indie

“Her favorite color was blue,” Gojo blurted out, and Choso felt his eye twitch. Mouth barely able to hold onto thin neutrality as he resisted reacting. 

“When I was with her, it was purple,” he evenly replied, pushing off the ground to stand up straight. You wouldn’t even let him paint the kids bathroom blue. Skipped every shade of it to pluck out a soft lavender, smiling as you offered it to him. 

“Well, I guess you just know her so much better than I do,” Gojo scoffed, white brows pinching together tightly as he walked over to place his flowers by Choso’s.

It was hard not to cringe. 

Jealousy used to burn him up inside, gnaw at him endlessly at night no matter what you whispered or how tightly he held you in his arms. But now, seeing the man who was responsible for it teetering on a knife’s edge, miserably mourning your memory the same way he was, just sorta made all those harsh edges of his own hurt soften with unexpected sympathy. 

“She wouldn’t want you to waste the rest of your life waiting by-” 

“You don’t know that,” Gojo snapped at him, before immediately wincing, probably realizing how he sounded. “That was childish, I’m-” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Choso waved it off. 

Truthfully, he didn’t know what he’d do if he was in his shoes. 

Except for maybe not leaving to start with. 

“I used to be terrified I’d wake up one day and you’d be waiting at the front door,” he added, not sure if being candid would help him any, or if it just felt good to get it off his chest. 

“I wish I was,” Gojo openly admitted, defined jaw clenched tight. 

Up close, Choso could make out the curve of his cheekbones, a little too hollow to be healthy. A haunted quality etched into every line, every feature of his face. Not getting enough to eat. Probably not getting enough sleep either. 

Struggling to cope with his new circumstances.

Displaced in time and space.

And still there was one thing they both had in common. 

“I miss her,” Choso softly spoke, throat constricting as a lump started to take shape, blocking his breathing as he steeled himself. He wouldn’t cry. Not here. Not in front of him. 

“Yeah,” Gojo awkwardly agreed. “Me too.” 

“Do you want to go out for lunch later? Talk about her?” He offered, shoving down his own discomfort to extend an olive branch. 

Hope blooming when Gojo hesitantly accepted it, nodding with just a short bob of his head. 

“Can you bring some photos of her?” 

And a couple hours later, they were sitting across from each other in a corner booth of a restaurant he used to take the twins and Yuji to with you, plates pushed to the side as they poured over photo albums, fingers tracing over the glossy plastic protecting your pictures. 

Choso paused over an old one, back when the two of you first started dating, where you were sandwiched between Apollo and Artemis, smiling at him from behind a snowcone in a roller skating rink. It was supposed to be a playdate for the kids, but it kinda felt like one for him too. Holding your hand skating, making conversation over the loud bass of the obnoxious music blaring, and blushing when you nearly fell and sent him tumbling down on top of you. He could still remember that flutter in his chest when he helped you up, your fingers gripping onto his forearm and his own splayed across your side, lovestruck at the way you looked up at him with those pretty eyes, a temporary tattoo of a butterfly stuck to the bottom half of your cheek courtesy of Artemis and crinkled when you laughed. 

He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone so gorgeous. 

Snapping photos of your side profile and the kids racing around the arcade section, glued to your side and feeling like a dumb dog lapping up every little sliver of affection you tossed down to him. 

Devouring every ounce of it, feeling like he’d been stuck in a drought, wandering in a desert without you as he watched you help Yuji calculate how many tickets he’d need to get a ridiculous stuffed animal from behind the prize counter, Apollo tugging at your pants and pleading for you to play air hockey with him after Artemis went back to skating. 

It had been a good day. 

A great one. 

The five of you together had felt like a family far before you actually became one. 

“They look like they’re having fun,” Gojo muttered, tapping the picture of the little boy who looked so much like him. 

It was strange, honestly, a little uncomfortable how much Apollo had grown up to resemble him.

And now Apollo was older than him, his dad damn near the spitting image as him at that age. 

Not that he’d admit it. 

No, his stepson had done everything he could to diminish the similarities, running as far from his dad’s shadow as he could while his sister found the light in it. 

“We had just started dating back then,” Choso wistfully exhaled, reminiscing about how naive he’d been back then. 

How easy things had been. 

Artemis had filled your former fiancé on the basics. A rough history lesson on the years he’d spent in space. A vague outline of your life since he left. 

But he didn’t know how much Gojo really knew.

“You seem pretty close,” Gojo commented, his mouth pressed in a thin line as he flipped the page to a photo Mrs. Geto had snapped of the five of you at a soccer game, Apollo still in his uniform and beaming at the camera while you leaned into his side for the shot. 

“It, uh, was a little rocky,” he admitted. “Mostly because she was still in love with you.” 

And you had been terrified of falling out of it. 

“I think she was scared of falling for me too,” Choso added, leaning back against the leather seat, still able to shut his eyes and bring himself back to the first night he confronted you about it. 

Standing in your kitchen, putting plates in the dishwasher as you wiped the crumbs off the table, all three kids watching a movie in the living room, throwing popcorn at each other and giggling while you cleaned up after dinner. 

Another night where everything had revolved entirely around the kids, picking up after them and playing, breaking up their bickering or dragging them around from place to place. 

He had felt like a fucking asshole for having any kind of complaints, but when the most the two of you managed was a handful of makeout sessions you had to sneak in, a brief foray to second base that ended in less than a minute when Artemis burst into the bedroom crying about a skinned knee, frustration had begun to build. 

Choso didn’t mind waiting, if that was what you wanted. 

Taking however much time you needed if the idea of being intimate was still too much. 

But you weren’t saying anything. Avoiding the conversation every time he tried to bring it up, switching subjects or shifting back to the kids like you were searching for an excuse not to be close with him. 

To not move to the next step together. 

He wanted to take you on real dates. To spend time with you one-on-one. Be a couple instead of just coparents. 

“Can we talk?” Choso cleared his throat, shutting the dishwasher and fixing the settings without looking over at you. 

“Yeah?” He could tell you were nervous already, voice cracking on just a single word. 

“I, uh, just was thinking that we haven’t gone on a real date, y’know?” He started, peeking back at you just to see how stiff you were suddenly standing, shoulders squared as your mouth parted in surprise. 

“I mean, I guess,” you awkwardly replied, biting your bottom lip as you avoided his stare, turning your attention away, and he could already anticipate how many seconds he had left before you’d offer to check on the children or change the topic.

“Are you avoiding being alone with me?” He bluntly asked, a tiny bit stunned himself at the way the words just fell out of him. 

“No, no,” you stammered it out, repeating yourself as you shook your head. “It’s just, it’s hard to find time with the kids, it’s not you-”

It was the fact he wasn’t actually their father. 

But he didn’t say that. Didn’t bring him up. 

“I don’t want to rush you,” he tried to clarify, stepping closer and reaching out. Desperate to feel some kind of connection even when he suspected he might only end up freaking you out. “If you’re not-”

“What if I, um, ask Suguru’s mom to watch all of them next weekend?” You offered before he could explain his concerns, cutting him off with the words he wanted to hear.

“You’d do that?” Choso asked, heart thumping against his rib cage as he contained the hope he’d been clinging onto since the first day he met you.

“Yeah,” you nodded, smiling at him softly as he ran his hand over your arm, leaning in to press a kiss to your forehead.

He hadn’t looked then. 

But part of him wondered now, what he would’ve seen if he had. Would the smile reach your eyes? 

Still, you kept your word. 

Dropped all three of them off to be babysat for the night a week later, got all dressed up in a little purple dress that left him swallowing his drool throughout the entire dinner, clumsily opening doors for you and paying the check despite his dismal teaching salary. 

You laughed at his jokes, leaned across the table and let him trace circles over your knuckles with his thumb over white wine. 

Choso didn’t go on dates often. 

But he hadn’t met anyone who made him feel like you did. Warm and fuzzy and frustrated and so entirely wrapped up in every word that left your lips that it was driving him mad.

Practically vibrating just from your touch, the way your fingers delicately intertwined with his when you led him back up to your front door, electricity he might just be imagining buzzing between your body as his as you leaned back against the the frame, giggling when you accidentally bumped into the bell. 

He could see that nervous glimmer in your eyes. 

Shared his own sea of anxiety over how tonight would end when everything inside him was aching for it not to. 

“So,” you started, sucking in your bottom lip for a second as your unsure stare met his.“Are you gonna come in?” 

Choso felt like he was going to black out.

Sure that he was going to blink and wake back up in his bed. Alone. Exhausted. Craving you so goddamn much he could hardly contain it. 

And before he could hold himself back, he was cupping your pretty face and kissing those lips that constantly lingered in the back of his brain. 

The rest was a blur. You kissing him back and looping your wrists around his neck. Shutting the door behind both of you and stumbling back to your bedroom, clothes hitting the floor while his chest strained to catch his breath. 

And when your back hit the bed, he was sure this had to be heaven. 

“You’re so fucking gorgeous, god, I can’t fucking believe you’re mine-” He didn’t even realize he was rambling until your mouth collided with his again, your soft thighs wrapping around his waist as his cock pressed up against your entrance.

You were already wet, which felt like far more of an accomplishment than it should. 

Pride sparking in his chest as his pre-cum unhelpfully leaked out onto your skin. 

“Condoms are, um, in my drawer,” you blinked when you broke the kiss, swallowing hard as you tilted your head towards your nightstand. 

“Okay,” he nodded, a little too eagerly as he climbed off to grab it, yanking open the drawer to find a sealed box. 

Brand new. 

Did you actually buy it for him? 

Or was he being delusional? 

He ripped open the top flap, but before he put one on, he looked back at you, feeling a little bit like an idiot for thinking with his dick instead of his brain. 

How could he forget about foreplay? 

Choso tossed a condom on the bed, walking back around to the edge of it before getting on his knees and yanking you down by your thighs until that pretty pussy of yours was right there in front of him. 

Ready to be prepared. 

“Can I taste you first?” He asked, not entirely selfless in his request. 

He wanted to bury his tongue inside you. Get the whole experience rather than rush into it and risk cumming in just a couple clumsy minutes. 

You nodded, maybe a little unsure yourself. 

As rusty at this as he was. 

You had confided in him before you hadn’t dated anyone since him. But Choso had no clue whether or not you’d actually been with someone else – even if it was just a hookup. 

His fingers trembled as they slid over your pliable thighs, pulling them closer as he shyly leaned in to tentatively take his first lick. 

But all it took was a taste. 

And a handful of minutes later, he was nuzzling his nose as he sucked and lapped like a man starved, cock throbbing and twitching as he resisted the urge to cum every time you moaned and whined for him. 

Pausing to ask if you were okay a couple times before he got too tangled up in balancing your pleasure and his. 

Your fingers laced through his hair, tugging at his roots to keep him going, thighs clamping down on his head as he swirled his tongue around hungrily. 

It honestly felt like a crime you’d kept it from him for so long. 

He could spend the entire night like this. 

Solely devoted to you. 

Trying out every little thing, pushing and pressing and prodding at every spot inside you until he made a map of your likes and dislikes. 

But you were prying him off, ignoring his deep whine as his glossy lips froze in a panicked pant, ready to plead his case to convince you to let him have a teesny more time. 

“Are you alright?” He asked, swallowing hard as his own saliva and your slick dripping down his throat. Pretending he didn’t notice the rings gleaming around your neck, the diamond one you’d switched from your fourth finger to a dainty chain. Daring him to remember that you weren’t supposed to be his. 

“I-I’m fine,” you murmured, chest heaving with every breath, making the necklace bounce with it. “Good.” 

“Please,” he began to beg, brows knitted together tight. Desperate to make you his. For tonight, at least. “I just want-” 

“I want all of you,” you half-whispered, like you could hardly believe it. 

He couldn’t either. 

Brain still lagging by the time he was sheathing his cock inside the condom, squirting lube on his hand and stroking his shaft before slowly starting to slip his way in you. 

No resistance. No more holding back. No more hoping for something he didn’t know would ever happen. 

Just you and him here together. 

It was perfect. 

You were perfect. 

Your warmth, your touch, your scent, god, every last detail was far better than he ever dreamed it.

His thrusts were precise, dragging in and out all slow and deliberate so he could study the way your face scrunched up in pleasure, watch your lips part and purr his name like a prayer. 

“C-Cho,” you groaned, raking your nails down his shoulder blades, not enough to sink into his skin, but more like a soft graze. 

“Y-you like that?” He stuttered over his own words, not coming off nearly as confident as he liked. 

You were nodding, your head on a bobble as your mascara-laden lashes fluttered. 

He was shuddering, whimpering right as his cock pressed all the way in, bumping into the back as your walls squeezed down on him. 

Nothing had ever felt so good. 

He wasn’t sure anything ever would again. 

Fucking you all soft, hips sliding smoothly against you, grabbing your hands and pinning them over your head so he could kiss you as much as he liked. Tongue slipping into your mouth, tracing your teeth, exchanging whines just for the other to swallow. 

Pressure building and twisting in his core, terrible tension he couldn’t resist, trying to break him before he could make you finish. 

Rushing to rub your clit, murmuring into your mouth and practically begging you to cum for him. 

You were hurting. 

He still thought he could heal you. 

Intoxicated by your face when you unravelled for him, cumming into the condom twice as hard as usual hearing your breathy moan, half-collapsing on you as his knees went weak. 

Choso might’ve been more embarrassed if he wasn’t so enticed by every little shiver and shake of your body, absolutely enveloped while he left kiss after kiss across your soft skin.

Talking to you in a soft voice, pulling your body back up the bed and flipping over so you could be on his chest. 

It didn’t take long for you to drift off like that. 

He didn’t blame you. 

Between work and the twins, you barely had time to take care of yourself. You rarely got restful sleep. 

He was feeling it call to him too. 

Peace. Contentment. 

Heat lingering underneath his cheek as he held you close, brushing your hair back from your face as you dreamed. Your mouth curled up, a pretty smile reflexively forming as your fingers tightened around his side. 

Some sliver of him sort of wanted to wake you, to ask what occupied your mind when you slept so soundly. But he just craned his neck down to nuzzle his nose in your hair, pulling you up another inch or two closer to cradle your body against his. 

And then you said it and shattered the illusion completely. 

“Satoru.” 

One sleepy word. Three soft syllables. 

And you broke him in a way he wasn’t sure he could repair. 

He stilled beneath you, heart lodged in his throat as he resisted the urge to throw it up. Flush it down the fucking toilet as he tried to lie to himself. 

Swear that you didn’t mean it – even if your subconscious did. 

That he wasn’t even here. 

But fuck, that look on your face, so relaxed, so raw, it made something inside him snap. 

What the hell was he thinking? 

He couldn’t do this. 

Slowly, he slipped out from underneath you, making sure to tuck the pillow under your head and cover your bare body back up with the blanket before he padded silently over to his discarded clothes. 

Choso couldn’t take just being your consolation prize. 

But the idea of going home and never coming back to you felt pretty fucking unbearable too. 

He didn’t want you to know he felt like this either.  

Hated the idea of you seeing him spiral into doubt. 

His feelings were his responsibility. He couldn’t put anything else on you – be another burden on your shoulders. He just needed time. 

Yeah, that was it. To think this through. 

Figure out if you were really ready for this. If he was ready to be what you needed while knowing he wasn’t who you needed. 

Choso had only managed to get his socks and boxers back on when he heard rustling behind him. 

You were sitting up and staring, eyes wide and worried as you watched him wordlessly. 

“I need to get Yuji,” he lied, sweat sticking to his forehead and plastering his bangs down as you blinked at him. 

“Why?” 

One word, and he nearly cracked. Changed his mind and caved in. “I forgot that we’re supposed to go see Sukuna in the morning,” he excused, shrugging his shoulders. “I should probably pick him up and head home.” 

“You’re going home?” Your voice was wound tight, but you didn’t call his bluff. 

“I should, yeah,” he muttered. 

You didn’t fight him on it. 

Just covered yourself with the blanket as you got up to grab some clean clothes from the closet. Not looking directly at him when you got dressed, mumbling under your breath that you’d let Suguru’s mother know you were picking the kids up as you sent her a text message. 

She answered the door with a soft smile for both of you, murmuring that the kids were still asleep as she let both of you in. 

“I’ll go get them,” you yawned, walking past her – and all the framed photos of men who weren’t around anymore. 

“Would you like some tea while she wakes them up?” 

Choso always had trouble saying no. 

Ending up in the kitchen, a deep line imprinting on his palms from the bite of the sharp counter’s edge as she poured him some fresh tea. 

She glanced up at him with tired eyes, holding out a steaming cup he timidly took. She wasn’t a fool. Probably figured it out from your text alone that something was up. 

“Can I ask you something?” He started, readjusting to lean against the kitchen cabinets as he looked at the ticking clock on the wall. 

“Of course,” she nodded, a fondness in her gaze that he knew wasn’t reserved for him either. 

You had told him about her son. Your fiancé’s friend. 

Commenting quietly a month after he had met her that you thought he reminded her of him.

“Do you think I’m wasting my time?” He asked, keeping his voice down as he felt all the muscles in his face involuntarily clench. Mouth twitching in a tight line as he voiced the thought haunting his mind. 

Was he just a moron for standing here wishing for someone who didn’t want him back? 

He didn’t want to be a placeholder. 

“Wasting your time doing what? Waiting for her to stop loving Satoru? Or for her to start loving you?” She asked, tilting her head to the side knowingly. 

His mouth opened, but no sounds came out. 

Unsure what question he really was trying to ask once she said the silent parts out loud. 

“She’s never going to stop loving Satoru,” Mrs. Geto calmly said, no malice or condescension, just stating a fact Choso already knew. “But you’d have to be blind to not see how far she’s fallen for you.” 

He hoped she was right. 

Would rip his heart out of his chest and hand it to you if it made it true. 

Artemis stumbled in first, sleepily rubbing her eyes and clutching a stuffed animal to her chest as the boys trailed in after her. You were behind them, but you weren’t looking at him. 

“What’s happening?” Apollo grumbled, leaning all his weight against your leg as Yuji scampered over to his big brother. 

“We’re going home,” you answered, your voice coming out all breathy, familiar heat still curling hot in his stomach just at your pitch . “And Yuji’s going home with Choso.” 

“But I thought we were-” 

“No buts,” you huffed, wrangling your kids towards the door without looking at him once. 

He knew that he might’ve screwed things up. 

Still, he didn’t think it would still be so tense a full week later. 

That when he didn’t text you good morning, you wouldn’t either. No more dinners for five. Or carpooling to school. No more cozying up on your couch while the kids fell asleep halfway through a bad movie. 

The distance didn’t make him feel any better. 

It only made him miss you more. 

Staring at the stars outside his window and wishing that he was home with you. Even if there would always be a ghost haunting its halls. Looming over the two of you no matter how much love he had to offer you. 

Was the man you loved before him still out there somewhere? 

Craving you the way he was now? 

Sympathy he hadn’t anticipated surged inside him, daring him to fully empathize with someone he wanted to hate. 

But he couldn’t hate him. 

And he couldn’t stop himself from loving you. 

So he sent you a text Saturday morning, typing and deleting a variation of the same ten words before finally hitting send.

He wasn’t lying when he said that Yuji missed the twins. Choso just didn’t know how to tell you how much he missed you too. 

But you replied back that he could bring him over if he wanted, and he refused to miss the chance to reconcile. To fix things before they ended up broken. 

Choso thought you might be a little upset. Confused by the sudden space between you. 

But you barely even glance at him when you opened the door, speaking only to Yuji as you directed him to the backyard, nodding along to his endless chirping about what he learned in school yesterday before he ran out to join the twins. 

The morning sun wasn’t too harsh yet, your side profile illuminated in the soft rays as you stepped out with them, wearing one of your favorite faded shirts he suspected belonged to him, the chain of your necklace peeking out underneath the color. 

“Are you going to say it?” You broke the silence, your stare focused solely on Yuji and Apollo chasing each other and laughing. 

“Say what?” He repeated, running his fingers through his hair, attempting to not sound as nervous as he felt. 

You scoffed, low and soft, your mouth curling down as you looked down at the grass around your bare feet. 

“I guess this is it then?” You asked, refusing to so much as glance his way. Leaning against the wall with your arms tightly folded across your chest like you were trying to protect your heart. “We’re over?”

His own practically fell through the fucking floor as he processed what you just said. 

“What?” The question came out wounded. His throat drying out as he forced himself to exhale, “Why-”

“I don’t want to waste your time,” you coldly replied, but he could hear how much you were struggling too. 

Oh god. 

You must have overheard the first part of his conversation with Mrs. Geto. 

“That’s not what I meant,” he defensively started, panic pulsing through him as he reached out to touch your arm. But you recoiled, flinching fast like his fingers would burn you. 

“I thought things were okay,” you murmured, shaking your head like the very notion was stupid now. “Was it the sex? Was I not good enough for you?”

“No, no, I swear-”

“Then what?” You snapped, finally looking back at him, your beautiful face scrunched together in pain. Big tears welling up in your pretty eyes that you were trying to blink away. 

For a second, Choso froze, stunned that he could be the reason for that. That you cared enough about this, about him to cry. 

His mouth stuck open in a moronic ‘o’ as he stumbled for the right thing to say to stop your relationship from unraveling. 

