Synopsis: Gojo Satoru, your boyfriend, forgot your anniversary. So you did the only thing that made sense—break up with him. In the break-up package, came with also: a fever, and a car crash. Well, duh. Now you're staring at a seventeen-year-old boy who looks exactly like the man who broke your heart. Except this version of Satoru has a lot of questions…starting with why his future self is such an idiot. Well, you were dying to know the answer as well. Maybe you’ll get it when you find yourself back in the present on a hospital bed, staring back at the older and tear-stained Gojo.
Word count: 4.3k
Content: Heavy angst with a happy ending (cuz no one likes sad ones)
A/N: Very bad grammar and a little cursing
Also I lost motivation halfway so the second half turns out to be bad content as well I’m so sorry
Your exhaled breath turned into a wisp of white mist, lingering for just a second before fading back into nothingness.
Winter hit harder this year, you thought, as you sat huddled on the balcony of the penthouse, a mug of hot chocolate in your hands.
You had no idea what you were doing outside in weather like this. With all the snow falling, it was pretty clear you were going to catch a cold soon. It's not like you were wearing any clothes meant for cold weather anyway.
Shivering all over, you wondered if you were actually trying to catch one. Was that the point? Maybe that would stir his attention enough to make him come back. Or maybe not.
By "him," of course you were talking about your boyfriend, Gojo Satoru. The strongest sorcerer. Who…hadn't been home in a week.
No phone calls, no messages, not even a single word from Satoru for the past week. He always does that, saying that his missions made him too busy to even look at his phone, and you'd lived with it since you started dating him.
But knowing it and accepting it are two very different things.
Especially when it's your first anniversary.
You knew you were making a scene. This mission was no different from any other time he left without any warning beforehand, but you just couldn't take it anymore. You hated the loneliness, the feeling of being alone when you needed him. He was busy, there was no doubt about that, but you wanted to feel prioritized, not put in second place every single time. The very least he could do was to not fucking stand you up every single time he promised he would take you on a date.
Come to think of it, when was the last time you two actually went on a date that lasted for more than an hour without him running off to tend to emergencies anyway? Sometime in March, you thought.
And it was December now.
Were you being paranoid? Should you even feel this way?
You'd talked about this to Satoru before—or at least tried to.
He ended up shutting you up with his hands and mouth all over you.
You never even had the chance to bring the topic up again since then. Satoru was always so, so busy. Missions, schoolwork, his students, the higher-ups… everything kept him running around all the time. Sometimes you even wondered why he bothered to date you at all, a mere non-sorcerer who could see stronger curses but had no idea how to wield any cursed energy.
What made you special to him? Were you even special? If you weren't, why would he even date you? If you were, why did he put everything else before you?
Your hot chocolate had turned cold. Sighing, you shuffled back into the penthouse—Satoru's, to be exact—and went to clean yourself up.
Looking in the mirror, you found yourself staring at the reflection of a pretty girl. Eyes slightly red and puffy from some previous tears, nose pink from the cold, and hair ruffled, you still somehow managed to look good. Maybe that's what Satoru liked about you. Your pretty face.
You rubbed your face raw with a towel, groaning into the soft material.
***
Like you had anticipated, you spiked a fever in the middle of the night. Your head hurt so much you felt like it would explode at any moment. Mind woozy, you felt for your phone on the bedside table next to the empty king-sized bed.
I'm sick. Fever.
The message was sent, along with twenty other messages that Gojo had left you on unread.
In moments like this, you always hoped and hoped that he would magically appear in front of you, to tug you into his chest and kiss your forehead, whispering something soft into your hair. It never happened. Though he did disappear on you more than a few times to tend to his own matters.
You thought back to the day he asked you to be his girlfriend. He had knelt on one knee in front of you, a huge bunch of white lilies thicker than your torso held out to you, promising you everything in the world.
Turns out, when he said "everything," he meant everything. Except for his physical being. You never had to worry about money after dating him. Satoru was generous to a degree that you didn't even look at price tags anymore when you went shopping. But how could Satoru not know that what you wanted in the first place wasn't his money, but his whole damn presence?
You couldn't take it anymore. A single tear slid down your cheek as you stared down at your phone. You wiped it away with your hand. Your cheek—and your body—was burning hot with fever, your headache pounding so violently your ears were ringing. Crying only made it worse. You forced yourself to swallow down the lump in your throat, ignoring the protest of pain from your throat, and gathered your sheets. It was nearly midnight.
Sleep, you told yourself. Everything will be alright tomorrow.
***
You tried to sleep. You couldn't. You ended up crawling out of bed and heading downstairs to take medicine.
The cold water hit the back of your throat like a wall as you swallowed down the medicine. The night outside the huge windows had fallen to a dark purplish color laced with blue and a hint of stars. Pretty. You always liked the view from the penthouse.
Just as you were admiring the view, your phone buzzed. You nearly jumped out of your skin. Is he answering? Is he finally coming back?
Scrambling for your phone, you opened it as quickly as you could, your fingers fumbling with the buttons slightly.
It was only a message from Pinterest.
Your excitement quickly dissipated, the feeling of disappointment burning through you. What were you expecting anyway?
You'd had enough of this. Maybe it was because of the fever messing with your brain, or maybe it was because of your own tiredness.
Maybe both.
But you opened the chat box between you and Gojo again.
Let's break up. I can't take this anymore.
Ears still ringing slightly and your headache pounding, you turned your phone off. It was clear that Satoru wasn't coming back anytime soon. You decided to go back to bed—the medicine was kicking in—and deal with all of this tomorrow when you felt better.
***
Woken up groggily by the sound of your phone ringing, you picked it up without even looking at who was calling.
"Hello?”
"You're breaking up with me? Over the damn phone?"
Satoru's slightly incredulous and overdramatic voice had you springing up in bed. You winced slightly as your head protested strongly by pounding into your skull. You sighed inwardly. Having to deal with this breakup shit at eight in the morning (although you did cause this) was not how you wanted the day to go.
You didn't say anything. Satoru sighed into the mic, loud enough for you to hear it. "Baby, of course I remember our anniversary. But the mission was a special-grade curse. Who else could handle it besides me? Yuta’s still in Africa."
"..."
"I didn't reply to your messages because I was too busy. You know how everything gets."
He said everything with that drawling tone he always used when you accused him of ignoring you. You could already imagine him with that stupid smirk on his face as he said this, looking like he didn't even give a shit. It was like this every single damn time. You hated this particular thing about him oh so much.
It wasn't like you wanted a lot from him. Satoru would only have to tell you he loved you, and maybe give you a cuddle when he finally came back. You would go back to him with open arms.
But… well, he was busy. It wasn't like he wanted to exorcise curses instead of being with his own girlfriend. You were still trying to reason with yourself. It's fine.
You were about to tell him those exact two words when—
"Baby, don't be dramatic. I'll be back tonight, alright?"
To hell with the Strongest. To hell with Gojo Satoru, who made you want to reach across the phone line and slap that fucking smug little grin off his handsome face.
You gritted your teeth, your fingers clenching so tightly that your nails dug tiny crescents into your palm.
"I won't be here tonight. Nor any night afterwards." You said through your teeth, and hung up.
Only then did you allow yourself to cry. Tears spilled out like pearls off a broken necklace, splattering all over the sheets as you sobbed into the pillow. You couldn't even breathe. The lump in your already sore throat only grew bigger, so swollen you were choking on your own lungs.
The day passed with you in bed, not even having the energy to get out and leave. Just you, crying yourself to sleep, waking up, and falling asleep again. Your phone lay right beside you, with not even a message or a call from your boyfriend— or ex-boyfriend now.
It was dusk when you finally urged yourself to get out of bed. Dizzy with a headache, you packed a few of your own things and left the penthouse, not even bothering to change out of your pajamas.
***
Maybe it was exactly because of the spiking fever and grogginess that led to this, but you never thought that you, a girl who had always followed the traffic lights, would step onto the road while the red light was still flickering—
And get hit by a car.
The sirens were so loud you could imagine your eardrums bursting. You lay in a pool of stickiness, which was probably your own blood, your eyes glassy as you looked upward.
So this is what dying feels like. Weird. You thought, as the orange-gray sky blurred into something whitish.
***
What the heck was going on in Hell? Why did they have button-pressing sounds and shitty background music blaring at full blast? You groaned inwardly, your eyes still closed.
The music stopped suddenly, followed by the sound of a game console clattering onto the ground.
"Who the fuck are you?"
Well, to Gojo’s defense, anyone would be freaked out if someone suddenly came into existence right in their arms. Not even his Six Eyes could tell where the hell you came from. Was this some kind of joke Suguru made? Or was it someone who wanted to kill him? Gojo stood up abruptly, his arms held up. Gravity did its thing and you landed on the ground with an unceremonious thump.
"Ow!" you yelled, reaching a hand back to massage your sore back. Rubbing your eyes for a second and letting them adjust to the bright sunlight leaking into the bedroom, your gaze landed on the white-haired teenager in the room. Damn it. Why is he still here in Hell? Are all Hells personalized for everyone to torture them?
Wait a minute. Why was he wearing those stupid round sunglasses? You had a vague impression of him in those from the photos he took with his friends when he was still a student at Jujutsu High. So you weren't in Hell?
"Um, hello? If you're not answering, then say goodbye to your life!"
Gojo was already forming hand signs as he looked at you with wide eyes.
You had no idea if he was as strong as he was when he was older, but you weren't about to test this. Quickly, you held your hands up above your head. "I'm so sorry," you said hastily. "I have no idea what's going on either. I don't think even science could explain this."
"Rubbish. If this could be explained, I wouldn't be asking you."
"…I think I'm from the future?" you said, cringing a little at how bizarre this sounded.
"Huh?" Gojo was about to finish his hand sign that created the huge blue orb of light you'd seen him do before that blew up half of a twenty-story building.
Oh shit. This was not going well for you.
"You like sweet stuff! Uhhh, you're in high school now so you're still trying to figure out how to do that reversed cursed technique thingy you told me about, and you love irritating Utahime. You're best friends with Suguru Geto and Shoko Ieiri!" You blabbered out everything you knew about the younger Gojo Satoru.
The white-haired teenager narrowed his eyes. "If you're here to kill me, my information is pretty well-known to every sorcerer."
…But if you told him everything, he would know who you were to him exactly.
"Speak up, or do you have a death wish? Any last words?"
Okay, maybe your life was more important than who you were to him—
"Y-Your dick is 9 inches—" you said desperately, closing your eyes and praying that whoever (or whatever) sent you here would keep you from being blasted into smithereens.
"…? Hey—wait a damn second—"
Now Gojo was the one who had frozen on the spot, his ears tinged with scarlet and his face flushed, one of his hands pinching the bridge of his nose as he averted his gaze (finally) from you.
"W-Why would anyone use that information to prove they're from the future?!"
"What else am I supposed to use?" you deadpanned. "Everyone knows all the general stuff. Do you still not believe me? Gojo Satoru, do you really want me to describe the mole on the left side of your—"
"I BELIEVE YOU! I believe you, alright? S-Shut up!"
You opened one eye just enough to see Gojo reduced to a blushing mess, white hair flying a little as he ran a hand through it and his sunglasses sliding slightly off his nose. You exhaled a long-held breath as you put your hands down. Looks like you were safe now.
***
You had been at the mercy of the strongest Six Eye sorcerer in centuries.
Now the said sorcerer sat on his bed, with you opposite him, looking at you curiously with that familiar smirk you'd seen on the older Satoru's face.
"Are you my girlfriend? I can't imagine anyone else who would know my… well, you know. Size," he said, tilting his head and blue eyes glinting beneath his glasses. "Wow. If you hadn’t crash-landed out of nowhere, I'd fall in love with you at first sight. I have a pretty girlfriend in the future! At least that's something to look forward to. How old am I when I date you?"
Your brows furrowed slightly when you heard the word "girlfriend" and you quickly shut Gojo up by putting your forefinger on his glossy lips. Gojo flushed at the slight touch.
Huh. No Infinity.
"You're twenty-eight," you said, "and sorry to break it to you, but unfortunately, I'm your ex-girlfriend. As of yesterday. But that still counts as your ex."
"Ex-girlfriend?" He sat up straighter, observing you carefully. "You're healthy and glowing. I must have treated you well. So… why did we break up? I wouldn't have dated you if I didn't love you or wanted a future with you.”
He paused a second. Seeing that you weren’t about to talk, he continued, “So. Um, what did the future me do?"
The irony of a seventeen-year-old teenager comforting you about something the older him did made you want to giggle. At least Satoru loves you. Well, loved. You wondered how he would feel if you yelled a bit as you stared at your ex-boyfriend’s younger face. Though, it seemed very unfair to take it all out on a teenager who did nothing wrong. You sighed, looking down and playing with your fingers.
"Well… we fought. There was yelling."
We didn't fight. It was a one-sided thing where I acted crazy like I should have been carted off to the hospital while you didn't give a shit.
"That’s it? Just yelling? And we broke up? Just like that?" Gojo seemed incredulous at his future self, his sunglasses slipping again slightly as he looked at you. "Was I not treating you well?"
You hummed in agreement but didn't say anything else.
Gojo's eyes widened.
"Well… not exactly. It was just me thinking you never had time for me because you’re always busy with work…"
"So that means I'm really strong when I'm older, right? Even though I'm already very strong now," he said, a smug smile on full display on his face.
Despite everything, the corners of your lips tugged up involuntarily.
"Yeah… Everyone knows you as the Strongest. You’re always on special-graded missions."
"Hah? Do I still answer to other people?"
Do higher-ups even count as people? you thought.
"Well…" you decided to beautify it a little for the younger Gojo. For the sake of his mental self, "you're working really hard for world peace!"
"Pshht, bullshit."
…Well, fair enough. But at least you tried.
"You can exorcise a special-grade curse easily! Everyone loves you. You became a teacher back at Jujutsu Tech and taught a lot of great students. Oh, and one of them was so talented he also became special-grade in his first year! Umm…you know everything. You can cook, and you love eating sweet food all across Japan! You have so many missions because you're so strong!"
Gojo's eyes were shining at first. You only stole a quick glance at him before looking back down at your own fingers, missing the questions forming in his eyes and the tiny crease between his brows.
You were counting off all his specialties off your fingers, rambling on now, trying to think of something he wasn't good at and, of course, failing. He should be the perfect boyfriend. Should. Shit. You felt a familiar burn hitting the back of your eyes.
"What about you?"
Gojo's voice cut through your ongoing list of how good he was in the future.
"I don't care about all that. What I do to other people or how other people are doing in the future doesn’t mean anything to me. What about you? You're only talking about me. But how was I to you?"
And there goes the last straw. As you finally looked up into the same shade of blue eyes staring at you with concern, tears bubbled out of you nonstop. Gojo gave a subtle squeak of concern and scrambled to look for tissues. Clumsily, he wiped away the tears from your eyes, the salty drops seeping through the tissue and the gaps between his fingers.
"W-Why are you crying?! Shit. Am I really a that much of a jerk in the future?"
"Y-You are a t-total—hic—jerk. N-No phone calls, no texts, ever! Every single time you're on a mission… I f-feel like I'm dating a—hic—dead person! You always p-put me in second place… below everything…"
"I'm sorry—I'm so sorry—"
"A-And when I b-broke up with you, you didn't even try to stop me!"
Gojo looked genuinely distressed. "I'm that bad? T-Then when you get back to the future, give him a good slap across the face! The future me isn't enough of a jerk to slap back, right? Please stop just crying—"
Tears flooded down your face through sobs and hiccups, with no sign of stopping, leaving Gojo scrambling for more tissues while muttering what seemed like curses at his future self under his breath, trying desperately to soothe you at the same time.
Gojo had already passed the state where he had completely thrown out all his usual smugness and ego, agreeing to whatever you were saying about how the future him was a total asshole as you cursed him through your tears.
You missed Satoru so much.
God, you were pathetic.
"No, no, no, of course you're not," Gojo looked like he was on the verge of tears himself as he tried to comfort you, hands flying everywhere, not even knowing whether he could touch you or not. Clumsily, he settled the tips of his fingers on your shoulder lightly.
