𓏲ּ𝄢 in which the only thing that can step close to august’s hugs are the animals you crochet┆ fem!reader ┆request
after missions, you had a tendency to just collapse as soon as you reached your room.
if you could, you’d conjure the extra energy to tread to august’s office and spare his scattered papers as pillows, but that’d never work out under his busy routine, or loud working habits.
it wasn’t all horrible. any place in your room was comfortable enough to fall on.
sometimes the floor. sometimes the cold, hard wood of your desk. sometimes against the just-shut door.
most of the time though, it’s on your bed, residence of your tiny army of animals. more specifically, your army of animals you’ve crocheted yourself, a hobby you’ve joyfully held onto for years.
you found yourself making them more often after you’ve joined the cleaners, as a way to kill time, break down stress, or simply just because.
and the best part? they were super stinkin’ cute!
warm and soft if you must add as well. a near-perfect substitute to nuzzle in whenever august couldn’t be there. it was slightly embarrassing how much you would pretend they were him, and the silly question arose if he would feel confronted by the affection you gave them.
that wasn’t the case at all. when he discovered it, he was struck down on the spot from the cuteness.
which made sense since the first time august saw the animals, he fanboyed. shaking your shoulders so infectiously it made you gush too.
he knew about them long before developing feelings for you, but when you started dating he found himself coming face to face with them even more, whether it be when you left one in his workspace or the times he hung around in your room—they were cute little jump scares that instantly made him think of you.
so in short time, something buzzed. he presented it to you head on, first thing when you woke up: a small tutu fit on one of the animals you left behind.
audibly, you gasped—he swore there were straight stars in your eyes.
“oh my gosh!!” you took it from his hands, taking in all of it’s glory, “this is so adorable!”
“right?” he grinned, ego scratched perfectly by your reaction.
the more you went on about it the more he realized something.
you loved it. so much so it actually caught him a little off guard. he always got a special kick out of seeing people’s praises and smiles to the things he made, but with you it might as well had been the best sight in the world.
there was only one way he knew of to keep bringing that face back: more little clothes.
he took advantage of any moment. a present on your pillow, a parting gift for your long missions—hell, even just on random urges, your animals stayed in rotation as his own special clients.
some strangely came back with his scent, one or two carried a long lost strand of hair, every so often one could look like him when half your mind was lost to sleep.
when he snuck in on you cuddling them like him one night, he never let it go. the image constantly on his mind constantly came out his mouth in light hearted teasing. sometimes he wished to catch you off guard like that again, chasing the rush of affection.
you on the other hand, always had a reminder of him nearby. scents, fabrics, or simply feelings that held his energy.
It has been a year since I started writing fanfiction and I'd really like to say thank you to those who follow me. I've enjoyed creating these works as an outlet, as well as being able to get into more media that help me out of art/writer's block. As a token of my thanks, I'd like to share a work in progress fic that is in the making!
The Starter's Guide To Immortality™, a Lego Monkie Kid Sun Wukong x Reader, is currently in the making! I'm now able to watch LMK as a whole, allowing me to continue working on this project that I've planned for months :D
As of now, many of its chapters are currently outlined and soon to be drafted. This would be my first ever (planned out) fanfic on this blog and I am very excited to introduce it once it is finished. I do have other story ideas for different fandoms but they will remain outlined (for now)! Once again, thank you to my followers and friends for supporting my shenanigans. I can't wait to continue this silly journey (to the west) <3
Tamsy x f!reader | No y/n | “Dove” = reader self-insert | Vague reader appearance
Trigger and spoiler warnings below ⚠️
A/N: Slight manga spoilers. Tamsy is especially creepy in this one. Thank you for bearing with me as I try to figure out his character! Feel free to send me any criticism. This is just a small portion of what I’m working on.
The off-roader had no business moving at this speed.
Enjin had both hands on the wheel and the expression of a man genuinely enjoying himself, which was the most dangerous configuration possible. The vehicle lurched over a ridge of compacted waste and came down hard, rattling every body inside it against every other body inside it.
"Enjin—" Riyo started.
"Relax."
"You just took that at—"
"I said relax."
The boarding had been quick. Tamsy had been one of the first to the vehicle, assessed the seating with the economy of a man who did not appear to be assessing anything, and then stepped aside when Rudo came around the front — a small, unhurried movement that opened the middle naturally. Follo had taken the far back. Tomme had settled in beside him. Riyo had already claimed the passenger seat beside Enjin on the grounds that she wanted to be close enough to scream at him if necessary.
Which left Dove at the door, with Rudo already in, looking at the remaining space.
She climbed in without comment and pulled the door shut.
She leaned slightly into Tamsy as she settled, caught herself, and straightened. "Sorry."
"Not at all," he said.
She reached down for the seatbelt.
Nothing. She felt along the seat edge. The buckle slot. The floor.
Nothing.
The car lurched forward and she grabbed the dash.
Enjin drove like he had somewhere important to be and very little respect for the terrain between here and there. The road — if the corrugated strip of pressed garbage and exposed earth deserved the name — threw the off-roader sideways every thirty seconds. Dust bloomed against the windows. Riyo had given up trying to watch the path and was simply bracing. Follo knocked into Zanka and was elbowed back.
"Is there a reason you're—" Tomme began, gripping the handle.
"Fastest route," Enjin said.
"To what? Your own funeral?"
"There's a beast sighting near the northern wall and I want to get there before the trash cloud comes around." He took a corner. The whole vehicle shuddered. "We get there first, finish the job, then get out before the trash fall.”
"We get there first, we get launched through the windshield," Follo said.
"Have some faith,” he says looking back at him through the rear view mirror.
Riyo's hand shot out and grabbed the dash.
"Enjin." Her finger jabbed at the windshield. "Enjin—“
A figure crossed the road ahead. Enjin hit the brakes.
The sound was exceptional. The skid was worse. Every person in the car went forward in a single ugly lurch, and Dove, beltless, hit the dashboard edge with a sound that had no business being as loud as it was.
"Oh dear," said Tamsy, raising his oversized sleeve to his mouth.
Oh yes.
His inner self settled back in its chair with the long, quiet satisfaction of a man watching the opening scene of something he had been anticipating for some time.
"Enjin, what the hell!" Rudo snapped.
"There was a person—"
"Drive like that again and I'll—"
"She going to be alright?" Tomme craned forward, alarmed.
"She's breathing," Riyo said, already reaching over the seat back.
But Tamsy was closer. He moved without announcing it, one arm coming around Dove's shoulders, his other hand bracing her at the side before she could slump further toward the dash. He drew her back against him, steadying her with the calm efficiency of someone who had simply been in the right position at the right time.
"You should drive a little more carefully, Enjin." His voice stayed pleasant.
"Oh yeah?" Enjin glanced in the mirror with a grin and zero remorse. "You gettin’ real comfortable back there, Caines?"
Tamsy produced a handkerchief from within his sleeve and pressed it gently to the split at Dove's hairline, dabbing the thin line of blood.
"Comfortable enough."
More so than expected, actually.
She was lighter than he'd imagined. Warm through the fabric of her capelet. And there was a scent — clean, faintly sweet, something that did not belong in a vehicle that smelled of dust and exhaust — that arrived when she leaned against him and made him pause behind his own face.
He kept the handkerchief steady.
Riyo and Tomme exchanged a glance across the seat.
Tomme pressed her fingers to her mouth. Her eyes were doing something involuntary.
Riyo mouthed: Holy shit?!
Zanka, to his credit, looked at the window. His jaw tensed once in the particular way it did when he found something mildly insufferable but had decided not to dignify it.
Rudo was staring at Dove's forehead with the sharp, unblinking focus of someone taking inventory of damage. He glanced once at Tamsy's hold and then back at the bruise already darkening at her hairline.
"She's going to have a lump," he said tightly.
"Unfortunately," Tamsy agreed. "She hit it rather squarely."
Rudo directed a look at Enjin that communicated several things, none of them friendly.
Enjin had the grace to look slightly apologetic, which for Enjin meant he stopped grinning for five consecutive seconds.
The vehicle stopped at the edge of a wide lot, a flattened stretch of compacted waste with the northern wall visible through the haze. The beast was already audible — a low, grinding resonance that rattled the windows.
Doors opened. Feet hit ground.
"How bad?" Enjin asked, scanning the distance.
"Mid-size, looks mobile," Zanka said, squinting. He had his staff out already. "We all set to go?”
Riyo was already rolling her neck. "Rudo, you coming?"
Rudo hesitated. He looked back at Dove, still unconscious against Tamsy's shoulder.
"Go," Tamsy said. "I'll stay with her until she wakes. She hit her head — someone should be here in case she doesn't come around cleanly."
"You're support type anyway," Follo said, practical, already pulling his mask up.
Rudo looked at Dove once more.
"Go," Tamsy repeated, quieter, and smiled. "I have her."
Rudo went.
The doors closed. The noise outside swelled and then shifted direction as the team moved toward it.
The off-roader went still.
He waited a moment after the last footsteps faded.
Then, in the filtered, dusty quiet, he adjusted her.
She settled against him more fully when he shifted his arm. Her head came to rest near his collarbone. Her breathing was soft and even, the rhythm of it something he tracked without meaning to.
He looked at her face.
The bruise was coming up ugly, a plum-colored mark just below her hairline that he had already cleaned as well as the handkerchief allowed. Her lashes rested against her cheek. Her lips were parted slightly.
Sleeping, something in him noted. Or near enough.
He let his hand rest at her side, thumb resting against the fabric of her capelet. He turned his face slightly, enough that her hair was close. The scent again — that clean, faint sweetness — arrived with more clarity in the silence.
His other hand moved, slow and unhurried.
Underneath the edge of her capelet. Beneath the hem of her shirt. His palm settled flat against her stomach — warm skin, the soft rise of her breathing underneath his hand — and he held it there.
Just curious, he told himself. Harmless. Only seeing what she feels like.
He did not interrogate the space between that thought and the act.
In his inner theater, there was no popcorn. No performance. His inner self simply sat facing forward, very still, watching in the attentive silence of a man who has been given something he had not calculated into the plan and finds it, upon receipt, considerably more affecting than projected.
So that's what you feel like.
If someone walked in right now—
His inner self tilted its head.
—we'd look like lovers.
The word landed without the revulsion he expected. He turned it over the way you'd turn a coin between fingers, waiting for it to produce the correct response. Disgust, maybe. Clinical detachment. Some appropriately sardonic annotation.
Instead, something warm moved through his chest that had no business being there.
His thumb pressed slightly into the fabric of her capelet.
Lovers. Her head at his collarbone. His hand against the warmth of her skin. Her breathing against him, slow and trusting, in the particular way of someone who had no idea they were being held.
His pulse picked up. He swallowed thickly.
Fascinating.
He was aware of it with the faint, detached alarm of a man who has just noticed a crack in load-bearing architecture and is choosing not to look directly at it. The excitement was real. The warmth was real.
Both arrived without his permission.
In his inner theater, his other self sat very still.
Just a man in white, in the dark.
He held her like that for a while. The sounds of the fight outside reached them muffled and remote, and the light through the dusty window was amber and still, and Dove breathed evenly against him, and he allowed himself the full measure of the moment.
She stirred.
A small shift, her chin moving first. Then her hand, pressing against the seat. Then her eyes opened, unfocused, and he watched her take stock — the ceiling of the vehicle, the light, the arm around her — and he felt the precise moment she understood where she was.
She sat forward.
He let go immediately. Both hands withdrew. He created distance without comment, easy and clean, nothing that looked like retreat.
Dove pressed a hand to her forehead and winced.
"Easy," he said.
She looked at him. Then at the empty vehicle around them. Then back at him with the wariness of someone whose instincts had fired before her reasoning caught up.
"Where is everyone?"
"Fighting." He nodded toward the window. Distant, the sounds of impact carried faintly. "You hit your head when Enjin braked. I stayed with you in case you didn't wake well."
She touched the bruise at her hairline carefully.
"I cleaned it as best I could," he said. "There wasn't too much blood."
A pause.
"Thank you," she said.
She meant it. He could hear that she meant it, and it landed with more texture than it had any reason to. She did not give that tone to everyone.
"Is your vision clear?" he asked.
She looked at the window, the door handle, the far seat. Testing. "Yes."
"Any ringing?"
"No." She pressed her fingers to the bruise again and exhaled through her nose. "That's going to be terrible tomorrow."
"Enjin drives like he has a death wish," Tamsy said mildly.
