cece's blog

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you stand by the window in the main living room of a villa that sits on the outskirts of munich. floor to ceiling windows overlook the alps, grey and distant under a winter sky. the interior is all white marble and black leather. it belongs to one of the biggest football agents in europe, a man whose name appears in the fine print of half the contracts in the bundesliga, and who has apparently decided that the best use of a saturday evening in december is to fill his villa with random strangers.

your father is a PIFA sponsor, the kind who writes the cheques and attends the events and shakes the right hands and never makes the headlines, which is precisely how he prefers it. tonight he is somewhere near the fireplace, doing exactly that. shaking hands. smiling. being impeccably useful to people who barely know his name.

the living room was enormous, high ceilings, a fireplace big enough to roast a boar, seating arranged in careful clusters that encourage conversation. a string quartet plays something classical in the corner. all the guests are a mix of executives, investors, and a handful of athletes who look handsome, and deeply uncomfortable in suits. 

you are wearing a dark green dress that falls all the way to the floor, something you borrowed in a hurry from your mother's closet because you couldn't bring yourself to care enough to find something of your own. 

it fits well enough. you don't care about that either. 

you were, in fact, in the middle of calculating the exact optimal moment to excuse yourself, somewhere between the next round of canapés and before whoever is standing near the door decides to start a conversation with you, when you feel it. a presence. 

"your dress. it's ugly." 

you don't startle. you've never been able to startle around michael kaiser, which is irritating, because you've tried. you turn your head just slightly, not enough to give him the satisfaction of your full attention. 

"good evening to you too," you say dryly. "you always know how to make a lady feel special." 

"someone had to tell you." he tilts his head, considering you. "it’'s drowning you.” a pause. "and the color is ugly."

you'd met at something like this, actually. some other party, some other villa, some other collection of adults performing importance at each other while their children stood at the edges and waited to be released. 

he'd stood next to you by a window then too. you're not sure either of you has ever found a better strategy.

kaiser moves to stand beside you properly now, and you take the opportunity to look at him the way you always do when you haven't seen him in a while, quickly and sideways, like if you're fast enough about it, it doesn't count.

he looks annoyingly good. he always looks annoyingly good but tonight there is something particularly unfair about it. he's wearing a dark suit, charcoal or something close to it, fitted in the way that suggests it was made for him rather than selected off a rack, with a white shirt underneath left open just enough at the collar to be deliberate. 

his hair is pushed back from his face, a few pieces falling forward anyway. his jaw is clean-shaved. his eyes, when he glances at you, are that particular shade of blue that always looks slightly different depending on the light, and in the warm gold of the chandeliers they are very blue indeed.

you look back at the alps.

"what are you doing here?" you ask. "you never come to these things."

"my agent," he says, which explains everything and nothing.

"he made you?"

"he strongly suggested." kaiser's gaze drifts across the room, unhurried. "apparently my public image requires occasional proof that i exist outside of a football pitch."

"and do you? exist outside of a football pitch?"

"jury's still out."

you almost smile. "how long has it been?"

he thinks about it. "istanbul."

istanbul was four months ago. you'd been there for a friend's birthday, he'd been there for a pre-season friendly, and you'd run into each other entirely by accident in the hotel lobby and ended up talking until two in the morning in the bar downstairs because neither of you had anything better to do. it had felt very normal, which is the thing about kaiser. no matter how much time passes, it always feels very normal, and then he leaves again and you remember that it isn't, quite.

"ah," you agree.

for a while after that, neither of you says anything.

it's the comfortable kind of silence, or it starts that way. you sip your champagne, which is cold and very bitter and you keep drinking it anyway because it gives your hands something to do. the quartet plays on. 

you watch the room the way you always watch rooms at things like this, cataloguing, half-bored, picking out the dynamics. who is performing for whom. who wants something. who already got it. kaiser does the same thing, you know, because you've been doing it side by side for long enough to recognise the quality of his attention when it's pointed at a crowd. you're both bored out of your minds. it's almost companionable.

then a woman approaches. tall. blonde. wearing a beautiful red dress. she gives kaiser a familiar, and warm smile. 

“michael,” she purrs. “i didn’t expect to see you here.”

kaiser’s expression doesn’t change. “anja.”

“i watched your match last night,” the woman, anja, tilts her head sympathetically. “tough loss. but you played well. really well. the rest of your team just couldn’t keep up.”

god.

you take a long sip of your champagne and stare very hard at the mountains. if there was anything worse than being trapped at a party you didn't want to attend, it was standing next to kaiser while a woman in four hundred euro heels looked at him like that. 

you feel faintly, absurdly ill. you swallow it down with the rest of the champagne.

“thank you,” kaiser says. his voice is flat. 

anja steps closer and touches his arm, her fingers curling just slightly at his sleeve. "if you ever want to talk about it and unwind, i'm staying at the mandarin."

you raise an eyebrow at the window.

kaiser removes his arm from her grip. gently. politely.  "i'll keep that in mind," he says.

anja's smile falters at the edges. she glances at you, a quick sweep, assesses and dismisses in approximately one second, and then walks away. the silence closes back in behind her, but it's different now. there's something in it. something with weight.

"friend of yours?" you ask, because you can't help yourself.

"not even slightly."

you smirk into your champagne glass and take a small sip. still bitter. you don't know why you keep expecting it to get sweeter.

kaiser doesn't say anything else. he goes back to looking out at the window, jaw set, hands in his pockets.

so naturally, "do you want to talk about it?" you offer, which comes out more awkward than you intended, because you two have never really been the talking about it type. you talk around things. you talk beside things. direct conversation about anything that actually matters has historically been handled by both of you looking in opposite directions and pretending the question was rhetorical.

