INDEFINITE AFFECTIONS
pairing(s): sukuna x fem!reader x toji fushiguro synopsis: as a favor for a mutual "friend", you and sukuna take toji in as he finds himself in a tight spot. his arrival permanently shifts the peace in your apartment tags: hurt/comfort, developing friendships and relationships, slow burn, former criminal sukuna, he's a butcher now, underground fighter toji, reader&sukuna are roommates, reader knew mamaguro in highschool, she works at a nursing home, emotionally constipated characters, no use of y/n, age gaps (sukuna is 43, toji is 30, reader is ~25) ~1,8k words a/n: i am so so sorry about the lack of toji this ch, but dw the next one is full of him. i should probably add the age gap tag. yeah.
part 1 || part 2
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There was not much that could faze you anymore. Some examples: while the Japanese medical system did not offer the same horror stories as the ones you would read on Reddit, you still saw your fair share of oddities during your emergency medicine rotations; you just nodded when your parents told you about the divorce; the girl you were babysitting at 17 drawing grotesque figures barely disturbed you from your homework.
So finding out your roommate was very much not a woman, but a man, a former convict in his early 40s (who looked like he went to prison for 1st degree murder and affiliation with the yakuza) no less, only pulled a sigh out of you. Shiu did not bother providing all this information before meeting Sukuna. The usage of formal language when referring to him and the name itself, "Sukuna", made you think you were gonna room with a respectable older woman.
Still, Sukuna was quiet and never bothered you, even when you left hair in the bathroom or ate the last leftovers late in the night when you came home from work, so you left it at that. You were now going on three years of living with him, and you wouldn't change a thing, mostly because moving out would be a bigger hassle than actually having him as a roommate.
Toji Fushiguro, though, unnerved you like nothing else.
Maybe it was because, unlike your roommate, Toji wasn't shy about taking up space, as if it was his God given right to lounge his large body around, talk as loud as he pleased, and do anything his heart desired around his temporary residence. Toji was the kind of man you used to avoid like the plague while doing your rotations at the hospital, preferring to hide in the bathroom whenever you saw the charge nurse get ready to pass an entitled man off to you.
That night you helped Sukuna make dinner (passed him the ingredients he needed) because you refused to leave the kitchen. By the time you finished washing the dishes, Toji was curled up on the couch with his back facing the rest of the room. He did not look small, his size made it very much impossible, but it felt vulnerable in a way you weren't comfortable with. You didn't bother him again.
When you and Sukuna woke up, the sun had yet to come up. You both went about your routines, noticing only when you put on your jacket at the genkan that Toji was nowhere in the apartment. You glanced at Sukuna — you weren't sure why you did that, what kind of look you hoped to find on his face, but you found nothing, not even a purse of his lips.
You spent the rest of the day not thinking about the prior day or anything related to your roommates at all.
(That was such a lie. Every day since Toji moved to your couch you thought about what your patients might say if they found out about your living arrangement. They already had been outraged to find out you were living with an older man — even if you said he was a relative who let you stay with him while you were paying off your student debt — but learning that number had doubled? You feared Satsuki-san would die of a heart attack.)
(Well, somebody did die of a heart attack that day, and someone else died in their sleep, just not Satsuki-san, the oldest resident of the nursing home. She had been admitted before you started working there, and the belief that she wouldn't bite the dust even by the time your employment would end was only solidifying in your head.)
Sukuna was not home when you got to the apartment that evening, meaning he probably stopped at Uraume's after closing the butcher shop. Toji wasn't there either. It was quiet in a way it hadn't been for quite a few days, and you told yourself that the heavy breath that escaped your chest was a sigh of relief.
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You had attended Himari's funeral out of courtesy. You hadn't been close while in school, but you had still been classmates; she would lend you hair ties she had on her even though her hair had always been short, you'd whisper her the answers in class because you knew her part-time job was making her lose sleep, the two of you would exchange looks when upperclassmen would come to flirt with your other classmates. At the time, at least, you hadn't considered yourself her friend. Himari was a popular and friendly girl, while you could barely make yourself mutter a word in class. The two of you had no business spending more time together than necessary.
You knew you were supposed to feel some sort of way about the fact that not even three years had passed since the wedding (which you had been invited to; you just didn't go. You were struggling to get through nursing school and helping your parents with other expenses for your little brother.) You feared you were already numb to the suffering of others, and considered dropping out of nursing school, if only to spare your future patients of a cold and unfeeling practitioner.
