”

You were sure the sentiment was supposed to hurt your feelings, but you were more unsurprised by the sentiment than anything else.

“Some of us like to leave our personal lives personal,” he shot back, glancing at you before bringing his glare back to his ex-wife.

“Well, that’s cute. I remember, you had the biggest crush on Joel back in the day. Glad you two ended up together,” she laughed and your stomach dropped. Were you that obvious in the past? “Anyway, we’re gonna go to a less busy lane. See you at dinner, Joel. And maybe you, too?” She looked you up and down, and for a second you felt like you were in the hallways of your high school once again, trying your best to avoid the passive aggression of a particularly mean girl.

“Right. Bye,” he said simply, watching the pair walk away as if he were scared that they would turn back around at some point and bother Joel some more.

“Fuck,” he muttered aloud as soon as they were out of earshot, his hand falling away from your back and back to his side.

You immediately launched yourself into a rambling apology, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to overstep or anything, they just looked like they wanted to eat you alive and-“

“No, no, don’t apologize. I appreciate what you did back here. I mean, you saw the look on her face when she thought we were together?”

“Oh yeah,” you laughed out, which also acted as a cover for the deep sigh of relief you needed to let out. “Is she always so shocked when she thinks you’re dating someone new?”

“Well, I haven’t dated much since the divorce,” he explained as the two of you began exiting the building. “So I guess I didn’t really know what to expect. But it totally delivered.”

You couldn’t help but smile as the two of you walked out to your cars together and Joel confessed that not only was he single, but that he hadn’t really seen anyone. Not that it really mattered to you, considering that the two of you had absolutely no shot together.

You weren’t exactly sure where Joel had parked, but he’d offered to help unload your groceries into your car, and you weren’t exactly going to decline that offer.

“Thank you, again for helping me out tonight,” Joel said as he helped place bags in the trunk of the car. “Is there anything I can do to repay you?”

“Actually, there is one thing.”

—

Every year, you absolutely dreaded your family’s holiday celebrations. Specifically, the celebrations where you showed up without a date, and had to spend the night downing eggnog to drown out the sound of your family asking you when you were going to settle down and bring a grandchild, or niece, or nephew into the family.

But this year, you didn’t have to worry about that issue. After running into Joel at the grocery store and briefly pretending to be his partner, he’d agreed to do the same for you at a family holiday party, and to be completely honest, you couldn’t be more excited.

“Again, thank you,” you said to Joel as he opened the passenger door to his truck for you, politely standing at the side of it as you got in.

“It was really the least I could do after you saved my ass back there in the store,” he dismissed, closing the door behind you before getting back into the car.

“I mean, I couldn’t just stand there and let you suffer,” you explained, glancing over at the man as he settled into the seat and started the car. He’d certainly dressed up more than usual for the event, a nice red sweater nicely complimenting your green sweater, and his hair styled nicely. For a second, you thought about your younger self, and how she probably would’ve given anything for a night like this—to just play pretend with Joel just for a moment, since he clearly didn’t see you the way you saw him.

“Well, I appreciate it,” he dismissed, sending you a quick, charming smile before beginning to pull out of the driveway. “Anything I need to know about your family?”

“Oh my god,” you laughed. “Where do I start?”

You more or less talked Joel’s ear off on the drive over, filling him in on family members to avoid; overbearing aunts who would attempt to examine him like a lab specimen, uncles who would try to quiz him on his knowledge of local sports teams, and the occasional family friend, who seemed to be just as crazy as your actual kin. Joel listened politely, taking in all of the information, and throwing in some commentary every now and then, but surely making mental notes on who to try to avoid.

Once you finally arrived at the car-lined street, Joel once again opened the door for you like the gentleman he was, before allowing you to lead the way to the christmas-light adorned house that was clearly bustling on the inside. As the two of you walked up to the porch, Joel looked at you rather earnestly.

“Did I scare you in the car? I promise they’re not all that bad,” you began to attempt to explain, nerves bubbling in your stomach as you thought about how Joel surely wanted to go home.

“No, no, you didn’t scare me,” he assured you, reaching over to brush a stray hair out of your face. “I just… I never got the chance to tell you how good you look. I wanted to say something when you first got in my car, but I guess I got scared. You always look good, but you kinda took my breath away.”

Fuck, you internally groaned. Why did he have to tell you that? Was he just trying to get into character or something? You couldn’t even gather the words for how it made you feel before the front door was swinging open with one of your favorite aunts at the door greeting you.

“Hello, my love!” she practically squealed as she pulled you into a hug. “And who is this?”

“This is my boyfriend, Joel,” you introduced, only slightly alarmed at how easily the word rolled off your tongue.

“Hello, ma’am,” Joel said warmly, setting out a hand for her to shake, which was rejected in favor of a hug. He was clearly a bit caught off guard by it, but also clearly a little into it.

“Sorry,” you whispered to him once she let go and the two of you were ushered inside. “We’re a hug family. I probably should’ve warned you about that on the ride over.”

“I don’t mind, I promise,” he assured you, gently grabbing your hand and looking to you for some sort of assurance. You smiled at him then subtly nodded, lacing your fingers in between his in an act that you hoped would be as practical as it was performative.

As the two of you navigated through the house, you made pleasant small talk with all who you encountered, with you proudly introducing Joel as your boyfriend, and him taking the lead in introducing himself from time to time. After an exhausting hello tour, you had finally made it to the kitchen for drinks, something you’d surely need if you were going to keep up at this rate of socialization.

As you grabbed Joel the beer he’d requested and began to spoon out ladles of the bowl that was tape-labeled ‘ADULT Punch’ into your own cup, you were slightly surprised that you’d finally ran into your mother.

“Hi honey,” she squealed, pulling you into a hug. “How long have you been here? You avoiding me?”

While past experiences of being single during the holiday season and having to interact with your mother often ended up with you suffering for the entirety of the night–or an entire week, like the time she tried to set you up with a coworker’s son–you felt a newfound confidence with the knowledge that Joel was just a few feet away from you, diligently playing the perfect boyfriend.

“We just got here,” you giggled at her typical overbearing self. For once, your guard was down, knowing that she would not be attempting to set you up with anyone, or hounding you about coming home and settling down with a nice local.

“We?” she asked dramatically, brows raised in surprise. “Is your sister somewhere around here, or something?”

“Don’t act so surprised,” you feigned offense as she stepped back to look at the two drinks in your hands. “I brought my boyfriend,” you glanced back at Joel, who was right where you left him, making enthusiastic smalltalk with one of your cousins about the Cowboys game. Like a good little fake boyfriend, upon catching your eye he excused himself from his conversation and walked over to you and your mother.

“Mom, this is Joel, my partner,” you explained, as your gentlemanly fake boyfriend grabbed your mother’s hand and gave it a polite kiss. You certainly hadn’t forgotten about his charm back in the day, but to watch it up close and personal after so much time had passed was undoubtedly having a bit of an effect on you.

“I’ve heard all about you. Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” he gushed. You had to give credit where credit was due, Joel was a great actor. You’d given him a bit of backstory on your mom on the ride over to the house, and you’d certainly discussed her while the two of you were students, but definitely not to the extent that he was playing up.

“So nice to meet you,” she replied, her cheeks warming at her interactions with the man. Joel was laying it on thick, but it seemed to be working for her. “Miller, right?”

“Indeed,” he confirmed, flashing a pearly white smile at your mother. As you watched the interaction, you were doing your best to keep it together, partially wanting to laugh out loud at Joel’s overdramatic chivalrous act, and partially wanting to melt into a puddle over just how alluring he was.

“Then I’ve also heard a lot about you. My daughter had the biggest crush on you in high school! It’s so funny that you’ve ended up together now. I suppose God’s timing is always right?”

Your eyes grew wide and your mouth gaped open for a second as your mother reinforced your little secret that Joel had heard from someone else just a few days ago. Suddenly, you were feeling a lot less like a liquidy puddle, and more like the bark of a firm tree–if that tree could experience mortification. If you didn’t need it before, now you really needed that drink. He glanced at you and smiled cheekily before looking back at your mother.

“So I’ve heard,” he said with a smirk, clearly biting back a laugh. You were going to kill your mother. And maybe Naomi too, while you were at it. In fact, you might just add yourself into the mix. It certainly couldn’t hurt. Or at least, it would hurt less than the discomfiture of your fake boyfriend hearing from everyone about the huge crush you had on him.

“Mom! I think your other daughter just got here. Why don’t you go say hi to her and Ben?” you suggested, knowing that the best way to prevent her from embarrassing you any further was to distract her with the idea of embarrassing her other child in front of her significant other.

You clearly knew your mother well, because the strategy worked well enough to get her off your tail. You passed Joel his beer as he watched you closely, the same mischievous smirk lingering on his face long after your mother had left.

“Crush, huh?” he teased you, causing you to shake your head as you took a healthy sip from a deceptively strong punch.

“Shut up,” you groaned. “Please.”

As the night went on, you realized that you couldn’t have picked a better candidate to pretend to be your boyfriend at a family gathering. Joel was quite sociable and polite, even more so with a beer in his system. He didn’t even mind entertaining your family members on his own as you went off and caught up with the few members of your family that you could tolerate for more than a few minutes at a time.

Following a rather chaotic series of discussions including when you and Joel were getting engaged (never, I mean, in the next few years. Probably.), the most romantic thing you’d done (backpacking through Europe, according to Joel), and what it was like reconnecting with your high school crush (fucking fantastic), you’d finally lost track of Joel. You did a quick lap around the house before bumping into your sister and cousin, the latter of which desperately described her need for air.

The three of you huddled together outside on the deck, the spot where you seemed to find yourselves at almost every family function regardless of how fun or stressful it ended up being. While you were enjoying the mayhem of the party and enjoying your time with Joel even more, it was nice to have a little break from it all.

“I can’t believe you’ve been home for just a few days and you’ve already gotten your childhood crush wrapped around your finger,” your sister laughed, comfortably leaning against the railing of the deck.

“That’s the power of working for a Fortune 500. All of the men in your hometown just want a sugar mommy for a little bit. Get some presents for the kids and wife for free,” you joked.

“You’re kidding?” your cousin asked, her brows furrowed in a mixture of confusion and intrigue.

“I’m kidding,” you confirmed. “You know, we aren’t even actually dating,” you confessed, lips and tongue loose from your second glass of punch.

“What?” your cousin and sister exclaimed at the same time, the two of them suddenly very alert.

Even in your not-completely-there state of mind, you could tell that you had made a mistake telling your secret. It was now very likely that the entire house would know the truth within the next hour, or that you would not be hearing the end of how terrible an idea the whole ordeal was for months on end.

“I figured you two just hit it off, or had some long distance thing going on?” your sister questioned, peering at you curiously as if your face would reveal some sort of information about your arrangement.

“Nope. It’s kinda a long story, but I guess the short of it all is that we’re pretending to be together for the holidays so certain people get off our asses,” you said casually, finishing off your drink and looking out into the backyard rather than making eye contact with either of your kin.

“Fair enough,” your cousin sighed, finally relaxing once more. “If I wasn’t already seeing Will, I’d probably do the same.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea? He really broke your heart,” your sister asked, grabbing your arm to attempt to force you to look at her, and staring at you with concern.

You were sure you could imagine what was going through her head in the moment, the vision of your heartbroken teenage self and the sound of your prolonged sobs as you questioned what your crush saw in her that he couldn’t see in you. You really couldn’t blame her for being worried. She was your older sister, after all, the task of protecting you instilled in her from the day you left the womb, and clearly not gone now. But things were different now. You were all adults, you had more life experience and perspective, and most importantly, whatever was going on between you and Joel wasn’t real, regardless of how much you might have wanted it to be.

“Yeah, when we were eighteen. I think it’ll be fine,” you dismissed, as if anything was ever that simple.

“And he seems like a sweetie now. I think my own parents were wishing I brought him home for the holidays,” your cousin, ever the peacekeeper, added as she attempted to diffuse the quickly escalating tension between you and your sibling.

“He was also a sweetie thirteen years ago when he led you on, then got someone pregnant,” your sister snapped back with a huff, crossing her arms over her chest and turning her back to you.

“Okay, that’s enough,” you declared, watching your breath float away in a cold puff of air. “Can we go inside now? I think my toes are gonna fall off.”

After a side eye from your sister and a nod of agreement from your cousin, the three of you headed back inside, where you made quick work of grabbing yet another drink and finding the fireplace.

A few couches were arranged by the fireplace, some filled from edge to edge with sleeping, snuggling children who were exhausted by the excitement of a holiday party, others with some of the older members of your family who simply needed a break from it all. Among them all, you were surprised to find Joel, enthusiastically talking to none other than your father.

Your father was probably one of the most difficult people in your life to impress. He’d maybe told you that he was proud of you a total of five times in your life. Yet, he looked content, hell, happy as he spoke to your fake boyfriend.

Part of you felt bad as you found your way to the empty spot on the couch next to Joel, but you were cold, and you weren’t going to pass up on the opportunity to warm up by the fire and the man that you had found was a bit of a human furnace.

When Joel caught sight of you, he smiled and beckoned you over, and you made quick work of maneuvering yourself past the coffee table between the couch. Once you sat down, Joel surprised you by greeting you with a gentle peck on the lips. The action temporarily shocked you, and you desperately hoped that the feeling was not reflected on your face. The naturalness of it all almost felt as if you’d done it a thousand times, and you tried your best to suppress the part of you that wanted to do it a thousand more.

“Hi honey,” Joel greeted you sweetly, his hand almost immediately finding yours. It all felt so right, and if you weren’t so endeared by him in the moment, you certainly would’ve been mildly panicking.

“It was nice meeting you, Joel, but I’m old and I’m tired, so I’m gonna head out,” your father explained, giving you a half nod as he began to stand up.

“Bye, dad. I’ll see you on Christmas?” you asked him, ignoring the panicked look that Joel was certainly sending your way.

“Sounds like a plan. Love you. Get home safe,” he bid the two of you farewell before leaving without much other fanfare.

“Why didn’t you tell me that was your dad?” Joel asked you, looking at you with wide eyes. You laughed a little bit at his panic, finding the dumbfounded look on his face more adorable than you’d like to admit.

“Thought it might’ve come up in conversation, or something,” you shrugged, suddenly feeling the exhaustion of the day, mixed with the criminally strong punch set in. “Why do you care so much? Trying to make a good impression, Miller?” you teased.

“You’re the worst,” he groaned, then laughed as you snuggled up to his side. You weren’t exactly sure whether the laugh was coming from discomfort or relief, but with the bone-deep cold you were feeling and alcohol in your system, you couldn’t exactly bring yourself to care. “You’re also really cold. Are you okay?”

“Mmm, you’re really warm,” you replied, settling against his warm body unconsciously.

“Someone’s feeling the punch,” he replied, wrapping an arm around you as you closed your eyes.

“It was way stronger than it needed to be,” you agreed in a murmur against his sweater. “Thank you for being such a good fake boyfriend tonight.”

“It was actually pretty fun. I like your family a lot,” he confessed, trying his best to maintain eye contact with you despite the fact that you were in the express lane to dreamland and your blinks were beginning to turn into miniature naps.

“Everyone liked you too. I owe you,” you yawned, dropping your head from the soft fabric of his sweater to the denim of his jeans.

“Mhm. Wanna head home?” he asked.

“How’d you know?” you responded as Joel chuckled above you.

The ride back home was a mostly quiet one, with Christmas music playing softly on the radio and you dozing off in the passenger seat. Every now and then Joel glanced over at you, and the few times that your eyes were actually open, you wondered what it was that he was thinking. Was he checking up on you to make sure you were still alive? Probably. But you just swore there was something else in his eyes, something you’d seen when Ben looked at your sister, or when your parents looked at each other.

But that was probably just the exhaustion speaking.

Once you arrived at your sister’s place, Joel made quick work of helping you get inside safely, even helping you get to bed at your own insistence. Even in your not sober and exhausted state, you knew that you didn’t want the night to end. Even in your less than ideal state of mind, you knew that the way you were feeling about Joel was unsustainable.

—

The soft, dim lighting of a restaurant that felt fancy even for you seemed to beam down on you, encouraging little beads of sweat to collect at your forehead and the creases of your arms. As much as you were desperately trying to maintain the appearance of being cool and collected, your staccato breaths, wobbly smile, and the rapidly appearing perspiration were quite clearly selling you out. You couldn’t help but to stare down at your menu like it was the most interesting thing in the world, the intimidation of sitting across from your fake partner’s ex-wife’s heated glare far more intense than what you’d expected. Far worse than sharing a brief, yet artificial moment of PDA in a grocery store, and far more than you expected to be able to handle. Yet, Joel had done the same for you, and really, it was only fair that you would do the same.

After the Christmas party, you hadn’t really expected to hear anything else from your date. As far as you knew, Joel had only agreed to play pretend with you for one night, and as fun as that night was, it was all fake.

As much as you hated to admit it, your sister was maybe, just a little bit right about the whole ordeal not being your best idea. You couldn’t help but think about the two of you at the party—how he’d held your hand like your hands were two pieces of a puzzle that were made for each other, how he cuddled with you on the couch and looked at you with such genuine concern when he thought you might not be well, but above all, you were stuck on his confession to you, about how beautiful you looked and how scared he was to tell you.

You couldn’t believe that you were still making these kinds of stupid decisions, the type of decisions that made you want to lay in bed all day with a pint of ice cream and a soap opera playing on the revision, and not do work—the very work that you came back to Austin to do.

But despite your urge to shut down, you tried your absolute best to do what you set out to do. You spent hours tossing ingredients in mixers, whipping egg whites into stiff peaks, and narrowly avoiding burning yourself as you took trays out of the oven. Only at the end of the day, as you wiped your forehead with a flour-covered arm and checked your phone did you realize that you’d missed a call from Joel.

After a quick call-back and an explanation to your sister that you would no longer be third wheeling the night’s tree-lighting ceremony with her, you had somehow managed to renew your little agreement with Joel. Your task being a performance of being the perfect, dream girlfriend to Joel Miller, a task that you hoped you would be up for.

But as you sat at the table next to Joel, nearly sweating your mascara off, you began to question the extent of your capabilities within this particular role.

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” Naomi began, the sharp wing of her eyeliner and the depths of her eyes feeling like they were poking and prodding into you, searching for any weakness or insecurity to be exploited. “What are you up to these days?”

“Well, apart from making the most of my time with Joel,” you looked over at him with what you hoped appeared to be adoration, but probably came across more accurately as the fear you were experiencing, and grabbed his bicep–what you hoped to appear like a fond move, but was something more like you bracing onto him for dear life. “I’m a consultant in New York City. It definitely takes up a lot of my time, but it also feels like every second of free time I have, I’m spending it on the phone with this one.”

You and Joel chuckled, your choked out laugh feeling far more artificial than his. You hoped to whatever powers above that you would somehow manage to convince the couple across from you to believe a story that you could barely even believe yourself, although, with the way that Naomi was still glaring at you, you doubted that being the case.

“That sounds fun,” she replied, leaning forward slightly as if she was ready to sink her teeth into you two and absolutely tear you apart. “So how’d you two reconnect?”

Joel, clearly sensing your discomfort, came to your rescue with a quick, preplanned answer. “Remember when I took Sarah to Manhattan earlier this year?” Joel began, averting his gaze from you and onto his ex, who now shot Joel a pleasant, yet, rehearsed smile.

“Mhm,” she replied, seemingly already entertained by where the story might end up going.

“Well, we ran into each other at a coffee shop a few blocks away from her workplace and really just hit it off. The rest is history,” he said, turning his attention back towards you.

“You two were hitting it off in front of our daughter?” Naomi asked, the slight tilt to her head and hint of smirk on her face revealing that her question was less out of concern for their child, and more out of taking an opportunity to antagonize the two of you.

“It was more like reconnecting. I swear, Joel is the only person in the world to think that recommending my favorite bagel shop in the city is flirting,” you attempted to save, not wanting to be labeled as a threat to their child just a few minutes into dinner.

“To my credit, you were selling it pretty hard. You were practically saying, ‘come with me to get bagels tomorrow,’” Joel added on, seemingly lighting up as the two of you added more and more to your fake meet-cute.

“Next time you visit we’ll get all the bagels you want, my love. We can even split them Lady and The Tramp style,” you giggled, feeling your cheeks warm as you imagined you and Joel at the opposite ends of one cream cheese filled bagel.

“Okay, yeah, I get it. I was just joking, anyway,” she replied, clearly fed up with the two of you.

“Sorry,” you apologized, actually feeling a little bad about how long your little bit had gone on. “What about you two? How’d you and Henry meet?”

“It’s actually a pretty cute story,” Henry spoke up after being a passive spectator for an uncomfortable period of time. “Noms had just moved out west a little bit after the divorce, and the two of us met in a yoga class. I accidentally took her yoga mat, and it was… what did you say earlier? The rest was history?”

The two of them shared an intimate laugh, one that indicated that they were referencing some sort of inside joke, just as you and Joel had earlier after you’d shared what you’d been doing with your life since high school. You glanced over at Joel, his pressed smile and slightly furrowed brows a clear indicator that he was not impressed by the two of them. Thankfully, before the tension could go any further, a kind waitress interrupted the conversation with the simple question of whether or not your table was ready to order.

Shortly after ordering, the conversation picked up once again. While you occasionally were able to ask a question or two about the couple sitting across from you, it above all felt like you and Joel were being interrogated about the nature of your relationship. Lies easily flowed from both of your tongues, sandwiched between fond looks shared between the two of you as if there was no one else in the room, and stolen moments of physical affection that seemed to warm you from the inside-out.

As the two of you added more and more onto your story, the more you began to yearn for the more intricate details of it all to be true.

