texts with... platonic!ateez x 9th member!reader (gn) | san spinoff
description: variety of texts between ateez and their 9th member; some fluff, some crack and some comfort!
content warning: likely ooc ateez, reader is written as the maknae (jonghos age/slightly younger), terms of endearment used platonically (honey, lovely), jongho plays with your hair but nothing else is specificied, its unclear which dorm/apartment the reader lives in!
from jelly: haii first post here! my blog is a work in progress so bare with me... i hope these put a smile on your face. have a lovely morning/day/evening n don't forget to stay hydrated and eat well! （。＾▽＾）
And now we have the penultimate entry in this project, which also happens to be my favorite of the whole lot. Higuruma is my favorite Culling Game character and easily in my top 10 JJK characters—partly because his backstory has one of the most compelling "snapping" scenarios I've seen and partly because of how well he and Yuuji play off each other when it comes to their respective ideals and suicidal tendencies.
It's also not an easy ship to write in a feasible way, I think, so it's rare that I attempt it—but when I do, I invariably go insane about it. My last and only hiita fic was from Yuuji's PoV, but this time, I'm tackling Higuruma's PoV, and it's been easier than I feared! Rewatching and rereading the relevant parts of the series helped a lot.
Onto the fic—it's set some 12 years after JJK ended, so Yuuji is 28 and Higuruma's pushing 50. This one's also heavy on the angsty past!goyuu angle (what with the "past" being because Gojou died).
“Itadori,” Hiromi asks calmly, “what are you doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Hiromi blinks, waiting for a real answer. It is obvious, that’s true. Itadori is taking a bath—in his clothes.
He’s dressed the way he usually is, in jeans and an oversized hoodie. There’s probably a thinner t-shirt underneath. Too many layers for this time of the year, but Itadori has run colder than average for as long as Hiromi has known him. It’s only in winter that his attire changes in any notable way.
Right now, the deep red of his hoodie has darkened to a near black from the water, and his jeans are equally soaked. The bare feet propped up on one end of the tub are damp like they were submerged until recently, and Itadori’s hair is also sopping wet and half plastered to his face, like he’d gone under at some point. Thin rivulets of water run along his face, and pink scar tissue gleams on his brow and by the corner of his mouth.
Hiromi must have looked significantly more ridiculous when they first met. He, unlike Itadori, hadn’t even taken off his shoes. And a waterlogged suit is significantly more cumbersome than what Itadori is currently wearing.
None of it explains why Itadori is having a soak in Hiromi’s tub instead of the perfectly serviceable one at his own house.
“Itadori,” Hiromi prods when it’s clear Itadori is entirely content to just stare at him with heavy-lidded eyes.
“You were right,” says Itadori. “It does feel better than I expected.”
Hiromi closes his eyes. It’s a terrifyingly easy habit to fall into when this person is involved.
He forces them open. “How long have you been like this?”
Itadori tilts his head. “Like this?”
“In the water.”
There’s a low hum that’s not reassuring in any way, shape, or form. “Who knows. A while.”
“You’ll get sick.”
“I never get sick.”
“Itadori,” Hiromi sighs, dragging a hand over his face and wishing he could stick it into the undoubtedly lukewarm water in the tub to cool it down or maybe drown himself, “get out.”
Itadori raises an arm, indolently stretching it out toward Hiromi. “Help me up then.”
“You don’t need my help.”
“No,” Itadori agrees serenely. “Help me anyway.”
He shouldn’t. He should walk out now, never mind that this is his own bathroom in his own apartment. There’s a guest room anyway. He could crawl in there and lock the door, and in the morning, Itadori would probably be gone. His bedroom for a night wouldn’t be the worst sacrifice Hiromi has made because of this boy, who hasn’t been a boy in well over a good decade—if he ever was.
Hiromi steps further into the bathroom instead, and he tells himself it’s habit that has him closing the door behind him.
Itadori waits patiently, with a small smile. It’s gentle. When he smiles like that, his entire face is gentle.
Hiromi takes his hand.
It grips him tight, yanking him down into the water.
A part of Hiromi must have been expecting it. Or it’s simply two seasoned sorcerers’ combined reflexes that keep him from landing face-first in the water and sucking in a shocked lungful. Nothing breaks either; his body barely even bumps into the hard edges of the tub.
But Itadori doesn’t make for a particularly soft landing either. Under the soaked clothes, his body is like marble. The fingers that slip under Hiromi’s shirt are ice-cold.
