camping with bestfriend!choso and his friends .｡❅*⋆⍋*∞*｡
summary! your bestfriend!choso invites you to go to camping with some of his friends from the frat, the guys were welcome to bring a plus one, and of course, you were his first pick. this fic is also heavily centered around friend group dynamics! (fluff, crack (?) bestfriends to lovers, i genuinely just bully gojo this entire fic) also satosugu bc i <3 them :) (fake at the begining, real at the end.)
a fic with lots of jjk friendship moments ⋆˚꩜｡ characters in the friend group/frat: gojo, suguru, shoko, sukuna, toji, nanami, shiu, yuki, ino, maki.
A/N: i used the word 'laugh' in this fic like a bajillion times so yk it's fun and fluffy
wc: 12k || art creds: @/einrvji || 18+ || apart of @falsedivide's camping writing event !
"hey, you ever been camping before?" choso asks from his spot behind you on the couch, cradling your waist.
"not really, why? you wanna go?" you quiz, leaning back against his chest.
"mhm, some guys from the frat are doing a bonding event out in the woods this weekend for a few nights, said i could bring a plus one."
"awww and you picked me? so sweet of you, cho!"
"eugh, shut up before i change my mind."
you laugh and that was that, you both stood and got to packing your bag.
choso's been you best friend since frehsman year, you started selling him the weed your good for nothing boyfriend naoya would give you, then when he broke up with you in sophomore, choso sort of stepped in to 'keep you company'.
"i can't even sell you anything anymore... why are you hanging around, choso?" you'd ask, he'd only laugh in response. "it was never about the weed, pretty girl."
you'd been closer ever since, crashing in each others rooms after parties got too rowdy and comfort could only be found in one another's arms, going on drives after long lasting lectures. it was the perfect balance of relief paired with the stress of university.
"i've packed my bags, so ill give you a hand." choso interrupts your thoughts by chucking a few pairs of underwear at your head.
"thanks, cho." you laugh rolling your eyes.
~
"WOO HOO! ROAD TRIP!" gojo sung from the passenger seat of the mini bus, throwing his hands in the air. nanami let out a deep sigh from the drivers spot, clearly upset about the seating arrangements.
behind them sat suguru and shoko, then behind them, toji and his friend shiu who he invited as a plus one. at the very back, you and choso were squished in between everyone's duffels and pillows.
"choso, wanna swap for shotgun when we make a pit stop? please?" nanami calls back, earning a very childish unimpressed gasp from satoru. "you're so rude, nanami. im the prez! i always get shotgun!" he whines.
"if you're the president, shouldn't you be the one driving?" nanami could barely finish before the whole bus goraned a loud, "no!"
"wow guys, real mature. i'm goated at driving."
"you genuinley got a DUI last week?" toji poked.
"can you die, you ape?"
"the fuck!"
a few really good insults were hauled at gojo before the bus simmered out again.
though, at the back, choso was poking fun at you. "you all good there, sweetheart?" he asked through small bursts of laughter. your face was barely visible beneath the piles of bags, a look so comical to choso he took out his phone and started snapping pictures. wow, real mature.
"hey! give it a rest!" you tried to sound stern but it was futile, you soon also started giggling at his teasing, making the piles of clothes and pillows stacked atop of you gyrate.
from the front of the vehicle suguru and shoko give each other that look, the one you give your friends when you know someone's into someone else. "they couldn't be more obvioys." shoko smiled. "damn right." suguru laughed.
"c'mon guys stop flirting! there's plenty of time to get your dick wet at the spot, y'know" the white haired man taunted.
"shut the fuck up gojo,", "boo, does he ever stop talking?", "be quiet for one second, satoru". the rest of the bus moaned in displeasure.
you and choso went quiet, the way you did whenever anyone teased you two for 'flirting'. you tried avoiding eye contact, but when he inevitably caught your gaze again, you gave each other a sweet, bashful smile.
~
“we’re close,” nanami announces, god he’s already exhausted by the upcoming hours of corralling the frat. “satoru, keep your feet off the dash.”
gojo ignores him and points out the windshield. “look at that. nature! untouched. pure. just like me.”
“pure and untouched? didn't you literally just f-,” suguru remarks.
“anyways!.”
the bus finally arrives at a small clearing surrounded by beautiful, towering pines. the space opens wide enough for tents, a fire pit, and a path leading towards waterfall sounds.
nanami brakes hard. “we’re here. everyone get out.”
gojo is first to leap off. “ahh, the serenity!”
you climb out last with choso right behind you, both of you shuffling through backpacks, duffels, grabbing your stuff and dumping it in a pile outside the door.
“wow, this place is so pretty,” you smile.
“figured you’d like it,” he replies, nudging your elbow with his. “it's peaceful.”
before you can answer the quiet is broken by another engine rumbling down the dirt path. the second bus swings into view, packed full of the rest of the group. the door slides open and sukuna steps out first with a big huff. maki follows then yuki hops down right after, stretching her arms. ino strolls behind almost tripping on the last step.
gojo waves dramatically. “yuckkk, your bus smells, ryo. to think i was gonna ride with you gu- ow, ow!.”
“say that again,” sukuna interrupts grabbing satoru's ear making him laugh like a guilty kid.
“please don’t, not yet at least.” nanami mutters.
the moment both groups merge, greetings overlap, bags drop everywhere, and everyone's laughing.
nanami claps his hands. “alright, get your tents. pick a spot. don’t fight. don’t set anything on fire. don’t follow gojo’s example.”
“holy shit i can't catch a break with you assholes,” gojo whines.
choso picks up the tent bag and hands you a few stakes, shoving your shoulder playfully with a smile. “c’mon. before someone steals the best patch of ground.”
you skip behind him toward an area near the fire pit. the spot sits under a tall bunch of trees that give shade without blocking the pretty blue sky. the clearing gives you space and a good view of the waterfall trail. it's tucked away enough to be your own little corner.
choso drops the bundle of poles. “hey, sit. i’ve got it.”
you laugh and push at his pec. “you’re not doing it alone, give me a pole.”
“i’m serious,” he says, though there’s a smile playing at his mouth. “you always get stuck with the annoying jobs. let me do it, y/n.”
“too bad.” you grab the pegs from his hand before he can argue, the look on his face shifting into playful annoyance as you crouch beside him. “team effort.”
“you never listen.”
“i know that's right.”
he shakes his head with amusement and starts sorting the poles. you hammer stakes into the earth while he threads rods through the tent sleeves. you reach a flow state, passing parts back and forth, hands touching. each time you meet his pretty eyes, he looks away bashfully.
once the tent stands upright, choso checks the corners and tugs on the ropes. satisfied, he steps back. “not bad.”
“you mean perfect.”
“yeah, sure.”
you have to hold a hand over your mouth at the other groups struggling so bad. gojo’s tent collapses twice before nanami threatens to leave him sleeping in the woods. "no! bugs will crawl all over my dick!", "bro, what are you even talking about?", "this guy's not real holy fuck i cannot."
maki barks orders at yuki while shoko digs through her bag for the mosquito spray she swears she packed. sukuna’s group finishes quickly but only because toji ignores instructions and bulldozes through the setup until shiu yanks the fabric straight.
soon enough, everything is (somewhat) arranged.
“alright,” nanami says. “final arrangements. satoru, you’re with me.”
gojo freezes. “nuh uh. i’m with suguru.” he sounded suspiciously sad.
“actually,” suguru cuts in, voice far too pleased, “i need a break from you.”
gojo staggers like they do in shounen when the mc gets hit by the main villain type shit. “you’re abandoning me...? a-after everything. after years of best friendship. betraying me when shit gets too real for you? huh? yeah, go on, then. leave me suguru, you fucking dead weight.”
toji and sukuna start pissing themselves laughing, then start choking on the cigarette smoke they hadn't fully exhaled.
nanami rubs his temples. “get in the tent.”
gojo groans dramatically, picks up a spare peg, and chucks it at suguru’s foot. “you're disgusting!”
“you missed,” suguru deadpans.
shoko sets up with maki and yuki. sukuna, toji, and shiu call dibs on a larger tent near the trees. ino and hiruguma toss their bags into another with suguru tagging along. once everyone’s settled, the group drifts toward the fire pit as the late afternoon sun shines across the grass, painting the clearing in nice warm kinda color.
the campfire pit sits empty for now, a circle of stones waiting for kindling. everyone settles on logs or the ground, shoko pops open a can of heineken and maki ties her hair back. toji argues with sukuna about absolutely nothing while suguru and nanami share a quiet conversation, (nanami's very pleased to converse calmly for once).
then, gojo stands up and stretches his arms overhead, the band of his calvins peeking over his jorts. “someone needs to get firewood. any volunteers?”
silence. its like everyone in the group jointly decided to tease this poor man.
no one speaks, suguru looks the other way. shoko takes a long sip. maki shakes her head. and nanami stares at the ground.
gojo’s smile turns into an exaggerated scowl. “wow. seriously, fuck all of you. hating ass clowns”
maki leans toward you, whispering, “don't do it, piss him off a little longer please, this is priceless.”
you grin but stand anyway, feeling bad for the guy. “i’ll go.”
gojo's face lights up and he laughs triumphantly, jokingly pumping his fist in the air. “yes! y/n my beloved!.”
“stop calling people that,” nanami says.
“no.”
gojo snatches nanamis empty duffle bag to carry the wood and gestures for you to follow. “let’s roll, partner. the rest of you can sit and stew, being uncool lame losers, i guess.”
you hear groans and nanami's shouting behind you as he leads the way toward the tree line. your steps crunch through brown leaves as the clearing disappears behind you. birds rustle overhead, and the path dips deeper into the quiet part of the forest. the sound of water grows louder, the waterfall humming behind the trees.
gojo kicks a stick aside. “jeez, they act like i’m some kind of menace.”
“hmm, i wonder why.”
“ouch.”
“you’ll live.”
he smiles looking over his shoulder at you. “you always take my side. even when you don’t take my side. i respect the loyalty.”
“sure.”
gojo snorts and crouches to pick up a fallen branch. “you’re so nice. choso’s lucky.”
you smile to yourself as the sunlight slips through the branches above, brushing your hair. gojo sings some tune off key as he tosses another piece of wood into the bag.
back in the clearing, choso watches your body shift between the trees. he stands at the edge of the camp, arms crossed loosely, eyes following the shape of your back until both of you disappear into the trees. he doesn’t say anything but suguru notices.
“she’ll be fine,” he comments, patting choso's back.
“i know,” choso replies with a sigh.
“gojo’s just a loud prick, he's not dangerous.”
“didn’t say he was.”
suguru shakes his head smiling. “you’re staring pretty hard for someone who isn’t worried.”
choso keeps his eyes fixed on the path you vanished down. his attention pinned to the forest until the last trace of your voice fades.
~
you and gojo get back to the camp around half an hour later with arms and a duffle bag full of wood.
shoko was halfway through telling everyone about how the last guy she fucked had a piss kink... sukuna and toji seemed to be the only two interested in that vulgar conversation.
"oh wow, you made it out alive, y/n." suguru commented as you dumped the wood in your arms by nanamis feet.
"why are you constantly tryna run a fade on me suguru." satoru scoffed, throwing nanami's now emoty duffle over his head, getting all the sticks and left over leaves all through his perfectly combed hair.
"gojo, i'm gonna kill you!"
the white haired boy just ran away laughing like a hyena to the other side of the pit, hugging shoko for 'protection'.
"get off of me, your breath stinks."
you walk back to your spot next to choso, he's now dangling a beer between his legs with his elbows to his knees. as you step closer, he looks up and catches your eyes, it's hilarious how hard this guy was tryna act stoic.
"hey, cho." you sing before flopping down next to him, he scoots away like a child.
"yeah, hi."
you have to stop yourself from letting out a loud pffft, at the way his annoyed tone is so obviously forced.
jabbing a finger into his stomach and wriggling it into his muscles forces him to shiver in his seat and start cracking up against his will.
"you little shit!" he screeches between ripped laughter. pulling your arm away leaving a permeant smile on his face.
"hm, that's better."
"oh give it a rest." he replies, playfully shoving the side of your face away. you knew he couldn't stay upset for long.
he clears his throat while suguru and satoru fight over who gets to light the fire first. "so, uh. how was getting fire wood with that idiot?"
"yeah, it was fine." you reply, trying your hardest to sound casual about it.
"fine?"
"yeah, just fine."
"right... what did you talk about? nothing weird? he didn't try to touch you... or anything like that?" he asked taking a long sip from his drink.
'did alone time with gojo piss him off that much? jeez.'
you smile, "hmm... well lets see." you say, tapping your chin, watching as his face contorts like its bracing for impact. "all he did was talk my ear off about all the women he's seeing right now. what was it, like seven? don't know how they can stand him, but it is what it is. always thought that guy was gay to be honest."
choso sighs in relief, then finally scoots closer to you. "good. that's good." he places his hand on the back of the log behind you almost protectively. "wouldn't want him getting any ideas."
"yeah? why's that? it's not like i, you know, have a boyfriend or anything."
god, you don't think you've ever seen choso's lazy smile drop so fast in your life. "yeah... i guess."
his moping was shortly interrupted by gojo yelling at suguru.
"i'm the president so i get to light the fire! didn't see you out there getting any fire wood? huh? if anything, me and y/n should get to light the fire together! we did all the hard work."
"oh, thats okay gojo, it's all yours." you laugh in that funnily awkward way.
"see, be more like y/n, you dead weight."
"i think the fucking fire hazard should be staying five feet away from the fire, not lighting it!" suguru counters, smacking satoru with a stick.
"are we breaking up? is that what this is?"
nanami quelled the bickering by throwing a small yellow bic in between them, watching them scramble on the leaf litter to grab it.
choso snorts, the sound pressed into his palm as he tries to hide it. you try to hold yours in too but it slips out in a burst that makes him look at you. it’s one of those quick looks where his eyes soften a bit then dart away like he didn’t mean to get caught. you do the same, staring at the dirt for a second with your mouth tugging up because the whole thing feels stupid in a silly sweet way.
once suguru finally snatches the lighter and sparks the first bit of kindling, the group settles down in a loose circle around the pretty flames.
you hear the crackle of dry wood catching and shoko digging through her tote.
she pulls out two neatly rolled blunts and taps each against her thumb. “alright,” she says, handing one to suguru and the other to toji. “don’t canoe these or i swear to god i'll throw worms in all of your sleeping bags.”
“love when you talk sweet to me,” toji grins, sparking his up. suguru does the same and takes a slow hit like he’s in a commercial then passes it to maki with a little flourish.
while it moves around the circle, gojo claps once like he’s calling kids in from break. “ok! i have an idea.”
seven people groan at once.
“no hear me out. it’ll be fun.”
nanami drags both hands down his face. “you barely said anything and i’m exhausted.”
gojo takes the dark glasses from his hair and tucks them into his flannel shirt. “we’re playing two truths and a lie.”
shoko blinks. “wow, he finally has a good idea.”
everyone laughs and gojo bows like they’re applauding him. “thank you, thank you. i try.”
“you don’t,” suguru says, taking back the blunt. “but go on.”
gojo points dramatically at toji. “you start.”
toji exhales, taps ash into the dirt, and shrugs. “fine. uh… i hotwired a random car on the street when i was 17. i stole an alice in chains vinyl from jb-hifi.... hmm, and i took some guy from gamma's entire jojo's set last year.”
"like, the manga?" maki asked.
"yes mam."
everyone stares in both shock and contemplation.
sukuna rubs his head. “bro that’s not how the game works. i know for a fact you did all of that.”
“oh. right,” toji says, he’s learning the rules for the first time. “my bad.”
“you need to go to jail for abit,” shoko mumbles.
ino clears his throat. “okay! i’ll go.” he straightens a bit, proud. “miu from econ. sara from the gym. hana from-”
nanami cuts in. “hana is the lie.”
"bro, is he listing off chicks he's fucked?" shiu whispers to toji.
ino whips around. “nanami! how’d you know so fast!”
“you’d never pull hana,” nanami says dead serious. “she only dates guys with a 4.0.”
choso sits up a bit straighter, grinning like he’s been waiting for this one. he finishes the sip of his beer and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “ok. uh…” he looks around the circle. “once when i was fucked up, i pissed all over gojo’s car, the nice one.”
gojo genuinely looks like he's about to tweak out. “you fucking what?.”
“second is... hm, oh yeah, i also pissed all over suguru’s car,” choso adds casually, “when i was high.” he can't help the drunken laugh spitting out.
suguru’s jaw drops. “you asshole.”
the circle starts laughing. the fire pops loud in the middle of it.
you look at choso with your brows up. “wow. you’ve been busy.”
he shrugs like he’s innocent. “man’s gotta piss.”
“that was so unnecessary,” maki says, coughing smoke out her nose.
“ok, that’s two,” choso continues, leaning back on his hands again. “and the third is…” he pauses dramatically, watching the whole group lean in. “i once broke into the chem lab after hours to steal a microscope because i was high on ket and wanted to look at my own hair follicles.”
shoko squints. “i didn't know you fucked with ketamine?”
"then that's the lie!" yuki announced like she cracked the code using clues.
“yeah,” gojo says, crossing his arms. “no way you pissed on both of our cars, the microscope one's a lie.”
suguru shakes his head. “no, the lie is gojo’s car. he’d spare that sexy thing.”
“i think the lie is the microscope,” maki adds. “he probably doesn’t even know how to spell microscope.”
“fuck you, i do,” choso throws.
you nudge his knee. “i think the lie is suguru’s car. you'd shit yourself if he found out and i dunno if you'd wanna deal with that." choso pinches your hand grind your back teasingly.
"maybe."
suguru puffs out a cloud. “no, i am reasonable.”
“no,” maki says, “you’re petty.”
suguru rolls his eyes.
the guesses fly around louder and louder until choso finally raises both hands. “alright, alright. final answer? you guys won't like this.” he says pointing to the wonder duo. "the microscope one's was a lie."
the group bursts into laughter again, loud enough that some birds rustle out of the tree above you.
"gross man!"
toji leans forward, elbows on his knees, chin lifted. “you got a piss kink or something? jesus christ.”
shiu points at you without looking away from the fire. “good luck with that one, y/n.”
the entire circle cracks up. even nanami smiles, which is some sort of miracle. you cover your face with both hands but you’re laughing so hard you fall into choso’s shoulder.
choso rolls his eyes and flicks his beer cap at shiu. “eat shit.”
shiu holds up both hands. “i’m just saying. man’s got a theme going.”
“it’s not a theme,” choso mutters, cheeks warm. “it was one bad month.”
gojo practically wheezes. “dude. one bad month? you pissed on two luxury cars in thirty days?”
sukuna kicks dirt toward the fire to smother his own laugh. “bro’s out here marking his territory.”
your face heats but you can’t stop smiling because choso keeps glancing at you in this shy way like he wants to see if you’re judging him. you bump your shoulder into his. “it’s ok, cho. everyone has… hobbies.”
he groans. “don’t.”
“your secret’s safe with me.”
he smiles and looks down at his beer like he can't contain it, your head feels so warm with affection you hook an arm around his and scoot even closer.
"okay y/n, your turn." he nudges.
"hmm, okay!" the group settles down to listen to your answers, you feel like stirring things up abit.
"so, one, i've had a crush on gojo before," the group makes their own collective 'oo's' and 'oh my god''s, with gojo laughing like a psychopath, "what can i say? i have so much aura it's just overwhelming for women."
you feel choso's arm go stiff, he sips his beer trying to keep cool. cute.
"second, my social studies TA confessed to me three weeks ago."
shoko and maki converse on that one, "i knew he was staring at her!"
"and third, i like choso more than all of you combined."
"okay, well that's one of the truths." ino laughed.
the circle’s crazy with guesses before you even finish talking, everyone pointing at someone else like that’s going to help them figure you out.
“number one,” sukuna says immediately. “no way you liked gojo. nobody with a functioning brain stem likes gojo on purpose.”
“yeah, fuck you man,” satoru huffs.
maki taps her knee. “yeah, i think it’s number one too. she probably had better taste than that.”
“i don't cuss at women, but if i did maki... i swear to god.” the man sighs.
ino lifts a hand. “nah nah nah wait. that could be true. dude’s tall and has hair that does… that.” he gestures vaguely at gojo’s head.
“awe, thank you, ino,” gojo beams.
“i wasn’t complimenting you.”
toji scratches his jaw. “yeah, i’m locked in on number three being true. she treats him the best.” he juts his chin toward you and choso.
shoko nods in agreement, “yeah, that one’s just obvious, shit choice y/n.” she teases.
"oh my god, shut up shoko." you smile.
choso clears his throat at that, looking down into his beer like it suddenly has answers.
suguru leans back on his hands. “number two sounds fake. i’ve seen her TA. that guys a total square.”
shiu snaps his fingers. “oh yeah, the little dude with the lanyard.. i dunno if he'd be bold enough.”
“so we’re landing on number one?” nanami asks, looking around as if he’s running a board meeting.
everyone nods.
everyone except choso, who doesn’t say anything. he keeps his face neutral, but the tip of one boot digs into the dirt.
you clap your hands once. “okay! final answers?”
a chorus of, “number one.”
you grin. “wrongggg, boo.”
the group groans so loud the birds probably take off again.
“wait, so you did like gojo?” maki says.
gojo looks like he’s about to ascend. “i knew it! i knew you couldn’t resist me, im a sexy lady magnet.”
you cross you arms at him. “don’t get excited. it was only before i met you.”
his face drops. “hey.”
