Hehe, I'm impressed you're still conscious. One last chance. Now... are you going to "cooperate"? Aww, cat got your tongue? Then let's play a little game.
you run into sukuna looking for your antipsychotics on day 8 of the apocalypse. you have something you can give him. tw: mentions of rape & violence.
divider by @/saradika-graphics | brainworms by @/saintshigaraki :)
The door chimes when it’s opened. Isn’t that silly? The world has ended and the door to the pharmacy still chimes.
You never particularly liked the Fallout series, never watched the show, never played the game, and it feels like it’s come back to bite you. Perhaps if you had paid better attention, you would have been more prepared for the nuclear fallout that happened hundreds of miles away from you. It had been a domino effect, soon everything had gone to shit. And now you were alone, moving from place to place, seeking shelter away from other people.
Today, you’ve lingered into the pharmacy. It’s already been raided of everything useful: bandages, ointments. Gone. The rows of makeup hadn’t been touched, which you found somewhat amusing. As if nuclear fallout had been the final drag to break the makeup industry’s hold on women.
But you’re not in the pharmacy for any ointments or Welly bandaids with cute little planets on them. All you have on you in your fanny pack that you take with you on walks, filled with the essentials: notebook, pen, lighter, ereader. You’re hunched behind the pharmaceutical counter, pouring over the different bottles of medication.
The opioids and painkillers are gone, along with the Xanax. But you’re not after that, you’re after your dosage of antipsychotics. At least your bare minimum dosage.
Then again, maybe you should let them run out. Succumb to the paranoia and eventually kill yourself after going mad from lack of sleep.
But the door has chimed. You freeze from where you’re rooting around in the medicine.
“This is my territory,” comes a rough, low voice. Calm, even. The opposite of your beating heart. “Come out and I’ll think about sparing you.”
The man’s boots crunch over glass. You don’t know what possesses you as you stand up and come to the counter. You reach down for your crowbar, your weapon of necessity during these trying times, and swing over the counter.
You come to the front of the store, standing face to face with the man— Undercut, light pink hair. Ferocious and clean tattoos over his face, disappearing into his compression shirt. His hands are in the pockets of his cargo pants. His boots are heavy duty against the floor.
He laughs. “Look at you.”
You readjust your grip on the crowbar. “I’m not here for anything valuable.”
“Everything’s valuable nowadays, doll,” the man says. His eyes linger over your body, over your sorry excuse for clothes– jeans and your walking shoes and a thick, burgundy henley that looks out of the men’s section. “I’ll cut you a deal. What are you after?”
You chew your bottom lip. What’s there to lose? “Risperidone,” you admit. “Nothing, nothing mind altering. I mean, it is, but it’s not in a fun way.”
The man crosses his arms. He’s broad all over, shoulders wide and muscles thick. Built from before everything went to shit. On his face, interrupting his tattoos, there seems to be a heavy acid burn. He’s still handsome.
“Risperidone,” he repeats, even keeled and a scary mix of nonchalant and serious.
You nod, then explain yourself: “It’s an antipsychotic.”
He takes a deep breath, then lets it out in a big sigh. “You’re a pretty thing, you know that, right? All the crazy ones are pretty.”
“I looked better before,” you say. True statement. You had access to showers. Thank god you showered the morning of the nuclear drop.
The man laughs at that. “I bet you could do crazy things to that face and hair of yours in two hours.” And for a second he imagines it– ungreased hair, a pretty dress. Women always look good in their favorite dresses, some heels. He misses the way women would get dolled up.
“Yeah, I could,” you admit, looking down at your feet. When the world ended, you were hungover from a night out, looking the kind of pretty that he’s alluding to.
The man uncrosses his arms, placing a hand over his chest. “Sukuna.”
The world is scary out there. The man is scary. Sukuna is scary.
He takes a step closer, hands back in his pockets. He has a gun strapped to his thigh and a machete hanging off his belt. He stands in front of you, then leans down to look at you face to face.
“What do you call yourself?”
Part of you wants to lie, like you’re at a bar. But you’re not at a bar. You haven’t heard anyone say your name in eight days and you crave it. So you tell him.
He repeats it back, as if savoring a particularly good oyster.
“Interesting. Very pretty.” He begins to circle you like a hawk about to clamp down against a sugar glider. “Very pretty.”
You swallow.
“Don’t be scared,” Sukuna says, though it feels like a joke. He reaches out for your hand and you don’t pull away. “Let’s play house.”
