what you need, girl?

Ordinarily, you are the cure for such agitations. Toji will often come home with a sour grimace on his face, a result of the day's or previous mission's tireless burdens. His feet will thud against the floor and his things will drop in a pile at the door, and he'll go searching for you to find you holed up in your shared room, hunched over the bed on your computer as you get some last minute things done for work.

And like a lazy dog, he'll heave himself up onto the bed with you and slump against your body. Your hand will mindlessly thread through his hair and the weight of Toji's annoyances will melt away in an insant, a heavy exhale brushing through his nostrils as he sinks into you, ignoring complaints that he is too heavy.

You're truly all Toji needs to make a shitty day better, to make everything bad turn good with just the touch of your fingers. Usually, usually, you are the one good thing that Toji has to look forward to after days on end of nagging, assassination, blood, complaints, and the same routine over and over once it ends. Usually, you are his safe space amidst packed weeks, the light at the end of the tunnel.

But when things have cooled down, when your boyfriend has been given a break from the big jobs that keep him away from you and the kids for too long, and everything in your lives has found the slightest bit of stillness and relief, the everyday grievances that Toji so often grumbles on about suddenly shift to one, blaring, irritable thing that you do.

Above all the bullshit that Toji deals with with everyday-people and his piece of shit dealer, nothing quite bothers Toji more than when people try to take what's his. Jobs, titles, money... you. Toji is a possessive man, very abrasively so, and the second he feels like someone is sniffing around what rightfully belongs to him, no amount of your comfort could save them from their sealed fate.

And it's a hundred times worse when it comes to you. When you are the thing that other men start to give too much attention. When the two of you are out in public and he catches eyes lingering for too long, or when a man jumps to hold the door for you before either of you can even reach it? Fuck all that, he's shoulder checking the fucker out of the way to reach a burly arm above you and hold the door open himself, for that is his responsibility, not some desperate shmuck's.

Toji is a lot of things. He's stubborn, crude, greedy, and mouthy, but he's nothing if he isn't the most jealous man you've ever met in your entire life. The man gets jealous over things you never would have considered someone to be able to get jealous over, and any time the two of you even dare to step outside together, you have to brace yourself for the way your intimidating boyfriend will guard you like a dog. Walking stiffly on the outskirts of the sidewalk, his arm will wrap around your waist, keeping you tight and close as you make your way down the street, his sharp eyes taking in your surroundings as though someone will come in and try to swoop you out of his grasp.

The two of you have butted heads before about his behavior, a particularly nasty argument resulting once from the time you went to get some new shoes, and the clerk came back around to ask if he could bring you another pair of disposable socks after the others ripped. Toji had told him to beat it with a hiss and a harsh glare, claiming that the attendant was far too friendly for his liking when you got home and that he clearly saw him preparing to get you more socks himself when he cut in like a desperate moron.

Early in your relationship, you would tell Toji that he was too aggressive with his insecurities, that not every single man who spoke to you or glanced your way was after you romantically. Toji argued, and still continues to argue, that he knows men, and no man in their right man would look at you and go about their business without such intimate thoughts crossing his mind. You're just that eye-catching, that beautiful, and you're his. Not a toy to gawk at, not a damsel to sweep off her feet, but his.

As time and assurances that you would never leave him for anyone else went on, you realized that Toji would never change. He is an inherently jealous man, and whether he has a reason to be angry with a guy for interacting with you or not, there's really no arguing with the psycho once he gets an idea planted in his mind. Especially when it's about you.

While his stern clinginess and jealousy is annoying, you can't deny that it also... turns you on.

Seeing how serious he gets about the thought of someone else looking at you. How fiercely he must love you to get so crazy behind you. It's so sexy, so electrifying to see just how far he'll go for you.

Deep down, you know where it stems from. You know that Toji has always worried about how you'd perceive his circumstances, the fact that he didn't come from much, that it took him so long to be a good father, that he lost people he loved and darkened because of it, and he doesn't want the same to happen to you. He doesn't want to lose you too, or for you to suddenly wake up one day and decide that you're too good for him. Because you are - he swears, you are.

So he fiercely protects you like he could lose you someday, though you remind him that he never will. And he's jealous, not because he doesn't trust you, but because he doesn't trust a world that has only taken and taken from him until it granted him this one, final grace: his girl. And he'll be damned if some little bitch looks you up and down as if you didn't save Toji's life, as if you aren't the love of his life who he's snuffed men out over for far less.

He loves you. He loves you hard and heavy, and you don't find yourself complaining much anymore when those eyes green with envy lock on yours sternly, his thick fingers curving into the small of your waist, his sharp jaw clicking, the muscles clenching against stubbly skin. And ever the physical lover, Toji always ensures that you don't forget how much he loves you and how much you love him by tugging you into the closest private area, pushing you up against the nearest surface, and having his way with you until your brain is so scrambled you can't even think to say anything but his name.

The only name that should be circling around that pretty little head of yours.

When he's loving on you sweet and gentle the same night, after biting red marks and bruises across your soft flesh, he's kissing wordless apologies for his roughness into the crook of your neck and across your collarbone, his scarred hands smoothing over your bare thighs as the muscles in his back ripple and dent as he straddles over you and tells you how crazy he is about you with a tenderness that only reveals itself at night.

A serene smile grazes your features as you decide that perhaps his jealousy isn't so bad if this is the persistent outcome.

That's when you plot to piss him off intentionally.

You're always innocent about it, though Toji would certainly claim the exact opposite. You respect your boyfriend as much as you love him, therefore, you do not seek instances in which your loyalty would come to question. You have no interest in even pretending to look at or act with another man in that kind of way, for the very thought makes you sick. You're far too enamored with the man you love.

You do, however, play to the little things that build up to really tick your boyfriend off.

You recall feeling exceptionally bratty one day when you felt likeToji was being too physically distant leading up to a night out.

The two of you are tipsy, standing outside in the summer heat, waiting in line with a ticket clutched in your fingers for the nearby street food stand. Toji is already irritated because of the wait, and yet, he had subconsciously become touchier than he was earlier in the day due to the crowd and the liquor buzzing in his system. Eager to press for more than his big, warm palms settled on your hips from behind, you seize the opportunity to push his buttons just the slighest bit more when a guy squeezes past the two of you in the cramped space.

Toji is already sneering at the poor guy, gripping you tighter and tugging you against his chest as the stranger's shoulder brushes against your arm. You feel the air thicken, and the guy mumbles an apology as he looks at you. He's almost away from you when you whip your head back around to meet his eye. He purses his lips awkwardly as he shuffles, eyes flickering between you and your boyfriend's menacing expression.

You cheer internally. Perfect.

"It's okay," you smile light and kind, your attitude so polite and amiable that it has the man locking his eyes back on you and nodding stiffly in acknowledgment. You glance at his shirt - some merch from a show you used to like. "Nice shirt," you say.

You feel thick digits crescent against your skin, and a sharp exhale that weighs against your back.

The stranger then pauses briefly and finally returns your friendly smile. "Thank you!"

You hear Toji's jaw click, and before he can think to say anything, the guy continues on and rejoins his friends, disappearing into the crowd.

"Nice fuckin' shirt?" you feel a heat against your cheek, a gravelly voice seering with something dangerous brushing against your skin. "You gonna pull down his pants and tell him he's got a nice cock next, or what?"

You roll your eyes, having forgotten about how crass he gets when he's jealous and under the influence. You toss your hand back to slap at his chest weakly. "Toji, stop. There's nothing wrong with what I said. I just liked his shirt, is all."

"Yeah, and 'the fuck were you even talkin' to him for in the first place?"

"He apologized for bumping into me."

"And it wasn't enough that he touched ya. You had to say somethin' about his lame ass shirt too."

You bite the inside of your lip in an attempt to shield your excitement. "Cut it out," you fein annoyance. "I didn't do anything wrong."

You feel his hand clutch the back of your neck and tug you back slightly as he leans down over your shoulder to meet your ear. "It's cute you think so."

He waits, letting you think that harm is out the way or at least waiting for you at home, allowing you to get your food first after twenty minutes of standing around. You're in for it, however, when you suddenly find yourself pinned to the hood of your car with your knees pressed by your ears and your legs dangling over broad shoulders. The vehicle beneath you rocks violently with each violent plow of hips snapping against yours, thrusts mean enough to touch your throat, mean enough to prove something.

And when Toji gets like this, he doesn't care how mean he's being. He doesn't care that you've just cum three times in a row, and pretty tears are cascading down your cheeks as you squirm and writhe and clench even tighter around him. He doesn't care that he's denying you any chance to breathe, pressing his chest to yours, weighing heavy against your lungs. All he cares about is the way your pussy squishes messily around him like it just can't help it, reminding you that he can reduce you to a blubbering mess in ten seconds flat.

"Don't start cryin' now, doll," he grunts into your ear, nipping at your lobe with a smirk curving against your skin. "I still wanna know what you found so cute 'bout the shirt he was wearin'. Use those pretty words the way you did earlier, yeah?"

You're dizzy the whole ride back home, your legs still trembling under Toji's palm, fluid pooling onto the seat from between your legs. With lidded eyes and flushed cheeks, you beam with lazy success when Toji leans over the console to kiss your cheek firmly, proudly. And you know you're in for even more when you make it back to your place, where he makes you wear nothing but his shirt for the rest of the night as he wrecks you.

There was another incident that involved Shiu, and looking back, you note that Toji has a weird thing about you interacting with his handler in any way, shape, or form. You think he hates when the two of you are together so much because of something he mentioned a long time ago about Shiu calling you attractive, which you swear you don't remember the way he does.

Toji doesn't care how long ago it was. Like he always says, he knows men. And he knows Shiu's perverted little soul.

So when the three of you are out to lunch on business as Shiu discusses the details of Toji's upcoming job, you begin to scheme. Toji's wearing that thick, grey sweatshirt that you like, the one hugs around his thick shoulders and biceps nicely and drapes down over the rest of his bulking form, his veiny hands peaking out from full sleeves. His hair was left damp from the shower that morning, the wind fluffing up the strands and naturally drying them over time.

He looks good.

And you're slightly aggravated with the talk of just how long Shiu's trying to keep him away from you with this particular listing.

So when your food arrives, and you glance at the distance between yourself and the salt, you note that it is at the center of the table. Shiu sits across from you in the booth you occupy while Toji sits next to you with a heavy arm slung behind your seat.

The salt could be accessed easily by any one of you, so you grin.

"Shiu, can you pass the salt please?"

You don't miss the way Toji freezes next to you, then slowly turns his head to face you with seering eyes burning into your skull. Mid chew, he watches the exchange between you and his handler. Shiu is quick to drop his fork and slide the salt into your direction.

"Here you are, sweetheart."

"Thanks."

You take the salt and proceed to season your food, humming to yourself as you ignore Toji's glare.

"The fuck did you just call her?" Toji growls, glaring back at the man across from him. Shiu gives him a bored look as he proceeds to cut into his food.

"It's a common address"

"Common my ass. Call her that again and I'll poke yer fuckin' eye out," he turns back to you. "You ask this prick for salt instead of me?"

"Relax, Fushiguro. I ain't trying to steal your girl," Shiu exhales.

Oh, Toji could light him on fire.

"Sorry, baby," you pipe up. "It just seemed like he was closer to it."

The look your boyfriend gives you is horrifying enough to curdle blood, but you try your best to pretend like you don't notice. You turn back to your food and start eating, but you only make it so far into your meal when Toji's pulling you out of the seat and dragging you to the private bathroom in the back the moement Shiu picks up an incoming call.

He doesn't care that it's the middle of the day. He doesn't care that there are people eating nearby. He keeps a hand wrapped tight around your throat with your legs wrapped snug around his torso as you sit atop the sink, pressed back into the mirror. You try your best to be quiet, but the sound of skin slapping mixed with Toji's grunts and your whimpers echoes throughout the space, urging your boyfriend to simply go harder.

Blurry eyes capture his brows angled with anger and his tight jaw, the way your hands cling to his forearms as his sweatshirt raises slightly over his ripped abdomen to hammer into you, and a breathless moan slips from your parted lips. You're exactly where you want to be, and if Toji wasn't so pissed, he would have noticed quicker.

"Keep fuckin' playing with me, sweetheart," Toji sneers. "I'll make sure that fucker and this whole shitty place can here what I do to this pussy. My pussy."

You can do nothing but take it, lashes fluttering as you fight cries and cling harder, head a cloudy mess as you drip onto the white floors.

"Salt - ngh - closer to him my fuckin' ass."

You continue with the little shenanigans, laughing a little too loud at a bartender's joke, helping pick up a stranger's dropped pen, letting the butcher at the grocery store ring your meat up as a half a pound less than it actually costs.

And every time, Toji fulfills his role without realizing, fucking you so good that every weak step you take the next day feels like jelly.

You know that you're playing a dangerous game with the man, but you just can't help how addicted you've become to his touch, to the way he handles you when he gets brutish and possessive. You love Toji, dearly, almost obsessively sometimes, and to feel the return of such affections in his heated kisses and in the heaviness of his dick pressing into you as though to claim you, to engrain the memory of his body into yours, makes you tingle.

You're always sure to shower him with reassurances when it's all said and done. You'll clamber on top of him with the remaining strength you have, loop your arms around his neck, and pepper kisses across his face. "I love you," you'd sing.

He'll murmur incoherently with his eyes closed, stubborn still with lingering envy, but you know he's softened when his hand meets your back and he holds you against him, eyes peeling up to slide a hand over your cheek and guide your lips to his.

Toji only begins to think that you're doing these things on purpose when he catches the hints of a smirk creeping onto your face after he's made you sink to your knees before his heavy cock after one of Tsumiki's teachers gave you a high five and not Toji during a parent-teacher conference.

He pauses, tilting his head with the raise of a brow. It all clicks together when his thumb caresses your jaw, and you bat your lashes prettily, your pupils practically blooming into hearts as you wait for his next demand.

He chuckles, lips curling into a smirk of his own that creases his scar. You little shit. This whole time, he thought he was teaching you a lesson, when in reality, you've wanted this all along.

The thought almost makes his heart clench with pride, for he really is the motivation behind the majority of your actions. It's him you want, his attention you seek, not anybody else's. How sweet.

Nevertheless, you're still a little brat for going to such lengths just to be fucked like a whore by your boyfriend. You know it doesn't take much to get Toji pissed off, and you've been using that knowledge to your advantage. You're having way too much fun with it too.

The assassin can only allow it for so long until you get too cocky, and by the looks of it, you already are.

So, he decides to get you back.

For as jealous as Toji can be, he knows that if he pokes the right buttons, you are no better than him. No matter how secure and mature you claim to be.

You're out looking for a new backpack for Megumi when a woman in the store drops her purse at the cash register. Normally, you would have gone to help, but the woman is far away enough for it to be considered outside of your territory. You go to continue browsing when your boyfriend brushes past you. You do a double take, freezing and watching with wide eyes as the Fushiguro makes his way over to the check out to pick up the woman's purse for her.

Something clenches tight in your chest as you watch the interaction. Toji smirks lazily as the woman profusely thanks him, and he mumbles a swift don't mention it before turning back to you and sauntering over with a sleezy grin.

The fuck was that?

Toji isn't a man of the people. He never bothers to help them in public. He doesn't hold the door for other women, or move out of the way when he sees someone walking into his direction with their hands full. The only person he goes out of his way to assist is you. In fact, he frequently says that he doesn't owe strangers kindness, for they can take care of themselves if they decide to venture out on their own.

So why Toji would help this particular random woman, and walk all the way across the store to do so, you have no idea. And you don't like it.

The hell is so special about her? Sure, she's not bad looking. Actually she's quite pretty, if not just completely fucking clumsy. Did Toji notice her attractive traits? Is that why he all but raced over to her to help her with her things?

"What?" Toji asks with a grin when he returns to you. You squint your eyes up at him with lips pressed tightly together, a curl in your lips. Toji snorts at your expression. He's going to enjoy this. "What?" he asks again.

"Could you have run any faster to get to her?" you snarl, snapping your eyes back to the row of backpacks you were previously perusing. Your brows draw together in subconscious agitation. "Jesus. The hell was that about anyway?"

"Whattt, I can't decide to be chivalrous for a day?" he teases, slipping behind you to wrap his arms around your middle and peck a kiss to your shoulder. "Aren't you the one always naggin' me about being nicer?"

"I said be nice, not trip over yourself to run to a woman's aid. It was a purse for fuck's sake, not a bomb."

Toji's chest rumbles with laughter, the sound further aggravating you as you clench your jaw. The ebony haired man sees why you love doing this now. It's nice to see you all bothered over him for once, and not the other way around. "You jealous, doll?"

"No, I'm not jealous. You just looked stupid doing all of that."

"Mm. Right," he humors you. "So don't be nice anymore?"

"Don't be a smartass. Get off me."

Toji releases you and watches you storm off to the other end of the aisle with a smile.

But he doesn't stop there.

The two of you run your next errand to the hardware store, and end up in an aisle with a woman at the end trying to choose between two different shades of paint. You stand with your arms crosses as you seethe in your own annoyance, trying your damndest not to let it show though Toji tells you that you always wear your emotions like a sleeve. He thinks it's cute, how you pretend like you aren't irritated for the sake of your pride, which you also claim is not as bad as Toji's.

You're in denial.

You wait as Toji scans the area for caulk, but much to your surprise and irritation, he points out to the woman at the end of the aisle that the left most paint she's browsing dries quicker.

"Oh! Good to know, thank you so much!" she chirps, reaching for the paint he recommended and turning to walk away.

You scoff, shaking your head with a cynical laugh and looking away. Toji locates what he was searching for and reaches down to grab it, all whilst eying you, amused.

"You say somethin'?" he asks.

"No," you spit.

"You sure? Thought I heard you talkin'."

"You must have mistaken me for your own bigass mouth. Since you wanna be so talkative today."

"Woah," Toji grins, clutching the tube of caulk between his hands as he makes his way back over to you. You avoid his eyes as you glare elsewhere, your lips twisted up in that precious way they always do whenever you're upset. "Where's all this sass comin' from? You mad about me being nice again?"

"You know what you're doing."

"Do I now?"

"Yes."

"And what is it I'm doing, darlin?" he breaks out into a toothy, devious smile. "Makin' you jealous?"

Your eyes snap up to his in a fit of anger. "I'm not jealous."

"Then why're you bein' so rude to me?"

"Because you're acting like an idiot."

"So now I got a big mouth and I'm an idiot? Big words for someone who ain't jealous."

You watch as Toji smugly angles his head, ivy hues slim with mischief, and you suck your teeth. "Fuck off, Toji. You're not funny."

You strut off, leaving Toji behind to follow. His eyes follow the way your hips swing as you walk away with such attitude, and he hums to himself, finding that he likes this game a little too much now that he's seen what it does to you.

On your way to the next stores, you find yourself increasingly weary of the people around you. Toji walks on the outside of the curb as always, clinging to your waist despite the way you glare elsewhere.

For the first time, you start to take in how eyes dart first to Toji, then to you. How his height and size always capture stares, how groups of woman who pass giggle to themselves whe they think they're out of earshot.

You're fuming. You know Toji is an attractive man - sinfully so. You know that it's a given that he'll gain some kind of attention when you're out, the same way you always do, and usually it doesn't bother you because you're too busy trying to calm your boyfriend down. Today, however, you're more focused on your surroundings. You take in what the ebony haired man is always telling you about when it comes to other men, and you see it now in other woman at every corner and every turn.

And Toji just decides he wants to be nice to every woman he sees today?

The Fushiguro can feel you getting angrier by the second, and he's glad to. You must have forgotten how petty your partner can be, how eager he is to get you back for the weeks of tormenting him just to get him riled up in bed on your behalf. All those times you were kind to men he saw checking you out minutes prior unbeknownst to you. All those times you'd gone out of your way to get a reaction, knowing that even the smallest interaction with another guy sets Toji off.

You have to answer for your actions in a way that will finally get through to you.

Your last straw isn't even something orchestrated by Toji himself. It just happens, much to his pleasure, for he didn't even have to further exert himself to make you snap.

It's the last errand of the day, and Toji has to take the car in to get a routine oil change. You sit in the waiting area as Toji sorts out the details with the mechanic, emphasizing that they shouldn't touch shit else but what he is explicitly visiting for, as he is not a huge fan of unexpected charges. He'll run out of the establishment before he pays for something he didn't ask for.

The dark haired man is on his way back to you when a woman intercepts his path, having seen him from afar, to ask him if mechanics are supposed to charge an extra hundred dollars for a routine inspection.

He glances over at where you sit in one of the cushioned grey couches, your face wrinkled with displeasure upon seeing him chat it up with yet another fucking woman. He lifts his brows, winking at you before returning to the conversation with the poor girl, clarifying that she did not ask for the inspection and went in just to get a flat tired replaced. Toji explains that unless they're looking for something specific, maintenance checks like the one she described should be free of charge, or at least far less than a couple hundred dollars.

Embarrassed, the woman bows her head in shame before pressing her hand to Toji's forearm and pouting sadly. "Could you help me dispute the charge?" she asks.

Oh, you've got to be kidding.

Toji fights the grin creeping up his face when he sees you jump out of your seat out of the corner of his eye and march over to the two of them.

The woman's eyes dim slightly when she turns to you as you plant yourself next to your boyfriend. Without warning, you rise to the tips of your toes, clutch Toji's face, and yank him down to kiss him firm on lips. You pull away with a scowl, Toji's hands sliding over your waist as he smiles with lidded eyes, satisified. The woman quickly retracts her hand, a grim look crossing her features as she looks between the two of you.

"I'm going to take a walk," you state flatly, still holding Toji's cheeks.

"Sure, doll," he smirks.

You shoot the woman a dirty look before releasing your boyfriend and storming off.

That’s three times now that you’ve stormed away from him, each time leaving him more proud… more aroused than the last.

“Sorry, can’t help ya with your car shit,” Toji murmurs to the woman beside him, eyes still glued to your retreating figure. “Gotta go take care of my stubborn ass girl.”

She retreats in defeat.

You make it as far as the stop sign just outside the dealership when Toji catches up to you, reaching out to catch your arm but you shrug it away.

“C’mon, you can’t kiss me like then try to run off,” Toji teases.

You feel rage building in your gut as the course of today's events flash through your mind. You were supposed to have a nice, peaceful outing with your boyfriend this Sunday, but instead, he had to be friendly with the entire female populaton. Granted, you know the other interactions today were primarily innocent, but this last one was anything but - you knew it the second the bitch mustered up the courage to lay her hand on your boyfriend's bicep.

You're so damn angry. Is this what Toji goes through every time he's jealous? Is this the intensity he feels?

You fucking hate it.

You turn to give your boyfriend a piece of your mind, but you are instead met with his large hands grabbing your hips and pulling you in to press his lips hard to yours again. He hums huskily into your mouth, tugging you against him, and your eyes fly wide in surprise. Despite us your anger, the second Toji's lips are on yours, you can't find the strength to fight back. You involuntarily sink into him, kissing him back with equal fervor as he wraps you up eagerly.

You feel him smirking against you as his warm lips swim against yours, his tongue slithering sneakily into your mouth, swirling about to claim you, to taste you, to remind you that he isn't going anywhere, that you're the only girl he'll ever want to hold and kiss and touch in this way.

You press your hands to his firm chest as you part, a thin string of saliva stretching between your damp lips as Toji ducks to kiss the bottom of your jaw. You groan, ignoring the soft flutter in your stomach as you try to fight against him, and this feeling.

"Toji," you complain, squirming against his assault of dizzying kisses. "Let me go. You're pissing me off."

"Yeah?" he grumbles against your skin, chills sparking across your body. "You don't like other girls touchin' your old man, huh?"

"I don't like you."

"Don't be like that," he kisses your temple gently. "Just say y're jealous and I'll stop."

"I'm not fucking jealous," you snap. "But it's fucking weird that you let that bitch touch you after hours of sticking your nose in other women's business. Just say you're ovulating or some shit, for God's sake."

