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ETHOGRAM ENTRY III — Year 2: Handling, Trade Behaviors, Mutual Reliance

The call comes on a Tuesday that looks like every other day in here — pale light, slow tide, the same mechanical breath of pumps and filters pretending to be ocean.

The phone on the wall never rings gently — It snaps the quiet in half like it has always resented it.

You dry your hands on a dish towel that’s already damp and pick it up on the third ring, because letting it go longer feels like defiance you can’t afford.

“Dr. —” you begin, and the name in your mouth tastes like paperwork.

A man answers.

Not the one you usually report to, not the polite voice that pretends to care about your well-being.

This one is clipped, tired, important in the way men get when they’ve decided they don’t owe you softness.

“We need your quarterly,” he says. “In full.”

The words make something in your shoulder blades tighten.

“I sent the last batch three weeks ago.”

“Partial.”

“It wasn’t partial. It was measured.”

A pause, the kind that punishes you for speaking back.

In the background you hear other voices, pages turning, a chair dragged across the floor.

He’s in an office that smells like stale coffee and authority, and you’re in a house built to keep two living beings contained.

“Your methodology has changed,” he says.

“It’s improved.” you correct, before you can stop yourself.

On the other side of the glass wall, Sukuna is surfaced at the shore ledge, upper body out, the water sliding off him in thin sheets.

He’s not pretending to sleep, He’s watching you with that lazy stillness that always makes you feel like you’re the specimen with a clipboard, not him.

“You’ve grown... personally involved,” the man continues. He doesn’t say it like a concern, he says it like a diagnosis.

You stare at the phone cord. Twist it once around your finger. Untwist.

“He responds better to sustained interaction. He learns faster when there’s continuity, when it isn’t a rotation of handlers.”

“He’s not a child,” the man says flatly. “He’s an asset.”

The word makes your stomach roll.

You keep your voice even anyway, because your anger will only feed them.

“He’s a person. An individual.”

A second of silence, then a faint laugh — short, unimpressed.

“Don’t start with that. You’re overly emotional. It’s been noted.”

You feel heat rise up your neck.

Not shame.

Rage held under your tongue like a bitter tablet.

“If you want results,” you say, carefully, “then you want trust. You want language. You want him calm enough to cooperate. And yes, he is calmer with me.”

“So you admit attachment.”

“I admit efficacy.”

He ignores that. Of course he does.

“What we want is quantifiable progress. We want demonstration, recorded on tape. We want comprehension tests. We want—” papers shuffle, “—comparative behavioral mapping. Social tendencies. Dominance signals.”

Your eyes flick to Sukuna again.

His mouth curves, almost imperceptible.

He knows what they’re asking.

Maybe not the words, but the tone — people outside deciding what to take from him next.

“I can provide social observations,” you say slowly. “Within the limits of a single subject in isolation.”

“You’re creative,” the man answers, which is not a compliment. “Make it work.”

And then, like he’s tossing you a bone, he adds,

“We’ll be sending a team in a few weeks to evaluate next steps.”

Your fingers tighten on the receiver.

“Next steps?”

“You’ll be informed.” he says.

“You’ve kept me in the dark for a year. I need to know what happens when—”

“You need to do your job,” he interrupts. “That’s all.”

Your jaw locks.

“You will have your quarterly. But I want it in writing that you won’t introduce invasive procedures without my presence.”

Another pause, longer.

When he answers, his voice is colder.

“You’re not in a position to bargain.”

“I’m the only reason he hasn’t eaten anyone else you’ve thrown at him.” you say, and you hate that you have to play their language to be heard.

In the glass reflection, Sukuna’s eyes narrow, amused at the venom in your voice.

As if he’s pleased you’re finally biting back.

The man exhales, irritated.

“Send your report. We’ll talk later.”

The line clicks dead.

You stay with the phone against your ear for a second too long, listening to the empty hum, as if it might turn into an answer if you wait hard enough.

When you finally hang up, the house feels smaller.

You don’t move right away, you stand there in the kitchen, hand still hovering near the receiver, and let the anger settle into your ribcage.

Behind the glass, Sukuna shifts.

The motion is economical — one hand flexing, claws scraping faintly against sand, the shark half of him adjusting in the water with a slow sweep of tail. He doesn’t come closer yet.

He doesn’t need to.

His attention fills the space without effort.

“Emotional,” he says, and the word isn’t quite clean, but it’s good enough to make your spine stiffen.

You turn your head toward him.

“You heard that.”

A faint tilt of his chin. Not yes, not no. He likes making you say things out loud.

“Don’t.” you warn, because you can already hear the shape of his mockery forming.

His mouth pulls into something sharp.

“They talk. You take. You shake.”

“I don’t—”

“You do.” His gaze drops to your hand, the one you’ve curled into a fist without noticing. “Your blood go fast.”

You swallow.

You hate that he knows you this way, that your body betrays you around him, that he reads you like you read a chart.

“It’s nothing.” you lie.

His top lip lifts slightly, a sneer, baring the tips of teeth.

“Liar.”

You let out a breath that feels more like surrender than air.

“They’re sending a team. They still won’t tell me what happens after.”

Sukuna’s expression doesn’t change, but the water around him seems to tighten — less idle drift, more gathered presence.

“After.” he repeats, tasting the word.

“After the research.” you explain, because he forces you to be clear. “After they decide they have what they want.”

“What they want.” he says, and there’s contempt in it, thick and steady.

You pick up your notebook from the counter just to have something in your hands.

“More. Always more.”

His eyes stay on you.

“And you?”

You hesitate.

“What do you want?” he clarifies, voice lower, slower, like he’s choosing words that will stick.

The question lands wrong.

Too intimate for a kitchen.

Too honest for a place built on lies.

You look down at the notebook.

“I want you alive.”

A beat.

Then he huffs, soft and derisive.

“Stupid.”

“You asked.”

He shifts closer to the glass, torso rising a little more out of the water. The tattoos across his chest — those unmistakable black marks — look darker when they’re wet, like ink that never dries.

“You want ocean.” he says, like he’s naming one of your habits. “You want leave. But you stay.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

His gaze narrows.

“You always have choice.”

“Not here.”

You could leave, he’s right. Then someone else would take you place, someone that would use violent methods to extract what they want from him.

It’s easier to pretend you have no choice and abdicate of your freedom in order to keep him as safe as you can.

