Okay but do you accept intersex people who are happy in their bodies? Do you accept intersex people who don't experience body dysphoria? Do you accept intersex people who are cis and comfortable with it? Do you accept intersex people who don't need/want medical interventions? Do you accept intersex people who have no interest in sport or other gendered activities?
Do you accept that all these people still experience discrimination and hate, often from gay and trans people as well as cishet people?
Or are we just your logical strategy to win an argument against transphobes?
“actually we just want to see strong female friendships” apply the same logic to straight ships then i dare you :/ maybe i want to see strong female/male friendships w no romantic feelings between them bc that’s actually a thing yknow… BUT YOU DONT SEE ME BITCHING ABOUT IT DO YOU
(this got a few likes and everyone is misunderstanding so edit: i don’t actually give a shit about f/m friendships i just want to ship my wlw ships in peace thank you xx. in this post i’m complaining about ppl who say let them be friends when i ship two girls in media xx)
Hours later, Colton Seavers sat in his trailer after a long day of dropping off buildings and crashing cars. He pulled out his phone and began to check his notifications.
Mostly the usual, scheduling for whatever action scenes were next, some news alerts about the big, fancy government project to save the sun, messages from Jody, and finally a handful of missed calls from his brother. He raised a brow at that and immediately signed into his voicemail, ignoring anything else.
It wasn't unusual for Ryland to leave him a message, he tended to do so at least once a week just as a check in of sorts, since he was pulled away into that world-government appointed science job. Although, he never tended to leave quite this many.
A sense of unease quickly pervaded Colt's mind as he hit play. The first one started with a shaky breath filtering through the speaker as Ryland seemingly collected himself before beginning to speak. "Hey Colt, it's me, Ryland. Listen - something went wrong with the project, and now they're asking me to step up in a big way..."
Confusion and concern filled his mind as his brother's voice thinned away into nothing. A moment of silence before sniffling could be heard, and Colt thought that would be the end of the message, but his brother's voice came back much shakier than before.
"I don't think I can do it Colt. I mean, I've never been brave. Not like - not like you, I'm the cowardly twin, and I've made my peace with that." He had never thought of his brother as a coward. Sure he was fearful of many things, but he was never a coward. He was just too good for what the world had to offer him. Too kind and easy to hurt. In the message, his brother continued.
"But now, there's just so much at stake, I just don't - I want to help, but what they're asking me to do - what they're asking me to give up? It's too much." He feels himself begin to panic in earnest when the call ends right after the sound of Ryland choking on a sob. Give up? What could these people possibly be asking his brother to do that would drive him to this state of dismay? He saved the message and began pacing as the next one started.
The first second or two is just deep breathing, as if Ryland is trying to reign himself in. Which, after how the last message ended he wouldn't be surprised if he was. "I could really use your advice right now. You've always been the best at getting me out of my head, and getting me to realize what I want. I could use that right now. Everything is just so jumbled right now that I don't know where to begin," a pause as Colt feels guilt join the fray of emotions tumbling in his gut. He should have been there to pick up the phone. His brother needed him.
"You would probably tell me something entirely too vague, like 'Just trust your gut Ry Ry, you know what you want!' I wish it was that simple to just pick what I want right now. I don't know what I'm going to do Colt," his voice had grown thick by the end of the sentence and sniffling could be heard as Ryland seemed to be desperately trying to keep it together. Colt's own eyes were growing misty at the thought of his brother being in such clear misery over an unknown decision he had to make.
Ryland cleared his throat before continuing, "Time is running out, and the world is resting on my shoulders. I miss you, and I'm so scared. Please call me when you get a chance, bye." A cold sweat had seemed to erupt over his entire body as he clumsily backtracked to dial his brother's number. The line rang once, twice, then went straight to voicemail, his brother's cheerful voice filling the tense silence.
"Hi! You've reached Dr. Ryland Grace, unfortunately I can't come to the phone right now, so go ahead and leave a message after the tone, and I'll try my best to get back to you! Okay, bye!" The uneasy feeling came back tenfold as Colt began to speak, "Hey Ry, it's me. Listen- I'm sorry I missed your calls, I promise I wasn't ignoring you. You've uh, really got me freaked out here, I'm calling you back like you asked, so if you could return the favor that would be great. Please call me Ry."
With that he hung up. A minute passed with him pacing around his trailer staring at his phone, waiting for the screen to light up with the smiling picture of his brother's face. It remained dark. Another minute passed before he remembered there were two more missed calls from his brother that he needed to listen to. He picked his phone back up and logged back into his voicemail.
The third message started much quicker than the other two, with his brother no longer sounding as if he was going to break down into tears. His voice was firm and determined as he began. "I'm saying no. I don't know what she might do, but I have decided I am not getting on that ship. I just can't do it. I'll probably get fired and blacklisted again, so maybe we can finally do good on that offer to crash with you when things get rough, yeah? I love you Colt, hopefully we talk soon, if I don't get arrested or disappeared," he finished with a dry chuckle and hung up.
Colt looked at the time. It had been more than six hours since Ryland had left that message. Surely, he would have called by now to update his brother on whatever situation he had gotten himself into. Right? That must be what the last message was, an explanation and a reassurance that everything was fine now.
Ryland telling him that he had blown everything out of proportion and that he was fine, or that he had been fired and was making his way to Colt to crash with him. He didn't answer because he was probably sleeping, or working, or doing some other Ryland-y thing. Everything was going to be fine, and this last message was going to prove that.
The sound of heavy breathing and movement was what greeted him. Faint shouting could almost be discerned in the background as Colt felt the panic come rushing back full force. "Colt! Colt please - I need you, I need - I need help," Ryland practically wheezed out. Ice flushed through him as he immediately began grabbing his stuff and shoving it in a bag. He needed to go now.
The feeling of urgency only intensified as Ryland took a gasping breath and continued on "They're making me - making me go, Colt. I can- can't do this! I can't! Colt please, I'm so scared. I don't want to die! I don't want to die!" His brother was practically screaming as his frantic panting once again replaced any discernible dialogue.
Whines and gasps could be heard in time with his brother's feet pounding against the ground. Colt's own feet thrummed in time as he ran through the set and out the door, ignoring the alarmed cries of those around him. He needed to get to his brother.
He had just gotten to his car when he heard something that made his blood seemingly freeze in his veins. The sound of his brother running was abruptly cut off as a loud thud emanated from his phone along with the sound of air being forced out of a pair of lungs. No. No, no, no. This couldn't be happening. Colt sat numb in the driver's seat of his car as the sound of his brother begging for his life filled the empty space.
Pleads of no, and stop were all he could hear along with grunting as his brother was audibly restrained against the ground. Ryland's sobs filled every corner of his brain as he repeated over and over how he couldn't possibly do it. He wasn't suited for it. He didn't want to die. Colt could do nothing but sit in silent horror to the sound of his brother being attacked.
A name, Carl, was heard as Ryland turned his begging for mercy onto him. There was a calm reply of, "You know who you are. You're gonna do great," that could barely be heard over the din of pleas before his brother's sobs turned to screams of raw terror. His thrashing could be heard as a steady undercurrent to the symphony of animal desperation.
A final cry of "Don't do it!" before all that came out of his brother's mouth was Colt's own name accompanied by various sobs and calls for aid. By this point Colt was almost entirely sure that this was some kind of living nightmare. He felt completely detached from his own body, like he was viewing the whole thing from an outside perspective.
