May 24
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ETHOGRAM ENTRY X — Attachment #2: Decision.
He is half out of the cave before you have fully caught your breath.
It is the first thing that matters once the panic leaves enough room in your head for anything else. Not the scrape along your shoulder, not the way your chest still works too hard from fear, not the lingering image of black-and-white bodies cutting the water into smaller and smaller pieces around you.
Sukuna is already moving toward the mouth of the cave, and the shape of him says more than his face ever needs to.
He is not thinking. He is deciding.
There is a difference, and you know it now.
Thinking is when he goes quiet and strange, when his eyes narrow and stay half-lidded and the claws of one hand drag absent, shallow lines into rock like he is tracing routes only he can see.
Thinking is patient, ugly, controlled.
Thinking is what he does before he chooses the best angle to ambush, the best word to bait, the right time to lunge.
This is not that.
This is rage stripped down to intent. It lives in the set of his shoulders, in the low line of his spine, in the way his tail cuts once through the water and makes the whole cave seem to tighten around him. It lives in the black widening of his pupils until the crimson ring is just a thin red insult around something far older and meaner.
He has heard Toji, he has seen the scrape on you, and now the whole of him is turning in one direction.
Out.
Your first instinct is stupidly human. It has not left you, no matter what saltblood did, no matter what shape your lower half took. You reach.
You throw yourself after him and catch his arm with both hands.
Your seal body is still adjusting to urgency in tight spaces. On land you used to step into someone’s path, plant your feet, use your weight.
Now you pull yourself over the smooth stone shelf with your palms and your core when you’re going out of water, flippers dragging and catching faintly on rock.
When you’re in, you lunge, you swim towards him on a little desperate movement and by the time you get to him you are breathless from the remnants of fear. It does not matter. You get your hands around his biceps anyway, arms locking hard, cheek almost brushing the line of his shoulder.
“Sukuna.”
He does not stop.
He does not even look at you at first. He drags you a fraction with him because your grip means less to his momentum than a loop of kelp would, and the only reason you do not end up hauled half out into the open water clinging like a remora is because he finally pauses out of irritation. His body goes taut with the effort of not shrugging you off violently.
“You will let go.”
“No.”
The word leaves your mouth too quickly, sharpened by the image of the reef fissure and Toji’s face filling the entrance while the pod sealed every direction that meant survival. Your fingers tighten, nails pressing against wet skin and the black lines that band his arm. He is warm despite the cold of the cave water. You can feel muscle shifting under your grip, a dense, living threat.
He turns his head then, slow enough to make it deliberate. His eyes flick down to where you cling to him, then up to your face. The expression is not soft. It is annoyed first, then edged with something darker because he can still smell the leftover fear on you. It offends him. It always has.
“They chased you.”
“Yes.”
“They tried to eat you.”
“Yes.”
His upper lip lifts in a sneer, a start of a snarl.
“Then move.”
You shake your head, hard. Your hair floats around you with the movement, soon settling again, heavier than the water’s density.
“No.”
Something in his face changes at your repetition. Not surprise. He knows you can be stubborn. He knows because he spent years watching you refuse good sense whenever good sense felt too close to surrender. He knows because he watched you argue with the board through clenched teeth and then throw your whole life into the sea because they wanted his brain on a tray. He knows because you keep asking questions even when the answers make your life worse.
He still hates the timing.
One clawed hand comes up, not quickly, and settles against the side of your face. The touch is rough only because he is rough, not because he is trying to hurt you. His thumb presses at your jaw, pushing your face up slightly so you have to hold his gaze.
“They will not chase you again when I am done.”
That certainty would have thrilled you once. It would have sounded like safety with teeth. Now it curdles in your gut because the pod did not move like random aggression or stupid dominance. They moved like a mechanism built out of bodies that trusted each other’s angles. They moved the way you used to watch coordinated hunters move on grainy footage in marine behavior seminars, pausing frames and drawing arrows with a laser pointer while professors called it intelligent predation like intelligence made it less terrifying.
And Sukuna — Sukuna is Sukuna. Too large, too violent, too quick, too certain. He is not easy prey for anything. But you have seen what orcas do to great whites.
Not myths. Not stories. Data. Evidence. Torn livers.
Bodies rolled and stunned and harried until even mass and muscle mean less than numbers and strategy. You have spent too many years around water to romanticize apex predators as invincible.
You know what orcas do to sharks.
