#zero proof zero doubt

[marshmallowwitharubberband]

I find it hilarious and lovely that all human languages have swear words, even if the intensity of the meaning varies by culture (i.e. one Japanese swear is a very informal "you" while one Colombian swear is an STI) . We still all collectively need a way to express ire in shocking and devastating ways.

And it makes me wonder two things:

¿Do other languages also have "PG versions" of swear words that kids may use like English and Spanish do?

And,

¿do animals have an equivalent? ¿is there, like, a particular dolphin noise or bird chirp that's akin to "motherfucker" but we can't know because we can't understand it?

that would be so funny.

Cat: ¡suéltame a la verga, hijo de tu perra madre!

Human: awww, you're so chatty today! who's a chatty boy? who's a chatty boy?

[maxdibert]

I need to do a survey for all those Snaters who often say that "someone had to bully Snape," and it is: how many of you have ever been bullied? I mean, I need to know how many of you probably have people in your life who have made you go through terrible times and probably while doing it told themselves that "someone had to do that to you" because you clearly didn't fit into the social hegemony. And I need to confirm for myself that approximately those of you who have gone through that are 95% of the Snaters because I am a narcissistic egocentric who loves being right, and I have the theory that between 90 and 95% of the people who say that nonsense have been victims of people clearly more socially successful than you, screwing up your lives for being considered outcasts or weirdos, and you're just following the usual cycle of violence by projecting your frustrations onto fictional characters.

Pure ego here, but it's curiosity.

[luckybyler]

“If you got enough money to live happily and comfortably for the rest of your life, but-“

Yes. The answer is yes.

If you got enough money to live happily and comfortably for the rest of your life, but everyone who saw you immediately knew what fandom you are in and understood what that means, would you take it?

[brltpop]

The cardinal who canonizes/makes george harrison a saint gets my vote on the conclave btw

[caffeinefafnir]

She first sat on the couch but there was nothing good on the TV and also she was getting cold because, well, NO DOOR.

Then she rummaged the whole kitchen and ate all the cookies and bread she could find, out of boredom.

"How long is this gonna take, exactly?"

Then she got bored and went outside, looked at the roof and thought to herself: "I bet I can scare tf out of her if I climb up there". So she did. And she sat there and waited.

thinking about rio leaving the road and just waiting on the roof of agatha's house until they finished the last trial lmaoooo

just kicking her feet lmao

[dragon-ascent]

Imagine being so in love with your husband Zhongli and being aware of that; like, you'd be relaxing one fine evening with him and it just...hits you that he's yours and he's here and he's in love with you too.

He'd be gazing out the window, the fading sunlight pooling in his amber eyes as a small smile of satisfaction rests on his lips, glossy with the tea he's drinking. You'd admire him, the way his hair frames his face and gives this old soul a youthful look, and - oh, he's looking at you now!

"I love you!" you blurt out, "I love you so much!"

Zhongli's smile widens, his eyes crinkling as he cups your cheek and plants the sweetest of kisses. "I love you too," he'd say, and the way he says it offers zero room for doubt. "Very, very much, my darling."

Your heart is full to bursting. "I love you so much I don't know what to do with myself!"

"Oh, how sweet you are," he'd murmur affectionately, bringing his arms around you in a warm embrace. He's soft and gentle and he's breathing, the steady rise and fall of his chest exhibiting his peace, and his body in such close contact with yours as he absently draws little patterns on your skin is proof that...that he...

It's so comfortable in his arms, you can't help but doze off - knowing that when you wake, he'll still be holding you, his fingers running through your hair and his teacup going untouched, not wanting to stir and wake you. Zzz...

[gilverrwrites]

Two Wrongs

Roy Harper/Reader, 1.1K words Kinktober entry 14: Voyeurism Warnings: (Accidental) Non-con voyeurism | Tight spaces Requested by: Authors choice

Watching your roommate getting off through a crack in his wardrobe door certainly wasn't how you’d planned to spend your evening, but it was just one of those situations, you know, like quicksand, once you're in, it becomes increasingly difficult to get back out.

It had all started months ago when he had eaten the last of your leftover pizza. You'd gotten him back by putting glitter in one of his caps. He'd retaliated by stealing ALL of your socks, so you'd tied all of his shoes together by their laces with the most complex knots you could find tutorials for online. The war had been raging ever since. Most recently, Roy had ‘you-proofed’ every drawer, cabinet, and door in the apartment with a bunch of contraptions of his own design. Many of which now lay broken in his scrap bin, destroyed by your impatience.

You'd been in the process of hiding a series of miniature Green Arrow figures around his bedroom when he’d unexpectedly arrived home early. With zero forethought, you'd simply thrown yourself into his closet and hoped he'd either leave or fall asleep soon. Neither were the case.

You watched through a seam in the hatch as Roy entered his room, your jaw falling slack when he'd immediately unzipped his cargo trousers and started palming his dick through his boxers upon closing the door.

He doesn't bother surveying his surroundings, why would he? This should be his safe space. As he approaches the bed, he kicks off his shoes and socks. You're treated to the sight of his captivatingly firm and freckled ass when he removed his bottoms before finally, he falls unceremoniously upon the bed, still donning his cap and tank top.

You shouldn’t look, you tell yourself. You absolutely should not look. This is a huge breach of trust, and you'd never intended to see Roy naked, at least not like this. Yet, a depraved curiosity possesses you.

It's big. Bigger than you’d imagined, but not intimidatingly so. More, mouth-wateringly so. Thick, cut, straight, and surrounded by a thicket of fiery red hair to match that on his head.

The whole scene is strangely hypnotic; his even, rhythmic strokes, the sordid slap of his spit-slicked hand meeting the base of his cock while he so casually scrolls through his phone. You could watch him all day, but you can't. This goes far beyond a prank, and it certainly isn't fair to him.

You're not brave enough to come clean, you've seen too much. So you gently lean away from the door, closing your eyes and trying to block out the raunchy sound of Roy's heavy breathing until it’s over. Hopefully, he’ll shower or fall asleep after and you can sneak out then.

You're not expecting to hear a voice, so your heart almost stops when you hear someone squeal his name. Shit. Had he called someone? Was he seeing someone? You're struck with a pang of jealousy until you realise the voice in question is your own.

“Ahh, Roy! Are you filming me?” It’s quiet, and tinny but there’s no doubt in your mind. You can even recall when he’d recorded it; Back in the early days of your prank battle, on a hot summer day. You'd been strewn out on the couch, half-asleep in a moderately skimpy outfit that you certainly hadn’t hoped would grab Roy’s attention when you'd noticed him hovering over you with his camera. At the time you’d just assumed it was ammo for some harmless joke. Evidently not.

Peeking through the door again, you watch once more as he continues to stroke his dick, freckled cheeks growing ruddy, jaw tight as he loses himself more and more, eyes fixate on his phone screen as he uses his thumb to repeatedly rewinds back to the first few seconds of the clip. “Ahh, Roy! Ar- Ahh, Roy! Are y- Ahh, Roy!”

The debauched symphony of Roy getting off to the sound of your voice has your body feeling feverish, and you have to fight the urge to grind your nails into the wooden panel that separates you from your housemate. You’re not sure which you want more, to stuff your hand between your legs and knead you’re aching sex in time with Roy’s thrusts, or to exit your hiding spot, climb his husky, tattooed body, and ride him until you’re both completely and utterly fucked. Paralyzed by indecision, you instead watch him, restlessly motionless as he starts to lose control.

The phone falls from Roy’s hand as he bucks his way to the finish line, your name becoming a quiet, breathless prayer on his lips whilest he fucks into his hand from beneath. His eyes close, and he chews on his bottom lip, muscles growing tight until he finds his climax. You watch spellbound as an obscene amount of thick, white cum leaks from his cock, dripping down onto his hand. Wilder, stray droplets launch high, landing on his shirt but Roy neither cares nor notices as he writhes deeper into the mattress, riding out a full body high until he has nothing left to give.

You’re just as fascinated, watching him lay near motionless, enjoying the aftershock, as you had been observing the climax. There had always been tension between the two of you, but you’re starting to realise that you might be down worse than you’d thought.

Eventually, Roy returns to the land of the living, slowly shifting back up. With his clean hand, he removes his cap and pulls his soiled shirt over his head, using it to mop up the mess he’d made of himself and throwing it out of your limited line of sight. Whatever he was aiming for, you don’t doubt he made the shot.

Though you’re disappointed that the show is over, you’re growing angsty at being confined to the four walls of his closet, so when he kicks his legs over the side of the bed you get excited. The prospect of escape is so close you can taste it, until he grabs his phone once more. If he goes down a rabbit hole, you could be stuck here for hours you think, as he taps away at the touchscreen. You’re about to slink back against the wall and try to get comfortable when you’re heart drops. You feel it first, the buzz in your back pocket followed by the custom ringtone Roy had picked out for himself. Instinctively, your arms fumble to grab your phone and turn it off but Roy’s head has already snapped in your direction, his face looking as pale and as panicked as you feel on the inside.  

If you're reading this, you have impeccable taste.

Kinktober Masterlist

[hoothootmotherf-ckers]

the hardest thing about chronic pain to me is how it makes me doubt my own brain.

I have chronic pain. specifically chronic migraines. and the hard thing about that, or neurological pain in general, or really just so fucking many different chronic pain conditions, is there is no proof.

there's no scan a doctor can do to show my pain level or symptoms. you can't look at my head and go "huh, looks fucked up, probably a 8/10 pain." absolutely everything I experience, in order to be understood by a medical professional or even just anyone really, has to be self-recognized and self reported.

and that requires so many steps and levels of trust. like just to fucking start, I have to be aware that the invisible thing I am experiencing is not a thing everyone feels! which again, fucking invisible! Then I have to be aware it's happening at all, which sounds basic but with chronic shit is not. I had to explain to a doctor this week that I do not know if I ever experience "normal" or low-level headaches, because I'm so used to severe migraines that anything below that doesn't register. Sometimes it even takes hours for me to notice I'm having a migraine!

and then I have to be able to assess my own pain, judge how bad it really is, when after nine fucking years my scale is goddamn broken. and the longer I've had a migraine, the further out of whack it goes. I have to recognize and categorize my symptoms, one of which is fucking brain fog, and I have to communicate these very nebulous and abstract concepts to other people.

And then. And then they have to actually believe me. I have to convince them I'm not lying, I'm not looking for attention or drugs or pity or excuses. with zero hard proof, just my words. and then it cycles, because if people doubt my pain, I start to doubt my own experiences. I start to think I'm being a wimp, I'm faking it, I can try harder. so then I downplay it, so then I think it's fine, so I push through it, and this works great until I am fully fucking incapacitated.

and then people are shocked and surprised because I "look healthy."

it has taken fucking years for me to accept that what I am experiencing is real and people who doubt me can go fuck themselves. and it's still very much a work in progress. every single day.

but my pain is real. and so is yours. and people who doubt us can, to reiterate, go fuck themselves.

[vefania]

There's a part in the book where Lucy Gray is handcuffed and he says something like seeing her like that made him uneasy. What does this tell us? That if he's not into kinky practices —such as bondage— as a dom/sadist, he must be the one who likes receiving it ☝️🤓

I'm totally delusional bc this control freak wouldn't even give up in bed but stfu

I don't necessarily think Coryo is the submissive type, but there's a chance that he is prone to masochism

[lukie17]

Hunter! Sylus

Totally a lone wolf, a lot of hunters are scared to be his partner, because who the heck fights wanderers only using his fists? Yes, he also uses his evol but people have seen beat a wanderer to a pulp with only his hands a tiny bit of his evol. Even though he has a pistol hanging from his belt.

Bestie with Tara, he might be your boyfriend, but he is besties with Tara. They like to hang out a lot, Tara a Sylus have tea about everyone in the office, and Tara is the one who suggested that you looked like a good couple, so he likes her even more. It's like a lil sister he though he never wanted.

I think he would be the capitan of the hunters instead of Jenna. Jenna is an associate of Sylus, but this man can handle the Unicorn team by himself. So, he asigns you with him, what a perfect opportunity to be together, and not he is not giving you a special treatment. This man would give you the same workload as the others, and even more because he knows that you can handle yourself.

I can picture you complaining with Sylus about your asshole boss, who is him, and how he gives you a lot of workload. He would play the part as an understanding boyfriend, only for him to turn tables at work about how a "bird" told him that you called him asshole.