There is nothing left for you anymore. Your neighbors broke into your apartment and you couldn’t save your cats from being their dinner. It’s always three days before you start wondering what your next door neighbor has… and you had two cats and a week of freshly made meal prep.
Now you have nothing. You have the whisperings of things in the corners of your eyes, remnants of your lack of medication. You have the crowbar, stolen from a hardware store. Taken. Is it stealing if there’s no society left?
Your crowbar leans against the counter of the pharmacy again. Sukuna is with you now, the two of you pilfering through left behind medications. Glancing over, he looks concentrated on the task at hand. He looks like he knows what he’s doing a little too well. Perhaps, before all of this went down, he was siphoning off dosages into little orange bottles and asking for birthday and address to verify the pick up. Hard to believe with all the tattoos. He was probably siphoning off cocaine.
“What dosage do you need?” He asks.
You tell him your dosage. He nods at the information, then goes back to his container searching. He finds what he’s looking for, calling your attention to him.
He stands up straight, then shakes the bottle.
“What’s it worth to you?”
“I have a hard time living without it.”
“I think we’re in for a long, hard life,” Sukuna notes. He looks down at the bottle, reading over the information on it with vague interest.
“This would make it a lot easier,” you try. Would he withhold this from you? What do you have to exchange for it? Maybe luck would be on your side again and you’ll best him in a hand-to-hand fight.
He does have a gun.
Maybe death wouldn’t be so bad.
Sukuna rests the bottom of the bottle against his tattooed chin. “You know, you’re going to need someone to help you maintain this expensive need of yours.”
Another thick swallow. “I thought you wanted to play house.” The idea of it is probably your only chance at survival, and this Sukuna is handsome, he seems like he can fight. And that’s what you need, isn’t it? Someone who can fight?
Satisfied, Sukuna smiles like a pleased tiger. He drops his hand to hold the bottle normally. “Good.” He walks past you, picking up your crowbar. “Now follow me.”
You scamper after him. He has your weapon, after all.
The streets are desolate. A surprising amount of people had chosen suicide at the end of the world. Somehow, you were exempt from that percentage. Cars are littered on the roads, abandoned. You trail a little bit behind Sukuna, head on a swivel. You hadn’t been ambushed on the way to the pharmacy, but you’d left before the sun rose. Currently, it sat low in the sky, casting the streets in the harsh morning rays.
Sukuna whistles as he walks, which makes the hair on the nape of your neck stand up with anxiety. He’s practically calling people to you.
“Stop that,” you whisper.
“Hm?” Sukuna looks over at you with his brows raised. Well, a brow and a half, as half of one has succumbed to the burn. “Why, are you scared?”
“I don’t think it’s smart to be drawing attention to ourselves,” you frown.
“Doll, you have nothing to worry about,” Sukuna says. “Everyone’s scared shitless and hiding. Probably going to die of starvation. No one has the guts anymore to kill.”
He swings the crowbar around lazily in a circle, using deft fingers to move the metal. He moves it like he’s worked with tools his whole life.
Suddenly, he stops. He swings the crowbar at you, stopping just before making contact with your temple. Your breath hitches as adrenaline courses through you.
“Say, have you killed anyone with this?” He asks with great interest.
At least the whistling has stopped, even if it’s replaced with the sound of your heart beating.
Your mouth opens and closes for a moment. He looks back at you, eyebrows raised. He gently taps the crowbar on your shoulder to prompt a reply.
You nod. “Yeah.”
He raises it again, lightly tapping your temple. “Right here?”
“Eventually,” you admit. You try not to think about it too hard– you’d swung the bend at him, missing, then again, missing, then catching him on his cheek, ripping flesh, then, while he howled in pain, devastatingly across his temple.
He fell on you. Heavy. Bigger than you. Painful.
Sukuna smiles. “Good girl.”
Your core twists at the praise in a way that simultaneously upsets you and delights you. Sukuna lowers the crowbar, towards your stomach, offering it back to you. You grasp around the elbow of it. When you pull to take it back, Sukuna pulls you closer to him with it. He wraps an arm around your shoulders, holding you close by his side. Somehow, he still smells good, deodorant or cologne or maybe even a shower of some sort.
He whispers in your ear: “If you try to use that on me, remember: I’m quicker.” The warning doesn’t need to hang in the air for it to be heard.
The two of you approach an abandoned strip mall that you used to frequent when you were a small child, since there was an arcade and movie theater on the lower half. You remember it fondly: rainy afternoons and your hand clasped in your father’s, running across the parking lot and being lifted over the big puddle because the drain was never clean. Then, inside, there was an ominous Verdin street clock that loomed in the center of the entryway.
