Some Kinda Tsunami

His fingers trail down your side, gliding over your ribs before settling against your waist. The lingering touch makes your stomach tighten in anticipation.

By the time his hand finally reaches where you’ve been craving it most, you’re already breathless.

Sukuna slips his hand beneath the fabric of your panties and moves down to your folds and immediately feels the evidence of what he’s been doing to you.

A low chuckle rumbles from his chest.

“Fuck baby,” he mutters against your lips. “You’re soaked.”

The comment only earns him a needy whimper from you as you pull him closer, unwilling to break the kiss for even a second.

His touch remains frustratingly slow.

His ring and middle fingers move lazily up and down between your folds , making small circles on your clit as he reaches up taking his time as though he has all the patience in the world.

Your legs instinctively press together around his hand, trying to keep him exactly where you want him.

You feel yourself getting even wetter; how is that possible?

He continues at his own pace, moving his fingers slowly, stimulating your clit and your entrance completely unhurried, enjoying the way your body responds.

Every small movement seems calculated to draw another reaction from you, and judging by the smug look on his face, he’s enjoying every second of it.

You hate how easily he can read you.

Sukuna lets out a quiet laugh, clearly amused by your growing impatience. Meanwhile, your heart pounds harder with every passing second, caught somewhere between embarrassment and anticipation.

The bastard is taking his time on purpose.

Sukuna suddenly pulls his hand away from your soaked core, and a frustrated sound escapes you—something between a moan and a whimper.

The sudden absence of his hand leaves you completely undone.

Immediately, you pull back from the kiss, trying to create a little distance, placing your hands against his broad chest to gently push him back. It’s a useless effort; he keeps leaning in, heavy and relentless, devouring your lips in deep, possessive kisses. Only when you push harder, desperate for air, does he finally break the kiss, tilting his head to look down at you.

A pout instantly forms on your lips.

“Why did you stop?” you complain, your voice small and pathetic in a way that makes Sukuna’s grin widen.

There it is.

That infuriating, amused smile.

The one that always appears whenever he knows he’s getting exactly the reaction he wanted.

A low laugh leaves him.

Then he leans forward and presses a quick kiss to your lips.

“I wanted to taste you.”

You blink.

For a second, you don’t understand what he means.

Then your eyes follow the movement of his hand.

The same hand that had been buried between your thighs just seconds ago.

Realization hits instantly.

Heat rushes to your face.

Without breaking eye contact, Sukuna brings his slick fingers to his lips. He slides two of them deep into his mouth, his throat moving as he slowly, deliberately sucks them clean, tasting every drop of the sweet, needy mess you made for him.

His gaze never leaves yours.

Not for a second.

The gesture is slow, deliberate, and completely shameless.

Your breath catches.

The sheer visual makes your core throb. Your thighs violently clamp together, a full-body shiver running down your spine.

He slowly drags his fingers out, his tongue darting out to lick a stray drop from the corner of his mouth.

A satisfied look crosses his face.

“You’re sweet today,” Sukuna rasps, his eyes darkening with a dangerous hunger.

The comment only makes your cheeks burn hotter.

He doesn't give you time to answer. He leans down and crashes his lips back onto yours, forcing his tongue into your mouth. He kisses you filthy, making you taste your own sweetness mixed with his hot saliva. It’s intoxicating, intimate, and utterly overwhelming.

His hand drifts lazily along your thigh, fingers tracing absent-minded patterns against your skin.

When he finally pulls back, there’s still amusement dancing in his eyes.

“So,” he murmurs, thumb brushing lightly against your leg, “What do you want first? My tongue down there, or are you ready to let me stretch you out?”

He is too large for the space around him, as always. Too tall against the low wall. Too still under the streetlight. Four arms arranged with deceptive ease, body angled slightly as if he has been leaning there long enough for waiting to become a posture rather than an action. He’s in dark clothes suited to the winter night. Head turned already in your direction as if he has been waiting long enough to hear your steps before they were close enough to matter.

Your thoughts collide so hard they trip over each other.

Did he come while you were at the festival? Did he leave Tokyo before you did? Did he follow? Did he wait the entire day? Did he stand here under the eyes of your neighbors like a nightmare with patience?

You silence the questions before they show on your face.

“How the fuck do you know my address?”

He shrugs.

“It is not difficult to access teacher information.”

Of course.

Of course that is his answer. Practical. Mildly criminal. Delivered with no shame.

You cross your arms and keep what feels like a safe distance, though safe is always a relative word with him. The gate is behind him. Your apartment is beyond it. Your bed is beyond that. Your quiet. Your life. All currently blocked by a two-meter-tall problem with too many eyes and the emotional literacy of a thrown brick.

You wait for him to move.

He does not.

He does not even speak.

He only looks at you.

It is not the stare you remember from battle, bright with hunger and amusement. Not the sneer from faculty meetings. Not the feverish fixation from the curse. This one is heavier, harder to interpret. Still arrogant because he cannot breathe without arrogance, but not careless.

“What do you want, Sukuna?” you ask at last.

His answer is immediate.

“I want to take you on a date.”

For one split second you think you might actually throw up.

You gotta be fucking kidding me, you think immediately.

The cold air, the night, the ache in your feet, the weight of your bag, the exhaustion from travel — all of it seems to tilt. You feel sick and angry at once, a sudden curl of nausea under your sternum because the words are too close to something you once wanted and too close to the way he ruined it.

It feels deliberately cruel.

Of all the cruel things he could have done, this is almost elegant in its brutality.

Maybe that is the worst part. That he can stand there and say it like a normal thing. Like the last time you spent a whole day with him did not end with his thumb on your lip and his grin cutting you open. Like date is not a word he already poisoned once.

He sees your expression change.

“It is serious this time,” he adds.

Your mouth twists before you can stop it.

That addition almost makes it worse.

He really does not know shit about anything mildly emotional, does he? Not about timing, not about the weight of words, not about how normal people approach other normal people after hurting them.

No instinct for the wound, only the place he wants to press. No emotional intelligence broad enough to step around the obvious tripwire. Just straight through everything like that will somehow make the result cleaner.

He is completely unversed in the parts of human interaction that require kneeling before anything that is not power.

You start to raise your voice.

The first words rise hot and sharp—

Then you stop yourself.

Close your eyes.

Breathe.

You do not need this.

You do not want this.

You do.

You want it so badly the wanting itself feels like betrayal, but want is not trust, and trust is the thing he took in both hands and crushed just to see what shape your face would make.

You open your eyes.

“No,” you say. Then, because clarity feels good in your mouth, “And, get the fuck out of here before I beat your ass.”

That gets him.

Not in the way you intend, though.

One eyebrow lifts. The corner of his mouth tugs upward faintly, unmistakable. Something old and familiar kindles in his gaze, daring and taunting and alive.

He pushes away from the short wall around the complex and begins walking toward you.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

Like every step is a question he knows will make you angrier.

Oh.

The motherfucker wants to fight.

