lotus

Aki Hayakawa brings you home in his Public Safety uniform. That's the first problem.

You're already nervous. You'd be nervous even if he looked like any other guy. You've just been transferred into a division where the casualty rate for newbies is treated less like a tragedy and more like a weather forecast, after signing a contract with a devil that almost bit your tongue off during negotiations. You were told, very calmly by Makima with that creepy smile of hers, that your new living arrangement is "for monitoring purposes" and that Hayakawa will be responsible for reporting any irregularities.

As if you're a machine that leaks oil, not being assigned a live-in babysitter with a sword.

Then Aki shows up outside the briefing room in a dark suit, white shirt, earrings catching the nasty office light. An expression on his face like he's already decided you're going to piss him off.

Fantastic.

You look at him once and immediately wish your thoughts had a shut-off switch.

Makima keeps smiling when she says, "Please take care of her."

Aki glances over, and you stand a little straighter, because apparently that's what your body does when a hot man looks disappointed in you.

"Yes, ma'am," he says.

That's basically the whole conversation. He's not pleased, though. You can tell. He goes still in a way that makes it obvious he's irritated, just not willing to waste energy showing it.

He barely speaks to you on the way to his apartment. Rain taps against the umbrella he's holding over both of you, even though he never offered and you never asked. You walk half a step behind him because he's got longer legs and because his suit jacket does absolutely nothing to hide the width of his shoulders. How exactly are you supposed to live in the same place as someone who looks like that?

By the time you reach his street, the rain's settled into that steady, miserable kind that makes every shop sign bleed into the pavement. The apartment block ahead looks exactly like the sort of place Public Safety would dump people it expected to die young: narrow balconies, outside corridors, bikes chained under the stairs, vending machines humming by the entrance.

Aki doesn't point it out, but you know it's his before he turns toward it.

"You'll follow the rules," he says.

You look up too quickly. "I know."

"This isn't a social visit."

"Yeah, I got that from the sword."

He steps around a puddle without breaking pace, leaving you to hurry after him. "You don't leave without telling me where you're going. No bringing strangers back. No smoking inside. If something feels off with your devil, you tell me. Don't wait until it becomes a problem."

He lists it all while walking, as if he's done this many times before and hated it every time.

"And for fuck's sake, don't summon it inside my apartment."

"You smoke?"

"On the balcony."

You glance up at the rows of narrow concrete platforms stacked above you, each one half-sheltered and damp at the edges. "Right. Anything else?"

"Just…" He pauses, like this one's somehow worse than the devil thing. "Please clean up after yourself."

You look at him. "That sounded personal."

"Yeah. You're not the first hunter Public Safety's dumped on me."

When you both reach the entrance, Aki folds the umbrella with two sharp shakes, and you make your way up to his apartment in a rickety elevator ride that feels about three hours longer than it is.

His apartment is cleaner than you expected, though definitely not fancy or warm in the way normal people's homes are warm. There are no useless decorations or soft little personal things scattered around—everything is in its place. The sink is empty. The zataku in the living room has been wiped. The whole place smells faintly like detergent, tobacco, and whatever he cooked before coming to work that morning. There's a small fan on the floor, a first-aid kit on top of a chest of drawers, and piles of books stacked so neatly it feels vaguely threatening.

Aki points out your room, the bathroom and where he keeps spare towels, bedding and cleaning products. He does it all in the same flat voice, like he's just listing equipment before a mission.

You stand in the doorway of the bedroom that is now apparently yours and try not to stare at him again.

He has rain on his lashes. Public Safety should warn people about this shit.

"Unpack. Training starts at six," he says.

"In the morning?"

"Yes," he replies, as though there's no other possible answer.

"That's evil."

"Devils are evil."

"I don't think devils invented waking up before sunrise."

"You'll manage."

He turns away before you can think of anything clever to reply, and you watch him go down the hallway, sword case shifting against his back.

Your contract stirs under your skin, restless and amused. It likes him. Or hates him. With your devil, those feelings are basically cousins.

Hungry? It whispers.

You press a hand to your chest.

"Shut up," you whisper back.

Aki pauses near the kitchen.

He looks over his shoulder. "What was that?"

"Nothing."

He notices your hand against your chest. Of course. That is the entire point of you being here after all.

"Report it if it speaks again."

Then he disappears into the kitchen, and you shut your bedroom door before your devil can start mistaking attraction for hunting instinct again.

**********

The first week is mostly rules—Aki is strict at work. And even worse at home, because at home you can't escape it.

He wakes up too early and moves around the apartment as though he pays his rent with discipline rather than money. He has a whole system: coffee first, balcony doors open, cigarette, shower, breakfast. By the time you drag yourself into the hallway, he's already in a pressed suit with his tie done and his hair up, looking mildly offended that you weren't ready fifteen minutes earlier. The only proof he's human is the faint, dark circles beneath his eyes that he can't quite hide, even after coffee.

By the second week, though, you start noticing the rest.

As the routine becomes easier, you start catching him in the morning before he ties up his hair, making coffee in a faded long-sleeve shirt and sweats. He coughs a little after his first cigarette. Washes rice with methodical hands. Shifts vegetables into neat little piles. He calls your convenience-store dinners disgusting and then starts cooking enough for two without asking.

He's a great cook too, which becomes a problem. At first, you refuse because living under his roof already feels like owing him something.

He glances over his shoulder from the kitchen.

"You need to eat properly. Keep your strength up."

"I can feed myself," you say.

"Pudding cups and instant noodles aren't food."

So you eat what he gives you. Grilled fish. Rice. Miso soup. Vegetables that taste better than they ever have before. You make a whole thing out of not reacting too much, but he notices when you finish everything. And, the next night, the same amount is waiting for you.

He's still mean, technically. That's the thing with Aki. He doesn't say nice stuff if he can avoid it. He just does things and pretends they don't mean anything.

But whenever you come home bleeding, he cleans the cuts himself. When your hands shake too much after a rough mission, he puts a cup of tea in front of you and says nothing.

When your devil wakes you at three in the morning, whispering through your bones until you are sweating into your sheets, Aki knocks and opens the door with a knife already in his hand.

You're sitting on the floor with your back against the bed, palms pressed to your ears as if that will help.

He takes one look at you, then crouches in front of you.

"Name three things in the room."

"I'm not a kid."

"Just do it."

You hate him for the fact that it works.

"Wardrobe," you mutter. "Lamp. Your ugly slippers."

His eyes narrow.

"These are house slippers."

He says it with enough offence that you almost laugh.

And then he stays.

He stays until the pressure under your skin fades. He doesn't touch you. He doesn't soften his voice. He just sits on your floor in old clothes with his hair down, knife resting loose in one hand, and waits out the devil with you.

That's when the crush stops being a crush and becomes something far more concerning.

You try to act normal. You're terrible at it.

By week three, you know too much about him.

You know he likes the kitchen cleaned before bed. You know he smokes more after reports with high casualty numbers. You know he checks the lock twice at night. You know he gets annoyed when you leave crumbs on the counter, but he still makes you breakfast anyway.

You know his hair is longer than it looks when it's tied up. That he has a small mole low on the left side of his neck, almost hidden by the collar of his shirt. That his shower gel smells like lemon and cedarwood, the kind of clean, practical scent that shouldn't be distracting and absolutely is.

You know his forearms are ruining your ability to function. (That last one's his fault. Nobody told him to wash dishes like that.)

Tonight, you're at the zataku, eating dinner while rain specks against the balcony glass.

He is in a loose dark shirt with the sleeves shoved up, grey trousers low on his hips, hair tied back badly as if he did it without a mirror—a few strands have slipped free around his face. He looks tired. He looks good. He looks like you should get up and leave the room for your own safety.

Instead, you stare at his hand when he reaches for the soy sauce.

Bad idea: his sleeve shifts, his forearm moves. Your brain immediately starts acting like it's never seen a man before.

"You're quiet tonight," he says.

"You complain when I talk," you murmur, focusing hard on your rice now.

"I complain when you say stupid things."

You huff a laugh. "Yeah, well... unfortunately for you, that's most of my personality."

"Yeah, it is."

You kick him under the table before you can stop yourself.

Aki pauses with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth and looks at you.

You wait for the lecture.

Instead, he takes another bite of fish. "Childish."

Your face heats because that shouldn't do anything for you. But it does. Lately, every blunt little comment from him seems to take the shortest possible route straight between your legs.

After dinner, you help wash up. He dries. Steam rises from the hot water and dampens the little hairs at your temple. He reaches across you to put a bowl on the rack, and his shirt pulls tight against his stomach. Your shoulders nearly touch. Now and then, your fingers brush as you both go for the drying rack.

It's boring. It's painfully domestic. It's making you insane.

Hungry? Your devil asks again, smug as hell.

You almost drop a plate but Aki's hand closes around it before it slips.

"I'm going to bed," you say quickly, retreating to your room.

"You're never tired this early," he says, confusion in his voice.

"Congratulations, you've witnessed personal growth!"

Then you slam your bedroom door before your face gives you away.

The apartment doesn't go quiet. That's the issue. You can still hear him in the kitchen—water running, cupboards opening and closing, his footsteps, the balcony door sliding open. He's smoking. You know exactly how he'll be standing: one arm folded, cigarette in the other hand, head tilted slightly as he looks out at nothing.

You collapse on your bed and press your palms over your eyes.

This is so stupid.

Aki is your supervisor. Your housemate. The guy who has to report if your contract devil starts acting weird. The guy who told you this morning that your footwork looked like "panic with shoes on."

And still.

You think about his forearms half in the soapy water, his mouth when he says your name in that irritated way, his fingers around a cigarette, the hard lines of his body under clothes he wears around the house because he isn't thinking about what he looks like.

Your hand slips under the waistband of your underwear.

"Fuck," you breathe.

Too loud. Maybe. You stop, listening.

Nothing from outside your room except the distant rush of rain and the low hum of the fridge.

You continue because you're weak and alive and twenty-something and sharing an apartment with Aki Hayakawa, which should count as an unsafe working condition.

You're wet embarrassingly fast. You try to keep quiet at first, biting the inside of your cheek, fingers moving under your underwear. It's not enough. Your brain keeps handing you more of him. Aki looking down at you. Aki telling you to behave. Aki's hand in your hair. Aki hearing you right now and finally doing something about it.

Your hips jerk.

"Aki," you whisper.

Then again, louder.

Your own voice embarrasses you so badly you cover your mouth, but that does not help the bed, or the slick sound between your legs, or the way his name keeps wanting out. There's no way the room's silent enough to hide everything, not if he's still awake, not if he's anywhere near the hall. That thought should stop you.

It really, really doesn't. It makes you come.

Harder than you expect, thighs shaking, and afterwards you lie there horrified, hot all over, listening for proof that your life is over.

The balcony door slides shut.

Footsteps pass your door.

Pause.

Your soul leaves your body.

Then Aki keeps walking.

You pull the blanket over your face and silently beg for a devil to eat the entire building.

**********

The next morning, the embarrassment hits before you're fully awake.

It's Saturday. Your first rare day off since moving in, and his too, which means you were supposed to spend the day sharing the apartment with him like a normal person. Maybe grabbing a takeaway so he doesn't have to cook for once. Maybe sitting across from him at the low table and watching something trash on his crappy little television, which you're pretty sure you've never seen turned on.

Instead, naturally, you picked last night to masturbate over him loudly enough that he might've heard you through the wall. Excellent timing.

You stay in bed longer than you need to, listening, trying to decide whether it's better to pretend nothing happened or fake your own death before breakfast.

Eventually, you force yourself up and head into the hallway, already cringing hard enough to make your shoulders ache.

"Aki?"

The apartment gives you nothing back.

You check the kitchen—empty. His cup has been washed and left upside down by the sink. The balcony door is locked shut, and his shoes are gone from the entrance.

Your phone buzzes on your bed. When you go back to check it, you find a message from him sent twenty minutes earlier.

Hayakawa:Gone grocery shopping. Back later.

You stare at the message for longer than you need to, thumb hovering uselessly over the screen. Grocery shopping? On the one day you're both supposed to be off, at an hour when the shops are barely worth escaping to. The heat crawling up your neck tells you what you already know: he heard.

*********

Later turns into hours.

You spend the whole day flipping between wanting to die, wanting to laugh, and wanting to throw yourself at him the second he comes back. Because he heard. He definitely heard. You know he heard. The man notices when a spoon's in the wrong drawer. There's no way he missed you moaning his name through a thin apartment wall. Then you get angry because if he did, he should just say that. Then you get even more embarrassed because what the hell would that conversation even be?

Hello, yes, sorry for masturbating loud enough for my supervising officer to hear. Won't happen again (unless you're into it).

You clean because sitting still feels dangerous.

You wipe the counters, fold every item of laundry in the basket, then panic halfway through because some of it is his. You find yourself holding one a bit too long like a total creep, then catch yourself and shove it onto the folded pile like it's likely to bite you.

"Shit, I'm too far gone," you mutter. Your devil laughs beneath your skin.

You make rice. Badly. It goes a little sticky, but edible. You chop vegetables because you have seen him do it enough times now, and you only nearly cut your finger off twice.

By evening, the apartment's tidy, and you're one awkward conversation away from phasing into the walls.

Aki gets back after dark with shopping bags in both hands and rain on his coat.

By then, you're at the zataku, trying to be casual by pretending to read a Public Safety file while your entire body is trying to crawl out of your skin.

He steps inside, takes off his shoes, and then sees everything: the cleaned kitchen, the folded laundry, the food on the stove. And you.

"You cleaned," he says.

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because I live here too."

"Uh-huh."

Aki doesn't look at you. He takes off his coat, hangs it by the door, then carries the bags into the kitchen. You, on the other hand, want to be consumed from the inside out by your contract devil. It would probably be less painful than this.

"You were gone ages," you say, drifting over to the counter like you haven't spent the whole day rehearsing how not to sound weird.

It comes out casual. A little too casual. The kind of casual that makes everything you're trying to hide painfully obvious.

Aki sets the shopping on the counter and starts unpacking it like every item has an assigned place, and the whole place will collapse if he gets it wrong. Spring onions first. Tofu. Fish wrapped in paper. A bag of rice with a brand that you recognise from the shop, literally two minutes down the street.

"The shops were busy," he says.

You lean against the edge of the counter. "For eight hours?"

He puts the spring onions in the fridge with intense focus. "I had errands."

"What errands?"

"Household ones."

You stare at the back of his head. "Okaaaay—and I couldn't have helped?"

"I'm done talking about it."

Yep. He heard.

Your face goes hot so fast you nearly get dizzy. The silence after that is awful.

You need a different subject. Immediately. Your gaze darts over the kitchen, uselessly, until it lands on the little beer bottles lined up along the bottom shelf of the fridge.

You point at them before you can overthink it.

"Shit—do you want a beer?"

Aki follows your finger to the bottom shelf of the fridge. For a second, he doesn't answer. He just stands there with one hand still on the door and the other holding a packet of tofu, as though the question has just made unpacking groceries deeply more complicated.

"That's a bad idea," he mutters.

"Probably."

He puts the tofu away and then shuts the fridge with more force than necessary.

"You have training on Monday."

"And... right now it's Saturday?" you reply.

He turns back to the shopping bags, still not looking at you, and pulls out a bottle of soy sauce he definitely didn't need to buy. There's already one by the stove. You both know that. Neither of you mentions it.

"You can't control yourself."

There it is again; not about beer. Not really.

And this time, it pisses you off a little. Not because he's wrong, exactly—last night isn't giving you a lot of room to argue. But he's standing there in his tidy apartment, putting spring onions away, acting like he's never done anything stupid in his life.

You've heard about him at the welcome drinks: knocking back beer like it's part of the job, getting too serious, then too drunk, while Makima sits there smiling, watching her useful little experiment.

You lean back against the counter, arms folded loosely, trying to look less affected than you feel.

"Well—neither can you! I've heard the stories."

Aki doesn't answer right away. He folds the receipt once, then again, making the crease too sharp for something he's going to throw away.

"One beer," he says eventually.

Then he exhales through his nose, opens the fridge and takes two beers from the bottom shelf, looking about as pleased as he would if he'd found a devil in there.

**********

One beer becomes four.

Not in any wild way. You eat first because he tells you to, and you have to pretend not to like he orders you around like that. Your cooking is nowhere near as good as his, but he finishes it anyway.

He even tells you "it's alright," which from Aki is basically applause.

Then you sit across from each other with beer bottles sweating on the table and the rain making the apartment feel smaller than usual.

The beer helps because it gives your hands something to do. It helps him too, though he would deny it under oath. His shoulders lower a little. He leans back onto one palm, beer in his other hand, his legs stretched out under the edge of the zataku. Most importantly, his eyes don't move away from you as quickly now.

His hair is down, a little stringy at the ends from the rain, and he has changed into a loose pale shirt and grey sweatpants (actual grey sweatpants!?) that you are trying very hard not to look at.

You fail several times.

Aki catches you around the fifth. He finishes the last of his beer, throat shifting as he swallows, then sets the bottle down with a quiet click. "Stop staring at me. It's creeping me out."

"You stare at me all the time!"

"I'm monitoring you. It's my job."

"Right." The beer has made you braver or stupider. Hard to tell. "Is that what we're calling it?"

His eyes narrow, but there is colour at the top of his cheekbones. The beer has done that too, and the idea makes you reckless. You lean back from the zataku, trying not to smile.

"We've had enough," he says, suddenly, standing to grab his cigarettes.

You scoff dramatically.

"Come on, Aki, we've had a couple of beers!"

"Then you handle your booze even worse than I do." A pause. Then: "You're trying to start something you'll regret."

It annoys you. Mostly because part of you is scared he's right. Not about wanting him; that's not the regret. The regret would be wanting him and finding out he only sees you as a problem with tits.

He slides open the balcony doors before you can respond and disappears out onto the balcony. Classic Aki: retreat to smoke, avoid all human consequences.

"Don't follow me," he calls behind him.

So, obviously, you wait all of thirty seconds before following him.

The balcony's cold and narrow, damp air, wet concrete smell. The street below is all car spray and convenience store lights and people hurrying with umbrellas. Aki stands under the small overhang, cigarette already between his lips, shoulders hunched slightly against the chill.

"You never listen," he says without turning.

"You're only just learning this?"

You stand beside him. The rain does not quite reach you under the overhang, but the air is cold enough to raise goosebumps along your arms. His gaze drops, then moves away.

"You're going to catch a cold."

"That's such an old man thing to say. Besides, I have my beer jacket on."

Bad idea number whatever: taking the cigarette straight from his mouth.

That gets his attention. Aki turns his head, eyes fixed on you as you put it between your lips and inhale like you've done this a hundred times, which lasts about half a second before the smoke hits wrong. It tastes awful. Hot, bitter, too much like him for that to be fair. But somehow, by the grace of every devil in Tokyo, you don't cough.

He snatches it back. "You don't even smoke."

"I could start."

"No."

"You're so bossy."

"You're so drunk."

"I'm really not." You lean against the balcony railing, feeling far too pleased with yourself for someone whose throat is still burning from one drag. "I'm not a lightweight like you, Hayakawa."

He looks away, cigarette back between his lips, and you catch the almost-smile before he can get rid of it. Tiny. Annoying. Devastating.

The beer warms your face while the cold sharpens everything else. Okay, you're not sober-sober. But you're not gone either, not even close. You know where you are. You know who he is. You know exactly what you want, and that's part of the problem.

"You were avoiding me today," you say.

Aki's jaw tightens. He flicks ash into the little tray balanced on the balcony railing. "I had things to do."

You should stop. You know that. But there is a version of you still in your room last night, hand over your mouth, his name slipping through anyway. There is a version of him outside your door, pausing. There is the whole day he spent anywhere but here because neither of you could stand the apartment with that sound still in the walls.

"Because you heard me."

Aki goes still. The cigarette burns between his fingers.

Your stomach drops, then twists hot.

"Oh my god," you say, half laughing because you might cry otherwise. "You did!"

"Go inside."

"No."

"That wasn't a request." His eyes cut to you. "I'm not having this conversation right now."

The tone should sober you. It does, partly. But it also sends a bright line of heat through you because you are apparently built wrong.

You step closer, and he doesn't move away. Instead, his gaze drops to your mouth so quickly that anyone else would miss it.

"Everyone knows you're obsessed with Makima," you say.

Aki turns back toward the street.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he says, quieter than he needs to.

You watch him inhale, then watch the smoke curl from his lips, soft and pale against the wet dark of the balcony.

"I know she tells you where to stand and you act like it's where you wanted to be anyway."

Aki's jaw clenches. "That's enough."

There's that voice again. The one he uses in training. The one that means stop talking, fix your stance, don't make me repeat myself.

It should work. It does, most of the time. Just not tonight.

You are jealous. You are embarrassed. You are so full of him you can hardly stand upright with it. All those weeks of being fed and scolded and patched up and watched. All those mornings seeing him half-awake at the kettle. All those evenings with his cigarette smoke at the window and his hands doing ordinary things, like he could keep a normal life running if nobody looked too closely at how hard he was trying.

"She gets this perfect version of you," you continue. "The suit. The yes, ma'am. The bleeding on command. Whatever she wants."

Aki says nothing.

You didn't plan to sound this upset. You planned to be sexy. Annoying. A tiny bit mean. You had this whole stupid idea of showing off, pulling your top low, making him look at you instead of her. But now you're here, cold and turned on and humiliated from last night, and the joke isn't landing right because none of this feels like a joke anymore.

"She doesn't see you," you say. "Not properly."

He's still staring down at the street. The cigarette has burned low between his fingers, ash bending at the end, but he doesn't seem to notice. You hate how calm he looks, and how much you want to get under it.

"I see you making breakfast for me even when I'm too stubborn to say thank you," you say. "I see you checking the door twice before bed. I see you pretending you don't care when you care so much it's actually kind of annoying."

"Just stop." He turns his face sharply towards you, and his eyes aren't angry in the way you expected. They're tired—almost empty, which somehow feels so much worse. "You're saying things you don't understand."

Your throat feels tight, but you keep going because if you stop now, you will lose your nerve.

"And yeah, I'm younger than you, and I'm a mess, and my contract probably wants to chew through half the office." You swallow. "But I'm here. I'm looking at you. Not your job. Not your contracts. You."

Aki turns fully toward you.

You're close enough now to see the rain caught on his lashes again, just like that first night he brought you here under the umbrella. Back then, he was all suit and sword and clipped orders. Now his hair is loose around his face, cigarette burning low between his fingers, and his breathing isn't as even as he's trying to make it.

You reach for him.