You know what a pod can do to one.
You slide one hand from his arm to his chest and push. It is like trying to move a cliff face with your palm, and you feel stupid the second you do it. He does not shift by even a fraction. The broad plane of his sternum remains where it is, warm and immovable under your hand. Your seal half bunches awkwardly under you, flippers angled wrong against the stone because you do not have the leverage you want, because moments like this are when you miss your legs with a flash of real irritation. Legs could wrap. Legs could brace. Legs could box him in, if not physically then emotionally, turn your body into argument.
Now all you can do is press your palm to his chest like it means something.
It means something to you, if not to physics.
“I don’t want you going.”
His nostrils flare.
“That is foolish.”
“Maybe.” Your throat is still sore from fear and from the long swim home, but you force each word clean. “You going alone to pick a fight with an orca pod is also foolish.”
His mouth curls. Not amusement. Offense.
“I would win.”
The answer is immediate, effortless.
It lands in the water between you like a fact rather than a boast, and the worst part is that a part of you believes him. You’ve seen him hunt. You’ve seen him move in ways your eyes barely catch up to. You’ve seen him take violence with the same matter-of-fact ease he uses to eat.
You’ve watched Toji bleed because Sukuna decided one boundary had been crossed and one fin was an acceptable lesson.
He is not bluffing. He really does believe he could tear through them.
And he probably could do major damage. He is too big, too fast, too brutal in close range. One-on-one, maybe even one-on-two, you can imagine him winning by simply refusing the rules. You can imagine him taking bodies apart in ways that leave the water full of panic.
But pods are not duels.
Your mind flashes again to Maki below you, Mai above, Naoya cutting the path before you even fully chose it. Toji hanging back just enough to let the machine work. Not chaos. Not individuals. Structure.
You take a breath that comes in thin and tastes faintly metallic with leftover panic.
“I know what orcas do,” you say.
He clicks his teeth, impatient.
“You know what humans say.”
“No.” The word comes out stronger than you expect, sharpened by the old anger of classrooms and notes and all the useless expertise that still lives in you. “I know what I studied. I know what I’ve seen.”
His gaze shifts slightly, enough to say continue or stop. You continue because stopping means he leaves.
“You think I don’t know how impressive you are?” you ask, and there is a strange sting behind the words because the answer matters more than it should. “I’ve seen you hunt. I’ve seen you move. I know you’re stronger than most things that should exist. But I also know what orca pods do to great whites. I’ve seen it in footage, in necropsy photos, in papers. I know how they herd. I know how they wear a shark down and keep wearing it down until size stops mattering.”
His jaw tightens, but he still does not leave. That’s enough to keep talking.
“You’d hurt them,” you say, quieter now because the image itself is getting under your skin. “You’d probably kill some of them. I know that. But I’m not afraid you won’t do damage. I’m afraid you’ll do enough damage for it to become a bloodbath, and then what. Then you’re torn open in ten places because you wanted to prove a point.”
His upper lip curls, offended all over again by the idea that his death could be folded into a tactical argument.
“You worry like prey.”
“And you answer everything like violence is the only language that counts.”
“It is the only language they used with you.”
You close your eyes for one beat. He’s not wrong. They hunted you. They boxed you in. They were going to eat you because you were alone and soft and looked enough like what they already take from the water to slot neatly into their instincts.
Still.
You open your eyes and stare at him until he has to acknowledge the stubbornness in your face.
“You do not get to die over this.”
His pupils narrow slightly.
“You do not decide that.”
“Then I’ll make it very inconvenient.”
That gets something close to amusement out of him, dark and brief. It disappears just as fast. He can smell you’re serious. He can feel the tremor under your skin that says this isn’t only about logic. Fear has wrapped itself around something warmer and uglier and more personal.
You slide lower, because your upper body is tiring from the way you have to hold yourself even underwater, and shift your grip so your arms go around his forearm instead. You hug his arm with all the leverage you can manage, cheek pressing briefly to wet skin and tattoo lines. It is pathetic as restraint. It is also the most honest thing you can think to do.
He glances down at you and snorts, a harsh little breath through his nose.
There’s that damned urge again, the one that makes you miss your legs like missing a weapon. If you still had them you could throw one over his lap, wrap around his waist, make yourself into a living obstacle.
He chuckles then.
It’s not nice. It’s that low, dark rumble out of his chest that always sounds like laughter sharpened on bone. The vibration travels through his arm into your cheek where you’re pressed to him.
