Here are the festive Azula-kitsune and Katara-naga. I'm having a hard time with color, so here are two versions of the image.
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I apologize for making Katara white, but please refrain from writing angry comments.
can you pls use the correct tag next time? i mean your art is "gosuku" so can you use it instead of sukugo? (No hate it's just a question, you can ignore it if you want)
I try to use all hashtags)) Maybe this time I forgot to tag “sukugo.” Actually, my favorite tag is “Satokuna,” but for some reason, no one uses it 🥺
art by the perfect @hitsuo of course
Satoru is annoying, doesn't fit in his life and yet, he makes his mother laugh and trains with him whenever he's around. Sukuna sucks it up and promises not to be an ass while trying to figure out what is this strange sensation unspooling under his ribs.
He only comes because Sayo works the desk and his membership rides her employee comp. Without that, he’s not here — no way he’s paying the city’s “youth rate” with what they don’t have.
Wraps in his pocket, homework half-finished in his bag, ink peeking under his sleeves because Sayo let him get tattooed if — and only if — he didn’t drop school.
He almost did
She almost killed him.
The lobby smells like disinfectant over rubber. A box fan hums behind the counter. Sayo looks up and the whole place brightens, she’s all long hair the same soft pink as his — pulled into a loose tail that slides over one shoulder — and eyes the cool, impossible blue people remember.
When she smiles, her nose and eyes wrinkle the way they do when she’s actually happy.
It looks like sunlight.
It also looks like a warning label if you know her.
The tall white haired kid leaning against the counter mirrors the same wrinkle-eyed grin like he was born with it.
“Gojo Satoru,” he tells Sayo’s sign-in sheet, like he’s giving it a commercial. He’s in too-clean trainers, school track jacket, wrists bare except for athletic tape he doesn’t need.
Expensive shampoo.
No gym bag.
“Sampling classes.”
“Put your name on the waiver, sampling boy,” Sayo says, sunshine with teeth. “And wrap your hands right.”
Sukuna signs in, nods at Sayo, ignores the blond. The gym floor is the real room — scuffed heavy bags, a ring that lists a little, timer that beeps too loud. He tucks earbuds away and goes to work — three rounds just to find breath, three more to feel his shoulders stop choking his punches. Elbows in, wrists straight, hips honest. On the seventh he’s warm enough to forget there’s a world outside these ropes.
“Pad work?” the kid says, suddenly there with a pair of mitts like they teleported into his hands. Closer, the details line up — eyes too blue to be contacts, hands with old callus in the right places, stance that says he’s held pads before even if he’s pretending he hasn’t.
He’s taller by a head, reach for days, balance decent.
Annoying.
“Hold them still,” Sukuna says.
He doesn’t.
The first combination skates off a drifting mitt, the kid laughs like he enjoyed getting it wrong and sets his feet better. Sukuna gives him the numbers again, sharper. The third time the left mitt stays, Sukuna buries a hook into the body to say thanks.
The kid oofs, breath punched crooked, and then laughs through it, eyes bright like this is the best part of his day.
“Okay,” the kid says, grinning around air he’s trying to catch. “You hit for real.”
“No kidding.” Sukuna mocks.
Sayo is already circling, nurse-brain on. She takes the mitt off Satoru’s hand, checks his knuckles, tightens his haphazard tape, fixes a twist he didn’t know he had.
“If you’re coming back,” she says, tone sweet, instructions exact, “you come back wrapped.”
“I’m coming back,” he answers, and he’s looking at Sukuna, not the tape.
Sukuna rolls his eyes and throws the next combo. The kid holds steady this time, the catch is solid, the return tap lands right in Sukuna’s palm.
Not stupid, then. Just loud.
Between sets, Sukuna clocks the other tells because that’s what he does, the kid’s shoes have soles without a day of real road on them, his jacket is school-issue but the fabric is better than the public school gets, his mouthguard is new in the box but he hasn’t boiled it, his smile is careless in a way you can only afford if you never had to price out bus fare vs. dinner.
When the pad round ends, he bounces on his heels like he could go another five. He probably can.
He’s built like someone the world made space for on the first try.
Satoru peels the mitts off and offers a glove bump like they’ve already agreed to something. Sukuna taps it because refusing would be more dramatic than he feels.
The tall idiot grins like he won anyway.
“Hydrate,” Sayo says, passing Sukuna his bottle before he reaches for it, passing Satoru the gym’s communal towel he absolutely does not deserve.
“And, Gojo? Check the sign by the clock. Shoes off on the ring. If Coach sees you scuffing canvas, he’ll feed you to the mop.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Satoru says, delighted to be managed.
He reads the sign out loud just to make Sayo laugh. She does, nose scrunching, eyes crinkling — same pattern as his, which puts a strange pressure behind Sukuna’s sternum he doesn’t examine.
Round timer screams. Sukuna goes back to the bag because he knows what he becomes if he stops moving. He doesn’t look to see if Satoru watches.
He feels it anyway — the attention like a hand on the back of his neck, curious, not hostile. It puts a burr under his focus and makes him cleaner, which pisses him off a little, which helps.
By the time he strips his gloves, Satoru’s at the front again, trading dumb jokes for a spare lock.
Sayo hands one over and points at the whiteboard, Teen study hour 7–8:30. No excuses.
Her ponytail swings. The blue of her eyes softens when she looks at Sukuna’s hands — checking for fresh splits, checking for the story of his day.
“How was school?” she asks, and it’s a code more than a question.
“Still there,” he says. Code back, I went.
“Good,” she says. “History test Friday. If you pass it, I’ll stop pretending I don’t see the new line of ink.”
He tugs his sleeve down out of reflex, blackwork edges wink at his wrist anyway.
“It’s healed,” he says.
Satoru notices the ink because of course he does.
“Sick,” he says, equal parts admiration and invitation to explain. Sukuna doesn’t take the invitation. Satoru doesn’t sulk when it’s not taken. He just smiles like okay, later and taps the counter twice with a knuckle like he’s ringing a bell only he can hear.
He signs the waiver. His handwriting is neat and fast. He lists a home number, pauses, erases, writes a mobile.
He doesn’t look at either of them while he does it. Sukuna files that without deciding why.
“Come back wrapped,” Sayo repeats, sliding him a roll of cheap tape and a look that says I will be checking.
To Sukuna,
“Bus in ten. Don’t miss it.”
He won’t. He never does when she asks like that.
Satoru lifts two fingers in a lazy salute at both of them and backs toward the door. “Tomorrow?”
Sukuna should say no. He hears himself say,
“If you hold them still.”
The grin gets bigger, if that’s possible.
