Sashisu Week @sashisu-week - Tumblr Blog

May 3

my love, mine all mine - 4k Words

Shoko spends a lot of sleepless nights staring at the moon. Her, the moon, a lighter, and a bad decision. It's quiet. Shoko likes the quiet. You wouldn't think this with how much she hangs around Satoru, but she does. Suguru joins her, sometimes. _______ on shoko, satoru, suguru and love day seven of @sashisu-week

Ao3 Link

Moon, a hole of light

Through the big top tent up high

Here before and after me

Shinin' down on me

————————

Shoko spends a lot of sleepless nights staring at the moon.

Her, the moon, a lighter, and a bad decision.

It's quiet. Shoko likes the quiet. You wouldn't think this with how much she hangs around Satoru, but she does. (Satoru incessant chatter is different from other noises though. It's a steady background hum, an anchor. She's grown used to it, so much so that the world feels off balance when something finally, finally shuts him up.

When Satoru stops talking, she's learned that's when you start to worry.)

The quiet’s been her friend since she was young. It sheltered her in quiet stairwells and in a house where the air was unwelcoming. It gave her much needed reprieve.

Her, the moon, a cigarette, and the quiet. If she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine she's at her father's house again.

Almost.

Suguru joins her, sometimes. They never speak, only wordlessly pass a cigarette or two between them. She finds her way to the roof and he follows, both of them leaning against the railing that wasn't there at the start of the year. Yaga's figured they come up here, she thinks. Doesn't want them to fall.

She wonders why he doesn't just tell them to stop.

Probably because it would never work.

Suguru lights his cigarettes with her own, their faces inches apart. Shoko stopped offering him a lighter, because he never took it. She thinks he does this to see if he can get a reaction out of her.

He hasn't gotten one yet, and he isn't going to. She's not easy to fluster.

So it becomes a game they play. They chainsmoke together on the roof. Shoko offers him a cigarette, Suguru lights it on her own, she doesn't react, repeat cycle.

Repeat cycle, until either the sun comes up or they run out of cigarettes. They stumble back to the dorms close to dawn, on these nights, only catching scant hours of sleep before classes begin. And Yaga will complain about two thirds of his class falling asleep during lessons, but he will not ban access to the roof. He will not tell them to stop. Instead, he will build a railing for them to lean on and for Shoko to put out her smokes.

In the morning Satoru, the early riser of their trio, will make them coffee. And Shoko, who perpetually runs on four hours of sleep no matter the day, will slump against him and allow Suguru to press her favorite mug into her hands.

(She likes using Satoru as a pillow, he's warm. Boney, yes, but in a comfortable way. But don't tell him that. It'll only serve to make his head even bigger.

She likes using Suguru as one, too, since he's just as comfortable. But in the mornings he's busy either using her or Satoru as one, his face nuzzled into one of their shoulders. Satoru works perfectly fine in his stead.)

She dozes as she listens to her classmates' low conversations, taking slow sips of her drink. Eventually their underclassmen will file in. Haibara and Nanami's voice will join the fray, the latter joining her in tiredly sipping coffee before class and the former making sure all five of them eat something.

It gets a little loud, with four voices (five, sometimes, if she wants to chime in) overlapping each other. Someone's always doing something; talking, moving, Satoru and Haibara poking and prodding at Suguru and Nanami respectively. Shoko watches through half closed eyes, sipping her coffee with a smile.

Mornings aren't quiet like her nights are, but that's fine. Shoko's grown to like the noise, too.

————————

Moon, tell me if I could

Send up my heart to you?

So when I die, which I must do

Could it shine down here with you?

————————

Suguru's dying.

He doesn't really want to die, not yet, not now, but he knows it can't be helped. His arm had been blown clean off and there's a hole in his side. Blood drips on the ground after him in a thick trail, all the way from the site of his final battle to the alleyway he finally collapses in. Every movement, every breath is pain. This is something even Reversed Cursed Technique couldn't fix.

Not that they would spare any RCT for him.

Suguru doesn't want to die, not yet, not now, with his life incomplete. But he supposes he doesn't have a choice. Especially now. Because,

Satoru's here.

He was always going to be.

Suguru doesn't want to die, but it's been a long time coming. It was written in the stars long before they even knew of each other. He thinks he maybe even deserves it. To die.

“You're late again as usual, Satoru.”

Satoru's here, he knows because he can feel his presence. He'd be able to, with or without cursed energy, with or without a decade apart. Once he felt it during their first meeting there was no way he could ever forget it. The taste of it was burned into his memory, as familiar as his own energy was.

Suguru doesn't look at him because he doesn't think he can. Moving hurts. He thinks, if Satoru doesn't get it over with soon, he's going to pass out before he gets to say his last words.

Satoru gets on with it, and

They talk. It's about everything and nothing. The past and the present all at once. The mall, the elementary school, the curses Suguru sent after his students, why Satoru sent two children to fight him. He doesn't think any of it really matters, not anymore. Yet, they talk.

It's the first proper conversation they've had in ten years.

There's a lot of things he should be saying that he isn't. They talk about the last few months instead. He doesn't know why.

It's kinda funny that they still know each other so well. That Satoru still trusts his principles. (To think, he missed Satoru so much it was an all consuming ache. And now that they're here…

Maybe his ideals were childish. Maybe he will die a coward after all.)

“I don't think I could wear a heartfelt smile in this world.” He says one thing he needs to say, and thinks it may be a lie. If Shoko and Satoru had been there, well….

Maybe.

But that chance passed a while ago.

Lots of things passed a while ago. The aforementioned chance. Suguru's youth. The idea that maybe, just maybe, he won't die young. The idea of Satoru killing him being stupid because they were the strongest. All of that's gone now.

Especially the last one. Right now, the notion sounds almost funny.

Their final conversation ends. Suguru knows its time.

Satoru crouches a few feet away from him, hands clasped between his knees. There's a look on his face, one Suguru wishes he could understand. He used to be able to, a long time ago. That season of their lives has passed, just like everything else.

“Suguru…”

He leans his head back against the alley wall and laughs, his cheeks dusted pink. “At least curse me a little, at the end.”

————————

'Cause my love is mine, all mine

My love mine, mine, mine

Nothing in the world belongs to me

But my love, mine, all mine, all mine

————————

“Can you do this for me?” Shoko asks, throwing her math homework on his desk. The way she says it makes it more of a demand than anything.

“If you pay me.” He asks, not even looking at the paper. Satoru is currently engrossed in Suguru's English homework, which he's doing because Suguru sucks at it and offered to pay. (He's not sure what the problem is, verbs are like, easy. He's half convinced Suguru's just faking how bad he is so he doesn't have to do it.

And Satoru doing his homework is fair, anyways. Suguru does his science homework, because he already knows all that shit and filling the worksheets out is so boring.)

“You're rich.” She says, scooting the paper closer towards him. This is true. He is rich. Very very rich. But, he's not some hapless, bullied nerd his classmates can shove their homework onto. This nepo baby knows how to bargain.

Satoru looks up at her with a scowl. “I bought you three weeks worth of cigarettes.” He didn't think Shoko would be this needy when he met her. Or lazy. Wait, no, he kinda did think she'd be lazy, but not this much.

“Asshole.” She huffs. There's no heat behind her words. Because Satoru bought her three weeks worth of cigarettes not even a full forty eight hours ago. She cannot be mad at him for at least the next week.

(Suguru had scowled and said he's promoting a bad habit. But Suguru also smokes so he's a big fat hypocrite.Plus, if Shoko doesn't smell like cigarette smoke and ash, is it really even her?)

“I'm your asshole.” He grins, fixing Suguru's subject-verb agreement.Shoko rudely wrinkles her nose at him, like he's not the man who bought her three precious weeks of tobacco. “Suguru can have you.”

“I don't want him.” Suguru calls from across the classroom, not looking up from Satoru's DS. The one he'd so rudely taken out of his hands three days ago and hasn't yet given it back yet. Apparently he wants to play through one of Satoru's various Pokémon games. (Even though the Digimon ones were obviously better.)

“Hey!” He says, whipping around. Suguru keeps playing his game, unbothered by the pout now directed at him.

Shoko taps a nail against his desk, impatient. “So, my homework?”

Satoru turns back to her with a huff. “You still need to pay me.”

“You don't need money.” She points out again. She's right, he doesn't need her money. But once again, he's a nepo baby who knows how to negotiate.

“You can pay me with something other than money, ya know.” He leans forward against the desk with a purr, making sure his sunglasses slip suavely down his face. “Suguru did~”

She raises an eyebrow. “With what? A blowjob?”

“Shoko!” Suguru yells, scandalized, like Satoru didn't make the same joke when he offered his alternative method of payment.

“I mean, if you-”

Suddenly Suguru is next to them, slapping a hand over Satoru's mouth. Shoko cackles. “Don't finish that sentence.”

“I'm not doing that, by the way.” Shoko adds.

“I didn't suck him off!” Suguru snaps.

Their classmate still does not look like she believes them. (Damn, do they really act that gay?)

“Well if you didn't suck his dick how else did you pay him?” She glances between them, expectant. He looks to Suguru, also expectant.

The lady has asked for a demonstration. It'd be rude not to give her one.

Suguru leans down, taking Satoru's lips in his. He smiles into it, expecting the kiss to be like it was last time. Gentle, sweet, and slow. It is not like this.

Suguru kisses him messy, all teeth and tongue. Satoru ends up whining into his mouth, Suguru's hands fisting at the nape of his neck. It's a hot, needy thing, this kiss is. Satoru thinks he gets a little lost in it.

Suguru didn't kiss him that hard the first time, he was definitely just showing off to Shoko. Not that he's complaining. But like woah, warn a guy first.

“Like that.” Suguru pulls away with a purr. He leaves Satoru panting and happily disoriented. “Think you can deliver?”

He recovers quickly, glancing back to the girl in front of his desk. “You don't have to if you don't want to-”

Shoko smashes their lips together before he can finish, her hands reaching out to grab his face. Satoru makes a surprised noise but kisses her back, eager.

Her lips are softer than Suguru's, less chapped. He can taste her cherry lipgloss and the peppermint gum she'd been chewing this morning. She runs her thumbs over his cheeks, a little noise escaping from the back of her throat. Satoru thinks he's going to melt right then and there.

She climbs into his lap without breaking the kiss, trusting that he'll catch her if she stumbles. Satoru's hands fumble for purchase on her waist, doing exactly that. He feels her familiar weight settling over him and whines this kiss, too,

(Somewhere behind them, Suguru wolf whistles.)

She pulls away slowly, teeth dragging along his lower lip. Satoru pants into her mouth, his eyes half lidded. She giggles when he tries to chase her lips for more.

Shoko slides his glasses back up his nose before moving away, a satisfied grin stretching across her face. “So, will you do my homework now?”

Her fingers trace the edge of his jaw. He fights back an involuntary shiver at the tease.

“Yeah.” He giggles. God he sounds so stupid like that. But Shoko's the one who made him sound lovestruck and dumb so he doesn't even care.

She pats his cheek. “Good boy.”

Both of her classmates blush at that, Satoru staring up at her dumbly and Suguru spluttering. Shoko simply hops off the former's lap with a snicker, very, very satisfied.

Before she sits down, a hand catches her wrist.

“Don't I get one?” Suguru asks, blinking imploringly.

She looks up at him, unimpressed. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.” He says, tugging at her wrist again. If Shoko knew Suguru was gonna feel all left out, she probably wouldn't have kissed Satoru at all.

“Fine.” She sighs. The stupid boy in front of her practically beams.

Suguru bends down because he's a real gentleman. Satoru would've made her stand on her tip toes. “Hey pretty girl.”

“Shut up.” She huffs, bumping their noses together.

Suguru licks into her mouth with a quiet laugh, kisses her slow and languid. She smiles against his lips, fights him a little when he tries to take control of the kiss. Nips at him and tugs at his hair when he gets a bit too cocky. She's not like Satoru; she won't be going pliant in any pretty boys' hold.

(Satoru watches them with vague fascination. It's kinda hot, watching them kiss. He thinks he'd like to be sandwiched between that.)

They break apart, Suguru placing one last peck to her cheek before he leans away. He couldn't help himself, really, not when it came to her. Shoko just laughs.

“Are you gonna call him a good boy too?” Satoru asks, impishly, and grins when he sees Suguru blush bright pink.

“He's not doing anything for me.” Shoko says, retreating to the back of the classroom; where Suguru had been sitting previously. Satoru supposes that fair enough, and turns back to now two homework papers he needs to get done by tomorrow morning. Man, they really do love springing their work on him last minute.

(Shoko will later swear that Suguru pouts when she refuses to call him a good boy. Suguru will deny this fervently. Neither of his classmates will believe him.)

Shoko snatches the DS where Suguru left it on the table, the sounds of Pokémon Emerald greeting her when she flicks it open. A gym battle theme is playing, which means he's probably-

“You're fighting Flannery with a Luvdisc?” She exclaims, staring at the screen in front of her. The game is paused in the middle of the third gym fight, Flannery's Slugma as the opponent. And Suguru's Pokémon is, and she cannot stress this enough, a fucking Luvdisc.

Satoru's head whips around, math homework temporarily forgotten. “He's what.”

“It's a water type isn't it? Water beats fire.” Suguru scoots a desk against hers before settling in it so he can watch her play. He rests his chin on her shoulder, bangs falling slightly in front of his face. Shoko doesn't know whether to brush them aside or shove him off her for fighting Flannery with a Luvdisc.

“It's the worst water type in gen three.” She scoffs, quickly opening the team menu. The rest of his team is not any better. It's an actual miracle that he got to her Slugma before being overheated to oblivion. Behind her, Satoru nods vigorously in agreement.

“I didn't know you were into Pokémon, Sho.” Suguru says, nuzzling his nose into the crook of her neck (stupid clingy cat.)

Whatever snarky comment she had ready dies in her throat. She doesn't have a response to that.

Shit. Dammit. Her and her big mouth.

Satoru lights up like a lightbulb. “Aww, you do listen to my nerd rambles!” He looks like he's gonna come over here and squish her. Gross. She's had enough of him for one day. She can still taste the mochi he had for breakfast on her tongue. (It's mixed with the taste of Suguru's organic oolong tea, also had in the morning. It's not a great combination.)

“Shut up and do our homework.” She snaps, feeling the tips of her ears warm. Satoru turns back around in his seat with a laugh, focusing on their papers again. And, hey, if he gets it done fast and gets every question right, she might reward him again.

“What are you gonna do, fix my team?” Suguru asks, turning her attention back to him. He's still curled around her, eyes trained on her face. He's comfortable. Shoko doesn't want him to move away.

“First I'm gonna get you through Flannery, but yeah.” She flicks through the Pokémon on his team again, looking for something to switch the damn Luvdisc with. The results have not gotten any more promising. “You can pay me for it later.”

Suguru smiles lazily into her neck. “Deal.”

————————

My baby here on Earth

Showed me what my heart was worth

So when it comes to be my turn

Could you shine it down here for her?

————————

Knowing you're going to die is a lot of things.

It's terrifying. It's a relief to know that finally, finally, everything will be over. Will death be a black void of nothing forever? Or will he go somewhere? Satoru doesn't want to go to a void. He wants to see his friends again. He wants to stay. He doesn't want to die. The idea that he most likely will doesn't bother him, but that doesn't mean he wants it either. It doesn't mean he craves and aches for it. He likes living. He's so excited for the pain to finally stop.

Everyone else knows he's probably going to die, too, even if they don't believe it. Sometimes, he catches his students looking at him sadly. Like he's a dead man walking, a corpse that has yet to learn it's just that. A corpse.

It's a lot, but Satoru takes it all in stride. Because he's the strongest.

Well, he takes most of it in stride.

Shoko acts like she's fine with it all, and it's honestly pissing him off a little. She has no objections to anything they suggest. Not the battle plan, not what will become of his body, nothing. It's irritating. He thought she'd have something to say, at the very least. Some sort of backhanded comment that lets him know how she really feels. Yet, strangely, she says nothing.