“You had your fun and fucked me. I’m just not what you wanted, right?” You were half-whispering, keeping your voice down to not alert the kids. Bottom lip quivering as you continued, “I don’t know why I thought you’d stay.” 

Fuck. 

This was not how this was supposed to go. 

He was supposed to be smoothing things over, not losing you over nothing. 

“No, baby, no,” he insisted, grabbing your hand before you could retreat even further away. “You are everything I’ve ever wanted.”

You tried to pull your hand out of his, but he wasn’t the kind of fool who would let you walk away. 

“The sex was amazing, god, you’re amazing,” Choso rambled, rushing through his words as he felt a frightening surge of anxiety at the idea of you thinking he was just using you like some scumbag. “I just, I thought everything was perfect, and after you dozed off, you said his name and I-” 

“What?” You faltered. 

“You were in my arms, and you called out for him,” he murmured, attempting to suck air in his lungs as he inhaled sharply. 

A tear slipped down your cheek, and before you could burst into sobs, he was pulling you back against his chest. Enveloping you in his embrace, arms wrapped around you as your body wracked with the weight of your sorrow. 

“M’sorry,” you cried, your voice muffled as your tears left damp spots in his shirt. “I-I-” 

He was stroking your hair, swallowing the lump in his throat at the sound of your broken voice. 

“It’s okay,” he soothed, pressing your head against him to make sure the kids wouldn’t have to see you crying. 

Not when you tried so hard to be strong for them. Built a life around being there when their father hadn’t been. 

“I didn’t mean-” You started again, and he only pulled back to wipe the tears away beneath your eyes, thumb slowly dragging over your cheekbones. “I just haven’t had sex with anyone since-”

“You don’t have to apologize when you didn’t do it on purpose,” he reassured you, feeling that hole in his own heart chisel just a tad wider at your acknowledgement he’d been the first man to fuck you since him. “I just needed some time to sort out my own feelings.” 

“You’re still going to leave,” you mumbled, wiping your nose on your forearm as you tried to step back and recoil back. 

“I’m not,” he promised, cupping your cheek. “I’m just scared of being his stand-in. A shitty replacement for the real thing.” 

You stared back at him, taken a little aback before you shook your head, leaning into his palm. “You know you’re not.” 

He didn’t though. 

How was he supposed to believe he wasn’t second place when you wore the proof of who was first around your neck every day? 

But he couldn’t point that out. 

Not when he knew that he wasn’t being fair. 

Your former fiancé had been gone for years. It wasn’t a bad breakup, or like you lost him in some tangible way. 

You had no closure. No answers. 

Just an empty hole in your heart that Choso was doing his damndest to fill. 

He glanced back at the children, clueless as they played in the sandbox, Artemis threatening to dump a bucket on her brother while Yuji dared her to do it. 

And his chest fucking spasmed at the idea that there might be another life where they weren’t his family. 

Where you weren’t his. 

“I’ll always love Satoru. I wouldn’t have the twins without him,” you admitted, sniffling a little as you pulled yourself back together. “I wouldn’t have you either.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

Aware that you were right, but having a hard time finding it in himself to be grateful. 

You were a gift.

Choso just couldn’t decide how to feel about the sender. 

“I love you,” you spoke so softly to him though, so tenderly despite how scared he could sense you were just saying the words out loud. “I’m sorry it took me so long to say it.”

“I love you too,” he promised, leaning down to press a soft kiss against your lips. 

To seal it. 

“I think we just have to work on talking to each other,” Choso added after you started to pull away, slipping a hand around your back to keep you close. “Communicate better before it turns into this.” 

He didn’t want to be the reason you cried. Be the one who broke you. 

“Yeah,” you mumbled an agreement, relaxing into him before looking back over to the twins and Yuji. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“And then what?” Gojo interrupted his story, shoving a fry in his mouth with an annoyed frown. “You guys lived happily ever after?” 

Wouldn’t that be sweet? If it had been so simple? If you’d both stuck to what you swore? 

“Uh, not exactly,” he muttered. “I mean, most of it was great. But we did have a pretty bad patch.” 

Gojo freely glared at him, like he was offended at the concept of him having anything to complain about. 

“Why are you looking at me like it’s my fault?” Gojo huffed. 

Some childish part of him wanted to retort that it was. 

That he spent his life fixing the damage he’d done to you by getting on the damn spaceship. 

But Choso had made his peace with that long before you were his wife. 

“You’re the one she married,” he bitterly added, jaw locked with barely concealed contempt he wasn’t bothering to hide without Artemis around. 

Apollo didn’t even want to entertain him at all, only tolerated seeing him when his sister dragged him around to family gatherings and brunches, excited to have someone to chatter about science stuff the rest of them couldn’t comprehend.  

Choso didn’t blame either of them. 

“You know, she didn’t say yes the first time I asked her to marry me,” Choso confessed, twisting his own wedding band around a wrinkled finger. 

You broke up with him, actually. 

He had tried to dull the memory over the years. Make the edges of it less sharp, enough that it didn’t taint you in his mind. 

But it still stung. 

No matter how much time had passed. No matter what he knew now that he hadn’t then. 

Choso had spent weeks planning it. 

Debating on all the different ways to do it before finally deciding that he should do something as a family. Show you how much he loved you and the twins. 

He didn’t want to just be your live-in boyfriend. 

He wanted to be the step-dad to your kids. Your husband. To slip a ring on your finger and swear to love you for the rest of his life. 

To never leave. 

He settled on making the kind of meals usually reserved for holidays, buying candles and balloons, buying a pack of rose petals to scatter on the bed. Picking out a ring he hoped you’d like and saving enough money to afford a second if you didn’t. 

Waiting for the perfect opportunity to get you out of the house long enough to set everything up only for you to hand it to him on a silver platter. 

You were distracted when he got home from work, chewing on your lip as you dropped your phone in your purse and murmured that you needed to go run a couple errands while he tried to hide his excitement. 

Maybe, if the kids hadn’t rushed over and started tugging on his jeans, distracting him with what they’d done at school, he might’ve seen your face before you walked out the door. 

Maybe it would have all played out differently. 

But he didn’t, and he’d never get to know what could’ve happened instead. 

Roping the kids into the plan was perhaps a mistake. 

But he wanted the twins' permission before he proposed. 

“I need to ask you two something,” he hummed, ruffling Apollo’s hair as Artemis squinted suspiciously at him. 

“What?” She murmured, glancing between him and Yuji, who was practically bouncing up-and-down with excitement he couldn’t contain. 

“I would like to ask your mom to marry me,” he admitted, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he measured their reactions. 

Apollo threw his arms around his leg, looking up at him with those bright blue eyes, absolutely elated. “So you’re gonna be our dad?” 

“It would make me your step-dad,” he replied as calmly as he could, still trying to respect the man who made them – even if he’d never gotten to watch them grow. “And that’s up to your mom.” 

You lived together. You told him you loved him. 

He never thought no was really an option. 

“If it makes mom happy,” Artemis murmured, a little more reluctant as she nodded. 

“That’s all I want,” Choso softly replied, smiling at her. 

She looked like a little version of you. Acted like one too sometimes. Slower to trust. Sweet underneath it all. She wanted to seem strong, but she was still soft underneath it all.

Choso had overheard her on the playground telling her one of the other kids swinging that her daddy was up in space, swearing that he’d come back after the child called her a liar. 

He felt pretty fucking shitty for his silent hopes that her father would stay up there. 

Did it make him an awful person? To want a place in your life that badly? Unsure if you would really pick him if your first choice became an option once more? 

He did what he did best though. 

Push down his anxieties and pray he never had to find out. 

“Who wants to help set everything up for her?” He asked, forcing his brightest smile as his ring sat impossibly heavy in his pocket. Weighing his heart down like a lead balloon, threatening to bury it as he tried to swallow the fear that he might fuck this up. 

But the chorus of ‘me’s and the bright faces of the kids that had all started to feel like his own was enough for him to forget about it and focus on you instead. 

Getting all the details right as he devoted himself to the dinner, letting the kids lay out the tablecloth and set the plates up – although he had to stop Yuji from accidentally setting his hair on fire when he snuck the lighter out of the drawer to light the candles Choso had set out. 

But eventually, everything was in its place, the lights adjusted and the food set out, the children all changed into nicer clothes as the twins talked about how they’d all be siblings soon. 

“What do you guys think?” Choso grinned, wiping his palms off on the apron before taking it off. 

“She’ll love it,” Apollo optimistically smiled, one of his front teeth missing from where it’d fallen out the week before and traded in for five dollars from the tooth fairy. 

Choso really hoped you would. 

It was too late to change anything, because they all heard the familiar sound of your key turning in the lock, the creak of it swinging open. The front door thudded shut, and he was pretty sure his heart was going to explode if it started pounding any harder. 

“Are you guys hungry?” You called out, your voice wavering, bordering on exhausted, pride flaring in Choso’s chest at how happy you’d be to see the spread on the table, to see the way the kids were all eagerly holding their breath, glancing between each other and nearly bouncing out of their seats. “We could order pizza or-” 

You stopped speaking the second you saw it. 

Froze in the open doorframe, your eyes going wide as you scanned over the scene. All the food and the fancy tablespread and the flickering candles, the way the kids were holding in giggles as he stepped forward to bridge the distance between you. 

“What is-” 

Choso got down on his knees mid-question slipping a hand in his jeans to clumsily grab the crushed velvet box, blinking a little too fast, mouth opening too soon as he struggled to remember the speech he rehearsed a thousand times in the mirror over the last month. 

“Um, I, uh,” he paused, spit thick in his throat that he had to swallow before continuing, “I love you, and I love our family, and I can’t imagine living the rest of my life without you or the twins in it. Will you make me the happiest-” 

“I cannot believe you,” you interrupted him, shaking your head as you stepped back, your face blank, mouth hanging open as you sucked in a shallow breath. 

“What?” He blanched, barely even processing the words that had just left your lips as your expression shifted to anger, of all things.  

Brows scrunching together as you scoffed, fingers trembling as you pointed down the hall. “My room. Now.” 

The kids looked at each other, awkwardly slipping into dining chairs as if they were the ones in trouble, but Choso didn’t know what to say to soothe them when it felt like his heart was shattering too. 

Humiliation burning his cheeks as he put the ring box back, getting up off the ground and following you like some dejected puppy, hoping for his owner’s love. But the moment you were alone, the second you shut the door behind him, the way you were staring at him was closer to a stranger. 

“What the hell did you think doing that in front of my kids?” You asked, and he couldn’t comprehend what the fuck he’d done that was so bad in your book. 

“We’ve been talking about marriage for like, a year,” he argued, indignation he didn’t know how to handle boiling up inside his chest at your attitude. Glaring like he had done something so absurd to deserve it, your rejection leaving a sour taste in his mouth he didn’t think would be going away any time soon. 

“We?” You hissed, hurt written all over your face before you wiped it and replaced it with thinly-veiled resentment. “You were the one who kept bringing it up.”

His jaw dropped. 

“Are you kidding me?” Choso deadpanned, disbelief wracking through his body as he felt a shot of adrenaline begin to course through his veins, fingers flexing into a fist before he forced them to relax. 

“I was just trying to keep you happy, I didn’t think that you were serious about it,” you said, turning away from him as you buried your face in your hands for a second, breathing hard like you might be on the verge of a panic attack. 

Instinctively, he wanted to reach out. Hold you close and let you crumble while he whispered soft words to coax you through it. But he stayed still, nails digging into his palm as he found himself fuming at you for the first time ever. 

“What the fuck?” He spat, his voice starting to raise as you recoiled back even further. “Why wouldn’t you say something? Why the hell would you just let me think you wanted it too?” 

That you wanted him? 

“Don’t shout at me,” you huffed, mouth still quivering as you folded your arms tight across your chest. 

“What happened to communication?” He demanded, thinking about the fight the two of you had. How you’d sworn that you loved him and didn’t want to lose him. 

And now here you were, refusing to meet his eyes, mouth pressed in a thin line as you held your tongue. 

Something he didn’t know he’d been holding back snapped when he realized you weren’t going to reply. 

“Oh, I get it,” he grimaced, brows knitting together in frustration as his disappointment bubbled into disgust with himself for not seeing it sooner. “You don’t want to marry me because I’m not him.”

He knew the second he said it that he couldn’t take it back. 

“That’s not fucking fair and you know it,” you snapped at him, and a bitter voice in the back of his head pointed out that you were only speaking up now that he brought up your real fiancé.

“You’ll wear his ring every day and not mine,” he retorted, doubling down rather than backing out of his accusation. 

He thought you’d yell back.

That you would fight him on it. He wanted you to fight him on it. To finally let every thought you kept from out so the two of you could get out of this frustrating limbo. He didn’t care if it dropped him in hell. 

He just wanted to get somewhere with you. 

But you shut down. 

Silently staring at the floor, chest heaving as you dug your own fingers into your side.

“I really am just a fill in for you,” Choso continued, trying to get any kind of reply out of you. 

And still, you somehow found the only one he didn’t want. 

“Get out,” you whispered. 

“What?” 

“Get out.”

Everything that had been boiling seconds before abruptly stopped, the pot ripped off the burner and left him stranded in hot water as his senses finally snapped back into place. 

You had never kicked him out before. 

What the hell had he done? 

“I’m not trying to hurt you, I just, I want to understand,” he tried to backpedal, holding his hands out and stepping forward just for you to not even glance up at him. 

“I need a break,” you said, your voice barely above a whisper, sounding like you were a world away.

“From this conversation? Or us?” He blanched. You were supposed to be throwing your arms around him right now. Telling him you loved him and discussing what season your wedding should be in. Not fucking dumping him. 

“This is just too much,” you muttered. 

What the fuck was that meant to mean? 

He felt helpless as he stared at you, the way your head was hanging down, shoulders slumped as you shut him out. 

“I’ll take the twins somewhere and you can get your stuff,” you added, getting up and walking around him, making up your mind without even giving him a chance to talk this out.

Watching you walk away, dumbfounded as you slipped out the door, the conversation over before it had even properly begun. 

“Are we going to be a family now?” Apollo’s hopeful voice carried through the door down the hall, and Choso rested his head against the door, wishing the conversation had gone another way and still too upset to think of a reasonable way to reach you. 

To break through the barriers you were haphazardly throwing back up. 

“Yuji and Choso aren’t going to live with us anymore, baby,” you softly said back. 

Fuck. 

You were supposed to be his wife. 

Not his ex-girlfriend. 

“You’re a fucking moron.” 

Said the jerk that left a pregnant you to go to fucking space. 

“You’re one to talk,” Choso commented, mouth curling down as he grabbed his glass to take a sip, the sight of his own aged hand reminding him that he was definitely too old for starting fights like this. 

“So she really dumped you?” Gojo grinned, irritatingly white teeth on display as he leaned forward, looking directly at him instead of the photo albums. 

“Not for that long.” 

“You should’ve fought for her more,” Gojo pointed out, before almost immediately stopping himself, brows scrunching together like he realized what he was saying and who he was saying it to. 

“I thought she didn’t want a future with me,” he shrugged. “Not when she was still thinking about what one would’ve looked like with you.” 

Always stuck in the same position. 

Torn between wanting your heart and wishing that he wasn’t second-place in it. 

“If I could’ve been there,” Gojo started, genuine remorse bleeding through, and Choso remembered once again why he’d never been able to bring himself to loathe the man you loved. 

Because they both loved you. 

“I know,” Choso murmured. “I sorta wished sometimes that you would just show up if it meant she would be happy.” 

𖥔 ݁ ˖

You weren’t sure you had ever been so fucking miserable. 

Breaking up with Choso had nearly broken you. 

You hadn’t seen him since you came back home to find every trace of him and Yuji gone. Hadn’t said his name since you had to explain to Apollo that you were going to switch him over to a new soccer team for the summer. Artemis had asked if you were happy, giving you that look like she could see through the stories you tried to keep up for them. All you could do was twist the necklace and tell her that her and her brother were all you ever needed. 

But she had wanted to go to a sleepaway space camp for the summer, and you couldn’t bring yourself to say no when everything you would have planned with Choso had fallen through. So she was hours away, gone for weeks while Apollo was busy with his own soccer camp and sleepovers with friends from school. 

When he was home, he was just complaining about how much he hated the older kids in the 9-12 group he’d gotten stuck in, muttering under his breath that his old team was better. 

You sort of thought if you stayed busy with him, you could forget about all the other stuff. 

Shut out the awful spiralling that started in your head every time you laid down in your cold, empty bed and rolled onto your side to see the unwrinkled spot next to you. 

Picturing your pretty dark-haired man there, his eyes lazily opening and noticing you staring before pulling you into a warm embrace. Waking up in a daze from a dream where your blue-eyed boy was still holding onto you, murmuring that it was all just a nightmare and to go back to sleep. 

Now you didn’t have either of them. 

God, you couldn’t even pull yourself together enough to send a video message to Satoru like you used to, staring at the unused webcam when you got ready every day and lacking the strength to even sit in front of it and say something. Couldn’t bring yourself to call your therapist either, cancelling appointments over text and shrugging your shoulders to swear that you were fine. 

You wanted to believe that you could heal from this. That there was still real happiness to be found somewhere between the lines of hurt and heartache. 

But it didn’t feel like it when you pulled into the parking lot for one of Apollo’s exhibition tournaments and he started bouncing around in the backseat swearing he was sure you passed by Yuji. 

Shit. 

God, you were sure that he wouldn’t be here. 

Yuji was in so many sports, and Choso usually coached younger kids anyway, so what the hell-

“Can I please go say hi, mom?” Apollo begged as you stopped the car. 

“Of course, sweetheart,” you nodded, going ahead and practicing your smile when the muscles to make it were a little rusty. 

The second you had slung your chair over your shoulder and opened the door for Apollo, he was sprinting over to the grassy area, Yuji’s voice calling out his name as a boy you didn’t recognize protectively puffing up his chest as he stepped between the two of them. 

“Who’s this, brother?” The boy asked, looking back to Yuji as he stepped out from around him. 

“Apollo, are you playing?” He chirped, his loose soccer jersey swaying as he rushed over.

“Yeah,” he nodded, deflating the moment he noticed how close Yuji was with his new friend. “My team kinda sucks though.” 

There really weren’t many feelings worse than watching your kid go through something you didn’t know how to help them with. 

Seeing the shock scrawled all over their face the second they thought they were replaceable. 

“You think we’ll play against each other then?” Yuji asked, grinning with a gap in his teeth, one that must have fallen out this month. 

“We’ll definitely beat you,” the other boy boasted, and you knew you shouldn’t hate a kid, but you sorta did. 

And then you looked up, glancing around just to see Choso approaching – but he was too busy talking to a blonde to notice you with his brother. Her hand on his forearm, leaning forward as he spoke all seriously about something, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she listened intently to every word. 

You hated her. 

Almost as much as you missed him. 

But you couldn’t deal with either emotion. Had no way to defend or deflect it, just putting your hand on Apollo’s shoulder and nudging him away, “Sorry, but, uh, I should get him to start his drills. It was good to see you, Yuji.” 

You didn’t stay long enough to see what kind of accusatory stare he’d give you for breaking his brother’s heart. Or run the risk of Choso coming over and catching you clinging to the remnants of your relationship by letting Apollo hang around Yuji. Rushing off to find the right field, a sick feeling spreading across your stomach, filling your lungs and choking up your throat as you set up your chair and tried to tell yourself that the chance of Yuji playing against Apollo was slim considering how many teams there were here today. 

But luck hadn’t decided to grace you today.

Because standing across the field twenty minutes later, in his stupidly attractive jersey and shorts, Choso was tying half his hair up off his face, bending over to listen to Yuji before looking over to see where Apollo was sitting on a bench, a cap hiding the steaks of white from the sun as he kicked his feet and waited for the game to start. 

You saw the way his mouth pulled tight. How his jaw clenched before he looked over to the sidelines, starting to scan it before you looked back down in your lap, pretending to be interested in something on your phone instead of staring at him. 

Just one game. 

That was all, you told yourself. 

You could make it through that. 

But fuck, it would have been so much more bearable if she wasn’t a few seats away once it started. 

Loathing didn’t quite cover the jealousy simmering inside you at the way her pretty blonde hair cascaded down her back and gleamed in the sun, how freely she bounced and cheered, clapping her hands together and calling out Yuji’s name in a chipper voice along with her own kid. 

The one who called Yuji brother. 

That was how it was now. 

Choso wanted a happy family. So he started one with some other soccer mom, huh? 

It had only been two fucking months. 

How the hell could he just move on like that? 

Maybe you broke it off, but he could have at least pretended to be bent out of shape about it when he had said he wanted to marry you. 

Were you just not that serious? Had the past few years really meant that little to him? 

Every time she cheered for Yuji felt like a fresh stab. 

It was hard to hold back your annoyance when Apollo was struggling on the field too, all his older teammates refusing to pass the ball to him on the rare chance that he got to play. 

And then came the moment that her kid knocked Apollo down, big tears welling up in his blue eyes as the ref called it and his coach had to pull him off the field for good. He tried not to cry. To hold it in and not seem like a baby in front of the big kids. 

But rage was boiling inside you, injustice at how fucking unfair everything always for you. 

You were trying to fight for your kids. 

