"These fatal fantasies giving way to labored breath— Taking all of me. We've already done it in my head. If it's make-believe, why does it feel like a vow we'll both uphold somehow?"
Author's Note: Reader is 19. Gojo is three years older.
You know how you have people you call aunt and uncle but you aren't actually related to them? And they're just really good friends with your parents? That's what Satoru's parents were to you. Your mothers were close since they were children and they both pursued modelling as they grew older. While your mom eventually retired from the game and chose a more quiet life with a kind lawyer for a husband, your Aunt Arisu became a famous supermodel and married into a family of old money— the Gojos.
And though your mom got married much earlier since she retired from modelling first, your Aunt Arisu got pregnant right off the bat after her wedding. She was a spoiled little thing, too, always calling for your mom and not so much her husband when her cravings and hormones reared their ugly heads. She often chided your mom to give her child a playmate, but not too late. She hoped to have a pretty daughter so they could wear fancy matching clothes.
Aunt Arisu's son Satoru was three years old when you were born. And while he wasn't the daughter she pined for, she loved him so, so much because he was just as pretty as she always hoped for. He was present when you were born, locked in his mother's arms as she held him out to take a peek at you.
...The story never gets old. Your mother and Aunt Arisu would always be laughing as they got drunk on their sweet wine every two weeks or so, and your family's kitchen was still a mess after hosting dinner for the Gojos again. Your fathers were drinking whiskey and smoking their expensive cigars on the front porch, talking about current affairs and stocks if you knew. And Satoru...
Well...
He was always welcome in your room. He always brought his own toys to play with and sometimes played with yours, too. Satoru was like the older brother you never had, and he was always so sweet to you... That is until you turned sixteen and suddenly, he was way too good for you to hang out with.
You didn't see much of him in the last three years, but you always knew where he was— on the cover of your favourite teen magazine, that soda commercial on TV, fronting promotional material for high-end clothing and expensive mobile phones on social media... All of that made sense. He's the son of modelling royalty, after all. Your childhood friend was the nation's sweetheart now and you're probably just a girl in his boyhood memories.
You didn't bother showing yourself downstairs when the Gojos arrived for your usual dinner date. You couldn't stomach seeing Satoru sitting across from you at the table, his silvery hair and feathery lashes framing his blue, blue eyes, his slender fingers curling around the wine glass that was usually just your mother's and her best friend's... His eyes twinkling in mischief as he calls your name with that voice of his, both so sweet and so sultry...
Why did he push you away back then when he was the one to embrace you first?
That embrace was etched so in your head since you were sixteen, and it was something you always remembered whenever you saw his posts on Instagram, whenever your mother watched his commercials on TV, whenever you've been struggling at high school... And whenever you were alone in your room in your bed— the walls the only thing that could hear you and your thoughts, possibly— as you dove deeper into your inane imagination.
"Toru..."
He wanted you just as much.
...So much that you were crying to yourself, too, thinking of how stupid you were to believe your Aunt Arisu's silly little joke that you were born for her lonely little son to have someone—
The soft knock on your bedroom door was enough to snap you out of your deluded solo flight. You jumped out of your bed without a second thought about how flushed you looked. "I'll be there in a second, mom... Just... a sec!"
Perhaps you should have thought about it first.
"Hey there. Are you... feeling okay?"
Gojo Satoru. As though he stepped right out of your fantasies mere moments ago.
"Uh..."
He wedged his foot on your door as you tried to shut him out in panic. What the hell was he doing here? "Wait a moment. I've been meaning to talk to you about something."
And what could he possibly want to talk about now?
When you turned sixteen, Satoru's father sat him down for a conversation. He was told that you weren't just some girl anymore. That you weren't children anymore and that he needed to be more careful around you. Because you were growing into a woman— And because of that, there were certain things you couldn't do together anymore.
"What are you saying, dear? If Toru likes her, then I'm all for it. That girl is my best friend's daughter and a fine young lady! I wouldn't want anyone else for my boy!"
...And it bothered him. A lot. Because it meant he couldn't hold you anymore. And when he did so once out of habit— because your laughter delighted him so much— he pushed you away so hard that you held back tears. He didn't know what came over him back then, but he stopped coming over to your room afterwards.
