Discover Top Posts Tagged with #mafia!au

₊⊹ risk//reward ⊹₊

pairing: mafia!sukuna x fwaitress!reader

info: idk guys, this has been languishing in my google drive for a while now, and I just needed to get it off my plate. I just like angst, I like damsels, I like Sukuna.

warning: Not sure if this needs to be mdni/18+ because it's not really NSFW, it's just kinda dark and violent? violence (reader gets lightly tortured, but I don't get super into the nitty gritty of it all), angst, hurt/comfort (quite literally), hot making out moment lmao

*not proofread*

wc: 9.3k

It is just after two in the morning when the bell chimes over the entrance to the diner. As the door swings open, the sound of rain outside clarifies—heavy and charged—before it muffles again behind the cheap, glass-paned door settling back on the jam. Fluorescent lights flicker overhead, and you sigh before looking up from your mind-numbing sidework of merging condiments to see him.

You don’t know what to look at first. He’s tall, taller than any man you’ve ever seen, and broad, taking up the entirety of the doorway. From the way his black suit clings taut across his body, you’re sure he’s built out of solid marble muscle. He sweeps his hair, soft pink and drenched from the rain, back from his face, and you see the tattoos. Black marks along his jaw, his forehead, the bridge of his nose—it must’ve hurt, although you doubt this man is afraid of pain. Power radiates off of him in tsunami-stong waves, and it makes you wonder… What the hell is someone like that doing someplace like this?

The diner is in the shittiest part of the city. Garbage spills into the street, crime runs rampant, and money is as rare as happiness. This late at night, the worst of the worst are out, hungry for violence. The only reason you’re here is because it’s the only shift they were hiring for, and you’d just been fired from another job. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and right now, this job was the only thing keeping you off the street. Sure, it was keeping you in a shoebox with faulty heating and a sleazy creep as a neighbor, but you had six deadbolts and a bed, and that was all you could ask for.

So, was this man one of the worst of the worst?

You watch him as a mouse watches a hawk, and that’s when you notice the twitch at the corner of his frown. His hand at the back of his waistband, holding something as his eyes sweep the diner, stopping only on the drunk regular mowing through pancakes at the counter and the sleeping unhoused woman in a corner booth. The blood on his white shirt collar.

Danger! Your brain screeches, but then his crimson eyes meet yours.

You move before you think, careful but quick steps as you walk past him and open the swinging door to the kitchen. The chef’s in the bathroom, smoking out the window to avoid the rain, so it’s nice and empty.

“There’s a door just through here,” you say, hands tucked in the pockets of your apron, “Lets out into the alley, which runs all the way down to the next block.”

The man’s eyebrow quirks, and slowly, his frown turns up into a smirk. He lets go of what you know is a gun tucked into the back of his pants, and he comes back around the counter to the kitchen door. He stops in front of you, closer than you expected, and you breathe in sharply.

From fear or excitement, you aren’t sure, but he smells like spice and cigar smoke, and you have to tip your head back to look up at him.

“Thanks,” he growls, voice deep and smooth as aged scotch.

Then, he’s gone, brushing past you and slipping out through the kitchen door. You watch after him for what feels like seconds and an eternity, trying to decide if you’d just experienced a hallucination, before the woman in the corner booth wakes with a start.

“Coffee!” she croaks, rubbing her throat. “I need coffee!”

You take one last look at the door, decide to forget about the man, and go back to work, knowing you’ll never see him again.

Which, quickly turns out to be untrue.

Again, around two in the morning, you’re bussing a particularly disgusting mess a group of morons left after drinking themselves stupider at the bar down the street. There’s more food on the table than there is left on the plates, and as the only waitress on this shift, it is up to you to deal with. Which feels particularly demoralizing after spending over an hour dodging their pinching fingers and leering stares only to get fifty-seven cents and an illegible phone number for a tip.

You’re busy scraping blobs of ketchup from the sticky tabletop onto a plate when the bell above the door chimes, and you groan inwardly at the thought of more inebriated customers. You don’t bother asking the chef for help—he’s in the back “deep cleaning” the fryer, which actually means watching TV on his phone in the manager’s office until an order comes in.

“Sit wherever you like,” you call, not even looking up, “I’ll be with you in a moment!”

You don’t listen for a response, wincing as a giant dollop of ketchup squirts onto your finger. It takes you a few minutes, but you finish wiping up and dump the bloody-looking rag behind the counter in the laundry bucket. You clean your hands and tighten your ponytail before grabbing a plastic menu, and you paste on your best please tip me smile.

Finally, you turn and find him sitting in the booth furthest from the door.

He’s wearing a suit again, but this time, it isn’t drenched in water and tinged with what you find yourself hoping was someone else’s blood. No, it’s black and well-tailored, probably designer, with a black dress shirt beneath. The top two buttons are undone, hinting at more of those bold, obsidian tattoos sweeping across his chest. His pink hair is combed out of his face with pomade or something, but a stray lock has sprung free and lays against his forehead. And those eyes—shockingly red—rest on you.

Fuck, you wish your work uniform weren’t so ugly. A while ago, the diner had had a retro theme going on, and although that had been long since abandoned, the uniforms seemed as permanent as your apartment’s water damage. It is a polyester, collared dress in an unfortunate gray-green and a zipper that went from the top of your collar to just between your tits. It fits terribly, which you try to hide by using your apron to give yourself a waist, but it truly does you no favors. And now, you have to stand in front of the hottest man you’ve ever seen before in your life while looking like a lumpy potato.

