To the people out the who writes for the Pitt has anyone made a Dr. Robby/Michael Rochinavitch
Dr. robby x attorney reader on the phone and on the way on to the court house and the is a shooting going on and they part ways the reader goes to the court house and the has been a shooting there and Robby realized that the reader was there and I think she gets shoot in the collarbone and she makes it
I'm not sure who it's by not she when I read it when I think about the Pitt my head goes to the fic I read but I don't who is by it's been driving be crazy so who wrote or reblogged it please let me now
Bowser x wife!reader scenario ( bowser randomly yelling at his army about destroying the mushroom kingdom and Y/N tells him “ Honey can you please lower your voice Jr. needs his nap “ ) Bowser Jr.
Oh wow, I never done these before :0
•Idk if it was meant for someone else or for me, but hopefully you’ll like the story though :))
•I might change some parts but their small detail nothing too much.
•Kinda proof-read… oops
Summary: Bowser Junior is sick, and all he want is a good nap, and wants to get better, but papa Bowser keeps yelling, and won’t stop.
“Sir… there been an attack on the east side of the kingdom.” The main second general Koopa began to say, disappointed “What?! Why isn’t the group taking care of it?! I asked for group B to keep watch!-” Bowser's anger began to grow. “Call in the entire army! I need a word with them! I’ll be there in a minute” He harshly sighs rubbing his eyes. The koopa bows in agreement and walks away quickly. The sudden yells took Y/N walking outside the bathroom. “Bowser, what’s wrong? What happened?” She said, beginning to worry. His stern face relaxes when he sees her, something about her completely positively changes his mood, though he didn't like showing his anger side towards her.
“Just a small attack. Nothing to worry about my dear. My soldiers are lacking protection lately, so I’m going to have a word with all of them. You and Junior have breakfast without me, I’ll be there shortly. ” She quickly grabs his hands, rubbing them a bit. “Alright then, if anything happens let me know.” He gives her a kiss on her forehead. “I doubt it’s anything bad, just some goombas trying to scare my soldiers away.”
15 minutes passed, Y/N heard a loud fierce yell outside her window. I wonder what happened this time… I can practically feel his anger, though I would be too… hmm come to think of it, where is Junior? She began to brush her hair a bit, and the door opened unexpectedly. Y/N quickly turns around to see Junior, standing in front of the door, covered by his blanket and tearing up. “Junior, honey, what’s wrong?” She quickly walked up to him, kneeling down, his eyes were tired, his snout was a bit red. He abruptly sneezes. “My body feels tired, mama.” Y/N touches his forehead, feeling his fever start to rise. “You’re sick… Come on let’s get you back to bed.” She grabs his hand softly, bringing him to his room. He gets on top of his bed and covers himself. “My body hurts, my eyes hurt, my head hurts.” He began to say tearing up.“Aw, don’t cry my Junior, just stay here tucked in while I get your medicine. I’ll be back.” He nods, looking towards his window.
Y/N went to the kitchen of the kingdom, asked one of the Koopa cooks to lend her a special remedy, though the prince isn’t going to be fond of the medication not tasting like candy. The koopa gave her several snacks for the prince in case he got hungry, so Y/N obliged the cooks to make soup for lunch. She started to make her way towards his room and heard another abrupt growl and yells. I think they didn’t do their job this time.
“I’m back, I brought everything you need for this time.” She places the tray on his drawer next to his lamp. “Everything hurts Mama. I don’t want to be sick!” “I know, baby, but I brought your medicine. It isn’t exactly tasty, so I brought crackers you can munch them.” She says, grabbing some tissue paper. “Papas been yelling so much, it’s hurting my ears and head. And it’s making me cry.” A sudden burst of growl comes from outside. “Mama do something… it hurts.” He wipes his tears, as Y/N cleans his nose. “My poor baby… I hate seeing you like this… tell you what, if you drink this nasty medicine and I give you some crackers, I’ll tell Papa to move somewhere else to yell.” Junior thought about it for a moment, medicine that tastes nasty? Gross! But on the other hand… yummy crackers? And Papa stops yelling? Yes. "Mama… do I have to? I know it’s going to taste so nasty.” “I know, I know, but it’s for you to get better. Now open wide and say ‘ah’. ” Y/N pours a spoonful of the remedy, giving it to the prince, while the baby Koopa, starts tasting its savory, he makes a gross face, and quickly eats the crackers. “See that wasn’t too bad.” She glances around his room then his window, and looks back at Junior puffing, coughing, and sneezing. She then takes his temperature, and as she suspected he does have a fever. “Hmm… sweetheart you do have a fever. But not to worry, I’m here to take care of you.” She smiles warmly, Junior opens his eyes, feeling safe and relaxed. “Can you tell Papa to stop yelling?” He pulled his blanket, Junior rubbed his eyes and felt a bit drowsy. “While I go and talk to him, I want you to take a nap, alright? The medicine will help you feel better and by the time you wake up, you’ll feel like there was no fever.” He nods, his eyes closing, as Y/N looks at him and then sighs. Y/N presses a kiss onto his forehead and heads out of the room. Two soldiers were walking by, Y/N orders them to keep guard of Junior while she headed outside.
Y/N walked outside, his shouts were getting much louder each time, she was getting close.
"I don't care if it was the Mushroom Kingdom, Sarasaland, or Kong Isle! We have been getting multiple attacks from the outskirts of the kingdom, and I've seen that no one even tried to attack them or to bring them in! If-" His anger was so high up, every time he would speak, dark smoke would come out of his mouth. "I've trained you all better than this! What is going on?!"
Y/N heard his burst and immediately covered her ears, startling a bit, she walked behind Bowser and Kamek, trying to signal Kamek to come over. Bowser continued to shout, Y/N tapped Kamek's shoulder, she glances at the front, and freaked out, there were so many soldiers, it made her a bit nervous, Kamek turned around, he instantly created a bubble shield for them. "My dear, what are you doing?! You know you can't be here, your ears are sensitive. He's awfully angry at the troops. So what did you need?” “Oh! I wanted to ask him a certain thing about Junior.” Bowser storms over to Kamek, furious that he wasn’t paying attention, he stomps towards him till he sees Y/N in there. His cold stern furious look turns into a worried, soft look. His eyes completely soften up, while Kamek bubble disappears and so does he. “Y/N darling-” His voice became gentle, softy grabbing her palms. “What are you doing here? I could have hurt your ears from all my yelling... What’s wrong? Did something happened?”
“Do you think you can tone it down a bit or go to the other side of the castle? Junior is sick and wants his nap. But unfortunately papa Bowser is shouting a whole lot…” Y/N awkwardly chuckles glancing away from him. His eyes widen a bit, Junior is sick… He sighs, blinking slowly. He looks at her, informing Y/N to cover her ears, as Bowser lifts his hand over firmly grasping onto her hands, tightly enough not to hear his shouts.
“Koopa Troops! West side! Now!” He shouts at command,rapidly the Koopas marched away to the other side. He lets go of her hands, so does she. Y/N looks at him, but he was feeling a bit irritated. As the place was deserted, Bowser sighs, rubbing his eyes. “This is a lot…” She stands in front of him, going in for a big hug. She knew he was getting overwhelmed, the lack of sleep, the lack of the guards protecting the castle was so much for him. The attacks were growing each day, and he found his son is sick. “Don’t push yourself over the limit…” He felt her hands roam his bottom torso, her touch made him feel comfort, safe, he then softly hugs her back. His arms around her torso, it definitely helped him calm down. “If you weren’t here…I don’t know what would become of me…” Y/N fully caress his sides, as he places his chin on top of her head. “You can tell me everything once you finish talking with them. For now, I want you to do your best and don’t stress. I know it’s really hard, but you can do this. In the meantime I’ll be with Junior taking care of him, so don’t worry.”
“If anything happens, please let me know first. I have you both on my side now, I feel awful I can’t be there with you both.”
“It’s going to be okay. You don’t have to worry about anything,” Y/N then looks up into this eyes. “They’re waiting for you. Don’t keep them waiting.” Y/N was about leave his arms when Bowser pulls her over. He gives her a gentle kiss, pulling her close. Bowser felt even more powerful and confident, now that Y/N came to see her. They both take their leave walking opposite of each other.
“Junior?” She opens the door hearing his small snores around the room. Well that seemed to work. I just hope both of them will be okay…Junior… Bowser….
She slowly walks over to Junior's bed, sitting beside him, checking his temperature. His temperature has gone down a bit. Hopefully his papas as well.
Y/N began to lie down and felt to doze off a bit. A small nap may go faster...
A couple of hours later, midnight has fallen, Bowser had finally finished his duties, feeling exhausted. He told Kamek he would be staying in Juniors room for a bit, so he went ahead and started to walk. As he walked towards there, the things that have been brought up in the meeting and searching around the koopa troops places kept running around his head. Who would even dare to attack this kingdom? Why would they try to attack only the outskirts of the land? Whatever or whoever it was, it was making him frustrated. The koopas were lacking, the kingdom could be attacked in any second, he need to be more ruthless towards his army.
“Mmm…? Bowser, you’re back!” She loudly whispered. “How is he?” He sat down at the edge of the bed, as Y/N sat up. “He’s doing a bit better. Hopefully by tomorrow morning, he’s good.”
“Pa..pa?” Junior began to awaken and rubbed his eyes. “Shh.. go back to sleep alright? We’re right here with you.” Junior grumbles, lying back on his stomach. “Can… I sleep up? My body feels weak…I can’t smell either…” Y/N and Bowser looked at each and both nodded. They both whisper and helped Junior turned around slowly. Once his shell was touching the bed, he tried to snuggle with Y/N as he fell asleep. Luckily for Bowser, Juniors bed was big enough for him to lie down. He lies down on the other side, carefully not trying to break the bed nor wake up Junior. He scoots down close to them, sure he was lying down on his stomach, but that didn’t stop him from reaching out towards Y/N pulling all of them into a tight hug. She began to caress Juniors hair a bit, and giving him a small kiss on his forehead. And felt her husband hand, rubbing around her torso. “I love you both so much, you know?” Bowser whispered. “I love you both as well…” Y/N whispered as she rubbed his scaly hand around, feeling each different scale of his and outlining them a bit. She pulled his hand close to kiss it. Y/N looks up at him, he was hesitant to say something, but couldn’t fully explain. “Darling, you’re tired, let’s rest okay? You did so much work, and even went over your limit.” She rubbed his hand softly. “We can talk about it tomorrow, for now you need sleep. A wholeee lot.” Bowser quietly chuckles as he began to feel both of their warms, snuggling close.
Bonus:
The next day came, several loud sneezes were heard from Juniors room, Y/N quickly woke up looking over at Junior who was still asleep, touched his forehead, it was still warm but then another loud sneeze was heard from another room. Bowser wasn’t in the room anymore, looks like he probably got up in the middle of the night to leave. Oh no… don’t tell me he’s… Y/N slowly got out of bed and headed towards the door, slowly closed it as she heard another loud noise. Yeah… I know those sounds…
She opens her door and saw Bowser lying down in bed, coughing and sneezing. He blows his nose and looks at Y/N feeling a bit of embarrassed. “Looks, like I got it as well.” Despite being sick, he show off his grin. “Bowser, why didn’t you tell me you got sick? I could have gotten medicine for you.” She walks up to him, placing their hands on his forehead. “Sheesh, you’re burning hot!” “Why thank you darling.” He gives out a grin and immediately receiving another sneeze. Y/N laughs as they called out to the guards to bring him mediation and foods. He loved that Y/N was taking care of him, something that he’s never gotten used till the day they met.
Though who would be ruling over while he was sitting here? He thought for a moment, his beloved could be in charge for the day, at least for today.
-10/9/24 Uhhhhh yoooo, I’ve had writers block for so many months, so hopefully this is a good read. 😔🤞
ᝰ.ᐟ childhood bestfriend!suguru gets caught jerking off to you during a sleepover ⸝⸝ 18+ mdni
childhood bestfriend!suguru who used to practically live at your house, having sleepovers every weekend where you'd sleep on the top trundle bed and he’d pull out the bottom one underneath.
childhood bestfriend!suguru who started making up every excuse in the book to decline your invitations once you both hit your early twenties, all because he developed a massive, agonizing secret crush on you and knew his self-control was slipping.
childhood bestfriend!suguru is completely powerless against you when you use your charm and extra-persuasive "please, please, please" voice, forcing him to finally break his streak and agree to one more sleepover.
childhood bestfriend!suguru who feels an overwhelming wave of nostalgia mixed with nervous tension the second he sits back down on that pulled-out bottom bed, trying to act natural while his heart is hammering in his chest.
childhood bestfriend!suguru who has the absolute time of his life chatting, playing games, and joking around with you until late into the night, suddenly realizing how much he missed being this close to you.
childhood bestfriend!suguru is left sitting in complete silence when you suddenly fall asleep mid-sentence, leaving him down on the bottom bed just staring up at your sleeping face with an unbearable amount of affection.
childhood bestfriend!suguru feels his throat go completely dry when you stir lazily in your sleep, twisting the top blanket away to reveal the dip of your collarbones, the deep slope of your cleavage, and your shorts riding high up your smooth thighs.
childhood bestfriend!suguru undergoes an agonizing internal battle as his heart hammers against his ribs, his blood rushing south as his pants grow impossibly tight, every instinct screaming at him to turn away while his eyes remain completely glued to you.
childhood bestfriend!suguru who eventually breaks down under the unbearable friction and tension, quietly slipping a hand beneath his waistband to slowly stroke his throbbing cock, trying to keep his desperate breaths silent so he doesn't wake you.
childhood bestfriend!suguru gets caught in the absolute worst, most vulnerable position imaginable when you stir awake, your eyes fluttering open and landing directly on his frantic, rhythmic movements underneath the covers.
childhood bestfriend!suguru is utterly mortified, pulling the blanket up to his chest while his hand stays frozen over his aching length, stammering out a breathless, panicked "s-sorry, i didn't think you'd wake up..." as he braces for your utter disgust.
childhood bestfriend!suguru who panics even further when you lock eyes with him and plainly state, "you were watching me," only for his brain to short-circuit entirely when a slow, mischievous, teasing glint appears in your eyes instead of anger.
childhood bestfriend!suguru watches in absolute disbelief as you shift on the top mattress, intentionally pulling your blanket back to give him a full, unobstructed view of your chest and bare legs, whispering softly, "how naughty of you, suguru... you wanna look at me while doing it?"
childhood bestfriend!suguru is so utterly consumed by lust and desperation that he ignores every single red flag firing in his brain, choking out a humiliated, needy "c-can i?" the second you promise that this stays between the two of you.
childhood bestfriend!suguru who reaches up to the top mattress, his trembling hand gently stroking up your thigh and caressing your warm skin while his other hand pumps his hard dick at a faster, messier pace, completely undone by the sight of you looking down at him with an adoring, playful smirking face.
childhood bestfriend!suguru who loses what little sanity he has left when your eyes wander down to his tented covers and you softly offer, "do you need help?", causing him to hitch a choked breath and whimpering out a desperate, completely spent "y-yes, please."
childhood bestfriend!suguru who holds his breath as you climb down from the top trundle bed under the warm room lights, his heart hammering against his ribs so hard it rings in his ears. he can only watch, completely frozen, as you pull back his blanket and straddle his thighs, towering right over him.
from where he’s lying, exposed and completely raw under the soft overhead glow, the shift in your posture catches him off guard. he watches your eyes widen—a sudden, bright sparkle of genuine curiosity and dark amusement lighting up your face as your gaze drops down between his legs.
a fresh wave of heat floods his entire body, making his face burn a furious red. he knows exactly what you’re looking at. he can feel the heavy, humiliating weight of his own arousal—thick, throbbing violently with every pulse of his blood, and swollen so large that the veiny length twitches beneath your gaze. a hot, slick bead of pre-cum is already glistening at the tip, leaking down his shaft and making him feel agonizingly bare.
his thighs tremble beneath your weight as he tries—and utterly fails—to shrink away from the exposure. the raw humiliation of being caught like this by you crashes over him, but as he looks up at you from the bed, watching the playful smirk curve your lips, all he can feel is a terrifying, desperate rush of need.
childhood bestfriend!suguru is completely overwhelmed the second your soft, warm hands wrap around his slick, throbbing length, his hips involuntarily jerking upward at the unbelievable sensation of your touch after years of hidden longing.
childhood bestfriend!suguru who can barely process reality as your fingers slide up and down him with a deliberate, agonizingly sweet pace. the sheer sensory overload leaves him whimpering softly into the quiet room, his knuckles turning white as he grips the bedsheets tight, muttering hushed curses through a tight throat "nghh... oh god, you're—fuck..."
every movement of your hand feels like a deliberate torture designed just for him. he watches through half-lidded, dark eyes as you lean in close, using your thumb to slowly circle his swollen slit, smearing the slick bead of pre-cum all over his sensitive head until he hitches a sharp, ragged breath. you don't stop there; your fingers trace the heavy, pulsing vein running down his underside, following every hot ridge of his length.
when the friction starts to build under the warm room lights, you coolly lean lower and gather a pool of spit on your lips, letting a long, glistening string drop right onto his head. suguru's hips involuntarily jerk up off the mattress at the sudden, cool moisture, a desperate groan tearing from his chest as you rub it in, coating every inch of his thick shaft until your grip is slick, wet, and sliding smoothly over his most sensitive spots.
childhood bestfriend!suguru is so utterly ashamed by how good it feels that he tries to throw an arm over his flushed face to muffle his needy groans, only for you to gently pull his arm away and pin it loosely against the mattress so he's forced to look right up at you.
"don't hide from me, suguru," you whisper teasingly, your thumb lightly tracing the racing pulse in his wrist while your other hand keeps a steady, maddening rhythm on him. "does it feel good?"
"f-fuck..." he chokes out, his dark eyes wide, glossy, and entirely blown out as his head rolls back into the pillow. "you—you have no idea—ah..."
"i want to hear you," you command softly, tilting your head with a playful smirk as your grip tightens just a fraction. "look at me. i want to see every single expression you make, and i want to hear every sound. don't quiet down for me now."
childhood bestfriend!suguru who reaches a point of sheer, desperate need under the warm overhead light, stuttering out a breathless, embarrassed "c-can you use your mouth?"
childhood bestfriend!suguru who completely short-circuits the moment you give a smooth "sure" and immediately dive down, the sharp angle bringing your chest spilling out right in front of his face again and sending his brain into an absolute tailspin.
childhood bestfriend!suguru is thrown into a messy spiral as you take him in, his hips helplessly bucking up into your heat, his legs trembling violently as tears well up in the corners of his eyes while he babbles incoherent praise and pleas.
the heat of your mouth enveloping the sensitive tip sends an electric shock straight down his spine. his eyes go wide, staring down in disbelief as you push past your limits, taking him deep down your throat. the filthy, wet sounds filling the quiet room shatter whatever restraint he had left, echoing loudly under the warm lights. he feels your tongue swirling intensely around his slit before flattening out to lick up along his heavy veins, making his entire body shudder.
because you can't fit all of his thick dick, your warm, spit-slicked hand stays wrapped tight around the base, pumping in perfect, rhythmic sync with your mouth. a long, glistening string of spit rolls down your chin and drips onto his lower stomach, adding to the messy, humiliating sight. every wet slide, every pull of suction, and the heat of your cheeks stretching around him pulls a wrecked, tearful whine from his throat as he helplessly rolls his head back into the pillow, completely undone by you.
childhood bestfriend!suguru who gasps out a desperate warning "wait—fuck, i'm—i'm gonna cum—" his voice cracking, entirely wrecked and pleading, only for the low, rumbling hum of your vocal cords against his sensitive length to send a violent shockwave straight to his core, instantly snapping his final thread of self-control and pushing him completely over the edge.
childhood bestfriend!suguru who cums hard straight into your mouth, his mind going entirely blank with pleasure as he lies there teary-eyed, watching fat globs of his release overflow past your lips and messily drip over his skin and your hands.
childhood bestfriend!suguru is pushed to the absolute brink of blacking out as you slowly keep working your hand over him, lazily licking up his mess from your lips and his skin.
he lies completely helpless—his chest heaving, dark hair fan-spread across the pillow, and eyes glassy with unshed tears. he can barely breathe, let alone think, but his gaze remains entirely locked onto yours. you drag your tongue over your lower lip, gathering the slick white traces, before dragging a tongue up his shaft to clean him off—never once breaking eye contact.
a slow, wicked smirk curves your lips as you look up at his flushed, wrecked face, tilting your head slightly.
"look at all of this, suguru," you tease softly, your voice dripping with playful amusement as you trace a messy thumb over his skin. "you were holding out on me... didn't know my sweet best friend could make such a huge mess just from looking at me."
the sound of your voice—so casual, yet so utterly possessive—brands that exact image into his mind for the rest of his life, leaving his brain completely short-circuited as he stares back at you, entirely ruined.
hii!! care to write some enemies to lovers with eagle flies from rdr2 someone as reckless and youthfully dumb as him would fit him and it would be a fine dynamic if the person was someone higher in class
we spoke like we were learning how . | 3k wc
the first time you see him, it’s the color that catches you.
the deep rust red of his coat against the pale stretch of the riverbank, the flick of a horse’s black tail swatting at flies, the slow rise of dust where hooves had torn the ground. you don’t mean to stare. you’re only passing through — trading wagon half-empty, mind fixed on the road ahead — but he looks up, and for a moment the world folds into stillness.
his eyes are the kind that don’t flinch. proud, sharp, unreadable.
you’d grown up counting crates more than coins, learning how to smooth tempers with words instead of gunfire. a merchant’s daughter, your father liked to remind you, must learn how to make both ends meet — ledgers and people alike. polite, composed, useful. it was a small life, but steady.
and then the army, in its tidy way, decided you’d make a fine liaison. someone to record the exchanges and ensure fairness — as if fairness could be written down.
eagle flies was standoffish, you noted — brows much more pinched than his father’s, constantly surveilling the area. you never understood why.
you nod, a polite gesture you were taught in town to offer strangers. he doesn’t return it. his gaze lingers, measuring you — the clean hem of your shirt, the careful braid in your hair, the way your boots don’t belong in mud.
then he turns away.
you exhale, not sure why you’d been holding your breath.
the river runs low that summer. some mornings you bring your mare there to drink, trying to keep out of sight of whoever camps upstream. the air always smells like pine and iron and the faint sweetness of waterweed crushed underfoot. you hear him before you see him again — the muted thud of hooves, the soft murmur of a voice in a language you don’t know.
you spot him first because of the noise — the short, sharp crack of a branch and the low sound of a horse snorting. you turn, and there he is again, standing by the river like he owns the damn thing.
you hesitate. last time you tried to greet him, he barely acknowledged you. but today he looks up before you can pretend you didn’t see him.
“you again,” he says, flatly.
“that’s one way to say hello,” you answer.
he gives a short snort of a laugh. “don’t recall asking for company.”
“don’t recall needing your permission,” you shoot back, stepping down the bank to fill your canteen. your boot slips on the slick mud, and before you can catch yourself, you land halfway in the shallows with a very ungraceful splash.
you freeze, cold water seeping through your sleeves. he blinks once. then he laughs. really laughs — a surprised, rough sound that startles a few birds out of the trees.
“you alright?” he asks between chuckles. “you sure you’re made for the wilderness?”
you glare up at him, half embarrassed, half trying not to laugh yourself. “i’m fine. thanks for the concern.”
“looked like the river just won a fight.”
“yeah? keep laughing, see what happens.”
he raises an eyebrow, smirk still on his lips. “oh? you gonna fight the river too?”
you bite back a grin. “maybe i’ll start with you.”
he grins wider at that — a flash of boyish mischief that disappears as quickly as it comes. “that’d be a mistake.”
“we’ll see.” you wring out your sleeve, trying to salvage some dignity. “so do you always hang around here waiting to make fun of people?”
“no,” he says, kneeling to scoop water into his hands. “usually i’m busy watching fools fall in.”
“you must be real bored then.”
he shrugs. “there ain’t much entertainment around here.”
“lucky you found me, then.”
he gives you a sideways glance, amused despite himself. “guess so.”
for a while, the two of you work in silence — him tending his horse, you filling your canteen again more carefully this time. you can feel him watching you, though. not hostile, just curious.
finally, he breaks the quiet. “you from the town?”
“close enough.”
“figured.”
you frown. “is that a bad thing?”
“depends.” he looks at you for a long second, then adds, “you talk different. move different.” he hums lowly. “like you’re waiting for someone to tell you what to do next.”
that hits sharper than you expect. “and you move like you’ve never listened to anyone in your life.”
that gets a grin out of him — small, quick, but real. “now that’s true.”
he tosses a small pebble into the river, watches the ripples. “you got a name, or should i just keep calling you ‘the town girl’?”
“you could ask nicer.”
“you could answer faster.”
you roll your eyes. “fine,” you hum, and give him your name.
he nods once. “eagle flies.”
“i know.”
“then we’re even.”
you catch yourself smiling again, despite the mud on your clothes and the cold creeping up your legs. he notices it, tilts his head. “what’s funny?”
“nothing,” you say quickly. “just thinking maybe you’re not as unfriendly as you pretend to be.”
his mouth twitches, like he’s fighting another grin. “don’t start spreading lies.”
“wouldn’t dream of it.”
he stands, swinging easily into his saddle. “next time you plan on falling in, maybe pick a warmer day.”
“next time you plan on laughing at me, maybe help me out first.”
he laughs again, soft and low. “no promises.” then he kicks his horse into a trot, water splashing under its hooves.
you watch him disappear up the ridge, half annoyed, half warm in a way you don’t want to name yet.
-
by the third encounter, the silence slowly dwindles; your odd interactions become their own kind of greeting in normality.
you find him mending a bridle on a fallen log, leather stretched across his knee. he doesn’t move when you approach, but his shoulders tense, just slightly.
“you fix it yourself?” you ask, trying to sound casual.
he looks up, the faintest spark of challenge in his eyes. “who else would?”
you shrug, setting your pack down. “most folks would pay someone.”
“most folks don’t know how.”
his tone isn’t cruel — just firm, like a truth he doesn’t expect you to understand. you don’t rise to it. instead you watch his hands: dark, steady, fingers working with quiet precision. the smell of oiled leather mixes with smoke from his small campfire. it’s oddly calming.
after a while, he asks, “what are you doing out here?”
“passing through,” you say. “trying to sell a few things. help where i can.”
he hums, skeptical. “you don’t look like you need to sell anything.”
you want to laugh, but the way he says it stops you. “you think you can tell everything from a person’s clothes?”
he ties the bridle’s last knot, pulls it tight, and finally looks at you full on. “most times, yes.”
you should leave it there. but you stay — long enough for the fire to burn low, for the wind to carry the smell of rain.
when you do leave, he doesn’t tell you goodbye, only nods once. but somehow, that feels like something earned.
days pass. the air grows cooler, nights heavy with insects and the far-off rumble of thunder. you start to see him more — by accident, or maybe by rhythm. you fetch water when he does. you cross the same stretch of dirt road at dusk. sometimes he’s on horseback, sometimes walking beside it, head turned toward the hills as if he’s listening for something.
he doesn’t smile easily. his words come clipped, measured. but you learn small things. he likes the smell of cedar. he feeds his horse first before eating. he doesn’t trust towns or people who talk too much.
and you, with your half-city manners and cautious politeness, begin to unlearn what you thought you knew about pride.
one evening the sky splits open with summer rain. you find shelter beneath a rock outcrop, the earth soaked and steaming around you. thunder rolls low and long. you don’t notice him at first — not until a shadow moves near the trees, horse reins looped over his arm.
“didn’t think anyone else would be fool enough to stay out,” he says, half-shouting over the rain.
you grin, brushing hair from your face. “what can i say? suppose i’m the fool, right?”
he snorts, the sound almost amused, and ducks beneath the stone ledge beside you. the space is small; his sleeve brushes yours when he settles. the smell of wet leather and river silt fills the air.
for a while, you just listen — to the hiss of rain, the uneven rhythm of his breathing. he pulls off his gloves, wrings them out.
“you ever stop running around out here?” you ask, voice soft enough not to disturb the quiet too much.
“no.”
“why not?”
he thinks for a moment. “they’ll take from us either way. i just want to choose the ground where it happens.”
you don’t know how to answer that. so you don’t.
but when lightning flashes, you glance at his profile — the firm set of his jaw, the rainwater tracing down his temple — and think how young he looks when he isn’t glaring at the world.
when the storm passes, he mounts his horse again. before he rides off, he says, “next time, don’t forget a coat.”
and it’s the first time he sounds almost kind. you don’t miss the faint quirk of his lips as he passes you.
weeks stretch. the wildflowers fade. you learn to read the land a little — which paths turn to mud after rain, which bends of the river stay shallow. once, you find him repairing a snare line, muttering about a fox that chewed through it. you bring him wire from your pack without being asked. he accepts it, wordless, and from then on, he doesn’t look surprised when you show up.
the first time he calls you by name, you almost miss it.
you’re tending your mare, plucking burrs from her tail. he says something about the way you tie the reins, how it’ll slip loose if you’re not careful. you turn to answer and realize he’s said your name first, like a habit he didn’t mean to form.
you feel your chest warm despite the chill in the air.
he notices, maybe, because his eyes dart away quickly, and he busies himself with his horse’s saddle.
small kindnesses begin to grow between you, unnoticed until they’re already there. you bring him a tin of coffee grounds; he leaves you a strip of dried venison near your campfire one morning. you start sharing silence easily — him carving arrow shafts, you mending fabric, both of you pretending you don’t hear the other humming under their breath.
sometimes he tells you pieces of things. about the mountains his father spoke of, about the soldiers who came and the land that keeps shrinking. his anger simmers under every word, but you see the grief too — the part that wants to build, not just fight.
you listen. you don’t try to fix it. he seems to appreciate that.
in turn, you tell him how you left town, how the noise and manners and talk of money felt like a cage. he doesn’t say it, but you think he understands.
one morning you wake to find frost on the ground. he’s already by the river, breath clouding in front of him.
you walk over quietly, boots crunching the frozen grass. he glances up, nods once.
“cold,” you say, rubbing your hands together.
“winter always comes early here.”
you kneel beside him. “you think it’ll be bad?”
“it’s always bad.”
his tone is flat, but not bitter — just a statement of fact. the water glitters like glass between you.
you watch the current a long time. when you speak again, it’s without thinking. “you ever wish it was easier?”
he’s silent for a while. then: “if it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing.”
you look at him, and he looks at you, and for a heartbeat the cold doesn’t seem so sharp.
he stands first, brushing frost from his coat. “i’ll ride east today. you shouldn’t stay alone.”
“i’ll manage.”
he gives you that half-look again — somewhere between irritation and concern. “you always say that.”
“and i’m always right.”
his mouth curves, not quite a smile but close. “we’ll see.”
and when he mounts his horse, he hesitates just a second before turning away — enough for you to catch the faintest warmth in his eyes.
the last days you spend there pass quietly. the trees turn bare. you share fewer words, more glances. sometimes, when you hand him something — a spool of thread, a tin cup — his fingers brush yours, quick, accidental. neither of you mention it.
one evening, you sit by the fire watching embers rise into the blue dark. he sits across from you, elbows on his knees, eyes reflecting the flames.
“you’ll leave soon,” he says. it’s not a question.
you nod. “when the roads thaw.”
he pokes at the fire with a stick. “town life waiting?”
you shrug. “something like it. my father thinks it’s best,” you say, ignoring the way he grits his teeth at the mention of your father. you fear you’ll start believing eagle flies’ notion that your father is holding you captive.
your thoughts quickly dissolve as you turn back towards him. “maybe i’ll miss this, though.”
he glances up. “this?”
“the quiet. the space to think.”
his gaze holds yours a little longer than usual. “you don’t need to leave that behind.”
you don’t know what he means — or maybe you do, but you’re afraid to name it.
so you just say, “i’ll try not to.”
and that night, as the fire burns low and sleep creeps close, you think of the river and the rain and the way he never says goodbye, only looks at you like he’s memorizing the shape of your face against the light.
fingers running over the sleek leather of your journal, you put your fountain pen to paper and watch the ink bleed onto the ivory, thinking of golden pooled on skin and the visage burned into your memory.
“the river is lower than last week. the air smells faintly of smoke, like someone’s been burning cedar down the valley. i saw him — eagle flies — for what i’m afraid may be the last time today. i don’t think he meant to stop where i was, but neither of us moved away, so i suppose that means something.
i think back to the first few times where i had met him. he asked me why i wander alone so often. i didn’t know how to answer without sounding foolish, so i said i liked the quiet. he gave me that look of his, half doubt, half understanding. i think he knows the quiet i meant isn’t about peace, but about escape.
when i rode back to camp, the sky was the color of cooled iron. i kept thinking about his voice when he said my name. how it sounded like he wasn’t used to saying it, but he’d been thinking it for a while.
sometimes, i wonder if i’ll see him again by the river down the way. i suppose it’s impossible now that father’s asking us to start heading out. either way, the silence feels different now. it’s less lonely somehow. i only hope to see him once more for some sort of closure.”
the next morning, you wake to find a small token by your pack — a feather bound with leather cord, the kind you’ve seen tied to his horse’s mane. you turn it over in your hands, the faint smell of smoke clinging to it.
you don’t see him again that day, or the next.
but when you ride out, the wind carries the scent of cedar, and you think of his voice — calm, certain — and how, without meaning to, you’ve learned to listen differently to the world.
It takes you three days to lose the argument against yourself.
You don’t call it losing at first, because that makes it sound like you were ever truly impartial. You call it waiting. You call it being reasonable. You call it not letting one good birthday conversation, one apology, one pen in a black box with red ribbon, and one quiet admission loosen all the careful knots you tied inside yourself over the past year.
Three days, you tell yourself, is restraint.
Three days is, objectively, not a very long time. It's barely a fragment of a week. It's the distance between one lesson plan and the next small crisis caused by someone forgetting their assignment in the most theatrical way possible. It's one pile of papers graded with a pen too expensive for the emotional state you’re in. It's three mornings of coffee, three evenings of resisting your own hand, three nights of turning your phone screen down as if that makes the contact inside it less present.
Three days is nothing and also absurdly long when his number is sitting in your phone again.
Not Champion. Not the stupid contact you once teased him about because of course he would save himself into your phone like a brand and a challenge and a warning. Just Sukuna. Plain, clean, almost too bare. There is something more intimate about that than you expected, like you removed all decoration and still found him there underneath it. It stares back whenever your thumb hovers too near the search bar, whenever you open messages out of habit, whenever you check a notification that turns out to be your phone company or a coworker asking if you finished adjusting next week’s lesson plan.
You tell yourself you are being normal.
You are not.
On the first day after your birthday, you don't text him because the conversation still sits too fresh under your skin.
You sleep warm and unsettled, the expensive pen on your desk among the other birthday gifts, its weight ridiculous even before you use it. In the morning, you tell yourself it was a good conversation, that’s all. Necessary. Maybe overdue. It doesn't need immediate continuation. You both got to say things. You accepted the apology. You gave him a way back into contact, but that doesn't mean you have to rush toward it like a fool who forgot what hurt feels like.
You are not that foolish.
You are also, unfortunately, not that detached.
You go to work. You smile at students. You use the pen he gave you because refusing to use a perfectly good pen would be childish and because part of you wants to know whether it writes as well as it looks. It does.
Annoyingly.
The ink glides without skipping. The weight is perfect between your fingers. It makes your usual pen feel like a plastic straw. You hate that he chose so well. You hate that you love it. You hate that every red mark you leave on a paper feels like some small betrayal of your own attempt to remain composed.
You write “Please expand this point” beside one student’s paragraph and think, entirely against your will, that Sukuna would probably say the child has expanded nothing except your suffering.
You nearly laugh alone at your desk. That irritates you too.
Three students receive corrections written with luxury ink they don't deserve. One of them, a girl who notices everything, pauses when you hand back the paper and squints at the pen in your hand.
“Teacher, is that new?”
You look down at it as if you have been caught holding evidence.
“It was a gift.”
“It looks expensive!”
“It's obnoxiously expensive,” you say, softly.
“From your boyfriend?”
You almost laugh, but it catches oddly before reaching your mouth.
“No,” you say, and keep your tone neutral in a way that makes it sound like the truth and not a door opening onto an entire private country. “From a friend.”
Friend.
The word behaves badly in your mouth, but it's the only available word that doesn’t demand explanations you’re not ready to give. But it's too small for him, and too generous, and too cautious all at once. Sukuna has never fit inside clean labels, which is partly how you ended up two years into loving him without knowing what to call the thing you were living in.
You spend the second day being normal with the determination of someone forcing a door shut while wind presses from the other side. You are not sitting alone in your apartment, staring at Sukuna’s contact like a woman who has lost every ounce of dignity to a black sedan, McDonald’s fries, and a pen too expensive for grading fractions of effort out of ten. You are not simply lying in bed with your phone in both hands, his name bright on the screen, convincing yourself one message would not be a relapse if it's typed with clear intent and emotional responsibility. You are, in fact, doing very normal things.
You go to work again. You teach. You answer emails. You eat lunch in the staff room with Maki, who watches you with the peripheral attentiveness of someone pretending not to monitor your emotional stability while absolutely monitoring it. You grade with the pen again. You go home. You shower. You stand in front of your closet longer than necessary even though no one is coming over and you are not going anywhere.
Sukuna doesn't text.
That shouldn't surprise you. He said he missed you, but he didn’t ask for anything. He put his number in your phone, but he didn’t send a message after driving away. He gave you the room to decide whether the contact remains decorative or alive.
It makes you feel safer, but also restless in a way you don't want to admit.
You keep expecting the old force. The message at the wrong hour. The blunt claim. Coming over. Open the door. Picking you up. Not because he ever ignored your boundaries in the usual way, not because he ever treated your refusal as irrelevant, but because he had always moved like wanting was an engine and his confidence was the road. He used to arrive in your life with the pressure of a storm approaching. Careless sometimes, careful others, but unmistakably there. Now there is space, and the space is respectful, and respect shouldn't feel so much like an ache.
You try not to punish him internally for doing the thing you need him to do. That’s harder than you expect.
Three days still pass with all the small violences of an ordinary week. Bells ringing. Students asking whether an assignment is actually due if they did not understand it, as though deadlines operate on personal enlightenment. Staff room coffee tasting burnt no matter who makes it. Your birthday decorations slowly disappearing from your desk, little gifts finding places in drawers, the expensive pen becoming both tool and symbol against your will.
At night, you lie in bed and don't text him.
The first night, it's pride.
The second night, it's caution.
By the third, it becomes something closer to self-discipline, and you begin to resent how much discipline is required for a single message.
Then Yuuji destroys you. Apparently it’s an Itadori thing.
It happens around early evening, when you are at home wearing loose shorts and an old shirt, hair clipped back badly, trying to decide whether dinner should involve actual cooking or a dignified arrangement of leftovers. Your phone buzzes on the counter while you are rinsing a mug. You dry one hand on a towel and check it with no particular expectation.
Yuuji has sent a picture.
It arrives without warning in the late evening, after dinner, while you are sitting on your couch with one leg tucked under you and a drama paused on the TV because you have spent the past fifteen minutes scrolling through your phone instead of watching it.
The message preview is simple.
LOOK AT HER
You open it and the sound that leaves you is not dignified. It's not even human enough to be called a gasp. It's a small wounded noise produced somewhere between your throat and your ribs, immediate and helpless, because Yuuji is holding a very small orange kitten in both hands, and the kitten looks like someone took a tangerine, rolled it through dust, taught it resentment, and then gave it ears too big for its head. Her little paws are resting over Yuuji’s fingers. Her eyes are round and serious. Her fur sticks out in uneven fuzz. She is staring at the camera with the expression of an old queen who has been inconvenienced by commoners.
You zoom in. Then zoom in again. Your chest hurts from the amount of affection that slams through it.
YUUJI
What is THAT
Did you adopt a cat?????
His reply comes with the speed of someone who has been waiting to explain.
I WISH
this is Sukuna’s new daughter
You stare at the words. Then at the kitten. Then back at the words.
There are several things your brain tries to do at once. It tries to imagine Sukuna buying cat litter. It tries to reconcile the man who used to glare at children who got too close to his bike with the phrase new daughter. It tries to preserve your emotional caution in the face of a kitten small enough to fit in his palm. It fails at all three with impressive speed.
I’m sorry
Sukuna’s WHAT
Yuuji sends three more pictures as if evidence will clarify anything.
One is the kitten on Sukuna’s black jacket, chewing the zipper. You can see only part of his hand in the corner, large and tattooed, one finger bent as if ready to stop her from falling. Another picture shows her inside a gray pet bed, glaring at the camera with such concentrated displeasure that you have to press your hand over your mouth. The third is slightly blurry, taken while she is apparently trying to climb Yuuji’s hoodie string.
he found her at a gas station after he dropped you home
took her to a 24h vet
bought like half the clinic
she’s small and stubborn and very loud
still nameless
I’m calling her Sukuling until he gives her a name
You laugh so abruptly it startles you.
