Jason Todd is one of the most punk characters I’ve seen, who doesn’t look stereotypically punk. This man is anti-government and anti-establishment. He canonically is a protector and friend to sex workers, yet an enemy to the system that keeps them trapped. He is disdainful towards the uber wealthy, yet capable of showing empathy towards people of all stations.
I find the discourse of “Jason is just a big softie” vs “no, he’s a brute” to be so telling. He’s both AND he’s neither. The idea that Jason is a softie comes from people looking down on his extreme empathy towards women and children. The idea that he’s a brute is usually a classist argument because he grew up in Crime Alley.
In truth, Jason is just punk. He cares about PEOPLE, and is willing to show both kindness and harshness to build the world he wants to see.
He has the old money leather wallet phone case and I never knew it would suit his old soul ass so much. I should have known. He collects coins and probably takes his coffee black. He sets an alarm but wakes up naturally before it even rings. The disgruntled expression in his sleepwear groovy paired with that silk pajama set just —
Y’all. We make fun of Lilia for being the old soul but Azul is the ACTUAL out-of-touch grandpa. He scrolls through that phone using his pointer finger and adjusts his glasses when reading through an article. I just know it
I just keep toying around with the concept of a yandere! Dr Ratio, who's so up his high horse that he can't comprehend why he's so attracted to a simpleton such as yourself. He singles you out and makes you uncomfortable on purpose but gets so pressed when you're talking to someone else.
... It's insulting.
Don't listen to those buffoons. If you have problems, come to him. Just ignore the grip of his hand and unnerving stare.
For the Valko requests, I would love to see some cute family fluff between MC, Valko, his cousins, grandma, and his sister (I think he had a sister in his lore, correct me if I am wrong), because I want to see how MC would get along with Valko's family. 🐺
𝐀 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐀𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄
synopsis: when valko brings you home for the first time, he warns you about everything: his grandmother’s food, his sister’s stare, his cousin’s stories, the family jokes that always cut too close. he forgets to warn you that love in his house is not gentle or quiet, but loud, practical, mercilessly observant, and served warm at the kitchen table.
cw/tw: valko x reader. very soft domestic fluff. light family teasing.
read here: ao3 ⋅ tumblr
Valko lost his nerve three steps from the door.
It was a small death, but you saw it happen; the brave lift of his chin, the twitch in his jaw, the small, tragic collapse of his entire face when a crash came from inside the house.
His hand tightened around yours.
“Dobro,” he said.
Another crash.
From inside, and older woman called, “If that's my good plate, I will put someone in the ground before supper.”
Valko closed his eyes. You turned toward him.
He opened one eyes. “She loves plates.”
“More than people?”
“Depends on the people.”
You laughed before you could stop yourself, and relief moved through him all at once, softening his shoulders, loosening the frightened line of his mouth. He'd been nervous all morning. Badly nervous. Valko, who could grin with blood on his teeth and make danger look like a door he'd simply forgotten to knock on, had spent the whole walk here giving you warnings no sane person could have prepared for.
Do not let Mika read your palm. He makes things up and then believes them.
Do not compliment Baba's curtains unless you want curtains.
Do not say you're full.
And, most importantly, if anyone mentions the soup incident, Valko had said, grave as a condemned man, they're lying.
You had asked what the soup incident was.
He had started to walk faster.
Now he stood before the old wooden door with your fingers caught in his, trying to look calm and producing, somehow, the exact expression of a wolf about to be bathed.
“Valko,” you said softly.
“Yes?”
“You're shaking.”
“I'm not shaking.”
“You are.”
“I’m containing myself.”
“From what?”
“Hereditary embarrassment.”
The door flew open.
A girl about his age stood on the other side, dark-eyed and grinning, with flour on her cheek and murder in her posture. She took one look at Valko’s hand around yours, then lifted her gaze to his face with the slow delight of someone finding a knife exactly where she had hoped one would be.
A slow smile cut across her face.
“Oh,” she smirked. “So this is why you changed your shirt twice.”
Valko made a sound. Small, wounded, entirely unlike a wolf.
“I changed once.”
“You changed twice. The first shirt was the blue one. The second was the one that made you look like you were going to court. This...This is the third.”
His ears went red.
The woman held out her hand to you. “Milena. His sister.”
“Unfortunately,” Valko added.
“Fortunately. Without me, you'd still think soap is optional in winter.”
“It isn't optional.”
“Because of me.”
You took Milena's hand. Her grip was warm, firm, and full of judgement she hadn't yet decided to use.
Behind her, the house breathed out heat. Bread, onions, some in old wood, something sweet cooling on a counter. There were voices everywhere, layered and crossing. One person laughing while another complained, a child humming under a table, chairs scraping, a kettle whistling like a bird losing patience.
Milena stepped aside. “Come in before Baba starts saying we were raised by wolves.”
Valko muttered, “We were.”
She looked at him. “And still, some of us learned manners.”
You crossed the threshold. The house was smaller than the noise made it seem, or maybe the noise had simply learned to fill every corner. Framed photographs climbed the walls in crooked rows. Herbs hung drying above the kitchen window. Nothing matched, and yet everything looked touched, mended, argued over... kept.