He doesn’t argue directly.

He never does when the truth is ugly, he simply watches you until the silence makes you keep talking.

“I sent them enough to keep them complacent,” you admit, voice quieter. “Not enough to make them... excited.”

He understands that kind of strategy.

You see it in the way his eyes brighten slightly, like a predator recognizing another predator’s patience.

“You keep,” he says. “For you.”

You swallow.

“Yes.”

A slow smile, all teeth and no comfort.

“Good.”

The approval shouldn’t warm you.

It does anyway, shamefully, like sunlight through the glass ceiling.

You turn away before he can see too much of your face.

“I’m going to work.”

“You always work,” he says, a complaint disguised as observation.

“It keeps me sane.”

He makes a low sound, unimpressed.

“Talk.”

You shut your eyes briefly, then open them and pick up your pen.

Fine. You’ll talk.

You’ll feed him words because it keeps him engaged, because it keeps him from sinking into the kind of silence that feels like coiling.

You settle at the edge of the shore ledge — close enough that your feet can dip into the shallows, far enough that you can still stand if you need to.

The sand is damp under your thighs.

The water kisses your ankles in slow, shallow pulses.

Sukuna drifts closer, head level with yours now, eyes tracking your mouth.

“Tell me,” you say, as if you’re directing an interview instead of negotiating with something that could break you. “You said before... great whites aren’t always solitary.”

His gaze flicks, amused at how you dress curiosity up as research.

“Humans,” he begins, and the word comes out with its usual blend of disdain and grudging respect. “You like stories. Lone hunter. Big teeth. No friends.”

You roll your eyes.

“You’re not exactly friendly.”

“Exactly.” He leans his forearms on the sand, shoulders broad, claws half-sunk. “Not friendly. Still... together.”

You angle the notebook on your knee.

“When?”

“Food,” he says simply, then expands when you keep waiting. “Place with seals. Place with whales. Place with blood in water. Many come.”

The way he says many is strange — flat, as if numbers don’t impress him, but memory does.

“Like a feeding ground.” you murmur, writing.

He watches your pen move.

“Looks like party,” he says, tone dry. “Not party. Just... same thing. Everyone want.”

You glance up.

“Do you... recognize individuals?”

His lips curl as if the question is naive.

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” you echo. “So there’s variation.”

He taps a claw against the sand once, impatient.

“Some stay near others. Some go alone. Some... young, travel. Two. Three.”

Your pen stills.

“You traveled with another.”

His gaze shifts away, to the far end of the tank.

For a moment he looks older than he ever lets himself appear — less amused, more... remembering.

“Juvenile,” he says. The word is clumsy, but he forces it out. “Not big yet. Teeth new. Hungry.” His eyes cut back to you. “Always hungry.”

There’s a flicker of humor in that last part, like he’s mocking his own past.

“Who?” you ask softly, surprising yourself with the gentleness.

Sukuna’s mouth tightens.

“Dead.”

The answer is immediate, brutal, a door slammed shut.

But his claw drags a short line in the sand as he speaks, absent, a physical outlet for something he won’t name.

You nod, and you don’t press.

You’ve learned which questions make him bite.

“Dominance,” you try instead, shifting to safer ground. “When many gather... what happens?”

Now he perks up, because this is territory he enjoys — hierarchy, control, the language of bodies.

He leans closer.

“Big first.”

“Size determines rank.”

“Mostly.” He shows teeth briefly. “Sometimes not size. Sometimes... mean.”

You snort softly.

“You.”

He gives you a look like you’ve finally said something intelligent.

“When together,” he continues, “they talk with body. Nudge. Slam. Bite small.”

His claw taps the outside of your calf, right where your leg meets water, a light, almost teasing touch.

“Like this.”

You jerk slightly anyway, reflex more than fear, and his eyes gleam.

“You do it to me.” you accuse.

“I teach.” he corrects, smug.

“You torment.”

“Same.”

Your mouth twitches.

“And cooperative hunting?” you ask, because you’ve read the papers, because you want to compare his lived knowledge to the sanitized language of journals.

His gaze sharpens.

“Yes.”

“How?”

He settles his weight more firmly on the shore, arms braced, posture like he’s about to demonstrate.

“One go near prey,” he says. “Make prey move. Panic. Other wait. Ambush.”

“A decoy.” you murmur.

He makes a sound that could be agreement.

“Simple. But work.”

You scribble notes, then glance up.

“Have you done it?”

He looks at you, and the answer is in his face before his mouth moves.

“Yes,” he says, and his voice has that quiet satisfaction in it, like he’s describing a craft.

“With another great white?” you press, unable to help it.

He pauses, then shrugs one shoulder.

“With many. With orca sometimes.” He bares teeth, expression turning sour. “Orca think they king. Annoying.”

You blink.

“You hunted with orcas.”

“Sometimes same food,” he says, dismissive. “Not friends.”

“So it’s opportunistic coordination.”

He watches you write and gives a small, approving hum when you use a word he likes — big words, human words that make you feel clever.

He likes them the way he likes watching you squirm — as proof he can pull something out of you.

You spend an hour like that, trading information for proximity, your stress slowly draining into the page.

Then the sun shifts behind clouds and the ceiling glass goes gray, and you realize you’ve been sitting with your legs in the water without flinching, without checking his hands every second.

You realize you trust him.

The thought lands like a bruise.

Sukuna’s gaze lifts to your face as if he’s been waiting for you to notice.

“You calm now.” he observes.

You don’t deny it.

“Talking helps.”

He taps his claw lightly against your ankle again — less dominance now, more insistence that you stay present.

“You talk,” he says. “I listen. Trade.”

“What do you want?” you ask, even though you already know it’s never simple.

His pupils widen slightly, dark swallowing more of the red ring.

He leans in just enough that you feel the warmth of him before he touches you.

“Touch.” he says.

Your breath slows. You keep your voice steady.

“What kind of touch?”

His mouth curves, and for once it isn’t purely cruel.

It’s hungry, but controlled.

“Study,” he says, mocking your own language. “Like you. I study you.”

You swallow and look down at your notebook, because meeting his eyes when he says things like that makes you feel too exposed.

“Fine,” you say. “But after you let me do a full oral exam.”

A pause.

He blinks, slow.

“Mouth.”

“Yes.”

His grin sharpens.

“You want my teeth.”

“You have seventy-some teeth. Constant replacement. The patterning is unique in hybrids. I need to see.”