Did you think that Sylus as your neighbour would be a good thing? Sweetie, you should know better by now. You will hear him sing every night, maybe that is the reason why rent is so cheap and why he is your only neighbour.

Hunter! Sylus is happy that he can spend time with you, he looks like he would kill and he would if someone bothers him, but he is actually pretty chill. Once you joined the Unicor team, all the rumors about him started dying and people actually liked him.

He would be asked to appear in a lot of media for the Hunters Association, his very handsome face would make him a perfect advertiser for people to want to become a hunter.

Sylus as Lumiere! Unlike Xavier, he would be more like an anti-hero. By day he pretends to follow the rules, but by night he will break everysingle of them in order to save lives.

Since he isn't involving in something shaddy, I think that Sylus would not be in his guard as much as he is being the lider of Onychinus, he would be more open and he would be more free.

Totally keeps tabs on you, his mechanical crow would follow you around, "to keep tabs on the newbie" Sylus wants to make sure that you are allright.

I think having him as a hunter would be good for you since he would help you improve faster, your trainning regimene would be harder but also more rewarding. You are growing muscle so fast and you complain to him that your clothes do not fit because you are more buffed now.

Tara has beef with the mechanical crow. I have no proof but zero doubts.

[twinroomies]

So, u know this joke in the last comic where Aerial doesn't know where does Chara get the money to keep buying cars? Okay, hear me out. What if they actually are... a moss dealer? Hear me out.

Think of it. Contemplate it. Appreciate it. Maybe Kris already knew Chara, but they are actually acting like they don't! I know they are. I have zero proofs and zero doubts.

Anyways, have a nice day, drink water!

…aerial

…

ASRIEL DOWN AIR

[strialternatives]

[[wrote like 5000 words of what amounts to akechi goro crashing out without his boyfriend as a sounding board--this is basically a messy stream of goro pov consciousness i cleaned up a bit about the lead up to a post royal!akechi palace formation! spent too much time poking at it not to share,,,]]

WARNINGS: canon typical references to suicide, minor self-harm RATING: T

Something inside of him is breaking.    

Akechi Goro’s wide gaze drills accusing holes into the man on the witness stand, still clad in his prison jumpsuit. His jaw goes 

clickclickclick 

he grinds down his molars, sawdust gathers in back of his throat, rage up to his damn eyes and he is…Goro is. He’s. 

He’s going to kill him.

Goro grips the pen on the table as his attorney looks at him with a troubled gaze.

His entire body is tense, alight with a fire in his core as his frame trembles with every inch of the self-control he’s cultivated since he was eleven.

—Kill him, he’s going to kill him, rip his juggler from his thick, ugly neck with his bare teeth.

Masayoshi Shido looks back at him with a thin quirk of his lips. It sets every inch of Goro ablaze with indignation, while his father effortlessly unravels what amounts to sixteen months worth of legal proceedings in his own case.

Once again this man takes his choices away, beats Goro one last time at his own game, amber eyes steady and undaunted by the sheer disdain on his own flesh and blood’s features. The begrudging affection present there is fit to drive Goro properly insane.

Shido raises his chin, he hammers the final nail in the coffin the two of them built together: “As I’ve said since the beginning, there is no such thing as the Metaverse. The theory itself is an absurd pseudoscience on par with leylines and energy healing. I committed all of my crimes through real world means.”

Son of a bitch.

The rest of the trial is a blur—there’s static in Goro’s ears as the courtroom falls away, his blank, ironed-out expression slack on his bowed face, fists clawing bloody crescents into his palms. Attorneys argue, blindsided, as Shido recounts his hits one by one from top to bottom with zero contradictions, no doubt having rehearsed his statement from every angle.

—Always a step ahead, even with a heart change.

The thought makes Akechi want to scream.

“He was a disenfranchised orphan at the time of our first meeting, and I used that to manipulate him.”

Shut up.

“I arranged his internship with the police department and brazenly used party funds and bribes to push him in the media. I doctored the Detective Prince public image and used Akechi Goro to deter legal suspicion while taking advantage of corruption within the department.”

Shut the fuck up.

“Everything I ever did was for my own ends, my son is blameless in all of it. I’m simply relieved… he never had to bloody his hands.”

Goro stands so fast his chair clatters to the floor, he gets halfway over the table before he’s yanked back by the shoulders, struggling in his seat. The snarls leaving him barely sound human, overgrown bangs shadowing his hellfire eyes.

The humiliation smarts like a slap.

The court, however, is quiet as a grave, stunned to silence; Shido hardly hesitates in wake of the outburst.

Don’t you dare.

“There is no physical proof of this Metaverse nor any of the crimes mentioned in the initial report; I plead with this court that my son's case be dismissed and the records with his name sealed. I will give up all of my contacts and constituents.”

Something deep inside of him is-

“Lastly, I implore this jury allow me to properly atone for my sins with the fullest extent of the law. I do not wish to seek parole.”

-Fracturing.

With that Shido bows, as though heralding the end of a show. His face is fully hidden from view—the lowest a man of his arrogance has likely had to bow ever in his entire life. He looks skinny in his prison jumpsuit and cuffs, shrunken. Weak. 

All it does is fuel Goro’s rage. 

There’s a second hush in the courtroom as the boy is swiftly restrained again, Goro thinks he might be screaming, struggling, arms wrestled behind his back as he’s all but carried out of the session. He’s spitting and hissing curses like snake venom, veins in his neck straining as he shouts out his damn voice.

Goro doesn’t remember all the words he'd said, half in anger, half in despair as his composure crumbled beneath his feet. But it made the judge look at him with a pity that stings even worse than Shido’s insult of a paternal conscience.

(He thinks he mentioned his mother. Goro hopes not. His mother's name doesn’t need to be spoken in such a wretched, awful place as the Tokyo High Court.)

/

After the fact, when all things are said and done, he is shouldered with just a year’s probation. —The irony of this specific stretch of time is not lost on him.— A state sanctioned order for therapy in light of his outburst, just shy of shipping him off to a psych ward after his dramatic outburst, Goro bets, he’d thrown quite a few violent death threats Shido’s way, after all.

A proverbial slap on the wrist for the ego death of dozens by his own hand. A clean record and his name scrubbed from the media. 

Something in him breaks. There’s a hollowness in his soul.

Gloved hands creak with mounting tension as his court-assigned probation officer’s words go in one ear and out the other, teeth grinding, aching.

Once again, he’s been denied a choice—his fucking choice—by the same wretched, controlling man. Once again, Goro has been denied control of his own destiny by a higher power and there’s not a single thing he can do to repay his debts.

He knows what probation really means in his case. It is protection, a weak excuse for a witness protection program Goro had denied several times. Everyone involved in the Shido case is desperate to keep their star witness from winding up dead in a gutter. 

Because, as much as they thought Goro was nothing more than a delusional little boy, manipulated by his own father, that same boy had kept meticulous records in the real tangible world over the years. Obsessive records on Shido's inner circle. Useful records. 

And that was not a loss the investigation was willing to risk.

There was no way out of this check he'd been tricked into, no matter which way Goro turns the board, and it is utterly infuriating.

Goro is going to fucking kill him.

///

He is set up in a new apartment with a box of his personal effects not seized for evidence.

Left with strict orders for his probation and house arrest, his brain is still whirling from a week’s worth of appeals and settling of assets.

If he so wishes, Goro doesn’t need to work for the rest of his natural life.

Shido had transferred the keys for all of his accounts to his ‘next of kin’, in consideration for his looming life sentence. 

The thought makes Goro want to rage again, the bastard had planned for something like this. The assets the government had seized weren’t anything to sneeze at but they were nothing compared to the scope number of non-governmental subsidiaries and private funds Shido constantly squirreled away for a rainy day.

Paranoid packrat that he was, there were plenty of off-shore bank accounts that were all but untouchable. 

Goro’s almost sure making him the sole-proprietor must’ve been some fucked up gene-essentialist backup plan, in case one of his associates stabbed him in the back, or if he couldn’t otherwise flee the country.

(Though, considering what Joker and the Thieves had let slip in January, that particular contingency was probably nothing more than a joke between Shido and his rotten lawyers.)

Even the apartment building he’s standing in is a part of one of Shido’s many (many) real estate ventures, and Goro hates every solitary inch of it. 

He despises the sterile, too-clean air, the way everything is a stark, minimalist off-white, the fact that he’s on the top floor with an objectively gorgeous view of the Tokyo landscape—all while Goro should be six feet under.

—Instead, he’s twenty now.

Goro didn’t expect to live past nineteen.

Left alone after the officer leaves, he glares down at the paneled floor, static in his ears as he sways on his feet and peers into the box.

There is a picture frame of a bewitching woman with rich, caramel colored hair that matches his own at the top of the pile, him at six—a fucking parasite, sucking her life away with every breath—clutching shyly onto full sakura-pink skirts, half hiding from whomever is taking the picture. 

The only part of him visible is a cautious wine colored eye against a fluffy brunette fringe. The woman smiles brightly with flushed, happy cheeks as she runs manicured fingers through the shy boy’s curls, not at all like Goro’s knife-like grin.

It’s a smile like sunshine—the ‘original’ smile that Goro could only wear as a mask, one he besmirched by using just to get others to want him, to like him. It hasn’t reached his eyes in years. But it always kept Goro safe all the same.

Mama.

His eyes are bone dry as he stumbles over to the sleek, pre-furnished, couch, Goro wouldn’t be caught dead picking out. He takes in the foreign space, the air so still and impersonal it’s downright suffocating.

Everywhere he looks.

White, on white, on.

More.

White.

Every inch of the studio apartment is blindingly white and Goro wants to claw his fucking throat out.

What was it all for, if this was how things were going to end? 

Did any of those years spent under his father’s thumb matter? Smiling for his slime ball compatriots? Breaking off pieces of himself and killing them to survive in their snake pit? Lowering himself to the status of an attack dog, twice-kicked, verbally condescended to on a daily basis by the adults around him?

This time Goro’s blunt nails do find his throat as he rasps, breathes quickening as he struggles and fails to draw in air to his lungs.

Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.

How dare Shido take this from him?

How dare the Judge look at him with pity? His social worker. His probation officer. Even his old coworkers whispered as he’d given every name he’d meticulously taken note of during his time at the center of the Conspiracy. It's a small mercy that Sae is no longer involved in the case, that would be a special kind of hell.

All Goro wanted was one thing, to accomplish one right thing, for the sake of enacting real justice.

The mantra is what he has killed every shadow after Isshiki Wakaba for—it was all supposed to be ‘worth it’ in the end. He’d stubbornly insisted to Robin Hood, who’d gone deadly silent after that first death, morose, nestled heavy as an anchor within Goro’s spirit of rebellion until he was needed again.

He’d wanted to set things right, put every game piece back in the box, so to speak. Neat and tidy.

But Goro couldn’t even have that. What better punishment was there for a monster like him, than to be guilty of all of the sins on his shoulders, but still, maddeningly idle? 

Free.

A familiar sneer splits Akechi Goro’s lips, sardonic, mocking whilst his body shakes again with the force of his laughs, image of his mother’s bright smile wavering in his vision.

He’d forgotten what she looked like. 

Goro hasn’t said her name in years, no one has—did Shido even remember her? Did his mother ever have a choice at all in her fate, or was she yet another game piece for the wretched hand Goro had been dealt from his birth?

He wants to know. He needs to know.

///

Goro stares blankly at the empty sheel on the other side of the safety glass, he is not sure why he did this.

God knows his therapist told him how unproductive it would be. Goro doesn’t blame her—he’s been fading physically since the verdict reading. Complexion pale, fists perpetually clenched and digging bloody into his palms, they’re bandaged under his gloves.

She doesn’t know about them, a lot of people don’t know much about Goro these days.

“What was her name,”

It is not a question. Shido… hesitates.

“I—”

“My mother’s fucking name! Before you go to prison forever, before I never have to see your awful face again, just—!”

The desperation just pours out of him in waves, a weakness that leaves Goro recoiling in self-disgust, his world tilting off its axis as he clutches at his fringe, letting out a breathless laugh. He starts over.

“...Tell me you remember her name.”

There’s a long silence. The prison guard shifts from foot to foot, he should not be here for this, yet, alas, to the chagrin of everyone in the room, on both sides of the glass, there is no better compromise.

But Shido only looks at him with dead eyes, his smile empty along with his convictions. 

