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YOU AND ME, ALWAYS FOREVER

FEATURING: zenin naoya x fem!reader

SUMMARY: everything changes after what happens to your clan, even things between you and naoya start to shift as more time passes, and it makes you anxious. but you come to learn that not all change is bad, and sometimes, it comes alongside the promise of a future that doesn't seem quite as bleak as you feared.

WARNINGS: fem!reader. canon compliant (MCD accordingly, not in this part tho). i took some liberty with 1) zenin clan relationships and 2) cursed energy lore for reader’s technique. naoya is his own warning—he’s gonna give you a lot of whiplash. heavily implied abuse (naobito->naoya). toxic relationship (i stress, toxic relationship). misogyny (obviously). moments of misandry from reader. liberal use of bitch (naoya to reader). asshole 4 asshole (naoya sucks, so does reader—the crux of their relationship is that they’re both so intolerable they can only tolerate each other). as always with my fics, reader has personality & background. still some grieving on reader's end. a bit of angst in the beginning because they're both idiots -> emotionally unintelligent people trying to have emotionally intimate conversations LOL, BUT I THINK I DID THEM JUSTICE IN IT, EVEN THOUGH THESE TYPES OF CONVOS ARE LIKE ....... FOR THEM all this to say they will infuriate you, as always

SMUT WARNINGS: switch!reader (sub-leaning this time), switch!naoya (dom-leaning this time), oral (m!receiving), degradation (m->f, not actually too harsh), naoya has a filthy mouth, improper use of projection sorcery, choking kind of (?), overstimulation, slight dumbification, mention of oral (f!receiving)

AUTHOR’S NOTES: YAYAYAYAY AGE 21-24 so I did get a part out today, for the small price of extending this series by another part LOLLL, sorry guys, please tune in for part 4 (final!! For real) next Tuesday (hopefully), this chapter just got so long that it needed to be split. You guys need to know that age 21 kicked my fucking ASS, I have 20k words of deleted scenes just from that year because I kept scrapping and rewriting. It was some necessary emotional intimacy/talks that they needed to get through before getting back to their regularly scheduled program ANYWAY, some notes about this chapter, I have a lot to say about this one, slight spoilers if you want to come back at the end: we start a bit rough with age 21 and a bunch of drama there, but I feel like it was necessary (and my goddd was it so difficult trying to make Naoya’s two big dialogue scenes—you’ll know what I’m talking about when you read—come across as in character). Naoya is Naoya, and he’s obviously been raised with the traditional mindset of one day having/needing a wife, and that is one that that just is not going to change, so it was always going to get to this boiling point of him needing this thing they have to be solidified, and then the obviously explosion when she is not so fond of the idea because of #trauma. I actually played back and forth with whether or not I wanted reader to eventually agree to it or not, I always intended on it coming full circle and them coming to the realization, “damn after all the shit we put each other through as kids, we’re really here 20 years later wanting to get married” but I was conflicted as to how/when I wanted reader to come to this realization. I was stuck between leaving them unlabeled up until right before canon, and just letting it all happen at age 21, and I realized that it’s not so much the labels that are the issue, so much as it is her not wanting anything to change, so I decided to go with age 21 because this is the perfect point for her to realize that. And I think it’s funny because as you read through the years, they both DO change, they mellow out with one another (to an extent), become more physically affectionate, and it just makes me snort because this whole blow-up argument at age 21 was for nothing in the long run JDFHUSIDFSFU (as it happens in irl many times as well). I also think it’s nice because we got a couple years of domescity with them before the beloathed arrival of canon. And omg another note, I had this idea for her maximum technique, and I just HAD to implement it, I think it’s so cool and it fits so well. I hope you guys like it too HAHAH ENJOY!! Here is a post I made about reader’s cursed technique—it’s described in the fic as well, but if you’re interested to read! (with the addition of the new maximum technique) All comments and reblogs are always appreciated!!

SEE: MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION series masterlist

2014 | READER, AGE 21; NAOYA, AGE 23

Nothing is the same after that year.

Things settle, and life returns to a dull routine of meetings and more meetings and even more meetings than that. You go to the Zenin estate to talk to Naobito twice a week because he is the one to keep your head above the turbulent waters of jujutsu politics—he does this for his own selfish reasons, but he does it nonetheless, and so you are grateful, even if it does make you feel dangerously indebted to him. You sit across from Kamo Norhide at a table once a month when all of the major clan heads meet, and you have to pretend you are not itching to put your knife through his throat. You have made no progress in proving that the Kamos were behind the slaughter; each day that passes leaves the hole in your chest wider and wider, and not even Naoya is enough to fill it anymore. You have to deal with the higher-ups regularly now, and instead of having to hear about their dislike of you secondhand, you to take it face-to-face, bitter and angry and resentful, because this was never supposed to be your burden.

You are extraordinarily tired, and there is no end in sight.

Worse, you still see your brothers and your father everywhere you look.

You leave their rooms untouched, and you had a terrible fit when one of your new attendants tried to open the door to your father’s bedroom to dust it. You still wake up at six in the morning on the dot for morning tea, half-expecting your brothers to barrel into the room after you, scolded by your father for being late, because you were the only one ever on time. Sometimes, you still set their dishes up as though they will arrive, and you’ll prepare the tea the way they like it, even though you dislike any flavor of tea besides your favorite. You wear your brother’s watch after you had it fixed—it’s too big and too clunky, but you refuse to go a day without it. You had a meltdown a few weeks ago when you thought you lost it, and you and Naoya spent an entire day searching for it. He catches you staring out into the training yard where your brothers first taught you how to hold a knife more times than you can count. He used to interrupt you, drag you off somewhere else, because he was unsettled by the silence and wanted to snap you out of the funk you got yourself into, but he has started to just sit next to you, shoulders brushing, thighs pressed together.

Nothing is the same.

Even your relationship with Naoya has begun to shift, and it’s making you anxious—is it your fault things are changing? Is this just another result of your grief?

You just want it all to end. You’re so tired.

It’s nothing serious, but any change at all now is enough to start setting off alarm bells in the back of your head. The two of you still bicker and fight the same way you always have—colorful insults flying back and forth, arguments flaring and dying out in the same breath—but he’s started… pulling his punches, so to speak. His insults lose their edge, and he pauses before saying something cruel, jaw tightening like he’s swallowing it back. When you argue, he lets you finish. Lets you say the ugly things, the irrational things, the things that come out all wrong because your grief still has fangs, and he doesn’t bite back the way he usually would. He is more gentle with you—his touches linger, and he goes out of his way to brush his fingers or body against yours even when he doesn’t have to, and you just don’t know what to think about any of it.

It unsettles you because you’ve always counted on Naoya’s consistency—your relationship with him is the one thing in your life that has never changed, and yet, here it is, changing, and change has never treated you well.

You try to convince yourself that you’re imagining it, but you, evidently, are not the only one who has noticed.

(“So, are you two together now or something?” Satoru asks, tilting his head to the side. You blink. “Finally past the whole friends with benefits situationship thing?”

“Uh, no—”

“Yeah—”

What? Your gaze snaps to the side, focusing on Naoya, and Naoya stares ahead, lips curling down into a frown as your words process. Your heart is racing—why is it racing? What is he talking about?

“Oh,” Satoru says with a laugh and then a grimace as you and Naoya look at one another. “Yikes. Well, uh, that’s awkward. I’m just gonna—”

Satoru is gone before he even completes the sentence, leaving the two of you in a tense silence. There’s something close to panic flooding your system, because you’re not dating Naoya. He’s your—you guess you’re not really sure what he is, but when has that ever mattered? Why would you need to put a name to it now? Putting a label on it would make it feel too real, too tangible—something that can be named is something that has a start, and something that can be named is something that can also have an end. You know better than most how quickly things can fall apart once they’re given shape, and the thought of that happening with you and Naoya after everything that’s happened over the last year…

There’s a loaded comment on the tip of your tongue, an insult about how Naoya is being an idiot, because what the hell is he talking about? But you hesitate when you see the expression on his face as he stares down at you. His jaw is tight, and there’s a look in his eyes that makes you uncomfortable. He blinks once as though he’s confused, and he doesn’t respond for a moment too long, so you say something to break the silence.

“Um—I—what?” you finally start to say, making an effort to lose the attitude before you speak up. Your voice comes out all clumsy because of it. You pause to collect yourself before you ask him, “What do you mean? We’re not… I mean, it’s the same as it’s always been.”

Right? you think, desperately wanting him to say yes. It’s the same. Everything is the same. It has to be the same.

His mouth opens, then closes again, and he stares at you with furrowed brows. He scoffs, but it comes out too late and too forced. “What do you think I mean?” he snaps, like you’re the one being difficult. “We fuck, I buy ya nice things, we’re always together. Everyone already assumes it.” He clicks his tongue, annoyed, but his throat bobs—is he nervous? “Didn’t think I needed to spell it out for ya.”

“That’s not how it works, Naoya,” you tell him, voice riddled with disbelief, nails digging into your palms. “You can’t just—”

“Well, why not?” he demands, becoming more incensed with each passing second. “I’m not some idiot makin’ moves on someone who’s not interested. You want me. You could’ve shut this down a long time ago.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“I’m doing you a favor, y’know?” he cuts in, voice rising slightly, irritation flashing hot across his face. You see it in his eyes the moment he starts to feel cornered, gold flicking uneasily and words shifting from a rushed defense to a cruel offense. Why the hell is he getting so wound up about this? Why can’t he just drop it? Why does anything have to change? “You’re rude, ya don’t listen, and you gotta mouth on you that scares off anyone with half a brain. There’s a reason you couldn’t hold down a man for more than a couple days. No one would ever put up with that shit.”

You let out a huff of disbelief. “You were the one who—”

“But I do. I put up with it,” he presses on insistently before you can finish your accusation, fists tight at his sides, “so, yeah, I’m doin’ ya a favor. You can’t really think some guy’s gonna wine and dine you when you talk back the way you do. Ya don’t know how to behave, and ya don’t act like a woman.” He scoffs again. “I let you get away with shit that’d have anyone else running.”

“Naoya, enough,” you say through your teeth. “Can you just shut up and list—”

“Don’t tell me to stop,” he snaps back, too fast and too loud. He drags a hand through his hair, then drops it, jaw tightening when his voice wavers and he has to force it steady. “Actin’ like you wouldn’t be lost without someone willin’ to deal with you. What a load of shit.”

He doesn’t quite look you in the eye when he keeps going, and at this point, you’re too baffled to interrupt, unsure why he’s so worked up.

“No one else is gonna step in and put up with your attitude,” he tells you again, words piling on top of each other now, rushed and defensive. “Always talkin’ back, actin’ like you’re on equal footing—most guys wouldn’t last a week.” He lets out a laugh, but it rings hollow. “They’d get sick of ya real fast.”

His fingers curl into his palm, knuckles whitening.

“But I don’t mind it. I don’t get sick of it,” he insists, too quick, eyes flicking back to yours like he wants to see if you believe him. “I can handle it. I want—” He cuts himself off, pauses, then he doubles down, voice turning harsher to cover the slip. “So yeah, I’m doin’ ya a favor.” He scoffs again, but it doesn’t land right this time. “Stop complaining. You got it good. You just don’t like hearin’ it said out loud.”

The silence that follows is suffocating. Naoya stands rigid across from you, like braced for the impact of whatever you’re about to say. You exhale slowly—you feel just as trapped as he looks. You don’t want—well, you don’t even know what you want, and that’s the problem. The last year and a half has taken too much already, and the thought of anything changing with Naoya makes your stomach churn.

Because if something changes, it can go wrong, and if it goes wrong, you won’t be able to handle losing him on top of everything else—you know it. You’ve been there before. The last time the two of you technically had labels, they were imposed on you, a formality neither of you had a say in, and when it fell apart, it almost took everything you had with him with it. Three years passed without a word between you. You don’t think you’d survive that again, not after everything that’s happened. There’s no reason for this. No reason to fix something that isn’t broken.

“I don’t want anything to change,” you tell him after a moment. “I don’t want labels. Not with you. We don’t need th—”

Naoya’s expression shifts immediately, indignation flaring so fast it almost looks like hurt before it hardens into anger. “What? That’s bullshit,” he snaps. “You didn’t have a problem with labels when you were runnin’ around with guys before me.”

“It’s not the same—”

“Why not?” he demands. “You were willing to go on dates with guys who didn’t know a damn thing about ya, but suddenly I’m the problem?” His jaw tightens, tongue darting out to wet his lips before he lets out a harsh laugh. “You let them date you, but won’t let me? I’m the one who’s always been here. I’m the one ya keep coming back to. And you’re gonna sit here and lie to me, saying ya don’t do labels? Fuck off.”

“Will you let me finish a—”

“Fuck you,” he says louder, stepping back. He forces a laugh again, hand pressing to his mouth. “Fuck you. I’m good enough to fuck, good enough to stick around when things get hard, good enough to buy ya whatever you want, but not good enough to be official?” His throat bobs again; his face is red, and you can’t tell if it’s anger or embarrassment anymore. “You really expect me to be okay with that? Fuck you. Fuck off. I don’t need ya. You’re the one who needs me.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets, and he’s gone before you can even say his name, leaving you standing in the middle of the room all by yourself, a sick feeling clawing at your stomach that you can’t push away.

You think you’ve just made a terrible mistake.)

Naoya doesn’t speak to you after that.

One week turns into two, two into three, and each passing day leaves you with a heavier heart and a guiltier conscience. You tell yourself that the two of you have had worse fights and moved past them, but something about this one felt different, felt final. Naoya was mad—no, not mad, upset—in a way you’ve never really seen him before. You didn’t want things to change, and yet, you might’ve ruined them entirely in your efforts to prevent it.

On the Sunday of the fourth week of no contact, his father invites you to the Zenin estate to make sure the two of you are aligned in preparation for a meeting with the higher-ups. You go, of course, because as much as you don’t want to run into Naoya, Naobito’s the only reason you’ve been keeping your head above the water since you became clan head.

You shouldn’t have.

————————

“My lady, Naoya-sama specifically told us not to let you in,” the young girl at the gates says, unable to meet your eyes. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

You press your fingers to your forehead, trying to will yourself not to lose your temper, but you had a shitty drive to the estate, and it’s raining, and it’s hot and muggy, and each moment you’re left out here being told Naoya doesn’t want to see you is testing the limits of your patience.

“Naobito invited me over for tea,” you say through your teeth. “If you leave me out here in the rain for another second, I’ll blow a fucking hole through the wall, and you can try explaining that to him.”

The girl stares at you with wide eyes through the crack in the gate, lips parting to respond, but before she can, someone grabs her attention from within the estate. You exhale irritability when the gates slam shut as she whirls around to address whoever approached her. Your gaze flicks up to the night sky, watching as lightning splits the clouds overhead, thunder shaking the ground beneath your feet.

After what feels like an eternity, the gates creak open, and instead of staring at one girl, you’re staring at three. Naoya’s kid cousin, Maki, stands in front of the two of them, hands fisted at her side, while her twin sister, Mai, hovers behind her with the girl who was working at the gate.

“Yo, Maki-chan, Mai-chan,” you greet, irritation draining at the sight of the twelve-year-olds. “How’ve you been?” Maki glares at you, crossing her arms over her chest. You raise your eyebrows at her, tilting your head slightly to the side. How cute, you think. You ask with a small smile, “Is Maki-chan mad at me?”

“He’s been awful,” Maki hisses, and you exhale, gaze flitting to the side. Maki immediately shifts so that she’s standing in your line of sight, and Mai grabs for the back of the other girl’s kimono, trying to hold her in place. “He’s always awful, but he’s been even worse. He made Mai cry for hours yesterday because he kept insulting her.”

“Onee-chan,” Mai complains quietly, gaze lowered.

“It’s your fault, isn’t it?” Maki demands. “He told everyone not to let you in. Specifically, you.”

You sigh and rub your hand against your mouth—you’ll try to find him after you talk to Naobito. You planned to already, but hearing Maki’s complaints, you realize it’s probably a more urgent situation than you thought it was if he’s still so worked up about it. Shit. Why the hell does this mean so much to him?