Something moved across her face. Not quite a laugh. The almost-version of one, honest and involuntary, there for a half-second before she tucked it away.
"Yeah," she said.
The sounds outside shifted. A heavy impact, then quiet. Then voices — Rudo's, somewhere distant.
Dove reached for the door handle.
He watched her go.
The capelet shifted as she moved, the gold compass rose catching the amber light for a moment before she dropped out of the vehicle and the door swung shut behind her.
The silence she left was different from the silence that had been there before.
Tamsy sat with it.
He had known she might end up in the middle. He had made room at the right moment, said nothing, let the geometry of boarding do the rest. He had known about the seatbelt for three days. He had known how Enjin drove.
He had wanted proximity.
He had gotten it.
Thank you, he thought, for sating my curiosity.
He folded the handkerchief, and tucked it back into his sleeve, then stepped out of the vehicle.
Tamsy x f!reader | No use of y/n | "Dove" = reader-insert nickname | Reader has vague appearance
Tamsy is injured and you are tasked with assisting him to the bath house. On the way there, chaos ensues.
No major spoilers or warnings. A little scene from a fic I'm working on. Will reference scenes from other chapters I have not published yet.
...
The hallway stretched long and quiet in the early evening light, the yellow walls gone amber at this hour, a single bulb flickering twice at the far end before settling.
Dove kept her arm steady under Tamsy's and focused on the elevator.
He wasn't dead weight — he was too controlled for that, moving with a deliberate economy that told her he was conserving rather than struggling. But the hospital gown had been traded for his leisure clothes, white underneath the open robe, and the effort of dressing had cost him something. She felt it in the occasional lean — the way his shoulder would press into hers for half a step, weight redistributing without comment, before he found his footing again and straightened.
She tried not to think about his hair.
It was down. Fully down, blond and navy loose around his shoulders, the tassels stripped of their white strips, the whole arrangement disordered in a way she'd never seen it. It made him look — different. Softer at the edges. The scar sat differently without the tassels framing his face, and the labret caught what light there was, and the navy brows were relaxed, and he looked, privately and annoyingly, like someone she wanted to keep looking at.
Stop, she told herself. He almost died today. That's just a chemically sympathetic response and it will pass.
She looked at the elevator instead.
She'd assumed this part would be uncomfortable for him. The reliance. The proximity. The visible evidence of limitation in someone who had never, in her observation, allowed himself to appear limited. She'd braced for the composed deflection of it, the practiced ease deployed to cover exposed ground.
But she glanced at him now, and he seemed — fine. Entirely fine, in fact. His expression was mild, his pace unhurried, his chin slightly elevated. Not performing comfort. Actually comfortable.
That mattered, she thought. More than it should.
"I could just use my Vital Instrument, you know," she said, before she'd decided to say it.
He glanced down at her.
"Float you the rest of the way." She kept her tone practical. "It would be faster than walking, and less strain on—"
"That's quite alright."
"Are you sure? It's not too—"
"You know," he said, pleasantly, "for someone offering to float me—" and his voice curved around the word like amusement itself, "—you seem rather comfortable just holding on to me like this."
She blinked.
He held her gaze with the specific quality of a man who had identified something and found it charming.
"That is not—" She stopped. Closed her mouth. Opened it. "I was being practical."
"Mm." He turned back to face the hallway ahead. The corner of his mouth had moved. "Certainly."
"I was."
"I believe you completely."
She looked at the elevator door, which was not getting closer fast enough.
The smile in his voice sat in her chest without asking permission, and she told herself that was just the warmth of the corridor, the flickering light, the end of a very long day.
The elevator was old.
The accordion gate folded back with a groan of metal and a sound like a very emphatic sigh. The car was small — wood paneling on three sides, a worn brass railing, the half-dial floor indicator above the door frozen perpetually between two and three. Dove pressed the ground-level button and felt the car shudder once, then begin its slow, certain descent.
The gate closed.
A smaller, quieter space than the hallway. She was aware of it immediately — the close walls, the creak of the old cables, the lack of anywhere useful to look that wasn't him.
She looked at the floor indicator.
Tamsy leaned against the railing at the back of the car with his arms loosely crossed, watching her with the uncomplicated attention of someone who had nowhere else to be and found the current view sufficient.
Then, from the hallway behind the gate — voices.
Dove recognized Gris's deep, easy baritone before the words resolved. He was talking to someone, two or three others by the sound of it, their footsteps unhurried, moving in the direction of the elevator.
Beside her, she felt Tamsy's posture shift — something subtle, barely perceptible. Not tension. More like a man who had just performed a rapid internal calculation.
Well. This is just great, thought Tamsy.
Gris would see them. Gris would see that Tamsy was still moving around post-medbay, which meant Gris would offer to help, which meant Gris would insist, and then there would be kind hands and genuine concern and questions and the specific well-meaning invasion that came from a man who found helping people genuinely fulfilling, and then there would be more people between him and the current arrangement of the evening, which involved Dove's arm and Dove's pace and Dove's quietly cherished expressions and absolutely no one else.
He was not going to let Gris Rubion ruin this.
The footsteps drew closer.
Tamsy stumbled.
It happened fast. His foot went sideways, his weight shifted, and she had exactly no time to brace before he came with it — sideways, forward, one hand catching the wall beside her head with a crack of palm on wood paneling, the other finding the railing. He caught himself. Both of them hit the wall of the car, her back against the paneling, his arm above her head, his body angled over hers and not quite touching, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him through the thin white of his underlayer.
His hair fell.
Blond and navy, swinging forward in a curtain around them, catching the dim overhead light. She was looking up at him. His face hovered close — the scar, the button nose, the labret gleaming, the pale oak eyes, which were not, she noted with some irritation, reflecting any surprise whatsoever.
Her gaze dropped. Nose. Lips. The silver of the labret. Back up.
"What are you—"
His finger touched her lips.
Light. One finger, just the tip of it, pressed gently against her mouth. His eyes moved to the gate.
"Shh," he said. "Wait."
Not a command. Barely even a request. Conspiratorial, almost — quiet and unhurried, the voice of someone who had a plan and was very comfortable with it.
Outside, the footsteps arrived.
Gris's voice, mid-sentence: "—told Enjin the south corridor's faster if you're coming from the—"
A pause.
A very specific pause.
Dove, with her back against the wood paneling and Tamsy's arm above her head and his hair falling in a curtain around both of them, heard the exact moment Gris saw them through the accordion gate.
Silence.
The silence of a large and fundamentally decent man processing information he had not anticipated.
Then the careful, deliberate sound of a throat being cleared.
"Let's uh," Gris said, with admirable composure, "take the stairs."
A second of shuffling. The sound of someone redirecting several people, gently, with the quiet efficiency of a shepherd who had encountered an unexpected situation in a field and was choosing not to examine it further.
Footsteps retreating. Then nothing.
The elevator creaked around them.
Dove planted both palms flat on Tamsy's shoulders and pushed.
He went, obligingly, to arm's length. His hair swung back. He found the railing again and settled against it with the ease of a man who had just concluded a perfectly reasonable interaction and was ready for the next one.
She turned her face to the side.
Her ears were on fire. She could feel it from the jaw up — the specific, comprehensive heat of someone who had been caught in a tableau they had not constructed and could not adequately explain. She could feel her own heartbeat in the side of her throat.
"They are going to think," she said, to the wall, "something happened. They’ll get the wrong idea!"
"Will they."
"What was that?"
"I tripped."
She turned back to look at him. Fully, directly, with the expression she reserved for things that did not hold up to scrutiny.
He met her eyes with a blandness that was technically a facial expression but barely.
"That was not a trip."
"I've been injured," he said. "My balance is—"
"Why?" She kept her voice flat. "Seriously. Why."
He looked at her for a moment.
Then the blandness dropped — not into guilt, nothing so satisfying as that. Into something more honest. He exhaled once through his nose, almost a sigh, and the arm that had been braced on the railing uncrossed, and he looked at her the way he'd looked at her in the medbay — not performing anything.
"I didn't want anyone else handling me right now," he said. Simple. Flat as reading from a list.
She stared at him.
"Why not?"
It was the wrong question to ask. She knew it was the wrong question the moment it came out of her, because asking why not meant she'd accepted the premise, which meant she'd let the excuse stand, which was apparently not something she was capable of doing right now.
He thought for a second.
Not performing the pause. Actually thinking — she could see it in the slight drop of his gaze, the moment where something assembled itself and then got dressed in appropriate language. Then he looked back up.
And grinned.
Not the polished smile. Not the pleasant warmth. This one was darker at the edges, more deliberate, something possessive underneath the playfulness that she felt in the base of her sternum like a struck chord.
He leaned in.
Not fast — slow enough that she tracked every inch of it and did nothing to stop it, which was a separate problem she'd examine later.
"I only want to spend a little more time with you." Close to her ear, quiet, conspiratorial and utterly sincere. His voice had dropped just slightly. "Must I have to share?"
She looked at him.
The elevator creaked around them.
The pattern assembled in her head all at once — clean and complete and entirely unwelcome. The town outing, offered so casually, already knowing the café's name. The spacing of his appearances in the laundry room, in the corridor, at her table. Now this. The common thread was not convenience. It was not coincidence. The common thread was her, and time, and the quiet engineering of both.
He had wanted the small table at the café that fit exactly two people. He had wanted her to bring him to the bath house. He had wanted, apparently, this specific elevator instead of those stairs.
He had wanted all of it.
Her heart hit her ribs harder than fear alone would have managed.
This is a problem, she thought. This is a significant problem and you need to not be in this feeling right now.
She straightened.
"Right," she said.
Her voice came out flat. Good. Flat was good. Flat was practical and self-preserving and implied no particular internal state.
She locked it in the same drawer as annoyingly beautiful and the warmth of his sleeve and her ear he'd touched during the café, and she pressed her hands together and announced:
"I'm not carrying you anymore."
His expression shifted immediately — the grin dissolving into something pained and exaggerated and deeply, theatrically unconvincing.
"I'll just use my Vital Instrument," she said. "You can float the rest of the way."
"Aww." His brows drew together. He pressed a hand to his chest. "Please?"
"You just admitted you faked a fall."
"I admitted no such thing. I said I wanted to spend time with—"
"Azimuth," she said. "You're getting floated."
He exhaled. Long-suffering. The expression of a man who had played his hand and found the return unsatisfactory.
She was already pulling the compass from beneath her capelet.
A/N: Anyone noticing that Victoria's Secret is stepping up their bra and panties game? They're so cute, but I'm a Calvin Klein girl. I mean, I got the underwear, the sheets, the socks, the shirt, the shorts, EVERYTHING. But you know, I was listening to guess by Charli, and I was thinking, let me just write something before she gets sent to the Khia. This is inspired by @fl4r3z, I really like their takes on the reader walking in on gachiakuta guys.
WARNING: Panty eaters, cunnilingus, freaky ahh behavior, flashing (don’t flash ppl irl), p in v, body worship, reader being a menace.
PAIRING: VARIOUS! male gachiakuta characters x reader
WORD COUNTER: 1.1k
[꣑ৎ] ENJIN
You were already approaching Enjin, who was sitting on one of the couches. Already kicking back with a cigarette from his lips. With that stupid grin on his face, as you saunter towards him.
You tell him to guess what color was underneath your uniform, already casually unzipping your jacket and a little tug down your pants, low enough to flash the edge of the new set you were wearing.
First, he plays along, "Is it red? nah... black? C'mon, give a guy some hints."
He likes the tease at first, I mean, you were already straddling him, grinding on top of him.
But once he "guesses" right, you finally show him. Yanking your pants down, panties exposed. As soon as he saw it, he was hard, like starving,
"Fuck, you know how to make me lose it."
He lowkey loves the fact that you're wearing lingerie underneath your uniform, just makes him hard as FUCK,
Spoiler alert, probably makes you ride him, and finishes inside you while both of you are still partial dressed. Then fixes your jacket with a lazy grin and a kiss on your forehead.
"You should do this more, makes me wanna fight harder just for you."
[꣑ৎ] TAMSY
You're in headquarters, your uniform neat as always. You were passively listening to him, talking about something about strategy,
But you had an idea, "accidentally" dropping something just to bend over, and flashing him with some lace under your lowered pants.
He sees it, of course, he sees it. His facade of a smile just grew sharper,
You just smirked, "Guess wrong, and there's a penalty."
He guesses at first, "Pink? That's cute that you're trying to distract me," He says, but you already know he's boiling under there.