He keeps her close throughout the process despite it. He makes sure she's at every meeting regardless. She asks why she needs to be there. He tells her something along the lines of “they can't leave their only doctor out of the loop.” She asks again when he makes her power of attorney and executor of his will. This is a dumb question. He's not letting the Clan do whatever with his will and Shoko's his oldest friend. Who else was going to do it? Ijichi? Kusakabe? Mei Mei? Yeah, he didn't think so.

Shoko, for some reason, is determined to not be involved. She wants to act like they're just co-workers and not what they are to each other. And he knows her, knows it's a defensive mechanism, but Satoru's not having any of it.

He transfers legal guardianship of Megumi and Tsumiki to her two weeks before the fight.

“They might not even-” is the first thing she says when he tells her. Satoru doesn't let her finish. Might not want that? Not survive? It doesn't matter, either way, because someone has to take care of them when he's gone and, after October, he's running short on options.

Not like it wouldn't be her, anyways.

“They will. And they'll need someone.” They will want Shoko to have guardianship over them, he knows that much. He doesn't know if they'll survive, or if they're both already in the ground. Only time and a battle for the ages will tell him that.

“You might not even-” He might not even die, he knows this. But he could die just as easily as he could survive.

“It's just a precaution.” He says. The Strongest isn't a fan of precautions, he usually never takes them. But desperate times call for desperate measures and he's feeling pretty desperate right now, so.

“I don't like it.” Shoko crosses her arms over her chest. She's holding a cigarette between her teeth. Satoru never sees her without one, these days.

(Someone's gotta wean her off those again when he goes. He makes a mental note to mention it to Ijichi. She wouldn't listen to anyone else.

She'll probably also guess that he's the one that put Ijichi up to it, but that's fine. Satoru will be dead. He won't have to worry about it.)

“I know, but I'm not sorry.”

“When are you ever?” She grumbles, her heels clicking against the floor as she leaves. Satoru watches her go with a shake of his head. She's never gonna get it, is she? For someone so smart, she really can be equally as dense. (But that's fine, Satoru will take her; stupid moments and all. He always would and always will.)

He gives her his notes for Megumi and Nobara the next day. It's the one thing she doesn't feel the need to grumble about.

Like everything else, it's just a precaution.

It takes her two more weeks to finally pop the question.

“Why do you keep insisting I be involved?” She says, finding him in the dojo the morning he's due to fight Sukuna. Satoru, who'd been beating up his favorite punching bag for the last time, stops mid training session.

Sheesh, talk about last minute.

“Because you should've been involved with Suguru, and you weren't, and I'm sorry.” He says. It's probably the most honest one of them has been with each other in years.

He hears the click of her lighter instead of a response.

Satoru gives the bag one last punch, then calls it quits. He would love to give her a show by beating the punching bag to shreds, he really would, but he kinda can't. There's this ancient evil curse he's due to fight in like, an hour. Gotta go get ready and all that. But before he does.

“Shoko?” He pauses at the sliding door, his head turned toward her. The bags under her eyes are the darkest they've even been. Satoru doesn't think she's ever looked more beautiful.

“Yeah?” She says, putting her cigarette out on the wall. Like some kind of heathen.Man, he's really gonna miss her when he dies.

“Cursing me before you go, huh?” She smiles, a melancholy thing. She can't bring herself to meet his gaze.

That's fine, he has enough eyes for the both of them. Six, in fact.

He smiles back. “Not on purpose.”

“I'll see you in a bit, yeah?” He pushes the sliding door open, his eyes never leaving her face. Unlike last time, his best friend won't look at him.

(He doesn't know which is better, seeing their eyes or not. So he's fine with getting both. Maybe he'll find out in hell.)

“Yeah, in a bit.” She says, and doesn't follow him out. (The last thing Satoru hears of her is the click of her lighter as he disappears down the hall.)

————————

'Cause my love is mine, all mine

My love mine, mine, mine

Nothing in the world belongs to me

But my love, mine, all mine

————————

Suguru wakes up and is very, very warm.

It's the middle of summer, yet his two classmates are stuck to him like burrs, still sleeping peacefully.

Satoru's face is smushed into his chest, his perfect hair tousled. An arm is thrown around Suguru's waist, keeping them pressed together. He can feel Satoru's knee pressing into his thigh. It should be wildly uncomfortable.

It isn't.On the other side Shoko clings to his back like a koala. Her fingers dig into his shirt, like even in sleep she never wants to let go. Her knees press into his back, leaving her in the same kind of not-uncomfortable position that Satoru's in.

She snores. Rather loudly too. If it were anyone else, Suguru would find it terribly distracting.Hearing her snore again is comforting. He hasn't heard it in……in…

Well, he knows when the last time he heard it was.

He doesn't remember the last time they slept together like this.

It used to be damn near every night, until things started to change. They'd find their ways into each other's rooms, one way or another, and would curl up in the same bed; limbs so tangled together Suguru often lost track of where one of them began and the other two ended. And in the morning they'd detangle themselves slowly, Shoko complaining about why she had to move if they were so comfortable. And Satoru would laugh and make them all stay an extra five minutes because he could never say no to her (and Suguru can't, either.)

It happened so much Yaga eventually gave up on scolding Shoko from sneaking into the boys side of the dormitory and vice versa. It happened so much that they started keeping spare toothbrushes in their rooms, that Suguru has a drawer in his dresser full of clothes they'd left on his floor. So much so that he started to forget what it was like to sleep alone.And then things changed.

Suguru doesn't get much sleep these days. He stays up late with an upset stomach and an exhausted mind. And when sleep does eventually claim him it's restless. The kind of sleep that leaves you waking up at odd hours of the morning and stumbling out of bed worse than you felt the night before. It's been this way for a while now.

(And he knows exactly when it started and why, but according to his clock it's one thirty AM. He's not in the mood to rename it and not in the mood to relive it in his nightmares.)

Growing used to a sudden lack of bodies in his bed certainly hadn't helped.

He doesn't remember how, but tonight the bodies are back. They're pressed into him, not comfortable despite the odd position. Like they all remember how to be together but don't at the same time. Satoru's knee is probably gonna bruise his thigh and Shoko's are pressing into his back. Suguru doesn't know what to do with it.

But it's one thirty AM and he's tried. His mind and belly are finally quiet. His eyelids feel heavy. Suguru knows when his body is telling him to rest.

He falls back asleep with his face buried in Satoru's hair and Shoko's breaths falling across his neck. He's far too warm in the summer heat, but that's fine. He doesn't want to move them. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to keep your classmates asleep.

For months he hasn't been sleeping well.

Tonight he sleeps like a baby.

————————

Nothing in the world is mine for free

But my love, mine, all mine, all mine

#day 7 #fanfiction

sashisu-week

May 3

do0zy-artz

no grave can hold my body down (i'll crawl home to her) - 23k Words

‘Hime tells her not to do it, when Shoko voices the intrusive thought. She tells her it's not possible. It's a crazy idea, there's too much at stake, it's not worth it. At the time, Shoko concedes that she's probably right, and drops it. There's a lot going on right now, what with the ongoing battle against Sukuna. She has a job to do, people to save, a plan to follow. She can't risk it all on a hypothesis. The idea stays stuck in the back of her mind though, like a burr. Her talent for Reverse Cursed Technique is unprecedented, as they've let her know. Why wouldn't she try and figure out how to bring the dead back to life? Utahime tells her not to once more. She says it in her teacher voice, the one she uses when her students do something particularly stupid. The one that says this is the last time I'll tell you. This is final. Shoko does it anyway because she's selfish. ______ on shoko, an intrusive thought, and dead best friends note: this fic is rated Explicit. day six of @sashisu-week

Ao3 link

‘Hime tells her not to do it, when Shoko voices the intrusive thought. She tells her it's not possible. It's a crazy idea, there's too much at stake, it's not worth it.

At the time, Shoko concedes that she's probably right, and drops it. There's a lot going on right now, what with the ongoing battle against Sukuna. She has a job to do, people to save, a plan to follow. She can't risk it all on a hypothesis.

The idea stays stuck in the back of her mind though, like a burr. She smokes a few cigarettes about it, adding them to the pile surrounding her desk when she's finished. She's smoked a lot since the fight started. A few more wouldn't hurt.

Eventually, said battle ends. Some people die, some don't. Shoko can't save everybody and she doesn't want to, either. Sacrifices need to be made to kill the King of Curses. That's how the world works. That's how Jujutsu works. All in all, they keep more people than she initially expected.

At least all of the students make it through the fight. There's that. There's always that.

The battle ends, the chaos calms into a new normalcy. The idea makes its way to the front of her mind again.

She turns the hypothesis over a few times, writes a few notes down on stray pieces of paper, next to everyday reminders and notes for her sudden influx of recovering patients. Eliminates a few things that wouldn't be possible, even if she tried really hard to make them possible.

She brainstorms, and brainstorms and brainstorms. Eventually, it's all she's thinking about.

Shoko thinks she's a little obsessed, but she doesn't think anyone can blame her.

Her talent for Reverse Cursed Technique is unprecedented, as they've let her know. Why wouldn't she try and figure out how to bring the dead back to life?

She doesn't say who she's thinking of bringing back when she mentions it to Utahime the second time, but her friend gets the implication. There's no one else Shoko would bring back.

Well, no one else who hasn't been cremated, anyways. She kinda needs a body for this to work.

Utahime, again, tells her no. She tells her to drop it. It's most likely not possible, and they're so few on people already. They don't need Shoko potentially hurting herself for what is, essentially, a pipe dream.

Part of Shoko agrees. The other part of her is, childishly, upset at being told no. On one hand, Utahime has a point. She has people to take care of. Kugisaki just came out of a coma, Megumi just got his body back, Inumaki still needs physical therapy after his amputation, so on and so forth. She needs to save her energy for them, and for when the school returns to semi-normal operations. The higher ups are gone, but curses aren't. She'll be back to tending mission wounds sooner rather than later.

Plus, sorcerers have tried necromancy before. It doesn't go well. Jujutsu is about exchanges. It isn't hard to imagine what the exchange for restoring life would be.

On the other hand, she's always underestimated Shoko in a lot of regards. She underestimates her capacity to be cruel. Utahime cannot fathom why she got along so well with Satoru and Suguru, when in reality it's because Shoko's mean and selfish tendencies are just as big as theirs were. She underestimates Shoko's technique, despite being healed by it a handful of times. That one is not Utahime specific though, everyone underestimates her RCT. It's either due to lack of knowledge on the subject or something similar, not that Shoko cares for the reason.

In terms of pure technique development, she kept up with her classmates perfectly, until she had to focus more on medical school than cursed energy. If Satoru, who's actually worse at RCT than her, practically speaking, can save himself from the brink of death and remake his brain multiple times a day, why can't she reanimate a corpse?

She's a prodigy, a once in a lifetime. She's been told her technique would get her hailed as an auspicious sign in all of the big three Clans. She should at least be allowed to try.

She voices it a third time. Utahime tells her not to once more. She says it in her teacher voice, the one she uses when her students do something particularly stupid. The one that says this is the last time I'll tell you. This is final.

Shoko does it anyway because she's selfish. She doesn't think she can live with herself if she doesn't.

Besides, somebody has a promise he's not fucking keeping right now.

Satoru told her he'd stay when they were seventeen. That'd he'd stay and he'd never, ever leave her. Not like Suguru had. She's not letting him break that promise. Not yet.

She holds onto his body after the battle. Every other available corpse is slowly prepared, dissected, then sent to the campus' crematorium. It's a miracle nobody thinks to ask.

Six days later she pulls it out and gets to work.

————————

For a brief period after Suguru, they were what most people would call “happy.”

It only lasts a few years, but they're precious years in her memories. She finds herself thinking back to them often, now that he's gone.

At the time, Shoko would've rather died than tell anyone this, but her favorite nights were the ones she spends with Satoru.

Sometimes these encounters are sexual in nature, sometimes they're not. It just depends on how both of them feel after work that day. Regardless, she treasures them.

He'll follow her home after work, ignoring the duties that usually keep him up late into the night. It's exciting, knowing he's shrinking work just for her. Shoko thinks she could get high off the feeling.

Sometimes they go for dinner, sometimes they skip it and just raid whatever she happens to have in her fridge, though. Usually it's dinner. Satoru eats more than she thinks she's ever seen anyone eat. It's disgusting as it is endearing.

The real fun starts when they reach her apartment.

They're not dating, no. Just friends who refuse to label the feeling between them. Doing so would be far too personal, in a way they haven't been in years

.He finds himself in her bed regardless.

Tonight is one of the nights where things grow heated. Satoru had been giving her a look all throughout dinner, and she knew what it meant. Meant he wanted a second, more personal course later.

Shoko had dragged him into her bed as soon as the front door was locked, more than happy to oblige.

Satoru presses featherlight kisses against her skin from where he lays half on top of her, making her giggle. She's ticklish there and he knows it.

He sucks a hickey into her neck, next, taking his time with her. Shoko lets out a hum, pleased, and bares more of her neck to him. He knows exactly how she likes it.

She twists his fingers into his hair when he bites down next, and Satoru groans. He bites at her harder in response. She knows exactly how he likes it, too.

The kisses travel downwards, into her collarbone and against her shoulder blades. She lazily guides Satoru's hands to the buttons at the top of her blouse, grinning when he gets the hint and starts undoing them.

Her shirt is barely off before his mouth is on her chest, eager.

“Fascinated with those, huh?” She teases, gasps as he rolls one nipple between his front teeth.

“How can I not be?” He purrs. His face is practically buried between them. “You got a nice rack. And a nice ass.” Satoru adds that last part with a lazy grin, one hand snaking around her backside to give said ass a squeeze.

“Pervert.” She laughs, arching her back slightly and pushing her tits into his face. She needed his mouth on her yesterday.

“Just for you.” He hums, taking one in her mouth fully. A hand finds her other tit and starts to massage it. Shoko tips her head back with a pleased sound, heat coiling in her gut.

(He was a pervert for Suguru, too, but that ship has long sailed.

The three of them, soft touches under a blanket that eventually turned more heated. Suguru kissing her breathless, his hands running over her chest, while Satoru rested his head between her thighs. Shoko sinking to her knees and doing the same for one of them, afterwards. The way they'd cuddle when they were done, Shoko often being the one pressed snuggly between their chests as they slept the afternoons away.

She misses those days, more than she could ever say

……what's done is done. There's no use for pointless dwelling. Especially not when one of those boys is happily putting his lips all over her.)

One of her hands fists in his hair as he sucks, tugging. This, delightfully, only makes him suck even harder.

She squeezes her thighs together, hyper-aware of the wetness starting to pool between them.

Satoru's hand, the one that's not fondling her boob, runs down her side and slips under her waistband. A tease.

She tugs him off her, dragging his head back up to kiss him again. She rolls her hips against his erection, and he groans into her mouth, needy.

They don't really waste much time after that.

Shoko unbuttons his uniform jacket and the undershirt beneath it, pulling it off him. Satoru drags what remains of her clothes off, kicking off his own pants and boxers when he's done. His cock springs out, already hard and leaking. Shoko feels herself clench at the sight of it.

She drags him back on top of her, legs already moving to wrap around his waist. Satoru gives her chest one last squeeze before pulling back. He lines himself up carefully, pressing in with a slow drag. He keens at the feeling, then starts fucking her in earnest.

They take it slow, Satoru kissing her as he begins to thrust in and out. Shoko sighs into it, the familiar stretch of his cock making her clench.

He's always so good with her. She can see why that, as of late, their nights together turn sexual more than they don't.

“..Fuck, Sho.” He hisses into her shoulder, his pace starting to quicken. There's a dazed look in his eyes, his breathing heavy. She clenches around him again. She wants more, needs it like she needs air. She loves it when he gets like that.

Her arms wrap around him, her hands scrambling for purchase on his back. The wet slap of skin on skin feels the room as he presses himself deeper, faster. She groans, her back arching off the bed as pleasure jumps up her spine.

Something coils in her gut, then releases, and her legs shake from where they hold onto him, useless.

Shoko comes, her moans muffled into his shoulder. Satoru doesn't last much longer.

He pulls out, his release spilling over her sheets. She hisses at the sudden empty feeling in her core. She wouldn't have minded if he stayed put a little longer, softening inside her. He knows she likes it when he does.

But it was also nice to watch him come undone next to her, so she supposes this isn't too bad. It's really hot when he comes without even having to jerk himself.