The sound infuriates you because it means he finds this at least a little entertaining.
You lift your head just as his face lowers, and for a half second your body expects teeth on skin, a light punitive bite to make you let go. He does that sometimes when you annoy him past patience — nips your shoulder, catches the soft edge of your upper arm, not hard enough to break but enough to warn.
His teeth brush your ear instead.
Not a bite. A nibble. A deliberate drag of serrated edges so careful it makes your whole body go rigid for a completely different reason. Heat crawls up your neck instantly. You hiss his name and he pulls back just enough to show the shape of his mouth curving at one corner.
“You’re impossible,” you mutter, because if you don’t say something your own body will betray you harder than it already has.
“And you’re clinging,” he answers. “One of us is at least honest.”
You flush hotter, which helps nothing.
“I’m serious.”
He clicks his teeth softly.
“So am I.”
You take a breath, gather yourself, and lower your voice because if he won’t stop for reason maybe he’ll stop for something closer to the inside of you.
“I don’t want you picking senseless fights.”
The chuckle dies. His expression flattens into something more dangerous.
“It is not senseless.”
“Sukuna—”
“Toji tried to eat you.” Each word comes out distinct and ugly, as if he has to keep them from turning into a snarl. “His pod chased you. They touched what is mine.”
There it is. Not safety. Not justice. Possession sharpened into motive. It should make you angry. Right now it only makes your chest ache with a mess of things you refuse to unpack while he is trying to go start a war.
You tighten your hold on his arm.
“You know what I am now.”
His eyes narrow.
“Yes.”
“A seal.”
He says nothing.
“And seals are…” You grimace because the phrasing is humiliating, but maybe humiliation is useful if it delays him. “They’re exactly what orcas love to eat. Prime prey. Fat. Soft. Easy to handle if they get you alone. Gourmet shit, basically.”
One of his brows draws down. He looks insulted on your behalf and annoyed by the information at once.
You keep going because it’s working just enough that he hasn’t ripped free yet.
“That doesn’t make it okay,” you say. “It doesn’t make what happened less terrifying. It just means it isn’t personal to them the way it is to you.”
His mouth turns into a hard line. He clicks his teeth once, then again, a habit you’re starting to recognize as him turning a thought over so hard he could bite through it. You feel the motion travel through his arm where you hold him.
“They should know better.”
You almost laugh because what a sentence. What a perfectly ridiculous, arrogant, Sukuna sentence to say about predators following their nature.
“Why. Because I’m with you.”
“Yes.”
He says it like it’s obvious. Like affiliation should rewrite instinct on sight.
You close your eyes for one second and open them again.
“That’s not how pods work.”
“It should.”
“That’s not an argument.”
“It is mine.”
You almost tell him he is impossible again. Instead you shift your grip and hug his arm harder, forehead brushing the edge of his bicep. Your voice comes out softer, because logic has gotten you only so far and what’s left is the truth.
“I was scared,” you say. “And I’m still scared. But right now I’m more scared of you going after them alone.”
That lands, finally.
You feel it more than see it at first — a tiny stilling under your hands, a pause in the restless anger of his muscles. Sukuna does not go gentle. He does not go soft. But he does pay attention when you stop trying to win and just say what hurts.
He exhales through his nose, a long, irritated breath that stirs the hair at your temple.
“You worry too much.”
“Yes.”
“Foolishly.”
“Yes.”
His gaze drags over your face, lingers at your throat where your pulse still jumps too fast, then moves away toward the cave mouth again. The water outside is darker now, evening settling through the kelp and rock. The cave feels smaller because all his intent is still pointed outward, but it no longer feels quite so imminent.
You risk a little more.
“You know my major,” you say quietly. “You know that’s how I ended up there. Marine biology. Predator behavior. Migration. Diet patterns. The stupid irony is not lost on me, by the way.”
He glances down at you, expression unreadable.
“I spent years studying this,” you continue. “And I’ve seen too many cases where a lone shark ends up dead because a pod decided to make an example of it, or decided a liver was worth the effort, or just decided the water belonged to them that day. They don’t fight like sharks. They don’t fight like you. They grind. They coordinate. They feint. They keep going until the stronger thing is too hurt to matter.”
He listens. That’s already more than you feared you’d get.
“You would win some part of it,” you repeat. “I know you would. But I don’t care about some part. I care about you coming back.”