He, of course, he won't touch you right away; He has a sadistic kink, WHICH IS CANON, it just kicks in. Making you writhe underneath him, palming you through your clothes, purposefully rubbing against your clothed cunt.
He’s taunting you about how filthy it was for you to wear lingerie under your "serious" clothes.
He’s edging you because you did that something stupid like flashing him.
"How about we play a different game, guess mine."
He says it while you're on the edge of your orgasm, just for him to stop, and start edging you again.
[꣑ৎ] FOLLO
You're helping Follo set up, you know putting supplies into the satchels.
He's such a sweetheart, right? He was being his usual self, polite. You thought for a moment before turning towards him, already partially lifting your top, flashing the new pretty bra you're wearing.
"Guess"
His cheek turned pink immediately.
Like he like AHHH,
He is probably malfunctioning, blinking at you. "Uh... is it.. black?" he squeaked out. His cheeks instantly turned a deep pink, his eyes still locked onto you.
"Wrong~"
He tries guessing again, but he's stumbling over his words, so you give him one more try, but he's wrong again.
So you just tugged your uniform top off, and even though he got it wrong again.
You gave him pussy, I mean, he deserves it <3.
He eats you out, but through the panties, of course, and he's eager to and for your praise.
He's definetly cumming in his pants.
[꣑ৎ] GRIS
Awwee, you're a big, honorable guy. Gris is so respectful, even when you're both in uniform.
You wait until you both are alone, then unzip the top of your uniform, flashing a new set you got.
He freezes, immediately, already blushing at the sight. "You... wore that?"
The guessing game made him more flustered, but extremely turned on though.
He kept on guessing or just gave up in the end. He's already lifting you effortlessly, making you squeak out. Your uniform jacket is already open, bra exposed, though your uniform is on, you still feel exposed.
He's definitely fucking you, not before kissing every inch of your body, calling you beautiful, and how you're lowkey driving him crazy with all your teasing.
He's calling you beautiful while dicking you down, yeah <3.
Creampie, definitely.
[꣑ৎ] ZODYL
This is just stupid. Why on earth would you show Zodyl your panties?
You're in his room, the sound of static from the TV echoing through the room, and you are fully uniformed. Without warning, you lower your pants down, just enough to flash the barely-there panties on your hip.
He wouldn't even react, just looking at them with no shame.
"Bold. Guess the color, huh?"
HE DOES NOT ENTERTAIN THIS, just punishes you for distracting him. He makes you stand there, only in your bra and panties, and he sits right in front of you.
Just staring at you.
"It's purple.. huh."
He would make you ride him, while he purposefully guess wrong, and until he got it right, he wouldn’t let you cum at all.
He would definitely rip the lingerie, not even caring if it was new.
"Is this what you were hiding from me?"
Probably leave you ruined, with bite marks all over your body, lingerie soaked, before fixing your clothes and sending you out to find the Spherite, LMAO.
[꣑ৎ] JABBER
This is just pure chaos; he's busting when he sees a single flash of your bra while sparring with him.
It was an accident, of course, but you made him guess the color.
"Guess?! Who cares, show me the goods!"
He's already rubbing his face against your chest, I mean, he wants to scratch, slap, and even have you ride him face with the panties on.
He would probably eat through it. Maybe you should get a flavored one next time.
The guessing turns into biting, licking, and just him being impatient. Your uniform, just gone, bruh.
The jacket was thrown, pants around one ankle.
Oh yeah, it's crazy.
He makes you ride his face, "You should flash me more, babe," he muffled out while you were sitting on his face.
[꣑ৎ] AUGUST
The drama king sees your lingerie, and guessing goes out the window.
He's already got it right, I mean, he's an artist, a crafter, a maker, and an inventor. He probably knows it, just from the shadow of the color against your skin.
Yk color theory, ofc.
You didn't even tell him to guess yet.
"It's orange, isn't it?"
He would probably want to sketch you, "Holy, you've been wearing that under your uniform. Lemme sketch it, PLEASE."
He's handsy, probably making a new set for you as we speak. Making you model, and twirl, and pose, probably as jerking material for later.
He's definitely busting all over that shi, like after he's done sketching you.
He's eating you out, even if you're half-dressed, and fucking you from the back, again, he's an artist, so—he’s sketching while fucking you in the studio, of course.
"Next time, I'm designing you a lingerie with easier access."
he would always attack you aggressively when it came to practice, or constantly give you sarcastic comments. always saying something to genuinely ruin your day, constantly shoving you roughly during missions. it was really obvious you two hated each other so badly that you both wished death on each other.
but that never explained how you ended up on his bed naked. moaning his name as he roughly pounded into you.
he had one hand wrapped around your throat as he choked you out, his other hand gripping your hip as he brutally thrusted into you. he growled lowly, gripping your throat tighter as he continued to pound into you, his hips moving faster and faster as he fucked you brutally.
sweat dripped down his forehead and chest as he used you like some toy.
you moan softly. he smirked cruelly as he heard your soft moan, tightening his grip on your throat even more. “louder. let me hear how much you love getting fucked by someone who you hate deeply.” he slammed into you harder, his cock hitting your sweet spot repeatedly as he made you cry out.
“i-i.. hgnhhh!.. zanka—“ you stutter. he laughed, knowing he had full control over your body. he knew he was hitting the right spot inside of you. “yeah? you like getting fucked by me?” he slammed into you again, making you arch your back and grab onto his sheets.
he suddenly pulled out of you, making you whimper at the sudden emptiness. he flipped you over onto your stomach and pulled your hips up, entering you from behind roughly. he grabbed your hair and wrapped it around his fist, using it as leverage to fuck you deeper and faster.
your moans filled the room as he used your body for his pleasure, not caring how rough he was being at that moment. “that's it. moan for me, pathetic—“ he bit down on your shoulder, leaving a deep mark as he continued his brutal pace.
“g-gonna.. gonna cum— z-zanka!!” you cried out as your orgasm crashed over you. letting the pleasure hit you hard, you trembled violently, slowly collapsed onto the sheets.
he growled, feeling your pussy clench around him as you came. he fucked you through it, not slowing down until he felt his own release building up. with one final brutal thrust, he buried himself deep inside you and came hard, filling you with his hot cum.
he collapsed on top of you, still inside you, breathing heavily against your sweaty skin. he stayed like that for a moment before pulling out roughly, making you whimper at the sudden emptiness. he rolled off you, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling. the room was silent except for your heavy breathing.
he grabbed a towel and wiped between your legs roughly, cleaning up the mess he made. he tossed the towel aside and pulled you into his arms without thinking, spooning behind you possessively despite his earlier words. his hand rested on your stomach, keeping you close as if he didn't hate you at all.
he tightened his grip around you, his arm wrapping around your waist, pulling you closer. you could feel his face pressed against the back of your head, his breath warm against your neck. despite the rough sex and harsh words, there was a surprising tenderness in how he held you now.
A/N: soo I never actually watched the show but I have seen clips in tiktok, I'm very sorry if how I write them isn't 100% right I'm planning on watching it next week or on Friday. Thank you for the support and love
Paring: gachiakuta characters x s/o reader (seperate)
Summery:This has Tamsy Caines, Jabber Wonger, Zanka Nijiku
Contains:fluff;sfw
Jabber Wonger
Jabber was sprawled beside you during one of the rare quiet breaks where nobody was fighting, yelling, or trying to kill each other.
You were both eating from cheap takeout containers while sitting against the wall.
At some point, you noticed Jabber casually dropping part of his food onto your plate.
You blinked.
“…That was yours.”
Jabber barely looked up.
“Yeah.”
You stared at the extra food sitting there.
“Then why’d you give it to me?”
He finally glanced over at you lazily before shrugging.
“Don’t want my little peach goin’ hungry.”
Your face warmed immediately.
Jabber noticed too.
A grin spread across his face instantly.
“There it is.”
You looked away quickly and poked at your food.
“You’re weird.”
“Nah,” he snorted. “You’re cute.”
Before you could argue, Jabber leaned closer against you, practically half laying on your shoulder now.
One of his hands squeezed lightly at your side absentmindedly while he stole a drink from beside you.
“Eat,” he muttered casually. “You look better happy anyway.”
You tried giving some of the food back.
Jabber immediately pushed your hand away.
“Tch. Keep it.”
Then quieter, almost lazy:
“Like feedin’ you.”
Tamsy Caines
Tamsy teased you constantly.
Not in a genuinely mean way, well maybe a bit
Just enough to annoy you.
A comment about your cheeks.
Poking and squeezing at your sides when he walked past.
Calling you cute when you were trying to be serious.
After a while, you got fed up with it and decided to hide yourself completely for the day.
Big oversized shirt, baggy sleeves, nothing fitted.
You thought it was a good plan.
Then Tamsy saw you.
He stopped walking immediately.
“…What are you wearing.”
You crossed your arms defensively.
“Clothes.”
“Yeah, ugly ones.” he said he the most mocking tone
You glared at him.
Tamsy walked closer, immediately tugging lightly at the oversized sleeve hanging past your hand.
“What’s all this for?” he muttered out
“Nothing.”
“Mhm.”
He clearly didn’t believe you.
And somehow after that, he started following you around even more than usual.
Sitting beside you.
Leaning over your shoulder.
Constantly trying to peek in the giant shirt like he was investigating something.
At one point, he even grabbed lightly at your side through the fabric with a frown.
“…You’re hiding.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.” he said
You tried walking away again.
Tamsy followed immediately.
“Tamsy.” you said
“What?”
“Stop following me.” you huffed out
“No.”
The answer came way too fast.
You turned around annoyed only for him to flick your forehead lightly.
“You’re cute,” he muttered. “Quit dressing like a couch cushion.”
Your face warmed instantly.
Tamsy grinned the second he saw it.
“There you are, now take your clothes off for me”
Zanka Nijiku
Zanka treated you like a pillow constantly
Not even in a teasing way.
He genuinely just preferred laying on you over literally anything else.
The couch? Too stiff. Pillows? Not comfortable enough.
You? Perfect apparently.
At first it started small.
His head on your shoulder.
Leaning against your side during breaks.
Resting against your lap while talking.
Then eventually it became completely normal for him to just casually lay on top of you whenever he felt like it.
Today was no different.
You had barely sat down before Zanka immediately dropped beside you and rested his head right onto your stomach.
You blinked down at him.
“…Seriously?”
“Hm?” he groaned out
“You do this every day.”
“And?” Zanka sounded genuinely confused about why that was a problem.
You poked his forehead lightly.
“You’re heavy.” you said
“You’re comfy.”
That apparently canceled it out in his mind.
A few moments later, one of his arms wrapped loosely around your waist while he got comfortable against you like he planned on staying there forever.
You sighed dramatically.
Zanka only closed his eyes.
“Warm too,” he muttered lazily.
Your face warmed a little.
Meanwhile he looked completely relaxed already.
Like laying on you was the easiest thing in the world.
After another quiet moment, he tilted his head slightly against your stomach.
“…Don’t move.”
“Why?”
“I’m taking a nap.” he mumble out
And just like that, you were trapped there for the next hour because Zanka had decided you were his favorite pillow again.
Hellooo ! :D I hope you are doing well. I was wondering if you could do a Zankz x Gn reader when zanka allows them to hold his assistaff and some times whne training, they switch jinkis?
Have a good day/night and stay safe🩷
-🌻 anon
Hello sweetie, this took me a while bc I couldn't think in anything good, but I think It turned out well in the end. I hope you like this💕
The sun's rays beat down heavily on the training ground.
Training with Zanka always meant ending up with burning muscles and a ragged breath, but this time, the atmosphere felt strangely static.
Zanka drove the tip of Assistaff into the ground, resting both hands on the staff. His dark eyes scanned you with that analytical and severe intensity so typical of him, evaluating your posture.
"Your fluidity with your instrument is improving," he admitted, letting out a huff meant to hide his pride, "but you still rely too much on the weight of your own Jinki. If it's taken from you, you're dead."
You looked at your Jinki and then at the imposing Assistaff.
"Sometimes I wonder how you balance something so massive without losing speed," you commented, half-joking. "Will you let me check the weight?"
The request left the place in absolute silence. A Jinki was not a simple object; it was the manifestation of the soul. Lending it was like baring one's spirit. Zanka blinked in surprise and, for a second, averted his gaze while adjusting his jacket collar, visibly uncomfortable.
"It's not a toy," he growled. "If you drop it, I'll kill you."