The feeling persisted as he quickly became aware of the fact that his brother had stopped making noise. Any noise at all. There was only the sound of panting and grunting as something heavy was moved. The call dropped.
Colt felt as if he was underwater. Everything was strange and distant. Hours passed. Days. Years, he sat unmoving in the driver seat of his car. Then, the vague sound of pounding on his window and yelling.
His head turned slowly, as though he was submerged in molasses. There at his window, frantically yelling something he couldn't hear over the static buzzing through him, was Jody. She looked terrified. He wondered why?
Why should she be terrified when she hadn't had to hear the other half of her soul get ripped away into a horror beyond her comprehension? The door was open now, and her hands were cradling his face. Her mouth was still moving, and yet he still couldn't make out any sounds.
He was numb and empty, then all at once everything slammed into him with the intensity of a freighter. He doubled over and screamed.
Evan who has eating issues due to religious trauma and Barty who loves to kiss his stomach and lay his head on his chest and always has a hand on his thigh. Especially when Evan finally starts to get to a healthy weight and he feels really terrible, Barty just tells him how pretty he is.
You're positive your roommate hates you. He's the oldest brother of your best friend and sharing an apartment with him made sense — money wise. Living with him, though, a little rougher. Still, you endure the daily scrutiny.
tags: fluff (shocking), domestic life, sukuna is sukuna, also smut, more fluff, piv, choking, fingering, dirty talking, yada yada.
art by @tttsnf
You live like prey in your own apartment.
You learn the shape of his day — the weight of his boots at the door, the smell of smoke and cedar when he’s home, the way the air goes still when he’s in a room.
You time your exits like weather, you keep your voice small, you keep your steps soft.
You see how he perceives you in every little interaction — a nuisance, annoying, good for nothing roommate.
Morning, you round the kitchen corner and almost slam into him.
He doesn’t step back, he doesn’t soften, he lowers his chin and says, “Move.”
Flat.
You flatten yourself to the cabinets and slip by, pulse banging in your ears.
His hands stay braced — palms spread on oak, tendons up — like he’s giving himself something to hold that isn’t you.
You don’t see that part until later, replaying it, wondering why you didn’t collide.
Oil pops. You yelp. He’s there, jerking the pan from your hand with a scalded sound.
“You trying to brand yourself?” he bites out, angling his shoulder between you and the heat. “Out.”
You step back, stung.
You hate how the word works — how you go.
He kills the flame, rotates the handle inward, flicks the vent.
“Watch what the fuck you’re doing.” You nod like you’re eight.
You spend the next hour angry at your own hands.
You reach for the biggest knife in the drawer.
His tattooed fingers clamp the handle before you can touch it.
“Don’t,” he says, bored and cruel. “They’re not toys.”
The sneer skims your skin like a cold wind.
You sleep on it wrong and wake up to a mid-size knife on the counter, a cheap plastic sheath on the blade, a sticky note in his blocky hand, Use this. Guard stays on. — S.
You tell yourself it’s control.
You tell yourself he doesn’t want you touching his things.
You climb the step stool to reach a jar on the top shelf.
He’s suddenly behind you, voice right by your ear.
“Get down.” The tone is filth-soft, like smoke dragged across velvet. “You fall, I’m not patching drywall.”
You climb down because your body obeys that voice before your brain decides to.
When your feet hit tile, something shifts — the warm presence of his forearm hovering at your waist and then withdrawing, like a hand you imagined.
He reaches above you, grabs the jar, sets it in your hands without looking at you.
“Ask,” he says, already walking away.
Like a rule.
Like he hates that you tried.
You clean to a happy playlist.
He crosses the living room and kills the speaker with one jab.
“Enough,” he says without glancing up.
Your apology is automatic and you want to bite your tongue off for it. Later you hear him in the kitchen humming the same chorus, low, off-key, like he pocketed the noise so you wouldn’t spin out on it.
The balcony door is open for air, he plants a palm and slides it shut with a hard click.
“Inside,” he says, eyes on the night-dark lot. “Door stays closed at night.”
You feel stupid and scolded.
Two days later the neighbor with the too-long smile tries a conversation that lasts one second longer than polite. When you get home, you can’t stop seeing the way Sukuna had stood that night — shoulders squared to the lot, body a wall, attention on the dark instead of on you.
The AC dies and your fingers won’t warm.
A dryer-hot hoodie hits your chest as he passes.
“Put it on,” he snaps. “You sound like teeth chattering.”
It smells like him. It helps. You tell yourself it’s a territorial thing, his name written on you in fabric.
You don’t let yourself think about the heat already in it, like he knew you would pretend you weren’t cold and planned around your pride.
The pipes bang while you shower.
His knock has the force of a cop.
“You’re flooding the place,” he says through the door, gravel and impatience. “Finish up.”
Shame rips through you like a pulled muscle, you rush, ten minutes after, there’s a rubber bath mat leaning against the tub.
No note. No comment.
Just fewer ways to crack your skull open on tile.
Crossing the living room in shorts, you feel it — the slow, dead-eyed inventory as his gaze rakes over you and back, unapologetic. Your stomach drops. You translate it as disgust, judgment, rude boredom.
You don’t clock the way his jaw flexes once and then stills, or how his hands stay buried in his pockets like he’s holding them there on purpose.
You lug four grocery bags up the stairs. He opens the door and rips two away.
“You take too long,” he says, like you failed a test he didn’t announce. You seethe. Later you notice your greek yogurt, your tea, your brand of honey in the fridge, resting on the second shelf you can actually reach.
You tell yourself someone like him remembers everything so he can hold it over you later.
You chain the door wrong.
He flicks it open, shuts it, flicks it again.
“Don’t do that.” The look he gives you is mean enough to sting. “Top chain, bottom deadbolt. Leave the knob unlocked.”
You bristle, say you’re not an idiot.
He repeats the sequence without commentary and then leans his shoulder, testing the frame.
“If you scream,” he says, flat, “I’m coming through it.”
It takes you a day to realize he showed you the way he could shoulder the door because he was imagining needing to.
You host a silly apartment date because you’re tired of being alone and tired of feeling hunted in your own kitchen. The guy is harmless, loud, and brings cheap rosé because he thinks it’s whimsical.
Sukuna passes through like a storm front — silent, big, eyes acidic.
“Feet off my table,” he says to the room, never quite looking at your guest.
It lands like a threat.
Your cheeks heat, you want to crawl under the couch.
When the bottle opener skitters toward your fingers, Sukuna’s hand appears, big and fast, and plucks it out of the air, then sets it by your elbow so the metal edge doesn’t slice you.
He slices limes with surgical calm you don’t deserve and leaves a plate of wedges by your glass because once — weeks ago — you cut yourself trying to garnish something you didn’t need to garnish.
Your date tries a joke at Sukuna’s tattoos.
Sukuna stares through him like the man is furniture and says, “Yes,” when asked if the ink hurt. The conversation dies.
The thermostat ticks, colder. A hoodie you did not wear to dinner appears on the back of your chair as he passes.
It goes off the rails when the guy calls you “kiddo.”
You freeze, small and furious.
From the kitchen,
“Don’t,” Sukuna says without looking. “She’s not your anything.”
There’s no heat in it, only patience sharpened into a knife. Your date laughs too loud and tries again with “babe,” and Sukuna’s mouth pulls into something that isn’t a smile.
