lestappen

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. 

Kakashi knows what it’s like trying to play catch-up after some time away from home—two months, in your case. He’d knocked on your door a few minutes ago with the intention of returning your key, and he must have caught you right after you got back from the store if the two bags of groceries on your kitchen counter were any indication. 

You looked so dead on your feet that Kakashi took over from there, unprompted. But now, as he stirs the pot of flavourful soup simmering away on the stove, his mind sees fit to wander.  

What the hell is he doing?  

He’s getting too attached. That’s what he’s doing.  

It’s that time again—time to cut and run, just as he always does when things start to become complicated. Kakashi makes a habit of ending any potential connection before it can even start, because he can’t afford to lose anyone else. He can’t get hurt if he never lets anyone in. It’s easier that way. 

“I need to schedule my injection,” you mutter to yourself as you read through one particular letter. Then you sigh and toss it back down onto the table, before you lean back in your chair and rub your tired eyes. “We should probably get used to using condoms again until I can book an appointment.” 

Your birth control must be overdue, then.  

“Sure,” Kakashi answers, feigning unbothered. The two of you used condoms in the beginning, but after a particularly gruesome mission that nearly saw him home in a box, Kakashi stopped reaching for the bedside drawer, and you stopped asking him to.  

He should have known then that he was getting too attached. 

Still, it’s your body. Whatever you want. He’ll end things in the morning either way. 

As Kakashi samples a bit of the soup he’s minding on the stove, pausing for a moment to add a bit more salt, it suddenly sinks in – really sinks in – what could happen if the two of you aren’t careful.  

He could get you pregnant. 

A jolt of arousal shoots through him.

Kakashi doesn’t want children, not now, not ever, which is why it doesn’t make a lick of sense that such a thing would turn him on. He likes the idea of his seed taking root inside of you. He might even enjoy it, the imagery his mind conjures—you bent over for him, begging him to give you a baby, your pretty yukata hiked up around your waist…  

His clan crest embroidered on the back of it.  

Kakashi swears.

You startle, looking over at him in alarm. “What happened? Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” he lies. Then he proceeds to play it off like he burned himself, but he isn’t fine. No, that single thought, that single fantasy, scares the complete and utter shit out of him—but it turns him on even more, and that’s so much worse.  

He’s already too attached. 

—

Kakashi doesn’t do feelings. He has them, of course, much like any other person, but he doesn’t let them show very often, and he certainly doesn’t talk about them. He won’t say in so many words that he cares; instead, he shows you through his actions alone. 

His knees brush the underside of your thighs as he settles between your legs, bracing himself with one hand beside your head.  

What a vision you make, spread out for him like this.  

Your lamp had blown when you went to turn it on, leaving the streetlights to illuminate your features in a sickly hue of yellow-green. It isn’t romantic in the least, but he can’t help thinking that you’ve never looked more beautiful than in this moment—maybe because it’s the last time he’ll ever get to see you like this.  

The sight of you, so needy and wanting, fills his chest with something bittersweet.  

The tomoe of his sharingan spins lazily as he memorises the curves of your body, the muss of your hair, the rise and fall of your chest as you work to recover from your first orgasm of the night. His fingers are still tacky with your essence, and he smears the residual wetness over the head of his cock.

“You should wear a condom,” comes your breathy whisper, but you make no move to stop him. Your eyes almost seem to glow as you peer up at him in the dark, worrying your lower lip between your teeth. 

“Mm. Do you want me to?” 

His question hangs heavy in the air. The only things Kakashi can hear are your soft breaths and the sound of his own steady heartbeat, which quickens with every silent second that passes.  

You want to say no, he realises.  

He wants you to say no. 

“I like it better without,” you answer quietly, and the implication isn’t lost on him. Not when you look up at him with those big doe eyes, like you don’t know the risk. 

Because there is a risk, and he knows it. Kakashi hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it all night—wicked thoughts, terrible thoughts—thoughts of filling your fertile womb with his seed, thoughts of watching your belly grow round with his child, thoughts of seeing his clan sigil stamped between your shoulder blades like a mark of ownership. 

His.  

Against his better judgement, Kakashi does exactly what he shouldn’t do. He agrees.

“Just this once.”  

Just like he says every other time—except every other time, there's never been a risk.

Your coy little smile prompts him to lower down onto an arm and settle more of his weight on you. Kakashi dips his head to kiss you indulgently, savouring the taste of you, the feel of you beneath him. He kisses you like he hopes to convey just how much he missed you while you were gone, like you might be able to taste the unspoken words that linger in his mouth. 

He kisses you like he means it—and he does. That’s why he needs to go. 

As his tongue twines with yours, Kakashi fills you in a slow, beautiful glide that wrenches a whimper from your throat. He knows he should go easy on you, but he relishes in the rapid flutter of your walls as you struggle to adjust to him after so much time apart. A surge of masculine pride washes over him, tinged with a hint of guilt for stretching you open like this. He isn’t exactly small, after all, but you take him so well. 

To ease any potential discomfort, he smooths his hand up the silky skin of your thigh in a soothing caress, before he trails gentle, placating kisses along your jawline. “Is this okay?” Kakashi asks, voice low, only to be rewarded with a particularly strong contraction that makes his toes curl. 

“More than okay,” you sigh. 

As a test, he shifts his hips. When Kakashi hears your breath hitch, he knows that you can handle more.  

He starts slow, rocking into you sensually, but he already knows that he isn’t going to last. It’s been just as long for him, and you’re tighter than you’ve ever been.  

“God, Kakashi, you feel so good.”  

So do you. Kakashi sucks a bruise on your neck in response, if only to muffle the sound of his own pleasure when your perfect cunt clenches around him again.  

He needs to pace himself, or he’ll finish too soon—but then you ask him for more, and what else can he do but oblige you?

He speeds up, not overly so, just enough that both of you can hear the slick, sloppy sounds of your lovemaking. The smell of your arousal permeates the air, and he’s tempted to have another taste. 

Later. 

“You’re so wet,” he murmurs into your ear. “Did you miss me that much?” 

Maybe he’s reassurance-seeking – just a little – but your answering whine tells him what he already knows. 

He’ll miss this. He’ll miss you. That’s why he needs to go. 

Kakashi doesn't want to think about that. He just wants to enjoy what little time with you he has left.

“Stay with me,” you rasp. You’ve always been good at noticing when he’s stuck in his head, but right now, Kakashi can’t help but wonder if you’ve just read his thoughts. You see through him so easily. It’s one of the things he likes about you. 

“Sorry,” he says with genuine apology, leaning in to capture your lips again. You let out a pleased hum into his mouth and lift your thighs up a little higher—an offering, one he’s more than happy to accept, even if he doesn’t plan to reciprocate your vulnerability.

It’s selfish, he knows. 

The new angle does something to him, or maybe it’s because he's well aware that it would be even easier to fill you up this way. He reaches deeper like this, and the tilt of your hips would perfectly hold his cum in place, increasing the chances that it’ll take. 

He wants it to take. 

Kakashi exhales a long, shaky breath. He shouldn’t want that as much as he does. He shouldn’t want it at all.  

“Close?”  

Yes, but he’s not going to tell you that. Kakashi pulls back to look at you, only to find you gazing up at him like he’s hung the moon. It makes his heart ache.  

He stamps it down. “I could be,” he teases lightly—a non-answer. “Are you?” 

When you open your mouth to respond, however, he snaps his hips forward suddenly to make you trip over your words. “I—shit,” you swear, and his eyes shine with silent laughter. Your own narrow playfully as you add, “I could be too, if you keep that up.”  

“Really?” 

To pick on you a little, Kakashi withdraws from your tight heat more slowly than he has all night, agonisingly slowly, until only the head of him remains inside; and then he lingers there, purposely, until the stirrings of impatience start to take you over.  

It’s cute, the frown you give him, the pout he sees beginning to form. “Don’t be mean,” you tell him sulkily. 

His lips tug up at the corners, revealing a hint of prominent canine. “Maa, I didn’t realise you were in a rush,” Kakashi drawls. “And here I wanted to take my time with you.”  

Before you can read too much into what he’s just said, he slams home. Hard.

Your startled gasp brings on a flicker of self-satisfaction deep within. Kakashi relishes in the knowledge that only he can make you feel like this—especially when he starts to fuck you in earnest, prompting you to fling your arms around his shoulders.  

“F-Fuck, Kakashi, oh my god—” 

“That’s it,” he encourages gently. “Hold onto me.”

He likes the closeness of it, the intimacy.

You cling to him like your life depends on it, which brings about a funny feeling in his chest that he can’t quite shake—something warm and gooey and affectionate.  

Kakashi stamps that down, too, and traces the line of your neck with his tongue, kissing and sucking at your sensitive skin until you shiver. Seeing your throat so littered with love bites unearths something within him, something primal that he’s always refused to name. He likes seeing the marks he’s left on you. He wants them to mean something.

He wants them to mean that you’re his. 

He’s too attached. 

To distract himself from what he intends to do in the morning, Kakashi picks up the pace, flesh smacking against flesh as he drives his hips into yours, fast and rough, exactly how you want it.  

It won't last long. He’s too worked up. 

Kakashi knows he’ll come before you do if he continues like this, but when he tries to slow down, you dig your heels insistently into his ass. 

“Don’t stop, please don’t stop, please—” 

“I’ll have to pull out soon,” he says raggedly, even though the thought of finishing in you already has him ready to blow.

When Kakashi feels you lock your ankles behind him, he nearly does.  

“I want it inside,” you whine, your breath fanning hot over the shell of his ear.  

His thoughts screech to a halt. You want him to come inside you, knock you up— 

“Fuck,” he curses, stopping abruptly, buried all the way to the hilt. His cock throbs wildly, desperate for release, forcing him to tightly grip the the sheets above your head in order to stave it off. 

If he moves right now, he’s done for.  

When you make a quiet, frustrated sound deep in your throat and wiggle your hips, Kakashi barely manages to hang on. He can feel that tell-tale flutter inside of you, the one that indicates exactly how close you are, but he’s closer. His breaths come out in short, sharp pants as he tries to hold himself together.  

You finish first. Always. 

“Don’t be mean,” you say again, but you sound a little more petulant this time.  

Kakashi lets out an exhausted sort of laugh and presses a wet smack of a kiss against your cheek, making you giggle. “You like it when I’m mean.”  

“I like it when you’re nice,” you clap back, voice breathy. 

Kakashi hums knowingly. “All right. I can be nice.”  