"i'm not in the mood, okay?" he bites at you, his cold eyes, cutting to yours briefly, sharp and tired at once

you sigh. "you're never in the mood lately." the words come out sharper than you intended. “every time i see you, you're either on a screen somewhere, or somewhere i can’t reach you."

he exhales through his nose. turns back to the window.

"did i do something?" you ask. the question costs you something, saying it out loud. "because if i did, i'd rather you just say it instead of whatever this is."

a long beat. the quartet plays on, something slow and slightly mournful.

"this isn't about you," he says.

"then what is it about?"

"nothing. drop it."

"no."

the word lands like a stone in still water.

kaiser's eyes narrow. "excuse me?"

"i said no." you cross your arms. "you've been snapping at me since you walked in. i didn't do anything to you. so either tell me what's actually wrong, or stop taking it out on me."

for a moment, something flickers across his face. surprise, maybe. or irritation. you can't quite tell, and the not knowing irritates you almost as much as the silence does. "i don't owe you an explanation."

"no. but you owe me basic decency. or have you forgotten that we're supposed to be friends?"

his mouth twitches. not quite a smile. "friends? is that what we are?"

you look at him. "well, micha," and the nickname comes out like a finger pressed into a bruise. a sly smile pulling at the corner of your mouth, the kind that doesn't quite reach your eyes. "we've known each other for eight years. if not friends, what exactly have i been doing with my time?"

“i don't know. what do you call someone who's been waiting around for something that was never going to happen?”

the smile drops off your face. you, for the first time the entire evening, whip your head around to meet him. 

it's such a small thing. the way he says it. calm, almost bored, like the observation cost him nothing. like you cost him nothing. and maybe that's what makes it land the way it does, not the words themselves but the complete absence of hesitation behind them.

your jaw tightens. you look back at the window.

"right," you say. your voice comes out very even. you're proud of that. "good to know where we stand." a beat. you turn back to the window. your bitter champagne is warm now, but you drink it anyway. "then perhaps the problem isn't me," you say.

kaiser's eyes flash. "what's that supposed to mean?"

"it means you lost a match and now you're taking it out on the nearest available person. which, lucky me, happens to be me."

"i'm not taking anything out on you."

"you are. you've been a jerk all night."

the pianist's fingers stumble. a wrong note. she recovers, but the damage is done, and in the small moment where the music wavers the air between you and kaiser feels very thin, like something pulled too tight.

kaiser steps closer. just one step. close enough that you can smell his cologne, something clean, something expensive, and it does something to your chest that you refuse to acknowledge right now or possibly ever.

"you don't know anything about my match," he says quietly.

"i know you missed the penalty."

his jaw tightens. "you think i don't know that?"

"then why are you acting like everyone's against you?"

"because they are." he runs a hand through his hair, the first crack in the composure he's been wearing all evening like armour. "the pass was late. the defender clipped my ankle right before the kick, enough to throw off my plant foot. nobody saw it. nobody cares. all they saw was the miss."

you stare at him, unamused "so?"

"so?" his voice rises, just slightly, and you can hear the effort it takes to pull it back down. "so it wasn't--" he stops himself. exhales slowly through his nose. when he speaks again his voice is lower, controlled, but only just. "forget it."

"no. say it."

"it doesn't matter what i say." something shifts behind his eyes, tired and frustrated and something else underneath both of those that you can't quite name. "the ball went over the bar. that's what people remember."

"and you came here because you wanted someone to tell you it wasn't your fault." you say it like a statement, not a question, because you already know the answer. "is that it?"

he doesn't answer. but something in his expression shifts in a way that is as good as one.

"no," kaiser says, eventually "it's not the same."

"you're right," you say, and your voice comes out colder than you intended, colder than you feel, because what you feel is something you're not going to look at right now. "the result is worse. because you had the chance to win it and you failed."

the word hangs in the air between you.

failed.

kaiser goes very still.

the music plays on. the guests laugh, bright and oblivious. a waiter drifts past with a tray of champagne flutes and doesn't glance at either of you, and the whole room continues on like nothing is happening.

you see it happen. the way his posture changes. the way his shoulders square, slow and deliberate, the way they do when he's on the pitch and something has just been said that he intends to answer. the way his eyes, those impossibly blue eyes, go very dark.

you've seen him angry before. on screens, on pitches, in the clipped careful language of post-match interviews where he's choosing every word like he's defusing something. but not like this. not with the full weight of it pointed directly at you.

"you want to say that again?" he asks. his voice is quiet. too quiet.

your throat tightens. every instinct you have is telling you to stop, to take a step back, to soften it into something that doesn't land so hard.

but you have known kaiser for eight years, and you are tired of being the one who folds first. tired of swallowing things down and calling it maturity. "you heard me," you say. "you failed. that's why you're here, isn't it? because you can't stand to be alone with the thought of it. so you came to this stupid party to distract yourself, and have brainless bimbos tell you it wasn't your fault."

you make the mistake of looking up at him. 

and your heart sinks straight into your chest.

his face is completely unreadable, which is somehow the worst version of kaiser. when he's angry you can work with it. when he's cold you can match it. but the stillness, you don't know what to do with. his posture hasn't changed. his hands are still in his pockets. but his eyes are on you with the kind of focus that makes you feel like something small and pinned, like he is looking at you and through you at the same time, and he has already decided something, and you don't know what it is yet, and that is somehow more frightening than anything he could have said.

his face twitches.

and then he laughs. not a warm laugh, or the kind that means something is funny. a short, sharp guffaw, the sound of someone who has just heard something so absurd that their body responded before their brain could stop it.

"kleines biest," he says. *kleines biest: little brat/urchin*

then he reaches over, plucks the champagne glass right out of your hand, sets it on the nearest surface without looking at it, wraps his hand around your wrist and starts walking.

