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#ive never been able to get colours to look the way i want them to the same way i could do with photoshp

keishawantskisses · 7 days

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"Haven't you ever seen skin like mine?" A vault

Skin clarity + glow | Skin tone | skin clarity

∘₊ ✧───────────────────✧₊∘

⋆.˚ Skin clarity .𖥔˚

My skin is just so clear and beautiful, I can't help staring and feeling it. I am just in awe at how wonderfully blessed I am to be born with such perfect ideal skin. It is so gorgeously smooth, and while its firmness keeps me looking young and perfect, it is still supple and has a slight bounce to the touch.

I mean my skin is so perfect some friends ask me what brand of skin care I use to get my skin so even and glowing like it does, but truth be told.. genetics and positive assumptions about myself I guess😭?? I've never had any reason to use skin products because my skin has always been naturally flawless, and ive never had any reason to doubt myself because literally look at me- i am the proof. That's just my nature. But every now and then, I'll get gifted high-quality skin korean care sets and expensive most wanted skin moisturisers with the most delicious and entising scents by my mum "just in case" but also because the process is fun😋

It's also so fun being able to eat whatever I want without ever having to worry about my skin because nothing could ever affect its perfectness. I just eat what I want, and the after-effects are like a couple of crumbs on my lips and still looking pretty😭

But some people do be jealous tho🙄. "There is no way she can eat what she likes and still look that good" one says and "what about the acne? Has she even gotten a spot once?" another says. And it's even better when I post pictures or videos cus haters really be out here doing there best to convince themselves and everyone around them (like the clowns they are) that skin is impossible to look that perfect and it HAS to be makeup or it HAS to be a filter or she MUST have gotten some surgery of a kind and they all couldn't be more wrong lmao. I just be existing and nothing else and i am just that naturally radiant😂

∘₊ ✧───────────────────✧₊∘

⋆.˚ Skin colour.𖥔˚

I've had people pointing out how dewy and golden like my skin is like all my life and I never even thought about it until now. Well, I kind of always knew that I have the most gorgeous, jaw dropping skin colour that ranged between a deep caramel tan in the light and like a golden brown in the dark; I've even been accused of bleaching my skin to get a lighter tone once but how would that even make any sense when my tone changes slightly due to lighting?😭😭 But anyway other than that one person I've been getting remarkable amounts of compliments both in person and on social media about how glorious my skin colour looks. It's kind of overwhelming but ive been fighting though it.

skin colour in the dark | skin colour in bright lightings

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1 dimple is ♡shaped | I sweat= I shimmer | cutest mole marks

⋆.˚ Unique features.𖥔˚

— Glittery skin when I sweat

I have a rare phenomenon that only 0.0001 in the entire human population have, with my skin where if I am to sweat, my skin will have a light glittery coat. Scientists have recently come to find out that the glittery coat left behind by the sweat is a natural skin protecting barrier. This is incredibly useful for preventing skin problems like rashes, strawberry skin, and uneven skin texture. Scientists have not found a name for this yet (im scientists and don't know what to call it)

— ♡Shaped Dimple

Another rare phenomenon for people to get is dimples. Only 0.01 of the entire human population have dimples, and an even smaller number of people (me) have a heart-shaped dimple. There is nothing scientific about this tho, it's just fun to look at

— Beauty marks / moles

I have a couple of cute beauty marks on my body and face. Also somewhat rare, somewhat not lol. Nothing more to add😊

@theshifterbear @livingmydreamlife5555 @4ellieluv

This was lowkey entertaining to script especially the unique features one too. ONTO THE NEXT!

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diazsdimples · 19 days

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❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

It’s snowing!!

A snowstorm in my inbox!! 21 frosty sentences just for you (we're pretending that last section in the speech marks is one sentence okay)!

Frostpunk AU ❄️

Hope surges through Buck at the news – it’s the closest thing either of the Diazes have made in terms of visible progress and he clings onto it like a lifeline, Bobby’s words from a few days prior echoing in his head. “Do you think he’d be able to hear me, you know, if I talked to him?” Buck asks Hen later that morning. She’s doing her routine cares on Edmundo, checking his IV sites to make sure they haven’t tissued and taking his vital signs, and Buck hovers around her, his fingers itching to thread through Edmundo’s steadily lengthening hair. “Who, Christopher?” Hen asks as she turns Edmundo’s hand over in hers, checking the length of his nails and the colour of the IV site. “I mean, both of them really, but yeah, Christopher,” Buck replies, shifting restlessly from one foot to another. “I was thinking of reading to him, so he knows he’s not alone.” Hen give Buck an almost sad smile, ones that he’s become more and more familiar with as the days have passed. He’s seen it on Hen’s face as she works and watches him keep constant vigil at the Diazes bedsides, and Bobby and Athena’s whenever they come and check on him. Maddie doesn’t try hide her sadness behind a smile, he sees it whenever he walks into a room these days. Be careful with yourself, Evan. Don’t get too attached. Yeah, well, Buck’s never been very good at listening to instructions, even if it’s for his own good. “I’m sure he’d really appreciate it if you read to him, Buck, that’s a good idea,” Hen replies, and Buck’s already pushing through the tent flaps and pelting down the icy streets before he knows what he’s doing. It’s -30 degrees Celsius today, fairly mild for this time of year. The sun hasn’t quite crested over the big ridge that shelters the city, leaving the streets and buildings sparkling with icy dew from the frozen night. The slats of streets are still slippery with black ice, and more than once Buck has to grab onto a streetlamp to stop him from slithering sideways as he takes a turn too quickly. He reaches his tent in record time, sporting a new scrape on his knee from a misjudged corner, and shrugs off his coat, barely sparing a moment to brush the snow off his pants before continuing on his mission.

[insert this snippet about the Princess Bride here]

With the book clutched tight to his chest, Buck makes his way back to the med tent, this time with much more care. There’s a new chair waiting for him between Edmundo and Christopher’s beds, this one lined with furs and complete with a small section that pulls out, should he want to prop his feet up. There’s no indication of who made the switch, but Buck sees what looks suspiciously like the back of Bobby’s head over in the supply section of the tent, and Buck’s throat constructs a little. He settles himself down on the chair, kicking his boots off, and leans over Christopher’s side, speaking quietly to the kid. “Hey bud, it’s Buck. I- I don’t know if you can hear me but I’ve bought a book with me today, and thought I’d read it to you. My sister used to read it to me when I was little, and it always made me feel safe so I figured I’d do the same for you.”

Tagging friends who have shown interest in this work

@neverevan @cal-daisies-and-briars @exhuastedpigeon @thekristen999 @spotsandsocks @hippolotamus @jesuiscenseedormir @theotherbuckley

Make me write things!!

#james writes #frostpunk au #thank you for the flurry daffi!!#the healing has begun babes #buddie #eddie diaz #evan buckley #911 abc #911 buddie #buddie wip #ngl I've missed writing for buddie #this was like coming home at the end of a long day #*dreamy sigh*

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bau-drabbles · 10 months

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liaaa please don’t give me that promotion 💀 more hotch stuff bc ive been pining more for him lately and i keep thinking about that idea i told you about (where reader is jack’s teacher)? i’d think that aaron would try to bring jack to school personally, just to see you even if it was for few minutes? oh but can you imagine valentine’s day in jack’s school and the kids have to draw people in their lives they love/care a lot about and in his final drawing it’s you, aaron and jack next to a house on one side with his friends and his aunt on the other?

and when aaron comes to pick jack up, you hand him and jack this picture back and start complimenting jack on his skills but aaron is at the side wondering if this could work again?? :( he’s afraid of falling in love because he’s not sure if he’ll be able to protect them or be there for them when in need, but seeing his son so happy again just makes his heart melt. he likes being around you too, noticing that he has been putting his guard down when you’re talking to him.

once you’re done, you gently pat the top of jack’s head and he giggles as he walks away holding his dad’s hand, waving goodbye to you before a small slip up — he says “bye mom”. you can tell aaron freezes up, unsure how to feel but you’re immediately calling out to both of them saying that kids do this all the time and its no big deal.

you pass jack a little sweet, hoping it’ll ease the embarrassment he’s feeling. aaron turns to watch as you interact with his son, smiling and patiently reassuring him that it’s okay and that’s when he blurts out an invitation to have dinner with him?? this man would be so direct with no frills whatsoever, and while you’re taken aback by how abrupt it was, you can tell that he’s a little embarrassed by it too — his cheeks are tinted pink and he watches you nervously before you say yes. you quickly scribble down your number and pass it to him before leaving to tend to the other kids and their parents, now before sending a quick wink to the both of them.

aaron’s heart is beating like crazy because there’s no way he just managed to do that but as he walked towards his car, he cant help but smile at the thought that things are finally looking better for him, and that maybe, it doesn’t have to be just the two of the hotchner boys anymore <3

IM SO SORRY FOR ALWAYS SENDING LONG ASKS D:

- (not) gideon anon

aww baby, i don't think you gave me this idea the last ask you sent was sad horny hotch but teacher!reader !!!!! 👀👀👀👀 also never apologise for the long ask!!! i love them!! 🤍🤍

this makes me so sad and happy because the first chance at love after such a devastating loss??? 🥺🥺 like after the whole haley thing, he's so scared to love again because what happens if history repeats itself and he falls too fast and too deep?? but you're such a burst of colour, so vibrant and just so beautiful he just wants a taste. a little glimpse of what if.

and when he looks back after reaching his car, he can see you smiling and laughing to the other parents with their kids and you just look so damn gorgeous. the wind blowing just the right amount, the sun dancing across your face, all of it feels like a romcom. it's such a cliché but he all he wants to do is scoop you up in his arms and whirl you around before planting a soft kiss to your lips which look so inviting.

he paces himself though, this time he's a little more reserved but it's only because its so new. you've said yes to his invite, surely that must mean something good.

and in the midst of it all, your eyes have catches his again just before he enters his car. the usual stoic face drops a little and you see a hint of a smile and something more. his cheeks are tinged with pink, his eyes a hurricane of emotions even if you're too far away to decipher which is the most dominant. jack calls out to him again and he awkwardly breaks out of the trance, looking at his son before shooting you a soft smile as he gets into his car after securing jack in his seat

this dinner would be perfect, he concludes in his head. seeing your beautiful face and seeing just how happy you make him and jack feel, it was going to be all okay.

i love this so bad 😩🤲 your 😺 may belong to gideon but your heart def belongs to hotchycakes <33 😙😙

#asks #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner

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lucidicer · 1 year

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hi olli! do you have any tips on developing your ocs above the surface level like personalities, traits and such? i feel like with i know my ocs but not to an extend of having them fully developed? do you use any prompts and what advice could you give to someone who's terrible at building pinterest board for their ocs? 😭 thank you <3

omg hi!!! first of all im flattered that u came to me of all people to ask this omg? and absolutely!!! gonna do it under the cut cause i have a lot to say <3

okay i get what u mean abt not knowing an oc past the surface level omgg it takes a lot to break through that, ive had vin as an oc for i think just over two years and it's only recently ive truly been able to get deep into his core. i find that doing ask games and such for ocs helps me because it forces me to think of aspects i never really considered so my first tip is look at ask games, you dont need to have the questions send to you to answer them!! it helps develop your character in the smallest ways that can snowball into bigger aspects of their personality. you can find some at @ocaskmemes also @develop-your-oc is SOOOOO useful omg their tag page has everything you could possibly need!!!!! also i LOVE using this ask game by @/deathbypufferfish for developing romantic relationships between ocs!!! i like to keep all the answers in a document to reference later!! (also those cute as hell oc sheets? a god send. if you search oc profile on pinterest u can find so many!!)

fully developing an oc is pretty tricky tbh so don't feel like you need to have everything set in stone within a week or smth, take your time, switch ideas around, scrap things entirely. in the end this oc is YOURS!! you don't need to have their entire life known to you for you to enjoy them!

pin boards for ocs are also helpful for development tbh. when you start a board dont expect it to be amazing right away like my tang board is terrible and its only recently ive figured out how i wanted it like just look at the difference (top is the new one)

expect your boards to be bare bones when you first start them!! usually i have a vague idea for an oc when i start them like their appearance and for solitude specifically i know what their issues are no matter how undeveloped it is. i like to start with like appearance based pins first tbh cause it sets good ground work like eye colour, hair colour, outfits etc (these are all subject to change so don't feel tied down to them) and trust eventually you will reach an aesthetic you like. just keep adding things that make u think of that oc!! u can clean it up later when you have a more solid idea of what you want. one of the big things i recommend is to follow other simblrs on pinterest, if you want some good ones just look at the people i follow (@/lucidicer on pin) look at their oc boards they can really give u some good inspo and dont be afraid to steal the pics pdjfhjdhg. also BIG one...add 'aesthetic' to all your pinterest searches 😁

just have fun and go crazy :D ENJOY UR SILLIES!!!!!!!

#i hope this was helpful!!!!!!! i tried to add as much as i could think of from the top of my head :)#good luck nonny i believe in u <3 #olli.txt #asks

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snailsrneat · 1 year

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Hello, i stumbled across your match up event and was wondering if i caould get one from you.

Well, for my looks I have Blonde hair that comes to my shoulders, my skin is an ivory colour, more pale cause ive been told i look like a ghost, i have green eyes and i stand about 5'5" tall, i dress either grunge or emo(as ive been told) and i look kinda gay(which im Panromantic).

My basic interest are Horror(Games, books, movies) and Art, and my specific ones are vegetation and Bugs(When ever i see these types of things in nature, i will stop and staire to look at its beauty)

How i would describe myself is that im one of those grumpy old men in the movies that turned bitter after he lost his wife and just wants to be left alone, im stand off-ish, im not a fan of people, and i prefer to stay inside by myself, i dont really trust people due to past experiences, though there are very few people that can break my shell, one of them being the person im in love with.

I would say my celebrity crush(well not really crush but i love his character) is charlie heaton, i dont know why, but im in love with his character from shut in(2016), Stephen was just*chefs kiss*, and also Jonathan Byers from Stranger things.

My Favourite drink is tea, mainly fruit or green, and favourite food is ice cream, though i find it disgusting when people sit there and just eat the whole carton.

My zodiac is Aquarius, and my MBTI is ISTP

Bye and have a good day/night!

You have been matched up with...

Kalim Al-Asim

-----------------------------

Say it with me now everyone,

OPPISITES ATTRACT.

No but seriously Kalim is one of the most persistent little rays of fuckin' sunshine put there.

If you think for one second he isn't going to try his damn hardest to break you out of your shell you are dead wrong.

You guys go on nature walks all the time, and almost every single time one of you guys bring back some big ass bug.

Which, you know, Jamil hates.

Expect to forever be on Jamils shit-list cause of that.

If it wasn't for the bugs tho Jamil really mind your company in Scarabia.

Back to Kalim tho, he always tries to make you socialize with someone besides him.

Always ends up failing unfortunately, but baby steps are important.

He tried watching a horror movie with you once, never again.

He was haunted by night mares for a week.

But you guys love drawing together, occasionally using each other as references.

You guys probably met that way too.

You guys got sat next to each other and you just started drawing whilst listening to the lecture.

Kalim saw your beautiful artwork and couldn't help but bug you on how good it looked.

His presence made you really uncomfortable and he was eventually able to realize that after a couple meetings.

That's when he decided to take things slow.

He began to act much more chill and touchy when around you. Even going as far as to not show as much emotion when he got excited.

This eventually led to him gaining your trust after months work of effort and decided to confess his feelings to you.

Which you obviously accepted of course.

If I could give you guys a name I'd call you guys the opposite day couple.

#Twst #twst matchup #twisted wonderland #disney twisted wonderland #Match up #kalim al asim

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ravenveenova97 · 15 days

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IRL Pokemon Journy (Part 3)

youtube

(music to set mood)

Me and Kio walked all the way to the fashion district that was in Windom and when we made it the howl entire street was full of boutique’s, we walked around and had a little look “hay sis what about this place” Kio looked to where I was pointing an in the shops window was showing off alternative fashion both gothic and kawaii “nice shout sis lets poke around a little” we walked in and there was tones of outfits on display, they have 4 sections downstairs for the women, being underwear clothing accessory's and shoes me and Kio smiled and we picked up a carrier and walked to the underwear section, I looked around in my lane wile Kio was across from me looking at the gothic underwear, I was loving all the pastel colours and found serval pairs I liked.

One being pastel purple with stars on with some frill detailing on the bra and thong, the other one was pail blue with cute little moons and a alolan ninetails embroeded on the bra, the third one was more on the naughty side of things its colour was pastel pink, the bra had underwire but see threw mesh with frilly lace details around the band and the underwear was also see threw mesh with a heart on the bootie that’s been cut out and what made this set naughty was they it was also open crouch.

I giggle to myself while looking at it and Kio walked up next to me “oooooooo sexy the boys would love that” I shot bright red and looked at her “SIS!!!” she started lathing hard “i was just joking hahahahhaah” I smile and shake my head at her and add it into my basket “ow so you are going to get it then” I go shy and fidget a little “well yer.......you never know there could be a time I have to use it” Kio smiles at me and looks into my basket “seven pairs of underwear, that a weeks' worth” I look at her and nod “yer im sure the hotel has a laundry room we could use while staying there” Kio nods at me “yer let's hope they do, so we done in the unaware section? Should we move on to the socks?” I smile and nod and we walk to out sections agen.

It's amazing they have this part divided up, makes things a lot easier to find, I browse through the socks and I pick up some that are all thigh high in white or pastel pink blue and purple, I even got some normal socks and some lounged ones as I do like my fluffy socks no matter the season, after that we headed to the Pj section it wasn’t big of a section but I did find two I liked one lilac silk night dress and a pastel blue silk romper with more cute lace details

Kio was one with hers as well she brought some blue and black top and shorts and also a sexy night dress for herself “all right the time we been waiting for sis alternative style clothing” Kio giggles and we make our way to that section and we both helped each other out with those and soon after we picked up a few accessories to go without look and payed for them and left the store holding three bags in each of our hands so six in total

“Hahahahhaha I can’t remember the last time I splurged money on a howl style change” I happily lathed away as Kio was not happy back in our world she barely had any money to treat herself to stuff like this due to paying bills for the house and food and getting to and from work along with other expenses like tax gas and electric, I had it easy compered to her I was living with my mum so I didn’t have to pay much for rent and that left me with a lot of spending money after I payed out for my rabbit poppy, it’s nice to see her be able to buy the things she likes it makes me happy that she happy “Ok sis we done our shop should we head to a hair salon” I smile and nod and Kio opens her Rotom phone agen wile I do mine as well coz I wanted to know if there was somewhere around here that done colour contact lenses “ok iv found a place its about three blocks that way” I look to were Kio was pointing “ok so after we done that could we head here next” I show Kio my phone and she sees what I looked up “cool, so they do colour contacts here, yer we head there after we done at the salon” Kio smiles happily and we make our way to the hair salon and walk in and both get seated for our new hair change.

Kio just had a trim and dyed her blond hair black with a stormy vibrant blue on the fringe and tips of her hair, me I went for a total colourful change my hair was sectioned into five peses, on my left side I had cyan blue and under that a fuchsia pink on the right side was lavender purple and pastel pink, I had a fought fringe cut in and all that was salmon pink I even had my dead ends cut off to so I had the cute little Bob cut going on and after It was done i was in love with my new hair, We walked out and Kio looks at me “you went so colourful with your hair it suits you sis” I smile happily like a Cheshire Cat at her and I look at her hair “and you finally got the hair of your dreams how’s was the stinging ” Kio looked at me and smiled “believe it or not there was no stinging I think coming here had cured allergic reaction to dyes” I got happy on the spot for her as she always wanted to do this to her hair but couldn’t due to her anergic reaction to what was in our dyes back at home.

We took our last stop in the fashion district and headed to the store were I can pick up some colour contacts “ok sis what colour you thinking off” I’m stood at the wall looking at their colours “I’m thinking of doing two colours like one purple and one yellow” Kio nods and looks at the poster that’s on the wall and points two out “how about violet gem and daffodil yellow” I look at them and nod “sounds good to me I get those” so I walked to the till and ordered them I got the ones that last a year along with all the care stuff for it like a cellulation and contact case for them and we finally left the shopping district and headed to the housing agency.

It took us a wile to be seen to but we got saw by two different people and it was a long prosses but we actually were able to find a place we like in our favourite locations and made a full up front deposit so the apartment would be our in no longer than three weeks, we have to come back then and get our Keys to our new homes “well that was fun” I look at Kio that was exsusted from all the arranging we needed to do “want to grab a few drinks and head back for a bit before we go out agen to get dinner” Kio massaged her shoulder and nodded “yer I need time away from the crowds I’m mentally exhausted” I smile an nod I knew how she felt I started to feel it to so getting back to just relax and recharged would be nice.

We did one more thing before we left and that was pick up some new makeup but after that we got back to the hotel and we both flopped onto the bed “my feet hurt” Kio grones into her pillow and I respond to her “know how you feel but it’s my back that’s killing me” I take my head out of the pillow and I look at my phone from my world “I wonder if you can still send and reseve messages in this world” Kio pulls her face out of her pillow and looks at me “give it a go see if you can” I open up an new message and try to send something to my mum saying I’m ok and I’m still alive just on a road trip with Kim and I sent it, I looked at the screen as I saw the blue bar go up and then my phone made a noise to say it sent “no shit that worked” Kio was baffled and I was stunned but lathing in disbelief as Kio jumped onto my side of the bed and looked at my phone "it actually sent ha let’s see if I get a response” we waited for a bit and then I got an message back “it came through” I opens it and my mum responds with “ok just don’t get into any trouble and stay safe” I was happy because it means I can keep in contact with my mum.

“Well at least we can send messages to our world and they can send them back” I smile and nod as now I can keep my mum updated but getting back might be the issue I can only play the road trip card for so long as eventually I have to come home to see her “I’m going to get out of these dirty clothes and into the new ones we got today” I nod while I was looking at my phone to see if I can still get to my social media In my world and I could “it’s seems like all my functions are working on this phone so does that mean YouTube is too” I clicked on it and it opens up and I smile to myself “so does it work” I turn round to Kio and nod and show her the phone “yer it’s working heheheh which means we can lisson to our world music” she smiles and opens her Spotify “ok then I’m throwing this playlist on ready for a bit of rock music sis” I smile and nod at her “ow you know I’m always up for rock music hit it” Kio pressed play and the music started to play.

#pokemon fanfiction #pokemon galar #pokemon #pokemon romance #Youtube

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chronicbloodynoses · 1 month

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honestly mbikmb is actually me rn

the drum - i feel such a depressive cycle everyday and im not getting fucked up bc i cant w my situation but if i could i prob would b!

happy news 4 sadness - my ex lied 2 me constantly + my perception of love is actually so fked up after him and i constantly tried 2 change myself and use sexual stuff for him 2 love me (he treated me like shit and then convinced me i wanted too much from him)

sunburned shirts - honestly i see this as a nostalgia where it ends up not being what you remember, he used 2 look at the sun and he thought of it fondly, but it hurt more than he remembered

stoop kid - its me! im stoop kid! ive been so conditioned to my mother's baby-ing and when i try to be independent im not allowed and then i get yelled at for never helping out and im terrified to leave bc shes constantly saying that i'll fail completely on my own! also in my later "growing up" yrs i watched hey arnold LOL

something soon - i feel so strongly abt this song. trying to do things to keep from losing it + cutting off my hopes bcuz i feel incapable, i feel like the only way i'll ever b seen is to cause problems! break shit! my mother talked a whole bunch of shit about my dad so now i'll never ever see him the same despite him never actually doing anything to me! i both fear and hate him and miss him and wish i had a dad!!!!! treating what im going through as the past to keep myself from focusing on my problems so i dont kms!!!! wanting to hurt myself to have some reason to be upset!!!! wanting to express my emotions but never being able to!!!! if i cant feel better soon then im actually gonna lose my shit GENUINELY! i am completely unable to tell my mother anything bc either it has to do w her and she can do no wrong or its my fault how i feel! (fun fact- i got yelled at in eighth grade 4 listening to help let me go danny gonzalez bc of the kidnapping a girl part and my music is "too dark" LOL (she threatened to send me to a mental hospital on the same car ride to school)) this town is freezing cold!!! i need out!!!!!!! im not allowed to do laundry and my mom barely does it and acts like if i literally have no underwear then its the hardest thing in the world and i have to wait til bc shes constantly too tired (girl i just wore my last pair and im NOT wearing the ones with holes in them) wanting to be somethig more and never feeling content. ignoring my problems w content and procrastinating to complete guilt, i want to leave n sneak out (i literally could ive snuck someone in multiple times b4 LOL), if i dont romanticize what im going through i'll ACTUALLY fucking lose it (im already inching toward a breaking point xP) i hate this house!!!! ive grown up in the same butt fuck nowhere town in the same horrible traumatic house!!!!!!! i need!!!!!!!! to escape!!!!!! so bad!!!!!

guys we're halfway through the album LOL

no passion - this song is actually so depressed dancing 4 me but i honestly dont really listen 2 this one much n think abt the lyrics so no comment VERY EXTREMELY sorry for no passion fans i WILL think of u and listne 2 it more

father, flesh in rags - i love/hate this song honestly, like it kinda reminds me of my ex (scoliosis! his relationship w his dad was a big problem of our relationship!) thats all u get it kinda hurts LOL not in a way of missing him but i get really upset thinking abt all the shit i put up w and forgot abt bc of my SEVERE case of rose coloured glasses

strangers - im actually wanting to create are 4 this song LOL anyway this song is less specific 4 me (honestly i burnt out from something soon LOL) but i too am not gonna last much longer! im sofa king sick of it!!!! all of it!!!!!!

lawns - its okay will my dad left too <3

pow - fun fact my great grandpa was a prisoner of war! he was taken while he was in a plane over russia and there he learned the language in his 3 years there n idk if he escaped or was let go but hes honestly such a cool guy like! love him but he died when i was really young so i didnt get much of a relationship w him but if i was a great grandparent i'd be really happy 2 meet my great grand kid so im really happy i got to meet him

open-mouthed boy - i too call god a SHIT and then scamper off

ne way im so obsessed w car seat even if i dont have much to say and im just saying a bunch of nothing burgers i have so much appreciation for everything car seat headrest has done even w the songs i dont like (im looking at you hymn and famous) i know somewhere other people like them n are also so affected by car wseat and its just like wowzerz! love this band sofa king much! cant wait to see them live in june!!!!!

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kashimos-hajime · 3 years

Text

the colour yellow | jjk

summary: “You once said love manifests the most twisted curses. I never thought of it that way before, but I’m starting to think you’re right.”

WARNINGS: ANGST!! hanahaki disease but not an au, HOSPITALS, DEATH, DESCRIPTIONS OF DISEASE, UNHEALTHY WEIGHT LOSS, pining, unrequited love, complicated feelings, its just sad. there are some light-hearted moments, and happier/softer aspects in the ending but it is generally sad in the ‘what could have been’ department pairing: gojo satoru x fem!reader, past geto suguru x fem!reader, mentions of satosugu word count: 29.9k lmao

a/n: i just needed to get the hanahaki out of my system. it did not work. i took liberties w the timeline because idc about actual jjk canon in this fic thanks.

playlist for this fic

crossposted on ao3 x

Your Innate Technique always gave you a green thumb. Meaning, similarly enough to Yaga, you could plant cursed energy into objects.

Where it deviated, Satoru knows, is the type of object. Plants—trees, leaves, flowers.

Ironic, he thinks numbly as he walks through the hospital. Shoko had told him that at this point it was palliative care until you died—nothing else would work. Cursed energy only fed your sickness, and even her technique could not heal the damage fast enough. Stupid. Idiotic. Cruel.

Cruel. That was the word.

He hadn’t seen it himself but from how his old friend had described it, it could only be cruel.

His footsteps tap along the linoleum floors, urgent, but not too fast. A part of him dreads what he will see—his mind swirls with the possibilities, and of guilt.

Why didn’t he just come sooner? Why did he think it was okay to wait, to dismiss Itadori when he said you’d been checked in for your coughing fits?

“She’s strong. She’ll be fine,” he had said. Itadori’s small frown. “A little feather in her throat isn’t going to knock her down.”

Why? Why? Why? Why did he say that?

Because it had to be serious to put you in the hospital. For fuck’s sake, you were still that teenage girl who stood outside his dorm window in the middle of a thunderstorm to bring Fushiguro a birthday present before you left for a curse expedition a thousand years ago, and the woman who welcomed him into your home unprompted on December 24th, your cheeks dry, lips pressed in a brave smile.

You had held him tight enough he could not see the blood, scrubbed him in a bathtub, ran your fingers through his hair until the sweat and grime was gone. You took care of him because he knows the belief that no one should be left behind to suffer alone has been engrained in you since the day he’s met you.

He should’ve known. A girl abandoned for being cursed had turned into woman with a saviour complex who’d barely even think about telling him you were dying.

Dying, of all things, from a disease no one knows how to cure. And you’re a sorcerer.

He could’ve laughed. The irony is enough to make him smile.

Your room’s in a tiny corner of the hospital, down the hall from a nurse’s station, and as he walks through, he can see the grey sunlight streaming through the window, glaring against his glasses. He lifts them to rub the heel of his hand into his eye.

He doesn’t want you to worry when you see him, and mostly, he needs to stall. His heart is in knots in his chest, and he spots a chair beside the door with your name in the plastic slate, so he sits down. His knees feel gummy and he leans forward, the visitor’s pass clipped to the front of his shirt hanging.

Satoru tugs the glasses off his face, fits his palm over his brow and squeezes his eyes shut. It’s chilling in this dead end, and he swallows tightly. Everything tastes so dry as he looks up and shoves his hand underneath the sanitizer dispenser, rubbing it all over his hands just so he has something to do.

After a few minutes, he gets up and sets a hand on the knob.

It can’t be as bad as he’s imagining. At most, you’re a bit sick, but you’ll still be spritely, warm in the lips and with arms outstretched and, “Satoru, finally!”

He opens the door.

You’re sitting hunched over in bed. Silhouette outlined by the white-grey sunlight from outside your hospital room, you’re trembling as you hold onto a receptacle. An IV is hooked to your arm, a hospital gown is barely hiding anything, and it feels immoral to even look so Satoru doesn’t. Instead, he pauses by the doorframe and closes his eyes for a moment as your gaze flashes to him.