“Don’t ‘babe’ her."
Your crush blinks.
“Excuse me?”
Sukuna lifts his eyes, finally. There’s nothing theatrical in his stare — just the kind of patience that makes people reconsider their choices.
“You heard me.”
Your crush tries on a laugh and finds it doesn’t fit.
“My bad,” he says to you, all forced charm.
“It is,” Sukuna agrees mildly, and goes back to slicing.
Nobody enjoys the rest of the movie.
When the door finally closes on the silly date, Sukuna stacks plates with quiet hands. You dry glasses. Your fingers brush and you both pretend they didn’t.
“He seemed… nice,” you say, because you hate the silence.
“He seemed loud,” he says, jaw ticking. “You like loud?”
“I like kind.”
Something shifts in his expression, a small retreat you can’t name.
He rinses, passes, rinses.
“He call you kiddo again, I’m throwing him off the balcony.”
“We’re on the second floor.”
“He’ll live.”
He says it like a promise to himself to keep it verbal.
You slip in late another night and he’s at the counter, arms folded over his chest.
“Who dropped you,” he says, not a question.
You flare.
“You my parole officer?”
He just waits until you mutter a first name.
“Next time,” he says, “text you’re alive.”
It feels like a leash.
Later, when rage cools, you notice the lamp in the living room is on a timer — clicks on at ten, off at two.
You notice the scuffed track his boots make from the door to the window.
You notice the idle of his truck you didn’t hear over your date’s laugh.
In the hallway, you brush too close. He inhales, sharp, almost a growl.
“Watch it,” he says, stepping aside late, forcing you to reroute around him like you’re avoiding a boot. His hand curls and uncurls against his thigh, tendons jumping, as if stopping itself from settling on your waist.
He smells like mint and smoke and heat.
You walk away on shaking legs and tell yourself you hate him.
Rain threatens, you reach for the knob without an umbrella, he flips you the spare and says,
“Don’t be stupid.”
You take it because you’re cold and stubborn.
Inside the sleeve is a folded bill and a metro card with rides left.
You find it waiting for you after the storm.
You never mention it.
Neither does he.
You laugh on the phone at midnight because if you don’t laugh you’ll cry. He appears in your doorway like a shadow.
“Quiet,” he says, low and edged enough to cut off your breath, “I’m sleeping.”
You apologize. He leaves.
Ten minutes later there’s a glass of water outside your door with ice clinking like punctuation.
The apartment is silent so you can breathe.
This is the rhythm — his voice like a weapon, your spine learning its shape, the hard click of doors, the snap of rules, you reading every look as a sneer, every order as contempt.
The house learns your flinch.
You learn the circumference of his temper and pretend you don’t notice how it never actually lands on you.
One night, late, you catch him at the sink.
The kitchen light is off, only the hood lamp is on.
Water runs, steam climbs his forearms and softens the ink.
He doesn’t turn when you enter, he doesn’t acknowledge you, you can feel him see you anyway — the way the air charges, the way the room holds its breath.
“I can be quiet,” you say, because you think maybe that’s all you are to him, a noise to manage, a problem to compress.
He shuts the tap.
He stands there a second, hands braced on the counter like they’ve been everywhere else he’s needed them to be — on cabinets, on doorframes, on anything that isn’t the small of your back.
“Yeah,” he says finally, voice rougher than usual, like gravel under a tire. “I know.”
He turns, and the look he gives you is the same one that has had you thinking wolf, knife, red eyes.
It still looks like that.
It’s still a lot of hunger, none of it polite.
But there’s something else leashed under it that you recognize now that you’ve learned the edges of this place, the way he stands between you and heat, between you and dark, between you and anything with teeth. The way his meanness is grammar, not content. The way every order lands like a safety.
You look at his hands on the counter. You look at the space he leaves between you and himself, a precise, stubborn inch of restraint that keeps not closing.
Only later will you name the pattern. In the moment, all you can do is breathe and try on a different translation.
Maybe he doesn’t hate you.
Maybe he’s surviving you.
Maybe you’re the thing he doesn’t trust himself with.
He pushes off the counter, gives you that inch and a little more, and nods at the hallway.
“Door stays closed,” he says, voice quiet, mean on the edges out of habit. “Sleep.”
You go.
You lock your door, then unlock it, then lock it again because you don’t trust yourself either.
On the bedside table, you set your phone face-down on a sticky note you’ve been pretending isn’t there — the one with a license plate scribbled on it from the night your date left.
No signature. No lecture. Just numbers.
You live like prey in your own apartment until you realize the predator has been hunting with the safeties on.
And by then your heart is a problem you don’t want to fix.
Next morning you wake up mean with it — raw throat, wet cough, cramps dragging like an anchor. The apartment is too bright, your skin too loud.
You shuffle to the kitchen in his oversized hoodie because everything else on your body feels like sandpaper.
He’s already there, back to you, rinsing a mug. The smell of mint and soap, the low noise of the hood fan. You keep your distance, open the cabinet, and reach for the painkillers.
The bottle rattles like a threat, your hands are clumsy.
“Two,” he says without turning. “Not four.”
It lands like a slap.
You swallow a dozen answers and pick the worst.
“Thank you, Officer.”
He flicks a look over his shoulder, unreadable.
“I don’t need you faceplanting in the hallway.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
“You don’t have to,” you bite.
The words come hot, a flare you can’t leash.
“Every day it’s, move, don’t, stop, quiet. Like I’m fucking five! Or your dog. Or a problem you’re stuck with.”
The faucet shudders off, he turns fully.
Mean eyes. Flat mouth.
“You done?”
You hate the way your eyes burn.
You hate that you keep going.
“I’m sick, I’m— ” you gesture uselessly at your stomach “ —I’m not sleeping, and you just— ” Your voice frays. “I can’t do the drill-sergeant act today.”
Something tightens in his jaw, then releases. He doesn’t bark back. He doesn’t roll his eyes. He sets the mug down carefully, like careful is a language, and says,
“Okay.”
That’s it. No lecture. No sneer.
It makes you cry anyway. Not big sobs — stupid, quiet overflow you swipe away with your sleeve while humiliation crawls up your neck.
“Forget it,” you mutter, retreating, heart banging. “I’m sorry, I just— forget it.”
You escape to your room and sit on the floor beside the bed because sitting on the bed feels like a commitment.
The cramps gnaw.
Your head throbs in time with the pipes.
Shame curdles everything.
Five minutes later, you get up and go back.
You stand in the doorway, hoodie sleeves swallowed over your hands, and force your throat to work.
“Sukuna. I’m sorry,” you say, steady as you can make it. “I’m… on my period. And this cold is making me cranky. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
He watches you with that stillness that reads like disdain until you learn it means don’t spook.
Then he nods once.
“You’re sick,” he says, voice rough but quieter than usual, as if rough is habit, volume is choice. “Sit.”
You do because your legs feel borrowed.
He turns back to the counter, you hear the drawer, the knife, the hard thunk of ginger coins against the board.
Kettle. Steam. Honey. Lemon.
He doesn’t look up while he works, like looking would make it something else.
When he comes back, he sets the mug near your hands, handle turned to your dominant side.
The steam hits your face with a rush of ginger that clears a corridor through your skull.
“Drink.”
“I was shitty.” you say, small.
He shakes his head once.
“You’re sick,” he repeats, like it’s a verdict, not a pass.
A beat.
“You wanna put something on the TV?”