“you looked normal from far away,” you add, laughing. “then i actually got to know you and it became strictly friendship. you’re way too loud for my type.”
suguru falls backwards into the grass, cackling. “magnet? more like pussy repeller.”
maki wipes her eyes. “that’s so real.”
you’re still laughing when you feel choso shift beside you. his smile is there but softer, not full you nudge your arm against his, but he’s distant in this tiny way he probably thinks he’s hiding really well.
inside his head he’s spiraling just a bit. because now he knows you think gojo is attractive. even if it was old it sits in his chest weirdly. he’s built so opposite from gojo, and his brain takes the quickest path to overthinking. he’s quieter, darker, slower to talk, heavier in posture, none of the bright loudness gojo carries.
and he starts wondering, stupidly, whether that matters to you. whether you like the kind of person who fills a room, or someone who sits on the edge of it hoping you’ll come to him anyway.
his beer bottle shifts in his hand. he stares at the fire like it’s going to explain something.
you tilt your head. “cho? you good?”
your hand slides a little tighter around his arm and he looks over, caught off guard by your smile. it’s bright, it pulls the tension right out of him. he softens, even if there’s still a weird pinch of something stuck under his ribs.
“yeah. yeah i’m fine,” he says quietly.
you squeeze his arm again and lean into him more, and he swallows down the leftover insecurity because it feels dumb to cling to it when you’re right there choosing to be this close. and besides, he’s not your boyfriend. he doesn’t get to react the way he wants to.
but he still feels it. just a little.
before anything else can settle too deep, maki shoots up from her seat. “smores time!”
the girls cheer, already on their feet. you hop up with them, dusting dirt from your shorts, and choso watches the way you spin around to grab shoko’s wrist before jogging toward the bus parked a little ways off. you glance back once, giving him a quick grin, and it does even more damage to whatever was left of his nerves.
when you’re far enough away, the circle tightens.
gojo immediately drops down next to choso like a gremlin claiming a seat. “soooo.”
choso groans. “don’t start.”
“c'monnnn, y/n’s all yours, don’t worry,” gojo singsongs, bumping his shoulder into his.
toji whistles. “yeah man, she basically announced it.”
sukuna digs his stick into the dirt. “third option being him wasn’t even surprising. she looks at him like she's in love.”
shiu sits back with a smug grin. “told you months ago.”
ino nods. “you’re like… her favorite person ever.”
choso scrubs a hand over his face. “you guys are reading way too much into this.”
“we’re not,” suguru says, stretching his legs out toward the fire. he looks at choso with that older brother calm of his. “don’t overthink it. gojo could never be as cool as you.”
gojo gasps. “excuse me?”
“it’s true,” nanami says flatly.
toji leans back on his elbows. “look, we're just saying, you don’t gotta freak out. she likes you. even i can see that and i don't give a fuck.”
sukuna snorts. “yeah, and he’s blind.”
"shut up."
shiu adds, “emotionally and literally.”
the whole group piles on with messy teasing, half hearted insults, dramatic reenactments of choso’s face when you said you liked him the most. he rolls his eyes so hard it’s a miracle they don’t fall out.
you and the girls walk back with the smore ingredients in hand, choso's eyes are drawn to your beautiful, smiling face, and he feels his cheek heat. you really were breath taking.
the rest of the night flashed by in an array of talking shit, smoking weed and scoffing down whatever snacks were being passed around. with everyone either tipsy or a little zooted, ino was the first to suggest everyone get some shut eye.
"yeahhh, good idea ino, y'know, i always liked your hair too." gojo giggled leaning all over suguru. he was a very affectionate drunk.
"nanami, i might just have to take one for the team and tent with this flop. you can;t handel this guy drunk, trust."
"oh well, if you insist." nanami smiles, practically jumping up to get his stuff and put it in sugurus old tent.
"yeah, me and the girls are gonna head to sleep. g'night y/n." shoko waved with a very tired maki andd yuki trailing behind her.
"hey, where's my good night?" toji asks, throwing his arms in the air.
"eh, i only like her, so."
the girls disappear into their respective tent and sukuna and toji decide to clock out as well.
"i think that's our sign to go to, cho." you suggest, leaning on his shoulder.
choso laughs under his breath when you lean on him, soft enough that only you can catch it. “yeah, let’s go,” he says, tilting his head toward the tent like he’s been waiting for this chance.
you barely get a step in before he hooks his fingers through the belt loop of your shorts and tugs you along. you look forward at him with that little grin you always give when he’s being extra. he mirrors it without even meaning to.
the two of you duck into the tent, it’s got a chill from the day and still smells a bit like cigarette smoke from choso when you set it up earlier. the fairy lights you strung across the ceiling shine, making everything feel closer.
choso kicks the flap shut behind you, grabs your waist and pulls you toward the center of the airbed in one motion. you tumble right into him as he falls back, both of you landing in a messy heap. it makes you laugh before you can stop yourself, and he sinks into the mattress like he’s been waiting hours to do this.
“finally,” he sighs, pushing his hair out of his face.
you lay beside him propped on an elbow. “you dramatic man.”
“i’m serious,” he says, nudging your leg with his knee. “i thought i’d never get you alone tonight. every time i looked up, someone was hovering, like a fly. i hate flys.” tipsy choso always had a loose tongue.
you feel your face turn into a smile you can’t hide. “aw, you sound jealous.”
“maybe.” he says it so casually you almost miss the weight behind it.
your smile widens at that, and you shove your head down into the mattress a bit so he won’t see how flustered you are.
he sits up just enough to reach his duffle, digging around blindly until he pulls out a hoodie. one of his older ones, soft from too many washes. he holds it open with both hands.
“arms up,” he says.
you blink. “bossy.”
“c'mon,” he repeats, tapping your hip with two fingers.
you sigh like you’re hard done by but lift your arms anyway. he slips the hoodie over your head, easing it down so it falls around you. it’s oversized, the sleeves covering half your hands. it smells like his room, his laundry powder, that cologne he uses. he sits back to look at you in it, and his mouth clicks like he’s fighting a smile.
“good,” he mutters.
“you’re ridiculous.”
“nah.” he pulls out another hoodie thats sort of the same color and shrugs it on. “matchin’ fits. we look sick.”
you roll your eyes but curl into his side, he shifts until your legs tangle together and your head rests on his shoulder. he settles one hand on your hip, thumb brushing triangle patterns against the fabric without him knowing he’s doing it.
the tent grows quiet, only the faraway sound of somebody zipping a bag and gojo yelling something about a bug from across the campsite. your eyelids feel a little heavy from the long day, and choso’s breathing evens out under your cheek.
after a minute he whispers, “y’know… this is my favorite part.”
you lift your head a bit. “of camping?”
he shakes his head once. “of our… uh.” he hesitates, the word catching. “friendship.”
you let the silence sit between you for a few seconds before resting your face back on his chest. “yeah. me too.”
he closes his eyes like he’s soaking that in. it settles in the space between you, warm and steady, until you think he might fall asleep right there.
but then his hand pauses against your hip. he’s thinking, like, really deeply. and you can tell when he pulls in a breath like he’s gearing up for something he’d usually avoid.
“can i ask you something?” he says quietly.
you hum.
“earlier. with the game. when you said… when you said that thing about gojo.” he clears his throat. “do you think he’s... pfft, i dunno... attractive?”
you freeze for a sec because you knew this might come up eventually. you readjust against him so you can look at his face. he’s staring at the tent ceiling like it’ll give him the answer before you can.
you speak softly. “yeah. i mean… he’s objectively good looking.”
the muscles in his neck are tensing up, so much so you can see the veins beginning to pulse faster. his eyes stay looking upward, focused on nothing. he nods once but doesn’t say anything.
you touch his arm lightly. “but he’s not my type at all.”
he glances at you finally. “at all?”
“at all,” you repeat, “he’s… loud. and dramatic. and he likes being the center of attention. he’s fun, but i could never date someone like that, in the nicest way.”
that earns a tiny laugh out of him, more air than sound.
“i just… didn’t want you to think i lied,” you add. “but having a crush on someone you don’t actually know is different. when i met him, it flipped instantly. he makes more noise than ten people combined. respectfully.”
“respectfully,” choso echoes with a little smile.
you lean closer, head finding its way back to his shoulder like gravity pulled you there. “don’t overthink it, cho.”
he lets out a breath. “not overthinking.”
you snort. “you so are.”
his hand tightens lightly around your waist, you feel the uncertainty in his breathing.
so you decide to give him something to ease his nerves, something you’ve never said out loud.
“for the record,” you whisper, “you’re the only guy i’m into.”
oh fuck? what? choso goes still all over, did she really just say that?
you peek up at him and his eyes are slightly wide, like he genuinely can’t believe he heard you right.
“you're.. what?” he says like he’s scared he’ll fuck it up if he speaks too loud.
“you heard me.”
he stares at you for a solid ten seconds, trying to process that you just said something that bold. you never say things like that. not to him, not to anyone, really.
his mouth twitches into the softest smile, a little uneven like he’s trying not to let it take over his whole face.
“ok,” he whispers.
you shift even closer until your forehead rests against his collarbone. his arm wraps around you tight and steady, he’s savoring the moment so he doesn’t lose it.
you end up drifting off snuggled into his shoulder, choso stays awake a bit longer, staring at the ceiling with your weight against him. he looks down at you once like he can’t wrap his head around the fact you’re here like this despite falling asleep with you like this was common place for the two of you.
"god, youre so cute."
~
"goooood morning sports fans!" yuki announces into the now unzipped tent at the early hour of 8am. you and choso both groan and try to pull eachother in closer as to not get up yet.
"go away." choso complains, pulling your face into his chest with his big biceps.
"jeez, you two are gross! just get up soon, shiu and maki made breakfast and we're all going down to the waterfall later." she rolls her eyes before zipping the tent back up.
choso lets go of probably the sexiest morning moan you'd ever heard, stretching his arms above his head.
you groan into choso’s chest, refusing to move even as yuki’s footsteps crunch away from the tent. her voice still echoes in your skull like she’s right outside.
“she's so mean” you mumble.
“mm.” choso keeps his arms locked around you like he’s guarding you. “five more minutes.”
“we can’t,” you say, even though you’re making zero effort to get up.
“we can,” he insists, pulling the blanket higher. “we absolutely can.”
you slip your fingers under his hoodie to poke his ribs. “come on.”
he flinches and laughs quietly. “stop. i’m getting up, chill.”
you push yourself upright with a groan that matches his. you rake your hair back with your fingers and peel yourself out of the blankets. choso watches you for a second, still sprawled out, before dragging himself up to sit beside you.
“you look dead,” you tell him.
“i am,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. “but, uh… you make it tolerable.”
you toss a balled up pair of socks at him. “you’re so corny.”
“fuck you, you like it.”
you refuse to acknowledge that but the smile on your face is a giveaway.
you grab your small duffle and pull out the bikini you packed — a pretty one that always makes you feel hot. you slip it on under your clothes, shimmying the waistband into place while choso pretends he’s not watching from the corner of his eye.
“you done?” he asks once you’re tying the strings of your top under your shirt.
“yep.”
he throws on a fresh shirt and shorts, rakes his hands through his messy hair, then gestures toward the tent flap. “after you.”
you unzip the door and climb out into the cooler air, the campsite's already alive with movement. choso follows right behind you, shoulder brushing yours as you head toward the smoldering fire pit.
gojo and suguru sit together on a log, sharing a plate loaded with breakfast. they’re shoulder to shoulder, quiet for once. suspiciously quiet.
you dart your eyes back and forth. “what’s wrong with him?” you whisper to choso.
“dunno,” he murmurs. “either hungover or suguru drugged him.”
"or fucked him." you giggle, choso laughs quietly too.
“hey!” gojo calls out, oblivious, pointing a fork toward you both. “we made food.”
“shiu made food,” suguru corrects, nudging him.
“i watched.”
“no you didn’t.”
“i did at the end.”
you laugh and sit on a cooler, choso flopping onto the one beside you. shiu hands over two plates stacked with your favorite breakfast food.
you and choso stuff your faces, the food was good in the way all food tastes when you're sleepy and in a new place.
as the others crawl out one by one, shoko, then toji, sukuna, ino and shiu, nanami emerges with his phone in hand, he starts reading off something he clearly wrote before sunrise.
“alright. plan for the day,” he announces, ignoring gojo groaning dramatically. “we’ll head down to the waterfall for a few hours. eat, swim, relax. head back around three. collect firewood. shoko wants to try a new camp meal tonight, so we need dry wood only.”
everyone mumbles general agreement.
by the time you finish eating, everyone’s grabbed their bags, towels, drinks, and whatever else they think they’ll need. you fall into step with toji, shiu, and sukuna as you all start the short trek down the dirt path toward the water.
“yo, shiu,” sukuna grumbles, rubbing his eyes. “you snore like a seventy year old trucker.”
toji snorts. “i thought the tent was collapsing.”
shiu shrugs like he’s heard it all before. “maybe you two just sleep like princesses.”
“i sleep like a normal person,” sukuna claims.
“you drool,” toji laughs.
“oh shut up.”
maki grabs your hand as she skips up beside you, swinging your arms together. “if he snores like that again i’m shoving a sock in his mouth.”
“please don’t,” shiu says flatly. “last thing i need is to choke on your laundry.”
up ahead, yuki and shoko lead the way, pointing out random plants like they're on a cute little david attenborough doco. behind you, you hear the other guys who drew the short straw grunting and complaining while carrying the heavy coolers and bags.
gojo’s voice carries above all of them. “why are we the ones holding everything? this is discrimination against pretty people, right cho?”
“maybe you need the workout,” sukuna calls back without turning around.
“you’re huge,” gojo fires at him. “you should be doing this!”
“you bench as much as me, toru,” toji says easily. “you got it.”
suguru adds, “think of it as penance.”
“for what?!”
“existing, apparently,” choso says from the back, deadpan.
you laugh so hard at the sight of your poor boy-... friend, carrying half the camp site.
finally, the trees break open and the waterfall comes into view. it's tall, pouring into a bright pool that reflects all the light. the rocks glisten, mist hanging lightly in the air. it’s stunning.
everyone slows down at the same time, letting out various sounds of appreciation or, in ino's case, a loud “hell yeah.”
the group spreads out near the flat rock area by the water. beach chairs get unfolded, a picnic blanket goes down, coolers crack open, sunscreen gets passed around.
the guys start stripping off their shirts first, flinging them onto chairs. the girls follow suit, peeling off their clothes down to bikinis.
you tug your shirt over your head and wiggle out of your shorts. the cool air brushes your skin, and you stretch your arms above your head as the girls whistle dramatically.
“okay, body,” yuki says, fanning herself.
“look at you,” maki adds with a grin.
you’re laughing until you feel someone staring.
you look over your shoulder.
choso is frozen mid sentence staring straight at you with an expression that makes your breath hitch. his eyes drag from your shoulders down to your hips, then snap away like he got caught doing something illegal.
he almost drops the towel he’s holding.
ino notices instantly. “damn, dude,” he snickers under his breath. “pitching a tent already?”
choso elbows him lightly. “shut up.”
“you’re staring.”
“i’m not.”
“you so areee,” ino grins, “like she walked out of a commercial or some shit.”
“bro.”
“i’m just saying, if you don't claim h-”
choso shoves him, just enough to make ino stumble and laugh like an idiot. ino shoves back, then choso hooks an arm around his neck and drags him toward the water.
“say it again,” choso threatens playfully.
“she looks hot!” ino yells gleefully.
“you’re dead.”
they hit the edge of the rocks still bickering. then choso launches them both into the water with a loud splash that makes half the group cheer.
the moment seems to kickstart everyone else, toji pushes sukuna in next, sending water spraying everywhere. he jumps after him, flipping mid air because of course he does.
gojo yells “watch this!” and immediately slips on a rock, falling into the water sideways like a cartoon character. suguru follows him in with more grace but the same energy.
maki grabs your hand. “come on!”
you brace yourself and leap with her, the cold water breaking around you as you sink under and pop back up with a gasp. yuki splashes you immediately. shoko shouts something about sunscreen. toji tackles sukuna underwater. someone screams your name. someone else yells for beer.
the whole group is laughing, yelling, splashing, a complete mess of legs and screaming in the best way possible.
and when you push your wet hair out of your face, blinking against the sun, you see choso watching you again, this time from the water, hair slicked back, smile tugging at his mouth like he can’t help it.
he doesn’t look away, not even for a second.
the group swims and chats as the hours tick by.
.
the sun still shines bright against the water of the pool where everyone’s spread out in their own little pockets of conversation.
toji, sukuna, shiu, and gojo have now found a routine up on the ledge beside the waterfall. they keep climbing the path, launching themselves off like overgrown children, resurfacing, then racing each other back up to do it again. their voices bounce around the cliffs full of competitive grunts and trash talk. suguru calls them idiots every time they hit the water, but he’s smiling when he says it, legs stretched out on the picnic blanket where he’s sorting through the snacks you all brought down. fatass.
maki and yuki are floating in the shallow part, drifting on their backs, letting the current push them around. shoko’s perched on a rock a few feet away smoking one of her tiny joints, hair pulled up with a pen.
you’re stretched out on a nice, warm, flat rock, the surface almost hot, your legs are tired from swimming.
choso comes walking out of the water like some dumb test of your self control. shit, he looked good. motto motto type shit.
he pushes his wet hair back with both hands, eyes squinting from the brightness. he looks relaxed in that heavy-lidded way he gets after swimming, like the cold water cleared whatever fog was hiding behind his eyes. the cut muscles along his stomach catch the light each time he shifts. there’s something really stupid about how unfairly good he looks when he’s not even trying.
he stops beside you and gives a small breath of endearment like he’s caught you staring.
“gonna roast yourself,” he says, sitting down beside you.
“i’m fine,” you reply.
“uh huh.” he reaches into your bag and pulls out a bottle of sunscreen. he shakes it once. “c'mon, you didn’t put any on.”
you look at the bottle, look back at him. “so what if i didn’t.”
he nudges it toward you like that settles it. “use it.”
“you use it,” you say, still not reaching for it.
“i already did.”
you tilt your head toward him, letting the corner of your mouth lift. “then put it on me if you’re so worried.”
'wow, she's getting bold.'
he goes still, he’s surprised you said it. then a smirk spreads across his mouth.
“yeah,” he mutters, “if you insist.”
he sits on his knees beside you and pours a cold thin line up your very exposed back, rubbing it over your shoulders first, his thumbs tracing small circles as he works it in.
choso had seen you in your underwear plenty, but it was fleeting. this time, you were quite literally on display and flirting with him? was he in heaven?
his hands smooth the lotion along your spine, up to your shoulder blades, then down the sides of your ribs. his big, veiny hands feel so good all over your body, it drives you insane. you arch into his touch, earning an impressed hum from the boy.
“this good?” he asks softly.
“mm,” you answer, not trusting yourself to say more.
he keeps going, his palms warm now as they glide across your skin. he works lower, skimming just above the band of your bikini, always staying respectful but very aware of where his hands are.
you’re about to tell him he’s done a good job when a loud voice echoes from above the waterfalls mouth.
“ngh, rub me harder, choso!”
you whip your head toward the ledge. gojo and sukuna are both up there, hands cupped around their mouths like megaphones. sukuna starts moaning like a chick, and gojo doubles over laughing, nearly losing his balance.
“choso,” sukuna moans, “my back needs attention too. been real tense lately. help a guy out.” hes trying so hard to soun dfeminine but his deep voice just keeps on cracking causing him to laugh mid sentance.
gojo bumps his shoulder into sukuna’s, voice cracking from laughter. “he’s a giver, man, he’ll take good care of you.”
they both start fake moaning again, way too loud, way too committed to the bit.
choso shakes his head, fighting a smile. he doesn’t look embarrassed, more like he’s trying not to laugh at how stupid they sound.
“fuck off,” he calls back, tone warm and amused.
you lift your hand and flip them off without even sitting up. “get a hobby,” you shout.
this only makes them louder. sukuna nearly falls off the rock from laughing so hard.
nanami silently appears behind them like a punishment summoned by the universe. one second they’re laughing, the next nanami just steps up, expression perfectly neutral, and gives a straightforward shove.
both idiots yelp as they topple right off the ledge into the pool with a big splash.
nanami dusts his hands off like he just finished a chore. “problem solved,” he says.
you snort, shaking your head as everyone else laughs.
choso leans back on his hands beside you, eyes soft when they land on you again.
“you good?” he asks quietly.
“you’re the one who got heckled mid massage,” you tease.
“massage huh? worth it.”
you lie back down, head tilted toward him. “yeah?”
he looks out toward the pool rather than directly at you, voice low. “yeah.”
you swallow down the desire in your stomach and watch the sky as it turns orange and red.
the others keep splashing, yelling, chasing each other around. maki and yuki have now resorted to splashing suguru while he halfheartedly pretends to guard the snack pile like a disgruntled loser. shiu and toji are racing in circles, trying to dunk each other while ino judges them from the shallow end.
everything is loud in that harmless, summertime way, and yet you feel strangely tuned in to the small space between you and choso.
he lets himself lie beside you, close enough that your arms brush lightly. the rock is warm beneath you both. he crosses his arms under his head, eyes closing for a moment like he’s letting his body relax fully.
you turn your face toward him. “you tired?”
“little bit,” he murmurs, “water kinda knocked it out of me.”
you smile. “you act like you’re eighty.”
“i’m spry,” he insists.
“sure.”
his lips stretch upwards into a smirk.
he opens one eye just barely. “hey, you’re staring.”
“no i’m not.”
“you so are.” he mocks your voice.
"hey, that's my thing."
you toss a small pebble at his chest. it bounces off and falls into his lap. he acts like he’s been injured, grabbing his heart dramatically.
“ow,” he says weakly, he flicks the pebble back at you. it misses by a mile. “terrible aim,” you tease.
“my aim is great,” he says, sitting up slightly, stretching his arms. “i’m just being nice.”