"kaiser," you say, startled. your dress swishes against the marble floor, the hem dragging as you stumble to keep up with his stride. "kaiser, what are you doing, stop-"

he doesn't stop. he doesn't even slow down.

the party blurs past you. a cluster of guests, a waiter, the edge of the string quartet's little performance corner. your heart is hammering. you can't cause a scene in there, you know that, your father is somewhere in that room and the last thing you need is anyone looking over and seeing you being towed through a villa like a dog on a leash, so you keep your voice low and your face as neutral as you can manage and you try to keep up with him through the tall doors and out into the hallway.

the moment the door swings shut behind you, you try and yank your wrist back.

"let go of me," you snap. "are you serious right now?! let go-"

kaiser is already scanning the hallway. left, then right, slow and unhurried.

"i said let go." you pull against his grip. dig your heels in. try to twist your wrist free. "i'm going to trip, you idiot, let go!”

nothing. he is an unmoveable wall. your struggling doesn't even register on him, not in his pace, not in his grip, not in the set of his shoulders. he just keeps walking, glancing back once over his shoulder to check the hallway behind you, then forward again, pulling you along like the weather.

the corridor ends in a wall.

you don't fully register what's happening until your back meets it.

not roughly. but firmly. decisively. the kind of thing that leaves no room for argument about whether it was an accident. the thud of it reverberates through your shoulders and the cold of the wall seeps immediately through the thin fabric of your dress, bleeding into your skin, and you wince, not from pain but from the shock of it, the sheer unexpectedness. because kaiser has never done this. not once in eight years. not even when you'd said things that deserved it, not even when you were fifteen and terrible and pushed every single one of his buttons just to see which one would make him snap.

he never snapped.

until now, apparently.

his hands are gripping your upper arms, not bruising, but not gentle either, and he is staring down at you with an expression you have genuinely never seen on his face before. not on a pitch. not in an interview. not directed at you, not directed at anyone.

"have you gone insane?" your voice comes out smaller than you want it to. you try to wriggle out of his grip, shoulders twisting, hands coming up to push against his chest. "what is wrong with you, seriously, let go of me--"

he doesn't let go.

you push harder. it accomplishes nothing. he is an immovable wall and you are made of considerably less than that and the struggling is starting to feel embarrassing on top of everything else, so you try a different angle, twisting sideways, trying to duck under his arm-

his hand moves to your jaw.

not hard. not cruel. just his fingers and thumb bracketing your face, tilting your chin up and back until your head meets the wall with a soft thud, and suddenly there is nowhere to look but directly at him, no sideways, no away, no window to fix your eyes on, just kaiser, inches away, his eyes level with yours and absolutely done.

every protest in your throat dissolves.

something happens to your expression without your permission. you can feel it happening and you can't stop it. the fight drains out of you in one long exhale and what's left behind is something you'd rather he not see, something younger and more honest than anything you've said to him all evening.

the corridor is very quiet.

"listen to me, you brat" he says, and his voice is low, and even, and final. "apparently no one else in your life seems willing to tell you when you've gone too far." a pause, just long enough to make sure you're still with him. "but we're done with that. do you understand me? whatever that was back there. we're done."

his thumb doesn't move from your jaw.

"nod," he says simply. "so i know you're listening." you nod. small. reluctant. the tiniest possible concession.

something in his expression shifts, not softer exactly, but different. settled.

you are very aware, in this moment, of how close he is. close enough that you can smell him properly, that same cologne from earlier but stronger now, something cool and clean underneath it, like cedar and something sharper, expensive. 

his hand reaches down to your hip, bunching up the bottom of your dress in his fist, while his head leans in to meet your neck, biting down sharply. 

you yelp from the sting it gives, anxiously looking around the hall to make sure nobody was around, letting out a breathy exhale as he places kisses up and down your neck. 

his fingers move to graze your inner thighs. that feeling, that had been buzzing around you the entire time you’d been around him, it was hot - and you felt feverish thinking about it. 

his fingers inching closer to that forbidden area, it made your stomach hurt, and your head dizzy from the contact. 

his index finger moves to play with the lace of your panties, his middle finger ‘accidentally’ grazing down the front of your covered, but embarrassingly soaked, underwear. 

you keel over, it feels good. you want to tell him how good it feels, you want him to continue, to apply more pressure. your forehead finds his shoulder, your hair falling over your and you’re grateful for it, because at least it means he can't see your expression

“you like it?” his voice thrums against your throat, light and teasing. 

“i-ah, yes!” he grazes his finger there again, this time harder. 

“do you want more?”

humiliation unfurls in your chest hot and slow, not the sharp embarrassment of a public stumble, the heat of it crawls from your neck to your temples and keeps going, spreading under your skin with nowhere to go.

 “yes,” you end up spitting out, resisting the urge to grind your hips down into his hand. his lips find the line of your jaw, just below your ear, and stay there for a moment, warm and still, and then they move. unhurried.

each kiss pressed into your cheek like punctuation, working forward along your face slowly enough that you are aware of every single one of them, aware of the warmth of his mouth and the faint scratch of his jaw and the fact that your hands have stopped pushing against his chest entirely without you deciding to stop.

he suddenly pulls away from your neck, the warmth dissipating "then beg me.”

your heart stutters at his words, and your stomach follows, a long slow drop that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with him, with the warmth of his mouth still ghost-present against your cheek.

your pulse is loud and stupid and completely out of your control. you can feel it everywhere, your throat, your wrists, behind your eyes. his fingers finally push aside your panties, one finger moving the slick up and down, circling your clit so softly and lightly. 

ah, it’s not enough. 

you want more, you want him. 

embarrassment, and humiliation crawl up the back of your neck as you start to beg him to touch you. 

where did you even learn how to say things like this? you wonder thinking of how shameful and filthy the words coming out of your mouth are.  

he pulls back just enough to look at you.

and he smiles. small. barely there. just the faint curve of one side of his mouth. he looks at your face for a moment, unhurried, taking in whatever he finds there, and then he lets out a short exhale through his nose. almost a laugh. the sound of someone who has been thoroughly amused by something.

