☙ ⸻ TAINTED LOVE
sum: you get sent into a mission with Sukuna once again, because Yaga is a son of a bitch. Things go as they usually do, but when you both leave the battle grounds, something has changed. Not something, someone. Sukuna is acting even weirder than his usual unbearable self.
tags: fluff, true form sukuna, everyone is alive and teaching on jujutsu high, yeah sukuna too, you and sukuna are worse than sukuna and gojo in the bickering, this curse is a damn parasitic piece of shit, some yearning happening right there if you pay attention.
Part One: Tainted Love | Part two: Fake Out. | Part Three: Heartbreak Feels So Good
art by: @lacquerheadd
You are starting to think Yaga actively enjoys making your life harder.
There is no other explanation for why, out of every capable sorcerer on staff, he keeps pairing you with Sukuna.
Not Gojo, who would at least turn the whole thing into a joke and buy you coffee after. Not Nanami, who would be quiet and efficient and get the job done with minimal nonsense. Not Shoko, who would smoke through the paperwork and call the whole thing stupid with enough honesty to make it tolerable. Not even Suguru, who has the patience to stand there looking disappointed until people correct themselves.
No. It is always you and Sukuna.
You and the strongest sorcerer in history.
You and the most insufferable bastard currently breathing.
You and the man who looks like a calamity given shape — two meters of muscle and old violence, four arms, four eyes, black markings cutting over his skin like deliberate blasphemy, a mouth in his stomach, arrogance in every movement like the world itself should be grateful he has not split it open.
You hate how he talks to people. You hate the way he looks at colleagues like they are barely worth acknowledging. You hate how he acts like being right excuses being unbearable. You hate how he can do almost anything better than anyone else and never lets anybody forget it.
Most of all, you hate that Yaga keeps looking at both of you like this arrangement is somehow useful.
“He responds to you,” Yaga had said once, standing in his office with his hands folded behind his back while you stared at him in disbelief.
“He responds to me because I tell him to go fuck himself.”
“Yes,” Yaga had answered, completely serious. “That.”
You had looked at him for a long moment, then pointed towards the window, towards the rest of the school grounds as if the answer might be outside.
“There are students here. Children. Young people trying to learn. Why would you keep sending me as if I’m his goddamn handler?”
“Because,” Yaga had said, calm as stone, “when Sukuna gets excited in the field, collateral damage rises.”
“And that’s my problem...?”
“It becomes everyone’s problem.”
You had wanted to strangle him.
Instead you had left with your mission file and a headache already forming, knowing exactly how the day would go. Sukuna would be waiting somewhere he had no business standing, probably with that bored look that made it seem like he found all of this beneath him. He would say something cutting within the first thirty seconds. You would snap back. He would smirk, because apparently pissing you off counts as entertainment. Then you would head out, do the job, and try not to kill each other before the curse did.
That is exactly how it goes.
The abandoned lot lies on the edge of the city, boxed in by half-demolished warehouses and rusting chain-link fences. Wild grass pushes through broken concrete. There are whole stretches where the ground has caved in, exposing older foundations below, damp and black and threaded with cursed residue so thick it prickles over your skin before you even step past the police tape.
The reports say several missing persons over the last three weeks. Homeless people mostly. Two thrill-seeking teenagers. One contractor who ignored every warning and came in after dark because he thought urban legends were good fun until one of them bit him in half.
You stand with your hands in your pockets while the veil settles over the property and mutter,
“This place smells like shit.”
Beside you, Sukuna tilts his head slightly, scenting the air with that infuriatingly calm expression.
“Special-grade adjacent.”
“Glad the mighty king of curses can identify the obvious.”
His upper right hand flexes once, like he considers swatting the comment away and decides against it.
“You should be grateful I am here at all.”
You snort.
“I was doing fine before you decided to become faculty.”
His gaze cuts to you, all four eyes narrowing just enough to say he has noticed the wording.
“Doing fine.”
“Mm.”
“You sound unconvinced by your own lie.”
“And you sound exactly like why I hate staff meetings.”
One of the corners of his mouth lifts. It is the expression of someone amused in a way that promises trouble.
“Stay out of my way,” he says.
“You first.”
Then the ground ahead bursts open.
Concrete erupts in a spray of dust and jagged chunks. A shape drags itself up from the collapsed trench beneath the lot, huge and slick and wrong, all fused mouths and jointed limbs, too many eyes opening across its torso as though a dozen separate curses have been forced together and told to breathe with the same lungs.
It lets out a wet howl that vibrates through the air and into your teeth.
Sukuna steps forward like he has just been offered dessert.
You grab the back of his uniform before he can launch fully into it.
“Hey.”
He glances back over one shoulder.
“Remember,” you say flatly, “the job is exorcism. Not redecorating half the district.”
His sneer deepens.
“You insult me.”
“I babysit you.”
That earns you a low, ugly chuckle, and then he moves.
Watching Sukuna fight is always an ugly kind of miracle.
You hate admitting it, even in the privacy of your own mind, but the truth of him in battle is impossible to deny.
He does not simply engage a curse. He dominates space around it. The entire field shifts to him, bends around his presence, becomes his terrain. It’s mesmerizing to watch how mercurial he becomes as he fights.
The thing lunges and he slips aside with contemptuous ease, lower right hand catching one limb, upper left hand tearing another off at the joint.
Black blood sprays.
The curse shrieks.
He laughs.
Actually laughs.
You swear under your breath and move in before he can get too carried away, cursed technique flaring hot and bright along your arms as you carve through the mass splitting away from the main body. Smaller appendages skitter over the broken concrete, each with snapping teeth, trying to circle behind him and burrow into the blind spots he barely has.
You destroy three in quick succession, pivot under another, and shout,
“Left!”
“I have eyes,” Sukuna says, but one of his hands snaps out anyway and crushes the crawler before it reaches him.
“Use all of them, then.”
You hate him a little more every time you have to watch him enjoy himself.
“Are you done fucking around yet?” you shout, voice carrying over the crash of rubble.
All four of his eyes cut up toward you for a second. The upper pair narrows. The lower pair looks almost amused.
“Come down and do it yourself, then.”
You grit your teeth so hard your jaw pops.