“I’m not here for him. Naobito invited me. Are you gonna let me in or what?”

Maki nods shortly after a moment’s hesitation, stepping aside to let you in. The two of them lead you through the estate to the main house, and you swallow thickly. Ever since Naobito invited you over, you’ve been going back and forth trying to figure out what the hell you’re going to say to Naoya. You’ve had almost a month to think about the argument—about what he wants—and you still don’t know where you stand on it, really.

Dating, love, boyfriend, and girlfriend—they’re all so… well, pedestrian. It doesn’t feel like you and Naoya, and you worry that boxing what you are into these terms will change things between you fundamentally. It’s always been the two of you moving sideways around each other, never straight on, never naming anything because naming it would make it solid and vulnerable to being pulled apart. Whatever this is has survived precisely because it stays undefined, sharp-edged and messy, held together because neither of you want to know what the hell the two of you really are to one another, because that’ll open up a can of worms that can’t be closed.

But—but it’s you and Naoya, and whatever the two of you are, it’s never been fragile. It’s survived too much to be undone by a word. Years of friction and distance, worse arguments than this one, stretches where neither of you should’ve come back and did anyway. If it were going to break, it would have done so already. A label shouldn’t be enough to destroy this, and if Naoya wants it this badly, why are you so adamant on denying him?

Shit, you think again, rubbing your lips absently. What a pain.

You duck into the building, absently thanking a servant who passes you a towel, rubbing your hair dry briefly before draping it around your shoulders. You see Maki and Mai exchange looks with one another as they lead you to the tea room, like they want to say something but don’t know if they should. You give them a suspicious look, but they both lower their eyes.

Something is wrong.

Your gaze lingers on them for a second too long before Mai shifts to slide open the door to the tea room. You start speaking before you look into the room. “Y’know, if you’re going to invite me over, you could at least make sure your… What is going on?”

The tea room is crowded.

There’s a lump in your throat that you can’t seem to swallow away, and you hear your pulse roaring in your ears, dimly registering that Naobito is apologizing for his attendant. He sits at the head of the low table, a teacup that you’re sure is filled with sake in front of him, and there’s a man you vaguely recognize sitting across from him. Naoya is here too, lounging back against the far wall, legs spread obnoxiously wide like he’s purposely trying to take up as much space as possible.

There’s a woman next to him. A girl your age, maybe a little younger—silk sleeves, perfect posture, eyes lowered just enough to be polite. Breathe, you tell yourself, don’t react. You’ve dealt with ambushes your whole life; you know the importance of not letting your emotions show on your face. It’s just been… a long time since you’ve had to throw up this mask at the Zenin estate.

What is happening?

“This is Takaoka Hide, head of the Takaoka clan,” Naobito greets, eyes calculating as he watches you. This is a test, you realize. For you, for Naoya, maybe, but definitely for you. “We plan to finalize the arrangements between his daughter, Aiko, and Naoya soon. I wanted to bring you into the loop, since our clans are aligned for the time being. I thought you would appreciate the transparency.”

What the fuck?

You think you might be sick.

You can’t even bring yourself to look at Naoya.

The older gentleman rises to his feet, inclining his head to you. “I was sorry to hear about what happened to your family. Such a terrible tragedy.”

You stare at him for a moment. “Yeah,” you agree flatly after a moment. “A terrible tragedy.”

Not an appropriate response by any means. Naobito clocks it from the way his lips curl up slightly. Why is he doing this? Just to be cruel? The man has always been callous and unfair—you’ve seen it firsthand many times—but this is… Why? You haven’t done anything to piss him off, and you’ve been working with him as best as you can in meetings with the higher-ups, acting as a bridge between the Zenins and the Gojos when they’re aligned on certain policies. You want to look at Naoya, just to see if he’s in on whatever cruel setup this is, or if you’ll find some kind of support—a roll of his eyes to let you know that this was an ambush for him too—but you’re scared to, because you don’t want to know if the answer isn’t what you want it to be.

Naoya would’ve said something by now if he wasn’t in on this.

This is—you don’t know what this is—is he trying to punish you because you didn’t give him the label he wanted? Or does he not even care anymore? Did he move on when he realized he wouldn’t get what he wanted from you? No, he wouldn’t have, not like this, not with you.

Right?

Your gaze flicks back over to the girl instead. She sits a proper distance from Naoya, keeps her head bowed, her hands in her lap, and her knees folded beneath her. It makes you nauseous; your stomach flips, and it’s an effort to keep your breath steady and your expression blank. And it shouldn’t be—it really shouldn’t be. This is the life Naoya was always supposed to have. A wife who will never challenge him, never crowd him, never stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, and never speak out of turn.

Zenin-perfect—as he’s been trained to be and trained to want.

You’ve known this since you were a child. Naoya has shoved it in your face for as long as you can remember, complained about how you were the opposite of a perfect Zenin wife, compared you to various different animals, and whined about being stuck with you. He was never subtle when it came to reminding you, and you became used to it, rolling your eyes and kicking the back of his knees when the two of you were alone, rolling around in the dirt until you were both sporting blood and bruises.

You’ve known this.

So, why are you struggling to keep your composure right now?

Naoya would’ve said something by now if he wasn’t in on this.

“Is this seriously why you brought me here and left me out in the rain for ten minutes?” you finally ask, grateful that your voice isn’t as shaky as your hands are, and especially grateful that you can hide your hands in your pockets. “This could’ve been done over a call.”

The girl’s gaze flicks up for the first time, taken aback by your tone and attitude, but she quickly lowers it again—pretty and polite, not intruding in the conversations of men, exactly the type of woman Naoya lauds as the perfect wife. You hate her. You hate her. And you hate yourself, because she hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s sitting where she’s been placed, performing the role she was raised to perform, and you doubt she wants to marry Naoya. Who the fuck would want to marry Naoya? Naoya sucks; he’s a douchebag, and he’ll probably treat her like shit. She’s probably fighting tears right now, the same way you are, except for a wildly different reason, but you can’t stop the bile from curling in your stomach as you realize what’s being taken from you, how it’s being taken from you.

You hate Naoya, you realize instead. You fucking hate Naoya. You’ve always treaded the thin line of love and hatred with him, but this, you know, is hatred, deep-seated, you can feel it in your blood, in your bones, your soul. This is humiliating—you’ve been humiliated before, so many times, but never like this, not by him, not like this.

Naobito hums, amused. “I thought it would be more… respectful to do this in person.”

“Right,” you agree dryly. “Respectful.”

Takaoka Hide clears his throat, visibly uncomfortable. “If this meeting is inconvenient, perhaps—”

“No,” you cut in, tone polite and flat, eyes never leaving Naobito. You force your shoulders to relax, your posture to loosen, like this is nothing more than a mild irritation rather than someone crushing your heart between their fingers. “It’s fine. I appreciate the… consideration. Truly.”

Naobito watches you over the rim of his teacup. “I knew you would.”

“I’ve always known how to properly express gratitude to goodwill,” you say, and then add, voice lower, “and deal with insults in kind.”

Naoya snorts from the wall—you don’t know what it means. If he’s amused by what you said, or just the situation. If it’s his way of showing he’s on your side, or if it’s just further humiliation. You ignore him.

“So,” you continue, tilting your head to the side, “this is a courtesy meeting. Consider me informed. Is that all?”

Naobito sets his cup down. “You don’t have questions?”

“Why would I?” you ask dryly.

Naoya would’ve said something by now if he wasn’t in on this.

Takaoka shifts again, glancing at his daughter. “Aiko is well-suited to the role,” he offers, tentative, when he notices that you keep glancing at her. It makes you want to hurl even more. “She’s obedient, soft-spoken. She understands what’s expected of her. And any ally of the Zenins we’ll be treated as our own, you’ll have our support in meetings with the higher-ups.”

“Wonderful,” you say, tongue pressed to the back of your teeth as you turn away. “I’ll take my leave then.” You spare a glance at Naoya just long enough for him to know you’re addressing him, not long enough for you to see the expression on his face. “Congratulations. You finally got what you’ve always wanted.”

You don’t wait to hear his response or see how he reacts, making your way out of the tea room, out of the estate. The twins are waiting there still, eyes wide, guilty expressions on their faces. Well, Mai looks guilty, Maki keeps her gaze trained to the ground, very unlike her, so you think that’s her version of guilt.

“You brats could’ve warned me,” you say. Your voice cracks over the words now that you’re not in the presence of people who will feast on your weakness like vultures. “That was messed up.”

“I wanted to,” Mai replies softly, fisting the sleeves of her kimono. “Naobito-sama specifically told us not to.”

“Of course he did,” you scoff, looking away as you make your way out of the estate. What the fuck did you even do to him? Or is he just being an asshole for the love of the game? “Fucking bastard.”

Rain meets you again in the inner courtyard, and you’re grateful you didn’t stay much longer, because you would’ve been pissed if your clothes dried only for you to get soaked again. You cut across the stones, boots splashing through shallow puddles. You need to leave, get out of this wretched fucking estate before you collapse in on yourself. You don’t know how much longer you’re going to be able to hold yourself together.

He’s a fucking asshole, you think, jaw tight. He’s a fucking asshole, both of them, father and son. They can both go fuck off and die, making you stand there through that. Naobito’s stupid, smug expression, Naoya’s silence. Screw them both.

Fuck, why are you so upset? You want to rip out your hair. You’ve known your whole life Naoya was destined for this—it’s just, you’ve gotten used to how things were. He’s yours, he’s been yours for two years, longer than that, he’s been yours for as long as you’ve known him, and you’ve been his the same. Even when the two of you were brawling in dirt and giving each other bloody lips and black eyes, he was yours and you were his, and you don’t need fucking labels to know that. So why does he? Why did he take this so seriously that he went to these lengths? Unless—unless you’ve misunderstood everything this whole time. No, you couldn’t have, that’s not possible.

He is yours. He’s shitty and insufferable, unbearably arrogant and casually cruel, a terrible person all around—he really doesn’t have many redeeming traits at all, when you think about it—but he is still yours, and you don’t want to share him. Not with anybody.

Someone shouts your name from the engawa.

You keep walking.

“What the hell was that? You didn’t even—you didn’t even look at me. Hey! I’m talkin’ to you. Don’t fuckin’ walk away from me. Would you just—fuckin’ wait a second—”

You don’t.

“Hey—don’t just—” Footsteps come fast behind you, splashing unevenly. “Please, fuck.”

That word is what finally makes you stop. You let out a heavy breath and turn around, rain sliding down your face. He halts a few steps away, chest heaving, hair plastered to his forehead, rain darkening his clothes. He looks wrong like this—confused, uncomposed, stripped of the arrogance he usually wears like armor.

“What do you want, Zenin?” you ask flatly.

Naoya’s face tightens instantly. He opens his mouth like he’s about to snap back, then stops himself. Whatever he was going to say died the moment he registered how you addressed him.

“I—” He swallows hard. “Don’t call me that, the hell?”

“Thought it appropriate,” you say distantly. “What do you want?”

“I didn’t know he was gonna invite you,” he finally tells you, dragging a hand through his wet hair. “I didn’t—fuck—I didn’t even know this was happenin’. He just fuckin’ told me to come see him, and they were there, and then you were there, and I just—I didn’t know, okay?”

You hate that it doesn’t even make you feel better. It should. He didn’t know, it wasn’t a scheme, but your heart is still in your throat because—because what does it matter? His father is still going to go through with this. You know how this is going to go; you’ve played these games with him yourself before. The same way Naoya never went to his father to end the engagement with you when the two of you were kids, he won’t now. It’s over. Naobito only threw it in your face now because the deed is done.

“Okay.”

The word comes out flat and dismissive, and it drives him insane.

“Don’t—don’t do that,” he snaps. “Don’t act like you don’t care, like I did it on purpose.”

“Didn’t you?” Your jaw tightens, anger blooming suddenly in your chest because what right does he have to be mad right now? “That was humiliating. That was fucking humiliating, and you didn’t know, whatever, but you just sat there and let it happen. What was that? Supposed to be some sort of punishment because I didn’t give you what you wanted? Fuck you, Naoya. Fuck you—I don’t care how mad I am at you, I never would’ve fucking done this to you. Never.”

“No,” he says, louder this time, teeth gritted. “That’s not—that’s not what it was. It wasn’t… punishment, the fuck? I just—”

“Then what was it?” you demand. Rain runs down your cheeks, your eyes sting. “Because from where I was standing, it looked a hell of a lot like you letting them parade your future in front of me, daring me to say something, knowing that I can’t.”

“That’s not—” he starts, then stops, blinking twice. “That’s not what that was. Don’t put that on me, the hell? You think I enjoyed that? That I liked watchin’ that happen?”

“No? You didn’t? You get mad at me, and tell me that you don’t need me, don’t talk to me for a month, and then I’m called to the Zenin estate so your father can give me a heads up that you’re getting fucking engaged to someone?” Your voice breaks. You inhale deeply to calm yourself down. “You’re telling me that’s not you being spiteful and angry? Purposely trying to hurt me?”

Naoya exhales hard through his nose. “Alright,” he says stiffly. “It looks bad, but that’s not what it was—”

“Then why the hell did you just sit there?” you ask furiously. “You could’ve said something, could’ve spoken up, but you just sat there and let him fucking humiliate me.”

He opens his mouth, then closes it again, jaw working like he’s trying to force the right words out and keeps failing. You should walk away—you don’t know why you haven’t yet.

“I didn’t sit there because I was tryna hurt you,” he says, voice rough. “I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t make shit worse.”

“Bullshit, you—”

“I thought you’d say somethin’,” he interrupts. Of course he’s blaming you, you think furiously. Always your fault somehow. He can never accept responsibility for anything. “You always do. I figured—” His jaw clenches. “I figured I could shut it down after. Instead, ya just acted like you didn’t care and left. Didn’t even fuckin’ look at me.”

You let out a bitter laugh. “So it’s my fault. You wanted me to save you.”

“That’s not what I said,” he snaps. “Don’t twist it.”

“Fuck you, Naoya,” you say again, tired this time. “I never would’ve done this to you. Never. Just leave me the fuck alone. I’m done with this.”

“Wait—come on,” he says, strained as he realizes how serious you are. “Ya don’t have to go. I didn’t know this was happening. We can—fuck, we can figure it out, alright? I didn’t—”

“Figure what out?” you ask with a scoff. “You already did on your own. Have a happy marriage.”

“That’s not fair,” he argues, anger and defensiveness draining into something rawer. “I didn’t—I didn’t choose this. I swear I didn’t. I told you, I didn’t even know that was happening.” He catches himself slipping up and throws up the walls again, voice sharpening, expression twisting. “And—and what the fuck do you care so much for anyway? You said you didn’t want me, you said—”

You start turning away mid-sentence. You don’t want to hear this, don’t care for whatever twisted narrative he’s using to justify what he did. You just want to go home—you want to—you don’t even know what you want anymore. Frustration builds in your chest, and that awful lump is forming in your throat again. You need to go. You need—

Naoya grabs your wrist to stop you from leaving, and you whirl around, open palm striking his cheek so hard that his head snaps to the side. He could’ve dodged it easily, but he doesn’t. He blinks, stunned, cheek blooming red, rain sliding down his jaw, your arm still extended. Your vision is blurry, and you blame it on the rain instead of tears.

“... Okay,” he says, jaw tight as he stares off to the side, exhaling sharply. “You can—y’can hit me again, if ya want. Just… just listen to what I have to say, fuck.”

Your hand drops, fingers curling in on themselves as the sting finally catches up with you. The rain is coming down harder now, drowning out your voices to any unwelcome ears. You don’t answer him, so he speaks up again, desperately trying to get you to listen to him

“I didn’t know what to do,” he says, hands fisted at his side. “You—I waited a month. You didn’t say anything or come to see me. I thought you were done. For real this time. I—”

“Why the fuck is that on me?” you demand. “You could’ve said something, could’ve come to see me. You were the one who said you didn’t need me, told me to go fuck myself.”

