ari, 21 / gay / phd in suguru geto + world’s most insufferable jjk stan
this account is inactive! i’m keeping it up only for the sake of preserving older posts and writing, but i won’t be logging into it again, nor will i be making a new account. i don’t want to sign this off with a dramatic farewell, so i’ll simply leave it at that! take care of yourselves, and stay loving the goat >:3💗
immediately back and posting but i don’t have much of a choice: it turns out i won’t be able to attend any courses this summer (meaning i have no way to financially support myself until the end of august)— i’ll be trying to make do to the best of my ability but it’s really bad news and i have nothing to fall back on atm. so i’m posting this to let you know where to find me for commissions this summer! message me at @/aricomms (discord) and we can work something out ^^ i have very little reservations about what to write, as long as it concerns the jjk cast!
i accept xreader, selfship, canonxcanon and ocxcanon commissions!
my prices are generally 10€ for every 1k words, meaning a 10k piece would cost you 100€, a 5k piece 50€, and so on :)
payment via paypal!
my specialty is writing suguru geto jjk & he is additionally the one i’m most comfortable writing smut, kink and dark content for, but i’m open to writing similar things for other charas in the cast too!
this is my kofi in case you’d like to make a donation! usually i would prefer earning them but again, things are pretty dire
SYNOPSIS: It’s in your nature to hunt and hurt. Jujutsu sorcerers are meant for it: exorcising, butchering, acting without thinking. Suguru Geto is the only person who has ever told you off for it.
WORD COUNT: 7.5k
CONTENTS: suguru geto x gn!reader. angst. major character death (not suguru or reader). snapshot fic; spans moments between 2005 and 2017, following the canon timeline. violent imagery, compulsive violence and detachment issues (via reader). canon divergent; suguru survives. reader’s ct is described, utilized and a major part of the plot. open ended!
A/N: this fic was originally planned for christmas eve aka my dear blorbo’s death date…… it’s been sitting at 80% finished in my docs since january but here it is in its entirety! finally. i’m really happy with this fic and always delighted to write within jjk’s canon world…. the final part is a scenario i’ve had in the back of my mind for years and years, so it’s immensely satisfying to have put it onto paper :’) !!
The ringing in your ears has yet to subside.
It's been two, five, ten minutes since you and Geto split up. Twenty? You can't remember. It was the logical decision to make at the time: your cursed technique is suited for hunting, and his for cleaning up the swarm of curses that had been waiting to ambush you as soon as you stepped off the staircase to the second floor, festering around abandoned sleeping bags and rotten compost, reeking of bile and dried blood. All while your target dashed around the corner, clutching the talisman-wrapped object you're after with both hands.
It's still in his palm, half-secured by limp fingers.
Your knuckles keep the back of his head still, twisting the roots of his hair in a painful grip. Or it would be, if he could feel it, if he wasn't long unconscious— knocked out cold by the first of continuous rhythmic thuds as his tender skull kisses rough concrete flooring. Again, again, and again. The sound has grown sticky and sloppy, crimson seeping from the gap in his forehead and pooling on the floor below you, enough to illuminate your reflection above.
Hunched over, like an animal. Pupils coiled into slits, twitches in the muscles of your jaw, body thrumming in silent exhilaration. You look like you're hungry for something.
He's already dead, but you aren't stopping. Your fingers aren't letting up, twisting, tugging, moving in sweet, stanza-like tandem with the sound of bone being splintered. Adrenaline pumps through your body in sluggish doses. Until it doesn't— until those electrifying sparks begin to dull, your rapid heartbeat beginning to settle, your fingers gone lax. Only they're still moving. Time has lost you. It might have been an hour since you saw your classmate's face. It might have been five seconds. His skull meets the floor again, but you feel no impact. There's no resistance. No weight. How much of his face have you left intact? They won't be able to identify him at this rate. Yaga-sensei will yell at you, pinch his brow, exhale.
You don't know how to stop.
(Thud, thud, thud.)
"That's enough."
You're knocked onto your back before the voice reaches your ears, thrown off balance by a harsh tug at your elbows, something rope-like fastening your arms to your back; so tightly you couldn't break free if you struggled, which you're much too dazed to do. There's another thud, but this time it's your skull meeting concrete, your eyes gazing at the broken lights attached to the ceiling overhead, flickering like candle-light.
When Geto's face comes into view, you note only the clear displeasure in his features.
"… Did you snap out of it?" He crouches down, silky bangs falling like curtains past the ink-black of his brow. His eyes bore into you, weighty with reprimand, the amber of them sharper than usual. They have you mouthing yes— less because it's true, and more because you want that disappointed glint in them to go away. But it is true, ultimately. He did snap you out of it. Your mind is beginning to wake up to the consequences of its body's actions: a subtle but still present cramp in your fingers, the sticky warmth of blood seeping through your uniform where your knees were pressed flush against the floor. The dull, buzzing absence of blood sugar in your veins. Your palms ache from tripping over a box with left-behind equipment in the corridor just outside the room, having caught your fall well enough to still catch up to your target, inner palms scraped like you'd dragged them over the rough side of a rock.
… Said target is still limp behind you, skull cracked open. Inwardly, you wince.
Well, this mission was a dud.
"Good," Geto sighs. You feel his hands ghost at your shoulders, guiding you to rest on your stomach. Whatever tied your arms together loosens under his touch— slipping your limbs free and allowing you to drag your body into a half-hunched sitting position. Your joints ache under the pressure of what had to be cursed, crackling with oppressive energy, and when you look over at your classmate your suspicions are confirmed. There's a snake-like curse wrapped flaccidly around his arm over the sleek sleeve of his uniform: thin and blood-red, with scales that look like miniature knots of rope. Its eyes are shaped like slits, all-black, tail extending into tentacle-like threads and swaying like an irritated cat's. For a curse, it's almost cute.
"You need to show restraint." Geto's voice has a cool edge to it. Your head snaps up to meet his hardened gaze. "We were told to bring them back alive. The cursed object is important, but it's not all that matters. We could have gotten useful information about their organization."
… Your shoulders sink under the weight of his lecture. Part of you wants to speak— to defend yourself and your intentions— but there's nothing you could say that wouldn't just prove his point. There's nothing to tell. If you told him the truth he'd only fix his eyes at you longer.
(It was exhilarating to not have to think of the consequences. To not have to think at all.
"It felt good to listen to his skull shatter, because I knew I'd get away with it.")
… Instead, you nod your head.
His stare frays into your features. It pins you in place. You feel like a butterfly under glass, a taxidermied animal. One of those foxes your fourth-year Senpai drags around over his shoulder. Only when he breaks away and stands up can you do the same, on still-trembling legs, watching as his curse slips away and into nothing, back inside his stomach. Geto walks over to the corpse and untangles the small, paper-wrapped object from his fingers.
It's an organization that hasn't been active in years, is what the assistant manager told you during the debrief. They want to revive Ryōmen Sukuna. You've heard of him, right? I don't know what they teach you kids these days… They've always been regarded as an ambitious band of lunatics, but it seems they have some good fighters in their ranks now. Since they were able to steal one of the fingers Jujutsu High is in charge of, the people at the top are really pissed. Believe me, it's a witch hunt. You're next in line if you mess this up.
Tread carefully, you two.
"A piece of Ryōmen Sukuna…" Geto stares at it silently, the name quiet on his tongue; like it could wake him up. "Even holding it makes me feel like we're doing something we shouldn't."
He's smiling, though. Then he turns around and walks towards you, nudging your shoulder with the knot of his own. It's a gentle collision. Everything about him is like that.
"Come on," he beckons. "I'll have one of my curses bring back the body."
When you're sitting two seats apart from him in the car that'll bring you back to Jujutsu High, blisters on your palms and a plastic-wrapped corpse in the trunk, the silence between you a delicate thing— you think about his tense brow. The emphasis he put on the word restraint, his tongue dancing on the vowels like a tight-rope. Sunset-brown eyes cloudy in a way you didn't like.
Geto is just a classmate. Half a stranger. You've only known him for a little over two months.
His opinion of you shouldn't feel like such a heavy thing.
(It shouldn't bother you at all— even if he were to find you unsightly, dangerous,a lost cause—)
"Geto-kun," you call out, breaking through the quiet. "I'm not fit to be a sorcerer, am I?"
In the window seat parallel to yours, his posture shifts. The change burns at your senses. You don't meet his stare; eyes glued to the drying, darkening crimson staining your pants. You'll probably have to clean them by hand. Apply soap and squeeze out the blood-clot.
"That's not for me to say."
Rain begins to spark against the windows, slowly at first, then harsher, droplets racing down the glass with rapid steps. You follow their trajectory with your eyes. One of the front windows is open to let in fresh air: the car begins to smell of dew and summertime.
Geto exhales.
"You need a role, I think." He sounds like he's been mulling it over far longer than the seconds that just passed, far before you thought to ask. "Something to feel responsible for."
"Like you with non-sorcerers?"
There's a smile on his lips when you turn just enough to catch his expression, curiosity getting the better of you. "Not necessarily. But responsibility keeps you grounded. Level-headed." He pauses, lets the silence weigh. "It keeps you moving forward."
Responsibility. He puts emphasis on that word, too; the way you would a lover's name.
You simmer in the thought. "Gojo doesn't seem to need it."
Geto sighs. Heavier this time, weighed down with exasperated affection. "He does need it. He doesn't understand yet, that's all. Fighting for nothing is just…" he shakes his head, drawing his lips shut. "Insane. But it's all he knows."
You hum.
Gojo isn't like you— he's like Geto. Just as controlled. Maybe even more. Their motives may differ, but that's the extent of where they diverge.
You're the loose cannon. You know that already. You're the one who gets too violent while sparring, who loses their cool when there's a curse in front of them. When you were a child you'd break your toys playing too carelessly, beating their plastic limbs against each other, breaking porcelain dolls on the floor. Your mother said there must be something wrong with your head— something that made it too difficult to think with. Your father said that's just as well, since sorcerers work best when they aren't thinking about a thing.
But Geto wouldn't agree with that.
(He's the only one you know who doesn't.)
"You're strong," he says plainly. Something like pride burns in your chest. "Why do you think that is?"
"… Because I was born into a good family?"
He shrugs. "If that's how you want to look at it, sure. But I think that way of thinking is exactly why you're struggling so much."
Silently, you purse your lips.
The rain-shower has yet to pass, half-transparent webs of dew sticking to the windows and blurring the run-down apartments you drive past. Though the car still smells lightly of wet asphalt, the assistant manager has pulled up the window on his left to shield his shoulder from the downpour, dulling it. It's quiet. When you don't respond Geto continues, his voice like the conductor of an orchestra: steady, smooth, precise.
"Right now, your cursed energy and emotions are unstable. They feed into one another. Remember what Yaga-sensei told you? If you want to nurture your technique, you need steady footing in the areas you lack." His eyes are keen, but not callous. Guiding. "Figuring out what those are is the first step. Then it's just a matter of application. You get a sense of it as you go— but it does take reflection."
He meets your gaze, head tilted to face you.
"Do you get what I'm saying?"
"… I think so." You chew on your bottom lip. "I mean— yeah. I know I'm not clever."
That's why they sent Geto with you, you think. So he could hold your leash and call the shots. Your technique allows you to transform iron into cursed energy: as long as you've touched the target, or as long as their grade is below yours, you can turn particles of iron in the human body and pursue the trail that energy leaves behind. It's a technique particularly useful against humans, since curses aren't made of blood. But you're over-eager, too thoughtless to be sent on missions alone. Not when the goal is more than to hunt and kill. Yaga-sensei scolds you for it often, and Gojo always tells you you're thinking too small.
"That's not what I'm saying."
The firmness in his voice surprises you.
"It's not that you're not smart enough. It's that you haven't been taught anything different." What lines his tone isn't pity, but something sweeter; understanding, or the attempt of it, from a boy with gentle eyes and a gaze that cuts right through you. "Right now, your cursed energy is like a loaded gun. Since you resort to action so quickly, your body doesn't have time to aim it properly. So it misses."
"A loaded gun?" you echo, trying the words out on your tongue. Brows furrowed in thought.
Geto suddenly looks bashful. Or halfway there. "Bad metaphor. Satoru made me watch one of his Wild West flicks last night." He clears his throat. "But, still. You need to think before you pull the trigger, is what I'm saying. Stop what you're doing. Ask yourself if it's the right approach. If there's a better option. Even just a few seconds of recollection is enough."
His gaze is sincere. It makes you feel docile; pliant to the lesson he's trying to teach.
Think before you pull the trigger.
(At the end of the day, you aren't Geto-kun. Responsibility means nothing to you. It's fun to chase, and thrilling to catch, and it distracts you from the fear your body feels when you get hurt. It's as simple as that. Acting is easier than thinking, and violence without repercussions is cathartic in ways even he couldn't deny.
… That's what you think, and yet…)
"I want to be more like you," you admit, quietly, into the cramped space of the moving car. It sounds louder in the silence. He's sitting two seats away from you, but the proximity between your bodies is still sweltering. Marks your neck with a stare so intent you're surprised you don't burst into flames then there, reduced to ash around his tabi shoes, dirtying the floor.
Geto is smiling now. You hear it in his voice, though your gaze remains fixed on your knuckles.
A weary exhale. "Do you?"
"Mm… More solid." You lean your body against the window on your left, looking out at golden fields of wheat, shadowed by the wool-coated sky. Suddenly sleepy, your eyes flutter shut.
Silence. Then, in a voice as warm as the sun:
"We'll work on it, then." Geto breathes in. "Together."
The word weighs heavier than lead. It settles somewhere at the bottom of your throat.
The next time you kill a curse user, Geto doesn't scold you.
Your hands itch from the burning cold. The ache sparks at your fingertips and creeps inside your sweater sleeves, goosebumps rising up your arms and shoulder blades, burning into your pores. The air smells of frost, of nothing at all. You shift from one foot to the other.
In front of you lies a pale corpse, half-blanketed by snow. The tips of his fingers are blue with numbness, bleeding into blemished lilacs and violets, twitching with what little remains of his muscle response. Soon that too will numb.
(You're beginning to understand what Geto meant when he talked about application. The limits of your technique lie in your own way of thinking; there are methods to its violence that you've yet to understand, that you're only just seeing glimpses of. You altered the flow of iron in this man's body, just for a second, and he toppled to the ground in the shock of it.
Your fists did the rest— the broken bones of his back obscured by thick skin and winter-fitted clothing. Old habits die hard.)
Today's mission was a tragic one. When you turn your head to look at Geto it reflects clearly in his eyes, the amber smeared charcoal-black with conflict, what-ifs and grim realities. His face is set into hard lines.
He looks tired.
"What he did to those girls…." he exhales. Closes his eyes and listens to snow fall around you; it makes a low and ghastly noise, like screeching from the sky. "I'm glad you killed him."
It surprises you, the earnesty in his voice. Was it a slip of the tongue? Does he mean it, whole-heartedly? It doesn't matter. You swallow around the lump in your throat. It tastes like shame and gasoline, scorching-hot and oil-like, thick enough to choke you.
"… I lost control again." Geto turns to look at you, his gaze half-vacant. "I wasn't thinking straight. I just saw you— get hit, and…"
A jab of pain sears through your lip, welcomes the taste of iron. Your teeth sink deep into the flesh, trying not to remember his expression. Failing. For a moment, you thought—
"I just wanted him to die so badly," you blurt out. "And then he did. And then I—" You seal your lips shut, withholding the words weighing your tongue down. Head pointing downwards, as if anticipating reprimand. You've made progress this year. You've gotten better at thinking ahead, at not letting your trigger finger get the better of you.
But now you've undone it again.
"Do you regret it?" Geto asks.
Silence. You lift your head, slowly, to look at the corpse. A human, just like you. A curse user. He did awful things— to Geto, to Shizuku-chan and Haruka-chan. His veins used to beat with hot blood, but now it's gone cold. Now it's just a body. It'll never lift a finger against anyone.
It might have had a family. It might have had a heart bigger than yours.
It felt good to break its spine, after all is said and done.
"… No," you answer honestly.
Geto exhales. His breath turns into white smoke and curls past his jaw, like a dragon about to unlatch its maw and swallow around the world. There's something colossal there. "It's fine, then." He turns around and walks away: it's time to go home. You didn't rescue either of the missing girls, so the mission will be considered a failure. "You did the right thing."
(It'll haunt him more than you.)
Your eyes follow his wide shoulders, his broad back vast and ink-black like the night sky above you. Snowflakes fall like shooting stars and stick to the polyester of his uniform. When he says the word right, you sometimes wonder if it hurts him. Underneath his breath, he murmurs:
"Nobody will miss him."
Geto's voice is surprisingly cold. The crisp winter air doesn't sting in comparison.
Two pairs of shoes crunch against the snow lining the path towards the bus stop, revealing dying grass and gravel. You follow at a steady pace behind your classmate, and do not comment on the fury in his eyes.
Suguru is cursed by a demon called righteousness.