“sure.”
he glances toward the water again and catches ino waving him over in some chaotic attempt to get a volleyball game going.
“you wanna swim more?” he asks.
“i’m good here for a bit,” you say, shifting so your legs stretch out long over the stone. “go. play.”
he hesitates, eyes flicking to your sun warmed skin, then back up to your face. “you’ll yell if you need me?”
“what am i, helpless?”
“kinda,” he says with a small grin.
you shove his knee lightly. “go before ino has a tantrum.”
he stands, water still trailing off his trunks. he stretches once, arms lifting above his head, ribs flexing. you try not to stare, but you fail miserably.
he catches you. he tries not to react. he does a terrible job of hiding the pleased look that sneaks across his face.
he taps your ankle before heading toward the group. “don’t move too far,” he says.
you lie back down, the sun soaking into your skin, listening to the distant splash as choso dives into the water again, his laugh flowing over the surface like a little ripple that somehow finds you even from across the water.
.
as the sun sets into a deeper orange maki’s the first to stretch her arms and announce she’s starving. that seems to set off a chain reaction, everyone throwing themselves out of the water or off the rocks.
“alright, pack your shit,” toji says, slinging his wet hair back like a dog.
gojo pops out of the water like a sea creature, hair sticking all over his face. “i need a snack that isn’t water,” he says, voice muffled through his fringe.
everyone slowly gathers their towels, finished drinks, suguru’s stash of snacks, gojo’s sunglasses that are broken from chucking them on the rocks too hard, and toji’s shirt which somehow ended up in a tree. there’s a lot of bickering and whining and complaining, but it all blends together in that nice white noise way that means everyone’s in somewhat of a good mood.
you grab your towel and your bag, choso scoops up whatever you almost forget without you asking. he flings it gently against your back as a soft reminder.
you all walk back slower than you came, racked with laze from the big day in the water. gojo and suguru walk close, heads tilted toward each other like they’re having their own little secret conversation.
shoko keeps flicking water at yuki with her fingers and yuki hisses at her every time. toji, sukuna, and shiu walk ahead talking about something that sounds like a very illegal hypothetical.
ino is already complaining to kento about how “nature is trying to assassinate him.”, flipping away mosquitos. nanami does not indulge this. at all.
when you reach the campsite the heat doesn't ease up at all. not terrible, but enough that nobody even thinks abour changing out of their swimmers.
nanami steps into the center of the clearing with his phone, “alright. before the sun drops too much, everyone needs to collect six pieces of firewood each. dry, not damp. we need enough for tonight and tomorrow morning.”
gojo immediately groans. “six???”
“yes.”
“can i do… two?” he tries.
“no.”
suguru just grabs him by the back of his neck and steers him away. “come on, satoru.”
“why are we together?” gojo asks loudly, even though he looks very pleased.
“because I drew the short stick,” suguru answers.
they shuffle off into the trees, weirdly quiet again, like, suspiciously quiet.
“wonder what that’s about,” maki whispers.
“they’re probably hiding something,” shoko says, lighting up another tiny joint.
you give her a look. “like what?”
she shrugs. “i dunno. maybe they brung molly and don't wanna share?”
everyone starts splitting off into their little groups. toji, sukuna, and shiu head into the deeper part of the woods, already arguing about what counts as dry wood. yuki and shoko wander off together, shoko pointing with her joint like it’s a laser pointer. maki, nanami, and ino go the opposite direction, that leaves you and choso.
he kicks a stick by his foot. “alright. let’s go get this over with.”
“ookay.”
you walk side by side at first, but the forest gets denser the farther you go. the air feels cooler under the tall trees, shadows stretching along the ground. the floor’s covered in old branches and crunchy leaves.
“six pieces each,” you mutter.
“easy,” choso says, already eyeing a big stick like a prize.
you pluck a small one from the ground and wag it at him. “one.”
“that’s cheating.”
“nope. counts.”
“absolutely not.”
you grin, stick it into your little bundle, and then suddenly bolt deeper into the woods. "let's play tag!"
choso hesitates for half a second before laughing and running after you. “hey! come back!”
you dodge around a tree, giggling as you hop over a branch. choso shouts something about unfair head starts, but he’s clearly letting you win. every time he speeds up, he slows down again, giving you a chance to stay ahead.
your heart kicks as you run, but you don’t stop. he stays close behind, footsteps crunching in the leaves and breath warm when he gets too close. every time you think he’s about to grab you, he pulls back, teasing.
“i’m gonna catch you!,” he says.
“try it!” you throw over your shoulder.
“don’t tease me,” he warns, but you can hear the smile in his voice.
you leap over another branch, except your foot snags the end of it. you stumble, and at the exact same moment choso tries his best to grab your waist to steady you. his hand misses. both of you crash forward into the forest floor.
you hit the ground with a soft yelp, and choso lands rightttt on top of you.
his arms cage around your head, palms flat in the dirt on either side of you, chest pressed to your back at first before he pushes himself up a bit. he stares down at you breathing erratically with his eyes wide like he didn’t think the game of tag would end like this.
you blink up at him, equally as mortified, yet neither of you moves.
the forest is so quiet around you, not even a bird calling. it’s just him hovering over you, face flushed, hair messy, chest rising and falling.
his voice comes out low. “…uh.. you.. okay?”
“yeah,” you breathe. “you?”
he nods, still not moving. you can feel the warmth of him through the tiny space between your bodies, the closeness so strong you can’t think.
something lustful flashes in his eyes, just for a second like all he wanted to do was take you right then and there, but he shakes his head and pushes off.
he clears his throat and scrambles back, trying to be smooth but failing. he stands up first, then offers his hand.
you slip your fingers into his and he pulls you up in one clean swish. hot.
you dust yourself off, still feeling the tingle of where his arms had pinned you to the ground.
the walk after that is… awkward. not unbearably awkward, but enough that both of you pretend to focus really hard on looking for wood.
you pick up a stick. “three.”
“that’s barely a stick,” he says, kicking at it. “that’s a twig at best.”
“still counts.”
“i hate you.”
you smile. “no you don’t.”
he doesn’t argue that. his head is too filled with you, like it had been all day. you you you. on the walk to the waterfall, in the water, walking back, you were on his mind all day.
not that you weren't regularly on his brain, that was common, but this time it was one specific sentence you'd said, the one from last night.
'you're the only guy i'm into.'
fuuuuck.
it was driving him nuts. you were into him. he wants to ask you more, he wants to dig at your brain and ask you every little thing he's been thinking for the past 15 hours, he wants to pull you up against one of these trees and put you under some truth spell that'll get you to spill your guts.
a few more steps pass before he finally speaks again, trying to stay true to his desires and pluck up the courage to ask you. “so… uhm... y'know. about last night?”
your heart starts beating in your throat, it's embarrassingly nauseating.
you look at him trying to force a casual idgaf smile. “hmm? what about it?”
he sighs and stops walking.
“what do you… feel? about me?"
ah shit, you weren’t expecting him to be blunt about it. choso rarely asks for things directly, he hints at things and circles around the point, always waits for someone else to be bold first.
aw, he was being so brave. who are you to not give him a straight answer?
you step closer. “since freshman year, i’ve had a crush on you.”
his eyes go wide like you'd just pummeled him with a big, fat, heavy bowling ball.
“you..." he coughs out of nervousness. ", what?”
“yeah.” you shrug like it’s nothing even though your heart is fluttering and your fave is hit to the touch. “you’re surprised?”
he opens and closes his mouth a bit. “i... i guess not, but i… i’ve felt the same. this whole time. since the day you broke up with your ex.”
you stare at each other again, it's silent in this forest, you both seem to clock how badly you want the other, you can feel it in the way you fiddle with your sleeve anxiously and the way he's tapping his fingers against his thigh.
the timing is perfect, far too perfect.
choso seems to take the initiative, he reaches forward, grabs your face gently with both hands, and kisses you.
you accept gingerly. it’s soft and sweet at first, he's pushing his lips against yours smoothly and fluid. the year and a smidge of longing, late nights spent cuddled up together, talking shit and smoking weed, it was all pouring out into this perfect kiss. it's sweet, but you want a little more.
you grab his neck and pull him in closer, and he melts into it. the kiss deepens so quick, you and choso had always been on the same wavelength like that. your back presses into an old tree trunk the bark rough behind you, choso’s body's flush against yours.
one of his hands stays on your cheek, the other slides to your hip, holding you still. your fingers slip into his hair and he kisses you again, slower this time, then faster, he’s been waiting years for this exact moment.
you both break apart eventually, breathing hard, foreheads touching. his eyes slide down to your lips, then back up to your pretty eyes.
he laughs under his breath. “wow... uhm."
"yeah, wow. that was great." you giggle, nudging his shoulder, he smirks and looks down at you the way guys do when they're tryna look sexy, and it was really working out for him.
"we should… probably get actual firewood." he suggests with that's smile still firm on his face.
you laugh too, your cheeks still hot. “yeah. before nanami thinks we got mauled by bears.”
you both step away from the tree, still flustered. you grab a sturdy log, he grabs two bigger pieces like he’s suddenly trying to impress you, and you keep chatting quietly while stacking your finds.
then, the forest rustles up ahead.
you stop. “uhm, did you hear that?”
choso steps in front of you slightly, protective without thinking. “yeah. hold up.”
you creep forward together, quiet as possible. you push a branch aside.
and then...
you nearly scream.
because in front of you, sort of hidden between two trees, are satoru and suguru.
and they are VERY MUCH making out.
like pressed-together, hands-in-each-other’s-hair, bodies-flushed-close making out.
you slap a hand over your own mouth.
choso slaps his hand over your hand.
your muffled voice still tries to say, “i KNEW it-”
“shhh,” he whisper laughs, eyes going huge. “shut up, shut up, shut up-” he says between muffled giggles.
you two back up like spies retreating from an active crime scene, then once you’re far enough, you both break into silent giggles, hands over your mouths, practically vibrating.
once you’re safe, you wheeze out, “i knew it! we've talked about this!”
choso grins so hard his eyes crinkle. “oh wow i thought we were onto something, that's actually crazy.”
“so crazy.”
you collect the last of your wood and head back to camp, still laughing, still bumping shoulders, still so excited from the fact that everything, everything, between you just changed in the best way possible.
"sooo, can we make out tonight? can that be a new thing?"
"sure, cho. sure."
as you and him wander back toward camp the sky is darker now, almost syrupy, the last of the sun staining the treetops in a sleepy orange.
there’s already a flame flashing, crackling steady in the pit. everyone’s scattered around it, spread out on logs and blankets, hair still damp and bodies still bare. suguru and satoru are soon to come back as well, also as happy chappy as you and choso. although, everyone's too busy arguing or talking to clock them.
you both step into the clearing trying to look normal, which immediately does not work because choso’s smile is basically glued to his face and you're not much better.
maki, bless her soul, spots the two of you before anyone else.
she glances up, squints, and then her jaw drops so fast it’s comical. “oh my god?.”
you and choso freeze.
maki points directly at choso’s mouth, “you guys made out?!”
the entire group stops what they're doing as stares, even the fire crackles quieter.
and the funniest part?
choso AND gojo both blurt out at the exact same time,
“how did you know?!”
but they say it so differently.
choso says it all playful and shameless, like he’s impressed she figured it out.
gojo says it like he’s been caught fucking the pope.
the clearing goes dead still. everyone’s heads turn… slowly… toward gojo, who now has one hand slapped across his mouth like he’s trying to deep throat the incrimination words back inside his throat.
suguru sits beside him and his whole body shudders in an 'oh no' kinda way.
yuki’s eyes are huge with surprise and shoko is barley hanging onto her laugh. toji looks delighted. sukuna grins he’s watching the best soap opera he’s ever seen. ino looks confused, nanami looks exhausted, and shiu whispers “holy shit” under his breath.
maki clears her throat loudly, dragging her eyes off of gojo and back to you and choso. “uh- i was talking about choso. his lips. they’ve got her lip gloss on them. that’s all.”
then the people start hooting with laughter.
yuki practically explodes and shoko wheezes so hard she falls against yuki’s shoulder. toji leans over and gives shiu a stack of fives like they’d made a bet on this weeks ago. sukuna’s laughing at gojo with this sharp little grin, shaking his head like, “bro… come on.”
satoru is still sitting there frozen like a glitching video game character, hand over his mouth, real fear in his eyes.
suguru elbows him. “satoru.”
no response.
another nudge. “satoru, you outed us.”
gojo whispers, horrified, “i didn’t mean to. she scared me.”
maki throws a rock at him pissing herself laughing. “i wasn’t even talking to you! see what main character syndrome does to a guy? you idiot.”
yuki wipes tears away and points at suguru. “i mean… we did all kind of expect it.”
toji claps suguru on the back like a proud uncle. “knew it since last year, kid. congrats on finally doing something about it.”
shiu smirks. “yeah. bro it's kinda obvious.”
suguru groans and hides his face in his hands while gojo sinks into him like a sad little wet noodle. suguru wraps an arm around him anyway.
“it’s fine,” suguru sighs. “all bro’s make out sometimes.”
toji chokes on the smoke he was halfway through inhaling like an idiot, “THAT’S your explanation?!”
their banter just gets rowdier and rowdier with every word from satoru'ss mouth. nanami just mutters something about wishing he had chosen a different friend group in college.
and you?
you’re sitting on this beat up log, still warm from the forest encounter, grinning so wide your cheeks hurt.
choso bumps your shoulder with his, quiet enough that only you catch it. “we’re off the hook,” he whispers.
you tilt your head into him. “guess we don’t have to hide it now, huh?”
he gives you that little smile he only ever shows when he’s really happy. “guess not.”
the others are still hollering at gojo and suguru, who are now resigned to their fate, sitting next to each other on a cooler like children in time out. satoru keeps mumbling excuses. suguru keeps smacking the back of his head lightly every time he talks. toji and shiu are already arguing about the details of their bet.
nobody’s paying attention to you two anymore. perfect!
you catch choso’s hand, tugging. “hey.”
he looks down at your fingers sliding between his. his ears tint pink. “hmm?”
you lean in a little. “wanna sneak off?”
he tries to play it cool. he really does. but the tiny smile, the way he adjusts his grip on your hand, gives him away. “uh. yeah? obviously.”
you stand, brushing dirt and sand off your legs. choso stands too, stretching a little like he’s pretending this is casual, normal, totally fine and not exactly what he’s been wanting since he kissed you against that tree.
you both slip away like teenagers skipping class, quiet steps across pine needles, the fire dimming behind you as the forest swallows the noise. the further you get, the more the chatter fades until it’s just the two of you, the soft night, and the faint glow of your tent ahead.
when you duck inside the fabric glows with warm leftover daylight. the air feels close but comfy, the mattress messy from last night. you throw on one of his hoodies over your swimmers then collapse onto the bed with a gentle bounce. gross? maybe, but you're camping, who cares.
choso flops beside you, not even pretending to play it cool anymore. he pulls the zipper down halfway to let in some air, then turns toward you with that yearning look.
you nudge his side. “aw, you’re staring.”
“can’t help it,” he mumbles with nerves creeping in on him. “you’re kinda… fucking up my whole night right now.”
you grin. “in, like, a good way?”
“in the best way.”
you pull him closer by the front of the hoodie he slipped on before, he sinks into you like he’s been feining for it.
you tangle your fingers in his hair and he lets out the smallest moan into your mouth, soft and helpless, like he’s forgetting how to think.
"god this is so peak."
"right? we shoulda done this years ago." you reply, kissing him deeper.
you lie back together against the mattress, his arm slipping around you as the kiss gets heavier. outside, the fire crackles faintly under the distant laughter of your friends, but it all feels a world away from the quiet of the tent, the closeness of him beside you.
his fingers wave over your skin, pulling back to look you in your eyes. “today was… a lot.”
you smile. “a good lot, though.”
“yeah,” he laughs. “a really good lot.”
you shift closer, your nose buried in his neck. “we don’t have to figure out everything tonight.”
“i know.” he presses a small kiss to your head. “just wanna stay like this. for a bit.”
“we can stay as long as you want.”
he holds you to his chest so tight, this was what you craved, him in all of his gooey, lovey, glory.
when his kisses trail down to your cheek again, his laughter vibrating through your own throat, you smile and pull him closer.
so me and my best friend decided to write this because because of paleolithic grunts… “and this is why we have archeology today” that’s what she said as i was writing this.
“Do you know why shibari is sacred?” he murmurs, the question so quiet it feels like it’s being whispered directly into your mind.
The sound of his voice is its own kind of worship—smooth, sinuous, heavy with reverence and authority. You can barely think enough to shake your head.
“It teaches the body obedience.”
Or, in which rope becomes scripture, and your body the altar.
notes:
this took up my whole afternoon, but i’m glad with where it landed (i’m sorry if it feels slightly all over the place, the words kind of flowed out of me and i haven’t really beta read it lol). forgive me if any characterization feels slightly off, and thank you for reading. enjoy! :)
The blue rope digs into your skin with a steady, deliberate cruelty.
It’s warm where it bites, like it’s alive—like it’s breathing with you. Each strand hums faintly with the energy of his jinki, threads of power woven into the fabric itself. You can feel it, a low thrumming that seeps beneath your skin, as though the rope recognizes you now, memorizing the shape of your body, the pulse that trembles beneath the surface. Every twist, every knot he ties becomes an extension of him. His will. His control.
The fibers are deceptively soft when they first touch you—like silk dragged across your bare skin—but the moment he tightens them, they shift. They dig. They sting. They remind you, painfully and beautifully, that this is his art. You can feel where each coil presses, how each layer stacks over the other, pressing into muscle, pinning down sensation until your entire body sings in one long, trembling note of pain and pleasure. You twitch, instinctively trying to ease the pressure, but the rope only bites deeper, the friction burning in a way that almost feels holy.
Your breath hitches, a sound strangled behind the gag. The yarn scrapes against your tongue, coarse and bitter with the faint metallic taste of energy. It prickled at first, enough to make your throat rebel, to make you gag until your eyes watered—but you’ve grown accustomed to it now. The discomfort has turned into something else, something that feeds the heat pooling low in your stomach. You breathe shallowly through your nose, chest rising and falling in uneven rhythm, feeling the sting of every exhale as the ropes flex and adjust around your ribs.
Tamsy stands in front of you, silent at first. His posture is unhurried, confident. The soft light from the lamp catches in his hair, the strands gleaming silver-blue as his head tilts slightly to the side. His eyes rake over you, sharp and unblinking, yellow irises glowing faint blue as they track you like prey, watching the small shifts of your body—the way your thighs tremble, the way your pulse jumps in your neck, the way your lashes flutter when the ropes tighten. He studies you with an unnerving precision, a mixture of curiosity and control that feels both clinical and intimate.
His scar catches your eye, stark as a flash of lightning in a quiet sky, and you trace its path with your gaze before he moves again. He crouches, the faint sound of his fingers brushing against the rope as he checks the first knot. His fingers are careful, deliberate, tracing the path he’s created, ensuring that every coil lies exactly where it should. You can feel his touch even through the rope—warm, grounding, and terrifyingly gentle. When his fingertips ghost along the inside of your thigh, the breath you didn’t know you were holding escapes you in a muffled whimper. The sound seems to amuse him.
“Don’t tense,” he murmurs, his tone calm but firm, like a command dressed as kindness. His voice has that low, steady resonance—too measured to be comforting, too smooth to be innocent. “You’ll only make it worse.”
He says it without cruelty, without mockery. He’s simply stating a fact, and somehow that makes it worse. You want to obey, to unclench every trembling muscle, but the instinct to resist him—to fight against the ache he’s building in you—is stronger. Every time your body stiffens, the ropes answer in kind, tightening in small, merciless increments until your skin throbs and heat blooms like fire under your flesh.
He pulls again, slow and deliberate, and the rope whispers against your skin as it moves—dragging, rasping, alive. It glides up your ribs in a cruel caress, each strand warmed by the heat of your body, until it catches just below your sternum. The knot settles there like a heartbeat outside of your own—precise, unyielding, immovable. You can feel it every time you inhale; the rope tightens fractionally, pressing into the tender space between bone and breath, forcing you to feel your body in ways you never have before.
Tamsy ties with purpose. With reverence. With the quiet concentration of someone who’s spent a lifetime studying what makes the human form surrender. He knows exactly where to press to make your lungs catch. Exactly how tight to pull until the edge between pleasure and pain blurs. His movements are fluid, deliberate, almost meditative; the rhythm of a man both scientist and artist, taking you apart one careful knot at a time. His hands are unhurried, graceful in their cruelty. He doesn’t rush a single movement, because to him, the process is the pleasure.
The next length of rope slides lower. You feel it trace your waist, the fibers biting just enough to make your skin sting before the burn melts into warmth. He tightens the loop until your body reacts without thought—your spine arching, your chest rising, your back forced into perfect posture. You are pulled upright by geometry, by design, your breath fluttering shallow against the compression. You can hear the rope hum faintly when you exhale, vibrating with your pulse. You feel every heartbeat trapped beneath it—your own body playing accompaniment to the tension he’s composed.
He looks at you then, head tilted slightly, that same serene expression curving his lips—soft, knowing, cruel. It’s the look of a butcher admiring the symmetry of a suspended carcass. Beauty in the stillness. Perfection in the restraint.
Your lips part, the sound that escapes you caught somewhere between a gasp and a prayer. He hears it—of course he does. His eyes darken immediately, sharp and luminous all at once, like he’s feeding on the sight of your unraveling. On the way your breath falters. On the way your body instinctively strains against the rope even when it hurts. The pain blooms, rippling outward, twisting into something deeper, something that makes heat curl low in your belly until your knees threaten to give.
