#nanami sweeps the floor with a curse

[rahuratna]

Synopsis: Nanami, Ijichi and Nitta foil a bank robbery with a cursed twist ...

Genre: Suspense

Contents: Canon-typical violence, foul language, reader character narrator, reader perspective of sorcerers.

He’d never signed up for this.

When he’d joined, Ueno had gone on about the fun they’d have, the risk, the high of getting away with things like this. It was a release, a way to escape the drudgery of his long shifts at the convenience store and the hollow-eyed, resentful presence of his mother at home. If that place could even be called a home.

In the beginning, they’d just wandered the brightly lit streets of nighttime Shinjuku, vandalizing the shops Ueno’s boss had told them to target, getting into scuffles with rival gangs, keeping an eye on the activities of people of importance. Each time he’d left home, the door would swing shut behind him like the unseen gateway to another realm. The street before him would be familiar, but not, the night air crisp with possibility. He’d never been aware of the perilous web being woven around him, of the fact that none of these jaunts were disjointed activities, each with their isolated goal.

And now he was here, in the back of a dark blue minivan with no windows, the humid damp of the balaclava he wore sticking to his face, making breathing difficult. He couldn’t do this. He’d never known they would ask him to – but there was no time for that. No time to think about the number of times he shouldn’t have walked out that door, the number of times he should have turned Ueno down, the many, many nights he should have decisively put an end to any and all association with the present company.

They were crowded in on all sides, shoulder to shoulder, the cramped space filled with the smell of sour sweat, cheap cologne and the heavy funk of strong tobacco. These men would have no patience for a boy who backed out, even if he said he was young and stupid and regretted everything he’d done. They were wily, experienced, razor-edged and slick with survival instinct. There was no way out for him, not now.

The power of his fear roots him in place, even as his body rebels, his muscles catch and quiver, his breathing hitches sporadically and his bowels cramp and protest. If only … if only he were someone else, someone more equipped to deal with this. If only something, anything, would take over his body and mind, just for tonight. If only something would come along and turn him into the man he should be in this situation; fearless, aggressive, raring for battle, a spitting cobra rearing for a shot between the eyes. But he was not any of those things.

And they were on their way to rob a bank.

You'd made it something of a game over the years. Each person that swam into view in the window of your counter formed a portrait of an unknown life, one you tried your best to embroider.

Head, shoulders, knees and toes, just like the song you used to sing in elementary school. What would the shifting window bring you today?

Ah, here was a grandmother, feeble and infirm. Collecting her pension fund and rambling about her three adult children, including her son who was staying for the month. Most of that pension probably ended up in his pocket.

And here was the man who came every Tuesday since three months ago. Sweating, nervous, smelling faintly of cheap perfume. You'd bet your whole salary that each trip to the bank was followed by a sharp detour out the door to the seedy motel nearby.

Then, the antique shop owner, the family name a well-known one in the area. Pity his father gambled most of their inheritance away. Everyone knew that he lived in the once-fabled traditional home, now dilapidated and infested with mould, a Havisham who rotted beside his antiques in the wedding dress of former renown. His cash withdrawal was minimal, enough to feed him for a week at a time.

Today was spectacularly ordinary. As a financial services representative at this particular branch for an odd five years now, you'd come to recognise your usual patrons, along with the occasional tourist or visitor who'd pay a once-off visit. These were usually recognisable by their clothing, or accents.

Here were two such individuals right now. You'd definitely never seen them before. The man looked to be in his late twenties, wearing the harried, hollow-cheeked look of someone much older. His dark hair was neatly parted, a pair of rectangular spectacles enhancing the earnest, studious nature of his face.

Beside him was a girl with bright blonde hair in an untidy bob. In severe contrast to the man's sober, dark suit, she wore a pair of baggy black jeans, a crop top and oversized jacket, unzipped, over it all. The glitter eyeshadow she wore only served to emphasize her thousand-yard-stare and she looked you up and down appraisingly.

Oh. It was time to adjust to your customer service face. Feeling the stiff muscles of your lower jaw stretch into a wide, practiced smile, you bowed slightly.

"Good day. How may I be of assistance?"

"Ah, I'd like to open an account for my niece here. She's starting college next year and just landed a new job to help pay things off. A flexi-save option would be nice."

"Of course! Mister ...?"

"Ijichi. And my niece here is Miss Nitta."

"Pleasure to meet you."

You turn to the girl in question, eyebrows raising in slight query.

"Would you like to have a look at our options? There are varying interest rates with different benefits to each type of savings account you can open."

She shrugged with the kind of nonchalance that could only come with long practice.

"Uncle's handling all that. I just do the legwork and get my shit together. That's the deal."

Wow. The youth of tod -

You clear your throat and turn to your PC screen, avoiding the errant thought that had come dangerously close to leaping out of your mouth.

"Of course. Give me a minute."

The fairly youthful uncle nods, adjusting his glasses. He looks slightly tense, the poor thing. You would too, if you were planning the financial future of a niece like this. You wondered if he took care of her full-time.

The niece, Nitta, was focused elsewhere, eyes roaming across the high-ceilinged atrium, the neat and ordered rows of seats where clients waited for service, the row of reinforced glass windows that gave way to many small booths like your own.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw her glancing in one particular direction more often than not. Following the path of her gaze, your own is arrested by the sight of a tall blonde man in a dark suit, red patterned tie vivid against his white shirt. He stands in the queue of a neighbouring window, eyes inscrutable behind dark lenses.

Well, you could hardly fault her for looking at that. He has a stern, cold face, but his chiseled features and imposing stature make him hard to look away from. Speaking of which, you had a job to do.

Turning back to your screen, you complete the series of prompts, until you're finally within the authorized programme for creating a new account.

"All right, can I see some identifica- "

A scream tears through the still peace of the atrium, carving a sudden flaw in of the passage of time. In that moment, you do not think, you do not feel, and your body seems foreign to you. A group of people, dressed in black, waving weapons that were definitely acquired illegally, charge into the open space. Still frozen, you watch as they move like an oil spill across the room, smooth, practiced, herding the panicking crowd with sharp, barked commands and prods of their weapons.

Ijichi and Nitta duck down immediately, and you vaguely hear the bespectacled man shouting at you to do the same. Finally, dragged against the opposing current of shock, your body responds to your wishes. Dropping boneless to your knees, you reach up, fumbling for the panic button beneath your desk.

You press and hold, releasing after 20 seconds. Your mind still hasn't fully caught up with what is occurring, but your body is guiding you through the motions, stilted and half conscious.

The gang that has infiltrated the banking hall seals the doors. One of the burly men is obviously the leader, standing at the centre of the chaos while his lackeys form a co-ordinated chain of carried instructions, the spokes of a turning wheel. One of the gang comes right up to your counter, screaming instructions across to you.

You are still slow to respond, but panic has now asserted itself and you let out a sob of a breath, scrambling to raise your hands above your head and stand as he tells you to. You, and the rest of the employees behind the safety of the barrier, are forced at gunpoint to open up the inter-leading door, flocking out among whimpers, soft pleas and muffled cries to the atrium floor where you are made to lie down along with the rest of the crowd.

You find yourself near Ijichi and his niece, Nitta. You meet his eyes with a blank, stricken stare, mouth half opening in an apology, before you realise how stupid and pointless such a thing would be. How could you have known? You still can't quite grasp what is happening all around you.

Strangely enough, it is Ijichi who counters your disoriented glance with a square sense of reassurance. There is something ... different about him. He seems surprisingly calm, a far cry from the nervousness he showed earlier while opening a bank account for his niece, of all things. The niece in question is also unusually collected, her body coiled with the readiness of physical conditioning. That isn't a normal response to this situation, you're sure of it. She's too young to -

But there isn't time to speculate on this. The gang is rushing behind the tills, one of the managers held at gunpoint pushed roughly to the interior vault where his superior security clearance will allow him to gain access.

Granted, your security isn't state of the art, but it is fair enough to cause some small delay. There are five different checkpoints, each with a unique pass code, and a thumbprint, voice recognition and retina scanner that need to be applied simultaneously.

Turning your attention back to the interior of the atrium, you notice that one of the gang members is behaving a little erratically. His eyes, visible through the small opening of his balaclava, seem just as terrified as that of the people he is holding hostage. His blue, long sleeve shirt is soaked through with large, darker patches of perspiration, creeping down from his armpits, neckline and across his back. His breathing is harsh, audible from where you lie as still as possible, and the way he is holding his weapon is far from expert.

There is a small movement from beside you as ijichi straightens slightly. He is, for some reason, watching that young assailant like a hawk, eyes steady, something like recognition stirring in their depths. Nitta has moved to a crouching position, one of her hands braced on his back.

What are they doing? Surely -

And then, the boy in the balaclava stiffens, as if stuck with a knife. He is now staring past the man next to him as if dazed, his limbs as limp as a marionette whose strings have been abruptly cut. The gun tilts dangerously floorward, and one of his companions yells to him to -

"Get the fuck back in line!"

Something, the likes of which you've never seen, is occurring right before your disbelieving eyes. A jet of viscosity, black as pitch, shoots from the boy's mouth, tearing past the balaclava. The remnants of the knitted fabric land a few feet away, exposing his pale, terrified face, the damp strands of hair that cling to his forehead, the strange look of relief that briefly crosses his features before his eyes close.

They re-open, and you utter a small, involuntary scream. Behind his lids, two neon rings of purple form a flickering gateway to madness, the slow, unhinged smile that sweeps up the corners of his mouth as unnatural as his posture. The men around him pause, exchanging uncertain glances, some of them even re-directing their weapons to his quivering form.

The boy, if he can still be called as such, takes little to no note of the threat from his own former comrades. The crowd of hostages has now noticed the change, cries of alarm ringing out as they see the boy's body contort, arms and legs snapping and twisting to distorted, elongated proportions. One of the other gang members shouts out a hoarse warning before firing a round into the boy's contorted head and chest.

He is ... unharmed. Instead, the nightmarish head sweeps back, the neck stalk-like, flexible. The features seem even more inhuman, his grotesque smile now jagged-edged, the teeth sliding like nails past the shredded, bloody lips. The heist completely forgotten, the men in dark clothes back away, yelling in fear and consternation, weapons clutched in sweat-slicked palms.

What is this? What is -

You scramble backwards, coming up against a firm, warm palm in the small of your back. The muscles of your abdomen and legs are now plagued by small tremors as you turn your head to see Nitta behind you. She doesn't seem quite so young and nonchalant any longer. There is a certain hard quality to her, a readiness for what is to come that takes you completely off guard. Beyond her, Ijichi shoots you a quick glance of apology before nodding at his 'niece'.

His hand raises towards the glass of the atrium ceiling, the cloudy sky outside clearly visible. Nitta mirrors his pose, palm pressed flat against the smooth tile beneath her. Their voices rise above the cacophony, a steady chant that somehow resonates in the furthest reaches of your being.

"Emerge from the darkness ... "

The vision of horror that used to be a human sweeps out an arm, narrowly missing the men who scream and return fire. It seems that he - it - is still learning the use of that body. It stumbles, clawed feet scraping across the floor, leaving deep grooves in its wake.

" ... blacker than darkness ..."

Out of the corner of your eye, you see the group of civilians who has been standing at the counter being ushered to safety further into the lounge at the other end of the room. The man who seals the double doors behind him is one you recognise. The imposing blonde businessman, the one Nitta had been looking at earlier. This was now, in your mind, no mere coincidence.

Who were these people?

" ... purify that which is impure."

It slides from the fingertips of Ijichi and Nitta, a layer of otherness, a barrier between your world and the distortion of reality that has happened in here, in this space that used to be your everyday stronghold of familiarity. Ijichi meets your bewildered gaze and he pauses momentarily, mouth drawing into a regretful line.

"You can see it."

You nod wordlessly and he adjust his glasses, that incongruously stern set of his features directed at something past you.

"Don't worry. It'll be over soon."

One of the criminals spots the movement of Ijichi and Nitta, screaming out to them as they get to their feet on either side of you. 

"Get back down! Don't you fucking move! I'll - "

His words are cut off as one of the monster's flailing, spiked projections lob his left arm right off at the shoulder, the gun falling from the nerveless clasp of the severed hand. The noise that leaves his throat is thick, animal, full of existential fear. He slides forward, the floor now slick with his own blood, eyes bulging as his choked cries echo across the hall.

Two strong hands assert their grip under each of your armpits, dragging you to your feet. You realise that a sound, similar to the one the maimed man had made, was exiting your own throat.

"Easy," comes Ijichi's voice in your ear, "Just breathe. Move with us. It'll be all right."

How? How could any of this ever be all right?

You cannot comprehend how this man could possibly say that, but when you look over at him, there it is, in his eyes behind those rectangular frames. He does believe what he says. He means every word. But how can he -

"Step back, please. You're in the way."

The voice that echoes across the atrium is unlike any of the others, cutting through the chaos with calm, clipped, precise enunciation. It's the blonde businessman, who, you are rapidly realising, is also not what he seems.

He strides across the hall, completely ignoring the threatening gestures and shots fired in his direction by the gang who are now in disarray. He sheds his pinstripe coat, revealing a leather harness fastened across his torso, the dark straps stark against the white of his shirt.

And there is something else, something similar to the strange current you sensed from Ijichi and Nitta earlier, coursing along the powerful lines of his shoulders and arms. It is ... different, but holds a deadly latency that can't be denied. The businessman reaches up and removes his dark glasses, revealing a sharp-cornered, intensely shadowed gaze. He glances across at Ijichi, who straightens and nods in response.

"We'll leave things to you, Nanami."

"Thank you, Ijichi. Get the rest of the hostages to safety."

The rapid gunfight that had been punctuating by yells in the background had now taken a worrying turn. The force of the automatic rifles, puncturing skin and shattering bone, had been driving the monster back, but no longer. It was healing itself, shards of bone annealing, flesh knitting itself back together, blood decanting back into torn vessels as it slowly gained momentum, moving forward and driving them back.

The man called Nanami turned back to the battle, surveying it with the calm of a seasoned veteran. As Ijichi and Nitta help you along, you slowly regain your ability to move, but something kept your gaze fixed on Nanami's broad back as he reached behind him, fingers grasping the handle of what seemed to be a blunt blade wrapped in an oddly patterned cloth. It appeared to be a similar pattern to the one on his tie.

Is he mad? Bullets don't work on that thing! He was going to -

Your thoughts still and die away as an electric rush of that strange energy jets up around Nanami's body, coating him in what looks like armour. One polished leather brogue slides back along the tiles, giving him enough momentum to propel himself forward at inhuman speed. Your eyes can barely follow his movements as he streaks across the atrium, right towards the spinning, shrieking monster.

Now that it had become accustomed to the body it inhabited, the creature was darting forward with swift, jagged motions, dealing terrible slashes and blows to any flesh it encountered. Nanami reaches it, dancing around its flailing arms with ease and grace. It takes note of him, the slide of its bulbous eyes sickening as they gather on either side of its skull, as if to pin down his location better. The remaining gang members take this opportunity to scramble to safety, kicking and clawing each other to the floor in their urgency to escape.

You shout a wordless warning to Nanami, but Nitta's grip on your shoulder gives you a measure of reassurance. They seem to have full faith that this deceptively understated salaryman can handle the reality-bending situation unfolding before your eyes.

And he does.

From the little snippets of the battle that you can follow with comprehension, Nanami's movements match the creature's every step of the way. When its limbs elongate with a sudden snap, he adjusts his distance. When it sends tendrils of smoky substance across the floor, he seems to coat his shoes in that luminous energy, skidding effortlessly across the top of it. When it tries to close in on him, limbs splitting and weaving in tendrils that catch and ensnare, he slices clean through them, that blunt blade doing far more damage than you would have ever thought possible.

The confidence and surety of his block and parry sends a sudden flare of hope through your chest.

Maybe he can beat it! Maybe he can -

The creature let's out a howl of fury, the force of it battering the walls and shattering the windows. You scream as shards of glass blow outwards from the booths where you and your fellow employees had been crouched just a short while before. Covering your face, you brace for the tearing pain, but nothing happens. Peering between your fingers, you see that Ijichi is muttering under his breath, creating another kind of barrier, this one of a smaller radius, around the three of you. The faint patter of glass reaches your ears as the flying shrapnel falls harmlessly off the surface.

But what about Nanami?

A sharp breath escapes your lips as you see him, still standing, facing the wrath of the creature. He remains unphased, but his sleeves have now been rolled up, the smooth shift of sinew and muscle visible beneath skin. You watch as he reaches up, loosening his tie and flicking his wrist out, the spotted red material wrapping around his fist. He begins a measured pace towards the creature, and for the first time, you see it take a step back.

Nanami's smooth, mellow voice sounds through the hall again.

"It's now three in the afternoon. I started work today at nine and I'm going to clock out at five. That leaves me exactly fifteen minutes to finish off with you, forty five minutes of travel time and one hour to complete my paperwork for today."

... what? 

He continues, striding forward as the creature staggers back even further, defensive spikes slowly sliding into place on its arms and knees. He doesn't seem to be particularly bothered by this.

"I would prefer not to incur overtime, so if you would please co-operate with me, I would highly appreciate it."

For all your years in retail and finance, you had never seen customer service handled quite like this.

Nanami flicked his blade straight out, those keen eyes sighting right along the upper edge. He seemed to have assessed something of the creature, because his subsequent lunge was precision itself. The dappled sword swung down, then up and away, severing along some vital line. The ghoulish scream that exited the monster spoke of the damage dealt. It collapsed, clawing at its body as Nanami approached with that predator's prowl; decisive, tranquil.

He crouched right before the recoiling mass of darkness, one arm bending back before his fist slammed with impossible strength right into where the midriff should be. The blast stripped away the last vestiges of whatever had possess the original 'host' in the first place. The slick darkness shivered in its death throes, snaking along the ground before Nanami's heel came down on it with crushing finality.

You let out a breath you'd been holding as the boy, whose body you'd felt would be beyond any kind of repair, slumped to the floor, unconscious. Nanami knelt beside him, fingers enclosing his wrist before glancing up at Ijichi and nodding.

He was alive!

Nitta rushed forward immediately, a cellphone appearing from within her coat, balanced between shoulder and ear as she patted the boy down, searching for further weapons or injuries. She appeared to be calling for some kind of assistance from the outside.

Beside you, Ijichi raised two fingers, and suddenly, a rush of noise reached you from outside; the blare of sirens, the snap and flash of cameras, the commotion of many voices. The barrier they had cast earlier had been lifted. You clamber slowly to your feet, with his assistance.

You have so many burning questions, but you feel that the answers will hold information that might take you some time to process. For now, you'll simply ask about -

"You can see the cursed energy."

Ijichi is watching you, following your movements with attention.

"Cursed ... energy?"

"That's what we call it. Some civilians, like you, can see it, although that's quite rare. It's the duty of those like us to protect humanity from the curses that roam this world. Curses that appear, much like this one."

"So ... you knew it was going to come here? That's why you ... "

"Suspected," he corrects you. "We traced it to this area, but could not pinpoint its location. Then we received a tip-off from law enforcement about a heist that was about to occur at this bank. We made an educated guess as to where the curse would manifest next."

"With ... law enforcement? So all of you are ..."

"Sorcerers, affiliated with Jujutsu Tech. Well, I'm no qualified sorcerer. Simply an assistant director. Nanami is the sorcerer. You'll ... have to come with us, of course. To sign a waiver. There's a lot of paperwork involved with civilian witnesses and victims."

You nod, turning to where the boy who had been ... possessed, for want of a better term, was now being loaded onto a stretcher.

"Was he a victim too, then?"

"Yes. He will have little to no memory of what occurred when he wakes up. Just the events leading up to his arrival here. Everything before that ... will have to be processed through regular law enforcement."

"I see."

You really didn't, but the matter-of-fact manner with which Ijichi was rattling off this information made this fever dream seem halfway believable, if the protocol was anything to go by. Ijichi gestured to you, and you saw that the other hostages were being led out of the safety of the lounge where Nanami had sequestered them earlier.

Speaking of Nanami, you saw his tall figure stride ahead of you. He'd looked over you and the rest of the captives and seemed satisfied that his work here was done. You called out to him as he approached the doors.

"Thank you!"

He paused and turned slightly, that cool, appraising glance taking you in.

"No need. I'm simply doing my job."

"Well then, allow me to thank you ... for letting me clock out on time."

You see the barely perceptible change in his expression, the slight lift of his eyebrows, the tilt at the corner of his mouth.

"Noted."

He turns away and Ijichi ushers you after him, out into the sunlight that strikes your skin like your new-found awareness of the unseen world.

Dividers by: @saradika-graphics

[pseudowho]

okay here’s me getting all cocky and confident because you answered my ask once (ily for that seriously i think i screamed and fainted and sobbed and climbed up the walls a little) and once again asking you for….. for crumbs………. so my horny self was sitting and thinking…………… nanami sees you reading absolute filth and porn and you end up in biig trouble.. (i.e him doing that exact thing to you 😭) or perhaps you going up to nanami after reading absolute filth and being all needy with him bcs that straight porn made you a liittle…….. yk… 🌚🌚🌚

anyways i literally love you and ur my favorite writer ever and im gonna stop now before i burst

SMUT [smuht] (noun)

In which Nanami Kento catches you reading dirty literature...and punishes you with a performative reading.

Warnings: The anon who keeps targeting me like this needs a warning label...but otherwise: roleplay, erotic literature (*laughs and laughs in Tumblr*) being read to you while you're systematically destroyed, performative Bad!Nanami, Kento fucks you wearing a mask and leather gloves, Pleasure Dom!Kento who gets lost in the sauce, reader way out of her depth, bondage, the usual spicy goodness, couple of cheeky movie references

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The one she knew only as the Man in the Mask swept over to her, delighting in her capture, having evaded him for so long.

"Ahhh..." he sighed, his breath sweeping over the swell of her breasts, and sending shivers down her spine. "Finally...the little mouse who has wreaked havoc on my dreams for too many lonely nights. How does it feel? To be trapped here with me like this?"

Her heart stalled in her chest, and she gasped, his grazing touch to her belly leaving embers in its wake. The Man in the Mask saw her nipples pebble beneath her shirt, and felt something snap inside him as he loomed over her with a whisper; "I know. I feel it too."

With little warning, he lowered his barely covered mouth to her neck, hungry against her, and--

The door opened, and you leapt out of your skin, dropping your phone to the floor. You sat bolt upright in bed, your other hand coming up guiltily from beneath the covers as Kento leaned into the bedroom to greet you. You interrupted him.

"You're home early," you said, offering an unconvincing smile. Kento looked at you, flatly. He let the statement hang for a moment. His shrewd eyes flicked, taking in the glossy subtleties he saw from you only in foreplay.

"...well I thought you'd be pleased, but I'll just go back then shall I--"

You hesitated, words caught in your throat. Your eyes flickered to your phone. So did Kento's. His eyes narrowed.

"...what are you read--"

"Nothing! It's nothing." You lied, unconvincing. You both hesitated for a moment more, before Kento darted. You cursed at him for being faster than you, and Kento's fingers closed around your phone, sitting beside you on the bed in one swift movement. You smothered a pillow over your face, screaming silently, wanting the duvet to grow great maws and swallow you whole.

Kento read silently for a moment, scrolling, before reading aloud; "...she didn't want to fight anymore, as his fingers slid between her puffy lips...goodness me...his cock strained against the fabric of his clothes, begging for attention...I bet it did..."

You had begun to crawl away down the bed, just a maggot, unworthy of the sun and all its glories.

You felt a hand clasp around your ankle, and you squeaked as Kento dragged you back up the bed, without even taking his eyes off your phone.

"I don't think so, where are you going--"

"--oh god Kento just give me something for the cringe and let me die--"

"--no no no I'm blessed to be a part of my wife's interests--"

"--I am less than human, we need a divorce, I can't look you in the eye ever again--"

Kento scoffed, dark and derisive. "As if I'd let you divorce me. As if you'd even want to...now, where did I put that..."

Kento stood, still holding your phone as he rummaged in his dresser. You laid flat to the bed, trying to wiggle away again, still embarrassingly wet, your mortification laced with undeniable arousal.

"Stay exactly where you are, or I'll damn well make you."

You stopped. You looked up at Kento, unusually meek, as he approached you. He stood by the bed, looming and powerful, a god made flesh. He unbuttoned his shirt to the navel, not bothering to remove his harness. He undid his belt with a clink-clink. He let his tie hang loose...and pulled a black balaclava down to beneath his collar. He finished off with a pair of soft, black leather gloves.

Something imploded inside you; a dial-up noise in your mind. Kento prowled over to you, looming over you and chasing you up the bed, caging you beneath him, and reading through the smut on your phone screen.

"Be honest," Kento read aloud, his honey-brown eyes swirling with something altogether darker and more dangerous, "if you'd wanted to escape me...you could have."

You panted, breathless, your pupils blown into inky black as you lay splayed beneath Kento. You couldn't help but be captivated, lost in his insidious pull. You felt your heartbeat between your legs.

"Did you stay because you dream of me, too?" Kento intoned. You bit the poisoned apple, trembling as you nodded up at him. "Did you stay...because you wondered if hatred was as erotic a passion as love?"

"--Kento, I-- let me go, I--"

"That's the spirit." Laughed Kento, his voice booming through you, the vibrations crackling across every nerve, and you whimpered. Kento grasped your hands together with his own, gloved and powerful, pinning them above your head with the whole weight of his body. He pulled his tie loose with the hand holding your phone.

"I can't let you leave...not now. Fuck...you have no idea what you do to me, do you?" Kento growled. Being the villain seemed so effortless to him. Your safe word had never been further from your mind, your attempts to leave so paltry and insincere. The way Kento looked down at you, waiting to see if you would make him stop, sent shivers down your spine. Kento released his tie, eyes skimming across your phone for confirmation.

"I'd apologise, for trapping you here like this..." Kento intoned, tying your bound wrists to the head of the bed as you squirmed, crying out in anguish, "...but I'll show you...how you've craved my touch, just as I have craved yours." You strained against the bonds, in just the silky chemise you wore for bed, and it didn't take much for your breasts to fall free of the fine little straps.

In truth, Kento had never been harder in his life. Seeing you battle against primal desire beneath him, feeling your half-hearted embarrassed squirms brushing your bare mound against his aching, thick cock...and your nipples, hard as diamonds and covered by a thin veneer of lace. His breaths were heavy, chest heaving as he continued his performative reading.

"Just one taste, and we can return to how it was before." Kento groaned, his mouth suckling at your neck, licking, tasting, biting. You cringed against the assault on your senses, afraid to lose yourself to such diabolical pleasure. Kento pinned your bucking hips down with his own, the tip of his cock trapped beneath his waistband against his belly. "Just once...and we can rest easy at night, knowing how it feels for me to spend myself inside you."

You keened, mewling as Kento rested the phone on the pillow beside your head, and took your nipple into his mouth, ragging it around beneath his tongue with a fractured growl. Your head spun with the weight of him, totally captured, so wildly out of control. The suckling pleasure he gave to your nipples, connected in a fine thread to your clit, making it pulse with vicarious bliss.

"I can't...can't take it anymore...Ken--" You moaned, squeaking as his teeth closed in barely hinged warning around your breast.

"Unless it's to tell me to fuck you, I won't have you mewl like a kitten at me any longer." Kento rumbled against your breast, wet with his spit and the marks he left behind as he took what he was owed. "I hope you can take it. I'm...no small man. If you are ruined, after, I know you will bear the scars with grace, just as you have bore your hatred of me."

You were already so steeped in the hot rush of being pleasured, you did not notice how Kento's eyes glowered, lathering down your body and darting occasionally back to your phone. He continued his pilgrimage down your body. Kento growled in frustration at the chemise blocking him, and he rucked it up, spitting curses as you squeaked, wriggling against him.

"At least fight like you mean it." Kento laughed, and you blushed, eyes squeezed shut, mortified by how obviously faked your resistance was. Kento kissed his way down your belly, settling at your mound. He hovered, silent, giving your desperate clit nought but the breath from his lips.

"Do you want my fingers...or my mouth?" You whimpered again, babbling nonsense, such a rough and ruined heroine. Kento laughed again, dark and delicious, raising his mask just enough to free his mouth. "No words? No matter. You shall have both."

With little warning, Kento sunk his tongue between your folds, ragging his mouth and nose from side to side again to bury himself in the heat of you. You cried out as he growled into your heat, hitting a high note as he sunk two thick, gloved fingers into your fluttering pussy, slamming inside all the way to his knuckles.

Kento swore against your pussy, grunting and moaning as he lapped at your clit and entrance with animalistic rage. Quite canonically to his role, his cock wept against his belly, pre-cum leaking down onto his waistband until the fabric was cloying and sticky, the friction against his tip sending him spiralling. He couldn't help but fuck against the bed as you melted beneath him, writhing against his tongue.

Panting, letting his gloved fingers fuck into you and imagining it was his cock instead, Kento chuckled against your clit, at just how easily he had snapped. He pulled his fingers out of you for a moment, wickedly obsessed by the stark contrast of your creamy white arousal on the black leather.

He could smell you on the balaclava, the fabric over his nose soaking with your essence. Kento felt lightheaded with the blooming, heady scent of you. His cock twitched, aching and neglected, and so close to spilling thick spurts of seed all over its owner.

You risked looking down for just a moment. The eyes of a villain pierced through you, as Kento licked his gloves clean, not breaking eye contact once. You whimpered. He laughed, and curled his fingers back into you, continuing his relentless attack on your poor, aching cunt. Your moans reached a fever pitch, and Kento felt the creep of his own orgasm through his belly as he rutted against the bed with total abandon.

"Sing for me." He groaned, lifting your hips off the bed as he knelt, sucking your clit into his mouth in a devastating final move. You tipped violently over the edge, bucking against his tongue and crying his name, a stream of nonsensical babbles. Kento was quite sure you came harder than the girl in the story.

By the time you came back to earth, being licked in slow, languid movements through your peak, you saw Kento kneeling between your legs, stroking his cock in long, jerking pumps.

"You've reduced me to this." Kento forced, his teeth gritted and his mask back in place over his mouth. "To this...this boy, fucking his own fist just from the taste of you." Kento cursed, his gloved fist wet with pre-cum, cracking his neck from side to side and growling through his lurid tale. You lay, fucked out, bound, a fascinated by how Kento's whiskey-rich voice could fill you with fumes, warm and drunk one minute, but cold and piercing the next. You swung, manoeuvred across his harsh dichotomy.

Kento loomed over you, trapping you beneath him again, blocking the light from your eyes, a bad moon rising. "You did this to me." He hissed, accusatory in his possession of you. "You started this sordid fight. But I'll finish it. No more fisting my cock at night just to the thought of you. No more dreaming about bending you to my will."

You felt Kento's tip press through your entrance, thick and insistent enough that you squirmed up the bed, crying out as he yanked you back, his hands closing around your waist. Kento plaited his fingers in your tied hands, the ghost of affection, and readying himself to slam into your quivering heat. He was falling apart, he could barely contain himself, overcome by the raw power of making you pliable, shaping you to his desires--

Kento whispered in your ear, his voice shaking, gravelly; "And when you submit...know that it was entirely your fault."

You felt your delicate petals forced aside, crying out to be filled to the brim by Kento in one slick thrust. Kento could barely suppress a roar beneath his mask, throwing his head back in ecstasy. His enormous hands cuffed your waist, making it squidge down against your hips every time he dragged your hips, moving your pussy around him like a cock sleeve.

Kento's strength made manhandling you look easy. You lay ruined beneath him, your head lolling against the inside of your own bound arm. The image of him unbuttoned, masked, gloved and still almost fully dressed above you, grunting and groaning as he used your pussy for his own pleasure, burned onto your retinas.

Kento barely moved his own hips, his eyes fixed feverishly on where he dragged your swollen pussy around the length of his cock, twitching and burning inside you. He couldn't contain himself. The hook behind his navel, all scorched steel and selfishness, beseeched him to drag his pleasure from you.

"Fucking-- ruin you-- never be satisfied...by another man again-- keep running from me, and I'll hunt you down...and take you like this every-- fucking-- time--"

As Kento's pleasure roared over him, he punctuated his thrusts against your belly with the written word in action. Making nothing more than jolted, pitiful moans as he fucked repeatedly against your sensitive cervix and soft-spot, you clambered for purchase, sobbing your pleasure as his gloved fingers rolled your clit between them.

Kento came with a string of curses, his thighs cramping beneath him with the force of it. Feeling his seed begin to pump and spurt into you, he dragged you aggressively to another orgasm with his leathered fingers. He had to feel you clench around him, sucking his seed deep inside you. He had just enough forethought to recall his final, toxic line as he gasped, groaning and bucking with the force of his ejaculation.

You could barely hear him through the fog of pleasure, faint in the distance; "If you have the nerve...to crawl back to me...full and swollen-- know we can be enemies in matrimony, as well as battle."

The room was hushed and dark, the gloom broken only by your mingled, heavy breaths, and the earthy smell of sex. You reached up pulling Kento's balaclava up and pressing a breathless little kiss at the corner of his mouth.

"...but...we still have to get a divorce. I just-- couldn't live with you knowing what I read--"

Kento laughed, his shoulders aching from the weight of the villain, slipping away with his gloves and mask.

[ponderingmoonlight]

JJK men with drunk reader

Part ll with Geto, Megumi and Gojo here

Pairing: Choso x reader; Nanami x reader

Word Count: 2,9k (Choso's part escalated)

Warnings: Nanami's part is not proofread (wanted to publish this today so badly), angst in Choso's part, fluff in every part hehe

As always, I apprechiate every little comment or repost. Thank you guys so much for your support <3

Choso Kamo

You weren’t planning on drinking that much tonight. To be honest, you were just looking for a good time, guys bought you drinks like there’s no tomorrow though. Who are you to refuse that favor?

You definitely should have, though. Because right now, you are standing with your back against a wall in a dark alley of Tokyo, whole body trembling in fear. The frame of an enormous looking man cut off every possible escape route you’ve had, every minor spark of hope you’ve had left. Fuck, how could you be so dumb, why did you take the shorter route through this abandonment district? All you have in your purse are a lipstick, a few bills, your phone and your keys. No pepper spray, no knife, absolutely nothing to defend yourself. Not that you would be able to, given that you aren’t even able to stand up straight.

“Come on cutie, don’t be shy”, he purrs, hand stretched out to touch your hair.

“Keep your fucking hands off me”, you hiss before sinking your teeth into his hand so violently that his skin bursts.

“Little bitch.”

With a swift motion of his bare palm, he sweeps you off your feet, head spinning when it hits the wet tarmac harshly. You are way too drunk to collect a single logical thought, mind racing uncontrollably as your blood discolors your sight crimson.

“I was trying to be nice, y’know? But that’s it. You’ll pay for that.”

Without hesitation, he grabs you by the throat und pulls your aching body out of the dirt, smirking at you with his missing teeth. Tears start to swell up your eyes, you simply can’t believe that it came this far. You should be home already, lying in your bed after drinking a whole bottle of water, sleeping in until afternoon. But this…This isn’t how your night should have ended.

“Help me!”, you cry out.

“Please, someone! Help me.”

“Shut the fuck up”, he interrupts you roughly, smashing your weak body against a nearby wall.

Focus. Try to have a sober thought for a minute. Your legs are free, perfect height for his crotch. If you kick him hard enough, he might let go of you. Every inch of your skin hurts like hell, bruises over bruises covering your weak frame. But you have to be strong now if you want to escape him. No, you’re not going down without a fight.

With a loud scream, you put all the power you have left into your right leg, kicking between his legs with full force. He lets go of you immediately, puny figure crumpling down on the floor. You have no time. As fast as your wobbly legs carry you, you run deeper into the dark alley. Away from that man, away from his attempt to force himself on him. Get away, fuck the alcohol and the way your whole body screams at you. Your sharp and fast breath hangs in the air, tears still rolling down your eyes. You run and run and run until-

You harshly land on the ground.

Choso didn’t plan on hearing your desperate cries for help. To be honest, he didn’t even plan on being here in the first place. But still he stops in his tracks, eyes darting towards the direction of your desperate scream. What was this? It sounded like the cry of a woman followed by punches. Curses, maybe? No, he can’t detect any curses energy around this area. Is this even important, though? He is on his way to a meeting with Geto and the others, making plans on how to take revenge for his brothers.

He grumbles to himself. Whatever it is, taking the back alley doesn’t extent his path significantly. His steps follow the constant mumbling, screaming, crying and rumbling. Fast steps come near him, a woman running his way. His brows furrow. You don’t seem to see him, the panic in your glossy eyes seems to glow in the dark as you sprint forwards, directed towards him. Before he is able to move to the side, you crash into him full force, making you fall to the ground rougly.

The second your doe eyes dart towards him, he forgets for a moment how to breathe. You must be quite beautiful for a human being, even though your face and hair are covered in blood and your whole body is bruised. Carefully, he steps towards. What is he supposed to do now? What even happened?  

“Back off”, you cry out, crawling away from him on the wet tarmac of the night.

Another pair of steps, this time louder and heavier. A man come in sight. The second he lays his eyes on your puny figure, he starts sprinting faster, directly towards you with a maniac grin plastered on his face.

“What do you think you’re doing, fool?”

He shouldn’t care the slightest. No, Choso should continue on, leaving you to your face. Why the hell is he automatically positioning himself in front of you, now facing that ugly man that seems to chase you?

“What are you doing here, freak? She’s ours, find your own little whore”, the spits at him along with a weak attempt to break Choso’s nose.

Pathetic. Who does that fucker think he is? The tiniest amount of blood is enough to pierce right through his pea brain.

All you can do is stare in awe as the stranger in front of you. Who is this man? And how was he able to handle the situation in the blink of an eye? The toothless man’s body falls to the ground lifelessly. It’s only you and him, the man with the threatening appearance who happens to be your savior in shining armor.

“What are you doing here all alone?”, he mumbles before slowly turning around and staring at you dead still.

With the last bit of strength you have left in your weak body, you lift yourself off the ground and glare at him, shivers running down your spine. Did he…kill him? How? When?

“Was on my way home from a party”, you explain briefly.

“How careless to take this path without fighting experience or weapons on your own”, his harsh voice remarks, arms crossed in front of his chest.

“Thank you for saving me. He’d probably killed me if it wasn’t for you”, you mumble.

Fuck, you feel like freezing to death. Your clothes are sliced open, dirty and wet from the rain that fell a few hours ago onto the ground, head spinning from the alcohol and the way he slammed it into the tarmac with full force.

“You’re freezing.”

The stranger takes one step forward, leading you to panic all over again.

“Don’t touch me!”, you yell instinctively, body desperately trying to hide from his presence.

“Stay here, idiot. I’m trying to help you.”

Choso doesn’t really know why, but his arms wrap themselves around your trembling figure, your head resting against his chest while silent sobs escape your lips.

“I just wanna go home…”, you sniff and he can’t help but feel…

Sorrow.

You were probably enjoying your evening, not putting much thought into your way home, not expecting a men to attack you like this.

“Where are you living? This isn’t an ideal place to stay”, he mutters, unsure of how to act in a situation like that.

This is the first time he ever held a woman. Fuck, this is the first time he ever felt something like distress about a human in his whole life.

“I…I can’t…walk”, you stutter.