The central body of the curse rears back. One of the mouths in its chest stretches open far wider than anatomy should allow, cursed energy building at its core.
You feel the surge a heartbeat before it fires.
“Sukuna!”
He does not dodge.
Of course he does not dodge.
He plants his feet and meets the blast with a grin that makes your stomach drop, as though the worst thing about him is not his strength but the way he enjoys using it. The impact tears a trench through the lot, pulverizing a warehouse wall behind him, and smoke blooms upward in a thick black cloud.
When it clears, he is still standing there.
Mostly.
His uniform hangs in scorched strips off one shoulder. Burned skin peels back along his side, already knitting itself together under reversed cursed technique, steam curling off him in ghostly streams. One of his eyes blinks through blood. His stomach mouth stretches in something like delight.
You stare for half a second too long.
Then he launches himself into the curse’s open chest.
The lot becomes carnage.
You do not know how many minutes pass, only that your lungs burn by the end of it, your forearms ache with the recoil of your technique, and the entire property looks like a bomb testing site.
The giant curse lies in sections. One piece still twitches. Sukuna stamps his heel through it with almost lazy finality.
Silence comes back in ragged pieces.
Dust drifts through the low evening light. The veil trembles and begins to dissolve. Somewhere beyond the lot, traffic resumes its distant hum, indifferent as ever.
You push sweaty hair out of your face and glare at the destruction.
“Yaga is going to have an aneurysm.”
Sukuna rolls one shoulder. Fresh skin has already replaced the worst of the burns. His eyes remain on the remains of the curse like he is still listening for another round.
“Then he should have sent me alone.”
You give him a look.
“So you could level the entire neighborhood?”
“It would have been faster.”
“It is always ‘faster’ with you. Then someone has to explain to the authorities why half the block vanished.”
He says nothing to that. He only stands there, breathing slow, steam fading from his skin.
That is when you notice something is off.
Not because he is quiet. Sukuna can be quiet, but it's the sort of quiet that makes people nervous because it is never truly absence, only restraint.
This is different.
The fight is over. He should either be needling you or insulting the curse for not being worth the trouble or looking half a second from demanding another hunt just to work the restlessness out of his system.
Instead he is staring.
Not at the remains.
At you.
You frown.
“What.”
His gaze does not move.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
His upper hands flex once at his sides, and for a strange, disjointed second he looks like a man listening to a conversation happening very far away. Then he clicks his tongue and turns from you.
You stare after him.
“What,” you repeat, more to yourself this time.
He does not answer. He only starts walking toward the exit gate.
You tell yourself it is nothing.
You tell yourself he is always odd. That trying to parse Sukuna’s moods is a guaranteed way to ruin an evening. That you are tired, sweaty, and already late getting back to campus, and the last thing you need is to start inventing new ways the king of curses can be bizarre.
By the time you both return to Jujutsu High, night has settled properly.
The school buildings sit under warm exterior lights, calm and orderly in a way that feels almost insulting after the wreck you just left behind. Students move through the corridors in pairs and clusters, some heading back from training, others from evening study. There is the usual mix of chatter and half-suppressed teenage chaos that clings to a boarding school no matter how many cursed objects or monsters exist around it.
You want one shower, one hot drink, and several hours where no one says the name Sukuna anywhere near you.
Instead, you stop by one of the halls because Suguru catches sight of you through an open classroom door and waves you in.
You lean on the frame, arms crossed.
“You look too relaxed. That means either your class went well or Gojo is somebody else’s problem tonight.”
Suguru smiles in that infuriatingly composed way of his.
“Both, actually.”
“Disgusting.”
Three of his students snicker. He ignores them.
“How was the mission?”
“Awful. Filthy lot, ugly curse, Sukuna in a fantastic mood which, as you know, is the worst possible mood for him.”
Suguru’s mouth tilts.
“And yet you are intact.”
“Barely.”
You start to step in fully, already reaching for the back of a chair, when the room shifts.
No. Not the room.
Your awareness of it.
Like someone large has entered your orbit without making a sound.
You turn.
Sukuna stands in the corridor behind you.
Not speaking. Not moving. Just there.
Weirdo.
Four eyes fixed on you.
You stare at him.
“Can I help you.”
“No.”
“Then why are you looming.”
“I am standing.”
“You are being weird.”
One of Suguru’s students abruptly remembers they have somewhere else to be and bolts. Another follows. Suguru watches the exchange with the kind of calm interest usually reserved for storms visible through safe windows.
Sukuna says nothing.
You wait.
He keeps looking at you.
A slow crease forms between your brows.
“What the fuck do you want.”
His expression shifts, faintly, like annoyance at the question itself.
“Nothing.”
“Then leave?” you feel yourself almost snapping from how infuriating this man is.
He does not.
Suguru coughs into one hand, definitely hiding amusement.
“Maybe,” he offers mildly, “he has something to discuss.”
“Then he can discuss it like a person and not like a haunted wardrobe.”
Sukuna’s gaze flicks to Suguru, then back to you.
“You speak too much.”
“You are welcome to fix that by walking away.”
He still does not leave.
You end up standing there another ten seconds just staring at him before you realize this will go nowhere. You ignore him, then, and keep talking to Suguru. Sukuna is still there, not speaking, not leaving, just occupying the space at your side like some huge, unsettling piece of furniture that breathes.
You turn again, already irritated.
“What, Sukuna?”
He looks at you in that same strange way he did at the lot. Intent and still. All four eyes fixed on your face and he seems to be fighting an internal battle you don't wanna know about.
Suguru shifts beside you.
Sukuna’s mouth curls just slightly, not quite a smile.
“Nothing.”
The answer lands wrong once again and you want to rip his face off for it. Instead, you stare at him.
“Then fuck off.”
He stays there another few seconds, then opens the door to the building when you move toward it.
Holds it. Actually holds it.
You stop short.
He lifts his chin, impatient now, as if you are the one making this weird.
You go through because standing there arguing about a door would somehow be even more humiliating. Suguru follows behind you, and you hear him exhale through his nose in quiet disbelief.
Later, when you pass the teachers’ lounge, there is a cup of coffee on the desk you usually steal from.