That's what you think when you walk in on him retching his guts up in one of the dormitory's bathroom stalls, knuckles white from how hard he's clutching at the edges of the toilet seat in front of him. His face is pale, and the skin under his eyes has rotted lilac-blue from lack of sleep. When the tremors and heaving subsides, he rests his cheek against the plastic lid.
You're sure he knows you're there. But he doesn't greet you, or ask you to leave.
He must be too tired to pretend to be alright.
"I'll go get water," you tell him, before he gets the chance to speak. "And that ginger tea you like."
Suguru doesn't respond. Only moves his head, barely-there, the ghost of a nod. Mouths something like I'm sorry.
Which you, of course, ignore.
He must have swallowed something terrible. Or maybe too many curses to keep down? You're not sure which would be worse. Recently, he's been all alone; you know very little about the missions they send him on, only that he looks just as weary each and every time he returns to Jujutsu High. They're so short on workers even you've been getting sent on missions alone recently. That would have made you bloom with pride if you were still a first year.
Now, though….
(It's an awful feeling.)
When you step out of the kitchen a rough ten minutes later, clutching a lukewarm cup of ginger tea with one hand— a glass of water in the other— Suguru is waiting for you on one of the benches in the hall. Wearing only his white undershirt and a weak, weathered smile.
"Thank you."
You watch him take slow sips from the cup, careful, as if one wrong swallow could have him keeling over and vomiting again. His face scrunches up at the taste. You probably shouldn't have let the ginger stew in there for so long. There's no time to berate yourself, though.
"Are you okay?" you ask.
"Yeah." He gazes into the cup, seemingly transfixed. You wish he'd look you in the eye. Suguru doesn't really do that very often anymore. "Today was just… a lot. I'll be alright."
A hum buzzes under your tongue. Your eyes remain on his face, his cheeks more sunken than usual. It makes unease fester in your gut, makes you press closer to him, unconscious, as if to mend the space between you. Even when your shoulders knock together, he doesn't push you away. That's as close to consent as you're going to get. Beggars can't be choosers.
"Did you get home safe?" He puts the cup down with a clink.
"Mm. I exorcised the curse."
"Good." A half-hearted smile; not as prideful as you'd hoped. Still, his warm voice soothes you. Even when it sounds like it's coming from another room. "You did well."
Because of you, you think. Because I wanted to hear you say that. The words stay locked in the barrel of your throat. Silence overtakes you, the kind that digs into your tender spots, molten iron burning human flesh. You want to speak, but you are tongue-tied, and there is too much to say.
A year has passed since Amanai died. Suguru is cursed by a demon called righteousness, and it wants him to suffer— you think that's why he can't forget about it. You think it did something to him, to carry such a colossal loss; no one to blame it on, not even you. You all lost.
All of you but Satoru.
(You think it burns, aches, grates at him, that his best friend did something he couldn't. You think, very quietly, afraid to say it out loud.)
Only a year has passed, but everything has changed. You're third-years now, the four of you, standing at the cusp of autumn, and the heat is unbearable. Satoru is never home, the pieces of your technique are finally starting to come together, Shoko hasn't left the morgue in twenty hours. Suguru is cursed. You are haunted. At least you think so. In dreams, in flashbacks, in the corners of your eyes: you see a girl with ink-black hair, a cheery smile, the grin of the man who took it from her. You see Suguru with an X through his chest, lying limp and lifeless, bleeding out on the ground below him. A sharp, metallic scent permeates the air and burns into the back of your eyes. You see your own battered body from a bird's eye point of view. You see people in clusters, dressed in pure white and clapping.
An itch you didn't scratch.
…
Suguru finally takes a sip of the water. It's nearly spilling over the corners of the glass, a few droplets dribbling down his chin. It's all you hear in the silence, his gentle, greedy gulps, the bobbing of his Adam's apple. You watch him drink, hesitant. Because when Suguru looks at you in disapproval— like he's disappointed— you feel like you're about to die. Because you know it's not right of you to feel what you are feeling. Seeing what you're seeing when you close your eyes at night.
But Suguru has never turned away from what you are.
So, silently, you part your lips.
"… Sometimes I dream about killing them." The admission is so quiet it feels more like breathing empty air into the room. Pulling the trigger, letting the treacherous words leave your lips, a secret shared between the two of you. "The Time Vessel Association."
…
Suguru doesn't turn to face you.
For a moment, you think that he will. You think you'll see the firm curve of his brow, raised in silent judgement— in lesson. You think he might scold you for bringing it up.
"Sometimes I regret telling you not to."
(His voice rings out, the curve of it sharp, a blade thudding down against a marble counter.
Thunder rumbles South of Tokyo.)
Your neck aches with the strain of craning itself to face what you'd rather not see, his eyes subdued in shadow, the circles around his pupils more pitch-black than honey-brown. Murky seas that you could wade right into, sink to the bottom of until there's nothing in your lungs but salt water. You wonder if he heard himself. You ask yourself if it matters, and find that you don't have an answer. Suguru still won't look at you, and that hurts more than anything.
Then why don't you tell me now? You want to ask. Why don't we go do it?
The question never makes it past your lips.
Because the longer you look at him, the more broken Suguru seems. Gaze fastened on the floorboards, on the cracks between them, arms resting on his bent knees. You don't want to see that expression anymore, surrendered, caved in on itself, too brittle to hold. You're not going to be the final push that makes his ceramic heart break, fall and shatter into pieces. It's only a matter of time: he can't keep going like this, not eating or sleeping, only taking in new breaths when his lungs are crying for it. No one else is here to treat Suguru with care, so that burden falls on you. It's one you'd gladly carry. Even if you're the least suited for gentleness of all.
His fingers are coiled tightly around the glass, as if he might break it. You won't ask him. You won't put that pressure on his conscience. You'll stay passive. You'll think it through, just like he taught you, until you're sure the path you've chosen is the right one to tread.
Neither of you speak for a long while.
Three weeks later his dorm is empty, and your heart lays skewered in between your battered ribs. There is one less mug in the kitchen cabinet, and Suguru is nowhere to be found. When you hunted him down, he told you to go home— turned to face you just to say it, braver than you'd seen him in months, then walked away without further explanation. He didn't leave any final words of advice— of acknowledgment— didn't tell you to join him. Didn't tell you why he didn't tell you what he was planning to do, and didn't reprimand you for not asking. He didn't say anything at all. You couldn't do much but listen to the blood cruising through your brain, dig your nails into your inner palms, wishing all the iron inside of you could turn to stone.
September burns beyond the windowpane, sputtering out under a bout of rainfall. It hits the grounds of the schoolyard and erases all traces of muddy footsteps from the months before. Long gone are the days of youth; the winter ahead of you will be the longest one yet.
(Silently, in a school struck by mourning a boy who isn't dead, you think to yourself:
If the gun I'm holding is always loaded, can't I just take the bullets out? Would you do it if I asked— dismember me for my own good? Isn't that what you've always wanted to do?
Suguru. Suguru. Suguru.
Would you soften my edges if I promised to let you?
—Since you're gone, you can't respond. I'm left with this bullet-sized lump in my throat.)
Right before the world ends, you lift the barrel of your gun.
The air smells of frost and snow, a long overdue year's end. The wide-mouthed light of a very long tunnel, stretching out before you, bowing at your feet. It's a cold Christmas Eve in the outskirts of Tokyo Jujutsu High, the afternoon sun yet to sink and slather the skies in colour. Only the beginnings of it, shimmering yellow, illuminate the battlefield ahead of you.
Battered buildings. Side-walks caked in dust and bloodshed. Two figures and a ghost.
Okkotsu Yuuta stands with his demon-bride, the hollow edges of his soul overflowing with resolve. The blind, devout kind, unthinking. You've liked him since you met him. A boy who can't help but destroy the things he loves most. It made you feel nostalgia for your old self— only Okkotsu doesn't like violence, has never enjoyed it, never had a choice but to let it linger in his life— so you aren't very similar at all. Now, for the first time, he is in full control of himself.
You're sure it's a blissful feeling.
Across from him stands Geto Suguru, your former classmate of three years, ex-classmate of ten, his figure framed by battle-worn robes. A cursed spirit stands proudly at his side, four eyes coiled into slits, clad in a beautiful kimono, her black hair pooling like spilled ink on the ground. You never got to graduate together, and you never got to show him the true extent of your technique. He left you when you were eighteen, declaring war on the world. Now he's back where he started, standing at the door to hell with a smile on his face.
You've been watching for the past ten minutes, star-struck by the spectacle. Neither of them have noticed you. Neither of them care for anything but settling this, come what may.
Think before you pull the trigger.
The phantom of his sixteen-year-old, yet-to-be-ruined voice haunts a ghosting touch behind your ear. His words echo through your mind, so loud they drown out everything else.
Think before you raise your hand.
But it's too late. You've already activated your technique, formed the necessary hand seals, stretched your lips around the chanting in the split second before the two figures lunge at each other— and Okkotsu has already fallen to the ground, eyes snapped wide open. He gasps for breath in a world that won't give it to him, every organ in his body failing simultaneously. You hear the wailing of his bride before it dawns on you that it's your hands pointing south-west, towards the battlefield, in the spot where the student stood. Before you feel warmth run down your face, blood trickling from your nose and pooling in your mouth, your stomach churning wretchedly in its attempt to process the abrupt changes to your body. You're on the brink of passing out, and yet you exercise the remainder of your strength in staying upright.
Before you know it, it's over. The feeling creeps up your spine, up the back of the world, the infinity between your bodies. After the war ends, and the dust settles: only this empty, harrowing silence.
(You always knew it'd feel this way.)
Your cursed technique can transform iron into cursed energy. As you've grown to learn, it's comparable to a blood transplant, and its potential doesn't lie in tracking or disrupting blood flow. It lies in robbing your opponent of the iron their body needs to transport oxygen.
Maximum Technique: Massive Transfusion Protocol is your magnum opus. Until this moment, you've never succeeded in performing it. Only by turning the iron your own blood-cells are composed of into cursed energy did you manage to pull it off, only because you're familiar with your target's body. Because you've sparred with him, grabbed his wrist, wiped his own blood off his face. Touched his blood-cells and acclimated them to your own cursed energy.
You could only have performed it against someone who trusts you.
Across the battlefield, Suguru finally meets your eye. His expression has twisted, disfigured with shock, as if struck by an invisible hand— as if he hadn't expected to see you here today.
And then,
horror.
You remember it well. Tense brows, tight lips, eyes stormy with thought. It's the one he always wore. You inhale until your lungs burn. Walking, stumbling towards him.
His expression doesn't change. Frozen in time. Only his pupils wavering, though you don't see it until you're close enough to reach out and touch him, moving on autopilot through the bursts of cold winter air shaving against your face. This moment is yours. All yours and his. Your head hurts, twists with the weight of the iron deficiency you forced upon yourself, your palms cold and shaky when you reach to wipe off the blood at your lips. But you don't stop walking until you're as close as you can get without thumping right against his chest.
Faintly, under the dust and drying blood, his robes smell of osmanthus and rainfall.
"Why?"
He says the word like it's a bullet. Like he's digging it out of his throat, pressing the pads of his fingers against the bleeding juncture of his neck. There are no words to say— nothing that could make him understand the depth of what you're feeling. Suguru has never looked away from what you are, but he's never understood you. Only now do you accept that.
(If he did, he wouldn't be looking at you like this. Wouldn't be surprised in the slightest.)
"He was going to kill you," you croak. Trying not to sputter on the blood in your mouth.
Suguru looks confounded. His lips part to form around your name, a familiar sound, one you've missed, the ringing of a bell-chime hung outside the window to your childhood. He says it like he's being haunted. Maybe he is. Maybe that's the price you pay for killing a child, maybe it turns you into a spectre. Okkotsu is still lying limp on the ground, his body cradled by his weeping bride. She's yet to attack. Suguru's curse circles her, determining her to be the greater threat between you, though he seems to have given her no order to strike.
"… He was your student."
"Satoru's," you correct. "I liked him."
He looks at you sceptically; horror slowly fading, giving way for clinical curiosity, or something akin to it. Observation. Reading between the lines of your face. He was always like that, just never this obvious about it. He's looking at you like he's trying to figure out who you are. As if something else could be wearing your skin, using your body to trick him.
It hurts. But you'll take it over having him not look at you at all.
"… I'm not a child anymore," you mutter. Squeezing your eyes shut, head hung so low your neck hurts, feeling blood flow to your brain at a gruelling pace. It's hard to breathe. "I know what I'm doing. I know what I just did. You may not believe me, but I've always wanted this."
"You betrayed Jujutsu High."
"Didn't you hear me?" you whine. "I know."
No sound. He must still be surveying you. Wondering what you're getting at, trying to find an ulterior motive that doesn't exist. He doesn't get it. He still doesn't get it. You know it's your fault, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. This is where your confession belongs: in the span of these few minutes. If only your throat wasn't clogged with bloodclot you could say it without straining, but beggars can't be choosers, can they?
"Suguru." You reach out to touch him, to ghost your fingers over his robes. Lifting your jaw to nose at his maw. Partially to keep yourself upright, knees nearly buckling under the weight of your exhaustion, and partially to keep him from running away, you clutch weakly at the silk-stitched fabric. "I've only ever cared about you. There wasn't really… anyone else."
Suguru, in turn— carefully, as if you're an oil-slicked lighter primed to burst— lets his palm fall to your lower back. He nearly flinches at the proximity between your bodies, but keeps you stable all the same. He's too nice for his own good. Dainichi Nyorai incarnate. If you said that out loud, he'd spit in your face.
"I've been wondering what I can do to make you understand that." You take a wobbly breath. It's hard to keep your voice steady. Vowels slur together when you fall into distraction, watching his face flicker like film, hunting for the lines you've rehearsed for this moment. They all escape you now. "I'm no good either. I'm just as bad. I tried so hard to be righteous without you, but it doesn't make me feel a thing." Ten years of trying. You really did try. You thought that if you tried hard enough to be good and responsible, to be principled, he'd eventually return. That if nothing else, it would mellow out the heartache.
In the end, it did nothing but make you want this. Carnage. Your mother was right all along.
"I can't be like you," you continue. "That's the reason you didn't let me go with you back then, right? Because I said that's what I wanted." Your gaze sears into his. You must look manic. That's just as well: a long time has passed since you thought yourself capable of becoming a normal human. "But I've changed my mind. I just want to be with you."
And that's that. Your heart is racing in your ears, the rushing of your own blood loud in the silence, drowsy as it is. You swallow thickly. Adrenaline is keeping the pain at bay, just as it's always done for you: but the ache at your temples is harsh enough to give you pause.
"With me." Suguru tastes the words, seems to mull over them. His face is set into firm lines. "Do you even believe in what I'm trying to accomplish?"
"Not really," you answer honestly. "But there's nowhere else for me to go. They'll kill me for helping you, you know."
"Then why did you?"
He sounds angry. Scolding. You must really be evil, down to the bone, in a way Suguru never was and never will be— because even in the midst of this brutality, you can only bring yourself to think that you've missed the sound.
"Because I only care about you," you exhale. The words ring in your head. "I said that already."
There's a pause. Vacantly, you dip your tongue out to lick at the trail of blood from your nose, already beginning to flake. Watching him intently. The movie playing on his face. Every muscle there is tense, like something out of a scene from Satoru's Wild West flicks. Something like the final standoff between sheriff and outlaw. Who is the sheriff between you, you wonder?
"You still haven't learned how to think before you speak, have you?"
Suguru's tone is dull. Brow perched high on his forehead.
"… Maybe," you concede. You have, technically, though it's mostly been for show. "But I mean it. I have nowhere else to go."
…
"Please, Suguru."
His eyes gleam gold and muddy-orange. Worn by rust, but still just as disarming as ever. Still so quick to falter under earnesty.
"Tamamo-no-mae Incarnate," he calls, finally, voice taut like a bow. "Finish her."
Rika doesn't resist. You wonder why. You'll never know. It's over in an instant: Suguru puts his hand out, twists her features, and turns the Queen of Curses into a globe on his open palm. He swallows it whole without flinching. It's a victory for Suguru Geto and the curse users— you know it to be true, and see it in his eyes. Something like disbelief. Nothing like the pride you were hoping for. He doesn't even look particularly pleased, but you'll take what you can get from this. When he licks his lips clean the barrier above you crackles, trembles, and finally shatters. You feel his presence before you register the sound of glass breaking.
Suguru meets the sheriff's eye over your shoulder.
"What did you do?"
When you turn around Satoru looks the angriest you've ever seen him, blue eyes bare and flashing with fury, confusion, cutting through the distance between your bodies to pierce into you. If looks could kill you'd be dead where you stand, butchered under the weight of the sorcerer world's treasury. His voice comes out so sharp it hurts to listen to it.
Mutual understanding. One look meets another. He's seen Okkotsu's corpse, and he knows which one of you killed him. You know, instinctively, that he is never going to forgive you.
Cold calm washes over you.
Suguru steps forward, standing rigid at your side. A marble statue come to life, the ends of his hair dyed ember-red by the sunset behind him: dragging its thousand teeth against the mountain-ridged horizon. His eyes carry resolve you could never have understood until today. "Satoru," his voice softens, near imperceptible. "You're late." There's an apology there, one he won't say out loud. You wonder if Satoru can hear it through the thundering in his skull.
