#like ive been feeling pretty weak these past few weeks
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I love my paranoid brain because I'll be feeling physically bad for a while and there will be plenty of non-serious explanations (lack of exercise, bad diet, smoking, idk a simple illness, whatever) but I'll be terrified that I'm either dying or becoming in some way physically disabled
#like ive been feeling pretty weak these past few weeks#but it is very hot most of the time#or there are storms and the pressure is fucked up and i get a headache#and. i dont exercise and drink too much caffeine and also smoke#like i dont actually think its anything serious#but my brain will go. oh your body is actually breaking down and soon you wont be able to use your hands#which makes me feel bad mentally so i feel even weaker#fuck man#bee buzz
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Teach Me IV
extra credit
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
Pairing: Lee Dokyeom (Seokmin) x fem!reader
Genre: smut, humor, college au, frat!svt
Warnings: mentions of drug use (weed) and alcohol , phone sex, exchange of nudes, both are down horrendous, mutual masturbation, making out, dry humping, idiots in like, dokyeom has a praise kink and isn't ashamed, snippets of disgusting fluff
Length: ~5.1k
Note: ugh ... anyways! i know i mentioned potential angst in an ask but i'm weak
read more here
The best part of starting Fall Break on a Friday is having to do absolutely nothing for five blissful days. But because he is easily swindled by his friends, Dokyeom is ass over tits and the clock hasn’t even chimed 8PM. After the incredibly awkward week following your latest tryst, he’s thankful for the mind numbing freedom of alcohol, weed, and nothing but miles of mountain and woods.
Or he would be if wasn’t still upset you turned down his invitation to join him this weekend.
So he sneaks into his room and pulls up your Instagram. You're at the top of his results when he clicks into the search bar.
You posted a new photo this afternoon. A memory of a girls night out, sandwiched between two of your friends outside some bar, nothing but wide drunk smiles and closed eyes under the flash of the camera. Dokyeom already saw it. Already liked it.
He keeps scrolling, down down down till he reaches his favorite picture. A frozen memory of you outside some cafe, slumped in an iron wrought chair, sunglasses obscuring half of your face; your mouth is spread over a wild guffaw, teeth flashing and the corner of your lips arched high in amusement. Whatever had amused you pulled your entire body in, shoulders curved up as your chest caves, chin tipped back.
The soft pink sundress hugging you snugly is an added bonus.
And somewhere in his muddled mind, Dokyeom decides he needs to talk to you. Right. Now.
After the third ring, the call connects.
“Heyyy, pretty lady.”
“Oh my god, are you drunk?” You laugh, and Dokyeom can imagine the same expression from the photo flashing across your face.
God, she even sounds pretty. He thinks.
He whines through the goofy smile plucking the corners of his lips, “Nooooo.”
“Oh, really?”
“Maybe I’m a little drunk.”
“Only a little?” You jest.
“Maybe a lot-tle.”
“I can tell.”
“Wish you were here.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Haven’t seen you in like a week.”
If he wasn’t wasted then he might feel embarrassed, but Dokyeom finds the words slipping past him without a second thought as he rocks back and forth, caught in waves of emotion.
“How’s the cabin been so far?”
The sudden change in topic scratches unpleasantly but he lets it go.
“Would be more fun if you were here.” He confesses. “What are you up to?”
“Laying in bed, watching Love Island.”
“What are you wearing?”
“Seriously?” You scoff.
“What?”
“You’re so lame, Kyeom.”
“I’m curious about what you do when you’re alone.” He tries to sound innocent. “You’re alone, right?”
“Yeah, Ava left for the weekend.”
“So what are you doing this weekend?”
He’s fishing for the real reason you told him you couldn't come with him to the cabin. You’d been purposefully vague the few times Dokyeom probed since last Thursday, claiming any excuse under the sun: a friend coming to visit, getting ahead on assignments, pulling a few extra shifts at the library. Anything to avoid flat out rejection.
“You know, this and that. What about you guys? Any big plans?”
“Some of the guys mentioned a hike tomorrow. And Beer-lympics Sunday.”
“God, you’re such a frat bro.”
“I can do better.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah. What are you wearing?” He tries again.
He hears you huff, “Pajamas.”
“Sexy.”
“I actually think this is your shirt.”
“Oh? Send me a pic.”
“What do I get if I do?”
“What do you want?”
“Are you hard?”
“I can be.”
“I’ll send you a picture if you send me one too.”
“Fuck, okay.” He agrees, tapping open his camera app and trying out a few angles, working himself up in the process.
Dokyeom settles for cupping the bulge over his pants, outline of his cock pronounced as he lightly squeezes. He’s highly aware of your obsession with his hands, so he tries to flex his arm forcing the web of veins to rise as the muscles clench.
“I’m waiting.” You goad on the other end of the phone, knocking him out of his concentration.
The five photos he’s snapped all look about the same. Settling on the least blurry one, he quickly opens your messages and sends it before changing his mind.
A sharp inhale announces its arrival on your phone.
“Your turn.”
He can hear the rustle of clothes and blankets through the speaker, and a whispered curse following a dull thud. Dokyeom can’t help the chuckle that escapes as he pictures whatever caused it.
The photo you send back takes him a second to decipher. You're definitely wearing his shirt, the bottom hem bunched across your breasts, the swells of flesh peaking out near the top of the picture; perfectly omitting your face. Tracing down your bare stomach, your hips are wrapped in powdery blue cotton panties. And if that wasn’t enough, one hand is stuffed underneath, pulling the elastic taunt across the crease in your hip as it stretches to accommodate your fingers.
Holy shit.
“You like it?”
“You're evil.” Head rolling back, Dokyeom groans as he takes it all in. “You want me dead.”
You giggle at his tone.
“Fuck,” he mutters, continuing to study your figure. “You’re so hot.”
“Kyeomie,” you whine, obviously embarrassed under his attention.
“Are you touching yourself?”
“Yeah,” you mewl.
“Dirty girl.”
“Yeah? And what are you gonna do about it?”
The back and forth of your relationship is the funnest part, in Dokyeom’s opinion. You like when he puts you in your place as much as he enjoys you putting him in his. It helps that even when he assumes the more dominant role, you still praise him as if he’s the best thing since sliced bread. It scratches that submissive part of his brain that always wants needs to be good. Especially for you.
“I can think of a few things.”
“Oh? Like what?”
Phone sex is unfamiliar territory. He isn’t sure how much is too much and the awkward parting last week still stains his brain. But you just sent him a photo with your hands down your underwear so Dokyeom tries to go with the flow.
“Could make you cry on my cock.” He flushes when you remain silent for a second too long . “Sorry, that felt awkward.”
“No!” You object, voice crackling through the speaker at the sharp increase in volume. “It, ugh, that’s hot.”
“What? Crying from my dick?”
“You don’t think so?”
Dokyeom’s cock twitches, as if to signal its eager agreement.
“I think anything involving you near my penis is hot so I’m not really a good judge.”
“Well, just imagine it. Remember that time we fucked at Wonwoo and Mingyu’s house party?”
“Not appreciating you saying other dudes’ names while my dick is in my hand but yeah.”
You snicker at his reprimand. “Anyway. Remember how I wanted you to fuck my mouth?”
Dokyeom takes a sharp inhale as the memory rushes forward. You on your knees, eyes glossy and lips bruised, begging him to stretch your throat. The second the request reached his ears Dokyeom nearly came on your sweater covered chest, but he’d ignored your request, hauling your ass up onto the counter in favor of stuffing your cunt. You hadn’t complained.
“But you wouldn’t because you didn’t wanna mess up my makeup?”
“You looked pretty… didn’t wanna ruin it.”
“Yeah but I wanted you to.”
Another squeeze of his cock as he slips his hand under his boxers, “Yeah?”
“You’re really hot when you tell me what to do.”
“Fuck.” He groans, vocabulary limited by the husky timbre of your voice. “Are you touching yourself?”
“Mhhmm, doesn't feel as good as when you do it though.”
A pathetic thrust through his fist at the praise. “I know but I’ll make it up to you next time. Promise.”
“How?”
“Might tie you up. Fuck you till your screamming.” Dokyeom doesn’t know who he’s become but you seem to like it.
“Oh?”
Your reply is all breath, the same way you sign when he gives you his fingers after a long study session. The beads of pre-cum on his tip increase as he works his cock, almost able to fill the way you’d coat his fingers if he was there to give them to you.
“You like that? Want me to use your tight little pussy? Fill it up?”
“Want you to come inside me again, Minnie. So hot.”
“I know, pretty girl. So desperate for it aren’t you?”
“Yeah.” you squeak, “Are you close?”
“Send me another picture.”
Only a few seconds pass, filled with muffled groans on his end and the clack of your nails on yours. Dokyeom rushes to open the new attachment you’ve blessed him with, heart clenching when his stomach caves around a moan.
The photo is blurry from your haste but he doesn’t care. You're drenched. The crotch of your panties tinged darker as you pull them aside, flashing the way your entrance stretches around three of your fingers. Your clit just barely visible, puffy and swollen from neglect.
“Fuck, baby.”
“Minnie—” Your voice sounds far away, and he realizes you've put yourself on speaker so you can use both hands.
“Can you do something for me?” he grounds, squeezing the base of his cock to stop his impending end.
“Anything.”
Another deep breath before he lays himself bare, “Drive up here tomorrow.”
“What?” You ask, the springs of your mattress squeaking as you sit up, clearly confused by the switch in pace.
“I wanna see you.”
“I—”
“Promise I’ll make it worth your while.” Dokyeom scrambles.
Another pause before a timid, “How?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Dangerous words.”
“Pretty sure I’ll enjoy it just as much as you.”
“I don’t know…”
“If you don’t want to, it's fine but,” he sighs, “if you can I want you to come. And not just because of sex.”
“Then why?”
“Because I like—” He cuts himself off hastily. “Because I like spending time with you.”
As seconds tick by without response, Dokyeom is sure you're going to call his bluff. Or worse, laugh in his face. He’s sweating, heart beating irregularly as he waits for your reply.
“Really?” Shyness creeps into your voice.
Dokyeom nods before realizing you can’t see him. “Yeah.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll come.”
“Really?” Dokyeom asks, eyes wide and jaw slack. No way it's this easy.
“Really,” he can hear you smile. “But only because you said you’d give me whatever I want.”
“You’re gonna make me regret that aren’t you?”
“Absolutely.” You tease, enunciating each syllable as his heart beats in time. “But Kyeomie…”
“Yeah?”
“I’m still wet.”
“Can’t have that.” He tsks.
“Please,”
“Be a good girl and play with your clit.” Dokyeom instructs, slipping right back in.
A hitch in your breath precludes a satisfied “hmmm”. He wishes he could taste both on his tongue.
“Touch yourself too.” You plea.
Dokyeom’s wound so tight a gust of wind would have his load all over his stomach. He tells you as much.
“Shiiit” You curse, catching up to him. “Close.”
“Yeah? Think you deserve it?”
If he was there, Dokyeom knows he’d see the frustrated kick of your legs and feel the daggers shooting from your eyes.
“You ignored me all last week, I don’t know if I should let you.”
“Dokyeom, please!”
“But since I get to see you tomorrow.” he tuts, covering up the catch of his breath as you plea again. “Let me hear it.”
The call devolves into choked curses and groans. He keeps the screen close to his face as he focuses back on the picture you sent, painting his fist with streaks of white as you beg him to cum, choke on how much you want to taste. Your stuttered “ah”s floating right into his ears as you twist and shake in your bed hours away.
When Dokyeom can feel himself returning to his body, he soaks in the lull of you catching your breath.
“You good?”
“Yeah.” You sigh dreamily.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Send me the address.”
“Oh and Y/N?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m happy you’re coming…”
“Goodnight,” you chuckle at the double entendre.
“Night.”
Even with the satisfaction of an orgasm coursing through his veins, the fizzing bubbles of happiness in his chest have nothing to do with the cum cooling in his underwear.
--
The drive to the cabin is two hours and thirty seven nerve wrecking minutes. Dokyeom has been up since six, texting you the address, asking you to let him know when you left, keep him updated on any pit stops you needed to make. Not to rush up the mountain and drive safely.