He feels it, to be honest. The heat of your stare until it is wrenched away by a violent cough you instinctually muffle by your palm, blood splattering over your hand, soft, velveteen purple petals falling from your lips and into the receptacle in your lap.

You’re supposed to have a green thumb.

Vines bend to your will if you command it, you can summon forth thorns to impale your opponents, send thick creeping ivy to barricade a doorway. It doesn’t matter if there is no greenery in your immediate area. At the sweep of your hand, the ground could rumble with the sound of trees twisting their gnarled roots into feet to march at your command.

Just as long as they’re within range and you’ve touched them in the past few hours, they’re yours.

So, why can’t you stop this?

Plants are supposed to listen to you, right? As he stares at your shaking body on the bed, curved over the plastic tub, thick globs of bloodied spit drip from your lips and soaked purple blossom petals entwine with your life essence. His heart plummets to his chest. You retch, spit, choke, and every sound stabs him in the chest as he takes a weak step forward, hand stretched out limply.

Your name flutters, barely leaves his lips before you’re looking at him again, a bit of a mortifying image but nonetheless.

Even so, you smile, despite the blood painting your face, the exhaustion morphing your body. You look like you haven’t slept in weeks, and your hands shake around the receptacle. You look battered, bruised along the arms where the needles keeping you filled with antibiotics, medicine you need, had punctured you.

And still, you’re beaming at him. He thinks he’s going to be sick.

“Hi, Satoru.”

His hand falls. Eyes wide, he cannot take another step. You wipe at your lips, tossing the tissue into the trash before pushing the plastic receptacle onto the table and swinging your legs off the bed.

“Don’t—“ he croaks but you don’t listen, sliding your feet into slippers and grabbing your IV stand to take a step towards him. Your knees nearly give in but you stick out a hand before he can rush to catch you. Then, you’re pushing yourself up and walking over to him. It’s more of a shuffle, but Gojo finds he can’t care as you land on his chest, hands pressing into his back.

You’re a bit cold in his arms, and he wraps himself around you, trying to rub the heat back into your skin as you shudder, but your heart is still racing as it always does around him, and you…

You’re the type of person who can shift how the air feels and looks to his Six Eyes with your smile or your tears or your frown, and in that moment, the air bleeds yellow with your joy. It’s so bright in his soul that it makes his heart skip as you shift on your feet against him, hands sliding down so your arms can circle his waist and haul him closer.

“Gojo Satoru turning off his infinity for little ole me,” you murmur, voice raspy, as he closes his eyes, cradling your head. Without another word, he sinks into you. “Talk about the world ending.”

Why didn’t you just call him? Why did you let him stay away for so long? He doesn’t want to ask why it’s happening, or how. He already knows you’ll just lie. But he wants to know if you think so lowly of him that you thought you didn’t matter to him.

After Suguru…

How could you think that? He’s screaming inside his mind as he touches your back, feels the faint protruding ridges along your skin when he pushes down. It makes your spine a bit more pronounced along the knobs, your shoulder blades a bit bumpy, but otherwise, it’s almost normal. One wouldn’t even be able to tell without touching you and actively searching for it. How could you think I don’t care?

This isn’t the work of a cursed spirit, that much he knows. It seems much more seductive, sneaking yet unhurried in its nature. This is agony in effigy. There’s something rotten inside you, but he can’t tell what it is. The energy is everywhere.

You pull back to look up at him with a soft smile, then tap his nose and tell him to join you before turning around and climbing back into bed with energy that betrays your earlier fits. You grab your robe that you’ve left on your bed before getting up again and walking around, shrugging the fabric back onto your shoulders.

He sits down in a visitor’s chair that is still cold.

“It comes and goes,” you explain first with your new, croaky voice, stretching your arms above your head and rubbing your neck. It doesn’t look painful, but you clear your throat a lot to see if it helps. So far, nothing. “So, it’s just like a really bad coughing fit, to be honest.”

“How long has it been going on?” Your hip cracks and you let out a relieved sigh. Satoru arches an eyebrow as you animatedly stretch your face. “What are you doing, silly?”

“It got worse a few weeks ago, enough that Nanami insisted I check myself in around two weeks ago?” you say, after counting on your fingers. Satoru’s heart plummets. “But it’s levelled out since I’ve been moved here and off-campus. And I’m stretching. When I get back out there, I have to remember how to emote.” You flash him a bedazzling grin and a bit of the weight lifts off his shoulders as you swallow down another cough. This time, it’s successful and you only let out a short, raspy breath before shaking it out.

You aren’t even doing that bad.

The blood, the flowers, that must’ve been just a bad bout, but otherwise, you seem quite normal.

That’s what he tells himself, and he believes it.

With relief, he stretches out his legs, leaning his head back on his hands. Your room’s pretty nice—much nicer than an average hospital room. Plants on the windowsills, some get-well-soon cards and a desk in the corner filled books that you look like you haven’t even begun to read, some paintings hanging off the walls.

You wave a hand to grab his attention again.

“Don’t look,” you chastise, tying the robe around your waist. “Some of these are works in progress.”

“So Itadori and Shoko were just exaggerating,” he assumes. You look up at him, quirking an eyebrow. “If you’re attempting to paint, I know all that’s happened is that you’ve lost your mind.”

“Shut up.”

“Well, they made it out as if you were dying. If it’s just a lung issue, they could probably just fix it and we can get back to exorcising curses and making fun of Fushiguro’s teen angst,” he says, crossing his legs at the ankles. You step over them to go to the window and examine your plants, and he eyes you in his peripheral, watching you inspect one of the leaves before looking next at some blooming flowers. You don’t answer, and the grey light makes you look melancholy until you shrug.

“The doctors say I need to rest, save my strength and all that,” you finally say vaguely. “And don’t make fun of Fushiguro.”

“I’d never do that.”

You tilt your head and arch an eyebrow skeptically before flicking his forehead with a sharp donk. “I’m not above slapping the shit out of you.” He opens his mouth to argue and you hold up a finger, shutting him up. “And you can’t hit back as revenge. Ill hospital patient rights.”

“You can’t take the moral stand. Vengeance has no gender bias,” he exclaims, sitting up but you merely smirk, leaning over and shoving your face into his space before turning your head to present your cheek. His eyes widen as you poke your own face tauntingly.

“Do it, then.”

Gawking for a moment, Satoru stares but you only wink and he pushes you away lightly. You stumble a bit and he jumps to his feet to catch you but you manage to right yourself up, shooting him a foul glare. He glares back in response.

“Well, obviously, I wasn’t going to actually slap you,” he says, indignant.

“So you pushed me instead? Gojo, in your words, you are the strongest. You never know how to control the strength you push out.”

“Yes, I do!”

“One time, you patted Megumi on the back and you sent him into the pavement.”

“He was nine.”

“It still happened!” you cry, although an impish smile is already curling at your lips and it isn’t long before it spreads to Satoru, warm bright yellow and enough that it absolves any of the remaining pain in his body as you straighten up, holding onto your IV stand for support. The metal rattles a bit as the wheels roll. Your feet brush the ground. You lift your head up wretchedly.

It’s almost like that weakness sobers you.

The expression that overtakes you frightens Satoru to fucking death.

His face feels like it numbs, staring at the darkness that seeps the light away. You stare at the metal pole your fingers are wrapped so tightly around, and then you look at the bag hanging there, clear and round and soft to your touch as you straighten up.

“Satoru,” you say softly.

“Yeah?” His voice is so quiet he’s not sure he even speaks. He can’t remember the last time you had looked so dispassionate at anything in his life. Even death had left its mark—black frowns, long streaks underneath your eyes.

Your apathy is dark purple, an endless void colour.

“When I die, make sure Shoko’s the one who cuts me open to find out what’s wrong with me.”

Something prickles at his fingertips. He touches your shoulder and half-thinks his fingers will go right through you.

“You’re not going to die,” he insists firmly. “It’s just a bad cough.” You look up at him and blink. Then you touch your lips and shudder down another cough.

“We all die.”

“It’s not your time, yet.” His fingers dig into your shoulder. You don’t even wince even though you’re clenching his jaw but he can’t find it in himself to loosen his hold. It feels like the Jaws of Death. A crocodile’s bite.

So much for not being able to control his own power.

“It’s just a bad cough.” He ignores everything Shoko had said. Sometimes she’s wrong—sometimes, it’s not even that bad. He’d just seen it, hadn’t he? You were stretching, jumping onto your bed, acting like nothing was wrong.

Palliative care? As if you needed it—

You blink, then, and look at him. Stare at him as if you’d never said those words, and he had never reached out.

You jerk your shoulder out of his grip. It stings more than it should.

“Right. But I’m just saying. You know how you always say I’ve got a few screws loose. It just makes sense someone will wanna crack me open to see what was going on up there and I want it to be her.”

You smile, and the yellow cancels out the purple.

Colour theory.

But Satoru doesn’t smile back.

“What about the flowers?” he asks after a while. You’ve climbed back onto bed and he’s sat back down. You’re blowing into a spirometer, and every time, without fail, the ball shoots up to the top, clattering against the plastic. He watches, hoping that the next time, it’ll do the same thing again.

You stop and look at him. “What about them?”

“Is it some optical illusion? Why are they in your throat?”

“That’s a harder nut to crack,” you muse. “I don’t really know. It’s like when you’ve got food in your esophagus and you’re trying to cough it up so it doesn’t feel stuck anymore except it keeps building up. That only started a few days ago, though, so maybe, someone drugged me or something.” He doesn’t laugh and you frown. “Not funny?”

He shakes his head. “It’s freaky.”

He sits on the bench on campus.

He’s cancelled classes because he didn’t come up with a standard lesson plan and his students are glad to have a Monday afternoon off, even if they’d never say it to his face. In truth, he’d spent the whole weekend at the hospital until he reeked of antiseptic and pollen.

You coughed up five petals, and without fail, a nurse would come in hourly intervals to collect them. Shoko came once, to check up on you and to collect the samples. If she was surprised Satoru was sitting in the corner on his phone, she didn’t voice it.

“She’s not even doing that bad,” he says to the air, more accusatory than anything. The woman standing by him doesn’t answer and sits down beside him uninvited. Turning to look at her, his eyes narrow behind his blindfold. “You said she needed palliative care until she died. The doctor said she could leave tonight.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive concepts,” she informs, not looking at him. Shoko looks a bit out of place in the warm colours of the garden. Half a corpse herself. Waif-like. “The doctor’s letting her relax in the comfort of her own home before she dies. That’s all.”

“She’s not going to die.”

She snorts. “Denial isn’t a good colour on you.” The words could’ve been delivered colder. Satoru is grateful that they weren’t.

Shoko rests her hands on her knees, tilts her head up, and sighs. Her long hair is like warm chocolate in the sunlight, spilling down her arched back from the knot she tied. “If you have any idea on how to fix this, I’m listening with both ears.”

“I don’t even know what it is,” he says. “Coughing and flowers? I’ve never heard of a sickness like that before.”

“Nanami pointed out that it could be a curse someone placed on her. I don’t know why, but it’d be an explanation.” Satoru spreads his legs, plants an elbow on his knee and leans forward to look at the ants travelling along the cobblestone before his shoe. “It manifested on some negative emotion lingering inside her and it’s growing every day, but she won’t budge.” Shoko sighs. Her purple eye bags look worse in the sunlight, but he would never tell her that. “Maybe you’d have a better chance digging into her. With Geto gone, there’s no one else to ask, is there?”

“What about you? What happened to girls and their little secrets?” he jokes, trying to ignore the ache that begins to bloom in his chest. Shoko eyes him wryly.

“I have suspicions, but there are some things girls don’t ask other girls,” she retorts. “It’s never been my business anyway. My job is to treat her, and I’ve given her options. It’s up to her to take them. Grief is a birthing ground for curses, and if she’s letting them feed on her freely, you know what fate is waiting for her.”

With that, she gets up and leaves as quickly as she arrived. Satoru swallows the smell of flowers and feels sick.

Monday night, Satoru pulls up his laptop and looks through, searching up words he can string together in a coherent sense to get the answers he wants. As rare as it probably is, some research wouldn’t hurt, would it? Some curses had a trademark affliction—maybe this one does, too.

So he searches up flower coughing to see if there has ever been a record of strange deaths that have made the news. If not, he’ll go to the jujutsu databases, but for now, maybe some publicity could put some answers to this question.

He is surprised when one of the first results is flower coughing disease.

When he hits enter, the white screen blasts into blue irises with numerous results all repeating the same two words.

HANAHAKI DISEASE

And Satoru reads, and reads, and reads. He reads two weeks to three months, he reads unrequited love, and removal, and disappearance of romantic feelings and capacity for romantic love.

He reads fictional disease and wonders how much of it really is fictional.

His phone pings with a text, and he grabs at it, tilts it just enough to get a glimpse of the screen. It’s from you, and he hasn’t read a text from you in so long he almost doesn’t recognize who it’s from except he does because… who else could it be?

[Greenbean] 11:02 PM

hey!!! guess whos finally fucking free oh my god

ugh out of the hospital and forgot how actual air smelled like lol bitch im so hungry i could eat a zoo

Letting his phone clatter, he sighs and rubs his face roughy, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment before snapping his laptop shut and getting up. His phone buzzes again and he reaches for it blindly, the screen lighting up as he goes to bed.

[Greenbean] 11:03 PM

we should get smth to eat!! i wanna go to that new ramen place in ikebukoro

[Satoru] 11:03 PM

fine but you good???? who picked you up from the hospital? still insulted you didnt let me tbh

also what did the doctor say???

[Greenbean] 11:04 PM

bc ur a menace who doesnt know how to drive

he said itd get worse before itd get better so still gotta go for checkups but yeah dont worry and nanami came bc he didnt trust me not to try and walk home lol but he did buy me dinner

wasnt enough though!!!

…

[Greenbean] 11:06 PM

ok but fr does he think im insane

clearly id flash some skin and hitch a ride duh

…

[Greenbean] 11:10 PM

youre just gonna leave me on read? yikes

[Satoru] 11:12 PM

i was getting ready to sleep silly

and yeah ill come pick you up on saturday for lunch?

[Greenbean] 11:15 PM

sorry making instant noodles rn but yeah that sounds fine

wait youre sleeping so early lmfao

[Satoru] 11:16 PM

im old :/

[Greenbean] 11:18 PM

u sure are

(image sent)

look!!! my babies are still alive!!! idk how but miracles do exist im tellin ya

[Satoru] 11:24 PM

inumaki, maki, and fushiguro broke into ur home to water them but dont tell them i told u

[Greenbean] 11:24 PM

wtf

[Satoru] 11:25 PM

yeah idk when but i think u teaching inumaki how to pick locks has opened up too many possibilities but also its really funny thanks

now go to sleep u need to rest

[Greenbean] 11:28 PM

whos gonna make me lol youre not my dad

[Satoru] 11:29 PM

lol

remember how i can teleport

lol so cool

[Greenbean] 11:30 PM

dude

wtf

fine

goodnight hoe </3

[Satoru] 11:31 PM

goodnight knock off poison ivy <3

“You’ve looked better,” Shoko says. Satoru raises his head wearily as he pushes off the wall. Shoko’s holding a cup of coffee, her lab coat fresh on her shoulders and eye bags looking more printed on rather than natural swelling. Satoru can’t help but feel the same exhaustion. “Definitely looked worse. What do you want? It’s early.”

“Have you ever heard of Hanahaki disease?” he asks. She shakes her head, and he pulls up the page on his phone and hands it to her. She takes it from him and her eyes scan the screen as he continues, “It’s this fictional disease, something that stems from unrequited love, and I think it could be related to whatever she’s experiencing.”

“I thought you were set on willing her to survive,” she replies dryly, shooting him a quick look and adjusting the coffee in her hand. “But this is definitely one of your stranger theories.”

Satoru ignores that last part. “It’d make sense. With her Cursed Technique, maybe it manifested in a way that links to it.”

She pushes into the office, setting the coffee on her desk and sitting down. Satoru sits down on the exam table closest and leans forward eagerly as she continues to read the page, scrolling down occasionally before scrolling back up and sighing. “This is a stretch. The timeline doesn’t match up to what this is saying.”

“This is a curse. It doesn’t have to follow fiction.” His body feels sore, janky even, everywhere. He barely got a wink of sleep last night and he knows he’s paying for it, now. “Hell knows life rarely does, anyway. But the symptoms matches too well, doesn’t it? The flowers—you’ve done scans, haven’t you?”

She deliberates his words carefully as she looks to the file cabinet and pulls out a binder. Satoru catches a flash of your name on the spine before she moves her coffee and his phone out of the way to flip it open.

“The scans we’ve taken have only just begun to show small growths in her trachea,” she allows, “and we don’t fully understand how cursed energy affects our bodies, so I suppose it could be something like Hanahaki, if the negative energy stemming from December 24th was what brought this on or if these symptoms started when we were still students, but she’s been experiencing shortness of breath a few months before Christmas.” Satoru’s lungs squeeze the last of the air out of them at that, and a cold sweat drops down his spine as she hands his phone back to him. “It only started getting worse Suguru’s death, which meant there had to have been a trigger before that.”

In the back of his head, he hears your voice, light and yellow, saying a few weeks. It got worse a few weeks ago.

“Worse?”

“The first petal fell some time after Christmas. It’s been a slow, but steady progression since then. Sometimes, it’s two or three. When it’s not a good day, there can be as many as seven to ten.” Shoko switches on the lamp on the corner of her desk and adjusting the direction of the white light before flipping the page. “But if we can find the original trigger and alleviate that pressure it’s putting on her, we could buy her more time.”

“So it’s been nearly six months since the first petal,” he says. Shoko nods. Satoru is grateful for the blindfold—she can’t see how blank everything looks on his face. “It said sometimes, the disease can last for eighteen months.”

“As you said, this isn’t a fairytale.” She half-spins on her chair to face him and leans back into it, crossing one leg over the other and jiggling her knee. “I saw that one of the solutions is excise the growths at the cost of the attachment. That was one of the options I gave her when the growths first appeared. She said she wanted more time before she could decide.”

He frowned. “Why?”

“Because she’s smart, and likes to push her damned limits. And if this is truly the basis of the curse”—she gestures to Satoru’s phone. Her expression flickers—“those flowers are feeding off cursed energy. Cutting them out would remove those negative emotions, but at a cost of something else. Maybe whatever feelings she has regarding the trigger.”

Satoru looks down at his phone. It feels heavier than a thousand cinderblocks in his clammy hands. His fingers are numb as his screen dims and finally locks itself. Pressing the button, it illuminates again to reveal a picture of a cactus you gave him for his birthday years ago, blooming with delicate purple petals.

His heart rends. That cactus is long dead now.

“But, Suguru’s dead.”

“That’s why I asked you to ask her,” Shoko mutters.

Turning to her binder again, she picks up a pen and clicks it, lowering it to the paper before pausing, and Satoru looks up as she stares at whatever words are printed into the page distantly. A strange affliction is on her face, almost tormented, and Satoru is not-so-kindly reminded that before Suguru and Satoru, Shoko was your best friend first.

“Tell her how idiotic she’s being,” she enforces quietly. “The longer it lives, the more permanent damage is inflicted. With the unpredictable nature of curses, that won’t take long and by then, it’ll be too late to consider removing it.”

Saturday comes too fast, yet not fast enough. By the end of the week, Satoru is all but finished with teaching, and is waiting outside your apartment, leaning against the car as he scrolls through his phone. He’s done a bit more research on this Hanahaki disease, but even the word makes him shiver with the implications.

“Satoru!” Turning, he catches you loping easily towards him. You’re dressed in billowy, wide-legged dark mint green pants and a pretty white top that makes you look more nymph than human, with a canvas tote bag hanging off your shoulder. You flash him a smile as you fiddle with the fabric tie at the waistband of your pants nervously. “Hi.”

“Hey. Hope you don’t mind I brought Ijichi along for the ride since someone claims I can��t drive.”

“You don’t have your license, sir,” Ijichi says wearily as you bend over to wave through the window. "It would be illegal for you to be on the road in any capacity—oh, hello, ma’am. It’s nice to see you doing so well.”

“Thanks, Ijichi. I think I’m doing better after getting out of there,” you say as Satoru opens the car door for you and he smirks, eyes crinkling behind his sunglasses. You straighten up, looking at him before poking his chest and it’s almost just like the good ole days as you break out into a grin that crinkles your entire face. “What’s with you being a gentleman? It better not be because I was in the hospital.”

“Of course not,” he admonishes. “I wouldn’t dare dream of being polite to you of all people.” Still, he sidesteps and sweeps his arm, gesturing for you to climb in first which you do, exhaling a bit shakily as you settle in and slide over. By the time he’s settled in beside you, you have a fist over your lips and you’re clearing your throat testily.

A worm of unease wriggles into his stomach as he clips in his seatbelt, pulling the lapels of his unbuttoned green shirt free from the strap. Legs spreading, he lets his hands fold in his lap as Ijichi begins to drive them to their destination. You’ve lowered your hand by now, looking out the window, and it’s not bright enough that Satoru can read your expression on the glass.

It’s clear you don’t want to talk about it, but still, that nagging feeling bites at him as he rolls the divider up between the backseat and the front—a mock of privacy.

“The place we’re going to gives me the same vibe as that family-owned restaurant we went to when we were students. The one in Kagurazaka,” you say after a while, turning back to look at him. You’re wearing a bracelet that jangles when you move your hand to adjust the seatbelt across your chest. “I think you’ll like it.”

“Have you been?”

“One time, before I checked in,” you tell him, smiling still. “It was really good. The perfect last meal.” Satoru does well enough to hide his frown at your choice of words as you meet his eyes. “You know, you can ask. I’m not fragile.”

“I don’t have anything to ask,” he lies. “I’m just glad you’re out of the hospital.”

“Me, too. I’ve missed so much and it drove me insane. Yaga-sensei insists that I don’t work until I’m sure I’m feeling better,” you add. “But to be honest, there’s nothing much that can be done to make me feel better.”

“I see. So you’re still coughing up flowers?”

“Petals,” you correct, “and a bit. Don’t worry. It’ll get better soon.” You wave a hand and turn to look out the window and Satoru’s appetite all but vanishes. He doesn’t know why you’re so intent on lying to him about the severity of your condition, but as your knee jiggles relentlessly the whole car ride with unbridled excitement, he wonders if you’re even aware of how sick you could be.

His Six Eyes scan your body for signs of a curse. Normally, those plagued have their little burdens hanging off their shoulders, prying their head open, biting into an arm or leg, but he finds yours lives inside your chest, just barely hidden by the yellow light brimming from your body as you reach forward to lower the divider and talk to Ijichi.

They reach Ikebukuro before they’re dropped off after Satoru insists on walking the rest of the way.

“Give us some privacy, Ijichi! We both know you’ll just eavesdrop for the juicy details,” he exclaims loudly, leading to the man to blush furiously, stuttering that he’d do no such thing, and earning Satoru a smack on the back of his head, knocking his sunglasses askew.

“Thanks for the ride, Ijichi,” you say warmly as if you hadn’t slapped a concussion into Satoru. The Assistant Director dips his head. “See you later!” With that, he drives off and the two sorcerers are left in the busy street. Satoru looks around curiously, but you tug him along up the main road of the district and immediately turn right into one of the smaller streets. A few cyclists race past, as well as cars, but the traffic seems relatively slow despite it being the weekend. There are people walking along the white lines separating the lanes, chatting merrily as you lead him to the restaurant.

“I forgot how actual sunlight felt,” you sigh, stretching your arms high above your head as if to touch the wind breezing through. Inhaling deeply, you close your eyes. Satoru waits for you to begin to cough, and you hold it in, throat tensing a bit.

He looks away, and pretends he doesn’t hear your sharp exhale, the soft cough you try to muffle with your hand. Instead, he looks at their surroundings, traces the green roads, watches a man park his bicycle and take the plastic bags out of the basket before rushing into a store. The air smells faintly of smoke, and Satoru waves in front of his face to see if it’ll help dispel the scent, but it’s so engrained with the hint of meat, honey, sweets, and flowers, that he can’t.

“I saw Suguru here once,” you tell him suddenly. He blinks, head snapping to you, and you’re already regarding him with a faint smile, eyes a bit dimmer. The warm yellow energy has faded to a burnt orange as you look ahead. “A year or two after he left. It’s why I moved closer a few years ago. I guess I had this weird hope that I’d see him again, but I never really did.” A faint grin graces your lips again, as if you’re not even aware you’re smiling. Fondness overtakes you. “I think about him a lot these days.”

“Me, too.”

“Of course,” you chuckle a bit, rubbing at the back of your neck. “I’m being insensitive.”

“No, you’re not. He meant a lot to you, too. I don’t own him, or his memory.”

“I know, but he was still your best friend.” Unbidden, a voice in Satoru’s voice finishes it for you. My one and only.

“Did you guys talk about anything?”

“Not really anything important,” you say, shrugging, but by the way your eyes shift in the light, glimmer differently, he knows you’re lying. He knows it’s none of his business, but a part of him hungers for new parts of Suguru and it’s powerful enough to take control of his tongue.

“Nothing’s not important. He was a wanted criminal.”

“I think we both know somehow that part never mattered to us.” You look at him, and run a thumb under the strap of your bag. “To any of us. But…” You tilt your head to him and your smile grows tender. “…since you asked, we talked about us. He told me about what he wanted, the kind of world he was determined to create. He paid for my dinner, kissed me goodnight like it was normal, and then he was gone. Never saw him again until last December.”

It shouldn’t sting as much as it does.

He remembers that day ten years ago in Shinjuku. The coldness in which Suguru had looked at him. He can’t imagine that same poison directed at you. He couldn’t even imagine Suguru looking at him like that in the first place until he did.

“Are you the strongest because you’re Gojo Satoru or are you Gojo Satoru because you’re the strongest?”

“I used to have nightmares about it,” you continue distantly. “Because I could’ve left with him, but I didn’t. And I could’ve killed him, but I didn’t do that either.”

“If you want to kill me, kill me. There’s meaning in that, too.”

Satoru’s chest tightens. His heart feels rotten to the core. “I didn’t, either, until I did.” You smile a bit more, at the irony. “Would you? Have gone with him, that is.”

“I didn’t, so what’s the point in debating it?” you ask before shrugging thoughtlessly and answering anyway. “I think tackling curses at the source is important. I just didn’t like the way he was doing it. If I thought I could somehow change his mind, just a bit, on his methods, maybe, but by then, he was too far gone.”

Your eyes, chips of glinting sunstone, mellow as a cyclist trills at them with a bell to get out of the way. You step out of the way, away from Satoru for a moment, before returning to him, and when the back of his hand brushes yours, he’s startled at how cold your skin is.

Satoru is quiet as he absorbs all of this. He doesn’t really know what to say, and you don’t prod him for a reaction as they turn the corner again.

“It’s just over there,” you say, pointing to a small restaurant, people milling by the door. There’s a sign hanging over the door, off-white with black kanji painted on and your arm falls. “There’s a line. Huh.”

“We can wait,” Satoru says when they stop at the edge of the crowd. “I don’t mind.”

“Okay. I’ll go put our names in then come back.” You disappear into the crowd for a moment before resurfacing and joining his side again, something in your hand. “It should be, like, fifteen minutes. I said the bar was okay.”

“That’s fine.” Shoving his sunglasses up into his hair, he cracks his knuckles and migrates to the wall. You follow, and he slouches against the concrete pillar. You adjust the tote bag against your body and lean against the other side just around the corner. Their elbows brush, and you tilt your head to look at him, smiling. Your face has caught the sun perfectly, and Satoru can’t help but smile back.

He wonders how to bring up this Hanahaki disease theory. You look so perfect, so happy in this moment where their eyes meet, that he can’t bring it up. Maybe it’s selfish, but it feels like it’s been so long since the two of them even managed to see each other for more than an hour. With how overworked jujutsu sorcerers are, it’s hard to recall the last time they both had downtime at the same time that wasn’t spent catching up on sleep.

You look away, shoulders shaking, as if that’s enough to hide your coughing, and he thinks, Later. There’ll be time for that later.

“Here’s the menu,” you tell him once you’ve calmed down, extending your hand. He takes the paper, unfolding it as you cross your arms and tilt your head back on the concrete. Reading down the list, he keeps an eye on you out of the corner of his vision, and your fingers play at your lips as you swallow. Reaching into your bag, you twist the cap of a water bottle and chug half of it down.

“Do you have any medicine? For your coughing?” he asks casually. You hit your chest with a firm fist, clearing your throat and looking at him in surprise. The water bottle returns to your bag.

“Oh, uh, no. It doesn’t work. Just gotta keep hydrated and avoid any possible triggers,” you inform. You turn up the street as you speak, crossing your legs at the ankles and sinking against the concrete.

“And what are those triggers?”

“And you say Ijichi is the one digging for gossip,” you snort with short, choked huff. Satoru rolls his eyes, but keeps looking at the menu. “Don’t worry about it. I’m avoiding them.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“If I wanted your dry wit, I would’ve gone to the original.”

“I don’t copy off Shoko. I take bits of everyone’s personality and twist it to make it my own.”

You shake your head. “Whatever you say.”

Your name is called a few minutes later and the pair push off the concrete pillar, heading through the crowd and into the small restaurant. It’s not too dimly lit, a bunch of natural light from the street streaming in through the open windows, and the air is rich with the smells of the kitchen as they sit down at the bar.

It’s not long before they’ve ordered, and Satoru has gone through his first bowl and is well into pouring his second into what remains of his broth before he remembers to even check up on how you’re doing. You’d been right—he loves this place. The atmosphere isn’t overly loud, but the mumbling of nearby patrons is enough to make him feel like he isn’t quite alone. It’s sheltered away from the world, and although he’s used to girls staring, no one has gone up to him which is giving him time to his own thoughts and food. Everyone here seems to mind their business—everyone likes to stay in their own bubble.

Here, he isn’t the strongest, or quite so special. It honestly feels kind of nice.

