Tell me you love me.

“okay!” you chirp, giving him a little finger wave that makes his eyes widen in panic.

he takes exactly two steps—you count them—before stopping so abruptly his bag slides down his arm. when he turns around, his hair is doing that thing where it sticks up in the back from nervous finger-combing, and there’s still a faint smudge of blue ink on his left cheekbone from when he dozed off on his notes earlier.

“you’re…” his voice cracks slightly, and he clears his throat, pushing his glasses up his nose with his middle finger in that way that makes your chest warm. “you’re not forgetting something?”

you tap a finger against your bottom lip, pretending to think. satoru’s gaze immediately drops to your mouth before snapping back up, his cheeks flooding pink. “nope! got my keys, my student id…” you pat your jacket pockets with theatrical precision.

“no, i meant…” his hands flutter uselessly in the air between you, sketching invisible shapes. the pink in his cheeks deepens to red. “you usually… we usually…”

watching satoru gojo—the boy who can explain quantum mechanics without breaking a sweat—stumble over asking for affection is a special kind of torture. the good kind. the kind that makes you want to frame this moment.

“usually what, ‘toru?” you tilt your head, letting your smile turn wicked around the edges.

“the… the thing you say?” his voice squeaks on the last word, and he looks mortified. “and the… the goodbye thing?” he’s practically vibrating now, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “with your… your lips? on my lips?”

the laugh bubbles out of you before you can stop it, bright and delighted. satoru’s expression crumbles into something so devastatingly soft and relieved that your heart does gymnastic routines. “aww, baby, did you want a kiss?”

his shoulders sag like a marionette with cut strings. “yes! and you didn’t say… the thing. the three-word thing.” he runs both hands through his white hair, making it stick up in every direction.

“oh!” you press your palm to your chest in mock surprise, eyes going wide. “you mean ‘see you tomorrow’?”

you step closer, close enough to smell his cologne mixed with the faint scent of coffee and mechanical pencils. your fingers reach up to smooth down his catastrophic hair, and he melts into the touch like he’s been starved for it. “hmm… ‘wear your seatbelt’?”

“no!” he’s fully pouting now, bottom lip jutting out in a way that should be illegal on someone his age. “the other three-word thing!”

“the love thing!” the words explode out of him, and immediately his face goes nuclear. his hands fly up to cover his cheeks, glasses askew. “you always say the love thing and then kiss me and i was standing there like an idiot wondering if i did something wrong or if you’re mad at me or if maybe i miscalculated the social algorithm for goodbye protocols and—”

you silence his spiral by pulling him down, fingers curling into the front of his sweater. his lips are soft and surprised against yours, and he makes this tiny desperate sound in the back of his throat that makes you want to keep him forever.

“i love you, you beautiful disaster,” you whisper against his mouth, tasting his relieved exhale.

satoru melts completely, long arms winding around you like he’s trying to memorize the shape of you. “don’t ever do that again.” his voice is muffled against your temple, glasses fogging up. “my heart can’t handle the uncertainty. i was genuinely about to pull out my phone and google ‘girlfriend didn’t say i love you back statistical analysis of relationship termination probability’.”

“you absolutely would have.” your laughter shakes both your bodies, and satoru looks so relieved he might actually cry. his eyes are glassy and overwhelming behind his crooked glasses.

“i was spiraling,” he admits, burying his face in the curve of your neck like he’s trying to hide from his own embarrassment. his breath tickles warm against your skin. “i kept thinking maybe i calculated the optimal goodbye timing wrong, or maybe there’s some social cue i missed because you know how bad i am with those, and then i started wondering if this is how relationships end—just suddenly no more kisses and routine disruption and statistical outliers in affection distribution—”

“satoru,” you laugh, fingers threading through the soft hair at his nape.

“—and then i remembered that article about behavioral pattern changes indicating relationship dissatisfaction and i was literally planning to reorganize my entire study schedule to optimize our time together and maybe learn how to be more romantically competent like those male leads in the movies you make me watch even though their methodology is questionable at best—”

you kiss him again to shut him up, swallowing his worried rambling. he makes the softest, most pathetic little whimper against your lips—a sound that goes straight to your chest and sets up permanent residence.

“i’m never letting you walk away without a kiss again,” you promise, watching his eyes go liquid and devoted behind those adorable glasses.

“good,” he breathes, looking at you like you’ve just solved world hunger. his pupils are dilated, hair a complete disaster, lips kiss-swollen and perfect. “because i was about to turn around and come back anyway. i physically can’t leave without it. it’s like… it’s like trying to submit an equation without checking your work. the incompleteness makes my brain itch.”

god, he’s such a nerd. your brilliant, gorgeous, overthinking nerd who can make your heart stutter with differential equations and desperate little sounds.