“Copy that.”
Door chime, night air, he’s gone.
The lobby feels normal again.
Sukuna hates that the quiet is less interesting.
Sayo leans on the counter and levels that mother-voice that isn’t quite scolding.
“Don’t scowl so hard. Your face will stick.”
“He’s annoying.” Sukuna says.
“He’s sunshine,” she says, exactly like the boy was five minutes ago, eyes crinkling, nose wrinkling, weaponized warmth. “Also — sugar?” She pops a lemon candy into his palm without waiting for an answer.
He doesn’t say thanks. He unwraps it, tucks it under his tongue, and shoulders his bag.
The paper sticks to his fingers, her blue eyes flick to the trash, he drops the wrapper in.
Right is repeatable.
On his way to the door he checks the big wall mirror the way he always does — to make sure the posture is his and not the one the day gave him. The reflection shows a kid who looks older than eighteen and exactly eighteen at once — ink-edged, wrist taped, jaw set, alive.
Behind him, Sayo waves with that ridiculous pink waterfall of hair and the kind of smile that keeps a city lit.
He tells himself that’s why he catches his bus on time and shows up tomorrow.
He knows it isn’t only that.
He hates that it isn’t only that.
He goes anyway.
Round 2 — First Snag
He tells himself the kid won’t come back. Rich boys like to sample and vanish. Then the door chime goes and there he is — white hair even in the bad lobby light, eyes that stupid bright blue, tape already looped around his fingers like he actually practiced.
Sukuna is halfway through jump rope when Satoru waves at Sayo like they’ve been friends for years. She grins back — nose and eyes wrinkling — and tugs his tape to tighten it, long pink hair sliding forward over her shoulder.
It lands wrong in Sukuna’s chest.
He drops the rope, grabs his wraps, heads for his bag. Satoru shadows him without asking.
“Round pads?” Satoru says. No mitts in his hands yet, just that expectation in his voice like the answer’s already yes.
“What do you even want here?” Sukuna asks, not bothering to hide the edge. “Tour’s over.”
Satoru blinks, then smiles like he’s been handed a trick question.
“To get hit less than yesterday. Ambitious, I know.”
Sukuna stares. Most rich kids want a selfie, a spar to post, a story about the scary tattooed guy.
This one brings tape and bad jokes and attention that doesn’t feel like a camera.
He doesn’t know what to do with that.
He hates that he doesn’t know.
They glove up. Satoru holds the mitts better — feet set, elbows soft, eyes on the shoulders. He’s listening without showing it. Sukuna gives him the numbers, adds speed, buries a hook when the mitt drifts. The kid absorbs it, breath hitches, smile stays.
Annoying.
Between rounds Satoru raids the vending machine and drops a lemon candy on Sukuna’s gym bag like yesterday.
An “offering.”
Sukuna flicks it back without looking. It skids to a stop at Sayo’s sneakers.
“Rude,” Satoru calls.
Sayo picks it up, pops it into Sukuna’s hand anyway.
“Sugar crash is real,” she says, then softer to him, “Homework before night session. Deal?”
He has the wrong answer ready. He swallows it.
“Deal.”
Satoru leans on the counter, talking to Sayo while she scans in new members. She laughs at something dumb he says, nose wrinkling, eyes creasing. They look related that way and it scrapes at Sukuna’s nerves.
He doesn’t want the kid near her.
He doesn’t want to be the guy who says that out loud either.
Satoru comes back with a mouthguard, still stiff from the box.
“Boil it for me?” he asks Sayo, shameless.
“Sink’s for staff,” she says, already taking it.
She drops it into the kettle behind the desk, taps a timer with a knuckle, hands him a bowl and a towel like he belongs here. Sukuna changes directions on the bag, angry at the bag for being there.
What does the kid want.
He has nothing to give him here except violence and the patience to do it right.
It should send him away.
It doesn’t.
Back on the floor, Satoru’s phone hums through his jacket.
He ignores it, then doesn’t.
A preview lights, Come home. We don’t mix with —
He locks the screen too fast. Smile returns, cheaper around the edges.
“Everything good?” Sayo asks, casual on purpose.
“Perfect,” he lies, bright.
Sukuna says nothing. The heavy bag takes it for him.
They run another pad round.
Satoru’s timing improves enough to be interesting.
He drops his left when he chases the cross.
Sukuna taps the mitt against his wrist.
“Left higher,” he says.
Satoru obeys without a joke. It throws Sukuna off more than the jokes do.
Water break. Satoru stands too close while Sayo presses the mouthguard into his teeth and pinches the sides to form it.
He jokes around it, she swats him, still smiling.
Sukuna watches her hand on the kid’s jaw, the way she checks his bite, the way she does when he gets new headgear.
Heat crawls up his throat, stupid and fast.
Sayo glances over like she heard it.
“You’re scowling,” she says. “That better not be a grade report face.”
“It’s a face,” he says.
“Jealous?” she teases, light as air.
“Of you?” He snorts.
It’s safer than answering the real question. She rolls her blue eyes and lets it go.
They get back in the ring. Satoru’s a quick study and a show-off when he thinks no one is looking. Sukuna hates that combination and respects it. He gives angles that force Satoru to move his feet.
Satoru adjusts, stumbles once, laughs at himself, gets it right the next time.
He learns. That’s the problem.
After cooldown, Satoru lingers at the desk again, fingers tapping a private rhythm against the laminate.
Sayo slides him a spare lock and points at the whiteboard, Teen Study Hour 7–8:30. No excuses. He reads it out loud like yesterday just to make her laugh again. She does.
Sukuna swallows another lemon he didn’t eat.
Locker room is loud and tiled and safe. Sukuna finds a cheap tiger keychain hooked through his vent — plastic, dumb, exactly his problem.
He should throw it away. He leaves it. Not for Satoru. For later.
When he comes back out, Satoru is testing the mouthguard fit, talking around it.
“Thish ish good,” he says. Sayo bumps him with her hip, tells him to enunciate, hands Sukuna a bottle and, like she can’t help herself, checks his knuckles for splits.
He wants to say stop fussing over him, and don’t fuss over me, and get him out of here, and don’t go, all at once.
None of that makes sense.
He closes his mouth on all of it.
Satoru clocks the look, tilts his head like he’s trying to solve a puzzle he likes.
“Tomorrow?” he asks.
Sukuna hears himself answer before he decides to.
“Don’t be late.”
“Copy,” Satoru says, unreasonably pleased.
The phone hums again. He finally checks it, thumb hovering. He doesn’t reply. He locks the screen, tucks the phone away, and meets Sukuna’s eyes with something steadier than a grin.