Of course he does. Of course the answer to emotional conflict, in the great ruin of his mind, is to walk straight into physical conflict and see what survives. He wants his ass beaten. Fine. You are not in the mood to deal with him in any civilized capacity, and if putting him under is the fastest way to make him someone else’s problem, then so be it.

Maybe you will actually knock him unconscious this time.

You set your stance.

He sets his.

Some small, rational part of you points out that fighting outside a civilian apartment complex is a terrible idea. The lighting, the walls, the parked bicycles, the landscaping, the windows, the security cameras, the neighbors who absolutely do not need this at the end of their day.

Every part of this is bad.

You are also exhausted from travel, cold through the knees, still carrying the remnants of too many unresolved things in your chest, and the sight of him striding toward you like a dare given shape makes something in you crack into readiness with vicious relief.

You are so, so tired of his shit that caution has to elbow its way through rage, and rage has better footing.

He moves first.

Not fully. A test. You parry, shift, answer with a strike aimed at his ribs that he turns aside with a lower hand. The contact cracks through your arm. He is holding back. You know that immediately, not because he is slow or careless, but because the world around you remains intact for the first three seconds. That’s immense restrain when it comes to Sukuna fighting.

You do not need much power to make your point. You are quick. You know his body. Know where the openings usually are, how his weight shifts before a strike, which feints mean nothing and which ones mean duck now.

He knows you too, infuriatingly well. Knows the angle of your shoulder when you are about to use your technique. Knows how to redirect your wrists just enough to ruin your aim. Knows which attacks you expect and which you hate.

Rage pours off you in waves hot enough to feel.

He, bastard that he is, looks too delighted.

The grin on his mouth as you both get faster nearly makes you reckless. You compensate by getting meaner instead. Low strike, pivot, elbow, heel into his knee, duck under the upper right hand, catch the lower left wrist, torque, shove, move before the next blow comes.

His laugh — breathless and a little maniac — follows one of your harder hits.

The fight tightens.

You are faster now. You have to be. Against Sukuna, speed is not an advantage so much as the entry fee.

You slip under one arm, catch another at the wrist, twist enough to redirect but not enough to control. He lets you have the motion, then uses the shift to bring another hand toward your shoulder. You duck. Your heel strikes his thigh. He huffs something that might be a laugh and pivots before the hit can take his balance fully.

You need precision.

Palm, wrist, elbow, step out.

Avoid the lower left. Watch the upper right.

Do not track only his shoulders because half his body lies.

Do not let the extra arms become noise — read them as separate intentions.

He knows how you think too.

He catches the slight angle of your wrist before your cursed technique can land. Redirects your palm past him and close enough to a metal trash can that your technique buzzes through the edge of it instead. The can collapses inward with a shriek of twisted metal.

“You missed,” he crows at you.

“Asshole!” you snap.

“Observant.”

A lighting pole takes damage when he forces you sideways and you use the base to kick off, leaving a fracture spidering up the metal. A low branch cracks under the force of his body turning too sharply near one of the trees. The little decorative stones around the green patch scatter under your feet. Somewhere near that havoc, a security light flickers like it is considering resignation.

You are absolutely going to be billed for this.

You do not care yet.

You drive in again, aiming for his collarbone. He catches your wrist again before contact.

Your frustration spikes hot enough to sharpen your voice.

“Why are you being so fucking difficult?”

His laugh comes breathless this time, real from deep in his chest, edged by exertion and something like satisfaction.

“I have always been difficult.”

You wrench free and nearly catch his jaw with the next strike. He leans just out of range and adds,

“You never seemed to grow tired of it.”

That lands somewhere under your ribs.

For a heartbeat, the fight blurs with memory. Missions. Bickering. The old rhythm of him pushing and you pushing back, both of you too stubborn to name the way familiarity had grown beneath irritation like roots under stone.

Then he says, because apparently he has a death wish,

“If I win, I am taking you on that date.”

The rage that hits you is clean and scorching.

You attack in a burst sharp enough to make him give ground. One blow lands against his sternum. Another clips his jaw. A third, charged with cursed energy and all the offended dignity you have left, slams into him hard enough to send him flying backward several meters toward the apartment complex wall.

He hits the short wall with enough force to break the top layer and disappears behind it with the cloud of dust slowly thinning after a few seconds.

For one satisfying second, there is silence.

Then four hands rise into view.

He hauls himself back over the short wall like some obscene creature climbing out of a bad dream, laughing under his breath while one hand wipes blood streaming from his nose.

It streaks over his mouth and chin in red that looks almost black in the winter light. Smoke curls faintly off scorched skin where your attack burned through his shirt — the fabric is gone now, hanging in useless blackened tatters before falling away completely. His hakama, unfortunately, remains whole. One of his eyebrows is singed at the edge, and there is a darkening mark near his cheekbone where you caught him.

He looks better like that than any man has a right to.

He looks thrilled.

Weird man.

Terrible man.

Beautiful in a way that makes you angrier because even bleeding and scorched he has the nerve to look vigorous.

When he lunges back, he stops playing as much.

Not all the way. Never all the way, or the street would split open and the building behind you would become rubble. But he gives you enough of himself to remind you why he is what he is.

Now he moves like himself in the old way you remember — vicious, mercurial, impossible to fully predict because all four arms turn every opening into two new problems. Strikes coming from directions a human body should not be able to produce. Feints layered under real attacks. A rhythm that changes each time you begin to catch it. He’s making you sweat and he’s grinning like a demon the whole time.

He is not trying to maim you. You know the difference well enough to trust that much. This is not slaughter. It is overpowering. Dominance. A fight scaled precisely to the edge where he can have fun without tipping into irreversible destruction. A fight to press until you answer with everything he wants from you.

You parry what you can. Some hits get through. Your shoulder jars. Your ribs light up. Your heel skids through ruined grass. You growl through your bared teeth and focus on the single clean chance you need.

Your palm.

His skin.

Your technique.

He is too fucking fast.

You think you will miss again, and the thought makes your frustration flash white behind your eyes.

“I don’t care if you win,” you bark, ducking under a lower arm and twisting past the upper pair. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

All four eyes narrow.

There.

That tiny shift is enough.

You find your angle.

You step in instead of away, take the risk of his proximity, and plant your palm against the slope of his collarbone.

You fire.

He rips back almost instantly, creating distance with a burst of speed that makes the cold air snap between you, but you know you hit him.

Not enough to drop him. But enough.

His body knows the hit for what it is, and in less than a second the violence drains out of the exchange because he knows better than to keep pushing through that particular fog.

The fight stalls.

He stands a few paces away, teeth bared, growling low, shoulders rising and falling under the effort of adjusting to the sudden distortion in his perception, every line of him taut with frustration rather than rage. He blinks harder than usual. The pupils do not focus evenly.

Good.

You got enough of him.

Your technique sinks into the edges of his senses and bends them. Not intoxication exactly, but close enough to make balance unreliable, timing ugly, clarity slippery. The world will be lagging half a breath behind itself for him now. Not long. Not forever. But long enough.

He hates it. Always has.

You watch him carefully, one hand still raised.

For a moment, you think he might push through anyway and cleave you, maybe even dismantle.