His hand catches your wrist before you get anywhere close. Of course, Aki has a habit of stopping things before they become a problem. Except his thumb stays there a second too long, and suddenly he looks like he might be one too.

Your eyes meet.

"Don't say things like that just because you're drunk and pissed off," he says.

It breaks your heart a little.

You step closer until your toes nearly touch his.

"I meant them yesterday too."

His grip on your wrist loosens very slightly.

"I meant them before the beer," you add. "I'll mean them on Monday when you're being a dick about training."

Aki's eyes close briefly, as though you've just made his life very difficult and he needs one second where he isn't looking at you.

Then he drops the cigarette into the tray, pulls you in by the wrist, and kisses you.

It's not smooth. Not at first. His mouth meets yours with too much restraint still in it, like he's trying to kiss you and hold himself back at the same time. Then you make a sound against his mouth, and his hand slides to the back of your neck.

That's when it goes bad.

Bad as in your knees nearly give out.

Bad as in his mouth opens against yours and his tongue slips into your mouth, and suddenly he tastes like beer and smoke and the person you've been thinking about every night for weeks—real in a way your fantasies never managed.

You grab his shirt.

Aki breaks away first, breathing harder than before, eyes lowered to your mouth.

"You're not going to blame this on the beer tomorrow?"

"The beer gave me the confidence. Not the idea."

His brows draw together. "That's not reassuring."

"Then kiss me again and stop making me fill out a safety form."

His mouth gives the smallest twitch. He looks into your eyes again, really looks, and whatever he sees must be enough.

So he kisses you again.

The second kiss has less argument in it. His hand grips your waist. Yours slides over his chest, then lower, over the hard line of his stomach under that stupid pale shirt. You feel him tense, feel him decide not to stop you. That alone sends heat down your spine.

You touch the front of his sweatpants.

Aki inhales sharply through his nose.

He's hard.

Not a little. Not maybe. Hard enough that your brain goes bright and empty for half a second before every filthy thought you had last night comes back with a vengeance.

You look up at him.

His jaw is set, but his face is flushed pink now, which is probably the alcohol, but the look in his eyes isn't. It's dark and hungry and intense in a way he's obviously embarrassed by—only Aki could be standing there with his cock straining against your hand and still look like he's deciding what the correct procedure is.

"You heard me last night..." you whisper.

"Yeah..."

"You thought about it."

His hand tightens at your waist. Aki looks at you for a long second, then takes your hand and presses it harder against him. You feel him twitch beneath your palm.

The answer goes straight through you.

You sink to your knees before he can tell you not to.

"Here?" he says, his voice lowered.

"You want me to stop?"

He looks over the railing, then back at you. The rain's thick enough to blur most of the street. The city is too wet and tired to care. Still, this is reckless. It's exactly the kind of thing he would usually scold you for.

His hand comes to your cheek.

"No, don't stop," he says.

Your hands shake a little as you pull at his waistband. Not from nerves anymore. From the unreal fact of him letting you. Aki Hayakawa, who corrects your form and counts cigarettes like sins and pretends his whole body is a locked door, is standing over you on his balcony, rock hard only inches in front of your face. He sees you trembling and helps, jaw tight, one hand braced on the rail.

Then you free his cock and nearly lose your mind.

He's pretty everywhere, apparently; long, flushed, already leaking at the tip. Your mouth waters so fast it embarrasses you. You wrap your hand around him and hear his breath catch above you.

"Fuck," he growls.

That word from him almost makes you moan.

You lick him first, just the head, tasting the salt-bitterness of pre-cum and warm skin. His hand grips tighter on the rail, and you see his knuckles go pale. So you do it again, because you want him like this—you want proof that he can be shaken, to give him something he can't organise or clean or file away under work. You want the sound of your mouth on him to be something he can't pretend he didn't hear.

Then you take him into your mouth. Aki makes a sound you know he meant to swallow.

It comes out broken off and low, and you feel it all the way between your thighs. So you take more of him, lips stretching around his girth, hand working at the base where he doesn't quite fit.

You look up.

Bad idea. Amazing idea.

The balcony tile is cold under your knees. Rain hits the roof. None of that matters because Aki's above you, head tilted back slightly, throat exposed, hair falling loose around his face. His shirt hangs off one shoulder from where you grabbed it. He looks nothing like the clean senior officer who brought you here under orders. He looks young. Tired. Turned on enough to hate both of you a little.

Aki's other hand comes to your head and settles in your hair.

You hollow your cheeks and keep your eyes on him while you take him deeper.

His hips jerk at the sensation.

"Don't," he says through his teeth, then immediately looks down. "I mean—don't push yourself."

You pull off just enough to speak, hand still moving slickly over him. "Are you seriously supervising my blowjob?"

You grin and ignore him, because obviously the correct response is to slide him down your throat until his careful little warning falls apart above you.

The groan that comes from above you tells you he's lost the argument.

You get messier after that because you want to. Because last night you were alone with your hand between your legs, terrified he might hear, and now he is hearing everything on purpose: the wet slide of your mouth, your soft gag when you take him too far, the way you hum around him when his fingers tighten in your hair.

It goes on long enough that your jaw starts to ache and your knees complain against the cold tile, but you don't care. You keep working him with your mouth and hand, pulling off just enough to breathe before taking him back in. Each time you pull back, he's slicker, heavier and throbbing against tongue, the head of his cock catching your lower lip before you take him in again. You're drunk on the way his control keeps slipping by tiny, humiliating degrees, and the longer you stay there, the worse he gets at hiding it.

It makes your cunt ache so badly that you have to press your thighs together for friction.

He sees.

Aki pulls you off him with more restraint than mercy.

You gasp, lips wet, fingers still wrapped around him.

He looks down at you, his chest rising and falling hard.

"Inside," he says.

Your stomach flips.

He tucks himself away badly, just enough, then hauls you up by your arms. You barely find your feet before he is kissing you again, walking you back through the balcony door. You laugh against his mouth because it's absurd, because you're dizzy with it, because Aki nearly trips on the door track and glares at it as if the building has personally betrayed him.

"Shut up," he mutters.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to."

"I was gonna say... you're very graceful."

He gives you a look that should kill you, but you're thriving.

Then he picks you up.

Not in some perfect romantic sweep. More in an irritated, practical, I've run out of patience with your legs and decided to solve the issue kind of way. Your arms go around his shoulders, your legs around his waist, and the feel of him hard between your thighs wipes the joke clean out of your head.

"Aki—"

"Quiet."

You grin into his neck—you can't help it. You're excited. Giddy, even. It's stupid, but you've wanted him for weeks, and now he's carrying you down the hall like he's done pretending this hasn't been happening.

He carries you past your room, to his.

You've never been inside before. That fact hits you when he sets you on the bed.

It's exactly what you'd expect and somehow still too much. Clean sheets. A spare uniform jacket hung on the back of the chair. Laundry basket tucked away. Nothing excessive. Nothing careless. His whole room feels like he lets himself need as little as possible, and maybe that's why sitting on his bed with your mouth still glossy and swollen feels even more obscene than the balcony.

Aki watches as you take it all in.

"You can still leave—if you want," he says.

You look back at him.

His sweatpants are sitting wrong. He's tense and hard and still, somehow, trying to be decent about it. Still giving you an exit when he looks like he's one breath away from losing the last of his control. It's so him that you want to kiss him for that alone.

It makes you ache.

"I don't want to leave."

He drops to his knees in front of you.

Your brain goes blank.

"Aki..."

He reaches for your waistband. "Lift your hips."

You do it so fast you'd be embarrassed if you had any dignity left.

He pulls your shorts and underwear down together, over your thighs, your knees, your ankles, then drops them on the floor. Cold air hits the wet between your thighs, and you realise, with a fresh wave of humiliation, that he can see exactly how gone you are for him.

His eyes drop.

The small silence after that is packed with every hour he spent avoiding you today.

You start to close your thighs, but Aki catches your knee.

"Don't."

One word. Quiet. Direct. Horrible for your self-respect.

You let him open your legs and lean in.

The first touch of his mouth makes your whole body jump.

He starts careful, which is insane because there's nothing careful about the way you react. His tongue moves over your clit with firm and wet pressure, then dips lower to taste you properly. You grab the sheets. Then his hair. He makes a low sound against you when your fingers slide into it, and that nearly finishes you on the spot.

Your hips jerk before you can stop them. He puts an arm across your stomach and holds you down with insulting ease.

"Oh my god," you gasp. "Aki—"

He looks up at you from between your thighs.

His mouth is wet. His hair's fallen forward, brushing your inner thigh. He looks focused, serious, devastatingly calm, as if he's taking in every twitch and sound and filing it away.

"You're loud," he says.

You make a strangled noise. "You knew that already."

His gaze sharpens.

Then he lowers his mouth again.

Bastard.

He uses it against you; every time you try to bite back a sound, every time your thighs try to close around his head, he does something worse. His arm stays over your hips to keep you where he wants you the entire time, and the fact that he can hold you there so easily makes you even wetter.

He's far too good at it, because he's Aki: the kind of person who learns fast and refuses to half-arse anything that requires a little patience, even apparently eating pussy. He pays attention to everything, which is unfair. The way your hips twitch when his tongue moves slower. The way your breath catches when he presses harder. The way you say his name, which makes his fingers work a little deeper, as if he heard it and decided to reward you for being so vulnerable.

His tongue stays on your clit while two fingers press inside you. He curls them until your back arches, and you grab the sheet so hard it pulls loose from the mattress. He doesn't rush. That's the worst part. He keeps you there, pinned and shaking, building it up like he's got no interest in letting you escape, even when it gets too much.

Your orgasm starts building too fast, but he keeps it just out of reach until you are furious with him. You hear yourself begging and don't even care what the words are, only that his name is in them.

"Please," you whine. "Please, fuck, stop being good at this and just—"

He lifts his mouth. "Just what?"

You could kill him.

You could kiss him until neither of you remembers how to go to work on Monday.

"Fuck me," you say.

Aki's fingers stop inside you.

"Please, Aki, I need you inside me. Right fucking now."

You are both breathing harder now. He looks at you from the floor, and for a second, the whole thing threatens to become serious in a way neither of you is ready for. Then he withdraws his fingers, stands, and pulls his shirt over his head.

You are not prepared.

You have seen hints of him. Lines under fabric. Forearms. The shape of his body when he stretches in the kitchen. But seeing all of him, bare, in the low bedroom light is different. He is lean, built from work rather than vanity, hard through the stomach and shoulders. Hipbones. Scars that interrupt his skin in small pale marks. A dark line of hair disappears beneath the waistband of his sweatpants, where the fabric sits low enough to show the cut of muscle at his hips. There's a damp mark at the front from where his cock strains against the grey cotton, and that's where your ability to think like a normal person gives up entirely.

He sees you staring, and this time he doesn't tell you to stop.

Maybe he likes it? The thought makes you clench around nothing.

He gets a condom from the drawer, then hesitates.

"I'm on birth control," you say, face hot. "And clean. Public Safety tested me after the contract. Everything."

You catch the tiny inhale before he can hide it, his eyes lifting to yours. "You sure?"

"Yes. Very. I need to feel you."

Aki's mouth presses into a line. He looks almost pained by your answer.

He puts the condom down and pushes his sweatpants off.

Your whole body trembles with anticipation.

He climbs over you, one knee on the bed, then the other, and suddenly he's close: warm, bare skin, dark hair falling around his face, the weight of him above you. You reach up and touch his chest because you can. Because last week you were afraid to brush past him in the hall, and now he is above you with his cock sliding hot against your inner thigh.

His hand comes to your face. Thumb under your chin.

"If your contract devil reacts, you need to tell me."

You blink. Then laugh once, breathless and a little mad. "That's what you're thinking about right now?"

"Yes."

"You're literally about to fuck me."

"I can do both."

The annoying part is he absolutely can.

You pull him down and kiss him, and he lets you for a few seconds. His cock presses against your cunt, slicking through the mess he made with his mouth. When you angle your hips up and the head of him catches at your entrance, your whole body goes tense with wanting. He breaks the kiss and looks down between your bodies as he guides himself slowly into you.

Your attitude dies immediately.

It's a lot. He's a lot. You feel every inch because he makes you feel it. The stretch burns in the best way, and he's watching your face, easing in with his jaw tense and one hand braced beside your head, ready to stop if you so much as flinch wrong. Your nails dig into his back.

"You're tight," he murmurs, pausing and sweeping the hair out of his face. "Are you okay?"

"Fuck—yes—keep going."

His forehead drops near your shoulder, and you feel the small huff of something almost like a laugh against your skin.

Then he pushes the rest of the way in.

You forget the room. You forget devils, Makima, Monday, every rule he gave you at the door, yourself. There is only the stretch of him—hot, deep, filling you so completely that your body needs a second to work out what to do with it—and the harsh little sound he makes when his hips meet yours.

Aki stays still, head dipped beside yours, hair falling against your cheek.

You turn your face into it.

"You feel so good," you whisper.

His hand grips the sheet beside you. You can feel the tension in his arm.

Then he starts moving.

Slow at first. Deep enough to make your eyes flutter shut. His hips roll into yours, controlled and steady, like he's still trying to keep the whole thing neat even while his cock's buried inside you and your legs are wrapped around him.

Each thrust makes the bed shift under you, makes heat climb through your stomach and chest until you are clinging to him because there is nowhere else for your hands to go. Every time your mouth opens, every time your eyes squeeze shut, every time his cock hits the place that makes your thighs tighten around his hips, he adjusts until you are making noises that don't even sound like your voice.

"You like that?" he says.

It comes out rougher than his usual voice. Less polished. More dangerous for your health.

"Yes," you pant.

"Here?"

He does it again.

You gasp. "Yes."

His pace changes. The bed knocks once against the wall, and he immediately puts a hand behind the headboard to stop it.

You would make fun of him if you were capable of anything beyond taking him.

Instead, you pull him down by the back of his neck and moan his name until his rhythm slips and comes back rougher. Messier. His hips snap into yours hard enough that you feel him everywhere: the weight of him over you, the drag of his cock inside you, the heat of his breath. Your thighs tighten around him, keeping him close, and he groans like that's the last thing he needed.

His hips find a rhythm that makes sense of every fantasy you had and then improves on it. Sharp hipbones against your thighs, stomach tight under your hands, hair falling in a curtain around both of your faces until the room narrows to just him.

"Fuck Aki, you're—fuck, you're so hot—so good at this," you breathe.

His hips stutter.

You say it again, because feeling him lose control drags you closer and closer to the edge.

"Aki, you're so fucking incredible."

He kisses you hard, trying to shut you up.

"You started all this," he whispers into your mouth.

"You heard me—fuck!—coming over you and still... put on those grey sweatpants."

His face flushes darker, and he answers the only way he apparently can: by fucking into you harder until whatever you were about to say breaks apart in your mouth. Then his fingers find your clit, and there's nothing left in you clever enough to answer him.

"Talk less," he growls.

He rubs you in tight, firm strokes, still driving into you deep, and your body folds around the pleasure.

The orgasm comes up fast. You feel it coming and panic because it is already bigger than you expected. Meaner than last night. Stronger because it's him, because his mouth is near your ear, because his cock's dragging through you exactly right, because he's watching you come apart and won't look away. Your legs tighten around him. Your hands slide over his back, then into his hair.

"Aki," you whimper, and it sounds too close to last night. "I'm gonna—"

He changes the angle of his hand before you even finish. His fingers press down on that swollen little point of your clit, faster and more exact, and the pleasure snaps so sharp through your hips that you can't get the rest of the sentence out.

You nearly sob.

"Come," he says.

Not pretty. Not coaxing. An order.

So you do.

It tears through you hard enough that you grab at him with everything you have, cunt clenching around his cock, hips lifting into his hand. For a few seconds, you cannot hear anything. Your body takes over completely. You say his name again, too loud, shaking under him while he fucks you through it with his face pressed near your temple.

Aki curses. His rhythm breaks.

You feel him try to hold back. Feel the strain of it in his shoulders, the way his hips slow like he is giving himself one last chance to be sensible. The last stupid bit of discipline.

So you tighten around him on purpose.

His eyes snap to yours.

That is all it takes.

He comes with a low, helpless sound, burying himself deep and trembling as warmth spills inside you. His body goes rigid above yours, then shudders once, hard. You hold him there with your legs around his waist and your fingers in his hair, feeling each pulse of him until he has nothing left to hide behind.

Afterwards, he does not collapse on you. Aki catches himself on one arm, breathing hard, face turned partly away as if he can somehow be modest.

You smooth damp hair from his cheek.

He lets you.

That feels almost more intimate than the sex.

He pulls out very carefully, and you wince.

"Sorry," he murmurs.

"I'm fine, I promise."

He doesn't believe you. He gets up, pulls his sweatpants back on, and leaves the room. You hear the bathroom tap. When he comes back, he's got a damp towel and a glass of water.

Your chest does something stupid.

He sits on the bed and takes care of you without making it weird. Or he tries not to. It's still weird because you're naked in his bed and his cum's leaking out of you and he's dabbing at your inner thigh like this is a first aid situation. The sex is one thing; his cleaning you up with red ears and a serious face is another entirely.

"So," you say, because silence might kill you. "Great supervision tonight."

He closes his eyes. "Don't start."

"You're really committed to your job, Hayakawa."

"I said don't."

But his mouth twitches.

He hands you the glass of water. "Drink something that's not beer."

You take it because you know he'll just sit there holding it until you do.

"Bossy," you mutter, before swigging some down.

"You like that."

You nearly choke.

His face goes blank in self-defence. "See, this is why I don't drink."

You laugh so hard you have to press the glass to your chest to avoid spilling it. "Because you end up fucking your subordinates?"

His ears go redder. "Because people make stupid decisions when they're drunk."

That kills the laugh a bit.

"...Was it stupid?"

The question sits there, ugly and honest.

Aki looks down at the towel in his hand, then puts it aside. His hair's still damp around the edges of his face. There's a scratch on his shoulder from your nails.

"No."

Your chest loosens. The relief is embarrassing in its size.

He rubs a hand over his face. "Just—complicated."

"Yeah..."

"We work together," he says softly, taking the glass from your hand and setting it on the floor.

"Yeah..."

He gives you a tired look. "Makima will notice if this affects anything."

There she is. You hate that her name can enter his bedroom so easily. You pull the sheet up over yourself, not because you're shy, but more because the mention of her suddenly makes your skin feel too exposed.

"She notices everything," you say. "Doesn't mean she owns everything."

Aki goes quiet.

You watch him start to shut himself away piece by piece again. It's subtle, but you know him better now. Maybe not enough. Enough to see when he's leaving without moving.

"She's not good enough for you," you say.

His expression hardens by habit. "You don't even know her."

He looks toward the window. Rain moves down the glass in thin, uneven lines. His profile is severe again, but tired under it, old grief sitting somewhere behind his eyes.

"It's just work," he says finally, quieter now.

"No," you keep your voice softer, more careful this time. No balcony bravado. No showing off. No trying to win. "It's not just work."

You wonder if he knows how young he looks when he has no uniform to hide inside.

"I don't know what she is to you," you add. "I don't even know if you know. But I know how she looks at you. Like you're—I don't know—just useful."

"I... don't know what it is," he says.

That honesty costs him. You can tell.

So you decide not to push. Not tonight. Not after everything. The last thing you want to do is put a sour taste on all of this. Instead, you reach for his hand where it rests on the bed.

He looks down at your fingers covering his.

"I'm not asking you to figure everything out right now," you say. "I'm just saying... I see you. That's all."

His fingers shift, barely, then settle under yours.

"You should sleep," he says.

"Are you kicking me out?"

"No."

The answer comes fast enough to make both of you lift your heads. He clears his throat and looks faintly mortified by it.

"I mean... You can stay—if you want."

You lie back and settle beneath his duvet before he changes his mind. "How very romantic of you."

He shoots you a warning look, but there is no real bite in it. Then he gets into bed beside you, stiff at first. You can hardly believe that he's still not realised that there's no way to do this neatly.

So you shuffle closer. He sighs, but his arm comes around you anyway.

The apartment feels different now. Same clean sheets. Same rain on the balcony glass. Same quiet rooms. Only now you know what he sounds like when control finally slips, and he knows exactly what his name sounds like in your mouth. Monday will bring uniforms, reports, training, Makima's calm smile, and whatever version of normal you're both supposed to perform after this.

But tonight Aki's skin is warm against yours, his hair down and tickling your cheek, his hand resting at your waist by accident and staying there by choice.

Your contract devil stirs sleepily under your skin.

Hungry?

You close your eyes.

"Not anymore," you whisper.

Aki's head lifts slightly from his pillow.

"What?"

"Nothing."

He exhales against your shoulder.

"Get some sleep," he says.

Then you saw him. His hair was longer than the other guys. His eyes were dull, almost empty. He radiated a wave of mystery—nothing like the “mystery” you saw on guys who pretended to be interesting just to get in chick's pants… he seemed genuine. Like he was the only one left in his world. When you got partnered up with him, you didn't exchange any needless words. You spoke when spoken to, and that was it. Your starting intrigue started melting into a sort of pity the more his aloofness soaked you up. Until you caught it: Aki, with his no-nonsense expression and his deliberate steps, looked around and with a swipe of his thumb, wiped a letter off a chalkboard to make it spell something much less appropriate. You really couldn't believe your eyes. Maybe you had him all wrong.

Fast forward to you guys being friends. Just with three months of consistently teaming up and/or running into each other, you could confirm that, yeah, Aki Hayakawa had a silly side. He was an older brother once (he had confessed that during a rare drunken heart-to-heart), of course teasing was in his DNA. His classic moves? Tapping your left shoulder and appearing on your right side, giving your ear a warning flick after you messed up and doodling a smiling face on your hand with a pen while you talked business on the phone. The funniest of it all? How nonchalant he was while pulling these stunts. He acted like nothing had happened at all. He remained his collected nature. You gathered that collected didn't mean serious.

After a year and a half, you two start sharing an apartment:

You rested on the bedroom floor after a rough work day, resting your cheek on the cool wood. The pressure of the ground against your ribs did wonders for your back and shoulders, letting you relax. Aki walked into the bedroom, about to ask you what you want for dinner and just finds you lying there like a slug. He would be concerned if you hadn't been doing this every night since you moved in together. He smiles to himself and presses his foot against your back, threatening to fully stand on you—though he'd never even think of actually hurting you. Your arms flail behind you, trying to smack his leg away and he just laughs and stands by your side. You tilt your head up with a small smile and see his lazy shit-eating grin.

"You know, maybe we should buy a kiddy pool and fill it with dirt" He muses sarcastically

"Stop."