The words are out before you can polish them into something safer. They hang there, raw and embarrassingly direct.
Sukuna’s eyes flick to your face with a sharpness that makes your stomach dip. For a second he says nothing at all. Then one corner of his mouth moves, not quite a smile, not quite mockery.
Something lower and stranger.
He lowers his head until his temple brushes yours for one brief, almost absent moment. If you were still human in the old way, maybe you’d call it tenderness. As it is, it feels more like acknowledgment through contact.
“You make it difficult to leave,” he says.
“You’re welcome.”
That actually gets the smallest hint of a real huff out of him, amused despite himself. It fades quickly.
You are not done. You know better than to stop at the first crack.
“If you care so much,” you murmur, “then don’t go.”
He rolls his shoulder under your grip as if testing whether you’ll hold harder. You do.
He could break free. He chooses not to.
The silence stretches just long enough that your mind tries to fill it with disaster again.
Then he says, flat and irritated,
“I won’t go if you care this much.”
You blink up at him. You expect to hear the trick in it. Some loophole. Some phrasing that means I won’t go now, I’ll go in ten minutes when you’re asleep. Sukuna is entirely capable of that kind of technical honesty.
“Really,” you ask, because trust is still not something you hand out without checking the blade first.
His lip lifts.
“Do you want me to lie more prettily.”
“No.”
“Then stop asking foolish questions.”
Relief hits you so fast it almost makes you sag. You don’t, because you don’t entirely trust this yet, but your grip loosens by a fraction without your permission.
He notices. Of course he notices.
You clear your throat.
“You could still try talking to Toji.”
That finally gets a real laugh out of him, low and brief and wholly disbelieving. It shudders through his chest and arm and into your hands where you hold him.
“Talking,” he repeats, as if the word itself is ridiculous.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do not.” He looks genuinely offended by the concept. “I hunt with him. He hunts with me. Prey dies. We eat. Then we leave. There is no talking.”
You squint at him.
“There is definitely talking. I heard all of you.”
“That is not talking. That is deciding where the meat goes.”
You almost smile despite yourself because the simplicity is so violently him that it becomes absurd.
“You could still tell him,” you say. “Who I am.”
His expression flattens again.
“That I’m me,” you press on. “That scientist. That human he met with you before.”
“I know who you are.”
“Sukuna.”
His pupils narrow slightly. He is listening even while he pretends he isn’t.
“Maybe if he knows I’m not random prey,” you say, “it changes something. Maybe not everything. I know enough about orcas not to assume they’ll suddenly become polite because you asked. They’re opportunistic and clever and manipulative as hell. Toji especially. I know what kind he is. He learned human speech by using it against people. That alone should tell you enough.”
His jaw shifts once, annoyed all over again that you know facts that don’t flatter him into immediate violence.
“But maybe,” you continue, “if he knows I’m attached to you, he doesn’t keep testing. Or maybe he does, but at least he’s doing it with information.”
Sukuna goes silent. Really silent this time. Not absent. Processing.
You take the chance to let go of his arm and resettle yourself more comfortably against him before your shoulders decide to give out. The moment your hold changes, one of his hands comes down to your hips as if it was always going there.
You’ve noticed that lately. More and more often. The way he touches the softness of your seal half when he’s thinking, the slight press of claws into the plush skin over your hips and flanks.
It started as assessment when you were changing — checking temperature, checking tone, checking whether your body held warmth right. It turned into something else by degrees so small you only noticed after it had already become habit.
He kneads.
There isn’t a prettier word for it. His broad hand spreads over your hip, claws just dimpling the skin enough to leave faint impressions, and then his fingers flex in an almost absent rhythm.
Press. Ease. Press. Ease.
Testing and enjoying at the same time. The first time he did it you thought he was checking for swelling. The tenth time you realized he was doing it when he was annoyed or restless or just had you close enough to reach.
It reminds you horribly of a cat. A giant, homicidal, sea-born cat with too many teeth and absolutely no shame.
It also feels good.
It feels like a massage if the masseuse might eat people and never admits to affection.
You try not to smile at the thought. He’d take it personally.
His claws press slightly deeper, not enough to hurt, just enough that you feel the drag through the dense softness of your new body. He looks away while doing it, like if he doesn’t meet your eyes the action doesn’t count as indulgence.
You think it is cute.
You would rather drown again than say that out loud.
“You’re fidgeting,” you murmur instead.