"you give up too easily," he says quietly, "for someone with such a vicious mouth."

and then he steps back.

the wall is the only thing that keeps you upright.

the cold of it against your back feels very different now than it did five minutes ago. your legs are doing something unreliable. your dress is slightly askew and your hair is not where it was and your cheek is warm in the specific places his mouth was and your heart is still doing that thing, that loud inconvenient thing, that you are completely powerless to stop.

you watch him straighten his jacket. smooth it at the lapels. run a hand once through his hair, unhurried, like he has all the time in the world and you are not standing there completely undone behind him.

he doesn't look back.

the sunday afternoon sun hung lazy and golden over shibuya, filtering through the glass windows of a third-floor café where you nursed an iced vanilla latte and tried not to stare at the brothers sitting across from you. 

you'd thought today was going to be just the two of you, a quiet sunday afternoon with your boyfriend, itoshi sae. then sae had said it outside the station, almost offhandedly, like it was nothing: rin is coming. and that had been that.

sae was all indifference. one ankle crossed over his knee, mindlessly scrolling through his phone. his other hand rested lightly on the back of your chair. and then there was sae's little brother, rin. he hadn't said much since they'd met up outside the station. three words, or maybe four.

he was tall, taller than sae, you noticed, though you'd already known that from your shared chemistry lab. but seeing him beside his brother, all sharp angles and brooding silence, the difference was stark. he sat forward, elbows on the table, staring at his empty espresso cup. 

"i want to check out the record store on cat street," sae said without looking up from his phone. it wasn't a question. it was never a question with sae, just statements of fact delivered in that low, unhurried voice.

you smiled into your straw. "okay."

rin's eyes flickered to you for half a second, teal and cool, assessing, before sliding away again.

you didn't take it personally. from what you'd observed in the lab, itoshi rin didn't really look at anyone unless he was about to argue with them. especially not michael kaiser, who seemed to exist solely to provoke rin into muttered german insults and the occasional thrown piece of chalk.

they're more alike than they'd ever admit, you thought, watching sae finally tuck his phone away and stand. both of them had the same way of tilting their chins when they were deciding whether something was worth their attention.

sae held out his hand to you. you took it. rin was already walking toward the stairs, not waiting.

you wandered through the back streets of harajuku after the café, falling into an easy rhythm. sae bought you a soft cream from a cart near the park, and you ate it while the three of you drifted past storefront windows and faded street murals, rin trailing a half-step behind with his hands in his pockets. 

by the time you reached cat street, the sun had begun its slow descent, painting the buildings in amber and long shadow. the record store was wedged between a plant shop and a narrow ramen place, its exterior unremarkable except for the crates of discounted vinyl stacked outside and the faint pulse of old jazz bleeding through the propped-open door.

inside was towers of colorful records, handwritten tags in both japanese and english, string lights wrapped around a collection of retired turntables along the back wall. it smelled like dust and old paper and something faintly electric.

rin walked straight to the back without a word, drawn like a current toward whatever had caught his attention. you watched him go, then felt sae's hand leave yours.

"i’ll be over here," he said, already moving toward a crate near the window, fingers flicking through records with practiced efficiency. he'd found something interesting, you could tell by the slight shift in his posture, the focus that settled over him.

you explored the small store, trailing your fingers along the edges of album covers, pausing on one, then another. a section of old city-pop near the middle of the store caught your eye, and you turned down a narrow aisle, meaning to call back to sae.

but when you looked up, you couldn't see him. the aisle curved. the shelves were tall. somewhere deeper in the store, you could hear rin's low voice asking something to a clerk, but it was distant, muffled by layers of cardboard and vinyl.

you stood still for a moment, waiting for the familiar shape of pink hair to appear around a corner.

it didn't.

it's fine, you thought, not worried, only a little adrift. i'll just look around.

you ended up finding a door at the back of the shop, half-hidden behind a tapestry, and you'd glimpsed someone carrying a box through it earlier. storage, maybe, or a back room with more inventory.

curiosity had always been your downfall.

you pushed through the doorway and found yourself in a narrow corridor, walls lined with unsorted records and dusty amplifiers. it opened into a smaller space, more of an alley entrance than a room, really, with a metal door propped open onto a side street you didn't recognize.

oh.

you stepped out, turning to get your bearings. the street was narrow, shadowed by the buildings on either side, the sun cut off entirely. it smelled like old cigarette smoke and something chemical.

you pulled your phone out. no service, of course. you were about to turn back when a voice stopped you.

"well, well. lost, little bird?"

he was older, forties, maybe, with a face that had settled into something unkind. gold chain over a stained t-shirt. slicked-back hair. the kind of smile that made your back teeth ache.

you took a step backward. "i'm fine, thank you. just heading back."

"back where?" he moved, not quite into your space, but close enough that you could smell the whiskey on his breath. "you wandered into my shop's private entrance, sweetheart. that's trespassing."

"i didn't realize," you started, shifting your weight, calculating. the door was three meters behind you. if you ran.

"didn't realize," he repeated, and his hand shot out, fingers closing around your wrist. not hard enough to bruise. not yet. but the pressure was there, a question and a threat all at once. "pretty thing like you, all alone. someone ought to take care of you."

"i said i'm fine." you kept your voice steady, even as your heart slammed against your ribs. "let go of me."

his grip tightens and he leans closer. "i've got work inside. good money. you've got the face for it." you turned your face away, stomach lurching.

"no." the word came out much softer than how you felt. "absolutely not."

"now, now. don't be hasty. come inside, we'll talk. you'll change your mind once you see what i'm offering."

he stopped. because a voice came from directly behind you. low. quiet. absolutely devoid of anything resembling warmth.