Valko leaned close as he helped you out of your coat.
“Last chance,” he whispered. “We can run.”
You looked past him to where an old woman stood near the stove, hands folded over her apron, watching you with bright, wolfish eyes.
“Too late,” you whispered back. “I think she heard you.”
“I hear everything,” the old woman said.
Valko went still.
Milena smiled into her shoulder.
The old woman crossed the kitchen with the slow authority of someone who had ruled this house before any of them had teeth. She was small, broad in the shoulders, silver-haired, with flour on her wrist and no softness wasted in her face. The softness, you realised, was elsewhere. In the bread covered by a towel, in the chair pulled out before you reached it, in the way Valko lowered his head without being asked when she came close.
“Baba,” he said, and for the first time that day, his voice lost its jokes.
She, of course, ignored him.
Instead, she took your face between both hands.
Her palms smelled of rosemary, yeast, and soap. Her thumbs rested beneath your cheekbones, and for one strange second the whole house seemed to lean closer. The cousins, the kettle, the old boards, even Valko, holding his breath beside you.
“So,” Baba Vesna said. “You are the reason he forgets to eat.”
“I eat,” Valko protested.
Teta Marika appeared by the stove, wooden spoon in hand. “You came here last week, opened the pantry, stared at a sack of potatoes for six minutes, then said, ‘I wonder what she’s doing.’”
“That was taken out of context.”
“What was the context?” you asked, because love had made you brave and terrible.
Valko looked betrayed. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
A boy leaning backwards on his chair nearly lost balance from laughing, another cousin caught the chair by its back without looking up from peeling an apple.
Baba Vesna patted your cheek once and released you. “Sit, dušo. Eat something before my family embarrass me properly.”
Valko gave a strangled laugh. “Before?”
No one listened to him.
You were placed at the long wooden table as if the decision had been made before you arrived. A bowl appeared, then bread, then butter, then a small plate of pickled vegetables. Teta Marika, Valko's aunt, kissed the air beside your cheeks and took the small gift you had brought. Mika announced that he already knew your favourite colour from Valko’s face. Luka told him that was the stupidest sentence ever spoken in the kitchen, which Mika accepted as praise. The little one beneath the table emerged, solemn and bread-dusted, and introduced himself as Niko.
“Are you going to marry him?” Niko asked.
Valko walked directly into the side of a chair.
The whole kitchen paused. You pressed your lips together.
Milena leaned against the doorway, radiant with cruelty. “Careful, Niko. Val only has two knees.”
“Niko,” Teta Marika turned from the stove, wooden spoon in hand. “We ask guests if they want juice first.”
Niko nodded, absorbing this etiquette with grave importance. “Do you want juice before you marry him?”
Valko covered his face with both hands. You bit down on your smile so hard it almost hurt. This wasn't what you had expected.
Some foolish, frightened part of you had imagined a den in the old sense. Teeth, watchful eyes, a family arranged around blood and law, waiting to decide whether your bones could be allowed near theirs. Valko had never spoken of them casually. Whenever he said home, something tender and embarrassed moved through him, as though the word itself had fingers and knew exactly where to touch.
Now you sat beneath a crooked lamp while his grandmother tore bread with her hands and put the first piece on your plate.
“Eat,” Baba Vesna said.
You obeyed.
The bread was warm enough to steam between your fingers. The crust cracked softly, butter melted into it in golden lines. Across the table, Valko watched you take the first bite as if your mouth held judgment from heaven.
You chewed. Swallowed.
“It’s delicious.”
Baba Vesna clicked her tongue. “Of course it is wonderful. I made it.”
Mika leaned towards you. “He talked about you after the market yesterday.”
Valko’s hand hit the table. “No.”
“Yes, you did” Luka said sticking his tongue out.
“No.”
“You said, and I quote, 'she chooses fruit with such care'.”
The table went quiet for half a breath, your hand stilled around the bread. Valko looked at Luka as if betrayal had entered the room wearing his cousin’s face.
“That was private.”
“You said it in the kitchen.”
“That makes it private.”
Milena sat across from you and rested her chin in her hand. “He also said you have kind hands.”
Valko’s mouth opened, nothing came out. Your heart did something foolish inside your chest.
The teasing had worked him bright and flustered, but beneath it, something softer trembled. He was embarrassed, yes. Horribly, so. Beautifully, so. Yet the thing underneath was more dangerous than shame. This was exposure. A curtain pulled open in a room he had spent so long keeping dim.
He had spoken of you here.
At this table. In this warm, loud house. To these people who teased him because they knew what he looked like with no armour on. He had brought you home long before he ever brought your body through the door.
Baba Vesna filled your bowl with soup.
“He was always like this,” she said.
“Baba, please.”
“He was a strange child,” she said.
Valko groaned. “Please.”
“A sweet child,” Teta Marika corrected.
“A dramatic child,” Luka said.
“A biting child,” Milena added.
Valko pointed at her. “You bit first.”
“You looked biteable.”
“You see what I mean?” Valko turned to you with helpless outrage. “This is what I survived.”
There was love in it, the kind that had been cooked too long and reduced into something strong enough to stain. They spoke to him as if they had known every version of him and chosen, again and again, to keep putting food in front of whichever one came home.
