✦ ── synopsis: taking a hike, alone, in a massive forest to escape your mundane life may not have been the greatest idea you'd conjured up—a realization you'd come to soon after you managed to lose your map miles inland. but when a lumberjack who knows the land like the back of his hand offers you a place to stay, you think maybe your life isn't so tragic after all. besides, for the sake of your safety, who knows what lingers in the shadows after nightfall?
✦ ── contents: lost in the forest au, forced proximity, bantering, angst, trauma/torture aspects, minor injuries, eventual romance, eventual smut, no use of y/n, more tags to be added.
✦ ── a/n: check out the playlist for the curated mood and for a forehead kiss.
✦ ── word count: 3.4k
archive ─ playlist
series masterlist - previous volume - volume three
art by outdmilk on twt
Your arms tightened around Sukuna’s collar as an attempt to calm your worries, eyes widening as you glanced around the dim woodlands, realizing that the sunlight was slowly but surely draining.
“Quit it. You’re fuckin’ chokin’ me,” Sukuna huffed out hoarsily, clasping a hand around your forearm and attempting to wring himself free from your firm hold.
But your legs tightened around his waist, digging your face into the crook of his neck and shivering. “I’ve never gone on a hike before!” You exclaimed, voice muffled as you felt doom crawling upon you from all angles, clinging to him as tightly as you could.
He scowled, resigning to your unrelenting bear hug before he honed his focus in. You hadn’t dared to glance up, leaving him to deal with this.
He could deal with this, right? He was an expert—lived in the outbacks and was a formidable fortress of a man. You weren’t crazy to let him deal with this.
But then you heard it, closer this time. Your heart sank to your stomach, the sounds of snarling closing in on all sides.
You were frozen in fear, unable to even peek from your eyes, feeling as if this creature were about to pounce on you from behind.
You could hear Uraume whining loudly beside Sukuna’s foot, paws brushing against your booted foot.
“Uh, don’t let go,” Sukuna spoke, head turning on a swivel as he crouched, dropping your bag to his side carefully.
You nodded, nose nuzzling into his skin and practically choking him out of fear.
You could hear him crack his knuckles, knees bent before he moved forward, letting out a loud huff.
He did it again, and again.
You couldn’t see his expression, but you could imagine his frown and bared teeth as he pounced forward.
Metallic sounds resonated in the charged air before Sukuna made a growling sound, stepping forward once more.
You could hear the whine of the wolves, whimpering and afraid, stepping backwards while whistling quietly. They began yelping and yapping to each other before one barked, maybe some sort of a signal to retreat as a pack.
They huffed, before the sounds of their paws meeting wet earth sounded in the opposite direction, and thus disappeared.
You couldn’t move, your forearms trembling against Sukunas neck.
“You can let go now,” he gruffed, now tugging at your arm to try and get a breath in.
Slowly, you let your guard down, lifting your pinched face from the crook of his neck and loosening the curl of your fingers on his collar. “Sorry,” you muttered, blinking a couple of times.
He grunted, cracking his neck with a loud pop! before picking up your bag and beginning to walk again.
After a couple of silent moments where you gathered your mental bearings, you spoke quietly, still afraid of what managed to lurk beneath the shadows. “Do you come across wild animals often?”
He wiped sweat from his browline before removing his hat to skim his fingers through his hair before placing it back on. “What?”
You bit your lip, your jitters still lingering despite never taking a glance at the animals that nearly mauled you. “Well, you seemed to know fire would scare them off.”
He was silent for a few minutes. He stepped over a fallen rotten log bustling with dawdling vermin, his footfalls suddenly louder as night began to fall and wildlife lurked in the shadows, a quiet hum of locust chirps and low howls of the wind. “What are you talking about?”
Shuffling uncomfortably, you still kept your voice to a hushed tone. “Your lighter. I-I wouldn’t have known what to do in the moment,” you sighed, a sort of dread washing over you.
Who knows what might have happened to you if Sukuna hadn’t been there? You definitely would’ve been dinner for a pack of wolves in the middle of the woods, not a scrap of you left to send back to your family.
Sukuna sighed, attempting to hone his focus on the protruding branches in the dark in case they skim you again. “Been here a long time. Can’t have myself gettin’ scared of a couple of mutts.”
You didn’t respond to that, wondering what Sukuna had managed to endure in the woods, possibly a plethora of stories behind the scars that littered his face.
“Do you live alone?” You asked, wanting to steer the conversation.
“Mhm,” he hummed, eyes squinting as the trail only managed to seem to get darker with each passing second. He hadn’t brought his flashlight with him as he’d only been going on a walk with Uraume and would’ve been back home ages ago.
