haunt me then

It’s not that he is a bad guy per se; he’s incredibly polite, with a voice and countenance so sweet and timid anyone would find him charming. But he gives Nobara the creeps. She swears if you ever turned up missing, his basement would be the first place to check.

(The second time she said that to you, your first thought was to wonder if his basement wasn’t so bad a place to be).

You don’t have it in you to confront the fact that she’s right: Yuuta is weird.

Outwardly, there wasn't actually anything weird about him when you first met. He's handsome—not 'People Magazine's Top 100 Sexiest Men' handsome, but handsome enough to get your attention. He dressed inconspicuously, stuck to the back of classrooms, and kept mostly to himself. But he had friends, that much you knew from the times you'd seen him around. And he was always kind: opening doors for you, offering you a smile, and later sticking around and chatting with you as acquaintances would, once you got more friendly. He wasn't exactly serial killer material; not to the exaggerated level that Nobara had placed him in the very first time you ever mentioned an interest in him. Sure he was a bit of a loner, but that wasn't a crime.

It took a few more intimate encounters for you to find that Nobara's intuition wasn't far off. Despite her disinterest in them, she's never wrong about men, it seems.

It’s the eyes.

He has this stare that roots you in place, that makes the bones beneath your skin feel like the layers around them aren’t thick enough to hide away from him. You wonder if he can see the reds and yellows of your bone marrow beneath the layers of compacted calcium.

Just that deep, endless blue looking down at you makes your knees too weak to stand. As confident a person as you are, you're reduced to a newborn fawn, struck down to the earth with no strength in its feet. Those first few moments where you're bare beneath him it's like you've never taken a step and are too afraid to. But the fear has never pushed you away—in fact, it’s only drawn you nearer to him, your body a willing addict as it asks for more, more, more.

It's like a person who's afraid of heights becoming addicted to skydiving. The fear is there, it's heavy on your chest when you look down and out of the plane. But you come back and make the jump—over and over, the adrenaline and fear a nitrous; an incredible blood rush.

Perhaps any other prey animal would feel skittish in the presence of a predator such as him, even if he's tamed. But it doesn’t work on you, not entirely. He makes your skin crawl but your heart race, like watching a horror movie from the comforts of the sticky, dirty seats of a cheap movie theater. The seats aren’t remotely comfortable but the movie’s too good to tear your eyes away.

Besides, you wouldn't get up and dash out of a movie theater for being scared. The threat is contained. The movie isn't real, no matter how much adrenaline rushes through your veins—at least, your mind is convinced that it can't hurt you. Because the serial killer or the scary zombie in the screen can't jump out at you, can't actually harm you... can it?

Anyway, that’s what it feels like to be with Okkotsu Yuuta.

Everything he does seems to be both gentle and intense, purposeful and impertinent, yet mindful and considerate. Like he's apologetic for taking up space, for existing, but not so for feeling. He's unapologetically a bleeding heart, and he offers it to you. It makes for a dangerous combination—a man with no self-preservation, but the most intense hunger imaginable. More than once had he compared his desire for you to starving. And you believe him, having felt the intensity of his feelings in the strength of his grip and the bite of his teeth.

He’s never done anything to outright hurt you (not without your consent, anyway) but you don’t doubt that he could.

“He asked me to marry him,” you repeat the words after you swallow your noodles. The phrase feels like a foreign language on your tongue, sounds like your speaking through the bottom of a glass bottle. It doesn’t feel real when you say it aloud, not like it felt when he whispered them to you this morning over your shoulder.

“He’s fucking insane,” Nobara guffaws, incredulous. Like it’s the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. “You’re not even dating him.”

“I don’t think he cares,” you reply. There’s this weird grin on your face, to Nobara’s horror. Are you even entertaining something so—

“He should. He should ask you to date him—”

“Well we—”

“—do normal shit like going out to dinner or something—”

“But he does take me out—”

“—get down on one knee—no, both his knees—”

“Nobara.”

“—first he needs to beg you for forgiveness for all those fucking bruises—”

“But I—”

“—Then, he needs to promise to stay a hundred feet away from you for at least a year—”

“Nobara, that’s ridiculous. I—”

She holds up a finger. “I’m not done.”

Your shoulders sag as she continues:

“You need at least a year of dating normal guys to remember what normal, not serial killer men are like. And then maybe I’ll allow him to breathe the same air as you again. Maybe.”

"He's harmless."

She quirks a brow in silence.

"Okay maybe not harmless, but he never did anything I didn't agree to."

"You know," she starts, as she picks up her chopsticks and starts picking up another pinch of noodles, "You were so innocent before you ever let crazy stick itself between your legs. Normal."

"I resent that."

"It's true!" She stuffs the noodles into her mouth, but continues talking. You've seen each other at rock bottom, so she's way past something as small as talking with her mouth full. "Before Okkotsu you hadn't even shown a guy your tits before. You were a virgin when you met him! Now he's got your wrists tied to his bed and got you calling him nii-san—"

You flush, "That was one time!"

"He's fucking weird! The hickeys you come home with are nasty, dude. What if he's a fucking vampire?"

"That'd be kind of hot."

"You're beyond saving," she sighs into her noodle carton. "No man's dick is that good." When you're silent for more than a beat, she groans. "Okay, even if it is, he's, like, two steps away from chaining you to a radiator or something. Some Ted Bundy shit,"

"That would never happen," you shrug, digging into your noodles once more, "Why would he wanna date me so bad if he just wanted to do some shit like that?"

"He'll Stockholm syndrome you into it. Don't call me when he's got you tied to a toilet."

You chuckle. "You don't know him, okay? He can be a little intense but he's harmless. Devoted, even."

