⤷ GAME SAVED , GAKU .
summary 𓂃 gaku stays up late playing Resident Evil on his PSP instead of resting after getting badly injured a mission. you find him on the couch at 2 AM, try to drag him to bed, and end up falling asleep on his shoulder.
tags 𓂃 boyfriend!gaku x fem!reader , 3rd person POV , fluff , established relationship , sleepy fluff , soft gaku , video games , reader takes care of him , worrisome!reader , slice of life , injured!gaku , he doesn’t know why you care .
⤷ THE COUCH was exactly where he'd left it three hours ago.
Same sagging cushion on the left side. Same faint stain near the armrest that no one could identify. Same angle that let him see both the TV and the kitchen doorway, because old habits from Al-Kamar didn't die just because you'd escaped.
Gaku pressed start. Restarted the level.
The PSP glowed in his bandaged hands, screen reflecting off his hot pink eyes. Resident Evil. The fourth one, not that it mattered—he'd played all of them so many times he could navigate the mansion blindfolded. Which was good, because his right hand still ached where Kashima had sewn it back on.
He flexed his fingers. Still attached. Still working.
Good enough.
The level loaded. Zombies shambled toward him. He shot three in the head without blinking, then paused to check his ammo count.
Footsteps.
Soft ones. Bare feet on hardwood. He didn't look up from the screen, but his thumb hovered over the analog stick, waiting.
"You're supposed to be resting."
Her voice was thick with sleep. Groggy. Annoyed. He'd heard that tone before—maybe a dozen times in the last few months, always around two or three in the morning, always when he'd been sitting in this exact spot for too long.
"I am resting," he said without looking up. "I'm sitting down."
"That's not what Kashima meant."
"Kashima's not here."
A pause. He could feel her staring at the back of his head. Probably doing that thing with her arms—crossing them, the way she did when she was about to launch into a lecture.
He shot another zombie. Headshot. Clean.
"You've been playing for hours," she said.
"Hours is an exaggeration."
"It's two-thirty in the morning."
"So?"
"So you have stitches in your stomach. And your hand. And—" She stopped. Took a breath. He heard her move closer, the floorboards creaking under her weight. "And you're supposed to be healing, Gaku. Not speedrunning your way to another injury."
He almost smiled at that. Speedrunning. She'd picked up his vocabulary somewhere along the way, all those video game terms slipping into her speech like she'd always known them. It shouldn't have made him feel anything. It did.
He wasn’t sure what to do with that.
"I'm fine," he said.
"You say that every time."
"Because it's true every time."
She moved around the couch. Sat down on the coffee table facing him—close, too close, blocking his view of the screen. Her hair was messy from sleep, falling over one shoulder. She was wearing one of his shirts. He noticed because he noticed everything. That was how he'd survived this long.
"You're not fine," she said flatly. "You lost a hand, Gaku. And fingers. And an ear. That's not 'fine.' That's 'I should be in a hospital.'"
"It got reattached."
"It got reattached by a guy who usually works on cars."
"Kashima's talented."
She stared at him. He stared back. Her eyes were darker than his—not pink—but they had that same intensity. That same refusal to look away first.
He respected that. Annoying as it was.
"You're impossible," she said.
"I've been told.”
"By who?"
"Everyone." He tilted his head, considering. "You, mostly."
She made a sound—half laugh, half frustrated exhale—and dropped her face into her hands. Her shoulders shook once. He couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying.
Gaku set the PSP down on the cushion next to him.
He didn't know what to do with that either.
—
Three months ago, he wouldn't have been here.
Three months ago, the concept of "here" didn't exist. He had Uzuki's organization, he had Kumanomi's nagging, he had missions and targets and the distant hum of violence that filled every quiet moment. That was enough. It had always been enough.
Then he'd gotten careless on a job. Nothing dramatic—just a knife where it shouldn't have been, a wound that bled too much before he noticed. He'd staggered into the safe house at three in the morning, leaving a trail of red across the floor, and she'd been there.
She wasn't supposed to be there. She was new then, someone Uzuki had picked up for support work, not field operations. She wasn't even supposed to know his name.
But she'd patched him up anyway. Hands steady. Voice calm. Asked exactly two questions—"Can you feel this?" and "Are you going to pass out?"—and when he'd said no to both, she'd just nodded and kept stitching.
He'd watched her work. Her hands were smaller than his. Cleaner. No scars on her knuckles, no calluses from swinging a mace.
She looked like someone who'd never had to kill anything.
He didn't know why that made him want to stay.
---
"You should go to bed," she said now, lifting her head from her hands. Her eyes were dry. Not crying, then. Just tired.
"Not tired."
"Liar."
"Am not."
"You yawned three times in the last ten minutes."
He hadn't noticed. He also hadn't noticed that she'd been watching him long enough to count.
"You were supposed to be asleep," he said.
"I was. Then I heard the shooting."