You approach slowly, which seems to amuse him because that smirk stretches its way across his face once again.

“Hi,” you say, somehow breathless, “Welcome in!”

You place the menu on the table and before you can slide it over, he takes it, brushing his fingers against yours. A burst of lightning shoots up your arm, and you fight not to yank it back in shock. Suddenly, you want to be anywhere but here, with him and whatever this overwhelming energy rolling off him is, so of course he has to speak and make it all worse.

“Thanks, doll,” he replies, his voice impossibly rich, “I’ll take coffee.”

You nod for a second too long, as if hypnotized, before turning and rushing to the coffee station. All the while, you feel those red eyes burning into your back, and your stomach seems to flip forwards and backwards in anticipation of… something. When you bring the man the coffee, you also bring a sugar caddy and bowl of single creamers. Again, when you place the mug on the table, he reaches for it before you can slide it over, skin meeting skin in a way that has your cheeks burning. He’s doing it on purpose, you both know this, and you wish your reaction wasn’t so plain on your face.

Under his gaze, you force yourself to calm down and straighten your spine. He’s probably just here to say thank you for helping him get away from whatever he was running from, and you didn’t need to moon over him like some silly little school girl. He’d drink his coffee and be on his way, leaving you to the dregs of the early morning diner patrons. Besides, judging from the luxury of his clothes and the giant watch on his wrist, this man was wealthy and dripping with power. He wouldn’t look twice at a diner waitress like you.

The man ignores the creamer and sugar, as you suspected he would, and takes a sip of the black coffee. As he drinks, his eyes find your plastic nametag, and the corner of his lip quirks up.

“This coffee is shit,” he comments, placing the ceramic mug on the cheap linoleum table.

You snort, your spark returning. “Were you expecting gourmet?”

He tilts his head to the side, showing off a jawline sharp enough to cut a diamond as he studies you with interest.

“Would you like anything else?” you ask, refusing to look down under the pressure of his stare. His smirk widens into a smug grin, his teeth white and his canines almost too sharp.

“No.” Then, he thanks you by name, and you almost shiver with the way the timbre wraps itself around the word. You didn’t think your name could ever sound like that, something sexy and luxe, but you turn away before he can see you flush once again. He knows he oozes dominance; you don’t need to show him just how much you’re feeling it.

You finish bussing that corner booth, taking your time to stack the plates and carry them back to the dishwasher. The man watches you, occasionally sipping from his shit coffee or typing intently on his smartphone. You hide spend time in the back, washing the stack of dishes the chef was supposed to get to, and when the bell chimes over the door again, you assume the man has left, bored and interested in better food.

However, when you finally emerge from the kitchen, it’s to find a pair of night shift nurses sitting at the counter. The man still lounges in his booth, watching as you approach the nurses—two regulars—and take their order. The chef finally emerges to make their food, and you try to ignore the man in the booth as you serve the customers who come in and work on that night’s sidework. You do go over a few times, since you’re still very much at work, but all he does is get a coffee refill, which he sips slowly, always thanking you by name, as if he likes the way it sounds. Or, as if he was teasing you with a joke you didn’t understand.

A few hours later, as the sky turns a light gray-blue and the sun peeks out through the smog, the next shift of waitresses come in. In the three minutes it takes you to punch out and retrieve your ratty coat, the man is gone, leaving a $100 bill in his place. With as blank a face as possible, you cash out his bill and pocket the ridiculous tip, not wanting your coworkers to notice and start asking questions you don’t know how to answer.

Besides, the tip must be the thank you he came to deliver. Why he decided to stay for over four hours, just watching you work, is beyond you, but now you’re certain this is the last time you’ll see him.

Except, he keeps coming back.

At first, it’s only a random night here and there, but within two weeks, he’s coming every night you’re there, arriving just after two in the morning and staying until it’s light out, and you’re almost at the end of your shift. He mostly drinks coffee, and you find yourself brewing a fresh pot in anticipation of his arrival, but sometimes he orders extra crispy fries and picks at them as he frowns at his phone while insisting you help him eat them. Some days, he looks stressed, his tattooed brow furrowed; others, he looks pleased as he keeps his phone in his pocket and watches you serve and do odd tasks, as if you’re his favorite movie.

You wonder how he doesn’t have anywhere else to be—namely, asleep in his bed. Every night, he’s here in what you’re sure is a different designer suit, something unheard of in this area of the city, so you’re sure he’s successful at whatever he does. Which, you’re not stupid… you’re starting to suspect that something is illegal. Given the gun you know he has on him, the blood from your first encounter, and the lethal aura shrouding him like a cloud of electricity. He looks like he should be off, threatening people into doing what he wants with just one sharp, savage glare, not sitting in a shitty diner in a shitty neighborhood drinking shitty coffee.

But he keeps showing up, and more than that, he asks you questions, which you always find yourself answering.

What brings a girl like you to a place like this?

A pipe dream of going to college, replaced by the simple truth of needing to survive.

Are you always working alone?

The chef is here, he just fucks around in the manager’s office unless there’s an order on.

What do you do in your time off?

What time off? I have two other jobs.

Little by little, he breaks you open and examines your contents, and you find yourself looking forward to it. You tell him about your parents—both dead—your dream of being an ER nurse, the way you’re trying to teach yourself how to knit. You can’t remember the last time someone saw you like this, and you’re surprised you enjoy it so much. Actually, no, that’s not what you enjoy about your interactions—it’s that he wants to see you. It sends an almost too-hot warmth spreading out through your chest and into your limbs, molten in a way that’s sometimes more terrifying than pleasant, like you might burn yourself out like a trapped inferno.

