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solxamber · 1 month ago

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Mage x Menace || Jade Leech

You, a struggling mage-in-training, tried to summon a majestic beast to escape your cursed fate in the botany stream.

Instead, you got Jade Leech—chaos incarnate, collector of mysterious jars, and disturbingly enthusiastic about plants.

He now lives in your dorm, calls you "Master" with a straight face and might be seducing you via herbal tea.

this is a present for @hyperfixating-rn <3 I'm very late but happy belated birthday!!

You were going to be a great mage. A legendary one. The kind they wrote poems about—long, rhyming ones with unnecessarily dramatic metaphors. You had dreams. Ambitions. A Pinterest board titled "Epic Wizard Core." You practiced basic spells in your room, blew up your mirror once, and were 96% sure your magical aura was purple (which is obviously the most powerful one, everyone knows that).

So imagine your surprise when your entrance exam results came back and you were… sorted into the Botany stream.

Botany.

As in, plants.

As in, dirt and roots and sunlight and “communing with nature.”

You had never communed with nature. You had once tried to grow a cactus—the most resilient plant known to humankind—and it had withered in protest within a week. You had named that cactus Spiky. Its death was a tragedy. A murder, some said. By you.

So naturally, you stood there on orientation day, holding your shiny new textbook titled “Green is the Heart’s Color: Love and Magic in Leaves”, with the same vibe as someone who had been given a live grenade and told to hug it.

Your fellow classmates looked excited. Eager. Too green, in more ways than one. You watched one of them gently cradle a sproutling like it was a newborn. Another was crying over the “beautiful potential” of transpiration. Meanwhile, you were googling "can you accidentally poison poison ivy."

And then, of course, came your professor. You don’t remember much from the orientation speech because you were too busy having a silent breakdown about the phrase "the gentle whisper of chlorophyll." But you do remember one very important thing:

You’re in so much trouble.

You raised your hand at one point to ask if you were allowed to… switch majors. The professor smiled.

A warm, benevolent, lethal smile.

“Oh, dear. The plants have chosen you.”

What does that even mean???

You don’t know. But the tiny seedling on your desk keeps wiggling like it’s happy to see you. You don’t trust it. You name it Vermin and pray it doesn’t unionize with the moss on your windowsill.

You are a mage in training. A powerful wizard in the making.

And now you are at war… with horticulture.

After a week of trying to bond with leaves like they were long-lost family and nearly getting strangled by a particularly enthusiastic vine, you decided you’d had enough.

You needed a way out.

Not in the dramatic “storm out of class, set fire to the greenhouse, and flee into the mountains” way. (Though it was on the table.)

You needed a loophole. An escape clause. A forbidden back door in the curriculum forged in ancient times by other students who had also accidentally murdered cacti.

So you did what any desperate, dignity-depleted mage-in-training would do.

You found a senior.

Now, seniors in mage school are like cryptids. Powerful. Elusive. Sleep-deprived. And terrifying in the way only people who’ve once accidentally turned themselves into a plant can be. Your chosen senior was sitting under a tree, drinking coffee from a mug that said “I survived Magical Ecology II and all I got was this mug and lifelong trauma.”

You approached, clinging to your textbook like it was a lifeline. “Hi. I’m—uh. I’m not vibing with the flora.”

They looked up, eyes dark with knowledge and probably caffeine. “Botany stream?”

“Against my will.”

A pause. A long, sympathetic sip. Then: “You have two options.”

Your heart fluttered. Hope! Salvation! Maybe—

“One: Fail everything, get held back a year, reapply next cycle. Pray the plants forget your face.”

“I can’t afford that. Option two?”

“Summon a familiar so powerful, the faculty has to bump you into a combat-heavy stream for your own safety. And theirs.”

You blinked. “Like. A dragon?”

The senior shrugged. “Sure. Or a demon. Or a vengeful raccoon. Anything above ‘mildly homicidal housecat’ works.”

“And then they’ll just… change my stream?”

“If your familiar is terrifying enough, yes. Preferably something with fire. Fire fixes everything. Except greenhouses.”

You nodded slowly, feeling the stirrings of a Plan™. A terrible, beautiful, questionable plan.

"How hard is it to summon a familiar?" you asked.

They smiled, and it was not comforting.

“Not hard. Doing it without summoning something that wants to eat you is the tricky part.”

You thanked them and walked off into the distance, muttering under your breath and already flipping through your grimoires.

You were going to get out of this stream or die trying.

Hopefully neither.

But if a hellbeast had to be involved, well…

You were prepared to negotiate.

You had one job.

Just one.

Summon a powerful familiar. Save your future career path. Escape the dreaded Botany Stream before you're eaten alive by carnivorous radishes with anger issues and questionable ethics.

You’d studied forbidden texts. You’d drawn your summoning circle to perfect mathematical proportions using a protractor, three compasses, and something called “Manifestation Oil” you bought off a sketchy alchemy influencer.

You even lit candles by hand like a peasant. That’s how serious this was.

You had one last step: focus your intent. Picture what you wanted. Channel all your magic and will into the ritual. A dragon, perhaps. A fearsome spirit. A beast of legend. Maybe even a war general.

Instead, the unagi you were saving for dinner—your actual, literal eel—slid off the table mid-chant and splat landed right in the center of the summoning circle.

The summoning circle hissed.

You had precisely one second to scream “NO, YOU STUPID SLIPPERY FISH—” before the circle detonated.

There was light. Screaming wind. Something smelled vaguely of seaweed and crime.

When your retinas finally stopped sizzling and your ears recovered from their astral slapping, you looked up.

And there he was.

A tall, elegant man standing in the still-smoking circle, dusting off his sleeves like he hadn’t just been yanked across the realms by an overcooked eel. His teal hair shimmered like deep water. Heterochromatic eyes. He looked like a minor sea god and a professional tax evader all rolled into one.

He tilted his head. Smiled. “That was… dramatic.”

You stared. Still holding the empty microwave-safe eel tray like a sacrificial relic.

“I was trying to summon a dragon,” you croaked.

“Ah,” he said, eyeing the smear of soy sauce in the center of the runes. “Then why the seafood?”

You didn’t have an answer. Mostly because you were too busy silently screaming.

“I suppose I’m what happens when your spell gets rerouted mid-delivery,” he continued, delight practically oozing off him. “Fascinating. I'm Jade. Jade Leech.”

You, a mage of great ambition and even greater regret, took a deep breath and said the only thing that made sense.

“…Are you allergic to plants?”

Jade Leech, freshly yanked from the dark, swirling depths of somewhere much cooler than here, watched with the amused detachment of a man who had just witnessed his summoner go through all five stages of grief in under forty seconds.

You cursed the gods.

You cursed the stars.

You cursed your entrance exam, your cactus, your birth, and at one point—yourself in third person.

He said nothing. Simply folded his hands behind his back and watched with the kind of serene interest normally reserved for people observing an exotic animal fling itself against glass.

Eventually, once your vocal cords began to shred from impassioned screaming (and possibly mild sobbing), you whirled toward him, red-eyed and wild-haired, and gestured at him in disbelief.

“Are you—” you wheezed, dragging a sleeve across your face, “perchance a dragon?”

He blinked slowly. His smile widened.

“Perchance?”

“I don’t know!” you shouted. “You’re tall! You appeared in a bunch of smoke! Your hair defies gravity! That could be dragon behavior!”

“Hm.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “And if I say yes?”

You squinted. “...Do you breathe fire?”

“I’m more of a ‘poison your tea and watch what happens’ sort of creature,” he replied, pleasantly.

You screamed again—this time in cosmic betrayal—and stomped your foot so hard the candles trembled.

He made a note of this. You had good stomping technique.

“Well then what are you?!” you demanded.

He shrugged, like this wasn’t a magical emergency and more of a casual day.

“A Moray Eel, technically.”

You stared at him. Then at the summoning circle. Then at the empty microwave eel tray still on the floor. Then back at him.

“Oh my gods,” you whispered in horror. “The unagi redirected the target circle. I was summoning a power dragon and the ritual downgraded to ‘long sea worm.’”

He chuckled. “How dare you.”

“I wanted to cheat the system,” you whispered, falling to your knees like a tragic protagonist. “And the gods sent me seafood.”

“I’m standing right here, you know.”

You threw yourself to the ground and started sobbing into the floor.

Jade’s smile grew wider. He might stay. This was already more entertaining than anything back home.

And honestly, watching you spiral was kind of charming.

Jade made tea.

You weren’t entirely sure how or when. One moment, you were crumpled on the floor, dramatically mourning your dreams of becoming a cool elemental mage with a dragon familiar. The next, he was handing you a dainty teacup on a saucer you definitely didn’t own.

There was a slice of lemon in it. The mug was warm. You were terrified.

“…Did you summon this tea set too?” you asked, eyeing the porcelain like it was going to explode.

“No,” he said pleasantly. “It was in your cupboard.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

He smiled wider. “Was it not?”

You stared at him. He stared back, sipping his tea with the calm of someone who knew exactly where every spoon in your home was and wouldn’t hesitate to replace them with slightly longer spoons just to gaslight you.

You took a sip of the tea to assert dominance. It was delicious. You hated that it was delicious.

He watched you, unblinking. “So. Why the desperate summoning?”

You groaned, slouching like the tea had robbed you of whatever spine you had left. “I got sorted into the botany stream.”

There was a silence. You sipped your tea again to drown in the shame.

Then his eyes sparkled.

You felt it. Like a shift in the atmosphere. Like the moment before a lightning strike. Like the second someone said, “Trust me,” and you woke up four hours later in a tree, covered in glitter and mild regret.