You wanted to receive a bouquet of flowers on your doorstep from someone almost two-thousand miles from you, just because he’d been thinking about you. You wanted to have a reason to come back and visit the city you grew up in, and to learn about every new hole-in-the-wall shop that had come to mean a lot to him. You wanted to take on his hobbies, and have him take on some of yours despite you both being terrible at them, solely because you knew that the other cared about it. The longer the night went on, the clearer everything became: you wanted all of this and more with Joel, but you’d clearly never be able to have him.

It was no longer a question to you of if your arrangement should end, and had clearly become a matter of when it was going to end. No matter how much fun you were having holding Joel’s hand under the table and feeding the man next to you bites of scallop, you knew it wasn’t sustainable to be feeling so strongly about a situation that had been doomed from the start.

You were undoubtedly treading a very thin line between getting your hopes up for what wasn’t, but could be, and savoring every last second you had with Joel, pretending to be something that the two of you were very obviously not. With the arrival and passing of dessert, and the final spoonfuls of a split chocolate cake, you’d realized that your time with Joel had ended; a conclusion as bitter as the dark chocolate garnish on your shared plate.

The two of you held hands once more as you walked out to his car, fingers lingering together even after the couple you’d been putting a show on were safely tucked away in their own vehicle. You didn’t talk much on your ride back home, the air thick with a tension that made you wonder if Joel had come to a similar conclusion of his own during dinner. The radio filled in the silence where words lacked, covers of Christmas songs filling in for the conversation that surely should’ve been occurring.

After a ride that felt like it had lasted forever and no time at all, you had finally arrived at your sister’s place, the final resting ground for whatever your relationship had been.

“Thanks,” you said as you unclipped your seatbelt, wanting to rip the bandaid off and leave as quickly as humanly possible, while also lingering in his car forever. “Have a good night.”

“Yeah,” he looked at you for a moment as if he had something more to say, but was holding his tongue. Taking one long look at your face, then offering you a weak half smile, he spoke once more. “You too.”

Though you were mildly disappointed when you didn’t hear back from Joel, you couldn’t say that you were particularly surprised. Everything about your final encounter in his truck indicated that the very brief chapter in both of your lives of pretending to be what you both were not was over. Still, you couldn’t deny the remnant ache in your chest when your father asked where your boyfriend was over Christmas dinner, or the pathetic way that you secretly hoped every ring of the bakery door would deliver you Joel Miller, much like your first day back in Austin did.

Once again, you attempted to drown yourself in your work, working from open to close at your sister’s bakery and ending the day with sore legs, flour in your hair, and an intense desire to never consume anything sweet ever again. You somehow even managed to convince your boss to let you clock a few virtual hours at your actual job, spending all of the time that you were not at the bakery in your temporary bedroom, doing whatever tasks would set you ahead by the time you returned to work.

You realized you weren’t being particularly subtle with the fact that you were trying to distract yourself from something, and while your sister did her best to be whatever it was that you needed during such a bizarre time, she didn’t exactly press, though you were sure she had a bit of an idea of what was making you feel so down.

“Hey, I have a catering job for us,” she informed you one morning as the two of you worked side-by-side.

“When? You remember I’m leaving tomorrow, right?” you sighed, hoping your sister recognized your mild annoyance as less with her, and more with your time in Austin as a whole. You desperately wanted to leave, but you’d promised to stay until the new year began, when orders typically began to slow down. (“Resolutions,” she told you over the phone as you prepared to come back home.)

“Of course I remember,” she shook her head playfully as she spoke to you. “It’s tonight. At the Spoke. They’re doing some New Year’s Eve thing, and I think it’ll be fun.”

“I think maybe we have two different definitions of fun,” you commented, continuing to roll out the piece of dough in front of you.

“Oh, come on. What were you going to be doing anyway?” she pressed you, her attempt to get you to get out of the house clear as day now. “Working in your bedroom during your break? Sulking for reasons you refuse to share with me? Watching episodes of The Bachelor that you’ve seen a hundred times already?”

“Ugh, okay, okay. I’ll do it. We’ll do it,” you finally conceded.

“Good! Now, do you want a coffee? We’re gonna have a lot of trays to finish today.”

You couldn’t deny that it made you feel a little bit better knowing that you had somewhere fun to go that night. Despite living in Texas for the first portion of your life, you’d never had the opportunity to go to any sort of dance hall, and though you’d probably be spending the majority of your time distributing cupcakes to people, you were excited to be doing something fun regardless.

After your longest and final shift at the bakery, your sister hugged you as tight as she could manage and thanked you for everything you’d helped her accomplish this holiday season, before sending you back home to get dressed up for the dance hall. After deciding to go full cowgirl with your attire, you peered in your sibling’s closet for any article of clothing that you could borrow for the night, and ultimately left her closet with a completely different wardrobe.

Even as you and your sister arrived at the dance hall early to set up, patrons were already beginning to flood into the venue. Their excited energy was contagious, and you couldn’t help but feel invigorated, your downtrodden feelings being replaced with much more positive ones.

As the night went on, you found yourself having more and more fun, whether it was from distributing pastries to rosy-cheeked dancers who paused to take a break from the floor, or flirty gentlemen who took the brief moment of your fingers touching over a distributed cupcake to ask to buy you a drink. While you were sure that you would’ve had a decent time doing nothing at home, then popping a bottle of champagne at midnight, the night was certainly shaping up to be a memorable one.

Time seemed to be flying by as you stood by the table, offering cupcakes to whoever passed you by. It wasn’t long before Ben arrived, and your sister was excusing herself from the table to share a dance with her partner. You watched the two of them with adoration, thinking of how you would love to have someone to come sweep you off your feet and offer to dance with you–well, someone other than a sweaty patron. As much as you’d tried to convince yourself over the years that you weren’t cut out for relationships, your trip and weird fake dating arrangement with Joel had made you realize something of the opposite. Maybe you’d be ringing in the New Year with a Hinge download.

After passing out the final cupcake you had, you began to break down boxes and put away some of the other items you’d brought to help the distribution process go more smoothly. With your back turned to the dance floor as you dropped leftover napkins into a plastic bag, you were surprised as you heard a familiar voice greet you from behind.

“Joel?” you said as you looked up at the patiently waiting person, surprised to see his face after such an abrupt ending and a period of radio silence between the two of you.

“Hi,” he said, almost shyly.

“Hi. Sorry, we just ran out of cupcakes” you stated, trying to pretend that things were business as usual between the two of you–whatever business as usual meant now.

“I don’t…” Joel trailed off before ditching the idea altogether, surely figuring that whatever he had to say was more important than an explanation of how he was uninterested in the treats you were serving. “Can we talk?”

“I mean,” you hesitated for a moment, wondering if it would be better to avoid everything altogether and simply move on with your life. You could simply tell him no, hop on a plane the following afternoon, then never think about Joel again. It would all be so simple and easy–the exact opposite of what your relationship had spiraled into during your time back in Austin. “Yeah. Sure. Let’s talk.”

The truth was, as easy as you would’ve liked it to be, you were intrigued by Joel’s nervous body language. As he shifted from foot to foot and subtly picked at his hand, you imagined him walking into the hall with his friends, or whoever it was that he came with, seeing you, and immediately going to leave the venue, only staying from the coercion and peer pressure of his peers. You imagined him spending the night working up the nerve to come say to you what was left unspoken the last time the two of you talked, hoping that the beers in his system and all of the dancing would finally get enough jitters out of him to finally address you.

“I’m all ears,” you shrugged, crossing your arms over your chest in a subconscious protective measure. Even though he could do no physical harm to you, your brain was all too aware of the damage he’d done to your heart in the past.

“I’m sorry. For everything. For not reaching out to you after our dinner, and for being an oblivious idiot in high school. And I guess, for being an oblivious idiot now,” he began to blather, glancing down nervously at his shoes as if they were the most interesting thing in the world.

You were surprised by his words and slightly unsure of what to say, or even think in response. Now that you had heard his apology, you were beginning to have an idea of the direction that this confession was likely going to take, and you couldn’t tell if you should be leaping for joy or finding the nearest exit. Maybe you could figure out a way to do both, jumping and skipping as you left through the fire exit.

Joel began to search for his next words and you tried to ignore the racing heartbeat in your chest as you attempted to search for your own. Just when you were thinking that it would be impossible for your situation to get any more uncomfortable, a man slightly shorter than Joel and who oddly resembled him sauntered up to the table where the two of you were attempting to speak.

“It’s gonna be twelve soon! Come dance!” the man shouted at Joel, his accent heavy and his words slurred as he grabbed onto Joel’s flannel sleeve. Joel shot him a dirty look, one that clearly communicated his annoyance, but didn’t exactly scream surprised.

“Not now, Tommy,” Joel reprimanded, his gritted teeth and tense demeanor making you want to laugh–if not for his reaction, then over the surrealistic nature of the scene. Mere moments into some sort of apology or confession, the two of you had been interrupted by his intoxicated acquaintance asking him to dance.

“Yes now, Joel. C’mon, lighten up!” the man practically whined, eliciting an exasperated eye roll from Joel. He looked back at you with tense shoulders and worry in his eyes, and you couldn’t exactly tell if he was looking for backup or sympathy. Instead of responding to him with either, you gave him a shy shrug of approval.

“We can talk while we dance?” you suggested, part of you hoping that maybe the distraction of doing something else while you spoke would make your conversation a little less difficult.

Taking Joel’s hand, you followed the men out to the dance floor, where Tommy had disappeared just as quickly as he had appeared to interrupt Joel’s confession. Part of you wondered if this had been premeditated, or if Joel’s drunk friend was simply not able to read the room.

“Before we start, I have a confession of my own,” you began, hoping that what you were about to say would at least lighten up the mood of your conversation. Clearly, the two of you struggled with communicating your feelings, and you hoped sharing what you were prepared to share would at least be helpful in opening up a line of communication.

“Yeah?” he said hopefully. You tried your best to fight the smile that was threatening to appear on your face at the sound of his tone, but ultimately failed.

“I don’t have a damn clue how to do this,” you confessed, glancing over at the pairings around you moving together as if they had done these steps a million times–and knowing your town, they probably had.

“It’s fine,” he said without an ounce of judgment in his voice. “I’ll teach you how.”

And he did, his mouth pressed closely to your ear as he counted off numbers in time with the live band just a few feet away from you, and directed your body left, right, back, and forward until you finally seemed to get the hang of the dance. Though there was still an elephant remaining in the room, dancing seemed to be successful in alleviating some of the tension that lingered.

“Is it okay if we continue our conversation?” Joel asked as the two of you took a synchronized step back. Your eyes were trained on your nearly matching boots, and the thought of having to face your feelings–or the lack thereof–made your stomach churn. Once again, you began to consider the most efficient exit routes.

“Of course,” you replied, doing your best to mask the nerves that had bubbled right back up as you finally met his eye.

“I was so excited to see you, when I found out you were back in town. I guess there was still part of me that wondered what things might have been like if things were different. Then I saw you in the store, and we started doing… whatever we were doing, and I just kept wanting more. It just felt so real, too real, and I started wanting more than what I could have. I mean, you live so far away, and even if you didn’t, I’m sure you have romantic prospects all over the place. Why would you settle for me?”

You almost couldn’t believe what you were hearing. Joel still thought about you? He had begun to want more in the same way that you did the more your fake relationship progressed? He thought he wasn’t good enough for you?

“Joel-” you began, his name slipping off your tongue involuntarily. You desperately wanted to dispute his claims, but he didn't let you finish.

“I guess I just wanted to apologize for how I acted. I didn’t want you to assume that things ended how they ended for any other reason other than me making terrible decisions as usual.” Once again, it was Joel’s turn to look uncomfortable, and you couldn’t exactly blame him after what he shared with you.

“I accept your apology, but it wasn’t all your fault. And you’re not an idiot,” you clarified in between a spin, finishing your sentence as Joel pulled you back to him. “I was disappointed, but I understood. Honestly, I was starting to feel the same way with you. Our fake dating was starting to feel a little too much like real dating, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up when you were clearly uninterested.”

“But I’m not uninterested,” Joel looked at you with a glimmer of hope in his eyes, which only seemed to be highlighted by the fact that his arm was draped across your torso, a welcome result of the spinning move. “I want to try, if you want to try. The distance is a hurdle, but we can give it a shot, at the very least. We can visit each other when we get the chance. We can watch the same episodes of The Bachelor, then discuss it afterward.”

“Oh my god, who told you about that?” you remarked, interrupting his big speech.

“Your sister. At the Christmas party,” Joel replied, his cheeks flush with the adrenaline of sharing his feelings with you and the excitement of dreaming of a future with you.

“She’s unbelievable,” you murmured, shaking your head the slightest bit before Joel continued.

“But that’s besides the point. We can send each other delivered gifts, and can talk to each other every day, like what you told Naomi.”

“What I told her when I was lying?” you asked with a laugh, reminiscing on your dinner.

“Well, yeah… But it doesn’t have to be a lie. I can come visit you, and you can come visit me. We can get bagels at your favorite shop when I come to the city. I can teach you how to dance when you come to Austin. Maybe it’s crazy, but I think we can try. Should try.”

“I would like nothing more than that,” you confessed, an honest truth that seemed to light you up from the inside. Hearing Joel’s almost crazed rant about how passionate he was about trying made you a little less afraid of your possible future together, and a whole lot more sure about your feelings for the man.

“Then let’s do it. Let’s do it right this time,” he said as the music finally came to a conclusion, being swapped out for none other than the chant of a countdown.

Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

As cheers of ‘Happy New Years’ rang out, Joel gently directed your face towards his, your noses and foreheads pleasantly bumping into each other. As your lips finally touched, it felt as if two puzzle pieces designed for each other and meant to be together had finally fallen into place, the rumble of fireworks outside celebrating the long-awaited union between the two of your bodies.

In the past, the affection the two of you had shared had felt real, but deep down you were aware that it was nothing more than a farce. A façade to trick judgmental exes and prying family members. But this time, the affection was different.

The growing warm feeling in your chest, the electric sparks on your skin where Joel was touching you, and the look of admiration in his eyes once you’d finally pulled away told you everything you needed to know.

This was real.

#joel miller x reader #joel miller fluff #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x f!reader #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal fanfiction #the last of us fanfiction #tlou fanfiction #tlou

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say-al0e · 1 year ago

Text

Casual

Rating: M | This is smut! No one under 18! Minors, DNI!

Summary: Steve Harrington has always been kind of an asshole and you've always been kind of in love with him. But a lifetime of friendship doesn't mean either of you are ready for something more than a casual fling because there's nothing scarier than vulnerability, even in Hawkins. [Set between seasons 2 and 3] Warnings: Car sex, requited unrequited love, unprotected PinV, mentions of cheating (parents, Carol; not Steve or Reader). Pairing: Steve Harrington x rich girl!Reader (briefly mentioned but important, off-screen Eddie Munson x rich girl!Reader) Word Count: 5.6k

Steve Harrington was kind of an asshole.

For as long as you’d known him, he’d been a bit of a dick. Luckily, or maybe unluckily, depending on who you asked, you’d known him your entire life. You grew up together, neighbors, with parents who, in their own way, were best friends - if either of your parents were capable of such a thing as friendship. And because of that, you saw a side of Steve that few others had ever witnessed.

There were moments where you saw the softness, the honeyed sweetness, that shimmered through the cracks in the facade he crafted for himself - beneath the hair and the smirk and the snarky quips. Moments where the real Steve, a tender-hearted, well-intentioned sweetheart who was always on the verge of getting it right but never quite managed to make it, lurked beneath the heavy crown he wore.

Just as there were moments when he saw beneath your own carefully crafted persona. He was the only only person who had ever seen the worry, the sadness, the deep-rooted yearning for something more that was buried beneath your walls of ice. He saw every impossibly strong, deeply felt emotion that lingered beneath your careful composure, your even stoicism. He saw the real you, not just the Ice Queen cloaked in department store dresses and expensive perfume.

Only, neither of you acknowledged those moments.

It was an unspoken pact, one you’ve honored since thirteen when you both realized that being popular meant more than being nice. You both pretended that you were still the same vapid rich kids you’d always been, unburdened by a world built to cater to you.

Even if that was no longer true. Even if it hadn’t been true in a very long time.

Either way, you didn’t mention his newfound soft spot for a strange, ragtag group of children and he didn’t mention the fact that he knew the hickey just beneath your jaw was from none other than Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson.

Just as you had nearly every weekend for the past six months, the pair of you sat in the backseat of his BMW after yet another party that neither of you particularly wanted to attend. It had long ago gotten old, pretending to enjoy the self-involved prattling of your former classmates - their bragging about taking on the family business or which colleges they’d be attending in the fall, snide remarks about Steve’s lack of direction while conveniently ignoring the fact that you were the only one with an Ivy acceptance - and you couldn’t help yourself as you huffed.

“Tommy and Carol are the worst. I swear, if I have to hear her bitch about his inability to make her come or him make another stupid fucking dick joke, I’m gonna scream.”

For as long as you could remember, you’d wanted to tell them both to fuck off, to disappear back into whatever hole they’d managed to claw their way out of, but Steve reveled in their following, once upon a time, anyway. Now, he looked almost resigned to their existence in your lives as he frowned.

“She told you that?”

“Won’t stop telling me that,” you scoffed, rolling your eyes as his hand fell to your thigh, fingers idly tracing the bare skin just beneath the hem of your skirt. “I would tell her to break up with him but, honestly, they totally deserve each other. May they spend the rest of their lives making each other completely fucking miserable.”

It was only in these moments, hidden away in the thick of the trees near Lover’s Lake, that any glimpse of your real selves began to emerge. Your annoyed huffing, directed at the awful people you found yourself surrounded by, and Steve’s tender touch as he shifted closer and carefully brushed a lock of hair from your neck. Neither of you mentioned it, too lost in your own little world, but it never escaped either of your notice.

Still, Steve hummed dutifully. “Totally,” he agreed, “told him she cheated on him with Billy but he called me a liar.” He paused for a moment, shifted just a touch closer - his jean covered leg pressing into yours, body warm even in the cool air conditioning - before he changed the subject by asking, “New perfume?”

“Everyone knows about her and Billy. But, like, who hasn’t Billy fucked at this point.” Steve leaned in, nosed at the curve of your jaw, and you hummed. “Mom brought it back from that last conference they went to. Said I needed something more mature before I leave for school.” You left out the part of the conversation where she went on for nearly an hour about how much of a waste it was for you to even consider college in the first place when you were meant to marry someone of status - someone like Steve - and tilted your head to allow him more room.

“Smells good,” he complimented. “Like oranges or something.”

“Or something,” you mumbled agreeably, shifting against the seat to make yourself more comfortable as he began to press his mouth to the sensitive skin of your throat. “What’re you doin’, Stevie?”

“Giving you the attention you deserve,” he answered, never missing a beat and only pausing to nip at the pulse point. “Can’t have you unfucked in this skirt. That’d be criminal.”

As if he sought to make a point, Steve’s hand began to drift higher up your thigh, fingers traveling a well-worn path and ghosting over bruises left in his wake after last Saturday’s party at his own home. Again, he decidedly avoided the few extra spots that lined your thighs - the bite mark he would see when you parted your legs, in the shape of a certain metalhead’s teeth, and the hickey you’d been left with at the juncture of your thighs - as you laughed.

“Should call Hawkins’s finest,” you teased, grinning when Steve huffed a laugh.

“They’d send Callahan,” he mused as his fingers dug into the plush of your thigh and pulled you closer, encouraging you to climb onto his lap. “Would love to see him try to figure out what to do with you.”

“And you know what to do with me?”

Steve’s smirk was obvious, clear even as he nipped at your skin. “‘Course I do,” he assured you, settling back against the plush of the seat as you shifted in the small space and settled on his lap. “I know exactly what to do with you.”

“Prove it.”

The challenge hung in the air for a moment, thick even in the cool interior of his car, and gave you the briefest respite to study him. Soft brown eyes were blown black with lust, a darkness that you sometimes found yourself grateful for the chance to witness, and his hair had begun falling in his eyes. His cheeks were tinged pink and you knew that his lips would follow soon.

Steve was beautiful, a work of art in the dim moonlight, and your heart beat just a touch too fast for something that was supposed to be casual as you waited for him to take the bait.

Before you could tease, attempt to bring some levity back into the moment that suddenly seemed too intense, Steve’s large hand found the back of your head. He pulled you in with a practiced ease, a touch that betrayed just how comfortable you were with one another, and pressed his mouth to yours.

Whereas Steve’s facade was all flash, easy confidence with nothing to prove, his kiss was almost desperate. There was the knowledge that he was good - he’d earned it, sought to learn exactly what you liked and adapted quickly - but beneath that, there was a desire to make the moment everything you could want. He kissed you with an urgency you could never quite understand, almost as if he wanted to savor the moment because he feared it may never happen again, but you knew that couldn’t be true.

As reticent as you both were to delve into your true selves - into your true feelings - you knew that this would happen time and again. It would happen until one of you inevitably broke the other’s heart, and maybe even after.

Still, Steve kissed your with more passion than you ever could’ve expected.

From your position on his lap, skirt bunched around your waist and hands falling into his hair, you could feel the growing bulge in his jeans. There was a slight rocking of his hips, something you might’ve dismissed as an attempt to get comfortable if you didn’t know him so well, and you still managed to find yourself surprised by just how much the little things turned him on.

“Girls like you,” he rasped, breaking the kiss before you could even think to, “just need to be fucked dumb. Be all pretty and cock drunk. Made into that pretty little trophy wife you swear you’d hate to be.”

The way he spoke was so casually condescending, a little mean in the way he’d discovered you liked, and you felt your cheeks heat as you squirmed on his lap. He knew - knew that your mother hated your ambition, swore you were purposely sabotaging her attempts to marry you off, including the few attempts she’d made with him - and smirked when you shot him a half-hearted glare.

“You can pout all you want, but that’s what you need, right?” His hands fell to your thighs, raking up the soft skin as your own tangled in his hair and tugged. “To be taken care of, to be fucked like you deserve.”