“You said you didn’t want me first,” Naoya fires back, loud and frustrated. “You said you didn’t want me, and my old man started talkin’ about alliances and heirs and responsibilities, and I—I can’t just fuckin’ wait around for someone who doesn’t want me—what was I supposed to do? Say something in there, just for you to—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head and looking away. His hand loosens around your wrist, but doesn’t let go, fingers trembling now that the anger’s burned out of him. “I was scared,” he admits, face twisting like the words taste bad in his mouth. “There. Ya happy? I didn’t know if you were waitin’ for me to fight or if you were already gone—I was waiting for you to clue me in on where we stand, so I didn’t fuck up everything more than it already was.”

“I never fucking said that, Naoya,” you say, scoffing. “You always fucking do this—take shit and run with it with some warped story that fits your narrative. I never said I didn’t want you. You didn’t even let me finish talking back then. It was never about not wanting you. Why the fuck do labels matter so much to you?”

“Because it matters,” he hisses, then stops himself, jaw clenching. “Not to you, apparently, but it does to me.”

“Why, though?” you ask him. “Tell me why.”

“Because I don’t do things halfway,” he says through his teeth, “and I don’t like not knowing where I stand. You don’t get to keep things just vague enough so that you can walk whenever you feel like it.”

“You can’t actually think that’s why,” you say with an incredulous laugh. “Naoya—”

“Then why fight me on this?” he interrupts, voice rising, strained. “Why the fuck fight me on this unless you’re just keeping me around until something better shows up?”

Your lips part in shock. “Naoya, what—?”

“Don’t pretend that’s not what it is,” he spits defensively. “You get what you want from now—company, money, whatever the fuck it is you want—and then one day you’re gonna wake up and decide it’s time to marry someone else. I’m not stupid, I know how this works. You don’t get to string me along, good enough to stay as long as nothing’s real, so you can walk free when another person comes along. So, I gotta do what I gotta do, I’m gonna be clan head, and if you’re just leadin’ me on, not serious about this, I need—”

Oh.

The words hit harder than you expect, drowning out the rest of whatever he’s saying. You’ve heard this fear before, dressed up differently, buried under arrogance and cruelty, but it’s the same wound you’ve watched him carry since you were kids. The tight jaw, the way his nails dig into his palms enough to draw blood, the insecurity he’s desperately trying to hide beneath pride and anger. This has nothing to do with labels or relationships or even you. You think you should’ve realized it sooner than this; you spent over ten years dealing with the Zenins, and you know better than anyone that Naoya learned early that he’s only valuable so long as he performs perfectly, and the moment he falters, someone else is waiting to try to take his place.

It clicks suddenly why labels matter to him so much—why ambiguity feels like a threat instead of freedom, and why he can’t stand the idea of something so important to him being undefined, one bad day from being replaced. Unnamed things don’t last; they get tossed aside the second they stop being useful, he has learned that firsthand time and time again. He’s centered his whole identity around a title that his father can take away on a whim, and has threatened to do time and time again if he doesn’t live up to his impossible standards. Now he feels secure in his title, and he was trying to center his future around you, but he was thrown back into the same limbo he endured his entire childhood.

You’re an idiot, you think, gaze shifting up to the stormy skies, but so is he. You two really are made for each other.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Naoya scoffs, looking away from you, crossing his arms over his chest. “Don’t fuckin’ psychoanalyze me. That’s not what this is.”

“Naoya,” you say, and he uncharacteristically goes quiet, watching you from the corner of his eye, body tense. “I didn’t want the labels because I didn’t want to mess things up with them. I didn’t want to lose you. I didn’t—” You cut yourself off from what you’re about to say, sighing and looking away. It sounds silly when you say it out loud. “I didn’t think I could handle that. Losing you on top of everything else. So I just wanted to keep things as they’ve always been. I didn’t want anything to change.”

“That’s twisted,” he tells you quietly after a moment, jaw tight, not meeting your gaze. “The fuck is a label gonna change? S’just a word.”

You swallow and scoff lightly.

“Well,” you add, “guess it doesn’t matter now anyway, does it?”

“It does matter,” he argues. “It still matters. We can—I’ll fix it.”

You let out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh, shaking your head slightly as you look away.

“I mean it,” he insists. “I’ll talk to my old man. I’ll call it off. I don’t give a shit what he says—I’ll make it stop. I don’t want her, I don’t want anyone—I want you. I’ve always wanted you, even back when we were kids, alright? Shit, can't believe you'remakin’ me admit this. I—”

“Naoya—”

“I’m serious,” he continues before you can tell him to stop. “I’m serious, okay? I didn’t really understand it back then, but it’s true. You were fuckin’ awful, and you were everything I was taught to hate, but I couldn’t stop wanting you anyway. You were loud and aggressive, and y’never did what you were supposed to, and—and you were always there. Every time I hesitated, every time my father tore into me, every time I fucked something up and didn’t know how to fix it. You were an asshole about it. You mocked me, and called me an idiot, and kicked the back of my knees when no one was lookin’, but you were there. And I kept telling myself I hated you, and you were a problem I couldn’t shake, but I never went to my old man to tell him I didn’t want the arrangement. I could’ve, and I knew ya wanted me to. I had so many chances—he asked me after all of your visits, and every time, I told him that it was fine. I always wanted you, and it scared the shit outta me, because you never needed this place or the Zenin name, and you didn’t want the rules and all the expectations, and you didn’t need or want me, but I—” His eyes slide shut as he forces out the last bit. “—I needed you… I still need ya.”

You swallow hard, arms wrapped around your torso as you stare at him. He lets out a breathless laugh, looking down at the ground before he turns his gaze up to the sky.

“Fuck,” he says, pressing his hands to his face. “Fuck, look at how you’ve got me actin’. This is so fuckin’ embarrassing.”

He drops his hands, limp at his side, and he looks at you again, eyes red and unfocused in a way that makes your chest ache.

“Say somethin’ already,” he mutters.

You can’t. Your throat’s tight, lungs burning like you forgot how to breathe somewhere between his confession and the way he’s looking at you right now. You don’t know what to say right now that won’t lead to you right back into his arms, his bedroom, his bed, and you can’t—not until this is all worked out. Not until you know he’s yours again, only yours. You won’t settle for anything less.

“You’re an asshole,” you finally tell him, letting out a sharp breath and looking away. You nod your chin over to the main house, and then look him in the eye. “You figure things out here and then come find me.”

Naoya blinks at you, like he’s not sure he heard you right.

“…That’s it?” he asks hoarsely. “That’s all you’ve gotta say to me after all that?”

“Yeah,” you tell him, turning away from him. “I don’t have anything else to say to you right now. Get things handled here, then maybe I’ll have more to say.”

“You’re really somethin’ else, y’know that?” he says bitterly. “Don’t you have a heart? I just poured mine out to you, and that’s all you’re gonna give me? Every time I think you can’t be more of a bitch, you prove me wrong.”

You flip him off over your shoulder as you walk away.

“Can’t you—” he starts to ask, aggravated, but then he sighs. “At least tell me I’m not doin’ this for nothing. I’ll go in there and burn it all down, if that’s what ya want me to do, but you can’t—ya can’t just drop me and go runnin’ off with someone else when you get the first chance. It’s us, alright, you and me—no more one foot in shit.”

You look at him over your shoulder, a small smile curving at your lips. “Naoya, you’re an idiot if you ever thought it was anyone else. It’s always been you and me.”

————————

Two weeks later, Naoya shows up at your doorstep. It’s raining again, and when you open the door, he stands there with an uncharacteristically dull look in his eyes, circles beneath them. He looks… wrecked. His hair is matted to his forehead, and there’s a faint bruise along his jaw, yellowed like it’s days old. He’s dressed simply in a dark jacket and a plain shirt, none of the traditional wear he usually dons. His throat bobs when his gaze meets yours.

For a moment, neither of you says anything.

“Hey,” he says after a moment, voice subdued.

“Hi,” you reply.

He pauses, nostrils flaring slightly as he inhales, gaze flicking past you into your apartment, and then back to you. His lips part, tongue darting out to wet them as he tells you quietly, “You… said to come find you after I handled everything.”

“I did.”

“Well,” he mutters, eyes shifting up to the ceiling. You think the conversation with his father must not have gone well, because he seems too exhausted to even put up the pretense of pride. “Here I am.”

You stare at him for a moment. He looks anywhere but your face—behind you, above you, at the sweatshirt you’re wearing and the socks on your feet. His gaze doesn’t lift to your face until you step out of the way, pushing the door open a little wider.

“Are you gonna keep dripping in the hallway, or are you gonna come in?” you ask him, and Naoya exhales in relief.

He slips off his shoes and steps inside, hanging his jacket up next to yours, and you shut the door behind him. He stands awkwardly in the middle of your apartment, like he isn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He turns to look at you again, as though he’s waiting for you to say something, and you raise your eyebrows at him briefly, becoming more and more concerned with each passing second.

To try to lessen the awkwardness, you give him a half-smile and tell him, “You look like shit,” and the tension in his shoulders eases. He lets out a breathless laugh, gaze lifting to meet yours, the gold still swimming with uncertainty. You glance back toward your bedroom and say, “Wait here.”

You feel his gaze trailing after you as you disappear down the short hallway, and you dart over to your dresser, pulling out a pair of his sweats and a t-shirt for him to change into. When you come back out, he’s standing exactly where you left him, rainwater pooling faintly at his feet. He looks up when you reappear, startled, like he’d been lost in his own head.

You hold the clothes out to him. “Change. Maybe go take a hot shower, too. It’s freezing out there, and you’re soaked.”

He blinks at the fabric in your hand, a conflicted expression on his face, and when he reaches out to curl his fingers around the clothes, he glances up at you. Quieter than you’ve ever heard him, he asks, “Y’sure?”

You can still send me away, he says, without saying anything at all.

Quit it with the woe is me bullshit, you answer instead when you raise your eyebrows at him and say, “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“... Right.” He hesitates, then adds, awkwardly, “Okay.”

You busy yourself in the kitchen when he goes down the hall to your bedroom. You put a kettle on, wipe down a counter that’s already clean, anything to keep from sitting here agonizing over what happened between him and his father, wondering why he looks so exhausted, stripped of his usual arrogance and venom. The sound of the shower starts, muffled through the walls, and you let out a heavy breath, eyes sliding shut as you lean against the counter.

Shit, you think.

When he finally comes back out, he looks less awkward, but no less tired. The sweatpants hang low on his hips, and the t-shirt you gave him drapes over his shoulders in a way that makes him look… younger. It’s… terribly domestic, you think, as he shifts, barefoot in your kitchen, hair damp and pushed back from his face, and instead of the panic that usually swells in your chest when you think of a life with Naoya beyond what you already have, something warm settles in your chest.

“So?” you finally ask him, pouring him a cup of tea and making your way over to the couch.

You sit cross-legged on it, waiting for him to join you, and he does, very slowly, hands resting on his knees, posture unusually stiff. You press your lips together and offer him the tea. His fingers brush yours as he takes it from you, lifting it to his lips.

“You still make awful fuckin’ tea,” he mutters, which you take as a good sign, so you roll your eyes and kick your foot out to hit his thigh. His hand darts down to grab your ankle before you can pull it back, dragging your calf over his lap. Your throat feels tight as he rests his hand there, thumb gliding along your bare skin. “I talked to him.”

“I figured,” you say quietly. “What happened?”

“He didn’t like it,” Naoya says after a moment, staring down at the surface of the tea, “but it’s done. Told him I wouldn’t go through with it. He threw a fit, said I was embarrassing the clan, thinkin’ with my dick. Threatened to disinherit me.”

Your eyes widen slightly, heart sinking. It’s exactly what you feared, you—

“He didn’t,” Naoya continues quickly when he sees your reaction. You only relax marginally, brows furrowing as you watch him. “I called him on the bluff. Told him to do it, said he wouldn’t. He got real pissed.”

Oh, you think, lips parting in disbelief.

You… did not anticipate that Naoya would call him on his bluff like that. A part of you was trying to brace yourself for the end of… well, whatever this is, because Naoya never went to his father back when you were kids to try to get the arrangement canceled. Though he claims now that it was because he didn’t want it to end, you still have your doubts, because Naoya, until recently, has always been quite reluctant to get on his father’s bad side. And ending an engagement and destroying an alliance between the Zenins and another clan would certainly be enough to make Naobito apocalyptic—you know Naoya well enough to know that he’ll put his inheritance over everything, even you.

Except, clearly you were wrong in every regard in those assumptions. Even if he was confident that Naobito wouldn’t really disinherit him, so there was no risk there, the fact that he was even willing to go to that length… You don’t know what to think about that, and you hate how it makes your chest feel tight.

Shit.

You shift closer before you can stop yourself, lifting your hand up to cradle his jaw in your palm. You run your thumb along his bruised skin. His eyes slide shut as he leans into your touch, breath trembling as he exhales. You ask quietly, “He hit you?”

Naoya snorts lightly, but doesn’t reopen his eyes. “Tried. Got one good shot in before the old bastard realized I’m not a kid anymore.” His lashes flutter as he looks up at you, gold horribly soft as his gaze traces your face. “He’s not gonna keep pushing. Told him if he ever tried to pull shit like that again with me that I’d walk.” Your breath catches, eyes widening slightly. “He didn’t think I meant it at first, but he realized real quick I did. Told you, ya didn’t believe me a couple years ago, but he can’t afford to lose me now. None of my trash brothers are cut out to take over the clan. Everything’ll be fine. I’ll just… stay here ‘til he calms down. ‘Til I feel like going back… If you’ll have me.”

“Idiot,” you murmur fondly, fingers sliding from his jaw to the back of his head, threading loosely with his damp hair. “As if I’d turn you away.”

Naoya’s throat bobs as his eyes search your face—you don’t know what he’s looking for, but you’re not sure if he finds it, because his lips press together briefly before he swallows thickly, gaze flicking away.

“I want you,” he tells you. “I know you don’t want labels, and we don’t need ‘em right now, if it’s still what ya want, but I want you. This. Us. I don’t want anyone or anything else, and I don’t want this to just be some vague thing we won’t name ‘cause we’re scared it’ll break if we look at it too hard. ‘Cause it won’t.” He exhales, gaze shifting up to the ceiling like he’s trying to will himself the strength to say whatever he wants to say next. He continues, voice quiet, “I want to call you mine. I’m not tryna fuckin’ cage you, or box whatever mess this is into something, if that’s what you’re thinkin’. I just—I wanna know what this is. I don’t wanna be trapped in some weird limbo, not with you.”

You don’t respond right away, because his jaw tightens like he still has more to say, but your heart is racing in your chest, and you’re gnawing on the inside of your cheek. You knew this—you knew this is what he’s wanted, and you’ve had ample time to prepare yourself for this, but it’s still different hearing him say it out loud.

Different when you don’t feel the rush of panic you first felt when he ambushed you with this a month and a half ago.

Different when you think, maybe, that you might want this too.

It was never really about the labels for you. You just don’t want anything to change, but it’s you and Naoya—and you won’t admit out loud that he’s right, but he is, because what the hell is a word going to change? You’re his, and he’s yours—he’s still the same douchebag he was fifteen years ago, and you’re still the same as you were. You’ve never been able to imagine your life without him, so who the fuck cares what the two of you are called as long as you get him in your apartment, barefoot, damp hair, curled up with you on your couch in sweats?

“And one day,” he finally adds, softer now, gold eyes drifting back over to you as you lean your head against the back of the couch, watching him carefully, “I want ya to be my wife.”

You inhale sharply through your nose, lips parting, and Naoya rushes to continue, face flaming up. “Not now, I mean—one day. I don’t—I don’t need another woman in my life, you’re too much as it is,” he spits, that familiar defensiveness creeping back in when he realizes exactly what he just admitted to you. He sighs after a moment, shoulders slumping, voice more serious as he continues, “I just—I don’t want anyone else standin’ there. Never have. When I picture my life—really picture it—you’re there. Every time. And I’m sick of us dancing around that, so y’need to know that this is real for me. It’s always been real.”