For a second you truly wonder if the fever cracked something.
“What?”
“TV,” he says, like he’s reminding you English exists. “Noise helps when your head won’t shut up.”
You blink.
“Like… a movie?”
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t make you choose. He pads into the living room, grabs the remote, and sinks into the couch like it owes him rent. He leaves a lane between him and the corner — space you can take or not.
You wrap your hands around the mug and follow, because the idea of your room feels mean suddenly, like a place where your breath will catch on your bones.
He scrolls past too-serious options and lands on something dumb and loud with big colors and no stakes.
“That okay?” he asks, already pressing play like he expects you to say yes.
“Yeah,” you breathe, surprised to mean it.
He doesn’t sprawl. He sits like he’s making himself small, which is ridiculous given the acreage of his shoulders. He keeps his hands on his thighs and his attention forward.
The ginger burns a path down your throat and warms the pit of you where anger used to sit. Your nose runs, you swipe with your sleeve, he says nothing.
The hood fan clicks off in the kitchen. The apartment softens.
Onscreen, people run from explosions as if cardio is a personality trait.
You try to track it and fail. The rhythm of the action settles into white noise. Your head tips, then jerks, then tips again. You tell yourself you’re just shifting the mug. At some point the mug is on the table and your cheek is against heat that doesn’t feel like a pillow.
You realize too late it’s his shoulder.
Everything in you goes rigid.
You start to sit up.
“Relax,” he says, not looking away from the TV. “You’re fine.”
“I didn’t— I didn’t mean to— ”
“I know.”
His shoulder is a broad, stubborn thing, and it doesn’t move when you test it. His T-shirt is warm and soft with too many washes. You concentrate on breathing like a person and not a trapped animal.
His smell — smoke, cedar, mint — threads through the ginger and settles you faster than you want to admit.
He doesn’t take advantage. He doesn’t shift you closer. He doesn’t do the theatrical arm-over-the-back-of-the-couch move.
He sits there, a ridiculous block of heat, and lets your weight be what it is.
Onscreen someone yells “Go!” like it’s profound.
You huff a laugh that’s almost a cough. He snorts, barely.
“You hate these,” you murmur, eyes closing without permission. “You always turn off my music.”
“Your music tries to run a red light,” he says. “This is just… dumb. Dumb is good when your head hurts.”
You hum, sleepy.
“You’re not… mean right now.”
“I’m not mean,” he says, and it should come out defensive. It doesn’t. “I’m loud. Scary, even.”
“You’re… controlling”
“Better than mopping blood,” he says, like he’s listing groceries.
You want to argue and don’t have the energy. The movie blurs. Your body does that soft drop it does when it decides without you.
You feel him reach — not to you, past you. A blanket unfurls, drops over your knees and up to your hips like a quiet tide.
He moves slow, careful not to jostle the place where your forehead meets his shoulder, careful like he is with knives and doors and every stupid thing you misread as contempt.
“You’re hallucinating,” you mumble to yourself thinking you're just talking in your head, because it’s easier than saying thank you out loud.
“Yeah,” he says, dry. “Ginger tea’s a hallucinogen.”
You drift.
Somewhere in the middle distance, digital cities burn prettily. Your breaths even. His do, too, big and steady, a metronome under your ear. He lowers the volume half a notch. You don’t see his eyes track your face, the tiny frown he gets when you sniffle, the way his hand hovers once over your shoulder and then falls to the couch cushion like he’s reminding himself of a rule.
You come back up from sleep because your neck twinges.
The credits are slow-rolling names you don’t care about. The lamp is low. The ginger is a memory in your chest.
“Hey,” he says, voice close and quiet. “Bed.”
You blink, embarrassed.
“I didn’t mean to— ”
“You say that a lot,” he says, almost amused. “You can. It’s allowed.”
You push up.
The blanket slides. He catches it before it hits the floor.
“Thanks for the— ” you gesture at the whole scene — mug, TV, shoulder, mercy.
He shrugs like it’s nothing and meant everything.
“Next time you’re sick, you say so. Don’t try to soldier through and then bite me.”
“I didn’t bite you.”
He lifts an eyebrow.
“You tried.”
Heat flickers under your skin, this time not from fever.
“Sorry,” you say again, but it lands differently now — less apology, more acknowledgment.
He nods.
“Text if you feel dizzy,” he says, back to basic. “I’ll be here.”
You stand there an extra second, halfway convinced the cold cooked your brain. He looks like himself — mean eyes, foul mouth, rough lines — and somehow the edges don’t cut.
They fence you in.
“Goodnight,” you say, voice gone soft without permission.
“Sleep, rabbit,” he says, just as soft.
You pad to your room. You don’t lock the door. You think you should and don’t.
In bed, under your own blanket, you can still feel the ghost weight of his shoulder under your cheek and taste ginger where the apology used to burn.
Maybe you’re hallucinating.
Or maybe not.
On the coffee table, your mug sits with the handle turned just so, waiting where he left it.
You don’t make it to work the next day.
Alarms happen to somebody else.
Your phone buzzes until it gives up.
The room tilts if you turn your head. At some point you decide the air is heavy and crack the window, damp morning heat spills in, then a draft that feels like knives.
You sweat, then shiver, then sweat again.
Brilliant.
A knock, two short, one long.
“You didn’t leave,” he says through the door. “You alive?”
“Mm,” you croak, which is not a language.
The knob turns. He steps in, fills the doorway, scowl already forming.
His gaze strips the scene fast — open window, heap of blankets, you blinking like a stunned animal.
He crosses to you, sets the back of his fingers to your forehead.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “You’re boiling.”
“It’s fine,” you lie, trying to roll away.
Your body disagrees.
He shuts the window with a click that feels like judgment. Curtains down. Thermostat up a hair. He swears at the room in general and then at you, softly,
“You open a window with a fever? You trying to die on laminate?”
You try to glare, it comes out damp.
“Too warm.”
“Yeah,” he says, all gravel. “Your brain’s cooking.”
He holds the digital thermometer to your temple, it beeps high.
His mouth goes flatter.
“Up.”
“Don’t wanna."
You sound five and hate it.
He ignores that and gets an arm behind your shoulders, forearm braced like he’s practiced lifting broken things.
“C’mon. Tub. Before I call a clinic.”
“I can— ”
“You can’t.” He hauls you gently, efficiently.
The room swims, the hallway’s too bright. In the bathroom he already has a towel on the floor, the rubber mat in the tub, the water running just on the cool side of lukewarm.
He checks it with his wrist, not trusting the dial.
“Sit.”
You sit on the edge because he said it like gravity.
He peels the blanket off your shoulders and drops it outside your reach.
“No.”
“I’m cold.”
“Yeah.” He guides you in, steady hand at your elbow, keeping his palm broad and impersonal. “That’s the point.”
Water climbs your shins, your thighs, your spine.
Your breath stutters, your teeth chatter. He crouches, big man made small, and dunks a washcloth, wrings it, lays it over the back of your neck, then your wrists, then your forehead.
He works the cloth across pulse points with ruthless competence, refreshing it the second it warms. Every now and then he glances at the thermometer like it insulted him personally.
“Breathe,” he says when you start to pant. “Slow.”
“You’re mean,” you whisper, which is unhinged and true.
“Yup.” He brings the cloth back to your throat, thumb careful at your jawline like he’s trying not to touch more than he has to. “Stay with me.”
Time kinks. The vent hums.