The digital clock on your dash reads just past noon as you slowly creep up a narrow gravel road, praying another car doesn’t swoop around the bend. Of course a pack of frat boys would choose some creepy woods to set up camp for a long weekend.
You dial Dokyeom’s number just to be safe. Barely a full ring passes before he picks it up.
“Hey!”
“Hey… I think I’m pulling up to the right place?” You scan for any sign of a driveway on either side of the road without any luck.
“Oh shit, I’ll come outside. Jun got us lost yesterday when he drove up so it’s tricky.”
Taking a left as you finally spot the red mailbox with a beaver carved into the dark wooden post at the end of the lengthy driveway, a two story cabin comes into view between the trees. Dokyeom jogs from the porch to meet you at the edge of the yard. Rolling down your window as he makes his way over, you greet him.
“Hey,”
“Hey,” he smiles, bright enough to blind a village.
“Um, where should I park?”
“Just pull up behind anyone, it doesn't matter.”
“Alright.”
Dokyeom walks next to you as you pull in behind a white sedan. Once in park, you pop the trunk before slipping out the door. He already has your bag tossed over his shoulder, tangling your fingers with his as he pulls you towards the house.
“Some of the guys went on a hike earlier so I’ve been helping Seungkwan and Mingyu clean up.”
“Oh, you didn’t need to wait for me.”
“I wanted to.”
Before you can think too much on that statement, Seungkwan interrupts by tackling you in a hug.
“Oh thank god you’re here.”
“Hi to you too.” You say, carrying his weight as he goes boneless.
“Hi,” he responds with a squeeze, before turning to Dokyeom with a blunt, “Goodbye.”
Seungkwan pulls you inside the front door, beelining for the sliding glass doors that lead to the back porch.
“Hey!”
Without slowing, Seungkwan fends him off. “She was my friend first!”
“Yeah well,” Dokyeom flounders like a washed up fish.
“You dazzle with words. Now go away.” Seungkwan sniffs.
Sending an apologetic smile over your shoulder, you allow Seungkwan to usher you along. You spot another person in the kitchen, face shadowed by the hood of his sweater. He doesn’t look up when you and Seungkwan shuffle pass.
“Ignore Mingyu, his girlfriend broke up with him yesterday.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah, anyway.” Seungkwan plops onto one of the chairs circled around the patio table. “Speaking of girlfriends—”
“Did you finally get one?”
“Being mean is bad for your health.” He deadpans. “As I was saying, did Dokyeom ask you to be his?”
“His what?”
“His girlfriend.”
Your ears ring at the nonchalance in Seungkwan’s tone.
“Why would he ask me to be his girlfriend?”
“Why else would you get up at the ass crack of dawn to come to this dump?”
“He said he wanted me to come.” You answer, turning your head to observe the lake beyond the thin tree line.
“After you told him no? Wow, didn’t realize he was that good in bed.”
Your hands itch to circle his neck and shake but Seungkwan is saved by the very man in question.
“Hate to interrupt but I thought you might want some coffee?”
You turn around, smiling as Dokyeom leans out of the sliding glass door, “Yeah, that sounds great.”
“We aren’t done talking!” Seungkwan calls as you reach the door.
“I am!”
Mingyu apparently retreated to his room after you stepped outside, nowhere to be found in the kitchen or living room beyond the counter.
The isolation makes you nervous which is strange because it’s just Dokyeom. But his words last night over the phone, coupled with Seungkwan’s on the porch twist your guts uncomfortably.
It’s too late to bail. You can’t claim illness since Dokyeom will fawn over you like some mother hen. Besides, you don’t actually want to leave. You just can’t stand the nagging voice in the back of your head insisting this isn’t what friends do. Even if said friends are having sex.
“Wanna show me your room?”
“Sure!” Dokyeom is still cheery, eagerly leading you upstairs and down a maze of hallways.
The outside of the cabin, while daunting, failed to betray how big it actually is as you pass door after door on your journey.
The room Dokyeom is sharing with Soonyoung is cozy. Two full sized beds with little room for anything else and an en suite the size of a closet. But at least you won’t have to battle it out with anyone else for a bathroom during the next three days.
Dokyeom was lucky enough to claim the bed closests to the bay windows, framing a pleasant view of the backyard, dock, and sprawling lake. When you step closer, you can spot Seungkwan’s mop of hair as he leans on the edge of the railing that borders the porch; hand animated as the other holds his phone near his mouth.
Turning back to the bed, you spot your bag on the floor at the foot of it. The room is ten degrees hotter when you realize Dokyeom was lying right there as he talked you through an orgasm barely twelve hours ago. You awkwardly shuffle on your feet as you try to find something to say.
Dokyeom seems unperturbed, flopping onto the mattress, arms thrown wide in invitation. A shy grin twists your lips. Hair a mess, and cheeks flushed, Dokyeom looks cute. He’s always cute but navy crew neck and gray sweats transforms him into a cozy dream. The mattress dips under your knee as you crawl to lay next to him.
Settling your head over his heart, arms twining around one another, you feel your own give a peculiar squeeze. It’s truly no different than all the other times you’ve cuddled, albeit those were post-coitous; except it is. Dokyeom told you he wanted you here, that he likes spending time with you, and now he’s squeezing the life out of you as he snags one of your legs to wrap around his waist.
When sleep tickles your nose, pleasantly warm and inviting, you ignore how Dokyeom isn’t your boyfriend. What you have right now is perfect enough.
—
The sweet hum of Dokyeom’s voice lulls you awake, a simple melody you vaguely recognize from his playlist he insists on blasting during your hangouts. Gray light from outside casts the room sullenly dark. Storm clouds, swollen to a near black, eclipse the late afternoon sun. Dokyeom’s neck is the perfect place to escape the unavoidable sounds of the cabin filled with life, eyes firmly shut as you inhale the smell of laundry detergent and pine.
One of your hands managed to twist under his sweater in your sleep, fisting his thin T-shirt as you attempt to beckon sleep out of hiding and back towards you. A pathetic whine escapes when Dokyeom jostles you in an attempt to find a more comfortable position, only silenced by his lips against your forehead and his stroking your elbow.
“Shhhh,” he coos. “Go back to sleep.”
“What time is it?”
“Like five.”
Lifting back from his neck, you pout. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
A gentle peck to your lips in response leaves you speechless, a soft quirk to his lips as you gape. Collapsing back into his chest you’re left to bask in each other's presence as you take to silently drawing shapes on his stomach, smiling as he giggles from ticklishness. His thumb traces the curves of your hip, digging to the soft flesh of your waist.
A banging on the door makes you both jump out of your skin before Seungkwan’s voice cuts the air. “Come on love birds, dinners ready!”
“If we don’t get up, do you think he’ll go away?” Dokyeom whispers into your hair.
“No.”
On queue the door flies open, smacking against the wall and rebounding into Seungkwan’s face.
“I said it's time for dinner. Now get your asses up!”
“Go away, Boo!” You demand, chucking a pillow in his direction.
“What happened to respecting your elders?” Dokyeom asks, eyes sharp as he tries to kill the younger man with his eyes.
“When my elder does something respectable, I’ll consider it.” Seungkwan claps. “Now chop chop!”
The dinner Seungkwan so adamantly demanded your presence at is a huge pot of spaghetti and some loaves of garlic bread. Nothing overly complex but the bustling atmosphere downstairs is nice, comfortable.
Dokyeom introduces you to some of the fraternity members you haven’t met, as well as their dates. Squished between him and Seungkwan at the dining table, you barely engage in conversation. Not that you need to. They both fill the space with their own joking easily enough.
Instead, your mind focuses on the warmth of Dokyeom’s shoulder brushing yours, and how he rests his arm on the back of your chair once he finishes his plate.
When the mess is cleared away, a few people scurrying off to who knows where, Soonyoung insists on a game of Beerio Kart as dessert. Excited to have a new person to torment, he drags you to the couch before you can object. In a blink, you find yourself wedged between the armrest and Dokyeom as he explains the game.
“The rules are simple my friends! No drinking and driving and you have to finish your drunk before the race ends. If you fail to do so you’ll be publicly shamed.” Soonyoung claps his hands together, the maniacal glint in his eyes a little too intense for such a silly game.
“And for additional chaos,” Seungkwan adds. “I’ve changed it to blue shells only.”
“Now may the best driver win!”
“Alright, the first round is Jun, Marci, Sam, and me.”
“This is gonna be a bloodbath.” Someone calls from the other couch.
And it is. Jun uses height to hold Seungkwan’s drink out of the younger man’s reach, resulting in Seungkwan launching himself from the couch in a flying kick. They’re both so occupied with one another they don’t notice the race is long finished and neither of their characters moved past the starting line.
A chorus of boos rises as the race times out, designating them as 11th and 12th place.
“Alright, next is DK, Y/N, Wonwoo, and myself.”
“Can I forfeit?”
Dokyeom turns to you. “You wanna quit already?”
“Considering my opponents, yes.”
“New rule: no quitting allowed.” Soonyoung interjects.
“You can’t make that a rule!”
“I just did!”
You respond with a thumbs down, much more effective than the middle finger you want to throw his way.
“It’s okay if you’re scared, Y/N.” Wonwoo taunts from across the room.
“I’m not scared!”
“That’s exactly what someone who is scared would say!” Soonyoung chimes in.
Dokyeom just shrugs his shoulders when you look at him for assistance. Figures. He’s part of the reason you don’t want to play. He and his roommate rile each other up too much under normal circumstances, let alone when things get competitive and alcohol is involved.
“Fine, let's play!”
Soonyoung divvies out another round of lukewarm beer cans you’re required to drink as Wonwoo picks the track. N64 Rainbow Road because apparently he’s an asshole. The way he reclines back in his seat confirms it.
To avoid the inevitable mess Dokyeom will make in his haste to chug before the race begins, you stand, shuffling closer to the safe zone at the edge of the coffee table. He tugs at the back of your shirt for a second, prompting you to shake your head.
Dokyeom pouts but stays silent.
“Alright lady and gentlemen! Start. Your. Engines!”
Cracking open your can the second the countdown begins on screen, you gag at the taste of cheap beer as everyone whoops around you. You manage half the can before you have to stop under the threat of it coming back up. Dokyeom and Soonyoung are still drinking, the later shuffling in place restlessly. Wonwoo hasn’t even opened his beer, focusing on getting as far ahead as he can.
Hopefully Seungkwan’s meddling takes care of him.
The race track is chaos as you press your character forward, occasionally blown off course by a blue shell moving to knock out whoever is in first. Half way through the course, you chance a glance at the other corners of the TV. Soonyoung and Dokyeom have finally started lap one, only for Soonyoung to fly over the edge at the first turn and wait to be rescued. Wonwoo is caught in the mess at the front of the pack, only able to maintain first for a fraction of a second before being sniped by a shell.
Once you round the third lap, you take your chance. Stopping in a corner of the track to down the rest of your drink, hoping everyone is too engrossed in the events on screen to see you start moving despite still swallowing a mouth full of beer.
This is when you see Wonwoo make his mistake. He pauses right before the finish line, cracking his can open and nearly choking on the large gulps in his haste. You're gaining quickly, barely a quarter of the last lap remains between your carts. When he finally finishes the can and picks up the controller, you unleash the blue shell you’d been saving. Rosalina goes flying as you sail by, Yoshi claiming fifth place.
“Suck it!” You scream, jumping up and down in victory; joined by Seungkwan who hollers with you as if he won too.
Wonwoo is shell-shocked, literally. He finishes seventh overall, pulling behind another computer character. Soonyoung is on the floor as he and Dokyeom fight for second to last place. The shame goes to Soonyoung as the race times out once again.
When you turn back to the couch you're met with another blinding smile as you drop into his lap.
“Looooooserrrr,” you taunt as you flick his nose gently.
“Yeah whatever.”
“It’s okay, maybe I can teach you sometime.”
He laughs, squeezing you into his chest. “God, you’re annoying.”
“It’s so lonely at the top.” You furrow your brow in mock sorrow.
Another race ensues, more chaos and screaming echoing through the living room. The heat of Dokyeom’s chest sinks through the back of your hoodie, strong plains of muscle shaking as he laughs with the group. When Seungkwan and Soonyoung face each other in a rematch you tempt Dokyeom upstairs, kissing behind his ear before leaning back and giving him the “look.”