“Don’t think some hotshot husband would care enough to fuck me like that,” you countered, swallowing hard in an attempt to maintain your composure as his fingers trailed higher. “Would never come. He’d be too focused on fucking the secretary ‘cause she won’t be upset when he gets off and she doesn’t. But that’s why the trophy wives fuck the pool boys and tennis coaches, I guess.”

Steve hummed his understanding - had his own firsthand knowledge of both your father’s affairs, knew just what kind of men he was surrounded by now that he was old enough - before tipping his chin to glance up at you. “Guess you’ll have to look harder to find someone worth your time, then. ‘Cause this pussy’s too good to be wasted on some dickhead who won’t appreciate it.”

“Steve.” His name came out softer than you intended, a near breathless sort of whine that betrayed you - more than the growing patch of slick clearly visible against the light pink fabric of your panties - and he hummed.

“Don’t worry, babe. You know I’ll take care of you.” Though Steve could be an asshole when he wanted, he was nothing but a giver when he settled between your thighs. There were moments where you worried, secretly feared this might be the moment he decided to be selfish and leave you hanging, but more often than not, you were the one to tap out first. And any argument you could’ve formed died on your lips as he ordered, “Just shut up and sit pretty for me, yeah?”

Despite yourself - despite the part of your brain that wanted you to argue, to fight back and tell him to go fuck himself - you melted into his touch as his fingers ghosted over the fabric between your thighs. You heard him sigh, felt the warmth of his breath fanning over your mouth as he refused to put more space than necessary between you, as his gaze met yours.

“Next time, I’m fucking you in my bed,” he decided, gaze flicking back to where his fingers hooked into the soft material and dragged it to the side. “Can’t taste you the way I want in here.”

“Can’t keep saying shit like that,” you mumbled, nails biting into his skin as you gripped his shoulder to keep yourself upright. “Gonna make me think you actually like eating pussy.”

“I do,” he admitted, grinning when you rolled your eyes. “Like eating yours the best, though.”

With that, Steve’s fingers swiped through the slick gathered between your thighs. His thumb caught on the sensitive bundle of nerves and his mouth returned to yours, eagerly swallowing the soft noise of surprised pleasure you released.

Each swipe of his fingers was easy, almost lazy. There was a practiced ease there, a lover’s knowledge of your body - absent any of the almost nervous exploration of the first time - and you forced yourself not to think too hard about that fact as his tongue swiped at the seam of your lips.

The small space was cramped, not the easiest to maneuver, but it was familiar.

Though sometimes familiarity equated to boredom, routine, Steve’s touch was anything but. Every swipe of his fingers through your folds, every brush of his thumb over the aching bundle of nerves, was electrifying. He had you teetering on the verge of begging, eager for him in a way you’d never been for anyone else - almost anyone else - and you knew he could tell as he finally gave you something more.

Two thick fingers, skilled and steady, pressed into you. They stretched you - never quite enough to fully prepare you for the impressive length hidden beneath the denim you knew you were soaking through - in a way that had your breath catching in your throat and your heart hammering in your chest. Steve knew exactly where to press, fingers finding that one spot that made you see stars, and you could feel the twitch of his mouth as he refused to allow you to pull away from the kiss entirely.

“That’s it,” he encouraged, tone so smug it made you realize why so many were eager to brand him an asshole. “C’mon, babe, the sooner you let go, the sooner I’ll give you exactly what you want.”

Despite your conflicting emotions - the desire to hit him, to call him an asshole and tell him to just get on with it; the desire to kiss him, to tell him that you only wanted this, him for the rest of your life - you settled for the middle ground and allowed yourself to sink into his touch.

Those murmurs of encouragement, almost reverent in a way that you hoped no one else had ever heard, had your mind blanking and your chest heaving as you focused solely on the press of his fingers. His pace was perfect, steady and even and never too much - always too much, always enough to make you wonder how you ever thought you could be fine with losing this someday - and you would’ve told him as much if you were capable of speaking without admitting that you were afraid you could love him for the rest of your life.

Instead, you settled for sinking your nails into his shoulder, for tugging at the soft strands of his hair, as he nipped at your skin. He sucked a mark just beneath the one you knew he’d seen, despite your attempt at concealing it, and that was enough to throw you over the edge.

Steve once admitted to loving the noises you made, promised they turned him on rather than weirded him out - something you only admitted when he asked why you were so quiet, refused to let you come until you explained yourself - and you knew you wouldn’t have been able to quiet yourself even if you’d tried as his fingers worked you through the first orgasm of the night.

Knowing him, Steve wouldn’t stop until he had you desperate - he liked to see your tears, watery eyes and mascara running as you finally let down the walls he’d only glimpsed behind - and that seemed to be the case as he resumed his pace the moment your breathing began to even.

“Steve,” you huffed, your best attempt at something resembling normal, though you could hear the whining edge to your tone. “Fuck me,” you demanded, or at least attempted to. “Fill me up. So big, always feel so full when you’re inside.”

It was a low blow, an attempt to appeal to his ego - exaggerated, though it was true; he was the biggest you’d ever had - and he rolled his eyes as he nipped at your bottom lip.

“So fucking impatient,” he huffed, though he gave in, just as he always did. “Such a spoiled brat.”

With a tap to your thigh, you shifted. You held yourself upright, knees digging into the soft cushions of the seat, long enough for him to unbutton his jeans and shift his hips. As you had every time you found yourself in this situation, which was more often than not lately, you watched with wide eyes and bated breath as he freed himself from the confines of too-tight denim.

For years, you wondered why so many girls flocked to Steve when they knew how things would end. You wondered why anyone gave him a chance, why anyone came back when he forgot to call or blew them off for someone else, but you understood now. The look of him, the weight and feel of his cock in your hand as you reached out and swiped at the pearl of precum beading at the tip, was almost answer enough. The effort he put in to make you feel as if you were the only person that mattered, as if your pleasure were more important than his, quelled the rest of your doubt.

When you lifted your hand to your mouth, lapped the bead from your thumb and hummed, Steve groaned.

“Fucking tease.” There was no bite, no venom, to the words, but you still bit back your grin as he reached for your hip with one hand and held the base of his cock with the other. He dragged you closer, settled you firmly on his lap and swiped the tip of his cock through your folds, as he tipped his chin in a silent request for you to return your mouth to his.

As you pressed your lips to his, he used the grip on your hip to drag your hips down. It was swift, faster than he’d ever gone and almost desperate in the way he pulled you in, but you reveled in the slight pinch as he stretched you open.

There was something so overwhelming about feeling Steve so close, about having him in the way you dreamt of when you first realized how you felt about him, but you did your best to swallow the sudden lump in your throat as your eyes fell shut and your lips parted.

The pace always varied with Steve. Some nights were hard and fast, usually when you were both wound up after a particularly rough night; others were soft and slow, when the emotion began to overwhelm you, when the desperate need to be close outweighed the potential damage a confession might bring. And others still were somewhere in between, teasing and playful; an alternation between soft and hard, slow and quick - a way for him to make you beg, to bring you out of your head and into the moment.

Tonight was no different.

Though you sat atop him, Steve did all the work. His hips snapped, cock pressing into you with every movement, as his hands dragged you down. He controlled the pace, controlled the moment, and you allowed yourself to be fully present.

There was no facade in these moments, no pretending to be anything other than you were, and you imagined that was why you both returned time and again. This was Steve - giving, eager, desperate to be good enough. And you were just as present, just as honest; soft, pliant, warm and overjoyed that he still wanted you despite the surface ice that froze most others out.

Neither of you could pretend here, with nothing between you but a few pesky articles of clothing. Neither of you wanted to.

And you knew, as your mouth returned to his, that despite the rough snap of his hips and the bruising grip he held on your hip, that your kiss betrayed you. Each swipe of your tongue, each breathless gasp you allowed him to swallow, told him exactly what he needed to know.

When his hand fell between your thighs, thumb pressing to the aching bundle of nerves, your mind went blank and your thoughts revolved solely around the beautiful brunette beneath you.

The curve of his jaw, the warmth of his eyes, the slope of his nose, the plush of his lips; Steve, Steve, Steve, was all that existed in your mind. The drag of his cock, filling you so perfectly that it almost seemed as if he were a missing piece, designed especially for you, was all that existed. And just as he wanted, it left you pliant in his hands.

“There we go,” he groaned, voice softer than you imagined he intended, as a hand lifted to your cheek. “Look at that, givin’ you what you need, hm?” When you moaned your agreement, lips pursing in a silent request for him to kiss you, Steve smiled. “Look pretty like this. Soft and fucked out for me. I’m the only one that can make you feel like this, yeah?”

It was the first confirmation that he knew, that he cared more than you thought he might, about the other man in your life. And though you wanted to tease him, to poke and prod and be a bit of a bitch about it, you could only moan your agreement.

Eddie was good, was more than enough, but there was something about Steve.

“Prove it,” he demanded, voice only just beginning to show his exertion as his hips snapped a little harder. “Come for me, babe. Show me how good I make you feel.”

As was beginning to become a habit, you gave in to him without so much as an attempt otherwise. The press of his fingers to your aching clit, the rough snap of his hips, the warmth of his breath fanning over your sweat slick skin; all of it was too much, just enough, to send you barreling over the edge for a second time.

With a cry of his name, keening and louder than you intended, you came and Steve followed shortly after. You could feel the warmth of his spend, the twitch of his cock, as you settled for a long moment, and felt the tears stinging at the backs of your eyes.

Without so much as a second though, Steve lifted a hand to brush at your cheeks, careful not to press too hard, and swiped away the few that had fallen before he pressed a kiss to your cheek and shot you a teasing wink.

“Love it when you cry for me, babe,” he teased, though you wondered if he’d have the same reaction if he knew the tears were, at least in part, caused by the overwhelming flurry of emotion that had you questioning everything you knew. “Seeing the Ice Queen melt never gets old.”

“You’re such a dick, Stevie.” The huff was as playful as you could manage with your breath still coming in short pants and your stomach churning with emotion but he grinned just the same as he helped you off his lap.

“Think you mean, ‘you have such a great dick, Stevie’.” When you rolled your eyes, straightening out your clothes and attempting to smooth your hair, he laughed. “Oh, c’mon, not gonna say thank you for the incredible orgasms? Your parents raised you better than that, babe.”

“They raised me better than to fuck some rich asshole in the backseat of his car, but, here we are.” Steve followed your lead and began to straighten himself out, zipped his jeans and at least pretended not to stare as you settled your panties back into place, the fabric immediately darkening with his spend. “Speaking of, you should probably get me home, Romeo. It’s past curfew.”

For a moment, neither of you spoke. Steve simply tugged you back into his side, hand cradling your jaw as you both attempted to catch your breath.

The lie was obvious - your parents didn’t care very much how late you stayed out, even less when you were with Steve - and you knew that he knew who would be waiting for you to return home. However, you didn’t expect him to ask.

Steve’s touch was soft, though you could see the distaste in the set of his mouth as his fingers brushed the two marks beneath your jaw - one fresh and one fading. “What’re you doin’ with the freak, anyway?” He’d never asked, neither of you made it a habit to pry into the other’s personal life, but he seemed unable to help himself as he continued. “You know you could just buy weed, right? You don’t have to fuck him for it.”

“I don’t smoke,” you reminded him, rolling your eyes even as you leaned into his touch. “Dunno,” you shrugged, avoiding his gaze as your hands worried with the hem of your skirt. “He’s exciting. Well, not really,” you amended because he wasn’t, “but he’s different. He’s just… Eddie. Doesn’t try to be something he’s not.” The slight was unintentional but you caught Steve’s slight wince, even as you barreled on. “And, I mean, it totally pisses off my dad every time he sees Eddie sneaking out because the guy’s a total fucking klutz and can’t leave without waking up half the neighborhood.” Steve scoffed, though you weren’t sure you were meant to hear it as he quickly covered the sound with a clearing of his throat before you added, as an afterthought, “And he listens to me. Not, like, pretends to.”

“I listen to you.”

While it wasn’t a lie - Steve listened, retained whatever you told him - neither of you were ever particularly honest with one another. Your conversations were never as serious as the ones you shared with Eddie, never as deep. For someone you considered your best friend, Steve barely knew anything about the real you. Though, that was as much your fault as it was his.

There was always a fear, deep and unfounded, that he might not like the real you. That if you were honest, that if you allowed him to see you for who you really were, that he might hate you. That he might leave. With Eddie, that didn’t matter very much. He was fun, a distraction, a taste of something forbidden and a glimpse into another life, but he was temporary. He could leave at any time, decide he didn’t like the real you and it might hurt for a moment but you would get over it quick.

With Steve, it was your biggest fear.

Thinking that he might not like the real you, that he might suddenly change his mind and decide the real you wasn’t worth his time, was a fear that felt almost paralyzing. Steve’s opinion mattered, more than anyone else’s, so you held tight to the person you’d always been - the one he’d always at least tolerated - and never breathed so much as a word to the contrary.

Regardless, you humored him. “You do,” you agreed, lifting a hand to brush a strand of hair from his eyes. “But you kinda have to. And you also moaned Nancy’s name the first time we fucked so, like, that sorta cancels out some of the good stuff.” Steve flustered, cheeks flashing neon pink as he recalled the moment - a drunken hookup soon after his breakup, the first of what would become a regular occurrence - but before he could defend himself, you asked, “How’s that going, by the way? You figure out how to get her back from the creep?”

Steve shook his head, then, and sighed as he admitted, “Don’t think I even want to, anymore. Think I was just… She was right, maybe. We were kind of bullshit.”

The resigned misery in his voice was obvious, still upset by the hurtful declaration of a girl you knew he’d loved - in his own way, anyway - and you sighed as you rested your head against the seat cushion. “All of this is bullshit,” you shrugged. “High school, Hawkins, Indiana; none of it means anything.”

“We don’t mean anything?” Despite his best attempt at nonchalance, Steve sounded almost heartbroken - devastated to hear yet another person who meant something to him declare that he meant nothing - and you sighed as you grabbed the hand that rested on your thigh.

“You know I hate sentimentality,” you mumbled, unable to look him in the eye, “but you’re the only thing worth anything in my whole life. You could never be bullshit. Annoying, totally, but not bullshit. Never bullshit.”

There was a brief pause, a moment in which you both felt the weight of you admission pressing on your chests - stealing what little air seemed to remain in the car, windows still fogged and radio still playing too softly to really hear - before Steve swallowed. “You know I…” He cut himself off, paused and seemed to think better of voicing the thought aloud, before he asked, “You know, right?”

‘I love you,’ went unspoken, as it always had. It lingered, just beneath the surface, waiting for one of you to crack the ice and set it free. You knew, just as Steve did, that you were in something like love. Maybe not a love that would last forever, maybe not even a love that was ever meant to be, but it was there.

Warm, shiny and bright, and just waiting for you to stop pretending that things between you had ever been casual.

So, you nodded.

“Yeah,” you assured him, reaching for his hand to squeeze it gently. “I know. Me, too.”

Silence fell, then, thick and suffocating. It filled the interior of his car with a bitter chill and it struck you just how new that feeling was. It made you wonder what a future might be like, if you had one at all, and you found yourself mildly horrified at the idea that you could end up as either set of your parents. There was no world in which you could see a future without Steve at least somewhere in your life but there was no happiness in a world in which you both continued to pretend.

Either way, you were both stuck - caught up in a never-ending performance, an act for an audience that only existed in your minds.

What began as something effortless, something casual, had become so complicated that you no longer felt certain of much beyond the understanding that you loved Steve. How - if you could love the real him, if you only loved the idea of him, if you loved the safety of him - was a question you had no answer to but before you could begin to even fathom it, the moment ended.

Steve pressed a final kiss to your mouth, bruising in a way that made your chest ache and your eyes sting with unshod tears, before he made his way to the driver’s seat.

And then, just as he had every night since he got his license, Steve drove you home. He pulled up to the door to let you out and didn’t mention the van he saw parked down the street. He squeezed your hand before you could step out into the night, three times in rapid succession, and lit a cigarette the moment you stepped out of the car.

King Steve wasn’t one to fall in love easily, neither was the Ice Queen. But Steve Harrington wore his heart on his sleeve and that heart beat for you. Despite the distractions, the desperate attempts at finding something so disconnected from the cushioned prison of his gilded cage, he knew that it had been you all along. And just as neither of you mentioned the real people beneath the personas, neither of you mentioned just how real the love you shared had grown.

Loving one another, allowing yourselves to be vulnerable - to reveal the deepest, darkest secrets - was terrifying. Both of you feared what the other might think of the truth that lay beneath the crown so you agreed, silently, that to pretend was better than to face rejection.

So, Steve drove the few streets that separated your neighborhood from his and let himself into the empty house that meant nothing when his true home was likely sliding open a window to allow the only person he’d ever seen as true competition inside. And he wondered when the love of his life became a casual fling, when you both resigned yourselves to pretending that neither of you deserved something real - something true, something happy. He wondered why he carried on with it, knowing that in a few short weeks you would be in Boston, knee-deep in a life you hated, while he was stuck in Hawkins, wishing he’d had the courage to be himself and that he’d asked for something more than casual.

There was no satisfactory answer, not if he really thought about it, so he decided not to.

The rest of the summer would be spent in the same way the last six months had. Steve would pretend to enjoy the parties and the attention of girls who only wanted him for his reputation. You would continue pretending that nothing fazed you, not even him. And things between you would remain casual.

And he supposed that was just the way it was meant to be.

_________________________________________________

Author's Note: Did you know there's a chance black beans will catch on fire in the microwave? 'Cause I didn't. Anyway. This was my first time writing 'King Steve' and I had so much fun. This was loosely inspired by Chappell Roan's Casual. And my love of both Steve and Eddie. :)

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#stranger things smut #steve harrington smut #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington imagine #stranger things imagine #stranger things x reader #steve harrington fic #stranger things fic #v's fics

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s4lv4tions · 2 years ago

Text

numerology; nsfw

pairing; gojo satoru x reader / gojo satoru x geto suguru (past) / geto suguru x reader (past) summary; numerology — the belief in an occult, divine or mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events. or: trying to move on. wc; 13.4k cw; death, angst, requited unrequited love, violence, smut (at the very end, but mentions throughout), canon divergence, spoilers for manga an; if you think you've read this before, you probably have! i posted this on my old tumblr a year or so ago, and it's still available on my ao3. this version is slightly updated and edited, but still diverges from canon as it was created at the start of the culling games arc :)

The first time you bathe with Satoru, he cries.

You don't notice at first; he's quiet — abnormally so —, and his face remains pristine, unchanged. The only hint you get is a small, barely audible sniffle that stops as quickly as it starts — and you think he wants it that way. You don't think he's ever cried in front of anyone.

That's why you don't say anything. Just continue washing the suds from his hair, and pretend that the tears rolling down his cheeks are beads of water dripping from his hair — but you take extra care to massage the conditioner in, and peck his cheek as you finger-comb through silky, cloud-white strands.

It occurs to you afterwards — as he lounges on your bed, scrolling through channels with a wayward hand planted on his stomach — that perhaps, it's the first time somebody has taken care of him. The first time ever, or just the first time since… since…

Geto Suguru's face smiles up at you from your vanity — a tiny polaroid, his face no bigger than the nail of your thumb. Beside him, Satoru grins, cheeky and bright-eyed — you don't think he's ever been any different —, and in the corner, the smudge of your thumb covers the lens. You don’t have to lift the photo and check the back to know what’s written there, in your scratchy, looping scrawl; the strongest, 2006.

"Lord of the Rings?" Satoru calls, carefree as ever. A yawn catches in his throat, and his fingers slip underneath his shirt to scratch absentmindedly at his chest. "Ooh, haven't seen this one yet…"

"Uh, yeah. Sure."

It was a better time. Less pain. Less responsibility. Less death — or maybe the same amount, just shielded by the blinding cover of childhood inexperience. Suguru was still alive and burning bright, Satoru was happy (happier. He didn't cry in the bath, at least). Shoko didn’t self-medicate as intensively as she does now. The days were spent in childish ignorance and stupid indulgence, and even when things seemed their darkest, you never lost hope.

(It probably says a lot about you that, if given the chance, you wouldn't return. Whether that's because of what you know is bound to happen, and the pain is too much to experience again, or because you're so utterly pathetic that you'll take sadness and grief and a tiny shred of affection over… whatever it is you were back then, you don't know. A smudge in the corner of a picture of the jujutsu world's greatest.)

Suguru's eyes seem to burn into you. You turn the picture over, and rejoin Satoru on your bed.

"It's been two years."

Satoru doesn't like to talk after sex. Not in any way that's really meaningful, you mean, nothing that lets you in. He loves jokes, empty small talk, work politics. Chatter that's deep enough to show he cares a little without bearing any part of himself — your injury healed up? When was the last time you had a break? There's a new teppanyaki place in Shinjuku, I'll treat you. Don't work yourself too hard, you'll put me out of business!

If you're being honest, you didn't go into this expecting anything more than a person to scratch an itch with.

You're already friends — though, you're not sure friends totally encapsulates what Satoru is to you, romantic or platonic. You've been friends since you were 12. Satoru, Suguru, you — and then Shoko, when you all met in your first year at Jujutsu Tech. That's how it's always been.

You swear sometimes you know him better than yourself. You swear sometimes it's his voice you think with. Is that what "friends" encompasses? Somehow, it doesn't seem enough.

Whatever. The point is that your relationship with Satoru is already strong; foundations tall and proud and unshakeable. You didn't start fucking Satoru in the hopes of forming a relationship — one was already there.

It's just... Satoru is young, yes, and he enjoys flirting, but (contrary to common belief) he's not all that keen to sleep with the first person who's willing. You don’t say this with the belief that you’re special. It’s just that with work, and especially with — y'know, his… romantic history, Satoru hasn’t found the time or will to just sleep around. At least, according to him.