Did you say that out loud?
Gojo was looking at you with panic clear in his blue eyes, his sunglasses nowhere to be seen as he frantically wiped away your nonstop tears and mumbled soothing words.
Looking at the familiar face of your boyfriend—well, ex-boyfriend—you never wanted to go back to your own world more than now.
The world suddenly flickered. Pulled by something invisible, you felt your body being sucked into darkness, Gojo shouting something as he tried to reach you.
***
When you woke up again, you found yourself locked in a pair of strong arms. They were hugging you so tightly you felt like your ribs were cracking. You tried to move, but your fingers only gave a feeble twitch. Somewhere to your left, a heart monitor flickered to life, warmth flowing back into the tips of your fingers. Looking up, you found yourself staring into the blue eyes of Satoru—the older one. His blue irises were trembling slightly as he stared into your eyes, his face wet with tears and his white hair messy. He looked absolutely wrecked. You thought he cursed before saying—
"—I was one second away from jumping off the hospital building with you in my arms so we could die together."
***
Satoru was still talking nonstop as he carefully fed you a spoonful of hospital food. It wasn't great, but it wasn't that bad either.
"I'll bring you real food when we get back home, alright? I'm not letting you out of my sight again."
Satoru paused for a split second, then continued. "You know, I had the most bizarre dream about you when I was asleep beside you on the hospital chair. It was back when I was in Jujutsu High, when you suddenly dropped into my arms."
Okay. You take back what you thought. The hospital food was shitty. You pouted, angling your head away from the spoon after one bite. Satoru only smiled slightly and kissed your forehead. He reached for an orange that came with the tray instead and started to peel it for you.
"You were praising me nonstop, ya know? It was cute. You don’t do that enough in real life," Satoru said, carefully working the knife through the skin of the orange.
"But you were crying the entire time… and I realized that… you never talked about how you were present in my life. It was all about me."
Satoru fed you a piece of orange. You chewed on it, savoring the sweetness of the juice as it exploded in your mouth. He wiped his hand on a clean piece of tissue nearby—wait, you'd barely even eaten anything!
Taking your small hands in his big ones, he rested his head lightly on them, looking at you, his white lashes fluttering slightly and casting a shadow on his face. His blue irises were bright and soft as they settled on yours, as if you were the only light in his life.
"Please forgive me, baby. I'm so sorry for all those stupid mistakes I made. I promise that I'll always put you first, above anything else. I'll take you on dates every weekend. I love you so much I'd literally kill myself to be with you in the afterlife. But the shitty world of jujutsu couldn't run properly without the Strongest. So, for the sake of world peace, please, please stay by my side forever and ever?"
What you had ever wanted was exactly that. To hear Satoru say that he loved you. You sniffled slightly as you nodded your head, careful not to use too much strength since it hurt so much.
EEK, why was he hugging you so tightly again—
You couldn't even breathe properly—
***
Satoru kept his promise. He took you out wherever you wanted once a week, and when he was busy, he would always take you out twice the next week to make up for the week he missed. He'd tell Ijichi to message you when he was on a mission, and sometimes leave a note on the fridge too. Everything was going well.
***
Satoru's phone buzzed on the bedside table. You looked down at the noise, then back at the bathroom door, where the man was still in the shower. Curiosity got the better of you as you unplugged it from its charger to check the notification.
Password? You typed in your birthday. The phone unlocked with a simple swipe.
The message was from Reddit. Your boyfriend had posted something on your anniversary day?
My girlfriend broke up with me but I was too busy to call her back, is there still a chance I could win her back? [🥺]
You huffed out a laugh as you scrolled down to see the comments.
Some people had actually given pretty good advice.
Grovel on your knees with a huge bunch of flowers and promise her whatever she wants. Most useful skill I've learned in my life. You're welcome ;)
Cook her a huge breakfast and take her on a holiday. Malaysia's very nice.
There was one that caught your eye.
Bro, just get a new girl. There's plenty of fish in the sea.
Satoru had replied:
The sea is polluted and so are the other fish. I only want my fish! :(
You giggled, putting down the phone.
Typical Satoru.
Side note from Vivi: I think I’m finally getting the hang of Tumblr lmao
I’m open to all suggestions! Thank you for reading! <3
୨୧ — The chat doesn't even register to him, because Sukuna doesn't stream for them.
He streams because he likes watching you squirm knowing thousands of strangers can see exactly what he's doing to you- and there's nothing your drool drunk brain can do about it.
"Pathetic," he rumbles, and the word vibrates through his chest where your back is pinned against him, "can't even keep your mouth shut without help."
The ball gag stretches your jaw wide- cute and pink and utterly humiliating, a mocking splash of color against the mess you've become. Drool pools behind your teeth, spills over the silicone sphere in thick, glistening strands that drip down your chin, your throat, between your tits where the nipple clamps bite into swollen flesh.
He tugs the chain connecting them. Lazily. Just to watch you jerk.
"Mmmngh-!!"
"Quiet." Another tug, harder. Your nipples stretch obscenely, flushed angry red beneath the metal teeth, "you wanted this. Begged me for it, remember? Wanted to be my little toy."
Tch. And she's already crying. Weak.
The camera's positioned at the foot of the bed, angled up to catch everything... your spread thighs, your trembling body, and Sukuna behind you like a throne of muscle and malice. His hands dwarf your hips, and fuck... His cock -thick, veined, fucking monstrous- rests against your slit, smearing precum into your already ruined folds.
He doesn't fuck you. Not yet at least.
First, he spreads you open.
Two fingers hook into your cunt and pull- slow, deliberate... stretching you wide while the webcam captures every glistening detail. The dewy folds of your pussy part for him, slick strands of arousal glinting under the harsh light, snapping in sticky threads as he spreads you wider and wider. Your hole clenches on nothing, gummy walls fluttering, pink and puffy and dripping.
"Look at this mess." His voice drips contempt as he angles the camera with his other hand, zooming in on the way your pussy weeps for him.
You whimper around the gag, hips twitching involuntarily toward his cock.
His laugh is low. Cruel.
"Fine. Since you're so desperate."
He teases his tip against your entrance and the camera catches it- the exact way your gummy walls clench around that fat cockhead when he nudges in, stretching to accommodate his girth, that first inch sinking into wet, sucking heat. Your muffled wail vibrates against the silicone.
Then he punches into your guts, forcing a choked "MMMNGH-!!" from your throat.
One brutal thrust buries him to the hilt, and your vision whites out. His cock punches so deep you swear he's rearranges your insides- and when he presses a palm against your lower belly, you can see it-
"There." He grinds up against your cervix, watching the shape of his cock distort your tummy, "That's where I'm going to break my girl."
He doesn't give you time to adjust.
His pace is punishing- hips pistoning with savage force, that fat cock battering your cervix over and over until your insides go soft. Mushy. Ruined. Each thrust punches a muffled sob from your gagged mouth, drool splattering against your tits, making the clamp chain slick and shiny.
"Hnnngh-! Mm-! MMMPH-!!!!"
"What's that? Can't understand you." He tugs the chain again, hard, and your back arches as your nipples scream, "Use your words, little whore. Oh wait- you can't!"
Fuck. She's clenching so hard. Trying to milk me already.
The wet sounds are filthy. Your pussy squelches around his cock with every thrust- arousal churning to cream, whipping into a thick white froth that clings to his shaft and oozes around the stretched rim of your hole. It drools down his balls, down to the sheets, making a mess of everything.
"Look at that." He angles the camera lower, making sure it catches the creamy ring forming at the base of his cock, "Making such a mess. Like a bitch in heat."
He grinds against your battered cervix, and you keen- the sound strangled behind the gag, drool bubbling from the corners of your mouth.
"You gonna cum?" His thumb finds your clit, rubbing cruel circle, "gonna cream on my cock like the desperate little fucktoy you are?"
You nod frantically, tears streaming, drool pooling, nipples throbbing.
"Then do it. Show them what a pathetic slut you are for me."
He rams into your cervix and holds-
And you shatter. Completely.
Your orgasm rips through you in a blinding wave, walls clamping down so hard he grunts, your whole body seizing as your cunt creams around him in thick, milky spurts. He fucks you through it without mercy, churning your release, coating his cock, dripping down to the ruined sheets.
"Mmmngh-! Mm-! HNNGH-!"
"Good girl." The words are mocking. Empty. And then he's pulling you into a kiss by the chain, your overstimulated nipples stretching... "Again." he whispers.
The view count ticks past fifty thousand.
Sukuna doesn't even glance at it.
His hips slow. Still buried inside you, cock throbbing against your battered cervix, but the brutal rhythm eases into something different. Deeper. Rolling.
"Fuck-" His composure cracks, just barely. "That's my girl." his hand leaves the clamp chain, past the mess of drool on your chest- and cups your jaw. Gentle. Almost reverent. His thumb swiping through the spit pooling at the corner of the gag, and for one impossible moment, he just... holds you.
Sukuna streams because he likes watching you squirm knowing thousands of strangers can see exactly what he's doing to you-and there's nothing your drool drunk brain can do about it.
ꉂ ᵎᵎ cw/tw: 18+, suggestive (?) (idk if that’s the word for it), dubcon elements (both are drunk but denki has better tolerance) dom!sleazy!piercings!tats!denki, sub!ditzy!drunk!fem!afab!reader, reader has two earrings and nothing else, reader has no tattoos, reader is a good amount shorter than denki, light groping, the whispers of corruption kink stirring, the hinting at a dick piercing, themes of possessiveness, vaping, alcohol, didn’t proofread bc i went to go to sleep
ꉂ ᵎᵎ a/n: this is a reblog from my old account. the fic title is named after the song by aretmas because it’s fitting and i like it.
ꉂ ᵎᵎ synopsis: discussing and counting the tattoos and piercings of the guy you’d been talking to all night at a party.
ꉂ ᵎᵎ w/c: ~1k
“which hurt more? your tattoos or your piercings?”
“definitely the tattoos,” denki laughs, eyes tracing lazily along the curves of your body. he liked girls like you— the ones that got a little giggly, touchy— dumb when they got drunk. it gave him a high unlike any other and was probably one of his favorite things these sorts of parties tended to produce. “why? you wanna see some?”
“could i?” you ask, anticipation sparkling in your eye.
he smiles, the sight warm and inviting. “of course.”
carefully balancing his red solo cup and geek bar in his free hand, he rolls up his long sleeve, fully revealing the design that had peeked out from his wrist and trailed all the way up to his shoulder. your fingers gingerly reach out to drift along the ink, the warmth of his skin beneath seeping into you, stoking the pooling heat in your core.
you look up at him through your lashes, giving him a wondering smile. “and your other arm is covered too?”
“yep,” he answers easily, leaning back against the kitchen counter as he tugs his sleeve back down. “and then i have one on my upper back and then two on my ribs.”
“so,” you blink, trying to do the mental math, “you have four tattoos?”
a chuckle escapes him at your miscount. “five, sweetheart.”
“oh,” you murmur, eyes half-lidded as he hands you his drink, encouraging you to steal another sip, a pattern you two had somehow fallen into over the course of the night. “do you want more?”
denki takes a hit of his vape, blowing the vapor to the side so it doesn’t reach your face. “hm, maybe,” he shrugs. “i don’t wanna get too tatted up. probably something like, on my spine, and then maybe one on my chest.” his hand rests on his left pec, demonstrating to you where he means. “what about you?” he asks curiously, already having a good guess of the answer. “you got any tattoos?”
you shake your head, self-consciousness threatening to creep up your neck. “no,” you mumble. “...do you like girls with tattoos?”
he makes sure to take note of your desire for his approval, smiling softly as he runs a hand through his hair. “i like girls with and without tattoos,” he answers noncommittally, letting a pause hang between you as he considers his next words. “would you ever get any?”
you shrug, a little giggly as a fellow partygoer squeezes behind you, bumping you closer to him. “i don’t know,” you hum, finishing the last of your shared alcohol. “what do you think would look good on me?”
a small puff of air slips out from his nose as your question sparks a private thought— and he finds himself caught between telling you or keeping it to himself. “the sort of thing i like on a girl isn’t for everyone,” he murmurs.
your head tilts, interested. “what is it?”
he chuckles, shaking his head at himself, and takes the empty plastic cup from your hands before setting it on the counter. “you really wanna know?” he asks, studying your body language carefully. when you nod, he leans in slightly.
“for me,” he explains in a low voice, making sure you were paying close attention, “the hottest tattoo a girl could get, is a tattoo of my name... right here.” his hand slides down to rest over where your womb would be, lingering only for just a moment, before pulling away as if nothing happened. “but that’s just a fantasy.”
almost on instinct, your thighs clench, caught off guard by both his words and the ghost of his touch. “you’re crazy…” you giggle, partially amused, partially flustered.
he joins in on your laughter. “am i?” he questions, propping himself up against the cupboards as he stretches, his sweater riding up to reveal his abs when he does. “you don’t think it’d be hot if a guy had your name on him?”
“i dunno,” you admit honestly, “i never thought about it before…”
“hm. you ever thought about any piercings?”
“mm, not really… i like just my earrings” you say with a lazy shrug, “i don’t know if i’d ever want any like, on my face. i like yours, though. how many do you have?”
“wanna count them?” he asks, leaning down to shorten your height gap and inviting you to touch him.
dopily, you nod and lift your hand, skimming first against his eyebrow piercing, then the stud on his nose. “one… two… three, four,” your thumb grazes against his lower lip, carefully noting his two snake bites. you turn his head to the side, tracing the studs and surrounding earrings. “five… six, seven—” you giggle, “—eight, nine, ten. ten piercings.”
as you finish counting, his gaze rolls back to meet yours, and a light laugh escapes him. “almost, gorgeous,” he smiles, taking your fingers in his. “you’re missing one.”
your brows knit together in confusion. “...where?” you ask, your mind quick to wander somewhere a little lower, since you didn't see any more visible piercings.
denki smirks at your expression, lifting your hand up as he parts his lips, and lets your thumb brush against his tongue piercing. “eleven,” he says, knowingly amused.
“oh,” you mumble, a rush of heat spreading across your cheeks as sheepishness blooms at your own dirty thoughts.
he chuckles lowly, releasing your hand for just a moment before snatching it back up like he suddenly remembered something. “oh shoot— i forgot one.”
this time as he guides your hand, he takes it to the place you had expected, and your face flushes once more as your palm presses firmly against the growing bulge in the crotch of his jeans— the weight thick and heavy.
“twelve,” he grins.
instantly, you pull away from him, your voice barely a whisper as you worry if anyone was watching you two, the thought of being caught essentially doing foreplay in public deeply embarrassing you. even if anyone was, they wouldn't have cared. “do you really have one there?” you manage, shyly.
denki only shrugs, coyly avoiding a direct answer. “you wanna find out yourself?”
I KNOW YOU WANT ME, SO WHY WON’T YOU ACT LIKE IT ?
sum: when you reject fratjo because of his playboy reputation, can his frat brothers—and real brother—help him win you over & prove he’s not a player ?
NICE GUY TACTICS #1: STOP TALKING, START LISTENING !
taught by: nanami kento
“maybe if you listened to y/n as much as you spoke, she’d finally give you a chance.”
ΣX
at a desk behind a bookcase somewhere in birge-carnegie library, nanami kento has a book in his hands & sato gojo’s voice in his ears.
“—rich, handsome, charismatic, compassionate,” sato counts the words on his fingers. “i’m all these things and y/n still rejected me! can you believe it, kenny?”
nanami kento does not give a fuck.
4PM thursday means a box of timbits & the latest volume of nanami’s new favorite BL manhwa. he’s trying to root for cirrus as he pursues his love interest, skylar, but sato gojo’s whining in his ears makes concentrating very, very difficult. nanami snaps his book shut.
“first of all, can you please sit like a child of God?”
across from him, sato gojo is all loose limbs & no decorum; legs open & spread over the mahogany table as he leans back just enough to rock in the wooden chair. he has his arms folded behind his head but when kento snaps, he sits up. his lips are tugged in a stubborn, trying-to-be-cute frown:
“kento,” sato pouts. “help me.”
nanami kento drags a palm over his face. his collar feels tight on his neck & his fingers twitch over his book but sato has his lips pouting & lashes fluttering across from him. if helping out means sato will leave him alone to focus on reading lost in the cloud, who is he to refuse?