“Oh,” he said, delighted. “Botany.”

“No,” you said immediately. “Don’t do that. Don’t say it like that.”

“Fascinating field, truly.”

“Nope. You’re not going to help me switch out, are you?”

He leaned forward, chin in his hand, elbow balanced too gracefully for someone who had appeared out of eel magic and poor life choices. “Why would I do that? I think you’ll thrive.”

“You don’t understand,” you said, pleading now. “I killed a cactus.”

“Oh, I completely understand,” he said. “And I'm going to help you fulfill your potential.”

You froze. “…You mean, like, help me survive until I transfer?”

“No,” he said.

You dropped your cup. He caught it without looking. You wanted to scream.

The only thing worse than being a botany student… was being a botany student with a chaos eel who found fungi romantically intriguing as your familiar.

You were so doomed.

Unfortunately for everyone involved—and by everyone, specifically you—magic law was a clingy little thing. Once the summoning circle did its sparkly flashbang thing and delivered you one (1) butler-themed eel man, the universe basically clapped its hands, said “it is what it is,” and slapped a contract in your face.

Minimum term of servitude: one year.

“But I didn’t mean to summon him,” you argued to literally no one who cared. “There was fish involved! It was a mishap, not a magical invocation!”

Jade, very unhelpfully sipping tea that you definitely hadn’t bought, slid the scroll across the table toward you like a cheerful IRS agent. “Intent is only one part of the ritual,” he said with the infinite patience of someone who enjoyed watching trainwrecks in slow motion. “The contract is already half-formed. You really should sign it before your house explodes.”

You stared at the scroll.

Then at him.

Then at the scroll again.

“Do I at least get a trial period?” you tried.

“No,” he said, smiling.

“A free return policy?”

“No.”

“Is there, like, an eel clause I can exploit?”

He chuckled. You were going to die in this major.

With the kind of reluctant grace that only someone who’d just accidentally legally bound themselves to a smug sea-creature man could muster, you signed.

The moment the pen left the paper, the air shifted with a cozy little pop, as if magic itself was tucking you both in and whispering “congratulations on your joint custody of chaos.” A faint glow danced around Jade’s shoulders. Your window exploded.

(You’d ask questions about that later.)

“There we are,” Jade said, clasping his hands. “Familiar and mage, officially contracted. Shall I begin compiling a weekly schedule for our fieldwork?”

“Field—oh no.”

“Oh yes,” he beamed. “We’ll be revisiting the entire kingdom flora catalogue, starting with mosses.”

You suddenly understood the reason why some mages went mad.

And unfortunately, you’d just handed yours the clipboard.

The next morning, you dragged yourself to class like a condemned soul to the gallows, weighed down by a sense of impending doom and also by the deeply unsettling realization that your familiar had organized your bookshelf by spore reproduction categories sometime during the night.

Everyone else looked so normal. There was someone with a fire spirit coiled lazily around their shoulders, someone else with a giant spectral wolf that radiated unbothered energy, and even one smug jerk with a miniature dragon who was definitely using it to cheat on practical tests.

And then there was you.

With him.

Jade stood a respectful half-step behind you, dressed like a mildly menacing butler who might also commit tax fraud if given the opportunity. He carried your books. He bowed to your professor. He smiled at your classmates.

You didn’t trust that smile. That was the smile of a man who had definitely poisoned a royal court and got away with it by turning the queen into a toadstool.

Someone asked what type of spirit you’d summoned.

You opened your mouth to lie.

Jade answered for you. “They were aiming for a dragon,” he said, serene as ever. “But an eel will have to do.”

The entire class stared at you. You stared into the void.

“It was the unagi,” you muttered, already defeated.

No one knew what that meant, but it sounded stupid, so they all laughed.

Jade patted your back like a supportive guardian. You were ninety percent sure it was to check your spine for eventual harvesting.

Gods help you. It was only the first period.

The Academy was in shambles.

Centuries of magical history. Thousands of successfully summoned fire spirits, storm wolves, mildly angry raccoons. And you—a botany major with a dead cactus on your record—had gone and summoned a person.

Not a ghost.

Not an illusion.

Not even a creepy guy pretending to be summonable.

No. A fully functional person.

“Technically,” the Dean said, staring at the magical contract hovering over your heads, “you… own him now.”

You almost threw up on the ornate rug.

Jade Leech, the man in question, just smiled—sharp, calm, entirely too pleased.

“This is so cursed,” you whispered.

“Oh no,” he replied sweetly. “This is fate.”

And that was only the beginning of your descent into contractual hell.

Because Jade? Oh, he thrived under magical servitude. Took to it like a duck to water. Like an eel to crime.

He started calling you Master.

In public. Loudly. With emphasis.

“Good morning, Master,” he purred on the way to breakfast, gliding past stunned first-years who immediately assumed you were either very powerful or very into some stuff they weren’t ready to Google.

“Jade. Stop.”

“As you command, Master.”

You tried reasoning with him. You begged. You threatened to cry in front of the Headmistress.

Didn’t matter.

In fact, the more embarrassed you got, the worse it became.

“Master, shall I carry your books?”

“No.”

“Your lunch?”

“No.”

“Your emotional baggage?”

“Jade—”

“Ah, but you summoned me, Master. Now we’re bonded.”

You looked around, desperate for help, but every professor just kind of shrugged. Magical contracts were sacred. Breakable only through death, divine intervention, or, apparently, a system of interpretive dances before the moon goddess during a blood eclipse. None of which were happening before finals.

So now this was your life.

You were the “owner” of a smug eel man in a waistcoat who made you do your homework, made better tea than your own grandmother, and insisted on calling you Master while looking like a very polite threat.

You used to be a normal student with no future in botany.

You should've just failed your exams like a normal student.

Jade settled into your dorm room like he’d been planning it for years. Which was frankly insane, considering you’d only accidentally summoned him a day ago.

You woke up the morning after signing the magically binding familiar contract to find your room… different. Not horrifyingly so, just enough to make your eye twitch. Your desk had moved three inches to the left. Your bookshelf now had labels. Your cactus—previously deceased—was somehow thriving in a suspiciously fancy ceramic pot.

And then there were the jars. Oh gods, the jars. They lined the shelves now in neat, alphabetized rows. Some were normal—“Chamomile,” “Sea Salt,” “Lavender Sprigs.” Others were less so. “Tooth Collection (Domestic)” sat right next to “Rainwater (For Legal Use Only).” You wanted to ask, but Jade had a look in his eye that said whatever answer you get, you won’t like it.

He also brewed tea every morning. Not the relaxing kind. The existential crisis in a cup kind. You drank one (1) polite sip and suddenly understood what “the color eleven” looked like. Your body remained seated but your soul went on a brief vacation.

You had no idea how, but you were scoring higher in Botany. You still couldn’t identify a single plant, but Jade kept slipping you notes mid-lab with things like “This one bites. Do not sniff.” or “Lick at your own risk.”

So yes, your GPA was rising. Unfortunately, so was your blood pressure. And your heart rate. And your sense that you were, somehow, very much in danger.

Jade simply smiled every time you panicked. “You’re thriving, Master,” he’d say, and sip his tea like he wasn’t actively reorganizing your entire life.

You were not thriving. You were surviving. Barely.

The assignment was simple on paper: identify twenty local plants, label their genus, and list their magical and medicinal properties.

Which was all fine and dandy if you weren’t a person who had accidentally killed a cactus by underwatering it because you “didn’t want to overwhelm it.”

You’d gotten through most of your academic career via a potent combination of vibes, frantic late-night study sessions, and an almost supernatural level of spite. But this—this was science. With labels. And botanical terminology. And leaves that all looked the same.

So, you did what any sane, desperate mage-in-training with poor decision-making skills and a total lack of botanical knowledge would do.

You brewed a bathtub-sized cauldron of universal poison antidote and decided you’d taste-test each plant to figure out which one was lethal and, by process of elimination, identify the rest.

Jade found you leaning over the cauldron, mumbling something about statistical mortality rates and chewing on a leaf like a feral squirrel trying to beat natural selection.

“I thought you were joking,” he said, in that same unsettlingly pleasant tone he always used when you were actively concerning him.

“I wasn’t!” you declared. “This is science, Jade. And survival. I’ve made enough antidote to survive an assassination attempt—”

“You made it in your bathtub.”

“—and I’m going to lick nature into submission.”

Jade sat you down at the table, folded his hands neatly, and asked you—politely but with the weight of an ancient curse behind it—to repeat your plan.

You did.

He stared at you.

You shifted in your seat.

He continued to stare, like a disappointed headmaster.

“...Okay fine,” you finally muttered. “It is a bad plan.”

“Thank you,” he said calmly. “Would you like to identify your plants using logic, reference books, and assistance from your familiar, or would you prefer a slow and humiliating descent into gastrointestinal regret?”

“I mean, when you say it like that—”

“Wonderful. I’ll prepare the tea.”

You hated how soothing (mostly) his tea was.

You found out purely by accident.

Your friend sat down at lunch with a heavy sigh and a tear-streaked face, muttering something about how their fox familiar had gone limp and glassy-eyed after being ignored for two days straight in favor of midterms. Apparently, he needed “emotional engagement” and “frequent pets.”

You had not known this. You had not known any of this.

You returned to your dorm in a panic.

Jade, as always, was seated like an eerie portrait come to life, sipping tea and reading a book that looked suspiciously bound in scales. He raised one eyebrow as you burst through the door carrying three different types of fruits and a hand-sewn blanket you’d made in Home Ec two years ago.