You’re sipping on your broth, tilting the spoon towards your mouth and your lips are pulled into the warmest smile he’s seen since they were kids. The light’s hitting you just perfect again, more cool than warm, but it’s got you on the cheekbone, illuminated your lips. Satoru wonders if you know how to manipulate light, or if that’s just your natural blessing as you tilt your head towards him, eyes squinting from your own joy.

For a moment, another image flashes in his head. Him along the end of their group of four—you and Shoko, Suguru and Satoru. It’s almost poetry how much of a glimpse he can see in your smile. You would always be laughing, and Suguru’s cheeks would always be red, and Shoko would charm the guy over the counter to hand over a bottle of shochu. Satoru would tease his stupid best friend, and pay for their meal because “I’m friends with a bunch of goddamn freeloaders.”

But that moment ends as quickly as it came, and it’s so fucking heartbreaking that Satoru never thought their last meal together would be their last meal together. He would’ve cherished it more—done anything to make them stay in that ramen shop in Kagurazaka.

“Do you like it here?” you ask.

He blinks. You’re studying him behind that smile of yours. Watching. Always watching. “It reminds me of when we were kids,” he replies. When he realizes that didn’t answer the question, he adds, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

You grin, delighted. “If I knew how stupid you’d look sucking up these noodles, I would’ve brought my camera like when we were students. I still have it, you know.”

“Next time, then.”

“Yeah, next time.”

Satoru pays. He insists despite your protests, and snatches the bill from you anyway, swiping his card as quickly as he can.

After, they walk slowly around the district, looking at the other restaurants and stores for desserts or souvenirs to bring back, and it makes him so nostalgic, his heart wilts a bit in his chest.

He is saying something about buying some soymilk for Megumi when you stop suddenly, deviating to the side of the road to cough. It grows so intense so quickly that your eyes widen as if you’re surprised, too, and you place a palm flat against your chest as he comes to your side. You wave him back, and he frowns, running a hand down your back as you finally manage to dislodge the petals in your throat and spit them into your palm.

Satoru sighs, staring at the cursed things. The energy emitted from the petals are raw, potent, and his nose wrinkles at the stench that comes from powerful curses as he softly asks, “Do you know what Hanahaki is?”

“Flower vomiting?” you whisper through your raw vocal cords. You shake your head, slamming your sternum with a tight fist and flinging the drenched petals to the ground with a wet slap. “Itadori… said something about it, once. Never really paid attention, I—”

Satoru squeezes the back of your neck gently. “Whatever this curse is, it could be something like that.“

“You don’t want to open that can of worms, Gojo, of what is causing this.” Straightening up, your eyes widen and your cheeks puff up as you choke down another bout. Wobbly, you spit out, “It’s under control. I swear.”

“Are you sure?” His fingers brush your chin to turn your face towards him so he can look at it more clearly, and the instant their eyes meet, you lurch over, slapping his hand away and succumbing to the wracking. Hands shooting out to grab your elbows, Satoru barely eases you to the ground as your legs give in.

You collapse to your knees, hard. A hand is slapped over your mouth but your whole body shakes with the seizing of your lungs. Eyes widening, your cheeks puff up as Satoru grabs your shoulders, falling to his knees beside you.

“Hey! Hey, breathe!” His fingers dig into your shoulders and your nostrils flare, trying to follow his instructions. Bloodshot eyes and blueing lips, your inhales are shaking and incomplete, gasps for air that do not take in any oxygen before you’re kneeling over, hand falling from your lips. Blood splattered over your palm, you let out a low noise of pain. Satoru’s hand glides down your spine, rubbing in soothing circles as red spit falls to the pavement in thick globs.

People all around stop to stare, eyes masked with concern, but he can’t care less at that moment despite the burning scrutiny. He shoves a hand into his pocket, speed-dialling one of the top numbers of his list.

“Ijichi, I need you to take us to the hospital, now!” Letting his phone drop with a clatter, he scoops you close but you slam your bloody hand against his chest, pushing him away. You throw yourself away, hands twisted tight in the fabric of your white shirt and Satoru looks down at the red handprint on his tee before blinking. “What are you doing? We need to get—“

“I’m—I’m fine!” Your voice, broken, is drenched with ice as you continue to wheeze, grasping at your chest as if you could reach and tear out the growths with your own hand. “Gojo, I’m fine!”

“No, you’re not!” Grabbing his phone, he hears a loud car horn, and looks up to see Ijichi leaning out of the driver’s seat, waving his arm frantically. Without another thought, he scoops you up and runs out into the street, ignoring the tires screeching, the cars horns blaring at him and the angry shouts as he jumps into the car and slam the door shut.

Ijichi sets off at a drive, no directions needed. Satoru is sure he’s breaking as many laws as he can as he pushes you back against the seat to buckle you in. Blood dribbles down your lips in bubbles as a thick, gurgling sound begins to grow in your throat and he wipes at your chin with his sleeve, clicking the buckle into place just as you pitch forward. He jerks back just in time as you retch, and, slowly, torturously, you gag out three petals, one after another. Your fingers claw at your own throat, panicking and desperate as you struggle to breathe.

The petals fall in wet pools between your feet, landing on the carpet, and he spares them not even a glance before forcing your head between your knees. You’re still hyperventilating and as Satoru sweeps a hand down your back and up to your neck, his fingers come into contact with something sticky.

Sweat. It drenches through your shirt so suddenly that Satoru reels at the wet marks spreading through your shirt, making the fabric translucent. Your heart is racing, tripping over itself. When you finally stop coughing, you breathe in harsh pants as he keeps your head between your knees.

Your fingers lace at the back of your head and he grabs them firmly, reassuring that he’s still beside you.

“She’s stable,” Shoko announces to the waiting Satoru and six students. The latter came when their teacher had told them of what happened, and Itadori still clings to Fushiguro’s arm by an iron hand, fingers clawlike into his friend’s bicep. Kugisaki chews on her thumbnail, a bit paler than usual and there are crescent indents along her forearm where she had dug her nails in. Maki’s hand rests on her shoulder. Inumaki’s on the phone with Panda, and he turns the screen around so he can see the Strongest Sorcerer who does not feel quite so strong.

Satoru’s assurances that you would be fine had done nothing but send them into a quiet that scared even him.

“Is she okay? When can she get out?” the kids demand suddenly.

“We’re waiting for the updates on her scans from the doctors, but she’ll need to stay here under observation.”

Satoru runs a hand through his hair, smiling in a way that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Guess that means she gets a few more days off while the rest of us are working our asses off,” he teases. Maki shoots him a glare and his eyes close in a way he hopes arranges his expression in one of joy as he shrugs helplessly. “Well, that means I have another girl I have to spoil.”

“Aren’t you too busy with the four already blowing up your phone?” Kugisaki mutters sourly. Satoru pretends not to hear. His phone has been silent without your texts, and it’s cold and heavy in his pocket.

“Can we see her?” Fushiguro asks. Shoko nods, but holds up a hand and the kids skid to a stop.

“She’s resting. I’m unsure if you know, but certain topics of conversation or trains of thought can lead to more attacks, so stick to talking about your curriculum. Topics you think are safe.” The woman shifts on her feet, a wisp of brown hair swaying in front of her eye. “It’s unavoidable, but use your judgement.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The students walk off down to the dead-end hallway, and Satoru turns to Shoko who has her arms crossed over her chest. She steps up, scanning him like he’s got contraband, and he raises his eyebrows innocently.

“What?”

“It’s getting worse. I hope you managed to get answers,” she says. At once, Satoru’s facade drops, and a sober sensation overtakes his face.

“No, I didn’t. She’s heard of the disease, at least. We talked about Suguru, but it wasn’t like it was under lock and key.” The brunette shakes her head at his words, gesturing for him to sit down beside her. Doing so, he leans back into the uncomfortable chair as she crosses a leg over the other. “She said she thinks about him a lot.”

“She still loves him,” Shoko says bluntly. “She gets that far-off look when she talks about him. You two should trade secrets some time.” A shake of her head, and she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I healed what damage I could, but I can tell those growths inside are expanding. The attack only seems to have agitated and prompted them to take root.”

“How…” It’s hard to formulate the question. Luckily, Shoko knows him well enough.

“Without seeing the scans, I won’t know. Based on her last ones, I thought at least four months. Now?” Her lips press into a thin line. “She’ll be lucky if she gets two.” Shoko’s eyes flicker down Satoru’s front, and her lips press into a wry line. “And change you shirt. You look like a murder suspect.”

Glancing down, he looks at your dried bloody hand print, stark against white, and he gets up abruptly. Shoko doesn’t stop him.

He walks down to the dead-end hall. He can hear Itadori through your open door cracking jokes, Kugisaki relaying every detail of her shopping trips, and you’re wheezing your laughter despite Maki scolding you to save your strength. Satoru stops just outside your door, out of sight, and rests his head against the frame, content to just listen.

“Tuna mayo.”

“Is that right?” you ask Inumaki. “Lay it on me.”

You sound exhausted, beaten to the bone, but still, when Fushiguro says something too quiet for him to make out, you still have the strength to tease him for worrying.

The night is warm, and he sets the last plant back into its place on your window sill before cracking the window a bit at your request. He’s busied himself making this place as homely as possible as quickly as possible, and in the process, had walked in on you staring at your own scans on the lightscreen mounted on your wall.

“Thanks, Satoru,” you say over your shoulder. He joins you by your side to stare at the scans. Granted, Satoru didn’t cheat his way through medschool like others have, so he doesn’t understand much, but he can tell what is and what isn’t supposed to be there. The floral-like growths situated right where the main bronchi meet the trachea, for one.

The roots spreading across your chest like cracks in concrete, for another.

“The doctors want to monitor this,” you explain, pointing at the roots, “to see whether or not it’ll grow around my lungs or continue outward, around the ribs and spine. If it’s the former, I’ll slowly suffocate and die. If it’s the latter, I’ll slowly suffocate, become paralyzed, and die.” You smile grimly. “Not quite a win-win.”

“Exactly the opposite.” He inspects the growths and through the blue-white-black imaging, he spots the tiny stems emerging from the main growth, sprouting into your lungs. He guesses, with time, those will grow into flowers of equal size before sprouting more shoots.

He wonders…

As if sensing his hesitance, you scratch your collarbone and look at the scans with a new glint.

“The doctors say if I avoid another attack like today, I’ll probably have two months, three if I’m blessed, but because of how big the growths have gotten already and its volatile nature, it’ll be impossible, so we’re looking at a month. Maybe a month-and-a-half?” You smile at him, throat bobbing. “Guess it’s good to have a number,” you add shakily, a short puff coming at the end of each breath as you struggle to fight the cough. “Being a sorcerer, too much uncertainty, I think.”

“You should tell Nanami that. Maybe this time, it’ll convince him to stay away,” he retorts, turning away from the scans. They’re burning his eyes and he doesn’t want to look at the real thing for much longer. You turn with him, walking back towards bed and climbing in. “Are you sure you don’t want the operation? Shoko could do it so fast you wouldn’t feel a thing.”

“No, not yet. There are some complications that’ll definitely occur and I don’t want that to happen.”

“But it would save your life,” he argues. “What risks are frightening enough that you’d even consider not having it?” Your gaze flickers as you take another wheezing breath. The strength seems sapped from your limbs—you’re a scarecrow hanging off its pole as you swallow tightly. Satoru leans against your window sill and crosses his arms over his chest so you can’t see the frustrated fists he wants to make. “If this is about Suguru…”

Resolutely: “It isn’t.”

“You’re going to die if you keep going down this road. I don’t understand why you’re hesitating.” In the back of his mind, klaxons begin to scream.

“Satoru, some things are just beyond logical reason.” He jerks his gaze away, pushing his glasses up his nose pointedly. You sigh. “I know it’s hard, but this is my choice. I just want you to be here so you know it’s okay.”

Your hand stretches out. Blue eyes flash to your outstretched fingers and he takes it before he can stop himself. Your fingers curl over his palm, tugging him closer and he lets you, sneakers dragging over the tile until he’s sliding into the chair by your bed. It squeaks against the tile.

“Please don’t be angry with me.” That’s all. That’s all I ask.

A hard, heavy sigh, this time from his end. He tightens his hold on you as you sit there, smiling hopefully. His heart thunders in his chest. “I’m not angry.”

You perk up a bit, and his index finger unfurls to rub your wrist. It feels colder than normal. “Promise?”

He wishes he could lie half as well as you. Either way, he tries his hardest: “Promise.”

By the time it’s quarter past nine, you’re already getting ready to sleep. You have enough pillows to surround your entire body, and he fluffs them up, helps you arrange them until you’re sighing against the white sheets, burrowing in with a sedated smile on your face.

Satoru sits down again on his visitor’s chair and you watch him lazily through the dim orange light stemming from behind your bed.

“You don’t have to stay here and watch me, creep,” you mumble, turning your face away to stare at the ceiling. You cough dryly, but it subsides moments later. Your voice is nothing but a croak as you let out a tired groan, and Satoru smiles to himself, cheek to his fist.

“I feel robbed of our afternoon together. Making up for it now.”

You look at him again incredulously. “We’re not even doing anything.”

“I don’t know when you were told that every second of us being together had to be us doing something,” he huffs. “I like being in here. Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s too much. You’re annoying me.” Even so, your voice turns fond as you roll onto your side, away from him to settle in to sleep and Satoru’s warm gaze lands on your shoulder gently rising and falling as you slowly drift off.

He already knows you’re gone by the time he’s standing up and gathering his jacket. Walking around the bed, he glances at the bathroom to check the light’s off and catches a glimpse of his shirt. A coil wraps around his gut at the muddy red handprint pressed into the fabric and he turns away to look at you instead.

Your face is in perfect peace, half-buried into a pillow you’re hugging into your chest, and he only soaks in those features. His hand twitches, and his infinity wavers as he raises his hand as if to touch you. Your eyelids flutter and he freezes, fearing he might’ve woken you up, but you only mumble incoherently and turn into your pillow.

Satoru watches on silently just as a breeze sweeps into the room and he looks up where the window he had cracked open. The breeze takes hold of the plants, uplifts them until they sway like a tender dance.

His chest begins to hurt. The smell of the antiseptic is starting to sting, so he moves his hand to the light switch instead. Flicking it off, he turns to leave.

Every time Satoru walks down to the end of the hallway, a different memory will play in his head until he’s playing a movie over and over every single day. Of the first time he met you, although that one is blurry. Your sixteenth birthday when the four of them had piled into your dorm room to drink themselves stupid.

One-and-a-half weeks go by before he realizes that he only replays the moments where you feature. Like his brain is preparing him, reminding him. For what, he doesn’t know.

He can’t come every day—considering the low number of sorcerers has been taken down by one more, it means besides teaching, he still has to work for the Higher Ups as well as his own personal agenda—but when he does make it, he always makes sure that he soaks in every second. Even the horrible parts. Maybe, especially the horrible parts.

You have scans taken every other day to monitor your progress, so when he arrives at an empty room, he isn’t surprised. It’s when there’s movement in the bathroom that sends his nerves prickling until he catches a slab of golden hair and reading glasses flashing in the sunlight.

“Nanami,” he greets.

“Good afternoon.” His jacket’s off and his sleeves are rolled up. With a quick sweep of the room, Satoru notes that the windows are cracked open and the aforementioned jacket is folded over a chair sat in a square of sunlight.

“Do we need to be so formal?” he complains, bypassing the bathroom and searching for another chair. The one Nanami’s taken by the plants is still warm and Satoru isn’t keen on the idea of sweating so soon. During his search, he stops by the windowsill and his eyebrows rise curiously at the new plants and trash bin pressed up right underneath. “What’s happening here?”

“We were planting new seeds when she had to be taken for her scans. She insisted I finish potting the plants.” Noting the empty terracotta, Satoru bends over and prods at the moist dirt. “I have to go soon, though. I had hoped it wouldn’t take as long as it did and she would be back by now.”

“They started taking MRI scans when the branches continued to grow outward rather than inward,” Satoru informs. “It takes around forty-five minutes, on top of the CT scans they’re taking, too. That’s if she doesn’t start coughing in the middle of it.”

“I’m guessing she does.” Nanami adjusts the glasses on his nose, wiping at his hands free of the last of whatever dirt might’ve been clinging to his hands.

“Yup.”

“I see.” Satoru looks at the plants again. The blond man across the room throws the towel into the dirty clothes basket.“Has she… spoken to you of what to do with her effects?”

Gaze hardening, he doesn’t move at the question. Of course, he’s thought about it, but those bouts of weakness have never been longer than a few minutes. There’s no use in wasting time on a reality that won’t come until it does.

Hopefully, it never does.

“I’m so sick of everyone talking like she’s signed a death sentence,” Satoru murmurs, turning around to look at the blond man at the door to the washroom. “She still has time. Not a lot. It’s not convenient, but it should be enough.”

“She’s already considered the benefits of taking the surgery, and yet she actively decides to postpone it. You know she’s stalling,” comes the steady reply.

“And what about you?” Satoru asks. His words are biting, icy, but Nanami seems unfazed as he begins to loop the tie around his neck. “Would you do it?” Blue eyes meet a stoic face, and the coldness seeps into Satoru’s body. Nanami sighs.

A part of Satoru wonders why he even bothered asking. He already knows the answer—

“No.” Eyebrows shoot up. His mouth drops open and a strangled noise escapes his throat. Nanami merely continues on, quiet as death. “Perhaps it’s because I’m willing to accept my death, but, to be honest, I don’t know how to let any part of Haibara go. I’ve accepted it, but he’s still in my heart and my head.” Lips parting, Satoru takes a step forward as Nanami slants his body away, continuing to fold the fabric into a tie. He looks statuesque, unmovable, and something tightens in Satoru’s throat at the stone-like mask taking over his face. “I’m unwilling to do anything to taint that memory.”

Wordlessly, the blond walks over to Satoru to take his jacket from the chair, rolling down his sleeves and slapping his watch back onto his wrist. Standing less than two feet apart, the two men finally meet eyes.

“Gojo,” Nanami murmurs. “I can’t say I understand your burden, but I am by your side. I do not always agree with your choices, but I still respect them. As your kouhai and as your colleague.” His lips pull in a facsimile of a wry smile and there’s an understanding Satoru doesn’t understand haunting his handsome face. “However, she is your friend before mine. I think your opinion matters much more than mine. Don’t abuse that power.”

Satoru’s eyes nearly reflect in the lenses of Nanami’s glasses. He wishes his friend would take the damn pair off.

In truth, the reason he’s so irritated is because he knows. If he insists enough, begs enough, there will always be a chance that he can convince you. That you will give in, not because you are selfless, but maybe because you’re too selfish to let him stay mad at you.

An unstoppable force meets an immovable object, and sometimes, the force wins.

But he’d promised, hadn’t he? To not be angry with the choices you’ve made?

“Jeez, it’s somber in here. Who died?” you tease as Shoko pushes the wheelchair in after you. Both men look away from each other. You’re still walking steadily, but an IV is hooked into your chest now, and it’s so obvious you’ve lost unhealthy weight that looking at you is hard sometimes. Satoru does, anyway.

Noting Nanami, you straighten up. Surprised, but pleased: “You’re still here.”

“I was just leaving,” he says. You frown, but don’t protest. A jujutsu sorcerer’s work is never finished until one stops breathing. “I finished planting the seeds you asked me to, and watered them.”

“Thank you.” He dips his head to you, then to Shoko, before departing, and you watch him go for a moment before your eyes land on Satoru and you smile. The air around you shifts immediately to a vibrant yellow.

“You’re early, Satoru.” You head towards the bed as Shoko parks the wheelchair by the door. “It took way longer than I thought.”

“That’s because you threw up pistils today,” Shoko replies dryly. Satoru straightens up and looks at Shoko more carefully. Placid lookimg—usual for his mortician friend in the jujutsu world—but there’s a blanching in her knuckles that isn’t usual. “The CT wasn’t good. You know that.”

“Well, it’s still more time than I could’ve asked for, you know.” Shoko shakes her head, and meets his eyes before leaving the room, presumably to talk to your doctors. “Party pooper.”

“First day knowing Shoko?”

You laugh sarcastically, adjusting the hospital gown on your body before climbing into bed slowly, as if your joints ache. Satoru’s feet shift on the tile when he realizes his body moves to help and he freezes. You’re breathing audibly by the time you settle in and you meet his eyes, wondering if he’s noticed.

Of course he has, he wants to tell you. He notices everything about you.

Then, you sigh, and the yellow energy around you flickers into something darker, something grey, something that reminds him of summer thunderstorms.

“The roots have reached the edge of my rib cage and are encroaching on my stomach now,” you inform bluntly. “I probably won’t be able to keep food down in the next couple of days so they’re going to up the ante on this thing.” You gesture to the catheter by your clavicle. “So that’s not really fun. And, they want to start taking scans every single day because the growth is increasing exponentially. The doctors think something triggered the flowers to begin blooming in earnest. Like spring has come to my body, and I’m having the worst fucking time of my life.”

Despite your admission, your smile only falters in that it no longer reaches your eyes. Satoru shoves his hands in his pockets because he doesn’t know what else to do.

The word Hanahaki still burns, whispers coyly in his ear. It teases the tip of his tongue as he watches you look to your windowsill where your new plants are and get up, walking over to inspect your friend’s work.

He wonders if he can bring it up again. If he can insist that there’s a way to save you—

But Nanami’s words linger, too, and he bites his tongue until he tastes iron.

“Oh, look.” He blinks at your voice, turning to look. Your fingers sink into one of the pots and before he can ask, blue energy flares up around your hand and into the soil and a shoot breaks through the dirt, unfurling as it grows higher and higher into the air.

“What is it?” Petals are beginning to form, the shade of a warm, gentle red that fades in shade as it reaches the stem. Satoru comes up next to you as the first flower blooms and his eyebrows rise. “Tulips. Huh.”

“I used to love them,” you tell him, picking it off and extending it to him. Eyebrows furrowing in surprise, he takes it as you sink your fingers deeper into the soil, sending more cursed energy into the seeds. More stems to replace the one you had picked continue to grow and you pull your hand out, wiping at your fingers with a towel.

Satoru tilts the flower towards his nose, taking a whiff.

“Used to?” he repeats, and you nod.

“Trees and flowers have their own language.” Your eyes do not meet his as you watch the plant continue to grow. Your muscles go slack, and your fingers touch the petals, mind not quite aware of how you’re moving. “Red tulips mean eternal love, and fame.”

Blinking, he looks down at his own bloom.

Suguru. He hears you say his name, even in the silence, and remembers years ago, walking through Tokyo. A neighbourhood he doesn’t remember, his best friend looking at the florist’s shop and immediately perking up to head inside and buy a bouquet after something had caught his eye.

“For a girl,” he had admitted sheepishly.

“Only one?” Satoru asked, horrified. “You can’t settle down! We’re meant for so many more women than just one!”

A sharp nudge to the ribs. Raucous laughter. “Shut up!”

Quietly, Satoru’s fingers tighten around the stalk as you tilt your head to the sun, inspecting something he won’t understand. He doesn’t have a green thumb, and although you say you aren’t the smartest, he’s seen you grow the college’s gardens in a way that has amplified the beauty already lingering on the grounds. You had dismissed it as a little side project, but seeing you water your plants dutifully, spread feed and root out weeds, makes him wonder if you know how to put half-efforts into anything.

When you garden, you never take the easy route. You labour for the satisfaction, and pour sweat and tears into the soil.

When you love, you love with all of yourself and more.

It’s what makes whatever he wants impossible.

Because he is the same, and they will never change.

When Satoru goes home, he places the tulip in a vase and the cursed energy prickles at his fingertips.

You get worse and worse with every visit.

Each day brings him another raw wound, salt on blood. You slowly grow more and more ragged, even though you stay in the hospital, confined to your room.

There are days Satoru walks into your room to you hunched over the toilet, spitting blood and flowers into the bowl and vomiting all you ate the night or day or hour before and he already knows what he has to do. A cold, damp rag to your forehead, a crouching stance beside you as your grip on the toilet seat becomes rigid like steel.

Other days, you’re still asleep because the night before, you’d been hacking up half a lung and half a bouquet. Sometimes, you’re curled around a plastic receptacle already full of your half-attempts to dislodge the pressure building in your chest.

Or, you’re crying into your hands, breath coming in rapid bursts as you try to force your head between your knees to stop the world from spinning and Satoru holds you when you beg him to, and stands in the corner of the room when you push him away.

Afterwards, you always grab onto his sleeves, his arms, and sink against him, shivering. For hours after, he’ll curl around you on your hospital bed, no matter how much his body cramps, until you insist you’re fine.

“It’s a little like touching death,” you told him once, voice raw and fatigued. “When it’s a pretty bad day, and I think I’m going to die alone, it happens, so all I have to do is not think about it.”

There’s a flawed logic there, but Satoru was too busy pressing his nose into your hair and feeling the warmth of your body to reply any more than, “I’ll be there. I promise.”

Two weeks pass (fourteen sets of scans, a different pair hanging from the lightscreen every day tell him that) and Satoru watches as the branches spread through your body, past the reaches of your ribs, and the flowers have spread to your lungs so quickly he’s sure the time for you to decide is running out.

You’re near-passed out against him on the bathroom floor one evening, and although it’s not closet-sized, it doens’t make the arrangement any less awkward. He’s up against the bathtub, legs sprawled all around you as he holds you in his arms. On the edge of the tub, there is a bar of bodysoap and a bottle of lotion he recognizes as the same one Shoko used to buy when they still had time. Your sink counter is filled with your toothbrush and cup, handsoap and a microfibre towel hanging off the edge smeared with lipstick, foundation, and black streaks of who knows what.

Shoko must have spent the night while he was out hunting a curse in Sendai. Good. He doesn’t like the nights when you’re alone and he can’t be there.

His fingers brush over your shoulder blade, and he travels over something rigid cloaked by your skin. Your eyes are closed, and you’re nearly asleep as you curl deeper against him. Looking down at you, he presses curious fingers into your shoulder blade only for you to let out a soft groan.

“Did that hurt?”

“No. It just feels like you pressed down on a big sore muscle,” you mumble slowly. He trails his fingers over, feels the bumps of the roots curling around your bones before following it towards your spine. It disappears the closer it reaches the trail of knobs that go down your back, and he moves back to your shoulder again. “Doesn’t hurt, though.”

“Does anything?”

“Mostly my stomach,” you tell him. “I’m so hungry all the time, but I can’t eat.” He glances at the IV stand, the only other witness to the events in this bathroom. It leads down through your gown and past your clavicle. Monitored every day in case the growths dislodge it, it’s one of the only things keeping you alive. “And my throat. It feels like I’ve scratched it out until it’s bleeding.”

He tilts his head. His lips barely brush your sweaty scalp despite how cold you feel in his arms “No surgery?”

You shake your head, what remains of your strength slowly coming back. “They say the flowers and roots have taken up sixty-five percent of my chest cavity. It’s not only inhibiting my lungs, but my heart and stomach, too, so it’d be kind of hard to get rid of it all. Not impossible, but it’s really risky. That, on top of the already-present consequences—”

“So let’s say we start with the lungs,” he cuts off, trying to not sound too desperate but these past few weeks have worn him down to the bone. Although he thinks he’s managed to hide it from his students, Shoko has offered multiple times to prescribe him sleeping pills just so he can shut his mind down.

He said no every time.

Your legs draw up and he squeezes your shoulder carefully, looking down. “Are you ready to get up?”

You nod. “I think so.” He wipes at your lips with the rag he left on the counter and you roll your eyes as he makes sure no blood is left on your face before throwing it back up and carefully adjusting you against him.

“Do you want my help?”

“My answer does not matter to you,” you shoot back teasingly and he lets you pull away from him before reaching up with one hand to push yourself up. Your arm wobbles, your feet kicking back underneath you and slowly finding theirselves on the floor. Satoru withdraws, ducking underneath and back up so he can stand, hands floating around your body as you draw the IV stand towards yourself and grab on. When he’s sure your knees might give in, he grabs your elbow, but you shake your head. “I think I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay,” you breathe, raising your head to look at him. Your lips curl in a soft smile, and you clasp his shoulder. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t even do anything this time,” he says.

“Not everyone stays for the pathetic girl on the floor of the bathroom floor,” you quip. Turning around, you begin to head back to bed and he trails behind you carefully.

“If the girl’s you, then I think exceptions can be made.”

“Hospital bonus.”

“It adds that you’re in the hospital, too,” he agrees. “My morals are just.”

“Isn’t that a relief?”

It is. It is a relief that you still have the strength to joke with him.

You climb back into bed. Satoru returns to the bathroom to make sure the bathroom is flushed and it’s clean before returning and perching on the edge of your bed. Pulling out his phone, he shuffles his shoes off and tucks his legs to his chest, leaning against the foot of your bed and scrolling through his messages.

Not much to miss, to be honest.

“There’s supposed to be a lunar eclipse on the morning of the 28th,” you say suddenly. Satoru looks up. You’re leaning back on the mountain of pillows, exhaling and inhaling measuredly in a way he now knows is your way of fighting off another bout. Squinting against the orange glow of the sunset, there’s a longing in your gaze. “I want to see it. Outside and everything.”

“You’re not supposed to leave the hospital.”

You don’t miss a beat. “Oh, we’re abiding by rules, now?”

“If it keeps you around, yes, we are.”

“When did my best friend turn into such a party pooper?” Looking at him, an impish glint lives in your eyes. He balks.

“Don’t you dare insinuate that I’m not fun.”

“Then… take me to see the eclipse.”

“No. There’s nothing to even see.”

“I want to see the moon disappear, Gojo,” you declare. “And if you won’t take me, I will definitely sneak out.”

It paints a pretty pathetic picture, and he can’t help but arch his eyebrows at your determination. The air purifier drones on. The nurse turned it on after dinner, he guesses, and he has the strange urge to kick it as you fix him with a fierce stare.

“You probably won’t be able to walk by then,” he says.

“That won’t stop me.” He knows it won’t. The corner of his lips pulls into a slight smile as you continue, “I just want to go outside one last time. Is that really too much to ask?” Your words are tinged with a fine dusting of humour, and he shakes his head.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Big word for you, Satoru.”

“I still mean it.”

“And I learned that from you.”

