no joke is a problem now. I’ve read about every black clover thing you could find. IVE READ THEM ALL. I’ve been gone for 5 weeks and there’s only ONE new story. I’m going insane.
summary: he’s so into you but all he does is admire you from afar. what a loser!
feat. yuno, nozel, fuegoleon, william
a/n: gn!reader except for yuno’s cuz i got lazy to change things
also, writing styles vary cuz i couldn’t write anything in one sitting like i’ve been adding sentences here and there at different points in my life. this has been a journey for like 2 years but now i’m at the finish line thank god.
anyways, as always, thank you to everyone who still reads my fics no matter how inactive i am ily <3
yuno could count all the times he felt nervous on the fingers of one hand.
one, when his necklace almost got stolen.
two, when asta insisted on roaming around outside at the dead of the night he was so anxious of getting caught he couldn’t breathe.
three, the magic knight exam.
four, that time one seemingly easy mission had gone awfully wrong.
five, you — his hands would tremble at the mere sight of you.
his demeanor seems to change every time you were around, every muscle in his body stiffening, while his consciousness floated away. in his eyes, a spotlight shines above you while the rest of the room drowns out in pitch black. he was so enamored by you, making him feel things he doesn’t quite understand.
klaus paused, annoyed by yuno’s sudden unresponsiveness. mimosa giggled and pointed to the person at the end of yuno’s line of vision.
“ah, y/n again i see,” he teased.
yuno turned his attention back to his 2 friends in front of him looking as if he was a deer caught in headlights.
“y/n is so pretty, isn’t she?” mimosa chimed in.
yuno felt his heart race but he just shrugged.
“i guess,”
“why don’t you ask her out? you seem to be into her anyway.” klaus quirked an eyebrow.
he almost almost got a reaction from yuno but as expected, he shrugged again.
klaus groaned then proceeded to return to the conversation he was having with mimosa. the pair walked away towards the snack bar while chatting, not really caring if yuno followed or not.
of course, he didn’t.
instead, he turned his head back to where you stood, wanting to catch one final glimpse at you. you were scanning the room, seemingly looking for someone when your eyes met his.
your eyes lit up, and began to make your way to him. yuno quickly averted his gaze, palms sweating as he pretended to look for his squadmates.
“hi,” you greeted politely.
yuno could barely move almost as if he was in a catatonic state.
“i wasn’t so sure when we’ll ever meet again but…” you paused, taking out a neatly folded clothing item from your bag. “i wanted to say thanks for lending me your cape that time i was feverish in the middle of our joint mission.”
“it’s no big deal,” he spoke softly. “you can keep it if you want.”
you frowned. “hm, i don’t think it would be right for me keep it. it is a personal item. it has the golden dawn insignia after all.”
you reached for his hands and placed the item in his palms. his hands felt cold and unsteady.
“your hands are so cold, yuno. almost like ice.”
yuno swallowed thickly. he could not speak, the words pooling in his throat could not be forced out. he wanted to carry on a conversation with you perhaps starting with mundane topics then progressing to more personal ones.
“thanks,” he finally said.
you smiled softly, bowed your head, and turned to leave.
“wait! do you—” yuno blurted out.
“hm?” you tilted your head back.
“nothing, nothing. i— have a good night, y/n.”
you had this look on your face. disappointment? sadness? hurt? yuno wasn’t really sure. he was too nervous to read too much into it.
“right. you too,” you smiled (in a sad way, yuno thought) and quickly walked away from him.
“you let her go,” klaus would have said. “she was right in front of you, and you let her go?”
yuno cursed under his breath. maybe he’d have another chance. there will be a next time, there always is, there has to be.
but even he wasn’t so sure anymore.
ever since the day nozel met you, he could not think of anything else but you.
you were taking up too much space in his head and he didn’t like that. lately, it was taking longer than usual for him to finish simple paperworks because truthfully he daydreamed about you in between his work. he felt so inefficient, so sluggish, so out of control. and he didn’t like not being in control.
nozel sighed for what felt like the 5th time in the last hour as he caught himself out of focus again. a knock on his door had pulled him back to reality.
“come in,”
the door slowly opened revealing a slightly disheveled but still charming nonetheless—you.
he swallowed thickly and turned his attention back to the mountain of paperwork in front of him. but as you inched closer to his desk, his thoughts became more and more clouded.
“captain nozel,” you saluted. “i apologize for the intrusion but i came by to submit my report of last week’s mission.”
as you rifled through your thick envelope of files, nozel decided to sneak a glance at you. he noticed the bags under your eyes, and the paleness of your lips. you had been working yourself to death no doubt. it pained him to see you this way.
at last you had found the document. you placed it on his desk, your hands trembling as you did.
“sorry that took a while,” you said as you combed your fingers through your unkempt hair. “the fatigue is finally catching up to me.”
rest, y/n. i can’t stand seeing you like this, he wanted to say. but instead, he gave you a quick nod not even bothering to look up from his paperwork.
you frowned at his reserved responses. you let a moment of silence pass and there it is again, that odd tension that hung in the air whenever the two of you were near each other. people have been definitely noticing; the more people pointed it out the more it bothered you.
his silence stretched on, and you figured he had nothing else to say. he was hunched over his desk, too focused on the papers laid out in front of him to even spare you a glance or wonder why you were still there.
but he did wonder. your presence was making him anxious. suddenly he could hear so much — the tick tick tick of the clock, the creaking of the floorboards as you shift your weight from one foot to the other, the rapid beating of his heart.
“captain?” you hesitated but spoke at last.
you continued. “may i ask you something?”
“go on.” he said, raising his head and finally looking at you.
your lips quivered, suddenly conscious now that his eyes were on you.
“i—i wanted to know if…” again, you hesitated.
“if?” he quirked an eyebrow, urging you to go on. he was growing impatient.
“if…” you licked your lips and continued. “…if i did something wrong? to you perhaps, or maybe as a magic knight?”
nozel shifted in his seat.
“why do you think that?”
it was now or never
“you seem to be cold and dismissive towards me which i noticed you are not with others. at first, i thought it was just the way that you are. i didn’t want to read too much into it but people have been telling me that they’ve noticed as well. and so, i wanted to ask if i’ve done anything to offend you…”
nozel was stunned. he wanted to tell you how he really felt about you, and all the love he has for you—the love he wanted to give you.
but he couldn’t.
“no, you’ve done nothing wrong, y/n. as for you performance as a magic knight, you’re at par with your peers.” he gave you a quick, stiff smile. “you may leave if you have no other concerns,”
you were in disbelief. you anticipated this but somehow, it hurt you.
but why are you hurt? where is it coming from? you don’t really know.
nozel heard the forceful shutting of the door. he sighed and rubbed his face in frustration. he wanted to scream. after a few moments, he rested his head on the desk and thought, it’s for the best, it’s for the best.
fuegoleon has been infatuated with you for quite some time now. from looking for you in a crowded room to his gaze steadily fixated on you when you were close by, he was absolutely smitten. he was pretty in denial at first; those seemingly harmless glances of his became lengthy stares, long enough for some people to notice his little crush on you.
“oh? what’s this?” mereoleona blocked his view and smirked.
fuegoleon was startled as he was quite engrossed with what he was doing.
“what’s what?” he cleared his throat and composed himself.
“oh don’t play dumb with me, fuegoleon.”
fuegoleon scratched his head. he was about to explode from embarrassment and wished mereoleona would just let it go. much to his dismay, she kept going.
“what’s with the hesitation? you’ve never had problems with romantic interests before,”
“i’m not hesitating,” (lie) “i find them charming but i do not wish to pursue them,” (also a lie)
mereoleona quirked an eyebrow. of course she can see right through his brother
“no romance has ever blossomed with just admiration from afar. you-” mereoleona forcefully poked his brother in the chest. “-need to get your ass over there and start getting to know them like any normal person would! you aren’t a coward, are you now?”
“r-right. i should do that,”
but fuegoleon could not move. his palms were starting to sweat and he could feel every beat of his heart. he felt as if he was going to pass out any moment.
mereoleona groaned. his brother was having a textbook petty school crush and she’s obliged to deal with it.
“for fucks sake, you’re a grown man! a little embarrassment will not kill you. now, go!”
mereoleona pushed his brother forward. fuegoleon relented and started to waddle towards you. at the last minute he wanted to take a detour maybe go to the loo to give himself a pep talk or jump from the balcony and cower amongst the bushes beneath.
as he got closer to where you stood, your gaze shifted from the person you were happily chatting with to him. when you and him made eye contact, your features visibly brightened.
this is the point where fuegoleon started to panic.
you were just about to open your mouth to greet him but he took a sharp turn and headed towards the balcony. what was that all about?
“oh…” you mumbled, partly confused, partly disappointed.
“what’s wrong?” your friend had said.
“captain fuegoleon avoiding me again for whatever reason.” you sighed. “i’ve done nothing to him as far as i could recall,”
“that’s strange,”
you nodded. “indeed.”
“maybe he likes you!”
you scoffed. “yeah right,”
outside stood fuegoleon, his hands gripping the railing so tight his knuckles turned white. he took deep breaths to ground himself but it was no use. even after a few internal monologues, he still felt unsure.
he craned his neck to take a look at you only to find you exiting the room from the other end, saying your goodbyes to the people around you.
it was too late.
perhaps he was a coward after all.
“captain william? are you listening?”
william snapped out of his thoughts and zoned back into what was an important squad meeting. langris had been reporting for the last 15 minutes but due to a lack of response from the captain he decided to call his attention. now all eyes are on him.
“5th of the month,” david whispered. “he has spaced out in every meeting since the start of the month which is so unlike him. i wonder why.”
“shush!” letoile whispered back and flicked him in the forehead.
david was right: william was not himself. it was quite unusual for him to lose focus during important squad meetings. he tried to ground himself, staring at langis as he spoke, mincing his words so he could digest them better. but he couldn’t bring himself to be present at the moment, no. his thoughts, his damned thoughts, would only circle back to you.
“apologies, langris. i’ve been preoccupied by personal matters. go on, you have my undivided attention now.”
while he did survive that meeting, most of the golden dawn members noticed a big shift in him. it didn’t take long for people to start talking though william didn’t pay them any mind.
“everyone’s saying that you’re in love,” the wizard king said. william knew better than to lie. julius, who spent his free time wandering about, knew everything.
william chuckled. “so i’ve heard,”
julius pouted. he was not getting the reaction he intended to get.