“I heard that familiars need enrichment,” you blurted. “Do you—are you enriched? Are you feeling under-enriched? What’s your favorite snack enrichment type? Is it eels? Oh no wait, is that cannibalism? I don’t know your rules!”

Jade blinked slowly. “You believe I am in poor health?”

“I don’t know!” you wailed, thrusting the blanket at him. “I don’t know the maintenance routine for familiars! You could be dying from sadness and I wouldn’t know!”

He looked down at the blanket. It had uneven edges and a sewn-on mushroom that looked like it had witnessed terrible things. Slowly, he took it. Draped it over his lap. Sipped his tea again.

“You are a very considerate Master,” he said with a pleased little smile that absolutely shouldn’t have made you feel like you’d just earned an A+ in Familiar Wellness. “I feel much better already.”

You weren’t sure if he was messing with you or not. But then he let you tuck the blanket around his shoulders like a shawl, and even let you hand-feed him a strawberry.

You decided you didn’t care if he was messing with you. His ears were flushed. That was a win.

You needed Nightshade. Not the safe kind either—the real, reactive stuff that tended to hiss if the humidity wasn’t just right and once exploded in someone's bag for being stared at wrong.

Unfortunately, your professors had firmly, repeatedly, and increasingly frantically refused to let you anywhere near it. Something about “prior incidents,” “a trail of fire ants through the dorm hallway,” and “we are begging you to stop licking mystery leaves.”

But you had an experiment to finish, and a lack of official approval had never stopped a single mage in history. Which was how you found yourself sneaking into the restricted greenhouse under cover of darkness, with your overly smug eel-familiar following like he was on a stroll and not a felonious B&E.

“This is clearly illegal,” Jade said cheerfully, as he helped you pick the lock.

“You’re a summoned being. Laws don’t apply to you,” you muttered, shoving the door open.

“That’s speciesist,” he said mildly, and you ignored him on purpose.

The two of you tiptoed through rows of glowing plants, whisper-bickering the whole way.

“Don’t touch that. It screams.”

“You scream.”

“Yes, and I have a great voice.”

He huffed a laugh. You tried not to grin. You failed.

Honestly, it would’ve been a perfectly stupid and smooth heist—until the Shrike Vine noticed you. Apparently it was pollination season and it was feeling bitey. You froze as a thick green tendril snapped toward you like a whip.

Except it never hit.

Jade moved faster than you thought was possible. One hand caught the vine mid-strike, the other calmly flicked a tiny blade across it like he was trimming hedges instead of saving your life.

And then, because he was a menace, he leaned in close—just enough for you to catch the sharp gleam in his mismatched eyes—and murmured:

“I’m very good at protecting what’s mine.”

You were not about to combust in a greenhouse. You were not. Absolutely not.

Still. Your face was hot. You blamed the bioluminescent plants.

“Wh—That’s not—you can’t just say things like that,” you hissed.

He tilted his head, looking unbothered and devastatingly pleased. “Why not?”

You opened your mouth. Closed it. Pointed at the vine. “Is that one safe to lick?”

“Absolutely not.”

“…Cool, cool, just checking.”

The incident itself wasn’t even your fault this time, which was frankly insulting, considering you usually caused at least 70% of the department's arcane emergencies.

No, this time it was Jeremy from Spell Calculus who accidentally overcharged a fire enhancement glyph and sent a wayward jet of magic careening through the lab like a feral gremlin. It ping-ponged off three protective wards, vaporized a desk plant, and promptly singed your familiar.

Specifically: Jade’s sleeve caught a little fire. For exactly three seconds.

The sleeve was barely charred. His skin wasn’t even red. He smirked.

You, however, reacted like you’d just watched him be stabbed in the heart by a divine lance.

“OH MY GOD YOU’RE BURNING—ARE YOU OKAY?! Is it fatal? It’s fatal, isn’t it?! What’s the protocol for familiar injury?! Do you need a resurrection spell?? Should I call the nurse or the exorcist—?!”

Jade, blinked once. Then calmly patted the faintest whiff of smoke from his robe and said, “I believe I’ll live.”

But the glint in his eyes said he smelled weakness. And he would absolutely exploit it.

The next morning, you showed up with a full care basket: enchanted cooling balm, a wonky scarf you’d panic-crocheted in the night, a potion for nerve regeneration (completely unnecessary), and a whole assortment of healing snacks from the infirmary vending machine.

You even hand-fed him a soothing honey drop.

That was your next mistake.

Because the very next day, Jade reclined across your bed like a drama major rehearsing for a role in “The Dying Swan: A Magical Tragedy.” He had a lukewarm towel across his forehead, your blanket wrapped dramatically around his shoulders like a cape, and a very deliberate look of fragile suffering.

“Alas,” he whispered, placing the back of his hand to his (completely fine) forehead, “I fear the lingering effects of the trauma are… worsening. There’s a tightness in my chest. I may never wield a kettle again. My tea senses are dulled.”

You squinted at him, deadpan. “You brewed two pots this morning.”

“For you, dearest Master,” he said, with an exaggerated wince. “But at what cost?”

You refused to indulge him. For about ten minutes.

Then he started coughing. Badly. Into a silk handkerchief. That you were pretty sure he’d dabbed with food coloring beforehand to resemble blood.

“Do you think you can bring… strawberry lollipops?” he asked, voice trembling. “Before I pass on to the next world.”

You shoved five into his mouth. “You’re not dying. But you are insufferable.”

He sucked dramatically on the sweets, sighing. “I find this treatment emotionally compromising.”

You fed him another one.

And started plotting your revenge with a very bitter herbal “recovery” tea. It smelled like wet moss and tasted like betrayal.

He drank it all. Smiled. Said it “added intrigue to the healing experience.”

You were no longer sure who was winning this war. But you were definitely losing your mind.

It started subtly. Jade would casually set a teacup in front of you in the mornings, unprompted. You’d ignore it. He’d raise an eyebrow. You’d argue that caffeine was a food group and you didn’t need anything else, thank you very much.

He’d say something cryptic like “I’d rather not have to explain malnutrition-related hallucinations to the administration,” and then slide you a plate of suspiciously elegant finger sandwiches.

Somehow, you’d end up eating them.

A week later, you found yourself sitting down for actual breakfast—tea, toast, even fruit—without remembering how it happened. He’d simply adjusted your routine. Quietly. Steadily. Like a moss infestation with an agenda.

He began packing you lunch. Bento-style. With little hand-drawn labels.

You didn’t even know when he started doing it. You just opened your bag one day, reached for your emergency gummy stash, and pulled out a thermos of miso soup and a side of rice balls shaped like sea creatures.

He started accompanying you to the dining hall under the excuse of "needing seaweed access." He monitored your meals. Commented on vitamin intake. Replaced your sugar gummies with dried fruit. Told you that if he caught you drinking energy drinks for dinner again, he’d report you to botanical safety for trying to poison a living plant (Vermin had still not recovered from the one time you tried to share a Monster with it).

Eventually, your friend—sweet, concerned, possibly one skipped breakfast away from passing out—cornered you between lectures.

"Hey," she said, tugging your sleeve with wide eyes. “I need to ask you something and I don’t want you to freak out.”

You, holding a bento box labeled ‘Don’t Forget to Finish Your Spinach, Master’ with a small smiling mushroom drawn on it, tilted your head. “Okay?”

She glanced around, lowered her voice, and whispered, “Who’s the familiar here?”

You stared at her.

She stared back.

In the distance, Jade waved at you politely while handing a professor a jar of suspicious glowing jam.

You opened your mouth. Closed it. Thought about how he’d reorganized your pantry by nutritional pyramid. Thought about how your life had improved and yet somehow spiraled out of your control in the exact same breath.

“I… don’t know anymore,” you whispered back.

And that was the beginning of your existential crisis about power dynamics, dietary fiber, and eel-based emotional manipulation.

The more you thought about it, the more the terrible, horrifying truth settled in: Jade had been slowly taming you.

Not in a leash-and-collar kind of way (though you weren’t entirely convinced he wouldn’t enjoy that visual), but in the slow, methodical way one might tame a particularly wild housecat. One that hissed at vegetables and believed microwaved instant noodles were the pinnacle of culinary achievement.

When you’d first summoned him—on accident, via unagi-induced chaos and a summoning circle that was technically illegal in five countries—you’d been expecting a fae general. A terrifying beast of war. A dragon, maybe.

What you got was a polite, well-dressed man with a smile that could curdle milk and the calm demeanor of someone who’d enjoy watching your academic career spontaneously combust.

You were sure he would spend his time reclining in your dorm like some cryptid, sipping tea while you panicked over assignments and singlehandedly ruined your chances at survival in botany.

That had been your first impression.

But it wasn’t what happened.

Instead, Jade made it his mission to ruin you in the most terrifying way imaginable: through care.

He made sure you ate. He brewed tea tailored to your stress levels. He reorganized your notebooks by topic and color-coded them while claiming he was “bored.” He calmly extracted you from five different poison ivy incidents. He taught you how to pronounce “photosynthesis” correctly after you spent an entire presentation calling it “plant vibes.”

And you hated to admit it—but it worked.

You stopped waking up in a panic. You stopped considering glitter glue a legitimate potion ingredient. You even passed a midterm without attempting to bribe a forest fairy.

It was subtle. Devious. Soft.

And worst of all, it was making you feel warm. Cared for. Grounded.

You used to dream of summoning a dragon—a grand, legendary familiar that would impress the entire academy and maybe light your homework on fire for dramatic effect. But now?