You looked at him while he argued with Mika about whether a stolen spoon counted as a childhood trauma.
He caught you looking. For a moment, the noise thinned.
There he was.
Valko with his hair refusing every law of decency. Valko trying so hard to survive his own family and failing beautifully. His eyes met yours with a nervous brightness that made you want to reach across the table and be cruel to every fear that had ever found him.
Then Niko pointed his spoon at you.
“Are you keeping him?”
The kitchen stopped.
Valko made a tiny sound into his bowl.
Milena closed her eyes as if praying for patience and finding none. “Niko.”
“What? Mika said maybe she is keeping him.”
His gaze dropped to the table, to the bread by his hand, to the small old cuts in the wood. The blush still clung to him, but it had changed into something quieter now. Hope, perhaps. Or terror wearing hope’s coat.
You could have laughed. Everyone would have let you. It would have been easy to throw the question back into the room like a toy and watch them tear it apart.
Instead, beneath the table, you found Valko’s hand.
His fingers closed around yours at once.
“I’d like to,” you said.
The house held itself still for half a breath.
Then Baba Vesna nodded, once, as if some old contract had been signed in soup and honey.
“Good,” she said. “He is difficult, but warm.”
Valko bowed his head.
His shoulders shook.
At first you thought he was upset. Then you realised he was laughing, quietly, helplessly, with one hand over his mouth and the other holding yours under the table like he meant to keep it there until winter.
Mika groaned. “Ah, look at him. Finished. Completely finished.”
Milena reached for the pickles. “Good. He needed finishing.”
Teta Marika smiled into her tea. “Eat more, zlato. You will need strength.”
“For Valko?” you asked.
“For all of us.”
Dinner became less a meal than a storm with chairs.
Bowls moved, hands reached, stories climbed over one another and died unfinished because someone remembered a better accusation. Luka asked you practical questions in a calm voice: where you liked to walk, whether Valko had shown you the old river path, whether he still pretended not to like sweet things. Mika tried to read your palm and declared that you were fated to own a troublesome dog.
“That's just Valko,” Milena said.
“I am not a dog.”
“True,” Luka said. “Dogs listen.”
Valko began quietly placing the best pieces of food on your plate.
A soft carrot, the inside of the bread, a dumpling he pretended to move away from himself and somehow abandoned beside your spoon. He was not subtle. He had never been subtle. He was a wolf trying to hide a whole deer behind a napkin.
You noticed on the fourth offering.
His family noticed on the first.
Baba Vesna said nothing until Valko tried to give you the last honey cake. Then she leaned back in her chair and looked at him over her tea.
“Ah,” she said.
Valko froze.
It was one syllable. It landed like a bell.
“What?” he said.
“No, no.” She waved him off. “Continue. Starve for romance. Very noble.”
Mika threw his head back.
You picked up the honey cake before Valko could die at the table and broke it in two, placing half on his plate. “There,” you said. “No starving.”
He looked at the cake.
Then he looked at you.
His expression opened in a way that made the room, somehow, feel too small for your heart. It opened with that unguarded, bewildered softness he sometimes gave you when kindness arrived before he had prepared himself to receive it.
Milena saw it.
Her teasing quieted.
For a moment, she only watched him with something old and protective in her face.
Then she stood. “Come help me with plates.”
Valko blinked. “Me?”
“Her.” Milena pointed at you.
Valko frowned. “Why?”
“Because I said so.”
“That's not a reason.”
“It has worked on you for years.”
You rose before he could protest again. Milena took two plates from the table and handed you none of them, which told you at once that this had nothing to do with helping.
She led you down a narrow hallway lined with photographs.
Behind you, Valko’s voice rose. “Do not interrogate her.”
The hallway smelled faintly of beeswax and dried herbs. The noise of the kitchen softened behind you, still there, still golden, but now wrapped in walls. Milena stopped by a window overlooking the yard and leaned her hip against the sill.
For the first time all evening, she let the smile leave her face.
“He likes you,” she said.
You smiled gently. “I got that impression.”
“No.” Her eyes flicked towards the kitchen. “He likes people easily. He likes old men who tell bad stories, stray cats that scratch him, children who throw rocks at windows because they want attention. Valko is built stupid that way.”
A laugh escaped you.
Milena folded her arms.
“He brings things home,” she continued. “Broken things, angry things. Things he thinks no one else will be gentle with.” Her gaze moved towards the kitchen, where Valko’s voice lifted in protest. “He does not bring people home.”
Your throat tightened.
From the kitchen, Valko shouted, “It wasn't soup. It was stew.”
Mika shouted back, “Stew cannot make a grown man cry.”
“I was overwhelmed by flavour.”
Milena closed her eyes for one second. “Bože, give me strength.”
You laughed softly.
She looked at you again, sharper now.
“He was nervous all week,” she said. “Changed his shirt three times. Asked me if the house smelled too much like onions. Asked Luka if his laugh was strange. Asked Baba if she could please not tell the story about the goat.”
“The goat?”
“Later.” A faint smile touched her mouth. “Maybe never.”
You glanced back towards the kitchen.
He had asked if his laugh was strange.
Something in you ached with such tenderness that it almost felt like anger.