Then he pulls back just enough to pepper your face with kisses, and you squeal in delight, though it soon tapers off into a moan when he starts to trail them down your throat, each one more sensual than the last. He palms one of your breasts, gently squeezing, tweaking a nipple— 

“Come on,” you whine, digging your heels into his ass a second time. 

No more teasing. You want him to be nice.

You inhale sharply when Kakashi picks back up where he left off, this time with quick, shallow thrusts that target your g-spot. He smooths his hand down your side, savouring the softness of your skin, then he slides it in between your bodies to rub your clit in just the way you like—the way he remembers you like, because he’s too fucking attached. And sure enough, when your hips buck from the added sensation, he knows that it’s working for you. 

“If you—If you edge me again, I swear to god—” 

Upon hearing the indignation in your voice, Kakashi laughs softly. “I won’t.” 

Then he remembers that he won’t have a chance to edge you again. Not after tonight. 

His jaw tenses at the reminder. 

“Fuck, I’m so close,” you gasp, holding onto him, needing him, which pulls him right back into the present. “Come with me. Please?” 

Kakashi bites back a groan and slides in deeper, readying to do what his body craves. 

No. He can’t come with you. He’d have to finish inside in order for that to happen. 

And just like that, he’s back to teetering on the edge. The filth his mind conjures nearly proves to be his undoing—a vivid image of your tight, wet cunt wringing out every drop of his cum until it takes, tying you to him, making you need him. Making you his. The threat of it simmers under his skin, but it’s starting to feel more like a guarantee. 

Get her there, then pull out. 

Kakashi repeats those words in his head like a mantra, over and over, like it’ll ensure that he lasts, and it works—at least until you start to move your hips in time with his thrusts. You meet him at the perfect angle, sucking him deep on every stroke, allowing him to slide just beyond your cervix and into that spot that sends your voice into a fever pitch. 

A choked sob escapes you as you rake your nails down his back, leaving red lines in your wake. The sting of it only sends him higher, and he sinks his teeth into the junction of your neck and shoulder to prevent himself from blowing too soon. 

“Right there, Kakashi, right fucking there—” 

Right there, so deep within you that if he came right now— 

He groans when he imagines what would happen, and it all ends with his baby in your belly and his family crest on your back. It shouldn’t turn him on as much as it does, yet he fucks into you with purpose, now—hard, deep, powerful thrusts that knock your headboard into the wall. 

Kakashi knows exactly what that purpose is. The primal part of his brain won’t let him forget it. 

“Yes, just like that, fuck me, make me fucking yours—” 

He kisses you to shut you up, because if he hears another syllable, he’s sure to fill you to the brim. It’s not a gentle kiss, not now. He holds your head in place with a firm grip on your jaw, shoves his tongue into your mouth, and still, he recites his mantra. 

Get her there, then pull out.  

Get her there, then pull out.  

Get her there, then—  

You jerk your head away to gulp in a breath of fresh air, chest heaving from exertion, and Kakashi’s eyes sweep over your face for any sign of discomfort. What he finds is the opposite, and he drinks in the pleasured scrunch of your brows, the hazy flutter of your eyelids, the kiss-swollen state of your lips. 

Watching your muscles tense and strain as you struggle to keep your eyes on his is one of the most intimate things he’s ever experienced. “Come inside me,” you beg, and he can hear the desperation there, see it written all over your pretty face. “I need it, I fucking need it, Kakashi, give me your cum—” 

“I’ll give it to you,” he chokes out. Anything for you. Anything you want. 

The way your fingers wrench into his hair belies a hunger that matches his own as you drag him down for another kiss, messy and insistent, demanding that he make good on his promise to pump you full. He can feel the ripple of your inner walls as you come undone, feel the painfully tight squeeze of your legs around his waist, holding him there, ensuring that he stays; and never in his life has he felt so overwhelmed.  

He can’t pull out. Not now. Not when you’re so willing to milk him dry. 

Kakashi kisses you with everything that he is as he shoves himself impossibly deep inside of you, acting solely on instinct to drown your cervix in hot, sticky spend. He lets out a sound of pure male satisfaction that you eagerly swallow down, your tongue massaging his in tune with every erratic jerk of his hips as he empties himself inside of you, painting your insides white.

It feels good. It feels right. 

He’s too attached. 

He doesn’t care. 

As he comes down from his high, all Kakashi can think about is how fucking risky it is, what he’s just done, which only ruins him more when the post-orgasm clarity finally hits. 

Why the hell did he do that?  

What the hell did he do?

Your thighs tremble and shake, a sign that he’s done his job well, though he feels no pride in it—just a growing sense of panic.  

He needs to go. He needs to go right now. Not tomorrow. Now. He needs to get the hell out of here and never look back, right fucking now.  

Then he hears your quiet sob, and his heart leaps into his throat. Kakashi jerks his head down to look at you, and when he sees the tears rolling down your cheeks, he actually does panic.  

“Did I—Shit,” he quickly pulls out to check on you, more attentive than he’s ever been, “Did I hurt you?” 

It wouldn’t be the first time he’s accidentally hurt a woman during sex, but he really should have taken it easier on you. He probably went too deep, hit your cervix too hard. 

“No,” you sniffle. “I’m fine. I just... I really missed you.” 

Fuck. Don’t say that. You’ll make him want to stay.  

His eyes soften as they trail over your features – the colour of your irises, the slope of your nose, the curve of your lips – and he gently smooths your tears away with the backs of his fingers. “I didn’t hurt you?” 

You shake your head and offer him a watery smile. “I also came really, really hard,” you add matter-of-factly, and he huffs out a relieved laugh. It’s hormonal, then. “They’re happy tears, Kakashi. Calm down.” 

Teasing or not, someone telling him of all people to calm down is an otherworldly experience. The phrase lands strangely, and for the first time since he came to see you tonight, his thoughts quiet down to a dull background murmur. 

They’re happy tears, you said. 

You’re happy with him. 

He’s happy with you, too. He doesn’t want to go. 

You frown, then, and lean up onto your elbows to look at him more closely. “What’s wrong?”  

Kakashi can’t be sure what you see in his expression to warrant that sort of question, but the fight finally leaves him. He sits back on his heels and drags a hand down his face, feeling defeated for a reason he can’t explain.  

“I was just...” Happy, for a moment. Happy to be with you. “Worried,” he finishes lamely. He can’t look at you, not when he feels the heat of a blush creeping up his neck. 

You laugh and gently cup the side of his face, turning him back towards you. “Okay. Well, I’m fine,” you pat his cheek in playful reprimand, “but I am leaking all over my clean sheets, and it’s your fault, so...”  

That draws his attention. When Kakashi sees the creamy mess spilling out of you, his flaccid cock twitches with interest even after he remembers why his stomach is in knots.  

“Sorry,” he says hoarsely, transfixed by the sight. 

He wants to do it again.

He shouldn’t want to do it again. He feels fucking crazy for having done it once already, when the two of you aren’t even in a relationship, let alone in any way prepared for a child. But again? A second time? He’d have to be certifiably insane. 

“It’s fine,” you reassure him, and Kakashi wonders how the hell you can possibly be taking it so in stride. He came a lot. There’s so much of it dripping out onto the sheets that it’s starting to create a small puddle under your ass, and there’s even more inside of you—a lot more, judging by how hard he came. 

It might take. It might seriously take, and you think it’s fine? 

“You’re doing it again,” you tell him, and his eyes snap back up to yours. He’s in his head again, you mean. Then you chew your lip for a moment, hesitation evident, before you ask carefully, “You’ve been acting a little… off tonight. Is everything okay?”  

Every single one of his instincts is telling him to run. That’s where this conversation always leads, but he’s not ready for it. Not yet. Maybe not ever. 

He swallows the lump in his throat. “I’m fine.” 

When you frown at him, skeptical, Kakashi shifts uncomfortably under your gaze.  

“Okay. I won’t pry. But, um, I’m here. You know. If you ever need to talk.” You say it a little awkwardly, like you aren’t sure if he’d be offended by the suggestion, and the worried crease between your brows only grows at whatever you see in his expression. “Or... Or not.” 

You laugh nervously, then, and shift away from him, only to wrinkle your nose when more of his cum oozes out of you.  

It’s cute. You’re cute. 

“You said it’s fine. Why?” The question leaves him before he even thinks it through, but it’s too late, now.  

“What?” 

This wasn’t the first time he’s come inside of you, not by a long shot, but it’s certainly the riskiest. “I finished inside. Aren’t you upset?” 

“What do you mean? You finish inside me all the—” Then you stop, and your brows shoot straight up onto your forehead. “Wait, is this about my birth control?”  

“Well, it’s overdue, isn’t it?”  

You stare at him for a prolonged moment, and he can almost see the gears turning in your head. Then your nostrils flare. “Are you kidding me? You thought my birth control was overdue, and you still—” Scandalised, you slap him on the arm. “Kakashi!” 

Oh. Well. It must not be overdue yet, then. 

Of course you wouldn’t let him come inside if there was a chance that you might conceive. He’s a fucking idiot. 

“That’s so bad! What if you got me pregnant?” 

A lick of heat shoots up his spine upon hearing you give voice to what’s been on his mind all night. Kakashi stares at you, wide eyed, and blushes all the way to the tips of his ears.  

You study his face for a moment, before you purse your lips, looking a little troubled. Or pissed off. He can’t really tell. “I mean... Did you want to get me pregnant?” 

“No,” he rushes to say, his cheeks burning hot because yes, he did, but not for real.  “No. Not at all. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking, and...”  

And how the hell is he supposed to explain himself? Neither of you are exactly vanilla, you’ve explored a number of kinks together, but this is something else entirely. Then again, a breeding kink would make the most sense out of any, considering it stems from a biological urge to procreate. 

But would you even believe him if he said he only gets off to the fantasy of it, and not the reality? Because if a woman ever said that to him, he’d get the hell out of dodge as fast as he could. 

A sly smile tugs at your lips, then, a knowing smile, and Kakashi quickly averts his eyes to the window, embarrassed. 

“You like it, don’t you?” you hum, seductively walking your fingers along his bare shoulders. “You like the idea of knocking me up.” 

Refusing to look at you, Kakashi clears his throat, trying to ignore the arousal that comes on from your suggestive tone. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“No?” The sheets rustle as you reposition yourself, and then, when your fingers delicately wrap around his cock, he inhales sharply and bites the inside of his cheek. “Then why are you so hard?”  