It creeped you out then. It creeps you out now as you breach the threshold with Sukuna. The halls have always been empty, and they are even more so now. The escalator that normally miraculously runs despite the abandonment of the building, is out. Unsurprising. Sukuna gets on it to descend without hesitation.
You stop at the top of the escalator and watch as Sukuna continues to descend. There’s darkness down below. The thick sole of his boots against the metal of the escalator create this all-too-loud clanging sound. He stops when he realizes you aren’t descending either.
Turning, he looks up at you. His eyes drift over your figure once more. Are you attractive to him? Is that what’s saved you?
“Remember, we’re playing house,” he reminds you. He offers his hand out to you, for the taking. “Let me feed you.”
You’re not sure you should trust him, but he’s holding the bottle of risperidone in his hand. He has food. He has shelter. So you descend down the escalator, sliding your hand in his. It always feels weird to walk on a moving escalator, and now is no different.
There’s the telltale sound of fire crackling that reaches your ears as you descend. It comes into view: a small fire, nothing big. Just enough of an ember to be activated if needed. Beside the fire lies a sleeping bag with a pillow– a pillow– and some camping cooking gear.
You wonder how many people Sukuna killed for these items.
“You hungry?” He asks.
Nine days ago, you would have said no. But now… “Yes.”
Sukuna nods. He leads you over to his little camp, which rests up against a wall so he can prop himself against it. He sits on the cool tile of the abandoned building, and pats the spot next to him. You take it, then look around.
“You’re pretty exposed here,” you note.
Sukuna gestures to the escalator. “Only way in and out. I welded the emergency exits shut.”
“Were you a welder before all this?” You ask with interest.
“Yeah,” Sukuna says. He doesn’t offer anything else. Instead, he pilfers through his cans and finds one of baked beans. He offers it to you. “Does this look good?”
“Anything looks good to me right now,” you admit. Your stomach rumbles.
Sukuna nods. He cracks open the can via the pull top and scoops out a sporkful of them. He holds it up to your lips.
As you open your mouth to protest, he’s pushing the spoon in. You’re too hungry to try and back away, in fact, the beans mix with the uptick of saliva in your mouth as you chew.
“We’re playing house,” Sukuna reminds you gruffly. If not for the desolate environment, you’d feel like a school child. Or a teenager who’s snuck her boyfriend over while her parents aren’t home. He readies another spoonful. “Just sit there.”
You don’t have it in you to protest. Sukuna gently feeds you bite after bite until you find yourself surprisingly and pleasantly full of baked beans. The feeling feels almost like you're seven years old again and have eaten nothing but baked beans at the family cook out.
Only they’re cold, you’re in an abandoned building with a strange man, and you don’t think anyone from that cook out is still alive.
Sukuna downs the last third of the baked beans, straight into his mouth from the can. Instead of discarding the can like a cowboy would, he does use the spork that had just been in your mouth to scrape the sides.
“So you were a welder,” you start. “Did you go to trade school straight out of high school?”
Sukuna glances over at you. “I found it later in life.”
“How old are you?” You ask.
“Thirty-five,” Sukuna says. “I’ve been welding for the past three.”
“What were you doing before that?” You continue to ask.
Sukuna glints a grin at you. “Are you sure you want to know?”
That catches you off guard. You lick your chapped lips.
“I’m a reformed man,” Sukuna says, reaching into a backpack for a stick of lip balm. He offers it up to you. “You can’t keep it, but you can borrow some.”
“Thank you,” you say, accepting the stick happily. You apply some as delicately as possible, running it over the fat of your lip and then smacking your lips together. Handing the balm back, you thank Sukuna again.
“Here,” Sukuna says, getting a water bottle out and handing it over. SmartWater. “Drink up, we can always get more.”
Hesitating, you accept the mostly-full water bottle. You haven’t had water in a while, which is a big difference from how you were always toting around three of those Stanley water bottles of varying sizes– one with regular water, one with electrolytes, one with a Diet Coke. It all seems so silly now.
You take a few demure sips of water. It’s warm, but it tastes amazing. Refreshing.
Instead of gouging yourself, you take your final through pulls and then hand the bottle back to Sukuna. You watch his tattoos, these bands of thick black around his wrists and fingers.
“What do your tattoos mean?” You ask.
“They look cool,” Sukuna says.