“I didn’t. Until I ran a background check on you that is, and it finally clicked… It. Was quite unusual, the way Sakura’s name was written.”

Breathe in. Breathe out.

“We met at the same university, she wanted to go into business, really wanted her own space, to be her own boss.”

Goro twitches, irons out his expression, his teeth ache along with the words he forces out, “Just what are you blathering about?”

Shido’s gaze is steady, “She was quite good at marketing, I… she was integral in the campaign we were both working under, went above and beyond despite being an intern.” He exhales, “She didn’t much care for my seedier contacts though, so the relationship didn’t last. I tried to threaten her into terminating.”

“Instead… she ran.”

At that his gaze turns considering, a familiar sharpness showing for a split moment in those eyes before dying like scattered ash—Goro feels his hairs stand on end. “Curious, isn’t it…? How she chose not to get rid of you, in the end… I was simply glad she dropped out of university and out of my way.”

Goro wants to bash his head into the glass, he wants to rip his fucking heart out, it must show in his eyes because Shido inclines his head, lips twitching. It's still not a happy smile.

“Akechi Sakura was close to getting her career on track, you know—? She started pestering me about child support around then because she just needed a bit more to cross that last barrier,” Shido paused, letting out another one of those miserable scoffs, “Bad timing really, I was campaigning. And she was in the way... again.”

The world slows down, there’s a sinking feeling—inside he is screaming.

“Get to the point, old man.”

He almost wishes he hadn’t prompted him.

“She had a job lined up, a real one after groveling to her parents—but that’s not here nor there. She was going to go back to university, she needed a bit of child care assistance and the money to move you both out of that shoebox near the red light district.”

No.

“Sakura…she… contacted me at a critical time during my election. And you know better than anyone how much of a stigma escorts have in this country, boy.” 

Shido shrugs, numbly nonchalant, like Goro’s mother is nothing more than a morose footnote in a long list of sins to keep track of. Goro’s fists clench in his lap, irritating his bandages again.

“All it took was a few phone calls to upper management at her parents’ company—ah, they didn’t even know she’d been working as an escort to support you both. Shame, really. They properly disowned her with the quickness after—nasty business, that.”

Goro’s eyes are still dry, so much so it aches. He wants to kill him.

He wants this bastard dead and buried.

He’ll drag him all the way down to hell.

Something

is.

breaking.

“Y,you… it was you—….?” Goro’s shoulders slump.

The static is so loud now that he can barely keep up with the confession.

“It was,” Shido says with a wistfulness he has no right to, “She’d really gotten far on her own, I’ll admit, she even had a full-time gig lined up in case things with her parents fell out again, and was in the process of breaking ties with her regular clients.”

Their eyes meet.

“All for you.”

Goro stares.

“She told me wanted a future for you.”

His fists creak, face blank, mind spinning.

“I… I wish… I’d made an honest woman out of her back then, she really was brilliant. By my side, we could have accomplished—“

SCREECH!

His feet carry him from the visitation area at a brisk pace, chair clattering to the floor. Goro's breaths are even and measured as he bows to his probation officer and politely requests he be escorted out. The mask he puts on is a familiar skin.

 —Somehow knowing the reason is worse, knowing his mother truly never had agency, just like Goro. Another tragedy. His fault. Always his. damn. fault.

There’s a quiet horror in knowing that his father had taken everything from him, and didn’t even have the decency to be here and present in any way that matters.

A ‘change of heart’ what a shitty farce. 

No wonder the Okumura heiress made his stomach churn, so.

That pathetic, lobotomized thing on the other side of that glass wasn’t Masayoshi Shido, probably never would be again.

He barks out a bitter laugh of his own once he's managed to weasel a moment away from his guards in the men's bathroom after. Perfect. Just fucking perfect.

Mother had always been the optimistic type, unlike Goro with his many anxieties and tendencies to think himself into knots, even at a young age. 

In retrospect, her downward spiral had been unusually swift and merciless—she’d started taking clients again despite not needing them for months previously. Goro went to the bathhouse more often.

Things outside of their little bubble suddenly started to crash and burn.

Goro remembers it vividly, Akechi Sakura had tried to brew pork and vegetable soup one of those nights, only to burn and ruin the pot and three days worth of groceries in the process.

The scent of her flowery perfume and her heaving sobs were overwhelming as she’d dropped to her knees and hugged her son tight, rocking him like he was a toddler instead of an elementary student on the cusp of double digits.

<“It’ll all work out, Goro. Mama promises. We’re going to be okay.”>

He’d hugged her back as hard as he could. But her words were nothing more than a pretty lie.

It only took a month—though numbly, Goro acknowledges that mental health isn’t one of those things broken in a single moment. But instead, a psyche meticulously dismantled with micro-fractures across a score of years, full of slights to his mother’s pride, concessions she’d had to give up for the sake of her bastard son, and countless whispers she had to endure every day she was late to pick him up from school.

So, logically, even armed with Shido's confession, Goro knew there were a number of factors that led to his mother stepping off that train platform on the way to her day job that morning. 

Logic does not, however account for feelings.

It does not account for the very human urge to cast blame and point fingers.

—For instance: what if someone had given his mother a chance?

If only that client hadn’t stiffed her a week before. If only someone on that train platform had said something about her swaying so close to the safety line. If only her thrice damned parents helped, even a little.

What if. What if. What if–

If only Akechi Sakura had never met one Masayoshi Shido.

(If only Goro had never been born.)

He fantasizes about one day killing Shido.

However, this dream is not something that is remotely realistic.

There is a maximum security prison, and tens of dozens of guards in his path. Goro’s expression had been blank and calculating, taking in the wretched shell of a creature in front of him for weaknesses. Yet, he'd only seen a long, insurmountable corridor, stretching out before his very eyes.

One by one, the metaphorical bulkheads had closed, his vengeance farther than it had ever been.

Out of reach. Always too slow—too late.

It makes Goro want to laugh, and laugh. For the first time in ten fucking years a part of him wants to cry.

Fuck.

All that work, all the time spent sawing off the undesirable bastard orphan pieces of himself for his deadbeat father and the brainless masses, giving up every part of himself that was even remotely heroic—yet vengeance had never tasted so bitter.

Something in him fractures again, he can almost feel it break this time. It's obvious enough that he feels the fissure in his damn soul.

This time, unlike that time in court, Goro pays attention. He takes stock of himself and his muddled head, comes to a conclusion quite alarming:

Akechi Goro no longer revels the chance to herald Ragnarök.

Goro blinks, looks down, his vision doubles, eyes widening as the static space in his head grows into something insurmountable as a black hole.

Before he knows it he's curled over his lap on his haunches right there in the bathroom stall he's scrambled into. Arms tight around his middle, once again struggling to inhale.

He's never felt so cold.

There is no chaos, only his hollow masks left behind. Stillness. Stagnation. 

Things haven’t been this silent since Goro signed his life away to Shido in his last year of middle school.

Hereward he normally doesn’t hear unless he reaches, but Loki is different. Loki is chatty.

Goro’s heard his whispers for years—he wasn’t just his malice, he was his passion, where the inferno lived, the part that had given him the means to build Shido up only to tear him down.

(A void where there had previously been righteous fury, of a child brought low and abandoned by his village.)

Goro’s voice is a hesitant croak when he finally finds the will to speak and confirm the truth he’s already grasped. Returning had been a blur, he didn't even know what he ate for dinner if he even ate today at all.

“… Loki?”

The gnawing emptiness inside him hungers. The verbal plea is vulnerable in a way Goro would loath to be around anyone else but…

I am thou, thou art I.

The realization that dawns has him drawing in a sharp breath, Mementos was gone but he could usually always feel his spirit of rebellion. 

His chaos, his justice, his defiance. 

Over the past year and a half they’d never left him, not truly—they didn’t speak often anymore, but he’d usually at least get impressions. Goro closes his eyes tighter and this time he pulls, he whispers for Loki, he grasps for Hereward, his connection borne of his bond with Joker. 

But nothing echoes back in reassurance.

In their places are gaping wounds, fresh, aching and bleeding.

Goro cannot feel their rebellion; the loss is fit to leave him spinning out of control without a motor. For once, Goro doesn’t know how to proceed. His personae were the only things that were always be with him. Never has he felt truly alone until this moment. 

Crack.

Goro draws in a calm, measured breath and reaches–

Robin reaches back.

He exhales.

There’s no one else, it's just them again—just like when he was scrappy and fourteen, trapped in a cramped foster home.

Robin Hood to Goro is the first urge he felt to take a hit for a weeping toddler who didn’t know his parents weren’t coming back. Robin Hood is the very first time he shared a bag of candy to share with the youngest children at the bottom of the pecking order in the group home he wound up in after, whispering with a secretive smile that he’d lifted them from the local corner store.

Goro counts to ten over the migraine steadily building in his temples, nails breaking skin once again.

“Are you going to leave me too?”

His words are flat, matter of fact, as though acknowledging something as asinine as water being wet. There isn’t a hint of childish sentimentality in the question—there isn’t.

“I,” Goro breathes in, finds he doesn’t have the air to, “To be honest, I wish you wouldn’t.”

I am thou…

It’s his own voice but a little offbeat, a bit more whimsical. Goro hasn’t heard it since he killed his first shadow for Shido. One by one his fingers unclench, in a show of frankly disgusting vulnerability, he hugs his knees to his chest on the filthy floor.

“Thou art I.”

His quiet response is swallowed quickly by the lonely bathroom stall, lonely voice echoing for no one else to hear. There's static in his head, darkness at his back, deeply entrenched in his rotten spirit.

In that darkness, Akechi Goro wraps himself in masks, as he always has. He doesn’t plan on taking any of them off, he adopts a proper one for the guards, and calmly washes his hands, before strolling out of the men's room with his head held high.

—Robin Hood is all he has, and he’s always taken care of Goro when it counts.

///

The fall out of the trial, along with Goro’s probationary conditions take months to iron out; it feels like the painful final rasp of a slow-to-die houseplant, the constant ticking of a desk clock past midnight doing Sae’s paperwork after hours.

Goro breathes, he survives.

More boxes full of things lost and scattered between transit come to Goro’s literal doorstep while he lies through his teeth to the therapist that makes his stomach churn. Apparently, Shido had collected far more from the background check than he’d let on. 

With disgust, Goro finds childhood things he’d thought his foster parents would’ve binned—left as hand-me-downs, rotting away in the attics of their real children or perhaps the odd relatives that had an ankle bitter running around.

And isn’t that just a summary of Goro’s entire life story—? Unwanted but for his possessions and the short term pseudo-comfort he can provide, scavengers picking at his carcass until there was nothing left but the rotting bones.

He often has to blink away the images of rotten flesh circled by crows. 

Without fail, Robin’s presence is usually quick to blanket his mind when he spirals, the heated warmth of a security blanket.

He stops looking inside the boxes when his probation officer delivers one full of his mother’s scarves. They’d been sitting in a police locker for a decade, apparently. Lost in transit, just like Goro's true self that died a quiet death in a foster home he doesn't even remember the street name for.

Goro holds the scarf with rose patterns for hours, dry eyes slowly blinking, Shido’s wretched pre-paid apartment tinted warm in the red of the sunset.

He’d forgotten how his mother used to smell. Such a terrible son.

(There is no way forward. Has there ever been?)

///

Goro does everything right at his state sanctioned therapy sessions.

He tears up at the correct pulse points, ‘opens up’ in the ways he’s learned people respond to the best, smiles weakly when he’s congratulated for his ‘progress’... Goro is barely a person, he thinks, only one individual has ever made him feel like anything besides plastic.

But, he’s gotten very good at pretending to be a functional person, one that hasn’t had a million bits and pieces clinically removed across a dozen houses that never felt quite like homes.

There’s a joke about lost causes in there somewhere, but a voice that sounds a bit too much like… ‘him’ keeps insisting that Goro can still be saved. It whispers of a lighthouse among the black rolling rapids in the dead of a stormy night.

Thoughts of that mischievous grin sneak up on him often, as he lay awake in bed between police interviews and therapy sessions he only pays half a mind to. They invade him in the silence, whilst staring blankly at the lone glove on his nightstand—his favorite black pair missing its mate. 

It is March again. 

‘Kurusu Akira’ should have graduated from high school by now.

(Joker would understand, why therapists and counselors set Goro’s teeth on edge.)