He extended the staff toward you, and as your hands wrapped around it, a jolt of energy, rigid and astonishingly warm, climbed up your arms. Assistaff was ridiculously heavy. Your knees buckled from the surprise, forcing you to plant your feet firmly to keep from falling. Zanka let out a laugh, crossing his arms.
"See? You lack leg strength," he said. "Keep your center of gravity low."
"It's like lifting a concrete pillar," you gasped, trying to adopt a better posture. The metal vibrated beneath your palms, responding warily to a touch that wasn't Zanka's.
"Because you're not guiding it with willpower, you're only using brute force," he explained, taking a step forward. Without warning, he positioned himself behind you, his chest brushing your back as he extended his arms to wrap around yours.
The heat of his body enveloped you immediately. His touch was firm.
"Don't fight the weight," he whispered near your ear, his voice unusually low. "Let the Anima flow from your chest, pass through your shoulders, and fill the weapon."
Guided by his hands, you raised the staff. Surprisingly, it felt light as a feather. Zanka's Anima current intertwined with yours for an instant, and an intimate, overwhelming sensation made your heart race. Noticing how your posture tensed, Zanka stepped away, clearing his throat.
"Now, give me your Jinki," he ordered, holding out his hand.
You didn't hesitate; you handed him your precious object, and seeing it in his hands felt strangely right. Zanka felt your instrument, spinning it rapidly through the air.
"It's light," he commented. "Ideal for consecutive attacks, but you leave too many openings on your flanks. Come on, attack me with Assistaff."
"Are you crazy? I'm going to crush you," you warned, swaying under the weapon's weight.
"Try it if you can," he challenged with a smirk, adopting an impeccable guard posture even while using your Jinki.
The training resumed, but the rhythm changed completely. Launching strikes with Assistaff required a massive effort; every swing opened your defense, and Zanka capitalized on every mistake, blocking your attacks with your own weapon using short, fluid movements.
"You're using my weapon better than I am," you protested after dodging a blow and falling to the ground.
"I'm teaching you its potential," Zanka replied, sitting down in front of you.
You reached out to return his staff, and he handed you your Jinki. The return of your precious instrument brought a wave of familiarity, but now, your grip was firmer, unconsciously mimicking Zanka's technique.
Zanka took his staff, caressing her with his thumb before glancing at you sideways. His cheeks were slightly flushed.
"You didn't do badly," he murmured, looking away. "Your Anima left a strange sensation in Assistaff. It's... bearable."
You smiled, knowing that coming from someone like him, that was the equivalent of a compliment.
"We could repeat it next time," you proposed, tilting your head toward him.
Both of you remained silent for a few seconds. Finally, Zanka sighed, though the corner of his lips lifted just a bit.
"You better run ten kilometers tomorrow before touching Assistaff again. If you're going to use it, I need your arms to not look like jelly."
Warnings: Suggestive, choking, ooc probably, NOT proofreaded
Notes: I was planning on having all the characters I was gonna do for this be in the same post but Enjin's part was getting to long so I separated it.
"WHAT'S YER PROBLEM?" In all the time you've been with Zanka, you really haven't seen him look so disgusted. His burned red as he stared down at you, perfectly composed, even a little embarrassed that he was shocked. Well, of course he was!
"You're acting it's a big ask, Zanka. All I want you do is choke me with your biceps that's it." Maybe it wasn't something that you'd ask someone out of the blue, but his arms just looked so good with him in that tank top that you couldn't resist.
He really couldn't believe what he was hearing. When you say it like that it doesn't sound that bad... Zanka let out a gruff sigh and made is way towards you. His eyes were trained on your face and yours alone and you feel sweat starting to accumulate on the back of your neck. But you did what he asked you anyways.
You stood from your seat on your bed and looked up at him nervously, trying hard to not focus too hard on his stone cold face. He gripped you by the shoulders and turned you around facing the bed. Your fists clenched at your sides, the feeling of his breath grazing the back of your neck sending tingles down your spine.
"You're real weird, I hope you know that." I he mumbled softly, his face unbeknownst to you heating up to a red brighter than Rudo's eyes. Suddenly, the crook of his arm traps your neck in a tight hold while his other arm wraps a tight grip around your waist. You loud shriek escapes from your lips as the two of you go crashing onto the bed, a mess of limbs and laughter caught between you.
Your try to wriggle and worm out of his grip as he flips onto his back, leaving your legs suspended in the air for just a split second as you attempt to get away. Your arms are basically useless, as you can't exactly reach behind you not to mention Zanka has a real strong grip on you.
"Zanka, babe," his name escapes your lips in harsh whisps as loud laughs escape your mouth.
"Ain't this what you want?" He removes the arm against your throat and flips you over, now stomach to stomach face to face with him. "You asked me to choke you with my biceps."
You shove his shoulder roughly, though it doesn't really do much to him. "You know what I meant!" Wrapping your arms around his neck, gently compared to what he did to you, you peck him sofltly on the lips. "Thanks though."
Zanka's eyes remained fixed on you, no matter where you moved. He couldn't stop watching you. Even when you sat down next to the crowd, Zanka kept looking only at you.
It had been a month since you broke up. The reasons always changed whenever someone else asked:
"We didn't feel the same."
"Lack of time."
"It just didn't work out."
"It was a temporary thing."
There wasn't one specific reason. It just happened. One day, you and Zanka decided it was the end. But as the days went by, both of you began to feel each other's absence.
He noticed it first, when he arrived back from a mission, exhausted, with his spirit crushed, and you weren't there to cheer him up.
Then you noticed it, when you woke up from a nightmare one day, and he wasn't by your side to comfort you.
The absence weighed heavily, so very heavily.
Now, you were sitting next to your team, and Zanka could only watch you from afar.
"Are you leaving so early?" Follo asked when he saw you getting up.
"Yes, I'm tired. See you tomorrow," you replied with a faded smile. Everyone said goodbye, except for Zanka. To him, this was an opportunity.
He followed you closely, watching the way your hair moved from side to side as you walked down the hallway. He also noticed the way you gripped your jacket. You were nervous.
"Zanka," you said, turning toward him. There was no one else in the hallway. He froze in his tracks, ten steps away from you.
Since you broke up, Zanka always made sure to stay ten steps away from you...far enough, but always close enough.
"Is something wrong?" you asked, gripping your jacket. He smiled internally. Ever since he noticed that little gesture of yours, he couldn't help but look for it; he found it charming, just like the way he gripped Assistaff whenever something bothered him.
"Nothing is wrong," he let out softly, his eyes never leaving yours. "I was just making sure you made it safely to your room."
You laughed, relieved.
"I didn't drink anything, don't worry." You stepped a little closer to him, and he didn't move. Instead, he craved for you to get close enough. "And you? How many glasses did you have? I could see Enjin offering you a cigarette too."
"I didn't drink anything...well, maybe half a glass, but I didn't accept the cigarette," he defended himself. You laughed again, and his heart leaped. His hands were sweating and his brain stopped working; it did that every time he was with you.
"That's good. Don't let Enjin rub his bad habits off on you," you said, turning on your heels toward your room. "Good night."
He didn't hesitate. His hand moved on its own and firmly grabbed your wrist to stop you. You looked at his hand and then at him. His cheeks were flushed a pretty salmon pink.
"I..." he muttered, his grip loosening from your wrist. "I wanted to tell you something."
"What is it?" you asked, intrigued. Your heart began to beat like crazy, your legs felt weak, and your mind started imagining things: 'He wants to ask you to get back together' 'What if he met another girl?' 'It must be that, he wants you to give him advice.'
You bit your tongue to keep from crying. You didn't know why you wanted to cry, but you really didn't want those thoughts to come true. You gripped the edge of your jacket tightly again.
"I miss you," he blurted out, just like that. His eyes were closed; he looked like a lost child. Your heart beat a thousand miles an hour and you felt like you were going to faint.
"Zan..." you tried to speak, but a lump in your throat cut you off. Fortunately, he spoke up too.
"I know we broke up a while ago and the reasons aren't clear, but..." He took a deep breath. "I still have feelings for you."
His eyes locked onto yours again, and that was when you looked down, unable to hold back the tears. You cried what felt like gallons of tears, and when he wrapped his arms around you to comfort you, you drowned in them.
"I," you said between sobs, "miss you too. I still love you."
Zanka held onto you even tighter, determined not to let you go this time.
"I don't know why I'm crying, I feel so happy," you let out between tears and laughter. He chuckled softly and placed a hand on your cheek.
Warm, just like always. You had truly missed his touch.
"It's okay. If you want to cry, do it. I will dry your tears." And with that, he kissed you.
I'm in a romantic mood today hahaha maybe it's bc it's been raining and rain makes me sentimental and nostalgic, whatever, I wanted to take this chance to post something nice that isn't a request 🫶🏻
As much as i love Modo being written to do things to y/n with his tongue he is a komodo dragon and has lethal poison in his mouth and that would literally kill me 🥲
Random things gachiakuta characters have done in your relationship suggestive themes, crack, fluff, it depends on the character. This is kinda short sorryyy
Zanka
● He pushed a kid over because they called you pretty and because they said said they wanted to save the beautiful princess (You) from the ugly troll king (Him)
● Got kicked in the nuts by you during training and till this day guards his crotch because of it
Enjin
● Said you were hot when you were mad then proceeded to hide everything in the house to piss you off then got shocked you were actually angry
● Watched you burn something on the stove then talked shit about "Young hoes cook everything on high" then got smacked across the head.
Gris
● Broke the bed then started acting shy like your spine didn't almost snap in half.
● Accidentally bruised your hips to the point where someone called in a meeting with Corvus to see if you were ok, you awkwardly had to explain that you're ok and that Gris doesn't abuse you.
Bro
● Accidentally groped you infront of a very disturbed Dear. Its safe to say your husband got lectured.
● Got hit on by a bunch of single moms at one of Dears activities then whipped out his wedding ring like Yuta Summoning Rika.
August
● He pulls up gang signs with his toes whenever you're on cowgirl so that you "have something to look at"
● Yelled at some guy on the streets because he tried to offer you a custom poncho, he described it as disrespectful because "AS IF YOU'RE NOT WEARING A MATCHING SET WITH MY NAME SEWN ONTO THE ASS". The guy just thought you loved the month of August.
Arkha
● Carried you over a puddle of dirty water so that your new shoes wouldn't get dirty
● He often feels bad for working so much even though you reassure him that you dont mind and that you'll always be here for him
(This has been sitting in my drafts for a couple days so here you go, I dont have much to say this time. For the next couple of days I'll be releasing my drafts because I have 15......😣 its 1:24 am so yayayyay I'm sorta early. Pls lmk If there's any spelling erros because this isnt proof read.
𝓲𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 ♰ you fake a phone call to jokingly roast your boyfriend satoru, and he reacts so dramatically that he ends up tickling you until you admit he's a ten.
✿ ◞◟) gojo satoru 𝓍 gn!reader
𝓬𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 fluff, established relationship, tickling, satoru being dramatic, lots of kisses, satoru being down bad actually.
the first thing satoru registers is the sound of your voice.
not that it’s unusual — you’re always talking, filling the spaces of the apartment with your running commentary about absolutely everything and nothing. it’s one of satoru’s favorite things about you, actually. the way you narrate your life like it’s a mildly interesting documentary, the way you talk to yourself when you think he can’t hear, the way you hum nonsense songs while you’re cooking.
but this… yeah, this is different.
satoru is sprawled across the couch, all tall form taking up far more than his fair share of space, one long leg hooked over the armrest while his head dangles off the edge. blood rushes to his brain in a way that’s probably not healthy, but the ceiling looks interesting from this angle, and his phone is somewhere in the couch cushions, and honestly, he’s really comfortable.
he’s been listening to you move around the kitchen for the last ten minutes — the soft pad of your footsteps, the clink of a mug being set down, the drawer opening and closing.
really, it was quiet and so nice.
“—no, i’m serious. you have to stop being so picky.”
satoru blinks at the ceiling, and his eyebrows pull together slightly. are you talking to him? no — you’re not in the living room yet. you’re still in the kitchen, and your voice has that particular cadence it gets when you’re on the phone; slightly louder than necessary, slightly more animated.
he doesn’t think too much of it at first, because, well… you talk to your friends all the time.
he’s about to tune it out again, let the familiar rhythm of your voice wash over him like background noise, when he catches the next words and something in his brain snaps to attention.
“look, i’m just saying. you’re out here looking for prince charming when you should be focusing on, like… basic human decency. that’s the bar. that’s literally the bar.”
satoru’s head lifts slightly off the couch cushion — just a few inches, just enough to confirm that yes, you’re definitely on the phone, your shoulder pressed against the kitchen doorway, one hand wrapped around your mug while the other holds your phone to your ear.
he lets his head fall back.
okay. fine. it’s just a phone call. nothing weird.