"Uh huh," he lifts his head to look down at your angry pout, too pleased with your aggravation. He sees the lust pooled in your eyes that you pray he'll overlook, though you know deep down he won't. He notices everything, all of your little tells. "’Pisses you off when I'm too friendly, doesn't it?"

"Obviously it does, you're making a damn spectacle of y-" You pause and furrow your brows, swiping your tongue across your teeth as it all pieces together in our head the longer you look at his stupid, smug face. "You motherfucker," you breathe. "You've been trying to get back at me for making you jealous."

"Just givin' you a little taste of your own medicine, baby. That's all," he kisses your cheek. You see red. "Can't have you thinkin' you're the only one who can get away with the shit you pull. Your ass was starting to enjoy it too much."

"...So let me get this straight," you start. "You went out of your way to talk to other women to try to make me jealous?"

"And it worked," his smirk widens. "Real well."

You could actually kill him.

"You can't be that mad, now. I wouldn't even have'ta do this if you didn't start it. And all because you just want me to toss you around a little."

Your lips clamp shut, heat blooming over your face the moment your secret is unraveled so casually before you.

“You know all you gotta do is ask and I'll give you what ya want, doll. You don't need to act out for my attention."

"I don't act out, and the difference between you and I is that I could sneeze and you get jealous. You purposely did all the shit you would never do otherwise to get a rise out of me!"

"Y’re tryna to move the wires around, but you did the same thing."

"I never do anything crazy. I'm just nice."

"So was I."

"You let that woman touch you."

"I ain't let her. She just did."

"I don't care. Let another woman touch you again, and see what happens."

Toji tilts his head, eyes darkening as his nose brushes yours. "What's gonna happen?" he challenges. "You gonna punish me?"

You lift your chin, looking him dead in the eye. "I'll be sure to get real familiar with your handler. Since, you know, we're all being nice and everything."

You shouldn't have said that. You really shouldn't have.

Toji's smile falls in an instant, the air shrinking from between the two of you as that familiar possession sharpens in his gaze. You watch his jaw clench, feel his fingers tighten around you, and you raise a brow in triumph.

"Now what?" you shrug. Toji's eyes narrow.

The second the car is finished getting serviced, you end up in the back seat with your hair knotted in his fist and your ass arched up against his pelvis. The car trembles in a nearby parking lot, the windows clouding up with heat, sweat, and the friction of writhing bodies. The rhythmic squelch, squelch, squelch of your cunt rings out crudely, firm hand clutched into the fat of your ass as Toji slams you back onto his thick girth with little restraint.

Your fingers dig into the side door as you cry out, your jaw hanging loose as Toji curves down to kiss along the perfect arch of your spine, mesmorized by the droplets of your juices that spray into the air with each clap and the ripple of your ass with each thrust. He raises his hand to swat down hard on your flesh, stinging over other blooming red prints across your bum. You lurch forwad with a sob, gushing wantonly over Toji's painfully hard length.

And as your eyes disappear into your skull, and the symphony of Toji's broken growls floods into your ear, you admit your faults. You admit that you had this coming, much like you always do, that your boyfriend's retaliation is... in some way, valid. After all, you have nothing to worry about when it comes to him. You shouldn't feel threatened, just as he shouldn't either.

Nevertheless, you can't help but rejoice in the fact that while other woman can stare and try to touch, they'll never get to experience the delicious way your boyfriend's dick hits every magical, spongey spot inside you as he growls words of greed and dominance into your ear with the contrast of his sweet kisses soothing aching spots across your body.

"Y're mine, you understand me?" he pants into your ear from behind, tugging hard at your hair, deepening your arch. "Don't say or do that stupid shit again."

"H-Hate that she touched you," you manage between moans. "Hate that they all smiled like tha-at, hah - fuck!"

Toji slows slightly, grinding in deep and hard, pressing in as close as he can so that you can feel the nudge of his tip in your stomach, feel every second, every ridge of his length gliding against your gummy walls. You lose your breath, pretty whimpers growing louder as he kisses your shoulder, then the crook of your neck.

"Mhm, shit's not so funny when the roles are reversed, is it?" he hisses. You mewl out something that sounds like a no. "Yeah, remember that the next time you try 'n bullshit me. Y'know I'm all yours, darlin', I ain't goin' nowhere. Better start actin' like it instead of bein' such a damn brat all the time."

The both of you know, however, that the charades won't end there. As long as the two of you possess that competitive spirit, and as long as you remain delusionally insane about the other, the pestering won't come to an end.

When you started seeing Satoru, you didn't expect much from him. Tall stature, ivory hair, dazzling sapphire eyes were only a few signifiers of his popularity with the female population, and unfortunately, with you as well. 

You aren't quite sure how he roped you in. You'd known him long enough, been friends long enough to give it a little push, to entertain his flirtations just a little bit despite your gut screaming at you to turn the other way, to let him bother some other hopeless case.

But that look in his pretty eyes, the one soft and precious enough to make you give him a chance, the one that led you to subconsciously lower your guard as you gazed into authenticity rather than suave and arrogance for the very first time, is what made you give it a shot. After all, you decided, a few months of knowing someone is enough to have an idea of how they'd treat you on dates, how they'd handle you in a relationship.

And what you do primarily know about Gojo is not his occupation, which he brushes over rather frequently, and not his home life, but his wealth. The man is loaded. You can tell simply by glancing at the time piece wrapped around his taut wrist and the ridiculously overpriced sunglasses that he pulls down the bridge of his nose to wink at you. You know that, even if trying to get to know him romantically ends in disaster, that you'd at the very least get a good fucking date out of it.

But the problem is that it didn't end at just one good date. What you had assumed to be a little fling, a one time outing, a test of his confidence actually turned out to be one of the best dates you’d ever been on. Satoru's a gentleman, in an annoying kind of way. He'll sport that cheeky grin as he holds the door for you and leads you to the finest seat of the establishment, and he'll lounge back in his seat as he gazes at you fondly, lips curving into that devilish smile as the softest of compliments tumbles from them.

He calls you beautiful like it's the first time he's ever said it, and however skeptical you may be, you detect it. You hear it. You see the truth in his eyes, hear it in the stutter of his words that he attempts to hide with jokes and false suave. However pompous Satoru Gojo may be outside of this territory, he's humbled into a rather pathetic sap at your hand, and you... well you like it. You really do.

So you let it sweep you up just a little bit, easing the air as you laugh freely about work stories that he only listens to and does not share himself. And that is another thing that surprises you. He only wants to hear about you, to learn about you, to understand you and your functions and divert from any topic of himself.

You notice it. You've taken note of it ever since you've known him. You thought that going on a date with him would have reduced some of his mystery, but alas, he remains an enigma in your eyes. An overly sweet, rather playfully irritating, gorgeous enigma. Something in your gut tells you not to trust it, but the way your hand slips into his as the two of you stroll the city after dinner says otherwise - or at least says that you don't mind the mystique. That you can play pretend just for a little while.

He tells you he wants to see you again. That he's practically chomping at the bit to take you out once more. That he's got all these date ideas swimming around in his head that have been plaguing him since the very day that he met you. That befriending you has brightened his life, and you allowing him to court you has opened his eyes to the world's beauty even more.

Satoru is all dimpled grins and sweet nothings, and you hate that you love it. You slap him on the chest with a scoff of a laugh and shake your head, but he means every word he says. You know he does. You allow yourself to think he does. Because he doesn't want you to feel as though he's playing pretend. He wants you to feel alive the way you make him feel. He wants you to sink into the notion, and trust that someone like him could actually take care of you.

So you go home after your date and wait for him to text you, to respond to your message saying that you had a great time, that you want to do this again when he's free, but it remains unanswered for a day and a half. And the first seed of doubt implants itself into your gut. 

He comes back the following night like nothing, responding as though he's answered you in minutes, expressing how much he enjoyed the night and shares your sentiments, and you text him back with a wrinkle in your brow that you try to brush off.

you | damn, late response lol

satoru | sorry sweetest most beautiful princess😩 work's been crazy, please don't be mad

And you try not to be. You try to be the understanding individual that you are, though he still doesn't clarify just what he does for work other than the fact that he works with kids and helps with their training. Training for what, you aren't sure, but you don't push it any further since he does not willingly offer up the information. Perhaps he's just guarded in that realm. Perhaps he signed some NDA. Hell, perhaps work really is digging into his free time. Even when you and Satoru became friends, he never texted all that often. You only are now noticing it because you've stepped into a different territory regarding your relationship, and your heart and mind have inflicted unwarranted expectations onto the man who so desperately wants to see you again.

You're annoyed, but you let it slide. The first time.

you | it's okay i understand, just lmk when you're busy or i'll think you died or something

satoru | that should be the least of your concerns, but noted!!! i'll do better.

And you schedule the next date, and unsurprisingly, your heart tugs into his direction even more. He takes you to an amusement park, something you vaguely mentioned in passing that you'd want to revisit because you rarely got to go as a kid. Hours of cotton candy, kettle corn, ferris wheel rides, and teddy bears later, he looks you in the eye and tells you how much he likes you - even with lingering sugar stuck to your shiny lips and your eyes reflecting the fireworks that burst overhead. He peers down at you with that soft gaze and gentle smile, cheeks warm and hair tossed by summer breeze, and you lean up on your tip toes to kiss him on the cheek before he walks you to the car.

Surely, you expect some more conversation when you send him a picture of you and the bear he won from that carnie cuddled up in bed together that night, but once more, a day and a half passes, and he pops in out of the blue, responding like no time has passed again.

You feel yourself growing aggravated, but it's early, you tell yourself. He said he was busy with work, and it was nearing the end of the week, so you grant him that grace. You try your damndest to shovel down the doubts that begin to rise and focus on your own job, attempting to burrow the thoughts of him that begin to swarm your mind at the worst of times.

Then he calls you another day later, and you answer rather flatly.

"Hello."

"Hiii beautiful," Satoru sings into the phone. "What are you up to this weekend? Care to grace me with your presence?"

And his voice, so silky and playful, almost makes you forget your frustrations now that you're actually speaking to him. Almost. "Maybeee," you sigh.

"Uh oh. What's wrong? You hate me now?"

"No, I don't hate you. Stop saying that."

"Then what's wrong? You sound kinda... tired."

You rub your temple as you try to find the words. "Is everything okay with work? You've been really distant."

There's a slight pause. "Have I?" he questions as though he is genuinely confused by the sentiment. "I'm sorry, I honestly didn't realize. I'm not a good texter. You could ask my coworkers. I suck."

"It's fine. I know you're busy - it's just... I mean, could I ask what your intentions are with me?"

"Sure you can."

"...Well, what are they? Is this just a fling... or-"

"God, I hope not!" he chuckles, a hint of nervousness in his tone. "Why... is that what you want?"

"No. I just... if it's what you want then..."

"It's not," Satoru says earnestly. "I like you. I want to keep seeing you and only you. Seriously."

"So not like a fling?"

"Not at all like a fling."

"Okay..."

"Do you want that too? To keep dating me seriously?"

"...Yeah. Maybe," your cheeks flush.

Satoru takes the opportunity to lighten the mood and runs with it. "Maybe?? You tryin' to give me a heart attack?"

You snort. "You're dramatic."

"Only about you, pretty girl."

You close your eyes and exhale slowly. "Then... if we're being serious about this... I really don't care if you're busy. I promise I don't. But I get really weird about communication... and I'd prefer it if you told me beforehand when you'd be busy so I'm not expecting a text from you. Because... you really do respond late as hell. I know that's nothing new, but now that we're seeing each other... I just want more clarification. Is that... something you could do?"

He's silent for a moment, pensive, you think. "Of course it is, (Y/n)," he finally says, the humor leaving his voice. "I know you already mentioned that. I'm really sorry. My job is just - I don't have a lot of free time and things tend to slip my mind."

You store those words in a vault. You slip his mind? Does that mean he isn't thinking about you enough to care to reach out?

You try not to let the thought swallow you, and remain present in his words.

"Those kids must have you running ragged, huh?" you try to joke yourself, hoping for an opening to learn more.

"Like you wouldn't believe," he murmurs. "I'll tell you more about it some other time. Don't wanna bore you with the details."

"You could never bore me..." you trail off.

You hear a smile return. "You like me, huh?"

"Shut the fuck up."

Satoru laughs loudly, and you hate the way your lips twitch to smile as you duck your head and try to force it away. "So mean," he whines. "You could never bore me either, for the record. And I really am sorry about my texting. I get distracted easily."

You roll your eyes, heart pounding in your ears. "Yeah, yeah."

"...Soooo, this weekend?"

"I'm free, you idiot."

And this weekend, he takes you to the fucking opera. Why? God only knows, but he tells you to dress pretty and that he'll pick you up adorned in a dark tux, and the only thing you can think about as you sit on the balcony with those binoculars you've only seen in Pretty Woman is that this man knows exactly how to make you feel like royalty, as long as he's physically with you.

His hand grazes the small of your back and when you turn to look at him with the glitter of your dangly earrings shining against your (s/c) skin, and an awed smile stretched from ear to ear during intermission, he melts. And you do too. 

And you decide, in that very moment, that the opera is your new favorite place to visit.

"I've never done that before."

Your head snaps into Satoru's direction as he waits for the valet to bring his car around after the show, hand around your waist, his cologne clinging to your fabrics. "Done what?" you ask softly, your head still light from the amazement you witnessed in the form of grand voices that tugged at the strings of your heart.

He looks down at you, lids low. "Gone to the opera."

You furrow your brows, though smiling. "What?" you laugh. "Then why'd you take me?"

He shrugs. "Thought we could experience something new together," he says. "You also said once that your mom used to play a lot of Puccini, so. I don't know. Thought it'd be cool."

Your eyes slim though your heart soars. "Do you even know who Puccini is?"

"He's an opera singer."

You cackle. "He's an opera composer."

"Oh. Well, same thing."

"You're insane," you giggle, holding your abdomen as Satoru's hand glides up the silk of your back.

"Didn't seem so insane when you were crying during the last thirty minutes."

"Hey, I didn't say it wasn't good!" you finally calm down, looking back up at him. You sigh out. "It was really beautiful. I can't believe you took us here off a whim though."

"But you liked it, right?" he smiles with the tilt of his head.

You purse your lips as your cheeks glow with warmth. "I loved it."

His smile warms. "Then my job is done." The atmosphere thickens as he pulls back slightly to lift a hand to the side of your face, slender fingertips gently brushing at something under your eye. You blink, holding his gaze as his hand hesitantly settles upon your cheek, thumb caressing your flushed skin. "Eyelash," he mumbles, voice dipping.

You hardly hear him, the lights of the theatre aglow around you as your faces inches further toward one another. Satoru's bright eyes have grown heavy and serious, pupils swollen with the image of you as the distance between your lips shrinks.

"Was it really an eyelash?" you whisper as he looks over your face contently, completely swept up in you.

"No," he says.

And the distance closes. Your lips meet. His arms encircle you, and you can not go back.

You forget that he doesn't tell you about work like he said he would. You forget that his communication when the two of you aren't physically together is not ideal. You forget it all, and let him kiss you like you mean something to him, and let come inside with you when he drives you home as though he's promised himself to you.

You wake up the next morning to an empty bed and a text saying that he had to run much to his chagrin. But it's Sunday. No ordinary person works on a Sunday, so, rather abruptly, his sound excuse crumbles, and you are left with the empty imprint of his body in your sheets where he held you close.

You text him back expressing how much you enjoyed the night, and like always, nothing comes in return.

You elect to wash the sheets.

The assumptions come flooding into your mind as you busy yourself with cleaning the space after the two of you had left it in such a wreck. He couldn't even bother to straighten up on his way out.

Is he married? Does he have any kids? A secret family? Is he fucking other women behind your back and trying to hide it? Is he even employed?

The possibilities wreck your brain as time passes, and every second he does not respond weighs down on your shoulders, as you begin to think that this was all just a trap - that he successfully baited you into sleeping with him. Using false promises, pretty dates, and his charm to weasel his way into your body, pretending to be enamoured with you as he held eye contact through every second, as he talked you through every second, as he swore to do right by you every second he was inside of you.

And now he's gone. A memory that has tinged itself in resentment with the setting of the sun and his sheer lack of reply. You think of calling him, but you decide that would look desperate. You think of telling him off, but decide that would look too hasty.

You try to understand. Desperately you do, but how can you when you are left high and dry every single time he leaves your presence? How can you when he doesn't bother to think of you when you aren't around? How can you when he doesn't even have the decency to let you know that he's okay? To tell you the truth if he's hiding something? To be up front if he's kept secrets?

You don't do well with lack of communication. Even if he's a bad texter, your mind does not jump to that simple solution. In the absence of words, your mind jumps into overdrive. You conjure up the worst possible solutions, the most outrageous notions, and you stew in them until you get answers.

So that night before bed, you double text.

you | hey... you good? what did you have to go do?

And you wait with your phone clutched in trembling hands for a text that does not come. So you put his messages on mute, turn over, and try to sleep.

But your heart wails for its capture, as you realize you're falling for someone who can't even text you back. Your dreams are haunted by your anxieties, by the thought of him running off to his family, by the thought of him texting other women, by the thought of him hiding something monumental from you.

Because that is something that you know for certain, that he is protecting something with his life. Whether it is good or bad, you do not know, but you doubt that you will access it any time soon.

The next morning you get up early to go grab a cup of coffee. Your texts remain unanswered, despite having muted his messages, so to drown your irritation, you take a walk to the nearest coffee shop.

On your way out however, you see him. Clad in a dark blindfold that spikes his fluffy hair upward, the same hair that your fingers were entwined in two nights prior, and a strange black uniform adorning his entire body.

But next to him... next to him is a brunette woman with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and heavy, yet entrancing circles tracing under her eyes. They walk closely beside one another. She says something. Satoru laughs. And your heart shatters.

She’s beautiful.

Not only did Satoru refuse to answer your text, but he refused to because he was busy with another woman.

And when you look down, that stupid phone of his is clutched in his hand.

You consider yourself to be a reasonable woman. You always try to exercise patience, to see all sides of a situation even if it makes you uncomfortable, to not act with your emotions first but with empathy, for you never know what other people may have going on in their lives.

Satoru told you he'd try, but weeks have passed, and his communication remains the same. And it's not because he's busy, but because he merely does not want to speak to you. Because his time is occupied by another bitch, who he probably ran off to the second he was done fucking you.

Anger bubbles in your gut. You knew it. You knew something was wrong. You knew that someone like him couldn't possibly be loyal to you. You knew that it was all too good to be true, that his silence answered for something he refused to name.

Now you see it. And against your better judgment, against your carefully exercised patience, against your logic, you steep in red. You're hurt, you're embarrassed, you're betrayed.

So instead of trying to understand, you let all of your insecurities and doubts pile up and explode, using them as a justification for what you see. You toss your overpriced coffee to the ground, it splatters at your feet, and you march across the street with steam rising from your head to save you from tears.

Satoru seems to sense you when you are halfway to him, and his laughter dies down. His face drops, and he turns to you in shock, or what you assume to be shock, as you aren't entirely sure due to the blindfold hiding his eyes.

The brunette's eyes float to you after Satoru's attention diverts, and she blinks cluelessly as you stomp toward him.

"(Y/n)!" he starts in surprise, but the very sound of his voice only infuriates you.

"Don't you fucking (Y/n) me. What the fuck is your problem?" you jab your index finger toward him. The brunette's eyes widen slightly, and she slowly looks up to Satoru as if she's caught a child getting in trouble.

Satoru stammers, hands raising at your foreign, accusatory tone. "What are y-"

"You just fuck me after a date and then disappear again? Like you fucking always do?" you shout. The brunette's hand goes to her mouth, but you doubt she's uncomfortable. In fact, it almost looks like she's enjoying this.

It pisses you off.

Satoru's cheeks flush red as he glances over at the woman frantically, then back down at you. "(Y/n), can we talk about this somewhere else?"

"No! No, we can't talk about it somewhere else! Have I not told you a hundred times that I need better communication if this is gonna work? Every time you tell me you'll get better, that you're sorry, but nothing fucking changes! I don't know why the hell I thought it would change after you had sex with me!" you pause to chuckle cynically. "That's fucking hilarious! What the hell was I thinking? That you'd suddenly be loyal to me because you called me pretty and took me out three times? Christ, I'm a fucking idiot!"

Satoru tries to take a step closer. "You're not an idiot," he reaches for you, but you swat his hand away. He reels, stepping back as though you've burned him with clamped, wobbly lips.

"Don't fucking touch me. You can't use me anymore. I won't let you. I'm done. I told you how I feel about this shit, and you've ignored me every single time. I don't wanna talk to someone who doesn't take me seriously and who lies about it."

"But I do take you seriously," he pleads. "I told you, I do-"

"If you did, you would have responded. You would have called. You wouldn't let me initiate damn near every single conversation. You'd hear me when I express something to you," you fume, tears building in your eyes. "How am I supposed to trust you if you can't even do that? If you won't even tell me what you do for work? If you're clearly able to pick up the phone, but not for me? If you're actively with another woman while I wait for you to fucking reply days later?"

The brunette raises her hand slowly, lazily, hesitant to interrupt. "Sorry, but," she starts, and your eyes snap to her heatedly. "I'm his-"

"I don't give a fuck what you are, okay?" you interrupt. Her hand falls and she nods, rather unintimidated. "I'm done. Hear me? Done. Lose my fucking number."

With that, you turn over your shoulder and march back off across the street, leaving Satoru and the brunette to reel in the aftermath of your outburst.

Satoru blinks, watching you retreat with his heart weighing down in his chest. A lump of shame builds in his throat, and he remains rigid as if he is still being yelled at.

"So," Shoko starts awkwardly. "That was her?"

"Yep, that was... that was her," he finally says, dejectedly.

There's a beat.

"You fucked her then left her on delivered?"

"Shoko," Satoru whines, turning to her with a slump in his dejected posture. "Please don't start, you just watched the woman I'm crazy about stomp on my heart and leave it on the pavement to get shit on."

"Okay well, if you're so crazy about her, why haven't you texted her back?"

The ivory haired sorcerer sighs. "Because I'm in too deep."

"Clearly you already were."

"That's not what I-" he glares with a pout at her innuendo, but Shoko looks up at him boredly, expectantly. Satoru groans. "Because I'm a sorcerer and she's not, and the kind of life I live isn't meant for her."

"Then why pursue her in the first place?"

"I couldn't help it," he ducks his head, scratching the nape of his neck. "She's sweet, she's smart, she's... she's strong, and so pretty. I’m obsessed with her," he shakes his head. "And you know Gakuganji's been sending me on all these stupid ass missions back to back too. He knows I'm gettin' distracted. Between that, and Yuji, and... I just don't wanna hurt her."

"Eh. Too late for that."

"You're not helping," he groans. "I'm serious. What if she becomes a target because I'm around her too much? What if she finds out what I do and thinks I'm crazy?"

"If you like her as much as you say you do, then... I don't know. Just be honest. Just go for it."

"And put her in danger?"

"There's always danger with you around, Satoru. Why should it matter if it means you can be happy?"

Satoru purses his lips. "It matters 'cause I'm not just some sorcerer. It matters because she could get killed."

"Is she worth it?"

He looks off into the direction you stormed off in and his heart aches at the thought of losing you this way. "Yeah," he frowns.

"Then protect her. She’s not gonna get hurt with you around."

Satoru turns back to look at his close friend, hooking a finger under his blindfold to peer at her with his icy gaze. "Why are you telling me that?"

Shoko sighs. "'Cause I haven't seen you this happy since Suguru died," she says rather casually, as if the very statement did not send memories flashing rapidly through Satoru's brain. "That and I like her."

"You like her?" Satoru squints his eyes. "You just met her, and she yelled at the both of us."

"Yeah, it was nice to see a woman give you her ass to kiss," she says flatly.

Satoru deflates, lowering his blindfold back over his eyes with a sorrowful exhale. "...It was kinda hot, right?"

"For the love of god. Go fucking text her, moron."