“Later.”
Sukuna shrugs, which costs less than nodding. Satoru leaves.
The noise of the gym fills back in around the space he took up.
Sayo leans over the counter, chin in hand.
“He’s good for you,” she says, reading him like only she can. “You’re clean when he’s there.”
“He’s loud.” Sukuna says.
“You’re loud inside,” she answers. Then she softens it with a smile that could power a street. “Eat something before study hour. And think about what you actually don’t like, him, or that he makes me laugh, or that you don’t know what to call this.”
He glares at the floor because it’s easier.
“It’s annoying.”
“Accurate.” she says, amused. “Go wash your face.”
He does.
In the mirror the teenager looking back is irritated, taped, alive. He doesn’t know what he feels about Satoru. He knows he doesn’t like not knowing.
He dries off, pockets the lemon candy this time, and heads for the study table because Sayo asked, because the kid will be back, because he is not going to be the one who flinches first.
Round 3 — Oh, We’re Doing This
Sukuna decides before dawn to stop being a jerk — at least for a day.
Sayo asked for “nice,” and when she asks, he bleeds to make it happen. She won’t let him quit school to work nights, so he makes her life easy in the ways she’ll allow — on time, no fights, pass history, keep the gym clean, don’t mouth off to staff.
If being decent to Gojo is on that list, he’ll try.
Satoru is waiting outside with two paper cups and that winter-bright hair.
“She said you take sugar,” he says, breath fogging. “So. Sugar.”
“Thanks,” Sukuna says.
The word tastes weird in his mouth.
Satoru blinks like he just got handed a rare animal, then smiles smaller, realer.
Inside, Sukuna sets cones for footwork and wipes yesterday’s chalk off the ring apron before Coach sees it.
He does the chores fast so Sayo won’t have to.
Satoru trails him, not in the way of it, just… there.
Sayo arrives in a too-big puffer and sunshine. Long pink hair down today, blue eyes bright enough to make the lobby less tired. She clocks the cones, the clean apron, the way Sukuna’s wraps are already tight.
Her smile says she noticed.
“Warm-up,” she calls. “Then mitts. Sukuna — show him the wrist wrap I like.”
Sukuna nods and crooks a finger. Satoru holds out his hand without performing. Sukuna takes it, sets the heel, crosses the tape, anchors the thumb.
“Keep this snug,” he says. “You’re dropping your left because your wrist feels naked.”
Satoru watches like it matters.
“Copy. Thank you.”
Mitts go smooth. Sukuna keeps his tone even when he corrects.
“Weight centered. Breathe. Don’t chase the cross.” Satoru adjusts without jokes. It helps.
Between rounds Satoru’s phone buzzes — Mother — and he kills the screen.
The grin tries to return and doesn’t quite make it. Sukuna offers him the water first.
“Hold pads after? I’ll run.”
“Yes, sir,” Satoru says, teasing the honorific, but he takes the job and does it right. Sukuna runs his laps and watches, in the corner of his eye, Satoru re-stack plates that weren’t his and turn the timer down a notch so it won’t blast Sayo’s ears.
Fine.
Sayo drifts by with the med kit like always. She checks Satoru’s knuckles and Sukuna’s tape, smooths a wrinkle with her thumb.
“Both of you — study hour after. I brought snacks.”
Her look at Sukuna is fond and loaded.
Pass history and I’ll book you amateur night.
“Got it,” he says. He means I’ll pass.
Satoru lingers at the desk while she logs waivers, talking about nothing in particular — bus routes, the vending machine that eats coins — and she laughs, nose wrinkling in the same pattern that used to belong only to him.
It stings less today.
Maybe because Satoru wipes the counter crumbs without being asked.
Maybe because Sayo’s smile cuts to Sukuna as often as it does to the kid, like see? This is better, right?
Back on the floor, Sukuna tries another experiment in “nice.”
“You want rounds in the ring,” he asks, flat “or more pads?”
“Ring,” Satoru says, a little too eager, then checks himself. “Please.”
They keep it light — touch spar, tap and move. Satoru’s fast feet start to make sense. Sukuna praises once, quiet and clean.
“Good angle.” Satoru absorbs it like heat. No crowing. Just work.
Cool-down stretches. Sukuna mirrors Sayo’s routine because she worries when he skips. Satoru follows his lead without comment. The phone buzzes again, this time Satoru turns it face-down under his towel and looks at Sukuna instead.
“Study after?” he asks, like an invitation, not a test.
“Yeah,” Sukuna says. “History.”
Satoru grimaces.
“I’m terrible at dates.”
“Then carry the snacks,” Sukuna says. It lands like a joke and an order both.
Sayo locks the register, flips the OPEN sign, and threads her arm through Sukuna’s for half a second on the way to the staff kettle.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, so soft only he hears it.
“For what?” he says, deadpan.
“For being kind,” she says. “It looks good on you.”
He grunts, ears hot, and takes the kettle to fill it so she won’t have to.
When he comes back, Satoru is setting out paper cups and a banana like he belongs here, careful not to take the last of anything, careful in a way that reads as learned, not innate.
Sukuna doesn’t know what to call the thing that’s settling under his ribs — less anger, not comfort, something like room.
He knows this much, Sayo’s shoulders sit lower when Gojo is around and not being an idiot, and today she looked at him like he makes her day easier.
That’s enough for now.
He bumps Satoru’s shoulder on the way to the study table.
“Left higher,” he says out of habit.
“On it,” Satoru says, and then, like he can’t help himself, “Thanks… for the not-being-a-jerk trial run.”
Sukuna snorts.
“Don’t get used to it.”
“Too late,” Satoru says, grinning with less shine and more truth.
They sit
Sayo drops a lemon candy on each of their notebooks and opens the history packet to the ugliest map on page three.
Sukuna hates maps. He studies anyway. It’s what Sayo asked.
And being decent to Satoru? For today, it’s part of the job.
This artwork is full of pain
Just like the fanfic it’s based on
I’ve been reflecting on it for days — how do I stop crying?
My boy… 😭
Thank you so much again, @belimah , for this beautiful work
After the ending of Aqua Regia, we have to face Sukuna's choices and deal with their consequences.
IV. WE FIX WHAT YOU BROKE
Day 18 — The Door
The clearing builds itself the way a bad habit does — piece by piece, nothing dramatic at first, just the square of rope staked into the dirt, four bells hung at the corners, the priest with the lacquer box, the elders in their careful coats, the junior who can’t keep his fingers still, the light is exactly wrong in the same way, the oil pot sits by the same stake, the paper in the box has the same red cord, and when the eldest lifts his chin to speak, Sukuna’s stomach drops because his body remembers this day faster than his mind wants to and his heart skips hard once, then steadies because he knows what comes next and he also knows what will not.