“Need,” he repeats, amused. “Sure.”

You glare at him, and he laughs without sound — just a breathy shake in his chest.

“You won’t bite me.”

A slow blink.

“I will not bite,” he repeats carefully, like he’s carving the promise into stone.

You exhale.

“Okay.”

The fact that you’re negotiating terms with him like a contract makes you want to laugh and cry at once.

You set your notebook aside on dry sand and rinse your hands in the shallow water, scrubbing your nails like ritual.

You don’t want fish oil on your skin. You don’t want blood. You don’t want anything that might make him decide you taste like food.

Sukuna watches your preparation with that patient attention he reserves for things he respects.

When you finally shift closer, kneeling at the waterline, he rises further out of the water and settles onto the shore ledge.

The shark half of him stays submerged, tail sweeping once, then still. His upper body is all muscle and wet skin and ink-black markings, and the membrane between his fingers flexes when he plants his hands in the sand on either side of you.

He’s close enough that you can smell him properly — the clean salt, the faint metallic edge that never fully leaves him, the animal warmth under it all.

“You nervous.” he says, tone almost conversational.

“I’m careful.” you correct.

“Same thing.”

You roll your eyes, but your hands hover for a heartbeat.

He notices. He always notices.

Sukuna leans forward slightly, closing the distance without touching you, and tilts his head.

“Look.” he says, as if granting permission.

You swallow and lift your hands to his face, fingers braced along his jaw the way you would with a large dog — except this isn’t a dog, and the power under your palms is different, ancient and coiled.

His skin is rougher near the edges of his mouth, smoother along his cheekbones.

You trace the line of one tattoo that cuts near his eye and feel the raised texture where ink sits under skin.

“Open.” you say.

His mouth curves, and he opens it slowly.

The first thing that hits you is the sheer architecture — rows that look too sharp to belong to anything that breathes air, enamel meant for tearing.

His gums are darker than yours.

His tongue is broad, the surface textured in a way that speaks of water and friction and prey that struggles.

You force yourself not to react like a startled animal.

You’re here to keep your mind from dissolving.

You slide two fingers in, careful, staying near the front, touching one tooth at a time.

They’re cold at first — water-cooled — then warm where his breath hits them.

You trace the serrated edge of one and feel the precision of it.

Sukuna stays still, eyes half-lidded, watching your face more than your hands.

“You like.” he murmurs.

“It’s... incredible.” you admit, and it’s the most honest you’ve sounded all day.

He makes a small, pleased hum.

You shift your fingers slightly, pressing gently at the gumline, noting the angle, the spacing, the way the teeth sit like interlocking blades.

“You get quiet.” he murmurs around your fingers, the sound vibrating faintly against your skin.

“I’m working,” you say, lowly.

“You look like prey when you work.” he answers.

Your heart trips. Your fingers still.

Sukuna’s eyes gleam.

You pull your hands out a fraction and glare.

“I am not prey.”

His mouth curves.

“You are in my mouth.”

You hate the heat that rises in your face.

You hate that he can provoke it with a sentence.

You shove your fingers back in with more firmness than necessary.

“Hold still.”

Sukuna hums, amused, and lets you continue.

Your thumb slides, accidentally, against the corner of his mouth.

He closes his jaw a fraction — enough to trap your fingers without pressure.

You freeze.

“Still okay?” he asks, and the words come out with that exact, cruel softness you’ve come to recognize — the one that makes your consent feel like both power and humiliation.

You swallow and force your voice to stay steady.

“Yes. Still okay.”

His grin deepens, satisfied with the tremor he hears anyway.

He releases you and opens wider, as if rewarding compliance.

You keep going, refusing to let him make you shy. You count. You map. You murmur notes out loud, partly for memory, partly to keep your mind anchored away from how close he is, how his forearms bracket your hips, how the warmth of him seeps into your skin.

When you’re done, you don’t pull away right away.

Your hands remain on his face, fingertips tracing the line of a tattoo that isn’t ink — at least not originally. You’ve learned enough from his skin to suspect the markings are more than decoration, something old and ritualistic that humans copied poorly when they started trying to categorize his kind.

You touch the edge near his cheekbone.

“These weren’t done by humans.”

“No.” he says.

“By who?”

He blinks.

“Mine.”

You tilt your head.

“Your people tattoo each other.”

He snorts softly.

“You always want rules. It is not rules. It is claim. It is story. It is warning.”

You trace the line with your thumb.

“And yours says what?”

Sukuna’s eyes narrow, and for a moment he looks almost pleased to be asked.

Then he answers, quietly,

“It says do not come close.”

Your throat tightens.

You don’t say what you’re thinking — that you came close anyway, that now you live close enough to count his breaths.

Instead, you move your hands down, to the membrane between his fingers, lifting one webbed hand and stretching it gently to see how the skin pulls.

He watches you with that same focused patience, as if letting you learn him is its own kind of indulgence.

“You are gentle.” he says suddenly.

You snort.

“Don’t get used to it.”

His mouth curves.

“Too late.”

The trade shifts, like it always does.

“My turn.” he says.

You blink.

“To examine my dentition?”

He narrows his eyes in a way that is all mockery and intent.

“To examine my scientist.”

You feel heat climb your throat, rapid and ridiculous, as if you have not spent two years sharing space with him, swimming within arm’s reach of his teeth, listening to him talk about how he and his kind tear seals apart.

You start to slide back, to put distance between your body and his, but his hands are already moving.

Those big, webbed hands leave the shore and come to your waist with practiced ease.

He does not grab sharply. He does not bruise. He presses, thumbs digging into the curve above your hip bones, fingers wrapping around to the small of your back.

“Trade.” he reminds you. “You learn me, I learn you.”

“We have different definitions of research ethics.” you manage.

“Yours are boring.” he says.

He doesn’t push you down, he leans in.

His torso crowds closer, his weight a steady, undeniable presence between your knees.

Your balance goes, and you end up leaning back on your hands in the sand, looking up at him from entirely too close.

Sukuna’s gaze drops to your throat, then to your chest, then back to your face.

He catalogues you with the same unhurried precision you used on his teeth.

“You soft everywhere.” he says, almost contemplative. “Even where you think you not.”

“You have said that before.” you mutter.

“Keeps being true.”