Sheer willpower isn't enough to make those urges go away, though, and… well, you had them too, and you were willing, and he trusts you. And you'll take anything he'll give you, really, even if it's just scraps. Even if sometimes it makes you feel worse.

Today's one of those days.

You feel sick, after. Not because of him — because of yourself. Your polaroid of Getou and any other photo he's in has been turned over, anything that could remind you of him tucked away, but — but he's everywhere today, everywhere, and you'd fucked Satoru despite it. And Satoru is covered in memories of Getou, of course. Every freckle, every shifting of muscle, every jut of bone — did Getou touch him here? Caress every bit of him he could get his hands on? Tangle his hands in his snow-white hair, breathe against his collarbone?

When you came, you cried. Pretended it was just because it was so intense, but behind your eyelids, dark, cat-like eyes stared back.

"Hm?" Satoru hums as if he didn't hear you, eyes fixed on the TV. Dumb doesn't suit him — it's honestly a bit of an insult for him to even try it. Like you didn't sense the stiffness of his limbs the second he'd stepped inside, or the crumbling edge of his smile, or the way he'd forced you to love him harder — pull his hair harder, scratch his back deeper, his Infinity turned off and his skin yours for the marking.

Satoru's mannerisms are scribed into your brain. You catch yourself emulating them, sometimes; hands waving, head tilting, grin wide and posture open. You wear it like an oversized coat, an ill-fitting costume, and sometimes you wish you could stop taking on pieces of him. The more you take, the more you must throw away — and it's Suguru that your memory discards. You find yourself forgetting how he hummed when he woke up from a nap, or filled his cheeks with food like a hamster; how he scrunched his face up when he laughed, pretty all the while…

The point is that even with his incredible knowledge, his awesome strength, the sheer holiness of his existence — you know Satoru. And the fact that he came to you today isn't mere coincidence.

You decide to come out with it. You've tiptoed around it for 24 months, give or take, had a shockingly brief mourning period before the jujutsu world forced you along, and… even with what he did, Suguru deserves better. "Suguru died today."

A beat of silence. Then:

"Mm, I guess he did."

You'd spent the day staring out at the grey sky, the miserable sight of soaked pavement. Grey, grey, grey. Concrete jungle. Heavy rain clouds and an ocean of multicoloured umbrellas, bobbing and rolling to destinations unknown. You hadn't said it aloud; hadn't even thought of it, specifically. The knowledge of it had just sat over your head like a thick, sweltering fog — and if you know Satoru at all, you know that he'd done the same. Maybe he hid it better.

You don't have to look now to know that his lips are pressed thin. You find the sudden thought of looking him in the eyes daunting, anyways, so you turn onto your side, back facing him, and pick mindlessly at the sheets. You don't want to see what his reaction will be when you say—

"Did you know that I loved him — back then?"

You don't want to see the shock, or the confusion — and you'd rather not see a lack of them, either. What's worse, you wonder — him knowing and loving Suguru too, or not knowing and loving him?

"...Yes."

You screw your eyes shut and try to will away the sudden surge of cold, like a sharpened dagger to your chest.

(It turns out that knowing is much more painful.)

Suguru Geto had been the apple of your eye ever since you'd met. 11 and gangly and stupid in a way that all children were always stupid, Suguru had been a bit kinder than his white-haired counterpart. Satoru, being Satoru Gojo, had grown up with no fear of authority, no mindfulness for his less-powerful peers as anything more than people who existed around him. You and Suguru were allowed the title of friends, but very few were. Anyway — he grew out of that mindset, of course, but your fondness for Suguru stayed.

(Though they'd always seemed to be on another level than you — not even just in terms of power, but… just caught up in each other, always. Suguru had only ever wanted Satoru. And vice versa.)

And then Suguru changed. Right under your nose, he changed, and his sudden quietness made sense. His fatigue. The way his hands would always shake when swallowing an exorcised curse, always had since you were kids, and then suddenly they were ingested with a scary calm. Nobody understands the taste of curses. Not even you, not even when he’d explained it in sickening detail.

You sigh, then. Tired and lethargic and not from physically straining yourself for an hour. This is bone-deep, soul-weary. It's been held in for 730 days, or maybe more. Maybe you've carried it with you since birth. "I never apologised."

"For what?" Satoru asks — and he laughs, jolly, and the sound fits awkwardly in his throat. A clear attempt at feigning indifference, but he's a bad liar. He always has been, because he's never needed to lie. Perks of being the strongest, you guess. You can just come out and say shit — and if you can't, not saying anything technically isn’t lying.

"I hated you, after," you confess. You dig your thumbnail hard intoyour pinky finger, taking momentary refuge in the sharp shock of pain. "I couldn't stand to look at you. When I did, I saw… I saw what you did. What you had, and what you had thrown away. I blamed you for Suguru. I blamed everyone except Suguru."

Another snicker, a bit too humourless. "You can't stand to look at me now."

"I…" You don't know what to say to that.

Truth is, you don't want to see his face. Contorted in pity, or disgust, or sadness for you. You've gotten used to living in his shadow — most everyone has — but that doesn’t ease the ever-present blanket of insecurity that you carry around your shoulders. It doesn’t dull the ache of inferiority you’ve been housing in your chest from the moment you were saddled with your technique. As you aged, you got better at hiding it, and you generally prefer your self-pity to go unnoticed, but Satoru—

He could always read you like a book. And you hated it. You hated being pitied by someone who was as powerful as him — someone as close to God as one could get. It was demeaning. Patronising. It makes you feel like a child again, bowing your head as your mother makes excuses for you.

You shift over — onto your back, and then onto your other side — and you look at him. You force yourself. Blankets pooled around his waist, his skin so pale it could be translucent, eyes icy blue and framed with fluffy white.

"You were forced to do it," you murmur. Your eyes remain trained on his chin — his are much too bright, much too all-seeing for comfort. "If you hadn't, he would've gotten worse. He never would have stopped. You knew that, you always did. It… took me a while to come to terms with it."

Satoru sighs. Then, he slumps down so that — like you — his head rests flat on the pillow, and his body arcs towards yours. He's forced himself into your sights again, in a way that’s gentle, but not so much that you wouldn't be able to figure out what he's doing: forcing you to face him.

"Would it have made you feel better," Satoru begins, reaching forward to brush his fingers against your chin, "if you were there when I did it?"

Would it have?

Would it have given you closure? Would you no longer spend your nights wondering what he'd looked like, what his last words were, his last thoughts? If he had spittled and roared in anger, if he had wept in fear, if he had attempted a smile, a joke? If he thought of you, or if you were just another insignificant blip in his radar?

In your mind, Suguru exists as his 17 year old self — smiling and mischievous, polite yet humorous. He puts extra broccoli on your plate and gently berates you to eat more. He tells you that you're a precious part of the team, that none of them would be who they are without you. He calls you crybaby because you always wear your heart on your sleeve, and tells you not to worry about things you cannot change.

Change what you can. Forget the rest and leave it to me, crybaby.

The bubbling hatred that had festered inside him has no place in your head. You want him to stay as he is, your Suguru that was never yours, shining like gold in your mind.

"No. He hated me at the end, I think," you say quietly. For a second, you dare to meet his eyes — bright and pointed in how they stare at you. You know he can see the tears that have begun to burn in your waterline, the way you ball your fists so hard you dig half-moon into your skin. He doesn’t need to be blessed with the Six Eyes to see.

"I wasn't interested in changing the world like he was, even with my Technique. That made him despise me, I think."

Satoru stares for a few more seconds. You wonder what he's thinking about. A second in your time is a lifetime in Satoru's; he must be thinking hard.

But he blinks, at last; sighs so deeply that his chest caves in with it, before he winds an arm around your waist and pulls you close, bare chest to bare chest, only atomic space between you.

There's nothing sexual about it. You're nothing but bones and skin and blood, here. He moulds your head to his shoulder with one large hand and cocoons you in his embrace, warm. Protected. You're not sure who the action is meant to comfort.

And just when you think the conversation is over — just when minutes have passed with nothing but the sound of the TV between you both — he speaks.

"Suguru could never hate you. Trust me."

You don't want to know what that means. You're only beginning to get over it, two years later.

Satoru is holding three onigiri in one hand, and two Starbucks' cups in the other — extra sugar, extra cream, extra ice, extra unicorn-marketing, just the way you both like it.

"There she is!" Is the first thing he says as he meets you just outside the metro, grinning.

It's sweltering hot today — the sun had risen early and would surely set late, and Satoru seems to be taking advantage of it. Gone is his Jujutsu Tech uniform and thick blindfold, but he's stuck with the all-black theme like he usually does — black jeans, black linen shirt, black socks and shoes. Even the frames of his sunglasses are black.

(Handsome. He's handsome. He's always been handsome — years later, you'd think you'd stop feeling the effects of it.)

Lucky for him. You're not, y'know, the strongest sorcerer in the last century, so there's no leeway for you — and even in your summer uniform, the skirt and short-sleeved blouse, you're sweating. Your only respite is that the combined force of you and Satoru will mean this mission is going to be a breeze.

Satoru tsks. "Took your time. I almost ate your onigiri."

A man nearby jogs past, clearly in a rush, and Satoru has to step closer to you to avoid him. He could've stayed still. He wouldn't have touched him, anyway, with his Limitless.

"And you would've had to buy another, genius."

A pout. "You only love me for my bank account, don't you?"

(He's joking. It's a joke.

But your hand shakes — a miniscule tremor — as you reach out to take one of the cups, and you know he sees it because he's Satoru and he sees everything. You turn away as quickly as you can, setting off in the direction of whatever place it is you're here for, and pretend that the fact that he can say it so casually doesn't kinda fucking hurt.

(He could never say it like that with Suguru — so bluntly, so crassly. Not without softened eyes and softened smiles and a gentle tilt of his head — those are mannerisms reserved only for him, never to be seen again. Instead, you get snickers and digs in the arm and teasing pulls of your hair. Of course it’s a joke. That’s all you are.

Perhaps you should just be grateful for what you get. Perhaps you should try to stop comparing yourself to a man you once loved. Perhaps you should try to stop comparing yourself to a dead man. Perhaps, in the end, you just love the pain of it all.))

"Yeah," you reply, taking a large, sugary sip. "And don't you forget it, either."

Satoru catches up to you quickly, effortlessly; his arm flops around your shoulder as he tugs you in the opposite direction, chastising you for going the wrong way — but it stays there long after it needs to.

Itadori Yuuji — Sukuna's dead-but-not-really vessel — thinks your cursed technique is powerful. He thinks it’s amazing that you can use reverse cursed technique — you must be really powerful, right? Gojo-sensei says you’re special grade. He also thinks you're very pretty. He tells you this over his fourth grilled pork belly wrap — this one bursting at the seams with kimchi, garlic, and roasted sesame seeds.

He doesn't say it in a flirtatious way — it's just an observation to him, simple and blunt, and you figure he has about as much of a filter as Satoru does.

"O-oh," you say, metal tongs frozen over the sizzling meat. "Thank you, Yuuji."

You had briefly met him for the first time before his death — Nobara, too. Megumi, the third piece of the golden trio, has been something of a little brother ever since Satoru had taken him in, and you know him well enough to know that Yuuji's death (or lack thereof) is weighing on him terribly.

(There are too many parallels you could make. Suguru and Satoru. Haibara and Nanami.)

Hiding it does make you feel guilty. To experience that grief, that loss — even if it will soon go away when Yuuji rejoins jujutsu society — isn’t something to take lightly. But Yuuji needs a guide that isn’t completely off the rails. Satoru and you balance each other out, and balance seems to be something Yuuji needs.

He reminds you terribly of Satoru when he was younger. Maybe that's why you have such a fond spot for him — he's too goofy and well-meaning and genuine to dislike.

"Why are you acting surprised?" Gripes Satoru, chewing with his mouth open. "I tell you that all the time."

Your eyes narrow. You place a perfectly cooked slice of marinated beef on his plate. "You're you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He whines. "We're best friends, crybaby!"

"You don't say I'm powerful. You say I'm helpful. There's a difference. And don’t call me that."

"Is there?" Satoru asks, turning to Yuuji for guidance. The teen boy shrugs, preoccupied by assembling his newest monstrosity. "I call you pretty, too."

"Yeah, when—"

When you're eight inches deep in me, face buried in my neck, trying to get yourself off. Your cheeks flush with warmth at the thought, and you shut your mouth. Yuuji doesn't notice your slip up, busy as he is; Satoru does completely, and fixes you with a grin so sharp that you vow to not give him any more meat until Yuuji is completely full.

"It's not the same," you say, voice final. It's a lighthearted lunch. You don't want to ruin it by getting touchy over semantics, and that's exactly what'll happen if you keep going. "You say it to reward me. Like tossing a dog a bone."

You reach for the scissors to snip the meat into little pieces — and in doing so, you miss the brief frown that presses against Satoru's brow.

Neither of you say anything more on the matter.

Satoru has known you for five years when he realises that he resents you. Not completely, and not for one particular or solid reason, either. He prefers not to think about it, in any case, because you're one of his closest friends — and even at 17, he knows that that's hard to come by. Especially as the Strongest.

Satoru stares up at his ceiling; stares at the miniature striations only he can see, the starburst-shaped gyrations of clay used to finish it off.

Tonight, he's thinking about it. And many other things.

He hates that you're so hesitant about everything — he hates that you believe yourself so weak that you have to tiptoe. You, with your reverse cursed technique — which is a feat in and of itself — that could transcend time and space, just like he could. A technique passed down for hundreds and hundreds of years, accumulating power all the while…

(Your technique has lots of rules and regulations, of course. A handicap, and he understands it frustrates you, but his own frustration eclipses his understanding. Why should someone so strong feel anything but their own strength?)

He hates that you curl in on yourself when you're sad, or lonely, or angry. He hates that you wear your heart on your sleeve — he's never allowed himself to, not fully. He can't, never fully, because there are people who are watching him, people who hate him, people who want him dead. He can joke. He can make his political desires clear — but he can’t love like he wants to, and God forbid he cries.

He hates that you close your eyes and bask when it's sunny, like a cat in a sunspot; hates that you remember that he doesn't like chicken wings and prefers thighs; he especially hates that you watch over Suguru like it's your job, when Suguru doesn't need it.

And some part of Satoru hates Suguru, too. It was strange for him to come to terms with it, fond of him as he is, but as he grows Satoru realises that there's no love of his that isn't closely affiliated with hate. It makes the love all the more strong.

Satoru, for one, dislikes how polite Suguru is, even when he doesn't need to be. He hates that Suguru becomes a straight-faced, unfeeling thing when he's upset, and tries to hide it — the emptiness in his eyes unsettles him like nothing else.

Most of all, above all, Satoru hates that Suguru loves you, crybaby, and is too pussy to do shit about it. Satoru doesn't understand why, anyways, because he'd made it clear that if he wanted, Suguru could have you both and Satoru wouldn't care. Usually, the thought would offend him. How can you love someone when you already love me? When you've already sworn yourself to me? You already have the strongest, who else do you need?

But… he doesn't know. He kinda understands. You're precious to him, too, after all, sunflower soaking up the sun.

Like he said: there's no love of his that isn’t closely affiliated with hate.

Six and a half hours after the hours-long meeting that followed the ruined School Goodwill Event, you find yourselves in a diner somewhere in Harajuku. It’s one of those weird fusion places, loaning ornamentation and tokens from classic American diners, serving omurice with fries, sushi with mashed potatoes, with a cute little mascot that looks like Elvis. It’s loud enough and bright enough to make you feel timeless. It's a sensation you can appreciate.

Something’s been telling you that time’s ticking, and you’re not quite sure what it is. Trauma, probably. Anxiety. The fact that curses have been banding together, learning spoken language, amassing power — planning an attack on Jujutsu Tech, gaining intelligence, gaining anger.

Satoru doesn’t say it — doesn’t want to say it — but you think it’s unnerved him, too. The last time outsiders entered school grounds was… two years ago, wasn’t it? It’s crazy. Everything always seems to lead back to Suguru.

The attack has fueled something in both of you, anyways; something that makes you both stay up instead of knocking out like you usually do; something that makes you both hungry and restless and liable to travel across Tokyo past midnight. By public transport, no less. No warping or high-speed flying for you, tonight.

But you appreciate it. And you think that Satoru is taking things slow for the same reasons you want to — to take things in, to appreciate what you never think to appreciate. To admire the mundane, even for a little while. Satoru’s less emotionally attached to the jujutsu-less aspects of life than you are — bullet trains and waiting in line and standing on the train platform, escalators and traffic — but he enjoys them all the same when he has time to. And it’s not often The Strongest gets to experience pure, genuine normality, too, so maybe sitting in this gaudy diner and watching the world pass you by is a luxury he rarely affords himself.

He orders the most complicated drink they have — a sakura-caramel milkshake topped with whipped cream, glacé cherries, and an entire slice of cheesecake. He’s down to the last dregs of melting cream within 10 minutes, swiping fries from your plate between sips, ignoring your chides of rotten teeth and high blood sugar.

Blindfold swapped for glasses. Strands of hair drifting down against his forehead.

You’re always reminded at the worst times of how handsome he is. It’s not like it’s a secret, or he’s unaware of it — and he takes pride in his looks, if his extensive skincare shelf and general attitude is anything to go by — but he puts much more stock in his strength, in his usefulness to others, his intelligence. The things he can provide for others. Not many people realise that.

Maybe you shouldn’t act so high and mighty. It’s not like you don’t appreciate his appearance as much as the next person — hell, half the time you’re trying to stop it from distracting you — but maybe you get a pass. Y’know, as a person who actually has reason to marvel over the stretch of his neck and the flush of his cheeks and how his lips go the prettiest pink when you kiss him. Or the cords of muscle along his arms; the slender-yet-thick bands of muscle of his chest and legs. The large, veiny expanse of hand — slim, delicate fingers wrapped around a paper straw…

"Are you gonna eat those?" Says Satoru, slurping obnoxiously. “Haven't eaten since dinner."

You push the basket across the table, uncharacteristically void of argument. "Go crazy."

Satoru sets his empty glass aside, but the straw remains in one hand. The other he uses to pluck up fries, 4 or 5 at a time, his gaze suddenly fixed on you as he chews nonchalantly.

"Y'know," he says, licking salt from his fingertips, jabbing the straw in your direction, "I can always tell when you're horny."

"Excuse me?"

"You squirm," Satoru continues — matter-of-fact, casual, as if he's talking about the weather. "And you get quiet.”

“I’m a quiet person,” you snap, nails pressing against your palms under the table. “Sorry I know when to shut the fuck up—”

“And then you get flustered. And when you’re flustered, or embarrassed, you get angry.” He raises his hand — signals the cute waitress for another basket of fries, and leans back with his arms splayed along the back of the booth. “Don’t look so surprised! How long have we known each other?”

If you were a better person, you’d probably admit that yes, he’s right. You do get quiet when you’re horny, and you do get angry when you’re flustered — if you were a worse person, though, you’d remark on how you're the first person he crawls to when he’s sad, or overwhelmed. How getting you into bed and losing yourselves in each other is a sort of therapy for him. How he always tries to distract you with cheeky grins and sly, flirty comments, but then afterwards he cries in the bath as you clean him up.

You don't say that, obviously. Seems like a pretty shitty thing to bring up today of all days. He'd probably deny it anyways, but you don't think it's a coincidence that the attack has left him restless and he obviously wants to take you home.

The new fries are delivered to the table, but he looks right past them. He bows his head slightly, glasses slipping a little further down his nose so that his white-framed eyes peek over the top of them.

"Let's warp home," Satoru says — and oh. There's that voice. That drop in tone, that lack of boisterous humour he always employs. It's soft enough to have goosebumps rising on the back of your arms, smooth enough to have you squirming — yes, squirming, you admit it — in your seat. "Alright?"

"Yes." And it's embarrassingly breathless, and embarrassingly quick, but Satoru doesn't tease you. Just smiles, raises a hand for the bill, and watches you all the while.

You count seven stitches in the forehead of Geto Suguru.

Count, because it's all you can do. Everything else is lost to you.

Breathing.

Standing.

It feels like even your heart has stalled. Because—

Because—

Because Geto Suguru is dead. Dead, in the ground, no longer breathing, no longer living. Satoru had killed him. Satoru had demolished him.

The lips of the Geto in front of you twist — a sickening, stomach-turning imitation of the smile you once adored. On his face it's a sneer, a mockery. Your Suguru did not smile like this when you knew him.

"Hello," he greets pleasantly. His arms are hidden within the sleeves of his yukata. Hair down. Suguru always tended to wear his hair up, unless he was fresh out of the shower. Unless he was upset. It was too much hassle to take care of. You know when he took over the Time Vessel Association and donned the gojo-kesa he began wearing it down. "_____ _____, yes?"

You can't answer. Your ears are ringing. Your stomach gives a worrying lurch that winds up your throat — you think you're going to be sick.

How? Why? Who — who is this in front of you? Because it's not Geto, not Suguru — and you don't say that because of longing or a pathetic desire for ignorance. This thing feels wrong. Inherently, blasphemously wrong. Looking at him for too long makes your cursed energy prickle. Seeing Suguru's image painted in such slimy, rancid energy has you gasping for breath.

Satoru, your mind whispers. Satoru needs to know.

He should. He needs to. But this pseudo-Geto does not look friendly in the slightest, and you are isolated.

Looking back, it had seemed fine to go alone to exorcise curses in the belly of Tokyo's metro. Taking old service tunnels and eventually entering abandoned tracks hadn't felt scary. You're a semi-special grade sorcerer with years of experience under your belt and a powerful cursed technique that could get you out of most, if not all, pinches, restrictions and regulations be damned.