It wasn’t like you had someone other than Suguru’s mother to rely on. Not really. 

No one else understood. 

Knew what it was like to lose your whole world and then have to hold it together anyway. To never get closure and still be expected to just move on like nothing happened. Like you weren’t reminded of what you were missing every moment of every day. 

Apollo’s team lost. And you were still trying to be the mature adult you knew he needed you to be as you folded your chair back up and slung it over your shoulder, hurrying over as he nursed his scraped knee, still trying not to sob as he bottled it all in. 

But Choso beat you there. 

Kneeling down on the ground and putting a bandaid over it as he smiled at your son softly. You used to love the way he cared for your children like they were his own. But now you were second-guessing if maybe that was just who he was, that it never had anything to do with you.  

“-did great out there, okay? You should be proud of yourself,” he spoke gently, using all the right words as you tried not to wince. But Apollo smiled, wiping his tears away with the back of his hand, ignoring the dirt and grass sticking to it before throwing himself at Choso in a big hug. 

Arms wrapped around his neck before you could move forward fast enough to pry him off. Choso patted his back, but you were already trying to pick him off yourself, swallowing the pain threatening to close your throat. 

You couldn’t breathe. 

Couldn’t think straight.

Clouded with so much distress it felt like someone had embedded sharp shards of glass in every fiber and muscle of your body, limbs robotically moving as you mentally replayed what your last conversation had been.

“Can we go out for ice cream? Please? Like we used to?” Apollo blurted out, and you hated that you knew he would hold the refusal that was about to leave your lips against you. 

Choso opened his mouth to reply, hesitating as your eyes actually met his for the first time, and you wondered if he could see the hurt in yours as the lump in his throat bobbed. 

“Choso!” The blonde called out, her tits bouncing in her shirt as she waved to him. “Time to pass out snacks!” 

“Choso’s busy, sweetheart,” you said, picking Apollo up, his long legs dangling as he kicked, trying to get put back down. Trying to save yourself from the scene of him begging for attention from a guy who wasn’t his father. 

Even if you both wanted him to be. 

He watched you leave. 

Didn’t try to make you stay. 

That wasn’t who he was, you guessed. 

No, he just wanted to throw a ring at you on the second worst day of your life and toss the fact that you’d lost the father of your children back in your face when you were on the verge of a breakdown. 

Apollo pouted the entire way back to the car, his little nose scrunched up as you pulled out of the parking lot, muttering that he didn’t want to play soccer anymore. 

You tried to talk him out of it, saying that the next game would be better. 

But you didn’t know if he believed you. 

Not with the way he was dramatically staring out the window the rest of the ride home, switching between having  arms folded across his chest and fidgeting with the seatbelt. 

“I know you’re upset, but-” 

“I’m fine,” he stubbornly insisted, shaking his head. He had his cap back on, unable to make out any of his white hair underneath it as his blue eyes looked up at you through the mirror. “Are you?” 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” You asked, even though you knew he wasn’t stupid. 

He wasn’t as scientifically minded as Satoru, or Artemis, but he read you like a book. Saw in between the lines without you having to say anything. 

“I want to sleepover at grandma’s house,” Apollo murmured, diverting his stare  as you swallowed your pride and shrugged. 

“Okay,” you muttered. “I’m sure she’d like that.” 

Suguru’s mom had never said no to either of the twins. 

And when you brought him over in the evening, watching him run straight back to the spare room she made for them, hearing faint rummaging and rustling noises as he pulled out toys to play on his own. 

“I take it the game didn’t go so well?” She asked, fine lines and wrinkles really starting to show on her soft, tanned skin. Wisdom you wished you had even a small sliver of in her kind smile as you flopped down on her couch. 

“Choso was there,” you muttered, your stupid heart stuttering just saying his name. 

“Oh?” That piqued her interest. 

She always liked him. Told him that he was good for you. Good for the kids. 

But you could see how much he reminded her of Suguru. Always chalked it up to her seeing some of her son in him. 

“He already moved on,” you bitterly huffed.. “Some other soccer mom was practically all over him. God, her kid even called Yuji brother.” 

“Honey, are you sure? Did you speak to him?” She started, trying to be careful with her words as you scoffed louder.

“No, but-” 

“Have you spoken to him at all since you broke up?” She pressed, and you could only shake your head. 

What the hell were you supposed to say? You were broken up. 

It wasn’t like you had his number blocked.

But he hadn’t reached out either. 

“That boy loves you,” she insisted. “He wouldn’t just-” 

“He left me,” you muttered. 

Well, you left him. 

But if he loved you, he wouldn’t have let you leave. Just stood there when you walked away. 

You had made that mistake before. You let Satoru go. Trusted him to come back. 

He didn’t. 

And you were the one who had been stitching yourself back up every time his memory tore your heart back open. 

But how were you supposed to marry a man who couldn’t tell when you had come undone? That you were falling apart in front of him? 

“Did you want him to stay?” She asked, and you knew the answer instantly, no matter how hard it was to actually say it. 

Of course you wanted him to stay anyway. 

Even though knowing that felt like betraying Satoru. 

“I should go home,” you murmured, picking yourself back up off the couch and snagging your purse from the floor as you threw a long look down the hall to where Apollo was, debating on peeking in to tell him good night before deciding against interrupting him. “Just, uh, call me when I should come get him.” 

Or just walk next door. 

The house was horribly quiet. 

Your footsteps echoing as you returned to your room, the silence following wherever you went as you stripped and showered, scrubbing your skin raw with soap and sighing at your blurred reflection in the fogged-up mirror after you got out feeling no fucking cleaner than you had when you stepped in.

Truthfully, you didn’t really want to look at yourself anyway. 

Clinging to the towel you wrapped yourself in, staring at the clothes in your closet as you searched for something to hide yourself in, settling on an oversized hoodie you’d bought before either man you were wrecked over. 

Throwing on pajama shorts too, wondering whether or not it was worth wasting an hour scrolling through shows and movies searching for stuff to watch or giving up and crawling into bed when you heard a knock on your front door. 

A flicker of relief slipped in, thinking that Suguru’s mom must be bringing Apollo back, that maybe he changed his mind and you could offer to let him stay up late watching whatever movie he wanted together as you scurried back towards it. 

You didn’t even ask before pulling it open, but you stopped in your tracks the second you saw who was on the other side. 

“Hey,” Choso greeted, the single word shoved out unceremoniously as you just stood there and stared.

“What are you-” 

“She, uh, called me,” he muttered, jutting his thumb over to the house next door. He had changed into an outfit you missed seeing him in. A sweater you used to steal of his, thick and cozy, in your favorite shade of purple. Jeans that were well worn. His hair was a little damp too, bangs framing his handsome face as the dim lighting made his dark eyes hard to read. “If you want me to go-” 

“You didn’t speak to me today,” you pointed out, not that you made the effort to talk to him either. Picking a fight in the first five seconds. 

“I didn’t think it was a good idea,” Choso sheepishly answered, and before you realized it, you were stepping aside, letting him back in. Although, you guessed it was better than letting half the neighborhood hear you bicker. 

“Yeah, I’m sure your new girlfriend wouldn't be happy with you talking to your ex,” you defensively said, gritting your teeth as he shut the door behind him. Throwing you a confused glance before he fully turned to you with his thick brows all pinched together. 

“What are you talking about?” He shook his head dismissively. 

“Did you think I wouldn’t see the new soccer mom all over you?” You snapped at him. Your jealousy was plain to see, painfully obvious as the words came out all wounded and weak. 

“Are you talking about Yuki?” He asked, his lips parting as you imagined her mouth meeting them.

“Oh, is that her name?” You spat it out, backing away as you resisted the urge to roll your eyes. “She’s pretty, huh?” 

Did he think she was prettier than you? That he upgraded? 

The worst part was you could barely recognize yourself right now. 

You didn’t want this to be you. Petty and pathetic and pining over something you were trying to damndest not to want. 

Since when were you so insecure? So jealous that you were starting an argument with Choso because you couldn’t get a fucking grip on yourself? 

“She is,” Choso agreed, and you wanted to throw up. 

Ruin his sweater like he ruined your day. 

You didn’t know what face you made, but whatever it was, however wrecked you must have seen before you could recover, he softened. Unlocking his jaw as his eyes crinkled, exhaling slowly. 

“I’m not into her like that,” he added. Treacherous respite rippled through your body, but you held onto your anger, resisting everything you instinctually wanted to do around him. “But, we’re not together anymore. We can see other people without-” 

“You proposed to me two months ago,” you pointed out, but the accusatory tone didn’t really do much when it came out half an octave too high. A horribly familiar lump was growing in your throat, heat crawling up your cheeks dangerously close to your eyes. “If you actually loved me, you wouldn’t just move on like we were nothing.” 

“I’m not just moving on, it’s just,” he paused, budding frustration threatening to boil over as he took a small step closer. Standing in front of you as if he was the victim, like everything was all your fault for being the fucked up one in your relationship. “I should be allowed to heal however I need to heal.” 

For a second, you couldn’t stand him. His maturity. His rationality. The way he was still collected when it felt like someone had plucked out all your seams and left you to crumble. 

Tears you couldn’t stop welling up, a choked sound coming out before your broken words, “I’m sorry I was such a horrible girlfriend you have to do so much healing.” 

“I’m healing from your rejection,” he clarified, but you couldn’t stop yourself from crying, rubbing underneath your eyes as you tried to stop yourself, scoffing a little as you tried to reel yourself back in. 

“You had an out from the beginning,” you sniffled, although it sounded more like a huff. “I told you I didn’t want to waste your time.” 

He recoiled at the reminder, and panic sprung back up, hot and bright, burning your throat. You wanted to take what you said back. 

But you were too stubborn to say that. “Our relationship wasn’t wasted time,” he muttered, and there was a hint of remorse in his tone. Disappointment that things didn’t work out the way either of you wanted. “But this argument is.” 

You were about to throw out a retort, ask him what that was supposed to mean, but then he was walking away, sweater stretched across his broad back as he started towards the door, and you were bridging the gap between you, snagging his sleeve to stop him. 

“You’re just going to leave again? Like that?” You asked, voice quivering as you forced your stare to harden. He looked down at you like it was taking everything inside him not to give in too. 

“You wanted to break up,” he murmured, and you bit down on the raw spot you chewed in your cheek, ignoring the taste of blood on your tongue as the temptation to take it all back grew harder and harder to resist. “I was stupid to think that maybe we could talk things through tonight.” 

He began to slip away again, and impulsively, you were pulling him down by his sweater, your mouth crashing into his to reclaim him in a manic kiss. 

You sort of thought he would push you away. 

Tell you that he was really done this time. Through with you and all the baggage he’d have to bear being yours. 

But then his calloused palm was cupping your cheek and he was kissing you back twice as hard, returning the fever with his own heat. It seared through you, fried your nerves as his tongue slipped past your lips, his nose nudging against yours while his body pressed up against yours. Clumsily forced back a few steps until you were both falling on the couch, sandwiched between his heavy chest and the stained cushions. 

Having sex with your ex was almost always a mistake. 

But you couldn’t bring yourself to let Choso go. 

“I hate how much I love you,” he muttered when the kiss broke, and your pulse picked up, self-loathing sinking into you as it struck you how much your fuck-ups were fucking him up too. 

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, weak and almost whimpering as your apology came out sincere this time. 

You weren’t even sure which crime of yours you were apologizing for. 

Breaking up with him to begin with. Forcing him to bear the weight of your burdens. Being too emotionally constipated to communicate what was haunting you without turning it into a fight. 

“Show me then,” Choso dared, his usually low voice dropping down to damn near dangerous while his intense stare narrowed, studying your face for some sign that you meant it. 

And then you were tethering your fingers through his hair, pulling him back down for another rushed kiss, shutting out all the thoughts of how many sins you were trying to atone for. 

You spent so long trying to be strong for the twins. For Choso. For yourself. 

But you were so tired. So exhausted from expending all your energy putting on a show pretending to be fine when you just kept failing. 

Couldn’t you just let it go for a little bit? Let yourself love Choso without holding back? 

His hands were slipping underneath the soft fabric of your hoodie, phantom shivers racing down your spine as he nudged your thighs further apart with his knee. You could feel each finger, how they tentatively ghosted across your side up to your chest, greedily grabbing a handful of one of your breasts, nothing shy or reserved about it. 

No soft questions of if it was okay, or if you wanted more, just taking what he wanted. 

And you were willing to give it. 

To let him have all of your body when you struggled to hand over your heart. 

Kissing him came easy. His palms pressed so firmly against your skin, pulling at the soft muscle and tender flesh, his lips fitting so nicely between your own as his nose nuzzled against you. The connection you had been fighting was too intense for you to resist his pull, the intimacy that used to terrify you slipping its tendrils around you and wrapping around you so tight you didn’t think you’d ever be able to escape the hold he had on you. 

He pulled away, and you were left chasing the kiss, craning your neck up, whining and missing him the moment his mouth wasn’t on yours. 

That was the truth, wasn’t it? 

You had missed him the moment he stopped being yours. You were used to loneliness. To being lost in your head and longing for someone. 

So why the hell did it feel so different with him? So visceral and raw to accept that he might move on if you couldn’t give him what he wanted? What he deserved? 

“You don’t want me but you don’t want me to go,” he accused, and you were shaking your head, pulling him back down by his hair as you locked your thighs around his waist. 

“I do want you,” you admitted, brows knitting together tightly as you practically begged him to believe you. 

Your heart and your head might both be a mess. 

But you could pick out that brutal fact between the wreckage any day. If you didn’t want him, it wouldn’t hurt half as bad as it did right now to see him hurt. 

Like he was concerned you could change your mind (or maybe before he changed his), his grip slid back down to your hips, pulling you up some so he could get your clothes off. Adjusting down so he could shimmy your shorts and panties down your thighs in one go, 

You awkwardly lifted your arms, and he was half-ripping the hoodie off of you, but the moment it was off, he was flipping you over in one rough move, one hand on the back of your neck to press your face into your throw pillow. 

He left his clothes on. 

All his shields still up when it came to you. 

Your body trembled, cool air hitting your ass as you heard the rustle of him pulling down his pants behind you. 

Usually the sex was slow with him. An hour long affair of foreplay and making out, rolling around the sheets before taking turns giving each other head, drawing out an orgasm or two before he actually fucked you, or you even rode him. 

You were in uncharted territory. 

On the outskirts of his heart instead of taking up space inside of it. 

He ran his other palm over your ass, slowly trekking over your spine and letting out a low exhale you couldn’t decipher. You tried to look back at him, but the fingers on the back of your neck kept you firmly in place, sinking in a little deeper to get you to stay. 

You shouldn’t be soaked. But you could feel the dampness leaking down your thighs, your hips aching to wiggle a little and entice him into just fucking you into feeling something other than sorry for yourself. 

There was no prep. 

Just him tentatively testing how wet you were with his swollen tip before smoothly sliding in, a drawn-out hiss leaving his throat at the way your warmth wrapped around him the same way it had a thousand times before. 

You wanted him to kiss you again. Would even settle for a handful of pecks pressed to your shoulder blade or a few tracing up your throat. 

But you didn’t feel like you had the right to make any kind of requests from him right now. 

“C-Choso,” you whispered, your voice muffled into the pillow as your walls clamped down around him mid-thrust, squeezing as he shoved his way past the first ring of resistance. 

“Don’t,” he murmured, and if he didn’t already feel so good inside you, you might’ve broken down from that single word. 

Don’t what? 

Call out for him? 

“Not unless you’re mine.” 

You knew what he was asking of you. To give him the pieces of you that you were still desperately clinging onto. To let go of the ones that were someone else’s. 

His mouth hovered over your shoulder, so close to touching and still so far away, a little squeak escaping as his cock rubbed right into a spot he knew was sensitive. 

“When you close your eyes, are you picturing me? Or him?” 

The raw sound of his voice ripped through you, painfully piercing your heart as his hips pinned you to the cushions. Bottomed out and buried inside like he was aching to claim you completely and utterly as his own, his teeth finally skimming over your throat as a moan involuntarily slipped out. 

“You,” you half-whispered, and you could see his face in your head now, dark and dreamy and dragging you over the coals of a fading fire. The fight you used to have in you, the one that kept you dreaming for the life you lost, dying out.

Choso had fire of his own. It was tamed, controlled, where the flames wouldn’t hurt if they licked your skin. A warm hearth you could curl up by without fear of being burned. 

“Promise me,” he grunted, the springs beneath you creaking as he thrusted right where he knew you’d crumble and crack, your pleasure memorized like it was his favorite book. 

“It’s you,” you echoed, a whimper echoing in your living room as his back pressed flat against your own, his hand moving your hair off the nape of your neck so he could kiss you again. Mouth leaving a messy trail of kisses, each consecutive one making the invisible thread in your stomach tense and tighten, pulled taut as he pounded you into the couch with no mercy. 

“I said promise,” he groaned just before biting down, your wrecked whine just making his cock twitch as his free hand slipped around your side, roughly beginning to rub your clit like you weren’t already on the brink of breaking. 

“I p-promise,” you stammered, clawing at the cheap pillow for grip, each of his thrusts threatening to make you jolt. But he didn’t stop fucking into you faster, no matter how hard you were clamping down around him, thighs trembling and toes curling at the force of his rough strokes. 

So stuffed you thought you were going to snap, strangled noises buried into the pillow as his thick fingers worked your sensitive bud, his mouth littering your neck with what you hoped were love bites. 

Even if he wasn’t fucking you the way he usually did, Choso was still Choso. 

Still made sure you came first, waiting until your breathy gasps turned into a broken moan, shuddering as he painted white splotches across your vision, cumming and crying his name, ruined and half-limp underneath his body. 

Hiding your face in the pillow as hot tears welled up in your eyes, knowing it would probably leave damp spots after this was over. 

Were the two of you still over? 

Now probably wasn’t the time to ask. 

He pulled out at the last second, hand furiously pumping his cock, cum spurting out to spill all across your bare back as you started to come back down to earth from your climax. 

Waiting for him to say something first, shutting your eyes as you struggled to catch your breath, the metal of your necklace pressing hard into your chest as his weight shifted. Carefully moving off of you instead of collapsing like he used to. Sometimes you could spend half an hour afterwards just with his body melting onto yours, playing with each other’s hair or listening to him murmur about whatever was on his mind. Letting him trace pretty shapes over your skin while he swore he adored you. 

“I got some in your hair,” he mumbled instead.

Oh. 

Right. 

“We can shower,” you offered quietly, turning your head to the side, but still barely able to make out any of him in your peripheral vision. 

You thought he’d turn you down. 

Leave anyway now that he fucked you. 

“Okay,” he agreed. 

There was no big conversation. No emotional breakthrough under the hot water. 

Choso cleaned you with the same attention he always had. Scrubbing your skin with the loofah, massaging your scalp when he washed your hair. 

Taking care of you like a lover. 

Even if you didn’t deserve it. 

You knew you should have a proper conversation. Address what had landed you here, adjusting the water and pretending not to notice the ghost in the room. 

But then the shower was over, and he was stepping out first, tying a towel loosely around his defined hips, water droplets still clinging to his happy trail as he handed you your own towel wordlessly. Was this just how things were going to be from now on? 

You watched him in the steamy mirror as you dried yourself off, searched him for remorse before he bent over to pick up his phone from the pocket of his discarded jeans.  

“Yuji wants me to pick him up from Todo’s,” he muttered, looking back at you with an uncertain expression. 

“Oh,” you muttered, stomach twisting with discomfort you once again didn’t want to vocalize. Todo. Wasn’t he the one that belonged to the blonde? “So Yuki’s place?” 

And despite what he said earlier, a poisonous part of you whispered that he might be going over to just repeat what he’d done with her instead. 

That perhaps he had just picked up those moves from being in her bed. 

“Yeah,” he casually confirmed with a small nod. 

You didn’t know what to say. 

How to bring up your insecurity when you couldn’t even commit to him how he wanted in the first place. 

So instead you deflected, biting down on your bottom lip before tilting your head to the side, “Do, um, you wanna come back over tomorrow?” 

Surprise registered on his face, and he slowly nodded. 

“What time?” 

He was at your door the next afternoon while the kids were off at camp. 

And the one after that. 

Keeping your bed warm for an entire week, fucking you into your mattress like he was hoping to leave an imprint by the time he finished. To permanently press the shape of your bodies into the sheets, mold it around both of you while he molded you around him in everything from mating presses to reverse cowgirl. Any position where he could make a point in seeing how hard you would cum for him. Even in the shower afterwards when he was supposed to be cleaning you up. 

Kissing you from the moment he crossed the threshold to the time he left. Desperate ones that gave away the craving you both shared, the hunger that seemed to spread and sink you further into starvation. 

You didn’t know what this was. 

What your relationship with him would be once the summer camps were over and you wouldn’t have the time to spare for having steamy sex with your sorta-ex. 

“Shit,” he groaned, throwing his head back, the outline of his Adam's apple bobbing hard in his throat as you stole a glance over your shoulder at him. On your hands and knees, cum sticking to your ass and connecting your skin to his cock as he came a few seconds after you. His muscled abs glistened in the fading daylight, toned ridges and divots on display as he finished fucking his frustrations out on you doggy-style. 

