It's always "stop harming yourself or we'll have to lock you up!!!" and never "what do you need to change to want to harm yourself less and how can we help you make some of these changes?" and that's why we're not getting anywhere
i know folks are gonna call me a pedo for this one, but i grew up seeing my mom and grandma naked. they had health issues and at times needed care and help showering. and i truly think more kids need to be shown the nonsexual reality of naked women at a young age. there is nothing sexual about my grandmothers breasts, they were simply body parts. more women die of heart attacks because people are too afraid of breasts to do real chest compressions, because they are scared to touch their breasts. the sexualization of our bodies literally kills us. i need people to be more normal about naked bodies and i'm 100% serious.
𝓲𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 ♰ when you finally decide to flirt back after years of brushing off sukuna’s teasing, he quickly discovers he can’t handle a taste of his own medicine.
✿ ◞◟) ryomen sukuna 𝓍 gn!reader
𝓬𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 fluff, college!au, established friendship, uno reverse card flirting, sukuna is really pathetic, lovestruck behavior, yearning hidden under friendship (?), sukuna is blushing.
the afternoon light coming through sukuna's apartment windows was that tired golden color, the kind that made everything look a little too soft and a little too warm for a tuesday that felt like a thursday.
you were sprawled on the pink haired boy’s worn-out leather couch with your laptop balanced on your thighs, trying to finish a reading assignment that had no business being this dense, while sukuna sat on the floor across from you with his back against the coffee table, his phone in one hand and a half-empty energy drink in the other.
sukuna's tattoos stretched across his forearms every time he moved to scroll through whatever mindless content he seemed to be invested in, those familiar dark lines shifting over muscle and bone like they'd always been there, like they were just another part of him you'd stopped really noticing years ago. the four-eyes motif on his biceps caught the light when sukuna leaned forward to set his drink down, and you watched him crack his neck in that lazy way he always did when he was bored, the movement causing his jaw to flex once before he settled back against the table leg.
"you're staring," sukuna said without looking up from his phone, and there it was — that particular tilt to his mouth, the one that meant he was about to make things annoying on purpose. "didn't know my forearms were that interesting, sweetheart. could've just asked for a closer look."
you didn't even blink.
"your forearms are fine, kuna. i was actually staring at the window behind you because there's a really weird-looking bird right on the fire escape."
sukuna finally looked up, one dark eyebrow raised, and he turned his head toward the window just to check. when he saw nothing there, his gaze slid back to you with that familiar mixture of amusement and mild offense.
"you're lying."
"oh, am i?" you clicked back to your reading assignment, highlighting a sentence you'd already highlighted twice. "bird must've flown away. tragic timing, really."
sukuna laughed once, short and sharp, and went back to his phone, but you knew damn well he wasn't done; sukuna was never done when he was bored and you were the only person in the room. it was like a game for him, or maybe like a compulsion — throwing out these little flirtatious comments just to see if he could get a reaction, any reaction, even though he'd known you for long enough to understand that you'd stopped reacting to that particular brand of nonsense somewhere around year two of your friendship.
"you know," he said after a moment, dragging the words out like he was savoring them. "most people would at least pretend to be flattered. but you just sit there like a brick wall with a laptop. it's kind of insulting, honestly."
"i'll try to care about your feelings more," you said flatly, not looking up. "let me just find that emotion real quick."
sukuna kicked at your foot with his own, just a light tap of his sneaker against your socked heel.
"you're the worst."
"you're the one who keeps flirting with a brick wall. that sounds like a you problem."
sukuna grinned at that, wide and sharp and entirely unbothered, because this was simply how things worked between the two of you; he'd flirt, you'd deflect, he'd laugh, and then five minutes later he'd ask if you wanted to order food or complain about his stats professor or show you some ridiculous video he found at two in the morning.
it was comfortable, it was routine, and it meant exactly nothing, and you both knew it.
but today, something about the light and the quiet and the way sukuna was sitting there looking entirely too pleased with himself made you feel like switching things up.
just a little.
just to see what would happen.
you set your laptop aside slowly, making a show of closing the screen and placing it on the cushion next to you, and then you turned your body toward him.
sukuna was already watching you with that lazy curiosity he always got when you deviated from your usual patterns, his phone completely forgotten in his hand, and you let your gaze drag over him in a way you never actually did — leisurely and meticulous, like you were taking your time with something you'd been saving for later.
his eyebrows pulled together just slightly. "what?"