“you know what my boyfriend always says?”
satoru’s ears perk up, you’re talking about him, and a slow, satisfied smile starts to spread across his face.
oh, this is going to be good.
you’re probably bragging about him — how could you not? he’s so tall, he’s gorgeous, he’s got the kind of jawline that makes people stop mid-sentence just to stare. he’s a catch. really, it’s the total package.
satoru settles back into the couch, ready to soak in the praise that’s surely about to come his way.
“he always says that expecting a partner to be both good-looking and emotionally intelligent is like expecting a dog to do your taxes.”
the smile freezes on satoru’s face.
…what?
he must have heard that wrong. there’s no way — no, you definitely said something else. something complimentary. something that doesn’t compare him to a dog doing taxes.
satoru stays perfectly still, waiting for the correction, for the part where you laugh and go, just kidding, he’s actually the most gorgeous man who’s ever existed.
but it doesn’t come.
instead, you take a sip of your tea — satoru hears it, the little exhale you do when it’s still too hot — and keep going like you didn’t just commit a federal offense against his ego.
“my point is, you need to drastically lower your standards. like, way down. think about what you’re actually qualified for.”
satoru’s eye twitches.
he’s not sure what the hell is happening right now. his brain is trying to process the words coming out of your mouth and failing spectacularly, like a computer trying to run a program it wasn’t designed for. lower your standards? you’re telling your friend to lower their standards, while you’re dating him?
satoru slowly sits up properly.
the blood rushes out of his head and he gets a little dizzy, but he’s too focused on the sound of your voice to care. he swings his legs over the edge of the couch and plants his feet on the floor, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, staring at the kitchen doorway like it might spontaneously combust.
you’re still talking. you haven’t even noticed he’s moved.
“and honestly it’s so much better that way. like, when you stop caring about looks, you open yourself up to so many more options. you get to actually connect with someone as a person, you know? you’re not distracted by, like, a pretty face.”
satoru makes a sound. it’s not quite a word, it’s more of a really strangled, indignant noise that gets stuck somewhere between his throat and his mouth.
his hand comes up to press against his chest, right over his heart, like he’s checking to make sure it’s still beating after whatever the hell you just said.
pretty face.
you said 'pretty face' like it’s a bad thing, like his face — this face, this objectively perfect, sculpted by the gods, should-be-in-a-museum face — is somehow a distraction.
satoru stands up. he’s not entirely sure when he decided to do that, but suddenly he’s on his feet, moving toward the kitchen doorway with the kind of silent, predatory grace that usually precedes him stealing food off your plate.
you’re leaning against the counter now, mug cradled in both hands, your phone wedged between your ear and your shoulder. you look really comfortable and relaxed. completely unaware that your boyfriend is currently experiencing what can only be described as an existential crisis in the doorway.
“i mean, just look at my boyfriend,” you say, and satoru freezes mid-step.
okay, here it is.
the part where you clarify. the part where you say something like he’s so gorgeous i can barely function or i’m obviously joking, he’s the most attractive person i’ve ever seen.
“he’s the perfect example of what i’m talking about.”
satoru waits.
but you don’t say anything else for a moment, you simply nod along to whatever your friend is saying, like you didn’t just drop the verbal equivalent of the biggest nuclear bomb on his entire sense of self-worth.
he’s the perfect example.
example of what, exactly? of lowered standards? of settling? of not caring about looks?
satoru’s mouth falls open. his hands come up — one presses flat against his chest once again, and the other reaches out like he’s trying to grab your words out of the air and shake them until they make sense.
you finally glance up, and your eyes meet his.
and for a moment, just a split second, he sees it — the tiniest flicker of something in your expression. a micro-expression, a flash of amusement so quick he almost misses it.
but satoru doesn’t miss it, and he narrows his eyes.
you look away immediately, bringing your mug to your lips, and he swears he sees the corner of your mouth twitch.
oh.
oh.
you’re fucking with him.
or—no, wait. you’re on the phone, so you’re actually talking to someone… but you definitely just looked at him like a cat that knows exactly which vase it’s about to knock off the shelf. that was a look. that was a 'i know exactly what i’m doing and i’m enjoying every second of it' look.
satoru crosses his arms as he leans against the doorframe. he simply decides to wait and see just how deep this hole you’re digging is going to get.
you clear your throat. “anyway, yeah. like, my boyfriend isn’t conventionally attractive by any means—”
satoru actually chokes at your words. his hand flies to his throat like you’ve physically struck him.
“—but he’s got a great personality. well… decent. yeah, he’s decent. he’s learning.”
learning. he’s learning. like basic human decency is a skill he’s acquiring. like a toddler learning to share his toys.
satoru’s arms completely drop to his sides, and he takes a step into the kitchen.
“i’m sorry,” he says, and his voice comes out weird — higher than usual, a little strained, like someone’s squeezing his windpipe. “what did you just say?”
you hold up a finger. you hold up a finger, like he’s interrupting something important, and you keep talking into the phone.
“no, sorry, that was just my boyfriend. he’s—” you glance at him, and this time he definitely sees the amusement in your eyes, the barely-suppressed grin fighting to break free. “—he’s doing his thing.”
“my thing?” satoru repeats.
his voice cracks on the word, and he’s not even embarrassed about it. hell, he’s way too busy being personally victimized by the love of his life.
“what thing? what thing am i doing?”
but you ignore him. you turn your back to him, even, which is a bold choice, a very dangerous choice.
“honestly, the whole experience has been really humbling for me,” you continue, and satoru can hear the smile in your voice now, can hear it getting harder and harder to suppress. “i used to have such high standards, you know? but then i met him and i was like… okay. this is fine. maybe this is what i deserve.”
maybe this is what i deserve.
satoru makes a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and his huge hands come up to frame his face, palms pressed to his cheeks, fingers splayed against his temples.
he’s standing in the middle of the kitchen like a man who’s just been told his entire life has been a lie.
“my face,” satoru says, and his voice is genuinely offended now, wounded in a way that’s so over-the-top it circles back around to sincere. “you’re talking about my face. this face. this face that has been on a billboard. this face that people pay money to photograph.”
you wave a dismissive hand at him without turning around.
“hmm. yeah, no, he’s really insecure about his looks, actually. it’s kind of sad. i feel bad for him.”
satoru’s mouth opens, closes, and opens again, but literally no sound comes out.
you called him insecure. the most confident man on the planet — the man who looks in the mirror every morning and winks at himself, who has never once doubted his own attractiveness for a single second of his entire life — and you just told your friend he’s insecure about his looks.
“i’m sorry?” he says again, and this time his voice is deadly calm; the kind of calm that comes right before something very dramatic happens. “baby, i think i need you to repeat that last part. for posterity.”
you finally turn around, and there it is — the grin. it was bright and wicked and absolutely delighted. you’re not even trying to hide it anymore. your phone is still pressed to your ear, but your shoulders are shaking with suppressed laughter, your teeth digging into your bottom lip like that’s going to do anything to stop the smile taking over your whole face.
“oh, you’re still here?” you ask, and your voice is so fake-innocent it’s practically dripping. “i thought you were back in the living room.”
“you thought—” satoru starts, but you’re already turning away again, bringing the phone back to your mouth.
“sorry, what were we saying? right, right. honestly, the biggest thing i’ve learned is that you can’t have everything. you have to pick what’s most important to you. for me, it was having someone who remembers to eat vegetables sometimes.”
satoru stares at the back of your head, and his eye is actually twitching now; he can feel it.
“i eat vegetables,” he says, and his voice has gone up about three octaves. “i ate a carrot yesterday. you saw me. you watched me eat that carrot.”
“and the rest of the time,” you continue smoothly, like he hasn’t spoken. “you just have to accept that you’re not going to be physically attracted to your partner. and that’s okay! there’s more to a relationship than sex.”
“more to a—” satoru’s voice actually breaks.
it cracks right down the middle, like a teenage boy going through puberty, and he has to stop and clear his throat, and even then, when he speaks again, his voice is strangled;
“more to a relationship than sex? i’m a ten. i’m objectively a ten. i’ve been rated. professionally. by people whose entire job is rating faces.”
you simply hum thoughtfully, nodding along to whatever your friend is saying.
“yeah, exactly. that’s what i mean. like, my boyfriend is a solid three on a good day. maybe a four if the lighting is forgiving.”
something in satoru’s brain snaps.
it’s not a bad snap, it’s not even an angry snap; it’s the snap of a man who has realized, with absolute certainty, that he is being thoroughly and magnificently fucked with, and that his only recourse is to retaliate with equal and opposite force.
satoru moves.
he’s really fast, and before you can even react, he’s right behind you, his arms wrapping around your waist and lifting you clean off the ground.
you yelp, the sound sharp and surprised, and your phone slips from your grip, clattering onto the counter. but satoru doesn’t care about that right now. all he cares about is the way you’re squirming in his arms, laughing already, the sound bubbling out of you like you’ve been holding it in for way too long.
“put me down!” you gasp, but you’re laughing too hard for it to be convincing, your hands coming down to grip his arms where they’re locked around your waist.
“a three,” satoru says, and his voice is right next to your ear, low and mock-serious. “a three. maybe a four on a good day with forgiving lighting?”
“i said what i said!” you’re kicking your legs now, not actually trying to get away — you could get away if you really wanted to, he’s not holding you that tight — but putting up enough of a fight to make this fun. “put me down, toru!”
“no.”
satoru shifts his grip, one arm still around your waist while the other hand finds your side, fingers splaying against the soft spot just below your ribs.
“i think we need to have a conversation about your rating system. i think it might be… flawed.”
you freeze.
you know exactly what’s coming, and satoru can feel it in the way your body goes still against his, the sudden tension in your shoulders, the way your breath catches.
“toru,” you say, and now there’s a warning in your voice, almost a pleading. “satoru, don’t you dare—”
satoru tickles you.
your reaction is immediate and violent — you jerk in his arms, a shriek ripping out of your throat that’s half-laugh, half-scream. your body twists, trying to escape, but he’s got you locked in, his fingers dancing along your ribs, finding every spot he knows will make you absolutely lose your mind.
“what was that?” satoru asks, and this brat is grinning now, wide and wicked, watching your face contort with laughter as you try to bat his hands away. “i didn’t quite catch that rating. could you repeat it?”
“sto-op!” you’re gasping, tears already forming at the corners of your eyes, your whole body shaking with laughter.
your hands are grabbing at his wrists, his forearms, literally anything you can reach, but he’s stronger than you and he knows exactly what he’s doing.
“satoru—please—!”
“a three,” satoru muses, dragging his fingers up to your underarms and delighting in the full-body shudder that ripples through you. “maybe a four if the lighting is forgiving. those were your exact words, i believe.”
“i was kidding! i was kidding!”
“oh, you were kidding?” satoru’s voice is all false innocence, exactly the same tone you used on him earlier. “so you don’t think i’m a three?”
“no! no, you’re—you’re a ten! you’re a ten, okay, you’re the most beautiful man i’ve ever—”
satoru changes tactics, spinning you around in his arms so you’re facing him, your back now against the counter.
your face is completely flushed, your hair a mess, tears streaking down your cheeks from laughing so hard, and you’re still giggling, little breathless sounds that escape despite your best efforts to glare at him.
“say it again,” he demands, and he’s not even pretending to be serious anymore — he’s grinning, the kind of grin that takes up his whole face. “say it like you mean it.”
you open your mouth — probably to insult him again, satoru can see it in your eyes, the mischief still burning there — but he doesn’t give you the chance. he leans in and presses a kiss to your forehead, then your cheek, then the corner of your mouth, then the other cheek, then your nose, then your chin. then your forehead again (just for good measure).
you’re laughing still, softer now, your hands coming up to cup satoru’s face, your thumbs brushing against his cheekbones. he gently kisses your eyelids — both of them — and then pulls back just enough to look at you.
“what was that rating?” he asks, and his voice has gone soft, the teasing still there but wrapped around something warmer.
you look at him, and your eyes are bright, your smile so wide it’s making your cheeks round, and there’s something in your expression that makes satoru’s chest feel too full, like his heart’s expanding past the point his ribs can contain.
“a ten,” you say, and your voice is quiet now, sincere in a way that makes his stomach flip. “you’re a ten, toru.”
he narrows his eyes, suspicious. “you mean that?”