He will, for what you don't know is that every time he leaves you, he sticks around in secret to make sure you get to your destination safely as he watches from afar, six eyes detailing your every move. What you don't know is that during every mission, he stares at the contact picture he's saved of you mid-laugh, your eyes scrunched tight and all pretty teeth of yours on display, just to get him through the day. What you don't know is how he babbles about you, the amazing, gorgeous woman he's seeing that everyone at work thinks is fake, every single chance that he gets, hearts fluttering in his eyes at the mere thought of you, his constant babble in front of his students making them all want to gag.

What you don't know is how silently he yearns for you when he forces himself not to respond, when the fears of what could happen to you as a result of others trying to get to him stop his fingers from clicking the keys. When the higher ups barely allow him a moment to breathe as he teleports between countries long enough for days to slip into nights, and he's only back in time to realize that another day has gone by without him reaching out to you, texting you, hearing your pretty voice, seeing your pretty face.

What you don't know is the toll that his occupation takes on him. What you don't know is who he really is to the world, and how hard it is to balance having feelings for you with taking care of the entire planet.

But you are worth it. He pictures your sleeping form curled into his chest, your makeup smeared and your hair messy, and your heart peacefully pattering against his skin. His heart clenches.

You're so worth it.

"Shoko, tell Yaga I'm taking the day off."

"Ummm, sure, but he's not gonna - " Before she can finish, he's vanished into thin air, and she rolls her eyes. " - like it," she eventually trails off, pulling out her phone and continuing her walk.

You're at the door of your house, trembling with anger, when you feel a strange breeze pick up behind you, and when you turn around, you find Satoru standing there behind you in all of his six something glory.

You jump with a yelp. "How the fuck did you just - what the hell?!"

"Sorry. I'm sorry, pretty. Hey," he reaches for his blindfold and yanks it off. You watch as snowy hair falls back down to frame his face as he tucks the fabric into his pocket to look at you clearly, see you can see him. The pain in his eyes, the regret, the desperation, and you watch with knitted brows, red eyes, and a deep frown. He hates the sight on your face. "I'm sorry. For everything. I'm so sorry."

"Satoru, how did you - " you look around, still confused as to how he just appeared behind you like that, but then you remember your rage. "Whatever. Go away, I don't want to talk to you."

You go to reach for your door handle, but he grabs your hand. You yank it away, turning hotly on your heel to glare up at him. He holds his hands up in defense.

"(Y/n), please. I'm sorry. Just let me explain. You had every right to say what you said back there, but - "

"Damn right I did. You're a liar, Satoru."

"Okay, I'm not a liar. I've never been a liar."

"Then what do you call what I just saw? You were out with another woman! You told me that you were only seeing me!"

"I am only seeing you! That was Shoko, Shoko is my coworker!"

"Your-" you stop yourself, staring hard into his eyes as if trying to read if he's telling the truth. "Your coworker? She's your coworker who you were walking around with on a Monday morning while actively ignoring my texts? And you still won't even tell me where you work! How am I supposed to believe you?"

"Because, (Y/n), I swear to you that she has never been anything but a friend and peer to me. We went to high school together. We work at the same place."

"Which is?"

"I - " he hesitates. "I can't... tell you like this. It's not - it's hard to explain."

"Sure it is," you scoff. "Goodbye, Satoru."

"(Y/n), please," the sapphire eyed sorcerer begs, and he panics the moment your keys jam into the lock and your hand grips that handle tight. He panics, images of Suguru turning his back to him flickering through his head, years of loneliness flashing by, then you. You and your smile, you and your laughter, you and your sunshine that he's somehow turned to rain.

He can't lose you. Not to this. Not to any other threat.

"(Y/n)," he calls you, and when you still don't answer as you push open your front door, the words blurt out. "I'm a sorcerer."

You freeze. Satoru's heart drops to his stomach, his eyes wide, and you slowly turn over your shoulder. "You're what?"

The ivory haired man gulps. "I'm..." he gets lost in your harsh eyes, and all logic fails him. "I'm... that's what I do. I'm a... sorcerer."

You watch him, befuddled. "What the hell is a sorcerer? Like - like DND?"

"Kind of...?"

Your shoulders slump, and you stare at Satoru with a quirked brow. "Are you shitting me? Now you're gonna tell me you have a made-up job?"

"It's not made up," Satoru's voice dips into something more serious.

"Oh really? Then what the hell does a 'sorcerer' do?"

Satoru looks into your innocent eyes and sighs as he prepares to warp your perception of what is real and what is not. He hates to do this to you. He really does, but a woman like you deserves his truth. The good, the bad, the ugly. As long as you'll take him. It's a risk he's willing to take.

Suguru would have had his fucking head for doing something like this.

Your eyes go wide, as the man that was once in front of you completely disappears from sight. Your head jerks back, your eyes darting about the vacant space, and you breathe out a gasp of confusion. Are you hallucinating? Are you going crazy?

You step away from your door, which is now ajar, looking all around you like you've lost your mind, and for a moment you think you have.

"I'm here, pretty."

You rip your body around with lightning speed, shoulders bunched to your ears as you stare wildly at the vision of Satoru now halfway through your doorway. You're frozen with something between stun and fear, and you stumble back, dazed. You look behind you, then turn to face him again as he steps forward. "You - you - how did - you just - "

"I know," Satoru exhales, dimple poking his cheek as his mouth twists to the side. "I know. I'm sorry. That was probably really weird."

"Satoru," you murmur lowly. "How the hell did you just do that?"

"I'm a sorcerer," he says again, like it means something, like it could make any of this make sense. "Certain things I'm able to just do."

"You teleported?"

"Mhm," he finally is able to approach you in your state of shock, monitoring your rapid heartbeat and your doe-like eyes. "I do... a lot of other things, but I - I don't want to overwhelm you."

 Your hands fly to your head. "What the fuck," you breathe out, looking up and down his frame. "I must be - dreaming or something - "

"You're not. I'm real. This is real."

You shake your head. "It can't be."

Satoru presses his lips together, watching you carefully as he holds his hand out to you. "Try to touch me."

You scrunch your nose. "What?"

"Just try it."

Against your better judgment, you do. You inch a finger toward him slowly only to meet an invisible wall that blocks you from coming in contact with his open palm. Your brows knit, and you attempt to touch him again, but to no avail. You poke and poke, then slap a hand against the shield, before ripping away. "Ohhh, what the fuck," you murmur under your breath. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.”

"(Y/n), listen. C'mere. Please."

Satoru rushes around you as you turn to mull over what you've just witnessed, dropping his infinity the moment he's holding your gaze again. His hands fly to hold your shoulders, keeping you steady in your stupor. You look down at the hands holding you, wondering how he can touch you now. "Listen, okay? Please, please don't be scared."

"I'm not - scared, I'm fucking confused!"

"I know, baby. I know. And I'll try my best to explain everything, but listen, it's really dangerous that I'm telling you and showing you this, alright? You gotta promise me you won't tell anyone."

You squint your eyes. "Who would I-?"

"Just promise me," he says sternly. For the first time, you see Satoru as he is, firm, a force, a being to be reckoned with. Someone to take seriously. You stare up at him, dumbfounded. "Promise, okay? I don't want you getting hurt."

"...But how - "

"Please, (Y/n). Promise me."

You see the same truth in his eyes that first brought you to him, and you slowly relax as best as you can. "I promise."

Satoru exhales a breath he did not realize he was holding. "Good. Thank you." You nod mutely, still completely awed. Satoru notices and takes the opportunity to continue now that he's got you like this. Now that you'll hear him. "(Y/n), I really like you. I really, really do."

"...What does that have to do with - "

"I like everything about you. I like every moment we spend together. I like holding your hand, and kissing you, and feeling you, and the hardest thing I ever had to do was leave you alone yesterday morning to go to work. My job is... it's hard to explain, but I do work with kids. And I do train them... to become sorcerers. To become strong like me. That may not mean anything to you right now, but it's my life. My whole entire life, and because I am who I am, everyone expects a lot from me, you understand? Every day I have to drop what I'm doing to take care of really fucked up things, and I'm really sorry that I've left you hanging in the process. I'm really, so sorry, princess. I know I said I'd get better with communicating, but it's not really easy to tell the girl you're seeing that I had to go to Italy to exorcise thirty curses - "

"What?"

"Nothing. It doesn't matter. What matters is you. What matters is that I made you feel unheard and tossed aside because I was too scared of putting you in harm's way, or because I literally have no time to myself. The time I do have, I spend with you. And then it's all over so soon and I leave you hating me because I can't be there for you like a normal man. I so badly want to be that for you, but I'm just not. And I'm sorry. I should've found more time, I should've communicated, I should've done anything to make you feel safe but I just did the opposite. And I'll hate myself forever for doing that to you because you… because I just care about you so much. And I don't ever want to make you feel the way I have ever again."

Silence swallows you whole after Satoru has ceased his rant. You can feel his fingers lightly digging into your shoulders, eager for you to say anything in return, but you just stare at him in awe, overwhelmed, so so confused... but somehow relieved.

Satoru's brows curl upward. "Please say something. Anything. Say you hate me. Or you think I'm crazy - do you think I'm crazy?"

Your lips part, your eyes glassy. "A little," you say honestly. Satoru bows his head in humiliation. "...But... I think... I believe you."

He perks up immediately, big blue eyes blown wide with hope. "You do?"

"For some reason, yeah. Yeah I do," you swallow hard, still processing. "So that woman-"

"Shoko."

"Shoko. She's also a...?"

"A sorcerer. Yeah. We were going to pick up our kids from a mission."

"Your... kids?"

"Students! Our students!" he clarifies.

"...And you have powers...? That you teach the students? At a sorcery school?"

"...Kind of…?"

"And you teleport. And have an invisible forcefield."

Satoru tries not to laugh as you wrap your mind around the concept. "I mean... that's kind of what it is. Yeah."

“O-Okay… so, what else can sorcerers do?"

"We're not all the same. Everyone has their own technique."

"Technique?"

"Like a power."

"Oh. Then what's yours?"

Satoru smiles warmly. "Let's not worry about all the details right now," he chuckles. "I just wanna worry about you. Okay? Are you okay?"

You nod stiffly. "Yes. Yeah. I'm just... sorry. I'm sorry."

The reality of everything comes crashing down on you, but surprisingly, not what Satoru has just unveiled, but rather what you said to him on the street earlier. The scene you caused. The accusations you threw. The assumptions you made. How out of character you got.

"Oh Jesus," you groaned, bringing a hand to your head. "You really don't know what people have going on in their lives."

"(Y/n)? You sure you're okay?"

The kindest, most concerned blue eyes follow your every move as secure palms hold you, and you deflate. "I'm fine. I'm sorry. I just realized I cussed you out for no reason. I'm so sorry."

Satoru blinks. "You're not... mad about the sorcerer thing?"

"I mean, I'm still fucking confused, but no... I feel awful that I ripped you apart like that in front of your coworker. Oh god, and I snapped at her. Satoru, I'm really sorry. I had no idea."

"(Y/n)

," he calls your name gently. "How could you have known?" You go to answer, but you can think of no response. "I'm the one who kept you in the dark. I'm the one who hid this from you. I'm the one with a secret identity. You have no reason to apologize to me. I deserved it. From where you stand, you couldn't have possibly known."

"But now I do, and I... I mean, I knew you were hiding something, but... I should've paid more attention?"

"To what?" he chuckles. "I hid this from you every day. There's nothing you could have noticed."

"I notice how tired you are sometimes," you say softly. "I notice how quick you are to take care of everything. To pay, to splurge. Like it's your responsibility."

"That is my responsibility."

"But you do it like you're... trying to be seen... or I don't know.... appreciated," you say, and Satoru's smile slowly fades. "But I appreciate you without all that flashy stuff. And now I understand... you must be a really big deal where you come from. You must have a lot of pressure on you."

You have absolutely no idea.

But he doesn't even bother to confirm or deny. For once, he's happy to hear how a human being perceives him. "I don't know, I should've realized how much you have on your plate instead of constantly thinking about how you could make me feel better. I mean yeah, it sucked not hearing from you, but now that I - I know some shit like sorcery exists, the texting thing doesn't really seem like all that big of an issue. And I really am sorry I yelled at you like that. I swear, I'm not always like that. I just really like you, and when I feel like I haven't been heard or seen, I freak out and jump to the worst-"

You feel hands cup your face and draw you upward, and your eyes go wide as those soft lips press to yours passionately. You hum in shock before sinking into the warmth that you desperately longed to feel again. Your hands go to hold his wrists as you reach up on your tip toes, and his lips slowly mold against yours in three, prolonged smacks.

He pulls away, and you bat the cloudiness away from your eyes as you look up into his own. Satoru beams down at you with a love struck grin, cheeks rosy and pupils blown, snowy lashes low over his irises. He ducks back down to kiss your forehead, and your heart thrums.

"I just told you that I'm a sorcerer, and all you can think about is how you made me feel?" he murmurs sweetly. "What did I do to deserve you?"

"I didn't - do anything?" you say slowly.

"You did," he smiles, skin creasing at the corners of his eyes. "I understand why you yelled, (Y/n). I deserved it. And honestly... I kinda liked it."

You can't help the snort you let out. "You what?"

"I liked that you stood up for yourself. That you don't take any crap. You know your worth. And you should. You're perfect."

"You freak," you push at his chest so that he releases you. His hands fall to his sides, yet his love dazed expression remains as he looks at you. "You're insane."

"I know," he agrees happily. "I really like you."

You gnaw on the inside of your cheek, fighting your smile. "I really like you too," you admit. "But you're a fucking weirdo. Teleporting and shit. What the fuck is that?"

"I know," he says again. "You don't even know the half of it, sweetheart. It gets a lot weirder."

You scrunch your face. "Do I wanna know?"

He shrugs. "Do you? I got all the time in the world."

"I thought you were busy. Don't you have to go to work?"

"Mmmmm, I took off."

"You can do that?"

"Not really. But I'm the big shot around there, so they can't really do shit about it." You look at him skeptically and he grins. "Enoughhh, today's about you, and repairing the damage I've done. So ask me all the questions you want. I'm here. I promise."

You pucker your lips in thought. "No more shitty texting?"

"No more shitty texting. For real real this time."

You turn and gaze at your ajar front door. "Alright. Come inside. I've got two hours before my shift."

You can hardly get your sentence out before he's scooping you up bridal style into his arms and marching you through the threshold of your front door. You squeal, gripping onto his shoulders tight. He kicks the door closed behind you and looks down at you with a devious, heavy haze in his eyes.

"Anything that your mind tricks you into thinking is fake," Satoru's firm voice comes, tone mellow, serious. He gets this way any time he shares things with you about his profession, any time he attempts to bridge that gap between you and the sorcerer-world. You purse your lips and glare hard, at the dark windows reflecting moonlight, around the blue double doors signifying an entrance and exit. "Any shadows. Any feelings of dread, or sadness. Just an unknown presence."

"An unknown presence," you repeat slowly, (e/c) eyes skittering across the area. "So it'll look like a shadow?"

"No. It'll look more like some kind of monster. You'll know it when you see it. When you feel it."

Something unsettling sits in the pit of your stomach as you furrow your brows. "Okay," you murmur uncertainly. Satoru notes the subtle shift in you, the displacement and unease, and his hands hold you tighter.

"I got you. Don't worry," he assures. You nod, swallow hard, and focus.

Despite how firmly Satoru stands his ground for you, and the confidence he very clearly withholds regarding the foreign things he introduces to you, the ivory haired man shields his anxieties regarding your wellbeing deep within, locking them away to be uncovered in the privacy of his loneliness, when he's separated from you, far off in a territory that you can not fathom. That you do not know.

Months of puppy love have passed, of Satoru sneaking off to see you every second he can, of him juggling his students and responsibilities with the love that is blooming in his soul, and that has been from the very moment his eyes first lay on you. Months of carefully feeding you information in increments, of him unveiling truths and secrets to your virgin eyes and ears that have your head reeling at the insanity. And he hasn't even told you who he is yet. Not really. Not fully.

Satoru tries his very best not to overwhelm you. He started with little tricks, like his teleportation and his infinity when it takes the form of a shield around his body. Gradually, notions of cursed energy, cursed techniques, and weapons floated into conversation. And even that was a lot for you to grasp. And hell, the sapphire eyed man does not blame you.

Life with you has been refreshing, yet so odd. He has never spent such a prolonged amount of time with someone who does not know who he is off the bat, with someone who has never heard of the horror that he is, that he deals with day in and day out. You're completely ordinary in that aspect. No cursed energy. No untapped technique. You're just you, just a human being. And yet, that is one of the most extraordinary things that Satoru has come to find about you.

Because you are just a human. You're independent. You're kind. You're emotional, you're passionate. You're motivated. You're strong, like very physically strong - one time you kneed Satoru in the gut accidentally while he straddled over you and attacked you in a fit of tickles. The very action knocked the wind out of him and sent him toppling onto the other side of the bed from the shock, his hands clutching his gut. He at least knows that he does not have to protect you from human dangers, though he absolutely still plans to.

You're everything that Gojo never knew he wanted in a partner. Loyal, opinionated, outspoken, gentle, nurturing, sweet, and you are one of the greatest beings he has ever known. But you aren't a sorcerer. And while he finds that he loves that about you, that he can breathe and let himself simply be in your presence without the burden of having to keep appearances or adhere to the name that nations beg sanctity from, you have absolutely no way of confronting the supernatural evil that lurks if it ever faces you.

It terrifies Satoru more than anything else in this world, and Satoru Gojo has never experienced such fear before in his life. He's never really had reason to be afraid of anything before meeting you.

And if basic concepts and principles of sorcery overwhelm you, then how could he ever begin to tell you who he is? The weight of his presence in any room? What it really means for you to be with him, and how he frets every day for your safety solely because he cares so deeply for you?

You don't know that you're dating the strongest sorcerer of the modern age. You don't know that you have the honored one, feared and esteemed by the whole of Jujutsu Sorcery, wrapped around your perfectly manicured finger, as you go to work every day to fulfill your duty while Satoru fulfills his. Your ignorance to the weight of the situation is one of the only ways Satoru really knows how to keep you and himself sane, for if you knew what he could do. If you saw what he could see. If you heard the things that monsters and demons say about him... you'd certainly go running for the hills. He swears you would, and you'd have every right.

He wants to tell you enough to keep you safe, to bring your guard up in case a threat imposes itself on you, but he wants to hide you away from enough to maintain the peace of your own stressful life. Because even if Satoru did tell you that he is the greatest sorcerer of all time, the infinite layers that come with such a title would be too much to throw at you, too much for you to bear. It already is for him, for his students, for his coworkers, so he couldn't imagine what it would do to you... how your opinions would change, the light you would begin to see him in.

It's all so tricky. A very slippery slope. But Satoru's very life has been constructed around the protection of the weak and vulnerable, therefore to prioritize you feels like something of his birthright. The whole of humanity is one thing, but what would he be if he could not protect the one human being who actually, truly, deeply means something to him?

Satoru thinks of Suguru more and more each day as he falls deeper and deeper into your entrancement. He thinks of what he would say. How he would respond. The disgust with which those hazel eyes would look upon him. The pity he'd hear in that voice.

You just couldn't help it, could you?

And he would have been right. Satoru couldn't help it. He couldn't help but to fall for you, and perhaps his love for humanity will be the very thing to end him one day, but the ivory haired sorcerer doesn't care. Suguru chose hatred and bigotry. Satoru chooses love. In every single universe. Every single time.

And it's aching all over his body. It's making his mind spin, his stomach churn, his fears rise and rise and rise. The thoughts of someone discovering you, someone stealing you away, someone using your weakness to their advantage to get a rise out of him haunt the blue eyed twenty eight year old to no end.

He can't sleep when he's not around you. When he can't see you. When he can't physically feel you breathing against him.

He pops into your life without warning every day, teleporting mid mission to your office or your room, swooping in to dot kisses on your stunned lips and to check in and make sure you're still breathing. That your doors are locked and your blinds are closed. That no curses have clung to your body in his absence. That no unwarranted eyes are surveying you outside of his.

Like he told Shoko that one day a few months back, he's in too deep. And now that he's unveiled his truth to you, he's in much, much deeper. So deep, that he feels he couldn't exist if something were to happen to you, that he must be near you at least twice a day or else panic will settle in, and the fears concerning your safety will wreck his erratic brain.

So, he's decided to try to further push you, to test just exactly how estranged you are from curses and jujutsu. What you can sense and what you can't, to get a better grasp on how imperative it is for you to be mindful of your surroundings.

And you are, but what you look for aren't curses. You look for strange men, weapons, robbers, the typical ailments of everyday life for everyday people. But you need to look beyond those, to look for the entities inspiring such behavior, to seek safety beyond human reason.

Hence, why he's dragged you out of the coziness of your bed in the middle of the night to an elementary school he frequents, one where he knows a number of curses linger about the space. To see how much protection you need. To measure the circumstances.

He waits as patiently as he can, rising back to stand upright, keeping you safe within his hold where no vermin could even think about inching toward you. He admits, his presence alone is likely enough to send all the lingering curses running into the opposite direction, but he senses the presence of a few. They aren't very strong, but they are strong enough for you to pick up on. For you to be mildly impacted.

But can you see them? Can you sense them?

"Uh," your voice finally speaks up after a prolonged period of silence, and Satoru looks down at you, alert, eager to know if there is something there that he has to work with.

"What is it?" he asks lowly. "What do you see?"

Your lips twist, your head angling slightly. Satoru feels your shoulders tense up a bit. "I don't... I don't see anything," you admit. "But I feel really, like, sad all of a sudden. Like heavy."

Satoru surveys you, releasing your shoulders to angle your body slightly toward him, his hand clasping gently around your arm. Your eyes snap up to him as you let him look over you, then you look back over your shoulder at the school, visibly troubled.

"I see," he says. "And... that's all you feel? You sure you didn't look over anything?"

"I'm pretty sure, Toru. We've been standing and staring at this place for fifteen minutes. If something were there, I would've seen it by now," you rub your forearm awkwardly.

Satoru fights the way his heart plummets. He fights the disappointment and further fear that grips him. He fights anxiety that wages behind a wall of feigned calmness.

He releases you gradually, placing a hand on his hip and one scratching the back of his neck. He turns to look back up at the array of curses that wiggle around the school's entrance, peaking out from cracks and crevices and bushes, and he exhales. "Alright..." he mumbles.

Your lips purse as you look between him and the school with sudden shame. "Sorry," you apologize.

This snaps Satoru out of his thoughts as he looks at you. "Hm? For what?"

You shrug, looking down. "It seems like I was supposed to see something that I just can't," you frown. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to stress you out."

"You're not stressing me out, baby," Satoru says, his tone shifting from that steady seriousness to something comforting and sweet. "It's not you. You don't have to apologize for something that isn't your fault. You didn't ask for the world to be like this."

"Yeah, I know, but..." you hesitate as Satoru's arms fall and he turns back to you completely. "it's bad that I can't see those things, isn't it? Doesn't that just make everything harder for you?"

"There's only one thing that's hard for me, (Y/n), and that's being away from you." His arm slips around your waist, bringing you closer to him. In his attempt to make you crack a smile, you stare up at him with lips curved downward and doubt creeping over your pretty face.

"I'm being serious. You always downplay everything you have going on."

"And you worry about me too much."

"You try having a sorcerer for a boyfriend and see how you feel," you roll your eyes. Satoru chuckles away the layers that could be lying within your words and tucks you against his side, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head. "And you worry about me way more. Clearly. So I'm asking you, does this make things harder?"

Satoru sighs, resting his head against yours. "It adds extra steps to my plan," he elects to say instead.

"What plan?"

"My plan to keep you safe," he says. "But it doesn't make anything harder. Nothing with you is harder."

You lean back to look at him, and he lifts his head. "I feel like you're lying."

He smiles. "How many times do I have to tell you? I'm not a liar."

"I know, but -" you stop yourself and shake your head, leaning back into his side. "Nevermind."

Your boyfriend leans his head forward slightly to get a better look at you. "Hey. Don't beat yourself up about it, pretty girl. It's not a big deal. I promise."

"I don't know. It seems that way, though."

"Maybe it would be if there weren't other ways for you to see curses, but there are."

You perk up, meeting his gaze hopefully. "Yeah?"