He rolls his eyes and sighs. “Fine,” he caves. Your face lights up, and he sets down his phone, legs unfolding to brush the floor as he leans over to flick your forehead. Your eyes squeeze shut at the contact and you slap his arm away sluggishly before he soothes the smarting spot over with a smear of his thumb. “I’ll come by, and we’ll sneak out.”

You beam and he slips his feet back into his shoes and pockets his phone so he can focus his attention on you.

When visiting hours end, the nurses offer to set up the cot for him like they always do. You pretend not to look at him out of the corner of his eye, awaiting his answer behind your laptop screen, and he spares you a quick glance before saying yes.

“She likes you,” you tell him after one particular nurse with dyed purple hair who always wears a fishtail bids them goodnight. Satoru fluffs up his pillow ceremoniously, having shed his jacket and taken off his jeans to hide underneath the blankets. The fabric is cold against his bare chest, and he pulls his glasses off, sets them on the stand right behind him.

The black frame holding up his mattress rattles a bit as he punches his pillow one last time and lies down. He turns on his side and looks at you. You’re turned on your side, too, and your brow is furrowed as you fight the sleepiness.

“Is that so?” he asks carefully. “What do you think about it?”

“I think if you wanted someone with a hectic schedule, you could pick someone else,” you say vaguely.

He raises an eyebrow. “Does she have a bad attitude or something?”

“I dunno.” There’s a subtle fire igniting in your words. You look a bit more awake, and your eyes are shifting the air into a smouldering red. He squints up. Your face is shadowed, but you’re still silhouetted by the orange light behind your bed as your shoulders rise and fall greatly in staggering, weighty breaths. “She wouldn’t understand. I guess.”

He hums. “So I should find someone who understands me but can’t be there for me? Sounds like the set up to every tragic love story ever.”

You laugh, and it’s the saddest sound in the world.

Friday, July 27th arrives in clouds.

Satoru scouted a spot before where they can watch the eclipse. He settles on one of the highest buildings on campus with a balcony where they can sit against the railing and watch the moon disappear. You can’t eat, but he still buys your favourite food from all over Japan, travelling to different prefectures in hopes that they still have your favourite dessert or drink that you mentioned once—he even gets you a new polaroid camera. He doesn’t know exactly how well the eclipse will show up on it, but, memories, right?

Maki makes a dry remark about how much he’s running around lately, probably to make amends to a girl he’s scorned. Satoru deflects and says he’s actually trying to impress one this time.

It’s been a five days since his promise to bring you. You lost your ability to walk steadily two days ago and to speak effortlessly only yesterday. The roots have extended through your body, pushing the muscle of your back and shoulders, and it’s made even moving painful, so he intends to carry you everywhere he can, holding your IV bags if he needs to.

The doctors say eighty-five percent of your chest is now occupied with foreign growth. Satoru wishes they’d just tell it how it is—you’ll probably be dead by next week.

He arrives at the hospital and walks the path he’s walked so often over the past few weeks that he is sure he could do it with his eyes closed. The nurse’s station, and there’ll be the purple-haired one and the one with a double helix piercing on call at this time. Then, twenty-five steps to the end of the hall where the window often lets a lot of natural light in. Today, it’s grey and not much, but it’s enough to cast his shadow long and blurry.

He stops in front of your door to sanitize his hands when he hears voices within and hesitates.

Your door is closed, which means you don’t want people to interrupt, and he moves away from the rectangular window, back pressing against the tiny slab of wall between the frame and the corner of the hallway. Glasses slipping down his nose, he tries not to listen but he can’t help of himself.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” you say weakly. You sound awful. Satoru wonders if he’s missed one of your panic attacks and curses himself. “If I don’t sound sure, it’s because I’m dying… and sounding like a fragile piece of shit… comes with the territory.” Your words are coarse, and a harsh anger grates his ears as you cough violently, a terrible retching sound ending with a splat following right after.

“I wasn’t doubting you,” Nanami replies calmly. “But this could be done in so many other ways.”

“Look, Nanami. I’m not… brave enough to say any of it. Now, sit down. Your standing… it’s making me nervous… Thank you.” Satoru’s legs feel numb as he sinks down to the floor, tilting his head just enough to listen clearer through the sliver underneath the door. Resting his elbows on his knees, he runs a hand through shaggy white hair. It feels dry and lifeless.

He can’t remember the last time he took a shower that was longer than ten minutes and more than ice-cold bordering on just beginning to warm.

“Take care of him for me,” you croak and his fingers tighten against his scalp. Nanami doesn’t answer, and you let out a sound that can only be described as pure agony as another bout grasps you tightly. You’re wheezing by the end of it, gasping painfully for air, and the monitors start beeping rapidly, a dinging that echoes in his head as Nanami’s low voice soothes you, tells you gently to calm down. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Breathe with me,” Nanami orders, and everything falls silent. Satoru stares at his lap. His head is beginning to pulse with the monitors when the beeping finally starts to fade. “Good. No sense to waste your strength.”

Wobbly, spitting: “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” A pause. “It’s not your fault.”

You laugh, as if Nanami’s cracked a funny joke, and it’s gut-wrenching. “Remember how… we can curse each other? Ourselves? True curses.”

Faintly amused, immeasurably strained: “I thought it was still a hypothesis regarding those who don’t have the correct bloodline and the ability to curse through their own will.”

“No…Not a hypothesis. Real, Nanami. Real. No one knows how cursed energy affects us. Not really. Since, in my opinion, it’s entirely based on how we process things… it’s so difficult to say but when you know someone…” You break off to clear your throat. “The curse of adulthood… some of us got that too early… but we can survive that and even if it’s not a curse by… definition, we still feel it, right?”

Satoru clasps his hands together just so he doesn’t rip the door open at the hinges.

“Right.”

“And… knowledge… can be a curse. Even if we can’t see it.” A ragged breath. Then, another laugh too loud for the grey light outside, too bright, a spark before it fizzles into, again, pained choking. “Nanami, remember last year… the job out in Yama… Yamaguchi?”

“Yes.”

“And we came back… Okkotsu was beginning his first year at the college… what I—what I told you?”

“…Yes.” A beat passes. A chair shifts on the linoleum floor and Nanami clears his throat. “I see.”

“I don’t want him to be so alone. I know I was never the strongest or the smartest or the most talented but I liked to think he let me in because I was there. Not because I understood. Maybe… Maybe because I didn’t. Nanami, please… he always try to stay so far away from the people he thinks he can’t love. Tell him… tell him—“

You break off and Nanami assures you with a steadfastness Satoru has counted on so many times before: “I will.”

“…thank you.”

Eyes shutting tight, Satoru rests his brow against the heel of his hand. His head is aching, and a hard fist grabs his chest, squeezes his heart until it feels like it’ll burst. So this is how you’re really feeling. When you’re not smiling, this is what you are. Angry at the world, and heartbroken.

So terribly heartbroken.

And you couldn’t trust him with it? Because you thought he couldn’t handle it?

He can take it. It’ll be okay because he’s the strongest. He has to be.

I’m the strongest. I should be okay. I’m the strongest.

I’m the Strongest.

The headache gets worse so he gets up from that corner in the dead-end hallway, all the while three words replay in his head like a goddamn gramophone.

Nanami doesn’t come out of the room for a while. When he does, Satoru walks down the hall with takeout and a smile plastered on his face as if he had heard nothing at all.

At just past one-thirty AM, Satoru sits up from his cot and rubs at his eyes. After dinner, the both of them had forced themselves to go to sleep in order to have enough energy for their little late night excursion. He glances at you, a slumbering shape on the bed, and gets up, slowly sliding on the lights. They burn a dim orange, glowing on your face, and your eyebrows furrow as he touches your cheek.

“What?” you mumble, vexed, and he smiles.

“Are you ready?” he asks. A backpack is situated at the end of his bedframe and he reaches for it, unzipping it carefully as you crack your eyes open. “We’re going to go see the eclipse, remember?” Pulling out clothes he robbed from your room in the staff facility from when you used to work full time, he grabs your shoulder and shakes you gently. The gnarled roots under your skin feel strange against his fingers as you groan weakly. “Do you want five more minutes, Sleeping Beauty?”

You don’t answer, burying your face into your pillow and he shakes his head to himself. It’s going to be all right, he thinks. I planned for this setback.

Slipping into a dark long-sleeve, he parts the black-out curtains to let light come in. He checks his reflection in the bathroom mirror before running a hand through his hair and washing his hands with a cold stream of water. By the time he leaves the bathroom, you’re sitting up already, heel of your hand rubbing against your brow as you groan. In your other hand in your lap, there’s a splash of blood and a lone petal, and he rushes to your side instantly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t even hear—“

“It came out easy,” you assure as he grabs a tissue to pick it off your hand and throw it into the receptacle at the table just beyond the foot of your bed. Wiping at your mouth roughly, he hears your complaints and your hand shoves against his shoulder to tell him to quit it. “Ah, I can do it myself!”

“Shh! Do you want every nurse storming in here while we conduct our super secret getaway?” he whispers, and your eyes fix on his. Dark circles mark your face like bruises, but that light is still the same—glimmering, bright, like twin suns and just as warm. Making sure your hands are clean, he wipes the invisible streaks of blood just to be sure before grabbing your clothes and setting them at the end of the bed.

You glance around the place sluggishly, at the paintings you never got to finish, and the books you haven’t finished reading, before settling on him. “What are we going to do about the… about the machines? And my IV…”

“Oh, trust me. I may have bribed a nurse or two,” he confesses and you send him a scandalized look. He shrugs. “What? You told me a woman liked me and I couldn’t help but turn on my natural charm.”

“You’re awful,” you say without meaning it and he smiles as he moves your bed into a sitting position. You cough lightly, but sit up straighter as he carefully unhooks the huge bag and pump from your stand and gently slides it into the pocket in the backpack, resisting the urge to squish the pouch a bit. Strapping the pump in, he makes sure it’s secure as you peer around him to catch what he’s doing. “Is this… safe for me, you—you know, medically-speaking?”

“Nope.” He adjusts the tubing to avoid any kinks. “But, Purple gave me this backpack and she will come as soon as we come back to make sure you aren’t dying. And, if anything goes wrong, I promised her I’d come back as soon as possible.”

“Promised her?” you echo “I see. So that’s what Purple… was doing before my afternoon nap. I thought you guys traded suspicious looks.”

“Yeah. I’m pulling big strings. Now, c’mon, silly. Let’s get you dressed.”

You roll your eyes with a whistling breath. “Watch the tube… and c’mere, then, Gojo.”

He grabs the jacket first and does exactly as you order. Wrapping it around you, he helps you thread your arms through before zipping you up carefully as your shoulders begin to shake. Bending over, you reach blindly for the receptacle at the end of the bed and he hands it over to you.

A wad of saliva mixed with blood slips between your lips and you let out a low noise before forcing yourself to cough harshly again and again. Satoru watches. No matter how many times he sees you rip your throat up just to breathe with a bit less pressure in your chest, it doesn’t get any easier.

You manage to get up a whole magenta blossom. It blooms from your mouth like something out of a horror movie and lands in the receptacle before he’s wiping your mouth.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

They continue on.

Coat, next, zipped up, and a scarf, then he’s scooping up your legs to help you twist on the mattress until your feet are dangling off the edge. He weaves your legs through the sweat pants, careful not to let his gaze avert from his task even as the hospital gown trails up your legs. You shiver at the exposed skin and gooseflesh pimples your thighs as you lift up your hips to help with the effort. He pulls the hospital gown free from the waistband and lets it fall over the hem so you’re completely covered before falling back.

In a crouch, he pats your knees and makes the mistake of looking up only to find your eyes already on him, searching, nearly mystified. Satoru’s throat tightens. The faint light streaming from the window catches half of your face, as if half-divine. There’s a curiosity there, lingering, and the way you look at him makes him freeze in his spot.

Is this how Suguru saw you a thousand times before, a thousand lifetimes ago? Is this what he felt?

Did he see the way your pupils dilate, the flare of your nostrils as you exhaled so quietly that it felt like a feather against his lips despite the distance between them? Did he see galaxies in your irises, home in the softness of your stare? Is that why he kissed you the last time he saw you? To memorialize their love for himself, to remember what it looked like when you loved him?

Did he feel like he could fight dragons, crush demons, rip their world apart at the seams and rebuild it again with bloodied nails if it meant you would never cry again? Is that part of why he did it? So you would never be lonely again?

Because if so, Satoru understands.

Because if so, Satoru would do the same.

Because he always saw you as just pretty, because you had always been just his friend, and then his best friend’s girlfriend, and then his best friend, so there were always lines drawn in salt, scuffed and distorted over the years, but…

But in the light, tired and lost in his gaze, you’re nearly ethereal. The only reason he knows you’re not a goddess is because he’s still touching your knees, and your breath quivers, as if you’re just as disconnected from the world as he is in this moment.

Lips pressing together, he looks away, and the moment’s gone.

He glances at the clock.

How long has it been since he moved? It feels like hours.

Twenty-seven seconds.

Twenty-seven seconds of temptation, and then Satoru turned away.

He slants to grab a pair of thick woolly socks to give himself something to do. You’re still watching him, head tilted down just so, and he carefully takes hold of your ankle.

He focuses on the little things: the iciness of your skin, the way you pick at the fabric of your sweatpants absently as you watch him work, the way you shiver a bit when he touches you.

He rubs heat back into the arch of your foot as you reach into your jacket slowly to carefully remove the nodes monitoring your vitals. You seem stiff to the bone, and your fingers are rigid with anticipated pain as you peel off the stickers. In the back of his mind, he remembers the days that feel like yesterday when you weren’t hooked up to so many machines to assure both you and him that you’re still alive.

Removing the cap for the oximeter from your finger, you shake yourself out a bit, clearing your throat. He slides one sock on, and then the other.

“How’re you feeling?” he finally utters.

It takes you a moment to answer. “Bottom half feels tingly. Usual these days. My body feels like a big giant bruise,” you inform quietly. Your voice is nothing more than a rasp. “Very warm and toasty, though… Thank you.”

“Just gotta get the shoes on and then we’ll teleport there.”

“Okay.” He helps you slip your feet in, something straight out of Cinderella, and then he stands up to take your hands. Your fingers slip into his palms, and he holds you so tightly as you slide off the bed. The instant your feet hit the floor, your grip intensifies and your head snaps down to the floor. You find your footing after a moment, and he lets go to crack open your window. Moving your plants aside, he climbs out to glance around.

The air is crisp and cold, but not too bad for him. Even so, he’ll probably slip on a hoodie before they leave and he ducks back in to your room to do so, tugging it down his waist before grabbing the backpack.

“Arms through,” he instructs, slipping the backpack onto your shoulders. Guiding you closer, he helps you shuffle as close as possible towards him before turning around and bending over. “Alright, climb on. We’re going.”

Your arms touch his shoulders, his hands shoot out behind him, and you fall.

Fingers hooking on your thighs, he boosts you up and your arms wrap around him, your own fingers wrapped so tightly around his collar that it nearly chokes him. Haphazardly stepping through the windows, his fingers sink into the fabric of your sweats. Your breath is warm against the shell of his ear, and he can feel your heart pulsing against his back as he turns to look at you.

He smiles. “How’s it feel?”

“I’m still not sure if you’re going to let me die.” You press your face closer to his head and your arms tighten. “But the wind feels so good. So, so good.”

“That’d be too undignified,” he teases, and then he jumps. Time seems to slow as it always does when he’s about to teleport. He imagines the staff facility on the campus, quiet as a cemetery at this time of night, and his heart lurches forward. For a moment, his senses leave him all at once. He can’t taste or feel or see anything for a fraction of a second, then it comes to him in blinding speed. His hearing, as always, is first, then his eyes, smell and then touch and smell.

His foot lands on stone, as if he’s just finished a small skip, and he grins as he sweeps the courtyard. No one, as planned. The building’s to his immediate right, and he climbs the steps, using your knee to nudge the door open.

“That was fun,” you comment. “Convenient, too. Blink of an eye, and you’re somewhere else.”

“You can’t even begin to imagine how many lines I’ve skipped because of it,” he comments. The lights are all off, and he heads for the kitchen immediately to grab all the food he’s bought. Setting you down on the kitchen counter, he takes out another canvas bag and stuffs all of the food in.

Daifuku with of all kinds of fillings in the fridge, fresh dorayaki, canned coffee and aloe drinks, sweet soymilk and other wagashi they used to feast on when they were younger. Mostly because Satoru would buy enough to feed a kingdom so he always had something on hand for his overactive brain. You watch him with wide eyes as he moves around with such purpose one could think he was preparing to fight an army, but as soon as he finishes, he flashes you a smile.

“I think you’re going to like where we’re going a lot, silly.”

“Didn’t have to buy stuff,” you mutter, fingers playing with the tube leading into your backpack for a moment.

“You haven’t eaten in weeks. I thought maybe we could at least try. Maybe not now, but at the end of the night, before we go back. Just in case.”

“I can’t eat, though.”

“Don’t know until I stuff it down your throat,” he replies cheerily, and you smile at him so brightly it’s almost like you aren’t sick. Then, that smile turns into a cough, a fist in front of your lips, and your expression is frozen into one of exasperation before it flickers into strained. He sets down his bag, already knowing what comes next.

You make a hacking sound, deep in your throat, and he shifts you closer to the sink so you can lean over and throw up. Gagging, it comes in red and clear torrents, the cursed energy spilling out of your body nearly making it incinerating to even touch you as you clutch the edge of the sink basin.

You fall to your elbows, and Satoru eases you off the counter so he can hold you up instead of the cramping body contortion you sink into. Cupping the juncture of your shoulder and neck, his thumb sweeps soothingly over your root-invested spine, tossing the ends of the scarf over your shoulder and out of the way.

Settling a hand on your hip, he presses you against the countertop so you don’t fall, and hopes your legs can hold you up long enough for him to reach for the hand towel. You spit just as he manages to grab it, snapping back into position and peering over your shoulder to inspect how much you’ve coughed up. You shudder and a tortured moan wrenches out of your throat as you sink, forehead against the cool metal.

You’re scorching to touch, but he tightens his hold on you anyway, setting the towel aside for just a moment. Carefully, he pulls you back up and you let out an drained whine, but he shushes you quietly, turning you around and guiding your head over his shoulder so you don’t stare at the rot any longer.

Satoru knows you would, even if you pretend like you aren’t plagued with morbid, self-destructive curiosity.

Looking into the sink, he counts a few petals and three whole flowers, and you’re quivering against him as he wraps his arm around you.

“Alright, lean back for me,” he whispers into your ear, and you obey. His arm around you crooks so he supports your head, the other grabbing the towel again. Exhaustion seems to have sluiced through you, and your eyes are nearly unfocused as he dabs at your mouth carefully. His blue eyes focus on the gentle curve of your lips, and your cheeks puff up before you swallow tightly and let out a shaking breath.

“You’re really close,” you mumble in that exhale. He tilts your chin to the light to make sure he hasn’t missed a spot, and your eyelids flutter as the corners of his lips quirk up. His Six Eyes pick up a muted yellow emanating from you, and it’s so warm against his skin that he can’t help but relish in the feeling. “You smell nice.”

“Good. I took a shower before I came today. Well, yesterday,” he amends softly. “Alright, let’s go before you hack up your other lung.”

“Funny.” Nonetheless, he scoops you back up onto his back and he rinses down the sink as you rest your head against his. He feels you breathing steadily, much easier now than before. Red swirls down the drains, and he watches the magenta petals slowly reveal their true colours. There’s a flash of white in the center of each one, and he wonders silently what flower it is and what it means.

Maybe he’ll find out some day.

When the kitchen’s back to the state they entered, he grabs the bag of food and holds onto your legs tightly as your arms around his neck shift and pull him closer.

This time, when he teleports, it’s not as jarring. Walking around the balcony, he makes sure no one’s in the area before checking that the door to the roof is locked and heading back out into the night air, towards where they can see the moon clearest.

“Hey, open your eyes,” he whispers over his ear, and your head shifts.

“Hm? Oh!” He feels you wriggle, but he doesn’t let you go as he walks closer to the spot he’s set up. Near the railing, a blanket surrounded by pillows is laid out surrounded by a few space heaters. The moon is hanging perfectly in front of them, and the light illuminates the forests in silver as a gentle wind whistles through. Tranquil, the only sound is his footsteps on wood as you manage to pull your legs free with a harsh twist of your torso. Your hand slaps against the railing and he whirls around to hold you up but you grit your teeth. “I can do it.”

Breathing in deeply, you pull yourself past him using mostly your arms. Your feet drag as if they’re not really attached to a living body but you still move steady onward, and he walks ahead to turn on the heaters and set the food down as far away as he can so it doesn’t spoil too quickly.

“Satoru,” you breathe as if for the first time,” it’s so fucking beautiful up here.” Looking up, his heartstrings twinge. Your face is bathed almost entirely in silver, and it drapes down your body like silk, illuminating the cord of your throat he can see above the scarf, the strength of your hands. A smile brighter than even the most blinding sun rays comes across your face and he finds that the moon pales in comparison as your knees begin to give.

Reaching forward, he helps you sink down slowly, and then sit down, legs hanging off the edge and then you’re leaning to rest your elbows on the middle bar of the wooden railing. You can’t stop staring at the moon, and Satoru can’t stop staring at you as he opens the box of daifuku and pops one into his mouth.

“The eclipse should be starting in a few minutes,” he says, checking his watch. 2:10. Four minutes to go. You finally tear your eyes away from the moon to look at him.

“I forgot…” you muse. “I forgot how bright… the moon was.”

He settles in beside you and offers a canned coffee, but you shake your head. He cracks it open for himself.

“We’re about to watch the moon change,” he notes. “But I read that it’ll last six hours.”

“Really?” Excited, you look up at the moon again. The lunar rays outline your already-pronounced eye bags but it also makes you look more beatific. “That’s just proof… our time here on Earth is so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. It really makes you—makes you think how much we really matter. Which doesn’t seem like a lot, compared to things like a… fucking lunar eclipse.”

The moon’s opinion doesn’t matter more than mine, he thinks. “Well, while we’re waiting for your next epiphany to hit you,” he says instead, “you never answered my question.”

You smile, intrigued. “What’s that?”

“What if we removed the flowers bit by bit, rather than all at once?” he asks. Your gaze snaps to him, but he only regards you honestly. “That gives you a fighting chance.” Your eyes widen imperceptibly, and he grabs another mochi ball and takes a bite.

“The roots and flowers are too entangled in my chest to be removed safely. It’s either they remove my lungs completely, or not at all, and finding a… match for one lung is hard enough, much less two perfect lungs…” You trail off and shrug. “Well, that’d take forever… and I wouldn’t get much… longer, anyway. I’m a sorcerer. I always knew… I was going to die, so why not die on my own t-terms?”

He frowns. “Why not try?”

“Give me your phone.”

He does so, and watches you type in a query you must’ve typed before with how quick your lethargic fingers fly over the screen before you’re shoving it back towards him and leaning forward on the railing, chin to your forearms. You don’t even look at him, as if you don’t want to watch him crumble.

He reads: The first year after the transplant is the most critical period wrought with surgical complications, chances of rejection, and infection… Although there are some reports of some people living for 20 years post-transplant, many people do not make it past 10 years and only half make it past 5…

His stomach curdles. “Five years is better than nothing.”

“Five years worrying when my lungs are going to… kick it,” you correct. “Besides, my ribs are mangled by the roots. And my heart. My stomach. My spine. I’m undernourished, exhausted, and everything in here”—you gesture slowly around your abdomen—“is doing overtime. My body’s too weak to handle any kind of surgery that wouldn’t heal me… immediately.”

Your eyes find his, and it’s as if lightning strikes through him like a spear—piercing cold and electrifying. You’re beginning to blue in the lips like you’re freezing to death, but he’s sweating under the blast of the heaters.

Pulling off his hoodie, he drapes it around your shoulders. You don’t react anymore than: “Sucks, but that’s how it is.”

A few more minutes pass by in silence. Their knees knock into one another, and Satoru can’t stop looking at you as you breathe in the home you left months ago, head lifted to the inky universe.

“You know I can tell when you’re—when you’re angry with me,” you utter, not looking at him. “No matter how much you smile at me, you’re still too passive aggressive to cover it up.”

The words spill out of his mouth as you lower your gaze to him. “I’m sorry.” No sense in lying.

“That’s okay.” You smile for a moment, like he hasn’t said something worth ruining a night over, but when you look up at the stars, it fades. Wistful, you cock your head at the moon that hasn’t gone away just yet and lower your chin to your arms again. “It’s not really something that was… fair of me to ask anyway.”

Just as the moon turns yellow, he remembers something. Bending back to root through your backpack, he excuses himself. You frown. “What are you—“

“I got a camera for this occasion,” he announces, withdrawing the camera and a plastic bag, leaning back to snap a quick picture of you. You squint at the flash, mouth opened in an incredulous smile and face half-turned away, before the photo rolls out. “Like the one you used to carry around.”

“Some memories to hold on to, huh.” You reach for the camera and your fingers wrap around it, aiming it right at him. A flash and two peace signs later, another image joins the one of you Satoru slides into the plastic zip bag. “Hold on. I want to take another one.”

“We should do one of both of us.”

“Ugh, fine… I don’t look good at all, though.“

“Too late.” He snatches the camera from you and sticks out his hand, dragging an arm around your shoulders and you lean into him, temple against his cheek as he snaps another photo, and then another of him making a stupid face. Another of you mid-laugh. You’re wheezing for air as he keeps grabbing the polaroids as fast as he can with the arm that’s around your shoulder, leading to a bunch of jostling that has you in stitches at his frantic panic whenever the new photo chugs out of the slit.

When he’s had his fill of making you laugh, Satoru leaves you alone to look at the moon. He can’t stop grinning stupidly with every photo and while you watch the moon slowly descent into the earth’s shadow, he shuffles through the photos he just took of them together, trying to brand them to memory.

The way he looks at you in these photos makes him believe in something. In something that could’ve been there if they had more time, and he could convince you to open your heart up to a new possibility.

Another hour passes. The moon hangs a strange transition between black and blood red and a paler peach orange. A glimmering yellow dot sparkles below it, and he wonders if that’s Mars.

The forests seem almost hauntingly quiet, and no one has spoken in the darkness. You regard the moon, so enraptured, and more photos have joined the zip bag, but they’re mostly of you. He’s managed to sneak them in by turning off the flash and upping the brightness settings so it’d still be visible, and he hopes you never realize that he’s got them.

Satoru has never been interested in astronomy, but the stars in your eyes are changing his mind.

He’s dug his hand into the bag of dorayaki already. He remembers it’s supposed to be for you, too, but his hands are too empty without the camera, his brain going a mile a minute and the air absolutely quiet with nothing.

Twenty minutes ago, you asked him to help you take off your coat so you can pull on his hoodie, and haven’t moved since zipping yourself back up. The air smells only of canned coffee and the stinging wind carrying the scent of cedar. Feet swinging, he drapes his arms over the railing and looks up at the red moon.

It is pretty. Magnificent, and ominous, almost. The night is so much darker without the moon. Sheesh, colder, too. I wonder if you’re feeling okay. Maybe I should check, but you don’t seem to be shaking. Worst comes to worst, I could up the level on the space heaters…

“I don’t think I ever got to hear his last words,” you muse quietly, voice cracking, rousing him from his monologue. His head swings to you. Your eyes are barely open as you rest your cheek against your forearm, and you don’t look at Satoru despite your head turned towards him. Instead, he can watch the pieces of you fall apart without your scrutiny. “I used to think… that I didn’t care.”

“Do you want me to tell you?” he asks slowly as you continue to stare blankly over his ear. Your chest stutters in its inhale and the exhale is just as shaky as you smile a bit to yourself. He takes that as answer, and as he speaks, he sees Suguru’s smile—bright against the darkness of the alleyway, and a reminder of a simpler time. Satoru’s heart quickens from the memory “‘At least curse me a little at the very end.’”

You’re quiet for a moment, as if soaking that in. Then, you draw yourself up and sigh. “That sounds like him.”

You say it fighting off a laugh, even though it wracks your body with such intense pain you can barely breathe. You begin to wheeze not even a second in, and still, your face is cracked into an agonizing smile as you blink, tears slipping down your cheeks. Your eyes squeeze shut and your body goes stiff as you cough, hands flying over your lips. Your shoulders shake so uncontrollably it’s like an earthquake in your body, but Satoru cannot find it in him to calm you down as you hunch over yourself.

It comes in its own course, until you’re nothing but a gasping body, crying into bloodied palms cupping purple flowers, and the low sobs that spill and stutter out of your throat makes Satoru wish he never told you.

“‘At least curse me a little at the very end,’” you repeat to yourself, voice raw and iron-like, and your eyes finally rise to meet his. Nothing but hollow purple pierces through him once more. “Yeah… Yeah, that sounds like him.”

An apology bubbles at his lips, but you continue before he can even begin. Your hands fall to to your laps, and you look at the decaying flowers, thumbs stroking the petals. “I could never make him truly happy… could I? Just like he said… nothing would’ve been good enough for him while we lived in this kind of world. No matter how many times I sat by him while he swallowed… swallowed those curses, held his hand, held him, I would have never been… enough to make him laugh from his heart.” Your tears cast dark shadows. “I held him, Satoru, with all my might… and I still felt him slip away between my fingers.”

That’s how Satoru learns you were there that day, December 24th, not a snowflake in sight. Just a few metres away, you stood for only a moment before you walked away from the man you loved so he could die without any regret, at the cost of your own guilt eating you alive.

No one speaks after that. Satoru cleans your hands slowly, carefully, giving attention to each finger, before swiping your lips, and then he wipes your tears away but you’re not crying anymore.

You just look up at the moon emptily and he scoots closer in hopes to keep your returning trembling at bay.

“Ten years is a very… long time to love someone.” You break the silence. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. Fifteen, thirty minutes? He looks at you, and your lips press into a thin smile. He lifts his arm so you can scoot up close next to him. Your eyes never leave his face, regarding him with new clarity. “I just… realized.”

“Ten years is a very long time for anything,” he replies quietly, their faces very close. Their noses brush, and a warmth spreads through his cheeks as he presses the tip of your nose against his. You don’t pull away. Instead, you almost lean closer. Your nose is cold against his hot face, and he rubs it slowly with his own, trying to send heat back into your skin.