And he is, too. He’s already fully erect and ready for another round, and he knows that there’s no way to lie his way out of it anymore. As you start to work your hand over him in slow, sensual strokes, up and down, coaxing the answer out of him, his head drops back. “Because,” he rasps.  

The sheets shift again, and then you crawl into his lap. He welcomes you gladly, splaying his hand over your lower back to steady you, though he still can’t meet your gaze. He’s too embarrassed. 

“Because why?” you hum. Kakashi lets out a pleasured sigh as you kiss and suck your way up the side of his neck, stroking him steadily, before you purr into his ear, “Because you want to give me a baby?” 

A soft sound of approval rips out of his throat, and his cock twitches into your palm. “Don’t—Don’t say that,” he pleads. 

“Hm? Why not?” 

To hell with it. No sense in hiding it anymore. “Because I might actually do it.” 

“Yeah?” Your teeth tug playfully at his earlobe before you pull back to look at him, and Kakashi finally wills himself to meet your sultry gaze, humiliated though he is. “You know,” you muse, “I don’t like condoms for a reason. I wonder why?” 

The breath leaves his lungs with a whoosh.

Oh, he should have known. You’re just as filthy as he is. Of course you’d have a breeding kink, too, though he’s exceedingly grateful that you’d kept it to yourself until now. You’ve never been shy about sharing the things you enjoy, which means you probably figured out how he’d react. That’s the only explanation. 

He likes that you understand him as well as you do. 

He likes you.

“I think I might be able to guess,” Kakashi says knowingly, a smile playing at his lips. When he leans in to kiss you again, all he can think is: maybe it’s not a bad thing to be too attached. 

-

Snippet #1:

“You said it was overdue,” Kakashi tells you pointedly.

“No, I said I needed to make an appointment,” you correct, and he can see that you’re struggling not to laugh. “I still have, like, a week left on it. Ish. It doesn’t hurt to be careful.” 

While you cook breakfast for the two of you, Kakashi wraps his arms around your waist from behind and traces the shell of your ear with his tongue.  “What if I don’t want to be careful?”  

He feels the shiver wrack your body, but then you do laugh at him. “Down, boy. Three rounds wasn’t enough for you?” 

“Oh, I don’t know...” Kakashi pulls you back against him, allowing you to feel the answer for yourself, hard and insistent against your ass. “You tell me.” 

-

Snippet #2:

Kakashi hides his face in your pillow, feeling distinctly vulnerable without his mask. “Don’t tease me,” he groans, muffled. “I have a delicate constitution.” 

You cackle at his discomfort, like the cruel woman you are. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But I’m really, really curious.” Then you hum thoughtfully. “Do you want to know one of mine?” 

He lifts his head just enough to reveal one curious eye. 

You squirm a little, then, like you’re finally starting to realise exactly how embarrassing it is to talk about. “I, um...” A pause. “So, you know how...” Another pause, and you take a deep breath. “Okay. I like to imagine that I'm being used to—to repopulate a clan, I guess. Just, over and over. Lots of kids. But not for real.” 

He feels another jolt of arousal at your admission. 

Looks like you’re on the same page, then. 

Then Kakashi leans up onto his elbow to regard you properly, and then he lifts an eyebrow, as if to point out how closely that particular fantasy hits to home. 

That’s when you seem to realise who you’re talking to – the sole remaining member of a clan that could probably stand to be repopulated – and your eyes go wide, before you nearly trip over yourself to add, “It—It has nothing to do with your clan, specifically, Kakashi, it’s just—” 

“A fantasy,” he finishes for you, amused. 

 You worry your lip between your teeth and nod. 

“Well,” Kakashi says, considering his answer for a moment, “I might have imagined that, too. Specifically.” Then he gives you a roguish grin, intending to pay you back in kind for your teasing. “How many children do you think would be enough for my clan to be sufficiently repopulated, hm? I’m thinking eight.” 

Mortified, you bury your face in your hands. “Oh my god! Eight?” 

Payback’s a bitch. “Well, I was originally going to say ten, but—” 

When you squeal in embarrassment and yank the blankets over your head, Kakashi barely manages to stifle a laugh.  

—

You have to admit, you keep getting fonder of them, it could be Suguru’s way of making sure you have your favorite white claw in the fridge, or Choso making sure he got that sativa strain for you. It could be that they’re gorgeous and they smell too damn good, or it could be you’re just ovulating and all sensitive tonight.

But fuck you want them, would it be so terrible to ask them to join? But at the same time, you don’t want them looking a certain way at what you do. They seem super chill but you get a little nervous any time they ask, unable to fully answer them, just sort of giggling and brushing it off.

Suguru’s cooking before they go, his long hair is thrown half up in a bun, the rest flowing down his bare skin, just a thin black wife beater with some band he loves and blood splatter designed trip pants. Choso’s got a baggier shirt, stark white over long black sleeves, his jeans littered with chains, pockets stuffed endlessly full of his growing collection of lighters.

For some reason he stole one from every party he went to – which was a lot.

Suguru’s got a pan of garlic butter shrimp sizzling on the stove, making your tummy growl, since Choso’s grinding some new, ridiculously loud strain he just got in, and he let you test it out – fuck it’s made you hungry, your eyes are so damn red you have to slop drops in. You’re sitting right on the island, crossing your legs and giggling as Suguru has to work around you.

“Always in my way and shit,” he teases, pinching your thigh, you yelp a bit and he tugs you down, hovering a little too close, your phone notifs rolling in nonstop, he faintly notices with a flick of his gaze, hands lingering on your waist.

“Sugu you got a date tonight? You always shave when you do,” you tease him right back, fingers brushing his chin – smooth from where he’d just shaved, you can smell that aftershave this close.

“No I don’t have a date,” he snatches your hand and looks curiously at your phone again, when the timer goes off. “Distracting me, I’ll burn it.”

“My apologies, chef,” Suguru rolls his eyes, you go sit over next to Choso at the little table, his eyes dart across the little robe you have tied around your waist – this pretty pink silk that hits mid thigh and hardly covers shit.

“Wanna try this edible?” You laugh and shake your head.

“No way, yours are too dangerous!”

“This is so yummy, just take a nibble,” he opens the little squares of chocolate, leaning closer and holding it toward your lips, black nailed fingers delicate as they swirl it around temptingly. “Ya know ya wanna.”

“I better not hallucinate or something,” he snorts and shakes his head, but falters when you open your mouth, tongue brushing his fingers as you bite the milky chocolate laced with thc, moaning and shutting your eyes.

Suguru and Choso both just fucking stare at you, as you swipe some of your thumb and suck on it, moaning.

“So yummy!” You look at the silent men curiously, Suguru’s timer goes off and it sort of breaks the spell, but not before both men have to go to their rooms and jerk it to you.

It was sort of a ritual, jerk it to their roommate, act like they didn’t – know they each did – and get jealous when you gave either of them the smallest bit more attention. A cycle of wanting to fuck their pretty roomate who dresses slutty, but never wanting to take it too far, leaving them hopeless and jerking it raw.

They could fuck other girls, but how could they really when you live here all fucking cute and ruining them?

“Shit that’s good stuff,” you’re giggling when they’re getting ready to leave for that party, each have slung a faded jean jacket on, smeared a little liner on their eyes, you’ll use it as gooning material for your cam session tonight.

“Alright, we’re heading out,” Suguru lets you hug him and kiss his cheek, trying to ignore the face he leaks pre from hugs now. “If you need something call us.”

“No, go have fun!”

“Lock up please?” Choso kisses your head, you smile and nod.

The front door clicks shut behind them, and you exhale just a bit – your own routine is to wait a good ten minutes, just to be safe, before you get ready, undoing your robe so just your very slutty lingerie clings to your body. You get into the mood to talk to all these men on your laptop, sorting your blanket and the endless plushes and pillows into a cute arrangement.

You spritz yourself with body spray but that really never made sense – not like the guys smell you, but you still love champagne toast, right along with that little matching candle you light. You have your leds on this pretty pink color, putting on your slutty playlist – yep, you have it titled ‘slutty playlist’ right on your spotify.

Camming was easy in a way, but it was also a bit of a mindset to tap into. Setting up the ringlight, touching up your makeup, all before positioning yourself on your bed just so, making sure the angle looks casual. Your laptop was open, the soft glow of the ring light illuminating your almost bare skin as the viewer count starts to climb.

The problem is, this time? You forget to fully shut your door – you figure they’ll be gone for hours anyway.

“Hey everyone,” they start throwing those tips on stream just to see a hint of your titties. “Aw, did you all miss me?”

*****

"Shit I forgot all my prerolls," Suguru rolls his eyes as he drives toward the party, Choso is checking his pockets that are just full of papers, lighters and empty baggies. "I had them all ready to be bought."

"You're a mess," Suguru yawns and turns the car around, Choso's grinning. "You're lucky we aren't that far."

"What do you think she does for a living, besides being hot?"

Suguru snorts, putting the car into gear and easing up on the clutch. "I figure she's some like, sugar baby? She's gorgeous and chronically online."

"Nah no way, I think she's like in crypto - maybe she's some secret scammer? Like... a hacker or some shit!"

Suguru rolls his pretty amethyst eyes as they near the apartment. "Yeah I doubt it. Fuck I think I did forget my fave guitar pik... I'll come up too."

The two of them try to be just a bit quiet in case you're asleep, you kinda went to your room decently early every night and played your favorite music. Nothing too loud - just enough that if you were right by your room you could hear, the same music is a little louder when they walk in, your door cracked.

"Mmm, where'd I leave em?" Choso tugs at his ponytails that are falling just so, looking around until he pauses, peeking right in your room like a fucking pervert.

You're fucking your pretty cunt with a glass dildo, and the thing is all glittery and pink - like your entire room. All arched on that plush rug, ass facing this bright heart shaped ring light, moaning softly as your cunt is so loud he hears her sucking it up.

Choso almost busts.

"Bro," Suguru scowls as he sees his friend, clearly invading their cute roomie's privacy, but he pauses right fucking behind Choso, his jaw dropped on the damn floor.

"Mnh! Hah I'm not squirting for just a hundred, gonna need way more than that," you tease, pulling the dildo out and turning, lapping your tongue along the ridged glass, tasting your own fucking cunt.

Suguru almost busts.

"Hehe," you're all giggly from the weed, tits out of that robe, just a little garter around your waist and some ripped stockings the only thing covering you. "Mmm, I do taste g-"

You look and see both your roommates staring at you, cocks visibly hard in their jeans, you gasp and slam your laptop shut, stumbling up and dropping the damn dildo, it rolls loudly on the hardwood floor.