Is it real for you? he asks you without asking anything at all.

His shoulders are tense, like he’s bracing himself for rejection, and his fingers curl slightly around your calf, twitching, as though he doesn’t really know what to do with his hands. His eyes keep flicking back over to you, waiting for you to say something, and you let out a soft sigh, sitting up a little straighter, shifting closer. Your hand slips from the back of his head to his cheek again, thumb brushing lightly along the corner of his mouth.

And then, you laugh.

You don’t mean to laugh, and Naoya doesn’t even register you’re laughing at first, brows furrowing, but when you try to stop, you only find yourself laughing harder, leaning your forehead against his shoulder as you try to calm yourself down, but hysteria bubbles in your chest and tears pool in your eyes.

“The fuck?” Naoya demands, furious. “The hell is the matter with you? Are you seriously laughing at me right now?”

“No,” you try to say, but devolve into another fit of giggles. “I promise, I promise. Just—gimme a second, okay?”

“Sure fuckin’ sounds like it,” Naoya hisses, but he pointedly doesn’t shove you away like he usually would when you piss him off, and he’s incredibly tense, so you try to force yourself to settle down. “You’re so unbelievable, y’know that? Heartless bitch. I can’t stand you.’

“It’s just—” you try to say, letting out another snort, eyes sliding shut as you will yourself to stop laughing. “I just could not imagine telling our younger selves that we’re sitting here, telling each other we want to spend the rest of our lives together after all the shit we put each other through.”

You finally manage to get the laughter under control, wiping at the corner of your eyes with the heel of your hand. Your forehead stays pressed to his shoulder for a second longer than necessary, and Naoya is still rigid beneath you, waiting for you to properly respond to what he said, one wrong word from bolting.

You rest your chin on his shoulder, lean in to brush your lips against his jaw, and the tension finally slips away. He sighs, sinking back into the couch, turning his head slightly to the side so he can look at you properly.

“It’s funny, admit it,” you say with a small smile. He rolls his eyes. “If I told six-year-old me that I’d be sitting on a couch with you, listening to you talk about wanting to marry me, I would’ve assumed you’d finally lost your mind.”

He lets out a huff that you think is laughter.

“And if you told eight-year-old you that you’d be saying all this to me, he’d probably punch you in the face for being embarrassing,” you add, amused, “and then call you a liar.”

Naoya’s lips finally curl up into a half-smile. “... Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“I won’t be the wife you want, y’know?” you remind him quietly, more serious now, watching his face carefully. “If we get there one day, things aren’t gonna magically change. I’m not going to magically change. I’m still gonna argue with you, and insult you, and I’m not going to stay home and be safe—I’m a sorcerer, and I have my own clan to worry about, too, now. I don’t fit into the Zenin’s idea of what a perfect wife looks like, and I know that’s what you’ve wanted since, well, forever.”

Naoya gives you a long look and a tired smile. “I’ve known you for fifteen years. Ya think I don’t know what I’m gettin’ myself into?” he counters, shifting so that he can face you. He lifts his hand up to cradle your cheek in the palm of your hand, and you let out a shaky breath that you didn’t even realize you were holding. You’re not sure why your eyes suddenly feel a bit wet, and you’re doubly unsure why your throat feels swollen—maybe because you’re not used to this kind of intimacy with him. “You fucked up everything I thought I wanted the moment you stepped into my life and punched me in the face. I want you exactly like this—arguin’ with me, callin’ me out, kickin’ the back of my knees when I deserve it. ” He winks at you, lips curling up into a faint smirk. “Keeps me honest.”

You let out a breathless laugh, leaning slightly into his touch. “It’s not going to be easy,” you warn him. Your lashes flutter when his thumb brushes over your bottom lip. “It’s really not going to be easy. Your father and the rest of your clan will be pissed… and the higher-ups hate me, so they’ll hate that the Zenin heir is—”

“Who cares?” he interrupts. “They can all go to hell. I’m going to be the next clan head, so none of what any of ‘em say matters.”

You sigh and shake your head. You say again, “I’m serious, Naoya, it’s not gonna be easy, we—”

“I’m serious, too,” he cuts you off, frowning as he forces you to look at him again. “I’m serious. Who the fuck cares what they have to say? What the hell can they do to us?”

You stare at him, chest suddenly tight for a whole other reason, because you know very well what the higher-ups are capable of when they decide they don’t like something and want it out of the way. Naoya seems to realize what you’re getting at, because he lets out a puff of air and glances away briefly.

“We’ll figure it out,” he tells you. “Everything always works out for us, doesn’t it?”

You roll your eyes. “It never fails to astound me how you act like the world just exists to give you everything you want.”

“Well, it gave me you, didn’t it?”

The two of you look at each other, pausing briefly, and then you both burst into laughter. You press your hand into his face and push him away, wheezing as you say, “Enough, that was too corny even for me. Get out of here. I can’t stand you.”

He lets himself be shoved, flopping back against the cushions and tossing his arm over his face. “Shit, almost made myself sick,” he mutters, and then props himself up on his elbow to look at you with a sharp grin. “Y’know, most women would be properly romanced with a line like that, y’ungrateful bitch.”

“Most women don’t know you,” you counter.

“Tragic for them.”

You snort, knocking your fist against his thigh. “They should be counting their blessings, actually.”

He grins and then reaches out to snatch your wrist before you can pull back. He pulls you closer to him so that you’re straddling his hips, one arm slinking around your waist as he pushes himself into a sitting position. You lift your hand to cradle the back of his head, fingers threading through his blonde hair, and then you lean in to press your lips against his. Naoya lets out a soft breath into your mouth, arm tightening around your waist, one hand coming up to cup your cheek. Most of your kisses are rough and messy, but this one is chaste, unhurried, savoring in each other’s presence. Naoya hums softly against your mouth, something pleased and content, and when you pull back just enough to breathe, his forehead tips forward to rest against yours, eyes slide shut.

“It’s us,” he says quietly, exhaling as he presses his face into the crook of your neck. “You and me. No more one foot in shit.”

You let out a huff of laughter, leaning down to press your lips to the top of his head. “It’s always been us, dumbass.”

————————

2015 | READER, AGE 22; NAOYA, AGE 24

Naoya stays at your place more often than not that year, and you learn, very quickly, that he is a terrible roommate.

It starts small. You find his jacket draped over the back of a chair instead of hung up. His shoes are kicked off haphazardly by the door of your apartment. Cups migrate from the kitchen to the living room to the bedroom, and never make the return trip. You try to be patient—you really do—but not only is he completely useless in a shared space, he also doesn’t care to even put up a front of trying to be helpful.

(You tilt your head to the side, watching him leave an empty mug on the counter, turning away like the problem has simply ceased to exist once it's served its use. You clear your throat pointedly, and he pauses, giving you a questioning look. You look down at the mug, then back up to his face, raising your eyebrows.

“... What?”

“Are you just going to leave that there?”

Naoya blinks. “Yeah?”

You stare at him. He stares back.

“... It’s empty,” he adds, like that explains everything.

“So, clean it,” you say slowly.

“... Why?”

“Did you just ask why?” you ask, voice riddled with disbelief. “Who the fuck do you think is going to clean it?”

He pauses like he’s genuinely considering the question. “Well—I don’t know, actually. They’ve just been disappearing when I leave them around.”

Your eyes slide shut, willing yourself the patience not to strangle him. “Clean the mug, or so help me, I will put Nair in your shampoo.”)

He doesn’t do laundry. Doesn’t know how the trash system works. Stares at the dishwasher like it might attack him if he presses the wrong button. He uses all of your hair products and skin care, no matter how many times you tell him not to touch your shit. The first time you asked him to help clean, he stood in the middle of the apartment with a sponge in one hand and a bottle of cleaner in the other, scowling as though you’d personally offended him by even putting these things in his general vicinity.

Living with Naoya, you think, is the most infuriating experience of your life. He has no sense of maintenance. If something is clean, it is because it has always been clean, not because someone cleaned it after he dirtied it, and if something is dirty, it’s because it has become dirty, through no fault of his own, of course, so he shouldn’t have to lower himself to clean it. This is, apparently, how his world works, and it astounds you, because you don’t even think your brothers were this bad, and they had the same silver spoon treatment as Naoya.

(“The hell am I supposed to do with this?” he demands.

“Wipe things, smart one,” you say dryly, trying to figure out how the hell he managed to get the sink clogged.

“Where?”

You gesture behind you vaguely. “Surfaces, Naoya. My fucking god, do you need someone to tell you how to wipe your ass, too?”

Through gritted teeth, he demands, “Why can’t ya just bring one of your attendants from the estate to your apartment? Better yet, I’ll bring one of our servants to—”

“Wipe the fucking counter, Naoya!”)

Still, you find yourself enjoying the months of Naoya’s rebellion, because, as infuriating as he is to deal with, you have fun forcing him to do things around the apartment with you. There’s always a running commentary of complaints and insults, saying it’s inefficient and beneath him, and if anyone back at the Zenin estate ever saw him scrubbing a countertop, his reputation would be thoroughly ruined—to which you naturally echo his words about how ‘none of what any of them say matters anyway,’ much to his distinct displeasure—but it’s entertaining, at least, and you get some good pictures of him doing housework out of it.

It almost becomes a strange sort of ritual for the two of you. Music playing low from your phone, you leaning back against the counter, watching him do things badly on purpose just to prove a point. Despite all the noise he makes, there’s something easy about it. Domestic in a way that creeps up on you. You start to notice that Naoya complains less when you’re doing it together. He’ll still talk shit, but he won’t get bored and wander off, and he’ll start asking where things go instead of leaving them wherever they land. He still, naturally, throws a hissy fit if you point any of this out, but you can’t help yourself from teasing him.

It’s nice, you decide, even if Naoya is a pain to live with, and you allow yourself to become used to it when you know you shouldn’t have, because it was never going to last.

(“You’re starting to make a decent house husband,” you tell him one day, slinking your arms around his waist from behind as you peek over his shoulder to look at the mug he cleaned without your prompting. “It’s cute.”

Naoya turns to look at you over his shoulder so slowly that you think he must be trying to convince himself he didn’t hear properly what you just said. He tells you, “If ya ever say such disgusting shit t’me ever again, I’ll make ya regret it. House husband. The fuck is the matter with ya?”

He scowls as he storms away from the sink, and you laugh as you follow after him. “I’m just saying, you went on and on about making a proper wife out of me, and I’m making more progress in three months than you made in ten years.”

“Bitch.”)

When summer rolls around, you’re not back at your apartment too often anymore, so the time you share there becomes briefer and more sporadic—weekends, if you’re lucky, but hardly ever during the week. You have matters to attend to at your clan’s estate that you can’t delegate to your uncle or cousins, and it’s a busy summer with curses that popped up from the winter. Naoya used to come with you to your estate, but after a bad run-in with Naobito, when the man stopped by unannounced to talk about an upcoming meeting with representatives of the higher-ups, Naoya didn't ask to come along again.

(“Still off playing house, are you, boy?” Naobito asks dryly when he sees Naoya standing beside you, gaze flicking over him, unimpressed. “When are you going to tire of this little rebellion? It’s getting boring.”

Naoya’s lip curls up in annoyance. “Why are you here?” he asks flatly. “Don’t ya got better things to do than hang around another clan’s estate? And you wonder why we got so many problems to deal with.”

Naobito’s gaze drifts back over to you, openly dismissing Naoya, as though his own son and heir isn’t even worth his own time. Naoya scoffs, rolling his eyes, and Naobito tells you, “Come. There are logistics to go over before Wednesday's meeting. We should be on the same page.”

You exchange a long look with Naoya before nodding and making your way to the tea room.

Naoya is gone before the meeting is over.)

You never learn exactly what went down between Naoya and his father.

You don’t press when he makes it clear he doesn’t want to say anymore than what he did that day he showed up on your doorstep, but whatever happened, you think it irreversibly changed their relationship. Naoya still goes to meetings, and trains the Hei, and prepares for his role as heir, but he no longer bends himself in knots trying to anticipate Naobito’s moods or approval. You suppose he hasn’t for years, but it’s different now, more apathetic in how he goes about it. When his phone lights up with his father’s name, he lets it ring or silences it. Once, he deletes the missed call without comment and goes back to trying to figure out how to put together your new bookshelf after you insisted that he’d never be able to, tricking him into doing it for you.

You think this was always bound to happen. Naobito held power over Naoya for a long, long time, but it was never sustainable. Naoya was raised on hierarchy and obedience, yes, but more than that, he was raised on entitlement—the unshakable belief that he was meant to stand at the top, not bow his head indefinitely. Fear gave his father power when he was younger, when Naobito’s shadow was still big enough to blot out the horizon of the future Naoya was promised, and Naoya still equated a night in the discipline pit with pain and humiliation and loss of standing. But fear as a leash only works for so long, and Naobito only held that leash so long as Naoya believed his future could still be taken from him.

Whatever happened that day cracked the illusion clean in half. Just like how his fury toward his brothers and their scheming shifted into bored amusement, Naoya’s fear of his father becomes casual indifference.

(“Why did you do it?” you ask Naobito one day as the two of you make your way out of Jujutsu Headquarters in Hokkaido. The man raises his eyebrows as he walks down the steps to the car waiting for the two of you, beckoning you to elaborate. “You ended me and Naoya’s engagement for no reason, and then the moment you thought there was a rift between us, you rushed him into another one and then brought me there to humiliate me. Do you really hate me that much?”

Naobito casts you a side-long glance as the driver steps out of the car to open the door for the two of you. Naobito slides into the back seat, and you scoff before sitting with him, barely withholding a roll of your eyes as you angle yourself to the window. Naobito settles back against the leather and tips his head back against the headrest, eyes sliding shut. The driver closes the door, and it’s only once the car starts to pull away from the curb that he finally speaks.

“That boy has never been the ideal son or heir,” Naobito says firmly after a moment. “He is arrogant and impulsive and too easily distracted by his own whims and things that don’t serve the clan. If I had any other acceptable sons, I would have replaced him years ago. Unfortunately, he’s the only one who inherited a proper technique.”

“You say that as if he isn’t exactly what you raised him to be,” you say with a huff of laughter, though you’re not particularly amused, folding your arms over your chest. “What did you expect? I knew from our first meeting that he was an insufferable pick, and he’d grow up to be an even more insufferable prick. You raise a kid to think the world bends to everything he wants, and then you’re surprised he acts like it does? Come on.”

“Watch your tongue, girl,” Naobito warns you, gaze cutting to the side. “You’ve become far too casual with me.”

“I don’t care about your relationship with Naoya,” you say, and it’s a lie, but you care more about figuring out what the hell his problem is with you. “Why do you have to drag me into it? How are we supposed to work together at these meetings with the higher-ups and the other clans when you’re actively trying to humiliate me behind closed doors?”

“Because he has never been so irrational and out of control as he is when it comes to you,” Naobito scoffs. “He was never supposed to listen forever, a clan head does not take orders from anyone, even his own father, but especially not an outsider, and a woman at that. You became an issue the moment he let you start distracting him. I thought that removing you from the picture by ending the engagement would eliminate the issue, but I hadn’t realized how deeply your claws had already sunk in.”

You roll your eyes. “My claws sunk in,” you echo mockingly. “You act like I’m some sort of demon, or something. That’s ridiculous. So you want me gone, is that it?”

“Did I say that, girl?” Naobito asks, irritated. “Your clan is a valuable ally. What I want is for that stupid boy to understand that you are not his wife, nor will you ever be, and he needs to get that through his thick skull before he ruins himself for something that was never his to begin with. And if you cared about him half as much as you appear to, you would take a step back and let him do what he needs to do instead of hovering around muddying the picture. If he can’t get his head on straight and make decisions that are best for the clan, instead of chasing the skirts—” his gaze flicks over you with distaste, and he corrects, “—pants of some woman, then perhaps he’s not fit the role at all.”

Your gaze snaps over to him, assessing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Naobito raises his eyebrows slightly, not even sparing you a glance.