“A very long time to… wait.” Your eyes flutter shut, and your breath is warm over his lips as you slowly tilt your head so their foreheads meet. His hand squeezes your waist. You smell like the hospital, but there’s still the fragrance of the fresh-cut grass and herbs clinging to your skin as he moves his head just to the side so his nose presses into your frozen cheek. Your arm moves as if dragging through honey until it’s wrapped around his neck, palm flat against his shoulder, just as their brows press against one another.

Something ignites inside his chest, incinerating the rot that seems to grow inside his own chest—it’s his dread, he realizes a moment later. An ugly knot of dread for what’s to come, the guilt, the cold grief that’s just out of reach.

It’ll unfurl soon, he knows, but for now, he welcomes the relief you bring him.

In this moment, you are his, and he is yours, and that is all that matters.

His eyes close. His cheeks are burning hotter than the heaters surrounding them, and he feels a smile pulling at his lips as your fingers curl against the back of his neck.

“When will people… stop waiting?” you ask him, hushed like a secret.

Eyes opening, he answers you in the same soft voice, “Probably when they die.”

Your eyes crack open once more and he catches a sliver between your heavy lids. You’re so close he sees every detail of your irises, the pores of your eye bags, the way memories flicker through your pupils like fish in a river.

Your exhausted smile grows more genuine—something inside you seems to rear its bright little head, but it’s sad, and he realizes, then, what you must’ve been thinking. Words fumble at his mouth, but he doesn’t let anything slip as you lift your face away to rest your head against his shoulder.

You’re dozing against him. Satoru is staring up at the moon in your stead. It’s nearly fully that famous shade of dark blood red, but not quite. He can’t hear anything except the buzz of the space heaters and your breathing. His arm is still wrapped tight around you, holding you flush against him. He’s wished he’d done it so many times before that now, he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.

You’re dying. Even as you rest against him, he feels it. The weakness in your body, the way you’ve turned ghost-like. The strength of your Cursed Energy has become more prominent now that you don’t have the energy to channel it properly, and it’s centred so strongly in your chest that he can feel it poking curiously at him, leaving little marks, a souvenir for when you’re gone.

His fingers dig into your side. You let out a noise, head shifting, and he rips his gaze away away from the sky as your hand falls away from where it had rested around his neck into his lap.

“Satoru?” you whisper brokenly, and he nods, smiling. He pulls you closer, but their bodies are so pressed against each other that it only serves to make you huff a bit.

“Hey. You’re still with us, don’t worry,”

“Not worried,” you mumble, lifting your head with difficulty. “Just glad you’re here.” You tilt your face to the moon. “It’s still… red, huh…” You shake, your hand at the hem of his shirt twisting tightly. He reaches to squeeze your arm and hopes it’ll be enough now. “Pretty.” Throat dry, he does not answer. His white hair falls into his eyes as you look up at him, and he decays at the vulnerability in your gaze. “Aren’t you glad… that we saw the eclipse?”

Jaw clenching, he nods and tries his best to smile. Your hand lets go of his shirt and you shuffle up close enough that your other arm sneaks around his waist. Touching his chin with trembling fingers, your eyes glitter in the darkness of his shadow.

“I’m going to miss this. The moon, stars, how… fucking short… ’n’ beautiful life is,” you finally whisper, throat tight. “Makes shit worth living for. Maybe… won’t miss it… the most… but, top three.”

“Top three?” he echoes. “Top three sounds pretty good to me.”

“And, y’know what, Satoru?” you continue in the same low, husky tone, as if you’re about to change his world one more time.

He drops to the lowest, quietest voice he can manage and moves his head closer. Their noses nearly bump into each other again, and you smile as he quirks an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“You’re… going to miss me… more.”

Your hand on his waist travels up his shoulder and he feels the last of your strength in your muscles as you pull him towards you. Letting you, his arms wrap around your waist as your other arm shoots around his neck, clinging on so hard that he’s sure his spine might break.

Flattening his palms against your uneven back, he closes his eyes and slides a hand to cradle your head close.

“And promise… me something,” you breathe into his ear. Your lips brush the shell of his ear, and a shiver shoots down his spine.

“Anything.”

“When I kick it,” you whisper, “take my body, and bury me… yourself.”

Throat swelling shut, Satoru’s glad you can’t see the way the blood drains from his face as he nods and holds you tighter. “I will.”

“One more photo for the road?” he asks. You lift your head from his chest, and he looks as you reach to sweep his lips with cold, trembling fingers. He smiles, his hand on your thigh squeezing meaningfully even though you can barely feel it now. Your arms are bundled between your chest and his, and he hauls your legs on his thighs more securely up his lap, arm tightening around your torso.

“Satoru,” you murmur, tilting your head to him. His eyes never move from yours as he picks up the camera, and your hand falls from his lips. “I’m glad… that it was you.”

He snaps the shot and the only sound that fills the silence is the camera chugging out the polaroid. Your eyes are dark, murky and unfocused, and he feels your stammering inhale in his very lungs as he presses his forehead against yours.

“I’m happy it was you, too,” he whispers. You search his gaze for only a moment, and then turn your head to the moon once more.

Lowering the camera to the floor, he sneaks his other arm around you and rests his chin atop of your head, eyes sliding shut.

Nanami, Yaga, and Ijichi approach, dress shoes tapping against linoleum floors. Satoru and Shoko say nothing to them as they join in watching through the glass doors.

Satoru doesn’t like the room they’ve moved you to. It’s too full of machines, too open to passersby who could just look in if the curtains aren’t drawn, and even then…

It smells too clinical here. Too full of artificial light. The ICU is a mechanical sort of silence than the quiet peace of the dead-end hallway. There is no warmth, no books, no paintings. Your plants have been removed, and Nanami has taken all of them into his apartment except the red tulips which rest on the dinner table in Satoru’s kitchen.

You stopped being able to breathe on your own only a day after the eclipse. That was two days ago, and the ventilator is doing nothing more than prolonging your agony. Soon, the growths will block your lungs entirely, suffocating you from the inside out.

The doctors have stopped taking scans.

“It’s only a matter of time, now,” Shoko had said. “Her directive says we let her go as soon as she can’t come back.” Quieter: “Her pulse ox has been dropping. It won’t be long.”

Ijichi’s face is stony. Satoru doesn’t know why he focuses on him out of everyone. Leaning against the nurse’s station, he stares blankly at the Assistant Director’s. Maybe because he thought he’d be a wreck. Out of all of them, Ijichi’s the most emotional, but his lips are set firm from where he stands between Nanami and their principal.

Maybe Satoru’s just looking for permission to fall apart, but that’d be stupid.

I’m the strongest. I’ll be fine.

“I’m going to go in,” he announces. No one protests. Nanami sits down and crosses one leg over the other, fingers steepled and eyes indecipherable. Shoko sits beside him. There’s the faint scent of smoke clinging to her lab coat.

Ijichi dips his head, but doesn’t sit and Yaga excuses himself to talk to the nurse about your condition.

Satoru sanitizes his hands, approaches the door, and pulls it open before stepping in and sliding it shut behind him.

Click. Hiss.

The sound of the ventilator is the only thing that occupies the room. That and the monitors. It’s very dark, despite it being the middle of the day. Mostly because you can’t open your eyes wide enough to withstand the sun anymore, so Satoru had asked the nurses to bring the same blackout curtains from your room here. The lights are dimmed until it’s only an orange glow right behind your bed.

Click. Hiss.

Sitting down, he doesn’t take hold of your hand just in case you’re sleeping. The intubation tube rests on a pile of towels on your chest, and it takes a long time before your eyes open and your head tilts just enough to look. Your hand twists on top of the covers until your palm is tilted open.

He slips fingers in, takes hold. The feel of your skin making everything worse. You’re colder than you should be—it’s sweltering in this room, enough that Satoru is already beginning to sweat even through his short-sleeve—and your fingers just barely twitch against the back of his hand, tracing strange shapes.

You blink, tapping his knuckle, and he frowns.

“What’s up?” Withdrawing, he feels your nail scrape against his flesh and he looks down. Curiously, he takes your hand and places it on top of his so your fingers can touch the lines of his palm. “Are you spelling something out?” he asks, amused, glancing up again.

Another blink, slower this time.

He leans forward on his elbow to touch your cheek before resting his cheek against his fist.

“Alright, give it your best shot.”

Your eyelids flutter, lips trembling in a weak smile. Your index finger begins to trace shapes, kanji, into his palm. Your chest rises and fall slowly, pumped full of air by a machine hooked to your lungs, forcing breath into you as your writing grows sloppy by the passing second but you still persist.

ANGRY?

“Angry?” he repeats, and you blink slowly again, fingers insistent on grabbing his palm. Folding his fingers over yours, he arches his eyebrows. “If I was angry at a terminally ill patient, that’d make me the asshole here.” Your eyes squeeze shut, eyebrows rearranging in what he recognizes as your laugh in silence. More seriously, his hold on you tightens and he lifts his head to brush his fingers over your brow. You tilt your head more to him, gaze murky warm. “How’re you feeling?”

It takes a while, but he feels your hand shuffle back to trace your answer on his hand.

BETTER

“Better. Yeah?”

Another lethargic blink. Yes.

“It’s because of me, right? I knew it. I knew it. We should tell Shoko—I’m the newest medical innovation in town,” he proclaims, and his smile begs to slip off his face but he only forces it back on, shoves it into place. Your eyebrows move again, like you’re struggling to hold back your laugh. Your eyes slip shut and do not open again.

Your face goes lax a moment later, and your fingers loosen a bit, but he doesn’t let go. He just wants to touch your face and trace the lines into his memory.

Satoru stretches his thumb along the swell of your bottom lip while carefully avoiding the tube. He runs his knuckles down your cheek. His fingers brush your pulse point along your neck, and he feels the slow, weak beat.

Click. Hiss.

He thinks you’re asleep for a while, until your finger drags over the flesh of his palm and he looks down, hand lifting from your face.

“Hey, I’m still here,” he whispers, and your face turns towards him slightly, the tube in your mouth shuffling. He reaches forward, cupping your face and holding you still. “Hey. Don’t move. Your lungs are weaker than the rest of you and I’m not about to watch you die.” Something grabs onto the front of his shirt near his stomach and he looks down to see your fingers hooking on the cotton of his tee, twisting it weakly. “Oh, sorry.”

He draws back and slips his palm back into yours. Your index finger taps against the heel of his hand before your nail drags deliberately. One stroke. Then another, and another. Gojo wishes your eyes were open, because then he would be able to determine what the rest of the sentence could spell out before you’re done, but he’s patient.

HERE

“Here?” You tap on his hand. Yes. “What’s here?”

YOU AND ME

“You and me,” he repeats thoughtfully. “Yeah, I get that. At least… now you can see Suguru again, right?” Your hand goes still and he looks at your face, reaching to touch your cheek again. You’re placid—doll-like, eyes shut, living dead. “I’m a bit jealous of that, but you should rest easy. It’s been a hard few months, hasn’t it?”

Another weak twitch of your finger on his hand.

“No matter what happens, don’t think I’m angry at you, or the choices you’ve made,” he continues. “As long as you let me stay here, I won’t waste a single second of it, okay?” Tap. He squeezes your hand so tightly your eyebrows twitch, even as you slip away from him. “For all your saying that you’re weaker than me, I never thought that. Not really.” Satoru raises your hand to his lips and he closes his eyes. “Being the strongest is pretty lonely. Used to be so fucking cocky about it, huh. Thought no one could touch me or the people I cared about because everyone would be too scared.”

Your fingers curl against his palm and he lowers his head to press your knuckles against his brow.

“I was wrong. I’d give anything to have you both back, but I can’t, and I hate it. You’re supposed to be with me at the top. I don’t want to be alone again.” His eyes are burning from the strain of keeping them open, but he refuses to miss a second of you being alive when the time is trickling like sand in an hourglass. He feels it like a heavy stare on his back, wondering if this next breath will be the last one before your brain finally decides to shut down. Your organs have been shutting down for nearly weeks now. He knows it’s out of pure selfishness that they’re dragging precious moments into agonizing hours.

He knows you’re exhausted.

Resting his chin on your fingers, he swallows. “I don’t know how to let you go. I wished I’d come sooner. I was careless. I know that. We could’ve had more time…”

Your fingers squeeze his as tight as you can before letting go. Somehow, he hears your voice in his ear. Something about being grateful for the time they did have.

“You were right, silly.” He chuckles to himself, bitter, anguished, and lowers your hand back to the bed, not letting go yet. “Ten years is a long time to wait. I let you down, but I’ll make sure you go easy. I promise.”

Satoru lays his head down on his forearm and he swears he catches your lips pull into the faintest smile. He stays there for hours, watching your face, stretching up to touch your unmoving face. The only sound is his steady breaths, the beep of your monitors and the click-hiss of your ventilator.

It’s 1:04 PM when he falls asleep to the sleepy circles you trace into his wrist

It’s 6:22 PM when only one of them wakes up.

At 11:00 AM the next morning, during one of the hourly tests, they declare you brain-dead. With the announcement of your directive being honoured by your chosen proxy, Satoru himself, classes are cancelled and they are scheduled to take you off life support at six.

Ijichi brings them lunch and dinner. Satoru doesn’t eat. Only sits by your side, leaned back into the chair and looking at you while he still can until the clock ticks and ticks and ticks towards doomsday. The kids come to say final goodbyes while he watches on. Inumaki, as always, brings Panda through his phone, and Satoru wishes there could’ve been some way to sneak Panda into a high-class hospital just so their last moments together aren’t cheapened by a screen.

Shoko enters five minutes before it’s time, hand finding his shoulder and he looks up just long enough to catch her blank stare resting on your face.

She doesn’t say anything, only moves to the other side of the bed and sits down in the other chair.

The doctor pumps you full of sedation drugs, so you won’t feel any of the pain, unhooks the machines, and extubates you, explaining all the while what he’s doing just to fill the silence. As he pulls the tube from your throat, something in Satoru turns icy when a purple petal is plastered to the side of the plastic, but the doctor does not acknowledge it any more than murmuring that he will give them privacy.

Your rattling breaths echo in his ears as he watches the numbers slowly drop, but even your inhales fade to nothing more than soft, slight wheezes. The tape has left a strange mark around your mouth, and you’re unmoving otherwise. Shoko gently reaches and touches the eye bags that are, for once, worse than hers before shaking her head and pulling back. Everyone else waits outside.

Hours pass by in torturous years.

Satoru wears the same stony expression the whole while, finally surrendering into his desire to hold your hand.

His heart hardens. He goes completely still. Shoko talks but he can’t really hear anything except the slow beeps of your monitor once you pass certain thresholds.

There are nurses waiting outside. They’ve grown used to the company, he thinks. He thinks one or two are crying. Soon enough, they’ll come in to turn off the machines tracking your vitals so the sounds don’t drive them crazy, banging in home that you’re dead, dead, dead.

After a while, Satoru realizes you aren’t quite breathing, although your chest moves. Sometimes, there’s a gasping sound, like someone surprised the breath out of you and you’re inhaling sharply to replace it, and he imagines your fingers twitching against his hand one last time.

It’s very slow. Much slower than he imagined it to be. Maybe you’re still fighting. Maybe you don’t want to go.

Satoru can’t imagine why. Where you’re going, there’s no pain, or exhaustion, or blood. Where you’re going, Suguru waits.

He leans against his hand, elbow on the slight incline of your bed. Letting go of your hand, he touches your face, feels the soft puff of your breath, the curve of your jaw. You’ve lost so much weight from the sickness you barely look like yourself, but you’re still you. The cursed energy is still yours. His Six Eyes sees it. His soul feels it.

It tangles with his own where he touches you, and a wave of exhaustion washes over him.

He wants to sleep, let time pass, and wake up to you dead.

It seems a much better alternative to watching you slip away, but he’s always been selfish when it came to personal affairs.

You die two hours later.

Shoko closes her eyes and leans back into her chair as the nurse comes in to turn off the droning monitor. Her face is dry and she takes long, measured breaths as if trying to temper something swirling inside her. Satoru’s hard heart cracks as he squeezes your hand to see if you’ll wake up. It doesn’t quite sink in, even though he can hear someone crying outside, and when your limp hand doesn’t react at all, he shakes his head and gets up, pulling his sunglasses off the collar of his shirt and sliding them back onto his face.

He shoves his hands into his pockets and rakes his face over your body, your face.

He’s seen a dozen dead bodies before, maybe more. You look just like he did on December 24th. At peace, younger. Like you’re glad the suffering is over, and Satoru turns his face away sharply and leaves the room. He doesn’t know what to say and he’s not sure if his voice is still here.

Everything feels dry and dull and grey.

“Sensei,” Itadori whispers wetly, reaching out a hand, making him stop. The students are all sitting in a small area, but they stand upon seeing him leave the room, and he gives them a plastic smile that makes all of them flinch. Maki is scowling furiously at the ground as Inumaki takes hold of her bicep but she flings the hand off and stalks away, hiding her red face.

“It’s going to be okay,” he tells them as Kugisaki runs after Maki. He watches the two go before turning his attention back on the students. “The important thing is that she didn’t suffer. Arrangements will be made, but there won’t be any rush, alright?” The words feel lacking, but he still manages to smile. “It’s been a long day. Go home. Rest, shower, eat. Let’s remember that she doesn’t want us to be here, slumping around looking like idiots. She wants you to all to take care of yourselves.” He arches his eyebrows insistently at his students, but they don’t seem to hear him.

They’re only looking through the glass doors at your coolling corpse, at Shoko who stands, and speaks to the doctor when he comes back in.

Fushiguro is the only one really looking at him, and the teenager has a silent question in his stare.

Satoru shakes his head, and Megumi nods.

“Classes are cancelled for the rest of the week,” Yaga adds. “Ijichi will drive you all back to the college in thirty minutes. Make sure you tell the girls.” He directs this to Inumaki, who nods.

“Salmon.”

Later, Megumi finds him smoking a cigarette leaning against Shoko’s car. Satoru’s never liked the taste of the stuff so he doesn’t really know why he’s smoking other than the fact he doesn’t know what to do.

Up is down, left is right, and you’re dead.

Nothing seems right, but Megumi gives him a good excuse to stop. Flinging the cig to the ground, he stomps out the ember and re-arranges his expression into that shielded smile of his, but it feels a bit weaker. Sharp, janky, wrong.

“Why haven’t you gone home yet? Ijichi should’ve taken you all back by now,” Satoru says wearily as Fushiguro stops before him, hands shoved in his pockets.

“I stayed behind to look for you,” informs Megumi. He looks a bit fractured, but the boy’s never been one to wear his heart on his sleeve. Satoru makes a mental note to dig into his psyche at a later date, and stretches an arm out to wrangle the boy into a hug against his side.

For all of his complaints and mumbles and scowls, Megumi’s body still relaxes a bit against his, and even though he doesn’t hug him back, when he tells him, “You should go home and get some sleep, too. These past few months haven’t been easy on you, either,” Satoru feels a part of his old self raise its bloody head.

Glancing down at a head of spiky hair, he knocks his knuckles into his student’s skull. “Have you been keeping an eye on me?”

Megumi crosses his arms, glares over Satoru’s elbow, but even his voice is quieter. “You need to take care of yourself.”

Satoru smiles again. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “But you’re not worried about me, are you, Fushiguro?”

Megumi ducks his head and doesn’t answer any more than, “Someone has to pick up the slack, now.”

“Thanks, Ijichi,” Satoru says with a huff, digging the shovel into the ground and stepping on the metal edge. “Not every day you help me carry a dead body and dig a grave, huh.”

“No, sir,” Ijichi replies. He sounds a bit hoarse and tired as he wipes at his brow.

It’s been two days since you’ve died. The college grounds feels a lot less lively. He took a walk in the gardens yesterday, and saw Yaga planting new flowers. He had strode past and ignored the tears on his sensei’s face, and absently wonders now why he hasn’t cried yet as he grabs the shovel and yanks it out of the dirt, tossing it to Ijichi.

It feels kind of stupid, but despite how eviscerated everything inside him feels, he just can’t.

Either way, he’ll deal with it when it becomes a problem.

Satoru wipes at his brow, too, with a heavy sigh, and heads to where a cloth-covered shape is resting on the ground. Your corpse is light in his arms as he bridal carries you to the hole he’s just dug into the grass. It looks suspicious as hell, but it’d probably be even worse if he’d been walking around with a dead body over his shoulder, stitched back together after an autopsy by your best friend.

Good thing they’re only in the forests outside the college campus. There won’t be any civilians for miles.

“You can go,” he says over his shoulder, setting you down by the hole they’ve dug. He takes in a deep breath to calm himself and Ijichi’s footsteps hesitate before beginning and fading away moments later. Falling to his knees, Satoru begins to carefully unfold the cloth just enough that he can see your face and chest.

He squints behind his blindfold at the ripples of energy still seeping from the stitches along your chest. Sinking his hands into the lush, cold grass, he twists the blades with rigid fingers at the stench of rot coming from the curse before he draws back.

Hands on his lap, he stares at your face. You look frozen in time, eyes closed, skin clean, and there’s that unnatural stillness about you that only comes with the dead. It’s strange. He probably couldn’t have imagined someone so vivacious could be so motionless if he hadn’t seen it first with Suguru.

He had asked not to hear the results of your autopsy. Not now, maybe not ever. It’d be fresh lemon juice in a weeping wound. All he knows is that the curse clings to your corpse, and Shoko could only remove the growths that were no longer being fed for examination.

“Weird that this is where we’ve found ourselves,” he begins humourlessly. “With how we were living, Suguru always said I’d die first. Doing something stupid, being too cocky.” He slides a hand into his pocket and withdraws something he’d snipped this morning from the last plant you had grown with your Technique. A red tulip with a short stem that’s a bit crushed, and beginning to decay, but… everything can’t be perfect.

“I never thought I’d outlive you.”

Reaching forward, he places the tulip gently on your chest, takes your cold arms that are just beginning to loosen up again from rigor mortis, and folds your hands over the stem.

“Eternal love, and fame,” he repeats to himself. The energy nearly swallows up the tulip, but as it radiates from your chest, flickers in the slight breeze, Satoru sees flashes of red and green, much brighter than everything else around him, and knows that it won’t be consumed. Sitting down, he hugs his legs to his chest and stares at your dead body blankly, chin on his knees.

He had had a plan. He was going to just… put the flower there, exorcise the curse inside you, and bury you so you could finally rest. He wouldn’t hesitate because this is something you entrusted him to do.

But this is the first time in months he hasn’t had a cloud hanging over his head, and his body feels so much ligher without the burden of your disease hanging off his shoulders, that he can’t help but relish in it. Speak to you without worrying about saying the wrong thing, of people overhearing. He’s finally… free.

It feels fucking awful.

“You were right, by the way.” His voice is dull, resonating deep in his chest. There is no August sun breaking through the trees above, only from behind him, and the golden beams touch your chin, down your throat and chest. It sets the red of the tulip on fire. “I miss you. And I wish I could’ve said so many things, but we ran out of time.” A faint smile. “No matter what you think, Suguru loved you. It’s why he came to see you one last time. I knew him better than I knew myself, and I know he was happiest knowing you were at his side.” Closing his eyes, the ache in his heart swells as he utters out, “So was I.”

Burying his his face in his forearms, a cup inside him seems to tip over and everything feels too hot for him to breathe in. Ripping his blindfold off and tossing it away from him blindly, his eyes snap open wide as he tries to breathe. His ribs constrict his lungs, and he presses his eyes into his arms, hands shaking as he sinks his nails into his biceps.

Harsh pants puff against his face as he tries to reign in his shuddering, but he can’t. The knot in his heart twists until he thinks he might die, and distantly, he hears soft footsteps so faint he’s not sure if he imagines it. Gritting his teeth, he stifles the bruising feeling welling up in his throat.

Gentle hands brush down his shoulders soothingly, sending a wave of nausea through his body, and he jerks away.

“Damn it, Ijichi, leave me alone!” Wrenching his head up, his eyes widen at the figure crouched in front of him.

Arms falling lax to the grass and his knees widening, his jaw drops as a thumb teases his parted lips. You step between his legs and crouch down, limber and strong. You look healthy again, bright eyes and full cheeks, young like spring, and when you smile, it fills him utterly with light. In your hands is his blindfold, and you ruffle his hair, tilting your head curiously.

“I’m not Ijichi, but… do you really want me to go so soon?” you ask as he rakes his gaze up and down your body. There is still a purple shell encasing your legs, but as you shift your weight on your feet, it falls like fragile eggshells to the ground and sinks into the dirt, disappearing for good. Peering around you, his eyes widen when he sees shards of a purple shell in shatters all over your corpse.

He’d only seen this once before, eight months ago, with a certain student of his and the cursed spirit of the girl he loved and who loved him.

Face burning, his gaze snaps back to you as you poke his cheek and continue to grin. Leaning back on his hands, he tries to stop the intense shattering of his walls by clenching his jaw, but the shudders overtake his body, his chest, his throat until he’s letting out an ugly sound and blinking hard as if that’ll hide it away from you. Something devastatingly warm immediately shoots down his cheeks. Covering his mouth with the crook of his elbow, he turns his face away but your warm hands cradle him carefully, thumbs brushing underneath his eyes.

“Yuuta, you’re right. Rika isn’t cursing you.”

“No,” he whispers, arm falling. His fingers sink into his shoulder as if that would be enough to wake him from this nightmare. “No. I can’t—Did I—Did I kill you?” You squint studiously, not letting go of his face as he lifts the hand from his shoulder and reaches to touch you. It shakes, and he snaps it into a fist to stop it, looking at his fingers that have done so much harm—shed so much blood. “Did I do this to you?”

“You cursed Rika.”

You chuckle fondly, like he’s said something silly, and set a hand on his fist, pushing it down firmly. “You can’t control how other people react to your words, Satoru.” Your voice changes, and your eyebrows draw together in something bittersweet. “And you can’t change something you didn’t know. The chances of you cursing me and me cursing myself are irrelevant. It doesn’t change anything about where we are, now.”

Satoru watches you, lips parted, as you tie the blindfold around his neck. You feel so real, so close, and as you slide your hands down his shoulders, to his chest, he jerks his head down to stare at your shoes in the grass.

So he did.

“I see,” he murmurs.

That’s it, then.

“Satoru, please look at me,” you whisper, fingers stretching to his chin. With the gentlest of pressures, you prompt him up and he finds your face, your smile, where all colours begin and end. For a moment, the world seems to inhale all of its life back into its core—the leaves whistle, the sun is warm and golden, and he lifts his hand to touch you again, but you pull back before he can.

“I can only thank you for being my friend. For staying with me until the very end.” You laugh quietly to yourself and lift your hand from his face. “I would make a joke about a curse, but I know it still hurts, so I’ll save it for when I see you on the other side, okay? When it heals a bit more.”

“It’s never going to hurt less,” he croaks. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know how much you mean to me.”

Your smile softens. Satoru tries to eternalize that expression forever. “I’m honoured, but, I hope it does heal. I don’t want you to learn how to carry so much pain around. I don’t want you to be numb.” You touch his cheek again, as if you’re trying to soak in as much of him as you can, too.

“Do you have any last words?” he manages to ask raspily, and you chuckle, tilting your head and running your hand through his hair again. His eyes flutter shut at the scratch, the sensation of your nails against his scalp, and then there’s your hand at his jaw, holding him all together. He wants to hold you so badly he thinks his muscles might cramp into stone at the desire.

“What does it matter?” you ask curiously. “You already know how I feel. That will never change. And if you ever want to know what I think, or what I’d do, you can just ask Shoko and think about it yourself. You know me well enough to not need me nagging about it.”

“But, it won’t be enough.”

“It never will be,” you agree. “But isn’t it wonderful that we even got to know each other at all?” You lean forward, and his eyes flutter shut as you hold him to your chest. He can’t hear your heartbeat anymore, but your warmth is almost the same. The echo of your voice rumbles in his head as you speak, and maybe that is enough. “If you want my last words, you already have them.”

You draw him back, and give him one last smile. The air shifts golden yellow to his Six Eyes, for the last time.

“Until we meet again, my Satoru.”

You fade without giving him a chance to answer, taking all the colour with you.

Staring at the empty air where you had been just a moment before with wide, burning blues, he whispers your name brokenly before burying his hands in the dirt, squeezing his eyes shut, and letting boiling tears scald his face red.

“If you want my last words, you already have them.”

Spinning the key ring on his finger, Satoru looks dully at the door knob he had just unlocked. There’s no one in the hall, and he debates whether or not he should turn around, but Shoko had insisted. There’d been something left for him in your old apartment, and according to her, it would be spoiled soon if he didn’t go.

“Oh, what the hell,” he mutters, catching the key in his palm and shoving it into his long coat. Tugging it tighter around himself, he twists the knob and pushes it open. He can’t remember the last time he was in here. Maybe five or six months ago, when they both had a day off that didn’t need to be spent at the college.

There aren’t any plants anymore. He supposes Nanami, Ijichi, maybe even Yaga have taken them. He swears he’s seen a few in the gardens lately, but who is he to say? Toeing off his shoes, he makes his way down the hall.

Everything is just as you left it, with clean counters and empty tables. The curtains are spread, letting in so much September sunlight. It hits random display pedestals of different sizes, all the surfaces big enough to fit a pot on. Your watering can sits by the sink. There are photos hanging on the walls, propped up on the desk, on your shelves, polaroids taped to the walls.

Reminders that someone did live here. That there is a whole life unknown to strangers but evidence enough that whoever used to be here, they had people who would miss them.

Walking up to the counter, he drags his fingers along the surface, feeling the dust collect up to a square of pale light. A clean circle is all that’s left as a clue that there used to be something there, and his heart twists.

Who knew he could miss fucking plants of all things?

Sweeping his gaze around, he brushes off the dust on his jacket and hooks a thumb on his blindfold, sweeping the area with an eccentric eye. The TV is off, your bookshelves are in their usual untidy state, but even the reaching vines of the bean plant is gone from the highest shelf.