Now you watched Jade hum to himself in your kitchen, cooking something that smelled like lemon and dreams, and you didn’t care about dragons. Or status. Or changing streams.

You just wanted to figure out if there was a spell that could describe the exact way your heart skipped when he smiled at you and called you “Master” with that infuriating glint in his eye.

And if not… well. Maybe you’d make one.

From Jade’s point of view, your summoning had all the signs of an impending disaster—and thus, a highly enjoyable evening.

The circle was sloppy, the candles were the wrong color, and the ambient magical pressure was off by several kilopascals. The unagi that had plummeted into the center as a last-minute offering had been particularly concerning. Jade had arrived in a flash of light and fish-scented smoke, bracing for either mortal peril or at least a good laugh.

And then he saw you.

Wide-eyed. Covered in ink. Mumbling about “hoping for a dragon or something.” The perfect storm of magical desperation and zero planning skills. He had thought you’d be amusing. A novelty. A fun little side project to pass the time while bound by contract for a year.

And at first, that was exactly what you were. You were so spectacularly bad at botany that Jade was convinced you were a social experiment.

You called mushrooms “leaf meat.” You once referred to an entire genus of plants as “the crunchy ones.” And your plan to identify herbs by tasting them like a medieval poison tester had nearly given him a stroke. (Emotionally. He’s far too composed for physical symptoms.)

But somewhere between force-feeding you actual meals and dragging you out of exploding greenhouses, Jade started feeling… something. Not just amusement. Not just secondhand horror.

Affection.

It was awful.

So naturally, he did what any emotionally stunted eel-man would do—he ramped up the teasing. Called you “Master” in public. Smiled just a little too sharply. Hovered with a quiet attentiveness he pretended wasn’t genuine.

But when he thought back to that summoning—your hopeful eyes, the half-charred fish, the complete magical disaster—Jade realized something horrifying.

He owed his current happiness to a piece of grilled eel.

The next time he saw unagi on a menu, he gave it a respectful nod. After all, not every familiar bond is forged through fate, fire, and ancient prophecy.

Some are forged through sheer dumb luck and seafood.

You had always believed, deep in your feral little heart, that if you ever fell in love, it would be with the intensity of a meteor crashing into the earth. There would be pyrotechnics. An orchestra. Maybe a cursed bouquet of sentient mushrooms arranged in the shape of your initials. Something properly dramatic.

You were prepared for a sweeping romance. A declaration shouted from a balcony. A confession under a blood moon. At the very least, a sword fight followed by heavy breathing and an emotionally repressed kiss.

What you were not prepared for was... a random morning.

More specifically: today morning at 6:42 a.m., in your tragically unventilated dorm kitchen, where you shuffled in half-awake, wearing a blanket like a disgruntled ghost. Your hair looked like it had seen war. Your socks didn’t match. You were only conscious due to residual academic panic and caffeine withdrawal.

And there Jade was. Crisp and awake and annoyingly gorgeous, as usual, humming some eerie little tune while cooking god-knows-what on your stove. The sunlight framed him like he was in a toothpaste commercial. There were suspicious jars open on the counter labeled things like “Fenugreek??? (Maybe)” and “Do Not Inhale.”

He glanced at you over his shoulder, amused. “Good morning, Master.”

You grunted. It was too early for sarcasm or formal titles.

So, with the sleep-deprived logic of a creature who had survived exclusively on coffee and academic desperation, you trudged over to him, latched onto his waist like a needy koala, and rested your cheek against his back.

You did not plan this. Your body moved on its own, possessed by the Spirit of Affection.

To his credit, he didn’t question it. Jade simply chuckled, adjusted his stance, and offered you a spoonful of something suspiciously green and steaming.

You tasted it. Your neurons barely fired. It was delicious and probably illegal.

And then, without thought, without warning, still pressed against him and one brain cell away from sleep, you mumbled, “I love you.”

There was a beat of silence.

You blinked.

Wait.

Wait—

What the hell did you just say—

YOU SAID THAT OUT LOUD—

Jade paused with the spoon still in his hand, his entire body going still like a predator that just heard something interesting. Then—slowly, like he was savoring it—he turned.

He looked at you. He really looked at you. And then, in true chaos spirit fashion, he grinned.

Not his usual polite smile. No. This was different. This one had teeth.

“Oh?” he said, softly. “Oh?”

And that was the moment you realized: you had said those three words to a man who considered emotional vulnerability an invitation to hunt.

You tried to backtrack. Tried to say you meant “I love you—r soup.”

Or “I love you as a friend. A colleague. A sentient eel.”

But before you could decide on your lie of choice, he leaned down and kissed you.

It started sweet. Gentle. Thoughtful, like maybe he was giving you time to flee.

You didn’t. That was your mistake.

Because then his hand slid around your waist, and the kiss deepened, and suddenly your kitchen felt too small, and too warm, and definitely not rated for public indecency. Your legs threatened to give out. Your brain flatlined.

When he pulled away, you were breathless and dazed. You looked at him, heart hammering, pupils blown wide.

He tilted his head, still grinning, and said, “You taste like honesty. How rare.”

You briefly considered combusting on the spot.

And as he turned back to the stove like nothing had happened, humming again, you realized something terrifying:

You were in love.

And you were the prey.

And you were kind of okay with that.

When familiar contract renewal season arrived—accompanied by the usual administrative chaos, enchanted paperwork that bit fingers, and panicked first-years realizing their mushroom toadlings had exploded again—you were… calm.

Weirdly, suspiciously calm.

You should have been stressed. You were, after all, still a mage in training with a botany grade being held together by duct tape, blind luck, and the sheer force of your familiar’s passive-aggressive hovering.

But no. You weren’t worried. Because somehow, over the past year of accidental poisonings, illegal greenhouse heists, and near-romantic tea-induced hallucinations, you and Jade had fallen into something far more dangerous than summoning magic: mutual affection. Possibly even love. Terrifying.

And yet, when the day came, you expected a conversation. A little back and forth. Maybe some dramatic flourish on his part—Jade had a flair for drama and mild emotional terrorism, after all. At the very least, you thought he’d present a contract with a smirk and some cryptic line about “servitude never being quite so delightful.”

But he didn’t.

You woke up one morning to find him already seated at your desk, as if he’d been waiting all night. The early sun filtered through your window, highlighting the soft teal of his hair and the amused glint in his eyes. You were still blinking the sleep out of yours, shuffling over in your raccoon-print pajamas with all the grace of a zombie when he slid the document toward you.

A thick, arcane-heavy contract. One that glowed softly at the edges. Titled:

“PERMANENT FAMILIAR CONTRACT — LIFELONG BOND”

Your eyes snagged on the signature line.

His name was already there.

Signed in an elegant, curling script with a wax seal that looked like an eel tail. No jokes. No teasing. No loopholes.

You stared at the paper. Then at him.

“…You want to be stuck with me forever?” you asked, because your brain short-circuited and apparently decided that was the most romantic response it could muster.

Jade raised a brow. “You make life—interesting,” he said, voice inflected with all the warmth and amusement of someone who once watched you attempt to eat a venomous berry “for science.”

You blinked again. “That’s not a no.”

“It’s a yes,” he said easily, his smile softening. “I’d like to be yours. If you’ll have me.”

You didn’t even hesitate.

You picked up the pen and signed your name beneath his. The moment the ink dried, the paper vanished in a swirl of moss-green smoke, the pact sealed with a pleasant little magical ding.

“So,” you said, heart thudding in your chest as you looked up at him, “we’re really doing this.”

“We are,” he said.

“Forever is a long time.”

“Not nearly long enough.”

And you had to kiss him after that, because what else do you do when your familiar—not-quite-boyfriend-but-very-possibly-soulmate says something like that?

He kissed you back like he’d been waiting years. And you let him, sinking into his arms like it was the only place you’d ever belonged.

You, a chaotic disaster of a botany student. Him, a merman familiar who brewed tea that could bend time.

A perfect, absurd, slightly terrifying match.

Later that evening, when you sat together on the windowsill, legs tangled and laughter echoing, you realized something else: you'd meant to find a way out of the botany stream. A bigger future. A stronger school of magic.

But with Jade by your side, maybe botany wasn’t a prison—it was just where you bloomed.

It started, as most disasters in your life did, with you tripping over your own feet. Specifically, you’d tripped face-first into a rare carnivorous plant while trying to impress your professor with your “innovative approach to hands-on learning.” (Your professor had screamed. The plant had screamed louder. You still didn’t know plants could do that.)

And while you were nursing your slightly-bitten pride and applying salve to your dignity, some golden-haired, obnoxiously perfect fourth-year had wandered over, all pristine robes and condescending smiles.

“You know,” he said to Jade, completely ignoring you like you were a decorative shrub, “it’s a shame. A familiar with your magical potential? Tied to someone who’s clearly... not invested in their future.”

You scoffed. Loudly. “Excuse you. I am very invested in my future. I just think the universe should meet me halfway and stop putting venomous moss in my study patch.”

The student didn’t even blink. “You deserve a master who challenges you. Who brings out your best.”

Jade tilted his head, politely smiling the way a shark might if it had impeccable manners and was about to swallow a surfer whole.

“I see,” he said, sipping his tea. “And that would be… you?”

“Why not?” the student said, and you hated how confident he sounded. “They're wasting you.”

You froze.

You knew it wasn’t true. Jade had chosen you. Signed a lifelong contract. Literally brewed you soup after you set your eyebrows on fire.

But the words stung in a way you hadn’t expected.