"what's going on here?"

your blood ran cold. it was sae. you didn't turn around, couldn't. but you felt him there, a blade's width behind you, close enough that you could smell his cologne, clean and expensive and utterly out of place in this grimy passage.

the man's eyes lifted over your shoulder, and something flickered across his face. annoyance, at first, then confusion.

his presence alone was a wall, a door closing, an eclipse. the man laughed, but it came out wrong. too high. too fast.

"nothing. just having a friendly conversation. this your girlfriend?" sae didn't answer. he didn't seem to think the man was worth the breath.

the man released your wrist entirely, holding up both hands in mock surrender. you stumbled back, straight into sae, your shoulder blades hitting his chest. he didn't move, didn't so much as shift his weight. he just stood there, solid as a grave, letting you lean against him.

then he stepped around to face you, positioning himself between you and the man with a movement so seamless it barely registered until it was already done. sae’s eyes found yours, just yours, like the man behind him had ceased to exist entirely.

"are you okay?" he asked. his voice was different now. still quiet, but the edge was gone from it, filed smooth into something almost careful.

you weren't quite. your wrist still felt the ghost of that grip, and your skin crawled with the kind of disgust that doesn't rinse off quickly. you looked to the side, not at sae or the man, but at the wall, the gap between buildings. anywhere that wasn't either of their faces.

"i'm fine," you finally said. sae watched you closely for a moment.

his hand came up to rest lightly at the small of your back.

"look," the man was saying, words tumbling out faster now, "i didn't mean anything by it. she just wandered into my stockroom, and i was just making conversation."

"what kind of conversation?" sae's voice was still quiet as he turned back to the man. still low. but there was something underneath it now, a razor edge, a promise of violence.

the man hesitated. then, stupidly, he smiled. "just offering her a job. that's all. she's got the right look for the industry. good money, easy hours."

he stopped. because sae had moved again. not much. just a slight shift forward, a tilt of his head. but it was enough.

the air in the alley changed, growing heavier, tighter, like the moment before a thunderstorm.

sae turned to you. his eyes were cold, colder than you'd ever seen them. but his voice, when he spoke, was gentle. almost soft. "do you want to do that?" he asked. "the work he's offering."

you shook your head. quick, sharp, emphatic. your cheeks burned with humiliation, with anger, with relief so intense it made you dizzy.

"look at me and say it," he said.

"no," you said. then, stronger: "no. i don't want to, sae."

sae held your gaze for a moment longer. then he turned back to the man, his entire face changing. the coldness in it sharpened and crystallized into something that made the man actually take a step backward.

sae's mouth curved into a smile that wasn't a smile at all, thin and pleasant and utterly, terrifyingly empty. "my woman," he said, each word measured and precise, "says she's not doing this kind of work."

he stepped closer. the man's back hit the wall.

"so, fuck off."

the words landed like gunshots. quiet. final. sae leaned in, close enough that the man had to tilt his head back to keep eye contact, close enough that you could see the way his pink hair fell across his brow.

you weren't exactly sure what you were expecting from nanami's apartment.

it was quite large. the ceilings were high, the furniture was substantial, and everything was arranged with the kind of order that suggested nanami had unpacked once and never reconsidered it. a bookshelf ran the full length of one wall. the kitchen was clean.

you stood in the entryway removing your shoes.

on the couch, legs draped over the armrest and one arm flung over her eyes, was ieiri shoko. she was a dark-haired girl and was wearing a long skirt. there was a half-finished drink on the cushion beside her. the way she'd arranged herself across the cushion suggested that this was not her first.

geto suguru was sitting on the far sofa with his arms loosely crossed, long dark hair pulled back, watching haibara, a smaller, younger second-year by the look of him, who was cross-legged on the floor with a controller in his hands and his entire attention poured into the television screen. the game was loud and made it hard to think, but haibara didn't seem to notice or care.

on the low table: two open bottles, a glass with something amber in it, a small white dish with a lighter resting on top of it. the room smelled faintly of something sweet and herbal.

nanami moved ahead of you toward the kitchen.

you set your bag down near the entrance and were still in the process of deciding where to put yourself when gojo satoru appeared to your right.

he saw you and his whole face opened up. before you'd properly registered his face, one of his arms was around your shoulders, pulling you briefly but firmly into his side. he was warm, solid, and significantly taller than you had remembered.

you went rigid from his touch. your arms stayed at your sides. your chin dropped half an inch. you held yourself very still until the contact ended, which it did, after a moment, though he didn't seem to register your stillness as anything other than your ordinary reserve.

satoru grinned and walked the two of you toward the couch, his hand briefly at the small of your back to steer, and you let it happen because making a thing of it seemed worse than enduring it.

you lowered yourself onto the far end of the couch and placed your bag on your lap like a small, practical barrier.

shoko cracked one eye open. "is this the lab girl?"

"hi," you said.

"shoko." she closed the eye again. "there's tequila on the counter if you want it. don't take the thing in the glass, that's mine."

haibara turned from the screen long enough to raise a hand in greeting without looking at you. "i'm yu," he said. "i'm busy."

satoru dropped onto the couch beside nanami, picked up a deck of cards from the table, and began shuffling. "we're playing cards. shoko's theoretically also playing."

"i'm playing," shoko said, from under her arm.

you shifted your bag from your lap to the floor beside your feet as satoru passed cards around the table.

you suddenly felt a gaze settle on you, and you turned your head.

geto suguru was looking at you. his arms were still loosely crossed, his posture easy and unhurried. but his eyes were on you directly, and they didn't shift when you caught them. dark and calm and entirely unreadable, set beneath strong brows, his long hair falling over one shoulder.

your heart gave one slow, startled knock against your ribs.

you held his gaze for a second, maybe two, and then looked away, back toward the table, toward the cards in satoru's hands, toward nothing in particular.

