𐔌՞. .՞𐦯

Monday started as it always did. Sukuna unlocked the door, stepped inside, and moved to the quiet office at the back of the garage, pulling up the log from the end of last week to see what’s waiting for him. There’s nothing unusual in it that would force a change on its own, but he lingered over the page a little longer than usual, weighing his options before deciding how he wanted the week to run.

The biggest engine jobs were scheduled right in the middle of the week, perfectly placed to cause chaos if anything went sideways. With a flicker of annoyance, he dragged them forward, stacking the heavy work at the start and shoving the smaller, less messy tasks to the back. Better to get the worst of it out of the way before anything had a chance to pile up.

It’s a straightforward, efficient call that came from years of experience. He doesn’t bother second-guessing himself beyond a quick, practical check that told him it’d keep things running smoother and keep the headaches to a minimum. Once the plan was set, he moved on without revisiting it.

The next days fell into line without a hitch. There’s more than enough work to keep his hands busy from open to close, but nothing that forced him to stay longer than he planned or strained him beyond the usual.

By Wednesday night, most of the heavy lifting he’d shoved to the front was already done. He ran through what’s left, ticking off jobs in his head, and the remaining work looked absolutely manageable. In the middle of that, a stray thought slipped in: Maybe I should hit the gym in the morning instead?

If he gets it done before work, he won’t be dragging himself through the last set, half-dead from a day on his feet. The session will go better if he’s fresh, anyway. Three workouts down already this week, so might as well keep the streak going. Moving the fourth to the morning felt like another good decision, and the thought settled in with a quiet, satisfied click of his tongue. Yeah. That works.

Thursday starts before the sun even thinks about rising. The alarm goes off at five, and he’s awake before it rings twice. The city is quieter at that hour, streets mostly empty, the gym quieter still with just the distant clatter of weights echoing in the space instead of the usual crowd. The workout goes smoothly, every rep landing just right, and the early start pays off exactly like he knew it would—it was a solid call, efficient even.

The first couple of hours at the shop slide by without a hitch, but by late morning, an emergency job drops right into his lap. The owner’s already wound tight before he even walks through the door, talking too fast that the car needs to be ready by Friday morning. The transmission’s slipping badly, worse than it should be for the mileage.

“Friday morning,” the man repeats, like saying it twice will make it easier.

One look under the hood and it’s obvious that this isn’t a job you can shove to the side or knock out between oil changes. Full teardown, the kind that eats hours and refuses to finish early. There’s no point in arguing, so he scribbles it into the schedule, like it or not.

After lowering the lift, he rolls the car into place, mind already ticking through what it’ll take to finish on time. It isn’t impossible, but it’s tighter than he’d planned for the end of the week, forcing a shift he hadn’t accounted for when he laid everything out on Monday and not in a way he likes.

But staring at the calendar, the irritation hits sharper than the inconvenience warrants. His hand freezes on the wrench, the spike of anger almost ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense. He’s dealt with worse, pulled longer hours, handled tighter deadlines without blinking. So why does this one get under his skin?

Normally, he’d just adjust, stay until eleven or later if he had to, grind it out, and barely think twice about the overtime, but that job arrived right when it shouldn’t, forcing its way into a space that had already been set aside. And just like that, the idea of staying late tonight makes his irritation flare, way out of proportion to the actual problem.

It lingers, simmering under his skin as he works, but Sukuna refuses to let it affect the job. He moves with a cold, almost frantic efficiency, pushing hard until most of the task is finished by eight. Stepping back, he surveys what’s left—not done yet, but close enough that he can see the end. The rest can be wrapped up cleanly before the customer returns, and the thought surfaces without effort: I’ll come in early. Five should do it. Maybe earlier.

That decision settles as smoothly as every other adjustment this week. It’s efficient and effective, and it prevents things from becoming unnecessarily messier. He scrubs the oil and grit from his hands, changes into fresh clothes, and heads out of the garage. As he pulls his keys out and climbs into the car, his shoulders burn, and his mind is slightly clouded by the day’s leftover frustration.

The engine’s hum settles into a steady rhythm as he merges onto the main road. Traffic’s thin at this hour, and the city is already slipping into its quieter nighttime pace. For a while, he keeps his focus where it belongs, on the drive and the familiar pattern of turns and stops.

But his mind refuses to quiet down. Whenever something feels off during his day, it circles back to it later, gnawing at him until he figures out why. Tonight is no different.

The emergency job is the first thing that surfaces, along with the delay, the tight timeline, the way it shoved itself into his carefully laid plans. He runs through the steps again, mentally mapping out how long the rest will take, how early he’ll need to show up, if five is enough or if he’ll have to push it even earlier. The answer doesn’t change: five works. But that doesn’t make the irritation disappear. It’s still there, detached from the problem it should belong to.