“Did he ever tell you why he failed his first promotion to Special Grade One?” Naobito asks, suddenly so amused that it makes your skin crawl.

Your lips part. It was so long ago, but you remember that day vividly—getting to the Zenin estate early, watching Naoya get belittled by Naobito in front of them all. You recall being angry—at him, at Naobito, at the situation.

“He said that it was his partner’s fault,” you say after a moment, and you know as soon as the words are spoken aloud that it’s a lie. You went through the promotion process, too, now, so you know that he wouldn’t have had a partner for that final mission. You add reluctantly, “He lied.”

“Mm,” Naobito hums in agreement. “Stupid boy tried to lie to me, too. Unfortunately for him, I was given the mission report by the two supervising sorcerers. For a grade one, the curse was fairly weak—a low ball, so the Zenin heir could obtain his promotion without issue. It was a parasitic type of curse, relied on hallucinations. Annoying, but trivial for someone of his skill; very low raw output, cursed energy-wise, but sneaky. Very sneaky.”

Your heart sinks as you stare at the older man, taking in a shallow breath. Hallucinations. Parasitic. Your gut knows where this is going before Naobito even tells you. You remember the way Naoya struggled to look at you after, how defeated he was, the way he got so angry when you brought it up during your reunion four years ago. You vaguely remember what he said: blaming a partner he didn’t actually have, a woman who wasn’t actually there, and the snide comment about emotions and how it wasn’t his fault. Your eyes slide shut, and you hear the smile in Naobito’s voice as he continues.

“Clever girl. You understand now, don’t you?” he drawls. Your jaw tightens, fingernails digging into the fabric of your pants. “It mimicked you perfectly. Your voice, mannerisms, appearance. Drew it right from him—”

“Bullshit,” you interrupt, exhaling harshly as you turn to look at him, accusing. “Naoya isn’t stupid. He would’ve figured it out instantly.”

“He did,” Naobito scoffs. “Immediately. He identified it as the curse within seconds, and then he went to exorcise it, could’ve ended it in one clean motion, and the idiot boy got stuck in one of his own frames instead, nearly got himself killed because of it. Projection Sorcery demands commitment—perfect timing and perfect decisiveness. You hesitate even for a fraction of a second, and the technique punishes you for it. He knows that, and he hesitated anyway, because it had your face and spoke with your voice.”

You feel sick, lashes fluttering as you look away from Naobito, turning your gaze to the passing trees outside the car window. You try to steady your breath, ignore the ringing in your ears, but it’s impossible.

“That is why I ended the engagement seven years ago, and that is why I took advantage of the rift between the two of you to try to sever whatever… this is completely,” Naobito finishes. “Attachment is a liability, and a clan head cannot afford a hesitation that costs him his life. I will not have the future head of Zenin frozen in place by a woman. Do you understand now? If you were half as smart as I like to believe you are, you would realize that whatever it is the two of you are—it’s going to get both of you killed one day.”)

————————

“Oh wow,” you say, gaze sliding around your apartment. There are no dishes in the sink, there’s no trash overflowing from the garbage bin, and there’s even food on the stove. “Did you… clean? And cook? Am I, like, in the twilight zone or something?”

Naoya sneers at you from where he’s lounging on the couch, scrolling on his phone. “Don’t mention it, alright? Got bored, and all the shit layin’ around was annoying me. Didn’t think you were gonna be home for another two days, otherwise I woulda left it for you to deal with.”

Your lips curl up into an amused smile as you shrug off your jacket, hanging it up before you make your way over to him. His gaze flicks up to you, setting his phone on the table as you approach him, a slow smirk creeping onto his lips. He tips his head back to look up at you, eyes half-lidded as you settle on his lap, hands finding your hips.

“Don’t mention it? And here I was gonna reward you for being so good to me,” you say, lifting your hand to cradle the back of his head, brushing your lips against his. “Guess I won’t then.”

Naoya hums, lazy and content as he leans in to press his lips against yours more firmly. You let out a soft breath into his mouth, his arm sliding around your waist to pull you closer. His lips part against yours, and you tilt your head to meet him, fingers curling at the nap of his neck as his tongue traces along your inner lip.

“Alright, y’can mention it,” he says, lips ghosting yours as he speaks, an easy smile on his lips. “Just don’t tell anyone, yeah? I’ve gotta reputation.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” you say dryly, but your lips are curved up as you mouth at the underside of his jaw, relishing in the way he lets out a pleased sigh. You trail down the side of his neck, teeth grazing his pulse, fingers working at the buttons of his shirt.

“This ain’t really just ‘cause I did a few things around the place, is it?” Naoya asks suspiciously, breath catching as you run your hands down his bare torso, kissing down to his collarbone and sucking lightly at his clavicle, dragging wet kisses down his abdomen. “Ah, shit, you’re seriously—”

He cuts himself off, throat bobbing, lashes fluttering as your fingers slip beneath the waistband of his pants. You don’t want to talk about what Naobito said to you earlier, so you divert the question instead. Your gaze flicks up to him, and you counter with, “You didn’t clean and cook just because you were bored, did you?”

Naoya gives you a smile that’s a bit too tired to be as sharp as he tries to make it as he says, “I asked ya first.”

“No,” you say, tapping his thigh, signaling for him to lift his hips so you can slide down his pants. “It’s not just because you did a few things around here, but a bit of positive reinforcement is good for dog training—” Naoya gapes at you furiously, but you continue before he can throw a fit, “—are you gonna make me keep talking, or can I suck your cock, Naoya?”

The next smile Naoya gives you is much more smug. “Go ahead,” he drawls. “Ya got a filthy fuckin’ mouth, y’know? I should do somethin’ about it.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?” you hum absentmindedly, leaning in to press your lips against the vein running along the side of his cock, sucking at it gently. Naoya hisses, hips jerking slightly. “Tell me what’s going on. If you’re spending your time acting like a proper house husband, it must not be anything good.”

Naoya gives you a flinty look, and you can hear the insult about to fly off his tongue, but before he can, you drag your tongue across the underside of his cock, watching as his breath catches, jaw tight, and gaze flicking up to the ceiling. You rest your head on his inner thigh as you trail lazy, open-mouthed kisses along his length. His eyes slide shut, trying to regain some semblance of control over himself, and your lips curl up into a pleased smile before you take his tip into your mouth.

“Hah—shit—” he gasps, thighs tense beneath your palms as you swipe your tongue over his slit, already weeping with precum, dribbling down his length. His knuckles are white around the cushion of your couch, and you let out a soft grunt of surprise when his right hand darts out to slide around the back of your head, not quite pushing you down, but heavy enough that you can’t pull off him. You give him an irritated look and let out a muffled noise of complaint, but Naoya already looks half out of it, lips wet and parted, eyes blown wide as he stares down at you. “So fuckin’ pretty like this, y’know? Pisses me off sometimes that you gotta be so difficult. This is where ya belong—on your knees, lips wrapped around my cock—shit—”

You ignore Naoya’s babbles, bobbing your head up and down his length slowly, swirling your tongue around his tip before taking him all the way down. You flatten your tongue as he knocks against the back of your throat, cock twitching and abdomen flexing as he tries not to finish so soon. Naoya chokes over a groan, hand instinctively tightening in your hair to hold you down, nose flush to his pelvis, and your eyes are wet with tears as you will yourself not to gag around him.

“Fuck,” he breathes, voice pitched now, and head pressed back against the wall. His hips jerk up slightly, forcing himself impossibly deeper, and your nails dig into his upper thighs, drawing blood as you try to ground yourself. You let him roll his hips against your face, fucking himself deep down your throat each time. “Take me so fuckin’ well, s’like you were made for me.”

Naoya’s voice breaks over a moan of your name, but instead of holding your head down so he can thrust up, cumming deep down your throat, his grip tightens in your hair and he pulls you off of him, chest heaving and breath ragged. You sit back on your heels, giving him a confused look, but he only pulls you back up onto the couch with him, laying you back against the cushions.

“Wanna finish inside you,” he rasps, fingers trailing over your body, lingering on your stomach, before he drags them between your slick folds. Your breath hitches, hips jerking up. His lips curve up into a smirk. “This drenched just from sucking my cock—fuckin’ slut. Don’t even need to prep ya, do I?”

You rock your hips up impatiently. “Quit fucking around,” you tell him, voice far more breathy than you’d like, lashes fluttering as he presses the tip of his finger against your hole, tracing around it but never pushing in. His free hand slides up your body, cradling the side of your face before he slips his thumb into your mouth, pressing down slightly on your tongue. “Naoya—”

“Maybe I should make ya beg properly,” he says absently, and you expect him to lean over you, caging your body between his like he usually does when he’s the one taking the reins, but instead he sits back on his heels, grabbing your waist to drag the lower half of your body into his lap. “If you’re tryna reward me, that’d be a good way to do it. Wanna hear those pretty lips of yours beg me for my cock. Can ya do that for me?”

You tilt your head to the side, craning your neck a little so that you can scowl at him, but he only tosses you a lazy smile, waiting.

“Sucking you off wasn’t enough, was it?” you ask snidely, clicking your tongue, but your breath hitches when you feel him slide the tip of his cock through your cunt, grinding slowly between your folds. “Naoya—”

“Consider me greedy,” he drawls. “Was a lotta effort today, y’know, making sure this place was ready for you so ya didn’t have another bitch fit when you got back. Thank me properly. Say ‘please, Naoya,’ and I’ll consider fuckin’ ya real good.”

You exhale, head dropping back against the cushions. Your heart is racing in your chest, and you can feel your own wetness smeared between your thighs, dripping down onto his pants, abdomen tight and cunt aching every time Naoya presses the tip of his cock against your hole but doesn’t push in.

Usually, he is not this patient.

“Please,” you finally say through your teeth, lashes fluttering shut. You think, for a second, that might be enough, because your breath catches, back arching up slightly when Naoya sinks the tip of his cock inside of you, but then he stops before he pushes in any deeper.

“Please what?” he asks, unbearably amused, as though you don’t hear the breathlessness in his voice and feel the way his fingers are bruising your waist as he tries to keep himself still. “C’mon, y’can do better than that for me. Don’t make me deny her any longer, she’s achin’ for me. She’s got me feelin’ bad.”

Naoya doesn’t sound like he feels bad at all. In fact, you can hear the huff of laughter in his voice as he slides one of his hands across your abdomen, dragging it down so that he can thumb slow, agonizing circles over your clit. You choke over a moan, hips jerking, but he holds you in place, refusing to let his cock sink inside you deeper than the tip, and you have to bite your bottom lip to stop yourself from letting out a frustrated sob.

When the fuck did he get so patient?

“You’re so mean to her, y’know?” he murmurs absently, and you hate how intently he’s watching the way your cunt spasms around him as he toys with your clit. “Makin’ her go out there and do all that dirty work, all she wants to do is stay at home, safe and full of cock—my cock—ain’t that right?”

“Naoya,” you warn, shooting him a flinty look when he starts to broach this subject.

You knew back when you had this conversation with him that it wouldn’t be the end of his attempts to get you to retire from being a sorcerer. He brings it up every now and then, and to his credit, he does drop it when you start bristling, but he never quits trying to push his agenda.

“I know, I know,” he soothes, and you choke on air when he finally, finally starts to push deeper inside you, cock stretching your walls, the slight burn adding to the heat that makes your skin feel all tingly and your abdomen tight. “‘m just sayin’, would it really be all that bad?”

You don’t even have it in you to respond, lashes fluttering as Naoya bottoms out inside you, tip of his cock pressing so deep that you swear you think you can feel him in your stomach from this angle. You struggle to breathe, just a bit, lips wet and parted as you stare up at the ceiling, trying to regain some control over yourself.

“Could have you like this, spread out on my cock, every day,” he continues, voice low and pleased as he watches the effect his cock has on your body, gaze trained on your stretched hole and the slick gushing around his cock. His hand presses down slightly on your pelvis, and your whole body shudders at the pressure he purposely puts on where his cock is buried inside you, choking on your own saliva. “I’ll take care of ya—buy ya everything ya want, keep this pretty cunt nice and full, I’ll make ya happy.”

“You already do all of that,” you hiss, but your voice slips into a whine when he grinds his hips slowly against yours—even deeper, fuck, how is he even deeper? “Naoya—”

“All of it?” he questions, gold eyes flicking up to your face at last.

“All of it,” you confirm after a moment, gaze meeting his.

Naoya exhales through his nose, shifting a bit so that he can get off his knees and hover over you instead. He positions one of your legs over his shoulder, hooking the other around his waist as he trails wet open-mouthed kisses up your neck, finally rocking his hips against yours.

“Hah—” you gasp, eyes rolling up slightly, one hand darting up to claw at his shoulder blade, while the other reaches for his. Naoya indulges you, entwining your fingers in a way that’s terribly romantic as he starts to pick up the pace of his thrusts, each one knocking the air from your lungs. “Naoya—”

“So fuckin’ pretty like this,” he says again, breath hot as pants against your skin, forehead pressed to your collarbone. Your eyes half roll back into your head—in, out, in, out, it’s too fast, you think, hardly able to breathe, each thrust feels deeper, faster than the last. “Made to take my fuckin’ cock, ain’t ya?”

You can’t—you can’t breathe. Your heel digs into the small of his back, and your vision spots with black dots, and you would almost think his hand is around your throat, except one is holding yours and the other is up by your head, keeping him propped up. He’s just—fast, too fast, faster than usual, faster than your mind can keep up with much less your body, before you can even get a proper breath in before the next thrust knocks it right out of your lungs.

“Na—ah, f—I—” You can’t even get a word out, can’t lift your head to look down at where his cock is fucking in and out of you, can’t think, can’t breathe, you still can’t breathe, can’t—

“Shit, you cummin’ already?” Naoya lets out a breathless laugh, tipping his head down slightly to look at where his cock is plunging in and out of your cunt—are you? What the hell? You try to say something again but your voice breaks over a noise caught between a sob and a moan, body trembling beneath his. “Damn, if I’d known this’d fuck you up this bad I woulda tried it ages ago.”

What—what is he talking about? You can’t even figure out what he’s saying, desperately trying to blink away the spots in your vision and the blurriness in your eyes, head heavy and lolling back limply against the cushions as Naoya only seems to pick up the pace more. How—

He drags his free hand to your lips, and then wipes away something at the corner of them, a wild smile on his face.

“Lookit ya droolin’, and you have the nerve to call me the dog,” he drawls, and you think, absently, that you should snap at him back, but you can only part your lips, staring up at him, another pitched noise escaping your lips at a particularly harsh thrust. “Aw, don’t look at me with those big, dumb eyes like that—s’gonna make me cum, I’m not tryna cum yet.”

You think you cum again, because one second, you’re looking up at Naoya, and the next your vision is hazy and your face is half-pressed into the cushions, back arched, fingers tight around Naoya’s, and Naoya is letting out a choked moan, hips stuttering as your walls tighten around him. Did you pass out? Seriously? Your head feels all fuzzy, vision swimming. Are you still cumming? Have you even stopped? You can hardly figure out what’s happening—he’s never fucked you like this before, you can’t even figure out what he’s doing.

“Fuck,” he gasps. “Fuck I’m gonna—”

Naoya’s free hand tangles in your hair, pulling your face where you’ve buried it in the cushions, half-sobbing as you try to get air into your burning lungs, so that he can press his lips against your slack ones, moaning into your mouth as he finishes deep inside you. Your whole body trembles beneath him, cheeks wet with tears and nails still digging deep into the back of his hand and his shoulder blade. He lets out a heavy sigh against your lips, dragging them to the corner of your mouth, absentmindedly down your neck as he grinds his hips into you while you settle down.

“Wh—what the hell?” Is the first thing you’re able to say, voice shaky, still clinging to him. “What the hell was that? What—”

You feel him smiling against your neck, too smug. “Just tried somethin’ new,” he says easily. “Y’like it?” You blink stupidly up at the ceiling, still reeling. He coos, “Aw, did I fuck ya dumb?”