“y/n.” julius whispered.
“huh?”
julius caught a glint of recognition in william’s eyes and smirked. he was caught off guard for sure.
“that’s their name, right? y/n?”
beads of sweat had formed on his forehead. his ears turned red at the mention of your name. he quickly averted his gaze and steadied himself.
julius laughed heartily and patted william on the back. “you my friend are definitely in love.”
“give them flowers. i heard sunflowers are their favorite.” julius said as he bid william farewell.
so he gave you sunflowers.
every week sunflowers would appear at your doorstep — bright yellow flowers humbly wrapped in sheets of kraft paper that sometimes came with a note.
“a secret admirer. how romantic!” your friend had teased. “who do you think they’re from?”
you shook your head. “no idea. i couldn’t recognize the handwriting either.”
then you smiled softly. “but the gesture was nice and they made me happy so it doesn’t really matter.”
unbeknownst to you, this admirer of yours had been watching you from a safe distance, his heart thumping as you carefully picked up his little gift and cradled it in your arms. he saw that you were happy, and that was enough for him.
“don’t you feel a little weirded out with yourself? you almost seem like a stalker to me,” julius once said as he sat beside william.
he chuckled. “i could say the same to you, lurking around disguising yourself while being up on other people’s business.”
“hey! thats not—” julius groaned. “what i meant to say was why don’t you go over there and say hi? what could possibly go wrong?”
a lot of things, william thought.
he dreamt of you day and night; he dreamt of touching you, holding you, being with you. but he couldn’t make this a reality for himself. the fear of rejection ran deep in his veins.
“perhaps some other time,” william pursed his lips and stood, no longer wanting to be part of this conversation.
“eh? you’re captain of THE golden dawn, what’s stopping you?” the wizard king was genuinely confused
william sighed and pointed at his mask. julius’s features softened; he finally understood.
“i have places to be, i’m sure you do too. i’ll see you around, julius.”
he bid the wizard farewell and walked away, feeling his heart shattering into tiny pieces.
I am curled in a fetal position, still wearing the clothes from last night. They smell faintly of smoke, cheap alcohol, and his fiancée’s cloying perfume. It’s a bitter scent.
I remember the cool, grounding weight of Shoto’s arm around my waist, the quiet promise of safety in his presence. I remember the way he didn’t ask questions, the way he just took care of me.
But mostly, I remember the ring. And the word.
Fiancée.
A single, elegant word that serves as the final, official obituary for all the years I gave.
The world owes me nothing, I know that. But Katsuki Bakugo owed me something. He owed me the memory of a love that reshaped his entire being. He owed me the recognition of the woman who held his broken pieces until they fused into something whole.
And now, even that sliver of hope — the fragile, illogical thread I clung to that one day his memory would return — has been cut. He is building a future on the hollow ground of my past.
I whisper the truth into the damp cotton of my pillow, the sound swallowed by the oppressive silence of my room:
I am not just the woman he forgot. I am the woman he had to forget to finally become the man she could choose.
Now, I am left with only the artifacts of a life that never was: the phantom weight of a ring that was never placed on my finger, the bitter taste of promises that belonged to a man who no longer exists.
I have to move on. I have to accept the world’s cruel irony.
But a tiny, pathetic ember still glows in the ruins of my heart. It is the hope that one day, years from now, when he is settled into his beautiful, easy life, a scent will cross his path — perhaps the familiar trace of my hero suit’s custom detergent, or a specific brand of coffee I always made — and that the memory will break through.
I hope that, just once, the real Katsuki Bakugo — the one who learned how to be vulnerable beneath my touch — will look at his perfect fiancée and wonder, just for a moment, why his chest aches for a girl he doesn't know.
I hope that one day, he will turn his crimson eyes to me across a crowded room — years after I’ve moved on, years after the pain has scabbed over —and he will see not a drunk, shouting stranger, but the essential anchor, the constant, the beginning of everything good in his life.
I hope he sees me again.
Until then, I will be out here, in a world I helped him save, learning how to be a hero when the greatest battle was already lost.
──── ୨୧ ────
Thirty days.
Seven hundred and twenty hours since the wrought iron gate clicked shut. Since the ring flashed under the porch light. Since Shoto Todoroki walked you away from the wreckage of your own heart.
They say it takes twenty-one days to form a habit. You’ve spent thirty trying to break the habit of loving him.
You aren’t cured. You aren't "over it." But you are functioning.
The first week was a chemical haze of painkillers and sleep aids. The second was the purge.
“I hate this apartment,” you confessed to Mina, your voice raspy from disuse. “Every corner smells like him.”
“Then we fix it,” she declared, summoning an army.
Mina, Hagakure, Yaoyorazu, Ochaco, Tsuyu, and Jirou descended on your life like a perfectly orchestrated hero operation. They didn’t mention his name. They didn’t need to. They understood the assignment: Erase the Anchor.
They packed up the double-sized agency planning whiteboard where his spiky, aggressive handwriting had scrawled "Dynamight & (Your Hero Name) — BEST FUCKING AGENCY, ZERO COLLATERAL.” They painted over the wall where he’d accidentally scorched the drywall while arguing with you about microwave etiquette. They replaced the ancient, hideous couch he’d insisted on keeping.
Ochaco meticulously scrubbed his favorite mug, the one shaped like a grenade, and placed it in a box labeled "DONATE."
“You’re getting a new life,” Jirou said simply, plugging her headphones into your speakers and blasting something loud and distracting. “The one you were always going to have, just… without the noise.”
They didn't try to fill the void. They taught you how to live comfortably with the space.
──── ୨୧ ────
Slowly, through the haze of grief, you began to find the outline of yourself again.
You started thinking about the man he was, not the stranger he had become. The old Katsuki — the one who remembered you, the one who fought for you — would have hated seeing you like this. He would have clicked his tongue, scowled, and told you to stop being an extra in your own life.
“If you’re gonna cry, do it while you win,” he used to say.
So, you chose yourself. Because he wasn't there to choose you anymore.
But the days were manageable; it was the nights that were the enemy. The nights were when the silence got loud. You’d roll over and your hand would hit the cold expanse of the sheet where his warmth used to radiate like a furnace. You’d wake up reaching for a shoulder that wasn’t there.
And then there was his mother.
The doorbell rang two weeks in. You almost didn’t answer, but the aggressive pounding was familiar.
Mitsuki Bakugo stood there, holding three containers of spicy curry. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but her jaw was set.
"I didn't cook this for him," she said, her voice gruff as she shoved the containers into your hands. "I cooked it for you. You look too thin."
She came in, and for the first time, the loud, boisterous woman was quiet. She looked around your apartment, seeing the lack of his boots by the door, the lack of his presence.
"I tried to talk to him," she admitted later, sitting at your kitchen island while you ate the curry that tasted painfully like home. "I told him he was making a mistake. I told him he was throwing away the best thing that ever happened to him for some... some shiny new toy who likes the fame more than the man."
She sighed, rubbing her temples. "He doesn't remember, kid. And he's stubborn. He thinks I'm just being controlling. He thinks..." She trailed off, her voice cracking. "I'm sorry. I raised a hero, but I forgot to teach him how to remember."
"It's not your fault, Mitsuki," you whispered.
"I know," she sniffed, standing up abruptly. "Anyway. I'm not gonna bother you with him. But you... you're still family. Even if that idiot is too blind to see it."
She became a regular fixture, bringing food and fresh laundry, ensuring you survived.
And then there were the flowers.
Every Tuesday, a delivery arrived at your door. Simple, elegant arrangements. White camellias. Blue hydrangeas. Nothing romantic, nothing that screamed "date me." Just... presence.
The card was always the same.
I’m here. — S.
Shoto didn't push. He didn't try to fill the space Katsuki left. He just stood at the perimeter of your life, a silent sentinel, reminding you that you weren't invisible. That someone saw you.
It gave you the strength to do the hardest thing yet.
You walked into the leasing office downtown. The paperwork for the agency was on the desk.
Dynamight & (Your Hero Name) Agency.
You stared at the header for a long time. The dream you had built together. The floor plan included two offices, side by side. A shared gym. A balcony where he promised he’d grill on Fridays.
You picked up the pen.
And you crossed his name out.
"Just me," you told the leasing agent, your voice steady despite the tremor in your hand. "I'll be opening the agency alone."
You were doing it. You were moving forward. You were breathing without the assistance of his memory.
But the universe has a cruel sense of humor.
The call came in at 04:00 AM.
It wasn't a local dispatch. It was a priority summon from the World Heroes Association. A massive, coordinated raid on a villain stronghold involving an international trafficking ring. Target location: Italy.
They needed heavy hitters. They needed widespread quirk coverage. They needed you.
You packed your gear in a trance, the muscle memory of being a hero taking over where your heart failed. You zipped up your hero suit — the one he helped design to withstand high impact, checking the reinforced seams with trembling fingers — and looked in the mirror.
You looked strong. You looked ready. You looked like a woman who hadn't spent the last month crying on her bathroom floor.
You didn't check the mission roster. You didn't want to know who else was deployed. You just needed to work.
Two hours later, you are strapped into a seat on a massive, long-haul military transport jet. The interior is dim, lit only by low-level blue safety lights. The air is cold, recycled, and smells of jet fuel and sterile upholstery.
You stare at the headrest in front of you, focusing on your breathing. In. Out. Just a mission. Just a job.
Steps echo down the aisle as the last few heroes board. You keep your eyes forward, shrinking into your seat, hoping to remain invisible until you land in Europe.
And then, the air shifts.
It isn’t a sound that alerts you. It is a scent.
A sharp, distinct mixture of burnt sugar, nitroglycerin, and expensive, spicy cologne. It washes over you like a physical wave, stealing the oxygen from your lungs. It is the scent of mornings in your kitchen. It is the scent of the pillow you haven't been able to wash.
Your heart gives a painful, treacherous thud against your ribs — a traitor in your own chest.
Against your better judgment, you turn your head.
You look behind you to see who owns the smell, though you already know.
And you are right.
Katsuki Bakugo is walking down the aisle, his gear bag slung effortlessly over one shoulder. He doesn't look at you. His gaze is fixed straight ahead, his jaw set in that familiar, stony line. He looks exactly the same as he did that night on the porch, and yet, he looks like a complete stranger.
He passes your row without breaking stride. He moves to the back of the plane, finding an empty row far away from everyone else. He drops his bag, sits down, and immediately leans his head against the reinforced window, crossing his arms over his chest. Closing his eyes.