His hands shift. One slides down to your thigh, fingers pressing into the muscle, testing resistance. The other trails up your side, skimming ribs through fabric, pausing where your breath hitches.

He notes every reaction.

You have no illusions about what this is.

He is not gentle because he has become domesticated.

He is gentle because he has full control and this is the option he is choosing in this moment.

It would be easier if that did not make something inside you loosen.

He leans down until his mouth is level with your shoulder.

His breath skims your skin, hot in contrast with the cool air of the House.

His nose pushes aside the collar of your shirt, baring the curve where neck meets shoulder.

“Warning marks.” he murmurs, eyes flicking to the faint white lines there from old accidents, old clumsy dives, a childhood of climbing rocks and ignoring caution. “Your kind scars small.”

“So do yours.” you say quietly, thinking of the thick pale lines crisscrossing his upper chest, the missing piece of dorsal fin, the dent near his flank that could only be human harpoon work.

He makes a sound that might be agreement.

Then his teeth graze the skin above your collarbone.

Not a bite, a hint.

Enough pressure to prick awareness, to let your body know that the potential is there.

Your breath stutters.

Your hand finds his forearm without thinking, fingers wrapping around inked skin.

He feels solid under your palm, wet warmth radiating up your arm.

“Sukuna,” you say, not in protest, not exactly, but more as an anchor point.

He pulls back a fraction, crimson eyes watching your face.

“You trust me.” he says.

Not a question.

A statement he is checking for weaknesses.

You exhale slowly.

“More than is wise.”

He smiles, slow and feral and satisfied.

“Good.”

It becomes a pattern.

You study him — he studies you.

You take meticulous notes on the minor ways his pigmentation shifts over time, on the way his gill slits flare when he exerts himself, on how his eyes respond to light changes in the tank.

He lets you trace the raised edges of old wounds, lets you press fingers to places where the human portion of him transitions into shark, feeling the subtle change in skin texture.

In return, his hands learn your body in the same steady, exploratory way.

He pokes at the soft concavity above your knee. He squeezes the muscle of your calf as if testing how much strength is hidden there. He slides his thumb along the inside of your elbow and watches the shiver pass through you with genuine curiosity.

Sukuna’s hands come to your thighs, thumbs pressing into soft flesh, not bruising, just claiming space.

He pokes, squeezes, probes like he’s cataloging you the way you catalog him.

He has no shame about curiosity.

He never has.

When he pinches lightly, you swat at his wrist.

“Stop that.”

He catches your hand with his other one, claws careful not to scratch. He holds it for a moment longer than necessary, eyes on your fingers as if he’s comparing them to his.

“Soft.” he says again, the word still half-insult.

“Human,” you reply, and you’re not sure which of you is repeating the other anymore.

His gaze drops, and his mouth brushes the inner side of your thigh.

Not deep, not violent — a controlled nip that stings like a thin line of heat.

You inhale sharply, fingers curling into the sand.

“Sukuna—” you warn.

He doesn’t bite again. He licks, slow, deliberate, tongue rougher than any human’s, a texture made for water and friction.

The sting eases into a pulsing awareness that makes your skin feel too awake.

His pupils widen, dark swallowing most of the red ring.

For a second he looks less smug and more satisfied, as if the taste hit something in him that quieted the edge.

“You bleed easy.” he murmurs.

“You bit me.” You grumble.

He lifts his gaze to your face.

“Still blood.”

You swallow.

“Are you done?”

Sukuna’s mouth curves.

“Not yet.”

You should be furious, should push him off and stand up and remind both of you that this is dangerous.

Instead, you breathe out slowly and say.

“Then keep it controlled.”

Sukuna pauses, eyes narrowing, like your calm is more interesting than your anger.

“Say stop.” he says, low.

You meet his gaze.

“If I say stop, you stop?”

His jaw shifts.

“Yes.”

The promise has become ritual.

It should feel clinical. It doesn’t.

It feels like a thread you can hold onto when everything else in this place is made of glass.

Later — hours later, after you’ve rinsed and written and forced your mind back into “research” — you ask him for something else.

Not because you want to.

Because you don’t want the board’s hungry hands on it first.

You sit at the waterline with your notebook, tanktop, shorts, and a pen that keeps slipping between your fingers because your palms sweat.

Sukuna surfaces close, resting his forearms on the shore ledge, eyes bright with that quiet, cruel amusement he gets when he knows you’re about to embarrass yourself.

“Appendages.” you say, forcing the word out like you’re reading from a manual.

His mouth curves.

“You finally ask.”

“Shut up.”

He shifts his weight, and the movement is fluid, controlled — his shark half adjusting under the surface while his torso stays steady above.

He reaches down, fingers disappearing briefly beneath the waterline, then lifts his gaze back to you.

“You look,” he says. “No touch until I say.”

You hate that you obey instantly.

“Fine.”

He gives you a slow, satisfied blink, then moves again.

You keep your eyes on the notebook for a second longer than necessary, writing the words as if anchoring them will keep your pulse from betraying you.

When you look up, you force your face into something neutral — scientist, not lonely woman in a glass house.

Sukuna watches you watch him, smugness curling at the edges of his expression.

You can see his whole self when he lays like that — horizontal, humanoid and shark-like parts above the water, resting on the shallow part of the shore.

He doesn’t make it easy. Of course he doesn’t.

He drags out the moment like a lesson, letting you sit in the heat of anticipation and embarrassment.

When he finally allows you closer, you scoot forward on the sand, careful not to slip, careful not to rush.

You keep it clinical.

You keep it measured.

Your hands move with the same deliberate gentleness you used on his teeth.

You observe shape, texture, placement, the way his hybrid physiology solves problems in ways your textbooks never accounted for.

You note the band of dark pigment near the base of his lower cock, the way the skin shifts and adapts between air and water, the way everything about him is built for function and dominance at once.

While his lower cock looks more human-like, big, thick, a flared glans that matches the tone of his torso’s skin, a little pointy at the edge — his upper cock looks like a tentacle. Broader at the base, thinner at the end, like a long tongue, but with a slit at its edge, similar to his glans.

You wonder if both have similar properties, sensibility, function.

You press lightly, touch carefully to test temperature, skin, texture, softness.

He lets out a huff at some point, but doesn’t move.

Sukuna watches your face the entire time, eyes bright with the quiet pleasure of making you do this without fleeing.

“You pretend,” he murmurs. “Professional.”