Sukuling. Sukuna’s new daughter.
The sentence shouldn't hit you in the chest the way it does. It's ridiculous. It's a cat. A kitten. A stray, probably, judging by the slight unevenness of her fur and the seriousness of her little face. It has nothing to do with the apology, with the pen, with the way Sukuna said he missed you and did not reach for you after saying it. It has nothing to do with the way his hands stayed on the steering wheel during the drive, how restraint made the air inside the car heavier than touch would have been.
And yet.
Sukuna with a kitten.
Sukuna, who used to scowl at every tiny dog in apartment elevators as if disgusted by their existence. Sukuna, who once said people who dressed pets in clothes deserved some investigation, then spent too many minutes watching a video of a cat in a raincoat because you pretended not to notice. Sukuna, whose hands are built for handlebars, heavy tools, fists, trophies, your waist, and apparently now for holding something so little it can sit in his palm.
The warmth is dangerous.
You want to know too much. You want every tiny detail — whether he panicked at the vet, whether he let the kitten sleep in his bed, whether he pretended not to care while buying little bowls and toys and food. You want to know if he named her in his head. If he talks to her. If she follows him around the apartment yelling at his ankles.
Then the want hits the obvious wall.
If you want to meet Sukuna’s new daughter, you have to text Sukuna. Possibly visit Sukuna. Possibly sit in his apartment again.
You lower the phone to your lap and stare at the paused TV. The actor on the screen looks devastated about something completely unrelated and therefore useless to you.
“No,” you say aloud to your empty apartment.
Your phone buzzes again.
she’s so tiny
also she screams
do you think Sukuling is too much
It's absolutely too much
Keep doing it
You send a row of hearts you immediately regret, because your affection for the kitten is too naked and Yuuji will use it. Still, he only sends a sticker of a crying dog and tells you she is even cuter in person.
You endure another day.
That is the word. Endure.
Wanting to know means wanting to ask him. Wanting to ask him means opening that line again.
And that’s not nothing.
It's so easy to pretend the difficult part is whether you still have feelings for him. That answer is unfortunately clear. It sits inside you with the same stubbornness he does, heavy and alive despite distance, despite hurt, despite the whole year of trying to make peace with the shape of life without him. You love him. You have loved him through anger, silence, another relationship, through fireworks on a rooftop and panic outside a stadium, through the sight of him beside Kenny and the ache of imagining he had chosen a world that fit him better.
The difficult part is not feeling. The difficult part is deciding what you are allowed to do with it.
So you endure the third day with heroic self-control, which means you only look at the kitten picture six more times. Maybe seven. You don't text Sukuna. You don't ask Yuuji to send more pictures because that feels like using his brother as a contraband tunnel, and you have already promised yourself not to make Yuuji carry things between you. You simply go about your life like an adult woman with responsibilities and emotional intelligence and absolutely no weakness for tiny orange animals.
That night, you dream of a kitten meowing from inside a motocross helmet.
On the next morning your dignity loses.
Your students are louder than usual, or maybe you simply have less patience for ordinary noise because part of your brain keeps replaying the kitten’s grave little face. Maki catches you looking at your phone during lunch and narrows her eyes.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That was your guilty nothing.”
“How would you even know that?”
“I know all your nothings.”
You put the phone face down on the table and Maki leans back, her coffee held in one hand, eyes assessing.
“Is this about him?”
You don’t answer fast enough. Her mouth flattens, but not with anger. Concern first. Anger is behind it, available if needed, but she doesn’t draw it yet.
“He has a kitten,” you say, and she blinks. It's deeply satisfying to stun her for once.
“What?”
“A kitten.”
“Sukuna? That Sukuna?”
“Unless there’s another massive, emotionally constipated motocross champion collecting tiny orange kittens from gas stations.”
Maki stares at you, then slowly lowers her coffee.
“That sounds weirdly like a trap designed specifically for you.”
“It’s not a trap.”
“Does it look stupid?”
“It looks like a plushie that decided it would try to take over the world.”
Maki exhales through her nose and looks up at the ceiling as if asking for strength from whatever god supervises best friends with terrible taste in men.
“You’re going to text him.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m being so normal.” You raise your brows, offended, but not really. “I’m invested in the tiny little animal.”
“You’re invested in his accidental single-father arc.”
You hate her for phrasing it so well.
You survive the rest of the day mostly because work gives you things to put between yourself and your own weakness. In your defense, it doesn't come out of nowhere.
You are sitting at your desk after classes, the window cracked open because the room is warm from the afternoon heat, papers stacked in front of you, the expensive pen uncapped in your hand. Outside, students are leaving in waves. Your phone sits by your notebook. You don't touch it for five minutes. Then you do.
You open Sukuna’s contact.
Just Sukuna.
The contact still sits there like a reset, but not an erasure. You know too much for erasure. The road back, if there is one, can't be paved over old damage and called smooth because nobody wants to trip on it. You know that.
Still, your thumb hovers over the message field.
You type.
Delete.
Type again.
Delete.
You glare at the phone as if it started this.
Then, before you can overthink your way into another whole day of suffering, you write:
Were you planning to keep your little fluffy ball a secret for longer? Also, what is her name?
You send it. Immediately, your stomach drops.
It's absurd. You are not sending a confession. You are asking about a cat. A small cat. A cat whose existence Yuuji already revealed with no discretion whatsoever. This is a normal message. Friendly. Light. Reasonable. It gives him something to answer without making either of you bleed on the floor.
Still, you lock the phone and put it face down. Then pick it up ten seconds later.
No answer. You put it down again.
You last almost a minute.
When the screen lights up, your body reacts before your mind can maintain dignity. You grab the phone so fast the pen rolls off the desk and clatters against the floor.
Sukuna sent an image.
The kitten is sitting on his palm. Not both hands. One hand.
That’s what gets you first — his hand is so large that she looks unreal on it, a bright, fuzzy little ball arranged with complete seriousness, tail curled around her side, paws gathered under her chest. She is cleaner than in Yuuji’s pictures, orange fur fluffed, eyes clearer, ears absurd. His thumb rests near her side, not touching, just close enough to show the scale. The contrast does something terrible to you. The same hand that once gripped handlebars at impossible speed, that carried the weight of a machine through the air, that touched you like certainty when he still had the right, now holds a kitten like a fragile secret.
Under the picture, his message reads:
Probably gonna have no name. I call her Pest. Creature. Little shit when she screams nonstop
You make a sound that is half laugh, half offended gasp.
That is no way to speak of a little princess
Princess is generous
She tried to eat my shoelace and then screamed because it moved
She’s a baby. She’s learning the world.
She can learn quietly
You smile despite yourself. It's immediate, soft, and so familiar you almost feel the ache of it under your ribs. This rhythm. The insult that isn’t an insult. The way he lets you correct him because he likes it even when he pretends he doesn’t. The sharp little back-and-forth that used to fill cars and kitchens and long, tired evenings after events.
His typing bubble appears.
Disappears.
Appears again.
You’re free to give her a name
You still for a moment and worry your lower lip between your teeth.
It's such a small invitation. Just a cat name. Nothing more.
Not nothing, though.
You know it's not nothing because your heart has started doing that stupid, unhelpful thing where it beats harder than the situation requires. He is offering you a place in something new, a tiny domestic detail, a creature he rescued the night after he saw you. He is not asking you to come over. He is not pushing. He is not saying he found a way to put something between you that you can't resist.
But he is leaving the space open.
You stare at the picture again. The kitten stares back like she already expects tribute.
I’ll need to meet her to name her properly
This time, he answers quickly.
Obviously. She’s too important for lazy naming
You smile despite yourself. Then his next message comes.
Come by after work if you want. No pressure.
No pressure.
You read it twice.
The old Sukuna would not have added that. Or he would have said it with enough arrogance to make it meaningless. This one writes it plainly and leaves it there, a small, careful boundary marker, almost awkward from his hands. No pressure. Two words that shouldn't feel so intimate, and yet they do, because what is more intimate than a man like him choosing not to shove his want into your space and call it honesty?
You breathe in. Breathe out.
I can stop by for a little while
She’ll be awake. Unfortunately
Good. I’m coming to see her, not you
Cruel woman.
You stare at the words, feeling the old rhythm flicker between your ribs.
She probably deserves better company.
She bit my finger this morning, so maybe you’re right.
You laugh alone in the classroom. Then you pick up the pen from the floor, cap it, and spend the rest of the afternoon pretending you are not aware of every passing minute.
By the time you stand in front of Sukuna’s apartment door, your nervous system has become an unreliable employee.
You have been here before, and that’s precisely the issue. Everything looks the same.
Buildings don't care about breakups. Elevators don't hold grudges. Hallways don't pause because your pulse changes when you step out on a familiar floor. Still, your body remembers. The path to his door sits in your muscles before your mind approves it.
How many times did you come here with a bag of clothes after work? How many times did you let yourself in because he gave you a key with no ceremony and expected you to understand the weight of it? How many evenings did you arrive to find him half-dead on the couch after training, or fresh from a shower, or sprawled in the kitchen eating something because you threatened him into feeding himself properly?
The hallway is familiar in a way that catches under your ribs. The elevator ride, the polished floor, the lighting that used to make late-night arrivals feel a little softer because you were tired and he was beside you, his keys in hand, his shoulder warm against yours. You remember coming here after races with his gear bag knocking against his leg, both of you smelling like sweat and dust and stadium food. You remember weekday evenings when he would open the door with his hair damp from a shower, shirt loose, face already scowling like you had personally inconvenienced him by arriving at the time he told you to.
You remember leaving too.
Not from here, not that last night, but in all the ways that mattered. The things Shoko returned. The shirts sent back. The key no longer in your life. The drawer that belonged to you, emptied. The absence of his apartment becoming one of the many quiet disciplines of healing.
Now you stand here with your work bag on your shoulder and your heart being dramatic because of a kitten.
You knock.
There is a beat of silence.
Then a high, thin meow from inside.
Your face changes before the door even opens.
It's awful, the way seeing him in his apartment hits differently from seeing him in the car. Here, without windshield, steering wheel, night air, or McDonald’s bags as buffers, he is simply there. Black shirt. Loose sweatpants. Bare feet. Hair messier than it was three days ago, pushed back with less success. The scar on his face visible in the afternoon light. The single carmine eye going over you once with enough restraint that you feel the effort of him stopping before it becomes hunger.
The first thing you notice is not his size, though it still fills the doorway. Not his scars, though your eyes touch them like a habit you have not lost. Not the black shirt stretched across his shoulders and broad chest, not the sharp line of his jaw, not the dog tag chain glinting at his collarbone.
It's the orange blur trying to climb his pant leg.
Sukuna looks down with deep offense.
“No.”
The kitten answers with a furious little sound. You forget how to be nervous.
“Oh my God.”
Sukuna lifts his gaze to you, and something in his face eases at your expression. He doesn’t smile outright, but the corner of his mouth shifts up, and the single red eye on you warms in a way that makes you wish your heart had better manners.
“She heard you outside and started screaming,” he says.
The kitten meows again.
You step in because the door is open and because the little thing is looking up at you now, ears forward, body vibrating with the confidence of an emperor trapped in a tennis ball. You crouch automatically.
“Hello, tiny baby,” you coo at her.
Sukuna makes a rough sound.
“She’s not a baby. She’s a parasite.”
“She is absolutely a baby.”
The kitten approaches your shoe, sniffs, then places one paw on it as if claiming the territory. You press a hand against your mouth to contain yourself and fail. The sound that escapes you is soft and ridiculous, and Sukuna watches it happen like he has forgotten the correct shape of his own face.
You reach a hand out slowly. The kitten sniffs your fingers. Her nose is damp and tiny. Then she bumps her head into your knuckles and begins to purr.
Loudly.
Too loudly for her size.
Your chest caves in around something dangerously sweet.
“Oh no,” you whisper.
Sukuna leans one shoulder against the doorframe after closing the door. His arms are crossed, but not defensively. More like he needed to put his hands somewhere. His shoulders are slightly lowered. His face has the guarded severity he wears when something inside him is too exposed and he is pretending it isn’t.
The kitten climbs onto your bent knee.
“Oh, we’re bold.”
“She has no fear. Or brains.”
“Don’t be rude.”
“She does that to manipulate people.”
“It’s working.”
“Weak.”
“You sent me a picture of her sitting in your hand like a cute trophy, you’re no better.”
“Evidence.”
“Of what?”
“That she exists.”
You look up at him from where you’re crouched, fingers scratching gently under the kitten’s chin while she stretches her little neck with shameless delight.
“You took her to the vet, bought her an entire apartment’s worth of supplies, and let Yuuji call her your daughter.”
“I didn’t let him do shit. He’s just a brat with a loud mouth.”
“Like your daughter.”
His eye narrows. The kitten meows. You smile down at her.
“Exactly.”
Sukuna turns away first, but not fast enough to hide the tiny shift in his mouth.
“Come in before she decides your shoelace is her prey.”
His apartment is both exactly the same and not.
The furniture remains where it was, the couch, the low coffee table, the clean lines, the shelves with too many trophies and not enough sentimental objects. The space still carries him in every corner — dark, expensive without seeming decorated, orderly in a way that suggests control rather than domestic enthusiasm. But there are now interruptions. A small litter box tucked discreetly near the laundry area. A ridiculous cat bed in the living room, already abandoned. A tiny scratching post. Two toys under the coffee table. A bowl near the kitchen.
Life has made clutter in Sukuna’s apartment. You try not to stare too fondly at it.
The kitten follows you as if you have passed inspection. She trots behind your feet with serious concentration, occasionally veering slightly sideways because her body is still learning how to kitten efficiently. You sit down on the living room floor because there is no other possible choice. The moment you lower yourself, she climbs one of your knees, slips, scrambles, and then attacks the string toy Sukuna tosses toward you without comment.
You spend the next twenty minutes with your entire world reduced to a loud orange plushie with claws.
She leaps badly. She misses more than she catches. She makes fierce little chirps when the string evades her. Her tail puffs when she gets excited. She skids on the floor, tumbles over one of her own paws, rights herself with offended dignity, then pounces again as if nothing humiliating happened.
You laugh until your cheeks hurt. Somewhere above you, Sukuna sits on the couch.
You know because the cushion shifts and his presence settles near you, but you don't look right away. That is partly because the kitten demands all focus, and partly because you can feel him looking. His forearms rest on his knees, fingers loosely linked, body bent forward slightly. At first, you think he is watching the cat. Then, when you glance up after a particularly dramatic kitten tumble, you realize he is indeed watching both of you.
There is something in his face that makes your laughter catch.
Soft is not the right word for Sukuna. Not because he is incapable of it, as you learned the hard way and the beautiful way, but because softness on him never looks like surrender. It looks like a blade laid carefully on a table. It looks like strength choosing not to press. It looks like restraint, attention, a quiet lowering of whatever brutal machinery usually keeps him moving.
The late afternoon light catches the scar on his face.
It no longer shocks you. The first time you saw the changed shape of him after the accident, your heart broke for the pain he carried, not the loss of his old face. Now the scar is simply part of the man sitting on the couch in front of you, large and too still, trying to let something soft happen in his living room without taking it apart to see how it works.
His eye is on you. On the way your hands move with the kitten. On your smile. On your skirt gathered under your thighs. On your hair falling forward when you lean down to encourage the small orange menace to catch the toy. He doesn't look hungry in the old reckless way. Not like he plans to take. He looks full of wanting anyway, and the restraint around it makes the air feel warmer.
You look away first. Not because you don’t like it, it’s because you do. Because your body remembers too many things and your mind is still trying to keep pace with your better judgment.
The kitten saves you by launching herself at the string and rolling directly into your lap.
“Oh, excellent attack,” you praise. “Terrible form, but brave!”
Sukuna huffs.
“Don’t encourage her. She already thinks she can fight furniture. And me.”
“She can.”
“She weighs nothing.”
“Emotionally, she’s huge.”
“She screamed at my foot this morning.”
“Maybe it deserved it.”
“I wasn’t even moving it.”
“Threatening aura. Maybe it was stinky.”
“Yeah, maybe it was. Yuuji used the same excuse for her violence.”
His laugh is short and low, gone almost as soon as it arrives, but it settles under your skin.
“Former champion defeated by younger brother and baby cat. Tragic outcome.”
His mouth curves, not quite a full grin, but enough to make heat move through you.
“You getting bold again?”
“Again?”
“You were never shy about disrespect.”
“I was extremely respectful. You just deserved a lot of correction.”
“Still do, apparently.”
The words touch the air lightly, but the memory of his birthday-night answer flickers beneath them.
Or I’ll deserve it.
You feel it, and you know he does too, because his expression shifts almost imperceptibly. Not regret as much as it's awareness. He doesn't snatch the mood back with a joke. He lets the echo exist, then lets it pass when the kitten flops dramatically onto her side and kicks the string with both hind legs.
Eventually, the kitten gets tired in the sudden way kittens do, as if an invisible switch turns off every bone in her body. One moment she is biting the string. The next she is wobbling toward you, climbing onto your lap with determined little paws. She kneads once on your skirt, purring so loudly you feel the vibration through the fabric, then decides your lap is not enough.
She climbs your shirt. You gasp, then laugh as tiny claws catch carefully, not deep enough to hurt but enough to make you help her.
“Oh, okay, ambitious girl.”
Sukuna shifts forward.
“She does that.”
“I can see that.”
“She likes sleeping here.” He taps the side of his neck with two fingers, almost absentmindedly. Then he seems to realize what he revealed and drops his hand.
Your smile becomes unbearable. The kitten reaches your collarbone and tries to tuck herself into the space between your neck and shoulder, apparently disappointed by the fact that you are not built like a six-foot-plus motocross champion with shoulders broad enough to host small wildlife. You lend her a hand, cupping her tiny body so she can settle. Her fur tickles your skin. Her paws press against the neckline of your blouse. She turns twice, bumps her head against your jaw, then melts into a warm, purring heap.
“Oh,” you say quietly.
Sukuna watches from the couch. His expression does something complicated.
You stroke the kitten with one finger along her spine. She is so small that one careful movement covers most of her back. Her purr deepens, absurdly loud near your ear.
“You can just toss her on the couch. She’ll sleep.”
Your head lifts with immediate offense.
“I would never do that to a baby.”
“She’s really manipulating you.”
“I hope she knows I’m very easy to manipulate.”
“She figured it out faster than most.”
You glare. He looks pleased.
For a while, you sit there like that — you on the floor, the kitten asleep against your shoulder, Sukuna on the couch pretending not to be affected by the sight. The apartment settles around you in a way that feels too good to trust easily because it's too familiar.
You ask, partly to make yourself look at something other than his mouth,
“How have you been?”
His eye sharpens with amusement.
“You asked me that three days ago.”
“And things can happen in three days.”
“Nothing much.” He glances at the kitten tucked against you. “Except the pest sleeping on your shoulder.”
Your nose wrinkles.
“Don't talk ill of the baby.”
“She eats better than I do and screams when doors close. She’s fine.”
“You’re lucky she’s asleep and can't hear your slander.”
“She hears everything. Chooses violence anyway.”
You bite back a smile. He stands after a moment, and your body tracks him before you can stop it. The height of him, the controlled weight of his movements, the scar pulling faintly when he turns his head. He moves toward the kitchen, then looks back.
“Tea?”
You shouldn't feel as much as you do from one word.
“What kind?”
He opens a cabinet.
“That one you used to buy. Earl grey créme or something.”
Your gaze holds on his back. The brand comes into view when he takes the box out, and your heart gives an odd, warm twist. You used to keep that tea in his apartment because he claimed not to care what you drank and then somehow never ran out of it. He used to say it smelled like flowers and citrus trying too hard. He used to accept mugs of it at one in the morning after events and drink every drop with the expression of a man doing manual labor.
You smirk because softness without teasing would choke you.
“I accept. I’m glad you developed a bit of good taste.”
He turns his head just enough for you to see the line of his mouth.
“I’ve matured.”
“Have you?”
He pauses as if genuinely considering whether to make a joke or let the word stand.
“Trying.” The kettle begins to heat. Then he adds. “Don’t get too smug. It was in the cabinet.”
“From when?”
“A while.”
“Sukuna.”
“It’s not expired.”
“That’s not the same as an answer?”
“You want tea or an investigation?”
“Both, preferably. And no food poisoning.”
“Greedy. I’ll see what I can do for you.”
You smile down at the kitten and whisper,
“Your father is impossible.”
From the kitchen, he says,
“Don’t teach her that word.”
“Father?”
“Impossible.”
The afternoon bleeds into evening so quietly that you almost don't notice the shift.
The sky outside his windows changes from harsh pale blue to a softer gold, then to the faintly bruised color of early night. The tea is good. Of course it is. You hold the mug carefully because the kitten wakes up once, stretches against your neck, then slides down into your lap like liquid fluff. She eats again, an impressive amount for something so small, making tiny satisfied sounds over the dish while Sukuna watches with the vigilance of someone pretending he is only ensuring she doesn’t choke.
You talk about little things because little things are safer and, somehow, more dangerous.
You talk about your classes, about one student’s wildly creative excuse for missing homework, about Yuuji’s insistence that the kitten needs a name with prestige and dramatic theme music. Sukuna tells you the vet said orange girls are rare, and he says it in a tone that implies the cat has become even more troublesome through genetics. You tell him she is a limited edition. He says she is defective. You tell him all the best creatures are.
His eye flickers to you when you say that. You look into your tea.
It's strange to sit in his living room after everything, drinking tea. Strange and tender and quietly terrifying. You missed this more than you let yourself know — not the grand gestures, not the events, not the rush of being close to him when he was untouchable to everyone else, but this. The ordinary geography of him. The way he occupies a room. The rhythm of his responses. The sight of his hand around a mug. The little noises he makes instead of laughing fully when you catch him amused.
You missed being near him when neither of you had to perform.
The kitten wakes again with sudden purpose and decides the string toy must die properly this time. You drag it across the rug while she chases, pounces, misses, retreats, attacks from behind the leg of the coffee table, then climbs onto Sukuna’s boot and bites the lace.
He looks down at her.
“No.”
She bites harder. You laugh into your mug.
“She respects you so much,” you say.
“She’s alive because of me. God wanted her dead and now I’m learning why.”
“And now she has rights. Don’t be cryptic about the baby.”
“I should’ve left her at the gas station.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
You don’t say it softly. You say it simply, because it's true.
His gaze moves to you. For a second, something passes between you that has nothing to do with the kitten and everything to do with the man sitting across from you, the man who stopped at a gas station after driving you home and heard a tiny cry and chose not to walk away. He could pretend indifference all he wanted. You know what doing nothing looks like. This is not that.
He looks away first, jaw shifting.
“She was too loud to ignore.”
“Of course.”
“Don’t use that tone.”
“What tone?”
“The one where you pretend not to know I’m full of shit.”
You smile.
“I missed using that tone.”
The confession slips out before you can measure it. It's small. Not I missed you. But the air changes anyway, and you feel his attention settle on you fully. Your fingers pause around the mug. The kitten saves you again by attacking the string with such ferocity that she rolls onto her back and kicks at it with both hind legs.
Sukuna lets the moment pass.
He could press, yet he doesn’t. He reaches down instead and rescues the string from being swallowed.
“She fights like Yuuji did when he was five.”
“Badly?”
“With a lot of misplaced confidence.”
You laugh, and the tension softens instead of disappearing.
That becomes the shape of the evening — closeness offered in pieces, restraint holding the edges, humor stitched through places that would otherwise be too tender to touch. It surprises you how much you have missed this too. Not only the ache, not only the heat, not only the dramatic gravity Sukuna drags into every room by existing. You missed the little things. His dry commentary. The way he watches you understand something before reacting to it. The quiet between sentences. The fact that he doesn't need constant noise to believe your company is real.
When the room darkens enough that the lamps come on, you check the time and feel reality tug at you.
It's a weekday. You have work tomorrow.
The responsible part of your brain raises a hand. The rest of you tries to pretend you can't see it. Still, you set your empty mug down.
“I need to go home.”
Sukuna’s face doesn't fall. He is too controlled for that. But something in him stills.
“Right.”
The kitten, as if she understands abandonment in the most dramatic possible terms, meows when you stand.
“Oh, baby.”
“Traitor.” Sukuna mutters.
You crouch to scratch behind her ear. The purr starts so quickly you almost dissolve. The scratch becomes two fingers under her chin. Then she leans into your hand, eyes closing, and you lose the last of your discipline. You lift her gently, supporting her tiny body, and she curls into a fuzzy ball against your chest with such trust that you press a kiss to the top of her head. She smells faintly like kitten shampoo, food, and warm fur.
Sukuna’s eye narrows.
You see it.
You absolutely see it.
It's quick, almost hidden, but you have known this man through enough moods to recognize the way jealousy looks when he wants to call it something else. Not dangerous. Not possessive in the way that would make you retreat. More like a disgruntled disbelief that the tiny orange freeloader has received a kiss with no effort while he stands nearby behaving himself like restraint is a physically demanding sport.
Something hot and wicked twists through your stomach. You keep your face innocent.
“She’s so precious,” you say, and kiss the kitten again just because you can.
His jaw shifts. The kitten purrs, smug without knowing it.
He wants.
You know he wants.
And this time he is not taking.
That knowledge does something terrible to you.
You walk toward him and hold her out.
“Here. Hold the baby.”
His mouth opens. You know what he is about to say before he says it. Something like put her down, or she has legs, or she’s not made of glass. You cut him off with a look.
“Hold the baby, Sukuna.”
He stares at you. You stare back.
His exhale is long and deeply burdened. He takes the kitten with more care than his sigh suggests. His hands close around her small body, broad palms adjusting instinctively to support her chest and hind legs. She doesn't protest. In fact, she settles immediately against him as if returning to her rightful throne.
“I’m already dealing with a yelling girl every day,” he says. “Might as well obey.”
You make a soft amused sound that comes too close to tenderness.
He looks down at the kitten to avoid looking at you.
You look at them too long.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
“That expression is not nothing.”
“You look like a cat dad.”
His face goes flat.
“Get out.”
You laugh and head toward the door.
He takes you to the door with her cradled in one arm. The sight does damage. It shouldn't. He is still enormous. Still scarred. Still sharp at every edge. Still the man who hurt you, the man who apologized, the man standing in an apartment changed by a creature he insists on calling pest while holding her like the world might be rude enough to drop her.
At the door, while you put your shoes on, he asks,
“What name are you giving the little pest?”
You pause. Because, honestly, you forgot.
You came here for the stated purpose of meeting and naming the kitten, and then you spent the entire afternoon being devoured by her cuteness and the dangerous comfort of Sukuna’s living room. Now she is staring at you from his arm, round and fuzzy and authoritarian, one paw hooked lightly over his wrist.
“Oh.”
His brow rises.
“You forgot?”
“I was busy experiencing her cuteness.”
You look at the kitten properly. She is round and fuzzy in that strange kitten way, her whole body still not proportioned correctly. Her ears point outward. Her eyes are fierce and a little sleepy. She has the air of a tiny monarch who will accept worship, snacks, and violence in any order.
Orange. Small. Sweet. Loud. Impossible not to love.
“Ponkan,” you decide.
Sukuna glances down.
“Ponkan like the tangerine?”
“Yes.” You reach out and gently touch one fingertip between the kitten’s ears. “She’s a very cute kind of mandarin.”
He looks at the cat for a moment longer than necessary. Then his eye lifts to you.
“You’re a strange woman.”
The tone is the same.
It reaches back through time so sharply that, for half a breath, you are in another year. In another doorway. With a clean shirt in your bag and his hand at your waist and no knowledge yet of how badly things could break. He used to say it with annoyance pretending not to be affection. He says it now with the same warmth tucked under the words, but there is caution around it too, a careful distance that makes it hurt more and matter more.
Something twirls inside you. You are not proud of how quickly your body remembers him.
You lift your chin.
“You’re a strange man with a tangerine daughter.”
“She’s not my daughter.”
Ponkan meows.
He glances at her, then back at you, defeated in ways he will never admit.
“She’s freeloading.”
You roll your eyes because your alternative is looking too affected. The elevator dings softly somewhere below. You press the button.
“Send me pictures of her,” you say. “Whenever you can.”
His gaze holds yours. You realize, too late, how domestic that sounds. But he only tilts his head a little and says,
“If you want to co-parent the cat, you’re paying child support.”
A laugh breaks out of you before you can stop it. It fills the hallway, bright and startled, and his mouth shifts as he watches you.
“I can bring toys and snacks. She deserves them.”
“She has enough toys.”
“That’s not how having a cat works.”
“You’ve had a cat?”
“No.”
“Then why do you sound sure?”
“Because I have common sense.”
The elevator doors open. You step inside, still smiling, and turn to face them — Sukuna standing in his doorway with a tiny orange kitten in his arms, looking like the universe has played an elaborate joke on him and he has decided to tolerate it only because the joke purrs.
You lift your hand.
“Good night, Sukuna. Good night, Ponkan.”
The kitten meows.
“She heard you.”
“I hope so.”
The doors slide closed on the sight of his face softened by lamplight and reluctant affection, and you stand alone in the elevator with your hand pressed around the strap of your bag, still smiling like an idiot.
It feels light. That surprises you.
It makes you happy. That scares you a little.
By the time you get home, your phone is full of Ponkan pictures, so you send them to Maki because not doing so would be a crime against friendship and because you need someone to witness the severity of the situation.
Maki replies after three minutes.
You have been won by the evil man and his evil adorable minion again.
I have not yet.
The answer is a mistake. You know it the moment you send it. Maki replies with a photo she has clearly edited in under thirty seconds — a white background, one giant bold word in all caps.
YET.
Then another message:
Interesting word choice.
You stare at it. Your face heats.
Shut up and go to sleep.
You throw your phone onto the bed and then pick it up again because you are weak and because the pictures are there. Ponkan in your lap. Ponkan mid-pounce, blurred into orange chaos. Ponkan in Sukuna’s hand. Ponkan asleep against your shoulder.
You scroll through them slowly.
Maki is not wrong.
You hate that she is not wrong.
You have not been won, not fully, not blindly, not in the way some foolish part of you might have allowed if Sukuna had come back with the old force and your heart had mistaken being overwhelmed for being chosen. You are not going to pretend one apology, one gift, one soft afternoon with a kitten, fixes the break in the foundation. Trust doesn't repair itself because longing wants a shortcut. You know that. You know it so clearly it hurts.
But you are struggling. Internally, quietly, constantly.
Because you do see it.
You see it in every act of restraint. In the fact that he didn’t contact you after your birthday, even though you know him well enough to know silence must have cost him. In the way he answered your cat message without turning it into an immediate demand. In the open invitation with no pressure attached. In the way he didn’t touch you even when you stood close in his doorway with his kitten in your hands and your mouth still warm from kissing the little orange head.
You see it when he lets you decide the pace before either of you has even named the road.
You wish you could go back.
The thought comes as you wash your face, brush your teeth, change into sleep clothes, and set your work bag near the door for morning. You wish, in a stupid, aching, impossible way, that you could step backward into the version of the story where you still had a drawer at his place and a key in your bag. Where you could go to his apartment after work without your chest tightening first. Where his hand on your thigh in the car did not have to be a question with an answer. Where loving him did not come with evidence stacked beside it.
But going back is not possible. Maybe it shouldn't be. The old version had beautiful things in it. It also had rot under the floorboards you did not know how to see until it broke under you. A bet. An omission. People knowing what you did not. His self-loathing waiting to become a weapon. Your own willingness to understand him almost faster than he understood himself.
No. You can't go back.
You can only build something new, if you choose to, and only if he chooses it too. New foundation. Stronger because it can't pretend history is smooth. Stronger because the worst thing is not hidden in a room full of people waiting for Naoya’s mouth to turn cruel. Stronger because maybe this time Sukuna knows love can't be treated like a trophy for surviving enough damage.
Right before sleep, your phone lights up.
Sukuna sent an image.
You open it and immediately regret having a functioning heart.
He is lying down. The picture is angled from below his jaw, probably taken with one hand from bed. Ponkan is curled in the crook of his neck, a tiny orange comma pressed against his throat. His black shirt collar is visible. The edge of his scar cuts along his face, softened by shadow. You can see the chain of the dog tag disappearing near his collarbone. Ponkan’s eyes are closed. One paw rests against his neck like she has found the safest possible place in the world and intends to colonize it.
You are not prepared for that view. You are really, really not prepared.
There’s something obscene about it in the emotional sense. Not sexual. Worse. Domestic. Vulnerable. Sukuna, the champion, the reckless menace, the man who once survived a crash that rearranged your life, lying still because a kitten trusts him enough to sleep on his pulse.
Your throat tightens. You react with a heart because words feel dangerous.
Then, because you are still you, you type:
Don’t crush her in your sleep.
His response comes a minute later.
She’s the one sleeping on top of me. Your worries are on the wrong body.
You smile into the dark.
Good night, Sukuna.
Night.
A second later:
Ponkan says nothing. Useless.
You laugh softly, alone in bed, and the warmth in your chest stays there even after the phone screen dims. You sleep with it.
The pictures keep coming.
Not too many. That’s part of what gets you. He doesn't flood your phone. He doesn't use Ponkan as a constant excuse to keep himself on your screen. He sends one in the morning, sometimes with no caption. One at night, maybe. Occasionally one in the middle of the day when she has done something especially absurd.
Ponkan inside his boot, peering out like a soldier in a trench. Ponkan sitting inside his helmet, tiny body dwarfed by the padding, one paw on the visor opening. Ponkan on Yuuji’s lap, biting the drawstring of his hoodie while Yuuji’s face is blurred from laughing. Ponkan in the pocket of Sukuna’s jacket, her head sticking out like she is being smuggled across borders. Ponkan asleep on a folded towel. Ponkan standing in her food bowl with wet food on one paw, captioned: Your princess is an idiot.
She’s exploring texture.
She is standing in dinner like a moron.
You save all of them. You don't tell him that.
The week becomes strangely gentle because of it. You wake up wondering whether there will be a picture. You don't always get one immediately, but when you do, it shifts the day. The teaching remains teaching — noise, questions, grading, administrative nonsense, small victories when a student understands something, small defeats when another forgets they own a notebook. But between all of that is orange fur and Sukuna’s dry captions, and your own replies, and the careful revival of something that used to be ordinary.
The texts are not only about Ponkan by the end of the week.
You tell him the pen has made grading emotionally dangerous because now you feel disappointed by every other pen you own. He replies that your standards are finally improving. You send him a picture of a comment you wrote on a paper — “This argument has potential, but right now it's mostly vibes” — with the student’s name hidden. He says the kid should respect the precision. You tell him not to encourage teacher cruelty. He says he learned from the best.
You ask if Ponkan has destroyed anything important. He sends a picture of a scratched box and writes, Define important.
You ask if he is still listening to Shoko. He says yes, unfortunately. Then adds, Before you ask, no riding stupid. You stare at that message for a long time because he anticipated the fear without making you say it.
The weekend arrives before you fully understand how much you have been waiting for it.
Yuuji somehow turns the second visit into a social event.
You don’t know if he does it intentionally or if his personality simply expands until other people are involved. He says he wants to see Ponkan again. You mention you might go over. He asks if he can come too, then adds that Maki should probably be invited so she doesn’t think Sukuna is luring you with a baby animal like a villain with marketing skills. You tell him that phrasing will not help anyone. He says honesty is important.
You ask Maki. She agrees too quickly. Which means she has been waiting for you to ask.
Choso ends up included after Sukuna apparently tells him, or Yuuji does, or perhaps Ponkan sends invitations through sheer gravitational force. By Saturday evening, Sukuna’s apartment contains you, Maki, Yuuji, Choso, Sukuna, and one very tiny cat who behaves as if she arranged the whole thing.
Everyone falls in love with her — this is not at all surprising.
Even Maki, who enters the apartment with the expression of someone prepared to commit inspection and violence in equal measure, lasts exactly forty seconds before crouching down to let Ponkan sniff her fingers. Ponkan, brave and politically astute, immediately climbs onto her knee.
Maki looks down, and although her face doesn't soften, her hand does.
You notice. So does Sukuna.
He stands near the kitchen island, arms crossed, watching Maki scratch Ponkan under the chin with a suspicious level of gentleness.
“Didn’t think you liked small things,” he says.
Maki doesn't look up.
“I like plenty of small things. Knives. Bullets. The amount of patience I have for you.”
Yuuji wheezes. Choso makes a soft choking sound that might be an attempt not to laugh. Sukuna’s mouth curves.
“Thanks for not trying to kill me in my own kitchen.”
“The night is young.”
You glance at her.
“Maki.”
“What? I’m being social.”
Sukuna huffs like he respects the effort and the apartment feels fuller than it used to, but not in the suffocating way you feared. There is some tension, yes. How could there not be? You don't put people who love you, people who hurt you, and people who failed you in the same room and expect the air to behave like nothing happened. But Ponkan is there, walking across the floor with the swagger of a creature carrying diplomatic immunity, and somehow that helps. She becomes the tiny orange center of gravity around which everyone can orbit without staring too directly at the past.
Yuuji lies on the floor almost immediately, arms stretched above his head while Ponkan attacks the cords of his hoodie. He lets her. He narrates her violence as a heroic battle.
Choso sits quietly at first, hands folded, watching the kitten with grave tenderness. When Ponkan toddles toward him, he offers one finger. She bites it. He looks honored.
Sukuna orders everyone to stop letting her think biting is acceptable.
No one listens.
Maki sends a picture to Nobara and receives a string of messages so fast her phone buzzes like an insect. She reads one aloud.
“Tell the evil man I am emotionally conflicted because the kitten is perfect but he is still on probation.”
“Tell her I don’t care.” Sukuna says.
Maki types, then says,
“I told her you cried.”
“You’re all irritating.”
The early part of the evening finds an awkward rhythm and then, slowly, a real one. Maki doesn't threaten Sukuna too much. Only a little. Mostly with her eyes. Choso greets you with visible nerves and a softness that makes you immediately want to ease him even though part of you knows you do not owe him ease. Yuuji fills gaps with noise, talking about Ponkan’s crimes, Sukuna’s terrible naming instincts, and how he personally feels Sukuling remains a strong option even if everyone else is committed to citrus.
“She is not called Sukuling,” Sukuna says from the kitchen.
“Her full legal name can be Ponkan Sukuling Itadori-Ryomen,” Yuuji says.
“No.”
Maki, to your horror, looks thoughtful.
“Ponkan Sukuling has character.”
“Don’t help him,” Sukuna snaps.
You cradle Ponkan against your chest and whisper,
“Your father is so sensitive.”
Sukuna’s eye cuts to you. Heat flickers low in your stomach. The fact that he says nothing makes it worse.
You sit on the floor with Ponkan eventually, dragging a toy in slow circles while she stalks it from behind the coffee table. Sukuna, Maki, and Yuuji drift into the kitchen to discuss food with the seriousness of diplomats negotiating a treaty. Choso remains in the living room.
He comes closer to where you are sitting on the floor with Ponkan and the string toy.
He stands beside you for a second too long. You look up.
He has the expression of a kicked dog trying very hard to look like a serious adult man. His shoulders are set, hands at his sides, eyes lowered with such concentrated guilt that you feel your own chest soften despite yourself.
“Sit,” you say gently, “before I feel the need to pull a chair out for you and hand it over.”
His eyes widen a fraction, then soften with something like gratitude. He lowers himself onto the floor at your side, careful to leave space. Ponkan abandons the toy and runs at his knee, then changes her mind halfway and flops onto her side.
The kitchen voices continue behind you. Maki arguing for something spicy. Yuuji saying he can handle spice, which everyone knows is a lie. Sukuna telling him he once cried because of convenience store curry. Yuuji protesting the historical accuracy.
Choso takes a deep breath. You keep your fingers moving along the string toy, but your attention turns quiet.
“I want to apologize.”
You knew it was coming. Still, the words alter the air. He looks at you directly, though it seems to cost him. The words are simple. No preamble. No attempt to make them look less heavy.
Ponkan catches your finger instead of the toy and begins nibbling with soft little teeth. You let her because it gives your hand something to do. Choso looks down.
“It wasn’t fair of me not to tell you something I knew. I thought it wasn’t my place. I told myself it happened before I knew you properly, and then when I saw he actually liked you, and that you liked him despite everything, I thought bringing it up would only hurt you for no reason.” His voice stays even, but you can hear the strain beneath it. “That was cowardice. The moment you offered me friendship, I should have been honest. Instead I omitted it and let you stand around people who knew something about the beginning of your own relationship that you didn’t. I’m sorry.”