He looks peaceful. He looks unbothered.
You whip your head back around, facing forward, your knuckles turning white as you grip the armrests.
You thought you could manage this. You thought thirty days of silence, thirty days of rebuilding, thirty days of tearing him out of your life would be enough armor to withstand seeing him again.
But it still stings. It burns worse than fire.
The proximity is suffocating. Knowing he is breathing the same recycled air, just thirty feet behind you —alive, whole, and completely belonging to someone else — breaks the scab right off the wound.
You turn your face toward your own window, staring out at the grey, pre-dawn runway. You bite the inside of your cheek, willing the emotions to recede. Don't cry, you order yourself. Not here. Not where he can see.
But you can't stop it.
A single, hot tear spills over, tracking a slow, humiliating line down your cheek.
You raise your hand to brush it away, to hide the evidence, but another hand beats you to it.
Cool, gentle fingers graze your cheekbone, catching the tear before it can fall further. The touch is grounding, solid, and safe.
You freeze, turning your head slightly.
Shoto is there.
He doesn't say a word. He doesn't look back at the blonde man in the rear of the plane. He just looks at you, his eyes filled with a quiet, steady understanding.
He lowers his hand and silently takes the empty seat beside you.
As the engines roar to life and the plane begins to taxi, pushing you back against the seat, Shoto shifts slightly so his arm is pressing firmly against yours. A silent anchor.
He is here.
And as you lift off toward Italy, leaving the ground behind, you realize that while you are flying into a war zone with the man who broke you, you are not flying alone.
──── ୨୧ ────
a/n: hiii 💗 thank u SO MUCH for waiting for part 3!! ✨and YES, before anybody throws tomatoes at me — there will absolutely be a part 4.
also if you need emotional support or a palate cleanser after this heartbreak buffet, my wattpad fic “trust no hero” is waiting for u!! it’s got fluff, romcom energy, k-drama moments, all the serotonin ur poor heart deserves 😭💗✨
thank u for the love & the messages… see u in part 4 🫶
A/N: hii :p it’s my very first fic! hope you like it babes. if you have any recommendations, let me know :3 mwah mwah -> m.ist
sequel here
Your eyes are still puffy from all the crying. You turn softly and glance at your clock. 11:27. You look over to the other side of the bed, only to be greeted by cold, untouched sheets. Your husband, the strongest, Satoru Gojo, isn’t here, even though he promised he would be.
You lie back on your side of the bed, staring at the ceiling of your shared, luxurious bedroom, a room that holds no sweet memories anymore. You both married out of love. That’s what you know. That’s what you feel. He loves you… right?
Then why does he always keep his Infinity around you?
You try to push the thoughts away. He’s probably busy, you tell yourself. He is the strongest, after all. Someone has to protect the civilians and who are you to judge, when all you do is sit at home, waiting prettily for your loving husband to come back to you?Your throat feels dry from all the crying, and suddenly the truth hits you.
Your husband, Satoru Gojo, is cheating on you. With her, his coworker.
The one who always needs his help, because she’s still new in the jujutsu world. Because he doesn’t want her to turn out like his best friend, Suguru. Because he cares about her. Because he truly sees her. Did he ever see you? Who the hell are you to him, anyway?
You stand up, unable to bear the pain of these thoughts any longer. The mansion feels haunted, not like a home. You pour yourself a glass of water, trying to calm your shaking hands. You tell yourself you’ll sleep again, like you always do. Drown your sorrows quietly, like always.
But the looks… those pitying looks from his coworkers when you bring him the lunch he forgot. When you hug him. When you talk to him. When you kiss him.
Did he even want to be kissed by you?
Did he even want to be loved by you?
You sit at the dining table and take out your favorite ice cream, but it tastes like sand, bland and lifeless. You remember it so clearly: the day you brought him his favorite strawberry mochis, only to see him hugging her, with his Infinity off. It felt like a knife stabbing straight through your fragile heart.
You stare at your ring finger. The rosy-gold, expensive ring gleams in the dim light yet it feels worthless without love, without devotion, without memories. You started neglecting your medicine. Your health. You went out less and less, avoiding the public eye, avoiding the whispers about how you’re still with a cheater.
Then it all hits you at once the hate, the disappointment, the suffocating pain. Couldn’t you have been better? Prettier? Smarter?If you were him… you wouldn’t choose yourself either.
So, the best thing you can do for him — your final act of love — is to let go. You rise slowly, almost hypnotized, and grab your medicine. Your eyes fall on your phone, still showing your last delivered message:
Happy 2-year anniversary, Toru. I got cake and some drinks. Maybe we can do a movie marathon? Stay safe.
You smile softly. Almost… relieved. You take nearly all the pills and swallow them. Then you wander back to your shared bedroom. The room feels warmer now safer, somehow. Your eyelids grow heavy as you hum a soft tune.
You look at your ring finger one last time and smile the cutest, most peaceful smile you’ve ever made.
DIRECTORY: (Platonic! Yandere Greek Gods x Neglected! GN Reader x Romantic + Platonic! Yandere Warriors)
Read until the end for an author's note.
"You have a face not even a mother could love..."
Intangible, wisp-like fingers interlace with the smooth strands of its baby hairs. She almost, just almost rips it off, wishes so badly that she would.
That she could.
But the little babe nestled into her shaky, cradled arms, gave her closed-eyed laugh showing off its gummy teeth, and she could only resist the temptations — to climb at the highest peak of the mountains, beg to your father, Zeus, the king almighty, that she'd do anything to take you to Olympus, just to simply throw your body down the heavens, feed you to the raging storms, or into the hands of the merciless seas, and into the arms of unruly death— yet could only sigh and look away, cold apathy, an immeasurable disgust smeared all over her pretty face.
At this mistake, at this... monstrosity.
At the product of a one-night endeavor.
The blades of grass running along her legs felt like actual knives cutting past her shiny skin, her airy feet planted against the damp soil a creeping sensation up her legs, from her soles, ankles, then all the way to her calves. Like the monstrous phalanges of the God who'd creep his palms up the fabrics of her shawls, tempted her to a night of pleasure ravaging her body.
Like Mother Earth wanted to devour her whole for her unmistakable sin.
She wishes it would— if it meant she'd be separated from this pest.
Motherhood was never her call in life.
"— You look just like your father," she sneered under her breath, biting back the venom from her words; any more insults, any more of her woes uttered from her sinful mouth, and the skies would rule it out as blasphemy.
She would be smited, eviscerated by the Lord above, but not alone.
The vermin in her arms would accompany her sooner or later into the walkway of death, and she'd rather this thing suffers in life before it could be granted the mercy of death.
Because even in the afterlife, her mistakes will shadow over her.
"Disgusting." Is all she could say, all she could do, as her ultimate curse was to bear the world this unwanted Deity of the Imperceptible.
An insignificant little thing this was. The babe in her arms, draped in tufts of hair like the clouds the Almighty Zeus sits upon.
A Demigod of the Imperceptible. Only the ruler of the inconceivable things: The ruler of the little wisps of air clinging onto a soldier's hair in a bloody battle, the whispers of the dandelion seeds sweeping around a field, the gentle warmth from the cinders of a crackling hearth— only loved by those who cling to life and live it with meaning.
Something so human. Something she is not. Something she does not want to be. Something she was demoted to be by the Goddess Hera as punishment for her bedding the Queen's husband.
What once was a beautiful water nymph residing in the oak logs of willow trees— the glowing sheen dancing across the strands of her hair was gone, her bedazzled eyes now a dull color barely reflecting the light of the sun, and her skin, oh her skin, now barely soft and silky; imperfect, like that of a human's.
How hideous. How terrible. How this child brings misfortune upon her.
Looking down at its Godly presence emanating off of its body, as if it drained her magnificence, turned her mortal from when it was all but a fetus inside her womb.
She hates it.
She hates you.
When your chubby little fingers reach up to grip on your mother's now fragile hair, she clenches her teeth and snatches your frail limbs away, almost tithering on the temptation to crush your tiny bones, uncaring for the cries it produces, echoing across the empty, green fields.
And tears flowed down her sunken cheeks, it was the only reminiscent thing of her past: The water sloshing from inside her human body, and she sobs a little more at the remainder of her past glory.
"You..." Her voice cracked, crushing your tiny palms into her splintering ones, her dull eyes bursting into flames of hatred. "You ruined me, child. You destroyed everything I was... I hate you."
When your cries begin to permute into larger decibels, she only sneers, only stomps her bare feet into the ground, as if tempting the Earth to swallow her whole if it was merciful enough to spare you the punishment.
"Hate. You will receive nothing from me but hate...
"From now on, until my death. You hear me, my child? I will make you wish you were never born into this world."
Just like that, when the thunder stroked just barely within her perimeter, she stops her cruel tugging, stumbles in her shaky steps until her back hits the trunk of the willow tree, her old home, and stares blakly with abject coldness, on the withering patch of grass now ash and cinder, ignoring of the cries of the toddler in her slipping arms.
Her hold tightens, just barely, enough to keep your body at bay, from falling into the soil, just enough so that it wouldn't anger the King above into harming her any further. She leans her head against the bark of the wood, cradles your body mechanically, and releases an empty sigh, staring up at the heavens, cursing Him inside the caverns of her plotting mind.
Under her breath, she dully utters:
"Next time... You won't be saved the next time."
And somehow, this was the most mercy your father has given your unfortunate soul.
Somehow, this was the only mercy you'll ever receive in the years of your miserable, immortal life— as this was only the start of the sweltering pain you would soon be put through.
reblogs and interactions are encouraged and appreciated.
a/n: very short prologue, i know. but chapter 1 is already very long and this is just the beginning of something sinister for the mc's mom as an introduction. also, unlike a&a., all my other chapters for other series' will be a tad bit shorter, but that's because that series is my main project so... yeah. this is something. don't forget to comment or send in a message in my inbox idk 😭
pairing: arrangedhusbandclanleader!satoru x arrangedwife!reader
trope: slow burn but they never burn + "please don't leave me" + death of a spouse
one month of loving satoru gojo, and one month of satoru gojo loving you. except the shifts of time and space never truly lined up, and eventually he learned the price of perfection—albeit far too late. if only he had realized earlier that the only way he should’ve regarded you was with pure, blindfolded devotion…
wc: 8.6k
cw:
↪ angst warnings: satoru is genuinely an asshole in this oml, whoever said playing nonchalant was hot? slimed. miscarriage -> major character death (guess who!)