He collapses on top of her with a huff, his face smushed into the pillow by her head. The rest of his body, all eighty something kilograms of it, pins her to the bed.

“Get off.” She mumbles, nudging his arm.

“But you're comfortable.” Satoru whines, trying and failing to squish her even closer.

“And you're heavy.” She nudges him again with a little more force. He laughs, and rolls onto his side.

He reaches out almost immediately to pull her closer to him. Shoko grimaces and tries to squirm away.

“You're sweaty and gross.” She complains.

“Five minutes? Please?” He fixes her with the biggest puppy dog eyes he can manage, which is honestly pathetic. He is twenty six years old.

She says, relenting. They both knew she wasn't going to kick him out. She never does. “Fine. Five minutes.”

Satoru grins, and nuzzles into her hair.

“Stay the night?” She asks, her fingers idly tapping along his bicep.

“Of course.” He presses a kiss into her temple, smiling when she tucks herself into his chest. He may be sweaty and gross, but he's also warm.

For now, at least, the ‘I'll always stay’ goes unsaid. For now, he keeps his promise.

————————

Unsurprisingly, reviving a person takes a lot out of her.

It takes her maybe six and a half days to do it, but she gets there.

Only one of those days was spent actually working with the body, trying to flow life back into its limbs. The other five and a half were spent purely figuring out how to even do the damn ritual at all.

All the past rituals for Jujutsu Necromancy had ended in failure, with both the necromancer dying and the body they wanted to use turning into a curse, so she's had to start basically from scratch.

She doesn't find much material on the subject, either. To even attempt such a thing you had to be a Reverse Cursed Technique user like her, and those only happen once every few generations. Honestly, it's a miracle they even have three, soon to be four, people who can do some variation of it right now.

But Shoko's resourceful. She works with what she has, and molds her own energy onto it until it does what she wants.She takes parts of the rituals that did work, smashing them together into a Frankenstein spell. It's a mess of an incantation, smashing together symbols that usually don't go together in Jujutsu. She doesn't think anyone else would be able to read it but her.

It feels like inventing black magic, because she basically is, thrilling and taboo in its own way. Shoko knows that if she's not careful, she's going to get addicted.

(Utahime is going to kill her when she finds out.)

It takes her five hours of on and off attempts to revive Satoru.

She's laid him out in the center of the floor, a circle of talismans around him. They're down in the morgue with the door locked for ultimate privacy. She doesn't want anyone walking in on this.

For a long while, nothing happens. She loses track of how much of her energy she flows into him, desperately watching for any sign of life. It goes on so long she's worried she's hitting the bottom of the reserves, that she's about to run out and will have to try a different day.

She gives it one more go, her jaw set. And for some reason, this time works.

She flows her technique into the circle again, her eyes trained on the body before her. A minute passes, then two, then three. Nothing happens. It seems like this attempt will be a failure, too.

Then, through her energy, she feels his heart start to beat again.

His chest rises, then falls. She watches for it again, just to make sure. It could be a fluke, similar to how a defibrillator won't always get every patient's heart working right, no matter how many times you shock them.

Then,

Satoru jolts upwards, panicked and alive.

Shoko stops what she's doing, gasping as the rest of her energy rushes back into her. Her whole body is shaky as she stumbles over to him, but Shoko doesn't care.

She just figured out frigging necromancy.

It worked, he's alive.

Shoko hugs him, her arms shaking. From the revival or the emotions coursing through her she isn't sure.

He doesn't hug her back, but that's fine, she's not expecting him too. He's a little disoriented right now. He doesn't have to hug her back. He's alive again, that's all that matters.

She hides her face in his chest, listening to the steady, familiar beat of his heart. God, she thought she'd never hear that sound again.

He's so unnaturally still under her. The heartbeat might be the only thing suggesting that he's here.

“I thought I was dead.” Is the first thing Satoru says after being reborn, his voice hoarse from disuse.

Shoko sits back on her knees, releasing him from the hug. “Not anymore.”

His eyes seem to finally clear as he stares at her, horrified. “What did you do?”

“I brought you back.” She says simply, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

“Did the plan fail?” Panic flashes in his gaze, wide and blue. And damn, she'd never thought she'd say this, but she fucking missed his stupid pretty Six Eyes.

She shakes her head. “No, Sukuna's dead.”

“Then why?” He gasps, his breathing starting to come in gasps. She thinks he's in shock. “‘Cause you missed me or something?”

“...Yes.” She says.She'd missed him, so she brought him back. Was she not supposed too?

Satoru doesn't say anything for a long moment.

“Shit.” He says, and then he's gone.

Oh.

He teleported somewhere else. Away from the morgue. Away from her.

Shoko stares at the spot where he'd sat, at the circle of talismans she'd made, and doesn't move for a very long time.

————————

They don't talk for a few days after the revival. She brings him to her apartment and, wordlessly, Satoru recuperates on her couch. Shoko gives everyone else strict orders to stay away, as much as they've missed him. He just came back from death. He needs space.

She can't be sure of his emotional state, either. Shoko doesn't want him snapping at a well-intentioned Itadori or a grieving Megumi. The battle is over and Satoru's back, but the world is still fragile. They're all trying to heal. It's the last thing all of them need right now.

Shoko's tired, from everything and from the resurrection, she can admit that much. She doesn't need it right now, either.

So, for a few days they don't talk.And when they do talk, what happens can't really be considered talking. Shoko doesn't remember who starts it or why it starts, just that it starts.

She thinks, and this is just an educated guess, that the revival got brought up again. Either by her or Satoru, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that he isn't very happy about it, for reasons Shoko can't understand because she literally gave him a second chance at life.

She's a little peeved at him for that, but she's also missed him. And she knows him well enough to know that he's missed her, too, even if he acts like he doesn't.

That last part is the important part. It's how they get from one heated discussion to where they are now. One strange, ugly mix of anger and longing.

Satoru's on top of her, her hands pinned to the ground beside his head. His grip of her isn't very strong, she could slip out if she wanted to. She doesn't remember how they got on the floor, but she's pretty sure she started it. The pinning her down thing is a little out of character, but Satoru's everything, his head space, his strength, has been off since he came back.It's not like she's bothered by it. It's what he says that's the real problem.

“Fuck you.” He hisses, and means it. “Fuck you, Ieiri. You should've let me stay dead.” The use of her family name stings. He hasn't called her anything but Shoko since they were fifteen years old.

“I couldn't.” She tells him, more honest than she thinks she's ever been.

Satoru stares down at her, his anger unyielding. “Why?"

“I couldn't.” She repeats. It's the only thing she can say.

“He was there, he was there.” Suguru. He saw Suguru when he died. “He was there and he wasn't crazy. I had him again.”

“I needed you here.” Her hands move to his wrists, gripping them as tight as she dares. She needed him here so badly it was going to kill her.

“You never needed me before.” He spits, angry. He's so mad, the anger practically rolling off his skin. And Shoko doesn't understand why.

She brought him back, she gave him a second chance at life. Most anyone would be grateful for this, and here he is pinning her to the floor over it.

She busted her ass trying to bring him back, and he's mad about it?

She never needed him before. What a fucking joke.

“Yes I did.” She digs her nails into the flesh of his arm, taking advantage of Infinity's absence. She wants to make him hurt. She wants to make him bleed.

Does he think his revival was a pet project? A sick experiment to see if she could? If she didn't need him he wouldn't fucking be here.

“Fuck off.” She growls, trying and failing to knee him in the thigh. And then Satoru's leaning down and his lips are on hers and Shoko thinks she stops breathing for a second.

She kisses him back once her brain catches up, brought back to the present by teeth nipping at her lower lip. She nips him back, where she can, biting harder. He's so fucking stupid. He's such an asshole. Shoko wants to make him bleed.

Somewhere, between the kissing and the fighting, they end up in her bed. Satoru's on top of her still, but that's fine. Shoko knows how to deal with him in bed better than she knows how to deal with him in a fight.

The kisses move downwards but remain just as hungry. He makes out with her and he makes out with her hard.

His teeth sink her neck, two inches from her jugular. He tears and chews on her skin, the opposite of gentle, of how he was before. Good. Great, even. Shoko wants him to. She wants him to finish what he started when he pinned her to the floor.

He moves back up and bites at her lips again until he draws blood. His fingers dig bruises into her waist. Shoko scratches at the meat of his shoulder blades, bites his mouth back and kicks him in the knees. She gives as good as she gets.

Gojo starts to nip at her neck once more, bored with her mouth and tired of muffling the whines he wants to hear. Shoko's the one twists her fingers into his hair and drags his lips to her chest, encouraging him until he's almost eagerly sucking the beginnings of a hickey into her skin.

She can feel his erection against her thigh and she can feel the heat in her own gut, too. She wants it, needs it; they both do.

She's the one who grinds their hips together and pants into his ear, the way she knows he likes it. Any restraint he has crumbles at that, and his hands are on her.

His fingers roam under her shirt, over her abdomen and upwards. The touch is familiar and foreign all at once. He finds her bra clasp and fumbles with it, impatient. Shoko starts tugging the waistband of his sweatpants down his hips, feeling the same haste he does.

Before she knows it, all their clothes are lying haphazardly on her floor and he's on top of her again, naked and an almost crazed look in his eye. His cock rests on her stomach, hard and aching.

It's almost ridiculous, the haze of need filling her senses. She doesn't think she's ever wanted anything more than she wants him at this moment.

“You want it? Think you can take it?” He says into her ear, almost growling.

“Shut up and fuck me already.” She hisses back, digging her nails into his arm.

Satoru leans back and lines himself up with her entrance, his breathing heavy. He looks to her before he enters, a question in his gaze.

“Don't do it inside.” Is all she tells him before he presses the tip in. She doesn't remember when she last took her birth control, nor does she have any condoms. Shoko doesn't think either of them want to stop and get some, either. Gojo simply grunts in acknowledgement, giving her hip a squeeze. She thinks that, normally, the gesture would be reassuring. But they're far from their usual right now, so it's simply just a squeeze.

(They still know what the other means perfectly, even when they're pissed at each other.)

He pushes the head in, slow but impatient. Shoko shudders under him. She's taken him plenty of times before, but Gojo is big and they didn't stretch her out properly. It burns as he inches himself in, but not unpleasantly.

She yelps when he bottoms out, their hips flushed together. He only stills inside her for a moment before starting to move again, slowly pulling out halfway before pressing in again. She can tell he wants to do more by the way his fingers did into her thigh, restless as he holds her body steady for him.

Shoko, desperate to do something with the frustration simmering under her skin, bucks into him once, then twice. Satoru gasps, and doesn't go slow for much longer after that.

It's not long before his pace becomes almost punishing, the wet slapping sounds of skin on skin ringing out across the bedroom. Satoru moans above her with almost every movement, losing himself in the rhythm.

She cries out as he slams into her, his pace unforgiving and relentless. Shoko digs her nails into his shoulder, leaving scratch marks as she clings for purchase. This, somehow, only seems to make him fuck her harder.

Shoko keeps moving her hips to meet him in the middle, getting him as deep as he'll go. It's somehow too much yet not enough all at once.

His free hand reaches down, his fingers slipping between her folds. She keens at the added sensation, bucking even harder.

He rubs a few circles over her clit, and Shoko crumbles. She cries out as her orgasm washes over her, stars dancing across her vision.

He fucks her through it, the rhythm of his thrusts growing more and more erratic. He mutters mindless praise into her shoulder and pins her hips to the bed, keeping her still so he can finish out.

Gojo, pissed as he is, isn't a complete asshole. He pulls out just like she asked, giving his dick a few strokes with his hand before spilling all over her stomach. The groan that leaves him is pulled straight from his throat. Shoko wants to make him sound like that again.

She takes his lips in hers one last time before they separate and kisses him until they're bitten red. She runs her fingers through the peace fuzz of his undercut like she used too, when they were soft. A last attempt to reach him, to get him to stay.

He doesn't.

Gojo stands from the bed and slips out of her room without a word. Presumably, he's returning to his designated spot on the couch. Shoko, her inner thighs coated in her own fluids, watches his retreating back. Something ugly curls in her gut, a low and angry feeling. She pushes it down.

A few more minutes pass and Shoko allows herself to catch her breath. There's a pleasant ache in her lower back and her thighs are sore. Despite this, she still feels unsatisfied.

She stands on shaky legs, anyways, and heads towards the bathroom. She has a shift tomorrow morning. She needs to clean herself up and get some sleep.

(Satoru, in his haste to leave, left half his clothes on the floor. She doesn't pick them up. He can dress his own damn self.)

She doesn't see him much, for the next week or so, and when she does it's only in glimpses. She stops seeing much at all, really, like he's hiding from her in her own apartment.

They don't speak again, not until six months after Suguru comes home.

————————

Suguru's reaction to revival is not anywhere near as violent as Gojo's was.

Good. Shoko doesn't think she could take it if both of them were mad at her.

She has to wait almost a whole month to revive him. Partly because Gojo's own reanimation tanked her RCT reserves, partly because he was a wanted criminal. She's glad she had the foresight to embalm him.

Embalming him does make this more complicated, though, because now she has to get blood back into his body somehow. But it's fine. She'll figure it out.And figure it out she does.

(She didn't have to embalm Satoru, she just stuck him in a freezer and used RCT on his corpse twice a day until she had the ritual figured out. Suguru's corpse had to be repaired and hid in the crematorium until everyone forgot he was supposed to have a corpse at all.)

Sure, it takes several night shifts and several wasted bags of blood (she's not excited about replacing those,) but she gets it.

Once that's done she sets up the circle just as she did the last time, places the corpse in the middle, and gets to work.

Reviving a person takes more out of her than it did the first time. She thinks she almost passes out midway through.

(Utahime is so, totally going to kill her.)

The good thing is that it only takes her three hours of on again off again attempts to get his heart beating again, a significant improvement from last time.

She wonders how long it would take for her to revive a third person. She also wonders what the cost for that would be. Probably something hefty.

Good thing she's out of dead friends and isn't too interested in finding out.

One moment, Suguru lays lifelessly in the circle of talismans, his eyes glazed over and staring at nothing.

The next his corpse is sitting up with a gasp and a jolt, scattering the ritual circle around him. Shoko releases her technique with a strangled sound, her stomach clenching with pain.

She half stumbles-half crawls over to where he sits, scattering even more of the talismans as she goes. She doesn't care. She doesn't need them anymore.

Suguru looks up as she approaches, recognition in his gaze. But there's doubt there too, and panic.

But that's fine. He just came back and they haven't seen each other in a while. She wasn't expecting this to be easy.

“Shoko…?” He asks, tentative.Satoru looked a little wild when he came back. Suguru just looks at her with awe.

“It's me.” She says, not daring to touch him this time. At least not yet. She has a working theory that the hug is what made Gojo teleport away last time.

His eyes, the same golden she remembers, take her in carefully. Like he's studying something precious. “You look….different.”

She can't help but snort at that. “You haven't seen me in ten years, dummy.”

Suguru presses their foreheads together with a weak laugh. Shoko closes her eyes, and basks in the next few minutes with him, listening to the sound of his breaths.

They're steady, so is his heartbeat.

He's alive, they both are. She did it.

“I thought I was dead.” He rumbles, opening his eyes. (Golden, like the morning sun.)

Her hands come up to hold his face, now that she knows it's okay to touch. “You were. But I fixed it.”

She hasn't held him in so long, she thinks she'd forgotten what it was like.

Suguru gapes at her. “You….figured out necromancy?”

Shoko hums an affirmative, unable to stop the swell of pride in her chest. She had figured out necromancy, just for the two of them. She'd brought them back.

Suguru only laughs again, nuzzling into her hands. The sound of it makes her heart ache.

Shoko missed him, more than words could ever say.

She reaches up and traces the scar along his forehead, the other still cradling his face. Like he's something precious. (Because to her, he is.)

Gojo has a matching one etched into his own skin, one she hasn't been allowed to feel. She was involved in making that scar. She's not sure she wants to feel it.

Shoko, lump in her throat, pulls him into a hug. Suguru buries his face in her shoulder and hugs her back.

He doesn't run away. He stays. This is the important part.

————————

Suguru waits a little longer to take her to bed than Gojo does. That said, they still get there pretty fast.