Then he huffs sharply, more annoyed than furious, and disengages.

The sudden absence of violence is almost dizzying.

You remain standing until you are sure. Muscles trembling with leftover adrenaline. Breath cutting too fast in the winter air.

You wait, just in case.

Until his arms lower. Until the energy between you drops from active threat to unresolved tension.

You sit hard on the little patch of grass beside the complex that is now more dirt and damage than landscaping.

You breathe hard.

Your lungs hurt from the cold. Your palms sting. Your shoulder throbs. Your wrists ache. The back of your throat tastes metallic from the force with which you bit down on your own concentration during the fight. Adrenaline makes your hands tremble in little pulses you cannot quite hide.

Sukuna approaches after a moment, slower now. Still huge. Still ridiculous. Still bleeding at the nose and looking like a problem no city should ever be expected to manage.

You do not look up until he stops in front of you and lowers himself to his haunches, forearms resting on thighs and knees, huge body folded with strange patience. Blood is drying on his face. The scorch marks over his bare chest look worse in the streetlight, though you know he will heal quickly enough.

He says nothing.

Of course he says nothing.

The silence stretches until you are too tired to maintain hostility in its sharpest form.

“What is your problem?” you ask.

It does not come out angry or hostile.

It comes out honest. Worn down. Threadbare at the edges.

He looks at you — it seems to catch him slightly off guard.

“I have no problem.”

You stare at him.

You nearly laugh from disbelief.

“Then what the fuck was all that about?”

He clicks his tongue and looks away, briefly, toward the apartment building.

You follow the glance.

That is not an answer.

It is, somehow, an admission that he does not know how to give one.

You sigh, long and too exhausted, then push yourself to your feet. Your legs feel heavier now that the fight is done. The cold has found the sweat along your spine and turned it unpleasant.

You want a shower. You want your bed. You want your apartment to be empty of complicated men and full of uncomplicated silence.

Instead, against all good sense, you say,

“Come up.”

His eyes cut back to you.

“I’m going to regret it,” you add. “But I’d rather not leave you outside to brood and break more things.”

He rises.

You open the gate and walk ahead without checking if he follows.

He does.

You feel him behind you the entire way up.

Your apartment feels even smaller with him inside.

That is the first thing you notice once the door closes. Sukuna does not fit into modest domestic spaces. He alters them. The ceiling looks lower. The doorframes narrower. He is too big for the couch. Too big for the doorway. Too big for the narrow strip of open floor between kitchen and living room.

His presence changes the dimensions of the place simply by existing in it.

He stands near the entrance for a moment, eyes moving over the apartment with a look you cannot read.

“Do not touch anything,” you say, pointing at him as you move toward the bathroom. “I need to shower. I need to breathe for ten minutes. If I come out and anything is broken, I’m putting you through the floor.”

His gaze slides to you.

The corner of his mouth moves like it wants to become a smirk but thinks better of it.

“Sit,” you order.

A pause.

Then he sits on your couch, arms crossed, too large for it in a way that would be funny if you had emotional room left for comedy.

You shut the bathroom door.

The second you are alone, the fight drains out of you in a rush.

You brace both hands on the sink and bow your head. Your breath trembles once. Not crying. Just the body catching up with too much in too little time. The festival. The train. His presence. The date request. The fight. The fact that you invited him upstairs because apparently self-preservation and emotional clarity remain separate committees inside you and neither has full authority.

You strip and step under hot water.

The shower is almost too small, but tonight the closeness helps. Steam fills the narrow bathroom. Water pounds your shoulders, loosens the cold from your skin, turns the ache in your muscles into something you can name. Dirt runs down the drain. Sweat. A faint smear of blood from your knuckles that might be his or yours.

You breathe.

For a few minutes, you are alone with heat and tile and the sound of water.

It helps.

Not enough.

But some.

When you come out, dressed in fresh clothes with your hair tied back, Sukuna is still sitting exactly where you left him.

This obedience should not be noteworthy.

With him, it is.

You do not sit beside him. You stand near the couch, arms loosely folded, and look at him with the fatigue of someone who no longer has patience for performance.

“What did you think you would achieve by coming here today after what happened?”

He answers brutally.

“I thought we would argue.”

You wait.

“As we always did,” he continues. “I thought you would accept going out with me out of spite.”

He means it.

That is the worst part with Sukuna.

He truly thought that was a real plan.

You lower yourself onto the coffee table in front of the couch because standing suddenly feels too precarious for a conversation like this. Elbows on your knees. Hands hanging between them. You look at the floorboards for a few seconds, gathering your thoughts like scattered things after an earthquake.

It takes longer than you want.

Finally, you look up.

“What did you think would happen after you told me the curse was gone back in the park?”

His eyes snap to your face.

You keep your voice steady with effort.

“After you told me you had been free from it for the whole day. After you told me you were just messing with me to see how far I’d go.”

His nostrils flare once.

Something alive and unpleasant flickers across him — recognition, maybe.

The silence that follows is not empty. It is crowded with the memory of that night by the lake, his thumb against your lip, the moon on the water, the wine on his breath, the grin that turned every soft thing into a weapon.

“I thought you would just try to fight me,” he says.

You absorb that slowly.

“Curse at me,” he adds. “Try to put me under. Hit me, at the very least.”

You stare at him.

His jaw tightens.

“I realized I was wrong when I saw your face right before you got me down.”

Your hands come up before you can stop them. You press your fingers into your hairline, elbows still on your knees, and look down at the floor.

Of course.

Of course that is what he thought.

Violence, he understands. Anger, he understands. Challenge, insult, retaliation, fury — those are languages he speaks fluently.

He knows how to meet a blow. He knows what to do with an enemy. He knows how to turn conflict into a shape he can hold.

But grief? Hurt? Humiliation? The vulnerability of being toyed with in the exact place you did not want touched? Those had not even entered the calculation.

They ask for more than reaction. For recognition. For care before damage becomes entertainment. They ask him to imagine your inner life as something separate from his game, and that, apparently, is where his centuries of power and cruelty have left him nearly illiterate.

He really is terrible at this.

Not malicious in some grand sophisticated way.

Just catastrophically unequipped.

A genius on battlefields but a real calamity where human feeling is concerned.

When you look up again, he has not moved.

Not even slightly.

The stillness is so complete it almost looks unnatural. You wonder, absurdly, if he thinks that moving too quickly will send you running again.

The idea of Sukuna holding himself motionless like a cautious person approaching an angry dog should be funny, considering the sheer difference in your size and destructive capacity.

It is not funny.

It just makes you tired.

“Did you not consider how it would make me feel?” you ask.

His face gives you nothing.

You continue because stopping now will only make the pressure in your throat worse.

“Two days, Sukuna. Two days of you latching onto me with this massive wave of tenderness and attention and all those little things that would put anyone off balance. Even knowing it was fake, it was coming from a curse, it was still…” You search for the word and hate every option. “A lot.”

He watches you.

“Didn’t you think I would be better off knowing the curse was gone the instant it left? We could have had a normal adult conversation about what happened, about your memories and the curse and, I don’t know, anything helpful for Shoko and her research on the effects of that bullshit.”