As much as he knows about you, you know nothing about him, and you use that imbalance as a way to ground yourself. You’ve tried asking him about himself, and every time, he gives vague answers, eyes darkening like he’s unsure just how much to tell you. You’re just something to pass the time, not something he’s bothered investing himself in. Besides, you know your place—poor, trashy waitress who just keeps her head down, the idea of anything outside of survival too far away to even dream about. This man, wrapped in luxury and power, wouldn’t ever seriously look at you twice.

There’s no point in dwelling on him as you lay in bed after your shifts, thinking about what he might be thinking about… what he might feel like…

No, there’s no point at all.

He just had a weird thing about you and this diner now, but it would fade. He’d go back to his world, and you’d stay here, fighting off drunk idiots like the ones you were tending to tonight.

They’d come in almost an hour ago but are still going strong, ordering plate after plate of food while they yell and cackle with each other, banging their hands on the table and sending food crumbs flying. The group sits at the big corner booth two tables down from the man, and although they probably don’t know he’s there, you watch him watch them, his bright red eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted in a deep, chiseled frown. One hand rests on the table, gripping his half-drunk mug, and the other rests tensely on the seat next to him.

“Hey!” one of the guys—the leader, it seems—waves his hands in the air and points at you. “Hey, girlie, where the hell are those fries?”

“Coming right up!”

The sweetness in your voice is as fake as the sugar in the ketchup you grab from the condiments bar, and you brace yourself before carrying the basket of fries and the red plastic bottle over to the table. The chef has already disappeared back into the manager’s office, so you’re on your own as you deliver the food and brush a brainless smile on your face.

“Sorry for the wait, guys,” you say, doing your best to look apologetic. “Is there anything else I can get you?”

The leader trades a sleazy, secretive look with his buddies before grabbing you by the wrist, moving faster than you thought possible with the sheer amount of alcohol clogging his blood. You gasp once, and then again when he yanks you down, forcing you into his lap with the ease of a man who’s assaulted many women before.

“Hey! St—”

He wraps his arms around you, breathes his foul breath into your ear.

“C’mon, baby, no one else is here. You can relax with us.”

Your stomach twists into a knot of disgust, and you almost gag. His friends jeer as you jerk in the drunk’s grasp, but you can’t get a good angle to elbow him in the gut or chest or anywhere. Any panic is short-lived, giving way to red-hot anger, and you open your mouth, ready to release a tirade of curses, when you’re suddenly yanked free.

Profanity becomes a squeak as you fly forward and land against something solid, warm, and big. Hands grip your arms, the contact sending fire surging through your body in a way that makes your eyes go wide. Slowly, you look up, but the pink-haired man doesn’t return your gaze or let on that he’s feeling what you’re feeling. Instead, his positively homicidal expression rests firmly on the drunk and his friends. More gently than you expect, the man moves you to the side and steps up next to the table, placing himself between you and the drunks.

“Gentlemen,” he says, voice low. Dangerous. “Are you truly so desperate to get a pretty girl to pay attention to you that you have to grab at her like infants?”

Most of the group recognize that the man in front of them is as lethal as a grenade after its pin has been pulled, but not the head drunk. No, he just chuckles and shakes his head.

“Relax man,” he says, waving his hand dismissively. “We were all just having a little fun.”

“Fun?”

The pink-haired man chuckles, deep and dangerous. Then, he grabs the drunk’s hand and snaps it back all the way. The crack of bone and cartilage is crisp and clear, and the man’s screams quickly follow, shrill and crazed as he falls out of his chair. The pink-haired man, however, isn’t finished. He grabs the fingers of the hand and bends those back, too, and you swear, the drunk stops breathing, his eyes bulging out of his head as he tries and fails to comprehend what exactly has just happened to him.

The pink-haired man wraps his fingers around the drunk’s wrist and squeezes, and then he tangles his hand through the man’s sweaty, knotted hair and forces him to look at you.

“Apologize,” he commands, calm and low.

“S-s-sorry!” the drunk splutters out, not even trying to feign defiance.

The pink-haired man glances at you as he releases the drunk, and his scarlet gaze doesn’t waver as he addresses the whole group.

“Put money on the table and leave. Now.”

The men, terrified and humiliated, don’t even fight back. They just empty their pockets of cash, peel their shitty comrade off the floor, and hurry from the diner, barely giving you and your apparent defender a second glance. As the bell trills over their exit, you and the pink-haired man simply stare at each other; you not knowing what to say, and him having said everything he wanted to.

You should be scared of this display of violence—he literally destroyed a man’s hand with nothing but his casual strength, for fuck’s sake—but you’re not. You’ve never in your life had someone defend you, let alone to that degree. You stare at him like he’s a safe haven… Which means you really, really, need to run the other way.

After a few seconds of this strange, intimate standoff, your body seems to go into autopilot, and you begin clearing the plates. Then, you think better of it, remember your manners, and look at the pink-haired man once again.

“Thank you—”

You stop as soon as you start, your cheeks starting to burn.

“What?” he asks, and you look up at him and shrug.

“You’ve been coming in for weeks now,” you say, shoving your hands in your apron pockets, “and I just realized I never asked your name. I’m sorry, that’s so rude.”

The man considers you for a moment, and you can see his thoughts churning before he comes to a decision.

“Sukuna,” he says, finally.

“Sukuna,” you echo, and something intense flashes through his eyes before he looks away abruptly. “Well, thank you, Sukuna. Your order’s on me.”