You giggle a bit at that. Giggle. It causes Sukuna to raise an eyebrow, looking you up and down. He lifts his knee up to rest his arm on, facing you.
“You into guys with tattoos?” He asks.
“I think they’re a nice touch,” you reply.
“I’ve got them all over,” Sukuna says with a conniving flash in his eyes. “Do you have any?”
“I’m scared of needles,” you admit. “I can’t even get blood drawn.”
“But you don’t have an issue with blood.”
“I’ve recently gotten over it.”
Sukuna hums at that. “Tell me about who you killed.” He asks with genuine interest.
You chew on your bottom lip. “Why do you want to know?”
Shrugging, Sukuna looks around the abandoned mall. “Just making conversation. Since we’re going to spend so much time together.”
“I don’t have much to offer,” you admit. You guess there’s sex; you can offer sex but that’s it. Sukuna knows how to read, you hope, and you can tend to a garden but there are no gardens anymore. You like to write, you like to paint, you like the arts, but there’s no room for the arts now.
“You’ll have to figure out what you can offer,” Sukuna says. “Maybe you’re a cold blooded killer. What happened? Tried to take your food? Tried to rape you? Just didn’t like how he looked?”
“Second one,” you murmur. You look over at him, suddenly getting a gust of bravery. “And he was bigger than me too, so don’t try anything.”
Sukuna laughs at that. He takes a sip of the water. “Sex isn’t fun like that,” he muses.
“It would be a pretty abysmal time to get pregnant,” you tack on.
Chuckling, Sukuna nods along. “It would be.”
You draw your knees up to your chest and fold in on yourself. You watch the escalator, which is quickly becoming more and more swathed in darkness as the sun rapidly sets. Sukuna tilts his head back, closing his eyes.
“I could kill for a cigarette,” Sukuna says.
At the same time, you ask him, “Do you not get freaked out by how big the space is?”
The two of you pause, looking at each other. You move first, grabbing your fanny pack from where it rests on the ground and pulling out a vape. In the firelight, it glints yellow and green, the liquid inside sloshing around and mostly full.
“And you were just saying you didn’t know how you’d be helpful,” Sukuna chides, accepting the device.
“It’s lemon flavored,” you say, reaching over to fiddle with the bottom of it to turn it back on. It blinks to life, the digital interface a reminder of times that would take decades to return.
Sukuna takes a deep, long drag of the vape, exhaling it slowly. “Always used to make fun of people who vaped,” he says, taking one last sip before handing the device back to you. You turn it back off and put it away in your fanny pack. “But here it is, saving the day.”
“Then I’ll have to hold onto it so I’m always useful,” you say. Perhaps this is your sundown, your last few hours of living. It doesn’t make sense for Sukuna to keep you alive alongside him; you’re just a drain on his resources.
“I think you have other talents that you aren’t telling me about,” Sukuna says. He looks you up and down. “What did you do before all of this?”
“I taught high school,” you reveal, your heart suddenly beating a thousand miles away in your chest. You feel your heart begin to get crushed as you think of all your students, kids, just kids and what fate they must face now. “And, um, I was getting my yoga instructor certification.”
“Damn, they let you teach high school?” Sukuna blurts out. His eyes go wide.
You furrow your brow in offence. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He whistles, mocking like a wolf. “If I had teachers like you in high school, maybe I wouldn’t have dropped out.”
“Oh my God,” you laugh and roll your eyes. “You sound like every other guy at the bar when they find out what I do.”
“And they’re seeing you all dolled up,” Sukuna groans, tilting his head back and covering his eyes with his hand for a moment. He drags it down, over his face, in a grandiose show of FOMO. “So what, you’re from around here?”
“Yeah,” you say. “Are you?”
He confirms with a nod of his head. His gaze flits down to your hands, to the nails you have on right now. Long, painted with cherry blossoms.
“Nice nails,” he comments.
You nod a little bit in acknowledgement, bringing your hands up so you can observe them in the dim lighting.
“Thank you. I just got them done.”
“How do you do shit with them that long?”
You laugh at that, lighter than needed for the ambiance of the world around you. “I’ve adapted. I’ve had long nails since I got my first paycheck. I, ah, I always thought that the most beautiful women had long nails.”
“They fake?”
“Yeah.”
He nods a bit.
You put your hand closer to him, showing off the design. “My nail tech practiced to do these little faces on them.”
Sukuna takes your hand in his, then brings it closer to the fire so he can see it properly. “They’re cute. Cute what you were going for?”
“I guess so,” you hum.
