@ofluminance continued from here.
𑁍—The lengthening space between the last breath he’d spent on his admission and the first syllable of Kugisaki’s response sent his stomach running up and down his ribcage. His senses were tightly attuned to her reaction - the subtle shadows cast by her eyelashes, the proud arch of her brow as she contemplated his words. She could lift his world or snap it open with barely a thought.
Itadori observed and waited, as silence gripped hard at the center of his throat.
Was she pissed off? Had he seriously overstepped himself?
Even so, it wasn’t as though he could just play it off.
He’d said it purposefully; it had felt imperative. Like the words would have spelled themselves out from his chest, anyway, as he’d stood in the corridor alone with her.
It was such a small peace. It was such a small space. Their heartbeats were such small sounds in all the clamor of the school, of the world of sorcerers, of the ageless war between Curses and Humanity. It was just the two of them; a pair of willful souls cradled inside the tenuous space between struggle and survival.
When a moment like this could unfurl - he had to speak up while they had it.
Everything turned into chaos so quickly these days.
…well, ‘these days’ for him, at least.
She’d always lived in a world like this, hadn’t she?
Kugisaki’s amber gaze pried at his attention, and his expression collapsed under the weight of all her unspoken, accurate guesses. He gave a messy, conciliatory grin: half-hope and half-reassurance,
“I’m not stupid enough to think I can guess what you’re feeling, Kugisaki. Plus, you’d be mad as hell if I started assuming this and that about you, right?”
The pressure of her fingertip against his chest was - at once, both strong and delicate. Heat bloomed like wildflowers at the diminutive span, and the flush followed the path of her touch, pooling in his neck until he thought he would slip out of the waking world altogether. His pulse thundered in his ears and he barely had the presence of mind to issue a weak scoff at the notion of kissing Fushiguro.
That was. Kind of a different thing. Maybe. Sort of. Was it?
A chuckle drowned in affection and possibly some terror ventured an escape as he conceded wholly to her claim that they were hopeless without her,
“... no comment.”
He saw the kiss coming. Felt the grip at his collar. The realization that it was his first kiss with a girl washed over his thoughts, soothing and staggering at once. He swallowed hard against a sense of inadequacy, closed his eyes, and added his gentle favor to the connection between them.
Itadori expected embarrassment. He thought he’d panic and mess something up.
He didn’t anticipate the relief. The gratitude. It could have overwhelmed him, if he hadn’t been so cognizant of the sensation. She was warm, close, and her mouth was impossibly soft. Nobara’s breath slipped against his mouth like hot silk, and he raised a hand to her jaw, aligning his fingertips along the curvature of her neck. He was the type to experience the world by what he touched, after all.
His thumb sought the subtle slope beneath Nobara’s bottom lip and her girlish chin.
He could feel her pulse, beating tenaciously beneath his fingertips. Her taste, the scent of her hair, the heat of her skin - her vitality was coursing against him like a little storm and he was so damned relieved that she was alive in spite of his weakness. In spite of the Curse that -
His eyes snapped open. The Curse. A crimson gaze brimming with insatiable malice leered at him somewhere from within a darkness that Itadori felt he’d forged with his own ignorance.
He should have tasted like death.
He couldn’t let Kugisaki anywhere near it.
Because he was a dead man. What was the point of asking her to hear him say something like that when he was a walking execution sentence? Cruel. He was being totally cruel.
If he’d never swallowed the damn thing, then maybe he and Nobara could have -
Without having done that - he never would have even known about sorcerers. He never would have met Kugisaki. Or Fushiguro. He never would have known any of them.
Was he grateful to that bastard?
Not a chance in hell.
Nothing was worth the suffering, the death, and the anguish he brought.
So wasn’t it kind of messed up that he was glad to kiss Nobara right now?
All of it. It was only possible because—
Itadori nuzzled his forehead to Nobara’s brow and pulled away, turning his back to her for a moment in a gentle departure from her view.
If he got stronger. If he could keep Sukuna and his evil crammed up, if he could help exorcise Sukuna. If he could keep up with Nobara, and never let Fushiguro have to shoulder his weight, again: then maybe…
Maybe he wouldn’t feel so gross for asking for their love.
Itadori lifted his shoulders, and joked nonchalantly, “Jeeze. If you say that’s your first kiss, I’m gonna feel talentless. But if you say it isn’t, then I’m gonna get jealous. What’s a guy supposed to do, here?”
He couldn't quite face her, yet.
His eyes were troubled. The back of his neck was beet red.
And he gripped her hand tightly in his without saying another word.
