hellowoolf

[hellowoolf]

miss conway, with love

synopsis: when a strange and beautiful invitation arrives at satoru’s door, he supposes there cannot be harm in spending a weekend in new york. an extravagant party coalesced with a funeral, he has no idea what to make of the effervescent miss conway. but oh, it is plain enough to see that he needs you at least once.

pairing: 1930s!gojo satoru x heiress fem!reader

tags: fluff, a little angst, suguboo didn't defect because i say so, everyone speaks the same language because i say so, i take creative liberties please just roll with it, SMUT!!, unprotected piv, masturbation (gojo...and you? you'll see >:)), creampie, gojo needing you real bad, reader has family trauma but it won't get graphic!, not proofread :3

wc: 10.7k

a/n: this crawled right out of my hole and onto the page. i recommend listening to frank sinatra while you read it because that's what i listened to while writing hehe. i hope you like it!! i love you all so bad let's human centipede

18+! mdni <3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

gojo does not need much time at all to determine he despises new york city. 

his hotel is a beautiful, gleaming thing overlooking central park, and from the ornamental windows he supposes he may find some merit. he can only see from so many floors up how sharply dressed the crowds are, just how stunning the park is against its steel cradle. yes, embraced by his expansive and exorbitantly expensive room, limbs stretched and suits pressed in the closet, he thinks new york is lovely to look at. 

but on the street, among the bustle of people and the stench of life he becomes, rather quickly, opposed. he finds himself expanding infinity a further few centimeters to carve a greater space between himself and the smoky air, the smell of concrete. the sidewalks pool with water, grotesque and murky, and the passersby glisten with sweat under their beaded dresses and derby hats. his face is a great deal less handsome when he wrinkles his nose, but he supposes it is a necessary concession.

of course, he hasn’t come to enjoy the city. 

when his invitation first arrived, dressed in dark blue ribbon and sealed in pressed wax, it was such a jubilantly presented envelope that he imagined a clan member was announcing a wedding. and then, written in sweeping, almost coyly elegant strokes he found:

in celebration of the death of anwir conway

please join us at the new york city conway international

friday, march 22, 7pm

he had blinked at the paper and it blinked back. anwir conway? he knew that name, though anyone with money must have, he thought. conway international hotels spanned the globe now, the pinnacle of luxury in all major cities people cared to visit. the conway family was surely one of the most wealthy in the west. celebrating the death? he didn’t care much to investigate that. 

but then almost all the powerful sorcerers he knew had received invitations, too. yuki and suguru and a few of his international contacts, all brandishing that cream cardstock. some denied immediately—yuki had no interest in the sort of ostentatious indulgence a conway party promised—and suguru has the girls to care for. and besides, the only person capable of arriving in america without any form of machinery was satoru.

and so, suitcase packed delicately with western style party-wear and fine leather shoes, satoru lifted a leg in tokyo and made contact in the center of new york.

each invitation was fit with a conway reservation for the weekend, and upon satoru’s arrival the lobby had been infested with near-royalty, in wealth and cursed power. there were as many non-sorcerers, he found, as there were jujutsu users, but the whole lot made up the global upper echelon.

nobody seemed all that preoccupied with the implication on the invitation: that the party thrower is elated by the death of anwir conway. satoru supposes now, lying in wait hours before the party, that he has paid it little mind, too. but his host hadn’t signed their name, either. who would so brazenly advertise their disdain for the new york city’s king of elite?

a part of him is almost amused by the unadulterated joy unfurling in the hallways; even beyond the tangible glitter of crystal chandeliers and precious gemmed decor, there was a potent air of delight, the scent of it curling a talon from under his closed door. 

there is so much cursed energy in this hotel that satoru can hardly discern a thing. only that, if he can admit it, he is excited for tonight. the intrigue and the wealth and the subversion of the invitation all inspire a thrill within him. whoever he would encounter this evening, it would be someone worth meeting. a terrible villain, he is certain, but no doubt someone fun.

he stands at the threshold of the room’s closet now, glancing over his various suits and smoker jackets, some a sleek black and detailed with silk, others attached with white or ivory bowties and scarves. is this…a funeral? a party? both, maybe. gojo pads to the phone by the bed and twists the rotary to call the front desk. a man answers, voice rough with use but unendingly polite.

“good evening, conway international front desk. how may i help you?”

satoru grins with the stiff script of it all. “good evening, sir. i’m a guest of…well…i suppose i don’t know. i’m a guest this evening and i was wondering what the attire is for the party?”

there is shuffling on the other end, a hasty “just one moment, sir,” whispered across the line. there are at least three people speaking as his telephone friend holds the phone to what must be his chest. two men and a woman, he thinks. very little can be made out beyond one sentence, wry and full of humor, a feminine voice: let me speak to him.

satoru is transferred hands and then a delicate breathing comes through the receiver. the woman says nothing. is she…waiting for him?

“um…hello?”

“hello, sir,” you says. satoru can hear the smile in your tone, almost like you’re amused to be in this position. it’s clear enough that you don’t typically handle the phones.

“yes, ma’am, i was wondering whether you knew the attire code for tonight’s party?”

your laugh is light, almost teasing. “it’s nearly a quarter past 6, mr. gojo. aren’t you a little late?”

“am i?” he teases back.

you snicker again, and it’s a terribly attractive sound. “you know, i’ve been preparing for weeks. can’t you spare a full hour of your precious time to compose yourself?”

“you’ve spent weeks selecting an outfit?” 

“among other things,” you say, voice trailing off at the end. your cadence is provocative. not quite sexual, more biting. satoru finds himself smiling broader the longer you speak with him. who is this woman? 

“well would you be so kind as to offer me guidance?”

you hum quietly, pretending to consider it. “i suppose i might, if you asked me kindly.”

gojo laughs again, again. “right. oh powerful woman on the phone, might you please indicate a color in which i should dress this fine evening?”

“yes!” you cackle. “that’s exactly the sort of ego-stroking i’m in search of. well done, mr. gojo.” satoru, despite himself, beams, though you cannot see it. “tonight, more than anything, is a celebration. wear something you’d be horrified to see at a funeral. i don’t mind the colors, more the spirit of it.”

“i will work tirelessly to please you,” he returns.

you hum again, pleased. “i hope so. enjoy your night,” you say.

and satoru almost lets you hang up the phone before startling to awareness. “wait—wait,” he waits to hear you settle the receiver on your face again before continuing, “how do you know my name?”

you pause a moment before responding. “it is the job of the front desk to know our guests by name.”

“but you don’t work at the front desk, do you?” satoru probes.

something sweet and self satisfied pushes out of your nose and he hears it crackle on the line. you let the silence stretch one moment too long, he suspects just to make him wait. “because i invited you.”

the sound clicks, and you are gone. gojo lowers the phone slowly, wondering what sort of ravenous thing it was he just spoke to. 

the city lights twinkle through his window as the sky darkens, and in the flickering gleam satoru selects a pressed tuxedo, which on its own would be altogether normal, but attaches about his waist a shiny, light blue cumberbund. the reference to his own eyes is so overt that he snorts as he asses himself in the mirror. would this satisfy you? he looks, he thinks, like the worst, most vain young man in the world. perfect.

descending down to the ballroom, gojo still thinks of you. the lilt of your voice, almost reticent, but not at all sheepish. would he know you by sight alone? this is—you made sure he knew—your party. who are you to awrin conway? satoru supposes you must be his daughter, in which case your more than manifested glee at his death is rendered even more fascinating. are you to inherit the empire of your father? do you relish this bequeathment of power, or do you resent the responsibility? how close would you let satoru get to your lips?

that last musing would concern him, but just then the elevator bell sings as the operator pries open the door, and he steps slowly into what would be better described as an auditorium. a dance floor beams the diamond starlight, enormous and full of people already, and along the waist of the high ceilings rounds a second floor, trimmed with silver railings, over which glamorous people of all ages drink champagne and watch the dancers below. a live band bellows from the front stage, alto saxophones and violas and the deep voice of the vocalist, sorcerers and non-sorcerer's alike making fools of themselves, dripping in all manner of fine fabric. it looks like all the most exquisite curtains in the world have gathered to dance here, twirling and draping themselves around the expanse of the room. 

contrary to his norm, nobody seems particularly interested in satoru, white-haired and beautiful and teeming with cursed energy. in this room he fits in quite nicely, and the throng hums, full, but makes room for his entrance. 

and despite it all, against his better judgment and against this howling opulence which demands his attention, satoru finds himself searching for you. he hardly has a plan in the case that he even finds you, but nonetheless his eyes flit and scrutinize the crowd for a face he’s never seen.

across the way there is a woman engaged in fierce dancing with two other men, twirled between their arms and agonizing the both of them, entirely pleased with the way they each reach for her when she turns towards the other. but her dress is black and simple; gojo imagines this woman did not realize your insurgent intentions until her arrival. not you.

another young lady crosses the dance floor, cutting into his line of vision. she has had multiple glasses of champagne already, clear in her gait, and she still grips two of the offending flutes. her friend guides her towards a table to deposit her, and they cackle at her inability to place her feet properly. not you.

satoru lifts his gaze again to the surrounding platform making up the second floor. 

there you are.

he has no reason to know it so certainly, but you lean there, forearms crossed over one another on the railing as you assess your invitees below you. if your hands weren’t so relaxed, dangling like white flowers held by their stems, he might wonder whether you were controlling the entire crowd. you simply have that air about you, that free and open confidence, and it makes satoru want to be your puppet, too. 

your dress is a deep blue velvet, homage to the night, draped just barely over your shoulders and down your back. satoru climbs the stairs towards you, eyes locked on the incline of your back, watching you even through the pillars as he passes them. nobody even seems aware of you there, aware that it’s you who has invited them, you who, satoru can only assume, owns everything around them now. 

does he offer his condolences? no, that much has been made obvious. he wonders whether he should congratulate you. you choose not to turn to him as he leans against the railing, too, mimicking you. you wait, again, for him to speak first, for him to give.

“you didn’t give me enough time on the phone to thank you for the invitation.”

you turn now and smile in greeting, so dazzling, so familiar, but still you give nothing away. “i hoped you would come thank me in person.”

satoru bows his head a little in a show of gratitude that makes you giggle. “miss conway, i thank you kindly for your invitation this evening.”

your chin tips in response, “i’m simply delighted to have you.”

he resettles on the railing and gojo watches your face turn again. your eyes are wide open, so bright as they bite at the scene below and around you. “you look like you’ve never thrown a party before.” this is not entirely true, you stand far too self-assured for him to really mean it. but there’s a newness, too, in the way you glance about.

“i haven’t,” you admit, easily, like it’s cost you nothing.

“i’ll admit i’m surprised.”

“everyone is. but until now it was my father who liked to host,” you say. and your voice is casual, the way it has been thus far, but something wriggles awake beneath it. satoru pretends not to notice.

“so you were his daughter, then.”

you nod. “the one and only.”

he gestures to vivacity abound. “and is this how you mourn?”

you straighten to standing and tilt your head back a bit as you laugh, humorless but cut short. “i don’t suppose i’ll mourn at all.” you make a conspiratorial face. “come drink with me.”

satoru, with an absurd flair of showmanship that makes you laugh, takes your hand to guide you back down the stairs.

there are only brief and fleeting passes of recognition in people’s faces as you pass them on the ground floor. they are all uncertain, it seems, if you’re really his daughter, if you’re really their host. the few that are brave enough to approach you introduce themselves, every one of them. the question tugs at satoru’s sleeve: do you know any of the people here? though his wonderings don’t seem to matter much as he walks beside you. you shine like you’ve swallowed a comet, entirely awake and alive. there are moments when, at the right angle, satoru thinks he can see you have cursed energy, but it’s almost impossible to tell in this room.

the bar comes into view and he collects a flute of champagne for each of you. the chime of your glasses makes you disproportionately giddy and you take a long pull. 

“so ask me what you’d like to ask me,” you say suddenly. satoru blinks.

“what is it i’d like to ask you?”

you drink again, lick your lips, and he tracks the pink of your tongue. you notice. “well,” you walk around the dance floor and he follows in step, “there are a few things i’d imagine most people here are wondering, and still none of them have chosen to talk to me.” you glance up at him, eyes narrowed. “so you must have something you really want to know.”

he wonders if you’re right. he thinks he can’t admit that what he wants to know most of all is what you’d taste like under your dress. “i’d like to know why you’re celebrating your fathers death so voraciously.”

you falter but only a moment, a minute second. “anything but that.”

gojo does his best to recover as quickly as you. “have you inherited everything?” he goads.

“what a gauche question!” you admonish, but you’re dripping with sarcasm. “yes, every last dollar is mine.”

“what are you going to do with it?”

you tap your pointer finger to your chin. “it’s more than i could ever make a meaningful dent in. i’d like to keep the hotels, i think. i think being a hotel owner is sort of chic,” you start.

“very chic,” satoru agrees, smiling like an idiot.

“but beyond that i’d like to travel, i suppose. go somewhere. go everywhere, even.” you pause again to watch the dancers; they’re even drunker now, even more pleased.

“where will you start?”

still enraptured by your guests, you say without thinking, “new york city.” and though he doesn’t have the tools to decipher it, gojo suspects it’s your most intimate confession of the evening.

satoru deposits your empty flutes on a table nearby. “come dance with me, new york city,” he says softly, lips tilted into your ear. you shudder and beam, taking his hand to the dance floor.

the pair of you work seamlessly into the body of the crowd, it breathes you in, and satoru takes your waist in his large hand. you squeeze his fingers between yours in the other, waltzing as you orbit each other. with each twist and spin your neck cranes a little further, your joy stretching out further as the melody of your laugh wraps around gojo’s skin. the music swells.

it’s here, too, tethered to you, that he knows for sure; you have cursed energy, something viscous and awake, something with a heartbeat. and it’s impossible not to feel close to you now in a spiritual sort of way, with his hands over your dress and yours smoothed over the lapel of his jacket. 

“can i ask you another question?”

you tip your gaze back to his and nod, smile still spread delicately across your face. 

“what is your cursed technique?”

for a moment your eyes widen, but like every passing vulnerability it is fleeting. and something else emerges too, a realization maybe, or the settling of something long kicked up. 

and then—it happens so fast gojo has half a mind to shove you off of him, it’s startling and striking, and beautiful, too—you’re cackling. 

a full and vibrant resonance beating from your throat, he can almost track it as it’s born in your stomach and claws out from between your lips. your dancing suffers as you shake with it, but the sudden and nearly disturbing sound of it pulls gojo under. he can only hardly keep himself from howling, too.

you keel over, still gripping his hand, and then right yourself with a shock of breath in. “come with me,” you tell him, breathless. all he can do is nod.

you buzz with adrenaline and champagne and something else, something bigger, as you pull him towards the elevator and the lift tugs you both up, up, up. the rising seems to further surge your frenetic excitement. satoru leans himself against wall.

“where are you taking me?” he tries to sound teasing at the provocation in his voice but really he would like if you did something untoward to him this evening. he wants to break rules with you, wants to see how an heiress sounds with her face in his pillow.

you shrug with a grin. “through my personal suite.”

he preens, it’s exactly what he had wanted to hear. “oh, sweetheart, aren’t you being presumptuous?” he teases. somewhere in his periphery he feels badly for the elevator operator, who stands solem in the corner, pretending not to listen, but mostly gojo is hot with your sunlight, basking.

you roll your eyes. “through my personal suite, mr. gojo. you’ll remain a virginal saint in the morning,” you promise as the elevator doors are opened and you step out.

you have no interest in showing him around, though satoru pays little mind to that. you trudge straight through the living room, the kitchen, all of it enormous and lavish, and along the way he collects the little things strewn about your floor. you keep a clean living space, and it’s altogether impersonal, but there are whispers of your living here dotted about and he all but lunges for them. a newspaper, smudged at the edges with your fingerprints: two different-colored socks, thrown together like you’d worn them both: a lacy bralette, clasps tight, like you’ve never undone it in a rush. you’re about to swing open the doors of your closet when you turn back to him, words in your mouth that you swallow again.

“put that down!” you screech, scandalized and still laughing, you’re always laughing. he knows what of his menagerie you want back, and he holds the garment above his head. you jump for it, bracing your hands on his shoulders as you propel yourself up and make to grab at it, but satoru continues to twist out of your hold, maniacal and giggling.

“you’ve inherited an empire! can’t you spare me one gift of good fortune?”

you pant a little from your attempts at retrieving it, your skin beginning to flush and satoru’s body practically pulls itself towards you. your chest heaves and he’s right there, sternum brushing yours with each breath in. you seem unbothered by the proximity, though he knows better. you each grin at the other, both pink and so uncomplicatedly drawn together. “my gift is forthcoming, mr. gojo.”

“call me satoru.”

“satoru,” you purr. god he wants to hear that again. he wants to hear that in the dead of night while the rest of the city sleeps, wants to hear it in his ear and against his chest, you are so captivating. he drops your bra, sufficiently tamed.

“yes?”

you have won, and it shows on your face. “follow me.”

the doors of what he was sure was a closet fly open with your greedy hands, and gojo finds himself at the base of a ladder. you start up it immediately, dignified even scrambling up the rungs in your evening dress.

“sweetheart, i really must know, where are you taking me?”

“to new york city!” you call down as he begins to climb.

“that cannot be your answer to everything!”

“yes it can!”

vaguely he hears a hatch open above him, feels the blanket of the night sky unspool down the ladder as he makes his way up. when at last his shoes meet steady ground, satoru has all the remaining air knocked from his lungs in a great, ceremonious push.

you’ve taken him to the roof of the hotel, a slab of concrete among the stars, and all around you the city shimmers. it is a strange and profound feeling, satoru thinks, to watch over a thing so tall. the park hides behind the shadow of the skyline but still boasts a deep emerald green, the larger streets twitch with the movement of people, hardly discernible from up so high, the streetlights glimmer faintly from hundreds of floors away. they look like stars, too; he is surrounded by stars, below and above him, and a sun ahead of him.

you run towards the wall circumscribed about the platform like those few feet closer to the sight and sounds of the city will make a difference in how it appears to you. he hears you breathe in, deep. 

“isn’t it amazing?” you ask him.

he approaches the wall with you. “it is—and it pains me to admit this—truly stunning.”

this makes you delighted. “i know,” you agree, halfway to a reverie satoru can only hope he’s a part of. you look up suddenly, remembering something. “it’s cloudy enough.”

gojo furrows his brows a little. “enough?”

“you wanted to see my technique.”

“i asked you what it was, miss conway, not to see it,” he laughs fondly.

you whisper a name, yours, and satoru nods, says it again. and then he says nothing, hoping you’ll speak to him more.

“yes, well, i want to show you,” you confess, smile smaller, realer, he could reach out and touch it.

gojo raises his hands and takes a step back: well, show me then. you give him a brief and almost secretive smile before tilting your head back again, eyes fluttering shut and opening your palms. your energy licks at your wrists and flares, hungry, big-bellied.

for the first few moments, nothing happens. and then, a bellowing crack of thunder, the clap spread through the clouds. 

the rain comes down so torrentially, so immediately, so everywhere, that gojo fears the sky has opened before you can show him your technique. but when he glances your way, you are smiling so wide it must hurt your cheeks. you extend your arms out, scream and whoop, as the rain trails down your body and traces your shape.

satoru assesses his surroundings again. the entirety of the city, all some odd 500 square miles of skyscraper and horde, is pelted by the sudden and open-armed rain. the light and the buildings drink it in, too, even shinier when wet and seeming as jubilant to feel it as you are. his mouth drops open.

“are you…are you doing this?”

you turn to him, soaking wet. “yes!” looking at him a moment you add: “you aren’t wet.” you look almost hurt.

yes, satoru thinks looking down at his own arms, his infinity is on. he turns it off immediately. this suit will be irrecoverable, but then you beam again at the way his hair plasters to his head, vaguely gray with the sheer amount of water in it, and he doesn’t mind at all.

“this is wonderful,” he says earnestly, raising his voice slightly so you can hear him against the pounding. 

you take his hands and pull him towards the center of the platform, place his hands at your waist again and revive your dance from earlier. there is no music beyond the beating of your rain, and the cold threatens to set in, but you spin satoru in your hands and he spins you in return, and it feels too much like an incandescently perfect moment to want for anything. the water splashes under your shoes as you prance about together.

“are you enjoying your party, miss conway?” he asks, face much closer to yours than it was a moment before. gojo hopes you’re blushing, he thinks you may be, but in the dark it’s harder to tell. still, you are a scorching heat between his palms.

“very much so,” you say.

he dips you once, then brings you close again. your steps slow, each of you loosening further, more ready to admit you only dance to hold each other. 

“i have another question now.”

“i’m terrified,” you joke.

“why would you invite all these people you don’t know?”

you look unbothered as you sigh. “who else should i have invited?”

“friends, family,” you twirl between his arms, “lovers, maybe.”

you laugh, almost into his mouth you are so close. “i have none of those things.” but there’s no sadness in it, no regret, all freedom. “but i wanted to spend tonight with people who could dwarf this inheritance, who could do things like i can,” you explain. and then, with a wry grin, “so i wrote to the wealthiest, most powerful people i could find.”

gojo nods once, twice, mulling it over. you’re almost unmoving now, but his palm still skates slowly across your back, tugging as much as he is capable without insulting you. he takes the hand held out at your sides and places it over his shoulder, and you clasp your fingers behind his neck. with his other large palm he slides down your wet dress, reverent, impossibly slow. 

“and which would you like to be, satoru?” you ask, so sincere it cuts him.

“i’ll be whoever you’d like me to be,” he breathes. your noses bump and it sends a thrill down his spine. he’s already hard and he can’t tell if he hopes you can feel it. you take another deep breath, trying to steady yourself.

“i’ll have to think on it,” you whisper.

and satoru cannot wait another moment, he clips the centimeter of space to kiss you. your lips are so warm against his despite the cold of the night as it sticks to the rain. he kisses you slowly, there is no ask in it at first, and brings one hand up to cradle the back of your head. but then you whimper into his mouth a little and he all but consumes you there on the roof of what is now your hotel.

you are both hungry, pushing into each other and making demands with your hands. you tug the hair at the nape of his neck, the lapel of his jacket, smooth your fingers behind it to get closer to his skin. and he is no better, running his hands down your arms, gripping your ass as he pulls you towards his cock as it jumps for you. you moan again, wild, and he groans at the sound, at your soft feeling rutting against him each time he pulls. 

with your lips parted satoru slips his tongue along yours to lick at you from the inside. you let him explore, feel behind your teeth, squirming at the feeling and canting your hips slightly into his. with each wet smack of your lips he is increasingly hot, increasingly hard, and you seem no better.

you pull away for a quick breath and satoru whispers a small fuck as you leave him.

you both still, though, eyes open for the first time since he began touching you. 

it’s unlike anything he has ever seen. 

the drops of rain hang, completely still in the air, little diamonds on strings. you turn your head looking just as stunned as he is. gojo brings his lips to your ear. 

“am i that fantastic a kisser?”

you turn to him, take in his little grin, sheepish and still hungry and hair mussed. you bark another one of your laughs out, dizzy with the pleasure of satoru, of your constellation of water droplets as they hang suspended. and then, all at once, they fall with a blowing splash to the ground. you make no more as you look his way again. 

“we should dry off,” you say, breathless. gojo nods and helps you down the ladder again. the silence between you now has no discomfort in it, only the residual, searing print of your hands on his body, your lips on his. you stand on your tiptoes to wrap a fluffy towel around his head, looking dazed in an elated sort of way. “we should get some sleep.”

“many things we should do, it seems,” satoru says.

your laugh is breathy, your eyes wide. “will you come see me tomorrow?” you ask. satoru opens his mouth to respond but before he can, you add, “i don’t need you to be any more than a friend.”

the towel hangs down his shoulder as he tilts his head. “i think i may need to be more than your friend.”

you let out a puff of air, relieved and insatiable again all at once, but you try to blow the heat from your body. “so come see me tomorrow.”

“yes, miss conway,” gojo whispers, closing in on you again. this time he kisses you only a moment, as softly as he can manage, just to see you make that wild face again. 

there are no more words from each of you then, just his contented, silent leaving, and your beaming smile as you close the door.

gojo looks sufficiently undone as he tows himself back to his room. much like your living space he is frayed at the edges with relics of you, your grip in his hair, your lipstick on his chin. his cock is aching in his trousers still, jumping and desperate, and he wonders if the elevator operator can tell from the shifting gleam of the shiny fabric as he twitches underneath. if he’s honest with himself, he doesn’t much mind either way.

as soon as the heavy door clicks behind him he sheds himself of everything, of his fine fabrics and bowtie and dignity, and they pool in the entryway as his head tips back against the door. he grips his shaft and tugs it once, twice, crazed beyond deliverance.

“fuckfuckfuck,” he mutters, a groan ripping from his throat as he strokes himself in earnest. he thinks of the bunching of your dress between his fingers, the give of your ass as he practically rut into you, god it was a shameful display, he thinks, and it only makes him harder.

precum pearls at his tip and he pulps himself further, the vague pain a baptism for the rest, imagines the lick of his own wetness is your tongue down the underside, along his veins. he wants to fuck you up against this door, cup your chin in his palm as he takes you from behind here, wants to hold you against a wall and grind his pelvic bone along your clit to feel you squeeze. he’s so close so quickly and it would bother him, normally, but not now, not with the myth of your body purring, an apparition, behind his closed eyelids, and the scent of your perfume still clinging to his neck. 

his bedside lamps flickers in protest as he moans again, his own cursed energy spreading its legs as he fucks his palm faster, and then with a whine of your name his hips stutter and he’s gone. he cums more than he ever has alone, hot and damning and everywhere, dripping over his hand and navel. he says again, more conclusively this time, “fuck.”

satoru cleans himself before climbing into bed, bunching the duvet in the cradle of his limbs to shackle himself to sleep. he wants you now, too, wants to hold your spine to his chest without taking a thing. satoru has always been an urgently insatiable thing, has put the world on his tongue like a pill, but he is a moment from utter consumption by this wanting. he steps into the mouth of it as he closes his eyes.

the morning light filters through his windows tentatively from behind the filter of clouds. gojo blinks awake, bleary and nearly hungover with last night’s lechery, but with no small amount of effort begins dragging each long limb off the bed to get dressed.

come see me tomorrow, you had told him. oh, he’s hard just thinking of you again, something animal in his belly clawing its way out. with the glow of daybreak, too, another realization dawns upon him; satoru will not be satisfied with just fucking you, either. 

this should alarm him. you are incalculable, potent with power, terrible and charismatic and ephemerally sad. there is something almost unseeable about you, something visible only when you spin and catch in the light. and even with your newfound familiarity with him, even after nearly allowing him to fuck you like an animal on your roof, you would not divulge gojo’s first question. what reason could you have to rejoice so resolutely in the death of your father? 

you had told him last night that you have no one now. or, satoru things, no one besides him, though as soon as he allows that thought he knows urgently that he should teleport home. but then he considers the pucker of your body splayed lazily in bed, your skin dappled by the sunrise, and finishes buttoning his shirt.

when he opens his door, there is a man waiting for him, dressed in a three-piece suit and ticking faintly with a pocket watch dangling from a chain. he might look jolly if he had a more pleasant look on his face, a round man with ruddy cheeks, but he assesses gojo almost aggressively, takes stock of his posture and the slope of his nose.

“can i…help you?” gojo asks, hip leaning on the threshold.

“good day, sir,” the man seems to have swallowed whatever disaffection threatened from behind his teeth. “i have been instructed to escort you to miss conway’s suite.”

satoru’s face spreads slowly into a smirk. “i spoke with you on the phone yesterday, didn’t i?”

“yes, sir, we spoke for a moment.” 

“before miss conway usurped the phone from you,” he lilts, tilting his head slightly.

“yes, sir.”

gojo exits the room fully but makes no move to follow this man anywhere else. “and now she has sent for me?” a rhetorical question, he is endlessly pleased. the man just barely restrains himself from sighing before turning sharply on one foot and setting off towards the elevator. and for all his deriding, satoru follows straight after him.

the elevator protests slightly under the mass of his companion and it endears gojo to him immediately. “and what should i call you?” he asks.

“ramon, sir.”

satoru nods. “well, ramon, you can call me satoru.”

ramon keeps his sharp gaze trained on the elevator doors like he knows precisely the moment they’ll be opened. “no, mr. gojo.” the operator hides his snicker in a cough and satoru pouts, hoping ramon will turn around and see it, but just then the silver doors and heaved up and they both pad out.

the sound of you approaches him slowly, tentatively, and then completely, a wild beast made docile with familiarity. a record crackles somewhere a few rooms away, more jazz—you must like it—and you hum along with the swing of the melody. the song of your morning washes over him and he nearly parts his lips to drink it.

you’ve laid yourself across your living room couch, back to him and ramon, hair tumbling down one armrest. a new newspaper has found its way between your fingers, ready to be smudged. it crinkles a little as you focus and ramon clears his throat.

“my dear, i have brought him,” he says. it is infinitely more kind than any order leveled at satoru in the past few moments, so much so that he might even think ramon was your father if he didn’t know better. you twist up and face them, all beaming smile and still in your nightgown.

“oh, po, thank you!” you say. it is satoru’s turn to snicker now.

“po?” he asks, mostly to ramon, mostly to needle him.

“my last name is poyard, sir,” he explains, losing again that affectionate look reserved for you.

“when i was a kid,” you interject, “my father insisted i call him mr. poyard, but i couldn’t really make out the yuh sound. so i called him mr. po.” 

ramon says to you, in a voice softer than satoru would have thought possible, “mr. po is leaving now, my dear.”

you nod, waving him out. your nightgown is a barely pink silk, provocative as it pleats over your shoulders but you make no attempt to exaggerate the arc of your body, the swell of your tits. you have no need for such parading, you surely must know: satoru’s eyes catch on the shadow in your collarbone, the most mundane of you.

“good morning, miss conway,” he begins.

your legs rock slightly as they hang off your sofa, in no rush to meet him, slack with sleep. “good morning, satoru.”

“you asked me to come see you.”

“and you have! i am very pleased.”

“no,” satoru starts goodnaturedly, taking one step towards you, “you sent someone for me.”

“i didn’t care to leave it to chance.”

another step towards you. your only indication that you care at all to see him is the way your head slowly tips to keep your eyes locked on his. “you’ve divested me of my power. what of the few minutes you would spend wondering if i’d show? i so looked forward to that.”

“well by all means, if you have little interest in accompanying me today you may spare me the hesitation,” you stand to stroll towards your closet, sweeping right up to the heat of him before you say: “feel free to leave.”

you leave your closet door ajar as you begin changing. the rustle of your clothes makes his cock stir, but he leans himself on the wall nearby and says instead, “what exactly would i miss if i abandoned you now?”

you hum through the muted swishing of fabric. “i’m beginning my new york travels today.”

gojo considers this, considers again your face last night as you promised—yes, it sounded very much like a vow—to visit new york first. “sweetheart, i could take you anywhere right this moment: india, france, the spanish alps. and you would choose to travel a city you’ve lived in since birth?”

to this you have nothing to say, punctuating your silence only with the faint clink of a buckle before you step out before him. you are a completely radiant display, white dress pendulous down your body, cinched in with a belt at the waist.