Pulling out instead of using condoms, the risk of it making your stomach flutter all funny even if you had a hard time imagining yourself ever having another kid. 

You knew he wanted one though. 

Another conversation you’d been avoiding. 

But before you could even consider broaching it, your phone started to buzz beside the bed, and he was leaning over to pick it up for you, face softening as he held it out. 

“It’s Artemis,” he muttered. 

“Shit, okay,” you blinked, climbing off the bed in a hurry to grab your robe off the back of your desk chair, hastily throwing it on and tying it around your waist before rushing back to take it. 

You barely got to speak to her since she’d been so busy with her space camp. 

Answering before it could end, biting your lip as the facetime automatically connected, the image of her all fuzzy and blurred for a few seconds before becoming clear. 

“Hi, sweetheart,” you greeted, heart rapidly thumping in your chest as you made sure she wouldn’t be able to see the rest of your room.

“I missed you, mom,” she grinned. 

Artemis had a light in her eyes that you missed. That spark, that gleam of excitement that was infectious, smiling easily back at her as she pushed a planetary model in front of the camera to show off. 

“Check it out. Do you like it?” She beamed, proud of her work as you instinctively thought of what Satoru would make of it. How he’d probably grin and goad her into going over every detail. How happy he’d be that she was into the same stuff as him. 

“I love it,” you promised, nodding along as she started rambling about how they were learning about worm holes earlier, bouncing up and down as you tried to not let the sinking pit in your stomach swallow you up with how much she reminded you of her father. 

But if he was really still here, would he be here to see this? Or would he still be choosing work over the three of you? 

You were so distracted, you didn’t hear Choso creeping back up until you felt the weight of him against your back, bending over to rest his chin on your collarbone as he saw Artemis’ project on your phone. 

“You made that all by yourself?” He asked, and you could see his soft smile on your screen, admiring her work like she was his. The pretty picture of a perfect father. “Choso?” Artemis blinked, mouth falling open and nose scrunching up in surprise as she looked back at you with sheer confusion. 

You stammered something out, a weak excuse about her brother calling, ending the call before you had to actually answer her reasonable questions about what you were doing with him. Turning back the second you were sure she wouldn’t overhear, scoffing as you shook your head at him. 

“Why did you do that?” You asked, blowing a short puff of air out of your nose as his palms settled on your hips. 

“Do what? Talk to Artemis? We’re back together,” He said it as if it was obvious, and you reflexively wanted to refuse. To sabotage the slice of heaven you were living in for the past week. 

“I never said that.”

The moment those four words left your lips, you wanted to put them back. 

Freezing as his hands fell away from you, loathing yourself for letting this happen, seeing how hard and fast he recoiled from you.

“I’m such a fucking moron,” he muttered, turning around and grabbing his sweater from the bed, pulling it over his head as your body seized with dread. “You’re just using me. You never wanted a life with me.” 

“No,” you breathed the word, but you were already sure it was too late. You screwed it up again. “I didn’t-” 

“Stop with the stupid lies,” he shook his head, not believing you. 

“Stay, please,” you half-whispered, the slowly-growing guilt gripping your heart encasing it completely. “I wasn’t trying to-” 

“To what?” He interrupted. 

“I panicked,” you weakly explained, an excuse forming on your tongue about not wanting to confuse the kids anymore, but he wasn’t about to let it go this time. 

“Why don’t you want to marry me?” He bluntly asked. 

No room for wiggling out of the conversation or wishing it away when it meant watching him walk out your door again. 

You had to be honest. 

No matter how much your brain was trying to convince you that you were just jinxing it. Cursing him to follow the same fate as your former fiancé by saying the words out loud. Condemning yourself by tying yourself down to someone you were scared would slip away too.   

“The day you proposed,” you hesitated, holding your breath as you swallowed hard. “While you weren’t here, someone from NASA stopped by that afternoon to tell me Satoru had officially been declared dead.” 

You didn’t know why it had even surprised you. 

All the years he’d been gone, the excuses his old coworkers had offered started to dry up, the same old stories they sold you not holding the same hope. 

And now they were admitting there wasn’t any. 

Satoru was dead to them. 

And you didn’t even really get to be a widow. 

“I went to his grave after you got home, but I just, I don’t know how to say goodbye to him,” you muttered, thinking about how it felt to sit there knowing his body would never be buried by his headstone. About the life he deserved and never got. Where he got to be a father and a husband and be a family. “And then you came home and pulled out the ring, and it was like everything was happening all over again.” 

The memory of it was a blur, your head a complete mess as an awful as intrusive thoughts threw everything you were terrified of straight in your face. 

Telling you that you were just replacing Satoru. That he would hate you if he knew you had moved on. Insisted that if you said yes, Choso wouldn’t stick around either. 

So scared that he’d leave you too, that you nearly lost him anyway. 

“Baby, if you had told me-” 

“I know,” your voice broke, body trembling as he wrapped a warm arm around your shoulders to tug you into a tender embrace. “I should’ve said something. But I didn’t know how to bring it up and I just shut down, and-” 

“If I had waited, would you have said yes?” He asked, and you couldn’t answer straight away. 

Was it a betrayal to Satoru to say yes? 

Or were you losing the best thing in your life by clinging onto the ghost of a man who hadn’t loved you enough to listen and stay in the first place? 

“I don’t know,” you admitted. “I don’t want another proposal if it ends in losing the person I love.” 

Looking up at him anxiously, waiting for the foundation you were standing on to crack and crumble – for him to prove you right. For the world to rip him away now that you admitted that you loved him enough to fear living without him too. 

“The only way you’ll lose me is if you keep pushing me away,” he comforted you, and you wanted to cry. 

“I don’t want to push you away,” you mumbled. 

“Then let me in,” he whispered, pulling you onto the bed and placing you on his lap. Letting you curl up on him, holding you tight like he was trying to make it clear he wasn’t going to let you go. 

Your sniffles turned into soft sobs, all the tears you’d been holding in, all the mourning you’d been rejecting released the moment you had someone to lean on. 

“Are you still seeing your therapist?” He pressed, and you hung your head lower.  

“No,” you confessed through the tears. “I haven’t been since we broke up.” 

“You need to go back,” he softly goaded, and you knew he was right. That you were only hurting yourself the more you held it all in. 

“Could, um, you go with me?” You muttered, unsure and anxious as you searched his face for some sign that you weren’t making a mistake, rubbing the damp streaks off of your cheeks as he nodded. 

“If you want me there,” he muttered. 

And you could finally admit to yourself that you did. 

That you wanted there when you went to sleep, and when you woke up, and for everything in between. 

“I want you here for everything,” you whispered. 

“I’m sorry that I didn’t see what you were going through-” 

𖥔 ݁ ˖

“So what? The second she thinks I’m dead she decides to marry you?” Gojo interrupted his retelling of it, Choso’s mouth finding it hard not to frown at how much he sort of reminded him of you. Seeing the bits of his personality that had melted into yours, picturing how the two of you might have worked together if the positions were reversed. 

“It wasn’t like that,” Choso muttered. 

“That’s what it sounds like,” he retorted. 

His phone vibrated on the table, Artemis' name flashing on the screen before Gojo snatched it off and shoved it in his pocket. 

“You can answer that,” Choso muttered, shrugging his shoulders. It was a little uncomfortable sharing a daughter, but she was too grown for him to say anything about it. And between the twins, she was the one who always had a soft spot for the father she lost to the very thing she was studying. 

Of course she was going to be excited that he was home. 

Even if some things were better left in her imagination than in real life. 

Choso had never planned on meeting him. Never considered what he might actually be like.

Although he did find it a little annoying that he was somehow even more obsessed and in love with you than he ever conceived. 

“I’ll call her back later,” Gojo answered, but there was a nervous glint to his eyes as he cleared his throat before picking up his fork to shove some food in his mouth, still talking mid-chew. “How long, exactly, did it take for you to marry my-” 

He nearly said fiancée. 

But Gojo corrected himself, clearing his throat, “Her.” 

“Your friend’s mother, she, uh, got cancer a year later,” Choso muttered, still a little haunted by the look on your face when she announced it. At the hard memories always attached to the good ones. “The doctors thought she only had six months to live.”

“Oh,” Gojo muttered, a crease forming between his brows on his pretty, wrinkle-free face. 

“It changed things.” 

If it hadn’t been for her, he wasn’t sure if the two of you would’ve found your way back together at all. 

It had been her birthday. All of you over at her house, the kids playing in the living room while you helped her clean up. Choso was supposed to be keeping an eye on the twins and Yuji, but he was within earshot of your conversation, beating a level that was too hard for them on the game console she’d bought them last Christmas.

He nearly died the second he heard the words terminally ill leave her mouth, using every ounce of his self-composure not to snap his head around and ask all the questions he was itching to know. But then the kids would notice, and the idea of the twins realizing that they were about to lose the closest thing they had to a grandparent was enough to make him hold onto his cool. Force his face into a neutral expression as he clicked buttons haphazardly. 

“You can get a second opinion, or, or-” You were stumbling over your words, in denial as Mrs. Geto tutted at you. 

“Sometimes, it’s just a person’s time,” she softly said. “I’ve lived a long life. A happy one.” 

Choso glanced back right as your entire face fell, devastation obvious in every line etched into your skin, shaking your head hard as you rejected it. 

You tried to speak, but nothing came out. 

“I want to be with my husband and son,” she said, and you were trying so hard not to cry. Eyes watering with tears you were quick to blink away. “I’ve made my peace with it.” 

Choso knew you. Could see how hard you were resisting the urge to say that you wanted her here too. 

“Don’t give me that look, dear,” she lightly said, reading you like an open book too. “All I want now is to know that you’ll be okay when I’m gone. All three of you.” 

You might not be her daughter. But you were damn near close to it after nearly a decade of leaning on each other for support. 

“You know Choso takes good care of us,” you softly replied, your voice barely audible as you sniffled. Rubbing your face from the spot you’d frozen in, lip still quivering. 

“He does, doesn’t he?” She knowingly said, and you were nodding. 

“He’s great,” you reiterated, and even when the timing was terrible, he couldn’t help but feel a small flicker of gratitude at hearing you speak about him like that. On you counting on him. 

“Not great enough to marry?” 

He almost flinched. 

A game over screen flashing across the TV as the kids groaned in unison, little fingers poking and pushing and telling him to try again. 

“I don’t need his last name to know I love him,” you muttered. 

“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t marry him,” she argued, and Choso felt his chest constrict, wondering whether or not he should even be listening when she started talking about Suguru, so fondly, recounting a memory of his father, her husband, the weight of her missing them present in every syllable. “Even if it hurts sometimes, I wouldn’t take any of it back.” 

You knew what that felt like. 

Choso could see the contemplation scrawled across your face, struggling to keep his focus on the game as Mrs. Geto continued. 

“You’ve known him longer than Satoru, sweetheart,” she guided, touching your shoulder tenderly as he caught a glimpse of you chewing on your lip. “He loves you just as much.”

It wasn’t a competition. 

Even if sometimes did feel like he was fighting a phantom for your love. 

“He would understand if you went all in with him,” she spoke gently. “All any of us have ever wanted is for you to be happy.”

You were about to start bawling, but you held it in, nodding along like you knew she was right. And Choso was already planning on sending her a gift basket the next day with all her favorite foods and snacks, including a note promising to make time to take her to any appointments she needed. 

“I loved Satoru like he was my own too, but even if they came back tomorrow, I don’t know if he’d be the one that’s right for you now, dear,” she gently goaded, guiding you as you sucked in a sharp breath. 

Choso waited for you to shake your head, to tell her that she was wrong. 

But you didn’t. 

And he was still thinking about what you were thinking that night. You told him about her illness after the kids had fallen asleep in their beds, sitting up with a pillow pressed against your chest as you gave him that look you always did when you were deep in thought. 

He pretended not to know, just wrapping his arms around you to offer whatever comfort you needed. He wasn’t going to push. Press about marriage just because you had spoken with Mrs. Geto about it. 

Truthfully, he didn’t expect anything to actually come of it. 

He understood your reservations. Those fears you were still working through with your therapist. 

So you caught him off guard when you looked up at him with wide eyes and nervously asked, “Do you still think about marrying me?” 

“Of course I do,” he answered a little too fast. “But I understand why you don’t want to.” 

He would take a forever of being your boyfriend than a future where you weren’t anything to him. 

“Why do you want to?” You asked, the question coming out slightly stilted, a hint of something he had a hard time placing. It wasn’t dismissive. Not completely curious, more like, searching for confirmation from him. 

“You already know I’m in love with you,” he murmured, reaching over to brush his fingers across your cheek. “And how much I love our family.” 

You and the twins. The way you readily accepted Yuji as their sibling. Loved his little brother without hesitation. 

“I want to grow old with you. Spend as many moments of our lives together as we can. Watch the kids graduate and get families of their own,” he mumbled, finding more confidence with each sentence as you leaned into his hand. “I want to write cheesy vows and say them in front of all our friends. I want Yuji to be my best man and Apollo to carry the rings while Artemis tosses flower petals down the aisle.” And fuck, when you were looking at him like that, like you wanted all of it and more too, he nearly melted on the spot. 

“I want to see you in a white dress, walking towards me while I cry at how beautiful you are,” Choso whispered, his gravelly voice standing out in the soft silence, the sound of crickets chirping through the cracked window as a breeze filtered in. “But really, I just want you to choose me. Forever.”

He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life waiting and wondering if he was the one you wanted. 

You swallowed hard, your hand reaching over to graze against his fingers affectionately. 

“Ask me again,” you breathed.

He stared for a moment, barely believing what had just left your lips. But the moment it sunk in, he was rushing off the bed, nearly stumbling towards his nightstand, pulling it open and rummaging through everything to find the ring box he tucked in the back when he moved in with you again. 

You sat on the edge of the bed, a ghost of a smile curling up on your lips as you watched him hurry to get down on one knee and pop open the box, revealing the ring you didn’t get to see last time. 

“Will you marry me?” 

Gojo looked like he was about to puke over the photo album in front of him. 

There you were, standing in your wedding dress, Choso’s hand slung on your waist as you leaned into him. Mrs. Geto was by your side, using a walker as her illness left her struggling to get around the way she used to. Yuji clinging onto the leg of his tux, grinning and sticking his tongue out at the photographer by his new step-siblings. Artemis and Apollo were in front of you, your bouquet in her hands while Apollo beamed at the camera, proud of himself for doing a good job not tripping or falling with the rings. 

“She’s glowing,” Gojo murmured, tracing over your face down to the wedding dress, face twisting up in pained tension. Maybe thinking of what his photos might have looked like with you. 

All his plans wrecked by his own confidence that the world would bend to what he wanted. 

And before Choso could really react, tears welled up in his blue eyes, his jaw clenched tight as he tried to hide the fact he was crying at the photo. 

“She was pregnant,” Choso explained, feeling himself getting choked up too thinking about that year. “It wasn’t planned.” 

Honestly, when you told him, stepping out of the bathroom with a positive test, that nervous glint of pure fear in your eyes as you held it out, he was sure you were going to tell him you didn’t want it. 

That you could marry him, but you would draw the line at having his kid. Sure that you wouldn’t want to put your body through it again, especially ten years after having twins. 

But you just anxiously asked if he wanted it, if he thought the two of you could really handle it. 

“How was it?” Gojo asked, a surprising sincerity to the question. Genuinely wanting to know, maybe because he missed his chance to go through it with you. Only got a handful of videos you sent when you were pregnant. Didn’t get to be there for the sonograms, or the appointments, or the birth. 

Missed buying baby clothes and painting a nursery. Picking out names together. 

Although, it had been you who suggested naming her Keso, after one of his brothers who passed when he was younger. “It was hard, sometimes,” he admitted. The later months especially. Your anxiety picking up the closer your due date came, convinced that something would go wrong, going to see your therapist every other week until your delivery date.  “But our daughter was healthy, and I was there to help her recover.” 

Choso never left you once. 

Was there for every diaper change and late night feed. Comforted every time he picked up his little girl relief he hadn’t expected blooming in his chest at having one that looked like him. He had told himself it wouldn’t matter. That he would’ve loved a little girl that looked like you too. Especially since he already adored Artemis. 

But it was nice to know that strangers would see his girl and know she was absolutely his. 

Gojo had only met her once since she came back at a big family dinner, and she was too preoccupied with her own husband and kids now to care about the man her mother once loved, just offering him an awkward smile before going back to talking to Artemis. 

He was wiping his face, pretending like he hadn’t been crying as he flipped the pages back in the photo album, finding one where you were sprawled out in the backyard on a towel and smiling at the camera, shielding your face from the sun. Artemis was laying next to you, her head buried in a book. 

“Can I have this one?” He asked, and Choso wanted to say no. 

Not let him have any more pieces of you than he’d already stolen. 

But it was hard to actually say no when he knew there was a second copy of the photo underneath, reluctantly nodding. “I suppose.” 

“I’m glad she got to move on,” he mumbled, not that it sounded even remotely truthful. The only thing there was regret. “That she could forget about me.” 

“I meant what I said,” Choso sighed, turning more serious as he looked into those frustratingly familiar eyes. He loved you too much to hate him. Loved Apollo and Artemis too much to loathe the man he had to thank for them. “She never forgot you.”

Gojo was the one who was struggling to swallow the fact he had to share your heart with someone else now. 

“Yeah,” he dismissively muttered, lips pressing together. 

“When she got sick a few years ago, her memory started to go too,” Choso reluctantly broached his least favorite subject, recalling the long months of watching you waste away. “Eventually, she forgot almost everything. Except you.” 

Gojo didn’t know what to say. 

Sitting there stunned as he stared at Choso, finding it too hard to meet his eyes and turning his attention to the wedding band still on his fourth finger. 

“She couldn’t remember the twins or our grandkids. But she still talked about you. Called me your name a couple times when I helped her get out of bed. Looked up at the sky and told everyone who visited that you were up there,” Choso admitted, his voice wavering as he tried his damndest not to hold it against you. To remember all the decades that had come before that when you were more than happy to be his. “Swore that her husband was just with the stars for a little bit before he’d come back for her.” 

He wasn’t quite as emotional as he had once been. But it was hard to not break down at the fact that he’d lost you long before you passed away. 

That in the end, he hadn’t carved himself deep enough into you to be the one you recalled. 

Sure, you still had moments of clarity. Rare days where you were almost like your old self, where you’d kiss him and hold him and swear you loved him more than anything. 

And those were enough. You were enough. Even when there was barely anything left. 

“We both loved her,” Choso murmured, although love didn’t seem like a big enough word for it. He had a feeling that Gojo would understand anyway. Know what he was trying to get at here. That they’d both felt the full spectrum of emotions, the highest highs and the lowest lows that came with worshipping you. “And lost her too.” 

“Yeah,” Gojo whispered. “I guess we did.”

“I don’t know what’s worse,” Choso exhaled, taking one last sip of his drink. “Losing her all at once like you or seeing her disappear piece by piece.” 

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, and Choso looked up to see the way his face had scrunched up, his brows furrowed as he twisted around the wedding band he started wearing too. The one you bought for him once upon a time. 

“You don’t need to apologize,” Choso shook his head. 

If anyone understood what it was like to miss you, it was him. Even if he spent most of his adult life despising him to some degree.

But Gojo was still staring at him with guilt he hadn’t anticipated. Like he knew everything was his fault and he didn’t know how to fix it. 

Choso contemplated telling him that there wasn’t anything left to fix. 

It wasn’t like he could go back in time to change anything. And even if he could, Choso wouldn’t change a single moment. Not when he’d gotten you. Gotten his daughter – and two bonus kids. 

His life had been filled with your warmth and laughter and a million smiles he wouldn’t trade for anything. 

Even if the ending had been a bit lackluster. Even if he had to spend the next ten years on his own wishing you were still around. 

“I’m going to Apollo’s place,” he announced. “His daughter brought her baby over.” 

Awkwardly extending an invitation even if his son wouldn’t exactly be thrilled at having the father that was now younger than him around. 

“Oh,” Gojo said, his mouth curling down like he knew it too. 

Recognized where he wasn’t wanted. 

It might be too late for Apollo. But he still had time to get to know the rest of his family if he stopped focusing on the past and learned to live in the present. 

“Don’t you want to come spend some time with your great grandson?” Choso asked, his voice coming out gravelly as his knee ached with the effort of standing. Gojo’s stare flicked down at his lap, towards the pocket he shoved his phone in. 

And even though Artemis didn’t share his physical features, he recognized that distracted look of hers in Gojo now, like he was working out a problem too complex for anyone else to solve. 

“I’ll, uh, catch you guys there later,” he excused, running his thumb over the edge of the photo. 

He didn’t have the energy left in him to convince him to come. 

Gojo would just have to learn for himself how little time there was left with the people he loved in this life. 

Choso supposed he should consider himself lucky. At least he got to spend most of his by your side. 

It wasn’t jealousy that plagued him as he collected his photo albums, the proof of every year you’d given him while Gojo was gone, but pure pity. 

If only he had the foresight to realize how misplaced his empathy was. 

But even if he had, he wasn’t the one who could turn back time. 

He proposed to you the day he got back from his last mission. Maybe he should make it a tradition and marry you the day he returned this time. 

Skip the whole big wedding he talked you into the past few months in favor of a courthouse ceremony. Maybe drag Suguru back after the landing to be the witness. 