"nothing," you said, and you let your voice drop just enough to change the texture of it, to make it softer and slower than your usual flat delivery. "just looking."
you watched the confusion flicker across sukuna's face, quick and genuine, because this wasn't how the script went;
you weren't supposed to look at him like that. you weren't supposed to sound like that. and you sure as hell weren't supposed to slide off the couch to sit on the floor next to him, close enough that your shoulder almost brushed his, close enough that you could smell whatever cheap cologne he'd grabbed off his dresser this morning.
sukuna's hand tightened around his phone.
"okay. you're being weird."
"am i?" you echoed your earlier words back at him, tilting your head just slightly, and you let your fingers rest on the floor between you — not touching him, not yet, but close enough that the proximity felt intentional. "i thought this was what you wanted, kuna. you're always saying all that stuff. figured i'd finally give you a response."
sukuna's throat moved as he swallowed, and you could see the moment his brain started scrambling to catch up with what was happening. the confidence he normally wore like armor seemed to flicker, just for a second, and his gaze dropped to your hand on the floor before snapping back to your face.
"that's—" he started, and then stopped, and you'd never seen sukuna stumble over a word in your entire friendship. "i mean, yeah, but—you don't actually—"
"don't actually what?"
you leaned in just a little, and you watched the tips of sukuna's ears go pink. his ears, of all things. the same sukuna who could make a waiter uncomfortable by accident just by existing was sitting here with pink ears because you'd leaned about four inches closer to him.
"don't actually find you attractive? because i never said that."
sukuna's mouth opened, then closed, and then opened again, and absolutely nothing came out except this small, strangled sound that might have been the beginning of a laugh or the end of his dignity.
you could feel the heat coming off his arm where it was braced on the coffee table, you could see the way his chest had started rising and falling just a little faster than before. his tattoos seemed to move with every small shift of his muscles, the dark lines pulling and relaxing as he failed spectacularly to figure out what the hell to do with his hands.
"you're messing with me," sukuna said finally, and his voice literally cracked on the last word.
ryomen sukuna's voice cracked like he was fourteen years old and talking to his first crush, and you had to physically bite the inside of your cheek to keep from smiling too obviously.
"am i?" you asked again, softer this time, and you let your finger trace a small, idle pattern on the floor between you; not toward him, not away from him — just there, like you were thinking about it. "i don't know. maybe i just got tired of you being the only one who gets to have fun."
sukuna's blush was spreading now, crawling down his neck in splotchy patches that disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt, and he was gripping his phone like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to reality.
you could see his pulse beating in his throat, quick and uneven, and his eyes kept darting between your face and the small space between your bodies like he was trying to calculate something he didn't have the formula for.
"this isn't—" sukuna started, and then he had to stop to clear his throat, and the sound was embarrassingly loud in the quiet apartment. "this isn't funny."
"i'm not laughing."
"you're definitely laughing on the inside. i can tell. your eye is doing that thing."
you blinked innocently. "what thing?"
"the thing where you're being an asshole and enjoying it."
but sukuna's voice was way too high to land the way he wanted it to, too breathy to sound like anything other than a man who was rapidly losing control of a situation he'd assumed he'd always be in charge of. his leg was bouncing now, that restless energy he got when he was nervous translating into small, jerky movements that he probably didn't even realize he was making.
you let the silence stretch, you let him sit in the discomfort of not knowing what came next, and you watched as he absolutely failed to fill it with one of his usual easy quips.
sukuna's brain was working overtime behind his eyes, you could easily tell — trying to figure out if you were serious, if this was a joke, if he was supposed to laugh it off or lean into it or run in the opposite direction.
finally, he did the last thing you expected.
he looked away.
sukuna actually looked away, his jaw tightening as he turned his face toward the window, and you could see the way his hand shook just slightly when he reached up to rub at the back of his neck. the movement made his sleeve ride up, exposing more of those dark lines, and you noticed the way his fingers trembled against his own skin.
"you're doing this on purpose," he muttered, and his voice was so quiet you almost didn't hear it. "you're trying to—i don't know what you're trying to do, but you're doing it on purpose."