You listen. That’s harder than people think. Anger wants to interrupt. Hurt wants to protect itself by speaking too quickly. But Choso deserves the dignity of being heard through the apology, and you deserve the clarity of knowing whether he understands what he did. So you sit there with Ponkan nibbling on your finger, the apartment warm around you, Sukuna’s voice low in the kitchen, and you let Choso say the whole thing.
“When you were kind to me, when you talked to me and trusted me and treated me like your friend, I should have understood that meant I owed you honesty too. Not only loyalty to him. I omitted it because it was easier and because I didn’t want to hurt you. But I helped create the situation where you got hurt worse.” His mouth tightens. “I’m sorry. Truly.”
The kitchen has gone slightly quieter. Not silent, but aware. You let Choso’s apology sit between you long enough for it to be real.
Broken trust is not repaired by immediate warmth. You know that now with a clarity that feels almost physical. But apology matters when it doesn't ask you to pretend nothing happened. Choso is not making excuses. He is not saying Sukuna changed as if that erases what you didn’t know. He is not begging you to make him feel better.
So you nod slowly. When he finishes, his hands are curled loosely over his knees. You look at him.
“Yeah,” you say. “That sucked.”
He flinches slightly, then nods.
“And I don’t think you had bad intentions. That doesn’t make it harmless, but it matters. I was hurt because I trusted you too, not in the same way I trusted Sukuna, but enough that knowing you knew made me feel really stupid for a while. Especially because I liked you. I trusted you in a different way from the team, I think. You felt safe.” You look down at Ponkan, who is now chewing your finger like she has found the meaning of life. “Broken trust is never fun.”
His expression twists. You soften your voice, not to absolve him, but because truth doesn't always need a blade.
“But I accept your apology.”
His dark eyes gleam. He blinks hard, once.
Oh.
The poor man.
You almost laugh, not because it's funny, but because Choso is fighting for his life to look stern and composed while clearly being a breath away from crying from relief. He was sorry. Really sorry. From the bottom of his heart, in that deeply Choso way that makes guilt look like an illness he has been carrying under his ribs. His nostrils flare slightly.
“Thank you,” he says quietly.
Ponkan releases your finger and attacks his shoelace. He swallows and looks down at her like she has saved him from eye contact.
“Can I ask something?”
“You can ask.”
“If you’re around…” He pauses, then tries again. “Would it be okay to talk about motocross with you again? The technical parts. Races. Bikes. If you would rather not have me around, I understand. Both options are okay, really, I won’t treat you different—”
There is such earnest anxiety in him that your answer comes softer than planned.
“Choso.”
He stops. You smile.
“I’d love to go back into the technicalities with you. I missed our talks.”
His attempt to hide happiness is terrible. It's truly awful. His mouth presses into a line that trembles at the edges. His eyes brighten again. He nods very seriously, as if you have just reinstated him into a sacred order.
“I missed them too,” he says.
You lift Ponkan carefully and place her in his lap like a sacred offering.
His hands come up immediately, gentle and uncertain. She sniffs him, then climbs onto his thigh, purring because apparently Ponkan has decided every person in this room exists to adore her. Choso looks down at her with wet eyes and says, very unconvincingly,
“It’s allergies.”
“Of course.”
“From the fur,” he tries badly.
“She’s very furry,” you indulge the lie.
“Yeah.”
You smile at him, warm and forgiving enough for now. From the kitchen, Sukuna calls,
“Is he crying?”
Choso straightens with Ponkan halfway up his chest.
“No.”
Maki appears in the kitchen doorway.
“He is.”
“I’m not.”
Yuuji leans around Maki’s shoulder.
“Aww, Choso.”
“I have allergies,” Choso insists, sounding genuinely distressed at the possibility of being perceived. Sukuna looks over Maki’s head, catches your eye, and the warmth in his gaze makes the entire exchange land somewhere deeper.
Dinner becomes Chinese takeout because the kitchen council decides on it after too much negotiation and one brief argument about whether ordering more dumplings counts as wisdom or gluttony. Sukuna pays before anyone else can protest. Maki tells him buying food doesn't grant moral superiority. He tells her he wasn’t under that delusion. Yuuji asks if they can at least pretend dinner has healed society. Choso, still holding Ponkan, says dumplings help most situations. By the time it arrives, the apartment has settled into something almost normal.
Almost.
You don't miss the careful glances. Maki watching Sukuna when she thinks you are not looking. Sukuna noticing and allowing it. Choso quieter after the apology but lighter. Yuuji filling silence before it can become too jagged. You, aware of all of them, aware of yourself, aware of Ponkan marching across takeout menus like a tiny inspector.
You eat from cartons, pass sauces, rescue Ponkan from trying to put her paw in rice, and argue about race clips Yuuji pulls up on the TV because he wants to understand the sport better and keeps asking questions that make Sukuna look pained. Choso answers most of them before Sukuna can insult him too badly. You find yourself adding explanations, correcting Yuuji’s assumptions, pointing out where a rider’s line choice changes the turn, how body position shifts before a jump, why the whoops punish rhythm errors faster than people expect.
Choso and you end up discussing suspension settings because he mentions a rider who changed setup mid-season and you immediately ask whether the issue was corner entry or landing stability. His whole face comes alive. He explains with his hands, careful not to knock over sauce, describing how different track surfaces affect what riders need from the bike. You ask questions because you still know more than a casual spectator and less than someone who lives in a garage, which is exactly where the conversation is fun.
Sukuna watches from the couch, one ankle planted over his thigh near the knee, posture lazy in a way you don't trust. He inserts corrections when Choso gets too diplomatic about a bad technical decision. You argue once because you think he is being too harsh about a rider who probably had limited setup time. He tells you limited setup time doesn't excuse riding like he has never met physics. You tell him physics probably didn’t like him either. His grin flashes.
The words feel strange at first.
Then good.
You missed talking about it. That truth comes with sadness attached, because liking motocross after everything sometimes felt like loving a place haunted by an accident. But the technical language still lives in you. The fascination did not die just because pain moved into the stadium seats. When Choso lights up at one of your observations, when Sukuna glances down with that sharp, pleased flicker he used to get when you noticed something most casual viewers missed, the old joy rises carefully through the fear.
At some point, the seating rearranges itself without discussion.
Sukuna and Choso end up on the couch. Yuuji lies on the floor with Ponkan on top of him, letting her attack his hoodie cords with saintly patience. Maki takes the armchair across from the couch, one leg crossed over the other, a carton balanced in her hand. You sit on the floor with your back against the couch, right in front of Sukuna’s spot, because Ponkan had been chasing a toy near your feet and you stayed there after she abandoned it.
Sukuna’s legs are spread around you, not touching at first.
Then, as the evening loosens, your shoulders brush the inside of his knees whenever either of you shifts. Light contact. Almost nothing. Enough to make your body aware of him in quiet, repeated pulses. If you tilt your head back, you would see him upside down. You know this because the thought keeps occurring and you keep not doing it. Then you do, and he is already looking down.
Maki goes quiet. You know that quiet. That quiet is not peace. It's loading.
She sets her food down, wipes her fingers, and looks directly at Sukuna.
“So,” she says, calm in a way that makes Yuuji stop mid-sentence on the floor. “Before we all try socializing like normal adults again, do you have any other disgusting thing you used to do, say, hide, or whatever that we should know about?”
Yuuji’s head whips toward her so fast Ponkan startles, does a little jump, and then immediately climbs onto his hair like it's a safe platform.
“Ow— Ponkan, no, that’s my scalp.” Yuuji says, frozen under kitten claws.
Choso goes so still on the couch you think he might have stopped breathing.
You crane your neck back slightly to look at Sukuna.
He doesn't look offended.
That surprises you a bit, not even because he has no reason to accept the question, but because Sukuna has never enjoyed being challenged in his own space, in front of people, with you sitting at his feet and his brother on the floor. The old him might have sharpened instantly. Might have turned it into dominance. Might have asked Maki who the hell she thought she was.
He does none of that. His gaze stays on Maki, steady and serious, and the contact of his knees near your shoulders becomes more noticeable because he doesn't move away. The room feels abruptly like territory, but not in a simple masculine way. It feels like sitting between a tiger and a black leopard while they decide whether respect is possible without bloodshed.
Sukuna’s knees bracket your shoulders. Maki sits across from him, still as a blade. She is not physically bigger than him, not even close, but she has never needed size to be dangerous. Sukuna, for once, doesn't meet threat with threat. He meets it like he knew it was coming.
“I never apologized to you for that bullshit either,” he says. “So I’m doing it now.”
Serious. Direct. Unflinching.
Your body goes strange, it feels too alert. Choso remains beside Sukuna like a witness trying not to vanish. Yuuji lies on the floor, eyes wide, Ponkan now chewing his hair as if the emotional stakes of adult conversation are none of her concern.
Sukuna continues, voice level.
“I used to find someone in the crowd when events started. Tell the crew I’d get the person to fuck me by the end of the night. That’s about it. It became more of a stupid ritual than a bet after a while, but that doesn’t make it less disgusting.”
Your stomach twists, not as sharply as it did the first time, but enough, because hearing it plainly still hurts. Because this is the truth without Naoya’s cruelty wrapped around it. Because he is saying it with you sitting between his knees and your best friend across from him, and he is not trying to make it sound better than it was.
Maki’s jaw works once.
“Good. At least you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You were disgusting for doing that.”
“Yes.”
“And you,” she says, eyes cutting to Choso, who unfreezes so fast it is almost painful. He bows his head immediately.
“I’m sorry. I should have told you too. I failed her as a friend, and I understand why that made you angry.”
Maki studies him for a long moment.
“Don’t make me regret tolerating you.”
“I won’t.”
Maki looks at him for a long second, then nods once. Not forgiveness. Acknowledgment. Choso accepts it like more than he expected.
Yuuji is still lying on the floor, one hand carefully trying to detach Ponkan from his hair without hurting her.
“This is the most stressful dinner with a kitten I’ve ever attended.”
“You attend many?” Sukuna asks dryly.
“First one. Still wins.”
Maki ignores them and looks at you, which makes your throat tighten. Her eyes are not hard when they land on you. Protective, always. Tired, maybe. But there is something else there too. Trust, given reluctantly and with both hands ready to catch you if it breaks.
“I can’t allow or forbid anything regarding your choices,” she says. “You’re an adult and you know what you do. So if you trust Sukuna won’t hurt you again, I trust your judgment.”
The silence after that is full. You don't know what to do with it.
There was a time when Maki would have turned the whole world into a weapon if you asked. There is still that version of her in the room. You can feel it. But she is giving you something better than control. She is giving you faith in your own choice, even if she hates the risk.
You look down at your hands. Then you feel Sukuna shift behind you.
His knees brush your shoulders more deliberately this time, not pressing, not claiming, but present. His torso leans forward enough that he blocks a little of the ceiling light above you, casting you in his shadow. It would have felt different once. Possessive. A public placement. Now it feels like he is there and forcing himself to stay silent because Maki is not speaking to him.
You think he probably doesn't appreciate being talked about like a dangerous animal whose handling has to be evaluated. You also think he knows he earned it.
He says nothing. That makes your chest hurt more than any defensive speech would have.
“Thank you,” you say quietly.
Maki shrugs, as if the entire conversation has not cost her anything.
“Don’t make me be reasonable too often. It’s bad for my brand.”
Yuuji exhales dramatically from the floor.
“Okay. Wow. That was intense. I think Ponkan bit my face as emotional support.”
Ponkan meows.
The pressure in the room eases slightly. Maki picks up her food again.
“That’s all.”
It's not all.
Because Yuuji finds his voice.
He finally frees his hair from Ponkan, rolls to his side, and sets the kitten on the rug. She immediately begins roaming for her next victim, tiny tail up. Yuuji props himself on one elbow and looks between you and Sukuna with the expression of someone about to do something he knows may get him murdered but has decided his conscience requires it.
“Actually,” he says.
Sukuna’s head turns slowly.
“No.”
“I didn’t even ask yet.”
“You started with actually. Nothing good follows.”
Yuuji ignores him, though his face suggests he is bracing for impact. He looks at you first, apologetic and determined, then at Sukuna.
“Have you two discussed anything about what you want from now on? Like, aside from apologies?”
Your entire body goes still.
Oh.
No.
Maki’s eyebrows lift with immediate, delighted shock. She looks like she did not expect Yuuji to throw a live grenade but deeply respects the form. Choso looks like he regrets having a physical form. Sukuna’s body goes quiet behind you.
Yuuji pushes on, brave or foolish or both.
“I know it’s not my business. It’s definitely not my business. But I think my big brother should stop being so emotionally clogged and tell you what he feels. Properly. Or at least not hover around it like a malfunctioning robot making everyone decode him like a broken radio.”
“Yuuji,” you say, because anxiety needs a target.
“Sorry. I’m just saying.”
You don't dare look up at Sukuna. You can't be sure what exactly Yuuji means by tell you what he feels. Your heart is already trying to supply answers it has no right to demand. You stare at Ponkan instead as she trots toward Choso’s abandoned takeout container and gets gently redirected by his hand.
The room waits. Then Sukuna shifts.
“I told her how I feel,” he says.
His voice is low, controlled, but there is something under it that makes your skin prickle. You keep looking at the rug.
“I told her I missed her,” he continues. “And I still do. That’s my problem to deal with, not hers. Not anyone else’s.”
Maki’s eyes widen just a fraction, and then her face does something unholy. Shock first. Then enjoyment. Not cruel enjoyment. Worse. Sister enjoyment. The kind that says she has just witnessed Yuuji drop a bomb and Sukuna answer it without exploding, and she plans to replay this later while making you suffer.
The brief silence is broken by Ponkan meowing again at Choso, who murmurs something to her like she is a small unstable client.
“No stealing food,” he tells her softly. You finally tilt your head back.
Sukuna is already looking down at you.
Of course he is.
The angle makes him look almost unreal, face upside down from your position, red eye steady, scar cutting through the lamplight. He leans further, and your heart stops for one stupid second because his face is closer now, because the couch behind you becomes too small, because his warmth is at your back, his knees near your shoulders, his voice about to touch the side of your head.
But all he does is bend near your ear and murmur,
“I’m not letting Maki and Yuuji come back here at the same time. I promised Shoko I’d keep my cortisol levels low. They’re sabotaging my treatment.”
You cackle.
It bursts out of you so suddenly that Ponkan startles in Choso’s lap. You slap Sukuna’s leg lightly, more instinct than decision, your palm contacting firm muscle through his pants for one brief second before you pull back. He goes still under the touch.
The evening softens again after that.
Not because the conversation meant nothing, but because it meant enough and didn’t destroy the room. Maybe that’s what normal adults do. Not avoid every hard thing, not turn each one into a battlefield, but ask, answer, breathe, order food, let a kitten bite someone’s hoodie, and keep going.
You find yourself relaxing back against the couch without intending to. The back of your shoulder brushes Sukuna’s shin. He doesn't move away. Neither do you.
The takeout containers empty. The TV plays more motocross clips. Yuuji asks fewer terrible questions and more useful ones. Choso gradually relaxes enough to talk setup and traction with you, his voice gaining life when you ask about how one rider handled a deep rut in a muddy outdoor race. Sukuna interrupts to say the rider nearly lost the rear because he came in greedy. You argue that calculated greed is part of racing. Sukuna tells you not when the calculation is bad. Maki says all of this looks like men trying very hard to die in interesting shapes.
Then you admit, quietly,
“I miss the races a bit. And the stadium.”
The room notices. Maki’s gaze cuts to you.
“Last time you went, you almost fainted.”
Sukuna’s head turns.
“What?”
It comes out sharp, immediate and worried before restraint catches it.
“Because she saw you riding, dumbass.” Maki deadpans.
You close your eyes briefly.
“What? He asked!”
Sukuna’s face hardens, not at you. At himself.
“When?”
“The same day you approached me,” Maki says. “Outside.”
Sukuna clicks his tongue, the sound low and irritated. Maki’s eyes narrow.
“What? You hoped I’d tell you she wasn’t feeling well so you could pull the dumb hero act and go ruin things a little more?”
“I wouldn’t have.”
Yuuji and Choso make doubting noises at the same time.
You turn your head to stare at them. Yuuji looks away. Choso suddenly becomes fascinated by Ponkan’s ears. Sukuna glares at both of them, then reaches over and plucks Ponkan from Choso’s lap with one hand. She dangles for half a second before he settles her on his shoulder like a tiny orange parrot.
“She’s the only one who respects me in my own house,” he says.
Ponkan immediately bites his earlobe.
You laugh so hard your stomach hurts.
Sukuna closes his eye for a second while Yuuji collapses onto his back in hysterics and Maki looks satisfied in a way that suggests cosmic justice has briefly visited. Choso, poor Choso, tries not to laugh too obviously and fails when Ponkan clings to Sukuna’s shoulder with tiny paws and continues her campaign against his ear.
It's the weekend, so people stay later than they should.
Not too late, but late enough for the sky outside to deepen fully and the city lights to sharpen beyond the windows. Takeout containers are cleared, slowly, with more arguing than cleaning requires. Ponkan falls asleep, wakes up, attacks a paper bag, falls asleep again. Yuuji declares himself her favorite uncle. Maki says there is no competition because the other uncle is Choso and he looks ready to write Ponkan into his will. Choso says nothing, which is incriminating.
By the time people start leaving, the apartment is warm from bodies, food, laughter, and the small chaos of a kitten who has explored every lap in the room and judged all of them useful.
Choso leaves first, saying he is spending the night with his girlfriend. Maki offers him a ride automatically, and he says he is fine because he came with his bike. Something about that small exchange makes you smile. The worlds are crossing carefully, not seamlessly, but without shattering.
Yuuji stretches, arms over his head, and looks around Sukuna’s living room with theatrical consideration.
“I’m wondering if I should just sleep over.”
Sukuna is on him instantly.
Not violently, but with the efficiency of an older brother who has manhandled this specific younger brother for most of their lives. He catches Yuuji by the back of his hoodie and steers him toward the door while Yuuji laughs and drags his feet.
“Out.”
“Wow. Kicked out in front of guests.”
“Out.”
“I love you too.”
“Go home.”
“You’re afraid I’ll bond with Ponkan more than you.”
“You’re trying so hard to make me revoke your access on the front gate.”
Yuuji grins at you over his shoulder while Sukuna pushes him toward the entryway.
“Tell Ponkan I love her.”
“She doesn’t know you.”
Maki stands, amused, gathering her things.
“Come on, sentimental brat. I’ll make sure you get downstairs without being thrown through a wall.”
You take the chance to rise too, even though Ponkan is asleep in your arms, purring so comfortably that the idea of setting her down feels morally wrong. You look at her little face tucked against your sleeve and hesitate. Sukuna notices that.
“You can stay a little while if you want,” he says.
Your eyes lift. He is standing near the door after successfully ejecting Yuuji, one hand still on the handle, his body angled like the offer costs him something but he is determined not to make it sound like a demand.
“I’m not kicking anyone out,” he adds. “Except Yuuji. I can do that. He’s family.”
Yuuji, from the hall, calls,
“I heard that!”
“You were meant to.”
You should leave. You know that. Staying alone with Sukuna after a warm evening, while the apartment still holds everyone’s laughter and your body is already too aware of him, is probably not the cautious choice. Slow means slow. Boundaries mean boundaries. You told yourself you would not let softness make you stupid.
But the invitation is open, not pressed into your hands. He doesn't step closer. He doesn't lower his voice. He leaves the door literally open as Maki and Yuuji wait in the hallway.
A little while.
You glance down at Ponkan. She is fully asleep, one paw tucked near her face.
“Sure,” you say. “A little while.”
Maki’s gaze snaps to you. You give her a look that says you know. She lifts both hands slightly, not surrendering, just acknowledging the adult-choice territory she promised to respect.
“I have my phone. If I need to come back and make him suffer, I will.”
Sukuna looks at her.
“You say that like you’re waiting for a coupon.”
“I don’t need discounts.”
“Goodnight, Maki,” you say before this can become another duel. She hugs you quickly at the door, one arm around your shoulders, careful of Ponkan.
“Text me.”
“I will.”
Yuuji gives you a softer smile behind her.
“Goodnight. Bye, Ponkan.” Ponkan sleeps through his farewell. “Bye! Don’t be emotionally clogged!”
Sukuna closes the door before the sentence finishes. The click of it shutting changes the apartment.
The quiet after company has a texture. You feel it settle over the living room, over the abandoned takeout containers, over the toys on the floor, over the space between you and him. Sukuna stands by the door for a moment with his hand still near the lock, then turns back.
You return to the living room and sit on the floor again because Ponkan shifts when you consider the couch, and you don't want to wake her. You cradle her in your lap, stroking one finger over her soft head.
Sukuna doesn't take his previous spot on the couch. He sits in the armchair across from you. Facing you, and the choice is so deliberate you feel it. Separate enough to be respectful. Close enough to talk. You stroke Ponkan’s back with one finger and watch Sukuna try to organize himself. It’s almost painfully obvious now that you know what to look for. The faint set of his jaw. The way his gaze drops once, then returns. The stillness of his hands. He looks less like a man at ease in his own apartment and more like he did in the car on your birthday — braced, determined, not sure where to put all the things he wants without making them too large for you. He looks at you, looks at Ponkan, looks at the window, then back at you.
You give him mercy because you are beginning to understand that mercy, used carefully, is not the same as letting someone off the hook.
“Did Yuuji and Maki get into your head?”
He scoffs. That means yes. Then a beat passes.
“Yeah,” he says. “Maybe.”
Your mouth curves.
“That was almost honest.”
“Don’t start grading me with that pen.”
“I could. It writes beautifully.”
“I know.”
“You sound proud of yourself.”
“I chose well.”
“You did.”
His face changes at the quiet sincerity. Only slightly. A tightening around the eye, a shift in his breathing, like praise still enters him with too much force when it's not about racing. Then he looks down at his hands.
“They’re annoying.”
“They love us.”
The us slips out before you can inspect it. Sukuna notices and his eye sharpens, but he doesn't pounce on it.
“They’re still annoying,” he says instead. “But maybe we should talk about something else.”
The statement is too open to be casual.
You shift slightly, legs folded to one side, Ponkan warm in your lap now. The kitten sighs in her sleep, slumbering through the complications of being an adult human being with an adult life and adult relationships, entirely unconcerned with the way your heart has begun making poor structural decisions behind your ribs.
You look at her because she is easier to look at than the man in front of you. Adult life is cruel, you think, in the most absurdly calm way. A kitten can sleep through emotional tension. She can be loved by everyone in the room and worry only about food, warmth, and whether hoodie strings can be defeated. Meanwhile, you are sitting on the floor of your ex-not-ex’s apartment trying to understand what shape love can have after betrayal.
Your pulse answers before you do.
“Okay,” you say, “What something else do you want to discuss?”
Your tone is lighter than the anxiety gathering beneath your ribs. Curious, almost gentle. You want to see what he thinks matters. You want to know whether Yuuji’s grenade left shrapnel in him. You want, dangerously, to hear him say something that makes the waiting inside you less shapeless.
He looks at you for a long second. Then, as if the armchair is suddenly too much distance for what he means to say, he slides forward and lowers himself onto the floor.
The movement steals your breath a little.
He’s to the floor across from you, not too close, but closer than before. Eye level, or as close as possible considering he is still taller and broader even seated. The choice lands softly. He could loom from the chair, but he puts himself on the floor with you, knees bent, forearms resting loosely, gaze steady.
He meets your eyes.
“I should probably ask if you ever think you can see yourself back with me.”
You stop breathing and your heart trips, but he continues before you can answer, voice low but very clear.
“Not like before, not the same way. But with me.”
“Oh shit,” you let it escape too honestly, a little too shocked, before any dignity can intervene.
His face goes flat.
“At least this time you didn’t choke and almost die. Progress.”
You let out a stunned laugh, one hand pressing carefully around Ponkan so you don’t jostle her.
“I wasn’t expecting you to actually be this pointed and direct like this.”
“I’ve been working on being less terrible at shit like this.”
“I can see that.”
“I’m not asking for an answer because I think I’m owed one,” he says, and the words come slower now, shaped with care. “I want to align my expectations accordingly.”
Your eyebrow rises. He grimaces faintly, as if hearing himself.
“That sounded like Nanami.”
“A little.”
“What I mean is—” He stops, exhales, then looks at you more directly. “I’ll wait or stop waiting depending on what you tell me. I’m not saying I’ll go away if the answer isn’t what I want. I’m not cutting contact unless you want that. I like you. Your company. Your presence. Everything you bring into a room.” His jaw works once. “You. As a person. It doesn’t matter if you’re with me as a friend or something else. I just need to know, and I know how hypocritical that sounds, if I should have any kind of hope in that. Or if I should see you as my friend and co-parent to this small orange little pest.”
You look down at Ponkan. She is completely gone to the world, purring faintly in her sleep, tiny stomach rising and falling. It's so unfair that something this small gets to be simple. Hungry, eat. Tired, sleep. Lonely, scream at Sukuna’s bedroom door until he gives in. No history. No old wounds requiring language. No careful negotiation of love, hope, trust, desire, friendship, fear.
You stroke her paw with your thumb.
You imagine saying no. You imagine saying friendship only. You test it privately, in the space behind your ribs. Could you do that? Could you keep him in your life, visit Ponkan, talk about races with Choso, sit in rooms with Yuuji and Maki and Sukuna and not reach for anything more? If you told him no, would he keep respecting it? Would he keep treating you with this careful steadiness? Would he continue as a friend, genuinely, or would want curdle into pressure eventually?
The only way to know would be to choose that road and watch his actions over time.
But there is another truth sitting under all the caution.
You love him.
A year was not long enough to dim it. Heartbreak did not do the clean, merciful damage people sometimes claim it does. You loved Kashimo too, in a different way, a real way, kind and grateful and tender, and that is part of why you let him go properly instead of using him as proof you had moved on. But Sukuna remains lodged in a place that has never stopped recognizing him. Not as the champion. Not as the danger. Not as the man on posters or the man beside a bike. Him. The unbearable, difficult, infuriating man who learned to let a kitten sleep on his neck and bought you a pen because he remembered a five-second glance from two years ago.
You really, really love him.
After everything. After the parking lot. After the silence. After Kashimo’s gentleness, after your careful attempt to build another life, after months of refusing to watch races, after seeing him beside Kenny in photographs and feeling something tear quietly inside you. The love did not leave. It changed color. It learned caution. It lost some innocence. But it is there, stubborn and breathing, looking at him from across a living room floor while a kitten sleeps between you.
You lift your eyes.
His focus on you is almost painful.
You can see how much effort it takes for him to remain still. It's in his shoulders, in the hands loosely clasped between his knees, in the way his jaw stays tight as if he is physically holding himself in place. He asked for the answer. Now he has to survive waiting for it.
“I like you,” you say. His eye flickers. You swallow and continue. “Hell, I love you. That didn’t change.”
The effect on him is immediate and contained only by force.
His whole body seems to seize around the words. His eye sharpens with such intensity that heat rushes through you. His body leans forward a fraction before he stops himself, like instinct tried to cross the room and restraint caught it by the throat. His hands flex once against his knees. The focus on his face becomes almost frightening, not because you fear him, but because you understand what it costs him not to lunge at the sentence. Not to grab, claim, kiss, demand, turn your confession into proof that everything can be restored by wanting hard enough.
He stays where he is.
You continue before either of you can drown in that one sentence.
“I thought about taking things slow... which is probably hard for someone who loves velocity, but that’s what I can offer for now. Slow. Not pretending nothing happened, or jumping back into what we were because what we were had things inside it that hurt me. I don’t want to rebuild the same house with fresh paint.”
His gaze doesn't leave yours. You breathe carefully.
“I’m willing to try a restart,” you say. “If you think you can endure slow.”
His shoulders lower. It's subtle, but the relief moves through him like a physical thing. His breathing deepens. Some locked part of his chest releases enough that his posture shifts, not collapsing, just no longer braced against impact. His eye remains intense, but the edge of dread retreats from it.
“I can do slow,” he says.
You tilt your head slightly and wait.
“I’m great at it,”his mouth curves as he says, dangerous and familiar.
You give him a look. He holds it for one full second. Then, because he is still Sukuna and apparently incapable of leaving tenderness unsinged, he asks,
“So, wanna spend the night?”
Your eyes widen. His hands lift immediately.
“It’s a joke.”
“Sukuna.”
“Humor, if you will.”
You stare at him. He looks unapologetic and slightly too pleased with himself.
“I won’t hit you,” you say, “out of respect for Ponkan, who is too young to witness that level of violence.”
“Merciful.”
“She deserves a peaceful childhood.”
“With Yuuji as an uncle? Impossible.”
You laugh, shaking your head, and the intensity loosens just enough to let both of you breathe.
He leans back on one hand, and the change in his body makes the air shift. Not threatening. Not quite flirtatious. But something warmer slides back into the space, old rhythm finding new footing.
“You can teach me, then.”
“How generous of me, after all, I’m a teacher.”
“I’m aware. It’s one of your flaws.”
You smile despite yourself. Ponkan, still asleep, makes a tiny sound. Both of you look down at her and the tenderness that follows is quiet and unavoidable.
Sukuna’s gaze rests on the kitten, then lifts to you.
“Did you come by car or app?”
“App.”
“Can I take you home?”
You look at him for a moment.
The question is simple. The asking is not.
He is giving you room to refuse. Again. No assumption. No grabbing keys and expecting you to follow. No making the decision through momentum. You nod.
“It’s fine. You can.”
He stands first, then reaches down, but not for you. For Ponkan.
You pass her carefully into his hands, and she wakes just enough to blink at him, deeply betrayed by movement. He murmurs something too low for you to catch. It sounds insulting, probably. It also makes her settle instantly against his chest. You try not to melt through the floor.
He puts Ponkan in her bed, waits half a second to ensure she doesn't immediately escape, and grabs his keys. She does escape. He looks down at her, then at you.
“You see?”
“She loves you.”
“She has poor judgment.”
“Don’t project.”
He gives you a look. You smile sweetly.
It takes five more minutes to leave because Ponkan follows both of you to the door and cries like you are abandoning her to war. Sukuna sighs, picks her up, carries her back to the living room, distracts her with a toy, and returns before she can realize she has been deceived.
By the time you reach the car, the night air has cooled enough to feel good against your face.
His car smells familiar. Clean leather. A trace of him. Something faint from the gas station maybe, or maybe you imagine it because you know the story now. The passenger seat accepts you again. He waits until you buckle your seatbelt before pulling out, which you notice and say nothing about.
The car ride begins with his usual command.
“Connect the Bluetooth and play something.”
You do. He complains before the first song reaches the chorus. You smile out the window.
It is the same old drill, the same familiar ritual, but not identical. That is the distinction you keep feeling all night. The shape resembles what you knew, but the weight is new. He grumbles about your music taste, but he doesn't use the teasing as a way to avoid the charged quiet completely. He keeps his hands on the wheel. When the streetlights pass over his face, you see him thinking between insults, measuring the road and the silence and whatever slow means now.
He wants hope. You gave him some. Now both of you have to learn how not to mishandle it.
As the car approaches your building, he speaks without looking away from the road.
“I’ll need you to tell me what taking things slow means.”
You turn your head.
“I thought you said you were great at it?”
His glare is immediate.
You smirk.
The car pulls up by the entrance. For a moment, neither of you moves. The engine hums. Your seatbelt rests against your chest. His hand is on the wheel, fingers relaxed but not fully. You see the old impulse in him again, and the new restraint around it. You feel your own want answer, warm and low and complicated.
Slow, you think. Slow doesn't mean nothing.
You unbuckle.
Then, before caution can take too much credit for keeping you intact, you lean across the space between you. Not towards his mouth. That would be too fast, maybe. Too much for the fragile new rules neither of you has written yet. You press a kiss to his face, on the scarred skin.
The scar is warm beneath your lips. Slightly different in texture, but not something separate from him. The contact is brief. Soft. Devastating. Deliberate enough that it cannot be mistaken for accident. When you pull back, he has turned his face toward you, his eye fixed on yours with an expression that strips the air out of your lungs.
Want is there.
So is shock.
So is something almost fragile, buried under the intensity of being seen exactly where he once thought he had become least lovable.
You open the door before either of you can turn the moment into something too large.
“Thank you for the ride,” you say, stepping out.
His voice comes lower.
“You’re just leaving after that?”
You smile, hand on the door.
“I’m willing to teach you how to take things slow. Like the hare and the turtle.”
His eye narrows.
“Did you just call me a bunny?”
You grin.
“Good night, Sukuna.”
You close the door gently and walk toward the gate, still smiling so hard it almost hurts. Behind you, his car remains idling. You do not turn around right away because you know he is watching, and because letting him watch you leave without calling you back feels like part of the lesson too.
At the gate, you glance over your shoulder.
He is still there. One hand on the wheel, face angled toward you, scar touched by streetlight, expression unreadable to anyone who has not loved him long enough to know when silence is crowded.
You lift your hand in a small wave. He doesn't wave back, only watches.
But his mouth moves, barely, like the beginning of a smile he refuses to let become too obvious.
You go inside with warmth under your skin, not simple, not safe in the careless way, but real. You know there will be difficult conversations ahead. Definitions. Boundaries. Trust rebuilt through repetition, not declarations. There will be Maki’s questions, Yuuji’s badly timed honesty, Shoko’s sharp little assessments, Choso’s careful attempts to be normal, and Sukuna learning, painfully, that slow doesn't mean standing still. It means choosing not to run just because want has always felt like speed to him.
But tonight, there’s enough for you to let yourself take a deep breath of relief. There’s a kitten named Ponkan. A week of pictures. An apartment that no longer feels only haunted. A man who asks what hope is allowed to look like instead of taking it. A kiss placed on scarred skin, gentle enough to be a beginning and heated enough to be a warning.
And when you reach your door, your phone buzzes. A text from Sukuna.
The turtle wins, doesn’t it?
You laugh softly in the hallway, forehead nearly dropping against your apartment door.
Yes.
A pause.
Annoying story.
Educational story.
I hate rabbits now.
You are the rabbit.
Sleep before I regret asking you for lessons.
You smile, unlocking your door.
Goodnight, bunny.
His reply takes longer. Long enough that you imagine him staring at the screen, offended and helplessly pleased in equal measure.
Goodnight, strange woman.
You step into your apartment and close the door behind you, still smiling.
For the first time in a long while, hope doesn't feel like something reckless dragging you forward too fast. It feels like something small and warm placed carefully in your hands, asking you to hold it properly this time.
And you want to.
God, you want to.
I love everything about you that hurts
So let me see your moves, let me see your moves
Lips pressed close to mine, true blue
But the prince of any failing empire knows that
Everybody wants, everybody wants
To drive on through the night, if it's the drive back home
Things aren't the same anymore
Some nights it gets so bad
I almost pick up the phone
Trade baby blues for wide eyed browns
I sleep with your old shirts
And walk through this house in your shoes
I know it's strange
It's a strange way of saying
That I know I'm supposed to love you
I'm supposed to love you
I've already given up on myself twice
Third time is the charm, third time is the charm
(Threw) caution to the wind, but I've got a lousy arm
And I've traced your shadows on the wall, now I kiss them
Whenever I'm down, whenever I'm down
Figured on not figuring myself out
Things aren't the same anymore
Some nights it get so bad
I almost pick up the phone
Trade baby blues for wide eyed browns
I sleep with your old shirts
And walk through this house in your shoes
I know it's strange
It's a strange way of saying
That I know I'm supposed to love you
I'm supposed to love you
I was born under a bad sign, you saved my life
That night on the roof of your hotel
Cross my heart and hope to die
Splinter from the headboard in my eye
Photo-proofed kisses I remember so well
Trade baby blues for wide eyed browns
I sleep with your old shirts
And walk through this house in your shoes
I know it's strange
It's a strange way of saying
That I know I'm supposed to love you
I'm supposed to love you
satoru gojo, truly, adores the way her angelic smile mirror yours.
ah, if the man is allowed to be miserly, he would lay it as clear as the sunny day, that he admires every inch of the little girl who's a picture-perfect of little you. she, the little one standing beside you, who inherited your soft demeanor and loving features in ways satoru never dreamed of as a possibility.
because in all truthfulness, satoru gojo is drowned from gratefulness out of the mercy this universe has bestowed upon him; even after the undeniable reality that he let go of this one shared dream with you, he's still allowed to see you through the one joyous bundle, from his lens of view.
the way the corner of her eyes that's yours would crinkle all the times she laughed, the puffed out rosy cheeks when she pouts, and the grumpy stomps on the ground to show you that she's sulking stole the air from the man's lungs.
she's beyond doubt a small version of you.
and if only you understand, that the scenery of the little girl who's the result of your love has the strongest lashes fanned against his cheeks, with drops of something dangerously close to regret clinging to it for dear life.
he loves watching with glazed eyes at how you lovingly tend to her, truly. your careful touch which grazes her skin illustrates evidently, for the man, that you spoil the little one with all the love brimming from your one kind of a heart. since, well, she's undoubtedly a gift from the universe to celebrate the love you two shared.
no, it's not with him. with another, one lucky man, who satoru will envies for the rest of his life until the breeze decided to steal the last air he's allowed to keep for himself. till' the man eyelids are no longer capable of opening it, to see the last picture of you he greedily keeps by his wallet, right by the 20s.
satoru's lips slipped the most bitter laugh before he was able to stop himself. despite how satoru can grasp at how loud and fast his heart is clashing with his ribcage, the man truthfully fears that even the slightest presence of him would shatter this life that you've built for yourself.
because even though he would never, ever, dare to carve his way back to your side. he's truly more than afraid to devote himself to the reality in which the lowest sound of his voice might cause your heart to stop beating, entirely. after all, the strongest had promised you a life where he wouldn't breathe down your neck any longer.
and as if to add salt to his already open wounds, you're beaming with a happiness he once had the privilege to be the receiving end of.
when you two went your separate ways—taking steps to a life that has no each other in it—he selfishly wishes on the stars, night after night, to be tolerated to cross paths with you one more time, when the time aligns and in both of your favor. and satoru, genuinely, intends on keeping the words he uttered to you.
it was a promise he meant to keep.
he was in no position to comprehend that a wish as small as wanting to see you again would cost him a life engulfed in blue days. like the sacred words he was supposed to hold onto, this forevermore nightmare trails behind him relentlessly; it has the strongest chest rose and falls with rapid breaths, as he feels his chest tightening.
maybe, if satoru didn't hell-bent on staying in the jujutsu society who treats him as if he's a weapon destined for one time use, and open his ears to listen to the sound of your voice for a normal life far from all of this endless chaos— he'd be the one to stand by your side, this very minute. not the man he has zero knowledge about.
you; his everlasting love, who throw away the life you two have known your entire life, standing a few distance from him with the same smile that used to be his, is with certainty the universe way of telling the strongest that he had let his world (everything he ever dreamed of) slithered away, from the palm of his hands.
and he, who supposedly is capable of turning the whole world upside down, can only stand from afar like the fool he is as the world crumbles under him, from how much his heart is twisted in agony at the long-lasting sight in front of him.
however, satoru chose to stay in the society which never treasure him under the very reason that his feet, unfortunately, are already rooted on the ground, ever since the day the man was born.
satoru gojo life was threaded with one and one purpose only, after all. to be the strongest, the honored one; someone who bears the world on the palm of his hand, with no one to turn to.
unwanted, one might say.
it's tragically one of the little things the strongest allowed himself to know and be sure of. aside from you, of course. because despite how much it rots him alive, there's no timeline that may exist in this universe where he would drag you down on this hellhole with him.
so, with everything that he has in him, satoru took a small, reluctant step away from you and the life he would never understand the taste of. and albeit slowly—as if time itself froze in this moment for him—he let a farewell hang in the air between him and you, alongside the family you built.
and just like the day he walked far from the life he always longed with you; he buried the lingering dreams that are gnawing at his chest, even though he yearns nothing but to live it in all truth next to you, in this moment to exist.
for it's the truth which he'll always keep hidden in a lock drawer: the strongest, who's destined for a lonely life, have love and dreams, too, after all.
Accompanying Kratos and Atreus was dangerous. You had figured that out early on after they had stumbled upon you trying to escape a Draugr attack. The two had saved your life; as such, you couldn’t help but want to try to help them in return. You didn’t have many skills valuable to them, but you did have a keen eye and were more emotionally in tune than your companions. It had prevented a fair few fights. That doesn’t mean they always listened to you, as Atreus and Kratos were an 11-year-old boy and an ancient man the size of a giant from some far-off land. They had their beliefs and thought processes, so no matter how much sense you made, they sometimes ignored your advice. You and Mímir did get along reasonably well, though.
During your travels, you met Baldur. The god had repeatedly attacked your new friends. Thankfully, he didn't see you as much of anything besides a nuisance, and you'd made sure not to be much else.