↪ smut warnings: consummation of the wedding (he takes his stress out on you), fingering, unprotected piv, breeding (no like deadass they're pushing for an heir) it's a magical experience for the two of you but he ruins it cause he's a loser leads to -> pussydrunk satoru, and i mean he is WHIPPED, 2x oral (f. receiving)
jj's a/n: this is for my darling @sweethearticism's 13k followers event!! sweetheart's brutal bakery is looking to be delicious i am so ready for all of these (so ready to cry ngh) this is revenge for all the times you made me cry with your writing eden, and don't worry, i'll get more personal revenge later... wink. i can't find the fanart creds so if someone does, pls lmk!! other images are from pinterest and dividers are by me!
also. this is MY TAKE on satoru being your arranged husband!! i believe that satoru doesn’t like being told what to do and just pretends to under the guise of “actually following along” while secretly having another agenda. but i also feel that if he was meant to marry a woman that he did not know, he’d be mad because it’s another choice being taken away from him. but because he is quite literally a mirror who deflects instead of hitting things head on anymore, he takes that out on reader. so if anyone comes at me for mischaracterization (anons in my inbox if you were curious), just know that i 1) don’t give a shit and 2) i am the biggest mischaracterizer and i’ll make it make sense to the world. if not, just my little group here on tumblr <3
mita's a/n: i have further decided that i shall stake a claim on the fanfiction that i helped write, so now i will make an appearance! this was such fun to write. i hope you like reading it as much as we (yes, we, even if jj will not admit it) liked writing it! xoxo
find the rest of my works here!!
You’re seated at the dinner table, waiting for your husband and the elders of the gilded Gojo clan to arrive. Your own family was forgotten the moment you signed yourself over to his family, a single scrawl of ink dictating that you were forever his, in sickness and health.
Wed to man that you hadn’t even seen, since the Gojo clan elders demanded, in the name of tradition, that you wore the blindfold during the ceremony. A lady scoffed that it was proof of your surrender to him.
You tell yourself that what you’re doing is surrendering to duty, truly.
But your sudden compliance when the same voice placed in front of you as you shared sake that tasted like coiled, bitter poison on the way down, is a stark contradiction to that.
You think, Maybe I can get a look now.
When you try and twist to catch a glance of the man you’re meant to spend the rest of your life with, but before you can turn fully, his hands ground your chin back in the direction of the empty chair across the table.
A battlefield of food stretches between the two of you, and yet you’re still plagued with the struggles in your own heart between duty and love.
Something like the very emotion bleeds through the slender fingers that tie a blindfold around your eyes. You’re left with only the sensations of your touch and the echoes of light and dark shadows across the folds of your shifting blindfold. Not even allowed to know what your husband, the man you are wed to looks like.
“Trust me,” he sneers, all too clear in just his voice, devoid of empathy and instead dripping with a poisonous replacement—something like malice, “that’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
The weighted silk on your eyes feels less like trust and more like a leash.
When the elders arrive for dinner and ask why you’re both wearing blindfolds, Satoru replies that they were the ones that said it was a sign of submission. And because feeling around for your fork garners murmurs from the elders, you give up on picking at your food.
Half-way through quiet bites and small talk, someone clears their throat.
“So, Gojo-sama, in regards to consummating the marriage—”
“Don’t worry. It will be done,” he cuts in.
There was a moment of silence before the voice continues, “And the lady?”
“The lady answers to me,” Satoru answers dismissively before you can even answer. Your lips purse at his abrasiveness, sparking rage that only simmers under your skin.
After dinner, after the elders have left, you’re still hungry, because you haven’t eaten. But before you can feel around for a fork, servants crowd around you, and the table is suddenly spotless.
From the shifting light, you think that Satoru is still there. But he makes no movement otherwise, at moments completely still, like a smudge of color against silk.
“Satoru—” you attempt, only to be disrupted.
“You will address me as Gojo-sama.” His tone leaves no room to argue.
Your eyes narrow behind the safety of the silk. “Okay, Gojo-sama—”
“And you will not speak in my presence, wife.”
There’s a sound like the sliding of chair legs against protesting wooden floors, and ensuing footsteps that make it feel like he’s gotten up and left the room. When your pricked ears can no longer pick up the patter of his footsteps, you curl your fingers around the blindfold.
Wondering how your husband can anger you this much, you rip it off.
The lights are a welcome crest of reality laving over your eyes.
Satoru Gojo, clan head of the Gojo clan, renowned for his cursed technique and incredible prowess, is cold and cruel, even in the shadow that he leaves behind. The colorless ghost looms over you, dwarfing your insignificant, cowering form.
You start questioning your worth.
Does he need a wife?
Does he need me?
Does he even like me?
A servant loops her arm through yours and walks you through the estate halls. Even when he’s not around, Satoru’s presence is constant in his phantom footsteps echoing behind you.
You don’t know how marriage is supposed to work. Maybe there was a few days where the husband and wife slept apart before consummating the marriage.
Whatever that meant. You attempt to ask the servants, but they turn a furious shade of carmine, duck their heads with an apology, and scurry away like fearful mice. Like just the thought of whatever the two of you were meant to do was too scandalous for their minds.
After a few days, you stay up an entire night for him to show up, to knock at your door. You tell yourself it’s duty, but deep down, nestled somewhere between your soul and heart, you’re waiting for him to prove that he might care for you—this woman he’s supposed to call his wife for the rest of his life.
The stars laugh at you silently in sparks of light that lull you to sleep, disappointment blooming under your cooling blood. You don’t know that when you’ve finally fallen asleep, tired of waiting for someone that you’re quite aware won’t come, that he appears in the doorway, hesitating before sliding the door open.
Satoru Gojo never hesitates. He makes split second decisions with the information provided to him by his Six Eyes, but his heart and soul are telling him different things.
It’s harder, still, when the moon paints your face in such a way that he can’t tell what emotion is prying at his chest and clawing at something deep inside the cavity.
If anything, Satoru isn’t equipped to deal with emotions. What he doesn’t realize is that he’s terrified of breaking something so fragile. Fear wasn’t an emotion, just a reaction that those weak to threats offered to a higher power.
And so almost entirely subconsciously, he pushes away from the threat.
A week after you’ve gathered your emotions enough to face your husband, you ask to see him. The man you’re speaking to furrows his brows, knitted together in disarray as he shakes his head. You’re told that you’re not allowed to see him, let alone request to see him.
You had thought marriage was a castle crafted with tall spires tossing flowers to the wind built on a strong basis of love, so why is hurt knocking the supports down?
You’re hidden away in one of the wings of the estate, a place where a bird soars to fly into the sky, except you’ve been tethered to the ground away from the rest of the family. You keep asking to see him, regardless, keep asking when he will return from missions.
Just as the loneliness threatens to drag you under, you’re informed that a clan meeting is coming up. You’re meant to make an appearance as the new wife of the clan leader, but you don’t feel pretty in the mirror, even if you look the part.
The robe is silken and falls around you like a waterfall of silver flickering between your favorite color. Are you allowed to have a favorite color anymore? Did Satoru send you this tailored robe knowingly, because he knows your favorite color?
Inside, you feel broken,like he’s punched a fragile mirror to shards inside your body, and now glass was pricking at your limbs every time you moved. Except with the realization that he might actually care, your heart reaches down and pricks itself trying to mend the mirror.
The afterthought of blood blooms across your face as the door slides open. You lift your gaze to meet one that has been clinging to you like a shroud. You don’t know her name, the servant’s, but she presses her forehead to yours without a word.
Her smile is the only source of outright compassion you’ve gotten since coming here. It’s also the only reason you have a smile on your face as you trudge to the meeting room.
In the minutes you spare before it starts, you’re seated next to your husband at a table that makes it feel like doom himself is crawling from the fine cracks. You smile, regardless of the distance that separates you two and satisfies the elders, because the girl has lifted your spirits.
“Who were you with?” Satoru’s voice is strained past a smile. You glance up at him, at the slant of his jaw, at the quiet anger pressed into the corner of his lips. He’s got a blindfold on, but his gaze is unwavering as he stares ahead, like he can still see.
“Who was I… what?” you echo, albeit quietly. The room spurs on.
“I can sense cursed energy on you,” he sneers, “so don’t bother lying to me.”
You blink up at him. “I was talking to a servant.”
“Why did she touch you?”
“She was doing my hair.” The lie slips out like lush velvet, leaving your throat dry.
Satoru stills, the movement of his jaw working around words ceasing. When he speaks again, his tone has shifted, dropped lower to a cutting edge.
“You can do your own hair. From now on, nobody touches you but me. Understood?”
With the knife pressed against your straightening back, you force a smile. It doesn’t make much of a difference, even though this is the first time you’re actually seeing your husband, and this is what he tells you.
Even though you should be beyond ecstatic that this is the man you’re married to.
From his facial structure, you gauge that he is indeed handsome. But what good was beauty when one didn’t have the warmth needed to spark empathy at their fingertips?
Couples laugh and share food. The room feels more like a festival than the precursor to a clan meeting. After a few moments of watching a woman giggle at her husband, batting at him for trying to pick at her food, you reach for Satoru’s sleeve, hoping for some semblance of normalcy.
He pulls away almost immediately. Your smile slips off of your face.
“Don’t,” he says quietly, eyes trickling from you to the tables in front of him, “we’re not them.”
Satoru’s blindfolded gaze lingers on the couples, as if he can trail your gaze and genuinely wishes he can believe otherwise. Or maybe you’re the blind one.
When the meeting begins, it’s all information that will forever be irrelevant to you. All things that you will never ever care about, about a clan you will never care about, from people who will never care for you like family. Except for when your ears catch one particular question.
“So, how do you feel about married life, Gojo-sama?”
There’s a moment of silence. The world takes a breath.
Expectant ears are pricked, yours included.
“Feelings do not alter lineage,” Satoru says simply. “Marriage is an answer to a problem, and the problem isn’t worth more than that.”
Even though the clan offers a nearly identical, impressed reaction with no empathy to the woman seated next to their beloved clan leader, you’re not as hurt as you thought you would be by hearing it. Your smile had pursed quite a while ago.
But even so, when the meeting ends and you’re meant to part ways in the night, you stand in front of him, blocking the doorway to the diverging paths of the estate.
You had thought it would be different. Somewhere between your confusion and anger, you find the courage to meet his eyes, glowing faintly like a threat behind flimsy fabric.