"I'm sure you're very confused. I apologise, really…"

The reality of the situation hits you. Maybe hit is the wrong word — it doesn’t come as a bloody, stinging smack in the face. It’s a trickle of ice-cold water down the nape of your neck, drawing dread from your head all the way into the pit of your stomach. You don't think this is a pinch you'll come out of — at least not battered half to death, especially when a silver-haired curse decorated with stitches steps out from behind pseudo-Geto. The curse Kento had fought. The one that he said to look out for. Patchwork.

Immediately, you know fighting isn't an option. But what else is there to do, in the face of pseudo-Geto and his silver-haired, sentient curse? Your technique may not be limitless in your possession, but in theirs? If they did to you what they did to so many others — transfiguring you past the point of recognition, stealing your body and technique, desecrating your corpse with cursed energy…

"I can feel it from here," titters the curse excitedly. "So warm… I have to have it! Her soul, I have to have it!"

Fuck.

You could try to escape, but you wouldn't have enough time to run past them and through the winding corridors of the underground, even while distracting them with your cursed technique. They'd catch you within seconds. You’re sure they have curses lurking around waiting to thwart you, too.

You could burst directly into the layers of concrete and metal above — use your technique to revert them back millions and millions and years to their very first forms, atoms and subatomic particles, and then rebuild them up as an ascending platform — but that would take too much time, and you'd be completely defenceless while you did. Not to mention the toll it'd take on you.

(Not to mention the fact that you'd be bursting into the public eye from a giant crater in the ground.)

"I'm sure you know what I'm going to do," continues pseudo-Geto, amiable. "I would ask you to join us, but I know that is impossible. Therefore, there is only one course of action."

Can't fight. Can't escape. Can't get answers. Can't stay clueless. How contradictory.

You're not dying, that's all you know. And if you have to do the one thing you never wanted to do, then so be it. Anything is better than death. Death is not an escape, in this scenario — it’s a guarantee of imprisonment.

"It's a shame," pseudo-Geto sighs, bloodlust swelling. "Such a waste of a good technique."

You make a Binding Vow with yourself within seconds.

Using a magnitude of cursed energy usually out of your reach, your entire body will be reduced to atoms — intangible, untrappable, unkillable — for as long as it takes to retreat to safety. In return, you will be unable to think, unable to move according to your own will, only a mere pawn to entropy as the rest of the galaxy is — high risk, high reward.

There are many things that could go wrong.

In reducing yourself to essentially nothing, in splitting your cursed energy into billions of particles, you could reach a state of such low cursed energy concentration that you are, for all terms and purposes, considered dead. In doing so, your Binding Vow could break, and you would be unable to return to living.

Or you could float for days, weeks, years — safety is subjective, subjective is dangerous when it comes to contracts, and you can only hope that your own understanding of it sets the standard.

It's either this, this fleeting, terrifying chance, or death. With one, you can return to your school, your students, your Satoru — you can tell them what happened. You can bring justice to whoever has disturbed Suguru from his slumber. With the other — nothing. Just plain, utter nothingness forever and ever.

(You know which you'd rather.)

The last thing you recall, in spotty haziness, is the heart-stopping sight of Suguru surging towards you, eyes bloodthirsty, face contorted in malice.

The last thing you hope is that Satoru isn't too upset about the risk you've taken.

Eight days after your solo mission, you resurface — a discombobulated, stumbling mess on the outskirts of Shibuya, eyes glazed and mouth stuttering over syllables. A nearby Window calls the college within seconds, and Gojo is there just as soon — hands shaking when he grasps your arm and turns you to face him, fingers trembling when he cups your cheeks and brushes them under your eyes.

It’s you. It’s you, it’s you, it’s you, and he can breathe, he can fucking breathe, his chest is lighter than it’s been for those entire 8 days — all the while, he burns with an anger so intense it hurts. And Satoru is no stranger to anger, of course — knows it as intimately as he knows himself — but he's not sure if he can remember the last time it had rendered him breathless, trembling. Bloodthirsty.

It's not the time to think about it. Not when you're shaking in his arms, so frail and weak everywhere except your hands — no, your hands remain strong, fingers digging into his clothes and skin. He turns off his Infinity. The sting of your touch grounds him.

Shoko is already waiting in the clinic for him — she’d been preparing ever since the call first came in. The students (the ones on campus, at least) crowd together at a distance, buzzing anxiously as Satoru disappears swiftly into the depths of the infirmary with you in his arms.

Bad things happen often. Too often. Satoru isn’t sure whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that they haven’t gotten used to it yet.

“Gibberish,” Satoru answers when Shoko asks if you’ve said anything competent since he picked you up. “Just gibberish.”

Shoko is poking and prodding you with the usual doctor's shit — stethoscopes and thermometers and that blood pressure band that goes around your arm — and you just lay there and take it. Head rocking side to side, limbs trembling, mouth lolling open, and Satoru's trying not to lose his head because what good is taking your temperature? Do you look like you have a fucking cold? Is the way your eyes focus and unfocus normal? The way you can’t string together two syllables that make fucking sense?

But even with how he can see your cells malfunctioning all over your body, Shoko knows more about this shit than him. So he sits pretty on her swivelling chair, twisting back and forth, body the image of boredom but mind anything but. Time and time again, he’s reminded of how unprejudiced tragedy is — how it leaves no hint, no mark of itself, no time to prepare for the toll of it all.

Satoru had greeted you briefly before you’d left. Said something about getting lunch together, that you better be careful because you were treating him — the same shit he said time and time again, his real plea hidden within the folds and twists of his jokes and quips. Be careful. Don’t die. I can’t lose you. You’re precious to me.

You’ll be okay. You have to be — he won’t allow anything otherwise. But if he’d known last week that you’d end up like this, would he have said those things out loud? He doesn’t think so. He’s cowardly in that way.

A few moments later, Shoko straightens up. Immediately reaches into the pocket of her lab coat and pulls out a cigarette and a rusting lighter, and is puffing out clouds of bitter air just seconds later.

Shit. That’s not a good sign.

Shoko sighs. Rubs at her dark undereye circles and only makes them worse, taps her cigarette so that the ash falls to the floor. “I know what it is.”

Well fucking tell him instead of keeping it in!

“Oh?” Satoru says instead, leaning forward onto his knees. “What is it, then?”

“She used her technique on herself.”

“She does that all the time to heal."

“She didn’t heal herself,” Shoko snaps — and Satoru remembers that he’s not the only person you’re important to. That while he and Suguru had gotten ahead of themselves being the strongest, they’d left you and Shoko to stroll humbly along your own paths. The only girls in their year. The only person Shoko could fully confide in, really — at least in Tokyo —, the only person who had bothered to check up on her when she drank too much, smoked too much. Even if Shoko hated it.

Shoko is upset. Satoru doesn't what to do with it.

(Alcohol — she likes alcohol. Satoru reminds himself to pick up the most expensive bottle of the stuff the next time he's out.)

(No. She’s trying not to drink so much, isn’t she?)

(Whatever. Life is short.)

“She dissipated herself.”

Satoru knows about your technique intimately enough that it immediately gives him pause — but he runs over the details in his head, just in case, as if it isn’t already imprinted on the flesh of his skull.

Your cursed technique allows you to disassemble items down to their most basic units — subatomic particles — while your reverse cursed technique allows you to reassemble them. Items can be reassembled into their previous form, or to another related form, but you cannot exceed the item’s natural entropy threshold. If you do, the item cannot be reverted back to a physical state, and you will bear the brunt of the resulting shift in energy.

It's a finicky technique. Finicky and fickle and the risks tend to outweigh the rewards — but you'd always used it so elegantly, so gracefully. Even when you doubted yourself, you had a handle on it. Satoru admired that about you.

("You don't say I'm powerful. You say I'm helpful. There's a difference."

You'd said that to him once, when he brought you and Yuuji to lunch. You'd acted like it didn't bother you but he could tell it did — he didn't need his Six Eyes to notice how your nose twitched and your eyes narrowed, displeased.

But Satoru believes in two types of helpfulness.

The kind he is — powerful, needed, a force to be reckoned with. Someone that keeps things afloat, that acts as a beacon in the dark.

Then there's the other kind. The usefulness of pawns, of bait. Necessary, but not fundamental. Desired, sure, but rarely crucial.

You've always been the first. Always. You and him and Suguru and Shoko, always. Even he could admit that.)

You disassembled yourself into atoms. Into nothingness. You lost your mind, your body, your energy, everything—

Satoru sighs. He's been doing that a lot today.

“I didn’t know she could do that,” Satoru says. His throat is covered in a layer of sawdust. He can’t remember the last time he had to actually focus on not throwing up. “Why would she do that?”

“She talked about it, before,” Shoko says. She leans against the bed you’re laying on, gazing over her shoulder — and the way she looks at you turns his stomach, the upturn of her brows, the sad downturn of her mouth. It’s as if you’re already dead. As if she’s looking at a living corpse. “Just… as a theory. A last resort to help her get away, if needed, but—”

“But what?”

“She knew she didn’t have the power for it,” Shoko mutters. Breathes another puff of cigarette smoke. “If she tried, she'd end up just… fading away. In breaking herself up, she'd negate the cursed energy that gives her the power to put herself together.

"And the side effects would be… well, you can see that for yourself. Stupid, so fucking stupid…”

“Well, obviously she has the power for it,” Satoru murmurs. “Or made the power for it.”

“A binding vow?”

Satoru shrugs. Clenches his jaw, watching as you scratch at the faux-leather underneath you. “It'd make sense. Explains how she put herself back together."

(But for what? What could have driven you to such lengths?

A curse like Jogo wouldn't be all too difficult for you to defeat.

So who…?)

Shoko hums. She stares into space for a moment, eyes unfocused, and for a moment Satoru sees her younger self — the one who just started smoking, just started drinking, who carried the weight of all the people she healed (and those she'd failed to) tucked in her pocket. The Shoko that would make sarcastic quips and humble them when they needed humbling, but humour them when she knew the outcome would be funny.

A time when they had very little responsibility. Even him, shackled with it since birth. Comparing his duty from then to now is like comparing a boulder to the weight of the world.

He feels very old, suddenly, at 28.

"There's nothing I can do for her," Shoko says, softly. Regretfully. "If she did make a binding vow, I can only assume she made a condition about returning to normal. If so…"

Satoru can’t do anything about it, basically, she explains. Your condition is one that will only heal with time, patience, and the odd boost from Shoko’s technique. Maybe, she says — she's still unsure about that last bit.

It sickens him. It festers as a deep, curdling annoyance in his bones, his uselessness. It’s a sensation he had only felt once before, standing before the slumped-over body of Geto Suguru. Nothing he could do for him except put him out of his misery, and even then that felt like a cop-out.

So… he can't go directly after the thing that had forced your hand, because they had left no trace. He can't heal you, either. He can't take care of you while your body repairs itself, while your supposed binding vow returns you to your rightful state — that duty will fall to Shoko, or one of her interns.

He can do nothing. And Satoru is nothing if he cannot be of use.

Nine months after the events of the culling games, Satoru enters your room to see you sitting up — eyes wide, eyes seeing, and it only takes you fixing him with a single look to know that you're okay.

(Subjectively. Relatively.)

Suguru Getou — Kenjaku — is finally dead — exorcised. He’s not sure which is the right word to use. All of his allies, killed or exorcised too. Nanami, murdered. Nobara, comatose. Yaga, dead. Inumaki, Maki, Okkotsu, maimed; the great houses of sorcery destroyed and rebuilt in the image of Satoru’s will.

Itadori Yuuji — dead. Sukuna Ryomen — exorcised.

Adding up the gains, subtracting the losses, carrying the ones… Both sides seem to have lost pretty evenly. And he should be happy about it, too; things could have turned out much worse. And they would have, too, if he hadn’t pushed himself out of his pouting and escaped the prison realm — a feat that was half out of spite and half concern for the outside world, and maybe a little curiosity. Rage. Longing to see the bastard who’d stolen Suguru’s face and body, who dared to reanimate him and rouse him from peace — longing to slaughter the thing that had rendered you bedridden and half-mad for months.

He had been the one to kill Kenjaku. It only felt right to be the one to do so — he’d killed Suguru, after all; had been the one to leave him defenceless and open to manipulation. If Suguru hadn’t been dead, Kenjaku wouldn’t have been able to steal his body.

Of course, Satoru ignored the fact that the very last rotten, desperate dregs of Suguru would have enjoyed Kenjaku’s plan — it was the only way he was able to keep his eyes open when he blasted his brain to bits. It was hard enough the first time.

All of these things sit on his tongue, bitter and souring and curdling — every detail of the battle, of the culling games, the colleagues and peers and students he’d held in his arms, the ones he’d comforted as they slipped away, the ones he’d reassured and promised.

(Pink, blood-covered hair; a smile that never dimmed, a nervous murmur (“It’s okay, Gojo-sensei. I know what I got into.”). The shaky laugh that had followed.)

Satoru’s hands tremble at his sides.

Your eyes are wet with tears when you look at him.

“How long has it been?” You croak — voice dry and cracked with disuse, whining in some parts, low and wheezing in others. Bone-deep, the fear in your voice, and for good reason — things had already been at a boiling point when you’d been taken down. Everything had moved past you. “Satoru—?”

Another selfish decision on his part: he doesn’t tell you. At least, not now, when the words threaten to vomit out of his mouth, when the pain is suddenly too fresh and too raw.

(For one strange, too-long second, he’s reminded of his mother — weak, presence-less, powerless as she was. Empty-eyed and unhappy. She was hardly even a mother with the amount of governesses he had.

Somehow, though, every problem would seem worse when her eyes were upon him; every cut and bruise was more painful; every slight against him a grave insult; every mistake a cause for self-pity and temper tantrums — and none of it mattered, as long as she took him into her arms.

A rarity, yes, but… maybe one of the only fond memories he has of his childhood in the Gojo household.

Satoru feels like a kid again — suddenly sniffling from a bruise he swore didn’t hurt, his mother ready to pat his head and baby him and coo his name. Satoru. Not Gojo-sama.)

He crosses the room and plants himself upon your bed and takes you into his arms for the first time in months, and—

And for the first time since Yuuji’s death, since Nanami’s, since Suguru’s, since your injuries—

He cries. Openly. Heaving, chest-wrecking sobs; red, wet nose and ugly whimpers. It’s overwhelming. It’s cathartic. It makes the pain worse, for a second, before it begins to taper out in a bruising wave; with it, he remembers his darling underclassmen who died, his colleagues that he’d wanted to live at least a few more years; he remembers that despite years of being told so, he’s not God — he couldn’t stop Yuuji’s death, or Suguru’s, or Toge losing his arms, or—

“Thirteen months,” he manages to get out. “Thirteen months — you couldn’t talk, or move properly, or—”

Satoru grabs handfuls of you — hair, waist, belly, it doesn’t matter. He can feel you beneath his skin. Rushing, pounding blood, cells, micromolecules — and he doesn’t need to, but he engages his Six Eyes for a moment — actually engages them, doesn’t let them run unconsciously in the background. It’s a comfort to let himself see each receptor interact with each signal on each plasma membrane, to let himself see the tissues that formed organs that formed organ systems forming you, breathing, living, sentient—

He kisses you — or you kiss him, he’s not sure — but it’s far more intimate, far more tender than any touch he’d delivered unto you; hands clutching the sides of your face, your fingers digging into his wrists. You’re crying, salt on his tongue — and he only knows they’re not his own tears because you give a great, shuddering sob when you part, trembling like a leaf in the wind.

“I had to,” you gasp, and he wants to tell you that he knows, he knows, he doesn’t blame you, sweet girl — did what you had to do to live, to survive— “I had to—”

“Only go where I can follow, okay?" His eyes are burning again, voice cracking with the promise, regardless of the fact that he’d rather you do it 100 times over than die. But it's the only way he can tell you he loves you without telling you he loves you, and he can't remember the last time he said the words aloud.

(He does. He remembers. And he remembers that Suguru wouldn't mind if he said it to you — that Suguru loved you as he loves you. And he remembers that Suguru is dead and doesn't have an opinion anymore, so it really doesn't matter, anyways.)

Satoru calls Shoko when he rights himself, barely pulling back from your embrace to text her something barely understandable and hurried. You don't say much while he does; still acclimating to being aware, being awake — he catches you with your eyes screwed shut and your nose buried in his jacket, fingers tight on his arms again. Grounding yourself. Reminding yourself that you're alive, and with him.

Shoko scolds you between rummaging around for a thermometer and scribbling your prescription in messy, barely legible cursive — calls you a dumb bitch for doing what you did, tells you that you owe her a bottle of wine and a trip to a fancy hot spring, and it all seems a little lighter.

(She cries a little — if the slight glassiness of her eyes can be considered crying. Satoru only teases her a bit for it, though you're quick to mention how he'd blubbered like a baby when he saw you, and he's humbled quickly.

It's the most normal he's felt in weeks.)

Shoko clears away after a few hours — gives you strict orders to rest, and sends him a knowing look that he's not all too sure of the meaning of.

"You look tired, Satoru," you finally say when you're alone again. Your smile is sad, knowing, and Satoru curses it all. You deserve a grace period, a moment of ignorance before the grief settles in. "What happened?"

But when have you ever wanted a moment of ignorance? When has he ever been able to hide the truth of things from you? When have you ever been anything but his equal, his confidant?

"Everything," Satoru says. A short, humourless laugh punctuates his single-worded sentence. "Everything, crybaby. Everything that we thought could happen, and everything we thought couldn't."

A flicker of a smile — uncomfortable, flat. Your eyes flicker down to the bland, starched sheets of the hospital bed. "Did you see him?"

He doesn't need you to elaborate. There's really only one person you both mean when you say him.

"Yes."

"Who was he?"

Satoru shifts in his seat. "An ancient sorcerer named Kenjaku. His cursed technique allowed him to transplant his brain between bodies and possess them."

"And he chose Suguru."

"Yes. And many others, too."

"And you killed him."

"Yes. For Suguru, and for you. But mostly for Suguru.”

“I’m glad,” you say, but your fingers twist the sheets tightly. “When I saw him, I was angry. So angry, I… I wanted to kill him. I knew I wasn’t strong enough, and I knew he would kill me, but for a second—”

He understands. God, does he understand. “You wanted to take the risk.” No matter the cost, no matter the damage to your own body. Anger like that consumes.

“I did.” You swallow. Your eyes meet his. “It was like… adding insult to injury. As if it’s not enough that Suguru is dead, but this — this Kenjaku has to puppeteer him too. Disturb his peace."

The wind rustles the trees outside. The late-afternoon gold of the sun settles along the horizon, a burning orange that stretches the shadows and warms the wind and turns the side of your face honey-soft and sad.

“But I realised that I was probably the first person he’d revealed himself to," you continue, "so I was the only one that could warn you."

Always thinking about the good of others. It was another thing he admired about you — Nanami, too. Satoru, for all his big talk about changing the world of jujutsu, about being better than those who came before him, is really quite selfish.

It's why his hands had trembled when he'd had to kill Yuuji. It's why he couldn't put Suguru in the ground the first time they met after he became a curse user. Even when he knows things are necessary, he tries his damnedest to hold on — just for the chance of it all. The chance that Suguru could change his mind. The chance that Sukuna could be removed from Yuuji without him needing to die.

"And…”

One snow-white brow raises. “And?”

“You’ve already lost too many people that you love,” you say simply, shrugging — like it's a simple fact, no need for experimentation, no need for an academic paper complete with its own abstract and footnotes. Like you've always known, in some little way, but you're only able to bring yourself to say it now.

And Satoru — well, it's no secret to him, is it? He's known it since he was 13, 14, 15 — had a bit of a buffering period, sure — and now here at 28, he knows it just as well. The point is that you're not supposed to know. Not while you're still healing from Suguru and… being attacked by fake-Suguru.

Regardless of what he knows and how long he's known it, Satoru feels his throat begin to close up, twisting and turning and holding his breath tight. He doesn’t like the feeling.

“Love?” He echoes. His voice has gotten a little empty. It's too soon for him to say it aloud, he thinks. It was okay when he whispered it in his head after making love to you; it was easy when he grinned at your scrunched up nose and scoffed comments and thought fuck, I love you. It was easy when he could pretend it was a simple, passing comment, a trick of the mind — but having it said as fact?

Not so simple. But you don’t need to know that. “Is that so?"

You don't seem to notice his momentary pause — a lifetime of rambling in his time, a second's hesitation in regular time — too busy staring at the space where his fingers stretch apart over the sheets. Just inches away from yours. "We're friends, aren't we?"

Oh.

"Oh." Satoru blinks back. "Oh, yeah. Best friends, you and I, crybaby."

"I know it's normal for us," you say, ploughing ahead, "to just lose and lose and keep losing, but… I'll be honest. I never fully got used to it, and I don't want to."

He wishes he could say the same, but he can't.

He understands, in some capacity. Nobody wants to see the people around them die, a continuous and vicious cycle. Nobody wants to get so used to loss that most funerals no longer hold any emotional significance. But getting used to it had saved him. Getting used to it helped him act without consequence, without remorse, and that's what the battlefield both needs and requires of him.

He could count on both hands the people he wants to save in this world — about half of them were dead, at this point. A lot of them died while he was imprisoned. Two, he had to kill himself. He swore he'd protect the rest with all Six Eyes, every non-existent boundary of his Limitless.

So Satoru doesn't care much about getting used to death and dying and loss and grief. As long as you're okay, he's okay. As long as his job as the Strongest is done, everything is as it should be.

He doesn't say that to you, of course. You'd probably curse him out and call him a heartless bastard. Instead, he nods, hums and agrees and tells you the names of those who died when you work up the courage to ask.

It's a long night. It's an even longer list.

10.

Shoko keeps you for observation for 10 days after you wake up — three days longer than necessary, but she won't hear it from him, no matter how many times he reminds her that technically she falsified her degree—

He's joking. Mostly.