“I am professional.” you snap, and your voice comes out higher than you want.

His grin deepens.

“You blush.”

You look down at your notes so fast you almost cramp your neck.

“I’m writing.”

He hums, pleased.

“Write more.”

You grit your teeth and continue, forcing your hand steady.

When you’re done, you pull your hands back, rinse them in the shallows, and pick up the pen again. Your notes are neat, tight, more thorough than anything you’ve ever sent the board.

These pages are for you.

Sukuna’s hand catches your wrist as you lay the notebook on the dry sand.

His lower body is back in the water.

You go still, breathing careful.

He holds you without squeezing, claws pressing lightly against your skin.

His gaze drops to your pulse point as if he can see it jumping under his fingers.

Sukuna settles his forearms again, relaxed like he hasn’t just made your pulse visible in your throat.

“My turn,” he says.

You don’t look up right away.

“We already traded.”

He hums.

“Not this.”

Your chest tightens.

“Sukuna—” you try.

He leans closer, voice low and sure.

“You always learn me. Now I learn you.”

Two years ago, that sentence would’ve been a threat that made you sick.

Now, it still makes you shake, but the shaking isn’t only fear.

It’s the strange, quiet reality that he’s become the only person who touches you with any honesty in this place — no pretense, no politeness, just a blunt attention that treats your reactions as real.

His hand slides down to your fingers, then releases you and plants on the sand again, bracketing you.

He leans forward, and the space between you shrinks until you can feel the heat of him against your knees.

He doesn’t lunge.

He doesn’t force.

He waits, and the waiting is its own pressure.

Sukuna’s hands come to your thighs when your expression gives him what he wants.

Warm. Heavy. Unavoidable.

He spreads you with ease, not forcing, not rushing — just making space the way he makes space in the water when he swims, as if the world should part around him.

Your face burns anyway, because you are still shy in ways you can’t seem to kill, and he knows it.

He likes it.

He uses his teeth to catch the fabric covering your sex and pull, the material giving way too easily under serration meant for meat. Your shorts and underwear are gone in a second, they never stood a chance.

The sound is small and obscene in the quiet of the House.

You gasp, a strangled sound you try to swallow, and your cheeks go hotter because he hears everything.

Sukuna pauses — not out of hesitation, out of control.

He inhales slowly, and you feel the warmth of his breath against you, the way his attention narrows until it’s almost tangible.

He looks up at your face, eyes wide, pupils blown.

“Still okay.” he says, and it isn’t a question the way it used to be.

It’s a demand that you be honest.

You swallow. Your hands curl into the sand.

“Yes.”

Sukuna’s mouth curves, satisfied — never gentle, but contained in a way that makes your chest ache with the strange safety of it.

He lowers his head again, you keep your breath steady.

When his hands shift — when his thumbs press into the softer parts of your inner thighs, when he tests what makes you tense and what makes you go loose — you find yourself grabbing at his hair without thinking, fingers tangling in damp strands at his temple.

Sukuna stills at the contact, as if the touch registers as a choice.

Then he continues with slow, relentless focus, learning you the way he learns everything — through attention, through patience, through the quiet arrogance of someone who knows he can take his time.

He spreads your folds, slides the rough pads of his fingers outside, inside, pinches and looks closely when you twitch and clench around nothing. He presses at your nub with a claw and you jolt, which amuses him, you notice.

The House’s pumps keep breathing, the tide keeps moving, the ceiling glass holds the sky far above you like a distant promise.

And eventually, when your muscles stop fighting and your mind stops trying to turn every sensation into a category, you let your head fall back against the sand and you exhale a sound you didn’t mean to give him.

Sukuna’s eyes lift again, watching your face like it’s the real study.

He pulls back just enough to speak, voice rough.

“You hide.”

You blink, dazed.

“What.”

“You hide sound,” he says, and his tone is both mocking and... almost annoyed, as if you’re denying him data. “Why.”

Because you were taught to be quiet.

Because you were taught your desire is shame.

Because you’re in a facility that will call you hysterical for feeling anything at all.

You can’t fit all that into words.

So you manage.

“Habit.”

He scoffs softly and returns to you, not allowing the conversation to become refuge.

You answer with your body — by staying, by not pulling away, by letting him see what he’s doing to you.

His breath warms your skin.

His eyes half-lid.

He stops testing with his hands and tests with his face, diving in between your legs and nuzzling the patch of kempt dark hair on your mound while his lips tease your clit without warning.

You tense. He opens his mouth and his long tongue unrolls to probe at your slick folds, sliding between them to taste you.

The sensation is immediate and overwhelming, not because it’s graphic, not because it’s violent, but because it’s different — his tongue broader, rougher, built for water, pressure, and the relentless patience of a predator that doesn’t tire.

You gasp despite yourself and press the back of your wrist to your mouth to muffle the sound, embarrassed even though there’s no one to hear.

Sukuna’s hands tighten slightly on the plush flesh of your thighs, keeping you open, anchoring you.

He doesn’t rush.

He takes his time in a way that feels like a message — I decide the pace.

Your body reacts with betraying ease, heat coiling low and spreading upward, making your thoughts smear at the edges.

You try to keep it in your head, try to keep it labeled — stimulus, response, nerve clusters, behavior conditioning — anything to keep from drowning in how intimate it is to be touched like this by someone who has learned your language and uses it to ask for your consent like a knife to the throat.

You fail.

You make a small, broken sound anyway, and Sukuna’s eyes lift again, watching your face as if that’s the true reward.

He shifts his mouth slightly — pressure changing, angle changing — and you feel your legs tremble under his hands.

You bite down on your lip hard enough to sting and hate yourself for how your body welcomes it.

His hands slide up, thumbs pressing into the softer flesh near your hips, kneading lightly as if testing, exploring, learning the way he always does.

You can’t stop thinking about the board calling you emotional, about the way they’d sneer if they saw you like this, about how they’d weaponize it, call it proof you can’t be trusted.

But you also can’t stop the truth — this is the first time in months you feel fully here in your body instead of trapped in your head.

Your fingers dig into the sand. Your spine arches slightly despite your effort to stay composed.

Sukuna’s hands press you down, not harsh, just firm, steadying.

“Look.” he says, and there’s command in it.

You hesitate, then lift your gaze.

His eyes are fixed on you with an intensity that makes your chest ache.

He looks... hungry, yes, but also focused, as if you’re the only thing in his world worth studying.