The “I-want-your-dick-in-my-mouth” look.
Of which he very is familiar.
Dokyeom lurches forward, eager to appease, forgetting you're still in his lap until your weight knocks him back down. Shaking your head you stand and pull him up behind you, moving towards the stairs uninterrupted as Seungkwan and Soonyoung threaten each other's life and limb behind you.
Tacky wood shiplap digs into your spine uncomfortable as Dokyeom crowds you against the wall. His lips ghost along your jaw, hands on either side of your head to prevent him from crushing you. You don’t have the same concern, pulling him closer with the fabric of his sweater. The door to his room is a few feet to your left but the idea of separating for even a second to make it inside is pure agony.
“What does the winner want for her prize?” he whispers, teeth grazing your earlobe.
“Depends.” You sigh, grinding against the bulge of his thigh.
“On?”
“If my prize is separate from what I get for driving up here.”
Dokyeom nips your chin, dodging your attempt to connect your mouths.
“Depends on what you want.”
“I want you to fuck me.”
“I’m gonna do that anyway.”
“I wasn’t done yet.”
He stays silent, teeth bruising the sliver of shoulder peeking out under your collar.
“I want you to fuck me,” cut of with a hiss at his vigor, “and I want to film it.”
Backing out of your neck, Dokyeom blinks at you, mouth wide.
Peeking at him through your eyelashes, you wait for Dokyeom’s brain to restart. His mouth opens and closes, but nothing comes out. Not a rejection or an agreement. Just surprise.
A heaviness curls in your gut. You thought he’d like the idea, especially from his reaction to the pictures you sent last night. And the videos he’s sent over the months you’ve been hooking up. Videos of him jacking off, cumming on his own stomach, your name on his lips. But maybe you assumed too much.
“Ifyoudon’twanttowedon—”
But a scream interrupts your rant as he lifts you by your thighs, ankles locking around the top of his butt and arms tangling around his neck like a koala. You hold on for dear life as he carries you down the hallway.
Palming your ass harshly with one hand, the other scrambles to open the door as he licks up your neck. The door rattles on its hinges as he kicks it shut but the blood rushing through your ears muffles it.
“Yes, yes. Holy shit, yes.” He’s whining into your ear, hips rutting into your core as he lands unceremoniously on the bed, crushing you underneath him.
You’re shocked for a second, woefully unprepared for his enthusiasm. But another harsh rush against you, coupled with his hands pawing up your shirt to palm your chest makes you bold.
Two things you know to be true about Dokyeom:
First, he has a ragging praise kink. If you tell him he’s a good boy, he can come almost untouched.
Second, he loves the sight of his cum streaking across your body.
He was right to say he’ll enjoy this as much as you will.
“Yeah? Wanna come on my face?”
Another pathetic whine against your neck as he keeps curling his clothed cock against you. All of his weight settles between your hips as drives you to madness.
“Then go lock the door.”
#svthub#lee seokmin#lee seokmin x reader#svt x reader#seventeen fanfic#svt#dokyeom#seokmin x reader#seokmin smut#dokyeom x reader#dokyeom smut#🫡 highvern
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These are some of my wips for @organsoutsidelovinglydescribed's Trigun Body Horror Week!
i thought about making separate posts but that's a lot more work than i want to do right this minute, so i'm going to a blanket warning of: gore, blood, ... alien weirdness of varying degrees, and frankly erotic organ touching. all the pieces are going under a cut due to the varying levels of the aforementioned warnings, with more specific warnings with each snippet.
heed the warnings and enjoy!
Major tags for this first piece, a dominai fic, where two independent plants sharing one body poke around with the nervous system; it's gonna be rated e for a combination of "domina splits knives like a peach (sexy)" and "whatever's going on there is definitely xeno". Alien weirdness, is all I'm saying. shockingly tender, but alien weirdness nonetheless.
Domina doesn't talk about most of them. Doesn't like to think about how people – humans entirely too full of hubris – cracked her open to see what made her tick. She knows she's lucky she lived. She wears the scars as badges that say “I lived.”
The scientists who'd carved her rib cage open like she was so much meat had the audacity to be shocked when Domina reached out to someone else to ask for help. She'd been young then and should still be young now.
Now, she's dying.
But she's not alone anymore.
Crimsontrip/Crimsonfang with shockingly erotic organ touching. Shockingly tender? The boys are having a Time and if you ask Elendira about it she'll gut you. Warnings include: blood, viscera, insects, mildly graphic medical descriptions, and hints of past traumas. organs and gore as well.
Elendira returned to their side. “How much of this are you feeling?” she asked. Finally, a clearer workspace. She slid her fingers along organs, gently pried them up from where they were tucked in Livio and Razlo’s musculature and viscera.
“Wish we could feel more of you,” one of them said. “Bet it’d feel pretty great, havin’ your hands all up in us like this.”
Elendira paused with her hand cupping her fools’ liver. She kept her hand on the organ and leaned up and over to press her lips against theirs. When she leaned back up, her lipstick stained their lips a bloody red. “If you two weren’t so fucked up right now, I would slice you apart like a succulent fruit and take you apart one piece at a time.”
“Oh.”
Elendira peppered a few kisses on their face, leaving marks there. “We’ll have to do this part again, my loves.” She went back to searching, pulling dead worms from inside of them and dropping them on the floor. Worms crunched under Elendira’s feet as she moved. Livio and Razlo’s organs were slick under her fingers. “I have you.”
One of them made an almost kitten-weak agreeing noise.
this next piece is from a fic ive been sitting on for two months, I've described it as "a comically biblical amount of insects brings a fallen angel of the lord to climax" and have gotten several people to lose their minds at that phrasing. its less comical, but really, what do you expect from knives of all plants? Warnings include: insects, alien fuckery, xeno. shockingly little gore in this, or at least this part of the fic - knives and zazie have a tussle in the larger fic and bugs are eaten. plants are predatory, imo. it explains their teeth.
Zazie does-doesn’t understand, doesn’t-does understand in a way that is wholly inhuman, a collective, not an individual. Knives is an individual of a collective, a single voice just out of harmony with the rest.
Zazie fills the ache, guts him to the core, while Knives claws at Zazie’s carapace, digging trenches, and hissing-clicking and reverberating loud and hard enough to stun many of the small Worms, collapsing them into the sand.
Zazie is hot against him, still holding Knives’ face in their mandibles. A mockery of a human kiss. Plants don’t kiss that way and Worms have no need.
Knives goes for a headbutt but only taps his forehead against an empty space between Zazie’s endless eyes. Between one breath and the next he reaches out with that part of him that sings with his sisters and touches Zazie’s Whole.
Knives burns.
And lastly, a bonus fic for the week, one that i hadn't planned on writing originally but it's getting written anyway, yet another knives vivisection fic. this one's a little different - 2nd pov instead of my usual third person. Warnings for this include: medical horrors, knives having a panic attack, false reassurance that someone's ok in a bad way, more alien freakiness, and Dr. Conrad's special brand of unhelpful bedside manner. eye trauma as wel,
The doctor – false, liar, ripped the creature that should’ve been your older sister in two – looks down at you. A scalpel drips with your resin.
The clearest words you’ve heard are spoken. “Subject Knives, this part you might feel.”
The blade descends.
You stop breathing.
It doesn’t hurt.
It doesn’t hurt.
There is pressure but it doesn’t hurt.
It should hurt.
A knife, silver in appearance. Blade only an atom wide, perhaps more. It slices the doctor’s cheek but melts as soon as it does.
The doctor’s blood drips. It mingles with your resin, pools where the scalpel has sliced open your eyelids.
[Well done little brother! You just have to do that harder next time!]
I hope you enjoyed the pieces here and i cannot wait for body horror week to start 💜
#trigun#trigunbodyhorrorweek#millions knives#tesla trigun#domina trigun#william conrad#horror#blood#elendira the crimsonnail#livio the double fang#razlo the tri punisher of death#crimsonfang#crimsonnail#zazie the beast#myde writes#wip wednesday#medical horror#eye trauma#insects#xeno#sure!#knivesanddomina#dominai#god#if ive missed something PLEASE tell me#i think ive got all the tags for these pieces#but i might not#they're all tonally VERY different
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twenty questions for fic writers 🫡
thanks for the tag @syoddeye!
1. how many works do you have on ao3?
50
2. what's your total ao3 word count?
699,806
3. what fandoms do you write for?
oh god, ongoing or previous too?? uhm currently batfam, star wars, cod, st - but i’ve had a few extra that i used to write for too
4. top five fics by kudos
i’m not linking them all bc some are,,,, far from my best work. also can u tell i love a long lyric title?
if you can’t give me all, give me nothing ; memorise the way you make me feel ; the way you move like you do ; i’m addicted to the way i feel when i think of you ; took the words right out of my mouth
5. do you respond to comments?
literally every single one,, before getting this account back a few months ago it was the only way i interacted w people in the fandoms so 🤷♀️ sometimes it might take a week tho but i try to be quick
6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
i don’t tend to do angst endings? like even in darker angsty fics i usually twist it so it’s like dubcon happy at the end 🥴🥴 sooo maybe either no grave can hold my body down or can i steal a kiss or two? or even choices made in anger
7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
liiiiiterally any other fic i’ve ever written lmao
8. do you get hate on fics?
not often? BUT i usually do fluff fics and when i started dabbling in darker stuff that’s when i got more hate - specifically on one fic in particular
9. do you write smut?
yeah! not all the time but maybe 65%
10. craziest crossover:
i dont really do crossovers but my last mando fic was inspired by justified if that counts?
11. have you ever had a fic stolen?
not that i know of,, again im not very online to be able to know :/
12. have you ever had a fic translated?
yeah! just one but now i dont do it,, learning curve for me
13. have you ever co-written a fic before?
almost when i was first starting out writing 6 years back but it fell through - katy if ur still out there i hope ur enjoying life <3
14. all time favorite ship?
ffffuckkkkkk i don’t think i can choose bc i dip in and out so often but i do tend to always come back to jaytim? they’re my for lifers i think but soap x reader is a close second atm
15. what's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?
i’ll always finish my wips bc i can’t stand to see them unfinished,, but it’s been like three years since i first said i was going to write my sci-fi dystopian jaytim fic and im still not past the first paragraph :/
16. what are your writing strengths?
i think i’m good at dialogue and catching accents and nailing personalities pretty quick,,
17. what are your writing weaknesses?
i’m so fucking slow. if nothing else, watching people write for cod on here has shown me how quick everyone else seems to be able to write :’)
and also with longer fics i’ve gotten into the (bad) habit of leaving out like integral details that i assume the reader will just know bc ive been too in my own head about it all and ive forgotten what i’ve established already; leads to decisions looking like they’ve come out of nowhere or random personality changes
18. thoughts on dialogue in another language?
i’ve attempted it but i have to google translate it so i try to keep it to a minimum and ask for correction in the comments. sometimes i do it italicised but written in english so readers can understand that it’s meant to be another language but dont have to skip to the bottom notes or another tab to understand what’s being said
19. first fandom you wrote in?
teen wolf 🥴
20. favorite fic you've written?
idk if i’ve got a favourite,, in hindsight a lot of the ones i think about most fondly are the ones that absolutely killed me off when writing so i’ve got real rose tinted glasses about them all. however these are few that should get honourable mentions just because i like them and they didn’t pop up earlier
whew this was long i think i yapped ontoo much lmao but it was so fun!!
no pressure tags: @glossysoap @mikichko @kyletogaz @femalefemur @sentientcave @gemmahale @madstronaut and anyone else who wants to give it a go!!