This gets his gaze swinging back to you, eyebrows drawn up in surprise. He opens his mouth, and then closes it, and then opens it again. You don’t realize it, but your eyes linger on his lips, full and dusky pink—it isn’t until he snaps them closed a second time that you come back to yourself.

Wordlessly, Sukuna reaches into his pocket, pulls out a crumpled hundred-dollar bill, and adds it to the pile on the booth table. Then, he’s gone, striding briskly from the diner without a second glance. You stand there, reeling from the whiplash, and suddenly, your breath feels too shallow, like your lungs are too full of something else.

You want to run after him, to ask him what the hell that abrupt exit was all about. All you’d done was ask for his damn name, which, frankly, you were doing to be polite after he helped you! You didn’t ask him to come to your rescue; hell, you didn’t ask him to come into the diner every night, brooding in the corner and doing his best to make you blush while he uncovered little pieces of you. Sukuna was the one who had initiated all of this, whatever this was, and now, simply learning his name had him running away like a fucking toddler!

Were you really the only one who felt that? That something when your skin came in contact, that electric surge of raw energy and something else, some deep and feverish.

“Fuck!” you shout, the word echoing back at you from the walls of the now-empty diner.

You reach for the mountain of cash, ashamed of how you’re already doing the math in your head of how many bills you’ll be able to pay on time, when the bell above the door trills. You sigh, preparing a smile as you turn to face the new customer, but your body freezes as Sukuna stalks toward you, lips turned down in a snarl you know should scare you.

All the words you want to shout at him clog your throat, but it doesn’t matter. You don’t get the chance to utter a single word because in a moment, he’s on you, large hands grasping your jaw so tightly it hurts. And, in another moment, his lips are on yours.

He kisses like he’s starving.

You almost trip backward, but he keeps you upright, clutching you with hands that scorch through your uniform. One curls around your waist, and the other tangles in your hair, palm pressed against the bottom of your skull as he consumes your every breath. It’s a mess—lips parting, tongues fighting, teeth nipping—as the tension between you finally snaps, as desperation floods all reason and your veins burn like hellfire under your skin.

Your arms reach up, wrap around his neck like you’ll collapse without him, and your hands find their way into his hair—impossibly soft for someone with so many sharp edges. You pull, lightly but firmly, just to check if he’s really there and this is really happening, and Sukuna growls against your lips.

“Brat,” he says, low and quiet, and then he’s picking you up. You wrap your legs around his waist as his hand in your hair goes down to cradle your ass. Your uniform rides up dangerously, but you don’t care. You can’t care, not about that or anything other than just how fucking good Sukuna feels on every part of your body. Of your being.

And then, it’s over.

Beneath you, Sukuna’s entire body tenses. You draw back, lips swollen and vision hazy, but instead of looking as kiss-drunk as you, Sukuna seems to glare out the window, jaw tight and red eyes blazing. You start to turn your head.

“What’s—”

He drops you, quickly but carefully, and your head whips back around to stare at him, startled.

“I have to go,” he grinds out, still looking out the window. Still not looking at you.

In that moment, something inside you breaks. It’s cruel, really, what he’s done. For what now feels like mere seconds, he’d made you feel like maybe, you were actually worthy of notice. Maybe, you’d actually get the guy and so it was okay that you’d let yourself like him. Let yourself more than like him.

But no. You were always the wanter, never the wanted, and that made you so fucking easy to play with.

You want to ask him what you did wrong, but you don’t. Instead, you just nod.

“Have a good night,” you murmur, and you don’t watch him leave. You just start bussing the table and try to ignore the sound of his footsteps as he walks out of the diner.

Sukuna doesn’t come back. It takes a week for you to stop glancing up with the bell over the door trills, but it takes three for you to stop brewing that fresh pot of coffee. You go through your shifts on autopilot, and you hate yourself for it. Hate yourself for the ways you let Sukuna carve himself into your mind. Your guard should’ve been up—it’s always up—but sometime in the last few months, you’d let it fall for him. And now you were left with this emptiness you hadn’t even realized was there.

Some nights, you’ll be cleaning tables or taking out the trash, and you’ll feel a prickle at the nape of your neck, like you’re being watched. And every one of those nights, for just a moment, you hope it’s him. But usually, it’s no one, or it’s a neighborhood creep conveniently reminding you that a girl like you will never end up with a guy like Sukuna. Why would someone like him, rich and powerful and handsome, go fishing in the gutter for someone like you, a girl with three jobs and a shitty high school education?

On the night you decide to stop thinking about Sukuna all together, a different man in a suit comes in.

When the bell goes off, you’re ducked under the counter, searching for your name tag, which has finally broken after months with a faulty clasp. One brush against it and it snapped, sending the plastic rectangle skidding under a storage container.

“Sit anywhere, I’ll be with you in a moment!” you yell, and indeed a moment later, you give up on the name tag and stand. Immediately, you jump in surprise at the man sitting directly in front of you at the counter, as if he’d somehow figured out exactly where to sit to catch you off-guard.

Unlike with Sukuna, the danger that radiates off this man makes you take a step back and map out an escape route in your head. The first thing you notice are his scars, silvery lines cutting neatly across his face and neck, as if his skin were a patchwork quilt. His long, blue-gray hair is tied in three messy ponytails, and he gazes at you with mismatched eyes—one the color of the sky right before a thunderstorm and the other the blue of the ocean far enough out that there’s no land on the horizon. He wears a black suit that seems to almost have a blue undertone, and you don’t even need to look closely to see that it’s expensive.