His mouth tightens faintly.

“Didn’t you think I would be hurt,” you ask, quieter now, “by you pretending to feel something for me after all that delusion-fed care?”

Your eyes sting.

You hate it so much.

You hate that your voice thins near the end. Hate that the room blurs at the edges. Hate that he is here, in your apartment, seeing proof that he found the soft place and stepped on it.

His face changes.

Not much. With him, not much can mean a great deal.

He goes even stiller, if that is possible.

Then, slowly, he leans forward.

The movement is careful enough to pull your attention from your own rising tears. He reaches toward you the way someone might reach toward a flame they are not sure will burn or vanish. One large hand comes to the side of your face and stops there, warm palm cupping your cheek.

The touch is familiar.

Bitterly familiar.

Your eyes close for half a second before you can stop them.

“Don’t do this,” you say, voice thin, low. “That’s just cruel.”

He pauses.

For a heartbeat you think he will withdraw.

Instead, another hand rises to the other side of your face. He cups you fully between both palms and tilts your face up with a gentleness that makes your chest hurt.

“I did not do it with the intention of hurting you,” he says.

You look at him through the sting in your eyes.

He is serious.

Painfully serious.

It would be easier if he were mocking. Easier if he gave you something sharp to bite back against.

“I thought you would play it off,” he continues. “Go back to treating me as you did before. I thought you would be angry, not…” His thumbs rest near your cheekbones, not moving yet. His eyes move over your face as if the memory of your expression still confuses him. “Not that.”

You laugh once, soft and humorless.

“Devastated?”

His jaw works.

He does not repeat the word.

“I wanted another day,” he says instead. “With myself in control of my own actions instead of a curse. I did not think you would give me that if you knew the curse had ended.”

Your brows press together, trying to understand what was the logic behind his decisions.

“So you lied.”

“I omitted.”

“You fucking lied, Sukuna.”

His eyes narrow slightly, pride reflexively trying to stand up.

You stare him down.

After a tense moment, he says,

“Yes.”

At least that.

You take a slow breath, his hands still around your face. They feel too good. That is the awful part. You become acutely aware then of the warmth of him. Of how good his hands feel, even now, even after everything.

Big, callused, steady. Your body remembers too much. The curse may be gone, but your skin does not care. It still knows what it was like to be held by him, soothed by him, watched over in that unbearable way that made you soften before you had a plan for the consequences.

You missed this.

You did not want to. You missed it anyway. You missed the solidity, the warmth, the sense of being surrounded by a force that, for those cursed days, had turned toward care instead of destruction.

It sucks to feel his hands again because you already know you will miss them when they are gone.

“Why,” you ask, tired enough now that the anger has burnt through into something duller and more honest, “do you make everything so difficult? Why do you scheme the worst possible version instead of just saying what you feel. What you want.”

He does not answer.

That silence is an answer too, in its way.

Because he does not know how.

Because feelings spoken plainly probably seem to him like stepping into battle without technique. Because desire is easier when disguised as conquest, tenderness easier when blamed on a curse, apology easier when wrapped in a fight. Because he is ancient and powerful and still somehow terrible at being a person.

You are too tired to care about protecting every exposed part of yourself now.

So you say it.

“I started to understand my feelings for you because of the curse, at least.”

His fingers still against your face.

You look down for a second, though his hands make it difficult.

“I didn’t plan for that. I didn’t plan to feel anything. I definitely didn’t plan to be hurt by your stupid bullshit, but I was. Maybe that’s the curse’s fault, maybe it isn’t. I don’t know.”

Your words begin to gather speed, not because you know where they are going but because there is too much inside you and no graceful way to let it out.

“I was fine with how we were before. I didn’t mind bickering with you. You’re infuriating, but at least I knew how to deal with that. And now I’m in Kyoto, and I can’t just come back because you finally decided to develop half a feeling and handle it badly. I can’t afford another move. I have students here. I need to finish the school year with them. They deserve consistency, and I deserve not to keep rearranging my life around whatever the hell is happening with you—”

You are rambling.

You know you are rambling.

Something in you keeps trying to turn emotion into logistics because logistics can be solved. Apartments. School years. Transfers. Commutes. Schedules. Those are easier than saying — I missed you. I wanted you. You hurt me. I am afraid to believe you could want me without ruining it again.

While you talk, he leans closer and closer.

So slowly you do not notice at first.

His hands remain gentle at your face, but the distance between you narrows by degrees until the air changes. His presence fills your awareness. The heat of him. The faint smell of blood still dried on his skin, smoke from the fight, cold night air, something darker and familiar beneath it all.

You only stop when his eyes are inches from yours.

All four crimson eyes fixed on you.

Your mouth closes.

The room seems suddenly very quiet.

He waits one beat.

“I know you did not plan for that to happen,” he says. “I did not dislike that it did.”

Your throat moves around nothing. The flutter in your chest is stupid, immediate, and impossible to crush.

His thumbs move once, barely, over your cheeks.

“I only wish I had not made such a stupid mess of it.”

You try for a smile and almost manage one.

“I also wish you wouldn’t be so stupid.”

He clicks his tongue softly.

No bite in it.

Then he leans in the last fraction and rests his forehead against yours.

It is ridiculous.

That is the first thought that manages to rise through the ache.

Ridiculous that this is happening in your tiny Kyoto apartment after a fight that destroyed half the courtyard amenities.

Ridiculous that he is shirtless because you burned his shirt off, dried blood still scattered along his jaw and chest.

Ridiculous that you are sitting on your own coffee table in clean clothes, exhausted from travel, shower-warm and emotionally wrung out, letting the former King of Curses cradle your face like he is afraid of mishandling something he cannot replace.

You let out a little laugh.

It has no humor in it, but it has breath.

“What’s your big idea now?” you murmur. “Go back to pretending you’re cursed so you’re less irritating?”

“Too much work,” he deadpans.

That almost earns a real laugh.

Then he adds, after a small pause,

“I could try being nice to you and no one else.”

You blink.

It is such a ridiculous sentence that for a second all you can do is stare at him.

He means it.

That is the problem. He actually means it. It’s not a joke. He is offering selective decency like some warrior offering tribute after battle, as though being tolerable to one person might be a vow of significant weight.

Maybe, for him, it is.

Your chest and stomach flutter with the proximity, with his hands on your face, with the knowledge that you probably still like him. Not the cursed version. Not the imagined version.

Him.

The difficult, arrogant, emotionally catastrophic man in front of you who can level a city and still apparently cannot figure out that lying about feelings might hurt someone.

He does not push.

He waits.

He stays there, forehead to yours, hands steady, waiting.

So you are the next one to speak.

“I hope,” you say, voice low, “you’re better at kissing than you are at anything involving feelings.”

Something shifts in his face.

It is not the grin you expect. His eyes drop to your mouth, and the focus in them sharpens so completely that your breath catches before he even moves. One thumb strokes once near the corner of your lips, not over them, just close enough to send a line of heat through your whole body.

“You will tell me,” he murmurs.

Then he kisses you.