“Itadori—”
“You look well,” Itadori says, peering lazily down at Hiromi as he struggles to detach his face from Itadori’s chest without slipping and collapsing right back on him. Itadori’s hand pushes at his stomach, but even if some illusion of assistance had survived the bold foray of that hand under his shirt, it would have been shattered by the way Itadori sinks all five fingers into the yielding flesh of Hiromi’s stomach and squeezes. “Being a sorcerer suits you.”
“Stop that,” Hiromi chides. It sounds like a token protest even to himself. Itadori’s hand just creeps higher, closing brazenly over the swell of a pectoral, and when Hiromi speaks again, his voice comes out mortifyingly breathless: “Just what do you think you’re doing?”
“Nothing I haven’t done before,” comes the cheeky reply; Itadori’s smile isn’t gentle anymore. “Hey, how come we stopped?”
Hiromi swallows another pointless protest. It would just be embarrassing at this point. Itadori isn’t keeping him captive, unless the hand still groping his chest counts. Hiromi’s hands and knees are already steady, planted half on the porcelain-enameled surface of the tub and half on Itadori’s mostly submerged body; he’s the one staying there, allowing Itadori to touch him and taunt him and look at him with those—
“I wasn’t the one you wanted,” Hiromi says plainly. It’s the least noble answer and also the truest.
“Nah, that can’t be right.” Itadori’s voice is cavalier. It doesn’t match the intensity of his eyes. “I remember a lot of wanting.”
He punctuates the point with a slight, controlled flex of his arm—every single button on Hiromi’s shirt pops violently, hurtling toward the water and the body underneath. Itadori’s other hand slides between the parted halves of the shirt to curl around his waist, gripping tight. Both hands squeeze, and a corner of Itadori’s mouth rises into a knowing smirk.
It’s not an expression that belongs to Itadori. This touch, that tone—none of it does.
They’re all familiar nonetheless, even if Hiromi’s familiarity with the original was limited to the span of a single month twelve years ago.
You simply do not forget Gojou Satoru.
Or Itadori Yuuji.
“Higuruma,” Itadori murmurs, his voice low and husky—and so much deeper than the last time he said Hiromi’s name like that. His face is closer too, warm breath falling on Hiromi’s face with every exhale, and for the life of him, Hiromi can’t figure out which one of them moved or when.
“Itadori,” Hiromi rasps, “don’t—”
The rest of the protest is stolen from his mouth, swallowed by the lips that slot over his and then strangled by the tongue that licks into him, and it’s a blistering reminder that his refusal of Itadori all those years ago worked only because Itadori listened and left.
They’ve seen each other since aplenty. They’ve worked together, trained together. They’ve shared lunches and drinks. There were smiles and laughter. There was touch, fleeting and largely incidental. But Itadori never crossed the line Hiromi drew in the winter of 2020, exactly two years after Gojou Satoru died.
There must have been people in between. Hiromi had seen enough of how Fushiguro looks at this boy, and he used to glimpse a familiar need or two on Okkotsu’s face as well. Knowing Itadori, there were also men and women entirely too old for him.
Hiromi wasn’t resentful; he was never under the impression they were lovers.
If they were, the mouth now trying to swallow him whole might make a little more sense.
Itadori was always an enthusiastic kisser, but there’s something different about it now. The hands holding Hiromi’s face in place aren’t ungentle, but there’s a barely restrained energy to them that leaves him feeling like he’s in the center of a trap about to spring shut. The tongue mapping out the insides of his mouth feels half like it’s refreshing itself on forgotten territory and half like it’s tasting him the way an animal scents the air for prey.
It’s the hunger, Hiromi realizes. That’s what’s changed. It was never not an animal thing, at least when Itadori turned it on Hiromi, but it was beastly—violent, vicious, consuming. There were times Hiromi thought Itadori’s teeth might finish what Sukuna had started.
But the way it feels now—it’s lazy, patient, like the gaping maw of a semi-slumbering leviathan.
Hiromi breaks the kiss, heaving for breath.
“Enough,” he rasps, turning his head to the side. Itadori’s lips smear spit and sound against the edge of his jaw. “That’s enough, Itadori.”
There’s no protest. Itadori’s lips and hands fall away as easily as they grabbed hold of Hiromi, and the man himself sinks back into the water, his hair becoming a gently drifting halo. Dark brown eyes peer up at Hiromi, and the emotion in them is nothing he can categorize.
