#Brick Pointing Contractor | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

katerina-marie · 3 months ago

Text

Don't You Know the Sky is Blue, Even for Me and You (Pt. 3) | Toji Fushiguro x Female Reader

Part 1 | Part 2

Synopsis: Toji is (figuratively) the wet, stray cat you rescue at the beginning of winter during your last year at university.

CW: Strangers to Reluctant Roommates to Lovers | In JJK Universe a little bit, but everything's happy and nothing hurts - so an AU of sorts | University + Cafe/Coffee Shop | No use of y/n + descriptively vague female reader | Fluff | Sprinkles of Angst | Vaginal Sex but mostly vague --- please avoid accordingly | TW: brief mention of pregnancy at the very end under "Epilogue"

*This is a completed story on Ao3 that I just never got around to posting on Tumblr, so for consistency's sake between here and there... (chapters are denoted within the post to reflect them on Ao3). Each part will be roughly 20-22k in terms of word count.

Chapter 10

It should be of no surprise that the cafe serves as some sort of sanctuary for world-weary salary workers and harrowed looking university students who have not yet emerged from a stupor caused by late-night studying or an alcohol induced hangover; either is as likely as the other. Jointly, the weather could also be what’s ushering them in. The sun is slow to reappear from between bloated clouds, and from some beginning point in the night, they still drop finely powdered snow. The city plows have already made speedy work of clearing the roads, but the stuff still builds into banks on less-traveled corners and gathers in every nook and shadow. As the snow flutters down, it winks and twinkles through the glass windows of the cafe and catches your attention more frequently than your customers.

Between the warmth it offers and the constant rotating smell of coffee and bread, you can’t think of a better temporary respite from what goes on outside. There’s music playing, though it’s never loud enough to overtake the chatter that flows about, and the general aura of the place is downright comfy. There is one thing that could serve as a marked improvement, however, and your eyes drift to the often-forgotten back right corner of the cafe.

It’s more dimly lit than the rest of the building just based on how the lights are strung through the ceiling, and the solitary booth and dead space next to it are seldom used, even at peak times. You’ve often imagined how lovely it would be to have a little brick fireplace built into the wall where the lone booth sits, as well as a deep-seated couch nestled in front of it. You’ve always ignored your complete lack of knowledge surrounding the feasibility of such a project in favor of a perfect daydream.

Normally, you would sweep the idea away as nothing more than wishful thinking, but this time, something about the snow outside and the quaintness of the interior has you pursuing your plans further into reality. You could probably sketch a rough image out on paper and maybe even get a quote from a contractor before taking the idea to your boss. He’s generally receptive to suggestions from his employees about how to improve the state of the cafe, though something of this magnitude could take a smidgen more pestering and convincing than normal. The hurdle isn’t enough to sway you, and you duck down behind the counter to seek out a piece of paper as your excitement builds. By the time the prep work is completed, the project probably wouldn't be done before winter ends, but surely it’d be ready by the time it gets cold again at the end of this new year and—

Your giddiness snuffs out like an old taper candle when you realize that you wouldn’t still be around to enjoy the fruit of your labor, at least not in the same capacity as now. Graduation looms just a few months ahead, and along with it, the prospect of corporate jobs and legitimate adulthood that can’t forever be maintained by a part time job’s pay. Thoroughly disappointed, you abandon your search for pen and paper and stand back up to focus your attention back on the cafe and its patrons.

The lunchtime rush is over. You and Toji had arrived an hour before it, and this is the first few minutes of down time you’ve had since then. Few tables still remain occupied, and now that you’re sucked out of your daydreaming, you look out across them to see if they need any tending to.

A booth at the front filled with four university-aged girls seems to be trying to catch your eye. Their stares aren’t demanding or upset, but their heads turn eagerly in your direction every so often. Some dishes sit empty and used between them, and since Toji is still in the kitchen elbows deep in the ones he came out to collect during the rush, you decide to walk out and fetch them for him.

The girls perk up as you walk towards them, and you plaster a friendly but still service-minded smile on your face. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

They giggle amongst themselves, and you watch perplexed as they turn their attention to their shy looking friend sitting closest to the window. Her cheeks flush pink while the laughter transforms into overlapping, gentle encouragement. Her eyes dart behind you in the direction of the kitchen before meeting yours with half-baked determination. Something about the whole encounter makes your stomach twist uncomfortably.

“Can you do me a favor?” she asks, and you regret ever coming over the first place.

The feeling still lingers when you swat aside the checkered curtain that separates the kitchen from the rest of the cafe. Shoulders yanked back tight and proper, you meet Toji where he stands at the sink. There’s a tray of mugs in your left hand that he takes right away. At your side, dangling from the fingertips of your other hand, is a crisp white napkin with a name and phone number scrawled in delicate black ink.

“This is for you,” you say once he has deposited the dishes into the sink, hoping that your voice sounds as untroubled and disinterested as the expression on your face. You hold it out to him as he wipes his hands on the dish towel he keeps flung over his right shoulder. “From table seven.”

His brows pinch in question as he takes the napkin from you, eyes reading over it, and you clarify with, “The one full of girls.”

Toji lets out a murmured “ah” and leans to the side to peer around you through the curtain briefly before straightening back out. You predict that he’ll crumple the napkin into his fist and find the nearest garbage bin to toss it in, but to your utter horror, he stuffs it into the front pocket of his jeans.

As if he hasn’t just upended your entire world with one simple gesture, Toji goes back to the sink to continue working on the dishes. You blink owlishly at his profile, stomach at your feet and some cold kind of dread filling you from head to toe as your mind races. If you had to put money on it—if you had to take a guess that would propel you into action—you would say that Toji has some sort of feelings for you or at least attraction towards you, though you have no exact certainty of the extent of them. It’s just a simple, fleeting tickle at the back of your head that compels you to think that they do in fact exist in some form or fashion. But now, when he just appeared to save a random girl’s phone number for who knows what purpose, you begin to grow very concerned that you’ve deluded yourself into believing such a thing.

You must make some choked noise as you stand rooted to your spot, staring and spiraling, because Toji jerks his head back towards you. He grabs the towel from his shoulder again to dry his hands, and then you see them move towards you like he has the intention to touch you. “You feeling alright? Need anything?”

Jaw slackening, you wave your hands around in denial. “No, no,” you say, shaking your head. “Just blanking out about something I need to do.”

Toji looks unconvinced, but you whirl around to walk back out front before he could ask anymore questions. In a paltry mercy, the girls have disappeared from their table in the time spent in the kitchen, and it’s a meager relief to not have to see them tittering and fawning about the “attractive big guy in the back”—their words verbatim. All around you, the sounds in the cafe come through your ears muffled and tunneled. Your mind feels empty as you fiddle listlessly with the register, stuck on the fact Toji didn’t just throw the damned napkin away. Unfortunately, that’s all you can focus on as your shift wanes on, and you travel through the seven stages of grief with each hour passed.

Shock, because you had assumed that there was mutual attraction between you two since the beginning, and you had expected Toji to act on it eventually at some point in time. Now, you fret over the idea that he has never spared any thoughts of that nature in your direction. Even worse is the possibility that his frequent-as-of-late absences from the apartment have involved women and any number of activities, varying in their levels of salaciousness and wholesomeness. You nearly trip over your own two feet taking a plate of food to a customer because of it.

Denial, because it’s not just a river and maybe he has no intention of calling the girl who can swirl the letters of her name in a script so pretty that it doesn’t belong on some cheap, two ply napkin. Toji probably threw it away after you left, and you just happened to miss it. A customer has to clear his throat twice to get your attention as you ponder the level of insanity required to snoop through his discarded laundry later to see if you can find it.

Anger, no matter how irrational, because how dare Toji not realize that you’ve been waiting right in front of him. The fact that you’re grown and can initiate romantic behavior on your own is conveniently forgotten. You ignore how you’ve been intentionally keeping an air of platonic friendship between you two so as to not yet disrupt the roommate situation currently ongoing. Even so, why someone else and not you? A styrofoam cup collapses under your grasp when you curl your fingers into it too tightly, splattering coffee all over your shoes.

Bargaining, despite the fact you’re not very good at it. You find yourself hoping for an outcome that’s beneficial to your circumstances when you remind the universe of what Toji has put you through from the very second you laid eyes on him. It’s selfish and prideful, but you’re desperate. A coworker eyes you warily when you mutter under your breath as you wipe down the ordering counter.

Guilt, white hot and heavy because is it your fault that Toji hasn’t initiated anything between the two of you? Have you been too dismissive of his flirting and vulnerability—played too hard to get? The burden shouldn’t fall all on you, and a reasonable person would tell you that it doesn’t, but you can’t help but wonder if you had just tried a little harder that maybe things between you two would already be different. You would’ve thrown away the napkin without ever passing it to him, letting it exist temporarily as an amusing story to be shared on your drive home. These are unhelpful musings and unfair to you and the person who bears the unwelcomed weight of them. They guilt you even further when Toji emerges from the kitchen to check on you halfway through your shift.

Depression, and it feels like heartbreak, which could be considered absurd when it’s over something that hasn’t even occurred and remains in its hypothetical state. The idea that you may not get your chance with Toji, that you’ve been developing these feelings with a slim likelihood you’ll ever get the chance to share them is crushing in its own right and hangs over you like a storm cloud. Your coworker offers to cook you up a plate of dinner, and when you respond back denying their offer with the same despair and despondency of that of a jilted bride, they take you in with an expression that’s mildly disturbed and return a few minutes later with a large piece of dessert.

Acceptance and hope, because your shift is nearing its end and you realize that you’re tripping into the realm of the dramatics. Toji has either kept the napkin or he hasn’t, of which you cannot know for certain since you can only cast so many furtive glances towards the front of his pants as he walks by before someone catches on and labels you a pervert. Either way, it doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that he reciprocates your feelings and would accept any advances that you make. The most logical next step involves communication, and you cannot expect him to read your mind if you want the relationship between you to change. You’re determined to see it through. Soon.

Besides, it’s the keys to your car that Toji snags from your bag ten minutes before your shift ends so that he can turn it on and make sure it’s filled with warm air when you two make a mad dash for it as the cold nips at your heels. It’s his hand that hovers over your lower back after your shoe skids over a patch of ice on the sidewalk leading up to your apartment. At the end of the night, after you’re all settled back in from work, it’s you that Toji is saying goodnight to as your bedroom door closes.

It’s enough to act as a balm for some of the emotion and nerves that have taken over for common sense, and you find yourself blowing out a long, heavy breath as you lay back against your pillows. You can’t completely forget about that white napkin that may or may not be still in the pocket of Toji’s jeans, but you don’t feel the intense need to rush out that very instant to declare your feelings for him in some pitiful attempt at staking your claim. Instead, even though your eyes are closed and you roll around under your covers to try and get comfortable, you imagine all the different ways you could possibly confess to Toji—as well as the varying outcomes.

Doing so is enough of a distraction that you’ve nearly drifted off, but a squeak from one of your floorboards by the kitchen has your eyes snapping open as you shoot upwards into a sitting position. In the darkness of your bedroom, you don’t dare to breathe in the static silence as your ears strain to pick up any trace of sound coming from behind your door. Just as you begin to doubt that you actually heard anything at all, you make out the unmistakable click of the front door closing, though it’s faint and gentle as if Toji’s hand guides it shut.

Any prior relief you felt vanishes like smoke. Your jaw drops open as you stare blankly at your door, and you wait a couple tense minutes to see if you can hear any signs of him returning. Perhaps he was hungry and ventured out for a snack, or maybe he simply felt cooped up and decided to take a walk through the snow. Anything sounds plausible as you sit and desperately try not to think of the girl in the cafe. When enough time has gone by and you can no longer reasonably justify Toji’s absence with anything but the obvious, you flop back against your bed to wallow in a mostly self induced melancholy.

It doesn’t help that as you try to force your eyes shut in the hopes of falling into the escape of sleep, your mind plies you with unwelcomed imagery. It’s the girl from the cafe, and what if her cheeks color the same pink under Toji’s gaze as they did at the table surrounded by her friends? Does she smile for him, shy and demure, in the hopes it tantalizes him into touching her? And if he does, will she simper in his arms and bat her lashes until his lips meet hers? If they do, will her’s eventually trail up the skin of his neck like you’ve imagined doing with your own, only for Toji to sigh out her name instead of yours?