It starts like this—Goro thinks of long, slender fingers versatile as a spider’s legs, he rolls over and buries his face in his pillow, exhaling as his brain whirls with thought of handshandhands, the way Joker twirls his dagger, impatient for his turn in battle, like Akira tends to do with his pens while studying. There's also the way Akira toys with his fringe when anxious, one of his few tells to that infuriating pokerface. The thought of those same damnable hands skating absently along Crow’s waist in the middle of battle as Joker calls forth Maria’s holy light to heal all his hurts on reflex, clenching around his glove that cold night in February, reaching out to cup the side of his neck before retreating, Hereward burning to life in his chest. Undeniable proof that someone in this world would miss Goro when he was gone—

What the fuck.

Goro stares, dumbfounded at the ceiling as he rolls over on his back, the panicked realization tightening his chest feels downright inevitable, even as he struggles to choke it down. He is suddenly blindly, incandescently angry.

(—He really should’ve just saved himself the trouble and shot that boy in the head for a second time.)

//

He loses track of his days.

Weekly, he is picked up at his apartment. Weekly, he goes through the motions of assisting the officers on Shido’s case, exposing the network the Phantom Thieves had left to rot.

But that wasn’t fair either, was it? They didn’t know what Goro did, not of the filth or the rotten underbelly he’d helped Shido cultivate—because Goro didn’t tell them. Of course not, why would he?

There existed dozens of Kaneshiro’s in Tokyo alone, and even more men at the top just as wretched and disgusting as the young Okumura heiress’ oh, so, beloved father that deserved to 'be guided down the correct path'.

The thieves were nothing more than naive children, with a childish justice to match; it left Goro seething, the envy burning inside him watching from afar had been…

….

He shuts off the train of thought before it festers. There's no point anymore after all was said and done.

At present, Goro inclines his head demurely at the officers on the other side of the table, he speaks in a slow, even voice for the recording.

It was an exhaustive affair, but Goro would much rather spend his months playing janitor than rot in Shido’s fancy apartment for any longer than he has to.

—He’d be dead in the ground before he let a single one of those rats go free to consolidate power. Goro may be barred from carrying out his own justice by what he can only call divine punishment, but, at least, he's mature enough to clean up the messes he himself created.

Kurusu Akira’s full name being in the system was bad enough, worse, it left him open for payback. Open for some very powerful people with axes to grind. And, as strong as the venerated leader of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts was in the metaverse, in 'reality', Joker was still distressingly mortal. 

(Self-sacrificing idiot that he is.)

It’s just so easy for people to die, like the flickering light of a candle, or the last gasp of a dying star echoed from a million light years away.

Goro wouldn’t allow Akira, sentimental, clever, earnest Akira with his knife like smiles and infuriating charm to wind up a statistic in a political power struggle.

That shit's just not on.

—Goro owes him a rematch, after all.

This he could put his energy into, a purpose he could focus in on instead of wallowing in the reality of his situation. Robin Hood, who'd made his nest in Goro's soul long ago, trills in united agreement.

Distantly, Goro can’t help wondering if Joker can still feel Arsene under his skin.

//

For a time the mask smiles and so does Goro.

He doesn’t think about Joker, he tries not to think too long about much of anything,

And then.

There’s always a ‘then’, isn’t there?

He finds himself staring at a pile of diaries and a meek elderly man in a traditional kimono. There are officers on either side of the man on the other end of the apartment's dining table; he looks downtrodden and exhausted.

Goro feels a rush of foreboding he hasn’t felt since that day when his sentence was read in court.

As the meeting wears on, filled with excuses and weak justifications, his eyes are blank and dispassionate. Yet another empty shell, his--'grandfather'--pleading for absolution from a part of Goro's sympathy he had let go to rust a long time ago.

How could someone as bright as his mother have come from such a cowardly worm of a man?

In the dead of night whilst reading his mother’s dying words, the officers and her wretch of a sperm donor finally long gone, Akechi Goro is for the first time, wholly alone. 

Something breaks for good inside him, when the realization hits: There is no true justice in this world.

(He can no longer feel the echoes of Robin’s merry laughter, nor the constant assurance of the gentleman outlaw’s masks.)

///

[Candidate found!] Akechi Goro. Tokyo Highcourt. Amphitheater.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Miss Raven, may I ask for a list of the flaws in Leona’s plan from 2nd book? I knew of a couple myself at some point but i forgot what they were 😅 I was hoping you could list off as many flaws in the plan as you could find. 🤔

Please note: This post ONLY addresses the issues with Leona's book 2 plans to get Malleus out of the picture as per the asker's question. Book 2 has several other issues with its narrative (such as Leona's lack of screen presence/interaction with Yuu and co.), but I will not be counting them here.

The problems with Leona's plan are, as I could identify them:

NO Savanaclaw students were among the injured. Does this not automatically make them look really shady????

Savanaclaw students form a wall around Ruggie to shield him from sight when he uses his UM. This, too, is hella suspicious... You're telling me that there's an oddly high number of Savanaclaw students at the scenes of the crimes and yet not one of them got injured??? IT MAKES THEM LOOK EVEN SHADIER THAN BEFORE, ESPECIALLY SINCE THEY HAVE A REALLY OBVIOUS MOTIVE.

Leona openly talks about his evil scheme in his own dorm. A dorm with seemingly no sturdy doors that open and shut. A dorm that just brought in a bunch of freshmen that he doesn't know well and may not be on board with what he's doing. A dorm with a lot of beastmen... that have sensitive ears... and can probably hear you monologuing from quite a distance away...

Ruggie is sloppy and Leona just does not care about it when he really, REALLY should care; he is overly reliant on a "lack of evidence" to exonerate them. Ruggie blatantly shows off his UM and reports this to Leona. Why does Leona show like ZERO concern about this?? Why does he believe the school cannot do anything without proof? Literally nothing is stopping Crowley from detaining him under suspicion of guilt, or at least having someone watch him like a hawk if they suspect something... which will just make it that much harder to execute his plan.

Leona doesn't seem to care either when Jack overhears his plan; he just... expects Jack to feel pressured by his dorm members + the hierarchy to not squeal???? Same issue as the previous bullet point; Leona should be caring a lot more about concealing their identities than this.

Leona assumes a regular ass stampede will be enough to kill/injure Malleus. The reason provided is that Malleus wouldn't dare to use his magic to get away when it might "harm" innocent bystanders. OKAY, what's stopping Malleus from poofing out of danger? This is an even stupider point because we literally see Malleus VANISH IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE when Yuu meets him for the first time in this very same book.

The potential political fallout. I doubt Twst intended to go into the consequences of what would have happened if Leona's dumb plan had succeeded, but surely if he was caught in the act or even suspected to have had a hand in it, it would impact the relationship between their countries since Leona and Malleus are both princes??? And that sounds like it would be a massive shitshow 💀

I've done my own book 2 rewrite, which attempts to address most of these issues with Leona's plan. There is also this follow-up post, which expands on some of the ideas I proposed in my initial rewrite. Tons of other people have book 2 rewrites as well! And you can write your own book 2 rewrite! Literally almost anything is better than the canon book 2--

[monimccoythings]

I believe everytime you and Worst!Logan decide to leave your kids under Wade's supervision, you also have to call someone to supervise Wade. It's not that Wade's a very bad babysitter, as the self proclaimed godfather of the living proof that The Wolverine has had sex twice in his life, he'd rather cut his own arm than let anything happen to the kids (it'd eventually grow back, so his sacrifice would be kinda pointless, still, it's a nice gesture); but the first time you left him with the children he threw a party, so when you and Logan returned you found yourselves in the middle of the wildest coke themed party the building has ever known, strangers form Sister Margaret's School for Wayward Children (plus Buck and Al) were passing your thankfully very oblivious kids around like a bong.

You felt like you were about to faint, scream and throw up at the same time. But nothing compared to what your husband was feeling.

Logan was red, he saw red, he was about to paint the walls red.

In Wade's defense, the children had been properly fed, changed, played with, and put to sleep, and there didn't seem to be suffering from any injuries either physical or psychological, as it turns out Buck used to study pediatrics at Medical School, and you honestly didn't know how to feel about that.

So, to be frank, they had actually been well cared for by all the guests. Also, although this barely counts as an argument in Wade's favor, there was coke for the adults and light coke (the drink) for the kiddos, so in Wade's mind nothing bad had happened.

Still, they all got lucky enough to be able to barely escape with their lives and limbs intact, since you thought convenient to hand both kids to Logan to prevent him from launching himself at the guests. Not that you were feeling less angry than he was, but at least your outburst wouldn't be as traumatic for your children as Logan's.

You know Wade, you love Wade, and you have zero doubts that Wade would kill to keep those children safe and sound. But next time you and Logan want to have a night to yourselves, you're dialing Vanessa.

[rottiens]

nocturne, gojō satoru

summary. you feel strange, something that had never happened in Satoru’s presence before. He had never made you feel anything more than comfort, confidence and respect, but now the air is slowly charged with a heavy mist that begins to seep through your skin, weighs on your lungs and makes your beats detonate just a little. You can't know what it is but there's something different about tonight.

tags. (18+), touch starved fem!reader, size difference, dubcon, manipulation, praise kink, reader is geto’s “ex”, gojo a little gay/bi (the usual), just the tip, cum eating, thigh job.

WC. 10.8K — read on ao3

notes. ok, first of all, I have the hc that gojo dances very well (I have zero proof, zero doubt). Second, this is inspired by my under my skin series with geto, writing the last chapter made me think about the people geto left behind when he left jujutsu tech and how they handled those feelings and this was born (you don't need to read that series at all to understand this), third; this came out darker than I had thought and I hope you still love me as much as I love feral gojo

You like to think that nothing has changed since he left. After all, the sun still shines just as brightly, the rain still drenches even the remotest corner of Tokyo, you keep drinking tea without a spoonful of sugar and you still attend Jujutsu Tech like the obedient little sheep you are (his words).

You still work for the higher-ups despite disagreeing with them all the time. You keep improving yourself as a sorceress, completing mission after mission and sending money to your parents every end of the month so they can finish paying off the house and maybe after all the only thing that has changed is that you now have your own apartment, which well, officially will be yours in about two more months when you finish paying off the loan. You are surrounded by things that you can proudly say belong to you and that you were able to buy for yourself, things that you may not need like a vase of candy that you keep in the kitchen for when Satoru is visiting or the cotton candy flavored lip balm that you are currently entertaining yourself with while waiting for the kettle to start squeaking.

The clock-like cat in the background meows at 1:56AM, yet another item Satoru threw in the shopping cart when he helped you get the essentials you needed to furnish your apartment a couple of years ago. It's something you didn't need because you're never home to look at the time or that's what you have your phone for, and after all you were never much of a cat lover. However when Satoru was looking at you over the top of his glasses and those bright eyes were begging you, it was almost impossible for you to say no to him.

Though, how could you? Satoru has been the only friend you've kept after so long, the only one who knows all the pain you've gone through in silence and the only one who was there with you the day Suguru left Jujutsu Tech. Truth be told, you were never that close to Satoru back then, you two never managed to talk that much except for when you would go out in a group and Ieiri would invite you downtown to go with them to eat, shop or drink sake, the memories make you sigh heavily. An ironic laugh crosses your chest along with a bitter memory of those days where you kept looking at Suguru from the other side of the table, every time his eyes met yours you were forced to look away, to run away from that heavy feeling that burned your chest and to ignore the fact that every time he laughed his knee met yours. You remember his cold fingers under the table touching your knee, touching your shoulder when he turned to tell you something funny. 

The clock strikes 2:03AM, the exact moment when the kettle starts to squeak and forces you to get up from your stool and shuffle your bare feet across the tiles to the stove. You turn it off and the smoke leaving the kettle makes you focus again on that day... The day when The High-ups decided that Suguru Geto was officially enemy of the sorcerers and was now considered a curse that needed to be executed, that day Satoru was there too. It was the first time you saw him so quiet, without that sarcastic laughter that characterized him filling the room, the same silence that filled the others rested even heavier on Satoru's head and yours, it was as if a heavy black cloud began to rain down on your heads.

Satoru was silent but his clenched fists spoke for him, shaking on the table. White knuckles and thick veins were marked on the backs of his hands and when you looked up into his face he was glaring at you, that icy stare still makes your back bristle every time you remember it. His nose flaps were dilated and his sharp jaw was clenched. You on the other hand were shivering, as if the gray cloud above your head was actually starting to rain, as if the drops were real and together with Satoru's gaze it was raining on your body.