"Fuck, shit, fuck," you curse now, waving your hands around and just making your tits bounce more. "I'm so sorry! I thought you all were like gone and... fuck I should've locked the door, please like... I'll find somewhere else to go, okay I-"

"Hey," Suguru barely manages to speak, clearing his throat and picking the dildo up in his hands, coated in your slick, he sets it on the dresser and walks toward you, where you're panicking. "You don't have to go somewhere, fuck, okay?"

"Y-you're sure?" You realize your tits are out then, your puffy pussy showing too, but it seems stupid to close your robe now, instead feeling their gaze drift. "I didn't mean to be... Choso, are you okay?"

"Mnh," Choso cums right in his jeans, cursing as the white liquid spurts all over, so much it leaks dark through the denim. "Fucking cumming, sh-shit..."

"Oh! Oh? Oh..." You blush now, as if you weren't just fucking yourself on cam, Suguru sighs and runs a hand down his face. "That's hot."

"What?" Both men ask that, you giggle now.

"It's sexy you came from just looking at me," you fiddle with your robe a bit, swallowing nervously. "I could clean it up."

"Wha-!?" Choso damn near runs to you, blitzed off his ass now, cupping your face with his big tattooed hands. "Fuck I'd do anything to feel your throat wrapping me."

"That's hot too," you giggle more when he moans and kisses you, Suguru staring in utter confusion, when you pull back and look right at him. "You both should join me, if you all want. We can keep your faces out of it?"

"Oh you wanna..." Suguru drifts off, clearing his throat and walking to you, turning you away from Choso who's needy as he ruts against the curve of your ass, Suguru's hands drifting down your pretty tits, thumbs brushing over your nipples.

"Mnh," you cry out, lashes fluttering. "I've had to fuck myself like every day since I moved here."

"I fuck my toy too," Choso murmurs against your neck, you look back and giggle again, before gasping out when Suguru's fingers find your messy cunt, swirling in your slick.

"If I do your video, I get to eat your pretty cunt out, and I get to cum inside it," you look up at him, all fucked up now.

"And I get to eat his cum out."

"Choso you slut," you whisper, but it's a needy little one - biting down on your lip and nodding then. "I'm down, I'll split the money too."

"We don't need that," Suguru sinks two fingers inside, moaning and curving them up. "Choso thought you were a hacker."

"Hah, what!?"

"He thought you were a sugar baby!"

"Well... sort of. Let me set this back up and..." You work on the stream, the two men's cocks flush and at attention as you kneel on your bed, Suguru behind you, Choso in front of you - and that's when you suck Choso's cum right off his pretty, veiny cock, lapping at that pink tip.

"Mnh," Choso's whimpering as you bob up and down him, while Suguru's on his knees with his face buried in your cunt. His tongue ring catches that soft spot in your gummy walls, before he's lapping at your clit in mean little flicks, spitting right on your hole.

"Arch," he murmurs, you do just that, moaning around Choso's already hard cock as you lap up the very last remnants of his messy white ropes - Suguru is fucking you with his fingers, curving them up over and over until you feel too much pressure.

The boys utterly forget you're on cam, and so do you. Choso, already sensitive from cumming once, he's just whimpering, needy mess, his hands tangled in your hair as you deepthroat him, fucking your throat till it's sore and raw, murmuring sweet apologies.

"S-sorry, jus' feel s'good b-baby," he's fucking harder with firm ruts of his cock, when Suguru leans up from making you squirt on his fingers, slipping them in Choso's mouth. His dark lips wrap Suguru's thick fingers, moaning, cheeks hollowing. "Oh f-fuck, you taste so sweet."

"Mmph," you can't talk, the edible making your body feel even more sensitive, when Suguru's cock slaps heavy against your ass, and his pierced tip drags right along your slit. You jolt and your eyes roll back in your skull when he sinks inside.

"This tight? Oh fuck, that toy didn't stretch you out, huh?" Suguru - usually so sweet - is mean with it, pinning your arms behind your back, throwing you off balance, while Choso holds you up by cupping your face, ramming his cock past your uvula.

"We'll stretch you out baby," Choso murmurs, his lips parted, eyes gone black with how fucked up he already is, how needy when those filthy sounds of your cunt getting fucked and your throat getting rammed fill your room.

You make a filthy amount that night, but you don't check until much later, not when Suguru is pounding your cunt and making you cum around his cock, barbell dragging right in your quivering little hole. When Choso's whispering good girl and Suguru's murmuring that you're a perfect fuck toy.

Suguru has you cumming so much you collapse, lips pulling off Choso with a messy pop, Choso spits right in your mouth - not the sweet little Cho you thought he was, not when he's smacking your cheek and pulling your hair into his fist.

Your thighs are trembling when Suguru busts his load inside you, bent over you from where he's fucked you down into your matress, your mascara making a mess of your pillows as your tears of overstim fall, gasping and drooling. At some point your ring light just fucking falls, and the laptop gets shut by Suguru.

"My turn," Choso murmurs when he spreads your thighs, laying you on your back and shoving them against you, just to scoop all Suguru's milky release on his tongue. Suguru's kissing you all messy and mean, rutting his cock on the mattress, watching his best friend drink him out of your hole. "Fuck you took so much cum, can you take more?"

"Mhm," you're nodding all cute, letting Choso put another load inside you, until so much is pouring from your abused hole you're sticky, they both play in it, fingering it back inside until you're squirting all down their knuckles.

Later - much later - you three are smoking weed in your bed, they've cleaned you all up with their tongues, both having their own roll lit up, the three of you dizzy and high.

"So, you two wanna cam now?" You tease, inhaling the blunt from Choso's fingers as Suguru brushes your hair back, damp from the little shower they took with you.

"You think we should?" Choso asks, you pull up your phone, coughing out smoke and showing him the number. "Oh fuck..."

Choso's kissing up your neck when you peer at Suguru. "What do you think, hmm Sugu?"

Even with your highest heels on, the pink-haired leader of Curses Epsilon (Curses ε, the most sought-after fraternity on campus) seemed to loom above you. Crimson eyes narrowed. Smile predatory. Signature black t-shirt tight.

He always had caught your eye, you had to admit.

C’mon, it was impossible for him not to: a few heads taller than most of the student body, more sculptured, more attractive. You’d heard a rumor that he did modelling down in Shibuya sometimes and you didn’t doubt it. He walked around this very university like he owned it. He probably did.

Sukuna pushes back his cotton-candy locks, and you’re seeing the roots of reddish brown where his undercut was.

The shade was so at odds with the utterly devilish look those tattoos gave him. Even now you could see the ink peaking out at his wrists, his collarbones, his nose bridge. They snaked all over his body. Sensual. And when he slowly dips his head down to kiss the underside of your jaw, you start to wonder just how far those patterns went…

“Oh.” You gasp, grabbing onto his well-built shoulders.

They flex through his thin t-shirt when he’s leaning even closer, and you’re suddenly remembering that he was here on a scholarship for wrestling. The infamous leader of his weight class on your university team. The King of the Court. At least that explained his irresistible build - you wonder whether he was a semi heavyweight? A heavyweight? Did they even have those?

You couldn’t think.

You’re tipping your neck further to the side, and from the edges of your peripheral vision you see the way that Sukuna raises one pink brow- before draaaaagging a line of soft kisses down the side of your throat. Filthy. Fleeting. 

You’ve seen that look on him before - it’s the one he’d shoot at admirers that dared to stare too long. That sort of ‘if you want it come and get it’ look. That sort of challenge. Prowling through campus corridors that seemed to shrink whenever his figure waded through, sports bag slung over his shoulder, hair still wet from his shower, you could expect the sports superstar to throw at least ten at a time. 

Though you couldn’t really blame them! You suspected that about half the student body - and perhaps even some professors - held a burning fire for Ryomen Sukuna, and the other half simply wouldn’t admit to it.

And just as long as his list of admirers was his roster.

Or so the whispers claimed…‘His latest catch is actually the mother of-’ ‘They say he has five girls at once and they know about it but stay-’ ‘He swings both ways so what I’d give for a chance-’ ‘His longest relationship was two days and that’s because they begged him-’ ‘Stay away.’ ‘Stay away.’ ‘Stay away.’

Stay away.

You didn’t have to be told that to know. 

It was an unspoken rule on campus, the lay of the land.

Quite the dichotomy, wasn’t it? Stay away from Ryomen Sukuna, unless he’s the one that approaches you first and then it’ll be like your wildest fever dream, your wettest, and when he finally leaves- well, weren’t you told to stay away?

That’s the way things were. And all any heartbroken ex-companion would get is a few soothing words by the very same people who would turn around and make an example out of you.

‘Didn’t you see what happened to so and so…? Stay away.’

He was like a guilty pleasure that most people knew better of, knew would become an addiction. However, still indulged in anyway.

And so here you were. Cooped up in some dimly-lit frat party, cramped until every breath felt like it was singed with the copious amounts of alcohol around you, surrounded by booming beats and bellowing boys. In nothing but the most sinful dress you’d stowed away for a night just like this. Though you had to give yourself some credit- you didn’t wear this just for Sukuna, that’d only happened to be a happy accident!

In fact, you hadn’t even been expecting to meet him here.

Sure, it was the fraternity that he was the leader of, but Sukuna was always quite the…busy man. To put it lightly.

No—when your friends had urged you into this very party, you’d worn it with the thought of another man in mind. None other than your two-timing, two-toned, two-inched ex Zenin Naoya.

Your relationship was never meant for a happy marriage with two kids and a house that had a picket fence, but the straw that surely broke the camel’s back was about a week ago when you’d sneakily scrolled through his social media likes. And say whatever you want about privacy, but the multiple other girls he was entertaining and the deplorable podcasts about women he’d been secretly listening to let you say whatever you wanted.

And your first words to Naoya afterwards had been that you wanted to break up. Your second had been cussing him out.

Which was why, when Utahime had told you that he’d be attending (likely to try and pick up another poor girl), you’d immediately rifled through your closet for this skimpy dress you knew he’d hate. And still jerk off to later.

Speaking of…how ironic was it that you’d run from one red flag and straight into the arms of another.

The thought mulls lazily in your brain, before it’s quickly overtaken by the feeling of Sukuna resting his hands just over the small of your back. Something stirs carnally at the pit of your stomach, and you don’t think you’ve felt this way for a long time - not even when you were still with your ex. 