You cannot go on any longer, and you flip onto your stomach and bury your face deep into your pillow to let out a cry of frustration. At some point, you finally make it into some kind of fitful sleep, and either four hours or four minutes passes before your morning alarm goes off. With a groan, you force yourself out of bed and try to garner any motivation to go about your day when you’d rather do nothing else than waste away in self pity.

-----

As it turns out, nighttime is a particularly heinous time of the day when it comes to providing the perfect environment for losing one’s sanity. Morning has come and gone, and you feel a modicum more in control of your feelings now that you’ve left the apartment and breathed fresh air. Classes take every ounce of your focus, and now that you’ve had the chance to be distracted by something that doesn’t have green eyes and a roguish smile, you look back on your maelstrom of emotions with a touch of embarrassment and regret. Toji is, after all, just a man, and not once have you deigned yourself into letting one put you into such a headspace like that before. Disappointment is allowed, heartbreak is unavoidable, but completely letting yourself fall apart for more than a brief moment is not a habit you care to pick up.

As such, you didn’t despair when you walked out from your room that morning and didn’t see Toji anywhere. You didn’t let your mind wander in class as to his whereabouts or the company he was keeping. Instead, you determined the whole thing as a lesson learned—strike the iron while it’s hot and all that—and tell yourself that this doesn’t change your intended goal that started all this. You wanted to give Toji a safe, healthy place to figure himself out, and you had no intention of deviating from that plan just because he finds romantic fulfillment in someone else besides you. Thus, you make yourself believe that adding some distance between you two would eventually prove itself beneficial, namely in keeping your tender heart from bruising any further.

So, for the first time since Toji moved in, you long for a moment of solitude in the sanctuary of your home, but you are robbed of it when you walk back into your apartment in the late afternoon and spot him napping on the couch. You’re careful to set your things down in order to make the least noise possible, toeing your shoes off to the side so that you can creep across the living room in near silence. That proves fruitless when you only make it two steps past the couch before he says your name.

You bite down on your tongue before you turn around with as sincere of a smile as you can manage. “Hi.”

Sitting up, Toji rubs sleep away from his eyes and pushes dampened hair away from his forehead, though it does nothing to smooth out the disarray it’s in since he probably slept on it straight after a shower. Regardless, it doesn’t affect how your chest aches when he gazes up at you, a little dazed and still half-asleep, and gives you a lopsided smile. You notice this time around that the feeling is more bitter than sweet.

“You’ve looked better,” he says. “Didn’t sleep well last night?”

“Something like that,” you shoot back dryly, though you’re not perturbed much by his comment since his voice is still gruff from sleep but laced with something you’d hate to name as affection. You briefly think about asking him about his night, to see what he would reveal, but in a bid to let things go, you simply pretend to have no knowledge of Toji’s middle of the night escapade.

“Mm,” is all of his short reply, and he leans back against the arm of the sofa, one hand tucked behind his head and the other resting on his stomach. He looks a bit worn out to you, with his under eyes shaded a hint of purple. You have to intentionally keep your mind from wandering into hypotheticals and decide that now would be a good time to retreat to your room. It’s not hiding, you tell yourself, more like a tactical decision to remove yourself from a space where you're prone to hurting your own feelings.

You flap a hand over your shoulder as you turn to walk off. “I’m going to go nap the rest of the day away, so I’ll talk to you later.”

Toji makes a small, confused noise, maybe having picked up on the unusual abruptness of your departure, but you don’t give him any opportunity to comment on it before you’ve stepped through your door and shut it behind you. It pains you to do it, but you have to for your own sake, and you promise yourself that it’ll hurt less in the end if you can keep up with the distance going forward.

It doesn’t take much effort the first couple of days; school keeps you occupied, and you become the interim boss at work when yours has to take time away to tend to his sick wife. There’s hardly any free moment for you to be had, and you rush between campus and the cafe with brief stops at home to sleep or freshen up. In between writing the shift schedules, taking inventory, ordering stock, and staying caught up on all the other administrative tasks, you can barely give any attention to the inner angst and turmoil you’re struggling to overcome. You don’t even have to bandwidth to care that the same group of girls return to the cafe one busy afternoon, though without their shy fourth friend that began this whole ordeal.

As for Toji, it’s surprisingly easy to dance around him in the cafe. You spend most of your shared shifts sequestered away in your boss’s office while he remains out front. With the unpredictable—albeit temporary—changing of your schedule, he finds his own ways to and from work. It leaves you with a reprieve from his near-constant presence and allows you to nurse your wounded emotions without having to be bombarded with the same features of his that drew you in in the first place: the eyes that sometimes track your every move and dance with mirth when you give into his teasing and banter right back with him; the way you can see how one side of Toji’s mouth tugs upwards when he realizes it’s you who dashes into the kitchen as he washes dishes to find a bite to eat while business is slow. You wrack your brain as you shove food in your mouth to try and recall if he does that for any one else. When you can’t remember for certain either way, it leaves you with the urge to throw yourself at him but with the simultaneous desire to both kiss him and throttle him. You have a better understanding now for the crimes of passion that you read about in airport romance novels and see in daytime soap operas.

Those dual feelings only intensify as you round out one week of playing boss and Toji stays two hours past his scheduled shift, meaning you aren’t left alone in closing the cafe down for the night. You can’t help but delight in the gesture. He’s sprawled out in one of the booths at the front, head craned back against the window sill. You know for a fact that the only reason he doesn’t have his ankles propped up on the edge of the table is because he tried it twenty minutes ago, only to have you hit him squarely in the face with the damp rag you had just used to wipe down said table. You would be a liar if you had to say that it didn’t feel even the smallest bit satisfying to catch the gobsmacked expression on his face.

Later, after Toji dozes peacefully while you work, he wakes with a whiny complaint already on the tip of his tongue about how long it’s taking to complete your extra tasks. Any begrudging excitement about his choice to stay late with you begins to fade. When you glower at him, lips pressed into a taut line, he shrugs with little remorse.

“Don’t you have anything better to be doing,” you ask from behind the counter, exasperation leaking into every word. Only you know that it’s a weighted question, hinting at the idea that Toji has been sneaking out to do any manner of illicit things with a girl who passed her number to him by proxy of you. The more rational part of your brain tells you that he isn’t under an obligation to not do so, and thus “sneaking out” is not quite the correct way to frame Toji’s freedom to do as he pleases.

“Not really,” he answers back lazily, and it fits perfectly in line with the way he reclines further into the booth, wiggling himself into the corner with all the carefree ease of someone without any worldly burdens.

You feel the skin under your eye twitch, and you drop your attention back down to the financial reports you’ve been working on for the better part of an hour lest you gripe at him further. There’s a discrepancy somewhere in it that you can’t find, even after flipping back and forth through all the pages in a diligent search for them. You’re still hunting them down when Toji’s palms slide across the counter as he leans down in front of you to look over the paperwork himself.

You don’t expect anything to come from it, assuming you’ll have to leave it be until early tomorrow morning when you have the chance to call your boss for help, but Toji finds the error in only a minute or so, pointing it out victoriously when you gape at him. He offers an explanation that you don’t fully grasp, though you suspect the fault lies with your comprehension skills and not with him in any way. Your gratitude takes form in a sincere smile and praise for his ability, but he shrugs it off.

“And I thought you were supposed to be the academic out of the two of us,” he says in jest as you shuffle the papers back in order.

He’s brushing away your compliment with self-deprecating humor, but it does nothing to hinder your long standing hunch that there’s much more to Toji than bulging muscle and immovable strength. There must be a wicked intellect hidden behind his eyes. You would say that it’s only bested by his temper in moments of heightened emotion—when pride and impulsivity win against reason. It gives you a longing to pepper him with questions, some rhetorical and abstract that mix in with those of the mundane, just for the sole purpose of hearing his thoughts and what he thinks of everything. Whether he’d let you is a whole other question in itself.

You’re quickly back to feeling endeared by him and longing to soothe away whatever insecurities are tucked deep under that skin of his. Such tenderhearted inclinations aren’t to be fixed if you keep letting yourself get sucked right back into being enamored by everything he does. University, your job, and the unknown of the future are all things you consider as easier than resisting the full force of Toji’s charm, and it feels like you have to continuously yank up the boundaries you have erected for yourself.

Distance, you chant in your mind when Toji hovers at your back protectively as you lock the double doors of the cafe before you both head to your car to go home.

Distance, you yell internally at yourself as he grips your hand in his to help you glide over a patch of ice hidden in the parking lot of your apartment.

Distance, you think feebly as you spare a lingering glance at Toji on the couch just before you shut your bedroom door for the night.

-----

The next day, you’re met with high praise for a job well done and many thanks from your boss when he calls you in the afternoon to inform you that your time as the interim boss is now complete. You’re taken aback when he gives you the following week off to make up for all the extra work you did, and you’re left a little stumped when it occurs to you that you’ll have plenty of time to spend in your apartment—with your roommate—now that you can’t hide away in the busyness of the cafe.

Regardless, you enact the same rule of distance for yourself when it comes to Toji that week. You move out from under the hand he drops at your waist when he reaches for something in the kitchen on your opposite side. When you two are passing each other in the hallway, you skip a step to ensure that it takes you out of the path of bumping shoulders with him, even if it causes you to stumble. You only manage to sit still for five minutes when Toji plops down right beside you on the couch one evening despite there being two other cushions for him to occupy, and it’s when he casually sets his left arm behind your shoulders that you bail. You feign a yawn and get up from the couch and into a stretch, barely looking back at him as you bid him an offhanded “goodnight” before retreating to your room.

You think it’s all done with the stealth of a woman determined. In your opinion, Toji should be none the wiser in realizing that you’re pulling away from him a little in the hopes of emerging emotionally unscathed, but when you rush out of your room the next morning, late for class because of over sleeping, he corners you in the kitchen with a demand for explanation.

“You mad at me or something?” he asks point blank, and you’re backed up against the counter while his hands press down onto the edge of the sink on either side of you, caging you in. The nearness is enough to send your pulse racing, but you do everything to make sure it doesn’t show as you blink up at him with contrived cluelessness.

“Not at all, why?”

“You’re acting weird lately.”

You purse your lips with a shake of your head. “That doesn’t mean I’m upset with you.” Keenly aware of each passing minute that will make you later for class, you use your elbow to nudge his arm aside, assuming Toji will let you go. He doesn’t, however, and he knocks your elbow aside with a light swat of his hand. You let out a sharp breath and shift your weight between your feet. “I’m going to be late. Can you move?”

He continues with his scrutiny of your features, and you drum your fingers against your thigh to give yourself something to do when you feel the weight of his eyes increase as every second passes. When he doesn’t relent, frenzied enough by your start to the morning and unprepared for it to be made worse by Toji, you duck out from under his arm. You don’t get very far before a hand comes down around your wrist and jerks you to a stop.

“Seriously,” he says, but this time there’s worry etched into the slant of his brow and the displeased set of his mouth. You’d even venture as far as to say desperation is concealed in the strength of his grip and how it doesn’t budge when you attempt to pull your wrist free from his hand. “Did I do something?”

The sight of it is an arrow to your heart because you never intended to shift the burden of your emotions onto him—never wanted him to think that the fault and misdeed lied with him. “No,” you insist tiredly, and you move your focus over his shoulder when you become aware of the building sting of tears in your eyes. You tug on your arm again, but it’s lacking effort on your part. Toji opens his mouth to protest, but you cut him off.

“I promise, it’s nothing you did.” Exhaustion cracks your words, and you aren’t faking the thickness of your voice when you allow some of it to seep out in order to further convince him of the lie you're spinning to him. “I’m just tired from working so much last week, and school is stressing me out. Graduation is going to be here soon whether I like it or not, and you know how completely unprepared I am for what comes after.”

When you sniffle, Toji’s face crumples with something like understanding, and you don’t think you’re imagining the feeling of his thumb swiping back and forth over the skin on the inside of your wrist. “I can—,”

“It’s just stress,” you interject, and when you yank your arm back again, Toji lets it go, his own falling limply to his side as he stares at you. You hate the hurt on his face—hate that you’re the one bringing the two of you to this point—and you do your best to give him a watery smile as you back out of the kitchen. “I’m super late for class, so maybe we can talk more about it later?”