You looked down.
“He didn’t need to worry,”
“He is clumsy with precious things,” she said. “Because he thinks his hands are only good for breaking them, even when he is careful. Especially then.”
“So be kind,” she said. “Or be cruel quickly. He will survive either, but I prefer to know which one I’m dealing with.”
There it was.
The knife under the table. The love with its teeth intact. You didn't resent her for it, you thought, strangely, that you liked her more for it.
“I’m not here to hurt him,”
“Most people aren’t, at first.”
“Milena.”
Milena’s gaze narrowed.
“I don’t know what I’m doing with him,” you admitted.
“With any of this,” you continued. “He makes everything feel…” You searched for the word and hated every pretty one that came. Fated. Wild. Tender. All too polished for the mess he made of your heart. “He makes everything feel like I’ve been walking past a door my whole life, and he is the idiot who opened it with his shoulder.”
Milena stared at you.
Then she laughed once, sharp and startled.
“Oh,” she said. “You’re gone too.”
You looked down, caught.
She seemed satisfied. “Good.”
“Is that approval?”
“That is me deciding not to be difficult.”
“You were being difficult?”
“Dušo,” she said, and now her smile had teeth in it, “I was being polite.”
When you returned to the kitchen, Valko was waiting near the doorway as if he had tried to remain seated and failed.
His eyes moved from you to Milena. “What did you say to her?”
Milena walked past him. “That you were adopted.”
“I’m not.”
“Emotionally, you're a wet dog we found in the rain.”
He watched her go, wounded on principle, then turned to you with genuine concern. “What did she actually say?”
You reached up and brushed flour from his sleeve. “That you’re warm.”
“That was Baba.”
“Family consensus.”
His mouth twitched. “You are enjoying this.”
“I am.”
“You were supposed to be intimidated.”
“By Mika?”
“By the bloodline. The history. The general atmosphere of teeth.”
“Mika told me my palm says I’ll own a dog.”
Valko sighed.
You reached up and plucked the dish towel from his shoulder. “You have flour on your sleeve.”
He looked down, surprised, as if his own body had been making decisions without him. Then he looked back at you, and the kitchen noise faded once more, though this time it was only the two of you making the world small.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
The question was casual enough for anyone else to miss the tremor underneath. You heard it. The naked, waiting part. You thought of his hand shaking outside the door. Baba Vesna taking your face between her palms, of bread steaming in your fingers, of honey cake divided in two, of Milena saying he doesn't bring people home.
“I’m all right,” you said. “Are you?”
Valko smiled too quickly. “I’m alive.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
His smile softened.
For once, he did not joke immediately. It cost him something. You could see it in the way his fingers flexed at his side, reaching for mischief and finding courage instead.
“I wanted them to like you,” he said. “I wanted you to like them.”
“I do”
“I wanted…” He stopped, then laughed under his breath. “I don’t know. Something stupid.”
He looked towards the kitchen, where his family had resumed their noise without mercy. Mika was accusing Luka of stealing the larger piece of cake. Baba Vesna had taken down a tin from the highest shelf, probably containing either biscuits or secrets.
“Valko, stop hiding her. I have photographs.”
Horror returned to his face with magnificent speed.
“No.”
“Yes,”
“No photographs.”
“Naked baby photos,” Mika added.
Valko went pale. “You do not have those.”
Teta Marika’s voice drifted after him, serene and deadly. “We have everything.”
He grabbed your hand. “We’re leaving.”
You let him pull you three steps before Baba Vesna appeared in the doorway holding a small album to her chest.
“Sit,” she said.
Valko sat.
It was remarkable how quickly a wolf could become a grandson.
For the next hour, they showed you the evidence of his life.
Valko missing two front teeth and glaring at the camera as though betrayed by dentistry. Valko asleep under the table with one hand buried in a dog’s fur. Valko at thirteen, all elbows and outrage, holding a fish half his size while crying because he had to put it back.
There was Valko covered in mud, Valko wearing a paper crown, Valko with Milena’s arm hooked around his neck while he pretended to hate her and leaned into her anyway. Valko standing beside Baba Vesna in the garden, holding a basket of tomatoes like he had been entrusted with the fate of nations.
Each photograph was another small door.
You had known him in pieces: the grin, the hunger, the awkward tenderness, the jokes he threw like branches over deep water. Here was the rest of him. Here was the child who had survived becoming himself because these hands had fed him, scolded him, dragged him upright, and remembered his softness when he tried to outgrow it.
At some point, while everyone argued over whether the goat incident happened before or after the soup incident, Valko bent close to you.
“You don’t have to keep looking,” he murmured.
You turned a page.
A tiny Valko stared up from the album, holding a wooden spoon like a sword.
“Yes,” you said. “I do.”
He stared at you.
Then, very briefly, he rested his forehead against your shoulder.
It lasted only a second. A shy, exhausted surrender. No one commented on it, though you knew every person in the room saw. That seemed to be another house rule. They would mock the wound, yes, but they protected the pulse.
Later, when the cups were cleared and the album returned to its shelf of holy embarrassments, you stepped outside for air.
The yard was cold, dark and soft around the edges. Herbs grew beneath the window, yhe old trees leaned towards the house as if listening. Behind you, the kitchen glowed gold, laughter pressing against the glass.