He hums, a smile growing at the sight of your hope. He starts to turn the two of you around, guiding you away from the haunted school so that you won't have to be within the vicinity of such negativity anymore. "Remember those cursed tools I told you about?" he asks, and you nod, your own arm raising to wrap around his long torso as the two of you walk together. "Well, they come in all shapes and sizes. And there's glasses you can wear if you can't detect curses or cursed energy on your own that can help you see everything."

Your brows raise, your other hand coming to press against his chest. "You mean I could see everything that you see?"

Satoru grins. "That's right."

You gasp. "How do I get them?"

"I'm ten steps ahead of you. Let's call it a night, and I'll run out to bring you some tomorrow morning, okay?"

"Okay. Okay, cool," you nod, solidified in a newfound relief that you wouldn't be a complete basket case after all. "That's good. Thank you."

"Anything for you,” he beams. “But when you get them, you're gonna have to sit with me so I can go over a few things, okay? I'll need you to listen carefully."

You click your tongue. "I always do."

"Yeah. You do," he pecks the side of your head again. "We can make it like roleplay. Professor Gojo and his really hot, over qualified college student. What will she do for extra credit if she can't understand how cursed tools work?" he purrs suggestively, and you roll your eyes with a laugh. Satoru swells with pride, happy to make you smile again.

"Stop being such a freak."

"Baby, how can I when I've got you?"

The next morning, Satoru makes good on his promise. After some private conversations with Shoko and Maki and a few errands, he's able to get his hands on a pair of frames for you. He is purposely discreet, as the only people who know about you in depth are Yaga and Shoko. Back when the two of you started dating, he bragged, but after he unveiled the Jujutsu World to you, he decided to tell everyone that you dumped him. And that Shoko saw it with her own eyes - and, technically, she did. She was at least able to vouch for him.

He can't risk news of you getting back to the Higher Ups, especially now that they've been on his case more and more lately. He knows they suspect something is afoot, but he'd like to keep those thoughts as speculations and nothing more.

Though it is currently the slot that Satoru is meant to be teaching, he teleports back to your room for what he thinks will be a quick drop off until his time is freed up.

But the second his feet land on the carpet of your floor, the stench of an intruder reeks throughout your space, and pools of cursed energy drag across the floors and walls. When he looks, there's remnants across your bed as well.

Something cold washes over Satoru's bones as your glasses drop from his grasp and onto the ground with little commotion. He freezes, taking in the space, six eyes capturing every single detail out of place. Your window is broken, shards of glass littering the floor. Your sheets are rumpled as if you picked yourself up from them in a hurry. Your phone is left open on your nightstand, and facing the ceiling is the text thread between you and him. You were about to text him.

He doesn't feel you anywhere. He can't sense you within this space, nor within five miles of your apartment.

Your room is still as the breeze wafts into it, like it was frozen in time the moment you left. There's clutter that dropped from your stand beside your bedside, and god, that smell. It smells nothing like you. It smells like a fucking plague.

Satoru's blood runs icy. His pupils are small behind his blindfold, his voice stolen from his throat.

At first glance, things are off. Your broken window, your messy bed. He knows. He fucking knows someone was here, that some curse user was rummaging through your things, breathing your air, existing within your well kept environment.

He does not need to search the house to know that you aren't here, to feed the denial that is attempting to combat what he knows and sees and feels in his gut, with all six of his senses. But he instinctively does anyway.

He teleports downstairs, to your living space, and finds the same remnants of cursed energy tracked across your floors. When he turns to look, the forced entry is evident by your front door thrown ajar. He moves to the kitchen, to your bathroom, to the small patch of green out back that you always try to swear up and down is a backyard. This fucker was everywhere. 

And when he turns and looks out front, your car is still parked next to the sidewalk.

No. No way.

Satoru's hands twitch at his side, and his entire body begins to tremble. His nose flares, his breathing escalates, and Suguru's voice pops up in his head again, yammering away.

You knew this would happen. She's a human after all.

There are no words for the feeling that overcomes Satoru's body and mind, that completely encapsulates him as he teleports back to your room and picks up your phone with gracious, wobbling fingers. In the text box he reads an interrupted sentence. “I think someone- “

Then nothing.

There's nothing. You've left nothing behind but your scent dominated by someone else's, and the strongest sorcerer of the modern age sees red. Crimson drips into his vision, seeps the world in its tint, and an anger like no other births itself in his core and makes every nerve in his system vibrate.

His head wails with all the things he can't verbalize, as anger chokes the words in his throat. He knew it. He knew something would happen to you. How could he let something happen to you? Why wasn't he there? He always promised to be there. Where did you go? Who took you? Why? Why didn't you-

Satoru rips his wild eyes back over to your new glasses on the ground, and a lump builds in his throat. There was nothing you could have done. Nothing you could have fought with to protect yourself. You probably didn't even know something or someone was pursuing or stalking you.

You're a human who can’t see curses. How could you have known anything?

Someone knew this. Someone stole you away because you're weak. Because Satoru wasn't around. His worst fear, the very thing that keeps him awake at night, that makes him lose increments of his sanity every day, has come to life.

You're gone. Someone has you.

When Satoru's blurry gaze turns back to your nightstand, to the space where your phone that he clutches in his hand once lay, he sees it. Specks of blood freckled on the wooden surface.

Gone is the savior. Gone is the providor. Gone is the friend, the humor, the happiness, and what remains in the vessel of Satoru Gojo is not mortal. It isn't merciful, or accepting, or understanding. It’s vengeance.

The white hot urge to kill takes over, to smush whoever did this to you between the concrete and the bottom of his foot. To stomp upon the fucking idiot who mustered up the courage and stupidity to take you away, to make you bleed, to use your human-ness - your unapologetic, beautiful humanity - to their advantage.

What your abductor wants and who they could possibly be to Satoru, he doesn't know. And he doesn't care.

What he cares about is finding you. Bringing you home. And giving your abuser hell to pay.

A weapon remains, rigid and unfeeling. That is what Satoru is. That is what he becomes in your absence.

Satoru tucks your phone into his pocket and rips down his blindfold, strays of snowy hair fluttering about the frame of his face, and crystal eyes pierce the air like a nocturnal beast seeking prey through the darkness of the night.

Where the hell are you?

You feel weak.

Your head rolls to the side, the room spinning on an axis through a blurry haze. You see three visions before you before your sight eventually focuses, and the pain comes quickly, shooting up through your back and into your head. Your legs, bound to the legs of the chair that you sit upon, ache from thrashing and kicking for survival. Your arms are strung behind you, wrists bound tightly, and all you can hear is a piercing ring through your ears.

You don't know what happened. One second, you were waking up from your sleep, then the next, the sound of your front door slamming open startled you up and out of bed. Something unseen barged in with the whip of your head upward. Hands gripped, something smacked across your face, and you could hardly see, but you thrashed, kicked, clawed. There was a struggle, the glass of your window shattering with the collision of your bodies. You were slammed onto the bed, then your head was knocked against the corner of your nightstand, and everything went black.

The course of events makes no sense when you mull over them. It was as though a ghost had appeared and ripped you away. As if a magical force had seized you.

You thought it was a man. The grunts that transpired behind your ear when you kicked were a man’s. The hands that groped and pulled at you felt like a man’s. But you couldn’t sense anything. It was as though he was invisible, as though the very thing that took you didn’t even exist.

You breathe in shakily, a dribble of blood spilling from your nose and onto the floor.

You can not register where you are. Only that you are not alone. That beady eyes are watching from a distance as you come to beneath harsh lights and amidst the scent of something nauseatingly sterile. After a few seconds, you hear footsteps wander, echoing about the vacant space, circling toward you like sharks in water.

Your head is pounding, and you blink, trying to see properly ahead of you. That is when the throbbing in the right side of your face settles in, and you whimper, squinting with a wince.

The alarm starts to sink in when you look down and find that your clothes have been changed while you were unconscious. You're sported in an unfamiliar grey shirt and shorts that leave very little to the imagination, and that little pool of blood from your nose settles between your bare, tied feet.

Your heart pounds, and your eyes roll around in panic. You go to scream, but cloth is taut around your mouth, knotted at the back of your head.

Oh fuck. You're so fucked. What do you do? Where are you? Who are the people you hear approaching you? Why are your senses so muddled?

Then it dawns on you.

"What d'ya think?" one grimy voice startles from behind you as three men step out of the shadows and into the harsh light that beams down on you overhead.

You tense, looking frantically about you. You immediately start to jerk and thrash against your restraints, your body jumping back into survival mode as the rope holding you back burns your skin. You feel something incredibly wrong, more wrong than the circumstance you are in. It's the atmosphere, something in the air that is sinking down on you and flooding you with an overwhelming sense of dread. Similar to the brief dread you felt at the elementary school.

It clicks. These aren't ordinary abductors. Your senses are blurred and your mind is playing odd tricks on you. Sorcery must be involved. These people must be sorcerers... or curses... you aren't sure. You just know, suddenly, that this is beyond you.

Within seconds, you feel pale as Satoru pops into your mind. This is exactly what he was talking about. This is exactly why he wanted you to be able to sense this energy, to see the curses.

There are things out there beyond your comprehension, and he always feared over whether they would collide with you outside of his influence. Now they have, all because you can't see.

You're just a regular person. Weak. Fragile. A target.

And here you are, subject to things you can't understand.

You've never been more afraid for your life.

"Where'd you find her?" a woman's voice rings out much to your surprise, stepping closer with a wicked smile. Two other men linger with mirrored smirks, and a hand reaches around from behind to grip your jaw and raise your head. You whimper through squished cheeks, brows angling as the light stings your eyes.

"On patrol this morning," the owner of the hand gripping you says proudly. "In one of those houses on the east side. Thought I’d break in, and happened to find her. She’s perfect, huh?"

The woman bends over before you and tilts her head, raising a brow. "You weren't supposed to bruise her," she says with a grimace, as if you are too unpleasant to her eye.

"The bitch put up a fight. What was I supposed to do?"

"You let a human give you a hard time?" one of the other men cackles. "Pathetic."

"She didn’t give me a hard time," the voice behind you hisses, the voice of the very man who stole you away from your home. His nails dig into your skin as his grip on your jaw goes taut, and he jerks you again. You release a muffled yelp, a wildness in your frightened hues. "Whatever. Where is it?"

The other strange man halts before you, stopping right beside the woman as she lifts herself back up to peer down at you as if annoyed, dark lips curled in distaste. The second man fishes something out from his pocket wrapped in dirty cloth, and slowly unwinds it.

You don't know what the fuck is going on. Your hasty, pitched breaths are audible with each second that passes as you watch, as voices murmur about nothing that is of value to you. You are out of your depths, overpowered, bound.

And when the cloth drops from that object, your eyes process the vision of what looks to be a severed, decayed human ear.

You scream, thrashing about, your cries ringing out hoarse and sustained behind that cloth. Dark chuckles rise over the sounds you emit as if you are a form of entertainment, as if this torture is funny to them. Watching you wiggle and squirm and fight against the inevitable. And what the inevitable is still remains a mystery to you.

The one with the ear steps further toward you, hovering just inches away. The piece of flesh is presented before you as if he wants you to take it, but when you look up in his eyes, you can't read his sadistic intentions. You can't read anything.

"She's gonna keep screaming when we take the tie off," the other man standing behind the woman says.

"Who cares? The result will be the same regardless."

"How are we gonna make her eat it?"

Eat it?

"If you don't just fucking force her mouth open," the woman snaps, eying the figure gripping you. "She's a human. She's tied up. Are you seriously scared?" she teases.

"I ain't scared," your abductor growls. You feel his other hand moving to untie the cloth around your mouth. You feel the fabric slip and loosen, your hefty breaths ragged when it finally falls around your neck with a stretch of your saliva connecting it to your lips. You cough and sputter, and before you can think, the same hands curl into the inside of your mouth.

You act quickly, chomping down as hard as you can the second you feel an invasion. Metallic blood filters into your taste buds, followed by the curse of the man behind you as he rips his bleeding fingers away.

"Fuck!" he curses. You hear footsteps shuffle as he clutches his hand. "She fucking bit me! I oughtta -"

His words collide with the fist that knocks your skull into the opposite direction with a force you can't quite name. Blood splatters from your lips onto the floor, and that ringing circles back in your ears, intensifying, as you filter between consciousness and unconsciousness from such a blow.

Voices overlap in a haze. Figures surround you. Everything is spinning, and you no longer have the strength to move about as new fingers pry into your mouth, hooking behind your top and bottom rows of teeth to force your jaw open wide as he hovers over you.

Someone grips around your neck, and before you, the ear is lifted from its cloth and inched toward your mouth. Through the dizziness, through the searing pain, alert strikes your body once more as you tense every muscle you have. You can't move away, can't do anything but stare in wide horror as it is drawn closer and closer to your open mouth.

Your body coats itself in goose bumps, the hairs on the back of your neck standing upright as you shake and choke from the discomfort. What do you do? You can't kick, you can't yell, you can't punch. You're alone. You can't understand. Sweat drips down your body, mixing into the blood dripping down your chin, and tears of sheer anguish, terror, and humiliation rise.

Satoru left you for one second. One second, and that was all it took for you to be stolen by sorcerers - no, by curse users. That's what these people are, aren't they? Monsters. Villains. Sadists with techniques. You remember your boyfriend told you that very briefly once. That not all sorcerers are good.

Your poor boyfriend. He's probably worried half to death trying to find you. Guilt wracks you in the seconds before your forced consumption of this severed body part, a tear streaking down your aching, stretched cheeks.

Satoru. He doesn't say it, but you know how deeply he worries. You know how anxious he gets about you. You know that there are still things he withholds from you in order to protect you, in order to give you as much normalcy as you can with someone like him by your side.

You wish you could have eased his mind more. You wish you didn't need stupid glasses to sense cursed energy. You wish you weren't so... helpless.

"Look at that. She's crying," someone coos viciously. "Don't you just love when they cry?"

And just as the ear hovers centimeters away from your tongue, the harsh light clicks off, and the sound of a generator dies with a sinking whir.

A chorus of confused grunts and huhs lift, and the ear is frozen before you. You hyperventilate, now unable to see what is happening around you.

"The hell happened to the lights?" one of the four speaks up.

"Fuck if I know. Go check," the woman orders.

A hand slips away from your neck, but someone keeps your mouth pried open.

The man holding the ear grumbles, using his free hand to fish into his back pocket for his phone. The screen lights up his face momentarily, his occupied hand pulling the ear away from you subconsciously as it hovers by his side.

Suddenly, you feel the curse users behind you hold their breaths. The man in front of you tenses as well, a paling look crossing over his face as he stiffens.

There's silence for a moment as everyone stills. "Do you feel that?" your abductor speaks.

"It's so..." the woman starts, before freezing with the realization.

"Is that...?"

"Can't be. No way."

"There's only one being whose... cursed energy is that strong!"

The room thickens with sudden understanding which, once more, fails you. Then panic rises.

"Hurry up! Feed her the fucking ear and let's get out of here!"

"We won't have time! If we feel him now, then he's already -"

"Already here?"

A new, disembodied voice echoes lowly, menacingly throughout the space. A voice familiar to you. A voice that makes your heart pound with disbelief, with hope that the owner is actually present. Are you dreaming? Are you still alive?

The hands gripping you immediately rip away, and you sputter, leaning over with heaving coughs. The phone screen waves about in a panic, your abductors’ abruptly stricken by fear. You hear feet shuffle in a hurry and curses fly. The ear drops to the ground before you, and the phone flashlight is hastily turned on to sweep the area to locate whatever or whoever they are suddenly so afraid of.

You lift your head, and through a searing squint, the flashlight turns and freezes on a pair of glowing celeste hues. Hues that gaze upon you with gentle love each day, now bold and almost alien.

And utterly blood curdling.

The man yelps, dropping his phone to the ground with a clatter. Your other abductors attempt to flee. Feet pound against the ground and scatter into different directions. The flashlight faces the ceiling from the floor, giving you a view of the man stepping away slowly in fear as Satoru approaches him slowly, methodically. 

Bright eyes cut through darkness, and you stare. He doesn't look at you. His eyes are locked on the curse user ahead, like some kind of beast pursuing a meal. His expression is neutral, lips pressed in a firm line, but the chaos roams in those eyes, wide, focused, thirsty for blood.

You've never seen your boyfriend in such a light, and by the reactions of those around you, he is just as terrifying to them as he appears to you.

They recognized his presence before he even physically appeared. Satoru is... known.

"Please," the man begs as they step into darkness again. "Please, Gojo. No, please - please don't!"

A sweep of air cuts through your earshot. Satoru thrusts a hand forward, sending the guy flying back into the concrete wall with a loud commotion. A terror stricken scream rings out, followed by the horrid squelch of flesh, the sound of blood dripping, then nothing more.

The sorcerer's head rips back into the direction of the scattering curse users, and his focus lands next on the woman. Cutting through darkness with lightning speed, he gives chase, breathing harshly through flared nostrils. Attempts at the expulsion of cursed energy are made, but they fall through, as Satoru's technique cancels them out.

They don't stand a chance.

If you weren't in this building, he'd use his domain. He'd hollow purple the whole fucking establishment, but the sight of you there, tied up, battered with bruises blooming over your skin and those dirty fingers prying into your mouth drives him to use his own bare hands, his own strength to rip these fuckers apart without so much as touching another hair on your perfect head.

How dare they.

His hands reach out and grasp the head of the woman mid flee. She cries with anger and fear, reaching back to try to pull away. But Satoru expels energy through his hand and squeezes, just a bit, just enough for her skull to crack under the pressure. Blood seeps from the sockets of her eyes as she wails, and then gargled silence as the head capsizes and explodes, chunks of brain and blood and skull fragments flying across the room, bouncing off of his infinity.

How dare they do this to you. 

How dare they soil your innocence, how dare they so much as lay a finger on your skin, how dare they pierce it, how dare they bruise it, how dare they attempt to steal you away forever to turn you into a curse no one even remembers.

Your poor face. The way you must have suffered without him there.

Oh, he'll fucking kill every last one of them.

His head snaps up. Speaking of... who's next?

Satoru locates him in an instant, teleporting across the base to cut off his path. He skids to a stop far too late before Satoru plunges a fist forward to pierce his chest, then pry him apart from the inside. The honored one is insensitive to his cries, to the tedious way flesh tears through his infinity, the way it burns, bubbles, and flops to the ground in two heaps.

Satoru stares down at the mangled corpse harshly, breaths weighted.

Then he smells it again. That scent that invaded your home, that was plastered over the walls, that was blooming over the injuries on your body when he found you.

Slowly, his head lifts and turns to locate the one who took you away. The one who started all of this.

He sees past the pitch black. Past the technique that likely allowed him to sliver into your home undetected, past that veil of transparency - the way his technique toys with light and shadows to fade into background as though invisible. Then cancels out.

Oh, Satoru sees him plain as day, the way he inches toward the back wall in search of the door. He sees how he tries to escape the pit of hell that narrowly awaits him.

With a flash of speed, he arrives, hovering behind the perpetrator who once appeared invisible to the naked eye. He trembles with the imminent presence of the honored one too close for comfort, knowing that he's been spotted, knowing that his life is over. He'd end his own life right there if he could, to prevent himself from experiencing the agony of Satoru Gojo's wrath.

The snowy haired sorcerer glances down at the guy’s fingers, noting how he clutches them as they bleed red down his wrist. A flicker of pride swells in his heart, as it seems you did your best. You fought back the only way you knew how.

That's his girl. His precious girl. He's so proud of you. Proud of you for staying alive long enough for him to get there. Proud of you for using the tools you do have in this likely horrifying, confusing situation.

He hopes you feel relief. He hopes your nervous system is resting now as he finishes what you started.

Satoru's firm hand rockets forward to grasp your abuser's neck. He chokes, reaching up to claw at Satoru's veined hand for air fruitlessly, as he can't even touch him. He can hardly even move.

Gojo keeps his eyes peeled wide as they bore into the curse user's, watching as life leaves him in seconds, as air sucks itself from his lungs and stops at Satoru's relentless hold. Satoru's eye twitches, his breathing growing louder. 

Then SNAP!

The man's body goes limp, his neck snapping back. Satoru releases a coarse breath and drops him to the floor, raising his foot high above to stamp down hard on his head. Then again. And again. Each blow, each crack for every second you spent in torment, for every scar that decorates your skin, and for every moment this will haunt your mind going forward.

He stomps and stomps, animalistic grunts flying through gritted teeth. There's nothing left beneath him but a pile of mush and blood at the end of the corpse's neck. But Satoru doesn't care. Not one bit.

And when he's finally done, he lifts his foot, steps back, and leans his head back with an exhale. His adam's apple bobs as he swallows thickly, eyes lashes fluttering against his skin as he allows himself to blink.

Then, he turns to you.

In your perception of time and space, what just transpired only happened within a few seconds, at best. You listened as death rang out from every corner of the space, and flashes of harsh air and the stench of blood wafted about you. Your breaths ring out as you twist and turn to look around, still bound.

"Satoru?" you call out in the emptiness, uneased by the sudden lack of activity. Your throat is sore, your voice torn when you call out. Where did he go? Is he okay? "Toru? Toru!" you shout again.

"I'm here, pretty."

And suddenly, he is standing right before you. The lights slowly flicker back to life, revealing him in all of his glory as he looks down at you with devastation in those eyes, sweet and lidded on you, a sheer contrast to what you saw and heard not even a few seconds ago. You gaze up at him in awe with curled brows before looking about and registering the dead bodies around you. You suck in a sharp breath, but he moves to untie you quickly, freeing from your restraints.

He drops to his knees before you, the greatness fading from him at your feet. He can breathe now, he can think now that he's got you. Now that he's protected you. Now that he sees you're okay.

He slips his arms under your weak ones to pull you down against him, embracing you tight. He holds your frame tight to his, breathing you in. A hand raises to clutch the back of your head, and you slip your arms around his neck clinging tight, afraid to let go.

"My baby," he huffs, tucking his nose into the crook of your neck. He dots kisses to your skin, adjusting his hold, pressing you in safely. "I'm so sorry."

“Satoru,” you whimper, finally safe. “You - you found me.”

He pulls back to look at you. You're curled up against him, your knees sprawled on the ground, your hands tucked over his undercut. His hands reach to cup your cheeks carefully, bringing your attention to him and only him.

His thumb grazes the purple and red swelling over your cheek, the blood trailing from your nose and down your chin. He looks into those big (e/c) eyes tinged in red, the tears collected on your lashes, and he feels the chill of your flesh when he touches it. You're shaking uncontrollably as he looks at you, and his lips tremble.

"Of course I found you. I always will. I'm here," he says again softly. "Just look at me. Don't look anywhere else. Keep your eyes on me, baby. I'm here."

"But how? How did - what did - " you can't find the words. Satoru shakes his head, wiping tears and sweat and blood away. Your nose flares and tears well in your vision as security and warmth swarms you, despite the monstrosity you saw in his gaze, despite the corpses that surround you. You're safe. "I thought I was gonna die before I got to see you again."

Satoru's heart shatters. "No. Don’t say that," he asserts sternly. "I would never let that happen. I'd give myself up before I let anything happen to you."

You don’t know just how heavy his words are.

Your chin wrinkles as your lips wobble. Satoru's hands smooth over your hair, helping to tame it, to bring you some sense of consolation and comfort as he kneels before you. He brings your head in to press his lips to your forehead, letting his kiss linger as long as he can as he savors you, savors the fact that you survived, that you didn't die on him.

Satoru expects questions. He expects your fear. He expects you to look at him like he's some anomaly, like he's a wild monster that you just happened to be stuck with. He expects you to interrogate him, to ask why those curse users reacted the way they did when they saw him, why killing comes so easily to him - as easily as breathing, why his speed is practically inconceivable, why the blood dotting his cheek does not faze him in the slightest.

Why he exhibits such power.

But instead, he feels your shoulders jerk and hears your soft cries. He pulls back from his kiss to look you in the eye again, and he feels his heart twisting. He feels his chest tightening at the sight.

You're in pain. He knows. You're traumatized. He knows. He should've found you sooner. He shouldn't have even left. But instead of expressions of your own pain, you whisper: "I'm sorry for making your fears come true."