“Prove it.” You blurt out before you can stop yourself.

He stops, raising those brows of his again.

And you don’t hesitate a single second before looping both arms around Sukuna’s neck and bringing him closer to you. And the hulking man lets you manhandle him as you please, lets your lips whisper just a breath’s distance away from his. In the distance you think you can hear a few gasps, feel a few stares. “Prove that I want you. Badly.”

And Ryomen Sukuna’s realizing that he didn’t need the alcohol, not really.

Not when he was already drunk on you.

His lips are on yours before you can say anything else.

Your first time meeting Ryomen Sukuna ended up with you pushed into the bedroom at his frat house and holding onto the headboard so that it won’t break against the wall. Bang-bang-bang. He’d lifted your trembling hands off of them, eventually, and placed them between your legs to roll over your clit. You don’t think he cared for a single sultry moment if any of his frat brothers happened to hear.

In fact, with the way that he’d been plunging his massive girth between your legs (the rumors really hadn’t exaggerated!) you’d almost wondered if he wanted them to hear. You wouldn’t be surprised.

Sukuna fucked hard, fast.

He made you stupid on his cock and chased his high like an absolute madman- though, that’s not to say he was a selfish lover. No—perhaps for his own ego, you were made to cum at least thrice on his fat, throbbing length.

And after the deed was done he’d rolled over to the side of the bed and tugged off the sticky condom. Discarding of it into the nearby trashcan, Sukuna rifled through his bedside cabinet for some wet wipes. 

Ryomen Sukuna wasn’t the type of after-sex cuddles and aftercare, you’d come to learn. As he’d handed them over to you gruffly, and flicked at his lighter to burn up a cigarette.

Taking a deeeep drag of it, he turns towards you and brings his lips so close that you think he might just kiss you—only to puff out a smoky cloud in your face. “Inhale.” You do as he says, and let the fumes burn your throat. The side of his lips were quirking up in a smirk, “Mmm, good.” Sukuna gestures at his walk-in closet, one that you’d been eyeing for the sheer luxury of it when you’d first entered. “Might wanna find a t-shirt in there, your dress is a little…”

You looked at the sad heap of silky fabric on the carpet - torn now. “And whose fault is that?”

“Heh, just go get yourself a t-shirt, girlie.” Sukuna sits back on the headboard, and you’re appreciatively eyeing his half-naked figure. Prominent pecs. Ladder-like abs. Tattoos that stand out against his golden, tannish skin. He’d tugged on a pair of black boxers by now that did nothing to hide the happy trail of dark pink hair that you had your nose pressed up to minute ago. “Or don’t.” He looks at you with a sleazy smile- shit, he’d caught you staring. “I don’t mind.”

“S-sure ya don’t.” You’re managing out, tight.

And almost robotically, you manage to pull yourself onto your wobbly legs and take one step—Sukuna chuckles to himself as you stumble.

With a glare thrown over your shoulder, you walk into his closet. About as large as your entire dorm. Rows upon rows. Shelves upon shelves. Clothes upon designer clothes that made you wonder just how loaded a future professional wrestler is.

There were brands on his shelves that you couldn’t even recognize but knew were high-end simply from looking at their logo. Gawking, you flip past a few hangers - Versace, Burberry, Burberry, Gucci, Loro Piana, Dior, Dior, Dior, Dior-

Eventually, you simply give up to snatch the (hopefully) least expensive thing you could find: a wrestling hoodie with colorful logos on its front and ‘Sukuna’ emblazoned across the back. 

The fabric was oh-so-soft in your hands, made of pure cotton that tempted you to tug it on your body as soon as possible. Oh, you’re marveling at the way the ending hem of it reaches well past your torso, engulfing you like some sort of blanket. Experimentally, you’re pulling the hoodie flap over your head and giggling at the way it droops down all the way to your nose. Unable to help yourself, you tug the sleeves up to where your wrists were and press the pink fabric to your nose.

Strawberries.

What a smell for such a guy.

“Fuck-” You’re whispering into the fabric, slightly muffled. The rush you were feeling gets dampened down a bit as you remember where you are, “I’m getting way too ahead of myself.”

When you’re finally walking out of the closet, Sukuna was lounging on his king-sized bed and scrolling through his phone. You take a moment to admire him like this- his long limbs stretched across the mattress, hair still sex-ruffled, your nail marks prominent down his shoulders, hands hugging a pillow to his chest.

He looked as if he was carved by the heavens themselves. Though he fucked like the devil.

He’s flicking his eyes casually your way, eyebrows slightly raising as he takes in your attire. “Nice choice.” Sukuna hums, voice deep with sex. “Didn’t think ya had it in you.”

And then he’s patting the empty side of the bed once more.

More, his eyes said. He wants you even more.

You almost instinctively take a step forwards before-

“Actually-” You start, fighting to keep your words steady. You keep yourself rooted in front of his closet and fidget with your fingers. “Before we do anything more, I wanted to make some things clear.”

“Mn.” He’s turning his phone off with a slight sigh, placing his hand atop his head. 

Sukuna says nothing more, and you take it as a signal for you to continue. Taking a deep inhale, “I don’t really do this one-night stand thing often- not that there’s anything wrong with that!” Heartbeat quickening at the way his lazy smile grows, you don’t know why he made you feel the need to explain yourself. “But since we’re-”

“And who says we’re a one-night stand?”

Your heart does something funny with its tempo, “Wh-what?”

He tilts his head as if analyzing you, almost feline with his movement. Sukuna’s pinkish tongue darts out to wet his lips, still sweet with the taste of your pussy. “What if I want two nights? Three? Four? What’re you gonna do then, girlie?”

“Th-then-” You’re clenching your fists—fuck, it made it so hard when he was looking at you like that. “Then you’d have to get tested.”

And that…seems to make him pause.

“What?”

“Then you’d have to get tested, duh.” You’re crossing your arms in front of your chest - oh, it was quite amusing to watch the Ryomen Sukuna scramble for words. And you can’t help the spike of satisfaction, as he so-very-obviously didn’t expect that. “And we’d have to set boundaries. And share schedules. And you’d have to tell me if you meet up with another one of your ‘friends’ so that we can get tested again.”

“…”

“…”

Without warning, he bursts out laughing. “Thorough, aren’t ya?” 

He wipes away a tear of mirth from the right side of his face and- c’mon! You honestly didn’t think it was that funny! Sure, you hadn’t had any…arrangements like this before but you couldn’t have been too far off for the requirements?

“What are you-” But as you start to protest Sukuna only guffaws even louder.

“Alright, alright-” He’s raising up a hand as if to tell you to stop before his (well-toned) sides start to split. It’s only once you take a step back and huff n’ puff yourself into silence that the man finally starts to calm down. Looking down at his lap, “Damn- fuck, I’ve never had my boner killed so fast.”

“It’s just the requirements.” You’re grumbling.

“Girl, I might as well cut off all my ah- ‘friends’ as you so-nicely put it and marry you.” Quite dramatic, but alright. You notice that he doesn’t push back against your boundaries, however. Sukuna stares you down, eyes twinkling with something that you couldn’t quite discern. “And what exactly would you like to call our little relationship then?”

“Friends-with-benefits, what else?”

“Mm, I like it.”

“And nothing more- no marrying any time soon.” You shudder when you think of your last failed relationship.

Sukuna grins, “Keh- don’t have to worry about that.”

.

.

.

“Okay-” Utahime slams! all one-thousand pages of Shoko’s anatomy textbook down on the cafeteria table, rattling your trays and making the surrounding students glance at your trio. You’re watching as her glass of orange juice splashes precariously around the rim and inches one watery hand towards the pages of the book. “-spill.”

You’re startling at her sudden interrogation, “What?”

And to your horror, even Shoko puts aside her medical notes to pay full attention to the commotion between her friends. Both of them staring—squarely at you.

“You heard me.” Utahime crosses her arms, “Something’s up with you these days- and we want to know what.”

Shoko nods, sighing the way she did whenever she was assigned a particularly difficult medical case to discern. “Sudden glow about you- likely a mix of estrogen and dopamine boosts, slightly dazed look in your eyes, increased screen time, unconscious smiles, unexplained disappearances at odd times of night.” She taps her pen on her chin, “Science says you have a boyfriend.”

Utahime gasps, “And we haven’t heard about it?” Throwing an arm around a deadpan Shoko, who says nothing when the other girl shakes her to and fro. “We- we, your very best friends since freshman year, haven’t heard about him.”

“So who is it? I’m curious.” Shoko probes.

“Tell us or I cry-”

“It’s no one.” You’re finally managing a choke out, to which you’re met with the most dramatic groans from both your friends. This time, they’re loud enough to garner the attention of over half this section of the cafeteria- and in your peripheral vision, you swear you could feel the intensity of two crimson eyes…

Your eyes flick to the side - and there’s your first mistake.

Utahime gasps, kneeling on the bench to look over Shoko’s head. “He’s there-” Above your frantic pleas for her to just settle down, “Don’t lie, I saw your eyes move! He’s there I just know it-”

You grab onto her dress and start tugging, “Uta, for heaven’s sake just sit- down-”

“Hmmm, the only ones there are Professor Yaga- no. Todo- no. That PhD student, Higuruma- maybe.” As her options dwindle, she sweeps her eyes. “Ijichi- no, eugh. No offense, my dear, it’d just get so troubling to have to peg him all the time.”

You don’t know whether to laugh or cry. “U-Utahime, oh my god!” Even Shoko simply lets it happen in amusement.

Until finally, her eyes waft over the group of fraternity brothers that sat tall amongst the rest of the students. She wrinkles her nose at them, “One of the Curses Epsilon boys- no way, you’re smarter than that.”

They were such a boisterous bunch. Murmuring what were most likely innuendos with each other, clapping each other on the backs with guffaws. Almost handsomely stupid the way they kept looking to their pink-haired leader for approval. Occasionally, someone from a neighboring table would walk up to them in an attempt to talk to Sukuna - and the entire table would fall over themselves to erupt in wolf howls. 

You were almost thankful for the way Utahime had given you the excuse to stare right at him. The way he’d wave off whichever newcomer, the way he’d roll his eyes at his friends’ antics. You’re realizing that his group was mostly composed of athletes, evidenced by the team jerseys and the trays upon trays of food were wolfing down.

Sukuna, noticeably, wasn’t wearing his wrestling hoodie.

The thought makes something shift at the pit of your stomach.

“Oh my god, it’s one of them-” Utahime’s following your line of sight with something akin to horror, and even Shoko seems to be rapt with an attention that she didn’t ever have in her classes.