His hands move again—steady, methodical, merciless. The first knot above your sternum tightens with a flick of his wrist, and you shiver so visibly that his mouth curves. Not quite a smile—more like satisfaction made flesh. The rope continues upward and outward, tracing the lines of your ribs, the swells of your breasts, until it creates a web across you: a cage of twisted silk and precise intention. You can feel every intersection pressing into you like punctuation marks—his rhythm, his sentence, his story written in tension.
You are not simply bound. You are constructed. Something he’s made with his hands. Something only he can undo.
Then, with a soft tug, he draws the ropes just enough to make you whine—a small, involuntary sound that shatters the silence. He watches how your muscles twitch beneath the strain, how your breath catches halfway to a sob. It’s like he’s weaving not only rope but trust, a lattice that holds your body upright and your heart bare. In the small spaces between knots, you leave behind everything that isn’t him—your fear, your hesitation, your control.
The air in the room grows heavy, thick with the mingling scents of sweat, fiber, and something electric—tension so strong it hums in your bones. The dim light halos him as he steps closer, a faint chuckle spilling from him, low and amused. His presence fills the room the way smoke does—slow, invasive, consuming.
The rope isn’t a chain; it’s a question.
Every knot a word. Every pull a pause. Every sigh a reply. He writes on your skin with fiber and friction, composing a language that only the two of you understand. He asks without speaking, and you answer without sound.
His hands come to rest at your waist, fingers brushing the marks the ropes have already begun to carve there. His thumbs trace the indents tenderly, a ghosting touch that feels like both a benediction and a warning. A promise and a threat. His breath is steady as he looks down at you, eyes soft but burning with quiet hunger.
He waits. He always waits. That’s what makes him dangerous—his patience. He doesn’t demand; he lets the silence shape your need until it trembles on your skin. He waits until your body begins to sway toward him, until the ropes feel like they’re pulsing in time with your heartbeat, until every part of you aches for him to move, to claim, to finish what he’s started.
By the time the first whisper leaves your throat—a soundless plea, a breath caught in surrender—he already knows. He can feel it in the way you shake. He can hear it in the air between you.
His grin flashes like a blade catching light—brilliant, merciless, and alive with something that dances between mischief and cruelty. A few stray strands of hair fall loose to frame the sharpness of his face, and his eyes gleam with that unmistakable Tamsy glint: amusement laced with hunger. He looks devastatingly composed, still fully clothed while you’re stripped bare—bound, exposed, trembling under his gaze. The difference between you burns. It’s humiliating in a way that crawls under your skin, that feeds both the fear and the heat pooling low in your stomach.
He leans closer until the air between you is nothing but a pulse—his. Yours. The rope’s. His breath brushes your cheek, soft and steady, the warmth of it melting into your nerves until you want to flinch but can’t move. He doesn’t even need to touch you to make you feel small, undone. His control radiates from him like heat off metal, calm and cruel in the same breath.
“You look so pretty…” he says softly, voice curling around the words like smoke. “Real pretty.”
The words shouldn’t sound like a threat, but they do. They fall from his lips like an incantation, and the ropes seem to tighten in answer, the fibers creaking faintly as your body arches. His grin widens when you shiver, and you know he feels every reaction—sees every twitch of muscle, every ragged breath. He’s reading you, memorizing you, dissecting the way obedience takes shape in the lines of your body.
He circles you slowly, his steps measured and quiet, until he’s standing behind you again. Then his hand finds the rope at your ribs, fingertips dragging downward with agonizing care. The motion is feather-light at first, more a whisper of sensation than a touch, until his nails catch the edge of the fibers and pull slightly, teasing the pain back into the surface of your skin. It’s unbearable how good it feels—the sting, the warmth, the way the rope vibrates faintly with your pulse.
“Do you know why shibari is sacred?” he murmurs, the question so quiet it feels like it’s being whispered directly into your mind.
The sound of his voice is its own kind of worship—smooth, sinuous, heavy with reverence and authority. You can barely think enough to shake your head.
“It teaches the body obedience.”
Each word lands like a drop of molten gold, slow and deliberate. His touch trails lower, brushing beneath the arch of your breastbone, tracing the delicate stretch of skin where your breath catches. The sensation is unbearable in its precision, pleasure and pain braided together so tightly you can’t tell them apart anymore. Your pulse stutters wildly, and you swear the rope responds—tightening, constricting, listening.
“It makes you honest,” he says, his voice soft but absolute. His fingers stop at the knot just above your sternum, the heart of his creation. You can feel your heartbeat trapped there, fluttering like something caged. His thumb presses lightly against it, and the pressure sends a tremor through your chest.
“The moment you stop pretending you aren’t afraid…” he breathes, leaning forward until his lips hover just beside your ear, the warmth of his exhale ghosting down your neck. You smell him—steel, faint incense, the clean bite of ozone—and it sends your nerves into disarray. “…is the moment you’re free.”
The words settle into you like a brand. You can feel them under your skin, sinking deep, fusing with the rhythm of your pulse. Fear blooms in your chest, bright and trembling—but beneath it, there’s something else. Surrender. The quiet, terrible kind that rises when you realize you’re no longer fighting the rope. Or him.
He pulls back just enough to look at you, and that’s when you see it—his smile.
It’s not cruel, not entirely. It’s serene. Almost holy. But there’s something monstrous about it too, the beauty of a god who delights in the faith of his worshipper. His eyes soften as he studies your face, and you know what he sees there: the collapse, the breaking, the transformation from resistance to devotion.
He loves it. Loves watching you come undone not from force, but from the quiet acceptance that this—the restraint, the stillness, the surrender—is sacred.
In his hands, shibari isn’t just art. It’s a ritual—and you are the prayer answered.
You’re suspended before you can even breathe. One moment, the ropes are shifting under his touch, the next, the ground is gone—stolen from beneath you like a secret. Your weight redistributes instantly, gravity tugging at every knot, every line of pressure that crosses your body. Your back arches beautifully, instinctively, and the air trembles around you. The ropes creak softly, singing their own low hymn of restraint.
The position forces you open—knees drawn apart, bound wide like the petals of a flower in bloom, trembling in invisible wind. The ropes bite into the tender skin behind your knees and the curve of your thighs, but there’s nothing cruel in the precision. The pressure holds you, not traps you. It is not a cage, but an embrace—one that hums with life, one that breathes when you do. Every shift in your chest, every small gasp, vibrates through the cords that cradle you. They hum back like a living thing, a second pulse twined with your own.
You can hear your heartbeat in the stillness—loud, uneven, echoing through your ribs. The tension of the rope presses there too, just beneath your sternum, making each inhale shallow. The faint sway of your suspended body reminds you that you are not separate from the system that holds you—you are the system. You are the instrument, and he the musician, and the music is your breath, your pulse, the soft creak of hemp shifting against skin.
When you finally open your eyes, he’s there in front of you. Tamsy. His gaze devours you, sharp and unblinking, like an artist staring at the perfect canvas—except his art is already alive and trembling. His grin flickers, the edges cruel but reverent. His hands rise to touch you, tracing the rope that cuts across your chest, following the curves it shapes as if reading the lines of a map he’s memorized.
Then—his fingers find your nipples. He tugs. Not gently. A sharp pull that rips a squeal out of your throat before you can stop it. The sound echoes in the silence, bouncing back at you, raw and helpless. His grin sharpens, and you swear you can feel it, even without looking—feel the satisfaction rolling off him like heat.
His fingers move lower, trailing down your stomach, skimming over the dips and hollows until his touch finds the sensitive flesh between your legs. He pauses there, deliberate, teasing, dragging the pad of his finger in slow circles over your clit. The rope trembles with the shiver that racks through you.
And then, he goes lower. Past your folds, past the slick warmth that’s already gathered there, until his fingers press inside you—slow, testing, deliberate. One, then two, slipping knuckle-deep, curling until you gasp. The stretch burns in the sweetest way, a sting that turns molten the longer he moves. He starts to build a rhythm, the movement firm and steady, filling the silence with the soft sound of skin and breath. You try to move with him, your body instinctively seeking more—but the ropes deny you.
Every twitch of your hips only tightens the lines, sending fresh waves of pain and pleasure colliding until you can’t tell which is which.
Your eyes tear up, lashes wet, and your breath catches on small, muffled sounds—half-whimpers, half-pleas. The ropes creak in time with the trembling of your thighs. He watches all of it, his expression serene, almost academic—except for his eyes. They glint, a sharp, dark blue that feels like lightning under water, and his grin is something too knowing, too alive.
Then, suddenly, he stops.
The world collapses into stillness. His fingers slip free, and all that’s left is the ache. The pain blooms sharp and unrelenting now that pleasure has fled. It throbs through you in waves, building pressure behind your ribs, making your fingers twitch helplessly where they’re bound. Tears spill freely this time, dripping down your cheeks, tracing the edges of the rope’s indentations. You can’t even wipe them away.
You blink—and he’s gone. For a moment, all you can hear is your own ragged breathing. Then you feel him. Not see—feel. The warmth of his breath ghosts over your skin, first at your inner thigh, then closer. His fingers brush against your hips, steadying you in your suspended sway, and his voice is nowhere but everywhere.
Then—his mouth.
The first drag of his tongue is almost unbearable, hot and wet against the overstimulated skin. He licks a long stripe up your folds, slow and reverent, until he reaches your clit. The tip of his tongue circles it, soft, teasing, patient. You jerk instinctively, the movement sending sharp tremors through the ropes. He hums against you, the vibration melting up your spine.
Then he sucks.
Firm, deep, merciless. His mouth seals around your clit, pulling until your body seizes with the shock of it. The sound that tears from your throat is muffled by the gag, but it’s desperate enough to echo. The world narrows—his mouth, the rope, the air filling your lungs too shallowly. He alternates between sucking and flicking, methodical, relentless. Every time you shake, he steadies you by the hips, fingers digging in just enough to remind you who’s in control.
Your body begins to quake. Tears and sweat blur together on your face. The pain from the ropes merges into pleasure so intense it bends reality around it. You can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t speak. The only truth left is the rhythm of his mouth and the soft creak of the ropes that hold you—each sound a testament to your surrender.
He doesn’t stop. Not when you shake, not when you cry, not even when your back bows in the air like something divine breaking apart. He only holds you there—bound, trembling, suspended between agony and rapture—until your body becomes the music again, and every sound that escapes you belongs to him.
He pulls back just enough to draw breath—and then you hear it. The slick, obscene sound of him spitting between your legs. Hot, wet, deliberate. It hits your cunt with a lewd slap, sliding down the tender skin, and before you can even process the shock, he’s lapping it up again, tongue dragging through the mess he’s made. Then he does it again—spitting, licking, spitting again—each motion slow and calculated, like he’s rewriting what it means to be touched.
It’s filthy. Humiliating. Dehumanizing in the way only he can make it feel. And yet beneath the shame, something else curls—a pulse of molten heat that swells until it eats the edges of your reason.
The sound alone is enough to make you tremble; it’s wet, primal, unholy. Every time he spits, it feels like he’s claiming something wordless from you. Marking you not with tenderness, but with possession. His mouth returns to your clit, and the sudden contrast of warmth and softness makes your breath stutter. He circles it with maddening precision, tongue drawing figure-eights that blur into spirals. Then he sucks—slow and deep, his mouth sealing over you like he intends to drink every sound you make. The rhythm builds: lick, circle, suck, release, repeat. It’s relentless. A pattern of control that mirrors the tension of the ropes holding you aloft.
You squeal without meaning to, a sharp sound that fractures into a cry. The ropes groan in answer, tightening around you as if they’re alive—his silent accomplices. Pain flares where the fibers meet your skin, sharp and consuming, but it melts just as quickly into pleasure. The heat radiates through you, spreading like a fire under your flesh. You feel the burn along your thighs, your ribs, your wrists. The pressure blossoms into bruises you can already feel forming, deep and tender and holy in their own way.
You don’t fear the pain anymore. You welcome it.
The marks he leaves aren’t bruises; they’re sunsets—violet and gold, born of friction and surrender. Each one a signature, a temporary tattoo inked in ache and devotion. They’re proof that he’s been here. That you’ve survived him, and wanted it. The pain, the shame, the heat—it all coalesces into something that feels like peace. The paradox of it takes your breath away: this stillness that lives inside the suffering, this warmth in the fire.
You feel his pace shift. The rhythm of his tongue quickens, sharp flicks of movement that make your whole body jolt. You cry out, head tipping back as your toes curl, your body tightening around the ropes until every muscle trembles.
And then—his fingers. Two of them, sliding inside you again, slick and sure, curling at just the right angle. He moves them in the same rhythm as his tongue, in perfect synchrony. Each thrust is mirrored by a flick, each curl matched by a suck, until your body forgets how to separate one from the other. It’s all sensation now—heat and wetness and the low hum of the rope vibrating with your heartbeat.
You drool before you even realize it. The gag muffles your cries, and the saliva spills from the corners of your mouth, sliding down your chin in slow, warm trails. It stains the rope, darkening it, glistening where it meets your skin. Tears join it, indistinguishable now, both dripping down together until they blend into the same shimmering evidence of your undoing. The sight of it—the mess, the helplessness—seems to please him. You hear a small, satisfied noise from below, a quiet exhale that could almost be a laugh.
The ropes pull tighter still, adjusting with every tremor of your body. They bite deep now—so tight you can barely move. Each shallow breath makes them groan softly, reminding you that every inch of you belongs to his creation. You can’t reach for him. You can’t escape him. You can only hang there—crying, drooling, shaking—held in the cruel mercy of his precision.
And he watches. Always watches. That same maddening calm in his eyes, that faint curve at his mouth, like he’s studying the equation of your ruin and solving it with perfect grace. His tongue never falters, his fingers never slow, and in that terrible rhythm—wet, slick, divine—you feel the world narrowing down to a single truth:
There is no you without him.
No breath that isn’t borrowed from his touch. No sound that isn’t shaped by the ropes and the rhythm of his mouth.
So you let go.
It happens like the breaking of a dam—sudden, unstoppable, all-consuming. The pressure that’s been building in your stomach, curling and tightening with every flick of his tongue, bursts open all at once. Ecstasy tears through you like lightning under your skin, bright and merciless. Your breath catches on a sob, your spine bows hard against the ropes, and every muscle in your body shudders in violent, beautiful surrender. The ropes strain to hold you, trembling with your trembling, singing their low note of tension as your body convulses within the boundaries he built.
The world blurs. The pain, the pleasure, the fire—they’re the same now. They melt into one roaring sensation that drowns thought. You can’t tell where the burn ends and the sweetness begins. You can only feel: the trembling in your thighs, the pounding of your pulse, the way your vision flickers with spots of white that bloom like stars behind your eyelids.
Tamsy doesn’t stop. He never stops.
His hands tighten on your hips, steadying you, grounding you as you shake apart. His mouth stays at your core, insatiable, drinking everything you give him like it’s holy water. He licks through the flood of your release, tongue darting, catching, savoring every drop as though he’s starving. His mouth is hot, greedy, reverent—every movement slow enough to worship and desperate enough to devour. He slurps noisily, shamelessly, the sound wet and obscene in the heavy silence, and it only makes you tremble harder.
You gasp for air, chest heaving, tears and sweat clinging to your skin. The ropes creak with each trembling exhale, rubbing against raw, marked flesh. You can feel the way he eats you—like a man parched, like he’s been waiting for this taste all his life. His tongue moves with purpose, tracing the edges of your sensitivity, coaxing every aftershock until the tremors roll through you in waves.
Each ripple of pleasure feels like the afterglow of thunder. It’s unbearable, exquisite, endless. Your legs twitch, the ropes holding them spread wide, forcing you to take every second of it. You whimper helplessly, but it only fuels him—he hums low against you, the vibration making your body seize again, another small quake rippling through you.
When he finally slows, it’s not out of mercy—it’s because he’s had his fill. He licks you clean with languid precision, as if savoring the remnants of something sacred. Then he pulls back just enough to look at you. His lips are glistening, his chin wet, his breathing steady where yours is shattered. His eyes—those calm, sharp, knowing eyes—find yours, and for a moment, he looks almost serene.
Tamsy smiles faintly. Not cruel. Not kind. Just that same unreadable calm, like he’s watching the aftershocks of a storm he created. The ropes still hum around you, alive with residual energy, and your body still trembles within them—sweat-slick, flushed, undone.
“See?” he murmurs, fingers brushing your trembling thigh, the faintest touch. “This is what freedom looks like.”
Your lips part, but no sound comes out. You want to answer him, to whisper something—his name, a plea, anything—but your mouth feels foreign. Your tongue is heavy, the rope between your teeth slick with saliva, too thick, too wet, too real. You try to swallow, but the act feels impossible, your throat raw from muffled cries. Every nerve in your body hums like a live wire. You track him through the blur of your vision, eyes following the movement of his body as he rises, unhurried, from between your legs.
He straightens, rolling his shoulders with quiet grace, the air shifting around him as he steps closer. The soft creak of leather and the faint shuffle of his boots on the floor are the only sounds in the room, and somehow they sound louder than your own heartbeat. He looks down at you with that same unreadable expression, eyes half-lidded, the edges of his mouth neutral. Detached. He could be observing a specimen. A sculpture. A sinner.
When his hand reaches out, you tense without meaning to. His palm presses against your stomach first, tracing the path of the rope until it finds one of the darker bruises blooming beneath it—a perfect oval of pain wrapped in purple and heat. The touch isn’t rough. If anything, it’s almost gentle, but your body reacts anyway. You flinch. The movement sends ripples through the web of tension holding you suspended, and the ropes sing softly in response. A small sound escapes you—a whimper, broken and breathless, trembling out of you before you can swallow it back.
He sighs. It’s quiet, drawn out, and heavy with something you can’t quite name. Pity? Curiosity? Resignation?
“You poor thing,” he murmurs. The words should sound cruel, but they don’t. His tone is steady, devoid of inflection, emotionless even—but there’s a faint echo of softness buried somewhere underneath, a shadow of sympathy that might not even be real. It’s that uncertainty that unsettles you most. He says it like a fact. Like an observation. Like he’s not even talking to you, but to the fragile shape of what’s left of you.
Then he steps closer. So close that you can feel the warmth of his body radiating against your skin. The air between you is stifling, electric, alive with the residue of everything he’s done. You smell him—clean linen, faint sweat, metal, something sharp like ozone—and it makes your pulse stutter. His hand drops from your stomach, and his eyes stay on you as his head tilts slightly, studying the tilt of your chin, the way your lips part on a shallow breath.
And then he leans in.
His tongue drags a slow, wet line from your chin up along your cheek. The sensation is shocking, hot and humid, tracing over the salt of your tears, the slick of your drool. He licks deliberately, unhurriedly, savoring the taste of your humiliation like it’s wine. His breath is steady against your skin, his lips parting just enough for another sweep of his tongue, this time slower, deeper.
It’s intimate in the cruelest way—not passion, not lust, but curiosity.
He’s tasting you. Your tears. Your surrender. Your embarrassment. Every sound you’ve made tonight is still there on your skin, and he’s collecting them with quiet reverence.
When he pulls back, your breath hitches. For a brief, foolish moment, you think it’s over. That maybe he’s finished, that maybe the exhaustion trembling through your body will be allowed to settle. You can see his chest rise and fall, measured, calm. His gaze softens just slightly, and that faint hope flickers somewhere between your ribs.
Then you hear it.
The sharp, metallic click of a belt buckle being undone. The sound slices through the silence like a blade, echoing far too loud in the small room. Your eyes snap to him instinctively, and you watch as he slides the belt free from the loops of his trousers in one smooth motion. The leather hisses faintly, the buckle glinting in the dim light. He folds it once, then again, testing the weight of it in his palm. His expression doesn’t change. It’s calm. Measured. Like a man about to resume a lesson interrupted.
Your stomach drops.
In his other hand, something new appears—a length of black fabric, soft and matte between his fingers. A blindfold. The sight of it makes your heart lurch, thudding painfully against your ribs. You know what it means. The ropes already took your body. This will take the rest.
He steps forward again, unhurried, the belt coiled loosely in one hand, the blindfold in the other. The air thickens with anticipation, heavy and hot, and every muscle in your body strains against the ropes without moving an inch. You want to speak—to beg, to ask, to plead—but the sound doesn’t come. Only the tremor of your breath fills the air.
“Now…” His voice is low, steady. Not cruel. Not kind. Just final. “Round two.”
You can see his mouth curve faintly as he says it, that small, devastating smile that never quite reaches his eyes. The kind of smile that means he’s already decided.
He steps into your space, close enough that his breath ghosts against your face, and lifts the blindfold. The soft fabric brushes your temple as he ties it around your head, his fingers careful and sure as they knot it at the back of your skull. The world narrows, dimming, until the light fades completely.
And the last thing you see—before the darkness claims everything—is him.
Tamsy, smiling that calm, almost tender smile, eyes gleaming like blue fire in the low light. The look of a man who’s not cruel by accident, but by design.
And then—
Nothing.
notes:
thank you for reading! please let me know what you think and until next time! <333
guys i’m so tired i feel as if my eyes are drooping out of my sockets and my brain is spilling out of my ears LIKE BRO WHAT POSSESSED ME TO TAKE INTRO TO ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES….icantdorhisanymore…..
oh and i’ll update the law fanfic soon im just SWAMPED with work rn, love you guys.. (pray for my sanity)
cws: again with the unethical experimentation, electro stimulation, sir kink, crying???, mentions of drool, oral fixation, semi-public spaces, cockblocking, let me know if i missed anything!
3.6k words
You shouldn’t be back here. You told yourself that after last time, that you wouldn’t involve yourself in whatever fucked up, experimental fantasy Senku had cooked up in his brain.
And yet—here you were.