He times five minutes on his watch, resets, does another five with your ankles propped on the tub edge to catch the cold better.
When you try to curl for warmth, his palm lands flat between your shoulder blades and pins you lightly.
“Uh-uh. No hiding. Fever breaks first.”
You hate him.
You adore him.
You might be hallucinating both.
When the thermometer finally chirps a number he can live with, he exhales like a door unlatching.
“Okay.” He helps you up, towels you fast, friction and heat.
He doesn’t let you grab the blanket yet, he drapes a the towel over your damp t-shirt and steers you back to the bedroom.
Your fingers find the hem of your wet clothes and you're too cooked to make sense of not changing in front of him.
He sighs and steers back to the door, leaving you to it.
“Soup,” he says. “Bed. Don’t move.”
“I’m fine,” you protest, already sinking in the mattress once you replace damp with dry and warm.
“You’re nonsense,” he corrects, gone before you can answer.
He returns with actual soup — steam, spoon, a wedge of bread. He sets it on a tray, nudges your pillow higher, and sits on the edge of the bed.
He feeds you the first spoon because your hands are stupid and you hate that you let him.
You also hate how good the salt tastes. He watches your throat when you swallow like he’s checking how much effort it takes.
“Slow,” he says. “You aspirate, I’m not explaining that to triage.”
“You’re being… nice,” you tell him, woozy and sentimental, “for someone who hates me.”
He looks at you like you just said the moon is inside the microwave — sharp, cutting, unreadable.
You’ll forget the look later, write it off like a fever glitch.
Right now, it lands in your chest and burns there.
“Eat,” he says finally, voice rough. “Then meds.”
You drink, you slurp, you do as ordered. The soup dwindles. The room softens.
He presses two pills into your palm, thumbs the ginger-ale can open with a hiss.
When you try to burrow under the comforter he flips it back with a single irritated hand.
“Nope.”
“Please,” you whine.
“You drop back under ninety-nine, you get a blanket. Until then? Suffer.”
“You’re impossible.” but you don't try again.
“Accurate.” He takes your empty bowl, sets it aside, and then stupidly, carelessly rests his hand on the mattress near your hip — close enough that your fingers brush when you shift.
You grab him.
It’s pure fever-brain.
You tell yourself that as you latch your hand around two of his fingers like a child catching a coat hem.
He goes very still.
You expect the jerk-away and the snarl.
He doesn’t pull.
He doesn’t move at all for one long breath.
Then his knuckles turn, slow, like a tide rolling palm-up under yours so you can hold properly if you’re going to.
You do.
Your fingers barely span half his hand.
His palm is hot, heartbeat steady under callus.
“Look at me,” he says after a while, and you do.
He leans in enough that his red eyes fill your vision.
You feel your skin flush with heat.
He lifts one finger of his free hand and traces left-right, up-down.
“Follow.”
You track like a drunk moth.
He checks your pupils, nods to himself, clicks the thermometer again.
It chirps a better number. He huffs.
“Good. Keep doing that.”
“Breathing?”
“Existing.”
You hum, heavy. Sleep drags at your lashes. You fight it and lose in small waves.
You surface to the cool weight of a fresh cloth on your forehead, to his thumb pressing the pulse at your wrist, counting.
You surface to him cursing the kettle for boiling too slow and the bottle cap for being glued on and your stubborn thermostat for existing.
You surface to his voice at the doorway — “Yeah, she called in sick,” — flat, final, probably to your work if they rang, and you cannot process how he would know the number.
Once, you wake because the room is too bright. He’s there immediately, dimmer in hand, light down.
“Eyes,” he says, soft.
You open them. He checks the time, your face, the slick at your hairline.
“You hungry?”
“No.”
“Water.”
You sip.
He adjusts the fan angle so air skims your skin without chilling you. When your teeth start to click, he waits it out, then tucks the sheet to your hips and, after another thermometer beep shows a cool, reasonable number, finally lets the blanket cover you.
It feels like permission.
“Stop being nice,” you mumble into the pillow.
“I’m not nice,” he says, automatic, like you accused him of tax fraud. “I’m efficient.”
“You hate me.”
He makes a low noise that could break glass.
“Go to sleep.”
You do, because he said it and because your body is heavy water.
The day loops, sleep, wake, check, drift.
Once, your grip on his hand loosens and he starts to pull away, you make a small, miserable sound you’ll deny forever, and he settles right back into the same spot, palm up, as if you’re an IV that can’t be jostled.
Another time, he puts the back of his hand to your cheek and swears happy under his breath at the cooler skin.
He doesn’t smile.
He doesn’t say good job.
He just leans back in the chair and lets his eyes close like someone flipped a switch for thirty blessed seconds.
Dusk comes violet at the edges of the curtains. Your head’s a dull ache instead of a furnace. You roll toward him, still holding his hand, and find him watching your face like a patrol — bored expression, eyebrows mean, attention total.
“Hi,” you rasp.
His mouth twitches.
“Hi.”
“Sorry about… earlier.”
You gesture at everything with little effort, the snap, the tears, the open window, your entire tragic body.
He shakes his head once.
“You were sick, you know it. I know it.” A beat. “Text next time. Before you try to fix it alone.”
You’re too tired to argue.
You squeeze his hand.
He lets you.
For a long, quiet minute, that’s the whole conversation — your pulse learning his, his thumb idly pressing the back of your knuckles like a metronome.
When sleep comes again, it’s easier.
He’s a big, rude shape in a chair, an ugly blanket folded near, a glass of water within reach, the room the exact temperature he decided. You drift with the dull certainty that you’ll wake and he’ll still be there, scowling at a thermometer like it owes him money.
In the morning you might file this under fever dream.
For now, with your fingers curled around his, you know exactly what it is, a giant predator running every safety he’s got and still refusing to leave the den.
You wake up feeling better.
The days pass, the same routine repeats.
Bare feet, soft steps around the house. Mug tucked to your chest as if ceramic could ward off a six-foot-plus problem with red eyes and a jaw that could cut glass. You clock the boots by the door, the keys in the dish, the way the air smells faintly like smoke and cedar when he’s home.
You reroute down hallways like a rat in a maze.
Your head is back at it because of the routine — as if he didn't nurse you back to health even when you snapped at him and then dozed off like a sick victorian child.
He hates you. Obviously. You didn't change your mind about it.
He grunts when you say hi, ignores when you ask if the shower’s free, reaches past you without a word for the top shelf you can’t reach.
He's your best friend’s older brother and sharing an apartment with him has a lot of pros, money-wise.
Living with him is… manageable if you treat him like a cyclone — track it, give it space, survive.
Tonight you miscalculate.
You come around the corner toward the kitchen and walk into a wall of muscle and heat and black T-shirt.
Your mug taps his chest and you jolt like you’ve touched a socket.
“Whoa.”
He catches the mug with one big hand and steadies it, steadying you with the other at your waist. His palm is hot. You freeze. He looks down. The red of his eyes flicks to your mouth, back up.
“Relax. I’m not gonna bite.”
“Okay,” you whisper, which is dumb because everything about him says bite.
You step sideways to slip past, he doesn’t move.
“Why are you always walking like I’m the landlord and you’re late on rent?” he asks, lazy and rough. He smells like soap and smoke, fresh ink and clean sweat. “I live here too. You don’t have to sneak.”
“I wasn’t— ”
“Lying,” he says, cocking a brow. “Try again.”