Satoru volunteers himself to help you back home, taking with you the plastic bag filled with your cleaned sorcerer's garb and weapon. He carries it over his shoulder along with two teddy bears, a half-wilted bouquet of tulips and a half-eaten box of chocolates (all courtesy of the second years — except for the chocolates, which are half-eaten because of him). He winds his other arm around your waist even though you can walk perfectly fine, but — it's just in case. Purely precautionary. For once, you don’t argue about being babied.

In the midday sun outside, you tilt your head back and close your eyes and smile. For a moment, it's as if the sadness has melted away from you — the tears you shed over Yuuji, Nanami, Suguru. The tears you shed over him, and he wasn't even dead. Satoru is glad your eyes are closed — even beneath his sunglasses, it's painfully obvious that he's staring.

You decide to take the subway home — it's my first time outside in almost a year, you remind him, so he pushes down any arguments he might have and enjoys the too-cramped journey towards Akihabara. You’re both shoved standing together, between a panicked looking man holding a tray of coffee and a woman with her child hanging about her legs, your head bobbing against his chest as the train moves.

For a moment — as the train passes momentarily out of the underground and becomes encapsulated in light — it's easy to drown in the normalcy of it all. For a moment, he sees himself looking in as a stranger would. Here, he isn't the Six Eyes; just a simple man taking his girlfriend home, standing close on the train, wishing to be closer. Riding home to your shared apartment where he'll peel oranges and feed them to you, where he'll lay his head in your lap and hold your hands to his heart.

His nose wrinkles. He prefers reality, he thinks, where he can be powerful and have you by his side; where he can protect you, uphold peace, change the jujutsu world for the best — and then go home all the same, and have you to hold.

"What are you thinking about?" You mumble against his collar.

"Oranges," he replies.

"I don't have any at home," you say, "or if I did, they're rotted."

"Don't worry — we cleaned your kitchen up. Me and the kids." It was an afternoon of Yuuji attempting to shove rotting potatoes in Nobara's face. That was before Shibuya; before everything, really.

"Oh? You got your hands dirty?"

Satoru tries to not think about that same beaming, smiling Yuuji's last breaths. "Of course! This is me we're talking about, honey. I was front and centre."

You snort, soft against his neck. It's a wonder he went almost a year without you. "Housewife Satoru. I'll keep it in mind."

When you return to your apartment, you shower together for the first time in forever. He spends extra time and care massaging shampoo into your scalp, detangling each knot; spends extra time rinsing the suds out, tilting your head back with a gentle tap to your chin.

Steam clogs his mind. Almond shower oil and citrusy shampoo fog his senses. The realisation that you could have potentially been taken away from him sits heavy like a stone in his stomach — why it hadn't sunk in in the past, oh, 13 months or so, he doesn’t know. All he knows is that he's terribly bad at caring for precious things — but if he could, if it's possible, he'll remould and reshape his hands, his heart, his mind, just for the chance—

"Satoru," you breathe against his lips, "Bow your head."

(Bow your head, you say. He'd kneel if you asked him to.)

You brush your hands through his hair; rinse him free of suds and bubbles and kiss his temples as you shut off the water. What is supposed to be healing for you is quickly becoming therapy for him — muscles relaxing, mind clearing of all responsibilities, mournings, obligations. All he knows are the soft, newly washed sheets beneath him and your nose in the crook of his neck.

It's a strange sensation, the lack of tension, his brain not working overtime. But hardly unwelcome.

11.

Satoru asks you if you saw anything when you were indisposed. Memories, flashbacks, prophecies? Blurry half-truths, nonsensical babbling? You tell him that you can't really remember — and you can't, not really, but you do remember one thing.

When you were 11, you met Satoru and Suguru for the first time. It's that memory that you can remember playing in your head, over and over and over again: Satoru and Suguru, scrawny and still-faced in their yukata.

Satoru was from a great, traditional house. Suguru was not, but upon discovery of his powers, was taken into unofficial custody of the higher-ups. In most circumstances, you wouldn’t have been allowed within two feet of them — but the elders had deemed your cursed technique a great gift, and so you were warily accepted into the upper echelons of jujutsu society, a stranger, a foreigner.

Introducing you to the most powerful sorcerers your age was nothing more than political play, of course. The adults followed behind as you walked through the grand grounds of the Gojo family — (maintained by a team of 12 gardeners, according to the Lady of the house) — muttering and scheming between themselves, making sure nothing would go awry.

Nothing did, of course. Satoru picked his nose and Suguru told him it was rude and they bickered for a while — Satoru bickered, Suguru replied calmly and quickly. Satoru asked you if your technique was good or bad ("No such thing," interjected Suguru) and whether or not you think you could beat him in a fight.

(That last question was to stroke his own ego, of course. Everyone knew he was the strongest sorcerer born in the last century.)

At some point, Satoru made you cry.

You can't remember what about, all these years later — you'd think you'd remember, considering the fact that you know the amount of gardeners employed by the Gojo estate — but you know that you had tried to stop it; fists balled, teeth gritted, full-body heaves. Crying was the last thing you had wanted to do. Crying meant weakness. Weakness meant being taken advantage of.

But you were so scared. It was all so alien. You wanted to go home, but home didn’t exist anymore. You wanted your mother, but your mother was long gone. All you had left were stone-faced adults that were only interested in your abilities.

Suguru had been confused at your reaction to what he took as a harmless quip — a little callous, as most children are — but he had reassured you nonetheless.

"Don’t cry. Satoru speaks before he thinks," he'd said, nudging your shoulder. "Sometimes you have to ignore him and he'll be so bored that he has to think."

"I can hear you," Gojo huffed. "I didn't mean to."

"See?" Suguru smiled. "Works like a charm."

Yes, Suguru had always been there to protect you. Emotionally, at least. He was willing to be kinder to people. More gentle, more forgiving. He'd believed that it was his duty as a sorcerer to protect those that couldn't protect themselves, and—

Well. That had changed, by the end, but having that memory replay in your head made you see the bigger picture of it all. Suguru's place in things. Your place in things.

You'd loved Suguru, no doubt. And you’ll probably always carry a piece of him with you — you'd hate to do otherwise. You’ll carry his kindness and his jokes and his catlike smile, all tucked away in bubble wrap somewhere in your chest cavity — but you will never disregard his wrongdoings. Since his death, you'd argued against the two sides of him; felt guilty for loving him after what he did, felt guilty for hating him after loving him and knowing him for as long as you did. Two halves of a whole. Darkness in light and light in darkness.

He was both of those things. You love him, but you don’t forgive him, and you probably never will. He will never again be the boy that comforted you after Satoru made you cry; he will never again be the boy who let you braid his hair back. He won't be the boy who slaughtered innocents, either — death's funny like that. Indiscriminately doing away with both the good and the bad.

And that's okay. Kenjaku is dead, after all, and Suguru can finally rest — and with him, your warring mind.

12.

Midnight strikes and you're still awake. You don’t even seem tired, and that's after a long shower and takeout and a movie. Usually you'd be a drooling mess by now, but tonight is different. Feels different. Satoru isn’t sure if it's just a year's worth of built up sexual tension or something else, but he feels it regardless.

He's flopped on his stomach, hair still damp; you're curled up in the shape of a C, skin reflecting the light of the TV. He might visit Nobara tomorrow. Megumi usually goes on Wednesdays, too — they could make a day out of it, and you could tag along, too. He's got a craving for the pistachio macarons they sell near—

"I'm in love with you," you announce.

Satoru doesn't bother asking you to repeat yourself because he knows he didn’t mishear. It isn't the knowing that shocks him — he's not stupid, and you wear your heart on your sleeve — it's the sudden, quick verbal affirmation of it that catches him off guard. After all, haven’t you two been putting this all off? Yearning for a dead man? Being pulled from two opposing poles?

He turns his head towards you, opens his mouth to ask you just that, and—

"After Suguru, I thought I'd never be happy again," you say, and you’re smiling like you didn't just say something inherently heartbreaking. But no, you look fond — content, even, blinking slowly at him. "And I thought I'd never feel for someone as strong as I did for him. But here I am: happy, and in love, and okay."

Satoru opens his mouth — then closes it quickly. For some reason, he remembers something Suguru said to you when you were younger: "Satoru speaks before he thinks." But he wants to think about this — about what he should say. How does he respond to you quite literally baring your heart to him? How does he tell you what he wants to tell you, what you deserve to hear? He's never been good with real, genuine words — emotional shit never came easy to him out loud. His thoughts are much more concise than his mouth is, but he guesses it's because it moves so fast in comparison.

Pity you can't read his mind. It'd make things much easier.

“You don’t have to say anything,” but he wants to, don't you know? "You don't have to pretend. It’s okay. I know that… maybe you don’t love me as much as you loved Suguru, but I know you love me in some way, at least—”

Satoru frowns — strings of ideas and thoughts bunching up and stopping short as your words register. “As much as I— hey, stop putting words in my mouth—"

"The truth is," you continue on, "I feel lighter than I have in years. I don't dread life so much anymore. I don't dread you anymore."

"You… dreaded me?"

You hum. Your legs stretch down, arms forward, face scrunched up in a passing yawn. "I'm not stupid to think you didn’t know how I felt, but… I hated that I was so obvious about it. Even when I was fighting with myself about it, I was obvious. It made me hate being around you, sometimes."

You sigh, then — not as heavy and melancholy as they used to be, no. This is a sigh of relief, of cathartic release.

Satoru blinks, and attempts to wade through the seventy-or-so compulsions telling him to make a joke, to laugh, to tease you. Maybe he should actually be serious for once. Say it straight and say it firm, so you can't take anything the wrong way. If there was ever a time for him to not beat around the bush…

"I've liked you since I was 17," he confesses, finally. "Me and Suguru, we were together, y’know, and we were happy. And Suguru loved you, and somewhere along the line I… began to do the same, but we were so young and then… Everything changed so fast. Everything broke so fast.”

Your fingers brush against his, and he breathes in a sigh. Your eyes are wide and watery, low light reflecting like glitter in your eyes.

"Sometimes, it keeps me up at night," Satoru says, laughing a pained sort of laugh. "Out of everything, that's what keeps me up — that we could've been happy together, all three of us. It never would’ve been enough to make him change, but…"

At least you would’ve known what it was like. To be happy together in that way. To be content. To find your places in the world, hand and hand. To know what it was like — even if Suguru’s fall from grace was inevitable — so you wouldn’t have to keep wondering until your untimely, gruesome, sorcerer-style deaths, or whatever.

Back then, Satoru didn’t understand why Suguru never told you how he felt. He couldn't understand how he could be content watching from afar, looking but never touching. What Satoru wanted, he learned to take; the Strongest didn’t need to ask for permission, only forgiveness.

He learned quickly that some things were better left unsaid. And now, 28 years old, half of his friends, students, colleagues dead — he understands even more.

He remembers how Yuuji had tried to stave off tears when he realised he had to die; remembers how his student’s throat had felt being crushed in his hands. He loved Yuuji like a little brother. Like a son, even. He was family. He was his student, and yet his death had been necessary, and Satoru battled with it. It allowed him to succeed in the mission he was born to complete. But he had given up Yuuji in return.

There is no curse more twisted than love.

Therein lays the problem, he supposes. The second you love someone, you run the risk of having them end up like Yuuji did. Like Suguru did. Like Nanami did. When you are burdened with incredible power like Satoru is — like Suguru was — you must be able to sacrifice for it. The closer that people are, the more likely they are to be caught in the crossfire, the more likely you are to be hurt. Suguru hoped to avoid that at all costs. It was easier to watch from afar, less painful.

Satoru is a tad more selfish. Which is bad, he knows, because he's too prepared to sacrifice. Even now. Even now, he knows that if caught between saving you and saving society, he would be forced to — to—

Satoru inhales. The only thing for it is to simply stop things from getting that far.

He could explain all this to you. He could talk circles around you about it, in fact, but the truth is that it's all conjecture. Suguru isn’t here to tell him why he did what he did. He can’t speak for him, no matter how well he knew him.

"I don't know why Suguru never told you," Satoru says instead. He folds his fingers tighter, taking yours in his grip as he does so. "Guess that's something he took with him to the grave."

"I've stopped wondering," you say. “I’ll never stop regretting, but I’ve stopped wondering. I can’t stay rooted in the past any more. It was doing more harm than good."

And you raise your interlocked hands — nestle them under your chin and screw your eyes shut, like you're wishing on the evening star, like he's something precious to be treasured. All of a sudden he's 17 and confused about why he can't stop staring at you. He doesn’t have Suguru to tease him about it, now.

“I’ll never forget him,” Satoru announces — a warning, or a reassurance, he doesn’t know. All he knows is that he’s telling the truth and nothing but the truth, and whether or not you like his truth is not his concern. He respects you too much to lie about this to you.

Your lips twitch upwards, a phantom of a smile. “Neither will I. "

"I'll never forget you, either."

The smile grows, blooms, blossoms, until it stretches bright and full across your face. The first smile of yours he's seen in a while that wasn't at half-mast, or tinged with sadness, or pain, or fatigue.

"How lucky I am," you whisper, "to be known by you, Gojo Satoru."

It should be the other way around, he thinks.

(12.5.

It's the first time he makes love in years.

Satoru has always fucked you. Always. No matter how tired you both were, no matter how injured — he'd always force himself to be rougher, force his touches to not linger as much as he wanted them to.

If he felt too much, he'd crack a joke instead of drowning in it; if he felt his eyes beginning to burn he'd bury his nose in the crook of your neck and push it down. If he thought of long, dark hair and cat-like eyes, he'd tighten your grip in his hair and the shock of pain would clear his mind. He fucked quick, and when he was done he'd lay far away enough that he couldn't feel your skin against his.

Tonight, he lets himself love and be loved again.

You're on top of him, ass flush against his thighs, taking every inch he has to give you; his hands have found your jaw, thumbs brushing back and forth across your dewy, sweat-slick cheeks. One hand of yours clasps around his wrist; the other bands to his chest, nails digging red into his skin. Your cursed energy blooms, flushes, flourishes when he opens his eyes to look at you.

He sees every pore, every hair, every dimple, every broken capillary, every scratch and scrape. Every part of you, bending to him in some places, unfalteringly stubborn in others.

"Look at you," he mumbles, blinking dumbly. "So… pretty…"

You snort something like a laugh, and continue: up, down, up, down. Slow, grinding gyrations of your hips that make his head spin pleasantly; and with his Limitless nullified, he feels every inch of skin, every tensing of muscle, every scrape and press fully and completely. He’s never felt so engulfed in it before — the sensations of it all, the warmth, your scent, your weight above him.

He'd drown in you, if he could. Take you in his mouth and nose and ears and everywhere, until he's left gasping for air and grappling for something of substance. Maybe once upon a time he would keep those thoughts to himself, for whatever reason — but now he's allowed to be selfish in his affections, allowed to give more than surface-level compliments and vague declarations of love.

Between pleasure-ridden shudders and sloppy, wet kisses, he breathes:

"I want you everywhere," he says, "All the time. Over me, on me, in me—"

You raise a brow, impudent and teasing in a way that makes his abdomen tighten. "In you?"

And maybe he didn’t mean it in the way that you took it, but he plays along anyways, waggling his brows. "You heard me."

"You're terrible."

"I'm not joking," Satoru argues — but it’s hard to take him seriously when his voice quietens, when he arches up eagerly to meet your lips—

When his grip on your lower back becomes painfully tight, when his lips part in a moan and his eyes screw shut and he throws his head back, hips rutting up to meet yours, and—

His peak rises to greet him — and his heart swells all the while. He finds himself clawing for you as his orgasm builds, hands clambering against your back, your neck, your hair, until (with a great, shaking breath, may he add): "Fuck, I — mmf, I love you—"

It carries him off to a state of fuzzy, empty-minded ignorance — pleasure tightening his entire body, fizzling from the tips of his fingers to his curling toes. Your name on his tongue, slurred and mellifluous, his smile dizzy and drunk.

As you smile down at him, so unbearably fond, Satoru thinks that he doesn’t mind saying I love you aloud after all.)

1K notes · View notes

halucynator · 2 years ago

Note

Can u pls make a fic abt the reader just wanting to make out with Mattheo riddle during October spooky month?

Spooky Surprises

aksjhshaadjsha i find this idea so cuteeeee

Pairing: Mattheo Riddle x fem!reader

Warnings: kissing (duh!), pining (ish), not proof read and my writing lol

Summary: After staying in for Halloween you realise that your love for Mattheo might not be as unrequited as you thought.

You stayed in on Halloween. You were never too keen on trick or treating anyway but there was a bigger reason you had stayed in. That reason was right next to you sat up on the couch. Mattheo Riddle.

It was his idea to stay in and watch a scary movie. You couldn't deny it. Not when he was looking at you with his adorable brown eyes. Not when he was practically begging you to stay.

And there you were, curled up next to him, his arms around your waist pulling you in closer. You breathed in his cologne and the faint smell of smoke.

Each time there was a jump scare you leaned in closer to him until you were practically on top of him. He chuckled every time that happened pulling you in each time you looked scared.

The movie ended and the credits rolled on the screen. You were asleep, Mattheo's arms still looped around your waist. Mattheo, not wanting to wake you up, turned off the TV moving very cautiously. However, he clearly wasn't cautious enough as you opened your eyes. You yawned and leaned into the body next to you, then stilled remembering who it was. You immediately sat up and muttered an apology to Mattheo. If one looked hard enough, they would've noticed the slight blush that crept up on your cheeks as you took in what you had just done.

You had stayed in your dorm on Halloween, watched a scary movie and slept on a person who you supposedly called your friend. You were too afraid to admit it but you liked Mattheo. Any person who wasn't a complete idiot would've realised that it was requited.

Unfortunately, you were the complete idiot.

The conversation you had had with Pansy and some of your other friends, ran through your head whenever you were nervous that he didn't like you back.

"Oh my God y/n! He totally likes you! Do you see the way he looks at you?!" Pansy exclaimed.

"But Pansy! I'm not sure though! What if he doesn't?!" You said not wanting to ruin your friendship with him.

"you two are so in love! Just ask him out already!!!" Pansy whined.

You rolled your eyes and chuckled at the girl.

And now here you were wondering if Pansy's words might've been right. He let you sleep on him for God's sake.

You looked into the boys beautiful eyes and sighed. You loved him but you didn't know how to tell him.

You took a deep breath and did what Pansy had been telling you to do. You grabbed him by his collar pulling him close to you. Your lips collided. They fit together perfectly like they were a part of a puzzle.

You pulled away when you ran out of breath. Mattheo's cheeks were flushed. He was just so perfect. After realising that you had just been staring at him for ages, you looked away embarrassed.

"Wow. That was erm- wow" Mattheo replied.

Colour rushed to your cheeks at his words.

"I'm sorry I don't know what i-" you froze in the middle of the sentence as you felt his hand on your waist. Your breath hitched as he leaned closer. You didn't feel so brave anymore.

"I don't mind it" he replied as if you had just borrowed his laptop rather than kisses him.

"oh um-" you started.

This time it was his fingers on your collar, his hands pulling you in, his lips that smashed on yours.

You wanted nothing more than to keep kissing him and no matter how many times you kissed, the butterflies were always there.

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡*:☆

Hope this is to your liking <3333 have a great day and happy halloweeeeeeeeen 💕

844 notes · View notes

taomyou · 2 days ago

Text

nerds do it better - chapter 3: VITAL BRACE_normal_manual_10

synopsis: You know, most people wouldn't be all that interested in getting to know the weird Digimon kid. Good thing you're not most people! - or, you and Gojo meet at a Digimon TCG game night and become really, really good friends.

tags: gojo satoru x reader, nerd!gojo, fem!nerd!reader, modern au, college/uni au, fluff, friends to lovers, mutual pining, first date, gojo!pov, requited unrequited love, aquarium date || wc: 10.4k

ao3 || tumblr masterlist

As soon as the door’s open, Gojo giddily rushes past you and into the room, dropping his bags just before jumping onto the bed. He beckons you to come and join him, and you happily oblige, quick to close the door and haul your things further into the room. You let yourself fall backwards onto the bed next to him, and you sigh in delight as you feel its plushness absorb you.

“I can’t believe we’re actually here,” you marvel, looking up at the soft yellow light on the ceiling.

“I can!” He beams, stretching his arms up towards the headboard, moaning happily. “Need me to pinch you?”

“Nope. I believe you now.”

You and him both turn to face each other, the space between you too big to reach across the two beds. Still, Gojo looks pretty fuckin’ stupid trying to pinch you from where he is anyway. The two of you then silently agree to just close your eyes and roll around on your respective beds, making rather… suggestive noises as you both stretch out your tense muscles. You haven’t really got the brain power to register the groans he’s making as anything actually suggestive, thankfully, oh, you’re totally lying to yourself though because you’re too preoccupied by the relief that washes over your body as you lay on your stomach and fully extend your limbs to release the tension in your spine.

The car ride to get to the hotel was boring enough; the two of you decided that leaving a day earlier than you really needed to was the best course of action to avoid any traffic, so you’re just going to be in the hotel room for a half-day and a night before you have to lug yourselves over to the convention center down the street.

And, Gojo, the persistent and considerate loser he is, forced you to let him drive the whole way (even though you knew he was gonna be nervous as all hell to drive the nine-ish hours it would’ve taken if he listened to you and just went a little bit faster than the speed limit). You thought he’d be sufficiently tired by now between all 11 hours behind the wheel and his neverending rambling about all the things he was excited to get to at the convention (and if those two things weren’t enough to tire him out on their own, you figured he’d get annoyed by your sarcastic cheering whenever he’d successfully make a difficult driving maneuver).

Turns out you couldn’t be any more wrong.

Gojo pushes himself up, now sitting with his elbows propping his torso up. He lets his head fall back like he’s basking in the sun (which he is, I guess, if you count the early afternoon sun that’s coming through the highrise window).