“how is it?” you ask, shifting your weight from side to side. and you really mean it, this question, and the sincerity punches at satoru’s lungs.

“stunning, miss conway,” he murmurs. your cheeks are pink like your nightgown was, and as it licks down your neck he thinks for a moment about how captured he is by everything you do. he doesn’t linger on it, though, because with a delighted cackle you’re grabbing his hand and pulling him out.

new york through your eyes is revolutionarily different. the people on the street part for you, the puddles of dirt and smog reflect you from new angles, the smell of metropolis is dulled by your scent, sweet and ambery and almost natural; all of it looks romantic in your shadow as you drag him about the city. he knows it isn’t wise to be so willing to recontextualize for you, to so quickly reevaluate, but god help him he cannot help himself. 

you point at street signs and tap against window displays like you’re seeing it all with new eyes, like you’ve never experienced anything so wonderful in your life, and somewhere in the back of his mind satoru suspects that dark and frightened thing you seem to harbor has something to do with it, but then you beam at him again and he forgets it.

you stop together at no less than three cafes and order nearly the entire glass case of pastries at each of them. with sugar still on your lips—satoru wants to kiss them—you stroll through central park, letting satoru dare to lay a hand on the small of your back. he tells you about his life in tokyo, about the school and suguru and his students, and you respond eagerly with questions about teaching jujutsu. you poke at his infinity with an amazed curiosity—though he’d prefer to keep it down with you—and giggle when he runs a tiny ball of blue energy up your arm.

the afternoon sun peaks above you and you find yourselves at some rooftop bar, cooling off with mint juleps you lap at; satoru wants to kiss you again and taste the bourbon. he takes his turn to ask you things, then, but even a little tipsy there are holes you skirt around. you refuse to tell him much about your father and why you are so overjoyed that he’s dead, you divulge nothing of your childhood, though you are so elegant at avoiding answering that satoru thinks he wouldn’t have noticed if he was any less desperate to know.

you run a finger along the rim of your glass as you tell him about now, though. the person you’ve become, your plans for the future: these things you give easily and satoru is all but desperate to reel them in.

“part of me wants to travel forever, to never stay in one place long enough to be remembered there,” you admit, head tilted, “but another part of me wants to dig my heels in somewhere. to know everyone.”

satoru clinks his glass against yours lightly. “you’ll be remembered no matter where you go.”

your face scrunches and you shake your head, but the corners of your lips pull up and satoru feels his chest sing. “you’re very suave, mr. gojo, i’ll give you that.”

he has grown to like that, too; you call him mr. gojo when you have something to admonish, which is almost always. his first name, satoru in that breathy lilt of yours, is reserved for when you’re pleased with him. pulling it from you is a victory he has grown drunk on; there is great triumph in seeing your mouth form the vowels, thinking to himself all the while: 

he wants to kiss you, he wants to kiss you. 

how many times has he thought that today? he wants it like he hasn’t had it yet, needing you with the same sort of appetite you seem to have for this city. still, he can’t help but feel it isn’t time yet somehow. the fact of your joy to explore a place you’ve spent more than twenty years living in rubs satoru raw somewhere in his lungs, he wants to let you have this day for yourself before he swallows you down again.

dusk cloaks the city and hues the sidewalks blue above the growing shadows of the skyscrapers. lights beam from apartment windows and office buildings in the throes of overtime, and you lace your fingers through his as you explore further. surely your feet ache and your waist is sore from twisting about in that sleek belt all afternoon, but if you feel any of it you show nothing on your face. 

partially sated by a day of exploration, you stroll together much slower than earlier, looping your way back to the hotel. with each passing block satoru feels you softening in his hands, sticky and sweet like a peach. your sense of satisfaction rubs off on him, too, he thinks, the pair of you heavy with the sights of the day. 

satoru hasn’t walked this much in years; he has never found much use for the sort of meandering you did today, not until it was you linking your arm in his and blushing lightly under his stare. he feels sort of like a teenager, like he’s never met another woman in his life, sensitive to the feeling of your fingertips along his forearm, to your breath on his neck. 

the hotel’s silhouette approaches slowly as you walk in step together.

“satoru,” you breathe.

satoru hums in response and squeezes your waist a little, not trusting his sense of propriety when you murmur his name like that.

“thank you for today,” you offer quietly. you almost sound…sheepish, if he could even call it that. it is entirely unfamiliar on your face, your soft smile and eyes tracking the planes of the sidewalk.

“it was my pleasure.” he means it. a bellman opens the door for you and the cinnamon perfume of the hotel lobby wafts about you both. you do not let go of him as you walk to the elevator, lean your weight into his side as you settle behind the operator. 

satoru is slightly alarmed to find he is nervous. he’s spent the last day and a half wanting you, needing you, kissing you on your rooftop and fucking his fist to the thought of you, but now, with the bump of your spine under his wandering fingertips he feels as inconfident as he’s ever felt. he leans down to your ear.

“are you taking me to your personal suite again, miss conway?” he whispers. your breath catches but you grin all the same.

“would you like me to, satoru?”

he doesn’t miss a moment: “yes,” and it comes out breathy and desperate but it only seems to fray your nerves further. he runs his thumb just above the curve of your ass, relishing in the way your lashes flutter shut.

eyes still closed, you say to the operator, “just take me to mine, please, james.”

the operator doesn’t turn back, only nodding politely and bringing you up. satoru wants to capture the thrill of the rise as you scale floors upon floors, in the heat of it brushes your hair from your back to place one, slow kiss on your neck.

for the purposes of your company you make no noise but gojo hardly needs it: the taste of your skin—he has missed it since last night—enough to leave him twitchy and half hard. the doors open and you both stumble out. there’s something endearing, he thinks, about the way you cling to your propriety even now, mistress to half of new york city and a dozen luxury hotels across the globe.

but as soon as he hears the creak of the doors closing again satoru is on you, big hands threaded through your hair and groaning into your lips. fucking finally.

you fare no better, fingers gripping tight on the collar of his shirt as you practically mewl into his mouth. he groans in return, even more candid tonight about how terribly he wants you. you seem to remember the cadence of him because you part your lips quickly to let his tongue in now, he wants to bite down around the way you moan when he nibbles on your lip, kneads your tit in his right hand.

“fuck sweetheart i’ve needed you all day,” he whispers.

“yeah?”

he tears his lips from yours to kiss down your jaw and neck, leaving marks hot and wet along your skin, looking for places along your jugular that make your thighs squeeze. your fingers card through his hair and tug at the roots, and he sinks his teeth in right under your ear; you wilt, a sweet whimpering thing in his hands.

god, his hands. he moves them everywhere, they are ferocious and have an endless appetite for the plush of your body. with one hand he runs his fingers soft and teasing along your pert nipple over your thin dress, circling and then dancing along the tight bud, while the other pulls you close by your waist, the dough of your ass, the meat of your thigh as he hikes it around his waist. he walks you carefully into a wall so he can grind his aching cock against your pussy properly and you keen for him.

“satoru,” you plead, holding your leg to his waist on your own now as you rut your hips in response. 

“oh, sweet thing, i have more questions for you,” he breathes into your neck, weak with the friction of your lace panties against the front of his slacks. you whine and he smiles on your skin so you can feel it.

with his left hand he grips to your hair and tugs your head back, straightening fully to watch you as you strain in his hold. you look so fucking pretty like this, so candidly needing him in that way that flushes your cheeks. practically into your mouth he asks you: “did you touch yourself last night?”

you squeeze your eyes shut and grind on him again, your wetness seeping through now and he can feel it but still he doesn’t let you off, not even when you whisper a desperate satoru from somewhere in the back of your throat.

“answer me.”

you nod, not quite ashamed, more disappointed to give it up so easily. but when you open your eyes surely you see how crazed satoru has become, feral and inhuman as he appraises you, his heiress humping the tent in his pants. “show me,” he insists, no small amount of anguish in it. 

you slowly disengage one hand from his hair and move it between your bodies, drag it slowly down your dress and then under the hem as it hikes against your thighs. satoru watches it all with rapt attention, breathing loud and chest heaving but still he hardly blinks. you hesitate as your fingers trace along the waistband of your white panties, exposed to him with your dress bunched further up, so he encourages you, “that’s it, baby, just like that.”

your head tips back and makes a soft thunk against the wall, relinquishing yourself fully to him. your fingers, deft and familiar with yourself, slip slowly under the lace, chest arrested in place when you make contact with your swollen clit.

“god, baby, i can hear you, you’re so fucking wet,” he pants. you only nod wordlessly as you rub tight circles over your little button, thighs clenching around his waist. the squelch and slip is filthy and it takes just about every ounce of strength he has not to simply pull the fabric to the side and fuck you like this alongside your fingers. 

“satoru,” you plead again, and he rolls his hips against you again in reward.

“that’s it—shit—i can feel you fucking twitching through my pants.”

your whines come easy and grow hoarse as you rub yourself faster, shoes falling off as your toes curl inside them, begging him again please, please, and gojo doesn’t know what for but it is almost impossible not to give it to you. it seems almost like you don’t even notice as you bring your two fingers lower and enter yourself slowly, he can see it all draped in the tight fabric of your panties, and simply to keep from setting the entire hotel ablaze satoru uses one hand to jerk his cock from over his slacks.

“fuck—did you think about me? did you touch your pretty pussy last night thinking about your satoru?”

“y–yes, fuck, yes,” you cry, and he bucks his hips so hard your standing leg jumps slightly from the floor. 

“i—fuck—i had to fuck my fist the second i left you,” his forehead bumps the wall next to your head, “i—shit—i couldn’t stop thinking of fucking this sweet cunt,” he whines.

he can tell from the twitches of your eyebrows, from the canting of your hips, that you’re bringing yourself closer and closer to the edge and satoru is about on the brink of insanity, so he untangles from you to rid himself of his clothing.

you collect your dress in one beautiful mess of white fabric before ruching it up and over your head, left only in those white panties. you look fucking edible there against the wall, a vision and almost too unreal to touch, satoru almost cums just seeing it, but instead he’s back on you, entirely naked and bare cock jumping in the cold air as he hooks two fingers under your last garment to drag it down your legs.

with one palm under each thigh he grunts into your cheek, “jump for me.” you hop into his grip and he holds you stable against the wall, your entrance dripping and hot right above him. precum beads at his tip, his cock is practically crimson and so angry looking, but the feeling of your nails digging into his shoulders keeps him grounded.

he teases his wet tip along your slit to gather your slick there, groaning, “i swear to god, baby, next time i’ll use my mouth, i’ll open you properly, i swear it, but f–fuck i need you now.”

you nod quickly, watching, mesmerized, by the weight of his cock as he teases your hole before finally, finally, pushing the tip in.

“fuck, oh fuck,” gojo grunts. your pussy clamps like a vice around him as he fucks into you slowly, sinking into your wet heat, he hopes he drowns. 

“sweetheart, don’t squeeze me like that,” he pleads.

you laugh breathlessly. “i can’t help it.” somehow that makes him harder and he slips another wet inch in. “fuck, fuck, oh fuck satoru that’s so good.”

“yeah?”

“yeah.”

gojo cannot help himself, grinning stupid and feral as he ruts down to the hilt. you all but scream out, neck extended, but neither of you seem to care. even unmoving satoru can hear the soft sound of your slick around his aching cock. he kisses you again, slowly, giving you a moment to become accustomed to him. after only a moment, though, you’re grinding your clit into him and begging something like please move, and who is he to deny you?

your bodies are so close as he fucks you, there is hardly an inch of either of you that isn’t pressed up against the other. your tits squish against his chest as he presses open-mouthed kisses to your lips, your jaw, the line down your neck where he can taste your heartbeat. his thrusts are deep and calculated, not so fast as to bump you painfully against the wall but hard enough that you can feel him hit that spongy spot in the back that makes you squeal.

“that’s it baby, fuck, fucking take it,” he heaves. the wet crack of his skin on yours echoes softly through the room, your cries humming alongside them, a symphony of your pleasure and his and god he wishes someone were recording this.

“harder, satoru,” you whisper, your hole fluttering around his veins, and he snickers something disbelieving.

“so fucking greedy, huh?” and he punctuates it with a sharp snap of his hips. with one hand he fits his palm behind your head on the wall before starting to pound into you in earnest, his hip bones clapping against the backs and insides of your thighs, surely red and raw with his effort but you arch back with the feeling, moaning out like you hope the entire hotel hears, and the tight grip of your pussy is so good he can’t think straight.

with each rut you roll your hips up to his in time, arms and legs wrapped around him tight to leverage your weight as your rub yourself on the neatly trimmed white hair at his base. your slick is dripping everywhere, down your legs and his, but with each stuttering grind your hole thumps and squeezes, and satoru fucking loves the smell of your want for him as it paints his lower body.

in between the harsh smack of his thrusts he whispers praise into your skin.

 “so pretty for me.”

“this pussy is fucking perfect.”

“fuck, sweetheart, squeeze me like that again.”

you bite down on the lean muscle of his shoulder and gojo’s hips stammer with the jolt of pain. 

“close?” you nod, tongue peeking out as you bounce between him and the wall. “fuck i wanna feel you cum around me, baby, fucking cum for me,” he begs.

your ankles lock up behind him as you seize, your heartbeat loud and pounding everywhere, down your neck and in your pussy and through your veins. you gush down his cock and satoru moans wildly.

“fuckfuckfuck i’m g’na cum,” he warns, thrusts more erratic as he chases it and fucks you through your high.

“inside me,” you whisper, hardly any voice left, apparently hoping to kill him stone dead.

just the breath of your pleading makes him lose it, thrusting hard once more, twice more, before ropes of hot release come pouring out and he growls out something unintelligible. you whine one more time, high-pitched and needy, and it pulls further wisps of his seed.

still plugged with his cock but boneless, now, satoru holds you steady in his arms and slowly, slowly, brings you to your bed. only once he’s sitting on the edge of it does he pull you off of him, the both of you groaning in sensitivity, and splays you gently onto your pillow.

sitting up like this satoru can see all of you in your sticky glory. your skin shines a little with your sweat and his, fuck his cum drips out of you leisurely and it makes something possessive and animal rumble and howl in his chest.

with the backs of his fingers he runs his knuckles up your calf and back down again, and he watches the goosebumps rise and fall behind them. seeing that you’re settled comfortably he follows after you, one arm thrown over your waist and chest presses up against your forehead.

he tilts your head up and you look at him with a small smirk, eyes bleary. “good?” he asks.

you smile bigger, toothy. “great.”

satoru beams back and lets you rest again on his damp skin, petting your hair delicately. 

“ask me again,” you say suddenly, quietly, like it’s imperative he take this opportunity as you present it to him.

“ask you what?”

“the question i won’t answer.”

his hand stops moving. “you don’t have to answer me.”

“i know,” you assure him. and there’s no trepidation in your voice, no darkness, just the sweet gravel of the way you had screamed for him and the lingering sense that you want to tell him the truth.

satoru repeats his question. “why are you celebrating your father’s death?”

you trace a nail in little shapes over his chest. “because i hated him,” you supply.

“why did you hate him?”

you breathe deeply, only once, and satoru worries your candor has been siphoned from you again, but you only tilt your head enough to look at him with one eye. you explain sleepily, “when my technique manifested i was six. nobody else in my family had ever had one before.”

gojo nods. “it’s much less common in the west.”

“my dad wasn’t willing to send me abroad to learn how to use it. my mom had died in childbirth with me and there wasn’t anyone to dispute that call. and i was upset with him, i mean, god, i hated him. i wanted to learn.”

satoru resumes the soft movement of his fingers in your hair: go on, he wants to say, but he lets you speak without interrupting.

“i only wanted to throw water at him or something. i didn’t know what i was even doing. and then…it—it was like a blade.” you run your pinky finger slowly across the side of your neck. “i cut him right here.”

satoru tries his best to show you on his face that he cannot judge you, that he wouldn’t, that you didn’t know any better.

“i knew even then that he would never forgive me. when he recovered he banned me from leaving the hotel, for all intents and purposes. he hired po to watch over me and i’ve been here ever since. it’s sort of felt like i’ve been stuck in time.”

there is something tragic and fascinating in the way you explain it, like the rage is too old to stay, but regardless it leadens something cold in satoru’s stomach. 

“he said i was dangerous. that i’d hurt people.” that part seems to hurt you, still. the insinuation that you have evil in you somehow the only piece of memory still strong enough to bite at you, and it makes his heart twist. his fury flares briefly, simmering under his skin, but then you hook your leg over his and he is docile.

satoru has a terrible, soft, awful, love-sick idea to suggest to you, this enigmatic woman he met a day ago.

“why don’t you come back to tokyo with me?”

you lift your head fully, eyes wide and owlish like always. “what?”

his heart hammers but he does not cower. “why don’t you come back with me? i could…” his voice is smaller than he’s ever heard it, “train you, if you wanted.” and then, to soften his sincerity, he adds with a smirk, “it is what i do for a living.”

your mouth opens and closes again, some serpent in your throat you can’t seem to swallow. “i don’t know what to say,” you admit. and then, a confession of your own: “i want to learn,” you whisper.

satoru smiles at you, mild and unexpectant. “if you hate it i can take you right back here.”

you laugh through your nose and bury your face in his chest again. when you think it is loud, almost, a fitting of cogs satoru thinks he can hear as clearly as the clanging of pots and pans a few rooms away. and he spends a long moment like that, holding you in the near-silence, scored by the metal chime of your deliberation. and then, into his ribs you say, “okay,”

he perches his chin on your head, thankful for the way you push your nose to his sternum so you cannot see the triumphant grin on his face, surely entirely idiotic but beaming nonetheless.

he would never hear the end of this—of collecting a beautiful young woman from his weekend away—from suguru, but oh satoru feels the warm puff of your breath as it evens in your sleepiness and he knows he could not have left you here without some enormous show of self restraint.

it had to be you, he thinks. it had to be you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

taglist: @missingnozw @trophywife111 @cheesecakeislazy @adictiss @kyungjunnies @hbhbhbhbhby @megapteraurelia @not-aya @heiranni @starlight5cat @jiupark @vraiao

[hellowoolf]

every time a stsg editor uses that clip when satoru is keeping his eyes wide open to look at suguru’s face for one more moment while he’s getting sealed i actually rip my stomach open and double knot my intestines

[hellowoolf]

hi sweet babies i had to host a memorial this weekend so next chap of something somehow someday might be postponed slightly. i’m sorry! hoping to have it out by middle of next week <33

[hellowoolf]

something, somehow, someday

chapter 4: close to you | prev | next | series masterlist

series summary: you know you will love satoru for the rest of your life, but when you wake with his cursed energy in your navel there is no option but to flee. what future is there for a child of a god? at 18 satoru is without you, and you make off with a piece of him you hoped he'd never meet.

pairing: secret baby daddy!gojo x reader

tags: secret child trope, angst (lots), eventual fluff, eventual smut, hurt/comfort, a lot of yearning :P, chapter specific: SMUT, unprotected piv, creampie (sorry), fingering,

a/n: thank you guys for your responses on the poll! this one is more than double the average length of the other chapters (~8k) and i plan to keep that convention from here on out. i hope you enjoy this one >:)

18+! minors dni <3

~~~~~~~

it is a funny feeling, YOU find, making your life new with a thing so familiar. to open your door so often and find satoru standing there, letting him bring food and splaying himself on your couch, walking with him in the heavy mist at dusk, it fills your lungs like smoke, the nostalgia thick and cloying. you remember all of it, it comes back to you embalmed.  

but the differences between now and your time together in high school demand your attention in equal measure. your son, for one: though it’s impossible to find the sight of him with his father unnatural given how obvious their relation is. with their backs turned they move the same, too, something between them irrevocably tied. you had forgotten the way satoru wrought blades of grass between his fingers when he laid in it until you had to clean both their palms of chlorophyll.

nonetheless your affection for satoru is much more hulking a thing than it ever was, supplanted by the tangible aftermath of the ways you used to love him. when takara lets him pick him up, grips to his collar as satoru balances him on his hip, you are defenseless. the softest parts of you win out. 

still, neither you nor satoru make any attempt to name the arrangement you’ve come upon. he is resolutely your child’s father and has stepped into that role with grace, and there are artifacts of your intimacy—his hand on your lower back, brushing your hair from your shoulder blades, an almost kiss, once—but mostly you let the joy of your child consume your time. 

and it shouldn’t bother you. you remember feeling so certain in high school that letting him fuck you was enough, that to love him quietly was a privilege. you suppose you still mostly believe that. but there are moments when takara is asleep and satoru lingers in your kitchen, and the want flares bright then. you are at a loss watching him leave with that look on his face, like he’s afraid you’ll ask him to stay and terrified you’ll let him leave. you sometimes wait a moment before locking the door behind him.

jujutsu tech stands like a graveyard around you, so full of memory the buildings almost sag. you haven’t been back here since the night takara came to you.

“oi!” satoru bellows from across the courtyard, hand high and wagging. 

takara holds a grip on your pant leg, one blue eye peeking out. you feel him loosen a little when he sees his dad, and then refasten when megumi and tsumiki emerge behind him. 

when satoru first suggested you both come to meet them you had hesitated. you were honest; there was something final about this last introduction. there would be nothing else left for each of you to keep separate from the other, your lives entirely reconnected. satoru had laughed at you in that way that makes your heart turn, and that sound was all it took for you—weak to him—to agree.

satoru comes rushing to takara, scooping him from behind you and holding him to his side. takara screeches, half afraid and half delighted. tsumiki walks to you without hesitation, little hand held out for you to shake. 

“it’s nice to meet you,” she says. her smile is soft, a little secret, but you can tell she is pleased with herself for her manners. you smile back.

“it’s nice to meet you, too.” 

she looks up at takara in satoru’s arms and waves. takara is frozen, too shy to move, so satoru takes his chubby wrist and waves it a little. tsumiki giggles. “they’re like twins.”

you lean in a little conspiratorially. “i know. i carried him for nine months and have nothing to show for it.”

she giggles behind her hand before turning to her brother. “don’t be rude,” she admonishes.

megumi cannot hear her, it seems. he’s watching takara paw at satoru’s shirt, turning in his hold as gojo points to the various buildings to explain what they are. to himself, or maybe to you, megumi whispers: “it’s so freaky.”

tsumiki scoffs lightly and goes to elbow him but you can only laugh again, louder this time. he may not be related to satoru but he was certainly raised by him. “you are exactly as satoru described,” you admit.

megumi furrows his brows and crosses his arms. yes, so furious, satoru had said once. “how exactly did he describe me?”

“as a little shit,” satoru offers, one palm now cupped over takara’s ear. megumi’s mouth falls open a moment before making a fist with each hand and bringing them in front of him. satoru only rolls his eyes and uses his knee to knock his arms out of place. megumi practically growls something about i’m really gonna do it someday and tsumiki taunts back at him: you’re such a liar!

oh, but that look on satoru’s face, he is so pleased. his eyes squint with it, you can almost see the satisfied breathing of his cursed energy, satoru is happy. it makes you beam at him and his breath catches when he sees it. 

takara wriggles out of his grip and stations himself at your legs again, but doesn’t hide this time. tsumiki is completely enamored, cooing again, “hi, takara!”

takara sucks in a little breath. “hello.”

tsumiki claps her hands together and looks up at you and gojo. “can we show him around? please?”

“what is there to show?” satoru asks.

“the training room, our old bedrooms, the koi fish—”

your eyes widen. satoru’s gaze flits to you, frantic, and you smirk, the tiniest thing. the koi fish? you mouth. satoru’s cheeks flush pink as he shakes his head slightly, but the damage is done, he knows. tsumiki is still listing menial places across campus.

you squeeze takara’s shoulder. “what do you think, bubba?” he looks at you, owlish, and then at tsumiki, before nodding. she takes his hand with a pleased squeal and the three putter off together.

satoru stands boyish before you as you straighten again. he tends to keep his blindfold off around takara—whether to keep from frightening him or for a more profound reason you don’t know—but he is bared to you without it. he knows exactly what you’ll say, lifting a hand as he turns and starts towards his office: “don’t.”

you skip to catch up with him. “oh, no, i think i have to.”

“i’m just a friend to nature.”

you howl. “you’re just as dishonest as you always were.”

he doesn’t dignify that with a response, pushing into his office and letting you inside. the walls are a dark wood, mostly bare save for the few bookshelves bloated with old novels and records and manila folders. a handful of pens scatter across the desk, like he’d needed to finish a sentence urgently before standing. there’s a record player on the windowsill, fuzzy with dust but clean in places around the arm. it looks like he’d used it recently for the first time in years. most of all it smells like him, mint and cedar and sugar, and you almost double over sick with it. 

satoru settles into his chair as you trace a finger along the spines of his books, his eyes igniting your back but you refuse to turn, you want him to watch. “you’ve done a great job with them,” you admit.

“you think so?”

you just barely twist your head over your shoulder to show him the sincerity on your face. “of course i do.”

he runs a hand through his hair. “they seem to like takara.”

you turn fully now to lean your back on the shelf. “everyone likes takara.”

he chuckles, fond. “yeah, i guess so.”

the sounds of this place are so startlingly the same, you think. the serenity is strange and charged, but nonetheless campus was always quiet enough to hear the wind through the leaves. you hear it now as you flip through mission files and reports: special grade, special grade, grade one, special grade, suguru geto. you put them down.

“is it weird to be back?”

you nod, gesturing around the room. “i’ll admit i was hoping for more of a welcome. is nobody else here?”

“yeah, i asked them to give us the afternoon so takara wouldn’t be overwhelmed for his first time.”

you pout, mainly to bare your lip to him but there is truth in it, too. “nobody wanted to see me?”

satoru shakes his head. “i wanted you all to myself,” he admits. and it’s teasing, easy, he says it like it doesn’t cost him anything, but you know he is like you: he almost never says something he doesn’t mean.

“how did they react when you told them?”

“that i have a son? kept a secret by his villainous mother?”

your eyes narrow but you’re grinning as you respond: “yeah.”

he cocks his head and kisses his teeth. “yaga said he was disappointed in you.”

“for leaving?”

“no, for letting me…” he smiles, wolfish for a second before it fades into something friendlier, “for giving me the opportunity.” you laugh, a bark of a sound, halfway humiliated. you nod him on. “and shoko was the one who found you, so, there wasn’t anyone else to tell.”

your hand finds your arm and you squeeze your bicep once, twice, swallowing around the tragedy in his confession: that all the people you used to know here are gone somehow. you hadn’t visited haibara’s grave since you left; nanami helped you lug a stone out by the stream and you grew flowers around the base, yellow pansies and red carnations. you remember kento pointing to them in a flower language book so you could conjure them properly, remember the promise you made not to tell a soul what they meant. 

the memory must show on your face, because satoru says then, “i still water those flowers you made by haibara’s grave.”

you smile at him, watery and real. you add on, “and feed my fish,” and he laughs like a surrender. 

you move to the record player just behind him and he swivels his chair to follow you. something seizes in your belly at the feeling of him scrutinizing you, the weight of his looking a leaden thing against your skin. you thumb through the few vinyls resting in the window before stopping on one. the words stick to your teeth like honey but you spit them as best you can: “this is mine.”

you hear satoru stand and look over your shoulder. frank sinatra’s close to you: the sleeve is long stained and yellowed, waterlogged in one corner, but the record inside is pristine. 

you remember the first time your grandmother taught you how to play her gramophone. her hands guided your smaller ones across the pavilion, down to the plateau; it was old and rusted, even then, something she’d bought second hand as a girl. but she had collected hundreds of records, they made piles throughout her home, and every afternoon you selected one to play. close to you was her gift to you when you entered jujutsu tech.

of course, you never had a record player. all three years it sat unused on your desk, a remembrance, still smelling like the tatami from her living room. she had told you once that sinatra taught her how to speak english, which you mostly believed; her english vowels opened with the syrup of the american east-coast, and she held each word a moment too long, like it took a great deal of effort not to sing them. 

you run your knuckles along the sleeve, feeling the still-familiar places where the gloss has faded and the paper catches. you hardly notice how close to your back satoru has drifted until he reaches around you to remove the record and situate it on the player. you freeze, his looming figure warm around you, his arms brushing your shoulders as he fiddles with the tone arm. you hope he can’t feel your heartbeat through your spine, but it rushes so deafening in your ears you cannot discern either way.

it could happen to you crackles to life from the speaker and you feel like you’ve been swallowed by space, on the cusp of a wrinkle. you wonder whether time has really suspended around you or if it’s only this, this song and this man at your back. your breathing is uneven and satoru does not step back, head craned a little to bring his chin closer to your shoulder. 

slowly, almost self-consciously, he braces each hand on the sides of the windowsill, keeping you surrounded. 

“it’s been so long since i’ve heard this song,” you whisper. the melody chimes and swings around the violin and you cannot help but tilt your head back a little into satoru’s chest, overcome with the ghost of the music as it hangs above you. satoru lets your weight lean slightly into him, unmoving.

“i hope it’s okay that i took it.” his voice rumbles through your bones before you hear it. you nod and it scrapes against his sternum. the friction stirs something in him, you think, because then he’s bringing a hand to your stomach, fingers long and splayed across your entire torso, and he rests his cheek fully on the back of your head. it would almost look like you were dancing if you began to move, but neither of you seem willing to risk it.

“do you ever wonder what it would have been like?”

you don’t need him to clarify. “all the time,” you confess. the sun moves behind the clouds outside, and you catch a moment of the both of you in the reflection. 

his hand tightens around your middle, holding you against him. the song threatens to end but he keeps his arm banded around you. “are we friends now?”

you laugh softly. “i honestly don’t know.”

he nods before bringing his other hand to your chin. he spreads the pads of his fingers, feeling the shape of your jaw, looking for something, for you. “would you let me kiss you, if i asked?”

“yes,” you say, but it comes out more breathless than you intend. your thighs press together and you’re sure he notices with how his hips cage you in, but he only hums, removing the hand around your chin. 

“it’s a bad idea,” he breathes, but still his nose brushes at the juncture of your neck and your shoulder. you shudder and nod. it is. 

and despite how badly you want him, you do not turn and demand it. it’s so precarious now, and with satoru in takara’s orbit you cannot run again, a chain fastened from your rib to his. you know fucking him would be a reckless idea now, but god, he presses one, slow kiss to the bared skin of your shoulder and your body remembers him. his hips press just slightly further into your ass as he sighs onto the same spot, his breath cooling the heat of his lips where they branded you, his cock alive and right there. but the both of you know it: you are cowards. he untangles himself, and you let him sit back in his chair before moving.