“What?” He falls apart. "(Y/n). You listen to me," he ducks to hover mere inches away from your face as you fight the tears and humiliation and pain. "You didn't ask for any of this. This isn't your fault. You couldn't have known -"

"But that's the problem," you tremble, eyes glossing over. "I never know anything. And it's too much on you to have to be responsible for me like this."

Satoru has been used as a weapon all of his life. Ordered around, tossed about, spoken to like an object of orchestration rather than a human being with thoughts and feelings. All of his life, he's been othered, treated as some glorified, inhumane, aggravating thing. He lost his childhood. He lost his best friend. And yet, the world pushed and pushed and pushed until Satoru lost any hope of being taken seriously. Of truly being seen.

But then, you.

As he holds you in his arms, as you bleed and shake and suffer, as you reel from the events you just witnessed, from the carnage that Satoru just lay, all you can think about is the toll that being human takes on him. The extra burden you pose.

And Satoru is floored. How can you think that the most beautiful thing about you is a burden to him? How can you sit there in your own dread, blaming yourself instead of him?

How can you continue to think of him when no one else on this planet does?

"Too much?" he repeats incredulously. "(Y/n), there are a lot of things in this world that could be too much. That I do everyday. That everyone expects from me. Things come to me because of... because of who I am, and it’s hard to explain any of that, but you?" he gazes at you with such sincerity and sorrow. "You are the very last thing that could be too much for me. Looking after you and taking care of you is my priority above everything else. Everything. That's not because you're a burden. It's because if something were to happen to you like it just did, I wouldn't be able to forgive myself. I can't forgive myself."

"You didn't ask for this either," you sniff.

"It doesn't matter," he breathes. "You're what matters. I couldn't breathe until I found you. I couldn't think of anything but getting to you because you mean more to me than anything else in this world. You're everything, and I have been trained to be ready for every possible obstacle on this earth except losing you. It's not an option. It will never be an option. I worry because i care. So much. Your humanity is not a burden. It's perfect. You're perfect," he confesses as though the words have been jumbled inside his soul for months. Tears slip down your face as you listen to him, as his fingers swipe over your face tenderly, as he keeps you near. "I'm so sorry I didn't get here sooner. I'm so sorry you got hurt."

"It's not your fault," you echo his words through tears. "You found me. You saved me."

"I was late," he argues, tormenting himself. "Look what they did to you."

"You're here," you emphasize. "I'm alive because of you," you shudder. "Thank you."

Such gratitude like this has been foreign to Satoru, because this is intimate. It's real. It's laced with love and truth, and the sapphire eyed sorcerer feels his heart swell.

He knows he loves you right then and there. He can't deny it. It smacks him clean in the face.

He pulls you back in, scrunching his eyes tight as he hugs you. You cry into his uniform, your fingers gripping the fabric tight as your cheek settles against his broad shoulder.

"I won't let anyone touch you ever again," he promises you. "I swear on my life."

Satoru eventually teleports the two of you back to his home, secluded in a jungle of bamboo trees, quiet and sterile with the scent of his cologne staining the air.

You sit on his bathroom counter as he stands between your legs, holding your chin cautiously, dabbing your wounds with antiseptic soaked cotton. You're fresh out of the shower, clean of the dirt and grime and blood that ailed you, and draped in an old shirt of his. He was sure to light the clothes he found you in on fire.

The two of you don't talk about curses or sorcerers. You don't talk about the display of power you witnessed. You don't talk about the weight that his very name carries in the world of sorcery. You don't talk about the fists that collided with you, the attempted reincarnation that you were almost utilized for, the weakness in your knees, the rope burns on your wrists and ankles.

Instead, Satoru spends a human afternoon caring for you. Fixing you a bowl of cheap ramen the way you like. Turning on a movie you always watch. Lifting you into his arms as you straddle his torso, and carrying you from room to room until you make it to the soft sheets of his bed.

Satoru lays you down on his pillows softly, handling you like pristine glass, and helps you under the covers. Exhaustion swirls in your eyes as you look up and reach for him weakly, wordlessly begging him to join you. And how could he not?

He slips in beside you and melts into your arms. The two of you mold together like malleable clay, sinking into sweetness and safety, expelling breaths that were caught in your throats.

You nestle your unbruised cheek against his chest, breathing him in, securing your arms around his middle as he does yours. There is nothing to say, as your hearts and limbs speak for themselves. And you both feel it. The shift. The tenderness.

You feel lips peck your head, trailing down to your forehead, then your nose as you tilt your head up to meet his eye. Fingers caress the small of your back as you hold one another's gaze, a silent exchange transpiring.

You see one another clearly. For your weakness, and his strength. Exposed, bare, vulnerable before one another, and yet, safer than either of you have ever felt in your entire life.

Satoru cranes down to kiss your lips. Softly. Appreciatively. Relieved. Your entire body vibrates down to your toes, your skin warm, your soul secure. He pulls away slowly, nose brushing against yours, sharing gentle breaths. And his eyes convey his truth, just as they always have.

That no matter your weakness, no matter your humanity, Satoru will love you until the day you both part from this earth.

That he will protect you with every ounce of infinite power coursing through his bones. And anyone who gets in his way will pay.

Of course, Suguru's distant voice sighs out in his head, though Satoru's too enraptured in you to quite hear it this time.

The dark haired Death Painting never asked for life, not in such a way. A severed connection once held between two other life forms ached terribly, sending pangs of grief through his chest that were enough to make him realize that light, joy, those human concepts of happiness under the sun were not meant for him. He's not a human after all. He exists somewhere in between consciousness and a nightmare, a monster and the narrowly acceptable.

A heart as big as Choso's fails to match his appearance. Dark, sunken eyes, circles beneath that drag them further into his skull. A haunted quality about his piercing gaze as he stares, observes from afar, undetected, unheard, unseen. Scraggly, brown strands of hair that sprout over his forehead and poke high into the air from a pair of cropped pigtails. An exhaustion that never quite leaves his expression, dragging down curved, pale lips upon ghostly pale skin. Marks that morph and warp with his technique, stamped like a stain of blood across his nose and beneath his eyes.

And a height... a height that intimidates, mimicing that of mythical creatures from a far off land - a curve of lean shoulders and muscle that hunches over its very own shadowy imprint on the pavement, a mass of cloth that seems to pool from the very ground as it drapes around Choso's big, ghoulish frame.

With no connections and no warmth, Choso lives his life in the crevices overlooked by mankind, in the forgotten wastes of what society leaves behind. A wandering half curse with no family to name except for a salmon haired boy that he protects from a distance, surveys, and ensures the wellbeing of from where he thinks he goes undetected, but Yuji always knows when his strange big brother is around, the one he only recently discovered he even had when he was walking to his dorm late one night and felt like he was being followed.

When the fifteen year old whipped his head around, he saw them. Two pale, shining circles at the end of the block, peering out from around the corner of an alleyway, an aura of gloom twirling about his head, sending shivers down Yuji's spine.

Once he got through the eeriness of it all, Yuji felt a hint of pity toward the creature. Beneath that dizzy unsettling countenance about him, beneath his severely lacking social skills and perpetual grey overcast that follows him, Yuji discovers that his habit of staring and... following him around (stalking is the term he is looking for, but he doesn't want to paint Choso in any more of a bad light than others already do) derives strictly from a place of desire to be close, from an instinct to care that Choso himself has failed to identify.

The very small hint of humanity that Choso comes to display is fully at the orchestration of Yuji and his friends. The brown eyed boy attempts to teach Choso the ways of the world through some of the planet's best films, or at least what Yuji deems to be the best films.

Long after Yuji has fallen asleep on the couch with his head tossed back and drool dribbling down his chin, Choso leans closer into the television with his knees to his chest. Lavendar eyes stare wide as colors flash across his fair skin, and the scene cuts in the midst of the rampaging action to a man and a woman - the great hero and the girl he fights for, watching the monstrous opponent lay siege to the city from a nearby cliff. Wind whips through their perfectly styled hair, they turn to each other as fire roars, and their eyes meet amidst a catalysmic crescendo of flames a blaring string instruments.

Choso's breath catches in the back of his throat as something... intimate is exchanged. His head tilts at a perfect angle, mimicing the behaviors of an owl, and his pupils reflect the pinnacle of the movie. The moment of broken tension: a desperate kiss.

The great hero grasps his lover's arms tight and brings her in to share breaths, to mold skin, to join lips passionately. The corners of Choso’s lips tug down with inquisition, his alien mind whirring as he processes the unfamiliar display. The music swells, the camera pans to the woman's brows curling with ferver as she throws her arms around the man's neck as if it will be the last time she sees him.

A goodbye?

After a few moments, the music settles and the protagonist pulls away. He gives her one last emotional look before daringly taking off into the direction of chaos, leaving the weeping woman to wave after her stud.

It is a common theme Choso identifies in these strange films. The one persistent thing in all the confusion of Yuji's favorite series. The complication and intensity of human connection. Siblings, friends, parents, lovers - an inseperable bond is shared with various ways of communicating each different relationship. Nevertheless, the motivations behind each behavior remains the same - sacrificing lives, intercepting to take the bullet, promising the land, moon, and stars. Love.

No matter what kind. It drives everything.

Choso's head swivels to look at Yuji as the movie continues on in the background as he snoozes. Blinking, the messy haired half curse looks down at the blanket that pooled to the floor. He cranes over to grab it, and awkwardly fumbles, turning stiffly to stretch the fabric over the fifteen year old's frame, blanketing him in warmth the way he saw a woman do her child in one of the earlier movies of the night.

Choso leans back, cautious, uncertain, bunching himself back into the corner of the shared couch. His arms wind around himself again as he stares at his brother, waiting for some outburst, like the ones gifted pedestrians have when they accidentally catch a glimpse of him in the wee hours of the night, prowling about vacant corners. The screams. The panic. The blood curdling fear ringing out high into the stars. The running.

But instead, Yuji twitches, snorting loudly, then nestles back into the comfort of the blanket, cheek squishing over the pressure of his propped palm.

Love. Choso ponders it. It feels... familiar somehow. Like it was the only thing aside from darkness engrained into his way of being when he manifested into truth.

Is that what ached so much when his other brothers were killed? Is that what keeps him tied to Yuji despite his responsibility for the former deaths?

It must be.

It's the only kind of love Choso truly knows. When he thinks of origins... of a mother, there's nothing. Choso was born into this world with no predecessors, no friends. As though he was destined to be a void.

And that special love? That love between two people, christened by the touch of one another's lips, by glittering gazes, and an urge to fight through hell in order to protect the other?

It’s a completely foreign notion. He wonders what such things feel like. He wonders how people know when the time is right, when the sentiments are shared, when the unspoken words lingering in the air are filled with a kiss, with a mute declaration.

Choso turns back to the screen. He watches a bit longer before looking down at his own hands, bringing them to vision before his knees. His eyes note the blue veins that course over the back of them and down his forearms. He notes the alarming width of his palms, the greying of his slender finger tips as if he is decaying. The sheer lack of color in his complexion.

His eyes flicker back up to the shiny, tan bodies decorating the screen. The human quality of life sparkling in the characters eyes.

He wonders if love like that, that makes women cry and men run off to fight, is a luxury reserved for those born completely human. Those born to a name. To an identity rather than a curse.

Choso returns to the shadows when he is not needed by his brother. In spite of Yuji's best efforts to integrate him, the brunette feels uneasy in human company. Not because he doesn't like it, but because he feels the judgment in everyone's eyes when they regard him, when his little brother introduces him as his sibling, and lips curl, or eyes dart over his figure in discomfort.

Choso knows he's not the prettiest. He's not the most ordinary. He's large, and inky, and macabre, and silent. Those who look like him are often portrayed as the villains of the heroes' stories, and he has long accepted that. He's okay with that.

The only thing he asks of this existence is for it to grant Yuji's safety. And though the boy tells him he doesn't need to stalk about from a far distance any time Yuji leaves his house, Choso persists. It's the only way he knows how to look out for his baby brother. His only family. His only ties to the human world.

So when Yuji's friends murmur about how his new big brother is creepy, Choso doesn't let it eat him up inside. He stays out of their path, not keen on frightening his brother's schoolmates, allowing him the normal life that Choso has never known.

One night, after Choso has watched Yuji, Megumi, and Nobara walk back into their dorms safely after a late night out, the half curse turns to meander the dark streets pensively. With his gaze to the ground, his mind subconsciously numbing out his surroundings, he does not see the figure in his way when he turns a corner. Emerging like some apparition from the darkness, his eyes eventually lift and he freezes.

The brunette's sunken eyes go wide.

His stomach drops. His breath catches.

There you are, crouched by the side walk, planted on the side of the road in front of the sewer. You stare, anguised, into the sewer crate, knees bent as you lock in on something lost to you now. You're angry, it seems.

Choso backs away into the shadows again, peering out from the corner to observe you.

You release a frustrated groan, one unweighted due to the lack of company you believe yourself to have. You crane your head forward, squinting your (e/c) eyes to get a better look into the darkness and murmuring frustrations to yourself that Choso can't quite understand from the distance.

The brunette leans in to get a better look at you. His mind is clouded as he watches you like you're a spectacle, eyes glassy and blown.

(S/c) skin. Big (e/c) eyes, full of life, full of humanity, full of emotion. The curve of your jaw, so pleasant upon the eyes when you clench down angrily on your teeth. The warm quality of your cursed energy, of what Choso interpets as the very essence of your soul. Your aura, bright, full, clean. Perfect (h/c) hair. Perfect chipped teeth. Perfect faded scars across your arms, perfect chipped black paint on your fingernails.

You are entrancing.

Yet, you seem so upset.

Choso looks around. The street is vacant save for you crouching there, and you aren't doing well to pay attention to your surroundings. Whatever's got you distracted is surely jeopardizing your safety. Why is someone like you all alone in the middle of the night like this?

You're angling your body awkwardly to stretch an arm through the open space leading into the ground. You tilt your head upward, face on display for Choso to examine, and you grunt with a wince. The muscles in your face tighten as you stretch and strain, skin wrinkling aesthetically by your eyes and the corners of your lips.

You dropped something down there. Is that it? You're trying to get it out?

Choso's right foot moves to step forward, his slender fingers poking out to help, but he stops himself as echoes of terror flash across his memory. He retracts slowly, dejectly, careful to avoid scaring you off.

After a few minutes of watching you switch between your right and left arm to no avail, you rip your arm away with another groan and rise to your feet. Overcome with agitation, you kick at the concrete, only to regret so immediately and whimper as you hop on your unharmed foot with a hiss.

Your shoulders drop, your countenace shifting to crestfallen and tired. You press your lips hard together, glaring down at the sewer as you stand on your two feet again. A shuddering exhale leaves your parted lips, and you duck your head in shame, moving to plop down on the side of the curb and bury your face in your hands.

Choso feels himself frown. You appear so... sad.

Is it because of whatever you dropped?

He observes that way your shoulders tremble, and soon the muffled huffs of breath rise into the still air as you sniffle into your palms.

He wants to help you. Badly.

In the midst of Choso's thoughts, his foot shuffles across the ground once more, knocking a complacent rock out of place and stirring up a small commotion.

The rock rolls out from the alleyway, into the street. Choso panics, ducking further into darkness as you lift your head with sudden urgency.

Tears stain your cheeks, your eyes tinged a light pink, and you sniff hard, lowering your hands into your lap when you catch wind of the rock. You swipe the back of your hand over your nose and go to stand up, having the sense to now have your guard up since something is evidently nearby.

"H-Hello?" you croak out, rising to your feet cautiously as you stare into the direction of the rocks origins. You know someone is there. You sense the energy now, bubbling like some inky mass in the shadows. You frown, for of course you would run into some kind of threat tonight, of all nights.

You sniff again, harder this time, dropping your shoulders with a huff. "I know you're there," you call out, voice echoing throughout the street.

Choso swallows hard, his heart suddenly lurching forward in his chest. He has to leave, before you see him. Before you take one look at him and deem him some sort of monster.

"If you're trying to scare me, it's not gonna work. Nor is robbing me. Everything valuable I own is -" you point to the sewer grate beside you with pursed, irritated lips. "- right down there, so. And trying to kill me won't go so well for you either. Just so you know."

A sorcerer? Or some member of the jujutsu world? You must be. He can tell by the way your stature adapts a specific stance, one he sees many of the students take on the field when they are preparing to spare. You don't seem to be completely in it though. You're movements are lackadasical, tired, like you just want to get whatever you're about to encounter over with so you can go back to wallowing in pity.

Choso's confused. He doesn't want to hurt you. Or steal from you. He just... doesn't want you to see him.

But after a few more seconds of his silence, you march over to the alleyway boldly. Choso backs away on instinct as you come in close, your hand rising to grip the brick as you peer into shadows and nothing. You squint, angling your head differently. "Hello?"

Then you make them out. Two glowing, hollowed purple orbs floating about in the near distance, and the soft ruffle of clothing as the owner of said eyes retreats further.

You scrunch your brows together, something uneasy settling in your stomach. The silence, the eyes, the darkness, it makes you shudder.

"I can see you," you eventually whisper, your tone evening out. Choso freezes, stuck.

You can see him?

No, not fully. You couldn't possibly, or else your reaction would have been less calm.

Because you're so close. Wafts of your perfume float into his confined space, intoxicating his senses and tickling his nose. It twitches, his hand going to paw away at it, as if he has the power to rid himself of your enticing presence.

And you, well, you're at a loss. You can tell, now that you've shrunk the distance, that whatever is out there doesn't want to come near you, let alone hurt you or take anything from you. It's hiding away, you assume, but from what? Why? What's so bad about it that needs to be hidden?

"Are you following me?" you ask.

No. No, he's not. Not now. He didn't mean to find you here like this.

"...Can you... speak?" you try once more for a response, but to no avail. You palm at your damp eyes again, ridding the saltiness from your gaze so you can see and focus properly. There's another shuffle back, and something sympathetic blooms in you. You aren't exactly sure why. Perhaps it's because of the shitty day you've been having. "Are you some kinda harmless curse?" you ponder aloud. Still nothing.

You stretch out a hand, and it reaches into darkness blindly. Choso looks down at your soft, small palm turned upwards, and your pretty eyes searching through nothingness with something desperate in your gaze.

"Look, see?" you offer. "I won't hurt you. I'm off duty, anyway," you half chuckle something sweet and hypnotic and... defeated. "As long as you don't hurt me too. Promise."

Tear dropped lashes blink and a sad, comforting smile rises to your lips.

"I probably sound insane trying to talk to you, but... if you don't mean any harm, I really wouldn't mind the company right now," your voice drifts off at the end of your sentence as if you are humiliated, leading Choso to stop backing away from you instinctively.

A human being is asking for him to show himself, asking for his company, and all he can do is stand frozen in place, as this is incredibly unfamiliar territory.

He wants to go. He wants to listen to you, to believe that you truly mean what you say. But fear grounds him until your next soft phrase.

"Please?"

You hear slow footsteps approach, and you lower your hand the closer you feel him getting to you. A soft, pathetic smile graces your features, and gradually, a head peaks out from the blanket of darkness.

But when your eyes go up, they land first on chest.

Your expression slowly wilters as your eyes trail up and up and up slowly, and after what seems like an eternity, they finally find stunned violet hues that peer down at you from overhead. He emerges cautiously, a similarly pathetic expression on his face, circling those strange eyes of his. Your arms completely drop to your sides, your brows lifting, your lips parting to release a soft breath of stun.

A spooky sight greets you. Over six feet of astonishing mass blending into the shadows of the darkness, a frozen face of what you would name as fear written across his empty eyes. You aren't quite sure what he is. He looks like some kind of curse, but the way he stares, the way he watches with a breath held is far too human for you to tell.

Wild strands of dark brown, dark enough to be black, sprawl over his forehead and into his wide eyes. His chest rises and falls slowly like he's waiting for the shoe to drop, waiting for your outburst, for your cruelty.

But instead of your cruelty, instead of fleeing in a terror-stricken haze, you just return his gaze and stare in awe. Perplexed. Intrigued. Surprised.

Choso stares at you, awaiting your rejection with lips clamped tight together. You just watch, lips parting and jaw dropping slightly.

You don't know what you were expecting, but it certainly wasn't him.

Though, despite his frame and offputting nature, there's that humanness swirling in his gaze like he is ashamed of himself, like he wants to rerteat at any given moment.

Your heart lurches with empathy.

"Oh..." you start, unable to find the right words. Subconsciously, you take a step back and Choso notices immediately. His adam's apple bobs, and he keeps himself half submerged in shadows. "...You're..." you breathe out.

Disgusting? Horrifying? A wretched sight?

"Tall," is what you elect to say, nodding slowly to yourself in your stupor. Choso's shoulder slump slowly in surprise.

You don't run. You didn't throw things at him. You don't even yell.

You just look at him as though you're amazed.

Choso feels something strange bite at the apples of his cheeks, the manipulation of his blood no longer under his control but his own body's. He blinks once, long and hard, as pink swirls over pale skin - his cheeks and the tip of his nose. His nose and lips curl, now crooked as he adjusts to the heat of his face as he stands before you.

"Sorry, um- I'm kinda a mess right now," you blink your own eyes repeatedly, snapping yourself out of your daze. Your hands slap at your sides, and you stretch your hand back out again. "I'm... (Y/n). Do you... do you have a name?"

You didn't run.

Choso is utterly frozen, a fish out of water.

The shock of your amiability despite having just seen his face is sending him reeling. And now, having stepped into the flickering luminescents of the street lights with you, his breath has been knocked away with the shock of your... your...

"Hello?" you wave, hesitantly taking a step closer to examine him with skeptical eyes. Your eyes narrow, your brows draw together, and your lips curve - not with distaste, but with curiosity. "Can you hear me? Or... even understand what I'm saying?"

Beauty.

That's what it is. That's what Yuji called it. Something so nice to look at, it can't be named as anything but such.

As you lean in to examine him closely, carefully, Choso names it. Feels it. Sees it. You're beautiful. The most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

You tilt your head, releasing your arm to prop a hand on your hip. "...Are you okay?"

Is he?

No human has ever asked.

He feels his heart jerk in his chest, and he jolts slightly. His hand abruptly flies to the very spot, and he looks down in alarm as though his own body has betrayed him.

You frown, suddenly believing that this being, this man - whatever he is, is hurt somehow. Or at the very least, having a psychotic break.

Your hand instinctively reaches out, and the moment Choso detects it, he pulls away swiftly, owlish eyes finding yours again. You deflate. "Do you need any help? Can I take you somewhere?" you ask, voice softening.

What a pretty sound.

No one has every spoken to him so casually. No one other than Yuji.

Why aren't you afraid? Don't you see his face? The way it absorbs all light to reflect only bleak darkness? Don't you see the marks of a killer, of a blood curse user? Of something strange and offputting and unfamiliar?

His eyes detail your red ones, then fly to the sewer opening.

Lifting a slender finger, he points.

"...Did you lose something?"

His voice slithers out low, yet smooth, a bass you are surprised to hear. There's something monotonous and robotic to the sound, like he has no idea how to speak to someone like you, or to anyone for that matter. His tone is also thick with lack of use, as if these are the first words he has spoken in days.

Your eyes follow his finger, still confused, and slightly taken aback by his speech. You gulp and locate what he is talking about you look back up at him in question. "Oh, yeah," you sigh, suddenly remembering why you're out here in the first place. "I... um... dropped my phone down there. And it has my ID and credit card in the case..." you trail off to turn back to him with questions in your eyes.

"Can I... help?"

You blink. "Um, I mean... if you can? If you really want to?"

Choso doesn't waste any time. You watch as his bulking, inhumane frame steps fully out of darkness and moves toward the sewer with a determined expression.

When he stands in the street, you see his full frame much more clearly from afar, and you ogle him. He's certainly a curse, or someone hybrid between that and a human being. His face, his hair, his ten fingers and two hands are enough to signify the workings of another human, but the lack of color on his skin, his size, his bulkiness, the sharpness of his jaw, the way he speaks, the way his eyes stare. Those traits of his are all quite unique, and while you think he should scare you, he doesn't.