"Do you want some leaves for dinner? Maybe I need to moisturize you?"

"Aki—"

"This way you'll save us grocery money, actually."

And once Denji and Power move in? You get first row seats for these antics.

Denji starts boasting, exaggerating every detail of his heroics to Makima. His arms move dramatically, trying hard to woo her. The moment the woman turns around, Aki is giving the back of his knee a nudge with his shoe, making the teen fold like a folding chair and almost fall to the ground.

“The hell, dude?!” He whisper-yells.

“My foot slipped. Also, stand up straight.”

He is more gentle with Power (the girl dad in him, maybe?), but he is just a man. He just has to stand for longer than necessary in front of the TV with the excuse of vacuuming the house while Power screams and curses his ‘puny human existence’ for interrupting her ‘precious televised entertainment enjoying time’

Kaito Nakamura.

Aki’s eyes didn’t lift. He skimmed through the page, scanning over a short but solid record – civilian law enforcement, two commendations, and a recent transfer request. It was all clean. Impressive for someone barely out of his teens.

“You’ve got good references,” Aki said. “No disciplinary action. Physical scores are decent.”

“Thank you, sir,” the kid replied, a touch nervous.

That’s when Aki finally looked up – eyes level, unreadable. The kid couldn’t have been older than twenty, with a freshly shaven jaw and a half-practiced sort of confidence. Eager. Green.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” the man added, as if to fill the silence. “Before I applied here. Everyone says you're sharp. Not just anyone gets to run a place like this.”

Aki blinked once. “Is that so?”

Another hum passed between them. Not quite amusement. Not quite anything.

His eyes dipped back to the résumé. Scanned the personal section. There it was.

“Married?” Aki asked, glancing down again. “You’re a bit young for that, aren’t you?”

The man smiled – an easy, casual thing, like this was a story he liked telling.

“It’s funny you bring that up, actually,” he said. “I’ve heard you and my wife have the same birthday coming up. November eleventh.”

A beat. Aki’s pen paused against the folder. He didn’t look up right away. Didn’t need to.

“What an odd coincidence,” Aki murmured. Then, after a beat, he closed the file neatly and stood.

“You’re approved. You’ll start on Monday,” he said simply. “Orientation in the morning. Patrol rotation in the afternoon. We’ll ease you into city routes.”

The kid stood too, eyes bright with opportunity. “Thank you, sir.”

Aki took the offered handshake. Firm. Polite. Distant.

He waited until the door clicked closed again before his gaze shifted—to the thin corner of the folder where the wife’s name was printed in small, neat letters.

November eleventh.

He didn’t smile. Just sat back down, leaned an elbow on the desk, and stared at nothing in particular as the city hummed just outside his window.

Late night walks were Aki’s favorite thing to do when sleep failed him. Whenever it slipped through his grasp, leaving him laying on his back, staring at the ceiling like it held the answers to some question he didn’t even know how to ask – whenever his roommates drove him up the wall, a walk never failed to clear his mind. Some nights he didn’t sleep much at all. Others, he would be chased by nightmares into the early hours of the morning.

It never stopped.

He’d had them since he was a child, but they had grown significantly worse over the course of his career as a Public Safety officer. Blood, gore, loss painted his memory like streaks of red over a blank canvas. Perhaps the greatest loss of all was the one he still couldn’t wrap his head around – the loss of his partner, Himeno.

Their relationship was… strange, to say the least. But it worked. For every pound of misery he carried into work, there she would be, all wide-eyed with that stupid grin on her face. She had feelings for him, he knew that much, and though he had never returned them, she had become the closest thing he could have called family. After her passing, he kept the dog tag necklace she used to wear under her uniform. Love was the word, though not in the traditional sense – there was no yearning, no longing for anything other than to hear her long-winded stories, to carry her drunken body home one final time. It was greater than worldly desire.

She was the first person to see him as something more than a machine, a person. She’d been his first kiss – though, admittedly, she was wasted beyond comprehension and he had no interest in doing such a thing with her. She was the first person he ever opened up to about his childhood, about his family, about the Gun Devil. She was the one who offered him his first cigarette. And, with the exception of his family some fourteen years ago, she was the first person he ever cried over. His first experience with loss as an adult – fresh and brutal and unexpected.

One minute she was there, clasping a hand over his back, telling him not to die on her. The next, the only thing left of her was a pile of clothes and an eye patch where her body had once been – the physical remnants of her sacrifice, her selfish decision to give her life up so that he could live.

And, fuck, he had spent the past two years wondering why. Why she had gone and done that when she knew he would be completely lost without her – why she had left him after promising that it would be the two of them against the world for however long they would live.

Often, he wondered if what he felt for Himeno was love – not the familial kind, but the kind you felt when your heart would kick up a beat whenever someone was around. But there was no racing of his pulse, no dreams about her – save for some brutal retellings of her death. She knew that he was incapable of loving her the way she needed and, yet, still, she chose him. 

She chose his life over hers.

Easy revenge was the only thing she’d left behind. That, and a confusing horde of emotions he didn’t know how to cope with.

Aki stepped off of the porch of his house and into the empty street. He was wearing a black tee shirt and some sweatpants – still, as he had only climbed out of bed a few minutes prior. From his pocket, he fished out his lucky carton of cigarettes and his lighter – the one Himeno had left him. He popped a cigarette between his lips – the motion both soothing and familiar – and flicked the wheel twice until the flame took to the end of it. Once he heard that familiar sizzle, he took a deep breath in, letting the nicotine swirl in his mouth, invade his lungs, ease his tensions away. 

I hope you’re doing well down there, He thought, pulling a long hit from the end of the cigarette before letting it all go – breathing his worries out into the midnight air, pretending they left with the smoke, because he knew there was no way in hell that she made it to the pearly gates. Too many drunk mistakes and dead bodies for that.

No, there was no promised land for Devil Hunters. He knew that.

In fact, he had long since given up on his dream of finding the Gun Devil. Losing her radicalized him, made him realize that protecting his family was the only thing that mattered.

His family, of course, being his two pin-headed roommates, Denji and Power.

The pavement was still damp from the afternoon’s shower. Out here, it was quiet. In fact, save for the sounds of traffic only a block or two away, the only sound he could hear was the sound of his Converse crunching against concrete. That, and the sound of… birds?

Aki furrowed his brows as he took another puff of smoke. Since when did we have birds out here?

His eyes trailed the source of the sound until they stopped on the only house with its lights still on – the one at the end of the street. The warm rays of light seemed to be coming from its side. Curiously, he inched towards it.

45, the mailbox read. If his memory served him correctly, then this was that rookie’s house – Kaito Nakamura, the one he’d interviewed today. The one with the wife who had the same birthday as him. It was as normal and unassuming as the man himself – painted with a neutral yellow exterior, having no real distinguishing features other than the chirping noises coming from the doorway.

His feet carried him right up to the side of the house. There was an open porch, one at ground-level, so he felt a whole lot less awkward than he probably should about approaching the bird cages that dangled off of the roof. There had to have been at least ten of them, each made of a different kind of metal, each containing a different kind of bird that he couldn’t have named if you paid him to.

Slowly, he approached the perpetrator – a yellow bird with red dots on its cheeks. It had its beak open, squawking into the otherwise quiet ambience.

Little shit, he thought, already pulling another hit from the smoldering cigarette between his fingertips.

Without even thinking about it, he breathed out – letting the smoke float into the bird’s cage. Really, he had no business jeopardizing the life of someone else’s bird, he knew that much. Still, it was mindless, something he didn’t fully realize he had even done until after the smoke materialized.

A voice called out behind him, “The bird doesn’t like that.”

Aki damn near jumped out of his skin, whipping his body around and coming face to face with you – a woman he could only assume to have been Nakamura’s wife. You were the picture of innocence, looking to be a year or two younger than Aki himself – hair tied back into a messy bun, cheeks a little flushed from the breeze, donning nothing more than a cotton nightgown that hugged your curves.

And you had the prettiest eyes he had ever seen.

Stop ogling your subordinate’s wife, He chastised himself, quickly flicking the cigarette onto the floor and smothering it out with his foot.

“I’m sorry, I–” He began, but the words fleeted him. “I’m not a fan of birds.”

None of that explains what you’re doing here on her porch blowing smoke at her pets, asshole, He thought.

“It’s alright,” You breathed out, wrapping your arms around your chest, as if you were self conscious beneath his gaze. He thought that there was entirely no need to feel such a way, especially given the fact that you looked like you crawled right out of a dream, all dewy lashes and blushy cheeks. “He gets… fussy when people are near him. You didn’t need to put it out on my account.”

“I did it for the bird,” He replied, though it was entirely a lie. He couldn’t give less of a shit about what the bird felt. “Didn’t mean to bother him.”

You shrugged, a little awkward, “He’ll puff up and squawk for a while. He’s kind of dramatic, honestly.”

“He’s not wrong,” Aki couldn’t help the half-smile that settled over his face. 

It was rare for him to smile these days, truthfully. So, the fact that you managed to pull this much out of him already was… a little disconcerting.

Still, rather than leaving – like he definitely should have been doing – he offered his name to you, “Name’s Aki Hayakawa. I live up the street.”

“You’re… from Public Safety, right?” You tilted your head at him, and it was the strangest thing – your hair fell down over your neck, your chest, and his heart skipped a beat. 

She knows who I am.

“Yeah,” He replied, rendered completely breathless by the motion. You were gorgeous – the kind people wrote poems about. Nakamura was a lucky man. “I work with your husband, I think. Nakamura, right?”

“Right,” You nodded, “Sorry if I startled you. Didn’t mean to.”

“I didn’t mean to trespass on your porch,” He sighed, “I just needed some fresh air.”

“You’re fine, I came out here for the same reason, actually,” You rushed out, waving your hands in the air, as if to dismiss his worries. “I haven’t slept well since we moved in here.”

There was a pregnant pause, then – during which Aki glanced down at his feet and awkwardly swung his weight back and forth, and you tucked your hair behind your ear.

Am I making her nervous?

“He said you were intense,” You broke the silence – and his train of thought. Your voice was melodic, sort of like an instrument. He didn’t think he’d mind standing here and listening to you talk all night. You had the strangest effect on him. “I don’t know what I pictured, but… you’re quieter than I expected.”

Aki proved your point only a moment later by answering quietly, “Quiet’s not always a bad thing.”

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” You retorted, clearly embarrassed by his remark. The prettiest blush dusted your cheeks, one that made his heart thrum a little harder. “Sorry, I’m not… I’m not really good at talking to new people.”

Clearly, I’m not either, he thought, then, Stop it. Behave.

His eyes betrayed his thoughts, dropping from your face down to the white nightie you wore, the way the fabric fluttered out over your hips, your bare legs. You were rubbing your thighs together – a nervous habit, perhaps? “Did I wake you?”

“No!” You shook your head, “No, I wasn’t sleeping. I just– I came outside for the same reason you did, I guess.”

“Is this where you grew up?” He asked, desperate to keep the conversation going despite the fact that he knew damn well how inappropriate it was to be out here with you. 

“No,” You replied. “I moved here a few months ago.”

“You like it?” He asked carefully.

“I’m trying to,” You exhaled.

Aki observed you like an admirer would a painting – as if you would be damaged if he got too close to you. “I know what that’s like.”

“It’s different, being around all of these people I barely know,” You admitted, smiling faintly. Maybe it was the light from the moon, from the warm porchlight overhead, but Aki thought you looked beautiful. “The other housewives have been nice to me, though.”

“Yeah,” He replied, stupidly, “Takes time.”

You glanced at the cigarette on the ground. “Do you… smoke a lot?”

Huh, he thought, Looks like she’s trying to keep the conversation going, too.

“Too much, probably,” He admitted.

“That’s bad for you,” You noted softly, gently, your voice as quiet as the wind.

He replied, “So I’ve heard.”

“Still… It suits you,” The quietest hum left your lips, as if you were still trying to make sense of the interaction – and whether or not you wanted it to end – yourself. “You seem like the type.”

Himeno used to say the same thing.

“What does that mean?” He asked anyway.

“The kind who doesn’t care if he lives or dies if it means he finishes the job,” You remarked.

Ah. So she knew about his… history.

“I don’t know if that’s a compliment or a warning,” He furrowed his brows, though the corner of his lips quirked up at the way your eyes widened.

“Maybe both,” You answered, your voice only a notch above a whisper.

“You don’t seem like the type to go around scolding strangers,” He commented.

That pretty blush was back and brighter than ever, illuminating the slopes of your face like a horde of fireflies lighting up a dark field. “I don’t, usually, but it’s not every day that you find a Captain smoking a cigarette on your porch.”

“Touché,” He replied.

She’s cute, He noted.

A silence settled between you. Not uncomfortable — just suspended. Like neither of you was sure whether to step forward or away.

You glanced toward the door, fingers curling in the hem of your nightgown, the breeze nudging your hair loose.

“I should… probably head back in,” You glanced towards the door. You were a great deal shorter than him. 

“Yeah,” Aki nodded, taking a step back, as if that would break him free of the spell you seemed to have cast on him. “Of course.”

With a soft, uncertain smile, you dipped your head in a bow, “It was nice meeting you, Captain Hayakawa.”

He nodded at you once more. Then, you turned on your heel, and made your way to the door. Just before your delicate fingers grazed the brass doorknob, he called out to you–

“Wait–”

You paused, your hand already on the door.

“I never got your name,” He clarified.

You hesitated for a beat, as if considering whether to give it. Then you looked back over your shoulder – the porch light catching in your eyes – and smiled. Not shy, not fully. There was something brighter underneath it now. Then, you told him your name, and his eyes couldn’t help but follow your lips as they formed the pretty syllables, as the name fell from your lips like butter.

A pretty name. One that suited you, he thought.

Then, without waiting for his reaction, you slipped inside, allowing the door to creak shut behind you.

Aki glanced back at the bird. Then back at the space where you had been only a few seconds earlier.

This one’s gonna be a problem, isn’t she? He thought.

That night, Aki had the same dream he always had – images of a snowy December day, of a smoking pit where his family had once been. He dreamt of a pile of clothes, an eyepatch that once used to accentuate the smile of his closest cohort.

Only now, there was a new picture in his head – pretty eyes and a timid smile.

It felt too quiet.

Himeno wasn’t there. That absence hit first.

The steps in front of HQ buzzed with noise — Denji’s shouting, Power’s demands to be in the center of the photo, Kurose quietly trying to coordinate it all — but none of it settled the way Himeno’s voice used to. She would’ve been loud, obnoxious, teasing everyone into line. She would’ve elbowed Aki and made him smile in that dry, reluctant way that used to come easier when she was around.

Without her, it felt... off. Lopsided. Like a room missing its light.

He shifted his weight. Rolled a cigarette between his fingers but didn’t light it. His coat felt too stiff. His shirt collar too tight. He didn’t know why he was in this picture. Or why the new guy was late.

The photographer was getting impatient.

Then the sound of quick footsteps—two pairs—echoed from the sidewalk.

Aki looked up.

And there he was: the new recruit. Breathless, still adjusting his collar. Twenty years old, fresh out of Osaka, married.

Your hand was in his.

Aki’s jaw tightened just slightly. He watched the way your husband smiled, too boyish for someone who claimed to be ready for this job. He apologized for the delay, and someone waved him into place.

But Aki’s eyes didn’t follow him.

They followed you.

You looked different in daylight. Different in this context—out in the open, visible, belonging to someone else. Your hair was done like you meant to impress, your expression polite and unreadable. You didn’t meet Aki’s eyes right away. And maybe that was for the best.

Because the second you did, it landed like a sucker punch. Like something in him twisted up and burned quietly behind the ribs.

You were smiling. It wasn’t for him.

He looked away first.

It was almost funny—how quickly everyone seemed to move on. You and your husband buzzed up the stairs, folded neatly into the group like you belonged there, like nothing about the last few weeks had ever happened. Aki didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He just stepped aside before the next photo and slipped out a cigarette.

No one noticed.

They never really did.

He lit up and turned his back to the rest of them, exhaling into the sharp morning air. The silence that followed felt louder than the chatter he left behind. It settled in his shoulders. Pressed into his chest.

And then he heard you.

Your steps were softer. Familiar in a way that made something behind his ribs tighten again.

You didn’t follow the others inside. You didn’t say a word. Just came to stand beside him, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He didn’t look at you.

Didn’t need to.

He could feel you beside him — the heat of you, the tension, the weight of everything you weren’t saying. You weren’t supposed to be here. Not like this. Not now, not after walking in on someone else’s arm.

But here you were.

Again.

“They went inside. Are you coming?” You asked him in that pretty little drawl of yours, and he was a goner all over again.

“No, I was gonna take a smoke break,” He hummed, breathing smoke out into the air – to the side, because the last thing he wanted was the breathe it into your face – without moving the cigarette from his teeth. “Maybe a walk.”

You shifted beside him, your body angled just slightly toward his. “Can I come with you?”

That was the thing – he should’ve said no. He should’ve made up some excuse, nodded you back toward the building, sent you away like he was supposed to.

But he didn’t.

He flicked the cigarette away and watched it skitter across the pavement. “Yeah,” he said, quieter this time. “Okay.”

You didn’t smile, but something eased in your shoulders. And without another word, the two of you started walking.

The air was cool, the sky heavy with clouds that hadn’t yet made up their mind about rain. Streetlamps buzzed overhead, casting gold halos across patches of cracked sidewalk. Your footsteps were soft, and every few seconds, Aki caught the sound of your sleeve brushing against your side, the whisper of your breath.

You didn’t speak at first. He didn’t mind. Silence with you felt full, not empty.

Eventually, you broke it.

“So… do you always sneak out of photos, or is that just today?”

He huffed out something like a laugh. “Depends on the company.”

You tilted your head, glancing sideways at him. “Am I good company?”

“Better than the lot of them, honestly,” He glanced at you then — only for a second — and found you smiling faintly, looking down at your feet.

“I think I like it better out here,” you said.

“Yeah. Me too.”

A few more steps passed between you. The night was still, save for the rustle of wind through half-dead trees and the low hum of traffic a few blocks off.

“Do you like the city?” you asked.

“It’s alright.”

“That’s not a yes.”

Aki shrugged. “Better than most places.”

You were quiet again, and he could tell you were mulling over something. It took a minute for you to speak.

“I miss home sometimes,” you admitted. “It was… simpler.”

“You from the country?”

You nodded. “Small town. You could hear cicadas at night. You could see the stars.”

Aki looked up — out of habit, maybe — but the clouds were too thick. “Sounds nice.”

“It was. But boring, I guess. That’s why I left.”

He gave a soft grunt of acknowledgment. “Boring sounds like a luxury these days.”

That earned a real smile from you. Small, a little sad. But real.

You walked a little closer after that. Not enough to touch. Just enough to notice.

And then it happened.

It was sudden –  the shift in the air, the spike of dread in Aki’s chest that came a second too late. One minute the street was quiet, the next it was wrong. A cold ripple crawled up the back of his neck.

He grabbed your arm without thinking, jerking you behind him. “Get down.”

Before you could even respond, something tore through the alley ahead — fast, fast enough to blur. Aki caught a flash of teeth, a glint of claws. It was tall, lean, twisted in shape like someone had sketched a human and then scratched it out.

He reached for his sword.

Too slow.

The Devil moved with a whipcrack sound – not toward him, but you.

You gasped, stumbling back as it slashed –  a wide arc of motion, like it meant to take your whole head off.

Aki’s blade was halfway out of its sheath when he heard the wet snap of impact.

And then your knees gave out.

He caught you before you hit the pavement, arms wrapping around you hard enough to bruise. You were gasping, hands pressed to your throat, blood already spilling between your fingers.

“Shit– hey. Hey, look at me.”

Your eyes fluttered, wide and scared and glistening.

“I’ve got you.” His voice was low, fierce, nothing like his usual calm. “Stay with me, okay? Just keep looking at me.”

He crouched with you, drawing you into his chest as he dragged the cursed blade free with his other hand, senses locked onto the devil now circling in the dark.

It hadn’t gone for him.

It had gone for you.

You were shivering, your breathing ragged. Blood slicked your neck, soaked into his uniform. His jaw clenched so tight it hurt.

He didn’t look at the wound. He didn’t want to see how bad it was.

“Don’t move,” he said, his voice lower now, steadier only because it had to be. “I– I’ll take care of it.”

You tried to nod, but the motion was small and weak. Aki let go of you gently, like you might break, and stood.

The devil rushed him again – fast, erratic – but now he was ready.

Raising a trembling hand up to the air, he pinched his thumb and middle finger together – finding the devil in the center, “Kon.”

Then, like it had done countless times before, the Fox Devil appeared, chomping the devil clean in half and leaving nothing more than a trail of purple goop in its path. 

After a moment, it disappeared, and when Aki was certain that it was gone, he rushed back to your side.

He turned on his heel and dropped beside you.

Your eyes were still open. That was good. That had to be good.

“I’ve got you,” he said again, hands already searching for pressure points, for anything to stop the bleeding. “You’re going to be okay.”

You didn’t speak. Your lips moved, but no sound came out.

“You’re okay,” he said, and this time it sounded more like a prayer than a promise.

She’s okay.

You turned your head towards the concrete, hand flying up to cup your ear, “My earring–” You gasped. “I think– I think I lost my earring.”

You were right. On one ear, a gold hoop with a pearly charm dangled. On the other, nothing.

She almost died and she’s worried about an earring? He thought.

It was enough to make him crack a smile.

The knock was sharp – one, then two – like the man on the other side had been standing there for too long, thinking it over.

Aki didn’t look up from the paperwork on his desk.

“Come in.”

The door creaked open. Boots on tile. The air shifted.

When Aki finally glanced up, Nakamura stood there — still in uniform, still stiff-backed like always, but his expression was softer than usual. Tired. Haunted around the eyes.

“Captain,” Nakamura greeted with a short nod. “Hope I’m not interrupting.”

“It’s fine,” Aki said flatly. “Sit.”

The man didn’t – just hovered near the chair across from the desk, hands folded in front of him like he wasn’t sure whether to stay or leave.

“I just… wanted to say thank you,” Nakamura said after a moment. “For what you did. This morning.”

Aki blinked once, then set his pen down. The words didn’t sit right. Too formal, too tidy for what had actually happened. You’d almost bled out on a city sidewalk because of his decision – because he couldn’t say no when he should’ve.

“I didn’t do anything worth thanking,” he said. “I let her walk into a fight she wasn’t trained for.”

“You saved her,” Nakamura countered. “That’s what matters.”

Aki’s jaw flexed, but he didn’t argue. Not out loud.