As soon as Shoko clears him of bedrest, he can't keep his hands off her. He's always touching her, casually or otherwise. Pressing himself into her space on the couch, a hand on her shoulder, leaning in His hands squeezing at her hips, teasing and a little needy all at once.

Shoko eats up the attention like a starved dog. She's missed him.

She leans into his touch, like a moth to a flame. She wiggles her hips whenever he squeezes them and, when he folds himself over her, makes sure her ass is pressed against his groin. It's almost like a game they play, each of them wanting to see who breaks first.

The game ends when Suguru, clearly too hard to think straight, pins her hands to the kitchen counter while he helps prepare dinner for the three of them. Shoko grinds against him, expecting him to do nothing but playfully growl in her ear.

Suguru surprises her by grinding back. Shoko surprises him, and herself, by groaning about it.

(Okay. Apparently she was more horny than she thought she was.)

She likes to think they tied, in the end.

It's all over, after that.

Suguru's hands move from her hands to her waist, pinning her between him and the counter. Shoko twists around the best she can to kiss him, groaning against his lips.

She's impressed it took more than three days, really. It only took Gojo seven, and that was without the fondling.

They kiss all the way back to her bedroom, never separating once. Suguru drops her onto the bed and Shoko lets him, pulling him down with her by his shirt collar. He presses his lips to her neck and she bares it to him, long familiar with how he likes to do these things.

It's far from their first time together, of course. She can't count the number of times they'd find a secluded spot on campus and go at it back in high school. But that was high-school. She hasn't fucked him in a decade, give or take.

(She's just now realizing how badly she's missed his dick.)

Back then they took it slow. They'd tease each other before, the foreplay lasting just as long as the actual sex did.

Today, they're moving fast.

Neither of them are normally like this in bed, but.

They haven't seen each other for eleven years. Shoko didn't even get to see him, the real him, before he died. Suguru didn't know she grew out her hair and switched out cigarettes for alcohol. She thinks they deserve this much.

Every touch of skin is messy, full of desperation. He kisses like he's trying to devour her, consume her like she's one of his curses. Shoko kisses back like she needs him to breathe, to live.

(And hell, it feels like she does.)

Suguru slips one hand down her shorts, the other reaches up to grab her tit. Shoko arches into both of them, her hand joining the one near her waist and practically shoving the stupid things off her. Suguru excitedly follows her lead.

She lifts herself off the mattress, allowing him to slide the rest of her pajamas and underwear off. His own clothes follow after, his boxers unceremoniously kicked to the floor in a heap.

(She bites her lip, admiring his length. It looks a lot bigger, then she remembers it being, but maybe her memories have just gotten foggy with time. Regardless, she's excited to have it inside her again.)

And then he's on her, pressing her to the mattress with need. She draws him into yet another kiss as he lines himself up, her fingers tangled in his hair to keep him in place.

They both groan when he slips inside her, her walls stretching to accommodate him. He's as big as she remembers, but the only cock Shoko's been taking is Gojo's. Suguru's is, for lack of a better term, wider than he is. The stretch almost burns.

He bottoms out in just a few thrusts, and pleasure jolts across her entire body. Then he starts moving, and Shoko's more than happy to get lost in it.

She babbles uselessly into the crook of his neck, whining and groaning every time he moves his hips against hers. She was never this talkative in bed until recently, Suguru used to have to work to get her begging. But fuck, Shoko can't help it. It all just felt so good.

Suguru mumbles praises into her ear. He tells her that she's doing good, that she's perfect. He tells her that he's missed her. He moans when she clenches around him, something about being close and not having a condom because they fell into this without preparation. He tells her that he loves her.

Shoko, in her haze, can't muster the words I'm on the pill, but she can keep him in her until he finishes and tell him later. She can come when he tells her to, her hands twisting in his hair as her release crashes over her. This is the only thing about their dynamic that hasn't changed; Suguru naturally took the lead in bed and Shoko was more than happy to let him.

He fucks her through both their orgasms, mumbling praises. Shoko barely hears them through the haze. All she knows, all she can feel, is him.

It's almost a disappointment when the daze ends, and he starts to slowly detangle them from one another.

What's not disappointing is the fact that he stays.

He pulls out and doesn't leave immediately. She doesn't have to kiss him to get him to stay an extra minute. He stays anyway.

He tells her he loves her again. Not in words, but with a gentle kiss pressed to her cheek. He tells her when he asks how she feels because they didn't prepare and he went kind of rough. He tells her he loves her (this is the most important part.)

Shoko, emotional and still a little fucked stupid, doesn't know what to say.Instead, she rests her head against him and focuses on breathing, in being there in her own way.

She doesn't say I love you outloud, because Shoko's never been able to do that. Not to her mother, not to her father, not to any of her friends and certainly not to these two. But she tells him in other ways.

She tries to tell him it now, pressing tired kisses into his shoulder as they bask in the aftermath.She brought him back to life. She hopes that says I love you well enough.

(And if not, well, letting him rail her senseless will have to do.)

Gojo's reaction is starting to make her think that it doesn't, and that ‘Hime was right all along.

(‘Hime is usually right about most things, much to her and Satoru's chagrin and Nanami's pleasure. He was so happy to have another sane person in the room, when he was still around.

Yaga would've been glad for that, too, if not for the fact that Utahime was haughty about it and young enough to be one of his students. It annoyed him, instead; but in a more fatherly way than any of his actual students' antics did. Haibara had always just laughed.

Half of these people are dead and one should be, nowadays. Shoko sees no point in dwelling.)

But Suguru isn't like Gojo, he's like her. He doesn't need verbal validation for every little feeling. He always understood the things Shoko couldn't quite voice. They were always kindred spirits in that way.

He rolls off her with a grin, and before she knows it Shoko's being helped into the bathroom. He runs her a bath, sets her in the tub and helps wipe away the grime of the past several months.

Feeling unusually clingy, she drags him in with her. He laughs softly, and joins her in the water.

Suguru presses a kiss to her forehead, mutters that he's so glad she brought him home. He's missed her.

Maybe revival means I love you after all.

————————

The three of them move into a nicer apartment, one Gojo bought her as a tone-deaf gift for her twenty-sixth birthday.

Until now, she had no use for it. She'd had her old apartment since she was nineteen and didn't plan on moving at the time. (She liked her old place, and the only reason she was moving now was because she ran out of couches to make people sleep on.)

The property sat in her name, unlived in for three, almost four, whole years. She hadn't even gone to look at the place. Gojo had been pretty pissed about that, as she recalled. It took him until his own birthday a month later to start talking to her normally again.

He doesn't even look at her when she tells them, or when they pack up their minimal belongings, or when they leave. He doesn't really look at her at all, anymore.

Suguru glances between both of them, concern evident, but doesn't say anything.

Moving, like everything the three of them do now, is done in a tense silence.

The new place is a spacious two bedroom and two bath apartment. It's only a few thousand and a few rooms away from being a penthouse, Shoko thinks. They even have a little balcony.

Foolishly, part of her thinks that maybe they can all share a bedroom. The master bedroom is big enough for them to move a king bed in there. It could be like high-school again, when they'd all crawl into the same bed most nights and wake up a pile of tangled limbs.

Realistically, her and Gojo aren't on good enough terms for it. He moves his stuff into Suguru's room before she even has a chance to ask. And she knew that they weren't quiet there yet, but it stings regardless.

He won't even look at her. She's finally using his stupid fucking birthday gift and he won't even look at her.

They've moved, and he still refuses to be in the same damn room as her. The worst part is that he drags Suguru with him.

The boys share one room and the hallway bathroom. Shoko gets the master bedroom and its adjoining closet and bath all to herself. There's too much space for just her. She doesn't have enough makeup products to fill the counter and doesn't have a big enough wardrobe to take up more than half the closet. The queen bed that came with the place is cold and empty, holding only her and the pillows.

It's incredibly lonely.

Suguru and Gojo share everything. A room, a bath, and conversations. Shoko is left down the hallway, alone.

Even in her own home she's sidelined.

(It feels like she's always sidelined with these two, even when she goes through the trouble of bringing them back to life.

Almost two decades of that feeling. She wonders when it will end.)

Suguru, at the very least, ends up sleeping in her bed sometimes. Half the time it's after sex, half the time it's not.

Gojo never sleeps over at all.

One could say he avoids her at all costs, even going so far as to leave any room she enters. He has an easier time doing this, in the new apartment. Her old one was basically just a giant room with some walls in it, much too small for him to hide away. He often settled for just sitting angrily on the couch whenever she ventured out of her old bedroom, looking at anything but her.

The running away is worse.

It's as annoying as it is tiring, because he's acting like a child. He's been revived for two months now and back to as much life as he can be. He got his teaching job back a week ago and is being put back on the active roster in three. She made sure all his beloved students didn't die of their injuries. Everything is, quite literally, almost back to the way it was before October.

Suguru's been revived for nearly a month. He's gotten him back and he's not roleplaying a cult leader anymore, he's staying. They have him back. Gojo has him back, just like he did when he was dead for six days. He should've gotten over it by now.

Shoko, feeling that any attempts to reach out will be ignored, doesn't even try. She wants to be with him again, like they used to be. She also has no patience for coddling. He can talk to her when he's done being immature.

So they don't talk. This, as a natural consequence, makes Suguru act as a buffer between them. A communicator, the one who tells them things they refuse to tell each other; it's mostly stuff about work Shoko needs to know as the nurse and one with, currently, the most authority over campus. Like which students injured themselves and how and extra administrative work that needs done. (He doesn't pass along personal messages, because they have nothing personal to say to each other anymore. It's all about work.)

It annoys him, she can tell. Suguru never had very much patience, even when it came to them. He doesn't like being used as a telephone between them, especially when he's trying to make his own recovery. But he manages it with surprising grace.

He doesn't pull away from them, and he doesn't close that line of communication, either. Instead, he tries to draw them closer together.

It doesn't really work, but it's a noble attempt. She can't help but credit him for it.

Suguru joins her on that tiny balcony for a smoke every morning while Gojo makes breakfast for the three of them. He won't talk to her, but he'll make her eggs the way she likes it. He'll put a pot of coffee on brew for her both before and after work, because Suguru only drinks the stuff after consuming a curse and he hasn't consumed one in months. He'll let Suguru drag her into the kitchen with them and will actually sit at the same table as her instead of just storming.

She knows it is not for her, that it's for Suguru's sake, but still he does.

He makes her breakfast.

(They don't even know if he can still consume curses anymore, but they're getting there.

The costs of her necromancy might have been evenly split between them all. Satoru's strength is sliced in half, Shoko's RCT felt strange since the rituals, and Suguru might not even have his technique anymore. He hasn't been able to consume a curse since he got back, not even the little flyheads Gojo periodically brings him.

Suguru's issue could also stem from the spirit that was inhabiting his corpse before. Neither of them are entirely sure.

Like she said, they're getting there.

She and Gojo are both trying to get him a job at the school, separately of course. Gojo, dying to relive the thrills of youth, wants him on the active roster with him, Shoko knows it'll be at least a year before anyone feels comfortable letting Suguru leave campus. Plus, his technique is pretty much gone. She's trying to get him a teaching job. It's probably the best choice for him and everyone else, when it comes to Jujutsu High.

They're having a bit of a faculty shortage, what with recent losses and all. Currently, Gojo, Ijichi, Nitta, and her are really the only ones on staff. Not a far cry from what they had before, but Yaga's death had taken a toll on them and their branch of the college. Kusakabe is off in Kyoto, working with Utahime on rebuilding and restoring the school. Shoko thinks they're probably going to make him principal. He's the only real viable candidate.

Gojo already turned down the offer, too. With Yuki dead, he's the only Special Grade who isn't sixteen years old. With Kuskabe gone, he's wrangling all the students. Plus, the Gojo Clan is a mess right now. There's a lot on his plate, he doesn't need to add running a school to it.

He never really wanted to be a teacher, anyways. Becoming principal wouldn't suit him.

(She hears Nitta tell Ijichi that she's glad Gojo declined. He's been so weird at work since he came back, she can't imagine having to work under him.

Meekly, Ijichi agrees.)

Suguru being a teacher would help out at the school, yes, but she also thinks it'd be good for his reputation. Her coworkers might be less wary of him if he proves himself to the kids. They might (rightfully) not trust Suguru as far as they can throw him, but Itadori and Inumaki are good judges of character. And if Maki lets him survive his first week of teaching then he's probably good enough.

Even without his curses, Suguru's still Special Grade material. The little urchins could learn a lot from him.

Shoko thinks he wouldn't be too sad if he lost his technique for real, even if it would make him have one more thing in common with those “monkeys” he hates so much. It'd always brought him much more strife than he deemed necessary.

He'd be like Itadori, then, she muses, which reminds her that she needs to check up on the students soon. See if Gojo remembers how to teach, because he doesn't ramble to her about work like he used to.

Hmm, another good reason to get Suguru that teaching job ASAP.)

It reminds her of how they were for a few years after Suguru left.

They weren't like this exactly, but it was similar. Quiet, uneventful. A mere shadow of the bond they'd once shared, when they were three instead of two.

For about three years, maybe four, they only spoke at work. And when they did speak outside of it nothing of value was said. It was just empty small talk.

And then they started their whole friends with benefits thing, one drunken night when Utahime had convinced them both to go to a bar and somehow got alcohol into Satoru.

They'd been more like themselves, after that.

They started hanging out again, and started speaking outside of work. He'd be at her place almost every weekend, his clothes migrating into her dresser drawers and a toothbrush in her bathroom.

And then the world had ended, and somehow, by a series of events Shoko can't even describe, they got to here.

She sighs, leaning against Suguru as they smoke. He glances at her, but doesn't say anything; just passes her another light when her current one runs out.

Gojo's inside. She can hear him moving about in the kitchen, making breakfast. For them, for her.

She takes the cigarettes from Suguru gratefully. She's going to need it.

————————

She hears the boys fucking, one day. It's not something done by choice.

She comes home late from work, almost near midnight, and is greeted with the sounds of Suguru's moans and Satoru's wordless pleas when she's halfway through changing into her sleep clothes.

They probably just assumed she wasn't coming home tonight. She usually isn't, if the school keeps her after ten PM. Tonight had been an exception. All she had to do was some extra paperwork.

She doesn't mean to listen in on them, but it can't be helped. The apartment might be nicer than her old one, but it's not soundproof. And the two of them are loud. They're lucky most of their neighbors and would-be neighbors were killed in the recent war. Otherwise, they'd definitely be getting noise complaints.

What she hears makes her stop in her tracks.

They're rough with each other, yes. She can tell as much by the timbre in Suguru's voice. But it's not the same as how she and Gojo are in bed. The latter is actually moaning instead of just growling and grunting at his partner, lost in the sensation. He's clearly on the bottom too, letting Suguru unravel him. He hardly ever lets her do that, these days.

Gojo's so different in bed with Suguru. He's gentle even, from what she hears. Loving. He talks like he actually wants Suguru to fuck him.

He actually sounds like he's fucking enjoying it. Like it means something to him and isn't just hate sex.

The past few sessions, he hasn't sounded like he enjoyed it with her.

But with Suguru he does. Unabashedly so.

But not with her.

The realization makes something in her chest burn.

If she was turned on from hearing them fuck before, she certainly wasn't now.She shoves her t-shirt over her head and grabs her noise canceling headphones, skipping the rest of her nightly routine.

Shoko snatches the covers over her head, her eyes squeezed so tightly shut it feels like they'll burst. Suddenly, she's grateful neither of them share a room with her.

She even locked the door for extra measure. She doesn't want Suguru wandering in here for his morning smoke. She doesn't want to see either of them at all, for anything.

She falls asleep with that ugly feeling in her chest again and doesn't wake up any better.

(Come morning, she still eats the eggs Gojo makes for her.)

————————

Less than a week later she finds herself pressed into the bed, a position that's become intimately familiar over the past few weeks. Gojo's peppering marks into her skin once more, all teeth and bites. Shoko rolls her head back, familiar jolts of pleasure running up her spine every time his teeth graze her skin. (He knows exactly how to make her unravel. It's gotten a little annoying, especially when he won't let her undo him in turn. And if he does, she has to fight for it because everything's always a fucking fight with him, these days.)