The first touch is careful.

That disarms you.

You had expected hunger, maybe. Arrogance, always. Some overwhelming proof of confidence, a kiss that announces itself like conquest because that is what Sukuna does with everything else. Instead his mouth meets yours slowly, warm and firm, giving you enough time to reject him if you choose.

You do not.

He kisses like he has been thinking about it.

For one suspended second, your body goes still not from fear but from the sheer strangeness of finally feeling him like this when neither of you can blame a curse. His hands remain at your face, grounding and gentle. His lips move against yours with a patience that makes your heart hurt. He is not clumsy or hesitant. He is controlled. As if control is the only way he knows to show care without making it too fragile to survive.

You breathe in through your nose and taste winter on him.

Blood too, faintly metallic, mixed with the heat of his mouth and the ghost of smoke from your fight. His skin smells like cold air, scorch, and the sandalwood that has always seemed to cling to him even when nothing else about him is soft.

He draws back after only a moment.

Not far.

Just enough to let the choice return to you.

You feel the space open and hate it.

So you lean forward.

The second kiss is yours first.

His answering sound is low and brief and almost embarrassing in how it goes straight through you. His hands tighten by a fraction, no more, thumbs firm against your cheeks. The kiss deepens slowly, gaining weight without becoming demanding.

Your fingers, which had been curled uselessly near your knees, lift and find his wrist first. Then his forearm. Then the hot, solid slope of his shoulder.

His skin is warm under your palm.

Too warm.

Alive and real and marked by your blows.

You kissed him in your head before, somewhere you never admitted. During the curse days, perhaps. On the bench by the lake, before the reveal turned the memory rotten. In the gap between anger and wanting. But imagination had not prepared you for the unnerving precision of his attention.

The way he follows the smallest shift of your mouth. The way he adjusts when your breath catches. The way he seems to put the full force of his focus into learning the exact line between welcome and too much. There is an expertise to him that is not polished or performative. Just attentive. He learns quickly, adjusts faster, follows the slight turn of your head and the softer pressure of your mouth with a precision that should be illegal in a man this annoying.

It is almost unfair.

When his tongue barely brushes the seam of your mouth, you let him in without thinking and hate how immediate the reward is — the tiny shift in his breath, the way his hands tighten fractionally, the unmistakable sense that for all his size and power he is paying attention to every sign you give him like they really matter.

The heat that rolls through you then is steady and full, less like being startled and more like something long-held finally loosening under touch. You are aware of everything. The coffee table beneath you. The ache in your ribs from the fight. The damp ends of your tied hair against your neck. The roughness of dried blood under your fingertips where your hand has drifted near his collarbone. The way his upper hands hold your face while his lower ones remain deliberately away from your body, as if he is making a point of not taking more than you offered.

That restraint matters too.

When the kiss finally breaks, neither of you moves far.

Your eyes stay closed for a breath longer than pride would prefer.

When you open them, he is looking at you with such total focus that your face warms.

“Well?” he asks.

The audacity nearly saves you.

“Well what?”

“You made a claim.”

You blink slowly, still dazed enough that irritation has to swim up through warmth.

“Are you expecting a grade?”

“Yes.”

“Of course you are.”

His mouth curves.

You should not want to kiss that curve.

You do.

“You’re still very irritating,” you tell him.

“That is not an answer to my question.”

“It is the one you deserve.”

His eyes narrow in faint amusement.

For a few moments, that is all you do. Sit there with his hands still on your face, your own fingers resting against his skin, your breathing not quite even.

The kiss has not solved anything. You are very aware of that. It does not erase the hurt, the months away, the transfer, the humiliation, the anger that made you put him on the ground by the lake. It does not make him suddenly competent at the parts of life that do not involve violence.

But it changes something.

Not enough to call safety.

Enough to call beginning.

His gaze shifts over your face, and his expression grows more serious.

“You are not crying,” he notes.

It is blunt enough to startle you.

Your throat tightens, but no tears fall.

“No.”

“Good.”

That one word is so heavy with quiet relief that you do not know where to put it. Whatever else he misread, whatever else he mishandled, he does not want to see that hurt on your face again.

You swallow.

“You don’t get points for basic decency.”

“I am learning that.”

“You are very late.”

“I noticed,” he grouses.

A small and tired laugh slips out of you. More breath than sound, but amusing nonetheless.

He seems to take that as permission to let his hands fall slowly from your face. They do not go far. They settle instead on your knees, one lower hand on each, anchoring but not holding. The shift gives you room to breathe, and the fact that he seems to understand you need it makes the room tilt again in a softer direction.

You wipe at one eye with the heel of your hand, irritated by the remaining sting.

He watches but says nothing.

Good, you are the one thinking now, maybe he can learn.

“You can’t just show up outside my apartment whenever you decide you’re ready to deal with consequences, by the way,” you say after a while.

“I am aware.”

“You can’t turn every conversation into a fight because it’s easier for you, too.”

His mouth tightens, but he accepts it.

“Fine,” he concedes but it seems to cost him something.

“You also can’t manipulate me into giving you time because you’re afraid I won’t give it freely.”

A pause.

Longer this time.

Then,

“No. I can not. I will not.”

You study him.

He does not look away.

You nod once, small and decisive.

“We’re good.”

He waits.

It is almost funny how visible the effort is now. Sukuna, who has never in his life lacked for action, sitting too big on your couch with blood dried on his face, forcing himself to wait because you finally made him understand that moving too fast costs him something he apparently does not want to lose.

You sigh.

“I also can’t keep pretending none of this matters.”

His fingers flex once on your knees.

You see the movement. Feel it through fabric.

“I know,” he says.

The answer is quiet.

Too quiet, maybe. It makes you look at him more carefully.

He has changed in some way you cannot yet measure. Not become softer, no. That would be too easy and too false. Sukuna is still Sukuna. You can feel the arrogance in his bones, the violence under his skin, the pride that takes up space even when he is trying to behave. But something has turned inward over the past months. Something has had to sit alone with consequence and found no immediate enemy to kill for relief.

“You stopped enjoying missions,” you mention and wait.

He glances at you sharply.

You lift a shoulder.

“Satoru complained for twenty minutes.”

“That idiot complains when the sun rises.”

“He said you locate, analyze, exorcise, leave. No collateral.”

“That is the job, is it not?”

“Since when do you care about the job more than the thrill?”

His eyes slide away.

For a while, he says nothing.

You let the silence sit.

Eventually, his jaw shifts.

“There was no point.”

You raise both your eyebrows in surprise.

“In enjoying it?”

“In dragging it out.”

You lean back slightly, the coffee table edge pressing into your thighs.

“Why?”

His gaze returns to you, and there is something almost irritated in it now, though not at you. At himself, maybe. At the fact that the answer exists.

“You were not there to stop me.”

The words settle into the apartment with more weight than you expect.

Your first instinct is to make a joke. To avoid the way your chest contracts.

You do not.

He continues, rougher now.

“If I went too far, someone else would try. They would fail, or get in the way, or make it tedious. So I ended it.”

You stare at him.

That is not exactly romantic.