“It won’t happen again,” Nakamura added. His voice was firm now, resolute. “I’ll make sure she keeps her distance from this stuff. It’s not her world.”

Aki’s eyes flicked up. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No,” the man agreed. “You could have gotten hurt, though. That’s enough.”

A beat of silence stretched between them. The fluorescent light buzzed faintly above.

Aki leaned back in his chair, exhaling slowly through his nose. He paused, carefully weighing the words before he spoke them.

“I’d like to apologize to her. In person.”

Aki counted the numbers as they climbed – his sneakers clicked rhythmically against the linoleum floor. This particular wing of the hospital was quieter than the lobby had been, though he did brush past a few nurses with carts on his way down the hall. 

In his arms, a bouquet of flowers – because he wasn’t entirely sure what else to do. In his pocket, your lost earring. (He had bribed Denji and Power with gum to spend the evening searching the spot where you had lost it. Power tried to eat it).

908. 910. 

912.

The door to your hospital room was closed. Nervous for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, Aki raised his hand up to the door and knocked twice. Do I have the right room?

Then, your voice rang out through the door – “Come in.”

He took a deep breath, smoothing his hands over his Public Safety uniform and his hair before he actually turned the knob and stepped into the room. Immediately the smell filled his nose – almost too much to bear. It was sharp and sterile and suddenly, he was two years younger, sitting up in his hospital bed with his head in his hands after realizing that his partner was really dead. Then, lingering just beneath the surface, was something distinctly you – lavender, clean laundry, something homey. Something that brought him back to the present.

Something that brought his eyes up to where you were rested – tucked away in the corner of the room, gazing out the window. There was a white gauze wrapped around your neck, tainted pink in the middle where you had been nicked by the devil. When you heard the door creak open, you glanced over slowly, timidly, like you weren’t sure what to expect.

Then your eyes were on him and he felt his stupid heartbeat kick up a notch.

Calm yourself, he reminded himself, Subordinate’s wife, remember?

“Hi,” He breathed out, sounding a whole lot more breathless than he intended. Why did he feel hot, all of a sudden? “I– uh… I wanted to apologize for yesterday.”

Your gaze dropped to the bouquet of flowers swaddled in his arm, then back up to his face.

“I never should have…” He trailed off, suddenly at a loss for words. This was a lot harder than he had originally thought it would be. “If I had just reacted faster, you wouldn’t have been hit. I’m sorry.”

I’m so fucking sorry.

You looked at him.

Not the way most people did – not polite or casual or distracted. Just… looked. Steady and soft, your lashes low, your body still beneath the blanket. That look landed in his chest like something weighted. He could feel it settle in deep, anchoring behind his ribs.

Your voice was just above a whisper. “The flowers need a vase.”

Aki blinked. For a second, he forgot what he was holding.

The bouquet in his hands — white lilies, a few roses, some baby’s breath — felt clumsy, too full in his grip. Like it didn’t belong. Like he didn’t belong.

But still, he nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, voice quiet. “I’ll… find something.”

You nodded, and your gaze dropped to your lap. You didn’t say anything else.

He turned and left without looking back.

The hallway outside your room felt colder somehow, quieter than before. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, and somewhere down the corridor, a machine beeped a steady, mechanical rhythm. But it was like all of it blurred into white noise. The only thing he could hear was the echo of your voice. The way it had hit him.

Aki found the nurse’s station just around the corner. He didn’t approach right away — lingered near the edge like he wasn’t sure how to ask. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Do you have… a vase? For flowers.”

One of the nurses looked up – a younger woman, her scrubs wrinkled, her hair pulled back into a high bun. She gave him a glance that flicked between his face and the bouquet in his hand.

“I think so,” she said after a second. “Give me a sec.”

She disappeared into a supply closet and returned with a clear glass vase and a small pair of scissors.

“You’ll want to trim the stems,” she added, holding both items out to him.

He took them without meeting her eyes. “Thanks.”

There was a single-stall bathroom nearby. He slipped in, locked the door, and stood there for a second, just breathing.

The mirror above the sink was slightly dirty. He caught his reflection in it – tie loosened, shadows under his eyes. He looked tired. He felt tired. But that wasn’t why his hands were shaking slightly as he set the vase on the edge of the sink.

No, he was nervous.

He filled it halfway with cool water from the tap, then turned back to the bouquet. One stem at a time. He didn’t know what he was doing – not really. He hadn’t brought flowers to anyone in years. Probably never like this.

He picked up the scissors and started cutting.

Snip.

Too high. 

Snip.

He shifted his grip, tried again. His fingers weren’t steady, but he took his time, lining each stem up before trimming it at an angle. The act gave his hands something to do — something small and careful and quiet. And maybe that was why he did it.

God, what the fuck am I doing?

When the last stem was cut, he slipped the flowers into the vase. Adjusted them. Adjusted them again. One of the lilies had bent slightly — he turned it, trying to get it to face the light.

He wiped the vase down with his sleeve, cleaned up the sink, and carried everything back down the hall.

When he reentered your room, you were still propped in bed, eyes half-lidded like maybe you’d dozed off. But the moment he stepped in, you looked up again.

That same look. The one that never failed to take his breath away.

Aki moved slowly, crossed the room in a few quiet steps, and placed the vase on the windowsill – not too close to the edge, but where it could catch the afternoon light. It hit the glass and scattered across the water. The flowers looked better in the sun. Alive. Fragile.

He turned to face you.

You watched him, not speaking. Your fingers rested loosely on the edge of the blanket, the gauze at your neck stark against your skin. There was a single IV drip to your right, ticking slow.

He meant to say something — anything.

But the words caught somewhere behind his teeth.

Show her the earring, He willed himself. 

Slowly, uncertainly, he reached into his pocket and produced the tiny ziploc baggie he’d kept stashed away in his pocket all morning. The one that held a tiny gold earring with a tiny pearl charm – the earring you’d lost.

And, fuck, the way your eyes brightened at the sight of it…

“You found it,” you breathed, eyes wide. Your voice was still soft, still hoarse from earlier, but the brightness in it nearly floored him. “I thought it was gone.”

He coughed, glanced down at the floor, then back at you. “It was near the… bench. Must’ve fallen out during the scuffle.”

Your smile crept slow and warm across your lips, and it knocked something loose in his chest.

“Thank you,” you said, gaze fixed on the tiny piece of gold. Then, after a pause: “Can you put it in for me?”

Aki froze.

Can you put it in for me?

Get your mind out of the fucking gutter.

His fingers went still around the plastic bag. The room felt smaller.

You tilted your head just slightly — exposing the soft line of your neck, the sweep of your hair pulled back behind your ear. It was damp in places, curled faintly at the tips. You looked… not well, no, but beautiful in a way that made his stomach twist. Soft and bare and open in a way you didn’t even seem aware of.

And you were asking him to touch you.

“Sure,” he said, quietly. He cleared his throat, tried again, steadier. “Yeah. Of course.”

He stepped forward, holding the bag carefully. Your eyes followed his every move.

Aki crouched beside the bed, knees cracking slightly under the strain. His hands were steady, but only just. He opened the bag, pulled the earring free between two fingers. It caught the light, casting a faint glint across your collarbone.

“I might be a little clumsy,” he murmured. “Don’t judge me.”

“I won’t,” you said, voice like breath. “I trust you.”

Holy shit. He nearly dropped it right then.

He reached up – slowly, carefully – and touched your earlobe with his thumb to steady it. Your skin was much, much warmer than he expected. He was so damn close, he could feel the pulse in your neck, see the faint flutter of your lashes.

You didn’t move. Didn’t blink. For a moment, he didn’t either.

He slid the post through the hole with a slow, practiced motion, and his knuckle brushed the curve of your jaw. The moment was small – technically innocent – but it jolted through him like electricity.

Fuck, I’m going crazy.

“It’s in,” he said, withdrawing his hand.

Your eyes were still on him. Unmoving. It was enough to make him self-conscious.

This is so wrong.

The earring sat perfectly in place. Like it had never been missing.

“You really found it,” you whispered.

He shrugged, looked anywhere but your face. “I can’t take all the credit. I had some help from my roommates.”

There was a long pause — the silence thick with something neither of you wanted to name.

You tilted your head again, just slightly. “You always do things like this?”

“Like what?”

“Keep pieces of people you’re not supposed to care about?”

His breath caught.

He met your eyes then. Really met them.

You weren’t smiling anymore.

Neither was he.

But god, the air between you – it was burning now. Not loud or obvious, but slow, like coals under ash. Just the weight of your gaze, the scent of lilies from the vase behind him, the trace warmth of your skin still on his fingers.

“He was mad at me, you know… After,” You broke the silence.

“Mad?” He repeated, still awfully careful to not upset you.

“He didn’t say it like that, but I could tell,” You sighed, “He didn’t like that I followed you out there. Thought it was reckless.”

Aki couldn’t help the frown that settled over his face, tugging his lips down at the corners, “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Maybe not,” You shrugged, “But I think he blames me anyway. He said I was lucky you were there.”

Aki could only blink, dumbfounded, “Did he?”

“I think I embarrassed him,” You added, “But I don’t feel embarrassed at all. I feel… safe.”

I’m going to lose my fucking mind in here.

Feeling an awful lot like an animal in a cage, Aki balled his fist up at his sides. He didn’t move – couldn’t move. “I was just doing my job.”

That damned smile was back on your pretty face again, “I saw your face after. You looked like… like you were scared.”

Then, much softer, Aki sighed, “I was.”

“For me?” You asked, like you were surprised that he even cared.

And, truthfully, he didn’t know why he cared.

“Yeah,” He replied.

But he could no longer deny it – he did. 

More than he probably should.

Aki decided that he was losing his fucking mind. Standing in his office, shifting his weight from side to side, his gaze was cast outside of the window – onto the busy streets of Tokyo below. To his left, Denji was droning on about some bullshit he couldn’t give less of a rat’s ass about – something about how he was definitely gonna get a smooch out of Miss Makima at the upcoming Public Safety ball, the one Aki had been dreading. His blue eyes scanned the streets for pedestrians, for cars, for anything that could take his mind off of you.

But, alas, the world had a cruel way of torturing him.

Aki stood at the window, his eyes scanning the busy streets below, but his mind was miles away — lost in the thought of you. The way you smiled at him. The softness in your eyes. The way his chest tightened just thinking about how screwed he was. He had no business feeling this way, but the fact that he couldn’t shake it only made everything worse.

Denji’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts with a sharp, “Hey, you good? You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

Aki blinked and straightened up. His throat tightened, but he quickly masked it. “Nothing,” he muttered, waving it off as if it was nothing. “Just... thinking.”

Denji narrowed his eyes, clearly not buying it. “Someone on your mind?”

Aki’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t let it show. He snapped back a little too quickly, trying to deflect the conversation. “Do you want to walk home?” he asked, his tone sharper than he intended.

Denji fell silent for a moment – a blissful, beautiful moment – clearly taken aback by the sudden shift, but he didn’t press further. Not for long, anyway. Aki could hear him grinning already.

“Well, whatever,” Denji said, shrugging as he leaned back in his chair. “Guess I’ll stop asking. But you are missing out. I’ve been practicing my moves for Miss Makima at the ball. She’s gonna love it.”

Aki looked over at him, a heavy sigh escaping him as he watched Denji try – and fail – to waltz, dramatically flinging his arms around. Aki’s lip curled into a smirk, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Aki muttered, rolling his eyes. He turned away again, trying to block out the ridiculous sight of his roommate prancing around.

But it was no use.

He could see it already – his mind’s eye playing out the scene with you instead. 

A slow waltz in a dimly lit ballroom. The soft brush of your fingers against his. The way you’d look up at him, and that soft, trusting smile of yours. It was all too easy to imagine, and far too fucking tempting.

He shook his head violently, trying to rid himself of the image. Focus, he told himself. Focus on something else.

Aki scrubbed the last of the plates in the sink, the warm water steaming against his skin as he methodically rinsed off the remnants of their late dinner. The kitchen was quiet, the faint clink of ceramic the only sound cutting through the silence. Denji was on the couch, not bothering to clean up after himself, as usual, his eyes glued to the TV. It was late – later than Aki had intended to stay up. 

“Hey,” Aki called over his shoulder, glancing at Denji as he dried his hands on the dish towel, “I’m going out for a smoke.”

Denji mumbled something incoherent in response, probably too distracted by whatever nonsense was on the screen to care. Aki didn’t blame him.

He grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door and stepped outside. The cool night air hit his skin immediately, refreshing, but it didn’t quite chase away the tightness in his chest. The cigarette between his fingers felt like a small relief, even though he knew it wouldn’t fix what was bothering him.

Before he knew it, there was a lit cigarette pinched between his index and middle finger, pressed right up against his lips. A nasty habit, he knew, but it was one he couldn’t shake.

He started walking without any particular destination in mind, his feet moving of their own accord. It wasn’t like he was planning on going anywhere specific — but somehow, he found himself heading down the quiet street toward your house.

It was stupid. It was reckless. He knew it. But here he was, as usual, walking toward a place that seemed to hold a gravitational pull over him.

And there you were. Sitting on the porch outside, completely at ease, cutting fruit. The soft glow from the porch light illuminated you in a way that made everything else fade away. You had on a pink nightgown, this time – a lacy one that he felt he was unworthy of seeing. It was cold out, and he couldn’t help the way his eyes flickered down to your chest, the peaks of your nipples that just barely poked through the fabric, before glancing back up to your face. 

Behave, he reminded himself.

You were focused on the task, oblivious to his presence, and for a moment, Aki just stood there, watching you.

It wasn’t until you noticed him, in fact, that you called his name. “Captain Hayakawa.”

Fuck, I’ll never get over the way my name sounds coming from her mouth, he thought. 

“You’re up late,” He commented – and, really, it was rich coming from him. “What are you doing outside?”

“Can’t sleep,” Was all you said before returning to your fruit-cutting mission. “My husband is upset with me. He didn’t like dinner.”

I would like anything you made me, Aki thought, but decided that it would be better to shut the hell up about it. Instead, he offered a half-hearted, “That so?”

You shrugged, “Not a big deal.”

Sounds like a big deal to me.

“I don’t think I’m very good at that sort of thing,” You continued – more abashedly, this time, “Being a housewife.”

Then, you laughed – a sweet, melodic sound. It reminded him of your pet birds, the ones that sang into the wee hours of the morning. He concluded that he would do whatever it took to make you make that sound again, even though, reasonably, it was none of his business. Still, there was something here – that much he couldn’t deny. There was something that lingered in the air whenever the two of you spoke, something like a magnet that kept drawing the two of you closer and closer together. He couldn’t help the way he felt about you, truly, and something about the way you peered up at him through those pretty lashes of yours told him that he wasn’t the only one who felt nervous.

Still, you were a married woman. There was no way that anything more could come from these small interactions. No matter how deeply he read into things, none of it changed the fact that you already had a man. 

You were already spoken for.

He squinted at you, bringing the end of the cigarette up to his lips and letting the smoke fill his mouth. “You don’t strike me as someone who’s bad at anything.”

You laughed again, and he had to pat himself on the back. “You don’t know me.”

No, I don’t, he thought. But I would like to.

He could get used to the sight of you – that was the most frightening part. He could get used to the way your pretty, rosy lips formed the sound of his name, the way you listened earnestly, head tilting to the side whenever he said something worth noting. He could get used to you.

Still, getting to know you would be a pleasure he would never know. You were married. To his subordinate, nonetheless.

“Maybe not. Just calling it how I see it,” He answered back, and the words felt dry on the back of his tongue, like there was so much more that he wanted to say and no way to say it. He took another puff, blew it out. The warmth of the cigarette rivaled the warmth in his cheeks, “There’s a Public Safety thing going on… a ball, later this week. You going?”

He had no right to know, honestly – let alone a right to ask.

“Yeah,” You answered. You dropped the last slice of the peach you had been cutting into the bowl on your lap. Then, tentatively, you reached for another. Your hands, gentle and small, like the porcelain fingers of a doll, looked like something he wouldn’t have minded holding. “He wants me to go.”

Her husband, right. He thought. The one that could come out here any minute now and see his wife talking to his Captain in the middle of the night.

“Figured,” He tilted his head back, craning it up to the ceiling, then blowing a spout of smoke up into the chilly air. 

You tilted your head to the side in that adorable way of yours, “What about you?”

“I don’t really have a choice,” he answered honestly, and, really, it was true. He was expected to come to those kinds of things. It would be seen as a sign of disrespect if he didn’t. While, under any other circumstances, he would have preferred to be in bed early, he figured that he wouldn’t mind going if it meant that he got to see you. Not even to talk – to watch, to observe, to admire. He would be okay with that alone. 

“Do you ever?” You asked him, “Captains don’t usually get out of things like that easily, do they?”

He huffed out something between a sigh and a laugh, “Rarely.”

“It’s formal, right?”

“Yeah,” He added, “Dinner, speeches, dancing… the whole nine yards.”

Truthfully, he’d been dreading it before you rolled into town. A while earlier, and he would have thought of nothing more than how insufferable some of his coworkers were – especially with a little liquor in their system. He’d resigned himself to standing off to the side all night with a drink in hand, avoiding eye contact and waiting for it all to be over.

But now?

Now, all he could think about was you.

You – in some quiet, elegant dress that clung to your frame just enough to keep him staring longer than he should. Your cheeks, a little flushed from wine or champagne, glowing under the lights. Your lips painted something soft, something subtle, something that would undo him if he looked too long.

He imagined the way you'd move – not rehearsed or polished, but easy. The way you'd laugh when your heel caught the floor, or when your husband’s hand led you into a turn too fast. He imagined you being spun in a slow waltz, the skirt of your dress fanning out just slightly, your eyes catching his for half a second too long across the ballroom.

Fuck, he was screwed.

“Do you know how to dance?” He found the words slipping out before he could stop them.

“I learned the waltz in school. Ages ago. I doubt I remember any of it, though. Why?” You gazed off somewhere in the distance, like the question took you back. He wished he could see into your mind, see what occupied it. 

See if he was on your mind nearly as much as you were on his.

“Just curious,” He admitted, flicking some of the ash from his cigarette into the bush. “It was a stupid… thing.”

Great conversational skills, Hayakawa.

He watched you carefully through the corner of his eye, almost afraid to meet your gaze head-on. You were still slicing fruit like you hadn’t noticed the way his hands were trembling slightly, like you couldn’t hear the quiet wreckage inside his chest.

The tension shifted – not thick, not heavy – just… different. Softer, maybe. Or sharper. He couldn’t really tell.

“I also have a stupid thing to tell you,” you said at last, voice barely louder than the night air between you. “I keep thinking about when you visited me at the hospital. I guess I… enjoyed it.”

And just like that, the floor tilted beneath him.

Fuck.

His breath caught somewhere behind his ribs. He felt like someone had hooked a hand into his sternum and pulled. Every coherent thought was flattened by the sound of your voice, by your honesty, by the impossible fact that maybe you’d thought about him, too.

Enjoyed it? Enjoyed him?

He stared straight ahead, afraid that if he looked at you, his face would betray just how undone he felt. Betray what you did to him.

Then, so casually it made his head spin, you added, “Here, take a peach. They’re good for smokers.”

He blinked down at the fruit you held out to him. His hand moved on autopilot, reaching for it. Your fingers brushed his – just barely – and he swore it fucking lit something on fire beneath his skin.

He brought the peach to his lips, but forgot to bite. You had no idea what you’d done to him.

Or maybe you did, and that was even worse.

Still, he knew better. He knew better. He should say thank you and walk away. He should forget this ever happened.

Instead, the words slipped past his restraint.

“All day long,” he said, voice hoarse. “I think about you all day long.” He paused. His throat was dry. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be saying this.”

There it was – the confession. Small, broken, way too fucking real.

He expected silence. Or discomfort. But when he dared to glance at you, your hands had stilled their cutting, and you were staring at the peach like you were trying to remember how to breathe.

What the hell was wrong with him?

She’s married, his mind screamed. She’s off-limits. 

And yet, he couldn’t take it back.

Fuck.

I’m a fucking idiot.

You turned toward him slowly, the knife stilled mid-slice, juice clinging to your fingers. Your hair shifted ever so slightly with the movement, catching the moonlight just right — soft and iridescent. Something flickered behind your lashes, unreadable. Vulnerable. Dangerous.

“That’s not stupid,” you whispered.

The words slipped between you like a thread pulled taut.

Aki forgot how to breathe. Just for a second – no longer – but long enough that he felt his chest hitch beneath his ribs. The air around him thinned, turned hot despite the night breeze. You weren’t looking at him anymore, not really – your eyes were cast somewhere to the side, like you were nervous to hold his gaze, but still, he felt pierced by the sheer weight of it.

He felt it again, that thing in his chest blooming fast and reckless – like fire catching on dry brush. It wasn’t welcome. It wasn’t safe. But it was there all the same, climbing higher into his throat, pressing in from every side.

God, he thought. I’m so fucked.

What was he supposed to do with that? With you sitting there on your porch with your fruit and your pretty nightgown and your quiet honesty, like you didn’t know you’d just upended his whole fucking day?

No. Not just his day. You’d tilted something inside him – Something he’d worked hard to keep buried. He wasn’t supposed to want things – not like this. Not soft, domestic, impossible things, and certainly not married things.

Then you looked at the lighter in his hand – his stupid, scratched-up lighter, the one Himeno left him – and the air shifted again.

“Your lighter. It’s nice.”

He blinked, momentarily thrown. “Yeah?” he said, trying not to sound as shaken as he felt. “You like it?”

You nodded once, gently as all hell.

Something possessive flickered in him. Not in the ugly way – more in the I-want-to-give-you-everything kind of way. He didn’t even think twice before pressing it into your hand.

“Take it,” he said.

Your eyes widened. “What?”

“I want you to have it,” he said again, lower this time. His voice felt too soft, too full. “Really.”

You took it slowly, fingertips grazing his as you accepted the little rectangle. You turned it over in your palm, thoughtful. “Okay,” you whispered. “Thank you, Captain.”

Captain

He should’ve let it end there.

But your voice, saying his title like that – formal and warm and intimate.

“…Aki,” he said, pulse loud in his ears. “Just Aki.”

You looked up at him, still holding the lighter.

“Aki,” you repeated, quiet as a promise.

And damn it all, he wanted to hear you say it again.

Aki dreamt of something pleasant for the first time that night. He dreamt of you.

The morning sun crept lazily across the floor, pooling in soft gold near his feet, but Aki didn’t move right away. He stood in the center of the living room, the coffee on the table growing cold, the silence stretching thick around him. The apartment was still. Too still.