"do you play?" geto's voice was low and even, directed at you.

"not well," you said.

he made a small sound, something like acknowledgement, and said "that makes two of us."

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once shoko had gone boneless on the couch, her eyes sliding shut as whatever she'd taken hit its peak, nanami had moved with purpose. he'd scooped her up like she weighed nothing, one arm under her knees and the other supporting her back. shoko's head lolled against his shoulder, her arm waving vaguely in your direction as if to say sorry, abandon you, can't help it.

the bedroom door clicked shut behind them with a soft, final sound.

then haibara. oblivious, golden-retriever haibara, who had been happily destroying everyone at whatever game was on the massive tv. he'd bounced up from the floor with sudden energy, announcing that they were out of drinks. "i'll go! suguru, come with me, i can't carry everything myself."

he'd grabbed geto's sleeve, tugging him upwards. geto had risen slowly. unfolded his long legs from beneath him and stretched in a lazy, catlike way. and then, before he followed haibara out the door, he'd looked at you just for a second. assessing and knowing. the door closed behind them. which left you alone in a room with gojo satoru.

all of the people meant to be your buffers, now gone.

the music played on. some low, throbbing beat with a bass line that you felt in your chest, in your throat, in the hollow space behind your ribs. it seemed louder now that there were fewer people to absorb it, more intimate now that it was just the two of you and the dark city beyond the windows.

you sat perfectly still on the couch, back straight and hands folded in your lap. your eyes fixed on nothing, the window, the city, the reflection of the room laid over the night. you could see him in the glass, a ghost at your shoulder. his arm was behind you. wait, when had he gotten so close?

"well." his voice broke the silence. and it had changed, all the warmth drained out of it, all the performative charm stripped away. "finally."

you didn't respond, you didn't move, you didn't even breathe. he shifted beside you, turning slightly on the couch, his body now angled toward you. you could feel his gaze on your face like a physical weight. it took something in you not to flinch.

"why won't you look at me?" his voice dropped lower. something almost like a purr, soft and intimate and terrifying. "you're hurting my feelings, you know?"

you looked at him then. you met those blue eyes that everyone on campus seemed to worship, seemed to drown in. they were beautiful. you could acknowledge that objectively, the way you acknowledge that a storm is beautiful right before it destroys your house. framed by white lashes, set in a face that was all sharp angles and perfect proportions. but there was nothing warm in them. nothing kind. just curiosity, sharp and hungry.

"is there actually a project, gojo?" you asked.

his smile sharpened. those beautiful eyes crinkled at the corners, and somehow it made him look less human. "satoru." he leaned back against the couch, spreading his arms along the back in a gesture of casual ownership. of the night, of her. "call me satoru."

he was wearing black, a silk shirt unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the pale column of his throat and the sharp lines of his collarbones. his white hair was slightly tousled, falling across his forehead. everything about him was effortless. everything about him was designed to make you look, to make you want, to make you forget that beautiful things could also be dangerous. he was the most beautiful person you had ever seen.

"that's not an answer," you said.

"it's the only one you're getting." you started to stand, but his hand caught your wrist. long fingers circling your bones, warm and dry and absolutely unshakeable. you were very familiar with these hands. you had watched them write equations, handle lab equipment, gesture lazily while he talked. you'd never thought about what they might feel like.

"let go of me," you said. your voice came out even.

"in a minute," he tugged you back down gently. "first, answer a question."

you waited. what else could you do.

"what's your deal?"

"my deal?"

"yeah." he tilted his head at you, studying you. "you're pretty, you're smart. i've looked everywhere for you, and you don't seem to have many friends. except nanami." his mouth curved. "you're not in any clubs. no sports. no part-time jobs. you go to class, you go to the library, you go home. that's it. that's your whole life."

he leaned in closer, his face inches from yours now. "so i'll ask again. what's your deal?"

you looked at him for a long time. "i'm just studying," you said finally. "that's my deal."

he laughed. a short, sharp sound. not a denial exactly. "that's a cute answer, but you can do better than that."

"then take it as you want" you said.

his grip on your wrist loosened, but he didn't let go. instead he shifted, slid closer on the couch, close enough that his knee pressed against your thigh. close enough that his face was inches from yours. close enough that you could see the individual lashes framing those impossible eyes, the tiny imperfections in his perfect skin, and you understood, with a dull and inconvenient clarity, that he was real after all.

that felt worse, somehow.

"you know what i think?" his voice was soft now, intimate in the way of something confided rather than performed. "i think you're hiding. i think you've been hiding for so long you forgot how to do anything else."

his eyes dropped to your mouth for a moment before shifting back up. "and i think you're about to find out that hiding doesn't work with me."

your heart was beating faster. you could feel it in your throat, your temples, the hollow of your chest. you hoped he couldn't.

"i'm not hiding," you said. "i just don't care about any of this."

"any of this." he gestured vaguely with his free hand. the apartment, the city, the life he'd been born into. "you don't care about any of this?"

"no."

"about me."

"no."

his smile didn't falter. if anything, it grew. "that's the problem. i think you're lying." his arm behind you made leaving complicated. you couldn't move without pressing into him. "you came tonight," he continued, his breath warm against your cheek. "you came to a party that you knew was a setup, for a project you knew didn't exist, and you're sitting here telling me you don't care."

his free hand came up and touched your chin, turning your face toward his. "you care," he said softly. "you just don't want to." you should have moved. should have pulled away, said something clipped and final, done anything except sit here, frozen, while his thumb traced the line of your jaw.