His gaze wanders down your entirely bruised legs. Who knows what that man did to you before he arrived. Anger rises within him, hands clenched into fists.

“I’ll carry you, then.”

With a swift motion, he wraps his arms around your back and knees, making sure not to hurt your limbs in the process.

You can only stare at him in awe. Who is this man, the man with that strange tattoo over his nose, the man who wears purple eyeshadow and a robe you haven’t seen before? Why is he helping a stranger, even carrying your drunk and injured body home? Even though something about him tells you that he’s not to be trifled with, you don’t ask him. Instead, you give him brief directions to find your apartment, eyes never breaking away from his gorgeous face. He seems young, maybe as old as you. But still, you’ve never seen him around. Is it because you’re drunk? You don’t know, but you can’t hold your tongue any longer.

“You are such a beautiful man.”

His eyes widen, staring down at you in disbelief. What are those words? No woman ever said something like this to him. How is he supposed to react? He should have let these men kill you on the spot, just leave you alone in this cold and dark alley.

But why, why do your words make his heart flutter?

“I mean, your style is pretty edgy and all, but it suits you very well. Haven’t seen you here before, though. You here often?”

“I’m never here”, he remarks dryly.

Are you really trying to start a conversation with him?

“We have to go right here. Aaaaaand there’s my place”, you announce weakly, Choso’s mind still occupied by your previous statement.

“Thank you for carrying me…”, you mutter when he lets you down gently, hands fumbling to reach your keys.

All he does is staring down at you blankly. What’s on his mind? Was all of that planned? Maybe he is like that man, maybe he just came here to know where you live…God, you are so stupid.

“You aren’t here to murder me, aren’t you?”

“Are you kidding me? Do you really think I would have carried you all the way to your door just to kill you here?”, he remarks.

“Right…m’sorry, I think I’m still a little drunk y’know…”

Fuck that. Before you’re able to go into panic mode again, you wrap your arms around his body tightly. His scent is almost intoxicating, probably the best male fragrance your nose ever sniffed. And you can definitely tell that he’s a well-trained man underneath that strange clothes.

Choso can’t move an inch, all senses focused on the way you hugged him. It feels strange. Strange to be embraced by someone, strange that he helped a human being tonight. Why did he choose to follow your screams, why did it bother him so much that that other man laid his hands on you? And why does it somehow warm his heart to feel you so close against his own body?

“Thank god I ran you over tonight”, you hush against his chest.

Choso has to blink a few times.

“Good for you”, he simply replies.

But deep in his heart, he knows this isn’t only an event you will never forget. He himself will probably never get over the fact that today, he helped another human being instead of letting it get killed. But not only that.

You are breathtakingly gorgeous.

“Now go inside and find some sleep.”

With one last glance at the man who saved you only a few minutes ago, you step inside your apartment, weak body sliding down the closed door. Did this really happen? You might be drunk, but that man…

You’ll definitely never forget him.

Kento Nanami

“Don’t do it, (y/n). You’ll only get yourself into trouble. Nanami-san is a higher up, you have to work with him for your entire life. It’s not wise to call him and tell him about your stupid little crush”, Ino warns you while you scroll through your phone with a dumb smirk.

“I can’t hold back any longer Ino! I’m soooo obsessed with him!”, you cry out dramatically.

One call can’t hurt, right? Nope, that sounds like a good idea. The second your eyes dart towards his name, you press the call button, Ino freaking out next to you.

“You are way too drunk for a serious talk like that. Are you out of your mind? Hang up immediately, this is a bad idea, you will-“

“Is that you (y/n)?”

“Hello Kento”, you purr into the speaker.

“Are you alright? Did something happen?”

Nanami straightens himself in his seat, eyes lingering through the window over the city lights. Why would you call him this late at night? And why does his first name coming out of your mouth make his heartbeat pick up so suddenly?

“No, jus’ wanted to talk to you…Y’know, your voice sounds so sexy, absolutely…how do you call it? Oh, masculine”, you mumble.

Something about your usual so composed voice seems off, though. Didn’t you and Ino mention earlier that you are going out tonight?

“Are you drunk?”

“Hehe, yes”, you giggle, making Ino almost lose his mind next to you.

“Can you tell me where you are? I’m coming to pick you up.”

It’s far after midnight, too late for you to be out on your own. Is Ino with you? Hopefully he’s still there. His brows are furrowed, ears focused on every little word you say. You never called him by his first name before, let alone talked with him so openly. Over the last few months, the two of you got to work together closely. And slowly but surely, Nanami begin to fall for you. Your exceptional brain, your immense powers, the way you carry yourself with such elegance and wise words. At the moment though, you seem to miss your usual composure completely. What are you trying to tell him?

“Oh really? That’s so kind of you. Uh, Ino, you know where we at?”

Ino snatches the phone out of your hand, ice cold sweat running down his face. Fuck, hopefully this doesn’t cost him his good reputation.

“Nanami-san, I’m so so sorry-“

“Don’t be. Can you tell me where you are?”

“Of course, I’m sending you the location right now!”

“Thank you. Make sure (y/n) stays save, I’m coming to get her immediately.”

With that, he hangs up.

“He’s coming to get you, dumbass”, Ino mutters.

“How exciting!”, you speak out with glimmering eyes, heart already pounding against your ribcage by the sheer thought of seeing him tonight.

“I should meet him at the parking spot.”

“Stay where you are!”, Ino barks at you, hand holding onto the sleeve of your shirt for dear life.

In the meantime, Nanami is already on his way to get you with his head lost in thought. This is the first time you ever spoke so freely to him. And the fact that you called him this late at night while being drunk…Even though a part of him wants to be mad at you for being so reckless, to know that he was on your mind instead of everyone else makes him blush ever so slightly.

It doesn’t take long to find you. With elegant steps he approaches you and Ino, your eyes wide open. How does he look so fine this late at night with his shirt buttoned up so neat and his hand braced on his hip?

“You look absolutely del…delicious…Is that how you spell it, Ino?”

“Please stop talking (y/n)”, Ino begs, finally able to let go of you.

“Come on, let’s drive you home. Ino, do you need a ride?”

“No thank you. My apartment is a few blocks away. Have a good night. And you, drink a lot of water.”

“Gotcha!”, you remark, eyes filled with determination.

Until you have to really take a few steps outside.

“Ouff, is it just me or is the floor lave?”, you breathe out.

“Come on, I’ll help you.”

His arm wraps itself around your shoulder gently, pulling you close to his large frame. Even though your mind is clouded by alcohol, your heartbeat picks up in an instant.

“I could get used to that. Should get drunk more often.”

“Please don’t”, he replies, leading you to his expensive looking car and helping you get seated.

It doesn’t even take 5 minutes for you to pass out in his car, snoring in the most adorable way Nanami has ever heard. Finally he has the opportunity to shamelessly admire your soft features and the way your hair frames your face so delicately. You really are an attractive woman with everything he could wish for.

And maybe, just maybe, this is the perfect opportunity to ask you about your feelings towards him. After all, he can’t deny the spell you put on him.

“(y/n)”, he gently speaks out.

You don’t move an inch, not even when he allows his hand to stroke over your arm. Are you really that drunk? Nanami signs to himself, gets out of the car and opens your door – still no movement.

“I’m going to carry you inside…”, he mutters more to himself than to you, arms lifting you up with ease.

God, you are so breathtakingly gorgeous. Will he ever have the courage to tell you about his true feelings, that he wants you to be more than just a colleague? Who knows. What is way more important to him now is to take off your shoes, carry you into his bed and put a blanket on top of you, softly tucking you in while you groan in your sleep.

“Good night, (y/n). Maybe I’ll tell you someday how much you mean to me.”

“Night, Kento…”, you mumble back.  

[bevswashere]

Koi No Yokan

Chapter 13: Tether

February 2006 One month later.

Satoru stayed with me that night, and the next. Then he whined that his bed is bigger and nicer. We've been staying in his room ever since.

I've found functionality again. The ability to get up in the morning, bathe myself, change clothes. I can eat a full meal without throwing it up, and hold a conversation without bursting into tears. Most of all, I sleep through each night with ease, a warm pair of arms wrapped around me.

But when he lets go, I'm still clearly so lost. I catch myself staring at the walls, walking into rooms unconscious of why or how I got there. I drift off into a void of darkness, overwhelmed by so many thoughts that my mind goes blank. The longest I'd experienced this was three hours, sitting on the floor of the lounge, eyes distantly fixed on the cracked white paint. Shoko was the one who found me. It happens most often when I'm alone, and at times in a crowded space. In the shower, or mid-conversation. During meals, and training, and journeys on the train.

It's happening all the time.

"Kaede-chan?"

"Huh?"

Even now.

"I said, 'Are you sure you're ready for this?'."

I stuff my hands deep into my pockets; the uniform it feels so wrong to be wearing. "Do I need to be?"

"If you're not ready to be in the field again, we should request for a substitute. Mariko and Haibara are more than willing—"

"Nanami-kun, I'm a special grade now. I highly doubt it matters whether I'm 'ready' or not."

"I don't want you to get hurt."

I laugh, but it's hollow. "Worry about yourself."

I lead the way into a dimly-lit tunnel, Nanami close behind. The yellowing walls are covered in a layer of overgrown weeds. Hues of brown and red stains peek out from beneath. When I observe more closely, I realize everything is rotting.

"What exactly is your technique anyway?" I try to fill the silence. "I should have a better idea before we face this thing."

This is the first time I've been assigned with anyone other than Satoru or Suguru. Why? Maybe I'm here as a safety net for Nanami—someone who could help him delve into higher stakes missions. Or maybe he's here as some sort of support for me—someone to keep me sane. Maybe both?

"Ratio Technique. I can make weak points when I hit the curse with this." He holds up the blunt blade, wrapped in some kind of spotted fabric.

"I see." The lights flickering overhead don't go unnoticed. Neither does the air that's gone still, making our footsteps echo the slightest bit louder. "So, you'd need to get in close."

Nanami had to have noticed the shift too, but his voice remains pleasingly steady, "Ideally."

"I can work with that," I say casually. The ground is thrumming with a new kind of vibration, tingling into the soles of my shoes. "Did Yaga Sensei tell you about this place?"

"Some kind of haunted sight for students to run through," he recounts. "All the kids who tried end up disappearing before they can make it to the other end."

"Right." I halt, and Nanami does the same behind. "So, why am I almost at the end of this tunnel then?"

We had been chatting the entire way down, blatantly leaving ourselves open to lure the curse out. Yet, we now stand less than a couple yards from the tunnel's end. I turn on my heel towards the other opening, scanning the ceiling as well. "Don't tell me it's letting us off the hook."

"I doubt we'd be so lucky."

"What gives?" I kick a pebble, listening to it clatter down the gravel. "Come on! I don't have all night!"

"Should you really be provoking it like that?'

The tunnel lights begin to flicker at a more rapid pace. A breeze sweeps through our hair and clothes. The stench of cursed energy becomes more pungent.

It flashes in my mind: the unamusing entrance of a sizable curse. Before it can drop from the ceiling, my hand is up, and four slimy fragments topple onto each other on the floor. "Alright," I dust my hands against each other, "Let's go..." The curse is in pieces, yet the domain over the tunnel remains intact. If anything, the stench of a cursed spirit only grows stronger. Nanami and I both feel it ripple through the tunnel in massive waves. "...Home."

"Nanami, run!" I see it, but not in time. The ends of the tunnel disappear. The open air is now the same rotting cement as everything else.

The next time we turn, we are unable to move. Nanami stares at me, feet glued to the floor as I try to shift my own. The curse appears between us, and the source of the surging energy becomes clear.

"Move," I tell myself. "Move. Move. Move!" I barely find the sense to overcome it, tackling Nanami to the ground.

Strangely, the curse doesn't use jujutsu to attack. It throws a swelling wave of pure cursed energy that splinters the floor.

I plant myself in front of Nanami, putting up a barrier large enough to cover us both. When the glow fades out, my attention is captured by the curse at the end of the tunnel laughing at me.

"Nanami-kun?"

"Yeah?"

"Stay there."

I step forward, careful to remember that a barrier must stay on Nanami at all times. It'll fragment my focus and dull my technique output, but I can't take the risk of him not surviving this with me. I can't lose anyone else.

The barriers roll out of my grasp, cursed energy compacting time into solid pieces, dicing through the air to end that infuriating laughter. It's quick enough to dodge, giggling as it runs, disgusting me further. A curse's nature is to kill, but to toy with me? The subdued anger embedded in my gut begins to boil. The many ways I was trained to keep a level head—the practicality of jujutsu that my family worked so hard to emphasize—disappears. All I can understand is the nature of these abominations to take everything, how furious that makes me.

Unlike most sorcerers, however, I'm powerful enough to win in this headspace. The lack of inhibition sharpens my senses, gives me a vicious edge that wasn't there before.

I can't bother with a domain expansion, not without the risk of pulling Nanami in. Instead I rely on the advantage of the Forward Sight, the visions that foretold where the curse would go and when. Combined with my speed, even a curse like this could not match. I move as I pleased, more than willing to play the game this curse appears desperate for.

The curse darts forward, but before it can reach me, I time jump past its back. My fist swings largely, hammering the full force of my cursed energy into its back. Black flash. The corners of my lips upturn at the sight of purple liquid spewing from the curse's mouth.

"You're pretty tough," I taunt, time jumping again before it can grab me. "What are you?"

There it is again. The laughter. I hate it. I hate any thought of a curse somehow enjoying itself, taking pleasure in the destruction it causes. I hate it so much.

"Kaede-chan...."

Ragged breaths are pumping in and out of my lungs. Every shift of my shoes sloshes in the purple pool beneath me. Each half of the curse's head is grasped in my hands, fingers buried deep into the flesh. Looking down, I realize the curse is in several uneven fragments.

I look over my shoulder to Nanami. "Are you okay?"

He nods, eyes wide.

The curse withers to ash with its domain. All the rot and weeds dissolve and the exits reappear. However, something gets left behind: a graying finger at my feet. "What's this?" I murmur, picking the finger up without much thought. The contact sends an unsettling jolt through my body. "Nanami-kun, come here."

He's still sitting where I'd left him, a sickly pale. I never took him to be the easily shaken type. Had the magnitude of the curse been that intense for him? Then, for a moment, I see he is hesitating to get closer—to the finger or to me?

"Nanami," I repeat. "Come here."

He finally listens, and I hold the dismembered finger to his face. "You're always reading about stuff. Do you have an idea what this is?"

All he responds: "We should bring it back to the school at once."

∞

"I hope you weren't waiting for a long time."

"I was closer than usual today. Kei-chan and I were assigned to a second grade in Ginza."

"Kei-chan?"

"My classmate. The one with the strings."

I think back to the girl with the golden hair and wide, hazel eyes. The one who flashed the satisfied grin at my pain. Nowadays, I find the sentiment far more understandable.

"So that's her name." There's a noticeable gap between Shigeri-san and I on the common room couch. His hands are neatly in his lap, interlaced above the nearly spotless blue fabric of his robes, but his knee bobs intermittently. Every so often his head turns to me sharply, observing my dull expression. Unlike before, it's hard to maintain a continuous conversation.

"I heard you got promoted," he brings up. "The second special grade in the world."

"Mm..."

Silence settles in again.

"Kaede-chan," he gives in, voice already filled with woe. "I swear, I wanted to see you so much sooner than this. They wouldn't approve a vacation period."

"It's okay."

"It's not okay. I can't imagine how you felt—how you must still feel. If my sister..." he trails off at the difficult thought.

"There's nothing you could have done, Shigeri."

"I could have been here. I should have—I should have left and dealt with the consequences."

"I wouldn't ask you to do that."

"It's not about what you ask of me." He redirects his entire body towards me, emerald eyes glazed with sorrow. "Kaede-chan, I want to experience so many good things with you, but I also want to be there for the bad. To be a shoulder to cry on."

He puts his hand on top of mine. It's warm, but not quite the right temperature. In fact, his overwhelming compassion doesn't feel right at all. "Sorry, but could you not touch me?"

Like a current has shocked him, he retracts his hand immediately. There's disappointment on his face, or is it shame? Hurt? Nothing of which I want to make him feel.

"I'm sorry. It's not you, and I'm not disinterested in what you have to say either. I love talking to you," I say earnestly. "It's just hard. Everything's been hard."

"I understand, but know that I'm not going to make the same mistake twice. I'm here for you."

"Even if I say something bad?"

His usual, charming smile doesn't falter. "Especially if you say something bad."

My voice lowers to a whisper, fear I typically hide seeping through my tone, "I think something is wrong with me."

"Why do you think that?"

"The curse I exorcised earlier," I say, "I can't remember what it looked like."

"So?"

"Every mission I take note of what the curse looks like, but I can't remember this one. I can't remember how I killed it either. I've been trying for hours."

"If you were moving so fast."

"No. There was time."

"Okay, but that hardly means something is wrong with you. Who needs to remember a curse's ugly face anyway?"

"I was so angry. I felt hate when it laughed and smiled when it was in pain. I blinked and suddenly it was in pieces!"

I purposely leave out Nanami from the story, how he could barely stand to look at me.

Ever the optimist, Shigeri assures, "It's just your strength, Kaede-chan. Cursed techniques can do that to you sometimes, get you in 'the zone'."

"I doubt being in 'the zone' is the same as blacking out from rage."

"You may have gotten a little vicious, but isn't the most important part that you did your job? The curse is gone."

"But I shouldn't get 'vicious'," I shake my head. "It's not how I was raised."

"Is that what this is about? You're afraid your family would be disappointed?"

"You know what my family's always been afraid of."

Shigeri's lips part, the dots slowly connecting in his mind. "I see."

"You can't tell anyone."

"Everything stays between us."

"I look in the mirror to see my old self, but I can't find her." I'm visibly healthy again. My skin is no longer a sickly pale, wrapped around protruding bones. The deep darkness beneath my eyes has faded. But a mirror doesn't display the new pieces of myself: cynical, angry ones. I have this rage in the pit of my stomach, bubbling like a stew. It comes out whenever I'm agitated, whether by a curse or my friends. I snap and whine without warning, as if any of them are to blame for my misfortune. Then, when I'm not angry, I stare off into space. "I think she died with Momo and everyone else, and I'm terrified of what's left."

Shigeri's expression softens. I can tell he wants to reach out again, but there's hardly a chance.

"One of Ryomen Sukuna's fingers!" The gap between Shigeri and I seems to widen when Satoru kicks the lounge door open. "What a heroic comeback, Kaede-chan."

The reminder of the finger's chilling energy was the last thing I wanted to occupy my mind. "I guess so."

"And I thought Suguru and I's mission today was cool." He plants himself inside the room, opaque glasses trained towards us. He waits a few moments before saying, "Am I interrupting something?"

His timing couldn't have been worse. Deep-rooted fears had finally been verbalized and I care a great deal to hear what Shigeri has to say. But I lie, "No. Not really."

None of us say anything for a moment.

"It's good to see you again, Gojo-san."

"Sure."

Silence fills the room again as he unceasingly watches us. Thirty seconds, possibly even a minute that feels like eternity, passes before Satoru finally speaks again, "It's late. You ready to go to bed, Kaede-chan?"

"We were actually in the middle of something," Shigeri says innocently. "I can walk her if you'd like."

"Really?" Satoru hums. "Alright. Kaede-chan knows the way to my room."

Satoru walks out, and the moment the door shuts behind him, I turn to Shigeri, "It's not how it sounds."

But he doesn't address it in the slightest, "I think you should look into some hobbies or mental exercises that will help ground you. At the least, it'll give you something to do so you can't dwell on these thoughts."

I seek out some kind of concern or betrayal in his expression, but it's unwaveringly sincere. "And if it's not enough?"

Shigeri merely sighs because he doesn't have an answer. "What you're going through right now will take a huge toll on your mind, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're losing it. Hold tight to anything or anyone that makes you feel sane. But Kaede-chan," I look at him, the genuine smile adorning his emerald eyes and pure heart. "You'll be okay."

With his final reassurance, Shigeri says goodbye, but doesn't walk me. Satoru makes that blatantly clear when he opens his door, looking left and right down the hallway. "Kamo went home?"

I drag myself into his room, humming a "yes" in response.

"The conversation seemed serious. What was it about?"

"If it seemed serious then why did you interrupt? You knew we were both in there well before you entered the room." His Six Eyes would make sure of that.

"Excuse me if I interrupted a private moment in the communal lounge," he scoffs. "And you didn't answer my question."

I remove my shoes and sit in his bed, feigning, "It was nothing."

"I got it," he dismisses me with the wave of his hand. "Relationship talk. You don't have to be all secretive about it."

"I really hate when you say that stuff."

"I hate it too," he shoots back. "I'm more than a personal heater, you know. You could at least try to trust me with whatever it is you're so inclined to tell Kamo."

"It's not about trust."

The bed rattles quietly when he sits next to me. "Then what is it?"

It's the shame of admitting I'm afraid to someone who understands my strength the way he solely does. "I didn't want you to think differently of me." To not want to share a bed with someone so weak.

"For what?"

"I feel lost," I say in the most impassive way possible. "I've been having a hard time recognizing myself these days."

"I recognize you."

The sentiment is nice, but hardly encouraging. We're both well aware of all I've lost, how much that's changed me. When do we draw the line that I'm too far gone? "I'm being serious."

"You think I'm not?" he pouts. "I promise, I still see everything that I've always seen in you."

"What do you see?"

Satoru's grin spreads slowly, but it's striking once fully formed. "I still see how you put everyone else's needs before your own. You still care about being polite to elders, even though it doesn't matter, and hold your shoulders too far back."

Instinctively, I pull them forward.

"Stealing all of my cherry flavored candy, and making that funny concentrated look with your eyebrows when you write. Only taking the green clothes from my closet, refusing to sleep on your right side, rubbing the 'Suguru' scar on your wrist. Even the piece of hair on the back of your head that's never straight."

My hand immediately smooths the back of my hair.

"You still let everyone have their turn to talk even though you know exactly what they'll say."

"Well," I suddenly grew timid, "I didn't know you would say all of that."

"And you're still the second strongest jujutsu in the world." I laugh, something that seemed impossible for so long. Then he tells me, "If you can't see all of it the way I do then I'll keep repeating myself. Once you're sick of it, I'll repeat it again."

Hold tight to anything or anyone that makes you feel sane.

The words leave my mouth before I can understand their weight, "Tether with me."

But he understands it far less than I do. "Huh?"

"It's a ritual my family does—did."

"What for?"

"Some said it could induce Forward Sight visions that warn you if your tether was in danger or making a life-altering decision. I'm not really sure how true that is, but regardless, it ties you to someone you care about, connects your souls."

"You want to connect your soul to mine?"

Suddenly, I'm embarrassed by the suggestion. "Forget it, I don't know why I said that."

He ignores my request. "You only get one of these?"

"Yes."

"And it can't be switched or broken?"

"No."

"I don't need your protection, though," he says thoughtfully, "Shouldn't you give it to someone who needs it more, like Tomiji or Mariko?"

"I didn't think you 'needed' it."

"Then, why did you offer?" To be next to me when I sleep. To experience the painful moments with me, but also the joyful ones. To keep safe my sanity planted deep within his soul. "I need you."

An agonizing moment of silent deliberation follows, but without warning he flings himself onto me. I topple from his sudden weight, falling back into the mattress in his embrace. "I'd love to be your tether, Kaede-chan! You're about to be connected to the coolest soul to ever exist!"

His touch warms my skin to the perfect temperature. I find myself holding him tightly, never wanting to let go. "I don't think souls can be cool."

"You haven't seen mine then." He lifts himself to look at me. "There's none like it."

The opaque glasses are slipping off, locking our eyes as the pads of my fingers trace the outline of his arms. "I believe you."

The moment slowly builds up into something far more intimate than I presumed. Holding himself above me like this, feeling the strength of his arms in my grasp, causes a knot to form in the pit of my stomach. One that tightens all the way down to between my legs. I find myself stuttering at first, "Sh-should we do it? The tether."

"Yeah." He gets up, sitting at a distance I find too far.

The want for lack of space isn't unusual, but every other tingling sensation in my body is. Gojo Satoru has triggered something indescribable in me that requires an absurd amount of effort to ignore.

When he removes his glasses, I nearly ask him to put them back on. Something about the deep crystal ocean in his eyes makes me feel more exposed. "What do we need to do?"

I take a pair of scissors from his desk and pick a random strand of his tousled hair. He whines as it shears off, "You better not make my hair look weird."

"You're a sixteen year old boy with white hair. I don't think that would be my fault." Pulling one of the deeper strands of my own hair, I tie it around the ivory lock. "Okay, now give me your hand."

Our hands are placed together, the knot of white and olive between our palms.

"You're okay with this?"

"You already cut my hair," he says, "No turning back now."

There's nothing quite complicated about performing a tether. All it takes is the right amount of cursed energy to meld two fragments together like a fire. But when it radiates from my hand into his, it's surprisingly gentle to the touch, gleaming in sparks that resemble fireflies in the dark.

Our hands come apart, and the entire strand of my hair has turned Satoru's distinctive white. "All done."

"Hey, my hair color looks good on you. Maybe we should color the rest of it to match."

"I think this piece is enough," I say. "Do you feel any different?"

"I feel.. Totally the same."

"Me too."

"I guess I'll need to be in grave danger to find out if it works." Satoru falls back into the mattress again, pulling me to do the same. I land in the crook of his arm, eyes trained on all the pointed features of his face.

"I never want to find out."

But in our lifestyle, that can never be guaranteed.

When I begin to drift off at the morbid thought, the hum of Satoru's voice brings me back to life. "Kaede-chan."

"Hm?"

"I like having my soul tied to yours."

"I like it too."

"Of course you do. You're the one who has the honor of being tethered to me."

"Shut up. You're ruining it."

[starmapz]

cigarettes in the theater - s. geto

❦ suguru geto x sorcerer reader

part two of the six degrees of separation anthology of oneshots, however can be read separately.

❝ the week following the declaration of suguru geto's status as a curse-user, you receive an invitation to meet him for a movie. you know you should decline, but you don't have the heart to do so. what harm is there in sharing one last cigarette with your lover? ❞

❦ warnings ; no pronouns used. angst. hurt/comfort. pet names (angel, sweetheart, darling). use of cigarettes. anxiety. graphic descriptions of death and injury. heavy subject matter discussed.

❦ words ; 3.4k.

masterlist || sdos masterlist previous (dependency) || next (nicotine)

By all accounts, you should be scared. You should be breathing heavily, your heart pounding in your ears, wide-eyed at the carnage that surrounds you in the theater. 

Yet… you aren’t.

You’re numb to it, numb to it all.

A body slumps to the floor in the row before you and all you can do is swallow the bile that threatens to upheave the contents of your stomach.

The presence behind you shouldn’t bring you the ease that it does. Yet, he’s been the only constant in your life as of recent, and you can’t bring yourself to hate him for what he’s done, even as a drop of blood runs down the side of your face. It isn’t your own, of course. He wouldn’t dare lay a hand on you.

You should have fought back against him, you should have protected everyone, but instead, you sat and watched. Maybe that makes you just as bad as it makes him. Maybe you’ll be sentenced to death by the higher-ups as well, seen as an accomplice to his actions tonight.

You wonder if you’re broken.

The worn red fabric of the seats hides the bloodshed so well that with little effort, you could clean everything up. You could hide the night’s calamity and go back home to Gojo, Ieiri, and Nanami. You could sweep this all under the rug, hide your trail, and blame it all on him.

Yet, you don’t move to do that.

He sits only a few seats back, smoke drifting languidly from his cigarette. His eyes are glued to the screen, just as yours are. There’s a sort of dramatic irony to the kind words being spoken on-screen as a drama plays.

“Cigarette?”

His voice is as sultry and kind as ever. You take a breath before you turn to look at him.

Suguru looks as beautiful as ever. His dark hair is up in a half-bun and the rest cascades down his shoulders, falling effortlessly over his collarbones. His eyes are sunken, tired, but that’s not unusual for him as of late. He’s wearing a deep blue sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. It’s almost cruel of him to do so, he knows it’s your favorite outfit on him.

It tugs on your heart strings in ways you can’t describe with words.

Your chest feels heavy, heart pounding suddenly against your rib cage, practically tearing its way out.

“Yeah,” you respond, barely above a whisper. You know he can’t hear it over the movie, but he reads your lips.

Long legs step over the chairs, descending the theater until he reaches your row. He pulls down the uncomfortable red seat, plopping down beside you. His cigarette hangs from his lips as he pulls a small box from his pocket. His sharp eyes watch your movements as you pull the cigarette from the cardboard.

“You look tired,” he comments, leaning over to light the cigarette.

“I could say the same for you,” you respond neutrally, taking a drag from the nicotine sitting between your lips. You blink a couple of times as you let the relaxation wash over you, a temporary escape from the dark corners of your mind.

Then again, it’s all temporary. Every life saved, every ‘thank you’ or lack thereof, each one a fleeting moment forgotten in the grand scheme of things and instead replaced with the sight of your lost classmates. Your lost friends.

The sight of Haibara flashes through your mind and you turn your head from the screen, from the bloodied seats before you, your jaw trembling subtly.

Suguru notices your movement, setting a hand on your knee. Your brain tells you to pull away. It tells you he’s dangerous, but there’s nothing more you want right now than to curl into his arms and feel his lips against your temple just as you had only a week ago.

So much has changed since then.

“Did it make you feel better?” You ask out of the blue, keeping your tone even as you steel yourself and push the image of your classmate’s body from your mind.

At the end of the day, his answer doesn’t matter. You’re surrounded by corpses in a theater. By all accounts, he’s already made his bed and you’re both laying in it here and now.

Suguru pauses, observing your expression. He can’t gleam anything about how you’re feeling, beyond the underlying sadness in your tired eyes. That look has been there for a while now, though. He recognizes it all too well. The dark circles beneath your eyes are a shade so dark that concern plagues him, though he knows he has to play his cards right in this conversation if he wants to help you heal.

“I don’t regret it,” he responds evenly, his thumb rubbing circles into your knee.

You bite your lip to prevent it from trembling. “That’s not what I asked, Sugu.”

You’re finally looking him in the eyes, for the first time in a week, for the first time since his return from the mission that sealed his fate as a curse-user.

You’re as gorgeous as he remembers, perhaps more. Even with sunken eyes, glossy and sad, and your hair somewhat disheveled, he finds himself unable to stop the way he stares at your lips. He still yearns to call you his.

“It did, yes.”

It’s a nail in the coffin. This isn’t just a departure from Jujutsu Tech, he’s traveling into dangerous territory now, with malicious intent.

It should hurt to hear those words, it should be painful beyond belief. Yet, it’s not.

You think again that maybe you’re broken.

Silence hangs heavy over you both as you take a deep breath, processing his response.

“How’s Satoru?” He asks calmly. 

You swallow the bile rising in your throat. It’s sour and you frown at the feeling. “He’s been better. He’s angry with you.”

“I figured,” he hums softly, a bleak smile pulling at his thin lips. “Shoko?”

You take a long drag from the cigarette. “I’m not really sure,” you admit, avoiding his gaze now. You feel guilty for the fact that you’ve drifted apart from both Nanami and Ieiri, but the entire faculty seems to be drowning. None of you have time to yourselves and when you do, you’re locked away in your dorms.

“And you?”

You pause. You don’t know how you are.

No, that’s a lie. When Suguru reached out to invite you to a movie, deep down you knew this would happen. Maybe not the pile of bodies, but this conversation. From the moment you hesitantly typed see you there, you knew it would all lead to you crumbling in his arms.

Suguru is your lighthouse, your beacon of hope and safety. Your home. You love him too much to let him go.

“I miss you.”

He doesn’t miss a beat as he responds, “I miss you too.”

You can’t help it this time, your lip trembles and your chest heaves with a sob. “It’s all so fucked without you, Sugu. I don’t think-” Your voice betrays you, cutting you off as another sob wracks your body.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he hums, resting the cigarette between his soft lips as he moves his hand from your knee to wrap his arms around you. He braces himself as he lifts you up out of your seat, away from the armrest so that he can cradle you in his lap.

With a final drag from his cigarette, he puffs the smoke into the air and puts it out on the plastic armrest beside him, leaving a melted circular indentation behind. It doesn’t matter, in the grand scheme of the mess that is the theater.

His nimble fingers slip your own cigarette from your fingers as you cry into his chest. He taps his finger once against it, his other arm holding you tightly to his chest.

His warmth is so familiar and brings a sense of comfort you haven’t felt since the day the news broke.

The corpses of 112 of the village inhabitants were found dead.

Like alcohol over an open wound, the thought stings. You don’t agree with what he did, but… you suppose there is a reason you’re here.

“Why did you do it?” You swallow a sob, taking a deep breath to steady your breathing when you finally begin to steady your emotions. You shift in his lap to straddle him, letting your hands rest on his built chest.

He leans back in the chair, which reclines slightly with his weight. Taking a drag from the cigarette that was yours, he lets his hand rest on your hip. “You know the answer to that question.”

Of course you do. You’ve been thinking it. Nanami’s been thinking it.

Ever since Haibara’s passing, it’s been plaguing you all. Nanami feels he failed Haibara. You feel you failed them both as their superior. Yet Suguru… he’s been feeling the effects since Amanai’s passing. He’s been slowly spiraling and despite your best efforts, it’s clear this was inevitable.

“That’s not what I mean. What was the breaking point?”

Suguru blinks calmly, holding the cigarette to your lips to take a drag. “I exorcized the curse,” he begins, “yet they demanded I kill two young girls.” His expression shifts from neutrality for the first time in the night to one of disgust. “Shit, you should have seen them. Caged like goddamn animals, two innocent children.”

You try to keep an impartial expression, but your eyes widen, betraying your shock and distaste. If he can find the right words, Suguru wonders if maybe, just maybe, he might find you back in his arms for longer than this conversation.

“They’re sorcerers,” he tells you, “but they weren’t responsible for the curse.”

Your fingers grip at his sweatshirt as you wrestle with your emotions. You want to hug him, bring him the comfort his eyes silently beg for, but there’s so much going through your mind, so many questions to ask.

“There were innocent people there,” you state blankly.

“Were there?” He challenges you.

Your brow twitches, you’re not sure what to make of the question. It seems obvious that there would be. “Of course,” you respond, lips parting.

Suguru takes a long drag of the cigarette, putting it out in the same fashion as the previous one before dropping the stub to the floor. “Are they innocent for calling on us with no regard for the sorcerer bodies piling up?” When you don’t respond, he continues. “Are they innocent for standing by and allowing two terrified children to be caged like animals?”

Your gaze drifts to the side, melancholy swirling in your tired eyes. Suguru admires you as he lets you think, resting his hand that had been holding the cigarette on your thigh. He longs to bring you closer, to kiss your soft lips, but he refrains out of fear of ruining the conversation.

“I suppose that means I’m not innocent either,” you mumble, eyes darting to the severed leg that sits on the ground behind Suguru. You’re forced to swallow bile again at the sight, a shiver running up your spine. You’ve grown numb to the sight of death, but your stomach certainly hasn’t.

“Perhaps not,” he agrees, his deep and observant eyes taking in the minute twitches of muscles in your jaw.

With one hand firmly keeping distance between you despite the compromising position you’re in, you lift your other hand to rub your face, sighing. When you drop your hand back to his chest, he offers you a small smile. It’s just like him to keep smiling and offer solace for those in need in spite of his own turmoil.

“Do you disagree with my actions?”

“Yes,” you tell him firmly, not hesitating for a moment.

“Why didn’t you stop me, then?”

Your lips part, brow knit tightly as you spare a glance at the bloody scene around you. Why didn’t you stop him? You’re asking yourself the same question.

“I’ll ask again, my dear. Why didn’t you stop me?”

You want to vomit. You don’t agree with him. You don’t want to kill people. Why are you here?

All you can do is stare helplessly at him. Stare at his sharp and beautiful features, the way he looks at you with such admiration, the way his hands feel at home on your body.

“I don’t know,” you whisper. You’re almost certain he doesn’t hear you as the movie playing behind you picks up in volume and music plays.

Suguru attempts to pull you closer, but you keep your arms firm, keeping distance between the both of you. He doesn’t dare push it, push you. Not when he feels your resolve crumbling before him. Maybe it’s selfish of him, but he doesn’t care to be selfless any longer. He wants you, he wants you by his side.

“There’s a purpose to this all,” he tells you, raising his voice over the movie’s music. He’s running out of time to get through to you. Running out of time before the carnage is spotted by employees and Jujutsu Tech is informed. He already failed to convince Satoru to join him, but he knew that would happen already, the snowy-haired sorcerer was far too set in his ways.

“Satoru told me,” you say all too quietly, but he reads your lips.

“Then why are you here, my love?”

“I-” you pause, the words die in your throat. You can’t say what you’re thinking, it pains you physically as you turn your gaze to the melted hole in the arm of the chair, desperate to focus on anything that isn’t him.

“You can tell me,” he coaxes you, “even if it hurts me.”

You would never hurt Suguru.

“I miss you,” you tell him again, eyes brimming with tears now. The words are on the tip of your tongue. You know it, he knows it.

“I miss you too, sweetheart.”

He’s so patient, so calm, as he always is. You know no matter what conclusion you come to, he’ll accept it. He would let you leave, though you think you wish he wouldn’t.

The music in the background fades as the movie comes to an end, much more somber, quiet music taking over as the credits roll. The light from the screen dims, leaving the both of you in near-darkness. Suguru is running out of time with you as the movie nears its final moments. It’s only a matter of time now before staff arrive and the police and Jujutsu Tech are informed.

“I think I still love you, Sugu,” you whimper. You can’t hold back your tears any longer as finally they spill, sobs wracking your body.

Suguru shushes you softly, relieved when finally you give in and allow him to hold you to his chest. He runs his hand gently along your spine, soothing you as you tremble in his muscular arms.

“I never stopped loving you. I never will,” he whispers. He buries his face into the crook of your neck, closing his eyes as he relishes the moment. He missed you more than he ever thought possible, and the idea of losing you again when he’s already lost his best friend brings with it a sense of hopelessness he’s grown all too familiar with.

You clutch at his sweatshirt desperately as the reality of your situation crashes down on you. You want out. You want out of the world of Jujutsu sorcery and curses, you want out of the world where those you care about die.

Yet… you don’t want to leave with Nanami. You don’t want to work a nine to five job like he’s expressed interest in. You don’t want to stay with Gojo, you know he’s too dedicated to Jujutsu Tech. You don’t want to eliminate humans from the world like Suguru. But you don’t want to live without him either.

In a matter of a week it’s like your whole world came crashing down and you sit in limbo.

Suguru’s eyes flicker to the screen and he sighs. The credits are reaching their end as more and more logos show and he knows he’s nearly out of time. He can’t face Satoru again if that’s who they send after him, not right now with you here in his arms. He’s running out of time with you.

“I want you by my side,” he tells you softly.

You raise your head from his shoulder and he gently wipes your tear-streaked cheeks. “You can’t ask that of me.”

His calm eyes observe you carefully. “Talk to me, then. Why are you here?”

Your lips part, hesitant, but you manage to choke out what’s on your mind. “I feel lost.”

“You don’t want to be at the school anymore,” he fills in the blank. He knew that already, before he chose how he wanted to live, back when he was still a student, you had expressed a desire to leave.