Despite not caring much about Baldur, you could tell what his mother did to him seriously fucked with his head. It was painfully obvious and hurt to see. Of course, you'd heard of him before; he was a god, after all. But to be faced with his actions and truly listen to his words was something else entirely. You held a sort of sadness in your heart for him, a kinship in some ways. It wasn't pity quite yet, but it was getting there.
So, when Atreus had begged his father to save Freya as Baldur began choking her, you decided to step in. Knowing Kratos, his answer would likely be killing the god. You didn’t know why, but you didn’t want that to happen.
"Wait!" You shouted at Baldur.
His bright blue eyes glared at you over his shoulder.
Nervously, you shifted, white-knuckling your bag’s strap.
"You want her to hurt, right?" You asked before licking your lips nervously. You eyed Kratos beside you, a silent way of telling him to stand down. Once you were sure he got the hint, you turned and locked eyes with Baldur again. "If you want her to hurt as much as possible, take it from someone who knows; let her live."
Baldur squinted at you in surprise and confusion. "What?" he asked, completely bewildered—bewildered enough to loosen his grip ever so slightly.
Sucking in a few more breaths before leveling out your breathing.
"Freya is your mother. She loves you with all of her heart. She wants to protect you no matter what. But, now," you said, trailing off. "I mean, come on," you laughed lightly, "Her curse is broken. She's failed to protect you. She has lost you, Baldur. In every way that matters, she has lost you."
Your eyes flickered down to his hands. His firm grip had loosened further as he’d listened to you.
"You kill her now, and she won't get to experience the paranoia and fear that comes with never knowing if you're dead or not. You kill her now, and her days will never be filled with worry and uncertainty. Shit!" You laugh again. "If you kill her now, she won't be able to go to your funeral. What's a worse fate than that!? I mean, seriously, you better than anyone should know that the worst fates aren't the physical but the mental, right? Why get it over with here and now when you can let her stew for years and years and let her feel just a tiny bit of what you felt? Let her live, Baldur, and die knowing that is the worst fate you can give to her." You looked over at Kratos. "You're a parent. How would you feel if that was the fate of you and Atreus?"
Kratos’ stone-set face crunched p ever so slightly as he thought about your words. The mere thought of Atreus dying before him and never knowing was more unnerving than anything he’d felt in a very long time. He was slow to answer, but that wasn’t surprising. "I would rather die than go through that," he replied quietly and honestly.
Atreus blinked in surprise at his father's answer, but a small smile slipped its way forward at his father’s words.
You met Baldur's gaze again, your shoulders pushed back and breathing steady. "See, even Kratos agrees. And getting him to agree with me is stupidly hard." Carefully, you approached him but still maintained a distance. After a beat of silence, you spoke again, "To let her live is to make her suffer.”
Your gaze did not waver from Baldur’s, and he searched for any sign of a lie or trick.
Finding nothing, he nodded, releasing her.
Freya fell with a thud, slightly gripping at her own throat. She took a few unsteady breaths, bracing her arm against the ground.
Baldur did not look at her; he simply walked away, his barren feet making obvious tracks as he left.
You? You just sighed in relief.
"And everybody gets to live another day,” you said before slightly chuckling.
Kratos and you locked eyes briefly. It was enough time for him to nod in approval of your actions, grateful he didn’t have to act, before turning his attention to his son and Freya.
You weren’t sure what your next actions would be, but you knew you were concerned about Baldur. Someone had to check on him. Getting the ability to feel back after years of nothingness must be rough on atrophied senses.
•
Following Baldur's tracks, you walked after him. After getting within visual distance, you jogged to catch up.
"Hey, are you okay?" You asked, practically hopping to keep up with his rather long strides.
Baldur stopped in his tracks at the sound of your voice. Still, he refused to look at you, instead studying the snow and mud on the ground. One of his fists remained solidly clenched while his other hand rubbed against his trousers. His entire face was contorted in some unidentified emotion. He seemed unnerved—maybe frazzled would be a better word? You weren’t sure.
Since he’d stopped, you managed to catch up with him, hopping around his body in an attempt to get him to face you as you spoke. "Look, I know you probably really wanted to kill her, and, ya know, that's probably still an option if you really want to, but letting her suffer is worth it. Trust me. Also, she kinda deserves it, from what I can tell. Overprotective parents kinda suck, ya know? Well, obviously, you'd know, but still…"
You were rambling now, and you knew it, but you couldn't help but continue talking. To you, it felt like if you stopped, Baldur would change his mind and go after Freya—or maybe he’d kill you or something.
You weren’t sure about anything right now, just that you needed to keep talking.
Unfortunately, you weren't paying attention while talking and slipped on some ice.
Just when you thought you were going to end up on your ass, Baldur caught you.
Unsurprisingly, his hands were rough and heavy, but his touch was much gentler than you expected. He was gentler than Kratos usually was, almost like he was afraid of breaking you like he didn’t know his own strength. Baldur studied you for a moment, his hands lingering.
"Are you alright?" He asked, his voice barely a whisper.
You gave a strained smile, not used to this type of softness from anyone, much less someone you thought didn't care about others. "Peachy. Thanks." You weren’t sure how else to respond.
He hummed before looking at where your bodies connected, at the arms. Baldur's head tilted slightly as his eyes ran up your arms and over your face. His fingers traced your skin as if figuring out what it was.
He knew, of course, but you could tell it was still a foreign feeling.
"Ya know," you said gently, "I-um, if you want, I could help with the whole being thrust back into the world of feeling shit. If you want? It's not like I got much else going on."
Baldur snorted and smiled as he met your gaze. "I- I would appreciate that, actually. I know my family isn't going to be much help."
You gave him another awkward smile and nodded. "Cool. Cool. Um, you can let go now, though."
He stepped away, snow crunching beneath his feet. "Sorry."
The reader is trying to sleep, but their friend Baldur interrupts. They eventually end up cuddling, leading to Baldur finding out something new about his curse.
TW/CW: Mentions of Baldur's curse, mental deterioration, insomnia, loneliness.
Word Count: 2.1+K
•
Staring at the wood above you, you make out the profile of a screaming face in the knot. You tilt your head to the side, and the face transforms in the faint firelight. It’s now a fist with a few missing fingers. Titling your head back into its original position, you giggle.
‘It looks better as a face,’ you decide.
You’d entertained yourself for hours like this, imagining random things and talking to yourself in your head. Despite the intent to sleep, you couldn’t seem to settle down enough to do so. A million and one thoughts wheeled around in your head. The one person who, without fail, quelled those thoughts wasn’t here. But you had to sleep one way or another, with or without him.
The smile falls from your face as you turn onto your side, pulling the heavy furs and blankets over your body. They act as an impenetrable shield against the chill of the late-night air that would likely seep through by morning.
Your mind drifted back to your friend as you tried to get comfortable.
Despite how odd he’d become over the years, your dear friend’s presence was a comfort that often allowed you to rest when you otherwise couldn’t. He was your safe place. Without him, you felt exposed and vulnerable to anything and anyone who could hurt you.
If you were lucky, he might come in later and lay with you. He did that sometimes. It was nice.
Closing your eyes, you take a deep breath and hope to find sleep soon.
•
You wake, mouth dry, to a cold, dark room lit only by the moon’s will.
The fire has long since been snuffed out by neglect. The chill in the air made you pause. Your small home usually held heat well; it was only when the door opened that heat escaped into the cold of the night.
In the shadows lurking around the room, you feel like someone is there, watching your every move. Just watching and nothing more. Their eyes bear into you as if probing, searching for something that remains hidden from them.
You sigh and tug the covers closer.
“How much longer are you going to stare at me, Baldur?” You ask, frustration flickering through your tone. It didn’t stay long, fading as quickly as it came. Though you tried, you couldn’t remain mad or even annoyed at the god for long. You cared for him too much.
A small chuckle sounds through the dark room. “I don’t know. However long I feel like it, I suppose.”
Opening your eyes, you sit and push your covers off. “Come here.” You pat the space next to you on the bed.
There’s a creak as Baldur stands from a chair he’d put in the corner. “You do know I can’t feel a thing, right?” He asked, almost teasingly, though there was a tinge of sadness and longing behind it. “I don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish by getting me into bed.”
You snort as he nears. “If you must know, I plan on using you as a pillow,” you say as you move around some more, pushing yourself as far from the edge as possible.
It’s your bed’s turn to creak as Baldur sits, his eyes glued to it as he manoeuvres his way around. He’d learned early on that it was nearly impossible to navigate in the dark without touch.
It was yet another thing stolen from him by this damn curse.
“Lay down, Baldur,” you grumble as you grab the top layer of your covers.
With only an eye-roll, he does as you say, flopping onto your bed. Despite the force, it didn’t knock the breath out of him like it would have a normal person. Like it used to do to him.
It was strange how much he missed the little things like that. Things as simple as the wind against his skin, the feel of clothing on his body, and even getting out of breath. He longed for it all desperately now that it was out of his reach.
He watched you intently as you folded a blanket up and laid it over his chest. Baldur wished he could feel it. Not only did he miss the simple feeling of the cloth itself, but he also missed you. The absence of your warm, gentle touch left a hole in his heart.
“What’s that for?” He asked, focusing back on you in the dim moonlight.
He barely made out your shrug.
“Knowing you, you probably walked out here without anything more than your trousers, and I don’t feel like getting poked in the face by your nipples.”
That caused him to laugh as you landed on his chest with a thud, pulling your covers with you.
“Fair enough,” he muttered in the dark.
At that moment, he wished he could feel you trying to get comfortable on his chest. Instead, all he could do was hear the shifting of your covers and your light grunts and grumbles.
There was once a time when that wasn’t the case. Years ago, Baldur remembered, he could feel your warmth leeching into him, your skin against his own, and your nails tracing random patterns or the intricate curves of his tattoos.
He’d missed his chance back then to tell you how he felt. Now, though, he didn’t feel like he deserved what little you gave him.
Baldur knew that he wasn’t the same god as he once was. He knew he’d broken down mentally, little by little, as the years went by. Shit, he knew that even if he got his ability to feel back right this very second and started to get back what he’d lost mentally, it wouldn’t be fair of him to ask you to wait for him to recover. He loved you too much to ask that of you.
Baldur wondered why you still let him keep the key you’d given him, why you let him watch over you as you slept even though he no longer could enjoy something so simple, and especially why you invited him to stay beside you in your bed.
It felt like someone else should be here, in his place. Someone who could wrap their arms around you without needing to see precisely what they were doing. Someone who could feel you against them. Someone who was warm and wouldn’t poke your eye out with their hard nipple.
You didn’t seem to mind, though. Every night he came, you worked with it rather than telling him to stop coming, never complaining for more than a joke.
Sometimes, he could almost forget, even briefly, that he was cursed. If he recalled his last memories of this where he could feel you, he could almost believe the curse was just some horrid dream and nothing more.
The thought made him want to weep.
But he couldn’t do that.
When he was alone, he’d weep. Let the tears stream down his face until they were all dried up, and all that’s left is a yearning to feel their path along his cheeks and for your delicate touch to wipe them away.
But not here. Not now. The last thing he wanted was to scare you with his tears.
He released a shaky breath and stared at the ceiling, wishing this whole thing was just some cruel nightmare he would wake from.
It wasn’t, though, and he knew it.
Still, a god can dream.
•
You hummed as you snuggled against him, letting an ungloved hand dip beneath the blanket you’d laid on his chest.
It had been years since you’d touched him skin-on-skin. It was usually when you’d lay your head on his chest on nights like these. These times were the only times you could stand touching anyone’s skin. But you mostly let it happen because it was Baldur, and you enjoyed the feel of him. No one else mattered, not when you had him.
You sighed, content, as your hand met his stomach, flattening itself against the tattooed skin. You traced a few hearts over the inked patterns for a moment before stilling. You pushed your hand up in one fluid motion, nails wracking a path across his chest to rest on his other pec.
•
Baldur paused in his thoughts. He could have sworn that he felt something on his chest. A fleeting feeling that disappeared just as quick as it came. It was almost like a ghost of a sensation. In the back of his mind, he knew it was nothing more than a phantom of a touch once familiar to him, his mind tricking him into thinking he was feeling something based on old memories when, in reality, he was still as numb as ever. Still, though, he indulged this phantom feeling and let his mind wander back to his last night of being able to feel you. The caress of your hand against his upper chest, rubbing against his skin. Honestly, it felt so real it almost made him cry.
He swallowed the tears, though.
If his crying woke you up… Well, that’d be just another thing to feel guilty over.
He heard you hum quietly, swearing he felt your hand move against his body, your nails lightly tracing over his tattoos as if by memory.
It was just a lie, though. Baldur had to remind himself of that. His mind was just lying to him. After all, he couldn’t feel anything else. Not the air on his face, the blankets covering him, or the clothes on his body. It would be crazy, even for him, to believe he could feel you and nothing else.
It had to be crazier than even him, but he felt your hand move against him again, and it felt so fucking real, so real that it had to be.
Still, Baldur could not let himself get his hopes up. After all, he still couldn’t feel anything else.
He was quiet as he asked, barely a murmur as he said: “Are you moving?”
After you didn’t respond, he tried again, a little louder: “Are you moving?”
You sniffled and nodded lazily against his chest. Then, of course, you remembered he couldn’t feel anything and whispered a yes.
“Why?” You asked.
Baldur bolted up like lighting did down, pushing you and the blanket from his chest.
“Baldur!” You huffed.
“Sorry,” he said.
Baldur squinted, trying to make you out in the dark before touching what he hoped was your shoulder. Upon touching it, he quickly realised that it was not your shoulder but your neck.
“Baldur, that’s my neck. Let go.”
He let out a huff and a laugh in complete disbelief.
“I know, I know it’s your neck. It’s too big to be your shoulder,” Baldur said, his voice cracking. “Far softer, too.”
“What?”
“I- I can feel.” He paused as he gently cupped your face with one hand. “I can feel you.”
Tears fell freely from his eyes, but he didn’t know that. Nor did he really care.
“You’re all I can feel, but I can still feel you!”
You paused, astonished, before you grinned like a madman in the dark. Instinctively, you reached out to him, wanting to get as close as possible. Before the curse, he had craved affection like an addict. You knew his yearning had only increased after all these years of nothingness.
“That’s great, Baldur,” you said. “I’m happy for you.”
Then, something odd happened.
You felt his other hand resting on your cheek before he kissed you.
Soft and gentle like kitten fur.
Yeah, you were pretty sure that was a kiss. The pressure of another’s lips against your own made that clear. It was surreal. Still, your tired mind couldn’t catch up to what was happening until it was too late to respond in kind.
Taking this as a sign of rejection, Baldur pulled away. And, though you couldn’t see it, Baldur found himself cringing in wait, expecting your rejection.
He allowed his mind to wander as silence consumed your home. Would you hit him? Maybe yell and ask him what it was, exactly, that made him think it was okay to kiss you? Worse yet, what if you told him to leave and never speak to you again?
“Baldur,” you said.
“Yes.”
“Did you just kiss me?”
You could hear him gulping.
“Yes…”
“Could you do it again?”
Baldur giggled at that before giving your lips a light peck again.
You hummed as he pulled away, chasing his lips for one more kiss before he let his hands rest on your shoulders and trace down your arms.
Baldur rested his forehead against yours, and you knew he was grinning even without a light.
You squeezed one of his sides before speaking. “Can I sleep now?”
He snorted before falling back onto the bed. “Fine, but I’m not letting you go.”
— SYNOPSIS: (bakugou has a crush on his baby mama) you take it upon yourself to deliver this ugly yellow haired figurine prototype to the dynamight office
— WARNINGS: pro hero!bkg, suggestive, flirting, swears, jealousy
BABY DADDY MASTERLIST
katsuki: Hey
katsuki: Random ask but does Kenji have a small figurine in his bag or room that kinda looks like me?
katsuki: It’s a prototype and the manufacturers want it back
You: IMG.347
You: this looks like your cousin kakugo batsuki
You: it is SO ugly
You: you do not look like this
katsuki: Thanks I fucking hope I don’t look like that
katsuki: The final will be so sick you’ll be begging me for one
katsuki: I’ll come pick it up in the evening
being the good, most useful baby mama you are, you took it upon yourself to hand deliver this manky ugly looking dynamight to the man himself. this seven inch, simpson yellow haired, thin milk bottle plastic figurine to the gorgeous, wheat blonde, greek god muscled, real dynamight, who is also your baby father.
the last time he saw you, you were snotty and crying in your old pyjamas… at least you had your grey leggings that you know made your ass look round but otherwise, you truly were a sorry sight. wailing in his arms as he soothed you like a baby. today, you wanted to show you’re an all rounder, you can cry, you can mother, you can look sexy yet casual on your day off.
you’ve been up all morning after dropping kenji off at nursery and you’ve got hours until you have to collect him again, so you pull on your favourite jeans, a cute bandeau and cardigan. it’s a slightly upgraded errand running outfit. right? right.
dynamight’s agency is massive. you only ever hang around outside to pick up kenji, never really needing to go inside but now, you can’t help but gasp. there’s people everywhere, rushing back and forth, people holding papers, you see through the glass a few heroes quirk training. there’s people around you in heavy fighting gear, black bulletproof padding and gauntlets similar to bakugou’s. you’re drawn to the trophy wall, the majority with DYNAMIGHT engraved perfectly, then a few for sidekicks, protégés and the agency itself. it’s the plaque on the wall that grabs your attention, hand prints pressed deeply into gold though they’re nothing like the massive paws bakugou’s got on him now. much smaller, child’s ones, dating to when he was… sixteen.
“hey! welcome to dynamight’s agency. do you need some assistance?”
it feels like your first day in a new school. you look to the lady at the desk, one of his many receptionists. you wonder if this is the one that gives kenji doughnuts. she looks younger than you, only by a few years with bright sparkling eyes and waist length neon orange hair. she’s pretty, sweet.
“hi! sorry, was just looking at the wall. i need to see katsuki. bakugou… dynamight.” you stutter. what does his team call him? dynamight, right?
this woman frowns at first, then softens, laughing a little. there’s no way she is laughing at you right now. her eyes crinkle at the corners, tone half apologetic, half mocking, “sorry miss, you can’t just ask to see dynamight. if it’s important you’ll have to send an email to get approved by security. if it’s fan related we have a museum and fan mail box to the left.”
now you laugh, loud with all humour gone. do you look like an idiot? you slap on a smile. she doesn’t know, she’s just assuming, you repeat in your head but you can’t miss the mockery.
“ah okay. thanks anyway.”
but you don’t move. you stay exactly where you are, whipping out your phone and pressing call.
“miss if you could move out the way—,”
there’s one ring and you’re through,
“hi sweet—, i mean yn—,”
“katsuki, i’m at the agency let me up.”
“hah? you are?”
“yep. your team thinks i’m a fan. i swear i won’t steal your underwear.”
bakugou chuckles on the other end. you can hear movement, boots stomping. you glance over at the receptionist whose mouth might permanently be stuck in an o shape.
“you don’t have to steal a pair. i’ll let you take one, if you give me one of yours.”
you roll your eyes, facing away from the desk. your face heats just imagining him holding your underwear. him stuffing it in his face, inhaling…
“you’re so stupid.”
“okay, sweetheart. how’s kenj?”
he started calling you sweetheart the last time you saw him with your snot all over his jumper. you love it. unsurprisingly. big sexy pro hero baby father calls you sweetheart. someone needs to get your head checked out. you’re not sure why you’re still on the phone to him when he’s on the way to get you.
“kenji’s good. dropped him off this morning. he was telling me he’s looking forward to swimming with daddy.”
“kenji? you’re kenji’s mother?” the receptionist asks, not even trying to hide that she’s listening to your conversation. you give her a quick smile, even adding in a wave.
“did you see those pics i sent of him? he’s the fuckin’ best in the class, gonna have to put him with the bigger kids soon.”
you did. you were close to making it your phone wallpaper. katsuki holding kenji in the water, both boys with the same expression on their faces. laughing, eyes squinting, though kenji’s lacking a couple teeth and katsuki is grinning with all of his, gold tooth catching the light. kenji is mid splashing about while bakugou keeps him just above the water. you definitely didn’t study how the pool water sat in the dips of his shoulders or how his bicep shone with droplets. actually, he doesn’t look that good with his hair all pushed off his forehead, slicked down with water. you sigh.
“not yet! he needs to be talking with kids his age!”
that’s when you see the man himself, strolling out the lift with his mobile pressed to his ear. he finds you instantly and gives you a wink that makes you stand up straighter. you’re transfixed and you have to consciously remind yourself to blink. though you’re not the only one. everyone around you gives attention to the pro hero. either nodding to greet him, staring, making sure they look like they’re working. everything about bakugou katsuki demands you look and it only makes you think about him in your apartment demanding you tell him what’s wrong.
you chew the inside of your cheek as his voice rumbles down the phone, “don’t wanna stop our kid being a future olympian. you look pretty.”
you see his lips move when he says it, no need to swerve through people to walk over to you because people naturally make way. he’s out of hero gear, just black boots, black cargos and a black jumper. you would swoon, if it wasn’t for the fact the receptionist is still looking over at you, clearly trying to work out the relationship status of you both.
“you look okay,” you whisper because as soon as you know it, he’s right before you, taking over all your personal space.
he hangs up the call and it’s the grin he gives like he’s genuinely happy to see you. he’s got his gold tooth in and it only makes you stare at his lips.
“hey.”
“dynamight sir! sorry for not sending your girlfriend up! i wasn’t aware!”
the word vomit breaks the stare down you and bakugou had going on. you can barely register what she says but one word sticks out.
“oh i’m not his girlfriend,” you awkwardly laugh, “we just share a child.”
you can’t read bakugou’s expression, there’s no smirk or frown. you do notice however, the receptionist relax, her eyes glowing with possibility.
“yn ln. her name’s already on my list, right?”
a couple clicks on her keyboard and she nods, “yep, it’s there dynamight. sorry for the misunderstanding!”
bakugou grunts in response, “thanks sara.”
then he nods his head for you to follow him. you make sure to give one last look to sara who looks like a pouting baby about to stomp her foot with her bottom lip jutted out. you definitely don’t miss the hearts in her eyes at the man beside you. bakugou lets you through the security gate, ushering you by your waist to walk in front of him.
you don’t say a word until the doors clank shut.
“are you fucking her?”
bakugou hasn’t even turned round yet, hasn’t even pressed the button for the top floor.
“hah?”
“the receptionist. orange hair. sara. are you?”
bakugou blinks at you, then presses the button, making the lift rumble upwards. the silence is killing you as he comfortably leans against the wall, adjusting his sleeves and then crossing his arms.
“katsuki!”
“why the fuck do you think that?” but there’s a smile begging to be released, the corner of his lips inching up as he follows the creases between your eyebrows, your eyes refusing to leave his.
“she clearly has a crush on you. she is a pretty girl.”
“and because of that i’ve fucked her?”
“that’s a hr violation, you can get in trouble for that being the big boss and all,” you say nonchalantly, turning away from him to face the door, looking at the floor numbers ticking upwards.
you’re not sure why your heart is racing, slapping against your chest like it’s going to fall out your ass.
again, he doesn’t say anything. he just begins to laugh beside you, shoulders bouncing out the corner of your eye. you clench your jaw so hard it’s about to break.
“why are you laughing!?”
“‘cause obviously i don’t have sex with my employees, yn.”
“are you sure, because she was staring at you like she was picturing you naked.”
the door pings open just as bakugou says, “you must be picturing me naked all the—,”
three women are chatting, holding their folders and papers waiting for the lift. their eyes widen in unison, catching exactly what bakugou just said. they look at him then over at you. they’ve wearing signature dynamight blazers, all black with orange trim.
bakugou sighs internally, “ladies,” he nods and you give them a small smile as they sing their chorus of, “hi dynamight! dynamight, sir!”
then they scatter in the lift as you step out though not before hearing a whisper of, “that’s his girlfriend! kenji’s—,”
your son is really famous around here.
“rumours get round fast.”
now he sighs, leading you to his office door. “yeah. that one’s not that bad though.”
you watch as a tiny camera scans his face and he presses a finger on a screen. it takes less than a second and his office door pops open. then he turns to you, hand out to his office, “cmon.”
maybe it’s because you haven’t been on a date in a while and you really need to up your standards because you struggle to look bakugou in the eye as he lets you walk in first.
you gasp, “oh wow.”
the last time you’ve been to bakugou’s office was over a year ago when he was just moving into the building. all he had was a desk, a whole load of boxes and your son who was at the time still small enough to be strapped onto his chest. now, the room is beautifully decorated, with a wall of the evolution of his hero gear, framed photos of him and his hero friends, his parents and kenji. he’s got a wall full of books and then two walls of windows— corner office privilege. there’s a corner just for kenji, with picture books, toys, drawers with spare clothes and snacks.
bakugou stares as you circle around his office and he’s forced to see the room through your eyes.
“sorry it’s a mess. haven’t tidied since kenj was last here.” he tries to quickly dart to his sofa, folding the blanket kenji uses and placing it over the back.
you shake your head, staring up at an air tight seven foot tall cylinder with a white mannequin wearing dynamight’s pre debut hero suit. then you’re back at his photo wall, cooing at every picture of your son till you land on one featuring the three of you. framed and up for everyone to see.
“you have this in your office? framed?”
bakugou blushes a deep red behind you but you’re still transfixed on the photo. you’ve got it too in kenji’s newborn photo album. it’s the day you gave birth to him, still sweaty, freshly out of tears, lying in the hospital bed holding your tiny little baby boy. bakugou’s bent slightly at your side looking down at you both, kenji’s tiny hand holding the tip of his finger. the picture was a few years ago but you remember everything about that day clearly.
“course i do. it’s one of my favourite photos.”
bakugou’s come up to stand beside you, his arms behind his back.
“i look—,”
“beautiful. like you just gave birth to our son. don’t say stupid shit.”
you laugh, because fuck, it was the hardest day of your life but it gave you your cute little rascal so you can’t be that mad.
“thanks katsuki. i was so nervous when you saw me like that. then i didn’t care because you made that happen.”
“i remember it being a joint effort,” he smirks and you roll your eyes.
“really? i don’t think i recall,” you reply and you watch bakugou’s face drop in real time.
“you’re joking, right? you can’t remember that night?”
you probably think about the night you were together at least thrice a week now. it rushes into your head without warning. sometimes it replays in your dreams with extra added scenes or sometimes when you’re in the shower it forms on the fog on the doors.
house party. you were a plus one. bakugou. a random bedroom.
you inhale sharply through your nose, turning away from the photo, walking across his office to stare out the window instead. he’s got the whole view of the city, you could probably point out your apartment from where you’re standing.
bakugou follows you like a puppy.
“nope. not a thing.”
“you can’t remember how you stared me down like you wanted to fuckin’ chew me out from across the room and when i finally spoke to you outside, you spilled your drink all over my shirt.”
you scrunch your face, fighting the cringe as you gaze down at the traffic. you’ve blocked that part out of your memory.
“no, katsuki. i don’t.”
“and then you started apologisin’ and said you wouldn’t mind seeing what’s underneath and i went up to change my shirt and you followed, practically stripped me naked, jumped on me and had your way with me?”
you gasp, turning to face him, “you liar! i started apologising because i was apologetic and when i was trying to flirt with you, you got all nervous and started stuttering that you’re gonna change your top. then you grabbed my hand to follow you. i’m not sorry i was bold enough to kiss you first.”
bakugou now, two years later, doesn’t seem to carry that nervousness. he doesn’t look at the skyline, nor the robbery that’s brewing a few streets over and the hero on patrol rushing in. he stares at you and he thinks this is the first time his cheeks have ever ached from smiling.
“i’m not fuckin’ sorry either, we could even—,”
“dynamight! kacchan, you in there? why’d you take my face off the door lock?!”
the smile that would have been permanent if it stayed for another two seconds drops immediately at the whine of his annoying sparky friend on the other side of the door. bakugou flings his head and groans, “i just wanna fuckin’ kiss you and this idiot—,”
“kacchan let me… wait is yn in there, you’re both clothed right—,”
bakugou storms over to his office door, swinging it open for charge bolt to walk in like it’s his office. he’s cute, quirky, paying bakugou no mind and looking straight at you.
“so you guys finally got together then? i heard the girls in the lift saying your girlfriend is up here,” he nudges bakugou and bakugou, well he looks as if he’s about to explode. he looks up at his ceiling and takes deep breaths, his hand running down his face.
“i’m never gonna tell you shit again.”
“oh i’m not his girlfriend, charge bolt. just kenji’s mum.”
“kenji! love that kid. and call me kaminari, actually denki if you guys aren’t dating—,”
“i’m gonna fuckin’ kill you.”
“oh, you’re kaminari! matching names to faces to names. kenji loves you, talks about that trick you do when you click your fingers.”
kaminari clicks his finger and an electrical spark forms from his thumb tip, shooting ten inches in the air.
“oooooo,” your eyes widen, “that is impressive.”
bakugou scoffs, “what the fuck?”
bakugou spreads both his palms before him causing yellow and orange explosions to blast from his skin. a lingering sweet smell spreads through the room. it all makes both you and kaminari step back.
“show off,” kaminari mumbles.
you giggle, “he is!”
“you…,” bakugou clenches his jaw so clearly bothered that both you and kaminari laugh, “you both are children. why are you even here?”
your laugh halts halfway down your throat. this is the middle of their work day and they are busy pro heroes.
you cringe inwardly, “oh, you, um, you sent that text this morning about picking up ugly dynamight. i thought i’d bring it now?”
you scramble in your bag, pulling out the ugly yellow haired, uneven orange eyed figurine and handing it to the real life prettier version.
kaminari’s laugh shoots out of him, “that thing is ugly as fuck.”
bakugou reaches for the figurine, his calloused fingertips brushing against your knuckles. he doesn’t pull it from your grip, just rests his fingers over yours. where you touch, you burn, unable to rip your gaze from his.
“i wasn’t askin’ why you were here. you can come whenever you want. i was gonna swing by and get it from you later.”
“just wanted to save you the trip. i was in the area,” every word edges to a whisper by the end and somehow, you’re standing closer than you were before.
bakugou’s back to looking at your lips, how your wet tongue swipes across your bottom one leaving a shine he’s desperate to kiss.
“wow. and you guys aren’t dating? is there a good reason for that?”
two heads whip to kaminari who’s standing with his pointer finger tapping against his temple like he’s trying to work out a puzzle of you and bakugou.
“now why the fuck are you here?”
slowly bakugou takes the figure from your hand, placing it on the top shelf. away from kenji’s eye view. you’re quick to stuff your hands in your pockets. it’s way too intimate with katsuki. it’s even intimate with another person in the room.
you zone out when they begin to talk hero business, wandering back to your tv screen of the city.
katsuki wanted to kiss you earlier, he was probably going to try and you would have let him. you would’ve let him shove you against his desk or even the window, unbutton your jeans and let him do whatever he desired. but you shouldn’t, no matter how much you want to because you have a child to think of, you both do. you can’t confuse kenji, mess up his routine for what? a night with your baby father?
but you look over at bakugou, arms crossed leaning against his cherry oak desk as kaminari rants off to him about paperwork, their last mission, the hero commission, something else and there’s not a part of you that doesn’t want him.
he carries a frown to show he’s listening, butting in comments that make kaminari nod in agreement. but once he feels your attention on him, his glare shifts to you. his ruby eyes trail from your feet, up your legs, your chest to your face.
you want him… you do… but with kenji in the picture it has to be all or nothing and you’re not sure if you want all… if you’re ready for all.
“d’you wanna get something to eat before we pick up kenji?”
we. kenji doesn’t see you as a we and he knows it’s not the day to see daddy.
you shake your head, gathering your bag on your shoulder. you feel all jittery with realisations upon confusions, “no, no i still have other errands to do! sorry for taking so much time out your days.”
bakugou stands abruptly, “what just happened?”
always one step ahead of you, grabbing you by the arm when your fingers wrap around the door handle. “you okay? you went somewhere there.”
you shake your head, pulling yourself out of his grip. “i’m good, just have lots to do today.”
you can tell he doesn’t quite believe you. though he doesn’t push it, just watches you like he’s studying. “okay. i’ll pick up kenj tomorrow for swimming class. i’ll send you some photos.”
“of kenji.”
“what?”
“send photos of kenji. not you in the water—, never mind. i’ll see you later.”
bakugou takes a step towards you to swing open his office door. it’s that questioning face he’s got again. eyebrows furrowed. lips slightly pouted. gaze never leaving yours.
“bye, yn. i’ll be sure to send you a mirror selfie when i get out of the pool. even do some press ups before i send it.”
you roll your eyes at your baby daddy and you’re not shocked to see that smirk slowly appear. you want to eat him. sit on his lap while he calls you pretty.
you huff, “goodbye katsuki.”
“bye yn.”
“bye yn! i’ll probably see you soon.”
you blink at the golden blonde behind your blonde, fuck, you forgot he was still here again.
“yep, see you kaminari!”
one last look at bakugou and you’re off down his corridor, refusing to look back because you know he’s still watching you. it’s only when you step in the lift, you hear his office door click shut.
likes don’t do anything on tumblr! but reblogs, comments and asks mean the world! i delete comments asking for the next part. thanks xox
🎀 ; Sukuna notices, because he always does.
🌸 ; art: @/tenobeee on X
🧁; masterlist
Sukuna notices the change before he understands it.
At first it registers only as the absence of irritation, which is its own kind of irritation.
Satomi usually makes herself known in ways both deliberate and constant. She stays late under weak excuses that fool nobody. She appears at his office hours without warning and acts as if she is granting him the privilege of being bothered. She sends him messages that are half demand, half bait, telling him to pick her up, to look at something, to answer, to stop ignoring her, to pay attention. She takes up space easily, speaks with intention, laughs when she wants the room to turn toward her and sharpens when she wants it to pull back. She is never quiet by accident. Even when she says little, she does it in a way that asks to be noticed.
Then, over the span of a few weeks, she begins to disappear in increments.
Not all at once. That would have been obvious.
It starts with her leaving too soon after class.
Usually she lingers. Not in ways anyone could call indiscreet, not unless they know where to look. She waits for others to gather their things, drags out the end of her packing, glances at him when nobody else is paying attention. Sometimes she finds a reason to ask a question she already knows the answer to. Sometimes she says nothing at all and only stands near enough to make him feel her there while the room empties.
She likes testing how long it takes for his patience to fray. She likes watching it happen.
Then she stops.
Class ends and she is already on her feet. Her bag is over her shoulder before the last student near the aisle has finished standing. She leaves with the others instead of after them. Her gaze stays on the door or on her phone or on the girl walking next to her. Never him.
The first time it happens, Sukuna thinks nothing of it. She is a student. She has a schedule. She is allowed other priorities. He is not so pathetic that he requires a performance after every lecture.
The fifth time, he notices.
By the second week, he notices enough to become annoyed.
She no longer shows up at office hours just to lean against the frame of his doorway and say something aggravating in a pretty voice. She no longer sends him messages from the library demanding he buy her coffee if he expects her to survive his workload. She no longer appears near his car at the end of the day and acts as if it is his job to know she needs a ride. When she does message him, which is rare now, it is brief and almost impersonal. Fine. Busy. Later. She has never used language with him so sparingly before.
The lack of trouble changes the shape of his days in stupid, noticeable ways.
He hates that he notices.
Sukuna sits through faculty meetings with one leg crossed over the other and his phone facedown on the table, and still some part of him keeps expecting it to light up with her name and some demand that pretends not to be an invitation. He walks into his office between lectures and catches himself glancing at the spare chair because she has a bad habit of appearing in it with her legs crossed and his pen in her fingers. He leaves campus in the evening and half expects to find her outside the building, tapping her heel and rolling her eyes because he took too long.
Nothing.
He tells himself the silence should be a relief.
Instead it crawls under his skin.
Like rumors crawl.
He hears some of it in the teachers’ room before he pieces together that it matters.
Not much. Not direct. Faculty gossip never arrives whole. It comes shredded by disinterest and cowardice, shaped into things people can repeat without having to own them.
Somebody says there is been nonsense spreading among the students again. Another says young people live for petty cruelty and boredom. A woman from another department mentions, with the lazy distance of somebody commenting on weather, that one of Professor Nanami’s girls has had rumors going around. Someone else asks which one. The answer is vague. Tall one. Pretty one. Blue eyes. Then somebody says, oh, the clever one.
Satomi.
Sukuna hears her name and lifts his eyes from the stack of exams in front of him.
The conversation does not stop, but it shifts under his attention the way rooms often do when he bothers to let people feel he is listening.
The details are not particularly clear. A rumor, apparently. Something personal. Something about identity. Students being nasty. Girls in the restrooms. Boys acting like rejected idiots. The usual.
One older lecturer tuts in false sympathy and says that generation is obsessed with labels. Another mutters that privacy does not exist anymore. Somebody says it is probably exaggerated. Another says no, I heard there was something to it.
Sukuna thinks, briefly and without much heat, that if people know Satomi is trans then they know. So what.
In his head, it ends there.
What is there to piece together? She is a woman. She is his. Neither fact should be open for debate by strangers with too much spare time. It does not occur to him, not then, that others might not let it sit with the same indifference. It does not occur to him that Satomi may not feel the same hard contempt he would. He knows she hides certain things. Knows she keeps her personal life guarded with almost everyone. Knows she likes control over how she is perceived. But knowing facts about her and understanding the shape of her fear are two different things, and fear is not something she has ever handed him plainly.
So he dismisses the chatter.
He should not.
Later, when he thinks back on those days, what irritates him most is not that others were stupid. That is expected. It is that he was not paying close enough attention to how stupidity lands differently when it is aimed at someone already living inside scrutiny.
He notices the rest in retrospect. The details gather once he knows where to place them.
Satomi does not eat with the same group anymore. Not properly.
There used to be a small orbit around her at lunch, fluid but consistent. Maki when schedules aligned. Miwa more often than not. Sometimes Momo, sometimes another girl or two from a different seminar. Satomi at the center without seeming to force it, because people like looking at her and listening to her and provoking her. She makes a table feel chosen simply by sitting there.
Then that changes too.
He sees her only occasionally in the courtyard during the break period. Sometimes she is with one girl. Sometimes two. Never the larger loose group that used to gather around her. On some days she is alone, eating nothing, pretending to read.
Other times he does not see her at all.
Once, from the faculty window that overlooks the side path between the language building and the humanities wing, he watches her turn the corner too sharply and nearly collide with a cluster of students. Three girls, two boys. One of the girls says something. Sukuna cannot hear it through the glass. Satomi’s shoulders go rigid for exactly one breath, then she walks on without stopping. The students look after her. One of the boys laughs. One girl smacks his arm. The whole thing lasts no more than a few seconds.
It irritates him all afternoon.
By then he is already aware that her attention in class has shifted.
Not her performance. Never that. Satomi is still sharp enough to answer before most students finish thinking. She still knows the material better than half the room. If anything, her answers get cleaner. More stripped down. Less playful. She no longer uses wit as garnish. She gives him the exact thing he asks for and then looks back down at her notes, as if she resents the air between them.
She also stops looking at him when he is not speaking to her.
That is the detail that finally settles into him as wrong.
Satomi is vain enough to enjoy being watched and bold enough to do some watching of her own. Not crudely. Not often enough to be caught by people who do not know what to look for. But he knows. He knows the particular weight of her attention, the quiet insistence of it. He knows when she is tracking him through a room out of defiance or fondness or need. He knows how she looks when she wants something and is deciding whether or not to make him work for the privilege of giving it to her.
Now she keeps her eyes away.
Sukuna begins to test it.
He says her name in class more often than necessary. Calls on her for material he could easily extract from someone else. Asks follow-up questions he knows she can answer. Waits for the moment she must look at him to respond.
Each time, her gaze rises, fixes on him, gives him what he wants, and drops away again the second she is allowed.
No challenge in it. No spark.
He starts hating the room when it happens.
By the time she misses a first class, he is already in a bad mood.
He does not look for her immediately. That would be absurd. Students miss lectures all the time. They get sick, oversleep, lose track of deadlines, decide on temporary stupidity, then return with excuses and visible regret.
Still, as he takes attendance with his eyes rather than the roster, the empty seat lands too sharply in his mind.
He teaches anyway.
The next lecture she attends, she says nothing after class and leaves before he reaches the second sentence of what should have been a correction on her paper. He watches the door shut behind her and decides he will let her have whatever sulk this is.
Then she misses another.
Then another.
By the time he checks his phone between lectures and sees that she has not answered the message he sent the previous evening, something ugly has already begun to collect low in his gut.
Where are you.
A simple question. No reply.
He sends another hours later.
You miss again and you explain.
Nothing.
He could call. He does not. Not yet. Something in him resists the shape of chasing her when he still does not know if there is anything to chase.