She squirms, rolling her hips forward. His cock rests just above her cunt, leaking and heavy on her stomach. Shoko wants it in her already. The foreplay has left her empty and wound up. Desperate, even. She's wanted him in her for at least ten minutes now.

As per usual, Gojo seems insistent on playing with his food.

And it's not that Shoko doesn't like foreplay, she just wished he'd stop stretching it out and put his cock in her already. A woman has her needs too, you know. She's been waiting too damn long.

She was on her knees before this, sucking his dick like she needed it to breathe. His hands had been in her hair, scratching and tugging as he throat fucked her. Shoko's technique healed any wounds he gave her when he pulled too hard, running on autopilot in the background. She didn't even notice she was healing them, not when she'd been automatically healing small abrasions since she was six and with Gojo's cock clouding her senses. It's fine though, because that just meant he gave her more.

She'd gagged, practically choking on the thing with every buck of his hips. It was almost a relief when he came, his nails making her scalp bleed again as he tugged. Shoko swallows every drop he spills into her mouth, cringing at the taste and the heat of it all. Her scalp heals over for the umpteenth time that night, slower than before as she comes back to herself fully. Gojo pulls his cock out of her mouth with a wet noise, panting. He'd just finished but he was very, very far from done.

He'd dragged her up onto the bed after that, hands finding her hips. He'd put a pillow under her head, lifted her ass in the air, then ate her out until she saw white. Then he'd dropped her down again and slid on top of her, getting into the position they were now; Gojo teasing her by biting (because he knew it did something to her, the bastard) and Shoko writhing under him for more, almost embarrassingly so.

This isn't the first time it's played out like this, and it probably won't be the last.

Rough sex like this has become more frequent since they moved into the apartment and Suguru was (finally) offered a shaky job at what remained of Jujutsu High. All three of them now had weird, constantly rotating schedules. By some misfortune, her and Gojo's schedules ended up aligning the most. And the only way they could stand to be in the same house, let alone room, as each other these days was if there was sex involved.

They don't fuck everytime they're home alone, obviously. Sorcery is still too much of a demanding job for that. But they do it often enough that her body starts to expect it. Like a Pavlovian response.

(She thinks, maybe, the only way they can communicate is through sex like this. There's certainly a lot of anger coming from Gojo when he rails her, and she knows there's an equal amount of frustration coming from herself every session. She wonders if they'll ever be able to communicate like normal people ever again.)

There wasn't a lot of talking, when they did fall into bed together. At least not at the start. Just kissing and roaming hands and maneuvering the other person where they wanted (needed) them to be. It worked out fine enough.

She'd been bent over last time, two weeks ago, her tits pressed flat into the bed and her ass in the air. Shoko had practically screamed when he fucked into her, having been edged for God knows how long before hand. It was embarrassing how fast and how many times she came. Gojo slammed into her regardless, drawing orgasm after orgasm from her until he was satiated.

The time before that she'd been riding him, aggressive and needy. She'd clawed at his chest with every slap of their hips, leaving scratch marks in his perfect build. She'd dug her fingers into the fifteen inch scar from the Sorcerer Killer and twisted, hoping the flesh would tear open; that blood would drip from the base of his neck all the way down to where they were intertwined. Gojo's response had been to tip his head back, a low moan ripping from his throat, and starting meeting her hips in the middle.

They don't do aftercare, though they probably should. Her legs always feel weak afterwards and she knows she scratches his back hard enough to bleed. But it's not like he'd let her heal them if she asked, so he can do his own fucking aftercare for all she cares, and she'll do hers. (It's not like he'd touch her outside of sex, either, and it's not like she'd let him. They're far beyond that point now.)

Gojo's in a particular mood when she crawls into his room that day. But that's fine. Shoko's in a mood, too. They can at least take it out on each other before Suguru gets home.

And taking it out they are.

She whines and squirms again, a little more insistent than she had been before, and Gojo finally gets the hint.

“So needy.” He huffs, pulling away from where he'd been biting at her tits. Shoko just whines again, her desire clear.

Gojo presses one last searing kiss to her shoulder, then pulls away. She meets his gaze, and sees her own desire reflected back. Excitement thrums in her veins. Finally.

He lines himself up and presses in, quick and hard. Shoko grunts and twists, unsure if she's trying to move away or closer to him. She's wet and open enough that he bottoms out in just two thrusts.

The pace for today is quick and hard, to the point. Good. Shoko thinks she'd start ripping his skin off if he went any slower. She needs this, today.

“Mmphm, like that.” She throws her head back with a mewl, her legs hooking over his hips. She wants him deeper, as deep as he'll go.

He groans above her, deep and guttural and frustrated all at once. “That's it. Beg for me, bitch.”

“A-asshole.” She chokes out the phrase. They've called each other names in bed plenty of times, but that one felt a little too far. It felt a little too real.

He only grunts, and keeps slamming into her. Shoko doesn't tell him to quit.

“Can I fill you up this time?” He breathes, a rare note of excitement in his voice. Like he's been wanting to fill her up, daydreaming about it every time they're together.

Shoko almost moans at the thought.

“Y-yeah.” She says, suddenly realizing how appealing that sounds. He's never come inside, before or after the revival (but Suguru certainly has.) They always either had a condom or made sure to pull out first. She doesn't know why. Shoko's been on the pill for years. The occasional creampie wouldn't have hurt….

Fuck, now she really wants it.

“Slut.” He growls, and heat flares in Shoko's belly. She doesn't like the tone he said it in, but he could call her it again.

“You're the one-” She gasps as he starts to move. “Ah-fucking me.”

“Suguru fucks you too.” He points out, like this means anything. Like she didn't hear him taking it up the ass not even a month ago; begging for it.

Stupid hypocrite.

“At least he actually knows how to eat pussy.” She snaps back. Compared to Suguru, he's only mediocre at best. Gojo growls again, spurred on by taunt.

“He also fucks you.” She points out, her back arching. He's moving so fast now, his balls smacking against her with every movement. She wants him faster. “If I’m a slut, so are you.”

Gojo responds by drawing her into a biting kiss, his teeth grazing along the skin of her lips. Shoko kisses him back, groaning into it when she comes. He hits the right spot a few times and she unwinds, biting his lower lip so hard he bleeds.

Apparently a little blood gets his rocks off, because he finishes almost immediately after.

He breaks away from her with a shout, his hips stuttering as he spills himself inside her. Shoko moans, warmth pooling in her core as he spills himself inside her.

She doesn't know why they've never done it before. He fills her up really, really good. Almost as good as Suguru.

Satoru pulls out with a wet pop, their fluids coating the inside of her thighs. His hands leave her, he lets her go. Shoko feels herself sink into the bed, her brain a floaty, satisfied, fuzzy mess.

At some point when they were fucking, Suguru came home. They find this out when he cracks the bedroom door open, quietly grabbing a change of clothes from the dresser door.

Well, Gojo finds this out. Shoko, lost in the movement of Gojo's hips and the overwhelming desire to be filled up, doesn't notice until they've finished and his cum is leaking out of her.

Shoko sees him slip out of the door in her haze but doesn't register it until later, her chest heaving and her legs weak. She doesn't register Gojo leaving, either, not until he's already long gone.

————————

(Suguru overhead them, because they were being loud. Hell, if Shoko's neighbors were still alive post-Sukuna, they would've heard them too.

As soon as the apartment door shut behind him it was all he heard. The muffled slap of skin on skin, Satoru's groans, and the little ah-ah-ah's he draws out of Shoko with every thrust. They're not even trying to be quiet. Suguru feels like he's in the room with them, watching as Satoru's hips fuck into her.

The sounds are loud, but normal. They're also five minutes away from giving him an after work boner.

He starts shrugging his uniform jacket off, his dick twitching at the thought. They've had sex separately, but not all together before. Two certain someones are still strange around each other.

Shoko's moaning pierces through the wall. He hopes they can get over it, soon. A threesome has been in his wet fantasies for a while, and he'd quite like to have it fulfilled….

Suguru wonders, as he often does, what the issue even is, if they're going at it like rabbits on the regular.

He'd assumed Satoru and Shoko were also fucking long before he came home today. They would have bruises that he knows he didn't leave, mainly because when he left marks they didn't stay dark purple for days on end. His hickeys didn't have teeth marks and the swelling of freshly stitched back together skin.

He'd thought that maybe they just liked it rough. That was fine. The two of them had had a decade to explore each other without him. During sex they were always clear with what they wanted, never afraid to tell Suguru to back off. Satoru wasn't the type to let himself be bossed around, either, and Shoko had never taken bullshit for as long as he'd known her. Suguru had reasonably assumed they were just a little meaner with each other.

For three whole months he wasn't worried. His almost-partners knew how to handle rougher scenarios, as his own experience had taught him. And if things went too far they both had RCT to fall back on. It should've been fine.

In hindsight, maybe he shouldn't have based their dynamic off his experiences with them separately. Because, again, both have never fallen into bed with him before.

As he found out two days ago, it was not actually fine.

He hears Shoko hiss, and pauses what he's doing. That noise is…less normal. She doesn't make it when they fuck. But it doesn't sound….bad, per say, just a little strange.

And then more noises keep coming. From both of them, not just Shoko. Noises they don't make with him, and Suguru likes to think he goes about as rough as they're going now. The dirty talk is different too; it's sharper around the edges. They call each other names and it sounds like they genuinely mean it.

He frowns, and pauses in the middle of the room. That sounds…concerning, for lack of a better term. He almost wants to pop his head in, make sure everything's okay.

But he doesn't. He simply throws his jacket over his arm and places his shoes by the door, grimacing at the dirt all over them. The curse just had to die before he was able to consume it, and on top of that it had to explode into goo. He is not looking forward to cleaning that out of his jacket.

He sets said garment atop the washing machine for later, trying to ignore the sounds coming from the bedroom. But it's rather hard to, especially when they keep on coming.

And with each new one, with each snarl and each growl, Suguru feels a knot of worry starting to form in his gut.

He tries to get started on making some dinner for himself, since his room is occupied for the time. Maybe make something for the heathens currently occupying it, too. He doesn't get very far.

He finds himself sat on the couch before long, tuned into the noises from his bedroom. It's the one closer to the living room and the couch is pushed against the adjoining wall. He can hear everything almost perfectly.

Again, like he's in the room himself.

His dick isn't twitching at the thought anymore.

He hears Satoru call Shoko a bitch. This is what really gives him pause.

It's different from the way he calls Suguru names in bed. There was no warmth under it, no teasing tone like when he called Satoru a dumb little whore and vice versa. This was something different.

Bitch had been laced with venom, something raw and angry underneath it. He'd meant it.

Something ugly twists in Suguru's gut at the word. It wasn't right, whatever was happening in there. He's not sure what it is, but he just knows parts of it aren't right.

They threw his name around too, which he wasn't a huge fan of. He'd rather them moan his name or something, not use it in a who's the bigger slut competition (Again, if this was supposed to be a sexy competition, he would not be unopposed. But it isn't. That's the whole damn problem.)

He knew the two of them had had…..issues. That Satoru was more pissed about the revival than he was and had yet to fully grow past that rage. Suguru didn't think it manifested like this.

He simply sits and listens in for what feels like an eternity, his whole body tense.

Listening to his two favorite people fucking should be making him hard, not worried he needs to intervene.

Shoko's moaning, borderline screaming, with pleasure, but it sure doesn't sound like she's enjoying it. It doesn't sound like Satoru's enjoying it, either, at least not in the way he should be.

But there's no requests for it to stop, so Suguru doesn't move.He listens to moans of keep going, keep going and Satoru's needy pants and doesn't move. He doesn't intervene, even if part of him is screaming to burst in there and ask what the hell they've been doing when he isn't home.

But he doesn't. He just sits, frozen.

Listening for the last ten minutes of their session makes him realize that his roommates have been partaking in under-negotiated rough sex on the regular. This is highly alarming.

He can't do anything about what's happening now, or what they've already done, but he makes a mental note to talk to them both later. Separately, tomorrow. When they've hopefully gotten it all out of their system for a while.

He just hopes they haven't been hurting each other. And that they still remember what a safeword is. (Though, what he's heard today makes him doubt they do.)

He decides to walk in at the end, because they're fucking in him and Satoru's bed and he needs to change. He's still gross from work.

He picks up his uniform jacket from where he left it on the table, and reaches for the door handle.

“-too much, too much.” Whines slip out of Shoko as he enters, the door clicking softly behind him. Her head is thrown back, her expression one of pure bliss. Suguru, despite his grievances with the situation, can understand why. The mattress is practically crying out for help under them with how fast they're going. (Distantly, he hopes they don't break it.)

Satoru sinks his teeth into the flesh of her shoulder like he means to tear with them, the movement of his hips unrelenting. “You can take it, I know you can.”

She turns into a babbling mess under him after that, begs of gojo, more, and please, nonsensically spilling from her mouth.

Suguru stops in his tracks, his heart sinking somewhere below his stomach.

They're still calling each other Gojo and Ieiri? Even during sex? Maybe the issues ran deeper than he first thought…

Seeing Shoko getting fucked senseless into their mattress should, once again, be making him hard as a boulder. Not whatever he's feeling now.

The skin from her hips to just under her collarbone is bruised a deep purple, littered with indents of teeth and fingerprints. He knows the ones on her waist and breasts will be left to heal naturally. The bruises are always a blueish-green when he fucks her.

Satoru makes eye contact with him, something wild in his eyes. Suguru tries to give his best lazy smile, but he fears it comes out strained.

Satoru looks back to Shoko not long after, hissing as his hips stutter again and the rhythm of his thrusts speed up. He's close.

Suguru chooses the moment to tear his eyes away and reach for his dresser drawers, finding the most comfortable pair of lounge wear he can as quickly as possible.

He slips back out of the door with a heavy feeling in his stomach. He shuts it softly behind him.

Suguru hops into the shower and doesn't come out for a long, long while, his mind abuzz.

He thinks the three of them have a lot of talking they need to do.)

————————

“Is that how you two handle it? With barely consensual fucking?” Suguru pops the question over breakfast three days later when Gojo's gone. He'd made them their usual, but couldn't sit down to eat with Suguru like he normally did. He had an early mission, somewhere in Osaka. He'll either be home later tonight or he won't be home at all. Whichever it is, Shoko won't be informed. Suguru will be.

“It's consensual.” She snaps, stabbing her egg with a fork.

Suguru's expression remains skeptical. She half considers throwing the fork at his beautifully scarred forehead. “Didn't sound like it. Didn't look like it, either.”

“I want him to fuck me like that.” She stabs her egg again, insistent. She's the one who started this whole arrangement. If she didn't want Gojo to pound her into the bed she wouldn't be letting him.

“Whatever gets you off.” Suguru pretends to relent. And she only knows he's pretending because she knows him. He didn't get the answer he wanted, so he'll try and broach the topic again in a few days. He usually only did this approach with Satoru, part of the reason they were at each other's throats so much. She's a little peeved he even thought to try it with her, let alone attempt it. “You two should talk about it, though. The house is too tense when you're both home.”

Shoko doesn't respond. She pushes her food around the plate, cheek resting against her palm. The eggs have suddenly become unappetizing.

Unfortunately, he has a fucking point. About them talking, not about the sex.

(Maybe about the sex, too.)

It's not like she doesn't want to talk to him, she does. But Gojo has walls up and won't put them down for anyone but Suguru. He hasn't even let her get close for months, so much so that she'd stopped trying.

She doesn't really know if she wants to keep trying, if all she's going to be met with is cold indifference

.…She isn't so sure if she wants to talk to him anymore.

Gojo made these eggs, just for her the way she likes them. He does it every morning.

She should just start throwing them in the trash, Shoko thinks bitterly. It's not like eating them or drinking the coffee he makes for her is mending anything. It feels like every interaction, even ones as miniscule as this, just makes everything worse instead.

(And don't even get her started on the sex.)

Suguru sits beside her, oddly quiet even for him. He's taken a bit of coffee today, sipping at it every so often. It's her coffee, the one Satoru makes for her. It's more bitter than he usually likes, but it seems to be manageable.

He probably needs it, with the headache the two of them have definitely been giving him.

“He's not forcing me to do anything.” She blurts out, guilt gnawing at her. She doesn't like that Suguru got that impression. “If I tell him to use a condom, or not to come inside, he listens.”