"Did you ask them to do this?" he questions, strained. "Or did they do it on their own?"
"Does it matter?"
"Answer me."
Suguru glances at you. His eyes are world-worn, face lines accentuated under the bleeding sky. Long gone are the days he'd look at you with pity. "Well?"
"I made the call." You don't stutter when you answer. "Sorry, Satoru."
Dove-white streaks of hair tremble in the winter air, nearly pink under a sunset overdue. His brow threatens to twitch, but his expression doesn't waver, and his face doesn't contort. His eyes hold you steady, calculating, cobalt-blue brushing against the contours of your soul. It feels like being pried apart by the hands of strangers. None of you know how terrifying you are. Not you, not Suguru, not Satoru.
If he decides to kill you, that'll be the end of this. Even with Rika Orimoto in his arsenal, Suguru won't stand a chance. Definitely not after unleashing Maximum Uzumaki. You know it, and he knows it, and Satoru knows it better than anyone. The man that stands in front of you was your friend of twelve long years, and now the final gambit standing in the way of the ending that you've chosen.
If you survive this, it's because Satoru lets you.
Standing at the world's edge, with your heart sluggishly pumping blood to a head that can barely hold its own weight— you understand this perfectly. You're gambling with your lives, but that's always been the crux of your profession. And Satoru only has one weakness.
He glowers at you both. Steel-jawed, straight-laced, feet rooted into the ground of a school Suguru and Okkotsu demolished. Crimson stains dribble down the cobble-stone.
Everything in silent, and nobody moves. The world stills in grievance of the youth you lost.
Then, without saying a word, Satoru tips his jaw down to look at the ground. His breathing turns to mist, turns to smoke, turns to vapour. He doesn't look at Okkotsu-kun. He doesn't look you in the eye. He looks at dirt and gravel like it could tell him how to feel.
But he isn't that naive.
(Back then, he understood. He knew you were dangerous from the moment he set eyes on you. Suguru believed in you, but Satoru never did— never really. He told you as much when you killed for the first time. You're going to do it again, he said, as candid as ice. You're going to get him in trouble. Do as you please, but don't come crying to me if he starts hating you for it.
You wonder if he knew what you were doing to Okkotsu. You ask yourself, quietly, if there was someone else you could have killed to save him, someone less important to him.
You already know the answer.)
"Suguru," you hear yourself speak, though you put no conscious effort into moving your lips. All you taste is iron, iron, iron. When you hold out your palm, he tangles your fingers together. It's reluctant, but you'll take what you can get. You'll take this broken ending over one where you're robbed of your second goodbye, left with a cool-blooded body to hold. Suguru and Satoru share a look over your shoulder, unspoken, charged with one millenia of devastation: you close your eyes in awe of it. The world has ended, your trigger finger gone lax. "Let's go."
Behind you waits a curse. The bullet at the bottom of your throat tastes of hell-fire.
contents; suguru geto x fem!reader. age gap (suguru is written with late 30s to early 40s in mind; reader is a university student.) long distance relationship. fluff & smut: afab reader, mostly sweet and gentle sex, though r and suguru are very needy for each other. some hair pulling and implied overstim. light dirty talk. for characterization purposes he wears a condom. + doting aftercare scene wc; 3.1k
commissioned by @toobadkoi !! thank you again for commissioning me !! 🥺💗
"There you are."
There's a man in front of the door to your apartment, broad-shouldered and tight-jawed: a plastic bag clutched in his palm and blue umbrella tucked between his arm and rib. The milk-blue sky is knitted over with cotton clouds and grayscale watercolour, the air between your bodies reeks of humid asphalt and cut grass. He perks up when he notices you, disheveled as you are from the weather and the day you've had, a warm smile fanning out across his lips.
Rain patters noisily against the sidewalk behind you. Your eyes widen— brain spinning. Skipping past the last remaining steps of the staircase, his name a heavy weight between your lips.
"Suguru?"
"Welcome home, honey." He catches you in his embrace, his voice thick at your ear, ripe with longing. Curse him for sounding so effortlessly domestic. "How was your day?"
"Forget my day," you pull back with a bright, unshakeable smile, eager for a proper look at him. You can barely remember what you were so exhausted about. Seminars? Does it matter when he's in front of you, warm to the touch and looking at you like he wants nothing but to press your lips flush against his? "What are you doing here? No, wait— how long have you been waiting here?" you slip on a playful pout. "I would've hurried if you'd told me…"
"Don't you worry," he smooths a palm down your shoulder, squeezing it gently. "I don't mind. I wanted it to come as a surprise."
Breathless laughter. You run a hand through your wet hair. "Trust me, it did. Gosh."
This older gentleman is Suguru Geto, your boyfriend of nearly one year. He lives five hours away by car, in an rural town surrounded by thick clusters of cypress and cedar trees, far from the hustle and bustle of the city you've settled down to study in. You met him there on a trip with your friends, and the rest is history. He's the best boyfriend you've had to date: caring and patient, supportive but comfortable in redirecting you when you need it. Obscenely handsome. Obviously. Your age difference was never an issue, because Suguru is always transparent with you, and never treads around speaking candidly.
The single downside is how far he is.
(Of course, the issue came up early. Suguru has roots where he's at. History. A stable line of work. He knows all of the locals by name, is well-loved by all of them. Between the two of you, it's obvious who'd be expected to move.
Except you don't like that. You don't like that it has to be you, that you'd have to build your life around his just because he's older.
And neither does he. So, at least for the time being, you're at a standstill.)
But now, he's right in front of you. Greeting you with a sunny smile, smelling lightly of oakwood incense and coconut oil, looking better than ever. Hair tied into a half up-half down bun, white threads gleaming silver in between the ink-black. He never believes you when you tell him they're sexy. Age wears him perfectly.
Hunger stirs in your gut.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," he murmurs, leaving a kiss below your ear that really, really isn't helping his case. You're gonna eat him up. "I know you've been stressed lately… I was hoping I could keep you company tonight."
"Why are you apologizing?" you huff. "This was the best thing I could have come back to."
The corners of his eyes soften. They're dog-like, adoring, taking you in. Seconds pass without him speaking. You share a long, weighty look, the patter of rainfall crescendoing behind you: the summer shower is only getting worse.
"Let's go inside," you hasten, tugging at his bicep. Fishing for keys in your front pocket.
Your boyfriend follows, cluelessly.
As soon as the door closes behind you, a dull thud echoing down the hall— you pounce. Wrapping your arms around his neck and dragging him down to your lips, sticky chapstick tethering you together when you mash them against his. A noise of surprise rasps in his throat, muffled against your mouth, but he's quick to catch himself; falling into your rhythm, parting his lips when you nudge at the seam of them, tongues gliding together in a sloppy, heated waltz. He tastes of pocket mints and need. An arm sneaks around your waist, hefty fingers dipping underneath your shirt to caress the dip of your lower back, causing your trembling frame to press closer. This ache in your chest feels like it'll never go away. Missing him, wanting him, drinking the oxygen straight from his lungs. Both the umbrella and plastic bag clatter on the doormat.
Your breaths mingle in the dark corner.
When you have to pull away, slack-jawed and doe-eyed, you're met with his swollen lips and molten expression, honey-brown eyes hot with desire. He looks like he could eat you alive like this: cornered, taking a shallow, quiet breath. His cheeks dusted pink with peach fuzz.
But he maintains his composure.
(Age has made him patient, you think. He's always been good at holding back with you. Sometimes it makes you want to push and prod at that part of him— just to see how he'd react. If you could hit on something. Wear him out. He is weak to you; that much you're sure of.)
"… Oh, baby," he's breathless as he speaks, reaching down to pick the plastic bag off the floor. "I almost forgot to give you these."
Inside it is a blue bouquet, hydrangeas paired with clusters of baby's breath. The syrupy scent of rainy season sticks to their petals. He hands them to you with a sweet smile, all-together unfitted for the animalistic need you feel right now, tongue heady with the taste of his saliva, but it still makes your heart bleed. Your boyfriend is something of a flower buff: because of that, you know what they represent. You know about the story of the emperor who gave hydrangeas to his neglected lover, in apology, in repetance. You understand what he's trying to say.
Suguru doesn't just talk to you in words. He speaks to you in actions, expressions, even bouquets. That's part of why you love him. You don't have to look hard to see his care for you.
"… They suit you," he compliments, watching them find home in your arms.
"Thank you, baby." You give him a kiss on the cheek, struggling not to grin at how pleased he looks. "I'll put them up by the window."
"Good idea. They'll look perfect there."
"Did you bring them from home?"
"I didn't," he shakes his head. "The temple is practically overgrown with them, though. I could have bought a bouquet from Mrs Satsuko, but I didn't want to risk them wilting during the drive. They're sensitive flowers, you know."
"Huh. Are they?"
"Yes." He smiles. "They need cool air and moisture. It's why they bloom so vibrantly when the weather gets like this."
Curiously, you look at the bundle of blossoms in your arms: their petals shaped like fallen stars, the colour of an evening sky. Sucking on a quiet hum. "I'll take good care of them."
…
Silence settles. Then tension returns, even stronger than before— impossible to resist. You bat your lashes, closing in like a coyote.
"Now," you purr. "Where were we?"
Suguru's throat bobs. It's the only tell you get into how much he's holding back, otherwise the picture of composure, your saliva still sticking to his bottom lip. "… Where indeed," he croons. Pulling you closer, and closer, letting you tug him away as you stumble to your bedroom.
Everything else can wait. You need him now. The rest of the world will sort itself out.
You end up straddling his lap, clutching onto his broad shoulders, panties pooled around your ankles as you sink down on his cock. Suguru likes to prepare you thoroughly, with his fingers and tongue and dollops of lube,but the need between your thighs is too great for that kind of patience. He lets you go at the pace you like best. Trusting you to know your limits. The fullness is a comfort, familiar, as much as it strains your pussy to take him to the root— nudging the line of too much, too fast.
Still, you can't help but want all of it. So you take every inch, carefully, from the bulbous head to the curved middle, waiting until you're relaxed enough to sit down fully. Once you've planted yourself on his lap, you pause to take a deep, steadying breath. The stretch burns. Your head spins. Suguru leans in to lick up the drool at the corner of your lip. He's got his palms on either side of your hips, tethering you to the sweltering need between your bodies.
"Take your time, little one," he murmurs.
It encourages you, if anything.
You start to move.
He guides you seamlessly, steadily, up and down his condom-clad cock— he slipped it on before you could protest, firm in his choice, more careful with you than you sometimes think is necessary— lips drawn taut around a silent moan. You want to stick your fingers down his throat and pull it out, but you suppose you'll have to do it with your hips instead. "Good girl," he praises, palms slipping underneath your thighs. "You look so beautiful like this."
The smooth, baritone cords of his voice make you dizzyingly wet: head spinning, slick sticking to his pubes, your feet planted on the mattress to support your pace. Up, down. Up, down. Suguru's thickness is there to welcome you every time, mushroom tip smearing kisses at your cervix. Up, and down.
A whimper splits your lips.
"I can tell you missed it," he sighs, holding you close, breathing down the side of your neck. It jolts through your fluttering pussy. Something embarrassing scratches at your chest, but you swallow it back down, digging your nails into his shoulders. "You're working it so sloppy."
Knowing him, he means it as a compliment, but it makes your neck burn terribly. He must feel the heat at your cheeks. With a sharp inhale, you flick his hands off your body, sinking down harshly just to hear his breath hitch. You squeeze around him, pointedly.
"Just… lay back," you pant. "No more talking."
Without protest, he does as you say; elbows cushioning his fall, biceps straining deliciously under your watchful gaze. His body is lethal. Firm and muscular, yet softened by age, perfect for resting your head against on days where your thoughts are too turbulent to carry. He hums, eyes flickering with something not quite amused, but endeared, like watching you ride him so desperately is cute to him. It makes you wanna tug at his roots and make him yelp.
(… Actually, why don't you?)
"Ah—" he sucks on a sharp noise, caught halfway between a moan and a wince, his grip on the sheets tightening like a snare. Desperate, just like you. You watch his throat jump, rosy lips falling open as you get a good grip on his silky black locks, pulling just the way he likes. "Oh, I missed you. I missed you so much, baby."
Almost unconsciously, you speed up. Raising your hips, then sinking down, using his hair as leverage. The rhythm grows sharper, more purposeful, smacking his pelvis every time you spear yourself open around him. Plap, plap, plap. Sparks firing through your nerve-ends. His balls feel firm underneath you, heavy.
"A little harder," he encourages, giving your thigh a tender— needy— pat. "I can take it."
"Don't… be greedy," you chastise, out of breath, flushed with heat and trembling. It's a struggle not to stumble on your words; all you're focused on is fucking him, working his cock until you're satisfied. So hungry for him that you feel it like a knot in your stomach. But you listen, tugging harsher, moving your entire body with every loud, slick bounce on his lower abdomen, legs straining with the tempo you've set.
"Good girl," he moans. There it is. Whatever triumph you feel evaporates under the heat of his hands, coming back to cup your hips, not guiding, only resting. You think of chastising him, but all that leaves your lips is half-whimper, half-whine. "Look at you…"
For a while, he lets you use him. Laid down like a meal with hearts in his eyes, breath hitching around sinful, broken noises, muscles tense and coiled. He reminds you of a tiger. Broad, sharp-eyed, lying in wait. What would that make you— a house cat? Needy and in heat? Playing with his cock like it's yours.
(It is, he told you once. He'd tell you again if you asked. There's no shame there— never was. Only yours. You can have it any time, honey.)
Eventually, when your hips slow to a sluggish grind, exhausted by the effort, the tides begin to shift. Violently, a boat rocked sideways. The band of his patience snaps, your chest pulled flush against his own; his cock pumping in and out of you with steady rolls of his hips, lovingly firm, knocking the mewls out of your mouth. You're being cherished— you know that— but it's intense, sweaty skin slipping against sweaty skin, his pulse thundering through your body, hot like a furnace. Intense enough to make you want to run from it, even though it's all you've been dreaming of for the last two weeks.
Not that you could— even through the fog in your head and need in your belly, you understand that. Suguru is just as pent up as you are. You're staying right here until you're tuckered out and boneless, no ifs or buts about it. The promise is unsaid, but you feel it in the hold he's got on your body. He's not as harmless as he seems. Not when you need something of him and he's promised to deliver.
Only when you're shaking and writhing around him, wetting his abs with your come, does he focus on his own orgasm. Using you harshly, yet lovingly still, dragging you over his cock. He makes little noise when he gets there, flooding the condom with sticky batches of warmth that you can still feel through the latex, panting at your ear while his palm rubs down your back, like you’re the one coming undone.
Then he lifts you off his lap. Sweat dripping down his brow, a drunken haze over his eyes, fingers hooked against your ribcage.
"I need to taste you," he pants. Eyes dark with greed, pupils overblown. Gone is the control he keeps such a tight hold of. "On your back, baby."
Your heart beats hotly, foreboding twisting in your belly. Thighs sticking together with slick. Breath stuck in your throat. You almost want to ask for a break, but he's already tied his hair up.
Quietly, you swallow.
He's nowhere near satisfied, is he?
After hours of being ravaged, made love to, held and taken apart and put together again— your bodies finally run out of fuel.
You're tended to with steady hands, every touch intentional, familiar with the process: cleaned in the shower as you drift in and out of consciousness, floating somewhere underneath the blank slate of your mind, then made to drink from a water bottle to soothe your worn throat. Wrecked. Wrung dry. Cunt buzzing like a livewire. The culprit walks into your bedroom with a hot plate of food, wearing an expression so content you'd think he just came back from a week-long excursion to a hot spring.
Shameless. Stupidly sexy.
"Can't feel my legs," you whine, sprawled out on the mattress, tucked in like a child. Stretching out your sore limbs with a groan. "God, I needed this."
Warm, rumbling laughter. Suguru walks over to your bedside, wearing nothing but his boxers and a cardigan he'd left behind in your closet, hickies sucked into his neck and collarbone. Your canvas. Sunset kisses smudging skin. "I'm glad to hear it," he croons. "Here you are. Make sure to clean your plate, alright?"
Suguru leans towards quick, easy cooking for your aftercare. This time it's fried rice with plenty of vegetables and thin slices of meat, cooked a perfect golden brown, smelling of sesame oil, soy sauce and ginger paste. Your weary hands reach for it, bringing it to rest on your chest. Warmth spreads through the blanket he wrapped around your shoulders.
"Ahhh—" you sigh, scooping up a pile of rice with the spoon he gave you. "I love you."
One of his palms brush against your cheek, eyes bright with satisfaction. Delighting when you lean into the touch. "I love you too, baby."
Without having to tell him to, Suguru crawls under the covers beside you. Offering his shoulder as a headrest while you eat. The room is coated in a thin sheen of shadow, only lit up by a half-broken lamp by the windowsill. It lulls your mind into a state of docile fatigue. Your body grows softer with every bite, entirely limp once he takes the plate off your hands and puts it on the nightstand. This security is what you like best. Sex with Suguru is mind-breaking in many ways, but this is the most staggering. How ready he is to hold you when it's over, even though he's nearly as tired as you are.