Satoru couldn't handle the way you avoided his gaze whenever he was around for your family's shared dinner. He realised you must have been finally done with him tonight when you didn't bother showing up at all even though you were just upstairs in your room.
"...ask Toru to call her downstairs! I haven't seen that girl for quite some time now! Has she been..."
"...with university lately. There's this boy, too. Her classmate, I think..."
The older women's conversation faded in his head the moment your mother mentioned a boy— a classmate— and just how close the two of you have grown while you were in university. Good grief. He couldn't handle it. He couldn't.
You were supposed to be his.
He made his way to your room upstairs, his footsteps as soft and quiet as a cat's, and he was ready to talk to you. About everything. About why the last three years were torment for him. About why his father was right to remind him that you weren't children anymore because children wouldn't think the way he did. About why you shouldn't go out with that guy from your uni—
Satoru heard them. The faintest of whimpers from your bedroom. And if he was right in his head, he seemed to have heard his name, too.
He wasn't going to let go of this.
You opened the door with your face still flushed and your clothes all rumpled and you nearly shut him out if didn't think fast enough. You let go of the door and allowed him inside your room, the sound of the locks unheard because of the rush of blood in your ears.
He's going to take what's his. Without so much of an effort, too, by the way you willingly walked into his arms the moment he opened them to receive you.
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To you, My Lady
fandom: hsr
pairing: gallagher/FEM!reader
warnings: SPOILERS FOR 2.2 AND WRITTEN BEFORE 2.3
a/n: this may be the weirdest and most far-fetched I've ever written in terms of character interpretation, but I just needed to get something out of my system after playing 2.2, I cried like a little bitch
“You’re a History Fictionologist.”
Gallagher doesn’t respond. He should’ve known. You’ve always been too perceptive, no matter how much you mask yourself as a mess.
He doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t have to; he knows the crease in your eyebrows, the raging hurt that is locked behind your frowning lips, tears prickling from the corners of your eyes. He has memorized it by heart, when he had broken your heart on several occasions.
He warned you. He had shut you down when you presented him with a bouquet of flowers, he left you to pack up your date meal on more times he can count, and barked out a condescending laugh every time you show him something you created.
And yet, you stayed. You tried to make this one-sided relationship work, and Gallagher doesn’t understand why. He also doesn’t understand why he didn’t straight-up push you away.
“Finally worked that brain of yours?” he snorts, “‘Bout time.”
Gallagher- he is merely a creation born from another pair of hands. He is a toy, a pawn, with a singular ambition; to make sure The Order never crafts their perfect world, a predetermined disaster.
Perhaps he is the creator. Perhaps he is the creation. He is a branch of the History Fictionologist.
A lie ceases to exist when the truth comes to light. His death is gradual, but he feels the instantaneous switch. The soft pull of the abyss, gently taking a part of carefully-mended facade. It won’t be so kind when the final hour comes. He’s sure you know, too.
This is expected, though. He has a meeting with Sunday later, and he will take him to Dreamflux Reef. There, he will bid the people he barely knew goodbye, and he will leave a single hound to watch over the old man.
He will have played his part.
Why did he delude you into thinking you two had a future together?
“Well.” You are clearly trying to hold back tears. The pathetic display wants to make him laugh. He doesn’t. He still doesn’t turn around. “This is it, then?”
Gallagher polished a glass. “There was never ‘this’, hun.”
“But I’ve seen the way you look at me.” you insist, “You aren’t as emotionally detached as you think you are.”
He pours in High Stakes, and plays around with the drink in the glass. “I didn’t think you were this dumb, love. You deluded yourself into thinkin’ we were something more. We’re not. To me, you’re as important as a passerby in this dreamscape.”
“Then why did you stay?” Your voice cracks. “Why didn’t you push me away?”
He drops in a dash of classic SoulGlad. “Hm. Maybe because you looked too pathetic. I dunno. I don’t feel much of anything.”
“And why are you leaving now?”
You sounded far too heartbroken, beyond the stricken looks you give him on a daily basis.