Hiromi strangles the temptation to try, instead forcing himself to stand up and get out of the tub. It’s easier said than done, owing to how Itadori fills the whole thing. The bathtub itself is of a perfectly serviceable size, and Hiromi hasn’t had any complaints in all the years he’s owned it. Itadori still makes it seem terribly inadequate. His bulk is only half of it; the other half is the presence that seems to fill the entire bathroom, despite the cursed energy reined in so tightly that Hiromi can barely sense it even at this non-existent distance.
He thinks, again, of monsters and men.
Outside of the tub, the chill hits. He shivers and is halfway through peeling off the shirt sticking wetly to his skin when it occurs to him that stripping might not be the wisest idea. Itadori’s watching—only his eyes have moved, tracking Hiromi faithfully while the rest of his submerged body stays stock-still.
Hiromi turns away but still shucks this shirt off. His pants are even more uncomfortable; there’s water in his underwear.
It’s nothing he hasn’t seen, is what Hiromi tells himself as he unbuckles his belt and lets his slacks drop to the floor. The usually comfortable boxer shorts underneath are plastered to his thighs and groin. He has to drag them down his legs, and bending over in the process feels like tempting fate.
Said fate is there when Hiromi steps backward out of the pool of soggy clothes. Cool skin brushes his back, and even colder hands come to rest on his hips.
“You’re giving me mixed signals here,” Itadori breathes against his nape.
anytime you'd almost slip in front of him he'd make this cute suspicious squinty face at you
until one time he literally caught you in the act, snuggling your teddy he'd gifted you with your thumb in your mouth, suckling away without a care in the world
despite the fact that he desperately wants to go “HA I KNEW IT,” he doesn't want to scare the baby 🫳🫳
so he just brings you the softest blanket he can find, tucking you into it with a hush when you make a confused little noise at his unexpected presence :(
once you've slipped out he brings it up again, asking if you're a regressor straight up
his knowledge of it catches you off guard, but he tells you he has an old idol friend who'd regress sometimes during his trainee days
when you say yes he actually asks if you'd like having a caregiver, and if you'd be okay with him taking care of you 🥺
and you say yes OBVIOUSLY
♡
really likes being called jjongie or “mister bear”
mostly cuz you sound so cute and teensy when you call him that :C
and also it's an instant way to get what you want 🙂↕️
“mister bear can we have snack time?” ✅
“mister bear can I have apple juice?” ✅
works every time
every once in a while, if you're extra sleepy or stressed, you'll call him papa :c
and he will literally turn the world upside down for you when you call him that
♡
he really likes watching you sleep???
it's like his favorite hobby乁 ˘ o ˘ ㄏ
rocks you to sleep allll the time
he'll bundle you up in a lil baby burrito and rock you side to side, humming lullabies as he watches your little eyes slip closed :C
and then he'll continue to rock you while he watches over your nap
he calls it being a “naptime guardian” but you just think he's weird :D
you will riot if he leaves you during naptime though, of course
♡
poking the bear is real btw, you poke jongho all the time :D
especially his cheeks I mean they're Right There c'mon
what are baby hands for if not to annoy your caregiver?? 💞
but now he's taken it upon himself to poke and squish your cheeks at every opportunity, bonus points if you're eating
and when you pout at him for interrupting your lunch he'll just smile his gummy smile and do it again
“all is fair in love and war, sugar~” ◜(ω)◝
♡
as jongho’s baby you will eat an unimaginable amount of apples
and other fruits too of course but like, apples are where it's at 🙂↕️
scurvy? jongho's never heard of it
shows off at snack time by breaking your apples in half
and you're just falling over with giggles at his little trick
“wow!! Jjongie do again!”
there's enough apples to feed the whole group by the time he's through 💔
♡
very big fan of terms of endearment
he doesn't go a single sentence without calling you a cute lil nickname fr
his favorites are little one, cub, sugar, jellybean, and bubbas
jellybean is reserved for silly cubs! usually when you have the zoomies and you're sprinting around the kitchen
“ok jellybean, let's go outside and get our sillies out~”
and when you're especially sleepy or teeny he always calls you his honeybear 🥺
“coooome on, honeybear. it's sleepytime, hm?”