Sukuna’s hand is warm in yours. Or maybe that’s the fire. Eventually, your hands find their way out of each other’s polite, inquisitive hold. You lose yourself in your thoughts– not too many though.
The only light source eventually becomes the crackling embers in front of each of you. At this silent reminder of the passage of time, Sukuna makes a big show of yawning, stretching his arms up above his head.
He turns to look at you. “So can I trust you with first watch?” Sukuna asks with a grin.
You blink at him, stomach dropping. It does make sense, you suppose. There are two of you, even if Sukuna is clearly the more formidable one. You could rouse him should anyone come down that broken escalator. Then, he laughs. “I’m kidding. No one’s coming down here.”
He shifts from where he’s leaned against the wall, getting more comfortable. He shuts his eyes. When he doesn’t hear you move next to him, he cracks an eye open to look over at you.
“Woman, I’m giving you the sleeping bag,” he grunts. “Get your damn crowbar and go lay down in it.”
“How do I know that you’re not just going to use it to kill me in the middle of the night?” You ask.
“How do I know you’re not going to try to kill me in the middle of the night?” Sukuna volleys back. “We’re strangers. You’ve killed someone already. Who’s to say I have?”
“With my luck, you probably killed people before all of this,” you huff, though you do stand. You stretch your arms up over your head and then bend forward, groaning a bit as you feel your spine decompress a bit.
Sukuna watches you with leveled eyes. “And what would you think, if I have already killed people?”
“I don’t have much choice to care now, do I? You’ve killed, I’ve killed, and it’ll probably happen again, won’t it?”
You stand fully, and Sukuna watches the graceful movements carefully. Yoga instructor. Fitting. He takes in your shoes, which are muddy and certainly not built for the life they are living now.
Picking up your medication, you take your dosage dry– no water to wash it down.
“Take off your shoes before getting in my sleeping bag,” he says, eyes still following you. “I’m trying to keep some things clean.”
“Got it,” you say, nodding a few times. You set the medicine back down beside him.
Toeing off your shoes, you crawl into the sleeping bag. It’s warm. The pillow is the softest thing you’ve rested your head on in days. Sukuna leans over and grabs your crowbar, and for a second fear flashes in your heart. Then, it’s laid down beside you, and you reach out to put your hand around it.
“Don’t unarm yourself too quickly around me,” Sukuna huffs. “You’re too trusting.”
“Sorry,” you murmur.
Sukuna hums, closing his eyes again. “And to think you’ve been on your own, this entire time…”
You’re not sure if he finishes his thought, because sleep overcomes you in moments. Something about being with another person, even if he’s also sleeping, brings comfort to you. You love sleeping, really sleeping, with other people surrounding you. Sleep overs, phone calls, you can’t get enough of it.
When you wake, the fire is still crackling. However, Sukuna is no longer leaning against the wall across from you. Immediately, you sit up, the sleeping bag unzipping some along with your movement. Your hand flies to your jeans, feeling how your button and fly are still done up. You look around with wide eyes, and appear to be entirely alone.
Then, there’s clanging on the escalator and you turn, watching as Sukuna descends. He stretches his arms above his head, letting out an all-too-comfortable groan.
“You up, doll?” He asks with a smile. “You’ve been out for a while. Sun’s been up for a while.”
You use your pointer finger to pull sleep from the inner corners of your eye. “Yeah. I’m up.”
Sukuna comes and stands in front of you, then drops down to crouch in front of you. “You look good,” he says.
“Just slept well,” you admit. Your meds, the sleeping bag, the pillow, the other person.
Sukuna places his finger, crooked, under your chin. He regards you, searching your eyes in the dim lighting. You regard him back, his tattoos, his burn, which goes over his facial markings.
“I like this look,” Sukuna hums. His gaze is lewd, but there’s something else there too. “This will be fun.”
Fun. He certainly has a funny definition of it.
With a surprisingly gentle hand, Sukuna drags a finger over your cheek. You’re still so soft, so gentle, and now, so well rested. It feels in part like the touch a lover would leave, but also the touch a butcher has over a piece of meat before hacking it away from the bone.
Sukuna takes you out with him to the shoe store in the same strip mall. You hold your crowbar and he holds his machete as you enter through the crashed glass doorways. You’ve been to this shoe store frequently, it’s where you buy all your nice flats for work, but have never been in the work boot section.
There are still wool socks left behind in the shoe store. Sukuna grabs a few pairs, putting them into his backpack, which carries a water bottle and two granola bars. The rest of his food and water has been stored behind a loose tile at the strip mall.