You tried to play it cool. Shrugged. “If he wants to leave, he can. No one’s stopping him.”

Jade’s eyes flicked toward you, a tiny crease between his brows. “Is that what you think?”

You shrugged again. Forced a smile. “Why wouldn’t it be? Go ahead. Take your tea. Find a master who challenges you.”

And with that, you walked away, head high, hands clenched so tight your knuckles cracked.

You spent the rest of the night trying not to cry into your pillow.

The next morning, your pillow was suspiciously warm. And breathing.

You cracked open one eye to find Jade wrapped around you like a clingy snake with boundary issues and an attitude problem.

“What—Jade—get off—!”

“I’m sleeping,” he said.

“You are not! You’re emotionally ambushing me!”

He didn’t move. Just curled tighter.

You squirmed, shoved, flailed. Nothing worked. The man had the tensile strength of a vine and the stubbornness of ten toddlers.

Eventually, you gave up and pouted at him. “You were mean yesterday.”

“I wasn’t trying to be,” he admitted cheerfully, his tone dangerously close to smug. “But in my defense, I expected my master to realize I have taste.”

You sulked harder. “You owe me.”

“Oh?”

“And I’m cashing it in later.”

“Of course, Master.”

“…Stop calling me that in the dorm.”

“No.”

You didn’t bring it up again. But the next day, as you passed that fourth-year in the hallway, he looked pale, shaken, and was clutching a charm pouch so tightly it might’ve become a fossil.

You glanced at Jade. He looked serene. Suspiciously serene.

“…What did you do?” you whispered.

“Me?” he smiled. “Nothing serious.”

You stared at him. He sipped his tea.

You decided you definitely weren’t asking.

But later, when he draped himself across your bed again and offered you a cup of calming lavender-citrus tea with a wink, you realized one thing:

You may be a borderline disaster of a mage, but Jade Leech was yours. And gods help anyone who forgot it.

You'd been holding back.

It wasn't that you were scared. Okay, no—you were absolutely terrified. Because the “what are we” question carried the weight of galaxies, of shifting dynamics and possible heartbreak, and you weren’t emotionally prepared to deal with that when you were already behind on your fungal studies and had just accidentally set your robe on fire trying to dry herbs.

Still, it was getting harder and harder to ignore the fact that Jade Leech, your familiar, your chaos partner, your maybe-something-more, had kissed you good morning again that day. Just a soft brush of lips while you were half-asleep, before you could even form coherent thought. And you’d just blinked at him, dazed and blushing and maybe a little dead inside.

And then that horrible, arrogant, no-chin-having senior from the advanced familiar studies track said—loudly—that if someone like Jade were his familiar, he’d “treat him properly” and “not waste potential on a person who still mistakes fertilizer for potion ingredients.”

You saw red. Possibly green. Maybe fuchsia, depending on how much of Jade’s tea was still in your system. But whatever the color, something snapped in your soul.

Because no one was taking Jade from you.

Not when he brewed you anti-headache tea with honey because he knew you hated bitter things. Not when he cleaned your desk with the gentleness of a man legally married to your organization system. Not when he smiled at you like you were a curious algae bloom he couldn't stop poking at. Not when he kissed your forehead, your temple, your nose, your cheek—like loving you was as natural as breathing.

So.

You marched.

You stormed into your dorm room where he was casually rearranging his jar collection (you didn’t ask, you'd learned not to the hard way.) and pointed an aggressively trembling finger at him.

“Be mine!” you shouted.

Jade blinked once. Then tilted his head, that infuriatingly pretty smile already forming. “I thought I already was, Master.”

Your brain combusted. You flailed. “Huh?!”

“I assumed the constant kissing and emotional intimacy might have been a clue.” His eyes sparkled. “Should I have drawn a diagram? I could make a chart—”

You launched yourself at him in mortified fury. “No charts!”

He caught you with practiced ease, laughed that horrible, lovely laugh of his, and kissed you again—this time slower, deeper, like he’d been waiting for this exact moment.

You melted. Fully collapsed like overwatered moss in his arms.

When you finally came up for air, dizzy and giddy and mildly offended at how good he was at this, he tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear and murmured, “Now that we’ve established that… shall we discuss what we’re calling the wedding mushrooms?”

You screamed into his shoulder.

He laughed again.

And that night, you dreamed of rings made of sea glass and mushrooms that glowed softly in the dark.

Masterlist

#twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #twst #twisted wonderland #jade leech x reader #jade x reader #jade leech #jade leech x you #twst jade

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carlislefiles · 25 days ago

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finals week | fushiguro megumi, geto suguru, gojo satoru, ino takuma, inumaki toge, kamo choso, nanami kento, sukuna ryomen, yuuji itadori ╰►college is hell, and finals week is the seventh circle. as much as you love your boyfriend, you can have absolutely no distractions, not when the biggest tests of your life loom over you like a raincloud full of dread and fear of failure. they don’t take to being ignored so well, and they take to you ignoring yourself even worse. 6.9k words far left picture (teacup) by @nevroicastar on pinterest

a/n: can you tell that literally all I want in life is someone to be nice to me... :D anyways, this is pretty much pure fluff, reader is not taking care of herself, mentions of poor eating habits, lots of talk of academic validation, etc. so read at your own risk. as I got to the end of this, I realized that a lot of these are quite similar, so sorry about that, but when I have an idea I just kind of have to get it out, so here she is. kind of modern college au, but still within the sorcery realm???? I don’t know don’t ask. warnings: incredibly cheesy, me rambling about topics I do not understand at all (hello? theoretical geometry? didn't even know theoretical math existed?), and pure, unadultered comfort. enjoy <3

megumi knows what it’s like to seek academic validation like it’s oxygen. he wears his indifference like a badge—hood up, sleeves pushed to the elbows, bag slung low—but make no mistake: anything less than an a has him spiraling into a full-blown existential crisis. he may look composed, but internally he’s questioning his intelligence, his self-worth, the educational system, and the meaning of life in general.

so when you break down over a b- on a practice anatomy exam, he understands. doesn’t mean it doesn’t rip him apart. you never cry. never. but that night, your tears soaked into the fabric of his sweatshirt as you buried your face in his chest and whispered, “if this was the easier version, I'm dead. I'm so dead.” it wasn’t even going in the gradebook. didn’t matter. that grade haunted you.

the next morning, he wakes up alone. you beat him out of bed. that’s unheard of. he sends a text. then another.

“you at the library?” “eat something.”

no reply. eventually you respond, just not with anything he wants to hear.

“I'm gonna be really busy. maybe we should take a break until finals are over. you should hang out with yuuji.”

he scowls at the screen. as if yuuji hasn’t third-wheeled 70% of your dates. but megumi lets it go—for now. he assumes you’re just holed up in the library. he’s done the same thing. but it gets worse. you stop sleeping in his dorm, stop answering messages, stop functioning like a human being. you become a finals-week cryptid, subsisting on caffeine and sheer willpower. megumi would yell, if he didn’t know better. but he does know better. so he gets quiet. observant. subtle. he brings you real food. coaxes you into drinking water. slides his hoodie onto your shoulders when you’re shivering under the library ac. brushes your hair back with fingers that shake slightly when he realizes how tired you look. pulls the ramen cup away mid-bite and replaces it with something that didn’t come from a vending machine.

and when you cry over flashcards and whisper, “I don’t even know what a nephron does anymore,” he just starts quizzing you, reading aloud terms he can’t even pronounce correctly. he doesn’t know how you’re surviving this course. anatomy and physiology? it sounds like science hell. he hates it for you. but you don’t stop. not until finals week swallows you whole, trembling under the weight of your own expectations.

that’s when he draws the line.

your head is buried in your laptop at some godforsaken hour, eyes bloodshot and fingers twitching when—slam. he shuts your computer. “what—megumi! I was—”

toothbrush. sweatpants. his sweatshirt. he’s already dragging you to the bed, ignoring every protest as you weakly try to wiggle free. “I have to—”

“no, you don’t,” he says firmly. “you’re not studying. you’re sleeping.”

he scratches your scalp. presses featherlight kisses to the slope of your neck. hums something under his breath, steady and warm. eventually, your body gives out. you melt. and sleep like a corpse blessed by the gods. he watches you for a long while before finally letting himself rest beside you.

the next day, he waits outside the medicine building. the test is over. your scores won’t be posted for a few days. doesn’t matter. he just needs to see you. you step out, bleary-eyed and barely functioning, and he immediately pulls you into his arms. “you're never doing that to yourself again,” he mumbles into your hair.

you don’t even argue. you just nod and melt into him. and a few days later, the score is posted. you stare at your screen, stunned. an a. a solid, shining, hard-won a. and megumi just smirks like he knew it all along.

suguru graduated last spring. walked across the stage in slacks you'd picked out for him and a grin made of gold and ease. he didn’t look back. college wasn’t hard for him—it never had been. books opened for him like petals, and concepts bowed to his comprehension. it was never about the stress or the stakes. it was about the hours you'd spend curled beside him in the library, mumbling about amino acids or molecular orbitals while he stared at you like you were the sun.

back then, he'd ask you questions from flashcards, only to discard them halfway through and ask about your favorite color, your middle name, your childhood dog. he loved the way your face lit up when your brain found the answer to something hard, but he loved it even more when it lit up because of him. he wasn’t ashamed of that. he’s never been ashamed of how deeply he loves you.