There is no hum here, no technique to hide inside, only air and the pressure of memory.
Satoru steps forward to the spot he took then, not a field around him, not a weapon in his hand, only posture and eyes, and Sukuna feels the first bad thought uncoil — the old reflex that says end the lever now and you end the cycle, cut the paper, cut the hand, cut the voice — and he sees the rope, hears the bell’s ready quiet, tastes the dryness that always comes before a mistake, and he lets the thought pass without picking it up, because he has already chosen how this ends.
The elder opens his mouth and the first syllable of “vow” comes out flat as a lid, the priest raises the folded paper, the junior starts to circle, the bells don’t need to ring because Sukuna is already moving, and there is no plan in the movement, no test running in the back of his head, only a simple order that lands where his feet do — person first.
He walks straight to Satoru, not fast, not slow, both hands coming up to his face the way Satoru once put warm hands on his, thumbs along the jaw, fingers behind the ears, and Satoru doesn’t flinch, doesn’t joke, doesn’t ask, he leans into the touch like it’s a normal thing on a normal day, and Sukuna tips his head, not to bow, just to set the angle.
He turns Satoru’s face toward the trees and says, “With me,” steady, even, and Satoru breathes out like a knot he’s been holding loosens.
And then they walk, not running, not checking if the rope tightens or the elders call a sanction, just stepping out of the square and past the torii — Sukuna’s hand sliding down to Satoru’s wrist and staying there until he feels Satoru walk on his own, behind them the words die mid-breath, the bells don’t get their second peal, the rope sags into ordinary straw, the priest lowers the empty box like he forgot why he opened it, and the whole scene folds from the edges like paper taken back to flat.
The path up to the hall is the same path it’s always been in here, regular stones, cedar needles, the door that slides right — Sukuna’s lungs finally catch up to the fact that there was nothing to fight except the urge to fight, his stomach unspools slow, heavy first, then light as the clearing dissolves without needing him to break it, and when they stop under the eave because the air above the torii splits open into a narrow bright seam that carries real wind and the old, exact weight of cursed energy.
Satoru looks at him — one set of bright blue eyes, clear and familiar — and Sukuna understands without being told that the hard part of this day wasn’t the leaving, it was deciding to leave before the bells had permission to ring.
“You’re ready,” Satoru says, and there’s no ceremony in it, only relief and a little pride he doesn’t try to hide.
Sukuna’s mouth goes tight and then soft.
“I know,” he says, and it’s not arrogance, it’s inventory, the same way he would note water in the pot and a vent set right — he looks at the seam of air and doesn’t step yet, because he has one more thing to do here, not for a rule, for them.
Satoru sees it the same moment and steps in, close enough that Sukuna can feel breath on his cheek, there is no Infinity here to manage, no field to keep the world off, just contact.
Satoru’s hand comes up to Sukuna’s sternum, palm over the place where the old seam lived in another life, fingers steady, and he says, soft and sure,
“You lived,” and then, because he never wastes a good line on silence,
“I’m proud of you.”
Sukuna’s throat tightens, not the kind that chokes action, the kind that means this lands where it should. He holds Satoru’s face again because it’s the truest thing his hands know how to do, and Satoru tips his forehead to Sukuna’s, a clean touch — and for a few breaths they stand like that with nothing to fix.
Satoru kisses him, not to test anything this time, not to push him through a door, just because this is the last moment they have like this before he changes shape to stay, and Sukuna kisses back the way he learned to, focused and honest, no performance. And when Satoru breaks it, he doesn’t move far, only enough to speak against Sukuna’s mouth.
“I love you,” he says, simple, the same way he says “water” and “sleep” and “stay,” and it does not crush, it steadies.
Sukuna doesn’t make it into a speech, he gives it back the way it was given, quiet and without edge.
“I love you.”
Satoru nods once like a deal has been kept, then he lifts Sukuna’s hand and sets it on his own collarbone, right where flesh met bad math on another day, and Sukuna feels skin and pulse and remembers, and Satoru draws a small circle with two fingers there, and something like an eye of pale blue ink opens under Sukuna’s touch — not on Satoru, on Sukuna, faint at first, then clear enough to be seen, set right in the notch between his collarbones where his own breath lives.
“This is where I stay,” Satoru says, voice even, not sad, “not as a wall, not as a leash, as a tether — when you start confusing control with safety I’ll open this, I’ll speak, I’ll refuse, I’ll pull you a half step left, and if you insist on hurting yourself I’ll make you start over in here until you don’t,” he says, the corner of his mouth tugging like he hates the line and loves that it’s true, “outside I can’t reset the day, I won’t hold your hands on the wheel, but I will say no and stand where you have to see me, I will not attack first, I will not leave”
Sukuna exhales because that is the shape of mercy he can accept, not pardon, not punishment, just a rule with a cost he can carry.
His palms are still on Satoru’s face and he can feel the small muscles by the jaw ease under his thumbs, he can feel his own pulse even out under Satoru’s palm at his sternum, he thinks, this is the last second like this, and the thought doesn’t panic him for once.
“One more,” Satoru whispers, not bargaining, not buying time, and he rises into him again, a kiss without urgency because there is nothing left to prove, only the simple fact of two mouths that have found the right pressure, the right pace.
Sukuna leans in and lets the relief come up like warm water, heavy first and then light, it slides down the back of his neck and out through his hands, he holds without clutching, he lets go without flinching.
Satoru threads their fingers and draws him inside in the next moment.
The shōji slide, the room holds the right kind of quiet.
The futon comes out with the soft sound of cloth over reed.
Satoru turns off everything that could stand between them and the absence sits like shade on a hot day. They don’t pretend to be nineteen and they don’t refuse the memory either, Satoru touches the old places first — the hinge where headaches used to live, the small scar Sukuna never names — then newer places that mean we stayed.
Sukuna answers without grabbing for control.
They undress like people with nothing to prove — neither careful like glass nor rough like penance — only the right pace for breath to keep up.
Satoru laughs once into Sukuna’s throat at a stubborn knot, something tight comes loose. Sukuna makes a small sound he’ll deny later when Satoru trails his fingers on the seam on his stomach's maw, and yet he doesn’t pull away.
Satoru lays kisses all over Sukuna — face, neck, shoulders, chest, stomach, the maw which grants him a very subtle grin from it, then below it, going down on the kempt trail of pink hair, brushing his lips and letting open mouth kisses send shivers down Sukuna's body.