You never told anyone, not Satoru, not even Ieiri, but deep down you blame yourself for never noticing how he was slowly drifting away from you, how he was losing himself. In the middle of the nights when you talked lying on his bed, while he smoked and passed you the cigarette and asked you about the origin of the curses, when he asked what you thought would be the solution for a world without curses are clues that should have raised alarms in your head, yet you could never connect the dots of the red alerts that screamed to you that the person you were in love with could be about to fall into the abyss.

You lie to yourself, when you fix your hair every morning and put on the spotless uniform next to the plastic smile you have become so used to wearing, you lie to yourself and tell you that everything is fine, that even though you haven't known where he is for four years, even though you hear the trail of death he leaves in his wake, you are fine, everything is fine, the reflection in the mirror smiles back at you and repeats the same thing. You're glad you have a roof to live under, a place to work, friends to worry about, it's okay if you couldn't save one of them after all, right? It's not your fault. The important thing is that you are doing the right thing, that you are saving dozens of innocents, right? 

You just pray every day, to whatever higher being might be listening to you not to be the one to find him, not to be the one to confront him... because if that day were to come, you...

Your phone chimes with a notification and the fact takes you so abruptly by surprise that the teacup you're holding slips and shatters to pieces on the floor, splashes of hot chamomile drops burn on your bare feet and exposed legs, you groan in pain and curse walking away to pick up the phone resting on the counter, just in time to receive another message.

S. Gojō: Knock knock, silly

S. Gojō: I'm outside

Sent at 2:21AM, he's never visited you this late. Usually Satoru would show up suddenly in the nights because he couldn't sleep, midnight, eleven, ten but he always left after two hours of drinking tea and talking about anything. Other times he would text you very late in the dawn because he woke up and couldn't go back to sleep, then he would find you awake because you couldn't sleep either and both of you would stay up late talking and then he would always be late the next day for his classes.

But today was unusual... your phone vibrates with another notification. 

S. Gojō: Don't make me break the door, I can feel your cursed energy from in here :p

You must have been too deep in thought not to notice the strong smell of his cursed energy coming through the door, the sensation even through the walls tingles your skin.

You flee the kitchen scene with your feet marking wet footprints all over the floor, on your way to the front door you stop in the small living room to turn on the lights and give a little more life to the gloomy place. Your footsteps stop right in front of the frame, your fingers curl around the knob and you take a deep exhale that allows you to search for the plastic smile to put on your face, a smile that manages to mask how exhausted you were feeling tonight. Of all the nights, this might have been his worst choice to come visit you.

"Hey—" The creation of your fake smile falls halfway off. You don't remember the last time you'd seen Satoru out of uniform, or at least dressed so formally, just to come see you? But seeing him in casual clothes caused the wheels in your brain to stop working just a little. "What—"

He chuckles, adjusting the sunglasses better on the bridge of his nose. "They canceled the mission to Kyoto." He pauses to tap twice on the carry-on suitcase dragging near his feet that you barely notice. "So I thought I'd stop by and see how you were doing."

That was it? "You always dress like that for all your missions?" Now he was smiling, almost looking amused at your reaction. "What's wrong with my clothes?" Nothing! That was the point, rather than a mission, he looked like he was dressed for a date. 

He was wearing a black synthetic jacket that came down to his wrists along with a shirt the color of his eyes underneath, the two buttons near his collarbones open revealing a flash of his chest. Those oval sunglasses that couldn't be missed and tight black pants that matched the shiny loafers. Without the uniform he even looked taller, he smelled like he just got out of the shower, a kind of icy mint where you are forced to inhale while blinking slowly.

"Nothing," you comment after you've examined him up and down. You think you were subtle enough that he didn't notice, but you're sure he did anyway.

"May I come in?" he still keeps a smile on his words.

You step aside without adding something else that sinks you into a debate you can't get out of. You wait patiently for the wheels of the mini suitcase to cross the threshold of the door and for Satoru to give you the space to close it behind you.

"Want some tea?" you cross past him to head for the kitchen, his footsteps following your trail.

"Yeah, tell me you have sugar." You want to fight him, to tell him that chamomile tea doesn't really have sugar in it because it's a sleeping tea, but you know you'd just be wasting your time so you end up pointing your finger at one of the shelves instead.

"It's right where—"

"Wow!" His hands suddenly squeeze your waist and make you stop, you stutter his name in confusion. His fingers burn against the flesh your pajamas fail to cover and he pulls you back. "What happened?" he says low behind you. You notice how his hands look squeezing you and then look at the puddle at your feet along with pieces of pottery strewn in front of the sink.

"Your text message, you scared me."

"So it was my fault, hm?" you can guess the smirk  in his tone. "It's okay, I always take care of my messes."

Satoru gently pushes you aside, then asks you to sit on one of the stools while he takes care of picking up the pieces because he's afraid you might cut yourself in the process. He further alleges that you are barefoot. 

"My hero," you say, exaggerating your voice for a louder one. This time Satoru laughs and it rubs off on you. He takes several paper towels and squats down spreading his knees as far apart as he can to soak all the paper while you stare at him silently, it's impossible not to think how big he is if you compare him to your kitchen space or if you compare him to any other object in your apartment really.

"I know, I know. What would you do without me, huh?" he looks up at you from below and you catch a glint of the blue in his eyes before he turns his attention back to the floor, focusing now on picking up the broken pieces and carrying each one to the trash can behind you.

"Sooo." You exaggeratedly lengthen the word until he's back in your field of vision, rummaging through your cabinets effortlessly as if he owns the floor.

"So?" He walks toward you with two mugs that he places side by side. Then he turns around to pick up the teapot and starts pouring the hot liquid.

"Do you always go on your missions like this?"

"Like this how?" Oh, he knows very well what you meant. Like this, you want to tell him, but you know it would only serve to boost his annoying ego a little more. "Tell me when to stop," he asks you, starting to empty the hot liquid into the cup, the smell of chamomile and cinnamon wafting up towards your nose. 

"That's good," you tell him a few inches before the infusion touches the rim and you bring it to your mouth almost instantly. "And I mean like this," you point his body up and down with your free hand, then sip slowly, "so elegant."

"What do you mean? This is me in my regular clothes, this is how I always look." Satoru finishes filling his cup and puts at least six sugar cubes in it before speaking again. "Let's go to the couch." You just shake your head and follow the path he traces because you're sure you're going to be more comfortable on the L-shaped couch he helped you pick out (which is why he loves it so much), conventionally too big for your living room space, but big enough for Satoru to spread his legs and arms on the back and coo like a pleased kitten. "Today's mission was special..." He answers a question you'd forgotten about and takes the first sip of his tea. 

"Hm?" you inquire, curiously looking for more information. Now that you're sitting up, the satin fabric of your shorts rides up a few inches over your thighs and in a vain attempt to pull it down just a little, you find him peering out of the corner of your eye. 

"It was someone... important." You feel his eyes on your thighs, he tries to disguise it but doesn't try very hard either. "I had to escort him somewhere." 

"It had to be someone important to be escorted by the strongest." This time he's the one cooing, hesitant. You know there are missions you can't divulge too much about or you might get in trouble, and even for someone like Satoru Gojo who giving his tongue a life of its own has never been a problem, him being quiet now should be enough to make you desist on the subject or maybe he's just too distracted going back to your legs again and again. You clear your throat. "I-"

"Mind if I turn out the light?" you blink slowly in his direction. "My eyes," he clarifies something that should be obvious to you. An Oh louder than it should makes your throat vibrate. 

"Sure." 

"I just want to take a break from the sunglasses for a while." 

"Sure, yeah." 

Satoru first sets the cup down on the small table in front of the couch, then gets up and walks over and through the various objects in your living room until he reaches the switch. You try not to notice his body as he does so, his long legs or how wide his shoulders look as he walks back towards the couch making the place his catwalk, the height and appearances have always made him look like a model in your eyes, a comment you want to make but your coherent side makes you bite your tongue, you're still too awake for that. 

You try to hide that it doesn't affect you when he takes off his jacket and settles back on the sofa with his mug in hand, staring at you.

"Better?" You clear your throat again, feeling it irritably dry.

"Yeah. I have been using them all day and the bright light sometimes ends up bothering me.” The conversation makes you look at his eyes, even in the midst of the darkness that surrounds you, you can see them shine.

“I'm sorry,” you say, but you don't know exactly what you're apologizing for. Uncomfortable and overheated, you decide to take another long sip of the infusion.

It's strange, you feel strange, something that had never happened in Satoru's presence before. He had never made you feel anything more than comfort, confidence and respect, but now the air is slowly charged with a heavy mist that, although you cannot see, begins to seep through your skin, through your pores, weighs on your lungs and makes your beats detonate just a little. You can't know what it is but there's something different about tonight.

"What about you?" Satoru murmurs with his mouth on the cup, his sweet voice echoing among the ceramics and the way he speaks seems like he's telling a little boy a secret. "Haven't you been on missions in a long time?"

"I don't usually take so many important missions, no." You didn't need to give him any more details because you're sure he knew… that your last name wasn't as well known as his or the Zenins, that you weren't as strong compared to other sorcerers, and that you didn't normally leave town, unlike he.

"I remember when Suguru was here it wasn't like that." His name makes you stop breathing for a moment. Your fingers squeeze the semi-empty cup and your gaze escapes from his to focus on some point on the floor. "He always said how strong you were, how much he wanted to have you under his arm and show you what you weren't able to see for yourself, one day." Was he really saying all that about you? This time you go back to his face, on his expression, his half-closed eyes fixed on what was in front of him, it seemed that he was serious.

"He never told me that."

"I guess it wasn't necessary, was it?"Yes? You have always been a person who likes to hear what others think especially regarding their feelings, no matter how much their facts speak for them, you need to hear them say those three important words. "You guys were really close after all." Yes, Suguru and you were very close indeed. So close that sometimes he would rather study with you than with Satoru even though you were a year younger than them. You were so close that sometimes you slept together, he would listen to your secrets and he would babble about his.

“Gojo…” You scratch the back of your neck, massaging a tendon that tightens and pulls your nape toward the floor. You weren't sure if this was the topic you wanted to talk about tonight.

“Please, we are the same now. You don't have to treat me with such respect, Satoru it's okay." You leave the empty cup on the table before looking at him, a smile was waiting on his face that barely curved the corners of his mouth but there was something in all this that although it seemed innocent, it was not right, and while you pull down the fabric of your shorts you realize what it is.

"Satoru." You say his name for the first time in a long time and that makes the grin on his face widen, he tilts his head forward a bit showing you more of his eyes and invites you to continue. "I don't know if I want to talk about it right now."

You knew exactly what that was on your chest, tight, like a rope knot. It was guilt, because even after so many years you felt that you had to continue being faithful to a person who disappeared without giving you an explanation, guilt because you were seeing who his best friend was with different eyes. Because you were thinking of Satoru in a way that one friend wouldn't think of another.

"Do you still love him? Is that why you don't want to take on the important missions, are you afraid of running into him?" your tongue is heavy, your stomach sinks even deeper. Satoru wasn't looking at you, his attention was fixed on the unlit lamp at the other end of the couch. 

"Yes." It's all you can say, running from his expression to your legs. Not having enough strength to clarify which of the two questions you are answering, concentrating on the heating in your apartment, on how warm it feels to be there.

"Yeah..." He sighs, pausing for a long time. "Me too. I miss him, it's hard not to think about him sometimes." You can sense the melancholy in his voice, his cup crashing against the wood as soon as he finishes speaking, the silence and darkness in the room adding a bit more melodrama to the scene. Satoru splits his legs, spreads his thighs wide, and the mix of emotions inside you intensifies.

"He never contacted you again?" you ask desperately to occupy your mind. He shakes his head, still focused on the lifeless lamp. You? "No." 

And maybe it was better that way. To live in silence, to live hiding and filling the emptiness he left inside you with books and knowledge, with other people who look like him, with missions where you pray you never meet him face to face because the moment you did you wouldn't know exactly what to say or what to do, even though you know well what the orders are supposed to obey. 

You look at the lamp along with him wondering what he's thinking. Filling the gaps in your memory with banal conversations you two might be having right now, yet this didn't seem like one of the many times Satoru has come to your place to chat and drink.