RULE #1: TALK LESS, LISTEN MORE !
sato gojo finds you somewhere on the second floor.
he didn’t mean to find you, really. heaven knows he was only on the way to the bathroom, snapchat map clearly not open to your location. at the desk you have your knees to your chest & a marker in your teeth as you frown at your textbook, and sato has to swallow the ache in his throat because your lips are all pouty & glossy & bruised against the marker-cap. fuck.
he strolls over, smile easy & hands in his pockets like you don’t make him shed nerves by the pint.
“y/n l/n,” he grins, leaning over the chair across from you. “fancy seeing you here.”
“don’t make me reject you twice in one week, sato.”
sato gojo bites his lip. your eyes don’t care to meet his as you speak & sato can only watch as you twirl your marker in your teeth. god, you’re so pretty. and god, you’re so mean, shutting him down every time he tries to speak to you because of his ‘playboy reputation’. bullshit.
he’s silent for a beat. “you have sharpie on your nose.”
you blink, hands slowly lifting to your face to rub at your nose. your fingers come back stained in black, & sato gojo can only bite back a smile as you frown at your palms.
“oh my god,” you groan.
“cute,” sato chuckles, pulling out the chair to sit across from you. you’re frowning at him now, lips curled in distrust. but sato doesn’t miss the heat in your cheeks, the glint in your eyes. he makes himself comfortable & leans forward over the table:
“so what’s got you so mad you’re drawing on your face?”
you frown, but sato still gazes at you with that stupid grin & a twinkle in his eyes. you sigh, licking your molars, eyes flitting back to your textbook.
“my group mates,” you tap your marker. “they dumped all the work on me, again. something about me being the ‘smart one’ anyways.”
sato nods, but his attention is split. half of his mind is on the way your gloss spoils in the heat. the other half’s focused on how your lashes flutter even though you’re grumbling. his stomach aches.
“i get that, y’know.”
you blink up at him. “you do?”
he misses the snark in your tone. “people expecting stuff from me, it’s exhausting.” he leans forward, takes the marker from between your fingers & taps it against your knuckles. “for me, it’s girls.”
“…girls?”
“mhm,” he’s still playing with your knuckles, tapping the marker-cap to the bone, lifting each finger & cocking his head like he’s inspecting them. “tons of ‘em, blowing up my phone just because i was nice to them once,” he tugs your thumb wistfully before leaning back. “it gets tiring.”
“…girls.”
“yeah,” sato nods. “girls.”
it’s silent for a beat, sato’s eyes boring into yours. his gaze is tender, nose red, & the marker that was once in your hands is somehow between his lips. his lashes flutter in the light.
you can’t believe he’s deadass.
you’re packing your books now, orgo chem & other textbooks shoving into your book bag. sato watches with his brows knit in confusion. “hey, hey—where are you going—?!”
you leave the library and don’t look back.
NANAMI’S REMARK : WHAT KIND OF MISCOMMUNICATION TROPE IS THIS…?
NICE GUY TACTICS #2: PLAYBOY? NAH, PAYBOY !
taught by: toji zenin
“girls like you for your face but stay for the black card. stop talking and start spending.”
ΣX
it’s tuesday again, and toru gojo’s room is filled with practically everyone but himself. sukuna’s palming his dick with his phone in one hand & toru’s bedsheets covering the other. sato’s twirling a beach ball even though it’s the peak of spring. toji zenin is tugging black tights over his thick thighs, upper half already covered in an equally tight black leotard.
“so,” sato hugs the beach ball to his chin. “new job?”
“dance instructor for katseye,” toji grumbles, struggling to fit the tights over his ass. sato bites his cheek.
“what happened with skai jackson? thought you were working as her personal AI prompt writer.”
“fired. and the brat says AI is bad anyways.”
sato nods. on the bed beside him, sukuna has blown his load & is laid back against toru’s sheets. he has a hand behind his head & the other resting lazy against his cock. “nice ass, zenin.”
toji doesn’t look up, still shifting the tights over his buttocks. “don’t talk about my ass with your dick in your hands.”
sato drops the ball to his lap and groans. “can you guys believe i’m still having no luck with y/n?”
“oh, brother.”
sato shoots sukuna a glare. he slumps against the wall, “i’ve tried listening to her, just like kento suggested. no fucking luck.”
in front of the mirror, toji zenin has succeeded in fitting the tights over his taut ass. sukuna asks him to do a spin & toji tells him to fuck off. sato watches the exchange with a slight pout before his eyes drop to toji’s crotch. damn. he was no expert in print catching, but that dick was definitely a D+.
he shakes the image of toji’s dick away. “i really don’t know what to do about y/n.”
toji picks up his duffel bag. “you’re a gojo, right? you got money?”
“yeah?”
“then use it, dumbass,” toji grunts. “pull out that black card and pay your way into her good books.”
sato only frowns. “y/n doesn’t seem like the materialistic type, though.”
“all women are materialistic,” toji mutters, fumbling through drawers for his keys. sukuna throws them at his head, & toji’s smart enough to pick them up with a tissue to avoid getting precum on his hands. “i’m not gonna ask why you were with my keys. and sato, take my advice if you want a chance with this chick.”
toji exits the room. sukuna has his dick out again, and sato contemplates his next steps as sukuna moans in pleasure beside him.
# SHOW TIME !
at the campus bookstore, there’s a line of 20 students glaring holes into your back.
four textbooks, a lab coat, & five other things you’ll use for class & never touch again. at 214 college street, there’s a heat in your cheeks & an ache in your stomach as the cashier hands you back your card. declined.
“sorry, can you just try again? or could i split the total between two cards—?”
“miss, i’m afraid you’re holding up the line.”
your lips are already bruised & half-bitten when someone sighs loudly behind you. you’re scrambling for another card with too many books in your hands but before you can find one something hard presses against your back.
“she’s with me. put everything she has on here.”
gojo sato has his chest smushed against your back & lalique’s encre noire pricking at your nose. he leans over you to hand his black card to the cashier, who takes it from him with glee.
you tense from the feel of his skin. you bite your lip as you watch the cashier swipe the card, & you’re fiddling with your fingers as your cheeks flush in embarrassment.
“relax,” sato murmurs in your ear. “i’ve got you.”
and you do. your shoulders slump into him. your breathing steadies. you don’t even mind the way sato’s hair tickles your ear as he leans over you, or the way his palm has climbed up to meet your hip. he mumbles a sorry as he presses you closer to the counter. his palm doesn’t fall afterward, & your spine tingles when his thumb brushes your side.
“here you go!”
the cashier hands you the bags with a smile as stretched as plastic. sato takes the bags instead, and you watch, wide-eyed & stupefied, as he carries the heavy load all in one toned hand. he walks slightly ahead for a bit before he reaches out his palm behind him. he makes a grabby hand & you take it with a blink.
he gently tugs you forward to walk beside him. he’s grinning, “Hi.”
“Hi.”
his smile grows. you’re peering up at him with wide eyes & god you’re so cute, you’re always so fucking cute, and god. his heart’s all swollen & sticky in his chest.
his hand shifts to your waist now, brushing up & down gently. “good thing i was close by, right?”
“thank you—“
“no need to thank me, sweetheart.” he hums, pressing you flush against his side as you walk together. “i know people like you are usually impoverished. that’s why you study so hard, right?”
you blink, “what?”
sato doesn’t hear you. “i saw you struggling to pay,” he sing-songs, eyes shut & grin pleased. “so i generously thought to step in. pretty girls like you shouldn’t have to pay anyways.”
you stop in your tracks. his thumb is still rubbing slow circles on your hip. “sato.”
“hm, baby?”
“don’t ever show your face to me again.”
you leave him on the street with your books in his hands & his heart in his throat.
TOJI’S REMARK : 🤦🏿♂️
NICE GUY TACTICS #3: LET HER COME TO YOU !
taught by: geto suguru
“you’re doing too much. sometimes you gotta give girls space and let them come to you.”
ΣX
“i’m actually creasing!”
it’s thursday again, and sato gojo is sitting cross-legged on his bed with sukuna’s head resting lazy on his lap. through his macbook screen geto suguru is laughing hysterically, tears in his eyes as sukuna snickers on sato’s leg with a palm clutched over his mouth.
they’re all wheezing—with the sole exception of sato gojo, of course.
suguru wipes his tears on his cashmere knit sweater. he’s looking all neat & proper, hair tied back & the picture of perfection. suguru is away in manchester for a study abroad semester. sato misses him badly.
till he opens his mouth again.
“i can’t lie, yeah,” suguru dabs at his eyes. “you’ve absolutely bottled it.”
“can you drop the british accent? you’re a first gen japanese immigrant.”
“allow it,” suguru shakes his head. sukuna is throwing up peace signs at the camera so balloons rise up on the facetime screen. “to call the girl you like impoverished…” suguru says through balloons, “just pack it in, mate.”
sukuna props his head up so his face is on the screen. his smile is clumsy: “your boy’s a proper wasteman.”
suguru grins, “is he?”
sato groans. “i was being a provider. following toji’s advice.”
“mind you, the man can’t even provide for himself.”
suguru snickers at that. “not too much, ryomen. and sato, don’t you think you’re trying too hard?”
“i don’t think i’m trying enough.”
“i think you’re trying in the wrong direction,” geto leans back, all calm & cashmere soft. “give her some breathing room—some space. let her come to you.”
sukuna bends his hands into a heart & a heart bubble appears on-screen. “might be your only option at this point. suguru, can i play on your sims 4 save file?”
“absolutely not.”
sukuna breaks the heart.
sato gojo has his back slumped over, brows knit, & lips twisted in concentration.
“let her come to me…got it.”
# SHOW TIME !
sato gojo is stalking you.
you’re on the way to class with a pen in your ear & a patience worn thin. he was three seats away at the local café. two in the campus library. now you’re walking through the courtyard & sato gojo is leaning back against a bulletin board like his eyes aren’t following your every move.
he has your books in your hand from the other day. is he wearing your lab coat?
you shake the thoughts away & keep walking. you’ve got a test in two hours. a project due in three. screw sato gojo & his rich kid privilege & clumsy smile & bright blue eyes and—
sato scurries behind you just to lean back coolly against yet another bulletin board. what the hell is his problem?
you snap, whipping around. “sato! what are you doing ?!”
his eyes widen. he’s still leaned against the bulletin board, your books in his arms & his hair messy-cute. there’s red on his cheeks & his eyes widen before he fixes his face & plasters on that smooth smirk:
“i’m letting you come to me.”
you blink. “no, i’m going to class.”
“and then you’re coming to me afterwards.”
“no, i don’t fucking think i am.”
he slumps forward as if your words are a weight on his shoulders. he’s pouting now as he walks up to you, your books hugged tightly to his chest. “i owe you an apology.”
“do you?”
“yes—god, yes i do.” he’s close now, too close. “y/n, i’m so fucking sorry. i wasn’t thinking straight. i was trying so hard to impress you and look like a provider but ended up sounding like some classist prick. you’re fucking amazing—strong, smart, independent—god, you’re my inspiration. please don’t make me stay away from you,” he clutches his chest. “my heart can’t fucking take it.”
sato gojo looks like an idiot.
your lab coat shrugged lazy over his shoulders, thick books pressed to his chest & a gaze too tender. he keeps his eyes on yours but his pupils shift like they’re heavy with nerves. you bite your lip. fuck.
“i forgive you,”
he blinks, straightens up. “really?”
“yes, really,” you murmur, picking out each book from his hold. he watches as you pluck them into your arms, your nose flushed & lashes fluttering, & his gaze is all misty. his heart goes sticky in his chest.
“i really like you.”
oh fuck. he didn’t mean to say that. he meant it, oh god, he meant it, but he didn’t mean to fucking say it and—
“i know,” you peer up at him, voice soft & gaze gentle in the heat. “walk me to class?”
he takes your books back into his arms. your lecture is two hours too long but sato gojo waits outside the whole time.
GETO’S REMARK : NEAR DISASTER; BUT CHEERS, MATE !
NICE GUY TACTICS #4: ACT LIKE YOU’RE THE PRIZE !
taught by: ryomen sukuna
“act like you’ve already got her, and you finally will. law of assumption or whatever.”
ΣX
in toru gojo’s room, ryomen sukuna is playing the sims 4 because he has no respect for suguru’s wishes.
sato gojo is on his bed, cheeks flushed & head dizzy. he’s still brushing a thumb over his palm, heat prickling at his skin as he remembers the way you held on when he picked you up after class. your hands were so soft, & you’re so pretty, & gojo sato is utterly fucked.
you’d frowned up at him when you found him waiting but let him hold your hand & guide you to the library regardless. sato tries to breathe. the air goes sticky in his lungs.
at toru’s desk, sukuna is drowning geto’s sim. “why are you smiling like an idiot?” he mutters.
“ryomen,” sato exhales. “i think i’m in love.”
sukuna scoffs, then grins when suguru’s sim kitchen catches fire. “so? you guys are dating now?”
“not yet,” sato sighs, easing into the covers. “to be honest, i’m not even sure she likes me. at least, not the way i like her.”
“mm. i think she just tolerates you.” / “shut the fuck up.”
“listen,” sukuna’s typing cheat codes into the game now. “you want her to be yours? act like she already is. it’s the law of assumption.”
sato blinks. “you believe in manifestation?”
“i use subliminals. how do you think i got my dick so big?”
sato doesn’t comment. “by the way, suguru’s sim asked yours for a divorce. just thought you should know that.”
sato sits up, suddenly serious. “new save file. now.”
# SHOW TIME !
sigma-chi’s frat house is blaring speakers & bodies pressed together on a friday evening.
sato gojo has a cup in his hands & liquor in his teeth. beside him sukuna’s on a chair chugging beer, porn playing in his headphones so he can have a dick print. his technique seems to be working—two bodies to the left, there’s a girl & her friend. sato overhears them conclude sukuna must be a D.
in sato’s ears, however, he’s playing an attract your crush! subliminal—hand-picked & recommended by ryomen sukuna, of course. he has his hands in his pockets, cap slumped & limbs lazy—until he spots you.
glossed hair, glazed lips & your tongue in your cheek. you’re wearing a skirt too short to be sweet & now sato has his tongue in his cheek too. you’re shifting around as if nervous—as if you’d rather not be here, & sato’s heart aches with something akin to want.
he doesn’t realize when his body starts moving.
you’re faced away from him, lips bitten, so he takes your hand from behind. you jolt, “oh—hi.”
“hi, baby,” he mutters, guiding you closer. “you look pretty.”
“thank you,” you murmur, breathless. sato’s arms loop around your hips. you only lift your palms to rest on his chest.
“have you had anything to drink?”
you shake your head, and sato’s hands are climbing higher now, under your top & grazing your spine. his hands are cold, so cold.
sukuna’s subliminal is still buzzing in his ears. he’s always been a daring boy, so he takes the leap. cups your cheek with a palm. brushes your waist when you shiver. “i can get you something.”
“that would be nice.”
he nods & guides you towards the bar.
——
sato gojo’s not sure how he’s done it.
you’re so pliant today. soft & unguarded, warm edges & caramel-sweet. even now he has your back pressed against his chest at the bar, hands on your hips, your perfume in his lungs.
you look up at him, “sato?” and he wants to kiss you because your eyes are too big & your voice is too pretty.
“mm?”
he leans down to hear you & his nose brushes your neck. his thumb is brushing circles on the dip beneath your waistband.
“do you…um. do you actually like me?”
oh god.
sato wants to say he’s never liked anyone more. that last night he dreamt about the shape of your frown, that his ribs ache when you ignore him, that his heart scraped against his throat the day he tried to pay for you but he messed up & you left, that he practiced his apology in the mirror till his throat hurt & if you ever said you liked him back he’d swallow his pride & cry.
but the subliminal still hums in his ears. sukuna’s words are still a ghost in the heat. ‘act like you’ve already got her!’
so he clears his throat. puts on that fake confidence like frat boys do.