You linger by him, and he looks over at you. “I’m sure it’s safe in here.”
“Are you sure?” You ask him.
“Maul them to death if it’s not the case,” Sukuna says. He pauses, then takes a better look at you. Scared, nervous, on edge. He sighs. “I’ll follow you.”
“Okay,” you say, a little life tapped back into your eyes. You head into the depths of the shoe store, towards the more practical shoes. There are work boots, which you regard with a bit of disdain. They’re all so ugly, a far cry from your usual casual heel.
“These are good,” Sukuna says, stopping in front of a pair. Carhartt. Will be a bitch to break in, but will last you a while. He crouches down and looks at the sizes.
You regale him with your size. Sukuna finds a half size bigger for you, pulling them out of the box.
For a moment, the store is bustling around you. It’s a Saturday afternoon, and for some reason you need work boots. Maybe to visit Sukuna at work– he’s a welder. Welding stuff together. And work boots, Sukuna knows. He pulls them out of the box and motions for you to have a seat to try them on.
Then you’re back in reality as Sukuna takes off his backpack and opens up a pair of the wool socks he found at the front. They have little llamas on them.
“Put these on before you put those boots on,” Sukuna says. “Your socks aren’t thick enough.”
You toe off your walking shoes and switch out your socks. The boots are tight and a little uncomfortable. Sukuna does up the laces, tying them like bunny ears. But they fit just like your nice Ariat boots did when you first got them. You stand, only to be immediately pulled down by Sukuna, his hand immediately clamping over your mouth.
Your eyes go wide at the urgency. Sukuna grins.
“I like this,” he whispers, unsheathing his machete.
You whimper, looking from him to the weapon. Is this it? Has he brought you this far just to kill you in the aisle of a Shoe Carnival? Can you at least be in the Steve Madden section? Chinese Laundry, at least.
Instead, Sukuna leans in and presses a kiss to your forehead. It makes your heart skip a beat, brain racing to figure out what is going on.
Then, Sukuna’s standing. Your eyes follow his every moment, the way he takes a deep breath, chest moving with it.
“Leave,” he says, firm and demanding. Like he’s had this power before– this is not the first time he’s wielded it. This is not the first time that he’s staked his territory. It’s crueler and meaner than it was in the pharmacy. “This is not worth it.” Maybe there’s a difference to him of someone scavenging for medicine than shoes.
“The place isn’t yours, pal,” comes the voice of another man. Then, he laughs. There’s the sound of a gun cocking.
Then, it goes off. You half expect Sukuna to drop dead beside you, leaving you to fend for yourself in shoes that need to be broken in. Instead, he side steps, then laughs. The bullet embeds itself in the wall of the building.
“So you’ll die over a pair of shoes?” Sukuna asks, heading towards the man. You watch as he goes around your aisle and out of your eyesight. Your heartbeat echoes in your ears. The crowbar– it’s nearby, right next to the backpack. Can you reach it without causing any sound?
“I’m not going to die,” the man says.
Sukuna laughs at the lie. “You don’t think you are?”
“Just take what you want and leave,” the man amends.
“I think I’ll take my time here,” Sukuna says.
You wait for another gunshot. It comes, along with the shattering of bone. Then, there’s the sound of knife against flesh and bone, sounding like the time you listened to your uncle process venison. There’s a scream, and you can’t tell if it’s that man or if it’s Sukuna– you’ve known Sukuna for less than twenty-four hours– and another sound of the venison-processing.
Gurgling. Gasping. Gurgling.
Then Sukuna is walking back towards you. You look up at him with big eyes, hand clamped over your mouth. His machete is covered in blood, down to the hilt and onto his hand. He crouches down in front of you.
“You made a good choice, coming along with me,” Sukuna says. He offers you a lopsided smile.
Right. The Saturday afternoon in the busy shoe store. Sukuna sheathes his machete and reaches out to pat your foot. He squeezes around the top, fingers on the arch.
“Do the shoes feel like they fit?” Sukuna asks.
You nod shakily, hand still over your mouth.
“Shh,” Sukuna coos, reaching to gently lower your hand, his hand coming around your wrist, encompassing all of it so easily. This hand isn’t bloody. “You’re my wife, remember? We’re playing house.”
You swallow thickly. Right.
He still has that lopsided smile on his face. It’s comforting, even if you know that in the doorframe there’s the lingerings of death.
“We’ll keep your old shoes while we break these ones in,” Sukuna says. “C’mon, let’s head back home.”
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