Black, no sugar. Exactly how you take it.
You look around the room.
Nanami looks up from grading. Shoko is half-asleep in a chair. Gojo is sprawled across the couch in a way that should not be physically possible.
“Did one of you—”
“Not me,” Shoko says without opening her eyes.
Gojo grins, too quick, too wide.
“You’ve got an admirer.”
“Shut up.”
Nanami adjusts his glasses.
“It was Sukuna.”
You stare at the coffee like it might be poisonous.
“He sneered the whole time,” Gojo adds helpfully. “Which somehow made it worse and funnier.”
You do not drink it immediately. You spend almost a full minute glaring at it first, eyebrows pinched so tight your forehead hurts. Then you drink it anyway because you are tired and the coffee smells good and you refuse to let him ruin caffeine for you too.
That evening in the cafeteria he corners you near the drinks machine.
There is no better word for it.
He does not touch you, he is simply too large, too close, too solidly there.
One second you are reaching for a canned tea, the next he is in front of you, broad shoulders blocking the aisle.
Students scatter without being told.
You keep your expression flat through effort and sigh.
“What.” you ask again, flat, thinking of how many times you're gonna have to ask him what the fuck is he doing in a single day.
He tilts his head, studying you.
“Come with me tonight on a date.”
You bark a laugh before you can stop it because what the actual everloving fuck.
“No.”
His upper right eyes narrow.
“You declined too quickly.”
“I’d rather eat a brick than going out with you.”
There is a beat of silence. Then, incredibly, he tries again.
“Tomorrow, then.”
You actually look behind you, just to check if Gojo is hiding somewhere filming this for blackmail.
When you turn back, Sukuna is exactly where he was, waiting.
You feel your eyebrows drawing together again, and now you are actually feeling yourself worry a bit.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
He does not answer that either. He only watches you, gaze tracking every tiny shift in your face like he is memorizing it.
You step around him and leave.
It gets harder after that.
Every hallway seems to have him in it. Every room. Every conversation.
You are talking to Shoko in the infirmary and he appears in the doorway, says nothing, leaves only when you do. You are reviewing lesson plans with Nanami and he passes by three times in ten minutes despite having no reason to be in that wing at all.
By the time you find Gojo leaning against the training field fence after class, you are already keyed up and meaner than usual.
“There’s something wrong with him,” you say.
Gojo, for once, does not joke immediately. He watches Sukuna across the field, where he is standing utterly still while first-years pretend not to stare.
“Yeah,” he says. “I noticed.”
“He keeps following me.”
“Mhm.”
“He asked me out, Gojo.”
Gojo’s grin flashes, then fades when he sees your face.
“Okay, yeah. That part’s new.”
You fold your arms hard over your chest.
“Whatever happened in that lot, it didn’t end there.”
Gojo grows a little more serious then, eyes hidden behind his blindfold but attention unmistakably sharp.
“Suguru thought so too.”
“Is it possession?”
“Maybe.” He tips his head. “He’s less murderous than usual.”
“That’s not really comforting.”
“No, I know.” He pauses. “He’s focused, though. Weirdly focused.”
“On me,” you say flatly.
“On you,” he agrees.
Your stomach sinks a little at hearing it aloud.
The day keeps going. You teach. Or try to.
The students are restless, the evening humid, the classroom too warm. Chalk dust clings to your fingers. You are in the middle of explaining the structure of a barrier technique when the door slams open hard enough to hit the wall.
Suguru stands there, breathing a little fast.
Every head in the room turns.
“Come with me,” he says.
You blink and stare at him, wide eyed.
“What?”
“Now.”
Something in his face empties your lungs.
You hand the chalk to the nearest student without even looking.
“Read the next section. Quietly.”
No one argues. Suguru is already crossing the room, already grabbing your arm, not hard enough to hurt but firm enough that it is clear you are moving whether you agree or not.
The corridor outside is too loud.
Banging. Splintering wood. The sharp, ugly sound of impact from somewhere deeper in the building. Another crash follows, heavier this time, and the floor trembles under your shoes.
You wrench your arm back just enough to keep pace beside Suguru instead of behind him.
“What happened?”
He keeps moving.
“Don’t stop.”
“What happened, Suguru?” you try again, hating the suspense.
Another impact. Closer.
Students are being herded the opposite way by other teachers, pale and wide-eyed. The fluorescent lights overhead shiver.
Suguru finally answers, voice clipped.
“Sukuna lost his mind. He thinks we want to keep him from his wife.”
Your blood runs cold.
A roar of ruined plaster tears through the hall ahead. Then a body comes through the wall to your left in a burst of dust and broken concrete.
You jerk back so hard your shoulder smacks the lockers.
Gojo rolls with it, hits the ground, comes up on one knee already grinning like a lunatic even with blood at the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, that’s fun,” he says, wiping his lip with the back of his hand.
You stare at the ragged hole in the wall, heart pounding high in your throat.
Heavy footsteps.
Not hurried. Not wild.
Heavy and deliberate, each one shaking dust from the ceiling.
Suguru moves half a step in front of you without seeming to.
“Satoru,” you call, because your voice is the only thing you can hear clearly.
He stands, brushing concrete grit off his shoulder.
“We think something latched onto him during the mission.”
Your head whips toward him.
“What kind of something?”
“The annoying kind.”
Another step.
The outline filling the ruined classroom beyond is too big to be anyone else.
Four arms. Too many eyes reflecting in the powdery light.
Tattoos cutting dark over skin and bared muscle where his uniform top has torn at the shoulder.
He looks at no one else.
Only you.
Your mouth goes dry.
Suguru answers the question you have not yet managed to ask.
“It seems to have rooted itself in a fixation. And that would be his wife.”
You hear your own voice, thin with disbelief.
“What wife?”
Sukuna steps through the broken wall.
Concrete snaps beneath his feet. Dust clings to his shoulders and hair. There is a shallow cut across one cheek that is already closing.
Suguru responds with something you refuse to believe,
“You.”
“What?” You laugh once, breathless. “What the fuck do you mean, me?”
Gojo cracks his neck to one side.
“We think the curse hit the first person he properly focused on after the fight.”
“No.”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
Sukuna keeps walking.