“Shut up,” you snap, but even that sounds terribly wobbly. You shift beneath him, breath hitching slightly since his cock is still lodged deep inside you. Naoya drags his lips from your neck to your cheek before he hovers above you again, very pleased with himself. You tongue feels heavy and your body is still trembling as you continue, “I… you—”

“Love it when you’re like this,” he murmurs, pressing his nose into your cheek and sucking lightly at your jaw. You don’t even have the energy to tell him not to leave marks. “Did ya like it? Answer me.”

“Compliment fishing,” you mutter more to yourself than him, but he lets out a huff of laughter against your skin. You blink, rapidly, still a bit dazed. “Were you using…”

Projection Sorcery?

“There she is,” Naoya grins as you ease out of your stupified state, confirming your suspicions. “Was good, wasn’t it?”

You exhale, laughing lightly, the sound coming out softer than you expect. “You’re so annoying,” you murmur, limbs heavy in a pleasant, boneless way that makes it hard to care that Naoya is going to be incredibly insufferable over this.

Naoya’s grin widens, delighted. “Wasn’t a no.”

“That’s cheating,” you mutter petulantly, but the arm still draped around his shoulders tugs at him, pulling him down so that his weight settles fully on top of you, warm and familiar.

“Cheating?” he echoes, mock-offended as he noses into the crook of your neck. “Please. I was enhancing the experience. Should be thankin’ me for fucking that brain right outta your skull.”

You roll your eyes, hand sliding up to the back of his hair to absently play with the blonde strands. You notice, absently, that he never pulled back his other hand from where it’s entwined with yours, and you squeeze it lightly, chest a bit tight. He squeezes it back, letting out a soft sigh.

“Tell me what this was all about,” you murmur, now that the haziness is finally dissipating. “Don’t think I forgot.”

You feel his lips curve down into a frown against your skin. “Didn’t fuck ya good enough then.”

You roll your eyes. “Naoya.”

“I’m gonna head back to the estate soon, I think,” he admits, breath hot as he lets out a heavy exhale. “It’s becomin’ a pain goin’ back and forth, and that brat Ranta was just promoted to semi-grade one, so I’m gonna have to take over his training so he’s ready to join the Hei.”

“Mkay,” you agree, absently running your fingers through his hair.

Naoya bristles. “Here I thought ya’d be more upset,” he mutters. “Shouldn’t have gone through all the effort then.”

You laugh, leaning down to brush your lips against the top of his head. “I will be so sad that you’re not here to eat all my food and use all of my skin care and hair products while I’m gone,” you say lightly. You add more seriously, “I figured it was coming.” And then you say, “Ranta isn’t a brat. He’s a decent kid. That’s rare in your family.”

Naoya lets out an irritated puff of air. “He’s a little shit. Too fuckin’ earnest. Always smilin’, always askin’ questions, always offerin’ to help like he’s got somethin to prove.”

You smile into his hair. “That’s because he does.”

Naoya snorts. “Yeah. To me. So he shouldn’t be so fuckin’ annoying.”

“Mhm,” you agree, “and you could try not being an ass about it.”

He shifts just enough to look up at you, brows knit together. “You takin’ his side now?”

“I’m saying there are much worse members of your clan than Ranta,” you say dryly, “and you should take your blessings where you’ve got them. Could you imagine having to train a mini you?”

“Bitch,” he mutters, glaring at you as he settles back down against you, resting his head against your chest. “I’d be a fuckin’ pleasure to train. Wouldn’t even have to do much work since I’d already know what I’m doin’. Perfect instincts. Perfect technique. Woulda been easy.”

You snort, fingers carding absently through his hair. “Modesty is a virtue, you know.”

“In women, you arrogant hag, take your own advice,” Naoya scowls, and you roll your eyes. “What happened with you, hm? S’not like you to come home and get on your knees for me. Or did it finally hit ya how lucky you are to have me?”

Your smile drops slightly as you remember the conversation you had with his father, taking in a deep breath. You don’t want to bring that up—Naoya won’t take it well that you know the reason why he wasn’t promoted on the first try, and you don’t want to ruin this rare bit of peace. Naoya seems to sense something is wrong, because he tilts his head up to look at you, brows furrowed in suspicion.

“I had to spend two days with your father in meetings with the higher-ups,” you say dryly after a moment, “isn’t that reason enough to come home feeling abundantly pleased that I got the better Zenin?” Before Naoya can preen, you add, “Not that it’s a high bar.”

“Bitch,” he mutters, but his lips curve down into a frown after a moment as he gives you a flinty look. “You’re lyin’ to me.”

You sigh and say, “Yeah, I am. Let me?”

The flinty look becomes a bit more curious as he furrows his brows and tries to decide whether or not he wants to push the subject. Evidently, he decides against it because he rolls his eyes and settles back down against your chest. “Whatever, I don’t care that much anyway, s’long as it means you’re gonna be sucking my cock more often.”

“I don’t even know why I put up with you.”

“Well, ‘cause I can fuck your brains out, for one.”

“You’re so fucking annoying, my god.”

————————

2016 | READER, AGE 23; NAOYA AGE 25

Things go back to how they were after that, for the most part. Naoya returns to the Zenin estate and continues in his efforts to terrorize the rest of his clan. You hear about it secondhand at first—a cousin complaining that Naoya tore up his proposal for the Hei before he even finished explaining it, and one of his older brothers shooting you a scowl and making a bitter comment about how you should’ve just ‘kept him away.’ It makes you snort every time, because he really never changes.

Naoya, for his part, seems perfectly content.

The two of you don’t see each other as often anymore since you’re both busy and no longer sharing your apartment, but the Zenin estate is only a half hour from your clan’s, and he takes any excuse to come over. Your attendants have stopped announcing when he arrives, because he starts causing trouble whenever he has to wait longer than a couple minutes for them to get ahold of you, so he just lets himself in like he owns the place, sometimes lounging around waiting for you to come back from a meeting, scrolling on his phone boredly after having your attendants go get him the last of your favorite snacks so he could eat them.

He complains about his father and clan politics, elders who won’t stop posturing, and how Ranta “pisses him off more and more each day,” because he apparently “flutters around Naoya” like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. You tell him to stop being a douchebag because Ranta is just trying to help, and Naoya throws a fit about you “taking his side” and sulks about it until you make a snide comment that sets him off.

It’s easy—nice, even—you’ll lounge around, feet kicked over his legs, as you listen to him complain. Insult him when he’s being annoying and mock him when he’s being dramatic, just as you always have. Sometimes he doesn’t want to talk at all, frustrated after a day of meetings with his father and the elders, and he’ll come over just so he can bury his face between your thighs or his cock into your cunt instead.

Or, most usually, it’s both at the same time.

(“Shit pisses me off,” he says, somehow still going, even as he drags his lips up your inner thigh. You roll your eyes, staring up at the ceiling. “Can you believe that? What right does garbage have to sit around and question me? They don’t even do shit, just sit around barking orders at—”

“My fucking god, Naoya, do you ever shut up?” you interrupt, head falling back against the pillows. “I swear to god, I’ve never seen a man talk so much when between a woman’s thighs, it’s almost like—”

You yelp, foot kicking into his back when he rolls your clit between his teeth, giving you an irritated look, and then he pointedly hikes your thighs over his shoulders, pulling you even closer to him. He mutters petulantly, “Can multitask.”

“Yeah, well, don’t.”)

You are not as content.

Not because you don’t enjoy how things are with Naoya, because you do—it’s easy, it’s nice, it’s you and Naoya, in a way that you’ve always been able to count on, and you feel silly for the argument two years ago, because labels don’t change anything between the two of you. It’s because you’re becoming more and more frustrated with the fact that you haven’t been able to make any progress on finding proof that the Kamos were involved with what happened to your clan. It’s driving you fucking crazy. Each passing day leaves you more and more on edge; every time you have to sit across from Kamo Norihide at a meeting, you think that maybe you’re better off just killing him and accepting whatever consequences there are for it, because at least it means your father and brothers and everyone else was butchered that day will finally be able to rest peacefully.

You and Naoya frequently argue about it.

(“Why can’t you just let it go?” he shouts, slamming his hands against the table as he rises to his feet. Your attendants look away awkwardly, unsure what to do as the argument between the two of you escalates. You motion for them to leave, jaw tight. “I don’t fuckin’ get it. You’re burnin’ your whole fuckin’ life down chasing ghosts, and I—”

“You don’t get it?” you ask, voice low and mocking, staring up at him. “You don’t get why I’m not going to let go of the fact that my family was fucking butchered, Naoya? They’re not fucking ghosts to me. They’re my father, my brothers, my clan. Just because you have a shitty relationship with yours doesn’t mean that I did.”

“Yeah, I don’t fuckin’ get it,” he doubles down, unrepentant. “You don’t even know it was the Kamos—”

“It has to be them,” you interrupt loudly, rising to your own feet now as you glare at him.

“No, it doesn’t,” Naoya hisses. “You want it to be them, and I can’t fuckin’ understand why. What if it really was an accident, huh? A fault in the barrier that nobody clocked in time? That happens, ya know it does. Why are you so fuckin’ adamant that it has to be them?”

“Because it has to be them,” you repeat, voice shriller now. “It has to be them, because if it wasn’t some plot to take out my family and purposely done when I wasn’t there, then it’s only bad luck. And if it was only bad luck, then I could’ve been there—should’ve been there. How the fuck am I supposed let it go?”

Naoya exhales through his nose, jaw flexing as he stares at you. “And what if you’re wrong, huh? What if you push this, and you’re wrong, and you start something you can’t finish?”

“Then I’ll live with it,” you say.

“That’s bullshit,” Naoya replies, voice hoarse. “You won’t. You’ll fuckin’ die with it.”)

You start to give up.

It doesn’t happen all at once; there’s not a single moment where you decide to stop trying to avenge them, and the anger is still there—it’s always there, always eating at you—but your energy begins to thin. Each dead end leaves you more tired than the last, a little less willing to believe that the next lead will finally be the one you need to prove you right. You start telling yourself that patience is a strategy, and waiting doesn’t mean losing. You sit through meetings with the Kamos and keep your face carefully neutral, let Norihide’s polite smiles slide past you without reacting. You tell yourself you’re being smart, that restraint is strength, and you’re honoring your family by surviving, but some nights, when the estate is too quiet, and your thoughts get loud, it feels less like strategy and more like consolation.

Eventually, you start to wonder if maybe Naoya is right. Maybe it was the perfect storm of wrong place, wrong time, wrong curse, and you just—you weren’t there. You could’ve been there, but you weren’t. There was no plot to make sure you were away from the estate… You just happened not to be there when your family needed you most, because you were out drinking at a club, partying while your brothers and father were butchered in their sleep.

(“I should’ve been there,” you say one day to Satoru. “I would’ve felt it coming. My cursed energy—my technique—I could’ve—”

“Or you could’ve been asleep, and you could’ve died too,” Satoru adds when you don’t finish your sentence, arm slipping around your shoulders to pull you into his side. “You can’t keep torturing yourself with this.”

“What else am I supposed to do?” you ask with a huff that’s supposed to be laughter but comes out more as a sob as you bury your face into his shoulder. “I can’t find any proof that there was any foul play, and my cousin—he’s been out there hunting down this cursed spirit for three years and he can’t fucking find it. How does an unregistered special grade just disappear like that? It’s not some run of the mill curse. You knew my father, my brothers, they were strong, really strong. I don’t—I don’t know what to do. Naoya wants me to let it go, but it’s all I can think about. I don’t have anything else to–”

“Come teach,” Satoru interrupts, nudging your shoulder. You give him a dubious look. “I’m serious. Come to Tokyo High with me. You can take over classes I don’t feel like teaching when you’re not busy with clan stuff.”

You shake your head. “The higher-ups will never ap—”

“Do you even know who you’re talking to?” Satoru asks dryly, grinning. “It’ll be fun, I promise.”

“You only want to slack off,” you mutter, no heat behind the words, eyes sliding shut as Satoru obnoxiously leans on top of you.

“It’s true!”)

So, you start to join him at Tokyo Jujutsu High on Fridays. You half-think that he’s going to drop his kids on you when you get there and leave to go shop or something, but it’s actually not too bad. He makes Fridays combat training days, and you get to spend the whole day knocking his brats around the training grounds of the school.

The students don’t tiptoe around you—they don’t know enough to, they see a capable sorcerer step onto the field and immediately try to test you, and Satoru, traitor that he is, lets them. You’re forced to be present, to read bodies and cursed energy and intent instead of spiraling inward. When one of them overextends, you knock them flat, and there’s no time to think about what you should’ve done years ago. Satoru watches from the sidelines, offering commentary that’s half useless and entirely infuriating, but he’s notably more at ease now that you have something to do with your time instead of sitting alone with your thoughts.

He starts training with you again too when the students are taking breaks. You become adamant on figuring out how to expand your technique. You first try by seeing if you can visualize more than a few moves ahead: three has always been your limit, but with Satoru’s help, you push it to five, seven, ten, but never past ten. You become frustrated, because you know this can’t be the limit of your technique, and after a couple days of theorizing with him, trying to figure out what aspect of your technique can still improve, he says: what if ten is your limit for visualizing future movements, but you can expand the area of effect to more than just your immediate surroundings?

Maki approaches you one day when you’re visiting Naoya at the Zenin estate.

(“Is it true you’re working at the Tokyo school?” she asks, standing behind you, fists tight at her side. Mai isn’t anywhere in sight, and you glance around once, because although your presence is less of a scandal now that you’re clan head and have frequent business with Naobito, most of the Zenins still aren’t fans of you, and you doubt they’ll like Maki talking to you so openly. “Well?”

“Only on Fridays to help with combat,” you tell her, tilting your head to the side. “Why?”

Maki’s jaw tightens, gaze flicking down to the ground briefly. She lets out a sharp breath before she looks back up at you. “I want to be a sorcerer,” she says firmly. You raise your eyebrows because, as far as you’re aware, the girl doesn’t have any cursed energy. “Don’t give me that look. There are cursed tools that can help me see curses. And I don’t need cursed energy to fight. I’m strong. Really strong. I want training—real training—I want to go to one of the sorcerer schools.”

“Okay,” you say with a shrug. “I think that’s great, but why the hell are you telling me this?”

Maki falters. “I don’t—” She hesitates, gaze flicking away with sudden uncertainty. “I thought maybe you would understand. And help me, maybe. I know that Gojo Satoru works at the Tokyo school now, and he’s not a fan of anyone with the Zenin name, but I… don’t want to be in Kyoto. Not so close to the estate.”

You raise your eyebrows. “You’re tryna leave for real, then,” you say with a grin. “Damn, Maki-chan, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Maki flushes, looking away. “I’ll be back one day,” she says firmly, “and when I am, I’m going to become clan head.”

You burst into laughter for the first time in weeks, and Maki’s face is terribly red with embarrassment as she watches you. You feel bad, so you reach out to squeeze her shoulder.

“I’ll be rooting for you then,” you say with a genuine grin. “I’d much rather be working side-by-side with another woman than that old fuck Naobito, or Naoya’s bitch ass. Maybe you can take over, and I’ll make him my house husband for real.”

Maki snorts, covering the lower half of her face as she holds back her own laughter. Once she calms herself down, she looks up at you, gaze a bit hopeful. “So, will you help?”

“I’ll talk to Satoru for you,” you promise, “but you better make sure this is what you wanna do. There’s no take-backs once you piss off Naobito like this, y’know?”

“I know,” she replies firmly. “I know. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. This is what I want.”

“Alright then,” you agree. “Let’s do it.”)

And for a while, everything is okay.

You settle into a routine. You spend the week dealing with clan business. You’re trying to get one of your younger cousins set up to go to one of the sorcerer schools, since there’s no one around to train him full-time on how to properly utilize his technique. You and Satoru are trying to ease the higher-ups’ disdain for one of his new students. You and Naobito are trying to box out the Kamos from pushing for the higher-ups to enact a new regulation mandating technique documentation and reporting. On Fridays, when you can, you head to Tokyo to help Satoru with his new students, and on Saturdays and Sundays, you find Naoya, and you spend most of the day laid up in his bed or yours unless the two of you feel like sparring and working the frustration of the week out that way.