"When was the last time you did something fun?" Out of the corner of your eye you see him rest his head on his shoulder and relax a little more on the couch. “Something that has nothing to do with work. Something you really enjoy.”

If you were honest... "I don't even remember."

He clicks his tongue and you look at him just in time to see him reach for something in his pocket. The blue light from the screen illuminates his face, the keyboard squeaks under his nice fingers, strands of hair stick to his forehead and the light is so bright it makes his eyelashes look like snowflakes. A soft melody begins to play, you're lost, you drop your head to the side along with a pout that makes him laugh, then he holds out his hand. 

"Dance with me."

“Gojo— no, no. I Can't." You laugh nervously, the heat rising from your cheeks to your chest. "I don't know how to dance." You confess quietly, more embarrassed to share that secret than you should.

"Okay, me neither." Liar, you'd definitely seen him dance before at teacher parties and maybe he wasn't a pro but he was good, he did that thing with his feet that was impossible to take your eyes off him when he was on the dance floor. "Come on." 

You chew your lower lip, exchanging glances between the hand that moves its fingers strangely in front of you and Satoru, who is waiting for you with a smile. No, don't, don't take his hand… You know he feels your icy damp fingers as his hand clings to yours and helps you up to cling to your chest. Your lungs empty and fill with him, his perfume, his natural scent, the faint cotton candy scent you manage to identify among the tangle of faint scents. The fact that he had deactivated his infinity so that you can touch him shoots adrenaline through your bloodstream, skin against skin. 

"Okay, what do I do?" You were laughing shyly again, allowing his fingers to take hold of your waist, fixing you close to him just as he wanted you.

"Just follow my footsteps." It was hard to follow him, keep your nerves in check and at the same time try to breathe.

"I'm going to step on you." You tease, his open palm descending to your lower back as the violins pick up, pulling you further into him. "Go—!"

"You're not going to step on me, we're fine. Put your hands on my shoulders." He instructs you. That meant having to leave his chest, stop yourself from looking at his collarbones and look into his eyes. "Like this." He does it for you, takes one of your wrists and delicately places it on one of his shoulders then returns to your waist, his ice-cold fingers a little further below your waist this time, you feel his fingertips brush against the elastic of your shorts, his nails barely scratching your skin. “This is my favorite part,” he says low in your ear, almost mischievous. And in the midst of the symphony of your blood rushing violently in your ears and the drum of your heart, you hear it. The violin had increased in speed which made you go faster, it was almost impossible to follow his turns, impossible not to step on him but this was something Satoru ignored, he allows your bare feet to step on him again and again and again, bringing behind these one apology from you after another.

Satoru was practically on top of you now, hugging you closer to him. His face hidden in your neck —which you appreciate because how could you look into his eyes and dance at the same time—, his lips on your skin, humming the melody of the instruments. His arms squeeze you, make you groan in surprise. Then he kisses your neck and that makes you aware of every little thing around you, the noise that the silence makes, how slowly his feet took you on the impromptu dance floor because the violins had decayed dramatically, you could clearly hear how quickly you were breathing with your mouth open, his arms gripping your waist make you feel small, you can tell how hot having him close is making you, the warmth of his body, how the tender fabric of his shirt felt crinkling against your exposed skin. Satoru kisses you again, this time near the ear.

“Gojo…” you call him, your hands pushing his shoulders in search of regaining your personal space, you needed it or you were going to faint.

"Satoru." He corrects you, breathing heavily into your ear. The warm breath makes your thighs rub against each other.

"Satoru." You repeat, he makes a growling sound. "I don't… think…"

"Do you think he will come back?" A phantom hand oppresses your chest, destroys your ribs to the rhythm of the dramatic melody with which the song continues that seems to never end. "Is that why you haven't been with anyone else?" Satoru leaves the comfort of your neck to look at you, his arms still tied behind your back. He has the look of a feline on his face, white locks falling across his forehead serving as curtains for those eyes that glow like neon lights. An iciness rests on your abdomen, as faint as the flutter of a butterfly.

The song stops abruptly, leaving you alone with the pounding of your heart, your stomach sinking with each breath you take.

“How do you know—” He snorts, his laugh sounding cruel, cutting your sentence off in mid-air.

"Have you?" you refuse to answer, you refuse to keep looking at him so you evade him and those eyes that seem to watch everything. You  think you have nowhere to go —literally, because his arms hold you prisoner—, wherever you look there he is. So you stare past his shoulder, past the baby blue of his shirt to the fresh coat of paint on your wall. "Look at me."

You refuse to do it and show him your vulnerability. Sinking deeper and deeper into that heavy, cold sensation that walks from your navel to your ribs, turning into a bitter cocktail of emotions that you don't know how to swallow. When you don't look at him, one of his hands goes to the back of your neck and forces you to do so, fixes your gaze on him, on his slightly half-open pink lips, then on his eyes and the bitter cocktail becomes digestible, clear....

"I've always had my eyes on you."

...So clear. Underneath the layers and layers of raw human emotions you could make out so clearly the primal fear, you wanted to run away from the almighty, hide from his intense gaze but you also feel guilt because inside you still waited for Suguru, because you still expected him to come back even after four years. Guilt because you still felt you had to remain faithful to someone who never asked you to be his girlfriend, to someone who never told you he loved you. You still want to stay faithful to a ghost. Shame, because you couldn't help that your body reacted so well to his closeness, you were hot in every corner of your body and underneath it all, you were aroused.

Your quick blinks took care of erasing the stupor you were in, protecting your tears from spilling over, why would you cry after all? If you never cried when he left, it wasn't time to cry now.

"What did you say?" You tell him in a shaky voice.

"Whenever you were looking at Suguru I was looking at you, watching you laugh, watching your eyes sparkle every time they met his." You see him move from your eyes to your lips. "Watching you fall in love with my best friend. But I don't blame you, I too wondered how his lips tasted."

"Satoru, I didn't—" You were dizzy, your guts in knots. Your frail fists push him again achieving the same result: him remaining motionless. "I don't think it's right that we..."

"He's gone." He says your name, the tone he uses is so ruthless, his voice sounds broken, hoarse and you can't help but shed a single tear that he tries to wipe away immediately, his thumb scrapes your cheek and the touch makes you close your eyes looking to escape from there, to escape the pain, the loneliness and the hundreds of emotions you shouldn't be feeling right now.

"You're his best friend," you say in a tired sigh, looking for him to see the logic to a situation that is obvious to you.

"Yeah." That's all he says. You see him approach you and your eyes snap open meeting his face bathed in darkness, the shadows of the room dancing across half of his face, it makes the features blur and stand out so much more at once. "But we haven't done anything, have we?" he says even closer to your mouth. "At least not yet."

Before you can protest, complain or bring any sense to his brain, Satoru was kissing you and all you can  feel for a long moment are his gentle, expert lips, kissing you frantically, forcing you to open wider to give him the space he needs to deepen the kiss. You try to push him away but any kind of physical force you try to exert on him is less than pathetic, your fists don't even faze him and as much as you try to run away, his hands are squeezing your forearms tightly forcing you to remain immobile.

After a while of struggling, of denying yourself the pleasure, you let him in. Satoru purrs reaching your tongue. You are clumsy at first but manage to keep up with him, melting into his rough grip that contrasts gently with the way his mouth caresses yours. His tongue drags your lower lip and that makes you moan in surprise, embarrassed your face boils and his teasing chuckle makes your whole body tighten.

When Satoru finally pulls away, it seems like an eternity has passed, every little corner of your body feels hot and unstable. Your lips tingle and your thighs tremble, you don't remember the last time you... actually, yes, you remembered very well.

He still stands close, with a smile you can glimpse cutting through the night. With slightly swollen lips, painted a pink a few shades more intense than before. As you struggled to get fresh air into your lungs, Satoru still maintained the same breathing rhythm as when he walked through your door.

"You really haven't been with anyone else,” he says, tasting his lips with his tongue.

"N-no, I..."

You didn't have to answer, it wasn't a question, you still looked to try to give him a logical explanation for the physiological reaction you were having but he was already smiling, much wider this time without actually showing his teeth. Satoru lets go of your arms and seems to widen on you, he seems taller, stronger, as if all this time he had been bending his knees so he could be completely at your eye level. Suddenly his hands were all over your crotch, squeezing your pussy above the fabric of your shorts, sinking deeper between your folds. The sticky puddle immediately stains the fabric, you feel it and you know he feels it so you slip away from his face paying more attention to the floor.

"No panties," he says loudly in a mocking tone. Your nails dig into his wrist, a futile attempt to make him stop.

"Satoru, please."

"Please what?" With the help of his fingers he strokes your slit up and down damaging your shorts with your arousal, the delicate fabric feels so good on your swollen clit, someone else's touch even with your pajamas in between is so good you can't help but moan, your nails digging a little deeper into his skin. "Please, keep going?" his caresses are barely perceptible now, toying very very slowly with your clit, your jaw drops to the floor. "Or Satoru, please stop?" He pats your pussy in a gentle slap as if trying to prove a point, your whole body arches falling forward towards him and Satoru welcomes you in a kind of strange embrace. "You have to use your words," he clarifies, his voice so much like a siren's song.

With your face in the middle of his chest he turns you into a shell that does nothing but tremble, a shell empty of all logical thoughts. All that comes to you is an explosion of emotions bombarding your senses, you are overstimulated with smells: you inhale with his hand on the back of your neck petting your hair, giving you time to clear your head. Your belly tingles because he smells so good, the icy mint mixes with a somewhat sweet manly perfume that invites you to sniff harder. His chest feels hard and pleasant at the same time giving you the security you've been lacking the last months, you want to hug him and cry while you let him take care of you, the heat emanating from him almost burns you, it seems impossible to you that he's so hot; your eyelids squeeze tighter making the pitch black take shapes: stars, constellations, random dots.

"If you're not going to decide, then I think I should give you space." He takes a step back and your brain has to force itself back to reality, you regain the unsteadiness you lost when you stopped touching him and take two strong steps backwards moving further away from him, even though the heater is still on, your whole body suddenly feels cold. You hug yourself to cover your erect nipples. "I'll leave you to rest and we can talk tomorrow."

Your tongue stays heavy and sticky, your teeth are biting it slowly as you watch him grab his jacket determined to leave.

"Don't go." You don't recognize your own voice.

"What? Sorry I didn't hear you."

"Please stay." You assumed he was smiling, you couldn't bring yourself to lift your head from the tip of his shiny shoes that are getting bigger as he approaches you again. His presence makes you feel  under some kind of spell, you inhale looking for the oxygen that was stolen from you, you feel weak, dizzy... and his long fingers grab your chin to make you look at him, then you confirm he was smirking, the corners of his mouth slightly raised towards the sky.

"Do you trust me?" You do. You'd be a fool not to. Your lips part to respond, but the height difference makes you clam up. "You know I'd never hurt you, right?" You know. "Go to the couch."

That's how you find yourself doing the next thing he asks, sliding your shorts off and placing your legs on the soft surface in an awkward V, exposing your wet pussy to a hungry gaze. In a way he reminds you of Suguru —the way he walks towards you brimming with confidence, the way he looks at you, the aura of superiority with which his height looms over you— and that makes you  feel more shame, more guilt, you want to hide your face but you know that would be much worse so you force yourself to watch him walk towards you and drop to his knees in the middle of your thighs. 

Satoru grabs your calves, your yelp in surprise. The soles of your feet are on his broad shoulders, you  feel the muscles there tense and stretch as he settles in, you watch him lick his lips and your pussy clenches under his nose. Without hands —because these are on your waist, walking shyly over your ribs—, he kisses your navel and your body contracts. Relax, he murmurs, kissing your skin, tickling you every time his pretty lips go down a couple of centimeters more. 

The waves of heat produced by his laughter go straight to your sensitive bundle of nerves, you were shivering under him, as if your body was freezing to death but on the contrary, your temples were wet with droplets of sweat, your back is hot and your hands are soaked, still you can't stop shivering. His nose brushes the short hairs on your mons pubis, then he kisses your clit hidden between your labia and with the help of his tongue he searches for it with his eyes closed, parting your soaked lips until he manages to make direct contact with what he craves so much. 

You don't know what to do with your hands, you want to leave them to the side of your body but they start to tremble, you want to take it into his short strands but you don't know if that would be something he would approve of. 

"More," he says. Satoru takes your hands and makes his words make sense, he helps you place your fingers under your knees, forcing you to open wider for him in an embarrassing position. "Keep your legs open, just like this." 