Sukuna's four crimson eyes are transfixed on his face and Satoru's many eyes have their full attention on his lover's body, face, reaction, soul. He sees it all.
One of Sukuna's hands closes on Satoru's stark white hair with a tight grip when Satoru decides to slide down Sukuna's upper dick inside his throat without warning — he just swallows it, sheathing the length with ease until his nose tip presses against the pink hair once again. Sukuna's eyes roll, dart to a few places and then go back to the other man's face. He feels heat taking over his body like he's being cooked alive just by the face Satoru makes when their eyes meet. It's pure glee.
He nuzzles Sukuna's lower belly and start to move his head after a few seconds, bobbing it up and down with no rush, lodging the girthy shaft inside his throat with ease, bottoming out Sukuna's dick in his mouth every single time and relishing in all the groans and snarls that leave his throat.
One of Sukuna's forearms is laid across his eyes, one hand is still clamping on Satoru's hair, the other one is gripping the futon like his life depends on it and the fourth hand is cupping Satoru's face gently, calloused fingers trying to be steady and yet trembling against the pale warm skin as his head goes up and down and up and down and his tongue works in ways made to drive Sukuna insane with cheer pleasure, he's sure of it.
They fold into each other the way they did the first time — Satoru taking the lead because Sukuna would not allow himself to, Sukuna allowing it because he trusts the hands and the mouth and the insistence that asks and answers at once — and they move until breath stutters, holds, and lets go.
Satoru's hands settle behind Sukuna's knees when he raises both to rest over his broad shoulders — he leans in, slowly, gently, allowing Sukuna to feel every inch of him as he slides in. He presses his thighs to his chest, then, Sukuna's lower hands settle on his own legs to keep them there as Satoru falls into the embrace of his upper arms looping around his neck and slowly clawing at his pallid back.
Satoru moans against Sukuna's lips and he drinks all of his pants, whines and curses, moving his hips, thrusting, slow at first, then building the pace like they built the trust between each other, and later, love.
No show.
The kind of hot, passionate joining that leaves a room more itself after.
The word love is said, swallowed, cursed and moaned a few more times — always ending up against lips, skin, hair, shared breath, wet lips, wet eyes.
After, they lie with their foreheads together, the blindfold folded between them as a pillow, breath evening while sweat cools.
Satoru’s hand lies warm and broad over Sukuna’s sternum the way you keep a map flat. Neither speaks until the turn of leaving arrives on its own.
They rise together and dress without fuss.
Satoru smooths Sukuna’s collar, Sukuna straightens the futon seam.
Right is repeatable.
Satoru steps back half a pace and nods once like a task finished well, then he lifts Sukuna’s hand from his collarbone and lays it on Sukuna’s own, two fingers drawing the smallest circle where breath lives, and under the skin a pale blue iris opens and looks once, not outward but through, a quiet eye set in the notch he used to aim past, it blinks and sleeps, a promise that doesn’t need audience
“there,” Satoru says, eyes on him and not the seam, “if you start mistaking control for safety, this wakes, I speak, I refuse, I pull you half a step toward the person, you hate me for a breath, then you breathe again, and when you are set I go quiet,” he squeezes Sukuna’s wrist, not restraint, contact, “we will not make a weapon out of you to keep you safe”
Sukuna thinks, I can live with that, I can live, and the weight in his stomach that has been a stone since the clearing loosens into something he can carry in a pocket, not gone, not meant to be, just smaller than his hands
The seam above the torii holds, a thin bright mouth in the air, it smells like rain and iron and the old pressure of technique, he faces it and for once he doesn’t have to count to move, he takes Satoru’s face in his hands again because he wants to, he presses their foreheads together because he can, “stay,” he says, a request he used to be too proud to make, and it doesn’t taste like begging, it tastes like accuracy.
“Always,” Satoru answers, and the word is not big, it’s plain.
He breathes out and lets the curse-body fold, the extra eyes shut and sink like fish into deep water, the outline of him tightens to what the world first learned to love and fear, one set of blue eyes where they belong, the seam-eye at Sukuna’s collarbone the only sign of what he has become, and even that sign sleeps.
They do not look back at the square that isn’t there, they do not wait for permission from a room that never gave it, Sukuna steps into the seam and the weight of the real world settles on his skin like tools finding their pegs, the hum returns to his bones and his body tries the old habit — cut first, control first, prove you’re safe — and in the same breath a cool awareness opens at his collarbone, a blink he feels more than sees, and Satoru’s voice is there without echo, person first, not a reprimand, a correction.
He adjusts his angle before the thought finishes, he smiles without showing teeth because the fix was clean
The hill beyond carries a sloppy bell array and a human heartbeat too quick under it, he goes to the heartbeat first because that is who he is now when he does not think, a child crouched with hands over ears, a real weight in his arms, a real thanks he does not require.
He sets them down in the wind shadow of a cedar and only then he breaks the bells on the second peal wrong on purpose, neat, quiet, still no show, and the field the array tried to pretend it had collapses like wet straw.
When he comes back to the threshold, Satoru is there the way thresholds sometimes keep things worth keeping, no scattered eyes, no distance, just presence.
Sukuna stops under the eave because leaving and arriving both deserve one breath.
Satoru lifts his hand and with two fingers taps the place over the sleeping eye like a door that doesn’t need knocking, “go on,” he says, tenderness without softness, “we have work”
Sukuna thinks of Sayo counting in whispers, of a boy with a reed whistle he pretended not to want praise for, of a cleared mat and a soot line he will sand tonight, of a rule that is his now because his feet moved before his head did, of a voice that will say no when he aims himself at the wrong salvation.
He thinks, I will survive and I will live, and when the old ache shifts — he lets it, heavy and then light. He nods once, not to Satoru only but to the door and the day and the long work ahead, and he steps inside to put the kettle on, because the world is waiting and he is ready to go meet it.
Why are you never real?
Whenever you appear
You leave me with that grace
I am trembling with fear
But I know that you will disappear
Just as I awake
Whisper in my ear
Well, I believe
Somewhere in the past
Something was between
You and I, my dear
And it remains
With me to this day
No matter what I do
This scar will never fade
So let's make trouble in the dream world
Hijack heaven with another memory now
I make the most of the turning tide
It just split what's left of the burning silence
Don't wait, 'cause this could be the last time
You turn up in the reveries of my mind
I wake up to a suicide frenzy
Loaded dreams still leave me empty
I believe
Somewhere in the past
Something was between
You and I my dear
And it remains
With me to this day
No matter what I do
This wound will never heal
Why are you never real?