“dunno,” but his hand grips your hip. “why? you want me to give you a chance?”
you still in his hold. sato gojo has fucked up once again.
SUKUNA’S REMARK : DAMN.
NICE GUY TACTICS #5: EGO IS THE ENEMY !
taught by: toru gojo
“i’ve played these games before. trust me when i say to just be yourself.”
ΣX
that evening, sato gojo has his knees against the tile & acid in his jugular.
he’s bent over the toilet seat, tongue curled & bone in his stomach. toru gojo has his hand in sato’s hair, holding it back as his twin brother spills his guts into the toilet bowl.
“i fucked up,” he rasps, then pukes again. “toru—toru. i fucked up,”
his nerdy brother bites his lip. it’s a sight for sore eyes—his twin on the bathroom floor with split lip & bruised knees, babbling over a girl with red cheeks & eyes watery. toru picks up a towel to wipe his brother’s face. “you need to calm down—you made a mistake. it’s not the end of the world.”
“it is, fuck, it is.” sato’s tears fall faster than toru can wipe. he’s shaking, “you know this isn’t the first time? that i called her poor?” toru winces. “and she let it go like a fucking saint and—hic—i still fucked up. i hurt her again.”
sato’s nose is blotchy red & his eyes are swollen puffy. the tears don’t stop. “i always hurt her. toru, why do i always hurt her?”
toru kneels down to his brother’s shaking figure, one hand on his cheek & the other dabbing his tears. “because you keep trying to perform. keep acting like something you’re not.” toru pauses. “like i was doing before i finally got my girlfriend.”
sato remembers—how he and his frat brothers gave toru a bunch of ‘playboy tactics’ to woo over his girl. sato shakes his head, sniffling. “i’m not pretending. i’m not fucking pretending.”
“you are,” toru wipes sato’s nose with his sleeve, then quickly regrets it. “i’ve been busy with projects but i know how you get, sato. acting all suave like you don’t overthink everything she says. like you don’t ask for advice on reddit forums. like you don’t make geto roleplay with you so you can decide exactly how to approach her.”
toru pauses, takes in his brother’s sore eyes & tear-stained cheeks. he hugs his brother’s head: “i know how you get.”
sato goes limp in his arms. “i really, really like her.”
“i know,” toru squeezes. “we all do.”
sato lets his head fall limp in his brother’s neck. he can’t help but wish that it was you.
—-
sato gojo has typed your name four times into his notes app because he likes the way it looks on his screen.
then he deletes it, then types it again, then deletes it with tears in his eyes. there’s still alcohol in his throat & his head is too fucking dizzy. it hurts to breathe & sato gojo can’t fucking think.
y/n.
it takes him three tries to spell your name into his contacts. not because he can’t spell, but because there are tears clouding his eyes & his throat hurts whenever he tries to sound your name out. y/n y/n y/n. no search results. then he finds your name saved under ‘baby :)‘ & he’s finally able to breathe again.
he’s still half-drunk, and he can’t really see, and there’s a wound in his chest & his thumbs are shaking so he prays to god for strength as he types. sato gojo hasn’t been to a church since he was eleven. he can’t even spell the word messiah.
SATO:
Hy [deleted]
Hi
y/n i’m so sorry
for everything
ikm such a fucking idiot
when u asked me if i reallly liked u and i said idk and u froze in my arms i felt my heart fucking stop in my chest y/n i’m so sorry
i like you i like you so bad
i don’t have the confudence to say it out loud to your face im so sorry
*confidence
i want to be a better man for you
i’m sorry for always hurting you i try not to i swear i do but i always think too hard and say the wrong things i swear i never ever mean to hurt you never ever
i liek you so much i’ve never liked any girl the way i like you ever in my life
i take acantability
accowntabikity
accountant
accountabity
i’m sorry im accountable
sato’s eyes blur. he’s not sure if it’s the alcohol or the tears. his hands are shaking but he prays again and he’s able to type just one more message.
SATO: ilikeyouilikeyouilikeyouilikeyou
the typing bubble pops up in the chat. he passes out before he can see your message.
——
“where is he?”
sato gojo has his nose beneath the covers, lashes sticky with dried tears & want. his hearing is muffled & his head is dizzy so when the lights flick on he retreats further into the covers.
toru gojo kneels in front of him. “sato. wake up.”
“mmrrnnhhhh.”
toru sighs. you walk up next to him and kneel in front of the bed. “sato?”
he stills. he knows that voice anywhere.
slowly, agonizingly, he pulls down the covers. just a little, just an inch—just because his nose is still blotchy & his eyes are still puffy & he doesn’t want you to see him like this. he opens his eyes & god. if this is a dream—messiah. please don’t wake him up.
you are so beautiful & your eyes are so big & sato gojo can’t believe you’re right here in front of him.
“sato. hi.”
he tries to say hi back. his lips part but he can’t seem to get anything out.
toru rises to his feet. “i’ll get him some water. be right back.”
it’s just you and him now; sato gojo and the only girl he’s ever loved. is it too early to use the word love? you’re resting your chin on folded arms right in front of him & sato does think he’s in love. he hasn’t even properly told you he likes you. he has to hurry up and say it.
you’re so close your noses are touching. you’re so pretty & you smell so sweet. “sato.”
“hi, baby—” but then he coughs. “hi, y/n.”
you giggle at that. sato realizes he’s never heard you giggle before. he wants you to giggle again. can you giggle again?
“i got your messages,”
ah. he swallows. “i texted you back and you didn’t respond. i got worried so i came here.”
sato can’t believe his ears. you worried about him?
he blinks. “i love you.”
your brows furrow.
“i’m sorry for saying it,” his voice is small, shy, slightly muffled beneath the covers. “but i think it a lot. and i’m sorry for loving you because i know i’m not worthy of your love, or of you in general, but if i said i like you that wouldn’t be correct, because the way my heart feels when i think about you is more than ‘like’,”
he breathes. “so i’m sorry for loving you. but i still love you. i’m sorry.”
you don’t know what to say to that. sato gojo is still peering at you—lashes sticky, blue eyes dim yet brimming with light. he’s retreated further into the covers now so all you see is white wisps of hair & those bright blue eyes.
you tug down the covers. he freezes, breathing heavy, eyes wide with both fear & adoration as you climb on top of him.
“say it again.”
“i…like you.”
“no, the other one.”
oh. “i love you.”
sato gulps. “i love you. i love you i love you i love you—“
you press your lips to his own as he holds your hips. he still says ‘i love you’ between your lips.
BONUS #1 — Y/N’S MESSAGES !
——
baby :)
😂😂 lol
you don’t expect me to acc believe this right?
do you know how many times you’ve hurt me these last few weeks and i let it go because my dumbass was in love with you?
*liked you
i was vulnerable and asked if you truly liked me and u said u don’t know and some other dumbass shit
that’s so fucked
you’re so fucked
you’re not fair to me that’s not fair sato
you say you’re sorry and you like me but you can’t even say it to my face? how is that fair? huh sato?
sato
sato?
are you okay
sato
i’m coming over
BONUS #2 – EPILOGUE !
it’s friday again, the end of the week, and sato gojo is at the airport with a grin on his face. his best friend is finally back in town & sato is practically vibrating.
“well, if it isn’t our casanova.”
“suguru!” sato tackles him in a hug. geto laughs, feet wobbly, patting at sato’s back affectionately. “you’ve got a girl now, mate. back up a bit, yeah?”
sato pulls back, frowning. “no more british accents.”
suguru smiles, “no more.”
in the car they talk about everything. sato should be driving but instead he plays passenger princess, recounting the last few weeks without him.
“so you’ve finally gotten the girl.” geto hums.
“yup.”
“and you told her you loved her before you even started dating.”
sato bites his lip. “yes.”
“you’re down bad.”
“i know.”
“i’m glad you’re happy, y’know,” geto is talking but sato’s phone dings in his lap. that special notification sound he’s set up only for you.
mine🫀: are you still picking up geto?
sato grins.
—
sato: you miss me, baby?
mine🫀: shut up
i’m still at the library
sato: i know babygirl i’m omw
mine🫀: nooo don’t come here
i need to study and u won’t let me focus
sato: thought i was your favorite distraction? 💔
mine🫀: ha. ha. don’t come here
sato: too late already at the exit
mine🫀: SATO
—-
“sato? are you listening?”
“sorry,” sato mutters, locking his phone. his knee is bouncing & his chest feels light. god, he’s so in love. “take the next left. suguru, do you know ryomen fucked with our sims’ marriage?”
“he what?”
“i need you to make a sim for y/n. i want to marry her instead,” sato hums. he’s clicking his phone on & off now, clearly not waiting for your next notification.
“i told that fucker not to touch my game.”
sato licks his canines. “that boy doesn’t listen.”
suguru’s grumbling now, something about a ‘good for nothing porn addict’ and ‘fuckass exhibitionist kink’ but sato only hums along in the passengers seat. then his phone dings again.
mine🫀: [Image Attachment]
he clicks on it way too fast.
and it’s a picture of you, phone in your lap & pouting down at the camera. your hair’s all messy in your face & your lips are bent in the cutest frown. god, you’re so beautiful. god god god.
he licks his lips. types back: ‘i love you my baby.’
“sato—? sato? what the fuck, man.” suguru’s still gripping the wheel, eyes on the road. “i’ve been talking for two minutes. who’s got you smiling like that?”
synopsis: someone posted you both on your college's anonymous app, yikyak? wonder how they feel about that...
featuring: collegeau!izuku midoriya, katsuki bakugou, and denki kaminari
warnings: nothing crazy! just crack and a lil suggestive. still prefer that mdni. painfully in char bakugou. deku is interestingly, in a situationship? denki is denki
masterlist | next
you are on: part 1!
a/n: omf first smau... 🥹 i've become what i semi despise (jk) LMAOO they sucked me in. and it's my mha debut. hello not so niche community! yes the trailer seeped into my brain what do u expect from me. part 2 with others if You The People™️ decide it's worthy lawl!!
canonically this started a cold war btw u and bakugou but makeup makeouts go crazy amirite
synopsis: the thing is, gojo satoru has no intention of marrying someone his clan elders pick for him. there’s a simple solution, of course! why get married to a stranger when you can whisk your best friend away to las vegas for a weekend and elope?
tags: fluff, smut (oral sex, fingering, riding, unprotected sex, one orgasm denial), mild angst, best friends to lovers, vegas wedding!au. idiots to idiots in love, profanity, alcohol consumption, discussions of arranged marriage, attempts at humour, crack taken seriously, mutual pining.
word count: 7.1k
a/n: the art in the header is by m00__ry on instagram & the fic title is from the 2008 movie of the same name. thank you to @saezzi for beta reading!
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #1 – ARSON.
For the record, none of this is your fault.
It’s all Satoru’s fault, and you’re pinning all of this solely on him because he gets on your nerves and he’s also a liar. A compulsive liar with no concept of shame or mortification or guilt, because the whole world revolves around his thick head and you, unfortunately, are no exception to this rule. It was a nasty trick, really, coercing you into going on vacation with him.
You should’ve known something was up when he specifically bought only two first-class tickets to Las Vegas and your flight was at midnight. He’d insisted the two of you sneak out of the Kyoto Jujutsu Tech compound where you’d stayed for the duration of his visit to the Gojo clan, and hadn’t bothered to inform Shoko or Utahime or Yaga.
And so, again, you reiterate firmly and resolutely: none of this is your fault.
Your predicament—standing in a parking lot behind a Denny’s at nine in the night with a small fire going in a trash can nearby—is entirely, absolutely, positively Gojo Satoru’s fault.
“I want a divorce,” you tell him.
“We’ve been married for forty-seven minutes.”
“Forty-seven minutes too long.”
“You’re burning our wedding certificate!” Satoru says. “How are we supposed to file for divorce if there’s no proof we even got married?”
“I’ll figure it out,” you say, poking at the certificate with a stick you found on the ground. The corner of it curls and blackens satisfyingly. “I’m very resourceful.”
“You’re committing a crime is what you’re doing,” he says.
“You committed a crime first.”
“Getting married isn’t a crime—”
“Fraud is.”
Satoru opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again, at a loss for words. This is a rare and precious occurrence—Gojo Satoru, speechless! You would be savouring it more if you weren’t currently a married woman in a Denny’s parking lot in Las Vegas at eleven o’clock in the night.
Satoru had told you it was a vacation. He’d shown up at your room in the Kyoto compound at half-past ten with a bag tucked under his arm and said, simply, “Come on. We’re leaving.”
“Leaving where?” you’d asked.
“Somewhere that isn’t here,” was his cryptic reply.
You’d been in Kyoto for six days. Six days of watching Satoru navigate the Gojo clan and their elders with their careful smiles and careful words. Nearly a week of watching something tight and unhappy lodge itself behind Satoru’s eyes while he pretended, convincingly, that everything was fine. You knew he wasn’t; you’d watched him perfect his act for years, after all.
So, you went. You told yourself it was because you’d never been to Las Vegas. This, at least, is true.
You’d grabbed your bag and followed him out through a side entrance of the compound at nine forty-five, and you didn’t inform any of your friends or superiors. Because of this, your phone has been periodically buzzing in your pocket for the last several hours and you’ve been ignoring it, which is a problem that is also, for the record, Satoru’s fault.
The flight was actually wonderful. First-class seats entailed warm socks and warm food and a window seat, because Satoru had graciously sat by the aisle. When you were flying over the Pacific, he’d fallen asleep with his head tipped back and his sunglasses still on. He looked younger when he was sleeping, you’d thought. More like the version of him you’d met when you were both too young and foolish to understand what being a sorcerer actually meant.
After you landed, Satoru took you to a casino and then to a fancy place for lunch, and then to another two casinos—if he wasn’t careful, he’d turn into a gambling addict soon—and then he took you to a chapel on the Strip with fake flowers zip-tied to the pews and an officiant named Francis who had red hair and smelled like cigarettes and convenience store chewing gum.
Francis had cried a little during the vows, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. Satoru had found this enormously gratifying. You, however, had been in something of a dissociative state.
“It’s not fraud,” Satoru says now, in the parking lot, watching you cremate your marriage certificate. “We did actually get married. Francis witnessed it. There are photos.”
“There are photos?”
“Francis had a camera.”
“What?”
“I think it’s just something he keeps on him professionally.”
You stare at him. He has the grace to look slightly sheepish. His sunglasses are still on. His suit jacket is open, and his tie, which had been done up neatly for the ceremony (clearly he’d planned far enough ahead to wear a nice tie) is now loosened and slightly crooked. The cheap gold ring on his finger—wrong hand; he’d fumbled it in the moment and jammed it on before either of you could correct it—catches the light from the parking lot fluorescents.
“That’s it!” you say, snapping your fingers at him. “That’s our proof to file for divorce! Take me back to the wedding chapel, Satoru.”
“No way,” he says. “I’m taking you to dinner first. We need to commemorate our first night of being married.”
“We’re behind a Denny’s,” you point out.
“I know,” Satoru says. “Denny’s is a perfectly acceptable dining establishment, but I meant somewhere nice. There’s a steakhouse on the Strip that has a three-month waitlist.”
“Then we can’t go there.”
“I called ahead.”
You gape at him. “Three months ago?”
“No,” he says. “I called ahead on the plane. You were asleep.”
“I wasn’t asleep for that long—”
“Yeah, you were asleep for, like, four hours. You even snored a little.”
“I did not—that’s not the point! The point is, you planned this. You planned all of it, the chapel, the restaurant, the—” You gesture at the ring on his finger, the ring on yours, the dying fire in the trash can—“everything.”
“Not everything. I didn’t plan for you to burn our wedding certificate in a fit of rage.”
“That’s your fault by proximity.”
“That’s not a legal standard.”
“I’m making it one.”
Satoru smiles, quick and bright. You have a long and storied history of making Gojo Satoru laugh when he isn’t expecting to, and it used to feel like winning something. It still does, if you’re being honest.
“Come on,” Satoru says, nodding towards the street. “Dinner first, Francis later. We can get the photos after and then you can file for divorce. I won’t stop you.”
“You’d better not,” you say.