It is not even healthy, for fuck’s sake.

But it is honest.

More importantly, it reveals something you had only wondered in the privacy of your own thoughts — he had trusted you to stop him. Not in the noble way people write stories about trust. In the Sukuna way. Brutal, practical, unspoken. He pushed because you were there to push back. He played because you could end the game.

Your absence changed the fight.

That knowledge moves through you slowly.

“You’re so fucking ridiculous, you know that?”

You say flatly because anything softer would be dangerous.

“I have been told.”

“By me.”

“Often.”

You huff, and this time the almost-smile stays.

The room eases by degrees.

You ask why he came today, specifically. He says he saw you at the festival. Not directly, not close enough for you to notice. He had been there, somewhere beyond the main crowd, watching the edges like he often does. He saw your old students gather around you. Saw Gojo occupy your attention with theatrics. Saw you laugh at something Suguru said. Saw you speak with Yaga near the takoyaki stall and look almost like you belonged to both schools at once.

Something in him, apparently, did not enjoy remaining unseen after that.

“That is not a normal emotional process,” you tell him.

“No.”

“At least you know.”

“I am not ignorant.”

You give him a look.

He exhales through his nose, annoyed.

“Not entirely.”

“Better.”

He asks about Kyoto then.

Not in a casual, polite way. He asks like he wants a map. About your students. Your classes. Mei Mei. Utahime. The commute before you moved. Whether the apartment is acceptable. Whether the neighborhood is safe. Whether anyone has bothered you.

“That sounds threatening,” you say.

“It is a simple question.”

“It sounds like a threat wearing a question’s skin.”

“Has anyone bothered you?”

“Sukuna,” you say flatly.

His eyes narrow and he raises a brow.

“You,” you clarify. “You bothered me. Outside. Recently.”

The look he gives you should not make you laugh, but it does.

You tell him about the school anyway. The disciplined students who still act like teenagers. Yuuta’s quiet intensity. Mai’s permanent offense at the world. Choso’s formal kindness. Toge’s expressive silence. Utahime’s competence. Mei Mei’s terrifying efficiency. The first apartment viewing. The moving day. Shoko insulting your lamp.

He listens.

Actually listens.

You notice because he does not interrupt to make every detail about himself. He asks follow-up questions, some weirdly practical, some unexpectedly sharp. He seems annoyed on your behalf when you mention one student refusing theory work because he thinks instinct is enough. He looks almost approving when you describe making that same student lose three consecutive sparring rounds because he failed to identify terrain risks.

The conversation stretches.

Not smoothly, exactly. Sukuna is still blunt enough to make rocks feel diplomatic. But there is effort in him now. Visible, imperfect effort. He does not always know what to say, but he tries not to make that ignorance your problem immediately.

“You still wanted to go on a date?” you ask after a moment.

“Yes.”

“After all of this?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The answer comes without hesitation.

“Because I like being around you.”

You blink, startled.

It is such a simple sentence. So ordinary. So stripped of game and ego that it hits harder than anything more elaborate could have. He says it like a fact he arrived at late and resents only for its timing, not for its truth.

You exhale through your nose.

“That would have been useful to hear months ago.”

“I know.”

He is getting annoyingly good at that answer.

Silence settles for a while.

Not awkward. Just full. You become aware of the little sounds in your apartment again. The heater humming faintly. Water ticking in old pipes. A car moving past outside. Your own breathing slowly evening out.

Then your eyes catch on the dried blood still at the corner of his mouth and speckled on his chest.

“You look terrible,” you mutter.

He raises a brow.

“You did that.”

“I’m aware.”

He waits.

You sigh, because apparently this night is not done humiliating you by revealing all the ways in which your care still functions even when you would prefer to let him sit there crusted in his own blood.

“Stay there,” you tell him.

He snorts as if he had any intention of fitting anywhere else in the room.

You stand up.

Your legs complain. The fight is catching up with your body in delayed aches. Your ribs throb when you reach for a glass. Sukuna notices and starts to rise.

You point at him without turning fully.

“Sit.”

He sits.

You hide your smile in the cabinet.

When you bring water back, you also bring a damp cloth and your first-aid kit.

His eyes follow the kit.

“You think that is necessary?”

“You look like you got into a fight, so yeah,” you half-joke.

“I did.”

“Seems like you got beaten up really bad, huh?” You go on with the taunt because you finally feel like you can.

“Yes.”

“I’m just cleaning your face so my couch doesn’t look like a crime scene.”

He wisely says nothing in response.

You stand between his knees because there is nowhere else to fit comfortably, and his size makes the position feel more intimate than you intend. You tilt his chin up with two fingers. His skin is hot under your touch. The dried blood at his jaw flakes slightly when you wipe it away. He chooses remains very still so you can finish the job easier.

The blood comes off in dark streaks. His nose has already healed enough that only the mess remains. The burn across one collarbone is superficial. The singed eyebrow, unfortunately, is funny.

You stare at it.

He notices and sneers at you.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You want to.”

“You look asymmetrical.”

His expression flattens.

You press your lips together to stop the laugh, fail, and let it escape softly.

For a moment, he only looks at you.

Then his mouth curves, not fully, but enough.

The sight does something unpleasantly tender to your chest.

You clean the blood from the corner of his mouth last. The cloth drags carefully over his lower lip, and the closeness changes again. His eyes stay on your face. Your fingers slow despite your best efforts.

“You look better here,” he says.

Your hand pauses.

You know what he means without asking.

Better than that night. Better than crying in your apartment after running from him. Better than the expression he finally understood too late.

You continue wiping because stopping would feel too revealing.

“That is a low bar.”

“It is relief, not praise.”

That shuts you up.

You finish in silence.

When you step back, he catches your wrist lightly.

Not a grab. A pause.

His thumb rests over your pulse.

“I am not toying with you,” he says.

The words are plain enough to scare you more than anything elaborate would have.

You look down at his hand around your wrist. At the size difference. At the careful lack of pressure. At the man on your couch who tore open your sense of trust and then apparently spent months realizing it oddly mattered more than he anticipated.

Trust does not return because someone wants it.

You know that.

One kiss does not build a bridge strong enough to carry all of this. One honest conversation does not erase manipulation. One visit does not make him safe.

But you believe, at least, that he means what he says right now.

That is not everything.

It is not nothing either.

“You can visit,” you say.

His grip shifts.

“Sometimes,” you add immediately.

His eyes lift to yours.

“I will.”

“That was not automatic permission.”

“It sounded enough like it.”

You roll your eyes.

“This is why I said sometimes.”

His mouth twitches.

“I’m not moving back yet,” you continue. “Maybe not until the year is done. Maybe longer. I don’t know. I have students here. I have rent. I have a life that I am trying to build without constantly being dragged into your orbit.”

He absorbs that with visible distaste.

Not at you, you think.

At the limits.

He can dislike them and still obey them, or he can leave.

“You can come here sometimes,” you repeat. “But you ask. You do not materialize at my gate like a curse from my bad decisions.”

His mouth twitches.

“I am not a bad decision.”

“You are several bad decisions stitched together.”