#loved doing this thanks for tagging me sy!!!#very interesting looking back at some of my older fics and old fandoms 🫣🥲 like some of my concepts were p cool like what was i on a few#years ago?? i was bashing out so many fics at one point lmao#like one a month??? who is she??#tag game
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Personal rant, CW for talks of blood and medical stuff
The past 5 days have really been so much for me and it... seriously doesn't feel like only 5 days at all with how much has gone on
On Wednesday evening I got home from work feeling extremely weak after telling my QPP repeatedly that I don't feel good, and after I was no longer able to hold my head up or open my eyes without extreme effort my roommate took me to the emergency room where we waited 9ish hours for me to even be taken to a bed and then one or two more to be seen
When they did get there, they said they needed to take blood, give me an IV, do chest x-rays, and a few other tests (I think they tested me for a stroke too) because clearly a lot was wrong
The nurse tried to put the IV in my left arm and then my hand, failing both times because she couldn't find a vein. She then called over a second nurse, who said since I had already been poked twice, she wasn't going to poke me unless she was sure she had one
She left without poking me.
She called over a doctor to come with a whole ass ultrasound setup to use that to find a vein, and they only found a suitable one in my upper right arm, meaning I had to hold it up at an uncomfortable angle the entire time and because of where it was, it also hurt the entire time (only a little, but still)
They also interrupted it in the middle to take more blood ("well that can't be good")
Also, while they were putting the IV in, I remember them struggling to reach the vein, and the pain from them wiggling it around trying to reach my difficult ass vein, and then hearing "how attached are you to this sweatshirt?"
I had... bled all over it (fortunately they stopped the bleeding pretty fast, very different from my last experience with an IV where I nearly bled out on the hospital floor)
Anyway, after wanting to cry from how uncomfortable the whole experience was but eventually managing to sleep through the last half hour of it, they told me about my bloodwork, and a lot is wrong! Some of the things that have always been wrong with me, and some new things, like low thyroid and low potassium, low sodium etc
They scheduled me for a follow-up appointment in a week and I leave, it is now Thursday morning
I picked up the meds they prescribed me and got home around noon, exhausted from not having slept all night, and napped
Only to wake up to a terrible toothache out nowhere, that at its worst was so bad I couldn't lift a finger
I ran to the dentist but they were closing by the time I got there and told me to come back the next morning
I did, and they said I need an emergency root canal, but that it would be hard to find any endodontists who take my insurance, which... yeah, it proved to be impossible
So now, today, I'm scheduled for the root canal, and I have to pay for the whole $1500 out of pocket
Which I haven't reached, but... I'll have to see what I can manage now
Also, through all of this, my workplace is telling me it's "unacceptable" not to show up to work because they're short-staffed. As if I wasn't stuck in the fucking hospital. I worried about getting fired, because I need that money to pay for the fucking root canal and I hadn't even received my first paycheck, so I went in to work yesterday, but wasn't able to finish a full day of work because I felt like Shit
They still told me they need a doctor's note specifically stating that I can't work for x number of days (even though I gave them my emergency room discharge papers to prove I was unwell) before they could believe that I was actually not feeling well enough to work
So I guess I'm going to ask the fucking endodontist for one
And this cuts into my funds for my trip to take the JLPT and some other things in June, which I also really need so I can get a better job. It is absolutely necessary that I take this trip, but I'll no longer have the money for it yet, and travel costs only go up as you get closer to the date of, so lol.
Anyway. It has not even been 5 full days since I first went to the ER. I need a fucking break.
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lol im not sure my mental and physical health has ever been this bad.
im kinda suicidal again instead of just being numb, empty, and having depersonalization/derealization but I don’t even know who to tell. my friends are probably getting overwhelmed with me/tired of me doing so bad all the time. it’s gotta be a real bummer. can’t tell my family bc they freak out or the complete opposite just tell me it’s gonna be ok. my girlfriend has DID and hasn’t fronted in several days because she’s been having a hard time mentally and physically so one of her alters (who I am not dating) has been in control. this alter doesn’t really talk to me nearly as much as my gf usually does so my bpd (and general shit mental health atm) is having a fucking field day with that. i miss her a lot. Unrelated to her but I don’t sleep or eat enough. my house is disgusting and I can’t get myself to clean it. the stupid lexapro my psych made me try gave me so many fucking side effects and I stopped taking it days ago and I’m still having the worst fucking time. i have so many bruises and scabs from how bad my skin picking has gotten from the medicine. my jaw hurts so bad bc the med made me start clenching it/gritting my teeth all the time now. my teeth feel so weak and sensitive like I’m scared they’re gonna fucking break into pieces when I eat. my acne got worse too but idk if that’s bc of the medicine or bc my hormones are crazy OR bc I’ve been on my period for basically two months at this point. i have sores on my tongue that are painful and overstimulating just to feel and i want to bite them off or something. my wisdom teeth are hurting too. im so tired. I have no excitement. im just detached from life. I’m not enjoying anything. people’s concern for me is not even fucking hitting me like it should be. I’ll be like “I want to kms” and they’ll be like “holy shit I’m worried about you i love you don’t die” and I’m just like “🤷”. it’s very frustrating. everyday feels like a shitty dream. but i never wake up. ive barely even been listening to music. which is fucking wild for me. I just listen to YouTube at work. and it’s mostly like videos on disturbing/scary shit lately. like shit I’ve barely even touched before the last few weeks. I don’t know why I’m suddenly so interested in really fucked up stuff but nothing else hits the same. I guess I subconsciously just wanna feel something. so fear and discomfort is my go-to. I’m always in pain. I have the desire to abuse drugs or drink or SOMETHING to make myself feel better. but I still really don’t even do that. oh yeah and I relapsed twice this week. once wasn’t that bad but the second time was pretty fucking rough. it’s even worse bc I literally broke apart someone’s fucking shaving razor at my friend’s house and used one of the blades. then had to wake my friend up bc the cuts wouldn’t stop bleeding. I need serious help. I don’t want to be hospitalized though. I did that earlier this year and it was a complete waste of time. I wish I could just die. I’m so tired of pushing through this hell. And I can’t help but think “well i guess it could be worse” which is true but also every time I think that something else happens. I want out. Please. I wish I had the fucking balls to kill myself like ive wanted to for the past like 12 years. No one can help me. I can’t even help me. I genuinely don’t know what to do. I take the medicine. I go to therapy. I reach out to loved ones for help. I try to live my life. But it’s not fucking working. I’m so miserable.
#stfu lexy#text#very heavy stuff I’m ranting about please be warned#these are just for people’s blacklists btw#self harm#suicide#suicidal thoughts#medication#dermatillomania
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FLAMES JOURNEY CHAPTER #10 growing and registering
a few days afer neegan and james left the guild valdederon finds him self feeling lonley alittle having not fully grasped just how much impact neegan had ont him . but he continues his school studdies untill he graduates and begins working out in the now repaired training hall were he continues working out evry day after a month he gets aproache dby kleo as hes chugging a water skin.
kleo--- so you realy do want to be a pheonix hawk… i.. are you sure you wont change your mind.
valdederon---mom ill be safe i promise im no stranger to the dangers of a dungeon in 2 worlds now. i promise i wond end up missing or killed.. im worried to but i want to explore ill always come back and spend time with my family.
he walks over and hugs the crying milotic and purrs lovingly.
valdederon---and im going to stick to the guild rules and wait untill im 13 to begin training for it theres always new stuff i can learn from other pokemon. plus if i keep going all out im pretty sure id bankrupt the guild withe the repair costs in the training hall.
kleo chuckles with a sigh
kleo---fair point… that is rather expensive mister arsonist.
valdederon growls at the tease but chuckles after purring as kleo ruffles his head fur with her tail. over the next few weeks valdederon studdies tirelesly in school and trains in the training hall taking breaks to read in the guild archives.
years later valdederon is 13 when he walks into a trainer office.
valdederon--- good morning id like to become a pheonix hawk.
an absol with both eyes pure white as if bline pears up over his desk and walks around the braixen witch is on the verge of evolving..
beyroon-- your an interesting one arent you.. young.. yet..mature for your age if abit prideful.. your powerful as well..verry well illgo get my assistant.. shes a zorua he he abit cheaky and abit skeptical of aplicants.
valdederon--- i dont mind i can handle it have you ever heard of outworlders beeing able to use abilities they held in another world by chance ive been asking around alot but no one has any answers and you seem quite wise and experianced..
beyroon--- hmmmm you arent curious about my eyes..
valdederon---- not my place to ask about perosnal medical situations im not a medic and ive seen plenty of wariors in my time who seemed weak but held powerfull secrets.
beyroon begins laughing with a smile.
beyroon--- you impress me kid your mature pridful yet surprisngly humble..kind and respectfull your a rare one indeed.. ive heard rumors yes.. nothing concreete give it a shot if your curious he he training would be a good start.
valdederon--- yea pride is a hard thing to break he he.. thanks for the compliments though and for sure ill try out my powers duing training.
beyroon walks over and calls for his assitant from the back of his office a young 16 year olf female zoroua who has a smug look reminicent of a snivy as she trots over. ( zell - lania pronounced like tania.. most often shown as a steryotyped rusian girl or lady )
zelania--- so your a new aplicant.. tsch.. dont look like much.and ontop of that your a fire type.. arent you the kid who torched the training hall.
valdederon---yes mam.. i am unfrotunately i was dealing with a lot back then…my mind was a wreck and so were my emotions…witch.. sort of super chagred my fire type moves…
zelania--- well.. if thats true you might be good enough to be a pheonix hawk… ugh lets go get the paper work done.. dont fuking get killed out there.. IF YOU PASS THAT IS..
valdederon--- seems like you trully care about evryone… despite your front.
she truns her head with a blushing growl making beyroon laugh alittle as she walks past him.
zelania-- can it you old fart.. so gald he cant see me right now.
valdederon stays quiet even as the elderly absol begins bellowing with laughter causing the zoroua to blush more as she takes valdederon to work out the paperwork
valdederon--- he certainly is a cheaky old guy isnt he
zelania chuckles--- yea.. damed old farts always been around for me.. atleast after saving me when i was 3 ish.. i barely rember anything but aparently me and my family were out exploring when an entire hill side collapsed after a big monsoon..i lost my folks but he found me limping after having just stollen a berry from a travling pokemon both him and the traveler found me by the mud slide eating the berry…..
she goes quiet and takes a breath looking down--
zelenia--hell why am i even telling you this your just some kid with a.
valdederon cuts her off.
valdederon--- i dont need to know your storry but if you want to talk about it.. im willing to listen loosing family. i know how hard it is. to think or even talk about to anyone. talk to my mom kleo if you want to know more.
he finishes up the paperwork she brought out and looks at him in shock as he leaves quietly with out a word walking past the absol who looks back at her.
beyroon--- been along time since you let that out hun.. you and that kid have more in common then you know i aint heard the whole thing but he was your age when it happend to him as well go on and take a break i can sense your upset.
she screams at him to mind his own business and runs off tears dripping as she transforms to go hide some were. making beyroon sigh paw on his face as he worries were shes run off to.
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Nov.7th ♠♥ 6am
Good morning, sunshine.
I have finally woken up before the breaking of dawn. Thanks to mothers lil helper two hours ago. It is some past five in the morning now. In fact, that✨ would be the reason why I've decided to bring back our letters.
There wont be much to talk about, let me just clarify this upfront.
I have been in perfect solitude in this attic for nearly a year now.
Significantly, in the first world I shall remain rational at all costs. In ours, allow me to tell you: something is not right. Perhaps you could put my mind at ease.
Considering my lack of memory permanence, i couldn't quite say how long this has been going on. Ive tried my best to ignore it all and am succeeded most of the time. But when i do fail, its pretty scary.
My mind has been crowded these days and I cant hear you anymore in there. Maybe talk through here?
I have been feeling him constantly now. Whispering, touching me even. It began small. Far away whispers and faint tastes in my mouth and nostrils. Then, it got harder to ignore.
My cigarette burn ached twice, be one yesterday. No, im lying. its not painful. Although im not exactly qualified to distinguish pain from pleasure. But it feels warm. Fire burning under the skin. That feeling from placing your hand above a lit candle. Inside. It doesn't hurt.
Felt it in my left foot way too many times. Didnt think much of it then.
Actually pictured grandpa. He always jokingly said he would pull my feet when he left.
The Wound ached a few times as well. This one hurt. Yet I concluded it was probably bad blood from keeping my arm in a weird position.
Haven't felt that in weeks. Could it be frustration? He does have one just like mine, i suppose. Suppose that it is like mine. At Fall I used to wonder if he was projecting pain into his wound and it accidentally fell over mine. Or purposely.