His face is wrong in a way you cannot fully explain.
Controlled, but stretched over something feverish and absolute, like a man having a dream with his eyes open.
The hallway suddenly feels too narrow, too bright, too full of dust.
Gojo lowers his voice a fraction.
“We need time.”
You tear your eyes off Sukuna long enough to glare at him.
“You’re joking.”
“I wish I were.”
“How much time?”
Another step. Closer now. Sukuna’s gaze does not waver.
Suguru says,
“Not much.”
You hate both of them for making you understand before they say anything else.
Your tongue feels thick.
“So I’m bait.”
“No,” Gojo says, "I mean..."
“Yes, I am.”
Neither of them answers.
That is answer enough.
You inhale once, too sharp, lungs burning with plaster dust and adrenaline. Your whole body is telling you to run, but that would be worse. You know it. They know it. Sukuna would tear through half the school to catch up, and then you would still end up here except with more blood in the hall.
So you step around Suguru.
Behind you, both men tense.
Ahead of you, Sukuna stops.
The silence that falls is almost worse than the noise.
You have to tilt your head back, craning your neck to look at him fully.
Up close he is ridiculous, monstrous in scale and presence, all brutal strength and heat. Your pulse is beating so hard you can feel it in your gums. He smells like dust, sweat, iron, the sharp ozone tang of cursed energy.
His eyes drag over your face like he is checking for injuries.
When he speaks, his voice is low and rough and terribly certain.
“Will you stop avoiding me now?”
Your eye twitches.
Of all the possible things he could have said, that one nearly makes you laugh from sheer disbelief.
“You are destroying a school hallway,” you say. Your voice comes out steadier than you feel. “And throwing teachers through walls.”
His expression does not change.
You force yourself to keep going.
“If you want me anywhere near you, you stop doing that first.”
For a second you think it works. He goes stiller, somehow. Listening.
Then you add, because someone has to try,
“You are cursed, Sukuna. There is something wrong with you.”
He scoffs.
Then, something happens so fast your body does not understand it at first.
One moment you are standing in front of him, furious and shaking and holding your ground on principle alone.
The next the floor is gone.
His hands are on you, one pair lifting, another securing, and suddenly your stomach drops as your body is hauled clean off the ground.
You hit his shoulder with a hard jolt that knocks the air out of you.
“What the fu— put me down!”
The world swings sickeningly. One of his arms braces the backs of your thighs to keep you from slipping while another settles heavy across your back. You can feel the heat of him through your uniform, the impossible solidity of muscle under skin.
You twist enough to glare back over his broad shoulder.
Gojo and Suguru are both staring.
Dust drifts lazily through the hall between all of you.
You do not dare say don’t fight him.
Do not dare say wait.
Do not dare say I am fine, because you are very much not.
So you settle for a look sharp enough to cut with.
Hurry the fuck up.
Suguru’s face hardens in understanding. Gojo’s grin is gone now, replaced by something colder.
Sukuna turns and starts walking.
You slam a palm against his back once, more insult than actual resistance.
“This is kidnapping, you know?”
“You were leaving.”
“I was not.”
“You were going to.”
“I teach here, asshole!”
“So do I.”
The absurdity of it all almost makes you choke.
The half-destroyed hallway lurches past beneath you as he carries you through it like your protesting means nothing at all. Broken plaster crunches under his feet. Teachers and students vanish from doorways the second he looks their way.
Night air spills in from somewhere ahead, cooler now, carrying the smell of rain and pine from the grounds.
You hate how helpless this feels.
You hate how your body is learning the shape of being carried by him against your will, cataloguing every hard line and shift of motion because it has no choice.
Hate the helpless bounce of each step.
Hate the strain in your stomach from trying not to panic.
Hate that you cannot tell if the shaking in your hands is fear or anger.
Probably both.
By the time he crosses the threshold out of the school building, the sky has deepened to indigo.
Campus lights are beginning to flicker on, pale and sterile against the trees.
You look back once over his shoulder.
The ruined corridor is now only a bright wound in the darkened building. You cannot see Gojo or Suguru anymore. You can only trust they are moving, searching, doing something useful while you are hauled farther and farther from where anyone can intervene quickly.
Sukuna does not head toward the staff wing. He does not head toward the road either.
He takes the stone path that leads toward his place.
Your mouth goes dry all over again.
He adjusts his grip on you, not gentle, not cruel either, just certain, and keeps walking as if this was always going to end with you in his arms and the whole school behind you.
The night feels suddenly huge.
You stare at the dark line of rooftops ahead, pulse hammering, every possible outcome crowding your head at once, and realize with a fresh stab of dread that whatever happens next, you are going to have to face it alone with him before anyone finds a way to stop this.
And Sukuna, maddened and resolute and carrying you like something already his, does not slow down once. You can’t do much, so you start thinking.
Thinking in that situation, unfortunately, is not helping much.
You had assumed the worst. Some locked room. Some insane display of territoriality. Maybe chains. Maybe Sukuna sitting outside a door like a living threat. Maybe a version of his fixation that becomes monstrous the moment there are no witnesses.
His home is large in the way that makes modern luxury seem almost embarrassed by itself. Not ostentatious, not cluttered, but it is expansive, high-ceilinged, clean-lined, expensive enough that you can tell every object in it was chosen and nothing was accidental.
Dark wood. Stone. Low lighting. Wide windows now reflecting the last of evening back at the room.
He still does not put you down until the front door has closed behind him.
When your feet finally hit the floor, you stagger. He steadies you at the waist automatically.
You slap both his wrists away.
“Hands off.”
Every one of his eyes fixes on your face.
Then, unexpectedly, he lifts all four hands and steps back half a pace.
The gesture should make you feel safer.
Instead it makes the room somehow stranger.
Because he is looking at you like restraint itself is painful.
His expression still carries its usual contempt at the edges, the natural sharpness of his face, the habitual sneer of someone made to rule through force. Yet underneath it there is something else working hard to surface. An almost restless pull in his body. His hands twitch once at his sides. Twice. Like he wants to reach and is stopping himself.
You swallow the lump in your throat.
The silence stretches until it becomes unbearable.
So you ask the first thing that comes out, voice low and somehow with real curiosity.