“I am an excellent decision if handled correctly.”

“You are making your case worse.”

He sucks his teeth.

You almost smile again.

Then his expression grows more serious.

“I can take the train.”

The image is so absurd you pause.

“You. On the shinkansen.”

“If necessary.”

“You say that like public transportation is a battlefield.”

“You insult battles with your comparison.”

That one gets a real laugh out of you.

It startles you.

It startles him too, though he hides it quickly. The laugh is not loud, not bright like the ones at the festival, but it is real enough that the apartment seems to warm around it.

He releases your wrist.

You sit back down on the coffee table, closer this time. Close enough that your knees nearly touch his. The distance between you feels chosen now rather than accidental.

Your eye catches the dirt his feet tracked in and the faint blood smudge drying near the couch cushion.

He follows your gaze.

Silence.

Then, with the same gravity he used when proposing dating like a military maneuver, he says,

“I can clean.”

You stare.

He stares back.

The image of Sukuna cleaning your apartment is so violently absurd that it wipes your expression blank.

“You,” you say slowly, “want to clean.”

“I caused the damage.”

“That is not the same as knowing how to clean.”

“I know how to remove blood.”

Your brows stitch together and you stare at him like he' just told you he could grab the moon with his bare hands and use it like a basketball.

His brows pull together as well.

“What.”

“That is the least reassuring version of ‘I can help’ I’ve ever heard.”

He seems to think this through and, to your absolute astonishment, huffs out what might be a resigned acceptance of your point.

“I know household tasks,” he says, with visible distaste for the sentence. “I am not useless.”

The very fact that he sounds offended by the possibility nearly finishes you.

“Fine,” you say, still half laughing. “Get a cloth.”

He rises.

The apartment actually changes shape around him when he stands, every proportion suddenly wrong. You forget sometimes how enormous he is until he moves in a contained space and turns the whole place into evidence. He looks toward the kitchen like he expects supplies to announce themselves.

“In the drawer by the sink,” you tell him.

He goes.

You sit there in a daze and watch Ryomen Sukuna, strongest sorcerer in history, former king of curses, catastrophic idiot with the emotional instincts of a natural disaster, find a dishcloth in your kitchen and return to wipe dried blood off your floor.

The universe is laughing at you.

There is no other explanation.

He crouches, too big even for that, and cleans with efficient if somewhat alarming precision. You end up taking over because otherwise he will probably strip the finish off your floorboards, but the fact remains that he tried.

You both clean the little mess in companionable bursts of bickering, passing a spray bottle back and forth, moving around each other in a space too tight for it not to become intimate. His hand brushes your waist once when you both reach for the same rag. You nearly drop the damn thing.

He notices.

“You are distracted,” he says.

“You are in my kitchen.”

“And?”

“And that’s still very strange.”

“I could kiss you again in it if that helps normalize the experience.”

You nearly walk into the counter.

He looks far too satisfied with himself after that.

By the time the floor is done and the blood is off his skin as much as he allows while standing at your sink with a towel you reluctantly hand over, the apartment feels different.

As if some line that used to be rigid and defensive has shifted just enough to let another person inside without sounding every internal alarm you own.

The night grows late.

You both should be asleep.

He should probably leave.

You should probably insist.

Instead the conversation keeps finding new paths through the wreckage. He tells you, haltingly and with irritation at his own lack of fluency, that during the curse he remembered all of it.

Not like being possessed exactly. More like a set of instincts and certainties shoved into him so strongly that resisting them had felt absurd. He had believed you were his wife because the curse made the belief feel older than thought. He had wanted to hold you, feed you, keep you close, not because the curse invented desire from nothing but because it took something he had not examined and built a shrine around it without permission.

That, when he says it, makes your breath stop.

He seems to regret the phrasing immediately, perhaps because it gives too much away.

You do not mock him.

You ask, carefully,

“So it wasn’t all fake?”

His eyes hold yours.

“No.”

A small word.

A large consequence.

You breathe around it slowly.

The hurt does not vanish. It shifts. Reorders itself. Some pieces remain sharp, but others become more complicated. You had told yourself the tenderness was counterfeit because that made the loss cleaner. Now he is telling you the curse did not fabricate everything. It amplified. Distorted. Dragged something hidden into monstrous certainty.

That means the warmth had roots.

That means the lie afterward hurt because it covered something real.

You rub both hands over your face and groan.

He watches, alarmed in his subtle way.

“What?”

“I hate that this helps.”

His brows draw together.

“It makes it worse too,” you add. “But it helps.”

“Good…?”

“Don’t sound so proud. You are still on probation.”

“I was unaware there was a formal system.”

“There is now.”

He considers that.

“What are the terms?”

You lower your hands and look at him.

“Honesty, for one.”

His face does not move.

You continue.

“No more testing me to see how far I’ll go. No more deciding what I can handle without telling me the truth. No more treating my feelings like an opponent you can outmaneuver.”

His jaw tightens, but he nods once.

“And if you want something,” you say, slower now, “you say it. With words. Like a person. An adult person.”

He looks like you have asked him to perform surgery on himself without anesthetic.

You almost laugh, but do not.

Instead, you wait.

He stares at you for several long seconds.

Then says, with effort,

“I want to kiss you again.”

Your stomach drops in a way that is not fear, although it feels a bit close to it.

It is ridiculous that such a simple sentence can do that after everything. But perhaps the simplicity is why. No scheme. No curse. No wager. No taunt disguised as a demand. Just want, spoken plainly because you asked him to speak plainly.

Your voice comes out softer than intended.

“Well. Then ask.”

His eyes narrow slightly in concentration.

“May I kiss you?”

You do not let yourself answer too quickly.

Not because you want to punish him. Maybe just a bit.

Because you want both of you to feel the shape of permission.

Then you say,

“Yeah.”

The second time he kisses you that night, it feels different from the first.

Less like an answer to a challenge. More like a promise he does not yet know how to word. His hands do not go to your face immediately. One settles near your knee, the other at the edge of the coffee table beside you, as if he is physically reminding himself not to take hold before being invited. You lean in enough to close some of the distance, and only then does he lift a hand to your jaw.

His mouth is warm.

Still careful, but surer now.

You let your hand rest against his chest, over the place where your technique had struck earlier. His heart, strange and powerful and real, beats under your palm. The contact makes you dizzy in a quiet way.

You kiss him until your thoughts loosen.

Not disappear.

Just soften at the edges.

When you pull back, your forehead finds his again almost naturally.

“Better,” you whisper.

“At kissing?”

“At asking.”

He hums lowly, satisfied.

“Do not get smug.”

“That is not possible.”

You push lightly at his chest. He does not move because of the force, but he leans back because you want him to. That distinction sits warmly under your skin now.

Eventually the hour becomes impossible to ignore. The clock on your wall shows a time that makes tomorrow look dangerous for someone that needs to be up early. Your body aches from the fight and travel. His technique-induced dizziness seems to have mostly worn off, though every so often his focus lags just enough for you to feel smug as well.

“You should go,” you say.

The words come out reluctantly.

He hears that too.