Suguru seems to breathe easier. “That's good.”

“I'm not forcing him, either. Had to pull off two weeks ago because he got a migraine.” Shoko frowns at the memory. They didn't get very far before he asked her to stop, pulling her off him and curling into a ball under his bedsheets. Shoko, a little at a loss for what to do, had sat there for a few minutes before leaving.

She'd thought, briefly, about using her RCT to lessen the pain. Like she used to. But when she reached out Infinity was already up, and under it was the jagged hum of Satoru's own Reverse Cursed Technique.

She'd simply pulled her hands away and left, heading straight to her own room. A reflection of what he did to her.

Suguru frowns at this little tidbit. “Did he use his eyes like he used to?”

“Yeah, at work that day.” She can't help the sigh that leaves her at the thought. It's a new habit Gojo has gained since he was weakened; trying to use his eyes at full capacity like he used to before. Originally, when he'd overused the Eyes, it'd just given him a splitting headache. Now it's graduated to a full blown migraine. Suguru, fed up, had thrown the old blindfold at him one day. Told him to wear it. Gojo had declined, and stormed out of the room like the child he was.

If even Suguru can't get through to him about this, there's certainly no way she can. So she hasn't tried.

(If that sigh sounds just the slightest bit worried, that's between her and the table.)

“Just because it's not forced doesn't mean it's healthy." He says, putting that little worry aside for now. Just another thing to talk with Gojo about, later.

“I know that.” She snaps. She doesn't really care if the sex is healthy or not. Nothing else about them is healthy, so why should it be?

“A reminder never hurts.” He says, finally eating a piece of his own food. He's been so focused on trying to talk some sense into her that he hasn't touched it since they sat down.

Shoko falls silent again. She stabs at what remains of her food, feeling like a child. She doesn't have anything to say to that.

They spend the rest of their breakfast in tense silence, Shoko taking the occasional sip of her coffee. It tastes bland now.“

Why are you asking me?” She says eventually. Her plate was emptied a while ago, somehow. She isn't sure why. She doesn't really feel hungry anymore.

“Satoru refused to talk about it.” Suguru says, downing what's left of his own coffee.

“Figures.” She huffs. Gojo was always like this, even before they started avoiding each other. Acted like talking things out was going to kill him or something. Leave it of the Strongest Sorcerer to make her and Suguru figure out what his damn problem is.

Shoko stands, taking her empty plate to sink. She would love to do more awkward sitting around with Suguru, but she has a job to get to. She makes a mental note to do the dishes, if time permits, and grabs her phone from the table.

“Hey,” Suguru catches her wrist before she leaves, a smile on his face. A truce, for now. “See you after work?”

“Yeah, after work.” Shoko mumbles. She can tell he's still not happy with them, but this is enough for now.

He presses a kiss to her knuckles before letting go, promising to make it up to her tonight. She smiles, and heads for the door. (And make it up to her, he does.)

————————

“He won't talk to me.” She admits later that night between moans. Suguru's cock slams in and out of her. It's not gentle, but compared to how Gojo fucks her it might as well be. “That's the only time we interact, when we fuck.”

Suguru only pauses briefly, a million emotions flicking across his face.He breathes in, and sets them aside for later, in the morning.

“It's fine, darling.” He whispers, picking up the pace again. His hips slap against her with every thrust, he's so deep. It's intoxicating. He wants to lose himself entirely in it while he can. “We'll figure it out together. You just focus on being good for me now, okay?”

His hips slam into her again, hitting a particular spot. Whatever Shoko wanted to say dies in her throat, a moan leaving her instead. And then he hits it again, and again, and again.

(Internally, she pouts a little. He was being meaner before she brought it up, he doesn't have to stop.)

She throws her head back with pleasure each time, her walls tightening around him. Her legs tremble from where they're wrapped around his waist. She doesn't think she's going to last much longer.

He's deep, so deep, she thinks she can feel him in her stomach. Shoko wants more. Wants him in her all the time. She babbles as much.

“Ah, good girl.” Warmth pools in her gut at the praise, Shoko rolling her hips to meet him. Suguru's voice is strained at the edges, but he praises her all the same. Tells her she takes him so well. She does so good for him every time, letting him stretch her and use her as he pleases. She's perfect, really, a perfect hole for his cock. He can't get enough of her.

Shoko groans, and bucks her hips harder.

They don't last very long after that.

“You did so well for me.” Suguru mutters when they're done, sleepy.

Shoko hides her face in his shoulder until she's sure she isn't blushing anymore. It flusters her when he talks like that outside of sex and he knows it.

She doesn't know how long she stays there, buried in his skin and willing her heart rate to calm. But when she does emerge, she finds Suguru's eyes closed and his breathing even.

Oh, he fell asleep. That's fine. He was probably gonna stay, anyways.

Shoko rests her head back against him, and tries to follow him into dreamland. It's harder than she expects it to be, tonight. (She's still thinking about Gojo.)

Suguru has a scar from the sorcerer killer too, an X shape slashes into his chest.

Shoko can't help but trace it every time they're together. Gojo's scar from that mission is long and jagged, running down almost his whole torso. She's been digging her nails into it for the past few months and hoping it reopens. But she doesn't, not really.

She used to trace it like this, back before. It always embarrassed him. She thought it was cute, how his face would crunch up whenever she did.

She falls asleep with a sigh, her hand against Suguru's scar and her heart aching.

————————

Her and Gojo don't even wait to fuck again like they normally do.

As soon as they're alone together she's grabbing for him, nails digging into the flesh of his arm. His hand finds her waist and he hauls her onto the bed with ease, pushing her clothes off her in hurried motions.

She helps him throw his own garments off too, and then he's on her again.Gojo pushes her knees up to her shoulders, bending her clean in half.

She's never been wetter or more pissed off in her life. Fucking bastard.

He slides in, then bottoms out in one swift movement. Shoko practically yells. He's always bottomed out fast, but never like that. She must be more open than she originally thought. Her thighs squeeze together as he starts to move. She wants him to do it again, and again and again, until she can't even think.

The pace for tonight is rough, a little rougher than usual. She would be stupid to think it's not related to her talk with Suguru and Suguru's attempted talk with him.

Shoko can't do anything but moan uselessly against him and gasp out cries for more and more. She can't do anything but let her orgasm wash over her, electricity shooting down her spine. She doesn't think she's ever come that hard in her life.

“Can't take it anymore.” She pants afterwards, and this time she thinks she might mean it.

“Yes you can.” He groans, rolling his hips again. Shoko squirms on his cock, too full, too full. He presses in anyways, relentlessly. It's hard for her to know if she truly enjoys the overstimulation, or if she's just telling herself she does. The talk with Suguru has turned everything on its head.

She doesn't tell him to stop, that's the important part. She could, the words on the tip of her tongue, but she doesn't. She simply lays there and let's Gojo fuck into her, wanton moans falling from her lips. This is the important part.

He comes all over her thighs and stomach, and then he's gone. Shoko doesn't even hear him shut the door, too distracted by the burn in her nether regions.

And then she comes back to herself and he's gone, and she's alone.

Just like she always is.

He leaves her alone and aching, sticky and uncomfortable. There's a lump in her throat, there by mostly her own fault. Shoko doesn't even drag herself to the bathroom like she normally does. The groves in her ceiling are suddenly very, very interesting.

(Maybe Suguru was right, after all.)

————————

“I told her you two needed to talk about it.” Suguru says one evening instead of hello.

He scowls from where he lays on their bed, a frustrated reply on his tongue before Suguru can even settle next to him.

Satoru argues about it, because an irritated Satoru is quick to argue and this is Suguru. They've never been good at not going at each other's throats, even now.(Usually Ieiri was there to quell them, but she's not here right now because she and Satoru are fighting and they haven't had a real conversation in almost five months. Which is the reason Suguru is even talking and the reason Satoru is even arguing right now

.….Fucking hell.)

“So you've told me.” He says, watching as his partner-but-not-quite joins him on the bed, dark hair flowing over his shoulders.

Satoru was hoping he could go to sleep in a good mood today. He was so close to it, too, before the other man had opened his big mouth. Bummer.

Suguru frowns. He looks so pretty, even when displeased. Satoru can't get enough of it after ten years and a month away. “I'm serious, Toru.”

He crosses his arms behind his head with a huff. They've already had this exchange before. He is not eager to have it again. “And I'm serious when I say I don't wanna talk about it.”

“Just because you don't want to doesn't mean you don't need to.” Suguru pokes him in the side, annoyed. “Emotionally constipated sex isn't doing anything but pissing her off more.”

“She enjoys it.” Satoru says, ignoring the little voice in the back of his head. The one that always whispers that maybe she doesn't like it, after all.

(He thinks he went too hard last time. It's part of the reason he's even entertaining Suguru, right now.

She always tells him that she can't take it when she can, when she wants him to keep going. She did that even before he died. It's a kink thing, he's pretty sure.

But last time….

She hadn't told him to stop though, so Satoru didn't.

He's mad at himself for not checking in. He's mad at her for not fucking communicating.

Ieiri's mad at him, he's mad at Ieiri. What's fucking new.)

“But she's always mad at you after it.”

“And I'm mad at her all the time.”

“You've been back for five months, Satoru. What are you even mad at anymore?”

For that, he has no answer.

“You weren't mad when you came back.” He says instead. And he knows it's not true, because he was there with Suguru the most in that time period. He was every emotion that flicked across his face, good and bad. Some of these feelings they shared, and some they didn't. But that was fine, because Satoru was there for them regardless.

(He wasn't going to leave Suguru alone. Not ever again.)

He says it anyway, because he has nothing else.

“I was, a little bit. I was a lot of things.” Suguru's frown deepens at the memory. He wants to kiss it away. “But I missed her more.”

“And you, of course.” He adds, almost as an afterthought.

“How sweet.” He snips. Satoru regrets it as soon as the words leave his mouth.

“Don't be mean.” Suguru chides, and Satoru stops looking at him entirely.He doesn't think he can, if they're really going to have this conversation.

“Sometimes I feel like I hate her.” He admits, his gaze fixed on the ceiling.

His partner sighs. “You don't hate her.”

“How do you know that?” He questions, bitter. Suguru's not in his head. He wasn't there when he was revived and he wasn't there at all before, either. He left. He was gone. And it feels mean, to drag that up now, but he and Ieiri have eleven years worth of history with each other that Suguru skipped out on.

“It's Shoko.” Suguru reasons. “When we were fifteen you told me that her mole was cute, and when we were sixteen you told me how you didn't want her to leave us for medical school.”

Satoru resists the urge to roll his eyes. “We're not fifteen anymore.” They're all almost thirty now, and things have changed since then. They've all died, literally and metaphorically, a few times over and become new people.

“I know you don't hate her because you're you. Because you make her favorite coffee and eggs every morning.”

He doesn't quite have a rebuttal for that.

“Do you even know why you're mad?” Suguru sighs again. This one is longer, heavier, brought on by months of playing messenger between them and being the only reason why the apartment feels somewhat calm. (He feels guilty about this, and vows to make it up to him. Somehow. He doesn't know how you make up for something of that magnitude, but he'll figure it out.

It's for Suguru. He'll always figure something out for him.)

Satoru turns over in bed, and doesn't answer.

“Just…try and work it out, okay? For my sake, if nothing else.” The bed creaks as Suguru hovers over him, his breath ghosting over the back of Satoru's neck. He wants to touch, but wants a response first. He knows how he can get when in a mood, and (understandably) doesn't want his face smacked with Infinity.

“Okay.” He relents, scowling into his pillow.

“Thank you.” A kiss is placed to the underside of his jaw, soft. Suguru slides under the comforter after that, spooning him and tangling their limbs together.

His partner sleeps that night, sound but troubled. Satoru, his mind running a million miles an hour, doesn't get a wink of it.

————————

(He's right. Satoru doesn't even know why he's mad at her, anymore.

Ironically, this also pisses him off. Everything seems to piss him off since he died. Not as much as it did before, but the anger lingers. He isn't sure if it'll ever go away. Satoru isn't sure if he wants it too, either.

The anger had all started with the revival, and what it has cost him.

Dying and coming back has had an effect on his technique. Hell, it even took it away for a few days. Considering how he was brought back, something like this was to be expected.

Jujutsu, especially processes like the one Ieiri used, is about exchanges. What one thing can do for another. What energy can be exchanged for what.

Rituals are a little unprecedented, because they're finicky and hard to pull off. You have to learn summon circles and incantations to know them, things most Sorcerers don't bother with. They don't have much need to, there's not much use for talismans in the heat of battle. Satoru himself only knows them because he's him and because it's his job to seal most Special Grade cursed objects.

He was brought back when he didn't want to be, which pissed him off. And then the exchange was bits and pieces of his power, which only served to piss him off more.

But that's putting it in simple terms. There's more to it than that, a lot more.

Losing his technique, even if only temporarily, had been sort of the start. The rest had been what came after.What Ieiri did to bring them back is like a binding vow. Not exactly the same, but similar enough.

The consequence of this? Both Limitless and the Six Eyes have had their power sliced in half. Satoru is not sure if this is a permanent affliction or only temporary. But the longer he performs at nearly half his old strength, the more he thinks it's the former.

He's still plenty powerful. He can handle most curses still without even needing to lower infinity, and Yuta and Maki still struggle to keep up with him in spars. To everyone else, this difference in strength is only slight, appearing on occasion but never for too long. Gojo Satoru is still just as strong as he's always been.

But Satoru can feel it in his bones. He knows it's there, and that's all that matters.

He probably couldn't take on Sukuna again, so it's a good thing that the bastard is dead. He didn't exactly win the original fight, but he couldn't pull as many domain clashes and powered up Purples out of his ass if they were to fight now.

The fight would go from a close one to a far more pathetic showing on his end, and that's all that matters.

This, combined with Ieiri's flippant attitude about the whole thing, is why he's been taking it out on her in bed.

At first, it had made him feel more like him again. It had soothed the gaping hole in his chest, when Ieiri let him do what he pleased with her. It made him feel strong, in some roundabout way, to watch her writhe under him in bliss.

It also expressed how upset he was, in ways words cannot. And then, Ieiri, never one to take shit lying down, had bitten back. Because of course she had. And it had been good. It had felt right.

But that was two, almost three, months ago, this now. The rough sex has started to get old. It's not getting the blood pumping like it used too, because it's the only kind of sex they've been having. Still, he doesn't change anything when he crawls into her room, or when she crawls into his. Just goes along with their usual programming, until she's a begging whining mess and that feeling of rightness fills his senses again.

Honestly, it's Ieiri's demeanor about the whole situation that keeps drawing him back into it.It's like she doesn't even care. Like she doesn't care that he's mad, or why he's mad. Like she brought him back because she missed him so that answer should be good enough, even though he was fine with dying and didn't want to be brought back in the first place.

When she brought him back he lost Suguru. He had him again, finally, finally, and then she'd ripped that dream away. And there had been nothing he could do about it.

And then she'd brought him back, and this issue had been resolved.

Still, even with both of them back in her arms, Ieiri's indifference hadn't changed. She doesn't try to reach out, nor does she try to chip away at his silence like he'd expect (wants) her too. She only lets herself get more and more bitter towards him, the longer they don't talk.

She doesn't even try.

This, in turn, makes Satoru angry all over again. And then they fall into bed together, clawing and biting. Repeat cycle.

This part of their dance has been going on so long that Satoru is starting to feel himself get sick of it, too. But he's stubborn. He's not going to be the one who budges first. Unfortunately for them both, Ieiri is stubborn, too. Their little dance will probably go on a lot longer, no matter what Suguru says.

No matter how much he says she doesn't hate him….

(This part, what he's about to say, feels like the biggest admission yet. He'd hoped to take it to his grave with him, but he's bad at staying in those.

So here it goes.)

He hears them fucking, sometimes, her and Suguru, because of course he does. Just like how Suguru had heard them, and brought him here. They all really love listening to each other have sex, apparently.

He remembers when he and Ieiri were like that. Softer. When they did things like forehead kisses and aftercare and talking. When he'd whisper things like I love you into her shoulder instead of just teething at it, months old anger choking him.

He remembers when they used to be like that. He wonders if they'll ever be able to revert to it again.