~~~~~~~

SATORU is certain now; you are going to kill him. his grave will be beautiful, he thinks, flowery and green and alive with your energy, but his autopsy will have your name all over it, your lipstick.

he supposes, for his part, that much of your proximity is his fault. a stronger man wouldn’t have stayed in your apartment past takara’s waking hours, used his hands to guide you on the sidewalk, held your hips to his cock in his office windowsill earlier today. and satoru has lived a life of self restraint, has been a shackled man to his own whipping post, but he has found himself helpless to the feeling of your body on his skin.

he had been so irreparably hurt when he saw you in the park that day, or at least it had felt that way at the time. something grew in him then, a tumor with teeth, and he was certain it could never feel the same with you as it once had, that he would withhold something precious from you forever in some lasting spiteful act of defiance. and nevermind the fact that even hours later he moved to hold you, could barely restrain the instinct to kiss you again, was never even angry: for about 24 hours, satoru was sure that he would never be in love with you again.

but even the sharp canines of that wound have dulled with weeks of your presence. the smell of you on your couch when he lays on it, the afternoon scenery of you playing with takara in the park curtained by your vines, your laugh in his office, by your door, in his head. you are an apparition haunting him, one he can touch, and it’s killing him. 

and he knows he should not pursue anything with you. he knows you know this, too. your nebulous reconnection is unsteady at best—a strange amalgam of your old intimacy and the people you’ve become—and access to takara is too important to him to risk. and neither of you would say this, but the fact of your leaving in high school remains a reminder that at any moment you are capable of disappearing again. it’s something satoru always loved about you, actually. you make your own life wherever you step. what a beautiful thing you are. 

he feels ridiculous for thinking of you as often as he does. but how could he not? he visits at least daily to spend time with his son and you are always there, a vision. he sees you in takara, too, his little love. when he tries to explain how to use limitless, takara bears down into himself, thinking to the point of exhaustion. he has gotten that from you, satoru knows.

but it wasn’t a conscious thought that satoru has begun falling back into love with you—or, really, that he has plummeted into the well of it—until today, seeing you laugh with megumi . tsumiki had pointed at you from behind your back: she’s so pretty! and he had nodded without thought, proud as if you were his to boast for. and then, your teasing voice nipping at his heels as he brought you to his office, he realized that he was yours. he should have known some time in the thousand minutes he’s spent feeding your koi.

the smell of your cooking wafts into your living room as he reads to takara on his lap. you’re humming that song from earlier, it could happen to you, and the domesticity makes him beam like an idiot. yes, he thinks, that’s about the most succinct way to put it; he is an idiot for you. takara points to the page and reads a sentence himself.

“yes!” satoru encourages.

“don’t yell,” takara says, patting satoru’s leg as though he’d worked himself up.

“yessir.”

“come in to eat!” you call from the kitchen. takara scrambles to the sound of your voice and satoru is no better. the three of you settle to the table, takara’s legs dangling in his chair, and satoru knows he shouldn’t but he presses his foot to yours under the table. you give him a look, fleeting and knowing, but you don’t move. takara eats exactly the way you do, and satoru wonders whether you’ve noticed.

“what time do you go into work tomorrow?”

“i’m opening, actually, so i’ll head to the cafe early,” you grumble. “i’ll take my lunch break at 8 to take takara to preschool.” 

satoru shakes his head. “i don’t have any missions until the afternoon. why don’t i take him?”

“i don’t have an extra key for you.”

“he could sleep over,” takara offers, barely looking up from his food. you look startled by the suggestion, at first, and satoru is sure he looks much the same, but when the shock subsides he cannot help the little grin that tugs his lips up. you cock your head minutely, but he’s known you long enough to know you mean: don’t push it. 

“bubba, there isn’t enough space,” you explain. 

you had told satoru early on that you started in a one bedroom, fixed a nursery in most of it and fit yourself on a twin bed in the corner. when the owner of the cafe retired, though, she had let you have the place. you made enough now to scrape by with two bedrooms; satoru remembers how dignified you were to recount the whole thing, how hard it was not to kiss you when you smiled in your own self-satisfaction. 

“why can’t he sleep in your room?” takara asks. satoru smiles bigger, nudges your foot under the table. 

“because he…can’t.” you’re becoming flustered now and it only thrills him more.

“i really would like to take him,” he offers, though the sincerity is cut with the sound of his smirk.

you run your hands over your face, mumble out a little groan that softens into a hum at the end, but still your foot doesn’t move away from the press of satoru’s under the shadow of the kitchen table. 

“don’t you need to get home to megumi and tsumiki?”

satoru is beaming like he’s already won. he has. “they have a sitter.”

your head tips back as you say, mostly to the ceiling, “fine. but you’re sleeping on the couch.”

and truthfully he doesn’t mind much at all. he is voracious for more time with takara, for more time in your space, for benign moments you might take for granted. he wants to brush his son’s teeth at night and fix his hair in the morning. he taps your foot one more time: thank you. and you nod, almost imperceptibly: you’re welcome. 

~~~~~~~

as much as YOU might have resisted it, there really was about an hour or so when letting satoru sleep on your couch seemed like a good idea. it felt, if you can admit it, easy, the both of you moving around one another as the evening twilight overtook the windows. and it was so plain to see on takara’s face that he was pleased, too, to have you both here. sitting on the edge of his bed together as you tucked him in, watching his first few moments of sleep, made space for a new sort of intimacy. when satoru reached for your hand in the dark you did not pull away.

of course, you regret it now. maybe you’ll regret it forever. by the time you’re brushing your teeth you know you have made an error of cosmic proportions. some time between settling blankets on the couch and joining you in the bathroom satoru had unbuttoned most of his shirt and removed his belt, sidling next to you at the sink with the spare toothbrush you gave him like you weren’t a moment from dropping dead on the counter. you’re too afraid to look at yourself in the mirror; you already know your cheeks are red, that he can feel the rush of your blood in your jugular from inches away. 

“you seem uptight,” he says, though it comes out foamy around the toothpaste in his mouth.

“i’m not used to having people over.” you can’t look anywhere but the porcelain of the sink, too petrified of what you’d say if you looked at him in full. you remember this afternoon in his office and shift on your weight a little.

“you don’t have a lot of sleepovers?” he asks through a grin.

you’re so focused on not making eye contact with him in the mirror that you answer him honestly. “i don’t have any.”

you hear his toothbrush stop. he spits in the sink before leaning on it to face you. “what do you mean you don’t have any?”

you take a deep breath before turning. god he’s so pretty, even more stunning like this, a little unspooled. “what do you want me to say? i’ve never had anyone else to take care of takara. it’s not like i can…” you don’t even know how to end that sentence.

the teasing look leaks from satoru’s face slowly. he asks you with more earnestness than you think you can stand: “have you not had sex since high school?”

it’s not even fully out of his mouth before you’re pushing past him and out of the bathroom but he is relentless behind you—he always was—and you feel him an inch from your back as you walk towards your bedroom door.

“wait a second—”

“satoru, i’m not talking about this with you.”

“no, but i’m being serious.”

“so am i!” you turn at your door and try not to shudder at how close he is. his eyes glow in the low light, a man made of comets.

“i just,” he huffs a little, “i feel bad, i guess.”

“what?”

“well you—you’ve been taking care of takara alone all this time and you haven’t gotten…you haven’t gotten to do—”

“satoru, i don’t need your pity about my sex life, okay?”

“but that’s my point! it’s not just about your sex life, it’s—it’s everything.” he ruffles the back of his head, almost embarrassed, you think. “i feel bad that you’ve been alone all this time.”

you kick your heel against the door behind you to ground yourself. “it’s my fault, isn’t it?” and it comes out a little small, more pathetic than you’ve ever heard yourself. satoru buckles with it.

“baby,” he starts, and you think his hand flexes to reach for you, but you put your palm on his chest to keep him in place. he hasn’t meant to call you that, you know, the endearment from years ago clawing back, finding purchase on his tongue. his heart murmurs like a bird behind his shirt.

“listen, i—i don’t need you to pity me for a decision i made. especially because i don’t regret any of it.”

he breathes out quick, almost angry, but you know not at you. before either of you can stop him, he holds your wrist to keep your hand on him, thumbs your pulse on one side. he does this a lot, you think. you wonder if he knows that you can feel his heartbeat, too, through the pads of his fingers. and there’s a moment, among the sounds of your breathing and the creak of the floorboards under his feet, when you think it is all over, that you’ll let him kiss you against your door. earlier today you felt like a coward for denying him, but that self-flagellation has waned. no, it takes a great deal of courage now to press your hand more firmly into him, to not rise onto your toes and suck at the skin under his jaw.

“goodnight, satoru,” you whisper, and shut yourself into your bedroom before you lose your resolve.

the night is cruel to you. it feels very much like sleeping with a black hole in your living room; you cannot ignore the thought of him draped over your sofa, body too long to fit comfortably. even with your eyes closed you can feel him from a room away. 

you toss under the covers, try to at least become entangled enough in your sheets that you cannot rise from your bed to check on him. you hope he’s fallen asleep by now, that you’re the only one left in this apartment awake.

being alone in the dark gives you more time to think, more time to resolve a decision you cannot yet name. you have been so insistent that to become ensnared again by satoru’s pull would be a mistake, let him leave you at the windowsill, stiff armed him at your door. you wonder whether any of it matters in light of the fact that you are utterly in love with him. of how much consequence could the physical distinction be now? in truth, you can’t tell whether you are freeing yourself from an obsolete stipulation or looking for any reason to abandon it.

in the blue midnight streaking through your curtains you can admit to yourself that a part of you, the fleshy part that wants for things, is simply too afraid that you need satoru more than he needs you, and to reconcile that is a task too treacherous to ask of yourself. what of the moment when, slick with sweat and the smell of sex, you move to kiss him again and he turns away? it’s all hypothetical, of course, but still it plagues you like a memory. and you suppose you have no reason to fear it at all; he has made clear enough that he wants you. 

it almost feels ridiculous to pine so excruciatingly over the father of your child. you’ve already done all of this before, no less as a teenager, and somehow now, a self-actualized adult, you hesitate and turn your knees in. you flip onto your other side with a huff. you’re only in a tanktop and shorts but you feel like you’re suffocating, or worse: something from inside of you is threatening to come loose.

you wonder whether he’s waiting for you in your living room. what a horrific thing to wonder. 

you creak open your door slowly and pad out.

it looks like satoru has given up on sleeping already. he’s sat upright, head tipped over the back of the couch and legs spread, an arm hanging over his eyes. you know he can hear you—you think he might have heard the moment you decided to come out—but he waits for you to address him.

“satoru,” you whisper. at last, he lifts his head, eyes sleepy but undeniably pleased to see you. he pats the spot next to him on the couch as he assesses your mild state of undress and you settle there, facing him. “i can’t sleep.”

he shakes his head. “i can’t either.” though he doesn’t look all that displeased, certainly not as he bends over to collect your legs and drape them over his lap. you let him. you let him drag one enormous hand up your bare leg, too, and he stops just below the knee but still you watch as goosebumps follow his fingers. your body is traitorous but you can’t find it in you to mind.

“when did we get so weird, huh?” he asks you.

“how do you mean?” “sometimes it feels like it used to feel,” he thinks about how you may take that a moment longer, “when we used to be friends.” you nod slowly. “sometimes it feels like i don’t know you at all.” 

honesty looks so pretty on his face. his eyes are slightly narrowed but they’re no less auroral, his lips slightly swollen on the bottom as he bites them between breaths. he points at your nose. “and sometimes, you make that face at me, and i—fuck i mean what am i supposed to do with that?”

you scrunch your nose. “what face am i making?”

“i mean you look—jesus, i don’t know.” he runs a hand through his hair, mussing it further, before continuing, “i just wish you wouldn’t keep thinking in your head.”

you can’t help but laugh softly, bumping your foot into his stomach. “where else am i supposed to think?”

he flails at the sound of your giggle but his lips turn up. “i don’t know! i just spend so much more time now wondering what’s going on in your head. i want to know.” and then, to devastate you further, you imagine, he adds: “you used to tell me.”

you slide a little further into the couch, lay more of your legs’ weight on his lap. he lets his hands drift up to your kneecaps now. “okay, satoru,” you relent. “what do you want to know?”

“you’ll tell me anything?”

“i suppose that’s what i’m offering, yeah.”

he grins. “okay…” he taps his finger on his chin and you snort. “are you still afraid of me being in takara’s life?”

“a little. i’m afraid for both of you. but he…he loves you now, i think. ultimately i’m glad he can know you.”

“what about in your life?”

“what about it?”

“are you glad i’m in your life again?”

you smile, wry. “i think so. even though you torment me and make me spill my secrets.”

he puffs his chest and tugs your legs further into him. you’re almost in his lap, a few inches from it, but whether you notice is a question he decides not to ask. “do you still trust me the way you used to?”

“yes.” you do.

“do you still like me as much?”

“in what way?”

“all of them.”

“you’re greedy,” you whisper.

something punches from satoru’s lungs but you cannot discern what comes out. he says only: “yes, i am. answer me.” 

with a defeated breath you shrug. “yes.” 

his hands have both stalled on your knees, each thumb an omen breaching the threshold of your thigh. your skin twitches, you think, but you can’t look away from his face. he looks like he’s released one foot over the edge of some decision, you can see one teetering moment in the air, and then the resolve sets in.

“do you know how much i still want you?”

your heart kicks. “no,” you confess.

his hands remember themselves again, gripping up your legs higher, higher, now with purpose as they swing around his hips and move you to his lap. straddling him you can feel how hard he is already and you’re certain he can feel your wetness through your shorts, the slick is humiliating and so much. you whine a little and it comes out through your nose. his cock twitches.

“not today in my office?” his right hand cups the back of your neck. “not an hour ago?” your chest rises and falls, stumbling over itself. “you don’t know?”

and you have no faith in your voice now so you only shake your head as much as his hold will allow. he presses his hips into you just once, a fleeting indulgence you’re unsure if he even intended, but you whine again and it looks like it hurts him. 

“let me show you, baby,” he coos, but it’s desperate, too, a prayer into your lips as he brushes his nose against yours. “just one more time.”

you haven’t even finished nodding before you’re kissing him, both of you groaning into the other at the sheer relief of the feeling, his hands grabbing for anything he can reach: around your back, your tit, the globes of your ass to grind you down against him. the fabric of your shorts catches on your clit as it swells and you moan something awful in the back of your throat.

he kisses you like all six years apart demand it, like he can feel how long it’s been in the truest sense, like all at once the wanting has frayed his nerves and your lips cauterize the veins. he bites your lip to make you gasp, taking the opportunity to lick into your mouth as it opens.

you grind your clit onto him again, rubbing little circles on his tip through your clothes and he pants with the pressure. 

“satoru,” you whine, and he ruts up, harder.

“oh, say my name like that again,” he pleads, lips trailing down from your lips to your neck. his tongue streaks hot against your skin, sucking and biting and grinding you onto him like his cock is inside you already.

“satoru,” you repeat, and it comes out clearer without his tongue on yours but just barely. 

“fuck.” he rips your tank top off before attaching to you again, leaving hickies in the hollow of your throat, down over each breast, before taking a nipple into his mouth and laving his tongue there.

your moans almost come out like hums, all strung together, and he preens at the sound of them. you can feel the damp spot on his pants growing as you spread your slick, each wet kiss on your chest demanding a new wave from you. 

“i don’t even need to prep you, do i? you’re already so f–fucking wet,” and he punctuates it with a gyration of his hips that would have made you scream had he not clamped a palm over your mouth. 

you’re almost deaf with the rushing sound of blood in your ears but still you crane to hear him, each filthy utterance a precious thing you covet as he ruts up into you. if you were in your right mind you might find it funny that the experience of dry humping him feels so profound but as it is you can think only of the feeling of his veins through two layers of fabric.

despite how he may have goaded at you he brings one hand down your navel and under your shorts, feeling through your folds and spreading the honey of you further. your mouth is fully dropped open but his hand is large enough to cover it.

“oh, baby—yeah, that’s it, grind on it—you’re dripping for me.” he says it in that pleased way that makes him sound like an animal. you roll your hips onto the pads of his fingers and pleasure shoots up your spine at the rub of them on your clit, around your entrance. he circles his middle finger once before sinking it in and you keen. he holds you still with his other arm, nose pressed to your ear now as he whispers in it.

“f—fuck this pussy is so fucking tight.”

your hole flutters and sucks his digit in and he revels in the grip as he fucks you on it slowly. you try to bounce yourself faster but he squeezes your middle again, bites your pulse as it bumps in your neck. he murmurs there: “let it last,” using his hold to swivel your hips on his hand. your nails grip to his shoulders, surely making marks through his shirt but he lets you, frenetic and buzzing like he gains as much from touching you as you do.

the heel of his palm presses up onto your nub and you bow into him further, and he takes the movement to press another finger alongside the first. something searing and hungry licks up your spine, you’re close already, but there’s no indignity in it. you tug on his hair to bring his face to yours again, pulling back from the hand clamped over your mouth to lick behind his teeth, moaning into his mouth. “cum for me baby, come on,” he encourages.

your eyes squeeze shut as you come undone, heat spasming around his fingers as you soak him to the wrist. “fuck, f–fuck, that’s it,” he curses, mainly to himself, you think. you’re only half-lucid as you come down but you feel him pull his fingers from you and lick them clean, groaning softly around them.

“fuck me, satoru, please.”

his hair doesn’t move as he nods, stuck now to his forehead damp with sweat. neither of you have the patience to remove anything else, simply tugging your shorts to the side and his cock from his pants before you’re dripping right over it. his tip catches on your entrance and you both go half-boneless with the feeling.

when you sink onto him you feel a little like you did in his office earlier in the day. like time has stopped, or maybe like it has all arrived at your fingertips, like you’re everywhere. you remember this feeling, a little bit, but it’s also undeniably new. the stretch burns but you hardly feel it, taking no time before sitting on him to the hilt. your head drops to his shoulder, little pants into his neck, and he lets out a shaky breath.

“fuck you’re so fucking tight, baby, this pussy was made for me,” he chokes into your ear. you each have a handful of the other between your fingers, the lines of your palms tattooing him even through his uniform he still has mostly on. you hope his brand you the same.

all it takes is one, slow pull of your hips before he’s rutting up into you again, not so much ruthless as intense, deep and pregnant with meaning and so precise you wonder whether he’s using his six eyes to assess the inside of you. with one hand he holds your face to his ear to consume your moaning that way. you whine and when he shudders, bucking harder, you whine again.

“o–oh, these sounds are mine, this pussy is mine,” he stutters. the squelch of your cunt sucking him in seems to only encourage him, and you make yourself wetter just hearing it.

“it’s so good, satoru,” you whine.

he laughs softly, manic, “yeah?”

and you only wail quietly again. with each snap of his hips you thrust yourself down, clit throbbing and catching on the little white scratch of his pubic hair, and his other hand, still handled on the plush of your ass, rubs you harder as you move. you vaguely hear your little ah! ah! ah! but mostly you can feel the pleasure building again, can feel the vein down the underside of his cock as you wring him harder.

“hah–i won’t–fuck–i won’t last if you keep squeezing me, baby.”

you only feel encouraged, sliding deeper, revelling more in the slip of your slick as it floods out of you.

“ah–-i’m close, i’m close,” you breathe.

“fuck yeah, i wanna feel you cum on my cock, let go for me.”

and you do. have you ever really denied him? your mouth drops open in a silent scream as your hips buck wildly, the pleasure seizing you from the inside out. satoru moans feeling you ride your high, panting into your ear, “tell me to pull out.”

you shake your head, little smile creeping over your face as he fucks you through your high. “isn’t the damage already done?” you ask breathlessly.

and he can only laugh for a second before his hips stutter and still, pulling you into him like he wants to crawl inside of you and live in your stomach

“fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.”

his cum is so hot as it fills you, and so much, your own orgasm jolting you again, exulting in the feeling. 

he drops his forehead to your shoulder now, sweat of your collarbone meeting the beads on his hairline. the sounds of your breathing mix, too; your cum and your hands and your warmth, all of it intertwined with his, maybe forever. he kisses you one more time, sated now, along a hickey he’d left on your neck before. you return one to the corner of his mouth.

he doesn’t say anything when he sits up straight again, supporting the wings of your shoulders with his hands. there is only that look on his face, a cousin to the one you saw the first day he found you and takara, but so recognizably relieved this time: everything is different now.

~~~~~~~

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something, somehow, someday

chapter 4: close to you | prev | next | series masterlist

series summary: you know you will love satoru for the rest of your life, but when you wake with his cursed energy in your navel there is no option but to flee. what future is there for a child of a god? at 18 satoru is without you, and you make off with a piece of him you hoped he'd never meet.

pairing: secret baby daddy!gojo x reader

tags: secret child trope, angst (lots), eventual fluff, eventual smut, hurt/comfort, a lot of yearning :P, chapter specific: SMUT, unprotected piv, creampie (sorry), fingering,

a/n: thank you guys for your responses on the poll! this one is more than double the average length of the other chapters (~8k) and i plan to keep that convention from here on out. i hope you enjoy this one >:)

18+! minors dni <3

~~~~~~~

it is a funny feeling, YOU find, making your life new with a thing so familiar. to open your door so often and find satoru standing there, letting him bring food and splaying himself on your couch, walking with him in the heavy mist at dusk, it fills your lungs like smoke, the nostalgia thick and cloying. you remember all of it, it comes back to you embalmed.  

but the differences between now and your time together in high school demand your attention in equal measure. your son, for one: though it’s impossible to find the sight of him with his father unnatural given how obvious their relation is. with their backs turned they move the same, too, something between them irrevocably tied. you had forgotten the way satoru wrought blades of grass between his fingers when he laid in it until you had to clean both their palms of chlorophyll.

nonetheless your affection for satoru is much more hulking a thing than it ever was, supplanted by the tangible aftermath of the ways you used to love him. when takara lets him pick him up, grips to his collar as satoru balances him on his hip, you are defenseless. the softest parts of you win out. 

still, neither you nor satoru make any attempt to name the arrangement you’ve come upon. he is resolutely your child’s father and has stepped into that role with grace, and there are artifacts of your intimacy—his hand on your lower back, brushing your hair from your shoulder blades, an almost kiss, once—but mostly you let the joy of your child consume your time. 

and it shouldn’t bother you. you remember feeling so certain in high school that letting him fuck you was enough, that to love him quietly was a privilege. you suppose you still mostly believe that. but there are moments when takara is asleep and satoru lingers in your kitchen, and the want flares bright then. you are at a loss watching him leave with that look on his face, like he’s afraid you’ll ask him to stay and terrified you’ll let him leave. you sometimes wait a moment before locking the door behind him.

jujutsu tech stands like a graveyard around you, so full of memory the buildings almost sag. you haven’t been back here since the night takara came to you.

“oi!” satoru bellows from across the courtyard, hand high and wagging. 

takara holds a grip on your pant leg, one blue eye peeking out. you feel him loosen a little when he sees his dad, and then refasten when megumi and tsumiki emerge behind him. 

when satoru first suggested you both come to meet them you had hesitated. you were honest; there was something final about this last introduction. there would be nothing else left for each of you to keep separate from the other, your lives entirely reconnected. satoru had laughed at you in that way that makes your heart turn, and that sound was all it took for you—weak to him—to agree.

satoru comes rushing to takara, scooping him from behind you and holding him to his side. takara screeches, half afraid and half delighted. tsumiki walks to you without hesitation, little hand held out for you to shake. 

“it’s nice to meet you,” she says. her smile is soft, a little secret, but you can tell she is pleased with herself for her manners. you smile back.

“it’s nice to meet you, too.” 

she looks up at takara in satoru’s arms and waves. takara is frozen, too shy to move, so satoru takes his chubby wrist and waves it a little. tsumiki giggles. “they’re like twins.”

you lean in a little conspiratorially. “i know. i carried him for nine months and have nothing to show for it.”

she giggles behind her hand before turning to her brother. “don’t be rude,” she admonishes.

megumi cannot hear her, it seems. he’s watching takara paw at satoru’s shirt, turning in his hold as gojo points to the various buildings to explain what they are. to himself, or maybe to you, megumi whispers: “it’s so freaky.”

tsumiki scoffs lightly and goes to elbow him but you can only laugh again, louder this time. he may not be related to satoru but he was certainly raised by him. “you are exactly as satoru described,” you admit.

megumi furrows his brows and crosses his arms. yes, so furious, satoru had said once. “how exactly did he describe me?”

“as a little shit,” satoru offers, one palm now cupped over takara’s ear. megumi’s mouth falls open a moment before making a fist with each hand and bringing them in front of him. satoru only rolls his eyes and uses his knee to knock his arms out of place. megumi practically growls something about i’m really gonna do it someday and tsumiki taunts back at him: you’re such a liar!

oh, but that look on satoru’s face, he is so pleased. his eyes squint with it, you can almost see the satisfied breathing of his cursed energy, satoru is happy. it makes you beam at him and his breath catches when he sees it. 

takara wriggles out of his grip and stations himself at your legs again, but doesn’t hide this time. tsumiki is completely enamored, cooing again, “hi, takara!”

takara sucks in a little breath. “hello.”

tsumiki claps her hands together and looks up at you and gojo. “can we show him around? please?”

“what is there to show?” satoru asks.

“the training room, our old bedrooms, the koi fish—”

your eyes widen. satoru’s gaze flits to you, frantic, and you smirk, the tiniest thing. the koi fish? you mouth. satoru’s cheeks flush pink as he shakes his head slightly, but the damage is done, he knows. tsumiki is still listing menial places across campus.

you squeeze takara’s shoulder. “what do you think, bubba?” he looks at you, owlish, and then at tsumiki, before nodding. she takes his hand with a pleased squeal and the three putter off together.

satoru stands boyish before you as you straighten again. he tends to keep his blindfold off around takara—whether to keep from frightening him or for a more profound reason you don’t know—but he is bared to you without it. he knows exactly what you’ll say, lifting a hand as he turns and starts towards his office: “don’t.”

you skip to catch up with him. “oh, no, i think i have to.”

“i’m just a friend to nature.”

you howl. “you’re just as dishonest as you always were.”

he doesn’t dignify that with a response, pushing into his office and letting you inside. the walls are a dark wood, mostly bare save for the few bookshelves bloated with old novels and records and manila folders. a handful of pens scatter across the desk, like he’d needed to finish a sentence urgently before standing. there’s a record player on the windowsill, fuzzy with dust but clean in places around the arm. it looks like he’d used it recently for the first time in years. most of all it smells like him, mint and cedar and sugar, and you almost double over sick with it. 

satoru settles into his chair as you trace a finger along the spines of his books, his eyes igniting your back but you refuse to turn, you want him to watch. “you’ve done a great job with them,” you admit.

“you think so?”

you just barely twist your head over your shoulder to show him the sincerity on your face. “of course i do.”

he runs a hand through his hair. “they seem to like takara.”

you turn fully now to lean your back on the shelf. “everyone likes takara.”

he chuckles, fond. “yeah, i guess so.”

the sounds of this place are so startlingly the same, you think. the serenity is strange and charged, but nonetheless campus was always quiet enough to hear the wind through the leaves. you hear it now as you flip through mission files and reports: special grade, special grade, grade one, special grade, suguru geto. you put them down.

“is it weird to be back?”

you nod, gesturing around the room. “i’ll admit i was hoping for more of a welcome. is nobody else here?”

“yeah, i asked them to give us the afternoon so takara wouldn’t be overwhelmed for his first time.”

you pout, mainly to bare your lip to him but there is truth in it, too. “nobody wanted to see me?”

satoru shakes his head. “i wanted you all to myself,” he admits. and it’s teasing, easy, he says it like it doesn’t cost him anything, but you know he is like you: he almost never says something he doesn’t mean.

“how did they react when you told them?”

“that i have a son? kept a secret by his villainous mother?”

your eyes narrow but you’re grinning as you respond: “yeah.”

he cocks his head and kisses his teeth. “yaga said he was disappointed in you.”

“for leaving?”

“no, for letting me…” he smiles, wolfish for a second before it fades into something friendlier, “for giving me the opportunity.” you laugh, a bark of a sound, halfway humiliated. you nod him on. “and shoko was the one who found you, so, there wasn’t anyone else to tell.”

your hand finds your arm and you squeeze your bicep once, twice, swallowing around the tragedy in his confession: that all the people you used to know here are gone somehow. you hadn’t visited haibara’s grave since you left; nanami helped you lug a stone out by the stream and you grew flowers around the base, yellow pansies and red carnations. you remember kento pointing to them in a flower language book so you could conjure them properly, remember the promise you made not to tell a soul what they meant. 

the memory must show on your face, because satoru says then, “i still water those flowers you made by haibara’s grave.”

you smile at him, watery and real. you add on, “and feed my fish,” and he laughs like a surrender. 

you move to the record player just behind him and he swivels his chair to follow you. something seizes in your belly at the feeling of him scrutinizing you, the weight of his looking a leaden thing against your skin. you thumb through the few vinyls resting in the window before stopping on one. the words stick to your teeth like honey but you spit them as best you can: “this is mine.”

you hear satoru stand and look over your shoulder. frank sinatra’s close to you: the sleeve is long stained and yellowed, waterlogged in one corner, but the record inside is pristine. 

you remember the first time your grandmother taught you how to play her gramophone. her hands guided your smaller ones across the pavilion, down to the plateau; it was old and rusted, even then, something she’d bought second hand as a girl. but she had collected hundreds of records, they made piles throughout her home, and every afternoon you selected one to play. close to you was her gift to you when you entered jujutsu tech.

of course, you never had a record player. all three years it sat unused on your desk, a remembrance, still smelling like the tatami from her living room. she had told you once that sinatra taught her how to speak english, which you mostly believed; her english vowels opened with the syrup of the american east-coast, and she held each word a moment too long, like it took a great deal of effort not to sing them. 

you run your knuckles along the sleeve, feeling the still-familiar places where the gloss has faded and the paper catches. you hardly notice how close to your back satoru has drifted until he reaches around you to remove the record and situate it on the player. you freeze, his looming figure warm around you, his arms brushing your shoulders as he fiddles with the tone arm. you hope he can’t feel your heartbeat through your spine, but it rushes so deafening in your ears you cannot discern either way.

it could happen to you crackles to life from the speaker and you feel like you’ve been swallowed by space, on the cusp of a wrinkle. you wonder whether time has really suspended around you or if it’s only this, this song and this man at your back. your breathing is uneven and satoru does not step back, head craned a little to bring his chin closer to your shoulder. 

slowly, almost self-consciously, he braces each hand on the sides of the windowsill, keeping you surrounded. 

“it’s been so long since i’ve heard this song,” you whisper. the melody chimes and swings around the violin and you cannot help but tilt your head back a little into satoru’s chest, overcome with the ghost of the music as it hangs above you. satoru lets your weight lean slightly into him, unmoving.

“i hope it’s okay that i took it.” his voice rumbles through your bones before you hear it. you nod and it scrapes against his sternum. the friction stirs something in him, you think, because then he’s bringing a hand to your stomach, fingers long and splayed across your entire torso, and he rests his cheek fully on the back of your head. it would almost look like you were dancing if you began to move, but neither of you seem willing to risk it.

“do you ever wonder what it would have been like?”

you don’t need him to clarify. “all the time,” you confess. the sun moves behind the clouds outside, and you catch a moment of the both of you in the reflection. 

his hand tightens around your middle, holding you against him. the song threatens to end but he keeps his arm banded around you. “are we friends now?”

you laugh softly. “i honestly don’t know.”

he nods before bringing his other hand to your chin. he spreads the pads of his fingers, feeling the shape of your jaw, looking for something, for you. “would you let me kiss you, if i asked?”

“yes,” you say, but it comes out more breathless than you intend. your thighs press together and you’re sure he notices with how his hips cage you in, but he only hums, removing the hand around your chin. 

“it’s a bad idea,” he breathes, but still his nose brushes at the juncture of your neck and your shoulder. you shudder and nod. it is. 

and despite how badly you want him, you do not turn and demand it. it’s so precarious now, and with satoru in takara’s orbit you cannot run again, a chain fastened from your rib to his. you know fucking him would be a reckless idea now, but god, he presses one, slow kiss to the bared skin of your shoulder and your body remembers him. his hips press just slightly further into your ass as he sighs onto the same spot, his breath cooling the heat of his lips where they branded you, his cock alive and right there. but the both of you know it: you are cowards. he untangles himself, and you let him sit back in his chair before moving.