It started innocently enough, or at least as innocently as anything could with him. You were on your way to the break room, craving five quiet minutes and a bitter cup of coffee, when he appeared in the hall. His expression was as stoic as always, but there was a sharp glint in his eye. One that never meant anything good— at least not for you.
“Do you have a minute?”
The words made you pause. You turned slowly, exhaustion heavy in your face. “Senku, I’ve been here all day. I don’t have time for whatever it is you’re doing.”
He only rolled his eyes, that infuriating half-smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “Come on. It’ll only take twenty.”
Twenty.
What a fucking lie.
And yet, somehow, your coffee stayed untouched on the counter as you followed him back down the hallway, away from your own lab, away from your own pile of work. Dragged by his presence alone.
The door shut behind you with a dull thud, followed by the resounding click of the lock sliding into place. The aseptic tang of metal and chemicals filled your lungs, grounding you in the familiarity of his lab.
But nothing about the setup in front of you felt familiar.
On the counter, a generator hummed faintly, its wires coiled neatly beside a sleek wand tipped in steel. No flasks bubbling. No blueprints sprawled across the bench. Just that machine, pulsing with quiet menace.
Your arms crossed over your chest. “Senku,” you said slowly, suspicion already souring your tone, “what exactly are you planning?”
Before you could take a step back, you felt him. Senku was already behind you, close—closer than he had any right to be.
His height loomed over you, the brush of his lab coat ghosting against your shoulders as his breath tickled the shell of your ear.
You froze, every muscle locking, the air in your lungs now forgotten.
“You should take a seat.”
The words vibrated low against your spine, a whisper that sent a shiver tearing down your body before you could stop it.
Your eyes flicked around the room. No chairs. No stools. Just the wide, sterile expanse of the lab table. Your arms stiffened where they crossed, nails digging faint crescents into your sleeves.
“There aren’t any—”
But before you could even point out the obvious lack of chairs, his hands were already on you. Firm, unyielding, yet deceptively gentle.
His palms bracketed your waist, guiding you forward like you weighed nothing, like your protest had been nothing more than background noise. The fabric of his gloves was cool at first, but the pressure of his grip burned right through.
You wanted to step back, to plant your heels and tell him off, but the sound caught in your throat—what came out instead was a shaky little hitch of breath that betrayed you completely.
Senku didn’t comment. He didn’t need to.
He steered you with the same infuriating precision he’d use when adjusting delicate instruments, nudging until the backs of your thighs bumped against the edge of the lab table. The metal was cold through your skirt, shocking enough to snap you halfway back to reality.
Your head snapped up, words stammering out. “Senku, I—”
“Up.”
Just that. One word. A simple command, spoken without force but heavy enough to sink straight into your bones.
Before you could decide whether to obey, his hands flexed at your waist, lifting—helping you onto the table as though you were nothing more than another part of the experiment.
And for the first time, you wondered if maybe you’d made a mistake following him here.
Your palms pressed against the table on either side of you, fingers curling against the surfaces’ edge. The metal was cold, but it did nothing to slow the warm, sharp pulse in your veins.
Senku didn’t move away. He stood there between your knees like it was the most natural thing in the world, the faintest glint of satisfaction in his eyes as if he’d already won. His presence filled every inch of space you might’ve claimed for yourself, until the only thing you could do was look at him.
The generator’s low hum vibrated through the air, steady, insistent. Like a countdown you couldn’t see.
Your legs swung restlessly where they dangled off the edge of the table, heels scuffing against the metal frame. Your fingers tapped an uneven rhythm against the surface at your sides before curling into fists, then flattening again— anything to bleed off the nervous energy winding through you. When that didn’t help, you pressed your knees closer together, only to feel the faint brush of his coat hem between them.
Senku’s gaze flicked down briefly, catching every fidget, every twitch. The smallest raise of his brow made your chest tighten like you’d been caught doing something you weren’t supposed to.
He finally broke the silence, voice annoyingly even. “Don’t look so tense. It’s not lethal.” His lips quirked, a razor-sharp shadow of a smile. “Not at this voltage, anyway.”
You swallowed hard, gaze darting toward the wand gleaming in the harsh overhead light. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
He chuckled under his breath, turning back to adjust the dial with a casual flick of his wrist. “It should. But your reactions are the data I’m after, not your comfort.”
You rolled your eyes at his clinical dismissal, exaggerating the motion before fixing him with the most insufferable pout you could muster. You let your lashes dip low, batting at him like some caricature of wounded innocence.
“You don’t care about my comfort…?” you sighed, voice syrupy sweet, just short of mocking.
It was bait, plain and simple, meant to poke at him, to throw him off his pedestal of smug detachment.
But Senku didn’t bite the way you expected. He stilled for a moment, gaze sliding down to where your legs dangled against the table. His expression didn’t shift, but you felt it in the way his hand moved—slower now, deliberate, sliding higher until his palm settled against the bare skin just above your knee.
The warmth of his glove bled through, grounding, distracting. Then his thumb began to move, dragging in small, steady circles. Not hurried, not rough. Just patient, methodical, like he had all the time in the world to map out the texture of your skin.
Your pout faltered.
“You know I didn’t mean it like that,” he said at last, and his voice was different this time—lower, smooth, edged with something almost… careful. Not the razor of sarcasm he so often wielded, nor the indifferent flatness of a scientist giving instructions.
It sank under your skin, that tone. Dangerous, because it didn’t feel like an experiment anymore.
You shifted slightly on the table, thighs tightening beneath his palm before loosening again, as if you couldn’t decide whether to shrink away from his touch or lean into it. His hand didn’t move. If anything, his thumb pressed firmer, sketching another deliberate circle against your skin. Each stroke was maddening in its simplicity, as if he knew exactly how to unravel you without even trying.
For a fleeting second, you thought maybe he’d forgotten about the machine, the wand, the whole charade of “science.” That maybe this was something else entirely.
But then the generator crackled, a faint, electric hum rising as he reached for the wand with his free hand.
“You trust me, don’t you?” he asked, casual as ever, though the subtle squeeze on your thigh betrayed the weight of the question.
Your breath hitched, throat tightening around the word. “…Y-yeah.” Barely a sound, more of a choked whisper than a real answer.
Senku’s eyes flicked up to you immediately, sharp, assessing. That wasn’t good enough and you knew it.
Panic fluttered in your chest, so you nodded—once, twice, then again, quick and frantic, like you could make up for the weakness of your voice by sheer insistence.
His smirk deepened, subtle but unmistakable.
“Good.”
The wand hummed faintly in his other hand, alive with current, and the sound coiled around you like a warning. For the first time, you realized—it wasn’t pain you feared. Not with him.
No, what terrified you was how much you trusted him not to hurt you. How easily you’d let him push you this far, closer than anyone else had ever dared. How you’d let him— no, want him—to.
And then it came.
The first crackle of electricity kissed your skin. Sharp, biting, a staccato shock that lit every nerve in its path. It wasn’t agony. It wasn’t even close. It was too quick, too precise. A warning shot meant to test your threshold.
Your gasp broke free before you could swallow it, raw and involuntary, filling the air between you. Your body jolted, muscles twitching as though they weren’t your own. Nails scraped across the metal edge of the table, grasping for something solid as your thighs threatened to snap shut around him.
Senku’s smirk widened, just barely. But his eyes—sharp, greedy, glowing with quiet satisfaction—devoured you whole.
“Interesting,” he murmured, though it wasn’t for the data this time. It was for the way you flinched, the way you tried to muffle your own sounds, the way you still hadn’t pulled away.
His gaze lingered on your lips, parted from the sharp intake of breath, then slid lower— to the quiver of your stomach, the tension still buzzing in your legs where his hand held steady.
He didn’t bother writing anything down. He didn’t need to. Every gasp, every twitch, every desperate little tremor—you could see it in his face. He’d commit it all to memory.
“Still with me?” His voice was deceptively soft, even as the wand pulsed again in his grip.
You nodded shakily, though your throat felt too tight to speak. The reassurance wasn’t for the data, not really. It was for you. And that alone made your chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with the current buzzing under your skin.
The second jolt ripped through you, sharper this time, and your whole body lurched forward before you could stop it. You caught yourself instinctively—hands fisting into Senku’s lab coat, forehead dipping into the crook of his neck.
His body went still for half a second, letting you ground yourself against him. You could feel the heat radiating from him even through the sterile smell of gloves and metal, the faint brush of his hair against your temple somehow anchoring you more than the table ever could.
“You’ll skew the results like this,” he muttered, voice low, almost more observation than reprimand, but he didn’t push you away. Instead, his hands settled firm on your thighs, steadying you where you sat at the edge of the table. His thumbs were at it again, drawing slow, absentminded shapes against your skin— too soft to be necessary, too grounding to be accidental.
The current buzzed again, making your stomach jump. A shiver ran through you, muffled against his neck, your breath hot against his collar.
“Mm. Still responsive,” Senku noted, but his hands never left you. If anything, his grip on your thighs tightened fractionally, the comfort hidden beneath a mask of precision.
“Senku…” your voice cracked, shaky, desperate.
“I thought I told you last time not to hide,” he murmured, more coax than command, though the sharpness in his eyes betrayed him. “If your body responds this strongly, it’s valid data. Embarrassment won’t change that.”
You trembled, burying your face harder into the crook of his neck, but his thumb kept tracing those soft, steady circles—cruelly comforting, like he wanted you to lose yourself.
“Tell me,” Senku pressed, the hum of the generator vibrating between you. “Does it feel good?”
This was wrong. Sick. Disgusting. Perverted. And yet, you couldn’t stop yourself. Every pulse, every shiver, every gasp was proof you were as complicit as he was, even if your mind screamed otherwise.
“Y-yes, sir. Feels… really good,” you admitted, voice trembling with a mixture of shame and pleasure.
His eyes gleamed faintly, sharp and calculating. He loved your reactions—the little jerks of your body, the sharp gasps, the soft, shaky whines. He could catalog them as easily as jotting down equations, each response a data point, yet he lingered on them far longer than any note-taking required.
And when you moaned—soft, desperate, and muffled against his shoulder— he stilled for half a second, not because he was startled, but because he wanted to memorize it.
He could listen to you all day.
Your body trembled harder now, heat pooling low, nerves singing with every pulse of the generator. Face pressed into his shoulder, tears pricked at the corners of your eyes, and your chest heaved uncontrollably. You couldn’t stop the shivering, the little hiccuping sobs that escaped despite your efforts to stay composed.
Senku’s hands slid subtly under your shirt, tracing the line of your stomach with cold, calculating fingers. The contrast made you jolt, a sharp gasp muffled against his collar, and the trembling intensified. Every movement, every involuntary flinch, every tiny sob—he cataloged it all in his mind, and somewhere beneath the guise of observation, a part of him was thrilled, maybe more than he’d admit even to himself.
Your head dipped further into his shoulder, and you felt a wetness at the corner of your lips. Drool. Your eyes rolled back slightly, and a high-pitched, shaky gasp escaped despite your attempts to keep quiet.
Senku noticed immediately. His thumb moves up to brush delicately against your lips, wiping it away with a calculated gentleness. His eyes narrow ever so slightly— as if weighing some private curiosity. He lingered for a moment, fingers still pressing lightly against your stomach, as a thought crossed his mind.
Before you could even process it, he moved swiftly, sliding two fingers past your lips. “Shh,” he murmured, his voice deceptively calm. “You’re being too loud. What if someone walks by?”
It was clinical. Scientific. Necessary. At least, that's what he made it sound like.
And yet.
The way his fingers rested against your tongue, the subtle pressure, the heat of his hand against your stomach—it was anything but “clinical.” You shivered, letting your lips part involuntarily around him, eyes fluttering closed.
He watched you closely, every flicker of reaction written plainly across your face, savoring the combination of control and trust.
“You see?” he murmured near your ear, voice low, “we have to be careful. Discretion is part of the experiment.”
The lie hung in the air, both of you knowing full well it was only a front.
Then, almost imperceptibly, he pushed his fingers deeper. You gagged, tears stinging your eyes, and your body jerked against him. The shiver that ran through you now wasn’t just from the current—it was from the closeness, the overstimulation, the impossibility of control.
Senku’s eyes caught yours, the faintest, darkest glint flashing within them—a predator’s gleam hidden behind the mask of a scientist. He reveled in this moment: the way you were at his mercy, trembling and exposed, the way every gasp and whimper betrayed the full extent of your reaction.
“You’re fascinating,” he murmured, voice deceptively calm, almost clinical, but laced with that edge you could feel in your bones. “The way you respond… it’s… exquisite.”
You swallowed around his fingers, eyes watering, chest heaving, but the words only made your body shiver harder. Every inch of him, every deliberate, careful motion, was designed to pull a reaction out of you—and it was working.
Then, as if on cue, a sharp knock echoed against the lab door.
Senku grumbled under his breath— a low, frustrated sound that carried just enough disappointment to make your pulse spike. You frowned, irritated yourself at the interruption, the thought of someone stumbling into your… “experiment” making you clench your thighs against the edge of the table.
His eyes flicked toward the clock on the wall. 1:47 a.m. Late. Everyone else should’ve been gone hours ago. Of course, his luck—or lack thereof—was impeccable.
He exhaled softly, brushing a stray tear from your temple, and shifted to make you appear more composed. “Stay still,” he murmured, calm but firm, guiding your hands to your lap, smoothing your skirt, and pressing a cool cloth to wipe any trace of tears from your cheeks.
Then he swiftly moved to the table, cleaning up the scattered equipment, straightening the generator wires, and repositioning the wand as if nothing had happened. His movements were precise, practiced, a delicate choreography to erase all evidence of what had just transpired.
You blinked at him, still catching your breath, as he glanced back with a faint, mischievous smirk. “Better?” he asked softly. His hand lingered briefly at your waist, grounding you while masking the adrenaline that still hummed between you.
“Yeah,” you muttered, your voice rough but obedient.
The knock came again, louder this time, and Senku straightened, slipping seamlessly into his usual, composed persona.
“Come in,” he called, voice calm and clipped, like nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
The door creaked open, and there stood Xeno. His eyes scanned the dimly lit lab, taking in the dark setup. Every detail registered in his cold, calculating gaze.
Then his eyes flicked to you. Flushed, slightly disheveled, hair loose from its style that he’d seen you walk in with this morning, chest still rising and falling rapidly.
And then back to Senku.
“Is this a bad time?” Xeno asked, voice level, betraying nothing, though there was the faintest lift of an eyebrow at your state.
Senku’s smirk deepened just slightly, but his voice remained steady. “Not at all,” he said smoothly, slipping effortlessly back into his scientist mode. “We were just… calibrating some equipment. Everything's under control.”
You cleared your throat, stepping back from the table and smoothing your skirt. “I was just about to head out for the night,” you said, voice a little strained, still catching your breath.
Xeno’s eyes flicked to you, sharp, questioning, like he didn’t fully believe you. The faint crease of suspicion in his brow was unmistakable.
“I… really should get going,” you added, more insistently this time, glancing between the two of them.
Xeno’s eyes lingered on you a moment longer, measuring, calculating, before he finally gave a subtle nod. “Of course,” he said, voice even, though the faint smirk tugging at the corner of his lips suggested he was far from convinced.
You hurriedly gathered your things, casting a quick glance at Senku, who still lingered near the table, hand brushing absentmindedly over the cold metal surface. Then you slipped out, leaving the door ajar behind you.
Now it was just the two of them.
Xeno stepped fully into the lab, smirk tugging at the corner of his lips as he took in Senku’s slightly irritated expression. The faintest tension lingered in the air, and it was clear who had caused it.
“You’re in quite the mood,” Xeno remarked, tone light, teasing, but there was an edge to it—sharp, knowing.
Senku’s eyes narrowed, the subtle curl of his lips betraying his irritation. “You’re lucky she left when she did,” he muttered, voice low, though the annoyance in his tone was plain. “Otherwise, I’d have to have a discussion about boundaries.”
Xeno chuckled, tilting his head just enough to emphasize the amusement in his gaze. “Clearly, you didn’t enjoy the interruption.”
Senku’s jaw tightened, and a low exhale emphasized just how annoyed he was at Xeno for being the reason you had felt the need to leave. His fingers flexed at his sides, betraying a mix of restraint and lingering frustration.
Xeno’s tone remained measured, almost dry. “I suppose I shouldn’t bother you,” he said, stepping further into the lab, eyes flicking over Senku’s form. He noticed a bulge he’d rather not see on his protégé. “Considering you clearly have your own… issue to solve.”
“Very funny,” Senku muttered, voice low, trying to maintain his composure.
Xeno gave him a final, measured look, his hand moving up to hide the small chuckle in that faint, knowing smirk of his. “And do try not to use the lab for your… extracurricular activities. It’s unsanitary, and highly unprofessional.”
“Noted,” Senku replied curtly, lips twitching with a smirk that didn’t reach his eyes.
The door clicked softly behind Xeno, leaving Senku alone in the lab. The hum of the generator suddenly seemed louder, a steady reminder of the tension still coiled in the room. He ran a hand over his face, exhaling slowly, trying to regain control—but the memory of you, flushed and trembling against him, refused to fade.
For the first time in a long while, Senku wasn’t thinking about science. He was thinking about you.
“Fuck…” he muttered under his breath, jaw tightening, fingers curling into fists at his sides. A dangerously distracting thought crept in, unbidden and relentless.
Every detail replayed itself in his mind—the rapid rise and fall of your chest, the soft whimpers you’d tried to stifle, the shiver that ran through you whenever his touch grazed your skin. He could almost feel your warmth pressed against him again, smell the faint trace of your hair brushing his neck, hear the gasps and broken moans that had left him entirely unprepared.
And as his gaze dropped to the ever-present bulge in his pants, he realized with brutal clarity: he was a ruined man.
an: i want his fingers in my mouth… I was disgustingly ##### this week and couldn’t concentrate. but the academic weapon in me couldn’t let my grades slip so i just kept repeating “senku would be disappointed in you” every time i questioned whether i should write or finish an assignment. it worked! but now all my pent up frustration came out while writing this… so maybe this is a win win situation 🤔
funny enough I have a story about this so like a few weeks ago, right I was going back reading old stories that I had read on Wattpad during Covid right because why not and swear to God I got like 28 chapters through this thing until it just started getting corny as hell no hate to the author. I just couldn’t stand it and I mean I screamed THIS IS WHY I WRITE MY OWN FANFICS and then i closed out of it like I shouldn’t have been screaming. It was never that serious the first place.
hyperfixation please stay with me long enough to complete the project. hyperfixation do not fade. hyperfixation finish what you started for the love of god
Being unhappy with your situation right now does not make you ungrateful for everything you have. You are allowed to strive for more, to want something different, to explore another direction. It is ok to crave change. It is ok to want something you have wanted for a very long time. It does not mean that you do not appreciate your life as it is. These two things can coexist - you can be very grateful with your life and still want something to change. It is never just black and white. Please do not be so hard on yourself, my love. You are working very hard and you do not need the pressure of having to be grateful and happy all the time. You are human. You are allowed to feel sad and lost. And you will find the life you are hoping for. I promise.
Law x Reader
Length 14 K+
Rating: 18K+
Warnings: Slight Age Gap (Older reader/Younger Law), Slow Burn, Jealousy, Possessiveness, Family Pressure, Medical Detail, Childhood Trauma, Language, Gaslighting, Angst, slight sexual content
For Scalpel Bae.
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Next
The bond began whisper-faint when you were a preteen. A vague hum at the edge of your mind, scraps of someone else’s thoughts drifting through like leaves on a river.
Most people got lucky. Their soulmates thought about food, music, or embarrassing crushes. Yours? Yours narrated surgical procedures.
You were sketching quietly one afternoon when the mental equivalent of, “Scalpel. Suction. Clamp that artery,” dropped into your head.
Your charcoal broke against the page. You stared at your drawing and wondered if your soulmate was a murderer.
By fourteen, you knew better. Not a murderer. Just… unnervingly comfortable describing human insides in clinical detail. You had so many questions and absolutely no desire to know the answers.
He was sarcastic, too. Not in the fun, witty way. More in the ‘I will skin you alive with words’ way. Entire summers passed where you were forced to listen to him silently dismantle someone’s intelligence in increasingly creative ways.
He had the bedside manner of a storm drain. Flat. Cold. Unimpressed. Yet there were moments that startled you. The way his focus sharpened when someone was injured. The rare flickers of tenderness when he thought about animals. The low, steady hum of quiet when he was finally alone.
By sixteen, you gave up trying to figure him out. Doctor. Pirate. Something worse. Whoever he was, you were stuck with him, destined to hear him grumble about anatomy, the weather, and the stupidity of humanity for the rest of your life.
Sometimes you talked back in your head—little sarcastic comments.
“You must be fun at parties.”
The bond pulsed faintly, as if he was holding back a sigh.
You were just an artist who liked to draw anatomy. Your soulmate was a man who dissected it. And if fate had a sense of humor, his name was probably something dramatic, like ‘Law’.
-X-Bond Awakening-X-
Age 13:
You were thirteen the day the bond snapped into clarity.
It happened mid-afternoon, in the corner of your guardian’s study where you had spread out your sketchbook. The window light fell across half-finished portraits and clumsy studies of hands, your pencil scratching as you tried to capture the curl of a smile from memory. The smell of ink and graphite clung to the air.
Then a voice broke across your mind like glass.
“I swear, if anyone touches me, I’ll cut them open.”
You froze, pencil hovering mid-stroke. The words were too sharp, too young, too soaked in fury to belong to you.
“Worthless. Every last moment. Why would he—”
Soulmate bonds weren’t rare, but yours had always been faint, a distant hum you could forget if you tried. Whoever he was, he had never been clear enough for you to catch more than a flicker of mood.
Until now.