“You are mine.” he says.

The words should make you scared, probably.

They should make you fight.

Instead, something in you loosens further, because mine is still better than asset, still better than specimen, still better than the board’s cold language that reduces living bodies to value.

You swallow.

“I’m not—”

Sukuna nips your thigh again — not deep, not cruel — enough to make your sentence dissolve in a mewl.

You inhale sharply and glare down at him.

He looks smug.

“You talk too much.”

You laugh once, breathless and disbelieving.

“Says you.”

His eyes gleam again.

He returns to his work with slow, relentless attention, and you stop trying to label it because the labels don’t matter anymore.

He learns you quickly, he repeats his motions that have you squirming, he picks pace when he hears your breath hitching, he pulls you closer and sinks his tongue inside of you when he feels how your muscles twitch under his palms and your body heat spikes as your lust uncoils in your lower belly like molten lava.

When the edge finally comes — when your body tightens, when your mind blurs into a single, bright line — you reach down and touch his head, fingers sliding into wet hair at his temple again, and the contact grounds you.

Sukuna stills immediately at the touch, not because he’s startled, but because he registers it as a choice.

He looks up again, eyes wide.

“Stop?” he asks, voice rougher now.

You shake your head, breath shaking.

“No.”

He watches you for a second longer, then continues — slower, controlled, as if he’s guiding you over the threshold instead of forcing you off it.

When it finally breaks through you, it doesn’t feel like fireworks. It feels like something unclenching that you didn’t realize you’d been holding since you arrived here.

You exhale a sound you can’t swallow back.

He has you arching and gasping, clenching around his tongue as he takes your orgasm as a triumph, latching his mouth on your cunt and letting those sharp teeth graze lightly on your mound and puffy lips.

You whine his name at the sensation and the lingering fear that he will bite you just because he can be a bastard sometimes, but he slowly slides his tongue out of your tight core, lapping at it once before licking his own lips.

Sukuna stays close, mouth lingering for a moment longer as if savoring the aftertaste of your reaction, then pulls away and rests his forehead briefly against your lower belly.

The gesture is shockingly quiet.

Not affectionate in a human way.

More like... claiming, grounding, listening to the way your body calms.

His hands loosen on your thighs.

“More.” He says, lowly, voice gravelly, raising his forehead from your belly to look at you — pupils blown wide, deep black swallowing bright red, his gaze scorching your skin.

You feel like he’s looking through you, not at you.

Your heart beats fast once again, blood rushing in your ears but you have already lost that thing that kept you at least three feet away from the jaws of an apex predator.

Common sense.

You nod at him and that’s all he needs to pull back his torso just enough to flip you to your belly and drag you further down into the water.

You yelp because the sensation of being dragged in sand is never incredibly pleasant, and you settle your forearms and knees however you manage on it to keep your head above the water.

He’s hungry. He’s still paying attention.

His massive shape cages you with two strong arms before one of them wrap around your torso diagonally, a clawed-webbed big hand encasing the front of your thin neck almost fully and dragging a low groan from your throat.

He uses it to keep your head above the water. He fixes his elbow on the et sand right in front of your sternum, between your boobs. If he’s not careful he can end up strangling you.

You trust he won’t.

His other massive, warm, clawed hand travels up from your thigh to your waist with abandon, squeezing lightly, feeling you up and anchoring you as he moves up, leaning in until his broad chest presses against your shirt covered back.

You can feel him slightly against your skin where the shirt rode up with the slow movements of the faint waves in the tank.

You take a deep breathe and look up at his face towering just above your head.

Dark eyes, giant pupils swallowing the flame of his irises like two black holes that make you feel like you’re the next one being consumed.

He is truly magnificent.

Painfully so.

You part your lips, meaning to say something about his face but what leaves your mouth is a loud, ragged mewl as he — no warning, no nothing — bucks his lower half in, flared head of his thick lower cock pressing, breaching, sliding inside and stretching your tight cunt in a crude, sharp thrust that has him bottoming out inside of you at once.

You see white at the edges of your vision and the pain burns in a bright way.

The stretch is painful, your velvety walls fluttering, clenching and trying desperately to adjust to that girth and size. You gasp, pant and whine, fingers curling in the sand as your body jerks and writhes uselessly under his weight.

His claws dig into your skin, fingers closing around your neck and feeling your pulse spike.

He lowers his head until he’s basically looking at you upside down.

He licks at your cheekbones, tasting your tears as he feels his cock twitching inside you, being massaged by your warm walls, basking in the delicious feeling of your pussy gripping him in a tight vice. His upper cock lays between the curve of your ass, leaking against the small of your back.

Your breathes are still ragged and wet with your sobs as he slowly pulls himself out until only the fat head of his cock stays inside.

You feel the difference, you feel empty suddenly without that massive intrusion — but soon you learn that he did it so he could fill you up even more.

Unlike a human man, he doesn’t let go of your hip or your neck to fidget with his cock and align it with your entrance.

No — he bucks his hip again, adjusting, pressing, and you feel that pointy tip of his upper appendage sliding in between your ass cheeks, intruding, probing at your puckered rim.

You jolt and your body shivers, but he takes mercy on you.

His big hand lets go of your throat and cups your jaw, keeping your face up, keeping your eyes on his.

“Relax.” He orders, voice low, almost gentle.

“Won’t fit— Sukuna— fuck,” you feel the panic uncoiling inside you.

He lowers his head again, this time he settles it besides yours, his cheek — warm, wet — presses against your cheek and he breathes deeply once, twice, three times, forcing you to match his rhythm until your heart stops hammering your ribs.

“Relax.” He repeats without moving his head, and you slowly, very slowly, feel your body relaxing under his ministrations.

He moves, unhurried this time. He rocks his hips, the tip of his cock dragging in and out, in and out, erring to leave your cunt but never doing so as the pointy tip of his upper cock pokes, presses and finally breaches your tight asshole.

The stretch is still painful, weird honestly, but he slides in so much easier even though you’re so, so much tighter there.

That upper dick is made for lubrication and oviposition, you manage to remember as he presses and pushes his powerful hips, spreading you open inch by thick inch.

He reminds you to breathe with a squeeze on the hinges of your jaw, and he grunts, heavy, luscious, once he finds himself completely sheathed by both your hot, cozy holes.

Fuck, you’ve never felt so fucking full.