“I said I won’t.” He holds his hands up, the picture of innocence. “I’m a man of my word.”
“You’re really not.”
“I’m a man of some of my word,” he amends.
The steakhouse is situated on the upper floor of one of the larger casinos on the Strip, lined with dark wood and low, hushed lighting. You are seated by a window. The Strip sprawls below you in every direction, extravagant and relentless, all that light going nowhere at tremendous speed.
“Were you really that confident I’d say yes?” you ask once the menus have been set in front of you.
“I was… hopeful,” Satoru says. It’s not a word you can recall him ever applying to himself before, in all the years you’ve known him; it sounds odd. You pick up your own menu and look at it without reading it.
What you’ve learnt about Satoru and what most people tend to miss is that underneath all the grinning and grandstanding and carelessness, there is someone who wants things very badly and has learned not to show it. You’ve known this for years. You’ve watched him want things, and watched him bury it under layers of grandiosity until it’s almost invisible. Almost.
“The elders have been at it for two years,” he says finally, without looking up from the menu. “The meetings, the candidates. They’re all very suitable women from very respectable families. Good for the clan’s interests.”
“You never told me it’d been going on for that long.”
“Didn’t want to make it a thing.”
“Satoru—”
“It’s fine. It’s just—” He sets the menu down and looks out at the Strip, all that light below. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life performing for someone who sees me as a resource. I do enough of that already. I knew it was going to happen eventually and that they were going to stop asking and start insisting. So. Vegas.”
“Vegas,” you echo.
“You were the obvious answer,” he says matter-of-factly. “You already know what you’re getting into with me. You don’t have any illusions. You—you’re my best friend. There isn’t anyone I’d rather be stuck with.”
“Stuck with,” you repeat. “Incredibly romantic.”
“I said what I said.”
The waiter arrives and Satoru orders for the two of you. You look down at the ring on your finger and think about how it came from the little rotating display by the chapel door, five dollars American. It fits almost perfectly except for being on the wrong hand.
“Er. You fumbled the ring,” you say.
“I was nervous,” he says.
Gojo Satoru, nervous. Gojo Satoru, who treats most of human experience as something happening at a slight remove, who has never, to your knowledge, shown up to anything in his life uncertain of the outcome—nervous!
“Were you,” you say.
“Briefly,” Satoru says, with great dignity. “It passed.”
“Of course.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“Of course.”
The fountains in front of the Bellagio are in the middle of their routine, water arcing up in great pale columns against the dark. The light from them moves across the window in slow, repeating patterns. Satoru’s eyes catch the shifting light. You swallow hard.
“We’re not arguing about the divorce, by the way,” you tell him.
“We’ll see.”
“Satoru.”
“We’ll see,” he says again pleasantly. You’re going to say something else, something firm and unambiguous, but he’s already put his cutlery down and is walking out, and you’re already following.
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #2 – BREAKING AND ENTERING.
The supposed 24/7 active wedding chapel has a sign tacked onto the front door when you arrive later, which reads, Under maintenance. We apologise for the inconvenience!
“Fuck,” you groan.
“Language,” Satoru says. “Maintenance at midnight. Huh. That’s strange.”
“That’s what I’m focusing on right now, yes, thank you.”
You press your face briefly against the chapel door’s small window. The lights inside are off. Through the glass you can just make out the shape of the pews, the flowers zip-tied to their ends, and the little altar at the front where Francis had stood several hours ago and wept openly into his handkerchief. How are you supposed to get the photographs of your husband—you are using that word provisionally under extreme protest—looking at you like you’re the only fixed point in the room?
“He might live here,” Satoru says.
“Francis?”
“Some of these places have a back apartment for the officiant. We could knock.”
“We’re not knocking on a man’s door at midnight,” you say.
“It’s nearly one.”
“That makes it worse!” You step back from the door and look at the sign again. There’s a narrow alley running along the left side of the chapel, squeezed between the chapel building and the 24-hour tattoo parlour next door. You only notice it because Satoru’s already walking towards it. “What are you doing?”
“Recon,” Satoru says. “Just looking.”
He disappears around the corner. You stand on the pavement with your hands on your hips before deciding to follow him. The alley is cramped and smells stale. There’s a dumpster and a stack of plastic chairs leaning against the chapel wall. Satoru stands with his hands in his pockets, looking upward with his head tilted back.
“No,” you say.
“There’s a window.”
“I see that.”
“It’s open!”
It appears to be a casement window on the chapel’s ground floor, propped out at an angle, about eight feet off the ground and just wide enough for a person to fit through.
“That could be a bathroom window,” you say. “We’d be breaking and entering.”
“The window’s already open,” Satoru says. “Technically we’d just be entering. The photos Francis took are currently somewhere in that chapel developing in a back room, unattended.”
“If we get arrested,” you say, “I’m blaming you entirely.”
“Obviously.”
“I will give a statement to the police and it will contain your full name and a detailed account of everything that’s happened tonight, starting with the chapel and working backwards to Kyoto.”
“Sure. Boost or be boosted?” Satoru asks, turning to the chairs. “I’d say I’ll boost you, but I want it to be on record that I think you’d make a better lookout.”
“I’m not being a lookout.”
“You just said—”
“I’m coming with you.”
He pauses, glancing at you, his expression softening just a little bit. Warm and amused—gone before you can fix it in place.
“Obviously,” he says, smiling, and starts stacking chairs.
The window is, in fact, not a bathroom window. It opens into a small storage room at the back of the chapel, with folding tables against one wall, boxes of artificial flowers stacked against the other, and a mop in a bucket in the corner. Through a door on the far side, you can see the chapel proper. The dripping you can hear means the maintenance situation is a ceiling problem, probably towards the front.
“There’s a whole back operation,” Satoru says, impressed.
“We need to find the darkroom,” you whisper.
“Why are you whispering?”
“Because we’re trespassing.”
“Right, yes,” he says, lowering his voice. “The darkroom will need ventilation, so it’s probably towards the back.”
“How do you know anything about darkrooms?” you ask.
“I went through a photography phase in my second year of middle school. It was a whole thing.” He opens the storage room door and peers through into the chapel. “All clear.”
You follow him through. The chapel at night, empty and dim, is a different place entirely from what it was several hours ago. Smaller, somehow. Without Francis and the lights, it’s just a room with cheap flowers and worn carpet.
“Back room’s through here,” Satoru says softly; he’s already at the door behind the altar. You cross the chapel quickly, not looking at the pews or the aisle, not doing anything so foolish as standing in the dark and sentimentalising about a five-dollar ring and a laminated vow card.
The back room is small and smells sharply of chemicals—developer and fixer, mostly. There’s a red safelight along the wall that Francis has left running, bathing everything in a dim glow. A long workbench runs along one wall, and on it, clipped to a line strung above the bench, are your photographs.
Four of them, hanging in a row, damp and gleaming slightly under the monochromatic light. Even from across the room, you can make out the chapel and the altar. Neither of you says anything for a moment, until Satoru walks to the bench and stands in front of the photographs. You make your way and stand beside him.
The first one is mid-ceremony. You’re both facing Francis, and you can see Satoru in profile—head tilted, shoulders set. The second one is the ring exchange; you can see immediately why it’s blurry. You’d both been laughing, actually, you remember that now, because Satoru had fumbled the ring and said something under his breath, and you’d bitten down on a laugh and not entirely succeeded. Francis had captured exactly that, the two of you with your heads slightly bent towards each other.
In the third one, Francis had asked you to face each other for a photo, and while you’re looking at the camera, Satoru’s looking at you. You look—Francis had said surprised, and yes, there is that, but there’s also something else, something you would rather not name.
Satoru is looking at you the way he was looking at you in the chapel, the way he’s been looking at you in these odd unguarded moments all evening.
“We look like idiots,” Satoru says.
“Francis was right,” you say. “We both look surprised.”
“Were you?” he asks.
“Yes. Were you?”
“No,” he says, then adds quietly, “Maybe. About—about other things.”
In the fourth photograph, you are outside the chapel, looking at the ring on your hand, and Satoru is looking at you looking at the ring. Francis had captured the angle so cleanly that you can see Satoru’s full expression, soft in a way his face almost never is in front of other people, private. You realise you’re holding your breath.
“We should take them,” Satoru says.
“We can’t just take them,” you say. “They’re developing.”
“They look pretty developed to me.”
“Satoru, they’re damp—”
“They’ll dry.” He’s already carefully unclipping the first photograph from the line. “Francis has the negatives. He can print more.”
“You don’t know that Francis has the negatives, and besides, we’re stealing from him.”
“We’re borrowing from Francis.” Satoru holds the first photograph carefully by its edge and looks at it in the red light before setting it down on the workbench. “Hand me something to put these in. There should be a folder or an envelope on the bench somewhere.”
There’s a paper envelope at the end of the bench, brown and flat. You pick it up and hold it open. Satoru slides the photographs in one by one.
“We need to leave Francis a note,” you say, “and money. For the printing. For—everything.”
“How much do you think midnight darkroom theft runs these days?”
“What?”
“I’m asking genuinely.”
“A lot,” you say. “Leave a lot.”
You find a notepad on the workbench next to a jar of pens. Francis, you write. We’re sorry for the unauthorised visit. We needed the photos tonight, so please print yourself copies. Enclosed is payment for the developing, the breaking-in, the trouble, and your time. Thank you for everything. It was a beautiful ceremony.
You fold the note and put it on the workbench. Satoru takes his wallet out, removes a quantity of cash that makes your eyebrows go up, and weighs it down with the jar of pens.
You go back through the chapel and through the storage room and back out the window into the alley. Satoru drops down behind you and lands easily on the ground. The night air is warm, and the Strip is still brightly lit not thirty feet away. You hold the envelope against your chest. The photographs inside are still slightly damp.
“For the record,” you say, “this is also your fault.”
“The chapel was closed,” Satoru says reasonably. “I didn’t plan that part. Plus, we have the photos, so. Seems like it worked out.”
You look at him with his loosened tie and ruffled hair and think, He’s going to be completely insufferable about this for years. You are going to have to hear about the Vegas chapel break-in for the rest of your natural life and possibly longer.
“Come on,” you say. “You said the hotel’s three blocks away.”
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #3 – VANDALISM.
There is only one bed. It’s not, on its own, an unusual situation. You’ve shared sleeping arrangements with Satoru before—field missions and overnight calls that left two sorcerers and one room. You’d use a pillow wall, most of the time.
The difference is that you are currently married to him.
“You booked a room with one bed?” you ask.
“They may have assumed, given that I made the reservation under a recently married couple’s names, that we would want,” Satoru says, gesturing at the bed, “the one bed.”
The bed in question is enormous, dressed in white linen and piled with decorative pillows. There’s a bowl of strawberries on the bedside table. The whole room smells faintly of roses.
“Did you request the honeymoon setup?” you say.
“The woman on the phone seemed very enthusiastic about it.”
“That’s not an answer!” You look around the room, hands on your hips. “Well, there’s a couch. You can use that.”
It’s one of those small, decorative couches present in hotel rooms to fill a corner, hold throw pillows, and look tasteful in photographs, but not to sleep on.
“I’m not going to sleep on it, but noted,” Satoru says, striding towards the minibar, shrugging his jacket off and draping it over the back of the chair by the window. “Whiskey or gin?”
“Whiskey,” you say. “We can put a pillow wall down the middle.”
“We’re married,” he says, crossing the room with two small bottles. He sits down on the other side of the bed. “It seems a bit prudish.”
You take the whiskey from him and twist the cap off. Satoru has his own bottle balanced between both hands, still unopened, and he’s looking out the window at the city below. You’ve spent enough years watching him, but it doesn’t seem to change anything; the flutter in your heart remains the same, as does the contentment you feel in your chest.
“I want to see them again,” you announce.
Satoru looks at you. “The photos?”
You reach for the envelope on the nightstand and slide the pictures out carefully, holding them by the edges. They’re drying, stiffening slightly. You hold them in your lap and he leans in slightly.
“You should’ve warned me,” you say quietly.
“About which part?”
“All of it.” You tap the third photograph’s edge, gently. “This.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “If I’d warned you, you’d have said no.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you,” he says, not unkindly. “You’d have thought about it too long and decided it was too complicated, and then you’d have spent months being strange about it, and then we’d have gone back to normal, and—” He stops, turning the bottle in his hands. “…I didn’t want to go back to normal.”
“It’s still a bad idea,” you mumble.
“Probably,” he agrees. His hand shifts on the duvet between you, the tip of his little finger coming to rest against the back of yours. “Hasn’t stopped being true, though. Whatever it is. You know what I mean.”
You do. That’s the problem: you’ve always known what he means, even when he’s being deliberately oblique about it. You’ve known him too long and too well for any of it to not make sense anymore. Which means, you understand now, that you’ve also known you’re in love with him for longer than you thought.
You look at the fourth photograph—Satoru, standing outside the chapel, watching you look at the ring on your hand.
“You could’ve just said something,” you tell him. “At any point. Like a normal person.”
“I took you to Las Vegas and married you,” he says. “That’s me saying something directly.”
His hand turns over and covers yours, warm and assuaging, and whatever reservations you’d been carefully maintaining for years simply crumble.
You close the remaining distance. Satoru’s free hand comes up to your face before you’ve fully moved, which means he was thinking about it too—has been thinking about it, probably, for longer than tonight, longer than Vegas—and he’s kissing you.
He kisses you decisively. There’s a certainty to it that shouldn’t surprise you—this is Satoru, who does nothing halfway—but it does, a little. But what surprises you more is how easy it is. How it doesn’t feel like a change in anything so much as a long-overdue acknowledgement of something that’s been there all along.
When you pull back, his forehead drops to yours. His sunglasses are still pushed up on his head, and you reach up and take them off without asking. He lets you.
“Hi,” Satoru says.
“You’re still wearing your sunglasses indoors at midnight,” you chide.
“I said hi.”
“Hi,” you say.
He smiles; it reaches his eyes. “So,” he starts.
“Do not say ‘I told you so.’”
“I wasn’t going to. Probably.”
“Insufferable,” you say, and kiss him again, which is both a rebuke and a surrender but mostly just because you want to. He makes a sound against your mouth that might be a laugh, and his arms come around you properly this time.
The decorative pillows go first. There are seven of them, and they go in ones and twos without either of you paying much attention—one knocked off when his arm comes around you properly, two more when you shift closer, the rest sliding off the edge in a soft succession of thuds. One of the small whiskey bottles, empty now, rolls off the mattress and lands on the carpet. You don’t notice any of it; you’re somewhat preoccupied by Satoru taking your face in his hands and tilting it and kissing you until you forget what you were arguing about.
You suspect that he’s thought about this for a long time, the same way you have.
“You’re thinking,” Satoru says against your mouth.
“I’m not.”
“You are. I can tell. You get this little—” He pulls back just enough to look at you, and traces something between your brows with one finger. “Here.”
You stare at him. “I hate that you know that.”
“No, you don’t,” he says. He’s right, and you hate that too, so you tell him so by pulling him back down by the front of his shirt.
He lets you tug at him willingly—more than willingly, with an enthusiasm that sends you back against the pillows and makes you laugh, briefly, before his mouth finds your jaw, your throat, your collarbone, and the laugh turns into a gasp. His hands are at your waist, warm through the fabric.
His tie joins the pillows on the floor; you get the knot loose while he’s working on the matter of your buttons. His shirt is untucked and you run your hands on his waist, his ribs, the warm plane of his stomach. Satoru groans against the side of your neck, and you shiver. He tosses your shirt aside, too, and his eyes darken when his gaze lands on your chest. He takes his time with your nipples, rolling them around with his thumbs, before taking one of them in his mouth.
He moves lower, pressing kisses to the underside of your breasts, moving down to your navel. When he reaches the waistband of your jeans, he looks up, pupils blown wide and asks, “May I?”
“Yes, yes, please.” You nod frantically, helping him pull your jeans and panties off when he unbuttons it. You’re already wet and needy.
“You’re so beautiful,” Satoru says, gazing up at you before littering kisses on your inner thighs, so close to where you want him.
“Satoru, please,” you say. “I need you.”
He blows on your wet core, making you shiver. “Need me to what?”