He grins at you as if he knows you, and dread sinks like a stone in the pit of your stomach.

“Welcome in,” you say, forcing your own smile and handing him a freshly wiped menu. “Can I get you anything to drink while you look over the menu?”

“I’ll take some of your finest coffee, please!” the patchwork man requests, and you’re surprised at his voice. He’s strangely cheerful, the ghost of laughter hugging each of his words, and it sets you on edge. He’s too casual, too cocky. He is a man who doesn’t feel threatened, and in this neighborhood, a man like that is either stupid or lethal.

Your instincts are screaming the latter.

“Coming right up,” you reply quietly, and you hate how you have to turn your back on him to get a mug and the coffee pot.

“You know, I’ve been meaning to try this place for ages,” the patchwork man says, tapping his fingers on the counter. “One of my friends seems to have become a regular these past few months.”

You freeze, just for a second, but you’re sure he noticed. It’s in the way he keeps talking, the tone of victory edging into his voice.

“I wanted to see what all the fuss was about,” the patchwork man chuckles. “The place seems like an absolute dump, and yet…”

He trails off as you turn around, as if your attention is the end of his sentence. The stone of dread in your stomach seems to double in size, and you scramble for a plan. If you can get this man to order food, then you can get the chef from his nap in the manager’s office. Surely, whatever this man is planning—and he’s planning something, you can tell from the sparkle in his eyes—he wouldn’t do it with a witness.

“And yet, our food is pretty good,” you finish, grinning in a way you hope doesn’t look like a grimace. You pour the coffee and slide the mug across the counter, careful not to touch his hand. “What can I get for you? We’re serving breakfast and dinner right now!”

The patchwork man hums, tilts his head to the side.

“My friend,” he says, drawing out the word like it’s a toy that amuses him. “Sukuna is his name. What does he like to get?”

You’re not stupid, nor are you a snitch, so you keep your face as placid as an untouched pond.

“I’m sorry,” you say, shrugging. “I’m not sure I know someone named Sukuna. If you want a suggestion, you can try—”

“No?” the patchwork man interrupts, raising his eyebrows. He doesn’t look confused or angry, or even a little frustrated. He looks amused, and you forget to breathe.

“Nope.” You shake your head, and as you do, you see movement in the kitchen out of the corner of your eye. You start to turn, start to get the chef’s attention, but then the patchwork man says your name.

And you go still.

Because your nametag is still missing under the counter.

The kitchen door opens, and it’s not the chef. It’s a giant man, barely fitting through the doorway, who watches you with violent interest, like a hawk watches a fieldmouse before diving.

The patchwork man says your name again, gleeful like he’s just won a game, and slowly, you face him once again.

“Let me ask you just one more time,” he says, words razor sharp despite the casual way he speaks. “Do you know my friend Sukuna?”

Your exhale is shakier than you want it, betraying your fear.

“No.”

For a second, there is silence, and then the patchwork man claps, the sound as sharp as a gunshot.

“I’m glad you’re lying,” he chuckles, standing up. “That makes this more fun!”

You manage to take a half-step backwards before the giant man is on you, one thick arm banding around your chest and pressing your arms to your sides as the other raises a cloth to your mouth, the harsh stink of chemicals immediately flooding your nose. You buck violently against his hold before bringing your heel up hard. It makes contact with the giant man’s groin, and he grunts in your ear but doesn’t loosen his grip even a millimeter. You try swinging your head backwards to crunch his nose, but the movement is too sluggish, as if you’re moving through jelly. Your vision blurs and goes grayscale, and your nose burns as you breathe in the drugs. You say something, you think, but your lips are too heavy. Your bones go weightless, but your muscles turn to lead, and your body collapses.

The patchwork man laughs as darkness consumes you.

It’s the pounding in your head that finally drags you through the smog of unconsciousness. It’s as if someone is stuck inside your head, pounding from the inside of your skull as they try to get free. You let out a strangled groan, a painful sound as it drags up your too-dry throat. You try to reach up and rub your neck, a lame attempt at soothing the pain, but something restrains your wrists and forearms, and you suddenly slam back to yourself with white-hot fear. Your eyes rip open, but you have to blink a few times to sharpen your vision.

The first thing you find is the duct tape binding your arms to the metal armrests of a chair. Craning your neck, you find the same duct tape wrapped around your shins and the legs of the chair. Your whole body jerks out of instinct, but the chair doesn’t budge, and you realize it’s bolted into the floor. You also realize that you’re practically naked, clothed only in your panties and simple cotton bra.

What… the fuck?

Suddenly, you can’t breathe as panic rises like bile in your throat, choking you and kicking your heart into overdrive. Your brain screams at you to escape, but every time you wrench against your restraints, the duct tape rips your skin raw and digs in deeper. You don’t know how long you fight for, only that you can’t free yourself, and when you try to scream, only a threadbare gasp comes out, as if you’ve lost your voice to exhaustion and fear.

You try to look around, but there’s nothing to see—you’re in a concrete room with no windows, the only light a yellow glow seeping through a small window at the metal door a few feet in front of you.

As if it senses your attention, the door swings open, and you jerk backward.

The patchwork man waltzes in, his grin too broad, too white. He drags a chair behind him and sits down on it, not even an arm's length away. Fury boils up, abrupt and hot, and your palms itch with the need to strike the triumph from his smug fucking face.

“I’m glad you’re awake,” he says, and you press your lips together and give him nothing but a glare. That, of course, only seems to make his smile deepen. He pulls his phone out of his suit jacket pocket and taps the camera. His grin turns wolfish as he speaks. “You and I are going to make a little film to send to our friend Sukuna.”