“They really scooped this place dry,” he muses dryly to no one. He can still hear the music you’d play for late nights, the smell of dumpling soup. He walks down the hall and still remembers how many steps it takes to reach the bathroom that guests would use.

He had hunched over that bath on December 25th, and let water soak through his hair as strong fingers worked the sweat from his scalp and skin.

Four more steps to the guest best room on the right, and another three to the end of the hall where a door leads to your room. It’s already open, and he steps in easily, tugging his blindfold all the way down off his face. Hair falling over his eyes, he sweeps it aside and surveys the room. The walls are still that pretty shade of cream, and your bed is made carefully, dark olive blankets resting atop your white sheets. He smiles to himself, despite the twang in his chest.

Walking deeper, he approaches the cabinet by your bathroom, and picks up the photo you have by your jewelry stand.

A smile curls his mouth. He remembers this one. First year, their first September. All four of them had gone together to Sapporo for the autumn festival.

He sets the photo back down and looks into the bathroom. Your toiletries are all lined up, waiting for their next use, and he swallows as he raises his gaze up to the mirror. His blue eyes look a big too big on his face from the past month alone, and there are red-purple half moons printed onto his face that have only just started to fade. He swears it only looks worse because of how much pale light is streaming in from the windows, and he tugs at his collar uncomfortably, clearing his throat.

Turning around, he looks at the offenders for making him look so awful, and finds a medium-sized pot sitting on the window seat. It’s the only thing sitting on the flat, wooden surface, in partial shade and almost unfurling before his very eyes.

Satoru frowns, walking around your bed to inspect the plant.

The flowers are a warm magenta colour, and his eyes widen at the flash of white he can see leading to the center of each bloom. Brushing a thumb over the petals, his jaw sets as he tilts his head to get a better look at the plant. So this is what was growing inside of you. Huh.

There’s another slip of white near the dirt, and his eyebrows furrow, fingers seeking the thing. It crinkles when he touches it, and his frown deepens as he manages to grasp it, pulling it free underneath the leaves and stems of the plants. Sitting down beside the pot, he dusts off the dirt clinging to the paper, and reads his name along the front in your print before flipping the envelope around. There’s something sticking out of it, a sloping shape that’s hard but not too big.

Curiosity peaked, he tears the envelope open carefully and peers inside. A binder clip is inside, holding something together, and he flips it upside down, letting everything fall. The letter slides out first, followed by whatever the binder clip is holding together and he squeezes his thighs together so it doesn’t fall to the floor.

Setting the letter aside, he picks the bundle up.

Polaroids.

They’re polaroids of different sizes that have him smiling despite the heavy sorrow twisting his entire chest.

Various pictures of Satoru, Suguru, Shoko, and you together, and he finds most of them are of him and you. Pictures of him hiding behind plants of various sizes, a picture of him drinking soju, because Suguru liked it the most and insisted he try, while leaning against Shoko who was knocking back a shot of tequila. There is a shot of Suguru, wet with mud and smiling like sunshine, while a drenched Satoru was in the background, flipping the camera off in the middle of a storm.

More and more pictures, enough to spill out of his lap, and he picks up each one, desperate to remember when or where you took them.

And, sometimes, he can’t. Sometimes, they are just moments that he’s lost because he never thought they’d be important, and now moments he’d give anything to remember.

There are pictures of a fern he had named their first year, little annotations on the bottom of some others. Dates, but with no context otherwise. Names scribbled in black ink.

You’re in a lot of them, your smile timeless, your joy infectious even through film.

Arms slung around Suguru, face smushed against his, artfully blurry perhaps on accident, and annotated with scrawl that read: I call this masterpiece “Dumb Sweethearts” by Gojo Satoru :)

A picture of him and Shoko and Suguru, of them in one of Tokyo’s night markets, you behind the camera, the lights flashing and warm and pink, making them all look like they’ve transported to some other kind of cyberpunk world.

You and Shoko lounging in the gardens, having a tiny picnic at your insistence, and in Suguru’s handwriting in black: JUST GIRLS BEING PALS

Satoru stares at Suguru’s writing the longest, not even at his words, just the strokes of his pen. This is a new part of him Satoru thought had been destroyed, and he starves for it. It’s like his one and only lives and breathes in the ink, in those snapshots of him caught in eternal youth. When they’d been happy and unaware and not innocent, but cocky enough to think they could rule the world.

It’s hungry, the way he goes through each photo, searching for another glimpse of you, of him, of them together, until Satoru is all out of moments to feed on, and still, he feels empty, flicking through the last few photos.

You in a pool, arms wrapped around Shoko and beaming like the sun.

A shot of Satoru and Suguru climbing trees shot from below, your eyes and skeptically raised eyebrows in frame, captioned big dumb monkeys

And the last one…

He holds it to the sunlight and his gaze softens.

A selfie of you kissing Suguru on the cheek. It’s mostly dark, but they were definitely in the bathroom, and the flash made Suguru’s outstretched arm look pale as a ghost, but even so, there’s no mistaking the happiness captured there. He was sticking out his tongue, winking, and red as a beet so he was either drunk or you had said something or both. Your arms were wrapped around his neck, nose squished against his cheek, eyes squeezed tight as he took the shot.

Turning it over, Satoru’s heart plummets into his chest. In Suguru’s clean, blocky writing:

THE GIRL IM GOING TO MARRY ONE DAY <3

And crossed out is your reply followed by a little note:

dummy doesnt have the nerve to propose SHHH!!!! ONE DAY C:

One day.

It sounds so much emptier now.

He lowers the photo back to his lap, and glances around him, at all these scattered moments captured forever. Gathering them up again, he relives them all over again, looking at each photo for longer to see if he’s missed anything, but mostly his stare lingers on your face, and on Suguru’s, and his own, too, because he can’t remember what it felt like back then, but he is sure it feels so much better than now.

The polaroids come together a neat stack and he is careful not to scratch any of them when he clips them together. The top photo is of you with your arms wrangled around Suguru and Satoru, your face split in a maniacal laugh, their mouths open in shock, eyes bulging in how you must’ve scared them witless.

Shoko’s messy writing at the bottom, for it must’ve been her who had taken the photo: BREAKING NEWS: Japan’s Strongest Conquered by a Woman.

A smile cracks his weary face and he runs a thumb over their faces before sliding the photos back into the envelope for safe-keeping.

Then, he grabs the letter. His name is written again on the first flap, and he reads it three times over before unfolding the paper, not quite ready but also not sure if he ever will be.

Immediately, a faint, herbal-like scent slashed with antiseptic flows from the page and his stomach curdles as your script pours down the page.

Swallowing, Satoru shifts and leans against the wall, hiking a foot up onto the seat and holding your inked characters to the light. There’s a date inscribed at the top.

Thursday.

The first Thursday after you had been released from the hospital. Your last Thursday before you were back in for good.

“Shit.”

He folds the letter again and tilts his head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling.

Does he want to read this? Does he really want to fucking read this?

Taking a deep breath, he clears his throat and lowers his gaze to stare determinedly ahead of him. The purple flowers greet him warmly and he shakes the shiver out of his body before tightening his grip on your letter and unfolding it again, forcing his eyes on the page.

My Satoru,

I sent all the pictures I had of Shoko to her, and she has some of Suguru, too. Now that I’m gone, there’s no use if I keep them. Maybe you two could share some time, laugh it up over these old memories. I know she says she can’t stand you, but to be honest, who else is there that will remember us now? Who else is there to remember Suguru for more than his bloody hands and me as more than that girl too sick to do anything but die?

Some legacy we said we’d leave, huh.

I don’t think I told you this, but with this disease catching up to me, it’s hard not to form hypotheses on why it’s happening or how. I have quite a few theories, and, unfortunately, none of them are pleasant or unriddled with angst. By now, you’ve probably figured out it’s a curse, and if you’re smart enough to ignore how much I’ll probably deny it, that it’s some love bullshit. If you didn’t know, now you do.

I know it’s weird. Suguru is dead. It shouldn’t be happening, right?

That’s what I thought, too

You once said love manifests the most twisted curses. I never thought of it that way before, but I’m starting to think you’re right. I don’t want to curse you by dying, but I can’t help but wonder if we can control who we curse. If I hadn’t heard you say that, would I still be here? Healthy? Okay?

I don’t know. I can’t predict alternate timelines, because I got to live one life, and that’s more than most people get. But, because I know you, you want me to entertain you. I’m sighing as I write this.

Look, I know the pain would still be there. I know I still wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for what I did, even if it was what had to be done. I know I would still miss him. I know that I would still long for the day I didn’t feel guilty for loving someone else.

If you didn’t curse me, I cursed myself. It drives me crazy that this is how the die was cast, even now, even after months where I could’ve accepted this, but at least this physical manifestation almost makes me… calm. Like seeing what this life has done to me makes me brave enough to fight it. If anything at all, the curse brought me a greater understanding of how powerful our world is in comparison to people who… are normal. The people we have to protect.

I’m sorry. Reading this back, it sounds like I’m the one cursing you now; telling you all this knowledge that can only bring you more anguish. I promise, this isn’t what it is. I just want you to understand. You couldn’t have saved me, Satoru. I couldn’t have given you the absolution you wanted, and if that’s how it is, then I just hope that one day you can look back on this and it won’t hurt anymore.

It’s always been so complicated between us, after what happened to Suguru, and after what he did, even ten years ago. What we couldn’t stop and what we had to do that day. There was always a line that I thought I couldn’t cross, or a line you didn’t want to cross, and it was shaped a lot like him. I don’t know if it was just in my head, but there was something holding us back, and I was fine dancing around it because I saw how you felt about him and I understood. Your eyes always changed when you looked at him. When you spoke of him. Even after.

Always after.

Don’t think I’m angry. I’m not blind. I know how much you two meant to each other, and I could never be angry that Suguru is so cherished. Missed. It makes everything so much harder, so much more painful.

Look, in the end, I loved him, and you did, too. And if we both still do, that’s okay. He deserved love.

I guess it just feels like a stab in the back that it wasn’t enough.

But life isn’t a fairytale. None of it really matters. To be honest, I wouldn’t trade any of it for a second, and I hope you wouldn’t either.

Maybe life isn’t supposed to be lived happily, but lived contently. And I did. I am satisfied with what I’ve done, even if I wanted to do so much more.

I’m so grateful to have known you, to have had you by my side. I hope you can say the same.

Don’t regret my death. Remember how much fun we had when we were stupid kids, and smile. Because I don’t want you to think your best years are behind you. I want you to be happy, even if I can’t be there to see it. I want you to be excited for your future, even if I can’t be in it.

I’ll always be watching over you, so smile for me every once in a while. Even if it seems like you’ll never feel anything again. One day, I promise you will, and it won’t feel so bad.

Yours forever and ever and ever,

(Name)

Throat crushed, he reads one line over and over the most. He’s memorized your letter heart, but he still carries it around with him, anyway.

“I know that I would still long for the day I didn’t feel guilty for loving someone else.”

Sometimes, he just wants to imagine your hand whispering over the page, the pen tapping against your chin, your face as you wrote, the sigh that you said you heaved. Because he’ll never hear you laugh again, see your smile. Your voice will never tease his ear, your fingers will never touch his face. There is no more laugh-wrinkles set in a face always perfectly hit by sunlight, and this is all he has left. His memory, and what you’ve left behind.

It makes him laugh how almost lovestruck stupid he’s being, but… he doubts anyone blames him. As long as he’s still doing his job, as long as he’s still the Strongest, what does it matter if he carries a dead woman’s letter in his pocket everywhere?

“Warm weather, even in the evenings. That’s a bit unusual,” Nanami observes, startling Satoru and he looks up at the blond who stops by him in the gardens. The man is wearing his grey suit, as always, and his watch glimmers in the fading gold light. “How are you?”

Satoru’s fingers tighten around the letter in his hands. As usual, the urge to crumple it up, throw it into the garbage to never see it again, has reared its head after his latest re-read, but he’ll stave it off. He always manages to.

“Fine,” he replies, glancing at the startling blood red and burnt orange leaves casually. Colours seem a bit brighter, and Satoru still squints a bit against them, despite the soft light of the sunset. He doesn’t know when his Six Eyes got so sensitive to that kind of stuff, but it almost feels good to be distracted by something so trivial as sensitive eyesight. “It is a bit warm for October.”

Nanami hums. “How are your plants doing?”

“Mine are doing good,” he says, smiling. “The tulips have gone dormant, so nothing to worry about there. The one with purple flowers, though. It’s a tough one. It took me a while to figure out what it liked, but it didn’t go dormant or anything as long as I gave it enough water and paid attention to it.”

“That’s good.” Nanami adjusts his green lenses and sighs like he’s bracing himself for something difficult. “Gojo,” he begins, but Satoru merely folds your letter up and slides it into his breast pocket, holding up a hand.

“Whatever you’re going to say, Nanami, I don’t need to hear it.”

“Are you sure?” he asks skeptically, gaze following as Satoru stands, patting his jacket. Adjusting the lapel, he turns to his friend and when he grins, it feels like it reaches his eyes behind his sunglasses for the first time in two months.

“I’ve done this before, Nanami. I’ll be fine.” He waves it away. Nanami frowns. “I’m gonna get some dinner, though. Care to join? There’s a real good ramen place in Ikebukuro that you have to try.” The blond man observes him for a moment, before shaking his head, saying he had dinner already. “Suit yourself. Next time, I’m treating you, though.”

Lips puckered in a whistle, Satoru turns around and begins to walk away.

A breeze sweeps through the gardens, rustling the leaves in a discordant harmony, and sneaking into his jacket, sending a slight shiver up his spine as Nanami’s voice follows after him.

“The flower she left you is the sakurasou.” Satoru stops, hands in his pockets, but he doesn’t turn around as Nanami continues, “I wasn’t certain if if you knew.”

“Nope, I didn’t. Thanks for the info.” Lifting a hand, he barely looks over his shoulder before saluting with two fingers and smiling cheekily. It’s not as forced as it used to be. In fact, it comes quite easy as he reaches into his pocket for his phone. He knows what he has to find out now. “See ya later, Nanami.”

“Good evening,” he replies, and in a blink of an eye, Satoru is gone.

On the windowsill of his empty apartment, the sakurasou soaks in the last remnants of the day before wilting against two photos.

One of four students, arms entangled, and faces framed in eternal youth.

And another immortalizing what could’ve been longer than a few shaky months if someone had been just a bit braver.

a/n: satoru’s google search result: the meaning of sakurasou - desire and long-lasting love.

and yes, there was an actual lunar eclipse on july 27th, 2018 (28th in japan time). it was very pretty. i researched a bit about both the lunar eclipse and the medical stuff, but excuse any inaccuracies! tis but a work of fiction <3 also, fun fact: the polaroid camera is supposed to be the instax mini 90 but ive never used it so excuse those inaccuracies as well SKNDALSDKN

ngl i did wanna write an alternative ending, but i can’t see this ending any other way. this is it. this is the canon, and we got a bit of happy feelies at the end as a treat. thank you for reading!

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thetaoofzoe · 3 years

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Fic: Syverson the Protector pt 5

* Syverson The Protector - Part I (pairing Syverson x YOU)

* Syverson the Protector - Part II (pairing Syverson x YOU)

* Syverson the Protector - Part III (pairing Syverson x YOU)

* Syverson the Protector - Part IV (pairing Syverson x YOU)

Author note: Finally part 5! Thank you so much for hanging in with me through this delightful journey and I hope that this part quenches your desire.

Summary: Henry has invited you to spend a few weeks at his cabin in the mountains and of course you agree. 💖NEW💖

Rating for this part: Sex, fluff, discussion of trauma (minor) Everyone has a good time and Aika is there too :)

I’ve picked ‘Henry’ as Syverson’s first name and he’s grown his hair out :D

Must be read in order, no part can stand alone.

Word count: 7500

Want to read more? Click for my Masterlist

‘Well,’ said your nurse as she watched you sort and pack your belongings. ‘If you want him to know how you feel, you have to tell him.’

She folded her arms and leaned against the narrow door frame to your hospital room. You glanced up at her.

‘I’m not twelve, Barb,’ you scoffed, nevertheless feeling pleased with her observation.

‘Well you were the one asking me to pass notes to him like you were in school.’

You raised your brows in surprise and then pointed an accusatory finger at her. You had resorted to note passing because you couldn’t see Henry face to face and communicate with him like an adult. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but you made it work.

‘You, Nurse Barb,’ you started, about to say something caustic and then relented, deciding to be sweet. ‘Did a great job passing notes, and I thank you.’

You flipped closed your small travel case and crossed the hospital room to grab at one of the slowly deflating helium ‘Get Well’ balloons which still listed lazily around the silver weight that held it in place. With a small pair of scissors, you cut the ribbon tether and lanced the mylar in an inconspicuous place. Pressing the balloon to your chest, you squeezed out the remainder of the helium air mix and added the now flat balloon to the pile of other flattened balloons.

‘So? Then what are you going to do about it?’ Barb continued to press. ‘Leave and regret never having said anything?’’

You stopped compacting the pile of deflated balloons and turned to look at her.

This whole budding romance thing between two war torn lovers must have been the most exciting thing that had ever happened to the nurse, you thought pleasantly. It was certainly exciting to you. So, you cut her some slack.

‘I just happen to know that he’s outside in the pool area right now. And, you have some time before your flight.’

The look on her face was both encouraging and infuriating.

Smiling, you walked to the door and patted Barb’s shoulder.

‘All right. I’ll go.’

She waggled her brows, turned and walked with you down the narrow corridor and then through the half-empty dayroom. She stopped at the double glass doors that led to the pool area and used her weight to press open one side.

‘I can’t tell if you’re a really good matchmaker or a really bad matchmaker,’ you said absently.

She shrugged.

‘Good luck, and don’t be too hard on him.’

‘I won’t. Well, I probably won’t. Well...I can’t promise.’

She chuckled and quickly gave you a one-armed hug.

‘I’ll have them bring your bags to the car when it turns up. There are a few people going to the airport with you. So if I don’t see you… keep in touch, ok?’

You nodded and walked through the open door.

The pool area, as they called it, was really just a collection of beach umbrellas shading colourful inflatable kiddie pools, some blowup flamingos, and an odd assortment of mismatched lawn chairs. There were several men camped out around most of the medium sized pools, with their feet in the water and enjoying each other’s company. You spotted Henry right off the bat, as he was the only one still in a wheelchair and paused a moment to watch him laugh at something the man next to him had just said. You were loath to interrupt them.

I’ll just leave a note, you thought, turning your back to the men in order to return to the day room. He won’t mind. I’ll leave a note and my business card so he won’t feel pressured to say anything to my face.

A little lost in thought, you lingered there for a moment, with your hand on the door handle when your thoughts were interrupted by a chorus of teasing male voices calling out your name, accompanied by whistles and several coquettish sounding ‘yoo-hoo!’s.

A wave of heat rushed into your face and you hunched your shoulders in a self-conscious cringe.

Jesus Christ you hated military men sometimes.

But you had been caught and you had no other choice but to turn around and face them.

One of the men kicked out the empty lawn chair closest to Syverson and waved you over. Taking the invitation, you drew the chair close to the circle, lightly rested your hand on Henry’s shoulder and sat down next to him. It was good to see him looking so well.

‘I read your new article,’ said the man, and by deciphering his medical wristband you learned he was called Solensky. ‘That was a damn brave thing you did.’

You shook your head and looked at Syverson, hoping that he didn’t think you were trying to steal glory.

‘I didn’t write it to showcase what I did. I had to tell people what really happened. How heroic the men were. And my partner. The sacrifices that they all made. What I did wasn’t important.’

‘Saving my life wasn’t important?’

Syverson sounded a little bit hurt and turning to him you were at a loss to read his suddenly cloudy expression.

You opened your mouth to protest.

‘I-- I didn’t mean that you… of course you are important. I just did what I had to.’

You held his incredulous gaze and continued, ‘you know that, Henry.’

Didn’t he believe you?

‘He don’t mean it like that,’ said Solensky. ‘He means that, you doing what you did, was important. Even if you don’t think it was.’

Henry obviously agreed with the man’s assessment, for a smile lifted the corner of his mouth and you cut a relieved and fondly exasperated look at him. Sitting back in the creaky lawn chair you kicked your feet out in front of you and rested them against the cushy rounded pool edge.

‘Thank you,’ you said finally and nodded to Solensky. ‘I had hoped to get it finished and published before I left.’

It felt good to hear some praise from the men you were trying to uplift.

‘You leaving soon?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Today. In a few hours in fact.’

You turned to face Henry again.

‘I wanted to say goodbye before I did.’

His face remained unreadable and you feared that you had upset him in some way.

The door to the dayroom opened and Barb called to you.

‘The car is here early. They have to do more stops, so you’ll have to leave now, I’m sorry.’

You shot Syverson a panicked look.

Now? But you didn’t say all you wanted to say. You didn’t have time!

‘Ok,’ Henry said finally. ‘You don’t want to keep them waiting or they’re gonna have you walking home.’

He pressed himself up and out of the wheelchair and breathing a little hard from the exertion, he faced you when you stood as well.

‘I’m in your debt. Whenever you need me, for whatever reason, I want you to call on me. It don’t matter, you got that?’

‘I got it,’ you answered, feeling a deep pang of agony and regret in your gut. Leaving was harder than you had expected.

Henry smiled then and curving his arms around you, he pulled you against his sun warmed body.

And what torture it was for him to hold you like that!

You put your head on his chest and embraced him in return. And, when you lifted your teary eyes, he leaned in and kissed your forehead. But that wasn’t good enough. Not nearly enough and you squeezed him when his lips met yours.

‘Ok… ok,’ you giggled, feeling hot faced and aroused. ‘You gotta stop that or I won’t be able to leave.’

He didn’t release you.

‘You can stay and come home with me,’ he said, moving in for another kiss.

You ducked your head and stepped out of his embrace.

‘If you behave, maybe I will.’

Barb cleared her throat, a signal that you were out of time, and kissing him quickly, you turned to leave.

‘Barb’ll give you my card. It’ll have my info on it.’

‘I will?’ she asked, glaring at you and then at him. ‘Boy, I’ll be glad when you leave and I can stop all of this note ferrying back and forth.’

‘See ya,’ said Henry.

‘Soon,’ you promised and went through the day room doors.

It had been six months. Six months of convalescing at home, writing columns and binge watching all of the television shows you missed while you were deployed. It had also been a pleasant six months of regular correspondence with Henry, which culminated in him asking you to come to the mountains with him for a few weeks. He had a little cabin in Montana which he had been renovating and now that Aika was finished with her mandatory quarantine in the States, he was going to go there and relax.

A few weeks in the fresh mountain air was just what you needed and once you agreed, he made and paid for your travel arrangements.

It was refreshingly cool when you shuffled into the noise and chaos of the airport arrival terminal on your way to the baggage claim. However, you walked a little more leisurely than the hustling crowd, taking in the sights and idly people watching. As a journalist, although you had trekked through more airports than you cared to count, the peculiar culture of tiny, and expensive indoor pseudo-cities like this was still so compelling. It wouldn’t be strange to see a bleary eyed man chowing down on a stacked burger and swilling his third bourbon on the rocks at 6:30 in the morning. Or seeing a grown woman tucked into an awkward corner, and clutching her carry-on bag protectively in front of her as she tried to catch some sleep during an unexpected flight delay.

You had been both of those people at one point or another in your travels. But there was another reason why you were strolling and taking your time examining the mass produced keychains and tee shirts proclaiming the name of the state you were in. You were nervous and your heart banged painfully against your ribs. You could feel it galloping and straining against its internal tethers and you had to stop occasionally and pretend to look at overpriced pizza slices in order to catch your breath.

You were nervous about seeing him again. That sweet, unfairly handsome Captain Henry Syverson.

The thought of him made you smile but you pressed it into a straight neutral line in the event someone was watching. You didn’t want to seem crazy, grinning down at a display case of heat-lamp warmed slices of cheese pizza.

When you finally reached baggage claim, a man, dressed in a dark suit and white shirt was waiting for you. He stood with the rest of the chauffeurs looking bored and holding an open tablet on which your name stood out in bold block letters on the screen. You walked expectantly up to him and he smiled and greeted you by name.

‘How was your trip?’ he asked, as he walked with you to the baggage carousel.

‘It was fine, thank you.’

And the two of you stood side by side watching the conveyor belt start to move and roll out the luggage.

‘Which one is yours?’ he asked, moving closer to the belt, ready to snag your bag as it tumbled by.

‘The red one, with the white stripe. It has the camera shaped luggage tag.’

He nodded and when that red bag came by, he grabbed it by the side handle. He then put it down, pulled up the telescoped handle and indicated that you follow him to the parking lot. Outside, the cool air woke you from your flight induced stupor and you took in a long cleansing breath.

‘First time in Montana?’ he asked, grinning as he watched you stretch your arms and back.

‘Just tired,’ you said. ‘Long flight.’

He opened the door to the glossy black SUV and helped you step up into the high spotless interior. Through the back window you watched him stow your suitcase in the trunk and followed him with your eyes until he climbed into the truck.

‘So,’ he said and fiddled with his tablet. ‘It’s going to take a little while to get to the destination. Is it warm enough for you? Too warm? There are snacks in the centre console and water under the seat. Do you mind if I have the radio on?’

The questions seemed rehearsed and you assured him that everything was fine before you sat back into the plush leather seats and he drove off.

Taking out your mobile, you switched it off of airplane mode and it immediately pinged that you had a message.

Making sure you landed safely.

You smiled and replied that you had done just that and were already on your way.

I’ll be waiting. I hope you’re hungry.

The driver was right. It took two and a half hours to get to the cabin and the last mile or so was on a dirt road so pitted and bumpy that you weren’t sure you were going to come out of the ride in one piece.

But it was all made better when you spotted Henry standing with Aika on the broad porch of a gorgeous mountain cabin. When he said that he wanted you to spend time with him at the cabin, you immediately pictured it to be a one or two room Little House on the Prairie type place. Which was absolutely fine with you, as you wouldn’t be there to admire the decor. However, you were not expecting the beautiful structure that stood proudly amongst the trees.

The driver slowed, made an awkward k-turn in the dirt and deposited you directly in front of the tall man approaching the truck.

The sight of Henry made you feel weak and proud to show the driver that you had been chosen by a superior specimen. Henry briefly spoke to the driver through his open window and the trunk popped open. With hands clasped in your lap, you waited. Henry grabbed your suitcase, slammed shut the trunk and then opened your door. He positively beamed at you and when you took his outstretched hand, you felt like a princess being rescued from a high tower.

When the SUV made its way back down the dirt road and the two of you were finally alone, you were faced with one of two decisions.

One: behave in your usual awkward way and shake his hand or pat his shoulder and thank him for letting you come and visit.

Two: press into his arms and give him the biggest hello I fucking missed you, kiss he’d ever received.

With some internal dismay, you found yourself leaning towards option one. You didn’t want to lead him to the wrong impression about you and slowly you extended your hand.

A look of surprise drifted across his face, but he was apparently willing to follow your lead. Before he could take that hand, you had a change of heart and instead ran straight at him and clamped your arms about his waist.

‘Hey, baby,’ he murmured, kissing the top of your head and enveloping you in his strong arms.

Oh God, you thought. I’m gonna start crying.

Tears pricked your eyes and before you could stop yourself, you heaved with a desperate sob.

‘What’s the matter?!’ he asked, sounding alarmed with the sudden change in your attitude.

You clutched him tighter and put your face against him.

‘I’m… I’m so happy to see you standing right here,’ you gasped.

The last time you’d seen him in the flesh, he had still been mostly confined to a wheelchair, still healing from his terrible wounds and unable to look after himself. But there he was now, strong and whole and so warm in your arms that you felt an overwhelming sense of affection for him.

Henry held you tighter and you felt infinitely safe in his embrace. Everything was right with the world.

‘I thought about the moment I could do this,’ he said, gently stroking your back. ‘And now I made you cry.’

‘I’m just so happy to see you well,’ you said, pulling back and looking at his wryly smiling face. ‘And not hooked up to wires and IVs.’

‘Ok,’ he drawled. ‘Me too. In that case…’

He curved one hand about your cheek and lifting your face, he kissed you. It took a few more moments of cuddling before you eventually stopped trembling and having an existential crisis. He drew back, bent down and picked up your bag.

‘You hungry?’ he asked, slipping his hand down to your lower back and guiding you to the glorious cabin.

‘Famished!’ you announced and stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

The dog on the porch sat up and wriggled with pleasure, her thick furry tail whapping excitedly on the wooden boards.

Henry dragged his fingers through the thick brown and black scruff and scratched her angular head. The dog bowed and flattened her ears softly and approached you. You put both hands on her head and massaged her fluffy ears.

‘I remember you,’ you said to the dog who continued to eagerly lick at your hands.

‘This place is different than where she’s from, but she loves it.’

Then to Aika he said, ‘stay on the porch.’

And the dog promptly flopped down on the cushiony bed made from folded quilts and began her surveillance of the surrounding tranquil woods.

Henry opened the cabin door and ushered you in.

The inside was just as spectacular as the outside and your mouth came open with surprise.

‘I know you did all of this, didn’t you. It’s so… beautiful.’

‘I had help,’ he answered modestly. ‘It’s been a work in progress for years. Still got some things to do, but it’s liveable.’

Liveable, you scoffed silently. That was an understatement. The place was an obviously handcrafted masterpiece. From the matte blonde wood flooring and the warm caramel panelling, it was a masculine tribute to a rustic lifestyle. The appliances were new, but understatedly retro and wood burning. The main living room was broad and comfortable with soft couches and homespun appointments. You followed Henry down a narrow hallway to the left. Off of that hallway was a short staircase that led to the upper floor.

‘There’s a guest bedroom down there,’ he said pointing to the door at the end of the corridor and the master is upstairs.’

He gestured that you go up the stairs and you complied. Opening the door at the top of the stairs, you found yourself walking into a bright warm room with a large bed facing a broad clean window that overlooked the trees and the lake behind the cabin. It smelt of pine and you wondered if he picked that scent because he thought you might like it. You did like it.

Henry put your bag on the floor by the bed.

‘This is your room.’

He rested a hand on the glossy dresser top which had been pushed against the far wall.