Valko followed after a moment, closing the door carefully behind him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
You looked at him. “For what?”'
“The interrogation. The photographs. Mika. The marriage question. The soup litigation.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Milena.”
“I like Milena.”
“That means she behaved.”
“She said she was being polite.”
He winced. “Then she liked you.”
You leaned back against the porch railing, and he stood in front of you with his hands in his pockets, rocking once on his heels like he wanted to come closer and had forgotten the law of his own body.
Through the window, you could see Baba Vesna pretending to wipe the table while watching you both with shameless interest. You lifted a hand and waved.
She waved back.
Valko turned, saw her, and groaned. “For the love of...Baba.”
“She loves you.”
“That's her usual excuse for crimes.”
“It’s a good one.”
He looked back at you, and the teasing left him slowly, piece by piece. Out here, with the house at his back, he seemed caught between the wild thing and the loved thing. The wolf and the boy in the paper crown. The man who had brought you to the threshold with shaking hands and still tried to joke like fear could be made harmless if he gave it a funny name.
“Did you mean it?” he asked.
“Which part?”
“When Niko asked if you were keeping me.”
The question came lightly, too lightly. A feather laid over a blade.
You reached for him.
This time, Valko did not hesitate. He came into your space at once, as if pulled by a string tied somewhere behind his ribs. His hands settled at your waist, careful at first, then warmer when you didn't move away.
“I meant it,”
His eyes searched yours.
“For tonight?”
“For longer than that.”
He didn't kiss you immediately. Somehow, that made it worse. He stood there and let the answer enter him, slowly, like someone opening the door to a room he had been told was empty and finding it lit.
Inside, Mika yelled, “Are they kissing?”
Valko dropped his forehead to your shoulder.
“Leave them. He is finally being normal.”
You laughed.
He looked at you then, and the last of his embarrassment broke open into something bright, something almost boyish
“Welcome home,” he said, very softly.
You touched his cheek.
Behind him, the old house breathed and creaked and held its golden noise. Inside, his family waited with tea, teeth, stories, and a place at the table already made yours.
☀︎ a/n — first time listening to mitski in like a year and i alr want to jump.
☀︎ word count — 2.2k
☀︎ content — modulo! yuji x fem! reader, very small modulo spoilers (not even but yea), mention of hospitals, mortal x immortal, mention of death, established relationship, angst - heavy angst yall, not proofread.
☀︎ synopsis — Yuji Itadori was cursed to walk alone forever, but as long as you would hold on- he'd never be alone again.
── ☀︎ i am a forest fire. and i am the fire, and i am the forest, and i am a witness watching it
The first gray hair he found on you, he laughed, "There."
Your head jerked away from the book in your lap as he pulled the hair out, "What?"
"You've got one." Yuji leaned over the couch, pinching the silver strand between careful fingers. "You're getting old."
You gasped, “No I am not! Don’t pull them it makes two more grow!”
"It’s just one," He smiled, impossibly bright. "It looks cute."
"You know what's not cute?"
"What?"
"You pointing it out." You stated as you swatted his arm.
He laughed so hard he nearly fell off the couch. Eventually, after pretending you were mad, you laughed too, leaning against him.
Back then, wrinkles were things that appeared only when you smiled.
Back then, old age was still a joke.
You met Yuji Itadori when you were sixteen. He was loud, kind, and always bleeding from somewhere.
You thought he smiled too much. He thought you frowned too much. You thought he was pretty loud. He thought you were pretty. From there, the rest happened naturally.
Movie nights became dates. Dates became shared apartments. Shared apartments became homes. Homes became places you stayed for decades.
You never got married.
He asked once, and only once.
He'd bought a ring with money he'd saved for nearly a year.
It wasn't extravagant because you would've hated extravagance. It was just a thin gold band with a tiny stone that caught the light whenever he turned the box.
"I know it's... weird," he'd begun.
You stared at the ring for a long time, and then you smiled, "You know why we can't."
"I don't care."
"I do."
"You'd still be my wife."
"I would." You reached over, closing the little velvet box with gentle fingers. "You'll still be here in a hundred years."
"I don't care." He’d said with the conviction of a hundred men. "I do." Your smile trembled, as if you were forcing it on. "How're you supposed to explain having the same marriage certificate from a century ago?"
"I'll figure something out."
"You always say that."
You leaned forward until your forehead rested against his, "You can't stop living because you loved me."
He wanted to argue. Argue that, yes, he’d find a way. He’d find a way to become mortal again- to age alongside you in this life and the next. But…he couldn’t promise that.
Instead, you laughed at his focused face, "Besides..." You kissed the tip of his nose, "I don't need a ring to know you love me."
And that was the end of it.
The ring stayed in the back of his dresser. He never threw it away…just in case.
The years were cruel in ways curses never managed to be.
You first complained about your knees. And then your back was constantly aching. Then your eyesight got worse.
Reading glasses appeared. Walking canes were an everyday accessory. Little orange prescription bottles lined your bathroom sink.
Yuji remained forever somewhere in between, withered and aged by the fights he had as a young teenager, but never looking old enough to match your aging pace.