He asks nobody at first. Pride, perhaps. Or caution. He has no interest in making her absence into a public inquiry that invites curiosity. Whatever exists between them functions because it is contained. He will not be the one to loosen the lid.
Then she misses office hours she herself had asked about three days earlier.
That is when the edge of concern finally cuts clean through annoyance.
Sukuna sits in his chair after the last waiting student leaves, glances at the clock, then at the half-open door. Satomi would usually have entered without knocking by now, full of some bad attitude and a question she could have asked by email. The room stays empty. Ten minutes pass. Fifteen. The evening on campus deepens outside his window. Nothing.
He takes out his phone.
You’re testing my patience.
Sent. Delivered. Not read.
He stares at the screen longer than he should, then locks it and slips it back into his pocket with all the restraint of a man who would rather crush something.
The first useful answer comes from Miwa.
Not because he seeks her out in any dramatic way. He simply catches her by the vending machines after one of his classes, small shoulders tucked in, hands wrapped around a canned tea she has not opened yet. She startles when he says her name. Most students do. He has that effect. Miwa more than most.
“Professor,” she says, standing straighter at once.
Sukuna studies her face for a second. She is quiet, observant, the sort who notices more than she advertises. Satomi tolerates very few people closely. Miwa is one of the rare ones. That alone makes her useful.
“Where is she,” he asks.
Miwa blinks once.
“Who.”
He gives her a look.
She folds immediately, not out of fear exactly, but because pretending otherwise would be insulting both of them.
“Satomi?” Miwa grips the can a little tighter. “I don’t know.”
“Try harder.”
She wets her lips, glancing down the hall and then back to him.
“She’s been ignoring us.”
Us.
Good.
That means she has not singled him out for avoidance. The conclusion should soothe him. It does not.
“How long.”
“A few days.”
“A few,” he repeats flatly.
Miwa lifts her eyes again. There is worry in them, plain enough to make him stop pressing quite so hard.
“I messaged her. Maki did too. She said she was fine, then stopped answering.”
The answer lands badly.
Sukuna says nothing for a beat.
Miwa, perhaps because she mistakes his silence for openness, adds quietly,
“She’s not acting like herself.”
No. He has gathered that much.
“Did something happen?”
Miwa hesitates.
That hesitation tells him enough that his whole attention narrows.
“What.”
She lowers her voice.
“There were rumors.”
He says nothing.
“People were talking about her. About… personal things.” Miwa swallows. “I think someone may have told her something.”
His face does not change. He is practiced enough that it never has to. But something under his sternum turns hard and cold.
“What did they say?”
“I don’t know exactly.” Miwa looks miserable for not knowing. “Satomi didn’t tell me.”
He nods once. That is all. No thanks, no dismissal.
Just a gesture that ends the exchange.
Miwa lingers.
“Professor.”
He looks at her again.
“She’s really not okay.”
Sukuna lets that settle. Then he says,
“I heard you.”
Miwa nods and leaves with her tea still unopened.
From that point on, the days sharpen.
He messages Satomi again that night.
Answer me.
No reply.
The next morning she misses class.
So does the following afternoon.
He gives her five days.
Not because he enjoys generosity, but because five days is enough time to determine whether this is retreat or collapse. Enough time for fever to break, for panic to dull, for stubborn girls to stop licking their wounds in private and come back swinging. Enough time for her to make contact if she intends to remain in command of herself.
Five days and every class missed.
Five days and every message unanswered.
Five days and no appearance anywhere on campus except the briefest recorded exit from her dorm building for food and then back again. Five days and she ignores her friends too. Maki messages him once, a rare and unpleasant overlap of their separate concern, only to ask if he has heard from her. He does not answer Maki, because he does not care to start whatever line of questioning would follow.
By the third day he has already set people on it.
Sukuna’s money does not come from teaching.
The university salary is useful only in that it gives him routine, access, a legitimate face to wear over other operations, and a reason to keep certain worlds overlapping just enough. His real income comes from channels far older and more dangerous than academia. Men answer him because he owns too much of what feeds them. Information arrives because he expects it to.
Access exists because he pays for it, built it, or took it.
He does not need much.
Dorm entry records. Camera timestamps. Confirmation she is inside. Confirmation she is not alone. Confirmation there has been no hospital call, no ambulance, no obvious emergency. Confirmation that, yes, she has barely left and no, she has not had visitors except a girl once, likely Maki, carrying a convenience store bag.
He tells himself this is precaution.
It is also the only thing that keeps him from ripping the door off her room on the fourth day, but he knows the girls visited her with food and drinks, and left at night empty handed.
By the fifth, his restraint is gone.
He leaves campus later than usual, after a meeting he does not remember hearing through. He goes home only long enough to change out of the charcoal suit he wore to lecture and into black trousers and a black turtleneck under a dark cardigan, something that reads less like professor and more like the man he becomes once formal obligations end. The clothes sit cleanly on him. Expensive. Simple. Controlled. He would look overdone at most dormitories. He does not care.
The drive is quiet and too short.
He parks, cuts the engine, and sits for one breath with both hands resting on the wheel. He listens to the silence of the car. Measures the pulse at his throat. Lets the anger settle into a useable shape.
Then he gets out.
The campus housing building is bright in the ugly institutional way all student living is bright. Fluorescent hallways. Bad flooring. Doors too thin. Young people passing with wet hair, textbooks, half-empty laundry baskets, faces that register him and then look away fast. He moves through it untouched, each step precise, the building’s cameras catching his image from corners he already knows.
He knocks once on her door.
Nothing.
He knows she is inside. He checked before coming. More than that, he can hear the shower running beyond the wall, a steady rush of water behind wood and tile. He imagines her in there and the first image his mind offers is so dark it sours the inside of his mouth — blood diluted at a drain, pills on the sink, wrists, heat, collapse. Satomi is dramatic, proud, and fragile in places she guards with claws. He has never thought her foolish enough to hurt herself that way, but five days of silence peel certainty apart.
He does not knock again.
His hand goes to his pocket and closes around the copy of her key.
She gave it to him in a mood halfway between teasing and affection sometime during the second month of whatever this arrangement is. He remembers the look on her face, chin raised as if daring him to make fun of her for the gesture. For emergencies, she had said. Or for when you finally stop pretending you don’t like when I’m in your space.
He had taken the key, slipped it onto a separate ring, and never once used it.
Until now.
The lock turns easily.
He opens the door and steps inside.
Her dorm room is warmer than the hallway and smells faintly of steam, soap, and something sweet that has long gone stale. The curtains are mostly drawn. One lamp on near the desk. The room is neat in the surfaces that matter and chaotic in the details that reveal strain — clothes folded but not put away, half-finished cups, skincare on the sink counter visible through the cracked bathroom door, papers stacked too precisely to be genuine tidiness. Her bag lies by the bed as if dropped there days ago.
The shower is still running.
He crosses the room in three steps and pushes the bathroom door open.
Steam hits him first, dense and hot enough to make the air feel thick. The mirror is fully fogged. The tiles shine wet. The water comes down in a punishing stream from above, far hotter than it should be. Through the blur of it he sees her shape.
Satomi is folded into herself under the showerhead, arms wrapped tight around her own body as if she is trying to keep it from falling apart. Her back is to him at first, narrow shoulders shaking. Pale skin flushed bright from the heat. Long wet hair plastered pale against her spine and chest. She is crying hard enough that he can hear the breaks in her breath even over the water.
He freezes for exactly half a second.
Not because of her body. He has seen her in too many states for that to matter. Not because of nakedness. That is irrelevant beside the sight of her curled inward this completely, reduced to trembling and heat and effort just to keep standing.
She senses him a second later. Turns her head. Sees him.
Her blue eyes go wide with horror, shock, and something so raw it looks like pain caught in the act of trying to hide.
“Sukuna—”
He reaches past her and turns the shower off.
The sudden quiet is violent. Water still trickles from her hair, from her shoulders, down the lines of her body. The room fills with the sound of her breathing instead, ragged and wet.
“Don’t,” she says immediately, voice shredded. “Don’t look at me.”
She tries to cover herself more tightly, wrists crossing over chest and stomach, chin turning away, shoulders caving in with shame that arrives so fast it feels rehearsed. The motion slices straight through what is left of his restraint.
Sukuna catches both her wrists before she can hide behind them.
Not harshly. Firm enough to stop the movement, gentle enough not to startle her worse.
She jerks once against his grip, more from panic than resistance. He lowers her hands slowly, carefully, moving them out of the way not because he cares about seeing but because he refuses to let her turn herself into something that must be hidden from him.
Her face stays angled away.
“Look at me,” he says.
“No.”
Her voice cracks on the word.
He does not repeat himself. Instead he eases forward and wraps both arms around her.
The effect is immediate.
Satomi is soaking wet. The heat of the room clings to her skin, and the water soaks through his cardigan and shirt in seconds, spreads cold along his chest and stomach beneath the remaining warmth of her body. She is all tremor and breath and damp hair against him. He pulls her in until there is no distance left, until her forehead brushes his collarbone and her knees stop that small shaking attempt to hold themselves rigid.
She makes a broken sound at first, offended by the contact and relieved by it in the same breath.
“You’re getting wet,” she mutters, as if that is the part of this he should mind.
The sentence is so absurd in this moment that something almost like tenderness cuts clean through his anger.
“I noticed.”
She still refuses to lift her face. He lets her have that much.
One of his hands slides to the back of her head, fingers threading through the heavy wet strands there, holding without forcing. The other settles low at her back, palm broad and warm against skin heated too far by the water. He rubs once, slow and steady.
Her breathing stutters again. Then, just as quickly, shifts.
The resistance goes out of her with painful speed.
Both her arms come around his torso, tentative only for an instant before they tighten. She clings. Not delicately. Not seductively. Not like the teasing thing she usually is with him. She latches on with the humiliating urgency of someone who has been hurting alone long enough that touch becomes an answer before pride can interfere.
Her face presses into his chest. Through the soaked fabric he can feel the shape of her mouth against him, the warm exhale there, the way she breathes him in with desperate, exhausted greed. He knows his cologne. Knows the brand because he chose it for the fact it stays subtle even after a long day, dark and clean and expensive without being cloying. Satomi has teased him about it before, calling it unfair that a man like him should smell that good. Now she inhales it like she has been deprived.
He tightens his arms.
There is nothing hurried in the hold after that. Nothing performative. He simply keeps her there. Lets her cry into him until the worst edge burns itself down.
Time stretches strangely in the steamy bathroom. He does not count minutes. He counts the smaller things instead. How her grip changes. How the sobs stop tearing through her and become shaky breaths. How the tension in her shoulders eases by degrees. How the frantic heat of panic leaves her muscles and something more fragile takes its place.
By the time she speaks again, her voice is low and rough from crying.
“I’m sorry.”
He looks down at the crown of her head.
“For what.”
“For this.”
He gives the answer no softness because softness would insult the weight of it.
“Stupid thing to apologize for.”
Her fingers curl once in his wet shirt. That is all. But he feels it.
After another minute, when he is certain she can stand without swaying, he says,
“You intend to tell me what happened.”
It is not phrased as a question. He does not care to pretend.
Satomi only makes a small sound against his chest, something too muffled to parse.
He glances toward the counter, toward the towel hanging there, then back down at her bent head.
“You’re spending the weekend at my apartment.”
She stiffens just slightly, enough to show she heard.
“You can pack,” he says. “Or I’ll do it for you.”
Another beat. Then a weak nod against his chest.
Good.
He does not move yet. Neither does she.
It becomes clear, in the stillness after decision, just how badly she has missed contact. Not sex, not flirtation, not the sharp pull-and-push they usually perform around each other. Simpler than that. More humiliating. She has missed being held by someone who does not ask anything from her first. He can feel it in how completely she settles. In how quickly her body chooses his as the place to stop fighting.
That realization makes something cold sharpen behind his ribs.
Someone did this.
Not in some grand tragic way. Not a single catastrophic act. Cruelty is rarely that clean. But someone, likely several someones, drove her into five days of silence and locked doors and scalding showers hot enough to redden her skin. Someone got inside the precise places where her pride and fear are knotted together and pulled until they tore.
He thinks of Yorozu.
Miwa had not known details, but she had known enough to look sick when looking at the girl during those days. That is enough for now.
Sukuna keeps one hand at the nape of Satomi’s neck and the other spread against the damp curve of her lower back and allows himself exactly one private thought about Yorozu and what fear can be taught to a careless mouth.
Then Satomi speaks again, so quietly he barely catches it.
“Sukuna.”
He hums once.
When she lifts her face at last, it is only partway. Enough for him to see her eyes, swollen and bright from crying, lashes wet and clumped, mouth soft and miserable. The sight punches harder than it should. Satomi is used to assembling herself into beauty before anyone gets a chance to see her unravel. Right now she is giving him what the rest of the world does not get.
“Do you think,” she begins, then stops.
He waits.
Her eyes flick away. Shame moves across her face so plainly that he already knows he is going to hate the question before she finishes it.
“Do you think I need surgery,” she asks, each word small and scraped raw, “to be a real woman?”
The entire room goes still inside him.
Anger arrives first, immediate and blinding, because the question itself is evidence. Somebody has been inside her head with filthy hands. Somebody has taken one of the oldest cruelties in the world and pushed it between her ribs until she believed it worth asking aloud. There are answers he could give in anger. There are names he could demand right now. There are vicious promises lining up behind his teeth.
He does not let a single one of them out.
Sukuna knows enough, if not always gracefully, to understand that this is not the moment for his rage. Rage would only make the question heavier. Would make her feel foolish for voicing it.
Right now she needs certainty so steady it does not shake even when his anger does.
He slides one hand up and under her chin, lifts her face fully.
Her eyes try to evade his and fail.
“No,” he says.
One word. Calm. Flat. Certain.
She just stares at him.
He keeps his voice level.
“You are a real woman.”
Her breath catches.
“You have always been.”
The tears well again instantly. He sees them gather in those too-bright blue eyes, held there by the force of her trying not to lose control all over him again.
He goes on before doubt can interrupt.
“You don’t need to carve yourself open for other people’s comfort. You don’t need permission. You don’t need proof.” His thumb rests still against her jaw. “The only thing you need is to know it and stop letting idiots tell you otherwise.”
Her mouth trembles.
He should probably stop there.
Instead he leans down and kisses her.
Softly, because anything else would be cruelty. Gently, because her face is still wrecked from crying and the room still smells of salt and hot water. His mouth meets hers with no hunger in it, only the deliberate pressure of reassurance made physical. A brief touch. Warm. Firm.
Enough to settle something without asking for more.
When he pulls back, she looks stunned.
Good.
He would rather leave her stunned than spiraling.
“Dry off,” he says.
It takes her a second to move. When she does, it is with the strange carefulness of someone returning to her body piece by piece. She reaches for the towel on the rack. Wraps it around herself. Pats at her face, then her hair, then stops halfway through as if remembering he is drenched too.
Her eyes widen in sudden practical concern that would almost be funny under any other circumstances.
“You’re soaked.”
“Nothing gets past you.”
She makes a face, faint but real. Better than crying.
Then she starts fussing.
It is the most Satomi thing she has done in days, he suspects. Dragged out of a breakdown only to turn immediately toward the fact his cardigan is clinging wetly to him. She tells him he cannot stay in those clothes or he will catch something, which is nonsense on multiple levels, but he lets her say it because the cadence of complaint sounds more like her than the broken whisper from before.
She ushers him out of the bathroom with the towel clenched around her and directs him to the chair by the desk. He pulls off the cardigan first, drops it over the back. Then the turtleneck, wet fabric peeling from skin with mild annoyance. Satomi, now in an oversized sleep shirt and shorts dug out from a drawer, goes rummaging until she produces one of her hoodies and hands it to him with a look that dares comment.
It is pale pink and clearly hers. Smaller through the shoulders than anything he would choose for himself, but large enough to fit because she likes things oversized. There’s a stamp on the back that reads ‘Babygirl.’ with some glitter and curvy font.
He takes it.
She watches while he pulls it over his head, then seems satisfied in a way that makes the room feel less wrecked.
By then she has begun packing.
Not much. Just enough for two days, maybe three if he decides she is not stable enough to return sooner. She moves with mechanical efficiency at first, opening drawers, choosing clothes, toiletries, chargers. Sukuna stays seated and watches. Not because he doubts she can handle the task, but because if he stands too soon he might start doing it for her, and she already looks close to humiliated enough.
The room is quiet except for zippers and fabric.
At one point she pauses with a folded sweater in her hands, staring at nothing. Sukuna says her name once. She blinks, nods, and keeps moving.
When she is nearly done, he says,
“Phone.”
She looks over.
“What.”
“Take it.”
She glances toward the nightstand where it lies face down.
“I know where it is.”
“That wasn’t the instruction.”
A faint, exhausted irritation crosses her face. Good. He still prefers irritation to vacancy.
She retrieves the phone and tucks it into her bag.
Then she hesitates.
Sukuna reads the hesitation before she speaks.
“What.”
“My friends.”
The words are small again, uncertain in a different way now. Concern instead of shame.
He leans back slightly, considering her.
“Which ones.”
“Maki. Miwa. Momo. They’ve been messaging.”
“Then you send a message.”
She holds his gaze.
“You tell the good ones you’re not home,” he says, “but you’re safe and you’re eating.”
A strange look passes over her face. Half gratitude, half disbelief. As if she expected him to dismiss the matter entirely or sneer at her concern for them.
He nearly does sneer then, but only because she is underestimating him, which offends his pride.
“They worry,” he adds, flat enough to keep it from sounding kind. “No reason to make them do it more.”
That gets the ghost of a smile.
She types while perched on the edge of the bed, thumbs slower than usual from fatigue. He does not ask to read what she sends. He only watches the shape of her calm return in small increments as three brief messages go out. One to Maki. One to Miwa. One to Momo after a pause, perhaps because she knows Momo will make a whole event out of any news. Her phone starts vibrating almost immediately with replies.
She looks at the screen, exhales through her nose, then turns it facedown again.
“Done.”
“Good.”
He stands then, takes her bag before she can reach for it, and gives the room one last glance. Laptop closed. Curtains drawn. Bathroom door open to let the steam out. Wet towel slung over the chair. All the signs of a life temporarily paused. He locks the door behind them.
The walk back through the dorm feels easier only because she is beside him now and not hidden behind wood and silence.
She says nothing until they reach the car.
Once she is in the passenger seat, belted in and staring out through the windshield, he can see the exhaustion catching up to her in full. She holds herself upright by force. The crash after panic always comes like that. Sudden. Absolute. Her face, stripped of makeup and freshness, looks younger than it does on campus. Not childish. Only unguarded. More obviously tired.
He starts the engine and drives.
Traffic is light. The city after dark blurs past in clean lines of storefronts, signals, reflected lights on damp pavement. Inside the car the air is warm and quiet. Sukuna keeps one hand on the wheel, the other loose by the console. Satomi sits curled slightly toward the door at first, hugging one arm with the other as if habit still has not fully released her from the shower.
He lets the silence sit.
About ten minutes in, she shifts and turns her face toward the window more fully. The streetlights moving over her features reveal that she is not crying now. Only thinking. The kind of thinking that can become dangerous if left too long in the dark.
“Did Yorozu touch you,” he asks.
Satomi goes still.
He keeps his eyes on the road.
“No,” she says after a moment.
“Did she talk to you.”
A pause.
“Yes.”
His fingers tighten once on the wheel.
“What did she say.”
Another pause. Longer.
Then Satomi says, in a voice too controlled,
“You don’t need the whole thing right now.”
He could demand it. Could pin the details down, one by one, until he has enough to build a response out of them. But he hears the strain in her answer. Hears the edge of collapse still waiting there if pushed wrong.
So he says only,
“I’ll get it anyway.”
She lets out a tired breath that is almost a laugh and not quite amused.
“You are terrifying.”
“Yes.”
That, finally, earns a real sound from her.
Brief. Dry. Better.
He drives the rest of the way with one part of his mind on the road and another on names and possibilities. Yorozu first. The rejected boy rumor Miwa mentioned second. Whatever faculty heard and repeated in fragments third. He does not need to explode publicly.
Public consequences are rarely satisfying enough. He only needs facts, leverage, timing.
By the time they reach his building, he already knows whom he will call after Satomi is asleep.
His apartment is quiet when they enter.
It is the kind of quiet money buys properly. Thick doors, high enough ceilings, no neighbors stomping above, no hallway chatter seeping in. Clean lines. Dark wood. Controlled lighting. Everything in its place because he likes it that way and because nobody else lives there often enough to disrupt the order unless he allows it.
Satomi has disrupted it before in small ways.
Hair ties left on the sink. Books stacked by the couch. Face cream beside his shaving kit. A mug abandoned on his counter and retrieved only after he sent her a photograph of it with the caption take responsibility for your crimes.
Tonight he is grateful for the traces.
They make the space less severe when she needs that.
Satomi toes off her shoes at the entry without being asked. He sets her bag down by the bedroom door she usually uses and turns on the warmer lights rather than the overheads. She stands in the middle of the living room for a moment, barefaced and slight in her sleep clothes and one of his hoodies over them now, looking as if she is not fully certain she is allowed to occupy the air here again.
Ridiculous.
Sukuna gestures toward the kitchen.
“Sit.”
She obeys this time with no smart remark, choosing one of the stools at the island and curling her hands around the edge of the counter. He opens the refrigerator, starts pulling together the fastest useful meal available. Rice reheated properly, not microwaved to death. Salmon from the previous night. Pickled vegetables. Miso soup he keeps portioned because routine matters. He moves through the kitchen on habit and control, listening behind him to make sure she stays there.
She does.
Halfway through plating the food he glances back and finds her watching him.
Not with flirtation. Not with the slow heat she usually likes to build when he is using his hands for something else.
Just watching.
Quiet. Tired. A little dazed by being taken care of against her will and then not minding it.
“Stop staring,” he says.
“You’re cooking.”
“Yes.”
Her mouth shifts faintly.
“I like when you cook.”
He gives her a look over his shoulder.
“That obvious.”
“You’re bossier in the kitchen.”
“Eat the food and keep your opinions to yourself.”
That earns another small smile. He would like more of those before the night ends.
He sets the plate in front of her and watches until she takes the first bite. Only then does he move to make himself something separate. Not because he needs dinner — he already ate badly between obligations hours ago — but because sitting across from her with a drink while she picks at food will only make her more self-conscious. Better to normalize the table by doing something with his own hands.
At first she eats slowly, as if her body has forgotten the point. Then hunger remembers itself. Not greedily. Satomi is too well mannered even exhausted for that. But steadily. Enough to loosen the line between his shoulders.
When the soup is done he sets it beside her. She murmurs thanks without looking up, the word soft and automatic. He does not answer. He does not need to.
After a few minutes he says,
“You’ll tell me when you stop wanting this to be private.”
She looks up.
“The rumors,” he says. “The girl.”
Satomi lowers her chopsticks. The appetite fades from her face and becomes caution again.
“You mean when I let you go ruin people’s lives.”
“I mean when you stop pretending silence helps.”
The correction lands. She looks down at the soup, then back to him.
“I know it doesn’t help,” she says quietly. “I just… couldn’t handle people looking.”
Sukuna leans one hip against the counter opposite her.
“They already look, you like the attention, and you produce yourself for it.”
“I know.” A humorless laugh escapes her. “That’s part of the problem.”
He studies her for a long second.
“Then we fix where it matters.”
She absorbs that without responding, perhaps because she is too tired to challenge the we.
Good.
When she is done eating, he sends her to shower again — properly this time, not skin-boiling and folded in on herself. She starts to protest that she already showered. He informs her that standing under scalding water while crying is not hygiene, it is self-punishment, and she should learn the difference. She glares weakly at him from the hallway and goes anyway.
While the water runs, but gentler now, he makes two calls.
The first goes to a man who handles student records and petty leverage when asked. The instructions are simple — everything on Yorozu by morning. Academic standing, family, complaints, finances if there is anything stupid enough to use, names of who she talks to, and confirmation of where she was and with whom the day Miwa mentioned.
The second call goes elsewhere. Broader. Less legal. The rejected boy rumor too. He wants the name. Wants to know who has been spreading what and how far it has traveled. He wants details not because he enjoys them, though he does enjoy knowing the shape of prey, but because once he acts he does not like loose ends.
By the time he ends the second call, the anger in him has gone colder, cleaner.
The bathroom door opens.
Satomi steps out in fresh clothes and damp hair, skin no longer reddened by abuse. She still looks tired enough to sleep standing, but the wildness is gone from her face. She notices his shirt discarded over the arm of the couch and frowns.
“You’re not wearing the hoodie.”
“I changed.”
He did. Back into one of his own shirts once the wet things were dealt with. She seems to approve of this, though she only nods and walks closer.
The moment she reaches the living room, he sees the hesitation again. The pause before deciding where to put herself.
Bedroom. Couch. Distance. Nearness.
Sukuna makes the decision for her.
“Come here.”
She goes.
When she is close enough, he lifts a hand to the side of her neck, fingertips at the damp line where hair meets skin. Her pulse is steadier now. Still fast. Not panicked. He lets his thumb rest there, grounding them both to the fact she is here, upright, and no longer alone.
“You sleep here tonight,” he says.
Satomi’s mouth softens in a tired, crooked little smile.
“I figured.”
“Genius even after missing so many classes.”
She glances toward the bedroom, then back at him.
“Can I ask you something without you getting mean about it.”
“No.”
Her eyes narrow.
“That defeats the point.”
“Ask.”
She sighs, but the sound lacks heat.
“Were you worried?”
He looks at her.
It is a stupid question. Not because the answer is no, but because worry is too small a word for the black thoughts that arrived when the door did not open and the shower ran too long and he imagined a body behind it.
He does not give her any of that.
“Yes,” he says.
Her gaze shifts down, then up again. The answer seems to do something to her, though she does not comment on it. She only leans the smallest fraction closer into his hand at her neck, as if she cannot help it.
He lets her.
When they finally go to bed, he expects distance at first. Some stubborn attempt on her part to reclaim dignity after the bathroom, after the tears, after the question she asked him in a voice barely louder than breath.
He is wrong.
The second the lights go down and the room settles, Satomi turns toward him and presses herself along his side like she has done this a hundred times and never once with as much need. One arm over his waist. One knee hooked half over his thigh. Face buried against his shoulder. Her whole body asks not to be sent away.
He wraps an arm around her and that is the end of it.
It does not take long for her to start drifting. Exhaustion has teeth. It pulls her under fast once safety finally exists around her. He feels it in the way her grip loosens, then tightens once in sleep reflex before easing fully. Her breathing evens. Her body grows heavy and warm against his.
Sukuna stays awake.
He lies there in the dark of his own room with Satomi asleep against him and listens to the city under the windows and the steady quiet of the apartment. His hand remains on her back. Every so often he drags it once, slowly, from shoulder blade to waist. She settles deeper each time without waking.
His mind does not soften with the room.
It sharpens.
He thinks of her in the shower, arms crossed over herself, unable to bear being seen. Thinks of the question about surgery. Thinks of five days of her alone with whatever those girls and boys and whispering idiots shoved into her head. Thinks of faculty chatter and his own mistake in dismissing it. Thinks of Miwa saying she is not acting like herself. Thinks of how quickly Satomi gave in once held, which means the isolation had gone on too long already.
Then he thinks of Yorozu.
The next morning will come. Information will arrive. Facts will replace guesswork. He will act from there. Perhaps not dramatically. Perhaps not visibly. But thoroughly.
He is too old and too practiced to confuse rage with efficiency.
Still, in the dark, with Satomi breathing against him, he allows himself one simple conclusion.
Anyone who made her ask whether she is real has made a very stupid choice.
Sometime after midnight she stirs.
Not fully awake. Just enough to shift, to make a soft unhappy sound, to press closer. He feels her hand spread against his chest, searching in sleep for proof of something solid.
He covers it with his own.
She quiets immediately.
By morning, when the sun edges pale through the curtains, she is still there, soft, face resting against his chest, cuddling against him as he keeps holding her tight.
🎀 ; the moment things start to go wrong, they just don't seem to stop.
🌸 ; art: @/TAKKIYURI and @/cucci0294 on X
🧁; masterlist
The rumors start small enough that Satomi almost convinces herself they do not count.
That is the worst part of it later, when they swell and spread and begin to stain everything they touch. It does not begin with one spectacular humiliation she can point to. It does not begin with a public confrontation, or a note slipped under her door, or somebody shouting across a classroom.
It begins the way rot begins — somewhere low and hidden, somewhere nobody bothers to look until the smell has already set in.
At first, life goes on.
She keeps taking Sukuna’s class because, if she is honest, she would probably take anything that man taught. History, yes. Political theory, sure. Comparative historiography, if he felt like ruining everybody’s lives for a semester. She had signed up for the subject because she liked it, because she is good at it, because she likes reading, likes patterns, likes the push and pull between event and interpretation. Then she saw him on the first day and the whole thing acquired a second, much worse, much more distracting layer.
She is not ashamed of that part.
He is hard to miss. He is nearly two meters of broad shoulders, dark clothes, old money taste and mean silences, with a face that looks cut from something less forgiving than the people around him. Even when he is standing still behind the lectern, there is a kind of force to him, as if he is holding himself in one place by choice and not because the room can contain him.
Most professors either want to be liked or want to be respected by him. Sukuna seems interested in neither. He only wants the class to keep up.
That, more than the sharp mouth and the body under fitted shirts, is what gets her at first.
Not softness. Not charm. Not ease.
Competence. Precision.
The dry, cutting intelligence of someone who has no patience for laziness and even less for stupidity performed as personality.
It becomes a game after that.
One she starts. One she enjoys. One he pretends not to.
She dresses carefully for his lectures without ever making it look like she dressed for him.
Skirts that are a little shorter than strict necessity. Sweaters that soften her shoulders. Blouses that make her look neat, sweet, expensive. Hair done, gloss on, rings chosen with care.
Feminine in the way she has taught herself to be feminine, not because femininity is fake on her but because she knows too well how much of womanhood is read through effort. There are girls who can roll out of bed in an oversized hoodie and still be taken for what they are.
Satomi has never had that luxury, at least not in her own head.
She is tall. That fact never changes. She can contour, trim, soften, perfume, posture, stretch one leg and tilt one hip and laugh just right, and at the end of it she is still one meter eighty-five of expensive bone structure and long limbs.
Beautiful, yes. She knows that. People tell her enough. Men look. Women look too, sometimes with envy, sometimes with appraisal. She can make them swallow their assumptions whole with one smile. But beauty does not erase vigilance. It only hides it better.
So she builds herself every morning and goes to class shining.
And people buy it, because most people want to buy the first thing they see.
At first, half the room takes her for exactly what she knows they take her for — another pretty rich girl coasting on her face and her last name. Gojo helps in that regard.
Money is a language everyone reads.
She lets them think what they want. Lets the boys glance too long. Lets a few girls dismiss her. Lets the room settle around her image before she begins to disturb it.
When she starts speaking up, the surprise is almost funny.
The first time she answers one of Sukuna’s harder questions, there is a beat of silence after she finishes, the kind that happens when people are recalculating a person in real time. She watches it happen from inside her own skin. One boy in the back looks annoyed. A girl two seats over blinks at her as if she has just watched a decorative lamp solve an equation.
Sukuna only stares at her for half a second longer than usual, then nods and keeps going.
That is enough.
After that she answers more. Not constantly. She is too clever to overplay it. But enough.
Enough that the pattern becomes undeniable.
Enough that the room begins to understand she has actually read the material, and not just the assigned material but the supplementary papers too.
Enough that Sukuna starts waiting a fraction longer before answering his own questions, because he knows she might have something better than the room.
They all start calling her little Gojo genius in the lazy, affectionate way students build hierarchies for one another. It should annoy her. Mostly it does not. She has heard worse from people with less right to name her.
None of that is the problem.
The problem is that the rest of her life exists around this one.
At dinner break, she usually eats with the same girls from class. It is not exactly a friend group in the childhood sense, not the kind of intimacy where people braid one another’s hair on dorm floors and cry over exes and borrow shirts without asking, but it is comfortable. Miwa is there most often, soft-spoken and observant, the kind of girl who notices what others say and what they choose not to. Momo, when she is not busy. Two other girls from their year who orbit between groups but always seem to drift back to Satomi’s table because she knows where the better food is and because she can always be counted on to say something funny when everyone is tired.
That first night, nothing looks different. The cafeteria is too bright in the ugly institutional way all university cafeterias are. Trays scrape. Someone drops a fork and curses. There is always a smell of frying oil threaded through everything, even the fruit.
Satomi has a smoothie and half a sandwich she will probably not finish because she has been anxious all week for reasons she cannot name and anxiety makes her appetite petty.
One of the girls is halfway through a story about a professor from another department when she says it.
“So, this is stupid,” she starts, laughing before the sentence is even out, “but somebody told Hana that you used to be a dude.”
The table reacts before Satomi does.
There is immediate noise. An offended kind of disbelief. One girl snorts so hard she nearly chokes. Another says, “What?” like the word itself is ridiculous. Momo rolls her eyes and mutters something about people being bored and evil at the same time. Somebody else, kinder, says there is no way. Says Satomi is just tall. Says people are weird about tall girls. Says people will say anything to make themselves interesting.
And then, because cruelty often dresses itself in admiration, one of them laughs and says,
“Please. Satomi’s a real girl, a perfect doll.”
It is meant kindly.
That almost makes it worse.
Relief hits first. Relief so fast it hurts. Relief that they are rejecting it, refusing it, laughing it down before it can gain footing. Relief that nobody at the table is looking at her like she has become unfamiliar.
Then grief comes with it, so quickly on relief’s heels that her body cannot sort one from the other.
Because that is the thing, isn’t it. They dismiss the rumor because it sounds impossible, because her face and clothes and voice and makeup and softness make the thought absurd to them. They defend her by saying there is no way. No way she would ever be a man. No way she could ever have been one. No way what is true about her could fit inside the person they like.
The smoothie suddenly tastes too bitter and seems too cold.
She smiles. She has practice. She tips her straw between her lips and shrugs like it is all equally idiotic. Says people on this campus need hobbies. Says the rumor mill is starving. Says if she had ever been a man she would at least hope she had been richer then too.
The girls laugh. The conversation shifts. On the surface, it is over.
Inside her, something has started vibrating.
The worst part of fear is that it makes time sticky. The next few days cling to her. Every glance lasts too long. Every whisper somewhere behind her shoulders feels like it could be her name.
Rumors happen. Campuses are full of bored people and rejected boys and girls who need something tastier than coursework to chew on. Somebody says one thing, somebody else repeats it, and then it dies. She has spent years surviving worse than college gossip. She knows how to keep moving. She knows how to make herself untouchable by acting like nothing can stain her.
Still, when she goes to the restroom after lunch, she checks the mirror longer than usual.
She sees what everyone else sees first — long pale hair, gloss still intact, waist nipped in by the tailored shirt she chose on purpose, skirt cut just right, legs endless in black tights, collarbone showing, mouth pretty and composed. A beautiful girl. A woman. Satomi.
Then her eyes go mean.
Too tall. Too broad in the shoulders if she stands wrong. Hands she sometimes still hates. Jaw saved by careful angles and years of work and money and pain. A voice she knows how to place when she is calm and fears when she is not.
She splashes cold water over her wrists. Fixes her lipstick. Walks back out.
She starts noticing things she might not otherwise have noticed. A boy looking away too fast. Two girls stopping their conversation when she enters the bathroom. A pause after she introduces herself to someone from another lecture section, as if the name and the face and whatever they have heard are being tested against each other.
She tells herself this is how paranoia works. Not as a lightning strike but as a lens. It takes ordinary life and makes it unbearable by sharpening all its edges.
She keeps going. Keeps dressing. Keeps answering questions in class. Keeps letting Sukuna look at her with that measured, annoyed patience he only seems to have for her.
He notices, she thinks, that something is off. Once, when she interrupts him to add a point about a reading, he studies her too long after she finishes, not with suspicion but with concentration, as if he is trying to place a sound he heard under the rest of the room’s noise.
She looks away first. It irritates her that she does.
Then, a little under two weeks after that first cafeteria conversation, the rumor comes closer.
She is leaning against a wall outside lecture, flipping through notes on her phone, when a girl she barely speaks to approaches her with that falsely casual posture people get when they have decided they are being brave for asking something cruel.
“Hey,” the girl says. “Can I ask you something weird?”
Satomi does not even look up immediately.
“You’re already asking.”
The girl laughs in a thin way.
“No, I just— some people were talking, and I thought it was probably bullshit, but—”
Satomi raises her clear blue eyes then. The girl falters a little, perhaps because Satomi’s face is too composed, perhaps because she realizes at the last second that gossip looks uglier when it has to stand in daylight.
“Is it true,” the girl asks anyway, lowering her voice as if discretion can save her from being disgusting, “that you used to be a dude and then, like, transformed?”
The word almost makes Satomi bare her teeth.
Transformed?
As if she had cocooned herself and crawled out under fluorescent light. As if womanhood on her is a special effect. As if the years of knowing, hiding, wanting, planning, risking, changing, grieving, insisting can be flattened into something out of a bad movie.
For one wild second she imagines saying something so mean the girl cries.
Before she can, someone from behind calls her name sharply.
It is Maki, already holding up a stack of printouts she clearly does not need help with. Her face is flat, but her timing is exact.
Satomi understands the rescue immediately.
She offers the girl a small, cold smile that never reaches her eyes.
“Looks like your question’s going to stay a mystery.”
Then she steps away.
Maki says nothing about it while they walk down the hall. She just keeps pace beside her, shoulders squared, expression unreadable. Satomi loves her a little for not making it gentler than it is.
Only when they reach the stairwell does Maki glance over.
“That girl is stupid.”
Satomi snorts, grateful for the bluntness.
“That is one word for it.”
“You okay?”
“Yes,” Satomi lies.
Maki watches her for one extra second, then nods once.
“If you need somebody hit, let me know.”
That gets a real laugh out of her, brief and cracked at the edges.
“Very normal thing to say.”
“I’m very normal.”
Satomi touches Maki’s arm once before they split off in opposite directions. It helps more than she wants to admit.
But something has changed now.
Not externally, not in any way she can point to and prove, but in the atmosphere around her. In pauses. In glances that go a second too long. In the quick hush that follows when she turns a corner and walks into a cluster of people who were definitely talking about something they do not want her to hear.
She starts to notice who looks, and how.
She starts to hate every open space on campus.
She stops going to Sukuna.
That is how she thinks of it in her own head, plain and ugly and true.
That should have been enough warning.
That should have told her what direction things were moving in.
Instead she keeps hoping the rumor will burn itself out.
She stops going to Sukuna as much.
Not class. Never class. She still attends, at first, because Satomi does not give that part of herself up easily. She dresses well. She answers questions. She lets the room remember she is clever, because beauty draws attention but intelligence commands it.
If they are going to look, then they will look at someone brilliant.
But the hidden hours with him disappear.
She stops taking the path behind the language building where he sometimes corners her with a hand at the back of her neck and a mouth made cruel by restraint.
She stops slipping into his office after everyone has gone.
She stops answering the brief messages that mean come here.
She stops lingering when class empties.
Stops baiting him.
Stops smiling like the room belongs to her.
From the outside, she tells herself, it is subtle.
From the way Sukuna looks at her by the end of the first week, it is not subtle at all.
He notices everything. He always has.
That is not a deliberate strategy at first. It is simply that she cannot bear more scrutiny than she is already under, and being with him, even in secret, requires a kind of openness she cannot access while the rest of campus feels like a room full of people listening at a door.
He messages her once after class, something short and characteristically rude about whether she plans to keep vanishing before he can talk to her. She stares at the text until the words blur. Tells him she is busy. He sends back a single thumbs down, which is so unlike him that she almost laughs and almost cries instead.
He notices that she no longer waits for the room to clear before leaving. He notices that she keeps her eyes on the board instead of on him. He notices that she is still sharp when he calls on her, but not playful. That she dresses beautifully and somehow more defensively, higher necklines one day, heavier makeup another, as if she is trying to armor herself out of skin.
He notices, and his patience with the rest of the class gets worse.
The first time he snaps at someone for misreading a text, the room goes so quiet Satomi can hear the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.
She keeps her face neutral and writes notes she does not need.
After class, he says,
“Gojo.”
Her spine goes stiff before she turns.
The room is almost empty. A few students still gather bags and laugh too loudly by the door. No privacy. No safety.
“Yes, professor?”
The title lands between them like a blade. His mouth hardens.
“You missed office hours.”
“I was busy.”
“With what.”
She almost smiles at the audacity. Almost.
“My life.”
His eyes narrow, red and mean in a way that usually thrills her. Today it only exhausts her. He studies her face like he can peel back skin and mood both.