“i mean that you’re the most annoying person i’ve ever met,” you say, and your hands slide from his face to his shoulders, fingers curling into the soft fabric of his shirt. “i mean that you’re really dramatic and ridiculous and you eat an entire bag of marshmallows in one sitting and then won’t stop complain that your stomach hurts.”
satoru waits.
“i also mean,” you continue, and your smile softens, your thumb tracing the collar of his shirt. “that you’re the most beautiful person i’ve ever seen. and i was lying, obviously. you know i was lying.”
“i know,” satoru says, and he does.
he knew from the moment you looked at him with that little smirk of yours, that glint in your pretty eye that said you were up to something.
“i still can’t believe you called me insecure about my looks, though. that was cold.”
your laugh is bright and genuine, your head tipping back against the cabinet behind you.
“your face was so offended. i almost lost it.”
“i was offended! my feelings were hurt!”
“your feelings,” you repeat, raising an eyebrow. “your feelings. about your face.”
“my face is very important to me,” satoru says it with complete seriousness, but he’s leaning into you now, his forehead pressing against yours, his arms still wrapped around your waist. “it’s my best feature.”
“mmh,” your fingers find his hair, carding through the white strands, and satoru makes a sound low in his throat, something content and pleased. “i thought your best feature was your personality.”
“my personality,” he says flatly. “my personality that you described as 'decent' and 'learning'.”
“i was setting realistic expectations for my friend.”
“nah, you were slandering me,” satoru noses along your jaw, pressing a soft kiss to the skin just below your ear. “publicly. in my own kitchen.”
“your kitchen?” you laugh, tilting your head to give him better access. “it’s my kitchen too.”
“our kitchen,” he amends, and he can feel your pulse under his lips, steady and warm. “you slandered me in our kitchen, in front of our appliances. the toaster heard everything.”
“oh no,” you say dryly. “not the toaster.”
“it’s going to be awkward at breakfast tomorrow.”
you laugh again, and he pulls back to completely look at you.
your cheeks are still flushed from laughing, your eyes a little red-rimmed, your hair sticking up in about twelve different directions. you’re wearing satoru’s hoodie — the oversized one that swallows you whole, the one he’s been looking for all week — and there’s a smudge of something on your chin that’s probably from the toast you made earlier.
you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
“for the record,” satoru says, and his voice is softer now, the teasing fading into something gentler. “you are a ten. a twelve, even. maybe a fifteen.”
your eyebrows rise. “fifteen? that’s a very specific number.”
“i’m a very specific person,” he presses a kiss to the corner of your mouth. “and i think your rating system is broken, because you somehow ended up with me, and i’m clearlyyy way out of your league.”
you shove at satoru’s chest, but you’re still laughing, and he catches your hands, brings them to his mouth, kissing your knuckles one by one.
“i love you,” you say, and it’s so simple, so matter-of-fact, like you’re telling him the weather. “even though you’re the most dramatic person i’ve ever met.”
“i love you too,” he says, and he’s grinning again, that stupid, lopsided grin that he knows makes you weak. “even though you publicly humiliated me in front of our kitchen appliances.”
“the toaster will recover.”
“i’m not sure it will. it witnessed something truly traumatic.”
you roll your eyes, but you’re smiling brightly, and satoru can’t resist that smile — he dips down, catches your mouth with his, and kisses you properly.
𝓲𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 ♰ when you finally decide to flirt back after years of brushing off sukuna’s teasing, he quickly discovers he can’t handle a taste of his own medicine.
✿ ◞◟) ryomen sukuna 𝓍 gn!reader
𝓬𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 fluff, college!au, established friendship, uno reverse card flirting, sukuna is really pathetic, lovestruck behavior, yearning hidden under friendship (?), sukuna is blushing.
the afternoon light coming through sukuna's apartment windows was that tired golden color, the kind that made everything look a little too soft and a little too warm for a tuesday that felt like a thursday.
you were sprawled on the pink haired boy’s worn-out leather couch with your laptop balanced on your thighs, trying to finish a reading assignment that had no business being this dense, while sukuna sat on the floor across from you with his back against the coffee table, his phone in one hand and a half-empty energy drink in the other.
sukuna's tattoos stretched across his forearms every time he moved to scroll through whatever mindless content he seemed to be invested in, those familiar dark lines shifting over muscle and bone like they'd always been there, like they were just another part of him you'd stopped really noticing years ago. the four-eyes motif on his biceps caught the light when sukuna leaned forward to set his drink down, and you watched him crack his neck in that lazy way he always did when he was bored, the movement causing his jaw to flex once before he settled back against the table leg.
"you're staring," sukuna said without looking up from his phone, and there it was — that particular tilt to his mouth, the one that meant he was about to make things annoying on purpose. "didn't know my forearms were that interesting, sweetheart. could've just asked for a closer look."
you didn't even blink.
"your forearms are fine, kuna. i was actually staring at the window behind you because there's a really weird-looking bird right on the fire escape."
sukuna finally looked up, one dark eyebrow raised, and he turned his head toward the window just to check. when he saw nothing there, his gaze slid back to you with that familiar mixture of amusement and mild offense.
"you're lying."
"oh, am i?" you clicked back to your reading assignment, highlighting a sentence you'd already highlighted twice. "bird must've flown away. tragic timing, really."
sukuna laughed once, short and sharp, and went back to his phone, but you knew damn well he wasn't done; sukuna was never done when he was bored and you were the only person in the room. it was like a game for him, or maybe like a compulsion — throwing out these little flirtatious comments just to see if he could get a reaction, any reaction, even though he'd known you for long enough to understand that you'd stopped reacting to that particular brand of nonsense somewhere around year two of your friendship.
"you know," he said after a moment, dragging the words out like he was savoring them. "most people would at least pretend to be flattered. but you just sit there like a brick wall with a laptop. it's kind of insulting, honestly."
"i'll try to care about your feelings more," you said flatly, not looking up. "let me just find that emotion real quick."
sukuna kicked at your foot with his own, just a light tap of his sneaker against your socked heel.
"you're the worst."
"you're the one who keeps flirting with a brick wall. that sounds like a you problem."
sukuna grinned at that, wide and sharp and entirely unbothered, because this was simply how things worked between the two of you; he'd flirt, you'd deflect, he'd laugh, and then five minutes later he'd ask if you wanted to order food or complain about his stats professor or show you some ridiculous video he found at two in the morning.
it was comfortable, it was routine, and it meant exactly nothing, and you both knew it.
but today, something about the light and the quiet and the way sukuna was sitting there looking entirely too pleased with himself made you feel like switching things up.
just a little.
just to see what would happen.
you set your laptop aside slowly, making a show of closing the screen and placing it on the cushion next to you, and then you turned your body toward him.
sukuna was already watching you with that lazy curiosity he always got when you deviated from your usual patterns, his phone completely forgotten in his hand, and you let your gaze drag over him in a way you never actually did — leisurely and meticulous, like you were taking your time with something you'd been saving for later.
his eyebrows pulled together just slightly. "what?"
"nothing," you said, and you let your voice drop just enough to change the texture of it, to make it softer and slower than your usual flat delivery. "just looking."
you watched the confusion flicker across sukuna's face, quick and genuine, because this wasn't how the script went;
you weren't supposed to look at him like that. you weren't supposed to sound like that. and you sure as hell weren't supposed to slide off the couch to sit on the floor next to him, close enough that your shoulder almost brushed his, close enough that you could smell whatever cheap cologne he'd grabbed off his dresser this morning.
sukuna's hand tightened around his phone.
"okay. you're being weird."
"am i?" you echoed your earlier words back at him, tilting your head just slightly, and you let your fingers rest on the floor between you — not touching him, not yet, but close enough that the proximity felt intentional. "i thought this was what you wanted, kuna. you're always saying all that stuff. figured i'd finally give you a response."
sukuna's throat moved as he swallowed, and you could see the moment his brain started scrambling to catch up with what was happening. the confidence he normally wore like armor seemed to flicker, just for a second, and his gaze dropped to your hand on the floor before snapping back to your face.
"that's—" he started, and then stopped, and you'd never seen sukuna stumble over a word in your entire friendship. "i mean, yeah, but—you don't actually—"
"don't actually what?"
you leaned in just a little, and you watched the tips of sukuna's ears go pink. his ears, of all things. the same sukuna who could make a waiter uncomfortable by accident just by existing was sitting here with pink ears because you'd leaned about four inches closer to him.
"don't actually find you attractive? because i never said that."
sukuna's mouth opened, then closed, and then opened again, and absolutely nothing came out except this small, strangled sound that might have been the beginning of a laugh or the end of his dignity.
you could feel the heat coming off his arm where it was braced on the coffee table, you could see the way his chest had started rising and falling just a little faster than before. his tattoos seemed to move with every small shift of his muscles, the dark lines pulling and relaxing as he failed spectacularly to figure out what the hell to do with his hands.
"you're messing with me," sukuna said finally, and his voice literally cracked on the last word.
ryomen sukuna's voice cracked like he was fourteen years old and talking to his first crush, and you had to physically bite the inside of your cheek to keep from smiling too obviously.
"am i?" you asked again, softer this time, and you let your finger trace a small, idle pattern on the floor between you; not toward him, not away from him — just there, like you were thinking about it. "i don't know. maybe i just got tired of you being the only one who gets to have fun."
sukuna's blush was spreading now, crawling down his neck in splotchy patches that disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt, and he was gripping his phone like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to reality.
you could see his pulse beating in his throat, quick and uneven, and his eyes kept darting between your face and the small space between your bodies like he was trying to calculate something he didn't have the formula for.
"this isn't—" sukuna started, and then he had to stop to clear his throat, and the sound was embarrassingly loud in the quiet apartment. "this isn't funny."
"i'm not laughing."
"you're definitely laughing on the inside. i can tell. your eye is doing that thing."
you blinked innocently. "what thing?"
"the thing where you're being an asshole and enjoying it."
but sukuna's voice was way too high to land the way he wanted it to, too breathy to sound like anything other than a man who was rapidly losing control of a situation he'd assumed he'd always be in charge of. his leg was bouncing now, that restless energy he got when he was nervous translating into small, jerky movements that he probably didn't even realize he was making.
you let the silence stretch, you let him sit in the discomfort of not knowing what came next, and you watched as he absolutely failed to fill it with one of his usual easy quips.
sukuna's brain was working overtime behind his eyes, you could easily tell — trying to figure out if you were serious, if this was a joke, if he was supposed to laugh it off or lean into it or run in the opposite direction.
finally, he did the last thing you expected.
he looked away.
sukuna actually looked away, his jaw tightening as he turned his face toward the window, and you could see the way his hand shook just slightly when he reached up to rub at the back of his neck. the movement made his sleeve ride up, exposing more of those dark lines, and you noticed the way his fingers trembled against his own skin.
"you're doing this on purpose," he muttered, and his voice was so quiet you almost didn't hear it. "you're trying to—i don't know what you're trying to do, but you're doing it on purpose."
"maybe," you said, and you let yourself smile then, just a small one, because he looked so genuinely thrown off that it was actually kind of endearing underneath all the hilarity. "maybe i just wanted to see what would happen."
sukuna turned back to look at you, and his eyes were wide in a way you'd never seen before — less of the sharp, amused glint he usually carried and more of something raw and uncertain, like a door you'd accidentally nudged open that he'd been keeping firmly closed. his blush had settled into something deeper now, staining his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose, and his lips were parted just slightly like he was still trying to figure out how to breathe normally.
"well," he said, and his voice cracked again, softer this time, almost fragile. "are you happy? because i'm—i'm not—this is—"
sukuna gave up on words entirely and just gestured vaguely at himself, at his flushed face and his bouncing leg and his white-knuckled grip on his phone, and the gesture said everything sukuna's his voice couldn't.
you laughed then, not meanly, just a warm exhale of a sound, and you bumped your shoulder against his gently.
"yeah," you said, your voice back to normal now, dropping the flirtatious edge entirely. "i'm pretty happy, actually."
sukuna stared at you for a long moment, his chest still rising and falling too quickly, and then he dropped his head back against the coffee table and made a sound that was somewhere between a groan and a whine.
"i hate you," he said to the ceiling. "i genuinely hate you. you're the worst person i've ever met."
"you're blushing."
"shut up, i'm not blushing. my face is just warm. from the—it's warm in here."
"it's twenty-one degrees in here."