~~~~~~~

SATORU is certain now; you are going to kill him. his grave will be beautiful, he thinks, flowery and green and alive with your energy, but his autopsy will have your name all over it, your lipstick.

he supposes, for his part, that much of your proximity is his fault. a stronger man wouldn’t have stayed in your apartment past takara’s waking hours, used his hands to guide you on the sidewalk, held your hips to his cock in his office windowsill earlier today. and satoru has lived a life of self restraint, has been a shackled man to his own whipping post, but he has found himself helpless to the feeling of your body on his skin.

he had been so irreparably hurt when he saw you in the park that day, or at least it had felt that way at the time. something grew in him then, a tumor with teeth, and he was certain it could never feel the same with you as it once had, that he would withhold something precious from you forever in some lasting spiteful act of defiance. and nevermind the fact that even hours later he moved to hold you, could barely restrain the instinct to kiss you again, was never even angry: for about 24 hours, satoru was sure that he would never be in love with you again.

but even the sharp canines of that wound have dulled with weeks of your presence. the smell of you on your couch when he lays on it, the afternoon scenery of you playing with takara in the park curtained by your vines, your laugh in his office, by your door, in his head. you are an apparition haunting him, one he can touch, and it’s killing him. 

and he knows he should not pursue anything with you. he knows you know this, too. your nebulous reconnection is unsteady at best—a strange amalgam of your old intimacy and the people you’ve become—and access to takara is too important to him to risk. and neither of you would say this, but the fact of your leaving in high school remains a reminder that at any moment you are capable of disappearing again. it’s something satoru always loved about you, actually. you make your own life wherever you step. what a beautiful thing you are. 

he feels ridiculous for thinking of you as often as he does. but how could he not? he visits at least daily to spend time with his son and you are always there, a vision. he sees you in takara, too, his little love. when he tries to explain how to use limitless, takara bears down into himself, thinking to the point of exhaustion. he has gotten that from you, satoru knows.

but it wasn’t a conscious thought that satoru has begun falling back into love with you—or, really, that he has plummeted into the well of it—until today, seeing you laugh with megumi . tsumiki had pointed at you from behind your back: she’s so pretty! and he had nodded without thought, proud as if you were his to boast for. and then, your teasing voice nipping at his heels as he brought you to his office, he realized that he was yours. he should have known some time in the thousand minutes he’s spent feeding your koi.

the smell of your cooking wafts into your living room as he reads to takara on his lap. you’re humming that song from earlier, it could happen to you, and the domesticity makes him beam like an idiot. yes, he thinks, that’s about the most succinct way to put it; he is an idiot for you. takara points to the page and reads a sentence himself.

“yes!” satoru encourages.

“don’t yell,” takara says, patting satoru’s leg as though he’d worked himself up.

“yessir.”

“come in to eat!” you call from the kitchen. takara scrambles to the sound of your voice and satoru is no better. the three of you settle to the table, takara’s legs dangling in his chair, and satoru knows he shouldn’t but he presses his foot to yours under the table. you give him a look, fleeting and knowing, but you don’t move. takara eats exactly the way you do, and satoru wonders whether you’ve noticed.

“what time do you go into work tomorrow?”

“i’m opening, actually, so i’ll head to the cafe early,” you grumble. “i’ll take my lunch break at 8 to take takara to preschool.” 

satoru shakes his head. “i don’t have any missions until the afternoon. why don’t i take him?”

“i don’t have an extra key for you.”

“he could sleep over,” takara offers, barely looking up from his food. you look startled by the suggestion, at first, and satoru is sure he looks much the same, but when the shock subsides he cannot help the little grin that tugs his lips up. you cock your head minutely, but he’s known you long enough to know you mean: don’t push it. 

“bubba, there isn’t enough space,” you explain. 

you had told satoru early on that you started in a one bedroom, fixed a nursery in most of it and fit yourself on a twin bed in the corner. when the owner of the cafe retired, though, she had let you have the place. you made enough now to scrape by with two bedrooms; satoru remembers how dignified you were to recount the whole thing, how hard it was not to kiss you when you smiled in your own self-satisfaction. 

“why can’t he sleep in your room?” takara asks. satoru smiles bigger, nudges your foot under the table. 

“because he…can’t.” you’re becoming flustered now and it only thrills him more.

“i really would like to take him,” he offers, though the sincerity is cut with the sound of his smirk.

you run your hands over your face, mumble out a little groan that softens into a hum at the end, but still your foot doesn’t move away from the press of satoru’s under the shadow of the kitchen table. 

“don’t you need to get home to megumi and tsumiki?”

satoru is beaming like he’s already won. he has. “they have a sitter.”

your head tips back as you say, mostly to the ceiling, “fine. but you’re sleeping on the couch.”

and truthfully he doesn’t mind much at all. he is voracious for more time with takara, for more time in your space, for benign moments you might take for granted. he wants to brush his son’s teeth at night and fix his hair in the morning. he taps your foot one more time: thank you. and you nod, almost imperceptibly: you’re welcome. 

~~~~~~~

as much as YOU might have resisted it, there really was about an hour or so when letting satoru sleep on your couch seemed like a good idea. it felt, if you can admit it, easy, the both of you moving around one another as the evening twilight overtook the windows. and it was so plain to see on takara’s face that he was pleased, too, to have you both here. sitting on the edge of his bed together as you tucked him in, watching his first few moments of sleep, made space for a new sort of intimacy. when satoru reached for your hand in the dark you did not pull away.

of course, you regret it now. maybe you’ll regret it forever. by the time you’re brushing your teeth you know you have made an error of cosmic proportions. some time between settling blankets on the couch and joining you in the bathroom satoru had unbuttoned most of his shirt and removed his belt, sidling next to you at the sink with the spare toothbrush you gave him like you weren’t a moment from dropping dead on the counter. you’re too afraid to look at yourself in the mirror; you already know your cheeks are red, that he can feel the rush of your blood in your jugular from inches away. 

“you seem uptight,” he says, though it comes out foamy around the toothpaste in his mouth.

“i’m not used to having people over.” you can’t look anywhere but the porcelain of the sink, too petrified of what you’d say if you looked at him in full. you remember this afternoon in his office and shift on your weight a little.

“you don’t have a lot of sleepovers?” he asks through a grin.

you’re so focused on not making eye contact with him in the mirror that you answer him honestly. “i don’t have any.”

you hear his toothbrush stop. he spits in the sink before leaning on it to face you. “what do you mean you don’t have any?”

you take a deep breath before turning. god he’s so pretty, even more stunning like this, a little unspooled. “what do you want me to say? i’ve never had anyone else to take care of takara. it’s not like i can…” you don’t even know how to end that sentence.

the teasing look leaks from satoru’s face slowly. he asks you with more earnestness than you think you can stand: “have you not had sex since high school?”

it’s not even fully out of his mouth before you’re pushing past him and out of the bathroom but he is relentless behind you—he always was—and you feel him an inch from your back as you walk towards your bedroom door.

“wait a second—”

“satoru, i’m not talking about this with you.”

“no, but i’m being serious.”

“so am i!” you turn at your door and try not to shudder at how close he is. his eyes glow in the low light, a man made of comets.

“i just,” he huffs a little, “i feel bad, i guess.”

“what?”

“well you—you’ve been taking care of takara alone all this time and you haven’t gotten…you haven’t gotten to do—”

“satoru, i don’t need your pity about my sex life, okay?”

“but that’s my point! it’s not just about your sex life, it’s—it’s everything.” he ruffles the back of his head, almost embarrassed, you think. “i feel bad that you’ve been alone all this time.”

you kick your heel against the door behind you to ground yourself. “it’s my fault, isn’t it?” and it comes out a little small, more pathetic than you’ve ever heard yourself. satoru buckles with it.

“baby,” he starts, and you think his hand flexes to reach for you, but you put your palm on his chest to keep him in place. he hasn’t meant to call you that, you know, the endearment from years ago clawing back, finding purchase on his tongue. his heart murmurs like a bird behind his shirt.

“listen, i—i don’t need you to pity me for a decision i made. especially because i don’t regret any of it.”

he breathes out quick, almost angry, but you know not at you. before either of you can stop him, he holds your wrist to keep your hand on him, thumbs your pulse on one side. he does this a lot, you think. you wonder if he knows that you can feel his heartbeat, too, through the pads of his fingers. and there’s a moment, among the sounds of your breathing and the creak of the floorboards under his feet, when you think it is all over, that you’ll let him kiss you against your door. earlier today you felt like a coward for denying him, but that self-flagellation has waned. no, it takes a great deal of courage now to press your hand more firmly into him, to not rise onto your toes and suck at the skin under his jaw.

“goodnight, satoru,” you whisper, and shut yourself into your bedroom before you lose your resolve.

the night is cruel to you. it feels very much like sleeping with a black hole in your living room; you cannot ignore the thought of him draped over your sofa, body too long to fit comfortably. even with your eyes closed you can feel him from a room away. 

you toss under the covers, try to at least become entangled enough in your sheets that you cannot rise from your bed to check on him. you hope he’s fallen asleep by now, that you’re the only one left in this apartment awake.

being alone in the dark gives you more time to think, more time to resolve a decision you cannot yet name. you have been so insistent that to become ensnared again by satoru’s pull would be a mistake, let him leave you at the windowsill, stiff armed him at your door. you wonder whether any of it matters in light of the fact that you are utterly in love with him. of how much consequence could the physical distinction be now? in truth, you can’t tell whether you are freeing yourself from an obsolete stipulation or looking for any reason to abandon it.

in the blue midnight streaking through your curtains you can admit to yourself that a part of you, the fleshy part that wants for things, is simply too afraid that you need satoru more than he needs you, and to reconcile that is a task too treacherous to ask of yourself. what of the moment when, slick with sweat and the smell of sex, you move to kiss him again and he turns away? it’s all hypothetical, of course, but still it plagues you like a memory. and you suppose you have no reason to fear it at all; he has made clear enough that he wants you. 

it almost feels ridiculous to pine so excruciatingly over the father of your child. you’ve already done all of this before, no less as a teenager, and somehow now, a self-actualized adult, you hesitate and turn your knees in. you flip onto your other side with a huff. you’re only in a tanktop and shorts but you feel like you’re suffocating, or worse: something from inside of you is threatening to come loose.

you wonder whether he’s waiting for you in your living room. what a horrific thing to wonder. 

you creak open your door slowly and pad out.

it looks like satoru has given up on sleeping already. he’s sat upright, head tipped over the back of the couch and legs spread, an arm hanging over his eyes. you know he can hear you—you think he might have heard the moment you decided to come out—but he waits for you to address him.

“satoru,” you whisper. at last, he lifts his head, eyes sleepy but undeniably pleased to see you. he pats the spot next to him on the couch as he assesses your mild state of undress and you settle there, facing him. “i can’t sleep.”

he shakes his head. “i can’t either.” though he doesn’t look all that displeased, certainly not as he bends over to collect your legs and drape them over his lap. you let him. you let him drag one enormous hand up your bare leg, too, and he stops just below the knee but still you watch as goosebumps follow his fingers. your body is traitorous but you can’t find it in you to mind.

“when did we get so weird, huh?” he asks you.

“how do you mean?” “sometimes it feels like it used to feel,” he thinks about how you may take that a moment longer, “when we used to be friends.” you nod slowly. “sometimes it feels like i don’t know you at all.” 

honesty looks so pretty on his face. his eyes are slightly narrowed but they’re no less auroral, his lips slightly swollen on the bottom as he bites them between breaths. he points at your nose. “and sometimes, you make that face at me, and i—fuck i mean what am i supposed to do with that?”

you scrunch your nose. “what face am i making?”

“i mean you look—jesus, i don’t know.” he runs a hand through his hair, mussing it further, before continuing, “i just wish you wouldn’t keep thinking in your head.”

you can’t help but laugh softly, bumping your foot into his stomach. “where else am i supposed to think?”

he flails at the sound of your giggle but his lips turn up. “i don’t know! i just spend so much more time now wondering what’s going on in your head. i want to know.” and then, to devastate you further, you imagine, he adds: “you used to tell me.”

you slide a little further into the couch, lay more of your legs’ weight on his lap. he lets his hands drift up to your kneecaps now. ���okay, satoru,” you relent. “what do you want to know?”

“you’ll tell me anything?”

“i suppose that’s what i’m offering, yeah.”

he grins. “okay…” he taps his finger on his chin and you snort. “are you still afraid of me being in takara’s life?”

“a little. i’m afraid for both of you. but he…he loves you now, i think. ultimately i’m glad he can know you.”

“what about in your life?”

“what about it?”

“are you glad i’m in your life again?”

you smile, wry. “i think so. even though you torment me and make me spill my secrets.”

he puffs his chest and tugs your legs further into him. you’re almost in his lap, a few inches from it, but whether you notice is a question he decides not to ask. “do you still trust me the way you used to?”

“yes.” you do.

“do you still like me as much?”

“in what way?”

“all of them.”

“you’re greedy,” you whisper.

something punches from satoru’s lungs but you cannot discern what comes out. he says only: “yes, i am. answer me.” 

with a defeated breath you shrug. “yes.” 

his hands have both stalled on your knees, each thumb an omen breaching the threshold of your thigh. your skin twitches, you think, but you can’t look away from his face. he looks like he’s released one foot over the edge of some decision, you can see one teetering moment in the air, and then the resolve sets in.

“do you know how much i still want you?”

your heart kicks. “no,” you confess.

his hands remember themselves again, gripping up your legs higher, higher, now with purpose as they swing around his hips and move you to his lap. straddling him you can feel how hard he is already and you’re certain he can feel your wetness through your shorts, the slick is humiliating and so much. you whine a little and it comes out through your nose. his cock twitches.

“not today in my office?” his right hand cups the back of your neck. “not an hour ago?” your chest rises and falls, stumbling over itself. “you don’t know?”

and you have no faith in your voice now so you only shake your head as much as his hold will allow. he presses his hips into you just once, a fleeting indulgence you’re unsure if he even intended, but you whine again and it looks like it hurts him. 

“let me show you, baby,” he coos, but it’s desperate, too, a prayer into your lips as he brushes his nose against yours. “just one more time.”

you haven’t even finished nodding before you’re kissing him, both of you groaning into the other at the sheer relief of the feeling, his hands grabbing for anything he can reach: around your back, your tit, the globes of your ass to grind you down against him. the fabric of your shorts catches on your clit as it swells and you moan something awful in the back of your throat.

he kisses you like all six years apart demand it, like he can feel how long it’s been in the truest sense, like all at once the wanting has frayed his nerves and your lips cauterize the veins. he bites your lip to make you gasp, taking the opportunity to lick into your mouth as it opens.

you grind your clit onto him again, rubbing little circles on his tip through your clothes and he pants with the pressure. 

“satoru,” you whine, and he ruts up, harder.

“oh, say my name like that again,” he pleads, lips trailing down from your lips to your neck. his tongue streaks hot against your skin, sucking and biting and grinding you onto him like his cock is inside you already.

“satoru,” you repeat, and it comes out clearer without his tongue on yours but just barely. 

“fuck.” he rips your tank top off before attaching to you again, leaving hickies in the hollow of your throat, down over each breast, before taking a nipple into his mouth and laving his tongue there.

your moans almost come out like hums, all strung together, and he preens at the sound of them. you can feel the damp spot on his pants growing as you spread your slick, each wet kiss on your chest demanding a new wave from you. 

“i don’t even need to prep you, do i? you’re already so f–fucking wet,” and he punctuates it with a gyration of his hips that would have made you scream had he not clamped a palm over your mouth. 

you’re almost deaf with the rushing sound of blood in your ears but still you crane to hear him, each filthy utterance a precious thing you covet as he ruts up into you. if you were in your right mind you might find it funny that the experience of dry humping him feels so profound but as it is you can think only of the feeling of his veins through two layers of fabric.

despite how he may have goaded at you he brings one hand down your navel and under your shorts, feeling through your folds and spreading the honey of you further. your mouth is fully dropped open but his hand is large enough to cover it.

“oh, baby—yeah, that’s it, grind on it—you’re dripping for me.” he says it in that pleased way that makes him sound like an animal. you roll your hips onto the pads of his fingers and pleasure shoots up your spine at the rub of them on your clit, around your entrance. he circles his middle finger once before sinking it in and you keen. he holds you still with his other arm, nose pressed to your ear now as he whispers in it.

“f—fuck this pussy is so fucking tight.”

your hole flutters and sucks his digit in and he revels in the grip as he fucks you on it slowly. you try to bounce yourself faster but he squeezes your middle again, bites your pulse as it bumps in your neck. he murmurs there: “let it last,” using his hold to swivel your hips on his hand. your nails grip to his shoulders, surely making marks through his shirt but he lets you, frenetic and buzzing like he gains as much from touching you as you do.

the heel of his palm presses up onto your nub and you bow into him further, and he takes the movement to press another finger alongside the first. something searing and hungry licks up your spine, you’re close already, but there’s no indignity in it. you tug on his hair to bring his face to yours again, pulling back from the hand clamped over your mouth to lick behind his teeth, moaning into his mouth. “cum for me baby, come on,” he encourages.

your eyes squeeze shut as you come undone, heat spasming around his fingers as you soak him to the wrist. “fuck, f–fuck, that’s it,” he curses, mainly to himself, you think. you’re only half-lucid as you come down but you feel him pull his fingers from you and lick them clean, groaning softly around them.

“fuck me, satoru, please.”

his hair doesn’t move as he nods, stuck now to his forehead damp with sweat. neither of you have the patience to remove anything else, simply tugging your shorts to the side and his cock from his pants before you’re dripping right over it. his tip catches on your entrance and you both go half-boneless with the feeling.

when you sink onto him you feel a little like you did in his office earlier in the day. like time has stopped, or maybe like it has all arrived at your fingertips, like you’re everywhere. you remember this feeling, a little bit, but it’s also undeniably new. the stretch burns but you hardly feel it, taking no time before sitting on him to the hilt. your head drops to his shoulder, little pants into his neck, and he lets out a shaky breath.

“fuck you’re so fucking tight, baby, this pussy was made for me,” he chokes into your ear. you each have a handful of the other between your fingers, the lines of your palms tattooing him even through his uniform he still has mostly on. you hope his brand you the same.

all it takes is one, slow pull of your hips before he’s rutting up into you again, not so much ruthless as intense, deep and pregnant with meaning and so precise you wonder whether he’s using his six eyes to assess the inside of you. with one hand he holds your face to his ear to consume your moaning that way. you whine and when he shudders, bucking harder, you whine again.

“o–oh, these sounds are mine, this pussy is mine,” he stutters. the squelch of your cunt sucking him in seems to only encourage him, and you make yourself wetter just hearing it.

“it’s so good, satoru,” you whine.

he laughs softly, manic, “yeah?”

and you only wail quietly again. with each snap of his hips you thrust yourself down, clit throbbing and catching on the little white scratch of his pubic hair, and his other hand, still handled on the plush of your ass, rubs you harder as you move. you vaguely hear your little ah! ah! ah! but mostly you can feel the pleasure building again, can feel the vein down the underside of his cock as you wring him harder.

“hah–i won’t–fuck–i won’t last if you keep squeezing me, baby.”

you only feel encouraged, sliding deeper, revelling more in the slip of your slick as it floods out of you.

“ah–-i’m close, i’m close,” you breathe.

“fuck yeah, i wanna feel you cum on my cock, let go for me.”

and you do. have you ever really denied him? your mouth drops open in a silent scream as your hips buck wildly, the pleasure seizing you from the inside out. satoru moans feeling you ride your high, panting into your ear, “tell me to pull out.”

you shake your head, little smile creeping over your face as he fucks you through your high. “isn’t the damage already done?” you ask breathlessly.

and he can only laugh for a second before his hips stutter and still, pulling you into him like he wants to crawl inside of you and live in your stomach

“fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.”

his cum is so hot as it fills you, and so much, your own orgasm jolting you again, exulting in the feeling. 

he drops his forehead to your shoulder now, sweat of your collarbone meeting the beads on his hairline. the sounds of your breathing mix, too; your cum and your hands and your warmth, all of it intertwined with his, maybe forever. he kisses you one more time, sated now, along a hickey he’d left on your neck before. you return one to the corner of his mouth.

he doesn’t say anything when he sits up straight again, supporting the wings of your shoulders with his hands. there is only that look on his face, a cousin to the one you saw the first day he found you and takara, but so recognizably relieved this time: everything is different now.

~~~~~~~

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something, somehow, someday

chapter 4: close to you | prev | next | series masterlist

series summary: you know you will love satoru for the rest of your life, but when you wake with his cursed energy in your navel there is no option but to flee. what future is there for a child of a god? at 18 satoru is without you, and you make off with a piece of him you hoped he'd never meet.

pairing: secret baby daddy!gojo x reader

tags: secret child trope, angst (lots), eventual fluff, eventual smut, hurt/comfort, a lot of yearning :P, chapter specific: SMUT, unprotected piv, creampie (sorry), fingering,

a/n: thank you guys for your responses on the poll! this one is more than double the average length of the other chapters (~8k) and i plan to keep that convention from here on out. i hope you enjoy this one >:)

18+! minors dni <3

~~~~~~~

it is a funny feeling, YOU find, making your life new with a thing so familiar. to open your door so often and find satoru standing there, letting him bring food and splaying himself on your couch, walking with him in the heavy mist at dusk, it fills your lungs like smoke, the nostalgia thick and cloying. you remember all of it, it comes back to you embalmed.  

but the differences between now and your time together in high school demand your attention in equal measure. your son, for one: though it’s impossible to find the sight of him with his father unnatural given how obvious their relation is. with their backs turned they move the same, too, something between them irrevocably tied. you had forgotten the way satoru wrought blades of grass between his fingers when he laid in it until you had to clean both their palms of chlorophyll.

nonetheless your affection for satoru is much more hulking a thing than it ever was, supplanted by the tangible aftermath of the ways you used to love him. when takara lets him pick him up, grips to his collar as satoru balances him on his hip, you are defenseless. the softest parts of you win out. 

still, neither you nor satoru make any attempt to name the arrangement you’ve come upon. he is resolutely your child’s father and has stepped into that role with grace, and there are artifacts of your intimacy—his hand on your lower back, brushing your hair from your shoulder blades, an almost kiss, once—but mostly you let the joy of your child consume your time. 

and it shouldn’t bother you. you remember feeling so certain in high school that letting him fuck you was enough, that to love him quietly was a privilege. you suppose you still mostly believe that. but there are moments when takara is asleep and satoru lingers in your kitchen, and the want flares bright then. you are at a loss watching him leave with that look on his face, like he’s afraid you’ll ask him to stay and terrified you’ll let him leave. you sometimes wait a moment before locking the door behind him.

jujutsu tech stands like a graveyard around you, so full of memory the buildings almost sag. you haven’t been back here since the night takara came to you.

“oi!” satoru bellows from across the courtyard, hand high and wagging. 

takara holds a grip on your pant leg, one blue eye peeking out. you feel him loosen a little when he sees his dad, and then refasten when megumi and tsumiki emerge behind him. 

when satoru first suggested you both come to meet them you had hesitated. you were honest; there was something final about this last introduction. there would be nothing else left for each of you to keep separate from the other, your lives entirely reconnected. satoru had laughed at you in that way that makes your heart turn, and that sound was all it took for you—weak to him—to agree.

satoru comes rushing to takara, scooping him from behind you and holding him to his side. takara screeches, half afraid and half delighted. tsumiki walks to you without hesitation, little hand held out for you to shake. 

“it’s nice to meet you,” she says. her smile is soft, a little secret, but you can tell she is pleased with herself for her manners. you smile back.

“it’s nice to meet you, too.” 

she looks up at takara in satoru’s arms and waves. takara is frozen, too shy to move, so satoru takes his chubby wrist and waves it a little. tsumiki giggles. “they’re like twins.”

you lean in a little conspiratorially. “i know. i carried him for nine months and have nothing to show for it.”

she giggles behind her hand before turning to her brother. “don’t be rude,” she admonishes.

megumi cannot hear her, it seems. he’s watching takara paw at satoru’s shirt, turning in his hold as gojo points to the various buildings to explain what they are. to himself, or maybe to you, megumi whispers: “it’s so freaky.”

tsumiki scoffs lightly and goes to elbow him but you can only laugh again, louder this time. he may not be related to satoru but he was certainly raised by him. “you are exactly as satoru described,” you admit.

megumi furrows his brows and crosses his arms. yes, so furious, satoru had said once. “how exactly did he describe me?”

“as a little shit,” satoru offers, one palm now cupped over takara’s ear. megumi’s mouth falls open a moment before making a fist with each hand and bringing them in front of him. satoru only rolls his eyes and uses his knee to knock his arms out of place. megumi practically growls something about i’m really gonna do it someday and tsumiki taunts back at him: you’re such a liar!

oh, but that look on satoru’s face, he is so pleased. his eyes squint with it, you can almost see the satisfied breathing of his cursed energy, satoru is happy. it makes you beam at him and his breath catches when he sees it. 

takara wriggles out of his grip and stations himself at your legs again, but doesn’t hide this time. tsumiki is completely enamored, cooing again, “hi, takara!”

takara sucks in a little breath. “hello.”

tsumiki claps her hands together and looks up at you and gojo. “can we show him around? please?”

“what is there to show?” satoru asks.

“the training room, our old bedrooms, the koi fish—”

your eyes widen. satoru’s gaze flits to you, frantic, and you smirk, the tiniest thing. the koi fish? you mouth. satoru’s cheeks flush pink as he shakes his head slightly, but the damage is done, he knows. tsumiki is still listing menial places across campus.

you squeeze takara’s shoulder. “what do you think, bubba?” he looks at you, owlish, and then at tsumiki, before nodding. she takes his hand with a pleased squeal and the three putter off together.

satoru stands boyish before you as you straighten again. he tends to keep his blindfold off around takara—whether to keep from frightening him or for a more profound reason you don’t know—but he is bared to you without it. he knows exactly what you’ll say, lifting a hand as he turns and starts towards his office: “don’t.”

you skip to catch up with him. “oh, no, i think i have to.”

“i’m just a friend to nature.”

you howl. “you’re just as dishonest as you always were.”

he doesn’t dignify that with a response, pushing into his office and letting you inside. the walls are a dark wood, mostly bare save for the few bookshelves bloated with old novels and records and manila folders. a handful of pens scatter across the desk, like he’d needed to finish a sentence urgently before standing. there’s a record player on the windowsill, fuzzy with dust but clean in places around the arm. it looks like he’d used it recently for the first time in years. most of all it smells like him, mint and cedar and sugar, and you almost double over sick with it. 

satoru settles into his chair as you trace a finger along the spines of his books, his eyes igniting your back but you refuse to turn, you want him to watch. “you’ve done a great job with them,” you admit.

“you think so?”

you just barely twist your head over your shoulder to show him the sincerity on your face. “of course i do.”

he runs a hand through his hair. “they seem to like takara.”

you turn fully now to lean your back on the shelf. “everyone likes takara.”

he chuckles, fond. “yeah, i guess so.”

the sounds of this place are so startlingly the same, you think. the serenity is strange and charged, but nonetheless campus was always quiet enough to hear the wind through the leaves. you hear it now as you flip through mission files and reports: special grade, special grade, grade one, special grade, suguru geto. you put them down.

“is it weird to be back?”

you nod, gesturing around the room. “i’ll admit i was hoping for more of a welcome. is nobody else here?”

“yeah, i asked them to give us the afternoon so takara wouldn’t be overwhelmed for his first time.”

you pout, mainly to bare your lip to him but there is truth in it, too. “nobody wanted to see me?”

satoru shakes his head. “i wanted you all to myself,” he admits. and it’s teasing, easy, he says it like it doesn’t cost him anything, but you know he is like you: he almost never says something he doesn’t mean.

“how did they react when you told them?”

“that i have a son? kept a secret by his villainous mother?”

your eyes narrow but you’re grinning as you respond: “yeah.”

he cocks his head and kisses his teeth. “yaga said he was disappointed in you.”

“for leaving?”

“no, for letting me…” he smiles, wolfish for a second before it fades into something friendlier, “for giving me the opportunity.” you laugh, a bark of a sound, halfway humiliated. you nod him on. “and shoko was the one who found you, so, there wasn’t anyone else to tell.”

your hand finds your arm and you squeeze your bicep once, twice, swallowing around the tragedy in his confession: that all the people you used to know here are gone somehow. you hadn’t visited haibara’s grave since you left; nanami helped you lug a stone out by the stream and you grew flowers around the base, yellow pansies and red carnations. you remember kento pointing to them in a flower language book so you could conjure them properly, remember the promise you made not to tell a soul what they meant. 

the memory must show on your face, because satoru says then, “i still water those flowers you made by haibara’s grave.”

you smile at him, watery and real. you add on, “and feed my fish,” and he laughs like a surrender. 

you move to the record player just behind him and he swivels his chair to follow you. something seizes in your belly at the feeling of him scrutinizing you, the weight of his looking a leaden thing against your skin. you thumb through the few vinyls resting in the window before stopping on one. the words stick to your teeth like honey but you spit them as best you can: “this is mine.”

you hear satoru stand and look over your shoulder. frank sinatra’s close to you: the sleeve is long stained and yellowed, waterlogged in one corner, but the record inside is pristine. 

you remember the first time your grandmother taught you how to play her gramophone. her hands guided your smaller ones across the pavilion, down to the plateau; it was old and rusted, even then, something she’d bought second hand as a girl. but she had collected hundreds of records, they made piles throughout her home, and every afternoon you selected one to play. close to you was her gift to you when you entered jujutsu tech.

of course, you never had a record player. all three years it sat unused on your desk, a remembrance, still smelling like the tatami from her living room. she had told you once that sinatra taught her how to speak english, which you mostly believed; her english vowels opened with the syrup of the american east-coast, and she held each word a moment too long, like it took a great deal of effort not to sing them. 

you run your knuckles along the sleeve, feeling the still-familiar places where the gloss has faded and the paper catches. you hardly notice how close to your back satoru has drifted until he reaches around you to remove the record and situate it on the player. you freeze, his looming figure warm around you, his arms brushing your shoulders as he fiddles with the tone arm. you hope he can’t feel your heartbeat through your spine, but it rushes so deafening in your ears you cannot discern either way.

it could happen to you crackles to life from the speaker and you feel like you’ve been swallowed by space, on the cusp of a wrinkle. you wonder whether time has really suspended around you or if it’s only this, this song and this man at your back. your breathing is uneven and satoru does not step back, head craned a little to bring his chin closer to your shoulder. 

slowly, almost self-consciously, he braces each hand on the sides of the windowsill, keeping you surrounded. 

“it’s been so long since i’ve heard this song,” you whisper. the melody chimes and swings around the violin and you cannot help but tilt your head back a little into satoru’s chest, overcome with the ghost of the music as it hangs above you. satoru lets your weight lean slightly into him, unmoving.

“i hope it’s okay that i took it.” his voice rumbles through your bones before you hear it. you nod and it scrapes against his sternum. the friction stirs something in him, you think, because then he’s bringing a hand to your stomach, fingers long and splayed across your entire torso, and he rests his cheek fully on the back of your head. it would almost look like you were dancing if you began to move, but neither of you seem willing to risk it.

“do you ever wonder what it would have been like?”

you don’t need him to clarify. “all the time,” you confess. the sun moves behind the clouds outside, and you catch a moment of the both of you in the reflection. 

his hand tightens around your middle, holding you against him. the song threatens to end but he keeps his arm banded around you. “are we friends now?”

you laugh softly. “i honestly don’t know.”

he nods before bringing his other hand to your chin. he spreads the pads of his fingers, feeling the shape of your jaw, looking for something, for you. “would you let me kiss you, if i asked?”

“yes,” you say, but it comes out more breathless than you intend. your thighs press together and you’re sure he notices with how his hips cage you in, but he only hums, removing the hand around your chin. 

“it’s a bad idea,” he breathes, but still his nose brushes at the juncture of your neck and your shoulder. you shudder and nod. it is. 

and despite how badly you want him, you do not turn and demand it. it’s so precarious now, and with satoru in takara’s orbit you cannot run again, a chain fastened from your rib to his. you know fucking him would be a reckless idea now, but god, he presses one, slow kiss to the bared skin of your shoulder and your body remembers him. his hips press just slightly further into your ass as he sighs onto the same spot, his breath cooling the heat of his lips where they branded you, his cock alive and right there. but the both of you know it: you are cowards. he untangles himself, and you let him sit back in his chair before moving.