“I can.”

Not I will.

I can.

You look toward the window. The night beyond it is cold and quiet. Then back at him, too large on your couch, cleaned of most blood but still bare-chested and bruised. Sending him out into the cold feels sensible. It also feels abrupt, and some fragile part of the night resists ending on distance.

“You can stay,” you say, then immediately lift a hand. “With rules.”

His expression shifts into something dangerously pleased.

You point at him.

“Do not look like that.”

“I am listening.”

“You sleep. That’s it. My bed is small and you are the size of a structural problem, so you do not crush me. You do not decide in the middle of the night that I need to be trapped under you for my health. You do not steal my phone. You do not make this weird.”

He looks around your tiny apartment, then down at himself, then at you.

“It is already weird.”

“Sukuna.”

His mouth closes.

“Fine,” he says.

You go to the bathroom to change because even now, especially now, boundaries are not optional. When you come back, he is standing near the bed in the small bedroom, taking in the space with what looks like profound skepticism.

“What?” you ask.

“This bed is too small.”

“You are too big. The bed is normal.”

“It is not.”

“It was normal before you entered the room.”

He glances at you.

“Many things were.”

You roll your eyes, but your face warms.

He notices.

Mercifully, he says nothing.

The logistics are ridiculous.

He lies down first because there is no other way to measure the space. Even carefully arranged, he occupies too much of it. You climb in afterward, suspicious and tired, keeping a deliberate gap that lasts maybe five seconds before the cold air between you becomes offensive and his heat becomes impossible to ignore.

He does not touch you.

He lies on his side facing you, lower arm bent near his body, upper arms arranged awkwardly to avoid taking over the entire mattress. The effort is so visible that your mouth twitches in the dark.

“You look uncomfortable.”

“I am not.”

“You look like you are losing a fight with the bed”

“Your furniture is inadequate.”

“You’re welcome to leave if you want.”

“No.”

The immediacy of that answer makes the air still.

You do not respond.

After a moment, softer, he says,

“Not unless you want me to.”

You turn your head on the pillow and look at him in the dim light.

That is new too.

“I don’t,” you say.

His eyes stay on yours.

You shift closer by your own choice, inch by inch, until the warmth of him reaches you properly. His lower arm comes around your waist slowly, giving you time to object. You do not. It settles there, heavy but not trapping. You let your back turn toward his chest, more because the position fits the narrow bed than because you intend to make a statement. At least that is what you tell yourself.

He is a furnace behind you.

The heat seeps through your sleep clothes, into your spine, across the lingering soreness in your ribs. His breath touches the back of your neck. Your body remembers this from the curse days and goes soft so quickly it embarrasses you, but this time the meaning is different.

He is not cursed.

You are not pretending.

No one is using delusion as cover.

It’s scarier and better at the same time.

You lie in silence for a while, eyes open in the dark.

Tomorrow will still be complicated. You will still be in Kyoto. He will still be in Tokyo. You will still have students, rent, schedules, boundaries, anger, caution. He will still be Sukuna, which is a problem large enough to require its own administrative department. There is no easy version of this waiting just because he kissed you well and admitted something true.

But for once, you are not being dragged.

You are choosing to remain still.

His arm shifts slightly around your waist.

“Are you awake?” he asks.

“No. Go to sleep.”

A low sound brushes the back of your neck. Almost a laugh.

Then, after a pause, he murmurs,

“I can learn.”

You do not ask what.

You know.

You close your eyes.

Your hand finds his where it rests near your stomach, and after one small hesitation, you place your fingers over his. His hand is too large under yours, warm and solid and capable of unimaginable brutality, but it does not close around you until you curl your fingers first.

Then it does.

Gently.

“You’d better,” you murmur back.

The room settles.

Outside, winter leans cold against the windows, while inside your apartment your bed is too cramped, and the former King of Curses holds you with careful restraint as if the act requires concentration. It probably does. That thought should not make your chest ache, but alas.

Sleep comes slowly.

No nightmares, no fear induced insomnia. Your body simply keeps noticing the difference between being haunted and being held, and for the first time since you left Tokyo, you let yourself believe that maybe difficult does not have to mean impossible.

The crackling swells, like dried wood tossed into a blazing inferno. After a moment, it fades, and out comes a quiet, "What you are, I was. What I am..."

"You will be." Dottore huffs and taps the outer shell. "You sound...scattered."

"Oh, forgive me," you sneer, voice now far sharper, "but there's been quite the disturbance on my end due to someone's interference."

Dottore scoffs, though his amusement is palpable in his voice. "And who was it who assisted you in achieving such a state in the first place?"

"...Fuck off." Your voice still ripples with amusement, as it did centuries ago. If he still had any doubts it wasn't you, it would have vanished at the swear. "Now what do you want?"

"How has your memory been?"

"As well as it can be, all things considered. Why?"

The scientist smirks and begins sorting through the binder of papers he'd brought with him today. Much of it contains historical accounts of Inazuman politics Post-Cataclysm, broken up by handwritten entries of Sumeru's own Post-Cataclysm period of academic darkness. He spreads the former across his desk in neat rows as he says, "I believe someone's been replicating your research."

"Oh my, how flattering." The device crackles, a stack of papers rustling as if someone had brushed them aside. It shifts from pile to pile, pausing only when he sets down an old clipping of the Akademiya's newsletter about the disaster at Tataratsuna. "And concerning. What the fuck did you do?"

Dottore scoffs and glares at the open air. "You know how I felt about our replication assignments."

"You always were a little baby about them," you sigh. "Still, I can't believe someone managed to pull a stunt like this. I thought the Sages burnt all of my records after my trial."

"They did."

"Then...the Greater Lord's doing?"

There is a hint of awe in your tone that makes the researcher's eyes roll. "So many years spent beyond the veil and yet you're still so taken by her stolen authority?"

"Yeah, because I don't have my head up my ass. I know how to respect my peers, unlike you." Another stack of papers ruffles, this one covering blacklisted thesis topics. "How else does one become a genius without reading the works of others?"

Dottore huffs again, tidying up the scattered sheets. "If you're hoping to fish a compliment out of me, you're wasting your time."

"Oh, trust me," you sigh, "I have nothing but."

Something grazes his arm, so featherlight and gentle he would have ignored it in any other case. Instead, he turns to his side and makes out the faint outline of your form. In the centuries since your experiment, you'd never figured how to conjure a fully corporeal form. You're already pushing your luck, reaching through your domain and into the Ley Lines to interact with this decaying world.

And yet here you are, standing at his side, poring over information like you had when you and he were mere students.

As 'enlightened' as you've become, Zandik can't help bit think you're still too eager to respond to him whenever he turns on your anchor. But he knows you. You'll just say you took pity on his small mind and deigned to bless him with your infinite wisdom.

At that, Il Dottore retrieves the last key report from the confines of his coat: a weathered journal, treated to maintain its integrity. There is no reason to have it - he's memorized its contents centuries ago. It still makes your laugh ripple from your anchor.

"Compliment received," you say as your spectral form sharpens. "Now, what do you need help with, Zandik?"