Suguru had been watching you sleep before slipping out of your bed and back into his own room. Your blankets were soft with natural heat. Your naked calf was thrown over his own, melting into him. The touch felt calculated despite you being a restless sleeper. 

He left with the stealth of an apparition. Which would mean something if he wasn’t part of a world with people born to see them. 

The child with the mole cannot see curses. Neither can the man or the elderly woman, with their fading freckles and paling acne scars. Yet they all take their own turns to stare at your bumping limbs. 

He doesn’t have to tell you to turn around once the curse is taken care of. 

Crouched into the dirt and picking at the disturbed sediment, your back is sun-lit and hunched so intensely that he can see the outlines of your undershirt poking through the fabric of your sweaty uniform. He wonders if it’s the same one you were wearing this morning. A simple black tank top with a tag that constantly itches at your left side but that you refuse to cut off. Suguru will thumb at the scratchy material and tug on it just to mess with you, just to let his knuckles graze the skin it hugs. 

Suguru pats at his forehead with his own sleeve and hisses. A dark splotch of his own sweat pools onto the fabric to match yours. Every year he wonders why the school couldn’t have been bothered to provide summer alterations. Maybe then he could be kinder to you, if it were just a little cooler. Maybe then you wouldn’t need to leave the buttons of your uniform messily undone.

He clears his throat as a signal, but it only reminds him of how thirsty the fight made him.

You turn toward him, still in your squat and scuffling the dirt beneath you aggressively enough to dirty his much cleaner shoes.

“I found a fossil.”

Suguru’s throat still stings.

“It’s a mold,” you explain. “Can you see the imprint?”

You hold the rock up to his face, arm extended as you balance. Suguru has to lean down to get a better look, tries not to groan about the muscle pain in his shoulders. And he means to look at the fossil, he really does, but there’s tiny specks of dirt splattered across your cheek, debris so miniscule he could blow them away with a careful breath, the same way he’d blow dust off an old, discarded artifact. 

“Not really,” he answers hoarsely. 

“Here, feel.” You grab his wrist in an unsteady jolt and guide the tips of his fingers into the subtle grooves, dragging them across the hardened sediment. Fraying pieces of skin on the pads of his fingers catch onto the ridges and dips of stone. He can feel the grime rubbing into the valleys of the dry skin. 

“Isn’t it funny?” you chuckle, breaking the buzzing silence. Suguru swears dead weeds blow in the wind because of the strength of your voice.

He lets you continue with bated breath, plants himself into the ground.

“You just touched a ghost.” Your hand palms the stone before pocketing it. A cool and simple theft. 

The communal bathroom lights dim after eleven. to save power, and they don’t come back until five in the morning. The timing leaves Suguru with a chance to spill bile into the sinks without being forced to look back at a clear version of his reflection. 

You walk in on him after he’s just spat the last of the acid coating his throat. The faucet is still running strong, he doesn’t hear your soft footsteps echo against the tile floors. 

“Hey,” you greet him plainly while drinking in the state of him: hunched over, sick, tired; hungry. “You weren’t in your room.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” he answers. 

Suguru cups his hand underneath the cold tap water, catching your silhouette stalking behind him through the reflection of the mirror. Your head cocks from side to side, not observing him any longer, but breathing in your surroundings. You look like one of the owls that would poach the chickens in Suguru’s village. 

The two of you have often been alone, but never here. 

The notions behind that fact urges a nervous sigh out of him when you finally reach his side, weight pushed into the ceramic of the sink next to his. You’re still dressed in your tattered uniform, still dirt stained at the knees. The two of you match; the sleeves of his uniform are rolled up but it does nothing to hide the stains of cursed blood. 

You cross your arms across your chest, staring at his wet face. 

“You’re just as filthy as I am,” you point out. The observation, plain and obvious, only feels charged because of his own perversions. What a funny posture for such a jarring statement; your shoulders are peaked to your ears. There’s an idea quickly pushing its way past your bitten lips, an implication held underneath your tongue.  

“We should shower,” you offer through a sigh. 

Suguru tightens his hands around the ceramic, they’re still wet. He almost slips and loses his balance.  

“What?” The heat of the afternoon rushes back to him, juvenile and ridiculous. He rushes to turn the water. Pathetic droplets of run sprinkle onto the porcelain to the same rhythm of your bumping knee. 

He looks at your figure again, infected with ideas of your smooth skin. Wet, frothed, and sliding against his. It's shamefully reminiscent of pornos he’s stumbled upon, yet your face always remained disconnected. It only fits when his mind oddly jumps to the times he’s seen you at the water fountains with Haibara, playfully splashing water into the shorter boy’s face as clear beads roll down your forearms. A pang of jealousy strikes through him like ice. Suguru looks back to the mirror. He might throw up again.