Choso locates your phone. He sees the screen facing upward just a few feet below the crate. His head tilts as he studies the predicament, and before you can tell him not to worry about it, you watch him lurch forward, hook his fingers into the grate, and yank it out with one forceful tug. Your eyes widen as he tosses the metal crate over his shoulder like it weighs nothing, and it lands with a loud clanging. He then hops down into the hole without a second thought. You hurry over to check on him.

But what greets you upon arrival is a large hand stretching out from the sewer, your phone clasped in his dark fingers. You gasp, light catching your eyes as you bend over. Choso looks up at you sheepishly, waiting patiently for you to take your belonging as he stands still.

"Holy shit, you actually got it?" you exclaim, reaching to retrieve your phone, brushing his cold hand. Choso retracts it, swallowing hard as his face warms even more. You check to make sure nothing is cracked or wet as Choso climbs his way out, pressing his palms to the pavement and pushing forward with his seemingly impressive strength. He clambers back to his feet before you, uncaring of the grime smudging his robes, and awaits your next reaction, your next words like an eager puppy.

You heave a sigh of relief when you find no damage to your device and hug it to your chest. No longer full of sadness, your (e/c) eyes find his and you grin wide, all teeth on display and your eyes squinting with gratitude.

"Thank you so much! You're a life saver."

Thank you. You're thanking him - him. A human being is thanking Choso, and he can't even operate his brain quickly enough to say you're welcome. He just nods stiffly, staring.

"You must be really strong, huh?" you pipe up, your voice now chipper and free. Choso doesn't say anything, and you chuckle slightly with a nod toward the discarded sewer grate. "You yanked that thing like it was nothing."

"Oh. I am strong. Yes," Choso says awkwardly, for it is a fact. It's true. He possesses remarkable physical prowess, much like his little brother, but you still giggle upon hearing his answer. His ears burn. He's never made it this far in conversation with someone before. Is he supposed to laugh? Is he saying the right things?

"Yeah, I can see that," you say warmly, tucking your phone back into your pocket. With another spirited exhale, you smile. "So you were watching me back there, weren't you?"

Choso's face flushes a deeper pink. "U-Um-"

"I only ask because... well, you were here long enough to see that I lost something. You saw me have a meltdown, right?" Choso stares. "You saw me crying and stuff," you clarify.

The half curse clears his throat. "Yes," he croaks. "I did. I was watching you. I saw you hurt your foot, too. Sorry," Choso hastily rushes out, stiff and peculiar, like the word was tangled on his tongue and he didn't know how to get it out. All he knew was that you needed to hear it. "Sorry," he says again, this time quieter.

You quirk a brow. "Why? Were you watching me, I mean?"

He doesn't know how to respond.

"It's okay," you say after a moment of silence, having taken in his countenance and his tone and deduced that he isn't a threat. "I'm not upset. Just wanna... make sure you aren't a secret threat to me or something."

"I'm not," he swears. "I don't want to hurt you. I would never hurt someone without reason."

"Okay..." you drawl. "I believe you. So then, why?"

"I was... walking," he starts.

You nod. "Right."

"Then I saw you, so I stopped walking."

"...To watch me?"

"Not at first," Choso admits, incapable of lying. "I didn't want to... scare you. So I stayed in there."

You turn and look back at the dark alley, and something suddenly tugs at your chest. "I see."

"Do I scare you?"

You whip your head back around to look up at the being before you. You tilt your head, soaking in the image of him, detailing the submission behind his dominating, foreign physique. You smile again.

"No. I've seen much scarier. Trust me," you wink. Choso's heart spasms again, and his body jerks. You stifle a laugh at his odd nature. "I appreciate your concern, really. But it might've been less creepy if you'd just come up to me in the first place. I don’t bite."

There's that word again. Creepy. Choso scratches the side of his jaw, pensive. "Normally, people run away."

"What? They run away? From you?" you ask, and Choso nods solemnly. Your heart aches. "Sure, you're a little unique, but that's no reason to run from you. That's kinda harsh, no?"

Choso frowns. "Unique?"

You hum. "I've never seen anyone or anything like you before. But that's not a bad thing."

"It's not?"

"Of course not," you giggle. "You should own it. You're the only one of your kind out there, just like I'm the only one of myself out there," you sing happily, your mood having been healed.

You don't know how deeply your words impact Choso as he listens to you, watches you. "So... you don't think I'm gross? Or - or ugly?"

"God no. I actually think you're really sweet. You wanted to help me without even knowing me," you beam. "It's a shame people haven't stuck around long enough to see that."

Suddenly, flowers bloom in Choso's mind. Warm colors and fragrances drift into his imagination and surround you as he stares, and as you grin up at him like he's any other man.

You think he's unique. And sweet. No one has ever used such words to describe him.

You're pretty, and unjudging, and kind.

Little hearts bloom in Choso's dead eyes as he starts to imagine what life could be like with you in it, suddenly struck by Cupid’s arrow.

"I think you're sweet too," he suddenly blurts, having grown confident under your compliments. "And... um... beauty - beautiful. Beautiful."

Caught off guard by his compliment, your smile fades slightly. You notice the reddened state of his face and the cute way his dark brows curl. Flattered, heat burns at the back of your neck as you chuckle nervously, out of your depth. This was the very last thing you would have expected him to say.

“You think I’m beautiful?” you ask.

Choso gulps, rethinking his words. The last thing he wants to do is offend you. So he doesn’t say anything again, tongue tied and beet red.

“T-Thank you. I guess,” you murmur. “I don’t look… the best right now. But you’re sweet for thinking so,” you laugh again.

Befuddled by your statement, Choso speaks again. “I do think so,” he asserts.

“Okay. Thank you,” you nod shyly.

You are just so pretty, Choso doesn’t know what to do with himself.

An awkward silence breezes by as Choso stares at you, and you quickly determine that he’s got absolutely no social skills. You breathe in sharply. “So what’s your name?”

“…Choso.”

“Choso?” you echo, and the said man feels chills curl up his spine at the sound of his name rolling off your tongue. “That’s a nice name. It’s nice to meet you.”

You thrust your hand out to him again, and Choso studies it. He’s seen this before. Handshakes. People do them with one another as a formality when introducing themselves.

He can’t believe you want to shake hands with him.

Cautiously, Choso lifts his large hand out and slowly his fingers clasp around yours. His hand is cold, the sheer size of it dwarfing your own.

And your hand is so warm and soft, like a cushion of cotton or the surface of a cloud.

You giggle slightly, looking up at him. “Now we shake.”

Choso clenches his jaw in embarrassment and carefully shakes your hand, allowing you to guide the up-and-down motion.

You smile triumphantly. “Good… you can let go of my hand now.”

Choso does, ripping it away when he notices he’s been holding onto you for too long.

"So, Choso," you start kindly. "Where were you heading tonight?"

"Um. Nowhere," he says. "I was leaving my brother-"

"Brother? You have siblings?" you inquire, intrigued.

"Y-Yeah. A little brother."

"Wow, how old?"

"Fifteen."

"Awww, how sweet," you grin. "I have a little sister. She's not so little though. She's nineteen. Real pain in my ass."

Choso perks up. "Are you the eldest?"

"Unfortunately," you joke.

Choso's heart flips yet again. How could you get any better?

"So after you left your brother, where were you going?" The brunette shrugs. You hum, looking over his now tattered, dirtied robes.

The poor guy is all alone out here, hiding away from the public because people have grown frightened of his appearance without bothering to learn what lies beneath. And though he is a bit grim looking, he isn't all that bad. At all, actually.

He's got a kind face. And dare you say, eerily handsome features. He didn't ask to be born this way, and even after having burdened humanity's cruelty, it seems that he still seeks humanity's approval.

There's nothing ugly or monstrous about the pink face looking back at you now. You've had a particularly trying day yourself too, and the only inkling of kindness that the universe had to offer is the being towering over you in the empty street.

He's lonely. And you just so happen to be too.

You look all around you, then mentally question if you are truly about to do what pops into your head. "Your clothes are dirty," you observe.

Choso looks down at his robes. "Oh. Yeah."

"...I think I have some spare clothes from my dad somewhere in my closet. You look about..." you note his height and the width of his body with a curved smile. "...his size?" you guess. "He’s a big guy. Do you maybe... wanna come to my house and get cleaned up? I'll wash your robes for you. You can consider it a thank you for helping me get my phone."

The violet eyed half curse is silent as he processes your offer in a daze. You tilt your head and raise your brows with a smile, and that is enough for Choso to follow you blindly, happily to your home.

Your scent clings to the air of your small apartment, and Choso has to duck his head to enter through your front door. His once dull eyes shine as he takes in the coziness of your space, your snug furniture and the earthy tones that accentuate the environment. You're talking as you lead him through the living room and head into your room to sort through your closet, but Choso lingers behind as he takes in his surroundings.

Pictures of waterfalls and winding green trails litter your fridge, stuck to the surface with little magnets naming far off places and national parks. There's dishes piled in your sink, unwashed, and an apron hangs on the pantry door that reads: kiss the cook.

There are fairy lights strung up on all of your walls, encasing the space in a soft, dim glow. Plants decorate your kitchen table, your coffee table, the corners of the floor.

And when he follows your voice into your room, he is mute with admiration as he looks around. You stand on the other side of your bed at your closet door, rifling through articles of clothing. The lights in your room are even softer, with hues of orange and pink warping the ceiling from a little projector. There are little knicknacks sprawled over your nightstand and desk, and a big shelf piled full of books right next to it.

Choso steps into the space slowly, entranced, his eyes floating to a frame propped up by your bed. He bends over, reaching for it to examine. There you are, pictured in the middle of some rainforest, your arms spread wide above you and a heart stopping grin on your face.

So pretty.

"A-ha! These should work!" you exclaim, whipping around with a big grey shirt and black sweatpants stretched in your hands. Choso panics, hastily putting your picture frame back into place. In his rush, it fumbles from his grasp and drops onto the carpeted floor. He winces, fumbling once more to pick it up and put it back. You laugh. "Relax, Choso. It's okay. That picture's actually from when I went to Costa Rica last year. It was a really awesome trip."

"You like to travel," he observes, stepping away from your nightstand to stand stiffly with his arms at his sides, afraid of causing any more commotion.

"I love it. And nature. It helps - I don't know - ground me I think. I’m not the most social person out there, so I go away to center myself," You move forward to lay out the clothes on the bed next to him. "Here, why don't you go shower and freshen up. You can use whatever's in the bathroom."

Choso blinks, eyes following you. "Shower? Here?"

"I promise I don't mind."

Somehow, Choso ends up cramped in your shower, his robes discarded on the floor as his nose brushes the showerhead. He sorts through every single one of your soaps and shampoos curiously, gingerly, flipping the lid to smell each one. Some are more sugary, others fruity, and all of them carry some piece of you that Choso engrains into his mind. He uses every one.

He's in there so long that you have to knock and check to make sure he's okay. Only then does he put everything carefully back in place and finish up.

Choso emerges with steam clinging to his body and hair damp, loose over the frame of his face as unfamiliar, clean clothes cling to his skin. You do a double take when you look up at him from where you sit at your desk in front of your laptop, and he awaits your reaction, his robes piled in his arms with that sheepish look on his now brighter features.

"Oh wow, look at you," you turn in your chair to admire him with a grin. "How do you feel?"

"Wet."

You snort, looking up at his dripping hair free from its ponytails. "Here, gimme your robes. I'll throw them in the wash then help you with your hair."

Once again, Choso finds himself in foreign territory as you stand on a step stool in the bathroom mirror with a blow dryer clutched in your hand. Choso stares at you through the reflection of the glass as you gingerly dry his hair, hot gusts blowing his dark strands to and fro. Your gentle fingers separate strands after asking permission, and you're careful to avoid tangles as you work with crisp focus.

Choso's skin buzzes. His entire body is vibrating as he hunches in your little bathroom, letting you care for him as if you aren't a stranger he only met a couple of hours ago. He thinks he might be sick when his rapid heart rate and warm cheeks persist over a long period of time in your company.

When you finish blowdrying, you laugh slightly and lower the device to unplug it. Choso's hair is now fluffy and full of volume, sitting atop his head like a thick helmet of shoulder length locks. A mop of bangs hides his eyes, and you lean over to curve the strands out of the way gently so he can see. He flushes, eyes finding yours. “Hi,” you chuckle.

“H-Hi,” he murmurs back.

After a bit of combing and maintenance, you finally hop off of the step stool and stand beside his large frame. "There. All done."

The pale skinned man observes himself in the mirror and almost doesn't recognize what stares back. His hair feels soft, looks neat, as his bangs curve around his ears and his hair filters gracefully down his neck. The outline of his broad shoulders is visible against the fabric of your dad's old tee, his biceps bulging against the sleeves. He feels refreshed. Renewed. Warm and fuzzy.

"Better?" you ask.

Choso turns to look at you and is overcome with a rush of emotions he can't name. "Yes," he exhales, whipped.

As Choso's robes hang to dry, and you retreat to your bed having offered up your couch for Choso to sleep on, the half curse elects, instead, to stand over you in the darkness of your room as you sleep.

The clock reads three in the morning, and piercing through the night, Choso studies your unconscious form. You lay on your side with fists bawled up under your chin. Your eyes roll beneath your lids, lashes fluttering as your lips part with gentle breaths.

Choso feels his heart hammering heart again. He presses his palm to his chest.

Is this the feeling the movies speak off? The intensity? The heat?

When Choso returns to Yuji the next day, still wearing the clothes you gave him and carrying his robes in a spare tote bag that you let him borrow, the salmon haired teen's eyes bulge out of his skull and his jaw drops to the floor.

"Bro, what the heck happened to you?!" Yuji exclaims. "You look so - like - well, you look great!"

Now, with the approval of Yuji, Choso puffs his chest and closes his eyes with great emotion. "I met a woman."

Thus begins the unhealthy habits, the toxic patterns that Choso knows no better but to follow. He can not get you out of his head, the way your fingers threaded through his damp hair. The way your hand felt in his when he shook it. The way your house smells, the way your soap and scent clung to his body. The way your eyes lit up when he helped you retrieve your phone, and the way you never feared him.

His heart skips beats when he thinks of you, when your name rings through his head like a melody. He learns from Yuji that he is in fact not sick, but that he has exhibited signs of yearning, signs that he is romantically interested in you.

Choso begins to chase the feeling day in and day out. Whenever he has the opportunity, he's seeking you out in secret. Tracking you down, trailing behind you throughout your days, watching you through a window from across the street, lingering to ensure that you make it home safely at night.

You're a Jujutsu librarian. You keep a collection of important documents at Kyoto Jujutsu High, the rival of Yuji’s school. You lay low, linger in absences, keep to yourself. You're far more isolated than Choso would have believed you to be, given your bright personality, but you seem content to be so. You like to read, he finds. You like the simple things about life. You stop to take pictures of trees and pay extra for limited edition copies of books. You feed birds and sit in park benches, just existing. Being. Alone.

Weeks go by of Choso following you around, all the while meeting you in person once every week to stroll through town at night and talk. He can't help but to look after you, the same way he does Yuji. You've bled into his life, you've left a lasting impression, and Choso can not quit the way his body reacts to your voice alone. He can't quit the precious way your eyes catch the glimmer of the moon, or the way the corners of your lips curl with an impending smile.

He's grown obsessed with you. With your very life.

And one day, he decides he'll do something about it. With a rather questionable pep talk from Yuji buzzing in Choso's ears and a bouquet of hand picked flowers in his trembling hand, he goes to head to your apartment when he catches you inside a restaurant on the way there.

He stops, heart jerking when he sees you, confusion rising, as he expected you to be in your house by now. Normally you are. It’s pretty late.

Choso takes a step closer in the dusk, only to find that you aren't alone. His heart drops to his stomach as you sit there across from some guy, cozied up in a booth, surrounded by warm lighting. Your shoulders hunch and your eyes crinkle as you laugh, and Choso frowns. He thought he was the only one who made you laugh like that.

Nausea rises as the man across from you smiles, and you smile back. He's pretty and perfect, like the heroes in Yuji's movies. Perfect straight teeth and smooth skin, bagless eyes and hands that don't scare. Light cropped hair and bright eyes. Everything, everything, that Choso is not.

A lump builds in the back of Choso's throat as he glares at the two of you. He doesn't know how long he stands there, heartbroken, flowers falling to his side and eyes darkening.

Did you want someone 100% human after all?

You return home that night rather drained. You'd forced yourself to go on yet another date set up by Utahime, who swears up and down that you would be less lonely if you put yourself out there more. You sigh, tossing your keys to the ground and shuffling off your shoes at the door, shutting it tight behind you.

It's not as though the guy was bad. He was nice, you suppose. A little drab, but otherwise, not a monster. Even so, you couldn't bring yourself to be interested in him beyond that. The conversation was stifling, and the entire time, your mind kept trailing off to other places, other worlds, to... to Choso.

You groan, rubbing your temples as you go plop down on your couch in the dark with a weighted sigh. You know you're a little strange, as most people in the Jujutsu world are, but you can't help the things that stimulate you. You can't help but to be interested in the things overlooked, the things no one cares to see, the things others write off as unnoteable.

But Choso is anything but to you.

With his strange way of speaking and moving, his strange eyes, and strange, strange behavior, he's unveiled passion. The kind that comes easily to him, the kind that certain people are merely born with. He will talk for hours about his brother, then listen to you talk for hours about your interests and occupation. And he'll watch you when you speak... like a hawk, like he's afraid of missing any second.

And you like it. You like the way he makes you view the world unintentionally. You like his mystique. You like his unique quality. You like him.

But it's irrational. Choso hardly exists during the daytime. You only see him once a week, and he's... well, he's different. Though you enjoy his differences, you realize that liking him could pose some complications with your job. Unless you kept him a secret. But Choso doesn't deserve such treatment. He deserves someone who fully embraces him. 

And you do. You want to. You're just... scared.

Your head leans to the side, your eyes darting across the space when you catch a shadow just behind you in the connected kitchen. You scream out, jumping up from your couch to throw yourself against the wall.

With a trembling hand, you reach out for the lights, and flick them on to reveal Choso standing there before you behind your kitchen counter.

You pant erratically, your heart hammering into your chest. "Choso?!" you shout. "What the fuck?! What are you doing here?"

In typical fashion, he doesn't answer. But he is void of the warmth and kindness you ordinarily associate with him. You furrow your brows in concern as you press yourself further against the wall, taking in his intrusive stature.

That sheepish gaze is nowhere to be found. The light that once trickled into his violet hues is gone. Instead, the Choso that stands before you is silent with resentment, betrayal. His lips are curved down, his eyes sharp on you as he stares. His gaze feels stern, hard, unforgiving, and his brows are angled down. The shadows encompass him, helping him to blend into darkness much like how he did when you first met him. But this is different.

He looks angry. With you.

You swallow thickly, unfamiliar with this side of the sweet man you've come to know.

"Cho..." you start slowly in a shuddering whisper. "Why are you in my house?" He doesn't reply. Your nose flares. "W-What's wrong?"

Nothing.

"How long have you been here?"

Still nothing.

You heave out, attempting to calm yourself with a hand to your abdomen. "Jesus Christ. You scared me."

This, this, elicits a response.

"I scared you. Huh."

His deep voice rumbles out into the dimness. You gnaw on the inside of your lip, startled by the bass in his tone, by the severity with which he speaks to you now.

"Y-Yes, Choso. You're standing in my kitchen in the dark. How did you even get in here?"

"The same way I always do."

"The same way y- what?"

He doesn't even bother to correct himself. He makes it known that he'd been here, that this is his territory, not anybody else's. It's supposed to be just you and him.

Your blood runs cold. He's snuck into your house before? More than once?

"Why are you so far away?" he asks suddenly.

You stare like a deer in headlights, unaware of how tightly you press yourself away out of instinct. Your nervous system is still reeling from the scare, and you're desperately trying to process everything that Choso just said - trying to process why he's in your house like this, why he's looking at you that way.

You watch as he starts to move, slow steps padding against your floor toward you. You stare with wide eyes as he approaches, stepping into the dim light, moving across your carpet to stand before you.

You inhale and exhale slowly, eyes glued to his as he stops just a couple of feet away from you. He studies you so closely, you feel he can read every thought in your mind with those eyes of his. You see something wrecked in his gaze, something broken that urges his eerie, solemn state. Your frown deepens, your confusion intensifying.

He takes one more step forward. "Are you scared of me now?"

A crease dents the space between your brows. "I'm more confused than anything right now, Cho," you tell him in a hushed voice. "How often do you sneak into my house?"

"A couple times a week," he says casually.

You twitch. "Why? Why wouldn't you just - just ask to come over?"

"Do you not like me anymore?"

"Wha...?" your face scrunches. "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm really confused. I don't-"

"Do you prefer someone more normal than me?"

You squint. "What do you mean?" you ponder his words, thinking back to your date. Then it dawns on you, rather fast. "Were you... have you been watching me?"

"I always do," he confesses earnestly, eyes pointed. You clamp your mouth shut, eyes widening as Choso takes another step closer. "I always want to know what you're doing and make sure you're okay. And tonight, I saw you with him. With a normal guy. I didn’t like it."

He doesn't have a filter. Not a single one. Choso acts and speaks on impulse, and his impulses after having met you have drawn him closer and closer, have placed him into the center of your life, and he wants you to have him. He wants you to want him there, but he needs to know if this is all for nothing. If he even has a chance with someone like you.

"Choso..." you start, slightly alarmed and overwhelmed.

"Who is he?" he asks coldly, something torn in the back of his voice. His brows twitch, his chest tightening. "Were you on a date?"

"You can't just-"

"Is he what you prefer? Over me?"

Your face falls.

You don't know what to say. 

If you were to answer him truthfully, you would have said no. Of course he's not. You don't even know the guy, and he's hardly even half of what Choso is, half of what he makes you feel.

But you are reeling with shock at these sudden revelations, at the intensity of Choso's feelings that you can not deny you knew he had. It was always so telling in the way he clung to you when the two of you went out. The color that always swirls in his cheeks when he's with you. The way he just can't stop staring. 

But you didn’t know it would get this bad.

You should have known. Choso isn't like ordinary people. He's a half curse with hardly any experience with other human beings aside from his brother, and he's even mentioned how he would follow Yuji around during the day to ensure his safety. 

Choso is a passionate person. He feels more than the ordinary being. He acts on his emotions, which likely feel foreign to him, far differently than anyone else would, and you should have known. You should have known that bringing him into your house upon first meeting would have bridged a connection that deluded him into thinking he's entitled to your space at all times.

You should have known that a little crush wouldn't be just a little crush to him.

And Choso is desperate. Desperate for you. For your answers. For a sliver of the attention you gave that guy at your date. Desperate for your love, love which he's never gotten to experience before you.

Looking into his eyes now, your instinct is to comfort him through your discomfort. Choso's always been so honest, so unapologetically himself, and he's looking to you for something, anything. And you want to give it to him, but you can't overlook what he's telling you now. What you're seeing.

The eeriness of it all.

"Choso," you say his name firmly, and something in him shifts slightly. "You can't stalk me like that. That's not okay. You can't follow me around when I'm unaware. That's an invasion of my privacy. I'd never do that to you. You understand?"

The brunette falters, his brows twitching again and his lips curling down. "You don't like me anymore?" he asks again, this time lower, more fragile.

Your heart aches against your best judgment. "I do like you, Choso," you say, hesitantly bringing your hands up to cup his face to calm him. You feel the half curse jerk under your touch, and like the fool he is for you, he melts into your palms, shoulders slumping as he hunches over, lavender eyes softening into something oh so pathetic. "I do. Okay? I like you a lot."

He's sap, his sternness crumbling. "You do?"

"I do," you assure him. 

“I like you a lot too. I like you very much. As more than a friend.”

“I know, Cho. I know,” you say tenderly. “And I’m happy to hear that, but I don't like you sneaking around me. That's weird, okay? You can't just come into my house whenever you want or follow me like that. I don't like that. At all."

Choso grimaces. "But I just want to protect you."

"I can protect myself."

"I want to help."