A thousand and one questions shoot to your tongue, but only one word tumbles out.

“Who?”

The patchwork man drops his phone to his lap and leans forward gleefully.

“Yes, oh yes! Keep lying! It’s much more entertaining!” he sneers, mismatched eyes glinting. “See, Sukuna and I have known each other for a long time, and recently, he decided it would be a good idea to steal from me. So now, I’m going to kill him! And you—” he picks up his phone again, “are going to help me do it.”

His face seems to glow with violence, as if the need to hurt lit him from within, your body instinctively tries to curl in on itself for protection. But of course, it can’t—you’re restrained, a giant target practically inviting whatever his sick mind is concocting.

“I—” Your throat is too dry, and you have to try again. “I don’t know him!”

“Oh yes you do,” the patchwork man growls, suddenly harsh, “He likes you, and he doesn’t like anyone.”

You open your mouth, ready to decry any assumed relationship with Sukuna, but you can’t. Instead of the memory of him running out on you not once, but twice, your lips tingle with the memory of your kiss, searing and possessive. Your cheeks heat with all of the questions he’s asked you about yourself, your life, your dreams, and you can’t refute a thing.

In your silence, the patchwork man stands and starts recording, the flash on his phone blindingly bright. You try to blink away the white fuzz clouding your vision, so you don’t see the first punch before it connects with your temple, just above your ear. Your head snaps to the side as you choke out a grunt, pain crackling through your skull and down your spine. Distantly, you hear the patchwork man giggling, and then he swings again, this time jamming his knuckles in the softness of your gut, just below your ribcage. The air leaves your lungs in a scream, blood and spit spewing from your mouth as you gag on agony.

“Stop.” you wheeze, “stop!”

The patchwork man laughter borders on maniac.

“Hear that, Sukuna?” He sneers, shoving the camera in your face. “Your little plaything is asking me to stop.” He turns his attention to you, grinning. “Tell him how much it hurts, little plaything!”

You aren’t sure what it is—the glee in the patchwork man’s mismatched eyes or the fact that you know you’re being used as bait to lure Sukuna into a trap—but you glare through the pain, spit a glob of blood into your lap, and shake your head.

The patchwork man looks surprised, just for a second, and then his grin deepens into something truly monstrous.

“Oh,” he says, “I see why you picked her now, Sukuna.”

The last punch is to your jaw, and as your head snaps around, unconsciousness welcomes you.

It’s funny how quickly you lose track of time. You drift in and out of sleep, still bound to your chair, sometimes lit by the warm glow outside the door and sometimes not. Your legs and hands have gone numb, your circulation stuttered to a sludgy pace due to lack of movement. You think you’ve been captive for at least three days, but you wouldn’t be surprised if it were longer.

You’ve made two more videos under the violent directoral eye of the patchwork man.

For the second, he’d brought a knife. At first, he’d just traced the sharp edge of the knife along your skin, dragging it down the column of your throat and pressing the point against the center of your bottom lip. Then, he’d started slicing, quick, short cuts on your cheeks, your bare arms, your chest, stomach… Deep enough to bleed, shallow enough not to bleed out. You lost track of how many times he’d cut you, but in the aftermath, every movement has the wounds opening like agonizing kisses.

In the third, after the first hit had turned your vision fuzzy, you couldn’t remember what else the patchwork man had done. All you know now is that it hurts when you breathe—broken ribs, probably—and one of your eyes has swollen shut—a gorgeous black eye, you’re sure. At one point, you must’ve started crying, because the patchwork man had shoved the camera in close to your face, and his fingers had crested the peak of your cheekbone, gentle as if collecting something fragile.

You’ve tried to escape by ripping the duct tape with your teeth, but it’s too thick, and with all the struggling you’ve done, it’s rolled itself into even stronger bracelets. You’ve also tried rocking violently in the chair to rip it out of the ground, but after all of the shots to your head, you can barely handle a few seconds of the movements before getting unbelievably nauseous.

Fuck, every inch of your body hurts.

As you dance on the border between consciousness and oblivion, you wonder distantly if you’ll die here. Surely, Sukuna isn’t about to risk his life for a diner waitress he’s known for a few months. That’s the kind of thing a man does for a soulmate, a grand gesture from a romance novel where the man saves the girl he’s spent the past 400 pages loving. Sukuna and you… shared one kiss, that yes has branded itself on your soul, but still… You can’t hope that he’ll save you because you know he won’t. It would be idiotic, truly, especially if he’s as important as he’s increasingly seeming.

You’re not worth it.

Your head lolls to the side, greasy hair falling in a sheath against your face, and you start counting down from 100. It’s something you’ve been doing to pass the time, to try and hold onto your sanity the longer you stay here.

100…

99…

98…

97…

bang!

You pick up your head, staring at the door with a frown. Was that a gunshot or a door slamming shut? After a few seconds with no sound, you swallow on your too-dry throat and resume counting.

96…

95…

94…

93…

BANG!

You jerk in the metal chair, now certain that the sound is a gunshot as it draws nearer. You open your mouth, draw in a deep breath, but then snap your lips closed. If you scream, and the person shooting isn’t a friend, you don’t want to be on the other end of their gun. But, then again, if you don’t scream, and the person is a friend, they may never find you. You don’t—

BANG!