He should’ve been getting dressed. Polished shoes. Starched collar. But instead… He was thinking about you.

The way you’d smiled last night when he asked if you knew how to dance. The soft laugh you gave when you said you’d learned back in high school – a half-shy little thing, like you were embarrassed to admit it.

The image hit him before he could stop it. You in a dress, something soft and clinging, swaying with the turn of a waltz. Your hand in his. 

He exhaled through his nose, Delusional. That’s what this was. Stupid, dangerous, completely inappropriate. But it didn’t stop the vision from burning behind his eyes.

And before he could think better of it, Aki shifted his weight. Moved his left foot forward. Then his right, side-step. One-two-three. One-two-three.

He found himself tracing the steps slowly across the floor, the echo of your imagined laugh haunting his ears. His fingers flexed, like they could feel your hand in his already. One turn. One pause. The gentle rhythm of a song that wasn’t even playing. Something in him ached at the thought of holding you like that – of having you close, even for a single dance, even if he knew it would be inappropriate.

Aki stepped again, more sure this time. A full circle. A spin that was almost graceful.

And then…

“Are you seriously dancing right now?”

The voice came to him like the sound of nails on a board.

Aki froze mid-step. Slowly turned.

Denji was standing in the hallway, shirtless, hair a mess, holding a half-eaten rice ball in one hand and gawking like he’d walked in on a crime scene.

Aki’s jaw tightened. “No.”

Denji squinted. “Bro, you were spinning.”

“It was stretching,” Aki said flatly.

“Oh yeah? That what you call it now?”

Aki reached for his coffee, brushing past him with a glare. “I’d shut up if you didn’t want me telling Miss Makima what I found on the computer after you used it.”

Denji made a dramatic zipping motion across his mouth.

Aki hated balls. Just as he suspected, this one was painfully dull. Though the scenery was nice – a lush ballroom with golden chandeliers over marble floors – he stood off to the side, in his usual spot. In his hand, he nursed his fourth glass of whiskey. He was only half-interested in the conversation he was engaged in – one with two commanders from Kyoto and Osaka and the Chief. 

“I’m telling you,” the Kyoto commander was saying, “--we’ve tracked three of the Devil traces to that northern corridor. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Gun Devil’s proxy is using the route for something.”

“Could be a trafficking line,” the Osaka one chimed in. “But it’s strange. Too clean. No collateral. Makes you think it’s either something new or someone’s gotten smarter.”

Aki nodded slowly, letting his gaze drift across the ballroom. He didn’t offer much in response. He’d heard it all before – theories, scraps of intel, half-assed leads that led nowhere. More often than not, it was just noise.

The Chief chuckled and sipped from his brandy glass. “That’s the thing about these bastards. They evolve. Just when you think you’ve cornered them, they slip right out of your hands.”

Aki hummed in agreement, eyes settling on the entrance of the ballroom as the doors opened.

His stomach dropped as you walked in.

And even with your husband beside you, your arm loosely hooked around his – you had the presence of someone who didn’t belong in any man’s shadow. He thought – briefly, of course – that you would look much better next to him.

What? 

The dress you wore was bold. A deep neckline that clung to your figure, hugging curves he had no fucking business looking at. It was a risky choice, especially for someone like you – soft-spoken, reserved, the kind who rarely wore anything that drew attention. But tonight, you were the center of attention.

Well, his, anyway.

Your husband placed a guiding hand on the small of your back, possessive in its casualness. Aki’s jaw tensed when he saw you gently brush it off. 

He felt a strange sort of satisfaction about it.

The Chief caught sight of you and broke into a wide, indulgent grin. “Well, well,” he said, loud enough for Aki to want to sink through the floor. “Look at this. The belle of the ball herself.”

You approached with a small, polite smile that didn’t touch your eyes. Aki’s grip tightened slightly around his glass. Oh, God.

“Goddamn,” the Chief added, eyes dragging a little too slowly across your silhouette. “Where on earth did you find her?” He slapped your husband’s shoulder with a laugh. “She’s got poise.”

Nakamura laughed along stiffly, adjusting his collar. “She cleans up nice.”

“Do you dance?” the Chief asked, this time addressing you directly. “You’ve got the look of someone who knows how to waltz.”

There was a beat. You glanced – just for a moment – in Aki’s direction.

And it was enough to ruin him.

He straightened slightly, chest tightening beneath his suit. He couldn't look away. Is it hot in here?

Your gaze drifted back to the Chief. “I learned once,” you said softly, “in high school.”

The same thing you’d told him earlier that week.

The Chief grinned wider. “Well then, may I?”

The question wasn’t directed at you. It was directed at your husband.

Misogynistic asshole.

I have to save her. He wanted to say something – had to – but it was the Chief, and you were certainly not his to publicly defend.

Aki spoke, sharp and sudden. “Chief – about the proxy route. You mentioned something about the tracing going quiet near the border district?”

It was transparent, even to himself, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted the attention off of you.

The Chief turned his head, barely. “Mm?” Then he laughed, eyes still on you. “Later, Hayakawa.”

Fuck.

Your husband leaned down, whispered something low and clipped in your ear. Aki couldn’t hear what it was, but he saw the way your jaw clenched, the twitch in your brow, and he knew it was something harsh. Still, you turned toward the Chief and nodded.

“I’d be honored,” you said.

The Chief extended his hand. You took it.

Aki felt his stomach sink as the two of you stepped onto the floor. Your husband watched with a smug sort of pride, satisfied.

If you were mine, I would never let another man talk to you that way.

Aki didn’t even realize he was holding his breath until he forced himself to look away.

The string quartet picked up.

And then you moved.

It wasn’t the Chief’s lead that made the dance beautiful—it was you. Even with your expression unreadable, even when your hand rested lightly in his, you glided like you belonged in a painting. Light caught in the curve of your neck, spilled along the exposed line of your shoulders, and Aki… 

Aki felt like he couldn’t fucking breathe.

Then your gaze lifted, and it found him.

He froze.

You weren’t smiling. You weren’t coy. 

No, you looked at him like he was the only thing tethering you to this place. Eyes wide. Helpless. A wordless plea passed between you, like maybe, if he were braver, he’d storm over and take you away from all of it.

But he couldn’t.

Your husband stood nearby, watching with a drink in his hand and a lazy, smug grin. As if this was all some game he was already winning, as if he were content with selling you out as long as it meant he would get on the Chief’s good side.

Aki's grip on his glass tightened. His chest twisted.

I can’t take this.

He turned on his heel, cut through the crowd, shoved open the first door he could find.

The bathroom was empty, quiet, too white. Too bright. He staggered to the sink and braced himself on the edge, setting his glass to the side.

God, help me, he thought. He was lost – gone beyond reprieve.

Cold water. That’s all he could do. Cold water to his face, again and again, like it might rinse you out of his system. He ran the faucet on its highest settings, cupped his hands beneath it, and splashed the water onto his face. It was brisk, it was refreshing, but it did nothing to calm the incessant thought of you.

He gripped the edge of the sink, chest rising and falling too fast, too sharp. The cold water dripped from his chin, down his collar, and into the front of his shirt, but he didn’t move to wipe it. Didn’t even look at himself in the mirror. Just kept his eyes down, his knuckles pale against porcelain, breathing like he’d run a mile uphill.

He had no right to feel this way.

You weren’t his.

You’d never been his.

And yet – the sight of you, in that dress, in someone else’s arms, looking at him like you wanted him to do something, anything – it had twisted something inside him so hard it still hadn’t let go. He was pathetic. Weak. He didn’t even have the spine to look away when he should’ve, let alone stop it from happening.

The room tilted just slightly, the floor seeming to slope beneath his feet.

Probably the alcohol, he thought. He hadn’t had much, but he hadn’t eaten either, and his head swam just enough to make the edges blur.

If Himeno were here…

She’d slap the back of his head. Tell him to get his shit together. Maybe hand him a glass of water and a cigarette, call him an idiot for letting a girl and a couple of neat whiskeys undo him like this. And she’d be right.

He thought of your face again. The way your eyes found him across the ballroom, wide and unreadable, the way you looked like you wanted to be anywhere else but in that man’s hands. And the worst part?

He couldn’t do a goddamn thing to fix it.

He stayed like that for a moment, maybe longer, just breathing through it, willing the ache in his chest to dull, willing the image of you to go the hell away.

And then, after what had to have been a few minutes too long, the door creaked open.

Aki didn’t move. Didn’t lift his head. But his entire body went still.

He looked up slowly, eyes flicking to the mirror. And there you were.

His breath caught.

You weren’t supposed to be here. Not now. Not when he was trying so hard to forget the way you looked at him out on that dance floor. Not when he was still reeling from the sight of your husband’s hand on your back. Not when every instinct in his body was screaming at him to stay the hell away.

But you didn’t stop. You came closer.

Closer.

His pulse climbed with every step you took. You stood in front of him now, the space between your bodies taut with unspoken things. Your perfume was subtle — something soft and sweet that made his head swim. You tilted your head slightly, like you were about to say something, but the words never came.

Just that look.

Open. Waiting.

And then – God help him, like a magnet was strapped to his chest – he leaned in.

God, you were intoxicating.

He told himself it was nothing. Just a shift of weight. Just curiosity.

But when your breath mingled with his, soft and warm and so very close, his composure crumbled. His restraint, already threadbare, snapped entirely the moment you stood up on the tips of your toes, until your mouth brushed against his.

It wasn’t a clean kiss. It was probably muddied by the copious amounts of alcohol in his system, but it was real. It knocked the breath from his lungs.

And, fuck, you kissed him back. The way you kissed him – slowly, like you’d been imagining it – made something inside him break. His hands found your waist, tentative at first, until your fingers curled in the fabric of his coat and tugged him closer.

I feel like an animal.

Then it changed. The kiss deepened. Grew desperate, and he lost control of himself entirely. 

He slid his hands up your sides, palms gliding over the curve of your back, and the high-pitched noise you made against his mouth nearly brought him to his knees. It was something like a whimper. He pressed you gently, but firmly, back against the sink, breath warm, heart hammering, mouth grazing yours again and again, like he couldn’t get enough of you, and fuck, he really couldn’t.

She’s kissing me. She’s kissing me. The thought bloomed in his mind, disbelieving, delirious.

And God, she tastes so fucking good.

The warmth of you. The way you felt against him. It was too much. 

It was everything.

He wanted to stay there forever, in that suspended moment where none of it mattered. Where the only thing that existed was the feel of your body under his hands, the flutter of your breath, the soft, almost pained sound you made when he kissed you just a little deeper, a little harder.

But then– your hands. On his chest.

He paused.

You broke the kiss, slowly. As if neither of you really wanted it to end.

You looked up at him, dazed. Eyes wide, lips parted, breath shaky. His own heart was threatening to beat out of his chest.

And just like that, you were gone.

You slipped out from his arms without a word, leaving him cold and dry. Just a final glance at him over your shoulder, something swimming in your eyes that he desperately wanted to understand.

Tell me you need me. Tell me you need me the way I need you.

But, no, instead, the door clicked shut behind you.

Aki stood frozen. The space you’d left behind was still impossibly warm.

Then, with a harsh breath, he dropped his head to the sink, groaning.

Fuck my life.

It wasn’t supposed to happen. He hadn’t even meant to kiss you. He’d meant to stop it. Really.

But the moment had swallowed him whole – your mouth, your hands, the heat of your skin beneath his palms. It had felt like falling, and maybe he hadn’t tried hard enough not to. 

Hell, maybe he didn’t want to.

He stood there a while. Just breathing. Replaying all of it – the sound you made against his mouth, the way you’d looked up at him when it broke apart, like something had cracked open between you.

He could still feel your lips on his.

Still feel your body under his hands.

Still feel the loss of it.

When he finally staggered out of the bathroom, he barely registered the crowd. The music had changed to something slower now, richer. Candlelight flickered against polished floors.

He walked like he was sleepwalking, caught somewhere between a dream and reality, adjusting his tie with a hand that still shook. But he made it back to the main floor. Back to his usual spot, where the chief was already mid-conversation with the same higher-ups from Kyoto and Osaka.

And your husband.

Of course.

You stood beside him, calm and perfect, looking like something out of a fucking oil painting. Your hair was swept just-so, your cheeks dusted with a pink hue, and your expression – demure, unreadable – gave no hint of what had just happened only a few minutes earlier in the marble bathroom down the hall.

You didn’t look at him, and that was worse somehow. 

Aki felt like someone had hollowed him out and left him standing there with a drink in his hand, pretending.

The chief caught sight of him and waved him over with that wide, boisterous smile of his. “Ah, Hayakawa. We were just talking about heading out for drinks next week.”

Your husband chuckled and clapped a hand on one of the other men’s shoulders. “Yeah, I told the old man I’d come, and then I remembered I’d already promised my wife we’d go out that night. So I’ll just bring her along.” He grinned at you, clearly amused with himself. “She won’t mind.”

God, he’s such an asshole. Aki swallowed, but it stuck somewhere halfway down.

“Bring someone if you want,” your husband added. “A lady friend, or something. Could be fun.”

He glanced at you. You didn’t return his gaze.

Aki’s jaw clenched. He could treat you better. He wouldn’t humiliate you in front of a room full of people. Wouldn’t make you feel invisible – like an accessory to someone else’s night.

He’d remember your plans. He would never complain about your cooking.

He would actually listen to what you liked – what you needed.

But instead, all he could do was stand there, pretending he was just another man with a glass in his hand and nothing at stake. Pretending the way your husband put an arm around you didn’t kill him a little bit inside.

Pretending he wasn’t head over heels for you and that damned smile of yours.

a/n: oh my god i was so obsessed with this movie when i saw it. i would highly suggest you all watch it - its on tubi! i will say that the sex scenes are... ridiculously graphic, but i digress. this fanfic actually WILL BE SHORT i swear.... i have it planned out LMFAOOAOAO!!!! i wanted to slip you all a lil smth extra to make up for my negligence to post the pornstar chapter lol. please let me know your wants/likes/comments, as always, and i'll see you lovelies next time! muah!!!

credits: I obviously do not own csm or anything related to it. please do not reproduce, copy, or translate my works anywhere. dont fk w me im a bruja.

also: come find me on my wattpad if u wanna interact more!

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a man of calm nights. those nights, now, were haunted with images of you.

his life now was a poorly made silhouette of your own, solely to ease the cruelty of your illusions. almost as if begging for mercy. he, every morning, made the breakfast you loved, listened to your favorite songs, used your perfume at nights, bringing it to his nose and inhaling with hunger, his skin itching to touch yours.

his soul was unmistakably entwined with yours. he couldn’t think of any other explanations for his pitiful state, his miserable existence without you.

and you were gone. the cruel woman you were, leaving your ghost behind with him, your name for him to carry around, sour on his tongue, you were gone and you were content.

not crumbling like he did.

not just seconds away from groveling.

but put together. going to work every morning with the same bewitching smile, the same fragrance that could bring any man to their knees, the same tone lingering within your voice which vowed to never leave him alone.

he crumbled anytime your gaze found his desperate face and smiled upon him, as if his despair meant nothing for you, as if the yearning glistening through his eyes was not reaching its way to you.

so he tried.

after spending his days with complete misery, a wretched man living with the shadow of the woman he loves, he yearned for you to have him back.

it started with expensive flowers, your favorite ones with lovely meanings, scattered before your door with notes attached to them, your favorite poems.

a letter he wrote to you, hidden somewhere in your notebook. with the ink you adored, in his handwriting in the way you envied. your name etched upon the expensive paper. his words raw and vulgar on it.

a perfume bottle you found on your doorstep next day, a handmade fragrance with all your favorite tones. a hobby you’ve always wished to learn but never had time to do so. a perfume he made solely for you.

a perfume in your name.

then him. bare with his feelings and his expression begging for you to listen to him, only once.

you gazed through his face, his figure, the man who was so broad and composed. the man you knew, before he crushed what you had with his very calm mind and structured hands.

you were furious at him. you despised him, even.

and you despised how you couldn’t even deny him. how hard you’ve tried over the weeks you’ve spent without him, to look as unaffected as he did. to not miss him, to not miss his touch.

only once, you told him before letting him in inside, to frame him with your scent end warmth he had been searching for. upon seeing the glint in his eyes and the desperation in them, you knew how this would end.

his promises and pleas were whispered against your ear with such heat, his devastated touches searched your skin with longing, his tears wetted your cheeks. he kissed you urgently with moist lips, as if he vowed to prove you how foolish he was to lose you, and how he would do anything for you to have him back. his eyes sought yours under the dim light falling upon your figures beneath the moon, his heart worshiped you with regret.

he knew, surely, that you wouldn’t forgive him, not that easily.

but he was present. impossible to ignore. lurking outside your strictly builded walls with sincere apologies.

days after, you found a silky dress, in your favorite color, in front of your door with a note and address attached to it. with a shoe from your favorite brand, and a necklace adorned with pink diamonds.

nanami kento, was a man of desperate gestures and trembling words. and you, from the day he’s lost you, knew that he would win you back.

10k words later, it’s finally here 😭

This story has changed SO MUCH since I first started posting about it. At first, it was supposed to just take place in the Sengoku period. Now we have Taisho AND Sengoku action because it turned into a reincarnation story. Koku was supposed to kill Reader’s parents. Now it’s… this. :p

ALSO. There won’t be any explicit NSFW in this. The violence will be canon-typical, but boink is fade to black/implied.

The script he had planned out in his head to greet Makima, the words he had picked out to describe the mission, the expression he'd wear when she'd praise him. All falling at his feet as he struggled to volley back the softly murmured pleasantry you aimed at him. He caught a flash of your dark eyes as he stood rigidly next to your chair. Your face upturned to him, and he was not ready to look at the gentle openness of it. He stared ahead, beyond Makima's frame and into the bright light of the window.

He was cold to you that first introduction, with the frigidity of a glacier winning against the the sun. The blood rushing through his ears almost covered Makima's request of him taking you along for a couple outings, just till you got the ropes, since Himeno was away for the next bit anyway. If he didn't mind. And of course he didn't. But the thought ran Aki ragged that night. The nape of your neck floated over his sight, making him blind to his usual routine. He dropped a glass, incorrectly folded a shirt, bumped into the counter. He hissed at the bruise that would form on his sharp hip, but fell asleep tracing it while he though about your "hello".

The next morning you were actually on the bottom step of the stairs that lead up to his apartment. He had frozen at the top, foot stilled midair. His heart felt full and flat on his tongue, and Aki forced his body to move through it. His steps rang out sharply against the metal of the stairs, and he watched you flinch with a voyeuristic pleasure. He tried to find the words to say as he neared you. Good morning? Hello?

"Let's go." And his feet didn't miss a beat as they pounded on the step beside you and moved on . You scrambled up to follow him, his long legs covering an expanse of distance that only grew despite your best efforts. His hand slapped at the side of his car, wrenching the door open and sliding inside. You jogged the last couple meters to the door, and Aki considered leaving it locked. A twinge in his heart made him press the switch the moment after your hand touched the handle.

You hadn't said a word and he hadn't even looked into your face yet. You sat blank next to him and Aki was terrified you could hear his blood, his heart. He almost sighed with relief when the engine burst to life, the soft rumbling and the tinny music blanketing his worry.

"What do we know about this one?" You finally broke the silence as the car quieted, nestled into the side of a shady street that looked like hundreds of others in the city. "About this devil, I mean."

"Enough." The word was thrown over his shoulder as he climbed from the seat. Aki hated himself. Why couldn't he just hand you the debrief that was sitting in the console. Where was this coming from? The faceless form of you stood by the car until Aki had reached the doorway. The world paused into a standoff.

"Tonight I'll ask Makima for a different person to shadow." You relented first and Aki's eternally straight shoulders almost slumped, an acrid mix of relief and regret pulling them down. "Just put up with me for today. I'm scared that I'll get you hurt, or hurt myself if I go in there without knowing what you know. If there even is anything. It's really worrying me. But I can't let you go in alone."

Aki wasn't used to someone admitting they were scared. That wasn't a word people used in this line of work. To admit that was to show your belly, readying it for a kick or knife. He could imagine the bell of Himeno's laugh, or the way Fushi would pounce on the softness and scorn it till it hardened.

"Stay out here then." His voice was curt, shadow lightly by disdain. A half step away from a sneer. He wanted you out, away from him. So he could think again properly, breathe again. It was met with a quiet, choked sound and then the louder slam of his car door. By the time he had turned you were already up the path and pushing past him, kind enough to let your form slide instead of shove against his as you barrelled into the home.

"What the fuck-?" Aki exclaimed before following behind you, his face burning with rage. Less at you, more at his mind for replaying the way the line of your body had traced his, giving him shape. You had disappeared around the corner and Aki dashed through the rooms, trying to catch up but you cleared them quickly. All he could see was the flash of your black suit jacket. He opened his mouth, ready to scold you when he realised the pounding sound wasn't just his own heart. Your head turned slowly to look at the door to the basement, and his gaze followed yours.

Before he could warn you, you stalked quickly to the door and threw it open. The pounding got louder and he saw you inhale slowly. A hand want to your head, lifting the bun that rested against your neck to show the soft skin and hairs at your nape. Aki winced as you grabbed a lock of hair and ripped it out. You let it fall to the floor and the curls began to straighten, shivering as they grew longer and longer. So this was one of your contracts. You looked back at Aki and he met your gaze this time, too overwhelmed to remember to look away. The hair was now spires that went to your knees, spiky and hard. They were a deep black, and reminded him of an onyx knife he had coveted once as a child. One that had sat in the window of an eclectic shop near one of his brothers specialists. He pulled himself out of the reverie, nails digging into his palms and finding the familiar half moon scars.

"What do we know about this one?" You repeated, and the soft of your voice had curdled. It was clipped and pointed and Aki felt a deep shame despite himself. He felt the sense of loss at the way you wouldn't face him fully, half turned as though to run

"Small class of organ devil, from civ visual reports. Not that strong. It's killed 3. Nothing about gasses or toxicity, nothing about any other barriers. Dispatch, don't take it home. No contracts. The only other note was that it was soft."

You nodded and set down the stairs, Aki moved in close behind you while minding the shivering spikes.

Aki's eyes slipped carefully over the bodies. He knew if he focused too closely he would see the ages, the hair, the blank eyes. One looked small. He couldn't afford to feel the deep sickness he always did when he was too late. Instead he focused on the thing in the corner. And what a thing it was, what a mass that struggled to be comprehended. It was tissue and wet and pulse. He could see where the description "soft" fit it. How else to describe how the flesh seemed to fold into itself, and where it touched it seemed to bruise. The devil raised what acted as its head from the body it was resting on. The single eye, a burning bright blue fixated on Aki, and the man drew his sword with his next breath.