"i want to know," he murmured, "what it would take to make you admit it."

the words landed somewhere low in your chest and stayed there. "maybe," he said, quieter still, "i should find out."

your hands had started shaking somewhere in the last few minutes. small, almost invisible. you pressed them flat against your thighs.

then, from somewhere down the hall, you heard the clean, mechanical sound of the elevator arriving at the floor.

a soft ding. the distant slide of doors opening.

satoru didn't move. didn't look away from you. as if the world outside this couch had simply ceased to require his attention.

but you looked. you couldn't help it.

you didn't have very many friends, but the ones you did, you kept close to your heart. nanami kento was one of them.

he was tall and even-tempered, and very serious. 

he said what he meant. you had known him since the both of you were children, your families overlapping in the way families do when they share a tax bracket but not much else. the same holiday parties, the same charity dinners, the same tired circuit of events that everyone attended and nobody particularly enjoyed. you and kento had found each other at one of these things when you were both quite young and discovered, without much discussion, that you were similarly uninterested in being there.

you were telling him something about your calculus professor, when kento's gaze shifted, just slightly, past your shoulder. you turned.

gojo satoru was crossing the courtyard toward you, and he was smiling. 

"nanami!" you hear satoru’s voice, bright, carrying, completely unbothered by the fact that he was interrupting anything.

both of you looked at him. nanami's expression shifted from mild irritation to active annoyance in less than a second. as he approached, satoru grinned and slung an arm around nanami's shoulder. 

"gojo," nanami said flatly. "what." 

"i was just walking this way and saw you." 

satoru's gaze slid to yours. casual and easy, like he'd just noticed you were there. "oh hey, partner. didn't expect to see you here." 

you inclined your head. polite. distant. "gojo." 

"you two know each other?" nanami's voice was carefully neutral. 

"lab partners," satoru said, giving nanami's shoulder a squeeze that made him flinch. "she's the only reason i’m passing. very patient with my many, many questions." 

something in your posture shifts, the barest suggestion of i don't have time for this. 

you turn to nanami. "i should go. i'll see you-" 

"wait." satoru's voice was light, and after a moment he says, "nanami's throwing a party at his apartment tonight. you should come." 

both you and nanami freeze. nanami turned his head very slowly to look at satoru, his eyes behind those glasses were sharp and calculating. what the fuck are you doing written in every line of his face. 

"i'm-" you started. 

"it’s a small gathering," satoru continued, smooth as glass. "just the usual crowd. nanami's been talking about it all week. right, nanami?" 

nanami's jaw tightened. for a moment, satoru thought he might blow the whole thing open right here, in front of you, and ruin everything. but, nanami was smart, and more importantly, nanami was private. he wouldn't cause a scene, would rather absorb the annoyance than create conflict. so when he spoke, his voice was controlled and flat. "there's a party. at my apartment. tonight." 

you look at nanami. something passes between you two, a silent conversation that satoru couldn't read. then you turned back to satoru. "i have work to do. but thank you for the offer." polite. firm. final. 

you start to turn away, but satoru's hand comes up. a gentle stop. 

"the thing is," he said, and his voice was different now. "it's not really optional." 

you look at him, nanami looks at him. satoru’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

"the project," he said smoothly. "there's a component yamamoto didn't mention in class, i only found out because I talked to the TA after. it's due monday, and it requires group work outside of class. i was going to suggest we meet up anyway, but since nanami's already hosting..." he shrugged, easy, effortless. "kill two birds." 

your eyes narrow slightly. “there's no additional component," you say.

"check your email." satoru pulls out his phone, scrolled, and waved it in front of your face. a forwarded message from the TA. you read the screen. your expression didn't change, but something in your eyes went very still. 

satoru could feel the weight of your suspicious, assessing gaze. "so you see," satoru continued, pocketing his phone, "we have to meet anyway. might as well be somewhere comfortable, right? nanami's place has good lighting and i’m sure he won't mind hosting for an hour." 

he looked at nanami and raised an eyebrow. play along. 

nanami's expression could have curdled milk. but after a long, loaded moment, he said, "you can come to my place at eight." satoru beams at this and turns back to you.

your face was perfectly blank. "fine." you turned and walked away without another glance

nanami watches you go, then turns to satoru. his expression was dangerous. "we need to talk." 

"i have class-" 

"now." 

"walk and talk," satoru said, and started moving toward the science building. "i have places to be."

nanami fell into step beside him. his voice was low. "what are you doing?" 

"going to class?" 

"with her." 

satoru glanced at him with an innocent look. "we're lab partners, we have a project." 

"bullshit." nanami's voice didn't rise, but it got sharper and colder. "i know the TAs. there's no additional component. you fabricated that email." 

satoru's smile widened. "oh yeah? prove it." 

they walked in silence for a moment. students parted around them like water around stones.

"why her?" nanami asked finally. 

"why not?" 

"because she's not like you. she's not like any of us, gojo. leave her alone." 

satoru stopped walking and turned to face him fully. they were the same height, almost, satoru maybe an inch taller, but standing this close, the difference in their energies was stark. 

“here's the thing about your friend," satoru said quietly. "she's interesting. and i'm curious. and i don't let go of things that make me curious.”

"so this is about your ego." 

“call it what you want." he tilted his head, "anyways, why do you care? she's not your girlfriend. you've got shoko. so what's her angle?"

nanami’s eyes flashed. “there's no angle, that's not the point. she's a person, not a puzzle for you to pick apart because you're bored. when you’re done with her, she’s the one who has to live with whatever you leave behind."

satoru was quiet for a moment. "are you worried about me, kento?" his voice was light, almost fond. "that's sweet."

"listen to me carefully gojo," nanami said, turning towards satoru. the two boys stopped walking. "she won't thank you for it.” his voice had changed. still careful, but something underneath it had shifted. "whatever you think is going to happen. she won't thank you."

"i'm not doing it for that."

"then what are you doing it for."

satoru looked at him for a long moment. the science building was ten feet away. the morning had gotten grey and flat overhead, the kind of sky that promised rain and didn't commit.