“So,” he starts, a lazy smile on his face, “what do you wanna do?”

You whine and bury your face further into a pillow, turning your head just slightly so you still have space to breathe. “I wanna take a nap.” You’re half-lying—you are tired, but your nerves are fuelled by something so foreign and new that you don’t think you could truly sleep even if you tried—but Gojo doesn't have to know that.

“Oh, come on, you’re not really gonna go to sleep, are you? Let’s go do something fun!”

You turn over again, now on your back, forearm over your eyes to readjust to the light. “How do you have so much energy? You drove.”

“Well,” he nervously laughs, “I am tired, but I—.”

Nevermind. Guess you were right.

“Then go to sleep, Gojo.” You roll off the bed towards him, bending your knees before you’re at the edge so you can land and stand up fairly quickly. “I don’t want you to be too tired for the actual con. We’re here until Monday, anyway, we can do something then.”

You don’t mean to lecture him, but all the sugar in his system isn’t going to keep him awake forever, and you’d feel awful if he wasn’t able to properly enjoy the convention weekend because he’s too sleep-deprived.

“Ok, then, we could use Monday to catch up on sleep. I know you’re not going to actually sleep, you knocked out way earlier than I did last night, so I don’t want you to get lonely if I’m taking a nap either.” He interrupts himself with a yawn, pushing off his elbows to sit up even straighter, and he rubs his eye to satiate his tire.

Guess he can read you better than you thought he could.

“Besides,” he yawns again, “I wanna make the most out of us being here,” Gojo says softly, almost like he’s saying it to himself.

The sentiment makes you blush, but, thankfully, you’re facing away from him.

By now, you’ve gotten back to standing with your hands on your hips as you lean to the side to crack your bones, biting at the back of your lip to keep yourself from smiling too hard. After taking a second to recompose yourself, you turn back to him and approach him slowly, then pouncing on him to push him back down on his back.

“Aw, you’re so sweet, you big nerd!” You have to tease him because, otherwise, you’d take his words to heart.

“Woah, woah, hold on!”

You know he’s ticklish behind his ears (he’s a bit like a puppy, you suppose; you found out when you tried getting his attention at the library by poking him there with your pen and he laughed so hard you both got kicked out for the day), so you run your nails gently there to get him laughing and smiling again. He writhes underneath you, loud with thrashing limbs and all, but he’s careful not to hurt you as you continue to tickle him. Eventually, once you’re too lazy to keep teasing him, Gojo pushes you off him and positions himself on top of you to ghost his hands at your sides where he knows you’re ticklish.

In front of the bed is a large, ceiling-to-floor mirror that spans nearly the entire wall, and the two of you catch glimpses of your forms in the reflection. In any other scenario, you’d find the composition of your bodies like this incredibly… lewd, but the two of you look so wildly unsexy that you can’t help but roll your eyes at how in-character it is for the two of you to be like this, Gojo in a faded orange Tsunomon shirt and you in a Gabumon hoodie he regifted you after he couldn’t get Geto to accept it as his birthday gift, both of you in sweatpants.

Your heads turn back to face each other, and you burst into giggles as you push Gojo off you before he can get back at you, him rolling off onto the bedspace next to you. You stare up at the ceiling again, used to the light now because it’s nowhere near as bright as Gojo’s smile, and you sigh contentedly, slightly out of breath.

“Okay, okay, truce.”

Gojo squints at you, taking off his glasses to glare at you. “How is it a truce if you got the last hit!?”

You roll your eyes again. “Because I said so.”

“...Okay.”

You turn over to lay on your stomach, elbows propping you up so you can see Gojo better. “Now, mister, you take your nap.”

“But you’ll be awake on your own,” he says with a frown. “All alone without me.”

“I’ll be fine, promise.” You hold out a pinky for him to link. He complies with a half-smile, putting his glasses back on to free his hands. “I need to grab stuff for the room anyway. You don’t have to worry about me, like, gazing at your sleeping figure or anything creepy like that while you’re sleeping, either.”

“Oh, so you’re leaving me here all alone instead?” Gojo wails.

“Yes, Princess,” you scoff. “Your Prince Charming must leave you to slay the dragon and go downstairs to the ice machine.”

“Who are you calling ‘Princess?’”

“Please,” you snort. “Just go to sleep, Gojo, you’ll survive.”

“I guess I am pretty sleepy,” he yawns again, rolling over onto his side, still facing you. “But we’ll do something after my nap, right? I don’t wanna be bad company.”

“Sure, if you really want to.” You get up, stretching your arms up to the ceiling again to fully reawaken yourself. Gojo still looks so stiff, so you lean down slightly to ruffle his hair to try and get him to loosen up. He leans his head into your touch (again, like a puppy). “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Okay,” he muses, closing his eyes and reaching for the pillows. “If you get bored, you already know I'll sleep through anything, so do whatever you want. Have fun getting… ice, or whatever. Also, can you ask the front desk for—”

You pull away your hand to go back to your bed, cutting him off. “I already know, Princess, here are your pillows.” Before he can interrupt to say you need your own pillows too, you keep talking, moving again to take off his glasses for him and set them on the nightstand so he doesn’t crush them in his sleep. “I’ll grab more from the front desk for myself, just use those.”

He sighs happily, spreading out his body and spreading his limbs again to make a snow angel on his sheets. “You really are my Prince Charming!”

You’re already slipping on your shoes at the door by now, but you look over your shoulder back at him, now curled up in a ball as he hugs a pillow to his chest and has all the others around him. From your own backpack, you see his little Agumon plush peeking up from the not-fully-zipped side pocket.

Poor thing. Gojo hadn’t even remembered to pack him until he was already 5 hours into the drive. Little did he know, though, that you’d swiped him the night before at your little slumber party at his place.

You’ll consider this payback for all the other times Gojo’s taken your things. Not your fault he said he was sure he had everything when you asked him before you started the road trip.

You smile to yourself as you rush back to go grab the cute orange digimon from your bag to leave him at Gojo’s headboard, excited to see the look on his face when he realizes you’ve properly gotten back at him.

☆

When Gojo wakes up, all he hears is the faint sound of fabric rustling and the drone of the air conditioning. He’s slow to open his eyes and even slower to grab his glasses from the nightstand, but as he’s barely-awake and feeling around, his hands meet the familiar feeling of felt claws. He bolts straight up, leaning on his hands as he turns his upper body to see Agumon sat at the headboard.

What’s he doing here? Had he gone back to grab him during the drive? There’s no way that happened, right? Uh, or, maybe, he really did remember to put him in his luggage and the plushie digitized to appear on the bed. That’s what happened, right?

“Good morning, Princess.”

Gojo’s head whips to the direction of your voice but is only able to see the top of your head, you sitting on the floor. He pushes himself straighter-up sitting to see what you’re doing, but before he can, you put whatever it is you’re handling back in your suitcase and zip it closed before turning back to face him.

“How was your nap?”

“Oh! It was great,” he yawns, rolling his head to release the tension in his neck. “Say,” after he puts on his glasses, he moves to sit criss-cross on the bed and pulls Agumon onto his lap, “where did this little guy come from? Did you find him in my luggage?”

You laugh, leaning back to put your head on the end of your bed and turn slightly to look at him. Your smile is bright and unashamed, and you shake your head, your hair grabbing static as it rubs against the sheets. “Nope, I snagged him before we left. Figured you’d forget him.”

He flushes in embarrassment, defensively patting the digimon on his head and turning his body away slightly. “What?! No, I wouldn’t!”

“Sure, then, I have no idea how he got there,” you tease, shaking your head again and getting up to join him across the space between your respective beds. When he’s still turned away, you whine and reach across to pull him back to face you. “Come on, please don’t be mad at me, Gojo! It’s just payback for when you steal my cables at the library!”

He’s firm in his position, not at all mad but wanting to play along to keep your hands on him as you beg him to forgive you. He chuckles behind a bitten cheek, and he watches you from the corner of his eye as you firmly keep your hands on his shoulders. You resign yourself to sighing and flopping down on the spot next to him, at which point Gojo lets out his long-held laugh and falls down next to you, setting Agumon down to lay between the two of you.

Your hair is still staticy, so when you both turn to face each other, he feels a small zap as he reaches out to try and meet you halfway. You flinch at the spark, and you frown again, reaching out to pull Agumon into your own arms for a hug.

“I hate you,” you huff, the telltale half-smile on your face telling him you’re lying.

He laughs. “Sure you do,” he teases.

“Well, now that you’re awake and I can’t escape your rambling,” you start, holding up the plush to the light, “what do you wanna do for the rest of the day?”

Even though he could’ve just checked his Vital Bracelet, he’s too lazy to bring up his wrist to his face to look at the time, so Gojo’s eyes dart to the digital clock on the nightstand.

Gojo frowns, sadness threatening to escape from the back of his throat. “It’s 7 already?”

“You’ve been out for a while, so, yeah,” you shrug.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think I’d be knocked out for so long. It’s so late.”

Certainly much too late to do what he'd planned on taking you to. He should’ve set an alarm for himself earlier…

“What?” You prop yourself up, positioning yourself like you did earlier before Gojo’d taken his nap, on your stomach and looking down at him from his side. “You don’t need to be sorry! We can still find something to do, it's not like we had anything specific in mind, right?”

Well, he did, but telling you about it now wouldn't do either of you any good if it's not like you can even make it now.

You don’t seem to be down about the lost time—if anything, you look more energized now than you did earlier despite not having gotten any extra shut-eye yourself.

Maybe you enjoyed the time you had to yourself without him bothering you, he thinks to himself. He should know better by now—that you genuinely enjoy his company—but there’s always that thought nagging him at the back of his head, telling him he’s way too in over his head. Maybe that’s why he has such a hard time keeping his mouth shut around you; he’s terrified you’ll see through him and realize how utterly pathetic he is, so he feels like he has to distract you by talking about anything and everything under the sun.

You look down at him, though, eyes begging him to gather his spirits, and, really, who is he to refuse?

Gojo leaves his disappointment for himself to deal with later, and smiles with what little confidence he’s got left in him. He moves to stand up, holding out a hand for you to grab and pull yourself up. “Yeah, let’s.”

Gojo moves to go fix his hair in the huge mirrored wall while you fix up the bed (and tuck in Agumon beneath the covers—his heart is just about to explode), and once he’s figured he’s presentable enough, he heads over to sit at his suitcase to look for something to wear.

“What do you think we should do? Dinner for sure, but are you in the mood for anything to eat in particular?” Gojo pauses for a second to wait for your response, but he laughs to himself anyway before you can give your usual response. “Nevermind, we’ll figure it out once we’re out.”

You chuckle and gently pat his head, and he can see the begrudging smile that’s probably on your face right now. “You’re finally learning.”

“Dress code?”

“Uh,” you pause to think it over, your hand still mindlessly patting his hair, “let’s find somewhere casual, I doubt anywhere too fancy is open right now anyway.” Before he can make any sort of comment about you messing up his hair (because he definitely cares more about addressing that more than the butterflies in his stomach), your touch disappears, and you go to your own suitcase at the end of your bed.

He starts to dig through his luggage to find something casual (which, yes, he’s grateful you suggested as much because all he’s got in his suitcase are casual clothes and the three-piece suit he decided to pack because, well, who knows if he’s going to need it at some point this trip?). After a while, though, Gojo notices you’ve been angling yourself to have your back facing him, almost like you’re hiding something in the main compartment of your luggage. He doubts you’ve got your underwear at the top of your main luggage—you’d made it a point to tell him to stay out of the front pocket of your suitcase, so he assumed your intimates were in there—so what’re you hiding now? He leans over to the side to try and get a look, only really curious because you seem so secretive about it.

When you notice him trying to peer over your shoulder, you angle yourself between your suitcase and him again, glaring at him. “What do you want?”

“What’re you hiding? Can I see?”

“Um, no,” you say plainly, turning away.

“Why not?”

“You don’t see me trying to peek into your luggage.”

“You can look through it if you want, I don’t mind.”

“...Are you serious?”

“I mean, if you want to look, I don’t care.”

“Gojo, you should care,” you scold, shooing him away from looking over in your direction by swinging out your arms. “You’re the one that wanted to hide our cosplays from each other, remember? Not my fault you wanted to wait.”

“Oh!” Gojo nervously laughs before turning back to look down at his luggage, then staring down the neatly-wrapped bag of red and white clothes he’d pieced together two months before. “Uh, right, right.”

Okay, really, it isn’t even his fault he forgot! He just woke up, like, five minutes ago!

☆

Several weeks ago, Gojo had finally gotten all the things he needed for the cosplay he’d planned to wear at the convention, and he was so excited to show you a picture of him in the outfit. Despite his excitement, though, he absolutely wanted to see your reaction to it live, so even though it was hell trying to hide it from you, he waited until you and him were out celebrating the end of finals with the rest of his friends at some karaoke studio he couldn’t remember the name of to show you.

”Hey, hey,” Gojo called to you as Haibara queued the next song for him and Nanami to sing together. “Come here.”

You turned to look at him, scooting closer to hear him over the new running instrumental. “What’s up?”

He grinned. “Wanna see my cosplay for the con?”

You were already in a good mood, high off the end of exams, so you beamed. “Oh, I didn’t know you were cosplaying!”

As he tapped around to get the picture, you leaned closer onto his shoulder to get a closer look at his phone.

He flushed at the contact, grateful for the low lights in the room and the bellowing sound of Nanami’s off-key start to the song, but he laughed to ease his own nerves. “Yep! Bet you can’t guess who I’m going as, either,” he sing-songed. He saw the thumbnail of the picture towards the bottom of his screen now, so he turned his phone away to build on the moment. “Okay, you ready? Or do you wanna guess first?”

“You know,” you mused quietly, trying not to disturb Haibara’s more on-key second verse, “you should’ve told me you were gonna cosplay, too. We could’ve worked on ours together.”

You’d said it just as he was about to turn his phone back to you, so he froze and stopped with his phone half-angled away.

You were cosplaying, too?

“I can guess, though. Are you going in an inflatable Agumon costume? I can’t really imagine you going in anything else.”

“Oh!” Gojo exclaimed, now shaken out of his freeze. “Uh, actually,” he clears his throat and looks away, embarrassed he hadn’t also thought you’d also be cosplaying (and definitely not because the first image that came to mind was you dressed as his first real fictional crush, the purple in her design the same shade as the blouse you were already wearing). “No, I’m not.”

“Do I get another guess before you show me?”

“Tell you what,” his mind raced a million meters a minute. “Let’s both hold our guesses, and we can make it into a game.”

“What?! I wanted to see, why’d you build it up like that if you’re just not gonna show me?!”

“You always call me a tease, gotta uphold my reputation,” he rolled his eyes. “Besides, I wanna guess yours, too.”

“You don’t need to guess, I can just show you now. I don’t mind,” you pulled out your own phone, but before you could find your picture and show Gojo, he bit his lip and shook his head frantically.

“Nope, I’ve decided,” he turned off his phone and slipped it back into his pocket, turning to face you instead with his side pressed to the back of the seat and his eyes averted.

He didn’t know why he was so shy all of a sudden—maybe it was because he was too afraid your cosplay would completely show his up, maybe it was because the feeling of your arm against his was too much in combination with Nanami’s botched high note just now—but he doesn’t want to think about you prettied up in cosplay right now while all his friends (no doubt) watched the exchange unfold.

“We’re guessing. Winner can buy dinner on the last day of the trip.”

“How would that even work? We’re either right or we’re wrong. Come on, just show me!” You whined, trying to grab his phone from his pocket.

He blocked your hands, laughing again to keep the situation light as he felt the attention in the room shift to the two of you as the extended instrumental after the chorus played. “No can do, Princess.”

You were quick to also catch onto all the eyes on you from around the room, and you huffed before scooting away from him to get back closer to Shoko.

“Can I at least get a hint?” Gojo threw in as a joke to try and get you back on his good side.

You only leaned in closer to his friend, Shoko now looking over at Gojo with an entertained smirk.

“No, fuck off.”

☆

And, so, both of you have gone without any other mention of what you were going as. It’s been killing him to keep his a secret, but it’s been so, so much worse trying to guess yours.

In the beginning, he earnestly tried to guess, but you made it impossible. You hadn’t given anything away—no offhand comment, no mention of what shoes you’d be wearing, nothing at all—-you just never brought it up again. When he tried (several times, mind you) to call off the wager, you refused, telling him he just had to wait like he made you. With no hints to pull from, it’s not his fault his mind started to conjure images of you dolled up in different outfits, but he was quick to shut that down. No way he was ruining his friendship with you like that (or at all)!

He’s done an awful okay job not thinking about you in any of the million outfits available for you to wear from all the franchises you enjoy, but nonetheless!

It’ll be fine.

Okay, not really, but he’s trying his best.

It’s not his fault, really!

After he’s finished staring blankly into the void that became of his suitcase, he chooses a plain white tee shirt and a pair of baggy cargo shorts to put on (and, obviously, he's got his crest necklace and VB already on, so he doesn't have to think about that at all). He hasn’t got a clue in the world how hot it is outside, but even though he does tend to run cold, it’s the middle of summer. How cold could it possibly get? Either way, he puts on a dark blue quarter-zip, just in case he's wrong and it's actually freezing outside (which it probably isn't, but he doesn't mind the extra warmth).

You’d already claimed the bathroom for yourself long before he could come back to his senses, so it takes no time at all for you to finish getting dressed. As he’s doing the button to his shorts, you give a quick knock to let him know you’re coming out, and he quickly straightens up and smooths the front of his frame.

“I’m decent, I’m decent!”

You come out of the bathroom once he's given the okay, the clothes you just changed out of draped over your forearm, and you start to put them away as Gojo moves to do the same.

He tries not to stare, but the pale blue of the sundress you're wearing calls to him from the corner of his eye, even only if it's because the color compliments your skin so well. There's two small braids behind your ears that you've pinned back with some clips Shoko gifted you after you'd helped her with an assignment (and he remembers because she'd asked him to deliver it to you on her behalf and you looked so happy when he helped them on for you to try). The straps of your sandals are beaded with bright colors in vague aquatic shapes—he thinks he can see a fish, maybe a squid, too—and the pink of your crest necklace compliments the dark purple you'd painted your nails yesterday in the living room while he was in the bathroom steaming his cosplay parts. You've got a tote bag hanging on your shoulder with pins you've collected over the years and a Digivice clipped onto it—one he also has clipped onto the coin pocket of his shorts.

And, really, it's not that he's surprised or anything—he's not blind, even if his prescription lenses are about as thick as his thermal physics textbook would be if he'd actually gotten a physical copy instead of just pirating it online like he always does—, but you look... nice. He hardly ever sees you dressed up like this, but on the rare occasions you do dress up a bit, it's usually for the stray hangout you join in for with Gojo's larger friend group or one of your friend's birthday parties that he gets an extended invite to as your plus-one.

Point is, he hasn't ever seen you in much else aside from the hoodies and sweats you wear when it's just the two of you and he can't hide behind Nanami so you can't catch him staring with bright eyes.

Which he definitely doesn't do! I mean, what kind of loser has to pretend to care about accounting audits or whatever just to avoid that situation? Definitely not this loser.

And, like, he's not really avoiding that completely hypothetical and totally-didn't-happen-every-time scenario. You do meet eyes at some point when these get-togethers happen, and once you spot him, it's not like he skitters away like a cat. He stays where he is, and because he looks so busy listening to Nanami talk about statement analyses, you tug on your necklace to pull it on top of your clothes, and even from the distance he's always standing away, he can see the crest shine and your Vital Bracelet fit snugly around your wrist. It's almost like you're trying to tell him that even if you've dressed up and gotten more put-together, you're making it obvious you're still you.

Yeah, yeah!

That definitely has never happened.

Nope, never.

. . .

Oh, who is he kidding?

But, come on.

Can really you blame a guy for crushing on a nerd, especially one that’s so cute?

Gojo's sure he's going to get caught with his eyes stuck on you, but, thankfully, he catches you also peeking at him from your side of the room, and his bashfulness is replaced with a fake cockiness he steals from you.

"You know," he teases, turning towards you and fully posing, "you're welcome to take a picture, Princess."

You scrunch your nose at him before averting your eyes. "In your dreams."

Gojo laughs from his belly, both at your equally fake distain and the quiet smile you give back to him, and he quickly zips up his suitcase before standing up to offer you a hand up. He makes a show of not looking into your luggage by putting his glasses on his head and covering his eyes with his other hand, and once he feels your hand slip into his, he's careful not to pull you up too fast so you don't trip over your shoes. You mutter a quick thanks, but Gojo can hardly hear it over the quiet burn he feels at the tips of his ears.

He puts his glasses back on and grabs his wallet from his backpack before he goes over to put on his shoes as you look at yourself in the mirror. In the reflection, he can see you fiddling with your necklace, something he's noticed you do a lot when you're overthinking. "Hey, everything okay?"

"Huh?" You turn over to question him, fingers still pulling your crest side-to-side. "Why wouldn't they be?"

He finishes lacing up his shoes, and he stands awkwardly with his hands in his pockets now. "I mean, I don't know, you look kinda..."

You avoid his gaze by turning back to the mirror, and when he catches you frowning, he immediately rushes to put his hands out and shake his head frantically.

"Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean like that! You look good, promise!"

"...You think so?"

"Are you kidding? You look cute! Super cute, even! I really like your outfit, especially the shoes, and, I mean, you're always pretty!" He scrambles to make himself try to sound like he's not being weird about it, but he can feel himself failing so he changes his approach. "It's just that you seem anxious about something, and I wanted to ask if something was wrong!"

You seem to bite your cheek, still not looking back over at him, but after a slight pause, you make your way over to the door, brushing past him to open the door. "Nothing's wrong, you always worry too much."

"Are you sure?" Gojo frowns, following you out and making sure the door is locked.