“I don’t want to- to kill people, Sugu.”

“I wouldn’t ask that of you.”

You sigh, chewing on your lip. You inadvertently find yourself glancing down at his lips, pursed as he waits for you to make a decision.

“Then what are you asking of me?”

Suguru pauses, he hadn’t thought much of his answer to this question. He knew you wouldn’t want to bring harm to people, you’re too kind. He lifts his head slightly, staring into your eyes, a tempest of uncertainty thundering within them. As his lips brush yours, he can only hope, pray, that you’ll allow him to close the distance, that you’ll give in to him.

“I could use help looking after the girls while I’m away.”

You pause, taking in his words. There’s still a lick of uncertainty to this whole situation. Your life has lost its direction, but the one thing you find yourself drawn to is him. Although you disagree with his methods, he’s right.

You are here.

You didn’t stop him from wreaking havoc on the theater.

You don’t hate him for what he’s done.

You feel his pain. Yours just manifests in a different way.

Like a switch finally flips, you lean forward, pressing your lips to his. Your fear, your pain, even if only for a moment, it all dissolves as you’re consumed with him, with Suguru, your lover.

He slides a hand to the back of your head, pulling you into him as he deepens the kiss, passion overflowing from the movement of his lips on yours. His tongue swipes your lower lip and with a quiet whimper, you give him access to deepen the kiss. It gives him the chance to say everything his words don’t.

He parts from you, eyes flickering wildly over your features with nothing short of adoration in those beautiful deep irises of his. He pants lightly, catching his breath as he cups your cheeks.

“We need to leave, angel.”

You swallow hard.

This is it, there’s no turning back now.

Slowly, you nod.

“I love you, Suguru.”

“I love you, too.”

Hand in hand, you escape out the theater’s emergency exit. As the sun sets over the horizon, you spare a glance at your boyfriend.

You hadn’t noticed in the dim lighting but blood coats his sweats, dried into the gray fabric. His hair still drips with fresh blood and your breathing hitches when you see the way his keen eyes follow your gaze. He doesn’t seem at all phased by it.

Your heart pounds in your chest as you realize that he has bloody handprints covering his shoulders. Shaky hands lift to stare at your crimson palms. Before you can overthink your decision, Suguru gently takes your hand in his.

“I need a cigarette,” you whisper shakily, thankful when he complies. He lights it for you and as you take a drag, you feel your nerves calm.

You wonder what life would have been like had you met him at a normal college.

As news breaks of the carnage in the theater and you’re labeled as a curse-user too, you wonder if you have any right to wish for things to be different.

You wonder again if you’re broken, but as two young girls run up to meet you excitedly and hop into your boyfriend’s strong arms, you watch him with a small smile. Though he still looks exhausted, he seems happier.

For the first time in a week as you’re dragged into Suguru’s new home, you don’t feel the crushing weight of uncertainty.

You don’t regret your decision.

masterlist || sdos masterlist previous (dependency) || next (nicotine)

writing & format © starmapz. art © 3-aem. dividers © adornedwithlight and cafekitsune.

[anyon-else]

— bar!au w/ nanami kento, gojo satoru, toji fushiguro, sukuna ryomen (a/n: this is kind of ooc but i’ve had the idea in my head forever, so here we are) – spotify playlist | main masterlist

— warnings: attempted sexual assault (it does not actually happen, but some of the language could still be triggering), sexual harrassment, drugging, violence, cursing

the bar is a small, hole in the wall biker bar that caters mostly to regulars and locals. sukuna and toji are bouncers, nanami is the manager, and you and gojo are bartenders

before nanami took over, he worked as a bartender himself under the less-than-adequite management

the previous manager was fired by the owner, mei mei, for harrassing his employees. mei was quick to recognize nanami’s capabilities as a businessman, and a promotion came quickly after

nanami cleaned house and hired his current staff all at once, keeping it small and doing minimal pr. the bar was an integral part of the small community, and two bartenders was more than enough to handle the patient and familiar crowd who came for the company as much as they did the drinks

nanami knew toji and sukuna from his gym, where they worked part-time as personal trainers. he heard them mention that they were looking for other jobs, something low stress that would have them on their feet instead of sat behind a desk for eight hours. nanami’s offer may not have been the best thing they could’ve found, but they were semi-regulars at the bar and seemed to like the environment

he met you and gojo in college. he’d never admit it, but without the two of you he would have spent his college years holed up doing work, miserable every day of the week. you and gojo forced him to go out and, at the very least, stop working for a few hours

(he was more than satisfied that the roles were now reversed, and he was forcing you two to work)

the five of you had the bar running like a well-oiled machine, and despite mei’s constant begging that nanami hire a third bartender, nanami’s profits were enough proof that you and gojo managed the bar just fine

you two were much louder than the previous bartenders. while it did take some time for the regulars to adjust to the new energy you brought to the bar, you quickly became an essential part of the experience. you had no problems pulling out your joint charisma on the clock

but that made for something of a depressing atmosphere when one of you was missing. the other would just mope around as if there was no purpose in life without a partner to bicker with. nanami would have talked to you both about it, but the customers found this just as amusing, so he let it slide

he was nervous to introduce the two sets of employees to one another. you and gojo had a tendency to be blunt, and oftentimes condescending when talking to new people. he knew you didn’t mean to be; you two just said the first thing that you thoughtabout people, even if that thing was insulting. sometime you did’t even realize it. just thinking about introducing you to toji and sukuna had given nanami a headache

his worries were somewhat justified

Sukuna and Toji watched their new coworkers approach them. Toji glanced at Sukuna and grinned at the look of mild disgust on his face. You and Gojo were in the middle of what could have been an argument, as Gojo had you in a head lock and cackled loudly when you tried to sweep his legs. The laughter continued until they heard a timely oof sound, and Toji couldn’t help the huff he let out at your triumphant smirk. Nanami looked like he wanted to throttle both of you. 

“Y/N, Gojo, if you could be professional for more than thirty seconds, I’d like to introduce you to our new bouncers,” Nanami yanked Gojo off the floor by the arm, and the man took a moment to adjust his glasses before looking the two men up and down. 

“Gojo,” his introduction was simple, a complete change from the man they’d just seen. Sukuna just scoffed, giving Gojo a quick once over. Toji continued to observe, watching you as you watched him. You looked like you were about to say something, but kept thinking better of it. Eventually, after a few seconds of watching you try and fail to speak, he rolled his eyes. 

“Got somethin’ important to say?��� 

“How much do you lift?”

Nanami’s dissapointed sigh didn’t make you falter. You held Toji’s gaze with narrowed eyes, waiting in silence for his answer. 

“300.”

Your eyes widened only a fraction, and before he could ask why you wanted to know, you were leaning over, whispering something in Gojo’s ear. It only took a second for Gojo to started cackling again, bent over double and practically wheezing as he tried to control his breathing. You had a matching grin on your face, and Nanami considered firing you both for a very long moment.

“I’m sorry about these children,” Nanami sounded tired. Toji didn’t blame him, “and I understand if you want to rethink your decision to work here.”

“Nah,” Sukuna shrugged, “they’ll stay at the bar, right? We won’t have to deal with ‘em.”

“Please don’t say that, they will take it as a challenge.” 

despite their best efforts, toji and sukuna did start to become more acquianted with the two of you. it was a slow moving friendship, of course, but after a few months of mostly keeping to themselves, they stopped passing up on nanami’s offer of free booze and joined the three of you for drinks after your shifts. 

the bar was empty and quiet after hours. it seemed like a different place without the hustle and bustle of customers moving this way and that. sukuna and toji were able to sit at the bar without being on guard (though incidents were rare) and you and gojo seemed tired enough after a shift of constant charisma that your personalities were slightly toned down (slightly)

the two bouncers never admitted it, and likely never would, but it was hard not to become friends with the people they spent time with almost every day. and you two weren’t all that bad when you were paying attention to other people. and every now and then, one of you would crack a joke that would make sukuna huff (and quickly scowl again when toji jabbed him, saying something about him getting soft)

after four months of working in the bar, they finally introduced you all to their families. well, each only had one family member to account for, but it seemed like a big deal. toji’s son, megumi, was similar to nanami in many ways. gojo took an instant liking to bothering the boy, and despite megumi’s outward disgust with the man, toji knew that he secretly enjoyed talking to gojo

sukuna’s younger brother yuuji became a third thorn in nanami’s side. sukuna would always take great joy in inviting himself and his brother into nanami’s office and leave the boy to have a very long and very one sided conversation with nanami

nanami tried very hard not to take a liking to the boy, but it was hard when yuuji didn’t seem to have one bad bone in his body. it was refreshing, and somewhat reassuring to see

like sukuna and toji, he would never admit this to anyone, but sukuna saw and took full advantage of nanami’s weakness. the itadoris had a death in their family about a month after yuuji started coming into the bar. sukuna had thrown nanami’s office door open with wild eyes. nanami looked down at yuuji’s tear-streaked face and immediately put the peices together. for all that sukuna cared about his brother, he wasn’t the type to know how to comfort someone

so nanami had unwillingly become fond of the boy, who spent a lot of time with megumi in his office since they technically weren’t allowed in the bar. he wasn’t sure why they liked it so much, but he never said anything. the company was nice. it was something he never really asked for but appreciated when he got it. it was the very reason he got so attached to you and gojo

both boys came to you when they needed advice, particularly for things that they did not want to ask the others for. sukuna was shit for advice, and toji’s was always a bit too intense. gojo couldn’t hold a serious conversation to save his life, and nanami was too serious for his own good. you were a good neutral between them all

you were the first person that yuuji told when he realized he was crushing on megumi

and vice-versa

you and gojo played matchmaker, much to the continued chagrin of toji and sukuna

“i will show no mercy if your brother hurts my son.”

“fuck you. don’t talk about that to me, shitface.”

friendship? they don’t know what that is. they forgot. 

nanami took a lot of pride in his job. he was running a bar that was more successful than many others in the area, and there was minimal conflict between coworkers and among the customers. however, that didn’t mean there were no incidents

usually, he was the one to come out and calm things down when you or gojo made an off-handed comment to the wrong person. that’s why he liked keeping the customer-base contained to regulars who were used to your and gojo’s humor. new customers (especially those who expected and sometimes demanded respect from employees) did not appreciate the unprofessinal nature you and gojo brought to the bar despite the fact that you were both excellent bartenders

those were the incidents that didn’t require sukuna and toji stepping in. they just watched carefully from the sidelines as nanami talked to either the customer (explaining that there was no policy against joking with customers and that his employees truly meant no harm) or to you and gojo (telling you both to tone it down when you didn’t recognize someone, which wasn’t often)

nevertheless, these incidents were short-lived and easily handled. the more intense incidents were the ones that initially pushed nanami to hire sukuna and toji. he wasn’t dense; he was a bartender himself once, and he’d had his fair share of drunk customers hit on him. the knew that if someone was brave enough to approach a very intimidating, very unapproachable nanami with a proposition, than they’d see you and gojo’s open and bubbly personalities as invitations

it was surprising that it took nearly three months for one of these incidents to occur. the regular customers at the biker bar were often enough intimidation to ward off any unwanted harrassment, but sometimes not even toji and sukuna’s constant presence near the doors deterred people. 

the milder situations only required an escort out of the bar, whether that be gentle or, every now and then, a bit more forceful

Gojo was having a good night. A great night even. He was skipping drinks with you and the others after work to go on a date with Geto, who he’d been on and off with for a couple months. You were constantly throwing him looks when you caught him smiling to his phone, smirking at the blush that covered his cheeks when he recieved a particularly sexy message from his on-again off-again boyfriend. the one time he recieved a nude at work, he’d quickly slammed the phone face down on the counter, attracting the attention of you and the customers in front of him. you were quick to put the peices together, and fell against the bar in a pretend faint, grinning wildly. 

The customers in front of him whistled, ignoring his glare as they pointed out his gaping mouth and red face. 

“Is she a looker, Gojo?” 

“I’m gay!”

“How big is it, then?” 

“How’d you like mine in your drink?” Gojo asked with a scowl, quickly turning his phone off and shoving it in his pocket. All he got was a cackle in response from the customers.

Your loud laughter carried across the bar, even drawing Sukuna and Toji’s attention to see what had caused such an uproar. Unfortunately, it also attracted some unwanted attention towards Gojo, who was still defending himself to the grinning customers. Gojo was bent over the bar, back to his usual joking despite his still red face.

“You’re just jealous that I’m getting fucked while you’re all going home horny and alone.”

“Bet I’d be better, pretty boy!”

The voice was unfamiliar, and both you and Gojo turned to the man who’d spoken. The stranger grinned at Gojo, raising his drink with a shaky hand. You winced. You’d served him more than a few drinks; in fact, this was going to be his last one before you cut him off. His flushed cheeks drew back as his smile widened at capturing Gojo’s attention, oblivious to the sudden silence in the bar as everyone eyed the newcomer. 

“Yeah?” Gojo said, testing the waters. This could be harmless. People flirted with you and Gojo all of the time, but there was an unspoken agreement that it never went farther than harmless jokes. You both considered your regulars friends, but there was still an acknowledgement that harrassment was common in your line of work, so people tended to avoid outright propositions.

“Mhm,” the man smirked, leaning heavily against the bar and almost shoving a woman out of her seat. She leaned away, giving him a once over before getting up and walking to the other side of the bar. That wasn’t exactly a good sign, “how about I take you home tonight, hm? There’s enough room for both of you.” 

His eyes moved to you now and you scoffed, turning back to the customer you were serving, though you kept quiet to hear if things got out of hand.

“Whatever,” he rolled his eyes, turning back to Gojo, “I don’t like prudy bitches anyways. So, what’dya say? I promise I’m worth your time.”

“Right, I’m gonna have to pass. Why don’t you call a cab and jerk off when you get home.” 

He turned from the man as chuckles erupted from the other customers. Face red, his anger at being rejected overpowered his embarrassment at being humiliated in front of the other customers. He seethed as you laughed and knocked your fist against Gojo’s, muttering something that made him grin.

“Hey!” the man snapped, leaping over the bar and grabbing hold of Gojo’s shirt, “the fuck are you laughing at, huh?”

Gojo’s eyes widened in surprise, but he only stumbled back a step before he yanked out of the man’s grip. The man fell back, bracing to hit the floor. Instead, two hands gripped his shoulders hard and began dragging him back to the door. He looked up, eyes wide as he took in the scar running jagged over Toji’s lips and the muscles that strained against his shirt. 

“Hold on, man– it was just a joke.” 

“We don’t tolerate assault here,” Toji scowled down at him. “Either get the fuck out or I make you.” 

“Wha- assault? I didn’t assault anyone, we were just havin’ a conversation!” 

Toji smirked, standing the man up near the door and shoving him through, watching him stumble to his knees with a grunt. The door was slammed and locked behind him. Sukuna and Toji watched him try to open it a few times, let out a string of curses, then huff and walk towards the cab that Nanami had called for him. 

“Thanks!” Gojo called from across the bar, signiture grin back in place. Toji nodded back, a smirk on his face as he watched the two of you laugh with the customers about how sad it was to have to resort to harrassment to get some dick. 

unfortunately, not all situations were resolved so quickly, and without some lasting effect. nanami appreciated the consistency of having so many regulars come in, warding off most tourists. however, sleazy people in bars was unavoidable, despite nanami’s best efforts to prevent it

You’d been on for much longer than you’d originally planned. Despite your insistance that you’d break your shifts up with an hour lunch break, sometimes time just got away from you. You loved your job, and hunger came second to entertaining and serving your loyal customers. After all, who were you to tell them that you couldn’t serve them because you needed something as unimportant as food?

However, this also led to situations like the one you found yourself in now. You’d been bouncing on your feet for half an hour, trying to find a time to run back to the bathroom in between drink orders. The day was busier than most; the holiday weekend always brought in a lot of newcomers, some family of regulars, some complete strangers. 

After an hour of complaining to Gojo that you had to pee, he finally got a break from his orders and took over one of yours, allowing you to rush to the bathroom. 

You sighed as you made your way back to the mass of people at the bar, groaning as you watched the continuous flow of people in and out of the bar. You’d almost made it within sight of Gojo and the front door, but you were stopped by a hand jutting out in front of you, almost hitting you in the forehead.

“Hey,” the man staring down at you smiled, leaning in close and breathing in your face. You coughed, probably more theatrically than necessary, at the strong smell of liquor and smoke. This was exactly the type of person that Nanami tried to drive away from the bar, but it was busy nights like these that gave them the opportunity to slip in unnoticed by all five of you. 

“Can I help you?” you deadpanned, holding his gaze and glaring. He faltered, not expecting your resistance to his towering figure, but it only took him a second to recover and continue on undetered. 

“You most certainly can. My friends and I here are looking for someone pretty to bring home with us.” 

You waited with a raised brow for him to continue, but he just stared at you. He had probably imagined that you would yourself at his feet and beg to be the chosen one. 

“Cool,” you deadpanned, “are you trying to give me an application or something? I’m not interested.” 

Hoping that would be enough, you tried to shove past his arm and get into sight of your coworkers, but another one of the group that you hadn’t noticed gather around you yanked you back by the arm. He held your waist so that your back was pressed against his chest, locking his hands against your abdoman. You looked up, nerves starting to build when you saw that this man was even taller than the first one, and his leer was twice as unsettling. His smile was distustingly wide and eager. You gagged.

“No application necessary, beautiful,” the first man grabbed your chin and squeezed, forcing your jaw open, “we’ve already picked you.” 

Someone behind you yanked your head back by your ponytail. Before you could process what had happened, a bitter drink was being poured down your throat. You choked, knowing full well what was happening, but your shocked body betrayed you. A good amount had already gone down your throat, burning as it tried to reject the unexpected drink. You kicked your leg out, finally gaining some attention from a customer, who ran out to get Sukuna and Toji. 

“The back, open the door,” someone said above you, holding your jaw closed despite your best effort to spit out what was left of the drink, “someone’s gonna come soon. Hurry the fuck up.” 

Your eyes widened in panic as they began to drag you towards the back door, conveniently located next to the bathrooms. You grunted when one of them pulled your head back again, a warning to stop struggling. You kicked back at him, using what strength you had now before whatever they spiked you with kicked in. 

“Jesus– fuck,” you heard as you made contact with something behind you. You took the opportunity to gather your strength and flailed as hard as you could, surprising your attackers enough that they dropped you. You scrambled, anxiety spiking as you realized your movements had slowed. Where were Toji and Sukuna? 

You knew from experience that these things only took seconds to happen. You’d seen it too many times, having to give statements to the police in the aftermath of an assault. But this was the first time you’d been on this side of things.

Meaty fingers wrapped around your ankle and pulled you back again, heaving you up and back where you started. “C’mon, you don’t have to do any work, baby. Just sit there and look pretty.” 

On the other side of the bar, Toji and Sukuna watched as a panicked boy rushed towards them. They recognized him as Inumaki, a mute kid who had just turned twenty one and always came in with two of his friends. He was waving at them and pointing frantically in the direction of the bathrooms. Both glanced back and broke into a frantic run when they saw you attempting to crawl out of the space. You disappeared just as fast as they’d seen you, mouth open in a scream that they couldn’t hear over the crowd.

“The fuck?” Sukuna grunted, pushing through the crowd until they reached the back hall.

“Shit! The bouncers are here, run! No, you idiot, leave them–”

Sukuna was less than a foot from the speaker in three long strides. He stepped over you carefully to let Toji take you back to Nanami’s office. He could hear Gojo’s panicked questions as Toji carried you through the crowd, as well as Toji’s quick retort that an explanation would come later.

Sukuna zeroed in on the man in front of him, watching as his friends scrambled away without him. Cowards. 

“Either you start talking or I knock you out and let you wake up in a jail cell. Your choice.” 

The man struggled, but Sukuna had him lifted against the back door. His feet brushed the ground in a pathetic attempt to run. 

“L-listen man, we just saw them at the bar and wanted to, you know, get a piece ‘a the action. I mean, can you blame us? They come in here flaunting around like they own the place, disrestpecting people and shit. Jus’ wanted to put ‘em in their place. Shit, you should probably thank us. I bet they’re a pain in your ass–”

Sukuna followed through on his second promise.

The man crumpled to the ground at his feet. He turned to the crowd and spotted Todo looking over someone’s shoulder at the scene. Sukuna pointed at him, then at the man at his feet. 

“Watch him until I get back and call the police. If he wakes up, kick his face in.”

Todo nodded curtly, stepping around Sukuna with a rough clap to his shoulder. He put a foot on the man’s shoulder and pulled his phone out, expression hard as steel.

Sukuna worked through the crowd until he reached Nanami’s open office door. He closed it behind him and looked over Nanami’s shoulder to you. You met his eyes, barely lucid and mumbling out incoherant answers to Nanami’s questions. 

“Y/N, were you drugged?” 

“Mm.”

“Y/N, I know it’s hard right now, but I really need you to stay awake. Did you hit your head?” 

“K-kinda.”

“Gojo, call an ambulance.” 

Gojo’s eyes were wide as he watched you struggle to speak, something so unlike you that it physically hurt to see. He pulled his phone out with steady hands despite his racing mind. 

“Toji, Sukuna, did you see what happened?” 

“There was a group of guys pulling them towards the door. Probably drugged ‘em somehow, they were completely limp,” Toji grit his teeth. He should’ve been there earlier and stopped this from happening. Shit like this never happened at Nanami’s bar, and the one time it did, he couldn’t do shit to stop it. 

“Sukuna?” 

“Jesus, I dont know! I saw the same fuckin’ thing he did.”

“Suk’na,” you mumbled, trying to reach out to the man. Your hand fell uselessly over the side of the couch, and Nanami placed it carefully back over your stomach, “s’fine.”

“Goddammit,” Sukuna grumbled, turning and walking through the office door. It slammed shut behind him and you winced as your foggy mind tried to process the sudden noise. Nanami would have to talk to him later about dealing with the aftermath of crisis situations. 

“Drug,” you muttered, “was drug’d.” 

Nanami nodded, turning to Toji with worried eyes. Toji just stared, guilt now all-consuming. His bartender got roofied in his fucking bar. This happened on his watch. How could he not even do his fucking job the one time he was actually needed. 

“Stop,” Nanami said firmly, “whatever you’re thinking, it’s not going to help now. Come down here.”

Toji knelt down carefully, watching you as you watched him. You tried to give him a small smile, but it seemed like you were too tired to do much else. He smiled back, a rare occurance, and something that would have made you giddy in any other circumstance. 

“Why so s’rus,” you grumbled, and he laughed despite himself. You weren’t lucid enough to tell Nanami what had happened, but you could still give him your Joker impression?

“Don’t be a dumbass.” 

something like that rarely happened, but it was the one thing that seemed to keep sukuna and gojo from wanting to go at each other’s throats. toji and sukuna both talked big game, but when it came down to it, they knew that their job was to take care of anyone who entered the bar, and they took that very seriously

(it definitely did not have anything to do with how much they had grown to care about you and the others. no, nope, not that at all)

in summary, nanami is very tired, but he never once considered changing his decisions when he hired the four of you. eventually, mei stopped bothering him about a third bartender, content with her ever-increasing profits

[kashimos-hajime]

the colour yellow | jjk

summary: “You once said love manifests the most twisted curses. I never thought of it that way before, but I’m starting to think you’re right.”

WARNINGS: ANGST!! hanahaki disease but not an au, HOSPITALS, DEATH, DESCRIPTIONS OF DISEASE, UNHEALTHY WEIGHT LOSS, pining, unrequited love, complicated feelings, its just sad. there are some light-hearted moments, and happier/softer aspects in the ending but it is generally sad in the ‘what could have been’ department pairing: gojo satoru x fem!reader, past geto suguru x fem!reader, mentions of satosugu word count: 29.9k lmao

a/n: i just needed to get the hanahaki out of my system. it did not work. i took liberties w the timeline because idc about actual jjk canon in this fic thanks. 

playlist for this fic

crossposted on ao3 x

Your Innate Technique always gave you a green thumb. Meaning, similarly enough to Yaga, you could plant cursed energy into objects.

Where it deviated, Satoru knows, is the type of object. Plants—trees, leaves, flowers. 

Ironic, he thinks numbly as he walks through the hospital. Shoko had told him that at this point it was palliative care until you died—nothing else would work. Cursed energy only fed your sickness, and even her technique could not heal the damage fast enough. Stupid. Idiotic. Cruel.

Cruel. That was the word.

He hadn’t seen it himself but from how his old friend had described it, it could only be cruel. 

His footsteps tap along the linoleum floors, urgent, but not too fast. A part of him dreads what he will see—his mind swirls with the possibilities, and of guilt.

Why didn’t he just come sooner? Why did he think it was okay to wait, to dismiss Itadori when he said you’d been checked in for your coughing fits?

“She’s strong. She’ll be fine,” he had said. Itadori’s small frown. “A little feather in her throat isn’t going to knock her down.”

Why? Why? Why? Why did he say that?

Because it had to be serious to put you in the hospital. For fuck’s sake, you were still that teenage girl who stood outside his dorm window in the middle of a thunderstorm to bring Fushiguro a birthday present before you left for a curse expedition a thousand years ago, and the woman who welcomed him into your home unprompted on December 24th, your cheeks dry, lips pressed in a brave smile.

You had held him tight enough he could not see the blood, scrubbed him in a bathtub, ran your fingers through his hair until the sweat and grime was gone. You took care of him because he knows the belief that no one should be left behind to suffer alone has been engrained in you since the day he’s met you.

He should’ve known. A girl abandoned for being cursed had turned into woman with a saviour complex who’d barely even think about telling him you were dying. 

Dying, of all things, from a disease no one knows how to cure. And you’re a sorcerer.

He could’ve laughed. The irony is enough to make him smile.

Your room’s in a tiny corner of the hospital, down the hall from a nurse’s station, and as he walks through, he can see the grey sunlight streaming through the window, glaring against his glasses. He lifts them to rub the heel of his hand into his eye.

He doesn’t want you to worry when you see him, and mostly, he needs to stall. His heart is in knots in his chest, and he spots a chair beside the door with your name in the plastic slate, so he sits down. His knees feel gummy and he leans forward, the visitor’s pass clipped to the front of his shirt hanging. 

Satoru tugs the glasses off his face, fits his palm over his brow and squeezes his eyes shut. It’s chilling in this dead end, and he swallows tightly. Everything tastes so dry as he looks up and shoves his hand underneath the sanitizer dispenser, rubbing it all over his hands just so he has something to do.

After a few minutes, he gets up and sets a hand on the knob. 

It can’t be as bad as he’s imagining. At most, you’re a bit sick, but you’ll still be spritely, warm in the lips and with arms outstretched and, “Satoru, finally!”

He opens the door. 

You’re sitting hunched over in bed. Silhouette outlined by the white-grey sunlight from outside your hospital room, you’re trembling as you hold onto a receptacle. An IV is hooked to your arm, a hospital gown is barely hiding anything, and it feels immoral to even look so Satoru doesn’t. Instead, he pauses by the doorframe and closes his eyes for a moment as your gaze flashes to him. 

He feels it, to be honest. The heat of your stare until it is wrenched away by a violent cough you instinctually muffle by your palm, blood splattering over your hand, soft, velveteen purple petals falling from your lips and into the receptacle in your lap. 

You’re supposed to have a green thumb.

Vines bend to your will if you command it, you can summon forth thorns to impale your opponents, send thick creeping ivy to barricade a doorway. It doesn’t matter if there is no greenery in your immediate area. At the sweep of your hand, the ground could rumble with the sound of trees twisting their gnarled roots into feet to march at your command.

Just as long as they’re within range and you’ve touched them in the past few hours, they’re yours.

So, why can’t you stop this?

Plants are supposed to listen to you, right? As he stares at your shaking body on the bed, curved over the plastic tub, thick globs of bloodied spit drip from your lips and soaked purple blossom petals entwine with your life essence. His heart plummets to his chest. You retch, spit, choke, and every sound stabs him in the chest as he takes a weak step forward, hand stretched out limply.

Your name flutters, barely leaves his lips before you’re looking at him again, a bit of a mortifying image but nonetheless.

Even so, you smile, despite the blood painting your face, the exhaustion morphing your body. You look like you haven’t slept in weeks, and your hands shake around the receptacle. You look battered, bruised along the arms where the needles keeping you filled with antibiotics, medicine you need, had punctured you.

And still, you’re beaming at him. He thinks he’s going to be sick.

“Hi, Satoru.”

His hand falls. Eyes wide, he cannot take another step. You wipe at your lips, tossing the tissue into the trash before pushing the plastic receptacle onto the table and swinging your legs off the bed.

“Don’t—“ he croaks but you don’t listen, sliding your feet into slippers and grabbing your IV stand to take a step towards him. Your knees nearly give in but you stick out a hand before he can rush to catch you. Then, you’re pushing yourself up and walking over to him. It’s more of a shuffle, but Gojo finds he can’t care as you land on his chest, hands pressing into his back.

You’re a bit cold in his arms, and he wraps himself around you, trying to rub the heat back into your skin as you shudder, but your heart is still racing as it always does around him, and you…

You’re the type of person who can shift how the air feels and looks to his Six Eyes with your smile or your tears or your frown, and in that moment, the air bleeds yellow with your joy. It’s so bright in his soul that it makes his heart skip as you shift on your feet against him, hands sliding down so your arms can circle his waist and haul him closer. 

“Gojo Satoru turning off his infinity for little ole me,” you murmur, voice raspy, as he closes his eyes, cradling your head. Without another word, he sinks into you. “Talk about the world ending.”

Why didn’t you just call him? Why did you let him stay away for so long? He doesn’t want to ask why it’s happening, or how. He already knows you’ll just lie. But he wants to know if you think so lowly of him that you thought you didn’t matter to him.

After Suguru…

How could you think that? He’s screaming inside his mind as he touches your back, feels the faint protruding ridges along your skin when he pushes down. It makes your spine a bit more pronounced along the knobs, your shoulder blades a bit bumpy, but otherwise, it’s almost normal. One wouldn’t even be able to tell without touching you and actively searching for it. How could you think I don’t care?

This isn’t the work of a cursed spirit, that much he knows. It seems much more seductive, sneaking yet unhurried in its nature. This is agony in effigy. There’s something rotten inside you, but he can’t tell what it is. The energy is everywhere.

You pull back to look up at him with a soft smile, then tap his nose and tell him to join you before turning around and climbing back into bed with energy that betrays your earlier fits. You grab your robe that you’ve left on your bed before getting up again and walking around, shrugging the fabric back onto your shoulders.

He sits down in a visitor’s chair that is still cold.

“It comes and goes,” you explain first with your new, croaky voice, stretching your arms above your head and rubbing your neck. It doesn’t look painful, but you clear your throat a lot to see if it helps. So far, nothing. “So, it’s just like a really bad coughing fit, to be honest.”

“How long has it been going on?” Your hip cracks and you let out a relieved sigh. Satoru arches an eyebrow as you animatedly stretch your face. “What are you doing, silly?”

“It got worse a few weeks ago, enough that Nanami insisted I check myself in around two weeks ago?” you say, after counting on your fingers. Satoru’s heart plummets. “But it’s levelled out since I’ve been moved here and off-campus. And I’m stretching. When I get back out there, I have to remember how to emote.” You flash him a bedazzling grin and a bit of the weight lifts off his shoulders as you swallow down another cough. This time, it’s successful and you only let out a short, raspy breath before shaking it out.

You aren’t even doing that bad. 

The blood, the flowers, that must’ve been just a bad bout, but otherwise, you seem quite normal.

That’s what he tells himself, and he believes it.

With relief, he stretches out his legs, leaning his head back on his hands. Your room’s pretty nice—much nicer than an average hospital room. Plants on the windowsills, some get-well-soon cards and a desk in the corner filled books that you look like you haven’t even begun to read, some paintings hanging off the walls. 

You wave a hand to grab his attention again.

“Don’t look,” you chastise, tying the robe around your waist. “Some of these are works in progress.”

“So Itadori and Shoko were just exaggerating,” he assumes. You look up at him, quirking an eyebrow. “If you’re attempting to paint, I know all that’s happened is that you’ve lost your mind.”

“Shut up.”

“Well, they made it out as if you were dying. If it’s just a lung issue, they could probably just fix it and we can get back to exorcising curses and making fun of Fushiguro’s teen angst,” he says, crossing his legs at the ankles. You step over them to go to the window and examine your plants, and he eyes you in his peripheral, watching you inspect one of the leaves before looking next at some blooming flowers. You don’t answer, and the grey light makes you look melancholy until you shrug.

“The doctors say I need to rest, save my strength and all that,” you finally say vaguely. “And don’t make fun of Fushiguro.”

“I’d never do that.”

You tilt your head and arch an eyebrow skeptically before flicking his forehead with a sharp donk. “I’m not above slapping the shit out of you.” He opens his mouth to argue and you hold up a finger, shutting him up. “And you can’t hit back as revenge. Ill hospital patient rights.”

“You can’t take the moral stand. Vengeance has no gender bias,” he exclaims, sitting up but you merely smirk, leaning over and shoving your face into his space before turning your head to present your cheek. His eyes widen as you poke your own face tauntingly.

“Do it, then.”

Gawking for a moment, Satoru stares but you only wink and he pushes you away lightly. You stumble a bit and he jumps to his feet to catch you but you manage to right yourself up, shooting him a foul glare. He glares back in response.

“Well, obviously, I wasn’t going to actually slap you,” he says, indignant.

“So you pushed me instead? Gojo, in your words, you are the strongest. You never know how to control the strength you push out.”

“Yes, I do!”

“One time, you patted Megumi on the back and you sent him into the pavement.”

“He was nine.”

“It still happened!” you cry, although an impish smile is already curling at your lips and it isn’t long before it spreads to Satoru, warm bright yellow and enough that it absolves any of the remaining pain in his body as you straighten up, holding onto your IV stand for support. The metal rattles a bit as the wheels roll. Your feet brush the ground. You lift your head up wretchedly.

It’s almost like that weakness sobers you.

The expression that overtakes you frightens Satoru to fucking death. 

His face feels like it numbs, staring at the darkness that seeps the light away. You stare at the metal pole your fingers are wrapped so tightly around, and then you look at the bag hanging there, clear and round and soft to your touch as you straighten up.

“Satoru,” you say softly.

“Yeah?” His voice is so quiet he’s not sure he even speaks. He can’t remember the last time you had looked so dispassionate at anything in his life. Even death had left its mark—black frowns, long streaks underneath your eyes.

Your apathy is dark purple, an endless void colour. 

“When I die, make sure Shoko’s the one who cuts me open to find out what’s wrong with me.”

Something prickles at his fingertips. He touches your shoulder and half-thinks his fingers will go right through you.

“You’re not going to die,” he insists firmly. “It’s just a bad cough.” You look up at him and blink. Then you touch your lips and shudder down another cough.

“We all die.”

“It’s not your time, yet.” His fingers dig into your shoulder. You don’t even wince even though you’re clenching his jaw but he can’t find it in himself to loosen his hold. It feels like the Jaws of Death. A crocodile’s bite.

So much for not being able to control his own power.

“It’s just a bad cough.” He ignores everything Shoko had said. Sometimes she’s wrong—sometimes, it’s not even that bad. He’d just seen it, hadn’t he? You were stretching, jumping onto your bed, acting like nothing was wrong.

Palliative care? As if you needed it—

You blink, then, and look at him. Stare at him as if you’d never said those words, and he had never reached out. 

You jerk your shoulder out of his grip. It stings more than it should.

“Right. But I’m just saying. You know how you always say I’ve got a few screws loose. It just makes sense someone will wanna crack me open to see what was going on up there and I want it to be her.” 

You smile, and the yellow cancels out the purple. 

Colour theory. 

But Satoru doesn’t smile back.

“What about the flowers?” he asks after a while. You’ve climbed back onto bed and he’s sat back down. You’re blowing into a spirometer, and every time, without fail, the ball shoots up to the top, clattering against the plastic. He watches, hoping that the next time, it’ll do the same thing again.

You stop and look at him. “What about them?”

“Is it some optical illusion? Why are they in your throat?”

“That’s a harder nut to crack,” you muse. “I don’t really know. It’s like when you’ve got food in your esophagus and you’re trying to cough it up so it doesn’t feel stuck anymore except it keeps building up. That only started a few days ago, though, so maybe, someone drugged me or something.” He doesn’t laugh and you frown. “Not funny?”

He shakes his head. “It’s freaky.”

.

He sits on the bench on campus. 

He’s cancelled classes because he didn’t come up with a standard lesson plan and his students are glad to have a Monday afternoon off, even if they’d never say it to his face. In truth, he’d spent the whole weekend at the hospital until he reeked of antiseptic and pollen. 

You coughed up five petals, and without fail, a nurse would come in hourly intervals to collect them. Shoko came once, to check up on you and to collect the samples. If she was surprised Satoru was sitting in the corner on his phone, she didn’t voice it.

“She’s not even doing that bad,” he says to the air, more accusatory than anything. The woman standing by him doesn’t answer and sits down beside him uninvited. Turning to look at her, his eyes narrow behind his blindfold. “You said she needed palliative care until she died. The doctor said she could leave tonight.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive concepts,” she informs, not looking at him. Shoko looks a bit out of place in the warm colours of the garden. Half a corpse herself. Waif-like. “The doctor’s letting her relax in the comfort of her own home before she dies. That’s all.”

“She’s not going to die.”

She snorts. “Denial isn’t a good colour on you.” The words could’ve been delivered colder. Satoru is grateful that they weren’t. 

Shoko rests her hands on her knees, tilts her head up, and sighs. Her long hair is like warm chocolate in the sunlight, spilling down her arched back from the knot she tied. “If you have any idea on how to fix this, I’m listening with both ears.”

“I don’t even know what it is,” he says. “Coughing and flowers? I’ve never heard of a sickness like that before.”

“Nanami pointed out that it could be a curse someone placed on her. I don’t know why, but it’d be an explanation.” Satoru spreads his legs, plants an elbow on his knee and leans forward to look at the ants travelling along the cobblestone before his shoe. “It manifested on some negative emotion lingering inside her and it’s growing every day, but she won’t budge.” Shoko sighs. Her purple eye bags look worse in the sunlight, but he would never tell her that. “Maybe you’d have a better chance digging into her. With Geto gone, there’s no one else to ask, is there?”

“What about you? What happened to girls and their little secrets?” he jokes, trying to ignore the ache that begins to bloom in his chest. Shoko eyes him wryly.

“I have suspicions, but there are some things girls don’t ask other girls,” she retorts. “It’s never been my business anyway. My job is to treat her, and I’ve given her options. It’s up to her to take them. Grief is a birthing ground for curses, and if she’s letting them feed on her freely, you know what fate is waiting for her.”

With that, she gets up and leaves as quickly as she arrived. Satoru swallows the smell of flowers and feels sick.

.

Monday night, Satoru pulls up his laptop and looks through, searching up words he can string together in a coherent sense to get the answers he wants. As rare as it probably is, some research wouldn’t hurt, would it? Some curses had a trademark affliction—maybe this one does, too.

So he searches up flower coughing to see if there has ever been a record of strange deaths that have made the news. If not, he’ll go to the jujutsu databases, but for now, maybe some publicity could put some answers to this question.