There would be no such thing if you had it your way, and you would guess that Toji suspects the same as he watches you dash out of the apartment.

-----

It’s evening time when Toji slips through the back entrance of the building. The remaining lights are low, and he picks his steps carefully as he maneuvers around piles of dirty rags and other objects left strewn on the ground. With his height, he also has to be mindful not to bang his head into the machinery suspended in the air. Despite the lack of noise announcing his presence, he must’ve been detected anyway because a face he’s grown familiar with emerges from a hallway and is illuminated from the light that pours out behind him.

“You rang?” Toji calls, not bothering to hide the disdain in his voice. You should be getting out of class soon, and he’s been waiting with fitful anticipation to find out what the hell is going on once you return home. He’s not stupid, and he knows you’ve been avoiding him. It pains him like no other when it seems like you can’t get away from him fast enough every time he aches to be near you, especially when Toji can’t even fathom a reason for your behavior in the first place.

“And you took your time getting here,” the older man says back. He walks just far enough to close most of the distance between them, still scowling and grumpy like everytime Toji’s seen him for the last couple of months.

Before Toji can complain further, the man reaches into the back pocket of his coveralls and pulls out a crisp white envelope. He holds it out to him, and Toji takes it with a wary hand, only opening it once the man nods his approval. Its contents surprise him, and he uses his thumb to shuffle through what's inside as he counts in his mind.

One, two, three….

Toji jerks his head up, eyes wide as he looks at the man in stunned disbelief. He sneers back at him with a smug, knowing grin that’s missing a tooth on one side. “Yeah, I figured that’d get your attention.” He jerks his head back towards the hallway. “Come on in. We need to have a chat.”

He doesn’t wait for an agreement before he’s turning his back and shuffling away, leaving Toji to pull his lips into a tight line and blow out a controlled breath through his nose. He’d rather deal with this another day, but the temptation proves too much, and he reluctantly follows the other man deeper inside.

Chapter 11

It must be some vicissitude of life to be plagued with the recurring mental images of your less-than-finer moments. They haunt you now in your walk home from class through the sleepy old park in the middle of the city, and even hours of listening to the monotonous drone of university lectures and the frantic pace at which you wrote your notes in order to keep up gave you no assuagement from them. The worst of all is the memory of Toji’s face as you fled from him that morning. It pains you, and passing by the wooden bench that two of you first sat on months ago only adds to the uncomfortable ache in your chest.

Forlorn would be the word to describe him, if you thought back to the fists Toji had balled up at his sides and the eyes he cast downwards towards the floor. He looked all for like he was to blame for your sudden reluctance to be near him. Resignation and familiarity accompanied it, like Toji was well acquainted with the act, and the image is a wretched punch to your gut when you can see him clear as day in this same park on this same bench with that same look on his face. Back then, the guilt lied with the family who cast him out, but you couldn’t say the same for now, nor could you credit the tears on your lashes on the brisk wind of the evening. They are all your own doing.

Self pity and the poor handling of your own emotions is what led you into this convoluted mess and what has, indubitably, put such an expression on Toji’s face. Ignoring the situation would—at best—leave things as they are, and at worst it would damage the friendship that the two of you have built over time. The thought of having to lay your feelings bare to him, to admit enough of the truth so that you can apologize and explain why you acted the way you did spikes your anxiety to the point you feel nauseous. The alternative, however, of leaving the whole situation to fade away on its own feels equally detrimental and likely to produce its own bitter outcome.

If the temperature outside wasn’t dropping, all because it’s still late enough in winter that the sun begins to set at a time most unreasonable, you’d wander the park aimlessly while debating your choices further. There are some piles of snow tinted brown and grey still littering the edges of the sidewalk, and you kick at one in frustration as you try and force yourself back home. Putting the inevitable off would only make things worse, and with a muttered curse under your breath, you turn away from the bench and quicken your steps down the sidewalk.

Fifteen minutes later and you’ve made it to your apartment. You’re a little winded, but you call out Toji’s name regardless before you’re even halfway through the door, not giving yourself the opportunity to shy away from the approaching discussion. Instead of his voice answering you back, there’s no response as you shut the door behind you, and it doesn’t take more than a second’s glance to know that he isn’t home. Disappointed but still marginally relieved, you sigh as you slump back against the door, your bag falling from your shoulder and onto the floor.

You could guess any multitude of places Toji might be at the moment, but you cannot blame him for not being here, subject to his roommate's volatile emotions and her tendency to balk at conflict resolution. With a swallow to rid the lump in your throat, you push off the door and shuffle further into your apartment. You flick on the lamp in the corner of the living room and chew on the inside of your cheek as you consider what to do with the evening.

The kitchen holds no appeal; your appetite has escaped you, and anything you put in your mouth would surely taste like cardboard. If you thought you could sleep, you’d go tangle yourself in your blankets and hope to wake up in a better mood tomorrow, but you can’t foresee yourself doing anything other than reflecting on your own misgivings into the wee hours of the morning. Even though it takes more effort and energy than you would like to expend, you decide that a hot shower could prove itself beneficial, both in washing away the lingering chill from outside and the feeling of self depreciation.

As you are now, fresh from the shower and huddled in the corner of the couch with a blanket that carries the scent of Toji’s body wash, you could be painted as the perfect picture for a cautionary tale of the hazards of falling for one’s roommate. Unsettled and reluctant to do much of anything, you ignore one of your books on the window sill and turn on the TV, allowing whatever channel appears first to play on. It only goes so far as to break through the heavy quiet of your apartment, not actually managing to distract you from your own inner turmoil.

Time passes slowly though you heed it little. When the warmth collected from the hot water of your shower fades, you tuck the blanket tighter around your front and let your nose fall into it so that you breathe in the smell with every inhale. Through half-lidded eyes, you watch what flashes across the screen of the TV. The occasional road noise and hum of the fridge in the kitchen barely catches your attention, and you find yourself less and less cognizant of those sounds as minutes tick by while your eyes droop closer to shutting.

The front door swings open, stopping an inch from leaving a knob-shaped hole in the wall. Its suddenness startles you out of your slumped position against the arm of the couch, and you shake your head clear of disorientation. Some inordinate amount of time has passed since the last moment you can recall. When you turn towards the door, your heart skips and then races at the sight of Toji standing in front of it, one arm stretched back so he can close it without taking his eyes off you.

His chest heaves as though he’s been running, and his hair is windswept enough in every direction that you would gamble on that being true. The bones of his cheek are nipped pink by the cold, as are his lips, parted so that his breath can rush out between them. Toji only remains by the door for a second before he’s striding towards you, his steps long and full of purpose.

You scramble out of the cocoon of the blanket and onto your feet just as he comes to a stop in front of you. There’s barely an arm’s distance between your bodies, and you wonder if he can hear the way your heart pounds in your chest because you certainly feel it thumping against the confines of your ribcage. His eyes are full of overwhelming intensity and searching your face, and whatever is weighing in the air between you two feels electric and rippling with anticipation.

Without breaking the eye contact he holds with you, Toji unzips his black jacket enough that he can reach a hand into it. He pulls it back out and there’s a white envelope pinched between his fingers, ever so slightly wrinkled.

“This is for you,” he says as he holds it out.

Your eyes dip down to it and then back up to his as you tentatively reach out and take it. “What is it?”

Toji works his jaw, looking as though he considers explaining, but instead he urges you forward with a nod of his chin. “Just open it.”

You slip your finger underneath the flap of the envelope, curiosity flaring and overtaking some of the earlier anxiousness caused by his arrival. As you rip through the paper, your mind wanders as to what it could be, and maybe it’s—

Money.

Your eyes jump back up to his, lips parting in surprise as your forehead scrunches in confusion, and you feel as though you’re trudging through thick mud as your mind races to put together what’s in front of you. On its own accord, your mouth moves like you want to speak, but Toji gestures again towards the envelope. His expression is wiped clean of anything that would give insight into what he feels, but he shifts his weight between his legs and stands ramrod straight as he watches you.

With a rough clearing of your throat, you peer back into the envelope as you use a finger to sort through the bills inside. There’s an unmistakable crackling of flimsy receipt paper, and you notice two of them separating some seemingly random grouping of bills. Though crumpled and slightly faded, you’re still able to make out the print on each receipt as you pull them out one by one, and as you read over each total, the picture of what’s going on becomes that much clearer.

The first set of bills and its corresponding receipt represent the total from the department store where you had picked out the beige sweater he now wears with regularity—the same store where you first learned that Toji had worried about scaring you.

The second contains the exact amount for the grocery trip that immediately followed—the one where Toji made a vow to you in your car that you’re now currently witnessing it in its completion.

There are more bills, though not followed by any receipts, but you can count enough to make out two months of your rent and then some. Astonishment has you blinking rapidly at Toji. He looks unsure of himself, but his eyes are eager, and he leans forward just so, like he can entreat the words he wants to hear out of your mouth by mere physicality.

But you trip over them, your throat thick with emotion. “What—I mean, how—when—?”

The money sitting in that envelope amounts to more than he could feasibly make from the cafe alone, regardless of the extra shifts he claimed to be taking, and you’re just as perplexed as you are completely blown away.

Toji chuckles, and it’s full of nerves. “Don’t worry, I earned it legally.”

Your eyebrows fly to your hairline. “That’s a possible concern I should have?”

When he realizes his joke didn’t land, that perhaps not enough humor and teasing was injected into the lilt of his voice, Toji backpedals and shakes his head adamantly. “Uh, no. Don’t worry about it. I’m just messing with you.”

Neither of you say anything else while looking back and forth at one another, and there’s only the occasional laughter track coming from the TV to fill the air.

“I’m not sure I understand,” you begin stiltedly. There’s some rushing nervousness that’s teetering on excitement deep inside you, and you need some kind of explanation from him before you can let it grow any further. “Where did you get all this money?”

Toji’s throat bobs as he swallows, and you hold your breath as he manages out a weak smile for you. There’s some question in the back of your mind as to whether or not this is the first time he’s presented himself to someone—honest and vulnerable—and doesn’t expect to be hurt in the process.

“I’ve been working a second job,” he reveals to you, voice hushed in respect for the gravity of the moment. “For a while now, actually.”

This time your mouth falls open without immediately snapping shut, and there is some brief worry that you resemble a fish out of water, though you don’t have an ounce of attention to spare for it. Intent on seeking details of what Toji just announced, you take a step towards him. “What—why? When? Where?”

He looks amused at how fast your words tumble out, thrown at him as quickly as they come to you, then crosses his arms and glances upwards in recollection. “About a week or two after I started at the cafe. I went down to that mechanic’s shop a couple streets over that you talked about once and—,”

“Wait, wait, wait,” you interject, one hand coming up to your head so you can press your fingers into your temple as you struggle to recall when exactly you had mentioned said mechanic. “I don’t ever remember bringing that up to you.”

“You did.”

“Okay, but when?”

You swear Toji’s face softens into wistfulness for a mere second before it transforms into lighthearted accusation. “That afternoon right before you gave me a heart attack with that damned peanut butter.”

If you think hard enough, you can maybe remember musing the idea of a mechanic’s shop outloud, but the details are fuzzy, and you’re too astounded by the fact that Toji could remember such a thing when you barely could. “I can’t believe you caught that.”

His eyebrows hunch in offense, but his voice is steady and plain when he says, “I always remember what you say.”

If you weren’t already a melting pile of sappy affection, there’s nothing to stop you now from descending into a state of ridiculousness.

With a shrug, Toji continues on without giving any extra thought to how his words sounded just then. “That’s about it. I went down to ask the owner if he had any extra work and got hired that day. I’ve been working both since then. Some days I’d work overnight cause that was the only free time I’d have. Not sure if you noticed that I was gone a lot more often,” he says with a sniff.

He just so happens to turn his chin at that moment, looking like he couldn’t be bothered that you may not have paid any attention to his comings and goings, but you see he still has you in his sights from the corner of his eye. It fills you with sadness to think that all Toji wants is someone to care enough about him that they notice when something about himself changes.

“Of course,” you respond with emphatic sincereness. “I certainly did notice, but I’m not sure I understand why just yet. There was never a deadline for when you paid me back. You didn’t need to go out and run yourself ragged just for my sake.”

“I wanted to make sure you could trust me, that my word was worth something.” The scarred corner of his mouth ticks upwards, and you’re not sure if you’ll ever recover from what Toji says next. “That I was worth something.”