She rolls her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, spare me the story about him eating you out the entire night on the first date, okay. I refuse to be jealous of you and him."

"It was amazing though," you grin like a fool. "I think he's more into eating pussy than sex."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Okkotsu supposedly being the world's number one munch aside—" she ignores your chuckling, "—what did you tell him when he said that?"

"What, the marriage thing?" She nods, and there's a snap and fizzing sound as she opens a can of beer. "He was literally balls deep in me, what was I supposed to say?"

"Uh, push him off and run the fuck home, maybe? Anyone with sense would," she retorts as she takes a sip of her beer.

"But I like him."

That has her spitting out her beer dramatically. She is one for theatrics sometimes. "I thought you said you'd never date him."

"I've always liked him! He's just... intense, you know? It put me off before but..."

"But?"

Your thoughts fall back to the early hours of this morning, right before the whole 'marry me' sex thing, when you'd woken up first and got a glimpse of his sleeping face. His lips parted just a little, locks of black strewn across his forehead, an innocence about him that made all those intense, scary moments feel trivial. An unconscious arm around your waist as you cuddled up to his chest, prey safe in the arms of its captor. He'd never hurt you, he'd keep you safe—a feeling as soothing as it is addicting. You find yourself just as wanting of moments like those as you are of the thrill. Is there ever a moment that you haven't wanted to be in Yuuta's grasp?

As soon as his body began to twitch awake, eyes slowly blinking the sleep away, you had turned over and faced away from him, embarrassed at the way your stomach felt like worms when he stirred to life. The arm around your waist tightened, pulling you closer.

"You stayed."

His voice was thick with sleep, his warm breath fanning against the nape of your neck. Judging by the still dark sky beyond the windows, you'd maybe only fallen asleep for an hour or two. Your eyes widened at the realization that, despite sleeping together for several months, this was indeed the first time you'd slept in his bed after sex. It was what later prompted Nobara's 'intervention' of sorts: her fears that whatever you were doing with Yuuta had reached a point of no return.

"Is that," you paused to clear the sleep from your throat, "Is it okay that I stayed?"

"I always ask you to," he rubbed his palm up the curve of your side. "You can stay in my bed forever," he muttered as he kissed the bruise on your neck, a bite he'd left just a little while ago turning dark as the blood under the skin pooled. "You know I wouldn't mind."

"Yuuta." you angled your head as he continued to mouth at your neck. The way you said his name felt like a warning. Perhaps 'Down dog' would've had the same effect.

"I know," he leaned closer to your back, shameless as his length, hardened, pressed against the back of your thighs. "I'm a little stubborn though... and patient. For you, at least. I'll wait until you say yes."

He always said it like it was inevitable. The question of you agreeing to be with him, for more than just sex, was never a matter of if, but when.

And when he soon after pushed you down gently, propped your hips on one of his pillows, and fucked you lazily from behind as you hid your flustered face into your arms, he wondered if he'd finally had you. Because if he was stubborn you were downright impossible, always immediately rebuking his advances with an 'I'm not ready for a relationship right now' or some similar excuse. To which he'd tuck his tail between his legs and brush off the rejection, man up, and fuck you like he owed you the best night of your life—every fucking time.

But today no such rejection came. He said he'd wait until you'd say yes and you didn't say no. When he soon after had caged in your body with his, his body entirely surrounding yours as he pressed you into his bed, he'd gotten carried away, spurred on by your first lack of rejection in months.

"I wanna marry you," he'd told you as he grinded his hips into your backside. The angle in this position was insane, you had to bite down on your arm to stop from moaning awfully loud. Yuuta wished you would. "I can't stand the thought of anyone else doing this with you. I think I'd kill them."

"Yuuta," you moan his name into his mouth, and it always sets him off to hear you say it. "Don't-don't joke around like-like that."

Despite your words, you didn't think he was kidding. And, you realized, you didn’t think you minded if he wasn’t.

A sound, something like a laugh, or maybe a breath of relief, tumbled out of his throat when you squeezed down on him in response. He'd angled your head to the side, to kiss you roughly, full of bite. You returned his kiss as his words made you a combination of afraid and excited. Would you ever get tired of the feeling?

Yuuta was like a rabid dog collared, restrained only by your previous rejections, and for a moment you wanted to know what all of him felt like. What would a Yuuta Okkotsu be like if he were set free, if he were given the ability to satiate this hunger? Would he finally consume you whole, or would he stop baring his raw, beating heart so desperately and relent?

"I'm not joking," he pulled back a little, just to rest his head against your nape. Every word felt hot as his breath warmed the skin between your shoulder blades. "Wanna be with you—marry you, worship you, making a thousand and one babies if you want. Whatever you want, I'll do. I don't care how it sounds, I just—"

"It sounds crazy," you replied, not a hint of malice in your words.

"I know, I—"

"I like you, Yuuta." You felt the way his body tensed up. "Just... slow down a little, okay? Dating comes first. Do it properly, yeah?"

He pushed up from the bed, pulled out of you and sat on his knees, a little dumbstruck. "What?"

You turned around to face him, sitting up to match his posture. "I like you… I think about you doing this with someone else and get jealous too… you scare me a little, but I like you. But we should date first, I think."

He looked like you broke him a little, but a smile broke out over his lips regardless. "Can I... be your boyfriend, then?"

"Will you stop talking about killing people if I say yes?"

A blush broke out over his face back then as he nodded, and color pools over your cheeks as you remember it, much later now, over noodles in front of your best friend Nobara.

"Yeah he's intense but I think it makes my boyfriend even cuter," you smile. “I don’t want him to feel like that for anyone else… I like that he’s crazy about me… is that weird?”

"Did you just say boyfriend?"

When you nod she shakes her head and groans.