“Do we sleep apart?” you ask.
Satoru lifts his head, looking somewhere over your head. “Yes.”
“But I thought married couples—”
“You thought wrong. Goodnight.” Without another spared glance, Satoru brushes past you, but the questions are already slipping past your lips as you grasp at his sleeve, stunning him into stilling because when was the last time someone talked back to Satoru Gojo?
You don’t know. All you know is that you want some answers.
“Then why did you marry me?” Your voice wavers.
His own is steady, far too steady for the ground crumbling beneath your feet. “I didn’t marry you for love. I married you because I require an heir that can see what I see. That’s the point. You’re here to ensure continuity, nothing more.”
His admission sinks in as quick, sharp jabs. Satoru may as well have just slapped you, even though it’s a silent truth you’ve been denying this entire time. All you are is a pristine lineage plan wrapped in flawed human skin.
“Will you not even sleep in the same room as me?” you reason, willing your voice not to crack.
Satoru stands still in the doorway at your question, glancing over his shoulder. But he’s not looking at you, not really. Not when he’d rather be blind than truly see you for the first time.
“Don’t expect me to waste time proving I’m your husband.”
Even his absence feels heavier than his presence. The sound of his footsteps as he walked away to leave you at the crossroads of a loveless marriage are pounding in your ears as you lie awake in bed, unable to sleep with the only answer you know to ring true.
Clear and concise—Satoru Gojo doesn’t know love. Not in the slightest.
“If you can’t walk blind, you’ll never survive here,” someone muses as you walk past. Apparently in just three weeks, the marriage, or lack thereof, has taken a toll on you not just mentally, but also physically.
The elders scorn you, even though you should be the one scorning them for putting you in this pitiful situation. And your husband is there to hear their every murmur, now adorning the blindfold in light of your silent refusal to,since it happens to be the only rebellion you can orchestrate with no consequences.
His silence to their mockery feels rehearsed, like he’s practiced being cruel. He doesn’t say anything against the elder. You trail off to the dining room like a vengeful spirit.
Except revenge isn’t on your mind—just slow, painful ache.
You smile when your favorite female servant informs you that Satoru has left on a mission. It’s not because of what she tells you, but of the smile on her own face as she does. She then assures you that he was always quick with his missions, and tentatively suggests that you wait for him.
So because it’s your duty to play the dutiful wife, you sit outside, waiting for him. You tell yourself it’s just for that, but something in your chest argues that maybe he’ll be in a better mood after ripping curses apart without breaking a sweat.
Maybe then, his anger won’t be harnessed in a cold, cruel blade, tipped in poisonous words grazing just shy of your neck. Rain threads your hair. When you shake it out, the water drips away, but the cold stays.
When he finally arrives, not ten minutes later, you’re unsurprised to see that an iridescent second skin is rolling above the first as no rain nettles his body. What brings surprise is that Satoru sees you sitting outside, acknowledges you with the slight flare in his Infinity.
You smile even though it’s too cold to smile. Even though your lips want to restrain their breaths as your eyes glance up to the dry jacket fluttering around his shoulders. But beyond the flare, he doesn’t even spare you a direct look.
Satoru just says, “Next time, don’t bother waiting.”
Duty still calls, though. Some warm tea was sure to melt his facade, right? Just like your mother taught you to make it, except you get carried away in thoughts of her, your family, and their well-being.
You practice smiling in shiny reflection of polished kettle, stretching your lips thin over teeth that stay tucked behind them, except for when you try fruitlessly to elicit a charming grin from your husband. Husband. Steam blurs your mouth into something kinder than the truth.
Who are you kidding? You didn’t marry for love—you married for stability. For the guarantee that even if you weren’t, your family would be in a better place. Was the money your body was worth enough to give them a happy life? Did you do the responsible thing and sacrifice yourself so that your clan need not suffer like you?
But if you’re fighting for your family, who’s fighting for you?
A porcelain cup slips from your hands, shattering on the ground. Absently, you kneel to pick at the pieces, cutting your finger. You shake your hand, wincing, embarrassed as your husband comes over to check on you.
To check on you. The realization has something blooming in your heart as an embarrassed smile flits across your face. Satoru crouches near you, breath nearly ghosting your skin. He picks up a shard, turning it in his fingers, except it can never really hurt him.
It’s impossible to hurt Satoru Gojo, but he’s perfectly able to hurt others with just the blunt edge of his words. How ironic.
“This is what you are. Fragile. Breakable.” Satoru stands. “And if you don’t do your job properly, easily replaceable.”
There’s a moment of stunned silence before you quietly ask, “Why?”
“Kindness makes you people expect things.” Satoru glances over his shoulder, eyes narrowed. “I don’t give what I can’t keep.”
The cuts on your fingers are nothing compared to the spear in your heart. Satoru keeps twisting it further and further with every day that passes. Maybe you were trying to impose a mirror of good on him when there was truly none left.
Maybe you had unwittingly married a heartless man.
The elders continue to press you about consummating the marriage. of course, over three weeks, they’ve been pestering Satoru about it, sure. But he rarely talks to you, let alone let himself stray near you, so you don’t know what they expect you to do about it.
Except it seems to snap on him one night, nearly a month into a fruitless marriage where you play the perfect wife in a life that feels more like something from a horror novel than a romance novel.
You’re waiting for dinner the night it happens. The night that thin thread strung from the tips of his frosted hair to his robes brushing the mats suddenly tears in half.
The antique bowl in front of you creates ghosts for a while, then stops. The rice cools in a slow surrender, building your straight spine, steam curling in your lungs, keeping your breaths small.
“He’s been delayed,” someone says to no one in particular, and the room agrees by pretending not to hear. But instead of lowering your head, you lift it, beckoning the woman at the edge of the room.
“Where is he?” you ask, soft.
“Gojo-sama is in a meeting,” she squeaks out.
“For what?”
“I… cannot say.”
“Hm.” The sound dies in your throat.
“My lady, I suggest—” The servant pauses, hesitant, glancing away. “He is not in a good mood. I would warn you to stay away, if I was in a place to.”
As if you didn’t do the same thing every night. But you smile your gratitude away in her flushed cheeks and glance back at the door.
You tell yourself you aren’t hungry, that your concern is heavier than appetite. If Satoru walked through the door right now and peeled the moon’s light off his shoulders, you would forget the bowl entirely and ask if the elders told him anything important, if the details of the meeting bit back, if his hands are warm.
If he needs you to warm his hands for him. Forget how irritated he is, maybe he just needs someone to talk to.
Satoru does not come.
But you have always been obedient, in a way, and patient enough to wait longer. Imagining his blindfold pushed up to his hair, a pink seam on his cheekbone from the knot entertains your mind. You imagine his mouth shaping your name and catching on the last syllable like a hook.
You fantasize too much.
Cold rice sits strangely on your tongue. Warm rice forgives a long day, but the bowl in front of you is unforgiving.
A shadow falls, and your heart jolts. But that presence behind you isn’t nearly as imposing as that of your husband’s.
“Pardon me, my lady,” the same servant whispers, hands hovering as she slides your bowl away and nestles a new one into its place.
You glance at the door.
“It’s fresh,” she says, “from the back pot. I’d thought…”
The heat climbs your bones. Your throat tightens on nothing. You manage a strangled thank you and lift your fork. The first mouthful burns enough to make your eyes prickle, searing your tongue like all the words you never found the courage to say.
You look at the door again and imagine him there, late, lips quirked in something mocking yet still everlasting. Something that could burn the walls and still give off no warmth. You swallow and find the lack of said warmth hurts worse than the cold ever could.
But with the way his icy blue eyes are boring with an almost feverish, heated gaze knocks the breath out of your lungs, coating the back of your throat in something like passion as he takes a step closer, blocking the exit to the dinner hall.
You lower your head, waiting for him to move, feeling the heat radiating off Satoru's muscular body as he looms over you, so close that if he wished, his weight could press against you.
“You’re coming with me tonight,” he says, too rough to be a request.
When the door slides shut behind him and you face him, confused, he looks softer, almost gentle in the dim light of his bedroom. But there’s a hunger driving his actions as he presses forward, your knees buckling as you back up against the frame of his bed.
“W-What are you—”
“Consummating this marriage,” he grumbles, offering nothing further as he sheds his clothing, yanking at the collar of his shirt, pants collapsing carelessly to the floor, “since they seem so keen to keep bringing it up.”
Consummate. Nothing flickers through your mind at the thought of it, mind going blank, but as much as a part of you fears it, another part of you aches for his touch, craving the slide of his skin against yours. Faux warmth still feels cold on your skin.
But even fake love is better than none at all, right?
When he reaches you, left in nothing but his boxers, Satoru leans forward, lips crashing against yours in a kiss that doesn’t bother with any tender warmth. His tongue pushes past your lips, a large hand roaming down your body.
It’s the first kiss you’ve gotten in the four months of meeting and marrying him. You nearly lose yourself in the glide of his lips against yours, letting yourself be pushed onto the sheets, back immediately arching off the bed as Satoru grinds his hips against yours.
Your husband smirks against your lips, hand gripping your thigh, hiking your leg up and around his hip as he rocks into you harder, your panties growing damper with every strategic shift.
His lips trail down your jaw, teeth scraping over your pulse point before he sucks at the skin, marks blossoming like flowers on over the stretch of skin that drew taut whenever you shot him a challenging glare.
Slender fingers slide under your skirt, fingers pushing your panties aside to stroke through your slick folds. Two fingers push inside of you without so much as a flicker of hesitation in his eyes, pumping in and out of your tight heat, curling to hit that spot that makes your toes curl.
His eyes remain fixed on yours, lashes damp with tears and curling into one another when he retracts. Almost immediately, you mourn the loss of his skin.
“Wait—”
“Relax,” he instructs as the fat head of his cock prods against your folds, smearing your arousal before he starts to push forward, stretching you upon painfully slow, “wife.”
A shudder snakes down your spine and pulls your stomach taut as he stills, eyes fluttering shut, lips pursed like he’s willing himself to stay silent beyond that.
A low groan still slips past his lips when he’s buried to the hilt inside of you, his pelvis flush against yours. Satoru stays still for a moment before starting to move, pulling out until only the tip of his cock remains inside before slamming back in.
The ornate headboard slams against the wall with each powerful thrust of his hips, his hand sliding under your leg to lift it higher, allowing him deeper access.