Every few years, you moved to a new city with new names. You met new neighbors, and eventually, people stopped asking if you were dating.
Eventually, it turned to, "...It's sweet your grandson takes such good care of you."
You opened your mouth, but Yuji answered first, "Yeah."
The woman smiled warmly, "You're a good young man."
Young.
She walked away, unaware of how she added another crack to the already crumbling resolve he’d had. The silence lingered between you.
"You know..." You nudged his shoulder with yours. "I've always wanted grandchildren."
He groaned dramatically, "Oh my god."
"I'm kidding!”
You laughed together until neither of you could breathe.
And as much as he had laughed then, later that night- for as strong of a man that he was - Yuji cried in the shower where you couldn't hear him.
You’d wanted children, he knew that. Not because you’d explicitly told him, but he knew because you'd stop outside playgrounds. He knew by the way you always waved back when little kids stared.
Because you'd stop to look at tiny sweaters while shopping before quickly acting like you’d never known they existed.
One evening, the words just spilled out of your mouth, "I would've liked being a mom." The words were so soft he almost missed them.
"...Yeah. I would’ve liked seeing it."
"But..." You reached over the table, taking his hand. "I like this life more."
He couldn't answer.
His throat had already closed.
Time became measured differently. Not by birthday candles on the cake. No, instead it became measured by your monthly doctor appointments. By how many times they changed your medication.
By how often you had to do blood work and physical therapy.
How many stairs you could still climb. How long your afternoon naps lasted.
Whether your hands shook enough to spill tea.
Sometimes, late at night, Yuji would watch you sleep, examining the way your face had changed.
The smooth cheeks he'd kissed as teenagers now carried delicate lines.
Your hair had become soft silver.
Your hands…god, your hands.
The same hands that once grabbed his sleeve while running across streets. The same hands that braided small pieces of Nobara's hair because she'd insisted she didn't know how, although Yuji believed she just wanted to be pampered.
The same hands that held Yuta’s newborn before...
Before.
Now they trembled while pouring coffee.
Now they bruised so easily that he was afraid to hold them too tight.
Now they looked...so fragile.
He hated that word.
Fragile.
You were never fragile.
He almost asked, hundreds of times.
Do you regret me?
He'd rehearse it while standing in the hallway, watching television, while washing dishes. And just when he thought he’d gotten the courage…then he'd see you humming while making breakfast.
Your hands are spotted with age and moving slower than they used to, carefully gripping the pan.
And suddenly, he couldn't.
Because he already knew your answer.
"Never." You'd smile. "Not once."
But was that true?
Or were you just protecting him?
Eventually, the answer came without him asking.
You were sitting by the window wrapped in a blanket.
"You thinking?" He asked, standing in the door way, watching you the way you were watching the rain outside.
You smiled, "Always."
"About?"
"You."
He blinked, "...Me?"
"I've been remembering."
"What?"
"Our first apartment."
He laughed, "The one with mold?" You smiled, nodding, "And the broken heater." "The neighbor that played trumpet at three in the morning?" He added with a twinge of annoyance, man he hated that guy!
You rolled your eyes, "I loved that apartment."
That, he was confused by, "It sucked." You slowly nodded, "It did, but…”
You looked away from the rain and back towards him, "I would've lived there forever if you were with me."
"I'm glad I met you." His chest tightened as you spoke. "I'm glad I chose you.” You smiled, adding on.
"Every version of my life where I don't meet you..." A small shake of your head. "I don't want it."
Yuji looked away, because if he didn't…he was sure that he would cry.
The diagnosis wasn't unexpected, but the terminal part was.
The doctors spoke gently, and you listened calmly.
And all Yuji could do was wonder how no one else was scared, terrified even. He’d heard nothing after the first sentence, but he knew what it meant.
He was going to lose you.
He hated hospitals, always had since his grandfather passed away.
So he hated it more when the equipment came home. When monitors and oxygen got hooked up in the bedroom. Medication schedules taped to the refrigerator. Machines that beeped all night. Machines that, as much as he hated them, he learned to operate with terrifying efficiency.
The bedroom slowly stopped looking like a bedroom.
It became something else Yuji was entirely too scared to name.
"You should sleep." You mumbled, fighting your own sleep to see him close his eyes first. "I'm fine." He insisted.
"You've been awake for hours." You reached a hand over and ran it through his hair, a small laugh being pulled out of you. "Gosh. You look awful."
He laughed, "You have tubes connected to you." You smiled, "You still look worse."
Your world shrank to the bedroom, then the living room, and you could even go to the garden on good days.
Eventually, as much as Yuji tried to fight the passing of time, you were refined to just the bed.
Yuji carried you everywhere when you wanted to move, like it weighed nothing.
Like if he held you tightly enough…time would realize his willpower and give up on this battle with him.
One afternoon, after a week inside, you whispered, "I think..." your voice was shaky. "I'd like to see the sun." Yuji , ever loving and devoted, nodded immediately, "Okay."
He wrapped blankets around you and lifted you into his arms, very carefully, and took you outside.
The garden was blooming with hydrangeas.
You’d always loved hydrangeas.
He sat with you beneath them, your head rested against his shoulder.
"You remember..." You murmured. "The festival where you won me that giant stuffed bear?”