~~~~~~~

SATORU is certain now; you are going to kill him. his grave will be beautiful, he thinks, flowery and green and alive with your energy, but his autopsy will have your name all over it, your lipstick.

he supposes, for his part, that much of your proximity is his fault. a stronger man wouldn’t have stayed in your apartment past takara’s waking hours, used his hands to guide you on the sidewalk, held your hips to his cock in his office windowsill earlier today. and satoru has lived a life of self restraint, has been a shackled man to his own whipping post, but he has found himself helpless to the feeling of your body on his skin.

he had been so irreparably hurt when he saw you in the park that day, or at least it had felt that way at the time. something grew in him then, a tumor with teeth, and he was certain it could never feel the same with you as it once had, that he would withhold something precious from you forever in some lasting spiteful act of defiance. and nevermind the fact that even hours later he moved to hold you, could barely restrain the instinct to kiss you again, was never even angry: for about 24 hours, satoru was sure that he would never be in love with you again.

but even the sharp canines of that wound have dulled with weeks of your presence. the smell of you on your couch when he lays on it, the afternoon scenery of you playing with takara in the park curtained by your vines, your laugh in his office, by your door, in his head. you are an apparition haunting him, one he can touch, and it’s killing him. 

and he knows he should not pursue anything with you. he knows you know this, too. your nebulous reconnection is unsteady at best—a strange amalgam of your old intimacy and the people you’ve become—and access to takara is too important to him to risk. and neither of you would say this, but the fact of your leaving in high school remains a reminder that at any moment you are capable of disappearing again. it’s something satoru always loved about you, actually. you make your own life wherever you step. what a beautiful thing you are. 

he feels ridiculous for thinking of you as often as he does. but how could he not? he visits at least daily to spend time with his son and you are always there, a vision. he sees you in takara, too, his little love. when he tries to explain how to use limitless, takara bears down into himself, thinking to the point of exhaustion. he has gotten that from you, satoru knows.

but it wasn’t a conscious thought that satoru has begun falling back into love with you—or, really, that he has plummeted into the well of it—until today, seeing you laugh with megumi . tsumiki had pointed at you from behind your back: she’s so pretty! and he had nodded without thought, proud as if you were his to boast for. and then, your teasing voice nipping at his heels as he brought you to his office, he realized that he was yours. he should have known some time in the thousand minutes he’s spent feeding your koi.

the smell of your cooking wafts into your living room as he reads to takara on his lap. you’re humming that song from earlier, it could happen to you, and the domesticity makes him beam like an idiot. yes, he thinks, that’s about the most succinct way to put it; he is an idiot for you. takara points to the page and reads a sentence himself.

“yes!” satoru encourages.

“don’t yell,” takara says, patting satoru’s leg as though he’d worked himself up.

“yessir.”

“come in to eat!” you call from the kitchen. takara scrambles to the sound of your voice and satoru is no better. the three of you settle to the table, takara’s legs dangling in his chair, and satoru knows he shouldn’t but he presses his foot to yours under the table. you give him a look, fleeting and knowing, but you don’t move. takara eats exactly the way you do, and satoru wonders whether you’ve noticed.

“what time do you go into work tomorrow?”

“i’m opening, actually, so i’ll head to the cafe early,” you grumble. “i’ll take my lunch break at 8 to take takara to preschool.” 

satoru shakes his head. “i don’t have any missions until the afternoon. why don’t i take him?”

“i don’t have an extra key for you.”

“he could sleep over,” takara offers, barely looking up from his food. you look startled by the suggestion, at first, and satoru is sure he looks much the same, but when the shock subsides he cannot help the little grin that tugs his lips up. you cock your head minutely, but he’s known you long enough to know you mean: don’t push it. 

“bubba, there isn’t enough space,” you explain. 

you had told satoru early on that you started in a one bedroom, fixed a nursery in most of it and fit yourself on a twin bed in the corner. when the owner of the cafe retired, though, she had let you have the place. you made enough now to scrape by with two bedrooms; satoru remembers how dignified you were to recount the whole thing, how hard it was not to kiss you when you smiled in your own self-satisfaction. 

“why can’t he sleep in your room?” takara asks. satoru smiles bigger, nudges your foot under the table. 

“because he…can’t.” you’re becoming flustered now and it only thrills him more.

“i really would like to take him,” he offers, though the sincerity is cut with the sound of his smirk.

you run your hands over your face, mumble out a little groan that softens into a hum at the end, but still your foot doesn’t move away from the press of satoru’s under the shadow of the kitchen table. 

“don’t you need to get home to megumi and tsumiki?”

satoru is beaming like he’s already won. he has. “they have a sitter.”

your head tips back as you say, mostly to the ceiling, “fine. but you’re sleeping on the couch.”

and truthfully he doesn’t mind much at all. he is voracious for more time with takara, for more time in your space, for benign moments you might take for granted. he wants to brush his son’s teeth at night and fix his hair in the morning. he taps your foot one more time: thank you. and you nod, almost imperceptibly: you’re welcome. 

~~~~~~~

as much as YOU might have resisted it, there really was about an hour or so when letting satoru sleep on your couch seemed like a good idea. it felt, if you can admit it, easy, the both of you moving around one another as the evening twilight overtook the windows. and it was so plain to see on takara’s face that he was pleased, too, to have you both here. sitting on the edge of his bed together as you tucked him in, watching his first few moments of sleep, made space for a new sort of intimacy. when satoru reached for your hand in the dark you did not pull away.

of course, you regret it now. maybe you’ll regret it forever. by the time you’re brushing your teeth you know you have made an error of cosmic proportions. some time between settling blankets on the couch and joining you in the bathroom satoru had unbuttoned most of his shirt and removed his belt, sidling next to you at the sink with the spare toothbrush you gave him like you weren’t a moment from dropping dead on the counter. you’re too afraid to look at yourself in the mirror; you already know your cheeks are red, that he can feel the rush of your blood in your jugular from inches away. 

“you seem uptight,” he says, though it comes out foamy around the toothpaste in his mouth.

“i’m not used to having people over.” you can’t look anywhere but the porcelain of the sink, too petrified of what you’d say if you looked at him in full. you remember this afternoon in his office and shift on your weight a little.

“you don’t have a lot of sleepovers?” he asks through a grin.

you’re so focused on not making eye contact with him in the mirror that you answer him honestly. “i don’t have any.”

you hear his toothbrush stop. he spits in the sink before leaning on it to face you. “what do you mean you don’t have any?”

you take a deep breath before turning. god he’s so pretty, even more stunning like this, a little unspooled. “what do you want me to say? i’ve never had anyone else to take care of takara. it’s not like i can…” you don’t even know how to end that sentence.

the teasing look leaks from satoru’s face slowly. he asks you with more earnestness than you think you can stand: “have you not had sex since high school?”

it’s not even fully out of his mouth before you’re pushing past him and out of the bathroom but he is relentless behind you—he always was—and you feel him an inch from your back as you walk towards your bedroom door.

“wait a second—”

“satoru, i’m not talking about this with you.”

“no, but i’m being serious.”

“so am i!” you turn at your door and try not to shudder at how close he is. his eyes glow in the low light, a man made of comets.

“i just,” he huffs a little, “i feel bad, i guess.”

“what?”

“well you—you’ve been taking care of takara alone all this time and you haven’t gotten…you haven’t gotten to do—”

“satoru, i don’t need your pity about my sex life, okay?”

“but that’s my point! it’s not just about your sex life, it’s—it’s everything.” he ruffles the back of his head, almost embarrassed, you think. “i feel bad that you’ve been alone all this time.”

you kick your heel against the door behind you to ground yourself. “it’s my fault, isn’t it?” and it comes out a little small, more pathetic than you’ve ever heard yourself. satoru buckles with it.

“baby,” he starts, and you think his hand flexes to reach for you, but you put your palm on his chest to keep him in place. he hasn’t meant to call you that, you know, the endearment from years ago clawing back, finding purchase on his tongue. his heart murmurs like a bird behind his shirt.

“listen, i—i don’t need you to pity me for a decision i made. especially because i don’t regret any of it.”

he breathes out quick, almost angry, but you know not at you. before either of you can stop him, he holds your wrist to keep your hand on him, thumbs your pulse on one side. he does this a lot, you think. you wonder if he knows that you can feel his heartbeat, too, through the pads of his fingers. and there’s a moment, among the sounds of your breathing and the creak of the floorboards under his feet, when you think it is all over, that you’ll let him kiss you against your door. earlier today you felt like a coward for denying him, but that self-flagellation has waned. no, it takes a great deal of courage now to press your hand more firmly into him, to not rise onto your toes and suck at the skin under his jaw.

“goodnight, satoru,” you whisper, and shut yourself into your bedroom before you lose your resolve.

the night is cruel to you. it feels very much like sleeping with a black hole in your living room; you cannot ignore the thought of him draped over your sofa, body too long to fit comfortably. even with your eyes closed you can feel him from a room away. 

you toss under the covers, try to at least become entangled enough in your sheets that you cannot rise from your bed to check on him. you hope he’s fallen asleep by now, that you’re the only one left in this apartment awake.

being alone in the dark gives you more time to think, more time to resolve a decision you cannot yet name. you have been so insistent that to become ensnared again by satoru’s pull would be a mistake, let him leave you at the windowsill, stiff armed him at your door. you wonder whether any of it matters in light of the fact that you are utterly in love with him. of how much consequence could the physical distinction be now? in truth, you can’t tell whether you are freeing yourself from an obsolete stipulation or looking for any reason to abandon it.

in the blue midnight streaking through your curtains you can admit to yourself that a part of you, the fleshy part that wants for things, is simply too afraid that you need satoru more than he needs you, and to reconcile that is a task too treacherous to ask of yourself. what of the moment when, slick with sweat and the smell of sex, you move to kiss him again and he turns away? it’s all hypothetical, of course, but still it plagues you like a memory. and you suppose you have no reason to fear it at all; he has made clear enough that he wants you. 

it almost feels ridiculous to pine so excruciatingly over the father of your child. you’ve already done all of this before, no less as a teenager, and somehow now, a self-actualized adult, you hesitate and turn your knees in. you flip onto your other side with a huff. you’re only in a tanktop and shorts but you feel like you’re suffocating, or worse: something from inside of you is threatening to come loose.

you wonder whether he’s waiting for you in your living room. what a horrific thing to wonder. 

you creak open your door slowly and pad out.

it looks like satoru has given up on sleeping already. he’s sat upright, head tipped over the back of the couch and legs spread, an arm hanging over his eyes. you know he can hear you—you think he might have heard the moment you decided to come out—but he waits for you to address him.

“satoru,” you whisper. at last, he lifts his head, eyes sleepy but undeniably pleased to see you. he pats the spot next to him on the couch as he assesses your mild state of undress and you settle there, facing him. “i can’t sleep.”

he shakes his head. “i can’t either.” though he doesn’t look all that displeased, certainly not as he bends over to collect your legs and drape them over his lap. you let him. you let him drag one enormous hand up your bare leg, too, and he stops just below the knee but still you watch as goosebumps follow his fingers. your body is traitorous but you can’t find it in you to mind.

“when did we get so weird, huh?” he asks you.

“how do you mean?” “sometimes it feels like it used to feel,” he thinks about how you may take that a moment longer, “when we used to be friends.” you nod slowly. “sometimes it feels like i don’t know you at all.” 

honesty looks so pretty on his face. his eyes are slightly narrowed but they’re no less auroral, his lips slightly swollen on the bottom as he bites them between breaths. he points at your nose. “and sometimes, you make that face at me, and i—fuck i mean what am i supposed to do with that?”

you scrunch your nose. “what face am i making?”

“i mean you look—jesus, i don’t know.” he runs a hand through his hair, mussing it further, before continuing, “i just wish you wouldn’t keep thinking in your head.”

you can’t help but laugh softly, bumping your foot into his stomach. “where else am i supposed to think?”

he flails at the sound of your giggle but his lips turn up. “i don’t know! i just spend so much more time now wondering what’s going on in your head. i want to know.” and then, to devastate you further, you imagine, he adds: “you used to tell me.”

you slide a little further into the couch, lay more of your legs’ weight on his lap. he lets his hands drift up to your kneecaps now. “okay, satoru,” you relent. “what do you want to know?”

“you’ll tell me anything?”

“i suppose that’s what i’m offering, yeah.”

he grins. “okay…” he taps his finger on his chin and you snort. “are you still afraid of me being in takara’s life?”

“a little. i’m afraid for both of you. but he…he loves you now, i think. ultimately i’m glad he can know you.”

“what about in your life?”

“what about it?”

“are you glad i’m in your life again?”

you smile, wry. “i think so. even though you torment me and make me spill my secrets.”

he puffs his chest and tugs your legs further into him. you’re almost in his lap, a few inches from it, but whether you notice is a question he decides not to ask. “do you still trust me the way you used to?”

“yes.” you do.

“do you still like me as much?”

“in what way?”

“all of them.”

“you’re greedy,” you whisper.

something punches from satoru’s lungs but you cannot discern what comes out. he says only: “yes, i am. answer me.” 

with a defeated breath you shrug. “yes.” 

his hands have both stalled on your knees, each thumb an omen breaching the threshold of your thigh. your skin twitches, you think, but you can’t look away from his face. he looks like he’s released one foot over the edge of some decision, you can see one teetering moment in the air, and then the resolve sets in.

“do you know how much i still want you?”

your heart kicks. “no,” you confess.

his hands remember themselves again, gripping up your legs higher, higher, now with purpose as they swing around his hips and move you to his lap. straddling him you can feel how hard he is already and you’re certain he can feel your wetness through your shorts, the slick is humiliating and so much. you whine a little and it comes out through your nose. his cock twitches.

“not today in my office?” his right hand cups the back of your neck. “not an hour ago?” your chest rises and falls, stumbling over itself. “you don’t know?”

and you have no faith in your voice now so you only shake your head as much as his hold will allow. he presses his hips into you just once, a fleeting indulgence you’re unsure if he even intended, but you whine again and it looks like it hurts him. 

“let me show you, baby,” he coos, but it’s desperate, too, a prayer into your lips as he brushes his nose against yours. “just one more time.”

you haven’t even finished nodding before you’re kissing him, both of you groaning into the other at the sheer relief of the feeling, his hands grabbing for anything he can reach: around your back, your tit, the globes of your ass to grind you down against him. the fabric of your shorts catches on your clit as it swells and you moan something awful in the back of your throat.

he kisses you like all six years apart demand it, like he can feel how long it’s been in the truest sense, like all at once the wanting has frayed his nerves and your lips cauterize the veins. he bites your lip to make you gasp, taking the opportunity to lick into your mouth as it opens.

you grind your clit onto him again, rubbing little circles on his tip through your clothes and he pants with the pressure. 

“satoru,” you whine, and he ruts up, harder.

“oh, say my name like that again,” he pleads, lips trailing down from your lips to your neck. his tongue streaks hot against your skin, sucking and biting and grinding you onto him like his cock is inside you already.

“satoru,” you repeat, and it comes out clearer without his tongue on yours but just barely. 

“fuck.” he rips your tank top off before attaching to you again, leaving hickies in the hollow of your throat, down over each breast, before taking a nipple into his mouth and laving his tongue there.

your moans almost come out like hums, all strung together, and he preens at the sound of them. you can feel the damp spot on his pants growing as you spread your slick, each wet kiss on your chest demanding a new wave from you. 

“i don’t even need to prep you, do i? you’re already so f–fucking wet,” and he punctuates it with a gyration of his hips that would have made you scream had he not clamped a palm over your mouth. 

you’re almost deaf with the rushing sound of blood in your ears but still you crane to hear him, each filthy utterance a precious thing you covet as he ruts up into you. if you were in your right mind you might find it funny that the experience of dry humping him feels so profound but as it is you can think only of the feeling of his veins through two layers of fabric.

despite how he may have goaded at you he brings one hand down your navel and under your shorts, feeling through your folds and spreading the honey of you further. your mouth is fully dropped open but his hand is large enough to cover it.

“oh, baby—yeah, that’s it, grind on it—you’re dripping for me.” he says it in that pleased way that makes him sound like an animal. you roll your hips onto the pads of his fingers and pleasure shoots up your spine at the rub of them on your clit, around your entrance. he circles his middle finger once before sinking it in and you keen. he holds you still with his other arm, nose pressed to your ear now as he whispers in it.

“f—fuck this pussy is so fucking tight.”

your hole flutters and sucks his digit in and he revels in the grip as he fucks you on it slowly. you try to bounce yourself faster but he squeezes your middle again, bites your pulse as it bumps in your neck. he murmurs there: “let it last,” using his hold to swivel your hips on his hand. your nails grip to his shoulders, surely making marks through his shirt but he lets you, frenetic and buzzing like he gains as much from touching you as you do.

the heel of his palm presses up onto your nub and you bow into him further, and he takes the movement to press another finger alongside the first. something searing and hungry licks up your spine, you’re close already, but there’s no indignity in it. you tug on his hair to bring his face to yours again, pulling back from the hand clamped over your mouth to lick behind his teeth, moaning into his mouth. “cum for me baby, come on,” he encourages.

your eyes squeeze shut as you come undone, heat spasming around his fingers as you soak him to the wrist. “fuck, f–fuck, that’s it,” he curses, mainly to himself, you think. you’re only half-lucid as you come down but you feel him pull his fingers from you and lick them clean, groaning softly around them.

“fuck me, satoru, please.”

his hair doesn’t move as he nods, stuck now to his forehead damp with sweat. neither of you have the patience to remove anything else, simply tugging your shorts to the side and his cock from his pants before you’re dripping right over it. his tip catches on your entrance and you both go half-boneless with the feeling.

when you sink onto him you feel a little like you did in his office earlier in the day. like time has stopped, or maybe like it has all arrived at your fingertips, like you’re everywhere. you remember this feeling, a little bit, but it’s also undeniably new. the stretch burns but you hardly feel it, taking no time before sitting on him to the hilt. your head drops to his shoulder, little pants into his neck, and he lets out a shaky breath.

“fuck you’re so fucking tight, baby, this pussy was made for me,” he chokes into your ear. you each have a handful of the other between your fingers, the lines of your palms tattooing him even through his uniform he still has mostly on. you hope his brand you the same.

all it takes is one, slow pull of your hips before he’s rutting up into you again, not so much ruthless as intense, deep and pregnant with meaning and so precise you wonder whether he’s using his six eyes to assess the inside of you. with one hand he holds your face to his ear to consume your moaning that way. you whine and when he shudders, bucking harder, you whine again.

“o–oh, these sounds are mine, this pussy is mine,” he stutters. the squelch of your cunt sucking him in seems to only encourage him, and you make yourself wetter just hearing it.

“it’s so good, satoru,” you whine.

he laughs softly, manic, “yeah?”

and you only wail quietly again. with each snap of his hips you thrust yourself down, clit throbbing and catching on the little white scratch of his pubic hair, and his other hand, still handled on the plush of your ass, rubs you harder as you move. you vaguely hear your little ah! ah! ah! but mostly you can feel the pleasure building again, can feel the vein down the underside of his cock as you wring him harder.

“hah–i won’t–fuck–i won’t last if you keep squeezing me, baby.”

you only feel encouraged, sliding deeper, revelling more in the slip of your slick as it floods out of you.

“ah–-i’m close, i’m close,” you breathe.

“fuck yeah, i wanna feel you cum on my cock, let go for me.”

and you do. have you ever really denied him? your mouth drops open in a silent scream as your hips buck wildly, the pleasure seizing you from the inside out. satoru moans feeling you ride your high, panting into your ear, “tell me to pull out.”

you shake your head, little smile creeping over your face as he fucks you through your high. “isn’t the damage already done?” you ask breathlessly.

and he can only laugh for a second before his hips stutter and still, pulling you into him like he wants to crawl inside of you and live in your stomach

“fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.”

his cum is so hot as it fills you, and so much, your own orgasm jolting you again, exulting in the feeling. 

he drops his forehead to your shoulder now, sweat of your collarbone meeting the beads on his hairline. the sounds of your breathing mix, too; your cum and your hands and your warmth, all of it intertwined with his, maybe forever. he kisses you one more time, sated now, along a hickey he’d left on your neck before. you return one to the corner of his mouth.

he doesn’t say anything when he sits up straight again, supporting the wings of your shoulders with his hands. there is only that look on his face, a cousin to the one you saw the first day he found you and takara, but so recognizably relieved this time: everything is different now.

~~~~~~~

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[hellowoolf]

something, somehow, someday

chapter 4: close to you | prev | next | series masterlist

series summary: you know you will love satoru for the rest of your life, but when you wake with his cursed energy in your navel there is no option but to flee. what future is there for a child of a god? at 18 satoru is without you, and you make off with a piece of him you hoped he'd never meet.

pairing: secret baby daddy!gojo x reader

tags: secret child trope, angst (lots), eventual fluff, eventual smut, hurt/comfort, a lot of yearning :P, chapter specific: SMUT, unprotected piv, creampie (sorry), fingering,

a/n: thank you guys for your responses on the poll! this one is more than double the average length of the other chapters (~8k) and i plan to keep that convention from here on out. i hope you enjoy this one >:)

18+! minors dni <3

~~~~~~~

it is a funny feeling, YOU find, making your life new with a thing so familiar. to open your door so often and find satoru standing there, letting him bring food and splaying himself on your couch, walking with him in the heavy mist at dusk, it fills your lungs like smoke, the nostalgia thick and cloying. you remember all of it, it comes back to you embalmed.  

but the differences between now and your time together in high school demand your attention in equal measure. your son, for one: though it’s impossible to find the sight of him with his father unnatural given how obvious their relation is. with their backs turned they move the same, too, something between them irrevocably tied. you had forgotten the way satoru wrought blades of grass between his fingers when he laid in it until you had to clean both their palms of chlorophyll.

nonetheless your affection for satoru is much more hulking a thing than it ever was, supplanted by the tangible aftermath of the ways you used to love him. when takara lets him pick him up, grips to his collar as satoru balances him on his hip, you are defenseless. the softest parts of you win out. 

still, neither you nor satoru make any attempt to name the arrangement you’ve come upon. he is resolutely your child’s father and has stepped into that role with grace, and there are artifacts of your intimacy—his hand on your lower back, brushing your hair from your shoulder blades, an almost kiss, once—but mostly you let the joy of your child consume your time. 

and it shouldn’t bother you. you remember feeling so certain in high school that letting him fuck you was enough, that to love him quietly was a privilege. you suppose you still mostly believe that. but there are moments when takara is asleep and satoru lingers in your kitchen, and the want flares bright then. you are at a loss watching him leave with that look on his face, like he’s afraid you’ll ask him to stay and terrified you’ll let him leave. you sometimes wait a moment before locking the door behind him.

jujutsu tech stands like a graveyard around you, so full of memory the buildings almost sag. you haven’t been back here since the night takara came to you.

“oi!” satoru bellows from across the courtyard, hand high and wagging. 

takara holds a grip on your pant leg, one blue eye peeking out. you feel him loosen a little when he sees his dad, and then refasten when megumi and tsumiki emerge behind him. 

when satoru first suggested you both come to meet them you had hesitated. you were honest; there was something final about this last introduction. there would be nothing else left for each of you to keep separate from the other, your lives entirely reconnected. satoru had laughed at you in that way that makes your heart turn, and that sound was all it took for you—weak to him—to agree.

satoru comes rushing to takara, scooping him from behind you and holding him to his side. takara screeches, half afraid and half delighted. tsumiki walks to you without hesitation, little hand held out for you to shake. 

“it’s nice to meet you,” she says. her smile is soft, a little secret, but you can tell she is pleased with herself for her manners. you smile back.

“it’s nice to meet you, too.” 

she looks up at takara in satoru’s arms and waves. takara is frozen, too shy to move, so satoru takes his chubby wrist and waves it a little. tsumiki giggles. “they’re like twins.”

you lean in a little conspiratorially. “i know. i carried him for nine months and have nothing to show for it.”

she giggles behind her hand before turning to her brother. “don’t be rude,” she admonishes.

megumi cannot hear her, it seems. he’s watching takara paw at satoru’s shirt, turning in his hold as gojo points to the various buildings to explain what they are. to himself, or maybe to you, megumi whispers: “it’s so freaky.”

tsumiki scoffs lightly and goes to elbow him but you can only laugh again, louder this time. he may not be related to satoru but he was certainly raised by him. “you are exactly as satoru described,” you admit.

megumi furrows his brows and crosses his arms. yes, so furious, satoru had said once. “how exactly did he describe me?”

“as a little shit,” satoru offers, one palm now cupped over takara’s ear. megumi’s mouth falls open a moment before making a fist with each hand and bringing them in front of him. satoru only rolls his eyes and uses his knee to knock his arms out of place. megumi practically growls something about i’m really gonna do it someday and tsumiki taunts back at him: you’re such a liar!

oh, but that look on satoru’s face, he is so pleased. his eyes squint with it, you can almost see the satisfied breathing of his cursed energy, satoru is happy. it makes you beam at him and his breath catches when he sees it. 

takara wriggles out of his grip and stations himself at your legs again, but doesn’t hide this time. tsumiki is completely enamored, cooing again, “hi, takara!”

takara sucks in a little breath. “hello.”

tsumiki claps her hands together and looks up at you and gojo. “can we show him around? please?”

“what is there to show?” satoru asks.

“the training room, our old bedrooms, the koi fish—”

your eyes widen. satoru’s gaze flits to you, frantic, and you smirk, the tiniest thing. the koi fish? you mouth. satoru’s cheeks flush pink as he shakes his head slightly, but the damage is done, he knows. tsumiki is still listing menial places across campus.

you squeeze takara’s shoulder. “what do you think, bubba?” he looks at you, owlish, and then at tsumiki, before nodding. she takes his hand with a pleased squeal and the three putter off together.

satoru stands boyish before you as you straighten again. he tends to keep his blindfold off around takara—whether to keep from frightening him or for a more profound reason you don’t know—but he is bared to you without it. he knows exactly what you’ll say, lifting a hand as he turns and starts towards his office: “don’t.”

you skip to catch up with him. “oh, no, i think i have to.”

“i’m just a friend to nature.”

you howl. “you’re just as dishonest as you always were.”

he doesn’t dignify that with a response, pushing into his office and letting you inside. the walls are a dark wood, mostly bare save for the few bookshelves bloated with old novels and records and manila folders. a handful of pens scatter across the desk, like he’d needed to finish a sentence urgently before standing. there’s a record player on the windowsill, fuzzy with dust but clean in places around the arm. it looks like he’d used it recently for the first time in years. most of all it smells like him, mint and cedar and sugar, and you almost double over sick with it. 

satoru settles into his chair as you trace a finger along the spines of his books, his eyes igniting your back but you refuse to turn, you want him to watch. “you’ve done a great job with them,” you admit.

“you think so?”

you just barely twist your head over your shoulder to show him the sincerity on your face. “of course i do.”

he runs a hand through his hair. “they seem to like takara.”

you turn fully now to lean your back on the shelf. “everyone likes takara.”

he chuckles, fond. “yeah, i guess so.”

the sounds of this place are so startlingly the same, you think. the serenity is strange and charged, but nonetheless campus was always quiet enough to hear the wind through the leaves. you hear it now as you flip through mission files and reports: special grade, special grade, grade one, special grade, suguru geto. you put them down.

“is it weird to be back?”

you nod, gesturing around the room. “i’ll admit i was hoping for more of a welcome. is nobody else here?”

“yeah, i asked them to give us the afternoon so takara wouldn’t be overwhelmed for his first time.”

you pout, mainly to bare your lip to him but there is truth in it, too. “nobody wanted to see me?”

satoru shakes his head. “i wanted you all to myself,” he admits. and it’s teasing, easy, he says it like it doesn’t cost him anything, but you know he is like you: he almost never says something he doesn’t mean.

“how did they react when you told them?”

“that i have a son? kept a secret by his villainous mother?”

your eyes narrow but you’re grinning as you respond: “yeah.”

he cocks his head and kisses his teeth. “yaga said he was disappointed in you.”

“for leaving?”

“no, for letting me…” he smiles, wolfish for a second before it fades into something friendlier, “for giving me the opportunity.” you laugh, a bark of a sound, halfway humiliated. you nod him on. “and shoko was the one who found you, so, there wasn’t anyone else to tell.”

your hand finds your arm and you squeeze your bicep once, twice, swallowing around the tragedy in his confession: that all the people you used to know here are gone somehow. you hadn’t visited haibara’s grave since you left; nanami helped you lug a stone out by the stream and you grew flowers around the base, yellow pansies and red carnations. you remember kento pointing to them in a flower language book so you could conjure them properly, remember the promise you made not to tell a soul what they meant. 

the memory must show on your face, because satoru says then, “i still water those flowers you made by haibara’s grave.”

you smile at him, watery and real. you add on, “and feed my fish,” and he laughs like a surrender. 

you move to the record player just behind him and he swivels his chair to follow you. something seizes in your belly at the feeling of him scrutinizing you, the weight of his looking a leaden thing against your skin. you thumb through the few vinyls resting in the window before stopping on one. the words stick to your teeth like honey but you spit them as best you can: “this is mine.”

you hear satoru stand and look over your shoulder. frank sinatra’s close to you: the sleeve is long stained and yellowed, waterlogged in one corner, but the record inside is pristine. 

you remember the first time your grandmother taught you how to play her gramophone. her hands guided your smaller ones across the pavilion, down to the plateau; it was old and rusted, even then, something she’d bought second hand as a girl. but she had collected hundreds of records, they made piles throughout her home, and every afternoon you selected one to play. close to you was her gift to you when you entered jujutsu tech.

of course, you never had a record player. all three years it sat unused on your desk, a remembrance, still smelling like the tatami from her living room. she had told you once that sinatra taught her how to speak english, which you mostly believed; her english vowels opened with the syrup of the american east-coast, and she held each word a moment too long, like it took a great deal of effort not to sing them. 

you run your knuckles along the sleeve, feeling the still-familiar places where the gloss has faded and the paper catches. you hardly notice how close to your back satoru has drifted until he reaches around you to remove the record and situate it on the player. you freeze, his looming figure warm around you, his arms brushing your shoulders as he fiddles with the tone arm. you hope he can’t feel your heartbeat through your spine, but it rushes so deafening in your ears you cannot discern either way.

it could happen to you crackles to life from the speaker and you feel like you’ve been swallowed by space, on the cusp of a wrinkle. you wonder whether time has really suspended around you or if it’s only this, this song and this man at your back. your breathing is uneven and satoru does not step back, head craned a little to bring his chin closer to your shoulder. 

slowly, almost self-consciously, he braces each hand on the sides of the windowsill, keeping you surrounded. 

“it’s been so long since i’ve heard this song,” you whisper. the melody chimes and swings around the violin and you cannot help but tilt your head back a little into satoru’s chest, overcome with the ghost of the music as it hangs above you. satoru lets your weight lean slightly into him, unmoving.

“i hope it’s okay that i took it.” his voice rumbles through your bones before you hear it. you nod and it scrapes against his sternum. the friction stirs something in him, you think, because then he’s bringing a hand to your stomach, fingers long and splayed across your entire torso, and he rests his cheek fully on the back of your head. it would almost look like you were dancing if you began to move, but neither of you seem willing to risk it.

“do you ever wonder what it would have been like?”

you don’t need him to clarify. “all the time,” you confess. the sun moves behind the clouds outside, and you catch a moment of the both of you in the reflection. 

his hand tightens around your middle, holding you against him. the song threatens to end but he keeps his arm banded around you. “are we friends now?”

you laugh softly. “i honestly don’t know.”

he nods before bringing his other hand to your chin. he spreads the pads of his fingers, feeling the shape of your jaw, looking for something, for you. “would you let me kiss you, if i asked?”

“yes,” you say, but it comes out more breathless than you intend. your thighs press together and you’re sure he notices with how his hips cage you in, but he only hums, removing the hand around your chin. 

“it’s a bad idea,” he breathes, but still his nose brushes at the juncture of your neck and your shoulder. you shudder and nod. it is. 

and despite how badly you want him, you do not turn and demand it. it’s so precarious now, and with satoru in takara’s orbit you cannot run again, a chain fastened from your rib to his. you know fucking him would be a reckless idea now, but god, he presses one, slow kiss to the bared skin of your shoulder and your body remembers him. his hips press just slightly further into your ass as he sighs onto the same spot, his breath cooling the heat of his lips where they branded you, his cock alive and right there. but the both of you know it: you are cowards. he untangles himself, and you let him sit back in his chair before moving.