You made a face, nose scrunching up and lips parting like there was something you wanted to say, but you stopped yourself. 

“This is my last mission,” he reminded you, a weak attempt at reassurance as his thick cock rubbed against your clit. Your breath hitched, getting caught in your throat as he dragged it over the sensitive bud. 

“You said that about the last one,” you reminded him, and he didn’t have an argument to counter it. 

“Well, I mean it this time,” he muttered softly. He wasn’t particularly good at being soothing. Spectacularly bad, sometimes, actually. But you still stayed. 

Still smiled at him when he sucked at being what you needed. 

The moon hung heavy outside the window, a thick crack running across the glass pane as the night sky filtered through it and bathed the room in soft light. The apartment you shared wasn’t much, pretty shitty honestly, but it was just a stepping stone. A way to save money for when you’d really need it. 

Soon, you’d have the best. 

“Besides, I can’t leave again once you start having my babies,” he teased, moving a hand down to your stomach, feeling your soft skin. Dreaming of a future where you’d be waddling around his kitchen pregnant, trying to decide if he’d prefer a boy or a girl – only to land on wanting both. 

“So you’ll be here for them and not for me?” You huffed. 

“I just want to make sure I make a good life for all of you,” he replied, struggling to sound confident when you were looking at him with a faint hint of hurt shining in your eyes. 

You wanted to believe him. 

“Uh-huh,” you exhaled. 

He supposed he’d just have to remind you another way that you had his heart. That even if he left the planet for a few months, he’d always have to return back to you. 

His home. 

Your thighs opened up for him, letting him shut up all those awful thoughts with a kiss as he pushed the first few inches inside your pretty pussy. Felt you sucking him in, losing himself in your warmth as he pushed past that first ring of resistance. Filling you up until you were stuffed full, your head tilting back, lips parting in his favorite moan — his name falling from them in broken little gasps.

“Satoru,” you whined, wiggling under his weight as he leaned down to start trailing kisses across your jaw. Down the delicate skin of your throat, sucking greedily just to see what other sounds he could draw from you. 

“Mhm, sweetheart?” He hummed, pausing to drag his tongue over all the sore spots he’d left, tempted to sink his teeth back over them, to leave little bruises just so you’d have to keep thinking about him even when he was planets away.

“I don’t want you to go,” you huffed, forcing the words out between little whimpers, your body shivering as his cock slowly thrusted in and out, deliberately taking his time to stretch you out. He hesitated mid-pump, lips still pressed just above your collarbone as he tried to come up with something that would make it better.

“I don’t want to either,” Gojo softly admitted, kissing you again as if it would cure the ache in his heart or the one in yours. 

There was a moment of silence, seconds slipping by with tension that wouldn’t dissolve, and he wasn’t sure if he should keep thrusting or pull out.

But then your hips shifted, and his cock twitched, and he was already readjusting, palms moving to push your soft thighs against your chest with his cock still keeping you plugged up. 

And really, you couldn’t blame him for how pretty you looked in a mating press. 

Fucking you faster, the wooden bed frame creaking and bumping into the wall with every rough thrust, each harsh snap of his hips against your skin as he plunged his cock in and out, in and out.

Watching your face screw up in pleasure, lashes fluttering and nails scrambling for purchase in the sheets as his thumbs dug into your thighs. Holding onto you, keeping you firmly pinned between him and the bed, like he could imprint every ridge and vein inside you, supposing he’d just have to be satisfied with leaving the shape of both of you on the mattress. 

“I love you so goddamn much,” he murmured, chest constricting, heart racing as the pressure built and mounted in the pit of his stomach. Some invisible thread being pulled tighter, or maybe it was just himself, wrapped around your finger without you even realizing it. 

Ready to break just thinking about not getting to hear your voice every day, not getting to touch your skin, like he wasn’t still buried inside you.

“I love you too,” you whispered back, your voice quivering as you looked up at him with glossy eyes. 

He kissed you hard, teeth nearly bumping into each other as his tongue slipped past your lips. Tracing over your canines, tasting the hint of toothpaste on your tongue. The remnants of the candy-flavored lip gloss you’d been wearing earlier too. 

You were returning his fervor, squeezing down on his cock like you were trying to suck him dry like he wasn’t already struggling not to cum. 

He had to hurry to shift his hand, fingers rushing to find your clit, rubbing rough circles over it just to swallow every cute moan of yours that tried to escape. Cock twitching and aching for relief that he refused to give it, keeping an iron grip on his restraint as he waited for that familiar tremble, for you to really clamp down on him as shudders wracked through your body. 

Until you were crying his name in his mouth, whimpers muffled as he soothed you through your climax, rolling that sensitive bud between his thick fingers, only breaking the kiss to purr in your ears that it was all going to be okay. 

“That’s it, baby. Just cum for me, okay? It’s gonna be fine,” he promised, his voice cracking on the final word as he came with you. Finishing with warm spurts of cum filling you up, each thrust pumping more into you as he groaned your name, head collapsing into the crook of your collarbone. 

Sweat making your skin stick to his, your breathing mixing together as you both came back down to earth from your high. 

“Fuck,” you murmured, trying to shift underneath him, roll out from his heavy body. 

But he refused to budge, burying his face deeper into your neck just to smell your soap and shampoo, nuzzling his nose against your neck. 

He didn’t want to let go. 

And for a second, part of him considered cancelling. Backing out of the mission, coming up with an excuse or calling out sick. They had back up astronauts. 

They had a few people, perhaps not as qualified as him, but still acceptable, on standby that could take his spot. 

He might get fired. Shoved back to some bottom-tier desk position. 

But he’d get to stay with you. 

Would get to spend the next six months sleeping like this instead of alone in a spaceship compartment. 

“Satoru,” you softly said his name, shifting as he finally released your thighs, letting you lay them back down more comfortably – but still kept you caged in. 

“Can’t I just lay here for a while longer?” He groaned, jaw tightening at the idea that this was the last night he’d get this. You.

Cock still twitching as the last of his cum leaked out, some of it starting to spill down your thighs as he refused to take it out. 

You ran your fingers through his hair, scratching a spot behind his ears, sifting through the silky strands with a long sigh. “Sure.” 

That was just who you were. 

What you’d do. 

You gave him what he wanted. 

Even when you didn’t like what he asked for. 

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“Don’t be sorry,” you replied gently. “Just be sure you’re coming home.” 

“The stars can’t keep me from you,” he promised, moving to leave another kiss on the tip of your nose as you rolled your eyes at him. 

But you giggled, and that was good enough.

“Let’s get married when I get back,” he suggested. 

“We already-” 

“Like, the same day, sweetheart,” he insisted, lips curling up in a smile as he snagged your left hand, bringing it to his lips so he could press a kiss to your engagement ring. The big diamond glittering in the moonlight, accented with small gemstones that same shade as his eyes set in a white-gold band. One you picked out with him once upon a time. 

“You’re ridiculous,” you laughed, shaking your head like you weren’t grinning at the idea too. “Didn’t you want, like, the whole huge wedding?” 

“I just want you.” 

Gojo could make it six months if it meant you’d be waiting there for him when he got back.  

He just didn’t think everything would go to fucking shit in sixteen weeks.

Clinging to the same dream of you, the same memory his brain had chosen for comfort as he opened his eyes for another difficult day in a long line of them. 

Waking up to a window that only overlooked the cold, dark expanse of space instead of the familiar city. Missing your warmth in bed – trading it for a sleeping bag and a stiff compartment that they somehow still hadn’t figured out a better alternative for despite how advanced their rocketships had become. 

Sure, they could figure out how to simulate gravity inside the living areas now. But no, getting a good night’s rest was still impossible. 

They were only supposed to be running a supply drop off. Sending equipment to a planet a few other astronauts were previously sent to, one they’d recently started establishing a settlement on. Shoko was planning on staying behind there to be their medic – but he was supposed to return with Suguru.

It wasn’t the only habitable planet that had been discovered. There were a few, all being explored, data being collected and catalogued by various astronauts like themselves, sent back periodically and retrieved by relief missions like the one they were on. 

All just a galaxy away. 

It meant going through a wormhole to get to them, but according to all the calculations and the previous voyages, it was safe. 

Risky, sure, but it’d been done before. 

And to be fair, getting through it hadn’t been the problem. 

The problem was they were just outside the orbit of the wrong fucking planet. 

Whether one of them had bumped into the navigation system, inputted the wrong thing at the wrong time, or maybe some internal error was to blame, it didn’t matter. 

No, a more pressing issue had presented itself. 

A distress signal was being sent up. 

Someone was below – and begging to be rescued. 

“I have a bad feeling about it,” Suguru murmured, scowling at the screen as if he could make the message go away just by glaring at it. 

“You always have a bad feeling,” Shoko hummed, dark circles under his eyes as she scanned the data on her screen. 

“I think we should just continue to the correct planet. It’ll be a waste of fuel and time,” Suguru scoffed, ignoring her as his fingers flew across the keyboard, inputting either calculations or coordinates.

Satoru reclined back in his seat, fiddling with a pencil as his friend glanced up at him like he was looking for support here.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the one who wants to save people?” He asked, cocking his head to the side just to get a scoff. He’d known Suguru most of his life. Went to school together, graduated from the same program just to end up colleagues too. Between both of them, Suguru was always the altruistic one. The guy who thought of everyone else before himself – even if he was looking down at them from his moral high ground half the time. 

“Not if it means putting our mission at risk,” he argued, lips pressed together in a thin line. “Or us.”

“The last reported conditions there seem fine,” Shoko shrugged as she directed their attention back to what little data had been collected so far. 

Most of the planet was made of water, a massive sea dotted with a handful of islands, some mountain ranges that rivaled the highest peaks back on Earth. Two fellow astronauts were supposed to have been there for the last nine months. 

“Yeah, that’s why they’re sending a distress signal,” Suguru sarcastically grimaced. 

“You really want to just leave them?” Gojo asked, not sure how exactly to feel about it himself. Not wanting to totally throw away Suguru’s hesitation – but reluctant to just leave another astronaut stranded. 

“There are other people counting on us,” Suguru insisted, and Satoru knew he was right. Knew that you were counting on him to come back in one piece. “We can just send a message back to Earth and let them decide.”

Suguru knew as well as he did that doing that would most likely mean death to whoever was sending the distress signal.

It would probably be months before they sent another ship up.

And given that they didn’t have the data to know how fast or slow time passed below. No way to know when the signal they were receiving had started.

There was a heavy pause, all three of them weighing whether or not to take the gamble — and imagining what it’d feel like to be the one stuck on the planet praying for someone to come save them.

“I think we should check it out,” Satoru eventually spoke up, although he wasn’t exactly excited about it. 

He just wasn’t sure he could stomach the alternative. If he could handle coming back home to you and telling you the truth.

Risk you leaving him like they were about to leave the stranded astronauts.

“The extra data they have would be useful,” Shoko pointed out, tilting her head appraisingly. “If we needed to, we could bring them back to the other settlement.” 

“Two minutes,” Suguru begrudgingly gave in, irritation pricking in his voice as he stood up, rubbing his temple. “We shouldn’t spend more than ten on the surface when we don’t know how much time we could lose. Get there, see what’s salvage, get the fuck out.” 

Whether it was data or people, they’d just take what they could and leave. 

There was a chance that the relative time on the planet was off. That even just an hour on the planet could be the equivalent to a year back on Earth. 

“Yeah, agreed,” Satoru waved him off, watching him walk off, probably to start preparations for landing. 

He told himself it was the right thing to do. 

That it was what you would expect from him. 

He stood up too, walking around to one of the communication terminals they set up – where they could send and receive messages. 

You’d sent a couple videos, unofficial ones, of course, something he arranged in advance when he agreed to join the mission – that he’d be able to contact you and you’d be able to do the same. They were short, just a few minutes of you updating him on life back on Earth. How you were doing, how wedding planning was going, murmuring that you missed him in a soft voice before leaning in to kiss the camera. 

But a new one was waiting for him as he popped his headphones in to listen, leg bouncing nervously as it loaded, automatically smiling when your face popped up. 

“Hi, Satoru,” you greeted, but then you awkwardly looked down, fiddling with your fingers out of frame like you were shy all of a sudden. Biting your bottom lip, the skin there already broken like you’d been busy chewing it. 

He wanted to touch the screen. 

Caress your cheek and ask you what was wrong. 

“I, um, was gonna wait until you came back. But, uh, I don’t think I can keep it a secret that long,” you breathed, eyes glancing up at the camera like you were imagining him on the other side of it. 

And then you were picking something up, holding it out in front of you as the camera refocused and- 

Holy shit. 

“Surprise,” you excitedly called out from behind the tiny onesie in your hand. “You’re going to be a father.” 

A baby. 

He was going to be a father.

His brain stopped working. Shock freezing him in place as you peeked out from behind the onesie like you could see his reaction. Pride glimmered in your eyes as you grinned, his entire world sitting in front of him a galaxy away. His future wife and child just waiting for him to return.

“I wanted it to be a surprise, but it’s been so hard holding it in,” you continued, and he craved you even more than he had in the past few months combined. Dying to pick you up and press kiss after kiss to your lips, your cheeks, your stomach.

Aching to wrap his arms around you and start talking about baby names and nurseries, to take you out shopping for baby furniture and be there for your appointments. 

“There’s something else,” you said, reluctance creeping in. Glancing down at your lap again before pulling up a second onesie. 

No. You surely didn’t mean…? 

“I’m having twins,” you announced, a little awkward like you started second guessing how he’d take it. “Are you surprised?” 

It didn’t take his brain long to calculate the fucking odds of that, but his mind had a hard time accepting it, discomfort coiling in and mixing with the exhilaration in his stomach at the idea of you back in bed, carrying his babies, while he was up in fucking space. 

Unable to be there for you. To rub the lotion on your stomach, to sing terrible impressions of lullabies to them, to drive you to the doctor and hold your hand throughout all of it. 

You didn’t seem too bothered, or maybe just too excited to show it, holding up the ultrasounds next, proudly showing him baby A and baby B, talking about how you should find out their genders in just a couple weeks. 

“You better be back before I have these two,” you murmured into the camera, fixing him in a serious stare, your eyes shining in the fading daylight drifting in through your window. “Don’t make me go to the hospital alone.” 

Never. 

He’d fucking be there. 

“I love you, Toru,” you spoke softer, hesitating over actually hitting the button to stop recording. “Please don’t do anything stupid.” 

He’d already done something stupid by saying yes to coming here, hadn’t he? 

Still, he plastered on his best smile, sitting awkwardly in front of his own camera, recording you a message back. Making you a million promises, telling you how proud he was of you, how thrilled he was to be a dad. Selling you dreams of a life he was desperately trying to buy for your future family of four. 

“We’re, uh, about to go down to a planet to check out a distress signal, but, it’ll be fine, baby,” he informed you, hearing how stiff the words came out as he forced his palm to press down on his thigh to stop his leg from bouncing. “It’ll just be a quick pitstop before the supply drop, promise.” 

He paused, having to clear his throat, his tongue suddenly dry as he made himself look directly into the camera. 

“I’ll come back for you.” 

Gojo didn’t want to admit Suguru might be right when he had to sit with the heavy feeling in his stomach after he shut the camera off and sent the message back – knowing it would probably be a couple days before you saw it.

But it would be fine, wouldn’t it?

In a year, he’d be waking up in bed with you, laughing about how worried he’d been while you each held one of your babies. This would just be a memory. 

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there. Staring at the screen long after it shut off, replaying your voice in his head, itching to really hear it, to feel it on his skin, to touch you instead of just clinging to a digital copy of you.

“You ready?” Suguru’s voice called out to him, and he snapped out of his daze. 

Found his mouth opening, about to say no.

Tell him he changed his mind. Say he was wrong and that they should just save their fuel. 

But if you knew, if they knew, that he’d left someone to die just to come home to them sooner, would they look at him the same way? 

Would he be able to look his children in the eyes? 

He swallowed hard as he glanced towards the doorframe Suguru was standing in, slowly nodding instead of saying what he really wanted to. “Yeah.” 

Gojo wanted to believe that between their three-person crew, they’d be able to handle it. 

He just hadn’t realized that only two of them would make it back to the ship. 

𖥔 ݁ ˖

“You should move on.”

It didn’t matter how many people said it. How many times your therapist pleaded with you to put the past behind you.

You couldn’t let go of him.

Six months turned into six years without Satoru.

The one thing you were terrified of had come true.

You lost him.

Didn’t even have the fucking confirmation of his death. Just a gravestone with an empty casket, a plot picked out for you next to it — even if you’d never get to be buried by him. 

Wasn’t that the funny thing about taking risks? 

You always know what could happen. You just never think it will happen to you. 

It’s always someone else. 

Until it’s not. 

Until you’re the one waiting for a phone call you’ll never get or a knock on the door that will never come. 

“It’s not exactly like men are lining up to date me,” you muttered into the phone, tucking it between your ear and shoulder as you frowned at your reflection in the mirror, reaching up to fix a stray hair just for your still-shiny engagement ring to shimmer in the sunlight. Swallowing the lump in your throat before you turned away, nearly tripping on a toy. “With the twins-” 

“Guys like MILFs,” your friend teased in your ear, and you had to stop yourself from rolling your eyes as you bent over to pick up the stuffed bunny and toss it in an overflowing toy basket. 

You doubted they’d like one still in love with their babies’ father. 

Still holding out hope he’d show up with that stupid smile and wrap you in a crushing hug. 

Even if the rest of the world thought he was dead. 

When the government had declared his ship missing and him deceased. Cut you a check for it even though you weren’t technically Satoru’s spouse yet since you had his babies. A little boy that could be his clone and a girl that looked a little too much like you.  

Their check had been enough to get you out of your crummy apartment, to move the three of you in a small house in a quiet neighborhood. 

Suguru’s mother had ended up moving next door, offering to babysit and watch them during the day so you didn’t have to send them to daycare. Helping you raise your children while her child was still out there in space somewhere. 

She didn’t talk about Suguru with you. And you never spoke of Satoru. 

But you knew she understood anyway. Coped with it the same way you did. Skirting around their existence like it would lessen the hurt. 

“I know a guy who-” Your friend started, and your stomach lurched at the thought of being set up with someone who couldn’t come close to the man you were supposed to marry. 

“Look, I’ve, uh, gotta go get the kids. Their teacher wanted to discuss Apollo’s behavior. I guess he bit someone,” you muttered, heels clicking as you slung your purse over your shoulder and snagged your keys. 

She was disappointed, mumbling a goodbye that you tuned out, hitting end and dropping your phone in your bag with a sigh. 

You wondered what Satoru would’ve thought of it. 

If he would’ve laughed at his son picking fights at school or if there was a stern side to him buried somewhere beneath his goofy grins and cheesy jokes. 

You tried to pick out names he’d like. Even if sometimes it stung a little to think about. 

Apollo and Artemis. 

After the space missions. He’d think it was cute. Probably dress them up like little astronauts and kiss their foreheads, promising that he loved them way more than just to the moon and back. Paint stars on their ceiling and hang planets up on strings in their nursery. 

To be fair, you had done it in his place. 

Worn one of his old t-shirts as you bit your lip and bent over your swollen belly to get all the corners, carefully standing on a ladder to hang everything on the ceiling, standing in a nursery full of furniture you built yourself a month after his return date came and went. 

The last thing you heard from him was a video message where he promised he’d come back. If you shut your eyes, you could still see that look on his face, the flicker of nervousness that flashed across it as his mouth curled down into a frown before he admitted that they were about to go check out a distress call. 

And then nothing. 

NASA never told you if they had any additional information on it. But the conclusion they came to was obvious. 

Their mission was a failure. And your husband was forever missing. 

Somewhere you’d never be able to reach. 

You snapped on the twins' first birthday. You hadn’t even managed to bring yourself to throw them a party when Satoru wasn’t there to take the photos, to pick them up and blow out the candles for them. 

Carrying them next door to Suguru’s mom’s place, asking for her to watch them for a few hours just to come back home and rip down every stupid space-themed piece of decor you’d once painstakingly picked out. Throwing them all in a big, black trash bag before running out to the store to grab tarps and more paint. 

You didn’t stop until the entire room was drenched in shades of blue and green, alien toys traded in for sea animals.

At least the ocean was on Earth. 

It wasn’t like they were old enough to understand. 

But you couldn’t fucking stand the idea of losing them too. 

You had kept both their convertible cribs in your room since the day you brought them home from the hospital, unable to sleep without them in the same room. The crippling fear that you’d some intruder would sneak in and snatch them if you weren’t right there to stop it didn’t actually go away until they were big enough to toddle and talk. 

Now they were old enough to be in school, no longer babies, no longer toddlers, big enough to ramble on about what they learned every day, bicker over their toys and pick them back up before they went to bed. 

And Satoru had missed all of it. 

Every first they experienced tainted by the never-ending reminder that he wasn’t fucking here to see a single one. 

And like an idiot, you just kept recording message after message, setting up a camera and trying not to cry as you recorded yourself talking about the twins, showing them off to someone who should’ve been by your side every step of the way. You still had a few contacts with his old colleague, one who promised he’d send them all up anyway. 

Just in case Satoru was still out there in space. Still trying to come home to you.  