That night (a year ago) I was extremely medicated but heard him tell the girl about his scar. That i was with him when he did it and he -didn't care at the time if he died-. Could be he was just trying to impress her. Could be that i imagined the whole thing - for he also said i was his best friend.
Yesterday i felt it in my chest.
The night before, in my right hand; I was reading and the feeling stopped me instinticly, as if someone was holding my hand.
Every-time i feel the hot spots i push it away. This time i did not.
I was weak. Its understandable.
Usually it works. Last night i failed and started to hear loud whispers so i drugged myself to sleep. Learned to accept defeat long ago.
I fear to get overly nervous and never go back, as happened that summer i lost my home. Deeply do not fancy another coma.
The night i felt my hand being held, as well:
I gave into doubt and asked the spirits about it. The card they gave me was the King of Swords. I cant fathom it, not really. Yet it felt concerning that upon asking if he was trying to communicate with me mentally that is what they said.
The king of Mind. Right? Well, they also gave me the Sun. I am safe and the sun shines down on me. Besides, knowledge is always a good thing to receive.
I dont feel anger, in these messages. Is worth mentioning. Just longing.
But O life is so much simpler (and emptier) without him. All of them.
Help me, will you? Help me keep him banished.
Yours truly,
lily
ps- Felt guilty about giving you solely concerning info;
The sky looks pretty and white today. Have a look!
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just a sort of ‘update’ sort if thing on wats been going on w me recently or smth. just felt like putting it out there
TW for ED thoughts and mention of s/h.
srsly want to clarify that i dont romanticize any of this. this shit is whack as hell.
so, its been getting a little worse.
ive been purging for a few days in a row and im gonna try and stop for hopefully at least a few days or a full week if im lucky.
ive started exercising. mainly following these 2 videos, i try do do them once in the morning and once at night and i missed this morning and ive added a third one tonight.
im sore. i feel miserable. but i actually think its helped with my skin cause its so oily all the time and i think working out has been helping.
its back to school tomorrow so i’ll be able to avoid eating longer, i just need to fix lunch times cause ive started getting into the habit of eating lunch again and it makes me feel horrible but im too scared to purge at school so i literally just have to suck it up.
havent weighed myself in a few days. well i did weigh myself like 5 times last night and two times today but the scale isn’t accurate. so im hoping i can weigh myself tomorrow morning when i get the chance.
ive been having the urge to s/h again (ive been clean for almost two weeks now) but i want to target a specific part of my body but that part is already in pain from working out and if i workout with cvts its just going to be one hell of a shitty time and i think im starting to use working out as a form of s/h. its sure as hell feeling like it.
but on a brighter note i watched the live action tmnt movies from 2014 and 2016 and i loved it holy fuck look at the boys i love everything about them. and i got some fake nails, a retsuko plush, a hello kitty hoodie and three new shirts because im increasingly becoming more and more obsessed with the coquette aesthetic its so pretty omg. also i recently finished rottmnt series and movie (i cried). and im almost finished watching whats available of tmnt(2012) on netflix.
also i made a little ‘daily stats’ thing in pics art to track the day, my weight, what i eat, how many cals, how many cals i burn, my net cals and if i purge or not. im not gonna post it just cause i dont want to feel like im promoting any of this, and cause i made it all pink and cute looking i dont want to be accused of romanticizing this shit CAUSE IT SUCKS.
IVE BEEN THINKING ED RELATED THOUGHTS NONSTOP FOR THE PAST WEEKS AND ITS ONLY GETTING WORSE THE MORE I FEEL LIKE IM NOT MAKING ANY PROGRESS. I CANT LOOK AT FOOD THE SAME WAY AGAIN AND IM TOO SCARED TO GET HELP OR TO TRY AND FIX MYSELF AND IM SO SCARED IF GETTING CAUGHT AND NOT BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY AND I HATE STARING AT MY NAKED BODY IN THE MIRROR AND HATING EVERYTHING I SEE. I HATE CARVING MY HATRED INTO MY SKIN. I HATE CARVING MY INSECURITIES ONTO MY FLESH. BUT IM TOO SCARED AND TOO WEAK AND TOO MUCH OF A FUCKING PUSSY TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT ANY OF IT.
yeahhh living is fun.
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Hghggh
#don't re/blog#not. having a good time rn#p sure our cat Lola is dying#she hasn't eaten properly in a week and is getting too weak to move#she just stays curled up in a chair all the timr#last night i tried feeding her wet food and she just hacked it up#parents made a vet appointment for her today#and I'm pretty sure this is the last I'm gonna see of her#even shittier is that in-person classes are finally starting again for me today and ofc one of them is at the exact same time#as Lolas appt#so i won't even be there with her#...it's not like any of this is a surprise really#bc Lola's an old kitty (like at least 14/15) w thyroid issues#so it's just. she's finally winding down#but god it still sucks#esp bc i feel like she's in Pain and we kinda caused her More Stress in the past few months since we brought Vince home#little mfer keeps eating her medicated food and chasing her all over#......but even though she's been kind of a hag in her old age we all still love her#and she loved us back#...ive just been sitting with her in the back bedroom n occasionally petting her#can't bug her too much or she growls#she still has the most disproportionately deep chainsmoker sounding growl lmao#im gonna miss the angy motorcycle noises#dizzyisms#ask to tag
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Bad girl
ꕥ Pairing : Matsukawa x y/n
ꕥ Synopsis : Don’t be such a whiney brat when your boyfriends busy
ꕥ Word count : 0.7k
ꕥ A/N : IM SO SORRY FOR LACK OF POSTS IVE BEEN SO BUSY WITH WORK N ALL I PROMISE I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN ABOUT YOU GUYS!!!!!
ꕥ TW : punishment, fingering, oral, cream pie, vibrators, sex toys, vouyerism, dom! sub dynamic, mentions of raw sex, probs a lot more lol 18+
'Legs open and I don't wanna hear a word'
His hands wrapped around your legs, tearing your pussy apart. His eyes lurking straight down you, you could feel yourself tense from his gaze.
His hand palmed at himself gently and slowly through his clothes, agonising pace edging himself on from the way your slick built up within your legs, dribbling down your thighs - such a sight for sore eyes.
'Mmm...daddy please...' you mumbled, fingers clawing at the table your bent over in an attempt for some relief.
'Didn't you just hear me? Fine I'll give you something to moan over...'
You were so greedy for him. So pleading for himself to unveil inside you, the reminiscent feeling of him ruthlessly hitting inside of you, hard long cock pounding you like there's no tomorrow, his foreskin edging the rim of your cunt, a chased release was what you constantly craved and with a little good behaviour, you were granted it.
But you've been nothing but bad recently. Scandalous clothes whilst he's been tryna work, innocent eyes peering into him as you pretend like you haven't just been fucking your fingers into yourself without his permission. Your so dirty, so filthy over him, so worked up over the sight of his lazy eyes disregarding you, over the feeling of his dismissal over the past few days and you cant do it no more.
Your cunt suddenly clamped over a new feeling down there, a vibration pounding deep inside your core, your drool gathering at your cleavage, toes curling and neck shot back. Tongue draped out like a dog, you looked so fucked out and pretty.
'Fuck your really taking that princess hm? Your such a slut for me...'
Crouching down he tugged at the vibrator inside of you, pushing it deeper inside your swelling cunt. Ripped moans pouring out from your broken lips, your release being edged closer and closer.
'Cum and I wont touch you for a whole week, you'd like that hm? Me not even looking at you? I mean considering how bad you've behaved dont you think your deserve it...?'
'N-no...please...I'll be good...' you sobbed, cries crammed out of you as you purse your thighs shut, knot becoming tighter and tighter as you do everything in your right mind to not cum there and then.
'Really? Well try your best at this one princess...'
His pulsating tongue joined the toy inside of you, your ass clawed and groped at. Clit played with with his split, face buried between your folds and ass, greedily lathering up from all the slick you've coated your body with. Legs shaking and trembling under your touch. Moans screeched out your body, sexy croaked voice sent vibrations from your pussy right to your head.
'Ah..yeah...mmm...' you whined, white flashed and eye sockets sore. Tear stained cheeks glowing red as you lazily grinded your ass back onto his face. Needless humping on and off of his curved tongue inside of you, such a needed chase for your poor...weak...body...
'T'much please...'
'Nope... don't fucking try it...'
Head slung down, mattsun cock strained against his body, Precum coated at his tip as he almost exploded at the sight of your pain...
What a sadist.
#matsukawa smut#matsukawa issei#Matsukawa issei smut#issei smut#Matsukawa x y/n#Matsukawa x reader#issei x reader#issei x y/n#Matsukawa x you#Matsukawa#Matsukawa issei x you#mattsun smut#mattsun x y/n#mattsun issei#mattsun haikyuu#haikyuu smut#haikyuu x you#haikyuu x y/n#yandere Matsukawa#mattsun boyfriend#yandere mattsun#tatakaebomb#ren&ash#smut#haikyuu hc#hq Matsukawa#hq mattsun#hq mattsun smut#seijoh four#haikyuu Matsukawa hc
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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!
#fic: the colour yellow#gojo satoru#gojo satoru x you#gojo satoru x reader#gojou satoru#gojou satoru x reader#gojo x reader#gojo x you#gojou x reader#gojou x you#jjk#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen#jujutsu kaisen x you#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jujutsu kaisen fic#jjk writing#jujutsu kaisen writing#jujutsu kaisen gojo#my writing
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girl in the mirror | DRACO MALFOY
MASTERLIST
PAIRING: Draco Malfoy x Muggle!Reader
WORD COUNT: 2.1k
SUMMARY: in which draco and y/n are soulmates and can hear each others’ music, and you’ve been blasting sad songs all week, worrying draco.
WARNINGS: one mean joke about americans sozzles
A/N: based on the tiktoks where soulmates can hear each others’ music. i dont think ive seen an imagine like that on here so i thought i’d write one :)) also set in 2010s
In the Wizarding world, on your thirteenth birthday, you are officially bound to your soulmate. This means different things for different wizards and witches, depending on what they valued. For example, when Blaise Zabini turned thirteen, he was able to see his soulmate in mirrors-- fitting considering how self-obsessed he was.
Draco, however, heard music. You must be obsessed with it, he realised. He found out he was right pretty quickly, waking up to the sound of your playlists muffled in his ears and falling asleep to them too.
It was always Muggle music too. You must be a half-blood, or even… Merlin forbid, a Muggle-born. Realising that his soulmate wasn’t going to be a pure-blood like his parents had planned, Draco kept the news to himself and worked on his vocabulary. He tried his best to bite his tongue around Granger, ignoring his friends when they made fun of their ‘dirty’ blood.
He didn’t want to hurt you when he got to meet you.
It took Draco longer than it should have to realise you definitely didn’t go to Hogwarts. How could you when he’d be sat in assemblies, the room so silent you could hear a pin drop, and all he’d hear is the thumping of your music in his ears as if he was underwater?
“She’s probably an American,” Pansy pretends to gag, the others laughing with her.
“Could be a Beauxbaton,” Blaise suggests.
Draco doesn’t like to make assumptions, but he thinks you are definitely a Muggle. It’s rare, but not unheard of in the Wizarding world, especially nowadays. For the Malfoys, though, it would be an outrage.
You play your music the most when he’s eating dinner in the Great Hall or when he’s getting ready for bed.
At first, he hated it. He hated your music, he hated how his head was rarely ever quiet, and he hated that he didn’t know who you were in order to beg you to take your headphones out for once.
However, Draco learnt to love your music. Songs and bands he’d never heard of before quickly became his favourites and eventually, he found himself humming your Muggle tunes in the common room or quietly singing along in his dorm when the other boys were out doing whatever.
He learned to love having your music in his head, especially as the years rolled on and his life became harder and harder. It made him feel like he was never alone, your muffled melodies making a home in his head and pushing out all of his anxiety and depression.
Draco wanted to dance with you to them. He liked to lay in bed at night and listen to your songs and imagine that you’re lying next to him. He bets you have a nice singing voice. Maybe you can even play an instrument or two. Maybe you could teach him how to play the guitar, and maybe he could show you how to play his favourite pieces on the piano.