“What the hell is wrong with you.”
He stares.
“You are being impossible.”
“You abducted me from work.”
“They tried to keep me from you.”
“What,” you say, voice hoarse with secondhand embarrassment, “is wrong with your fucking brain.”
His mouth hardens.
“You are being difficult,” he goes on, voice low and rough with that peculiar certainty that only makes this worse. “Skittish. Avoidant. For no reason I can see. It is tiresome.”
You fold your arms, partly defensive, partly because you do not know what else to do with them.
“No reason?”
“You are my wife.” He says it like it is the simplest truth in the world. “You should let me embrace you. You should let me have you beside me as I wish.”
Half of you dies on the spot.
The other half goes up in flames so hot you swear your face could light the room.
You stare at him, unable to decide whether you want to laugh, scream, or throw something. The problem is that none of those responses would help. Not with the curse. Not with the school. Not with Satoru and Suguru buying time back there, trusting you to keep this disaster contained.
So you swallow the first ten things you want to say and force something else out instead.
“I am tired after the mission,” you say carefully, because this is still a game you are playing to keep him contained. “That’s all.”
His eyes hold yours for one long second.
Then he decides, with the ruthless simplicity that is very much still Sukuna, that this has a solution.
You know what he is doing a beat too late.
One moment you are standing.
The next you are in his arms.
Not hauled over his shoulder this time — scooped cleanly up, one set of arms under your knees, another at your back, as if carrying you like this is self-evident.
Your hands fly to his chest on instinct.
“Sukuna.”
“You are tired,” he says.
“That does not mean you can just keep picking me up.”
He looks down at you like the objection itself is irrelevant.
“I can.”
You open your mouth.
Close it again.
Because there is no point, and because he is already walking deeper into the house, and because some traitorous part of your body has noticed how warm he is.
Not warm. Hot.
He carries heat the way furnaces do, deep and constant, a living banked blaze under skin and muscle. It rolls into you through every point of contact.
You hate that you notice. You hate more that it feels good after the tension of the day.
He takes you to his bedroom.
Of course he does.
It is larger than your entire apartment had been in graduate housing.
Wide low bed. Dark sheets. Minimal furniture. Everything precise. The room of a man who does not need excess to prove anything. The curtains are half open, letting in city light in smeared bands.
You tense the moment he lowers you, but he does not trap you against the mattress.
He lies back first.
Then he settles you on top of him.
You freeze.
Completely, absurdly freeze.
Your cheek is pressed against the broad plane of his chest before you can decide where else it should go. One of his upper hands spreads over the middle of your back, heavy and steady. Another rests at your waist. The third braces lightly at your hip, not gripping, just holding your balance. The fourth lifts, pauses near your face, and then tucks a strand of hair carefully behind your ear.
The tenderness of it startles you harder than the kidnapping itself.
You do not know what to do with your face, your hands, your breathing, any of it. Your cheek grows hotter by the second where it is pressed to him, and you are suddenly grateful he cannot see all of it from this angle because if he does you might actually pass out.
He sounds almost practical when he speaks.
“Rest.”
That is all.
Just that.
Rest.
You stay rigid for nearly a minute, every muscle waiting for the catch.
There is none.
His hand on your back begins tracing idle shapes, broad slow passes that do not ask anything from you. The one at your waist only keeps you from sliding when his breathing shifts. Beneath your ear, his heart beats strong and even. No hurry to it. No escalation. No hidden demand.
You stare at the dark fold of his robe and think, in a stunned detached way, that you did not know this existed in him.
Not kindness exactly. Sukuna would spit on the word if someone used it about him.
But care, perhaps. Possessive care. Practical care.
The kind of thing that might surface only under very particular circumstances and then pretend afterward it had never been there at all.
You are so tired.
You do not know whether this tenderness belongs entirely to the curse or if it is only dragging something real out into the open and warping it beyond reason. The thought itself is dangerous. You shove it away.
You should not be wondering what Sukuna would be like with feelings. You should not be wondering whether there was ever a version of reality where he would touch someone like this without madness involved.
That is the problem.
Or maybe it is not the problem at all. Maybe the problem is that you have spent enough time around him over the last years to know the angles of his temper, the cadence of his contempt, the way he stands in a room and dares the world to be worth his effort.
Maybe the problem is that your relationship with him has always existed in clean familiar lines — professional, adversarial, sharp — and now every one of those lines is blurring because he has laid you on his chest like something precious and told you to sleep.
Your phone vibrates against your pocket.
You jolt like you have been caught.
Sukuna’s hand on your back stills.
“Ignore it.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“It might be important.”
“It is not more important than your state.”
A pause.
Then, to your surprise, he does not stop you. He only grunts and lets you squirm one arm free enough to fish your phone out. The angle is awkward. You keep your cheek where it is because lifting your whole face feels impossible somehow.
The message is from Gojo.
managed to figure things out w shoko. curse should burn out on its own. keep him contained.
You squint at the screen, then type one-handed with ferocious irritation.
how long
There is a stretch where only Sukuna’s breathing and the faint city noise beyond the glass fill the room. He notices the device again after a minute and makes a dissatisfied sound.
“It distracts you from resting.”
“It is communication.”
“It is annoying.”
“You are annoying.”
That earns the smallest low chuckle, felt more than heard through his chest.
Then the reply comes.
around two days. yaga says do NOT bring him back unless u want the rest of the campus remodeled. sorry <3
You close your eyes.
Two days.
Two whole fucking days.
A fresh message follows before you can even process the first.
seriously though, are u okay?
You stare at it.
Then type back: no
delete it.
Type again: alive
Send.
The phone vanishes from your hand a second later.
You make a startled sound and lift your head just enough to glare. Sukuna has taken it with one of his upper hands and set it on the nightstand far beyond your reach.
“It was keeping you awake.”
You stare at him.
“You cannot just confiscate my phone.”
“I just did.”
“You are a twat.”
His thumb, the one resting between your shoulder blades, resumes its slow path.
“Sleep.”
And maybe it is the day finally catching up to you. Maybe it is the heat of him under you, the steady weight, the way his body is impossibly firm and yet more comfortable than any mattress has a right to be. Maybe it is the bone-deep exhaustion of adrenaline wearing off all at once.