Badump, badump.
Your ear at his heartbeat. His palms at your back, arms around your waist, securing you against him— a shipwreck to his shore. There's nowhere else you'd rather be. Boneless in your boyfriend's embrace, aching terribly between your legs, but only in good ways. Quietly, a pitter-patter rattles at your windowpane, smattering against the glass.
The world outside your apartment is just as it should be. It's a comfort to listen to, bleeding into the mantra of Suguru's steady pulse.
"When are you leaving?"
He shifts above you, planting a gentle kiss between your brows. It makes your lashes flutter shut. "Not anytime soon," he promises. His voice barely-there, as if he's terrified of startling you. You believe him. "Go to sleep, baby. I'll be here when you wake up."
…
"Hey, Suguru," you whisper, feeling your mind sink into slumber. "Can I tell you a secret?"
"… Yes, my love."
You nose at his pulsepoint. Burying yourself in him. Murmuring, beneath your breath:
"I missed you."
Suguru stills. His wandering hands, his doting lips, even his rhythmic heartbeat. Before he can respond, your mind grows dull and quiet.
(You'll wake up to covers heady with hints of coconut oil and oakwood, the sweet smell of breakfast wafting from your kitchen through the rest of your apartment, and three good morning kisses from a man who loves you.)
boy who is cool and chill and unbothered until you start dating him and he slowly reveals himself to be 1) jealous 2) clingy 3) possessive the way a criminal in a thriller might unmask himself in its final act
(Suguru always adapts to the role he’s been given with exceeding diligence; you suppose you should have guessed he’d be like this once you started dating.
Still, the cold smile on his lips surprises you.)
”O-Of course you are.” Your tongue stumbles past the vowels, body caught between your classmate— your boyfriend— and the concrete-wall next to the vending machine. You didn’t have time to get anything before you were cornered. Since morning he’s been staring at you with enough intensity to burn your skin like wax, and now, it seems, his patience has run out. ”What’s this about?”
A dragonfly-hum bruises under the pocket of his pulse. Silence nestles itself into the span of one, two, three long seconds. It feels like twenty.
”That’s what I thought.” He lifts a hand to brush his fingers through your bangs, near-tender. ”… but you’re letting Satoru touch up on you like you’re his.”
You blink. You stare.
If you weren’t so flabbergasted, you’d probably laugh. He’d get the same look in his eye that he always does whenever you poke fun at him, intentionally or not— like a cat squinting at the sun.
”Suguru,” you deadpan. ”Are you seriously jealous of Gojo? Satoru Gojo? Our Satoru Gojo?”
…
”Well,” he clears his throat, angling his body backwards, letting you breathe. It’s not quite a step back, but it does the job. You can’t focus well on much when he’s close enough to smell: today it’s citrus oil in his hair and oakwood at his nape. ”Jealous is a bit much. I just don’t want him all over you.”
(It’s hard to tell with Suguru, but you think— you’re almost sure— that there’s some peach-dust at his ears. Gone by the time you think to take a closer look.)
”Well, neither do I.” You scoff, half-hearted. ”Gojo’s just like that… There’s not much I can do. Honestly, he might only be doing it because it bothers you.”
”He is,” Suguru inhales. Exhales very quietly. Eyes curved into crescents, but a sharp slope to his lips. ”Believe me, he is.”
”Then why make it sound like I’m to blame?”
He frowns, only slightly. Something in his brain must have gotten knocked out of order: the line that goes from A to B. That’s not what I meant, he’s probably thinking. I’m only mad at him, not you. You know that. You can see the thoughts flicker in his eyes, watching film on a projector that spins only for you.
”You… aren’t,” he says, smoothing out the crease between his brows with a light shake of his head. His bangs are sticky with sunbeams. ”Okay. You’re right. I’ll be more firm with him from now on.”
”Not sure how much more firm you can be without getting suspended.”
”That’s a risk I’m willing to take, unfortunately.” A full smile. He leans down to kiss your cheek, chaste and sweet. The sound his lips make reminds you of popped bubblegum. ”… Thanks for bearing with me. It annoyed me that he wouldn’t take it seriously, so I guess I’ve been letting it build up.”
”You’re good.” It’s cute, you think. ”It’s cute.”
… Though you didn’t mean to say it.
Suguru blinks. For a moment, you wonder if he’s upset. Some reactionary, masculine reflex. Then his eyes soften, and his fingertips feel hot against your jaw, and his lips are on yours, and you think, oh, he likes it. Nevermind. Kissing him feels like breathing, so your thoughts trail off somewhere around there.
”… Can you say it again?” he asks, low and lulling.
”You’re cute.”
”Not that,” he laughs. ”The other thing.”
…
Oh.
You wrap your arms around his neck, resting your elbows on his broad shoulders. They feel abyssal like this. His body warm through polyester. ”You’re my boyfriend, Suguru,” you murmur at his ear.
He might have shivered just now. You aren’t sure.
”Mm,” a purr thrums through his chest, pleased and rumbling. His throat sounds dry. ”… Yours. That’s right.”
Suguru always adapts to the role he’s been given with exceeding diligence; jujutsu sorcerer, class president, or boyfriend, all in equal measure. It doesn’t surprise you, not really, that it makes him act like this: being yours. Having you. It may surprise Gojo and Ieiri, but they haven’t traced his cells with their fingertips— not like you have.
You’re glad. Pleased. The cat that got the cream. Because Suguru acts more like a boyfriend than you ever could have dreamed.
contents: suguru geto x gn!reader. mindless drabble i wrote to cope with the temp being slightly higher than usual (i am sensitive). non-sexual nudity, suggestive but not explicit; suguru gets hard but does nothing about it & reader doesn’t comment on it. he’s just really really into you. syrupy fluff and desire. wc: 1k
Today the outside world is still: no wind in the air or clouds in the sky. You're in the mouth of May, stuck between her gums, soon to be dislodged (it’ll only get warmer outside of her maw—) and sprawled out on a mattress just big enough for two people to sleep in, emerald-green curtains curbing sharp light from your skin; wearing nothing but a pair of boxes that don’t fit around your hips. A windchime by the open window rustles from the blast of the AC, its whirring drowning out the gentle glass-toll.
Sweat blankets your body, heat-fatigue dulling your muscles. You exhale like a wounded dog.
When Suguru sees you he feels himself harden, blood rushing southward to pulse in his groin; so sudden he feels dizzy with it, heaving for silent breath. The same effect you always have on his body when you're this woefully at ease, laid out on your side with your belly exposed, baring the tight knots of your spine and branches of your ribs. You were clothed when he left, so he wasn’t prepared for it. Your thighs slick and parted, chest rising sluggishly: pebbled nipples soft and puffy. His fingers twitch at his sides like they don’t know where they’d rather be. Too many options. All of them susceptible to being taken apart. Something gluttonous unhooks his mouth as he adjusts himself, a disciplinarian palm at the front of his shorts, urging his own dormant need to unwind.
With a soft smile on his lips, he calls out to you.
”I'm home.”
And you, half-asleep and melting, with what little burst of energy your sleepy neurons catch hold of, use your groggy voice to answer: ”Welcome back.”
Then you flip onto your back— droopy eyelids straining not to fall once they're pried open— to stare at the ceiling like a dead cicada. The sheets he washed last night now wear an imprint of your body, darkened with sweat where you laid. Taking care not to trip over the empty waterbottles scattered on the floor, he makes his way to where you've chosen to ride out the heatwave.
"How are you holding up?” He heaves a plastic bag over to the nightstand, weighty with popsicles in honeydew and ramune flavours, cold cans of iced tea, sparkling water and espresso. There's a ring stain on the wood from your morning cup of coffee that he's sure he asked you to clean.
”I think I'm dying.”
Suguru cracks a smile.
”I doubt that,” he teases, fingers clasped around a can of green tea wet with condensation. ”But we don’t want you overheating.” He leans over to press it flush against your cheek, watching you shiver, ice-cold aluminum cooling your features— goosebumps blooming down the valleys of your shoulders. When your lips fall around a garbled moan, the ache in his lower region responds. Suguru swallows.
Oh, you’re bad for him.
”Thank youuu,” you whine with relief, high and wanton. Slippery fingers fumbling with the ring, struggling to break it open. He slips a thumb underneath yours, snaps it clean, then guides it to your lips, already parted and waiting. You're a good, pliant little thing for him. His sweetheart. Ring stains be damned. Suguru watches, half-delighted, as you take greedy, hasty sips— watches your throat bob like a ship wracked with saltwater.
When you're finished, you sigh. Your naked chest lifts with the force of it. Only then does he think to indulge himself, his own body hot after the mission you sent him on, reaching for a can of afternoon tea. He hands you a popsicle for good measure.
”… Are you tanning?” you ask suddenly. Lifting your head to get a better look, too tired to sit straight.
He blinks. ”Am I?” Raising his arm up to the curtain-filtered light, he sees that you’re right; his skin is darker than before, sunkissed, though only slightly. It's near imperceptible. Sometimes he wonders if you know his body better than he ever will.
”I like that look on you,” you admit, mouth full of crushed ice and honeydew. Pink tongue peeking out to lick your lips clean once you swallow. ”Like when we went to Kansai.”
(That was two summers ago. Not quite a honeymoon, but something like the promise of it: that’s how he wanted it to feel, anyway. You lived leisurely in the countryside, among rice fields and slow-flowing creeks, picking out ingredients for dinner from the markets you'd pass by on your way back home from your excursions. His skin did tan, then. More than it had since he was a child. You were both outside too much for it not to.)
”Should I try to get it back?” he smiles. Low-curved, wanting. Too sultry to be sweet.
”I mean,” you pop your sticky fingers into your mouth, ice cream gone with the wind. "I'd probably pounce on you.”
”Oh, how awful.”
”Terrible,” you tip your jaw back. ”I'd ravage you. Well, I guess I'll be doing that regardless, though."
”When you're done melting, I assume?"
”When I'm done melting,” you nod.
Suguru's laughter brushes against his ribs, the touch feather-light, stoking the fire buried underneath it. It’s soft and brittle, but weighty with delight. Finally he can't resist getting above you, climbing onto the mattress, biceps straining on either side of your head. His lips find purchase on your forehead. ”I’m looking forward to it.”
Two clammy palms clasp onto his cheeks, slippery but purposeful; you guide him to your open mouth. It feels something like praying. Your lips are cold and syrupy. He swipes his tongue across the seam of them, not to rouse but to clean, his own mouth sweet with the taste of apricot-flavoured chewing gum.
Blood pulses heavy in his heart, in his groin. The sound of it rushing through him drowns out the whirring of the AC overhead.
contents; suguru geto x gn!reader. canon au; written as a vague prequel piece to ask again later. pre-relationship hurdles. suguru is jealous, reader is oblivious. longing and pining. satoru wingmans unintentionally? convolutedly? feat. suguru’s untreated trauma response wc; 2.2k
commissioned by @loverducky !! chirps at u AGAIN. thank you for commissioning me and trusting me to write for this lovely couple 💗
Quiet cicada cries hollow out the air. Summer-heat frays at the soles of his shoes, bright sunshine dyeing the training fields alabaster; Suguru watches you spar with Satoru and wishes he could smash his skull into the ground.
… Well, that might be a tad too dramatic.
As hard as you’re trying to match the timing of his hits, there isn't much you can do against the gravitational pull of Blue. The stakes are raised so high against you that it's almost painful to watch. Still, he keeps his eyes trained on the scene.
Despite the obvious gap in strength, Satoru never takes it easy on you. You get along just fine: it's not a grudge, nor bullying, or anything of the sort. Just Satoru being Satoru. You'd think someone so groomed into power would fixate on it when it matters most, but when it comes to sparring he's never so much as entertained the idea of pulling his punches with you. Not more than he does per automatum, anyway. Suguru thinks it's improper. That he should have the common sense to see the cruelty in throwing you around when you fundamentally lack the power to retaliate. That, to put it simply, Satoru is an asshole.
Suguru thinks a lot of things. But the one time he tried to step in, to suggest he be gentler— you looked at him like he had failed you.
So he simply watches from the sidelines, sat on a bench overlooking the training field, cloaked in the shadow of a cherry tree. Hands in his pockets, stray bangs swaying with a breeze that flits past. You manage to avoid one of Satoru's jabs, letting gravity pull your body under at the very last second, but you aren't as lucky when he counters. His fist rams into your shoulder. The sight ruptures something in him. For a second— quietly, seethingly, for no one but him and the curses in his stomach to hear— he thinks of ripping his best friend open with his teeth. Pitting animal against animal. But you stumble back on your feet so valiantly that he can't do much but click his tongue and lean forward. This time it's Satoru who trips, no doubt due to your luck kicking into gear. He lands on his ass. Your laughter rings out.
From afar, it looks as if you're dancing.
(Satoru checks up on your shoulder. Good. He has some decorum, at least. You're panting— Suguru can see it clearly even from this distance, the way your lips strain around heaving breaths, your chest rising and falling under the polyester of your uniform, but still smiling in a way that has his heart twisting at the stem. Your high five rings through the air, crisp as a lightning-strike. Satoru is smiling too.
It shouldn't make him grimace.)
Today is a particularly hot day of summer vacation, and Suguru is watching the person he likes rub shoulders with his best friend when he could be doing anything else. Taking you out on a date, for example. Better yet, he could be sparring with you himself: he may not push you as hard as Satoru does, but he knows how to coach, owns curses perfectly tailored to pitting your technique against. In terms of pure physical combat, there's no question who's more knowledgeable between the two of them. Satoru just swings his limbs around.
But, no. You wanted to spar with him.
And he said yes.
(What a waste of a blue sky.)
Suguru breaks out of his thoughts at the sound of gym shoes crunching against gravel. When he looks up from the ground you're jogging towards him at a distance. Finally. The sight has him rising to his feet, making his way to a vending machine behind him, stickers of Digimon characters and rabbit mascots fastened to the glass; courtesy of his classmates. Yaga-sensei complained about it once, but his expression had given Suguru a different impression. That guy loves cute, childish things more than all four of you combined, after all.
He gets two cans of iced tea. One lemon-flavoured, one peach. He knows which you'll ask for, because he knows you. Pays attention in ways a certain someone wouldn't. Condensation sticks to his palms, the aluminum cooling his sunwarmed fingertips. When he strides back to the bench you're already there and waiting.
"Hi," you pant. The bright glow to your grin burns at his nape, the backs of his ears.
You're greeted not with his signature smile, carefully chiseled and made to please, but a gentler, laid-back version— reserved for you alone. "You did great out there," he praises. Passing the can into your clammy fingers. "Here. I'm sure you worked up a sweat."
"Ah… You didn't have to," you sputter.
"But I did." He counters. "I'm happy to."
For a moment, you're silent. Wearing the same strange expression he's grown accustomed to. As if you're trying to see through a thin facade, but can't seem to figure out where it ends or begins. He doesn't so much as cock a brow.
"… At least let me pay you back," you finally protest. One of your hands slips into the pocket of your sweaty uniform, hunting for change he knows you don't have, because you used it all up on a gachapon yesterday. He reaches out to clutch your wrist, stopping you.
"No."
"… Suguru," you pout. Dangerous. But even that jutted out bottom lip can't dissuade him.
"I'm not taking your money." When he lets go of your arm it falls limp at your side, idle fingers twitching like they really, really want to go back to hunting for loose coins. Too bad. "C'mon. Drink up. I can tell you need it."
To his surprise— after staring at him for a few seconds longer— you actually do. The can breaks open with a hiss, a quiet, blissful exhale escaping you after the first sip. Poor thing, playing in the sun for so long.You must be too tuckered out to bargain any further.
… Ah. He's doing it again.
(Are they a puppy or a person? Shoko asked him once. You're even creepier than Satoru.)
Together, you sit under the shade of the cherry tree and drink your cans of tea in silence. Your quiet gulps put a smile on his face, your panting eventually evening out. Newborn cicadas mumble from the forests behind the school, their singing echoing across the yard.
It's nice. Sharing this moment with you. It's nice not to think of anything but the fact that you're next to him, your elbows nearly touching, that it's summer and you don't have any lessons to attend. Of course, there are still missions. Of course, leisure isn't actually included in your job description. But it's something. It's enough. It feels like leisure when his time is spent at your side.
Right as he's about to crane his neck to look at you, a weight drapes itself over his body.
His fingers twitch around his drink, lashes aflutter. He turns his jaw, and there you are: eyelids drawn shut, your head nestled comfortably in the dip of his shoulder. Your chest lifting up and down, rhythmically, like how ocean waves mouth kisses at the sands of a beach.
Oh. Oh.
Okay.
You're sleeping.
… Suguru takes a quiet inhale.
With grace he barely musters, he curls his arm around your lower back to secure you against him, making sure there's no chance of your body tilting forward. You stir quietly, but do not wake. He retreats a moment after, satisfied.