“I need you to, hah, just—”
Satoru latches onto your clit, sucking and swirling his tongue around the bud. You moan, your hands flying to his hair and gripping the silver-white strands. He alternates between quick flicks and long, broad strokes, keeping your folds spread apart with two fingers while his other hand traces patterns along the underside of your thigh.
“Fuck, fuck—” You curse when his tongue moves in a circle right around your clenching hole. Satoru doesn’t stop. If anything, the sound of your voice breaking, the way you curse his name, only spurs him on. He knows exactly what he’s doing to you. He’s always known how to push your buttons. But this is different; this isn’t a playful tease during a mission.
He dives back in, his tongue flattening out to lap at you with broad, wet strokes that cover everything from your clit down to your opening. You arch your back, your hips lifting off the mattress instinctively, trying to press yourself harder against his mouth.
“Satoru… please, I’m—”
“You’re what?” he mumbles against your skin. He doesn’t wait for an answer, sliding two fingers deep inside you. You let out a strangled cry, your toes curling. His fingers are thick and warm, and he curls them, hooking them upward to find that sensitive spot that makes your vision blur. His thumb remains locked into your clit, rubbing circles on the engorged bud.
The sensation is overwhelming. It’s too much and yet not nearly enough. You can feel the tension building in your lower belly, a tight, simmering coil that winds tighter and tighter with every second.
“Right there,” you moan, your fingers knotting into his hair. “Right there, Satoru, don’t stop, please don’t stop.”
Your breath comes out in short, jagged gasps, your chest heaving. Just as you are about to orgasm, Satoru stops. He doesn’t just slow down; he pulls his fingers out of you with a sudden, wet pop and removes his mouth from your heat entirely. You freeze, your eyes snapping open. “Satoru, what the hell—”
He’s hovering over you, braced on his elbows, his hair messy and falling over his forehead. A slow, smug smile spreads across his lips, though his breathing is just as heavy as yours.
“Not yet,” he whispers.
“I hate you,” you groan, your hips twitching involuntarily, searching for the friction he just stole from you. “I actually hate you so much.”
“Liars don’t get to come,” Satoru teases, though his hand reaches down to gently stroke the skin of your inner thigh.
He shifts, moving upward to kiss you. He tastes like you, and you moan into his mouth, before he pulls away just an inch, his gaze dropping to your drenched core. “I want to feel you,” he murmurs. “I want to feel how tight you are around me.”
Satoru slides backward, just enough to strip off his trousers and underwear in one hurried motion. His cock springs out, thick and flushed. Your mouth waters simply looking at it, while he pumps it once, twice, thumb circling the tip. He doesn’t lie back down. Instead, he sits up, leaning his back against the headboard of the enormous bed, his legs spread wide. He reaches out, grabbing your waist with those large, strong hands and pulling you forward until you are hovering over him.
“Ride me?” he asks.
The need for friction, for fullness, for him overrides any lingering frustration. You shift your weight, guiding his cock to your entrance. As you slowly lower yourself down, the feeling of his cock filling you, stretching you open, sends a fresh wave of pleasure through you. You let out a long, shuddering moan as you sink down completely, inch by inch, your pelvis flushing against his. Satoru lets out a choked sound, his head hitting the headboard with a thud, his eyes screwing shut.
“Fuck,” he moans. “You’re—you’re so tight. I can’t—”
“Shut up,” you whisper, though there’s no heat in it.
You begin to move, a slow, grinding rotation of your hips. You watch his face—the way his jaw clenches and his nostrils flare, the way he looks at you with warmth and wonder. You quicken your movements, bouncing on his cock. Satoru’s hands move from your waist to your hips, fingers digging into your skin, helping you ride him. He thrusts upwards, tilting his hips and dragging his cock against your walls.
“Look at me,” he groans. You look down, your eyes locking onto his. “I love you,” he says.
You feel the coil in your belly snap. Your orgasm washes over you as you clench around his cock, milking him. Satoru moans, his back arching off the bed as he thrusts upwards one last time. “I’m going to come,” he says. “Let me—”
You slide off his cock and he comes, his release spurting onto his stomach, a little bit on your thighs. You collapse against his chest. He wraps his arms around you tightly, pulling you into the crook of his neck.
For a long time, neither of you speaks. Eventually, Satoru shifts slightly, kissing the top of your head.
“So,” he whispers. “Shower?”
You lift your head slightly, looking at him with tired, happy eyes. “Already?” you say with faux innocence. “I thought you’d want to fuck me on that stupid couch first.”
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #4 – EMBEZZLEMENT.
Hopefully Satoru didn’t mind you swiping his credit card from his wallet while he was fast asleep, one arm thrown over his face while the other was stretched out beside him. You’d wriggled out of his grasp carefully, pressing a gentle, barely-there kiss to the tip of his nose, before digging through his jacket’s pockets for his wallet and pulling out his black card.
It’s for a good purpose, you console yourself, hurrying through the streets of Las Vegas with a jewellery shop’s location pulled up on your phone.
Las Vegas in the early morning is a different city entirely from the one that had swallowed you whole last night. It’s not quiet, exactly—it’s never quiet, you suspect—but it’s quieter, the frenetic energy of the Strip mellowed into something slower. The crowds have thinned, at least.
You walk with your hands in your pockets, Satoru’s black card tucked safely between two fingers. The morning air is warm and dry, and the sky above the glow of the Strip is beginning to lighten from black to the deep bruised blue that comes just before dawn.
The jewellery shop is three blocks from the hotel, according to your phone. It’s a small, well-lit place that stays open through the night, catering to those Las Vegas visitors who find themselves in need of jewellery at unusual hours, which you now understand is a larger demographic than you’d previously considered.
You walk and think about the rings. The ones currently on your fingers are not adequate. They’re soft metal, the gold already slightly scuffed from one night of existence, and they’ll tarnish in a week. You’d noticed this morning, while Satoru was still asleep: the way your rings sat a little loose, the way it had already lost some of its shine. It’s more of a placeholder than anything else.
The thought of replacing them had arrived while you’d lain in Satoru’s arms, listening to him breathe and looking at the ring.
You aren’t scared, though you’d expected to be. You’d expected to wake up this morning with the full weight of what’s happened landing on you like a dropped beam, and to spend the subsequent hours dealing with the considerable wreckage of your own panic. It seemed like a reasonable response to having been married to your best friend in Las Vegas by a crying man named Francis and then having the matter become rather more settled than a marriage certificate alone would suggest.
But when you’d woken up with Satoru’s arm around you and the photographs on the nightstand, what you’d felt was something almost irritatingly simple: you’d felt like yourself.
The jewellery shop is small and bright, jewellery arranged in lit display cases along the walls, a pudgy man behind the counter. He looks up when you come in, takes in the look of you—your clothes from last night, slightly slept-in, your hair not fully combed—and nods pleasantly.
“Morning,” he says. “What are you looking for?”
“Wedding rings,” you say. “Two of them, please. Something that’ll last for a long time.”
He nods again. “Do you know the other person’s size?”
You think about Satoru’s hands—the ring sliding onto his finger in the chapel, his hand covering yours on the duvet last night, the warmth of his arm around this morning. “I can estimate,” you say.
He shows you to a case along the left wall. The rings inside are simple, for the most part—plain bands in gold and silver and white gold, some with small details, most without. You find two plain bands in white gold, clean-lined and unornamented, substantial enough to last.
“These,” you tell the man behind the counter.
He nods. You produce Satoru’s black card and spend a figure that makes you wince slightly but not reconsider, because the point isn’t the cost and you’re sure Satoru will agree with you about this when he wakes up and finds both you and his credit card gone. You leave the ship with the rings in a small white box and stand on the pavement outside for a moment in the warming air.
You pull your phone out and type in the search bar, Chapel of Eternal Love, and punch in the number attached.
“Hello, Chapel of Eternal Love, Francis speaking—”
“Francis,” you say, smiling. “I have a favour to ask.”
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #5 – MARRIAGE.
Francis, it turns out, is delighted. He’d gone quiet for a moment when you explained what you were asking, and then said, Give me an hour, and hung up before you could confirm the details.
You make your way back to the hotel with your ring box in your pocket and the morning brightening steadily around you. The casino lobbies you pass are still going—slot machines, a scattering of determined gamblers, staff moving between stations—but the Strip itself is relatively peaceful, the night’s crowd entirely dissolved and the day’s not yet arrived. You have the pavement to yourself. It’s a strange and pleasant feeling, Las Vegas in the interstitial hour.
Satoru is awake when you get back, sitting up in bed with his hair in complete disarray and the duvet bunched around his waist. When you open the door he looks at you blankly.
“Morning,” you say.
“My credit card,” he says.
“Is fine.” You cross the room and hold it out. He takes it without looking at it, still watching you. “I needed it for a purchase.”
“What kind of purchase requires you to leave the hotel room at—” he glances at the clock on the nightstand—“six forty-seven in the morning?”
“The important kind.” You sit down on the edge of the bed and take the white box out of your pocket, setting it on the duvet between you.
Satoru picks the box up and opens it, and doesn’t say anything at all, which is the loudest thing Gojo Satoru can do. “You stole my credit card,” he says finally, “to buy us wedding rings.”
“I borrowed it,” you say. “To replace the ones we got from a spinning display rack for five dollars each.”
“I liked those rings.”
“They were tarnishing,” you say. “There’s more, by the way.”
You tell him about Francis. He looks surprised at first, and then warm, so utterly warm when he tugs you closer to him and kisses you again, and again, and once more for good measure. Satoru closes the ring box and holds it in both hands, the way he’d held the whiskey bottle last night before he’d covered your hand with his.
“I thought you wanted a divorce last night, and now you’ve stolen my credit card and called Francis.”
“Yep.”
He looks at you for a long moment. The morning light filters through the curtains and he looks extraordinarily, unfairly beautiful, even just woken up.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.” Satoru sets the ring box on the nightstand, next to the photographs. “Okay.”
Francis has decorated the chapel when you arrive. You’re not entirely sure when he found the time—it’s been barely two hours since your phone call—but the maintenance issue has apparently been resolved, because the lights are on when you arrive. The door is unlocked; when you step inside you find that Francis has replaced the zip-tied artificial flowers on the pews with fresh ones, white and small. There are candles lit along the windowsills. The worn carpet, in the warm light, looks less worn somehow, or perhaps you’re simply disposed to see it differently today.
Francis himself is standing at the altar in a clean shirt, his red hair combed and his camera in his hands. “You came back,” he says.
“We came back,” you confirm.
Francis looks at the two of you—Satoru in a fresh shirt with his tie done up neatly again, you in the best thing you could assemble from your bag on short notice—and grins. “The rings, did you—”
You produce the white box.
“Right,” Francis says. “Right, yes. Let’s—shall we?”
Here is what you think about, standing at the altar of the Chapel of Eternal Love for the second time in less than twenty-four hours:
You think about the first time, yesterday, and how you’d stood here in something close to a dissociative state, your brain running through the situation at high speed. You think about the parking lot behind the Denny’s and the small fire in the trash can. You’d meant it when you said you wanted a divorce, though you realise now that you were frightened of what being married to your best friend entailed.
Satoru had let you burn it, too. He hadn’t argued because he’d known you’d come around. Not from arrogance, but because he knew you, the same way you knew him, all the way down to the things you didn’t say aloud.
You think about the darkroom, the four photographs drying on the line in the red light. Climbing back out through the chapel window into the warm Las Vegas night and holding the envelope against your chest, the photographs still damp inside it. You think about the rings in the spinning display by the door—you can still see them from where you’re standing, the little rack with the remaining rings. They were the beginning, it turns out.
You turn to look back at Satoru. He’s smiling at you.
Francis clears his throat gently. “Shall we begin?”
The vows are the same ones from the laminated card. Francis offers alternatives—he has a small binder with options—but Satoru shrugs, so you use the same ones. When Francis gets to the rings you open the white box yourself. You take Satoru’s ring out and hold it; he holds out his right hand out of habit before catching himself and switching to his left, and you both laugh helplessly. Francis gulps and pulls out his handkerchief. You put the ring on the correct hand this time.
Satoru takes yours from the box and looks up at you—there’s that expression, the one from the photographs, the one you have a name for now. He slides the ring onto the correct finger and holds your hand for a moment after.
Francis is fully crying now. He dabs at his eyes without embarrassment and beams at the two of you over his handkerchief with radiant approval.
“I’ve never had anyone come back,” he tells you. “In twelve years, you’re the first.”
“We forgot something the first time,” you say.
Francis tucks his handkerchief away and straightens up. Smiling, he announces, “You may now kiss,” and so you do.
a/n: the real mvp of this fic is francis who was also unironically my favourite person to write. thanks for reading!
synopsis: the thing is, gojo satoru has no intention of marrying someone his clan elders pick for him. there’s a simple solution, of course! why get married to a stranger when you can whisk your best friend away to las vegas for a weekend and elope?
tags: fluff, smut (oral sex, fingering, riding, unprotected sex, one orgasm denial), mild angst, best friends to lovers, vegas wedding!au. idiots to idiots in love, profanity, alcohol consumption, discussions of arranged marriage, attempts at humour, crack taken seriously, mutual pining.
word count: 7.1k
a/n: the art in the header is by m00__ry on instagram & the fic title is from the 2008 movie of the same name. thank you to @saezzi for beta reading!
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #1 – ARSON.
For the record, none of this is your fault.
It’s all Satoru’s fault, and you’re pinning all of this solely on him because he gets on your nerves and he’s also a liar. A compulsive liar with no concept of shame or mortification or guilt, because the whole world revolves around his thick head and you, unfortunately, are no exception to this rule. It was a nasty trick, really, coercing you into going on vacation with him.
You should’ve known something was up when he specifically bought only two first-class tickets to Las Vegas and your flight was at midnight. He’d insisted the two of you sneak out of the Kyoto Jujutsu Tech compound where you’d stayed for the duration of his visit to the Gojo clan, and hadn’t bothered to inform Shoko or Utahime or Yaga.
And so, again, you reiterate firmly and resolutely: none of this is your fault.
Your predicament—standing in a parking lot behind a Denny’s at nine in the night with a small fire going in a trash can nearby—is entirely, absolutely, positively Gojo Satoru’s fault.
“I want a divorce,” you tell him.
“We’ve been married for forty-seven minutes.”
“Forty-seven minutes too long.”
“You’re burning our wedding certificate!” Satoru says. “How are we supposed to file for divorce if there’s no proof we even got married?”
“I’ll figure it out,” you say, poking at the certificate with a stick you found on the ground. The corner of it curls and blackens satisfyingly. “I’m very resourceful.”
“You’re committing a crime is what you’re doing,” he says.
“You committed a crime first.”
“Getting married isn’t a crime—”
“Fraud is.”
Satoru opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again, at a loss for words. This is a rare and precious occurrence—Gojo Satoru, speechless! You would be savouring it more if you weren’t currently a married woman in a Denny’s parking lot in Las Vegas at eleven o’clock in the night.
Satoru had told you it was a vacation. He’d shown up at your room in the Kyoto compound at half-past ten with a bag tucked under his arm and said, simply, “Come on. We’re leaving.”
“Leaving where?” you’d asked.
“Somewhere that isn’t here,” was his cryptic reply.
You’d been in Kyoto for six days. Six days of watching Satoru navigate the Gojo clan and their elders with their careful smiles and careful words. Nearly a week of watching something tight and unhappy lodge itself behind Satoru’s eyes while he pretended, convincingly, that everything was fine. You knew he wasn’t; you’d watched him perfect his act for years, after all.
So, you went. You told yourself it was because you’d never been to Las Vegas. This, at least, is true.
You’d grabbed your bag and followed him out through a side entrance of the compound at nine forty-five, and you didn’t inform any of your friends or superiors. Because of this, your phone has been periodically buzzing in your pocket for the last several hours and you’ve been ignoring it, which is a problem that is also, for the record, Satoru’s fault.
The flight was actually wonderful. First-class seats entailed warm socks and warm food and a window seat, because Satoru had graciously sat by the aisle. When you were flying over the Pacific, he’d fallen asleep with his head tipped back and his sunglasses still on. He looked younger when he was sleeping, you’d thought. More like the version of him you’d met when you were both too young and foolish to understand what being a sorcerer actually meant.