Satoru’s lips find yours again, kisses messy and barely enough to drown out his soft sighs. He swallows down your cries, drinking in your expression as something writhes in his chest, unfurling like a blossoming flower as your walls start to flutter around him like melting velvet.
The wet slap of skin on skin echoes through the room as his breath comes in harsh pants, each exhale accompanied with a roll of his hips.
“I'll get it done," he mutters, voice slurred , “even if I have to breed this pussy ‘til it takes."
The head of his cock kissing your cervix, his fingers sinking into the outer flesh of your hip as he hilts himself inside and holds himself there.
Satoru stays nestled inside of you as the last waves of his orgasm wash over him, ensuring that every last drop is sealed deep inside your gooey pussy. Only then does he pull out and roll onto his back, one arm thrown over his eyes as he catches his breath.
A smile curves his lips. In twenty-seven years of life, the static in Satoru’s mind has finally quieted at the thought of your shy smile, to which he cracks open his gaze to find that very smile gracing your face.
What is this feeling stirring in his chest whenever you smile like that, whether it’s to him or not? You’re just a stranger bound to him by the fickle whims of fate and the ruthless ambitions of his clan, right? So why does he feel like he would ruin and remake the world to see the curve of your lips everywhere?
He thinks he should break the silence.
So Satoru opens his mouth and says, “At least it’s over, right?”
Your smile slips right off of your face. You reach for the hem of your nightgown, tugging down until the planes of your body are hidden from him, but Satoru doesn’t know why you’re clambering from his bed so eagerly. “Wait—”
“If that’s all, then, I’ll take my leave.” Satoru sits up, confused even though you don’t wait for an answer. As soon as you’re dressed, the door slides open and you’re gone in a single breeze. Maybe if he had chased after you, things would have been different.
Maybe it’s a feminine thing.
But because he has no answers to any of the questions in his life regarding you, he lies back down on his open palms and throws his leg over the other one, humming to himself.
You stand with your back to the door, hand clasped over your mouth, lingering arousal and hurt blending in your mind and your heart until the image of your husband becomes syncretic to the definition of the word duty.
Satoru stares up at the ceiling, unable to sleep, the thought of your smile getting his cock painfully hard against his thigh until the image of his wife becomes syncretic to the definition of the word love.
Now, Satoru knows what it means. He grins to himself in the moonlight.
Satoru thinks of that night far too much for any sane man. Everywhere he looks, the memory is there—his lips pressed up right to the corner of yours or his fingers slotting perfectly between yours or even that wasted look in your eyes when he came inside you.
Nothing outwardly happens this week. Nothing quick enough to tilt the axis of his world, except Satoru is thinking too much, hesitating to take what he wants, and he has never hesitated in his life, ever.
And he’s never been this… needy, either. You’ve awoken something in him. Something that makes it so that when just a sliver of skin above your hipbone is exposed to him, he’s brought back to the night where he pressed you into the sheets and showed you that he cared.
Because that was the single night where he knew what even an afterthought of care meant after going an entire lifetime of caring for nobody but himself.
That was one of many instances when you smiled at him with that heartshattering smile that made him rethink his entire life, who he was, why he was put on this earth. Except he couldn’t do anything but act cold to it because he didn’t have an answer to the question burning his head.
Why was he here, if not for you?
And so in a not-so-sudden change of heart, because you’ve been melting it all this time, he tells all the servants to get out. Someone lingers at the doorway, mumbling something about breakfast, but his voice was low the first time, and it can’t go any lower.
It’s the same residual that he sensed on you the first night you saw him, and your eyes kept washing over him like a greedy ocean. He had lapped it all up, of course, except maybe the foreign jealousy curdling in his veins made him seem cruel.
Satoru hadn’t meant to, of course. It’s just that jealousy was something others feel when they look to him, not something he feel back. Envy is, put simply, a one way street, and yet the speeding of his heart denies him the comfort of that fallacy.
He doesn’t want anyone else touching you, save for him.
Eventually, with a sharp cut of his eyes to theirs, they scamper away, and you’re still sitting alone on the other side of the table. He beckons you to come near.
You do as he says, head bowed, refusing to meet his gaze. Your plate trembles in your hands. Satoru doesn’t understand why you treat him like this now. Where did the fire in your eyes go? Where did the warmth go? Where is that beautiful smile?
You sit down, and Satoru waits as patiently as he can for you to finish eating. Your eyes keep flitting to his untouched plate. From your eyes, he knows you’re taking into account his stillness and judging whether or not you’re supposed to be eating. Whether or not this is a test, of some sort.
Satoru doesn’t know why you see marriage as a test. It’s simply a duty.
Except duty isn’t the reason he swipes everything off of the table when you take your last bite, chew and swallow, and set your fork down. It isn’t the reason he picks you up and puts you on the table with a kind of gentleness he hadn’t known he was capable of.
It isn’t the reason he feels this hunger clawing at his stomach that no food can satiate. No, it’s that look on your face of a smile flashing for just a moment before melting into a compliant whine—that’s what he’s looking for.
That’s the reason he doesn’t care who the fuck walks in when his head is buried between your thighs. It’s the reason he can get off on simply pleasuring you, because when you’re lost in the throes of ecstasy, all of your quiet mannerisms get chucked out of the window.
You call him asshole. You pull at his hair. And the leader of clan Gojo, just Satoru when he’s on his knees for you, likes it.
“Call me that again,” he rasps, tilting his head to press a sticky kiss to your inner thigh, eyes blazing as they meet yours.
“I apologi—” you cut yourself off, breathless when he delves back, “ngh—’Toru!”
Satoru’s never been like this, never inclined to believe that the slice of heaven between your thighs is salvation, but here he is, on his knees in the dining room, eating you out like a man starved.
And if you are his salvation, then he must mean something to you, too. A deity is not so cruel as to leave her worshipers praying without offering any boons in return, yes?
When he pulls away, he knows you’re satisfied, from the way your thighs are trembling. But he’s not satisfied, because in the quiet of afterwards, that smile that he longs for pulls at his chest. It’s not on your lips, either. Satoru thinks he can do something about it.
He pulls himself to his feet, leans over and tries kissing you.
And you turn your face away from him and ask, “May I be excused, Gojo-sama?”
Satoru realizes that sex can’t fix everything, after all. Your smile haunts his waking dreams.
The following week, he starts to change, getting too close, deciding that the distance that had been slowly built upon over a month was just a bridge meant to burn anyways.
Every step you took, now it isn’t just the ghost of him in your thoughts that follows, but the real, breathing man, trailing you as you wander the estates.
“You look less angry today,” he says. “It suits you.”
You don’t reply and he’s left with the replay of his words in his mind.
Idiot. Less angry? What kind of husband says that?
But he’s learning to be a husband, so mistakes are bound to happen.
One evening, rain pours as you stand out on the balcony, looking out over the forest overlooking the rest of the estate. Trees flicker in time with the rain-slick wind whipping through their decaying leaves, dousing you in a thin mist that cools the simmering of your blood.
Satoru can feel it boiling under your skin, but he approaches regardless, wondering if it’s enough to warm his own body with the wavering of his Infinity over you. He leans too close, he can tell, almost shy.
“You could catch a cold,” he murmurs, sounding clumsy in a way that doesn’t befit the clan leader.
You step away from him, even though the Infinity extends like a shroud that refuses to let you go. “Thank you, Gojo-sama, but I’ve survived worse than rain.”
When you skip dinner one night, Satoru brings food to your room, hesitant grin fearfully boyish.
“Eat with me, please.” He holds out the plate. “I want to share a meal with you.”
He has no reason to know that the only reason you skipped dinner that night was to avoid seeing him entirely, to find solace in the unfurled wings of your isolated room in the estate.
You blink. “It’s a bit late for that, Gojo-sama.”
Reaching out, you accept the food regardless and set it aside, but Satoru lingers, a small box in his hands. He thinks you’re fighting a smile when you take that from his hands, too.
Even without looking, he knows when you open the box and glance inside, there’s a hairpin, chosen with the notion of pretty women like pretty things. He can’t gauge what you’re thinking from your expression—definitely not that you’re thinking that the most beautiful things were often the most sorrowful.
Like the beauty of your heart when blood cracked and spilled like crimson hands clawing at a prize won not by love, but by duty.
Satoru doesn’t know that, though.
“It reminded me of you,” he says sheepishly, scratching his neck as he eagerly waits to drink in your reaction.
Instead of giving him what he wants, you stare at it. “Gojo-sama. I hate blue. I’d appreciate if you—you stopped. You don’t know me well enough to choose things for me.”
The wood of the estate keeps good secrets. He knows that better than anyone, although you don’t make much of an effort to hide the fact that you’re already stashing away his gift to you.
His attempts to broker a peace, tucked away between splintered wood and not clutched between your fingers where they should be.
Satoru’s smile fades like a dying star as his eyes trail your quiet movements, flitting back up to yours, capturing a plea that he can’t find the words to voice aloud. “Then let me stay, please. Let me learn.”
But silence has become your greatest strength, catching in your quiet refusal. Even though you’re lying lush velvet to his face—the blue of his eyes would always be your favorite.
Even so, this time you close the door to hurt blooming on his face. The man standing in the face of your dejection and knowing nothing other than how to shout back at it, Satoru reasons to himself that you must miss the ache washing off him in waves—because the things that we feel ourselves are often the hardest to spot in others.
You are with child. Everyone, including the doctor, expects the clan leader to nod because this isn’t surprising news, since the marriage was consummated over a week ago.
But Satoru starts crying, tears seeping through his blindfold. He tried willing them not to fall, because the elders present are invading what should have been a private moment between a husband and wife (but when had it ever been just the two of you, anyways?). Someone claps Satoru on the back and tells him good job.
Except he doesn’t reply to that, instead parting the sea of strangers to meet you in the middle. He reaches out, and as you sit on the examination table, for the first time Satoru Gojo holds your hand gentle yet so insistent that he feels your pulse carve a new map under his skin. It thrums like a soft rhythm to the frantic patter of his own heart.
He doesn’t say anything. The elders frown their disapproval. You lower your eyes to it.
Slowly, like a crack in time, you retract, fingers slipping from his.
Satoru wonders how he can cry tears of joy and still feel this blissful anguish prying his ribs apart with every wavering breath he manages to drag in.
When you return to the estate, news has already reached the ones left at home. A servant hands you a box of baby clothes, a gift from someone you know by name but not face. Satoru recognizes the name, and the clothes are all printed all in clan colors and embroidered with sigils.