He is surprised when one of the first results is flower coughing disease. 

When he hits enter, the white screen blasts into blue irises with numerous results all repeating the same two words.

HANAHAKI DISEASE

And Satoru reads, and reads, and reads. He reads two weeks to three months, he reads unrequited love, and removal, and disappearance of romantic feelings and capacity for romantic love.

He reads fictional disease and wonders how much of it really is fictional. 

His phone pings with a text, and he grabs at it, tilts it just enough to get a glimpse of the screen. It’s from you, and he hasn’t read a text from you in so long he almost doesn’t recognize who it’s from except he does because… who else could it be?

[Greenbean] 11:02 PM

hey!!! guess whos finally fucking free oh my god

ugh out of the hospital and forgot how actual air smelled like lol bitch im so hungry i could eat a zoo

Letting his phone clatter, he sighs and rubs his face roughy, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment before snapping his laptop shut and getting up. His phone buzzes again and he reaches for it blindly, the screen lighting up as he goes to bed.

[Greenbean] 11:03 PM

we should get smth to eat!! i wanna go to that new ramen place in ikebukoro

[Satoru] 11:03 PM

fine but you good???? who picked you up from the hospital? still insulted you didnt let me tbh

also what did the doctor say???

[Greenbean] 11:04 PM

bc ur a menace who doesnt know how to drive 

he said itd get worse before itd get better so still gotta go for checkups but yeah dont worry and nanami came bc he didnt trust me not to try and walk home lol but he did buy me dinner

wasnt enough though!!!

…

[Greenbean] 11:06 PM

ok but fr does he think im insane

clearly id flash some skin and hitch a ride duh

…

[Greenbean] 11:10 PM

youre just gonna leave me on read? yikes

[Satoru] 11:12 PM

i was getting ready to sleep silly

and yeah ill come pick you up on saturday for lunch?

[Greenbean] 11:15 PM

sorry making instant noodles rn but yeah that sounds fine

wait youre sleeping so early lmfao

[Satoru] 11:16 PM

im old :/

  [Greenbean] 11:18 PM

u sure are

(image sent)

look!!! my babies are still alive!!! idk how but miracles do exist im tellin ya

[Satoru] 11:24 PM

inumaki, maki, and fushiguro broke into ur home to water them but dont tell them i told u

[Greenbean] 11:24 PM

wtf

[Satoru] 11:25 PM

yeah idk when but i think u teaching inumaki how to pick locks has opened up too many possibilities but also its really funny thanks

now go to sleep u need to rest

[Greenbean] 11:28 PM

whos gonna make me lol youre not my dad

[Satoru] 11:29 PM

lol 

remember how i can teleport 

lol so cool

[Greenbean] 11:30 PM

dude

wtf

fine 

goodnight hoe </3

[Satoru] 11:31 PM

goodnight knock off poison ivy <3

.

“You’ve looked better,” Shoko says. Satoru raises his head wearily as he pushes off the wall. Shoko’s holding a cup of coffee, her lab coat fresh on her shoulders and eye bags looking more printed on rather than natural swelling. Satoru can’t help but feel the same exhaustion. “Definitely looked worse. What do you want? It’s early.”

“Have you ever heard of Hanahaki disease?” he asks. She shakes her head, and he pulls up the page on his phone and hands it to her. She takes it from him and her eyes scan the screen as he continues, “It’s this fictional disease, something that stems from unrequited love, and I think it could be related to whatever she’s experiencing.”

“I thought you were set on willing her to survive,” she replies dryly, shooting him a quick look and adjusting the coffee in her hand. “But this is definitely one of your stranger theories.”

Satoru ignores that last part. “It’d make sense. With her Cursed Technique, maybe it manifested in a way that links to it.”

She pushes into the office, setting the coffee on her desk and sitting down. Satoru sits down on the exam table closest and leans forward eagerly as she continues to read the page, scrolling down occasionally before scrolling back up and sighing. “This is a stretch. The timeline doesn’t match up to what this is saying.”

“This is a curse. It doesn’t have to follow fiction.” His body feels sore, janky even, everywhere. He barely got a wink of sleep last night and he knows he’s paying for it, now. “Hell knows life rarely does, anyway. But the symptoms matches too well, doesn’t it? The flowers—you’ve done scans, haven’t you?”

She deliberates his words carefully as she looks to the file cabinet and pulls out a binder. Satoru catches a flash of your name on the spine before she moves her coffee and his phone out of the way to flip it open.

“The scans we’ve taken have only just begun to show small growths in her trachea,” she allows, “and we don’t fully understand how cursed energy affects our bodies, so I suppose it could be something like Hanahaki, if the negative energy stemming from December 24th was what brought this on or if these symptoms started when we were still students, but she’s been experiencing shortness of breath a few months before Christmas.” Satoru’s lungs squeeze the last of the air out of them at that, and a cold sweat drops down his spine as she hands his phone back to him. “It only started getting worse Suguru’s death, which meant there had to have been a trigger before that.”

In the back of his head, he hears your voice, light and yellow, saying a few weeks. It got worse a few weeks ago. 

“Worse?”

“The first petal fell some time after Christmas. It’s been a slow, but steady progression since then. Sometimes, it’s two or three. When it’s not a good day, there can be as many as seven to ten.” Shoko switches on the lamp on the corner of her desk and adjusting the direction of the white light before flipping the page. “But if we can find the original trigger and alleviate that pressure it’s putting on her, we could buy her more time.”

“So it’s been nearly six months since the first petal,” he says. Shoko nods. Satoru is grateful for the blindfold—she can’t see how blank everything looks on his face. “It said sometimes, the disease can last for eighteen months.”

“As you said, this isn’t a fairytale.” She half-spins on her chair to face him and leans back into it, crossing one leg over the other and jiggling her knee. “I saw that one of the solutions is excise the growths at the cost of the attachment. That was one of the options I gave her when the growths first appeared. She said she wanted more time before she could decide.”

He frowned. “Why?”

“Because she’s smart, and likes to push her damned limits. And if this is truly the basis of the curse”—she gestures to Satoru’s phone. Her expression flickers—“those flowers are feeding off cursed energy. Cutting them out would remove those negative emotions, but at a cost of something else. Maybe whatever feelings she has regarding the trigger.”

Satoru looks down at his phone. It feels heavier than a thousand cinderblocks in his clammy hands. His fingers are numb as his screen dims and finally locks itself. Pressing the button, it illuminates again to reveal a picture of a cactus you gave him for his birthday years ago, blooming with delicate purple petals. 

His heart rends. That cactus is long dead now.

“But, Suguru’s dead.” 

“That’s why I asked you to ask her,” Shoko mutters. 

Turning to her binder again, she picks up a pen and clicks it, lowering it to the paper before pausing, and Satoru looks up as she stares at whatever words are printed into the page distantly. A strange affliction is on her face, almost tormented, and Satoru is not-so-kindly reminded that before Suguru and Satoru, Shoko was your best friend first. 

“Tell her how idiotic she’s being,” she enforces quietly. “The longer it lives, the more permanent damage is inflicted. With the unpredictable nature of curses, that won’t take long and by then, it’ll be too late to consider removing it.”

.

Saturday comes too fast, yet not fast enough. By the end of the week, Satoru is all but finished with teaching, and is waiting outside your apartment, leaning against the car as he scrolls through his phone. He’s done a bit more research on this Hanahaki disease, but even the word makes him shiver with the implications. 

“Satoru!” Turning, he catches you loping easily towards him. You’re dressed in billowy, wide-legged dark mint green pants and a pretty white top that makes you look more nymph than human, with a canvas tote bag hanging off your shoulder. You flash him a smile as you fiddle with the fabric tie at the waistband of your pants nervously. “Hi.”

“Hey. Hope you don’t mind I brought Ijichi along for the ride since someone claims I can’t drive.”

“You don’t have your license, sir,” Ijichi says wearily as you bend over to wave through the window. "It would be illegal for you to be on the road in any capacity—oh, hello, ma’am. It’s nice to see you doing so well.”

“Thanks, Ijichi. I think I’m doing better after getting out of there,” you say as Satoru opens the car door for you and he smirks, eyes crinkling behind his sunglasses. You straighten up, looking at him before poking his chest and it’s almost just like the good ole days as you break out into a grin that crinkles your entire face. “What’s with you being a gentleman? It better not be because I was in the hospital.”

“Of course not,” he admonishes. “I wouldn’t dare dream of being polite to you of all people.” Still, he sidesteps and sweeps his arm, gesturing for you to climb in first which you do, exhaling a bit shakily as you settle in and slide over. By the time he’s settled in beside you, you have a fist over your lips and you’re clearing your throat testily.

A worm of unease wriggles into his stomach as he clips in his seatbelt, pulling the lapels of his unbuttoned green shirt free from the strap. Legs spreading, he lets his hands fold in his lap as Ijichi begins to drive them to their destination. You’ve lowered your hand by now, looking out the window, and it’s not bright enough that Satoru can read your expression on the glass.

It’s clear you don’t want to talk about it, but still, that nagging feeling bites at him as he rolls the divider up between the backseat and the front—a mock of privacy.

“The place we’re going to gives me the same vibe as that family-owned restaurant we went to when we were students. The one in Kagurazaka,” you say after a while, turning back to look at him. You’re wearing a bracelet that jangles when you move your hand to adjust the seatbelt across your chest. “I think you’ll like it.”

“Have you been?”

“One time, before I checked in,” you tell him, smiling still. “It was really good. The perfect last meal.” Satoru does well enough to hide his frown at your choice of words as you meet his eyes. “You know, you can ask. I’m not fragile.”

“I don’t have anything to ask,” he lies. “I’m just glad you’re out of the hospital.”

“Me, too. I’ve missed so much and it drove me insane. Yaga-sensei insists that I don’t work until I’m sure I’m feeling better,” you add. “But to be honest, there’s nothing much that can be done to make me feel better.”

“I see. So you’re still coughing up flowers?”

“Petals,” you correct, “and a bit. Don’t worry. It’ll get better soon.” You wave a hand and turn to look out the window and Satoru’s appetite all but vanishes. He doesn’t know why you’re so intent on lying to him about the severity of your condition, but as your knee jiggles relentlessly the whole car ride with unbridled excitement, he wonders if you’re even aware of how sick you could be. 

His Six Eyes scan your body for signs of a curse. Normally, those plagued have their little burdens hanging off their shoulders, prying their head open, biting into an arm or leg, but he finds yours lives inside your chest, just barely hidden by the yellow light brimming from your body as you reach forward to lower the divider and talk to Ijichi.

They reach Ikebukuro before they’re dropped off after Satoru insists on walking the rest of the way.

“Give us some privacy, Ijichi! We both know you’ll just eavesdrop for the juicy details,” he exclaims loudly, leading to the man to blush furiously, stuttering that he’d do no such thing, and earning Satoru a smack on the back of his head, knocking his sunglasses askew.

“Thanks for the ride, Ijichi,” you say warmly as if you hadn’t slapped a concussion into Satoru. The Assistant Director dips his head. “See you later!” With that, he drives off and the two sorcerers are left in the busy street. Satoru looks around curiously, but you tug him along up the main road of the district and immediately turn right into one of the smaller streets. A few cyclists race past, as well as cars, but the traffic seems relatively slow despite it being the weekend. There are people walking along the white lines separating the lanes, chatting merrily as you lead him to the restaurant.

“I forgot how actual sunlight felt,” you sigh, stretching your arms high above your head as if to touch the wind breezing through. Inhaling deeply, you close your eyes. Satoru waits for you to begin to cough, and you hold it in, throat tensing a bit. 

He looks away, and pretends he doesn’t hear your sharp exhale, the soft cough you try to muffle with your hand. Instead, he looks at their surroundings, traces the green roads, watches a man park his bicycle and take the plastic bags out of the basket before rushing into a store. The air smells faintly of smoke, and Satoru waves in front of his face to see if it’ll help dispel the scent, but it’s so engrained with the hint of meat, honey, sweets, and flowers, that he can’t.

“I saw Suguru here once,” you tell him suddenly. He blinks, head snapping to you, and you’re already regarding him with a faint smile, eyes a bit dimmer. The warm yellow energy has faded to a burnt orange as you look ahead. “A year or two after he left. It’s why I moved closer a few years ago. I guess I had this weird hope that I’d see him again, but I never really did.” A faint grin graces your lips again, as if you’re not even aware you’re smiling. Fondness overtakes you. “I think about him a lot these days.”

“Me, too.”

“Of course,” you chuckle a bit, rubbing at the back of your neck. “I’m being insensitive.” 

“No, you’re not. He meant a lot to you, too. I don’t own him, or his memory.”

“I know, but he was still your best friend.” Unbidden, a voice in Satoru’s voice finishes it for you. My one and only. 

“Did you guys talk about anything?”

“Not really anything important,” you say, shrugging, but by the way your eyes shift in the light, glimmer differently, he knows you’re lying. He knows it’s none of his business, but a part of him hungers for new parts of Suguru and it’s powerful enough to take control of his tongue.

“Nothing’s not important. He was a wanted criminal.”

“I think we both know somehow that part never mattered to us.” You look at him, and run a thumb under the strap of your bag. “To any of us. But…” You tilt your head to him and your smile grows tender. “…since you asked, we talked about us. He told me about what he wanted, the kind of world he was determined to create. He paid for my dinner, kissed me goodnight like it was normal, and then he was gone. Never saw him again until last December.”

It shouldn’t sting as much as it does. 

He remembers that day ten years ago in Shinjuku. The coldness in which Suguru had looked at him. He can’t imagine that same poison directed at you. He couldn’t even imagine Suguru looking at him like that in the first place until he did.

“Are you the strongest because you’re Gojo Satoru or are you Gojo Satoru because you’re the strongest?”

“I used to have nightmares about it,” you continue distantly. “Because I could’ve left with him, but I didn’t. And I could’ve killed him, but I didn’t do that either.”

“If you want to kill me, kill me. There’s meaning in that, too.”

Satoru’s chest tightens. His heart feels rotten to the core. “I didn’t, either, until I did.” You smile a bit more, at the irony. “Would you? Have gone with him, that is.”

“I didn’t, so what’s the point in debating it?” you ask before shrugging thoughtlessly and answering anyway. “I think tackling curses at the source is important. I just didn’t like the way he was doing it. If I thought I could somehow change his mind, just a bit, on his methods, maybe, but by then, he was too far gone.” 

Your eyes, chips of glinting sunstone, mellow as a cyclist trills at them with a bell to get out of the way. You step out of the way, away from Satoru for a moment, before returning to him, and when the back of his hand brushes yours, he’s startled at how cold your skin is. 

Satoru is quiet as he absorbs all of this. He doesn’t really know what to say, and you don’t prod him for a reaction as they turn the corner again. 

“It’s just over there,” you say, pointing to a small restaurant, people milling by the door. There’s a sign hanging over the door, off-white with black kanji painted on and your arm falls. “There’s a line. Huh.”

“We can wait,” Satoru says when they stop at the edge of the crowd. “I don’t mind.”

“Okay. I’ll go put our names in then come back.” You disappear into the crowd for a moment before resurfacing and joining his side again, something in your hand. “It should be, like, fifteen minutes. I said the bar was okay.”

“That’s fine.” Shoving his sunglasses up into his hair, he cracks his knuckles and migrates to the wall. You follow, and he slouches against the concrete pillar. You adjust the tote bag against your body and lean against the other side just around the corner. Their elbows brush, and you tilt your head to look at him, smiling. Your face has caught the sun perfectly, and Satoru can’t help but smile back.

He wonders how to bring up this Hanahaki disease theory. You look so perfect, so happy in this moment where their eyes meet, that he can’t bring it up. Maybe it’s selfish, but it feels like it’s been so long since the two of them even managed to see each other for more than an hour. With how overworked jujutsu sorcerers are, it’s hard to recall the last time they both had downtime at the same time that wasn’t spent catching up on sleep.

You look away, shoulders shaking, as if that’s enough to hide your coughing, and he thinks, Later. There’ll be time for that later.

“Here’s the menu,” you tell him once you’ve calmed down, extending your hand. He takes the paper, unfolding it as you cross your arms and tilt your head back on the concrete. Reading down the list, he keeps an eye on you out of the corner of his vision, and your fingers play at your lips as you swallow. Reaching into your bag, you twist the cap of a water bottle and chug half of it down.

“Do you have any medicine? For your coughing?” he asks casually. You hit your chest with a firm fist, clearing your throat and looking at him in surprise. The water bottle returns to your bag.

“Oh, uh, no. It doesn’t work. Just gotta keep hydrated and avoid any possible triggers,” you inform. You turn up the street as you speak, crossing your legs at the ankles and sinking against the concrete. 

“And what are those triggers?”

“And you say Ijichi is the one digging for gossip,” you snort with short, choked huff. Satoru rolls his eyes, but keeps looking at the menu. “Don’t worry about it. I’m avoiding them.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“If I wanted your dry wit, I would’ve gone to the original.”

“I don’t copy off Shoko. I take bits of everyone’s personality and twist it to make it my own.”

You shake your head. “Whatever you say.”

Your name is called a few minutes later and the pair push off the concrete pillar, heading through the crowd and into the small restaurant. It’s not too dimly lit, a bunch of natural light from the street streaming in through the open windows, and the air is rich with the smells of the kitchen as they sit down at the bar.

It’s not long before they’ve ordered, and Satoru has gone through his first bowl and is well into pouring his second into what remains of his broth before he remembers to even check up on how you’re doing. You’d been right—he loves this place. The atmosphere isn’t overly loud, but the mumbling of nearby patrons is enough to make him feel like he isn’t quite alone. It’s sheltered away from the world, and although he’s used to girls staring, no one has gone up to him which is giving him time to his own thoughts and food. Everyone here seems to mind their business—everyone likes to stay in their own bubble. 

Here, he isn’t the strongest, or quite so special. It honestly feels kind of nice.

You’re sipping on your broth, tilting the spoon towards your mouth and your lips are pulled into the warmest smile he’s seen since they were kids. The light’s hitting you just perfect again, more cool than warm, but it’s got you on the cheekbone, illuminated your lips. Satoru wonders if you know how to manipulate light, or if that’s just your natural blessing as you tilt your head towards him, eyes squinting from your own joy.

For a moment, another image flashes in his head. Him along the end of their group of four—you and Shoko, Suguru and Satoru. It’s almost poetry how much of a glimpse he can see in your smile. You would always be laughing, and Suguru’s cheeks would always be red, and Shoko would charm the guy over the counter to hand over a bottle of shochu. Satoru would tease his stupid best friend, and pay for their meal because “I’m friends with a bunch of goddamn freeloaders.”

But that moment ends as quickly as it came, and it’s so fucking heartbreaking that Satoru never thought their last meal together would be their last meal together. He would’ve cherished it more—done anything to make them stay in that ramen shop in Kagurazaka.

“Do you like it here?” you ask. 

He blinks. You’re studying him behind that smile of yours. Watching. Always watching. “It reminds me of when we were kids,” he replies. When he realizes that didn’t answer the question, he adds, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

You grin, delighted. “If I knew how stupid you’d look sucking up these noodles, I would’ve brought my camera like when we were students. I still have it, you know.”

“Next time, then.”

“Yeah, next time.”

Satoru pays. He insists despite your protests, and snatches the bill from you anyway, swiping his card as quickly as he can. 

After, they walk slowly around the district, looking at the other restaurants and stores for desserts or souvenirs to bring back, and it makes him so nostalgic, his heart wilts a bit in his chest. 

He is saying something about buying some soymilk for Megumi when you stop suddenly, deviating to the side of the road to cough. It grows so intense so quickly that your eyes widen as if you’re surprised, too, and you place a palm flat against your chest as he comes to your side. You wave him back, and he frowns, running a hand down your back as you finally manage to dislodge the petals in your throat and spit them into your palm.

Satoru sighs, staring at the cursed things. The energy emitted from the petals are raw, potent, and his nose wrinkles at the stench that comes from powerful curses as he softly asks, “Do you know what Hanahaki is?”

“Flower vomiting?” you whisper through your raw vocal cords. You shake your head, slamming your sternum with a tight fist and flinging the drenched petals to the ground with a wet slap. “Itadori… said something about it, once. Never really paid attention, I—”

Satoru squeezes the back of your neck gently. “Whatever this curse is, it could be something like that.“

“You don’t want to open that can of worms, Gojo, of what is causing this.” Straightening up, your eyes widen and your cheeks puff up as you choke down another bout. Wobbly, you spit out, “It’s under control. I swear.”

“Are you sure?” His fingers brush your chin to turn your face towards him so he can look at it more clearly, and the instant their eyes meet, you lurch over, slapping his hand away and succumbing to the wracking. Hands shooting out to grab your elbows, Satoru barely eases you to the ground as your legs give in.

You collapse to your knees, hard. A hand is slapped over your mouth but your whole body shakes with the seizing of your lungs. Eyes widening, your cheeks puff up as Satoru grabs your shoulders, falling to his knees beside you.

“Hey! Hey, breathe!” His fingers dig into your shoulders and your nostrils flare, trying to follow his instructions. Bloodshot eyes and blueing lips, your inhales are shaking and incomplete, gasps for air that do not take in any oxygen before you’re kneeling over, hand falling from your lips. Blood splattered over your palm, you let out a low noise of pain. Satoru’s hand glides down your spine, rubbing in soothing circles as red spit falls to the pavement in thick globs. 

People all around stop to stare, eyes masked with concern, but he can’t care less at that moment despite the burning scrutiny. He shoves a hand into his pocket, speed-dialling one of the top numbers of his list.

“Ijichi, I need you to take us to the hospital, now!” Letting his phone drop with a clatter, he scoops you close but you slam your bloody hand against his chest, pushing him away. You throw yourself away, hands twisted tight in the fabric of your white shirt and Satoru looks down at the red handprint on his tee before blinking. “What are you doing? We need to get—“

“I’m—I’m fine!” Your voice, broken, is drenched with ice as you continue to wheeze, grasping at your chest as if you could reach and tear out the growths with your own hand. “Gojo, I’m fine!”

“No, you’re not!” Grabbing his phone, he hears a loud car horn, and looks up to see Ijichi leaning out of the driver’s seat, waving his arm frantically. Without another thought, he scoops you up and runs out into the street, ignoring the tires screeching, the cars horns blaring at him and the angry shouts as he jumps into the car and slam the door shut. 

Ijichi sets off at a drive, no directions needed. Satoru is sure he’s breaking as many laws as he can as he pushes you back against the seat to buckle you in. Blood dribbles down your lips in bubbles as a thick, gurgling sound begins to grow in your throat and he wipes at your chin with his sleeve, clicking the buckle into place just as you pitch forward. He jerks back just in time as you retch, and, slowly, torturously, you gag out three petals, one after another. Your fingers claw at your own throat, panicking and desperate as you struggle to breathe.

The petals fall in wet pools between your feet, landing on the carpet, and he spares them not even a glance before forcing your head between your knees. You’re still hyperventilating and as Satoru sweeps a hand down your back and up to your neck, his fingers come into contact with something sticky. 

Sweat. It drenches through your shirt so suddenly that Satoru reels at the wet marks spreading through your shirt, making the fabric translucent. Your heart is racing, tripping over itself. When you finally stop coughing, you breathe in harsh pants as he keeps your head between your knees.

Your fingers lace at the back of your head and he grabs them firmly, reassuring that he’s still beside you. 

.

“She’s stable,” Shoko announces to the waiting Satoru and six students. The latter came when their teacher had told them of what happened, and Itadori still clings to Fushiguro’s arm by an iron hand, fingers clawlike into his friend’s bicep. Kugisaki chews on her thumbnail, a bit paler than usual and there are crescent indents along her forearm where she had dug her nails in. Maki’s hand rests on her shoulder. Inumaki’s on the phone with Panda, and he turns the screen around so he can see the Strongest Sorcerer who does not feel quite so strong.

Satoru’s assurances that you would be fine had done nothing but send them into a quiet that scared even him. 

“Is she okay? When can she get out?” the kids demand suddenly.

“We’re waiting for the updates on her scans from the doctors, but she’ll need to stay here under observation.”

Satoru runs a hand through his hair, smiling in a way that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Guess that means she gets a few more days off while the rest of us are working our asses off,” he teases. Maki shoots him a glare and his eyes close in a way he hopes arranges his expression in one of joy as he shrugs helplessly. “Well, that means I have another girl I have to spoil.”

“Aren’t you too busy with the four already blowing up your phone?” Kugisaki mutters sourly. Satoru pretends not to hear. His phone has been silent without your texts, and it’s cold and heavy in his pocket.

“Can we see her?” Fushiguro asks. Shoko nods, but holds up a hand and the kids skid to a stop.

“She’s resting. I’m unsure if you know, but certain topics of conversation or trains of thought can lead to more attacks, so stick to talking about your curriculum. Topics you think are safe.” The woman shifts on her feet, a wisp of brown hair swaying in front of her eye. “It’s unavoidable, but use your judgement.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The students walk off down to the dead-end hallway, and Satoru turns to Shoko who has her arms crossed over her chest. She steps up, scanning him like he’s got contraband, and he raises his eyebrows innocently.

“What?”

“It’s getting worse. I hope you managed to get answers,” she says. At once, Satoru’s facade drops, and a sober sensation overtakes his face.

“No, I didn’t. She’s heard of the disease, at least. We talked about Suguru, but it wasn’t like it was under lock and key.” The brunette shakes her head at his words, gesturing for him to sit down beside her. Doing so, he leans back into the uncomfortable chair as she crosses a leg over the other. “She said she thinks about him a lot.”

“She still loves him,” Shoko says bluntly. “She gets that far-off look when she talks about him. You two should trade secrets some time.” A shake of her head, and she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I healed what damage I could, but I can tell those growths inside are expanding. The attack only seems to have agitated and prompted them to take root.”

“How…” It’s hard to formulate the question. Luckily, Shoko knows him well enough.

“Without seeing the scans, I won’t know. Based on her last ones, I thought at least four months. Now?” Her lips press into a thin line. “She’ll be lucky if she gets two.” Shoko’s eyes flicker down Satoru’s front, and her lips press into a wry line. “And change you shirt. You look like a murder suspect.”

Glancing down, he looks at your dried bloody hand print, stark against white, and he gets up abruptly. Shoko doesn’t stop him.

He walks down to the dead-end hall. He can hear Itadori through your open door cracking jokes, Kugisaki relaying every detail of her shopping trips, and you’re wheezing your laughter despite Maki scolding you to save your strength. Satoru stops just outside your door, out of sight, and rests his head against the frame, content to just listen.

“Tuna mayo.”

“Is that right?” you ask Inumaki. “Lay it on me.” 

You sound exhausted, beaten to the bone, but still, when Fushiguro says something too quiet for him to make out, you still have the strength to tease him for worrying.

.

The night is warm, and he sets the last plant back into its place on your window sill before cracking the window a bit at your request. He’s busied himself making this place as homely as possible as quickly as possible, and in the process, had walked in on you staring at your own scans on the lightscreen mounted on your wall.

“Thanks, Satoru,” you say over your shoulder. He joins you by your side to stare at the scans. Granted, Satoru didn’t cheat his way through medschool like others have, so he doesn’t understand much, but he can tell what is and what isn’t supposed to be there. The floral-like growths situated right where the main bronchi meet the trachea, for one.

The roots spreading across your chest like cracks in concrete, for another.

“The doctors want to monitor this,” you explain, pointing at the roots, “to see whether or not it’ll grow around my lungs or continue outward, around the ribs and spine. If it’s the former, I’ll slowly suffocate and die. If it’s the latter, I’ll slowly suffocate, become paralyzed, and die.” You smile grimly. “Not quite a win-win.”

“Exactly the opposite.” He inspects the growths and through the blue-white-black imaging, he spots the tiny stems emerging from the main growth, sprouting into your lungs. He guesses, with time, those will grow into flowers of equal size before sprouting more shoots.

He wonders…

As if sensing his hesitance, you scratch your collarbone and look at the scans with a new glint.

“The doctors say if I avoid another attack like today, I’ll probably have two months, three if I’m blessed, but because of how big the growths have gotten already and its volatile nature, it’ll be impossible, so we’re looking at a month. Maybe a month-and-a-half?” You smile at him, throat bobbing. “Guess it’s good to have a number,” you add shakily, a short puff coming at the end of each breath as you struggle to fight the cough. “Being a sorcerer, too much uncertainty, I think.”

“You should tell Nanami that. Maybe this time, it’ll convince him to stay away,” he retorts, turning away from the scans. They’re burning his eyes and he doesn’t want to look at the real thing for much longer. You turn with him, walking back towards bed and climbing in. “Are you sure you don’t want the operation? Shoko could do it so fast you wouldn’t feel a thing.”

“No, not yet. There are some complications that’ll definitely occur and I don’t want that to happen.”

“But it would save your life,” he argues. “What risks are frightening enough that you’d even consider not having it?” Your gaze flickers as you take another wheezing breath. The strength seems sapped from your limbs—you’re a scarecrow hanging off its pole as you swallow tightly. Satoru leans against your window sill and crosses his arms over his chest so you can’t see the frustrated fists he wants to make. “If this is about Suguru…”

Resolutely: “It isn’t.”

“You’re going to die if you keep going down this road. I don’t understand why you’re hesitating.” In the back of his mind, klaxons begin to scream.

“Satoru, some things are just beyond logical reason.” He jerks his gaze away, pushing his glasses up his nose pointedly. You sigh. “I know it’s hard, but this is my choice. I just want you to be here so you know it’s okay.” 

Your hand stretches out. Blue eyes flash to your outstretched fingers and he takes it before he can stop himself. Your fingers curl over his palm, tugging him closer and he lets you, sneakers dragging over the tile until he’s sliding into the chair by your bed. It squeaks against the tile.

“Please don’t be angry with me.” That’s all. That’s all I ask.

A hard, heavy sigh, this time from his end. He tightens his hold on you as you sit there, smiling hopefully. His heart thunders in his chest. “I’m not angry.”

You perk up a bit, and his index finger unfurls to rub your wrist. It feels colder than normal. “Promise?”

He wishes he could lie half as well as you. Either way, he tries his hardest: “Promise.”

By the time it’s quarter past nine, you’re already getting ready to sleep. You have enough pillows to surround your entire body, and he fluffs them up, helps you arrange them until you’re sighing against the white sheets, burrowing in with a sedated smile on your face.

Satoru sits down again on his visitor’s chair and you watch him lazily through the dim orange light stemming from behind your bed.

“You don’t have to stay here and watch me, creep,” you mumble, turning your face away to stare at the ceiling. You cough dryly, but it subsides moments later. Your voice is nothing but a croak as you let out a tired groan, and Satoru smiles to himself, cheek to his fist. 

“I feel robbed of our afternoon together. Making up for it now.”

You look at him again incredulously. “We’re not even doing anything.”

“I don’t know when you were told that every second of us being together had to be us doing something,” he huffs. “I like being in here. Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s too much. You’re annoying me.” Even so, your voice turns fond as you roll onto your side, away from him to settle in to sleep and Satoru’s warm gaze lands on your shoulder gently rising and falling as you slowly drift off. 

He already knows you’re gone by the time he’s standing up and gathering his jacket. Walking around the bed, he glances at the bathroom to check the light’s off and catches a glimpse of his shirt. A coil wraps around his gut at the muddy red handprint pressed into the fabric and he turns away to look at you instead.

Your face is in perfect peace, half-buried into a pillow you’re hugging into your chest, and he only soaks in those features. His hand twitches, and his infinity wavers as he raises his hand as if to touch you. Your eyelids flutter and he freezes, fearing he might’ve woken you up, but you only mumble incoherently and turn into your pillow.

Satoru watches on silently just as a breeze sweeps into the room and he looks up where the window he had cracked open. The breeze takes hold of the plants, uplifts them until they sway like a tender dance. 

His chest begins to hurt. The smell of the antiseptic is starting to sting, so he moves his hand to the light switch instead. Flicking it off, he turns to leave.

.

Every time Satoru walks down to the end of the hallway, a different memory will play in his head until he’s playing a movie over and over every single day. Of the first time he met you, although that one is blurry. Your sixteenth birthday when the four of them had piled into your dorm room to drink themselves stupid.

One-and-a-half weeks go by before he realizes that he only replays the moments where you feature. Like his brain is preparing him, reminding him. For what, he doesn’t know. 

He can’t come every day—considering the low number of sorcerers has been taken down by one more, it means besides teaching, he still has to work for the Higher Ups as well as his own personal agenda—but when he does make it, he always makes sure that he soaks in every second. Even the horrible parts. Maybe, especially the horrible parts.

You have scans taken every other day to monitor your progress, so when he arrives at an empty room, he isn’t surprised. It’s when there’s movement in the bathroom that sends his nerves prickling until he catches a slab of golden hair and reading glasses flashing in the sunlight.

“Nanami,” he greets.

“Good afternoon.” His jacket’s off and his sleeves are rolled up. With a quick sweep of the room, Satoru notes that the windows are cracked open and the aforementioned jacket is folded over a chair sat in a square of sunlight.

“Do we need to be so formal?” he complains, bypassing the bathroom and searching for another chair. The one Nanami’s taken by the plants is still warm and Satoru isn’t keen on the idea of sweating so soon. During his search, he stops by the windowsill and his eyebrows rise curiously at the new plants and trash bin pressed up right underneath. “What’s happening here?”

“We were planting new seeds when she had to be taken for her scans. She insisted I finish potting the plants.” Noting the empty terracotta, Satoru bends over and prods at the moist dirt. “I have to go soon, though. I had hoped it wouldn’t take as long as it did and she would be back by now.”

“They started taking MRI scans when the branches continued to grow outward rather than inward,” Satoru informs. “It takes around forty-five minutes, on top of the CT scans they’re taking, too. That’s if she doesn’t start coughing in the middle of it.” 

“I’m guessing she does.” Nanami adjusts the glasses on his nose, wiping at his hands free of the last of whatever dirt might’ve been clinging to his hands.

“Yup.”

“I see.” Satoru looks at the plants again. The blond man across the room throws the towel into the dirty clothes basket.“Has she… spoken to you of what to do with her effects?”

Gaze hardening, he doesn’t move at the question. Of course, he’s thought about it, but those bouts of weakness have never been longer than a few minutes. There’s no use in wasting time on a reality that won’t come until it does.

Hopefully, it never does.

“I’m so sick of everyone talking like she’s signed a death sentence,” Satoru murmurs, turning around to look at the blond man at the door to the washroom. “She still has time. Not a lot. It’s not convenient, but it should be enough.”

“She’s already considered the benefits of taking the surgery, and yet she actively decides to postpone it. You know she’s stalling,” comes the steady reply.

“And what about you?” Satoru asks. His words are biting, icy, but Nanami seems unfazed as he begins to loop the tie around his neck. “Would you do it?” Blue eyes meet a stoic face, and the coldness seeps into Satoru’s body. Nanami sighs.

A part of Satoru wonders why he even bothered asking. He already knows the answer—

“No.” Eyebrows shoot up. His mouth drops open and a strangled noise escapes his throat. Nanami merely continues on, quiet as death. “Perhaps it’s because I’m willing to accept my death, but, to be honest, I don’t know how to let any part of Haibara go. I’ve accepted it, but he’s still in my heart and my head.” Lips parting, Satoru takes a step forward as Nanami slants his body away, continuing to fold the fabric into a tie. He looks statuesque, unmovable, and something tightens in Satoru’s throat at the stone-like mask taking over his face. “I’m unwilling to do anything to taint that memory.”

Wordlessly, the blond walks over to Satoru to take his jacket from the chair, rolling down his sleeves and slapping his watch back onto his wrist. Standing less than two feet apart, the two men finally meet eyes.

“Gojo,” Nanami murmurs. “I can’t say I understand your burden, but I am by your side. I do not always agree with your choices, but I still respect them. As your kouhai and as your colleague.” His lips pull in a facsimile of a wry smile and there’s an understanding Satoru doesn’t understand haunting his handsome face. “However, she is your friend before mine. I think your opinion matters much more than mine. Don’t abuse that power.”

Satoru’s eyes nearly reflect in the lenses of Nanami’s glasses. He wishes his friend would take the damn pair off. 

In truth, the reason he’s so irritated is because he knows. If he insists enough, begs enough, there will always be a chance that he can convince you. That you will give in, not because you are selfless, but maybe because you’re too selfish to let him stay mad at you.

An unstoppable force meets an immovable object, and sometimes, the force wins.

But he’d promised, hadn’t he? To not be angry with the choices you’ve made?

“Jeez, it’s somber in here. Who died?” you tease as Shoko pushes the wheelchair in after you. Both men look away from each other. You’re still walking steadily, but an IV is hooked into your chest now, and it’s so obvious you’ve lost unhealthy weight that looking at you is hard sometimes. Satoru does, anyway. 

Noting Nanami, you straighten up. Surprised, but pleased: “You’re still here.”

“I was just leaving,” he says. You frown, but don’t protest. A jujutsu sorcerer’s work is never finished until one stops breathing. “I finished planting the seeds you asked me to, and watered them.”

“Thank you.” He dips his head to you, then to Shoko, before departing, and you watch him go for a moment before your eyes land on Satoru and you smile. The air around you shifts immediately to a vibrant yellow. 

“You’re early, Satoru.” You head towards the bed as Shoko parks the wheelchair by the door. “It took way longer than I thought.”

“That’s because you threw up pistils today,” Shoko replies dryly. Satoru straightens up and looks at Shoko more carefully. Placid lookimg—usual for his mortician friend in the jujutsu world—but there’s a blanching in her knuckles that isn’t usual. “The CT wasn’t good. You know that.”

“Well, it’s still more time than I could’ve asked for, you know.” Shoko shakes her head, and meets his eyes before leaving the room, presumably to talk to your doctors. “Party pooper.”

“First day knowing Shoko?”

You laugh sarcastically, adjusting the hospital gown on your body before climbing into bed slowly, as if your joints ache. Satoru’s feet shift on the tile when he realizes his body moves to help and he freezes. You’re breathing audibly by the time you settle in and you meet his eyes, wondering if he’s noticed.

Of course he has, he wants to tell you. He notices everything about you.

Then, you sigh, and the yellow energy around you flickers into something darker, something grey, something that reminds him of summer thunderstorms.

“The roots have reached the edge of my rib cage and are encroaching on my stomach now,” you inform bluntly. “I probably won’t be able to keep food down in the next couple of days so they’re going to up the ante on this thing.” You gesture to the catheter by your clavicle. “So that’s not really fun. And, they want to start taking scans every single day because the growth is increasing exponentially. The doctors think something triggered the flowers to begin blooming in earnest. Like spring has come to my body, and I’m having the worst fucking time of my life.”

Despite your admission, your smile only falters in that it no longer reaches your eyes. Satoru shoves his hands in his pockets because he doesn’t know what else to do.

The word Hanahaki still burns, whispers coyly in his ear. It teases the tip of his tongue as he watches you look to your windowsill where your new plants are and get up, walking over to inspect your friend’s work.

He wonders if he can bring it up again. If he can insist that there’s a way to save you—

But Nanami’s words linger, too, and he bites his tongue until he tastes iron. 