“‘Cuz you realized my identity. In a day or two, my form will be destroyed. I’ll continue exploring the cosmos in another body.” He squeezes in a Hanu sticker. It looks adorable. It reminds him of the smile you gave him the first day you met.
He still doesn’t turn around. “Darling, you have to realize you’ve been loving a dead man. I don’t know what it is about police officers and bartenders that make you hot’n bothered, but don’t run into another one.”
As he mixes his drink, there is only silence. He half-expects you to leave in a huff, but he knows better. You have never left in the long time you’ve known each other.
“... Then, if all my romantic gestures meant nothing to you,” you say, tenderly and still brimming with a love that annoys him, “Can I get one more kiss?”
“On the cheek.” He says coldly, putting down the drink on the counter. “And only because I’m basically dying.”
He closes his eyes as you turn him around. He hears a quiet hum, still sad and carrying grief, before he feels a soft brush of lips on his cheek. His hands cling to your waist, before they let go.
“Thank you.” you say, “And I’m sorry.”
He opens his eyes. Your smile is fragile and hopeless, but it carries a tinge of warmth, one that makes him close them again, because if he stares longer, something in his carefully-crafted heart may actually want to stay in this dingy apartment.
Will you go chase another man, when all is said and done? Will you marry him? Will he protect you and treasure you? Will he leave you, just as he did?
“Sure.” he answers, sliding the drink into your hands as he backs away.
He opens the apartment door, and doesn’t spare another glance. If he does, he may actually fear.
Before he leaves completely, he stops. “To you,” he murmurs, knowing you will hold onto his every word, “With this glass of ‘Farewell, My Lovely’.”
Leave. Don’t be delusional. Leave.
Hm. Perhaps he was the one deluding himself.
“To unfinished business.”
He shuts the door, and basks in the soft artificial moonlight.
He hears you wail.
He can only hope this is what Mikhail would have wanted.
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ok well just let me type this out to get it out of my head. senior year was seriously ass. and now thats its over..; im in this weird in between right now of classes having ended but so much senior stuff is still coming up. and i feel like a complete and utter failure. not academically. academically, i got my aice diploma junior year, went to college full time as a hs senior, got into my dream school and the top school in florida, and had straight A's every year. yeah, it sounds good all typed out, but i cant help but feel that the struggle for all that was worthless. because somehow, i still failed. i hardly have any real friends. many of my friendships crumbled this year. i have severe social anxiety. i feel like everyone else in my class is so social and has such strong bonds with so many people, and i dont have that. i dont know how to interact normally. making friends is simply a skill i never really developed. and a lot of the blame for that falls on how i was raised. i went to a tiny private catholic school for 11 years. the same 30 people in my grade (15 per class as we were divided into two, because 30 was considered a large class) for ELEVEN YEARS. it truly does something to the psyche. and only a handful of my peers werent assholes. then, i started hs during covid. it was frustrating in terms of making friends, because there was such a heavy expectation to branch out and do that, but we also weren't really supposed to be near each other? and going from a school with maybe 230 people to one with 1,500 was not an easy transition. i didnt know how to really socialize! and i feel like ive never been able to change the effect all that had on me. then being labeled "quiet" and "shy" makes you never wanna open your mouth ever again. i was in three clubs, and it made no difference. seeing everyone else with their large friend groups makes me feel so insecure and shitty. and fucking THEATER KIDS should not be making ME feel insecure like what the actual fuck?? anyways. i feel like ive cried more in this in between time than all year, and i wasnt particularly doing well all year either. it just sucks. im so so sad over the what ifs. i have to grieve the person i couldve been and the life i couldve had. its not fucking fair. on top of that, the school im going to is the one my parents, grandparents, and many of my other family members went to. my older sister didnt get in, when they really wanted her to go. i worked so hard to get in because i had some stupid notion that i could "win" and finally they could love me as much as they love her. yet, they dont even seem happy about it. they act like they dont care at all. like everything they have to do regarding college stuff is just a burden to them. like, great. i wasted my whole life,, i couldn't make friends, i couldn't make my parents like me, nor the rest of my family. everyone just views me as some shy loser freak.
at least i didnt peak in high school, right?
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