"From the game?"
"From the game," she confirmed. "You have the volume up too high."
"It's the only way to hear the zombies."
"That's a problem for tomorrow you."
"Tomorrow me can deal with it."
She reached out and grabbed the PSP from the cushion. He let her. That was the strange part—he let her. Anyone else tried to take his things, they'd be missing fingers. But she held the console in her lap, thumb brushing over the analog stick, and he just sat there watching.
"You're at the laboratory level," she said, glancing at the screen.
"Fourth run through."
"Fourth?"
"I like the boss fight."
"You like shooting things."
"Same thing."
She shook her head. But she didn't put the console down. Didn't turn it off. Just held it, like a hostage she didn't know what to do with.
"Come to bed," she said quietly.
"Later."
"That's what you said three hours ago when I left you."
"I meant it then."
"And now?"
He looked at her. Really looked. The shadows under her eyes were darker than he remembered. Her hair was a mess. The shirt she was wearing—his shirt—had slipped off one shoulder, exposing the collar of whatever she'd been sleeping in underneath.
She was tired. Worried. Annoyed.
And she was still here.
At two-thirty in the morning, on a couch that was too small for both of them, in a safe house that smelled like antiseptic and old coffee, she was still here.
He didn't get it.
He'd spent his whole life around people who left. Al-Kamar had taught him that early—people disappeared, died, got taken away. Uzuki had stayed, and Kumanomi, and a few others. But they were different. They'd been through the same things. They understood that survival meant not getting attached.
She hadn't been through any of it.
She'd chosen to be here.
That was the part he couldn't wrap his head around.
"I don't understand you," he said.
Her eyebrows rose. "What?"
"You." He gestured vaguely at her, at the shirt, at the coffee table, at the whole situation. "You're tired. You're annoyed. I'm not doing what you want. And you're still sitting there."
"Because I—" She stopped. Frowned. "Because I care about you, Gaku. That's what people do. They sit there."
"That doesn't make sense."
"It doesn't have to make sense."
He considered this. Turned it over in his mind like a new game mechanic, something he hadn't encountered before. The rules were different here. He didn't know the controls yet.
"You should go to bed," he said finally.
"I'm not leaving you out here."
"I'm not going to disappear."
"I know." She stood up. And then, before he could react, she sat down next to him—close enough that her shoulder pressed against his arm. "But I'm not leaving anyway."
The couch groaned under their combined weight. His stitches pulled slightly. He ignored it.
"You're going to fall asleep here," he said.
"Probably."
"Your neck will hurt tomorrow."
"True."
He didn't have a response to that. So he picked up the PSP from her lap—she'd been holding it the whole time, he realized—and pressed start.
The level loaded.
Zombies shambled toward him.
He shot one. Then another.
Her head dropped onto his shoulder somewhere around the third wave. Her breathing slowed. Her weight settled against him, warm and solid and annoyingly comfortable.
Gaku kept playing.
He cleared the laboratory level. Started the next one. Missed a headshot—distracted, for some reason—and had to reload.
Her hair tickled his neck. Her hand had somehow found its way to his arm, fingers curled loosely around his bicep like she was holding on without meaning to.
He didn't shake her off.
That was the strange part.
He should have shaken her off. Should have finished his game, gone to his room, slept alone like he always did. That was the routine. That was safe. That was what he knew.
But she was warm. And she'd stayed. And no one had ever stayed before, not like this, not without wanting something in return.
Uzuki had freed him from Al-Kamar. Kumanomi had protected him. But they were family, bound by blood and violence and the kind of trauma that didn't wash off.
She was different.
She chose this.
He didn't know why. He didn't know what she saw when she looked at him—the scars, the missing ear, the bandaged hands, the body count that stretched into triple digits. He didn't know why that didn't scare her away.
But she was still here.
Gaku saved his game.
He never saved his game. That was the rule—no saves, no checkpoints, no going back.
But he saved it anyway.
The screen flashed. Game saved.
He set the PSP down on the cushion. Leaned his head back against the couch. Let his eyes close.
Her breathing was soft and even against his shoulder. Her fingers were still curled around his arm.
Tomorrow she'd wake up with a sore neck. He'd wake up with stiff shoulders and stitches that probably needed changing. Kumanomi would give them both a look and say something annoying. Uzuki wouldn't say anything at all, just watch them with those empty eyes that saw too much.
Tomorrow would be the same as today.
But right now—at three in the morning, on a couch that was too small, with a woman who didn't make sense—right now was different.
He didn't know how to describe it. It wasn't like a video game. There was no health bar, no objective marker, no clear win condition. It was just... here. Warm and quiet and alive in a way he wasn't used to.
She shifted in her sleep. Mumbled something unintelligible. Pressed closer.
Gaku didn't move.
He just sat there, in the dark, and let himself be stayed with.
A/N: I love him so much this is my husband forever 💔
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