Both of them had easily let their eyes slip past the boys, it seems. And it’s only once they saw your lingering gaze, only once they saw that familiar smile across your face, that they’re realizing.

Widened eyes slipping back to the rambunctious table.

You snap your eyes to your purple-haired friend once you register her words, “N-no, wait-”

“You stuttered!” She squeals, and you don’t know whether it’s out of excitement at the gossip or sheer fear. She turns to Shoko, “She stuttered, right? I’m not dreaming? She stuttered?”

Shoko nods, “She stuttered.”

Utahime whirls back to face you, “You didn’t even stutter when you told off that asshole Naoya- thank you for that recording by the way, it was quite the pleasure to listen to.” Shaking her head as if to make herself get back on topic, “Either way, are you or are you not dating one of the Curses Epsilon boys?”

“I am…” You pause, “-not.”

They both groan at your response. Utahime even reaches over the table to shake you by the shoulders, “Tell us- I can- tell- when- you- lie-”

“No- no listen!” You’re defending yourself, swatting away her grabby hands. “I’m really not dating one of them, promise! It’s just…”

Shoko asks, “Just?”

You sigh, there was no getting out of this now. “Remember that party we went to at their house a few weeks ago?” Continuing as they nod, your heartbeat starts to accelerate as you realize you’re getting to the meat of the story. “Right- and remember how I disappeared halfway through the night and told you that Akari dragged me off somewhere?”

Utahime gasps, “I have connected the dots.”

Shoko frowns, “You haven’t connected shit.”

“I’ve connected them.” She replies, “I always assumed you ended up hooking up with someone that night and didn’t think much of it. Now you’re telling me that it was one of them-”

“Keep your voice down!” You plead, “But yes, it was…and the thing is that one night turned into two, two turned into three.” Your skin starts to heat up as you remember just last night when you’d snuck out to be let in through the back door of Curses Epsilon. To be pressed onto all fours and ruthlessly ploughed into- “But look, the point is that now we’re kinda…sorta…friends-with benefits.”

They gasp in unison.

Utahime’s all but standing on the bench once more, “Who is it-”

“Whose dick do I need to cut off.” And Shoko is, too.

You put your face into your hands with a groan as they start listing off names.

“No.”

“Choso?”

“No.”

“Larue?”

“No.”

“Kenjaku?”

“No.”

“It surely can’t be fucking Sukuna-” Both of them look at you, look at the impression on your face. And they turn to each other with serious expressions, “She’s fucking Sukuna.”

There was no use in telling them to keep their volumes down now - people turned their heads your way and started to whisper. You could only imagine what the rumor mill was conjuring up now. Hell, even Sukuna himself casually flicked his head your way in interest.

And you wished you could sink even deeper into your seat.

“Did you see that-” Utahime hisses.

“I saw.” Shoko replies.

And the purple-haired girl reaches over to clasp your hands, “He was giving you that look- oh my god. He looked like he was about to eat you up—” And you think that Utahime is perhaps the only one who’d look over and glare at Ryomen Sukuna the way she did just then, “You know what they say about him, right?”

“I’m well aware.” You breeze off, “It’s nothing serious- just no-strings-attached fun, promise. I could break it off at any time and not feel a thing, and I know the same goes for him.”

“Well, that’s good.” Shoko crosses her arms, “And you’re getting tested, right?” 

“Of course.”

Utahime scoffs, “Yeah but it’s not like he’s seeing you that often, right?” A pause. “Right?”

“Well…”

You’d been saved in that very instance by a bzzzz—! in your pocket: a text from the man of the conversation himself. And with a quick apology to your friends (you loved them, you really did, but you supposed that was enough interrogation for the day) and a glance at your calendar to make sure you didn’t have any more classes for the day—you were racing out of the cafeteria.

Followed suspiciously closely by a certain pink-haired wrestling superstar.

You didn’t quite care who saw what or thought what, because a few hours later found you back in your single dorm room.

Fucked stupid.

Sex still hung in the air.

You were sprawled out across your humble single bed, heaving as if you’d just ran a marathon. Head sinking into the pillows. Cunt all drooling with your splashin’ slick. Still reeling from the aftershocks of your multiple highs.

With Sukuna’s athletic stamina, however, he seemed to be barely affected. Taking a light drag of his cigarette (you’re sure the building had a no smoking policy…), he looks over your dorm room with faint interest. Much smaller than his but also much…cozier, you had to admit.

Lived in.

He takes in the polaroids of you and your friends, all the cutesy lights, the columns of books. Sukuna stares hard at one of the pictures above your headboard—it was one of you, Utahime, and Shoko after shotgunning a few beers. On the verge of throwing up.

“Cute- the dorm, I mean. S’nice.” He says, blowing out a streamline of smoke at the photograph. “This purple-haired one s’the one that was screamin’ about us in the cafeteria today?”

“You heard that?” You exclaim.

“Girl, the entire cafeteria and Gakuganji’s senile ass heard y’all.” He rolls his eyes with a grin, “Dunno whether you’re louder then or…” Such a devilish, devilish grin. “-here.”

“Shut up.”

“You certainly didn’t-”

“They threatened to cut off your balls if you broke my heart, y’know.” You don’t quite know why you’re telling him - Sukuna was probably used to the threats of his love interests by this point. You’re turning to your side and facing him, trying not to shiver at the way his eyes glide appreciatively down your exposed body. “Not that there’s gonna be anything at stake to break.”

“Of course.”

“Of course.”

“And what if?” He asks you, to which you only look at him in confusion. Sukuna takes his sweet time puffin’ on his cigarette once more before satiating your curiosity, “What if I break your heart?”

You think about it for a little bit, “I won’t cut off your balls.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll cut off your entire dick and feed it to you myself.”

The cigarette falls from his hands and onto your carpeted floor- which Sukuna hastens to put out with an uncharacteristic yelp. You guessed wrestling scholarships didn’t cover burnt-down dorm rooms, and you have to stifle a giggle at his actions.

“You-” He pants out, finally looking up after picking the scorched nub between his fingers and throwing it into your trashcan. Almost glaring those rosy eyes down at you, “You think you’re soooo funny, huh, mama?”

You chuckle, “I do.”

“Well, yer lucky you’re cute.” He grumbles to himself, at least- you think that’s what he grumbles to himself. Because the moment you’re looking at Sukuna in slight surprise, he turns his head.

You see nothing but the sharp edge of his jawline, those high cheekbones, the tips of his ears that were flushed with…the sex? Surely? Almost as if he knew what you were thinking, Sukuna brings a hand up to cover them under the pretense of scratching his sweaty undercut. “Never met anyone with this much fuckin’ audacity.”

You yelp, “H-hey!”

“Hey yerself.” And then he’s heaving himself up and digging underneath your own fucking bed as if it was his. How strange, this familiarity. The two of you had only known each other for a few weeks (though you had to admit you had spent considerable hours together) and here Sukuna was rifling through your room like nothing - you just wasn’t sure whether that was a him thing or…He’s finally pulling out—

“That- that’s my rose toy?!”

“Yeah, let’s give ‘er a spin.”

.

.

.

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Itadori Jin’s voice echoed out from the other line, almost reaching a fever pitch in defensiveness. 

Sukuna rolls his blush-red eyes, he’d been standing outside this godforsaken café on a call with his brother for what felt like hours now. With you inside and waiting. All warm. All…fucked-out—anyway! The point was that you were inside all comfortable, and he was a hulking figure looming outside some frilly café grumbling profanities underneath his breath. 

In his defense, it was after one of your ‘hangouts’, alright! 

It was just another day with you. After he’d pumped deep into your lungs, Sukuna just-so-happened to hear your stomach rumble in hunger. And he was the one to have suggested taking a stroll down to the lil’ café down the block. It was packed with college students, and he didn’t really care who saw - besides, bearing through the gaudy interior theme and re-play of music certainly not his taste was almost bearable for the pleasant surprise in your ears.

And the refueling, of course. The main reason he was taking you here was because (surprise, surprise!) a house full of college men didn’t quite have the nutrition needed to last a few more rounds. And Ryomen Sukuna wasn’t done with you just yet.

He just didn’t expect to have been assaulted by a phone call from his older brother the very second he’d taken a step inside. And Sukuna had told you to find a seat for the two of you, deciding to take the call outside. He knew his brother wouldn’t give up if he declined the call.

They always were alike, Sukuna and Jin.

Sure, maybe not in personality - Jin was always a bit of a goody-two-shoes, though he could hold his own in a fight. Sukuna was the one everyone said they had to watch out for.

The one that didn’t get invited to birthday parties by fearful parents, the one picked last during team sports because they said he’d start a brawl, the one visited only by his brother and his father the first time he’d ended up in the ER after a fight, the one who only had those two to cheer at his wrestling matches. Only ever those two.

Whatever. 

Same rosy hair.

Same features (for the most part, at least. Sukuna’s constant trips to the gym and the ER had resulted in him having a rather more rugged look than his twin).

Same stubbornness.

They’d ended up going to different universities, with Jin attaining a scholarship for marine biology a few hours away. Which meant that family functions weren’t quite as frequent as they used to be, but he could still hear it in the man’s voice - that stubbornness.

It made the younger of the two brothers feel the heat creeping up on the back of his neck, slightly squirming as Jin admonished him—“I’m just saying that you sound happier than usual-”

“Jin.”

“And that’s a good thing!” He could practically envision the bespectacled man throwing his hands in the air, trying to hold back his smile. “Hell- Ryo, it’s a wonderful thing! You finally have someone making you happy! You’ve finally met someone special! You finally have someone in your life-”

“I don’t have trouble getting around.” He grumbles, and—well. Ryomen Sukuna isn’t quite the type to explain himself, but with his brother…

“Ryo.”

“Alright, alright!” Sukuna bursts out, and a mother nearby grabs her child by the hand and speedwalks away. “Alright, I haven’t met up with anyone else! I’ve cut off all of my ah- friends, for lack of a better word.” He could hear the smug hum of his brother, “But that’s not because it’s special or anything, it’s just because…”

Jin urges, “Go on…?”

“Because s’just convenient, alright?” He’s finally answering, “S’too much of a hassle to get fuckin’ tested after each one, so I might as well only have her in my life- ah wait, fuck, I didn’t mean it like that-”

“I knew it.” Comes the squeal, “Listen, Ryo, I just don’t want your stubbornness to get in the way of something special-”

“And I don’t want to hear yer voice- goodbye, old man.”