‘You can put your stuff in here, or hang them up in the closet.’

He opened the door next to the dresser to show you the empty closet space.

‘Bathroom’s over here.’

He crossed the room, opened the second door and you poked your head in, pleased to see a full bath and tub.

That tub might come in handy for sexytimes.

Once the tour was completed you smiled at him, but left the question of where he was going to stay to burn on the tip of your tongue.

It didn’t stay there long for Henry beat you to it.

‘I’ll be downstairs… in the guest room.’

There was hesitation in his voice and he trailed off seeming suddenly shy and awkward.

Was he as nervous about your visit as you were?

He didn’t look at you as he put a hand against the back of his head, which you knew was an unconscious self-soothing gesture. But you didn’t want to put him out of his misery just yet. You were enjoying it too much.

‘If… when you need me,’ he finished.

The implication of needing him, at night, hung heavily in the air and trailing a finger up his bare forearm, you squashed a smile.

‘And you’ll be downstairs…’ you said, keeping your voice serious and your expression neutral. ‘If… I mean when I need you. You’ll be downstairs? In the guest bedroom? Downstairs?’

He looked at you a moment, his own expression a mild mix of confusion and then that sweet slow bloom of understanding in his eyes. You saw the exact moment that he realised you were teasing him and you couldn’t help laughing.

‘C’mon you,’ you said, slipping your hand into his. ‘I’m starving.’

***

Once downstairs, he packed a big red-topped cooler with vegetables and potatoes and steaks that had been marinating overnight, as well as cutlery, plates and other sundry items. Carrying only a chilled six pack of bottled lager, you followed him down the winding gravel path to the lake. There was a rustic firepit down there flanked by two dark wood adirondack chairs and a picnic table.

You wondered if he made all of that himself and then chuckled. Of course he did.

You watched him dump the cooler next to the grated firepit and go to grab a few already split logs from a nearby pile. Clutching the thin cardboard handle of the sixpack in both hands you felt unbearably girly and unwilling to admit that watching him start a fire with a small pile of tinder and a magnesium firestick, aroused the fuck out of you. It didn’t help that his jeans stretched nicely across his thighs when he crouched lower and gently blew onto the young flame before quickly adding additional fuel until the fire was stable enough to tent the logs over it.

Henry rose and dusted his hands against the seat of his jeans and you cleared your throat.

‘That was sexy,’ you said and laughed at your own audacity.

He glanced at you over his shoulder, clearly appreciative of your praise, but instead of addressing it, he pointed to the short pier.

‘Do you see the green nylon sack over there?’

You looked and nodded.

‘Take the bottles and put ‘em in the sack and lower it into the water. That’ll keep ‘em cold.’

Feeling helpful, you did as you were told. When you returned a few minutes later, you hoisted yourself up onto the top of the picnic table and rested your feet on the bench seat.

‘Do you want some help?’ you asked after a moment.

‘Nope,’ he answered, and cast another amused look at you over his shoulder. ‘You just sit there and be pretty for me, ok?’

You preened, and lightly patted your face. It was as pretty as you were going to get.

‘I think I can do that. Sure.’

And you sat there thinking about having children with him. You imagined taking them on camping trips and teaching them all of the survival skills they needed to fend for themselves in the event the zombie apocalypse drove your family into the woods. So you asked him if he was prepared for the apocalypse and sat there rapt as he explained his six point plan and how he had been planning and storing for the last three years.

When dinner was ready, the two of you ate at the picnic table and drank most of the beer and discussed the pros and cons of wasting ammo to achieve a head shot as opposed to just disabling the zombie so that you could escape it.

‘Yeah, but you are the one who’s gonna get the successful headshots. I’m just out there swinging a rake or something.’

‘Can get you a katana if you like.’

You laughed and swigged your beer. Pointing the mouth of the bottle at him you scoffed.

‘A katana?? I’d more likely slice myself up before I’d do any damage to a zombie.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Henry replied easily and stood up to stoke the fire.

He helped himself to another few spoonfuls of vegetables, which when offered, you declined.

‘A little training and some practice, you’d be fine.’

‘You have a lot of misplaced faith in me, sir,’ you teased him.

Henry was quick to answer.

‘You’re wrong. You already proved to be capable, ingenious and tougher than you think. I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.’

Your chest tightened at the traumatic memory and you stared down at your empty bottle. The helpless tears started to threaten again.

But biting them back, you reached across the table and put your hand over his. Henry took it, curved your fingers over his and brought your hand to his lips.

Henry’s open emotion made you feel just as raw and vulnerable as you had that fateful day. The day that entwined your lives together forever.

You reached for him with your other hand and stroked his cheek, trailing your fingers through his beard which continued to amaze you with how soft it was to touch. He captured your other hand and kissed that one as well and then held them both. And when he smiled, you smiled in return. It was all right now.

It was starting to get dark and across the lake, you could see the setting sun disappearing behind the mountains. Henry got up and began clearing the table.

‘ Go and sit by the fire,’ he instructed you when you tried to help.

If he wanted to do all of the work, who were you to stop him. You slid onto the cool chair and drew your knees up and to the side to get comfortable just as Aika came trotting out of the woods. She went immediately to you and put her slobbery chin on your thigh. You rubbed her furry head until she was tired of the attention and went to beg scraps from Henry.

‘Coffee?’ he asked a moment later and lifted an old battered tin percolator to show you that he meant coffee and not anything else.

‘I could have one, sure.’

You had got used to black coffee during your time on the front and really never bothered to change it when you went back to civilian life. The cup he gave you was hot and tasted fresh with a hint of vanilla.

‘Vanilla,’ you said and he chuckled, seating himself in the chair next to you.

‘I ah… I got used to it over there, now I can’t drink any other kind.’

You didn’t mind it. Not at all and the two of you sat in companionable silence.

‘It’s a beautiful place, Henry. A beautiful cabin. I am amazed that you did all of this.’

‘My friends helped. This is their place when they want it too.’

Aika flopped down on the space between the chairs and Henry reached down to pat her head.

‘Are you glad I’m here?’ you asked finally, admittedly fishing a little for compliments.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m very glad you’re here.’

You were going to say something else but a yawn caught you off guard. Now that you were full and content and safe, sleepiness began to creep in around the corners.

‘You had a long flight,’ Henry offered as explanation, holding out his hand to take your cup. ‘If you want to go on in to sleep, I’ll take care of things here out here.’

‘No! No, I don’t want to leave. I’m not too sleepy.’

‘Awright,’ he chuckled and leaned back into the chair.

Aika yawned then and you did the same. You put the cup on the flat arm of the chair and closed your eyes. You had never felt so happy and before you knew it, you had drifted off. When you woke with a start later, it was dark and the fire had been extinguished. A glimmer of faint stars reflected by the lake was your only anchor point that confirmed where you were.

But it was the type of dark that could only be achieved when there was no light pollution from nearby cities and you felt a twinge of panic.

‘Henry?’ you called sitting up.

He wasn’t in the chair next to you and Aika was gone.

Shit! What if the killer was still out there?

You heard footsteps approaching on the gravel path.

‘I’m here.’

His voice was warm and steady.

There was no moon and standing, you blindly searched in front of you as he came closer. He put his hand around you, resting it low on your back then pulled you to him. At his touch, a jolt of welcomed pleasure spread out from your core.

‘Why are you out here lurking in the dark?’ you giggled softly, pressing your hands flat on his chest.

‘Making sure nothing carries you off,’ he replied just as quietly and gave you a squeeze.

Henry was clearly feeling for the edges of your boundaries and you deeply appreciated that about him. He hadn’t forced your hand and he was eagerly playing by your rules.

‘I’m glad to have my big strong protector to save me from the monsters. Are you… gonna take me inside now?’

‘Yeah. C’mon.’

God, his voice was so unbearably soft and alluring and you knew that if you weren’t careful, you would find yourself beneath him in his bed tonight.

You had to be careful, so once inside the cabin, you kissed him and bade him goodnight. Admittedly, that probably wasn’t how he expected the evening to end but you knew you were going to make the wait worth his while.

After showering thoroughly, you changed your clothes and sat down on the edge of the soft bed. The cabin was quiet except for the normal sounds of the woods coming in through the open window and the sounds of Henry moving around downstairs.

I could get used to this.

After a moment you heard the shower running downstairs and you immediately worried that you hadn’t left enough hot water for him. Stretching out on top of the quilt you listened and imagined his naked body, his wet, soapy naked body and a tingle raced up your thighs and pooled insistent heat in your groin. You bit your lip and pushed your hand between your legs. You held your hand there, still and unmoving and listened until everything had fallen silent on the lower floor.

You breathed quietly, in and out and in and out again and relaxed, drawing your hand away and tucking it across your midsection.

Sleep, you thought. It was all going to be more rational in the morning.

Bright sunlight and sweet bird songs greeted you the next morning. After washing up, you followed the scent of coffee and breakfast downstairs.

The front room was empty, but there was food and a still steaming coffee pot on the stove. The sound of Aika barking outside led you to the door and then out onto the porch. Henry stood at the bottom of the steps holding a red ball which he launched into the air for the dog to chase. He turned when you came to stand next to him.

‘Morning,’ he grinned and kissed you when you lifted your face to ask for it.

‘Hi. How did you sleep?’

‘Yeah, good, good. You?’

You stretched in the warm morning sunlight and fondly watched Aika race back to you. She dropped the ball and danced away, to wait for the next missile. Henry obliged and the dog took off again.

‘It was better than I expected,’ you admitted happily. ‘It usually takes me a couple of nights before I can get comfortable in a new place.’

He nodded and took a drink from his flowered cup.

‘Good. Hungry?’

‘I love that you’re always feeding me,’ you said joyfully. ‘Can we eat down by the lake?’

‘Anything you want, baby,’ he agreed.

The air by the lake was warm and fresh and a few metres out on the water was a group of ducks having a morning swim. Basking in the sun with a hearty meal and an intriguing and funny man was the most indulgent thing you could have possibly done. And you held onto the moment for as long as it presented itself.

You even agreed to a short easy hike after breakfast and in a sun drenched meadow you lay in the sweet smelling grass and talked about nothing in particular.

The day passed in uneventful bliss and again, Henry prepared dinner over the fire and afterwards the two of you sat side by side on the top porch step to watch some unexpected fireworks in the eastern sky.

During a lull in the colourful explosions, you went inside to grab a seat cushion.

When you came onto the porch, you were careful not to kick the cup at Henry’s side. Instead you picked up your own cup and gesturing for him to make room, you tossed down the cushion and sat on the step right between his knees. A little smile blossomed on your face, a response to the feeling of peace spreading through you, and you leaned back against Henry using his thighs as arm rests.

‘I like this,’ you said quietly and relaxed into the warm hands gently kneading your shoulders.

‘Yeah.’

The sound of him, low and husky behind you, filled you with pleasure. You pressed harder between his open legs and he went still. This was the moment of truth. Your heart thrummed with anticipation against your ribs and when he relaxed, so did you.

A beat of silence drifted between you and then he spoke.

‘You wanna go inside with me?’

There was a loud scratching sound of your nails raking along his jeans, evidence of your involuntary reaction to his clear invitation.

‘Yes. I-- want to.’

The breath he let out was audible.

‘C’mon then.’

Henry pushed himself up from the step and effortlessly lifted you in the process. It was like floating on air, reckless yet safe in his strong arms and when your feet finally hit the porch, you were loath to be released. You turned around to face him and slid your arms about his neck. The force of his kiss surprised you, and you clung tighter to him, opening your mouth to take all of him in. Henry pulled you against him and walked backwards towards the cabin door.

You cried out with delight when he crouched and swept you up into his arms. Just like the charming prince he touted himself to be.

‘I love this,’ you murmured, nipping at his lower lip and then suckling it between your own. ‘Why don’t you fuck me in your bed.’

‘Fuck,’ he groaned and clutched you to his chest. ‘You’re gonna drive me crazy, baby.’

‘I promise I’ll drive you crazy.’

Henry didn’t waste time in carrying you to the small bedroom at the end of the hall.

His room was clean, and quiet. Not as fancy as the master bedroom, but it was enough with its bed and bureau and the small adjoining shower. Aika, who had been napping on the floor at the foot of the bed perked up and cautiously thumped her tail as if wondering why the hell the two humans were making so much noise.

‘Aika,’ said Henry desperately. ‘Out!’

With a groan of a petulant child, the dog heaved herself up and reluctantly left the room. Henry booted the door shut behind her and then set you down onto your feet. There was enough gloaming light coming in through the windows for you to see him grin.

He cupped your face between his hands and kissed you gently, thoroughly and then let his fingers trail down over your shoulders, your arms and then across your waist where he curled his fingers beneath the hem of your baggy tee shirt. Instinctively you raised your arms when he lifted the shirt up and over your head. He tossed the shirt onto the chair in the corner. He then turned you around and unhooked your bra which was also tossed to join the shirt. And still keeping your back to him, he kissed your shoulder and then the other and then kissed the space between them. The light scratch of his beard on such an unexpectedly tender place made you shiver and your nipples harden. He hummed quietly, a sound of absolute satisfaction and he nipped you lightly where your shoulder sloped down to your collarbone. You sighed voluptuously and leaned into his muscular chest, turning your upper body slightly and reaching back to smooth your hand over his head.

Henry slipped his hands up from your waist and cupped your bare breasts and kissed you deeply as if trying to drink in every bit of you. You felt utterly possessed, and helpless in the face of his overwhelmingly masculine sexual power. You would give him everything, anything and all he had to do was ask.

He slid his hands down your belly again and into the elastic waistband of your shorts. He eased them over your hips and chased your curves to the warm, velvety space between your legs. Highly aware of his two thick fingers beginning to work into your wetness you arched and moaned breathlessly, your voice rising sweetly into the warmth of the room. A dark knowing chuckle rumbled behind you and Henry dragged his tongue across your lower lip.

All of your attention narrowed to that single delicious focal point of those deft fingers stroking your quivering clit and sliding deeper inside you.

‘I want you,’ Henry murmured and the demand behind his words made you shudder. ‘I want you so bad.’

Yes, you thought. I want you. The moment I met you, I wanted you. I’ve always wanted you.

You turned in his arms and a wave of lust crashed over you at the sight of him. He slipped those two previous busy fingers into his mouth and sucked off your juice. You crooked a finger at him, beckoning him closer as you backed towards the bed. Henry whipped off his shirt and took his time unbuckling his belt and shoving down his jeans until he could stand beautifully naked before you, his thick beautiful cock hard and standing at the ready.

You were ready for him indeed. Henry closed the space between you and grabbing you about the waist, he hoisted you up and sprawled you messily across the bed. You sat up, reached for him and dragged him down atop you. He was heavy, and pressed you steadily into the soft sheets and you never wanted to escape him. Henry kissed you hard, punishingly, muffling your sudden cry of pleasure with his mouth. You hugged and kissed him and swore under your breath, eager for the soft velvety feel of his blood-hot cock sliding up along your inner thigh.

‘Come inside me, Henry.’

It was all the invitation he needed.

The newness of him sliding into you hurt just a little, a small but welcomed reminder of what it meant when two lovers finally joined. Henry stilled then, and breathed quietly, as if fighting his urge to cum. You stroked his shoulders and kissed his face, encouraging him to focus only on you. He lifted his head and held your gaze as he rocked up into you again, then again, slowly and deliberately, stoking that fire smouldering between the two of you. You arched against him, vaguely aware of your own lusty sounds and Henry increased the intensity of his thrusts and in turn heightened the ferocity of your pleasure.

Henry lit your fuse and it consumed you. It crackled over your sensitive flesh and along every nerve ending and you responded eagerly to every slow drag of his cock in and out of you. He made you feel alive, more alive than ever before and at the moment of your orgasm you closed your eyes and let his name escape your lips, offering it up as a prayer, as praise. As thanks.

You held onto him when he finally completed the circuit and poured himself inside you.

It took several moments of panting beneath him before Henry moved off of you and you immediately felt the loss. So you lay there, sweat cooling on your skin and basking in the warm feelings of well being. When your senses returned, you got up and went to the bathroom for a quick pee and wash up and when you returned, the bed was turned down and you crawled gratefully beneath the soft sheets.

‘That was fucking amazing,’ you murmured to the man next to you. ‘That was the best sex I have ever had.’

Henry chuckled and sounded pleased.

‘Yeah. I waited a long time for you.’

‘Oh yeah? The moment I put my hand in yours outside of the barracks, you what? Wanted to carry me off to fuck me?’

He grunted.

‘Yeah! Something like that. I would’ve at least got your name first, /then/ put you over my shoulder and carried you off.’

You smiled to yourself and imagined the scene and how shocked the men would have been to watch their stoic captain haul off the journalist for a little fun. You closed your eyes, only intending to get more comfortable to continue the conversation. However, again sleep had other ideas.

Light burst behind your eyelids and the sound of shouting male voices filled your ears. You struggled to open your eyes, but something was holding them sealed shut. Another explosion and then the sound of rocks raining down all around you. I’m on fire, you thought, desperately trying to claw your way out of burning clothes. Your hands were already seared into talons of fused flesh and bone and there was nothing you could do to stop the pain. Sand blasted your vulnerable flesh and you opened your mouth to scream, only to be choked by tiny merciless shards of hot glass. You continued to scream and scream barely aware of the hands on your arms and the voice calling you name. It was Henry and he was shaking you out of your nightmare.

‘You’re all right, baby. You’re all right,’ he murmured pulling you against him. ‘It’s just a nightmare. You’re all right now. I’m here.’

As the dream melted away, you curled up into his arms and burst into tears. Henry gentled you until you quieted and even beyond that until eventually you were able to speak.

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry…’

‘Don’t be sorry, baby,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t be. I’m here. I’ll protect you.’

You lifted your tear wet face and kissed him. Then again and again, rolling onto your back and pulling him with you.

‘Make love to me, Henry. Please. Make love to me.’

‘I’ll take care of you,’ he promised.

And you trusted him to do just that.

The morning rain kept the two of you inside the snug cabin and in bed where you took your time exploring and delighting in the mystery of each other.

‘Does it still hurt?’ you asked, pulling back the sheets and stroking your fingers along the thick jagged scar that cut across his lower belly.

Henry looked down at where you were touching him and shook his head.

‘No. Not anymore.’

You fell silent, listening to the rasp of your dry fingers gliding across his skin. Henry curled an arm about you when you put your head on his shoulder.

‘You never went to talk to someone about it, did you.’

It wasn’t a question and as much as you wanted to feign ignorance, you couldn’t shut down your immediate and visceral reaction to his observation.

No. You had buried yourself in work the moment you got back to the States and didn’t want to think about the trauma that had befallen you. What was the point? It was over, wasn’t it?

Henry felt your body tense and he rubbed your back.

‘That’s why you’re still having nightmares.’

Your voice was small when you spoke, hoping to be heard against the lashing rain.

‘I thought I could handle it.’

He chuckled.

‘I know. I thought I could handle it too. They don’t let us go home without group therapy. I fucking hate it, but I do it, because it works.’

You stopped the back and forth motion of your hand and just rested it on his scar. It was the thing that drew you together, the thing that reminded him of you.

Henry turned his head and kissed your forehead.

‘You’re so strong. And you’re carrying this weight. But you gotta let it go, baby.’

‘I know. I… dream about you dying in the explosion and then burning to death. I can’t stop it. I can’t help you.’

Henry held you close.

‘You’re alive and I’m alive. I’m right here with you. You don’t have to worry when you’re with me.’

You slept against his chest for most of the day and dreamed, not of violence in a desolate place but of a bright new future.

-end part 5 you naughty little things. I love you ;D Please consider helping me to broaden my audience by reblogging this fic and sharing. Thank you.

Tag list: @lightsidecalling @omgkatinka @igotkatiepowers @the-soot-sprite @harrysthiccthighss @little-green-love @foxyjwls007 @angreav @maizyistrash @liquorlaughslove @supernaturallymarvellous @laketaj24 @october505 @inlovewithhisblueeyes @foodieforthoughts @wolvesandhoundshowltogether @singeramg @sapphirescrolls @brandycranby @zealoushound @eldarwen333 @beck07990 @lunedelorient @henrythickcavill @kalesrebellion @angrythingstarlight @lavitabella87 @kebabgirl67 @hail-horror-queen

#henry cavill #captain syverson #captain syverson x reader #man of steel #geralt #the witcher #reader insert

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wizkiddx · 3 years

Note

I would for sure read a continuation of the birth photographer fic if you feel comfortable writing it/have time! Xx

a/n sorry I kinda combined these two together, I hope this is okay!! sorry ive taken so long too!! my requests are still open, just going a bit slowly :)

summary: literally just birth + harry

dad!tom x reader

warnings: childbirth, mentions of fainting, squint for suggestiveness too

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

“Your doing so good darling, just keep breathin’ like that for me, in-out-in-out”

That had pretty much been the soundtrack to your last 3 hours. And yes it was MORE annoying than it sounds. Of course, that’s also ignoring the insane amount of pain your uterus was putting you through - as it spasmed while the little bug in there was wriggling away. Giving birth was not easy but giving birth with a husband-turned-midwife wittering away in your ear? Un-fucking-bearable.

“Tom…. I love you but..” Everything had really been starting to ramp up in the last half an hour, you were a panting sweaty mess now. “Please… SHUT THE FUCK UP” Tom would’ve recoiled completely away from the bed because of your tone, if it wasn’t for the absolute death grip you had his right hand in. Instead, Tom settled for straightening straight up and staring helplessly and dejectedly across the room at his brother - who of course was trying to hold back laughter, knowing it would be very easy for you to switch your target to him.

Clearly it wasn’t a social call to the hospital, Harry was here under the premise of taking photos when the baby arrives for Tom; but really to stop his brother from having his own breakdown - as commissioned by you. Lets just say, however scared and mortified Harry was of this ‘event’ he was taking a lot of enjoyment from how his brother was acting currently.

“It’s okay sir, if you were pushing a watermelon out of hole that normally was the size of a whiteboard marker, I’m sure you’d be a bit tetchy too.” That lady was your favourite midwife and in a lull between the sets of contractions, you actually managed a laugh. Wide-eyed, Tom just nodded jerkily, murmuring some sort of agreement. It was at this point a flash of light reverberated around the whole room, causing you to breathlessly laugh, Harry’s face informing you the picture he just got of Tom was priceless.

The laughter didn’t last long though, the next contraction had you bearing down on the bed, face contorted in pain as you sucked desperately on the gas and air tube.

“Okay Y/n I think we might be getting there, let me call the senior midwifes in okay?” The midwife had your legs hiked apart, a blanket attempting to cover your modesty - but at this point she was basically sticking her face in your noon. Modesty was out the window.

“Already?” Tom was shocked to say the least, from all his reading and research he’d learnt that the average labour time was more like 5 hours. Lets just say, Tom never exceled in school, never much enjoyed reading - which made the hours of highlighting baby books and pregnancy leaflets all the more extraordinary.

“Babies don’t stick to the script sir.” You could tell she was proud of the pun there, because you know, Tom’s a moviestar. “Professional improvisers, the lot of them.”

The cream walls of the hospital room very quickly filled with more and more people - Harry staying like a fly on the wall, now nervously biting his nails as he watched an obscene amount of medical people all take their turn oggling his sister-in-law’s bits. This was a weird ass situation.

Almost immediately it was at the point the midwifes were telling you to push, which after 9 months of holding a baby in (as well as your ill functioning bladder) sounded like an absolute dream. But it was also absolutely terrifying and exciting and horrifying all wrapped in one. Naturally then, after nodding hesitantly at the midwife between your legs, you’d craned your neck across to tom .You might’ve just told him off, for trying to encourage you, but now? You needed his encouragement.

What met you though, was his face completely drained of colour, mouth hanging slightly open as he hadn’t moved - still staring intently at the midwife. She followed your gaze, only taking half a second to survey the situation before knowingly smiling.

“Can we get a bit of help for dad please?” Immediately one of the more junior looking midwives was directing (pushing) Tom into the chair next to the floor. Suddenly actually concerned, you looked with wide eyes to the lady between your legs, who you felt bad for not remembering her name. With a comforting squeeze of your ankle she reassured you he’d be right as rain after a few moments of having his head between his knees. Also sensing you needed your support, she arched up, beckoning over to Harry who had an equally bemused look on his face.

“No - I-um I’m not.” His squeaking protests were interrupted by a large scream on your part, as another contraction tore through your body. Helplessly Harry glanced between Tom, who was still hunched over on a chair with a nurse squatted infront of him; and you, writhing around on the mechanical bed. He didn’t hesitate then, in jumping right to your side, allowing you to start crushing all the bones in his hand too.

And then it was all happening, a blur of activity and screams. It didnt take long for Tom to pull himself together and then you were flanked on both sides by Holland boys - both giving cheesy encouraging words (which you would’ve again told them to shut the fuck up for, if you’d been able to), Tom also stroking the top of your head. He found it pretty impossible, watching the woman that he loved go through such immense pain - especially when he was technically half the cause. Well… actually more that that, it had been him who had been… well shall we say *needy* those nine months ago.

“Okay Y/n the heads crowning, I know you’re tired but we need a few more big pushes, can you do that for me?”

Merely 5 minutes later and the most beautiful sound in the world echoed through the 4 creams walls. You were absolutely spent, eyes closed as you panted, knowing tears were flooding down your face too. Immediately though, familiar hands cupped both sides of your face, a forehead resting on yours.

“You did it Y/n/n.” His eyes were glassy, watering and red and the way he scoffed a smile in disbelief had you mirroring him exactly.

“We did it.” Your voice was hoarse and scratchy from all the yells of pain but it didnt matter. The midwife calling you by the name ‘mum and dad’ got both of your attention, a title you’d no doubt start getting used to.

“Meet your beautiful baby girl.” Another choked sob escaped your throat, as this little roughly wrapped up pink alien looking thing was placed onto your chest. Both you and Tom just gazed at her, completely transfixed at the way she wriggled her head slightly, nuzzling into your chest. Tom gently hovered his palm against her little head, while you pressed down the blanket gently, just so you could see all her features.

Then a flash echoed around the otherwise silent room, making you all look up to Harry who was gritting his teeth in apology. “Do mum and dad want to smile for the camera?” The question was posed so hesitantly and quietly, really it wasn’t funny either. That didn’t stop you and Tom both pulling out the biggest grins and chuckling away, allowing Harry to capture the perfect moment. Being referred to as mum and dad - it was bloody comical.

“You gonna tell me her name now?” You looked from Harry to Tom, nodding in approval for him to spill the beans.

“Amber. She’s Amber.”

You’d squabbled for months before ending on Amber. It had been a long relentless process, Tom claiming that your baby might just have ended up as ‘as yet untitled’ which you and your hormonal state had stormed out at. It hadn’t taken much to forgive it though, Tom had long since worked out that Ben and Jerrys was the way to your heart.

The nurses took Amber back to do some tests, properly cleaning both you and her up and after that everything was weirdly calm. Harry had left to give the twothree of you a moment alone and Tom was about to do his turn of skin to skin.

“This really is it isn’t it?” He murmured, whilst carefully scooping Amber from your arms.

“Mhmmm… your stuck with two girls who’ll go psycho on you without a moments notice.” He seemed to accept it though, just nodding in response.

“And I still can’t bloody wait.” His eyes penetrating deep into you, had you blushing like a nervous teenage girl. “ ‘m still so proud of you, you grew this little human.”

“Your not allowed to call her little because you didnt have the ‘little’ thing rip your insides apart.”

“Hey! I’m upset about it too! Was like I had to watch my favourite pub being burnt down.” Of course, trust Tom to make a dirty joke at a time like this.

“Don’t kid yourself, you weren’t watching, too busy fainting.”

“I didn’t actually faint!” This time he protested a bit too loudly, causing Amber to mewl a little and bury her head into the crook of her Dads arm. “I think Ambers just told you to shut it too.”

“You annoy the hell out of…” Your grumbling was interrupted by an impressive, ear-splitting yawn. “ You annoy the hell out of me.”

“But you love me?” He sing-songed, now back to a hushed tone.

“I hope so, otherwise we’re in a bit of trouble.” He scoffed, but nodded his head, taking the hand that wasn’t cradling Amber to tuck some sweaty, knotted strands of hair behind your ear.

“I do owe Harry though, he was at least able to stay on his feet.”

“He was a better birthing partner than you too, much much less condescending and annoying.” You sniggered, making Tom pout once again, only wiping the look off his face when you yawned again, rubbing an your eye like a toddler would.

“If your done insulting me… get some rest love, I got you.” All you did was nod, with a small groan (because below your waist still hurt like a bitch) rolled over so you could fall asleep to sight of the two of them.

“Got you both, my two beautiful girls.”

hope you enjoyed, would love to hear any thoughts <3

taglist: @hollandfanficlove @hallecarey1

#tom holland x reader #tom holland #tom holland fluff #Tom Holland blurb #dad!tom #tom holland imagine #harry holland

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cinnamonruts · 3 years

Text

WHITE DAY | ITADORI, KOZUME, SHIRAKUMO, SUGAWARA, TANAKA

SUMMARY → what they would plan for white day/ valentines

CHARACTERS → itadori yuji, kozume kenma, shirakumo oboro, sugawara kōshi, tanaka ryūnosuke x fem!reader

A/N → i know it’s not valentines anymore but I still wanted to write something so it is now white day... in the head canons it still says valentines <3

i. ITADORI YUJI

→ he is the personification of chaotic good. in all honestly he hadn’t thought of anything to do for valentines day in particular. whenever he thought of a cute date he took you on it as fast as possible. live is short, he does not know how long he has and he definitely wasn’t going to waste what time he had with you.

→ so he went to the only guy he knew that could help him wheat out all the bad apples.

→ spitting out idea after idea as he went he waited for fushiguro reaction; “I like it, go with that one.” he hums.

nodding, itadori casually strikes that idea. leaving him with only one perfect date idea; “thanks, man.”