You didn’t know how to feel about that. Would it have been more consolation that there was someone waiting up the hill he was currently climbing for you?
You also didn’t know the reasoning behind how you were feeling. Were you still worried about him tossing you in a nearby creek after chasing you like prey in the woods or did you feel a sense of pity for the guy, isolated in the forestry?
Living out here must be lonely.
“We’re here,” he panted out and broke you from your reverie.
You peered up, head bumping against the rim of his hat, gaze meeting his home.
Past the pine trees was a beat up and neglected one-story house, damn near dilapidated. You assume at one point it was a solid white, but as it aged over time it became a sort of beige from lack of upkeep and humid weather. The screen to the front door was torn in a few odd places, his brown drapes were drawn shut, and there was a singular plastic chair on the porch, beer cans littered on the floor beside it.
Uraume barked, wagging their tail and hurrying over to their small doghouse, a well-kept boarded box with a small cot inside.
Behind it was an ominous shed, and the image made your blood run cold for some reason.
“Are you going to kill me in there?” You quirked, only half-joking, swallowing thickly.
“If you ask nicely.”
You frowned deeply, fidgeting with your fingers. Sukuna glanced down at your hands, cocking his head. With a sigh, he padded up the two wobbly steps to his front door. “If I wanted to kill you, why would I bother bringing you all the way up here?”
You opened your mouth to respond, mind boggling with some sort of explanation but falling short.
“Right,” he groaned.
His hands began to loosen around your thighs, lowering you to the floor slowly and ensuring you kept off of your bad foot by holding your forearm. He slung your bag over his shoulder before digging into his pockets for his keys.
You wondered why on earth he even bothered to lock his house in the middle of literal nowhere but shook it off. To each their own.
You peered up at him as his movements flowed lazily and only now did you notice the sharp gleam and color in his eyes. He had crimson irises, his eye shape permanently contorted into a displeased form like anything he’d laid his eyes on repulsed him.
He pushed the door open, and you blinked, eyes adjusting to the eerie darkness despite the sun already going down.
Sukuna flipped the light switch on, kicking his boots off with a groan. He tossed your bag on the small coffee table littered with burnt out cigarettes and multiple, full ashtrays, before throwing himself on the couch that he easily dwarfed, his chest heaving. As you stood awkwardly in his doorway, you noticed just how exhausted he looked to be.
The front of his shirt was sweat soaked, his face was dotted in a layer of perspiration and he was still catching his breath. After what felt like over an hour, he never once asked for a break, hauling your complaining ass uphill.
You frowned at that, opening your mouth when he suddenly spoke.
“You gonna keep standing there or you gonna take a shower? You reek, woman.”
You shrunk into yourself, peering your head down to get a whiff and grimacing. He even endured the scent without one grievance the entire time?
“Uhm. Where’s your bathroom?” You spoke, mousily, itching the back of your neck.
“First door to the right.”
You whispered a small ‘thank you’ before wobbling away, stepping into the room he directed you to and shutting the door behind you, making sure to turn the lock.
You flipped the light switch on, laying your back against the door and getting the first sense of tranquility in the last couple hours.
The bathroom ventilation hummed, along with the lights that flickered a couple of times before radiating steadily.
You stared at your reflection, sweaty and covered in mud and disheveled. The skin tint you’d put on had become patchy and you had creases etched across your face, making you sigh.
There was suddenly a cool draft and a buzz, and you could assume that Sukuna finally turned the air conditioning on as his place was sweltering like outside.
It felt oddly similar to the times you’d spent at some shitty motel with your ex who never cared to take you anywhere nice, the dingy and timeworn room that was permanently marked beige from it’s year accommodating to plenty people with sketchy lifestyles, always smelling strangely like cockroaches.
You shook the thought off, gaze peering down and inspecting his sink.
There was one toothbrush, a half-used tube of toothpaste, and a nearly-gone bar of soap.
Men are so simple.
You shuddered, feeling a sudden urge to strip.
You began to peel your clothing off, just like you’d done at the stream, and tossed them into a heap on his tile floors. You played with the faucet for a couple of moments before figuring how to turn on the coldest temperature, desperately needing to cool your body.
You stepped in, allowing the freezing temperature to cascade down your form and carefully taking a look at your puncture wound.
It hadn’t seemed to grow since Sukuna brushed some branch against it, thankfully. But it still hurt to put too much pressure on it, one knee bent everywhere you hobbled to.
You glanced around the things in his shower caddy.
A bottle of shampoo. Another used bar of soap. A really old body wash.
A half-full beer bottle.