Sukuna makes a quiet sound of satisfaction at your silence. His hand resumes its slow path along your back, tracing idle shapes that have no purpose except to soothe. The effect is immediate and humiliating. You can feel sleep creeping in through the cracks of your exhaustion no matter how hard you try to resist it.
After a while, one of his free hands finds one of yours. His fingers curl around it, big and callused and terribly warm, and that is what nearly undoes you.
You feel it happening and resent it instantly because this is absurd, because you should not be able to drift off draped over the most dangerous man alive, because some part of your mind is still screaming about every level on which this is wrong—
But his hand keeps moving. Slow. Measured. Thoughtless.
Your own body, traitorous bastard that it is, takes that as permission.
You fall asleep.
When you wake, the room is darker.
Not full night-dark. More the strange almost-blue hour before dawn or after it, where shapes exist in softness and the city outside has not fully committed itself yet. For a few hazy seconds you do not remember where you are.
Then you realize you are in a bed that is not yours, wrapped in warmth that is definitely not blankets alone. It takes you a moment to understand that you are no longer on top of Sukuna.
You are on the bed, curled toward him instead, one arm trapped between your chest and the mattress, your face almost buried in the broad wall of his chest. Sukuna is wrapped around you from both sides, his arms forming an inescapable cage.
His body is at your front, at your back, everywhere. You are boxed in by heat and muscle and the steady rise and fall of him breathing.
One arm heavy over your waist. Another tucked beneath the pillows behind your shoulders. A third resting over your thighs to keep you close. The fourth somewhere beneath your head, bent in a way that has caged you in without discomfort.
You lie there and breathe once.
Twice.
The peace of it is almost unbearable.
It feels nice.
That is the part that hurts, because for one dangerous second, you forget.
You forget the curse. The school. The fact that this is not normal, cannot be normal, should not make your chest feel this unbearably full.
All you know in that second is peace. Warmth. The strange, heavy comfort of being held like your place is meant to be exactly there.
If you let yourself stay in this feeling too long, if you let yourself believe the quiet and the warmth and the impossible steadiness of him mean something you are allowed to keep, you will be an idiot. Worse than an idiot.
You will be someone building softness out of a curse.
Out of a mistake lodged in a monster’s head.
Then you move.
Only a little. Just enough to test if you can untangle yourself.
His arms tighten at once.
“Stop wiggling, woman.” he murmurs, voice still thick with sleep.
You go still on instinct, then scowl at yourself for it.
“I need to get up.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You do not.”
You angle your head back enough to glare at the underside of his jaw.
“I need to go home. I need a shower. I need clean clothes. I’m not spending the whole night covered in dust and sweat.”
That gets one eye to peel open. Then another. And another. Then all of them are on you again.
His face, when he finally looks down at you properly, is rumpled with sleep in a way you did not know he could be. It lasts only a second before that familiar disdainful look settles back into place.
“You can shower here.”
You close your eyes.
Sometimes you truly believe he is a moron.
“What would I wear, genius?”
He scoffs, offended by the question itself.
“I have infinite options for you.”
You drag a hand down your face.
At this point, what are your options? You are here. The curse needs time. Yaga wants him contained. Satoru and Shoko need these forty-eight hours to pass without bloodshed. You can either keep fighting every step of it and risk setting him off again, or you can endure it.
So you exhale and sit up at last, helped rather than hindered by the fact that Sukuna immediately releases you the moment he realizes you are not trying to leave the room entirely.
His bathroom is larger than your whole apartment kitchen.
Hot water pounds down over your shoulders and back, washing away the grime of the mission in long, steaming streams. Dust lifts. Sweat goes with it. The ache in your muscles sharpens first under the heat, then loosens bit by bit until you can finally breathe without feeling every bruise and strain from the day.
You stay in there too long on purpose.
Partly because you need it. Partly because you are delaying whatever awkwardness waits outside.
By the time you step out with damp hair and flushed skin, wrapped in a towel, Sukuna is waiting in the bedroom with a folded bundle in one of his hands.
He hands it over without ceremony.
It is one of his kimonos. Light fabric, soft, expensive in a quiet way, and much too large. You put it on anyway because there is nothing else to do. The hem drags. The sleeves swallow your hands. The collar slips wide enough at the neck that you have to tug it back into place.
When you emerge from behind the divider, he looks up.
And grins.
That wicked, knowing grin that makes you instantly suspicious.
“What?”
He looks you over once, slowly.
“It suits you.”
The compliment strikes clean through your guard.
You feel it happen. That awful, helpless rush of heat from throat to cheeks.
Sukuna’s grin widens.
You consider throwing something at his head. Instead you just glare and look away, which only gets you a low chuckle in response, deep and pleased and so uncharacteristically unguarded that you almost trip over your own thoughts.
He takes you to the kitchen next.
You expect arrogance there too, maybe uselessness, maybe the kind of man who has a beautiful kitchen he never touches because someone else does it for him.
Instead he cooks.
Quickly, efficiently, with the ease of someone who knows where everything is and uses it often.
Steam curls up from the pan. Oil hisses softly. Aromatics hit the heat and bloom into something that fills the whole room and makes your stomach tighten painfully with sudden hunger. He moves with the same economy he uses in battle, no wasted gestures, no hesitation, just one precise action flowing into the next.
You sit at the counter and watch despite yourself.
“You cook?”
He cuts you a glance.
“Do you believe I live on air?”
“I believed you lived on spite.”
That earns a low scoff that might almost be amusement.
When he sets the bowl in front of you, it looks simple. It tastes anything but.
The first bite makes a helpless little sound leave your throat before you can stop it.
He notices immediately.
The corner of his mouth lifts.
“Good?”
You hate how easy honesty is when the food is this good.
“Annoyingly.”
He hums, satisfied with that.
You eat. You keep eating because it tastes incredible and because your body is still trying to catch up with the fact that you are clean and warm and no longer actively panicking.
By the time you finish, your limbs feel heavier in a different way. Rested, but only partly. The kind of tired that comes after a deep sleep taken too early, when the body has been tricked into thinking it is healed more than it is.