For days after, his thoughts came in jagged bursts. Hatred. Exhaustion. Something darker still, like a shadow crouched in the back of his mind. And then, always, the same name, repeated like a prayer he did not believe in.
“Cora.”
You did not know who that was. But the way he thought it made your chest ache, as though you had sketched grief itself onto paper.
He was young. Younger than you, for sure. But his mind didn’t move like a child’s. It was jagged, old, scraped raw by something cruel. He thought like someone who had run too far, seen too much, and decided the world deserved every bad thing it got.
Once, you tried to think back.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
There was a pause. For a moment, you thought he might answer.
“Don’t talk to me.”
And that was it.
The following week was worse. Flashes of memory slid through the bond whether you wanted them or not. The smell of smoke. The crack of gunfire. The metallic tang of blood. You tried to shut it out. You told yourself it wasn’t yours to carry. But the bond didn’t care.
You were tied to him now. Whoever he was. Wherever he was. Whatever had happened.
And whether you liked it or not, you could hear every grief-soaked thought he had.
At first, he tried to block you out. The bond felt like an intrusion to him, and you knew it. Every thought of his was a wall slammed down hard. The rage dulled in time, but it did not fade. It sharpened instead, becoming something lean and precise.
You could feel him practicing it, shaping his fury the way you shaped pencil strokes. He measured his anger like a weapon, counting it out the way you counted lines on paper.
The more you leaned toward softness, the more he turned to cold. Detached. Clinical. On nights when you sketched until your fingers were gray with charcoal, his thoughts would run in exacting rhythm: scalpels, clamps, sutures. Each word carried the weight of repetition, like someone rehearsing until they could no longer fail. He refused to lose control again.
For months, that was all you had.
But every so often, something else slipped through.
A fleeting warmth when he thought of animals. A rare pang of guilt that bled raw before he shoved it back under lock. The faintest hum—soft, almost human—when exhaustion finally dragged him still.
It was not much. But it was enough to keep you there.
Through the seasons, you pressed against him without meaning to. Steady. Unguarded. Softer than he had expected.
When you spent afternoons sketching children in the street, trying to capture their laughter in crooked lines, he would go quiet. The bitterness at the edges of his thoughts would falter, thinned out by something he did not name.
When you lingered over the slope of an older woman’s shoulders or the delicate folds around her eyes, marveling at how wrinkles told their stories, you felt him hesitate. Not to sneer. Not to mock. Just pause, as though stillness was safer than scorn.
Your presence never demanded. It never accused. It simply was. And over the months, he grew slower to snap when you spoke across the bond.
“It’s all right to rest.”
“I like the way people’s faces change when they laugh.”
“You sound tired.”
Little things. Like pencil notes in the margins.
Nearly a year passed before anything changed out loud.
One evening, as you shaded in the curve of a ribcage on your paper, the thought slipped free of you without meaning to.
“I think you’re hurting.”
The silence stretched on so long you were sure he had shut you out completely.
Then, so faint you almost missed it, came his answer.
“So what if I am? No one really cares.”
It was not kindness. It was not cruelty either.
It was, for the first time, honesty.
“I hope you feel better soon.”
-X- A Sample of Your Teenage Psychic Transcript – Medical Cut -X-
Age 14:
By the following year, you’d stopped expecting him to soften. Whoever he was, he didn’t know you, didn’t want to, and made sure you were aware of it.
He was always moving. You could tell by the way his thoughts carried fragments of places you’d never been. Creaking docks. Rain on corrugated tin. The heavy thud of boots on ship planks.
And always that undercurrent of contempt. For strangers. For the world. For himself.
The only time you caught a break from the steady stream of sharp-edged thoughts was when you buried yourself in study. As the only child of a well-off merchant, you were busy stocking the front rooms, and all your free time was lost in art.
Sometimes, without meaning to, you’d answer him in your head when he muttered about the stupidity of someone’s choices.
“Not everyone knows what you know. Or, maybe they were scared.”
“You should eat more. You deserve to feel full.”
“Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault.”
He never acknowledged it. But sometimes his thoughts paused, like he’d heard you, and was deciding not to respond. The days were too full for waiting in curiosity.
You worked.
You rose before the sun to restock shelves and check deliveries. You ran accounts for the shop in neat columns. You weighed powders until your arms ached. You smiled at customers you didn’t like because a coin was a coin.
Sometimes, when you were too tired to keep your guard up, he’d flicker at the edges of your thoughts. The steady scrape of a chair on a deck. The clean, precise snip of scissors through bandages. The sound of him setting down a scalpel with deliberate care.
It was a rainy afternoon in the shop. The air was thick with the scent of wet wool from customers’ coats and the sharper bite of eucalyptus from the back room, where you were mixing a chest salve for an elderly regular.
The kid had been grumbling in the bond for the past half hour about someone named Bepo ignoring his medical instructions. You’d been letting him rant while you worked, humming under your breath.
Then the bell over the shop door rang, and a young mother stepped in carrying a wailing toddler. You could see right away that the boy’s arm was scraped raw from elbow to wrist.
“Come in,” you said gently, guiding her toward the counter. “Let’s take a look.”
You crouched to the child’s level, smiling like you had all the time in the world. You let him hold your measuring spoon while you cleaned the scrape, explaining each step in a calm, even voice. He sniffled but didn’t pull away.
Through the bond, your soulmate went quiet.
“…You’re…not the worst,” he said abruptly.
You paused.
This was the first time your morose soulmate had ever chosen to speak to you first.
“At treating scrapes? It’s not exactly advanced medical work,” you thought softly, trying not to scare him with how excited it made you.
“No. The… other thing.”
“What other thing?”
A pause. You could feel him hunting for a word and hating that he couldn’t find the right one.
“Making people stop being scared.”
You laughed softly. “Thanks, little guy.”
“…Gross. My name is Law. Use it, asshole.”
God, he was mean.
But that was the moment he began talking.
And despite his piss poor attitude, you felt pity for him. You wanted to help this kid, if for no other reason than sparing your own mind from the sheer depression flooding it.
You knew he was smart as hell and knew medicine. You weren’t much yourself, but you could draw. So you started sketching anatomy.
Little doodles here and there, and then entire sketchbooks. You still enjoyed flowery subjects, but more often than not, your confused parents found you sketching less pretty subjects.
Anatomical plates, muscles, tendons, imperfect, but with intention.
You were mid-discovering the delicate architecture of your own hand when the kid cut in again.
“You forgot the extensor indicis.”
You blinked at your paper. “The what?”
“The small muscle here.” There was the faintest brush of his mental focus, tracing where it should go. “It extends the index finger. Yours is missing it entirely.”
“I’ve never even heard of it.”
“Clearly.” His tone was flat, cruel. “Don’t label it wrong or you’ll look incompetent.”
He was as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel and just as merciless, but never wrong. He spoke like someone twice his age, and though he wasn’t unkind exactly, he had no concept of softening criticism.
You could have responded angrily. Could have stopped entirely. But the boy… Law… he felt so wounded, and always sounded like he was expecting you to just slam the bond closed. To be left behind.
And you realized that he never did. He could have closed the bond or just tightened it.
But he didn’t.
So you didn’t. And no matter how smart Law was, you weren’t letting a hurt little kid discourage you from art.
“Thanks, Law. I appreciate the help.”
And this was the right choice.
Over time, the weight of his thoughts shifted. They lingered just a little longer when you spoke, held fast instead of sliding past. It wasn’t comfortable, not really, but it was something.
He wasn’t always pleasant, but he was always right. His grasp of anatomy was flawless, too clean and too clever for a boy his age.
And with his constant, almost nagging perfectionism running through the bond like a second heartbeat, your art began to change. Muscles fell in the right places. Bone structure matched the lines of movement. Your sketches became precise, sharper, and undeniably correct.
You became better. Fast.
If only to stop his relentless commentary.
Age 15:
By fifteen, you had gotten good enough to take commissions from local medical students. Anatomical sketches fetched coin, and your work was clean enough to be pinned up in the back rooms of small classrooms. You were halfway through a detailed spinal plate when his voice slid in, cutting as ever.
“Your vertebrae look like they belong to three different people.” Law hissed, critically.
You sighed, rubbing the charcoal smudge off your thumb. “Hello to you too.”
“And that disc spacing? Unstable.”
“They’re for student reference, not surgery,” you muttered, setting your pencil down before you snapped it in half.
“So why make them wrong?” A pause, dry as salt. “Don’t show that to anyone until you fix it.”
The sharpness was still there, but the venom had dulled. He no longer sounded like he was trying to wound you with every word. More like he had decided you could take the critique, and that counted for something.
What drove him mad, however, were your thoughts when you weren’t working.
One afternoon, while you sat on the steps outside your guardian’s home, sketching children chasing a ball, your mind drifted to the smell of warm bread from the market stall nearby.
The bond prickled immediately.
“Bread? Again? It’s useless. Heavy. Worthless nutrition. You’re going to get sick again.”
You laughed out loud, startling one of the children. “You’re awfully passionate about food you don’t have to eat.”
“Eat something else.”
“Like what?” you jabbed back. “Clamp sizes? Sutures?”
The silence that followed was icy, and you could feel his irritation simmering. It only made you grin harder.
Which made it a blow when you discovered, to his endless amusement, that you were gluten intolerant.
“I told you. I am always right.”
“I am not about to let a ten-year-old diagnose me.”
“I already told you, I’m twelve, and more than highly qualified to see an obvious case of cause and effect—”
“Show me the medical certificate, child.”
He fumed for days over that one.
His nitpicking over your sketches and diet intensified, out of sheer spite.
You had been daydreaming about sketching in the corner of a café when your thoughts wandered to the custard tarts cooling in the window.
He cut in before you could even finish the thought. “Don’t. You’ll just get sick again.”
You blinked. “Are you… scolding my daydream?”
“I’m reminding you that you are an idiot,” he replied flatly. “Gluten makes you miserable. Stop thinking about it. You’re like a glutton bent on your own misery.”
“You’re very judgmental for someone who was muttering about vintage coins in his free time,” you muttered, but you still closed your sketchbook and walked past the stall without stopping.
“Shut up, asshole.”
His comments remained exacting, sharp-edged, and impossible to ignore. But over time, the anger that had once bitten into every word began to dull into something else. A strange, biting sort of concern, hidden in critique, in scolding, in relentless correction.
And as much as you rolled your eyes at his nagging, you realized you had stopped resenting it.
Somehow, it felt like proof he wanted to be there.
Age 16:
Your reputation was growing, and one of the town’s physicians had just asked you to illustrate a complete atlas.
It was late in the day, the kind of heavy summer heat that made the whole shop feel like it was holding its breath. You had the shutters open, but the air was still thick, curling in warm waves over the counters.
You were leaning over the workbench in the back room, measuring out a bone. Your sleeves had slipped down to your elbows, and there was a streak of green from the mortar across your cheek.
Through the bond, he was there, steady, present, not saying much. Just that quiet hum he got when he was working on something.
You were inking the serratus anterior when he dropped in.
“You’re getting better.”
You stilled, pestle hovering above the mortar.
It was quite literally the nicest thing Law had ever said to you.
“…Really?”
There was a pause. You could almost feel him realize what he’d said.
“I meant—your lines look less tired. Not that they’re perfect.”
You frowned, suspicious. “Less tired? Is that a compliment?”
“It’s not a compliment.” His tone had sharpened again, sliding back into familiar territory.”It’s an observation. Your artwork usually looks like you’re having a stroke.”
You rolled your eyes, relaxing again. “Thanks, little brother. Always so uplifting.”
“Don’t call me that, bread demon. I told you, my name is Law.”
“Okay, baby surgeon. I’ll just take your compliment."
“Asshole.”
You smirked.
“Don’t let it go to your head.” A pause. “Your scapula’s still ugly.”
“Ugly?” you laughed. “It’s bone.”
“And still somehow ugly. But… accurate.”
You grinned down at your work. “Careful, or I’ll start thinking you like being able to judge me.”
He didn’t answer right away, and when he did, his voice was lower. “I didn’t say I didn’t.”
But the edge in his voice was thinner than usual, almost see-through. And before you could press him on it, he filled the bond with the sound of turning pages, as if he’d gone back to work and the moment had never happened.
You still caught glimpses of his days. A faint reek of antiseptic. The wet slide of blood against gloves. The soft thud of a book closing. He was always busy, his thoughts layered and hard to get a read on. Assessments, plans, strategies. Sometimes, irritation so thick you could almost taste it when someone ignored him. You’re pretty sure they’re names are Penguin and Shachi, but he was tight-lipped as hell.
You tried to imagine what his life was like. You tried not to picture the places behind his jagged thoughts, or the things he never let himself think too close to you.
But sometimes, late at night, when you sat at your desk sharpening pencils down to neat little points, the bond shifted. It went quiet in a way that wasn’t cold. Not empty, not shut. Just… hushed.
In those moments, you swore you felt something else in him. Not anger. Not cruelty. Not the sharp edge of his sarcasm.
Just a boy who missed someone so fiercely he had wrapped the grief in barbed wire, convinced it would cut anyone who touched it.
“Who’s Cora?” you asked once, the words slipping across the bond before you could stop them.
The stillness that followed was suffocating. A silence so heavy it pressed down on your chest.
For a moment, you thought he would snap at you, that he would lash out with the precision of his usual cruelty.
But instead, what came back was softer, frayed at the edges, barely more than a thought.
“Don’t.”
Just that. One word. Not sharp. Not biting. Just broken.
You never asked again.
Age 17:
You were inking a series of cross-sections of the heart for a physician’s manual, bent low over the desk under the glow of a single lamp, when his voice slid through.
“That’s a decent left atrium.”
Your pen hesitated mid-line. A faint smile tugged at your lips.
“Oh? That sounded almost kind.”
“Don’t push it. The pulmonary veins are too thin.”
“You couldn’t just let me have that one?”
“No.”
There was no sting to it anymore, not the way there had been in the beginning. If anything, you could believe he wanted you to be as precise as he would be, as if your drawings reflected him, too, somehow.
By seventeen, you had gotten used to the sound of him. His voice was woven into your days the way the scratch of a pencil was, sharp lines against softer shades.
That evening, you were alone in the back room, counting out coins from the day’s commissions. Your fingers smelled faintly of mint and valerian from the bundles you’d sketched earlier. Outside, rain tapped steadily against the windows.
The bond stirred. Sharper than it had been in weeks.
“You’re not eating enough.”
You paused, surprised.
“…Excuse me?” The words slipped out before you could catch them.
“I can hear you counting coins. Not food. You’ve skipped too many meals.”
Your brows knit.
“You’ve been listening?”
“You’re loud,” he said flatly. “And you work too much.”
The old Law would have spat it like an accusation, jagged and cold. But this wasn’t that. His tone was flat, yes, but it carried something else beneath it. Not rage. Not sarcasm. Something closer to… concern.
You leaned back in your chair, staring at the rain. “You hate bread, and that’s all I want. What’s left? Air?”
The bond thrummed, a flicker of annoyance that felt oddly familiar by now
“Just eat. Not bread. Rice. My crew likes rice.”
It was rare for him to reference his work directly. You knew he did medical work and was probably good at it, from the way he critiqued your dosing methods and quizzed you on illustrations. You knew he sailed, because sometimes you caught the snap of salty wind behind his thoughts. You knew he had at least one tattoo, because he’d let slip once that they “took forever to heal at sea.” And you knew his crew was… strange.
Strange enough that whenever you’d asked, he’d just said, “You wouldn’t believe me.”
It gave you something to think about, though you weren’t mature enough to let it pass.
You almost laughed. “Says the one doing surgery in his head at all hours. You should practice what you preach.”
There was a pause. You could feel him weighing whether to answer.
“I don’t collapse while holding sharp objects,” he said finally. “You will.”
You leaned back in your chair, the corner of your mouth twitching despite yourself. “You’re too young to be lecturing me. You need a hobby. What about those Sora comics? Didn’t you think about those a few days ago?”
“...You’re lucky I said anything at all.” He said, followed by a sharp prick of irritation, quickly smoldered by cold distance. He hated losing. “And I’m not a kid.”
You smirked.
You learned to read between the lines and didn’t push on bad days, but you knew he was still a nerdy little kid under the attitude and occasionally needed a reminder.
You wished you knew more about Sora and the Sea or whatever made him feel happy on bad days. Wished you could send him a rare coin.
But you doubted he’d accept anything from a person who tempted fate to eat bread. He seemed more and more persnickety about your daily life.
The midsummer heat had settled in again, thick and unshakable. You were in front of the shop, sleeves rolled, hair pulled high to keep it off your neck as you rearranged the tincture display. The bell over the door rang for the third time that morning, and you glanced up to see two of the dockhands who came in every month for salves and liniment.
They were harmless enough, full of loud laughter and bad jokes, and you smiled as you handed one of them his usual bottle.
In your head, Law stirred. “He’s staring at your neck. Flip him off.”
You blinked at the sudden intrusion. “I’m working,” you murmured under your breath, hoping the dockhands didn’t notice.
“And he’s still staring.”
You handed the other man a packet of mint tea, smiling as they paid.
“That’s called eye contact, Law.”
“That’s called being distracted. Which, for the record, is a liability.”
“You are being ridiculous.”
They left with their purchases, still laughing, and you returned to the counter to tidy up. You could feel him still there in the bond, sharper than usual, almost… pacing.
“You’ve been like this for a while,” you said finally. “What is your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem.”
You arched a brow, even though he couldn’t see it. “You get all fidgety every time I talk to anyone under forty. Are you annoyed that your older sister hasn’t been giving you attention?”
“That’s not—” He stopped, the words halting mid-thought. For a second, you caught something unguarded in the bond, that restless knot you sometimes felt from him when you mentioned someone else by name.
“You are not my sister.”
And then it was gone. Didn’t speak to you for a solid two weeks.
Not until a traveling merchant paused to flirt with you one afternoon as you unloaded your wares.
“You’re wearing that dress again,” Law said sharply. “It makes you look easy.”
You laughed. “That’s the insult you’re going with?”
“It’s not an insult. Just… you could do better.”
“Better how?”
“…Forget it.”
You shook your head, still smiling as you went back to work. “Whatever you say, kiddo.”
The bond went tight at that, just for a second, but you didn’t notice.
You were too busy straightening jars to catch the way he lingered after, silent but unwilling to let go of the image of you in that heat and sunlight, smiling at people who weren’t him.
Age 18:
By the time you were eighteen, you’d started to at least think about dating. Not seriously. You were too busy keeping the shop and your art afloat, but sometimes the idea crossed your mind.
The delivery boy with the easy smile. The apprentice carpenter who fixed the counter and lingered in conversation a little too long. Even the traveling herbalist who’d passed through with a bag of rare seeds and a knack for flattery.
You never said any of it out loud, but Law always knew.
The moment your thoughts drifted in that direction, the bond would sharpen.
“What are you doing?”
“Stocking the front shelves.”
“You’re thinking about someone.”
“Thinking about inventory.”
“No, you’re not.”
It wasn’t just words. He had a way of crowding your mind when you got close to anything romantic, suddenly filling the bond with his own running commentary until you couldn’t hold onto the thought. Sometimes it was sharp and clinical, other times just plain annoying.
Like the time you’d been idly wondering if the carpenter would ask you to a late-night coffee, and Law had cut in with, “You forgot to delineate the humerus bone in the last sketch properly. You’ll have to start over to get it done right.”
Or when you’d been replaying a conversation with the herbalist in your head and he’d muttered, “That man doesn’t wash his hands enough to be touching your medicine.”
The worst was when you’d actually been mid-chat with someone, considering an invitation, and the bond had flooded with him reading medical textbook passages at full speed, as if rattling off symptoms of rare parasitic infections was going to help your mood.
You’d eventually stopped bringing it up, assuming it was just Law being Law: territorial in a little-brother way, determined to protect you from ‘idiots’.
You didn’t notice that he never reacted that way when you talked to neighbors, customers, or children, only when someone looked at you too long, only when your thoughts warmed toward someone who wasn’t him.
It happened in the middle of a Thursday, when you were stocking jars of peppermint tea on the front shelves.
The bell over the door rang, and in walked Jorin, the carpenter’s apprentice who’d been fixing shutters around town. Nice enough, quick smile, hair still damp from the drizzle outside.
“Hey,” he said, leaning on the counter. “So, there’s a midsummer dance this weekend. I was wondering if you—”
“Absolutely not.”
You froze, jar in hand. “I’m sorry?” you said aloud, blinking at Jorin.
He looked confused. “Uh… I was asking if you wanted to come—”
“Tell him you’re busy.”
“I—” You cleared your throat, trying to ignore the static of Law’s voice in your head.
“Busy with something important,” he added. “Like learning how to not trip over your own feet in public.”
You bit your tongue.
Jorin smiled patiently. “You don’t have to decide now. Just thought—”
“He’s wearing mismatched socks.” Law muttered.
You inhaled sharply. “Law—”
“And that shirt’s been mended badly. Probably with fishing line. Which means he can’t sew. Which means if he can’t handle a needle, he definitely can’t handle you.”
You tried not to laugh. “That’s… very specific.”
Jorin tilted his head. “Are you okay?”
“Say no before he starts reciting poetry or something equally stupid.”
“I—” You fumbled with the jar. “I’ll… think about it.”
Jorin nodded, a little unsure, and left.
The moment the door closed, you slammed the jar onto the shelf. “What is wrong with you?”
“You’re welcome.”
“For what?”
“Saving you from a lifetime of badly sewn buttons and subpar woodworking.”
“You are insufferable.”
“And yet, here I am, saving you from mediocrity."
There would be far too many times he would do this.
It was late summer, and the shop was stifling. You had the windows propped open to catch what little breeze there was, your sleeves rolled to the elbows as you weighed dried lavender for an order.