The sound is too loud, a bullet all on its own wreaking havoc inside your skull.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

It’s a stream of gunfire now, and you realize not only that more than a few people are shooting, but that they’re shooting close to you. Bursts of light snap through the window as gunfire ignites, and you start ripping against the duct tape bindings, desperate to simply put your hands over your ears.

It’s too loud—far too loud—but you can’t free yourself, and the duct tape just digs deeper into your skin, pearls of blood beading up along the bands of pink, shiny-raw skin.

The door slams open, and you squeeze your eyes shut. You’re ready for the patchwork man to end your life, especially if the enemy is on his doorstep; you just don’t want to see it coming.

But then Sukuna says your name.

You open your eyes slowly, scared that you’re hallucinating, but slowly, your vision adjusts and he is right there.

You open your mouth, but instead of words, all that comes out is a broken sob.

Sukuna, clad in black clothes and tactical gear, holsters the guns in his hands and takes a step toward you. Then another, and then he’s on his knees, cupping your face with his hands, his crimson eyes darkening with every wound he finds marring your flesh.

“You—”

You try to speak, but your throat is too tight, and silent tears stream down your cheeks, their salt stinging your open wounds. Sukuna’s hands are tense against your cheeks, muscles electrified with restrained rage, and you find yourself leaning into his grip.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Sukuna promises, and you nod, days of exhaustion slowly raining down on your shoulders. Your body, finally in the presence of its safe haven, stops dulling the pain and all you can do is hurt. Your body seems to fold in on itself against the holds of the duct tape, and the only reason your head stays upright is Sukuna.

Your vision grows hazy, flickering in and out like a camera trying and failing to focus. You think you mumble something, but it hasn’t formed into a word yet. Fuck, you’re tired. So… tired…

“Fuck,” Sukuna growls, “Fuck, I need you to hold on, okay? I need you to stay awake, okay?”

You think you nod, because Sukuna pulls one of his hands from your head and gets to work. He pulls a knife out of his pocket and starts sawing through the duct tape, freeing you in less than a minute. Without the support, however, you slump forward, and Sukuna catches you in his arms, holding you tightly against his chest. For him, it’s an embrace—for you, he’s just a solid place to land.

“I’m going to carry you out of here,” he whispers, his warm breath tickling your ear. “I am going to get you somewhere safe, and I am going to take care of you.”

You smile against the soft fabric of his shirt, and he picks you up like a bride, sweeping one strong arm under your knees and the other under your back. You curl into him naturally, pressing your face against his chest. In addition to spice and cigars, he smells like gunsmoke. You wonder if this is a dream, if you’d passed out from your concussion and couldn’t wake up, and your unconsciousness had decided to be kind.

Sukuna holds you firmly against his chest as he stalks down a corridor. A few times, you open your eyes, but instead of your surroundings, you look at him. At the obsidian black tattoos snaking up his neck and lining his jaw. His expression is full of rage, but beneath it, you see worry. Fear. Relief. You think about reaching up and touching his cheek, but your limbs feel loose and distant, and besides, you feel so warm tucked against him.

More gunshots erupt nearby—you think, nearby, but everything is starting to sound waterlogged—and Sukuna swears under his breath. You turn a corner too fast, the world whirling around you, but he doesn’t notice as he starts barking orders to people you can’t see. You try to steady yourself, try to breathe slowly, but the fluorescent lightbulbs lighting the concrete corridor are too bright, and you taste pennies on your tongue.

Get me out of here!

The thought is so loud, so demanding, that it pounds against your forehead and refreshes your tears.

Get me the fuck out of here!

“Sukuna?”

He stops mid-word, his eyes snapping down to you. The ferocity in his gaze makes you flinch, and his eyes widen for a second before he injects softness into his expression.

“Take me home?” you whisper, your voice rough from lack of use.

Sukuna stares at you a moment, an indecipherable storm raging behind his eyes, and then he nods once. Twice.

“Yes,” he says, and that’s enough for you to let the world spin away into a blur.

You aren’t unconscious, but you’re close, cheek tucked against Sukuna’s chest as he carries you out of the patchwork man’s fortress, a reinforced warehouse on the fringes of the city. Sukuna’s grip tightens on you with every step, not enough to hurt, but enough to know that you won’t slip away from him again. When he gets to one of the black SUVs waiting outside the warehouse, he doesn’t let anyone else touch you as he loads you into the backseat, laying you flat on a waiting blanket. To everyone’s surprise, Sukuna doesn’t then get in the passenger seat. Instead, he climbs in the back with you, pulling your upper body into his lap so he can hold you. When his men hesitate, he snaps at them, ordering them to pull their heads out of their asses and get you the fuck out of there.

As the SUV finally speeds back into the city, Sukuna keeps his arms wrapped around your small form, now clad in the blanket, quietly ordering his man in the front seat to have the doctor waiting at his penthouse by the time you arrive. You stir, murmuring something inaudible as your fingers rest on his chest, fingertips pressing weakly into his shirt. He stares down at you, forcing himself to memorize every bruise and cut crowding your exposed flesh, sure that there’s an equal amount of damage that he can’t see. Mahito must’ve ran, the fucking coward, so he took your injuries and let them fuel his bloodlust—Sukuna would eviscerate that motherfucker the moment he got his hands on him, and he’d enjoy every bloody second of it.

Vaguely, you feel Sukuna’s hand on your back, his thumb rubbing small, light circles on your skin. He doesn’t realize he’s doing it, but it’s enough to send you gently back into the darkness.

When you wake, you do it slowly. First, you come back to your body, which hurts. You moan quietly, and when you reach for your forearm and a sudden, insufferable itch,, you realize you’re surrounded by warm softness, a difference so stark to the metal chair that your eyes finally crack open. It’s dark, but not pitch black, so after a few moments, you can make out your surroundings.