"shut up."
sukuna didn't move his head from the coffee table, but his large hand found your knee — just a brief, clumsy tap before retreating, like he'd meant to do something else and changed his mind at the last second. his fingers were warm through the fabric of your jeans, and you could still feel the slight tremor in them even after he pulled away.
you sat there together in the golden afternoon light, the silence softer now than it had been before, and you watched as sukuna slowly, painfully tried to collect himself.
his ears were still pink, his breathing was still uneven, and every few seconds, his gaze would slide toward you and then snap away again, like looking at you for too long might somehow make things worse.
it was, without a single question, the most pathetic you had ever seen him.
"sooo," you said after a while, keeping your voice light and easy. "you want to order that thai place, or are you too busy being embarrassed to eat?"
sukuna lifted his head just enough to glare at you, but the effect was ruined by the fact that he still looked like he'd just run a marathon in a sauna.
"i'm not embarrassed."
"okay."
"i'm not. i just wasn't expecting—" sukuna stopped, swallowed, tried again. "you don't just—you never—"
"never what?"
he held your gaze for a long, charged moment, and something in his expression flickered — some thought you couldn't quite read, some emotion the pink haired boy shoved back down before it could fully surface. then he looked away once again, reaching for his abandoned energy drink like it might offer him some kind of salvation.
"nothing," he said quietly. "forget it. thai sounds fine."
sukuna didn't flirt with you for the rest of the evening.
not once.
and if you caught him staring at you when he thought you weren't looking, his expression soft and confused and a little bit scared like he'd just discovered something he didn't know how to name — well, you didn't mention that either.
death was the only way to escape the jujutsu world. rundown by the life you were born into, you search for rest. but your trip to the snowy japanese mountains takes a cold turn when a blizzard knocks your car off course. cold and injured, you accept your fate. until a rigid stranger drags you from the snow and tells you with dry finality that you won't leave until the storm passes. he won't tell you his name nor why the barrier around his humble cabin is as strong as it is. but the snow only melts away to reveal one truth: the man who saved you is supposed to be dead.
Everyone knew it. They aired it on live television. The shattering of a weapon; the fall of a soldier.
Your young eyes could not bear the sight of crimson soaking into the snow. Your father said it was gruesome. Spilled guts and half a torso.
They panned in on his face.
You swore that you saw his smile.
Perhaps he should have been grateful that the world was knotted in chaos. The King of Curses gave no one the time to mourn its strongest.
Not that they did, in any case.
Weapons rusted. They dulled. They grew old, and then they broke. A tragedy at best. But for most, it was simply the average Monday.
You wanted to pull out your eardrums than listen to how they spoke of him.
What a waste.
What a shame.
All that arrogance for this?
But there was one that haunted you. Kept your eyes glued to your ceiling in the frigid, December nights.
Maybe he wasn't the Strongest after all.
How dare they?
"He was a person."
It was the firmest voice you could muster against your father. Firm enough for the likes of you that it had others arching their brows and your mother shaking her head.
Dinner had become the epicentre of this dreaded topic. Of a god who fell and the Strongest that was no more.
"It's just an observation."
Your father said, picking away at his food as if he hadn't just insulted the man who saved all of you. Stubborn old men and their complacency to ignorance. That was why the world turned the way that it did.
Your family called you dramatic, feeling so deeply for a sorcerer you never met. A sorcerer who would glare you down under the weight of his mighty six eyes and call you weak.
You didn't have to know him to know he was probably scared. Didn't have to know him to know that every human feared the creep of death.
Perhaps it was your technique, sharpening your empathy into a blade that often left you gutted.
Maybe you, poor you, who shouldered with the heavy knowledge of what people felt right before death— knew that the look in Gojo Satoru's eyes was far from a man at peace. Even through the television static.
A stupid part of you led you to Shinjuku when it was clear. To feel the residuals of cursed energy. To understand, was the excuse you made for yourself.
But you knew in the ache of your heart that it was to feel for a sense of peace. A shred of content. Something, anything, in the snow other than blood spilt in vain.
What you found made you vomit once you staggered home.
You were silent in your mourning for a man you never knew. Let alone met.
Mourning because your eyes had long since opened to these rusty, bloodied cogs that turned. Big, and small. Strong, and weak.
But in the end, all the same. Cogs.
Twisting, and turning, and chugging along. In this endless, hopeless marathon that was jujutsu sorcerery.
If there was Nirvana at the end of this dreary tunnel, you were sure it was a wasteland. Barren.
Enlightenment was not a possibility in your world.
Only the snow. The frost. And the winter. The cold, unforgiving winter.
Cold.
So cold.
A cloudy breath wafted from your chapped lips. Your tongue eased as the warm, bland soup comforted your mouth. You had abandoned the spoon to cup the wooden bowl. Stealing more of its heat for your drying, trembling hands. The blizzard roared through the icy mountains again.
Gojo was nowhere to be seen.
If this were a few days ago, you would have been back to contemplating what he was. A man, a monster. A ghoul with thick enough skin to withstand the harsh bite of the frost.
But now you knew with absolute certainty, that he was a god. A fallen one. Gojo Satoru.
You were surprised that he was still around. More surprised that he hadn't caught you by the scruff of your neck and tossed you out to face the blizzard. Penance for your stunt.
A deeper part of you knew that someone like him wasn't capable of something like that. Or at least, his muscle memory wasn't.
You stopped talking. Stopped asking questions. Bowed your head and kept your eyes on the floor whenever he passed. It suited him well. After the incident, Gojo committed to his vow of silence.
He barely even looked at you.
The selfishly curious part of you wanted to peep in. Use your technique and understand what he was feeling.
The smart part of you knew better. Knew that the storm that raged in him was one that would consume you whole. More violent than the blizzard and twice as ice.
For now, you could busy yourself with the questions.
Why was here?
How long had he been here?
He was alive?
But most importantly. Most frightening.
How?
You debated the possibilities. That you had met your demise in the car crash and this was what waited on the other side. The cold felt befitting. A barren Nirvana. Or perhaps hell was ice rather than fire.
Maybe you were in a comma instead, and all of this was simply a long, agonising dream. You would awake to the faces of your family, and hate yourself again for your weakness.
Perhaps you had finally lost your mind. What if these past few weeks were a figment of your imagination? Why else would a fallen god stand before you?
Why else would you be able to touch him?
Why else would someone of his strength bother with a small, frail doe like you?
Finishing your soup, you cleared your throat. No dice. The lump in it hadn't left since that day. Since you stared him in his feral eyes as he burnt his past into nothing but ash in the fireplace.
Would it have been better not to know? That the man who saved you was one who saved many? One that many couldn't save?
The same you had cried into your pillows for, even though you only knew his name.
You tried your tea next. Hoping it was still warm enough to soothe the deep ache in your chest. When it caressed your tongue, a new kind of pain stabbed away at you.
He didn't speak. Didn't even look at you. But your breakfast was laid on the table when you came out, warm. Your tea was still brewed. The fire was still lit. Your comfort put above all else, even after you had disappointed him.
You wondered how much it costed him to care, even when he so desperately did not want to.
You still feared him. Feared that cold, controlled cursed energy that buzzed from him in lightning ready to strike. Feared his hands and the might that you now understood. Feared the crystals of his eyes that were all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful.
But it was a different kind of fear, now. Because you knew what he was. Back then, now. Knew what he could become.
And sadly, what he never did.
You sighed. Pinching the bridge of your nose to bring yourself back down to earth. At the end of the day, you did not know this man. You could feel what he felt. Sympathised with what he went through. But you did not know him
How could you? Someone as weak as you could not even dream to run in the same circles as him.
Knowing that he was Gojo Satoru did nothing to ease the pit in your gut. If anything, it only confirmed your uselessness.
Rising to your feet, you took the dishes and headed to the kitchen. Memorising the creaks under your feet and the sway of the lanterns overhead.
It was easier with your coat. Today you had woken up to it laid over your bed. Repaired with perfect stitches. Seamless.
What wasn't he capable of?
You almost punished yourself. Left it on your bed and braved the cold as penance for the tension you brought back into this humble shrine. But his care would not go wasted because of your own self-destructive tendencies.
After cleaning your dishes and drying your hands, you contemplated dinner. If you could compensate for anything, it would be food. You weren't sure when he would return, and a part of you even played with the idea that he might not. The thought didn't bother you as much as it should have. Abandonment was another lesson in this life that you had sadly learnt.
The wind bellowed. Knocking into the wood. A ravenous wolf seeking to blow your shelter down.
You cast a pained glance to the window. A flurry of grey and white smeared across the glass. A haze of nothingness. Of the unforgiving, treacherous heart of winter.
Why had he even gone out? You had enough meat to last a week and a half.
The thought of abandonment loomed heavier over you now. A second, cruel wolf that threatened to gnaw at your bones as the cold did.
Thunk.
The door opened at last.
Hefty boots shook the floors in slow thuds. Enough to rattle your heart. The grate of snow and ice sliding across the wooden floors made you flinch.
The wind tried to creep in. Tried to reach your stiff body in the kitchen. But it was dragged back and tossed out as the door slammed shut.
You contemplated between fire and ice. To stand in the kitchen and wait for him to inevitably freeze you with his presence, or to brave the fire of his stare and beat him to it.
You chose the latter.
Your feet weighed. Futile attempts to drag you back to the temporary safety of the kitchen. Your heart pulled at your limbs. Pumping dread through your veins. Dread that you would see him. That he would see you.
Fighting off every anxiety, you willed yourself to the living room. To the buzz of cursed energy that still rose nausea to the back of your throat. To the man, monster, ghost, god.
He stood tall at the centre of the living room. A mighty, tapered oak. With years carved into his flesh. Across his body. Beneath his eyes in dull circles. You noticed more about him now.
The scars on his face had a pattern you understood. The length of his hair, it was longer than the illustrations back home. Eyes duller. You hadn't seen a blindfold lying around. Did he have no need for it anymore?
Over his shoulder hung yet another poor, lifeless deer. Heavy. Twisted at the neck with a wretched gash across its throat. Its dead, black eyes still reminded you of home.
Worse, they reminded you of him.
A selfish part of you hoped to meet his gaze, and you did. But was it worth the biting ice?
Worth knowing that they once put the dazzle of sapphires to shame, but were now a frigid wasteland?
You swallowed your questions with the lump in your throat, remembering your promise. To stop asking. Stop bothering. Stop getting in his way.
The true blizzard ragged between your stares. Blue, and brittle, and banishment.
You broke first. Of course you did. Simply nature, for someone so weak. Dropping your gaze in a quiet surrender. To honour this distance he had wedged between you both.
That was when you caught the tears in his haori. Claw marks ripped across his arms. A deep red soaked into the white.
You remembered the snow.
Remembered the crimson.
Remembered the residuals.
"What happened?"
Already breaking your vow. How terribly, hopelessly weak you were. Weak enough that you did not care. Tossed out your promise in exchange for empathy as you dared to step closer.
His silent glare stabbed into you. A warning for you to stay where you were. Yet he did not move, and you had long since stopped fearing his threats.
You considered the possibilities of his wounds. A curse. Wolves. Himself.
"Let me help." You said.
Pleaded.
He scoffed, as expected. You had grown so used to it that you did not flinch anymore. It was his nature to be cold, and yours to be too weak against the chills. But stubborn enough to persist.
When he spoke, it was like the first taste of water in days.
"You know what I am and yet still think you can help me?"
Even if it was ever as frigid.
This should be the part where you scuttle away with your tail tucked between your legs. With your head hung low and your eyes glued to the floor.
You promised yourself that you would not be a bother.
You promised yourself that you wouldn't run, too.
"I can try." You said.
Even if your voice shook. Even if your heart trembled. Even if every instinct within you told you to hide.
Gojo stared at you.
You weren't sure why his silence bothered you more now that you knew his name. It pricked at your skin and burrowed into your pores. Twisted your nerves into an uncomfortable shiver.
Maybe it was the weight of knowing what he once was.
Who he once was.
That unnecessary urge to fill the silence tugged at your voice again. Even with the lump, the dryness and the dread.
But as you opened your mouth, he scoffed again. Pushing past you, he dragged the mushy snow on his boots through the shrine. Leaving you with two, frosty words.
"Don't bother."
You were not sure which was more biting.
As you watched the deer's limp body, you considered its eyes. Its familiarity.
The raging blizzard outside paled in comparison to the scathe of your mind. Whispering, blistering. Reminding you that you were a bother. That you were useless.
That you were weak.
Satoru was getting sick of his own weakness.