but now…now, things are different. you're wrapped up in organic chemistry like it’s a vice grip. barely breathing, barely blinking. you’ve got every note and molecule memorized, and still you tell him, "it’s not enough." over and over, like a prayer, or a curse. you’ve been walking around like a ghost, and suguru sees it for what it is—devotion, desperation, and destruction all rolled into one. you say it’s just a test, but he knows it’s your everything.

and the worst part? he gets it. he gets what it’s like to build your identity on success. he just wishes you didn’t have to. because when you go missing for a whole day, when you don’t text him back or come home or answer his calls, he panics. he’s not dramatic—not usually—but you’re his, and suguru takes care of his things. so he finds you. of course he does.

you're in the back corner of the chem building, surrounded by papers and empty energy drink cans and what might be tears, though you’d never admit it. you look up when he walks in, and there’s a flash of guilt that crosses your face like lightning. it stings. “I'm so sorry, suguru,” you whisper. “but this is really, really important. I need you to leave me alone until I'm finished with this. I'm too tired and too stressed to worry about anything other than this test.”

that breaks something in him. because you’ve never made him feel like a burden. never once treated his presence like an interruption. and maybe he should’ve fought harder. maybe he should’ve scooped you up, carried you out of there like he wanted to, tucked you beneath his covers and kissed your forehead until the tension bled out of you.

but he’s selfish only sometimes, and never when it comes to your dreams.

so he lets you go. the test is four hours long. you emerge hollow-eyed, trembling, and murmuring something about how you probably failed. you don’t even cry. just breathe in, breathe out, and fall into bed without so much as a kiss. and when the grade is posted the next morning, a clean, perfect a, you don’t celebrate. don’t smile. don’t even tell him. he’s the one who finds out first. you just so relieved that it's finally over, half of you doesn't even care how you did.

he pulls you into his lap before you can protest and presses a hand to your chest like he’s checking if your heart still beats. it does, but he wants more than that. he wants you back. all of you.

so he makes suggestions. strong ones. "take a semester off," he murmurs against your temple. "or transfer. or move in with me. or all three. I'll take care of you. you don’t have to do this to yourself. you don’t have to prove anything to anyone. not when I already know how brilliant you are." you nod like you’re not hearing him, but he’s patient. he’ll wait. he’ll wait until you believe it too.

he jokes—often, obnoxiously—that he’s always known you were too good for him. that you were the prodigy and he was the pretty face. that your acceptance into medical school was the universe playing fair, because how else could the world possibly balance your brain and his everything else? but even with all that noise, gojo satoru is terrified of the way this test has eaten you alive.

the usmle. the reaper in standardized exam form. every time he sees you, you’re either furiously annotating a textbook or passed out cold in someone’s office chair with flashcards stuck to your cheek.

he tries everything at first. plays the doting, lovable nuisance role to perfection—stealing your laptop charger, faking existential crises that can only be soothed by forehead kisses, crawling into your lap and pretending to cry (“I need affection, babe, it’s for my health, come onnn—”). and you smile. you do. but you don’t stop. you never stop. and eventually even he has to let you go into that studying-induced blackout tunnel, even if it kills him not to be able to pull you out of it.

still, he never leaves. when your weekly date nights disappear, he sends you dumb memes and voice notes that say things like “this is what it sounds like when I cry without you here.” when you sleep in the library, he sneaks snacks into your backpack and slips hand warmers into your hoodie pockets. he’s not even sure you notice. but he does it anyway. because loving you isn’t something he tries to do. it’s something that just is. like gravity.

the morning of the test, you’re shaking. eyes glassy, coffee untouched. it’s still dark out, and he hates how exhausted you look. you sit in the passenger seat of his car like you’ve been awake for a thousand years. he doesn’t try to make a joke. just…reaches over and tucks your hair behind your ear, thumb brushing your cheekbone.

“you’re not scared I'll be disappointed in you, right?” you shake your head, barely. but the thing is, he knows you. knows how your brain works. how you work. he can’t stop your nerves—he wouldn’t dream of trying. but he can hold them with you. sit there in the thick of it, still and steady and here. because that’s what you need. and when you finally leave to go take the test, gojo satoru doesn’t move. just waits. hours tick by. he plays stupid games on his phone. he thinks about the first time he saw you cry—finals week, sophomore year, when you were convinced you’d bombed a lab report—and how this feels exactly like that, only ten times worse. but then…you come back. and the world exhales.

you’re pale. wrecked. like you’ve just survived a war. you climb into the passenger seat like someone dropped you from space, and satoru immediately swaddles you in the blanket he brought from your dorm.

“I brought gummy bears, sliced veggies, and a literal gallon of water,” he says. “and I have an entire playlist dedicated to ‘songs that say I'm so proud of you I could cry.’” you laugh. just a little. but he hears it. “think you passed?” he asks.

“I think I survived.”

“close enough.” he drives you home like you’re royalty. like the day’s been his test too, and this—getting you back—is his only passing grade.

later, when you’re fed and clean and warm in bed, buried in layers of blankets and wearing his t-shirt, he lays beside you and grins like a fool.

“so,” he says, “how’s it going, dr. gojo?”

you raise a brow. “excuse me?”

“I just figured, if you’re gonna be a doctor, we should share the last name. has a nice ring to it. we’ll both be hot and dangerous. power couple energy.”

“oh, I'm taking your last name?”

“obviously. babe, have you met me?”

you roll your eyes—but there’s color back in your cheeks now. a glow. that fire he fell in love with. and he grins, victorious.

because you’re back. you’re his again. and no matter what happens next—residency, stress, long nights and endless hours—satoru’s ready. he’ll carry the whole weight of the world if it means you never have to go through that kind of thing alone.

takuma is a man of simple truths: ramen tastes better after midnight, bleach is not the same thing as laundry detergent, and you—god, you—are the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

you're a prodigy. he says that like it’s a title, not just a fact. you graduated high school at fifteen, cruised through undergrad before most of your friends even started, and now you’re gunning for a ph.d. because what else would someone like you do? you’re brilliant, born for academia. he fell for you like gravity, no question, no hesitation.

and he’s not dumb—not really—but school was never his thing. he coasted through high school on vibes and charm, then lucked into an internship with some big-deal suit named nanami. it was supposed to be temporary, but ino had that golden retriever work ethic, the kind where people give you more responsibility just because you say “sure thing!” with enough enthusiasm. it works for him. it always has.

but when it comes to you, that easygoing confidence starts to fray. because you're drowning. and he doesn’t know how to save you. your advisor says jump, and you ask how high in four languages. volunteer work, tutoring, research, a part-time job, and now the gre is looming like a thundercloud over your future. you study until your voice is hoarse from reciting terms, until your notes are smudged with highlighter ink and tears.

you rope ino into helping, and of course he says yes. he’s happy to. he makes flashcards with cartoon doodles on the back, quizzes you on vocab while you’re brushing your teeth, lets you explain abstract statistical theory to him until you both fall asleep on the couch. you look exhausted, but you smile when he calls you professor, and that’s enough. until it isn’t. until the smiles fade. until he’s helping you study alone. until you stop asking. until he’s waiting at home for a version of you who never seems to arrive.

he wants to fix it, to fix you, but he doesn’t know how to fight a battle that’s inside your own head. so he does what he can. brings you snacks at work, texts you affirmations, makes dinner even though he’s bad at it, and watches your exhaustion turn to something scarily mechanical. you stop complaining. you stop talking. you stop looking him in the eye when you leave in the morning.

then test day comes. and he's so proud. not of this behavior, of course, but of you, despite it all. he makes you breakfast, walks you to the testing center even though it's freezing, kisses your forehead and tells you you're already the smartest person in the building. when you walk away, his chest hurts with how badly he wants this to go well. it does. kind of.

you take the gre and survive it—but there’s no relief. no celebration. no breath of freedom after months of suffocating. you just...keep going. more work shifts. more hours. more silence. and ino, patient as he is, can only hold back his worry for so long.

it’s late when he says it. you’re curled into him, back to his chest, your favorite blanket tucked around both of you. he’s got one arm around your waist, the other buried in your hair, his cheek pressed to the back of your neck. “hey,” he murmurs, soft and real. “you ever think about slowing down?” silence. so long, he thinks maybe you fell asleep.

but then—“I'm just...so tired of trying to—to….” you whisper. “I just want to be good enough.” his heart cracks open.

“sweetheart,” he breathes, and holds you tighter, “you’re already more than good enough. you’re incredible. I picked you, remember? and I'm the smartest guy I know.” that gets a breath of a laugh. barely, mostly because you know that there was never choice, never other options. takuma was gone for you the minute he met you. if anything, you picked him and he will never be able to fully articulate his gratitude.