Your heart constricts before it leaps, and it doesn’t take much effort at all for you to rock onto your toes and throw your arms around his neck so that your lips can press to his, the fluid motion occurring all in the single flap of a bird’s wing. The limited amount of space that was left between you is easy to close, the two of you having wandered closer and closer when you were both too caught up in each other to notice.

There’s enough of a fog in your mind to allow you a couple brief seconds of bliss. You take in the fact that Toji’s lips are still cold and his nose feels like ice where it nudges into yours. He’s going to have to hunch down some if he wants to keep the kiss going because the arches of your feet are going to ache and—

You yank your lips from his and wrench yourself back at the same time that Toji’s hands clamp down on the tops of your arms. He’s already in the process of chasing after you, eyes half lidded and what sounds suspiciously like “wait” being breathed out. It makes you ache for him, but you’ve just propelled yourself into kissing Toji without giving a second thought as to whether he’d like it, and mortification makes you run hot when you are reminded of the possible consequences of your spontaneity.

“I’m sorry,” you gasp, trying to move backwards out of his hold, but Toji’s grip doesn’t loosen. If anything, he tries to draw you closer. “Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“Well—it’s just—,” you wave a hand between your bodies, “I wasn’t sure if this is something you wanted, and I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable if it isn’t.”

You’d spend more time fawning over Toji’s answering look of befuddlement if the situation was not so dire. “Did I give you that impression or something? Cause I wouldn’t think so.”

In all honesty, you couldn’t concretely say one way or the other before this, but looking back at your interactions now, as whatever is between you two is clearly about to change, you feel a little dizzy thinking about everything you passed off as newly significant.

“I don’t know. Maybe, but not really?” Voice pitching upwards, you tug backwards against his hands again just to give yourself something to do since you’re torn between the urge to kiss him again or hide in embarrassment. “You’ve never really made a move, but then again neither have I,” you ramble, “and then the whole phone number on the napkin thing and—”

Toji rears back, and his expression flashes through varying degrees of confusion, stupefaction, and then revelation. “So that’s what’s got you all ass backwards lately.”

You don’t appreciate the way he’s fighting off a smile, entertained at your expense, and it doesn’t alleviate the instinct to flee. “Crude, but yes,” you bite out.

With a shake of his head, Toji pokes his tongue into his cheek as the grin on his face finally breaks through. He’s clearly not bothered by what’s going on, not that the same can be said for you, so as he opens his mouth to speak, you jerk back one more time in the hopes that some amount of distance would help you think more clearly—as if you haven’t already learned how well that goes.

Toji’s eyes narrow, and the humor disappears from his face as he pulls back against you, not allowing for the step away you try to take. The two of you stare into one another, both on the verge of annoyance. This time, however, Toji relents first, and his face gentles into something close to pleading as he tries to coax you into him with pressure from his fingers. “Will you quit trying to run away from me?”

It’s said with some of his usual gruffness, but it also comes out beseeching and almost whispered. His eyes implore you with a similar kind of supplication, and there’s nothing you can do but give in to him. When you take a step towards him, one of his hands falls from your arm to land on your waist. He hesitates, but when you don’t rebuff his advances, his other hand finds purchase at the small of your back and presses into your spine until you move forward enough that you can splay your hands out flat against his chest.

“So that’s what was bothering you?” he asks, sincerely this time. You’re reluctant to discuss the whole thing, still embarrassed that Toji knows about it now, but it wouldn’t be fair to run away from this—him—and you sigh softly, dropping your eyes down to focus on the hollow of his throat instead of having to meet his green ones. Your fingers scratch mindlessly back and forth over his chest.

“Yes,” you admit sheepishly. “I should’ve just thrown it away in the first place,” and Toji makes a noise of agreement, “but I was trying to be noble and gave it to you anyway.” With a huff, you snap your eyes back up to his, and they’re half-hardened with condemnation as you exclaim, “But you kept it—right in the front pocket of your pants!”

Toji has the wherewithal to appear thoroughly chastised, and one of his hands reaches up to rub at the back of his neck. “Guess that wasn’t a great look, huh?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I never was going to use it.”

It does make you feel better—completely unburdened, in fact—but it still doesn’t answer your question as to why Toji kept it in the first place. You give an unimpressed cock of your head, and he acquiesces with a playful roll of his eyes.

“I swear I threw it out. I should’ve right then,” he says, and his hand returns to your back to glide up and down between your shoulders, “but you came in looking like the world fell out from under you, and I was too focused on making sure you were alright to be bothered with finding the trash can. Honest mistake, I promise.”

You level Toji with a look of scrutiny, though it’s mostly in jest and solely for the purpose of seeing if he’ll squirm, but then a thought pops back into your head. “So that night after when you left?”

“You heard that?” he asks incredulously, and when you nod in confirmation, he glances up and over your shoulder blankly like he’s reconsidering every ability he’s ever had. “Thought I got out without a sound.”

“Almost, but I happened to still be awake, so it’s not a fault on your part.” You finish with a half-hearted shrug, eyes wandering down to his chest. You have to take a deep breath before asking him your next question because you have to be sure. “So you didn’t call that girl and meet up with her?”

Toji’s reply is instant and full of vehemence. “Never thought once about it.”

“Oh.”

At another time, you will most certainly have to give yourself a stern talking to about your absolute overreaction to such a prodigious case of miscommunication. You feel rightly absurd for how you let yourself spiral so out of control, even more so when you think about how it affected Toji. If your hands weren’t currently twined into the fabric of his shirt, you’d try and shake some sense into yourself.

“Hey,” he murmurs, and his fingers find your chin and tilt it upwards so that you can meet his eyes, “it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Hell, I don’t think I would have acted any better if things were swapped.” You just barely nod, and Toji taps your bottom lip with his thumb. “I had to work at the shop that night. My new boss wanted the floor of the garage relacquered, so I had to do it when no one was there.”

You can only let out a pathetic puff of laughter as you let your head fall forward to bump into his chest. With his own silent laughter that jostles your head, Toji wraps his arms around your shoulders and curls himself over you. “I thought I was just waiting on you.”

“And I was waiting on you!” you protest, though it’s muffled by his shirt.

“No sense in waiting anymore.”

A passionate thrill builds as you draw away from him. This time, it’s done with less urgency and distance than before, yet Toji’s arms remain firm around your back so as to not let you venture any further than he’d like. You look up to study him, like you’ve been prone to doing in the past. The light of the lamp at your back casts a shade of soft yellow to the green of his eyes, and the tips of his hair that are hanging past his eyes throw jagged shadows against them and his cheek bones, only exacerbating the dark mysteriousness of his gaze. And though you do wander down to the bow of his lips, you ignore them as you raise your left hand, intent on satisfying a long held curiosity.

Your fingertips land on the plane of his cheek as you thumb at the scar on his mouth. Your eyes meet his with a silent request, and Toji turns his head a fraction, baring his cheek and the side of his nose. He presents the slash of marred skin with humble submission, laying a meager offering at the altar of your mercy because he has nothing else to spread out before you. He doesn’t know yet that you would take him as he is.

Your lips find the scar while your hands cup his jaw, and there is something thrilling in the way Toji melts under the tenderness of the action. He sinks into your palms, his fingers clench involuntarily at your waist, and you hear the subtle sigh of contentment and relief that rushes past his nose. Under your mouth, the scar feels barely more noticeable than the rest of his skin, though maybe a little indented and slightly less smooth. Toji shudders when you press a second and a third kiss there, and his patience must finally wear thin because he turns his head back with haste so that the full breadth of his mouth can meet yours.

The feeling of long-awaited fulfillment is all encompassing and only rivaled by Toji’s ardent intent to wrap you up in his entirety. Those hands of his that can span the width of your neck linger there until impatience drives them to explore you further. While you cling to him, balancing on his chest and the very tips of your toes, his hands wander down the slopes of your sides. When his fingers tickle under your ribs, you nip at his bottom lip. Toji waits until you shove the fabric of his jacket down his shoulders and dip your hands underneath his shirt to skitter upwards over the muscles in his abdomen before he starts to find his own way underneath your clothing.

Heady warmth fills you when his lips pause at your ear to murmur something about your bed. Along with it, a dozen other feelings take their place in making your stomach clench. Lust, nerves that have their origin in anticipatory excitement, a desire to find out more about the man that’s working his way deeply into every facet of your being. It’s not love just yet—there’s still time for that—but limerence will suffice for the period between then and now.

You break away to lead Toji forward by the hem of his shirt, beguiling him with your eyes to follow you backwards even though there’s no need to beckon him after you more than once. His steps land in the places yours just left, and he cages you in against your bedroom door with a grin that flashes white teeth. You have to reach your hand back as he kisses down your neck in order to fumble around until you find your door knob. After that, it’s a race and a testament to skill to find out how quickly you can both shed your clothes without allowing more distance than necessary to separate your bodies. With your hand against his chest, you push Toji back into your bed until he falls against the pillows. He looks up at you with such reverent awe that you abandon any thought to take him in slowly through the soft golden light of your bedside lamp. There will be more time for that later, you decide, and climb in right after him.

Toji is as you expect him to be, though he does surprise you in some ways. He’s rough and relentless, both with his hands and the way he moves, especially when your chanting of his name reaches a fever pitch and he becomes fervent in his efforts to see you through it. After, when you’re breathless underneath him and your body is satisfied in a way that is bone deep, Toji mouths at your neck and your cheek, uses his hands to arch you into him so that your chests can press together as you whisper to one another.

But then he gets greedy—a little selfish. He grasps your thighs in his hands to wrap them further up his hips so that he can surge forward, intent on kissing you senseless and making you call out his name just a bit faster than before. That is, until, even his restraint runs out and it’s your name ringing off the walls of your bedroom before Toji lowers himself onto your body with sated exhaustion. He’s heavy, and hot, and you know you’ll have to coax him out from between your legs sooner than you’d like, but for now you bask in the feeling of him against you. He’s still in the process of catching his breath, but when you scratch your fingers through his hair, he groans into the side of your breast and becomes no better than a beast searching for a petting hand.

“You’re going to have to move momentarily,” you warn him, delicate and affectionate. Toji grunts in protest, sounding very much displeased, and you give a playful tug with the fingers in his hair. On either side of you, his hands find their way between the mattress and your back to keep himself tucked close. You allow him another minute or two until it becomes too strenuous to breathe with the weight of him on your lungs, and you kick your heel against the back of his calf until he heaves himself up. Toji’s extols an effort that is solidly mediocre for he only manages to drop himself a hair's breadth away from you and down onto his front.

“So mean,” he grumbles. His cheek is planted into your pillow so that he looks towards you, and you roll onto your side to face him. His left arm is angled underneath his head, but his right he moves to hang over the top of your hip.

“Maybe let me be on top next time and we won’t have this problem.”

Toji eyes, which had been closed, snap open and are alight with interest. You feel his fingers dig into your skin, but you don’t encourage him to do anything further. Your body needs more time to rest, and you should probably make a quick visit to the bathroom to clean up. You decide you’ll do so soon, but you want to stay near him for the time being, so you wriggle in just a bit closer and drop a chaste kiss to his mouth.

In the moments after, neither of you say anything, though you’re content to listen to the noises of the world around you. The muffled chatter of the TV left on in the living room seeps through the walls of your bedroom, and Toji’s more-controlled breathing feels cool against your face. In fact, it’s so steady now and, combined with the fact his eyes are closed again, you think he might have fallen asleep.

In repose, he’s just as striking to observe as he is in wakefulness. His lashes—thick and black—nearly sweep the tops of his cheek bones, and it fills you with envy, because what could he possibly need them for? Above his ears, hair of the same color is dampened with sweat and plastered to his skin. You feel victorious when you spot a fading red mark on his neck just under his ear. Toji did, in fact, sigh out your name when you took the opportunity to attach your lips there while his head was thrown back.

Just remembering the moment makes you squirm as you clench your thighs together. You consider rousing Toji, but think better of it the longer you look upon him. A wry grin twists your lips because you will absolutely have to tease him for his gall to pass out so soon after sex. Deciding to let him rest, you get up on your hands with the intent to slip out of bed and into the bathroom.

Except Toji isn’t asleep, and he hooks his arm around your waist to keep you from leaving and maneuvers you to lie on his chest as he shifts onto his back. “What’d I say about running?”