A yawn catches you by surprise.
You cover it with the back of your sleeve and stare down into the empty bowl, weighing what is left of the day. Or night. Time feels oddly meaningless in here.
The light outside the kitchen windows is pale and uncertain, somewhere between dawn and a cloudy morning.
You consider your options.
You could ask for your things from home. Message Shoko to bring clothes. Ask Yaga how classes are being covered. Try to impose some kind of schedule on this madness so you do not lose your mind first.
You could also admit, at least to yourself, that another hour of sleep would not be the worst thing in the world.
Sukuna watches you from across the counter, having finished his own portion long ago. He has that look again, attentive in a way that feels nearly predatory if not for the strange care threaded through it.
“You are still tired,” he says.
It is not a question.
You rub at one temple.
“That tends to happen after a mission, a kidnapping, a cursed delusion, and several identity crises in the span of one day.”
His expression does not change.
“Then sleep more.”
You let out a dry laugh.
“You know,” you mutter, “most people would ask what I want to do.”
“You are deciding,” he says, almost dismissive. “I am only stating the correct answer.”
There he is.
That pedantic, unbearable certainty settles over you so neatly that, absurdly, it is reassuring.
You lean your elbows on the counter and look at him through damp lashes and the remnants of your exhaustion.
“If I stay awake, you hover. If I sleep, you turn into a weighted blanket. If I leave the room, you follow me like an overgrown guard dog. So really my options are terrible.”
A pause.
Then, unexpectedly, his mouth twitches.
“Correct.”
You snort despite yourself.
The sound surprises both of you.
Something loosens in the room after that, not fully, not safely, but enough for the tension to shift shape. Still dangerous. Still bizarre. But no longer poised right at the edge of breaking.
You know, instantly and viscerally, that the decision has been made without you.
“Do not,” you say, pointing your chopsticks at him in warning. “Do not pick me up again.”
His gaze drops to the chopsticks, then lifts back to your face.
And sure enough, a minute later you are back in his room.
This time at least you walk there on your own.
A victory. A tiny, humiliating victory.
The borrowed kimono brushes your ankles as you sit, then sink, then let yourself lean back into the bedding with a slow exhale. The fabric smells faintly like him too, which is not helping. Neither is the way he watches you do it, standing at the edge of the bed for only a heartbeat before climbing up after you.
And then he is over you.
For a second your thoughts blank entirely.
The movement is smooth, controlled, almost lazy in its certainty, yet the sight of it sends a sharp nervous thrill all the way through you.
Four arms bracket you in an instant, two planted beside your head, another pair settling lower near your sides and hips, his whole body a towering wall of heat and weight above you. He does not crush you. He only hems you in so completely that the rest of the room seems to vanish around the edges.
Your breath catches.
You try to keep your face composed, you really do, but the strain of it breaks all at once when his head dips and his nose brushes the long column of your neck.
A small, bright, utterly traitorous giggle bubbles up and bursts out of you.
It surprises you so badly your eyes widen right after, but it is too late to swallow back. It leaves you in a breathless little rush, nervous and euphoric all at once, and the second it is gone you feel every hair on your body stand on end.
Sukuna stills.
Not much. Just enough for you to feel it.
The tip of his nose drifts once more against your throat, slower this time, as if he is testing the reaction again. Your whole body shivers beneath him. Not from fear. Not from tension. From something warmer and far more humiliating.
That is when the truth hits you in a way you cannot sidestep.
Maybe you do feel something for him.
Maybe you have for longer than you let yourself think about, and all the irritation, the bickering, the professional distance, the snapping at each other in hallways and training grounds has been covering something else. Something softer. Something much more dangerous because it would have required honesty, and honesty with Sukuna has never once felt safe.
Your body gives you away before your mind can catch up.
It does not tense under his. It eases.
It yields to his warmth like it was waiting for a reason.
You realize, dimly, that your hands have closed around the front of his kimono at some point. You do not remember doing it. You only know that your fingers are twisted in the fabric near his chest, holding on like you might drift away if you let go.
The knowledge makes your face burn hotter.
Sukuna says nothing about it.
He lowers his mouth to the curve where your neck meets your shoulder, where the collar of his borrowed kimono has slipped wide enough to bare skin, and presses a kiss there. You feel like the touch, tender as it is, scorches your skin. Then he presses another. Then another, each one unhurried and gentle in a way that does not suit him at all and yet somehow suits him perfectly in this terrible, secret place inside your chest you have not wanted to name.
There is no greed in it, no taking, no forceful urgency. Only a kind of reverence that seems impossible on him, as though he has found something he wants to handle carefully even if he does not quite understand why.
Your thoughts scatter for a moment.
You feel ridiculous.
You feel warm all over.
You feel like your bones have gone loose under your skin.
Why are you melting into this?
Why are you sinking into his touch like something half-starved finally given warmth?
Are you really this touch deprived? This affection-starved? This vulnerable to one man pressing his mouth to your shoulder like you are something precious instead of the colleague he bickers with until both of you are ready to bite?
The answer comes easy enough that you almost laugh at yourself.
Probably yes.
And what is worse, if someone offered you another version of this moment — cleaner, saner, not born from a curse and a crisis and two exhausted days trapped in the same house — you suspect you would choose it too.
Because now you know.
Not about the curse. Not about whatever is rotting sweetly through his mind and telling him wife and mine and come here.
You know something about yourself.
About why bickering with him has always come too easily. About why his attention burns in ways other people’s never do. About why even at your angriest with him there is still some fierce bright wire of awareness underneath. About why being held by him, absurd as it is, feels less like revulsion and more like the world narrowing into something dangerously simple.
You like him.
God help you, you like him.
Maybe you have for a while.
Maybe all that friction had been hiding sparks you never let yourself name because naming them would have been stupid, and risky, and deeply inconvenient.
Maybe the realization should come later, in saner circumstances, under any sky other than this one.
That thought only survives a second before his hands slide down and close around your hips.
The breath leaves you in a quiet rush as he shifts forward and lets more of his weight settle over you. The mattress dips deeper. His body presses you into it, broad and hot and so heavy it wrings a helpless groan right out of you.