"You can help by respecting my space."

"But you won't want to see me otherwise."

"That's not true," you sigh. "You just have to ask."

"What about your date?"

"I don't prefer him over you, Choso. It was one date. And it wasn't that good," you tell him.

“Why did you go out with him in the first place?”

“I don’t know - it doesn’t matter. I was thinking of you the whole time.”

Choso's lips twitch into a crooked half smile, cheeks dusting with color. "Oh."

"Yeah. Oh," you roll your eyes, dropping your hands from his face much to Choso's chagrin. "You're fucking weird, Cho," you exhale with a slight laugh, shaking your head.

"I know," he mumbles. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not your fifteen year old brother, okay? There's this thing called phone calls. You can talk to me and ask to see me whenever you want. Just ask. No more sneaking around or breaking in. Or I'll be really upset."

Choso slumps. "Okay," he mumbles. He peers at you through thick lashes. "Are you going to see him again?"

"That's kinda the least of my concerns right now."

He takes in your edged tone and deflates. "You're mad at me."

You pout, quirking a brow and crossing your arms. "A little bit. You freaked the hell out of me just now,” you say. “But that doesn't mean I don't... still like you. Or think you’re scary. I'm just adjusting. Processing."

Choso suddenly takes the energy of a kicked puppy. "I'm sorry."

"So you said."

You gasp as Choso drops down to his knees before you, reaching forward to cling to your thighs. He wraps his burly arms snug around your legs, pressing his face to your stomach. You raise your arms in shock, face flooding with heat. "Choso, what are you doing?"

"Don't see him again," he muffles into your clothes. You feel his voice vibrate against your skin, and you shiver. "Don’t see any other man. Please. Pick me. I want it to be me instead."

You go to say something, but he holds you tighter, pressing himself to you pathetically, burying himself in your scent and warmth. You can be mad at him, if that's what you need. You can put boundaries in place, much to his chagrin, and he'd eventually deal. But he sincerely hopes, prays, that you won't abandon him for this. That you won't take back all the wonderful things you said about him, that you won't leave him for clinging too intensely, for offending you, for invading your space.

He just wants to be near you. That's all. He can't function when he's not near you.

And as strange as Choso is, you know that you are no better the moment you feel your heart flutter and skin tingle under his touch, when his desperate plea flushes against you. He's pitiful. Addictively, attractively, pitiful.

You exhale, lowering your hands to rest atop his thick hair. He whimpers, pushing in close, a great contrast to how he appeared to you only moments ago. You doubt he was even trying to scare you then. You assume that intensity is merely a part of him, a subconscious reaction when you are involved.

Choso's lashes flutter as you stroke over his hair, his face nuzzling closer. You look down at him with tired eyes.

The dark haired Death Painting never asked for life, not in such a way. A severed connection once held between two other life forms ached terribly, sending pangs of grief through his chest that were enough to make him realize that light, joy, those human concepts of happiness under the sun were not meant for him. He's not a human after all. He exists somewhere in between consciousness and a nightmare, a monster and the narrowly acceptable.

A heart as big as Choso's fails to match his appearance. Dark, sunken eyes, circles beneath that drag them further into his skull. A haunted quality about his piercing gaze as he stares, observes from afar, undetected, unheard, unseen. Scraggly, brown strands of hair that sprout over his forehead and poke high into the air from a pair of cropped pigtails. An exhaustion that never quite leaves his expression, dragging down curved, pale lips upon ghostly pale skin. Marks that morph and warp with his technique, stamped like a stain of blood across his nose and beneath his eyes.

And a height... a height that intimidates, mimicing that of mythical creatures from a far off land - a curve of lean shoulders and muscle that hunches over its very own shadowy imprint on the pavement, a mass of cloth that seems to pool from the very ground as it drapes around Choso's big, ghoulish frame.

With no connections and no warmth, Choso lives his life in the crevices overlooked by mankind, in the forgotten wastes of what society leaves behind. A wandering half curse with no family to name except for a salmon haired boy that he protects from a distance, surveys, and ensures the wellbeing of from where he thinks he goes undetected, but Yuji always knows when his strange big brother is around, the one he only recently discovered he even had when he was walking to his dorm late one night and felt like he was being followed.

When the fifteen year old whipped his head around, he saw them. Two pale, shining circles at the end of the block, peering out from around the corner of an alleyway, an aura of gloom twirling about his head, sending shivers down Yuji's spine.

Once he got through the eeriness of it all, Yuji felt a hint of pity toward the creature. Beneath that dizzy unsettling countenance about him, beneath his severely lacking social skills and perpetual grey overcast that follows him, Yuji discovers that his habit of staring and... following him around (stalking is the term he is looking for, but he doesn't want to paint Choso in any more of a bad light than others already do) derives strictly from a place of desire to be close, from an instinct to care that Choso himself has failed to identify.

The very small hint of humanity that Choso comes to display is fully at the orchestration of Yuji and his friends. The brown eyed boy attempts to teach Choso the ways of the world through some of the planet's best films, or at least what Yuji deems to be the best films.

Long after Yuji has fallen asleep on the couch with his head tossed back and drool dribbling down his chin, Choso leans closer into the television with his knees to his chest. Lavendar eyes stare wide as colors flash across his fair skin, and the scene cuts in the midst of the rampaging action to a man and a woman - the great hero and the girl he fights for, watching the monstrous opponent lay siege to the city from a nearby cliff. Wind whips through their perfectly styled hair, they turn to each other as fire roars, and their eyes meet amidst a catalysmic crescendo of flames a blaring string instruments.

Choso's breath catches in the back of his throat as something... intimate is exchanged. His head tilts at a perfect angle, mimicing the behaviors of an owl, and his pupils reflect the pinnacle of the movie. The moment of broken tension: a desperate kiss.

The great hero grasps his lover's arms tight and brings her in to share breaths, to mold skin, to join lips passionately. The corners of Choso’s lips tug down with inquisition, his alien mind whirring as he processes the unfamiliar display. The music swells, the camera pans to the woman's brows curling with ferver as she throws her arms around the man's neck as if it will be the last time she sees him.

A goodbye?

After a few moments, the music settles and the protagonist pulls away. He gives her one last emotional look before daringly taking off into the direction of chaos, leaving the weeping woman to wave after her stud.

It is a common theme Choso identifies in these strange films. The one persistent thing in all the confusion of Yuji's favorite series. The complication and intensity of human connection. Siblings, friends, parents, lovers - an inseperable bond is shared with various ways of communicating each different relationship. Nevertheless, the motivations behind each behavior remains the same - sacrificing lives, intercepting to take the bullet, promising the land, moon, and stars. Love.

No matter what kind. It drives everything.

Choso's head swivels to look at Yuji as the movie continues on in the background as he snoozes. Blinking, the messy haired half curse looks down at the blanket that pooled to the floor. He cranes over to grab it, and awkwardly fumbles, turning stiffly to stretch the fabric over the fifteen year old's frame, blanketing him in warmth the way he saw a woman do her child in one of the earlier movies of the night.

Choso leans back, cautious, uncertain, bunching himself back into the corner of the shared couch. His arms wind around himself again as he stares at his brother, waiting for some outburst, like the ones gifted pedestrians have when they accidentally catch a glimpse of him in the wee hours of the night, prowling about vacant corners. The screams. The panic. The blood curdling fear ringing out high into the stars. The running.

But instead, Yuji twitches, snorting loudly, then nestles back into the comfort of the blanket, cheek squishing over the pressure of his propped palm.

Love. Choso ponders it. It feels... familiar somehow. Like it was the only thing aside from darkness engrained into his way of being when he manifested into truth.

Is that what ached so much when his other brothers were killed? Is that what keeps him tied to Yuji despite his responsibility for the former deaths?

It must be.

It's the only kind of love Choso truly knows. When he thinks of origins... of a mother, there's nothing. Choso was born into this world with no predecessors, no friends. As though he was destined to be a void.

And that special love? That love between two people, christened by the touch of one another's lips, by glittering gazes, and an urge to fight through hell in order to protect the other?

It’s a completely foreign notion. He wonders what such things feel like. He wonders how people know when the time is right, when the sentiments are shared, when the unspoken words lingering in the air are filled with a kiss, with a mute declaration.

Choso turns back to the screen. He watches a bit longer before looking down at his own hands, bringing them to vision before his knees. His eyes note the blue veins that course over the back of them and down his forearms. He notes the alarming width of his palms, the greying of his slender finger tips as if he is decaying. The sheer lack of color in his complexion.

His eyes flicker back up to the shiny, tan bodies decorating the screen. The human quality of life sparkling in the characters eyes.

He wonders if love like that, that makes women cry and men run off to fight, is a luxury reserved for those born completely human. Those born to a name. To an identity rather than a curse.

Choso returns to the shadows when he is not needed by his brother. In spite of Yuji's best efforts to integrate him, the brunette feels uneasy in human company. Not because he doesn't like it, but because he feels the judgment in everyone's eyes when they regard him, when his little brother introduces him as his sibling, and lips curl, or eyes dart over his figure in discomfort.

Choso knows he's not the prettiest. He's not the most ordinary. He's large, and inky, and macabre, and silent. Those who look like him are often portrayed as the villains of the heroes' stories, and he has long accepted that. He's okay with that.

The only thing he asks of this existence is for it to grant Yuji's safety. And though the boy tells him he doesn't need to stalk about from a far distance any time Yuji leaves his house, Choso persists. It's the only way he knows how to look out for his baby brother. His only family. His only ties to the human world.

So when Yuji's friends murmur about how his new big brother is creepy, Choso doesn't let it eat him up inside. He stays out of their path, not keen on frightening his brother's schoolmates, allowing him the normal life that Choso has never known.

One night, after Choso has watched Yuji, Megumi, and Nobara walk back into their dorms safely after a late night out, the half curse turns to meander the dark streets pensively. With his gaze to the ground, his mind subconsciously numbing out his surroundings, he does not see the figure in his way when he turns a corner. Emerging like some apparition from the darkness, his eyes eventually lift and he freezes.

The brunette's sunken eyes go wide.

His stomach drops. His breath catches.

There you are, crouched by the side walk, planted on the side of the road in front of the sewer. You stare, anguised, into the sewer crate, knees bent as you lock in on something lost to you now. You're angry, it seems.

Choso backs away into the shadows again, peering out from the corner to observe you.

You release a frustrated groan, one unweighted due to the lack of company you believe yourself to have. You crane your head forward, squinting your (e/c) eyes to get a better look into the darkness and murmuring frustrations to yourself that Choso can't quite understand from the distance.

The brunette leans in to get a better look at you. His mind is clouded as he watches you like you're a spectacle, eyes glassy and blown.

(S/c) skin. Big (e/c) eyes, full of life, full of humanity, full of emotion. The curve of your jaw, so pleasant upon the eyes when you clench down angrily on your teeth. The warm quality of your cursed energy, of what Choso interpets as the very essence of your soul. Your aura, bright, full, clean. Perfect (h/c) hair. Perfect chipped teeth. Perfect faded scars across your arms, perfect chipped black paint on your fingernails.

You are entrancing.

Yet, you seem so upset.

Choso looks around. The street is vacant save for you crouching there, and you aren't doing well to pay attention to your surroundings. Whatever's got you distracted is surely jeopardizing your safety. Why is someone like you all alone in the middle of the night like this?

You're angling your body awkwardly to stretch an arm through the open space leading into the ground. You tilt your head upward, face on display for Choso to examine, and you grunt with a wince. The muscles in your face tighten as you stretch and strain, skin wrinkling aesthetically by your eyes and the corners of your lips.

You dropped something down there. Is that it? You're trying to get it out?

Choso's right foot moves to step forward, his slender fingers poking out to help, but he stops himself as echoes of terror flash across his memory. He retracts slowly, dejectly, careful to avoid scaring you off.

After a few minutes of watching you switch between your right and left arm to no avail, you rip your arm away with another groan and rise to your feet. Overcome with agitation, you kick at the concrete, only to regret so immediately and whimper as you hop on your unharmed foot with a hiss.

Your shoulders drop, your countenace shifting to crestfallen and tired. You press your lips hard together, glaring down at the sewer as you stand on your two feet again. A shuddering exhale leaves your parted lips, and you duck your head in shame, moving to plop down on the side of the curb and bury your face in your hands.

Choso feels himself frown. You appear so... sad.

Is it because of whatever you dropped?

He observes that way your shoulders tremble, and soon the muffled huffs of breath rise into the still air as you sniffle into your palms.

He wants to help you. Badly.

In the midst of Choso's thoughts, his foot shuffles across the ground once more, knocking a complacent rock out of place and stirring up a small commotion.

The rock rolls out from the alleyway, into the street. Choso panics, ducking further into darkness as you lift your head with sudden urgency.

Tears stain your cheeks, your eyes tinged a light pink, and you sniff hard, lowering your hands into your lap when you catch wind of the rock. You swipe the back of your hand over your nose and go to stand up, having the sense to now have your guard up since something is evidently nearby.

"H-Hello?" you croak out, rising to your feet cautiously as you stare into the direction of the rocks origins. You know someone is there. You sense the energy now, bubbling like some inky mass in the shadows. You frown, for of course you would run into some kind of threat tonight, of all nights.

You sniff again, harder this time, dropping your shoulders with a huff. "I know you're there," you call out, voice echoing throughout the street.

Choso swallows hard, his heart suddenly lurching forward in his chest. He has to leave, before you see him. Before you take one look at him and deem him some sort of monster.

"If you're trying to scare me, it's not gonna work. Nor is robbing me. Everything valuable I own is -" you point to the sewer grate beside you with pursed, irritated lips. "- right down there, so. And trying to kill me won't go so well for you either. Just so you know."

A sorcerer? Or some member of the jujutsu world? You must be. He can tell by the way your stature adapts a specific stance, one he sees many of the students take on the field when they are preparing to spare. You don't seem to be completely in it though. You're movements are lackadasical, tired, like you just want to get whatever you're about to encounter over with so you can go back to wallowing in pity.

Choso's confused. He doesn't want to hurt you. Or steal from you. He just... doesn't want you to see him.

But after a few more seconds of his silence, you march over to the alleyway boldly. Choso backs away on instinct as you come in close, your hand rising to grip the brick as you peer into shadows and nothing. You squint, angling your head differently. "Hello?"

Then you make them out. Two glowing, hollowed purple orbs floating about in the near distance, and the soft ruffle of clothing as the owner of said eyes retreats further.

You scrunch your brows together, something uneasy settling in your stomach. The silence, the eyes, the darkness, it makes you shudder.

"I can see you," you eventually whisper, your tone evening out. Choso freezes, stuck.

You can see him?

No, not fully. You couldn't possibly, or else your reaction would have been less calm.

Because you're so close. Wafts of your perfume float into his confined space, intoxicating his senses and tickling his nose. It twitches, his hand going to paw away at it, as if he has the power to rid himself of your enticing presence.

And you, well, you're at a loss. You can tell, now that you've shrunk the distance, that whatever is out there doesn't want to come near you, let alone hurt you or take anything from you. It's hiding away, you assume, but from what? Why? What's so bad about it that needs to be hidden?

"Are you following me?" you ask.

No. No, he's not. Not now. He didn't mean to find you here like this.

"...Can you... speak?" you try once more for a response, but to no avail. You palm at your damp eyes again, ridding the saltiness from your gaze so you can see and focus properly. There's another shuffle back, and something sympathetic blooms in you. You aren't exactly sure why. Perhaps it's because of the shitty day you've been having. "Are you some kinda harmless curse?" you ponder aloud. Still nothing.

You stretch out a hand, and it reaches into darkness blindly. Choso looks down at your soft, small palm turned upwards, and your pretty eyes searching through nothingness with something desperate in your gaze.

"Look, see?" you offer. "I won't hurt you. I'm off duty, anyway," you half chuckle something sweet and hypnotic and... defeated. "As long as you don't hurt me too. Promise."

Tear dropped lashes blink and a sad, comforting smile rises to your lips.

"I probably sound insane trying to talk to you, but... if you don't mean any harm, I really wouldn't mind the company right now," your voice drifts off at the end of your sentence as if you are humiliated, leading Choso to stop backing away from you instinctively.

A human being is asking for him to show himself, asking for his company, and all he can do is stand frozen in place, as this is incredibly unfamiliar territory.

He wants to go. He wants to listen to you, to believe that you truly mean what you say. But fear grounds him until your next soft phrase.

"Please?"

You hear slow footsteps approach, and you lower your hand the closer you feel him getting to you. A soft, pathetic smile graces your features, and gradually, a head peaks out from the blanket of darkness.

But when your eyes go up, they land first on chest.

Your expression slowly wilters as your eyes trail up and up and up slowly, and after what seems like an eternity, they finally find stunned violet hues that peer down at you from overhead. He emerges cautiously, a similarly pathetic expression on his face, circling those strange eyes of his. Your arms completely drop to your sides, your brows lifting, your lips parting to release a soft breath of stun.

A spooky sight greets you. Over six feet of astonishing mass blending into the shadows of the darkness, a frozen face of what you would name as fear written across his empty eyes. You aren't quite sure what he is. He looks like some kind of curse, but the way he stares, the way he watches with a breath held is far too human for you to tell.

Wild strands of dark brown, dark enough to be black, sprawl over his forehead and into his wide eyes. His chest rises and falls slowly like he's waiting for the shoe to drop, waiting for your outburst, for your cruelty.

But instead of your cruelty, instead of fleeing in a terror-stricken haze, you just return his gaze and stare in awe. Perplexed. Intrigued. Surprised.

Choso stares at you, awaiting your rejection with lips clamped tight together. You just watch, lips parting and jaw dropping slightly.

You don't know what you were expecting, but it certainly wasn't him.

Though, despite his frame and offputting nature, there's that humanness swirling in his gaze like he is ashamed of himself, like he wants to rerteat at any given moment.

Your heart lurches with empathy.

"Oh..." you start, unable to find the right words. Subconsciously, you take a step back and Choso notices immediately. His adam's apple bobs, and he keeps himself half submerged in shadows. "...You're..." you breathe out.

Disgusting? Horrifying? A wretched sight?

"Tall," is what you elect to say, nodding slowly to yourself in your stupor. Choso's shoulder slump slowly in surprise.

You don't run. You didn't throw things at him. You don't even yell.

You just look at him as though you're amazed.

Choso feels something strange bite at the apples of his cheeks, the manipulation of his blood no longer under his control but his own body's. He blinks once, long and hard, as pink swirls over pale skin - his cheeks and the tip of his nose. His nose and lips curl, now crooked as he adjusts to the heat of his face as he stands before you.

"Sorry, um- I'm kinda a mess right now," you blink your own eyes repeatedly, snapping yourself out of your daze. Your hands slap at your sides, and you stretch your hand back out again. "I'm... (Y/n). Do you... do you have a name?"

You didn't run.

Choso is utterly frozen, a fish out of water.

The shock of your amiability despite having just seen his face is sending him reeling. And now, having stepped into the flickering luminescents of the street lights with you, his breath has been knocked away with the shock of your... your...

"Hello?" you wave, hesitantly taking a step closer to examine him with skeptical eyes. Your eyes narrow, your brows draw together, and your lips curve - not with distaste, but with curiosity. "Can you hear me? Or... even understand what I'm saying?"

Beauty.

That's what it is. That's what Yuji called it. Something so nice to look at, it can't be named as anything but such.

As you lean in to examine him closely, carefully, Choso names it. Feels it. Sees it. You're beautiful. The most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

You tilt your head, releasing your arm to prop a hand on your hip. "...Are you okay?"

Is he?

No human has ever asked.

He feels his heart jerk in his chest, and he jolts slightly. His hand abruptly flies to the very spot, and he looks down in alarm as though his own body has betrayed him.

You frown, suddenly believing that this being, this man - whatever he is, is hurt somehow. Or at the very least, having a psychotic break.

Your hand instinctively reaches out, and the moment Choso detects it, he pulls away swiftly, owlish eyes finding yours again. You deflate. "Do you need any help? Can I take you somewhere?" you ask, voice softening.

What a pretty sound.

No one has every spoken to him so casually. No one other than Yuji.

Why aren't you afraid? Don't you see his face? The way it absorbs all light to reflect only bleak darkness? Don't you see the marks of a killer, of a blood curse user? Of something strange and offputting and unfamiliar?

His eyes detail your red ones, then fly to the sewer opening.

Lifting a slender finger, he points.

"...Did you lose something?"

His voice slithers out low, yet smooth, a bass you are surprised to hear. There's something monotonous and robotic to the sound, like he has no idea how to speak to someone like you, or to anyone for that matter. His tone is also thick with lack of use, as if these are the first words he has spoken in days.

Your eyes follow his finger, still confused, and slightly taken aback by his speech. You gulp and locate what he is talking about you look back up at him in question. "Oh, yeah," you sigh, suddenly remembering why you're out here in the first place. "I... um... dropped my phone down there. And it has my ID and credit card in the case..." you trail off to turn back to him with questions in your eyes.

"Can I... help?"

You blink. "Um, I mean... if you can? If you really want to?"

Choso doesn't waste any time. You watch as his bulking, inhumane frame steps fully out of darkness and moves toward the sewer with a determined expression.

When he stands in the street, you see his full frame much more clearly from afar, and you ogle him. He's certainly a curse, or someone hybrid between that and a human being. His face, his hair, his ten fingers and two hands are enough to signify the workings of another human, but the lack of color on his skin, his size, his bulkiness, the sharpness of his jaw, the way he speaks, the way his eyes stare. Those traits of his are all quite unique, and while you think he should scare you, he doesn't.

Choso locates your phone. He sees the screen facing upward just a few feet below the crate. His head tilts as he studies the predicament, and before you can tell him not to worry about it, you watch him lurch forward, hook his fingers into the grate, and yank it out with one forceful tug. Your eyes widen as he tosses the metal crate over his shoulder like it weighs nothing, and it lands with a loud clanging. He then hops down into the hole without a second thought. You hurry over to check on him.

But what greets you upon arrival is a large hand stretching out from the sewer, your phone clasped in his dark fingers. You gasp, light catching your eyes as you bend over. Choso looks up at you sheepishly, waiting patiently for you to take your belonging as he stands still.

"Holy shit, you actually got it?" you exclaim, reaching to retrieve your phone, brushing his cold hand. Choso retracts it, swallowing hard as his face warms even more. You check to make sure nothing is cracked or wet as Choso climbs his way out, pressing his palms to the pavement and pushing forward with his seemingly impressive strength. He clambers back to his feet before you, uncaring of the grime smudging his robes, and awaits your next reaction, your next words like an eager puppy.

You heave a sigh of relief when you find no damage to your device and hug it to your chest. No longer full of sadness, your (e/c) eyes find his and you grin wide, all teeth on display and your eyes squinting with gratitude.

"Thank you so much! You're a life saver."

Thank you. You're thanking him - him. A human being is thanking Choso, and he can't even operate his brain quickly enough to say you're welcome. He just nods stiffly, staring.

"You must be really strong, huh?" you pipe up, your voice now chipper and free. Choso doesn't say anything, and you chuckle slightly with a nod toward the discarded sewer grate. "You yanked that thing like it was nothing."

"Oh. I am strong. Yes," Choso says awkwardly, for it is a fact. It's true. He possesses remarkable physical prowess, much like his little brother, but you still giggle upon hearing his answer. His ears burn. He's never made it this far in conversation with someone before. Is he supposed to laugh? Is he saying the right things?

"Yeah, I can see that," you say warmly, tucking your phone back into your pocket. With another spirited exhale, you smile. "So you were watching me back there, weren't you?"

Choso's face flushes a deeper pink. "U-Um-"

"I only ask because... well, you were here long enough to see that I lost something. You saw me have a meltdown, right?" Choso stares. "You saw me crying and stuff," you clarify.

The half curse clears his throat. "Yes," he croaks. "I did. I was watching you. I saw you hurt your foot, too. Sorry," Choso hastily rushes out, stiff and peculiar, like the word was tangled on his tongue and he didn't know how to get it out. All he knew was that you needed to hear it. "Sorry," he says again, this time quieter.

You quirk a brow. "Why? Were you watching me, I mean?"