"maybe," you said, and you let yourself smile then, just a small one, because he looked so genuinely thrown off that it was actually kind of endearing underneath all the hilarity. "maybe i just wanted to see what would happen."
sukuna turned back to look at you, and his eyes were wide in a way you'd never seen before — less of the sharp, amused glint he usually carried and more of something raw and uncertain, like a door you'd accidentally nudged open that he'd been keeping firmly closed. his blush had settled into something deeper now, staining his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose, and his lips were parted just slightly like he was still trying to figure out how to breathe normally.
"well," he said, and his voice cracked again, softer this time, almost fragile. "are you happy? because i'm—i'm not—this is—"
sukuna gave up on words entirely and just gestured vaguely at himself, at his flushed face and his bouncing leg and his white-knuckled grip on his phone, and the gesture said everything sukuna's his voice couldn't.
you laughed then, not meanly, just a warm exhale of a sound, and you bumped your shoulder against his gently.
"yeah," you said, your voice back to normal now, dropping the flirtatious edge entirely. "i'm pretty happy, actually."
sukuna stared at you for a long moment, his chest still rising and falling too quickly, and then he dropped his head back against the coffee table and made a sound that was somewhere between a groan and a whine.
"i hate you," he said to the ceiling. "i genuinely hate you. you're the worst person i've ever met."
"you're blushing."
"shut up, i'm not blushing. my face is just warm. from the—it's warm in here."
"it's twenty-one degrees in here."
"shut up."
sukuna didn't move his head from the coffee table, but his large hand found your knee — just a brief, clumsy tap before retreating, like he'd meant to do something else and changed his mind at the last second. his fingers were warm through the fabric of your jeans, and you could still feel the slight tremor in them even after he pulled away.
you sat there together in the golden afternoon light, the silence softer now than it had been before, and you watched as sukuna slowly, painfully tried to collect himself.
his ears were still pink, his breathing was still uneven, and every few seconds, his gaze would slide toward you and then snap away again, like looking at you for too long might somehow make things worse.
it was, without a single question, the most pathetic you had ever seen him.
"sooo," you said after a while, keeping your voice light and easy. "you want to order that thai place, or are you too busy being embarrassed to eat?"
sukuna lifted his head just enough to glare at you, but the effect was ruined by the fact that he still looked like he'd just run a marathon in a sauna.
"i'm not embarrassed."
"okay."
"i'm not. i just wasn't expecting—" sukuna stopped, swallowed, tried again. "you don't just—you never—"
"never what?"
he held your gaze for a long, charged moment, and something in his expression flickered — some thought you couldn't quite read, some emotion the pink haired boy shoved back down before it could fully surface. then he looked away once again, reaching for his abandoned energy drink like it might offer him some kind of salvation.
"nothing," he said quietly. "forget it. thai sounds fine."
sukuna didn't flirt with you for the rest of the evening.
not once.
and if you caught him staring at you when he thought you weren't looking, his expression soft and confused and a little bit scared like he'd just discovered something he didn't know how to name — well, you didn't mention that either.
[ID 1: drawing of four non-descript characters smiling lined up, three of them have pale skin while one has brown skin and a more mischievous expression, the characters has text pointed to them reading “that one character that gets the melanin because they’re angry/agressive” End ID]
[ID 2: drawing of four non-descript characters lined up, three of them have varied brown skin and expressions while one has pale skin and a more calm smile, the characters has text pointed to them reading “that one character that gets less of the melanin because they’re passive/calm/fancier” End ID]
if you are a parent, or may become one, or you are otherwise likely to arrive in the situation of caring for a child while they eat, promise me this: if a child doesn't like a certain food or food group, you will ask them WHY. and specifically, you will pay attention to either confirming or ruling out "it makes my mouth itch" or "it makes my stomach hurt," both of which are medically important info that children may not provide unprompted. which i know because this PSA has been brought to you by "i spent my entire childhood and much of my early teens eating peas and lentils while wondering why everyone else liked the Violently Itchy Mouth Sensation so much, like were they a bunch of legume masochists or something, before i finally realized that Violently Itchy Mouth Sensation was in fact a sinister demon appearing only to me, and her true demonic name was: Legume Allergy"
Had a nightmare where Caine talked like ChatGPT. It was so terrifying that I woke up crying and panicking and started stabbing random people on the street.
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