After you landed, Satoru took you to a casino and then to a fancy place for lunch, and then to another two casinos—if he wasn’t careful, he’d turn into a gambling addict soon—and then he took you to a chapel on the Strip with fake flowers zip-tied to the pews and an officiant named Francis who had red hair and smelled like cigarettes and convenience store chewing gum.
Francis had cried a little during the vows, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. Satoru had found this enormously gratifying. You, however, had been in something of a dissociative state.
“It’s not fraud,” Satoru says now, in the parking lot, watching you cremate your marriage certificate. “We did actually get married. Francis witnessed it. There are photos.”
“There are photos?”
“Francis had a camera.”
“What?”
“I think it’s just something he keeps on him professionally.”
You stare at him. He has the grace to look slightly sheepish. His sunglasses are still on. His suit jacket is open, and his tie, which had been done up neatly for the ceremony (clearly he’d planned far enough ahead to wear a nice tie) is now loosened and slightly crooked. The cheap gold ring on his finger—wrong hand; he’d fumbled it in the moment and jammed it on before either of you could correct it—catches the light from the parking lot fluorescents.
“That’s it!” you say, snapping your fingers at him. “That’s our proof to file for divorce! Take me back to the wedding chapel, Satoru.”
“No way,” he says. “I’m taking you to dinner first. We need to commemorate our first night of being married.”
“We’re behind a Denny’s,” you point out.
“I know,” Satoru says. “Denny’s is a perfectly acceptable dining establishment, but I meant somewhere nice. There’s a steakhouse on the Strip that has a three-month waitlist.”
“Then we can’t go there.”
“I called ahead.”
You gape at him. “Three months ago?”
“No,” he says. “I called ahead on the plane. You were asleep.”
“I wasn’t asleep for that long—”
“Yeah, you were asleep for, like, four hours. You even snored a little.”
“I did not—that’s not the point! The point is, you planned this. You planned all of it, the chapel, the restaurant, the—” You gesture at the ring on his finger, the ring on yours, the dying fire in the trash can—“everything.”
“Not everything. I didn’t plan for you to burn our wedding certificate in a fit of rage.”
“That’s your fault by proximity.”
“That’s not a legal standard.”
“I’m making it one.”
Satoru smiles, quick and bright. You have a long and storied history of making Gojo Satoru laugh when he isn’t expecting to, and it used to feel like winning something. It still does, if you’re being honest.
“Come on,” Satoru says, nodding towards the street. “Dinner first, Francis later. We can get the photos after and then you can file for divorce. I won’t stop you.”
“You’d better not,” you say.
“I said I won’t.” He holds his hands up, the picture of innocence. “I’m a man of my word.”
“You’re really not.”
“I’m a man of some of my word,” he amends.
The steakhouse is situated on the upper floor of one of the larger casinos on the Strip, lined with dark wood and low, hushed lighting. You are seated by a window. The Strip sprawls below you in every direction, extravagant and relentless, all that light going nowhere at tremendous speed.
“Were you really that confident I’d say yes?” you ask once the menus have been set in front of you.
“I was… hopeful,” Satoru says. It’s not a word you can recall him ever applying to himself before, in all the years you’ve known him; it sounds odd. You pick up your own menu and look at it without reading it.
What you’ve learnt about Satoru and what most people tend to miss is that underneath all the grinning and grandstanding and carelessness, there is someone who wants things very badly and has learned not to show it. You’ve known this for years. You’ve watched him want things, and watched him bury it under layers of grandiosity until it’s almost invisible. Almost.
“The elders have been at it for two years,” he says finally, without looking up from the menu. “The meetings, the candidates. They’re all very suitable women from very respectable families. Good for the clan’s interests.”
“You never told me it’d been going on for that long.”
“Didn’t want to make it a thing.”
“Satoru—”
“It’s fine. It’s just—” He sets the menu down and looks out at the Strip, all that light below. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life performing for someone who sees me as a resource. I do enough of that already. I knew it was going to happen eventually and that they were going to stop asking and start insisting. So. Vegas.”
“Vegas,” you echo.
“You were the obvious answer,” he says matter-of-factly. “You already know what you’re getting into with me. You don’t have any illusions. You—you’re my best friend. There isn’t anyone I’d rather be stuck with.”
“Stuck with,” you repeat. “Incredibly romantic.”
“I said what I said.”
The waiter arrives and Satoru orders for the two of you. You look down at the ring on your finger and think about how it came from the little rotating display by the chapel door, five dollars American. It fits almost perfectly except for being on the wrong hand.
“Er. You fumbled the ring,” you say.
“I was nervous,” he says.
Gojo Satoru, nervous. Gojo Satoru, who treats most of human experience as something happening at a slight remove, who has never, to your knowledge, shown up to anything in his life uncertain of the outcome—nervous!
“Were you,” you say.
“Briefly,” Satoru says, with great dignity. “It passed.”
“Of course.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“Of course.”
The fountains in front of the Bellagio are in the middle of their routine, water arcing up in great pale columns against the dark. The light from them moves across the window in slow, repeating patterns. Satoru’s eyes catch the shifting light. You swallow hard.
“We’re not arguing about the divorce, by the way,” you tell him.
“We’ll see.”
“Satoru.”
“We’ll see,” he says again pleasantly. You’re going to say something else, something firm and unambiguous, but he’s already put his cutlery down and is walking out, and you’re already following.
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #2 – BREAKING AND ENTERING.
The supposed 24/7 active wedding chapel has a sign tacked onto the front door when you arrive later, which reads, Under maintenance. We apologise for the inconvenience!
“Fuck,” you groan.
“Language,” Satoru says. “Maintenance at midnight. Huh. That’s strange.”
“That’s what I’m focusing on right now, yes, thank you.”
You press your face briefly against the chapel door’s small window. The lights inside are off. Through the glass you can just make out the shape of the pews, the flowers zip-tied to their ends, and the little altar at the front where Francis had stood several hours ago and wept openly into his handkerchief. How are you supposed to get the photographs of your husband—you are using that word provisionally under extreme protest—looking at you like you’re the only fixed point in the room?
“He might live here,” Satoru says.
“Francis?”
“Some of these places have a back apartment for the officiant. We could knock.”
“We’re not knocking on a man’s door at midnight,” you say.
“It’s nearly one.”
“That makes it worse!” You step back from the door and look at the sign again. There’s a narrow alley running along the left side of the chapel, squeezed between the chapel building and the 24-hour tattoo parlour next door. You only notice it because Satoru’s already walking towards it. “What are you doing?”
“Recon,” Satoru says. “Just looking.”
He disappears around the corner. You stand on the pavement with your hands on your hips before deciding to follow him. The alley is cramped and smells stale. There’s a dumpster and a stack of plastic chairs leaning against the chapel wall. Satoru stands with his hands in his pockets, looking upward with his head tilted back.
“No,” you say.
“There’s a window.”
“I see that.”
“It’s open!”
It appears to be a casement window on the chapel’s ground floor, propped out at an angle, about eight feet off the ground and just wide enough for a person to fit through.
“That could be a bathroom window,” you say. “We’d be breaking and entering.”
“The window’s already open,” Satoru says. “Technically we’d just be entering. The photos Francis took are currently somewhere in that chapel developing in a back room, unattended.”
“If we get arrested,” you say, “I’m blaming you entirely.”
“Obviously.”
“I will give a statement to the police and it will contain your full name and a detailed account of everything that’s happened tonight, starting with the chapel and working backwards to Kyoto.”
“Sure. Boost or be boosted?” Satoru asks, turning to the chairs. “I’d say I’ll boost you, but I want it to be on record that I think you’d make a better lookout.”
“I’m not being a lookout.”
“You just said—”
“I’m coming with you.”
He pauses, glancing at you, his expression softening just a little bit. Warm and amused—gone before you can fix it in place.
“Obviously,” he says, smiling, and starts stacking chairs.
The window is, in fact, not a bathroom window. It opens into a small storage room at the back of the chapel, with folding tables against one wall, boxes of artificial flowers stacked against the other, and a mop in a bucket in the corner. Through a door on the far side, you can see the chapel proper. The dripping you can hear means the maintenance situation is a ceiling problem, probably towards the front.
“There’s a whole back operation,” Satoru says, impressed.
“We need to find the darkroom,” you whisper.
“Why are you whispering?”
“Because we’re trespassing.”
“Right, yes,” he says, lowering his voice. “The darkroom will need ventilation, so it’s probably towards the back.”
“How do you know anything about darkrooms?” you ask.
“I went through a photography phase in my second year of middle school. It was a whole thing.” He opens the storage room door and peers through into the chapel. “All clear.”
You follow him through. The chapel at night, empty and dim, is a different place entirely from what it was several hours ago. Smaller, somehow. Without Francis and the lights, it’s just a room with cheap flowers and worn carpet.
“Back room’s through here,” Satoru says softly; he’s already at the door behind the altar. You cross the chapel quickly, not looking at the pews or the aisle, not doing anything so foolish as standing in the dark and sentimentalising about a five-dollar ring and a laminated vow card.
The back room is small and smells sharply of chemicals—developer and fixer, mostly. There’s a red safelight along the wall that Francis has left running, bathing everything in a dim glow. A long workbench runs along one wall, and on it, clipped to a line strung above the bench, are your photographs.
Four of them, hanging in a row, damp and gleaming slightly under the monochromatic light. Even from across the room, you can make out the chapel and the altar. Neither of you says anything for a moment, until Satoru walks to the bench and stands in front of the photographs. You make your way and stand beside him.
The first one is mid-ceremony. You’re both facing Francis, and you can see Satoru in profile—head tilted, shoulders set. The second one is the ring exchange; you can see immediately why it’s blurry. You’d both been laughing, actually, you remember that now, because Satoru had fumbled the ring and said something under his breath, and you’d bitten down on a laugh and not entirely succeeded. Francis had captured exactly that, the two of you with your heads slightly bent towards each other.
In the third one, Francis had asked you to face each other for a photo, and while you’re looking at the camera, Satoru’s looking at you. You look—Francis had said surprised, and yes, there is that, but there’s also something else, something you would rather not name.
Satoru is looking at you the way he was looking at you in the chapel, the way he’s been looking at you in these odd unguarded moments all evening.
“We look like idiots,” Satoru says.
“Francis was right,” you say. “We both look surprised.”
“Were you?” he asks.
“Yes. Were you?”
“No,” he says, then adds quietly, “Maybe. About—about other things.”
In the fourth photograph, you are outside the chapel, looking at the ring on your hand, and Satoru is looking at you looking at the ring. Francis had captured the angle so cleanly that you can see Satoru’s full expression, soft in a way his face almost never is in front of other people, private. You realise you’re holding your breath.
“We should take them,” Satoru says.
“We can’t just take them,” you say. “They’re developing.”
“They look pretty developed to me.”
“Satoru, they’re damp—”
“They’ll dry.” He’s already carefully unclipping the first photograph from the line. “Francis has the negatives. He can print more.”
“You don’t know that Francis has the negatives, and besides, we’re stealing from him.”
“We’re borrowing from Francis.” Satoru holds the first photograph carefully by its edge and looks at it in the red light before setting it down on the workbench. “Hand me something to put these in. There should be a folder or an envelope on the bench somewhere.”
There’s a paper envelope at the end of the bench, brown and flat. You pick it up and hold it open. Satoru slides the photographs in one by one.
“We need to leave Francis a note,” you say, “and money. For the printing. For—everything.”
“How much do you think midnight darkroom theft runs these days?”
“What?”
“I’m asking genuinely.”
“A lot,” you say. “Leave a lot.”
You find a notepad on the workbench next to a jar of pens. Francis, you write. We’re sorry for the unauthorised visit. We needed the photos tonight, so please print yourself copies. Enclosed is payment for the developing, the breaking-in, the trouble, and your time. Thank you for everything. It was a beautiful ceremony.
You fold the note and put it on the workbench. Satoru takes his wallet out, removes a quantity of cash that makes your eyebrows go up, and weighs it down with the jar of pens.
You go back through the chapel and through the storage room and back out the window into the alley. Satoru drops down behind you and lands easily on the ground. The night air is warm, and the Strip is still brightly lit not thirty feet away. You hold the envelope against your chest. The photographs inside are still slightly damp.
“For the record,” you say, “this is also your fault.”
“The chapel was closed,” Satoru says reasonably. “I didn’t plan that part. Plus, we have the photos, so. Seems like it worked out.”
You look at him with his loosened tie and ruffled hair and think, He’s going to be completely insufferable about this for years. You are going to have to hear about the Vegas chapel break-in for the rest of your natural life and possibly longer.
“Come on,” you say. “You said the hotel’s three blocks away.”
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #3 – VANDALISM.
There is only one bed. It’s not, on its own, an unusual situation. You’ve shared sleeping arrangements with Satoru before—field missions and overnight calls that left two sorcerers and one room. You’d use a pillow wall, most of the time.
The difference is that you are currently married to him.
“You booked a room with one bed?” you ask.
“They may have assumed, given that I made the reservation under a recently married couple’s names, that we would want,” Satoru says, gesturing at the bed, “the one bed.”
The bed in question is enormous, dressed in white linen and piled with decorative pillows. There’s a bowl of strawberries on the bedside table. The whole room smells faintly of roses.
“Did you request the honeymoon setup?” you say.
“The woman on the phone seemed very enthusiastic about it.”
“That’s not an answer!” You look around the room, hands on your hips. “Well, there’s a couch. You can use that.”
It’s one of those small, decorative couches present in hotel rooms to fill a corner, hold throw pillows, and look tasteful in photographs, but not to sleep on.
“I’m not going to sleep on it, but noted,” Satoru says, striding towards the minibar, shrugging his jacket off and draping it over the back of the chair by the window. “Whiskey or gin?”
“Whiskey,” you say. “We can put a pillow wall down the middle.”
“We’re married,” he says, crossing the room with two small bottles. He sits down on the other side of the bed. “It seems a bit prudish.”
You take the whiskey from him and twist the cap off. Satoru has his own bottle balanced between both hands, still unopened, and he’s looking out the window at the city below. You’ve spent enough years watching him, but it doesn’t seem to change anything; the flutter in your heart remains the same, as does the contentment you feel in your chest.
“I want to see them again,” you announce.
Satoru looks at you. “The photos?”
You reach for the envelope on the nightstand and slide the pictures out carefully, holding them by the edges. They’re drying, stiffening slightly. You hold them in your lap and he leans in slightly.
“You should’ve warned me,” you say quietly.
“About which part?”
“All of it.” You tap the third photograph’s edge, gently. “This.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “If I’d warned you, you’d have said no.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you,” he says, not unkindly. “You’d have thought about it too long and decided it was too complicated, and then you’d have spent months being strange about it, and then we’d have gone back to normal, and—” He stops, turning the bottle in his hands. “…I didn’t want to go back to normal.”
“It’s still a bad idea,” you mumble.
“Probably,” he agrees. His hand shifts on the duvet between you, the tip of his little finger coming to rest against the back of yours. “Hasn’t stopped being true, though. Whatever it is. You know what I mean.”
You do. That’s the problem: you’ve always known what he means, even when he’s being deliberately oblique about it. You’ve known him too long and too well for any of it to not make sense anymore. Which means, you understand now, that you’ve also known you’re in love with him for longer than you thought.
You look at the fourth photograph—Satoru, standing outside the chapel, watching you look at the ring on your hand.
“You could’ve just said something,” you tell him. “At any point. Like a normal person.”
“I took you to Las Vegas and married you,” he says. “That’s me saying something directly.”
His hand turns over and covers yours, warm and assuaging, and whatever reservations you’d been carefully maintaining for years simply crumble.
You close the remaining distance. Satoru’s free hand comes up to your face before you’ve fully moved, which means he was thinking about it too—has been thinking about it, probably, for longer than tonight, longer than Vegas—and he’s kissing you.