Your music is never too upbeat, but today Draco feels like he hasn’t heard a single song that wasn’t about being sad. As he trudged from class to class, Draco couldn’t help but feel like something was wrong with you. It had been going on for the past few days, and the music stopped altogether on one of the days.
He went to bed with an empty head for the first time in a few years, staring at his ceiling. He plugged his iPod in and went to the Muggle section, playing a few of your favourite songs. It wasn’t the same.
“What’s up with you?” Blaise demands as Draco doesn’t touch his meal for the second time that day.
Draco glances to his friend and looks away, shaking his head. “Mind your own business, Zabini,” he mutters weakly.
Blaise’s soulmate, a Slytherin in the year below, joins them at sitting on the table and Blaise immediately forgets all about Draco, the two of them giggling as they hug each other. Draco thought he could throw up right there and then, shaking his head in disgust.
Green was Draco’s colour and Merlin was he jealous.
Why did you have to be a stupid Muggle?
Draco immediately feels bad for even thinking it. He wants to hug you and kiss the top of your head and mutter apology after apology. The soft feeling makes him feel weak. You did things to him that nobody else did, and he doesn’t even know who you were. The fact that you were most likely going through a rough time right now made it ten times worse.
“What’s wrong with Draco?” He hears Zabini’s girl whisper.
“Why don’t you ask me yourself?” Draco snaps, lip curling in disgust. “Instead of talking behind my back like a coward!”
“Draco,” Blaise growls. “I don’t know what’s up with you, mate, but you need to calm down.”
“It’s your soulmate, isn’t it?” Pansy quirks an eyebrow from opposite them. “Are they playing that rubbish song you hate on repeat again?”
“No,” Draco hisses in defence of you. “I like that song, thank you.”
Pansy holds her hands up. “Okay, whatever. Sorry, Malfoy. What has got your knickers in a twist, then?”
He hesitates. He doesn’t like talking about you to anybody else but he’s really worried and he thinks maybe one of them might be able to help.
“She’s…” Draco’s eyes drift to burn holes in the table in front of him. “She’s been listening to sad songs.”
Goyle snorts, making Draco’s head snap to him in fury.
“Sorry, Malfoy, sorry… But that does sound ridiculous, mate,” Goyle admits. “She’s probably just into that… genre?”
“No, you don’t understand,” Draco huffs and shakes his head. “You don’t know her like I do. Something’s wrong with her, I can tell.”
“Well, why don’t you visit her?” Blaise asks, grabbing a grape and popping into his mouth.
“What?” Draco spits. “Is that a joke, Zabini? I don’t find it funny--”
“I’m not joking,” Blaise frowns. “Merlin’s sake, Malfoy. Do you not pay attention in Charms?”
“Of course I do,” Draco hesitates, lying. “But what are you talking about, anyway?”
…
Draco feels ridiculous as he stands in front of the mirror in the bathrooms later that night. It’s silent since it’s the middle of the night, but Draco knows you’re awake because of the glum music playing faintly in his ears.
He wants to visit you like Blaise told him to do, and as he stands in front of the mirror and casts his incantations, he can’t help but wonder if this is a setup. He doesn’t give his hopes up, doesn’t hold his breath that when he opens his eyes you’ll be on the other side of the mirror.
But he wants you to be. He wants you to be there so badly.
Draco does sort of believe it so he put on his black turtleneck and black suit and combed his hair like usual, replacing the uniform and robes he’d been wearing all day. He doesn’t want you to see him and be disappointed.
He knows he won’t be disappointed no matter what you look like or what you are.
Draco takes a deep breath as he lowers his wand and closes his eyes. When he counts down and opens his eyes, he’s stunned into silence by the sight in front of him. His heart skips a beat and he nearly chokes on his own spit.
Staring back at him in the mirror is not his own pale reflection but what looks like a bedroom. The mirror glows orange from the lighting and he can see that it’s decorated with posters and records and other Muggle things. Draco doesn’t even process that you’re a confirmed Muggle at this point, he doesn’t care enough about that.
On a single bed in the middle of the room, sat up in the very centre with headphones in and a laptop in front of her, is a girl his age. She’s got beautiful y/s/c skin and y/c/h locks that have been thrown up into a messy bun, her y/c/e trained on the screen in front of her as she watches what he assumes is a film or a tv show.
She’s wearing a school uniform, not quite as posh as Hogwarts’, and it’s slightly crumpled from sitting in her bed with it on. Her polished black shoes are nowhere to be seen, rips in the bottom of her tights no doubt from wearing them thin five days a week.
Draco can’t believe he’s looking at you right now. He reaches his hand out, eyes widening when his fingers seem to slip past the glass and he’s sucked into another world-- your world. He wasn’t expecting it to happen, a small yelp leaving his lips as he tumbles straight out of the mirror hanging on your wall and onto your carpet.
You both scream as you make eye contact and you’ve thrown your laptop about in a panic. There’s no music in his ears now that he stands in front of you. Draco breathes heavily, unsure what to say.
“Um, hello?” He offers.
“What the hell?” You yell. “What are you doing in my bedroom? Who are you? My laptop!”
You ignore him as you dive off of the bed and pick it up. The screen is smashed making you glare at him harder.
“I’m sorry!” Draco practically squeaks. “I- I have Galleons--”
“Who are you?” You cut him off roughly.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Draco keeps repeating, hoping you will calm down. “I-I’m Draco Malfoy.”
“Draco Malfoy?” You repeat with a mocking laugh. “Is that a joke?”
“No,” he replies, voice pitched higher than usual with offence. “What’s your name?”
Normally you wouldn’t tell a stranger your name, but this situation is anything but normal. You stare at the boy for a few seconds, wondering why he feels familiar. There’s something about him that has you relaxing under his gaze, which is weird because he literally just appeared out of nowhere.
“Y/N Y/L/N,” you reply sceptically.
Draco smiles, “beautiful name.”
“Are you like a nonce or something?”
“Nonce?” Draco crinkles his nose in confusion.
You narrow your brows at him. “You’re literally British-- how do you not know what that means?”
“I’m not… I don’t really come from your kind of England,” Draco doesn’t know how to explain there is an entire world she’s been hidden from-- this is the first Muggle he’s ever had a conversation with.
“Are you Welsh?”
“Do I sound Welsh to you?” Draco cocks his head to the side, already amused.
“Sometimes I can’t tell the difference, not gonna lie,” you reply. “But no. I’m sure you’re English. You sound like you’re a private school kid or something.”
“I guess I am,” Draco replies quietly, looking around your bedroom and taking in all of the colours that it has.
You seem to snap out of whatever daze you were in. “Hey! You distracted me. Now tell me what the hell you’re doing in my bedroom before I call the police.”
Draco’s tongue darts out to wet his lips as he contemplates his next words. He hesitates and sits down on your bed next to you. You can smell his cologne-- it smells much more expensive than the Lynx sprays the boys at college seem to be obsessed with.
“Do you ever hear music in your ears?” He asks, watching your eyes widen in conformation. “You do. That’s… that’s me. My music. I hear your music too. You listen to it all the time. Um… normally a lot of bands and stuff.”
There’s a long silence. “Do you have me on Spotify?”
“What’s Spotify?” Draco’s nose crinkles.
“You probably just see what I listen to on Spotify!” You claim, standing up as you become weary of the boy on your bed.
Draco still doesn’t quite understand your Muggle terminology, but he gets the gist of what you’re trying to imply.
“That doesn’t explain the music you hear in your head from me,” Draco tries. “Or how I just came out of your mirror.”
You look overwhelmed. “What are you?” You whisper.
“We, Y/N, are soulmates.”
...
yuh
PART TWO HERE
#draco malfoy#draco malfoy x reader#draco malfoy imagine#draco#malfoy#harrypotter#harry potter#dracotok#blaise zabini#pansy parkinson#gregory goyle#soulmates au#soulmate au#harry potter imagine#harry potter au#draco malfoy au
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BTS Reaction To: Feeling Unworthy To Being His S/O
Hyung!Line & Mafia!Au
summary: a rookie makes a comment about you being his wife, and it is not a positive one
warnings: mafia!au, mentions of killing and drugs, insecure reader and hoseok in his part, crying from reader and yoongi, soft!yoongi, mentions of depression and depressed reader in namjoons part, soft!bts, fluffff, mentions of abusive family (reader being abused in the mentions mentally), scared hoseok, bts being soft for you and only you, rude rookies/newbie, comments about hating self and body. Mainly anything that has to deal with anxiety, depression, and self hate. This is a different type of mafia reaction I feel like
w.c.: 2.3k
notes: namjoons part was pretty personal to me and so it may hit home to some. Btw, I know it has taken me a while to post, but ive been trying to find my touch still, but please be patient with me!! School is starting up again next week, so I will be busy with it and with work too. Good news is that I finally found my writing self again!
Kim Seokjin
Am I being dramatic?
That was the first question that popped through your head when the newbie made the comment about your ability to have authority over him and group of others. Saying how you have no skill to be in your position, which is standing right next to your husband, Kim Seokjin, the deadliest mafia boss in the world.
From the beginning of your relationship with Seokjin, you have always felt inferior and unsure of yourself, especially lately when you guys got married. You took the position of being the ‘second in command’ even though his right-hand man, Kim Namjoon, is his go to. If anything, ever happened to Seokjin, he made sure you were the one to take over his business with the help of Namjoon. Before the marriage, Seokjin obviously asked you to which you agreed immediately – thinking that everyone in Seokjin’s gang was going to want this since they knew that you were his fiancée (at the time) and understand why you were getting the position. When Namjoon was told this, you began to apologize because you believe that he deserves the title because of how long Namjoon has been by your husband’s side. But those worries shut away when Namjoon smiled at you as he pulled you into a hug, congratulating you. In the back of your mind, you still believe that Namjoon deserves your position, but the constant reassurance from both Namjoon and Seokjin’s five other close friends, you felt confident. You knew a lot of the ins and outs of the job, thanks to being with Seokjin for almost seven years now, but sometimes you felt as if you did not deserve the position.
The one thing that fueled that thought was the newbie’s comment.
“No offense, noona, but you don’t necessarily have the skill for this job. It is more of, you know, a man’s job.”
In a way, you believed that he was right. You believed that you did not have any power in this position, having no say, thinking that all of the members will believe you are just joking by ordering them around. This comment took a mental toll on you, causing you to lock yourself in your shared bedroom with your husband, hiding underneath the comfort of your blanks, staring blankly at the wall. This is where your husband found you, a concerned look on his face as he sped walked to your side.
“Sweetheart, what is wrong?” He asked in a calm, comforting voice, an action that had you crying.
The first that went through Seokjin’s head was to comfort you but the second one was to find the bastard or bitch that hurt you and to kill them.
“I don’t deserve the position in your gang, Jin. I’m not fit for it, or even to be your wife. Namjoon deserved the title of your secondhand man. The newbie is right, this is a man’s job—” you were cut off by your husbands hand covering your mouth.
“Who told you this.”
“The newbie, Soojin.” You said, not realizing that you were signing the document of his termination. It only clicked when Seokjin stood up, a dark look on his face as he made his way to your guys closet, grabbing his favorite gun.
Knowing that there was no way of stopping your husband from killing the newbie as he gave you a kiss on your lips, rubbing his nose against yours in sentimental way that always brings a smile to your face. “I’ll be back later, sweetheart.”
Min Yoongi:
Yoongi could see the stressed out look on your face as you made your way into his office. He wanted to comment on it, wanting to know what is wrong with his usual ball of sunshine girlfriend, but he did not. Allowing you to push his chair back so you can climb into his lap, seeking the comfort of his presence and the touch of his skin, he did not mention the tears welling up in your eyes or the wobble of your lip, a tale tell sign of you about to cry. Holding you closely as you silently cried, he massaged your scalp, a comforting form of affection that you love, he wanted to ask you what is wrong, but he only kissed the crown of your head, silently telling you that it is okay to cry.
“Am I worthy to be your girlfriend?” you asked silently, voiced kind of muffled by his undershirt. Fidgeting with his flannel, you braced yourself for the about to come anger from your boyfriend.
“What kind of stupid question is that?” Yoongi gritted out, holding you closer, if possible, to help calm down his anger.