“It doesn’t have to be together.” You breach the imaginary wall between your bodies. If any line were drawn before, it’s been erased by the current, licked up by salt and foam. For once, these are the words you leave unsaid. But it can be.

“The water has to be warm,” he finally answers. It comes out more quietly than he meant it to.

You smile at him. It’s too simple. He wants to pinch your cheeks and warn you about the filth hiding underneath his skin. 

He expects one of you to have chickened out by the time he comes back with towels and a change of clothes; but you’re by the shower waiting for him, body shrouded under the shower curtain. You're testing out the temperature of the water. 

“It’s finally hot.” Your voice echoes with the rustle of the plastic curtain. The sound of the showerhead’s water pelting into the tile bleeds into his ears like rain. An incomplete comfort. 

During his distraction, you’ve already had the time to start peeling off your socks. His hesitance must be sensed, you gaze up at him slowly and without shielding the short puff of laughter that escapes you, giving him time to look away if he’d like. God. Even your mercy feels childish. 

“I never took you for the modest type,” you mutter more to yourself than at him. 

Suguru doesn’t answer you, still staring down at your bare feet. The skin around your ankles looks soft. The naked curve of your heel spirals and almost hypnotizes him. He thinks back to the fossil, thinks back to the dirt on your palms and your scratched up knees. He wants to be the one to see all that wash away in real time; watching you make a new skin out of the scalding water. You’d melt like a witch, puddling into the drain as a mix of flesh and scar and dirt. And then maybe Suguru would look up and see someone brand new. The person who used to see ghosts and think they could be saved. 

“Suguru.” You tear him away from himself, more than half-naked now and gleaming a little underneath the fluorescent lighting. 

“Yeah?”

“Take off your shirt,” you demand bluntly.

The water feels warmer than usual. Suguru would have fallen asleep standing if it weren’t for you standing so close.

You wash yourself slowly, sometimes pausing to let the water run down your back. And Suguru must be imagining things, because while they roll off your imperfect skin like iridescent pearls, he looks down to his palms and feels them plow right through him, breaking apart and pooling into the tile at his feet. 

The only reason this doesn’t alarm him is because he feels his skin brush against yours, watches goosebumps rise across your flesh as he gradually lets himself exist into you. 

You accept him with an alarmingly casual openness. Suguru used to assume you were lonely before being introduced into jujutsu society. You welcomed the companionship that came with it despite it being related to such a violent mother. You accept his vulnerable presence like you’ve seen him naked hundreds of times before. Maybe you have. You ignore the fact this is beyond any of the vague intimacy the two of you have fallen into. 

He washes your back at one point, stopping just above your shoulders. You wash his hair, thumb grazing the hidden nape of his neck like a chill. 

Suspended underneath constant movement, Suguru can feel himself softening like wax, weathering away like stone. He presses into you and feels like this could all be taken away in a second. He tests the way his palms leave goosebumps on your skin and thinks of preservation.

The sheets of his bed have absorbed the cold night air by the time the two of you have tucked in. He isn’t quite sure when the agreement for you to stay the night occurred, but Suguru figures it would be silly to object when he’s clutching onto you like a thing that belongs to him. 

He feels like a hollow shell, wrinkled skin missing something full to stretch itself over. In his bed, you’ve made him small enough to fit into the mold of the fossil you not-so-secretly placed on his nightstand. 

Suguru sighs as he closes his eyes. Buried underneath the covers, he tries not to panic about the weight already nestling into his chest. He blinks, hears the wind tickle the curtains covering the window you cracked open before climbing into the twin bed, and wonders if he should tell you goodnight. By the time he makes up his mind you’re already limp and lightly snoring. 

He’ll have to wait for you to dig him up in the morning. 

a voice like caramel, soothing to your ears. your brain is mush, so stuffed with cotton you barely hear it, too distracted by the wet, warm muscle of his tongue — the warmth of his body, his hands, careful not to crush you as he keeps you pushed against the couch. groaning, into your mouth.

needy. 

such a rare treat, for him to let you see it.

a weak, breathy whimper bubbles up your throat, spills into his own, his tongue gliding against yours and ghosting at the back of your teeth. he tastes like mint. it's a chain reaction, the moan that follows — your meek response only fuelling the depth of what he must be feeling. the closeness he's craving. even though you're already chest to chest, heartbeat kissing heartbeat, beating in rapid, thumping tune.

with the way he keeps trying to pull you closer, you'd think he wants you to slip between his ribs.

"god, i love you so much. god…"

suguru's voice is silicone, honeyed tongues and teeth, but now the rasp at the throat of it is all you can hear. your senses are overwhelmed, wrapped up in notes of amber, cradled by his scent — his warmth flowing into your body and keeping all coherent thoughts away from your brain. no thinking, only him. your big, gentle boyfriend, kissing you with enough reverence to pluck pearls from the bottom of a seabed. keeping his knee in between your thighs, his big palm at the back of your neck, to make sure you can't run from the love he's giving you.