“Oh, look.” He blinks at your voice, turning to look. Your fingers sink into one of the pots and before he can ask, blue energy flares up around your hand and into the soil and a shoot breaks through the dirt, unfurling as it grows higher and higher into the air.

“What is it?” Petals are beginning to form, the shade of a warm, gentle red that fades in shade as it reaches the stem. Satoru comes up next to you as the first flower blooms and his eyebrows rise. “Tulips. Huh.”

“I used to love them,” you tell him, picking it off and extending it to him. Eyebrows furrowing in surprise, he takes it as you sink your fingers deeper into the soil, sending more cursed energy into the seeds. More stems to replace the one you had picked continue to grow and you pull your hand out, wiping at your fingers with a towel.

Satoru tilts the flower towards his nose, taking a whiff.

“Used to?” he repeats, and you nod.

“Trees and flowers have their own language.” Your eyes do not meet his as you watch the plant continue to grow. Your muscles go slack, and your fingers touch the petals, mind not quite aware of how you’re moving. “Red tulips mean eternal love, and fame.”

Blinking, he looks down at his own bloom. 

Suguru. He hears you say his name, even in the silence, and remembers years ago, walking through Tokyo. A neighbourhood he doesn’t remember, his best friend looking at the florist’s shop and immediately perking up to head inside and buy a bouquet after something had caught his eye.

“For a girl,” he had admitted sheepishly. 

“Only one?” Satoru asked, horrified. “You can’t settle down! We’re meant for so many more women than just one!”

A sharp nudge to the ribs. Raucous laughter. “Shut up!”

Quietly, Satoru’s fingers tighten around the stalk as you tilt your head to the sun, inspecting something he won’t understand. He doesn’t have a green thumb, and although you say you aren’t the smartest, he’s seen you grow the college’s gardens in a way that has amplified the beauty already lingering on the grounds. You had dismissed it as a little side project, but seeing you water your plants dutifully, spread feed and root out weeds, makes him wonder if you know how to put half-efforts into anything.

When you garden, you never take the easy route. You labour for the satisfaction, and pour sweat and tears into the soil.

When you love, you love with all of yourself and more. 

It’s what makes whatever he wants impossible.

Because he is the same, and they will never change.

When Satoru goes home, he places the tulip in a vase and the cursed energy prickles at his fingertips.

.

You get worse and worse with every visit. 

Each day brings him another raw wound, salt on blood. You slowly grow more and more ragged, even though you stay in the hospital, confined to your room. 

There are days Satoru walks into your room to you hunched over the toilet, spitting blood and flowers into the bowl and vomiting all you ate the night or day or hour before and he already knows what he has to do. A cold, damp rag to your forehead, a crouching stance beside you as your grip on the toilet seat becomes rigid like steel.

Other days, you’re still asleep because the night before, you’d been hacking up half a lung and half a bouquet. Sometimes, you’re curled around a plastic receptacle already full of your half-attempts to dislodge the pressure building in your chest. 

Or, you’re crying into your hands, breath coming in rapid bursts as you try to force your head between your knees to stop the world from spinning and Satoru holds you when you beg him to, and stands in the corner of the room when you push him away.

Afterwards, you always grab onto his sleeves, his arms, and sink against him, shivering. For hours after, he’ll curl around you on your hospital bed, no matter how much his body cramps, until you insist you’re fine.

“It’s a little like touching death,” you told him once, voice raw and fatigued. “When it’s a pretty bad day, and I think I’m going to die alone, it happens, so all I have to do is not think about it.”

There’s a flawed logic there, but Satoru was too busy pressing his nose into your hair and feeling the warmth of your body to reply any more than, “I’ll be there. I promise.”

Two weeks pass (fourteen sets of scans, a different pair hanging from the lightscreen every day tell him that) and Satoru watches as the branches spread through your body, past the reaches of your ribs, and the flowers have spread to your lungs so quickly he’s sure the time for you to decide is running out. 

You’re near-passed out against him on the bathroom floor one evening, and although it’s not closet-sized, it doens’t make the arrangement any less awkward. He’s up against the bathtub, legs sprawled all around you as he holds you in his arms. On the edge of the tub, there is a bar of bodysoap and a bottle of lotion he recognizes as the same one Shoko used to buy when they still had time. Your sink counter is filled with your toothbrush and cup, handsoap and a microfibre towel hanging off the edge smeared with lipstick, foundation, and black streaks of who knows what.

Shoko must have spent the night while he was out hunting a curse in Sendai. Good. He doesn’t like the nights when you’re alone and he can’t be there.

His fingers brush over your shoulder blade, and he travels over something rigid cloaked by your skin. Your eyes are closed, and you’re nearly asleep as you curl deeper against him. Looking down at you, he presses curious fingers into your shoulder blade only for you to let out a soft groan.

“Did that hurt?”

“No. It just feels like you pressed down on a big sore muscle,” you mumble slowly. He trails his fingers over, feels the bumps of the roots curling around your bones before following it towards your spine. It disappears the closer it reaches the trail of knobs that go down your back, and he moves back to your shoulder again. “Doesn’t hurt, though.”

“Does anything?”

“Mostly my stomach,” you tell him. “I’m so hungry all the time, but I can’t eat.” He glances at the IV stand, the only other witness to the events in this bathroom. It leads down through your gown and past your clavicle. Monitored every day in case the growths dislodge it, it’s one of the only things keeping you alive. “And my throat. It feels like I’ve scratched it out until it’s bleeding.”

He tilts his head. His lips barely brush your sweaty scalp despite how cold you feel in his arms “No surgery?”

You shake your head, what remains of your strength slowly coming back. “They say the flowers and roots have taken up sixty-five percent of my chest cavity. It’s not only inhibiting my lungs, but my heart and stomach, too, so it’d be kind of hard to get rid of it all. Not impossible, but it’s really risky. That, on top of the already-present consequences—”

“So let’s say we start with the lungs,” he cuts off, trying to not sound too desperate but these past few weeks have worn him down to the bone. Although he thinks he’s managed to hide it from his students, Shoko has offered multiple times to prescribe him sleeping pills just so he can shut his mind down.

He said no every time.

Your legs draw up and he squeezes your shoulder carefully, looking down. “Are you ready to get up?”

You nod. “I think so.” He wipes at your lips with the rag he left on the counter and you roll your eyes as he makes sure no blood is left on your face before throwing it back up and carefully adjusting you against him.

“Do you want my help?”

“My answer does not matter to you,” you shoot back teasingly and he lets you pull away from him before reaching up with one hand to push yourself up. Your arm wobbles, your feet kicking back underneath you and slowly finding theirselves on the floor. Satoru withdraws, ducking underneath and back up so he can stand, hands floating around your body as you draw the IV stand towards yourself and grab on. When he’s sure your knees might give in, he grabs your elbow, but you shake your head. “I think I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay,” you breathe, raising your head to look at him. Your lips curl in a soft smile, and you clasp his shoulder. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t even do anything this time,” he says.

“Not everyone stays for the pathetic girl on the floor of the bathroom floor,” you quip. Turning around, you begin to head back to bed and he trails behind you carefully.

“If the girl’s you, then I think exceptions can be made.”

“Hospital bonus.”

“It adds that you’re in the hospital, too,” he agrees. “My morals are just.”

“Isn’t that a relief?” 

It is. It is a relief that you still have the strength to joke with him. 

You climb back into bed. Satoru returns to the bathroom to make sure the bathroom is flushed and it’s clean before returning and perching on the edge of your bed. Pulling out his phone, he shuffles his shoes off and tucks his legs to his chest, leaning against the foot of your bed and scrolling through his messages.

Not much to miss, to be honest. 

“There’s supposed to be a lunar eclipse on the morning of the 28th,” you say suddenly. Satoru looks up. You’re leaning back on the mountain of pillows, exhaling and inhaling measuredly in a way he now knows is your way of fighting off another bout. Squinting against the orange glow of the sunset, there’s a longing in your gaze. “I want to see it. Outside and everything.”

“You’re not supposed to leave the hospital.”

You don’t miss a beat. “Oh, we’re abiding by rules, now?”

“If it keeps you around, yes, we are.”

“When did my best friend turn into such a party pooper?” Looking at him, an impish glint lives in your eyes. He balks.

“Don’t you dare insinuate that I’m not fun.”

“Then… take me to see the eclipse.”

“No. There’s nothing to even see.”

“I want to see the moon disappear, Gojo,” you declare. “And if you won’t take me, I will definitely sneak out.” 

It paints a pretty pathetic picture, and he can’t help but arch his eyebrows at your determination. The air purifier drones on. The nurse turned it on after dinner, he guesses, and he has the strange urge to kick it as you fix him with a fierce stare. 

“You probably won’t be able to walk by then,” he says.

“That won’t stop me.” He knows it won’t. The corner of his lips pulls into a slight smile as you continue, “I just want to go outside one last time. Is that really too much to ask?” Your words are tinged with a fine dusting of humour, and he shakes his head.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Big word for you, Satoru.”

“I still mean it.”

“And I learned that from you.”

He rolls his eyes and sighs. “Fine,” he caves. Your face lights up, and he sets down his phone, legs unfolding to brush the floor as he leans over to flick your forehead. Your eyes squeeze shut at the contact and you slap his arm away sluggishly before he soothes the smarting spot over with a smear of his thumb. “I’ll come by, and we’ll sneak out.”

You beam and he slips his feet back into his shoes and pockets his phone so he can focus his attention on you. 

When visiting hours end, the nurses offer to set up the cot for him like they always do. You pretend not to look at him out of the corner of his eye, awaiting his answer behind your laptop screen, and he spares you a quick glance before saying yes.

“She likes you,” you tell him after one particular nurse with dyed purple hair who always wears a fishtail bids them goodnight. Satoru fluffs up his pillow ceremoniously, having shed his jacket and taken off his jeans to hide underneath the blankets. The fabric is cold against his bare chest, and he pulls his glasses off, sets them on the stand right behind him.

The black frame holding up his mattress rattles a bit as he punches his pillow one last time and lies down. He turns on his side and looks at you. You’re turned on your side, too, and your brow is furrowed as you fight the sleepiness.

“Is that so?” he asks carefully. “What do you think about it?”

“I think if you wanted someone with a hectic schedule, you could pick someone else,” you say vaguely.

He raises an eyebrow. “Does she have a bad attitude or something?”

“I dunno.” There’s a subtle fire igniting in your words. You look a bit more awake, and your eyes are shifting the air into a smouldering red. He squints up. Your face is shadowed, but you’re still silhouetted by the orange light behind your bed as your shoulders rise and fall greatly in staggering, weighty breaths. “She wouldn’t understand. I guess.”

He hums. “So I should find someone who understands me but can’t be there for me? Sounds like the set up to every tragic love story ever.”

You laugh, and it’s the saddest sound in the world.

.

Friday, July 27th arrives in clouds.

Satoru scouted a spot before where they can watch the eclipse. He settles on one of the highest buildings on campus with a balcony where they can sit against the railing and watch the moon disappear. You can’t eat, but he still buys your favourite food from all over Japan, travelling to different prefectures in hopes that they still have your favourite dessert or drink that you mentioned once—he even gets you a new polaroid camera. He doesn’t know exactly how well the eclipse will show up on it, but, memories, right?

Maki makes a dry remark about how much he’s running around lately, probably to make amends to a girl he’s scorned. Satoru deflects and says he’s actually trying to impress one this time.

It’s been a five days since his promise to bring you. You lost your ability to walk steadily two days ago and to speak effortlessly only yesterday. The roots have extended through your body, pushing the muscle of your back and shoulders, and it’s made even moving painful, so he intends to carry you everywhere he can, holding your IV bags if he needs to. 

The doctors say eighty-five percent of your chest is now occupied with foreign growth. Satoru wishes they’d just tell it how it is—you’ll probably be dead by next week.

He arrives at the hospital and walks the path he’s walked so often over the past few weeks that he is sure he could do it with his eyes closed. The nurse’s station, and there’ll be the purple-haired one and the one with a double helix piercing on call at this time. Then, twenty-five steps to the end of the hall where the window often lets a lot of natural light in. Today, it’s grey and not much, but it’s enough to cast his shadow long and blurry.

He stops in front of your door to sanitize his hands when he hears voices within and hesitates.

Your door is closed, which means you don’t want people to interrupt, and he moves away from the rectangular window, back pressing against the tiny slab of wall between the frame and the corner of the hallway. Glasses slipping down his nose, he tries not to listen but he can’t help of himself.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” you say weakly. You sound awful. Satoru wonders if he’s missed one of your panic attacks and curses himself. “If I don’t sound sure, it’s because I’m dying… and sounding like a fragile piece of shit… comes with the territory.” Your words are coarse, and a harsh anger grates his ears as you cough violently, a terrible retching sound ending with a splat following right after. 

“I wasn’t doubting you,” Nanami replies calmly. “But this could be done in so many other ways.”

“Look, Nanami. I’m not… brave enough to say any of it. Now, sit down. Your standing… it’s making me nervous… Thank you.” Satoru’s legs feel numb as he sinks down to the floor, tilting his head just enough to listen clearer through the sliver underneath the door. Resting his elbows on his knees, he runs a hand through shaggy white hair. It feels dry and lifeless. 

He can’t remember the last time he took a shower that was longer than ten minutes and more than ice-cold bordering on just beginning to warm.

“Take care of him for me,” you croak and his fingers tighten against his scalp. Nanami doesn’t answer, and you let out a sound that can only be described as pure agony as another bout grasps you tightly. You’re wheezing by the end of it, gasping painfully for air, and the monitors start beeping rapidly, a dinging that echoes in his head as Nanami’s low voice soothes you, tells you gently to calm down. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Breathe with me,” Nanami orders, and everything falls silent. Satoru stares at his lap. His head is beginning to pulse with the monitors when the beeping finally starts to fade. “Good. No sense to waste your strength.” 

Wobbly, spitting: “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” A pause. “It’s not your fault.”

You laugh, as if Nanami’s cracked a funny joke, and it’s gut-wrenching. “Remember how… we can curse each other? Ourselves? True curses.”

Faintly amused, immeasurably strained: “I thought it was still a hypothesis regarding those who don’t have the correct bloodline and the ability to curse through their own will.”

“No…Not a hypothesis. Real, Nanami. Real. No one knows how cursed energy affects us. Not really. Since, in my opinion, it’s entirely based on how we process things… it’s so difficult to say but when you know someone…” You break off to clear your throat. “The curse of adulthood… some of us got that too early… but we can survive that and even if it’s not a curse by… definition, we still feel it, right?” 

Satoru clasps his hands together just so he doesn’t rip the door open at the hinges.

“Right.”

“And… knowledge… can be a curse. Even if we can’t see it.” A ragged breath. Then, another laugh too loud for the grey light outside, too bright, a spark before it fizzles into, again, pained choking. “Nanami, remember last year… the job out in Yama… Yamaguchi?”

“Yes.”

“And we came back… Okkotsu was beginning his first year at the college… what I—what I told you?”

“…Yes.” A beat passes. A chair shifts on the linoleum floor and Nanami clears his throat. “I see.”

“I don’t want him to be so alone. I know I was never the strongest or the smartest or the most talented but I liked to think he let me in because I was there. Not because I understood. Maybe… Maybe because I didn’t. Nanami, please… he always try to stay so far away from the people he thinks he can’t love. Tell him… tell him—“

You break off and Nanami assures you with a steadfastness Satoru has counted on so many times before: “I will.” 

“…thank you.”

Eyes shutting tight, Satoru rests his brow against the heel of his hand. His head is aching, and a hard fist grabs his chest, squeezes his heart until it feels like it’ll burst. So this is how you’re really feeling. When you’re not smiling, this is what you are. Angry at the world, and heartbroken.

So terribly heartbroken.

And you couldn’t trust him with it? Because you thought he couldn’t handle it? 

He can take it. It’ll be okay because he’s the strongest. He has to be. 

I’m the strongest. I should be okay. I’m the strongest.

I’m the Strongest.

The headache gets worse so he gets up from that corner in the dead-end hallway, all the while three words replay in his head like a goddamn gramophone.

Nanami doesn’t come out of the room for a while. When he does, Satoru walks down the hall with takeout and a smile plastered on his face as if he had heard nothing at all.

.

At just past one-thirty AM, Satoru sits up from his cot and rubs at his eyes. After dinner, the both of them had forced themselves to go to sleep in order to have enough energy for their little late night excursion. He glances at you, a slumbering shape on the bed, and gets up, slowly sliding on the lights. They burn a dim orange, glowing on your face, and your eyebrows furrow as he touches your cheek.

“What?” you mumble, vexed, and he smiles.

“Are you ready?” he asks. A backpack is situated at the end of his bedframe and he reaches for it, unzipping it carefully as you crack your eyes open. “We’re going to go see the eclipse, remember?” Pulling out clothes he robbed from your room in the staff facility from when you used to work full time, he grabs your shoulder and shakes you gently. The gnarled roots under your skin feel strange against his fingers as you groan weakly. “Do you want five more minutes, Sleeping Beauty?”

You don’t answer, burying your face into your pillow and he shakes his head to himself. It’s going to be all right, he thinks. I planned for this setback.

Slipping into a dark long-sleeve, he parts the black-out curtains to let light come in. He checks his reflection in the bathroom mirror before running a hand through his hair and washing his hands with a cold stream of water. By the time he leaves the bathroom, you’re sitting up already, heel of your hand rubbing against your brow as you groan. In your other hand in your lap, there’s a splash of blood and a lone petal, and he rushes to your side instantly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t even hear—“

“It came out easy,” you assure as he grabs a tissue to pick it off your hand and throw it into the receptacle at the table just beyond the foot of your bed. Wiping at your mouth roughly, he hears your complaints and your hand shoves against his shoulder to tell him to quit it. “Ah, I can do it myself!”

“Shh! Do you want every nurse storming in here while we conduct our super secret getaway?” he whispers, and your eyes fix on his. Dark circles mark your face like bruises, but that light is still the same—glimmering, bright, like twin suns and just as warm. Making sure your hands are clean, he wipes the invisible streaks of blood just to be sure before grabbing your clothes and setting them at the end of the bed.

You glance around the place sluggishly, at the paintings you never got to finish, and the books you haven’t finished reading, before settling on him. “What are we going to do about the… about the machines? And my IV…” 

“Oh, trust me. I may have bribed a nurse or two,” he confesses and you send him a scandalized look. He shrugs. “What? You told me a woman liked me and I couldn’t help but turn on my natural charm.”

“You’re awful,” you say without meaning it and he smiles as he moves your bed into a sitting position. You cough lightly, but sit up straighter as he carefully unhooks the huge bag and pump from your stand and gently slides it into the pocket in the backpack, resisting the urge to squish the pouch a bit. Strapping the pump in, he makes sure it’s secure as you peer around him to catch what he’s doing. “Is this… safe for me, you—you know, medically-speaking?”

“Nope.” He adjusts the tubing to avoid any kinks. “But, Purple gave me this backpack and she will come as soon as we come back to make sure you aren’t dying. And, if anything goes wrong, I promised her I’d come back as soon as possible.”

“Promised her?” you echo “I see. So that’s what Purple… was doing before my afternoon nap. I thought you guys traded suspicious looks.”

“Yeah. I’m pulling big strings. Now, c’mon, silly. Let’s get you dressed.”

You roll your eyes with a whistling breath. “Watch the tube… and c’mere, then, Gojo.”

He grabs the jacket first and does exactly as you order. Wrapping it around you, he helps you thread your arms through before zipping you up carefully as your shoulders begin to shake. Bending over, you reach blindly for the receptacle at the end of the bed and he hands it over to you.

A wad of saliva mixed with blood slips between your lips and you let out a low noise before forcing yourself to cough harshly again and again. Satoru watches. No matter how many times he sees you rip your throat up just to breathe with a bit less pressure in your chest, it doesn’t get any easier.

You manage to get up a whole magenta blossom. It blooms from your mouth like something out of a horror movie and lands in the receptacle before he’s wiping your mouth.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

They continue on.

Coat, next, zipped up, and a scarf, then he’s scooping up your legs to help you twist on the mattress until your feet are dangling off the edge. He weaves your legs through the sweat pants, careful not to let his gaze avert from his task even as the hospital gown trails up your legs. You shiver at the exposed skin and gooseflesh pimples your thighs as you lift up your hips to help with the effort. He pulls the hospital gown free from the waistband and lets it fall over the hem so you’re completely covered before falling back.

In a crouch, he pats your knees and makes the mistake of looking up only to find your eyes already on him, searching, nearly mystified. Satoru’s throat tightens. The faint light streaming from the window catches half of your face, as if half-divine. There’s a curiosity there, lingering, and the way you look at him makes him freeze in his spot.

Is this how Suguru saw you a thousand times before, a thousand lifetimes ago? Is this what he felt? 

Did he see the way your pupils dilate, the flare of your nostrils as you exhaled so quietly that it felt like a feather against his lips despite the distance between them? Did he see galaxies in your irises, home in the softness of your stare? Is that why he kissed you the last time he saw you? To memorialize their love for himself, to remember what it looked like when you loved him?  

Did he feel like he could fight dragons, crush demons, rip their world apart at the seams and rebuild it again with bloodied nails if it meant you would never cry again? Is that part of why he did it? So you would never be lonely again? 

Because if so, Satoru understands. 

Because if so, Satoru would do the same.

Because he always saw you as just pretty, because you had always been just his friend, and then his best friend’s girlfriend, and then his best friend, so there were always lines drawn in salt, scuffed and distorted over the years, but…

But in the light, tired and lost in his gaze, you’re nearly ethereal. The only reason he knows you’re not a goddess is because he’s still touching your knees, and your breath quivers, as if you’re just as disconnected from the world as he is in this moment.

Lips pressing together, he looks away, and the moment’s gone. 

He glances at the clock. 

How long has it been since he moved? It feels like hours.

Twenty-seven seconds.

Twenty-seven seconds of temptation, and then Satoru turned away. 

He slants to grab a pair of thick woolly socks to give himself something to do. You’re still watching him, head tilted down just so, and he carefully takes hold of your ankle.

He focuses on the little things: the iciness of your skin, the way you pick at the fabric of your sweatpants absently as you watch him work, the way you shiver a bit when he touches you.

He rubs heat back into the arch of your foot as you reach into your jacket slowly to carefully remove the nodes monitoring your vitals. You seem stiff to the bone, and your fingers are rigid with anticipated pain as you peel off the stickers. In the back of his mind, he remembers the days that feel like yesterday when you weren’t hooked up to so many machines to assure both you and him that you’re still alive.

Removing the cap for the oximeter from your finger, you shake yourself out a bit, clearing your throat. He slides one sock on, and then the other.

“How’re you feeling?” he finally utters.

It takes you a moment to answer. “Bottom half feels tingly. Usual these days. My body feels like a big giant bruise,” you inform quietly. Your voice is nothing more than a rasp. “Very warm and toasty, though… Thank you.”

“Just gotta get the shoes on and then we’ll teleport there.”

“Okay.” He helps you slip your feet in, something straight out of Cinderella, and then he stands up to take your hands. Your fingers slip into his palms, and he holds you so tightly as you slide off the bed. The instant your feet hit the floor, your grip intensifies and your head snaps down to the floor. You find your footing after a moment, and he lets go to crack open your window. Moving your plants aside, he climbs out to glance around. 

The air is crisp and cold, but not too bad for him. Even so, he’ll probably slip on a hoodie before they leave and he ducks back in to your room to do so, tugging it down his waist before grabbing the backpack.

“Arms through,” he instructs, slipping the backpack onto your shoulders. Guiding you closer, he helps you shuffle as close as possible towards him before turning around and bending over. “Alright, climb on. We’re going.” 

Your arms touch his shoulders, his hands shoot out behind him, and you fall.

Fingers hooking on your thighs, he boosts you up and your arms wrap around him, your own fingers wrapped so tightly around his collar that it nearly chokes him. Haphazardly stepping through the windows, his fingers sink into the fabric of your sweats. Your breath is warm against the shell of his ear, and he can feel your heart pulsing against his back as he turns to look at you. 

He smiles. “How’s it feel?”

“I’m still not sure if you’re going to let me die.” You press your face closer to his head and your arms tighten. “But the wind feels so good. So, so good.”

“That’d be too undignified,” he teases, and then he jumps. Time seems to slow as it always does when he’s about to teleport. He imagines the staff facility on the campus, quiet as a cemetery at this time of night, and his heart lurches forward. For a moment, his senses leave him all at once. He can’t taste or feel or see anything for a fraction of a second, then it comes to him in blinding speed. His hearing, as always, is first, then his eyes, smell and then touch and smell.

His foot lands on stone, as if he’s just finished a small skip, and he grins as he sweeps the courtyard. No one, as planned. The building’s to his immediate right, and he climbs the steps, using your knee to nudge the door open.

“That was fun,” you comment. “Convenient, too. Blink of an eye, and you’re somewhere else.”

“You can’t even begin to imagine how many lines I’ve skipped because of it,” he comments. The lights are all off, and he heads for the kitchen immediately to grab all the food he’s bought. Setting you down on the kitchen counter, he takes out another canvas bag and stuffs all of the food in.

Daifuku with of all kinds of fillings in the fridge, fresh dorayaki, canned coffee and aloe drinks, sweet soymilk and other wagashi they used to feast on when they were younger. Mostly because Satoru would buy enough to feed a kingdom so he always had something on hand for his overactive brain. You watch him with wide eyes as he moves around with such purpose one could think he was preparing to fight an army, but as soon as he finishes, he flashes you a smile.

“I think you’re going to like where we’re going a lot, silly.”

“Didn’t have to buy stuff,” you mutter, fingers playing with the tube leading into your backpack for a moment.

“You haven’t eaten in weeks. I thought maybe we could at least try. Maybe not now, but at the end of the night, before we go back. Just in case.”

“I can’t eat, though.”

“Don’t know until I stuff it down your throat,” he replies cheerily, and you smile at him so brightly it’s almost like you aren’t sick. Then, that smile turns into a cough, a fist in front of your lips, and your expression is frozen into one of exasperation before it flickers into strained. He sets down his bag, already knowing what comes next.

You make a hacking sound, deep in your throat, and he shifts you closer to the sink so you can lean over and throw up. Gagging, it comes in red and clear torrents, the cursed energy spilling out of your body nearly making it incinerating to even touch you as you clutch the edge of the sink basin. 

You fall to your elbows, and Satoru eases you off the counter so he can hold you up instead of the cramping body contortion you sink into. Cupping the juncture of your shoulder and neck, his thumb sweeps soothingly over your root-invested spine, tossing the ends of the scarf over your shoulder and out of the way.

Settling a hand on your hip, he presses you against the countertop so you don’t fall, and hopes your legs can hold you up long enough for him to reach for the hand towel. You spit just as he manages to grab it, snapping back into position and peering over your shoulder to inspect how much you’ve coughed up. You shudder and a tortured moan wrenches out of your throat as you sink, forehead against the cool metal.

You’re scorching to touch, but he tightens his hold on you anyway, setting the towel aside for just a moment. Carefully, he pulls you back up and you let out an drained whine, but he shushes you quietly, turning you around and guiding your head over his shoulder so you don’t stare at the rot any longer.

Satoru knows you would, even if you pretend like you aren’t plagued with morbid, self-destructive curiosity.

Looking into the sink, he counts a few petals and three whole flowers, and you’re quivering against him as he wraps his arm around you. 

“Alright, lean back for me,” he whispers into your ear, and you obey. His arm around you crooks so he supports your head, the other grabbing the towel again. Exhaustion seems to have sluiced through you, and your eyes are nearly unfocused as he dabs at your mouth carefully. His blue eyes focus on the gentle curve of your lips, and your cheeks puff up before you swallow tightly and let out a shaking breath.

“You’re really close,” you mumble in that exhale. He tilts your chin to the light to make sure he hasn’t missed a spot, and your eyelids flutter as the corners of his lips quirk up. His Six Eyes pick up a muted yellow emanating from you, and it’s so warm against his skin that he can’t help but relish in the feeling. “You smell nice.”

“Good. I took a shower before I came today. Well, yesterday,” he amends softly. “Alright, let’s go before you hack up your other lung.”

“Funny.” Nonetheless, he scoops you back up onto his back and he rinses down the sink as you rest your head against his. He feels you breathing steadily, much easier now than before. Red swirls down the drains, and he watches the magenta petals slowly reveal their true colours. There’s a flash of white in the center of each one, and he wonders silently what flower it is and what it means.

Maybe he’ll find out some day.

When the kitchen’s back to the state they entered, he grabs the bag of food and holds onto your legs tightly as your arms around his neck shift and pull him closer. 

This time, when he teleports, it’s not as jarring. Walking around the balcony, he makes sure no one’s in the area before checking that the door to the roof is locked and heading back out into the night air, towards where they can see the moon clearest.

“Hey, open your eyes,” he whispers over his ear, and your head shifts.

“Hm? Oh!” He feels you wriggle, but he doesn’t let you go as he walks closer to the spot he’s set up. Near the railing, a blanket surrounded by pillows is laid out surrounded by a few space heaters. The moon is hanging perfectly in front of them, and the light illuminates the forests in silver as a gentle wind whistles through. Tranquil, the only sound is his footsteps on wood as you manage to pull your legs free with a harsh twist of your torso. Your hand slaps against the railing and he whirls around to hold you up but you grit your teeth. “I can do it.”

Breathing in deeply, you pull yourself past him using mostly your arms. Your feet drag as if they’re not really attached to a living body but you still move steady onward, and he walks ahead to turn on the heaters and set the food down as far away as he can so it doesn’t spoil too quickly.

“Satoru,” you breathe as if for the first time,” it’s so fucking beautiful up here.” Looking up, his heartstrings twinge. Your face is bathed almost entirely in silver, and it drapes down your body like silk, illuminating the cord of your throat he can see above the scarf, the strength of your hands. A smile brighter than even the most blinding sun rays comes across your face and he finds that the moon pales in comparison as your knees begin to give.

Reaching forward, he helps you sink down slowly, and then sit down, legs hanging off the edge and then you’re leaning to rest your elbows on the middle bar of the wooden railing. You can’t stop staring at the moon, and Satoru can’t stop staring at you as he opens the box of daifuku and pops one into his mouth. 

“The eclipse should be starting in a few minutes,” he says, checking his watch. 2:10. Four minutes to go. You finally tear your eyes away from the moon to look at him.

“I forgot…” you muse. “I forgot how bright… the moon was.”  

He settles in beside you and offers a canned coffee, but you shake your head. He cracks it open for himself. 

“We’re about to watch the moon change,” he notes. “But I read that it’ll last six hours.”

“Really?” Excited, you look up at the moon again. The lunar rays outline your already-pronounced eye bags but it also makes you look more beatific. “That’s just proof… our time here on Earth is so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. It really makes you—makes you think how much we really matter. Which doesn’t seem like a lot, compared to things like a… fucking lunar eclipse.”

The moon’s opinion doesn’t matter more than mine, he thinks. “Well, while we’re waiting for your next epiphany to hit you,” he says instead, “you never answered my question.”

You smile, intrigued. “What’s that?”

“What if we removed the flowers bit by bit, rather than all at once?” he asks. Your gaze snaps to him, but he only regards you honestly. “That gives you a fighting chance.” Your eyes widen imperceptibly, and he grabs another mochi ball and takes a bite.

“The roots and flowers are too entangled in my chest to be removed safely. It’s either they remove my lungs completely, or not at all, and finding a… match for one lung is hard enough, much less two perfect lungs…” You trail off and shrug. “Well, that’d take forever… and I wouldn’t get much… longer, anyway. I’m a sorcerer. I always knew… I was going to die, so why not die on my own t-terms?”

He frowns. “Why not try?”

“Give me your phone.”

He does so, and watches you type in a query you must’ve typed before with how quick your lethargic fingers fly over the screen before you’re shoving it back towards him and leaning forward on the railing, chin to your forearms. You don’t even look at him, as if you don’t want to watch him crumble.

He reads: The first year after the transplant is the most critical period wrought with surgical complications, chances of rejection, and infection… Although there are some reports of some people living for 20 years post-transplant, many people do not make it past 10 years and only half make it past 5…

His stomach curdles. “Five years is better than nothing.”

“Five years worrying when my lungs are going to… kick it,” you correct. “Besides, my ribs are mangled by the roots. And my heart. My stomach. My spine. I’m undernourished, exhausted, and everything in here”—you gesture slowly around your abdomen—“is doing overtime. My body’s too weak to handle any kind of surgery that wouldn’t heal me… immediately.” 

Your eyes find his, and it’s as if lightning strikes through him like a spear—piercing cold and electrifying. You’re beginning to blue in the lips like you’re freezing to death, but he’s sweating under the blast of the heaters. 

Pulling off his hoodie, he drapes it around your shoulders. You don’t react anymore than: “Sucks, but that’s how it is.”

A few more minutes pass by in silence. Their knees knock into one another, and Satoru can’t stop looking at you as you breathe in the home you left months ago, head lifted to the inky universe.

“You know I can tell when you’re—when you’re angry with me,” you utter, not looking at him. “No matter how much you smile at me, you’re still too passive aggressive to cover it up.”

The words spill out of his mouth as you lower your gaze to him. “I’m sorry.” No sense in lying. 

“That’s okay.” You smile for a moment, like he hasn’t said something worth ruining a night over, but when you look up at the stars, it fades. Wistful, you cock your head at the moon that hasn’t gone away just yet and lower your chin to your arms again. “It’s not really something that was… fair of me to ask anyway.” 

.

Just as the moon turns yellow, he remembers something. Bending back to root through your backpack, he excuses himself. You frown. “What are you��“

“I got a camera for this occasion,” he announces, withdrawing the camera and a plastic bag, leaning back to snap a quick picture of you. You squint at the flash, mouth opened in an incredulous smile and face half-turned away, before the photo rolls out. “Like the one you used to carry around.”

“Some memories to hold on to, huh.” You reach for the camera and your fingers wrap around it, aiming it right at him. A flash and two peace signs later, another image joins the one of you Satoru slides into the plastic zip bag. “Hold on. I want to take another one.”

“We should do one of both of us.”

“Ugh, fine… I don’t look good at all, though.“

“Too late.” He snatches the camera from you and sticks out his hand, dragging an arm around your shoulders and you lean into him, temple against his cheek as he snaps another photo, and then another of him making a stupid face. Another of you mid-laugh. You’re wheezing for air as he keeps grabbing the polaroids as fast as he can with the arm that’s around your shoulder, leading to a bunch of jostling that has you in stitches at his frantic panic whenever the new photo chugs out of the slit.

When he’s had his fill of making you laugh, Satoru leaves you alone to look at the moon. He can’t stop grinning stupidly with every photo and while you watch the moon slowly descent into the earth’s shadow, he shuffles through the photos he just took of them together, trying to brand them to memory.

The way he looks at you in these photos makes him believe in something. In something that could’ve been there if they had more time, and he could convince you to open your heart up to a new possibility.

.

Another hour passes. The moon hangs a strange transition between black and blood red and a paler peach orange. A glimmering yellow dot sparkles below it, and he wonders if that’s Mars.

The forests seem almost hauntingly quiet, and no one has spoken in the darkness. You regard the moon, so enraptured, and more photos have joined the zip bag, but they’re mostly of you. He’s managed to sneak them in by turning off the flash and upping the brightness settings so it’d still be visible, and he hopes you never realize that he’s got them. 

Satoru has never been interested in astronomy, but the stars in your eyes are changing his mind.

He’s dug his hand into the bag of dorayaki already. He remembers it’s supposed to be for you, too, but his hands are too empty without the camera, his brain going a mile a minute and the air absolutely quiet with nothing. 

Twenty minutes ago, you asked him to help you take off your coat so you can pull on his hoodie, and haven’t moved since zipping yourself back up. The air smells only of canned coffee and the stinging wind carrying the scent of cedar. Feet swinging, he drapes his arms over the railing and looks up at the red moon.

It is pretty. Magnificent, and ominous, almost. The night is so much darker without the moon. Sheesh, colder, too. I wonder if you’re feeling okay. Maybe I should check, but you don’t seem to be shaking. Worst comes to worst, I could up the level on the space heaters…

“I don’t think I ever got to hear his last words,” you muse quietly, voice cracking, rousing him from his monologue. His head swings to you. Your eyes are barely open as you rest your cheek against your forearm, and you don’t look at Satoru despite your head turned towards him. Instead, he can watch the pieces of you fall apart without your scrutiny. “I used to think… that I didn’t care.”

“Do you want me to tell you?” he asks slowly as you continue to stare blankly over his ear. Your chest stutters in its inhale and the exhale is just as shaky as you smile a bit to yourself. He takes that as answer, and as he speaks, he sees Suguru’s smile—bright against the darkness of the alleyway, and a reminder of a simpler time. Satoru’s heart quickens from the memory “‘At least curse me a little at the very end.’”

You’re quiet for a moment, as if soaking that in. Then, you draw yourself up and sigh. “That sounds like him.”

You say it fighting off a laugh, even though it wracks your body with such intense pain you can barely breathe. You begin to wheeze not even a second in, and still, your face is cracked into an agonizing smile as you blink, tears slipping down your cheeks. Your eyes squeeze shut and your body goes stiff as you cough, hands flying over your lips. Your shoulders shake so uncontrollably it’s like an earthquake in your body, but Satoru cannot find it in him to calm you down as you hunch over yourself.

It comes in its own course, until you’re nothing but a gasping body, crying into bloodied palms cupping purple flowers, and the low sobs that spill and stutter out of your throat makes Satoru wish he never told you.

“‘At least curse me a little at the very end,’” you repeat to yourself, voice raw and iron-like, and your eyes finally rise to meet his. Nothing but hollow purple pierces through him once more. “Yeah… Yeah, that sounds like him.” 

An apology bubbles at his lips, but you continue before he can even begin. Your hands fall to to your laps, and you look at the decaying flowers, thumbs stroking the petals. “I could never make him truly happy… could I? Just like he said… nothing would’ve been good enough for him while we lived in this kind of world. No matter how many times I sat by him while he swallowed… swallowed those curses, held his hand, held him, I would have never been… enough to make him laugh from his heart.” Your tears cast dark shadows. “I held him, Satoru, with all my might… and I still felt him slip away between my fingers.”

That’s how Satoru learns you were there that day, December 24th, not a snowflake in sight. Just a few metres away, you stood for only a moment before you walked away from the man you loved so he could die without any regret, at the cost of your own guilt eating you alive.

No one speaks after that. Satoru cleans your hands slowly, carefully, giving attention to each finger, before swiping your lips, and then he wipes your tears away but you’re not crying anymore.

You just look up at the moon emptily and he scoots closer in hopes to keep your returning trembling at bay.

“Ten years is a very… long time to love someone.” You break the silence. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. Fifteen, thirty minutes? He looks at you, and your lips press into a thin smile. He lifts his arm so you can scoot up close next to him. Your eyes never leave his face, regarding him with new clarity. “I just… realized.”

“Ten years is a very long time for anything,” he replies quietly, their faces very close. Their noses brush, and a warmth spreads through his cheeks as he presses the tip of your nose against his. You don’t pull away. Instead, you almost lean closer. Your nose is cold against his hot face, and he rubs it slowly with his own, trying to send heat back into your skin.