The hound in his gut begins to quell its anger. Quiet, bubbling jealousy simmers out. His gaze smooths over every detail of your face, free to stare as much as he'd like; a rare opportunity. You can't meet it with wide eyes or squirm in place. Suguru admires your still lashes, the bridge of your nose, down to your cupid's bow and lips. Through the filter of peace clouding your features, he spots a weighty weariness.
You need this. You must have needed this all week. If you hadn't, you would have excused yourself to go sleep in your room. Not… this. In the time you've known each other, he's never once seen you sleep like this, out in the open. Certainly not on someone else's shoulder.
… But, of course, he's wondered what you'd look like. If you'd snore, or breathe quietly…
If you'd wake with a k—
"Damn. Out like a light, huh?"
Suguru glares at his best friend. Mouthing a warning, he puts a finger to his lips.
"Yeah, yeah." Satoru rolls his eyes. They're hidden behind the frame of his black glasses, but Suguru knows him well enough to see it anyway. His white hair is cloaked in sunshine, swaying when he crosses the distance between them, picks up the empty can abandoned at your side and shakes it lightly back and forth to check its contents. Then he tuts, and it clatters to the ground. Suguru quirks a pointed brow.
"Pick that up."
"Tell that to the janitor," Satoru retorts. Brat. He walks past the bench, leisurely steps crunching against the ground. It bleeds into cicada cries, a grotesquely nostalgic summertime melody.
Suguru sighs. The quiet whirring of the vending machine echoes faintly behind him. The sky is so blue that it's nauseating.
… But then there's you. Sleeping quietly, even through the boys' bickering. Making these soft, breathy noises that fray at his heartbeat. Before Satoru can make his way back, Suguru risks a gentle touch at your forehead, brushing the back of his hand against your temple.
He hopes you're having a lovely dream.
"So," says a grating voice, one of his lanky arms hanging off the backrest. The other is clutching a can of Sprite. "When are you gonna confess?"
"… Are you actually interested?"
"Not really."
A sigh fans his lips. Satoru grins.
"Well, for whatever it's worth," he takes a swig of the drink, licking his lips clean off the excess. "—they're into you for sure. You don't have to worry about being rejected, at least."
Suguru hums. "… I don't know."
"Are you deaf?" Satoru knocks the aluminum can against his head. "I said for sure."
The hit makes him scowl, but with you relying on him for balance, there isn't much he can do. Nothing that's worth the risk of waking you. Voice flat, he asks: "And how do you know that?"
"Because they turn into a puppy when I tell them anything about you. That's how." Satoru groans at the look Suguru gives him, eyes wide, as if he's trying to say Really? without having to open his mouth. "Don't pretend to be humble. You know I know you better than that."
"Oh, shut up." His cheeks feel hot. Really, what have you done to him? This giddy, schoolboy-like feeling shouldn't belong in his chest. He quells the unconscious rising of his lips.
Don't get carried away, he reminds himself. Reigning the butterflies back in.
…
"You're weird, Suguru." Satoru puts his lips to the rim of the can, taking another soundless sip. "Isn't it fine to be happy about it?"
Well, isn't it?
The person he likes likes him back. That should make him glad, does make him glad. Requited love, under a summer sky so picturesque it makes rainfall seem like a fairytale, taken straight out of a coming-of-age novel where everyone graduates with bright smiles on their faces and everything turns out alright in the end. It's not like he hates them. A part of him finds them beautiful, even.
It's living them out that's too unrealistic. Too good to be true. That's why he can't help but strain against the urge to smile.
(He's grown used to denying himself. Trained himself into it. It's tied a knot around every one of his ribs, a warning sign: desire is dangerous, and honesty risky. It's better to slip into the cracks of what you're given than demand something more.
And yet, he moved to Tokyo. He chose to enroll in Jujutsu High. That choice marked the beginning of his greed, tempting him in ways he wasn't ready for— isn't sure he is ready for. If he keeps letting himself want so much, he's going to end up disappointed. That much he knows. You're skittish, fickle, quick to flee from direct advances. If his feelings made you distance yourself from him, he isn't sure what he'd do.
But god, you make it hard to resist wanting more.)
"I don't want to get ahead of myself."
Satoru's pristine eyes cut through him. Through pitch-black glass, he feels their weight. Suguru knows the look that must be cloaking them, all-seeing, cut-throat— his lips chalked into a thin line. For someone so guarded, his eyes are too honest not to feel discomforted by. "Liar," he grins suddenly. "That's all you want, right?"
Suguru's laughter is quiet. Some things are better left unsaid.
contents; suguru geto x gn!reader. canon au, cult era suguru. reader’s ct gives them wings; they’re forcefully tended to during their molting season. sappy hurt/comfort. non-sexual nudity & intimacy. intense devotion as is mandatory when writing this guy. subtle D/s dynamic if you squint. wc; 2.6k
commissioned by @loverducky !! thank you again for commissioning me ….<3 chirping at u fondly
When autumn comes to the coasts of Kagoshima, Geto-sama's followers know to steer clear of you.
To be more precise, they know to steer clear of you even more than they usually do. No matter the time of year or colour of leaves that oversee the temple grounds, interacting with you is a risk not worth taking. You are, after all, Geto-sama's self-proclaimed deity. God of a god. He certainly treats you like one. As goes without saying, they're expected to follow suit: meaning bowed heads and quiet prayers, a brief greeting if any, nothing but the utmost respect whenever they're graced with your presence, fickle as you are. You've taken to walking up the mountain trails when you bore of the quiet, and his followers all know not to approach without reason.
After all, were Geto-sama to see them…
It wouldn't end well.
However, in times such as these, their leader is not the sole threat to bear in mind. Because you, for reasons unknown to them, grow prickly with the shift from August to September— your forgiving demeanor replaced with something far more human. Ill-tempered, gloomy, and curt. Wearing much too many layers for the stifling heat yet to settle.
(There are whispers, on occasion. Speculation.
But above all lessons Geto-sama teaches, the one he highlights most is for them not to think too deeply about anything.)
Whatever the reason, the rule is as follows, unspoken but loud in its gravity: do not disturb Geto-sama's angel when autumn approaches.
With a glass of sake held at his lips, Geto sits by a set of parted sliding doors and watches his garden; raking his eyes over the autumn foliage, sunset-red trees and the sway of their branches, shimmering under gloating sunshine. It looks much like a war-torn battlefield, blood pooling down the cobblestone steps. The camellias he planted last year have begun to swell, scarlet knots weighing down their bushes.
He drinks slowly. The liquor is smooth as it slides down his throat, a rich, earthy taste spreading over his tongue. High quality, heady in flavour. Well-chosen. The bottle was a gift from a kouhai he drinks with all too seldom these days, all the more reason to savour each drop. The slow sips he allows himself provide gentle respite in the humid weather, cooling his wetted skin. Geto isn't a lightweight by any means, so there's no chance of him losing his bearings over a single glass.
It's a moment's indulgence— nothing more.
Clink. After a moment, he puts it down and rises to his feet. Lengthy robes drag across the tatami mats like pitch-black snakes, his steps echoing faintly in the still room. Enough, he thinks. He's given you enough time to collect yourself. Making his way to where you've stowed away, the faux monk crouches down to whisper in a sweet voice:
"Won't you come out and join me, my love?"
"Go away."
… He sighs, a worn smile at his lips.
The other residents of his temple couldn't know why your mood shifts so violently with the passing of the seasons, but Geto does. Geto knows why you hide your body under thick clothes and seek shelter in dark, secluded spaces. Much like this one; half-endeared and half-exasperated, he stares at the ball curled up in his closet, knees to their chest and facing the wall. Geto is all too familiar with this song and dance. Because of that, he knows to be patient.
"I can make it better," he promises, coaxing. Staying right where he is. "I can make it go away."
"… No, you can't."
A huff tugs at his lips. So juvenile today. But he can't blame you when you're under this much stress. If anything, it makes his desire to tend to you burn hotter, his body language softening, the visage of an animal approaching its injured cub. Geto would kill to hold you.
So— after yet another moment's contemplation— that's exactly what he does.
(Patience isn't always the answer, after all. Gentle is his default state with you, but sometimes you need firm hands, a body that knows how to put yours in its place. You need him to know what you need most, and he's consistently delighted to deliver.)
Your body locks up. Mouth breaking around a scowl, squirming fruitlessly against his chest, legs twitching with what he knows is the urge to plant a foot between his ribs. But you don't. His good little bird. Only hissing against his jugular, venomously: "Suguru."
"I know, I know," he croons, keeping a steady palm between your shoulder-blades as he wrangles you into his arms. It weighs you down against his frame. "Your husband is being so brutish. Bear with him for a moment, my dear."
Even through the grumbling, you make little resistance to stop his stride. Out the door and through the quiet halls of the temple, past a lone follower— his curious gaze met with a sharp, silent stare— and down a set of creaky stairs tucked away in a corner by the southernmost exit.
Autumn means many things to Geto. It's the mending of a rotting wound, brittle skin knitting itself over bone; it's the season where peace comes to him the easiest and sticks with him the longest, where breathing air into his lungs feels like an afterthought. It's a season of self-reflection and sanma. It's molting season for his poor, darling angel, who's smile usually flickers so brightly. Your cursed technique alters your body more than the average sorcerer: it gave you wings on your seventh birthday, monochrome in colour, flecked with silken feathers and supported by a sturdy bone structure. Now, after a long, tepid summer, they're finally ready to be shed and regrown. Though you haven't told him outright, he can tell your skin itches more than usual today— that the sluggish reproduction of your feathers is taking a tremendous toll on your body.
So he brings you to the bath in the basement of his temple, left unattended by anyone but him and you on nights where you have little choice but to stay over. It's romantic, if nothing else. Secluded. No windows to let in grating light.
Right now, he thinks it may be just what you need.
You're set down on the ground while Geto turns on the tap, adjusting the temperature of the water before letting it stream out and sluggishly fill the large tub. The beginnings of steam waft bashfully towards the ceiling. When he cranes his neck to face you, your gaze flickers away.
No more of that shyness. Not with him.
Tender hands approach, beginning to undress you. Despite the onslaught of discomfort, you make no move to reject his advances; he can only assume you tuckered yourself out too much wriggling in his arms. You've draped yourself in satin robes, large enough for the fabric to pool onto the floor, made to cover every inch of your body, including the wings you're so hesitant to show him. They're your pride and joy: Geto suspects it stems not only for their reliability in combat, but a bioligical instinct you have to show their pattern off to your lover, much like a bird vying for courtship. The fact that you allow him to tend to them, brush through them in the mornings, is a point of great satisfaction for him.
(To be denied that right when you need it most…
He'd be lying if he said it didn't grate him.)
Once both yours and his robes are laying in a pile on the floor, he wraps his arms around your waist. "In we go, angel."
You're given little warning before he picks you up again, careful not to ruffle your feathers as he steps into the half-full tub. Hot water laps at his ankles, his knees, reaching to his midriff once he's seated himself. Blissful, he thinks, warm lips ghosting the tender patch of skin between your neck and shoulder. Even though you may not agree at the moment. When he looks down from this vantage point he can clearly see the sorry state of your wings, more than half of your old feathers missing, waxy pinfeathers growing in their stead. The ones that still remain are visibly worn, little shine to them at all— as if they'd been caught in a dreadful storm.
Molting seasons are rough on you. Your energy drains far easier, your mood dips with more frequency, and your cursed energy tends to scatter under pressure, making it difficult for you to aid him in any missions. Lethargic and moody is what he's come to expect. It's unlike you, but Geto doesn't mind. Helping you through this is his priviliege, his alone. No one else should be cooking you meals rich in protein or slipping vitamin supplements into your palm every morning, hovering near like a hawk to make sure you swallow each one. No one should be here with you, hot water cupping your bodies, his wet palms brushing gingerly against your sore shoulders and stiff back, in the quiet of a dark room made to soothe weary souls into slumber. Chest to chest, your face tucked into the pocket of his neck, heartbeats sticking together like hot wax on parchment. This is for him and you. No other.
Quiet ripples stir the surface of the water. Once you've gone limp in his arms he runs a cautious thumb down the span of your left wing, admiring its weight, the patterns on the tattered feathers that have yet to be replaced. Spades upon spades. Blacks and grays flecked with white. It reminds him much of a cloudy, violent sky. They may be beautiful, but he knows better than anyone how viscious these wings of yours are to your opponents; in battle you may as well be a falcon yourself, missing no more than a beak to rip their throats out with.
And you're letting him hold them as if they were decorations. There's a level of sacriliege to this Geto wishes he wasn't addicted to, didn't want to run his mouth under.
"… Feels digusting," you whisper, breaking through the silence. You sound defeated in a way that tugs at his conscience. "I hate it."
"I know," he croons. "But it'll pass. They'll grow back."
"Yeah, but it takes forever." Your pitiful whine lifts his lips; it's good that you're able to complain to him like this. The bath must be working its magic, soothing your itchy skin and satisfying your need for something like a warm nest. Geto seamlessly summons one of his helper curses, a horror-show writhing under clusters of flowers, and has its limbs dissolve under the water. Bubbles begin to froth on its surface, smelling lightly of osmanthus. "Why does my cursed technique have to be so realistic?"
"I think your technique is perfect just the way it is," he counters, half-teasing. No less truthful. "And you know all good things come at a price."
"Don't preach to me right now, Geto-sama."
Silent laughter buds beneath his tongue, eyes crinkled like ginkgo-leaves. "Heard, heard."
To get something, you have to give something of equal value— you may find it pretentious, but it's a simple truth of the world you live in. The molting you go through is the perfect example. Each time is just as discomforting the last, but it's only through that process that you can replace the feathers that won't do you any good. They fall out without fanfare, are replaced by waxy, scraggly pinfeathers, and eventually become just as silky as before.
The world is cruel for asking so much of you. But there's a beauty to that balance, he thinks. Birth / Death / Rebirth. The continuance of it.
"… They're no less beautiful like this," he worships. "Just more vulnerable. More sensitive."
It makes them more lethal than ever, really.
"… Liar."
A long, silent beat. Geto's lips fall into a thin line. His hand drifts from your wings, steers upwards, settles at your nape. When he squeezes down— not harsh, but not so soft you couldn't feel it— you go stiff, a gasp at your tongue. Then your body slackens. He rubs his thumb against the tender patch of skin, as if praising an animal that just did a trick.
"I don't lie to you," he whispers, deceptively sweet. Quiet voice loud at your ear. "Do I?"
"… No," comes your feeble response.
For now, it's enough. He knows not to be too firm when you're like this. Mercifully, his hand falls, busying itself with gently caressing your featherless patches, both silent apology and further reprimand. The water rocks around your bodies. "They're beautiful,” he repeats, insistent. ”If you weren't this sensitive, I'd make you say it back to me."
"… Please don't."
Quiet laughter. His eyes flicker with mischief. "Not today," he promises. Another time. When you're more receptive to it. He can't wait to see your lips tremble around the words.
(Cruel that he is.)
A soft yelp breaks his reverie, your body jolting forward, squirming under his fingers. He's quick to retract his hand. "S-Suguru. Not the pinfeathers."
"… Forgive me, my love." Quietly, he directs his attention to the plumage that's still there, delicately petting down your wetted feathers. "Is that better?"
"… Mm…"
They're more sensitive than usual, yielding pliantly to his care. Twitching when he gently scratches at a sturdy spot, as if letting you know they want more attention, something like a breathy moan pooling below your tongue— all the instruction he needs. Your wings need pampering more than ever. You do, even though it takes so much out of you to admit it. Your body and mind. If only he could reach into your soul and preen the feathers there too.
"Once they've grown back," he says, lips at your temple, "I'll preen them for you. Every one."
You don’t respond. But you seem to melt further into him, letting the innermost marrow of your bones turn brittle against his ribs, underneath the warm, soothing water. He tucks you closer, resting his chin on the top of your head. This is your favorite hiding spot; this, and nothing else. No cupboards or closets could compare.
"These longs months will pass before you know it. You'll have a beautiful coating just in time for winter, my angel."
"… Wish it wouldn't take so long." Your voice tickles his skin. "But… thank you."
A quiet, tender kiss. His pulse flickers against it.
"I'll find a lot of curses for you," you whisper. "Once my wings work again. I promise."
"Don't worry about that now." His voice sits at a gentle lull, the reprimand in them as loving as the rest of him— his heart pushing at its seams. You're too good to him, too giving. "Don't worry about anything. You can be weak with me."
(You should know that by now. That your weakness alone doesn't repulse him. That seeing you like this every year doesn't change his feelings for you in the slightest. Admiration, adoration, and acceptance. He accepts all of you: scraggly pinfeathers, a talon at his throat. There's no need for you to prove what he already knows. That you're capable, and that you need love just as much as anyone else. The fact that the rest of the world can't see something so simple is proof enough that it's cursed. That his followers, confused as they are by something so mundane as a shift in mood, couldn't possibly be the same as he or you.
If he's the only one that understands you, that means no one else deserves to. He's lived by that vow since his third year of high school.)