You scoff, spreading your fingers across his ribs to balance yourself against the sudden movement. “It only seems fair if you’re going to sleep.”

“Not sleeping,” he says, adjusting himself more comfortably into the mattress and so that he can curl an arm around your back and palm at your rear. “Just recovering.”

“Mhm,” you hum, not so convinced. Toji reaches down with his free hand to tug your comforter over the two of you, and you prop your elbow up on his bicep so that you can hold your head in your hand. In the coziness of it, you swap small smiles and lingering touches. Now that some of the amorous excitement of finding each other has tempered, your curiosity about his new job returns. “Tell me about the mechanic’s shop,” you say quietly.

“My new boss is an old bastard.” A bark of stunned laughter bursts from you, and Toji rolls his eyes. “I’m serious. He’s grumpy, smokes a pack an hour nearly, and is missing a tooth—teeth maybe.”

Your nose wrinkles in disgust. “He sounds pleasant.”

“No,” Toji deadpans. “Thought I’d start learning to work on cars, but I returned after he gave me the job and he had me doing all the grunt work and shit. Scrubbing the bathrooms, sweeping the shop, and folding the damned laundry.” His upper lip curls in disdain, and you have to drop your head to hide your smile in the skin of his shoulder. “Even made me get everyone lunch one day.”

“You poor thing,” you coo at him teasingly as your finger traces the bridge of his nose. Toji scowls at you and bats your hand away, though without any real force. When his lower lip juts out into the beginnings of a pout, giggles break through the grin you can no longer stifle. He makes some unimpressed noise as you descend into more fitful laughter, and you feel a hand glide up to your lower back to hold you more securely as your body shakes. Your amusement eventually subsides, and you’re wiping bits of moisture from your eyes when you realize that Toji’s face has taken on an edge of crestfallen contemplativeness. Worry kills any of your remaining playfulness.

“What is it?”

He closes his eyes as he breathes in heavily enough to jostle you, and his head tips back deeper into the pillow in frustration. “I’m going to quit the cafe.”

It’s odd to feel so disappointed and so relieved all at once, and all you can only manage out a whispered, “Oh.”

Toji’s quick to crane his head forward and place a kiss of reassurance above your brow. At your back, his hand rubs in slow circles. “He offered me a full time position as a junior mechanic,” he explains. “I’ll learn from the other guys how to work on the cars and do all that stuff. I’m sure there’ll be some actual testing or schooling I’ll have to do later on but…” he trails off with an unbothered shrug.

Even if you’re saddened at the thought of no longer getting to spend your days at work with Toji, your joy for him is immeasurable, and you throw yourself forward to plant your lips against his. When you break apart, you wrap your arms around his neck and squeeze him tight so that you can whisper into his ear. “I’m so proud of you.”

Toji’s response isn’t verbal, but his arms encircle your waist and hug you to him with a force that is instant and unalloyed. In the curve of your neck, where his face is tucked, you would swear that you can feel his mouth tremble.

When he finally lets you go and reclines back into the pillows, he’s ostensibly composed and back to his normal nonchalance. In fact, one of his hands is beginning to wander downwards. You make a mental note later to gently—pointedly—remind Toji about the importance of handling one’s feelings and the subsequent sharing of them with a trusted someone if so inclined, but for now, you encourage him to keep talking with an excited bob of your head.

“Anyway,” he continues, “that’s why I was gone earlier. He called me down to the shop to give me the news and a bit of a bonus with my regular pay as an incentive to stick around, I guess.” Toji bites down on his lip as his eyes switch between yours, and you think he looks a little regretful. “I hate to leave you at the cafe, but this felt wrong to pass up.”

You’re already nodding your reassurance before he can finish his sentence. “No, no—it’s okay. I think it’s a good thing, too.”

Toji’s answering smile is relieved and filled with hopefulness. It almost tempts you into smothering him in all the physical affection you feel built up inside yourself in the hopes it gets a rise out of him. But really, in a valiant display of self control, you must resist and tend to yourself first. He must sense where your intentions lie because he suddenly grabs two handfuls of your rear and pulls you down snug against his body.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” you laugh, batting his hands away as you struggle to escape his grip. Toji clicks his tongue and opens his mouth to protest, but you think of something to lure him into letting you go and set him with an enticing arch of your brow. “You could always join me in the shower.”

It only takes a heartbeat before he’s lurching out of bed and hauling you behind him, all the while your peals of laughter fill the space of your room.

Chapter 12

In the confines of your car, on an early morning drive to your opening shift at the cafe, you use the few minutes of travel time—and the fact Toji is trapped with you—to emphasize the importance of professionalism in the workplace. Just because your relationship evolved into something more in the last couple days does not mean that your boss or coworkers have to be subjected to proof of it, and thus you expect him to maintain an air of common decency while on the clock.

“So what you mean is,” Toji says slyly when you pause to take a breath, “just make sure no one catches us.”

If you could bang your forehead against the steering wheel without causing an accident, you would. “No,” you emphasize heavily, drawing the word out. “I mean, practice some self restraint and keep your hands—and flirty comments—to yourself. We don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.”

“Semantics then.”

“No! Not semantics! More like a rather large and concerning gap in understanding.”

Toji makes a tsking noise with his tongue but doesn’t press any further. His arm is outstretched and resting on the edge of your seat, and his fingers, which had been stroking back and forth along the column of your neck, now drum rhythmically against the leather. You nibble on the inside of your lip as you can’t help but picture the look of horror on one of your coworker’s faces—or worse, your boss’s—if they happen upon you and Toji when he has his hand somewhere it doesn’t belong or hears him whisper something so wickedly inappropriate it should have never left the walls of your bedroom. The hypothetical scenario and the acute mortification that would surely follow is so viscerally imagined in your mind that you visibly cringe.

“Hey,” Toji prods, “I wouldn’t do anything to make you uncomfortable, so don’t worry so much.”

He does sound sincere, but you can still detect the humor in his voice and the way the side of his mouth trembles like it wants to break into a smile. With no intention of explaining yourself any further lest you provide him with more fodder for his laughter, you school your expression into placid neutrality, tip your nose into the air, and settle your focus on the road.

Toji finally picks up on the fact your silence has transformed into the pointed ignorance of his presence, and his hand falls from the top of your seat to splay out across your upper thigh. He gives it a squeeze, then another when you don’t react. It’s a horrid temptation to fight, especially now that you two have spent time indulging in each other’s touches. But you bat it away nonetheless and try your absolute hardest not to laugh at the offended disbelief on Toji’s face—a look you first saw in a laundromat months ago.

It isn’t until you’ve safely parked your car outside the cafe a couple minutes later that you turn to Toji with a look, glancing down at yourself and then back at him with an expectant raise of your brows. He folds rather quickly into cheerful compliance when he realizes that his free access to your body hinges precariously on his ability to behave himself. You pat his cheek and allow him to steal a less-than-chaste kiss since it’s still dark enough of a morning that visibility into the car isn’t really feasible unless right up on it.

The two of you have arrived fifteen minutes earlier than required so that Toji can give your boss his official notice of resignation, and you offer him a swift squeeze of your hand in reassurance as you approach the double glass doors of the cafe. The bell chimes your arrival. Your boss sits in his preferred booth towards the front of the cafe, and he has the newspaper open and spread in his hands.

“Good morning,” you call lightly.

Your boss returns with a happy greeting of his own just as Toji, being true to his nature, manages out a low toned “mornin’” and nothing else. The two of you approach his table, and you’re prepared to make easy conversation until Toji gets around to asking your boss if he can spare him a couple minutes. You’ve just finished unwinding the scarf from around your neck when your boss delicately and precisely folds his newspaper, tucks it under his arm, and slides out from the booth while eyeing the two of you in a way that only comes with the wisdom of old age.

“Something wrong?” you ask him, pivoting on your heel and stepping around Toji to watch as he heads towards his office.

“No, not at all,” he replies breezily. Certainly you’re missing something, and you glance back at Toji for clarification, but he only shrugs his shoulders. You open your mouth to pry into your boss further when he throws a hand up and holds two fingers over his shoulder. “I would simply like to reiterate the importance of rule number two: no fucking in the supply closet.”

Your jaw drops as he disappears into the hallway. Behind you, Toji sputters into boisterous laughter, and you cannot believe that your boss managed to perceive the change in your relationship with just one look. Perhaps you wear your newfound happiness more obviously than you realize, or maybe it’s the fact that Toji’s been hovering at your back, closer than usual and like maintaining any more distance than that is an ask too grand. You round on him as he continues to snicker, hands on your hips as you glare up at him.

His hands fly up in mock surrender as he curls his lips inwards to stifle his amusement. “I did nothing wrong.”

That might be true, but Toji is the only one who regards the situation as a laughing matter, so you hold your look of disdain at him for one moment longer before you spin around to make your way to behind the counter. One of your hands waves him off in the general direction of where he needs to be. “Just go quit already.”

“Don’t act like you won’t miss me,” Toji taunts, vanishing into the hallway by the time you turn to scowl at him.

As if, you think, but by now, you’ve learned that lying—especially to yourself—does nothing to mitigate how poorly you are to deny your own feelings. Toji is absolutely correct; you will miss him and his presence in the cafe. The fact that so much significant time was spent between the two of you here only adds to the sentimentality of the place and exacerbates the sadness you feel at the thought of having to leave it in the near future. That is one thing you do ignore, if only because you’ll find yourself in tears and no doubt put Toji on high alert otherwise.

Besides, continuing to have him around at work while trying to be productive sounds like an indomitable battle of your self control. Surely now you’ll notice that the muscles in his arms flex and bulge the same way when he’s clearing off and wiping down tables as they do when he moves above you in bed. If he lets out strained grunts through his teeth as he hauls around sacks of flour that you have no hope of ever lifting, you’ll mark them as familiar, though certainly not in the same capacity as before—not when you heard them in your ear just last night.

Despite some evidence to the contrary, you could never be so brazen, nor imagine a scenario where your desperation lowers you to the standard of a supply closet. You’ll never admit it to Toji, as his ego needs no bolstering, but perhaps removing a tangible temptation would be a mercy on yourself—and to the very walls of this cafe.

Still, after reaching down to grab your chocolate colored apron and looping it over your head, you can’t help but cast a lingering look down the hall with only one thought on your mind.

What a shame.

—————

For the next two weeks, Toji is split back and forth between his two jobs, not quite finished with the cafe but not fully prepared to start at the garage. There’s paperwork and administrative tasks to get completed before he can officially call himself a mechanic, not to mention how his new boss has to get two pairs of navy coveralls custom ordered just for him so they’ll zip over his chest and extend past his calves. Toji looks particularly unenthused about it when he drops by the cafe one afternoon in the middle of your shift, a measuring tape in tow.

His displeasure only intensifies as you giggle your way through taking his measurements in the back of the cafe’s kitchen, calling them out loud so that he can scratch them down on a piece of paper. You appease him some by nuzzling your cheek in between his shoulder blades while you wrap the measuring tape across his torso. Once you finish, you step around to his front and bat your lashes at him with a small smile already in place. After more than one stolen kiss goodbye, Toji’s foul mood is nowhere to be found, and he ducks underneath the kitchen curtain with his hands tucked into his pockets and a smug grin surely on his face.

When you walk out from the kitchen not long after him, your coworker is standing behind the counter and watching you with a knowing look on her face. “I take it he’s no longer sleeping on your couch?”

Already defeated in your quest to keep your change in relationship on a workplace appropriate, need-to-know basis, you answer her with a sheepish hunch of your shoulders and a look that says, what can you do?

“I knew it!” she squeals, bouncing over to you with a rapid-fire clapping of her hands that lands off center as to not echo through the cafe. “I knew it from the moment he followed you in on that first day.” She taps a finger against her temple with a satisfied tilt of her mouth. “I have a sense for these things, you know.”

With sarcasm heavy both in your expression and your tone, you reply with, “Oh really? Please, enlighten me.”

She’s unperturbed by your skepticism, and after a pensive glance towards the ceiling, she turns back to you with eyes that are lit up in victory. “It was like you had been the first person to ever be gentle with him, and then he immediately fell in love with the feeling.”