He mumbles something else between his teeth but you don't pay attention, his thumbs were spreading your lips further apart, uncovering more of your clit and the inspection gets your arousal spilling from your pussy to your thighs and from there to your ass. You were so wet, you could feel it touching the couch. You wanted him to do something, anything, if he kept looking at you like that you weren't going to be able to control yourself. 

"Stop it," you beg him, squeezing your eyes shut, the grip on your thighs weakening a little. 

"Let me look at you. You're soaking wet from just a couple of kisses..." The left one holds your pussy open, the thumb of the right then makes tight circles over your most sensitive spot and an electric current runs through your body. "That's cute." The thumb slides down to your slit, there it collects your juices and returns to the top where it drags them over your clit using them as a lubricant. "I wonder..." You feel his breath close to it, speaking so softly it feels like he's not even talking to you, your hips thrust upward. "Are you this wet because no one has touched you in years or is it just because it's me?" 

He doesn't give you time to answer, you don't even know if you'd be ready to. Suddenly his lips were locked on your clit, sucking roughly, making your legs slam over his head, the vibrations of his laughter going straight to your core. 

"Mhm no, stay wide open for me. I want to taste every last drop." You take a deep breath in search of silencing another moan. His hands on your legs forcing you to open them a second time.

It's been so long since another person touched you that his strokes seem to come in waves, forming with each moan a knot in your lower abdomen tighter and tighter, sharper and sharper. You couldn't form a single coherent thought other than a distant, welcoming white noise as Satoru devoured the feast that seemed to be your cunt, his soft tongue parting your slit and pressing hard enough on your throbbing clit. You open your eyes after a while, you blink looking up at the sky, the darkness you had grown so accustomed to is replaced by the dim lighting in your living room, the white noise turns into the wet and sloppy sounds of Satoru kissing your pussy and between long blinks you gasp—

"I'm close..."

Satoru stands up just a little to tease you and the sensation of not having his mouth near you is almost painful, you feel him shudder beneath your feet. "Already?" he asks without really expecting an answer, his open palm squeezing your clit mercilessly. The sudden electric touch makes you snap your eyes shut again, your eyelids fill with lightning and a cold current coils up your spine. "No— huh, I don't want you thinking about anyone else while I make you cum... open your eyes."

"That wasn't—! Ah." That wasn't what you were doing! That's what you mean, but his fingers were hitting your aching flesh a little too hard, emptying your lungs.

You are so very close to reaching that longed-for sensation but he stops. A coo of no, no, no, no, comes out of your throat, forcing you to swallow a ball of saliva that had formed. But Satoru was standing now, he had left your wobbling body to one side, your weak legs dangling off the couch and he was in front of you, undoing the belt with one hand and stroking the prominent bulge with the other. Now the white noise of your thoughts passed your ears, the drums in your chest were beginning to sound much louder. Then with a, Get on your knees, you knew this was really happening, this was real.

You want to protest because you want to find the release that is burning your core, you want to beg him to continue touching you until he makes you cum but the look he gives you silences any protest, you really didn't want to challenge him. Satoru plops down next to you occupying the previous empty space on some cushions with his body, his legs stretched out as he pleases, lightly colliding with your knee. You get up from your seat to crawl to his feet, there, with his arms on top of the backrest and legs spread apart add that air of superiority that always surrounds him. 

Your hands look small on his legs, the shadow of his cock resting on his thigh makes them look much smaller. The size intimidates you and detonates dozens of unseemly thoughts inside you —how big will he be when you take it out, if you've taken Suguru before you could definitely do it with Gojo— you were scared and you knew he knew it, silently Satoru raises his hips letting you know he's still waiting for you, but to your surprise he was being much more than patient with you. In the process of lubricating your throat with enough saliva and stroking his cock over the fabric at least thirty seconds pass.

You hear him sigh in relief, your palm is like the touch of a feather, so light that you know you will make him desperate if you keep it up. You see him drop his head back and decide to work up the courage to remove the button and then undo the zipper. Satoru helps you with the rest by hooking his fingers into his pants and pulling them down to his knees along with his boxers. You cling to his thighs, your nails digging into his porcelain skin, even with the absence of light you can see it quiver, the size makes you squeeze your legs together, your juices running from your cunt to the inside of your thighs. Again your memories travel to Suguru and you find it hard not to unconsciously compare the two of them, Satoru was definitely much less thick than his friend, something you are thankful for as it makes you think you would have an easier time taking it; however it is long enough to make you just a little terrified at the thought of having it inside you. It was long, pale and slightly curved to the left.

You swallow and come to the conclusion that the right thing to do would be to take it from the base with both hands made into fists, you squeeze it, he groans through his teeth.

"What are you thinking?" you are surprised to hear him speak, you thought after all this time he had run out of inappropriate comments to make.

"It's big." There's not a single filter in your brain at that moment. You still contemplate how much you have left to take in even as you hold it, one fist over the other.

"You like it?" You lick your lips in response, moving from the sticky wet head to his eyes and think as you look into them now they are darker, still glistening with lust. "Use your words, angel."

The petname makes you dizzy. You look down at the cock in your hands again, then back up at him. "I like it," you confess.

"Do you need help?" You didn't think it was possible to get your heart to beat faster but somehow you manage it. You shake your head in denial, see him smile and assume maybe he's proud. Satoru spreads his legs wider and moves his hips closer to the edge of the couch to make you  more comfortable, two of his fingers manage to start removing the buttons on the wrinkled shirt. "No? Alright, show me what a good girl you are then."

His praises were going straight to your head making your brain turn into a sponge asking for more of his voice, more of his compliments. You stir between your legs, the position quickly numbing your knees. You start to move your hands at the same time, up and down very slowly, hoping to get some sign of approval from him but all you get is a long silence, even though it only makes you want to please him more.

You let your hands continue to massage the shaft and focus on the head. Trying to remember the last time you sucked a cock you remember Suguru, you remember what he used to like, the instructions he used to give you, after all he has been the only man you have been with, the only one who has taught you everything you know so nerves eat away at your bones when you finally put it in your mouth. It's strange because you were expecting another taste but surprisingly it tastes like nothing so this makes you suck, swirl your tongue in circles sensing every detail of the smooth texture, that's when you hear him moan, you hollow your cheeks and seek to take it deeper.

You pause for a moment to spit on it and fuck just the tip of it with a tight fist, Satoru gasps and his back arcs in your direction. Standing closer to you his fingers sink into your silky strands and he forces you to steady yourself, his height widening over your crumpled figure.

"Say 'aah', that's it, atta girl." Satoru snatches his own cock from your hand to flick your tongue, then forces your head down to take him deeper. You feel the tip hit your throat which makes you gag around it, you squeeze the fabric of his shirt in your hands, protests get stuck around his shaft and when the saliva is touching your jaw he pulls out of you to let you breathe, as soon as his cock stops clogging your throat you start coughing. "Sh, sh. You're going to take it again." He speaks to you so sweetly he almost makes you believe that you can.

"I can't—"

"Let me try again, your throat feels so good, look how hard you've made me." Amidst your watery eyes you manage to see it throbbing in front of you as Satoru pleases himself by stroking it vaguely with one hand, the head tinted a darker red. "Just a second time, I promise." His words are cotton candy on your palate, they make it all make sense, make you trust him because he would never hurt you and get you to end up opening your mouth like an obedient lamb for a second time.

Satoru slides inside you with a praise and an animalistic growl, first he takes his time and rubs himself on your tongue back and forth, your lips close around him sucking devotedly. You take a big inhale to try and prepare to take him again, this time the fist binding your hair forces you to go deeper. You protest, your hands slapping his thighs. "Mhm almost... almost. I know you can take it all, relax your throat." In between gagging comes the thought that you are going to choke, not just because of the size, but because of the amount of saliva you have accumulated and with the fist on your head pushing you deeper you come to the conclusion that you were going to pass out. Even though you managed to breathe through your nose your throat was burning, you could barely see because of the salty drops accumulating in your eyes and when you had given up and relaxed your throat, the tip of your nose brushes the short white hairs, there finally Satoru lets you go.

You are coughing at his feet with your sore and bruised throat, one hand wiping the drool from your cheek and another drying your tears that apparently overflowed at some point. If you told him to stop, would he really stop now, could you really go through with this? Your lips hurt, your throat burns and your stomach sinks a little at the thought that Suguru might find you like this. What would he say? You don't know at what point you started sobbing quietly or when you ended up in Satoru's lap but when you opened your eyes all you could find was that pair of deep blue eyes staring at you, singing you a coo as he stroked your back. 

"You did so good for me." You did? Your eyes shining with illusion, your stomach in knots. You shouldn't be happy. His thumbs wipe away your tears, his big hands cradle your face and you melt into them, rubbing your head between his palms like a needy puppy. He deposits two wet kisses on your moist cheeks. "You liked sucking my cock that much? Is that why you're crying?" You... you were stunned, you didn't know exactly what you were supposed to answer. You try to swallow and your throat s scratchy, your tongue gritty. "You made me so fucking hard and took me so deep, you should be proud." His thumb travels from your burning cheeks to your lip and he squeezes it back and forth, the soft touch feels so good that you are forced to close your eyes again, letting yourself be consumed by that cloud of pleasure. In the midst of your stupor, you feel two fingers bring a new flame to your core, caressing your clit in lazy circular motions. 

"Satoru..." 

"Open your mouth." You find yourself doing it before you can process the idea, his thumb is heavy on your tongue, the sensation is pleasant and reminds you of his cock; the idea makes you clench around nothing. "Suck it nice and deep, like it's my cock." That makes you moan, his touch has you melting, his fingers go from your clit to your hole and there he slides a finger inside you with such ease, the squish of his finger digging deep inside you exposes how wet you are. "Do you want me to make you cum with my cock in your mouth?" The moan he steals from you is lewd, Satoru replaces your thumb with two of his longer fingers, he squeezes your tongue and thrusts in and out of your mouth as spit starts to puddle on your tongue. "All this wet from sucking my dick?" 

Satoru laughs behind your ear, leaving a kiss there that makes you clench around the second finger he presses inside you. Massaging your pussy slowly in and out, you're sure his fingers are soaking wet when he reaches your g-spot, all the way to the knuckles deep inside you, making your cunt scream with those clicking sounds. He starts to increase the pace pumping that spot and fucking your mouth at the same time, getting your body to start bucking on top of his lap.

His fingers keep pounding your sore pussy and that makes you want to collapse in his arms, his fingers longer and more expert than yours manage to easily reach deeper inside you. You cry out his distorted name thanks to his fingers reaching for your throat, your body twitches and falls silent until he pulls his soaked fingers out of your mouth and lets you collapse onto his body, sobbing into his shoulder as his fingers continue to ride each wave of your orgasm, your hole tightening again and again around him, you are exhausted, empty as he pulls out of you. 

You moan because your whole body is numb, more perceptible to the dim light, to the sounds you distinguish in your own apartment and his dirty fingers from your orgasm now begging for entrance to your mouth. 

"Clean your mess," he says, but he is really ordering you. Your still mush brain allows him to enter your mouth and you suck with devotion until he deems them clean enough, only then does he drag them out of you, gently pat your cheek and that gets your attention back to reality. 

"W-what-" Even though you had learned that complaints were worthless with Satoru, you decide to whine in confusion as he was helping to gently lay you down on the couch and next he positions himself better on top of you. "Wait, Satoru..." You clearly knew what was coming. 

"Squeeze your thighs together." He ignores any kind of complaint to your non-surprise. You manage to prop yourself up on your elbows to look at him, his hair falling messily across his forehead giving him a feral touch, almost covering the wild look he was staring at you with... though he wasn't looking at you, at least not directly. His cock slams into your clit, squeezing it back and forth beneath his heavy head and the impact makes you wince. "You know what..."

"I don't think, really... really I—"

"It's okay," he says. Gathering your legs so easily in one hand, pushing them together until they touch your chest. "I'm not going to put it in, it shouldn't count as cheating." He's so hard against your sodden folds, you gasp as you just  the fat head tease trying to push inside you, bumping into your hole to slide all the way back up your slit. You shudder, your hips squirm. "Though for someone who doesn't want to get her pussy fucked, you're pretty fucking wet," he snorts wryly, slamming into your pussy harder this time. "Maybe we could try it next time, it wouldn't count as cheating if I fuck your ass either." Next time.