The bond was quiet until the bell over the door rang and one of the local delivery boys leaned on the counter. He was a year or two older than you, all easy grins and sunshine hair.
“Brought you the package from Westport,” he said, sliding the box toward you. “And, uh… there’s a dance in the square this weekend. You should come.”
You laughed, warm and polite. “If I can get away from the shop, maybe.”
That was it. Just a passing, friendly exchange.
But in your head, the bond slammed into focus.
“Who’s that?”
You blinked. “Who’s who?”
“The idiot with the box.”
You glanced at the delivery boy, who was still chatting about the weather. “Just someone doing his job.”
“He was staring at you.”
“He was talking to me,” you corrected, moving to sign for the package.
“He was staring.”
You smiled to yourself. “Why? You jealous?”
Silence, but the kind of silence that thrummed, sharp and restless.
“You are, aren’t you? Adorable.”
“I’m not adorable, he snapped. And I’m not jealous. I just—he looked stupid. That’s all.”
“Mhm. Sure.”
“You’re impossible.”
The bond had been simmering since then.
You could feel the edge in him, that tight, deliberate kind of focus he got before something dangerous. He was thinking through a dozen contingencies at once, all of them involving violence.
“Want to tell me what’s going on?” you asked as you measured powdered feverfew.
“No.”
You sighed. “You’ve been tense for hours. At least tell me you’re not about to do something stupid.”
“I don’t do stupid things.”
“You’re fifteen. You absolutely do stupid things.”
The flash of irritation through the bond was sharp enough to make you pause mid-measure.
“I’m not a child,” he bit out.
“I didn’t say you were. I’m just—” You hesitated, then smiled faintly. “—looking out for you. You’re like a bro—”
The reaction was immediate. Not loud. Not even verbal. Just this heavy, knotted wall slamming down between you, the kind he built when he didn’t want you anywhere near whatever he was feeling.
“Don’t call me that.”
You laughed, confused. “Why? You’ve hated it since the start. What’s different now?”
“It’s—”
He stopped himself, the words cutting off mid-thought. You caught the edge of something raw underneath, not anger, not exactly. Something warmer and far more fragile. For a second, there was nothing but static between you. Then, faintly, “It’s different because you’re… He cut himself off so fast you almost missed the start of the thought.”
“Because I’m what?” you pressed.
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. You could feel the churn underneath: frustration, pride, something sharper you couldn’t quite place.
“You don’t get it,” he said finally. “You talk to everyone like that. You smile at them. You laugh. They all want your attention. They follow you around.”
It was so unexpected that you stopped mid-wrap. “…Are you seriously mad because I’m… friendly?”
“You’re popular.” He said it like it was a flaw. “People like you. They look at you like—” He broke off again, the thought snapping closed.
You tried to keep your tone light. “And you don’t like that I call you ‘kiddo’ while I’m also nice to other people?”
“Forget it.”
“No, I think I’m onto something here. Classic sibling behavior. I’m eighteen, you’re fifteen, and mad I’m ahead.”
“Forget it,” he repeated, sharper this time, but not sharp enough to hide the truth bleeding through.
You let it go.
But later that night, as you swept the shop and locked the till, you thought about the way his voice had caught when he’d said, “They all want your attention.”
You thought about how different it felt from his usual sharp, distant tone.
You told yourself it was just pride, just teenage stubbornness. You didn’t see the way the word “kiddo” tangled with every quiet, dangerous feeling he’d been trying not to name for a while.
At the time, you didn’t realize that to him, you weren’t just the older soul in his head who patched him up with words. You were the one person who made him want to be seen, and the idea that you might always see him as your “kid brother” felt worse than any wound.
So you let it go.
He didn’t.
He seemed to be more insistent on mentally following your days. Once, you were sketching a dissection of the abdominal cavity for a coastal hospital when he cut in.
“That’s an awfully fancy liver for a man who drinks as much as your uncle does.”
You snorted.
“It’s from a cadaver, not my uncle.”
“Still too clean. Looks like it’s never had to work a day in its life.”
“You’re a menace.”
“Your menace. Don’t forget it.”
And so on.
The next day, you’d been working on a set of rare pathology illustrations for weeks, a commission from a doctor in a port city you’d never visited. Every few hours, Law’s voice would slip in, quieter than it used to be.
“That ulcer’s the wrong shape. Add more mottling to the kidney cortex. Those necrotic tissues? Needs more depth in the shading.”
One evening, as you brushed in the final strokes, he said, almost like it wasn’t for you to hear, “You’re good at this. Better than anyone I’ve seen.”
You blinked, looking down at the page. “Was that…?”
“Don’t make it weird,” he said quickly. “Just don’t mess it up.”
You laughed and went back to work, not noticing how long he lingered after you finished, or perhaps that he’d been picturing, with perfect clarity, what it would be like to watch you draw in person.
Maybe it was his words (or perhaps just chance), but the bond changed after that. It softened, deepened, and clarified.
You were kneeling on the store’s backroom floor, sorting through a crate of dried herbs that had just come in from a coastal trader. Your hair had slipped out of its knot in soft strands, the faint scent of sea lavender clinging to your clothes from the shipment. A fine dust of powdered chamomile covered your fingers.
The bond flickered, sharper than usual. Not a sound, not a word, just a sudden clarity, like a curtain being pulled aside.
On his end, Law had been somewhere quiet. You didn’t know that. All you felt was the strange sense of him suddenly being present, without speaking.
You looked up into a window and saw yourself.
Through that crack in the bond, he saw you. The slow, careful way you unwrapped each bundle of herbs. The crease in your brow when you checked for signs of mold. The soft tilt of your head when you hummed under your breath: tuneless, absent-minded, but steady.
It lasted only a handful of seconds, but he didn’t look away. Couldn’t.
“…You’ve got powder on your cheek.”
You huffed a laugh, still bent over the crate. “Oh? Comes with the job.”
He almost said more, but stopped. Instead, he let the connection dim, slipping back behind the familiar wall.
You went on with your work, brushing your cheek with the back of your wrist, not thinking twice about the moment. You didn’t notice how still he’d gone on the other end, or how carefully he’d kept the image of you from fading.
For you, it was just another day in the shop. For him, it was something else.
Age 19:
The evening was warm enough that the windows were open, letting in the scent of the herb garden with the slow creak of the shutters. The lamplight in the kitchen was warm, spilling across the table where you’d spread out a few sketches that needed drying. You’d been working late, the faint scent of ink and parchment still clinging to your hands, when your father cleared his throat.
“We had a letter from Westport today,” he said, like he was just mentioning the weather. “From the Edevane family.”
You looked up. “I don’t know them.”
“I bet they smell like mothballs and desperation,” Law murmured in the bond. “Never seen a human liver in their life.”
You pressed your lips together to hide a smile.
Your aunt poured tea into your cup. “They have a son about your age. Works with his father in shipping.”
“They’d want you to stop drawing,” Law said, quieter now. “Or worse, they’d keep you at it but never understand what you’re doing.”
You glanced at your sketches. The delicate cross-section of a kidney, the careful shading on the inner ear. “Alright…?”
Your father shifted in his seat. “They’re interested in forming a partnership with the shop. And… perhaps, in time, with the family.”
“There it is,” Law said, his tone as dry as paper. “And by ‘partnership’ they mean ‘you sign over everything while he names the jars wrong.’”
You fought the twitch at the corner of your mouth. “You think this would help the business?”
“It could be good for stability,” your aunt said. “The boy is polite. Well-spoken.”
“Polite means boring. Well-spoken means talks too much,” Law murmured. “Do they know you have an existing arrangement with a ship’s doctor who’s better looking, better traveled, and has all his own teeth?”
You blinked hard to keep your expression neutral. “You think this would help the shop?”
“It could mean stability,” your aunt said.
“Stuck,” Law said. Then, warmer, “Do you want to be saddled forever?”
That caught you.
You took a slow sip of tea. “And if I’m not interested?”
Your father glanced at the ledger. “It would still be wise to meet him. No promises. Just… keep an open mind.”
“Tell them you’re too busy. Tell them you’ve got commissions. Tell them you can’t leave mid-series because anatomy doesn’t wait for courtship,” Law pressed.
You set your cup down, schooling your voice to calm. “I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t”, Law said, but there was something softer under it, not triumph, exactly. More like anxiety. “It’d be a waste. Your work’s too precise to get shoved in a drawer because someone doesn’t get it.”
Your aunt smiled faintly. “That’s all we ask.”
“And by ‘think about it,’ you mean ‘no,’” Law prompted.
“I mean… I’ll consider all the factors,” you said aloud, meeting your father’s gaze.
“Arranged marriage. You’re not doing it.”
You stared at the kitchen wall. “You can’t just decide that for me.”
“I can if the alternative is you marrying some idiot who thinks the word supercilium is a condiment.”
You pinched the bridge of your nose. “That is… wildly specific.”
“Because I know the type,” he said, his voice edged like glass. “They’ll come in here with their merchant smile, pretend they care about your work, and then the minute they’ve got the papers signed, you’ll be stuck with someone who calls every illustration in your portfolio ‘bones’ like it’s all the same thing.”
You let out a slow breath. “You are being extremely dramatic.”
“I’m being realistic,” he corrected. “If you go through with it, I will personally—” He stopped, then came back in colder. “You'll be bored and annoyed.”
You sat back, staring into your tea. “You know, normal people wish their soulmates happiness.”
“Normal people don’t have soulmates who make terrible life choices.”
You laughed despite yourself. “You’re unbelievable.”
“You’re welcome.”
Law’s satisfaction was a quiet hum at the back of your mind, smug and warm, like a secret tucked into the folds of your consciousness. It lingered there, a gentle, insistent presence that made your chest feel lighter, even as the world outside remained predictably tense.
You retired to your room, closing the door softly behind you.
Soon enough, a soft knock drew your attention, followed by the faint click of the handle. Your mother stepped inside, brow furrowed, lips pressed into a thin line as if she were holding back a lecture—or a worry—she didn’t know how to voice. She closed the door with careful deliberation, the soft thud punctuating the quiet hum of your room.
Her eyes swept over you, taking in the sketches on your desk, the scattered pencils, and the haphazard comfort of your little sanctuary. For a moment, she said nothing, simply standing there as if weighing whether to step further into your life or step back. Her fingers tightened briefly at her sides, betraying the concern she tried to mask behind measured composure.
“You’re… doing that artwork again,” she said finally, voice low, almost hesitant. It wasn’t an accusation exactly—more a note of fear, of frustration barely contained.
Law’s presence at the edge of your thoughts coiled in response, smug warmth fading into a quiet edge of discomfort. He was listening from a distance, tucked just out of sight, and the tension in your mother’s voice made him stiffen slightly. He wasn’t used to family dynamics like this; he didn’t like the tightness in your chest that made him ache with unease.
With a mental shove, you gently pushed Law out of your head. This was not something he needed to hear.
You shifted on your bed, cross-legged, sketchbook open on your lap. “Still not seeing anyone?” she asked, stepping further in, hands clasped behind her back, voice a careful mix of curiosity and reproach. Her gaze flicked over the scattered pencils and ink bottles as if the disorder reflected your life itself.
“I’m busy with the medical illustration,” you muttered, trying to keep your tone neutral. “The commissions help the store make ends meet when the merchants don’t come on time.”
Her brows knitted. “Yes, yes, I know you’re dedicated—but you’re getting older, my darling. That’s no excuse not to think about your future. Marriage… securing your place… You know how our family is.” She let out a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of generations.
“Yes… But my art is doing well. We’ve been more comfortable—”
“Comfortable?” she scoffed. “Comfortable won’t pay the bills when your medical art is no longer needed. You need security, someone to support you if…” Her eyes softened for a moment. “…if you can’t rely on yourself alone.”
You lowered your sketchbook and met her gaze, feeling the warm pull of Law’s quiet hum in your mind. It steadied you, gave you courage you didn’t know you had. “I have a soulmate,” you said, the words escaping before you could reconsider.
The air in the room thickened. Your mother’s face tightened, and she leaned against the dresser, arms folded. “A soulmate?” she repeated slowly, each syllable dripping with distaste. “Is it… romantic?”
You shook your head. “No, he’s younger—a kid. Just needs attention and a friend. I’ve just been—”
She cut you off sharply. “You know how dangerous soulmates are. Contracts broken, hearts shattered… lives ruined. Your great-aunt almost ruined the family when she abandoned her husband for hers. And for what? She disappeared on the Grand Line and probably died. Soulmates are not guarantees—they are… liabilities.”
Law’s attention was immediate, subtle, like a tight coil in the back of your mind. He didn’t like the quiet throbs of discomfort, and you could feel him trying to weedle in, to understand. You almost unconsciously pushed him out, and he stayed on the fringes, tension wrapped around him, his presence invisible but insistent.
“I know,” you said quietly. “But it’s not about a contract or a guarantee. It’s… almost impossible to think of dating right now.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose, frustration flickering. “You have to understand the patterns here, even if it’s not romantic. Every time someone dares to follow a ‘heart’ instead of reason, it ends in scandal—or worse. And you know your father doesn’t care much for meddling, but…” Her gaze flicked toward the doorway, where he wasn’t standing yet, giving a faint, impatient shrug. “…You need to figure out a way to move past this.”
“I am figuring it out,” you said, firm now.
Your mother let out a long, weary sigh, pacing a slow circle around your desk. “This family… we are cursed by heart and duty both. Soulmates have brought more misery than joy. I only want you to be secure. Happy is secondary to survival sometimes.”
Like hands pressed against the glass, Law’s presence in your mind shifted again, uneasy now. The warmth that had been smug and indulgent felt strained, tighter, anxious. He wished he could speak, could argue, could defend, but all he could do was stay close, listening, feeling the weight of your mother’s words, and silently promising himself he’d protect you when the storm passed.
When the soft click of the door signaled her departure, the room seemed impossibly quiet. You lay back on the bed, art pushed to the side, arms crossed over your knees, staring at the ceiling as if it could offer answers. The pencil on the floor beside you felt like a small, abandoned lifeline.
Law’s hum had faded to a low, restless thrum, as if he were pacing beside you, waiting for you to rise and reassure yourself. You felt him there, taut and anxious, a shadow pressed up against the edges of your mind, but you weren’t ready to move, to acknowledge him fully. Not yet.
The tension from your mother’s words clung to your skin, prickling at the back of your neck and settling in your chest. Marriage. Security. Contracts. The echoes of family mistakes and heartbreak. And still… the thought of your soulmate refused to feel wrong, refused to be tamed by fear or tradition.
Your fingers twitched against the blankets, restless, seeking. You could feel Law there, too, sensing the unease, the quiet battle between obligation and desire. His presence was a tether, a reminder that even if the world pressed in, even if your family’s expectations weighed heavily, you weren’t alone.
“Bread girl. Talk to me.”
Law’s voice was quiet, distant. You didn’t answer.
Age 20:
It started as a thought you barely allowed yourself to entertain.
Jorin had asked you out again. Polite, nervous, almost fumbling in a way that made your chest tighten. You could see the effort he put into appearing composed, the careful tilt of his head, the slight hesitation before he spoke. Part of you admired it.
You told yourself it was harmless. A simple dinner, nothing more, nothing less. No promises. No expectations. Just a few hours of polite conversation. You could manage that much.
Yet a tiny knot of doubt twisted in your stomach. What harm could it do? Just a meal, you told yourself, smoothing your hands over your skirts, adjusting the pencil tucked behind your ear.
At the back of your mind, you felt the faint, steady pressure of Law’s presence. His hum, usually smug and indulgent, had shifted. Taut, watchful, like he could sense the thought before it fully formed. It seemed like he already knew something you were pretending not to know.
The thought made your stomach twist in a way that was both familiar and unsettling. You tried to push it aside, telling yourself it was only dinner, a simple evening with no strings attached. Still, the knowledge of what could go wrong pressed at the edges of your mind. You had been cautious for so long, and yet this one small decision felt like stepping onto thin ice.
Law noticed immediately. At first, it was subtle, a quiet tightening in the back of your mind, like a hand pressing against glass from the other side. You felt the pressure and almost ignored it, telling yourself he was only reacting out of habit. Then it grew heavier, insistent, a coil of tension that wound around your chest.
“You are really doing this,” he said, cold and firm. The hum you had grown used to, warm and smug, was gone. In its place was something taut, restless, insistent. You could almost feel the rigid edge of his attention probing your thoughts, not judging, not angry, but evaluating every possibility and every risk.
“It's… important. To my parents.”
You tried to meet the sensation with reason, telling yourself that it was only a meal, that it would pass without incident. His presence did not relent. Instead, it pressed harder, a silent warning that refused to be ignored. Your chest tightened in response, a reflection of the tension threading through your mind.
“You do not understand,” he added, quieter now but still sharp. “You think it is harmless… You are placing yourself in unnecessary trouble. You don’t need to do this.”
You swallowed. His words were not a plea or a scolding. They were a statement of fact, precise and immovable. The room seemed smaller somehow, the air heavier. The simple thought of dinner had become a battleground of caution and defiance, and you felt the first pangs of worry that this was only the beginning.
“I want to,” you whispered, trying to convince yourself as much as him. “It a date. Nothing serious. I can manage it. It’s weird that I don’t—”
“Everyone else’s opinions don’t matter,” he said carefully. “Someone else, someone inexperienced, trying to insert themselves into your life while I am here keeping you safe.”
You froze. His presence, usually quiet comfort, felt oppressive now, like a weight pressing down on your thoughts. “Law, it is not like that. I have to live my life.”
“Live your life,” he said sharply, “but not at your own expense. You don’t like this guy. Playing with feelings is ruthless.”
“Dating is not ruthless,” you said, voice rising despite yourself. “It is just dinner. It is just a normal interaction. You do not get to dictate who I spend time with.”
“I am not dictating,” he said, low and steady. “I am warning. Protecting. It’s my job as a soulmate.”
The tension in your mind snapped. “Stop treating me like I am some fragile object you need to guard.”
There was a pause. You could feel him pull back, his warmth collapsing and leaving an empty, sharp hollow.
“I cannot do this anymore,” he said finally. His tone was flat, almost mechanical, but it carried the sting of disappointment. Then he blocked the connection.
The hum, the pull, the constant tether you had leaned on, gone.
You flinched against the sudden absence. “Law?” you whispered. Silence. Not even a trace of the protective weight that had always lingered beside you.
You sank onto your bed, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them. The pencils on the floor seemed sharper. The room felt smaller, heavier. The fight had left a hollow ache in your chest. It was not heartbreak or love, but the loss of a safeguard you had taken for granted. Someone who had always had your back was suddenly gone.
Hours passed. Shadows moved across the room, painting the walls in stripes of gold and gray. Your sketchbook lay forgotten. You could feel his absence like a draft under the door, a void that no one else could fill.
So you went, almost only to spite Law at this point.
You had told yourself it would be simple. A dinner, polite conversation, a brief step into normalcy. Jorin had been nervous but courteous, holding the door for you, asking questions with a genuine interest that felt almost foreign after so many days wrapped up in work and art.
The restaurant was quiet, a soft hum of conversation and clinking silverware surrounding you. Candles flickered on the table, casting warm light across his anxious features. He smiled too much, laughed at your polite jokes a little too readily. You told yourself it was fine, that nothing about this evening had to matter beyond being civil.
He was considerate. Thoughtful. Charming, in the careful, rehearsed way of someone who wanted to make a good impression. He listened when you spoke and commented without dominating the conversation. There was nothing wrong with him, and that was part of what made it so difficult. You felt nothing beyond neutral politeness, a polite affection that barely skimmed the surface of your heart.
After the main course, he leaned forward slightly, his hand brushing against yours. “I… I had a really nice time,” he said softly. His eyes searched yours for something, some sign of reciprocity. You forced a small smile, nodding.
“I had a nice time too,” you said, careful not to overstate anything.
Encouraged, he leaned in, closer than you expected, and brushed his lips to yours. You froze. The movement was gentle, tentative, but your stomach recoiled. You didn’t lean in, didn’t reciprocate. You pressed your lips into a polite line and subtly leaned back.
His eyes widened, hurt flashing across his features. “Oh,” he murmured, pulling back slightly. His fingers lingered in yours, uncertain, and you could feel the tension in his shoulders.
“I… I’m sorry,” you said, your voice gentle but firm. “I’m not… I’m not feeling this.”
A shadow crossed his face, the polite veneer cracking. “Not feeling this?” he repeated, disbelief and disappointment mingling. “We’ve been… I thought—” He trailed off, frustration bleeding into his tone.
“It’s not you,” you said quickly. “You’re… nice. Too nice, maybe. I just… I can’t.”
He let out a bitter laugh, the sound sharp in the quiet restaurant. “Too nice?” he echoed. “I’ve been trying, paying attention, caring, and that’s… too much?” His eyes glinted with frustration, a mix of hurt and anger.
You shook your head, looking down at the table, your fingers twisting in your lap. “It’s not personal. I just… I don’t feel it.”
The silence stretched between you, uncomfortable and heavy. He finally stood, gathering his coat. “Well, I suppose this is the end of the date then,” he said, voice tight. “I should have known better.”
You nodded, heart sinking. “I’m sorry, Jorin.”
He didn’t respond further. He walked away, leaving you staring at the table, your unease lingering long after the door clicked shut behind him.
At home, the quiet hum in your mind flared again, not smug this time but sharp, taut, and irritable. Law was there, restless, uncomfortable. You felt his presence coil around you, not speaking, only tense with disapproval. He didn’t need words to convey it. He was there, observing, waiting, silently asserting that he had warned you.
You curled into bed, cheeks warm and stomach knotted, wondering if polite neutrality had just become its own kind of war.