Your arms move on instinct, lifting from where they had fisted his clothes and winding around his neck instead.
He exhales against your skin at the feel of it.
His face lowers, rests, nuzzles almost absently against the upper swell of your chest where the borrowed kimono has fallen a little farther open under the pressure. The sensation is so unexpectedly intimate that your mouth curves before you can help it, not quite into a smile, not quite into anything you have worn before.
It feels strange on your face. Soft. Open. A little dazed.
He breathes you in.
Deeply.
Like he is memorizing you through scent alone.
The heat of it against your skin turns your stomach over in the gentlest possible way. You do not know what to do with the feeling it gives you.
It is too mixed up, too warm and embarrassing and oddly tender to sort through quickly. So you do the only thing your body seems capable of doing.
Your fingers slip into his hair.
At first it is cautious. Just the pads of your fingers easing into those unruly pink strands, feeling how thick and slightly coarse they are beneath your hand, the warmth of his scalp underneath. Then it becomes a slow caress, your hand moving on its own, combing back through the mess of his hair with careful strokes.
Sukuna goes still again.
A low sound leaves him, almost too quiet to hear, more vibration than voice where his cheek is pressed to your skin.
You feel it everywhere.
For one long second you are acutely aware of everything at once. The solid drag of his weight over your body. The stretch in your shoulders from the way your arms hold around his neck. The soft whisper of the kimono fabric open at your chest. The warmth of his breath as he turns his face a fraction and brushes another kiss there, just below your collarbone this time. The callus of one thumb moving in a slow circle against your hip through the fabric.
Your pulse beats so hard you think he has to feel it.
You stare at the ceiling because looking down at him would probably finish you off in some new and mortifying way.
“This is insane,” you whisper.
His mouth shifts against your skin, not quite a smile, not quite not.
“Hm.”
You let out a breath that almost turns into another laugh.
“You are infuriating even now.”
“And yet,” he murmurs.
And yet.
The words settle heavily between your ribs.
You tug lightly at his hair before you can think better of it, just enough to make him lift his head. His face rises from your chest, and you finally look at him properly from this distance, close enough to count every line of ink on his skin, every lash shadowing those too-watchful eyes, every small shift in the hard shape of his mouth.
He looks different like this.
Not softer — Sukuna does not become soft. But there is less distance in him. Less iron. Less of that endless guarded contempt he wears around everyone and everything.
Beneath it, you catch something intent and raw and almost boyishly stubborn, something that makes your heart hurt in a way you do not appreciate.
Hunger dressed in gentleness.
He studies your face like he does not understand why you are letting him stay there.
The thought lands harder than it should.
Because maybe he does not understand. Maybe neither of you does.
You are the first one to look away.
Your pulse is far too loud in your ears. The room smells like soap from your shower, like warm rice and broth from the food he made, like clean linen and the faint iron scent that always seems to cling to him under everything else. His heat cages you in. So does the bed. So do his arms.
This should be impossible to enjoy.
It is not.
That realization makes you feel a little sick and a little giddy in equal measure.
You clear your throat and aim for dry, unimpressed, normal.
“You’re staring.”
“I am looking at my wife.”
Your whole body jolts with mortification so abrupt it nearly turns into a laugh.
“That is still... odd.”
“So are you,” he says, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. “You keep insulting me while touching me like this.”
You open your mouth, close it, open it again.
There is no argument available to you that does not sound pathetic.
Because he is right in the most infuriating way possible. You are touching him like this.
Worse, you do not want to stop.
You settle on glaring at the side of his face, which would probably be more effective if your hand were not still buried in his hair.
He looks maddeningly satisfied.
“Don’t smirk,” you say.
“It displeases you?”
“Yes.”
He smirks more.
You hate him. You really, truly do.
You hate how easy he makes it look to pin you here with four arms and a single look. You hate how his voice drops into that low register whenever he speaks to you like this and your stupid body listens to it. You hate that he cooks well and runs hot and apparently has a hidden talent for being unbearably attentive.
You hate that under this curse, with his mind bent sideways and all his edges turned toward you, he is showing you a shape of himself you had never been allowed to know existed.
You hate, most of all, how badly some soft and neglected part of you wants this to mean something after it ends.
He lowers his head again, slower this time, until his forehead rests near your shoulder. One of the hands at your hips slides to your side, spanning your ribs. Another remains firm at your waist. The upper pair shifts only enough to ease some of his weight from his arms and let it settle more fully across you.
You should feel trapped.
Instead you feel held.
Your fingers resume their slow pass through his hair, no longer even pretending it is accidental. The strands slip between your fingers as you smooth them back, over and over, until his breathing changes.
It deepens. Slows.
A tension you had not even fully registered in him starts to ease little by little under your touch.
The realization makes something in you ache.
So much of him is made of resistance. Teeth. Pride. Violence held on a short, vicious leash.
To feel him quiet under your hand like this, even a little, feels like being trusted with something you should not have access to.
You swallow against a throat that suddenly feels tight.
His hand on your side spreads wider, fingertips grazing the bare strip of skin where the kimono has slipped apart. The contact is light, almost absentminded, yet it sends another tremor through you.
Not because it is too much. Because it is not. Because he is touching you like he already knows the exact line where your body will welcome it rather than flinch.
Maybe the curse helps with that.
Maybe the curse has nothing to do with it.
That thought is too large to face right now, so you turn your head slightly and press your cheek against his hair instead.
He gives a low hum of approval.
For a while, neither of you speaks.
The room holds around you, quiet and warm, the outside world reduced to faint sounds beyond the walls. Your body loosens by degrees beneath his. The hand in his hair slows, then lingers, your fingers idly combing the same path again and again. His thumb keeps tracing small circles against your side as if he has forgotten to stop.
Sleep starts circling the edges of you again, soft and inevitable.
You are not ready to examine what it means that you feel safest with four arms caging you in.
You are not ready to decide whether this softness is yours, his, or something the curse merely dragged into the light before either of you could stop it.
Right now all you know is sensation.
The press of him over you.
The heat.
The impossible comfort.
The way your chest feels too full to contain itself.
And the awful, tender fact that when he buries his face closer and your fingers sink a little deeper into his hair, you do not want him to move at all.