The shifting states you follow me through
Unrevealed
Just let me go or take me with you
So let's make trouble in the dream world
Hijack heaven with another memory now
I make the most of the turning tide
It just split what's left of the burning silence
Don't wait 'cause this could be the last time
You turn up in the reveries of my mind
I wake up to a suicide frenzy
Loaded dreams still leave me empty
Sleep Token · Take Me Back To Eden · Song · 2023
Once again I need to thank @hitsuo for the inspiration for the AU and for the constant cheering and supporting of my writing, you're an amazing artist and a wonderful creative person who has perfect AU ideas. The AU arts are below and linked to hitsuo's posts so make sure to go there and leave your like and your reblog and also loving words if you like this piece. ♥
I hope you all enjoyed this series as much as Aqua Regia, and it's now officially over — it's a story about self forgiveness and the permission to keep living after making mistakes that cannot be repaired.
After the ending of Aqua Regia, we have to face Sukuna's choices and deal with their consequences.
III. STAY
Day 11 — Place or Person
Afternoon settles into the room without asking.
The pot ticks on low heat. Paper dries flat under two weights. Sukuna planes a thin curl off a board that never needed it, just to feel the even pull against his palm.
The air is ordinary — that helps.
A coal pops.
He smells it first — hot dust, then the sharper edge of singe.
He turns. A corner of the reed mat by the brazier has taken a live spark. The straw has not flamed yet, it’s browning, beginning to curl.
He registers — water in the pot, wet cloth folded on the shelf, windows closed.
A small voice carries up from the path below the torii before he can move.
A child’s cry.
Not loud.
A single burst, the kind made when a knee hits stone.
It comes thin and real as air.
He looks once at the browning reed, quick — not a flame yet.
He looks toward the door — who is down there and what's the danger?
His chest does that tight thing it does before his hands start moving too fast.
He waits for Satoru to say something for a single beat.
Satoru doesn’t speak.
He stands by the door, arms loose at his sides, eyes everywhere.
Sukuna moves.
He clears the threshold in three strides, the yard is the same yard, dirt tamped, cedar needles lying where they fell. The sound came from the right side of the path.
He takes the slope without thinking about his knees, he expects his foot to catch the loose rock three steps down, — it does — he adjusts.
He keeps his breath even because running crooked makes you clumsy.
A small shape sits just past the torii, hands over ears, shoulders punched up.
The child is not fully there — edges fuzzed, wrong depth — but the cry that comes out is the right kind. Sukuna’s body treats it as real and makes room for it.
Person first.
The thought is not words so much as direction.
He crouches.
“Up,” he says, plain. No softness.
He puts two hands under the small underarms and stands, lifting.
There is almost no weight, that nearly undoes him.
He holds anyway like it matters and carries the shape up the path.
The thing settles against his chest and then blurs and is gone when his foot hits the top step.
His arms close on empty air.
His hands stay steady.
Smoke has thickened inside while he was gone, the reed has taken, a small tongue of flame has found the edge of the wall slat.
It climbs like it knows where to go, — heat on his face — he locates pot on the brazier, nearly simmering, wet cloth on the shelf, windows still shut.
He does not call to Satoru, he does not look at him.
Don’t fan it.
He grabs the bent pot with the lower right hand, uses the upper right to steady the handle, the left to pull the mat edge away from the wall so the water hits the base, not the spread. He pours slow, close, not a throw.
The first pour knocks the flame low but not out.
He pours again, holding the feed of water to keep steam from pushing fire into a higher seam.
The hiss is loud.
The second pour dunks the base — the flame gutters.
He sets the pot down hard and drops to his knees with the wet cloth, presses and drags, smothering. No scrubbing.
Press, lift, press.
The stink is immediate and ugly.
He coughs once and lets the rest of the cough sit in his chest until the smoke makes another decision.
The fire goes.
What’s left — a hand-size char on the wall slat, a black bite in the mat, soot trace up two boards.
He opens both windows, pulls the mat farther back, checks under it for heat.
Warm, not dangerous.
He keeps his palm there anyway until the wood cools under his skin.
He hears his own breath coming like someone is reminding him to do it at all.
He sits back on his heels, takes inventory — water left for tea, yes, cloth hot but useful, room holding.
No one else here.
He wipes his hands on his thighs, he stands and carries the wet mat outside to the veranda, lays it flat, palms it straight.
He does not look for Satoru’s approval — he is not working for applause.
You left the room.
There is no blame attached to the sentence echoing in his head. It is just a report.
You left the room and the room is still here. The child — whatever it was — is not in danger.
His heart is too fast.
He waits a count of ten with his eyes on the soot mark.
He thinks of his mother’s voice, Wash the bowl before the rice dries.
Do the small thing now.
He fetches a clean cloth, dampens it, wipes the wall gently to take up loose soot so it won’t smear when he sands later.
He sets the cloth to soak, drags the brazier two boards away from the mat’s new edge, checks the coal bed with a stick and closes the vent a fingerwidth.
He finds the scraper and lifts off the thin crust on the pot so the next boil doesn’t taste like smoke.
All of this he performs calm, but the calm is new.
It was not here an hour ago.
He takes a breath and lets it out slow so it sticks.
He glances at Satoru.
Satoru hasn’t moved much, he is still near the door, head turned toward the open windows.
He is not smiling, he is not blank, he is present.
He says nothing.
That is the right amount of help.
Sukuna reaches for the plane, then stops.
Not yet.
He sits on the step instead, hands open on his knees. He feels the tightness in his chest fade one notch lower. He lets his shoulders drop because he remembers that this helps and because no one is here to see and mistake it for weakness.
Thoughts come in order for once,
I didn’t think. I moved.
I picked up a person.
It wasn’t a person.
It doesn’t matter.
I did it anyway.
The room is fixable.
The other thing would not have been.
His jaw aches from clenching — he loosens it with his thumb at the hinge, the same way Satoru showed him when headaches sat behind his eyes.
He hates that this is comfort and uses it anyway.
He goes for water because his throat is raw, he pours one cup, then two.
He drinks the first in three swallows and holds the second without drinking.
He does not offer it, he sets it on the step within reach — if Satoru wants it, he will take it.
Satoru steps in from the door and stands by the brazier, looking at the char. He still doesn’t speak. He walks his eyes along the vent, the mat’s new position, the damp cloth set to soak.
He looks, that’s all.
Sukuna studies the black patch on the slat, he lifts a fingertip close without touching.
Sand and oil will take this down in a day.
Two, if I get picky.
He likes that the estimate is ordinary.
He likes that there is nothing heroic about it.
His hands stop shaking.