→ he brought you to his home town; now, it might have not sounded like the grand romantic acts you see in movies. but as a city girl you had never left the kanto prefecture more less gone to visit a random small town... if anything, you barely left tokyo ( if it was not for for a valid reason, sorcerer work, or to go to kyoto )

→ so, coming here made it special. walking around the town; he shows you all his favorite spots, his old school, the place where he fell as kid that left that scar on his elbow. it made a smile come up to your face, that never left.

at the end of the night, you ended up at a swing set. one eerily similar to the one where you had met ( not that not all swings were bascially the same thing... not at all ) “hi.” you whisper softly. making him smile at the cute gesture, “hi.”

ii. KOZUME KENMA

→ valentines is a scam. a scam where he would never invest in… that was until the two of you got together and now here he is. trying to make a list of what could be your perfect day, all your likes and loves.

→ you always say you just like spending time with him and that’s all you need, but that seemed a little too easy and cheesy for his taste. he couldn’t just be with you and act like it wasn’t a holiday.

→ no, you needed to do something special. an activity you wanted to do and would make this day unforgettable for the both of you.

→ the two of you went to a cat cafe. you had been bugging him for weeks to go with you saying how cute he would look surrounded by small kittens.

→ also, that his eyes remind you of a cat and that’s why you like them even more then you did before. he said it made no sense as he was not covered with fur nor did he particularly think his eyes resembled one of a cat, but with that smile of yours he could never tell you differently.

iii. SHIRAKUMO OBORO

→ this boy had it all planned out in his head, he would take you on a cloud date. get your favourite snacks and sushi that you enjoy while his cloud takes you over important milestones of your relationship ( the big moments mostly took place at school and your houses, but mr. loud cloud had some special places )

→ it would be perfect. well…. it would have been if it didn’t decide to start storming with no sign of stopping. all was lost, he had counted on the weather to be on his side!

→ taking the L he decides to move the date inside. telling you to meet him at his house as soon as you wake up. no changing, no formal wear, just your pyjamas.

→ it’s a cloud ford!

→ smiling at the boy, you can’t help but feel a sense of euphoria go through you as you hold him close to you. enjoying your day in the clouds.

iv. SUGAWARA KŌSHI

→ this boy knows everything there is to know about you. favourite food? check. colour, drink, place, series, film? who are you kidding, he knew it all. if there was every a quiz on you he would get a 101%

→ so why is he now blanking? nothing seemed good enough. he even asked daichi and he was just as clueless.

→ they had cancelled training for this particular day and he couldn’t think of anything… and then it hit him; cinnamon rolls. you loved that deliciously sweet dough more then anything else.

→ it took him days of practices but he finally was able to make the perfectly balanced bun. all so he could show you how to make your own. that way you never had the disappointment of going to the bakery and them being sold out.

→ and so he did; you had a lovely kitchen date with your cute boyfriend teaching you how to bake your favourite thing in the world.

v. TANAKA RYŪNOSUKE

→ with all the times he saw something that reminded him of you and bought it with no hesitation; all he had left to his name now was ten bucks. to be fair there was enough to do with that amount of money, but none of the things he had initially planned in his head.

→ a trip to the tokyo tower? no. bunchy-jumping on a budget? no. the movies? no. also, since when did cinema get so pricey?

→ what he could do with the little money he had; was get you some snacks and bring you to the most important place of your relationship.

→ which is no where at all. the plan went as followed; he would pretend he had no clue and surprise you at the end of the day with his reveal, but trying to keep up the entire day was so hard. he had to worship you and treat you as the goddess you are, but he got this.

→ waiting ‘till night, he made his way to just outside your window. letting the song, you guys song, blast loudly. looking out of your window you say your boyfriend dance that stupid dance the two of you would always dance; ‘because of you—’ the song continued on the background.

“what are you doing?”

“wishing my gorgeous girlfriend a happy valentines.”

MASTERLIST | KO-FI | TAGLIST → if you want to read more

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toxicbubblegum212 · 3 years

Text

Maze runner Reactions ~ Your Beautiful singing ~

Minho: “Who is that, Ive never heard such a heavenly voice” *peers off into maze unsure if its a human or a trap

Bonus Headcannons

- Minho would frequently hear your voice echoing through out the maze (lmao imagine hearing way)

- Minho has tried for years to try and track where that sound has been coming from.

- Minho has seen dreams of the girl he’s so longer to meet. Or well he believes its a girl at least

- Minho often wonders what your eyes would look like, what does your hair smell like or how soft is your skin.

- Minho is very eager to see, and if he could get that chance he would take it no matter what it takes.

- Minho dreams of having his head on your lap and being able to gaze up at you listening to your angelic voice.

- Minho hasn’t told anyone about your voice in the maze, part of him thinks it to good to be true. Such a beautiful being can not come from such a dark place.

- Other gladers have noticed that Minho has been day dreaming a lot and is more determined the ever to go into the maze.

- Minho likes to think your his light shining in the darkness he just hopes that your light doesn’t dim. He will find you one day and he hopes to be yours.

Newt: “Keep singing love, you always make all the pain go away.”

- Newt loves your voice, it reminds him of something he’s not sure what but its something he really loves.

- He could imagine your qualities being the same as his mothers. Something about you is so familiar

- He thinks you would make a beautiful wife and loving mother.

- But Newt is scared of losing you and he believes the biggest mistake is bringing more children into this corrupt world.

- Newt would always ask you to sing him to sleep.

- He likes your soft whispers in his ear, it makes him forget about everything.

- Your voice take him to a special place.

- He can see a valley of flowers varying in colours. You sitting down with a flower crown singing to the butterflies that fluttered.

- These are Newts dream’s, he wants to take you to this place. He wants to keep you safe and throw away this part of his life.

- Sometimes Newt looks up to you with glossy, sorrow filled eyes. It hurts but you understand so you both live it up whilst you two can.

Sorry guys but this gif was just to funny😂 we get it everyone wants Thomas

Thomas: “ You know your my sun shine Y/N..”

Headcannons

- Thomas would sometimes join in, he knows he’s bad singing but he wants to sing with you.

- Thomas isn’t actually that bad probs is the best out of the boys

- Thomas would sing you to sleep if your sick, tired and or can’t sing anymore.

- He would whisper into your ear and you would be able to feel his breath on your neck.

Thomas would always kiss your check before he finally goes to sleep.

- Sometimes you make Thomas cry with your voice and the things you sing about.

- The real reason he loves your voice so much is because he can feel your sorrow, pain, joy, love.

- He knows your real and appreciates it.

- Thomas will never forget you or your voice of hope. He singings with you to remind him of the memories, to hold onto them and cherish you.

- Thomas would hand these songs down to his children/generation.

- He wants your voice to live on in the glade.

Gally: “Your what i need after a long hard day at work”

Headcannons

- Gally has a tough time putting up with everyone else, its not his fault its just who he was.

- Gally would crawl up to you in bed (i imagine as a keeper he gets to stay in the homestead), lye on your thighs kisses and them occasionally.

- He would let your voice relax his tired muscles, tense expression and allow his to slowly drift off to sleep.

- Gally loves it when your rack your fingers through his hair.

- Because of this Gally treats you like a queen. Your just so loving and kind to him. Not like any of the others.

- Gally would always tell you how gifted you are to be able to sooth everyones problems and make everyone feel special, loved and valued.

- You also taught Gally how to enjoy the present, stop worry about tomorrow and start living today.

#the maze runner x reader #the maze runner x you #the maze runner #tmr gally #tmr x reader #tmr thomas #tmr minho #tmr newt #newt #gally #newt x reader #gally x reader #thomas x reader #minho x reader

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luimnigh · 3 years

Note

ive seen people talk abt winter defecting to team salem yet i cant quite see that happening, perhaps im wrong. what're your thoughts? do you think she might?

Oh, I absolutely believe Winter is going to defect to Team Salem.

The thing is, Jacques was never going to be Weiss’ villain. For as much power as he has, he ultimately a) never posed a physical threat, which is kinda anathema to an action-oriented show like RWBY, and b) the power he held over Weiss was pretty damn easily broken. He did it himself in Volume 4. Once Weiss was disinherited, there was nothing holding her back from just leaving.

So the question presented ended up being “Who is going to be Weiss’ villain?”

Weiss’ struggle has always been about her family. Her initial goal was to redeem her family’s name, and honestly I do still believe that’s something she wants to do. But just like she’s more than just a name, the name is more than just her, and bringing her family name back into the light involves bringing her family back into the light.

So her struggle has effectively always been about bringing her family back together. So the villain in her story has to be someone standing in the way of that.

Whitley is a kid with no combat training. Willow was basically an unknown until her first appearance.

So, that leaves Winter.

While everyone else in Weiss’ family has been distanced from her by Jacques’ abuse, Weiss and Winter have always been displayed as tight-knit. She’s Weiss’ mentor, the person who taught her to be a Huntress, the person who helped her escape.

But Winter also works for the Atlesian Military, who have screamed “Eventual Bad Guys” since their introduction. She was strict, she was quick to anger, and she was loyal to General Ironwood.

She was also a mentor figure in a show all about a new generation coming in and saving the world from the mistakes of the past.

And to top it all, it would absolutely hurt Weiss more if Winter was her villain than anyone else.

So the idea that Winter would be Weiss’ villain has been there for quite a while. The question then has been how she would go from beloved mentor to opposing force. A lot of ideas have been thrown against the wall in the intervening years, but now we’ve reached the point where the path forward looks obvious:

Winter is currently compromised to hell and back. Both physically and emotionally. She is absolutely conflicted about what she’s doing: she can see Ironwood is going off the deep end, but she still trusts him, still loves him as her surrogate father; her destiny has been pulled out from under her; the Kingdom she is sworn to protect is under attack; she has been asked to kill a friend, arrest her sister, be party to the violation of her best friend’s bodily autonomy, and go on a suicide mission all on the same day; and now she’s effectively let enemies of the state escape her custody twice.

But she has been taught to suppress her emotions, to suppress her doubts, to never question authority. To follow orders.

Everyone is reading the foreshadowing right: she is absolutely uncomfortable with what Ironwood is asking her to do. She is absolutely at her breaking point.

But she’s not heading towards Weiss.

Weiss is always going to be the person that gets Winter to defect. To leave Atlas behind and come be a family. Because Winter’s joining the heroes is as much a part of Weiss’ arc as it is Winter’s.

But she’s not heading towards Weiss.

When Ren looks at them with his empath-vision, Ren sees that both Marrow and Winter are uncomfortable with their situation, that they don’t want to be there anymore. But while Marrow’s emotions are certain, one colour, moving in one direction; Winter’s are all over the place, multiple colours, moving in every direction. Marrow is sure of what he wants, but Winter isn’t.

But she’s not heading towards Weiss.

Winter, right now, is at her most malleable. Her most susceptible. Her most vulnerable. She is at a tipping point, and a push could send her in any direction right now. If Ironwood knew what he was doing, he could do something that would secure her loyalty, just like Salem did to Cinder. Similarly, if Weiss were here, this would be the easiest time to convince her to come home, to be a family again.

But she’s not heading towards Weiss.

She’s heading towards Salem. The master manipulator. Who knows exactly how to break a person and get them on-side. Who has lived through very similar circumstances to Winter: an abusive father, a heroic rescuer, their paths diverging, and losing faith in that rescuer.

Anyone in Winter’s situation would be ripe for manipulation by Salem. The way to not be manipulated is to be surrounded by people who love and care for you, who are willing and able to talk you down from the ideas Salem would put in your head. But Winter is isolated, surrounded by people she doesn’t fully trust, with the two people she loves the most, who’d have the best chance of stopping any manipulation, currently stuck in Schnee Manor.

So I fully expect Salem to turn her. I fully expect Winter Schnee to be an antagonist going forward, and for this to utterly break Weiss’ heart. And I fully expect Weiss to never give up on her sister, and eventually convince her to step back into the light.

#rwby #winter schnee #weiss schnee #rwby spoilers #rwby8 spoilers #rwby8 #Anonymous #asks

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morganaspendragonss · 3 years

Text

dancing on the edge of something new

huge thanks to alice ( @reyeslonestar ) for letting me talk this through with her at midnight when it was causing me huge trouble 🥰

five dances in tk and carlos’s life

ao3 | 2.3k | @911fluffweek day 3: getting together // dancing

TK looks over when Carlos slides off the hood of the Camaro, his hand trailing after him until he’s forced to let go. Carlos is smiling almost shyly, shifting from one foot to the other, and TK can’t help but smile back, propping himself up on his elbows.

“Carlos?” he prompts, confusion growing as no explanation is forthcoming. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, of course. I just, uh…” He bites his lip, then takes a decisive step forward and holds out a hand, cocking a brow suggestively. “Wanna dance?”

TK laughs. “Seriously?” he asks, but he’s already sitting up and placing his hand in Carlos’s, allowing him to pull him off the car and to his feet.

“Well”—Carlos shrugs, yanking TK close and smiling at the oof he makes when their chests collide—“it’s how we began, isn’t it? I figured, if we’re starting again, then it feels only right, no?”

TK stares, stuck dumb, unable to do anything but follow Carlos’s lead as his arms slip around his waist, guiding them into a gentle sway. He rests his own hands on Carlos’s chest, the realisation that he gets to do this now—gets to touch Carlos and be with him like this—hitting him all over again. To think he almost threw it all away… Well, none of that matters anymore. What matters is that they’re here, dancing in a field with no music save for the shuffle of their feet in the grass and the occasional bird or cricket, like a pair of lovesick idiots in a romcom.

And he’s never been happier.

He slides his hands up until his arms are resting loosely around Carlos’s shoulders, fingers playing with the stray curls at the nape of his neck. He stares into those familiar brown eyes, so full of warmth and light, Carlos cast in the beautiful glow of the Northern Lights above them, and TK feels an intense feeling take root in his chest. It’s not love—not yet—but it will be.

He can’t imagine not falling in love with Carlos Reyes.

ii.

The club lights strobe around them, bathing the room alternately in lurid colours and strange shadows. The place is packed, the doors practically straining on their hinges, but the only thing TK is aware of is Carlos’s body moving against his own, their movements perfectly in sync with each other.

It’s been a while since they were last about to do this, to come out and just let loose for the night. In fact, TK thinks the last time might have been when they were out with Paul what seems like a lifetime ago; so much has changed since, and TK feels like a completely different person to who he was back then.

He and Carlos have officially been together for a few months now, but it’s like the universe has been working to stop them from actually being able to enjoy it. They’ve managed to squeeze in some dates here and there, but between the shooting, the solar storm, TK’s medical leave, and weeks of opposing shifts, getting a moment to themselves has been difficult.

But now, finally, they have one. And TK is going to milk it for all it’s worth.

He turns slightly in Carlos’s grasp, his head tilting up to catch his lips in a searing kiss. Carlos grips TK’s hips tighter, pulling them flush against his own as he deepens the kiss, and TK gasps, a sharp thrill shooting down his spine.

The night stretches out blissfully in front of them, the knowledge that this isn’t just a fling that will end with the cold light of dawn making it all the sweeter. It’s still a little surreal, even now, but it also feels so damn right.

TK’s heart hammers in time with the music and he sinks into Carlos’s hold, losing himself in his heat.

iii.

It’s not that TK never felt at home at the condo. The opposite in fact; Carlos’s place had been home even before he could officially call it his, and he feels the loss of it keenly. The thing is, though, even after he’d fully moved in, it had been a struggle to think of it as theirs.

It had been home, sure, but it had also been Carlos’s place.

Carlos had found it a little funny, and it had taken several slip-ups on TK’s part and just as many gentle corrections on his for TK to get used to our dining room, and our bedroom, and our house.

And then—well. Just as he’d started to get used to it, it was all gone. Ashes. It hurt, deeply, but TK knew that it was his turn to be the one to lean on, to let Carlos be the one to set the pace. Carlos had lived there for years, after all, and what was TK’s month compared to that?

Really, anywhere that Carlos is would be home, but this—holding the keys to a house they’d picked out together, a house they’d signed the lease for together, a house they’d picked the furnishings for together—feels like coming home.

He hates that it was the condo burning down that got them to this stage, but TK can’t stop a grin from emerging on his face as he slips his key into the lock.

He finds Carlos in the kitchen, humming and shimmying to a song playing from the speakers. To his credit, TK really does try to bite back his laughter, but he can’t quite manage it, letting out a loud snort which has Carlos stopping in his tracks, flushing a deep red.

“I see the unpacking’s going well,” he says, walking over to the kitchen counter and leaning a hip against it.

“It was, actually,” Carlos defends, still blushing. “I didn’t realise you’d be back this soon.”

TK shakes his head; as adorable as Carlos’s embarrassment is, he needs to let him know he’s not making fun. “You can relax, babe. You know I always love seeing you move those hips.”

“Mmm, don’t I know it.” Carlos leans in and kisses him, lingering a moment before pulling back, a wide smirk on his face. “How about you help me finish unpacking here and we’ll see about showing you more of that hip action later?”

TK grumbles, but does as he’s told, the two of them falling into a comfortable rhythm as they work to getting their house in order. It’s ended up being the perfect blend of their different styles, which probably shouldn’t work together, but somehow do, and TK loves it here. They both do, he knows—nothing will ever replace what they lost in the fire, but being able to build a home together is beyond special.

He keeps sneaking glances at Carlos as the afternoon goes on—sue him, his boyfriend is built like a Greek god—and TK smiles when he realises Carlos has started dancing again. He probably doesn’t even realise he’s doing it, which makes the whole thing so much better.

TK watches for a while, then walks up to Carlos and taps him on the shoulder. “Mind if I cut in?” he asks, gesturing to the wooden spoons he was twirling around.

There’s a brief moment of confusion, before Carlos’s eyes light up with realisation. He barely wastes a second in tossing the spoons aside (though, it’s more like a careful placement in the correct drawer) and grabs TK by the hand, sending him into a literal spin.

TK laughs, taking a moment to right himself after the sudden movement caused him to stumble inelegantly. Neither of them are in time with the music as they dance around the kitchen, carefully avoiding the boxes still scattered around, but it’s not important.

For the first time in his life, TK feels fully, completely at home. It’s not a feeling he wants to let go of.

iv.

“I think they were expecting something slower,” TK murmurs, burying a laugh in Carlos’s neck. Their guests are all wearing expressions with varying degrees of shock, and he can’t really blame them—he’s pretty sure the last thing anyone expects to hear during a first dance at a wedding is a country song. “I still can’t believe you even remember it.”

Carlos shrugs. “I still can’t believe you don’t. It is our song, after all.”

TK rolls his eyes, remembering their first conversation on this topic months ago, back when they were still sorting out all the wedding minutiae.

“‘Our’ song, babe?” he’d said, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “Why, because we danced to it for five minutes before leaving to get off in the bathroom?”

“Exactly,” Carlos had replied, his tone so serious that TK wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not. He’d rolled his eyes and lightly shoved at TK’s shoulder. “No, babe. Because it was the first time we danced together on the night that we met. That’s special, right, even if it did only last five minutes?”

TK hadn’t exactly been able to argue that one, and he has to admit now that it was a pretty good choice. If only to see the way Judd almost choked on his champagne in surprise when the song started.

It’s a little untraditional and, if he’s being honest, TK had never thought that one day he would be getting married in Texas on his new husband’s family ranch, with their first dance being to a ‘cowboy song’, as he’d once called it, much to Carlos’s horror. But he and Carlos have never been ones for tradition, and TK wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It’s perfect,” he admits, his eyes never leaving Carlos’s. He stops the dance, not caring that the song is still playing, and steps closer, pressing their bodies together. Everything else fades into the background as he leans up and kisses Carlos, barely moving when they break apart. “I love you, Husband.”

Carlos’s face lights up in a grin that could rival the sun in its brightness. “I love you too, Husband.”

Music is floating through the door when TK gets home, and it’s enough to alleviate the weight he’s been carrying all day. It’s not that it had been a bad shift per se (though, when your standards for a good day are ‘nobody dies’, your view tends to get a bit skewed) but it had been long and tiring, and he’d missed his family desperately.

Sometimes, he still can’t believe this is really his life. But Ana, now three, has been living with them for a year already, and TK can’t imagine their home without her anymore. She’d been a blessing, coming into their lives after years of fighting to get on adoption registers, right when they were beginning to despair of ever managing it.

They did, though, and now TK gets to come home to scenes like this.

Scenes like Ana standing on Carlos’s toes as he guides her slowly around the room in a basic dance. TK watches for a moment before getting his phone out and hitting record; he’ll be damned if he misses the opportunity to get this on film.

Carlos, having heard him enter, rolls his eyes when he sees what TK’s doing, but flashes him a quick smile before returning his focus to Ana. She hasn’t noticed TK’s entrance, her face scrunched up in deep concentration as she grips onto Carlos’s hands as tight as she possibly can.

When the music ends, Ana claps her hands and giggles. TK takes the moment to make his presence known, dropping to his knees and holding his arms out. She barrels into him, almost knocking him over, and presses her face into his chest, her tiny hands creating creases in his uniform shirt.

“Hi, sweetheart,” TK murmurs, dropping a kiss in her hair. He gently detaches her from him and manoeuvers them until she’s sitting in his lap. “Looks like you guys were having fun while I was at work.”

She nods enthusiastically. “Papa was teaching me to dance! Abuela showed me photos when I was with her and Abuelo and I wanted to be just like her!”

“Abuela got out the photo albums again, huh?”

Ana nods again. “Of her… Her…” She frowns and looks up at Carlos.

“Her china poblana dresses,” Carlos says softly, smiling as Ana grins and points at him.

TK laughs and draws his daughter into a hug, rocking them gently, his gaze going up to Carlos. “Well, from what I saw, you were dancing even better than Papa,” he says, smirking as Carlos gasps in mock offence. He looks back down at Ana, tapping on the back of her hand. “You know,” he starts, smiling, “I think I might need some dancing lessons too. Think you can teach me?”

Ana lights up and immediately gets to her feet, as if she’d been waiting for him to ask. She grabs TK’s hand and pulls him up, leading him to where Carlos must have cleared a space for them earlier. The music begins to play again and TK lets his daughter take charge, playfully sticking his tongue out at Carlos when he laughs at TK getting firmly told off for putting his foot in the wrong place.

At some point, Carlos joins the dance, the three of them stepping and bouncing around the front room. Ana’s laughter fills the house, shrieking with delight when Carlos sweeps her from the floor and wraps both her and TK in his arms. TK leans his head on his husband’s shoulder, a hand placed on their daughter’s back, and breathes out slowly, all the exhaustion from earlier forgotten.

At last, he’s home.

#911fluffweek #911 lone star #911 lone star fic #tarlos #tarlos fic #tk strand #carlos reyes #lone star #911ls #fanfiction #my fanfiction #writing #my writing #userjillian #tuserjamie #userkimmy #tuserpaige #reyeslonestartag #tuserjenny

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massivedrickhead · 3 years

Note

ive been obsessed with the Olympics and can totally picture beca being an Olympic skateboarder for some reason? please could you do bechloe at the Olympics?

Read on AO3

Chloe knew that the cameras would find her in the stand, so she tried to keep the fear and, let’s admit it, lust off her face.

The fans loved hers and Beca’s relationship, and she knew the commentators would make a point to mention it.

How often did it happen that two Olympic athletes fell in love with each other? Yes, the Olympic village was usually a sex fest, but that didn’t always translate into long lasting relationships.

Not that Beca and Chloe had met in the Olympic village, for one this was the first time that skateboarding was an Olympic event. They had met at a party almost five years ago, introduced by mutual friends, and now here they were. Engaged to be married.

Chloe, at her second Olympic Games, had secured herself 2 medals for swimming - a silver medal in women’s 50m freestyle and a bronze in the 4x100m relay - and now Beca was about to skate in her first Olympic final.

And as calm and collected as Beca looked, rolling her board back and forth beneath her foot, Chloe couldn’t have been more nervous.

And watching Beca lift the bottom of her shirt to wipe the sweat from her eyes, showing off her toned stomach in the process, her tattooed arms visible thanks to her rolled up sleeves, Chloe couldn’t have been more turned on.

Chloe saw her crack a joke at Emily - the other American competitor - and then it was her turn to skate.

There would be three runs, the highest score wins. Beca would be the last to skate each time.

She watched Beca wave at the crowd, and roll her shoulders back a few times.

She had come off her board a few months ago, and Chloe knew her shoulder was still giving her trouble.

And then she was off, moving quickly around the Park course.

A DJ was playing music, but Chloe knew Beca had her own AirPods in, hidden under her helmet.

The commentator was calling out the tricks as she did them, but Chloe couldn’t follow along.

She knew there were some grinds, some flips, some grab tricks, but if she’s honest she’d never quite understood all the names of all the tricks. She’d tried to learn, and Beca had tried to explain it, but it just never sunk in.

Beca’s first run was almost at an end and then the board got away from her, and she hit the ground, skidding on her knees.

Chloe heard her shout of frustration from the stands, so she knew the cameras picked it up too.

Beca got up, grabbed her board, and skated out, back towards the other competitors.

They all patted her back, and Emily gave her a hug and said something that made her laugh.

Chloe watched as she took off her helmet and took a drink, her eyes never leaving the scoreboard.

Her score was okay, not medal winning, but not terrible. Beca nodded to herself, and then shrugged at the camera when she realised it was on her.

Sensing an opportunity, she picked up her board and flashed her ‘Trans Lives Matter’ sticker at the camera, hoping it got on TV before it cut away to the next competitor.

From the stands, Chloe continued to watch her with pride. She watched her talking with her coach and joking with the other athletes, and all she wanted to do was run down there and kiss her.

“Which is exactly why you’ll be in the stands and not sitting with the coaches,” Beca had told her the night before. “How am I meant to concentrate if I know you’re there waiting to kiss me?”

Beca’s second run was up, and this time Beca aimed her wave directly at Chloe. She made a heart sign with her hands that Chloe returned eagerly, before blowing her a kiss.

A few years ago, Beca might have complained that Chloe was ruining her street-cred, but she was past the point of caring about that now.

Her second run went much better, and she stayed on her board the entire time.

Her score shot her into first place, gold medal position.

Chloe was on her feet screaming and cheering as she watched Beca get mobbed by the other skaters. Emily was practically jumping on her back despite being a solid foot taller than her, and the American fans around Chloe were drowning out the commentators.

Once the cheering had calmed down, Chloe saw Beca wipe her face on her shirt again, this time to get rid of tears, not sweat.

This was more than Beca had expected. More than any of them had expected. She wasn’t predicted to be in the top 5, let alone gold medal position.

Chloe knew Beca was aiming for bronze at best. The two kids from Japan were going to dominate it, according to Beca, and Emily was predicted to place higher than her.

Watching the other girls skate was now almost as nerve wracking as watching Beca skate.

Predictably, the two Japanese girls crushed it, but Beca was still holding onto bronze.

On her final run, Emily fell, and remained in fourth place. Beca gave her a tight hug, and a small kiss on the side of the head. Chloe knew better than to feel jealous. They had been best friends for longer than Chloe had known either of them, and they saw each other as sisters.

Finally, it was time for Beca’s final run.

“Come on Beca,” Chloe muttered, not bothering to keep the fear from her face now.

Beca had a shot at gold, she was only a couple of points away. Chloe watched as she glanced over to her coach and nodded, and her stomach twisted.

That nod meant pull out all the stops. It meant trying tricks that were a bit more risky. More dangerous but, if she pulled them off, more impressive.

Beca was guaranteed a medal, but now she was about to find out which colour.

Chloe held her breath as Beca dropped into the course.

It was all going well. Beca was executing her tried and tested tricks without fault, but Chloe knew she wouldn’t be satisfied with that.

She watched as Beca shot up into the air, her knees close to her chest, her hand on her board, as she spun in mid air.

And then as Beca came down, the board slipped from underneath her and she fell backwards, her helmeted head hitting the concrete wall of the drop. Hard.

Chloe didn’t remember standing up and gripping the edge of the railings as she waited for Beca to get up. She also didn’t remember running down the stairs of the stands, pushing past people in order to get onto the course.

She definitely didn’t know how she got down the surprisingly intimidating drop to where Beca was currently lying, but she was at Beca’s side quicker than she thought possible.

She was awake, blinking slowly against the bright sunlight, but she didn’t seem to register that Chloe was there.

“Bec?”

“Don’t move her!”

Chloe turned to see Beca’s coach and the medic hurrying towards them.

“Ow,” Beca muttered.

“Beca!” Chloe said, tears of relief flowing down her cheeks. “You scared me, you asshole!”

With the help of the medic, Beca sat up, and they gently took off her helmet. “I didn’t get gold then?” She asked as they shone a small torch in her eyes

“No,” Chloe said, half crying, half laughing. “But you did make me look like a crazy person. How the fuck am I gonna be able to get out of here?”

“Hey, there are kids about,” Beca said, grinning and gesturing to the other competitors who were looking at her with genuine fear in their eyes. “And TV cameras. You’re gonna get a reputation as the bad girl of competitive swimming.”

“Shut up,” Chloe said. Now that the medics had moved out of the way, Chloe cupped Beca’s face in her hands. “Are you okay?”

Beca shrugged. “I fell off. No biggie.”

“Are you okay, though?”

“Well that depends, how many of you are there meant to be?” Beca asked, before letting out a snort of laughter at the panic on Chloe’s face. “I’m kidding! I’m fine. I’m just hurting a lot, all over.”

“Can you stand, Beca?” The medic asked.

“I think so,” Beca said. Chloe stood and held out her hands for Beca to take. Beca did, and Chloe pulled her to her feet. “You’re so strong.”

“Thank you,” Chloe said.

Beca was a little wobbly on her feet, but she still made sure to wave at the crowd and give them a thumbs up.

“Did I just win a fucking bronze medal at the Olympics?” She asked Chloe quietly, watching the fans cheering after she and Chloe were helped out of the course.

“Yep,” Chloe said, allowing herself to relax a little. “That’s really very sexy of you.”

“I know right?” Beca said, grinning as she draped her arms around Chloe’s shoulder again. “I’ve always said bronze was the sexiest medal.”

“And silver, obviously,” Chloe said as someone wrapped an American flag over their shoulders.

“Obviously.”

“Do you have your Pride flag with you?” Chloe asked.

“Obviously,” Beca said again, grinning as she pulled Chloe over to her bag so she could fish it out.

“Can the cameras see us here?”

“Dunno.”

“Eh, who cares,” Chloe said, before pulling Beca into a bruising kiss.

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