“A very long time to… wait.” Your eyes flutter shut, and your breath is warm over his lips as you slowly tilt your head so their foreheads meet. His hand squeezes your waist. You smell like the hospital, but there’s still the fragrance of the fresh-cut grass and herbs clinging to your skin as he moves his head just to the side so his nose presses into your frozen cheek. Your arm moves as if dragging through honey until it’s wrapped around his neck, palm flat against his shoulder, just as their brows press against one another. 

Something ignites inside his chest, incinerating the rot that seems to grow inside his own chest—it’s his dread, he realizes a moment later. An ugly knot of dread for what’s to come, the guilt, the cold grief that’s just out of reach. 

It’ll unfurl soon, he knows, but for now, he welcomes the relief you bring him.

In this moment, you are his, and he is yours, and that is all that matters.

His eyes close. His cheeks are burning hotter than the heaters surrounding them, and he feels a smile pulling at his lips as your fingers curl against the back of his neck.

“When will people… stop waiting?” you ask him, hushed like a secret.

Eyes opening, he answers you in the same soft voice, “Probably when they die.”

Your eyes crack open once more and he catches a sliver between your heavy lids. You’re so close he sees every detail of your irises, the pores of your eye bags, the way memories flicker through your pupils like fish in a river.

Your exhausted smile grows more genuine—something inside you seems to rear its bright little head, but it’s sad, and he realizes, then, what you must’ve been thinking. Words fumble at his mouth, but he doesn’t let anything slip as you lift your face away to rest your head against his shoulder.

.

You’re dozing against him. Satoru is staring up at the moon in your stead. It’s nearly fully that famous shade of dark blood red, but not quite. He can’t hear anything except the buzz of the space heaters and your breathing. His arm is still wrapped tight around you, holding you flush against him. He’s wished he’d done it so many times before that now, he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.

You’re dying. Even as you rest against him, he feels it. The weakness in your body, the way you’ve turned ghost-like. The strength of your Cursed Energy has become more prominent now that you don’t have the energy to channel it properly, and it’s centred so strongly in your chest that he can feel it poking curiously at him, leaving little marks, a souvenir for when you’re gone.

His fingers dig into your side. You let out a noise, head shifting, and he rips his gaze away away from the sky as your hand falls away from where it had rested around his neck into his lap.

“Satoru?” you whisper brokenly, and he nods, smiling. He pulls you closer, but their bodies are so pressed against each other that it only serves to make you huff a bit.

“Hey. You’re still with us, don’t worry,”

“Not worried,” you mumble, lifting your head with difficulty. “Just glad you’re here.” You tilt your face to the moon. “It’s still… red, huh…” You shake, your hand at the hem of his shirt twisting tightly. He reaches to squeeze your arm and hopes it’ll be enough now. “Pretty.” Throat dry, he does not answer. His white hair falls into his eyes as you look up at him, and he decays at the vulnerability in your gaze. “Aren’t you glad… that we saw the eclipse?”

Jaw clenching, he nods and tries his best to smile. Your hand lets go of his shirt and you shuffle up close enough that your other arm sneaks around his waist. Touching his chin with trembling fingers, your eyes glitter in the darkness of his shadow.

“I’m going to miss this. The moon, stars, how… fucking short… ’n’ beautiful life is,” you finally whisper, throat tight. “Makes shit worth living for. Maybe… won’t miss it… the most… but, top three.”

“Top three?” he echoes. “Top three sounds pretty good to me.”

“And, y’know what, Satoru?” you continue in the same low, husky tone, as if you’re about to change his world one more time.

He drops to the lowest, quietest voice he can manage and moves his head closer. Their noses nearly bump into each other again, and you smile as he quirks an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“You’re… going to miss me… more.” 

Your hand on his waist travels up his shoulder and he feels the last of your strength in your muscles as you pull him towards you. Letting you, his arms wrap around your waist as your other arm shoots around his neck, clinging on so hard that he’s sure his spine might break. 

Flattening his palms against your uneven back, he closes his eyes and slides a hand to cradle your head close.

“And promise… me something,” you breathe into his ear. Your lips brush the shell of his ear, and a shiver shoots down his spine.

“Anything.”

“When I kick it,” you whisper, “take my body, and bury me… yourself.”

Throat swelling shut, Satoru’s glad you can’t see the way the blood drains from his face as he nods and holds you tighter. “I will.”

.

“One more photo for the road?” he asks. You lift your head from his chest, and he looks as you reach to sweep his lips with cold, trembling fingers. He smiles, his hand on your thigh squeezing meaningfully even though you can barely feel it now. Your arms are bundled between your chest and his, and he hauls your legs on his thighs more securely up his lap, arm tightening around your torso.

“Satoru,” you murmur, tilting your head to him. His eyes never move from yours as he picks up the camera, and your hand falls from his lips. “I’m glad… that it was you.”

He snaps the shot and the only sound that fills the silence is the camera chugging out the polaroid. Your eyes are dark, murky and unfocused, and he feels your stammering inhale in his very lungs as he presses his forehead against yours.

“I’m happy it was you, too,” he whispers. You search his gaze for only a moment, and then turn your head to the moon once more. 

Lowering the camera to the floor, he sneaks his other arm around you and rests his chin atop of your head, eyes sliding shut.

.

Nanami, Yaga, and Ijichi approach, dress shoes tapping against linoleum floors. Satoru and Shoko say nothing to them as they join in watching through the glass doors.

Satoru doesn’t like the room they’ve moved you to. It’s too full of machines, too open to passersby who could just look in if the curtains aren’t drawn, and even then…

It smells too clinical here. Too full of artificial light. The ICU is a mechanical sort of silence than the quiet peace of the dead-end hallway. There is no warmth, no books, no paintings. Your plants have been removed, and Nanami has taken all of them into his apartment except the red tulips which rest on the dinner table in Satoru’s kitchen.

You stopped being able to breathe on your own only a day after the eclipse. That was two days ago, and the ventilator is doing nothing more than prolonging your agony. Soon, the growths will block your lungs entirely, suffocating you from the inside out. 

The doctors have stopped taking scans.

“It’s only a matter of time, now,” Shoko had said. “Her directive says we let her go as soon as she can’t come back.” Quieter: “Her pulse ox has been dropping. It won’t be long.”

Ijichi’s face is stony. Satoru doesn’t know why he focuses on him out of everyone. Leaning against the nurse’s station, he stares blankly at the Assistant Director’s. Maybe because he thought he’d be a wreck. Out of all of them, Ijichi’s the most emotional, but his lips are set firm from where he stands between Nanami and their principal.

Maybe Satoru’s just looking for permission to fall apart, but that’d be stupid. 

I’m the strongest. I’ll be fine.

“I’m going to go in,” he announces. No one protests. Nanami sits down and crosses one leg over the other, fingers steepled and eyes indecipherable. Shoko sits beside him. There’s the faint scent of smoke clinging to her lab coat. 

Ijichi dips his head, but doesn’t sit and Yaga excuses himself to talk to the nurse about your condition.

Satoru sanitizes his hands, approaches the door, and pulls it open before stepping in and sliding it shut behind him. 

Click. Hiss. 

The sound of the ventilator is the only thing that occupies the room. That and the monitors. It’s very dark, despite it being the middle of the day. Mostly because you can’t open your eyes wide enough to withstand the sun anymore, so Satoru had asked the nurses to bring the same blackout curtains from your room here. The lights are dimmed until it’s only an orange glow right behind your bed. 

Click. Hiss.

Sitting down, he doesn’t take hold of your hand just in case you’re sleeping. The intubation tube rests on a pile of towels on your chest, and it takes a long time before your eyes open and your head tilts just enough to look. Your hand twists on top of the covers until your palm is tilted open.

He slips fingers in, takes hold. The feel of your skin making everything worse. You’re colder than you should be—it’s sweltering in this room, enough that Satoru is already beginning to sweat even through his short-sleeve—and your fingers just barely twitch against the back of his hand, tracing strange shapes.

You blink, tapping his knuckle, and he frowns.

“What’s up?” Withdrawing, he feels your nail scrape against his flesh and he looks down. Curiously, he takes your hand and places it on top of his so your fingers can touch the lines of his palm. “Are you spelling something out?” he asks, amused, glancing up again.

Another blink, slower this time.

He leans forward on his elbow to touch your cheek before resting his cheek against his fist.

“Alright, give it your best shot.” 

Your eyelids flutter, lips trembling in a weak smile. Your index finger begins to trace shapes, kanji, into his palm. Your chest rises and fall slowly, pumped full of air by a machine hooked to your lungs, forcing breath into you as your writing grows sloppy by the passing second but you still persist.

ANGRY?

“Angry?” he repeats, and you blink slowly again, fingers insistent on grabbing his palm. Folding his fingers over yours, he arches his eyebrows. “If I was angry at a terminally ill patient, that’d make me the asshole here.” Your eyes squeeze shut, eyebrows rearranging in what he recognizes as your laugh in silence. More seriously, his hold on you tightens and he lifts his head to brush his fingers over your brow. You tilt your head more to him, gaze murky warm. “How’re you feeling?”

It takes a while, but he feels your hand shuffle back to trace your answer on his hand.

BETTER

“Better. Yeah?”

Another lethargic blink. Yes.

“It’s because of me, right? I knew it. I knew it. We should tell Shoko—I’m the newest medical innovation in town,” he proclaims, and his smile begs to slip off his face but he only forces it back on, shoves it into place. Your eyebrows move again, like you’re struggling to hold back your laugh. Your eyes slip shut and do not open again. 

Your face goes lax a moment later, and your fingers loosen a bit, but he doesn’t let go. He just wants to touch your face and trace the lines into his memory. 

Satoru stretches his thumb along the swell of your bottom lip while carefully avoiding the tube. He runs his knuckles down your cheek. His fingers brush your pulse point along your neck, and he feels the slow, weak beat.

Click. Hiss.

He thinks you’re asleep for a while, until your finger drags over the flesh of his palm and he looks down, hand lifting from your face. 

“Hey, I’m still here,” he whispers, and your face turns towards him slightly, the tube in your mouth shuffling. He reaches forward, cupping your face and holding you still. “Hey. Don’t move. Your lungs are weaker than the rest of you and I’m not about to watch you die.” Something grabs onto the front of his shirt near his stomach and he looks down to see your fingers hooking on the cotton of his tee, twisting it weakly. “Oh, sorry.”

He draws back and slips his palm back into yours. Your index finger taps against the heel of his hand before your nail drags deliberately. One stroke. Then another, and another. Gojo wishes your eyes were open, because then he would be able to determine what the rest of the sentence could spell out before you’re done, but he’s patient. 

HERE

“Here?” You tap on his hand. Yes. “What’s here?”

YOU AND ME

“You and me,” he repeats thoughtfully. “Yeah, I get that. At least… now you can see Suguru again, right?” Your hand goes still and he looks at your face, reaching to touch your cheek again. You’re placid—doll-like, eyes shut, living dead. “I’m a bit jealous of that, but you should rest easy. It’s been a hard few months, hasn’t it?”

Another weak twitch of your finger on his hand.

“No matter what happens, don’t think I’m angry at you, or the choices you’ve made,” he continues. “As long as you let me stay here, I won’t waste a single second of it, okay?” Tap. He squeezes your hand so tightly your eyebrows twitch, even as you slip away from him. “For all your saying that you’re weaker than me, I never thought that. Not really.” Satoru raises your hand to his lips and he closes his eyes. “Being the strongest is pretty lonely. Used to be so fucking cocky about it, huh. Thought no one could touch me or the people I cared about because everyone would be too scared.”

Your fingers curl against his palm and he lowers his head to press your knuckles against his brow.

“I was wrong. I’d give anything to have you both back, but I can’t, and I hate it. You’re supposed to be with me at the top. I don’t want to be alone again.” His eyes are burning from the strain of keeping them open, but he refuses to miss a second of you being alive when the time is trickling like sand in an hourglass. He feels it like a heavy stare on his back, wondering if this next breath will be the last one before your brain finally decides to shut down. Your organs have been shutting down for nearly weeks now. He knows it’s out of pure selfishness that they’re dragging precious moments into agonizing hours. 

He knows you’re exhausted. 

Resting his chin on your fingers, he swallows. “I don’t know how to let you go. I wished I’d come sooner. I was careless. I know that. We could’ve had more time…”

Your fingers squeeze his as tight as you can before letting go. Somehow, he hears your voice in his ear. Something about being grateful for the time they did have.

“You were right, silly.” He chuckles to himself, bitter, anguished, and lowers your hand back to the bed, not letting go yet. “Ten years is a long time to wait. I let you down, but I’ll make sure you go easy. I promise.”

Satoru lays his head down on his forearm and he swears he catches your lips pull into the faintest smile. He stays there for hours, watching your face, stretching up to touch your unmoving face. The only sound is his steady breaths, the beep of your monitors and the click-hiss of your ventilator. 

It’s 1:04 PM when he falls asleep to the sleepy circles you trace into his wrist

It’s 6:22 PM when only one of them wakes up.

.

At 11:00 AM the next morning, during one of the hourly tests, they declare you brain-dead. With the announcement of your directive being honoured by your chosen proxy, Satoru himself, classes are cancelled and they are scheduled to take you off life support at six.

Ijichi brings them lunch and dinner. Satoru doesn’t eat. Only sits by your side, leaned back into the chair and looking at you while he still can until the clock ticks and ticks and ticks towards doomsday. The kids come to say final goodbyes while he watches on. Inumaki, as always, brings Panda through his phone, and Satoru wishes there could’ve been some way to sneak Panda into a high-class hospital just so their last moments together aren’t cheapened by a screen.

Shoko enters five minutes before it’s time, hand finding his shoulder and he looks up just long enough to catch her blank stare resting on your face.

She doesn’t say anything, only moves to the other side of the bed and sits down in the other chair.

The doctor pumps you full of sedation drugs, so you won’t feel any of the pain, unhooks the machines, and extubates you, explaining all the while what he’s doing just to fill the silence. As he pulls the tube from your throat, something in Satoru turns icy when a purple petal is plastered to the side of the plastic, but the doctor does not acknowledge it any more than murmuring that he will give them privacy.

Your rattling breaths echo in his ears as he watches the numbers slowly drop, but even your inhales fade to nothing more than soft, slight wheezes. The tape has left a strange mark around your mouth, and you’re unmoving otherwise. Shoko gently reaches and touches the eye bags that are, for once, worse than hers before shaking her head and pulling back. Everyone else waits outside.

Hours pass by in torturous years. 

Satoru wears the same stony expression the whole while, finally surrendering into his desire to hold your hand. 

His heart hardens. He goes completely still. Shoko talks but he can’t really hear anything except the slow beeps of your monitor once you pass certain thresholds. 

There are nurses waiting outside. They’ve grown used to the company, he thinks. He thinks one or two are crying. Soon enough, they’ll come in to turn off the machines tracking your vitals so the sounds don’t drive them crazy, banging in home that you’re dead, dead, dead.

After a while, Satoru realizes you aren’t quite breathing, although your chest moves. Sometimes, there’s a gasping sound, like someone surprised the breath out of you and you’re inhaling sharply to replace it, and he imagines your fingers twitching against his hand one last time.

It’s very slow. Much slower than he imagined it to be. Maybe you’re still fighting. Maybe you don’t want to go.

Satoru can’t imagine why. Where you’re going, there’s no pain, or exhaustion, or blood. Where you’re going, Suguru waits.

He leans against his hand, elbow on the slight incline of your bed. Letting go of your hand, he touches your face, feels the soft puff of your breath, the curve of your jaw. You’ve lost so much weight from the sickness you barely look like yourself, but you’re still you. The cursed energy is still yours. His Six Eyes sees it. His soul feels it.

It tangles with his own where he touches you, and a wave of exhaustion washes over him. 

He wants to sleep, let time pass, and wake up to you dead.

It seems a much better alternative to watching you slip away, but he’s always been selfish when it came to personal affairs.

.

You die two hours later.

Shoko closes her eyes and leans back into her chair as the nurse comes in to turn off the droning monitor. Her face is dry and she takes long, measured breaths as if trying to temper something swirling inside her. Satoru’s hard heart cracks as he squeezes your hand to see if you’ll wake up. It doesn’t quite sink in, even though he can hear someone crying outside, and when your limp hand doesn’t react at all, he shakes his head and gets up, pulling his sunglasses off the collar of his shirt and sliding them back onto his face.

He shoves his hands into his pockets and rakes his face over your body, your face.

He’s seen a dozen dead bodies before, maybe more. You look just like he did on December 24th. At peace, younger. Like you’re glad the suffering is over, and Satoru turns his face away sharply and leaves the room. He doesn’t know what to say and he’s not sure if his voice is still here. 

Everything feels dry and dull and grey.

“Sensei,” Itadori whispers wetly, reaching out a hand, making him stop. The students are all sitting in a small area, but they stand upon seeing him leave the room, and he gives them a plastic smile that makes all of them flinch. Maki is scowling furiously at the ground as Inumaki takes hold of her bicep but she flings the hand off and stalks away, hiding her red face.

“It’s going to be okay,” he tells them as Kugisaki runs after Maki. He watches the two go before turning his attention back on the students. “The important thing is that she didn’t suffer. Arrangements will be made, but there won’t be any rush, alright?” The words feel lacking, but he still manages to smile. “It’s been a long day. Go home. Rest, shower, eat. Let’s remember that she doesn’t want us to be here, slumping around looking like idiots. She wants you to all to take care of yourselves.” He arches his eyebrows insistently at his students, but they don’t seem to hear him.

They’re only looking through the glass doors at your coolling corpse, at Shoko who stands, and speaks to the doctor when he comes back in.

Fushiguro is the only one really looking at him, and the teenager has a silent question in his stare. 

Satoru shakes his head, and Megumi nods.

“Classes are cancelled for the rest of the week,” Yaga adds. “Ijichi will drive you all back to the college in thirty minutes. Make sure you tell the girls.” He directs this to Inumaki, who nods.

“Salmon.”

Later, Megumi finds him smoking a cigarette leaning against Shoko’s car. Satoru’s never liked the taste of the stuff so he doesn’t really know why he’s smoking other than the fact he doesn’t know what to do. 

Up is down, left is right, and you’re dead. 

Nothing seems right, but Megumi gives him a good excuse to stop. Flinging the cig to the ground, he stomps out the ember and re-arranges his expression into that shielded smile of his, but it feels a bit weaker. Sharp, janky, wrong.

“Why haven’t you gone home yet? Ijichi should’ve taken you all back by now,” Satoru says wearily as Fushiguro stops before him, hands shoved in his pockets.

“I stayed behind to look for you,” informs Megumi. He looks a bit fractured, but the boy’s never been one to wear his heart on his sleeve. Satoru makes a mental note to dig into his psyche at a later date, and stretches an arm out to wrangle the boy into a hug against his side.

For all of his complaints and mumbles and scowls, Megumi’s body still relaxes a bit against his, and even though he doesn’t hug him back, when he tells him, “You should go home and get some sleep, too. These past few months haven’t been easy on you, either,” Satoru feels a part of his old self raise its bloody head. 

Glancing down at a head of spiky hair, he knocks his knuckles into his student’s skull. “Have you been keeping an eye on me?”

Megumi crosses his arms, glares over Satoru’s elbow, but even his voice is quieter. “You need to take care of yourself.”

Satoru smiles again. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “But you’re not worried about me, are you, Fushiguro?”

Megumi ducks his head and doesn’t answer any more than, “Someone has to pick up the slack, now.”

.

“Thanks, Ijichi,” Satoru says with a huff, digging the shovel into the ground and stepping on the metal edge. “Not every day you help me carry a dead body and dig a grave, huh.”

“No, sir,” Ijichi replies. He sounds a bit hoarse and tired as he wipes at his brow.

It’s been two days since you’ve died. The college grounds feels a lot less lively. He took a walk in the gardens yesterday, and saw Yaga planting new flowers. He had strode past and ignored the tears on his sensei’s face, and absently wonders now why he hasn’t cried yet as he grabs the shovel and yanks it out of the dirt, tossing it to Ijichi.

It feels kind of stupid, but despite how eviscerated everything inside him feels, he just can’t.

Either way, he’ll deal with it when it becomes a problem.

Satoru wipes at his brow, too, with a heavy sigh, and heads to where a cloth-covered shape is resting on the ground. Your corpse is light in his arms as he bridal carries you to the hole he’s just dug into the grass. It looks suspicious as hell, but it’d probably be even worse if he’d been walking around with a dead body over his shoulder, stitched back together after an autopsy by your best friend. 

Good thing they’re only in the forests outside the college campus. There won’t be any civilians for miles.

“You can go,” he says over his shoulder, setting you down by the hole they’ve dug. He takes in a deep breath to calm himself and Ijichi’s footsteps hesitate before beginning and fading away moments later. Falling to his knees, Satoru begins to carefully unfold the cloth just enough that he can see your face and chest. 

He squints behind his blindfold at the ripples of energy still seeping from the stitches along your chest. Sinking his hands into the lush, cold grass, he twists the blades with rigid fingers at the stench of rot coming from the curse before he draws back.

Hands on his lap, he stares at your face. You look frozen in time, eyes closed, skin clean, and there’s that unnatural stillness about you that only comes with the dead. It’s strange. He probably couldn’t have imagined someone so vivacious could be so motionless if he hadn’t seen it first with Suguru.

He had asked not to hear the results of your autopsy. Not now, maybe not ever. It’d be fresh lemon juice in a weeping wound. All he knows is that the curse clings to your corpse, and Shoko could only remove the growths that were no longer being fed for examination.

“Weird that this is where we’ve found ourselves,” he begins humourlessly. “With how we were living, Suguru always said I’d die first. Doing something stupid, being too cocky.” He slides a hand into his pocket and withdraws something he’d snipped this morning from the last plant you had grown with your Technique. A red tulip with a short stem that’s a bit crushed, and beginning to decay, but… everything can’t be perfect.

“I never thought I’d outlive you.”

Reaching forward, he places the tulip gently on your chest, takes your cold arms that are just beginning to loosen up again from rigor mortis, and folds your hands over the stem.

“Eternal love, and fame,” he repeats to himself. The energy nearly swallows up the tulip, but as it radiates from your chest, flickers in the slight breeze, Satoru sees flashes of red and green, much brighter than everything else around him, and knows that it won’t be consumed. Sitting down, he hugs his legs to his chest and stares at your dead body blankly, chin on his knees.

He had had a plan. He was going to just… put the flower there, exorcise the curse inside you, and bury you so you could finally rest. He wouldn’t hesitate because this is something you entrusted him to do.

But this is the first time in months he hasn’t had a cloud hanging over his head, and his body feels so much ligher without the burden of your disease hanging off his shoulders, that he can’t help but relish in it. Speak to you without worrying about saying the wrong thing, of people overhearing. He’s finally… free. 

It feels fucking awful.

“You were right, by the way.” His voice is dull, resonating deep in his chest. There is no August sun breaking through the trees above, only from behind him, and the golden beams touch your chin, down your throat and chest. It sets the red of the tulip on fire. “I miss you. And I wish I could’ve said so many things, but we ran out of time.” A faint smile. “No matter what you think, Suguru loved you. It’s why he came to see you one last time. I knew him better than I knew myself, and I know he was happiest knowing you were at his side.” Closing his eyes, the ache in his heart swells as he utters out, “So was I.”

Burying his his face in his forearms, a cup inside him seems to tip over and everything feels too hot for him to breathe in. Ripping his blindfold off and tossing it away from him blindly, his eyes snap open wide as he tries to breathe. His ribs constrict his lungs, and he presses his eyes into his arms, hands shaking as he sinks his nails into his biceps. 

Harsh pants puff against his face as he tries to reign in his shuddering, but he can’t. The knot in his heart twists until he thinks he might die, and distantly, he hears soft footsteps so faint he’s not sure if he imagines it. Gritting his teeth, he stifles the bruising feeling welling up in his throat.

Gentle hands brush down his shoulders soothingly, sending a wave of nausea through his body, and he jerks away.

“Damn it, Ijichi, leave me alone!” Wrenching his head up, his eyes widen at the figure crouched in front of him.

Arms falling lax to the grass and his knees widening, his jaw drops as a thumb teases his parted lips. You step between his legs and crouch down, limber and strong. You look healthy again, bright eyes and full cheeks, young like spring, and when you smile, it fills him utterly with light. In your hands is his blindfold, and you ruffle his hair, tilting your head curiously.

“I’m not Ijichi, but… do you really want me to go so soon?” you ask as he rakes his gaze up and down your body. There is still a purple shell encasing your legs, but as you shift your weight on your feet, it falls like fragile eggshells to the ground and sinks into the dirt, disappearing for good. Peering around you, his eyes widen when he sees shards of a purple shell in shatters all over your corpse.

He’d only seen this once before, eight months ago, with a certain student of his and the cursed spirit of the girl he loved and who loved him.

Face burning, his gaze snaps back to you as you poke his cheek and continue to grin. Leaning back on his hands, he tries to stop the intense shattering of his walls by clenching his jaw, but the shudders overtake his body, his chest, his throat until he’s letting out an ugly sound and blinking hard as if that’ll hide it away from you. Something devastatingly warm immediately shoots down his cheeks. Covering his mouth with the crook of his elbow, he turns his face away but your warm hands cradle him carefully, thumbs brushing underneath his eyes.

“Yuuta, you’re right. Rika isn’t cursing you.”

“No,” he whispers, arm falling. His fingers sink into his shoulder as if that would be enough to wake him from this nightmare. “No. I can’t—Did I—Did I kill you?” You squint studiously, not letting go of his face as he lifts the hand from his shoulder and reaches to touch you. It shakes, and he snaps it into a fist to stop it, looking at his fingers that have done so much harm—shed so much blood. “Did I do this to you?”

“You cursed Rika.”

You chuckle fondly, like he’s said something silly, and set a hand on his fist, pushing it down firmly. “You can’t control how other people react to your words, Satoru.” Your voice changes, and your eyebrows draw together in something bittersweet. “And you can’t change something you didn’t know. The chances of you cursing me and me cursing myself are irrelevant. It doesn’t change anything about where we are, now.”

Satoru watches you, lips parted, as you tie the blindfold around his neck. You feel so real, so close, and as you slide your hands down his shoulders, to his chest, he jerks his head down to stare at your shoes in the grass. 

So he did. 

“I see,” he murmurs.

That’s it, then.

“Satoru, please look at me,” you whisper, fingers stretching to his chin. With the gentlest of pressures, you prompt him up and he finds your face, your smile, where all colours begin and end. For a moment, the world seems to inhale all of its life back into its core—the leaves whistle, the sun is warm and golden, and he lifts his hand to touch you again, but you pull back before he can. 

“I can only thank you for being my friend. For staying with me until the very end.” You laugh quietly to yourself and lift your hand from his face. “I would make a joke about a curse, but I know it still hurts, so I’ll save it for when I see you on the other side, okay? When it heals a bit more.”

“It’s never going to hurt less,” he croaks. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know how much you mean to me.”

Your smile softens. Satoru tries to eternalize that expression forever. “I’m honoured, but, I hope it does heal. I don’t want you to learn how to carry so much pain around. I don’t want you to be numb.” You touch his cheek again, as if you’re trying to soak in as much of him as you can, too. 

“Do you have any last words?” he manages to ask raspily, and you chuckle, tilting your head and running your hand through his hair again. His eyes flutter shut at the scratch, the sensation of your nails against his scalp, and then there’s your hand at his jaw, holding him all together. He wants to hold you so badly he thinks his muscles might cramp into stone at the desire.

“What does it matter?” you ask curiously. “You already know how I feel. That will never change. And if you ever want to know what I think, or what I’d do, you can just ask Shoko and think about it yourself. You know me well enough to not need me nagging about it.”

“But, it won’t be enough.”

“It never will be,” you agree. “But isn’t it wonderful that we even got to know each other at all?” You lean forward, and his eyes flutter shut as you hold him to your chest. He can’t hear your heartbeat anymore, but your warmth is almost the same. The echo of your voice rumbles in his head as you speak, and maybe that is enough. “If you want my last words, you already have them.”

You draw him back, and give him one last smile. The air shifts golden yellow to his Six Eyes, for the last time. 

“Until we meet again, my Satoru.” 

You fade without giving him a chance to answer, taking all the colour with you. 

Staring at the empty air where you had been just a moment before with wide, burning blues, he whispers your name brokenly before burying his hands in the dirt, squeezing his eyes shut, and letting boiling tears scald his face red.

.

“If you want my last words, you already have them.”

Spinning the key ring on his finger, Satoru looks dully at the door knob he had just unlocked. There’s no one in the hall, and he debates whether or not he should turn around, but Shoko had insisted. There’d been something left for him in your old apartment, and according to her, it would be spoiled soon if he didn’t go.

“Oh, what the hell,” he mutters, catching the key in his palm and shoving it into his long coat. Tugging it tighter around himself, he twists the knob and pushes it open. He can’t remember the last time he was in here. Maybe five or six months ago, when they both had a day off that didn’t need to be spent at the college.

There aren’t any plants anymore. He supposes Nanami, Ijichi, maybe even Yaga have taken them. He swears he’s seen a few in the gardens lately, but who is he to say? Toeing off his shoes, he makes his way down the hall. 

 Everything is just as you left it, with clean counters and empty tables. The curtains are spread, letting in so much September sunlight. It hits random display pedestals of different sizes, all the surfaces big enough to fit a pot on. Your watering can sits by the sink. There are photos hanging on the walls, propped up on the desk, on your shelves, polaroids taped to the walls. 

Reminders that someone did live here. That there is a whole life unknown to strangers but evidence enough that whoever used to be here, they had people who would miss them.

Walking up to the counter, he drags his fingers along the surface, feeling the dust collect up to a square of pale light. A clean circle is all that’s left as a clue that there used to be something there, and his heart twists.

Who knew he could miss fucking plants of all things?

Sweeping his gaze around, he brushes off the dust on his jacket and hooks a thumb on his blindfold, sweeping the area with an eccentric eye. The TV is off, your bookshelves are in their usual untidy state, but even the reaching vines of the bean plant is gone from the highest shelf.

 “They really scooped this place dry,” he muses dryly to no one. He can still hear the music you’d play for late nights, the smell of dumpling soup. He walks down the hall and still remembers how many steps it takes to reach the bathroom that guests would use. 

He had hunched over that bath on December 25th, and let water soak through his hair as strong fingers worked the sweat from his scalp and skin.

Four more steps to the guest best room on the right, and another three to the end of the hall where a door leads to your room. It’s already open, and he steps in easily, tugging his blindfold all the way down off his face. Hair falling over his eyes, he sweeps it aside and surveys the room. The walls are still that pretty shade of cream, and your bed is made carefully, dark olive blankets resting atop your white sheets. He smiles to himself, despite the twang in his chest.

Walking deeper, he approaches the cabinet by your bathroom, and picks up the photo you have by your jewelry stand.

A smile curls his mouth. He remembers this one. First year, their first September. All four of them had gone together to Sapporo for the autumn festival. 

He sets the photo back down and looks into the bathroom. Your toiletries are all lined up, waiting for their next use, and he swallows as he raises his gaze up to the mirror. His blue eyes look a big too big on his face from the past month alone, and there are red-purple half moons printed onto his face that have only just started to fade. He swears it only looks worse because of how much pale light is streaming in from the windows, and he tugs at his collar uncomfortably, clearing his throat.

Turning around, he looks at the offenders for making him look so awful, and finds a medium-sized pot sitting on the window seat. It’s the only thing sitting on the flat, wooden surface, in partial shade and almost unfurling before his very eyes.

Satoru frowns, walking around your bed to inspect the plant. 

The flowers are a warm magenta colour, and his eyes widen at the flash of white he can see leading to the center of each bloom. Brushing a thumb over the petals, his jaw sets as he tilts his head to get a better look at the plant. So this is what was growing inside of you. Huh.

There’s another slip of white near the dirt, and his eyebrows furrow, fingers seeking the thing. It crinkles when he touches it, and his frown deepens as he manages to grasp it, pulling it free underneath the leaves and stems of the plants. Sitting down beside the pot, he dusts off the dirt clinging to the paper, and reads his name along the front in your print before flipping the envelope around. There’s something sticking out of it, a sloping shape that’s hard but not too big.

Curiosity peaked, he tears the envelope open carefully and peers inside. A binder clip is inside, holding something together, and he flips it upside down, letting everything fall. The letter slides out first, followed by whatever the binder clip is holding together and he squeezes his thighs together so it doesn’t fall to the floor.

Setting the letter aside, he picks the bundle up. 

Polaroids.

They’re polaroids of different sizes that have him smiling despite the heavy sorrow twisting his entire chest.

Various pictures of Satoru, Suguru, Shoko, and you together, and he finds most of them are of him and you. Pictures of him hiding behind plants of various sizes, a picture of him drinking soju, because Suguru liked it the most and insisted he try, while leaning against Shoko who was knocking back a shot of tequila. There is a shot of Suguru, wet with mud and smiling like sunshine, while a drenched Satoru was in the background, flipping the camera off in the middle of a storm. 

More and more pictures, enough to spill out of his lap, and he picks up each one, desperate to remember when or where you took them.

And, sometimes, he can’t. Sometimes, they are just moments that he’s lost because he never thought they’d be important, and now moments he’d give anything to remember.

There are pictures of a fern he had named their first year, little annotations on the bottom of some others. Dates, but with no context otherwise. Names scribbled in black ink. 

You’re in a lot of them, your smile timeless, your joy infectious even through film.

Arms slung around Suguru, face smushed against his, artfully blurry perhaps on accident, and annotated with scrawl that read: I call this masterpiece “Dumb Sweethearts” by Gojo Satoru :)

A picture of him and Shoko and Suguru, of them in one of Tokyo’s night markets, you behind the camera, the lights flashing and warm and pink, making them all look like they’ve transported to some other kind of cyberpunk world. 

You and Shoko lounging in the gardens, having a tiny picnic at your insistence, and in Suguru’s handwriting in black: JUST GIRLS BEING PALS

Satoru stares at Suguru’s writing the longest, not even at his words, just the strokes of his pen. This is a new part of him Satoru thought had been destroyed, and he starves for it. It’s like his one and only lives and breathes in the ink, in those snapshots of him caught in eternal youth. When they’d been happy and unaware and not innocent, but cocky enough to think they could rule the world. 

It’s hungry, the way he goes through each photo, searching for another glimpse of you, of him, of them together, until Satoru is all out of moments to feed on, and still, he feels empty, flicking through the last few photos.

You in a pool, arms wrapped around Shoko and beaming like the sun.

A shot of Satoru and Suguru climbing trees shot from below, your eyes and skeptically raised eyebrows in frame, captioned big dumb monkeys

And the last one…

He holds it to the sunlight and his gaze softens.

A selfie of you kissing Suguru on the cheek. It’s mostly dark, but they were definitely in the bathroom, and the flash made Suguru’s outstretched arm look pale as a ghost, but even so, there’s no mistaking the happiness captured there. He was sticking out his tongue, winking, and red as a beet so he was either drunk or you had said something or both. Your arms were wrapped around his neck, nose squished against his cheek, eyes squeezed tight as he took the shot.

Turning it over, Satoru’s heart plummets into his chest. In Suguru’s clean, blocky writing:

THE GIRL IM GOING TO MARRY ONE DAY <3

And crossed out is your reply followed by a little note:

dummy doesnt have the nerve to propose SHHH!!!! ONE DAY C:

One day.

It sounds so much emptier now.

He lowers the photo back to his lap, and glances around him, at all these scattered moments captured forever. Gathering them up again, he relives them all over again, looking at each photo for longer to see if he’s missed anything, but mostly his stare lingers on your face, and on Suguru’s, and his own, too, because he can’t remember what it felt like back then, but he is sure it feels so much better than now.

The polaroids come together a neat stack and he is careful not to scratch any of them when he clips them together. The top photo is of you with your arms wrangled around Suguru and Satoru, your face split in a maniacal laugh, their mouths open in shock, eyes bulging in how you must’ve scared them witless. 

Shoko’s messy writing at the bottom, for it must’ve been her who had taken the photo: BREAKING NEWS: Japan’s Strongest Conquered by a Woman.

A smile cracks his weary face and he runs a thumb over their faces before sliding the photos back into the envelope for safe-keeping. 

Then, he grabs the letter. His name is written again on the first flap, and he reads it three times over before unfolding the paper, not quite ready but also not sure if he ever will be.

Immediately, a faint, herbal-like scent slashed with antiseptic flows from the page and his stomach curdles as your script pours down the page. 

Swallowing, Satoru shifts and leans against the wall, hiking a foot up onto the seat and holding your inked characters to the light. There’s a date inscribed at the top.

Thursday. 

The first Thursday after you had been released from the hospital. Your last Thursday before you were back in for good.

“Shit.”

He folds the letter again and tilts his head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling.

Does he want to read this? Does he really want to fucking read this? 

Taking a deep breath, he clears his throat and lowers his gaze to stare determinedly ahead of him. The purple flowers greet him warmly and he shakes the shiver out of his body before tightening his grip on your letter and unfolding it again, forcing his eyes on the page.

My Satoru,

I sent all the pictures I had of Shoko to her, and she has some of Suguru, too. Now that I’m gone, there’s no use if I keep them. Maybe you two could share some time, laugh it up over these old memories. I know she says she can’t stand you, but to be honest, who else is there that will remember us now? Who else is there to remember Suguru for more than his bloody hands and me as more than that girl too sick to do anything but die? 

Some legacy we said we’d leave, huh.

I don’t think I told you this, but with this disease catching up to me, it’s hard not to form hypotheses on why it’s happening or how. I have quite a few theories, and, unfortunately, none of them are pleasant or unriddled with angst. By now, you’ve probably figured out it’s a curse, and if you’re smart enough to ignore how much I’ll probably deny it, that it’s some love bullshit. If you didn’t know, now you do.

I know it’s weird. Suguru is dead. It shouldn’t be happening, right?

That’s what I thought, too

You once said love manifests the most twisted curses. I never thought of it that way before, but I’m starting to think you’re right. I don’t want to curse you by dying, but I can’t help but wonder if we can control who we curse. If I hadn’t heard you say that, would I still be here? Healthy? Okay? 

I don’t know. I can’t predict alternate timelines, because I got to live one life, and that’s more than most people get. But, because I know you, you want me to entertain you. I’m sighing as I write this.

Look, I know the pain would still be there. I know I still wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for what I did, even if it was what had to be done. I know I would still miss him. I know that I would still long for the day I didn’t feel guilty for loving someone else.

If you didn’t curse me, I cursed myself. It drives me crazy that this is how the die was cast, even now, even after months where I could’ve accepted this, but at least this physical manifestation almost makes me… calm. Like seeing what this life has done to me makes me brave enough to fight it. If anything at all, the curse brought me a greater understanding of how powerful our world is in comparison to people who… are normal. The people we have to protect.

I’m sorry. Reading this back, it sounds like I’m the one cursing you now; telling you all this knowledge that can only bring you more anguish. I promise, this isn’t what it is. I just want you to understand. You couldn’t have saved me, Satoru. I couldn’t have given you the absolution you wanted, and if that’s how it is, then I just hope that one day you can look back on this and it won’t hurt anymore.