You don't have time to complain or mention that you've never done anything like this before... you can't take in the icy fear mixed with excitement that settles in your belly as you listen to him talk about fucking your ass because Satoru was pushing himself into the middle of your tight pussy lips, Squeeze your thighs for me, he reminds you, so he can let go and rest both hands on the sides of your head. Your feet are pressed against his chest, Satoru starting a firm pace where he shamelessly fucks your thighs and where you can't do more than take it because your hands are busy holding your legs closed so they don't spill out beside you. 

Satoru is close to you, his shirt falls open around his ribs making it bounce with each sharp thrust. You're panting with your mouth open getting your tongue dry as you desperately search for the oxygen that each time his hips bump against your thighs makes escape. He's certainly not inside you, he's not stretching your insides nice and deep but it's as if he is— each thrust makes you feel dizzy, the swollen tip of his cock rubbing against your tender clit over and over again, your pussy still sensitive from the recent orgasm he had snatched from you.

Contrary to what you might have imagined, if you had ever allowed yourself to fantasize about such a thing, Satoru is quiet, grunting and moaning without any modesty, sometimes gritting his teeth or you notice the Adam's apple go up and down yet he doesn't bother to disguise how good you make him feel, not caring much that the whole building realizes you have company tonight— knowing him, you imagine the idea only turns him on more. You're sure he'd rather be inside you but the expression on his face right now is one of pure ecstasy and lust, a hint of morbidity even as he's not even fucking you properly, the idea of him fucking you with that same intensity... that you even let him use your ass makes you clench painfully around nothing, your walls feel achingly empty.

From below you notice his pearly teeth chewing on his lower lip, his arms tensed at your side from the force he's exerting mark prominent veins and the occasional white strand bounces off his forehead from the intensity, his forehead beading with droplets of water.

"Fuck, I'm close." Satoru sits back on his calves and runs a hand through his hair pushing away the annoying strands. Your legs open, drop down to rest a little from the position feeling already the burning that chews your muscles and will be much worse tomorrow.

He takes the time to take off his shirt which is a mess and you lose yourself for a moment in what little you can appreciate of his marked abdomen, much stronger than you could ever imagine. Satoru wasn't as muscular or beefy as Suguru, but he was just as attractive.

Holding onto your elbows you see him grab his cock with one hand and slap your aching flesh again, tap, tap, tap. "You want to cum like this? Me slapping your clit?" you couldn't answer, you don't really know what you wanted, too deep in a thick fog of desire that manages to sink you deeper and deeper into that white noise. Far away, you hear him chuckling without stopping, rubbing your clit, hitting it with the red tip, teasing it until you gasp squeezing your eyes tight, a big hand pushes your abdomen down telling you dirty and sweet things, thus helping you to reach your sweet orgasm just with the stimulation of his cockhead.

Satoru drops down on you again but this time it's much closer, his wet chest is crushing yours, between your legs you  how heavy his thighs and hips are. His heavy breath hitting your neck, from there he goes to your ear. "Can I put it in? Just the tip, I promise." The tantalizing whisper makes your hips thrust upward seeking more of his hard cock sliding in between your slick folds, you feel it hard, throbbing, begging to finally be emptied. "Please, please..." Your nails dig into his back, he growls biting your neck in response.

"Yeah..." You respond lost amidst your carnal desires. Overwhelmed by the beads of sweat on his back under your fingers, the fragrance of his sweaty shampoo hypnotizing your coherence, his clammy hair tickling your shoulder line. Satoru marks your neck, peppering it with little kisses and sucking until it hurts. 

"Yeah? That's a good girl." Satoru's heat suffocates you against the couch, his thighs heavy on top of yours making you sink between the cushions just a little, forcing you to open wider to take it. You are too hot, too wet. Satoru jerks the tip of his cock at your entrance, making circles that make you clench wanting to have it inside, teasing you one last time he does as he promises, he shoves just the tip of his cock in making you  so empty, it's not enough, it's all you can think about.

You are aching still thanks to your previous orgasm, sobbing, lost in the sweet babbles he drops as he licks your ear.

"I'm going to cum inside you," he blurts out. Followed by a long thrust that gets his hips sliding inside you but he pulls out right away, the motion makes your nails dig deeper into his back. "Sorry, you're so wet..." He shuffles his hips again to thrust into your pussy with a faint clap of colliding skins, there he just grinds his hips against yours, stimulating your clit at the same time, making you feel how deep he is, making you feel every inch of his cock, twitching, as Satoru gasps at the line of your neck, telling you how good you've been for him.

Your body is sticky as he pulls away from you tracing a line of kisses from your mouth, collarbones, navel and reaching your crotch. As he deprives you of his warmth a cold air seems to rush through your limbs. 

"Gojo..." You say softly, lifting your head.

"Sh. I always clean up my messes." You fail to articulate another word, sore and tired you give up on the couch as Satoru takes over licking your pussy collecting his own cum, you feel his fingers inside you a couple of times pumping it just a little, delighted by the way your hole quivers faintly around his digits. "Sorry, I couldn't resist." 

Satoru gives one last suck on your clit and climbs towards you to take you in a strange position, in a sort of spooning attempt but the space is so small you feel like you're going to fall off at any moment, yet his long arms manage to clutch you tighter to his chest, managing to coordinate your unrestrained breaths. Then you let him shower kisses on your shoulder and neck, his long fingers petting your belly. 

"Let's go take a bath." Satoru tries to get up but you stop him with a groan, too heavy to even open your eyelids. 

"Five minutes..." you say, your voice sounding distant. Within the mental morass you sink into, you feel him squeeze you, he leaves another kiss on your shoulder. 

"You're going to sleep. I want to clean you up first."

"Mhm." 

You can't get up now no matter how dirty you feel, your legs are mingling with the cushions, chains pulling you down forming one body with his. You don't know how you're going to present yourself to Jujutsu Tech tomorrow with your neck probably hurt, you didn't know if Satoru had left visible marks but the idea stirs up a feeling of anguish that fades as you give in to sleep— especially you didn't know what was going to happen now, what was going to happen next, you didn't know how you were going to look him in the face…. But maybe this was just what you needed, a reality check, a slap in the face of cruel realism that told you that you can't be loyal to an absent person. You will forget him, you would… you would… you repeat to yourself, having no idea how close you were to uncovering again that Pandora's box you had so much trouble closing.

[sgiandubh]

Prophetic

Every single time things look hard to decipher or farcical (and this is one of those farcical times), I remember a long post by @hardblazesong, dealing with BTS aspects and the intricacies of this cesspool of a fandom. I am yet to read something more clear and more bravely stated than the things she wrote almost eight years (!) ago, even if I do not necessarily agree with everything. Especially as far as SC's sexuality is considered and examined, for example - but that is secondary, to me.

Every word in this quoted passage was confirmed by what happened next, for example. And then, some more, if at all possible:

This is exactly what happened, rinse and repeat to oblivion. 'No one above D level status', with the odd lap dancer/Hooters waitress thrown in, for variety. Gross? Effective on the short term perhaps, to quench thirsty/insistent/too close to the real thing rumors and found tidbits, yet damn penalizing on the long run. MPC's dwindling subscription figures are testimony to it, as are the mediocre projects coming his way. And now he sorely needs a seriously good one to keep his rep at a decent level. You see, the entire kilt-cladded, warrior daddy imagery/fantasy is also quietly wearing off, as OL is coming to its merciful end. But believe it or not, S will survive even this life-changing experiment with fame. The key question here is 'how' and I have no definitive answer to it. But I am confident, and this Soroptimist approach of mine will always be my guilty pleasure, as far as S is concerned. Perhaps the only one, since the guy won't ever make me turn my head for him in the street. Not even sorry about that. But as I have already told you, I do like an underdog and know how to spot them, when I see one.

Now, as far as C is concerned, the 'low key thing' turned into the perfectly artificial farce we all know about. It is my sincere belief at least 85% of her Taliban Stan crowd is simply paying lip service to what they chose to believe and are constantly being reminded of by their trolling Sopranos. So much so, in fact, that it all reeks rather of Pollyannaism than critical thinking, no matter how brutal or self-assured they may sound. And at this point in time, with zero communication on the topic and C who apparently DGAF about narrative continuity when it comes to this, it's only fair to say more oil is being quietly, constantly thrown onto those embers of suspicion and legitimate, logical doubt.

As for going political, we all saw what happened with S's Gaza comment, didn't we? Case in point to never cross obvious red lines and allow your own emotions get in a mix you cannot control and which must not have been addressed, to start with. Especially when you are, above anything else, a media product manufactured on purpose for reaching the widest potential audience. MAGA Mommies crowd included.

Also, this:

Again, this is exactly what happened, and consistently so. Proof of this are the multiple times I had to excuse myself to powder my nose in the middle of a Zoom call or meeting, whenever my cellphone was blinking with concerned messages about this or that insignificant turn of an apparently endless, boring and disingenuous AF narrative. Shippers are worried and potentially even hurt every single time a Fitness Harem representative shows up on the roster. S knows that - how could he not, he is part and parcel of it? Trolls know that: in fact, this is their bread and butter in this fandom. And the reason this happens is an unnecessarily cruel and by now pathetic bout of schizophrenic trivia deliberately being thrown in, from time to time, for... eh... for reasons. Whether this is for 'protection' (complete quiet would be way more decent and effective, I think) or diversion, or remaining relevant, or even shits and giggles is entirely secondary, one more time. These allow to address all the factions of this fandom at once, using what are by now some lazy, well-tried and accessible plot devices (SM twisting reality, cheap pap walks, timeline innuendos, etc). Again, this is wrong and harmful, in the long run. It is refusing to see the forest for the trees and completely ignore the fact this is building the wrong persona and the wrong brand. Back to that sore need for a really good project I have mentioned before and own reasoning nicely tied in, thank you.

As for how SC feel about us, shippers, I suppose things are clear. I don't think they like us, and to be blunt, how could they? Mistakes have been repeatedly made, especially when it comes to projecting going completely, tastelessly out of control, the hyper sexualization and objectivation of both S and C (naively dirty fanfic, anyone? come on, we all read it!) and the liberties some took with decency, as far as C is particularly concerned. And by this, I don't mean stalking - that is pushing Covfefe Pics really too far and being a perfect hypocrite about it, when we know the entire faction was demanding proof, on many tones & in many ways and kept on pressuring for something along those lines to happen. To me, however, the most toxic part of it was definitely Jess' unfortunate drooling all over someone else's love story. It definitely had an impact and it was definitely been used as such, until it wasn't. The rest of all that obsessive approach are just spin-offs, but the bad seeds were gleefully planted there and then.

Before landing here, I carefully weighed in my options. And I chose to be primarily interested in business and legal paperwork simply because it so happened that an irritated reaction while on an Athens taxi ride prompted my arrival here. Then I realized it was the only way to bring something new to an already stalling body of public lore and keep it simple and real. What I did discover and what the trolls across the street chose to dismiss as trash is, in fact, evidence enough of the chasm that exists between what people are being served and supposed to gobble up, no questions asked, and a reality that certainly is more nuanced. This is what really makes me tick and this is why I am still here, while there are so many more useful and enjoyable ways to keep myself busy.

Rest assured, though: I am not going anywhere, even if from time to time life and a very strenuous job take precedence. I hope you can understand this. In the meanwhile, you have been so many witty, kind and warm people coming along my path, that I would feel like betraying you (and myself!) if I went away. And no, I have never felt more sure about SC than probably now, even if this 'SC' doesn't necessarily coincide with your own version of that saga.

Newbies can read the entire @hardblazesong's post here: https://www.tumblr.com/hardblazesong/678440162606350336/the-time-has-come-shipsters-to-write-a-lengthy?source=share

Thank you for reading this very long comment, summing up all the thoughts that nagged me while I was simultaneously translating and slaloming between my two mother tongues, while in Tunis. I am rather good at compartmentalization, you see. This post is also a clumsy homage of sorts to all the brilliant, brave and bold women, past and present, of The Shire, who have tried and managed to see beyond the thick veil of deceit this entire #shitshow is. The fact so many of us, across so many cultures and personal circumstances, saw the same damn thing and questioned it with integrity and wit, should be arresting evidence there are more things.

PS: I think we can all agree on the fact the Biggest Troll in this fandom is 'Erself, the Flip-Flop Blue Nailpolish Goddess. But that's a different story.