Every time he looked at you. Every time he spoke to you. He was reminded that his claws had been swapped for hooves. That his fierce canines now laid as shed antlers at his feet.
You were everything that he was. Useless. Weak. Something he couldn't recognise when he caught his reflection in the windows.
There was a reason he had no mirrors in the shrine.
Your bothersome stare pressed into the back of his shoulders as he lugged the deer through the kitchen. Out the back door. The force he used to shut it shook the shrine.
He was sure you would scuttle. Back to your room. Maybe the fire. Hell, he wouldn't be surprised if your flight won over fight again and you dashed out into the ugly blizzard.
He vowed that he would not chase after you this time.
It was in vain, he knew.
Because no matter how many years he locked himself away in these icy mountains. No matter how much he swore off his name. Burned it to ash. In the end, he was still Gojo Satoru.
Still too strong for his own good. Too weak to let a frail soul freeze to death if he could help it. The worst part of it all? Now you knew that too.
As if you needed any more of a reason to be a thorn in his side.
Everyone knew that Gojo Satoru wouldn't leave an innocent to rot. Everyone knew that no matter the winter, or the blizzard, or the ice that he claimed to clutch his heart in a chokehold—
He was built to protect. Born a soldier. Sharpened into a weapon.
The biting truth had him tossing the deer over the log stump. Uncaring for the haphazard way that he handled the dead. No one cared about his body, back then. From what he heard, he was not even dignified a grave.
Roaring in his ears, the blizzard sought to consume him. Blurring his eyes and pelting into him in crystal shards. Cutting into the tears of his haori. It needled into his pores and locked his nerves in a blistering shiver.
Null. Null and numb. When compared to the maelstrom howling in his mind. Rattling his teeth. Spilling fire into his veins.
He snatched the axe lodged beside the log. Focused on the splinters that nipped into his dry, rough hands. His nerves no longer recognised pain. Dull weapons knew the taste of stings well.
Heaving the axe over his shoulder, Satoru stared at the deer. Its useless slump over the log. The nasty gash torn across its throat. Its deep, maroon blood soaking into the snow.
The snow.
Blood soaking into the snow.
His jaw set tight. So tight he threatened to shatter it with his teeth alone.
The dead deer's eyes reminded him of his own. As he laid there.
In the snow.
His blood, soaking the snow.
He sucked in a breath and shut his eyes. Counted to ten and reminded himself that he did not care. That he did not have the right to.
The deer's face took on a different shape when he looked at it again. Yours.
Those dull eyes you tried to hide with acts of kindness that meant nothing to him. The dejected expression you gave him whenever he scoffed at you. The uselessness. The weakness.
For a moment, he entertained the thought of how easy it would be. To lug you over one of these logs and butcher you the way he did tough meat. You wouldn't be able to put up a fight.
Correction, you wouldn't even try.
There was a resign that he recognised whenever you looked back at him. One that mirrored a deep ache in his soul that he tried to ignore. Tried to shove down to pits of his gut, where his stomach acid could eat away at it. Disintegrate it.
But there was no avoiding it.
By some miracle, or perhaps cosmic joke, Satoru saw himself in you.
Saw your weaknesses and recognised it as his own.
That was why, he had no mercy on the deer today.
The blizzard bellowed. All around him. Through him. But the only thing ringing through his ears was the wrenching, wretched howl of bones snapping and muscles meshing. Of iron tearing into flesh. Tissue squelching. Blood splattering.
With every swing.
Into the snow.
The snow.
Blood.
Blood soaked into the snow.
Speckled on his sleeves.
Staining his hands.
The fading warmth was what he clung to as he clamoured the axe through the deer's throat. Cracked through its spine. Tore through its jugular.
Its head rested peaceful in the snow.
Chest heaving. Hands scraped. Lungs burning and heart pounding. Satoru stood there with the axe hung from him. An extension of his arm. His soul. As he stared at the decapitated corpse and the blood it soaked into the pristine, frigid snow.
Was that what he looked like on that cold, December eve?
Bloodied.
And pitiful.
And weak. In the snow?
The axe slipped from his hold. Missed his foot and slumped into the frosted ground. He didn't bother wiping off his maroon-smeared hands into the snow. Instead he jerked out the knife that wedged into the corner of the log, and began skinning the corpse.
It was clockwork now, but he remembered how it felt the first time. The slimy warmth on his hands. The nausea that pooled in his throat. The stench that stuffed his nostrils for days after. His hands sharpened into weapons. Fashioned for death. But the first deer's stain itched at his palms in the middle of the night for weeks to come.
He knew that this was cruelty. There was no need to hunt, the rations would have lasted you both exactly twelve days. Fifteen, if you insisted on a few vegetarian meals.
Satoru killed the deer because he wanted to.
Because he was angry. Because he ached. Because there were no curses here for him to sink his teeth into and tear his rage out in that way.
He hunted the deer, picturing your face, your eyes, when you discovered who he was.
When you said his name. That damned.
Stupid.
Doomed. Name.
Even as he cut the dagger through chunks of thick meat, ridding fat and whatever was not edible, the image refused to leave his mind. Of your eyes. Your voice. The glimmer of useless, misplaced. . . hope.
He was done giving people hope. Done holding out for it. As far as he was concerned?
Hope died the day that he did.
Slumps of meat piled onto the log. The carcass no more. His hands cold with the stickiness of blood. He stood there to catch his breath and sink into the depths of what he had done. Eyes duller than the sky. Colder than the blizzard.
As he stared at the head staring back at him.
Aimless.
Useless.
Weak.
Its black eyes reminded him of you.
Reminded him of himself.
The room was a massacre.
Satoru hadn't tidied it since that day, where his name was unearthed from the snow and put on display to his soul that had long since cast it away.
Cupboard doors skewed open. Drawers tossed and shoved in a maze that beckoned bruises. Books littered the floors. Crumbled pages. Some ripped out and stuffed into his bedside drawer.
He scorched whatever memory he could find of the man that he once was. Gojo Satoru. The Strongest. The Honoured One.
Looking like a disgrace as he sat on the foot of his bed. Elbows digging into his knees. Posture be damned. Glazed eyes focused on an aimless spot that wasn't marred by the carnage. He had cleaned himself of all the blood and grime, but what difference did it make?
He was certain that he got everything. Everything in this blasted, cold room that dared to whisper his name. He planned on burning it all to ash as he did the newspaper.
Well. Almost everything. He could not bear to enter the room narrowed at the end of the hall. Locked for a reason. To keep it safe from his hands that sought nothing but destruction. Sacred from what he had become.
The sharp pull in his stomach complained. Reminding him that he had ignored your call for dinner. Even as the grilled meat pleased his nose and warmed a deep part within him.
You were spoiling him. He could bite his teeth and go weeks without food before you came along. But it seemed that you had a knack for re-awakening bad habits in him.
It's why he denied dinner in the first place. Your face was the last thing he wished to see.
Every time he imagined it, the deer paired with it. Followed by his own, scarred face.
Ridiculous, it was. To think that something as frail and as feeble as you could reflect even a shimmer of himself.
The blizzard grew more violent to mirror his mind. Endless, and ravenous. Killing every speck of warmth, and demeaning any weakness. It shook the walls of the shrine and poured through the gaps of this unfurnished room. Pulling at his bones. Needling into his nerves.
He rose to his feet with a deep, weary sigh. Perhaps in the heart of the blizzard, in the dead of this treacherous night, was his only path to peace.
Maybe he would find another deer. Wear his cruel mask and dig his teeth into it.
Maybe he could picture your face again. And hate himself for it.
Sliding the door open, he slumped into the hallway. Hands tucked into the sleeves of his yukata. It would stand no chance against the storm. Perhaps that was what he was counting on.
Freezing to death didn't sound too bad.
Quiet. Slow. Lonely.
Seemed befitting.
For a dangerous moment, he stopped at the door to your room. Listened. Felt. Were you asleep? Or lost in your thoughts too?
Why should he care?
The lanterns swayed above. At times he indulged the thought that it were the spirits of his students. As free and as bright as he remembered them.
He cut the thought short. Lest he wound himself up in memories he no longer deserved to cherish.
The faint crackle of fire caught his ears before the incessant hum of cursed energy did. Satoru had long since tuned out the broken flute that was your curse.
Sitting in front of the fireplace as you now had a habit of doing, you fixed your stare to flames. Unblinking. He might have thought you a pyromaniac if he didn't know any better.
Your hands weren't capable of atrocities. Couldn't hurt a fly on accident. Let alone commit arson.
Would you try to stop him if he left now? The thought bubbled a spur of irritation in his gut. He hoped not. He couldn't deal with you tonight.
He told himself that if you bothered him he would cast you out into the cruel blizzard.
His heart called him a liar.
And yet, he took a few seconds to watch you.
Watched the embers that glowed in your face. Your dull eyes barely lit, even with the warmth of gold and fire dancing in then. Were you as immune to the warmth as he was? Another shard to this damned mirror between you both?
If only he had left you in the snow. The first time was a moment of weakness. The second time was pure stupidity, but weakness nonetheless.
Guess frail things attracted frail things.
He watched as you reached for the fire poker. Mindless to the haphazard angle it sat at that allowed for heat to blister at the handle.
Clatter!
It resounded. Hitting the wooden floor in smudges of ash.
You did not scream. Not a grunt, not a whimper. Not a single, audible peep.
Soundless in your pain. With your brows pinched and your hand holding your wrist. You stared at your own burn mark. As if you were scrutinising it.
As if you saw the weakness that he saw in you. Saw in himself.
His fingers twitched.
Damn that muscle memory.
Against every nerve and cold thought, Satoru had crossed the room. He was at your side in seconds. Kneeling beside you. Lowering himself in ways that he shouldn't have to. Not to a helpless doe like you. A bothersome deer. Useless butterfly.
And yet, he scooped your hand up as if he was mindful of your fragile wings.
He watched the shock in your eyes melt into understanding, and then embarrassment. Your lips pressed together. A habit of yours, he had learnt.
He was surprised that you hadn't offered him your words. Another habit of yours he knew all too well was your hate for silence. But here you were, staring at him soundlessly while your fingers bloomed a faint burn.
The cold would make it worse. He should leave it. Leave you here. Punishment for your own weakness. How else were you to grow thicker skin if not through pain?
But Gojo Satoru wasn't capable of that.
And that's why he loathed him.
Disowned him.
Hovering a cold hand over your wound, Satoru focused. Ignored your questioning eyes and your voice that slipped into the quiet after all. A whisper he didn't care for, but still registered.
Cursed energy pulsed through his veins. Whirling to his fingertips. Glowing. Reversing.
If only Shoko could see him now. She'd scoff at him. Call him a showoff for learning what she had futily tried to teach him since the day she met him.
Probably tell him it was all for nought.
What was the point of knowing how to heal, when there was no one to save?
What was the point of learning how to heal, when he no longer wanted to save?
It was a feat not many in history had achieved. One he had unlocked on a whim after his death. He tested it on injured rabbits and deers that escaped wolves' canines.
He could tell from your gaping reaction that it was still a rarity.
The burn disappeared, skin and tissue replenishing itself. No scars. Lucky you.
Only then did he take the time to notice how small your hand was in his. A frail, pitiful thing. Smooth when against his callouses and the etches carved in his skin. His paleness still had yet to meet a match.
He dared to meet your eyes as he slowly released your hand. Watching the awe warm your stare. Awe that he remembered. Awe that he now hated.
Satoru almost regretted healing you in the first place. A begrudging call from the back of his mind told him that he would have done it no matter the reaction.
"Thank you." You said. Quiet and timid. It churned his gut.
He shook his head. He should stand. He should leave. He should call you stupid for your mindless behaviour. Hurl an insult that dimmed the light in your eyes, because it was better to destroy. Better to be hated, than to be loved.
All he could do was huff.
"You really are weak."
It was low, but hardly as stabbing as he would have intended. Every other time he had called you weak, his voice was thick with disdain.
But now, here, as he sat beside your hopeless form, looking into your hopeful eyes, and hating every second of it—
He called you weak with envy in his stare.
You flinched. You always did. Fragile butterfly whose wings fluttered at the smallest of flicks.
Raising to his feet, Satoru made his decision. Whether he pushed himself into the nightmarish blizzard or not, it did not matter. His mind would not rest tonight. He would not know peace.
Only you.
You, and the deer, the mirror that glared between you both.
You and your weaknesses.
And your hopelessness.
Uselessness.
And your hopeful eyes that he despised from the depths of his wretched soul.
Satoru did not want your hope. Hope kept people alive.