“A question that someone made me think…” not wanting to say names because you did not want to be the reason for someone’s possible death. You knew in the back of your mind that Yoongi will make you say the name of the person who has been causing you distress for the past four days, but you did not want to seem weak and allow them to win in this mental game.
“What made you think this?”
Not being able to lie and play around, you began to ramble. “I don’t know their name since they started a few days ago, but they pointed out that I am just in your way. I am not worthy to be your girlfriend because I am weak, which I am. I am not made to be your girlfriend—”
“Now that is a load of bullshit, Jagi. You are my girlfriend, the love of my life. I love you because you make me feel human and feel so fucking loved. You made me see that there is good in this life – happiness even. You are my home. I do not care that you are not, in your words, ‘weak’ because you choose, along with my authority, to not get in the middle of this gang life. I do whatever I can to protect, and if that means hiding you from danger, then I will. But you are worthy, so worthy. I still question how I am even worthy to be your boyfriend and have the ability to love you and you love me.”
At the end of his speech, both you and Yoongi are in tears. The one thing that both you and Yoongi share is the insecurity of not being loved. But what the most beautiful thing that came out of this relationship is the ability to love yourselves and love each other. So, this topic is what makes you guys emotional – scared even. Scared that you both will lose each other and scared that you guys are not enough. It had been rocky in the beginning but seeing how far you both have came and grew is what made it worth it.
The anger and the want to kill whoever made you think this is what fueled the deadly thoughts in Yoongi’s head. You knew this because you can read Yoongi like a book. Looking down at you, silently asking you if he can feed his hunger, you nodded your head. Yoongi knows that you hate violence, but looking from his perspective, you would do the same thing.
Jung Hoseok
Jung Hoseok is a very observant person, has been since the day he was born. This is what makes him a dangerous person, especially in the mafia world because of how he can easily tell when someone is becoming a traitor or is lying to him.
That is why it is hard to lie to him because of how easily he can pick up your lies. You rarely lied to him, but when you did, he knows that something is wrong. So, for the past few weeks, he can tell that you have became more distant from him, mainly more unsure of yourself. He does not like pestering you about things, opting for you to come to him when you are comfortable enough. Being a person who hates conflict – mainly confrontation – he understands how hard it is for you due to your anxiety.
But he could not take it anymore. Hoseok misses you so much. How can you miss someone when they are right there in front of you?
That is why you are now cornered in his office, both hands beside your head, body pressed against the wall. You could see the conflict in your boyfriend’s eyes, a look that is rarely there because he is always sure of himself. Sure about the situation. But right now, the mafia boss is anything but sure.
“What did I do to make you not love me anymore?”
Looking at him confusedly, “what?”
“You’re distant. You don’t kiss me good morning anymore or even let me hold you at night. What did I do, Jagi?”
“Hope, I’m so sorry. I did not mean for this, for you to feel like this. I’ve been distancing myself because of how I realized that maybe I’m not exactly the type of girlfriend you need, especially in this lifestyle. I’m not strong, or athletic, or just what you need. I realized this when one of your dealers pointed it out when—”
“Why are you listening to what other’s say, Jagi? You do not need their approval for your choices on who you are with. If we are happy, then we are happy. We, you, do not need to make others happy. Making yourself happy is what is important. You are allowing someone who does not even know you decide on your happiness, especially someone who does not even know how to spell.”
“Wait, Jungsoo does not know how to spell?” You asked, going off topic, something that you do not realize a lot, a trait of yours that Hoseok loves about you. He knows that when you do this during serious conversations is when you grasp the situation and what he said.
Chuckling, “yeah, he is a lost cause. Fortunately, Yoongi will be able to test the new drugs he made on him.” Slapping his chest at that, you knew that he was going to get rid of him. “But Jagi, I am serious. I know you have a hard time with listening to people’s opinions, especially when it involves you. But what I have been saying from the moment I realized that I loved you, I do not care whether you are what this peasant considers to be ‘fit’ for my position in the mafia world. I love you for you.”
Grabbing him by his collar, you pull him down to you, smiling like a little schoolgirl, you kissed him.
Kim Namjoon
Namjoon wanted to kill the rookie right then and there. But he could not because of how they are at an important meeting with two other gangs. When the rookie made the underlying comment towards you about your appearance, Namjoon could see the light in your eyes diminish slowly. Shoulders slacking and your body caving in on itself, the sight of seeing your happiness disappear in an instant by an opinion (which is completely false and impossible to be found in any way true), is what made Namjoon feel as if he had not accomplished anything.
You struggle greatly with loving yourself and being happy with yourself. You know that you need to, but from the very first day you were born, your parents made you believe that you are unwanted and not even close to being beautiful. Having an older sister that you were compared to with everything and anything, you were always the one losing while she was winning. Nothing that you did was ever good enough. This had turned you into believing that you were not even good enough. You depend on people’s approval for everything – even if you do not even know them because of the abuse and lies (that you feel as if they are true), you believe that what people think of you is what makes you worthy.
But when you met Namjoon, things started to change. He began to show you how beautiful you are, how worthy and loved you are. It has been a very painful process, but you have gotten better. Yes, you get into a depression and deep rut that takes you forever to get out of. But, with the help from your boyfriend, you get out of it. Even if it means him having to literally drag you out of bed and into the bathroom to brush your teeth and help brush your hair, it helps.
It is just that you never know what a trigger to you will be. As of right now, with the rookies comment repeating in your head.
Realizing the train of thought you began to get, Namjoon pulled out his pistol and shot the rookie right in the head. Grabbing your hand, he excused the both of you and took you into the bathroom.
“Breath, baby, breath.” He cooed, hugging you close to him, kissing the top of your head. “You are so strong, baby. So strong, so beautiful, so perfect.” He whispered in your ear, rubbing circles on your lower back. “It’s okay, you’re okay.”
“But I allowed—”
“No, no. Let’s not go there, okay? It’s okay to fall sometimes, but remember that we always have to pick ourselves up from where we left off. We can do this, you can do this. You are so strong, my queen. So strong and so beautiful. I love you so much.”
“I love you so much,” you promised back, sniffling. “Please don’t give up on me. I’m trying my hardest.” You begged, grasping his suit jacket tightly in your hands, scared that he will leave you.
“Never.”
#bts reactions#bts mafia reactions#bts hyung line reaction#bts mafia au#kim seokjin imagine#kim seokjin#bts fluff reaction#bts angst reaction#bts smut reaction#bts kim seokjin#kim namjoon reaction#jung hoseok reaction#kim namjoon imagine#kim namjoon angst#jung hoseok angst#min yoongi reaction#min yoongi angst#min yoongi imagine#kim seokjin angst#bts min yoongi#bts agust d#bts suga#bts jhope#bts jin#bts rm#namjoon fluff#hoseok smut#yoongi angst#yoongi smut#seokjin smut
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Stealth Mission Part 2
A/N I finished the request, queued it up ready, and then was hit with inspiration. Since the other one is already 1611 words, I thought I would just make a part 2.
Also,
Y/n - Your name
Y/n/n - Your nickname
Bucky Barnes x Male Reader
Word Count: 1636
----------------
Y/n was going out of his mind. He had woken up in the medical bay after their last mission, totally confused. It had been a long time since he had been so seriously injured on a mission.
He went back through his memories looking for clues. He knew he had been on a mission with his team, but something had gone wrong. They had been found out and then it got hazy. The only thing he remembered with absolute clarity was getting stabbed in the side.
Y/n felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. He must have been captured. But if that was true, why would they have healed him. Surely they wouldn't have bothered if they didn't have to. If they had needed to heal him, maybe they needed something from him. He must have been right when he thought earlier that they wanted information. You can't get information out of a dead man after all.
Y/n swallowed heavily. If he had been captured, and he couldn't get himself out then that would be the only way to stop them from getting what they wanted from him.
'Better to save that for when it becomes necessary.'
He glanced around to get his bearings and his eyes landed on the medical gear attached to him. That would have to go, but then someone would be alerted to his escape by the monitors changing.
Y/n felt his heart speed up in anticipation. He swore loudly as he realized that his escape was probably already compromised. He had been laying here awake for a few minutes and he knew that your vitals change when you are awake.
He ripped the IV out and pulled all the other unnamed wires and cords away from the machines. That might buy him a few minutes.
He bolted up and to the door, but just as he reached out for the handle he heard a loud click. He tried it anyway.
Yep, locked.
He spun on his heel and took in the room he was in. There, a window. His captors must be pretty sure he wouldn't wake up if they were stupid enough to put him into a room with a window big enough to escape through.
"Woah, slow your roll there Y/n/n."
The voice made Y/n spin around, but there was no-one there. He felt disoriented. The world was starting to spin again. He stumbled back from the window, he hadn't even realized he had made his way over to it, when had that happened?
When Y/n looked back up someone was in the room with him.
He stumbled back a step in surprise and cried out when he realized he had moved into someone else.
The walls were closing in now and he knew he had missed his chance to escape unnoticed.
-----------
Bucky was mad. He had been assured that there was no way that Y/n would wake up just because he had left his room for long enough to grab a quick shower and a bite to eat. He hadn't even eaten the food, planning to bring it back to the room that Y/n was still unconscious in.
He was on his way back to the room when the alarms began to go off in the tower. It didn't take long for the voice of Stark's latest AI to start talking to him.
"Mr Barnes, might I suggest you make your way back to Y/n's room? He is awake and seemingly unaware of his situation."
Bucky didn't bother responding, just dropped his food where he had been standing and sprinted for his boyfriends temporary room.
He reefed the door open and stepped in just in time to see his boyfriend spin toward him. He looked past Y/n to see Clint in the room already, standing near Y/n's bed.
Bucky stepped forward to help, but this apparently was too much for Y/n, and he swayed dangerously before loosing consciousness once again.
Bucky barely managed to catch his boyfriend before he hit the floor.
He carefully lifted Y/n up onto his bed and tucked him on once again. Then he turned to Clint for answers.
He was very aware that he was more Winter Soldier that Bucky Barnes at that moment, but he couldn't bring himself to care. The most important person in his life was once again laying unconscious on a bed in the medical bay, and it was Clint who was supposed to be watching him.
Clint swallowed obviously and held his hands up in surrender.
"I swear man, I didn't do anything. He woke up and I don't think he could hear or even see me. I was sitting there the whole time and it was like he didn't even register it."
Bucky glared frostily at him, jaw clenching tightly.
He took in a deep breath, then another. He couldn't bring himself to start yelling in your room, but he damn well wanted to.
"Maybe you should go get someone from medical to fix that." He ordered pointing at the broken machines.
Clint was out of Y/n's room before he had finished speaking.
--------------
The next time Y/n woke up there was a familiar face leaning from near by before he even had his eyes open properly.
"Hey"
Words were a thing right? It felt like words should be a thing that he knew how to use.
The familiar person handed him a glass of water and held on as he sipped it.
It didn't take long for Y/n's head to clear enough to recognize his boyfriends face.
He sighed and leaned back against his pillows, feeling like he had slept for the last century and like it still wasn't enough.
"Hey, just take it easy. You weren't really all here the last few times you've woken up. Just take your time."
"Ugh, what century is it?"
Bucky's low rumble of a laugh rolled over Y/n and he felt something relax inside. He knew he would be alright now that he was back with Bucky.
-------------
Y/n was going out of his mind. He had been on bed rest for the last week after he was well enough to leave the medical bay, and Bucky had taken that to mean that he needed waiting on hand and foot. Every time he tried to move at all, he got an attentive look from his adoring boyfriend.
"Do you need something? Should I get you something to eat?"
It was very sweet, and Y/n had been soaking up all the love that his big fluffy boyfriend had to offer, but it was starting to get old.
He was now at the stage where his body needed to start moving more, so that he could start working through the stiffness and build himself back up to where he had been before.
Unfortunately, Bucky didn't agree with him. Y/n was sure that he had been enjoying spending so much time with him and do things for him, but he was done now.
"Bucky, Doctor Cho agrees with me. It's time to start moving around more myself, or I'm going to lose these muscles that you seem so fond of. Besides, I need to start working through the weakness that stabbing caused. It's a liability out there, you know that."