Your wings twitch against his fingertips. Autumn will fade, and your feathers regrow.
contents; okkotsu yuuta x gn!reader. aftercare scenario; suggestive, but sfw! bottom reader implied. hissy reader propaganda. yuuta is genetically incapable of not loving you to bits. plenty of animal & monster imagery; yuuta is scary in the weight of his devotion (as akutami ordained) wc; 2.4k
commissioned by @assmaster-8000 !! thank you for commissioning me .. ily…. it was an honour to write your sweet boy of all time …..
The ache between your thighs keeps you awake.
Vacantly, one faint corner of your mind protests; you probably should be sleeping right now. Tomorrow is a work day, and you had the misfortune of getting stuck with an early shift. Yuuta will without a doubt try to convince you to call in sick, velveteen and sure of himself, almost cloyingly sweet— a tone of voice he saves for when you're tangled up in bedsheets and he needs you home with him— but you're not going to listen. Twice in one month is two times too many. You can't keep letting him have his way just because he's charming in the morning, bleary streaks of sunshine ruffling the black locks of hair kissing your pillowcase, half-shut eyes that seem to see nothing but you and your slumber-worn features. Nope. No more.
Maybe you shouldn't have slept with him tonight. Maybe you need to get better at not needing him after long days. Or maybe he needs to get better at not indulging you so blindly.
Whatever the case, your shift starts in eight hours, and you're too sore to fall asleep. The moon has its crescented face pressed flush against the windows, intent on keeping light in. Your boyfriend is rummaging through the kitchen in search of something for you to eat, which means you're free to wince and whine and flex your calves as much as you'd like to, no use in pretending you weren’t just tenderized. The glass of water in your hand is almost empty; per his half-suggestion, half-instruction, you have to drink it all before he gets back with your food. He'll pout if you refuse him. You've done this song and dance before. Having sex with Okkotsu Yuuta is like signing up for a weekly subscription and clicking on the yearly payment plan on accident— you get more than you bargained for, and give more than you can handle.
He likes the routine of it.
(You'd be lying if you said you didn't, but that doesn't make it any less overwhelming. It shouldn't be, but it is. If you ever thought fucking him might tucker him out, you were sorely mistaken— the energy boost he gets after putting you through the mattress makes no sense, but it's a fact of life with him. One moment he's on top of you, slippery chest weighing you down, and the next he's hopping out of bed to stretch his limbs and ask if you're hungry.
When you first met, he called himself a monster. You've begun to think he was right about that. It's what kind of monster he is that he seems to have misunderstood.)
The door creaks, and a beautiful boy walks in, his quiet gaze catching yours across the room: a seamless kind of clicking together. Magnet eyes and magnet heartbeats. It responds when you catch sight of him, still disheveled, shoulders glistening with residues of sweat, but eyes bright and wide like a lion catching sight of a gizelle in the dark. Ba-dump, ba-dump. He's worn you down with his love, made your pulse his own. You can't look away from him. He's wearing nothing but boxer briefs and an old white shirt, no doubt the first article of clothing he saw when he dug through his closet— balancing a tray with three bowls placed atop of it, steam rising from the porcelain— a warm, hearty aroma wafting through the room.
"I made you miso soup with rice," he calls out softly, the dimples on either side of his lips catching moonlight through the window curtains. Dreamy cerulean hues. "And eggs. I wanted you to have some proper protein, but we're all out of beef..."
"We already had dinner, Yuuta."
"Huh? What's that got to do with anything?"
You squint at him. With thick blankets pooled atop your body and drawn up to your chin, it probably looks more comical than dubious. Your boyfriend tilts his head, clammy locks falling sideways. He doesn't look like he's even washed his face yet.
"… Nevermind," you sigh. "I don't need beef, is what I mean. I'm not that hungry."
"You're always hungry after we have sex," he shakes his head. Smiling sweetly, taking brisk steps towards you. Heat blooms across your collarbones, lips curling into a frown, thoughts louder than your voice. No, you don't. "Or are you going to tell me you could just go to sleep like this?"
"I could."
"Mhm." He downright giggles. Evil, evil man. Awful, charming man. He seats himself at your bedside, the tray kept steady on his lap, and leans forward to cup your cheek with the dip of his palm. When you give a pointed glare— mostly for show— his lips curl up like dragon flowers, threatening another bout of laughter. "You don't need anything, do you? Cutie."
"I-I don't," you protest. You've half the mind to shove at him, but your heart couldn't take that. You don't need anything, but there are some things you'd rather not go without. "You're acting like you broke my back. Literally. Cut it out."
He licks his lips absently. They're still rosy and swollen, a far cry from the chapped skin spring usually has him deal with, and his voice falls softer when they part. "… Well, you cried."
"Okay. I'll kill you."
"Baby," he croons. "I'm not trying to embarrass you—"
"If anything," your voice grows sharp, "aren't you more wrecked than I am?"
Pointedly, you look him up and down. Purple hickeys sucked into his skin. Check. Imprints of teeth like a wreath around his neck, evidence of your hunger for the places where he's most tender and you feel his pulse the clearest— check. Scratch-marks on his back? Probably. You'll check up on them tomorrow morning. He'd never bother with the bruise cream otherwise.
Sheepish laughter clouds his words, peach-fuzz dusting his cheeks. One of his slender hands go to cup the root of his throat, feeling for the bite marks. Shameless. "It's not that bad… I like it, actually."
"Oh, I know. I just don't think you should be fussing over me when you're the one who looks like he got jumped by a raccoon." You cross your arms over your chest, ignoring the very much still present ache between your legs. If he notices their trembling, it's game over. He won't be able to stop himself from massaging your calves. "We had sex. That's all. It wasn't even that inte—"
"Say 'aah,' honey."
… Suddenly a spoon is poised in front of you, and your boyfriend is wearing an innocent smile. Unbothered by anything you've said so far. That's not surprising, only frustrating. More frustrating is the fact that his feeble distraction actually works. He's scooped up a mouthful of homemade miso soup, a square of tofu sitting pretty and waiting on the cutlery. Despite your insistance that you don't need anything from him right now, that you'll be just fine without the five star meal he was hoping to magically throw together in the span of fifteen minutes, your stomach growls at the promise in front of you— drool pooling under your tongue. It's a struggle not to duck under the covers when the sound makes him beam. As you reach for the spoon held between his fingers, he tuts and pulls away.
Figures. Why did you even try?
"… Yuuta," you huff. "I can eat by myself."
"I know you can." He doesn't let go of it. Simply moves it back to where it was before you tried to turn the tables on a man this determined to spoil his partner, resting pointedly in front of your closed mouth. There's that look in his eye again: a hunter that just spotted its prey. Polished obsidian. Nothing you say or do will convince him to let you win this.
Reluctantly, your lips part. Curse your stomach.
"Good job," he croons, watching you chew on the silken tofu. It's not spoken with condescension, which somehow makes it worse. He scoops up a bite of rice next, blowing on it quietly before feeding it to you. The warmth of the meal settles in your chest like a heated blanket, your hunger growing with each bite. Curse Yuuta Okkotsu. As you eat what he's made you, you feel yourself being moulded into someone more pliant, a shadow of you that only comes out on these long nights, sneaking into his bed and your body like a monster under the floorboards when you're too weary to resist. Before daybreak, after dusk. Yuuta loves that monster. He wants nothing more than to feed into it. To feel its teeth under his greedy fingertips.
He's gross. You're gross for wanting it. You're both rotten and perfect for each other. That’s not something you should feel happy about.
"… There you go, pretty baby." He carefully places the tray and empty bowls on your nightstand, next to a short pile of unread books, a bookmark he made you in high school, the glass of water you'd been drinking from before. There's still the slightest layer of water pooling at the bottom— your stubborn, feeble resistance— but when Yuuta notices he only gives you an indulgent smile. "Was it tasty?"
You manage a nod, allowing your body to melt into the mattress. Limp as a noodle, toasted from top to bottom. "Thanks for the meal," you call out with your eyes closed, drowsy, softer than before. Softer than you meant to. The bed creaks, a kiss planted between your brows; he smells faintly of vanilla and sex, traces of sage from the cologne he likes to spray on his neck in the mornings before hectic work days. It's a scent that makes you feel at ease. He dips his head down to give a peck at your lips next, chaste and sugary, locks of his hair tickling the pulse-pocket at the base of your throat.
"You're welcome." He smiles against your skin. "Should we freshen up? Or do you want to sleep?"
"Sleep," you rasp. "I have work tomorrow."
… At that, a low, thoughtful noise coils in his throat. You can almost feel his Adam's apple bob under its vibrations. For a moment, all is quiet.
Then he whispers: ”Alright. Sleep it is."
Your body is still slick with sweat and fluids, but that doesn't bother you right now. You can take a shower in the morning without falling behind your schedule. Yuuta's compliance is suspicious, but you try not to pay it any mind. The ache is still there, but its begun to be dulled by the warmth of the meal and insistent tugs at your consciousness, pillowed under the weight of your exhaustion. It's only a matter of time before it overtakes you. Yuuta lowers the window-blinds before he slips beneath the covers, tangling your limbs together: exhaling a breath of relief, like this was the only thing missing. His leg under yours, his arm curled comfortably around your midriff. Tethered together like Tanabata-wishes on worn branches. He gives small, wet kisses to the apple of your cheek, knowing you're too fatigued to grumble about it.
"How are you feeling?" he whispers. "Sore?"
"… Just a little."
A soft, knowing sound. "Sorry. I missed you today, so I might have gotten carried away."
For a second, you think you'll laugh. This is what makes him so lethal. He doesn't realize what his voice does to you when it sounds like that, when it's saying things like that—
Your heart threads itself into a knot. Knocks against your trembling ribs. For a moment, being peeled open doesn't frighten you.
(For a moment, you think you'd let him unravel you however he likes, for however long he likes.
Just a moment; nothing more. If he weren’t kind, and didn’t love you, it would mean the end of you.)
"I'll massage your hips," he promises. Nosing at a tender spot below your jaw, a hound sniffing for buried weaponry. Surely, he should already feel satisfied. He got to break you open and stitch you back together again. Make love to you until your throat felt too rigid to make sound with, soundless tears dribbling down your cheeks, on your pillowcase, into his mouth. Your Yuuta is greedy. He's the greediest. That's the only reason you feel comfortable being greedy back. "Tomorrow. Or right now. You can sleep, I'll handle everything."
"I can handle myself," you protest, slurring your words. An ocean wave of slumber laps at your shaky legs, wades over your body, threatening to swallow you under. But you aren't afraid.
"I know you can."
Quiet breaths. Mingling pulses. Outside the walls of your apartment, unbeknownst to either one of you, the crescent moon succumbs to slivers of creaking dawn.
A kiss at your pulsepoint. It flutters beneath.
"I just don't think you should have to."
…
With what little remains of your willpower, you stifle a yawn, reaching over to wrap your arms around his neck. He's all too eager to make space for you. His body used to be eerily scrawny, but now there's more muscle mass to it. Enough for you to feel underneath the fabric, thrumming faintly, like a steady reminder of how strong he can be. How gentle he chooses to be.
There's no need to have your guard up. You know that's what he's saying, near constantly, without opening his mouth. You can close your eyes around me.
So you do.
"Yuuta," you call.
"Mhm?"
"You didn't eat anything."
Faintly, he chuckles. You can picture his smile in the dark of the room. As if your concern alone could fill his stomach, or soothe the ache in his lower abdomen. "I'm okay, baby. I'll eat something tomorrow."
"Promise?"
"… Yeah," he sighs. Wrapping you into him, pressed taut against his ribs, like even that isn't as close as he'd like you to be. If you fell asleep right now, you'd dream of it; dream a bird's dream, sitting pretty on a bone-white branch, next to a heart too big for his body. "I promise."
Yuuta is nothing if not meticulous. He's never broken a promise he made you. Intertwined pinkies mean more to him than written contracts.
So you believe him.
(His love is insurance. Reassurance. You fall asleep with it around you, inside of you; a quiet, mutual love. The trust that comes with it.
Tomorrow, you'll wake up past your bedtime, too late to catch your shift. The morning alarm you have set to ring isn't on: Yuuta's doing. Your compliance. You know you're losing one way or another, and he knows you'll let him win.
contents; suguru geto x reader. talks of gender: reader is implied afab and tmasc / somewhere on the nb spectrum, suguru refers to them as both good girl and good boy. hurt/comfort. age gap (suguru is older; this isn’t specified or further explored in the fic itself.) light hints of yandere tendencies, suguru’s devotion borders on eerie, wbk. fluff and feelings. wc; 2.4k
this piece was commissioned by @whatthefuckbabysalad ! thank you again for commissioning me ! <3
Working silently on grading long-overdue papers, Suguru barely notices you entering the living room.
The afternoon sun has finally set, a thin layer of shadow coating the inside of his home: through the window he can clearly see the cornflower-blue sky, clouds flecked with the last peach slivers of sunset, his garden beginning to sprout with wild iris. Mellow peace settles in his chest. Intensified, when he hears your quiet footsteps, bare feet on the carpet he bought last week. Even as his mind spins in overtime, and his fingers work the laptop in front of him, just the silhouette of your body in the corner of his eye is enough to make his heart flutter.
"How are you, baby?" he asks, not yet raising his head. Reading carefully through his student's assignment.
"I'm fine.” His forefinger twitches; too quick of a response. You rehearsed it before coming here. ”Finished my work for the day, so. That's that."
"Oh, good girl." He looks up from his keyboard to meet your gaze, right as it skirts away and lands flat on the coffee table; as if seeking shelter from the weight of his approval, shy under the praise. He coaxes it back with a careful nudge, patting the spot next to him. "Would you like to keep me company?"
Rather than answering, you take a seat. The sofa shifts under your shared weight. Just as it should be, he thinks. You, close. Within reach. It's enough to have him smiling to himself.
Only, when he tries to wrap a sneaky around your waist— you abruptly move away.
"Can we talk?"
…
Suguru's eyes flicker. Cuts of amber tensing, a softened gaze sharpening, searing into you. You aren't looking in his direction, face turned downward, lips drawn taut. He knows you, down to the valves of your heart and cords of your voice: knows from your tone alone that whatever you want to discuss has been weighing on you.
As a teacher, he shouldn't keep his students waiting. It's near the end of term, and most of them are anxiously awaiting their results. As a partner, though… nothing takes more precedence than your worries.
So the choice is simple.
"… Of course, baby." He flicks his laptop shut, then turns to face you properly. Whatever it is, he'll hear you out.
(… Unless, of course, you're planning to break up with him. If that's the case, he doesn't know what he'll do. But he shouldn't jump to the worst possible conclusion. He’ll set a bad example.)
Cautiously, he puts his palms above yours. When you don't pull away, he keeps them there. The promise is silent, but lasting. I'm here.
A safety anchor, of sorts.
"Okay, so. Uhh..." you take a shaky breath, restless fingers itching with the urge to fidget with something. "I don't know. How to say it."
"Try the first word that comes to mind," he encourages, voice warm with consideration. "We'll get it out of you step by step."
Your lips purse tighter. Suguru waits. It's his greatest strength, and the reason he's managed to win the trust of someone so guarded. While you gather the courage your subconscious needs, he tends to rubbing down your cool hands, soothing your anxiety in all the ways available to him.
"Gender," you blurt out after what feels like an hour— and Suguru's eyes widen.
Ah.
… There it is.
"Gender," he echoes. "Yours."
"Mine." You nod. Distressed. "I've never really… felt. Like a girl." A beat. You sit eerily still, as if waiting for him to say something— to object. When he doesn't, you keep going, slightly faster than before. ”I know how that sounds, but— I've just always gone along with it. For as long as I can remember. Every time I'm told I'm a girl, I think, alright, fine. Never that it's me. It's just something people call me."
Suguru listens. Doesn't let anything show on his face, but keeps his thumbs rolling between the ridges of your knuckles. Even when your eyes flee from his, clouded over with second thoughts, he doesn't look away from you.
"I'm not saying… I'm a boy. But sometimes I feel like one." Nervously, you begin to chew on your bottom lip. It irks him, but he stays his hand. Wants to ease your teeth away, let them sink into his flesh instead, his palm or fingers, save your brittle skin the ache. But he shouldn't interrupt this. "I understand if it changes things. I'm not expecting you to just go along with it. But I wanted you… to know about it."
Your throat bobs silently, a ship about to sink.
"I've wanted to tell you for a while now. So," you exhale, deflated, like you're already expecting the worst. "So, that's… how it is."
Suguru waits a moment. Squeezes your palm, then asks quietly: "Are you finished?"
(He knows you aren't. After a moment, your lips begin to part— moulding around a hesitant admittance, so quiet he barely hears it.)
"In the future… I think I want to start presenting more masculine," you add. "Soon, really. So, in case you don't like that—"
"Nonsense."
…
"In case you don't like that," you echo, softer, brittle, "It's only right that I tell you."
When the words have left you, your body sags against the sofa. There's a slight tremble in your bottom lip, like an ice tap about to fall and shatter, straining not to grimace, still stuck under your teeth. It aches to see you look so struck by nerves in front of him.
Because of him.
It aches the way marble erodes.
"… Let me ask you a question." Careful not to sound too firm, but not so nonchalant that you think you can get out of listening to spare yourself the heartache, he continues. "Do you think there's anything you could tell me that would make me love you less?"