You open your mouth. Close it. You hate how your pulse hammers, how your throat goes tight when he stares like that — flat, unblinking, cutting through pretense.
“I don’t want to… bother you,” you manage.
He huffs a laugh, it edges on a scoff.
“If you were bothering me, you’d know.”
Your fingers go clammy around the mug.
“Right.”
He leans his hip to the counter, caging you without quite touching again.
“You’re scared of me.”
“No.”
He tilts his head, considering.
The ink on his neck shifts with the movement, the light picks out the line of his throat, the scar through his eyebrow, the ring in his lip he worries with his tongue when he thinks.
“You look like a rabbit when you see me,” he says. “Big eyes. Freeze, bolt. Cute.”
Your cheeks burn so fast it’s embarrassing.
“I’m not— you can’t just call people rabbits.” your brows knit together.
“Why not? Fits.”
His gaze drops to your bare legs, the hem of your sleep shorts.
“Soft,” he adds, voice lower. “Skittish.”
“I’m not skittish,” you mutter, which sounds skittish.
He pushes off the counter and crowds a step closer.
You smell the mint on his breath.
He bends until his mouth is near your ear.
You can feel every single hair of your body standing and you need to kill a soft sound as it crawls up your throat.
“You think I hate you?” he asks, tone gone velvet and dangerous. “You really that bad at reading people?”
Your spine stiffens.
“You don’t exactly scream friendly.”
“Don’t need friends,” he says.
He drags knuckles down the outside of your arm, barely there, a static-soft graze that lights up every nerve.
“Don’t hate you either.”
“What do you— ” you go tense with the heat of his body so close to yours. Closer. Almost touching.
“If I hated you,” he murmurs, and you feel the curl of his smile against your cheek, “you wouldn’t be in my apartment.”
Your apartment, technically, but you’re not stupid enough to argue that with his mouth this close.
He straightens and looks at you like he’s been trying not to.
Direct and greedy. No flinch, no hiding.
“I don’t hate you,” he repeats, blunt, like a verdict. “I want to fuck you.”
The word lands low, hot, flipping your stomach like a coin.
You blink, aghast.
The mug in your hands suddenly weighs a ton.
You set it down before you drop it.
“You— you can’t say that.” Your voice comes out thinner than you want. “I’m— your brother's friend.” as if this would stop anyone, honestly.
“He’s not my keeper.” He studies your face. “You’re an adult. I’m an adult. We’re both sober. I’m saying it out loud so you don’t have to keep inventing stories where I hate you, rabbit.” His tongue touches his canine, the faintest flash of fang. “I don’t.”
"You can't say things like this— out loud."
You hate the wobble in your voice. You hate that you mean please don’t be mean and please be careful and please say it again.
“Why not.” He doesn’t reach for you
He doesn’t soften the line of his jaw. He keeps his hands flat where you can see them like a cop at a traffic stop.
“I’ve been decent. I’ve been loud instead of touching. I’ve been letting you spook. You’re not spooked anymore.”
“I’m spooked,” you say, wobbly laugh. “I’m—” You gesture at him. At the hoodie. At the sum of a week where a man like him ran a cold bath and timed your pulse points. “You scare me.”
“Yeah,” he says, like water is wet. “I’m scary.”
He tips his chin, gives you the full, unblinking red of his eyes.
“And I’m telling you so you stop inventing stories where I hate you. I don’t. I wanted you the second you put my knife back crooked and pretended you hadn’t.” The corner of his mouth pulls, wicked and fond. “Been running safeties ever since.”
“Safeties,” you echo, stupid with heat.
He nods once.
“Doors. Knobs. Knives. Voice.” He taps his throat, lazy. “This is me being polite, rabbit.”
The nickname shouldn’t make your stomach drop.
It does. It always has.
This time it doesn’t feel like a collar, it feels like a hand outstretched that could close, if you let it.
“I thought I was a nuisance,” you say, because the narrative you’ve been living in doesn’t know where to go.
“You’re annoying,” he says, without mercy and somehow with warmth. “I like annoying.”
He leans in a whisper of an inch, and the world narrows the way it does before a bad decision.
“I like you.”
You swallow. The kitchen feels smaller. Your silence stretches, he lets it, patient in a way you didn’t know he was capable of.
Finally, you breathe,
“What— what do you want me to say?”
“‘Yes’ if you want it,” he says simply. “Or ‘no’ and I’ll step back and stop crowding you. I won’t bring it up again. You can go back to tiptoeing and I’ll pretend I don’t hear you do those little gasps when you open a jar.”
“You do not hear—” your face is a furnace and your eyes go wide.
He grins, sharp and delighted.
“Every time.”
Your face is lava. You glance at his mouth. At his throat. At the veins in his forearms where black lines wrap muscle.
You have spent weeks dodging him like he’s a fault line.
You have also spent weeks not thinking about the way his shirt rides up when he reaches high shelves, not thinking about the soft grunt he makes when he drops a heavy pan, not thinking about what his hand would feel like at your throat—
“Close the fridge,” he says, gentle.
You blink, you had backed into it and left it cracked.
You nudge it shut with your hip.
“Okay,” you say.
Your voice is small but steady now.
“Okay.”
“Okay yes,” he clarifies, heat flaring.
You meet his eyes and nod once.
“Yes.”
The change is immediate.
The tension that always coils in him loosens into something focused and hungry. He steps in and cups your jaw carefully, thumb gliding under your cheekbone as if he’s making sure you stay exactly where you want to be.
“Knew it,” he murmurs, then kisses you.
It’s not gentle. It’s not cruel either. It’s thorough — like he’s been cataloging the idea and now he’s checking every line against the original.
His mouth is hot, peppermint-bitter. You brace on his chest and feel him, solid, heat thrumming under cotton. He groans when you open for him, it punches through you like lightning.
“Fuck,” he says against your lips, the word a growl. “You taste sweet.”
“Tea,” you manage. “Honey.”
He licks into your mouth like that’s an answer he likes.
Big hands bracket your hips and lift, easy as breathing, setting you on the counter.
The cool stone against your thighs shocks a small sound out of you.
His eyes go darker at that sound, his smile turns feral.
“Pretty,” he says. “Knew you’d be.”
“You act like you planned this.” you say as if you didn't imagine it a thousand times.
“Thought about it,” he admits, shameless. “Wanted to be decent about it.”
He noses along your jaw, finds the spot below your ear that makes your knees restless even with nowhere to go.
“Still can be. You stop me anytime, rabbit. Say the word.” He meets your gaze, waits. “You hear me?”
“I hear you.” like hell you're stopping him.
“Good girl.”
Heat runs through you like a fuse.
He drags his mouth down your throat, teeth scraping just enough to make your breath hitch, and you tip your head back and give him the length of your neck without thinking.
He laughs low, pleased.
“See? Not skittish.”
“I could run,” you say, breathless.
“You won’t.”
He sucks a mark into the tender skin above your collarbone, slow and proprietorial.
“You’re shaking, but you won’t.”
“I don’t— ” Your protest becomes a gasp when his hand slides under your shirt, rough palm over the softness of your stomach, up, up. He pauses at the band of your bra, eyes on yours. You nod. He slips his hand in and groans when he finds your breast, thumb circling once, twice, until your back arches to his palm.
“Pretty sounds,” he says, pleased and mean, like he’s proud he’s extracting them. “Been imagining what you’d sound like for weeks.”