"i don't know yet," satoru said. which was, nanami reflected, possibly the most honest thing he'd said all morning.

the first time you saw gojo satoru was in the lab section of your physics class. 

there was assigned seating, and you had arrived earlier than usual on the first day. you walked into the empty lab, the fluorescent lights still humming to life overhead, and took your seat at the chair pressed up against the wall of windows that looked out onto the courtyard below. you opened your notebook to the first page and wrote the date at the top in clean handwriting and then you waited. 

he was bright and beautiful, your lab partner gojo satoru. his hair was impossibly white, his eyes were pale blue that made you think of shallow water over white sand. he was tall and broad-shouldered, and the top button of his uniform was undone, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and when he smiled at you for the first time, you felt something in your chest tighten. 

of course you knew gojo, it would have been stranger not to. 

gojo, who was the heir to his parent’s company, one of those old-money zaibatsu families whose name was stamped on half the buildings in the city. everyone knew him, or knew of him: the crowd that always seemed to orbit him like he was the sun. the university had been built for kids like him, big limestone columns and manicured lawns. 

and you had fallen for it, for him. the slow and irritating recognition that he was not what you had prepared yourself for. he was intelligent, he didn't posture or perform.  you suppose that was the most irritating thing about him. 

you caught yourself wondering, sometimes, what your life might have looked like if you’d been born into the same kind of world. not for the money, not for any of that. but because you suspected, with a certainty that sat heavy in your chest, that gojo satoru had never once wondered if his presence was a burden. you understood, what it was to be raised by people who looked through you rather than at you. 

he asked about you a lot. how your day was, what you thought about the lecture, whether you’d eaten lunch, if you’d seen the sakura starting to bloom along the north path. his questions were simple, but something about the way he asked, his head tilted slightly, those pale eyes fixed on your face, made you go rigid in a way you couldn’t quite explain. you found yourself measuring each word before you let it out, your shoulders drawn up just slightly, and your voice kept carefully even. 

his eyes would track the small movements of your hands, the way you looked away when you answered, and there was something in his gaze, a glint or focus  that felt too sharp. it made your stomach tighten with something adjacent to unease. 

you answered him, of course. you were polite and cordial, and gave him clipped short answers that seemed to satisfy something in him even as they cost you something you couldn’t name. he never offered anything about himself, and you never asked. not because you weren’t curious, 

you were, that was the problem, but because something in you knew, with the same instinct that told you when to flee and when to stay still, that whatever answer he gave would make you feel smaller. as if the distance between your versions of the same loneliness was very large and very measurable.

it was easier to despise him. to file him away with all the other silver-spoon children who floated through these halls. you were tired all the time, the simple act of getting out of bed felt like wading through chest-high water, and you had learned, by necessity, to conserve your energy for things that mattered. gojo satoru did not matter. 

you told yourself this often, with the same flat conviction you used to tell yourself you were fine and that you were managing. 

he would wave to you in the courtyard two days later, an easy gesture like you two were old friends. 

you had expected, going in, a certain type. that specific brand of wealthy carelessness that curdles into condescension. you had grown up adjacent to it, had watched it operate at dinner tables and charity galas and in the back seats of cars. 

but gojo satoru, for reasons you couldn't quite account for and weren't particularly interested in investigating, was not that. he was pleasantly, disarmingly, almost irritatingly decent. 

you waved back.

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satoru had looked everywhere for you.

he'd reached for his phone after the first lab with the full expectation of finding something. instagram at minimum. but there was nothing. no facebook. no twitter. no anything. he searched your name twice and came up with a single mention in a high school academic honor roll from three years ago. he stared at his phone for longer than he would admit.

so he did the next logical thing, which was follow you home.

he told himself it was practical. he was already walking in that general direction. 

you walked at a steady unhurried pace with your earphones in and your eyes ahead, and he kept half a block between you the whole way. you lived in a decent-sized apartment building on a quiet street. nothing remarkable about it. he stood on the opposite pavement and watched the light come on in what he calculated was probably the third floor, and then he went home.

he went back twice more that week. he wasn't very proud of this.

the thing was, there was nothing unusual about you. that was the unusual part. you didn't go to parties, you didn't appear at any of the places students like you were supposed to appear (such as, but not limited to the library, cafe, student union). you went to class. you went home. and, on thursdays you stopped at the library to print out your report sheets. 

you were also very pretty. he had noticed this immediately. your dark curious eyes that looked at him like you were trying to solve an unsolvable puzzle. he enjoyed watching you work, the small crease between your brows when you were working through a problem, the way your pen stilled in your hand when you were deciding something.. 

he wanted to find out more about you, what you were like when nobody was watching. what you did at home, the shows you watched, the food you liked. 

but you didn't want him to know you. that was the part that gnawed at him. you looked at him like he was a nuisance or a stranger, and he had done nothing to deserve either. he was endlessly kind and gentle to you. patient, and attentive. you met it with coldness, brushing him off and keeping him at a distance as if his attention meant nothing at all. anyone else would have taken the hint by now.

but that wasn’t what he wanted. he didn’t want your politeness, and he didn’t want the same distant civility you gave everyone else. what he wanted, specifically, was your attention, your softness, your devotion, to belong to him alone

so when he saw you in the courtyard on a thursday afternoon, sitting on the bench near the east fountain, next to nanami kento, actually talking, satoru couldn’t help but feel a little bit betrayed

you were leaning forward slightly, one hand loose in your lap, and nanami was listening with his full attention, turned toward you like you were worth the trouble of it. the grey afternoon light sat flat over both of you and you looked comfortable in it. easy. a looseness in your posture that satoru had never once managed to produce.

granted he had never actually told suguru or kento your real name, but nanami had clearly known you for years and hadn't thought to mention it once