“go home, ‘toru,” you murmur, smoothing down his collar with gentle fingers. “before you say something even more embarrassing.”

“can you text me when you get inside?” his hands are still clutching at your jacket like he physically can’t let go, voice small and hopeful. “just so i know you’re safe? and maybe… maybe just text me goodnight too? please? and good morning when you wake up? i know it’s statistically redundant but—”

“satoru.” you cup his face in your hands, thumbs stroking over his cheekbones. he leans into the touch immediately, eyes fluttering closed. “you’re ridiculous.”

“ridiculously in love with you,” he mumbles against your palm, pressing a soft kiss there. his glasses are completely fogged now.

“terrible line.”

“i panicked.” he opens his eyes, and they’re so blue and earnest and stupid in love that you feel dizzy. “my brain stops working when you touch my face.”

you kiss his nose, quick and sweet. “what about when i touch your hands?” you intertwine your fingers with his, and he makes a soft sound like he’s been electrocuted.

“catastrophic system failure,” he whispers seriously, squeezing your hands like they’re lifelines.

“your neck?” you trail one finger along the side of his throat, and he shivers so hard his glasses slide further down.

“illegal,” he croaks, head tilting back automatically to give you more access. “probably violates several laws of physics.”

you’re both idiots, standing in a dorm hallway at eleven pm being absolutely gone for each other. satoru’s hair is sticking up in twelve different directions, his lips are pink and slightly swollen, and he’s looking at you like you’ve personally hung every star in the sky just for him.

“i love you,” you say again, just to watch his face do that thing where it goes all soft and wondering.

“nerd,” you laugh, and he grins so wide it should be embarrassing.

“impossible. i’ve run the calculations,” he argues immediately, competitive even in this. “i love you way more.”

“your nerd,” he corrects, finally—finally—releasing your hands to fix his glasses. “exclusively and permanently your nerd, barring any major statistical anomalies or acts of god.”

“go before i drag you inside and fail tomorrow’s lab because we stayed up analyzing the probability of successful long-term relationship outcomes.”

“we could make charts,” he suggests hopefully, taking the world’s smallest step backward.

“satoru.”

“fine, fine.” he holds up his hands in surrender, but he’s grinning like an absolute fool. “but you’re texting me.”

“i’m texting you.”

“and calling me.”

“don’t push it.”

he laughs—bright and delighted and completely unhinged—and finally, finally starts walking backward down the hallway, waving at you like he’s going off to war instead of to his dorm three buildings over.

“sweet dreams!” he calls out, nearly tripping over his own feet. “dream about me! specifically about how much you love me! i’ll be running statistical analysis on optimal dreaming scenarios!”

you watch him until he rounds the corner, shaking your head and smiling so hard your cheeks hurt. your brilliant, beautiful, absolutely unhinged boyfriend who just spent ten minutes having a breakdown over a missing goodbye kiss.

Something that’s been stuck in my head for the past week or so is Tanjiro’s fingers. They’re so calloused by years of brutal training and dedication.  During his moments of self-reflection, I think he stares at them in a bit of disbelief.  This is one of the ways the Corps has changed him.  And even when he's not holding his sword, he still remembers the roughness of his hands when he’s with you.  And he’s careful, oh so tenderly careful.  His quiet awareness sometimes makes him hesitant to touch you.  Not because he doesn’t want to, but because he doesn’t want to hurt you. 

He’s made a rule out of this.  A frustrating one.  Though he’s covered his digits with his own spit (we’ll get into his thing with spit another time), he won’t insert them inside of you until he deems you ready.  He starts with ghost touches that run slowly between your folds, sending goosebumps along your skin.

His mouth on yours already has slick ready to meet his fingers, which he makes a further mess of by circling your clit slowly.  It’s agonizing, and your whines for more are met by a gentle, “Not yet, love,” between kisses. 

It's not that he’s even trying to be mean.  He’s not trying to tease.  He’s just trying to be careful. 

It’s maddening.  His fingers are so coated by your slick that you can hear the sloshing as he gives you the tiny mercy of slightly increasing his pace, his fingers now gliding from your swollen clit to your fluttering entrance.

But oh, when he does finally grant your wish and gently inserts his finger inside of your awaiting hole, the sensation shoots straight up your spine.  One is filling just by itself, since his fingers are thick. But they’re also textured, tears blotting your vision from both the relief as well as the pleasure coming from every movement of his hand.

And once you do come, he'll let you ride out your high, cooing praise as you whimper and shake in his hold. Then, he reveals the mess you've left on his hand, a mess that continues to trail down his wrist, down his forearm. But it's the sheer look of pride and adoration on Tanjiro's face as he admires the gleam of your slick on his skin that leaves you flustered.

"Good job," he says, as though he wasn't the one who put the work in, hands now moving to unfasten his belt, "Do you think you can take more?"