ੈ✩‧₊˚ to chew on our cheeks and stare at the moon friends with benefits nerdy! ryomen sukuna wants more playing | graceland too- phoebe bridgers
“what are you doing tonight?” your screen read after lighting up with a ping. The words stared at you mockingly, as if they already knew what you were struggling to accept. Waiting a few minutes to finish up your assignment at hand before answering, you replied with a simple “not much”, because truly, there wasn’t much to do once you finished.
“can I come over to yours?” he replied quickly after, “I kinda want to tell you about this new thing that just dropped and you’re the only one that gets this like I do” a turmoil of feelings inside, you agreed on condition that there would be no funny business today, as it was during the school week and you had a 8 am lecture tomorrow you definitely couldn’t miss, not even if you woke up between his arms.
Confirmation that he was on his way received, you began to anxiously wait for his arrival while your head started moving at dangerous speed, trying to decode what he meant with that message.
It was routine, almost.
For the past 2 months, you had an agreement with your close, childhood friend Ryomen Sukuna to be friends with benefits. What started on a drunken night after tiptoeing around each other for way too long was still hanging on to dear life as your collage lives moved precariously around it, trying to do everything to keep it going.
You had some teensy tiny bit of feelings for him, and with the alcohol you two got more handsy with each other (more than you normally were on the daily) and things just lead up to that moment. It wasn’t horrible; matter of fact, it was amazing: not only could you talk about all of your fandoms, pop niche references and a million things more, but you also knew how his chest rose and fell at night after spending hours loving on you.
Now you might be wondering, if you had feelings for him, and if he had shown signs of reciprocating them multiples times, then why weren’t you on a proper relationship? And the answer would be a topic of conversation talked about frequently during one of your long, late-night talks during your teenage years.
“why don’t you date Maddy if she likes you and you think you like her?” you thought out loud to him at 16, when your love for each other was completely pure and platonical, no harm from others that tainted it. You were sitting on your rooftop, a common hang out spot for you since you were kids and you wanted to run away from adults, now it was the perfect place to hide away to smoke and make embarrassing confessions you probably regret telling but knew they were safe. Just you two.
“I think I don’t want to be in a relationship, the idea of being in one scares the shit outta me. Like, I know I want one at some point, but committing to it- like no, I don’t mean cheating on her or some shit, but-“ “I know what you mean” you cut abruptly, because he felt what you already knew about yourself, and he was trying to put into words with you struggled with too.
After some minutes, he turned to you and asked “why don’t you date Alex? He seems like a surprisingly great guy, and I’ve already ran a background check on him, he’s chill and likes you way too much, always following you like a damn puppy”, no jealousy on his tone, just pure confusion and interest. Looking at the moon on the dark, dark sky, you let the silence fill with the noise from the cicadas before answering “I feel exactly like you about relationships”.
And that was that, the two of you always together, never in relationships, seeking the other out always, like the way the sun understands the moons loneliness. It wasn’t something you desired, it was how you though protected others from yourselves.
Naturally, dating rumours began to form as years passed by. During high school people just knew that where one went the other was too, and his undying need to keep you close to him probably didn’t help, but hey, you two were just clingy people. After graduation and in university, that’s when things took a turn.
Ryomen joined a frat house (you still were wondering why, knowing he was quite introverted and wasn’t a huge fan of loud parties) and became a bit more cold with everyone. He had had some family problems the summer of your senior that took a great toll on him, so for the first year he was mostly partying, drinking, smoking and getting high. Surprisingly, very surprisingly, you were the only one he didn’t push away from him, always coming back to you at the end of the night. It wasn’t a good night out for him if he didn’t end up in your dorm at god-knows-when in the morning demanding for you to hug him and listening to his pokemon rants.
Yeah, it was hard to believe the two of you weren’t dating. But really, it was completely platonical. It was undeniable that you loved each other deeply, so, so much that it was overwhelming at points.
You had helped him through his parents’ deaths and aided with his brothers’ care more times than he is proud to admit (and honestly, those kids are way too adorable and sweet to be related to that grump), when he fell down from your rooftop when you were 14 and your parents thought they heard voices and he broke his arm, when he almost got kicked out of the boxing club for becoming too violent and you forced him to go to therapy for his anger…
He had helped you too, more times than you would give him credit for. When your first crush tried to reject you in public in middle school and he just socket-punched him before he could laugh at your face, that time when you watched a movie that was too scary for your own wellbeing and he came over and slept in your floor for two nights to keep you company, and the one that changed everything for you, when he did everything and more to help you through your major depressive episode last year. That was when your feelings changed and you began to see him in a new light, even though you didn’t admit it for too long, scared of the truth.