You saw lots of unfamiliar faces at the funeral, but looking at Toji now, you were realizing that he hadn't been there. You wondered what Himari, that bright and cheerful soul, saw in this man, who couldn't even bother with attending his wife's funeral.
The judgement was maybe unwarranted. You knew that while you were not seeing him at his absolute rock bottom — that had probably been when his wife died — he was still going through a rough patch. At the end of the day, you didn't know much about him, and you shouldn't want to change that. He was a temporary resident in your life.
Still, when you crossed paths with Sukuna the next morning, you asked him how they knew each other.
"Met him when he was still a little brat," meaning before he went to prison, "constantly looking for trouble, that one."
You held back the cringe from showing on your face — sometimes you forgot how much older than you Sukuna was. The way he talked made him sound ancient in moments like these.
"We crossed paths while on a job."
"And?"
"And what?"
You threw him a blank look and just went out the door, followed by his mumbled curses at your "attitude". God, men are useless.
The brief conversation — if you could even bestow it that title —only left you with more questions which you couldn't even satisfy because 1) Sukuna, as always, was stingy with the details, and 2) asking for more answers was a boundary you would not step over, and your pride was greater than the possibility of humiliation via caring.
(Did that mean Toji had also been yakuza? Some other illegal activity? What kind of job allowed for accidental interference from unaffiliated parties? Did Himari know about all of that — whatever Toji was getting himself into at the time? Did he stop when they got married, at the very least?)
Nobody died that day. Small mercies.
Once again, Toji was absent. You were starting to wonder whether he actually left and didn't bother to make it known, but you saw his duffel bag still tucked in the corner by the couch.
The small living room had always been a weird space. Both you and Sukuna tended to avoid it, preferring to just stay in your respective rooms. Since you never had guests over, it truly served no function in your home, and you only went in to dust it off. If it didn't connect to the kitchen, it truly would've been deserted.
Toji taking up the room should've made no difference in your routine, but you somehow found yourself going in the living room more in that week than the entire time you'd been a tenant.
Still, he was rarely there.
"What are we having for dinner?" you asked your roommate, feeling the need to break the silence.
When he said your favorite dish, you felt warmth spread through you and pinpricks in your eyes. You sniffled but said nothing in return, choosing to go gather his laundry to put it in the wash.
"Toji had a match last night," Sukuna said suddenly, making you startle with the basket in your arms. "Shiu called while I was opening the shop, said he took him out for a celebratory meal."
"Oh. Why was Shiu there? Didn't know they're that close," you had to raise your voice in order to be heard from the bathroom.
"You really don't know anything," he chuckled, but despite the mocking tone, the warmth from earlier reappeared. "Shiu's his manager. Has been for a real long time. He manages all the matches and bets made on Toji."
Your eyes widened. "Shiu's into illegal fighting?" you said quietly, but Sukuna still heard you over the chopping of vegetables because he hummed at you.
"Shiu's got his hands in lots of stuff."
"Is stuff how you know him too, or is he actually just your real estate agent?"
You caught the end tail of his smirk — dark, a little unhinged, nothing like you've ever seen from him — as you entered the kitchen.
"You could say that."
You took a seat at the table, content with watching him cook. "Make it a little spicier," you chimed in at some point.
"Let me do my shit, woman, I know what I'm doing."
"Uraume makes it spicy."
"Then why don't you go to Uraume to cook your dinner?" he barked, but you knew it was lighthearted because he didn't take you by the scruff to throw you out of his sacred space.
"And train someone else on my tastes when I've already struggled with you for so many years? Why would I do that to myself?" You were pushing it. Again. You were doing that a lot lately.
"Brat." He was still facing away from you, but something in his voice told you his mouth formed that sinister little smile again. Imagining Sukuna smiling was strange and confusing, so you chose to replace the image with the one of a frown with steam coming out of his ears.
"I have to take a night shift tomorrow, so you won't need to make anything for me," you told him as the two of you ate.
"I'm cooking anyway," he said, shoving the food in his mouth like he was starving. Men his age had a peculiar way of eating.
You shrugged. You weren't going to argue against one less thing to worry about.
divider by @/cafekitsune
taglist: @poeticbe4uty @fushiguroooozzz