♡
he's very soft when talking to his baby, especially if they're upset :<
he understands that feelings can be big and scary, and while all he wants is to take away those icky feelings, he knows that's not always possible :<
so he makes sure you're safe and comfy, always willing to hold you while you fuss and cry
and when you're all tuckered out he'll tuck you in a blanket and let you relax on the couch with your head in his lap, putting something soothing on the tv to help you relax after a hard day 🫂
♡
now we all know how much jjongie loves noraebang
safe to say he will be incorporating that into your baby routine
he'll sing to you, any genre ranging from baby shark to a power ballad that you've never even heard before 💔
and when it's your turn he claps and cheers for you while you sing
he will definitely ask for fanservice and demand hand hearts and hugs
and if you're too shy to sing alone he'll sit you in his lap to sing a duet with you :(
not competitive against you, but you can bet that he's doing his absolute darndest to get that 100 score on every song lollll
♡
all in all jjongie is a teensy bit mischievous as a caregiver, but he’s total marshmallow fluff too 💞
you can trust him with anything, and know that he’ll always be there for you, his little cub :(
🩷I’m very dry and people often can’t tell when I’m joking, so don’t hesitate to ask, I don’t mind. I’m not always very serious on here.
🩷I like to post about history, the arts, astronomy, fashion, and just general aesthetic vibey shit. But mostly, I post stupid fandom bullshit.
If you argue or act hostile in the reblogs or comments of my posts, I sacrifice you to Persephone, sorry babes.
🖤I love anything and everything vintage. History is my passion and reblogging aesthetic vintage moodboards is my second passion. I also love learning about folklore and various cultures. Art history is also dear to me.
🪻Alongside history I love flowers and astronomy.
🫀Horror is also dear to me. Especially southern gothic and religious horror.
🎵 Lana Del Rey, Ethel Cain, Sabrina Carpenter, Frank Sinatra, and Fleetwood Mac are my favorite artists.
🍒I’m a waitress at a shitty little diner, and I make that a way bigger deal to my personality than I should.
🚬 I love Persephone, Anne Boleyn, Rapunzel, fruit, gas stations, motels, sweet tea, New Orleans, mermaids, old cars, bees, deer, bats, and diners.
🦇I write sometimes so you can check out my ao3 here or my writing tag here for smaller things. I don’t really stick to a genre or write large projects, I mostly write stupid shit when I have time.
🦚I’m too obsessed with my own face and post fit pics here
“Alright, let’s play a game and remember, we’re going for complete honesty here, so be honest. [——], you and [——] get to go first just ‘cause I’m really dying to know: When you first met what was your first thought about each other?”
“Really?”
“Yes! I want to know, so [——], ladies first.”
“…Okay, I gotta think back…”
“Ah-ah-ah—honesty.”
“Yes, yes… I thought… well, the first thing I thought about him was… ‘Oh, you’re gonna be trouble, aren’t you?’”
“Oooh, ‘trouble’, huh? That’s just too fucking cute! Now! On to the gentleman, [——], your turn,”
“My first thoughts…”
“Oh no, you are not gonna leave us in suspense here, nu-uh. Spill.”
“…I thought, ‘There you are. Took you long enough.’”
“…Wow, [——]. That’s kinda lame.”
“Is it? Well, you wanted honesty.”
“You know, I was only half truthful with my answer.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah,”
“What part did you leave out?”
“I left out… ‘I can’t wait to get to know you, to love you.’”
“Oh, that’s… that’s so much better than mine,”
“No, your’s is perfect. Fits how things went with us in the beginning perfectly,”
“But you knew, right then. You knew…”
“I knew. And if I’m honest, it scared the hell outta me, but I was ready.”
“I’m, I’m sorry it took me so long,”
“No. Don’t do that. You needed more time and I would’ve waited forever if you needed it.”
"The name is Bonnie K. Parker. Dont you forget it now. You can just call me Bonnie though. I've been in Westerberg for a few years now so I know my way around the place."
[Ooc + hcs and stuff under the cut]
🦇 They can be put into any movie, musical or timeline, doesn't really matter. 🦇
[Headcanons + stuff]:
Goes by they/them pronouns [nonbinary] + [closted sapphic]
Not a cat or dog person, but a reptile person. They own 2 lizards at home
They dont have a close relationship with anyone at Westerberg but they have been seen hanging around with Tracy [stoner chick]
During lunch break, they play with their guitar in the music room when there's no one in.
You'll never catch them without a full face of makeup on (do they even have a real face under there??)
Awful with kids
AuDHD + BPD [also very sleep deprived]
Their country background are: latvia + portugal
Skip classes half the time [they have at least B-C+ grades]