You grimaced, opting for the shampoo bottle and body wash, thankful they weren’t expired. Surprisingly, his body wash was blood orange scented, making the shower not as horrible as you scrubbed yourself, wishing a loofah would fall from the sky and into your hands.
There were a couple of raps of knuckles against the door, stilling you as shampoo swam down your face, eyes clamped shut. “You done yet?”
“Uhhhhh,” you began to scrub quicker, a sense of urgency flooding you. “Almost!”
On another occasion, Sukuna would’ve told you to stop using all of his water and get out. But you were injured and probably trying not to slip, so he just bit his tongue. “I’ve got a spare towel, mind if I come in?”
Your heart skipped a beat, accidentally opening your eyes and allowing the fruity shampoo to burn your orbs and hiss. “I— Just give me a sec!”
You hurried your pace, accidentally hitting your ankle against the edge of the tub and digging crescents with your fingernails into your thigh before you carefully made your way out.
You dripped shower water all over his floor, scowling, before you undid the lock and held your wet forearm out. “You still out there?”
You barely allowed a glimpse into the bathroom, Sukuna glancing down at your hand and grinning to himself at how you were still so nervous around him.
He didn’t respond for a few moments, hearing the water run behind you.
“Hello?” You called out in frustration, peeking your head out and flinching when you saw the man looming over you.
He only scoffed with a grin to himself, placing the cotton towel into your hand and disappearing around the corner.
You didn’t know what to make of it, pulling your arm inside and slamming the door shut.
“Weird.”
You wrapped it around yourself, staring at yourself in the mirror and feeling a bit better about how you managed to scrub the remnants of the horrible day off.
Hold on.
You twitched, staring down at the pile of clothing on the ground and wincing.
Besides the extra pair of panties and bra you’d brought along with yourself in case you’d needed a change, a habit you had out of odd fear, you hadn’t packed an extra set of clothing.
Fuck.
You felt your cheeks warm before turning the faucet off and stepping out of the bathroom, hugging the towel around your form to cover yourself as best as you could.
Thankfully, Sukuna was a massive man, so the towel concealed most of your bare skin.
Though, it’s not like the guy hasn’t seen you naked before.
When you padded barefoot across his wooden floors, you craned your head around and called out to him. The house wasn’t incredibly spacious so he should be able to hear you from anywhere.
But, the front door was slightly ajar, making your head tilt slightly.
You walked over to it, pulling it open and peering outside. It was incredibly dark, and the air had turned from feverish to quite chilly, making you shudder.
The sound of panting caught your attention, making you turn your head to see a large form crouched over the dogshed.
Sukuna seemed to be ruffling Uraume's hair while they panted, eating from a bowl Sukuna was holding.
Though you could only make out the side of his face, his expression looked a hell of a lot softer as he eyed what seemed to be his best friend.
As you allowed yourself to be privy to what seemed to be a private moment, you missed how you stepped on a faulty plank of wood, effectively creaking beneath your weight and commanding the attention of anything in a hundred foot radius.
Sukuna’s head snapped towards you, eyebrows knitting once he made out that you were still in your towel. “The hell you doing? You’re gonna freeze your ass off,” he called, irritation swimming in his eyes.
You cleared your throat, pulling the top of the towel higher. “Sorry, but, do you think I could borrow a change of clothes?”
His crimson eyes gave you a once-over, enough to make your spine crawl, before he jutted his chin. “My room is across from the bathroom.”
You bit the inside of your cheek, hiding just how pleased you were. “Thanks, Sukuna.”
Tottering backwards, you felt a flutter of ease, feeling entirely unlike yourself. This strange man you’d met only a few hours ago was already opening his home, and even his closet to you.
Would alarms be sounding off in a rational woman’s head? Probably.
Have you ever been rational? No.
Before you headed to his room, you hurried back to the bathroom and gathered your dirty laundry clumsily and shoved them back into your backpack arbitrarily.
You then stepped inside, eyes going wide at the state of his bedroom. It seemed that Sukuna was a somewhat clean man, however he was not the slightest bit organized nor artistic.
There was a queen-sized bed shoved against the wall with no headboard, mussed sheets of a blue-plaid pattern, and a comforter that was half-draped across the floor. His clothing was scattered around his room, there was a clock hanging against the opposite wall that didn’t seem to work besides twice a day, and a stack of DVDs resting idly on the floor with no shelf to display them.
There was an overflowing laundry basket shoved and forgotten against the wall, far too many beer cans perched on his nightstand and a Walkman beside them.
Who still uses Walkmans?