You can feel your lower belly bulging from how big he is. How both his cocks consume every single inch avaliable.

You don’t really know how you managed to fit him inside, but you won’t think about it now.

Now you can only think about the hand leaving your waist to sneak up under your shirt and bra, pulling it up with no patience just so he can freely feel and cup one of your breasts, granting him another dragged moan from your lips as he squeezes it lightly.

“Soft.” He murmurs, as if you didn’t already hear that many times from him.

“You’re fucking big.” You catch yourself confessing instead of cursing him, a little breathless.

You feel his grin widening, his cheek is still against yours, and you feel the rumble raising from deep don his chest — which is still pressed against your back, mind you — in a dark noiseless chuckle.

He knows he’s big, and he likes he’s stretching you to his shape.

Because he knows you’re his.

He decided it, he claimed it and he’s doing it again.

“Fuck.”

It’s not a curse, it’s a warning.

And it takes shape in a single beat as he starts to actually move, slow, languid thrusts at first, because he’s not breaking you. He’s keeping you. And still they have you panting and mewling, brows knitting together as your body takes his size again and again.

Your knees scrap on the soft giving of the sand underwater, your hands find purchase around his wrist and forearm — that one still supporting your head by the jaw.

And he is fucking you partially underwater, so the sensation is simply unique in so many ways. You’re lucky there’s no sand intruding to turn it into a terrible experience.

He slowly picks his pace and you can feel the restrains snapping one by one as his movements grow rougher.

His claws sink into the soft flesh of your hip once his hand is back there to anchor you better as he fucks into your ass and pussy in a now ruthless rhythm.

His chest is not pressed against your back anymore and his face once again looms over your head with his hunched form — still he cups your jaw, keeps your face from the water, keeps his eyes bored into yours, transfixed, almost etching his lust in your body with each powerful snap of his hips against the fat of your ass.

You’re far gone when he starts to rut inside of you like a beast in heat, hammering his cocks in and out so viciously the water splashes every-fucking-where, but he doesn’t care and you’re too fucked out to even notice.

His hand explores and squeezes your plush flesh with abandon, and it finds your bundle of nerves between your legs again, pressing on it, circling, sliding and rubbing just to hear your screams and broken moans as he keeps stretching and pounding into you restlessly.

He pries out of you three, four orgasms in the span of five hours he keeps you at his mercy, releasing almost two years of gathered tension when his thick cum spurts inside of both your holes — not just once, probably half a dozen times — and it keeps being pushed out by the relentless thrusting only to be refilled again and again.

Your throat is hoarse of calling his name, begging, crying and moaning, your hands once closed around that wrist of the hand keeping your head up and then fell, limp, again on the sand.

Your eyes have rolled back and your body spasmed with every orgasm, every high you rode as he made sure to carve his shape inside of your warm, velvety walls.

Maybe he simply grew addicted too fucking quick at the hot, tight sensation of your human pussy and ass squeezing and milking his appendages.

Maybe he really needed to release all of the semen he has produced during the years he was kept.

Maybe he just couldn’t stop once he heard your cute mewls and moans escaping.

Whatever reason got him so frantically mounting and breeding you again and again, you’re free to explore once you regain your conscience.

Which, miraculously, happen while he’s still sheathed inside of you, chest heaving, cocks pressing deep, deep inside, purging the excess cum and water out of your holes as his body seems to finally need some rest.

He manages to get you further up in the shore, sliding slowly out of your ruined gaping entrances as he allows you to plop on the sand properly, tired, muscles sagged.

You’re shaking, sand sticking to your skin, hair damp at your temples.

You feel exposed and heavy and strangely clean, like something sharp has been pulled out of you.

You don’t move at first, just breathe, shallow pulls and little, soft moans and sobs.

He keeps his hand cupping your jaw to keep it elevated from water and sand, his cocks are tucked in again inside that subtle slit on the shark-half of his body.

He adjusts you to lay on your side, head able to look at him when you open your eyes and they can focus once again.

Sukuna lifts his head when your eyelids flutter open, his eyes still wide.

He looks... pleased.

Not in a triumphant way. In a way that makes your chest tighten, because it hints at a need he won’t ever admit.

You swallow and manage, voice still hoarse and mind scrambled.

“That was... a trade.”

He snorts softly.

“Everything is trade.”

Your thoughts travel towards the notebook, toward the research pages waiting to be filled.

“And now... you’re going to let me pretend... this is all science.”

Sukuna’s grin turns sharp again, familiar.

“You will write. You will lie to them. You will keep for you.”

Your breath catches, you furrow your brows. A little bit of life returning to you as you realize.

“You know I’m lying.”

He leans closer, voice low.

“I know you choose me.”

The words are simple, the meaning isn’t.

You stare at him, throat tightening, and the fear returns — not of him, not of teeth, but of what the board will do when they realize your subject isn’t just learning words.

He’s learning humans.

He’s learning leverage.

He’s learning you.

“You heard the call,” you whisper. “They’re coming.”

Sukuna’s gaze sharpens. The smugness fades into something colder.

“Team,” he says, tasting the new word. “Many.”

“Yes.”

He glances toward the far end of the facility, toward doors and locks and the invisible world beyond the glass ceiling. When he looks back at you, there’s a flat certainty in his eyes that makes your stomach twist.

“They will try take.” he says.

You feel your throat close.

“I don’t know what they’ll do.”

Sukuna’s hand rises and cups the back of your knee, claws careful, not scratching. His thumb presses lightly into the soft spot like a reminder of his control — but also, strangely, of his presence.

He looks like he’s considering grabbing you and taking to the depths of his tank.

“You will tell me,” he says.

It’s not a request.

It should terrify you.

It also steadies you, because it’s something solid in a situation that keeps shifting under your feet.

You blink hard, forcing yourself back into motion.

Your body is sore, your mind is still fuzzy. You can’t really sit down and you make a face when you realize it.

You reach for your shirt — you’re still laying on your side, still with his big hand holding your face — bunched up with your bra above your boobs and pull it back down with clumsy hands.

Sukuna watches you redress with a kind of quiet satisfaction, like he’s letting you rebuild your armor while still knowing what’s underneath. Your shorts never left, they’re simply ruined in the middle and that’s how he could ruin you with his tongue and his cocks.

He takes another mercy on you.

Letting go of your head slowly, he reels himself up so his upper body is flat on the sand, his back pressed on it, and his lower body still mostly in the water.