Satoru doesn't think he'd mind if they did. At least, not too much. Maybe then the sex wouldn't get old.)

————————

She knew, subconsciously, that Gojo was insanely strong. That he was holding back whenever they were intimate.

It's different now, she thinks, to have proof of him letting that restraint slip.

He could break her, if he wanted to. Could let his anger overtake him and kill her in the middle of sex. He wouldn't even need to use Blue or Red, he could simply just choke her a little harder when she tells him to and never stop applying pressure.

But he doesn't.

It's a little exhilarating.

Shoko, as his doctor and the person who brought him back, could probably kill him too. She's sure there's a loophole in her incantation somewhere that would make him drop dead.

And, if not, she knows a million other ways to kill a man.

If they weren't who they were, she doubts Gojo would be fucking her like this at all. If it weren't for her ability to self heal he wouldn't be making her bleed everytime they fuck. (It's not much blood, nothing internal. Just bites, his fingers nails digging too hard into her skin. Shoko tells herself she likes it.)

She's the same with him. She wouldn't be leaving scratch marks in his shoulders if it weren't for his own RCT, if only to save herself the hassle of healing them herself.

It's a strange sense of trust, in a way. To show each other these hints of themselves. For him to show her that violence, ever present, under his skin and for Shoko to accept it, eager and ready.

The last time they fuck seems to be lacking this level of violence. It seems to be lacking lots of things, really. Any if the, for lack of a better word, passion is gone. It feels like they're both just running through the motions, only having sex out of pure habit. Only because Suguru's gone and they don't know how to interact normally anymore and to quell the heat in their bellies and between their legs. They both reach completion, but it's not good.

He's not even in her for that before he's pulling out to jerk himself to finish, not even letting her attempt to help. Shoko sits up and her legs aren't even shaking. She still feels like she could go another round or two. Yet she doesn't want to, feels no desire to claw him back down with her.

Satoru disappears into his own room as soon as he's done, so quiet that she can almost forget he's home.

Shoko draws herself a bath. For the first time in a while, the air between them is not angry and stilted. The apartment is simply awkward.

It's strange. She doesn't know what to do with it. She should know what to do with it. But she doesn't.

She sinks into the tub with a frown. The water sloshes around her, loud in the quiet apartment.

Maybe it's fine to give Suguru's advice a try.

————————

A week after Suguru talks to them both she asks, “Can we talk?”

It's a Wednesday evening. Shoko's just finished eating the cheap takeout she bought for them. Suguru's out of town on a mission, because he's finally allowed to go on them now, and won't be home ‘till tomorrow morning at the earliest.

And by some miracle, Gojo agrees.

He follows her to her bedroom, his footsteps falling silently on the linoleum floor. She almost forgot he could do that; make himself completely soundless. He only really does it when he doesn't want someone or something, usually a curse, to detect him. She thinks he's been doing that around her ever since he came home.

Gojo's glances around once they enter her room proper, his interest poorly hidden. He's been in here plenty of times before, but never for anything more than sex. He hadn't given himself much time to look around, familiarize himself with it like he had her old room at the old place.

When Shoko takes a seat on her bed, part of her expects him to plop down in her empty desk chair. He doesn't. Instead, he follows her onto the mattress.

“Did you only bring him back for me?” Is the first thing he asks, sitting cross legged atop her sheets. It feels strange now, to be in a bed with him without fucking.

“I was always going to bring him back.” She replies. The whole idea had started with Gojo, of course, but the thought to revive Suguru as well hadn't been far behind. “You thought I wouldn't?”

“I don't know.” The sigh that leaves him is heavy. “I feel like I don't know anything anymore, when it comes to us.”

Shoko looks away, her gaze finding the wall. This, at the very least, they can agree on.

“Lift my shirt up.” He says, turning so that more of his back is facing her.

She blinks at him, startled. “I thought we weren't-”

“It's not like that.” He sighs again, heavier this time. “Just—lift it up.”

She does as he asks, but hesitantly. Her fingers gently prying the light blue fabric of his sweater off him, until it's almost all the way up and off him. What she finds nearly takes her breath away.

“You kept the scratch marks.” She says, running a hand over his shoulder blade. It's strange. They haven't touched each other gently in months.

“I always keep them,” he admits, quiet. The quietest he's been since before he died. “At least for a few days.”

Slowly, Shoko pulls his shirt back down. A lump has started to form in her throat, a mix of emotions she can't name. She should've been expecting this, when she asked to talk and when he agreed, but she wasn't. She starts to move back away from him, overwhelmed with it.

Gojo grabs her hand before she can pull it away completely. It's not harsh, like all his holds on her have been before. It's loose. Shoko could easily rip herself away from him, if she wanted to.

She doesn't. This is the important part.

He brings her wrist up, pressing a soft kiss to her pulse point. She sucks in a breath. She thinks her heart stops working, for a second.

“I missed you.” He says, placing another kiss on her palm. Then another, back on her pulse point, then a fourth to her knuckles. He fixes her with his sad eyes then, something like guilt shining in them.

Fuck. She thinks, feeling something in her start to crumble. Her heart squeezes painfully in her chest. She doesn't think she can do this anymore.

On instinct, she tries to pull away.

His grip tightens ever so slightly on her wrist. He doesn't let her.

“Shoko..” Her name falls from his lips for the first time in months. It's almost a plea. Everything spills over, and before she knows it her head is buried against his chest, ugly little sounds leaving her as her tears spill over.

She cries into the front of his sweater. It's one she bought for his last birthday. Not his twenty-nineth, but his twenty-eighth, the last one they celebrated together. She wasn't sure if he still had it.

“Satoru…” She sniffs, embarrassed. She can't believe she fell apart like that, and so easily too.

“I'm here, I'm here.” He mumbles into her hair, his voice cracking at the edges. Then, he tells her again, “I've missed you.”

“Yeah.” She sniffs, the words stuck in her throat. She's missed him, too, more than she ever thought she could. More than she thinks she ever did when he was dead.

It was agonizing to have him here but not have him. She doesn't know how she's survived almost half a year of it.

They detangle themselves slowly, Shoko's eyes puff from the crying at Satoru wiping unshed tears from his. She feels bad, for getting one of his favorite sweaters wet with her dumb tears. Satoru reassures her and says they can always clean it later.

“Do you….like how I've been treating you? In bed, I mean.” He asks, one of her hands held in his. He rubs circles into the back of her hand, savoring the connection.

She sighs. She should've known this question was coming. “Yes and no.”

Alarm passes over Satoru's face. “You didn't-”

“It's not that I didn't want it. I did. You never forced me.” She cuts him off. Shoko doesn't want him to think he made her do anything when she didn't want to, because he didn't. That's not what the issue was. Far from it, in fact. “I like it rough, but I…”

“I think I started missing you. I wanted you to talk to me outside of sex.” She admits, looking towards the wall.

“You're not the only one at fault here,” Shoko continues, guilt swirling in her stomach. “I was on top, a few times. I didn't say anything when I should've.” She thinks of the last time they fucked and a few more before that, when the overstimulation wasn't fun anymore. But she hadn't said anything, even though she knew she needed to. She just let him keep going until he was done.

“I topped you more-”

Satoru tries to argue. She cuts him off by squeezing one of his hands in hers. “It doesn't matter.”

“You didn't force me, either. I think it's really hot when you ride me.” He leans forwards, until their foreheads bump. “I just missed you.”

“I thought I wanted to hurt you, but I didn't, not really.” He admits. It sounds almost shameful. “I was just mad, and frustrated with everything, and I missed you and I didn't know what to do with it all.”

Shoko looks into his eyes, really looks at them, for the first time in months, and smiles. “I was mad, too, don't worry. That falls on us both.”

He laughs lightly, pressing a kiss to her cheek. Not her lips, she notes, just her cheek. He presses their foreheads together again after that, content to simply breathe the same air as her.Shoko closes her eyes, basking in the feeling of having him close again for the next few minutes.

“I didn't like the throat fucking.” She blurts, remembering all the times she'd gagged around him with a frown. That, for sure, was one thing she doesn't want to do again. “It was nice at first, but you always went too hard at the end.”

His face twists in guilt. “Fuck. I'm sorry.”

“It's fine,” She's not lying when she says this. It was on her for not tapping out when she needed it, not him. “Can I just….not suck your dick for a while?”

“Yeah, yeah that's fine.” He smiles. “That's what we got Suguru for, yeah?”

Shoko laughs in spite of herself. She supposes that is what they'll be using him for for the next little while, isn't it?

“You could've told me to stop. I stopped before, remember?” He reaches up, cradling her face in his palms gently. Like he's scared if he holds her too hard, she'll break. (She can't blame him for that, she feels like he's glass in her hands as well.)

“I knew that.” She mumbles, pressing her nose into his palm. “I don't know why I didn't. I think I just wanted something to hurt.”

Satoru hums in acknowledgement. It seems they had something similar going on this whole time, who would've guessed. (Suguru, probably. He's going to be a little smug when they tell him.)

“Don't ever call me a bitch again.” She says, firmly. That was the most unsexy thing he's ever done. Also rude and entirely uncalled for. If they weren't emotionally fucked up when he said that she probably would've slapped him.

“I wasn't planning on it.” Satoru mumbles, wincing at the reminder. Not his proudest moment, he'll admit.

“Is there anything else you didn't like?” He asks, brushing stray strands of hair behind her ear. They fell in front of her face when she was sobbing and have been bothering her since.

She shakes her head. “I'll tell you later if I remember something. Will you-?”

“I'll do the same, yeah.” He agrees, his voice starting to quake again. Shoko's glad she's not the only one feeling emotionally off-balanced by this whole exchange.

She draws him into her arms again, the lump back in her throat. He buries her head against his. Shoko politely ignores when the fabric of her t-shirt dampens. She had spiked his sweater earlier, she supposes it's only fair.

“I missed your laugh.” He mumbles into her shoulder.

One of her hands runs through his hair, twirling strands of it around her fingers. “Did you miss anything else?”

“Everything.” He says, and drags him down with her, arms wrapping around her middle. Shoko laughs again, letting her head hit the pillow. It's the most he's made her laugh in months.

They lay atop her sheets together, held in each other's arms. Satoru's face is comfortably pressed into her collarbone, smiling as she plays with his hair.

“Is there a way to make it up to you, for the throat fucking thing?” He asks, gazing up at her. There's something soft in his gaze. She thinks it's the same way Suguru's looked at her, before.

“Stay.” She says. It's all she's wanted him to do from the start.

“Okay, okay.” He promises for a second time. “I can stay.”

“Do you mean it this time?” She tries not to let her voice wobble when she asks this. She's pretty sure she fails.

“I do.” He mumbles, kissing her hair. Shoko closes her eyes. She thinks, this time, she really believes him. “I do.”

————————

They attempt to be intimate in the way they were before.

Key word being attempt.

A lazy make out session on the couch becomes heated, and they don't even bother going to the bedroom. Suguru shouldn't be home for a few hours, so it's fine. And if he does walk in, he is more than welcome to join in.

Currently, Satoru is alternating between kissing her breathless and chewing the shit out of her neck. They're both naked. She doesn't know when their clothes were flung off or where, but Satoru's mouthing at her in the way she likes so Shoko doesn't care. They'll find them later.

She slips her hand around him, teasing his rim with two of her fingers as they kiss. Satoru sucks in a surprised breath, pulling back and breaking it.

“What? I've heard Suguru fuck you before.” She says, meeting the look in his eye. She places her lips under his jaw, sucking the skin into her mouth.

He shivers. “You have?”

“You're not exactly quiet.” She mumbles around a mouthful of him, determined to give him a hickey of her own. He's left so many visible ones since he came back. She figures it's time to get a little revenge, now that he's letting her.

“I heard you two, once.” He gives his ass a squeeze, making sure his fingers leave indents in the flesh. “He fucks you real good, doesn't he?”

“Mmm, yeah he does.” Shoko moves back, feeling that he's been sufficiently bruised. Have fun explaining that to the students tomorrow morning, asshole.

He rumbles, his eyes gleaming with that boyish competitiveness Suguru always inspires in him. “Better than me?”

“We'll have to see.” She grins, letting him kiss stupid her again.

They only stop making out when she starts grinding against him, heat pooling in her stomach. His cock rests against her stomach, hard and spurring her own. Wetness pools between her thighs, and that familiar desire is back again.

“We need a safe word if we're gonna keep doing this.” Satoru says, sitting back on his legs and (sadly) taking his dick with him.

“Yeah, probably.” She sighs. He's right. She hates when he's right.

Honestly, Shoko just wants his dick in her. Realistically, this wouldn't be a good idea. There have definitely been lots of yellows in the past few months, maybe a bit of reds. They've just started repairing themselves. Neither of them want to risk ruining that progress so soon.

They take it slow, slower than they have in months. Satoru presses her into the couch, her head resting on the arm of it. He starts by sucking at her chest, popping a tit into his mouth, before working his way down her stomach. Shoko fists her hands in his hair, guiding him to where she wants him most.

They don't get very far with this.

It's not that she wants to stop, she doesn't. She just….isn't sure this is what she wants to be doing. She can feel Satoru falling into old habits, grabbing her roughly. She can feel herself falling back into them when she grabs back.

He's not soft like he used to be. She isn't sure how to smooth his edges out and she wants to be but she's not.

“Yellow.” Shoko says, when his fingers dig into her waist too hard to be good. She never liked half the bruises he gave her, even if they did look sexy as hell.

He pulls back immediately, and they reposition to try something else.

Satoru's the one who calls out yellow next. He was never a fan of when she came on fast like that, skipping all the kissing and fondling and going straight to riding him, instead.

There were a lot of preferences, a lot of boundaries, they'd bulldozed past in the last half a year. It's going to take more than two attempts to fix.

Shoko sighs, and slides off him. Hopefully a bit of oral will fix this.

Her sucking his dick is off the table, so Satoru gets on the floor and places his head between her thighs. Shoko trembles with anticipation, her legs hooked over his shoulders.

He presses kisses into her skin, delicate. They trail upwards slowly, inching closer and closer to her entrance. Shoko doesn't tug his hair, or make as many noises as she normally would. It's…hard to feel excited, after two unsuccessful attempts in a row.Satoru finally reaches her pussy, and it goes about the same.

He laps at her once, twice, before pulling back. He starts to dive in again, and then pulls back, unsure. This isn't working, either.

“Yellow.” She says again, right as Satoru opens his mouth to do the same.

(She thinks they've forgotten how to be gentle with each other. Hopefully, they'll be able to learn again.)

“This isn't working.” She huffs, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Maybe we just need to give it time.” Satoru stands from the floor with a frown, rejoining her on the couch.

“I don't want time, I wanna be fucked.” Shoko practically whines. She's turned on and wet and empty. She wants something inside her, filling her up and doing something about that. Quickly.

“That's what we have Suguru for, remember?” Satoru hums. He's keeping composed, but she can tell he's aching for some action too. There's that needy look in his eyes, buried under the displeasure. Plus, he's leaking pre-cum all over the couch cushion. He's probably hard enough for it to hurt.

(She almost wants to reach over and start jerking him off, against her better judgement. But she doesn't, because she doubts doing so would get anything in her faster. It'd probably do the opposite.)

“And sex toys.” Shoko adds, because she really doesn't feel like waiting for Suguru to get home and get in the mood. Not that it's terribly hard for her to get him in the mood, but still. She's impatient and riled up and owns a dildo, why not use it?

“Suguru and sex toys.” He agrees. Then, his eyes light up with something. An idea.

“We could use a toy, if you want?” Satoru suggests, his expression twisted into something hopeful. Shoko considers this carefully.

It might get them past this rough patch, or it could set them back even further. They can't even get inside each other without calling out yellow; she's struggling to see how a toy would help. She isn't sure what would push either of them to red, and she isn't eager to find out.

But if it's good, it's good. Great, even. It gets them somewhat past this hurdle and Satoru can go back to fucking her senseless. But if it's not good…

The two of them have never used toys before. She's never used a toy with Suguru, either. She wants their first time incorporating them into sex to be good, not….whatever this is.

She shakes her head. “I don't wanna do it like this. You can watch though, if that helps you get off.”

“Okay.” Satoru sounds a little breathless when he agrees. “That works.”