Admittedly, she renders you speechless. You had expected something gushing and excessively ridiculous about a passionate—imaginary—look in Toji’s eyes that day, but her explanation is uncanny in how it describes a feeling that you haven’t been able to put to words just yet. You want to probe her more about what exactly she saw, but the cafe and its patrons don’t care to wait for work-time gossip, leaving you to ponder her words as the two of you get caught up in the end-of-day rush.

In the final days, Toji’s not written into the cafe’s weekly shift schedule, but he comes in anyway to complete the random, long-standing tasks your boss asks him to complete before he leaves. They all require his caliber of strength and height, and you appreciate the few remaining opportunities you have to sneak glances at him from behind the register. At the end of the second week, the two of you close the cafe together one last time.

Not unlike before, Toji makes himself comfortable in a booth after finishing up all the work in the kitchen while you sit on your little stool with your book cracked open in your lap. Periodically, he breaks your concentration with questions about what you’re reading or what your plan for the weekend is, but you don’t mind it. If anything, it reminds you of the night he first burst into the cafe and interrupted your evening. The same jazz station trickles out from the speakers, golden light splashes onto the pavement right outside the towering glass windows, and there are green eyes that observe you, but they are not critical and reserved like they once were.

Nostalgia , you think, is as beautiful as it is melancholic.

Just before you’re set to leave, your boss arrives. You watch with pride as he shakes Toji’s hand and shares his gratitude for a job well done. He gives him his final paycheck, and you have a sneaking suspicion that it’s a little heaftier than normal. Toji must think the same for he bows a little lower, humility and respect making his head dip further down, and then the two of you are waving goodbye for the night.

What you don’t anticipate is the wistful way your boss watches you leave and how you immediately recognize that his smile doesn’t stretch as far as it usually does. If anything, he looks a little forlorn but in a way that suggests that he knew to anticipate it. A sharp sense of sadness washes over you, and you have you hold back tears on your way home as you picture your boss bidding you the same farewell in a couple short months when life moves you on from the quaint little cafe on a busy street corner.

—————

When you hear the knob rattle on your front door, it’s half past eight in the evening on a Monday. You’re two hours deep into school work, and spread out on the table in front of you is a whole variety of textbooks and notes scrawled in your handwriting. The remnants of the snacks you tore through are strewn along the kitchen counters, and you worry that the condensation dribbling down a glass of your water is wearing a hole through an opened notebook, but you haven’t had the bravery to check.

You didn’t mean to get so caught up in your work, and as Toji steps through the door and calls out your name in greeting, you find yourself wishing you had taken at least a small break to prepare some sort of dinner to welcome him home from his first day at the garage. You could have stopped a few hours earlier when he called to let you know that he’d be staying late to read up on some things at work, but the stress-induced drive to finish your work kept you going. He would never expect you to pause what you’re doing just for his sake, but you would have liked to since you find joy in the few opportunities available to care for him.

Something thuds against the wall in the entryway, and if you had to guess, Toji’s propped himself on it as he kicks his work boots off. When he rounds the corner into the kitchen, the scarred side of his mouth lifts upwards, prompting a smile to break out on your face in return. You notice that he walks somewhat stiffly and like his body weighs more than it appears. With a tired grunt, he falls into the chair opposite of you and stretches his legs out until one of his sock-covered feet knocks into yours.

“How was your first day?” you ask, propping your elbow on the table so you can drop your chin into your palm.

“Fine,” he says, and exhaustion is hinted at in his voice. “Tiring. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t know, but…I liked getting to work with my hands. The rest of the guys in the garage are fine too.”

There’s a smudge of grease on the left side of his chin and his fingers are stained black. Toji’s hair has clearly been run through a couple times, and it lays in some kind of disarray around his forehead and ears. You make a mental note to sit him down for a haircut in the next couple of days. Glimpsing further down, you take in the navy blue coveralls still zipped up his chest and also stained with oil, grease, and any other manner of things. Your eyes catch on a small, rectangular patch of red situated on the left side of his chest and—

“No way,” you breathe out, gaze fixed on the bold, black lettering of his name that’s stitched into his uniform. Toji follows your eyes down and then slaps a hand over the patch when he realizes what you’re staring at.

“Damn bastard,” he mutters under his breath, and you look at him curiously, hoping it’ll draw out an explanation. With a roll of his eyes, he lets his hand fall back onto the table with a thud since there’s no point in covering up what you’ve already seen. “I had to sign my full legal name on the paperwork last week in order to get paid. I guess he took it upon himself to put it on my uniform too.”

He’s glowering, and it shouldn’t endear you so much, but it does. “So, Toji Zen—”

“Don’t,” he snaps, and the sudden bite of his voice clicks your jaw shut before the rest of his last name can spill from your lips. Silence follows, not even broken by a loud neighbor down the hall or the thrum of the heater. You fall back into your chair with your hands in your lap, dumbfounded by the abrupt change in his disposition. Toji’s jaw works side to side, and the muscles in his throat strain against his skin as he collects himself. Finally, he lets out a long, controlled breath.

“Sorry,” he says regretfully, dropping his eyes from yours to stare at the table that’s hidden underneath all your school work. “I’m not mad at you, I just—” he swallows, loud enough for you to hear, and then, “I’d rather die than ever go by that name.”

In that very moment, you vow to never again let Toji’s last name touch your tongue. Not in jest, not in anger, nor any other capacity in which you have control over. You bury it here where it’s best left forgotten and let your foot graze up the length of his calf to diffuse the tension in the air and in his shoulders. His eyes, now that they’re back on you, are softened with relief and gratitude.

“Thank you for telling me,” you say with quiet empathy. “Though I’m sorry for teasing you.”

Toji stretches his arm down underneath the table and catches your heel in his hand, bringing it to rest on his thigh so he can press his thumbs into the ball of your foot. Your eyes flutter, and you can hear laughter that’s breathed out through his nose as you tip your head back against your chair.

“It’s alright. I just ignore it for now—pretend it doesn’t exist. When I think of a good way to get rid of it, I’ll let you know.”

The pressure from Toji’s fingers simultaneously border on pleasure and pain, and it sends a tingling up your leg and skitters goosebumps all over your skin. Your mind, already worn out from hours of school work, disintegrates into a pile of mush as relaxation takes over. With your eyes closed, you hum in the back of your throat as you muse an idea without much consideration for how it’ll sound.

“Well, you can always take your wife’s last name when you get married,” you ponder absentmindedly. “That’s the most obvious way I can think of, but—”

You cut yourself off when you straighten back up and open your eyes to see that Toji is studying you strangely. His head is cocked to the side and his lips are parted in befuddlement, like marriage as a whole is a concept he’s never been familiar with. A jolt of embarrassment warms your cheeks, and you tug your foot from his stilled hand as you push yourself away from the table and out from your chair.

It’s not as though you’re already thinking of marrying Toji, but you’d be hard pressed to deny that when you think of him—of your relationship and the time in which it flows—it’s always in the context of longevity. You’ve imagined no conclusive end for its existence, only that it remains in a state of committed loyalty, though marriage could be the presumed end goal. But even if that may be, you don’t intend for Toji to think that you’re presumptuous enough to assume this early on that the two of you will end up that way when there’s a whole lot of ground to be covered between “I want to be in a relationship with you” and “I do.”

Desperate for distance and any sort of distraction, you head to the fridge as you ramble out an explanation. “Or not, if you don’t want to get married, that is. Which is totally fine, too.” You swing the fridge door open without a thought and scan through its contents for the most readily available snack you can find. It ends up being an apple that’s a little bruised on one side, but it gives you something to busy your mouth with instead of putting your foot in it. You take a large bite as Toji just watches from his seat at the table. After a thick swallow, you shrug one shoulder. “You could always just change your name whenever you feel like it at the government office.”

The strange expression is gone, replaced with an intrigued quirk of his eyebrow and a bemused smirk on his lips. Thankfully, he doesn’t ask any questions and simply gets up from his chair, twisting his back in each direction until it pops. “No,” Toji says when he’s done. “Too much paperwork. Just “Toji” is fine for now.”

You nod in agreement, ignoring the twinge of disappointment that follows his answer. With a tightlipped smile around a mouthful of apple, you lean as casually as you can back against the counter. You think Toji’s going to saunter up to you. There’s a teasing glint in his eyes and nothing he enjoys more than riling you up when you’re embarrassed. You even prepare yourself, lifting your chin to hold eye contact and dare him into whatever plan he’s concocting in that head of his.

But Toji just shakes his head good-naturedly. “I’m gonna shower. You’re welcome to join me.” He raises his hand to his chest, and your eyes follow the zipper on his coveralls as he lowers it enough to reveal the white t-shirt underneath.

“I was planning to find some dinner to warm up for you.”

“I think I’d rather have you.”

You choke as Toji’s grin turns wolfish, and his eyes linger on you even as he turns towards the bathroom. He glances back over his shoulder at the edge of the hall when he realizes you still haven’t moved. He’s clearly waiting for you to join him, and you wave him off as you cough into the corner of your arm. “I’ll be right in.”

Contented, Toji wanders off, his footsteps sounding leadened against the floor. You hear the shower turn on, and you suppose you only have a few minutes before he comes to fetch you if you haven’t made your way to him by then. Still a little flustered, you finish off your apple before tossing the core into the trash.

You have your arms crossed over your stomach to grip the hem of your shirt in your hands, ready to yank it off as you step through the bathroom door, but the sight of Toji sitting in nothing but his boxers on the closed toilet lid makes you pause. He’s slumped over with his elbows on his knees. The black ends of his hair have dampened with the humidity from the shower, and you can’t tell for certain if his eyes are open underneath. Sympathy and affection swell up in you, replacing the last bits of embarrassment and the anticipation for what his words had promised. But you decide right then that nothing salacious is going to occur in the shower, now determined in your efforts to make sure Toji makes it to bed before he falls asleep on the nearest hard surface.

Toji jumps when your fingers slip into his hair. His eyes widen as he takes you in, naked now that you’ve removed the rest of your clothing. You’re looking down at him with a gentle smile while rubbing your fingers down the muscles in the back of his neck, returning the favor that he did with your foot just a bit ago. With a throaty groan, he lets his head fall so that it lands at the top of your stomach. Two large hands secure themselves on your hips and pull you closer so that he can nose into the skin over your ribs. You bite back a giggle when the sensation tickles.

“Tired?” you ask, scratching your nails along his scalp. All you get in response is a noncommittal noise as Toji swivels his head to and fro. As much as you’d enjoy letting him seek out your touch for however long he pleases, the air in the bathroom is growing thick as steam billows out of the shower, and you can no longer see your reflection in the mirror from how densely it’s fogged.

With a hand at his bicep, you urge Toji up as you reach for the curtain on the shower and drag it back just enough for the two of you to get in around it without allowing water to soak the floor. You watch with mild amusement as the water at the bottom of the shower swirls grey while he rinses away the evidence of his day’s work. His body blocks most of the showerhead, but you’re still misted with the lukewarm spray that flies past him. Huddled in the back half of the shower that’s hardly big enough to fit the two of you together, you fight off a shudder as you cross your arms over your chest.

Toji must take notice because he wraps one arm around your waist and tugs you against him with a murmured, “C’mere.”

You settle your chin on his sternum and look up at him. His hair is plastered in chunks around his eyes and drips steady streams of water down his face. The streak of grease on the left side of his chin is gone, but you swipe your thumb along where it used to be as the two of you take each other in.

There’s no solid way to determine which one of you moves first. Perhaps Toji’s hands find the base of your spine at the same time your arms slink around the back of his neck. Your lips meet with an unhurried, unpracticed ease. It’s a toss up on whether to blame the dizziness in your head on the building heat of the shower or the fact Toji hardly allows you any room to take in a deep breath in between the kisses he demands from you. His hands roam across the expanse of your back before they glide around to your front and squeeze at any place he can. At your hip, you feel him against you, and it drives away any of your earlier reservations about preserving whatever little energy remained in him.

You wrap a hand around him, and it rips a moan from somewhere deep in his chest that you feel against your lips and in other parts of your body. Hands move faster, too eager to explore to stay in one place. You’re so swept up in the feeling of Toji and the way heady anticipation curls in your abdomen that you’re willing to risk the slippery confines of your shower to be able to have him. When he grabs you under your thighs, just below your rear, you brace yourself for the shock of cold tile against your back, assuming it’ll be quickly forgotten by the time Toji makes space for himself between your legs. But, just as you lift yourself to the tips of your toes, you feel his arms tremble with exertion, and it’s enough for you to push past the haze of lust and remember the exhausted curve of his shoulders from minutes ago.