You’re in a large bedroom, your head tilted towards the window where light peeks around the edges of a set of opaque blinds. Sleek, black furniture furnishes the overwise sparse, white-painted room, and the door is open across from the bed, revealing an ensuite bathroom. For a fleeting moment, your body longs for a long, hot shower, but then you turn your head and find him sitting there.

Sukuna.

And he’s wide awake.

He sits in a black accent chair, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. Dark circles have carved themselves under his crimson eyes, and his black shirt rumpled and rolled up, revealing his inked forearms. He watches you closely, eyes tracking every wince that crosses your face, and for a moment that seems to stretch on, you just sit in silence together.

You take that time to take stock of your body. Specifically, that awful itch that you identify as an IV taped to your inner arm, just below your elbow ditch. You also notice you’ve been dressed in a giant, black t-shirt that slides off one of your shoulders and a pair of too-big sweatpants. Someone has taken care of you, and your heart stutters, unsure what to do. You glance at Sukuna through your eyelashes to find him still staring at you, his gaze searing.

You try to think of something to say, but Sukuna speaks first.

“You’ve been asleep for a little over a day,” he says, scratching his jaw absently. “My doctor looked you over, said you likely have a concussion and definitely have a broken rib.” Sukuna sighs, flexes his hands, looks everywhere but at you. “You were also severely dehydrated, hence the IV.”

You nod, wince, and fiddle with the medical tape holding the IV against your flesh. You don’t know why you suddenly feel so awkward, especially after everything that’s happened, but you don’t know what to do now. Sukuna came for you, which means something, but what if his something isn’t the same as your something. What if he—

“I’m sorry.”

His apology tears you from your thoughts.

“W-what?”

Sukuna’s face fills with shadow, but it seems to be flowing inward, not outward.

“I tried to keep you out of my shit,” he says, running a hand through his already mussed hair. “I should’ve stayed away, but I…” his voice trails off as his eyes lock with yours, and his shoulders droop just slightly. “I’m a dangerous man and a selfish man, and I should’ve left you alone. If I had, none of this would have ever happened to you.”

He’s siloed in his guilt, and you pull your hands into your lap, unsure what to do.

Because, he’s right. He’s the reason you ended up in the hands of the patchwork man. But, he’s also the reason you’re free, and he’s the first person to ever make you feel safe. It feels paradoxical, but the relief you felt the moment you saw him in the doorway of your cell… the security you felt in his arms as he carried you out of that wretched place… You crave it.

You crave him.

“Why did you come back to the diner?” You ask, and Sukuna’s tattooed brow furrows.

“Which time?” He replies, and you shrug. The corner of his mouth twitches, hinting at a smile, and he leans back in his chair. “I didn’t understand you.”

You expect more, and when he just stares at you, you scoff.

“That’s it?”

“Does there need to be more?”

“Yes!”

Sukuna groans, but there’s a glint of amusement in his eyes, a light in the darkness.

“I didn’t understand why you helped me, and I wanted to,” he says finally, “So I went back. And then I kept noticing things I didn’t understand, so I kept coming back.”

“So it wasn’t for the coffee?”

That has him finally cracking a smile, and fuck does it look sexy on him, but it’s gone as soon as it appears, replaced with a deep glower.

“I got too curious for your own good.” Sukuna’s hands curl into fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turn white. “I thought if I didn’t tell you about myself, I’d keep you safe, but Mahito found you anyways, and now—” He stops abruptly, considers his words, then tries again. “He would’ve killed you.”

“But he didn’t.”

“He could’ve.”

“Would you have killed him for it?” You hear yourself ask, and you almost take the question back, but Sukuna’s already answering. Confidently. Resolutely.

“Yes,” he says, nodding. “I’m already planning on it.”

That shouldn’t make your stomach flip the way it does.

Sukuna, lost in his own realm of self-loathing, shakes his head.

You want to get up and go to him, to climb onto his lap and hold his face in your hands, to show him how you’re feeling because words can’t describe the tight, helium-light feeling in your chest. He sees himself as the reason you’ve been put in danger, but you see him as the first person who will burn down buildings to make sure you’re safe. You still remember the pure and utter relief that flooded all of your senses the moment he stepped foot in your cell, the way your body finally stopped protecting itself before it knew that Sukuna would be able to protect you better.

You want to show Sukuna all of that, but you’re not actually sure you can get out of bed on your own. So, instead you hold out your hand to him.

“Come here,” you say, crooking your fingers at him. When he hesitates, you raise your eyebrows. “If you don’t come here, I’ll come there.”

You start to draw back the down comforter, and that’s enough to get him sitting on the edge of the bed. Then, you take his hand in yours, silently marveling at just how much it dwarfs your own. You trace the calluses hardened where fingers meet palm, and Sukuna lets you, his stare boring into the side of your face. If you didn’t know better, you’d think him almost skittish, like if you move too fast, he’ll go rushing from your side.

Has he ever allowed anyone this close to him?

You close his hand over yours and look up at him, voice and gaze steady.

“You don’t scare me, Sukuna.”

He looks right back, a storm behind his eyes.

“I don’t want to.”

maybe one day I'll write this whole thing from Sukuna's POV, because he is down bad for this reader. I see it in my mind palace!!

I have another idea for frat!sukuna so dw, he'll be back <3

#mafia!au

Trending Tags

Recently Viewed Tags

#mafia!au