No answer. You could hear a pin drop in the quiet of the room. His stare sharpens.
"Nothing." His tone leaves no room for doubt. "Nothing in the world."
(Nothing, nothing, nothing. If only you knew how true that was. You wouldn't look at him the same, but he'd love you all the more.)
"… Yeah," comes your answer. Quiet as a wind-chime rustled by the breeze. "I know."
Curled in on yourself like this, you look smaller than you are. Small enough to disappear, were he to close his eyes, small enough that he wouldn't be able to find you. Yes, it aches. It frays at the innermost marrow of his ribs and scorches his intestines. It burns in a way he can't help but find addictive.
It aches not to have you closer, so he opens his arms to invite you there: voice soft enough to ease the strain between your brows.
"… Come here, baby. Come to me."
And you practically stumble into his lap— like a puppy tripping over its front paws, like you'd been waiting for permission all this time. He chokes down something delighted and gargantuan, an urge to swallow you alive. It's rare of you to be so compliant. You're caught with seamless ease, wrapped up in his embrace, pressed firm where you'll feel his pulse the clearest. He knits you into him.
"Good boy," he praises carefully, nearly crooning when you shiver against his broad frame in response. Sweet, sensitive thing. You should have told him you needed this sooner. "You don't need to be scared, you know. Not when you're with me."
"You don't—" you swallow, clinging to the fabric of his sweater. "You're really not upset?"
"How could I ever be upset with you? You're my baby. My good little one." The words are purred into your ear, firm enough to stick; a tape for you to replay when need be. He doesn't tease you for the squirming you're doing, knowing it's half out of unease. "… Look at me, honey."
It takes effort, he can tell, but you do. Always so eager to please. When he sees your expression, his mouth nearly breaks around a chuckle. You look almost grumpy when you're scared. Brows scrunched up and lips drawn into a frown, staring at him pointedly, misty-eyed. He knows it to be a byproduct of discomfort. Knows you're still frightened in the nerves of this.
But you're trying. You're trying so hard.
Two big, warm palms cup your face, bringing your gaze where he needs it— making sure it can't scatter away the moment his tone shifts. Suguru presses his lips against the tender skin between your brows, easing the strain with a kiss. One of his hands fall to your lap, but the other remains; grounding, steadying.
"I love you." Warm eyes cup your features, hold them firmly, molten amber and cinnamon heady with affection. "Your body, your gender, or the way that you dress… None of those things matter to me. I adore them, of course— but only because they're yours. Do you understand?"
When you try to respond, the words seem to escape you. A sniffle wobbles at the gap between your lips instead. Barely-there. Precious. His marble-heart splinters.
"… I think so," you whisper.
"Good." As tenderly as you'd pet a butterfly, he runs his thumb along the curve of your cheek. "I won't understand everything right away, but I can tell you this. You're my partner, and I'll always support you. Tell me what I can do better, and I'll figure out the rest."
Something in your face crumbles. You can scarcely nod, before you're dodging his palm to burrow into his neck. He lets you this time. Cranes his head to give you more room, to make it more comfortable. This much he can handle.
What nearly breaks him are the words you sputter on afterwards, under your battered breath:
"Sorry for crying."
Suguru laughs. It isn't malevolent. He laughs around the wound that opens in his mouth.
"I should be thanking you for letting me see you like this," he corrects, brushing off your concerns. "I know it isn't easy for you."
It's never easy for you to let him claw you open. He knows, he knows. In due time.
"… It's embarrassing."
"It's natural," he shakes his head. "Beautiful. In its own right. It means you feel more than your body can handle." No response. He continues, tone moltening. "I'd never judge you for it."
A flimsy inhale. He rubs your back, your shoulder-blades, all the way to the back of your neck; massages your muscles, still so terribly tense. Digs into the skin that's most sensitive, and needs his touch the most. Even if only the slightest bit, you seem to melt against him, and he takes that as a sign you've begun to settle in the realization that the hard part is over.
"We'll take this at whichever pace you'd like," he reassures you. "I'll be with you all the while."
"… Okay," you exhale. "Thank you."
Finally, the tense air between you begins to mellow out. Quiet settles in its wake, fleeting, but terribly precious, your body seeking solace in the warmth his has to give. Suguru wishes he could turn into a furnace. You make him juveline: that's how he knows you're good for him. He wants you to know he's good for you, too. That he can love every part of you better than anyone else. It calms the possessive, ugly snake rearing its head at the bottom of his stomach.
"… I don't know why I was so nervous," you murmur in the silence. Threading steady fingers through your hair, he hums along, listening intently. "Feels silly now."
"Silly to think I'd react any other way, yes." Suguru tuts. "But not to feel nervous. You were very brave. I'm proud of you, sweetheart."
The shadow of a tremble wrecks through your frame. You need this. You need this reassurance. Pressing closer, even though you're enveloped as is, as if seeking out further approval in his touch. He responds by holding you tighter. Cocooning your body. The body he loves.
"… I thought maybe," you shake your head, voice even quieter, "you wouldn't be attracted to me anymore. It sounds stupid now that I'm saying it out loud."
Oh?
"… Yes," he agrees, a low rumble in his throat. His free hand slips down to your waist, resting there meaningfully. "Very."
… When you shiver this time, it isn't simple nerves. It's something more intoxicating. Suguru keeps his palm exactly where it is— a warning, if anything, a stark reminder of just how silly that thought is— before parting his lips. For now, he'll let you off the hook.
"To tell you the truth, it didn't come as a surprise," he admits. "I've been wondering how to broach the subject, but I didn't want to rush you. Now I'm glad I waited."
He expects you to blink up at him as owlishly as you'd do in the beginning of your relationship, like you couldn't wrap your head around something so simple as your boyfriend paying attention to you. You aren't used to being noticed the way Suguru notices you: all the more reason for him to keep doing so.
… But, to his surprise— it's fresh laughter that spills against his clavicle, muffled and breathy in the crook of his neck. You're smiling when you tip your head up, unshed tears in your eyes. "… You're always like that," you sputter. "You always know. I never even have to tell you."
A broad smile tugs his lips up. Prideful. Your voice crumbles ever so slightly when you ask,
"How do you know me so well?"
Suguru closes his eyes, and stifles the answer he'd like to give. Keeps it a secret, locked at the base of his throat. Down with the snake and its hungry maw. You're not ready to hear it yet.
(Behind his teeth, tucked underneath his tongue, lies the shameful truth:
Of course I do. You were born for me.)
"… I'm in love with you, for one." He beams like the sun, eyes curling into crescents when you lay your cheek against his shoulder, shy under his gaze. "I'd say it comes with the job."
"… You're so meticulous."
"It's worth the effort," he promises. Pressing one last lingering kiss at your temple, feather-light, more of a prayer than an act of worship. Less than you deserve, but more can come later. More, and more, until you're sick with it. "You always are."
"… Promise?"
The body he loves goes entirely pliant. He holds it closer, steadier, an answer in itself.
i have mayyyybe seven ish ? commissions to post on this acc but it might take me some time !! i’m posting in between the writing … sorry for neglecting u my summer-oil-lings…….
contents; suguru geto x gn!reader. professor/student relationship; unspecified age gap. unbalanced power dynamic. hints of yandere tendencies. mommy kink (brief but important). hurt/comfort. implied depression. wc; 2.4k
commissioned by @24kills ! thank you again for commissioning me ! <3
Professor Geto asks you to stay behind after class ends, the rusted tangerine glow of a late afternoon sunset pushed taut against the windows to the lecture hall.
He's joined you at the highest row, closest to the exit and farthest from the podium— your go-to seat on days you can’t be bothered with anything— wearing his regular chestnut-brown vest over a white button-up. He smells lightly of pocket mints and oolong tea, and his gaze is as harrowing as always: like he's seeing through you. It's not a harsh gaze, but it weighs heavy. When he takes the seat beside you there's a smile on his face. There always is, but it carries a gentler curve when he's speaking to you. It took you months to notice it. Now that you've done so, it's all you can see.
”I notice you haven't been handling these assignments very well," he begins, speaking kindly. "Is there anything I can help with?"
Amber eyes cloak you in shadow. Ah, you think.
Of course that's what this is about.
Your gaze falls to the desk, to your open notebook, pages empty save for mindless doodles: not a single noteworthy sentence jotted down. You can barely remember what this lecture was about. Might as well have stayed home, stuck inside your room, inside your head. Might as well not have woken up today at all.
An ugly feeling stirs in your membrane.
"… It's fine, professor." You mimic a smile, avoiding his piercing stare like it could burn you. "I've been procrastinating lately. That's all."
Empty cicada song rattles from the apricot trees behind the building your professor favours, tucked between the university's administrative offices and research hall. One of the students must have left a window open. The noise buzzes at some faraway part of your brain, clogging up your throat with weary hopes of summer.
"… As I've told you," his voice tightens, "you can call me Suguru when we're alone."
… Right.
If he was just a professor, it'd be much easier to deflect his worries. If he was nothing more than that, you'd already be on your way home, wondering what to do to stave the pit in your stomach. Collapsing in bed and sleeping until sundown, no thought of the future.
"You're an excellent student," he praises. It boils in your ribcage, the weight of it hot, too much to bear; you wish he would spare you the agony. "When you show a sudden change like this, I'm going to notice."
A moment passes. Yet another. There's a script to this. Or, there should be. You should know what to say, but you don't. All you know is you should say something, anything, but you don't know what that something is.
So you stay silent.
"… Forgive me for being blunt," he sighs, straightening his back. Your lack of answer must have frustrated him; a sharp sting blots your bottom lip. "But there's no point in lying."
"I'm not,” you insist, too meek for it to carry any weight. "I'll… be back to normal soon."
(Please don't give up on me, you think. The crescents of your nails catching crimson at your inner palms. Please don't give up on whatever this is.)
"Am I supposed to be convinced by that?" he drawls. "You're a good student. Not a good liar. Tell me the truth."
…
He says your name. Clear and candid, and sharp enough to cut you into ribbons, in a way that tells you he's lost any semblance of patience. It makes your heart give a lurid kick at your ribs, throat convulsing around broken letters.
"It's just— been hard lately," you swallow. Speaking around the lump in your throat. God, you can't cry in front of him. Anything but that. "I know that's no excuse. I'm going to fix it, I…."
You hang your head, afraid to see what kind of look he's giving you. The rest of the sentence dies in your throat. A group of students walk past the window closest to the row you're sitting in, their muffled laughter echoing down the hall. When it lingers, it begins to sound like sobbing.
"What's been hard?" he presses. There's a jagged edge to his voice that you don't comment on, misplaced anger, the consequence of having such a grand imagination. "Is someone in class giving you trouble? Someone in your study group?"
You shake your head.
"Someone outside of school, then?"
"It's not—" you try to laugh, but it ends up a bitter sigh, self-sardonic. "Someone. No one's giving me trouble except for myself."
Finally, cruelly, you meet his eye. You want it to hurt, and it does. It makes you want to vomit.
The rusted-gold of sunset cleaves across his face. Half-god, half-shadow, split where his skin burns. Obsidian locks sway when he stretches his neck, the stray bangs his students tease him for between lessons. You think of the folktales he talked of last week: demons of grotesque beauty, luring humans to their deaths in western story-books. That's how this feels. That's how stunning he looks.
Like you'll fall in if you're not careful. Your heartbeat clawing at your throat.
Professor Geto— Suguru— looks at you. Really, really looks at you. Miraculously, his eyes soften just when you think you can't take it anymore, that your brittle skin will crumble where it lays.
"Did something happen, then?" he asks. "Or is this ordinary for you?"
"… A bit of both.” You squirm in your seat. This feels like dissection. This feels like letting him look into your skull, hook his fingers in your cranium. "I made it worse for myself. That's all."
There's a furrow in his brow. Your gaze grows skittish, never quite settling at his face, yet you can't help but sneak glances when he lets the silence drag on for a beat too long. He seems more troubled than he should be, but it's not like you can read him anyway. The rhythmic tap, tap, tap of his fingers on the desk rings in your ears, as he seemingly collects his thoughts.
"… I did notice," he starts, tentative, ”that you've been eating less."
Of course. Whenever you stop by the cafeteria, he's always conveniently there to take a seat at your table, showing off his homemade bento and offering to buy your coffee. Of course he'd notice your absence.
A shrug. "I guess. It's not serious, though."
To your surprise, that makes him laugh. Coarse and ugly, like you scraped your nails against his clavicle. Like there's sand down his throat.
"Not serious," he echoes. "What a thing to say."
…
"Your grades are one thing." His voice takes on a distinctly academic tone, the one you’ve grown weary of, stern yet well-meaning. All these expectations, and nothing to do with them. Even kindness has weight. "I can always give you extensions. You only need to ask. But your body," he sighs. "Your health. Those absolutely can't be neglected."
My mistake, you think. Very quietly. Spitefully. I didn't realize you were my guidance counselor too.
"Are you listening?"
"… Mm."
He puts his hands on the desk. "I want you to be honest with me about what you're feeling right now. All of it," he stresses. "Alright?"
(Surely, he can tell how uncomfortable this makes you. Surely, he realizes you're dangerously close to breaking.
Can you trust him to know what's best for you?)
The words form in your mouth, slipping from your lips after what feels like an hour. "… Everything's so difficult," you answer, reluctant. "And I'm— so terrible at everything. I'm not a good student. I can't even finish my assignments on time."
"I'm your professor," he counters. "I know what you're capable of. Don't let one rough patch convince you that you're lesser than anybody else in this class."
A wry smile tugs your lips up. It's worn. "But it's not," you sigh. "It's not… just one rough patch. I struggle all the time. Even taking care of myself takes a lot of effort when I'm like this, nevermind studying—"
"Isn't that all the more proof?" Suguru asks. His voice sharp with intent. "You're a hard worker. There are plenty of students who drop out for those very same reasons, but you haven't. Doesn't that mean anything?"
"… That's the bare minumum."
"Not to you." He corrects. "Not to many others."
Still. Stubbornly, you can't help but cling to that sense of inferiority. The feeling that you need to earn his attention. It makes the stress all the worse. If you told him that, you're not sure what he'd say. You're not sure if he'd blame himself for making you sink deeper into your disease.
"… I'm falling behind," you whisper. "I keep falling behind. I'm scared that it'll just keep going." Before he can cut in again, you continue; voice so low you hope he doesn't hear. "If you stop believing in me too, then…"
Tears burn at your lashline, traitorous.
"I don't know what I'll do."
…
"I'm just so tired." A barely-there sniffle. You inhale sharply to scare it away, but it has the opposite effect, causing your breath to wobble. "Sorry."
Quietly, you wipe at your eyes with the sleeves of your shirt. Insistently. But it's too late— you've untied the knot that's been building up in your chest these past few weeks, the anxiety and exhaustion, all the things you can't tell anyone about. And you've done it in front of your professor.
In front of the professor who's a lot more than your professor, which only makes it that much more terrifying.
You've no doubt he's gazing at you with warm, understanding eyes right now, but you're too afraid to look. Wishing you could curl into a ball. Biting down on your lip to stop it from trembling.
When Suguru presses you flush against his chest, his cologne envelops your senses. You’re helpless to resist. He holds you tightly, the way no professor should, like you're a glass bottle he's keeping from falling to the ground. It makes you feel fragile. It reminds you that you are fragile. It does a lot of things your mind can't wrap itself around right now.
"I-I'm sorry," you whimper. "Sorry."
"Shh. Shhh." He pulls you closer, holds you tighter, rocking you against his body, almost in his lap. "Don't apologize. Let it out."
Easier said than done. But there's no undoing the tears, the fresh burn of humiliation searing itself across your shoulder-blades— he's already ripped the bandaid off, bared the red, ugly scab for all to see. You don’t have any bruise cream left.
So with wet eyes and a brain close to breaking, you hold onto the polyester of his vest for all you’re worth. Burying your trembling body in the crook of his neck, stifling the crying, hiding yourself from the world. No one else gets to see you like this. Only him. Minutes pass: your heart torn at the edges, weeping itself sore. It feels good, in the worst way possible, to have it all come flooding out.
It feels good to be held like this.
"… There. See, you can do it." He soothes the last gurgled sobs out of your throat, his palm rubbing steady circles in the dip between your shoulder-blades. "Mommy's got you."
It's spoken so quietly you barely catch it. Under his breath, like an afterthought. His hands cradling you like a babe, his voice all-forgiving. The room cuts in half, silence ringing in your ears— the shock that runs through you quiets the teardrops. When you pull away abruptly, his expression has shifted into something you don't understand.
"… No?" He smiles after a moment. "Did I guess wrong?"
(It scares you to sit with the weight of what that word just did to you. Head fuzzy, thoughts quiet. Seeing that knowing look on his face.)
"Or do you not realize it yourself?"
"W-What?" you croak. Snot dribbles down your nose; you wipe it with your sleeve.
Professor Geto doesn't answer.