He’s big enough, large and strong enough to support you, and in one fluid movement he reaches, grabs and hauls you over his torso.

You yelp once again and he simply lays your flimsy human body on top of him.

Chest to chest.

He’s uncomfortable, that position has to be terrible for him, but he’s the sole responsible for your lack of... well, everything. You really feel sore to your bones.

“Rest.” He rasps an order, keeping one arm wrapped around your waist to keep you from sliding off him or trying to get up, the other bent behind the back of his head to use his forearm as a pillow.

“Just a little.” You mumble and let yourself relax over him. He’s warm, and he’s firm under you. At this point you don’t even care that you’re wet, that he’s wet, that your skin will become wrinkled — it already is from how long you’ve been kept submerged as he pounded into you.

You close your eyes and let your mind drift, let yourself rest for a while until your body decides to let you move again.

You slide off him when you wake up, not mentioning how you have drooled on his chest. You manage to walk, still a little wobbly, to the shower where you take a hot bath, washing off the sweat, the sand, the salt and the remaining cum that drips off your sore sex.

That was, indeed, a trade.

You don’t sleep yet, you change your clothes, put another short, another shirt and walk back to the shore where he has simply rolled his massive body to a better position now that he doesn’t need to function as a water mattress for you.

You grab your notebook, flip to a page that isn’t part of the official log — no headers, no facility codes, no neat categories. Just your handwriting, private and dense.

You write — TEAM COMING. NO DETAILS. SUBJECT AWARE.

Then, lower, smaller — SUBJECT POSSESSIVE. SUBJECT STRATEGIC.

You feel his gaze on the page.

“Read,” he says abruptly.

You freeze.

“What.”

He taps the glass with one claw, impatient.

“Read what you write.”

You stare at him.

“Why?”

“Language,” he says, as if it’s obvious. “You make marks. You speak. I want.”

Your pulse jumps.

He’s moved beyond speaking.

He wants literacy.

He wants access to everything you’ve tried to keep behind pen and paper.

A year ago, you would’ve laughed. Now, you just feel cold.

You force your voice steady.

“If you can read, they’ll... they’ll never let you go.”

His eyes narrow.

“They already not let go.”

That simple truth hits you like a slap.

You exhale slowly.

“Okay. But not everything.”

His mouth curves.

“You keep secrets.”

“Everyone does.”

He watches you a beat, then gives a slow nod — acceptance, not agreement.

He understands secrets.

He just doesn’t like when they aren’t his.

You begin with simple words, the same way you started speech — TABLE. WATER. SAND. YOU. ME.

You point. You write. You read aloud.

Sukuna watches, absorbs, repeats, his mouth shaping the sounds while his eyes track the letters with unnerving focus.

He learns faster than you want him to.

By the end of the week, he’s picking out words from your taped labels without prompting.

He taps the glass near the kitchen and says “SINK” with almost perfect clarity, then looks at you as if daring you to deny him.

By the end of the month, he’s staring at your official logs when you write, head tilted, gaze moving left to right like he’s mapping patterns.

You start hiding your private notebook under the mattress again, like a teenager with contraband, and the shame of it makes you want to laugh.

The next time the board calls, you give them what they want — numbers, observations, a controlled slice of Sukuna’s behavioral knowledge:

Aggregation around resource-rich zones.

Dominance signals through nudges and body contact.

Opportunistic coordination during hunts.

Individual variation in sociability.

You omit the words “choice” and “mine.”

You omit the way he asked to read.

You omit the way he asked about after.

When the call ends, you find Sukuna at the shore ledge again, waiting like he always does.

He doesn’t ask what they said.

He doesn’t have to.

He watches your face, your shoulders, the way your hands move too fast as you put the phone back.

“You lied,” he says, calm.

“Yes.”

He looks pleased.

“Good.”

You swallow, and the weight of what you’ve become presses against your lungs.

“You can’t keep doing this,” you whisper. “You can’t—” you gesture vaguely between you and him, the intimacy, the trades, the quiet dependence. “They’ll use it.”

Sukuna leans closer, eyes bright with something dangerous.

“They already use you.” he says.

The words hurt because they’re true.

He reaches out, claws careful, and hooks one finger under the edge of your sleeve, tugging lightly — not to tear, not to force, just to pull you closer until your knee brushes the damp sand at the waterline again.

“Come,” he says.

You should refuse.

Instead, you sit.

You let your feet sink into the shallows.

You let the water climb your ankles.

Sukuna settles half-out of the water beside you, shoulder near your thigh, the heat of him bleeding into your skin as it did countless times before. He looks up at the glass ceiling, at the slice of sky beyond, and you follow his gaze automatically.

The sky is bruised purple tonight. Stars are faint behind cloud cover, but they’re there.

You feel him shift slightly. His claw touches your calf, drawing a slow, absent line — not quite a caress, not quite a claim. Something in-between that only exists because you’ve spent a year teaching each other new ways to exist in the same cage.

“You are afraid.” he says, not as an accusation this time.

“Yes.” you admit, and your voice is smaller than you want.

He exhales, a low breath that stirs your skin.

“Good,” he says, and the word is strange — almost gentle, if you don’t think about it too hard. “Fear make you watch.”

You turn your head toward him.

“And what do you watch?”

His eyes slide to you, sharp and steady.

“Doors.” he says.

Your stomach drops.

“You can’t—”

He cuts you off with a quiet, amused sound.

“You think I only learn words?”

You stare at him, heart tightening.

Sukuna’s mouth curves, and the expression is all teeth again — ominous, confident, cruel in the way only someone certain of their own strength can be.

“Team will come,” he says, voice low. “They will try take. They will try hurt.”

His claw presses into your calf slightly, grounding you.

“And I,” he adds, eyes locked on yours, “will choose.”

The threat isn’t loud.

It doesn’t need to be.

You swallow hard, staring up at the dim sky through reinforced glass, and the prison feels suddenly like a thin, fragile thing — sand and water and metal pretending it can hold a creature who’s started to understand exactly where the seams are.

Beside you, Sukuna stays half on shore, half in water, close enough that your body stops shaking.

He listens while you talk about nothing again.

He lays his head on your thighs, forearms bracketing your hips, claws half-digging in sand.

He allows you to play with his pale hair without punishing you.

You feel, somehow, in peace.

Not because you’re safe.

Because you’re not alone.