There wasn’t a single day that passed yet where you didn’t think about it. 

Him. 

But it appeared your attempts to keep him alive, to teach your kids about their dad, weren’t going so well when you replayed the voicemail you’d been left an hour earlier requesting you come in for a meeting after school was over when you picked up the kids. 

The soft voice on the other end apologetically explaining that Apollo had gotten in an argument with another kid to defend his sister, that no action was being taken, but that he’d still like to speak with you in person over it. 

You stared at the brick building of the elementary school, readjusting your purse as you swiped away another message from your friend sending you contact details of a man you certainly were not going to contact, steeling yourself for an uncomfortable conversation as you walked through the door and went into the office to get a visitor’s pass before you started navigating through the halls to look for the twins’ class. 

Suguru’s mom handled most of the pick ups for you, kept them at her place until you got back home from work in the evenings. 

Your boss had been annoyed that you’d taken off early, but you had to put them first. You were the only parent they had. 

You heard Artemis first. Her soft giggle twinkling as your steps picked up, her brother’s grumpy voice scolding her as you stopped just outside an open classroom door, pausing as you looked inside and saw sitting cross-legged on the floor with another boy who looked a couple years older, a bunch of toys dumped out between them on a carpet with the alphabet on it. 

“Are you their sister? I thought their mom-” A low voice spoke up, your head snapping over to see a dark-haired man stepping out from behind a desk. Warm brown eyes scanning your face as you stiffly shook your head.   

“I’m their mom,” you interrupted him, swallowing hard as you pushed your sunglasses back up in your hair before holding your hand out to shake. 

His hand was surprisingly soft when he took it, gently shaking it a few seconds too long before awkwardly letting go. 

“I’m Choso, their teacher,” he said, and you forced a small smile.

“I, uh, know,” you muttered, averting your stare back to where they were playing. 

“Yuji’s my little brother,” he added, pointing out the boy playing with yours, plucking out a toy from the pile and handing it over. 

You wondered if it would be awful to just ask him to go ahead and skip all the polite niceties, that you didn’t need them. 

“Sorry for making assumptions,” he awkwardly apologized, his dark eyes dragging over you again. “You just looked like you’re around my age, and I guess I forget sometimes that it’s normal for us to have kids of our own now.”

You blinked at him, trying to decide what to make of his slightly nervous rambling just for his mouth to open again.

“I wasn’t trying to comment on your appearance or anything, I mean, you’re beautiful-” His lips abruptly shut, cheek flushing pink in a painfully familiar way.

Your chest hurt.

Ached at the thought that Satoru was no longer the last person to call you beautiful.

“Um, thanks,” you murmured, looking at your outfit a little self-consciously. Wondering if he was just saying that to make you feel better or if he really meant it. You didn’t think you looked terrible. But without Satoru around, you’d sorta forgotten what it felt like to look in the mirror and see something pretty when you were struggling to survive most days. 

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, glancing down to the ring on your finger. Your throat started to close, palms getting clammy as he ran his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t realize you were married.” 

“I’m not,” you answered, a little too quickly as you folded your arms across your chest. Putting your left hand underneath your other arm as if it would make you stop thinking about it. Him. 

“Oh, um-” 

“I was engaged to the twins’ dad,” you explained, watching them giggle and pretend to eat the plastic food with their new pink-haired friend. “But, uh, he passed before they were born.” 

People usually asked too many questions if you told them the whole story. 

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he apologized, face falling the way everyone else’s always did. Regret etched into the soft lines of his face, nose scrunching up as the tattoo across his nose crinkled. “I had no-”

“It’s fine,” you lied, waving it off like Satoru didn’t still cast shadows across your thoughts. “So, um, what happened with Apollo? Is he in trouble?”

“No, no, one of the other kids tried to take a toy from Artemis, and he stepped in to stop it. I actually wanted to speak to you about him having a hard time making friends outside of her,” Choso spoke softly, obviously trying hard to pick his words carefully. “I was thinking of recommending they get put in different classes next year to help them socialize.” 

You bit the inside of your cheek.

Torn between immediately shutting the idea down and trying to argue against it before second guessing whether or not your parenting was actually just fostering codependence. 

Satoru would know what to do.

But he wasn’t here.

And all the decisions were yours to make.

Artemis was the outgoing one, inherited her father’s personality even if she pretty much got your face. Bright and brilliant, easy charisma that shined even at her small size. Apollo was reserved. Serious.

Scowling if he wasn’t with his sister, grumbling at the world like he already realized how it screwed them over.

“They’re just five,” you muttered, glancing over at where they were still distracted with his brother.

“Well, I guess we can see if there are any changes throughout the rest of the school year. I, uh, coach a boys soccer team on the weekends. He’s welcome to join, if you’re interested,” he said, running his fingers through the ends of his hair. 

You guessed if it meant your twins wouldn’t be split up in school, you’d sit on the sidelines to watch little kids try and fail to kick a ball across a field. 

Not that he was that happy about it when you told him he’d have to spend his Saturday morning in a soccer uniform with kids he barely spoke to before instead of playing with his toys at home. 

Choso grinned when you first showed up, one of those crooked ones that gave away his surprise when he saw you setting up fold-out chairs for you and Artemis. Even jogging over to tell you he was happy you came, squatting down to get on Apollo’s level to ask him if he knew how to play. 

He didn’t.

To be fair, after watching a single game, it was clear none of the other kids did either. 

Still, you left it with a schedule of practices and games stuffed in your purse, a couple of them circled and marked for your days to bring snacks and juice boxes for the team.

You told yourself that you were being an active parent. 

Showing up to every single school event. Refusing to miss a single soccer game even when Apollo spent half of it plucking weeds from the field to give to you afterwards. 

Taking him to play dates with his new soccer friends before taking Artemis to sleepover with her school friends, juggling their new social lives with your own work. 

And somewhere along the way, you supposed you’d made a new friend in their teacher too.

He went out of his way to talk to you at every game, greeting you at their school stuff with a shy smile and considerate questions while he updated you on how they were doing. 

The kids loved him, coming home chattering about what he planned and taught them during the day, complaining whenever he was out sick and they got stuck with a substitute. 

Wasn’t it normal to like someone if they made your children happy? 

Smile back when they spoke to you? 

Find your thoughts lingering a little on their dark-haired teacher when your son excitedly exclaimed that Choso promised to be his soccer coach next year too, your stupid heart stalling for a second when Artemis casually dropped that he helped her make a mother’s day card for you as she stuck it to the fridge with a magnet. 

You definitely didn’t pick them up from school yourself more often, swearing to Suguru’s mother that you were just trying to spend more time with them. 

But eventually, the school year wrapped up. 

You couldn’t really comprehend why some sliver of you was disappointed by that. 

Still, you suspected that it wasn’t just because Satoru wasn’t here to see it. 

A strange flutter in your stomach stirring watching Choso pass out printed graduation certificates to the class, plastering on a bright smile as Artemis proudly bounded over to show you hers. Toothily grinning as you sat and clapped for her in a cramped chair, a paper plate with a tiny slice of pizza in front of you as the other parents tried wrangling their own kids. 

Apollo was half-sitting on your lap, sneakily stealing your pizza after he polished off his own plate, enjoying their classroom party just to start bickering over which mini cupcakes they each wanted, eyeing the boxes Choso hadn’t given out. “Are you excited for next year?” You asked, barely able to stop yourself from rolling your eyes at their arguing. 

“No,” Artemis smiled immediately flipped into a frown as she flopped in her seat, folding her arms across her chest. “We’ll have to get a new teacher.” 

“Don’t be a baby,” Apollo huffed at her. 

“S’not fair, he’s still your coach,” she whined back, right in time for him to show up, holding out a plastic container with cupcakes to let them choose. 

They were quick to snatch them, thank yous muffled when they stuffed their mouths the next second, but to your surprise, he held out the box for you to pick too. 

“I, um, got enough for the parents too,” he awkwardly said, eyes hesitantly flicking up to meet yours as you chewed the inside of your cheek before accepting. 

“Thanks,” you murmured softly, selecting one with purple frosting as he smiled softly at you. 

It was nice of him. 

This was nice, actually. 

A classroom of sugar-fueled kids and hastily strung up party streamers wasn’t exactly where you pictured you’d be spending your afternoon a decade ago. Being a single mom had never been a part of your plans. 

But it wasn’t terrible. 

You loved your children. Loved being their mom. 

Maybe you could learn to love your life too. 

You stayed behind once the party wrapped up to help clean the classroom with a few of the other parents, stuffing greasy and frosting splattered plates into trash bags while the twins excitedly caught up with Yuji after his teacher dropped him off after the bell rang. 

“Hey,” a quiet voice startled you, your head snapping back to see Choso stiffly standing next to you, nervously raking his fingers through his hair. 

“Hi,” you breathed back, just as awkward. “The party was great. I think the twins will miss you next year.” 

You didn’t want to consider if you would. 

“They’re great kids. I know they’re gonna succeed some day,” he earnestly said, your mouth curling up as you nodded. 

You didn’t really mind if they succeeded or not. Wouldn’t hold them to the same standards their dad once held himself to. 

All you really wanted was for them to be happy. 

“Thanks, um, seriously,” you swallowed hard, throat constricting as you thought about how much Apollo had started to come out of his shell thanks to him. 

Choso’s intense stare swept over your face, scanning over your features like he was searching for something there.

His eyes were dark. 

Not blue. They didn’t shimmer, didn’t sparkle when the sun hit them. 

But they were deep. Warm. 

“I’m glad I got to meet you,” he started, speaking slowly like he wasn’t sure if he should even say it. “Getting to know you, um, it’s been great.” 

“Yeah, it has,” you agreed, actually meaning it too. 

He stepped a little closer, taking a deep breath as his gaze settled on your face. “You can like, slap me if I’m out of line here-”

“I’m not going to slap you,” you intercut, biting back a laugh as his brows knitted together seriously. 

“Would it be totally inappropriate to ask you on a date?” 

𖥔 ݁ ˖

Their mission was fucked. 

Suguru was dead. 

Body stuck on a planet of water and waves, left behind with the other astronauts that had died long before they even received their distress call. 

Swept under a fucking tsunami, unable to make it back on the ship on time in an attempt to save a stupid fucking data recorder. 

Now they had neither. 

The ship had been damaged in the process too, fuel wasted and plans derailed as they barely managed to get it off the planet before all three of them ended up as corpses. Water corrupting important systems as Gojo slammed his fists against the hard metal frame of a door, throwing off his helmet as Shoko said something his brain refused to process. 

Grabbing his arm to pull it back before he could fuck up his suit. Telling him to just take it off and cool down before he damned both of them too. 

Like his best friend wasn’t gone. 

He’d never get him back. 

No one would. 

Gojo just had to leave his body there for the tides to take. What the hell was he even going to say to his mom? How was he supposed to tell her that her son wasn’t coming home? 

He barely managed to get his suit off, stripping down and throwing it on the ground without giving a shit about proper protocol, storming off to his private compartment to stop himself from losing it in front of the only other person up here now. Shoko said something about getting everything back on course, but he wasn’t listening as he turned his back from her.

God, he felt like he was going to fucking hurl. 

The edges of his vision kept blurring, going in-and-out of darkness as he forced himself to change clothes, sitting hunched over the edge of his bed and burying his face in his hands, replaying the look on Suguru’s face when he realized he wasn’t going to make it. 

Rewinding and searching for some other way to change the past as he screwed his eyes shut. 

But he couldn’t save him then and there was no way to save him now. 

He wished you were here. 

Wished you’d wrap your arms around him and run your fingers through his hair and promise him that it would still be okay. That Suguru wouldn’t blame him. 

That his best friend was somewhere better. 

Even if everything scientific in his body swore that there was no better place waiting for him. 

Gojo pushed himself back up to his feet, jaw locked tight as he walked back over to the one piece of you he still had access too, tapping away at the controls to see if you sent any videos while he was out there making the worse fucking mistake of his life. 

Foot impatiently tapping against the floor as he reclined his head back against the floor, wishing that he’d never even come on this mission in the first place – if he hadn’t, Suguru wouldn’t have even answered the distress call, would he? 

He’d still be alive, and Gojo would be with-

The computer let out a beep, interrupting his thoughts as the screen came to life, loading everything up as he sighed with relief. 

Seeing your smile, hearing your soft words might not heal him, but it was the only thing he could think of to help the raw wound of loss ripping through his chest. 

Until the automated computer voice made an announcement right as he popped his headphones in.   

Loading messages from the past eleven years. 

No. No no no no no.

It was wrong.

It had to be fucking wrong. 

The computer had to be fried. Some water must have somehow gotten in it and fucked with the wiring and-

Before he could even hit a single button, try to troubleshoot, there you were in front of him, your hand on your swollen stomach, scowling in the camera as you asked where the hell he was. Fear creeping in your pretty voice that no one had heard anything from any of them – reminding him that he promised to come back. 

He did. He would. 

The small lump in his throat getting bigger and bigger as the video auto-played into the next one, where you were obviously about to pop, filming in a space-themed nursery, your anger twisted into worry, telling him that you didn’t want to do this alone. 

Begging him to not make you. 

Gojo froze. 

Shoulders stiff as he saw the tears rolling down your cheeks, stunned as his own brain short-circuited, the guilt swimming in his stomach threatening to drown him as you ended the message. 

Part of him wanted to hit stop. 

Like if he paused it now, he would be able to freeze time and somehow make it back to Earth in time to not miss any more of it. 

But his fingers weren’t fast enough. 

And the next frame came with the audio of a baby crying. 

Two babies. One swaddled in blue and the other in pink. Their names on knitted hats he already knew Suguru’s mom must’ve made, a strangled sob escaping him before he even realized he was crying. 

The twins. His twins. 

Sleepily yawning and opening their eyes just a peek, enough for him to see his son had the misfortune of inheriting his looks while his daughter came out like a miniature you. Someone else was recording you in the hospital bed, but you were talking to the camera like it was him, face soft as you giggled that he would probably bawling harder than the babies when he realized he missed this. 

Suguru’s mom laughed behind the camera. 

He was. 

Tears falling freely as the videos just kept playing. One after another. 

His children were growing up without him. 

From tiny and fragile bundles to bumbling toddlers to fuck, full-sized little kids. 

In what? Fifty minutes? 

Five entire years of their life, condensed down to a handful of clips. The first steps he missed, the birthdays and holidays and father’s day he’d never get back. 

They didn’t even look at the camera half the time. Too busy playing and giggling and laughing while you did your best not to cry in front of them. They didn’t know him. 

Their father was barely more than a fucking video camera being pointed at them. 

And you, god, his pretty, perfect you. 

Still sending him these even when you had to think he was fucking dead. 

Dark circles under your eyes and a hollowness to your face that only got worse over the years. Exhaustion in your expressions as you spoke to him like you didn’t think he was listening. 

You mostly updated them on the kids' life. Skimmed over the details of a job you obviously didn’t like. Told him how Suguru’s mom had basically become their grandma. Sometimes Artemis would be on your lap, squinting at a book or playing with a toy while you talked. 

His girls a wormhole away. 

Gojo wanted to scream. Shout at the world to stop fucking spinning for a while so he could make it back to you. 

But five years turned into six, and six turned into seven, and he watched in horror as it started to set in that he was losing you too.

What if it was too late? 

What if you moved on? What if your life had no room left in it for him by the time he made it back to Earth? 

The twins were already in school and playing sports and clearly didn’t miss the man they’d never met. 

Would you stop missing him too? 

He didn’t know how many videos he watched. Guessing the time jump between each one based on how much the twins had grown in the background. 

You looked more mature now too. More put together, hair styled differently, no longer bare-faced when you turned the camera on, in a different room that obviously belonged to a house that wasn’t his home. 

Toys weren’t scattered around everywhere in the background anymore. But sometimes the twins would run through with one of their friends, some pink-haired kid that seemed to come over often judging by the way you barely blinked when they passed behind you. 

Gojo felt like a stranger. 

Some creep looking in the window of a happy family and thinking it should be his. 

“Mom,” Apollo whined, trying to tug on your sleeve as his shaggy white hair hung around his shoulders, attempting to drag you away while you were in mid-sentence. “Me and Cho made a cake. Come try it.” 

“Sure, honey,” you softly said, cringing a little before glancing back at the camera apologetically before signing off. 

Was Cho one of his friends? One of yours? 

He didn’t actually want an answer. 

But the next video seemed to clue him in on one anyway. 

You were wearing a shirt that was too big for you. The collar of it stretched out, your hair mused and down as you softly spoke, like you were trying not to wake someone up. 

It wasn’t Gojo’s shirt. 

An awful feeling settled in his bones. One that etched deeper with every little off detail he noticed. 

A pair of men’s shoes in the background. A watch left on your desk, barely in frame. The Cho the twins occasionally chattered about affectionately. 

Who apparently was taking them to soccer games and science museums like he should be doing right now if he heard them correctly.

Gojo didn’t want to believe that you were dating again. Even if he knew that it would be the normal thing to do. 

Completely reasonable for you to move on after not hearing a word from him in nearly a decade. 

But the idea of you loving another man, letting him into your life, letting him take his space-

He puked. 

Head between his knees as he got sick on the floor, throwing up a mixture of salt water he swallowed earlier and the freeze dried breakfast he had this morning. Funny, wasn’t it? He’d lost over ten years with you and his best friends in just a day.

An hour on that horrible planet had cost him a decade. 

Body wracking with shudders as he coughed and spit, wiping the back of his mouth just in time to look up at you while those pretty lips of yours pressed in a thin line. Sadness shining in your eyes, frustration and disappointment you rarely let show evident in your trembling frame. 

“It’s hard to keep hoping for you,” you admitted, reaching out to shut off the camera, and he desperately wanted to scream for you to not give up, to just fucking wait. 

But then the computer chimed in that there was one video left the second the screen went black after you ended it. 

His hand reached out, desperate to touch you, desperate to stop you, but your world was spinning faster than his was. 

And your face was back on screen, something inside him wilting and withering at the realization that another year had probably passed for you, maybe even two, more that he would never be able to get back. 

A few more faint lines were etched by your eyes, subtle creases left as a sign of all the time he missed with you. But you looked healthier. Happier. 

His beautiful girl sitting there and smiling at him instead of screaming like you should’ve been. Cursing his name for not coming home sooner, scolding him for being a piece of shit that should’ve stayed on Earth.  

“Hi, Satoru,” you spoke softly, fiddling with your hands. “Been a while since I’ve made one of these.” 

He was terrified to know how long.

“The twins are good. They’re gonna be ten next month,” you continued, not looking directly at the camera as you talked. “They’re both smart, like you. Apollo’s been more into soccer than school these days though.” 

He wanted to see him. See both of them. 

Hold them too, know his children outside of the information you would tell some distant relative, even if that was all he felt like right now. 

“Artemis wants to be a scientist when she grows up. She sits on the sidelines of his games with her nose buried in books,” you told him, a little smile reflexively curling up on your lips just from talking about them. “I wish you could see them. Wish you were here.” 

His chest hurt. 

Gojo didn’t know he stopped breathing until his body forced him to suck in a breath, lungs screaming for air as he stared at the woman he was supposed to marry. 

This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. 

The mission should’ve been routine. Simple. 

Suguru should be setting up the navigation. He should be begrudgingly agreeing to being his best man and coming to the courthouse to witness the rushed ceremony. 

“Sometimes,” you started, swallowing hard as your gorgeous eyes welled up with tears that threatened to spill out. “I dream of you. Us. Back in our old apartment in the creaky bed and the broken window. I wake up thinking I’m still there.” 

The hard lump lodged in his throat was threatening to choke him entirely, the taste of bile still on his tongue as his nails digging crescent moons into his palms as he watched your mouth quiver. 

“The government declared you dead a few years ago. One of your old colleagues came by one day, said that no one really knew for sure what happened, just that you missed the supply drop. Used a bunch of big words like I was too stupid to understand that the bottom line was that you weren’t coming home. Tried to make me feel better about it too,” you bitterly scoffed at the memory, resting your chin on your knees as you exhaled. On the brink of crumbling just recalling it, “Told me that you might’ve settled on a colony on a different planet or got stuck in some fucked-up time dilation. That you might still be alive out there somewhere.” 

If his throat wasn’t already raw, he would’ve screamed at the screen that he was. 

Wanted to beg you not to fucking believe whatever bullshit everyone else was feeding you and believe in him. 

“You don’t feel dead,” you added. Sniffling a little, using the back of your hand to rub underneath your eyes. “Maybe it’d be easier to move on if you did.”

Even his relief was tainted by guilt, ruined with his own worry that he was ruining your future by wishing you’d be stuck on him forever. 

“My therapist thinks I’m wasting my life waiting on someone who’s never coming back,” you murmured, speaking to him more like you were talking to your diary than truly believing he was going to hear any of it. “But how am I supposed to tell her I’m scared that some day you will, and I won’t be here?” 

Everything hurt.

His body, his heart, his soul. 

Aching for everything he’d lost. Everything you lost because of him. His own kids growing up without a fucking father because he was an idiot who put a career before his family. 

The life he’d spent years carefully building towards lost because he miscalculated. 

“I know it’s not fair, but fuck, thinking about you moving on with another girl, or fucking starting some colony up in space and having kids with someone else, makes me wanna throw up,” you admitted, clueless that he had just puked at the idea of someone else being the stepfather to his twins. 