The road stretches ahead of him, and something about it all starts to itch at the back of his mind. The work’s planned, the fix is set, and normally, that would be the end of it. It always is, after all. Once a problem’s handled, it’s over—it stops mattering. Except this time, it doesn’t.

The thought builds, slow and steady, as the pieces start to align in the background. Half his attention stays on the road, the other half caught in the quiet, pointless loop of a problem that should already be solved.

Halfway to the store, it finally clicks. The pattern is right there, impossible to ignore: front-loading the week, the 5am gym session he’d told himself was just about efficiency, the way his temper spiked irrationally when the transmission job threatened to keep him late tonight. It all lines up, clear as day.

His fingers tighten on the wheel as everything lines up in his head. The pattern is obvious now, so simple it almost stings.  The realization settles in with nothing to soften it.

The leather creaks under his grip, and he lets out a long, heavy breath, shoulders sinking just a little.

“Fuck.”

The word comes out rough, scraping the quiet. He’s pissed—at himself, at the way his routine got thrown off by something he never agreed to. Thursdays were supposed to be easy, predictable and uncomplicated. Yet here he is, four days deep into unconsciously rearranging his whole week around a ninety-minute window in a parking lot.

The thought loops, relentless and grating: It shouldn’t matter. It’s just a fixed point in the week, nothing more. But the fact that it does matter, that it was enough to make him reorganize his gym and work schedule, is what really gets under his skin.

Sukuna doesn’t even bother trying to shove the thought aside; it just sits there, stubborn, threading itself beneath everything else as he drives. His grip on the wheel tightens, knuckles blanching white.

Focus slips, just for a second; he’s a beat slow on a turn, attention drifting as he tries to reconcile the man he thinks he is with the one who just pulled a twelve-hour shift, frantically working, all so he wouldn’t miss a conversation on a tailgate.

It shouldn’t matter, he tells himself again.But it does. And he hates that it does.

When he finally pulls into the parking lot, he sees your car right away.

Of course you’re here. The thought isn’t formed in words so much as it is simply accepted, as everything else about Thursdays has started to, whether he likes it or not.

Pulling in beside your car, he kills the engine and steps out into the cool night air. The moment he walks through the automatic doors, routine snaps back into place, just like always, even if something underneath has changed just enough that pretending not to notice isn’t an option anymore.

Moving through the refrigerated drinks aisle, one hand buried in his black hoodie pocket, he crouches to reach for his favorite juice on the lower shelf. Footsteps approach, and he glances up, spots you halfway down the aisle, and gives a small nod in acknowledgment.

By the time you stop near him, he’s already straightening up, and his gaze meets yours without hesitation. There’s no shift in his expression beyond the familiar, minimal acknowledgment, the small nod that’s become routine between you, so automatic that it barely registers to him before it happens.

“Wanna eat something?”

There’s no need to think about it, and he gives a single, rough shrug, answering, “Sure.”

At this point, fighting the momentum of these Thursdays feels like more work than just letting them happen. No matter how much it bothers him that they’re starting to feel like more than a fixed, neutral point in his week, he doesn’t want them to stop.

There’s a strange ease in the way he moves beside you without a word, falling into step as you head toward the premade meals. Neither of you veers off into different aisles or slows to create distance—it just feels natural.

Sukuna scans the selection, barely bothering to compare options before grabbing two identical sandwiches, just the first thing that’ll work. He turns away from the shelf, then doubles back a second later for a carton of pre-cut fruit and his favorite protein shake. You add your own things to your basket as you go.

At the checkout, you split off into neighboring lines. He finishes first, moves toward the exit, pausing by the doors where he can keep you in his line of sight while you bag your groceries.

The fresh air in the parking lot is a nice change from the store as the two of you step out. He slows his pace so you don’t have to rush, matching your steps as you walk to the cars. For a moment, you split off, heading to your own trunk to stash the groceries.

Turning around, you catch Sukuna already at the tailgate, the hatch swung open. His eyes flick up as you come to stand beside him with the blanket draped over your arm.

When you offer the fabric to him with a slight shrug, he glances at it and then back at you, something almost amused flickering in his eyes. There’s something about it he finds… well, oddly cute that you came prepared and are willing to share, but he genuinely doesn’t feel the bite of the air at all.

“Not cold for me,” he says, his voice rough and low as ever.