“I worked really hard for that-” He started, being cut off by your laugh. "You climbed the booth. The poor worker was so scared."
He opened his mouth to defend himself, but he could only smile, "He should've just given me the bear."
You laughed, as hard as you could now, and it turned into coughing. He waited until it stopped, hand patting your back with a practiced carefulness.
"I'm tired." You sighed, leaning against him. He felt his heart shatter once more, "I know."
You looked up at him, eyes hazy, "You'll stay?" "Always."
Yuji Itadori would give his life force to you if you let him.
The last night, you couldn't speak much.
You said it hurt to breathe, and Yuji could tell by the way every inhale sounded borrowed.
And yet, he held your hand. Just like he'd done thousands of nights before.
The monitor filled the silence.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Your fingers squeezed his once, weakly.
"...Yuji."
"I'm here."
"I know."
Another breath.
"I was..." You took a long shaky breath. "So lucky."
Tears blurred everything around him. "You gave me-"
He shook his head violently, willing you to stop- begging whatever god that was watching him to give you two more time together, "No."
"My whole life..."
Your smile…You still smiled so beautifully.
"...was so fun with you."
"It wasn't enough."
"It was everything." Your eyes drifted shut, "I love you."
He pressed his forehead against your hand. "I love you more."
The room grew quiet.
“Please don’t leave me.”
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Your grip loosened.
Yuji waited, surely- surely - you’d take another breath.
Please.
Another. Anything.
Instead, the monitor screamed one endless, merciless note.
Yuji discovered that everything became silent when you lost the person who made your life so full of love.
It was silent enough that he could hear the clock ticking. Silent enough to hear rain against the windows.
Silent enough to hear himself whisper, "...Hey." As though you'd merely fallen asleep.
He brushed your hair behind your ear, just like he always did.
"You'll catch cold." His voice cracked. "You always fall asleep without blankets." He pulled one over you, hands shaking, "There."
Silence answered.
His thumb stroked the back of your hand.
It was already cooling. "Please..." Not because he believed you could hear him. Not because he thought you'd wake.
Just…Please.
Not you too.
He had buried his grandfather.
He had seen his mentors Nanami and Gojo die.
He had lost Megumi.
Too many friends. Too many graves. Too many names that he couldn’t even recall.
He had endured all of it.
Because somewhere, you had always been waiting at home.
Now...
There was nowhere left to return to.
Years later, the house was gone. The city had changed. And no one remembered your name.
Children played where your garden once bloomed.
Yuji sat beneath a lone hydrangea.
Still stuck in a young body with a withered, old, traumatized mind. But he was still breathing. Still cursed with tomorrow.
In his pocket, a tiny gold ring sat untouched. He rolled it between his fingers.
The metal had never dulled, unlike everything else.
"...You know..." His voice disappeared into the wind. "I finally figured out how to explain it." He smiled, a shaky one, he was sure, "If anyone asks..." He looked toward the sky, "...I'll just tell them my wife died."
He'd never gotten to call you that, not while you were alive. So he did now.
Even if no one was there to hear it. Even if the world had forgotten you.
He never would.
And for the first time in more than a century, Yuji Itadori wished with every aching part of himself that he had been born an ordinary man.
Because ordinary men could follow the people they loved, he could not.
So he stood, slipped the ring back into his pocket, and kept walking.
The apocalypse completely devastated the rest of civilization, but for your relationship, it just turned your boyfriend into a slightly more unhinged, heavily attached house pet. When he first turned, you thought it was the end until you realized that the virus completely failed to overwrite his obsession with you. His brain might be ninety percent decayed, and he can’t speak coherent sentences anymore, but his territorial instincts are operating at a terrifying 110% capacity. He doesn't want to eat your brains; he wants to aggressively cuddle you in the middle of a ruined supermarket while low-level growling at the passing horde outside the glass.
Yandere!Zombie has a deeply endearing, slightly disgusting way of bringing you "gifts" to show his affection. Because his cognitive functions are entirely warped by the outbreak, he doesn't understand that you can’t use a rusted car engine part, a half-chewed designer shoe, or a shiny piece of broken glass he found in a ditch. He will trudge into your makeshift safehouse at 3:00 AM, covered in dust, and proudly drop a literal waterlogged, moss-covered teddy bear onto your lap, tilting his head and letting out a soft, rattling huff from his chest while waiting for you to pat his head. If you praise him and tuck the gross toy into your backpack, he’ll let out a wet, raspy purr that sounds like a broken garbage disposal, completely ecstatic that he pleased his favorite human.
Yandere!Zombie protective instincts are absolutely terrifying because he has zero self-preservation left. If a group of armed scavengers or raiders tries to corner you to steal your supplies, your zombie boyfriend will instantly drop his slow, clumsy facade. He will sprint forward with supernatural, adrenaline-fueled speed, tackling the threat with a feral, bone-snapping violence that leaves the entire area looking like a horror movie scene. He doesn't care if he takes a bullet to the shoulder or gets stabbed—he doesn't feel pain anyway. The second the threat is completely neutralized, his bloody, snarling face will instantly soften. He’ll turn around, tilt his head, and clumsily stumble back to your side, whining like a scolded puppy until you wipe the grime off his cheek.