He pinches one side of your hip in response. Not hard. A warning.
“You’re still talking.”
“You like when I talk.”
“No.”
You huff out the smallest laugh, because there is no point arguing the obvious. His hand keeps working at your hip, slow, methodical, his claws sliding lightly under the plush skin and releasing. The kneading eases some of the leftover tension in your muscles from the chase. It also makes heat settle low in you in a way that’s almost unfair given the conversation you’re having.
He pulls you closer with the same hand after a moment, a smooth drag across stone and water until you’re pressed along his side. His warmth seeps into you. You can feel the heavy line of his torso, the scarred roughness where human skin gives way to shark body beneath the water.
He doesn’t look at you while he does it. He just arranges you where he wants you and continues his absentminded, possessive handling like your softness is a thing he’s discovered and keeps needing to confirm.
You let him. Because it feels good. Because after fear your body wants contact it recognizes. Because his heat is familiar in a way the rest of the sea still isn’t.
He speaks eventually, voice low.
“You should let go. I should get food.”
You don’t move.
“For us or for your pride.”
His hand pauses for half a beat, then resumes kneading as if the interruption never happened.
“For food.”
You tilt your head to look at him.
“And maybe if Toji happens to be there, you’ll accidentally find a way to snarl at him.”
He says nothing.
That silence tells you everything.
You stare at the side of his face. He’s looking out toward the cave mouth, expression flat, jaw set. The hand at your hip has not stopped moving.
Press. Ease. Press. Ease.
“You were going to,” you say, because now that you know the shape of his silences it’s impossible not to call them out.
Still nothing.
You exhale through your nose.
“You’re really impossible.”
He pinches the edge of one flipper with two claws, just enough to make you twitch.
“You’re alive.”
You want to stay angry at that. You can’t. Not fully. Not when the relief of him staying is still spread through you like warmth.
So you do the only thing left. You lean in and nibble his shoulder.
His skin there is rougher than a human’s, salt and old scar and muscle under your teeth. You don’t bite hard. Just enough to annoy.
Sukuna’s head turns slightly.
“Careful.”
“You said I can bite now.”
“You can.” His voice lowers. “Not me.”
“You’re very authoritarian for someone who claims he doesn’t do talking.”
He huffs, amused despite himself.
You let your forehead rest briefly against his shoulder and feel the slow rise and fall of his breathing. Outside, currents move through the kelp. Inside, the cave holds a quiet that feels earned and temporary.
“I’m serious, Sukuna,” you say after a moment, softer. “Please don’t go pick fights for my sake.”
His hand stills at your hip. Then the kneading resumes, slower.
“It is not only for your sake.”
That makes you pull back enough to look at him again.
“No?”
His eyes flick to yours at last, dark and unreadable except for the thin red ring around the pupils.
“Toji touched what is mine,” he says. “That offends me whether you’re frightened or not.”
There is no use arguing the mine right now. The word has become one of his facts, the same way currents and hunger and territory are facts. You know what he means by it. You also know the word doesn’t erase your own will. You are here because you keep choosing to be, and he knows that even if he dresses it up as ownership.
Still.
You trace one finger lightly over the black banding near his wrist and choose your next words carefully.
“If you tell him who I am,” you say, “and if he has any interest in not making this into a blood feud with you, maybe that’s enough.”
Sukuna’s mouth curves slightly, humorless this time.
“He likes blood feuds.”
“I know.”
“He likes provoking.”
“I know.”
“He likes human meat.”
“I know,” you repeat, and you hate the way your body remembers the words.
Toji himself learned enough human language to lure people.
You remember that too vividly now. How many coastal disappearances got filed as accidents. How many strange stories men laughed off because it was easier than admitting something in the water could sound like your own kind and still want to eat you.
Sukuna studies your face while you’re thinking that, and the hand on your hip changes rhythm again — less kneading now, more a slow drag of claws just against the skin, a grounding touch.
You take a breath.
“That’s why I’m not saying trust him. I’m saying information matters.”
His eyes narrow.
“You sound like Suguru.”
“That is one of the worst things you’ve ever said to me.”
He actually shows teeth in brief amusement at that.
“Good.”
You huff.
He falls quiet again, but it’s not the same dangerous silence as before. It’s less pointed outward, more inward. Calculation at last.
Thinking instead of deciding.