You carefully maneuvered your way around his things before coming to a tall, oaky dresser and tearing through it.
You knew you weren’t going to find anything close to fitting you, but you tried anyway.
What you came up with was a black tee that practically reached your knees and basketball shorts that very well almost touched your ankles.
You giggled at your state, before hopping back to the living room.
It seemed that Sukuna had gone in for a shower himself, the muffled hum from the bathroom resonating as you walked past.
You plopped down on his couch and sank into it, sighing at the feeling of relief of finally being able to unwind. Grabbing your bag, you shuffled through it to pull out your phone.
You switched it on, fingers tapping away at the screen just to see if you had any service up here, opposed to the SOS signal you had when you slogged the trail.
Thankfully you did, but where you expected to see a plethora of phone calls and text messages asking where the hell you were or if you were alive, was instead met with radio silence.
Biting your lip, you did a quick google search to ensure you had service and you really did.
You shoved down the dreadful feeling in your chest. No one was worried where you were. But could you be surprised?
You sighed, dropping your hand on the couch and shutting your eyes with a groan, blue funk showering you at the state of your life. You wondered how on Earth you’d managed to end up here—isolated at some strange man’s house for who knows how long—after going on a hike instead of sleeping in your incredibly comfortable bed with your weighted blanket.
The bathroom door opened and though you couldn’t see Sukuna around the corner, you could hear his footfalls as he made his way towards his bedroom before shutting the door.
You sat there, fingers fidgeting and picking at skin, eyeing the small excuse of a television he had that was probably three decades old before he shuffled out.
He had a towel slung across his neck, still drying his pink hair. He was wearing a white long sleeved top and red Christmas pants that made you cock your head despite it being summertime, but you kept your thoughts to yourself.
He had a small plastic box in hand, his form making its way over to you before he knelt on one knee and picked your leg up haphazardly, pulling your back from the cushion and making you yelp. “Hey, what the hell are you-?” You cut yourself off when you watched him prop open the box that seemed to be as old as you on the coffee table.
“A first aid kit,” you spoke out, pursing your lips and wanting to sink into the couch.
Sukuna huffed, ignoring how you smelled of his shampoo, pulling out an antiseptic wipe and rubbing it against the wound.
You pulled back, hissing at the burn engulfing your nerves in fire, when he clicked his tongue, shooting you a frown, and pulled your leg back.
You resigned at his expression, bracing yourself and fingers curling into his leather couch. He wiped it down with a few pats, cleaning anything you’d missed in the shower and disinfecting it, before pulling out a tube of antibiotic ointment.
“What if that’s expired?” You whined quietly in a hushed tone, but that didn’t stop him from dabbing it against your ankle and pulling a bandage from the box to place against the wound.
He then grabbed a wrap, ensuring your entire ankle was covered with the beige medical-grade elastic. HIs fingers curled beneath the wrap to check if it was snug and unmoving, but not tight enough to restrict circulation.
As he did so, your eyes danced across his face, mapping out the flow of the symmetrical tattoos lining him. You couldn’t deny he was quite the handsome man, but why on God’s green Earth would he permanently ink one of his strongest attributes?
Though, no matter how strange they looked, you couldn’t say they made him unattractive. If anything, it’d draw people to him even more.
He carefully lowered your foot back to the ground as you broke the silence. “Where’d you learn to play doctor so well? You hurt yourself often?”
He pushed air from his nose, as if the question humored him. “Nope. Was just a real sick kid.”
You nodded, pursing your lips and eyeing his admirable handiwork. “I see. Well, thanks anyway.”
He tossed everything back into the box before clicking it shut and rising to his feet. “Whatever.”
Lifting your feet over the couch, you laid down and placed your hands above your head. “You sure you don’t want to let me sleep in your bed and you take the couch?”
wanted to give a slight update on plans for killer instinct, wyk, and my upcoming gojo fic!
this month has been fairly busy and i'm running behind on killer instinct so it'll undoubtedly run into november, but i'm about halfway done choso's part!
wyk's next chapter is mostly done, but i found myself getting a bit burnt out going so long on only that series and being in the home stretch and what i think is one of the more important pieces of the story and the romance in particular, i wanted to give it my all so i'm giving myself time to recharge to put my all into it :)
i'm also working on a story featuring husband!geto and husband's bsf!gojo, i'm pretty close to hitting 5k followers so it may end up being a 5k event but i haven't decided if i want it to be a oneshot or a three part series with an ending for each of the men. we'll see where it takes me :) we'll also see if i can even finish it by the time i hit 5k LOL
anyways, ty all so much for the love on killer instinct and the continued love on wyk and the rest of my work <33