This unorthodox relationship— if you could even call it that, whatever it may be— is a gross violation of teacher/student protocol. You both understand that. It's clear as day that what you feel for one another isn't normal: that even the most friendly of professors shouldn't hold their crying students to their chests or call them out on their fantasies, fantasies they've never shared out loud— that there's a line you shouldn't cross, and that the two of you are already well past it. You're both adults, but you aren't naive enough to think you stand on equal ground.
If you did, you probably wouldn't like him as much as you do. And you wouldn't be feeling this shameful hunger right now.
Without saying another word on the matter, your professor rises to his feet. The sun sinks outside the windows, flickering at the ends of his ink-black hair, catching onto the golden button on his vest— before sputtering out.
"Would you like to join me for dinner?" he asks, brushing an absent palm down the fabric you bundled up, like he didn't just witness you bawling like a child. "I'm making katsu curry tonight. It'd help to have a taste tester."
"… Sure."
It's not the first time you do. It’s not the last time you will.
"Perfect." A full smile stretches his lips, eyes crescented, crinkled at the edges. He reminds you of a ginkgo tree. Branches weathered with time, bearing golden leaves. High, high up in the sky. "Wait for me at the back of the building, alright? I'll come pick you up."
(See? He knows it's inappropriate. He's well aware of what the repercussions would be if any students or faculty saw you get into his car.
He just doesn't care.)
Silently, you watch him walk away. There's a moment where you're almost sure he's going to reach out and touch you, ruffle your hair, wipe at your eye— but he doesn't. The lump in your throat has yet to go away. It's smaller, though. Easier to breathe around. Less rocks in your chest than there were this morning.
Professor Geto isn't a normal person.
… But neither are you.
That's why this works. That's why only he could get you to unravel like this. You pack up your things, your notebook and water bottle, slinging your weather-worn bag over your shoulder. When you're all alone the lecture hall feels infinite, your steps echoing hollowly as you make your way towards the exit. Cicada cries bellow from the apricot trees. Most of them will die before summer vacation.
contents: suguru geto x gn!reader. literally just fluff. sickly-sweet kitchen fluff. mostly prose! i like hubby sugu i miss him a lot :( +one (1) kms joke wc: 1.2k
Eyes of firefly-gold graze the back of your neck.
Suguru sits on the kitchen table and watches your arms move where you stand in front of the stove, the conductor of an orchestra only you are privy to. If he closed his eyes he thinks he’d hear music: the ever-present crescendoing of a santoku-knife hitting wood, cutting through ginger, paprika and green onion, water streaming from the tap and sloshing in a sink already sullied with dishes.
This, he thinks, is peace. The kind that roots itself into the bone-marrow and spinal cord. This is what he’s been seeking his entire life.
This is what you give him, continuously: mundanity worth dying for.
”Fuck.”
Suguru blinks. Two birds take flight from the plum-tree just outside your window, their wings snapping sharply in tune with your exclamation.
”Fuuuuck. No. No,” your voice tightens with dread, dull and thick on your tongue. Dark smoke wafts from the pan you’re holding. ”I’m gonna kill myself.”
”Baby,” Suguru scolds. He rises from the table with the ease of a cat just awoken from its nap, stretching its slender body in a narrow crease of sunshine— his biceps straining pleasurably, the table-cloth smooth beneath the pads of his fingers. ”What’s wrong?”
”I burnt it,” you groan. A frown clads his lips as he steps beside you, palm carefully laying itself in the dip of your back. Surveying the damage, though still glancing at you from the corner of his eye. Gosh, you’re cute. Brows all furrowed in frustration.
(Satoru’s right, he muses. For once.
Love does make him mean.)
”I knew I should have done the prep work first,” you murmur, squeezing your eyes shut. There’s a strain in your jaw he’d like to smooth away. ”Ahhh. I’m so upset. The beef was so expensive, too.”
Quietly, the branches of his lips bloom upwards, flecked with fond fatigue.
”… It’s alright,” he soothes. Taking the spatula off your hands to turn the slabs of meat around, from charcoal-black to primrose-pink. ”We’ll scrape it off. It’ll taste just as wonderful.”
Despite the comforting words, your expression doesn’t change. This is just another string of motions to the evening scene of your married life— he knows them by hand, by memory, could recite them with his eyes closed and lips sealed. Such a small loss has taken your smile hostage, but he knows just how to bring it back.
”Trust me.” He raises his free hand, trailing his fingertips across your jaw, teasing the seam of your lips, so tightly pursed. Half tempted to tug at your gums and teeth, he settles for pinching at the fat of your cheek; careful, but seamless, knowing just how little force to use to make you look him in the eye. And you do. You look at him the way shooting stars burn across the cosmos, the way bare feet hit summer-warm grass. Your gaze is stubbornly irritated, like a cat dipped in water, but he sees the quiet guilt there. ”It’s hard to pay attention to so many things at once, right?”
…
A silent nod. Barely there, but he’ll take what he can get. Your gaze shies away, mindlessly scanning the chopped veggies on the kitchen counter, and he doesn’t force it back in place.
”Mhm. And blaming yourself for a simple mistake accomplishes…?”
…
You’re embarrassed. He sees it in the way you almost squirm in place, lower lip twitching, hesitant to part. That’s no good, he tuts inwardly.
”Baby.”
”… Nothing,” you sigh.
”Exactly.” Suguru beams. ”You’re doing well. Do you want me to cook the beef? Or should I sit back down?”
As expected, he’s met with a deadpan stare. ”Don’t you dare.”
Laughter pools under his tongue, breezy and light, right at home where it slips into the boundary between your bodies. His palm curls around your hip, tugging you closer. Smoothing your cheeks together in a brief nuzzle. ”Alright, alright,” he croons. He did promise you could make dinner tonight. ”If you say so.”
The air is warm with the scent of a hearty meal: ginger and onion, beef stir-fried in sesame oil, steam from udon noodles coming to a boil. Suguru behaves, though part of him aches to join you, sitting on the kitchen table with his slender jaw hooked on the dip of his palm. Watching you in quiet worship. Praying to the orchestra of your fingertips and chest, lifting up and down, the happy hum you purr on after taste-tasting the food. Peace floods his lungs with every inhale, flowing out with every exhale, thickening the air with bliss.
”Come taste, Suguru.”
By the time the words have left your mouth, he’s long since risen to his feet. Socks gliding against the floorboards, nudging your hip with his own, a loyal dog at the heel of your voice. You hold the spoon out to his lips, and Suguru grows hungry. Famished for more evenings, more charred meat and plum trees. Ravenous for you. His lips part around the cutlery.
”Mm,” he appraises, eyes curling into crescents. Heat floods his chest, spreading through his body; limbs; fingertips. ”Delicious. You outdid yourself, honey.”
”Really?”
A warm smile. ”Really.”
The praise makes something in your eyes soften, tantamount to crumbling; like a lamb rolling over to expose its underbelly, hoping for pets where it needs them the most. Hopelessly endearing. You’re quick to get down on yourself, but you need so little to glow with pride. He could get high on the way you seek out his approval.
”If you keep this up, I’m afraid you won’t need me to cook for you anymore.”
”Always gonna need your cooking,” you huff. Smiling broadly, steam dancing around your throat, your gaze like a cleaver to his jugular. ”I just want to be able to do this for you sometimes.”
”Yeah?” he chuckles. ”Well, isn’t my baby sweet.”
”I always am,” you nod. Suguru’s heart feels bigger than usual. He presses a kiss against the side of your temple, murmuring hotly:
”That’s right.” His voice dips into a low, sticky timbre. ”Maybe we should cook you into a meal, hm?”
”Nooo.”
”I did notice we were running out of sugar,” he clicks his tongue, trying to hide a cloying grin. ”We’ll have to use a substitute for dessert…”
You shake your head again, firmer this time, looking up at him with big, pleading eyes— just for show, he tells himself— because you want to make him weak in the knees. It’s too effective, is the issue. You’re too good at what you do to him. His Adam’s apple bobs pathetically. ”Don’t bake me into pie.”
”No?” His arms circle your waist, trapping you against him.
”No.”
”No,” Suguru repeats, mostly to himself. Under his breath, like a prayer. ”You’re right.”
”… Ah— I’m gonna burn it again!” your head snaps towards the stove, hastily stirring the udon, veggies and beef together, scraping at the bottom of the pan. ”Suguru, set the table or something. You’re too distracting!”
Your husband sighs contentedly. Watching your brows furrow, hands moving with practiced intensity. His, his heart sings. All his. ”… Yes, honey.”
contents: suguru geto x gn!reader, age gap (suguru is in his late thirties, reader in their early twenties.) fluff, suggestive (implied; not explicit). reader is shy, suguru is a worrywart, you know the drill :3c wc: 1.1k
You're being oddly quiet this morning.
Suguru takes the chance to glance at you in his peripheral, waiting for the traffic light to turn red. He taps his fingers on the edge of the steering wheel in steady crescendo, surveying you silently. Turning his head subtly to get a better look.
Your gaze is fastened to the windshield, vacant with thought. Lips pursed like you're thinking about something, subtle signs of unease woven into your expression— the twitch of a brow, fingers curling and unfurling on your lap.
The light flickers yellow, then green, green like the sky after dawn breaks and the muddy patches of grass just beginning to sprout up from the winter-reaped soil, slathered in nervous rays of sunlight. Suguru flicks his stare to the road ahead, missing your silhouette under his eyelids. He drives at a comfortable tempo, no faster than he has to. Some part of him waits, ever-patient, for a noise or a jumble of words, but you remain silent beside him.
You've been like this since you got into his car. Which would be just fine, if it weren't for the fact that you're usually so chipper when he drives you to school. Rambling about this and that, the classes you're taking, the show you're watching once you get home. He likes to think you're trying to enjoy your time together to the fullest. Always listens attentively, hums along, and smiles with every dip of your tone, every tch of annoyance and pleased grin. Suguru loves you in the morning. How silent you are the first hour after you wake up, like he roused you from a lifetime's worth of slumber, and how talkative you get when you're in his car. Nestled against the window like that's where you were born to be, his baby rabbit and their burrow of choice.
But so far, you haven't said a single word.
(Quiet is fine, he thinks. It just means you feel comfortable enough around him not to fill your mouth with words you don't have the energy to speak aloud. Suguru doesn't mind; he misses your chatter, of course, but this is fine too. Mornings like this are well worth savouring.)
"Should we stop for coffee?" he asks with a smile, craning his neck to meet your sunken gaze. "I can grab them to-go, if you'd like."
"No, it's fine." You give a sleepy shake of your head. He wishes he could reach out and card through your hair, but that'll have to wait until the next intersection. He seems to wish for them every time you're in his passenger's seat. "I'll get some at the cafeteria later."
"Alright."
… So much for buying time.
Okay, so maybe Suguru does want to hear your voice. Maybe he is disappointed that you aren't letting him hear it, not even a quiet I don't want to go to school today, something he could latch on to and rewind in his mind when you're away. Something to stave off the cousin of loneliness he carries on his shoulders when you're out of sight— a sense of being misplaced. Out of order. Age has only made him clingier, he thinks. Though no one knows it as well as you.
The obstruction of habit is another matter. Since he's so used to your banter, he can't help but worry. Are you truly that tired? Was last night too much? Maybe he should have said no when you crawled into his lap, put you to bed nice and early instead. Maybe his greed is catching up to him. Maybe is all he has, and maybe isn't enough. Suguru tap, tap, taps his fingers on the steering wheel, taking the left turn to your university's parking lot. Other students and faculty are out and about, IDs hanging off their necks, paper cups in their hands. He parks the car and turns the engine off.
"Here we are," he proclaims. Smiling as he turns to face you. "Off you go, little one."
You give him a pointed stare.
Several things happen in sequence: your eyes flee from his own, seeking shelter in the windshield, posture stiff with hesitation. They return after a moment to nervously scan his features, from the dip of his nose to the bow of his lips. You lean in and give him a kiss on the cheek— so chaste he barely feels it, like the touch of a particularly gentle cloud— and turn around so fast he doesn't get the chance to see what kind of face you're making.
Suguru's breath halts in his chest, a sparrow stopping mid-flight.
"… Thanks for the ride, Suguru."
You're speaking quietly. Meek. Like a frightened animal. He stares at your back with his mouth left ajar, the cogs of his brain spinning slowly, still processing the warmth lingering where your lips met his skin. You gave him a kiss. A thank-you kiss. You're being so polite, and so shy, and you can't possibly realize what it's doing to him. His heartbeat flutters, flutters, flutters, like he's in high school again, or in his early twenties, mingling with bright-eyed boys and speaking to quiet girls with his back against the brick-walls of the clubs Shoko used to frequent.
You open the car door with a click. It snaps him back into the present. Before you can flee, he purrs:
"… You're welcome, baby."
"See you after class," you mumble. Hopping out and closing the door behind you— and there, right there, in the split second where you turn around to look at him— he catches a glimpse of your expression through the window.
Brows furrowed, lips held between your teeth, pointedly snapping away from his stare. Too beautiful for words.
Now he's smiling, so wide his cheeks hurt, the branches of his lips blooming upwards with wisteria; and he can't be bothered to hide it from you. Perhaps if he was younger he'd want to conceal just how smitten he is, but the Suguru he is now can't bring himself to feel the slightest bit embarrassed.
(You're so brave, he thinks. So silly. Working up your courage over something as simple as a kiss. So good he wants to eat you.)
… He does, however, wait until you're out of sight to let his forehead smack against the steering wheel in front of him. Sighing like you just stole the air out of his body, left helpless to the heat nipping at the shells of his ears.
contents: suguru geto x gn!reader. canon au. light angst, hurt/comfort. part of my very vague ”cult era geto breaks into your apartment a lot” au. depictions of depression and apathy from reader (implied). wc: 766
There's blood under your fingernails, blood staining your palms and oscillating down the drain.
You turn off the tap, not bothering to wipe your hands first— catching your own reflection in the mirror fastened to the bathroom cupboard, dazed eyes staring into dazed eyes. You make for a macabre image. A corpse that learned to breathe.
Tonight's mission went smoothly, all things considered. As smoothly as a Grade 1 mission can go unless you're Gojo Satoru, meaning non-lethal injuries and your target successfully seized, battered buildings whose cost won't cause the middle management too much trouble. The blood on your palms isn't your own: that, in itself, is a blessing.
So there's nothing to complain about.
Not the buzzing in your skull that still hasn't subsided, not the mess you've made of the pure-white sink, not the fact that the higher-ups keep giving these missions to you. Not the fact that they're testing your loyalty towards them in such petty ways. It's been eight years, but they still haven't forgiven you for threatening them, and they're still making sure all missions involving curse users land at your desk.
(If you were a bolder person, you'd tell them your loyalty has never been with any particular faction. That if you were on his side— if you did want to kill them all— it'd be with him and only him, not any group of misfits or rogue sorcerer they sniff out from god-knows-where. That you couldn't care less about anyone who isn't him, inside the society or outside of it, revolutionary or not. You'd tell them, and they'd use it against you, and they'd kill you for it. But you'd get the satisfaction of flaunting your capacity to choose who you align yourself with in the faces of those rendered puppet-masters by the Jujutsu world, and that would be enough.)
With a groan, you step away from the sink. Your head hurts. Flashes of heat at the crown of your temple.
Sluggishly, you drag your feet towards the threshold to your bedroom, listening to the clock on your kitchen wall ticking towards midnight. The lamp on your nightstand isn't lit; shadows fall across the interior. A houseplant long past rotting, a painting you got from a mission overseas, paperbacks you've yet to read and don't know if you ever will. You walk towards the window to unhook the latch, then seat yourself on the edge of the mattress.
A sigh leaves your lips. Your eyes draw shut.
On nights like these, you know he's coming. Nights where the weight on your shoulders digs in more than usual, nights where you can't lull the monsters in your head to sleep, nights where you miss him more than usual.
On nights like these, Suguru always breaks in through the open window off the back of his mantis ray, like he's doing now, and slithers over you until you’re falling backwards onto the bed— your limbs dead and weightless around you. You blink, and he's there. Smiling from behind the windowpane. You blink, and he's got you laid out on the mattress, palms on either side of your head. He brings with him the scent of incense, and a look you cannot decipher.
From where he's looming above you, he seems to notice the vacancy in your expression. Because he stills, flexes his pupils in silence, a sharp observation; lowers his head to nose at your neck. His hair falls across your shoulders, ink-black silk, his heavy robes blanketing your body.
”Are you alright?”
His voice is soft with fatigue.
(There's still blood under your fingernails. You didn't bother to wash your hands properly, only let the water rinse away the worst of it. Tomorrow you'll just stain them again, so what's the point?)
”Mm,” you crane your neck to give him more room to work with. He takes it, greedily, suckling gently at the spot where your pulse beats the hottest. ”Just dirty.”
Suguru hums.
Silently, a knee comes to rest between your thighs. An anchor to your shipwreck.
"I understand."
He laces your fingers together. Your palm is still sticky with soap, but he doesn't seem to mind. Clumps of drying blood must be dirtying his hand, but he doesn't let go. He left you behind eight years ago, but the way he touches you could almost make you think he regrets it. When he raises his head to look at you, his amber eyes are dark with wanting, and an emotion you don't want to name.