When you two kissed two months ago at that cheap bar downtown (it, of course, wasn’t your first kiss with each other), something was different in the way he grabbed your waist with his ridiculously huge hands and tried to pull you impossibly closer to him, and it sure wasn’t the alcohol’s doing. Through your mind passed the idea that maybe, just maybe, he felt the same way you did, and this was just a step in between.
So yeah, friends with benefits was what had been working for the both of you.
A knock on your door too loud to be from an unknown person pulled you out of your thoughts, and through a muttered string of curses muttered, you opened the door to find a 6’3 man, tattooed, ripped, yada, yada, yada, man there. Yeah, he was hot and this bitch knew it too, wearing those t-shirts with horrible nerdy jokes on them that barely covered his huge muscles and symmetrical tattoos, his face plastered with his glasses that covered his tired eyes and a small smirk hanging from his mouth.
Letting him inside, you went back to where you had just been resting in your bed and motioned him to come inside and close the door after, as he had done countless times before. Doing as you instructed, he kicked his shoes off by the door and started saying total nonsense as he goo closer to your bed, just to let himself face down on it with a muffled “poof” from the pillows, lying next to you. Giggling at how silly that felt, you tangled your hands through his hair, just moving the locks gently at your whim, taming the messy hair he had from the midnight breeze outside.
You stayed like that for a while, him just face down, delightedly making satisfied grunts whenever you stopped and he urged you to keep going, nudging your hands with his head. He ended up moving across your bed to lay his head over your lap, now staring up at you with unfocused eyes and a very slight blush over his cheeks that could also be explained with the walk he just did to your dorm. Folding your legs, his head nuzzled a bit further down to be completely on top of you, and he began talking.
Honestly, it was hard to believe sometimes that this tank of a man was just as much of a nerd as you were and could (and has) carried conversations about videogames, movies, series, fandoms, comics, even fanfiction with you for years, and this time it wasn’t further from that. At some point in his rant, maybe when his hands started pointing upwards vigorously to end up caressing your face too, or maybe it was when he lowered them back down to softly move his fingers very, impossibly gently over your tights, but at some point you dozed off and started feeling sleepy, properly falling asleep after a little while, when his voice wasn’t as passionate and as intense as it was when he arrived.
Easy and silly dreams kept your mind busy, but then, at around 2 am if your clock was right, you woke up on your side alone in your bed, covered by a blanket. Sleep still in your eyes, you lifted your head slowly trying to see if Ryomen actually left or he was doing some other stuff around your dorm (you once found him trying to learn how to do a handstand in the dark at 4 am, hence why you weren’t that surprised now). His shoes were still by your entrance, so you stumbled in the dark to turn on your lamp, avoiding at all costs the bright, big light.
Once the dark room was warmly lit, you saw him sitting by the windowsill, looking at the sky, still wearing the same clothes from before instead of changing into some of the more comfortable ones he kept within your walls. You got up, trying not to make any noise and break the spell of the night, and wrapped around your blanket, you made your way to the window he was sitting on. Poking his shoulder, he actually jumped in place and started cursing you with a fondness in his eyes that let you know it was just for the sake of it.
Wordlessly, he moved from his spot in the middle to the side to make space for you close to him. You took the place, fumbling with the blanket around your shoulders until you moved it over both of your backs, trying to shelter yourselves from the zephyr early spring coldness. Once sat comfortably, you turned to look at him and saw that he was actually smoking, saying quietly that he was trying to avoid the smoke alarm inside your dorm, but you knew that that alarm had been broken form months because he was the one that broke it.
Looking at him with a surprising “no bullshit” look for the time that it was, he ended up confessing that he had been missing the times when you sat on your roof during the night, staying up longer than you should’ve because you wanted to keep talking to each other. Still mute, you hummed in acknowledgement and let your head down gently over his shoulder, and as if it was second nature, his arm wrapped over yours to pull you closer to him. With his other hand he still had the cigarette hanging down low, and after looking at you resting with your eyes closed, trusting him to keep you safe, he stared back at the moon.
The moon stared back, welcoming him again, urging him to keep the conversation they were having before you woke up, as if she already knew the true nature of your relationship and how it would end. Confessions exchanged silently, he looked at her once more, just to pull you closer when your arms wrapped around his middle, trying to lay down over his legs, and with one last glance, he turned his full attention towards you.
Just you, like it has always been.
a/n: i listened to “lost boys” by phoebe bridgers for the first time on the radio with my dad after going to the cinema to watch "obsession" yesterday and i just started bawling my eyes out i felt so alive