(not that you'd ever want to.)

love you, you try to say, ultimately sputtering on something like a mewl. suguru only pulls away to whisper praise against your lips, then he's back to waltzing with your tongue. he isn't fast — isn't rough — only intense, in the gentlest of ways. mellow waters lapping at the skin of your ankles, dragging you into the sea; you're being coaxed underwater, having trouble keeping up with the slow, deep rhythm he's set, his tongue in no rush to explore your mouth. you're having trouble remembering the first letter of your name.

your response only makes him hold you closer. there's no space between your bodies, nowhere further for you to go, but he's desperate enough that he's trying, pulling you up into his lap and wrapping both his beefy arms around your waist. mwah, mwah, two sloppy pecks against your spit-swollen lips, before he pries them open again.

you feel a little like you're dying. like you already died, and went to heaven.

suguru must have wanted this, all day. must have been waiting. it must have been a struggle just to help you get your shoes off, to close the door behind you before swallowing you whole. squeezing your body, like a fidget toy — though the way he handles you couldn't be farther from it. he just wants to feel you. to feel your flesh, and bones, and heartbeat, your tongue down his throat.

your boyfriend wants you to eat him alive.

(before he does the same to you.)

big, warm palms settle at your ass, and you know he's hanging on by a thread because he actually squeezes down, gently, feels the fat fill the gaps between his fingers and robs more air from your lungs before giving it back — heavy, bated breaths shared between the two of you. a gasp pushes past your lips, and he drinks it down. like freshwater, like cherry-red wine, lapping up the last drops at the bottom of the glass. a man intoxicated. drunk on you, his fingers sneaking under the fabric of your shirt to feel your blood beat and rush under his palms. ba-dump, ba-dump. he feels, listens, rubs circles into your hip. you hold onto his shoulders, dig your nails into the fabric of his skin-tight sweater, feeling so doused in heat you fear your nerves will catch on fire. heat at your neck, at your cheeks, in between your thighs. he licks into your mouth, flames at your teeth.

(as a child, your mother told you the sun was a lion playing catch with the stars. 

you used to wonder what it would feel like to be eaten by it.)

it's dizzying. suguru's kisses are always intense — he's always intense — but it's not often you see him this visibly bothered. he keeps tugging you closer, closer still, little rocks against you, like he can't stomach the thought of you being anywhere else. his rhythm is getting sloppy, and your breaths are getting more sparse, bodies melting together like gum on a hot, scorching sidewalk in the precipice of summer—

chew, and spit. you can't think of anything else. nibbling at his bottom lip, just to stay afloat.

fortunately, suguru knows your body. 

a deep, steadying breath. he manages to pull away, his fingers shaky, deft thumbs rubbing circles into the skin of your thighs.

"s-suguru."

"sorry." his lips are swollen, slick and puffy, his eyes so lidded you wonder if he's really there. if he actually got drunk on your spit. they're hazy, so dark you feel that you're staring into a deep, deep sea, sinking helplessly towards the bottom. "i don't think… i can control myself, right now."

(you aren't doing much better. droopy-eyed, lips thoroughly abused, drool seeping out from the corner of your mouth — his or yours, you couldn't say. a swipe of your tongue, and it's gone.

suguru inhales, shakily.)

too tired to speak, you lift your hands to cup his cheeks. they're rosy, cherry blossoms in the breeze, the fuzzy skin of sun-warmed peaches. hot, under your touch. when you smooth your fingertips against them his eyes flutter shut. 

a blissed out breath flows from his parted lips.

"i think i'd die if i couldn't love you." the words are spoken with bated breath, as if he couldn't keep them lodged inside his throat, couldn't even try. when he opens his eyes again they shimmer like sheets of glass, leaves wet with morning dew. 

you don't think he's exaggerating.

"… c'mere," he sighs, running out of patience. "you're too far."

this time, he's more careful. beginning to feel sated, maybe.

one palm on the back of your head, the other on the small of your back. heavy, radiating heat, pouring from the tips of his fingers through the fabric of your shirt, your thighs wrapping themselves around his waist to offer him the same. arms around his neck. he hums into your mouth, appreciative. his tongue glides against the seam of your lips, until you part them for him; letting him kiss you how he likes.

slow, and steady. breathing you in, and out.

(like this, you feel less like two people and more like one construct. a mechanism. inhale, exhale, your chests rising and falling, the way dandelion seeds float up into the sky, the way pebbles sink and sink until they hit the bottom of the sea. 

you think you understand him, a little more than usual. you think you'd drop dead, too, if someone were to pry your limbs apart.)

"i love you," you say, rasping against his lips.