The look on your face tells him that you wanted something soft, ordinary, human. Something like how you had dreamed of going baby clothes shopping with your cousins back at home. But the reality is that there is no such life waiting for you.
Only the man with the clothes in his hands, who can’t gauge your thoughts.
Satoru stares at the fabric, tightening his grip. “I wanted this to be ours,” he reasons.
“This will never be ours,” you reply, quiet and cold.
He wishes he could have another moment to fight for his wife, for the woman who looked at him like he was worth something, who smiled at him even when he didn’t deserve it. Satoru wishes for any emotion, even anger to spark in your eyes.
But he understands your character well enough to know that all you can think behind your blank eyes is they dressed my child in duty in the womb.
They dressed him, too.
The gardeners insist that they can do this for him, and the elders give him strange looks as they saunter past. But for an entire week, Satoru gets on his knees and plants flowers in the clan garden, awkwardly digging with bare hands.
“They’ll bloom when the baby comes,” he explains when he catches you watching him, not because you mean to, but more because it’s all you can do. Your eyes always find his, meant to be anchors in a stormy sea, but more so the catalyst of said storm.
You continue walking. “Nothing blooms here. Not really.”
With soil under his nails and your beauty erased by duty, Satoru swears that he will present these flowers to his newborn child. And he won’t let them take away his child’s youth.
Satoru had already lost you, in a way. He isn’t going to lose his child, too.
The evening sun catches in his eyes as his fingers slip around your wrist, pulling you back into the vacant garden of souls trampled on by uncaring children and elders alike.
It’s here where Satoru unties his blindfold for you for the first time, letting silk pool around his neck. At least, that’s what your eyes fixate on before they lower. His hands reach out, ready to cup your cheeks and bring your gaze to his, but you refuse to look him in the eye.
“I don’t want to hide from you anymore,” he pleads, sinking to his knees, looking up at you with something dangerous in his eyes. This is why he hides away his eyes.
If not everything, Satoru wants at least something of his to be yours.
He presses you into the soil, promising he’ll see to it that your clothes are washed if you let him do this, and trails open mouthed kisses, declarations of his newfound love sick in his eyes, down your body.
Satoru breaks you apart and puts you back together on his tongue with the kind of precision that he knows makes something resurface in your throat, something sick and vile and utterly ruinsome to your thoughts.
He is your husband by contract, not by love.
And the clan leader is thinking about how he can change that when you tug his hair, but not in a way to lead him to do on, in a way that makes him pause and pull away, blinking up at you.
“You already did,” you say in response to his question, “that’s who you are, Gojo-sama.”
Even after so long of hearing his formal title on your tongue, he wants you to call him Satoru. Call him dear, sweetheart, something endearing that would mean something other than the honorific used by everyone else.
Against everything, Satoru wants you to call him something reserved just for the two of you. Smile at him like the world is just a stage, and you’re simply the grand finale where he kissed the love of his life.
The love of his life won’t allow him a kiss.
How can he, when the sliver of moonlight keeps turning your face away?
Once again, it isn’t just the two of you—it never was.
nine months later
Satoru had asked where you wanted to give birth. You hadn’t offered an opinion. He asked if the estate was okay. You had nodded, eyes dim, expression solemn.
You look nothing like an expecting mother. There is no glow to your skin, even now, no rosy flush on your full cheeks, or enough blank space between your eyes. He doesn’t let you sleep alone, anymore, because you complained once of cramps in the night to a servant.
Now he falls asleep with his body curled around yours, fingers rubbing at the swell between your hips, his body pressed in perfect contact with yours, matching up nearly perfectly.
And every morning, he wakes up on instinct and wanders down to the estate kitchen and makes tea the way you like it. One bag, one spoon of honey, water warm enough to ward off the chills of the impending day.
The tea always cools, though, by the time you shift awake. His empty cup is on the nightstand, and he sits on your other side watching the curve of your side rise and fall.
Sometimes, he thinks to reach out and comfort the kicking baby inside your body. His child. But you only let him when you’re asleep, and flinch away when you’re aware of his touch.
Satoru can’t help but feel a little guilty. He doesn’t know how to fix this. He doesn’t know how to fix your relationship. He’s never been good with fragility, with careful and measured love.
Love itself was foreign to him. At least, before he met you. But now, no matter how much he has to give, he’s too late. You aren’t willing to accept it.
Satoru can only hope that his child, a blend of you and him, will be willing to show you how to. And then maybe fate can guide you down the path you’re meant to be on.
Elders gather outside the room, suffocating the air outside. But inside the room, only your heavy breaths and soft, keening whines fill the room. Satoru insists on being present, against tradition, and kicks everyone but Shoko, the doctor, and her assistants out, also against tradition.
The fact that a female doctor is delivering the baby is rebellious enough, but that isn’t why she’s here. Satoru only trusts Shoko to do this for him. And as a bonus, if anything, it’s a slap in the face to everyone standing outside.
Satoru holds your hand, terrified even as your breaths steady. “I’ll stay. For us.” His blindfold hangs loose around his neck, the third straw in a series of traditional offenses that will come back to bite him later.
But the wolf on the horizon would come to maul him away in the weeks to come (if it could), and you’re giving birth to his child now.
You’re exhausted, hollow-cheeked, pain screwing your face. But you’re also eerily silent now, lips pursed, unwilling to let whatever is brewing on your tongue into the open air.
Someone mutters from outside, “Ensure the heir survives. That’s all that matters.”
His words seep into Satoru’s brain, finally registering when Shoko lifts her head and tilts it, a silent question in her eyes.
“She’s not a vessel,” Satoru whispers, not really in answer to her, but in defiance to the elders, coming too late. “she’s my wife.”
Shoko’s panic is tenfold because it comes from a woman usually so reserved and calm, but Satoru notices her hands trembling slightly, covered in your blood, in your silence. Frantic movements blur in his eyes.
And he starts to panic, too, a reflection of the scene rippling in the smooth lake of your face. “Stay, please, stay. I don’t care about heirs—I don’t care about anything. Just stay, please, don’t leave me. Fight for me, please.”
Your voice is fragile. “You expect me to fight death to prove I’m your wife? When did you ever fight for me?”
Against the strongest curses, just the flick of his hand is enough to end entire battles. But Satoru doesn’t know how to fight against who he becomes when they are watching him.
He never learns, and even if he did, he would be all too late. All in vain.
You close your eyes, a soft exhale escaping your lips. “I stopped expecting things from you. Things that would’ve made you mine. The very things that you feared.”
“Please, no,” he whispers. “I didn’t—”
“But you did.”
He tells himself he longs for that smile, and even now as it curves your lips like a testament to the last beats of your heart, he wants to kiss it. Satoru wants to kiss his wife.
His hand is warm against your cold cheek as everyone retracts from around your body, the room silent going where it should be filling with the wails of a child.
You tilt your head towards his, eyes blank, and he swears he sees a spark in your eyes fizzling as he presses his lips against yours, his gaze locked onto yours.
“This is what I am,” you whisper helplessly, like it’s your fault, “breakable. Replaceable. You said it yourself.”
He was wrong. You aren’t replaceable. You never had been.
Satoru Gojo just never liked taking the blame.
“I love you.” The admission is warm on his lips and something meant to be ethereal—a miracle to pull you from the hands of lady Death with her lithe fingers cupping your soul—except it does nothing to the slowing of your heart in your chest.
A pause.
“Feeling don’t alter lineage. You told me that, Satoru.”
Satoru doesn’t know why you call him that at the end, when he can’t do anything for you. When he wants to do everything, and he’s not strong enough to save you. It’s not a scathing retort, but a simple question—one that brings guilt to his throat, suffocating him, taking up all the space in his lungs and expanding along his chest.
Both you and the child slip away as one being, in one ragged breath that he inhales, vowing to keep it in his lungs forever until he has to force himself to exhale, force himself to live despite your death, letting the sliver of life you have in your eyes escape even as the room goes silent. He holds your hand until it cools, blindfold slipping from his neck and fluttering to the floor as his warm tears drip onto your still body.
Satoru screams, but the clan hears silence.
Shoko takes an unsteady breath, perhaps knowing just from the state of the clan leader and one of her longest friends that no amount of consolation will be enough. Instead, her voice adopts a clinical mask as she steps outside of the room, closing the door behind her.
But her voice is clear, even past the ringing in his ears. “His wife is dead.”
“And what of the heir?”
No sympathy for you, but it had always been this way, hadn’t it? Satoru had just refused to see it past the duty hanging low in his gaze. The one that was swinging in yours when you died.
“Dead.” He hears the strain in her voice, knowing it’ll mirror the heat roaring to life in his mind, taking up the silence that stormed through the room.
The clan’s immediate reaction? Something about finding a replacement swirls into the mindless chaos outside.
Inside, your coffin is quiet, just how you like it. They try to put a blindfold over your eyes, but he doesn’t let anyone near your body for days.
At your funeral, the elders express their sorrows for their beloved clan leader, for their Satoru Gojo’s eyes, for their praise and worship, wasted on a gaze that forever refused to meet them.
No remorse for you. He would’ve blown the entire place into the wind if not for the image of you smiling back at him in the painting framed near your coffin. He finds the restraint somewhere in himself at the sight.
Satoru knows—knew—you well enough to know you like—liked—the quiet, even when you accuse—accused—him otherwise. Except kneeling in front of the flowers that he once promised to present to his newborn child, Satoru Gojo could never call it a waste of time.
As he sobs into the peaty soil, not caring if the heavens or hell bore witness, he realizes one thing pressed into the space between his ribs.
Blindfolded devotion had clouded his eyes even from the moment he sipped sake from a cup and thought, “Marriage is simply duty. Marriage is my duty.”
Duty survived—but you did not.