You hadn’t even confirmed-

“I’m being a hypocrite,” you muttered, burying your face in your hands to hide the fact you were crying — and that’s when it hit him.

The engagement ring on your finger wasn’t his.

Smaller. More subtle. A different cut and style. 

No. You couldn’t-

“I’ve, um, been dating a guy for a few years. He’s sweet. Everyone loves to tell me how much you would’ve liked him,” you admitted, twisting the ring around your finger anxiously like you were confessing a sin. He didn’t like him. Already hated whatever bastard had snuck in and swept you off your feet. “They keep saying that you’d want me to move on.” 

What a load of fucking shit.

The last goddamn thing he wanted was for you to move on. The idea of you marrying another man was enough for him to gag again, bile rising from his stomach as he struggled to stop it. 

“I still love you,” you shrugged a little, guilt of your own etched in your face as his eyes stung with more tears. “I just love him too.”

Gojo would take getting stabbed over hearing those words from your lips again.

“Choso said maybe it’d make me feel better to make another video for you, y’know, get everything off my chest,” you exhaled. “I’m just so tired, Satoru.” 

Okay, well, that kind of felt like being stabbed. 

Knowing that this was all his fault and you were the one bearing so much of the burden. 

“I know you’re probably never going to see this, but you’d want me to be happy, wouldn’t you?” You asked, eyes big and wavering as you struggled not to sob, reaching up to play with the silver chain of your necklace tucked under your shirt. “Would you hate me for choosing someone who cares about me and our kids?” 

He could never hate you.

Even if you married ten other men while he was gone.

He would just always hate the man who got to call you their wife. Jealous of whichever one got to take family photos with you and take you on vacation and sleep next to you every night. 

Gojo wanted to be that guy. Wanted to get down on his knees next to you now and dry your cheeks, kiss your mouth and murmur anything you wanted to hear just to make you feel better.

“I’m getting married in four months,” you murmured, wiping the tears away from underneath your eyes, mascara smearing on the back of your hand as you sniffled. “At that chapel we picked out. The one with the pretty hydrangeas out front.”

No no no. 

He could still make it. 

Couldn’t he? 

If they skipped the supply drop entirely and went straight back through the wormhole? 

Hadn’t he lost enough? 

Gojo refused to let you slip through his fingers a second time. No matter how fast the hourglass was running out of sand. 

You stood up, walking out of frame for a few seconds as he heard the sound of something unzipping. And then you came back, holding out something white and-

A wedding dress. 

“You never got to see me in one, so I thought-” You didn’t finish your sentence, just swallowing hard as you draped it back down on furniture just out of sight. 

The camera barely focused on your body as you peeled your clothes off, his breath hitching at the intimate sight of you slipping the dress on, struggling to zip the back by yourself before walking closer. 

You looked like an angel.

And Gojo sorta wished he was dead. 

Stuck in the stunned shell of his body as he watched the way the dress clung to your chest and flowed to the ground, his heart thrumming loud enough he was sure it was about to break through his ribcage. 

And then a noise in the background startled you. 

The thud of a door shutting. The excited clamoring of children, a girl giggling as a man said something he couldn’t quite make out. 

Your face scrunched up, a million different emotions flashing across it as you both heard it at the same time. “We’re back, baby.” 

Another man was calling you baby. 

Footsteps echoing down a hallway he’d never gotten to walk down, your own body rushing over to block the door before it could open. 

“I’m trying my wedding dress on, Cho,” you called out, lips pressing together in a pretty pout. “It’s bad luck if you see.” 

“Yeah? We brought back your favorite takeout, want me to put it in the fridge or-” he started asking, his voice deep, gravelly. 

“You can leave it out,” you replied, your voice softening as you spoke to him. “I’ll be out in a minute.” 

You glanced back at the camera, guilt returning the second your stare hovered over at it. 

And before Gojo could even really appreciate what a beautiful bride you made, you were rushing to get out of it, biting your lips before stuffing it back into a garment bag, putting your clothes back and returning to your seat. 

“I’m sorry,” you said, fingers trembling as your hand reflexively reached for your necklace again. “I wish things were different.” 

It could be.

It would be. 

Even if a little voice in the back of his head suggested that you might not leave your current fiancé for him if he made it back in time. 

That you might choose the man that had actually been there for you all this time. 

Behind you, there was a knock on the door. 

“Can I come in now?” 

No. 

This was supposed to be private, a one-sided conversation that was for his ears only, but you were glancing back over your shoulder. 

“Yeah,” you quietly answered. 

Gojo almost wished your fiancé was ugly. That it would make it easy for you to pick him instead.

But of course, he had to be annoyingly attractive, dark hair hanging around his shoulders and bangs that reminded him of the best friend he just damned as he casually walked over to you, concern etched into his sharp face as he leaned in to press a kiss on the top of your forehead. 

“Everything okay?” He asked, but then his eyes shifted and he noticed what you were filming. “Oh, baby.” 

The sound of someone who knew you were hurting. Who cared. 

“I’m okay, really, I’m just saying goodbye,” you murmured, like they both couldn’t tell how close you were to breaking down. 

“I’ll give you a few minutes,” he spoke gently, his touch lingering on your skin like it really was his now. “Apollo and Yuji want to go spend the night with one of their friends.” 

Gojo wanted to strangle him. 

Fly through the space and stars just to give him a black eye for just how casually he spoke about his son. 

Although some sliver of him was well fucking aware that Choso had probably been more of a dad to Apollo than he’d ever gotten to be. 

“That’s fine,” you shrugged, nodding a little as your body relaxed, tension lifting from your shoulders the longer you looked at him. 

Gojo hated that he could see that you really did love him in your eyes. 

See that familiar glimmer shining in them as you looked up at a stranger instead of him. 

Choso left the room, but his presence didn’t. 

You stared at the door for a few moments after it shut, but you didn’t say whatever you were thinking. Kept it bottled up before you eventually looked back at Satoru. 

Not that you could even see him. 

You thought you were talking to a ghost. 

That’s all he’d become to you. To his children. A phantom haunting rooms he’d never entered. Lingering in empty spaces he should’ve been. A spectre living in the shadows of your heads. 

“I miss you,” you murmured, reaching for the button one last time to shut it off. “I don’t think that will change. But I can’t keep believing you’re coming home.” 

No. Please no. 

He was.

“I love you, Satoru,” you half-whispered, choking the words out. “Goodbye.” 

The screen went dark. 

His reflection staring back at him. Cheeks wet with tears that wouldn’t stop, breaking down as he fell apart, nausea swirling as he forced himself to stand and step around where he’d thrown up, pacing the floor as his brain struggled to work through a problem he didn’t know how to solve. 

He went back to the console, frowning when he tried to start recording to send a message back out to you, to beg you to just give him a little more time, but nothing happened. 

Body and brain barely working together to frantically tap buttons, staring at what data was available to see if he could find when the transmission was received. 

A faint flicker of hope stirring when he realized it had only been two days ago. 

You weren’t married yet. 

Maybe there was time.

And even if there wasn’t, he’d do his damndest to get there and wreck your marriage if it meant winning you back. 

He was a wreck, stumbling out of the room to rush to find Shoko, nearly tripping on his own feet as he found her by the controls, her neat brunette brows scrunching together in disgust when she saw the state he was in. 

“What the hell-” 

Gojo wasn’t sure he was even speaking in full sentences when he started rambling about time dilation, about how they already missed a goddamn decade, her mouth curling down into a tight frown as he got into the details of how they needed to go home now. 

“We don’t have the fuel,” she deadpanned, drawing his attention to the data on screen. “We can make it to our supply drop, but unless they have some there, we’ll probably be stuck on their settlement until another crew comes along.” 

That wasn’t a fucking option. 

They had to make it.

But even when he spent the next forty-eight hours crunching the numbers and calculating different ways to return, he still came to the same conclusion – Shoko was right. 

And still said ‘I told you so’ when he said fine to going to the planet for the supply drop, figuring that at least if the load was lighter, he might be able to make what they had left stretch. 

He was barely showering. 

Barely eating. 

Manic energy getting him through the long days and longer nights to avoid the dreams that would only mock him for all his failures. 

They were just filled with your face, with Suguru’s, of children that called another man dad. 

Filling his notebooks with different calculations he was desperate to get right this time. 

Skin crawling with the fear that he’d fuck this up and lose you forever. 

He didn’t get to mourn Suguru. Couldn’t mourn the years he missed. 

Not if he didn’t want to miss the rest of them. 

By the time they made it to the next planet, he was a wreck. Practically shoved in the shower by Shoko to get cleaned up before they landed, feeling ill when he was forced to get his suit back on, praying to whatever higher power might be out there to let there be fuel. Let him go home to his family. 

This planet wasn’t full of water. Wasn’t one big ocean. 

Landing in a lush green field, not far from real buildings, actual structures erected, fellow scientists rushing out to greet them as Shoko worked fast to unload the supplies with their help.

Gojo knew he probably sounded like a lunatic rushing to get his request for fuel out as soon as possible, counting the seconds in his head as he hoped that they weren’t months passing for you back home. 

“I need to get back to my fiancée, my kids, please," he begged, pleading without caring how pathetic it came out when everyone here had given up their lives on Earth in the name of science and research. 

“I’m sorry,” their de facto leader apologized, an astronaut he once grew up looking up to frowning at him as he glanced around at their simple setup to search for anything that could help him. “We don’t have any. There’s going to be another supply drop in a month, more people coming to live here. You could probably go back with them if-” 

“No,” he accidentally interrupted, the word ripped from the back of his chest as he recoiled. 

It couldn’t end like this. 

He’d be too late if he stayed.

“Satoru,” Shoko hissed, pulling him back as his breathing got ragged, on the verge of a panic attack. 

“Shoko, they don’t-” 

“I know,” she cut him off, swallowing hard as she fixed him with her steady stare. “Look, I’ll stay here. You take the lander back. Without me and all this stuff, the fuel should last.” 

“You want me to leave you?” He asked, automatically shaking his head no at the absurd suggestion. 

“I don’t have anyone waiting for me back on Earth anyway,” she shrugged.

He didn’t have the seconds to debate it. 

“Are you sure?” He asked, his chest already aching at the idea of being alone on the ship. 

“Go get your wife back,” she huffed. “Name one of your next kids after me.” 

“Deal,” he breathed, throwing her arms around her in a rushed hug before he had to sprint back to the lander. 

Both his best friends left behind on planets he knew he’d never get back to. 

And still, he wasn’t sure if he’d even be able to make it back to the one they came from. 

He wasn’t even meant to be the navigator. 

Wasn’t supposed to be the one frantically typing in coordinates and rushing through checklists to get back home. 

Struggling and squinting at the consoles, breathing heavy when everything was inputted, running the numbers again and again.

He should make it.

Although, his current path put him at landing in some random field in the middle of nowhere, NASA would probably be rushing to get there once they realized it was one of their landers. 

If only he could send out a fucking transmission. 

He tried to figure out why it wouldn’t work, fiddling with it almost every day in failed attempts to fix it and rewatching your videos when his energy threatened to run out. 

Gojo hadn’t cut his hair in months. That was something Suguru usually helped him with. It was nearly touching his shoulders, looking like a stranger in his reflection in the fogged-up mirror on the occasions he’d make himself shower and scrub his skin until it was practically red.

But maybe you liked men with longer hair now. Wouldn’t mind the fact that he changed too. 

When he slept, he made it to the chapel just in time, rushing through the double doors right when the officiant asked if anyone objected. 

He would whisk you away, dip you down and kiss you, fingers sinking into the silk of your wedding dress as he begged you to still be his. 

Some part of him felt like it was all light years away. 

Up until Earth was outside his window, his heart thrumming at the thought of you down there, sharing a bed with someone else while he was fighting so hard to come back to you. Did he fuck you as good?

Make sure you finished every single time? Dot your face with kisses and carry you into the bathroom? Make all your favorite foods and worship the ground you walked on every day? 

Gojo didn’t know if he’d be able to handle knowing.

But fuck, if it meant he’d still get to have you, he’d share you with that asshole. 

Gojo still couldn’t send a transmission, had no way of actually notifying anyone when he got in the lander, flipping switches and changing settings as he got behind the controls. 

Shutting his eyes for a few seconds as he set the coordinates, palms sweating as he clutched the controls. If his math was right, today would be the day you were supposed to be standing at the altar. 

He could do this. 

Failing wasn’t an option.

Not after everything that had brought him here. 

“I’m coming home, sweetheart,” he murmured, a little aware that he had probably lost it if he was talking to himself up here. 

But he hoped you could feel him. 

That even if you were wearing your wedding dress right now, you would be able to sense him somehow. Clinging to the hope that yours hadn’t completely faded yet. 

The landing fucking sucked. 

Hitting the ground too hard, his head snapping forward fast enough he was pretty sure he had a concussion or whiplash, body bracing for the impact as it skidded to a stop in a corn field an hour from that chapel he just toured with you last year. Even if it’d been more like twelve to you. 

It still didn’t stop him from rushing to get out, nearly kissing the ground as he stumbled out. Sucking in the fresh air as he glanced around, his legs trembling as he forced himself to keep moving, well aware he definitely looked like shit even if he tried to clean himself up before his, ah, crash landing. 

“Are you okay? What the fuck is-” 

Gojo grimaced as he glanced up to find someone who pulled over on the side of the road, a stranger squinting at him and the wrecked lander in disbelief. 

“Uh, could you give me a ride?” 

Maybe the universe had decided to cut him some slack. Give him a helping hand as he sat in the passenger seat of a beat-up truck, rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes as he noticed the new phone in the cupholder. 

“Do, uh, you mind if I make a couple calls?” He asked, the distant sound of sirens echoing as they put mile after mile away from the lander – and inched closer and closer to you. 

“Sure,” his new friend shrugged, using his face to unlock his phone at the next stoplight and passing it over. 

Gojo still had your number memorized. 

Even if you didn’t pick up the phone for him. 

No voicemail box set up either, just the generic ‘please leave a message at the beep’ he didn’t have it in him to oblige. He hurried to dial one of his old contacts from NASA he remembered, not sure if Ijichi would pick up either. 

But they did. 

“Hello?” Ijichi croaked, almost sounding like he just woke up, or maybe was sick. 

“Hey, it’s, uh, me,” he said, tapping his fingers on the side of the window. “I sorta crash landed. You guys are gonna want to send someone out to take care of clean up.” 

“Satoru?” 

“Yeah, it’s, um, been a bit, hasn’t it?” He awkwardly chuckled, rambling off the coordinates twice, sure that Ijichi was scrambling to get them down before he exhaled. “Look, I’ve got a wedding to crash. I’ll check in later.” 

Gojo hung up before he could get caught up in any more stupid space bullshit. 

He was finished. 

Ready to spend the rest of his years devoted solely to you and his twins. 

Would you be happy to see him? 

Let him pick you up and press kiss after kiss to your mouth and promise that you missed him? 

He’d spent so long daydreaming about it that he didn’t really know what to do when the truck pulled into the very much empty parking lot of the chapel. 

Was he too early? 

Too late? 

Walking up to the double doors and pulling them open to find barren pews illuminated by stained glass windows. He walked around like an idiot, something pricking at the back of his brain that he wouldn’t listen to as he looked outside at the cemetery next to it. 

He didn’t have a real reason for going back out there. 

Just some invisible string tugging him there as he held his breath, searching for proof in the last place he wanted to find it. 

And there it was. 

Sitting underneath a willow tree waiting for him. 

He stared at the gravestone. Your name etched into the stone – with another man’s last name attached to it. 

His knees gave out. Collapsed underneath him as a broken sob racked through his body, hitting the hard ground as his body surrendered to the pain. Fat tears rolling down his cheeks, sucking in shallow breaths as he cried for the life you had. 

The one he hadn’t been there to give you. 

You couldn’t be- 

Someone tapped on his back. 

He turned fast, shaking as his eyes landed on your face. His pretty girl, probably a good twenty years older than him, aged like a fine wine as your mouth fell open in a surprised gasp. He reached out, fingers trembling as he nearly touched your cheek from his position on the ground, but you froze.

“Dad?” 

It wasn’t you. 

Artemis tried helping him up, tears springing up in her eyes as she immediately hugged him, his brain fractured as he realized that his daughter was here. His daughter was older than him. How much time had passed? How fucking off was he? 

“Oh my god, it’s actually you, when I got the call, I didn’t think-” 

“Artemis?” He breathed her name, wishing he’d gotten the opportunity to say it to her a million more times. “You’re-” 

“Holy shit, I have to call everyone,” she grinned, her smile hurting his chest when it looked so much like yours. “Apollo isn’t gonna believe it. You know, you’re already, like, a great grandpa thanks to him, by the way.” 

Every word was a fresh punch to the gut. 

A great grandfather. 

He never even got to be a father. 

Missed his kids growing up, getting married, having kids of their own, and even them having kids. 

“How long has it been?” He asked, his voice raw, broken chords of disbelief as Artemis' face twisted up, looking behind him as it struck her that he hadn’t known any of it.  

“Since you left?” She awkwardly spoke, tilting her head as she scratched the back of her neck. There was a wedding band on her finger. Did your husband walk her down the aisle? “Um, about fifty years?” 

Four months had been forty years. 

Gojo couldn’t stop himself from crying again, wiping away his cheeks faster, ashamed of what he’d done. 

A fool masquerading as a man. 

Artemis awkwardly wrapped an arm around him, trying to soothe him as she used her free hand to send texts like he couldn’t see through the tears. Sobs wracking through him as the dam inside him broke, reduced to rubble as he fell apart. Painfully aware that he was only inches away from you, and still no closer at all. 

He’d never hold you again. Never touch you again. 

Wouldn’t get to see your smile or hear your laugh, feel the warmth of your affection. 

His children wouldn’t need him. 

For a while, his daughter just sat there with him. Let him cry until he managed to halfway collect himself, his eyes swollen and sore as he struggled to breathe, body aching and stomach starving despite how sick he felt every time he looked up and saw your grave. 

“She passed away last year,” Artemis muttered. “She’d been sick for a while.” 

God, he felt like he was going to die right now. 

Figured it would hurt less than hearing about everything he missed. 

“She talked about you a lot. Made you out to be a big hero,” his daughter smiled softly, obviously trying to make him feel better. You should’ve turned him into the bad guy. “I actually work at NASA. God, she was pretty pissed at me when she found out I even applied, but I promised that I wouldn’t go to space so, uh-” 

It seemed like she inherited his ability to shove his foot in his mouth, her lips clamping shut as she realized that maybe this wasn’t the time. 

“Apollo’s a teacher now,” she abruptly changed the subject, and he didn’t know what to say.

Just staring at her in shock, unable to form proper sentences when he thought he was coming home to a preteen – not a fully grown woman who looked so much like you it hurt to breathe. “Oh, there he is.” 

He looked over to see his son was walking down the path with an old man, talking between each other with furrowed expressions. 

Watched the shock register on their faces when they saw Gojo there. 

He didn’t know what to say when they finally approached, the thick silence and tension simmering in the air as he stared at Apollo. 

Strands of silver in his white hair, blue eyes burning with emotions he didn’t blame him for. Resentment. Reproach. 

“You’re-” 

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” he heard himself say, voice cracking painfully. 

“Yeah,” his son huffed, arms folding across his broad chest. “Us too.”

“Apollo,” the older man next to him scolded, giving him a fatherly look that seemed so natural on his face before throwing Gojo a look that was almost like ‘kids, right?’ “It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Choso.” 

And despite the fact he had to be in his seventies now, Gojo still sort of wanted to hit him.

Rip the golden band off his finger and start a fight over the fact he’d gotten to spend decades with the love of his life. 

“Was she happy?” He asked instead, hollowed out, no strength left in him to stand. 

“She was,” Artemis softly confirmed, patting his shoulder like he was a child. And he wondered if she had kids too, or if even his son’s children were older than him now. 

“She missed you,” Choso added, more mature than Gojo suspected he would ever be.

Because right now, he was filled with hate.

Anger and rage boiling and burning under the surface at the injustice of all of it. At everything he missed. Everything that should’ve been his that ended up in the hands of someone else because he was too stupid to hold onto you tight enough.

He hated Choso. Hated space. Hated the universe. 

Mostly though, he hated himself.

“We should go get some food,” Artemis artfully pivoted away, trying to tug him upright. “You’re probably starving, right?”

Gojo thought he nodded, not that he was totally in tune with his body, dazed as he tried to sort through the thousand thoughts flooding through his mind.

Numbness creeping in now that he knew it had all been for nothing.

“Before I forget,” she murmured, taking off a necklace he hadn’t noticed her wearing. The thin silver chain weighed down by two rings dangling at the end. The engagement ring he once gave you – and a plain band of white-gold. “Mom always wore it. She told me she bought the band for you before you were supposed to come back and could never bring herself to put either of them away.” 

She dropped it in his palm, his pulse pounding in his ears at the proof you never fully gave up on him. One last thread of you in his hands as he automatically unlocked the clasp and put it on himself, the weight of it sitting over his chest and tethering him back to reality.

To the two children he made with you standing in front of him now he was still lucky enough to meet. 