The ringing tone to denote that the call has ended is much more soothing than his brother’s voice, he decides. And he takes a few deep breaths before tucking his phone back in his pocket- turning it on silent mode.

He turns around to step inside and—there you are.

Dressed in that hoodie of his that he’d forgotten to take back from you. The air of someone that’d just been properly fucked. Through the glass, he sees you staring at the other people outside. He strays his gaze himself to see what you see- you’re chuckling at that little boy who skips along the pavement, you gasp at the delivery driver with a stack of boxes who almost trips, you coo at the elderly couple walking their dog. Hand-in-hand.

Sukuna looks down at his own empty hands.

Scarred and calloused. 

Before he’s reaching his dominant one upwards and pushing open the swinging café doors. You look up from the booth you’d chosen for yourselves as he enters, waving him in the right direction. It was one by the window, he notices, though in the very corner of the place as if you’d wanted to hide yourself away.

Perhaps hide the two of you away.

Hm…Sukuna thinks, rubbing at his chest. And thrusting both hands into his pockets, he’s sauntering right up to you.

He’s not blind to the stares he garners from some of the other customers, and though any other time he might have thrown a stray wink or two - and honestly, nothing was stopping him now - he simply sides into the seat opposite you. “Sorry ‘bout that, mama- emergency calls.”

“Emergency?” You raise your brows in amusement, peering at the man opposite you as if you were analyzing every inch of him. And he almost couldn’t believe that just a few minutes ago, you’d been shaking and whining underneath him. “I don’t know anyone named ‘Emergency’ at our school.”

“Goes to another school.” He quips, knees bumping against yours as he stretches them out underneath the table. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous, girlie~”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

In almost no time, the waitress is bounding up to your table and jotting down your orders. He orders his coffee black, no sugar—and you roll your eyes at him. 

The older woman then coos down at the little interaction, “Oh, you know we’ve got a special offer just this week in honor of our upcoming fifth anniversary? 100% off on all desserts for couples!” Her eyes wrinkle beautifully at the edges, “Would you two perhaps be…”

You open your mouth, “Oh, we’re actually-”

“Completely in love.” Sukuna interrupts you casually, his large hand settling over yours on top of the table. “Maddeningly. We’ll take one of everything for the lady and a strawberry shortcake for me, thanks.”

“Oho, you two.” She chuckles, walking off. “Ah, young love~”

You watch as she leaves—and snap your head towards Sukuna so fast that you think you may have gotten whiplash. “You-”

“It’s for the offer, don’t overthink it.” He lets go of your hand and crosses his arms. You almost miss the heat of it - was the air conditioning in this place too high? You’re sinking your hands into the sleeves of your- his hoodie, and Sukuna’s slouching in his seat. “Take it home- all the desserts, share it with your friend or whatever. It’s for you, anyway.”

“Right.” You’re not quite sure what to say- “Thank you?”

It’s a rather long and awkward silence that follows.

You attempt to break it by grasping for some shred of conversation, “So ah- is everything alright?”

He raises a pink brow in question.

And you don’t know how he manages to do it - how he manages to make your veins bubble and bolt inside of you with just a single look. “The ah- the call, I mean.” You’re squirming in your seat at his half-lidded gaze, so intense. He always looked at you with this certain fire, whether in bed or…here. “You were just out there for so long, I hope it wasn’t anything serious.”

He rests his chin on one hand and tilts his head, “Not worried about me, are you? If it was anything serious?”

“And if I was?”

“You shouldn’t.”

To which you furrow your brows in confusion, “What do you mean? Of course I’d care if something bad happened to you.”

Sukuna only holds your gaze, his expression unreadable.

He reaches a hand down his chest - right over his heart - and lightly rubs that spot. Finally looking away from you, the frat leader answers. “No- no, it’s nothing serious. Just a…friend.”

“I see.” You still.

“You said I could still have ‘friends’, right?” He asks, a note in his voice that was imperceptible. Sukuna looks at you with a meaning that you didn’t fully understand, and you’re realizing that the two of you had been leaning over the table for quite some time. “Or has that changed?”

It seems like an age before you break his eye contact, “Nothing has changed.”

Sukuna leans back in his seat, “I see.” There’s silence between you both once he reaches into his pocket and starts scrolling absent-mindedly through his phone. “Then yeah- it was a friend that called. I’ll get tested afterwards though, don’t you worry that pretty head of yours over it.”

“Good.”

A few more minutes of silence.

He can’t bear it. “Lemme eat you out in the bathroom as an appetizer before our food?”

“Be quick.”

.

.

.

“Truth or dare! Truth or dare! Truth or dare!” Utahime chants, jovial words slurring into a nearly-incomprehensible mess as she claps her hands. Messily, she’s pulling you and a few others into a haphazard circle on her bedroom floor.

All cooped up in a room that was decidedly not designed to hold this many people. The air dimmed with LED lights and cheap alcohol. Bass thumping throughout the bones of her apartment - it was a small get-together that’d turned into a large get-together that’d turned into friends of friends of friends both invited and uninvited 

You swear you’d seen a few graduates sneak themselves onto the living-room-turned-dance-floor before you were being pulled into her room by your inebriated friend. One who, as the host, was deciding what the game of the night would be. “Truth or dare!” 

Pronouncing, more like.

Shoko rolls her eyes, “Your ability to turn into a twelve-year-old when you’re drunk both fascinates and abhors me.”

“Jokes on you I don’t know what that word means.” Utahime sticks her tongue out, to which most of the group giggles. 

“But seriously- are we twelve?”

“Fine…” Utahime grumbles, and clicks her fingers as if happening across a sudden epiphany. “Dare or drink, then!” She’s peering towards Shoko with a smug smirk, “How’s that for all adult and mature, hm?”

“That’s almost worse.”

You’re taking the opportunity to sweep a look at the (likely) players: some more of your friends, Ijichi, Haibara, Higuruma from the PhD students, a few sweet sorority girls, some strangers, one Curses Epsilon member-

Your eyes widen as you take in the long-haired man—Choso, you believe his name was.

He catches you staring and smiles at you shyly, an expression that you hope you’re returning without it looking too much like a shocked grimace. 

You’d seen this very man around Sukuna sometimes, and he seemed to be one of the quieter amongst the bunch. Below Sukuna in terms of rank, certainly, they seemed to have an almost brotherly relationship that stood out to you when you looked at the group. And, listen! It’s not that you didn’t realize a member of his fraternity could attend parties - in fact, Curses Epsilon was synonymous with parties. 

So you should have expected this. So you should have been prepared for this.

But the fact that he was here…a part of you couldn’t help but wonder whether that meant Sukuna was here, too…

What that meant he was doing…

Who…

You’re startled out of your little reverie by a call of your name- and to your horror, you’re realizing that you’d been staring right at Choso. The man was squirming before you, his ears tinged just the slightest rosy shade.

Heart thundering at your throat, you look away and turn back to Utahime. Slightly breathless, “Wh-what?”

“You’re up first!” 

She’s pointing down at the carpeted floor, which had a glinting vodka bottle in the middle that’d been spun, it seems. Its transparent circular nozzle stares you down in an almost-accusing way and makes you shift uncomfortably—you didn’t even know that they’d begun spinning bottles yet. And whoever was to fall victim to the end of its vermicular spine was the first up for their dares.

And it just-so-happened to be you. 

You gape, “I-I…”

“C’mon, c’mon! You can’t back out now-” Utahime taps her chin and pretends to think, “I dare you to—”

“Fucking hell…” You already know that this wasn’t going to end up well for you.

And just as you expected, her eyes slide over to meet another pair of eyes—dark, doe-like eyes that had been fixated on you ever since you’d been fixated on them. Subconsciously or not. She smiles as she drinks in the sheer intensity that Choso had been staring at you with, “I dare you to make out with the person sitting opposite you for ten seconds.”

Your brows furrow, “Sitting opposite…” Eyes lifting up to meet—his. “Oh.”

“Oh.” Choso’s pink lips part, the tips of his ears furiously red.

And there’s a few seconds of silence- between you two, but not the drunken students that surround you two. They erupt into cheers and wolf whistles, ribbing at a quiet Choso Kamo to get on with it. 

As you stare, stunned, he peeks up at you through his long lashes. “W-would you mind?” His quiet voice was almost inaudible.

“I…don’t.” You find yourself answering, mouth moving faster than your brain can compute. 

And before you know it, you’re rising to your feet and making your way to the middle of the circle. Those dark eyes widen as you draw nearer- so different from the red ones that you were used to.

Something in your stomach clenches, and you feel a strange buzz zing! throughout your entire body. You’re not sure whether you like it or not.

Choso himself starts to get closer to you, and your pulse quickens at his closing proximity. His eyes turn half-lidded as they flick to your lips and back up to your face, like he was making sure that you were okay with this. Tentative. Almost…shy. You’re admiring the tousled look of his hair, that tremble of his lips, and the way his eyeliner makes him look so soft. 

You wanted to run. You wanted to kiss someone. You wanted to run. “I- I really don’t.”

Choso kisses you.

For a beat. Two.

One of his ringed hands snake upwards to grip the column of your throat, and you’re parting your lips with a moan! Fuck, you were getting wet. Just in time for him to slip in his tongue and-

CRASH! THUD!

You’re wincing at the rush of light that assaults your retinas, and as you slowly blink back your vision- you realize that there were tears in them. Because of what, you’re not too sure. But you chalk it up to the harshness of the light as your eyesight clears back up.

And then you’re seeing—oh, it couldn’t have been a figment of your imagination.

You’d never mistake that cotton-candy hair anywhere.

Sukuna was on Choso, with the other man sprawled out on the ground and the rugged wrestler on top of him. Chest heaving. Skin flushed. A vein throbbing at his neck. His entire body was rigid and honed for a fight that he knew he was going to win. He had one tattooed hand gripping the front of Choso’s shirt, and the other pulled back mid-punch.

A punch that he was frozen in.

A punch that clearly hadn’t landed yet.

From what you’re surmising of the situation, Sukuna had pulled the other man off of you by his collar. From what you’re surmising of the situation, he was all but about to attack the other man just because he was kissing—

“Ryo.” You’re starting, a hand reaching out as if to stop the fight yourself. 

Any and all floatiness from the liquor had now completely dissipated from your body, and you were only left coiling in thick, unyielding tension. Surprisingly, your voice doesn’t waver. “Don’t do anything fucking stupid or god help me-”

Almost as if jolted to life by the sound of your voice, Sukuna lets go of Choso in a single, jerky movement.