Then someone brushes past on the way out, and the moment closes.
“Don’t waste my time,” he says flatly, and looks away first.
Satomi leaves with her head high and has to lock herself in a bathroom stall three floors down because her hands will not stop shaking.
She hates that he can still do that to her.
That even now, with all this ugliness climbing up the walls of her life, one sharp look from him can split her clean through.
The rumor mutates by the second week.
Miwa is careful by nature. She does not rush people. She does not make theater out of concern. Miwa does not traffic in gossip. She listens more than she speaks, keeps her hands folded around tea cups, blushes when too many people look at her at once. When she says something, it is because she has had to decide it is worth saying.
That is why Satomi knows, before a word is spoken, that what she is about to hear matters.
They are sitting in the library near the back, not quite together, just near enough to count. Miwa has her laptop open. Satomi has been staring at the same page in her textbook for twelve minutes and absorbing nothing.
“Satomi,” Miwa says softly.
Satomi hums without looking up.
“I heard something.”
There is no point pretending she does not know what kind of thing.
She closes the book.
Miwa worries the edge of her sleeve between her fingers.
“I was in the vending machine hall yesterday,” she says. “There were three boys from Professor Nanami’s section talking. One of them said the reason you turned him down last month was because you were obviously really a guy. And guys aren’t into other guys.”
For a second Satomi says nothing at all.
The stupidity of it is almost abstract.
It is so aggressively, proudly stupid it circles around into insult by sheer force. Not only is he cruel, he is unimaginative. Not only does he want to punish her, he wants to do it in a way that makes his own fragility central.
Heat flashes through her, immediate and white.
Miwa glances at her then, worried.
“What,” Satomi says.
Miwa winces.
“I know.”
“No, say it again. Slowly. I need to understand how somebody survives to adulthood with a brain like that.”
Miwa bites back a small smile, but worry wins out.
“I’m sorry, Sato.”
Satomi leans back in her chair and presses her fingers to her forehead. Anger comes easier than fear for a moment, blessedly hot and clean.
Rejected. That is what this is built from.
Some idiot gets turned down and decides the problem cannot possibly be that Satomi simply did not want him.
No, it has to be something else. Something humiliating. Something he can weaponize. Her refusal translated into an injury that needs punishing.
Of course.
Of course it is a man.
She laughs once, bitter and quiet.
“Dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.”
Miwa nods.
“Do you want me to tell somebody?”
That lands harder.
Somebody. And then what? An advisor. A dean. A conduct office. A report with her name on it and questions and forms and eyes. People asking what happened, what exactly was said, how long has this been going on, is there any truth to it, would you like to disclose—
“No,” Satomi says immediately.
Miwa looks stricken. “But—”
“It’s not worth it.”
It is. They both know it is. Harassment always is. But worth and survivable are not always the same thing.
Miwa’s face folds in on itself with helpless anger.
“They shouldn’t get to do this.”
Satomi looks at her then, really looks, and sees the sincerity there. Not pity. Not fascination. Outrage on her behalf.
Something in her chest softens painfully.
“They shouldn’t,” she agrees.
Miwa lowers her voice further.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
No.
“Sure.”
Miwa clearly does not believe her, but she nods anyway.
Satomi loves her for that too, a little. For not forcing care into a shape Satomi cannot bear. Loves that there are people who hear cruelty and do not immediately convert it into background noise. Loves that someone is standing beside her, quiet and angry on her behalf.
She cannot let Miwa fight this for her. If it becomes a confrontation, it becomes a spectacle. And if it becomes a spectacle, she loses control of the story completely.
So she makes a joke. Not a very good one, but enough to loosen Miwa’s shoulders. Enough to get through the walk. Enough to postpone the feeling of her own skin no longer being reliable shelter.
By the time she gets back to her dorm that night, she is tired in a way sleep does not fix.
After that, Satomi starts moving around campus like prey that has learned the map of the forest too late.
Not visibly. She still walks straight. Still dresses well. Still answers in class. But inside, her body is all alertness now. She listens for laughter behind her. Watches the way groups of boys go suddenly interested when she passes. Starts choosing restrooms farther from the busiest halls. Starts ducking invitations. Starts going back to her dorm earlier, doors locked, curtains drawn.
She has spent years building herself into someone people want to look at. Now every glance feels contaminated.
It gets under her skin in ways she hates admitting.
She changes clothes three times before lectures because some part of her has started believing that if she can get femininity exactly right, exactly convincing, exactly effortless, maybe nobody will dare say it again.
Then she hates herself for even thinking that, because she is not trying to become a woman in the eyes of strangers.
She is one already.
Their doubt does not alter the fact.
And still she stands before the mirror and adjusts the fall of a skirt and the tilt of a chin and the pitch of her hello.
Her family would laugh if they saw it. Or maybe not laugh. Maybe just nod, like they had predicted all along that being her would always be labor.
The memory of them comes back easier on bad weeks.
Her mother telling her to sit with her knees together. Her aunt saying softly, almost kindly, that girls like Satomi need to be careful not to overdo it because then people start noticing. Her father looking at her once after hormones had softened her face and saying, with the detached cruelty of a man observing weather,
“At least now you’re less embarrassing from far away.”
From far away.
Satomi keeps moving anyway.
The harassment changes shape after that.
It becomes sweeter on the outside.
More curious.
More feminine, which somehow makes it feel more dangerous.
Men, at least, are simple in their hostility. They posture. They laugh too loudly. They want witnesses.
Women like Yorozu know better.
They know how to make cruelty intimate.
Satomi knows Yorozu by sight before she knows her by name.
A girl from class, one of the ones who always seems to be listening when Sukuna speaks as if the act itself should count for intelligence. Pretty in a polished, almost aggressive way. Curvier than Satomi, shorter, with a face that would be soft if not for the constant tension in it. She has the look of somebody used to ranking herself against other women on instinct and resenting whichever one comes out prettier.
Satomi has caught her looking at Sukuna before. Not subtly. Not with the complicated, private hunger Satomi feels.
With ambition. With the certainty that the right kind of woman can eventually wear any man down.
The bathroom incident happens on a Thursday.
Satomi has gone in between lectures to wash her hands and fix her gloss. She is tired, not sleeping well, and the fluorescent mirror is crueler than usual. She can see the strain at the corners of her mouth. The faint drag under her eyes. The way stress makes her stand taller, stiffer, as if she can brace herself against being seen wrong.
The bathroom is empty when she enters.
It is not empty when she turns to leave.
Yorozu comes in a minute later, smiling. Not warmly. Not even socially. Just with the precise upward shape of a person who has decided she is enjoying herself.
Satomi recognizes trouble too late. The door swings shut behind Yorozu with a soft click. She walks to the sink as if she belongs there, as if this is nothing, as if they are about to have the kind of mundane conversation women have in bathrooms every day.
“Hey,” Yorozu says, meeting Satomi’s eyes in the mirror. “Have you heard the rumors?”
Satomi dries her hands slowly.
“I don’t pay attention to gossip.”
Yorozu laughs under her breath.
“That usually means yes.”
Satomi turns to go around her.
Yorozu shifts into her path.
The movement is small — not dramatic, just enough, just deliberate enough that the room changes shape around it.
Satomi stops.
Up close, Yorozu smells expensive and sharp, floral perfume over powder. Her smile widens a fraction when she realizes Satomi is not going to force past her right away. There is pleasure in it. In the tiny domination of making another woman pause.
“I’m just curious,” Yorozu says. “Are they true?”
Satomi says nothing.
Not because she is ashamed. That is what burns later, after the whole thing is over. Not shame. Not really. Fury that silence is so often the only tool a girl has when truth is dangerous and lies are humiliating.
She does not want to lie. She does not want to perform denial for someone who has no right to ask. She also does not want to hand this stranger the softest part of herself just to watch her step on it.
But Yorozu reads silence the way cruel people always do: as a confession owed to them.
Her face changes in an instant.
The satisfaction in it is ugly.
“Oh my God,” she says, almost delighted. “It’s true, isn’t it? You really are a guy who thinks he’s a girl.”
The sentence lands like a slap across her face.
Satomi feels heat flood her so fast it makes her dizzy.
Hands first. Face. Chest. Her whole body goes hot with anger and disgust.
She locks her jaw and hears herself say, very clearly,
“Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Yorozu does not step back. She steps closer.
That is the thing Satomi will remember later when she is lying in her dark room trying not to think. Not just the words, but the invasion. The way Yorozu keeps coming. The way her smaller body can still make the room feel less navigable.
The way mean girls understand that menace does not require size, only certainty.
“I know enough,” Yorozu says.
Satomi holds her ground for exactly two more seconds. Then Yorozu advances again and Satomi’s back touches tile.
Cold wall. Warm face. Trapped in a room built for ordinary things.
Yorozu plants one hand beside Satomi’s shoulder as if she owns the space. Tilts her head. Studies her like an object she has finally earned the right to inspect.
“I’ve seen the way you look at Ryomen-sensei,” she says.
The use of his name in her mouth makes Satomi want to bite.
Yorozu’s lip curls.
“It’s disgusting.”
Satomi goes still in a way that has nothing to do with submission. It is shock first, then a terrible blankness. As if the body, faced with too many threats at once, has decided to leave the room and let the mind manage what it can.
Yorozu keeps talking, her smile goes bright and vicious.
“You’re disgusting,” Yorozu says. “Do you actually think a man like him would ever want something like you?”
Satomi opens her mouth. Nothing comes out.
“A cultured man,” Yorozu continues, “an educated man, a handsome man, and you think he’d waste his time on a tranny?”
There it is.
Ugly and deliberate and spoken with pleasure.
Yorozu looks at her like she has won something.
“When he finds out you’re not a real girl,” she says, voice dropping almost fondly, “you think he’s still going to be so patient with you?”
Not a real girl.
Each word hits like metal. Not because Satomi believes Yorozu. Not because she thinks this girl knows Sukuna better than she does.
But because all these phrases have ancestry.
They come from somewhere older than Yorozu, older than campus, older than this bathroom.
Not because it is new. Because it is old enough to have grooves worn into her.
She has heard versions of it from family, doctors, strangers online, classmates in high school, one ex-friend who had cried while saying it as if grief could disguise cruelty.
She has survived every version.
But hearing it here, on campus, in a bathroom she uses every week, from a girl who sees her lipstick and her class notes and her laughter and still decides she is counterfeit — it lands somewhere raw.
Her mouth goes dry.
Not real. Not enough. Not woman. Not welcome.
Every line of them is worn smooth from use.
Satomi cannot seem to get air right.
That is the strangest part. She is not crying. She is not arguing. She is not fighting. She is simply no longer fully inside herself. The bathroom is suddenly too bright, too loud and too silent.
She can see the entire scene as if from above — Yorozu leaning in with hatred polished into elegance, Satomi against the wall in a neat cardigan and gloss and gold earrings, both of them framed by mirrors that repeat the image into the distance.
She thinks, absurdly, that she looks calm.
She could break her nose.
The thought comes flat, cold.
She knows how. She is taller, stronger than she looks, and furious enough to make it messy. One good hit. Blood everywhere. Screaming. Conduct office. Police maybe. A whole campus with one more story about Satomi Gojo losing her mind in a women’s bathroom.
Her fingers curl uselessly around the strap of her bag.
Yorozu mistakes silence for weakness and keeps going.
“I hope you know your place,” she says. “And if I ever catch you in the women’s bathroom again, I’m filing a report with the principal.”
Principal. As if they are children. As if Satomi is trespassing in her own life.
Satomi should say something. Should push back. Should laugh in her face. Should at least tell her to go fuck herself. But for one awful stretch of seconds she cannot access her own voice. She can only stand there and listen and feel each word hammer deeper.
Something inside Satomi drops straight through her.
Not because a report is guaranteed to destroy her, though maybe it could. Not because campus is full of perfectly coherent policies designed to protect her, because she knows better than to trust institutions on paperwork alone. But because of what it means. Because with one sentence Yorozu has reached past insult into threat. Into the suggestion that access itself can be revoked. That Satomi can be taken out of the ordinary life she has built and held up to scrutiny like contraband.
Yorozu smiles when she sees the hit land. Satisfaction again. That little bright glint of a bully who has finally found where the blade goes deepest.
Yorozu steps back at last.
Satisfied.
That is the worst part. Not even angry anymore. Satisfied.
She smooths her skirt, glances once more at Satomi’s face, and leaves.
The door clicks shut behind her.
Satomi stays where she is.
That is all. No spectacle. No witnesses. Just enough damage and then the exit. The luxury of leaving someone else to stand in the ruin of it.
For a long time she cannot make her body move. The wall is still cold through her sweater. Her hands hang wrong at her sides. There is a buzzing in her ears like bad electricity. She stares at the sink, the paper towel dispenser, the scratched metal of a stall door, and none of it looks quite real.
Then her knees threaten to give, and that is enough to force her upright.
Bag on shoulder. Check the stall doors though she already knows the room is empty. Walk to the sink. Grip the edge of the counter so hard her knuckles pale beneath foundation. Stare at the woman in the mirror.
Her lipstick is intact. Her eyeliner sharp. Her hair smooth. Her face composed in that eerie, dead way it sometimes gets when she is holding too much.
For one second she hates the reflection because it looks untouched.
Then she hates herself for that too.
She walks out of the restroom on instinct alone. Down the hall. Down one set of stairs. Past people she does not see. Out across the quad. Off campus.
She has a lecture in forty minutes. She does not go.
No one stops her. No one knows.
She skips her next class. Then the one after.By the time she reaches her dorm room, her feet hurt. She kicks off her shoes just inside the door and locks it twice.
Then she stands in the center of the room like she has forgotten what rooms are for.
Small bed. Desk by the window. Sweater over the chair. Makeup bag open. Textbooks in a stack. Her life, neat and temporary and college-small.
She sets her bag down too carefully.
Then she goes to the bathroom and scrubs her hands again. And again. Soap, water, rinse. Soap, water, rinse. Like she can wash language off skin.
The third time, she catches herself braced over the sink and breathing too fast.
“Stop,” she tells herself softly.
Her voice sounds wrong in the tiled room. Too high. Too thin. Too frightened.
That almost breaks her more than Yorozu did.
She presses both palms flat to the counter until the panic passes enough for her to stand upright again.
The rest of the evening folds inward.
Messages arrive. She sees notifications, does not open most of them. Akari asks if she is coming to dinner. Maki sends a link to an article and then, twenty minutes later, just the word alive? Miwa sends a heart and then nothing else, which is somehow the kindest thing anyone could do.
One email arrives from Sukuna in the early evening.
Missed class.
No greeting. No signature. Just that.
Satomi stares at it until the letters blur.
Then she closes the laptop.
The next morning she does not go out.
She tells herself it is just one day. She needs a day to settle. One day without eyes. One day without hallways and rumor and the risk of running into Yorozu at a sink again.
She silences her phone and stays in bed until noon fully dressed in one of Sukuna’s old shirts she never gave back because he had left it on her chair weeks ago and she had stolen it like a magpie.
It smells like her detergent now. Not him. She is weirdly grateful for that.
Around noon she forces herself up, makes coffee she does not drink, sits at her desk, opens a reading, stares at it, closes it again.
Every sound in the hall outside makes her flinch.
Laughter. Doors. Someone dragging a laundry basket. Someone calling to a friend. Campus life going on around her as if she has not just been shoved a step outside of it.
When she finally checks her phone, there are more messages.
Maki: You’re skipping and I’m judging you.
Maki, five minutes later: Also if you’re dying tell me first.
Miwa: I can bring you notes.
Unknown number that is very much not unknown to her: Go to class.
Her heart gives a stupid, painful kick.
She does not answer any of them.
She showers in water hot enough to sting and stands too long under the spray because it is the closest she gets to disappearing safely. When she gets out, the mirror is fogged over. She wipes a small circle clear with her palm and regrets it immediately.
Without makeup, without clothes, without the daily work completed, her body feels louder to her. Not wrong. Never exactly wrong anymore. But loud. Demanding to be witnessed by the cruelest part of her own mind.
Too tall.
Ribs visible in the wrong places from stress and poor eating.
Hips still not enough on bad days.
A body she has fought for and loved and hated and funded and injected and disciplined and taught and clothed and cared for.
A body that has taken her years to inhabit with something like peace.
She stares until the self-loathing starts to gather, then turns away.
That night she dreams of home.
Not this campus room or Sukuna’s office or any place where she has built herself. Home-home. Family home. Her aunt’s hands fixing the collar of a dress Satomi had been so proud of and saying, in that soft voice adults use when they are about to say something they think will help, “You need to be more subtle, sweetheart. If you force it, people start looking for what’s underneath.”
She wakes up sweating and furious and nauseated.
She does not go to class the next day either.
By the third day, absence becomes its own problem.
Anxiety does not shrink overnight. It breeds. It wakes before she does and sits on her chest. The thought of campus makes her stomach twist so hard she has to get out of bed and kneel on the floor until the nausea passes.
She imagines every possible version of return.
Walking into class and feeling the room know.
Entering the bathroom and finding somebody watching.
Hearing laughter behind her that may or may not be about her.
Getting called into an office.
Seeing Yorozu in the hall and knowing that the girl now holds a version of Satomi in her mouth that she can spit wherever she likes.
She cannot do it.
So she emails a professor from another course and says she is sick. She does not email Sukuna. She cannot bring herself to write anything to him that would survive his eyes.
The room is starting to smell like someone living badly. Sweet wrappers. Stale fabric. Fear, probably, if fear has a smell.
She keeps the curtains mostly drawn. Watches the slice of outside through a gap. Students moving on the path below. Bikes, backpacks, coffee cups, lives continuing with no pause for her private collapse.
She showers once because not showering makes her feel less human than she already does. Stands under hot water and presses a palm over her mouth when she starts crying without warning. It is not elegant crying. Not the sort that improves anybody’s face. It is furious and ugly and silent.
When she gets out, she does not look in the mirror anymore.
Messages accumulate, they never stop.
Momo: Did you die.
Another from Miwa: Seriously. Say something.Unknown Number: Class isn’t optional because you’re pretty.
That one actually makes her laugh, one broken sound in the dark.
Then, a while later, another from him.
What happened?
She puts the phone down and curls on her side around the ache in her own middle.
What happened is that she got reminded, all at once, that being loved in private does not protect her in public. That she can be held and wanted and looked at like she is the only girl in the room, and one mean woman in a bathroom can still reduce her to trembling silence. That she has built herself so carefully and still other people feel entitled to pry open the seams and inspect the work. That one rumor can turn every ordinary act into a threshold: class, lunch, hallway, bathroom, door.
What happened is that she is tired.
Tired of being brave in the exact ways nobody will ever reward. Tired of calibrating her voice and posture and smile. Tired of deciding, a hundred times a day, whether truth is safe, whether silence is safe, whether either of them has ever really been safe at all. Tired of the way people say they do not care and then care exactly when it can hurt you most.
On the fourth day she gets up only because somebody knocks.
For a second her whole body goes rigid. She thinks stupidly of administrators, of reports, of Yorozu somehow already having done it, of the knock at the door that always comes in bad stories right before everything gets dragged into the light.
Miwa’s voice comes through the wood, hesitant but unmistakable.
“Satomi?”
Relief is almost as painful as panic now.
Another knock. Firmer, not Miwa.
For one stupid second she thinks conduct office.
Complaint. Bathroom report. They came faster than she expected.
Then Maki’s voice comes through the wood.
“Open up before I kick it.”
Satomi does not open the door right away. She looks around the room first, at the evidence of collapse, and feels a sharp flare of embarrassment.
Then she unlocks it and opens it only partway.
Miwa takes one look at her face and the careful, neutral expression she had clearly prepared falls apart.
“Oh,” Miwa says softly.
Satomi hates that sound. Not because it is pity, exactly. Because it is recognition. Because Miwa can see enough in one second to understand that this is not a stomach flu and not a dramatic absence and not some silly romantic fight.
Miwa is besides her carrying a bag from the convenience store. She holds it up a little awkwardly.
“I brought you drinks,” she says. “And notes. And I bullied Momo into not coming because she would have kicked your door in.”
Maki takes one look at her and her mouth flattens.
“Jesus.”
“Wow,” Satomi says. “Great bedside manner.”
“You look terrible.”
“Thank you.”
Maki holds up a paper bag.
“I brought food.”
Satomi stares at it, then at her. She almost smiles.
She lets Miwa and Maki in.
Maki shoves the bag into her hands and walks in without waiting to be invited, because boundaries are things she respects only when people are not crumbling.
She takes in the room in one sweep: curtains half closed, laptop shut, untouched coffee mug on the desk, laundry basket full, Satomi in an oversized shirt and no lipstick, eyes bruised with exhaustion.
“You’re not sick,” Maki says.
“No.”
“You’re hiding.”
Satomi shuts the door behind them.
“Very perceptive.”
Maki turns.
“Do you want us to go?”
The question is so straightforward Satomi nearly cries from it.
“No,” she says, softer than intended. “Stay.”
So they stay. They sit on the floor because the chair has too many clothes on it and the bed feels too intimate for a conversation Satomi has not agreed to have. Satomi opens the bag and finds convenience store rice balls, fruit, canned coffee, gummies.
The stupid practicality of it almost makes her laugh.
Miwa hands over the drinks. Goes through the lecture notes first because it is easier. Safer. Sukuna assigned a paper. Comparative lit boy got roasted by another professor in class.
Momo called Yorozu a lizard under her breath loud enough for half the table to hear. Life, still moving. Details, still trivial.
Satomi eats because being watched kindly is somehow more effective than any amount of self-discipline.
After a while Maki says,
“Did somebody say something to you?”
Satomi keeps unwrapping the rice ball even though it is already open.
Maki does not push again. Good. Good.
Then Satomi hears herself say,
“Yorozu cornered me in the bathroom.”
The rest comes out in pieces. Not elegant. Not linear. She cannot make herself repeat every word exactly, especially not the slur, but enough gets said. The threat. The disgust. The part about Sukuna. The bathroom report.
Maki listens with her whole body still, Miwa seems a little shocked.
By the time Satomi is done, shame has soaked through her all over again. Saying it aloud makes it real in a different way. Makes her sound weak. Makes her sound fragile.
Maki’s jaw works once. Twice.
“I’ll kill her.”
Satomi laughs, startled and cracked.
“No, you won’t.”
“I’m considering it.”
“She’s not worth prison.”
Silence stretches.
Then Satomi, staring at the label on the bottle in her hand, says,
“She threatened to report me.”
Miwa goes completely still.
Maki looks at her then, really looks, and some of the violence in her face gives way to anger of a different sort. Protective. Helpless.
“You need to report it.”
Satomi’s stomach drops again.
“No.”
“Satomi.”
“No.” Her voice sharpens before she can help it. “I know how this goes.”
Maki does not flinch.
“Not if you do it right.”
Satomi looks away.
“There is no right way to hand over your life to a room full of administrators.”
Silence.
Then, quietly, Maki says,
“That’s fair.”
The acceptance disarms her more than pressure would have.
There it is. Said aloud. Real now in the room, not only in Satomi’s skull.
Miwa says a curse word so quietly it almost disappears.
“You didn’t deserve that,” Miwa says.
The sentence is so simple Satomi almost breaks on it.
Because of course she knows. Rationally, intellectually, politically, all the good sharp ways. She knows. She could write an essay on gendered cruelty and social policing and the mechanics of exclusion. She could dismantle Yorozu’s worldview in five clean pages with citations.
But knowing a thing in theory is not the same as surviving it while your own body is the subject under discussion.
“No,” Satomi says, and her voice is suddenly unsteady. “I didn’t.”
Miwa reaches over, very carefully, and takes her hand.
It is not a dramatic gesture. Not rescue. Not salvation. Just contact freely offered, without inspection, without hesitation.
Satomi looks down at their hands and feels something in her chest start to come apart.
She cries then, finally and fully, bent over herself while Miwa sits close and says nothing foolish.
No it will all be okay, no everything happens for a reason, no at least. Just presence. A hand. A quiet room. The dignity of not having to perform composure for one person.
When the crying passes, it leaves her wrung out and embarrassed and raw.
Miwa waits until Satomi has drunk half the tea before she says,
“What do you want to do?”
Satomi laughs weakly.
“Disappear forever?”
Miwa does not laugh back.
“Besides that.”
Satomi leans her head against the wall. Thinks.
“I don’t know,” she says at last. “I know what I should do. Report her. Get ahead of it. Be righteous and brave and educational.”
“But?”
“But I’m tired.” She rubs a hand over her face. “And I hate that that’s the answer. I hate that I’m even considering letting her get away with it. But the thought of turning myself into a case file makes me want to crawl out of my own skin.”
Miwa nods slowly.
“Then don’t decide today.”
Satomi looks at her.
“You don’t have to pick the brave option this second,” Miwa says. “You just have to pick the next one.”
The next one.
It is such a small framing, such a humane one, that Satomi could kiss her for it.
The next one is easier to imagine than the whole future.
The next one, as it turns out, is opening her phone after Miwa leaves.
Satomi’s throat tightens painfully when she thinks about the next one being related to college anyway.
“I just— I can’t do the whole thing. Not with school. Not with people already watching. Not with—”
Not with Sukuna.
She stops there.
Maki notices, but she only says,
“Okay.”
It is such a simple mercy that Satomi can barely bear it.
Maki and. Miwa stay another hour.
They talk about classes. About a professor who tripped over his own bag. About a vending machine that ate Panda’s money. About anything but the shape of Satomi’s pain until it is easier to breathe around it.
When they are gone, the room feels larger and lonelier at once.
Satomi brushes her teeth, washes her face, climbs into bed with her phone in hand, and stares at Sukuna’s unread messages.
There are three now.
Missed class.
Attendance matters.
Open your phone.
She almost laughs at that last one.
Instead, she types and deletes six different replies before sending nothing at all.
Sleep comes in broken pieces.
The fifth day is worse because she knows staying in the room has crossed from recovery into surrender.
She gets out of bed anyway.
She puts on a bra. A skirt. A blouse. Sits before her vanity mirror and starts her makeup. Concealer, foundation, powder, brows. Her hand is steady until liner, then shakes so badly she has to wipe the first attempt away and start over.
Half-painted, she stops.
Stares at herself.
Sees not progress or beauty or discipline but performance. A stage costume. Yorozu’s voice slithers right back in, pleased and poisonous.
Not a real girl.
Satomi puts the eyeliner down.
Then she knocks over the whole tray with the back of her hand.
Bottles rattle across the desk. A compact cracks on the floor. A brush rolls under the bed.
The burst of noise shocks her still.
For a second she just stands there, breathing hard, one eye done and one bare, looking like a woman split down the middle.
Then she undresses slowly. She doesn’t remember when she started crying, but by the time she’s under scalding hot water, she’s shaking and sobbing and hugging herself as if to keep her body from pulling in every direction.
She misses the days where she would feel at least a resemblance of normality. She misses the days before the rumors, when she could laugh and sass people and smile like she meant it. She misses the days when she could cross and uncross her long legs in front of Sukuna and then have his body pressed against hers when no one else was there to witness, complaining about her manners while kissing her neck anyway.
She misses Sukuna.
Yorozu’s words aren’t true, Sukuna knows who she is, what she is, and he enjoys her all the same. Never once he hesitated. Not even the first time, as if she was naturally… a girl. She is naturally a girl.
She just can’t wrap her mind around it anymore.
She presses her nails against her skin, still hugging herself, marking crescents on already reddened skin. The bathroom is completely fogged already. Someone knocks on her door again, but she ignores it, choosing instead to keep soaking in hot water and self pity for a little longer.
🎀 ; Sukuna's office hours are, as she already said multiple times, reserved for her.
☕; art by: @hiimkira___
🧁; masterlist
The campus looks different in the late afternoon, when most people have already convinced themselves they’ve done enough for the day and gone home.
The courtyard that’s a chaos of bodies at noon is half-empty now, benches occupied by lone stragglers scrolling their phones, a couple of study groups murmuring over printouts. The sky outside Sukuna’s office window is already starting to turn that pale, tired blue that means evening is coming whether he’s ready or not.
He is never ready for office hours.
He sits at his desk anyway, because that’s part of the ritual. Glasses on. Shirt sleeves rolled to his forearms. A pile of essays to the left, a smaller, more hopeful pile of graded ones to the right. Red pen between his fingers. The clock ticks above the door in the most obnoxious way possible.
On the corridor side of the door, a printed sign taped at eye level reads:
OFFICE HOURS – TUES/THURS 16:00–18:00
Knock. If there’s no screaming, you may enter.
He’d added the screaming line as a joke. Students took pictures. Administration pretended not to see.
The only sound now is the faint hum of the air conditioning and the occasional shuffle of paper when he turns a page.
He reads a line that makes his left eye twitch.
“‘The Shinsengumi were basically like the Avengers but with swords,’” he mutters under his breath. “I should start charging for emotional damages.”
He writes a neat no in the margin and moves on.
He’s midway through an especially tortured paragraph about modernization when footsteps approach, heels clicking in a rhythm that his body recognizes before his brain does.
He doesn’t look up right away. He’s learned.
You don’t feed wild animals by acknowledging them too fast.
There’s the faint rustle of someone stopping to read the sign on his door.
A pause.
Then a single knuckle raps three times, bright and confident.
He already knows who it is.
No one else knocks like they’re doing him a favor by showing up.
“Come in.” he calls.
The handle turns, the door swings open.
Satomi Gojo slips into the room in a swirl of cool air and the smell of something savory.
One hand holds a paper bag from the noodle place just off campus, grease darkening the bottom. The other pushes her sunglasses up onto her hair, pale eyes blinking in the dimmer, yellow office light.
His office is not big.
A desk, two visitor chairs, a bookshelf that’s doing its best, a narrow couch along the opposite wall that has never once known a purely academic use.
The window behind him looks out over a slice of trees and concrete and the edge of the main quad.
She fills the space like she owns it.
“Sens—” She catches his look, tiny, private, and amends herself. “Professor.”
He sets his pen down.
“You’re not on the sign-up sheet.”
“There’s a sign-up sheet?” She crosses to him in a few quick steps, the hem of her skirt fluttering around her thighs. Today it’s pleated navy, paired with a white button-up that is technically within dress code and practically a distraction by design. Skinny tie, loose knot. Knee-high socks.
He has strong opinions about who let her walk out of her apartment like that.
“Yes, Gojo, there’s a sign-up sheet,” he says. “It’s that big sheet of paper you ignored when you breezed past the queue last week.”
“Oh.” She sets the takeout bag on a clear strip of desk that didn’t exist until she made it. “Well, good thing I brought a bribe.”
He stares at the bag.
Steam curls from the small vent holes, carrying the familiar scent of broth and soy and fried garlic.
His stomach, which has been fueled by coffee and resentment since noon, makes a quiet, traitorous sound.
“Bribery is unethical.” he deadpans.
“But effective,” she counters, flashing him a grin as she drags one of the visitor chairs closer without asking. “Besides, you didn’t eat anything during lecture. I could hear your stomach from the back row.”
“You were in the front row.” he points out.
She shrugs, dropping into the chair, swinging a leg over the other so her knee-tilt slants toward him.
“Echoes.”
He doesn’t bother hiding the way he looks at her.
They’re alone, door closed, and the last time he tried to pretend professional distance in this room she ended up on that couch, tears in her eyes from laughing at him when his phone rang with some old gangster ringtone and ruined the mood.
Her hair is up today, high ponytail, few strands loose around her face. Her lipstick is a soft gloss rather than the dangerous reds she wears when she’s in the mood to start fights.
She looks younger like this, but the way she watches him — chin tipped, eyes bright, sly little smile — reminds him she’s not a kid and hasn’t been for a long time.
He reaches for the bag.
“If this is cold, I’m revoking your participation grade.”
“If it’s cold, it’s your fault for making me wait outside.” She rests her elbow on the edge of the desk, keening in closer as he unties the knot. “I could have walked in earlier, but nooo. You were doing your scary marking face.”
“You mean my normal face.”
“No, your normal face is hot.” She smiles sweetly when he glances at her. “The marking face is like that, but with more homicide.”
He doesn’t dignify that with a reply. He simply pulls out two containers and sets them between them, rummages for chopsticks.
“Are any of your questions about history,” he asks, “or is this strictly a feeding-the-old-man mission?”
“First of all, you’re not old,” she says. “You’re… prime. Vintage. Like expensive whiskey and… whatever the hell they sell in those stupid glass bottles in your kitchen.”
“Insightful analysis,” he says dryly. “Second of all?”
“Second of all, I do have a question.” She rips open the chopsticks with her teeth, because of course she does. “I just haven’t made it up yet.”
He stares.
She laughs, bright and unbothered.
“Relax, professor. I’ll ask something smart eventually so you feel like this isn’t a total waste of your time. Until then, eat.”
He should send her away. He knows this. Office hours are for students who are struggling, or panicking, or too nervous to ask things in class.
They’re not supposed to be for… whatever the hell this is. Noodles and flirtation and the kind of familiarity that would get them both in trouble if anyone saw it.
Instead, he shifts the essays out of splash range and digs into the food.
She’s right — he was hungry.
They eat in relative quiet for a minute or two. The clock ticks. Somewhere down the hall, someone laughs too loudly. A printer whirs to life and dies somewhere in the building’s guts.
Satomi watches him over the rim of her container with narrow, assessing eyes, like she’s cataloging his micro-reactions to the food, the stress, the day.
“How bad is the pile?” she asks eventually, tipping her chin toward the essays.
He snorts.
“On a scale from ‘mild disappointment’ to ‘war crimes,’ we’re solidly at ‘I should start drinking.’”
She winces in sympathy.
“That bad.”
“You’d be surprised how many of your classmates think the Meiji period happened in the 1600s.”
She pulls a face.
“Ew.”
“Exactly.”
She twirls noodles around her chopsticks, then pauses, looking thoughtful.
“Did you really only eat coffee today?”
He gives her a look.
“What part of my schedule suggested a leisurely lunch.”
She makes a dissatisfied noise and leans back in her chair, stretching her legs out, the toe of her shoe nudging his shin lightly.
“You’re going to die of stress at fifty and I’m going to have to haunt your department chair.”
“Assuming I live to fifty.” he mutters.
She frowns, studying him again.
Sometimes he forgets how sharp she is under the theatrics.
She sees more than most of his colleagues do, even if she doesn’t understand what she’s seeing.
“That a threat or a promise?” she asks softly.
He deflects.
“You’re nosy.”
“You’re evasive.” She sets the container down and lets her hand fall casually onto his knee under the desk. “I win.”
Her fingers are warm even through the fabric of his slacks. He pretends not to notice, turning a page in the top essay with his free hand, red pen poised.
“So,” she says brightly, as if she hasn’t just started creeping her hand higher. “About the paper. If I wanted to compare the Restoration to post-war reforms, would that be too much for the length?”
“Depends if you’re capable of staying on topic for more than three sentences,” he says.
The words come out mostly level, despite the way his nerves light up where her palm curls.
“I am capable,” she protests. “I just get… bored.”
Her hand slips another inch. His jaw tightens.
“Hold.” he says, a warning disguised as an instruction.
She smiles.
“Are you talking to my hand or my thesis.”
“Both.”
She laughs under her breath, delighted. Her thumb makes a small, idle circle against his thigh that is nowhere near innocent.
This is how it always starts with her.
Not with grand declarations or sudden pounces, but with little lines crossed one at a time.
A touch that lingers a beat too long.
A question that dips just under the surface of appropriate.
A look that burns.
“Seriously, though,” she says, and to anyone listening through the door she sounds like any earnest student. “Can I anchor it on continuity rather than change? Everyone else will write about change. It feels boring.”
“That’s because it is.” He forces his tone into its usual dry cadence, the one that makes students sit up straighter. “Continuity angle’s fine if you can support it. Less focus on ‘wow, everything was different’ and more on what stayed the same underneath the policy shifts. You’ll need strong primary sources.”
“You say that like you didn’t see my last bibliography,” she says, smug.
“I did,” he admits. “It gave me false hope for your cohort.”
Her fingers dip in a little squeeze that is absolutely intentional.
“False hope,” she repeats with a little mock-sad sigh. “Tragic. Maybe I should… restore your faith.”
She’s leaning forward now, elbows on the desk, tie hanging loose.
The corner of her mouth quirks.
The overhead light catches on the gloss on her lips.
He knows that mouth.
Knows the way her breath hitches when he presses his thumb into the hinge of her jaw, knows how she sounds when—
He cuts the thought off before it finishes forming.
“Gojo.”
“Yes, professor?”
“Behave.”
“I’m literally asking about my paper.”
Her hand isn’t.
It’s restless now, tracing a slow path toward the inside of his thigh and back. Not high enough to be undeniable, not low enough to be plausible deniability.
The kind of touch that is made entirely of suggestion.
“This is an academic meeting.” he reminds her.
“Uh-huh.” She looks entirely unrepentant. “And I’m being very academic.”
“You’re one more inch away from me failing you for ‘gross misconduct,’” he says.
She gasps, exaggerated.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
He arches a brow.
“Try me.”
Her eyes spark, challenge accepted.
“Okay,” she says, and stands up.
He watches her walk like he’s watching a storm form on the horizon.
He knows the pattern now — the slow build, the pressure change, the sudden crash.
She rounds the chair from behind, palms grazing his shoulders in a feigned stretch, fingers kneading once as if she’s just being helpful.
“You’re tense,” she notes, voice near his ear.
“Because I’m surrounded by children all day,” he says.
“I’m not a child,” she counters. “Remember?”
Her hands slide down, a trail of heat through cotton, moving over the curve of his shoulders, fingertips catching briefly at the top button of his shirt. Then she steps around to his side, wedges herself between him and the desk in that insistently casual way of hers.
The chair is not made for two people. It protests with a faint creak as she perches on the arm, then, without waiting for permission, turns and settles herself squarely in his lap.
He exhales, long and slow, like maybe if he gets all the air out, the tension will go with it.
It doesn’t.
“Satomi.” He uses her given name like a leash.
She wiggles a little to get comfortable, absolutely not helping.
“What?” she says, all wide-eyed innocence. “There’s no one waiting. It’s your time. I’m your favorite student. This is efficient.”
“You are not my favorite student.”
“I’m your favorite headache, then.”
Hard to argue with that.
He should push her off. He should stand up, put space between them, deliver a speech about boundaries that he doesn’t really believe in when it comes to her.
Instead, his hands find her waist almost on their own, fingers spanning the narrow curve of it, thumbs resting just under the ribs of her shirt.
He can feel her breathe, the rise and fall, quickened now that she’s where she wanted to be.
“Last time you did this,” he says quietly, “we nearly got caught.”
“Last time you did this,” she corrects, “you forgot to lock the door.”
“I reminded you to lock it.” he says. “You ignored me.”
She leans back against his chest, the back of her head resting briefly against his shoulder. Her ponytail brushes his jaw.
“Semantics.”
“Not semantics. Survival instincts.”
She laughs, the sound buzzing through her into him.
“Relax. It’s dead hour. Everyone’s either in the cafeteria or pretending to study. Who’s going to wander into the history department?”
A cynical voice in his head mutters — Someone with bad timing and a worse sense of direction.
Out loud, he just grunts.
Her weight settles more fully into him. The chair creaks again in protest. His knees part slightly to accommodate her. She takes advantage of that, letting her thighs fall open just enough that the hem of her skirt rides higher, the backs of her legs brushing against his.
He can feel the warmth of her, the solid presence of her body right where his self-control is thinnest.
His fingers dig into her sides in a grip that’s not quite gentle.
“Stay still,” he says.
“You say that like you don’t like it.” she purrs.
He doesn’t answer, she can feel exactly how much he likes it. All she has to do is shift a little more, and—
There’s a knock on the door.
Three brisk taps.
Not loud, but in the thick silence that follows it they might as well be gunshots.
Satomi freezes.
Sukuna’s grip tightens reflexively, holding her in place for a half-second before his brain catches up. His heart jumps in a way that has nothing to do with her body and everything to do with the immediate mental image of the Dean walking in to find his prized, problematic student seated squarely in his lap.
The knock comes again.
“Professor Ryoumen?” a tentative voice calls from the other side. “Do you have a moment?”
He recognizes the voice — one of his second-years, perpetually anxious, the type who reads every footnote twice and apologizes to furniture when he bumps into it.
“Shit.” he breathes.
Satomi twists just enough to look up at him, eyes wide, half-thrilled, half-terrified.
“Oh my god.”
“Under.” he says.
“What?”
“Under the desk.” His voice drops into that tone that brooks no argument, the one he uses in class when the noise level threatens to spiral. “Now, Satomi.”
She swallows, then nods.
There’s no time for sulking or dramatics, she slides off his lap in a fluid, silent motion that speaks of practice, plants her hands on his thighs for balance, and ducks down.