“You— god— heard me open jars but not— ”
Your words dissolve when he mouths at your nipple through the thin fabric.
“Oh, I hear everything,” he says, wicked. “Like how you breathe when you’re alone in the shower.”
He smirks against your skin when you make a scandalized noise.
“I’m not a saint. I left the apartment for a reason some nights.”
“You’re filthy.” you feel your heart thundering and still you're too aroused to care about his wicked ways.
“I’m considerate,” he counters, amused. Then, softer, honest, “And I was trying to give you room to decide.”
Something tender tugs under your ribs. It’s swallowed quick by the way his hand drifts under the hem of your shorts, fingers squeezing the curve of your thigh before sliding inward. He pauses again, patient.
You nod too fast.
He drags the pad of his middle finger over the damp cotton between your legs like he has all the time in the world.
Your stomach drops, heat flashes, your hips tip forward without your permission and his mouth goes back to your throat, humming, satisfied.
“Warm,” he murmurs. “So fucking soft.”
The words are filthy but his tone is reverent. He presses his forehead to your shoulder, fingers teasing slow until you’re clutching his shoulders and making little helpless sounds you will deny later.
“Hold on to me,” he says, and you do, wrapping your arms around his neck, feeling the flex of corded muscle as he works you with lazy precision.
“Sukuna— ”
“Yeah?” He kisses the corner of your mouth, smirking when you chase him.
“Bedroom,” you say, surprising yourself.
The kitchen feels suddenly too bright, too open, too like a decision you cannot walk back from in the place you both cook eggs.
His eyes flare at the word.
He leans in and kisses you again, slower this time, like a promise.
“Bedroom,” he agrees. He steps back, palms lingering on your hips before he slides you down. Your knees wobble and he steadies you, pleased. “Can you walk?”
You glare.
“Yes.”
“Prove it.” He takes your hand anyway.
Your room is only a dozen steps, but they feel like a ritual. His hand is big around yours, warm and sure.
In the doorway he stops you with a tug, makes you face him.
“Last chance to change your mind,” he says. “You say ‘stop’ and I stop.”
You breathe, look at him — at the ink at his throat, the red in his eyes, the stubborn set of his mouth that somehow means he’ll keep that promise.
The fear you carried around like a talisman loosens, slips. Something else settles in its place, a greedy, giddy relief you don’t try to hide.
“I don’t want to stop,” you tell him.
“Good,” he says, and for the first time since you moved in, he smiles without teeth, without edge, heat softening the hard lines of his face. “Then come here.”
You do.
You're in his arms, and then in your bed. Clothes get lost in the process of him getting you breathless with his kisses and touches. He relishes in every single sound he drags from you and is shameless about enjoying them too much.
You learn he lied earlier, he does bite.
He bites your inner thigh, he bites your belly and your neck and even your hip. He also soothes you with his tongue and lips, but he's mean, nonetheless. He circles your clit, presses with the flat of his tongue and edges you but doesn't let you come — you don't know how he knows so accurately when you're close.
He plays with you, lets his huge frame cage you from above as he fingers your needy cunt with one hand and keep his forehead against yours because he won't have you looking anywhere else besides his eyes as he undoes you prettily.
He chuckles in your mouth when you urge to kiss him, arms around his neck and chest pressing against his own as he finally lets you ride your orgasm while pumping his perfectly curled fingers in and out of you.
You don't remember the last time you came so hard, but he let's you know this won't be the last time of the day.
You ask him to choke you when he's already inside you and he stills for a whole second before opening a wicked grin, satisfied you decided to ask for what you want instead of burying it in your creative little mind.
And his hand around your throat is everything you thought and more.
Borderline obscene.
You moan louder, even with raspy voice you feel like the pleasure suddenly enhanced.
He lets himself enjoy you as much as you enjoy him, he places kisses and more bitemarks on your skin, he thrusts inside you with steady, strong pace that has your body shaking under his frame, he bites your lips, moans and groans against them and let you drink his lust as his crimson eyes sear their way through your glinting orbs.
Why did you take so long to— talk.
The brief regret of taking a long time to have this melts the instant he flips you and lets you ride him, big hand still encasing your throat and pulling you down so your chest lays on top of his, other big hand firm on your hipbone, settling you down so he bottoms out inside of you — gravity is a bitch sometimes.
You roll your eyes back when you feel the heat wave uncoiling in your stomach, his eyes bright with mirth as he sees how easily he rips another orgasm out of you, and he guides your body to grind against his. Swollen nub rubbing against his pelvis as his length twists and stroke in a lazy pace your inner walls. Your body shakes and muscles spasm — his mouth clashes on yours and he seems to feed on your whiny undone little sounds.
And as you ride your orgasm he chases his, fucking into you and making your body bounce on top of him, keeping your face close to his, chest to chest, hand now splayed at one of your ass cheeks before he grabs it so tight you yelp and he chuckles for a second and a wrecked moan escapes his lips in the other.
He finishes inside and oh god what is that sensation.
The heat increases and you feel him twitching, then a deeper thrust has him shooting thick hot ropes of cum inside you. You can't define it as other than strangely soothing, and of course, filling.
Later — sweat cooling, his breath slow against your neck, your sheets a mess — you’ll hear him say it again, rough and almost shy into your hair.
“I don’t hate you.”
“I got that,” you say, smiling in the dark, chest matching his. "You fucked the hate out."
He snorts, kisses your shoulder, pulls you closer with an easy, owning strength that makes your heart do stupid tricks.
“Good,” he repeats, and you feel the curve of his grin where his mouth rests on your skin. “So stop sneaking around our place, rabbit. If you need something, you ask.”
You pretend to think about it.
“What if what I need is on the top shelf?”
“Then I’ll reach.”
“What if what I need is you?” you feel sappy but you can allow yourself this one time.
He hums, pleased, and the sound goes through you like a warm hand.
“Then you won’t have to tiptoe for it.”
Yuji shows up like he always does, door flung with too much enthusiasm, a chorus of “hellooo!” and the smell of takeout preceding him down the hall.
He’s got a six-pack hooked in his fingers, a paper bag of gyoza clenched in his teeth, and exactly zero respect for doorframes.
“Peace was an option,” Sukuna says from the kitchen, deadpan, not looking up from the skillet.
“Peace is boring,” Yuji says around dumplings. He kicks off his shoes and beelines for you. “You look alive again! Did Bro stop waterboarding you with soup?”
You try to glare. It probably reads as fond.
“He did not waterboard me.”
“He would if it worked,” Sukuna says, flipping fried rice like the pan is an extension of his wrist. “Sit.”
You drift to the counter, meaning to help, and end up stealing a crispy bit from the pan. Sukuna’s eyes cut sideways — red and amused — and he taps the counter once, wait.
You do, because your survival instinct learned that tap.
Yuji bustles, sets down the bags, talks at a speed that defies physics.
“I brought gyoza, karaage, and those little sesame balls you pretend you don’t like.”
He leans in, stage-whispers,
“He eats them when you’re asleep.”
“I do not,” Sukuna says, already plating exactly three sesame balls on the far side like they’re under witness protection.
You reach for a plate, Sukuna slides it out of your hand with two fingers and jerks his chin toward the living room.
“Go sit.”
“I can carry—”
“Go sit,” he repeats, like gravity.
You go, muttering something about tyrants.
The couch sighs as you sink into it. The TV is on a streaming menu, the volume low.