~~~~~~~

SATORU is certain now; you are going to kill him. his grave will be beautiful, he thinks, flowery and green and alive with your energy, but his autopsy will have your name all over it, your lipstick.

he supposes, for his part, that much of your proximity is his fault. a stronger man wouldn’t have stayed in your apartment past takara’s waking hours, used his hands to guide you on the sidewalk, held your hips to his cock in his office windowsill earlier today. and satoru has lived a life of self restraint, has been a shackled man to his own whipping post, but he has found himself helpless to the feeling of your body on his skin.

he had been so irreparably hurt when he saw you in the park that day, or at least it had felt that way at the time. something grew in him then, a tumor with teeth, and he was certain it could never feel the same with you as it once had, that he would withhold something precious from you forever in some lasting spiteful act of defiance. and nevermind the fact that even hours later he moved to hold you, could barely restrain the instinct to kiss you again, was never even angry: for about 24 hours, satoru was sure that he would never be in love with you again.

but even the sharp canines of that wound have dulled with weeks of your presence. the smell of you on your couch when he lays on it, the afternoon scenery of you playing with takara in the park curtained by your vines, your laugh in his office, by your door, in his head. you are an apparition haunting him, one he can touch, and it’s killing him. 

and he knows he should not pursue anything with you. he knows you know this, too. your nebulous reconnection is unsteady at best—a strange amalgam of your old intimacy and the people you’ve become—and access to takara is too important to him to risk. and neither of you would say this, but the fact of your leaving in high school remains a reminder that at any moment you are capable of disappearing again. it’s something satoru always loved about you, actually. you make your own life wherever you step. what a beautiful thing you are. 

he feels ridiculous for thinking of you as often as he does. but how could he not? he visits at least daily to spend time with his son and you are always there, a vision. he sees you in takara, too, his little love. when he tries to explain how to use limitless, takara bears down into himself, thinking to the point of exhaustion. he has gotten that from you, satoru knows.

but it wasn’t a conscious thought that satoru has begun falling back into love with you—or, really, that he has plummeted into the well of it—until today, seeing you laugh with megumi . tsumiki had pointed at you from behind your back: she’s so pretty! and he had nodded without thought, proud as if you were his to boast for. and then, your teasing voice nipping at his heels as he brought you to his office, he realized that he was yours. he should have known some time in the thousand minutes he’s spent feeding your koi.

the smell of your cooking wafts into your living room as he reads to takara on his lap. you’re humming that song from earlier, it could happen to you, and the domesticity makes him beam like an idiot. yes, he thinks, that’s about the most succinct way to put it; he is an idiot for you. takara points to the page and reads a sentence himself.

“yes!” satoru encourages.

“don’t yell,” takara says, patting satoru’s leg as though he’d worked himself up.

“yessir.”

“come in to eat!” you call from the kitchen. takara scrambles to the sound of your voice and satoru is no better. the three of you settle to the table, takara’s legs dangling in his chair, and satoru knows he shouldn’t but he presses his foot to yours under the table. you give him a look, fleeting and knowing, but you don’t move. takara eats exactly the way you do, and satoru wonders whether you’ve noticed.

“what time do you go into work tomorrow?”

“i’m opening, actually, so i’ll head to the cafe early,” you grumble. “i’ll take my lunch break at 8 to take takara to preschool.” 

satoru shakes his head. “i don’t have any missions until the afternoon. why don’t i take him?”

“i don’t have an extra key for you.”

“he could sleep over,” takara offers, barely looking up from his food. you look startled by the suggestion, at first, and satoru is sure he looks much the same, but when the shock subsides he cannot help the little grin that tugs his lips up. you cock your head minutely, but he’s known you long enough to know you mean: don’t push it. 

“bubba, there isn’t enough space,” you explain. 

you had told satoru early on that you started in a one bedroom, fixed a nursery in most of it and fit yourself on a twin bed in the corner. when the owner of the cafe retired, though, she had let you have the place. you made enough now to scrape by with two bedrooms; satoru remembers how dignified you were to recount the whole thing, how hard it was not to kiss you when you smiled in your own self-satisfaction. 

“why can’t he sleep in your room?” takara asks. satoru smiles bigger, nudges your foot under the table. 

“because he…can’t.” you’re becoming flustered now and it only thrills him more.

“i really would like to take him,” he offers, though the sincerity is cut with the sound of his smirk.

you run your hands over your face, mumble out a little groan that softens into a hum at the end, but still your foot doesn’t move away from the press of satoru’s under the shadow of the kitchen table. 

“don’t you need to get home to megumi and tsumiki?”

satoru is beaming like he’s already won. he has. “they have a sitter.”

your head tips back as you say, mostly to the ceiling, “fine. but you’re sleeping on the couch.”

and truthfully he doesn’t mind much at all. he is voracious for more time with takara, for more time in your space, for benign moments you might take for granted. he wants to brush his son’s teeth at night and fix his hair in the morning. he taps your foot one more time: thank you. and you nod, almost imperceptibly: you’re welcome. 

~~~~~~~

as much as YOU might have resisted it, there really was about an hour or so when letting satoru sleep on your couch seemed like a good idea. it felt, if you can admit it, easy, the both of you moving around one another as the evening twilight overtook the windows. and it was so plain to see on takara’s face that he was pleased, too, to have you both here. sitting on the edge of his bed together as you tucked him in, watching his first few moments of sleep, made space for a new sort of intimacy. when satoru reached for your hand in the dark you did not pull away.

of course, you regret it now. maybe you’ll regret it forever. by the time you’re brushing your teeth you know you have made an error of cosmic proportions. some time between settling blankets on the couch and joining you in the bathroom satoru had unbuttoned most of his shirt and removed his belt, sidling next to you at the sink with the spare toothbrush you gave him like you weren’t a moment from dropping dead on the counter. you’re too afraid to look at yourself in the mirror; you already know your cheeks are red, that he can feel the rush of your blood in your jugular from inches away. 

“you seem uptight,” he says, though it comes out foamy around the toothpaste in his mouth.

“i’m not used to having people over.” you can’t look anywhere but the porcelain of the sink, too petrified of what you’d say if you looked at him in full. you remember this afternoon in his office and shift on your weight a little.

“you don’t have a lot of sleepovers?” he asks through a grin.

you’re so focused on not making eye contact with him in the mirror that you answer him honestly. “i don’t have any.”

you hear his toothbrush stop. he spits in the sink before leaning on it to face you. “what do you mean you don’t have any?”

you take a deep breath before turning. god he’s so pretty, even more stunning like this, a little unspooled. “what do you want me to say? i’ve never had anyone else to take care of takara. it’s not like i can…” you don’t even know how to end that sentence.

the teasing look leaks from satoru’s face slowly. he asks you with more earnestness than you think you can stand: “have you not had sex since high school?”

it’s not even fully out of his mouth before you’re pushing past him and out of the bathroom but he is relentless behind you—he always was—and you feel him an inch from your back as you walk towards your bedroom door.

“wait a second—”

“satoru, i’m not talking about this with you.”

“no, but i’m being serious.”

“so am i!” you turn at your door and try not to shudder at how close he is. his eyes glow in the low light, a man made of comets.

“i just,” he huffs a little, “i feel bad, i guess.”

“what?”

“well you—you’ve been taking care of takara alone all this time and you haven’t gotten…you haven’t gotten to do—”

“satoru, i don’t need your pity about my sex life, okay?”

“but that’s my point! it’s not just about your sex life, it’s—it’s everything.” he ruffles the back of his head, almost embarrassed, you think. “i feel bad that you’ve been alone all this time.”

you kick your heel against the door behind you to ground yourself. “it’s my fault, isn’t it?” and it comes out a little small, more pathetic than you’ve ever heard yourself. satoru buckles with it.

“baby,” he starts, and you think his hand flexes to reach for you, but you put your palm on his chest to keep him in place. he hasn’t meant to call you that, you know, the endearment from years ago clawing back, finding purchase on his tongue. his heart murmurs like a bird behind his shirt.

“listen, i—i don’t need you to pity me for a decision i made. especially because i don’t regret any of it.”

he breathes out quick, almost angry, but you know not at you. before either of you can stop him, he holds your wrist to keep your hand on him, thumbs your pulse on one side. he does this a lot, you think. you wonder if he knows that you can feel his heartbeat, too, through the pads of his fingers. and there’s a moment, among the sounds of your breathing and the creak of the floorboards under his feet, when you think it is all over, that you’ll let him kiss you against your door. earlier today you felt like a coward for denying him, but that self-flagellation has waned. no, it takes a great deal of courage now to press your hand more firmly into him, to not rise onto your toes and suck at the skin under his jaw.

“goodnight, satoru,” you whisper, and shut yourself into your bedroom before you lose your resolve.

the night is cruel to you. it feels very much like sleeping with a black hole in your living room; you cannot ignore the thought of him draped over your sofa, body too long to fit comfortably. even with your eyes closed you can feel him from a room away. 

you toss under the covers, try to at least become entangled enough in your sheets that you cannot rise from your bed to check on him. you hope he’s fallen asleep by now, that you’re the only one left in this apartment awake.

being alone in the dark gives you more time to think, more time to resolve a decision you cannot yet name. you have been so insistent that to become ensnared again by satoru’s pull would be a mistake, let him leave you at the windowsill, stiff armed him at your door. you wonder whether any of it matters in light of the fact that you are utterly in love with him. of how much consequence could the physical distinction be now? in truth, you can’t tell whether you are freeing yourself from an obsolete stipulation or looking for any reason to abandon it.

in the blue midnight streaking through your curtains you can admit to yourself that a part of you, the fleshy part that wants for things, is simply too afraid that you need satoru more than he needs you, and to reconcile that is a task too treacherous to ask of yourself. what of the moment when, slick with sweat and the smell of sex, you move to kiss him again and he turns away? it’s all hypothetical, of course, but still it plagues you like a memory. and you suppose you have no reason to fear it at all; he has made clear enough that he wants you. 

it almost feels ridiculous to pine so excruciatingly over the father of your child. you’ve already done all of this before, no less as a teenager, and somehow now, a self-actualized adult, you hesitate and turn your knees in. you flip onto your other side with a huff. you’re only in a tanktop and shorts but you feel like you’re suffocating, or worse: something from inside of you is threatening to come loose.

you wonder whether he’s waiting for you in your living room. what a horrific thing to wonder. 

you creak open your door slowly and pad out.

it looks like satoru has given up on sleeping already. he’s sat upright, head tipped over the back of the couch and legs spread, an arm hanging over his eyes. you know he can hear you—you think he might have heard the moment you decided to come out—but he waits for you to address him.

“satoru,” you whisper. at last, he lifts his head, eyes sleepy but undeniably pleased to see you. he pats the spot next to him on the couch as he assesses your mild state of undress and you settle there, facing him. “i can’t sleep.”

he shakes his head. “i can’t either.” though he doesn’t look all that displeased, certainly not as he bends over to collect your legs and drape them over his lap. you let him. you let him drag one enormous hand up your bare leg, too, and he stops just below the knee but still you watch as goosebumps follow his fingers. your body is traitorous but you can’t find it in you to mind.

“when did we get so weird, huh?” he asks you.

“how do you mean?” “sometimes it feels like it used to feel,” he thinks about how you may take that a moment longer, “when we used to be friends.” you nod slowly. “sometimes it feels like i don’t know you at all.” 

honesty looks so pretty on his face. his eyes are slightly narrowed but they’re no less auroral, his lips slightly swollen on the bottom as he bites them between breaths. he points at your nose. “and sometimes, you make that face at me, and i—fuck i mean what am i supposed to do with that?”

you scrunch your nose. “what face am i making?”

“i mean you look—jesus, i don’t know.” he runs a hand through his hair, mussing it further, before continuing, “i just wish you wouldn’t keep thinking in your head.”

you can’t help but laugh softly, bumping your foot into his stomach. “where else am i supposed to think?”

he flails at the sound of your giggle but his lips turn up. “i don’t know! i just spend so much more time now wondering what’s going on in your head. i want to know.” and then, to devastate you further, you imagine, he adds: “you used to tell me.”

you slide a little further into the couch, lay more of your legs’ weight on his lap. he lets his hands drift up to your kneecaps now. “okay, satoru,” you relent. “what do you want to know?”

“you’ll tell me anything?”

“i suppose that’s what i’m offering, yeah.”

he grins. “okay…” he taps his finger on his chin and you snort. “are you still afraid of me being in takara’s life?”

“a little. i’m afraid for both of you. but he…he loves you now, i think. ultimately i’m glad he can know you.”

“what about in your life?”

“what about it?”

“are you glad i’m in your life again?”

you smile, wry. “i think so. even though you torment me and make me spill my secrets.”

he puffs his chest and tugs your legs further into him. you’re almost in his lap, a few inches from it, but whether you notice is a question he decides not to ask. “do you still trust me the way you used to?”

“yes.” you do.

“do you still like me as much?”

“in what way?”

“all of them.”

“you’re greedy,” you whisper.

something punches from satoru’s lungs but you cannot discern what comes out. he says only: “yes, i am. answer me.” 

with a defeated breath you shrug. “yes.” 

his hands have both stalled on your knees, each thumb an omen breaching the threshold of your thigh. your skin twitches, you think, but you can’t look away from his face. he looks like he’s released one foot over the edge of some decision, you can see one teetering moment in the air, and then the resolve sets in.

“do you know how much i still want you?”

your heart kicks. “no,” you confess.

his hands remember themselves again, gripping up your legs higher, higher, now with purpose as they swing around his hips and move you to his lap. straddling him you can feel how hard he is already and you’re certain he can feel your wetness through your shorts, the slick is humiliating and so much. you whine a little and it comes out through your nose. his cock twitches.

“not today in my office?” his right hand cups the back of your neck. “not an hour ago?” your chest rises and falls, stumbling over itself. “you don’t know?”

and you have no faith in your voice now so you only shake your head as much as his hold will allow. he presses his hips into you just once, a fleeting indulgence you’re unsure if he even intended, but you whine again and it looks like it hurts him. 

“let me show you, baby,” he coos, but it’s desperate, too, a prayer into your lips as he brushes his nose against yours. “just one more time.”

you haven’t even finished nodding before you’re kissing him, both of you groaning into the other at the sheer relief of the feeling, his hands grabbing for anything he can reach: around your back, your tit, the globes of your ass to grind you down against him. the fabric of your shorts catches on your clit as it swells and you moan something awful in the back of your throat.

he kisses you like all six years apart demand it, like he can feel how long it’s been in the truest sense, like all at once the wanting has frayed his nerves and your lips cauterize the veins. he bites your lip to make you gasp, taking the opportunity to lick into your mouth as it opens.

you grind your clit onto him again, rubbing little circles on his tip through your clothes and he pants with the pressure. 

“satoru,” you whine, and he ruts up, harder.

“oh, say my name like that again,” he pleads, lips trailing down from your lips to your neck. his tongue streaks hot against your skin, sucking and biting and grinding you onto him like his cock is inside you already.

“satoru,” you repeat, and it comes out clearer without his tongue on yours but just barely. 

“fuck.” he rips your tank top off before attaching to you again, leaving hickies in the hollow of your throat, down over each breast, before taking a nipple into his mouth and laving his tongue there.

your moans almost come out like hums, all strung together, and he preens at the sound of them. you can feel the damp spot on his pants growing as you spread your slick, each wet kiss on your chest demanding a new wave from you. 

“i don’t even need to prep you, do i? you’re already so f–fucking wet,” and he punctuates it with a gyration of his hips that would have made you scream had he not clamped a palm over your mouth. 

you’re almost deaf with the rushing sound of blood in your ears but still you crane to hear him, each filthy utterance a precious thing you covet as he ruts up into you. if you were in your right mind you might find it funny that the experience of dry humping him feels so profound but as it is you can think only of the feeling of his veins through two layers of fabric.

despite how he may have goaded at you he brings one hand down your navel and under your shorts, feeling through your folds and spreading the honey of you further. your mouth is fully dropped open but his hand is large enough to cover it.

“oh, baby—yeah, that’s it, grind on it—you’re dripping for me.” he says it in that pleased way that makes him sound like an animal. you roll your hips onto the pads of his fingers and pleasure shoots up your spine at the rub of them on your clit, around your entrance. he circles his middle finger once before sinking it in and you keen. he holds you still with his other arm, nose pressed to your ear now as he whispers in it.

“f—fuck this pussy is so fucking tight.”

your hole flutters and sucks his digit in and he revels in the grip as he fucks you on it slowly. you try to bounce yourself faster but he squeezes your middle again, bites your pulse as it bumps in your neck. he murmurs there: “let it last,” using his hold to swivel your hips on his hand. your nails grip to his shoulders, surely making marks through his shirt but he lets you, frenetic and buzzing like he gains as much from touching you as you do.

the heel of his palm presses up onto your nub and you bow into him further, and he takes the movement to press another finger alongside the first. something searing and hungry licks up your spine, you’re close already, but there’s no indignity in it. you tug on his hair to bring his face to yours again, pulling back from the hand clamped over your mouth to lick behind his teeth, moaning into his mouth. “cum for me baby, come on,” he encourages.

your eyes squeeze shut as you come undone, heat spasming around his fingers as you soak him to the wrist. “fuck, f–fuck, that’s it,” he curses, mainly to himself, you think. you’re only half-lucid as you come down but you feel him pull his fingers from you and lick them clean, groaning softly around them.

“fuck me, satoru, please.”

his hair doesn’t move as he nods, stuck now to his forehead damp with sweat. neither of you have the patience to remove anything else, simply tugging your shorts to the side and his cock from his pants before you’re dripping right over it. his tip catches on your entrance and you both go half-boneless with the feeling.

when you sink onto him you feel a little like you did in his office earlier in the day. like time has stopped, or maybe like it has all arrived at your fingertips, like you’re everywhere. you remember this feeling, a little bit, but it’s also undeniably new. the stretch burns but you hardly feel it, taking no time before sitting on him to the hilt. your head drops to his shoulder, little pants into his neck, and he lets out a shaky breath.

“fuck you’re so fucking tight, baby, this pussy was made for me,” he chokes into your ear. you each have a handful of the other between your fingers, the lines of your palms tattooing him even through his uniform he still has mostly on. you hope his brand you the same.

all it takes is one, slow pull of your hips before he’s rutting up into you again, not so much ruthless as intense, deep and pregnant with meaning and so precise you wonder whether he’s using his six eyes to assess the inside of you. with one hand he holds your face to his ear to consume your moaning that way. you whine and when he shudders, bucking harder, you whine again.

“o–oh, these sounds are mine, this pussy is mine,” he stutters. the squelch of your cunt sucking him in seems to only encourage him, and you make yourself wetter just hearing it.

“it’s so good, satoru,” you whine.

he laughs softly, manic, “yeah?”

and you only wail quietly again. with each snap of his hips you thrust yourself down, clit throbbing and catching on the little white scratch of his pubic hair, and his other hand, still handled on the plush of your ass, rubs you harder as you move. you vaguely hear your little ah! ah! ah! but mostly you can feel the pleasure building again, can feel the vein down the underside of his cock as you wring him harder.

“hah–i won’t–fuck–i won’t last if you keep squeezing me, baby.”

you only feel encouraged, sliding deeper, revelling more in the slip of your slick as it floods out of you.

“ah–-i’m close, i’m close,” you breathe.

“fuck yeah, i wanna feel you cum on my cock, let go for me.”

and you do. have you ever really denied him? your mouth drops open in a silent scream as your hips buck wildly, the pleasure seizing you from the inside out. satoru moans feeling you ride your high, panting into your ear, “tell me to pull out.”

you shake your head, little smile creeping over your face as he fucks you through your high. “isn’t the damage already done?” you ask breathlessly.

and he can only laugh for a second before his hips stutter and still, pulling you into him like he wants to crawl inside of you and live in your stomach

“fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.”

his cum is so hot as it fills you, and so much, your own orgasm jolting you again, exulting in the feeling. 

he drops his forehead to your shoulder now, sweat of your collarbone meeting the beads on his hairline. the sounds of your breathing mix, too; your cum and your hands and your warmth, all of it intertwined with his, maybe forever. he kisses you one more time, sated now, along a hickey he’d left on your neck before. you return one to the corner of his mouth.

he doesn’t say anything when he sits up straight again, supporting the wings of your shoulders with his hands. there is only that look on his face, a cousin to the one you saw the first day he found you and takara, but so recognizably relieved this time: everything is different now.

~~~~~~~

sss taglist:

@emochosoluvr @por0u @vraiao @voidfulcrumdilemma @vaniyeiszero @missingnozw @crowroakchi @seikamuzu @anonymous-3846 @asahinasstuff @kunisnaomi @bl6o6dy @meanderingwistera @lilac-heartz @acowboykisser @miiikooooooo @missingnozw @heiranni @sadmonke @alicebleu @sanchann @splinx04real @lolllllllllllllliiiiiii @eggrollforyou @updated-version @yaurss @khaleesihavilliard @mizzowizzo @mierins @eolivy @spencerreidisagorgman @dahliadaenerys @cantchooseanctbias @fallenfromgrxce @theclassbookworm @liestel @jiasdream @maddy24207 @valoriya @19catspiledontopofeachother @hbhbhbhbhby @bijuu-naginata @jv5t4g1rl @bobagang @thraxpatty @muscovitechick

[hellowoolf]

it’s decided!! longer it is. next part should be up on wednesday, and im aiming for about double the length of previous parts :P

also, separately, i hit 400 followers a few days ago and i want to say thank you. there are something like 300 new faces and i can’t tell you how absolutely delighted i am that you’re enjoying my work!! i cant wait to share more <3

(and to the 100 that have been here from the beginning i love you something awful and we’re actually married)

with love,

your woolfie

quick question for my lovely something, somehow, someday readers: i have a tendency to break my stories into short chapters released close together (a few days), would you prefer i keep doing that or make them longer and release them further apart (more like a week between chapters)?

please let me know :3<33

[hellowoolf]

a lil teaser

satoru stands at the threshold of the room’s closet now, glancing over his various suits and smoker jackets, some a sleek black and detailed with silk, others attached with white or ivory bow ties and scarves. is this…a funeral? a party? both, maybe. he pads to the phone by the bed and twists the rotary to call the front desk. a man answers, voice rough with use but unendingly polite.

“good evening, continental international front desk. how may i help you?”

satoru grins with the stiff script of it all. “good evening, sir. i’m a guest of…well…i suppose i don’t know. i’m a guest this evening and i was wondering what the attire is for the party?”

there is shuffling on the other end, a hasty “just one moment, sir,” whispered across the line. there are at least three people speaking as his telephone friend holds the phone to what must be his chest. two men and a woman, he thinks. very little can be made out beyond one sentence, wry and full of humor, a feminine voice: let me speak to him.

satoru is transferred hands and then a delicate breathing comes through the receiver. the woman says nothing. is she…waiting for him?

“um…hello?”

“hello, sir,” you say. satoru can hear the smile in your tone, almost like you’re amused to be in this position. it’s clear enough that you don’t typically handle the phones.

“yes, ma’am, i was wondering whether you knew the attire code for tonight’s party?”

your laugh is light, almost teasing. “it’s nearly a quarter past 6, mr. gojo. aren’t you a little late?”

“am i?” he teases back.

you snicker again, and it’s a terribly attractive sound. “you know, i’ve been preparing for weeks. can’t you spare a full hour of your precious time to compose yourself?”

“you’ve spent weeks selecting an outfit?” 

“among other things,” you say, voice trailing off at the end. your cadence is provocative. not quite sexual, more biting. satoru finds himself smiling broader the longer you speak with him. who is this woman? 

“well would you be so kind as to offer me guidance?”

you hum quietly, pretending to consider it. “i suppose i might, if you asked me kindly.”

gojo laughs again, again. “right. oh powerful woman on the phone, might you please indicate a color in which i should dress this fine evening?”

“yes!” you cackle. “that’s exactly the sort of ego-stroking i’m in search of. well done, mr. gojo.” satoru, despite himself, beams, though you cannot see it. “tonight, more than anything, is a celebration. wear something you’d be horrified to see at a funeral. i don’t mind the colors, more the spirit of it.”

“i will work tirelessly to please you,” he returns.

you hum again, pleased. “i hope so. enjoy your night,” you say.

and satoru almost lets you hang up the phone before startling to awareness. “wait—wait,” he waits to hear you settle the receiver on your face again before continuing, “how do you know my name?”

you pause a moment before responding. “it is the job of the front desk to know our guests by name.”