It’s always been so complicated between us, after what happened to Suguru, and after what he did, even ten years ago. What we couldn’t stop and what we had to do that day. There was always a line that I thought I couldn’t cross, or a line you didn’t want to cross, and it was shaped a lot like him. I don’t know if it was just in my head, but there was something holding us back, and I was fine dancing around it because I saw how you felt about him and I understood. Your eyes always changed when you looked at him. When you spoke of him. Even after.

Always after.

Don’t think I’m angry. I’m not blind. I know how much you two meant to each other, and I could never be angry that Suguru is so cherished. Missed. It makes everything so much harder, so much more painful.

Look, in the end, I loved him, and you did, too. And if we both still do, that’s okay. He deserved love. 

I guess it just feels like a stab in the back that it wasn’t enough. 

But life isn’t a fairytale. None of it really matters. To be honest, I wouldn’t trade any of it for a second, and I hope you wouldn’t either. 

Maybe life isn’t supposed to be lived happily, but lived contently. And I did. I am satisfied with what I’ve done, even if I wanted to do so much more. 

I’m so grateful to have known you, to have had you by my side. I hope you can say the same. 

Don’t regret my death. Remember how much fun we had when we were stupid kids, and smile. Because I don’t want you to think your best years are behind you. I want you to be happy, even if I can’t be there to see it. I want you to be excited for your future, even if I can’t be in it.

I’ll always be watching over you, so smile for me every once in a while. Even if it seems like you’ll never feel anything again. One day, I promise you will, and it won’t feel so bad.

Yours forever and ever and ever,

(Name)

.

Throat crushed, he reads one line over and over the most. He’s memorized your letter heart, but he still carries it around with him, anyway.

“I know that I would still long for the day I didn’t feel guilty for loving someone else.”

Sometimes, he just wants to imagine your hand whispering over the page, the pen tapping against your chin, your face as you wrote, the sigh that you said you heaved. Because he’ll never hear you laugh again, see your smile. Your voice will never tease his ear, your fingers will never touch his face. There is no more laugh-wrinkles set in a face always perfectly hit by sunlight, and this is all he has left. His memory, and what you’ve left behind.

It makes him laugh how almost lovestruck stupid he’s being, but… he doubts anyone blames him. As long as he’s still doing his job, as long as he’s still the Strongest, what does it matter if he carries a dead woman’s letter in his pocket everywhere?

“Warm weather, even in the evenings. That’s a bit unusual,” Nanami observes, startling Satoru and he looks up at the blond who stops by him in the gardens. The man is wearing his grey suit, as always, and his watch glimmers in the fading gold light. “How are you?”

Satoru’s fingers tighten around the letter in his hands. As usual, the urge to crumple it up, throw it into the garbage to never see it again, has reared its head after his latest re-read, but he’ll stave it off. He always manages to.

“Fine,” he replies, glancing at the startling blood red and burnt orange leaves casually. Colours seem a bit brighter, and Satoru still squints a bit against them, despite the soft light of the sunset. He doesn’t know when his Six Eyes got so sensitive to that kind of stuff, but it almost feels good to be distracted by something so trivial as sensitive eyesight. “It is a bit warm for October.” 

Nanami hums. “How are your plants doing?”

“Mine are doing good,” he says, smiling. “The tulips have gone dormant, so nothing to worry about there. The one with purple flowers, though. It’s a tough one. It took me a while to figure out what it liked, but it didn’t go dormant or anything as long as I gave it enough water and paid attention to it.”

“That’s good.” Nanami adjusts his green lenses and sighs like he’s bracing himself for something difficult. “Gojo,” he begins, but Satoru merely folds your letter up and slides it into his breast pocket, holding up a hand.

“Whatever you’re going to say, Nanami, I don’t need to hear it.”

“Are you sure?” he asks skeptically, gaze following as Satoru stands, patting his jacket. Adjusting the lapel, he turns to his friend and when he grins, it feels like it reaches his eyes behind his sunglasses for the first time in two months.

“I’ve done this before, Nanami. I’ll be fine.” He waves it away. Nanami frowns. “I’m gonna get some dinner, though. Care to join? There’s a real good ramen place in Ikebukuro that you have to try.” The blond man observes him for a moment, before shaking his head, saying he had dinner already. “Suit yourself. Next time, I’m treating you, though.” 

Lips puckered in a whistle, Satoru turns around and begins to walk away. 

A breeze sweeps through the gardens, rustling the leaves in a discordant harmony, and sneaking into his jacket, sending a slight shiver up his spine as Nanami’s voice follows after him.

“The flower she left you is the sakurasou.” Satoru stops, hands in his pockets, but he doesn’t turn around as Nanami continues, “I wasn’t certain if if you knew.”

“Nope, I didn’t. Thanks for the info.” Lifting a hand, he barely looks over his shoulder before saluting with two fingers and smiling cheekily. It’s not as forced as it used to be. In fact, it comes quite easy as he reaches into his pocket for his phone. He knows what he has to find out now. “See ya later, Nanami.”

“Good evening,” he replies, and in a blink of an eye, Satoru is gone.

On the windowsill of his empty apartment, the sakurasou soaks in the last remnants of the day before wilting against two photos.

One of four students, arms entangled, and faces framed in eternal youth.

And another immortalizing what could’ve been longer than a few shaky months if someone had been just a bit braver.

a/n: satoru’s google search result: the meaning of sakurasou - desire and long-lasting love. 

and yes, there was an actual lunar eclipse on july 27th, 2018 (28th in japan time). it was very pretty. i researched a bit about both the lunar eclipse and the medical stuff, but excuse any inaccuracies! tis but a work of fiction <3 also, fun fact: the polaroid camera is supposed to be the instax mini 90 but ive never used it so excuse those inaccuracies as well SKNDALSDKN

ngl i did wanna write an alternative ending, but i can’t see this ending any other way. this is it. this is the canon, and we got a bit of happy feelies at the end as a treat. thank you for reading!

[leportraitducadavre]

can you recommend some nango fics?

Can I?!

Romantic/fluff:

the entire history of you - by rooted.

Summary: Satoru tries perfecting Infinity only to unlock another infinity, and find a constant within.

And what if... what then? - by andaniellight

Summary: Gojo Satoru learns a new language after going back from an oversea mission. He bothers Nanami as per usual.

Contains Smut:

hokkaido - by rooted.

Summary: Nanami tastes like gin, lime, sugar, and the man who returned when he shouldn't.

two slow dancers - by sonhoedesrazao

Summary: Kento opens his eyes and looks at the man cross-legged on the couch. “I waive my right to be entertained.”

“No, no,” Gojo says generously. “I aim to please. I know!” he chirps, in that way that could be spontaneous, but has a hint of predetermined intention Kento has come to associate with a bad idea. “Let me suck your dick.”

(or: a friends with benefits nanago fic)

The Words We Speak (and the breaths in between) (Indefinite Hiatus) - by albxnx

Summary: “Ouch, that’s mean, Nanami…”

It wasn’t. Not to him. If words hurt him, Gojo Satoru, for how cursed that he was by sorcerers and curse users alike, would be a dead man.

Professional Relationship - by phantomcobie

Summary: “So, you like your driver?”

Satoru stiffens. “Who?”

“Blonde, looks like he’s never gotten a full 8 hours of sleep in his entire life.”

“Oh, Nanami.” He says his name with a slight drawl, going for indifference but landing on yearning instead.

Alternatively, Nanami is Satoru’s personal driver. They’re both Alphas. Satoru puts him through hell.

Ongoing:

When The Time Comes - by andaniellight

Summary: On Wednesday, 31st October 2018, Kento has just finished sweeping the floor, hoisting up the chairs on top of the tables, and rearranging the place peacefully until a loud thud followed by clattering noises startle him, as if something heavy just falls off and hits a shelf before dropping to the floor. The noises came from the darkest corner of the place.

Kento stills to listen more; he figures it’s just a couple of books falling off the shelf. He’s sure he’s been alone for an hour or so now.

Then, he hears a groan and immediately tightens the grip on the broomstick.

------------------------

(Bookshop AU with a little bit of a twist.)

[katsukis-foxie6]

So. I've been thinking. What was the Kyoto Sister School Exchange Event like when Gojo and Geto we're in school? Cause I just know that if I was part of the Kyoto school and know I had to face those two I'd just be looking at my teacher like "really? Do you really need me to go up to Tokyo just so the god and his best friend can once again show that they are the strongest? Cause I really just don't feel like we should be feeding into his ego."

There's several ways I can see the event playing out.

Gojo is made to sit it out/just observe.

This one honestly feels kinda like a cop out. It's just gonna be Gojo harassing who ever is watching over the exams complaining to them about how unfair it is he can't participate with his friends, meanwhile, if any of the competitions involve dealing with curses Geto will still mop the floor with anyone else there.

Kyoto chooses not to participate for the sake of their students mental health.

This one is also unlikely as Jujutsu society on the whole cares little for anyone's mental health. Although this does leave the possibility of a very angry Gojo teleporting himself to Kyoto with a Geto who is doing his best to speak reason to him while he berates the Kyoto teachers and students for being cowards.

The principals pick some weird/random forms of competition hoping that Gojo's super human abilities translate at least slightly less to these obscure forms of "combat".

This one has so many possibilities. I know im the jjk data book Gege said Gojo basically could be good at whatever he tries and chooses to just not have hobbies besides eating sweets cause of it which I have thoughts on but that is for another post. With only a few hours notice I feel like he can't be *as* good at it as he would be exorcising curses. Several options I have in mind for this.

Croquet. Lawn darts. Literally any cooking competition from food network as it will just turn into nailed it from nextflix. Underwater basket weaving. Curling (like from the winter Olympics). Rythmic gymnastics.

These are just a few of many possibilities but the best part is I just know whatever bullshit they pick Nanami will be slowly dying inside cause it's all Gojo's fault they have to resort to these ridiculous competitions instead of something like battles. Meanwhile Gojo managed to tangle himself of in the gymnastics ribbon *again* and Geto had to untangle him. Shoko ends up healing even more injuries than if they'd just had battles. Gojo never again will be allowed to touch a lawn dart. Haibara has the perfect enthusiasm for sweeping during curling. Ijichi actually can make lovely baskets underwater. Basically evenone discovers a new talent or hobby while Geto has to stop Gojo from infinite voiding the teachers and equipment.

[chaotic-noceur]

malaysia truly asia

paring: Nanami Kento x Malaysian!Reader

summary: the story of how Nanami had come to know about Malaysia and his first trip to the country he had longed to visit

warnings + contents: food/eating, beach, multilingual reader (malay is mentioned, the rest is implied), malaysia references (contextual notes are provided!)

a/n: I never thought knowing the Malaysian slogan would come in handy but here I am. Words cannot express how excited my Malaysian heart got when Nanami mentioned Malaysia so I'm hurling this into the tumblr void for anyone interested :)

contextual notes + malay transalation

terima kasih = thank you

ringgit = Malaysian currency

tokyo is an hour ahead of kuantan

sunrise is around 7am in Malaysia, anytime from 4-6am in Tokyo (according to google)

roti canai = 'Indian-influenced flatbread dish' (wikipedia)

roti tisu = similar to roti canai, except thinner and shaped like a cone

pasar malam = night market, usually on closed off sections of road

flag erasers are often collected by school kids who purchase them from the on campus bookshop

"You're not from here." He says it with such assertion that there was no room to deny it, not that you were going to. You quirk an eyebrow up at him instead from your place on your bed. He nods to the english book currently in your hands as if it's a way of answer. Your head tilts to one side and he sighs before continuing. "Your Japanese is good, but you speak it with hints of... uncertainty, like it's not your mother tongue." I would know, he doesn't say. Your gaze falls from his bashfully and he seems to realise the implication of his words. "I apologise, I hadn't meant it as an insult. I was merely hoping to ask about your childhood."

Your mouth forms an o before you reply with a curt "I grew up in Malaysia and then my family moved here." He seems to consider your answer for a moment before nodding and returning his attention to his book. The pair of you fall silent, residual noise from Gojo's graduation party filters in to fill the gap. Before long, you notice his gaze flitting around the room as he shifts in his seat, a sure sign that he was looking for an opportunity to speak more. You chuckling lightly before putting your book away. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything." Your eyes narrow slightly to deduce if he's teasing. But his eyes hold nothing but genuine curiosity. It was rare for Nanami to ever display his true emotions but there was something about his eyes that was always readable to you. So you talk. You tell him about the road trips you used to take up the peninsula, showed him photos of your childhood, pointed out the few bits of home that were scattered around your room. He clings on to every word as you tell him about the near-constant summer, complained about the humidity, and reminisced about the food that you dearly missed.

Truthfully, you are surprised by his interest. Few people had even heard of the small, dual-part country, even fewer have shown any interest in learning more. Maybe this is the moment you fell in love with him. Or at least, it's the moment you accept your feelings for him as something beyond an passing crush but as something worth fighting for.

“I hope we can visit it some day,” he says when you finish.

We, not I, you think. Your heart flutters in your chest at the realisation. He is seemingly unaware at the implication. You reply with a simple “maybe”, refusing to give in to the false hope that he returns your feelings.

Some months later, you find him huddled in a quiet corner of the Jujustu High library engrossed in a book of Malaysian history, a small notepad open beside him. Where he acquired the book was beyond you. With nothing better to do with your rare moment of free time, you shrug your shoulders before heading towards him, making noises as you move so as to not startle him when you settle beside him.

You're flipping through your book in search of the bookmark when he speaks, "would you like me to read to you?" You turn to look at him so fast he's concerned you might have gotten whiplash. His cheeks are flushed slightly and he refuses to meet your eye. You blink at him for several moments and he clears his throat awkwardly. "I just - well, I was hoping to practice my English with you. It's um.." he rubs at the base of his neck, "it's been a while since I've spoken it."

"Oh," you begin for lack of words. For as long as you've known him, he has never once mentioned being multilingual. Then again, he rarely ever talked about himself. Preferring to let Yuu take the lead in conversations or to direct questions away from himself. "Sure, I'd love to help!"

"Te-li-ma kah-sir?"

"Te-ri-ma ka-sih," you correct as you swipe through the selection of in-flight movies. Nanami repeats after you and you nod before smiling at him.

"And what about 'where is the toilet?'"

Your tapping stops momentarily. "Formally, or informally?" He deadpans at you and you chuckle in response. "Di manakah tandas?" His pen glides along his pocket notebook before he repeats after you once more. "Love, you know you'll be fine with just English right?"

He drops his pen and takes a sip of beer from the clear plastic cup before responding. "I know, but it's a sign of respect to make an attempt to learn the official language." A soft smile graces your face before you resume your scrolling. You really are the luckiest human on the planet to be able to call him yours.

It's mid-afternoon when you finally leave Kuatan Airport. Travel fatigue begins to set in on the taxi ride to the beach resort Nanami had booked. You loop your arm with his before settling you head on his shoulder. Instead of telling you that you should've slept on the plane like he would've done if it was anyone else, he simply graces your forehead with a kiss before returning his gaze to the map on his phone.

Checking into the resort is a smooth process. Nanami makes quick work of talking to the receptionist before the pair of you make your way to your room, the resort porter guiding you. Nanami had been inclined to refuse but the porter rejected his offer. The pair of you make light conversation with the resort porter as you walk, Nanami using his arsenal of Malay when he can.

When you arrive at your room, Nanami takes your bags from the porter as you unlock the door. He settles the bags inside as you shake the porter's hand in thanks, passing along a 5 ringgit bill. They thank you with a bow before taking their leave. Nanami shoots you a look of surprise when he notices the action. "I wasn't aware that there was a tipping culture in Malaysia."

"There isn't, not to the extent that westerner do anyway. It's really just porters and housekeeping." You shrug.

He scowls at your slightly. "Regardless, you should have informed me," he grumbles. You chuckle at him before patting his chest lightly, avoiding his sunglasses that hang from the v of his button up.

"Well, you'll have plenty of opportunities to leave a tip for housekeeping." You're staying here for two week after all.

As Nanami does a quick sweep of the room, you set up the wifi for your respective devices before making your way to the snack cabinet. You whoop when you find a packet of your favourite childhood snack. Nanami pokes his head out from the bathroom at the sound, only to raise a curious eyebrow when he finds you crouch on the floor, holding the packet as if it was your child. "What?" you exclaim, "I haven't seen these in years!" His arms shoot up in surrender before he returns to his checks, his lips curling into a smile at your antics.

When Nanami returns to the bedroom, he finds you asleep on the sofa, phone slipping from your grip. He removes it before it falls as he rubs at his eyes as the travel fatigue begins to hit him too. The long flight and layover hadn't done either of you any favours but he supposes that what he gets for choosing a city with a small airport.

He changes you out of your travel clothes before moving you to the bed. Once he stashes your valuables into the safe, he freshens himself up before crawling in beside you. You smell of an airport and the mist the flight attendants had sprayed in the cabin but he doesn't care as he nuzzles his nose into your neck.

This is peace, he thinks. No missions, no curses and no Gojou Satoru. Just the two of you and a (mostly) endless supply of sunshine. He likes the thought of that.

When he wakes from his nap, you’re no longer by his side. He panics for a moment before he turns and finds you sitting out on the wooden deck, admiring the ocean view as the sun begins to set. Raking a hand through his hair, he climbs out of bed and makes his way to you. You smile at him as he sits down before laying your head against his shoulder, his arm looping around your waist.

“Sorry I threw us off schedule,” you say after a while.

You feel his head shake against yours before he says, “as long as you're by my side, there's nothing to apologise for. We’re on holiday. Let’s enjoy the peace while it lasts.”

“Afraid Gojou’s going to appear out of thin air?” you tease. He groans at the mention of his senior's name.

"Don't mention that name again. You'll jinx us." This time, you can't help laugh against him. You peck his cheek in consolidation and he think maybe, just maybe, for once in his life, Gojou will keep his meddling fingers out of things that are none of his concern.

The next two weeks go by in a blur of delicious food, sandy toes and a ridiculous amount of sweat. If there was one thing you didn't miss about Malaysia, it was the humidity. But it never stopped Nanami from intertwining his fingers with yours or ghosting a kiss onto your temple. The pair of you had quickly settled into fragments of a routine since you had first arrived.

Every morning, Kento watches the sunrise from the cushioned seat on the wooden deck. The first time it happened was unintentional. His body had become habituated to waking up early for work. That, combined with the 1 hour time difference and the fact that the sun rose significantly later in Malaysia, meant that he had woken up well before the sky had shown any indication of light. You were still fast asleep, unmoving even as he slowly untangled himself from you. So as to not disturb you, he made himself a cup of tea and read from his Kindle on the wooden deck until the sun had began poking out of the horizon.

Then it just became his own little ritual. On occasions where you wake with him, the pair of you take a walk along the beach. The ocean waves kiss your bare feet to the beat of a song you do not know as you talk about your plans for the day. You stumble across a sea turtle laying her eggs one morning and the pair of you settle onto the sand, far enough away as to not spook her, but close enough to marvel at the rare sight.

Nanami pulls out his phone after a while to record a quick video and sends it to Yuuji. Not long after, Gojou attempts to facetime him and Nanami turns off his phone without hesitation. You chuckle at their antics before you feel your phone vibrating in your pocket. Nanami declines all of Gojou calls for you and he gives up after 7 rejections. In hindsight, Nanami really should have seen that coming but he blames the cloud of holiday bliss that fogs his mind.

The rest of your days are spent enjoying the ocean breeze (or more often, the ocean heat), exploring the local attractions, immersing yourselves in the culture and best of all, devouring authentic Malaysian food. Nanami had made a list of the most recommended dining locations ranging from high end restaurants to road side food stalls and you make it your shared mission to visit every single one before you leave.

At each shop, he informs you of the best rated dishes but trusts your instincts/cravings for the most part. You point out any items that he 'has to try, at least once' and he asks questions about the items that pique his interest. More often than not, the pair of you will order a variety of dishes and share them, not able to settle on just one. Being the bread lover that he is, he takes a liking to roti canai. Although he isn't particularly unadventurous with his choices, always settling for a plain roti canai and opting for experimenting with curries instead. So, you take the plunge for him, knowing he'll likely be intrigued by the pointy hat shaped crepe that sits before you — he later learns that it's a roti tisu, or the stuffed roti that arrives. (He thanks you later.)

On your last night there, the pair of you make your way to the biggest pasar malam in the city. Nanami had a list of local fruits that he was hoping to buy while you had a list of souvenir ideas for the kids and your coworkers. You walk hand in hand, following the flow of footfall as your eyes scan the stalls. Nanami doesn't particularly know what he's looking for as he passes the snack stalls but he's enjoying himself all the same as he watches you converse with the stall keepers in a foreign tongue. He slips out of his daze when he feels a cold packet being pressed against his hand. "What's this?" He slips his wrist through the plastic loop and grips the tied-off section of the bag.

"Sugar cane!" you chirp, radiating an excited aura that rivalled Yuuji. Must be the atmosphere, he thinks. He takes a sip through the straw as you receive your change. Sweetness floods his taste buds but don’t overwhelm them. He savours the refreshing coolness it brings, contrasting the humidity. You look to him expectedly as you tug him further down the street. “Good?” you ask over the noise from the crowd.

“Acceptable.” There's a look of content tugging on his features that contradicts his tone and a soft smile tugs at your lips before you're promptly distracted by another stall.

When you finally arrive at the fruit stalls, you’re armed with a packet of cheap flag erasers for the students and an assortment of sugary snacks for the school staff room. The crowd had dwindled as you moved further towards the back of the market, allowing you a clear view of most of the stalls before you.

Nanami tugs on your intertwined hands before leading you towards a stall with mountains of rambutans and mangosteens. He nods politely at the elderly couple manning the store and accepts the plastic basket they hand him. Out of the corner of your eye, you notice the smile that tugs at his lips when they greet him in English. Undoubted pleased to be able to use his skills.

“I assume I should pick the ones that are not blackened and soft?” he says to you when the couple finish explaining the pricing. You nod in response as you begin carefully placing fruits into the basket. Nanami mimics your actions beside you before his attention is grabbed by the fruits to your right. “Is that what I believe it to be?”

You follow his gaze as he speaks. When they fall on spiky green fruits and packets of yellow, your eyes light up in delight. “Mhmm,” you hum before turning back to face him. There’s a sparkle of wonder in his eyes that makes you laugh before you turn to speak to the woman, “how much for a packet of durian?”

You look wistfully at the whole durians as the lady bags your items. As much as you would love to see Nanami use his 7:3 technique on the fruit (you can almost sense your ancestors rolling over in their graves at the thought), you know you won't be able to finish it off by yourselves. Besides, there is no guarantee that Nanami wouldn't hate it.

Rather uneventfully, Nanami does not hate durian on instinct — "the smell is uninviting, but the fruit itself is decent," he says as he helps himself to another. So, with the remnants of fruit juice clinging to your lips and the lingering smell of durian on your breath (despite your best efforts to get rid of both), the pair of you now walk along the beach's shoreline. Your pinkies are looped as you rejoice in the complete and utter sense of peace. There are no curses to be worrying about, no impromptu visit from a certain colleague. And for the first time in a long long time, Nanami feels like he can let his guard down. He feels like he doesn’t need to keep looking over his shoulder all the time. He doesn't feel the weight of the country's safety settling in his chest.

“We should come back some time,” he says as the waves lap at your feet gently.

You raise an eyebrow at him, “not sick of fending off mosquitoes and melting in the heat yet?” There’s a teasing glint in your eyes and he chuckles along with you.

He smiles at you then — genuinely, without fear of showing his emotions, shakes his head and kisses your temple gently. “Maybe we can visit your family next time. You can show me where you grew up, your favourite places, where you had your first date...” You smack him across his chest for his teasing while he chuckles at the action.

“Maybe one day.” He interlocks your hands then and ghosts a kiss over your knuckles before looping it over your shoulder to pull you into his chest. One day... when you’re both rid of this curse-riddled life.

[pseudowho]

Yet Another Nanami Kento Sex Pollen Fic, Part One

Owing our Reader for pleasuring him after his prior drunk escapades, Kento allows himself to be thoroughly used after the Reader encounters some rather unusual pollen.

Read Part Two HERE!

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

"Hey, darling. Home soon? I was going to run out and grab some wine."

You smiled warmly at Kento's voice over the phone, brushing your mission clothes off with one hand while you surveyed the wreck of your surroundings. The factory you were in seemed ancient, despite its abandonment in just the last decade. Its back wall, you noted, was formed of collapsed brickwork, opening out onto a patch of hazy woodland. You were curious to investigate.

"Soon," you promised Kento, "the main Curse body is gone. I'm just going to do a last sweep around. You know, I--"

"-- like to be thorough," Kento parroted you, knowing you so well. You rolled your eyes at him. Hearing him chuckle, he reassured you, "No, no, I like it. You're thorough. It's a turn-on, I promise." Laughing lightly as you stepped over damp brickwork and ivy, you heard the jangle of Kento's keys over the phone.

"Well, Sir, if I'm that much of a turn-on, you'd best get that wine. I'm ready for our evening." Kento gave you an approving hum, and bid you get home soon.

Hanging up, you stepped into the humidity of what appeared to be a totally enclosed patch of woodland, sprung like an oasis, half-in and half-out of the crumbled factory walls. Beautiful flowers, wild with a heady scent, sprouted from beds of moss and ivy, and low-hanging trees dropped jewels of dew onto the springy floor. You felt yourself becoming heavy-headed and warm. Bending down to inspect a particularly beautiful pink-budded succulent, you squeaked in shock when the buds puffed open into a surprising shade of yellow, coating you in a fine mist of pollen.

Sneezing, you backed away. Bumping against the residual wall, you noticed the forest starting to crumble away from the edges, disintegrating in the same way as the main Curse-body had. With a sinking feeling in your stomach, you recognised you had nearly been so foolish as to walk straight into the remains of its dying belly. Telling yourself off for your gullibility, you watched from the factory as the forest faded away, leaves rising like ashes into the mist.

You felt flushed, heart thumping behind your breasts as you left the factory, finding Ijichi waiting patiently for you outside the veil. Ijichi smiled to you, bowing, thanking you for your services. He held the car door open for you, and you climbed in, grateful for the chance to sit down.

Except, as the car rumbled to life, every small vibration, every graze of the cool leather against your flushed skin, every time you caught the smell of Ijichi's shampoo, you felt the agonising thud of arousal between your legs. You mentally shook yourself when catching yourself looking Ijichi up and down from the back seat, admiring how his hands managed the steering wheel so smoothly, and you were appalled that this wonderful, kind, gorgeous man didn't have a girlfriend yet. Maybe you could be his girlfriend, you thought fleetingly, you'd know how to treat him right--

"Everything okay?" Ijichi caught your eyes in the mirror, full of concern as you gasped at yourself and slapped your own cheeks. Cheeks pink, breasts heaving with deep breaths and underwear increasingly wet, you knew you needed to get home to Kento. There was absolutely nobody else you needed right now, and surely this would wear off, surely he would help you deal with your desire as you had helped with his, in the shower that night--

"I'm okay, Ijichi, I'm fine!" You babbled, arms folded across your chest to hide your pebbled nipples, "Just tired! You know how it is. Busy day." You laughed nervously, hiding your face in shame as Ijichi politely bowed his head and continued to drive you home.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Kento dropped his keys onto the shelf, slipping out of his shoes and into house slippers as he leaned back against the door, shutting it with a click.

His heart gave a happy leap when he heard you rummaging around the bathroom; you were home. Rolling the wine bottle in his broad palm, he fetched two glasses. In the process of uncorking the bottle, he pretended not to notice as you walked up behind him. He regretted feigning ignorance when he felt sharp teeth nip into the back of his shoulder.

Kento spun, startled, and barely had time to save the open bottle of wine when he was pushed with surprising force back against the table. All thoughts and blood rushed straight to his cock as he felt your body, insistent and hot press against his. Kento offered no resistance at first as you grabbed the back of his neck, fingers sinking into his hair to pull him down for a kiss, but stopped immediately at the feverish and desperate look in your eyes.

Kento gripped your shoulders and held you at arm's length, scowling deeply as he appraised you. Still in mission-wear. Flushed. Eyes glazed. Heat radiating off you.

"You're...hurt? What happened? Tell me." Kento ordered, already moving to grab his keys- you needed Shoko's attention. You moved instantly to block Kento's path, eyes fixed on him and pupils dilated as you panted, arousal thrumming through you in waves, your blood rushing in your ears and between your legs. Not swayed, and firm in his decision, Kento restrained you effortlessly, one arm trapping both of yours behind your back, and another arm diagonally across your breasts.

As Kento's arms pressed your body firmly against his own, you moaned and Kento short-circuited. Not letting go, breath tickling the side of your face, Kento stared at you.

"What happened?" he repeated. You pressed your head back against his shoulder, whimpering in frustration.

"The Curse was very plant-like I suppose, and it had a garden, and these pollen pods just exploded all over me, and since then I've just...I just...god Kento please just fuck me, I'm begging you."

With a blush, it finally clicked for Kento-  you weren't hurt, you were uncontrollably horny. He gulped, his tongue feeling thick in his mouth, and cock hardening against his thigh. In a measured voice, Kento replied.

"You're in no fit state to demand I fuck you. You're under the influence of that curse, and I won't take advantage of you like that."

"Who said anything about you taking advantage?" You whined, rubbing your arse back against his hardening cock, "I'm asking if you'll let me take advantage of you." You squirmed against Kento, one of your pinned hands sneaking between the buttons of his shirt to rub his V-line. Your head turned sharply and you bit Kento's neck hard enough to draw blood. Kento yelped in alarm, now moving you swiftly forwards and pressing you into the wall, using one arm and one knee between your legs to pin you there.

"You minx," he gasped. Wiping at his neck with one hand and holding your wrists in another, Kento watched as you squirmed against the wall, thighs clamped furiously together for relief, blush creeping down your breasts.

"Kento, please," you begged, "I helped you. When you came home, drunk. And you promised you wouldn't refuse me."

"You and I both know that was--"

"It was no different!" Kento let his silence hang in the air. He knew as soon as he let you go, you'd be undressing him in seconds. He was furious to find himself thrilled at the thought. Being used as your toy sounded absolutely delicious.

"If I let you use me for some relief, but it doesn't work, I'll be taking you to Shoko immediately. Understood?" You nodded frantically, hands clenching and unclenching desperately in Kento's grasp. Kento walked you slowly back to the table, and you heard him knock back his glass of wine. You felt a glass placed to your lips, and Kento's smooth voice in your ear, "Bottoms up," as you gulped the wine, the alcohol hitting your heightened senses immediately, and your need for Kento to be buried inside you was suddenly furious and burning.

Kento let go of your wrists, and you jumped him, quite literally, arms locked behind his neck and legs around his waist. Kento grunted in surprise as your lips crashed against his with bruising force, the taste of blood and red wine on his tongue as you forced yours into his mouth, immediately dominant in a way that aroused him to his very core. Kento's hands cupped your arse perfectly, and you shifted your weight so Kento slammed back onto the table, feet on the floor as you straddled him, clothed pussy grinding against his cock.

Kento groaned at the contact, and submitted fully when you pinned his wrists to the table, leaning forward to bite and suck his neck. Kento shivered with pleasure, feeling every mark that he would see in the mirror the next morning. Drunk on the novelty of being so used, Kento offered absolutely no resistance as your hand slipped to his groin, squeezing his clothed erection almost too hard through the thin material. Kento shuddered, coughing in surprise and bucking into your hand.

Your hand left his cock far too soon, and you moved up Kento's body, now pinning his wrists with your knees as you began to undo his tie. Kento watched you with absolute focus as you then began to undress yourself, clothes being flung off at speed, until you were bare breasted on top of him, nipples hard as bullets, and you absent-mindedly draped Kento's tie around your neck as you surveyed him like your favourite meal.

"Oh, fuck," Kento intoned, as you ripped open his shirt, hearing buttons skitter away across the table. Moving down to grind against him again, and replacing your knees on his wrists with your hands, you bit his nipple, leaving lovebites across his heaving chest. Kento's head swam with arousal and anticipation, hands eager to reach you, to give you your own way, to be inside you.

You were focused, predatory in your need, and closed your eyes as you kicked your trousers and underwear off, pussy now totally naked and glistening with your arousal, leaving a wet patch on Kento's groin as you humped his clothed cock fervently. Kento was completely pinned, moaning and gasping as his cock twitched with need. You felt like you were on fire, your clit throbbing as you felt your first orgasm approaching, almost there but not close enough, body and mind still feeling too empty to climax. Your torso leaned closer to Kento's as you tried to increase the pressure and he quickly freed his arms from under yours.

Sliding one hand between your legs, he hurriedly pressed his two middle fingers upwards, deep into the heat and wetness of your pussy, his thumb quickly finding your clit and rubbing harsh circles on it. You cried out and bucked, riding his hand, and Kento nearly came from the feeling of your pussy clenching his fingers alone. You had reached down, both hands holding Kento's wrist, grasping his hand in place as your cunt fluttered around it, wet and needy, your cries becoming higher and louder, desperate to abate the burning arousal that had turned your skin electric.

Kento felt your desperation, watching you, near tears, trying to cum on his fingers. Reaching down, he swiftly unbuttoned his trousers and freed his leaking cock, pressing it up into you without warning, not even removing his fingers, and pinching your clit between his thumb and forefinger.

Your orgasm hit you in hot waves, tears streaming down your cheeks as you called Kento's name over and over, feeling stretched and overfull with his fingers and cock still inside you. Feeling next to no relief post-orgasm, you slammed your hips down on Kento's, chasing the fullness his hand and straining erection gave you.

Kento clenched his teeth as you rode him, refusing to cum until you'd had your fill of him, vision and heart full of you clad in nothing but his tie. One hand remaining between your legs, and the other providing aggressive attention to your breasts and nipples, Kento felt your sweat and cum drip down his balls, groin now soaked with the intoxicating smell of you. He continued rubbing circles on your clit and squeezed his fingers forward against your internal walls, feeling your cervix bump his fingertips, as you shook and shuddered your way through a second orgasm.

Kento removed his hands to grasp your hips, your wetness dropping along his hand. Lifting you up and ramming you back down onto his cock, you slumped forwards onto him, a ragdoll.

Determined to pleasure you until you could barely stand, Kento tilted your hips against his until his cock pumped in and out of you at the perfect angle, his eyes fixed on where his fingers sank into the plush fat of your arse, jiggling as he slammed you down onto him. He hissed as your nails dug crescents into his shoulders, and you pleaded against his chest-- "please please please cum inside me, don't stop, don't stop" -- while his hips bucked you upwards, feet cramping as his toes pressed hard onto the floor, lights in his eyes as he felt his balls and abdomen clench, his approaching orgasm about to overwhelm his stamina. He felt your teeth and hot little pants against his chest.

Your hips couldn't keep up with his pace, hearing his moans rumble through his chest with every thrust, until you felt his cock jump and spurt hot seed inside you, cervix wet and belly warm and full. You lay on top of him, shuddering, feeling the heat in your body gradually dissipate. Kento stroked your hair, strong arms holding you to him, planting soft kisses on top of your head.

"Better?" he inquired, toying with the tie around your neck. You blushed, bashful after your performance, nodding and humming against his neck. "Much," you reassured him. He tapped your bum playfully, "You go shower and get cleaned up. I'll tidy up out here."

You climbed off him with a sigh, feeling his cum drip down your thighs as he slipped out of you, and you padded away to the bathroom.

In a few minutes, sated, sleepy, and feeling the hot water tumble over you, you were struck with a thought. Opening the shower door, you called out to Kento.

"I was just thinking, maybe you shouldn't touch those clothes? There's probably still loads of--" You paused, hearing Kento sneeze and swear in the next room.

A few tense moments passed, the time coiling up in your tummy like snakes, and the bathroom door creaked open slowly. Kento filled the doorway, shoulders tense as he stared you down like you were prey, slowly stroking his rapidly hardening cock.

"Oh shit," you breathed, naked and helpless under the hot water as he approached you, eyes burning with intent.

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REQUEST #1 COMPLETE!

And just think, Kento never even took off his slippers. Get you a man who can rail you like that with his house slippers on.

[rahuratna]

This has been, admittedly, sitting in my drafts until I decided to complete and edit this evening. The first of my holiday fics!

Synopsis: Nanami, Ijichi and Nitta foil a bank robbery with a cursed twist ...

Genre: Suspense

Contents: Canon-typical violence, foul language, reader character narrator, reader perspective of sorcerers.

When he’d joined, Ueno had gone on about the fun they’d have, the risk, the high of getting away with things like this. It was a release, a way to escape the drudgery of his long shifts at the convenience store and the hollow-eyed, resentful presence of his mother at home. If that place could even be called a home.

He’d never signed up for this.

In the beginning, they’d just wandered the brightly lit streets of nighttime Shinjuku, vandalizing the shops Ueno’s boss had told them to target, getting into scuffles with rival gangs, keeping an eye on the activities of people of importance. Each time he’d left home, the door would swing shut behind him like the unseen gateway to another realm. The street before him would be familiar, but not, the night air crisp with possibility. He’d never been aware of the perilous web being woven around him, of the fact that none of these jaunts were disjointed activities, each with their isolated goal.

And now he was here, in the back of a dark blue minivan with no windows, the humid damp of the balaclava he wore sticking to his face, making breathing difficult. He couldn’t do this. He’d never known they would ask him to – but there was no time for that. No time to think about the number of times he shouldn’t have walked out that door, the number of times he should have turned Ueno down, the many, many nights he should have decisively put an end to any and all association with the present company.

They were crowded in on all sides, shoulder to shoulder, the cramped space filled with the smell of sour sweat, cheap cologne and the heavy funk of strong tobacco. These men would have no patience for a boy who backed out, even if he said he was young and stupid and regretted everything he’d done. They were wily, experienced, razor-edged and slick with survival instinct. There was no way out for him, not now.

The power of his fear roots him in place, even as his body rebels, his muscles catch and quiver, his breathing hitches sporadically and his bowels cramp and protest. If only … if only he were someone else, someone more equipped to deal with this. If only something, anything, would take over his body and mind, just for tonight. If only something would come along and turn him into the man he should be in this situation; fearless, aggressive, raring for battle, a spitting cobra rearing for a shot between the eyes. But he was not any of those things.

And they were on their way to rob a bank.

You'd made it something of a game over the years. Each person that swam into view in the window of your counter formed a portrait of an unknown life, one you tried your best to embroider.

Head, shoulders, knees and toes, just like the song you used to sing in elementary school. What would the shifting window bring you today?

Ah, here was a grandmother, feeble and infirm. Collecting her pension fund and rambling about her three adult children, including her son who was staying for the month. Most of that pension probably ended up in his pocket.

And here was the man who came every Tuesday since three months ago. Sweating, nervous, smelling faintly of cheap perfume. You'd bet your whole salary that each trip to the bank was followed by a sharp detour out the door to the seedy motel nearby.

Then, the antique shop owner, the family name a well-known one in the area. Pity his father gambled most of their inheritance away. Everyone knew that he lived in the once-fabled traditional home, now dilapidated and infested with mould, a Havisham who rotted beside his antiques in the wedding dress of former renown. His cash withdrawal was minimal, enough to feed him for a week at a time.

Today was spectacularly ordinary. As a financial services representative at this particular branch for an odd five years now, you'd come to recognise your usual patrons, along with the occasional tourist or visitor who'd pay a once-off visit. These were usually recognisable by their clothing, or accents.