He looks out past the torii where the echo had been. The spot is empty. He feels the urge to run the path again, just to make sure.
He does not move.
He breathes once, hard, and tells himself, If there had been weight, there would be weight now. There is no weight. You did what you could. You are in the right room.
Saying it to himself sounds like someone else said it first.
He lets that be.
A breeze clears smoke through the open windows. The room smells like wet straw and old tea — the smell is not pleasant, but it belongs to work just done.
He rests two fingers lightly on the edge of the brazier and feels the heat settled, controlled.
He finds he is tired in the way that does not leave space for panic.
Satoru finally crosses the room and sits on the other side of the step. He doesn’t touch the cup, he doesn’t reach for him.
His eyes go from the soot mark to the doorway to Sukuna’s face, then stay on the yard.
His presence takes the shape of a fact, we are both here.
Sukuna hears himself think it for the first time without flinching, I chose the person.
He waits for the after-pain that usually follows any admission
It doesn’t come the same way.
Something else sits under it — flat, level, almost boring.
It was the only move that leaves both possible later — the room to fix and the person to save.
He doesn’t try to make it into a statement about morality.
He leaves it as logistics.
That feels safe.
He stands, rolls the charred mat carefully, ties it with twine so it doesn’t shed, and sets it aside.
He brings in a spare and places it farther from the brazier, then lifts the brazier onto a flat stone to raise it a finger higher from the floor.
He adjusts the vent again because he can, he looks at the rope knot over the door, checks the lay out of habit.
It’s fine.
Only then does he pick up the untouched second cup and hand it to Satoru.
Satoru takes it, drinks, sets it down.
No comment.
That is enough.
Sukuna sits again, his hands lie quiet, he thinks,
If this happens again tomorrow, I will do the same thing.
Even if the wall burns higher.
Even if the beam goes.
He does not try to imagine rebuilding the whole room, he knows he can, that is not the point.
The point was the first step out the door.
He lets his eyes close for half a minute. He hears only the ordinary sounds — wind, a fly against paper, the dull tick of cooling iron.
When he opens them, the room is still just a room.
Satoru looks over once, not checking, not testing, simply witnessing the state of things.
Sukuna meets his eyes without giving anything away, he holds the look a beat longer than he would have two weeks ago.
He looks away first, not as a surrender, just because he wants to.
He stands.
“Later,” he says.
He means the sanding.
He means the way forward.
He means the rest.
Satoru nods.
They go to the stream to refill the pot, they do not talk on the path down or back, the silence is heavy in a way that doesn’t bruise.
It feels like a shelf built right.
Back inside, Sukuna sets the pot on low and sets the scraper back on its nail.
He checks the wall once more, he doesn’t touch it.
He doesn’t need to.
Person over place, he thinks again and again and once more, not as a rule written by someone else, but as something his own hands did before his head caught up.
He notes that the loop did not tear and that the day kept going.
That is enough proof.
He takes the brush and writes two small characters on a scrap he will throw away later, just to see them,
人先
Person first.
He does not show Satoru.
He drops the scrap into the ash when it dries.
He goes on with the day.
Day 12 — Sleep or Story
He works too long, he copies a page, planes a sliver off a beam that doesn’t need it, cleans the pot again — his hands shake.
“Sleep,” Satoru says.
“I should finish—”
“Sleep,” Satoru repeats. He points at the futon. “Now.”
Sukuna stands in place, stubborn out of habit.
Then he lies down.
He does not arrange himself like a statue, he closes his eyes and he sleeps without performance.
Satoru sits where he can see the door and the window at the same time.
He doesn’t touch him.
He watches the room hold.
No reset.
Day 13 — Mob Echo
Midday.
A perfect echo forms at the gate, ropes, bells, oil, voices that say “Obey.”
Satoru looks at Sukuna.
Sukuna walks to the torii empty-handed.
He stands just inside the threshold.
“No,”
His voice is not loud, it's clear.
He turns his back on the echo and goes back to the kettle.
The echo shreds without drama. The bells stop. The yard is only a yard.
Satoru nods once.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Day 14 — Small Care
Morning.
Satoru holds a small knife and gestures.
“Sit.”
Sukuna sits on the step, Satoru combs his hair with his fingers, then trims the ends clean.
His palm steadies Sukuna’s cheek when he angles for a better cut.
The blade never nicks.
Satoru brushes the hair away from Sukuna’s neck with the back of his knuckles.
He doesn’t talk.
Sukuna stands.
He flexes his jaw.
“Even.”
“Obviously.” Satoru says, only a little pleased with himself.
Day 15 — Fix the Cloth
Sukuna takes the blindfold from the peg.
The edge is frayed where it rubbed against Satoru’s fingers for years.
He sits at the low table, folds a new hem and stitches it tight.
Small, even, unforgiving.
He ties off with a neat knot.
He hands it back.
“You fray where you touch the world too much,” Sukuna says.
“So do you.” Satoru responds and puts the blindfold on, not to hide — just to feel it sit right once again.
Day 16 — Clean Tears
The day gives him nothing to push against.
Morning work is done early.
Water fetched, wood stacked, rice cooked right the first time.
The door slides without sticking.
The rope knot above the lintel sits straight.
The library page dries flat under two weights.
No echo presses the path.
No bell tick rides the air.
The room is ordinary.
Sukuna wipes the plane, hangs it on its nail, and stands with empty hands.
He checks the brazier vent, though he already set it.
He adjusts the pot on the trivet by half a finger.
He straightens the copy brush so the hairs don’t splay.
He has run out of tasks that change anything.
Stillness arrives and stays.
It lands in his chest first — tight, not sharp. His jaw clenches.
He feels the old pull, find something to control.
He looks for it.
There isn’t anything honest left to fix.
Satoru sits by the step with his back to the post — he isn’t copying, isn’t speaking. He’s there.
He watches the windows breathe and the floorboards do nothing.
He lets the room stay a room.
Sukuna sits across from him, on the other side of the step.
He puts his hands open on his knees because fists will lie to him.
He looks at the soot trace he left on the wall two days ago and thinks,
I’ll sand that when it dries all the way.
The thought doesn’t stick.
The tightness does.
It starts moving.
His mind throws him small pictures because that’s how it works when there’s nothing to hold.
Sayo’s thumb between his brows when the second set of eyes first burned.
Her whisper-count while he hid under roots and learned to move without the leaves telling on him.
The three soft knocks. The red thread re-tied without comment.
“Wash the bowl before the rice dries.”
The sound after the shove. The sound he didn’t make when he stayed hidden.
He tries to stop there.
He doesn’t.
Satoru appears next whether he wants it or not.