It’s mundane in a way that almost startles you.

Meetings blur together, you start to look forward to Fridays and the weekends, and you begin to wonder if, maybe, things will be okay like this. The anger doesn’t vanish, but it stops driving every decision, and the more time you spend distracted from it, the more you realize how exhausted it makes you. You’re tired of being angry, and you’re tired of not making any progress. You’re tired of arguing with Naoya, who is tired of watching you burn yourself out on a mission for justice that’s ever out of reach.

And you think, maybe, that you don’t have to keep fighting, that things are enough like this—for now, at least.

————————

2017 | READER, AGE 24; NAOYA, 26

Naoya wants to marry you.

He doesn’t say it in so many words, but he doesn’t really need to. You knew something was up the first time you woke up to one of your attendants saying that a package arrived for you, even though you knew very well you hadn’t ordered anything recently. It was small and unassuming, and you were half asleep when you opened it, but it still took your breath away as you traced the necklace embedded with diamond and sapphire. You wracked your brain trying to figure out what might’ve triggered Naoya to get you this, but he hadn’t done anything to piss you off recently, and you certainly didn’t ask for it, so your brain came up frustratingly blank.

(“What was this for?” you ask the next time you visit the Zenin estate. “Never took you to be so generous.”

Naoya sneers at you, gaze lifting from where he’s scrolling on his phone, but his expression shifts when he sees that the necklace he bought you sitting pretty on your neck. He blinks once, gaze flicking up to your face, then back down to the necklace. His lips part like he’s going to say something, and then he pauses, brows furrowing and lips pressing together. You narrow your eyes suspiciously, and he finally scoffs, looking away.

“I’ve always been generous, buyin’ ya everything ya want. It’s about time you acknowledge it,” he mutters, crossing his arms over his chest. Then he gives you a crude smirk and says, “Y’should suck me off if you’re so grateful.”

“You’re so obnoxious,” you reply, rolling your eyes as you make your way over to him. Naoya sets his phone off to the side so that you can settle in his lap, arm slinking around your waist to hold you close, fingers slipping beneath the hem of your shirt so that his palm is flat against your bare skin. “You gonna tell me the truth?”

“Nah,” Naoya answers, free hand sliding up to toy with the necklace. You catch a brief, pensive expression on his face as he stares down at him, before he looks back up at you and gives you another lazy smile. “So? Head?”

“In your dreams.”)

He only becomes stranger after that. It starts small, too small to call out without sounding paranoid, and you don’t feel like hearing him go on another tirade about how women are paranoid and emotional, as though he isn’t both of those things far more often than you are, so you don’t mention it. It’s a lot like how he was acting a couple of years ago, actually, just to a much more intense level, and just as you were unsettled then, you’re unsettled now—not because you’re feeling flighty this time, but because Naoya has a tendency to decide things before you’re on the same page as him, and then he gets pissy when you’re indeed not on the same page as him, and it escalates into an argument that you just don’t want to deal with.

He starts scheduling you—or, well, when you talk to Shoko about it, she snorts and says that she’s pretty sure this is Naoya’s way of taking you on dates—but it seriously pisses you off. He never comes up to you and asks that you go with him somewhere, but your calendar is suddenly full of dinners you didn’t agree to and day trips to various places you offhandedly mentioned wanting to go to, but can never find the time because of your unending meetings and obligations. When you push back even lightly about how you have work to do, his irritation spikes as though you’ve just committed some heinous crime against him, so you tend to let it go.

(“Since when do ya hate spendin’ time with me?” he asks once, tone sharp but eyes unreadable as he frowns at you. Clearly, you did not sound excited enough when he told you the plans he has for the two of you tomorrow in Osaka.

“That is not what I said, Naoya.”

“Sounds like it.”)

He’s… nicer than he usually is, too, and that irritates you more than anything, because when you make a snide comment expecting him to snap back at you, he only hums absently, unbothered, eyes flicking over you with a distracted smile that throws you off more than any insult. You think he enjoys how it seems to take you aback, and he only seems to get annoyed when you call him out on it, scowling at you and giving you attitude for the rest of the day because god forbid, he’s “in a good mood.”

On top of that, you think he tries to… show off around you? You don’t even know how to explain it, really. He’s just constantly seeking your approval in even the silliest of things. If he’s training and you’re in the area, he looks around to make sure you’re watching. If he joins you and his father for a meeting, and he has an idea, he says it, and then looks at you to see what your reaction is (which you’re sure infuriates Naobito, so it makes you laugh). If he does something new with his hair or gets a new piercing, he pointedly waits for you to notice it and say something, and gets seriously insulted if you don’t.

It’s fucking odd—it’s so un-Naoya-like that you end up bringing it up to Shoko and Satoru one day.

(“It’s just so weird,” you say one day to Shoko and Satoru when the two of you are drinking. “It’s weird to you guys, too, right?”

“Eh,” they both say simultaneously, and you bristle, offended that they’re not taking your side. They exchange a look with one another, and then Shoko adds, “It’s like his mating dance. You know, like with birds? How male peacocks show off their feathers to female peacocks. It’s like that, except Zenin’s version of it.”

You gape as Satoru bursts into laughter at the comparison.

“Excuse me?” you demand, baffled. “What does that even mean?”

Shoko doesn’t answer, and Satoru covers his mouth to smother another giggle, glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose so he can look at you directly. He grins and says, “Man, as much as I can’t stand the guy, sometimes I really do feel bad for him. You’re so dense sometimes.”

“What does that even mean?” you demand again. “We—we’re already together, there’s no need for a—” You give Shoko an accusing look, and she snorts, looking down, because you can’t even say the word out loud. “—there’s no need for all of that.”

“Yeah, you’re together, I guess,” Satoru agrees, “but you know Zenin. How long was just being together going to be enough for him?”)

It’s only then that you realize why Naoya’s acting like this: and one day, I want ya to be my wife, he told you three years ago. Well, one day is clearly here, and Naoya is trying to… well, you don’t know what he’s trying to do. You think maybe he’s purposely going out of his way to be good to you, so you bring it up on your own, and that’s why he has inexplicable explosions of frustration whenever he does something, and it doesn’t lead to you being wooed and asking him when he’ll finally marry you.

But now that you have an idea of what his game is, you decide to test its limits.

You start by asking him to play the piano for you while teh two of you are lounging around with him at the Zenin estate, waiting for his father to finish up on a call. He’s always refused when you asked in the past, rolling his eyes and saying that he’s not going to waste more of his time with frivolous shit like that, especially not for you. So when you ask him this time, you half expect the same results, not getting your hopes up.

(Naoya barely looks up from his phone. “Why?”

“‘Cause I want you to, why not?” you ask, leaning your chin on your hand as you observe him. He lifts his gaze slowly, eyes narrowing as they search your face, like he’s trying to figure out what angle you’re playing. You raise your eyebrows at him. “Well?”

“You’re annoying as hell,” he mutters, and your eyes widen slightly when he stands, hands sliding into his pockets as he makes his way over to the piano in the corner of the room, untouched, more decorative than functional—another symbol of status rather than enjoyment. You know he was taught to play as a kid, something about enhancing his timing with his technique, you’re not sure really, but you know as soon as he learned, he never touched it again, discarded it like it was worthless.

He adds an obligatory, “Ya piss me off,” before he sits at the bench and defies all your expectations by actually playing a song for you.

You blink, surprised—he looks seriously annoyed as he plays, jaw tight and brows drawn together, but he plays. His shoulders loosen as the piece goes on, fingers flying across the keys without hesitation, muscle memory taking over in spite of years without honing the skill. It kind of annoys you how easy everything comes to him, but the thought is only fleeting, because you find yourself enjoying the way he plays more than you expect.

When he finishes, the last note lingering in the air, there’s a long moment of silence.

Then, he asks stiffly, “Happy?”

“Yeah,” you say honestly. “That was… really good, actually.”

Naoya pauses, fingers curling slightly at the edge of the bench, lips parting at your words. Then he scoffs and stands up abruptly. “Obviously,” he replies, as though the tips of his ears aren’t red. “I’m good at everything I do. You should know that by now.”

“Right,” you agree sarcastically, and then press your luck. “Play me another.”

“Do I look like your personal fuckin’ entertainer?” he snaps, glaring down at you like you’ve just asked him to debase himself.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” you ask with an unapologetic grin.

“Screw off,” he scoffs, and then, inexplicably, sits back down.)

From that point on, you make a habit of it—asking for small, unreasonable things that don’t benefit him and he used to refuse on principle. You tell him you want to walk instead of taking a car, even though the estate roads are long and gravely and he clearly hates the dust getting on his shoes. He complains the entire time, but he slows his pace to match yours without you asking, grumbling under his breath when you stop to look at something unimportant. When it’s his turn to pick a movie, you tell him you want to watch something else, and he’ll throw a fit about how he’s supposed to be picking, but then he puts on the one you want. If you have a long day of meetings, and you know he’s back at your estate waiting for you, you ask him to have a bath ready for you when you get back, and he goes apocalyptic because he’s “not some fuckin’ servant,” and yet, still has it ready for you by the time you return.

The more he gives, the more his patience wanes. You can see it in the way his temper spikes unpredictably, like he’s furious at himself, or you, maybe. He’s torn between wanting you to notice it and bring it up on your own, and just coming out and saying plainly that he wants you to be his wife.

It’s almost sweet, because as time passes, you start to think that he’s trying to prove he can be what you claim a husband is supposed to be. You vaguely remember an argument that the two of you got into when you were kids—he was, as always, pissy that you weren’t acting the way a wife is supposed to, and you made a comment about how you’d start acting like a proper wife when he started acting like a proper husband. He got even more pissy because he didn’t know what the hell you were talking about, and he laughed in your face when you said that a proper husband is supposed to love and take care of his wife, but you don’t think he ever forgot it, because here he is, almost twenty years later, watching him try to be one for you.

It’s clumsy and terribly unromantic, as things always are with the two of you, because he makes sure you eat, but he phrases it like an insult, which usually leads to an argument, and he positions himself between you and anything even mildly threatening without thinking about it, but it pisses you off because he knows you can handle yourself, and that usually leads to an argument too. But also—when you’re tired, he slips an arm around you and lets you sleep against him, even if he does bitch about his arm falling asleep and his neck hurting from having to stay in the same position for hours, and he indulges all of your stupid, unreasonable requests, no matter how outlandish they get.

You almost feel bad for playing this game with him, but you’re curious now to see how far he’ll go.

By the time the end of winter rolls around, months of this have worn him down, and he starts to get visibly fed up with the lack of progress. He starts making comments, trying to guide you to the right question, in the worst possible way.

(“Aren’t ya getting old?” Naoya asks bluntly one day, when you’re sitting around, while the two of you lounge around at your clan’s estate. You look at him slowly, unsure you heard him properly. “Just sayin’, most women your age are married with kids by now. You should be thinkin’ about that.”

You stare at him for a long second, blinking twice.

“What the fuck?”

“Don’t look at me like that,” he accuses. “You’re at the age where people start makin’ decisions like that. You should be thinkin’ about it, that’s all.”

“I’m twenty-four, you gross, disgusting, entitled pig. what the hell is your problem?” you shout at him, grabbing a nearby pillow and slamming it into his head. Naoya lets out a string of curses, lifting his hands to guard his face. “What is wrong with you? Seriously, every time I think you might be decent—”

“Oi—stop!” Naoya snaps, trying to wrestle the pillow out of your hands. “I’m being serious!”

“That makes it worse,” you say, furious. “What the hell is the matter with you? Who the fuck says that to a woman? You’re a fucking incel, you should be counting your blessings that you have me, otherwise you’d die alone and miserable.”

“Why the hell are you being such a bitch?” he demands. “I didn’t say anything bad, I was just pointing out—”

“Shut up, Naoya!”)

You think that it’s only a matter of time before his patience snaps for real, and you’re correct.

————————

“Get up,” you vaguely hear Naoya say as you sleep soundly in his futon. You stayed the night at the Zenin estate because you and Naobito were up late discussing an issue that needs to be addressed at the next meeting with the higher-ups, and you didn’t feel like calling for your driver at two in the morning. You let out a noise of complaint when you feel him roll you onto your stomach with his foot. “Get up, ya lazy bitch.”

“Shut up,” you mutter, pulling his pillow over your head. “S’early. Go away.”

“If ya don’t get up on your own, I’m gonna force you to,” he threatens, but you only exhale, already dozing back again. Naoya clicks his tongue. “You serious?”

You yelp, blinking sleepily when you feel him jam his arm beneath your stomach, alarm spreading through you as you start to say, “What are—” before you’re suddenly dangling in the air. You kick out your feet, one drives into his hip, and the other grazes his thigh. He only grunts, tightening his grip automatically as your weight shifts.

“Watch it,” he snaps, like you’re the unreasonable one here. “You’re heavier than ya look.”

“Put me down!” you hiss, half-awake and suddenly furious, flailing as he hoists you higher like a sack of rice. Your hands scramble for his sleeves, trying to find something to hold onto. “What is wrong with you?”

He adjusts his hold, slinging you over his shoulder easily. Blood rushes to your head; the world is upside down and extremely undignified. You realize that he’s walking out of his bedroom, in the direction of the inner courtyard of the estate, and your eyes widen.

“Naoya, bring me back to your room, I’m not dressed, you prick,” you hiss, trying to wiggle free again. You don’t need Ogi seeing you draped over Naoya’s shoulder in pajamas that qualify more as lingerie than sleepwear. “Naoya, what the fuck?”

“It’s fine,” he says dismissively, making no move to bring you back to his room. “No one’s out at this time anyway.”

You blink at his words, gaze flicking up when the two of you get into the inner courtyard, and you’re doubly furious when you realize that it’s still dark out. You kick at him again, but he grabs your ankle with his free hand before you can make contact this time. You demand, “The sun’s not even up, what the hell is your problem? I’m tired, you asshole.”

“Just shut up,” he mutters, unusually subdued. You can’t see his expression from the way he has you slung over his shoulder, but you can picture the frown on his face, and you don’t miss the way his shoulders tense when you keep struggling.

So, you still, sighing heavily as he carries you through the inner courtyard and into the garden. The air is cold enough that it bites at your bare legs and arms, and you huff irritably, arms crossing beneath you as best you can manage from your humiliating position. He doesn’t say anything—instead, he finally stops walking and bends just enough to set you back on your feet. You stumble slightly, steadying yourself against his arm, and Naoya slides off his outer robe to drape it over your shoulders.

You look up at him, catching the pinched and pensive expression on his face, and your lips part to ask him what it is that he wants before you catch sight of the soft pink of the cherry blossom trees from the corner of your eye. Your breath catches as you turn to look, watching as the dawn casts its first light across the garden. The cherry blossoms glow faintly, petals dusted with the morning light, some drifting loose and spinning lazily through the air with the morning breeze.

“Oh,” you breathe out. “The cherry blossoms are in bloom.”

You’ve never seen them at sunrise like this.

Naoya watches you instead of the view—you can feel the weight of his attention on the side of your face. His robe hangs loose around your shoulders, still warm from his body, and when a breeze cuts through the garden, he steps closer without thinking, blocking it with his back.

“Late this year,” he says quietly. “Not a good sign, is it?”

You don’t answer, gaze still trained upward as the sun creeps higher, light catching on the petals of the rows of cherry blossoms.

God, you hate the Zenin estate—no matter how many years pass, you can never fully push away the weight of the ten you spent dealing with the eyes and commentary of the Zenin men as a potential Zenin wife.

Ten years of perfect posture and perfect poise, of keeping your chin up and your smile light while men twice, three times, your age felt entitled to comment on your body, your temperament, and your future. Ten years of being assessed like you’re some object that might be useful if handled correctly. Even when your alliance with Naoya shifted into friendship, and Sundays became something you stopped dreading, even when he invited you here on his own years later, and you were no longer bound by the same rules and expectations that used to shadow you everywhere—it never fully went away, never will probably.