Artemis interlocked her arm with her brother, laughing at something he said before immediately beginning to bicker about where to eat at, who to call next.

Giggling about their sister, his throat closing at the confirmation you had another baby after him. That you lived a full life he’d only get to see second-hand. Through photos and stories instead of in person. 

Apollo grumbled something under his breath, throwing a glare back at Gojo, still protective over you after you passed. Artemis just elbowed her brother though, tossing the hair back over her other shoulder that reminded him of you.

And some depressing part of him wondered if that’s what you and him would’ve looked like together one day if he stayed. 

He would never get to know. 

His eyes drifted back to your grave. And then the one next to it. 

His name etched next to yours. A plot you must have purchased for him back when you thought you’d never get his body back. 

A loving fiancé and father. 

Gojo was grateful he would at least get to be buried next to you one day. 

You spent your life missing and mourning him.

He supposed it was just his turn. 

Who apparently must have bribed one of your friends to find out what you were wearing tonight judging by the flimsy white fabric he had loosely fastened into a toga and the much bigger angel wings attached to his back, the only part of his costume that was actually store-bought. His halo was shiny and silver and made of what looked fucking tinfoil, standing out above his fluffy white hair and about to fall off at any second.

Satoru was standing by the front door, holding a huge candy bowl and proudly passing it to some frat initiate next to him the second he saw you.

"There's my girl," he happily purred, slinging an arm around your shoulder.

You rolled your eyes, shrugging him off with an exaggerated sigh. It wasn't that you really minded his flirting - but you didn't need everyone here to think you were his. Satoru's words carried weight, more than he actually realized.

"You wish," you teased, batting your lashes and pushing past him to walk through the cracked-open door. The music you could hear from the street was jarring inside, bass thumping loud enough you could feel it in your bones as Yuki slipped out to go greet someone else.

Satoru was harder to shake off.

"You know I do," he hummed, following close behind you, his own angel wings making everyone else skirt around him in a wide berth.

He plucked out one of your feathers feather with a light laugh, the one that always seemed to take up space in your head after you heard it. You swatted at his hand, but he was already holding it over your head like it was fucking mistletoe.

"C'mon, sweetheart," he hummed. "Just one kiss for your favorite guy?"

Currently, you would rank him like number four or maybe even five, but you bit your tongue. Didn't have it in you to correct him. Got up on your tip toes to press a begrudging kiss on the corner of his mouth instead.

"Happy?"

"For now," he grinned.

You let him tug you into the kitchen, listening to him ramble on about someone you wanted to meet later. You didn't ask how he was planning on introducing you - and honestly, you didn't want to know.

For a guy who could have any girl on campus, he seemed awfully inclined to tack on a label to something you were both better off leaving unnamed.

Why ruin a nice thing?

Turn sloppy make outs and occasional casual sex into anything that could be construed as serious?

People were shouting his name as you passed by, one of those wide grins creeping across his face as his halo nearly fell off with how much he kept swiveling his head to greet his friends and the other girls who wanted to fuck him.

They could have him tonight.

You casually replied back to whatever he was chatting to you about, nodding and keeping an eye out for a head of pink hair while he rummaged through the fridge and pulled out some drinks. One of his frat bothers came up, leaning in to ask about how many kegs they had as Satoru rolled his eyes.

You managed to slip away before he even finishing cracking open his hard lemonade. Glancing over your shoulder at the irritatingly cute way his nose scrunched up at the sour taste at his first sip.

There was some foreign uncomfortable pressure in your chest, squeezing all your organs as you snuck out - forcing yourself to set your mind back on your mission.

It only took five minutes to find him.

Sukuna was reclining on a couch in one of the back rooms, thick thighs spread and smoking a blunt while heavy music blasted in the background. He hadn't bothered with anything other than his typical lazy outfit, a long-sleeved shirt clinging to his chest, loose jeans ripped and torn.

His head tilted to the side, a tiny smirk curling up on his lips as you walked over, wobbling on your heels as you pretended to be just a smidge more drunk than you really were so you'd be able to get away with more. Have an excuse in case you got rejected, easily slotting yourself in the empty spot next to him as his eyes dragged over your costume.

"Can I help you?" He grunted, like he wasn't considering what his dick might look like between your tits.

You looked down at the roll still perched between his fingers and then up to his lips.

"We could help each other," you slyly suggested, letting the implication hang in the air and biting your bottom lip.

"Oh yeah?" He arched a brow, still feigning nonchalance, but you knew better.

You had him.

He patted his lap, and it was so easy to toss your legs over his. He didn't touch you yet - let you do the work of scooting closer while he held out his blunt.

All you needed to do was wrap your lips around it. Except you got caught in the act.

"If you wanted some weed, I would've bought it for you," someone dryly commented behind you, and your manicured fingers paused above the blunt before you could reach out and grab it.

Throwing a look over your shoulder, angel wings fluttering as your eyes locked onto your second problem of the evening.

Suguru was smiling at you, perched all pretty on another man's lap, but it was hollow. The way his lips curled up was more like a smirk, one that spelled out trouble. He'd chosen some cheesy priest costume this year, as if he wasn't hoping to be worshipped himself.

"I'm just looking for a little fun," you hummed, daring him to say something else.

Suguru wasn't like Satoru. They were sorta similar, in a funny way, although you weren't sure if they even knew each other. Carried the kind of gravity that sucked you in. Satoru's was light, airy, playful like you were just animals batting back-and-forth with each other. Suguru?

He was closer to a panther, watching you with those dark eyes, waiting to strike and get you underneath his paw.

"You think you'll find it here?" He challenged, and you bit the inside of your cheek to stop your smile. He knew you wouldn't be able to resist the temptation of taking him up on whatever he was offering.

"You're the worst," you groaned, giving in before he could pick a fight and completely ruin your chance with Sukuna.

God, he knew how to derail your plans. With him though, you didn't really mind. Not when you could see if he was planning on putting those thick fingers to use for something other than strumming his stupid guitar.

You untangled yourself from Sukuna with a sigh, squeezing his thigh as you stood up. Suguru didn't step in how Satoru probably would have, waited for you to get close enough before one of his huge hands pressed down on the small of your back beneath your fake wings.

"Hey," Sukuna called out, and you barely concealed your own smirk when you looked back.

"Oh yeah?" You mimicked him. Tilting your head innocently, batting your lashes as cute as you could.

"I'll see you around."

You'd make sure of that.

Suguru stiffened, and you caught the way his mouth twitched before his thumb dug into your spine. He was pretty when he was jealous. The little pinch in his brows. The subtle clench of his jaw.

As if he didn't have his own fan club of sorority girls chasing after him.

He noticed you staring as he led you out of the room, squeezing in between passing people and up the stairs, his dark eyes swirling as they kept shifting down to see if you were still looking.

"What?" He asked, as if he didn't know.

"You're cute," you commented, shrugging a little bit.

"I thought I was the worst?" He teased, and you tried not to laugh.

Struggling to keep a straight face when his hand drifted lower, dancing over the curve of your ass right as he knocked twice on a door down the hall before pushing it open, peeking in first to make sure no one was inside.

And then he was dragging you to the bed, half-flopping down before pulling you on top of him. A hand on your ass, under your dress, possessive as you straddled him and got comfortable. A hint of annoyance still clinging to the corners of his mouth at the thought Sukuna got to have you on his lap first.

Even if he hadn't gotten a taste.

"What do you think you're doin' with a guy like that?" He asked, attempting to pull off your wings. For a guy who looked like he was ready to preach about heaven, you had a sinking feeling he wanted to drag you to hell with him.

"I don't know what I'm doing with a guy like you," you retorted, echoing him just to get a soft chuckle out. Dragging your finger down his chest, feeling for where his pants were underneath the dark tunic - and that thick bulge barely hidden, just waiting for your palm to press down.

"You want me to remind you?"

All it took was a smile for him to give up on plucking your wings to pull out his cock. It was one of the thicker ones you'd seen, a long vein pulsing all pretty along the side as pre-cum collected around his tip.

But before you could do anything with it, his hand was on your side, dragging you in for a kiss. Demanding, tongue on your teeth and hand in your hair, tethering you to him with soft kisses that didn't taste drunk.

Maybe a little hint of something sweet, but no nasty aftertaste of beer or alcohol clinging to him when he deepened it, sucking on your bottom lip like he'd die if he didn't.

His kisses ventured south - and it didn't take long for him to yank your tits free from your corset. Wrapping his mouth around one to suck hard, sharp canines grazing over your sensitive nipple while you whined his name.

Suguru was never sloppy, but he wasn't as precise as he usually was during your typical hookups. Dragging his tongue over the sore spots his teeth left, remarking the same places like he was just having fun.

Your chest was warm, pleasant heat drifting down to your core as you glanced around the room. It was dark, only the headlights of passing cars and the warm yellow lights street lamps bleeding through the window to illuminate the soft blue of the wrinkled comforter underneath you, dorky posters of characters you didn't know plastered on all the walls.

Suguru wasn't in a frat - but you guessed maybe it was his friend's room. You preferred not to hookup with a guy in their own bed. They got ideas of you being theirs.

But this wasn't a bad loophole.

"I don't like the idea of sharing you," Suguru confessed, his cock throbbing underneath you when your weight shifted down.

"Too bad," you teased, smirking as he barely stifled his own groan at the contact.

He might've made you eat those words - but the universe seemed to have something to say about it too.

The door swung open and someone too familiar stumbled in.

Your heart sank to your fucking ass. Staring at the open door, Satoru's hazy blue eyes sharpening fast the second they landed on you on top of someone else.

"Baby," he breathed. "I'm wounded."

Before you could say anything, Suguru was sitting up with an exaggerated scoff. Still holding you in place, but pulling you up against his chest to hide your breasts from Satoru. Oblivious that he had already seen them.

"How many times have I told you not to call me baby?" Suguru grinded his back molars, exhaling hard as his fingers sank deeper into your back. You blinked, trying to process what that meant before Satoru was rolling his eyes.

"I was talking to her," he huffed, pointing at you.

"You're sleeping with him?" Suguru fixed you in a hard frown, head snapping between the two of you like he couldn't conceive it.

"That's supposed to be my line," Satoru retorted, hands on his hip, moving a little to call attention to his wings like he was trying to show off the fact you were unfortunately matching him in front of Suguru.

"You guys, um, know each other?" You awkwardly asked, as if it wasn't obvious. Satoru snorted.

"Apparently not as well as you," Suguru muttered, more jealous than he started off as.

"Don't be mean to my princess," Satoru defensively said, and you both swiveled to stare blankly at him.

"I'm not-" You started, about to hold up your hand before he kept talking.

"Did you really ditch me for Suguru?" He whined, walking over casually, like he was ready to just fucking climb in bed with the two of you.

"No," you shook your head, avoiding the actual answer.

Suguru laughed though, and you shot him a glare to shut up. His dark eyes had narrowed though, amusement glittering in them as he leaned in.

"Seriously? You and that idiot?" Suguru chided, all low and a little sleazy, lips ghosting over the shell of your ear.

"Hey," Satoru pouted, standing directly in front of you now, pulling your attention back to him with two firm fingers on your chin. "I can hear you too, y'know."

"I know," Suguru sharply replied. Daring him to do something, as he continued in a low drawl. "You've got terrible taste, pretty girl."

"Clearly if she wants you," Satoru scrunched his nose up again to argue.

"She wanted Sukuna earlier," Suguru ratted you out, and you felt the pulse of his cock, the bite to his voice that made it clear he was itching to claim you.

"What?" Satoru's perky voice dropped into something sharp enough to skewer your heart.

"Caught her on his lap," Suguru revealed, like he was letting him in on some juicy bit of gossip.

"Were you gonna fuck him on my sheets too?" He bluntly asked, pretty lips pushed together as he leaned in close enough for his nose to nudge against yours.

The tension was too thick to slice through, filling up your lungs when you sucked in a shaky breath. An even worse idea than your initial one starting to form as your eyes flicked between each man.

The only thing better than one hot guy was two, wasn't it?

"What are you guys gonna do about it?"

You felt Suguru's smirk against your throat before Satoru chuckled, surprisingly deep as he cupped your cheek.

"You really wanna find out?"

You were really in trouble now. Had fucked around and found out just how much your flings could take before they were finished.

Literally and figuratively and soon-to-be stuffed with proof of just how screwed with you.

But their hands were too nice to ever say no to. Their mouths latched all over your body, throwing jabs at each other while they pulled-and-pushed you between them. A blur of fingers and cocks and tongues, your angel wings and panties discarded somewhere on the floor so you could be stretched out on Suguru's thick digits. Scissoring you open just to replace it with his unfairly large dick, dragging it against his walls and bucking his hips up so you kept falling forward on his chest. Relying on him for support while Satoru painted your back and shoulders with hickies, his chest against your back so you were stuck between them.

And then Satoru straining to reach past you to pull out a bottle of lube, softly muttering that he could satisfy you more than either of them ever could - only earning a scoff from Suguru.

"How do, um, you guys know each other?" You stammered out the question, breathing heavily between each word, eyeing where Satoru had stationed himself behind you as he squeezed an intimidating amount on his palm, already rubbing some on his cock before his cold hand started drifting down your ass. Skimming over your other hole, previously unbreached before he slowly started pushing the tip of a finger in.

He hesitated, testing the waters to see if you wanted it before you nodded yes, as if anal was a fucking peace offering.

"We've been best friends since high school," Satoru easily replied, like this was a conversation you were having in class instead of while you were being fucked and fingered.

"D-do you guys do this, like, a lot?" You asked, eyes scrunching shut as Suguru's tip grinded against a sweet spot inside of you, your nails digging into his chest for purchase as Satoru continued his steady exploration of the other parts of you.

"Do you?" Suguru remarked, his next thrust accidentally forcing Satoru's fingers further in time with him, a pathetic little whine torn from the back of your throat as you clawed at him again.

Your lips were stuck in a permanent part, about to say no, but you couldn't find it in yourself to form a single coherent word as Satoru readjusted just enough to slot another finger in your ass, the searing stretch rewiring your brain until you could only think about how fucking full you felt.

It wasn't exactly uncomfortable, but teetering on the brink of brain-breaking as he started to pump his fingers in and out, the weight of his chest starting to press down as he swirled them around just enough you could feel the thin barrier between him and Suguru straining to contain both of them. A new kind of intense you never experienced before, hyper aware of each and every movement and still lost in all of it.

"You think you can handle the real thing, baby?" Satoru tempted you, his mouth pressing a painfully soft kiss to your shoulder before his tongue licked a clean stripe up your neck. Making you shiver, seeking their warmth like a second skin.

"Mm, mhm," you mindlessly moaned, a tiny little whimper escaping when his fingers slid out and something even more enticing pressed against the base of your ass instead.

At least he wasn't as thick as Suguru was.

Unfortunately for you though?

He was longer.

The new stretch was brutal, but the lube and his fingers managed to loosen you up enough that the sting of his cock slowly sliding in was pleasurable instead of painful.

Suguru's mouth was back on yours, capturing you in reverent kisses while Satoru worshipped you from behind, slow strokes eventually picking up the pace, messy squelches and lewd moans drowned out by the party still thumping outside. Although if someone was standing on the other side of the wall, they might have heard the bed frame constantly knocking into it in time with their mean thrusts.

You were folded almost flat between them. Knees digging into the wrinkled blankets, thighs still spread wide as both their dicks dug in deeper. Drool probably leaking out of your lips before Suguru lapped it up.

"Am I not good enough for you?" Satoru huffed in your ear, teeth nipping at you while you were splayed in this position, buried in your ass while he nagged you about his feelings.

"I jus' don't w-want a boyfriend right now," you managed, slurring half your words when your lungs could barely get any air in them. Suguru's cock felt like it was fucking lodged in your throat, insides being rearranged by both of them.

"But if you did-"

And because your night wasn't messy enough, the door swung open for the second time tonight.

Your knight in cardboard armor had arrived.

And Nanami Kento was not happy at what he walked into.

His favorite tutoring student being sandwiched between morons number one and two. And maybe math wasn't your best subject either, but it wasn't hard to calculate that he didn't approve.

"Ken," you started, batting your lashes like both your holes weren't being filled. Like you could manage more than broken thinking and begging when you couldn't even breathe.

As if Satoru wasn't still halfway in your ass where he could see the filthy connection between your bodies.

"God, do not tell me that you've been hooking up with him too," Satoru whined. "He's the fucking frat treasurer."

Somehow, you missed that memo.

"Maybe?" You offered, both dicks inside you throbbing and pulsing as Suguru snickered. His own jealousy only overwritten by his amusement at Satoru being more jealous.

As if this was a competition he'd ever win by being nonchalant.

"Your presence was requested downstairs," Kento dryly said, his annoyed stare settling on Satoru, arms folding across his chest.

"Sorta busy, man," Satoru huffed, but your heart pulsed at the way Nanami started to turn.

"Unless you wanna join too?" You called out all airy and soft, watching his shoulders freeze.

"Are you suggesting I-?" He stopped himself, pushing the bridge of his glasses higher up on his nose while you stuck out your bottom lip.

"What? Are you scared?" Satoru eagerly joined in, ready to ragebait Nanami or call him a pussy for passing on yours.

"No," Kento scoffed, a faint hint of pink blooming underneath his cheeks.

"We could always see if Sukuna wants to join since you liked his attention so much," Suguru sarcastically added, that familiar edge in his honeyed hum, his cock grinding in deeper, kissing your cervix to make you whimper in front of the blond.

"This is a horrible idea," Kento muttered, and you were inclined to agree. But he just locked the door - throwing away his better judgment for the night.

The only thing all three of them seemed to agree on was their dislike for him. Or maybe just their want for you.

Kento stopped at the edge of the bed, as if touching it would mean he was just as bad as the rest of you. Your eyes hesitantly looked up to meet his, but instead of disgust waiting for you, it was just the faintest flicker of disappointment drowning in an amber sea of something much stronger.

Desire.

He knew he never had all of you. And he'd make due with what you could give him.

Right now? That meant your throat.

It was a little awkward at first, but then he was pulling his dick free too, one knee on the bed to position himself at the right height for where your face was. Although Suguru side-eyed the pale member, making sure it didn't get too close to him before your lips parted, tongue out and ready.

"Y'know," Satoru unhelpfully chimed in behind you. "It's bigger than I thought it'd be."

"Shut up," Kento hissed through gritted teeth before he stuck his dick in your mouth like he was trying to get you to stop talking instead.

But you took it, cheeks hollowing out as you sucked on him, barely keeping your own teeth from grazing him when your body was being tugged three different ways. His strong fingers tangling in your hair to pull you in, cock bobbing in the back of your throat. Suguru's hands on your side to hold you in place while he pumped you full. Satoru's full weight on your back keeping you pinned there for all of them to fuck.

"Your mouth's better than your hand," Kento slyly murmured, and Mr. Cool and Collected underneath you snapped, his dark brows furrowing together and throwing his competition a seething glare.

"How romantic," Suguru retorted, all snarky as you struggled to breathe through your nose.

You didn't think you'd ever done anything so filthy.

And you only wanted more, body trembling and shaking as you whined and whimpered for them. You could feel the sinful way you were squeezing down on Satoru and Suguru, the wall barely separating and holding both of them in as they dragged themselves in-and-out over and over again. All your sounds muffled by the girth of Kento pressed up against the roof of your mouth. You didn't even know whose name you would moan if you could.

Completely and utterly filled, their words going in one ear and out the other as you took their thrusts.

You had no idea who came first.

Maybe Satoru? Or Suguru? Both?

Overwhelmed by sudden warmth down between your thighs, deep groans as someone's fingers found your clit. You were pretty sure it was the former, judging by the sloppy little circles being rubbed over the sensitive bud. Messy massages, just as desperate and needy as you were as he moaned your name into your skin, his teeth sinking down on your shoulder as he worked you closer to a climax.

"Come on, sweetheart," he purred, pleading. "Cum for me, okay?"

You still didn't have the heart to tell him no.

With the pressure of his fingers, his arm wrapped around your waist to get better access, or maybe just from how full you were, the rubber band barely holding you together snapped hard and fast.

The noise it ripped from you sounded like some animal, all strangled and raw, the reverberations making Kento cum too, warm ropes of cum shot down your throat, nearly making you choke. The veins against your tongue throbbing briefly before he abruptly pulled out like your gag concerned him just for another thick spurt of it to suddenly coat your face.

Satoru's fingers were still underneath you, still rubbing you through it, Suguru's voice coaxing you and offering pretty praises while Kento cursed, pumping his cock as the last of it dripped out on your lips.

You felt like a puddle. Reduced down to something limp and boneless, collapsed on Suguru's chest while Nanami cleaned you up, grabbing a pair of boxers from the closest drawer after asking Satoru if it was actually fresh. Suguru was saying something to his friend too, but he was preoccupied pulling out of your sore ass, his fingers disappearing from your front as he shifted off of you. Someone was brushing your hair from your face, but your eyes were closed, lashes still fluttering as exhaustion set into your bones. Cum still leaking down your thighs, probably a mess soaking into Satoru's sheets, a mix of all of you.

Maybe you didn't get to fuck Sukuna. But surely this was better, wasn't it?

You could just try again next party.

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a/n: feel kinda meh about how it turned out but hope you guys liked it <3