Blindfold off, face close, “I’m turning it off.” Warm hands on his cheeks.
The first “With me” that felt like an order and a favor at once.
The second peal wrong on purpose.
The seam. The cut. The look that wasn’t surprised.
He breathes once, hard.
Don’t rehearse it.
The room doesn’t change.
It’s still afternoon, not the clearing.
He keeps his eyes on the floor to make sure.
His body thinks quiet means danger.
He argues back with facts.
There is water in the pot.
The vent is set.
The door slides.
The rope holds.
He is here.
I am here.
The tightness doesn’t leave, it moves lower.
It feels like his ribs are too narrow.
He says,
“I’m fine.”
It’s flat and untrue.
He leaves it on the floor like a tool he won’t use.
Satoru doesn’t answer.
He gets up, crosses the short space, and lifts the blindfold from the peg.
He doesn’t speak while he steps in and sets the cloth gently over Sukuna’s eyes to block the light.
No trick, no field. Just shade.
“Two minutes,” Satoru says. “Then tea.”
Sukuna nods.
He hates that his throat hurts when he swallows.
He lets his shoulders drop because they need to, not because he wants to be seen doing it.
He breathes in to four, holds to four, out to six.
On the fifth round the air catches.
Grief comes on a clean line — it isn’t a storm this time. It isn’t the first-night collapse.
It’s the weight he has avoided by working too well.
It sets down everywhere at once — eyes, jaw, throat, chest, the hollow under his ribs.
Thoughts come with it, not clever, not decorated:
She’s dead because she chose me.
He’s dead because I chose control and called it safety.
I would choose him now. I did not then.
I am still here. I have to keep the rule.
I don’t know how to carry both.
He keeps breathing.
The blindfold is warm where the cloth touches his cheekbones.
Satoru’s presence is a fact by his left shoulder, he doesn’t touch him.
The room is quiet except for the old tick of the cooling iron and the soft shift of air through the shōji.
His face goes wet.
It happens without a sound at first, then one sound slips out, thin and ugly.
He clamps down on it by habit — he doesn’t need to, he lets the next one go.
He doesn’t throw his head back, doesn’t grab for neatness, he sits, hands open on his thighs, blindfold on, and lets his body move the way it needs to, breath stutters, chest catches, throat burns.
Tears drop and cool on his jaw.
He doesn’t wipe them yet.
He thinks,
This doesn’t make me weaker.
It feels wrong and right at the same time.
He says nothing aloud.
His mind tries to bargain the way it always does,
Work now, later feel.
He says no to himself this time.
He stays.
He feels.
Sayo shows up in the simple way grief lets mothers in — the way her fingers rolled thread, the double sneeze, the way she pretended the sour half of the plum was her favorite.
It lands like a hand on the back of his neck.
He says, inside, I know. I’m doing the part you taught me.
It hurts like being skinned.
He keeps breathing.
Satoru is there too, but not in the sharp moment.
He is in the domestic facts, hair trimmed clean, the floor sanded in the right place, the door that slides, the rope splice that holds, the cup of tea steeped right.
The way he said “Stay” casual and meant it.
The way he didn’t move when Sukuna shoved him at the door in a different month in a different life and reset him instead of letting him lie.
Tears run until they don’t.
He loses track of the count.
It takes longer than two minutes and less time than the part of him that likes punishment wants.
When the block in his chest finally drops half a finger lower, he lifts the blindfold himself and folds it once before handing it back.
He wipes his face with his sleeve, looks at the floor because looking at Satoru might make him start again.
The room is still a room, the soot line is still a line, the weight is still there, but it sits instead of tearing.
That is new.
He tests a thought he hasn’t allowed, I can feel this and still keep the rule.
It doesn’t break him, it sits next to the other facts.
Satoru sets a cup beside his hand, Sukuna’s fingers are clumsy on the first lift, the tea is at the right temperature.
He holds it to his mouth and drinks, the swallow hurts and then helps.
He doesn’t rush.
He doesn’t perform calm.
He just drinks.
He speaks when the cup is half down.
“She’s gone.”
He means Sayo.
He means the one person who made childhood possible.
He swallows.
“He’s gone.”
He means Satoru.
He means the only person who stood in front of him and called it love without saying the word first.
“I’m here,” he adds.
It sounds like inventory, not pride.
That is what he can handle.
He sets the cup down and presses his thumb briefly to the old ache above his collarbone.
He doesn’t chase the seam, he doesn’t run the scene, he keeps his thumb there until his breath evens again.
He looks at the wall. He thinks of sanding it later. He thinks of rebuilding what burns, if it burns.
He thinks, Person first, and this time it doesn’t feel like a test.
It feels like something his hands already know.
Satoru takes the blindfold back and hangs it on the peg.
He doesn’t say anything that would make this a lesson, he doesn’t move closer, he stays inside reach because he knows that matters more than speech right now.
Sukuna stares at his open hands, he doesn’t hate them, he doesn’t like them either.
He accepts them.
He thinks,
I will not turn this feeling into an excuse to become a machine.
I will not use love as a weapon against myself.
Saying it inside his head makes his shoulders go looser.
He wipes his face one last time.
“Tea,” he says, like a normal request, not a rescue.
“Tea,” Satoru answers, same as always.
They sit on the step and drink without talking.
The afternoon light slides across the library floor and makes the thin bright stripe he remembers.
He lets it pass without getting up to chase it.
He feels tired in a clean way — the kind that means sleep will come when it needs to.
Later he will mend the scorched mat or scrap it.
Later he will sand the wall.
Later he will cook.
Right now he lets the quiet be quiet and doesn’t go looking for a fight to make it stop.
When the cups are empty, he gathers them, washes them before the rice dries, and sets them upside down on the low shelf.
He doesn’t look at Satoru to see if the motion is approved.
He doesn’t need the approval.
He needs the motion.
He steps outside, breathes once, looks down the path, and doesn’t go.
He returns inside, pulls the futon out one square, and sits.
The room holds.
He doesn’t call it progress.
He keeps the day.
Day 17 — The New Vow
After they eat, Satoru stands across from him, hands at his sides.
“Say it.”
Sukuna doesn’t ask which.
He looks at the room — the rope, the table, the repaired beam — and then at Satoru.
“I risk the place to save the person.” he says.
“Again.”
“I risk the plan to keep the human,” Sukuna repeats.
The final version of baby Sukuna and his mommy. I think I've developed a new hyperfixation. Expect more art... Sayo has a smile like Satoru's /cries/
This art is dedicated to the wonderful @ belimah and her magical work
You can read the fanfic here: @ belimah
Love you, little reed <3
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