Yandere!Zombie handles your human survival needs with a clumsy, suffocating level of micromanagement. He knows that you need to eat "the soft box food" to stay alive, so he will literally use his massive zombie strength to rip the steel security shutters off a locked convenience store just so you can walk inside and collect canned peaches. While you’re gathering supplies, he will walk right behind you, his cold, gray hand resting firmly on the small of your back to steer you away from any broken glass or dark corners. He treats you like a priceless, fragile antique that might shatter if he lets go for even a single second.
The most chaotic part of your dynamic is how Yandere!Zombie interacts with the other infected. Because he smells like a corpse, the other zombies usually ignore him but the second they try to wander too close to you, he turns into a total nightmare. He will literally physically throw himself in front of you, baring his decaying teeth and letting out a deep, echoing roar that asserts total dominance over the area. He has effectively conditioned the local zombie population to treat you like a radioactive zone; the horde will literally part around you in a wide, terrified circle whenever you walk down the street, entirely because they know the terrifyingly aggressive ghall holding your hand will rip them to pieces if they even look in your direction.
Ultimately, your life in the wasteland is a bizarrely comfortable, post-apocalyptic fairy tale. You are navigating the ruins of human civilization with a partner who is legally dead, completely unhinged, and entirely consumed by your existence. When you settle down for the night in an abandoned apartment, Yandere!Zombie will carefully pull your warm body against his cold, silent chest, wrapping his heavy arms around you like a protective human shield. He doesn’t have a heartbeat anymore, but as he rests his forehead against yours, letting out a long, contented sigh of rot and devotion, you realize that not even the end of the world could figure out a way to make him leave you behind.
Setting up a makeshift laboratory in the basement of an abandoned university science building is a nightmare, but managing your undead research assistant makes it absolute comedy. Yandere!Zombie has zero understanding of microbiology, virology, or why you’re staring through a microscope for eighteen hours a day, but he understands that this room is where you stay. While you’re frantically mixing chemicals and analyzing blood stability, he will sit flat on the concrete floor right next to your stool, his heavy, cold head resting directly against your thigh. If you accidentally drop a glass pipette or let out a frustrated, exhausted sob over a failed synthesis, he will instantly bolt upright, letting out a protective growl at the empty room before clumsily wrapping his massive arms around your waist to drag you onto his lap, entirely convinced the microscope is actively attacking your peace of mind.
Yandere!Zombie treats your highly sterile scientific environment with a terrifying lack of biochemical etiquette. He knows you need "the shiny glass tubes" to do your work, so he tries to help by scavenging for them in other wings of the hospital. He’ll stumble into your lab at sunrise, proudly holding a hazardous waste container or a random piece of an MRI machine over his head like a trophy, his face covered in ceiling tile dust. When you gently explain to him that a rusted dentist's drill isn't going to isolate the pathogen, he’ll let out a deeply offended, wet huff, crossing his gray arms and sitting in the corner like a scolded toddler until you go over and pat his messy hair.
Drawing his blood for chemical testing is an absolute circus. Because his survival instincts are completely gone, Yandere!Zombie doesn't care about the needle, but he deeply dislikes the fact that the tourniquet forces you to stop holding his hand for three minutes. The second you insert the syringe to pull a sample of his infected marrow, he won't even flinch, and instead he’ll use his free, decaying hand to clumsily play with your safety goggles, bopping the plastic frames and letting out a soft, rattling gurgle from his chest because he thinks you look incredibly cute in your lab coat. If you try to tell him to hold still, he’ll just lean forward and clumsily press his freezing forehead against your cheek, completely sabotaging your sterilization protocols with pure, unadulterated affection.
Yandere!Zombie has a deeply unhinged, territorial policy regarding your test subjects. To find a cure, you eventually have to trap a few low-level, regular zombies in reinforced steel cages at the back of the basement to test your experimental serum variants. Your boyfriend completely hates them. He views those caged infected not as scientific data, but as gross, uncultured peasants who dare to look at his favorite human. Whenever you walk near the cages with a clipboard, he will aggressively march right in front of you, slamming his massive fists against the iron bars and letting out an echoing, chest-vibrating roar that makes the test subjects completely cower in the corner of their cells. "H-Huhnnn," he’ll snap darkly at them, baring his teeth until you pull him back by his collar. "Shhh, leave them alone, they're for science," you’ll sigh, while he just grumbles, wrapping his arms tightly around your neck from behind to shield you from their dead eyes.
The ultimate reality of your research is that his instincts are actively fighting against the very concept of being cured. His decayed brain has associated his zombie state with total, unrestricted freedom to smother you 24/7. He doesn't have to go to work, he doesn't have to share you with society, and he can legally rip the throat out of anyone who looks at you wrong. On the day you finally synthesize a stable prototype serum and hold the glowing vial up to the light, he looks at the medicine with a look of pure, ancient suspicion. He knows that if he turns human again, the rules come back. When you turn around to face him, he will gently but firmly wrap his cold fingers around your wrist, tilting his head with a raw, pathetic whine, looking from the needle to your eyes as if begging you not to change the perfect, lawless paradise he built for you in the ruins.
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