That got him those dang puppy dog eyes that were the absolute worst. He must have learned them from somewhere, but for the life of him Y/n couldn't picture any of their friends ever making a face like that.
He shut his eyes and faced the ceiling instead.
"That isn't going to work this time. I've given you a full extra day, but now I need to start doing these things for myself again."
Better to keep it to himself that at some point he was going to have to go back to sparring with the others and all kinds of more dangerous things than simply getting his own food. They both already knew, but rubbing it in Bucky's face was probably not the smartest move in trying to win this argument.
Y/n was met with silence. He just knew that if he opened his eyes his boyfriend was going to be right in front of him, eyes bigger than ever.
He held out for a full two minutes more before peeking an eye open.
He was right. Bucky was standing right in front of him, but he wasn't pulling puppy dog eyes at him anymore. He had the softest smile on his face as he took in Y/n's antics.
Y/n opened both eyes fully and looked his boyfriend full in the face. Was he okay?
He went to ask him a question, but was met with a soft kiss. It was just a light brush of lips, but it caught Y/n by surprise. He melted into Bucky as he pulled him into his arms.
"I'm sorry, I know. This job that we do is dangerous, but it's something that neither of us would give up. It's a part of us, individually, but also together. I just worry. If something happened to you and I never got to see you again, I just hate that thought."
Y/n snuggled closer.
"I love you, you know that? I wouldn't choose to leave you if I had the choice."
Bucky was silent for a second and Y/n hoped he had read that right. It was the first time either of them had said anything like that, but what Bucky had said had sounded like a confession of love as much as the words themselves would have been.
Y/n looked up and was met with the biggest smile he had ever seen on Bucky's face.
"I love you too."
Neither of them were able to stop smiling enough to kiss properly, but that didn't stop them.
#Bucky Barnes x male reader#bucky barnes x male reader#male reader#bucky barnes#Stealth Mission#Part 2
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A few shinkami headcannons because I love them more than anything
Shinsou has a growth spurt and practically towers over Denki by their second year (for all intents and purposes, Shinsou has always been in class 1A)
Denki grows a little bit but not that much, he’s not complaining though, he gets Shinsou to grab stuff on the top shelve for him or has him hang up posters in higher places in his room (the only downside is that he has to get on his tippy toes for kisses but usually Shinsou will just bend down like a good boyfriend)
They go on dates every Sunday, It’s their day and it doesn’t matter what they’re doing as long as it’s just the two of them
They could be studying or doing homework or exercising or anything really and they’ll call it a date
The rest of the class knows better than to try and contact either boy on Sunday
“Normies worship Jesus on Sunday but I worship Shinsou” - Denki, at one point in time
Shinsou loves playing with denki’s hair, he buys different kinds of hair clips just to put them in denki’s hair
he just likes how the colors pop out
He especially likes to see purple hair clips in denki’s hair
Tbh it doesn’t have to be hair clips, it could be a scrunchie or a rubber band or a headband; as long as it’s purple it does wonders to shinsou’s heart
Denki likes playing with shinsou’s hair too but more than that he likes seeing Shinsou in yellow clothing
Shinsou doesn’t wear bright colors a lot usually sticking with black or cool tone colors
But when he does wear yellow, Denki just gets all mushy no matter how small it is
It could be yellow earrings or socks or something and Denki will wear a love sick expression all day
Despite being in the hero course, Shinsou still gets incredibly insecure about his quirk and how some people only see him as a villain
Denki, without fail or hesitation, tells Shinsou what a great hero he’s gonna be, he talks about how Shinsou is gonna inspire a new wave of underground heroes and how he’s gonna be some kid’s Aizawa one day and how proud he is of him (The first time he said that, it makes Shinsou sob. It makes denki cry too bc he’s a sympathetic crier so they just lay in bed holding eachother)
He also tells Shinsou how no matter who’s the number one hero, Shinsou will always have first place in his heart. And that Shinsou is just as much as any other hero out there and even a little more because he’ll be underground
Denki just loves his boyfriend so much and whoever planted the idea that some quirks are just made for evil is going to get electrocuted >:(
Denki will also pepper Shinsou in kisses saying things like ‘you are so kind’ ‘you’re an amazing person’ ‘I love you so much’ ‘You’re my hero’ and just a bunch of stuff so by the end of their heart to heart Shinsou is feeling a lot better
Denki gets insecure about how ‘dumb’ he is and how he’ll probably just end up hurting civilians or himself before he hurts a villain
Shinsou hates how that’s how Denki views himself because Denki is one of the kindest people in the world and doesn’t even realize it like the first time Denki told him that insecurity, Shinsou looked at him and was like ‘are you..you’re serious? Denks, You’re one of the most clever people I know’
Whenever Denki mentions it, Shinsou he just squeezes the blonde and lets him cry out his frustrations before telling him that ‘he’s not an idiot or stupid and that it’s okay not to understand something as fast as others and that it’s okay to learn differently and it’s okay’ (Shinsou will always try not to cry but a few tears fall anyways bc he just wants denks to be happy without feeling like he’s a fuckup)
Shinsou never lets Denki call himself an idiot or stupid, even in a joking way.
They don’t fight a lot because of their personalities like
Denki is a people’s person and is really in tune with other’s emotions and by default is a pacifist unless otherwise
Shinsou isn’t a people’s person but he’s observant due to his quirk bc of how he’s been treated in the past, he’s also good at picking up on people’s body language
Most times it’s just small disagreements and even then they communicate the best they can and try to compromise
If that doesn’t work then they’ll give each other space so the disagreement won’t turn into something ugly
They’ve only fought once and it was the worst (and best) thing for them
The fight happened after a mock rescue mission goes wrong and there were weeks of stress and tension leading up to it
It was messy and bad like really bad
“I just don’t get why you have to run into danger!” Denki screamed. The whole dorm could probably hear them but he didn’t care, not when his boyfriend was looking at him like he just lost his mind.
It was supposed to be a simple training exercise. Simple. Go in, defeat villains, rescue the ‘hostages’. It was not that simple.
*insert how badly the mission went and Shinsou ran towards the danger to help or smth idk*
It gets pretty rough between the two of them because they’re both pretty emotional people
Shinsou thinks denki doesn’t want him to be a hero and denki thinks Shinsou doesn’t want to be with him
It’s a lot of insecurities + stress + yelling
Denki is the first one to break, he’s a lot more emotionally sensitive than Toshi and everything is just crashing down and he hates it
“Do you just not want to be with me?!” He cries, unable to keep the tears at bay any more. He hates arguing with people, especially when that person happens to be his boyfriend. He gets it, he does! Toshi is training to become a hero and so is he but that doesn’t make it easier. Doesnt stop the shot of fear whenever he watches the other get hurt, doesn’t stop the late night self deprecation, doesn’t stop the anxiety he gets whenever he sees Toshi run head first into danger.
But he gets it and somehow it’s a bitter realization.
Because Hitoshi’s priority is the job they signed up for and Denki’s is Hitoshi.
The fight ends with tears on both their parts and they call it a night, too tired to scream anymore
They sleep in their own rooms that night
The next morning they agree to take a break, not a full break up, but some time away. Space away from each other to prioritize and think.
(Now ive seen fanfics where everyone picks denki over Shinsou and i hate that so fuck you, class 1A are both their friends and they’re all family and try and to help each other I will die with that statement)
Surprisingly the two most helpful people are Bakugou and Kirishima
(Actually not that surprising, they’re the longest couple in the whole class, dating immediately after Kamino)
Bakugou and denki have a heart to heart
“You’re both dumbasses” Katsuki sighs heavy, passing another tissue over to the sobbing blonde. He’s not good at these kinds of things, but Kirishima told him he could help the electric blonde more than he could so here he is. “You gonna tell me what’s wrong or just cry?” He asks, not without a hint of worry though. He pretends to ignore it.
So denki tells him everything and his insecurities
Oh. Yeah, Kirishima was right.
“You think I’m an idiot” Denki mutters quietly, harshly rubbing his eyes.
“No” The older blonde shakes his head, plopping down on the bed next to the other. He doesn’t turn to meet yellow eyes, his own trained on the All Might poster hanging directly across from them. He feels Pikachu’s curious gaze on him so he decides to elaborate more, knowing the sooner he helps the sooner he doesn’t have to deal with this anymore. It’s totally not because he’s gotten soft. Absolutely not.
“Trust me, Zombie Eyes looks at you like you put the fucking stars in the sky. It’s disgusting to watch.” He crinkles his nose in disgust earning a small laugh. “People like him and I, we gotta work twice as hard. Not saying that no one else does but it’s different.” He stresses the last word. “People like Ei or Deku or even you, people already see you as good so all you gotta do is get stronger. They don’t question your character, your morals, they don’t look down on you for having a weakness. People like Zombie Eyes and I though?we gotta work hard just to prove that we’re good. That we were meant to become heroes. Every action we do is put under a microscope and analyzed.” He explains.
“We’re assholes by default, It’s how we were raised. Not saying it as an excuse though. He was in the shitty system and I had shitty parents, no adult taught us shit like love or how to properly deal with feelings.”
Stupid Deku tried with him but he didn’t even know how to deal with his own much less some angry blond kid’s.
He takes a deep breath, pushing back faint memories of his childhood. The younger hasn’t said a word but he can tell he’s listening so it’s fine. “We can’t just turn off how we are. If it’s frustrating for you and Ei, It’s worse for us. Like we know logically that we’re good people, that we changed but that’s now how our brain sees it. We push ourselves because that’s all we know how to do, it proves to us and everyone else that we bled for our spot here. That we made it. Having friends is hard because we compare ourselves to them and draw our own conclusions to their actions. Being nice? Our brain says it’s a trap. Showing some human fucking decency? Our shitty brain says it’s an act. Being in a relationship? Laughable. We’re just villains pretending to play heroes to everyone else.”
He takes another deep breath, forcing himself to look away from the poster, flashbacks to their first year briefly passing in his head. Okay yeah, not going down that route. He looks over, making eye contact. He wonders if this is how Kirishima feels whenever he’s trying to cheer him up. Wonders if it’s just as hard. This better be worth it, everyone has been miserable. (Shitty thing about having been through life and death situations together is that everyone has bonded and become close like a family so when one of them is sad it’s like everyone is fucking sad.) (He loathes it because even he gets worried.)
“But despite that he still loves you.” He says softly, almost whispering like he’s telling the other a secret. “Fights his demons to hold your hand and all that shit”
Shinsou loves him? Loves him?
“How do you.. how do you know?” Denki whispers, throat sore. “We fought so badly last night, we were screaming at eachother.”
“He treats you the same way I treat Ei.” He answers,
“He changed his priorities around to try and accommodate for another person in his life, you became more important than training or studying. He takes days off to be with you, cuts his studying short if you need a break. It might not seem much to others but for him that’s huge. He came in with this one track mind but then you came along and he scrambled to balance everything. And then you two got your shit together and started to go out and I’m pretty sure he got scared”
“Scared?” Denki asks, the thought almost funny to him.
“I did.” Bakugou admits as Denki’s eyes grow wide.
“I was petrified. When Ei started to become more important than hero work, I freaked. It’s not that loverboy is choosing being a hero over you, It’s because he doesn’t understand that he can have both. He thinks everything important is a choice- that if you want something you have to give something up. He chooses hero work and he loses you. He chooses you and he loses hero work.”
“But he’s not going to lose me or hero work”
“Kinda sounded like you did give him an ultimatum though”
The realization hits him like cold water.
Shinsou gets a similar talk with Kirishima
It helps, a lot
They don’t immediately go back to eachother, instead spending the week with their everyone else and just taking time for themselves
Shinsou knocks on Denki’s door Sunday morning and they finally talk things out
It’s also the first time they say ily!!
Anyways after that fight they work harder on communicating especially when it comes to things like hero work
It’s not perfect bc their dumb traumatized teens but they’re trying and they know their lil family will always be there
I haven’t slept but yes thanks for sticking around if you’re reading this
If ur interested in shinsou’s talk with Kirishima lmk
#shinkami headcannons#shinkami#drabble#snippets#shinsou x kaminari#shinsou hitoshi#shinsou#denki kaminari#kaminari#my hero academia#kiribaku#Kirishima#bnha bakugou
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