"Yes, I'm sure," you roll your eyes, and you lead the way back to the car. Your voice seems nervous, but it doesn't really sound like you're upset. Maybe it's the change in scenery?

He follows you silently, the awkward shuffle of his sneakers loud on the carpet flooring, and when you get to the hotel parking lot, he tries not to annoy you too much when he opens your car door, only unlocking it, holding it open for you to get in, and closing it wordlessly before slipping in next to you. He's never really been all that great at opening that door anyway, no matter how many times he's done it, so it still makes him nervous sometimes to think you'll figure out he's a fraud.

When you've both gotten your seatbelts on, he sits in the silence until you sigh and lean back in your seat, turning to face him in the barely-there sunset light. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to bring the mood down or anything," you say. "Just thinking."

Gojo takes it that you're just too in your head right now, and all he really knows how to do to help is distract you, so he forces a grin and leans over to boop your nose. "Boop."

It seems to startle you enough that your eyes widen, and it annoys you enough that you flush pink and swat his hand away. "What're you doing?"

He laughs and tips his head back, quick to pull his hand back and rest it on the wheel. "Come on, let's just go have some fun!"

You frown, disingenuously this time, and put your elbow on the arm rest to lean your head on your hand. "On second thought, I'll head back to the room."

Gojo smiles, genuinely this time, and he starts the engine, his hand already just behind your shoulder to start reversing out of the spot. "Nope, you're stuck with me tonight, Princess."

He makes it a point to not stare as he's reversing, but he can see you grinning behind your hand.

And, you know, for all the times he's forced himself out of the moment to avoid having to confront his feelings, he's content to stay in this one, where you try so hard to look all unbothered even though he can see your smile turn your eyes into crescents and you steal glances at him to make sure he doesn't notice.

It's cute.

☆

It doesn't take long for the two of you to find somewhere to have dinner.

Not that he'd ever admit it to you, but Gojo'd spent the last couple months looking into the area to look for places nearby that'd be good to take you to, and the restaurant he ends up pulling into is one from that relatively long mental list. Thankfully, they're open late and time is of no issue, but Gojo still can't help but still feel a bit upset that he was out for so much of the day, no matter how many times you reassure him you're just glad he got to rest after such a long drive. To repay your grace, he makes mental note to get the two of you back to the hotel and in bed at a reasonable hour (so, like, before midnight) so you can be equally well-rested for the convention tomorrow.

It also doesn't take long to order and get food delivered to your table, half because neither of you have worked up that big an appetite to have to order much more than an entrée for each of you, half because the city has started to go to sleep and not too many people are out and about.

Honestly, Gojo's just glad he's managed to keep his cool for long enough to get through the first half of dinner without breaking too much of a sweat, but he doesn't really get much chance to pay attention to that anyway, enamored in the way your eyes light up as you tell him the small stories you collected from your exploration of the hotel while he asleep.

Sounds like a real adventure, filling up the ice bucket and stealing an apple from the lobby refreshments area. You even brought a carton of strawberry milk you'd gotten from the vending machine back to the room for him, the thought behind the gesture forcing him to hide behind the lie of his face being red because of how spicy his food is (which it definitely is not).

It also doesn't take long for Gojo to excuse himself and retreat to the restroom to call Suguru in a panic to tell him how nervous he's been all night, unable to keep up with the racing pace of his heart when he's with you. He knows his best friend is used to this (and, unfortunately, will laugh in his face about it whenever he has the chance to), but Gojo can't help it! The man offers virtually no advice, only teasing him over the line about how helpless he is, but he's with Shoko, so Gojo demands that the phone gets handed over to her so she can actually help him.

Turns out she's too busy on her own phone to get a word in, but whatever. Gojo has to get back to the table anyway so you don't think he's avoiding you on purpose (which he isn't! At least not for unsavory reasons).

But what does take long is the actual conversation him and you have over the now-empty plates between you. He couldn't say for certain how long it's been since you've finished eating (...actually, he can: it's been an hour and forty-three minutes), but he feels right at home with you going over the convention schedule for the millionth time to make sure you're well-prepared for tomorrow, so he's in no rush to stop talking. You'd gone over the schedule yesterday, too, but there's more finality in the way it's discussed now with an excitement that's everything all at once.

And Gojo's not a total asshole, so he orders as many desserts as his heart desires (so, uh, all of them) to make sure the two of you aren't hogging the table for that long without paying. You're still nursing the slice of cake you'd gotten at the start of sweets hour, but Gojo makes sure to invite you to try all the treats he gets for himself, too, and he doesn't bother hiding his shy smile when you occasionally dip into his small dishes with your dessert fork.

The conversation reaches its natural end when, after paying the bill (... and after much protest from you), Gojo takes the last bit of his dessert in his spoon and holds it out to you, a lazy grin on his face. "Want the last bite?"

You raise a brow. "You don't?"

And, well, admittedly, yes, Gojo would love to have this last bite for himself—it has a bit of cream, a bit of cake, a bit of strawberry, a bit of jam—but you hadn't gotten the chance to steal from his parfait because you were so occupied while you were talking about the panelists you were excited to see, and he figures you deserve it more than he does.

He shakes his head with a half-smile, holding his spoon closer to you. "Nah, go ahead."

You pause for a second before shrugging. "Sure."

He expects you to take the spoon from him, but instead, you lean forward and take the bite, both your hands tucking the front strands of your hair behind your ears. It throws Gojo off-guard, both the act and the fact you come off as so nonchalant about it while he's forced to grip onto the handle of his spoon with all the strength in his body so you don't realize his hands are shaking.

He could just about pass out when the realization hits him that you've just indirectly kissed him, but he manages to hold it together because you pull back just as quickly as you came forward to chew the sweet.

. . .

Honestly, the rest of that exchange is a blur. He awkwardly laughed to try and distract from all the thoughts fogging up his brain, you looked at him like he grew a Dark Flower from his head, and he whisked you back to the car to escape the stuffy room he could no longer breathe in.

You weren't exactly ready to head back so soon, suggesting a drive around to relax for a bit longer and seeing if there was anything to do around the city, so that brings Gojo to right now, with you laid back in the passenger seat with your eyes wandering in all directions while he aimlessly drives around. It starts feeling a bit hopeless when, after a few kilometers, all the buildings have got their lights off, only streetlights to guide him through the summer night, but there's a silent agreement hanging in the air that even if it ends here, the day was never wasted. Gojo's a bit disappointed he didn't get to surprise you how he wanted because he got up so late, though, but driving past wouldn't hurt—

Wait, it closes at midnight?

Okay, nevermind! Change of plans! Uh, well, more like changing back of plans to what he originally wanted to do, but change of plans!

Gojo's aware he's already not the greatest driver. Safe, yes, but anxious, scared, passive? Also, yes, so he's entirely practiced in the art of holding out his arm so his passenger doesn't fly forward and he has to pay them out in DTCG SRs to keep them from reporting him to the police.

He holds out his arm in front of you as he accelerates and makes a sharper turn, and, even though it's not a rough change, it still startles you enough when you jolt slightly forward that you hold onto him to steady yourself again.

"Gojo! What're you doing!?"

"Surprise!"

"What?!" By this point, you let go of his arm and just hold onto the grab handle instead (probably because you notice that he's only got one hand on the wheel and he'd fare much better with, you know, both of them on there), but Gojo just giggles through your empty anger as he follows the signs in the dark. "If you fucking kill us, I'm taking your EX-7 Textured Cendrillmon for myself!"

He's not even going that fast, though, it just feels like he's speeding enough relative to how slow he'd been cruising just a second ago!

"Yes, I'm going to kill us by driving the speed limit," he deadpans. "And I love you, but you are not going anywhere near my EX-7 Cendrillmons, Textured or otherwise."

He can hear you readjusting your grip on the handle looser before eventually letting go, and after you shift around in your seat a bit, moving the seat straighter-up than the recline it was just in, you clear your throat. "Where are we even going?"

"You'll see," he says, making another turn (carefully, this time) to follow the signage. "Close your eyes for me, Princess?"

"Oh, great," you wail, "you're really gonna drive us into a ditch. Whatever, end my misery, I'm sick of you."

"Aw, don't be like that," he brings his hand over to ruffle your hair to loosen you up. "You know you love me."

Gojo immediately pulls his hand back to hold onto the wheel to merge lanes, and he catches you grumbling and crossing your arms as he's checking his blind spot. Unfortunately, no cars around for him to call for a DNA Digivolve, but you've got your eyes closed now, so he'll take that as a win.

He happily hums to himself as he continues driving in the near-dark, eventually pulling up to the machines. He sticks his arm out the window to grab the parking ticket, and because it's so late out, it's not too difficult to find parking. Gojo puts the car into park, and before you can open your eyes again, he rushes to your door to open it and grab your hand to lead you up. "No peeking, got it? We're almost there."

"Ugh, you're so insufferable," you groan, and even though he's 100% sure you're rolling your eyes, you let him put his hand over them and hold his other hand to safely get to standing. Once you're up, Gojo locks the car, and he keeps hold of your hand to guide you to the entrance.

The two of you fall into a familiar walking pace, and Gojo can't fight off the grin on his face as he swings his hand in yours. He'll ignore the feeling of comfort he gets from his fingers laced with yours in exchange for the adventure ahead. You squeeze his hand every so often, probably nervous that he's dragging you without any caution thrown to the wind, but you seem to trust him enough to let him lead, so he's got to be doing something right.

Right?

Gojo spots where he needs to go to grab your tickets and rushes over as quickly as possible, though still careful not to walk too fast and accidentally trip you. He holds up a peace sign to the attendant to ask for two tickets, and after tapping his card and thanking the worker, he walk the both of you to the huge sign just above the ticket check, and he lets go of your hand to instead hover his over your eyes from behind you.

"Okay, okay, ready?"

"Gojo, if we're just at the hotel and you're pranking me right now, I'm gonna make sure you never see Agumon again.”

He chuckles heartily and gently tips your head up to face towards the sign. “Well, looks like you've caught me.” Gojo moves and puts his hands on your shoulders from behind, then leans forward so he can watch your reaction. “Okay, pretty girl, open your eyes!”

And, truly, he doesn't think he could be any happier than he is now.

Your eyes flutter open, and immediately, the exasperated look on your face is replaced with one of wonder. Your eyes glitter under the low lights, and you immediately turn to look at him in disbelief. Your hand immediately goes to play with your necklace, but he can tell it's only because you don't know what else to do.

“Gojo!”

The young man grins, and he tilts his head teasingly. “Yes?”

“I had no idea Ikebukuro Aquarium was even open this late! And there's an Ikebukuru event for Hacker's Memory, too! Oh my gosh, Gojo, thank you, thank you!” You gush, and you throw your arms around his neck to abruptly hug him.

Immediately, Gojo clenches his eyes closed to keep from screaming in excitement, but he tries his best to snicker back at you, careful not to let you see his face right now as he's fully red by now. “You're such a fake fan, how could you not know there was an Ikebukuru summer event this month?”

Well, not like he knew either until just a few minutes ago (he knew about the event, but he had no idea it meant the aquarium was open so much later than usual), but you didn't need to know that. Thank goodness for the banner he saw on the road earlier with the operating hours on it.

Ordinarily, he'd expect you to pull away and slap his arm for that accusation, but you seem too caught up in the moment to do that, only giggling in his ear. You let go of him quickly enough, though, his skin now cold with the loss of your touch, and you hold his hand in yours to pull him to get through the gates. Amidst his initial stumbles and the new warmth where your palm meets his, he hold out both your tickets to the attendant, and she scans them quickly before handing Gojo two paper maps and wishing you both a good evening.

Your eyes look every which way, but once you've settled down just enough for Gojo to get a word in, he swings his hand in yours to bring you back down to earth. “Okay, where do you wanna go first?”

He holds out his map to look at between the two of you, and you trace the outer ring with your finger. “Let's work our way into the middle.”

“Whatever you want, Princess,” he says, and he points to your bag to ask for permission to put the maps inside. You quickly pull it off your shoulders and hold it open for him. He swiftly slides in the papers, and he takes the tote from you and slings it on his own arm.

You look up at him curiously. “Uh, Gojo?”

“...Yes?”

“You don't have to carry my bag.”

“Nah, I want to,” he says as cooly as he can (which, uh, probably isn't all that cool anyway, but part of the act is looking off in another direction, so he thinks that saves him).

Besides, Gojo remembers one of your friends, Choso, telling him at a board game night once that you've always had trouble with the straps of your bags constantly slipping off your shoulders (...because your bag had just split out all the Jenga pieces on the floor a few seconds prior, and Gojo thought him and the rest of your friends were evil for laughing at you). He figures now is as good a time as any to actually use that information to make this night more enjoyable for you.

“Thank you,” you tell him genuinely, a smile on your face as you circle around to get right up next to him. “Let's go see some fish then, yeah?” You say it so softly, like you haven't got a care in the world right now and your eyes are only on him.

Gojo gulps and quickly blinks to make sure you're not an illusion.

Then he blinks again to make sure he's not dreaming.

Then he blinks again to take him back to the moment, and he shyly skitters after you as you lead the way down the aisles of sea creatures, the pink in your necklace lit up under the blue marine lights around you.

And, admittedly, Gojo didn't think walking around and looking at fish could be that fun. Sure, there's some Hacker's Memory motifs scattered around that he loves and a few other nods to the franchise in-between exhibits, but there's only so many ways to describe fish and cephalopods and pinnipeds and cetaceans and all the other types of marine life before they all start to blend together. You seem to also get a bit bored of reading all the information on the stands in front of the exhibits, too, but Gojo's lucky that you're both such dorks that you find your own little way to have fun apart from comparing the different fish you see to people you know.

It doesn't take long for you to realize that all the info stands have NFC readers on them; your Vital Bracelet keeps initiating battles when your hand is resting on them. Gojo notices the battle screens before you do because you're too responsible and always remember to turn off your volume when you're in places you should be quiet, so before you can figure out what's going on, he rushes to hold your wrist so he can battle on your behalf.

Of course, your Calamaramon wins without any real effort on his part, but you thank him like he's a hero anyway, eager to return the favor by grabbing his wrist, tapping it on the NFC, and triggering a battle with his Greymon.

And judge him all you want for just standing there like an idiot while you do it! God forbid a guy lets his crush hold his hand like he's actually someone important to her!

Gojo remembers what part of the Vital Bracelet manual talks about battles. It's indexed as item 10—he’s got the number burned into his brain because he couldn't figure out how to get the mechanic to start when he first got his VB. He didn't realize he needed to digivolve to rookie level first and felt pretty silly for missing that part of the manual, but hey! At least he remembers all the rules now.

Item 10.

10.

That's the number he counts to everytime you move onto the next exhibit and there's a new NFC to tap his bracelet again, and that’s the number of seconds he holds his breath when it's his turn to tap yours.

And, look.

It's not like all he cares about is Digimon (promise!), but it's the only thing he knows enough about all-around that he can think of to never run out of references to distract himself.

From life, from school, from his problems, from you.

Somehow, though, there still aren't enough ways for him to pull away from you and your spinning figure as you traverse through the aquarium, no matter how badly he wants to keep his heart steady for the sake of his friendship with you (and his VB stats).

He can't escape the way your lips part when you see a sea bunny that you say reminds you of a Yuramon (even if he thinks it looks more like a Pafumon) and a penguin that reminds you of Megumi, face sour and hair all spiky.

He can't escape the way your hands move as you explain to another person who asks about your VB how it works. You beckon Gojo to come closer so you can show them how well he's raised his stats, and even if he's too busy being worried that you'll click over to look at his heart rate monitor and catch him, his heart warms seeing you talk so animatedly.

He can't escape the way your eyebrows furrow as you watch the sea turtles float above you, trying to count the shapes on their shells with your finger pointing towards them. Gojo tries to follow along and also keep count, but they all seem to refuse to turn for him to get the count of hexagons on their other side, but that's fine with him.

And he certainly can't escape the way you smile at him. Suguru's gonna be so sick of him later when Gojo will inevitably hide underneath the covers to text him about his romantic dilemma, but he can't help it.

What's he even meant to say?

suguru her smile reminds me of all good things on earth and makes me want to be a better person and idk go run a triathalon with zero training i cant take it anymore please put me in a coma rn so i can remember it forever im so srs i cant ever forget this pls i can die happy now

Yeah, no, it's gonna look something more like:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

But, in-between all the other grander moments, Gojo's still able to relax. It's not like he's on the verge of bursting into melodramatic song every time you're near.

You'll call him closer to the tank, and he'll take off his glasses to marvel at the slow-travelling shark right in front of him.

In the summer heat, you chase his fingers to hold between your palms to cool down. It works out perfectly because your warmer hands keep him from freezing, and it's nice to be able to take a second away from all the other visitors who are hustling to get through everything.

No matter how excited you are, you do still start to get more drowsy as the moon rises. He feigns an ache at the back of his ankles to have an excuse for you both to sit down and just stare at the sky while you gather back your energy, and he's sure you know he's totally bullshitting when you roll your eyes at him before yawning behind your hand, but you still let him drag you back to a bench.

You get distracted by all the colorful marine life all too often, and Gojo takes to snapping candid photos of you on his phone while you wander around, head in the clouds as you wave hello to all the critters and coral. He's not all that great at taking pictures, his hands clumsy and unpracticed, but he thinks that hardly matters when you're in frame.

You catch him a few times and, instead of teasing him about it, you rope him in to stand right next to you to have a passerby take a picture of the two of you together in front of whatever it was you were enamored in, and once Gojo's phone gets handed back to you, you snap a more carefree selfie with the two of you and your crests glowing, cheeks flushed blue.

The two of you end the evening at the center of the aquarium, fully surrounded by an overhead dome of water, and you both look up, backs to one another and watching the moon through the waves. The silence is unpracticed and out of the ordinary for you, but it's comforting all the same as all the chatter and talk. All the colors of the sea swirl above Gojo, whose heart has accepted that it has no other owner than the young woman whose hands share the same calluses he does from all the studying you do.

The drive back to the hotel is equally as peaceful, your eyes closed and his glued straight to the road. He lets his GPS guide him back, and while neither of you really speak much, he's more than happy to unlock his phone for you to look at the pictures from the night and show him when he's at red lights. You send them all back to yourself, a few photos of you and Gojo to your friends, and all the embarrassing duo shots of you both posing like anime characters to his friends.

He lets you shower first so you don't fall asleep waiting, even after you insist that you're going to take forever. He practically has to force you to take the towel and gather your pajamas and toiletries, but whatever frustration he had over your stubbornness are gone when, through the door, he hears you yelp as the cold water from the showerhead hits you.

With a boisterous laugh, he walks over to the mini fridge to grab the strawberry milk you'd gotten him earlier in the afternoon, and he sips on that while he texts Suguru to tell him that he, in, fact, survived the evening without having to call for emergency services to resuscitate him. He takes his own shower soon after, grateful that you both warmed it up and are now in bed to catch up on your sleep, and he brushes his teeth with a quiet smile as he waits for his hair to dry off a bit.

When he comes back to the main area of the room, Gojo tries his best not to make too much noise as he's closing the door to the bathroom, but looking towards the bed, he sees that the lamp on the shared nightstand is still on and you're still awake. He quietly walks over and gets into bed, frown on his face as you shyly wave from under the covers. Once he's firmly settled in, he turns to face you across the space between your beds.

"Why are you still awake?" Gojo asks in a whisper.

"Wanted to say goodnight," you smile, snuggling in further into your blankets. "And, thank you. For taking me out today."

"Aw, you're so sweet. You're welcome," Gojo says in earnest, stretching happily and pulling another pillow underneath his head. "You have fun?"

"Of course I did! I had a great time," you tell him, rolling onto your side to look at him. "Did you?"

Gojo snorts, rolling his eyes playfully. "I'm offended you're even asking."

"Oh, bite me," you groan. "You're so annoying."

Gojo's gaze is steady on you as you fume, moving your hair out of your eyes and blowing away what strands keep getting caught in your mouth. When you notice he's staring, you freeze like a deer in headlights and your cheeks go pink.

"You know," Gojo bites back a laugh and shakes his head at you, reaching his arm across and miming the motion of petting your hair to calm you. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you're falling for me."

There's a beat of silence as your eyes meet his again, hair all messy again and arms tangled, before you scoff, reaching behind yourself to throw one of your spare pillows at him with a huff.

Jokes on you, he's not giving it back now.

Gojo chuckles, letting the pillow hit him and fall on the floor between your beds, and he shakes his head good-naturedly, clicking his tongue. "Sorry, sorry, I jest."

"Yeah, suits you a lot better than 'Prince.'"

Gojo chuckles again, this time contagious enough to get you laughing at your own joke, which is all he can really ask for. He waits for you to get all your giggles out before he struggles against his drowsiness to reach out from under the covers to pick up the pillow, then he hovers his hand over the lamp's off switch.

As he watches you cozy yourself to sleep, your form still peacefully turned to him, for just a second, Gojo wonders if it could ever be anything but a joke: you falling for him.

To him, that's all it ever could be, but with your eyes now closed and your hair haphazardly spread out across your pillows, he supposes it wouldn't hurt to indulge in the thought. With a shaky breath, he takes off his glasses to stare up at the ceiling, pretending there's no space between your beds and the pillow beneath his arm is your sleeping form.

And, because he's so selfish, he'll give himself 10 seconds.

10 seconds to pretend you think of him whenever you see two cats snuggled up against each other in their sleep.

10 seconds to pretend your dreams are of him whisking you away on adventures to the Digital World.

10 seconds to pretend you look at him the same way he does.

It's too bad that his 10 seconds are already gone before he can come up with much else grander than those simple things, but before he feels himself slipping away into dreamland, he turns his head to look at you one last time before closing his eyes.

"Sleep well, and sweet dreams," he smiles one last time before finally turning off the light, hoping to himself that you might still be awake to hear him one last time tonight.

"Goodnight, Princess."

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