After a long moment, the tension in your mind shifted again. Law slid in quietly, a little lighter than before, though not entirely. He didn’t mock you, didn’t scold or criticize. There was just a faint edge of smugness lingering beneath something that almost felt like… repentance. Almost.
“I suppose that didn’t go exactly as you hoped,” he said, voice low in your thoughts, neutral but carrying the faintest trace of irony.
You huffed softly, leaning back against the pillows. “You could say that.”
He made no reply for a moment, letting the silence stretch, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was deliberate, the quiet weight of him settling in your mind. You felt him there, attentive and precise, watching you unravel the day in little mental threads.
Then, as if the world outside the memory of the failed dinner had shifted entirely, he added, “I want you to draw something for me.”
Your eyebrows shot up. “For you?”
“Yes,” he said, not impatient exactly, but firm. “Nothing elaborate. Just… a sketch. A quick one.”
You narrowed your eyes. “You know I’m exhausted after tonight.”
“Exhausted or embarrassed?” he countered smoothly, almost teasing, though there was a quiet restraint behind it. He wasn’t gloating, but you could feel the faint smug curl of satisfaction buried beneath his words.
You groaned inwardly. “Fine. What do you want me to draw?”
He paused, the faint curl of smug satisfaction threading through the edges of his calm. “A smiling face,” he said simply. “Make it precise. Symmetrical. Don’t overdo it.”
You blinked. “A… smiling face? Seriously? You want me to… draw a smiley face?”
“Yes,” he replied, utterly matter-of-fact. “Do it well. I expect the eyes to align. The curve of the mouth should be balanced. Add something to fancy it up.”
You frowned at the page, pencil hovering. “Because nothing says ‘important and serious’ like a smiley face on a page.”
He made no reply, only waited. You weren’t sure if he was serious or testing you. That quiet hum in your mind returned, smug and insistent, and it made your stomach tighten in frustration.
You exhaled and started sketching. The curve of the mouth, the roundness of the eyes, the symmetry of the whole thing, it had to be exact. The way his presence in your mind leaned into every line made it difficult to relax, impossible just to draw casually. After a moment, you added connected little dashes around the edge.
“Not bad,” he said after a few minutes, his tone low, distant, precise. “The curve is slightly off, but acceptable. The eyes are symmetrical. That will do.”
You leaned back, pencil dropping to the desk with a soft tap. “A masterpiece of… whatever this is,” you muttered. “A smiley face for… reasons I don’t understand.”
“Yes,” he said, firm and straightforward. “Perfect.”
You rolled your eyes and leaned into the pillows, feeling your irritation and amusement mix. He lingered in your thoughts, patient and watchful, smug in the tiniest, most insufferable way. You didn’t know why he wanted a smiley face. You didn’t know what it meant.
But he was happy.
And that made you happy.
And somehow, that was the most infuriating part.
Age 21:
Your parents mean well. At least, that is what you keep telling yourself. They want security, reputation, and stability. They remind you, with gentle smiles and firm hands, that they only want the best for you. Yet their best feels like a cage.
At dinners, the subject arrives without fail.
“You are at a good age to settle,” your mother remarks while passing you bread.
Your father nods with authority, as though the matter has already been decided. “And you must not let that bond of yours distract you. Soulmates are unreliable. Fleeting. We have seen it before.”
Their distaste is obvious. To them, soulmates are storms: too wild and too uncontrollable, fate stealing their careful plans. Marriage, by contrast, is choice, alliance, and safety.
You lower your gaze, stabbing at your food, trying not to look like you are suffocating.
In the back of your mind, Law’s voice slides in. His tone is sharp and edged with disbelief.
“Unreliable, huh? Funny, considering I am the one keeping you from bolting out the door right now.”
Your lips twitch. You grip your fork harder to hide the smile.
The suitor parade begins next. A scholar from a wealthy family. A merchant’s son with perfect manners. A distant cousin from a noble line. Your parents beam as they describe each one, eager for you to show interest.
“Such promise,” your mother says with pride.
“Such potential,” your father adds.
Law sounds unimpressed.
“Potential? He cannot even tie his sash properly. Look at it. It is crooked.”
You choke on your wine and cover it with a cough.
Another suitor is praised for his smile.
“That is not a smile. That is constipation dressed up in velvet.”
You nearly laugh, and your mother mistakes the color in your cheeks for embarrassment.
The pressure mounts. Their words tighten around you until there is no room to breathe.
“Marriage is a future,” your father insists one evening, his voice firm yet still gentle. “A partner chosen wisely will last. That is what you must trust.”
Law’s presence surges. His voice is steady and insistent.
“They do not know you. Not like I do. You want to live. See the world.”
You sigh.
“If you say yes to any of them, I will never let you live it down. Do not think I won’t interrupt your vows with a running commentary.”
The last remark nearly breaks you. You bite your lip, staring down at your plate, while in your head you whisper: “Please stop.”
He won’t, because he knows that you don't actually want him to.
Over time, the pressure mounts.
The evening is like any other at first. The fire is warm, the table is laid with silver, and your parents’ voices are calm. Too calm.
“We have been speaking with the mayor,” your mother begins while buttering her bread. “His nephew has a fine education in law. He would provide a steady future.”
Your father leans back in his chair, nodding with satisfaction. “And he has no interest in idle romance. He understands what duty requires. A sensible match.”
You feel the weight settle in your chest. You want to argue, but the words cling like thorns in your throat.
In your mind, Law is already there. His voice is sharp.
“Law? Tell them you already have an education in Law.”
It was the final straw.
“Dad, mom…” You lower your fork. “Please, understand. I do not want this.”
Your parents exchange a look. The silence that follows is almost worse than their pressure.
“Do not be foolish,” your father says at last. “You have a gift for precision. You know anatomy better than most healers. You could use that skill to raise the family’s reputation with the right husband at your side.”
You blink, startled by the twist. “I want to use that gift,” you reply, your voice low but certain. “But not to marry. I want to study art. I want to draw seriously. I want to be more than an assistant with sketches in the margins of books. I want a degree.”
Law’s voice is immediate, warm, and firm.
“Good. Say it again. Louder.”
Your mother frowns, her hands tightening around her knife. “Art is not a career. It is a pastime. What you do now is enough.”
“It is not enough,” you whisper. Then you look up, and the whisper becomes steady. “It is not enough for me.”
The argument stretches for hours. Your parents are not cruel. They do not shout. They remind you of responsibilities, of appearances, of the danger of wasting years on frivolous dreams. Yet you do not bend.
In the end, your father exhales heavily, like a man conceding a battle he had not expected to lose. “I can see we’re not going to agree. I’ll think on the matter.”
When the door closes behind them, you sink into your chair and let the tension roll out of your shoulders. Law is quiet for a long moment before he finally speaks.
“You did it. About time.”
Their acceptance does not come all at once. At first, your parents simply grow quieter. The endless parade of suitors thins out until only polite names are mentioned in passing. The word “soulmate” is rarely spoken, and when it is, your mother glances away as if it tastes bitter.
It takes months of small battles: you reminding them you do not want marriage yet, they reminding you of your responsibilities, the house’s reputation, the family’s name. But your answers stay steady, and you keep working, filling pages with anatomical sketches, diagrams, and delicate renderings of bones and muscle. They notice.
One afternoon, your mother comes into your study while you are bent over your desk, carefully inking the inner structure of a shoulder joint. She lingers in the doorway for a long time before speaking.
“You are… very talented,” she says at last, and her voice is not dismissive. “Your hand is steady. That takes practice.”
It is the first time she has praised your work so plainly. You feel it like sunlight breaking through clouds.
Later, your father watches you present a portfolio of drawings to a visiting physician. He does not say much then, but when the physician leaves, he clears his throat.
“You have a skill that others respect,” he admits. “That is not something to dismiss.”
The final shift comes after dinner one evening, quiet and unexpected. Your father sets down his glass and studies you across the table.
“You have made yourself clear. We may disagree, but you have not wavered. That means something.”
Your mother adds gently, “If art is what you want, then you should not pursue it halfway. We will help you find a program worthy of you.”
“Very well. If this is what you truly want, you may pursue it.” Your father finally conceded. “But we will have a say in where you study. And with whom.”
It is a compromise, heavy with conditions, but you take it.
The words catch in your throat. You had prepared for another argument, another wall of reasons why you were wrong, selfish, impractical. Instead, you find yourself blinking back tears.
Law’s voice hums softly in your mind.
“They are finally listening. About time.”
Once the decision is made, your household shifts in subtle but undeniable ways. Where once conversations had been about matches and alliances, now they turn toward universities and programs, tutors and apprenticeships.
Your mother oversees the correspondence, dictating letters and sealing them with the family crest. She insists on fine parchment, clean ink, and elegant phrasing.
“Presentation matters,” she tells you, though her voice softens when she catches you rolling your eyes. “If this is your future, it deserves the very best.”
Your father combs through lists of institutions as though he is evaluating military allies. He speaks to family acquaintances, writes to scholars, and occasionally interrupts your studies to announce some new prospect. “This program in the West is respectable. Their graduates are employed in the finest hospitals.”
Sometimes you sit with both of them at the long dining table, spreading out papers and pamphlets like a map of possibilities. Their voices no longer clash with yours but join in, weaving questions about professors and facilities, location and reputation. For the first time, you feel like your parents are walking beside you rather than standing in your way.
The first acceptance letter arrives in the spring.
It’s a modest program, but one that praises your sketches with earnest warmth. Your mother reads the letter aloud, her eyebrows lifting, her lips curving. “They admire your anatomical studies. They say your eye for structure is rare.” She looks at you then, almost shy with her pride.
Another letter follows, then another. Soon, the stack grows thick. Each seal is broken with anticipation, each message carrying words like talent, potential, promising future.
Law hums in your head as the pile grows.
“I told you. You are good at this.”
The acceptance from Dressrosa comes last. Its paper is heavy, gilded at the edges, the seal pressed deep into crimson wax. Your father reads it aloud slowly, each word weighted.
“They are offering you a place in their advanced program,” he says. “It is… impressive.”
Your mother cannot hide her smile. “It is not only impressive. It is the finest in the world.” She smooths the parchment with reverent hands before sliding it across the table to you. “This could change everything.”
You lift the letter, feeling the weight of the words settle into your chest. Dressrosa. The best program. A dream finally within reach.
And somewhere deep in your mind, Law’s mood grows tense.
You hug the letter, your heart soars over and over. You spend hours pouring over the parchment, rereading the elegant words of praise, the promises of advanced study, the chance to learn from masters whose names are whispered with reverence across the seas.
That night, when the house was quiet and the bond hummed softly in your mind, you let the thought slip free, fragile and shining.
“I was accepted to the Dressrosa Institute of Art!”
The word hit you like a blow, stealing the air from your lungs. You hadn’t expected him to react this way. You hadn’t expected Law to care so much. You thought he’d be distant, detached, maybe amused. But this… this was grief, or rage, or something worse, and it made your chest ache.
“No.”
The word knocks the breath out of you. You hadn’t expected Law to be so unhappy. I mean, it was in the second half of the Grand Line, but your acceptance had come with a Marine Escort!
“What do you mean, no? It’s the best program in the Grand Line,” you said, trying to keep your voice steady. “Everyone knows it.”
“I know what that kingdom is built on,” he said, his tone cutting, almost brittle. “It’s too dangerous. You will not be safe.”
The words made your pulse quicken.
“This is my future. Do you expect me to give it up because you’re… uncomfortable?”
“Uncomfortable?” His voice rose, taut and impossible to ignore.“Is the Grand Line a joke to you? They enslave people there, gamble with lives. That country is rotten at its core.”
“You’re trying to control me,” you spat, anger and fear colliding. “You sound exactly like my parents before they finally accepted my choices. I fought for this, and now you want to take it away?”
“I am not your parents,” he said, sharp and fast. “I am telling you the truth. If you go, you will regret it. You think you can just bury yourself in studies, but the filth of that kingdom will reach you.”
“What proof do you have?” You shook, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. “Do you have any real reason to worry? Or are you just upset that I’m moving on without you?”
He was quiet for a long moment, longer than you liked. The hum in your mind had shifted—tense, unsure, a tether fraying at the edges. He seemed to struggle with something deep and heavy, something he could not let himself say. When he spoke again, his tone was sharp with restraint.
“I just… I do, okay? I’m not trying to hurt you. You need to listen to me—”
“Honestly, Law,” you said, voice shaking with anger and hurt, “I don’t really know all that much about you besides the fact that you seem awfully comfortable telling me how to live.”
The words landed hard. You could feel him flinch in your mind, recoiling like a wound had been ripped open. And you felt your chest constrict, a mix of guilt and vindication twisting together.
“All this time,” you said, tears spilling down your cheeks, “I’ve tried and tried to reach out. To be a friend. To know you. But it’s clear… It’s clear my parents were right about something.” The words tumbled out, bitter and dark. “Clearly… soulmates don’t mean anything to you at all.”
You felt it immediately. His presence contracted, taut and silent. Hurt, sharp, and unspoken.
He took a long, measured pause before speaking, and when he did, his words were like steel slicing through your chest.
“Fine. Go. Be a fool and get hurt. Clearly, you are ready for it. I just thought you were smarter than this.”
The sting of it cut deep. He had never spoken to you this way. Never like you were nothing to him. For a moment, you faltered, the letter in your hands suddenly heavy with doubt. Almost… almost you believed him.
Then your gaze fell on it again—the gilded edges, the promise of something that had felt impossible just days ago. The walls inside your chest rose again, and you whispered, trembling,
“You do not get to decide,” you whisper. “Not this time.”
Silence stretched, and then his voice came again, lower, final, hard as stone.
“Then you are a fool.”
The bond shuddered and slammed shut.
You were left alone in your head. The room pressed in around you. Your chest ached, your hands shook. The joy of your acceptance, the small spark of hope, had collapsed into dust, suffocated by absence. The house was quiet, but inside your mind, a storm raged, leaving you utterly, achingly hollow.
Days passed in that gray fog. You moved through routines almost mechanically, your sketches untouched, your meals half-finished, the Dressrosa letter folded and held so carefully it never left your side. The spark in your eyes had dimmed, leaving only the hollow trace of a smile.
Your grandmother noticed long before anyone else. She always did. Perhaps it was the way you lingered at your desk without drawing, or the way you traced the edges of the letter with trembling fingers. She saw the quiet unraveling that no one else would, the fragile threads of your joy fraying in the shadows.
One afternoon, she sent for you. Her chambers smelled of old cedar and roses, the curtains drawn to keep the heat at bay. She sat at her vanity, silver hair pinned neatly, her posture proper and unwavering despite the years etched into her hands and face. The faint scent of lavender clung to her robes, a reminder that some things endured even when the heart faltered.
“You look pale,” she says without preamble. “Has something changed?”
You hesitate. She has always been sharper than your parents, kinder too, but no less relentless when she wishes to be. “I thought I would be happy,” you admit. “I should be. But…”
The words falter. How do you explain a silence that no one else can hear? How do you admit that the presence that once steadied you, teased you, and kept you company has vanished? The hum that had been warmth and quiet amusement now left only emptiness, and the hollow echo of it presses against your chest.
Your grandmother studies you for a long, careful moment. Her eyes, pale and exacting, trace the lines of your face, the slump of your shoulders, the way your fingers hover over your lap as if afraid to touch anything. Then she gestures for you to come closer. “You remind me of myself at your age. Always reaching for something more,” she murmurs, a trace of wistfulness threading her voice.
From a small carved box, she draws a ring. Formless and gray, unremarkable at first glance, it feels heavier in your hand than it looks. She places it there with deliberate care, her hands warm and steady against your own.
“This has been in our family for generations,” she says softly, her eyes meeting yours. “I want you to have it.”
You blink down at it, startled. “Why?”
Her words hang in the air, bittersweet and unyielding. You stare at the ring again, suddenly aware of the lineage pressing against your palm, the history, the protection, and the unspoken expectation folded into the simple, gray band.
“Because you are strong, and you have fought for what you want,” she replies. Her voice is soft, almost proud, but it carries a weight that presses into your chest. “I want you to carry that with you. A reminder that you are not alone in your choices. That your family does not see you as a child anymore, but as someone worthy of our name.”
Your chest tightens. For so long, you have fought for recognition, clawed your way through doubt and expectation, and here it is, offered like a blessing. “Grandmother… thank you,” you murmur, voice trembling slightly despite yourself.
Her lips curve into a faint smile, but her eyes are unreadable, a steady, cool flame. “Wear it always, my dear. It will clear your thoughts. Think of me when you do.”
You slip it onto your finger. The weight is unfamiliar, cool against your skin, almost unnaturally cold. It anchors you, a tether to something steady in a life that has lately felt unstable. Almost immediately, the fog in your mind begins to lift. Walls and pain and anger that had seemed immovable begin to dissolve. You feel clearheaded, focused, a little lighter than before.
It takes a few days for the realization to hit you fully.
When you reach for the bond, there is nothing. No hum, no warmth, no smug insistence reminding you to pace yourself, to slow down, to notice your own worth. No sharp remark when you overwork your pen, no dry joke when your mother scolds you to sit straighter at dinner. No presence, no voice at all.
And the emptiness is louder than any argument, sharper than any fight. You had been carried through countless days by the quiet certainty of him being there, even when he annoyed you, even when he scolded or teased. And now, with nothing but silence, you feel the hollow ache of absence settle in your chest like a stone.
You trace the ring on your finger, its cool weight grounding you even as your mind recoils. It takes on a new significance. The history it carries, the lineage, the quiet strength of your family, all feel like a fragile shield against a world that suddenly seems louder, harsher, and emptier without him.
You call for Law once, your voice timid in the silence. You call again, sharper this time, the hope in your words cracking. And once more, your chest tightens with the effort of reaching for him. Nothing answers. The ring gleams softly on your hand, indifferent, as if it has always been there.
The conclusion arrives in a wave you cannot resist. Law no longer wishes to speak to you. He has blocked you for good.
The thought settles into your chest like a cold stone. You go about your work, continue your sketches, and read over the Dressrosa letter again and again. But every line you draw feels emptier without his sardonic commentary in your head. Every stroke, every careful rendering, echoes back only your own solitary thoughts.
For the first time since the bond awakened, you feel truly, utterly alone. The absence is not just his voice, not just the warmth that had tethered you—it is a presence that had carried part of your certainty, your courage, your grounding. Now, nothing remains but your own hesitant, fragile heartbeat.
The weeks that follow blur together, a quiet, muted existence. You move through your days with practiced calm, speaking politely, writing letters, and polishing your portfolio. Your parents notice how still you have become. They assume you are focused, maturing, taking your future seriously at last.
Your grandmother, ever watchful, praises you often. “You are steadier now,” she says, her fingers brushing the ring on your hand as if to remind you of her gift. “I knew you could grow into yourself. Sometimes we need a little peace to make a good decision.”
And yet, the peace feels hollow, incomplete. The world continues around you, but the part of it that had been his, the quiet commentary, the sharp humor, the subtle insistence on your worth, is gone. You cannot shake the memory of it, nor the echo of the bond that once hummed warmly in your mind. It lingers like smoke, faint, untouchable, a reminder of what you have lost.
Elsewhere:
On the other end of the bond, Law is anything but calm.
The silence is unnatural. Too complete. Not the ebb and flow of someone retreating in anger, but a deadness that gnaws at him from the inside. He presses harder against the bond, reaches with thought and will, but it is like trying to touch smoke.
“Answer me.”
Nothing.
He tries again, sharper this time. “Say something. Even if it is to tell me I was wrong.”
Still nothing.
It is as if the thread between you has been wrapped in ice. He can feel its shape, the familiar pull, the contours of your presence, yet not your voice. Not your warmth. Only echoes, faint and hollow, mocking the certainty he has always relied on.
Law knows bonds do not vanish overnight. They do not fall silent without reason. You are not the type of person capable of freezing him out completely. Which means something is interfering—something beyond his reach.
He retraces the days leading up to the silence. The fight. The sharp words. The insults flung too quickly. The heavy weight of pride and anger. He curses himself for every sentence, every jab, every moment he lets frustration override care. But guilt does not explain the void. Nothing does.
In the long nights, he sifts through memory, searching for any detail he might have overlooked. Anything that could explain your absence.
He presses again, softer this time, tentative, desperate.
“I should not have called you a fool.”
“You are infuriating, but I am sorry—”
“If you can hear me, give me something. Anything.”
Still, nothing.
The bond offers no reply, no flicker, no pulse of recognition. The emptiness stretches on, pressing, clawing at the edges of his composure. His hands curl into fists at his sides. He tries again, but it is useless.
Finally, he leans back, running a hand over his face, jaw tight, chest hollow with frustration. He mutters to himself, low and sharp, words meant only for his own ears.
Bepo, who had been quietly observing, steps closer, concern etched into his furry face. “Captain… what’s wrong? You’ve been like this for days.”
Law does not answer immediately. His eyes are dark, restless, and haunted by a helplessness he does not often allow himself to feel. The bond, so often a lifeline, has failed him. And the truth settles cold and bitter in his chest: He cannot reach you. Not now, not like this.
He exhales slowly, a long, ragged sound, and forces himself to compose a calm mask, but Bepo can see through it.
“Nothing,” Law says finally, voice clipped, but it is a lie.
Inside, he is still shouting into the void, still straining against the silence, still aching for the impossible: your presence, your reply, anything to tell him that you are still there.
Rebuilding the world takes time. So does love.
But gravity doesn't ask for permission. The tides don't apologize
You've always been drawn to him.
And him, to you.
i. curiosity
ii. beginnings
iii. judgement
iv. fractured
v.
tba...
this follows both the anime and the manga, so there may be potential spoilers. for warnings please check the tags on ao3! for additional warnings, they will be added to the top of each chapter.
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