For a moment, everything is chaos — her shoulder bumping his knee, the swivel chair rotating a little, her ponytail catching on the armrest. She stifles a giggle, the sound escaping through her nose instead.
He plants his feet, grabs the edge of the desk with one hand to stop the chair from spinning, and clears his throat.
“Just a moment,” he calls, trying to sound bored rather than like he’s hiding contraband.
Under the desk, Satomi is a warm presence between his knees, pressed close to him by the cramped space. The underside of the desk is a forest of cables, power strip, the faint smell of dust and paper. Her hand lands lightly on his knee as she gets her bearings, fingers curling.
He can feel her looking up at him even before he glances down.
Her eyes are huge in the dimness, lips parted, a flush high on her cheeks.
To anyone walking in, he’ll look like he’s just sitting there, maybe a little stiff from grading.
He feels anything but.
He mouths, Behave, at her.
She grins.
Of course she does.
He drags a breath in, lets it out slow, and pitches his voice into that clipped, professional range again.
“Come in.”
The door opens a crack, then wider. A head pokes in — a bespectacled kid with a backpack almost bigger than he is, hair slightly damp like he rushed there from the rain.
“Uh, Professor Ryoumen? Sorry to bother you. I saw the sign and…” He trails off, taking in the sight of his instructor at the desk, papers spread out, food containers pushed aside. “Are you busy?”
“Office hours,” Sukuna says. He keeps his hands on the surface of the desk, nowhere near his lap. “What do you need, Tanaka?”
Under the desk, Satomi’s hand leaves his knee.
He knows that shouldn’t make his pulse spike.
It does anyway, because where else is it going to go in that tiny space?
Tanaka steps fully into the room, door clicking shut behind him.
“It’s about the midterm essay,” he says, clearly having rehearsed this. “I was looking at your comments and I— I didn’t quite understand what you meant by ‘you’re summarizing the textbook, not engaging with it.’”
“Sit,” Sukuna says, gesturing to the empty chair, grateful for the excuse to focus on something else.
The chair legs scrape lightly as Tanaka drags it closer to the desk and sits, setting his backpack at his feet. He pulls out a slightly crumpled paper from a folder, smoothing it anxiously.
“Here, um. Page three.”
Sukuna reaches for the essay, flipping to the indicated page.
The red ink stands out starkly against the black type, his own handwriting looping in the margins.
Under the desk, soft fabric grazes his calf as Satomi shifts to avoid Tanaka’s feet.
Her hair brushes his knee.
He grits his teeth, determined to ignore every neuron screaming at him about how close she is.
“When I say ‘summarizing,’” he says, forcing his eyes to stay on the paper, “what I mean is that you’re repeating what the author says without adding your own analysis. For example—”
She chooses that moment to let her hand return to his leg.
Higher this time.
Fingertips ghost along the inside of his knee, then up, slow and deliberate.
His grip tightens on the edge of the paper. The red pen presses harder, leaving a tiny puncture.
“—this paragraph.” He clears his throat. “You write, ‘The government implemented X reforms in order to stabilize the economy.’ That’s… technically true, but it’s also something any reader could get from the textbook. What I’m looking for is—”
Her fingers trace a lazy path up his thigh.
She’s careful, infuriatingly so, staying just shy of anything that would force him to jerk away.
The heat of her palm bleeds through fabric, a quiet, insistent reminder that she’s there.
“What you’re looking for is…?” Tanaka prompts, earnest eyes fixed on his face.
“Context,” Sukuna says, very precisely. “Argument. Why did they choose those reforms and not others? Who benefited. Who didn’t. You’re smart enough to do more than paraphrase.”
Tanaka’s shoulders relax a little at the unexpected compliment.
“So I should… bring in more of my own argument.”
“Exactly.” He taps the margin with the pen. “You skirt around some good points here. Don’t hedge. Commit to a position and defend it.”
He’s talking to Tanaka.
He could just as easily be talking to himself.
Under the desk, Satomi’s hand moves again, a slow slide back down, then up, testing. She knows his tells by now — the way his breath hitches, the slight flare of his nostrils, the flex of his jaw.
She’s watching for them, gathering data, cataloging the effect she has on him with scientific thoroughness.
He refuses to give her the satisfaction of anything obvious.
He leans back in his chair, ostensibly to look more relaxed, really so his legs can angle in a way that corrals her movements.
His knee presses lightly against her shoulder, a wordless, enough.
She… does not take it as enough.
But she pauses, at least, her palm flattening against his thigh in a hold that’s somehow both chastened and possessive.
Tanaka asks a few more questions — about sources, about citation style, about whether it’s acceptable to reference a documentary if he can’t find the original interview transcript.
Sukuna answers them in clipped, efficient sentences, each word measured against the electric awareness of the girl under his desk.
Her hand keeps testing.
Up, then down. Fingertips brushing on the apex of his thigh, then sliding slowly inwards.
At some point she’s grazing her perfect manicured nails on the hard, aching bulge caged by his pants.
His nostrils flare and he nudges her shoulder once again with his knee — again to no expected result, since it earns him instead the delicious pressure of her palm right in the ridge of his cock through his pants.
He disguises a deep breathe with a yawn and Satomi needs to bite her lower lip to muffle a little chuckle as she slides — tortuously, but with the right pressure — her hand up and down, palming that bulge as it hardens to its limit.
From Tanaka’s perspective, this is a perfectly normal, if slightly awkward, meeting with a slightly intimidating professor.
From Sukuna’s perspective, it is an exercise in self-control.
Because Satomi replaced her hand with her face — nuzzling his clothed cock, both hands settled on the insides of his thighs as he fights for his life to keep his flat expression. Lips pressed into a flat line as she lets her hot little breathes seep through the fabric and reach his painfully caged erection. He can feel how much his cock is leaking on his boxers. The deep inhales she takes make the cool air send shivers down his spine, and the slow, hot exhales makes him want to shove his cock so far down her throat she won’t be able to talk for a whole day.
He keeps stone-faced, impassive.
By the time Tanaka says,“Thank you, professor, this really helps,” Sukuna feels like he’s run a marathon while sitting still.
“No problem.” he sounds normal. He’s almost impressed with himself. “Bring me a clearer thesis next draft. The bones are there.”
Tanaka nods vigorously.
“I will. Thank you again.” He rises, collects his bag. “Um. Have a good evening.”
“You too.”
The door opens.
The hallway noise filters in for a second — someone wheeling a cart, muffled conversation, a distant ringtone. Then it swings shut.
Silence.
Sukuna doesn’t move for a count of three.
One, to make sure Tanaka isn’t coming back.
Two, to listen for any other footsteps.
Three, because he needs a second to collect the fraying wires of his patience before he looks down at the person currently wedged between his legs and his professional ruin.
When he does, Satomi is looking up at him with the smuggest expression he’s ever seen on a human face. Mouth pressed against his hard bulge — lips clean from the gloss she had the decency to lick off before pulling that shit.
“You,” he rasps, “are going to be the end of me.”
She bites back a laugh, teeth catching her lower lip.
“You did great,” she whispers. “Very professorial. Ten out of ten for composure.”
“Get out from under there.”
“Aww.” She pouts, but starts untangling herself from the cables, careful not to bump his desk. “And here I thought I was helping you practice talking under pressure.”
“You were not helping.” he says.
“I was… enriching your experience.”
“Satomi.”
She finally manages to extricate herself, unfolding from the cramped space and rising to stand between his knees.
There’s dust on one side of her skirt, a faint smudge at her temple from where she must have bumped the underside once.
She looks road-roughened and pleased, like a cat that’s just escaped a too-small box.
He stares up at her, hands wrapping around her thighs automatically to steady her. Her skin is warm under the socks, her breathing a little faster than normal.
Despite all her bravado, her pupils are blown wide, adrenaline still humming through her.
“That was insane,” she says, in the tone of someone describing a rollercoaster they fully intend to ride again. “My heart was in my mouth the whole time. Although I preferred something else in it. I thought for sure he was going to, like, drop something and go reaching under there.”
“Yeah,” he mutters. “Me too.”
“And you were sooo calm,” she continues, relentless. “If I didn’t know, I’d think you were bored.”
“Years of practice.” he says.
Her smile falters for half a second at that — a flicker of something like curiosity, like suspicion, passing over her face.
He sees it, and immediately regrets the wording.
“Practice?” she echoes, slowly.
“With idiots,” he says, before her brain can run any further. He squeezes the backs of her thighs lightly. “Holding a straight face when undergrads tell me the Meiji Restoration took place in the Edo period. Don’t get ideas.”
She squints at him, searching his face for cracks. He gives her nothing but his usual exasperation.
Whatever she sees satisfies her enough for now. The moment passes. Her grin returns, quick and bright.
“Well,” she says. “You passed the stress test. Should I design a few more for you?”
“No.” he says immediately.
“Yes,” she corrects. She shifts her weight, leaning forward until her hands rest on the arms of his chair, effectively caging him in.
From this angle, the overhead light makes a halo of the loose strands around her face.
Gods, she will be the death of him.
Fucking profanely angelical brat.
“You want me to stop coming to your office hours?”
His answer is immediate and honest.
“No.”
“Then don’t complain.”
“I reserve the right to complain about everything.”
She laughs, leaning in until their noses are almost touching.
“That’s fair.”
Her breath fans warm against his lips.
It would be nothing, to tilt his head the slightest degree and close that last bit of distance. To kiss her the way he wanted to when she first walked in, takeout bag and trouble in her eyes.
The door is shut. The hallway is quiet.
Office hours are technically still running, but no one else is lined up.
He should still say no.
He never has, not really, where she’s concerned.
“Satomi.” he says, and there’s a warning in it, soft around the edges.
“Mm?” she hums, smiling.
“This is my workplace.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You were under my desk just now, nuzzling my cock.”
“It was educational.” Her smile turns wicked. “I learned about… continuity and change.”
He huffs despite himself.
“That’s not even clever.”
“I’m not trying to be clever,” she says. “I’m trying to kiss you.”
That, at least, is an intention he understands.
He gives in.
His hands slide up from her thighs to her hips, fingers curving around bone and fabric.
He pulls her that last inch closer and meets her halfway.
She tastes faintly of broth and that stupid bottled tea she likes, sweet and a little bitter. Her hands tighten on the chair arms, then slip up, one curling around the back of his neck, the other bracing on his shoulder.
She makes a small sound into his mouth, something soft and relieved, like she’s been holding her breath for hours. He really wishes he could just leave with her and solve both of their achings at once.
A different kind of tension starts to uncoil in him, the threads of stress loosening under the familiar pull of her.
He keeps it contained for now. No messy angles, no wandering hands beyond the safe span of shirt and waist again.
If anyone burst in now, they would still be in trouble, but not in the kind of trouble that involves formal hearings.
He pulls back before it can deepen into something hungrier — because he knows he’s always starved for her.
She chases him a millimeter, lips parting on a question.
He presses his forehead to hers briefly.
“Enough, baby.” he murmurs. “For now.”
She opens her impossibly blue eyes. There’s a flicker of disappointment, quickly smothered by something softer.
“For now.” she echoes, accepting the boundary even as she makes a mental note to test it later.
He lets his hands fall away from her hips, smoothing down the wrinkle in her skirt where his fingers bunched the fabric.
It’s a small, almost tender gesture, at odds with the sharp lines of his face.
She notices.
“You know,” she says, stepping back just enough to hop up onto the edge of his desk, nudging the empty containers aside with one heel, “most professors use office hours to talk about assignments.”
“I did talk about assignments,” he points out. “To Tanaka.”
“Yeah, but you never talk about them with me.” She swings her legs, heels tapping lightly against the desk. “You talk to me about… other things.”
“Such as how you’re going to fail if you keep pulling stunts like that,” he says.
“Am not.” She grins, tipping her head. “I’m going to ace your class and you know it. Then you’ll have to find another excuse to keep me around.”
He doesn’t say — I don’t need an excuse.
Instead, he reaches for the red pen again, twirling it between his fingers like a cigarette.
“You’re going to rewrite that section of your essay,” he says. “The one on the syllabus.”
She groans.
“Now? I brought food.” her lips become a pout and her tone is that stubborn whine he secretly loves “I brought entertainment. I brought—”
“Trouble.” he supplies.
“Exactly.” She pokes his shoulder with her toe. “And instead of appreciating my efforts, you’re giving me homework.”
“That’s literally my job.”
“Your job sucks.”
“And yet you chose my class.”
She looks at him for a beat, and in that beat the theatrics slide aside and something unguarded peers out.
“I didn’t choose it because of the syllabus.” she says softly. “I chose because the teacher is so fucking hot I couldn’t stop thinking about him.”
He looks away first, eyes dropping to the essay stack.
The red pen stills.
“Rewrite the paragraph,” he says. “Bring it tomorrow. I’ll look it over before you turn in the final.”
She rolls her eyes, but there’s a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
“Yes, professor.”
The title sounds different in here than it does in the classroom. He lets it pass.
She hops off the desk, smoothing her skirt.
“Are your office hours still on for another half hour?”
“Yes.”
“Any other students coming?”
“Not unless they want to knock and get yelled at.”
“Hmm.” She glances at the couch, then at him, then at the closed door. Her grin returns, slow and mischievous. “Then I guess we can talk about… continuity, later.”
He gives her a look that says he knows exactly what she’s planning and that he’s going to pretend he doesn’t until it’s too late.
“Go home, Satomi.” he says.
She leans over, steals one last quick kiss, then straightens.
“You’re coming over after, right?” she asks with a hint of hope, as if he could ever deny her.
“If I survive the rest of these essays.” he says.
“You will.” She moves to the door, hand on the knob, then pauses, glancing back over her shoulder. “And when you do, I’ll restore your faith in humanity.”
“That ship sailed a long time ago.”
“Then I’ll restore your faith in something else.”
He doesn’t ask in what.
He has a pretty good guess.
“Go.” he says again.
She opens the door, peeks into the hallway, then slips out, closing it behind her with a soft click.
The silence that follows is different from the one before she arrived.
It’s thicker somehow, full of her lingering presence — her perfume in the air, the faint warmth on his lap where she sat, the scuff on the floor where her chair scraped.
He blows out a breath, leans back in his own chair, and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Insufferable girl.” he mutters.
There’s no heat behind his words.
His phone buzzes in his pocket.
He pulls it out, expecting a text from her already — some emoji-laden message about noodles and “10/10 performance under pressure, professor 😘”.
Instead, the name on the screen is not one she’ll ever see, a contact marked with a single kanji that doesn’t appear in any of his public life.
He glances at the closed door, at the stack of essays, at the faint dust smudge on the edge of the desk where her sock brushed.
For a moment he sits at the crossroads of his two worlds, one hand still faintly smelling of takeout, the other holding a phone that connects him to rooms with no windows and men who don’t ask questions twice.
He answers.
A low voice on the other end starts talking about schedules, about shipments, about a meeting later that night in a part of town Satomi never has to think about.
He listens, responds in monosyllables, eyes unfocused on the campus outside his window.
When he hangs up, the essays are still there.
The clock still ticks.
The smell of broth still lingers.
So does the memory of her hand on his knee under the desk, steady and sure even as someone else sat meters away, unaware.
He picks up his pen, pulls the next essay from the pile, and starts reading.
Later, after office hours end and the building empties, he’ll leave by the back stairwell, cut through the shadows, and slide into the backseat of a car with tinted windows.
Later, he’ll go where his other name carries weight, where respect is measured in loyalty and fear rather than grades and title pages.
But tonight, after all that, he’ll still end up in a cramped apartment with bad insulation, Satomi in nothing but one of his shirts and her lace panties on the couch, takeout cartons on the table, her bare feet on his lap as he massages them because he’s incapable of not spoiling his brat.
She’ll complain about deadlines. He’ll complain about idiots.
They’ll both pretend this is simple.
For now, he underlines a sentence that misuses “modernization” and writes in the margin.
ꕤ﹑Satomi Gojo is a prodigy, a genius student, that much everyone can tell by now. But what they don't even imagine is how much of a slut she is for her history teacher at the university.
🧁; masterlist
The night class always runs too long.
Fluorescent lights hum overhead, making the whiteboard glare and washing everyone in the same academic gray. Sukuna leans back against the edge of his desk, ankles crossed, arms folded under the stretch of his shirt as he watches the last discussion burn itself out.
He teaches history, but on Tuesdays it feels like he’s teaching them how to waste his time.
“Primary sources, not TikTok threads,” he says, dry as bone. “You wanna talk about the Meiji Restoration, you cite the damn text, not some guy with a ring light.”
A few students laugh, most type.
One, in the third row, crosses her legs.
Satomi Gojo knows exactly when his eyes are on her.
She always knows.
Tonight, she’s dressed like a crime he’s already committed — soft pink miniskirt that rides high when she shifts, black tights that catch the dim light reaching under her desk, an oversized university hoodie that only makes her bare thighs more obvious when she tucks one heel behind the other.
She’s twenty-one, sharp and loud and infuriatingly bright.
She could coast through his classes without trying, instead she spends the whole seminar poking the tiger.
Right now, she leans back in her chair, pen tapping against her mouth. Lip gloss catches the harsh light as she drags the cap slowly along her lower lip, the way you do when you’re thinking.
She is not thinking.
Sukuna’s eyes narrow.
“Any questions before I let you degenerates go pollute the streets?”
Questions die on tongues because it’s late and he looks like he’ll eat whoever raises their hand.
Except her.
Of course.
Satomi’s hand goes up, just two fingers, lazy and delicate.
“Sensei,” she says, sugar poured over smug. “About next week’s essay. Are you more interested in structure or… content?”
There’s a little pause in the room.
A couple of students smirk because everyone knows Gojo Satomi gets away with murder in this class.
He should shut it down.
He always thinks that.
Instead, he meets her eyes.
“Wild concept,” he replies. “Do both.”
She smiles, slow and wicked. Her legs uncross under the desk, knees drifting open before closing again, the tiniest shift, just enough that from his vantage point he sees the hem of her skirt slide up another inch on her thighs.
She knows the angle.
She’s practiced it.
He feels his jaw tighten.
“Multitasking is hard,” she says in that dragged tone, pouting. “Maybe I could come by your office hours so you can… guide me.”
Someone snorts. Another voice mutters “of course she can.”
He lets the silence sit just a little too long, lets himself look at her the way he shouldn’t — the long pale line of her throat above her hoodie, the delicate little hoop in her ear that catches the light when she tilts her head.
Her lipstick’s a shade too dark for class. It suits her.
His thoughts go somewhere very far from pedagogy. Closer to profanity.
“Office hours are posted on the syllabus you never read,” he says at last. “Now get out of my classroom.”
Laughter. Chairs scrape. The spell breaks.
Students file out in clumps, yawning, talking about trains and drinks and assignments. Sukuna busies himself with the ritual — closing slides, uncapping red pen, pretending he doesn’t hear Satomi laugh with the girl next to her as they pack up.
He can feel her eyes on him like a fingertip between his shoulder blades.
By the time the last of the class trickles out, the hallway beyond the door is mostly quiet. The night campus hums low, all concrete and sodium lights and distant traffic.
He moves behind his desk, stacking stray papers, pretending not to notice that one student has not left.
He hears the click of her boots long before she reaches him.
“Sensei.”
He doesn’t look up.
“Class is over, Gojo.”
“Mm. You always say my family name like it tastes bad.”
“Occupational hazard.”
The air shifts when she comes around the side of the desk, stepping into his space like it belongs to her. The room feels different once it’s just the two of them — bigger, but somehow tighter, the echoes gone and only the faint buzz of the lights left.
She props her hip against his desk, close enough that he can smell her perfume — sweet, a little sharp, like something citrus peeled with nails.
Her hand lands on the stack of essays he’s half-heartedly trying to straighten.
“You were grumpy today,” she says. “More than usual.”
“Maybe my students spent ninety minutes flirting instead of discussing Tokugawa policy,” he snaps back.
“Oh?” She tilts her head. “Was someone flirting?”
He finally looks at her.
Satomi’s eyes are impossibly blue, framed in liner that makes them even bigger. She’s smiling, but there’s a tremor under it, something bright and reckless.
Her lip gloss is smudged at the corner of her mouth where she chewed on it during class. One strap of her bag has slipped off her shoulder, hoodie collar slipping askew enough to show a glimpse of the black bra strap underneath.
He hates that he notices that detail. He hates how his body answers it.
“You know the rules,” he says. His voice is lower now, not for the class, just for her. “In here, you’re a student. I’m your professor. You don’t pull that shit.”
“In here,” she echoes softly. “And out there?”
Out there is his car. Her tiny apartment. His kitchen counter. The back row of an empty theatre the week before midterms. Places where he’s had her legs locked around his hips, where she’s moaned his name so loud he had to clap a hand over her mouth.
Out there, she isn’t Satomi Gojo, problematic genius in his syllabus.
Out there, she’s just Satomi — twenty-one, stubborn, filthy-mouthed, with her nails in his shoulders and tears on her lashes when he pushes her past what she thought she could take.
Out there, he’s not Sensei.
His grip tightens on the red pen until the cheap plastic casing creaks.
“Out there,” he says, “you still like to act like a brat.”
She beams at him. It’s unfair, how soft that smile can be when her words are the opposite.
“I was paying attention,” she protests. “Mostly. It’s not my fault if you look good when you’re talking about revolutions.”
“Don’t.” He leans closer before he can stop himself, one hand braced on the desk beside her hip. “Don’t pretend you don’t know exactly what you’re doing crossing and uncrossing your legs like that where I can see.”
Her breath catches.
It’s small, almost nothing, but he hears it. Feels it. Her fingers curl slightly on the stack of papers, as if she’s considering grabbing them just to have something to do with her hands.
“You’re the one looking,” she whispers.
He laughs, low and humorless.
“You dress like that in my classroom and you expect me not to look?”
Her lashes flutter.
“So it worked.”
The last thread of his patience snaps.
Sukuna moves before he has time to pretend he’s thinking. One moment he’s half-bent over the desk, the next his hand is around her wrist, the other at her waist, hauling her in until her back hits the wood with a soft thud and a clatter of pens.
Her breath leaves her in a little gasp. Her hands fly up automatically, then pause, hovering near his chest, not quite touching.
“Sensei—”
“Don’t call me that.” he growls.
Up close, she’s all heat and softness, the faint tremble of adrenaline under her skin. He can see the pulse at the base of her throat. His thumb presses into the curve of her waist, not gentle, keeping her pinned between his body and the desk’s edge.
“You want to act like this is a game?” he asks, his voice a rough scrape. “You think it’s funny to spend my whole lecture trying to see how hard you can wind me up?”
Her eyes search his face as if she’s trying to tell how far she can go.
She finds whatever she’s looking for, because her lips curve, her chin tilts up.
Entitled little brat.
“I like seeing you lose control,” she says, simply. “You always look so composed up there. It’s boring.”
He huffs out a dark laugh.
“Boring, huh.”
His hand slides up her side, fingers brushing the ribbed fabric of her hoodie, feeling the thinness of it, the warmth beneath. He stops just under her arm, thumb fitting under the soft swell of her chest, not quite touching, just there.
A promise. A threat.
“Tell me, brat” he murmurs, eyes locked on hers, “who do you belong to when you pull this shit?”
Her throat works as she swallows, confidence faltering.
The bravado wavers, then flares again.
“You,” she answers, almost too fast. “Obviously.”
“Then act like it.”
He doesn’t wait for another smart remark.
His hand comes up to her jaw, fingers splayed, thumb dragging across that smudged edge of gloss.
He tilts her head back and kisses her.
It’s not the careful, stolen kiss of a secret affair. It’s hot and angry, teeth and tongue, her back arching off the desk as she grabs fistsful of his shirt and hauls him closer.
She tastes like cheap coffee and mint gum, like the candy she pretends to sneak in class when she thinks he isn’t looking.
She makes a little sound into his mouth when he licks into her, a whine that goes straight through him.
Her fingers curl tighter at his shoulders, finally daring to touch, to cling.
His mind blanks out in a rush of sensation — the slide of her lips, the way she sighs when he bites, the arch of her as he nudges a thigh between hers, spreading her legs to fit between them.
The neat rows of desks fade to nothing.
It’s just her and the way she melts against him.
He grinds her back into the desk with his hips, just once, harsh and deliberate, feeling how her body reacts so prettily when he pushes. She breaks the kiss on a gasp.
“Fuck,” she breathes. “Suku—”
“Language,” he says, almost conversational, even as his own breath comes rough. “This is an academic setting.”
Her laugh breaks on another exhale when he does it again, slower this time, grinding his own clothed bulge against her laced panties.
Her miniskirt does nothing to protect her from his heat and the hardness under his jeans, and he doesn't have to look nor touch the fabric under it to be sure she is wearing one of the many pairs of laced underwear he bought her.
She always wears them to his class in hope they end up going out after it.
Sweet little nympho girl.
He can feel her legs trying to hook around him, even with the stupid miniskirt trying to be in the way, the hitch of her hips seeking friction.
“You’re harsh.” she says, and there’s adoration in it, the stupid, reckless kind that makes his chest ache in a way he doesn’t examine.
“You started it.” he counters.
His hand drops from her jaw to her throat, his palm warm and broad, fingers resting lightly where he can feel her pulse race. He doesn’t squeeze. The weight of it is enough to make her eyes go darker, her breath catch.
“Last chance,” he murmurs. “I'll stop now if you want me to be nice.”
She looks up at him, cheeks flushed, lipstick smeared, hair a little mussed from his grip.
She looks, he thinks, exactly how she’s wanted to look all evening, ruined by him.
“Don’t you dare.” she whispers.
Something ugly and tender curls in his gut at the same time.
He leans in, mouth brushing her ear.
“Then you’re going to stay very quiet for me, princess,” he says. “Door’s not locked. Anybody could walk by and hear you. You remember what you promised me last time?”
Her fingers tighten where they clutch at him.
She nods, fast.
“Say it.” he prompts.
“That I wouldn’t… make a mess of it,” she says, voice low, shaking but sure. “That I’d be good.”
“Mm.”
His hand skims down the line of her body, the edge of her hoodie, the bare skin of her thigh where her skirt has ridden up from when he pressed her into the desk.
Goosebumps follow where his fingers trace, a visible shiver.
“You did everything but that tonight.”
“Sukuna…”
Her voice has that particular edge he knows by heart now — half plea, half challenge.
He looks at her for one long moment, mapping every line of her face like he’ll need the memory later.
Then he smiles, slow and dangerous.
“Guess I’ll just have to remind you.” he says.
He bends over her, crowding her down against the cold desk with his body, his mouth following the line of her jaw, the collar of her hoodie, lower — her hands grasping at his shoulders, breath catching in his ear — and soon enough, without parting his lips from her skin, she's put seated on the edge of his desk.
His hands find the straps of her panties under the bunched up pink miniskirt and he wastes no time in sliding them down her bare legs until the delicate piece is completely apart from her. She makes no mention to grab it, he stuffs it in his pant's back pocket and in a beat he's on his knees.
She's still not used to the vision.
He is one of the most imponent men she's ever came across — intelligent, built like a house from how bricked he is, dominant in all of the ways she likes, undeniably handsome and a little insufferable at times. And he's on his knees between her legs, a big, strong hand sliding up the plush skin on the inside of her thighs, the other grabbing her waist, anchoring her on his table while her own manicured hands find purchase on his broad shoulders, making Satomi lean a little bit forward.
"You got this hard by just listening to me teach?" he asks, his face inches from the apex of her thighs and her throbbing cock — the pink tip already leaking and the flushed color matching her cheeks now. "Cute."
"Sh—shut up." her tone is a mix of embarrassment and despair, he knows how sensitive she gets and he knows very well how good it feels to have hot breath hitting against thin skin.
He squeezes lightly her waist, once, and his other hand slides up to encase her hardened dick, wrapping around it and swallowing the shaft completely in his palm, leaving just the tip out — leaking to the point of pooling pre cum on the valley of his grip.
With his crimson eyes boring into her, Satomi's eyebrows knit together as she bites down on her lower lip, muffling a whine while Sukuna pumps her erection a few times, spreading the slick down her shaft, making the movements of his hand feel even better. His face tells her he's testing how much she can take without making a mess — without making noise.
She's positive she can endure whatever he puts her through.
That thought lives for two more seconds in her head before Sukuna's tongue is circling her rim, his face buried under her cock and balls as he works his way into her asshole.
She gasps and both her hands fly to cover her mouth.
She feels him chuckling in that inappropriate place but can't bring herself to do anything other than lean back slowly, supporting her body on her forearms as she half-lays over his pile of papers that may or may not end up ruined before the night ends.
She isn't worried about that, and he doesn't seem to be either.
His hands find the back of her knees, letting go for a moment the velvety skin of her cock, as he settles the soles of her feet against his shoulders, spreading her legs farther in a way he can enjoy not only the view, but the whole meal in front of him.
"Fucking perfect." he breathes hot against her cute clenching asshole, both hands splaying on the fat of her ass globes, grabbing them tightly with barely any restraint — he squeezes the flesh to the point of his sinking his nails into the soft skin, just so he can spread her open wider before resuming his ass eating activities.
"Fffuck—" she whispers ragged, supporting herself on just one forearm as the other lifts and extends so she can reach between her legs, grabbing a fistful of his pink hair, pulling him flush against her and bucking softly her hips as he tonguefucks her ass without a single pause to breathe.
Her low mewls, contained moans and the lewd sound of him having that delightful meal echo shyly in the empty classroom, bouncing on the walls and filling their ears as they let themselves forget for a second that they could be in unprecedented trouble if someone decides to barge in unannounced.
But the building makes sure to remind them that they're not alone, and that the classroom is not a cheap motel room.
Her heart thunders against her ribcage when a group of students walk down the hallway and someone bumps on the wooden door, making the knob slightly turn but not enough to move the door — bright blue eyes snap open and Satomi's body stiffens immediately, she sits up and recovers her posture, pulling even harder on Sukuna's strands, which grants her a low growl coming straight from his chest, his eyes flying up to meet her panicked face as he, unwillingly, removes his tongue from her entrance.
"What?" he snaps and his look is so heavy with lust she almost forgets the imminent danger of doing what they are doing, where they are doing.
"What if someone walks in?" she whispers, looking down to meet his eyes, hand still on his hair.
"I thought you didn't care." he cocks a brow and she notices that lazy grin forming on his lips. "Since you're a genius and you can get into any school—" he reminds her of her own little bravado thrown at him the last time she wanted him to fuck her on the spot after class. "—but a cock like mine was something h—shit!" his rant ends in a hiss of pain as she yanks his hair once, not wanting to hear the rest of that sermon.
"I don't want you to be fired, Sensei." those pretty, almost crystalline eyes, the sweet lilt in her voice and the batting lashes are more than enough to fool anyone, but Sukuna is not just anyone, he's the man who had to decipher, break and tame that brat into someone almost bearable to have around.
"How considerate." he deadpans and gives her no time to snark back before the flat of his tongue slides from the base of her balls to the tip of her — still hard, still twitching — cock.
He feels her body jolting and a soft moan rolling out of her lips just as Sukuna circles her glans and collects the leaking pre in his tongue, giving the pink head one good sharp suck that has Satomi squirming briefly before he lets the cock go with a wet pop.
"I think you just fear your colleagues might realize," and just like that he's not on his knees anymore, her feet no longer settled on his shoulders, his hands are finding her hipbones and pulling her towards him, once again getting her to stand on her feet between him and the table. "That the most intelligent girl in their class, the little genius Satomi Gojo, is in fact, a needy whore."
His tone is composed, conversational, and his lips brush against hers ever so slightly as he continues his little speech.
Satomi, however, continues to pretend she isn't getting even harder with every word leaving her lovely sensei's mouth.
"I think," he takes one step back and catches that little pout forming on her lips. He takes her in for a beat before steering her body and placing a firm hand against the space between her shoulder blades, forcing his best worst student to bend over until her chest presses against the table top — papers even more scattered now, some of them even a little crumpled. "You don't want people thinking you are the top student only because you're fucking your teachers."
She should curse him off.
Maybe throw a little tantrum, make a little fuss.
But oh my god she wants his cock so bad she is managing to do the impossible — to listen to all of that without trying to talk back even once.
A miracle, really.
She thinks she should be canonized as a saint after that night.
"So let's not take any risks, hm?" he unbuckles his belt, sliding it out of its loop. "Open."
"You think that's gonna make me quiet?"
The taunting tone is gone in a moment, because the instant that pretty bratty mouth opens, the softness she knows very well to be lace is shoved inside, pressed flush on her tongue.
Her eyes widen at the realization she has her own panty in her mouth, but the complain never makes its way out of her lips — the strap of leather that is his belt is now looped around her head, pretty, silky white hair is pressed against her skull and her mouth is now forced to be open — her poor jaw not strong enough to bite and bend thick, legit leather — with her underwear stuffed in.
A whiny, almost strangled sound that is probably a complain only gets Sukuna to press himself against her ass, the ridge of his hard cock printed against his pants and the heat coming from it through the fabric being enough to make Satomi drop any resistance and begin to purr like a domesticated cat as she perks her ass up, arching her back further.
Wanting, demanding, begging for him.
He pushes her miniskirt even further up and spreads her round, perfect plush ass cheeks with both hands to take yet another good look at that beautiful little pink hole before he ruins it.
As he enjoys the view, she grows impatient, but she knows better than to give him a reason to make her wait even longer — and he would, out of cheer fucking spite, she knows it very well.
Collected spit lands on the small of her back and slides down between her cheeks, encouraged by two broad fingers that massage, circle around her rim and slide inside with some ease, sending shivers down her spine, which are followed by her attempt to spread her legs even wider for him.
"Pathetic cockhungry slut." he drawls while undoing his pants, lowering them along with his boxers just enough to free his aching cock from the fabric prison. "Don't worry, I'll give you what you need."
Her whole bratty act is as cute as it is enticing.
As is her attempts of holding back her voice while his fingers play inside her ass, stretching her nice and well, scissoring them a little further before adding a third finger that makes Satomi let out another muffled groan and buck her hips almost automatically.
Sukuna could spend hours toying with her, making her squirm and beg for him to fuck her properly in every way she manages except with her words, but soon enough the lights will begin to power off on the campus and the staff will come in to clean the classrooms, so he halts the movement of his fingers inside her, pulls out and fists his own throbbing cock.
He gives it a few lazy pumps, the angry-red-head dripping precum brushes against her needy hole and he can feel how immediately her body tensing up in anticipation as she feels the familiar warmth of him.
"Remember, princess," He leans in, chest hot against her back, his lips ghosting the shell of her ear as he whispers. One hand finds her jaw and cups it, not minding the saliva that has already started to escape from her forced-open lips. The other is wrapped around the base of his dick as he presses his tip on the puckered rim. "quiet."
Sukuna snaps his hips forward with no further warning, bottoming out inside of her at once at the same instant he rises his hand from her jaw to her lips, covering her gagged mouth to suffocate a yelp that tried to leave.
Her eyes roll back instantly when she feels his length stretching her, filling her up and throbbing as her velvety walls clench around him. He keeps his hand there, warm, big palm being a third barrier to stop her high pitched, needy moans as he starts to move his hips.
He doesn't let her get used to him, not that he needs to, but each thrust is crude, sharp and deep — oh so deep — she feels her lower belly bulging each time he bottoms out.
He finds amusing how she always seem to take him so naturally — fingers or cock, it's almost like she was made for him, always ready to be fucked silly without much resistance, always taking him so well.
Sukuna lets his weight press over her lean body, pounding her in a rhythmic, steady velocity before snaking in his free hand under the hem of her hoodie, just to press on that delicious point where the head of his cock stretches her to the point of bulging visibly below the cute pierced navel — making her body tremble and her ass squeeze him even tighter.
It feels so good to be inside her that he immediately forgets how annoying she can be in his classes.
How can someone with such a delicious set of holes be so obnoxious?
No wonder the first time he accepted fucking her was to stuff her throat with his cock and have her shut the fuck up for a moment.
She presses back each time his groin slaps her ass, as if wanting him to get even deeper inside her, and he stops pistoning for a beat just to graze her ear with his teeth before nibbling at the shell. Just enough to feel her squirming and trying to make him move. Just enough to press that palm harder against her open mouth and turn her head enough to look into those perfect blue eyes, now threatening to leak and smudge her pretty makeup.
"So desperate." he croons and ruts into her, pressing his body further against her, squeezing the poor girl on the table as she pathetically tries not to suffocate on her own panties and drool. "I should let you fuck yourself on my cock until you learn to behave."
Her eyes widen before squinting as he muses, but the thin eyebrows knit tight just as fast, giving Sukuna that expression she only wears when, she wants him to pay attention to her, to buy her something pretty — or to dick her down.
He should be immune to those eyes by now.
Alas, he's not.
So he licks a stripe from her jaw to that spot right under her ear and presses his lips there, a tender kiss.
"You're lucky you have such a delicious tight ass." he groans before starting once again to fuck into her, his pace now faster, breathing getting ragged as he places open mouthed kisses on her neck where her pulse lives, on the curve of her shoulders, and lets her hear his deep groans and low moans as his cock drills into her warm hole.
She could cum from just that — from just getting dicked down by him in that rude way he does, but she feels his hand sliding down from her lower belly to grab once again her neglected cock. He's able to pump it three, maybe four times before that heat curling in her stomach unravels and the build up reaches its climax, getting Satomi to let out a longer whine and writhe under him as she releases in spurts as long ropes of cum hit the underside of Sukuna's table and fall to the floor.
He keeps pounding as she rides her orgasm, sometimes deeper, sometimes he ruts in, mean, just to press her prostate and make her whole body jerk and her legs shake before he falls back into the rhythm that brings him faster to his own orgasm. His hand is still enveloping her softening sharp, a thumb pressing against the slit on her glans, drawing slow circles and teasing it past overstimulation.
And when he finally reaches his own high, he sinks his teeth on the porcelain skin of her exposed shoulder, bite strong enough to make her eyes bar with tears and her vision blur as she's filled with his hot, thick seed painting her walls white.
She bites the leather belt and slowly lets her head fall until her forehead is against the cold wood of the table. He allows it and slowly retrieves his own hand from her gagged mouth, his chest and abdomen still pressing her down against the surface filled with scattered paper, his cock still fully sheathed inside her clenching asshole.
Slowly she brings her hand to the back of her head and tries to unbuckle the belt with trembling fingers. He breathes deeply, helping her once he peels himself from the pretty curve of her back.
Strings of saliva fall from her lips to the table, tainting the papers and the wood — she's a drooling mess with sore jaw, but she looks happy, satisfied. Less unbearable.
"You didn't have to use your belt, y'know? Your hand is more than enough." she grouses while fixing her hair, which was her biggest worry apparently.
When he pulls out and tucks his softening cock inside his boxers again, he takes a moment to appreciate his work — gaping hole clenching around nothing as his seed slowly overflows, sliding down her perineum, her cute balls, until it's dripping on the floor.
She swats away the hand he used to spread her ass cheek so he could have a better view, proceeding to pull down her miniskirt and consider wearing or not her soaked saliva-panties.
"Where's the fun in that?" he smirks, impish, as he loops his belt back and buckle it before tending to his pouty brat of a student. "Look at me."
When she does his hands cup her face, turning it slightly to the left and then right, looking for any redness or bruises he may have caused. The belt left dents on that soft, pristine skin, but he knows those will be gone in an hour or so.
His thumbs find the hinges of her jaw and he presses slightly, earning a brief wince from Satomi.
"It's gonna hurt for tonight, try not to talk much. You'll wake up fine and ready to piss me off again tomorrow."
He waits for her lips to become a pout — because he knows her too well for her own good — and leans in to kiss them without hurry and without letting go of her face.
"Unlike these papers you drooled all over. Once again you made a mess, princess."
"Good luck explaining to your students why their papers are all odd and smudged." she whispers against his lips, blue eyes boring into him as she opens a devious smile, manicured delicate hands already trying to unbutton his shirt.
"Insatiable little thing." He huffs a laugh and holds her wrists, everyday growing more sure she will be the death of him with how often she wants to fuck. "Come, I'll give you a ride home. We can't be here for much longer."
"What about the papers? The floor, the mess?" she acts worried but her arm is already looping around his as they walk out, her hand finding his biceps as she presses her body into his side.
She gets really calm and obedient once he gets to stuff her full with cum, it's an impressively quick effect.
"I'll conveniently forget to leave the door unlocked for the cleaning staff tonight. I'll deal with it tomorrow morning."
And just like that they leave.
Door locked, Satomi doing her best not to walk like a person trying to let her teacher's cum leak from inside her, Sukuna considering the risks of that brat trying to suck him off as he drives her home, and the specifics of how he once again ruined her stays between the two of them and that classroom's four walls.