But the garden is different.

The Zenin men never walked through it, so it was a place where you could hide away from all of their eyes. You think there are probably still marks around the place from where you and Naoya started to brawl and break things. You exhale softly, wrapping his robe around your body, dropping your nose into the collar to breathe him in.

“You used to disappear out here all the time,” he says quietly. “Used to have to cover for you, ‘cause you weren’t supposed to run off unless I was with you. I didn’t get it. Thought you were avoidin’ me or something. Or tryna make me look bad.”

That explains why he was always so aggravated when he came looking for you, you realize amused. You huff softly and say, “Sometimes I was—avoiding you, that is. I wasn’t trying to make you look bad.”

“Tch. Figures.”

“But mostly, it was everyone else,” you say quietly. “I… really hated coming here, but the garden—well, it was different. We were the only ones who ever really came here. It was… nice.”

The breeze shifts, stirring the branches overhead, and for a moment, the only sound is the soft flutter of petals hitting stone. His gaze drifts around the garden once before it settles back onto you, an uncharacteristically soft expression on his face.

“... Yeah,” he finally says. “It was.”

He rubs a hand over the back of his neck, eyes sliding shut briefly as he tries to figure out how exactly he wants to phrase what he wants to say to you. You have a feeling you know what it is, but you wait anyway, gaze searching as your eyes finally meet his.

“I ain’t good at sayin’ things the way people want,” he finally says, gaze sliding past you to the trees. “I say the wrong shit, push when I should wait, and then I get pissed when ya can’t read my mind.”

You snort. “You don’t say.”

He shoots you a look and then huffs, “Shut it.” He continues, quieter, “I’ve been tryin’, though. All this—” he gestures vaguely between the two of you and then sighs, looking up at the sky, “—I’ve been tryin’. I know we said ‘one day,’ but I don’t wanna keep waiting anymore. I can be what ya need, what ya want. I can take care of you—properly—and I can—” he falters, lips parting, lashes lowering, and then finishes, “I can love you properly too. I do love ya… I think.”

You know what he means, the hesitance in calling it love—whatever this is between the two of you, it’s never fit neatly into any word people can use to describe relationships. And it’s not that the feeling isn’t there—you don’t think there’s anyone in the world who could really understand what it is you feel for Naoya, except for Naoya himself, it’s too intense and too inexplicable.

Love doesn’t do it justice; you think that's what the problem is, but it might be the closest word there is to it.

“I want you,” he says plainly. “I want you as my wife. I don’t wanna keep waiting.”

You stare at him for a second, catching the uncertainty in his expression, and you let out a soft puff of air. You’ve had almost a year to brace yourself for this conversation, you’ve known it was coming, but it still makes your throat feel a bit tight as you look up at him.

“Okay,” you tell him.

“Okay?” Naoya echoes, cautious, brows knitting together.

“Yeah,” you say. “Okay. Let’s get married. You’re getting old anyway, don’t need you with gray hairs in our wedding portrait.”

Naoya stares at you, a little lost, a confused look on his face as though he thought this was going to be more of an argument. He doesn’t even look insulted by the comment, lips parting as he stares at you.

“You serious?” he asks, quieter than you’ve ever heard him.

“Wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t,” you tell him. “I mean, Naoya, we’re not gonna be—”

Oh. Your lashes flutter shut as Naoya steps forward to close the distance between the two of you, one hand sliding around the back of your head, and the other around your waist as he dips down to press his mouth to yours. His lips are soft and familiar, and they taste faintly of sake. He doesn’t ever drink usually, not after growing up with Naobito, but you wonder if he had a glass for some liquid courage before he came to drag you out of bed. You let out a soft noise into his mouth as he moves his lips against yours, hands coming up curl around his shirt. His fingers tighten in your hair, and after a moment, he tips his forehead against yours, lips parting, breath mingling.

“We’re not going to be married tomorrow, Naoya,” you tell him quietly, knocking your nose gently against his as he leans in to ghost his lips against yours again. “I’m serious. The logistics of this are going to be a lot. It’s gonna take a year, probably two realistically, and—”

“—and you’ll be my wife,” he cuts in, too smugly, fingers pressing into your lower back as he pulls you impossibly closer. He kisses you again, slower this time, deeper—it feels different from other kisses you’ve shared with him, and your hands slide up to loop around his neck, fingers curling into his blonde hair. He murmurs against your lips, “We should celebrate, yeah? No one’s awake yet—let’s have some fun.”

“You’re so annoying,” you tell him, but you’re smiling as he walks you backward until you’re against a tree trunk. His hands slide down to your thighs, and before you can protest, he lifts you up, fingers digging into your skin as he presses you back against the tree. Your legs hook around his hips on instinct, and he makes a low, pleased sound against your mouth. “I’m serious, Naoya. This isn’t going to happen quickly, and it’s not going to be easy.”

“Nothing’s ever easy with you,” he murmurs, and then his lips curl up into a crude smile against yours. “Well, except—”

“I would advise you to quit while you’re already behind, Naoya.”

————————

On December 24th, a thousand curses are unleashed in Shinjuku and Kyoto by the special grade curse user, Geto Suguru. Your clan, along with the rest of the sorcerer families residing in the Kyoto area, is deployed to the city alongside the Kyoto High students and faculty, and the Tokyo High second-year students. You were against the students taking part in the conflict once you learned that curse users aligned with Geto would be participating, but Satoru waved off your concerns, telling you they’ll be fine, and then also telling you that you better not let his students die before disappearing back to Tokyo to prepare.

He’s all smiles in a way that unsettles you deeply. Satoru never spoke about Geto Suguru with you, but you know enough to understand that neither he nor Shoko can possibly be taking this well—you know better to push when the conflict is imminent, but you can’t help the uncertainty that curdles low in your stomach every time your mind drifts to them.

You arrive the evening of the incident alongside Naoya and the Hei, the city already humming with an uneasy tension that makes your skin crawl the moment you step out of the vehicle. The streets are too empty, too quiet, and the air is thick with cursed energy before any curses even start amassing. The Hei fan out quickly to position themselves along the north side of the city, and the Tokyo second years who had come with you look to you for instruction.

(“Go. I’m not gonna babysit you. Don’t get yourselves killed. I don’t want to deal with Satoru,” you say, waving them off. “If you get in trouble, just run. We’re sorcerers, not heroes.”

“You gottit, senpai,” Hakari agrees with a grin and a wink, before saluting and heading off to his assigned position with a whoop and something about ‘pumping up the fever’. Kirara gives you a thumbs up and chases after him.

“Senpai?” Naoya drawls next to you, arms crossed over his chest. “Shouldn’t it be sensei, if you’re teaching them?”

You roll your eyes. “Don’t get me started,” you mutter. “Fuckin’ Satoru insists that they should call me senpai since I was technically his ‘first student’. They won’t listen to me when I tell them to quit it.”

Naoya snorts. Then he says with a frown, “I don’t like the way he looked at ya.”

“Don’t start with dumb shit,” you say flatly. You exhale as you glance down at your phone. You really need to get into position. “I should get going.”

Naoya hesitates. “You’ll be good?” he asks, jaw tight. “They don’t need me here, I can—”

“I’ll be fine, Naoya. You’re head of Hei—you need to stay with the Hei. I’ll call for you if I need you,” you say, waving at him over your shoulder as you walk away. “Focus on not dying, yeah?”

“Hah? You focus on not dying, y’bitch, I’ll be fine.”

You flip him off over your shoulder with a grin.)

Your position is at the center of the city.

It was a long and arduous conversation with the higher-ups, who still find your existence quite tiresome, but with Naobito endorsing the plan and growing irritated with their fickle disagreements, you became the linchpin of Kyoto’s defense against Geto Suguru’s attack. Your technique has always been about reading—cursed energy and intent, patterns and instincts, and you’ve been steadily expanding it, one move ahead to three moves ahead to five to ten.

With Satoru’s help, you’ve figured out your technique’s pinnacle: Maximum: Center Game. You anchor your cursed energy to a center point, and then you expand it outward—you stop reading local signatures and claim the whole board for yourself. Within that range, every cursed energy source becomes visible to you at once—what it is, where it is, how strong it is, how it’s moving, how it’s about to move. You’ve never used it over a battlefield of this size, and you’re not really sure how long you’ll be able to last before your brain starts bleeding from the stress of information overload, but you don’t tell Naoya that, because if he knew the risks, he would lose his mind, and you want to make sure that there are as few casualties as possible during this incident.

Between Momo Nishimiya’s eyes in the sky, and your technique, nothing will move in Kyoto without you knowing, and if you know, you can make sure that everyone in the area can prepare. This is the best way—with the small risk that you’ll be slowly dying and virtually defenseless since your cursed energy will be spread thin across the entire city.

In the best case scenario, the curse users aligned with Geto Suguru won’t figure out your position, and in the worst, you’re fucked.

Unfortunately, you’ve always been unlucky.

(Your eyes are bleeding from the strain of your technique.

You don’t know how long it's been since the battle began, but it’s been too long. Each second that passes feels like eternity, but you force yourself to keep directing information to the sorcerers scattered around the city: pull back from Nishiki Market, do not engage the cluster by Kyoto station, there’s a special grade is lying in wait by the Imperial Palace, a hoard of twelve cursed spirits are approaching Tofuku-ji Temple. You don’t explain—there’s no time, and they don’t need to understand why, only that when you speak, the odds tilt in their favor.

Your temples throb, a pressure building behind your eyes like your skull is too small for what you’re holding inside it. You taste copper and swallow it down, refusing to break concentration. Thousands of points of energy scatter across Kyoto—you see pathways forming where cursed energy flows strongest, concentrations where battles are about to erupt, and where they already are. Future lines overlay the present—not certainties, countless probabilities and branching outcomes that you have to decipher in real time to figure out which one is most likely to become reality. If this unit advances here, casualties spike. If that curse turns left, three students die. If Naoya pushes too far east, he survives, but someone else doesn’t.

Chess, you think wryly, remembering what you named your technique after, except it’s no game, and hundreds of lives count on you correctly figuring out how the board is shifting, what the enemy’s next set of moves will be.

You don’t know how Satoru does it, dealing with the constant inflow of information—you think the Six Eyes must be a curse as much as they are a blessing.

You understand the moment that you’ve been figured out. A dozen signatures—the curse users aligned with Geto, who you’ve been keeping careful track of—turn their attention to the center of the city, cutting through the streets, over buildings, in your direction at top speed. They’ve realized that if they take you out, they’ll cripple Kyoto’s defenses—the board you’ve curated will collapse, everything will become reactive, people will die.

“Naoya,” you gasp over the intercoms when you realize they’re coming for you. “I need you.”

Naoya is moving before you even finish saying his name. You watch his familiar signature pivot, carving a path straight through the city in your direction. The curse users are fast, but Naoya is faster, keeping his technique constantly active to get to you as fast as possible. You continue updating the sorcerers battling across Kyoto, trusting that Naoya will arrive before the curse users get to you.

When the first one breaches your immediate perimeter, there is a victorious expression on his face: checkmate, he tells you, cursed blade extended as he prepares to slice through your neck.

Not quite, you don’t reply as Naoya hits the field.

The curse user is dead before he even knows what happens, and the concrete splits next to you as Naoya skids to an abrupt stop, tanto-knife extended and dripping with the blood of the throat he just slit. There’s a livid expression on his face as he directs his attention to the other curse users who had approached you, hesitating now that they realize the Zenin heir is here, but it disappears when he looks down at you and sees the blood streaming from your eyes and nose, the way you’re barely conscious.

“You’ve done enough,” he says, voice tight. “End your technique.”

“Not yet,” you tell him, and he’s forced back into combat before he can argue with you.)

After the incident, you’re out of commission for two weeks.

You find out later through Hakari that Naoya lost his mind when you collapsed—even worse, when the representatives of the higher-ups decided that there were “more pressing” injuries to be treated before the few medics in Kyoto could see to you. Hakari ended up getting himself suspended when he spoke up in your defense, only to get insulted by one of the more conservative members of the higher-ups, which caused him to quite promptly beat the shit out of the man. But Naoya blew up, calling them all useless garbage before gathering you up in his arms and making his way across the country, leaving far too much destruction in his wake in his efforts to get you to a doctor who would prioritize you. He made it to Shinjuku in less than an hour through constant chains of Projection Sorcery, pushing himself to the same limits he was furious at you for testing, collapsing the moment he got you in front of Shoko.

Both of you were bedridden for a month, and since Shoko thought it fitting to keep you in the same room, and you were only unconscious for half of that month, you were forced to endure two weeks of him bitching at you for nearly getting yourself killed, “and before ya fuckin’ married me. The fuck is the matter with ya?”

But every time Shoko comes in to check on you and finds the two of you bickering, that dull look in her eyes that has been ever-present since the incident fades a little bit, so you suppose you can suffer Naoya’s bitching and moaning as long as it distracts her a little from her friend’s death.

You don’t hear from Satoru at all during that month. When you ask Shoko about him, she only averts her gaze and shakes her head—you don’t know what that means, but you assume it’s nothing good. You try reaching out to him, but all of your calls go to voicemail, and your texts go unanswered.

Two months after the incident, he shows up at your estate, all easy smiles and casual confidence, as you’ve always known him to be, but there’s something brittle about it that makes you feel uneasy.

Are you okay, Satoru? you ask, and the smile freezes, and the mask shatters all at once.

(“How did you do it?” he asks you, voice quiet as he leans into you.

He presses his nose into the crook of your neck, much like a child seeking comfort after a nightmare, and you lift your hand to his hair, fingers absently carding through the white locks. You send your attendants away. You and Satoru have always had a mutual understanding with one another that you’ll see each other beyond the fronts jujutsu society demands you put up, but you know he wouldn’t want anyone else to see him like this, even your attendants.

You’ve heard through the grapevine that he’s been throwing himself at mission after mission since the end of the incident, not allowing himself time to breathe, much less think. You also hear through the grapevine that Satoru was the one who ended Geto Suguru—his own hand crushing his own heart. You figure that this is the first time he’s allowed himself to stop, and it all hits at once.

“Do what?” you ask him quietly.

“Live,” he mutters. “After.”

He presses closer, body slumping a bit, forehead knocking lightly against your collarbone before he forces himself to look up at you. There’s a lost look in his eyes that you’ve never seen before, and it makes your chest ache.

“I didn’t,” you say honestly. “Not really. You remember how I was after.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he admits, fingers curling into the fabric of your shirt. “I don’t know how to move on—not from this. I can’t—I can’t even look in the mirror, I can’t—” His voice breaks, he lets out a terribly shaky breath against your skin, body shuddering. He lets out a noise that almost sounds like a laugh. “Love really is the most fucked up curse, isn’t it?”)

The months following the incident—the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons, the higher-ups are naming it—are foreboding in a way that’s hard for you to articulate. There’s a serious influx of curses in all prefectures of Japan, and sorcerers are spread thin trying to contain it. You are on mandated leave after your bedrest—at least eight months, Shoko tells you, and Naoya is quite pleased with the order, to your irritation, but you are terribly bored, endlessly wandering around your estate trying to find something to do. Naoya keeps you company when he’s around, but the Hei are frequently deployed around Kyoto to take care of the cursed spirits that keep popping up.

The ominous feeling you have never quite disappears, no matter how much time passes.

(“I have a bad feeling,” you admit to Naoya a few weeks after the two of you are okay’d to leave Shoko’s care, one arm draped around his waist, leg tucked between his as the two of you lay up in your bed after he returns from a mission.

His arm tightens slightly around you, fingers pressing into your side as he pulls you a little closer. You sigh, eyes sliding shut as you nudge your nose into his collarbone. He asks, “A bad feeling about what?”

“Just everything,” you tell him. “I feel like this is only the beginning.”

“Ya worried?”

“A little.”

“Don’t be,” he says. “We’ll be fine. We always are. Everything always works out for us.”

You don’t know how to tell him that you’re not convinced this time will be the same, so you don’t.)