“I mean it,” he says, fingers stroking your hip. “you don’t need to break yourself to prove anything to anyone. not to them, and definitely not to me.” that night, something shifts. he starts small. no, you can’t pick up that extra shift. no, you won’t be checking your email at midnight. yes, he is bringing you lunch and walking you home, and no, he doesn’t care if you think it’s “too much.” and slowly, the girl who once thought success meant saying yes to everything starts learning how to say no.

ino’s proud of you. he always has been. but now? now he’s proud for you. because you’re still brilliant, still ambitious—but you’re happy, too. and that's the version of you he always wanted to love.

your love is loud.

not the annoying kind of loud—though inumaki’s friends might argue that point—but the good kind. the kind that fills every quiet space. that buzzes with laughter and slams cabinet doors and yells from the shower, “do you think pluto misses being a planet?” while he's brushing his teeth. you are his voice. and you never mind being it.

you speak when professors ask dumb, intrusive questions about his muteness. you say no when he can’t afford to risk saying it himself. you make it known—loud and clear, unmistakable—that you love him. that he is enough. that he is yours.

and he doesn’t need a thousand words to love you back. he just looks at you like you hung the stars yourself. he kisses you like a prayer. he taps his fingers three times against your wrist—i love you in the language only you and he share. it’s perfect. you’re perfect. until the exams start looming.

at first, it’s small. a missed meme here, a shorter phone call there. you’re still talking, still laughing, but it’s... less. and then it gets quieter. you stop yelling from the bathroom. you stop planning your little dates. you stop talking altogether on some days—just kiss his cheek, tired-eyed, and disappear into your books.

it’s horrifying. like watching the sun flicker out.

he doesn’t doubt your love. you’d never let him. you’d carved it into the walls of his world with every grin, every “you’re mine, forever, deal with it,” every hand squeezed under the table during group dates. but he misses you. the you who would sing off-key in the car. the you who once narrated his entire grocery list in the voice of an australian accent. so he fights back. quietly. carefully. tactically.

he starts leaving you little notes:

"you’re the smartest person I know."

"your brain is hot. that’s unfair"

"I love you more than rice balls."

(and in tiny scribbles) "don’t tell salmon."

they’re everywhere. in your shoes. on your toothpaste. tucked between pages of your study guides like secret spells.

he learns how to cook, too—little meals, nothing fancy, but made with so much love it might as well be michelin-starred. he pouts dramatically when you hesitate to eat, eyes big, mouth drawn down, holding the plate like a peace offering. and you fold, always. because how can you not? not when he made it for you.

and then the test comes. that stupid fucking test that stole you from him. you ace it. of course you do. you walk out of the testing center a little dazed, a little pale, and into his arms, and he scoops you up like the national treasure you are. doesn’t say a word. just holds you. then he takes you home.

he feeds you. literally spoon-feeds you soup he made himself. he showers you, kissing waterdrops off your cheeks, washing your hair with reverence like you’re something holy. he lays you down in bed and kisses your forehead, your knuckles, your stomach, your spine. worships you without ever saying a word. and bit by bit, your spark returns. you tease him again. you dance while brushing your teeth. but here’s the thing: now he watches for the signs. watches closely. a little too closely, maybe—but he’s not letting that darkness steal you again.

so when he sees you looking so tired again? he tugs your sleeve and hands you a note: no fading. I need your noise. and you read it, smile, and say, “you’ll never get rid of me that easy.” thank god.

choso is not a school guy. never has been, never will be. he goes because he has to, because society demands it and his scholarship requires it. but it’s never going to be his thing. he floats through most of his classes like a ghost—half-there, earbuds in, hoodie pulled over his head. a b+ on a paper is a win in his book, even if the professor writes "needs revision" all over it. who cares. life’s short. he’d rather be sleeping.

you, on the other hand, care. you care so much. about everything. you’re his high-strung, teeth-gritting, color-coded, always-scheduling, never-late girlfriend. and god, does he adore it.

he loves how strict you are. loves how you wake up at 6:00am every day without fail. loves the way you brush your teeth for exactly two minutes, three times a day. loves that you have a salad every tuesday and the exact same pasta order every thursday. you’re sharp edges and ticking clocks and perfect routines, and he—chaos incarnate—thrives under your rule. you keep him functioning. you’re the reason he knows when to register for classes, the reason he turns in assignments on time, the reason he eats meals that didn’t come from a vending machine.

you're the reason he's even passing. but that stupid, stupid theoretical geometry class…it drives you nuts. not slowly. not like a spiral, like most things. no—this class is like a wrecking ball to your entire system. you hate it. you say it constantly. “it’s not even real math,” you groan. “it’s just concepts. I can’t work with concepts. I need problems. I need solutions.”

at first, choso thinks it’s kinda cute. your little rants. the way you scowl at the textbook like it personally offended you. he tries to encourage you with little pats on the back, forehead kisses, sitting on the floor next to your desk with his laptop so you’ll stay focused while he scrolls through reddit and tells you about cursed fan theories. but then, the changes start.

you stop brushing your teeth three times a day. you forget to make lunch on tuesdays. your planner—your beautiful little planner that he once saw you cry over when you accidentally spilled coffee on it—starts collecting dust. you cancel date night. you forget date night existed. you study through dinner, through sleep, through entire days, and suddenly, choso’s the one asking you when your assignments are due. you are unraveling. and choso is helpless.

he tries to support you. follows you to study sessions like a sleepy, loyal puppy, clutching your coffee order and not understanding a single damn word of what you’re talking about. he doesn't get theoretical math. he barely gets regular math. but he tries. he watches youtube videos meant for third graders. he makes flashcards—incorrect ones, half the time—but he hands them to you with such innocent hope in his eyes that you pretend they’re helpful just to kiss him on the cheek.

he never once asks you to stop. never once says, “you’re scaring me,” or “you’re making yourself sick.” but he wants to. so badly. you’re not sleeping. you’re thinner. you smell like stress and highlighters. you apologize all the time, say you miss him, say you’ll fix it soon. but nothing fixes.

so he adapts. he picks up your slack. makes you breakfast, even if it’s just a granola bar and a post-it that says "please eat. you’re gonna ace it. also I miss you :/." does your laundry and folds it wrong and puts your shirts in the wrong drawer but he tries. he doesn’t even complain when you forget to text him back for a day and a half. he just sends a message like, “love you. proud of you. text me when you remember I exist!!” it sounds so needy and passive aggressive, but it’s not, it’s just choso, who so genuinely wants you to remember that you’re not alone.

it breaks his heart when you reply, “I always remember. I just hate myself for not being better.” he refuses to let you carry that weight.

so when you cry the night before the exam, whispering, “what if I fail? what if I'm just not smart enough?” he kisses your temples and says, “then we drop out and open a donut shop. we’ll sell those cinnamon ones you like. you’ll do the math. I'll man the fryer.” you pass with flying colors. because of course you do. you’re brilliant and capable and too hard on yourself.

and the moment you do, choso sits you down and says, as gently and lovingly as a man with no boundaries or math comprehension can, “never again.” he means it. no more sacrificing your joy for a grade. no more skipping meals for numbers. no more breaking the routines that make you feel safe, secure, you. and you agree. you apologize again, of course you do, but he cuts it off with a kiss. he doesn’t want apologies. he wants his girl back.

you vow to never take another theoretical math class again—would rather switch majors, hell, switch schools. and choso vows to guard your schedule, your wellbeing, your sanity with the same devotion you once used to guard his grades.

because sure, he doesn’t care much about school. but he cares about you. and you? you’re the only constant he never wants to theorize. you’re the equation he solved the moment he met you. and he’s never letting you fall out of balance again.

at first, you wouldn’t let him help. you couldn’t. not because you didn’t need it—you did. badly. but need was dangerous. need led to reliance, and reliance led to disappointment, and you’ve never known anything but disappointment in the end. so you met every one of nanami’s gentle offerings with a hiss, a cold shoulder, a stiff spine and a scoff. you didn’t want kindness. you didn’t trust it. and yet—he stayed.

with his quiet voice and his tired eyes and his soft cashmere sweaters. with his thoughtful meals and perfectly timed cups of tea. with his ability to sit in silence and not make it feel like you were doing something wrong. nanami showed up for you over and over again, until you stopped flinching at the idea of someone showing up at all.

he’s older. settled. solid in a way that feels unreal to you. while you burn the candle at both ends and run yourself into the ground over essays and projects and unrelenting deadlines, nanami clocks out at 5:00, makes dinner at 6:00, and asks you if you’d like to come over for dessert like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

at first, you declined. then you said maybe. and then one night, you cried on his kitchen floor over a c in a class you hated, and he held you like it didn’t ruin his shirt or his night or his impression of you because, in all honesty, it only ruined his shirt; nothing more.

you started staying over. not all the time. not enough to leave your toothbrush next to his. not enough to cancel the lease on your overpriced apartment you barely use. you’re still scared. still stubborn. but god, does he make it hard to stay guarded. nanami treats you like you’re the most delicate thing he’s ever loved. not fragile—just precious. important. he has rules, quiet ones, and most of them are about you. you don’t skip meals. you don’t stay up past 1:00am. you don’t berate yourself over an 89.7 instead of a 90.

sometimes you listen. sometimes you argue. sometimes he finds you passed out on your laptop at 3:00am, and you feel his disappointment like a knife, but he never scolds you. never raises his voice. he just picks you up, tucks you in, presses a kiss to your temple and says something like, “you don’t have to do this alone.” and you don’t. that’s the worst part. you don’t. you have him. but sometimes your brain forgets that. especially this semester. this hellish, soul-draining, motivation-murdering semester that chewed you up and spit you back out into another one before you even caught your breath. nanami watches it happen in real time. watches you stop coming over. stop answering calls. stop eating the banana bread he baked with you in mind.

you’re not resting. you’re not sleeping. you’re not you. it scares him. not that he’d ever say it aloud. but it kills something in him every time you say, “I'm fine,” and he knows you’re lying. it’s like you’ve forgotten everything he taught you. so, he tries again. he doesn’t lecture. he never begs. but he texts. “are you eating today?” “my place is quiet. come nap.” “I miss you. you don’t have to talk. just be here.”

and finally, finally, finals end. and he takes you. scoops your burnt-out, hollow-eyed body from the wreckage and makes it his personal mission to bring you back to life. you sleep for almost a full day the first night at his place. when you wake up, he’s sitting in the armchair across from the couch, reading, glasses low on his nose. he just says, “welcome back,” and doesn’t comment on the dried tears on your cheeks.