She's never opened her toy box faster.

Shoko manages to make herself come with one of those fancy textured dildos she bought a few years back. It cost her a pretty penny, but it was very worth it. She babbles both the boys' names as she rides it, the ridges brushing against all the right places. She pulls it out of herself reluctantly, frowning at the empty feeling afterwards.

Satoru comes to with a whine not long after, spilling all over the couch cushions. (Eugh, one of them's gonna have to clean that before Suguru gets home. Gross.) She watches, a familiar spark under her skin. It's hot, watching him get off to her. She loves being under him, don't get her wrong, but the near adrenaline rush she gets from this isn't quite the same. The way his face scrunches up when he orgasms is cute, too.

Mmm, Shoko is so dominating him when they get their sex life back to normal. Just like the good ole’ days.

He flops over her, exhausted, his face hiding in the crook of her neck. Shoko laughs.

“We gotta clean up, ya know." She mumbles. She can feel her own fluids coating her thighs, sticky and wet. The dildo rests on the coffee table, similarly coated with them. Plus, there's the mess Satoru just made under himself.

“Five more minutes.” He hums, sounding sleepy. Shoko agrees with a kiss to the top of his head.

Five more minutes does sound nice.

————————

Slowly but surely, things start to feel normal again.

Satoru makes her breakfast everyday, now accompanied with a good morning and shy kiss to her forehead. Shoko calls him when she's buying cheap dinners for them, asking what he wants instead of simply guessing and making him deal. They interact at work; he bothers her in her office again and the rest of their peers visibly relax at the return of their old banter. They actually cuddle during movie nights instead of using Suguru as a wall between them.

Not perfect, because there's still moments where they'll stumble around each other awkwardly, or let old bitterness seep into their tones. But better.

Everything is almost back to normal, like they were before. Except for their sex life. That's going to need a little more time.

Her and Satoru are on an abstinence streak for the next little while, at least until their relationship becomes steadier. All three of them fear that they'd simply slip back into bad habits if they aren't given time. They almost did the other day. Suguru had agreed to reel them in if needed, when they asked. Shoko thinks he's more concerned about the whole thing than both of them are, and he's not even having the upsetting sex.

When the two of them inevitably get a bit too handsy on the couch, his threesome fantasy gets fulfilled.

(It was also Satoru and Shoko's fantasy as well, they just didn't realize it yet.)

“I wasn't lying when I said he's better at eating pussy.” She says, Suguru guiding her panties off her hips. They'd practically stumbled into the bedroom, Suguru guiding her and Satoru by the hand as they kissed messily, absorbed in each other. Even with that, it was a wonder they didn't run into the wall on their way here.

“Am I really that bad?” Satoru frowns beside her, his chin resting on her shoulder. Partly so he can watch their boyfriend undress her, and partly so he can give her a hickey or two.

“Eh.” Shoko makes a so-so motion, which means that he's not bad but she's definitely had better.

“It's probably from all the curses.” Suguru pipes in, watching as Shoko reaches around and unclasps her bra. His eyes zero in on her tits almost immediately, anticipation buzzing under his skin.

Satoru mumbles, thoughtful. “He's pretty good at sucking dick, too.”

“Is he now?” She hums, vaguely interested. “I might have to test that out.”

“On what?” Satoru snorts.

She smirks. Neither of them know about this, not yet. “My strap.”

“You have a strap?” Suguru stops undressing her to gape, one hand halfway in her pants and the other cupping her tit. (Shoko frowns a little. She gets the information was shocking, but he didn't have to stop rubbing her nipple over it.)

“I fuck girls.” She offers as explanation. Well, she did fuck girls, before the world ended. But if these two ever die again she'll be more than happy to go back to it.

“All this time and you could've been strapping me?” Satoru hisses. He sounds very disappointed.

“We can try it next time, if you want.” She pats his cheek. Honestly she doesn't know why she hasn't strapped him before. She didn't strap Suguru because didn't own a strap when they were fucking regularly, but she's had since before her and Satoru became steady. The thought must've never crossed her mind, she supposes.

Shoko doesn't say this out loud, though, because Satoru will interpret it as his dick game being so amazing she forgot about the strap entirely. (And it is good, but not that good. No man is good enough to make her forget about her strap-on.)

“Please.” He practically begs.

She turns to their other boyfriend, curious. “Suguru?”

“If you two want to.” He hums, rolling his thumb over her nipple. He doesn't sound too enthusiastic about the idea.

Shoko runs her nails along the edge of his jaw, smirking again. “What? You don't wanna choke on my pretty pink cock?”

(“Of course it's pink.” Satoru mumbles to himself. Shoko pretends she didn't hear that.)

Suguru doesn't like bottoming much. He'd probably enjoy watching her strap Satoru, but not much else. Shoko's still going to try and get him to blow her, at the very least.

He kisses her instead of replying, teeth scraping at her bottom lip. Shoko mewls around his tongue, and tries to give as good as she's getting.

“I thought you were getting fucked tonight.” He mumbles into her lips, tugging impatiently at her sweatpants.

“Okay, okay.” She breathes, putting all talk of the strap to the back of her mind. That's for another day. (It might just be the key to her and Satoru's sex hang ups, actually. She resolves to try it next time they get handsy; Suguru supervising, of course.)

The three of them shove what remains of their clothing off, and they go there.

Suguru crouches next to the bed, his head between her thighs. Satoru holds her waist in his hands, tracing her stretch marks.

“Show him how it's done?” She looks down, trying not to wiggle too much. She can feel his breath against her folds. It's tantalizing.

“Gladly.” He purrs, and dives in.

Suguru laps at her folds eagerly, flicking his tongue against her walls. He groans into her, his hands grabbing at her hips for better purchase. Shoko grinds against his face, letting soft moans fall from her lips.

Behind them Satoru watches, transfixed, as Suguru eats her out like a starving man. Shoko, blessed out of mind, can only hope he's taking notes right now.

Just as she's about to finish, he pulls back.

“Suguru.” She whines, her hips stuttering. She was so close.

“You only get to come on my cock, remember?” He coos, grabbing for Satoru behind her. Shoko whines, but scoots out of the way regardless.

Curiosity wins out over lust, and she watches as he drags Satoru to the edge of the bed and starts sucking him off.

Suguru takes him in his mouth easily, the whole thing fitting in his just a few thrusts. Impressive. He doesn't even gag when Satoru's tip hits the back of his throat, taking it like a champ.

(She is definitely testing that on her strap.)

Shoko watches, mesmerized, as he bobs up and down on it, his tongue swirling up and down the length. Satoru throws his head back in a moan, his hands gripping at Suguru's hair; guiding his head as he sucks.

She slips her fingers into her folds as she watches, rubbing herself lazily. Satoru's moans go straight to her core, lighting a fire in her belly. So does the way Suguru's throat bobs around him. Damn, she wishes they let her watch this sooner. It's quite the show.

Unlike with her, he lets him finish.

Satoru comes with a shout, his hands fisting into the sheets as he spills down Suguru's throat. He swallows it easily. He pulls off his cock with a pleased hum, his lips wet with Satoru's finish. Satoru groans one last time, and flops backwards onto the mattress, his thighs trembling.

Suguru calls back up on the bed and captures Shoko's mouth in his, her erection pressing into her thigh. She groans into the kiss, tasting both of them on his tongue.

They pull back and Satoru is already rummaging in the night stand drawer. He turns back to them when he finds what he's looking for, a small silver package held between his fingers.

“No condom.” She says. Satoru drops the packet with far too much enthusiasm for someone who isn't even going in her.

Suguru laughs softly, and starts positioning them the way he wants.

Satoru is leaned back against the pillows, Shoko snug between his legs. She's halfway in his lap again and her head rests on his chest. His hands find her breasts as soon as she settles against him, squeezing them appreciatively.

Shoko snorts, amused. She supposes this is how he'll be practicing, since they're on an abstinence streak and Suguru refuses to let anything go in his ass.

Suguru sits on his knees in front of them, pre-cum already leaking from his tip. Shoko makes eye contact with him and spreads her legs, impatient. She's been wet for the past ten minutes. She would like to do something about it.

She can feel Satoru getting hard again from where they're pressed together, his dick twitching against the small of her back. She wishes it were pressed against her ass, instead.

His hands find her hips, lifting her off the bed slightly; making it easier for Suguru to line himself up.

“Color?” He mumbles, hovering over her entrance. Shoko has half a mind to ignore him and snap her hips up to meet his cock in the middle. She needs him so badly she's throbbing.

“Green. Very bright and enthusiastic green.” Shoko mutters back, code for shut up and stick it in me already.

Suguru huffs, amused, and obliges her request.

He slides in slowly, much slower than he's gone the last few times. It seems he wants to savor their first threesome together, gliding inch by inch in. Shoko, so horny she thinks she's going to combust, wiggles impatiently under him.

He finally, finally bottoms out, a groan leaving his lips. She moans as well, already fighting the urge to buck up into him. If she does that, he won't give her what she wants.

He starts thrusting in and out slowly, his gaze fixed on where their bodies join and his cock disappears into her. Shoko grips at the bedsheets under her hands, and tries not to beg just yet.

“Doing so good.” Satoru tells her, his lips pressed softly to her temple. “You're doing so good for us.”

Shoko whimpers, Suguru bottoming out again. That's all he's doing, bottoming out at a snail's pace, she wants more.

“Satoru.” She moans, her resolve cracking.

“Big, isn't he? Feels real good, huh?” One of his hands squeezes at her breast, rolling a nipple between two fingers. She pants at the extra stimulation, Suguru choosing that moment to slide himself out again.

He pushes himself in again, a little faster this time, and she bucks up into it, chasing the friction like a woman starved.

“Ah, ah, ah.” Suguru purrs, his breath falling over her face. “You know that's not how this works.”

He guides Satoru's hands down to her hips, holding her firmly in place. Shoko tries to squirm again and whines, frustrated, when she can't.

They kiss over her shoulder, fast and messy. Suguru is painfully still inside her. Satoru twitches against her back, his pre starting to dribble down. He's so close from just watching Suguru tease her. It almost makes her jealous.

“Please.” She begs, the boys breaking away from each other with a gasp. Satoru moans, and bites down on her neck.

“Only because you've been so patient.” Suguru says, then slams into her. Shoko cries out, satisfaction jolting down her spine. He thrusts into her so fast the bed creaks, the headboard slamming against the wall.

“She's such a slut, isn't she Suguru?” Satoru says, mouthing at her neck. Shoko's head rests on his shoulder, an endlessly stream of moans spilling past her lips.

Suguru purrs in agreement. “Such a good little cock sleeve.”

“So desperate.” Satoru mumbles, nipping at her ear. “You want Suguru to come in you, yeah? Wanna be filled?”

Shoko whines again, her hips moving to meet Suguru's in the middle. She does want that, she wants it so bad it burns.

She comes to with a shout not long after, her legs trembling from where they're wrapped around him. Suguru fucks her through it and Satoru moans, his own release coating her back. Shoko, when they originally lined themselves up, thought that it would feel gross when he came. And it does, to an extent. It's also hot as fuck. She'd let him do it again, embarrassingly.

Suguru thrusts into her one final time, his cock pulsing around her walls. He comes without warning, just a groan in her ear and the wild thrust of his hips as he mindlessly fucks her through this orgasm, too. Shoko moans herself, warmth spreading inside her as he fills her.

(Behind them, she thinks Satoru comes for a third time, his breath heavy and ragged against her shoulder. She doesn't even know when he got hard again.)

He pulls out of her with a wet sound, sitting back on the bed. Shoko slumps backwards, exhausted. She rests all her weight against Satoru, chest heaving as she comes down from her high.

She lets her eyes slip shut, gross and sweaty and with three people's fluids coating her. She can't wait to do this again, when she and Satoru start feeling more like themselves in bed.

Shoko, dazed and very, very satisfied, allows herself to be carried into the bathroom. Suguru's holding her, muttering his usual praises into her ear. She wraps her arms around his neck lazily, warmth spreading in her chest at the words. She did do good for them, didn't she?

Satoru draws the bath, humming to himself as he does. It's an old song, one the three of them used to play on repeat back in high-school from her shitty MP3 player. Shoko, her face hidden in Suguru's chest, smiles fondly at the melody.

She only opens her eyes when she's being placed in the water, watching as the boys slip in with her.

Satoru sits behind her in the tub, his face smushed against her neck. Suguru sits opposite them, leaning forward a little to avoid his back pressing into the faucet.

“You're hogging her.” He complains, like they're fifteen again and still figuring out how they all slot together. Which, in a way, they kind of are. Shoko thinks it's cute.

(If she were to open her eyes, she'd be greeted with the sight of him pouting.)

“You were just inside her.” Satoru shoots back, his grip around her midriff tightening. Shoko almost forgot how clingy he gets after sex.

“Damn right he was.” She mumbles, lazily pressing her lips to his temple. She hears Suguru huffing from across the tub, overdramatic.

Scratch that, she forgot how clingy both of them got after sex. Shoko doesn't really want them fighting over her during their relaxing bath, either.

“C'mere.” She makes grabby hands at him. Her boyfriend gets the message.

Suguru scoots as close as he can without sitting on their legs. Once he's close enough Shoko wiggles out of Satoru's hold (with minimal complaint from the big baby behind her) and lets her head fall forward onto his shoulder.

“There.” She mumbles. She's still in Satoru's lap in this position, and Suguru has her head on his shoulder. They both have her now. “Does this work?”

It's also surprisingly comfortable. Shoko's pretty sure she could fall asleep like this.

Suguru laughs. “Yeah, it does.” A kiss is placed into her hair and she hums, content for the first time in a long time.

————————

‘Hime told her not to do it. Shoko's glad she didn't listen.

Satoru has started to share her bed with them. He'll crawl under the sheets with them after a long day, clinging onto one of them in his sleep. Sometimes he'll even nap in here while Shoko scrolls mindlessly through her phone or types away at work related bullshit on her laptop, his head resting peacefully in her lap.

She sleeps between the two of them almost every night now, his face buried in her neck and Suguru's chin resting atop her head. Their legs lay a tangled mess under the sheets, Shoko unable to tell where one of them ends and the other begins.

Like when they were sixteen and had figured themselves out.

Shoko thinks, recently, this is the most well rested she's been in years.

Slowly but surely, her room is becoming their room and their room is becoming the spare bedroom. Their bathroom is becoming the bathroom down the hall.

The apartment is theirs, not Suguru's and Satoru's or Shoko's and Suguru's. Theirs, all three of them.

(In the back of her mind, Shoko thinks she's finally home again.)

Satoru and her come back to each other, aching but ready to mend, and everything else slots itself back into place.

“I love you.”

Satoru tells them both one morning. He's in the middle of cooking breakfast, pans already on the stove and a stupid kiss the cook apron tied around his waist.

Shoko and Suguru have just returned from their morning smoke. Her favorite coffee has been set to brew. Satoru is making her eggs the way she likes them and making something light for Suguru's stomach. He has curses to consume today, so he'll need it. They're working on finding foods he can actually keep down, so he can both vomit less and have a healthy eating schedule. Shoko, who can't even cook instant mashed potatoes, has left that project confidently in Satoru's hands.

“Love you, too.” Suguru replies, stealing a quick kiss from his lips. Satoru grins, probably happy his dumb apron worked. He turns to Shoko next, placing another kiss on her cheek. She smiles, but doesn't say it back.

She still doesn't think she can say I love you outloud, but that's fine. She says it in other ways. She says it in the way she leans against Suguru, still sleepy, as they eat and the way she gives Satoru a kiss goodbye before he goes, dragging him down so she can press her lips to his temple. He laughs, fond, and says he'll see the both of them tonight. She says it in the way she watches him go and when she brings them both lunch later that day, even if it did take her twenty minutes to track them both down.

Satoru's not like Suguru, he can't understand every thought she can't voice. But he understands this one, and that's enough. A month ago, it was more than she ever could've hoped for.

Satoru promises to stay. This time, he keeps it. Shoko can't say I love you, outloud, but he still hears her. And Suguru is here, for the first time in over a decade, he's here. These are the important parts.

(She brought them back to life. That had said enough.

Revival does mean I love you, after all.)

#day 6 #fanfiction #nsfw

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