He watches as you wrap the blanket around your shoulders and trail after him to the back of the Jeep. Hauling himself up onto the tailgate first, he settles in with one leg propped, the other down on the asphalt, already tearing into his food before you’ve even gotten comfortable beside him. Hunger takes over for a minute, everything else fading out, and he remembers he hasn’t eaten since breakfast thanks to that last-minute job that threw off his whole day.

The silence settles in, comfortable as ever, just like it’s been for weeks, filled only by low music drifting from the front speakers. He barely glances up between bites, content to just be here, while you unwrap your food and tuck your legs under the blanket for warmth.

“I went to Iceland a few times,” you start after a few more bites, choosing a topic that sits miles away from the grit and frustration of the workday, while looking into the darkness above the horizon. “Years ago, when I was still in high school. My parents were into these off-season trips… less tourists, better prices, fewer people.”

Sukuna turns fully toward you, leaning his back against the Jeep’s interior wall. The last scraps of his attention peel away from the food and settle on you instead.

“It’s probably the only place I’ve been to that actually made me feel quiet inside,” you continue, your voice softening. “Like… there’s so much space. Everything’s just open. Sky, mountains, nothing for kilometers. You drive for hours and don’t see anyone… not even houses sometimes. Just moss and rock and that pale, immense sky that looks like it’s always about to snow, even when it isn't.”

Something about the sound of your voice, and just having you there beside him, settles him in a way he can’t quite name. The way you talk about escaping toward emptiness, toward fewer people, catches his interest. The picture you paint of wide, empty spaces and that deep quiet lines up perfectly with his own craving for order and solitude.

Another bite of onigiri disappears before you go on.

“We did this hike once in the rainbow mountains, Land…” You try to pronounce its name and miss it badly enough that it makes you laugh under your breath, not embarrassed at all.

That laugh sharpens his attention, but not because you got the name wrong. It’s the sound itself, unguarded and easy, like you aren’t embarrassed at all. He likes that. Most people he meets are too performative or self-conscious, but your comfort in the moment lets him relax, just a little more than before.

“Anyway… Wherever you looked, everything had different colors: emerald green, sulfur yellow, rusty orange, brick red.” You pause briefly, then your voice softens even further. “It looked so fake from a distance, but then you get up close and realize it’s all real, just mineral deposits. The wind’s brutal up there sometimes. You don’t realize how much noise you live with until you’re somewhere like that, where the loudest thing is the sound of the wind in your own ears.”

It’s the detail of the wind being the only sound that really lodges itself in his mind. After a day spent drowning in the racket of pneumatic tools, the idea of a place where everything finally goes quiet is almost too tempting.

“I remember I whined the whole time during that hike, and my dad was probably ready to strangle me, but once I saw the views… it was so worth it.”

You pause, glancing down at your hands and picking absently at the wrapper folded in your lap.

“We saw a pack of reindeers one day, grazing on the side of the road like it was nothing. And the cliffs… they drop straight into the ocean, and the water’s this deep, icy blue, and there are these birds that look cartoonish… puffins they’re called, I think? And almost all the beaches are black sand and it looks out of this world. You know… I felt like I visited five countries, the moon and Mars, and came back all in one trip.”

Letting out a long breath, you shake your head, your eyes dropping to your lap. “Sorry. Rambling.”

Sukuna doesn’t hear rambling in any of it. If anything, he likes how you talk without a filter when something matters, and this wasn’t just chatter—it had direction, and more than that, it meant something. You were describing something real, something that stuck with you, and he gets it.

Wiping his fingers on the edge of the wrapper and setting it aside beside him, he says, “Sounds peaceful.” It’s the closest word he has for it.

You nod, tugging the blanket tighter around your shoulders. "It was. Never really appreciated it until we stopped going. And I guess… when things get overwhelming, I keep coming back to it. In my head, I mean. That feeling. And lately… that happens a lot."

He recognizes it right away for what it is—not just a memory for the sake of remembering, but a place you return to when things get too loud, something you can step into without anything interfering. That’s familiar. He knows that specific kind of mental retreat and the need to find a place, or even just a memory, where the world stops demanding things from you.

Shifting his weight, he leans his elbow on his bent knee and closes his eyes.

After a pause, he offers up his own version of that quiet. “There’s a stretch of coastal road outside Ibaraki. Hard to find unless you already know it’s there. Nothing but asphalt, ocean, and maybe two or three trucks all night.”

That stretch of road is a comfort he’s always kept to himself, even from Jin. He’s not used to talking about himself, let alone his habits, but tonight’s atmosphere feels different, more open, like the names you gave each other last week changed something between you.

“I used to drive it after work. Windows down, music up. Nothing fancy. Just… it helped.”

“Still go there?” you ask softly.

“Sometimes.”