every day of break, he softens you. with warm breakfasts and long baths and small, safe silences. with his hand on the small of your back and the quiet strength in his presence that says I've got you. eventually, it happens. the breakdown you’ve been avoiding for weeks. it’s late. you’re curled into his side, finally eating real food again, finally existing again, and you whisper, "I'm sorry. I shut you out. I didn’t mean to. I just...I don’t know how not to. I thought I was better, I—"

he doesn’t let you finish. just pulls you close and says, “you are better. you’re just tired. and I'm here.” you cry. you hate that you cry. but he doesn’t. he’s kissing your forehead, brushing your hair behind your ear, murmuring, “you’ve never hurt me. I only hurt when you’re hurting.” and that’s the moment you remember why you let him in at all. because he’s steady. because he’s not scared of your sharp edges. because where others left, nanami stayed. and when he suggests you take fewer credits next semester, your gut reaction is guilt, shame, refusal.

but he just raises an eyebrow and says, “you’ll still graduate in time. and even if you don't—I'm not going anywhere.” you believe him. for once in your life, you believe someone. so you drop the extra class. you leave a toothbrush at his place. you take a deep breath for the first time in months. and nanami—your warm, unwavering constant—watches you come back to yourself, bit by bit, every day. and he doesn’t say it out loud, but he thinks it every time he looks at you: no one can love you like I do. and that is the most beautiful thing I've ever had the privilege of.

sukuna doesn’t do the boyfriend thing. not really. he’s hot, he’s untouchable, he’s slept with half the campus and ghosted the other half. he’s not the kind of guy who remembers anniversaries or asks how your day went or makes soup when you’re sick. or at least—he wasn’t. until you. you, who never asked him to be anything other than what he already was. you, who looked him in the eye, rough edges and all, and said “I don’t need to fix you.” you meant it. you still mean it. but he changed anyway. because disappointing you? hurting you? even by accident? that’s the one thing he can’t stomach. not now. not when he’s ruined so many things and somehow still got lucky enough to have you.

so when you start falling apart, he notices. it starts with a couple of weirdly average grades—an 85% on a midterm you were supposed to crush, a 7/10 on a quiz you studied hours for. you brush it off, but he sees the way it eats at you, worms its way into your confidence. you start staying up late, later, all night sometimes. your routine crumbles. you’re skipping meals. walking home alone in the dark. crawling into his bed after midnight and thinking he doesn’t notice. he notices.

and at first? yeah, he thinks it’s cute. in a stupid, masochistic way. you care so much. for what? a grade? a professor’s approval? you're a writer—an incredible one. he’s read your stories, soaked in your words, memorized whole passages of shit you’ve barely shared with anyone else. you don’t need a degree to prove you’re brilliant. you already are. but then it stops being cute. then it starts hurting. because now you’re not just tired. you’re hollow. you’re not just busy. you’re gone. and he can’t fucking stand that.

so he inserts himself. shamelessly. aggressively. shows up to the library with your favorite takeout. forces you to eat. pulls you out of your chair and into his lap like it’s his god-given right. covers your mouth with his hand when you protest, glaring at you through crimson eyes as he mutters, “you’re done for the night.”

and when you whine, “I'm not even close to being finished, kuna,” he just kisses the top of your head and doesn’t give a shit. “flunk out,” he says into your hair. “drop out. who cares? I'll handle everything.” he means it. every single word. if you never worked again, if you never lifted a finger again, he wouldn’t mind. in fact, he might prefer it. because sukuna has never believed in much—not school, not rules, not people—but he believes in you. always has. so he tightens his grip around your schedule. limits your study hours. makes you sleep. crushes you against his chest each night so you can’t wiggle away. when your friends text, “come study with us!” he replies for you: “she’s busy. fuck off.”

and it helps. a little. he keeps you from slipping too far. but even with his arms around you, you're still unraveling, whispering, “I don’t think I can do this,” like it’s some shameful confession. then the test comes. and you pass. not just pass—you crush it. top of the curve. feedback glowing. you’re shaking when you tell him. laughing in disbelief, wide-eyed and breathless, “I don’t know how it happened, it’s a miracle, I don’t—kuna, I thought I was going to fail—”

and sukuna, mr. I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-grades, who’s said a hundred times he doesn’t care if you pass or fail or burn the whole damn school down—he cares.

because that smile? the one on your face now, bright and radiant and real? that smile is what he does this all for. that smile is the closest thing to heaven a man like him will ever get. so he just shrugs and pulls you into his lap again, buries his face in your shoulder. “miracle my ass,” he grumbles. “you’re just a fucking genius.”

yuuji isn’t the best at school, but that doesn’t make him stupid—he’s sharp in all the ways that matter, intuitive, emotionally intelligent, loyal to a fault. still, academics were never where he shone brightest, and he knows that, accepts it with a shrug and a grin and a “hey, at least I'm trying.” and he is trying. not for some future career, not because he cares about grades or accolades, but because he wants to be good at something the way you’re good at everything. because when he looks at you—so graceful under pressure, so sharp and composed and somehow still soft with everyone around you—he wants to measure up. he wants to keep pace, even if he stumbles more than he’d like. even if half the time he’s just hanging on by the skin of his teeth.

you’ve always been kind to him about it. never made him feel slow, or behind, or less. you’re good like that—gracious in ways that disarm people, a born favorite, beloved without even trying. professors pull you aside to thank you for participating in class discussions. classmates email you asking for help. you’ve got this gentle gravity to you, this rare balance of competence and compassion, and it makes people trust you instantly. yuuji most of all.

but this semester, something shifted. you cut back on your work hours after landing an academic scholarship—because of course you did, you're brilliant—and decided, for reasons he still doesn’t entirely understand, to nearly double your course load. “I just wanna graduate a little faster, yu,” you said with that breezy smile, brushing it off like it was nothing, like your daily planner wasn’t already choked with color-coded breakdowns and your tote bag wasn’t already sagging with books and half-empty energy drinks. and at first, he believed you, because you’ve never lied to him before. you’re honest, almost to a fault. but it didn’t take long before that soft shell of composure started to crack.

you started sleeping less, studying more. the calls you used to answer right away now go to voicemail. the “good morning” texts he used to get by 7:30 are coming in hours late, if at all. you haven’t been to his apartment in over a week. and sure, you’re still managing—somehow you’re still getting the work done—but you’re so tired, and it’s not the kind of tired sleep can fix. he can see it in the way your voice shakes when you ask for an extension, even though the professor gives it without question. he hears it in the pause before you say “I'm okay,” like you’re trying to convince yourself. and it kills him. because you’re the strong one. the one who holds everything together. if you’re falling apart, then what hope does he have?

but here’s the thing—yuuji's tired, too. no one really notices, because he doesn’t complain. because he doesn’t let himself slow down. because his instinct, always, is to carry the weight alone if it means someone else gets to breathe a little easier. but he’s burning out right alongside you, pulling back-to-back all-nighters and forgetting to eat, pretending he’s fine because you need him to be. that’s who he is. that’s who he’s always been.

and when finals week finally ends—when the tests are done and the caffeine shakes wear off and the dark circles under both your eyes start to fade—he decides, without hesitation, that it’s over. no arguments. no compromises. you’re taking the summer off. you’re going to gojo’s beach house with megumi and the rest of the crew. you’re going to sleep until noon and eat things that don’t come in plastic wrap and learn what it means to do nothing again. and he is not letting you back into a course load that chews you up and spits you out just so you can cross the stage a semester earlier.

he doesn’t say it angrily. he says it quietly. like a vow. like a promise. because if anyone deserves to rest, it’s you. and if anyone’s going to make sure you actually do it, it’s him.

“you’re not weak for being tired,” he says one night, the two of you curled up on his bed, your body half-draped over his, your limbs heavy like you’re finally allowing yourself to feel just how exhausted you really are. “you work harder than anyone I know. and I know a lot of people who punch curses for a living.”

you huff a tired laugh against his chest, but it sounds more like a sigh. your fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt.

“I just…I thought if I could do it all now, if I could push through a little more, I could get to the good part faster. you know? the part where I've made it.”

he runs his hand over your back, gentle, rhythmic. “babe, you already made it. you're already everything. the rest is just paperwork and deadlines and weirdly specific formatting rules.”

you don’t respond for a long moment, and he can feel your breathing shift, feel the guilt brewing behind your silence, the way you stiffen just slightly like maybe you're trying not to cry. so he keeps going, softer now, slower.

“and hey,” he murmurs, tipping your chin up so you’ll look at him, “just because I couldn't fix this doesn’t mean I don’t see how hard it’s been. you don’t have to pretend for me, okay? I know it hurts. I know you’ve been running on empty. you don’t have to carry that alone.”

“but you’ve been tired too,” you whisper, your voice cracking under the weight of your own concern. “I haven’t even been there for you—”

“yes, you have,” he says, without letting you finish. “you always are. even when you think you’re not.”

he kisses your forehead then, like he’s sealing in every word. and it isn’t grand. it isn’t dramatic. but it’s real. it’s soft. it’s everything he’s been holding onto and everything he wants to give you now—space to fall apart, and space to rest, and the kind of love that doesn’t ask for anything back but lets you collapse into it anyway.

“you and me, okay?” he says into the silence. “all summer. rest, movies, megumi absolutely tearing gojo to shreds, eating until we feel sick. we deserve that. you deserve that.”

and this time, you believe him. not because you’re magically okay. not because the burnout vanishes. but because yuuji’s holding it with you, both hands open, no expectations, no shame—just love.

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