The next few moments were crystalline in their familiarity. Despite the novel moves he stepped he had walked this path over and over again. But this time you walked beside him, with your sharp spires growing through the flesh, holding it in place for a well timed strike of his katana.

The final movement came quickly, the one Aki could feel would set them free of this task. But before he could arch his katana to completion, something shot out from the viscera. It seemed to be an artery, wrapping around his wrist tightly, though still cascading blood, harsh in it's vermillion.

"Wait." Came the hiss from the devil. "Wait, don't. Not yet. Let me make a deal, you guys like that don't you? Deals?" The voice was pitched and falsetto. A sharp spike erupted from the ground, piercing the arterial limb that held Aki in place. He wanted to shoot you a grateful look but couldn't afford turning around. Aki finished the movement of his strike, the blade singing towards where the baleful eye stared at him, but it blinked and reappeared in another quadrant of the beast's "face". A slit appeared below it, and it gaped open to speak. "Come on. I could give you her. "

"What?" Both of you gasped in unison. A heat began to paint Aki's face.

"Her heart. I could give you her heart." The voice seemed to deepen now, purring. Each part of the devil pulsed in an almost unison, one side barely after the other. With each pump blood pooled around Aki's feet.

"Give, m-me?" You sputtered, the incredulity in your voice making it break.

"Well, you already have him."

That made Aki turn. Not all the way, just chin towards shoulder, to catch the sight of you from the periphery of his vision. That was all the devil needed, retracting itself with a squelch towards the veins it had crept to the basement window while the hunters were distracted.

Sharp spikes erupted from the dirt floor, following it's bloody path and Aki lunged towards the devil, a strangled cry of frustration erupting from his throat. It squeezed itself through the window and out onto the street. You were already up the stairs, already on the road, already running in the direction of the smell of iron. Aki following close behind. But the blood trail disappeared soon, and the slapping of the feet on concrete slowed to a defeated drag. In silent agreement you both made your way back to the car.

He sat down hard in his seat, the frustration feeling like a collar. He'd have to explain this to Makima. Maybe up the ranking of the devil. He'd have to go back call in a clean up crew for the bodies. He'd have to fill out those damned forms. He'd have to-

Aki froze as you slid into the seat beside him. Would your voice be as sharp as the spikes you wielded? The shame wrapped itself around his core. To have let a devil get away in front of you, for what the devil had said. He pretended not to know what it meant.

"I'm sorry." You said, and the softness in your voice unclenched Aki's heart for him. He looked at you now, fully. Taking in the brown skin, the full lips, the dark eyes, the way your forehead curved, the way your cheeks softened, the curls that had escaped the tightly done bun at the nape of your neck. He almost started when you continued to speak, so lost in the dedication of you to his memory. "I shouldn't have gone in so fast, we could have talked about it more. And I just didn't move fast enough, if I had been able to stick it then you-"

"Stop." Aki blurted and you looked wounded. Did you expect the same ice he had given you before too? Aki wanted to adjust his tone but could not find where that dial existed.

"You didn't do anything wrong. I hesitated. I'm the senior, you're not even supposed to be responsible for this. Makima will understand." He paused, breathing carefully. "Don't blame yourself." The words were kind enough, he thought. Even if the tone was stone.

You leaned back into the seat, but Aki could tell you were still staring at him.

"Thank you."

He nodded in response, suddenly unable to say more.

"That's unusual for you, Aki." Makima mused from behind her desk, her kaleidoscope eyes locking him into place. You stood beside him, head straight and arms behind you. From this angle he could see the way you twisted and fidgeted your fingers, and he wanted to cover your hand with his. Just to stop you from distracting him.

"I'm sorry, Makima. It'll be my focus if you allow it."

"Sure." She chirped, her smile bright and warm. Aki raised under it, but couldn't help himself stealing a sight of you from the corner of his eye. Makima followed his gaze like a hunting dog.

"And who will you take as your partner? Unless you think you're better off alone."

"Her." It was instantaneous, and his voice cracked with the force of it. He coughed for a second, correcting himself. "Y/n. I'll take y/n with me."

Makima cocked her head, the smile widening. Aki remembered a book with a cat clutched in his brother's hand, Alice in Wonderland. The cat had been smiling the way Makima was now. "It's only fair," she almost purred. "Y/n, you have to make up for distracting our poor Aki, okay? Be useful to him."

"Of course." You bowed slightly as Makima dismissed the both of you. As Aki's hand reached the door Makima called out.

"Oh, by the way. See if you can bring this one back. You both have permission to make a contract if it makes it easier." Her tone was light. "Bye bye now, good luck!" The final words almost pushed the both of you out of the room, into the silent cold hallway. The filtered light from the windows, interrupted by the large trees that played with the sun, made your skin glow. Aki was only able to sneak glances.

"Why? Thank you but, I thought..." You trailed off, hands in front of you now but still fidgeting. Aki noticed the nail grazing over skin, picking away at the thinnest parts. Without thinking he reached out, placing two fingers over your twitching hand. You stilled immediately, staring down at the contact. He gazed at you, and felt something inside him shift, like plates of earth settling home. He swallowed past the change, feeling heady with it. Aki moved his hand away, looking out the window to the dappled sunlight.

"It's nothing. Don't mention it." His voice was curt again, but as he turned he thought he caught the edges of your smile. That carried him to the next morning, to finding you on the bottom step again. And again the next day, and after that. Each day he would prepare to catch his breath, and every time he'd lose to you.

The slamming at the door could only be Himeno's. Aki could hear every centimeter of her hand make contact with the wood and he mentally apologised to his neighbours before throwing the door open. She stopped mid slap and smiled widely.

"Wow, he's dressed already! Usually this is the only thing you'll be late for." She teased, reaching out to pinch the deep navy overshirt Aki had painstaking picked out. He batted her hand away, distracting her with a cigarette before locking the door. She lit it eagerly with a lighter produced from seemingly midair and they set off into the cool blue evening. Aki was glad that the Himeno had chosen a restaurant close enough to walk. Himeno chatted brightly as they strode out of the quiet side street and onto the busy main faire. People flitted from bar to restaurant, stood on sidewalks in clouds of smoke, lovers leaned together in alleyways, and Aki searched for your face in all of them.

"What has got you so eager to get to my makeup birthday dinner, huh?" Himeno's sharp elbow made contact with Aki's rib and he hissed. She was a half step behind him, leaning forward with the effort of catching up. Aki refused to meet her gaze, pretending to be interested in the tableauxs of the restaurants they passed by. He caught her elbow again.

"I'm just excited to give you your present." He said, sidestepping around a man who had stumbled out of an especially noisy club. He wonder if you were there already. Who would you be sitting by? He was the one you knew the most, you would want to sit next to him wouldn't you? Through the chatter in his mind he heard Himeno stop in her tracks, even though it took him a couple strides to slow down and turn. She was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, the crowd milling around her. She smiled, big and wide.

"This one?" She asked, holding up the lighter,the kanji of her name catching the light of a street lamp. Oh. He had given it to her yesterday, the day she had returned from visiting family. How could he forget he did that? The memory of you entering the office hit him like gut punch. You hadn't been wearing your usual suit jacket, only the crisp white button up and Aki remembered staring at the contrast of your skin against the collar. Fuck. Aki glowered now, turning back sharply and setting off down the street. Himeno crowed with laughter all the way up to his side. "You lied to me! You have to actually tell me now that I caught you."

Aki remained silent, regretting ever opening his mouth. "Is it Makima? She's not going to be there today, I thought you knew that." Himeno searched his profile for any response, and Aki was greatful they were finally infront of the restaurant. He opened the door for Himeno and glared at her till she walked in, tittering the whole way.

The private table at the back was full of familiar faces. Aki entered the small room first and stepped way for Himeno, who all but danced her way in to cheers. Amongst the rabble Aki searched the sea of bodies for the one he had been thinking of all day. He couldn't find you, and felt his heart tighten. He all but slumped into his seat. Himeno took her place to his right, side eyeing him.

"What a sour face. There's the Aki I know." She said fondly, passing along a tall glass of beer. It smelled crisp and clean, and the warm taste of rice undercut it as Aki put it to his mouth. He passed it back to her quickly and all but shoved it to her mouth, worried that she would start guessing about why his demeanor had changed. The stream of alcohol that poured towards her helped and they lost an easy hour beginning to order appetizers, more drinks, getting the usual coworker catch up out of the way. But Aki felt your absence through it all, and strained his ears every time you were mentioned in passing.

"How's it going with the noobie, Hayakawa?" Fushi finally asked him outright as he poured a fresh glass for himself before offering the pitcher to Aki. Aki nodded and the light haired man began to fill one for him too. "I heard you guys got into a little trouble."

Himeno gasped, slamming her hand on the table. "Oh yes! I go home for two weeks and all of a sudden you're messing up. With new blood at that!" She shook her head, cradling the open bottle of sake to her chest. "I expected better of you, kouhai."

Aki rolled his eyes at Himeno as he accepted the glass. "We let a devil slip and haven't been able to find it since."

"That's pretty rough. What was it?"

"Heart devil." Aki thought back to its words and tried to drink away an oncoming blush.

"Wouldn't guess that's too strong. I hope she's not slowing you down. She kinda seemed like the type."

Before Aki could correct him, his heart raging at the insult, Tendo leaned over from her spot by the end of the table.

"She was with me her very first day. She was great." The woman's face twisted, making her scar scrunch. "Anyway, I thought you guys were taking down devils regularly?"

"We are," Aki said, shifting in his seat to dispel the energy of his anger. "It hasn't been the one Makima assigned though. The leads keep going to other devils." The heads around the table nodded at the familiar tale. "She is strong." He couldn't explain how well you worked with him. Your quick manipulation of the stalagmites that held devils in place for him, how you always seemed to guess where the next blow was aimed and sent a shield in it's place. You were a quick learner, you were smart. He felt the praise of you rise like smoke through him, and he bit it back.

"Where is she from, anyways?" Someone asked, and Aki knew all eyes were turned on him.

"I don't know." He admitted, and Himeno cocked her head.

"You've been partnered with her for... Two weeks. You don't even know where's she's from?"

"We don't talk." Aki's mouth barely moved as he said this. He didn't want to explain the hours of silence between the two of you either, broken only by clipped instructions from him, and soft sounds of understanding from you. At least he was giving you the information now. At least he was breathing beside you now, able to clear his mind to a soft murmur and still his heart to something mangeable. They wouldn't understand that was a victory in itself.

"I hope you're not being mean to her, Hayakawa." Himeno tsked, taking another sip of her drink and then admiring the glass. "You're cold, but not that cold.'"

"Whose being mean to the new girl?" Asked Kishibe . The grizzled old man returned from his smoke break, shrugging off his coat, handing it to the young attendent who buzzed away with it. "Certainly not Kurose." Aki glanced over at Kurose. The man was smiling, twisting the wrapper of a straw between his fingers. He had been quieter than usual since your name had been brought up. "You were all but doing a mating dance in the parking lot for her the other day." This made Kurose smirk and toss the wrapper at Kishibe. Kishibe batted it away, grinning back. Aki stared at Kurose openly now, and he met the gaze with what felt like an invitation to lock antlers. The smirk seemed fixed to him now, and betrayed a sense of smugness that made Aki's stomach churn. The alcohol seemed to rise into Aki's chest cavity, filling him with a bubbling anger. He wanted to wipe that look off the man's face with the nearest beer bottle, he wanted to call on whatever forces available to-

"Cigarette break!" Himeno interrupted, launching up and pulling Aki by the collar. "Anybody else?" The rest of the gathered waved off the invitation, the taste of their own cigarettes still strong enough from their recent break."You're going again quick Himeno." Kurose said, and Aki could feel his words slide across the table and wrap around his wrist. "Anymore and you'll be worse than Kishibe."

"I can only hope!" Himeno answered over her shoulder as she marched Aki towards the side door. The cool air enveloped Aki, and he accepted the cigarette Himeno lit with her new lighter gratefully.

Himeno was kind enough to let Aki get halfway through the cigarette before she kicked at the side of his leg. They were standing with their backs to the brick wall,and Aki could feel the spikes of hardened dirt pulling at the fibers of his shirt as he leaned away, glaring at her.

"What?" He snapped and she raised her hands, cigarette bobbing precariously on her bottom lip.

"Nothing! Nothing." She paused for a moment to take it between her fingers, the cherry red glowing as she inhaled. "Just happy I figured out the truth."

Aki wanted to bark back a retort, but a wave of tiredness overwhelmed him. He had been stiffened all week with his anger, with the ice that solidified his spine. His friend could see that plainly.

"What's wrong with her?" Aki flinched at the question. How could she even ask that?

"N-nothing, nothing at all. She- she's been great. " Aki winced at the repetitions, the words catching in his throat despite the force behind them. He could feel his tongue thick and full as it lazed behind his teeth, and it reminded him of choking. Despite the growing agitation he took a breath, allowing his stomach to push out and diaphragm to drop deep and low. His lungs filled with the cold city air, chasing the history of smoke from them. Himeno waited patiently.

"She hasn't done anything wrong." He said after a stretched, quiet moment.

Himeno sighed with the weight of a thousand lives, and Aki wanted to roll his eyes at her. "You know you're allowed to like girls right?"

Aki twisted his mouth. Like girls. It was such a pitiful description. He wasn't an elementary schooler in the yard, staring at the pretty girl on the swings. He was... An adult. Busy. Too focused on his mission. (Alone, a voice unbidden from the back of his brain). He didn't have time for butterflies, so that couldn't be it.

"It's not that. She just... Bothers me." Aki uncrossed his arms, realising how tightly they were pressed to him. He took another drag of the cigarette, darkening the clear air in his lungs.

"Don't you know boys are mean to girls they like?"

"I'm not a child, Himeno. "

"No. You're a big boy now. So use your big boy words."

Aki leaned further into the wall, cigarette burning down itself. Himeno remained quiet and when he looked up at her, she gestured for him to speak, expression exasperated.

"The way I feel around her bothers me." Himeno remained quiet and he shifted, uncomfortable and unable to continue.

"You like her."

"I don't." He replied, the impulse to deny it feeling hot in his throat.

"Then what?" She asked, throwing her hand, up. A dot of ash floated down from her cigarette, landing on her shoulder. She brushed it off with annoyance before resuming her caricature of exasperation. "You're a nervous wreck, you keep preening yourself in every reflection you find, you almost fought Kurose of all people-" Aki's brow furrowed as he interrupted

"He's being annoying-"

"Same way y/n is? Will you beat both of them up? I'm sure they'll have a lovely time bandaging each other's booboos."

Aki could feel his face morph into a snarl and Himeno snapped her fingers, pointing an accusatory hand at his face.

"See! That!" She said smugly. "There we go." Aki swatted her hand away, fixing his features into something plain. Himeno shrugged.

"You can try to lie to me, to yourself. To y/n even." Her voice was low, the playfulness leaching from it. "But Aki, you know as well as I do how little we get from this life. How little time and how little joy. You deserve that, as much as anyone would. Let yourself crush." She flicked the butt of the cigarette dangerously close to his shoe, but Aki knew better than to flinch. "Or don't. Stay in your sad lonely apartment, do Makima's bidding and rot."

"That's not fair." Aki said, stubbing out the glowing ember with the heel of his sneaker. He felt petulant as he said it. Maybe he was acting like a child.

"No," Himeno admitted. "It's not. We were never offered fair." She looked down the alleyway, out into the street. The lights buzzed and shone but didn't reach the pair. "I just don't want you denying every human part of yourself, Aki." Her voice was warm. "Sometimes I worry we spend so much time around devils, getting all caught up in that dark, we don't know how to stand it when it's bright."

He hadnt heard his friend this serious in a long time. Himeno's sermons were often couched in playfulness or drunkenness. This didn't suit her. Or he didn't like it. He hadn't decided which one was true before Himeno had pulled open the door for for the restaurant.

Himeno was wrong, Aki thought as he followed her back into the restaurant. It wouldn't be a crush he'd be giving himself to. He had had crushes. He wasn't a robot.But this, he thought as he turned the corner to see you, drink clutched in your hand as you smiled at someone he couldn't see yet, was something different. Something new and strange that felt like falling. And he was afraid to find the ground at the end, afraid of what it felt like to break. How could he accept that? How could he open himself to that? Hadnt he already accepted so much pain, come to terms with the fact he would never turn grey or have a family. Why tease himself with another dead end? He felt his heart pound violently with each step closer to the table. You weren't look his way yet, engrossed in a story Kishibe was recounting. He fed on your jaw line, on the length of your neck and the way it disappeared under your blouse. He hadn't seen you in civilian clothes before, and the sight made him stir deep inside himself. He wanted you to stand, he wanted to see you in your full glory and to touch it, grasp some part of you in his hands and feel you be real and his. He wanted it to be okay to want you.

And then you turned, fixing him with those dark eyes.

Aki sat down quickly, slamming into the thin cushion. He wanted to slide under the length of the table so no one could see how his want pitched in his jeans. He hoped the lighting and alcohol would excuse the blush that had already crept past his collar.

You looked over as he sat down, and the small smile that had been for Kishibe grew into something wider, but shyer. God, you must have worn lipstick because he has never seen your lips look the way they do right now. Aki 's vision snapped away, landing on the pile of tempura nestled in the soft green basket in front of him.

"Hello, Hayakawa-senpai." You said, and your voice was small but clear. Aki nodded his greeting back to you, eyes flicking up to meet yours. The feeling that shook him was not electricity or butterflies, but of a heart restarting.

Himeno plopped down beside him, and he was relieved to feel your gaze break away from him, even though it left a dark hunger on skin for more.

You exchanged pleasantries with Himeno, bobbing your head, fighting over her acceptance of the gift you'd brought, apologies for showing up late to her party. Himeno waved them off and plied you with drinks and food, every once in a while side eyeing Aki with a wide grin.

At first Aki busied himself with trying not to look at you. He made small, clipped conversation when it turned to him, spending more time cradling his drink. As the drinks settled him he found his eyes wandering over to you more and more often. Sometimes he'd see you in conversation with Kurose, and his heart would snap with anguish, making him start and look away. Other times you'd be sitting quietly yourself, one hand of well manicured fingernails and picked at skin around them running up and down your glass. It caught him now, that smooth movement admist the sharp chaos of the table. His gaze traced up your hand, along your arm, and though he tried his best not to, along the neckline of your top. Thankfully he didn't linger there too long, instead going up, up ,up until he was looking in your eyes again. You were staring back at him, your chin perched in your hand and eyes half lidded. You were a light weight it seemed, he knew this was just your second drink. He knew everything you had done within the past 45 minutes.

You held his gaze boldly this time. It was in such stark comparison to how you'd skip over his eyes like a stone over water during the week. Even when sequestered so tightly in Aki's car, in the silent smoke of his cigarettes, you had never looked at each other the way you did now. His own fingers twitched around the tall glass of sapparo, as if wishing to cross the distance and grasp yours in them. Your lips looked so full and they parted slightly, as if reaching for words. Aki hung on to them, leaning in to hear you admist the din.

That's when Himeno all but jumped up, making the gathered gasp and hiss, clamoring to the hold the table in place.

"I demand karaoke!" She announced, pulling up those closest to her by collars and scruffs. Aki was among the unlucky, and soon found himself bundled out the door with the rest of the group. The world was still alive, even more alive than the last time he had walked the streets. The lights fuzzed together slightly, and your form cut a silhouette in front of him. He focused enough to see that you were wearing a skirt. It ran to your midthigh, the fabric reflecting a soft sheen. Aki was engrossed in the way it touched you.

"Walk beside her, idiot." Himeno hissed from his shoulder, making the man start. Aki stumbled slightly before stretching his gait even longer. Soon he was abreast to you, but unable to speak. Again, unable to speak. You'd think the half gallon of alcohol sloshing under his ribs would have helped, but just the shape of your nose against the city lights rendered Aki almost immobile. He was lucky to have gotten this close. He could tell you had stiffened slightly, but neither of you spoke as your footfalls synced on the concrete. Beyond your profile a door swung open, a pile of drunken bodies filing out at an irresponsible speed. Without thinking Aki's hand grasped your elbow, pulling you carefully out of the flow. It bumped you against his tall frame, and he held you there for the length of a few strides before letting you go. You looked up at him, expression twisting to hide your surprise.

"Thank you, Hayakawa-senpai-"

"Don't call me that." Aki blurted out, and you both winced visibly at the sharpness of his voice. He took a breath, trying it again.

"Senpai, it's so formal. Just Hayakawa is fine." You nodded, and Aki wondered if the shadows of the street hid a smile.

"As long as it's not too forward, I wouldn't want to overstep." The group stopped to mill around the front of a karaoke bar, it's facade neon and dizzying, as Himeno headed in to inquire. Aki took the moment to pull out a cigarette and light it quickly. This was familiar, something he'd done time and time again while you waited for a sighting of a devil.

This time though, Aki offered you one from his silver case.

You shook your head, and Aki focused on breathing through the sight of your curls dancing with the movement.

"Never had one?" He asked, and you shrugged.

" I have. Just not a fan."

Aki felt self conscious suddenly. How often had he slid into the seat next to you smelling like cigarettes? How often had you seen him inhaling one like it was a lifeline? He went to put his out and your hand shot forward, stopping him by the wrist.

"Don't put it out!" You insisted, eyes wide and face turned up to him. You removed your hand, grabbing it with your other and twisted your fingers slowly. Your face turned away from him, and he could only see the curve of your cheek illuminated by the street lamp above you.

"I like the smell. Yours, at least."

Aki was blushing now, with a deep pink sincerity. You had looked back to him, and he could tell by your expression you were startled. You waved your hands in front of you as if trying to dissipate the smoke.

"I mean like, I like the smell of your cigarettes."

He wondered if you were blushing too, that if he held his fingers to your cheeks could he feel the warmth?

Aki let out a strangled "oh". What he wanted to say was "Thank you, thank you for liking something about me when I am such an asshole to you." Instead he inhaled deeply, twisting his head to the side to blow the smoke away from you. By the time he turned his head back around, Kurose was there, stepping into the tight space between your bodies. His smile was open and kind. Aki didn't believe it.

"We're going in now!" He said brightly, thumb pointing towards the open door of the club where Himeno was gesturing wildly. Aki caught the last of Kishibe's parting wave as the man set down the street with some others who weren't as eager to put up with 12 am karaoke. Aki really put out his cigarette this time, afraid to look at your expression in case it was disappointed. Kurose held his space in-between the two of you as you entered, making light conversation in a voice so soft you had to lean into him. The conversation tossed between the both of you in an easy way, above Aki's head. He watched with a mounting sense of fear, feeling as though he was behind a pane of glass.