You scroll, not really looking, Yuji follows with napkins and chopsticks and that big brother energy he has despite being the younger Itadori — “I will take care of you, and also I will drink your soda.” kind of vibe.
Sukuna arrives last, loaded like an efficient warlord — plates, bottles, extra sauce. He drops one plate on the coffee table and, without ceremony, drops himself onto the couch.
He hooks an arm around your waist and tugs you in, easy as breathing.
There’s no question.
One second you’re sitting next to him, the next, you’re sitting on him — across his thighs, your knees bracketing his, your plate balanced on the broad shelf of his quad. He nudges your ankle with his knee to angle you just right. His chin finds the notch of your shoulder like it was measured for him.
Yuji blinks.
Once.
Twice.
You can see the math happen behind his eyes.
“Ah, fuck,” he says, not exactly quietly.
Your stomach drops.
“Yuji— I was going to tell you,” you blurt, heat climbing your neck. “I just— I didn’t want it to be weird and I—”
He’s already grinning, palms up in surrender.
“No, no. I owe Megumi ten bucks.”
You short-circuit.
“I— what?”
Yuji thumbs out a text like he’s filing a claim.
“He said there was no universe where my brother would let you stay untouched and unkissed. Knowing you. Knowing him.”
He points his chin at Sukuna’s arm locked around your waist.
“Honestly? We’re late. I thought this would be, like, week two.”
Your cheeks go atomic.
Sukuna barks a laugh, chest shaking under your spine, and squeezes you closer until you can feel the smug roll of his hum against your nape.
“She thought I hated her,” he tells Yuji, delighted, like he’s reporting a crime.
Yuji cackles so hard he has to plant his hands on his knees.
“She’s always like this when people flirt— bold as hell and somehow blind.”
“I am not blind,” you say, attempting dignity from the worst possible vantage point —his lap. “He’s rough and mean.”
“Compliments,” Sukuna murmurs into your skin, teeth grazing your shoulder just to be an ass.
Yuji, gleeful,
“Bold. Blind.”
You stab a gyoza, refusing to be flustered.
You last three chews.
Sukuna, absolutely not helping, adds in that ruinous, lazy tone,
“You didn’t complain about rough and mean while I was fucking you.”
The noise that escapes you is not recognized by science.
Yuji facepalms so fast he might sprain something.
“BRO. I am present. I am a witness.”
“Be grateful I’m being polite,” Sukuna says, and steals half your karaage with audacious eye contact.
“Polite,” you echo, elbowing him in the ribs. It’s like elbowing a wall. “This is your polite setting?”
“Mm.” His breath warms the tiny hairs at your neck. “Figure you like me better out of prison.”
Yuji points two chopsticks like tiny accusing swords.
“New house rules. One, no filthy metaphors within three feet of the rice. Two, if you sit in his lap you forfeit food taxes. Three, I was right.”
“Megumi was right,” you correct weakly.
Yuji makes a show of texting.
“Pay up, Fushiguro. 😌”
Your phone buzzes a second later.
Megumi,
I won. Another, Also tell him to stop stealing sesame balls.
Sukuna snorts, mouth already full of a stolen sesame ball.
You try to regroup.
“For the record,” you say to Yuji, chin up, “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know if it was— if he—”
You gesture vaguely at the man-shaped problem you’re sitting on.
“He’s not exactly… obvious.”
Yuji barks a laugh.
“He is the most obvious man alive. He moved the top-shelf stuff to the second shelf and pretended it was gravity. He washed your hoodie, that he gave you, and warmed it in the dryer like a cat.”
Sukuna grunts.
“Shut up.”
Yuji grins wider.
“He installed the rubber bath mat.”
You whirl.
“You told him that?”
“Didn’t have to,” Yuji says. “Bro’s been doing silent acts of service since we were kids. He thinks if he uses verbs it makes him weak.”
Sukuna flicks a dumpling at him.
Yuji catches it with the reflexes of a raccoon and eats it triumphantly.
You… soften.
It’s ridiculous, how fast the embarrassment drains into something buoyant.
The room feels bigger. Your shoulders slide down.
From this close, Sukuna’s “rough and mean” is just… texture. Heat.
The absurd safety of being bodily anchored to someone who blocks doors and fixes thermostats and snarls at gyoza.
Yuji leans back, satisfied, and opens a beer.
“Anyway, congrats, lovebirds. When’s the wedding.”
“Eat glass,” Sukuna says calmly.
“Bring a plus-one,” you add, and Yuji wheezes.
The movie you didn’t pick plays in the background — something loud and unserious.
Yuji heckles the physics, you laugh, Sukuna hums, that low pleased sound that vibrates where your spine meets his sternum, and presses a kiss to the hinge of your jaw like he’s checking it fits there.
You swat at him with your chopsticks, useless.
“Yuji is right there.”
“I know,” he says, utterly unbothered, and nips your nape on pure principle.
Yuji throws a napkin.
“Two feet rule! Two feet!”
“Three feet,” you say primly, trying not to melt.
Sukuna’s mouth curls against your skin.
“I’ll allow it,” he says, like a king bestowing mercy, and slides one big palm over your thigh to anchor your plate. “Eat.”
You eat. He steals. Yuji steals from both of you like a happy goblin and gives running commentary about how Megumi is sending him a ten with a skull emoji.
Somewhere in there, your phone buzzes again — Nobara, tell him if he breaks your heart I’ll break his kneecaps — and you show Yuji and everybody laughs, including the alleged kneecap owner, who says,
“Get in line.”
At some point you lean back without thinking.
Sukuna’s arm tightens, automatic, the way seatbelts do in old cars. You pretend not to notice how good “automatic” feels, and he pretends not to notice you noticing.
Yuji finishes his beer, wipes his mouth, and eyes the two of you like an anthropologist closing a field notebook.
“Well,” he says, smug, “this turned out wholesome. Disgusting.”
“Get out,” Sukuna says without heat.
“In a minute.” Yuji snaps his fingers. “One more rule, if you’re going to be gross, at least admit you’re happy.”
You make a face.
Sukuna doesn’t.
He just hums against your shoulder again, low and obscene and somehow soft, and says,
“Happy she thought I hated her?”
“Yeah, and she still climbed you like a tree,” Yuji fires back.
Your face combusts again. You bury it in your hands. Both brothers laugh — Sukuna’s a bass rumble under your palms, Yuji’s a bright crackle that fills the room.
It should be mortifying. It is. It’s also easy. It’s loud and dumb and perfect.
You peek through your fingers.
Yuji is texting terrible memes. Sukuna is licking sauce off his thumb like a menace.
You are sitting on a man who used to terrify you and now feels like a gravity you got to choose.
“Hey,” Yuji says, half out the door later with leftovers dangling. “For real. If he’s too mean, I’ll steal you.”
“You can try,” Sukuna says, amused, hand heavy and warm at your waist.
You stick your tongue out at Yuji.
“Megumi still gets the ten?”
Yuji groans.
“I’m never betting against that man again.”
The door shuts. Silence returns like a friendly cat. You let your head tip back onto Sukuna’s shoulder.
He nudges the plate away and folds you in both arms like it’s his job.
“Bold and blind, huh,” you murmur.
“Bold,” he corrects, mouth at your pulse. “Not blind anymore.”
You smile, helpless.
“Rough and mean.”
“Mm.” He kisses your neck, unhurried. “You didn’t complain.”