“but you don’t work at the front desk, do you?” satoru probes.

something sweet and self satisfied pushes out of your nose and he hears it crackle on the line. you let the silence stretch one moment too long, he suspects just to make him wait. “because i invited you.”

the sound clicks, and you are gone. gojo lowers the phone slowly, wondering what sort of ravenous thing it was he just spoke to.

~~~~~~~

let me know if you want to be tagged when i post it! :>

taglist: @missingnozw @trophywife111 @cheesecakeislazy @adictiss @kyungjunnies @hbhbhbhbhby @megapteraurelia

if i wrote a long gojo x fem!reader one shot that had the following components would anyone want to be tagged :3

- set in 1930s, mainly in nyc, but still sorcerers

- geto didn’t defect because i say so

- everyone speaks the same language (also because i say so)

- smut…>:)

teehee let me know

[hellowoolf]

hiii, i jus wanted to say that something, somehow, someday grabbed my attention so hard and i cannot wait to properly read it ahhhh

looking super forward to it !!!! <33

hiiiii this absolutely made my day dear thank you!!! so happy you’re reading <33╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

[hellowoolf]

something, somehow, someday

chapter 3: sun stall | prev | next | series masterlist

series summary: you know you will love satoru for the rest of your life, but when you wake with his cursed energy in your navel there is no option but to flee. what future is there for a child of a god? at 18 satoru is without you, and you make off with a piece of him you hoped he'd never meet.

pairing: secret baby daddy!gojo x reader

tags: secret child trope, angst (lots), eventual fluff, eventual smut, hurt/comfort, a lot of yearning :P

a/n: i have a poll up on chapter length so if you have an opinion please vote! it's been tied up almost the whole way, and the poll will end around sunday. also, as always, feel free to send asks about context/content, i know i can be...sparse sometimes >:) i love you all

18+! minors dni <3

~~~~~~~

SATORU, for his part, never resented you for leaving. he missed you almost masochistically: he dreamt of you on purpose, refused outright to forget, dragged your memory behind him, the whole comatose body of it. but soon after your leaving he failed so spectacularly at protecting amanai, and suguru defected not long after. he lost that year in totality to his own failure, to a boundless and indiscriminate wash of waste and desecration. it was everywhere. and so covered in it as he was, it was impossible to discern the particulars; your disappearance was a limb to a much larger, beastly thing. 

for a time he hated himself for losing two of the most important people in his life, though even that he had to abandon for megumi and tsumiki’s sake. by the time he had enough clarity to truly wonder why you left, he had the sense to recognize that returning to 2006 could do him no good. so no, there has been no hatred—in fact, he doesn’t think he could ever hate you—only a quiet wanting, the remainder of the ways he once loved you, and your koi fish in the stream. 

he hasn’t spent much time in this part of tokyo. shoko seems to have crested her temporary calm and dissolved again into a tremor satoru pretends not to see. she scans the neighborhood with fear and appetite in equal measure and he finds himself doing the same. she stops suddenly, remembering something.

“you should take off your blindfold.”

his brows pinch together. “ha?” it doesn’t come out cruel so much as confused.

shoko makes an expectant face: you are at my mercy. satoru continues walking as he slips a finger behind the fabric and pulls it off. “you know, it’s cruel to string me along in the dark like this. just because you know something i don’t doesn’t mean you can prey on me,” he mutters.

shoko scoffs. “you think i’m enjoying this?”

“yeah, actually, i think you are at least a little bit,” he bites.

“gojo, i have scanned medical records, cctv footage, eye witness accounts—god i got teachers at the kyoto school involved for this—”

a small grin slides over satoru’s face. “utahime?”

shoko’s annoyance persists. “i’ve put years into doing this for you and you can’t offer me the courtesy of trusting me? this one time? after i’ve done something so monumental on your behalf? jesus, gojo, you really are—”

something behind satoru’s ribs turns over once, twice, snaps open. there are teeth in his sternum. he feels it all before he sees it, the tug to square his shoulders towards something, the echo of the person he used to be bellowing something inside of him, but he can’t make any of it out. he sees his eyes first, they’re his eyes, looking over your shoulder. they look frightened; he’s never seen his own eyes so afraid before.

there are a few things satoru knows immediately and a few others that are slower on the uptake. that is his child—this point is undeniable, though there isn’t much internalization that can happen right at this moment—and you are his mother. he would know you anywhere, he would know you in the dark, he would know you senseless, and he certainly knows you like this, eyes wide open and ten yards away. your back is turned and satoru also knows, right then, that you cannot sense him yet.

the kid does, though. he looks like a ghost, embraced in your arms, an eerie reconstruction of himself at that age. satoru wonders now if everyone found him as incandescently striking looking as he now finds this child, or whether it’s because it’s his. his child. there are no words or musings in him, only this feeling, the bite of wonderment and love and hurt. the latter, he thinks, wins out on his face.

the child whispers something in your ear and your back straightens. you shake your head a little, and the movement lets satoru see the side of your face for a brief and monumental second. god, you are just as terribly lovely as the day you left. there are more whispers between you and you stand, slowly, and satoru sees that you are now terrified, too. you come all the way up before you turn.

there is only a deep breath’s worth of time spent like this: satoru, frozen on the sidewalk and as helpless as he’s ever been, you, eyes wide, refusing to panic but nonetheless knowing that everything has changed, and your baby, the siphoning of each of you, stepped now in front of your legs. and that’s the worst part, satoru thinks. yes, it may be the most awful thing to have ever happened to him that this child worries satoru may hurt you. shoko and the neighborhood fade, blurred on the periphery of this little massacre shared among the three of you.

satoru moves first. a step towards you, and then another. you don’t make to protect your son, he knows you know that you don’t have to, but the boy clings to your knee behind him, so furious somehow and so petrified, and most of all determined to keep you safe. for one of the first times in his life satoru is glad for his six eyes; he can look at you both at once.

when he arrives at the altar of your feet satoru squats to his son’s level. it occurs to him only then that he must recognize satoru as his father; if he knows at all what his own face looks like then it would be impossible to miss it. 

the belated circumstances arrive in satoru’s head; this child has cursed energy, he has a cursed technique, he’s using it right now. satoru extends a hand towards the boy slowly, pauses each time he flinches, until suddenly his palm just…stops. whatever was left holding him upright leaks out his ears now as satoru sinks all the way to his knees.

your voice, against all odds, is even. “it’s okay, takara.” takara. he slumps a little as he relaxes, but keeps a chubby arm barring your legs from moving forward. you drop to the ground anyway, tears streaming down your face, and they look like they burn.

“say something,” you plead quietly.

satoru wrenches your name from his mouth like a death rattle. “what can i say? what do you want me to say?”

you shake your head, “i don’t know, i—i’m sorry. i can’t—you were never meant to meet him.”

“and what? you were just gonna keep him from me forever?”

you almost look confused as to how he couldn’t understand. “of course i was. he is your son, satoru. if people knew they would take him,” your voice raises only a fraction, “nobody could protect him from the onslaught of people who would use him to hurt you,” your words sound like sobs, they are heartbreaking, but you continue, “it was all i could do to protect you both.”

“and what about you? what about your protection? i could have been there for you and for him—”

“satoru, stop.”

“no, be serious with me. be honest with me. don’t you owe me that?” he’s almost manic now, so angry and so devastated and it bares itself in his voice, “how could you have decided without me?”

satoru wonders if you’d be yelling at him if takara wasn’t between you, but as it is you keep two hands on your volume. “i was practically a child! and so were you! i did what i thought was best. i did it for you. how could you ever be a father? i couldn’t burden you with that responsibility, there was too much on you already!”

satoru shakes with a terrible laughter. “and yet i ended up halfway to parenthood anyway!” he exclaims.

you suck in a breath. “what does that mean?”

where does he even begin? he tries his best to keep himself human but god how could you rob him of this? “i took in two zenin kids around when suguru defected.”

this information only slows you down for a moment before your face twists again. you had heard about suguru’s defection; yaga left you a voicemail, worried he’d seek you out. it’s one of the only times you had to well and fully restrain yourself from reaching out to satoru, who had loved geto voraciously, you think. you cast the thought aside and say again, slower, “i felt like i had no options. no way out but…away. i knew what you’d do if i told you.” 

and this is by far the most devastating thing you’d said to him so far. to acknowledge how deeply he cared for you seared you both, each of you shuddering with the memory. satoru practically whispers, “i can’t believe you took this from me…took him from me.”

the words rush out of your lips faster now. “i never wanted to hurt you, not ever, and that’s why i left. i stand by that choice.” you poke your pointer finger into his chest and he lets you. “he’s gotten to live free from us.” 

satoru grabs your wrist and keeps it close, firm but gentle, still. even feeling so betrayed by a version of you gone by he seeks your touch for comfort: his fingers wrap around to your pulse to feel you living. neither of you think much about how physically familiar you remain to one another. “he has my technique.” 

you both look at takara now, the first time since you began arguing. he looks even smaller up close, satoru thinks. his hands are wrung behind his back and his toes point in but he does not look at all confused. it’s clear to the both of you that he’s understood every word, or at least the meaning, and his eyes well with the knowing but he refuses to loosen. he stands stiff as satoru tilts his head and holds his hand out, releasing your wrist.

“my name is satoru.”

~~~~~~~

YOU cannot, try as you might, reconcile satoru gojo in your living room. takara points out his various toys at your request, and satoru watches him intently, nods when takara glances up at him. shoko had slipped quietly away watching the tableau of the three of you at the park, and against your better judgment you had let satoru through your front door; the two of them are blinding, beaming in each others company despite takara’s trepidation and satoru’s lingering hurt. they kneel together on the floor while you watch from the couch, witness now to a sacred moment, trying not to move.

you’re only mildly alarmed that you still know satoru’s posture enough to know he is trying to consume as much of takara’s presence as he possibly can. he’s hunched the way he is when he eats, ingesting the sight of his son who he’s known less than an hour. and you have so much left to say to him but you are not so cruel as to rip from him this time, too.

takara is sharp, too. in between turning his wooden trains upside down and sideways in this strange, stilted performance, he asks satoru enough questions to make a running catalogue in his mind: where do you live? do you have a job? do you have parents? how long did it take to get here? and satoru’s smile, already fond, nearly takes you to an early grave.

at least, you think to yourself, you can at last put to bed your questioning: you are still in love with satoru. watching them acclimate to each other's company, for the first time in a long time, you remember what it is you gave up for takara’s sake. in taking takara from satoru you forsake him, yes, but you denied yourself these moments, too. and part of you dreads the conversations with gojo that are sure to follow, but the rest opens itself to the warmth of the two of them, splayed unceremoniously across your carpet.

still, you meant what you said before; you don’t regret your decisions. the world of jujutsu asks for takara now, and you find a small comfort in the fact that he knows, to some degree, what he would lose if he took up the post of his lineage. 

takara’s eyes are sleepy as you glance at him now.

“bubba why don’t you say goodnight to satoru and i’ll come help you wash up in a few minutes?” 

takara hesitates. “will i see him again?”

you refuse to look at gojo when he asks. “yes,” you assure him, “i promise you will.” you mean it in a way takara can feel. he drags himself away and down the hall, leaving you alone with…what would you call your relationship now?

satoru takes his time situating himself on the couch next to you. how strange it is to see him again, to be thrust into such devastating conflict, to miss him so strongly at an arm’s length. he’s more stunning than you’ve ever seen him, blindfold still off and unfurled on your coffee table.

“he’s amazing,” he breathes. 

you can’t help the small smile that makes its way onto your face. “yeah, i know.”

satoru chews a moment on his question before he asks it. “did he ever ask about me?”

you deflate a little. “don’t do that.”

“don’t do what? don’t ask? don’t i deserve to know about my son?” his hands gesticulate ahead of him. you suppose the both of you are as angry at the other as you were earlier today, which is to say not very much, you think. mostly he is hurt—he cannot hide this from you—and you, somehow, are wounded, too, and you’re both floundering watching the other lick their blood dry. satoru continues, “don’t i deserve to know whether my son needed his father?”

“needed you? i assure you, satoru, i have been more than enough for him. i’ve given up the rest of my life in service of—”

“—that’s not what i meant—”

“isn’t it?” his eyes flit across your face, he’s looking for something and you’re unsure whether he’ll find it. “aren’t you asking me how often i’ve left a gap big enough for him to miss a man he never met? how often i failed?”

“no! i—no,” gojo reaches for you on instinct but leaves his palms hovering an inch from your forearms. “it’s obvious you’ve done an amazing job with him, especially given the circumstances, but—”

“and what circumstances would those be, exactly?” you ask with no small amount of cruelty. the funny thing is, you know exactly to which realities he is referring—your financial and familial solitude—but still it stings to feel questioned by this heir to a very real monetary fortune, beyond the immense power already bequeathed to him. “i may have wanted for things, gojo, but takara never has.”

bluer than anything human, satoru’s eyes look devastated, taken by gravity down his face. “don’t call me that.”

you purse your lips. “i just…” something vicious and sharp dissipates into the air, the both of you taking a breath, softly. “i’ve worked so hard to be proud of the way i have parented him.” satoru nods you on. “it’s not that i don’t want you in his life, i mean—i don’t think there was ever a moment when i didn’t want that at least a little bit. i can’t tell you how many times i wanted you to be there. but i feel…” you reach for him this time, resting a palm lightly on the back of his hand. “a little afraid, i guess,” you whisper.

satoru lets your admission flower in the silence a moment before he smiles, tiny and wry. “afraid of me?”

“yes,” you breathe. the white gleam of his hair bounces in the lamplight. “because everything is different.” you feel the steeled tension melt a little; you want to be honest with him, more than anything. “it feels a little bit like you’ve spoiled everything.”

satoru nods a little again, sober. “maybe i have.”

and your next confession will sound to satoru like a promise, you know it will, but it finds its way out anyway: “i can’t deny you him now, can i?”

“not without being terrible.”

you laugh something watery and real. “yeah, i guess not.” 

a silence consumes you both again, but it’s no longer hostile, the both of you too exhaustedly malleable  for anything more charged now. 

in the soft sounds of your apartment you are given the space to notice that you have an urge to ask about satoru’s life now. you don’t think you are capable of philosophizing more on your choices and the unyielding consequences tonight, and he’s seen now—at the cost, maybe, of your sanity—what your life has been in your six years away. and you suspect it may hurt you somehow to know more concretely how he’s lived in your absence, but the day has been long. you are tired. you allow yourself this luxury.

“you said you…adopted two kids? is that right?”

“i—yeah,” satoru says, surprised in a gentle sort of way, “they were collateral from a mission that summer.”

you soften even further at the thought of satoru growing into guardianship at the same time you did. something catches in your lungs. “how old are they now?”

satoru smiles at the thought of them. “the little one, megumi—a pain, honestly, and so mean to me—will be ten this year. tsumiki is three years older. i sometimes forget it, though. she acts so much like a little adult,” he laughs softly.

“i’d like to meet them,” you admit.

“i want you to, too,” satoru says, almost too fondly. you preen a little in it anyway.

“do they live on campus with you?”

“no, no. i tried that at the beginning but it felt…i don’t know, inappropriate? i got an apartment as close by as i could, and i stay there as often as i can.”

you hum. “you seem…” you have to look for the right words, “suited to this.”

“are you surprised?” he scoffs, not unkindly.

“i don’t know, i guess so,” you admit with a grin. a little teasing. a time capsule.

“i’m very mature now,” satoru says back.

and because the only secret you could ever keep from satoru was ruined this afternoon, you confess: “the you i have in my head has been from when you were 18. all this time has passed and—” you tilt your head back and forth slightly, “—and you haven’t aged in my mind at all. not until today, all at once.”

satoru’s eyes on you warm your cheeks and you can’t bring yourself to feel embarrassed, not really for anything. “and?”

you narrow your eyes. “and what?”

“am i still as wonderful all grown up?”

the laugh that comes from you is real. “that’s yet to be determined, actually.”

“smart girl,” he says, you hope without thinking. the quiet asserts itself again.

all these years later, you find yourself still intimately familiar with the choices satoru makes in your company. when he moves, and how: all of it has been in his own image, a predictable force. you have never flinched when he has reached for you, in part because you are unafraid, but also because you have always seemed to know when he wanted to move his hands.

but you are rendered entirely still as you realize—your mind is a moment behind you—that satoru is holding you, now. 

his arms are so warm you almost want to tear them from your body. instead—fool and terminally lovesick that you are—you press your forehead to the cradle of his neck and breathe the scent of him in. nothing has been settled tonight, not really, but neither of you move to acknowledge it, lest this sacrosanct handful of seconds be broken. you merely allow the bruising grip of his elbows around your biceps, the claw of your fingers around his sides, to hold.

tomorrow teases you from below the skyline. it’s only beginning to darken to evening but still you are confronted with the passing of time, with the reality of today. 

though you remember, here in his grasp, one of the things you used to love so much about pressing up against a supernova like satoru; all other light fades, and the darkness, too, is gobbled up. time stops for a moment, you think, a withholding of breath as the sun stalls in its burial below the city. you allow yourself to forget temporarily about the fact that you have no idea what to do, of how to continue living on top of the remains of this life you crafted so carefully, and push your nose further into satoru’s shoulder.  he whispers into your hair, so quiet you wonder if it isn’t meant for you: “i missed you.”

~~~~~~~

a/n: i feel SO eternally grateful as the taglist for this series continues to grow. i can't tell you all how much it means to me that you keep reading. i adore you <3 also, if you're interested in having a say on my chapter length in the future, vote in the poll i posted on sunday hehe. as always, let me know if you want to be added to the taglist!

taglist: @emochosoluvr @por0u @vraiao @voidfulcrumdilemma @vaniyeiszero @missingnozw @crowroakchi @seikamuzu @anonymous-3846 @asahinasstuff @kunisnaomi @bl6o6dy @meanderingwistera @lilac-heartz @acowboykisser @miiikooooooo @missingnozw @heiranni @sadmonke @alicebleu @sanchann @splinx04real @lolllllllllllllliiiiiii @eggrollforyou @updated-version @yaurss @khaleesihavilliard @mizzowizzo @mierins @eolivy @spencerreidisagorgman @dahliadaenerys @cantchooseanctbias @fallenfromgrxce @theclassbookworm @liestel @jiasdream @maddy24207 @valoriya @19catspiledontopofeachother @hbhbhbhbhby @bijuu-naginata @jv5t4g1rl @bobagang @thraxpatty @muscovitechick

[hellowoolf]

if i wrote a long gojo x fem!reader one shot that had the following components would anyone want to be tagged :3

- set in 1930s, mainly in nyc, but still sorcerers

- geto didn’t defect because i say so

- everyone speaks the same language (also because i say so)

- smut…>:)

teehee let me know

[hellowoolf]

something, somehow, someday

chapter 3: sun stall | prev | next | series masterlist

series summary: you know you will love satoru for the rest of your life, but when you wake with his cursed energy in your navel there is no option but to flee. what future is there for a child of a god? at 18 satoru is without you, and you make off with a piece of him you hoped he'd never meet.

pairing: secret baby daddy!gojo x reader

tags: secret child trope, angst (lots), eventual fluff, eventual smut, hurt/comfort, a lot of yearning :P

a/n: i have a poll up on chapter length so if you have an opinion please vote! it's been tied up almost the whole way, and the poll will end around sunday. also, as always, feel free to send asks about context/content, i know i can be...sparse sometimes >:) i love you all

18+! minors dni <3

~~~~~~~

SATORU, for his part, never resented you for leaving. he missed you almost masochistically: he dreamt of you on purpose, refused outright to forget, dragged your memory behind him, the whole comatose body of it. but soon after your leaving he failed so spectacularly at protecting amanai, and suguru defected not long after. he lost that year in totality to his own failure, to a boundless and indiscriminate wash of waste and desecration. it was everywhere. and so covered in it as he was, it was impossible to discern the particulars; your disappearance was a limb to a much larger, beastly thing. 

for a time he hated himself for losing two of the most important people in his life, though even that he had to abandon for megumi and tsumiki’s sake. by the time he had enough clarity to truly wonder why you left, he had the sense to recognize that returning to 2006 could do him no good. so no, there has been no hatred—in fact, he doesn’t think he could ever hate you—only a quiet wanting, the remainder of the ways he once loved you, and your koi fish in the stream. 

he hasn’t spent much time in this part of tokyo. shoko seems to have crested her temporary calm and dissolved again into a tremor satoru pretends not to see. she scans the neighborhood with fear and appetite in equal measure and he finds himself doing the same. she stops suddenly, remembering something.

“you should take off your blindfold.”

his brows pinch together. “ha?” it doesn’t come out cruel so much as confused.

shoko makes an expectant face: you are at my mercy. satoru continues walking as he slips a finger behind the fabric and pulls it off. “you know, it’s cruel to string me along in the dark like this. just because you know something i don’t doesn’t mean you can prey on me,” he mutters.

shoko scoffs. “you think i’m enjoying this?”

“yeah, actually, i think you are at least a little bit,” he bites.

“gojo, i have scanned medical records, cctv footage, eye witness accounts—god i got teachers at the kyoto school involved for this—”

a small grin slides over satoru’s face. “utahime?”

shoko’s annoyance persists. “i’ve put years into doing this for you and you can’t offer me the courtesy of trusting me? this one time? after i’ve done something so monumental on your behalf? jesus, gojo, you really are—”

something behind satoru’s ribs turns over once, twice, snaps open. there are teeth in his sternum. he feels it all before he sees it, the tug to square his shoulders towards something, the echo of the person he used to be bellowing something inside of him, but he can’t make any of it out. he sees his eyes first, they’re his eyes, looking over your shoulder. they look frightened; he’s never seen his own eyes so afraid before.

there are a few things satoru knows immediately and a few others that are slower on the uptake. that is his child—this point is undeniable, though there isn’t much internalization that can happen right at this moment—and you are his mother. he would know you anywhere, he would know you in the dark, he would know you senseless, and he certainly knows you like this, eyes wide open and ten yards away. your back is turned and satoru also knows, right then, that you cannot sense him yet.

the kid does, though. he looks like a ghost, embraced in your arms, an eerie reconstruction of himself at that age. satoru wonders now if everyone found him as incandescently striking looking as he now finds this child, or whether it’s because it’s his. his child. there are no words or musings in him, only this feeling, the bite of wonderment and love and hurt. the latter, he thinks, wins out on his face.

the child whispers something in your ear and your back straightens. you shake your head a little, and the movement lets satoru see the side of your face for a brief and monumental second. god, you are just as terribly lovely as the day you left. there are more whispers between you and you stand, slowly, and satoru sees that you are now terrified, too. you come all the way up before you turn.

there is only a deep breath’s worth of time spent like this: satoru, frozen on the sidewalk and as helpless as he’s ever been, you, eyes wide, refusing to panic but nonetheless knowing that everything has changed, and your baby, the siphoning of each of you, stepped now in front of your legs. and that’s the worst part, satoru thinks. yes, it may be the most awful thing to have ever happened to him that this child worries satoru may hurt you. shoko and the neighborhood fade, blurred on the periphery of this little massacre shared among the three of you.

satoru moves first. a step towards you, and then another. you don’t make to protect your son, he knows you know that you don’t have to, but the boy clings to your knee behind him, so furious somehow and so petrified, and most of all determined to keep you safe. for one of the first times in his life satoru is glad for his six eyes; he can look at you both at once.

when he arrives at the altar of your feet satoru squats to his son’s level. it occurs to him only then that he must recognize satoru as his father; if he knows at all what his own face looks like then it would be impossible to miss it. 

the belated circumstances arrive in satoru’s head; this child has cursed energy, he has a cursed technique, he’s using it right now. satoru extends a hand towards the boy slowly, pauses each time he flinches, until suddenly his palm just…stops. whatever was left holding him upright leaks out his ears now as satoru sinks all the way to his knees.

your voice, against all odds, is even. “it’s okay, takara.” takara. he slumps a little as he relaxes, but keeps a chubby arm barring your legs from moving forward. you drop to the ground anyway, tears streaming down your face, and they look like they burn.

“say something,” you plead quietly.

satoru wrenches your name from his mouth like a death rattle. “what can i say? what do you want me to say?”

you shake your head, “i don’t know, i—i’m sorry. i can’t—you were never meant to meet him.”

“and what? you were just gonna keep him from me forever?”

you almost look confused as to how he couldn’t understand. “of course i was. he is your son, satoru. if people knew they would take him,” your voice raises only a fraction, “nobody could protect him from the onslaught of people who would use him to hurt you,” your words sound like sobs, they are heartbreaking, but you continue, “it was all i could do to protect you both.”

“and what about you? what about your protection? i could have been there for you and for him—”

“satoru, stop.”

“no, be serious with me. be honest with me. don’t you owe me that?” he’s almost manic now, so angry and so devastated and it bares itself in his voice, “how could you have decided without me?”

satoru wonders if you’d be yelling at him if takara wasn’t between you, but as it is you keep two hands on your volume. “i was practically a child! and so were you! i did what i thought was best. i did it for you. how could you ever be a father? i couldn’t burden you with that responsibility, there was too much on you already!”

satoru shakes with a terrible laughter. “and yet i ended up halfway to parenthood anyway!” he exclaims.

you suck in a breath. “what does that mean?”

where does he even begin? he tries his best to keep himself human but god how could you rob him of this? “i took in two zenin kids around when suguru defected.”

this information only slows you down for a moment before your face twists again. you had heard about suguru’s defection; yaga left you a voicemail, worried he’d seek you out. it’s one of the only times you had to well and fully restrain yourself from reaching out to satoru, who had loved geto voraciously, you think. you cast the thought aside and say again, slower, “i felt like i had no options. no way out but…away. i knew what you’d do if i told you.” 

and this is by far the most devastating thing you’d said to him so far. to acknowledge how deeply he cared for you seared you both, each of you shuddering with the memory. satoru practically whispers, “i can’t believe you took this from me…took him from me.”

the words rush out of your lips faster now. “i never wanted to hurt you, not ever, and that’s why i left. i stand by that choice.” you poke your pointer finger into his chest and he lets you. “he’s gotten to live free from us.” 

satoru grabs your wrist and keeps it close, firm but gentle, still. even feeling so betrayed by a version of you gone by he seeks your touch for comfort: his fingers wrap around to your pulse to feel you living. neither of you think much about how physically familiar you remain to one another. “he has my technique.” 

you both look at takara now, the first time since you began arguing. he looks even smaller up close, satoru thinks. his hands are wrung behind his back and his toes point in but he does not look at all confused. it’s clear to the both of you that he’s understood every word, or at least the meaning, and his eyes well with the knowing but he refuses to loosen. he stands stiff as satoru tilts his head and holds his hand out, releasing your wrist.

“my name is satoru.”

~~~~~~~

YOU cannot, try as you might, reconcile satoru gojo in your living room. takara points out his various toys at your request, and satoru watches him intently, nods when takara glances up at him. shoko had slipped quietly away watching the tableau of the three of you at the park, and against your better judgment you had let satoru through your front door; the two of them are blinding, beaming in each others company despite takara’s trepidation and satoru’s lingering hurt. they kneel together on the floor while you watch from the couch, witness now to a sacred moment, trying not to move.

you’re only mildly alarmed that you still know satoru’s posture enough to know he is trying to consume as much of takara’s presence as he possibly can. he’s hunched the way he is when he eats, ingesting the sight of his son who he’s known less than an hour. and you have so much left to say to him but you are not so cruel as to rip from him this time, too.

takara is sharp, too. in between turning his wooden trains upside down and sideways in this strange, stilted performance, he asks satoru enough questions to make a running catalogue in his mind: where do you live? do you have a job? do you have parents? how long did it take to get here? and satoru’s smile, already fond, nearly takes you to an early grave.

at least, you think to yourself, you can at last put to bed your questioning: you are still in love with satoru. watching them acclimate to each other's company, for the first time in a long time, you remember what it is you gave up for takara’s sake. in taking takara from satoru you forsake him, yes, but you denied yourself these moments, too. and part of you dreads the conversations with gojo that are sure to follow, but the rest opens itself to the warmth of the two of them, splayed unceremoniously across your carpet.

still, you meant what you said before; you don’t regret your decisions. the world of jujutsu asks for takara now, and you find a small comfort in the fact that he knows, to some degree, what he would lose if he took up the post of his lineage. 

takara’s eyes are sleepy as you glance at him now.

“bubba why don’t you say goodnight to satoru and i’ll come help you wash up in a few minutes?” 

takara hesitates. “will i see him again?”

you refuse to look at gojo when he asks. “yes,” you assure him, “i promise you will.” you mean it in a way takara can feel. he drags himself away and down the hall, leaving you alone with…what would you call your relationship now?

satoru takes his time situating himself on the couch next to you. how strange it is to see him again, to be thrust into such devastating conflict, to miss him so strongly at an arm’s length. he’s more stunning than you’ve ever seen him, blindfold still off and unfurled on your coffee table.

“he’s amazing,” he breathes. 

you can’t help the small smile that makes its way onto your face. “yeah, i know.”

satoru chews a moment on his question before he asks it. “did he ever ask about me?”

you deflate a little. “don’t do that.”

“don’t do what? don’t ask? don’t i deserve to know about my son?” his hands gesticulate ahead of him. you suppose the both of you are as angry at the other as you were earlier today, which is to say not very much, you think. mostly he is hurt—he cannot hide this from you—and you, somehow, are wounded, too, and you’re both floundering watching the other lick their blood dry. satoru continues, “don’t i deserve to know whether my son needed his father?”

“needed you? i assure you, satoru, i have been more than enough for him. i’ve given up the rest of my life in service of—”

“—that’s not what i meant—”

“isn’t it?” his eyes flit across your face, he’s looking for something and you’re unsure whether he’ll find it. “aren’t you asking me how often i’ve left a gap big enough for him to miss a man he never met? how often i failed?”

“no! i—no,” gojo reaches for you on instinct but leaves his palms hovering an inch from your forearms. “it’s obvious you’ve done an amazing job with him, especially given the circumstances, but—”

“and what circumstances would those be, exactly?” you ask with no small amount of cruelty. the funny thing is, you know exactly to which realities he is referring—your financial and familial solitude—but still it stings to feel questioned by this heir to a very real monetary fortune, beyond the immense power already bequeathed to him. “i may have wanted for things, gojo, but takara never has.”

bluer than anything human, satoru’s eyes look devastated, taken by gravity down his face. “don’t call me that.”

you purse your lips. “i just…” something vicious and sharp dissipates into the air, the both of you taking a breath, softly. “i’ve worked so hard to be proud of the way i have parented him.” satoru nods you on. “it’s not that i don’t want you in his life, i mean—i don’t think there was ever a moment when i didn’t want that at least a little bit. i can’t tell you how many times i wanted you to be there. but i feel…” you reach for him this time, resting a palm lightly on the back of his hand. “a little afraid, i guess,” you whisper.

satoru lets your admission flower in the silence a moment before he smiles, tiny and wry. “afraid of me?”

“yes,” you breathe. the white gleam of his hair bounces in the lamplight. “because everything is different.” you feel the steeled tension melt a little; you want to be honest with him, more than anything. “it feels a little bit like you’ve spoiled everything.”

satoru nods a little again, sober. “maybe i have.”

and your next confession will sound to satoru like a promise, you know it will, but it finds its way out anyway: “i can’t deny you him now, can i?”

“not without being terrible.”

you laugh something watery and real. “yeah, i guess not.” 

a silence consumes you both again, but it’s no longer hostile, the both of you too exhaustedly malleable  for anything more charged now. 

in the soft sounds of your apartment you are given the space to notice that you have an urge to ask about satoru’s life now. you don’t think you are capable of philosophizing more on your choices and the unyielding consequences tonight, and he’s seen now—at the cost, maybe, of your sanity—what your life has been in your six years away. and you suspect it may hurt you somehow to know more concretely how he’s lived in your absence, but the day has been long. you are tired. you allow yourself this luxury.

“you said you…adopted two kids? is that right?”

“i—yeah,” satoru says, surprised in a gentle sort of way, “they were collateral from a mission that summer.”

you soften even further at the thought of satoru growing into guardianship at the same time you did. something catches in your lungs. “how old are they now?”

satoru smiles at the thought of them. “the little one, megumi—a pain, honestly, and so mean to me—will be ten this year. tsumiki is three years older. i sometimes forget it, though. she acts so much like a little adult,” he laughs softly.