“Hold on, hold on,” you hurry out as you press your hands against Toji’s chest. He lets out a noise of frustration as you break apart. Shuffling around so that the spray of the shower doesn’t hit you in the face, you wipe water from your eyes and grin at him playfully. “Probably better not to do this in here, yeah?”

If his narrowed eyes and displeased set of his mouth are anything to go by, not to mention how you can still feel him against your stomach, Toji does not share in your opinion regarding the difficulties of trying to have sex in the shower. In fact, he looks ready to protest, and the hands on your body curl into your skin like he’s about to disregard the sentiment completely in favor of continuing on. As tempting as it is, as much as you’d like to give in to him, you care more for Toji’s wellbeing and prioritize it over your own pleasure. With a kiss to his cheek, you reach behind him to pump shampoo into your palm and work it into a lather.

He jerks his head away when you reach up to spread the suds into his hair, and you fix him with a look that tells him everything he needs to know about what you think of his obstinance.

“Patience is a virtue,” you remind him.

“I don’t have any of those,” Toji deadpans.

With a tired sigh, you wait for him to concede, wiggling your soapy fingers in front of his face when he takes a moment longer than you’d like. He rolls his eyes but hunches down anyway, bringing his head down to a reachable level. You massage your fingertips through his hair, making sure to spread the shampoo all the way down to his neck, along his ears, and in front of his face. As you had anticipated, and long ago discovered, Toji mellows underneath the feeling of your fingers along his scalp and leans further into you. It’s a strategic way to diffuse the energy or tension that runs him high at times, and seeing it work now reminds of you of the last time you had your hands in his hair for a reason other than yanking it out of pleasured bliss.

Toji sits on the rug in front of the sofa, his shoulders forcing your knees as far apart as the muscles in your thighs would allow. There’s trashy reality TV on, of which he swears he doesn’t pay attention to but knows all the drama about. He’s managed to lure you out from your bedroom and away from the school work you have been obsessing over as finals loom closer. Trimming his hair serves as a welcome distraction and break from the stress you’re experiencing.

It’s only been a few minutes of you snipping away at the back of his hair after finishing at the front, but Toji’s head starts to bob nonetheless. You suppress laughter and hope he doesn’t notice how your chest shakes. When his head finally drops violently enough that his chin bounces off his chest, you put the scissors down in favor of working your fingers through his hair.

“Just to make sure everything is even,” you tell him, and Toji acknowledges your lie with a single grunt.

He only makes it another minute or two before he finally slumps over, his temple and cheek cushioned on your thigh while his back is propped up against the front of the couch. You let him doze there, content to shove a throw pillow behind your back and get lost in the mindlessness of the TV. You keep it a secret that you can see the tips of his cheeks burn red after Toji awakes a half hour later to realize he fell asleep between your legs.

So, you shouldn’t be surprised that he nearly falls asleep again now under the steady stream of water at his back and the ministrations of your fingers. His head rests on your shoulder, his nose tucked in along your collarbone. He palms lazily at your breasts, but they are lacking enthusiasm and any determined intention. Exhaustion and languidness have completely driven away any energy for romps in the shower.

In his own time, Toji eventually straightens back up. His eyes are half-lidded and dazed, barely falling shut in time to prevent shampoo-laced water from leaking into them as he rinses. You finish up after him, and the two of you towel off together in the warmth trapped in the shower before venturing out into the biting chill of the bathroom.

Once you’re done there, you follow Toji out, though you catch yourself against his back when he pauses in the doorway. His head turns between left and right—the kitchen and the bedroom—before he undoes the towel wrapped around his hips and tosses it over the door. Decision made, he walks to the bedroom, and you stay behind just a moment to admire the back of him.

Toji doesn’t bother clothing himself and simply gets into bed as you trail in and flip off your bedroom light. Guided by the lamp at your bedside, you fish pajamas out of your dresser and put them on, hoping that they will prevent an inciting of the earlier entanglement in the shower should you slip under the blankets with him also unclothed. He does reach for you when curl up on your side facing him, but his touch is light and only serves to close the distance between you two so that your knees bump together and his hand can find its place on your hip underneath your shirt.

You aren’t exactly tired just yet, at least not enough to fall asleep in any immediate amount of time, but the darkness of your room is a perfect solace for basking in the comfort of Toji’s presence and allowing a rare moment of still rest. There’s plenty of things for you to distract yourself with if you let your mind wander enough; school is going to end in about two month’s time, and you still have no idea of what will happen after that. A man is sleeping in your bed now, the breath from his nose blowing warm against your neck, and there’s a not-so-subtle feeling you have for him that you know will only grow exponentially.

You could choose to mull it all over, work it out until your mind is stretched thin from trying to come up with all the different outcomes and possibilities. Instead, with concentrated effort, you close your eyes, tuck your hands in the minimal space between your chest and Toji’s, and get lost in what is and what you hope will continue to be.

-----

You don’t expect much when you stay late after your morning shift to meet your boss in his office and hand in your resignation letter. He had to know that this was coming eventually, especially since last month when you showed him the pictures of you holding your diploma in an oversized gown while Toji stands next to you with your cap sat askew on his head. What’s not anticipated, however, is what he hands over in exchange for the letter you give him.

“I’m sorry,” you say bluntly while staring down at the skeleton key in your palm. Across from where you sit, in a chair behind his desk with his hands clasped together on top of it, your boss smiles. “You’re giving me the cafe?”

He nods once, confident and sure in a way that you are not. “Wouldn’t trust it to anyone else. Told you I was having one of you youngins take over my work.”

“I thought you just meant a couple of things here and there!” you blurt out. In your hand, the key trembles, and your boss’s figure blurs as your eyes begin to burn.

“I changed my mind,” he explains with a shrug. He then turns and opens a drawer to his right, rummaging around until he pulls out a photograph. When he tips it in your direction, you can see him and his wife standing around a younger couple dressed in a black tux and a white gown. “I’m going to be a grandfather,” he adds fondly. “Means I should probably retire for good now.”

You laugh a bit wetly and slap your free hand against your cheek. “That’s amazing, truly. But I can’t—I don’t—” you flail the other hand with the key in it around helplessly before letting it fall back into your lap, “I don’t know how to run a cafe.”

Your boss clicks his tongue while leveling you with a look of skepticism. “Now that’s not true and you know it,” he reprimands. You try to rebut, only for him to hold up a finger and continue. “You’ve been here the longest and know as much about the place as I do. Anytime I’ve had to step away, you swoop in and take over everything without a hitch. I’ve seen that you're capable, and anything you don’t know you can learn.”

All you can do is gape at him, speechless as you try to make sense of everything that’s happening right now.

“Besides,” he adds, his stern tone of authority gone and replaced with lightheartedness, “you have a partner now who can help you. You’re not alone.”

“But Toji has even less of a clue about how to run a business than I do!” you cry, distraught enough that tears begin to leak from your eyes even though it has more to do with the fact you’re simply overwhelmed. You know he means to be inspiring, but it doesn’t instill you with enough confidence to make you believe that it’s the right decision.

Your boss’s face softens with sympathy, and he plucks a couple tissues from a box sitting on the corner of his desk before leaning over it to hand them to you. You take them with a mumbled “thanks” before blotting them all over your cheeks.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” your boss says, chuckling, “but I’m sure he’s well aware of how important it is to have someone who believes in you and supports you in the choices you make. Do not underestimate the power of having someone who’ll stick by you.” He tilts his head to one side and pins you with a look that’s half all knowing, half chiding. “I take it you know what I mean?”

You do, and your chest tightens with emotion as the memories of the last couple months with Toji flash in front of your eyes.

There must be something on your face that wavers, an indication of a decision that you already made before you could fully comprehend it, because your boss reclines back in his chair, full of satisfaction. You’d dare to say that he looks just a little emotional as well.

“It’s not as if I’ll just vanish and leave you all to yourself,” he assures you. “I’ll be around to offer guidance when you need me.” And, after a moment of quiet, “So, what do you say?”

There’s nothing to do but agree, and the cold iron key in your hand feels like a promise of forthcoming excitement as you curl your fingers around it and smile at the person across from you.

Epilogue

In a quaint little cafe that’s now closed on a Sunday afternoon, Toji finds himself in a supply closet with any number of storage containers stacked to its near ceiling. This is his fifth trip back to it in the last twenty minutes, sent out on your request to find a garland of autumnal foliage that matches the changing leaves outside. He should’ve known when the temperatures began to drop last week that this yearly habit was almost upon him. He grumbles and gripes under his breath because his back is beginning to ache, and he’s knocked his head on the same corner of a wooden shelf twice now.

And yet, those things matter little and are minor expenses for the sight of your unfettered excitement in your efforts to transform the cafe into a cozy, cold-weather haven for the foreseeable future. You flit about the space now, tucking away vases of dark flowers and hanging bits of dried oranges intertwined with fragrant cinnamon sticks strung through on beige butcher’s twine. Like the very first time he ever stepped foot in the cafe, there’s jazz music playing from a speaker hidden in a corner that he can still hear through the walls of the closet. Toji had to pester you in the first couple years, but now you’ll begrudgingly change the channel to something more lively when he can no longer stand the sound of a piano. It offends your sensibilities each time, but you do it just the same.

Even though you’re both older now, with ages that have begun to start with a three instead of a two, Toji has not tired of participating in this all day event, nor does he actually mind doing all the heavy lifting. If anything, this little tradition the two of you have created serves to grow his love for you tenfold with each passing year. It's a notion he once brushed off as exaggerated fiction—a cheesy way of explaining what a simple “I love you” means. He was naive then. There have been many moments where his love for you has surged beyond what he thought it was capable of, even before he knew it existed.

Toji pulls you down onto the couch with him, and he knows this isn’t the best time. You’re over your head in preparation for finals, graduation just a short countdown away, and this is something he should have told you before he ever dared to kiss you, let alone sleep with you. If it goes poorly, if you upend his entire world and show him to the door like you had once threatened, then he’ll spend forever continually hating his family name and the world of jujutsu that he was born lowly into. Toji will have to hate himself too then, because it is what he is made of.

The decision to do so was made for him though, and perhaps he should be grateful that it’s not being put off any longer. At work that afternoon, after his patience had run out and his temper got the best of him, Toji’s fist connected with the nose of another mechanic after the guy couldn’t keep that stupid last name of his out of his mouth. Toji had warned him—more than once—when it wasn’t made obvious by the black duct tape he stuck to his uniform to conceal that part of him.

“Hey, Zenin,” he taunts, bumping into his shoulder and making the oil can in his hand tumble to the ground and land with a splatter.

“Got ya somewhere to be, Zenin?” he sneers when Toji’s already stayed an hour late past closing time and only wants to get home to you.

“Zenin! Watch what you’re doing, you worthless piece of—”

Toji’s fist is drawn back and launched forward into his face before he can finish the rest of the sentence. He sees red, blocking out the clamor of the other guys rushing over to them as Toji pins him to the floor. From the corner of his eye, he sees his boss lurking in the hallway leading to his office, and dread fills him when he turns away with a shake of his head. He pays for the distraction with a blow to his mouth, causing a tingle of sharp static to erupt in the scar tissue on his lip before it’s eclipsed by the ache in his jaw. Toji manages a few more hits before he’s eventually jerked away.

At the end of the night, he is the last to leave. His boss’s eyes have been on him since the incident, and now that the garage is empty save for the two of them, he expects to be fired on the spot.

“He’s a nasty piece of work, that one,” his boss says, referencing the mechanic who put the bruise on Toji’s face. His grin is wide enough to expose the few teeth he’s missing, and Toji cannot share in the humor he finds in the situation. He says nothing in return, only observing as the man pulls a cigarette from the pocket of his coveralls and lights it between chapped lips. He exhales, smoke swirling and floating until it fades into nothingness.

Toji’s about to demand he fire him right then and get it over with, but his boss cackles abruptly, which turns into hacking and sputters from the smoke in his lungs. He finally levels him with a look once his breathing is under control, and it brooks no further argument. “No more fighting.”

Wise enough not to ask questions, Toji nods curtly and spins on his heel, making haste for the door and on towards home.