That drive is a luxury he rarely gets. It’s a trip that needs a clear schedule the next day, so he only goes when the shop isn’t buried in engine rebuilds, or when a rare Sunday lets him disappear for a few hours without a deadline breathing down his neck.

After opening his eyes, he looks down at the bags between you. His hand disappears inside, fishing out the protein shake and the fruit package. He opens it, offers you a piece, and when you shake your head and return to your tea, he takes a slice of apple for himself.

“I’d like to go back to Iceland one day,” you say. “Though… not with anyone who’d talk through the silence. That’d ruin it.”

That lands for him right away. Most people fill silence without thinking, or break it because they don’t know what to do with it. He understands exactly what you mean, and the quiet sound he makes isn’t just an acknowledgment but an unadorned agreement.

“I imagine your road doesn’t smell like sulfur and cold ocean,” you add.

A faint smirk tugs at his mouth. The comparison amuses him, but he likes the grit in his version of peace compared to yours.

“No. Well, cold ocean, yeah. But mostly gasoline. And ramen”.

You blink, looking at him with your head tilted in surprise. “Ramen?”

“There’s a shop at the end,” he explains, his voice low as he meets your eyes. “It’s open until three. Nobody talks in there either”.

He brings it up because it fits; it’s another place where nothing is expected, and silence only breaks if you want it to.

“Okay, that’s good,” you say, smiling into your bottle. “Didn’t expect to like your version of peace almost as much as mine.”

“Didn’t expect to share it.”

It might sound blunt, but it’s honest. Sukuna hadn’t planned to tell anyone about that road, but watching you now, he realizes he doesn’t regret it. He appreciates, too, that you don’t push for more details.

He doesn’t look away, not even when you catch his gaze, or later, when your eyes drop back to your lap and you start tearing at a wrapper.

“My boss wanted to change the design again,” you say eventually, the frustration bubbling over in your voice. “Told me it needed more energy. Whatever the fuck that means.”

A sharp, brief puff of air escapes him, carrying a mix of genuine amusement at your bluntness and low-grade exasperation on your behalf. He knows exactly what it’s like to deal with a client or boss who thinks they understand a craft better than the person actually doing the work. He stays quiet as you continue, letting you vent your tension.

“I spent hours balancing colors, shape, tone, everything. It was clean, made sense. He comes in and wants to throw… I don’t know? A red box in the middle of a minimalist composition like it’ll magically make the whole thing pop.” You shake your head, running a hand through your hair. “I hate that word. ‘Pop.’ It’s not a fucking design term. It’s what people say when they don’t know what they want, just that they want it to feel more… something.”

It’s obvious you have standards for your work, and you’re not about to compromise them just because someone else’s lack of vision. He respects that. Competence is one of the few things that actually matters to him, and you have it in spades.

“Sounds like you actually know what you’re doing,” he says.

A long sigh slips out, your fingers rubbing slow circles over your sinuses, trying to work out the stress headache building behind your eyes.

“I like to think I do,” you murmur.

Neither of you says anything more. The food and drinks are finished, wrappers crumpled and set aside, and both of you pretend not to notice, sitting a little longer in the pooling silence, until a yawn finally escapes you.

You mumble a quick apology for that, stretching your legs out under the blanket, and he accepts it with a nod.

“Thanks for sitting with me tonight,” you say softly, both of you standing at the same time.

“Drive safe, Red,” he says, his gravelly voice cutting through the quiet of the lot.

The nickname fits easily, like it’s been there longer than it has. He figures you must feel the same, because you flash him a big, warm smile. It looks good on you.

“You too, Pink,” you reply, then head to your car, missing the tug at the corner of his mouth when you call him that again.

Like always, Sukuna doesn’t move until your engine turns over and your headlights sweep across the asphalt. Only then does he pull out of the lot behind you, glancing at his dash clock. Nearly eleven. He’s supposed to be back under a car in six hours, but as he drives toward  his house, the lack of sleep isn’t what’s on his mind.

He’s just glad he went to the gym in the morning.

a/n: i'm sorry it took me so long, i'm really trying my best, but me and thursdays are going through a rough patch :(

tags: @5seos @nerdjoenjoyer @nakiich @sspiralma @plaguecxlt @puttyly @chiaramartyna @shamelessdancer @qq-cup1d @man1cslut @spookyeomgoose @starmapz @sukunash0e @ssoapyyy @ita606 @dianhani @i-luv-mangos @alexa4040 @ram3nsukuna @dadonprimma @frigga13 @nessca153 @localfandomjumper @unlimited-impressions @sushikuna @wiredswan @emikoshiriyuki @skylaryippee @preval-ence