"And what song will you sing, y/n?" Kurose asked as the now culled group filtered into the small, brightly coloured but darkly lit karaoke room.

You shook your head, smiling up at Kurose. Aki felt his throat tighten. Was that a polite smile? Was that the same smile you gave to him? Was the smile you gave to him any different? He accepted a shot of hard American whiskey that was handed to him as they sat down. It was foreign and brash, and the terror it caused his throat was comforting. He stole another one from the platter on the table and downed it, ignoring Himeno's raised eyebrow. He watched Kurose clink his glass against yours before you leaned your head back and tossed it down. The sight made him wish he had a third.

"I'm not much of a singer." You said, a self conscious hand going to fidget with your hair. Aki had leaned forward to watch you, and your eyes found his for a moment before Kurose leaned even more forward, blocking him from view.

"Nonsense!" Aki couldn't see it, but he could hear the smile. "Y/n's speaking voice is so sweet, you can't deny us hearing it sing."

Aki's hand twitched but before he could say anything, Himeno crowded you and Kurose, leaning over the low table that crowded the booth.

"Kurose-san! You're up first." She said, gallantly presenting the scarred man with a microphone. Kurose grabbed it, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Oh Himeno-san, the first duet with you? That's very familiar!"

"Nonsense!" Himeno quipped, pulling him up by his elbow. He moved over you, apologised profusely as your bodies bumped together. She looked over her shoulder at Aki, darting her eyes between him and the space Kurose had left. "And it won't be with me. I get to pick who sings together and it's you aaaand-" she grabbed another innocent coworker, pushing them towards the front with the screen. Aki watched her, bemused. She all but skipped back, plopping down next to Aki and then shoving against him. He slid along the bench in jagged bursts until his thigh was pressed to yours.

"Ah sorry, do you have enough space? Just making sure we have room over here!" Himeno apologised, reaching out to touch your knee. You nodded, and Aki felt the movement through his arm. He felt it travel through his skin, his flesh, his bone, straight through the ventricles of his heart. Himeno elbowed him as she removed her arm, her lips beside his ear.

"I've done all I could Hayakawa, you're on your own now." Her tone was solemn and Aki smiled despite himself.

"What if I need more help?" He asked.

Himeno sighed dramatically. "I can't fuck her for you, as much as I'd like to."

Aki jumped, smacking at her side while she laughed with glee. You jumped at his other side, startled by the commotion. Aki hoped you hadn't heard anything, turning to you with an apologetic whisper of "sorry."

"It's okay." You whispered back, your voice almost overcome by the sound of the men at the front bleating along to a childhood show's opening song. "You and Himeno senpai are close."

Aki nodded, wondering if you could feel his body shift too.

"She was my mentor when I started. We've been partners since then. I owe a lot to her." Aki wondered if that's the most he's ever said at once to you. It seemed the whiskey was what his throat needed.

You nodded, and he could see the half smile on your mouth.

"It's nice to have a good mentor."

Aki twitched, turning his head to fully look at you now while you looked ahead. The sentence weighed heavily between the two of you. The weeks of silence sat on top of it, the short sentences, the time spent staring anywhere but your face, making you into a shapeless form that fought and breathed beside him but held no face he could think of after you left.

"I'm sorry." He whispered hoarsely. Kurose was done singing now, and had to find a seat across the small room. A part of Aki could feel him watching, but Aki was beyond care of that now. The line of your body was real against his. If you had looked at him, turned your face you would have seen him mere inches away, would have noticed the way his eyes watered.

"Don't apologize, Hayakawa." You murmured, swaying a little. Aki leaned into it. "You're drunk. I'm drunk. You'll forget about this when you wake up." You whispered. Aki shook his head, feeling it become heavy. It always felt heavy, when he thought about it. It took so much for him to keep it up, looking ahead and around. Despite himself he leaned down, resting slightly against yours. You seemed to deflate, but not to shirk his touch. If anything you leaned more into it.

"I'll say it again on Monday then." He murmured, not sure if you heard it over the new singer upfront. He thought it was Himeno but couldn't open his eyes just yet. Your hair felt good against his cheek, the texture pressing into his skin.

"Okay." Your voice sounded small, but he could hear a smile. "I'll be waiting. "

The rest of the night moved around the both of you. You'd shift positions to speak around each other to other people, lean forward to grab a drink or salted snack. But both of you would return to each other's side. Nothing more was crossed, even though Aki thought about it constantly. How it would feel to wrap an arm around your waist or lay it across your shoulders. How it would feel to touch your hair with his lips, his fingers. He stared at a lock that had fallen in front of your shoulders and dreamed about how it would feel twirled between his fingers.

He consoled himself with the hem of your skirt. It was bold, the touch stolen as the group piled out of the room around 4 am. You were infront of him, the fabric brushing ever so slightly against him. So he reached out and let it slide over his fingerprints, embed itself into his DNA. He wondered if you noticed, an immediate felt bashful, snatching his hand away.

The farewells were stretched, despite the tiredness in voices. Himeno hung around your neck, scolding you in one breathe for not singing today, and praising your sweet deposition in the other. Aki watched your too wide smile, the way your eyes wavered.

"Which way do you live, y/n?" He asked while he carefully extracted Himeno. The woman was heavy in his arms as he let her hang.

"I'll be taking her!" Tendo said, grabbing onto your arm. "You hogged her all evening, Hayakawa-chan. And she lives the building across from mine." Aki shrugged, but noted the flash of disappointment in your eyes.

"Do you have Himeno?" Fushi asked. Kurose stood with the small group as well, his gaze stuck on your face. Aki bit back the jealousy, rolling Himeno up to her full height so she could throw an arm over his shoulders.

"Yes. Get home safely." After a moment he added a swift. "Have a goodnight." He knew that everyone knew that was meant solely for you. It was worth it for the smile and small wave you gave before Tendo pulled you down the sidewalk. Aki waited until your figure had disappeared around the corner before dragging Himeno in the opposite direction.

Aki locked the door behind him with finality. He leaned his head against it, considering collapsing and sleeping right there, before pushing off the wood and stumbling past his kitchen. Getting Himeno to bed had been a struggle, and his late night walk cigarette didn't perk him up as much as he wished. He dragged himself into the washroom, grabbing the sink as he looked into the mirror. His face floated before him, eyes bloodshot and drawn. He closed them as he brushed his teeth, barely opening them as he washed his face, combed through his hair, and flossed.

Finally he found his bed, cold in the night air. He had left the window open and turned to face it now, curling slightly in on himself. His mind spun in slow, languid circles. The dark behind his eyelids lit with undulating shapes in muted colours, and he forced his eyes open to chase them away. In the light he only found you. His mind raked over every sense of you he had been lucky to experience that night. Now, alone, he felt himself indulging in the sights he was scared to dwell on. The brown of your soft thigh every time you'd stand up from beside him. The sight of your breasts as you leaned over the table. How **wet** your lips looked in the light. Before he realized it, his hand was in his shorts, wrapping around the already hard length. Aki blinked, surprised at himself.

He hadn't done this in a while.

With a sigh of what sounded like relief he rolled over, opening up the neatly arranged drawer on his night stand. The barely touched bottle of lube rolled with the motion and he grasped it before it completed its movement. He unclipped the cap now, allowing some to slide neatly into his palm.

Aki was kicked the sheets off, letting his body uncover in the moonlight. His clean hand pulled up the fabric of his shirt, hands sliding across the expanse of skin, stretched over his taunt muscles. The lubed hand now wrapped slowly around his cock. He felt solid and thick, thumbing the vein the protruded on the underside of his shaft. He thought of how you would touch him. Of your fingers glancing up and down the glass of beer, how they'd circle him and hold him so tightly. He knew your skin would be soft. His arm moved now, pivoting at the elbow in an even pace. Everything about you was so soft. Including your lips The thought of them made him inhale sharply, and he pulled up the neck of his shirt into his mouth, biting down. His abs flexed in the cold air, tightening as his speed quickened at he thought of lifting your skirt up, of seeing the curve of your body through to completion. He imagined the exchange of mouths, how you'd trade places on each other's bodies. The images tumbled faster now as he moved faster. He imagined you eager, he wanted you yearning. To open your arms to him and embrace him full while he sank into you. The thought sent electricity from the heel of his foot to the top of his head. His back arched. He was getting close, his movements more frantic now. His brain felt fuzzy, his mouth raw. The sound of the lube between his long fingers and hard cock made a slick sound and he pretended it was you. He wanted it to be you so badly. He let out a low whine, rolling onto his hand and knees. He squeezed himself before resuming the frantic pace, holding himself up with one hand. He could imagine your body silhouetted against his white sheets so clearly. And your head on his pillow and oh God your face your eyes the way your lips would part and then Aki came, the release from his body shooting onto the sheets below him. He groaned loudly, arms shaking before he pushed himself back, sitting heavily on his heels. His cock bobbed in response, head heavy and purple, still dripping with the last of his cum.

Aki wondered if he felt sated. If the clarity after the high would clean his slate. But for some reason visions of you still moved around him. He pushed them away with difficulty, starting the arduous task of unmaking and remaking his bed while drunk and drained. Once the sheets were hidden in his washer, crisp new ones added perfectly in their place, Aki collapsed into the bed. As he closed his eyes he thought of you again, but this time he ignored the stirring in his lower stomach. Instead he fell, deep deep into sleep. He would dream of you incessantly.

Toji was an enigma.

He wasn’t really a childhood friend but you’ve seen him since you were young–he was always alone. Always outside of his family’s home.

Back then, the one time you tried talking to him under a shade of the ginkgo tree in a hill just near your home, he flat out ignored you, he continued reading a book that looked worn out.

You tried again and again, akin to a cat you’ve taken care of. You used to think it was the same for him. Your other friends’ convinced you not to talk with him, they deemed him unapproachable and scary. Never agreeing with them but you think of Toji, just like a cat, ignoring you but will grow accustomed to you until the end. You think you were so smart back then, when he finally looked up to you. Those emerald eyes staring back at you, a frown on his lips. He doesn’t have the scar yet. You can still hear the cicadas, the wind blowing coolly, making the trees rustle, and a sweat forming on your back and forehead from playing.

“Do you wanna play?”

“No.”

The next day you return, you bought a children’s book, plopped down next to him under the shade, prickles of dewy grass through your legs and started reading. He stares at you for a moment before returning to read again. You didn’t talk to him much but you can tell for the next few days, his eyes started looking at you.

“What are you 5?”

It offended you when he first spoke, eyes glancing down at your book before back at you. You were 12, thank you very much, and he was probably 14 or 15. You were reading a Japanese folktale about Tama, the waving cat you’ve seen in restaurants that denotes luck for business. It was a short tale you enjoyed.

One time you bought a western book, it was called ‘ The Little Prince’, and your mother lent it to you. This time the young boy’s eyes changed a bit, you can feel him glancing at the book you were reading and back at you. He does this a few times. It seems he wants to read it as well. You also bought an ice candy or frozen popsicle with fruity flavors, you tried giving it to him but he only shook his head.

“I don’t want that, it's cold.” You only shrugged at him and started munching your popsicle, closing the book you didn’t finish but you can feel his eyes staring at it on your hand. You can hear his finger tapping his worn out book,“I want to read that.” He couldn’t seem to keep his mouth shut, curiosity finally overriding his brain. You grinned but stopped yourself. The cat took the bait, you think back then.

“Okay, what’s your name first?” You ask him, opening the book again, you didn’t understand the story much back then though you enjoyed reading the Prince’s adventures.

“Zenin Toji.”

You’ve heard the Zenin Family can be quite proud and a mean bunch, conservatives too, one of the old money types of richest here in your province. You remembered him wearing a Yukata. Their family always wears one. They were one of the famous sword dwellers around the country.

You’ve lent it to him, you can see his eyes shine upon reading. After reading, you see a small smile on his face and it was the first time you’ve seen it. It was summer so it was inevitable to start sweating, especially if one is wearing a dark yukata. You offered him the frozen popsicles again, he only stared at them, eyes looking back at you again before settling to get one.

It's been a few weeks of the same routine, school hasn’t started yet so you freely hang out with him. You talk about the books you both read, folktales mostly. You started bantering, his witty remarks at the fables you’ve chosen.

“Do you even know my name?” You asked him one time, he only nods back, eyes focused on the book he is still reading, it was a new one. It was about Yuki-Onna, the mysterious snow woman of Japan, a yōkai or spirit.

It was also the first time you heard your name spoken from his lips.

“How did you know?!”

“Stupid.” He remarked, pointing at your name from the back cover. Your eyes went wide, right you did write your name on the back cover before glaring at him, “I’m not stupid, you assho- you meanie. I just forgot.”

You can hear your mother already scolding you for saying a bad word but you can’t help it if you're hearing your grandfather curse at annoying customers. Toji is annoying for saying you’re stupid.

To your surprise, amusement mirths in his eyes as he lets out a short laugh. “You can curse, ya’ know.”

You also started to notice that he gets the same color of popsicle with the same color of what you would pick. It continued on, until you tricked him and didn’t bring any color of the same popsicle. Much to your excitement and was looking forward to it, he didn’t get one and said he didn't feel like eating sweets that time.

That day was also the last time you’ve seen him.

The next day, you sat under the shade alone, you bought the book that piqued his curiosity in the first place. A bit bummed out as school starts tomorrow, you left the book near its hollow when some of your friends asked you to play with them. You went home and completely forgot about it.

It was dinner time, you were eating tonkatsu filled with gravy, your feet kicking from the floor at the dining table. When your mother learned you were befriending a Zenin, she was alarmed and warned you to never associate with a Zenin. Your grandfather scolds your mother while father watches from the side quietly.

“It’s not the kid’s fault he was born to a corrupt family.”

Before going to sleep, you had asked your father about it, “Just follow your mother.” He just said. Following your mother’s advice, you never really went back to the hill near your home, although secretly you believe your grandfather’s words. Whenever your mother asks something to buy, you almost always stop by the hill with your bike but he wasn’t there.

Seasons changed, flowers fell, the leaves that used to sway from the tree are deemed empty, the white snowflakes continue falling, it recently just started snowing. You hugged your thick white jacket tighter around you, your hair you had forgotten to tie, speckles of snow spread in your hair, you’re a bit taller now and that’s when you saw him under the shade again. The same lush green eyes you grew to look forward to notice your gaze, he stares at you. Against your better judgment, you went even near, you could hear your mother’s warning voice yet your grandfather’s voice was louder.

‘It’s not his fault he was a Zenin’

The same way seasons have changed, you noticed he was different now. He was now taller, hair longer obscuring the view of his ears. He still wears a yukata, and you hope it still offers him warmth from the cold. Taking a few steps towards him, he has deep eye bags, his eyes—they look dimmed, tired. There seems to be a bit of bruises on some of his face, there's also a wound on the side of his mouth, it looks deep, you winced. His eyes focusing on you, he blinks a few times slowly.

“Thought you were Yuki-onna.” He chuckles lifelessly. You notice the breath of cold winter air from his lips. Toji crosses his arms, attention full back at you, with furrowed eyebrows and a tone a bit demanding. “What do you want?”

“I- Are you okay?” You asked and you think it was so idiotic, he sneers at you visibly. You almost tremble, never mind the winter air as you feel almost humiliated. You blink.

“Do I look like I’m fucking doing okay?”

“No.”

He clicks his tongue, glaring at you. “Now you can leave me alone.”

The warning signs rang through your head. You gulped, took another step closer but Toji stands still, eyes darker.

“Toji, what happened?”

“It’s none of your fucking business, I just said leave me alone.”

“But we’re friends—”

Toji lets out an incredulous laugh, “We’re not, you were the one who approached me.” He emphasized the last part. “I never thought of you as one, you made that shit up through your head.”

You felt something sink in your stomach, stepping back, your lips trembled and a barbed wire feeling around your throat. You fight back the tears threatening to fall. You were always weaker at your emotions, clenching your fists through the gloves. Glad for the winter air, your tears didn’t fall. You felt heat rising in your face, your heart started beating fast as you scowled at him back.

Taking the glove from your left hand, you threw it to his face fast.

“You’re an asshole.”

Toji remains unfazed, eyes almost dead. Your left hand starts getting colder but you never minded it as you turn around, your feet aching, and walking away quickly.

Unbeknownst to you, Toji continues staring at the place you left until you were gone from his view. He sighs wearily, holding the bridge of his nose before he strikes the tree with his fist, Toji stares at knuckles, now a bit aching and red. He felt exhaustion kick in now, the bruises in his body and face seem to taunt and made its existence even more.

He looks down and stares at the glove you left, its color the same as his aching fist, the glove seems to glower at him. He steps on it against the snow.

Through your anger, you didn’t notice how fast you went home from the bike. Your parents are shocked at your wild appearance, a missing glove and your hair unkempt. You look hurt. They thought you were mugged but you just said that you fell on your bike. Not sure if they believed you, when they looked at each other. You ignored their questioning gazes as you went to your room, closed the door loudly and lied down, your tears freely falling this time, crying your heart out just because some boy was mean.

That was the last time you saw him when you were 12.

❄️

When you turned 16, you met Jin in high class. He moved into your little province with his father. The first thing you noticed was his naturally pink hair, he slid the glasses up to his face when introducing. A bit shy, he sat next to you and naturally you learned about each other more.

Jin was kind and nerdy, he likes reading books and baking. He also seems to know a lot of video games. Getting close to him was easy like how spring came to view, it was pretty and blooming.

Late into Valentines, Jin was sweating, a huge blush on his face when he held a bouquet of red roses, now a bit wobbly from how hard he grips. Against the backdrop of the pink cherry blossoms, the roses shine even more.

You blushed, smiling as you accepted the flowers and the confession. You both became a couple. It was pure bliss being by Jin’s side.

The ginkgo tree near your home, bleeds against the sunset. It is Autumn now. You bought a picnic basket, Jin wanted to spend the day with you, and you suggested a picnic would be nice. The wind blows and you tuck in your hair as you open the basket, a red stripe blanket in view. You quickly stood up, unfolded the blanket and laid it on top of the grass.

A shadow came into view against the tree, you heard light footsteps and a presence on your back. You lightly chuckle, taking out a few popsicles. “That was fast—”

Turning around, a light blue yukata was the first thing you’ve seen, you raise your head to see Toji. The same green eyes looking at you, his hair still long and a noticeable scar on his mouth. He looks bigger now that you’ve seen him up close. It seems like he was back at home now after hearing he was sent to a private school somewhere in Tokyo. His eyes darted through your hand.

“You still like those popsicles, huh.”

“What do you want?” You turn away from him, opening the basket, getting other refreshments. Your voice can’t help but be harsh. Truth to be told, you almost wanted to forgive him, given the circumstances but you just can’t, you were hurt, it was a short time but you considered him a friend you genuinely enjoyed being with.

“On a date?” He asks back, you clenched your jaw at his audacity to ask you. It was shivering, the cold air. His voice is much deeper now. Where was Jin anyway? It's just sandwiches that you had forgotten at the kitchen counter. What's taking him so long? You muled in your mind.

“I don’t think it's any of your fucking business,” You said, done with this conversation. Standing up, you almost crane your neck because when did he get so tall. You stared dagger in his eyes but he returned them with tilt and an amusing chuckle. The sunset turned golden against Toji’s back, a soft glow contrasting to his sharp features and you hated the sight even more.

“Feisty,” he grins back at you, eyes almost sparkling. You scoff at his remark, he’s not taking your anger seriously. “Still mad at our last conversation?”

“Yes.” You said through gritted teeth. “And it was not a conversation, you were mad at me for asking if you’re okay! Now 4 years have passed and you try to strike up a conversation as if nothing happened?”

Toji keeps staring at you, you also noticed he doesn’t look quite as tired now like years before, if he was engaging you in something you think would be stupid for him.

Moments passed yet the man you are mad at is still quiet. Eyes only staring at you.

Breathing hard after saying all that, sighing, you closed your eyes and stretched your neck to the side. This was supposed to be a relaxing day to end with Jin.

“You know what? I’m done.”

Seems like this isn’t going anywhere, given that Toji doesn’t think much about the situation, it was just you who was at the receiving end. You know how the Zenin family has something to do with it, but the lashing out was uncalled for, it's just like you were holding a grudge for nothing all this time. You think that maybe you took it too seriously but his words hurted you. It doesn’t excuse how he treated you when you were just concerned. So no, you don’t want to be a doormat. “I don’t want to get involved with you.”

You took a step away from the blanket, grabbed it hastily and tucked it inside the basket, uncaring if it's crumpled. You can still feel his eyes on you. Standing straight, you glared at him once more before you were starting to quickly walk away when he called your name. You resolved yourself to not listen to whatever he has to say but Toji was quicker, he held your arm. It was warm and you hate the feeling, you tried removing his hand but he took your hand with him, his fingers almost intertwining between yours to not let it escape. You felt a shiver.

He calls your name again and your heart pounds.

“Then do you want me to say sorry?” He speaks nearly as softly. Toji turns you towards him. His scent almost envelopes you. This time you can even see his face clearer, he was still gazing at your eyes. “Sorry I was an asshole?” You watch his eyes go down—you had to physically push him away.

“I don’t know! You should know that.” You exclaimed, gripping the basket harder.

What the hell was he trying to do? Before you could even go, you snap back. “Asking what I want? feels insincere.”

Toji lets out a sigh before he speaks, and maintains the distance now. “I’m sorry for being an asshole. I’m not justifying how I felt back then.”

“I’m just sorry for lashing out at you. ”

You both stare at each other, another gust of wind hits both of you. The chilly cold autumn certainly is here. A few leaves fall from the ginkgo tree and you can see Toji let out a small smile at you. You were the first to look away when you heard someone call your name.

Your boyfriend. Right.

“Jin! What took you so long?”

“Dad had just a few errands, you know how he gets.” He says apologetically, his hand running through his pink hair, his eyes turning from you to Toji. Eyes back at you and you can see through his glasses. He was questioning you.

“That’s Zen–”

The taller man interrupts you and crosses his arms, a smug smile on his face. “Just call me Toji.” You kept your mouth shut after that. It was of course a sensitive topic, you just learned he now hates using it.

“I’m …” Toji says your name quietly, “..friend.”

“We’re not friends, you’re just making that shit up in your head.” You answered back at him, this time Toji lets out a hearty laugh at your response, his hand in his stomach. You felt an uncomfortable churning in your stomach the way it felt warm hearing it, he grins back at you, you just rolled your eyes at him.