You stay tucked against him while he does it, because you know better than to break contact when he’s choosing restraint instead of action. Your body gradually unwinds from fight or flight. The ache in your shoulders from clinging eases. Your flippers relax against stone and water. His heat seeps deeper. The cave’s dimness settles around both of you like a held breath.
He starts kneading again in earnest. Not absentmindedly this time. Deliberately. One hand braced at your waist, the other working at the plush softness over your lower half with a slow, almost methodical pressure that makes it obvious he enjoys the sensation.
You’ve caught him doing this enough times that you can read the pattern now.
He does it when he’s restless. He does it when he’s thinking too much and needs part of himself occupied. He does it when he wants you close and won’t say that plain.
He doesn’t name it. He doesn’t even seem to think about naming it. He just does it because he wants to and because your body is there.
You let your eyes drift half shut for a second and say, because the truth is easier when you’re tired,
“That feels nice.”
His hand pauses for the smallest instant.
Then his claws press in again, just a little deeper, and his voice comes out lower than before.
“I know.”
Of course that’s his answer. Not good. Not I’m glad. Just the blunt fact that he can feel your body’s responses and understands them on instinct. It’s irritating. It’s also somehow reassuring in the exact way you don’t want to admit.
You slide one hand up to the side of his neck and rest it there, not restraining him anymore, just touching. The muscle under your palm is dense and warm. You can feel the echo of tension still coiled there, waiting.
“You’re still angry,” you murmur.
“Yes.”
“At me?”
“No.”
“At Toji.”
“Yes.”
“At the whole pod.”
He glances down at you.
“Yes.”
“At the fact that I went alone.”
His mouth flattens.
“Yes.”
You sigh quietly.
“That one’s fair.”
His thumb digs into the softness at your hip in what might be approval or simple continuation of the same restless need to feel you under his hand.
The silence stretches long enough to become companionable. Outside the cave, fish move in the dark. Somewhere farther out a distant pressure change travels through the water, too far away to be immediate danger.
Sukuna hears it and ignores it — his attention is on you now, split between watching the entrance and making sure you stay where he put you.
You think, because your brain refuses not to, about how ridiculous your life has become.
Years ago you were in a lab, staying late over data sets and coffee gone cold, writing grant applications and pretending men who interrupted you in meetings mattered less than they did.
Then a secret project, a cliff island, a tank house cut in half by glass, a great white merfolk with too many teeth and too much attention.
Then escape. Fever. Saltblood. Becoming. A cave under the sea. Orcas that know how to speak enough human to use it as bait.
And here you are, pressed to Sukuna’s side trying to keep him from starting a fight because you’re afraid for his life.
The thought almost makes you laugh again.
Instead you say,
“I still think you should tell him.”
Sukuna exhales through his nose.
“You won’t stop.”
“No.”
He looks faintly aggrieved by your consistency.
“You would pester the sea itself if it annoyed you enough,” he mutters.
“You say that like you aren’t currently proving the same thing.”
His mouth twitches once, irritation and acknowledgment braided together.
Then, at last.
“If I see him.”
It’s not much. It’s a concession. A thread. You take it immediately.
“You’ll tell him.”
“I’ll make sure he understands.”
“That’s not the same—”
“It is to me.”
You close your eyes for half a second and reopen them. Fine. That is probably as close as you’re getting to diplomacy from him. If he intends to deliver the information in the form of a threat wrapped around Toji’s throat, that is still technically communication.
“I’ll take it,” you say.
“You should.”
You tilt your head and look up at him.
“You’re unbearably smug for someone who was about to do something very stupid.”
He leans down just enough that his mouth is close to yours, not a kiss, just pressure and threat and warmth all mixed together.
“And you’re unbearably interfering for someone who almost got eaten.”
You don’t pull away.
“Maybe I learned from the best.”
That finally makes him show enough teeth to count as a real grin.
Then, because he can never let a moment stay too soft for too long, he pinches your flipper again. You jerk and glare. He looks pleased with himself.
“You’re awful.”
“You’re soft.”
“You always say that like it’s an insult.”
“It is a statement.” His hand returns to your hip and resumes the slow kneading. “You make that difficult too.”
Heat rises under your skin again, less from embarrassment this time and more from the simple intimacy of being touched this way while your bodies settle after fear. There is something almost domestic about it, if domestic can include claws and territorial threats and discussions of orca predation.
You wonder, not for the first time, what this would look like to anyone else. Then you decide you don’t care.