If you want to make a request, support my writing or prefer to read it on Ao3, the links are below:
✦ ｢ https://ko-fi.com/belimah ｣﹒｢Ao3 ｣ ✦
🎀; Satomi figures out Sukuna really rich the first time he tells her not to look at the prices.
🌸; art: @winterrbluess
🧁; masterlist
They’re in one of those minimalist department stores that smells like money — quiet music, too much glass, mannequins wearing things worth more than her monthly rent. She stands in front of a display of skirts, one fingertip grazing the hem of something black and soft that she absolutely cannot afford.
Sukuna watches her from a step back, hands in the pockets of a long, dark coat. In the bland mall lighting he looks almost respectable, donning wire-rim glasses, button-down shirt, that quiet tone that makes idiots think he’s just a grumpy academic. The tattoos are hidden. The temper is on a leash.
The eyes are not.
“You’re doing the math in your head, brat.” he says. His voice is low enough that it doesn’t carry past the rack. “Stop.”
“I’m not,” she lies.
He huffs, studying her face.
“You always chew your cheek when you are.”
Her jaw freezes. She glares at him over her shoulder, pale hair swinging.
“It’s called budgeting, old man. Some of us have to think before we buy things.”
“Don’t call me old man in public.” He steps closer, the faintest brush of his chest against her back as he reaches for the price tag she’s failed to sneak a look at. “And you’re not paying. I am.”
He doesn’t even flinch when he sees the number. Just flicks the paper between two fingers, looks down at her with that flat, unimpressed stare that makes undergrads shrink in their seats.
“Try it on,” he says. “That one. And the red one you’re pretending not to want.”
She backpedals immediately.
“Sukuna—”
“That’s not ‘yes, sir’.”
Her lips press together. She’s bratty enough to push, but she’s also very aware of the weight of the credit card he palmed at the entrance, the way staff started treating them differently the moment they clocked the watch on his wrist, the shoes, the coat. She knows he’s comfortable, she just doesn’t know how comfortable.
She also knows what he did to her back in her apartment last week when she argued about letting him pay her phone bill.
She swallows and snatches the skirt off the rack.
“Fine.”
He smiles, slow and sharp.
“Attagirl.”
In the mirror of the fitting room hallway, they look wrong together in all the ways she likes — him tall and dark and solid, her small and bright and leaning into his orbit like she can’t help it.
His hand sits easy at the small of her back as he steers her to the changing booth, thumb pressing once, possessive, like a brand she can’t see.
“Don’t take forever,” he says, and there’s a double edge to it. “I’m not patient.”
“Since when?” She rolls her eyes, stepping into the tiny cabin. “You’ve been putting up with my bullshit for months now.”
“Don’t make me reconsider.” he calls through the thin door.
She laughs, all soft and delighted, and the sound hooks in his chest.
He shifts his weight, leaning against the opposite wall, expression smoothing into something neutral for any staff walking by. Inside, he’s replaying the entire last week in fragmented flashes — her legs over his lap on his couch, the way she sprawled across his sheets afterward, how she wrinkled her nose when she first saw the view from his apartment like she couldn’t decide if she was impressed or suspicious.
“You live here?” she’d asked, incredulous, taking in the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city spread out in glittering lines below.
“Where’d you think I lived,” he’d said, tossing his keys in the bowl by the door. “Under your dorm bed?”
She’d snorted, then gotten distracted by the fancy coffee machine. She didn’t ask where the money came from.
Most people don’t. They see the university title, the publications, the occasional guest lecture on some documentary. ‘Consultancy’ covers a lot. Nobody spends too long wondering what a man like him does when he leaves campus after his last class.
Satomi doesn’t, either. She just takes the spoiling and growls when he teases her about it.
The curtain rattles, snapping him back to the present.
“Don’t laugh at me,” her voice warns. “If you laugh, I’m not coming out.”
He can hear the fabric swish as she moves inside, the clumsy tap of one boot hitting the little bench. He imagines her balancing on one foot, yanking tights straight, skirt sliding up her thighs, hoodie riding high. Heat flickers low in his gut. He inhales, slow.
“I haven’t seen you yet,” he says. “What would I be laughing at, exactly.”
“Your own face when you do.” she mutters.
The curtain parts a crack, then a little more. She steps out, hands fisted in the hem of the hoodie like she’s considering bolting back in.
The skirt fits like pure sin. Simple black, mid-thigh on anyone else, but rather higher on her perfect, long model-like legs. The tights are semi-sheer, a whisper of skin beneath. Her hoodie is still on, but it makes the whole thing worse somehow, the oversized top swallowing her shoulders so that all that’s left is long leg, tiny waist, flush blooming on her cheeks.
“Well?” she demands. “Say something, professor.”
The title on her tongue hits him harder here than it does in the classroom.
He lets his gaze rake down, slow and unhurried, not bothering to hide it. She shifts under the scrutiny, weight going to one hip, knees pressing briefly together before she remembers herself and plants her feet again.
“Turn around.” he says.
She scoffs, but she does it, spinning in a quick circle. The skirt flares, then settles. From behind, it’s worse — just enough fabric to cover what it needs to, nothing more.
He can see exactly how high it will ride when she sits, how it will bite when he pulls. How hard it will be not to yank it off her and ruin the gift as soon as they go back to his place.
He exhales through his nose.
“You’re not wearing that to my class.”
She spins back, scandalized.
“What? Why not?”
His eyes snap to hers.
“You know why not.”
Her mouth opens, then closes. She stares at him, a slow grin creeping across her face as comprehension dawns.
“You like it,” she says, delighted. “Oh my god. You really like it.”
He gives up on hiding it, it’s pointless when she looks at him like that.
“That’s the problem.”
“That sounds like a you problem.” She steps closer, until there’s only a handspan between them, sun-sweet perfume drifting up. “So what, you’re going to buy me expensive skirts and then ban me from wearing them where you have to see?”
“Exactly.”
Her brows shoot up.
“Possessive much?”
“Bratty much,” he returns.
They glare at each other for a beat. Then she laughs, shoulders shaking, and the tension softens into something warmer.
“So where can I wear it?” she presses, eyes gleaming. “If not to your class.”
He leans down, lowering his voice so it’s barely more than a breath between them.
“On my time.” he says. “In my place. When there isn’t a campus policy and four walls full of witnesses between me and what I want to do to you for acting up.”
Her inhale is sharp, audible. Color floods her neck. For a moment, the store, the mirrors, the distant murmur of other customers all fall away. It’s just his hand coming up to lightly pinch the hem of the skirt, the pad of his thumb brushing the fabric right above her thigh, a promise made and not kept. Yet.
Her eyes drop, then come back up, pupils blown wide.
“Then you better buy it,” she murmurs. “And the red one, too.”
He laughs, low and genuine this time, and taps her hip with two fingers.
“Get back in there before I forget we’re in public.”
She flashes him a wicked little smile and disappears into the booth again, curtain swishing shut.
He leans back against the wall, pulls out his phone under the guise of checking the time. Instead, he opens their chat.
buy it. don’t argue.
He hits send.
There’s a muffled fumbling, then the soft buzz of her phone inside the cabin.
A second later, a reply pops up.
yes, sir 💋
His jaw twitches, half a curse catching under his breath. Somewhere between the marble floors and the polite salespeople, his life took a turn he did not see coming — history professor by weekdays, yakuza lieutenant by most late nights, sugar-daddy with a sugar-baby student sending him emojis while trying on designer skirts on his credit line by… whenever.
He should stop. He knows that.
He should push her away, untangle this mess before it knots beyond fixing.
Instead, he tucks the phone away and waits, already mentally planning which bottle to open when he gets her back to his apartment, which lecture he’s going to give her about “respecting her elders” when she inevitably spends the taxi ride home with her hand on his thigh, grinning like she owns the world.
He would give her the world if she asked for it, that’s the main issue.
He’ll spoil her again.
Like he always does.
The money is blood-warm and easy.
The girl is not.
She’s trouble, soft, loud and bright and impossible.
He presses the back of his head against the cool wall, closes his eyes for a second, and lets himself think, very quietly, that he likes it that way.
🎀 ; the moment she decided she would be majoring history was when she laid her eyes on who the Professor was.
🌸 ; art: @/tenshi
🧁; masterlist
Satomi decides she’s going to be a problem the moment she sees him.
It isn’t romantic in a soft way. It isn’t a gentle crush that grows over weeks. It hits hard, fast, and embarrassingly simple — the man is too handsome to be allowed to exist in a university building full of fluorescent lights and tired students.
He looks like he’s angry at the entire world and still willing to show up and do his job anyway. He looks strong in the ordinary, adult way — broad shoulders in a plain dress shirt, forearms exposed when he rolls his sleeves up, hands that don’t fidget.
He walks through the corridor like he knows exactly where he is and expects everyone else to keep up.
Satomi watches him pass a bulletin board with torn flyers and notices the small details, because she’s good at noticing. A clean watch. Shoes that aren’t flashy but are clearly expensive. A calm, practiced expression that says he has no interest in being liked by the people around him.
Just her type.
She’s there early on purpose, leaning against the wall outside the classroom with her phone in hand and a coffee she doesn’t need.
Her outfit is careful without being loud — a short skirt, tights, a crisp top.
Cute enough to make people look twice.
Normal enough to avoid drawing the wrong kind of attention.
She’s had years of learning how to be looked at the way she wants, and how to avoid being looked at the way she doesn’t.
Nobody here knows she’s trans. Nobody needs to. She’s not hiding because she’s ashamed — she’s hiding because she’s tired.
Tired of people thinking they know her from one fact.
Tired of the small questions that aren’t small at all.
Tired of being used as a topic for strangers to argue about.
This campus doesn’t get to have her whole story.
It gets Satomi Gojo — smart, pretty, blunt, and unbothered.
And in a few minutes, it’s going to get her problem.
The classroom door opens, and he steps in with a stack of papers under one arm and a book in his hand. He doesn’t look at anyone for long. He checks the room like he’s assessing exits, then heads for the front. He sets his book down, places the stack neatly, adjusts the microphone he doesn’t need, and writes his name on the board in clean letters.
PROF. RYOUMEN SUKUNA
A couple of students whisper, partly because the name is unusual, partly because he looks like he could bite someone if they talk too loudly.
Satomi slides into a seat where she can be seen without being in the center. Third row. Close enough to meet his eyes if she wants. Far enough that she can watch without feeling trapped.
He doesn’t introduce himself in a friendly way. He doesn’t do jokes to break the ice. He doesn’t ask them where they’re from or what their hobbies are.
He picks up a piece of chalk, taps it against the board once, and starts.
“This is a survey course,” he says, voice steady and dry. “If you’re here because you think history is just dates and wars, you’re going to have a bad time. If you’re here because you like arguing and you can read, you’ll do fine.”
A few people laugh nervously.
Satomi doesn’t laugh. She watches him talk.
His mouth is strict when he’s teaching.
His eyes move across the room without landing anywhere long enough to get stuck.
He’s controlled, almost severe.
She wants to see him lose that.
He goes over the syllabus like he expects them to actually read it. He explains how he grades. He says what he expects. He makes it clear that he doesn’t care if anyone thinks he’s harsh.
He’s not cruel, not for fun. He’s just not here to babysit.
Satomi takes notes. Real notes. She doesn’t need to, but she likes the way he looks when someone is paying attention.
He notices.
He glances at her notebook once, then back to the room.
No reaction.
She files it away.
When he opens the floor for questions, the room is quiet for a beat.
Then someone raises a hand and asks, “Is the textbook mandatory?”
Sukuna’s expression doesn’t change, but there’s a pause in his voice that makes the room tense.
“Yes,” he says. “If you can’t afford it, there are copies in the library. If you don’t want to buy it, you can borrow it. If you don’t want to read it, you should leave now.”
The room goes still, then a few awkward laughs.
Satomi smiles to herself.
He’s like that.
Direct. Unforgiving.
A little mean if you push him.
He’s not performing kindness.
He’s not trying to win them over.
That, somehow, makes him hotter.
For the first couple of weeks, she plays it quiet.
She shows up to every lecture. She wears outfits that make people look twice. Nothing extreme, nothing that screams for attention, but enough that she knows eyes track her when she walks into the room
She lets the boys in the back row assume she’s just another pretty girl who picked a class because it fit her schedule. She lets a few girls give her that look that says I already decided what you are.
Bimbo.
She doesn’t correct them.
Sukuna doesn’t give her much.
He doesn’t act like she’s special, doesn’t stare at her longer than he stares at anyone else, he teaches, he dismisses the class, he gathers his things and leaves like he’s trying to get out of the building before it infects him.
But Satomi watches, and Satomi is patient in the particular way she gets when she’s decided she wants something.
Then, around the third week, she starts answering.
It’s not dramatic.
She doesn’t throw her hand up to show off.
She waits until he asks a question the room can’t answer.
She waits until the silence stretches and he gets that flat look, the one that says he’s annoyed he has to be in this room with people who don’t care.
He’s talking about early modern Japan, laying groundwork, sketching context. He asks something about the relationship between policy and social control, something basic if you read the assigned chapter, something that should be easy.
Nobody answers.
A few people look down at their laptops like the answer might rise from the keyboard by magic.
Satomi lifts her hand.
Sukuna’s eyes land on her.
It’s brief, automatic, and then he looks away as if he’s already decided she’s going to waste his time.
“Yes,” he says. “You.”
She gives the answer cleanly.
Not long-winded. Not overconfident. Correct.
The room turns to look at her.
Sukuna blinks once.
The smallest crack in his expression.
He nods and moves on, as if it doesn’t matter, as if his attention hasn’t sharpened.
Satomi feels the shift anyway.
After class, she hears someone behind her whisper, “Probably got lucky.”
She keeps walking. She doesn’t correct that, either.
The next week, she answers again.
Then again.
Sukuna starts doing what good teachers do when they notice a student might be capable — he tests her without making it obvious. He asks for connections between points. He throws in a question that isn’t directly in the text. He references something he didn’t cover in lecture and watches for who flinches.
Satomi doesn’t flinch, she likes reading. She likes knowing things. She likes the feeling of being right. She likes the feeling of being underestimated and then watching the room change its mind.
More than that, she likes what it does to him.
Because for all his control, for all his careful neutrality, he reacts to intelligence.
Not with praise. Not with smiles. But with attention.
When she answers, he looks at her a fraction longer. When she makes a point, he pauses as if he’s recalibrating. When she’s wrong — rare, but it happens — he doesn’t mock her. He corrects her, concise, and then asks her to try again.
That’s what gets her.
Not the correction, but the expectation. The quiet assumption that she can do better.
She starts coming to class dressed with his attention in mind, but she stops doing it in the way she used to do for men.
She doesn’t dress for easy hunger.
She dresses for irritation.
A skirt that’s one inch shorter than it needs to be.
A blouse that’s neat until she leans forward and the collar shifts.
A tie worn loose.
Hair pinned up so her neck shows when she tilts her head.
Lip gloss that catches the light when she presses her lips together, thinking.
She makes sure she’s a distraction and a challenge.
The first time she interrupts him, she does it like she’s genuinely curious.
He’s explaining something about state consolidation, simplifying a point to keep the room with him. Satomi lifts her hand but doesn’t wait long enough. She speaks when he’s mid-sentence.
“Sensei. Isn’t that more accurate for the later period, though?” she says. “Because earlier on you still have—”
The whole class freezes.
You don’t interrupt Sukuna. Even students who don’t care have learned that.
His eyes snap to her. The room holds its breath.
Satomi meets his stare with a calm that isn’t fake. She isn’t disrespecting him for fun.
She’s pushing to see where the line is.
For a long second, he just looks at her.
Then he says, “Finish your point.”
So she does.
She lays out the argument in a way that makes it hard to dismiss. It’s not confrontational. It’s accurate.
It’s also clearly her showing off now, because she’s realized this is how she gets him to look at her like she’s real.
When she finishes, the room is very quiet.
Sukuna’s mouth tightens.
He nods once.
“Yes,” he says. “That’s a fair correction. The simplified version I gave you is the version you’ll see in lower-level courses and lazy summaries. If you want to do this properly, you pay attention to the shift over time.”
He glances at the room.
“And,” he adds, “you raise your hand and wait.”
A couple of students laugh, relieved.
Satomi gives him an innocent look.
“Yes, Sensei.”
His eyes narrow like he knows she’s enjoying it.
She is.
After that, the class starts reacting differently to her.
People stop assuming she’s dumb. They start asking her questions quietly before lecture. A few try to befriend her. A few resent her.
She doesn’t care much either way, she didn’t come here to build a social circle, she came here because she decided she wanted the angry professor to pay attention to her, and she’s getting closer.
Sukuna never compliments her.
Not directly.
But he starts calling on her more.
He starts watching her when he speaks, as if checking whether she agrees. He starts giving her questions that are harder, the kind that separate memorization from thinking.
Satomi answers them, and every time she does, she feels that small internal satisfaction — yes, you’re looking. You can’t help it.
Still, it isn’t the reaction she wants.
He doesn’t soften, doesn’t flirt back, doesn’t give her the crack in the armor she’s been trying to earn.
He stays controlled, and the only thing that changes is that his eyes rake over her sometimes when he thinks no one is looking.
He notices her legs when she crosses them. He notices her mouth when she wets her lips. He notices the way her skirt rides up when she leans forward to write.
He looks, but he doesn’t take.
Satomi isn’t used to that.
Most men are easy.
Most men get stupid fast.
She knows how to make them trip over themselves with a look, a laugh, a touch on the arm.
She knows how to make them want to prove something.
Sukuna doesn’t try to prove anything.
He just gets quiet, and a little sharper, and keeps teaching.
It makes her want him more.
By midterm season, she’s built a small routine for herself.
She stays after class sometimes, not quite lingering in a way that’s obvious, but long enough to ask one question, then another.
She goes to the library at times she knows he might be there.
She sits within his line of sight when he’s in the faculty section, reading.
She doesn’t do any of this like a desperate person — she does it like someone who belongs there.
Like she’s allowed.
That’s part of what makes it work.
Sukuna learns her habits, and he starts adjusting his without meaning to.
He stays later on some nights, grading in his office, because the library feels too open now.
He chooses corners with fewer people.
He tells himself it’s because he’s busy.
He tells himself it’s because he prefers silence.
It’s also because Satomi is relentless.
And because she’s smart enough to make his excuses thin.
On the night it finally happens, it isn’t planned.
At least, not on his side.
The day starts ordinary. A lecture, a few questions, a student complaining about deadlines. Sukuna moves through it with his usual stern efficiency, voice steady, hands clean of any tremor.
Satomi is in the front row today, legs crossed, skirt neat, hair tied back.
She answers questions like she’s making a point — she’s prepared, she’s engaged, she’s not here to be decorative.
And yet, she’s absolutely being decorative.
Sukuna refuses to reward her with a glance longer than necessary.
He keeps his focus on the content, on the board, on the class as a whole.
She keeps baiting him anyway.
When he dismisses the class, people pack up quickly. It’s night. They want to go home.
Satomi lingers, but so do a few others, asking quick questions, complaining about footnotes. Sukuna answers them, impatient but not unfair. Eventually the last one leaves.
Satomi stays.
He doesn’t look up right away.
He gathers his papers, erases part of the board.
He hears the soft sound of her bag strap shifting on her shoulder.
“Gojo,” he says without turning, “I’m not going to give you extra credit because you look cute when you pretend to understand historiography.”
She laughs.
“I’m not pretending.”
“You’re always pretending something.”
“Maybe,” she says. Her tone changes slightly. Less playful, more direct. “Are you going to the library tonight?”
He pauses, hand still on the eraser.
“Why,” he says, dry. “Do you plan to stalk me again?”
She doesn’t deny it.
“I have to study.”
“You have friends,” he says. “Study with them.”
“I don’t want to.”
He sets the eraser down and finally looks at her.
Satomi meets his eyes without flinching. She looks calm, but there’s a focused energy in her posture.
Like she’s already decided how this is going to go.
Sukuna’s patience is big, yes.
He’s dealt with worse than flirtation.
He’s dealt with violent students, entitled parents, administrators with political agendas.
He can handle a smart girl with a mouth.
But he’s also human, and she’s a specific kind of problem.
“You have an exam.” he says.
“I know.”
“You should go home.”
“I will,” she says. “After I study.”
He narrows his eyes.
“Fine. Study. Quietly. Away from me.”
Satomi smiles, as if he’s just said yes to an invitation.
“Okay.”
Two hours later, she finds him anyway.
The library at night is calmer, but it’s not empty. There are always students who live in this place during exams.
The air smells like paper, dust, and coffee.
The lights are softer than the classroom, but still bright enough to keep you awake.
Sukuna sits in a corner of the faculty section that’s technically not forbidden to students, but it’s far enough away that most don’t bother. He has a stack of books, a notebook, and a laptop open. His phone is face down, because he doesn’t like distractions.
He’s been here for thirty minutes, and he’s already annoyed.
Not by the work. The work is fine. Work is clean. Work behaves.
He’s annoyed because he knows, deep down, that Satomi is somewhere in the building, and part of his mind keeps listening for her footsteps.
When he hears them, it’s like his body recognizes her before his brain wants to.
She doesn’t come quietly. She never does. She walks like she expects the world to move around her, but she’s not rude enough to stomp.
It’s a controlled sound, a steady rhythm.
She appears beside his table with a small bag in her hand and a book tucked under her arm.
He doesn’t look up right away. He makes himself finish the sentence he’s reading.
“Are you ignoring me?” she asks softly.
He keeps his eyes on the page.
“I’m working.”
“So am I.” She slides into the chair opposite him without asking.
He finally looks up.
Satomi is wearing a cardigan now over her blouse, as if she’s trying to look innocent. Her hair is still tied back. Her makeup is minimal, but her lips have that soft shine again.
She sets the book down — one of the assigned texts — and then, with casual confidence, pulls the chair closer to his table until her knees are almost under it.
Sukuna’s eyes flick down before he can stop them.
Her skirt rides up slightly with the movement. Her knees are close together, as if she’s being polite.
He looks back at her face.
“You’re not allowed in this section.”
“I am if you let me.” she coaxes.
“You’re bold.” he says.
“I’m right,” she counters. “And you’re alone. Which is dangerous for you.”
He almost laughs. Almost.
“What do you want.” he asks.
She tilts her head.
“Help.”
“With what.”
“My exam,” she says, too smoothly.
He stares at her for a second.
“You don’t need help.”
“I want your help,” she corrects.
He leans back slightly, crossing one ankle over the other under the table.
“This is not office hours.”
“No,” she agrees. “This is the library.”
“It closes in an hour.” he reminds her.
“I can leave,” she says, “or I can stay.”
He notices the phrasing.
The subtle choice.
She’s offering him control while pretending she’s not.
He doesn’t like that he’s aware of it.
“Open your book.” he says, because it’s easier than arguing.
Satomi’s smile turns bright. She opens the book like an obedient student, flipping to a page, then looking up at him as if waiting for instruction.
Sukuna taps his pen once on his notebook.
“Tell me what you think the author is doing in that chapter.”
She starts answering, and for a few minutes, it almost works. She talks about structure, about argument, about how the author frames the period. She’s sharp. She’s engaged. She doesn’t ramble.
Sukuna listens.
He asks a question.
She answers.
He corrects one detail.
She adjusts without getting defensive.
It could be normal.
It doesn’t stay that way.
She shifts in her chair, leaning forward when she talks, elbows on the table. Her cardigan slips slightly off one shoulder. She doesn’t fix it right away. Sukuna sees the bare curve of her shoulder and makes himself look at the book instead.
She notices.
She keeps doing it.
At one point, she stops mid-sentence and says,
“You’re not looking at me.”
“Why would I be looking at you,” he replies, eyes still on the text.
She hums, like she’s thinking.
“Because you do sometimes.”
He looks up then, meeting her gaze.
“Focus.”
“I am focused.” She smiles. “On you.”
His mouth tightens.
“That’s not appropriate.”
“Neither is your watch,” she says, glancing at it. “Or your shoes. Or your apartment, which I still don’t understand.”
His eyes narrow.
“What about my apartment.”
“It’s too nice,” she says plainly. “For a professor.”
“That’s none of your business.”
She leans in slightly.
“It’s a little my business when you keep buying me things and then acting like you don’t want me to ask questions.”
“I don’t buy you things.” he frowns.
She arches a brow.
“Oh? The coat you replaced when mine got ruined? The headphones? The textbook you ‘forgot’ on my desk and told me to keep?”
He doesn’t answer.
She watches him, smug.
“You’re generous.”
“I’m practical.” he replies, a little annoyed.
“Sure.” Her smile turns softer. “I like it.”
He looks back down at the book and forces the conversation back to history. He asks her to explain the author’s choices again, to anchor her points, to bring evidence. She does it. She’s good at it. She’s also watching him the whole time, reading him like she reads a text.
She knows when his attention slips.
She knows when he’s irritated.
She knows when he’s trying not to look at her.
She uses all of it.
At some point, she stops pretending she’s here to study.
She closes the book gently and rests her chin on her hand.
“Can I ask you something else,” she says.
“No.” he replies, immediately.
She laughs quietly.
“You didn’t even hear it.”
“I can guess.” he says.
“Try.”
He doesn’t look up.
“You’re going to ask why I’m always angry.”
She blinks, caught off guard for the first time all night.
“Well,” she says, “now I’m going to.”
Sukuna finally looks at her.
“I’m not always angry.”
“You are,” she says, matter-of-fact. “It’s part of your face.”
“That’s unfortunate for me.” he says.
“It’s great for me,” she says, and her voice is warmer now, lower.
She’s not performing for classmates.
She’s not trying to win a room.
She’s just trying to get under his skin.
“I like it.”
Sukuna stays still for a second too long.
Satomi’s eyes flick down to his hands. He’s holding his pen too tightly.
She smiles like she’s proud of herself.
“You’re enjoying this.” he says.
“I am.” she admits.
“Why.”
“Because you’re hard to get,” she says, blunt. “And because you’re not stupid.”
He lets out a slow breath through his nose.
“That’s your criteria.”
She shrugs.
“It helps.”
Sukuna shifts his chair back slightly, creating distance.
“Gojo.”
“Satomi.” she corrects, lightly.
His eyes sharpen.
“In this building, it’s Gojo.”
Satomi tilts her head.
“Is that a rule.”
“Yes.”
She looks at him for a beat, then says,
“Then enforce it.”
His jaw flexes.
She’s not loud. She’s not being obviously inappropriate
She’s just… persistent.
She’s pushing the boundary in a way that’s hard to punish because she’s not technically breaking any rule, not on paper.
And Sukuna is tired.
He’s been tired for weeks.
Tired of pretending he doesn’t notice her.
Tired of the careful distance he keeps because he’s supposed to.
Tired of the fact that she’s twenty-one and fearless and smart enough to make him feel seen in ways he didn’t ask for.
He sets his pen down.
Satomi watches the movement like it means something. It does.
“You should go.” he says.
She doesn’t move.
“No.”
“You have an exam,” he says again.
“I’ll pass,” she says. “I always do.”
He stares at her.
“You’re arrogant.”
“I learned from you,” she lilts.
He almost smiles. Almost.
Instead, he says,
“This ends.”
Satomi leans forward slightly, lowering her voice.
“What ends?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want to say it out loud in a library.
She holds his gaze, and then, because she can’t help herself, she slides her foot forward under the table and lets it brush his shin.
It’s a small touch.
It could be accidental.
It isn’t.
Sukuna’s eyes drop for half a second, then lift back to her face.
“Stop.”
Satomi’s smile is sweet and irritating.
“Make me.”
His patience is not endless.
He stands.
The chair scrapes softly against the floor. Satomi’s eyes widen, not scared, but alert.
She glances around instinctively, as if checking who’s watching.
The corner they’re in is quiet, but not empty.
A couple of people sit farther away, heads down, earbuds in.
Nobody is paying attention to them. Nobody wants to.
Sukuna reaches down, closes his laptop with a firm motion, and slides his notebook into his bag. He doesn’t look rushed. He looks controlled, which is worse, because it makes it clear he’s choosing this.
Satomi stays seated, watching him.
“Where are you going,” she asks softly.
“Move,” he says.
She blinks.
“What?”
He leans down slightly, voice low enough that it doesn’t carry.
“Get up.”
Satomi’s breath catches. She stands, slow.
Sukuna doesn’t take her hand. He doesn’t touch her in a way that would look wrong to anyone passing by. He just steps closer and uses his body to guide her, a quiet pressure at her side as he angles them away from the open tables and toward the deeper stacks.
Satomi follows without protest. Her eyes are bright now. She looks pleased.
Her heart is racing anyway.
They pass rows of shelves, older books, thinner foot traffic.
The lighting gets dimmer.
The air smells more like dust and paper.
There are fewer people.
Less sound.
Satomi’s heart beats a little faster, and she knows he can hear it if he’s paying attention.
He leads her to a section that most students don’t bother with, tucked behind a row of reference material and a narrow alcove where the shelf spacing is tighter. It’s not a secret room. It’s just an inconvenient corner where nobody comes unless they have a reason.
Sukuna stops.
Satomi’s back is close to the end of a shelf. She looks up at him, expression open now, the teasing fading into something more direct.
“You’re not leaving.” she says.
“No.” he replies.
“You’re… what,” she asks, and her voice is quieter than it was at the table.
She’s trying not to sound too eager. She fails.
Sukuna’s eyes hold hers for a long second.
Then he reaches out and takes her wrist.
Not rough enough to hurt, not gentle enough to be polite.
Just firm. Controlled. Certain.
Satomi swallows.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that.” he says quietly.
“I just did.” she whispers.
His grip tightens slightly.
“And you don’t get to act like you’re in charge.”
Satomi’s lips part.
She looks like she’s going to make another smart remark.
Sukuna doesn’t give her time.
He steps in, closes the distance, and kisses her.
It’s the kind of kiss that feels like frustration finally given a direction.
His mouth is warm, insistent. His hand stays on her wrist, pinning it lightly against the shelf beside her head. The other hand finds her waist, fingers pressing into the curve through her clothes, anchoring her.
Satomi makes a sound against his mouth that she would never make in class.
She kisses back immediately, greedy, relieved, as if she’s been waiting for this exact moment since the first day.
And she was, oh how much she was.
Her free hand reaches for him, catching his shirt, pulling him closer like she wants him in her space completely. She presses herself against him without hesitation, and he feels how quickly her body reacts, how ready she is.
Sukuna breaks the kiss for a breath, not because he wants to stop, but because he needs to speak.
“This is a library.” he mutters, voice tight.
Satomi’s eyes flicker up, lashes heavy.
“I know.”
“People are here.”
“I know,” she repeats, and then she smiles, small and wicked. “Are you scared, Sensei?”
His jaw flexes.
He kisses her again, harder, as if answering without words.
Satomi’s shoulders relax into the shelf behind her. She’s smiling into the kiss now, pleased with herself, because she got what she wanted — not a look, not a dry comment, but him — close, real, losing control in a way that isn’t dramatic, just honest.
Sukuna’s hand on her waist shifts, sliding slightly, holding her more firmly. He keeps his touch where it can’t be seen if someone walks by. He keeps her close without making noise.
Satomi, of course, is less disciplined.
She arches into him, her knee pressing lightly between his legs, testing. Her fingers drag down his chest, slow, like she’s learning him.
She’s enjoying the fact that he’s forced to be quiet, forced to hold himself back while still wanting.
Sukuna pulls away again, breath rough now.
“You’re trying to get us caught,” he says.
Satomi blinks innocently.
“No, I’m not.”
Maybe she is.
He stares at her.
She smiles wider.
“Okay. A little.”
He exhales, and it almost sounds like a laugh, but there’s no humor in it. Just disbelief.
“You’re fucking insufferable.” he says.
Satomi’s voice turns soft, almost affectionate.
“You noticed.”
Sukuna leans in close, mouth near her ear.
“If someone comes down this aisle,” he murmurs, “you’re going to stand still and shut up.”
Satomi shivers at the tone more than the words.
“Yes,” she whispers.
He pauses.
“Yes what.”
She turns her head slightly, eyes meeting his.
“Yes, Sensei.”
He closes his eyes for half a second like he’s steadying himself.
Then he kisses her again, slower this time, still demanding, but more controlled.
Like he’s deciding what parts of himself he’s willing to show her.
Satomi presses her forehead briefly to his when he pulls away, breathing hard but quiet. Her cheeks are flushed, her lips swollen. She looks pleased in a way that’s almost unfair.
“You’re a nerd,” she whispers, smiling. “You like smart girls.”
Sukuna’s eyes narrow.
“Don’t talk.”
Satomi bites her lip, as if holding back another laugh.
Then she nods, obedient for a whole second.
Her hands slide down to his waist, fingertips catching the edge of his belt, not undoing anything, just touching enough to make the point.
Sukuna’s breath tightens.
His posture shifts, a subtle adjustment, as if trying to keep himself under control.
Satomi watches the tiny movement with satisfaction.
He notices her watching.
His gaze sharpens.
“You’re enjoying this too much.”
“I waited,” she whispers. “You didn’t make it easy.”
“I wasn’t supposed to,” he says.
Satomi’s smile fades a little, the first real seriousness cutting through her expression.
“Do you want me to stop,” she asks quietly.
It’s a genuine question, and it matters.
She doesn’t look like she’ll break if he says yes, but she looks like she’ll remember it.
Sukuna holds her gaze.
His grip on her wrist loosens, not releasing her, but easing into something less like restraint and more like intimacy.
“No.” he says.
Satomi’s breath trembles.
“Good.”
Sukuna glances down the aisle once, checking.
Empty. Quiet. The shelves block sightlines. The overhead lights buzz softly.
He leans in, mouth at her jaw, then lower, not doing anything that will make noise, just pressing enough to make her swallow hard. His hand at her waist tightens again, keeping her steady.
Satomi grabs his shirt with both hands now, pulling him closer, her body moving against his with the kind of impatience she’s been trying to provoke for weeks.
She’s not subtle.
She’s just quiet.
Sukuna’s voice is rough when he speaks again.
“This is the last time you pull that ‘make me’ nonsense in my face and expect me to stay polite.”
Satomi’s lips brush his ear.
“You weren’t polite,” she whispers.
“Good.” he whispers back, hoarse.
Satomi’s laugh is silent, shoulders shaking once. She looks thrilled.
Sukuna steps in closer, crowding her into the shelf edge, using his body as a barrier. It’s protective and possessive at the same time. His mouth finds hers again, and the kiss turns messy in the quiet way it can when both people are trying not to make sound. Her fingers fumble at his collar. His hand moves up her side, still careful, still controlled, but warmer now, less hesitant.
Satomi’s head tips back slightly, and she bites her lip, eyes squeezing shut for a second, fighting the instinct to make noise.
Sukuna pulls back just enough to look at her.
His eyes are darker now, expression tight, focused, like he’s reached the end of his patience and decided to live there.
“You’re going to behave.” he says quietly.
Satomi swallows.
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to stop trying to prove you can get away with anything.”
She stares at him, then smiles slowly.
“No.”
Sukuna’s mouth twitches, almost a sneer.
“You’re unbelievable.”
Satomi’s hands slide down, clinging to him like she wants him close in every way she can manage in this space.
Her voice is soft now, not teasing.
“I wanted you to look at me,” she admits, honest for once. “Really look.”
Sukuna’s gaze holds hers.
“I have been.”
Satomi’s breath catches.
Her expression changes, the smugness dropping away.
She looks almost surprised.
“You didn’t act like it.” she whispers.
“I’m acting like it now.” he replies.
Satomi stares at him for a beat, then leans in and kisses him again, slower, more deliberate, as if she’s trying to memorize the fact that this is real.
Sukuna’s hand comes up to the back of her neck, fingers threading lightly into her hair.
He keeps the hold firm enough to guide, not force.
Satomi follows without resistance, letting him set the pace.
A sound echoes faintly somewhere far away in the stacks — someone shifting a chair, a book closing, footsteps in a different aisle.
Sukuna stills immediately.
Satomi freezes too, eyes wide, breath held.
They listen.
The footsteps pass, distant, not coming their way.
Satomi’s shoulders relax with a silent laugh. She looks up at him like this is the best thing that’s happened to her all semester.
Sukuna’s eyes narrow.
“You think this is funny.”
“It is a little,” she whispers.
He leans in close again, voice low and sharp.
“If you make a sound and someone hears you, you’re going to have a very bad time.”
Satomi’s eyes drop to his mouth, then lift again.
“Promise?”
Sukuna stares at her. For a second, he looks like he can’t decide whether to be furious or impressed.
Then he presses his lips to hers again, cutting off whatever else she might say, and pulls her tighter against him, keeping her quiet, keeping her close, letting his frustration turn into something more deliberate.
Satomi clings to him, breathing shallowly, eyes half-lidded.
She looks pleased, but she also looks softened now, like she got past his defenses and found something human underneath.
Sukuna doesn’t like being found.
He also doesn’t stop.
He doesn’t stop when she bites his lower lip slowly, softly.
He doesn’t stop when her hands find again his belt and slowly undo his buckle.
He doesn’t stop when she tugs her fingers on the band of his pants and lowers them just enough along with his boxers.
He doesn’t stop when she slides down to her knees, wrap her perfectly manicured hands around his hard cock’s base and shaft and pumps it before collecting the transluscent pre leaking from its tip with her soft, warm tongue.
He doesn’t stop when she’s sucking him down, palms splayed on his thighs for support, head bobbing as she hollows her cheeks, tongue flat sliding underneath the thick length, massaging, almost memorizing every bulging vein as it slides in and out of her soft, plump lips.
He should have stopped.
He should stop.
But he’s balls deep inside her wanting mouth in a matter of minutes, fucking her throat slowly at first and then more urgently when he feels like he’s about to cum.
His blood red eyes find her impossibly blue ones when he ruts inside her tight hot throat for a few more seconds and he sees the tears collecting on her pretty, long stark-white lashes as she swallows every drop of his thick, hot cum without wincing.
And she looks so pretty with his cock buried deep in her mouth.
Probably because she can’t annoy him with her words.
She sucks him off clean, kisses his tip and swirls her tongue around it before rising to her feet again.
He curses under his breath and cleans the saliva staining her chin with his hand, then pulls her by the jaw and kisses her again.
“You’re fucking vile.” he whispers against her suck-swollen lips.
“Mhm. You’re delicious.” she replies and licks his upper lip when it twitches up in an annoyed sneer.
When they finally separate, it’s not because either of them wants to
It’s because the library is a public building, and the night keeps moving.
Satomi’s hair is slightly mussed.
Her lips are swollen.
She fixes her cardigan, straightens her skirt, and looks up at him with that bright, satisfied expression that says she’ll do it again if she gets the chance.
Sukuna’s shirt collar is rumpled.
He adjusts it with a sharp motion, as if he can reorder the world by fixing fabric.
He stares down at her, expression hard, voice low.
“This doesn’t happen again.”
Satomi smiles like she’s already decided he’s lying.
“Okay,” she says, far too sweet.
Sukuna’s eyes narrow.
“Gojo.”
She tilts her head.
“Sensei.”
He glances down the aisle one more time, then steps back, giving her room.
“Go back to your table,” he says. “Study.”
Satomi’s smile softens, just a little.
“You first,” she says, and she steps past him, brushing close enough that he feels her warmth without her needing to touch.
She walks away like she owns the library, shoulders relaxed, head high, as if she didn’t just drag her professor into a corner and crack his control wide open.
Sukuna watches her go until she disappears around the shelf.
Then he exhales slowly, steadies his breathing, and fixes his glasses like they weren’t about to slide off his face minutes ago.
He stands there for a moment in the quiet aisle, listening to the distant murmur of the building, the soft page turns, the faint hum of lights.
He’s annoyed.
He’s also awake in a way he hasn’t been in a long time.
And somewhere under that, there’s the realization that he didn’t just get cornered by a bratty, clever student.
He chose to follow her into the corner.
He doesn’t know yet what that will cost him.
He only knows that Satomi Gojo got what she wanted — proof that intelligence gets his attention, and proof that if she pushes hard enough, he will stop pretending.
He picks up his bag, shoulders it, and walks back toward the open tables with his expression reset into something cold and controlled.
No one looks up.
No one knows.
Satomi is already seated at a table again, book open, pen in hand, pretending to study.
When she senses him pass, she doesn’t look up right away.
She waits a beat, then glances up with a small, private smile that is not meant for anyone else.
Sukuna doesn’t react. Not outwardly.
He just keeps walking.
But his jaw tightens, and his mind is no longer on policy shifts or exam prep.
It’s on the fact that she’s going to keep pushing.
And on the uncomfortable truth that he might not always stop her.
𐚁﹒This is how it all began~!
𐚁﹒Sugar baby treatment.
𐚁﹒Riling Sukuna up after class!
𐚁﹒His office hours are hers to enjoy, or so she says.
𐚁﹒The moment things start to fall apart.
𐚁﹒He notices, because he always does.