And only one of those mattered in the end.
a/n: if you caught the ref as fast as mita did i love u. anyways sigh smd guys this took me so long to perfect i kept tweaking and geeking until it was like. mwah. delicioso. or maybe i've just got an ego. anyways time for me to lock in on android!satoru or maybe general!satoru in mulan... maybe i'll post a poll sigh. likes and comments always appreciated! love ya <3
content: blind!satoru, childhood best friends to lovers.
he learned to recognize your footsteps before he knew your name.
it was the sound of your sneakers dragging on asphalt, the soft rhythm of your breathing as you stood beside him during recess while the other kids played tag he couldn’t join. you used to narrate the game for him under your breath—who was running, who was cheating, who was about to cry. he’d sit beside you on the curb and smile like it didn’t matter, like the sounds were enough. and somehow, they always were.
you were the first person who didn’t talk about him like he was a project. you never raised your voice around him like volume could compensate for light. you never told him what he couldn’t do, you just showed him what you liked doing and then let him decide for himself. when you liked hopscotch, he learned to count the boxes by feel. when you got obsessed with gummy bracelets in middle school, he asked you to teach him the knot. when you learned how to rollerblade in eighth grade, you held his hand and made him try.
somewhere along the way, he started noticing the way his chest felt around you. like it held too much breath. like it was always one step behind the rest of him. it wasn’t something that arrived all at once—it was a dozen small things that built on top of each other until he couldn’t remember what it had felt like not to want to sit beside you, or hear you laugh, or wait for your approval like it meant more than anyone else’s.
he didn’t have anyone else who knew him the way you did. who chose him in every season, in every classroom, in every long walk home. and maybe that was part of it. maybe that’s how he fell. because he never had to ask for your attention. you just gave it, and meant it, and stayed.
and the first time you kissed someone, it wasn’t him.
he’d never admit how bad it hurt. you told him the whole story in the cafeteria while he chewed on the straw of his drink, pretending not to be jealous. he’d thought for a while after that that maybe he was the one imagining things, that maybe you didn’t feel it. the way your hand always found his wrist before a crowd. the way you made sure he got the side of the couch he liked without him having to ask. the way you’d touch his face without thinking—flick his nose, brush a crumb from his cheek, rest your chin on his shoulder like it belonged there.
but it wasn’t imaginary. he could feel it, and the truth of it settled deeper each year.
you’ve always been gentle with him. not out of pity. not because he needs it. he knows how to move through the world alone. he’s mapped his house and his school and the streets between them. he doesn’t panic when things are out of place, just adapts. he’s lived with this body all his life—he knows its edges better than anyone else. but when you reach for him, he lets you, because he trusts you, and because he knows you like to take care of him just as much as he likes being taken care of.
and now you’re both twenty. the world is quieter than it used to be. there are fewer lockers and more train stations, fewer hallway voices and more tired groans between college classes. but he still knows when it’s you entering the room.
you’re here now, beside him on the living room floor, with your knees touching and his hoodie drowning your frame. you’ve just painted your nails—he can smell the faint chemical tang mixed with the candy-scented lotion you always forget to rub in. he wants to ask if the color is the same as last time, the soft one you told him reminded you of cherry ice cream, but he forgets the word for it.
he doesn’t say anything. just tilts his head back and listens to you flip through a magazine.
“’toru,” you murmur, voice lazy with contentment. “you ever wonder what you look like?”
he smiles, tongue pressed to the back of his teeth. “sometimes. why? you wanna tell me again how pretty i am?”
“you are,” you insist, firm, like it’s ridiculous that he still doubts it. “you’re so pretty, satoru. and not just because of your face, okay? but also because of your face.”
he laughs under his breath. “go on.”
you shift closer. he feels your thigh press against his, the warmth of you anchoring him to the moment. your fingers are careful when they touch his cheek, like you’re tracing him into memory. like you’re trying to see him without your eyes.
“your eyes,” you say softly. “they’re… they’re like glacier water. i know that doesn’t mean much to you. but they’re this really pale blue. almost white. sometimes they catch the light and look silver, like steel. sometimes there’s a tiny ring of grey at the edge. but they always look clear. sharp.”
he goes still beneath your hand. he likes the sound of your voice when you describe things to him, especially colors. he doesn’t need to understand them perfectly. he just needs to hear how they feel when you say them.
“i think if i had to describe them without sight,” you continue, “they’d feel like ice melting on your skin. cold at first, but soft when it settles. you know that feeling?”
he nods, barely.
“and the way you look at people when you know something they don’t? it’s like that too. like pressure behind glass. like something waiting to crack open.”
he lets out a breath. doesn’t realize he’s been holding it. “and what do you look like?”
you pause, like you weren’t expecting the question, and then your voice drops to something quieter. “i don’t know how to describe it, really. but i always hope i look like someone you’d want to stay close to.”
he doesn’t answer at first. just reaches for you, slow, steady. his hand finds your cheek with familiar ease. you’ve always let him do this—trace your features when he wants to remember, when he wants to memorize again. his fingertips brush over your temple, down your jaw, across the corner of your mouth. your lips are slightly parted. he thinks he could kiss you now if he were brave.
you’re so warm, always. you smell like strawberries and notebook paper and whatever body spray you used in high school and never stopped buying. his thumb strokes beneath your eye, and he imagines the shape of you pressed into color. not light, but texture. not hue, but temperature. you are soft around the edges and bright at the center. you are the feeling of late spring against the backs of his hands. the echo of laughter in an open hallway. the taste of lipgloss on a soda straw.
he pulls away before the moment can stretch too far.
“you are,” he says quietly, voice steadier than he feels, “someone i want to stay close to.”
he doesn’t mean it as a confession. not really, not yet. but the air still changes between you, softens somehow, like something has exhaled around the edges of the room.
your fingers find his almost immediately. like muscle memory, like instinct, like they’ve never forgotten the shape of him. your hand is smaller than his now, but it still fits, still grounds him.
he squeezes once, and you don’t let go.
your other hand rises slow, brushes his cheek. he doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch. he’s always let you touch him like this, even when he didn’t know why it made his heart beat different. you’ve touched his face a thousand times—wiped smudges from his jaw, flicked water at his nose, cupped it between your palms on winter nights to warm him up. but now your fingertips pause at the edge of his mouth, and you’re close enough that he can smell the sweetness of your gloss, the warmth of your breath. your knee bumps into his and doesn’t move away.
"satoru," you start, and your voice is small in the space between you, breathy almost. your fingers fidget in your lap, curled around the hem of your sleeve. "do you think i’m pretty, even if you can’t… see me the way other people do?”
his mind goes silent, loud, then silent again.
yes. yes, holy fuck, yes.
yes, he thinks you’re gorgeous.
yes, he thinks about the soft skin between your waist and hip, the way he once pretended to stumble just to anchor his hand there and feel something new, something you, something he hadn’t mapped before.
yes, he held your hand on the walk to school even though he knew the way—he memorized the route a year before you ever offered.
yes, because blindness is the absence of vision, not the absence of knowing. not the absence of light. and you, you’ve always been light. warm and present and here. even if he could see, even if the whole world sharpened to color and shape tomorrow, he knows he’d still look for you first.
but his tongue is heavy. full of all the ways he wants to say it, and none of the words feel like enough. so he nods, once, slow. deliberate.
"yeah," he says. quiet like a secret. "i do."
he hears you shift a little closer, the fabric of your sleeves brushing. his chest is pounding. you smell like coconut body wash and nervousness, and it makes his whole mouth dry.
"um," you breathe, hesitating like you're standing on the edge of something. "can i—" your hands twist again, body curling inward, afraid to fill the space wrong—"can i kiss you?"
he doesn’t answer, he just nods again, heart in his throat, hoping you’ll know he wants this just as badly, something thrumming behind his ribs like panic and hope tangled together as his hand finds your wrist, the way it always does when words don’t work.
he guides you closer—not because you need help, but because he does. because this is uncharted territory, and he doesn’t trust his voice, and he’s never done this before, never wanted it this much, never let himself believe he could have something like this.
but then your mouth brushes his, and something shifts under his skin.
the kiss is soft, patient. a quiet question and a quieter answer. he tastes your breath before he tastes your lips. feels your thumb press against the curve of his jaw like you’re holding him steady. his world doesn’t stop, but it rearranges. folds inward, folds around you. and for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel like he’s reaching for something he can’t name.
your lips are soft and warmer than he expected. not delicate, but certain. the gloss tastes like strawberry, and something else he can’t place, something warmer, like the inside of your laugh. you tilt your head slightly, and he mimics the movement without thinking, chasing more of the contact. your hand slides from his cheek to the back of his neck, and it makes his whole body stutter.
he kisses you the way he’s always known how to do everything—by touch. his mouth moves gently over yours like he’s mapping it, learning you for the first time all over again. the shape of your upper lip, the curve of the corner when you breathe out. the way your mouth opens for him without hesitation. he doesn’t know what to do with his hands at first, but his body makes the decision before he does, one hand sliding to your waist, the other pressing lightly between your shoulder blades like you might float away if he doesn’t keep you close.
your lips are slick, and you taste like everything familiar. everything safe. he can’t tell if he’s breathing or just surviving through your mouth, if the sound in his chest is a sigh or a thank you or a prayer. he only knows he wants more of you. he leans in deeper, mouth parting wider, and you meet him there like you’ve been waiting for this, like you’ve known it too.
his fingers curl into the fabric at your side. he wants to remember this. wants to memorize the way your breath stutters and catches, how your palm slides down his arm and stays there. how nothing else in the room matters.
and when you pull back slowly, not far, not fully—your nose brushes his. your hand is still at the nape of his neck and his heart is in his throat, your breath is still mingling with his, soft and uneven.
you press your forehead to his and whisper, like the secret’s already been kept too long, “you’ve always been the one, toru.”
his breath stutters, the softest hitch in his chest, like his lungs weren’t ready for something that tender. his hand is still resting at your waist, but his fingers tighten slightly, like he needs to confirm you’re real, that you haven’t slipped away in the half-second it took for your words to settle inside him.
his lips are wet with the echo of your kiss, and the air tastes like you now. his jaw tingles where your thumb brushed it. the corner of his mouth twitches, like it’s trying to smile, but he can’t quite remember how to move. something in his throat rises and gets stuck halfway, something that might’ve been your name, or might’ve been i know, or me too, or something heavier that’s lived in his chest for years and never made it out.
he doesn’t have the words, even though he wants them. wants a thousand of them. but they’re gone. unreachable. and maybe that’s okay, because you’ve always been good at reading him without needing him to say anything. the way you always knew when he needed your hand. when to laugh, when to wait, when to stay.
his grip tightens once more, gentle. your breath is still brushing his lips.
and he feels—no, he knows—he’ll never need to see your face to understand what love looks like.
because he just felt it in your kiss. because it’s always been you for him, too.
and the world is wide. but with you beside him, it’s never felt empty.
kianamaiart
baratheonpilled
blakekathryn
snowghoul
turnnoffyourmind
yousharknotpass