He shifts after a while, pulling you more fully against him so your upper body rests along the slant of his chest and his arm bands your waist. The position is half protective, half ownership, entirely Sukuna.
“You should rest,” he says.
“I’m not tired.”
“You’re lying.”
You are, a little.
The crash after fear is setting in. Your limbs feel heavier. Your thoughts keep snagging on the image of the pod circling. The safety of the cave is making the adrenaline wear off in waves.
Still, you don’t want to stop talking yet. Talking means he stays here and doesn’t vanish into the dark with murder in his head.
So you ask,
“Did you really think you’d win.”
He looks almost offended by the question.
“Yes.”
“Against all of them.”
“Yes.”
“Even with coordination.”
His hand flexes at your hip.
“You assume I would let them keep theirs.”
You stare at him for a long second and then laugh despite yourself, because of course that would be his angle. Not weathering the formation. Breaking it. Cutting through the pattern until the pod stopped behaving like one thing and started behaving like individuals again.
It would probably work for at least some of it.
That doesn’t make it safe.
You lift your hand to his face, thumb brushing the edge of one marking near his cheek.
“You’re terrifying.”
He doesn’t deny it.
“You’re alive.”
Again, that answer.
Again, the way he uses it as if it explains everything he does and every choice he almost made.
Maybe, for him, it does.
You let your hand stay where it is. He tolerates it with the kind of stillness that means he likes it more than he’ll admit. The water around the cave mouth darkens fully into night now, the outside world reduced to drifting silhouettes and occasional flashes of bioluminescence in the far currents.
The cave is warm by comparison now, warm because he is, warm because the stone holds what little heat the day left behind, warm because you’re both still breathing and no one is bleeding in the dark.
You realize then that your grip on his arm loosened long ago. You are no longer holding him in place.
He is just… staying.
The thought softens something in you that was braced for a fight.
So, softer too, you say,
“Thank you.”
He doesn’t ask for what. He knows. For staying. For listening. For not turning your fear into another body count.
He looks away toward the cave entrance, jaw shifting once.
“You care too much,” he mutters.
You smile faintly.
“You’ve said that before.”
“And I was right before too.”
“Probably.”
His hand at your hip presses in with one last slow knead, claws just grazing the plush skin. Then he stills it, palm broad and warm over you, holding more than touching now.
After a long silence, he says,
“Tomorrow I’ll hunt near the outer current.”
You tense slightly despite yourself.
He feels it at once and glances down at you.
“Near. Not with them. If I see Toji, I’ll tell him.”
You study his face, measuring the truth of the promise. He meets your gaze without blinking.
No loophole. No trick. Not a surrender, but not a lie either.
You nod slowly.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he echoes, as if the word is strange in his mouth and somehow yours to say first.
Your body finally lets fatigue claim more ground. You settle further into him, head heavy against his shoulder, the steady rise and fall of his breathing doing something your own nervous system can’t quite do alone yet.
He curls a little more around you, instinctive, keeping the shape of his body between yours and the cave mouth. The movement is protective in that brutish way he has, one that would look like dominance to anyone watching and feels like shelter from where you are.
You let your eyes close.
Just before sleep starts to drag at you, he speaks again, voice low enough that it almost gets lost in the water.
“If I get hungry enough,” he says, “I’ll eat you instead. Then you won’t have to worry about dolphins’ goth cousins.”
Your eyes open just enough to glare at him.
“Orcas,” you mumble, too tired to be properly offended. “Not dolphins.”
His mouth rumbles against your hair in that dark almost-laugh again.
“Same ugly family.”
“You’re not funny.”
“And you’re still here.”
The words settle in you warm and heavy, not because they’re sweet — he doesn’t do regular sweet — but because they’re true.
You’re still here. He’s still here.
The pod is somewhere beyond the reef and the dark and the currents, and for tonight he’s not going to them.
For tonight, that’s enough.
You let sleep pull you under with his arm around your waist, his hand spread possessively over the softness of your seal half, claws barely dimpling the skin as if even in rest some part of him has to keep confirming you’re real.
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guess who's back, back again
Sakura WIP
oooough i made a bad decision
I think silver would really like early 2010s Disney.
(Tap for better quality)
Ref + flats, lineart, and sketch under cut.
What do you MEAN suddenly everything is the worst and everybody hates me and I'm super sad, why could this BE, I haven't had a day like this for... a month
oh
never doing chibis with a 1pxl brush again