He doesn't know how to respond.

"It's okay," you say after a moment of silence, having taken in his countenance and his tone and deduced that he isn't a threat. "I'm not upset. Just wanna... make sure you aren't a secret threat to me or something."

"I'm not," he swears. "I don't want to hurt you. I would never hurt someone without reason."

"Okay..." you drawl. "I believe you. So then, why?"

"I was... walking," he starts.

You nod. "Right."

"Then I saw you, so I stopped walking."

"...To watch me?"

"Not at first," Choso admits, incapable of lying. "I didn't want to... scare you. So I stayed in there."

You turn and look back at the dark alley, and something suddenly tugs at your chest. "I see."

"Do I scare you?"

You whip your head back around to look up at the being before you. You tilt your head, soaking in the image of him, detailing the submission behind his dominating, foreign physique. You smile again.

"No. I've seen much scarier. Trust me," you wink. Choso's heart spasms again, and his body jerks. You stifle a laugh at his odd nature. "I appreciate your concern, really. But it might've been less creepy if you'd just come up to me in the first place. I don’t bite."

There's that word again. Creepy. Choso scratches the side of his jaw, pensive. "Normally, people run away."

"What? They run away? From you?" you ask, and Choso nods solemnly. Your heart aches. "Sure, you're a little unique, but that's no reason to run from you. That's kinda harsh, no?"

Choso frowns. "Unique?"

You hum. "I've never seen anyone or anything like you before. But that's not a bad thing."

"It's not?"

"Of course not," you giggle. "You should own it. You're the only one of your kind out there, just like I'm the only one of myself out there," you sing happily, your mood having been healed.

You don't know how deeply your words impact Choso as he listens to you, watches you. "So... you don't think I'm gross? Or - or ugly?"

"God no. I actually think you're really sweet. You wanted to help me without even knowing me," you beam. "It's a shame people haven't stuck around long enough to see that."

Suddenly, flowers bloom in Choso's mind. Warm colors and fragrances drift into his imagination and surround you as he stares, and as you grin up at him like he's any other man.

You think he's unique. And sweet. No one has ever used such words to describe him.

You're pretty, and unjudging, and kind.

Little hearts bloom in Choso's dead eyes as he starts to imagine what life could be like with you in it, suddenly struck by Cupid’s arrow.

"I think you're sweet too," he suddenly blurts, having grown confident under your compliments. "And... um... beauty - beautiful. Beautiful."

Caught off guard by his compliment, your smile fades slightly. You notice the reddened state of his face and the cute way his dark brows curl. Flattered, heat burns at the back of your neck as you chuckle nervously, out of your depth. This was the very last thing you would have expected him to say.

“You think I’m beautiful?” you ask.

Choso gulps, rethinking his words. The last thing he wants to do is offend you. So he doesn’t say anything again, tongue tied and beet red.

“T-Thank you. I guess,” you murmur. “I don’t look… the best right now. But you’re sweet for thinking so,” you laugh again.

Befuddled by your statement, Choso speaks again. “I do think so,” he asserts.

“Okay. Thank you,” you nod shyly.

You are just so pretty, Choso doesn’t know what to do with himself.

An awkward silence breezes by as Choso stares at you, and you quickly determine that he’s got absolutely no social skills. You breathe in sharply. “So what’s your name?”

“…Choso.”

“Choso?” you echo, and the said man feels chills curl up his spine at the sound of his name rolling off your tongue. “That’s a nice name. It’s nice to meet you.”

You thrust your hand out to him again, and Choso studies it. He’s seen this before. Handshakes. People do them with one another as a formality when introducing themselves.

He can’t believe you want to shake hands with him.

Cautiously, Choso lifts his large hand out and slowly his fingers clasp around yours. His hand is cold, the sheer size of it dwarfing your own.

And your hand is so warm and soft, like a cushion of cotton or the surface of a cloud.

You giggle slightly, looking up at him. “Now we shake.”

Choso clenches his jaw in embarrassment and carefully shakes your hand, allowing you to guide the up-and-down motion.

You smile triumphantly. “Good… you can let go of my hand now.”

Choso does, ripping it away when he notices he’s been holding onto you for too long.

"So, Choso," you start kindly. "Where were you heading tonight?"

"Um. Nowhere," he says. "I was leaving my brother-"

"Brother? You have siblings?" you inquire, intrigued.

"Y-Yeah. A little brother."

"Wow, how old?"

"Fifteen."

"Awww, how sweet," you grin. "I have a little sister. She's not so little though. She's nineteen. Real pain in my ass."

Choso perks up. "Are you the eldest?"

"Unfortunately," you joke.

Choso's heart flips yet again. How could you get any better?

"So after you left your brother, where were you going?" The brunette shrugs. You hum, looking over his now tattered, dirtied robes.

The poor guy is all alone out here, hiding away from the public because people have grown frightened of his appearance without bothering to learn what lies beneath. And though he is a bit grim looking, he isn't all that bad. At all, actually.

He's got a kind face. And dare you say, eerily handsome features. He didn't ask to be born this way, and even after having burdened humanity's cruelty, it seems that he still seeks humanity's approval.

There's nothing ugly or monstrous about the pink face looking back at you now. You've had a particularly trying day yourself too, and the only inkling of kindness that the universe had to offer is the being towering over you in the empty street.

He's lonely. And you just so happen to be too.

You look all around you, then mentally question if you are truly about to do what pops into your head. "Your clothes are dirty," you observe.

Choso looks down at his robes. "Oh. Yeah."

"...I think I have some spare clothes from my dad somewhere in my closet. You look about..." you note his height and the width of his body with a curved smile. "...his size?" you guess. "He’s a big guy. Do you maybe... wanna come to my house and get cleaned up? I'll wash your robes for you. You can consider it a thank you for helping me get my phone."

The violet eyed half curse is silent as he processes your offer in a daze. You tilt your head and raise your brows with a smile, and that is enough for Choso to follow you blindly, happily to your home.

Your scent clings to the air of your small apartment, and Choso has to duck his head to enter through your front door. His once dull eyes shine as he takes in the coziness of your space, your snug furniture and the earthy tones that accentuate the environment. You're talking as you lead him through the living room and head into your room to sort through your closet, but Choso lingers behind as he takes in his surroundings.

Pictures of waterfalls and winding green trails litter your fridge, stuck to the surface with little magnets naming far off places and national parks. There's dishes piled in your sink, unwashed, and an apron hangs on the pantry door that reads: kiss the cook.

There are fairy lights strung up on all of your walls, encasing the space in a soft, dim glow. Plants decorate your kitchen table, your coffee table, the corners of the floor.

And when he follows your voice into your room, he is mute with admiration as he looks around. You stand on the other side of your bed at your closet door, rifling through articles of clothing. The lights in your room are even softer, with hues of orange and pink warping the ceiling from a little projector. There are little knicknacks sprawled over your nightstand and desk, and a big shelf piled full of books right next to it.

Choso steps into the space slowly, entranced, his eyes floating to a frame propped up by your bed. He bends over, reaching for it to examine. There you are, pictured in the middle of some rainforest, your arms spread wide above you and a heart stopping grin on your face.

So pretty.

"A-ha! These should work!" you exclaim, whipping around with a big grey shirt and black sweatpants stretched in your hands. Choso panics, hastily putting your picture frame back into place. In his rush, it fumbles from his grasp and drops onto the carpeted floor. He winces, fumbling once more to pick it up and put it back. You laugh. "Relax, Choso. It's okay. That picture's actually from when I went to Costa Rica last year. It was a really awesome trip."

"You like to travel," he observes, stepping away from your nightstand to stand stiffly with his arms at his sides, afraid of causing any more commotion.

"I love it. And nature. It helps - I don't know - ground me I think. I’m not the most social person out there, so I go away to center myself," You move forward to lay out the clothes on the bed next to him. "Here, why don't you go shower and freshen up. You can use whatever's in the bathroom."

Choso blinks, eyes following you. "Shower? Here?"

"I promise I don't mind."

Somehow, Choso ends up cramped in your shower, his robes discarded on the floor as his nose brushes the showerhead. He sorts through every single one of your soaps and shampoos curiously, gingerly, flipping the lid to smell each one. Some are more sugary, others fruity, and all of them carry some piece of you that Choso engrains into his mind. He uses every one.

He's in there so long that you have to knock and check to make sure he's okay. Only then does he put everything carefully back in place and finish up.

Choso emerges with steam clinging to his body and hair damp, loose over the frame of his face as unfamiliar, clean clothes cling to his skin. You do a double take when you look up at him from where you sit at your desk in front of your laptop, and he awaits your reaction, his robes piled in his arms with that sheepish look on his now brighter features.

"Oh wow, look at you," you turn in your chair to admire him with a grin. "How do you feel?"

"Wet."

You snort, looking up at his dripping hair free from its ponytails. "Here, gimme your robes. I'll throw them in the wash then help you with your hair."

Once again, Choso finds himself in foreign territory as you stand on a step stool in the bathroom mirror with a blow dryer clutched in your hand. Choso stares at you through the reflection of the glass as you gingerly dry his hair, hot gusts blowing his dark strands to and fro. Your gentle fingers separate strands after asking permission, and you're careful to avoid tangles as you work with crisp focus.

Choso's skin buzzes. His entire body is vibrating as he hunches in your little bathroom, letting you care for him as if you aren't a stranger he only met a couple of hours ago. He thinks he might be sick when his rapid heart rate and warm cheeks persist over a long period of time in your company.

When you finish blowdrying, you laugh slightly and lower the device to unplug it. Choso's hair is now fluffy and full of volume, sitting atop his head like a thick helmet of shoulder length locks. A mop of bangs hides his eyes, and you lean over to curve the strands out of the way gently so he can see. He flushes, eyes finding yours. “Hi,” you chuckle.

“H-Hi,” he murmurs back.

After a bit of combing and maintenance, you finally hop off of the step stool and stand beside his large frame. "There. All done."

The pale skinned man observes himself in the mirror and almost doesn't recognize what stares back. His hair feels soft, looks neat, as his bangs curve around his ears and his hair filters gracefully down his neck. The outline of his broad shoulders is visible against the fabric of your dad's old tee, his biceps bulging against the sleeves. He feels refreshed. Renewed. Warm and fuzzy.

"Better?" you ask.

Choso turns to look at you and is overcome with a rush of emotions he can't name. "Yes," he exhales, whipped.

As Choso's robes hang to dry, and you retreat to your bed having offered up your couch for Choso to sleep on, the half curse elects, instead, to stand over you in the darkness of your room as you sleep.

The clock reads three in the morning, and piercing through the night, Choso studies your unconscious form. You lay on your side with fists bawled up under your chin. Your eyes roll beneath your lids, lashes fluttering as your lips part with gentle breaths.

Choso feels his heart hammering heart again. He presses his palm to his chest.

Is this the feeling the movies speak off? The intensity? The heat?

When Choso returns to Yuji the next day, still wearing the clothes you gave him and carrying his robes in a spare tote bag that you let him borrow, the salmon haired teen's eyes bulge out of his skull and his jaw drops to the floor.

"Bro, what the heck happened to you?!" Yuji exclaims. "You look so - like - well, you look great!"

Now, with the approval of Yuji, Choso puffs his chest and closes his eyes with great emotion. "I met a woman."

Thus begins the unhealthy habits, the toxic patterns that Choso knows no better but to follow. He can not get you out of his head, the way your fingers threaded through his damp hair. The way your hand felt in his when he shook it. The way your house smells, the way your soap and scent clung to his body. The way your eyes lit up when he helped you retrieve your phone, and the way you never feared him.

His heart skips beats when he thinks of you, when your name rings through his head like a melody. He learns from Yuji that he is in fact not sick, but that he has exhibited signs of yearning, signs that he is romantically interested in you.

Choso begins to chase the feeling day in and day out. Whenever he has the opportunity, he's seeking you out in secret. Tracking you down, trailing behind you throughout your days, watching you through a window from across the street, lingering to ensure that you make it home safely at night.

You're a Jujutsu librarian. You keep a collection of important documents at Kyoto Jujutsu High, the rival of Yuji’s school. You lay low, linger in absences, keep to yourself. You're far more isolated than Choso would have believed you to be, given your bright personality, but you seem content to be so. You like to read, he finds. You like the simple things about life. You stop to take pictures of trees and pay extra for limited edition copies of books. You feed birds and sit in park benches, just existing. Being. Alone.

Weeks go by of Choso following you around, all the while meeting you in person once every week to stroll through town at night and talk. He can't help but to look after you, the same way he does Yuji. You've bled into his life, you've left a lasting impression, and Choso can not quit the way his body reacts to your voice alone. He can't quit the precious way your eyes catch the glimmer of the moon, or the way the corners of your lips curl with an impending smile.

He's grown obsessed with you. With your very life.

And one day, he decides he'll do something about it. With a rather questionable pep talk from Yuji buzzing in Choso's ears and a bouquet of hand picked flowers in his trembling hand, he goes to head to your apartment when he catches you inside a restaurant on the way there.

He stops, heart jerking when he sees you, confusion rising, as he expected you to be in your house by now. Normally you are. It’s pretty late.

Choso takes a step closer in the dusk, only to find that you aren't alone. His heart drops to his stomach as you sit there across from some guy, cozied up in a booth, surrounded by warm lighting. Your shoulders hunch and your eyes crinkle as you laugh, and Choso frowns. He thought he was the only one who made you laugh like that.

Nausea rises as the man across from you smiles, and you smile back. He's pretty and perfect, like the heroes in Yuji's movies. Perfect straight teeth and smooth skin, bagless eyes and hands that don't scare. Light cropped hair and bright eyes. Everything, everything, that Choso is not.

A lump builds in the back of Choso's throat as he glares at the two of you. He doesn't know how long he stands there, heartbroken, flowers falling to his side and eyes darkening.

Did you want someone 100% human after all?

You return home that night rather drained. You'd forced yourself to go on yet another date set up by Utahime, who swears up and down that you would be less lonely if you put yourself out there more. You sigh, tossing your keys to the ground and shuffling off your shoes at the door, shutting it tight behind you.

It's not as though the guy was bad. He was nice, you suppose. A little drab, but otherwise, not a monster. Even so, you couldn't bring yourself to be interested in him beyond that. The conversation was stifling, and the entire time, your mind kept trailing off to other places, other worlds, to... to Choso.

You groan, rubbing your temples as you go plop down on your couch in the dark with a weighted sigh. You know you're a little strange, as most people in the Jujutsu world are, but you can't help the things that stimulate you. You can't help but to be interested in the things overlooked, the things no one cares to see, the things others write off as unnoteable.

But Choso is anything but to you.

With his strange way of speaking and moving, his strange eyes, and strange, strange behavior, he's unveiled passion. The kind that comes easily to him, the kind that certain people are merely born with. He will talk for hours about his brother, then listen to you talk for hours about your interests and occupation. And he'll watch you when you speak... like a hawk, like he's afraid of missing any second.

And you like it. You like the way he makes you view the world unintentionally. You like his mystique. You like his unique quality. You like him.

But it's irrational. Choso hardly exists during the daytime. You only see him once a week, and he's... well, he's different. Though you enjoy his differences, you realize that liking him could pose some complications with your job. Unless you kept him a secret. But Choso doesn't deserve such treatment. He deserves someone who fully embraces him. 

And you do. You want to. You're just... scared.

Your head leans to the side, your eyes darting across the space when you catch a shadow just behind you in the connected kitchen. You scream out, jumping up from your couch to throw yourself against the wall.

With a trembling hand, you reach out for the lights, and flick them on to reveal Choso standing there before you behind your kitchen counter.

You pant erratically, your heart hammering into your chest. "Choso?!" you shout. "What the fuck?! What are you doing here?"

In typical fashion, he doesn't answer. But he is void of the warmth and kindness you ordinarily associate with him. You furrow your brows in concern as you press yourself further against the wall, taking in his intrusive stature.

That sheepish gaze is nowhere to be found. The light that once trickled into his violet hues is gone. Instead, the Choso that stands before you is silent with resentment, betrayal. His lips are curved down, his eyes sharp on you as he stares. His gaze feels stern, hard, unforgiving, and his brows are angled down. The shadows encompass him, helping him to blend into darkness much like how he did when you first met him. But this is different.

He looks angry. With you.

You swallow thickly, unfamiliar with this side of the sweet man you've come to know.

"Cho..." you start slowly in a shuddering whisper. "Why are you in my house?" He doesn't reply. Your nose flares. "W-What's wrong?"

Nothing.

"How long have you been here?"

Still nothing.

You heave out, attempting to calm yourself with a hand to your abdomen. "Jesus Christ. You scared me."

This, this, elicits a response.

"I scared you. Huh."

His deep voice rumbles out into the dimness. You gnaw on the inside of your lip, startled by the bass in his tone, by the severity with which he speaks to you now.

"Y-Yes, Choso. You're standing in my kitchen in the dark. How did you even get in here?"

"The same way I always do."

"The same way y- what?"

He doesn't even bother to correct himself. He makes it known that he'd been here, that this is his territory, not anybody else's. It's supposed to be just you and him.

Your blood runs cold. He's snuck into your house before? More than once?

"Why are you so far away?" he asks suddenly.

You stare like a deer in headlights, unaware of how tightly you press yourself away out of instinct. Your nervous system is still reeling from the scare, and you're desperately trying to process everything that Choso just said - trying to process why he's in your house like this, why he's looking at you that way.

You watch as he starts to move, slow steps padding against your floor toward you. You stare with wide eyes as he approaches, stepping into the dim light, moving across your carpet to stand before you.

You inhale and exhale slowly, eyes glued to his as he stops just a couple of feet away from you. He studies you so closely, you feel he can read every thought in your mind with those eyes of his. You see something wrecked in his gaze, something broken that urges his eerie, solemn state. Your frown deepens, your confusion intensifying.

He takes one more step forward. "Are you scared of me now?"

A crease dents the space between your brows. "I'm more confused than anything right now, Cho," you tell him in a hushed voice. "How often do you sneak into my house?"

"A couple times a week," he says casually.

You twitch. "Why? Why wouldn't you just - just ask to come over?"

"Do you not like me anymore?"

"Wha...?" your face scrunches. "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm really confused. I don't-"

"Do you prefer someone more normal than me?"

You squint. "What do you mean?" you ponder his words, thinking back to your date. Then it dawns on you, rather fast. "Were you... have you been watching me?"

"I always do," he confesses earnestly, eyes pointed. You clamp your mouth shut, eyes widening as Choso takes another step closer. "I always want to know what you're doing and make sure you're okay. And tonight, I saw you with him. With a normal guy. I didn’t like it."

He doesn't have a filter. Not a single one. Choso acts and speaks on impulse, and his impulses after having met you have drawn him closer and closer, have placed him into the center of your life, and he wants you to have him. He wants you to want him there, but he needs to know if this is all for nothing. If he even has a chance with someone like you.

"Choso..." you start, slightly alarmed and overwhelmed.

"Who is he?" he asks coldly, something torn in the back of his voice. His brows twitch, his chest tightening. "Were you on a date?"

"You can't just-"

"Is he what you prefer? Over me?"

Your face falls.

You don't know what to say. 

If you were to answer him truthfully, you would have said no. Of course he's not. You don't even know the guy, and he's hardly even half of what Choso is, half of what he makes you feel.

But you are reeling with shock at these sudden revelations, at the intensity of Choso's feelings that you can not deny you knew he had. It was always so telling in the way he clung to you when the two of you went out. The color that always swirls in his cheeks when he's with you. The way he just can't stop staring. 

But you didn’t know it would get this bad.

You should have known. Choso isn't like ordinary people. He's a half curse with hardly any experience with other human beings aside from his brother, and he's even mentioned how he would follow Yuji around during the day to ensure his safety. 

Choso is a passionate person. He feels more than the ordinary being. He acts on his emotions, which likely feel foreign to him, far differently than anyone else would, and you should have known. You should have known that bringing him into your house upon first meeting would have bridged a connection that deluded him into thinking he's entitled to your space at all times.

You should have known that a little crush wouldn't be just a little crush to him.

And Choso is desperate. Desperate for you. For your answers. For a sliver of the attention you gave that guy at your date. Desperate for your love, love which he's never gotten to experience before you.

Looking into his eyes now, your instinct is to comfort him through your discomfort. Choso's always been so honest, so unapologetically himself, and he's looking to you for something, anything. And you want to give it to him, but you can't overlook what he's telling you now. What you're seeing.

The eeriness of it all.

"Choso," you say his name firmly, and something in him shifts slightly. "You can't stalk me like that. That's not okay. You can't follow me around when I'm unaware. That's an invasion of my privacy. I'd never do that to you. You understand?"

The brunette falters, his brows twitching again and his lips curling down. "You don't like me anymore?" he asks again, this time lower, more fragile.

Your heart aches against your best judgment. "I do like you, Choso," you say, hesitantly bringing your hands up to cup his face to calm him. You feel the half curse jerk under your touch, and like the fool he is for you, he melts into your palms, shoulders slumping as he hunches over, lavender eyes softening into something oh so pathetic. "I do. Okay? I like you a lot."

He's sap, his sternness crumbling. "You do?"

"I do," you assure him. 

“I like you a lot too. I like you very much. As more than a friend.”

“I know, Cho. I know,” you say tenderly. “And I’m happy to hear that, but I don't like you sneaking around me. That's weird, okay? You can't just come into my house whenever you want or follow me like that. I don't like that. At all."

Choso grimaces. "But I just want to protect you."

"I can protect myself."

"I want to help."

"You can help by respecting my space."

"But you won't want to see me otherwise."

"That's not true," you sigh. "You just have to ask."

"What about your date?"

"I don't prefer him over you, Choso. It was one date. And it wasn't that good," you tell him.

“Why did you go out with him in the first place?”

“I don’t know - it doesn’t matter. I was thinking of you the whole time.”

Choso's lips twitch into a crooked half smile, cheeks dusting with color. "Oh."

"Yeah. Oh," you roll your eyes, dropping your hands from his face much to Choso's chagrin. "You're fucking weird, Cho," you exhale with a slight laugh, shaking your head.

"I know," he mumbles. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not your fifteen year old brother, okay? There's this thing called phone calls. You can talk to me and ask to see me whenever you want. Just ask. No more sneaking around or breaking in. Or I'll be really upset."

Choso slumps. "Okay," he mumbles. He peers at you through thick lashes. "Are you going to see him again?"

"That's kinda the least of my concerns right now."

He takes in your edged tone and deflates. "You're mad at me."

You pout, quirking a brow and crossing your arms. "A little bit. You freaked the hell out of me just now,” you say. “But that doesn't mean I don't... still like you. Or think you’re scary. I'm just adjusting. Processing."

Choso suddenly takes the energy of a kicked puppy. "I'm sorry."

"So you said."

You gasp as Choso drops down to his knees before you, reaching forward to cling to your thighs. He wraps his burly arms snug around your legs, pressing his face to your stomach. You raise your arms in shock, face flooding with heat. "Choso, what are you doing?"

"Don't see him again," he muffles into your clothes. You feel his voice vibrate against your skin, and you shiver. "Don’t see any other man. Please. Pick me. I want it to be me instead."

You go to say something, but he holds you tighter, pressing himself to you pathetically, burying himself in your scent and warmth. You can be mad at him, if that's what you need. You can put boundaries in place, much to his chagrin, and he'd eventually deal. But he sincerely hopes, prays, that you won't abandon him for this. That you won't take back all the wonderful things you said about him, that you won't leave him for clinging too intensely, for offending you, for invading your space.

He just wants to be near you. That's all. He can't function when he's not near you.

And as strange as Choso is, you know that you are no better the moment you feel your heart flutter and skin tingle under his touch, when his desperate plea flushes against you. He's pitiful. Addictively, attractively, pitiful.

You exhale, lowering your hands to rest atop his thick hair. He whimpers, pushing in close, a great contrast to how he appeared to you only moments ago. You doubt he was even trying to scare you then. You assume that intensity is merely a part of him, a subconscious reaction when you are involved.

Choso's lashes flutter as you stroke over his hair, his face nuzzling closer. You look down at him with tired eyes.