“A childhood friend then.” Toji says, he looks lighter now after your little remark.

You hear Jin let out an uncomfortable cough when he notices your gaze lingering at Toji’s. Awkwardly, you took a step back and took your boyfriend’s hand, intertwining it between yours. You can feel Toji’s eyes on them, he crosses his arms once again, finger tapping.

You can’t make what is now brewing in those green eyes of his.

“Toji, this is Jin, my boyfriend.” You start. The taller man only nods, contrary to his mood earlier. He was neither smiling or frowning. Jin was smiling politely yet Toji schools his expression as he looks at you. He yawns.

“Nice to meet you.” He greets back, eyes flickering towards Jin with a lack of interest. Before you can even take note of it, he speaks again. “I better get back, see ya lovebirds.” He waves at you, leaving while you continue staring at his back, walking down the hill. A flutter of autumn leaves falls.

You feel a nudge and when you turn, Jin smiles, holding the bag of sandwiches in your face. “Let’s eat?”

The mood became lighter, as you fixed the picnic again. Laid down blanket, a pretty sunset and good company. You both ate the sandwiches, a comfortable conversation follows.

At some point, the mood died down. Sunset turned lilac ones, the birds are going home now. It was serene.

Jin was quiet, so you sat near beside him. Laying your head on his shoulder, opposed to what you felt earlier… this is what you should be feeling. Secured, comfortable. Just like the spring that blooms and is pretty to look at.

“You alright?”

You hear him ask when you close your eyes. A hum was the only reply you could give, another rustle from the wind sings you a lullaby to sleep. You felt a warm cloth enveloping you, a scent akin to a vanilla. You snuggled further.

Moments later, Jin wakes you up. Face close, his gentle gaze on you, short pink hair and glasses you adore on him, while your eyesight starts to adjust from the nap.

“It’s already night time, let’s go?”

Smiling at him, he stares at you shyly, eyes looking down on your lips.

“Pretty…” He murmurs, you can see him gulping and an autumn colored on his cheeks. “May I?” Jin touches your cheek, fingers caressing. You just nod and feel Jin’s soft lips on yours. You both closed your eyes. It was anything you wished for.

Long enough you had just forgotten dreaming of a yukata and snow falling, and eyes that can’t stray away from you.

🍓🍓🍓

"There!" With a swift click, the camera captured the moment: you holding up one half of a heart while Haibara completed the other with his hand, and Kento, attempting to hide his fleeting smile.

Back in the dorms of Jujutsu High, the three of you settled into a familiar circle. Your room had become the default spot for hanging out with your two friends.

"Here, let's pin these bad boys back," you declared, brandishing cute clips to tame Kento's unruly hair. Despite his serious demeanor, Kento's expression never failed to amuse you, especially now with the playful clips adorning his hair.

"Haibara, get the camera!" you called out, prompting Haibara to seize the moment. And there was Kento once more, his expression the epitome of seriousness, immortalized in yet another photograph.

You and Haibara laughed at the photo while Kento watched, maintaining his typically stoic expression. Though he rarely showed much emotion when hanging out with you, you knew he was happy. The subtle warmth in his eyes and the relaxed set of his shoulders were telltale signs that he enjoyed these moments just as much as you and Haibara did.

"How did your first mission go?" Satoru asked, walking alongside Shoko and Suguru. Meanwhile, you and the others trailed behind them. "Me and Haibara kicked butt," you replied with a smile, nudging Haibara on the shoulder. "But, of course, Kento saved us when the other curse came outta nowhere."

"Haha! You guys suck!" Satoru turned around to laugh in your face. In response, you stuck out your tongue, a playful defense mechanism against his teasing.

"Leave our juniors alone, Gojo," Shoko said, playfully nudging him on the head. Meanwhile, Suguru smiled at Satoru's reaction, enjoying the lighthearted banter.

-

"He was strong," you muttered as tears streamed down your cheeks. Despite the evident truth that you were far stronger, you had never been one to boast about your strength.

"Nanami, why?" you whispered, your voice barely audible. The weight of your grief and confusion hung heavily in the air, a stark contrast to your usual confident demeanor.

He stayed quiet as usual. "Nanami, say something, please," you cried softly, tears streaming down your face.

"Nanami, please." Your voice broke, the desperation and sorrow evident in every word. The silence between you was heavy, filled with unspoken emotions and the weight of your grief.

Haibara's lifeless body lay on the table, and Suguru stared in disbelief, unable to process the grim reality. The room was thick with a palpable sense of loss and shock, as the once vibrant presence of Haibara was now a haunting memory.

"Nanami..." your cries softened as you dropped to your knees, laying your head on his knee. His head tilted back, a towel covering his eyes, as his hands gently found their way to your head.

In the midst of your shared grief, his touch offered a small measure of comfort, a silent reassurance that you were not alone in your sorrow.

"I'm sick," Suguru coldly muttered before stepping out of the room, leaving behind a heavy atmosphere fraught with unanswered questions and unresolved emotions. His departure only added to the sense of desolation and confusion that permeated the space, leaving you and Nanami to grapple with your grief in solitude.

Not only were the juniors suffering, but shortly after, so had the upperclassmen.

"Suguru, he defected," Shoko muttered as you two sat on the bench at Jujutsu High. Your heart sank at the news. "He murdered everyone in his entire village... even his own family."

Missions weren't the same anymore. In the wake of recent events, you found yourself throwing yourself into training with relentless determination. The camaraderie that once bound you and your fellow students seemed to fray, each of you retreating into your own struggles to cope with the weight of loss and betrayal.

After finishing Jujutsu High, your only plan was to move away from all of it. The constant turmoil and disappointment from the higher-ups had taken its toll, leaving you disheartened by their apparent lack of care for the lives at stake. The thought of continuing to risk your life without proper support or recognition weighed heavily on you, driving you to seek a fresh start away from the chaos.

Despite your intentions to leave it all behind, fate had a way of pulling you back in. Ten years later, you found yourself walking back into the dark history of Jujutsu High. The campus, once vibrant and bustling, now lay barren, stripped of its former vitality.

With a sense of resolve, you made your way to meet with Yaga, steeling yourself for the journey ahead and whatever challenges awaited in this place that held both memories and mysteries.

"You'll be in charge of physical training for the students. I know I can count on you," Yaga said, his gaze focused on the papers spread out before him, most of which were sent by the higher-ups. "You and Nanami."

So he came back too, you thought to yourself, a mixture of surprise and familiarity washing over you at the mention of Nanami's name. The weight of responsibility settled on your shoulders once more as you nodded in acknowledgment, ready to take on the task entrusted to you by Yaga.

Walking along the familiar school halls, you searched for Satoru, following Yaga's instructions to meet him and be introduced to the students. The memories of your time here flooded back as you passed by the classrooms and training grounds, each step carrying you closer to the present moment.

As you finally reached the classroom, you took a deep breath, steeling yourself for the introduction. Sliding the door open, you revealed Satoru and his three students. One of them, with pink hair, appeared extremely excited to be here, their enthusiasm practically radiating from them. Another student you recognized immediately as Megumi, Fushiguro's son, his demeanor reserved yet determined.

But it was the girl with the smile on her face who caught your attention as you entered the room. There was something about her warmth and openness that drew you in, and you couldn't help but return her smile as you stepped forward to join Satoru in the classroom.

"Long time no see, Satoru," you whispered, catching his attention. He couldn't help but notice the definite change in you. The girl he once knew seemed to have vanished, replaced by someone with longer, darker hair and a permanent slight frown replacing the once ever-present smile. Your physique appeared stronger, as if you had been training relentlessly on your own time.

Satoru's gaze lingered on you for a moment, a flicker of recognition and concern passing through his eyes.

"So cool! Our physical training teacher is a girl!" the autumn-haired girl giggled, shaking the shoulder of the boy beside her. Her excitement was palpable, and her enthusiasm brought a small smile to your lips despite the weight of your thoughts. It was refreshing to see her genuine excitement, a reminder of the youthful energy that still thrived within the walls of Jujutsu High.

"So, what are your names? I know this is Megumi, but you two must be?" you asked, your voice notably more emotionless than when Satoru had last seen you. The transformation in your demeanor was striking, a testament to the profound changes you had undergone since your last encounter. It was clear that the events of the past had left their mark on you, shaping you into a different person than the one Satoru once knew.

After learning their names, you found yourself alone with Satoru in the empty classroom. "So, what did you do after leaving Jujutsu High?" Satoru asked, taking a seat on one of the desks.

"I became a neonatal nurse. It was nice," you replied. It might have been surprising to Satoru, but he knew that you had always possessed a caring nature, making the choice of such a precious job fitting for you.

"Nanami is on a mission right now," Satoru added, sensing the unspoken longing in your voice to hear about his whereabouts.

You couldn't help but smile slightly at the news. "When is he coming back?" you asked, the anticipation evident in your voice. Despite the changes and the passage of time, the thought of Nanami's return filled you with a sense of comfort and familiarity.

"He should be back tonight," Satoru replied, confirming your hopes.

"And how are things with Megumi?" you asked, showing genuine interest in Satoru's relationship with his student.

"He's incredible. I think I've done a good job so far," Satoru replied, a hint of pride in his voice.

"You've done more than good, Satoru," you reassured him, your tone firm yet gentle.

"I'm always here for you," you said with sincerity before getting up from your seat and leaving Satoru alone in the classroom. Your words lingered in the air, a silent promise of support and solidarity, even in the midst of uncertainty and change.

As you stepped outside the school, the cold breeze greeted you softly, sending a shiver down your spine. Your gaze swept across the surroundings, only to lock onto the familiar figure standing distantly in front of you. "You're back," you said simultaneously with Nanami, the words hanging in the air between you.

His eyes met yours, filled with a mixture of shock and longing. It was clear that he, too, had noticed the changes you had undergone during your time apart.

"What are you doing here, Y/N?" Nanami's voice, now deeper and more monotone, cut through the air. His face remained emotionless, but there was an edge of irritation in his tone, questioning why you had decided to come back.

"Yaga called, and..." you began, but Nanami sighed, interrupting you.

"You're just putting yourself in danger again, Y/N. How stupid can you be?" His words were harsh, but his eyes betrayed a flicker of concern. The irritation in his voice couldn't hide the worry he felt for you, knowing the risks you were taking by returning.

Your brows furrowed in anger. "But it's okay for you to come back and risk your life?" you retorted, your voice rising with frustration. The unfairness of his accusation stung, and you couldn't help but challenge the double standard.

"I'll see you later," you said flatly, pushing past him. Tears welled up in your eyes, unseen by Nanami. The reunion had not gone as you had hoped, leaving you feeling more hurt and isolated than before.

-

"Sensei, I didn't know that you and Nanami knew each other," Yuji said as you all stretched, preparing for training.

"He was my classmate," you replied coldly, avoiding everyone's gaze. "Let's start." The curt response and your demeanor made it clear that you weren't in the mood to delve into the past.

You demonstrated a few tricks and moves you had learned during your time away from Jujutsu High, along with techniques you had mastered while attending the school.

It was safe to say that the students were impressed, not quite expecting such prowess from you. Your stamina and physical strength were evident as you effortlessly executed each move, showcasing the depth of your training and experience. The admiration in their eyes was unmistakable, a silent acknowledgment of your capabilities.

"Okay, now that I've thoroughly explained, try them on each other," you said, surveying the three students to decide who would go first. Your eyes scanned over Yuji, Megumi, and Nobara, each one eager yet focused, ready to put the new techniques into practice.

"Megumi and Yuji, I'll work with Nobara," you exclaimed.

"No! I want to work with a boy to challenge myself," Nobara said determinedly.

You couldn't help but smile at her determination. "Well then, Megumi and Nobara, Yuji, you come with me."

Yuji gulped, giving Nobara a look, but he quickly nodded and stepped forward, ready to train under your guidance.

"She's doing great," Satoru said to Nanami, who had been watching you from a distance. Startled by Satoru's presence, Nanami slightly jumped.

"Of course she is, she's always been great," Nanami responded, his tone a mixture of pride and concern. "I just don't want anything to happen to her. She's the only one I have left," he muttered.

Satoru smiled, a teasing glint in his eyes. "Nanami is in love," he cooed.

Nanami's expression hardened, but there was no denying the depth of his feelings.

"I get you're concerned, but she deserved a more welcoming response than what you said the other day. We've all been through a lot, and she knows the risks of coming back. So, you didn't have to lecture her on it," Satoru sighed, walking towards his students who had been training with you.

-

As you walked through the abandoned cell house, the weight of the cursed aura pressing down on you, you couldn't help but sigh. The air was thick with malevolent energy, sending shivers down your spine.

"I want to go home, so can we make this easy," you whispered to no one in particular, the words a quiet plea for reprieve from the impending danger lurking in the shadows. But deep down, you knew that the mission ahead would be anything but easy.

The urgency with which they assigned you the mission was unmistakable. There was no hesitation, no second-guessing. It was clear that the situation demanded immediate action, leaving you with little time to prepare mentally or emotionally.

The unease you felt was palpable, the stress of the mission compounded by the lack of communication with Nanami. He had been your best friend back then, a constant source of support and understanding. Now, the silence between you weighed heavily on your mind, adding an extra layer of burden to an already daunting task.

As you navigated through the abandoned cell house, the absence of Nanami's presence felt like a glaring void, a reminder of the distance that had grown between you. You couldn't help but wonder what he would say if he knew about the mission, if he would offer words of encouragement or caution.

As you reached the end of the hall, you spotted the medium-sized curse, its inhumane wails echoing through the desolate corridors. With a scoff, you dashed forward, determination fueling your movements as you prepared your cursed technique to swiftly take down the curse.

Standing over the fallen curse, you couldn't shake the feeling of unease that washed over you. The ease with which you had dispatched the curse raised concerns. It was too easy, too straightforward. Something didn't feel right, and you couldn't help but wonder if there was more to the situation than met the eye.

As if it had read your mind, the wails behind you grew louder, sending a chill down your spine. Slowly, you turned around, your heart racing as you came face to face with a larger and more powerful curse than before.

"What the fuck," you muttered to yourself, your disbelief mingling with a sense of dread as you assessed the looming threat before you. It was clear that this curse would not go down as easily as its predecessor, and you braced yourself for a battle that promised to be far more challenging than anything you had faced.

The battle was fierce, the curse's sharp arms slashing through the air with deadly precision. Despite your best efforts to evade its attacks, you couldn't avoid every blow, and soon, deep scratches marred your abdomen, each one a painful reminder of the danger you faced.

Gritting your teeth against the pain, you pushed through, determined to overcome the formidable adversary standing before you. With every ounce of strength and skill you possessed, you fought back, refusing to let the injuries weaken your resolve.

As soon as you found a moment of respite, you ducked under a nearby staircase, seeking refuge from the relentless assault of the curse. With trembling hands, you ripped off your shirt, using it to apply pressure to the deep scratch in your abdomen, which was bleeding profusely.

The adrenaline coursing through your veins dulled the pain momentarily as you focused on staunching the flow of blood. Each heartbeat felt like a hammer blow against your chest, a grim reminder of the perilous situation you found yourself in. But amidst the chaos and fear, you remained resolute, determined to survive against all odds.

"You were right, Nanami," you whispered to yourself, drawing strength from the memory of his wisdom. With renewed determination, you discarded your doubts and fears, steeling yourself for the battle ahead.

Without hesitation, you dashed back towards the curse, channeling all your energy and focus into confronting the formidable adversary before you. Each step forward was a testament to your resilience and resolve, as you faced the challenge head-on, determined to emerge victorious no matter the cost.

With one final decisive blow, the curse was defeated, collapsing to the ground before you. But as the adrenaline began to fade, you became acutely aware of the searing pain radiating from your abdomen and the new deep scratches on your leg.

With a sharp intake of breath, you felt yourself falling to the ground, the pain overwhelming your senses. Each movement sent waves of agony coursing through your body, a stark reminder of the injuries you had sustained in the heat of battle.

Grimacing against the pain, you fought to stay conscious, your mind swimming with a mixture of exhaustion and determination. Despite the darkness threatening to engulf you, you refused to succumb, clinging to consciousness with every ounce of strength you had left.

"This mission is taking far longer than it should," Satoru remarked as he sat next to Nanami in the break room.

As if on cue, Shoko's urgent call interrupted their conversation. "I need you to teleport to her right now and make sure she doesn't bleed out. I'll try to get back as soon as I can," she instructed, her tone clipped and serious.

Satoru's eyes widened in alarm at the sudden urgency in Shoko's voice. "It's Y/N," she added, her words hanging heavy in the air.

Lying flat on the ground, pain coursing through your body and blood seeping from your wounds, you felt tears welling in your eyes.

"I don't want to die like this," you whispered, your voice barely audible as you spoke to nobody but yourself. The weight of your words hung heavy in the air, a poignant reminder of the fragility of life and the fear of facing mortality alone.

"Y/N!" Satoru's voice pierced through the haze of pain, and despite your weakness, a soft smile tugged at your lips as you saw the familiar sight of the white-haired, blue-eyed sorcerer.

"It came out of nowhere," you admitted, your voice barely above a whisper as you recounted the sudden attack.

"You did great," Satoru reassured you, his presence a comforting anchor in the midst of chaos.

"No, you're supposed to say I suck," you weakly joked, a faint smile gracing your lips despite the pain.

You chuckled softly, reminiscing about your first mission with Haibara and Nanami.

Determined to stop the bleeding, Satoru applied pressure to your weak body, his hands steady despite the urgency of the situation. As he worked to stem the flow of blood, it became apparent that your injuries were far more severe than what you had explained to Shoko.

The gravity of the situation weighed heavily on Satoru's shoulders, his brow furrowed with concern as he assessed the extent of your wounds.

As sudden as a gust of wind, the doors burst open, revealing Shoko running alongside Nanami. In her hands, she carried a kit designed to stop your bleeding, her expression a mix of urgency and determination.

Without a word, Shoko rushed to your side, swiftly taking over from Satoru as she began to administer first aid. Nanami stood nearby, his eyes fixed on you with a mixture of worry and relief.

"I'm so tired," you muttered, your voice barely above a whisper, exhaustion weighing heavily on every word.

With a gentle touch, you reached for Nanami's hand, raising it to your cheek. His touch brought a sense of comfort and reassurance, grounding you in the midst of turmoil.

Nanami's expression softened as he met your gaze, his hand warm against your skin. In that simple gesture, you found solace, a silent acknowledgment of the bond that had endured through trials and tribulations.

"Y/N, keep them open for me, please," Nanami whispered softly, his voice tinged with urgency and concern.

You fought against the heaviness in your eyelids, struggling to keep them open as fatigue threatened to overwhelm you. In that moment, you noticed a rare vulnerability in Nanami's expression, a departure from his usual stoicism.

With a soft nod, you acknowledged Nanami's plea, but the weight of exhaustion proved too much to bear. "I can't," you barely whispered, your voice fading as your eyelids closed of their own accord.

Nanami's heart sank at your words, a pang of fear gripping him as he watched you slip into unconsciousness. Despite his best efforts, he couldn't shake the sense of helplessness that washed over him.

Gently, he brushed a strand of hair from your face, his touch tender yet tinged with sorrow. In that moment, as you drifted into the realm of dreams, Nanami vowed to stay by your side, determined to protect you no matter the cost.

-

As your eyes fluttered open, the sterile scent of the hospital enveloped you, mingling with the familiar beeping noises of medical equipment. The dull ache in your abdomen and leg served as a stark reminder of the ordeal you had endured.

Slowly, you glanced around the room, taking in the sight of flowers sitting on the table next to you. Your gaze then settled on Nanami, who was sleeping soundly in the small chair tucked into the corner of the room. His presence brought a sense of comfort and relief, a silent reassurance that you were not alone in your recovery.

"Nanami," you whispered softly, careful not to disturb his slumber. His eyes opened instantly, alert and attentive.

"Baby, you're awake. Let me get the nurse," he responded, his voice tinged with relief at the sight of you conscious.

Your heart skipped a beat at the sudden endearment, your mind racing with a mixture of emotions. "No," you murmured, your voice barely above a whisper. "I just want to be with you right now."

Nanami's expression softened at your words, his eyes reflecting a mixture of tenderness and concern.

Your heart ached at the raw emotion in Nanami's voice, his words a poignant reminder of the risks you faced as a jujutsu sorcerer.

"I almost lost you," he murmured, his voice thick with emotion. "I don't know if I could be able to live knowing how much danger you're in constantly, Y/N."

His hands tenderly brushed through your hair, his touch a soothing balm against the lingering fear and uncertainty. In that moment, you felt the weight of his love and concern wash over you, a testament to the depth of your bond.

"Then it looks like we'll be going on missions together again," Nanami smiled at your response, a mixture of relief and understanding in his eyes. He knew that you would never give up being a jujutsu sorcerer, no matter the dangers that lay ahead.

The room fell into a hushed silence, the air thick with the weight of unspoken emotions. Nanami's eyes bore into yours, their depths filled with a tenderness that took your breath away.

"I love you," he whispered, the words hanging in the air between you, a confession of his deepest feelings.

You felt your heart swell with warmth at his declaration, a surge of emotion flooding through you. Before you could respond, Nanami leaned in closer, his lips brushing against yours in a soft, tender kiss.

In that moment, time seemed to stand still as you melted into the sweetness of his embrace, the world fading away as you lost yourself in the warmth of his love.

"What the hell," Satoru exclaimed, his surprise mirroring that of the students behind him. As you and Nanami quickly pulled away from the kiss, a flush of embarrassment crept up your cheeks.

Nobara, grinning triumphantly, spoke up, "I knew it, they were so dating! You owe me 20 bucks, Yuji."

Yuji's eyes widened in surprise, "What? But how did you know?"

Nobara shrugged, "It was obvious. Just look at them."

"To be fair, we weren't," you admitted, a hint of amusement in your voice, "but..." You glanced at Nanami, a soft smile playing on your lips.

Nanami nodded in agreement, his expression composed as ever. "But now we are," he stated matter-of-factly, his monotone voice betraying none of the emotions that flickered in his eyes.

The room fell into a hushed silence, the students exchanging surprised glances at the unexpected turn of events.

"You got your lunch?" you asked, grabbing the keys to the car. Nanami's hands wrapped around your waist, pulling you close before giving you a long, affectionate kiss.

"Of course I do," he replied, a soft smile playing on his lips.

It was safe to say that the students weren't really used to seeing the once solemn, monotoned Nanami being all lovey-dovey. But that had changed, all because of you. Your presence had brought a warmth and lightness to his life that had been absent before, and he was grateful for it every day.