“i’d like to meet them,” you admit.

“i want you to, too,” satoru says, almost too fondly. you preen a little in it anyway.

“do they live on campus with you?”

“no, no. i tried that at the beginning but it felt…i don’t know, inappropriate? i got an apartment as close by as i could, and i stay there as often as i can.”

you hum. “you seem…” you have to look for the right words, “suited to this.”

“are you surprised?” he scoffs, not unkindly.

“i don’t know, i guess so,” you admit with a grin. a little teasing. a time capsule.

“i’m very mature now,” satoru says back.

and because the only secret you could ever keep from satoru was ruined this afternoon, you confess: “the you i have in my head has been from when you were 18. all this time has passed and—” you tilt your head back and forth slightly, “—and you haven’t aged in my mind at all. not until today, all at once.”

satoru’s eyes on you warm your cheeks and you can’t bring yourself to feel embarrassed, not really for anything. “and?”

you narrow your eyes. “and what?”

“am i still as wonderful all grown up?”

the laugh that comes from you is real. “that’s yet to be determined, actually.”

“smart girl,” he says, you hope without thinking. the quiet asserts itself again.

all these years later, you find yourself still intimately familiar with the choices satoru makes in your company. when he moves, and how: all of it has been in his own image, a predictable force. you have never flinched when he has reached for you, in part because you are unafraid, but also because you have always seemed to know when he wanted to move his hands.

but you are rendered entirely still as you realize—your mind is a moment behind you—that satoru is holding you, now. 

his arms are so warm you almost want to tear them from your body. instead—fool and terminally lovesick that you are—you press your forehead to the cradle of his neck and breathe the scent of him in. nothing has been settled tonight, not really, but neither of you move to acknowledge it, lest this sacrosanct handful of seconds be broken. you merely allow the bruising grip of his elbows around your biceps, the claw of your fingers around his sides, to hold.

tomorrow teases you from below the skyline. it’s only beginning to darken to evening but still you are confronted with the passing of time, with the reality of today. 

though you remember, here in his grasp, one of the things you used to love so much about pressing up against a supernova like satoru; all other light fades, and the darkness, too, is gobbled up. time stops for a moment, you think, a withholding of breath as the sun stalls in its burial below the city. you allow yourself to forget temporarily about the fact that you have no idea what to do, of how to continue living on top of the remains of this life you crafted so carefully, and push your nose further into satoru’s shoulder.  he whispers into your hair, so quiet you wonder if it isn’t meant for you: “i missed you.”

~~~~~~~

a/n: i feel SO eternally grateful as the taglist for this series continues to grow. i can't tell you all how much it means to me that you keep reading. i adore you <3 also, if you're interested in having a say on my chapter length in the future, vote in the poll i posted on sunday hehe. as always, let me know if you want to be added to the taglist!

taglist: @emochosoluvr @por0u @vraiao @voidfulcrumdilemma @vaniyeiszero @missingnozw @crowroakchi @seikamuzu @anonymous-3846 @asahinasstuff @kunisnaomi @bl6o6dy @meanderingwistera @lilac-heartz @acowboykisser @miiikooooooo @missingnozw @heiranni @sadmonke @alicebleu @sanchann @splinx04real @lolllllllllllllliiiiiii @eggrollforyou @updated-version @yaurss @khaleesihavilliard @mizzowizzo @mierins @eolivy @spencerreidisagorgman @dahliadaenerys @cantchooseanctbias @fallenfromgrxce @theclassbookworm @liestel @jiasdream @maddy24207 @valoriya @19catspiledontopofeachother @hbhbhbhbhby @bijuu-naginata @jv5t4g1rl @bobagang @thraxpatty @muscovitechick

[hellowoolf]

something, somehow, someday

chapter 3: sun stall | prev | next | series masterlist

series summary: you know you will love satoru for the rest of your life, but when you wake with his cursed energy in your navel there is no option but to flee. what future is there for a child of a god? at 18 satoru is without you, and you make off with a piece of him you hoped he'd never meet.

pairing: secret baby daddy!gojo x reader

tags: secret child trope, angst (lots), eventual fluff, eventual smut, hurt/comfort, a lot of yearning :P

a/n: i have a poll up on chapter length so if you have an opinion please vote! it's been tied up almost the whole way, and the poll will end around sunday. also, as always, feel free to send asks about context/content, i know i can be...sparse sometimes >:) i love you all

18+! minors dni <3

~~~~~~~

SATORU, for his part, never resented you for leaving. he missed you almost masochistically: he dreamt of you on purpose, refused outright to forget, dragged your memory behind him, the whole comatose body of it. but soon after your leaving he failed so spectacularly at protecting amanai, and suguru defected not long after. he lost that year in totality to his own failure, to a boundless and indiscriminate wash of waste and desecration. it was everywhere. and so covered in it as he was, it was impossible to discern the particulars; your disappearance was a limb to a much larger, beastly thing. 

for a time he hated himself for losing two of the most important people in his life, though even that he had to abandon for megumi and tsumiki’s sake. by the time he had enough clarity to truly wonder why you left, he had the sense to recognize that returning to 2006 could do him no good. so no, there has been no hatred—in fact, he doesn’t think he could ever hate you—only a quiet wanting, the remainder of the ways he once loved you, and your koi fish in the stream. 

he hasn’t spent much time in this part of tokyo. shoko seems to have crested her temporary calm and dissolved again into a tremor satoru pretends not to see. she scans the neighborhood with fear and appetite in equal measure and he finds himself doing the same. she stops suddenly, remembering something.

“you should take off your blindfold.”

his brows pinch together. “ha?” it doesn’t come out cruel so much as confused.

shoko makes an expectant face: you are at my mercy. satoru continues walking as he slips a finger behind the fabric and pulls it off. “you know, it’s cruel to string me along in the dark like this. just because you know something i don’t doesn’t mean you can prey on me,” he mutters.

shoko scoffs. “you think i’m enjoying this?”

“yeah, actually, i think you are at least a little bit,” he bites.

“gojo, i have scanned medical records, cctv footage, eye witness accounts—god i got teachers at the kyoto school involved for this—”

a small grin slides over satoru’s face. “utahime?”

shoko’s annoyance persists. “i’ve put years into doing this for you and you can’t offer me the courtesy of trusting me? this one time? after i’ve done something so monumental on your behalf? jesus, gojo, you really are—”

something behind satoru’s ribs turns over once, twice, snaps open. there are teeth in his sternum. he feels it all before he sees it, the tug to square his shoulders towards something, the echo of the person he used to be bellowing something inside of him, but he can’t make any of it out. he sees his eyes first, they’re his eyes, looking over your shoulder. they look frightened; he’s never seen his own eyes so afraid before.

there are a few things satoru knows immediately and a few others that are slower on the uptake. that is his child—this point is undeniable, though there isn’t much internalization that can happen right at this moment—and you are his mother. he would know you anywhere, he would know you in the dark, he would know you senseless, and he certainly knows you like this, eyes wide open and ten yards away. your back is turned and satoru also knows, right then, that you cannot sense him yet.

the kid does, though. he looks like a ghost, embraced in your arms, an eerie reconstruction of himself at that age. satoru wonders now if everyone found him as incandescently striking looking as he now finds this child, or whether it’s because it’s his. his child. there are no words or musings in him, only this feeling, the bite of wonderment and love and hurt. the latter, he thinks, wins out on his face.

the child whispers something in your ear and your back straightens. you shake your head a little, and the movement lets satoru see the side of your face for a brief and monumental second. god, you are just as terribly lovely as the day you left. there are more whispers between you and you stand, slowly, and satoru sees that you are now terrified, too. you come all the way up before you turn.

there is only a deep breath’s worth of time spent like this: satoru, frozen on the sidewalk and as helpless as he’s ever been, you, eyes wide, refusing to panic but nonetheless knowing that everything has changed, and your baby, the siphoning of each of you, stepped now in front of your legs. and that’s the worst part, satoru thinks. yes, it may be the most awful thing to have ever happened to him that this child worries satoru may hurt you. shoko and the neighborhood fade, blurred on the periphery of this little massacre shared among the three of you.

satoru moves first. a step towards you, and then another. you don’t make to protect your son, he knows you know that you don’t have to, but the boy clings to your knee behind him, so furious somehow and so petrified, and most of all determined to keep you safe. for one of the first times in his life satoru is glad for his six eyes; he can look at you both at once.

when he arrives at the altar of your feet satoru squats to his son’s level. it occurs to him only then that he must recognize satoru as his father; if he knows at all what his own face looks like then it would be impossible to miss it. 

the belated circumstances arrive in satoru’s head; this child has cursed energy, he has a cursed technique, he’s using it right now. satoru extends a hand towards the boy slowly, pauses each time he flinches, until suddenly his palm just…stops. whatever was left holding him upright leaks out his ears now as satoru sinks all the way to his knees.

your voice, against all odds, is even. “it’s okay, takara.” takara. he slumps a little as he relaxes, but keeps a chubby arm barring your legs from moving forward. you drop to the ground anyway, tears streaming down your face, and they look like they burn.

“say something,” you plead quietly.

satoru wrenches your name from his mouth like a death rattle. “what can i say? what do you want me to say?”

you shake your head, “i don’t know, i—i’m sorry. i can’t—you were never meant to meet him.”

“and what? you were just gonna keep him from me forever?”

you almost look confused as to how he couldn’t understand. “of course i was. he is your son, satoru. if people knew they would take him,” your voice raises only a fraction, “nobody could protect him from the onslaught of people who would use him to hurt you,” your words sound like sobs, they are heartbreaking, but you continue, “it was all i could do to protect you both.”

“and what about you? what about your protection? i could have been there for you and for him—”

“satoru, stop.”

“no, be serious with me. be honest with me. don’t you owe me that?” he’s almost manic now, so angry and so devastated and it bares itself in his voice, “how could you have decided without me?”

satoru wonders if you’d be yelling at him if takara wasn’t between you, but as it is you keep two hands on your volume. “i was practically a child! and so were you! i did what i thought was best. i did it for you. how could you ever be a father? i couldn’t burden you with that responsibility, there was too much on you already!”

satoru shakes with a terrible laughter. “and yet i ended up halfway to parenthood anyway!” he exclaims.

you suck in a breath. “what does that mean?”

where does he even begin? he tries his best to keep himself human but god how could you rob him of this? “i took in two zenin kids around when suguru defected.”

this information only slows you down for a moment before your face twists again. you had heard about suguru’s defection; yaga left you a voicemail, worried he’d seek you out. it’s one of the only times you had to well and fully restrain yourself from reaching out to satoru, who had loved geto voraciously, you think. you cast the thought aside and say again, slower, “i felt like i had no options. no way out but…away. i knew what you’d do if i told you.” 

and this is by far the most devastating thing you’d said to him so far. to acknowledge how deeply he cared for you seared you both, each of you shuddering with the memory. satoru practically whispers, “i can’t believe you took this from me…took him from me.”

the words rush out of your lips faster now. “i never wanted to hurt you, not ever, and that’s why i left. i stand by that choice.” you poke your pointer finger into his chest and he lets you. “he’s gotten to live free from us.” 

satoru grabs your wrist and keeps it close, firm but gentle, still. even feeling so betrayed by a version of you gone by he seeks your touch for comfort: his fingers wrap around to your pulse to feel you living. neither of you think much about how physically familiar you remain to one another. “he has my technique.” 

you both look at takara now, the first time since you began arguing. he looks even smaller up close, satoru thinks. his hands are wrung behind his back and his toes point in but he does not look at all confused. it’s clear to the both of you that he’s understood every word, or at least the meaning, and his eyes well with the knowing but he refuses to loosen. he stands stiff as satoru tilts his head and holds his hand out, releasing your wrist.

“my name is satoru.”

~~~~~~~

YOU cannot, try as you might, reconcile satoru gojo in your living room. takara points out his various toys at your request, and satoru watches him intently, nods when takara glances up at him. shoko had slipped quietly away watching the tableau of the three of you at the park, and against your better judgment you had let satoru through your front door; the two of them are blinding, beaming in each others company despite takara’s trepidation and satoru’s lingering hurt. they kneel together on the floor while you watch from the couch, witness now to a sacred moment, trying not to move.

you’re only mildly alarmed that you still know satoru’s posture enough to know he is trying to consume as much of takara’s presence as he possibly can. he’s hunched the way he is when he eats, ingesting the sight of his son who he’s known less than an hour. and you have so much left to say to him but you are not so cruel as to rip from him this time, too.

takara is sharp, too. in between turning his wooden trains upside down and sideways in this strange, stilted performance, he asks satoru enough questions to make a running catalogue in his mind: where do you live? do you have a job? do you have parents? how long did it take to get here? and satoru’s smile, already fond, nearly takes you to an early grave.

at least, you think to yourself, you can at last put to bed your questioning: you are still in love with satoru. watching them acclimate to each other's company, for the first time in a long time, you remember what it is you gave up for takara’s sake. in taking takara from satoru you forsake him, yes, but you denied yourself these moments, too. and part of you dreads the conversations with gojo that are sure to follow, but the rest opens itself to the warmth of the two of them, splayed unceremoniously across your carpet.

still, you meant what you said before; you don’t regret your decisions. the world of jujutsu asks for takara now, and you find a small comfort in the fact that he knows, to some degree, what he would lose if he took up the post of his lineage. 

takara’s eyes are sleepy as you glance at him now.

“bubba why don’t you say goodnight to satoru and i’ll come help you wash up in a few minutes?” 

takara hesitates. “will i see him again?”

you refuse to look at gojo when he asks. “yes,” you assure him, “i promise you will.” you mean it in a way takara can feel. he drags himself away and down the hall, leaving you alone with…what would you call your relationship now?

satoru takes his time situating himself on the couch next to you. how strange it is to see him again, to be thrust into such devastating conflict, to miss him so strongly at an arm’s length. he’s more stunning than you’ve ever seen him, blindfold still off and unfurled on your coffee table.

“he’s amazing,” he breathes. 

you can’t help the small smile that makes its way onto your face. “yeah, i know.”

satoru chews a moment on his question before he asks it. “did he ever ask about me?”

you deflate a little. “don’t do that.”

“don’t do what? don’t ask? don’t i deserve to know about my son?” his hands gesticulate ahead of him. you suppose the both of you are as angry at the other as you were earlier today, which is to say not very much, you think. mostly he is hurt—he cannot hide this from you—and you, somehow, are wounded, too, and you’re both floundering watching the other lick their blood dry. satoru continues, “don’t i deserve to know whether my son needed his father?”

“needed you? i assure you, satoru, i have been more than enough for him. i’ve given up the rest of my life in service of—”

“—that’s not what i meant—”

“isn’t it?” his eyes flit across your face, he’s looking for something and you’re unsure whether he’ll find it. “aren’t you asking me how often i’ve left a gap big enough for him to miss a man he never met? how often i failed?”

“no! i—no,” gojo reaches for you on instinct but leaves his palms hovering an inch from your forearms. “it’s obvious you’ve done an amazing job with him, especially given the circumstances, but—”

“and what circumstances would those be, exactly?” you ask with no small amount of cruelty. the funny thing is, you know exactly to which realities he is referring—your financial and familial solitude—but still it stings to feel questioned by this heir to a very real monetary fortune, beyond the immense power already bequeathed to him. “i may have wanted for things, gojo, but takara never has.”

bluer than anything human, satoru’s eyes look devastated, taken by gravity down his face. “don’t call me that.”

you purse your lips. “i just…” something vicious and sharp dissipates into the air, the both of you taking a breath, softly. “i’ve worked so hard to be proud of the way i have parented him.” satoru nods you on. “it’s not that i don’t want you in his life, i mean—i don’t think there was ever a moment when i didn’t want that at least a little bit. i can’t tell you how many times i wanted you to be there. but i feel…” you reach for him this time, resting a palm lightly on the back of his hand. “a little afraid, i guess,” you whisper.

satoru lets your admission flower in the silence a moment before he smiles, tiny and wry. “afraid of me?”

“yes,” you breathe. the white gleam of his hair bounces in the lamplight. “because everything is different.” you feel the steeled tension melt a little; you want to be honest with him, more than anything. “it feels a little bit like you’ve spoiled everything.”

satoru nods a little again, sober. “maybe i have.”

and your next confession will sound to satoru like a promise, you know it will, but it finds its way out anyway: “i can’t deny you him now, can i?”

“not without being terrible.”

you laugh something watery and real. “yeah, i guess not.” 

a silence consumes you both again, but it’s no longer hostile, the both of you too exhaustedly malleable  for anything more charged now. 

in the soft sounds of your apartment you are given the space to notice that you have an urge to ask about satoru’s life now. you don’t think you are capable of philosophizing more on your choices and the unyielding consequences tonight, and he’s seen now—at the cost, maybe, of your sanity—what your life has been in your six years away. and you suspect it may hurt you somehow to know more concretely how he’s lived in your absence, but the day has been long. you are tired. you allow yourself this luxury.

“you said you…adopted two kids? is that right?”

“i—yeah,” satoru says, surprised in a gentle sort of way, “they were collateral from a mission that summer.”

you soften even further at the thought of satoru growing into guardianship at the same time you did. something catches in your lungs. “how old are they now?”

satoru smiles at the thought of them. “the little one, megumi—a pain, honestly, and so mean to me—will be ten this year. tsumiki is three years older. i sometimes forget it, though. she acts so much like a little adult,” he laughs softly.

“i’d like to meet them,” you admit.

“i want you to, too,” satoru says, almost too fondly. you preen a little in it anyway.

“do they live on campus with you?”

“no, no. i tried that at the beginning but it felt…i don’t know, inappropriate? i got an apartment as close by as i could, and i stay there as often as i can.”

you hum. “you seem…” you have to look for the right words, “suited to this.”

“are you surprised?” he scoffs, not unkindly.

“i don’t know, i guess so,” you admit with a grin. a little teasing. a time capsule.

“i’m very mature now,” satoru says back.

and because the only secret you could ever keep from satoru was ruined this afternoon, you confess: “the you i have in my head has been from when you were 18. all this time has passed and—” you tilt your head back and forth slightly, “—and you haven’t aged in my mind at all. not until today, all at once.”

satoru’s eyes on you warm your cheeks and you can’t bring yourself to feel embarrassed, not really for anything. “and?”

you narrow your eyes. “and what?”

“am i still as wonderful all grown up?”

the laugh that comes from you is real. “that’s yet to be determined, actually.”

“smart girl,” he says, you hope without thinking. the quiet asserts itself again.

all these years later, you find yourself still intimately familiar with the choices satoru makes in your company. when he moves, and how: all of it has been in his own image, a predictable force. you have never flinched when he has reached for you, in part because you are unafraid, but also because you have always seemed to know when he wanted to move his hands.

but you are rendered entirely still as you realize—your mind is a moment behind you—that satoru is holding you, now. 

his arms are so warm you almost want to tear them from your body. instead—fool and terminally lovesick that you are—you press your forehead to the cradle of his neck and breathe the scent of him in. nothing has been settled tonight, not really, but neither of you move to acknowledge it, lest this sacrosanct handful of seconds be broken. you merely allow the bruising grip of his elbows around your biceps, the claw of your fingers around his sides, to hold.

tomorrow teases you from below the skyline. it’s only beginning to darken to evening but still you are confronted with the passing of time, with the reality of today. 

though you remember, here in his grasp, one of the things you used to love so much about pressing up against a supernova like satoru; all other light fades, and the darkness, too, is gobbled up. time stops for a moment, you think, a withholding of breath as the sun stalls in its burial below the city. you allow yourself to forget temporarily about the fact that you have no idea what to do, of how to continue living on top of the remains of this life you crafted so carefully, and push your nose further into satoru’s shoulder.  he whispers into your hair, so quiet you wonder if it isn’t meant for you: “i missed you.”

~~~~~~~

a/n: i feel SO eternally grateful as the taglist for this series continues to grow. i can't tell you all how much it means to me that you keep reading. i adore you <3 also, if you're interested in having a say on my chapter length in the future, vote in the poll i posted on sunday hehe. as always, let me know if you want to be added to the taglist!

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[hellowoolf]

it’s a tie right now </3 if you have an opinion please vote so i can decide tehehe

quick question for my lovely something, somehow, someday readers: i have a tendency to break my stories into short chapters released close together (a few days), would you prefer i keep doing that or make them longer and release them further apart (more like a week between chapters)?

please let me know :3<33

[hellowoolf]

quick question for my lovely something, somehow, someday readers: i have a tendency to break my stories into short chapters released close together (a few days), would you prefer i keep doing that or make them longer and release them further apart (more like a week between chapters)?

please let me know :3<33

[hellowoolf]

something, somehow, someday

chapter 2: near miss | prev | next | series masterlist

series summary: you know you will love satoru for the rest of your life, but when you wake with his cursed energy in your navel there is no option but to flee. what future is there for a child of a god? at 18 satoru is without you, and you make off with a piece of him you hoped he'd never meet.

pairing: secret baby daddy!gojo x reader

tags: secret child trope, angst (lots), eventual fluff, eventual smut, hurt/comfort, takara is my little baby, shoko showing emotion (scary)

a/n: i have the sense i should be spacing these chapters out more but i'm enjoying it too much. i hope you like :)

18+! minors dni <3

~~~~~~~

2012

YOU suspect that training takara here, practically in public, is a terrible idea, though you hardly have another option. the park by your apartment is by no means sprawling, but it fills only sparsely with people, and there are places to hide. the lot backs up to an office building on one side, so in between the trees there you can compose some version of privacy. the leaves tremble around you now, trees frenetic, greener, with the small makings of your hands. 

with a pointer finger sunk a half inch in the soil, you conjure a small root and make it dance at takara’s folded legs where he sits. you speak softly to him, always, “focus.”

his eyes squeeze shut as he braces himself against the ground. “i am,” he tells you. his hair, grown in as platinum as you knew it would, catches the waning light as it crests the horizon; he is painted orange, glowing as he shears. you twist the root and begin poking at his legs softly. his skin dimples with each moment of contact and he bows himself further into his effort.

“don’t strain, bubba,” you remind him. he strains.

“i don’t feel anything,” he whines, little face folded in on itself. 

you cannot help but assure him, “yes, you do.” 

he tosses his hands up and flops onto his back, palms stained a little from the grass he’d wrung between them. “no, i don’t!” you let your root go. his eyes, blinking at you now, are a curtain; they cut through the evening’s pink light. 

“this is inside of you, takara. you’ve done it before!” he doesn’t seem particularly interested in that fact, huffing at you quietly. unlike you at this age, and you suspect unlike his father, takara is bound to his small failures; he remembers them. you brush your knuckle down his nose. “we can go home.”

he nods, quietly collecting himself, and clambors to stand. it’s been weeks of this work for only a few, precious moments of success, but in this, too, you are choiceless. you could see the moment limitless began manifesting in him, a maw of energy pried open with time, and it would be negligent not to teach him how to use it.

of course, you don’t know how to use it. not really, anyway. your instructions come out misshapen, distorted things scraped off your memories with satoru as teenagers. there is a small and saccharine delight you take in this regardless; takara is a student of his father’s, and you’re the only one who knows. you take takara’s hand as you make your way home, bent at the waist to meet him. 

he is still a sun in your grasp, still so damningly his father’s son, still so different from either of you. he is quiet, takes a great deal of time deciding—though you suppose that bit is from you—and easily frustrated. he is resilient, too; you don’t know from which of you he inherited that. your takara. you are so devastatingly endeared to him.

the walk is short and quiet back to your apartment, and with the cafe being within a block, too, you only rarely leave your neighborhood. it’s best this way, you think; you have brought up a new world for yourself and for takara, one that needn’t overtly touch what you left behind. you’ve never seen anyone you used to know here.

you know you are still recognizable. your shoes, in the first place, give you away, and anyone attuned to cursed energy would know immediately the sort of masking ability they have on your technique, that you are a thing to be tamed. in a more intimate sense, too, anyone who knew you in high school would recognize them by appearance alone. the sound of them resonates on the sidewalk, cushioned in between by the soft footfalls of takara’s sneakers. 

you only notice now that he has braced himself to ask you something.

“mama,” he begins. your neighborhood passes slowly around you and you squeeze his little hand tighter to tell him you're listening. he continues, “your technique is different from mine.”

something in your spine locks. he is not asking; it’s leveled at you much more like an accusation. you nod, and take stock of his face. you can almost see the words in his mouth as he forms them.

“who…who has my technique?” 

you’ve arrived home now, and take the moment finding your keys like the reprieve it is. the clinking sound echoes softly against your door and you usher him inside.

this is not the first time he’s asked you this, or some version of this, and you would be terrible to blame him. to the best of your ability you have tried to understand the sensation of unearthing something wholly unnatural and singular; he cannot see this part of himself, his technique, in you. you wonder whether this makes him afraid, and then admonish yourself immediately. of course it does.

you sit beside him to remove his shoes and yours. part of you wants to admit the whole gory mess of it, present the truth to him, five-years-old and a sage to you. but another part of you, the part that wins, cannot bear that either. you tell him what you always tell him. “your dad has your technique and another one,” you press a finger beneath each of his eyes, twice on each side, “called the six eyes.” the affection in your voice is so easy to hear, you cannot help it. you don’t even try.

takara nods. he has never asked you why he cannot meet his father, though you are sure that day will come. for now, he is still young enough that he cannot altogether perceive the irregularities of his situation. he asks, instead: “when did his start working?”

you sink into that question further than you care to admit. it is an impossible truth to reconcile: for all you felt for him then, satoru was too enormous a thing to really learn. at the time of your pregnancy, the three years spent with him spanned so much of your life, and it felt almost noble to love a thing so wholly invisible. but now, in the face of this child who you love so fiercely, and against the nearly six years that have passed since you left, your not knowing no longer feels so generous. you almost pity yourself for how unendingly you pledged yourself to him. almost.

because even still, even now, you remember what it felt like to be so irrevocably in love. you can’t even discern for certain if you still are; or, more accurately, you cannot quite confirm for yourself that you aren’t. how could you? you meet his eyes every day. takara still waits for your answer.

“honestly, i don’t really know.” you flatten a wrinkle in his shirt with your palm. “but i know he tried every day.” takara’s eyes narrow; he senses you’re trying to teach him something. “and he never got mad at his mom, and he always did what she asked,” you add with a growing grin.

takara groans, high pitched and squeaky, as he putters away, and you giggle as he goes.

~~~~~~~

it is with a cold and leadened weight that SATORU assesses shoko in his doorway. each arm braced on the opening, she stands tilted in on herself, unsteady, like her center of gravity has moved. she looks more animalistic than he’s ever seen her, and given her typical affectless disposition, a great terror washes over him. eyes wild, she says only, “i need to talk to you.”

satoru is well and fully taut as he nods her in, but he is still himself, and so he tries to ease the tension: “lay it on me, boss.”

shoko all but buckles into the seat in front of his desk. “i don’t even know—shit,” she stumbles. “god, i don’t even know how to tell you, gojo.”

his eyebrows pinch together. “what does that even mean?”

“i don’t want to hurt you.”

“are you planning on hurting me?” he prods, smirking a little despite everything.

shoko cannot answer his question. she purses her lips, sucks on her teeth, looks for something to unstick. it comes loose, at last: “i found him, i think.”

and it’s been almost six years, but it takes satoru only a moment to know exactly what she means. there’s only ever been one person he’s sent her looking for.

he remembers his hopeless drowning when he first felt it, that greedy warmth which made him convinced a family member was close by. and the feeling never ceased so much as he became familiar with it; but satoru drowns again now. the vice grip inside him flexes and tears. his face grows pleading as he asks, “who?”

shoko can only shake her head and wave him out of his office. “i won’t tell you until i can see for sure.” and gojo is so desperate he cannot bear, even, to complain.

they leave the jujutsu tech grounds that way, shoko still strung with tension but seemingly relaxed, at least slightly, by now sharing the burden. and satoru, a sinking man, clawing with each step towards…whoever it is. the sky threatens to open and pour above them.

to pass the time on the way—shoko, difficult as she is, would not reveal their destination either—he considers what his options are. surely his life would be changed upon arrival, he thinks. yes, someone with enough cursed energy to alert him would be worth meeting in the cosmic sense. ignoring the glaring fact that he knows his own lineage, satoru cannot help but wonder who it is, cannot help but hope. he knows, of course, that anyone precluded from his studied family tree, ostensibly by treason or worse, could not sate this embarrassing desire for kinship. 

but still, satoru is hungry for family, a terrible appetite he has mostly suppressed. in megumi and tsumiki he has found it, and satoru, boundless, wants more. he has leashed himself so tightly all this time, in his power and his work and his personal life, but as he sets off with shoko towards the center of tokyo, his grip, white-knuckled, gives. 

~~~~~~~

YOU almost don’t take takara out for training; the sky groans and bloats above you and you don’t want him caught in the rain. but he’d pleaded with you to go—you choose not to comment on your victory in that—and you suppose the park is close enough to avoid drenching you both if the rain does come. 

in the grey mist there are few people out. huddled again between the treeline and the office building, you poke at takara’s leg with a conjured iris as he braces with the labor. you see the contact once, twice, a third time, and his frustration crests just so. you can hear the whistle of grass between his fingers as he squeezes and kneads himself into an attempt at cooperation. and then—

your iris stands pacified, still, a centimeter from his shin. you push a little, and then a lot. it doesn’t move.

for all your deliberation, you find yourself incapable of describing completely the look on takara’s face when you lift your gaze. at the beginning of his life, every moment was new and enormous, but now, at five, it is noticeably less often that you find him completely unrecognizable. but you feel it now, watching the sincere and incandescent pride wash over his face, tempered only by a split second of surprise. it is a world-ending look, his whole face open with it; he has never looked so pleased with himself, never been so profoundly relieved. you have half a mind to weep for the rest of your life. you smile instead, as wide as you can manage.

“takara,” you begin, soft. you find you’re afraid to frighten him somehow. he doesn’t even respond with words, surging forward on his knees to hug you, cackling to himself.

“i did it! i did it!”

you laugh now, too. “you did it!”

“mama, you saw! you saw it!”

“yes, bubba, i did!”

he squeals as you squish him between your arms, the two of you reduced to lunacy in the face of this terrifying power that your child, for a moment, towed enough to move. what sanity could you find in this? this moment feels very much like takara’s coronation, king of nothing, son of god. 

you breathe, at last, in the knowing that takara will be capable of his own protection. as inevitable as he emerged before you five years ago, you feel certain now that he will survive you, too. the relief entirely all-consuming, you are blind with it, almost numb. 

takara stills suddenly in your arms and straightens, looking over your shoulder. but you can’t feel a thing.

~~~~~~~

let me know if you'd like to be added, and i hope you enjoyed! <3 also i know i'm a less-is-more kind of fic writer as it relates to context so if you ever have questions just ask hehe

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