Here were two such individuals right now. You'd definitely never seen them before. The man looked to be in his late twenties, wearing the harried, hollow-cheeked look of someone much older. His dark hair was neatly parted, a pair of rectangular spectacles enhancing the earnest, studious nature of his face.

Beside him was a girl with bright blonde hair in an untidy bob. In severe contrast to the man's sober, dark suit, she wore a pair of baggy black jeans, a crop top and oversized jacket, unzipped, over it all. The glitter eyeshadow she wore only served to emphasize her thousand-yard-stare and she looked you up and down appraisingly.

Oh. It was time to adjust to your customer service face. Feeling the stiff muscles of your lower jaw stretch into a wide, practiced smile, you bowed slightly.

"Good day. How may I be of assistance?"

"Ah, I'd like to open an account for my niece here. She's starting college next year and just landed a new job to help pay things off. A flexi-save option would be nice."

"Of course! Mister ...?"

"Ijichi. And my niece here is Miss Nitta."

"Pleasure to meet you."

You turn to the girl in question, eyebrows raising in slight query.

"Would you like to have a look at our options? There are varying interest rates with different benefits to each type of savings account you can open."

She shrugged with the kind of nonchalance that could only come with long practice.

"Uncle's handling all that. I just do the legwork and get my shit together. That's the deal."

Wow. The youth of tod -

You clear your throat and turn to your PC screen, avoiding the errant thought that had come dangerously close to leaping out of your mouth.

"Of course. Give me a minute."

The fairly youthful uncle nods, adjusting his glasses. He looks slightly tense, the poor thing. You would too, if you were planning the financial future of a niece like this. You wondered if he took care of her full-time.

The niece, Nitta, was focused elsewhere, eyes roaming across the high-ceilinged atrium, the neat and ordered rows of seats where clients waited for service, the row of reinforced glass windows that gave way to many small booths like your own.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw her glancing in one particular direction more often than not. Following the path of her gaze, you own is arrested by the sight of a tall blonde man in a dark suit, red patterned tie vivid against his white shirt. He stands in the queue of a neighbouring window, eyes inscrutable behind dark lenses.

Well, you could hardly fault her for looking at that. He has a stern, cold face, but his chiseled features and imposing stature make him hard to look away from. Speaking of which, you had a job to do.

Turning back to your screen, you complete the series of prompts, until you're finally within the authorized programme for creating a new account.

"All right, can I see some identifica- "

A scream tears through the still peace of the atrium, carving a sudden flaw in of the passage of time. In that moment, you do not think, you do not feel, and your body seems foreign to you. A group of people, dressed in black, waving weapons that were definitely acquired illegally, charge into the open space. Still frozen, you watch as they move like an oil spill across the room, smooth, practiced, herding the panicking crowd with sharp, barked commands and prods of their weapons.

Ijichi and Nitta duck down immediately, and you vaguely hear the bespectacled man shouting at you to do the same. Finally, dragged against the opposing current of shock, your body responds to your wishes. Dropping boneless to your knees, you reach up, fumbling for the panic button beneath your desk.

You press and hold, releasing after 20 seconds. Your mind still hasn't fully caught up with what is occurring, but your body is guiding you through the motions, stilted and half conscious.

The gang that has infiltrated the banking hall seals the doors. One of the burly men is obviously the leader, standing at the centre of the chaos while his lackeys form a co-ordinated chain of carried instructions, the spokes of a turning wheel. One of the gang comes right up to your counter, screaming instructions across to you.

You are still slow to respond, but panic has now asserted itself and you let out a sob of a breath, scrambling to raise your hands above your head and stand as he tells you to. You, and the rest of the employees behind the safety of the barrier, are forced at gunpoint to open up the inter-leading door, flocking out among whimpers, soft pleas and muffled cries to the atrium floor where you are made to lie down along with the rest of the crowd.

You find yourself near Ijichi and his niece, Nitta. You meet his eyes with a blank, stricken stare, mouth half opening in an apology, before you realise how stupid and pointless such a thing would be. How could you have known? You still can't quite grasp what is happening all around you.

Strangely enough, it is Ijichi who counters your disoriented glance with a square sense of reassurance. There is something ... different about him. He seems surprisingly calm, a far cry from the nervousness he showed earlier while opening a bank account for his niece, of all things. The niece in question is also unusually collected, her body coiled with the readiness of physical conditioning. That isn't a normal response to this situation, you're sure of it. She's too young to -

But there isn't time to speculate on this. The gang is rushing behind the tills, one of the managers held at gunpoint pushed roughly to the interior vault where his superior security clearance will allow him to gain access.

Granted, your security isn't state of the art, but it is fair enough to cause some small delay. There are five different checkpoints, each with a unique pass code, and a thumbprint, voice recognition and retina scanner that need to be applied simultaneously.

Turning your attention back to the interior of the atrium, you notice that one of the gang members is behaving a little erratically. His eyes, visible through the small opening of his balaclava, seem just as terrified as that of the people he is holding hostage. His blue, long sleeve shirt is soaked through with large, darker patches of perspiration, creeping down from his armpits, neckline and across his back. His breathing is harsh, audible from where you lie as still as possible, and the way he is holding his weapon is far from expert.

There is a small movement from beside you as ijichi straightens slightly. He is, for some reason, watching that young assailant like a hawk, eyes steady, something like recognition stirring in their depths. Nitta has moved to a crouching position, one of her hands braced on his back.

What are they doing? Surely -

And then, the boy in the balaclava stiffens, as if stuck with a knife. He is now staring past the man next to him as if dazed, his limbs as limp as a marionette whose strings have been abruptly cut. The gun tilts dangerously floorward, and one of his companions yells to him to -

"Get the fuck back in line!"

Something, the likes of which you've never seen, is occurring right before your disbelieving eyes. A jet of viscosity, black as pitch, shoots from the boy's mouth, tearing past the balaclava. The remnants of the knitted fabric land a few feet away, exposing his pale, terrified face, the damp strands of hair that cling to his forehead, the strange look of relief that briefly crosses his features before his eyes close.

They re-open, and you utter a small, involuntary scream. Behind his lids, two neon rings of purple form a flickering gateway to madness, the slow, unhinged smile that sweeps up the corners of his mouth as unnatural as his posture. The men around him pause, exchanging uncertain glances, some of them even re-directing their weapons to his quivering form.

The boy, if he can still be called as such, takes little to no note of the threat from his own former comrades. The crowd of hostages has now noticed the change, cries of alarm ringing out as they see the boy's body contort, arms and legs snapping and twisting to distorted, elongated proportions. One of the other gang members shouts out a hoarse warning before firing a round into the boy's contorted head and chest.

He is ... unharmed. Instead, the nightmarish head sweeps back, the neck stalk-like, flexible. The features seem even more inhuman, his grotesque smile now jagged-edged, the teeth sliding like nails past the shredded, bloody lips. The heist completely forgotten, the men in dark clothes back away, yelling in fear and consternation, weapons clutched in sweat-slicked palms.

What is this? What is -

You scramble backwards, coming up against a firm, warm palm in the small of your back. The muscles of your abdomen and legs are now plagued by small tremors as you turn your head to see Nitta behind you. She doesn't seem quite so young and nonchalant any longer. There is a certain hard quality to her, a readiness for what is to come that takes you completely off guard. Beyond her, Ijichi shoots you a quick glance of apology before nodding at his 'niece'.

His hand raises towards the glass of the atrium ceiling, the cloudy sky outside clearly visible. Nitta mirrors his pose, palm pressed flat against the smooth tile beneath her. Their voices rise above the cacophony, a steady chant that somehow resonates in the furthest reaches of your being.

"Emerge from the darkness ... "

The vision of horror that used to be a human sweeps out an arm, narrowly missing the men who scream and return fire. It seems that he - it - is still learning the use of that body. It stumbles, clawed feet scraping across the floor, leaving deep grooves in its wake.

" ... blacker than darkness ..."

Out of the corner of your eye, you see the group of civilians who has been standing at the counter being ushered to safety further into the lounge at the other end of the room. The man who seals the double doors behind him is one you recognise. The imposing blonde businessman, the one Nitta had been looking at earlier. This was now, in your mind, no mere coincidence.

Who were these people?

" ... purify that which is impure."

It slides from the fingertips of Ijichi and Nitta, a layer of otherness, a barrier between your world and the distortion of reality that has happened in here, in this space that used to be your everyday stronghold of familiarity. Ijichi meets your bewildered gaze and he pauses momentarily, mouth drawing into a regretful line.

"You can see it."

You nod wordlessly and he adjust his glasses, that incongruously stern set of his features directed at something past you.

"Don't worry. It'll be over soon."

One of the criminals spots the movement of Ijichi and Nitta, screaming out to them as they get to their feet on either side of you. 

"Get back down! Don't you fucking move! I'll - "

His words are cut off as one of the monster's flailing, spiked projections lob his left arm right off at the shoulder, the gun falling from the nerveless clasp of the severed hand. The noise that leaves his throat is thick, animal, full of existential fear. He slides forward, the floor now slick with his own blood, eyes bulging as his choked cries echo across the hall.

Two strong hands assert their grip under each of your armpits, dragging you to your feet. You realise that a sound, similar to the one the maimed man had made, was exiting your own throat.

"Easy," comes Ijichi's voice in your ear, "Just breathe. Move with us. It'll be all right."

How? How could any of this ever be all right?

You cannot comprehend how this man could possibly say that, but when you look over at him, there it is, in his eyes behind those rectangular frames. He does believe what he says. He means every word. But how can he -

"Step back, please. You're in the way."

The voice that echoes across the atrium is unlike any of the others, cutting through the chaos with calm, clipped, precise enunciation. It's the blonde businessman, who, you are rapidly realising, is also not what he seems.

He strides across the hall, completely ignoring the threatening gestures and shots fired in his direction by the gang who are now in disarray. He sheds his pinstripe coat, revealing a leather harness fastened across his torso, the dark straps stark against the white of his shirt.

And there is something else, something similar to the strange current you sensed from Ijichi and Nitta earlier, coursing along the powerful lines of his shoulders and arms. It is ... different, but holds a deadly latency that can't be denied. The businessman reaches up and removes his dark glasses, revealing a sharp-cornered, intensely shadowed gaze. He glances across at Ijichi, who straightens and nods in response.

"We'll leave things to you, Nanami."

"Thank you, Ijichi. Get the rest of the hostages to safety."

The rapid gunfight that had been punctuating by yells in the background had now taken a worrying turn. The force of the automatic rifles, puncturing skin and shattering bone, had been driving the monster back, but no longer. It was healing itself, shards of bone annealing, flesh knitting itself back together, blood decanting back into torn vessels as it slowly gained momentum, moving forward and driving them back.

The man called Nanami turned back to the battle, surveying it with the calm of a seasoned veteran. As Ijichi and Nitta help you along, you slowly regain your ability to move, but something kept your gaze fixed on Nanami's broad back as he reached behind him, fingers grasping the handle of what seemed to be a blunt blade wrapped in an oddly patterned cloth. It appeared to be a similar pattern to the one on his tie.

Is he mad? Bullets don't work on that thing! He was going to -

Your thoughts still and die away as an electric rush of that strange energy jets up around Nanami's body, coating him in what looks like armour. One polished leather brogue slides back along the tiles, giving him enough momentum to propel himself forward at inhuman speed. Your eyes can barely follow his movements as he streaks across the atrium, right towards the spinning, shrieking monster.

Now that it had become accustomed to the body it inhabited, the creature was darting forward with swift, jagged motions, dealing terrible slashes and blows to any flesh it encountered. Nanami reaches it, dancing around its flailing arms with ease and grace. It takes note of him, the slide of its bulbous eyes sickening as they gather on either side of its skull, as if to pin down his location better. The remaining gang members take this opportunity to scramble to safety, kicking and clawing each other to the floor in their urgency to escape.

You shout a wordless warning to Nanami, but Nitta's grip on your shoulder gives you a measure of reassurance. They seem to have full faith that this deceptively understated salaryman can handle the reality-bending situation unfolding before your eyes.

And he does.

From the little snippets of the battle that you can follow with comprehension, Nanami's movements match the creature's every step of the way. When its limbs elongate with a sudden snap, he adjusts his distance. When it sends tendrils of smoky substance across the floor, he seems to coat his shoes in that luminous energy, skidding effortlessly across the top of it. When it tries to close in on him, limbs splitting and weaving in tendrils that catch and ensnare, he slices clean through them, that blunt blade doing far more damage than you would have ever thought possible.

The confidence and surety of his block and parry sends a sudden flare of hope through your chest.

Maybe he can beat it! Maybe he can -

The creature let's out a howl of fury, the force of it battering the walls and shattering the windows. You scream as shards of glass blow outwards from the booths where you and your fellow employees had been crouched just a short while before. Covering your face, you brace for the tearing pain, but nothing happens. Peering between your fingers, you see that Ijichi is muttering under his breath, creating another kind of barrier, this one of a smaller radius, around the three of you. The faint patter of glass reaches your ears as the flying shrapnel falls harmlessly off the surface.

But what about Nanami?

A sharp breath escapes your lips as you see him, still standing, facing the wrath of the creature. He remains unphased, but his sleeves have now been rolled up, the smooth shift of sinew and muscle visible beneath skin. You watch as he reaches up, loosening his tie and flicking his wrist out, the spotted red material wrapping around his fist. He begins a measured pace towards the creature, and for the first time, you see it take a step back.

Nanami's smooth, mellow voice sounds through the hall again.

"It's now three in the afternoon. I started work today at nine and I'm going to clock out at five. That leaves me exactly fifteen minutes to finish off with you, forty five minutes of travel time and one hour to complete my paperwork for today."

... what? 

He continues, striding forward as the creature staggers back even further, defensive spikes slowly sliding into place on its arms and knees. He doesn't seem to be particularly bothered by this.

"I would prefer not to incur overtime, so if you would please co-operate with me, I would highly appreciate it."

For all your years in retail and finance, you had never seen customer service handled quite like this.

Nanami flicked his blade straight out, those keen eyes sighting right along the upper edge. He seemed to have assessed something of the creature, because his subsequent lunge was precision itself. The dappled sword swung down, then up and away, severing along some vital line. The ghoulish scream that exited the monster spoke of the damage dealt. It collapsed, clawing at its body as Nanami approached with that predator's prowl; decisive, tranquil.

He crouched right before the recoiling mass of darkness, one arm bending back before his fist slammed with impossible strength right into where the midriff should be. The blast stripped away the last vestiges of whatever had possess the original 'host' in the first place. The slick darkness shivered in its death throes, snaking along the ground before Nanami's heel came down on it with crushing finality.

You let out a breath you'd been holding as the boy, whose body you'd felt would be beyond any kind of repair, slumped to the floor, unconscious. Nanami knelt beside him, fingers enclosing his wrist before glancing up at Ijichi and nodding.

He was alive!

Nitta rushed forward immediately, a cellphone appearing from within her coat, balanced between shoulder and ear as she patted the boy down, searching for further weapons or injuries. She appeared to be calling for some kind of assistance from the outside.

Beside you, Ijichi raised two fingers, and suddenly, a rush of noise reached you from outside; the blare of sirens, the snap and flash of cameras, the commotion of many voices. The barrier they had cast earlier had been lifted. You clamber slowly to your feet, with his assistance.

You have so many burning questions, but you feel that the answers will hold information that might take you some time to process. For now, you'll simply ask about -

"You can see the cursed energy."

Ijichi is watching you, following your movements with attention.

"Cursed ... energy?"

"That's what we call it. Some civilians, like you, can see it, although that's quite rare. It's the duty of those like us to protect humanity from the curses that roam this world. Curses that appear, much like this one."

"So ... you knew it was going to come here? That's why you ... "

"Suspected," he corrects you. "We traced it to this area, but could not pinpoint its location. Then we received a tip-off from law enforcement about a heist that was about to occur at this bank. We made an educated guess as to where the curse would manifest next."

"With ... law enforcement? So all of you are ..."

"Sorcerers, affiliated with Jujutsu Tech. Well, I'm no qualified sorcerer. Simply an assistant director. Nanami is the sorcerer. You'll ... have to come with us, of course. To sign a waiver. There's a lot of paperwork involved with civilian witnesses and victims."

You nod, turning to where the boy who had been ... possessed, for want of a better term, was now being loaded onto a stretcher.

"Was he a victim too, then?"

"Yes. He will have little to no memory of what occurred when he wakes up. Just the events leading up to his arrival here. Everything before that ... will have to be processed through regular law enforcement."

"I see."

You really didn't, but the matter-of-fact manner with which Ijichi was rattling off this information made this fever dream seem halfway believable, if the protocol was anything to go by. Ijichi gestured to you, and you saw that the other hostages were being led out of the safety of the lounge where Nanami had sequestered them earlier.

Speaking of Nanami, you saw his tall figure stride ahead of you. He'd looked over you and the rest of the captives and seemed satisfied that his work here was done. You called out to him as he approached the doors.

"Thank you!"

He paused and turned slightly, that cool, appraising glance taking you in.

"No need. I'm simply doing my job."

"Well then, allow me to thank you ... for letting me clock out on time."

You see the barely perceptible change in his expression, the slight lift of his eyebrows, the tilt at the corner of his mouth.

"Noted."

He turns away and Ijichi ushers you after him, out into the sunlight that strikes your skin like your new-found awareness of the unseen world.

Dividers by: @saradika-graphics

[pseudowho]

Glory Glory: Nanami Kento

An absolutely unhinged delicious "Help, I'm stuck!" series, where the reader is taken care of by the JJK guys.

18+ as always. Pure smut.

*Visual art of Reader/Nanami positions, link enclosed*

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You were never able to concentrate fully when sent on a mission with Nanami Kento, and it drove you to absolute distraction. The broad taper of his shoulders and nipped waist; the way his thighs strained his tan trousers dangerously tightly as he moved to sweep Curses like a minefield; the slow, considered, gravelly voice. You remained professional...but clumsy.

Already blushing after Kento complimented you smoothly on landing the killing blow on  the Curse, now crumbled and decaying before you, you sought the Cursed item that had been drawing such powerful monsters in. Roaming through the remnants of this crumbling city-edge mansion, you headed into a dining room, feeling the thrum of nearby Cursed energy that told you you were nearing your goal.

Your hand brushed the brickwork of an old chimney stack-- gotcha, you thought, leaning down to try to look up it, unable to find the right angle. Sitting on your bottom, and shuffling backwards to look directly up the chimney, you reached in, feeling something small and fabric wrapped, wedged into old brickwork. You began to work to free the item.

"In here!" you yelled, as you heard Kento call for you. Your yelling brought a crumble and cloud of soot and brick dust onto your face, and as you coughed, pulling the cursed item free, part of the chimney stack collapsed inwards against you, pinning you in place, bottom still sat on the floor below you.

You heard hard footsteps towards the room as you shrieked, Kento calling for you in concern. You coughed and spluttered, glasses covered in debris, stuck in the dark. You felt Kento approach, hearing him drop to his knees, and blushing as his hands lightly grazed your waist and hips, checking for injury.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, his usual calm and considered self. He almost sounded like he was holding back a laugh, you thought.

"No, but I...I don't think I can get out. I'm stuck," you complained, mortified by your own lack of care. You heard Kento hum to himself.

"That is a problem," he toned, low and sardonic, "what shall we do with you?" You blushed, heat creeping up your cheeks at the promise in his voice. You swallowed.

"Uhm...Kento? Can you get me out?"

"Well, yes. I absolutely can." Silence. Kento's hands were still on your hips, fingers tapping, slow and thoughtful.

As you opened your mouth to speak again, clenching your thighs together, not unnoticed by Kento, he spoke again.

"But, why rush? After all," he toned, voice silky smooth as his fingers squeezed your hips appreciatively, "we might even see this as...serendipitous." You let out a soft gasp, squeaking as you felt his warm, broad palms reach underneath you to squeeze your arse, the touch drawn-out and lingering.

"I've waited for a long time, you know," he intoned, musing out loud, "all those missions together. All the times I've caught you staring. How the hairs stand up on your arms when I talk to you."

You trembled as you felt his hands wander to the front of your trousers, reaching down to deftly unbutton and unzip your them. You throbbed, thighs clenching and eager.

"I can almost taste you aching for me," Kento teased, thrilled by how you shook in silent anticipation. "It would be cruel to let you suffer like this any longer." Your eyes were closed now, lost in your dream of Kento taking charge being realised.

Kento felt his cock twitch against his thigh as he slipped his hand down the front of your trousers, humming in appreciation at the laced edge of your underwear, before grazing his fingers against your pussy, admiring the growing wetness of your underwear. His mouth watered, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

Feeling your thighs clamp around his hand, holding it in place, Kento chuckled as he heard a breathy moan from within the chimney stack. He continued to stroke you, increasing the pressure just enough that you felt a distant soft ache building in your clit.

"Kento-- I-- please--"

"Lovely manners," he groaned, palming himself through his trousers as he slowly started to edge his fingers out of your trousers. You let out a frustrated squeak and a wiggle, and Kento bit his lip to suppress another laugh.

"Ask nicely," he teased, admiring the soft spread of your thighs against the floor, running his other hand up and down them to delight in the plushness of you. He pursed his lips in mirth as he heard you huff at him behind the chimney stack.

Your complaining stopped, however, when you felt him grip your trousers and eagerly peel them off you, along with your underwear, leaving your bottom half totally naked in one shockingly bold move.

You were speechless, blushing wildly and flustered, and you heard fabric-y shuffles against the floor, before feeling your bottom lifted by strong arms and settled onto Kento's muscular, planed chest. You squeaked as he slapped your bum in appreciation, the sting making you moan.

"I hope you know this is me asking you out for dinner," he soothed. Kento lifted your bottom again, high enough for him to wriggle under and delve his tongue into your quivering heat, wetting his lips at the sight of your soft folds and full round arse.

"Although...at least the first time, I'll be eating out without you." You had barely a moment to process before Kento released your weight, forcing your pussy down onto his face. You cried out, feeling your clit immediately hit Kento's chin, his tongue appreciatively licking a long stripe between your entrance and clit, nose nuzzling into your fluttering hole.

Pleasure hit you in deep throbs as Kento rocked your hips back and forth on his face, encouraging you to ride him, your knees and thighs splayed out at either side of his head. Allowing you to roll your clit against his chin and lips until you were mewling, your essence running down his neck to decorate his collar, Kento shifted his mouth down to pucker his lips firmly around your clit, flicking his tongue quickly against it.

You shivered, begging, "-- oh god, Kento-- just keep doing that, that's perfect, I can't-- I can't--" Kento carried on, nose still nuzzling into your pussy and tongue flicking against your clit, pleasuring you with absolute practiced ease. He groaned as he felt your thighs clamp around his head, the vibrations sending you over the cliff's edge and you fell, stomach swooping and clenching as you came with a cry, gasping and coughing as more brick dust collapsed onto your face.

Kento nuzzled into you, gripping your thighs affectionately with strong forearms, rocking you from side to side as he squeezed them to the sides of his head, cuddling your lower half to him. Lifting you off, and planting a kiss on your folds, Kento lifted his tie to wipe your cum off his face.

"Is that a yes to dinner, then?" He asked, laughing as you tried to kick at him.

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Also arriving tonight on scheduled blogs:

Kamo Choso, Higuruma Hiromi

[pseudowho]

In from the Cold

(help me find the Nanami artist in the banner, for crediting and thanks/permission!)

After a mission gone wrong, the Reader is left wandering confused, cold and alone in the biting snow- only Nanami Kento can save you, and warm you up.

WARNINGS: Angst, fluff, smut, PIV intercourse, fingering, handjobs, fluffy intercourse

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"[...]The only other sound’s the sweep    Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,    But I have promises to keep,    And miles to go before I sleep,    And miles to go before I sleep."

-- Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

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"[...] Hurt myself again today And, the worst part is there's no-one else to blame

Be my friend, hold me Wrap me up, enfold me I am small and needy Warm me up and breathe me."

-- Sia, Breathe Me

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Oh, god, Kento. Please find me. I'm so cold. I'm so cold. I'm so tired. I'm so afraid to fall asleep, in case I never get to say goodbye. In any other world, in any other universe, you would find me and I'd be warm.

Curled on wet cardboard boxes against a stack of bins, the shivers had now stopped. You felt the cold deep in your belly as you fought desperately against sleep. Blinking away tears, the thick falling snow and orange streetlights bled together, and you felt yourself drift, heavy, unmoving...

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The day had started like any other. Pulling on your usual mission attire, Kento leaned in and gave you a smooth goodbye kiss while pulling his tie through its loop. Separate missions, separate sides of the city, and neither expected to be much of a challenge to a pair of seasoned, competent sorcerers.

You gripped Kento's hair and pulled him back for a second kiss, his chest rumbling with a deep chuckle.

"Go, love," he had warned, faux-stern as he squeezed your hips, "if we're done with work fast, I'll be all yours, all evening."

You groaned against his lips, and nuzzled into his firm neck, breathing deeply of his smell; a spiced cologne, deep and woody and undeniably Kento.

"Promises, promises, darling. I'll bring the wine, you bring the bread and cheese?" Murmuring his assent into your hair, you reluctantly pulled away, mischief sparkling in your eyes. Kento turned you by the shoulders, and when he patted your bum towards the door, you laughed.

"Be safe, Kento. I love you!" and you had swept out the doorway as Kento shook his head fondly. You stepped out into the bitter cold, hailing a taxi- you would get yourself there today, but Ijichi was on call to collect you later. Enjoying the peace of a taxi journey where neither you nor the driver wished to chat, you rested your forehead against the window and watched as the first fat flakes of snow fell upon the Tokyo streets.

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Many hours had passed. Your curse had been much stronger, more vicious and tenacious than expected. With absolute focus, skill and determination, you had cleansed the abandoned hospital of its filthy inhabitant, and stood shaking, dazed and alone.

As you struggled to collect your thoughts, your arms were heavy as lead as they tried to take stock of your body, your injuries. Multiple and minor, you determined, but a firm crack to the temple as you had been swept aside by a thrashing tail, left your head throbbing and fuzzy.

Pipes had been wrenched from the walls and spewed frigid water. You were soaked through, and as the adrenaline faded you began to shiver, deep violent shivers all the way through to your stomach. Your mask and glasses were shattered across the floor. Face bare, and vision impaired, you reached into your pocket grasping your phone in its ziplock bag.

With despair, you looked down at your phone. It was utterly ruined, smashed and soaked, ziplock bag ripped open by the cracked and warped glass of the device.

Nodding slowly to yourself, and glancing out the first floor windows into the pale of the night, the eerie glow told you the snow had fallen deep and thick upon the ground.

Ijichi will be here by now, you reasoned to yourself. I'll be home and in a nice hot bath before I know it.

You wobbled towards the staircase, assuring yourself you were fine. Gripping the bannister, you took the flight of stairs at an unsteady pace. Your fingers felt like putty, cold and numb against the dark wood.

You pushed the ageing front doors open, hearing the frosted chains clank, broken, against the metal. Looking onto the streets eagerly for Ijichi, you did not notice the sheets of ice beneath the fresh snow on the steps, and slid backwards hard, your head cracking on the concrete.

Crying out, coughing and winded, you slid down the rest of the steps. Vision blurring, you raised a tentative hand to the back of your head, wincing as you felt the sharp tang of split skin. The bleeding seemed minimal, but your head only throbbed harder.

Pulling yourself up from the snow, you heard only the sounds of snow-hushed suburbia. The old hospital was on the outskirts of Tokyo, now silent and abandoned, and faint orange streetlights ahead of you told of a quiet street, its residents all in bed, or soon to be. Ijichi was nowhere in sight.

Unlike him, you thought to yourself with a gulp. Body still wracked with shivers, pain, and confusion, you took a meandering walk through the crunching snow, all the way around the hospital.

As your path reconnected with your original footprints, which were now softened by continued snowfall, you were forced to conclude that Ijichi was not here.

Growing colder and more confused, you set your pace firmly towards the street ahead. If you could find a phone, work out exactly where you were, or hail a taxi home, you would be fine. Patting your pockets with rubbery fingers, you felt for your thin purse, always stocked with emergency cash and your bank card.

Your heart sank. Gone, and lost, somewhere in the chaos of the fight. No phone. No cards. No cash. No idea where you were. You stared helplessly back at the hospital, now as good as miles away with the state you were in. You stood at a crossroads between houses, each rolling street looking just the same as the next, but you saw the Tokyo skyscrapers in the distance and set your course.

Your clothes soon became stiff with the blood and water, and snow collected in your hair, body and soul feeling dank, heavy and wet. Desperate, you hesitated by a house with a light on downstairs. Maybe they'll let me use their phone? At your first step towards the front door, the downstairs lift switched off and you halted.

You laughed bitterly to yourself, at your thought that a soaked and blood covered stranger in the night, and a foreigner no less, would be welcomed into this Tokyo home. If they didn't slam the door, they'd simply call the Police.

No, you thought, best bet is just to keep walking and get home to Kento. Get home to Kento. Get home to Kento. You continued these words like a mantra as you walked, and walked, and walked, dead-legged and deeply, concerningly cold now, and it just went on and on and on, and even when you started passing shops and restaurants and strangers who veered around you with hands clasped over their mouths and words of shock to their friends and partners you just kept walking dazed and lost now and so tired and so cold and you just needed a rest before you carried on into the night and the laughter from bars and music from clubs washed over you as you lost your footing again and again and took a tumble down an alleyway desperate for somewhere out of the snow and fell onto wet cardboard against a bin that was so comfortable as you rested your weary spinning head.

You started to sob, soft and pathetic, whispering pleas for Kento to come to you, to carry you home, to whisper sweet things in your ears. You were too far gone to see reason or a way out, feeling your brain shut down in the cold.

"Hey, hey! What have we got here? Hey cutie, are you lost?" You glanced up feebly to see three or four shadows leaning over you, all men, and the smell of beer hit your nose.

"Please can you help me?" you stuttered in broken Japanese, "I'm so cold."

The shadows laughed and jeered, and you felt a hand grip your arm to pull you up, as the man in front cooed, "Don't you worry sweetheart, we can get you nice and warm, right boys?"

Another, familiar voice cut through the alleyway, dark and threatening.

"Get your filthy fucking hands off her. If her fiancé doesn't rip your dicks off, I'm happy to oblige."

You were dropped back against the bin as the men scattered, and cool long fingers pulled your face upwards to see the face of Satoru, your dear friend, hair as white as the snow. He pulled you up easily with one arm, his other hand pressing his phone to his ear.

"Nanami. I've got her. I've got her. Come to the car, now." Satoru hung up, and bent down, hoisting you onto his back. "Bet you've never been so happy to see me, huh, kiddo?" His attempt at lightheartedness was tight and easily gave away his fear. You clutched at his jacket, weeping with relief, and opening your eyes as you heard frantic footsteps rush to reach you and Satoru.

"Shit, Gojo, where did you find her? Shit, shit, shit, she's soaked. Darling, are you awake?"

A goofy smile on your face, you gazed at Kento like you'd seen an angel; absolute panic on his usually stoic face, hair messy and wet, and bundling you from Gojo's back into the back of the car, he was still just as handsome as you always knew him.

"Gojo, give me your shirt, anything warm and dry. I've got to undress her. You drive."

You felt Kento's huge warm fingers begin to deftly rid you of your sodden clothes. Satoru, unusually serious and quiet, put the heating on full blast and rumbled the car to life. You remained impassive and smiling blankly at Kento as he pulled Gojo's shirt and his own shirt onto your cold body. He slipped off his shoes, removed his socks and pulled them onto your own, holding your toes between his hands and breathing hot breath onto them. Wrapping his overcoat around you, Kento pulled you into his lap, covering you in as much of his body as he could manage. Warmth washed over you, Kento's body a furnace. He pushed your hands under his undershirt, chilly against his solid chest. You hummed happily, curling your toes, finally safe. You drifted in and out of sleep, taking in snippets of conversation.

"Ijichi...miscommunication...thought he was supposed to get me..."

"No word from her...hours and hours...lost."

You snapped out of your thoughts as Kento insisted that Gojo drive you to Jujutsu High, to wake up Shoko, to spend the night there.

"No!" you blurted out, and both men looked to you, Satoru in the rear view mirror, "No, I'm okay. I just need a warm bath, a warm bed and some plasters. I'm alright. I'm already feeling a lot better."

Kento looked at you like you'd grown another head as Satoru laughed.

"See, Nanami? She's great! No weaklings in this car tonight!"

Kento scowled at him. "She's clearly concussed, Gojo. She's taken at least two knocks to the head. She goes to Shoko, no arguments."

"She's not concussed! Hey kiddo, what's the capital of Azerbaijan?"

"Satoru, I don't know that and I'm damn sure you don't either."

Satoru laughed again, "Alright, what's my favourite drink?"

"You don't drink."

"Ding ding ding! Correct. What's Megumi's surname?"

"Fushiguro."

"Correct again! What month is it?"

"December," you said warmly, excited and reminded of your festive plans with Kento.

Kento had remained silent throughout, peering down at you, and now met your eyes. Reading you gently, he caressed your cheek. "Are you sure? I'd never forgive myself...if you're hurt..."

You put your finger to his lips.

"All I need right now is you, a hot bath, and home."

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"Ah ah ah, what do you think you're doing?" Kento stood from his stool by the bathroom door, as you began to pull yourself out of the bath. Shirtless, Kento reached his arms into the water, lifting your bruised bodily easily against his own. Ignoring your demands for him to put you down, that he'd get all wet, that you were perfectly capable of walking, he carried you to bed, placing you onto a nest of towels and beginning to lovingly dry you. You softened as he continued in silence, serious and committed in his attentiveness. As he finished drying your feet, he lifted your ankle to his shoulder, kissing your calf gently as you reached forward to brush your thumb against his cheek.

He placed your leg gently down and turned to the drawers behind him, rummaging for pyjamas.

"I don't want them, Kento. I just want you. Your skin on mine."

With a quiet hum, he closed the drawers, and flipped the covers of the bed. Leaning over you, he placed your arms around the back of his neck. You clasped your hands, and he crawled smoothly up the bed, resting you on the pillows and settling beside you with a sigh. Chest to chest, Kento held you, silently nuzzling into your damp hair.

A residual shiver crept along your skin, the memory of the cold still deep within your body, ice cubes in your belly and muscles. Kento felt tense, and you nuzzled into his throat, yearning forthe heat inside that only he could give you. You licked delicately along the front of his throat, raising your thigh up insistently over his hip.

Kento's body stiffened, and he grasped your thigh in his broad palm.

"Don't even try it," he growled, "you've just been through hell, you are injured, and you need to rest." He groaned as you rocked your hips against his, bare pussy whispering against the material of his pyjamas. Gripping your hip firmly, he pressed you back into the bed and loomed over you, thigh still pinned between your legs.

Kento faltered at your expression, tearful and pleading. "I can't get rid of the cold. It's so deep, I was so afraid. Please Kento. I need you to warm me up."

Kento swallowed thickly. "I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't. You could never hurt me." You took his hand, and guided it down your breasts and tummy, ghosting against you as you rested it between your legs.

Resolve broken, Kento laid his body firmly against yours, grinding deftly between your legs. He shuddered, his own eyes narrowed and dark, and kissed you softly, the wetness of his tongue against your own making you moan into his open mouth.

One hand working delicately between your folds, and the other grasping the back of your neck, he dipped one finger inside your pussy to gather its wetness, and brought the finger, agonisingly slowly, back up to stroke circles over your clit. Bringing his face down to your breasts, seemingly unable to look you in the eyes, he glossed his tongue over your nipple, taking it fully into his mouth and moaning around it as he played your body like an instrument.

Warmth began to spread through you, and you whispered your moans and his name like a psalm, rocking against his fingers as he stroked two fingers deep inside you, his thumb continuing circles on your clit with patient consistency. Your hand grasped his hair, hard, as you panted and whined, feeling your orgasm approach.

Feeling his cock, hard and heavy against your leg, you ground up into him and were rewarded with a heady moan against your breast.

"My love," he gasped, as you reached down a hand inside his pyjamas, squeezing his length, his stuttering moans and sticky precum the last element you needed to push you over the edge. You cried out his name, squeezing his cock and hair as heat filled your belly and waves of pleasure rolled through you. Kento buried his face into your neck, slowly thrusting, thick and long, into your hand. He was silent as he kicked off his pyjamas, and, taking your grasping hand from his length, he laced your fingers with his and pinned it above his head.

Naturally, effortlessly, he pressed his whole length inside you, groaning shakily as he bottomed out. Bringing your thighs around his hips, he moaned in satisfaction as he felt your ankles lock around him. You saw stars, feeling him move deeply, kissing your cervix, finally feeling warm again.

"Please don't stop-- you feel incredible-- I can feel you in my belly...I...I..."

You felt a sudden dampness at your neck where Kento's face was pressed, his thrusts becoming more insistent, barely pulling out of you as he rutted you against the bed. With a pang, you realised he was crying.

"Of all the dangers...of all the Curses we...haah...we face--" Kento's voice broke as he moaned against your ear, gripping your thighs tighter around him, "...and I nearly lose you to the fucking cold. You were afraid, but I was too. I thought I'd find you...find you dead... from such a thoughtless mistake."

You held him close, whispering love into his ear, feeling pleasure build and build deep within you again as he gasped and moaned, only ever partially pulling out, hitting your most sensitive spot again, and again.

"Gods, you feel so good. So warm, I...I'm not going to last...please darling..." His clever fingers reached down to draw circles on your clit again, and his thrusts became sloppy as you spasmed and fluttered around his cock, head thrown back in ecstasy as you called his name in bliss.

Kento came hard, white lights in his eyes as he pulsed deep inside you, filling you with his warm seed. Trembling, and laying butterfly kisses across your cheeks and nose, he collapsed to the side, pulling you with him, chest to chest again.

You both lay, warm to the core, in peaceful silence. The snow continued to fall outside, and the wind whistled over the windows, and you felt Kento's chest rise and fall against your own.

"I'm so sorry, Kento. I tried so hard to get home." Kento shushed you gently, pressing his lips to your forehead in a tender kiss.

"It wasn't your fault. It was all bad luck and circumstance. First thing in the morning, we'll look into the most indestructible phones on the market."

You giggled into the pillow, and succumbed to sleep together, Kento still nestled inside you, keeping you warm.

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Kento padded around the kitchen the next morning, in only grey joggers and his Danish grandfather's old woolen cardigan. You were tucked up in blankets on the sofa, enjoying your second round of tea and toast, while Kento's phone lit up with messages of concern for you, from students and staff at Jujutsu High. He responded to them all patiently, reassuring everyone that you were now safe and warm and working your way through a small bakery.

Two exquisite bunches of flowers were delivered to Kento's door in quick succession- one from Ijichi and one from Nitta. After collecting Kento from his mission, neither had attended to collect you as both had believed the other to be on duty for you. Kento snorted derisively, considering murder as an option.

He sent thanks to Gojo, whose exceptional six-eyes had found you when nobody else could. Kento tapped his phone thoughtfully against his lips as he draped your legs over his lap on the sofa. Perhaps he would get Gojo a Christmas present this year.

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This was my first smut for quite some time. I hope you enjoyed a read, HMU sometime ✌️💓