As he figures, you meet his sheepish expression in the kitchen with immediate concern for the bruising on his face. There’s not much you can do for it but shove a bag of frozen fruit at him to hold against his jaw. Once you get confirmation that he’s not injured anywhere else, your expression turns expectant as you wait for an explanation.

“It’s just a name, Toji!” you exclaim, frustration pitching your voice high as you slash a hand down through the air between you. You are less than enthused to have found out that he had been fighting. “It can’t be worth possibly losing your job for! What about it is that important?”

Toji can’t blame you for not understanding the significance of something you don’t know, not when it’s him who has withheld that knowledge from you.

And that’s how he finds himself here, sitting on the couch and clutching your hand on his thigh as he explains to you a world that is beyond any imaginary tale. He watches you as he speaks, taking note of how your brows furrow, the way your eyes bulge, and how you lean back from the enormity of it. Then he gets to his last name, having needed the background information of jujutsu society present in your mind so that you could fully grasp all that “Zenin” entails.

By the end of it, Toji feels sick to his stomach. Some of it’s from having to recount the trauma of his entire life until a certain point. The rest comes from the way your face hardened as you listened. He waits in silence, taking in the way you bite down on the inside of your mouth as you struggle to contain whatever waits to burst free from your tongue.

When you jump to your feet, wrenching your hand from his grasp, Toji feels as though the floor falls out from under him. Your back is to him, spine snapped straight, and your shoulders heave with each erratic breath you take. He’s one second short of throwing himself to his knees, your name already on his lips as he prepares to beg for you, but you whirl around before he can get there. Toji’s eyes clench shut without his permission in anticipation of your verbal blow.

But, what comes out is not a demand for him to immediately leave your presence. You do not shriek at him or berate him for keeping a secret of this magnitude.

Instead, you curse the Zenin name.

Toji’s eyes pop back open in utter shock, and he is stunned at the ire in which you vow your hatred and disgust for a family you don’t know, all for the sake of defending him. Your eyes are alight with righteous fury, and you spit vitriol until there’s nothing left in you but empty breath. Toji is equally breathless, and he’s brought even further when your anger vanishes, replaced with a quivering chin and eyes that swell with tears as your face crumples. You throw yourself into his lap and sob into his neck. In between haggard gasps, you press apologies into his skin for the torture he endured and the unfairness of it all.

When you pull away, all tears and snot, you laugh weakly and wipe your sleeve across your face before you catch his cheek in your palm, thumb sweeping ever so gently over the scar on his mouth. You apologize again for feeling like you made the moment all about your emotions instead of his. With a brush of your lips over his cheek to catch a tear he didn’t realize had escaped, Toji feels as though his heart is going to explode, and he cannot fathom a time where he could ever love you more than he does right now, in the very moment he realizes it.

There is another instance that Toji can recall with relative ease in which his chest tightened with such palpable emotion that he actually worried for his health. In a humorous, albeit peculiar coincidence, you were crying in this instance too, and he scratches at his head as he looks back on it with fondness.

“That’s the last one,” Toji announces with a huff, dropping a box stuffed to the brim in the corner outside the door. He wipes his hands on his pants as you trail out behind him, having followed him through the entirety of the apartment as he carried the last things out in order to ensure there was nothing forgotten. Your lips are pulled into a thin line, your expression forlorn. A sight like that would usually be a cause for concern, especially with a recent development, but Toji has a sneaking suspicion that the trembling of your chin and the glassiness of your eyes isn’t something to be alarmed by right now.

You burst into tears in the doorway of the apartment—now emptied—when you both turn to stand and look upon it one last time. There are years of nostalgia and memories lingering in every inch of it, and sentimentality constricts even Toji’s throat as he tucks you under his arm to help soothe your tears away.

You have always been the more sensitive one of the two of you, but he bets that the child you’re carrying in your belly doesn’t help with the stability of your emotions—hormones and whatnot—especially since it’s what prompted the move to begin with.

Neither of you could figure out a way to make space for a baby in that one bedroom apartment, and it took quite a bit of gentle coaxing and convincing on Toji’s part that something bigger and more accommodating was finally in order. It took long enough, but you finally agreed, and it was a balm to Toji’s frayed nerves; the time left remaining before chaos ensues can be measured in weeks now rather than months.

Finding a new place to live had happened in a flurry of phone calls and trips to look at houses, packing and cleaning and setting up furniture in a home new to you both. The whole process took only a matter of days, and with such a whirlwind of activity, neither of you had the chance to fully grasp what you were leaving behind until just this moment when the magnitude of a final farewell seizes you both.

It’s only one place in a span of many, but that doesn't mean that you can’t stand on the cusp of some great excitement while still lingering in the threshold of something cherished and forever held dear. Toji’s love for you started here in this apartment, with its chestnut walls and a couch he only sleeps on now if he’s too lazy to move his nap to the bed, and he wonders if there will ever be another place in which he can see it played out so visibly in any direction he looks.

As it turns out, there is, and Toji knows this now. With the lengths of garland you’re after, tucked away in a dark matte container instead of a clear one, he takes in one last look of the closet with a smirk on his face and hits the light switch with his elbow. He’s struck with a thought trail he can’t ignore as he walks out from the hallway with his arms full.

“Hey,” he inquires casually, catching your attention so that you turn to look at him despite your hands being occupied, “when Megumi is older, do you think he’ll get a kick out of knowing he was conceived in the supply closet?”

His question catches you so off guard that your hands flail and knock over the vase of artificial flowers you’re arranging atop one of the tables. You have to scramble to catch it before it teeters off the side and falls onto Megumi where he’s playing with some wooden blocks at your feet.

“Toji—that’s not—no!” you sputter, and when you get the vase to sit steady on its own, you turn around to pin him with an aghast glare. “He was not!”

“I don’t know,” Toji muses, taunting you. He sets the container down on the table next to yours and then leans his hip against it as he crosses his arms. “I think the math evens out.”

To your horror, he holds up his hands so he can begin counting on his fingers, and there is no mistaking the cheeky grin on his face that tells you he’s enjoying every bit of watching you squirm.

“Let’s see, nine months before his birthday would put us at that week the cafe was closed to get the fireplace installed. You and I stopped by late one night to check in and found that bottle of wine. Surely you remember that you threw yourself at me a couple glasses in and dragged me into—”

You cut him off with an embarrassed shriek as you hurl yourself forwards to slap your hands over his mouth and muffle whatever crude nonsense he was about to spill. “Megumi might hear, you dolt!”

Toji snickers, and you increase the pressure against his mouth until his hand flies up to wrap around your wrist. He pulls it away with ease, but not before leaving a kiss in the center of your palm.

“He’s not even four yet,” Toji counters, looking back over your shoulder to peer at his son. Megumi’s still happily playing with his toys on the ground, oblivious to his parent’s bickering. “It’s not like he actually understands.”

With a huff, you yank your wrist free from his grip and step back around the table to finish what you had been doing before he interrupted you. “He’ll be four in two months. Besides, he’s more perceptive than you think.”

Toji snorts, and it’s not because he doubts Megumi’s intelligence, but he doesn’t sincerely think that perceptiveness alone means that he can understand the implication of his parents getting busy in a cramped supply closet. But, just as he’s about to tell you such, Megumi pauses and tilts his head, looking up at his father with rounded eyes and like he blames him for all of the calamity in his short life thus far—even though there’s actually none.

“So what if he understands,” Toji says to you while holding eye contact with the little boy. His lip curls up on one side as Megumi blinks at him owlishly before deciding that his toys are more interesting than his father and turns back to continue playing with them. With a roll of your eyes, you pick up the vase you were working on, flowers arranged and looking the same as they did five minutes ago, and walk off towards one of the booths near the window.

Toji breaks his gaze away from Megumi to follow you. “We’re not going to teach him that the stork dropped him off, so why bother—”

A buzzing in his back pocket interrupts whatever he was about to persuade you with, and he fishes it out with a dissatisfied noise in the back of his throat. It isn’t until he’s able to read the message and takes a look at the photo attached to it does his grumbling turn into delighted surprise. With a grin, he lifts his head in your direction and waves his phone in the air. “Got an update about the garage.”

You spin around with tentative excitement written all over your face. “Is everything finally finished?”

“Not quite,” Toji says slowly, and you let out a frustrated groan in response.

When his boss and the owner of the garage died eighteen months ago, it left the business in some state of legal limbo. There were no heirs to inherit it and no will left bequeathing it to anyone. For weeks, the fear of it shutting down had hovered oppressively over each mechanic working there as they waited for the law to take its effect. During that time, it had only taken a couple days of thought and one night of Toji pitching a wild idea to you after Megumi had been put to bed before his decision was made.

And so, after one year of too many lawyers, more stress and headaches than he anticipated, and a loan amount that made him nauseated, Toji had become the new owner of the garage. Since then, he’s spent the last six months learning how to run a business (he has never been more grateful for you) and over overseeing the various upgrades and repairs he wanted done.

With a disbelieving chuckle, Toji stares back down at the picture on his phone again. “That old bastard was good for a couple things, I guess.”

“Toji!” you exclaim with an intonation that suggests you don’t approve of his willingness to speak such casual ill of the dead.

“Oh yeah, may he rest in peace.”

“Toji!”

He knows he should probably pay some proper respects or express some kind of gratitude, but he’s too caught up in the emotion welling in his chest, and Toji can only think of sharing it with you. “Come look at this.”

Leaving the vase on the booth, you cross the floor to where he stands and look at him curiously. “What is it?” you ask.

He lowers his arm so that his phone is closer to your line of sight, and you squint down at the small pixelated image.

“They got the new sign up,” Toji says, voice hushed and awed. You’re no better, and there’s a wobbly smile on your face as you take in the sight of “Fushiguro’s Garage” carved out in sleek black steel and mounted high above the entrance of the building.

“And to think,” you whisper, looking up into Toji’s face and smiling so brilliantly that he wonders if his naivety hasn’t completely faded away, “you once said that you wouldn’t change your last name because it takes too much paperwork.”

Toji can’t help but laugh as he draws you into his side with an arm around your waist. He drops his chin so that his lips can ghost over the shell of your ear. “You’re not wrong, but in my defense, I didn’t know any better then. Afterall, it was your idea that I take my wife’s last name, Mrs. Fushiguro.”

At the same time that you stretch onto your toes, you plant one hand at the back of his neck to drag him down to you, and Toji is determined to kiss you senseless. However, he only gets about two seconds of his lips on yours before you’re breaking away, your attention stolen by something. Toji looks down, and Megumi is staring up at the two of you, the fabric of your pants clenched in his tiny first.

“Snack,” he requests politely.

Toji releases you from his arm with a sigh of disappointment, but he still manages to slip his hand down your back and squeeze a handful of your rear as you reach for Megumi’s hand. With a scandalized giggle, you swat his hand away but you don’t tear your eyes from his, and they are filled with equal parts love, flirtatiousness, and something wickedly promising.

“Can you get the garland hung up while I make him a snack?” you ask around a smile, and Toji nods as he watches you lead your son back towards the kitchen. He goes to open the container that it sits in, but you call his name once more. “Remember, we only have an hour before we have to leave to meet the Itadori’s in the park. Megumi and Yuji have a playdate today.”

Toji wrinkles his nose but grunts in confirmation, and you duck underneath the checkered curtain separating the kitchen from the rest of the cafe with Megumi in tow. With a tired sigh this time, Toji turns and begins to unpack the garland of leaves from its container, letting it spool onto the floor.

It’s not that he minds spending the afternoon at the park with you two, even with the addition of Jin, Kaori, and the son they had just three months after Megumi was born, but he can’t say it’s his favorite way of rounding out the weekend. If anything, he would prefer to get the three of you home, but he does suppose that the park would be a convenient way to tire Megumi out for the evening and land him into an early bedtime. The kid’s been clinging to you like glue lately, and Toji cannot deny that he’s never been the best at sharing you.

Just as he’s securing the garland to the front of the ordering counter, you walk back out from the kitchen to stand on the other side from where he’s at. Toji can see through a gap in the curtain that Megumi is happily eating away at a little table in the corner, and a thought pops into his head that he only considers with a mild level of seriousness.

“Hey,” he whispers conspiratorially, and you raise a brow at him. “You think you’d ever want to give that supply closet another go, cause if so—”

-------

If you're reading this here for the first time, thank you bunches <3 I hope you enjoyed it!