He kisses you decisively. There’s a certainty to it that shouldn’t surprise you—this is Satoru, who does nothing halfway—but it does, a little. But what surprises you more is how easy it is. How it doesn’t feel like a change in anything so much as a long-overdue acknowledgement of something that’s been there all along.
When you pull back, his forehead drops to yours. His sunglasses are still pushed up on his head, and you reach up and take them off without asking. He lets you.
“Hi,” Satoru says.
“You’re still wearing your sunglasses indoors at midnight,” you chide.
“I said hi.”
“Hi,” you say.
He smiles; it reaches his eyes. “So,” he starts.
“Do not say ‘I told you so.’”
“I wasn’t going to. Probably.”
“Insufferable,” you say, and kiss him again, which is both a rebuke and a surrender but mostly just because you want to. He makes a sound against your mouth that might be a laugh, and his arms come around you properly this time.
The decorative pillows go first. There are seven of them, and they go in ones and twos without either of you paying much attention—one knocked off when his arm comes around you properly, two more when you shift closer, the rest sliding off the edge in a soft succession of thuds. One of the small whiskey bottles, empty now, rolls off the mattress and lands on the carpet. You don’t notice any of it; you’re somewhat preoccupied by Satoru taking your face in his hands and tilting it and kissing you until you forget what you were arguing about.
You suspect that he’s thought about this for a long time, the same way you have.
“You’re thinking,” Satoru says against your mouth.
“I’m not.”
“You are. I can tell. You get this little—” He pulls back just enough to look at you, and traces something between your brows with one finger. “Here.”
You stare at him. “I hate that you know that.”
“No, you don’t,” he says. He’s right, and you hate that too, so you tell him so by pulling him back down by the front of his shirt.
He lets you tug at him willingly—more than willingly, with an enthusiasm that sends you back against the pillows and makes you laugh, briefly, before his mouth finds your jaw, your throat, your collarbone, and the laugh turns into a gasp. His hands are at your waist, warm through the fabric.
His tie joins the pillows on the floor; you get the knot loose while he’s working on the matter of your buttons. His shirt is untucked and you run your hands on his waist, his ribs, the warm plane of his stomach. Satoru groans against the side of your neck, and you shiver. He tosses your shirt aside, too, and his eyes darken when his gaze lands on your chest. He takes his time with your nipples, rolling them around with his thumbs, before taking one of them in his mouth.
He moves lower, pressing kisses to the underside of your breasts, moving down to your navel. When he reaches the waistband of your jeans, he looks up, pupils blown wide and asks, “May I?”
“Yes, yes, please.” You nod frantically, helping him pull your jeans and panties off when he unbuttons it. You’re already wet and needy.
“You’re so beautiful,” Satoru says, gazing up at you before littering kisses on your inner thighs, so close to where you want him.
“Satoru, please,” you say. “I need you.”
He blows on your wet core, making you shiver. “Need me to what?”
“I need you to, hah, just—”
Satoru latches onto your clit, sucking and swirling his tongue around the bud. You moan, your hands flying to his hair and gripping the silver-white strands. He alternates between quick flicks and long, broad strokes, keeping your folds spread apart with two fingers while his other hand traces patterns along the underside of your thigh.
“Fuck, fuck—” You curse when his tongue moves in a circle right around your clenching hole. Satoru doesn’t stop. If anything, the sound of your voice breaking, the way you curse his name, only spurs him on. He knows exactly what he’s doing to you. He’s always known how to push your buttons. But this is different; this isn’t a playful tease during a mission.
He dives back in, his tongue flattening out to lap at you with broad, wet strokes that cover everything from your clit down to your opening. You arch your back, your hips lifting off the mattress instinctively, trying to press yourself harder against his mouth.
“Satoru… please, I’m—”
“You’re what?” he mumbles against your skin. He doesn’t wait for an answer, sliding two fingers deep inside you. You let out a strangled cry, your toes curling. His fingers are thick and warm, and he curls them, hooking them upward to find that sensitive spot that makes your vision blur. His thumb remains locked into your clit, rubbing circles on the engorged bud.
The sensation is overwhelming. It’s too much and yet not nearly enough. You can feel the tension building in your lower belly, a tight, simmering coil that winds tighter and tighter with every second.
“Right there,” you moan, your fingers knotting into his hair. “Right there, Satoru, don’t stop, please don’t stop.”
Your breath comes out in short, jagged gasps, your chest heaving. Just as you are about to orgasm, Satoru stops. He doesn’t just slow down; he pulls his fingers out of you with a sudden, wet pop and removes his mouth from your heat entirely. You freeze, your eyes snapping open. “Satoru, what the hell—”
He’s hovering over you, braced on his elbows, his hair messy and falling over his forehead. A slow, smug smile spreads across his lips, though his breathing is just as heavy as yours.
“Not yet,” he whispers.
“I hate you,” you groan, your hips twitching involuntarily, searching for the friction he just stole from you. “I actually hate you so much.”
“Liars don’t get to come,” Satoru teases, though his hand reaches down to gently stroke the skin of your inner thigh.
He shifts, moving upward to kiss you. He tastes like you, and you moan into his mouth, before he pulls away just an inch, his gaze dropping to your drenched core. “I want to feel you,” he murmurs. “I want to feel how tight you are around me.”
Satoru slides backward, just enough to strip off his trousers and underwear in one hurried motion. His cock springs out, thick and flushed. Your mouth waters simply looking at it, while he pumps it once, twice, thumb circling the tip. He doesn’t lie back down. Instead, he sits up, leaning his back against the headboard of the enormous bed, his legs spread wide. He reaches out, grabbing your waist with those large, strong hands and pulling you forward until you are hovering over him.
“Ride me?” he asks.
The need for friction, for fullness, for him overrides any lingering frustration. You shift your weight, guiding his cock to your entrance. As you slowly lower yourself down, the feeling of his cock filling you, stretching you open, sends a fresh wave of pleasure through you. You let out a long, shuddering moan as you sink down completely, inch by inch, your pelvis flushing against his. Satoru lets out a choked sound, his head hitting the headboard with a thud, his eyes screwing shut.
“Fuck,” he moans. “You’re—you’re so tight. I can’t—”
“Shut up,” you whisper, though there’s no heat in it.
You begin to move, a slow, grinding rotation of your hips. You watch his face—the way his jaw clenches and his nostrils flare, the way he looks at you with warmth and wonder. You quicken your movements, bouncing on his cock. Satoru’s hands move from your waist to your hips, fingers digging into your skin, helping you ride him. He thrusts upwards, tilting his hips and dragging his cock against your walls.
“Look at me,” he groans. You look down, your eyes locking onto his. “I love you,” he says.
You feel the coil in your belly snap. Your orgasm washes over you as you clench around his cock, milking him. Satoru moans, his back arching off the bed as he thrusts upwards one last time. “I’m going to come,” he says. “Let me—”
You slide off his cock and he comes, his release spurting onto his stomach, a little bit on your thighs. You collapse against his chest. He wraps his arms around you tightly, pulling you into the crook of his neck.
For a long time, neither of you speaks. Eventually, Satoru shifts slightly, kissing the top of your head.
“So,” he whispers. “Shower?”
You lift your head slightly, looking at him with tired, happy eyes. “Already?” you say with faux innocence. “I thought you’d want to fuck me on that stupid couch first.”
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #4 – EMBEZZLEMENT.
Hopefully Satoru didn’t mind you swiping his credit card from his wallet while he was fast asleep, one arm thrown over his face while the other was stretched out beside him. You’d wriggled out of his grasp carefully, pressing a gentle, barely-there kiss to the tip of his nose, before digging through his jacket’s pockets for his wallet and pulling out his black card.
It’s for a good purpose, you console yourself, hurrying through the streets of Las Vegas with a jewellery shop’s location pulled up on your phone.
Las Vegas in the early morning is a different city entirely from the one that had swallowed you whole last night. It’s not quiet, exactly—it’s never quiet, you suspect—but it’s quieter, the frenetic energy of the Strip mellowed into something slower. The crowds have thinned, at least.
You walk with your hands in your pockets, Satoru’s black card tucked safely between two fingers. The morning air is warm and dry, and the sky above the glow of the Strip is beginning to lighten from black to the deep bruised blue that comes just before dawn.
The jewellery shop is three blocks from the hotel, according to your phone. It’s a small, well-lit place that stays open through the night, catering to those Las Vegas visitors who find themselves in need of jewellery at unusual hours, which you now understand is a larger demographic than you’d previously considered.
You walk and think about the rings. The ones currently on your fingers are not adequate. They’re soft metal, the gold already slightly scuffed from one night of existence, and they’ll tarnish in a week. You’d noticed this morning, while Satoru was still asleep: the way your rings sat a little loose, the way it had already lost some of its shine. It’s more of a placeholder than anything else.
The thought of replacing them had arrived while you’d lain in Satoru’s arms, listening to him breathe and looking at the ring.
You aren’t scared, though you’d expected to be. You’d expected to wake up this morning with the full weight of what’s happened landing on you like a dropped beam, and to spend the subsequent hours dealing with the considerable wreckage of your own panic. It seemed like a reasonable response to having been married to your best friend in Las Vegas by a crying man named Francis and then having the matter become rather more settled than a marriage certificate alone would suggest.
But when you’d woken up with Satoru’s arm around you and the photographs on the nightstand, what you’d felt was something almost irritatingly simple: you’d felt like yourself.
The jewellery shop is small and bright, jewellery arranged in lit display cases along the walls, a pudgy man behind the counter. He looks up when you come in, takes in the look of you—your clothes from last night, slightly slept-in, your hair not fully combed—and nods pleasantly.
“Morning,” he says. “What are you looking for?”
“Wedding rings,” you say. “Two of them, please. Something that’ll last for a long time.”
He nods again. “Do you know the other person’s size?”
You think about Satoru’s hands—the ring sliding onto his finger in the chapel, his hand covering yours on the duvet last night, the warmth of his arm around this morning. “I can estimate,” you say.
He shows you to a case along the left wall. The rings inside are simple, for the most part—plain bands in gold and silver and white gold, some with small details, most without. You find two plain bands in white gold, clean-lined and unornamented, substantial enough to last.
“These,” you tell the man behind the counter.
He nods. You produce Satoru’s black card and spend a figure that makes you wince slightly but not reconsider, because the point isn’t the cost and you’re sure Satoru will agree with you about this when he wakes up and finds both you and his credit card gone. You leave the ship with the rings in a small white box and stand on the pavement outside for a moment in the warming air.
You pull your phone out and type in the search bar, Chapel of Eternal Love, and punch in the number attached.
“Hello, Chapel of Eternal Love, Francis speaking—”
“Francis,” you say, smiling. “I have a favour to ask.”
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #5 – MARRIAGE.
Francis, it turns out, is delighted. He’d gone quiet for a moment when you explained what you were asking, and then said, Give me an hour, and hung up before you could confirm the details.
You make your way back to the hotel with your ring box in your pocket and the morning brightening steadily around you. The casino lobbies you pass are still going—slot machines, a scattering of determined gamblers, staff moving between stations—but the Strip itself is relatively peaceful, the night’s crowd entirely dissolved and the day’s not yet arrived. You have the pavement to yourself. It’s a strange and pleasant feeling, Las Vegas in the interstitial hour.
Satoru is awake when you get back, sitting up in bed with his hair in complete disarray and the duvet bunched around his waist. When you open the door he looks at you blankly.
“Morning,” you say.
“My credit card,” he says.
“Is fine.” You cross the room and hold it out. He takes it without looking at it, still watching you. “I needed it for a purchase.”
“What kind of purchase requires you to leave the hotel room at—” he glances at the clock on the nightstand—“six forty-seven in the morning?”
“The important kind.” You sit down on the edge of the bed and take the white box out of your pocket, setting it on the duvet between you.
Satoru picks the box up and opens it, and doesn’t say anything at all, which is the loudest thing Gojo Satoru can do. “You stole my credit card,” he says finally, “to buy us wedding rings.”
“I borrowed it,” you say. “To replace the ones we got from a spinning display rack for five dollars each.”
“I liked those rings.”
“They were tarnishing,” you say. “There’s more, by the way.”
You tell him about Francis. He looks surprised at first, and then warm, so utterly warm when he tugs you closer to him and kisses you again, and again, and once more for good measure. Satoru closes the ring box and holds it in both hands, the way he’d held the whiskey bottle last night before he’d covered your hand with his.
“I thought you wanted a divorce last night, and now you’ve stolen my credit card and called Francis.”
“Yep.”
He looks at you for a long moment. The morning light filters through the curtains and he looks extraordinarily, unfairly beautiful, even just woken up.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.” Satoru sets the ring box on the nightstand, next to the photographs. “Okay.”
Francis has decorated the chapel when you arrive. You’re not entirely sure when he found the time—it’s been barely two hours since your phone call—but the maintenance issue has apparently been resolved, because the lights are on when you arrive. The door is unlocked; when you step inside you find that Francis has replaced the zip-tied artificial flowers on the pews with fresh ones, white and small. There are candles lit along the windowsills. The worn carpet, in the warm light, looks less worn somehow, or perhaps you’re simply disposed to see it differently today.
Francis himself is standing at the altar in a clean shirt, his red hair combed and his camera in his hands. “You came back,” he says.
“We came back,” you confirm.
Francis looks at the two of you—Satoru in a fresh shirt with his tie done up neatly again, you in the best thing you could assemble from your bag on short notice—and grins. “The rings, did you—”
You produce the white box.
“Right,” Francis says. “Right, yes. Let’s—shall we?”
Here is what you think about, standing at the altar of the Chapel of Eternal Love for the second time in less than twenty-four hours:
You think about the first time, yesterday, and how you’d stood here in something close to a dissociative state, your brain running through the situation at high speed. You think about the parking lot behind the Denny’s and the small fire in the trash can. You’d meant it when you said you wanted a divorce, though you realise now that you were frightened of what being married to your best friend entailed.
Satoru had let you burn it, too. He hadn’t argued because he’d known you’d come around. Not from arrogance, but because he knew you, the same way you knew him, all the way down to the things you didn’t say aloud.
You think about the darkroom, the four photographs drying on the line in the red light. Climbing back out through the chapel window into the warm Las Vegas night and holding the envelope against your chest, the photographs still damp inside it. You think about the rings in the spinning display by the door—you can still see them from where you’re standing, the little rack with the remaining rings. They were the beginning, it turns out.
You turn to look back at Satoru. He’s smiling at you.
Francis clears his throat gently. “Shall we begin?”
The vows are the same ones from the laminated card. Francis offers alternatives—he has a small binder with options—but Satoru shrugs, so you use the same ones. When Francis gets to the rings you open the white box yourself. You take Satoru’s ring out and hold it; he holds out his right hand out of habit before catching himself and switching to his left, and you both laugh helplessly. Francis gulps and pulls out his handkerchief. You put the ring on the correct hand this time.
Satoru takes yours from the box and looks up at you—there’s that expression, the one from the photographs, the one you have a name for now. He slides the ring onto the correct finger and holds your hand for a moment after.
Francis is fully crying now. He dabs at his eyes without embarrassment and beams at the two of you over his handkerchief with radiant approval.
“I’ve never had anyone come back,” he tells you. “In twelve years, you’re the first.”
“We forgot something the first time,” you say.
Francis tucks his handkerchief away and straightens up. Smiling, he announces, “You may now kiss,” and so you do.
a/n: the real mvp of this fic is francis who was also unironically my favourite person to write. thanks for reading!
⊹₊˚‧ ୨ asking mha boys stupid questions PART 2 ୧ ‧˚₊⊹
⟢ various x partner!reader, smau!
⟢ fluff/crack
⟢ masterlist
⟢ read part 1 here!
⟢ a/n: omg thank u guys sm for the love on the first one??? im glad u enjoyed it that was actually wild 😭😭 also pls feel free to request other characters you'd want to see!!
an: heh lwk disappeared again but chat ive been visiting a friend for the past 3 weeks and ive been so stressed and literally could not think of what to write but im locking in for you guys 🧘♀️
notes: f! reader, bkdk, use of senpai, mommy and kitten as a joke, more friend like banter
dailybridgerton
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
romaincrisis
janainaart
snowghoul
baratheonpilled