Though he doesn’t speak - and you’re almost thankful for it, you don’t know what you’d say to him. Instead you’re breaking out of your little trance and pushing aside Sukuna—yes, pushing him to the side so that you can get to Choso.

Stunned, he lets you move him.

He always has.

With both hands gently placed upon either side of Choso’s handsome face, you’re inspecting him for any injuries. He flushes slightly at your touch. And - tactfully - no one nearby says a single word about it. “I’m- I’m alright.” Choso says, his tone slightly hoarse.

But you don’t give up until you’re completely and utterly sure that he’s okay. “Hm, well alright.” Finally letting up, you start to move yourself- and only then do you realize that you’d been straddling Choso’s hips. Hurrying to scramble off, “O-on behalf of him, I apologize.”

You’re lightly bowing and he stops you with a hand at your shoulder- only to glance at Sukuna and let you go as if you burned. “No, no! It’s my fault for not knowing-”

“Don’t worry.” You spare a glance at Sukuna, who had his eyes downcast and his expression revealing nothing. “There’s nothing to know.”

And that…that makes the Ryomen Sukuna flinch—

As if he’d just been stabbed.

As if the temperature in the room had dropped to freezing.

As if you’d plunged your hand right through his ribcage and torn out his heart.

But you couldn’t find it in yourself to care at his point. “Again- I’m so sorry.” Turning back to Choso, who’d been watching the exchange with side eyes - right along with half of the party that’d turned up from the living room now at the whispers of a commotion here. Especially one with the wrestling star—and over a girl at that! “And about that ah…” You gesture at his hips…the ones you’d been straddling.

Choso blushes even deeper, waving his hands in front of him frantically. “No- no, I didn’t mind! I mean- I mean, it’s alright and you don’t need to apologize! But you didn’t need to apologize anyway because I didn’t-”

“Man.” Shoko rests a hand on his shoulder, “Stop talking.”

He immediately clicks his jaw shut.

The next thing you’re doing, you don’t even know if you even fully thought it through. Because one second you’re standing up—and the next you’ve got your hand wrapped around Sukuna’s waist—and the next you’re dragging him through the packed party—

Through the crowd that turns their head to look at your unlikely duo, that turns their head to watch the gruff leader of the wrestling team be led out as if he was a naughty child.

Sukuna lets you take a few steps out of the apartment’s front door, before he’s halting in his tracks and gripping onto your waist instead. Not hard enough that it hurts, not gentle enough for you to be diverted anywhere but his one-track destination to…well, you weren’t quite sure.

“Ryo- I mean, Sukuna—” You squeal as your heels click-clack! down the stairs. You don’t pull yourself free from him, because you know he would let you. “Sukuna, I demand to know where we’re going-”

“There’s nothing to know.”

Your stomach drops.

It’s the last thing he says. The only.

And you can only follow as Sukuna draaaags you out into the night-lit street, cars lining the pavements like the straps of lingerie on a faceless body. An outstretched. A ready. 

You’re recognizing the gleaming black body of his new Audi in an instant - you would anywhere, to be honest. It took up about half the street. Imposing, just like him. It always did make your heart skip a beat to see it parked outside whatever rager you were attending for the night. Just as soon as you’re registering the car, you’re having your back pushed up against it-

“What are you-” You gasp out, before his lips are on yours.

Furious. Feral. Fighting to open them roughly with his own mouth, he’s taking a single look at your prettily parted lips and spiiiiitting straight onto your tongue- before stuffin’ it with his own tastebuds, just in the way that Choso was about to mere minutes early.

You muffle out, “M-mmpf- Sukuna!”

“Ryo.” He rasps, blindly unlocking the door and pushing you into the spacious backseat. “You know m’always your Ryo.”

That night he fucks you harder, faster than any time before.

As if he was claiming every inch of you.

And you don’t end up going home for the night—no, you end up at Sukuna’s instead. And if he made you moan his name even louder than usual, well, it’s only in the morning that you realize that Choso’s bedroom was right next door.

.

.

.

Ryomen Sukuna had flowers—

An entire bouquet of red roses that he’s sure the florist ripped him off for - surely something grown out of the dirt couldn’t be that expensive?! But he did have to admit that it looked wonderful taking up more than half of his backseat—the very same backseat he’d fucked you senseless in not too many nights ago.

The two of you hadn’t seen each other properly since Utahime’s party.

What with his wrestling practices for the upcoming tournaments, and your finals rounding the corner. It’s honestly by sheer miracle that Coach Kashimo had cancelled today’s training for some reason or the other (he honestly didn’t look too closely, merely glancing at the email before driving to the nearest florist whilst texting you to ask whether you were free). And, well, here he was…

So fucking pathetic in his excitement to meet you that he’d forgotten the damned flowers in his car!

Sukuna hopes that they weren’t wilted as he struggles to put on his ripped jeans, discarded on your bedroom floor right along with the rest of his clothes. He’s looking around frantically for his t-shirt, when you glance over at him from the bed.

And he doesn’t see the flicker of hurt in your eyes.

“Leaving so soon, Ryo?”

“Uh huh.” He’s absent-mindedly responding—where the fuck where his socks? Did he even need socks just to go down to his car-

You bite down on the inside of your cheek, “Another appointment?” Another person, is what you really wanted to ask, but…

“Something important that I forgot.” Sukuna replies, looking underneath your bed and ah- there they were. He feels you sitting up on the bed, blanket clutched to your naked chest, as he sits on the mattress with his back turned and finishes dressing up. “Fuckin’ hell, can’t believe I even came up here forgetting-”

“Right.” Your tone was clipped.

“Should’ve gone down the second I remembered but-”

“Should have.”

“Because it’s mad urgent-”

“More than me.”

“I just got a little distracted, y’know?” The pink-haired man glances over his shoulder with a teasing smirk, slightly frowning at the way you turn your head away from him. Hm…he attempts to lighten the mood, “S’all your fault, girlie~”

“Sukuna.”

And that makes him slightly wither in on himself. That tone. That name. Trying to get a good look at your face, he leans towards you. “What’s wrong…?”

“I think we should end this.”

Everything.

Everything was wrong.

Ryomen Sukuna doesn’t fight your decision, Ryomen Sukuna doesn’t try to get you to explain. He lets your words sink into his being like a pebble cast out in the vast and unceasing Blue—and he lets them fester within him just as mysteriously.

He’s walking out of your dorm a hollow man.

Right up to his car, he’s taking automatic steps. Where he flings the door open and grips the bundle of stems of those- of those fucking roses.

He wants to destroy them.

Sukuna’s hand trembles as he raises them high in the air to chuck- before his peripheral vision features two familiar faces. Unbreathing, he’s turning his head jerkily to the side and staring at them—matching crows’ feet, a slow hobble, the slightly hoarse laughter between a whispered conversation. A vision so private that he almost wants to look away, he didn’t know how you did it.

It scares him how quickly he recognizes the elderly couple to be the exact same one you’d been admiring from afar that one day at the café.

It scares him.

Ryomen Sukuna doesn’t know why he hands his heartbreak bouquet to the old couple that day. But he does remember one thing - the delighted smiles on both their faces, the way the old man had so-clearly wanted to hold the blushing, beautiful flowers. But he’d given them to his wife anyway.

Seeing the young man staring, the old man had winked. 

A knowing smile on his face.

“Oh dear, oh dear.” To which the sweetly older woman had reached down to pluck! two blossoms from the bouquet. And without hesitating, she’d tucked one behind her husband’s ear—and then beckoned Sukuna to lean down to tuck the last one behind his. Rosy red against lovely pink.

His eyes widen as her slightly roughened hands cup his cheek.

Humming with a smile, “You are so easy to love, my dear.”

Something in him breaks a little at that very moment.

And Ryomen Sukuna drives the entire four hours it takes him to drive to Itadori Jin’s university, to damn-near bang down his apartment door.

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK—!

“I’m coming, I’m coming! Jeez…” His older brother’s familiar voice - stubborn, so stubborn just like his calls out from inside the apartment. He doesn’t care that it’s 2AM and Jin’s neighbors would be complaining, right now he just…really needed his big brother.

He can hear the footsteps get even closer. “Who the hell is it at this time- I swear if it’s rent then I already paid it two weeks ag-”

The door clicks open.

Jin’s face freezes in surprise—before it’s dropping at the look on Sukuna’s face.

“Oh, Ryo.”

His arms are around the taller man’s instantly.

And if Itadori Jin felt his sweater drench where Sukuna’s face rested, then he doesn’t say a word about it.

“What did I tell you about keeping your someone special, Ryo?”

.

.

.

It’s the next day when you’re waking up to an incessant knocking at your door.

It pounds like the headache you’d been sporting all night.

And you’re getting up, your eyes swollen - not just from sleep (in fact, you don’t think you slept a single wink all night) - and your movements all sluggish. Looking down, you realize that your pyjamas- Sukuna’s wrestling hoodie, was still drenched in tears. Your blinks were heavy. You felt a mess.

You barely even wanted to get out of your bed, and you don’t think you would have had it not been for the sheer ferocity of the knocks. 

Were they trying to break down your damn door?!

“C-coming!” You’re coughing out, sure you had a doorbell that was going unused. Disgruntled, you’re unlocking the door and reaching for the doorknob. “Jeez, Uta, I swear this isn’t really a good time if you’re going to-”

The first thing you see is red.

Red.

Red.

Red roses.

Bouquets of it lined every inch of your dorm’s corridor, as far as your eye could see, some even piled on top of each other, the largest held between Ryomen Sukuna’s trembling hands.

And the second thing you see is, well, red again.

The blush that dusts his handsome face, rivalling his pinkish locks. Sukuna takes a half-step forwards- before he seems to think better of it and lurches right back. His thick brows furrow in sincerity, as if he just wanted to make you feel his words— “I love you.” He pants, as if he’d just run here. And it feels like all the breath has been knocked out of your lungs. “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you-”

“Oh, Ryo.”

And it’s all the confirmation Sukuna needs to let the bouquet in his hands drop down to the floor. Rustling. Letting the blossoms be replaced with something that is, to him, far more beautiful.

He crushes you so tightly into his embrace that you almost can’t breathe - nothing but the soft strawberry scent that engulfs you whole. And you almost don’t think you need to. Not right now. “I love you.”

“You idiot.” You choke out, “You idiot- you’re so- fucking- stupid.” You punctuate your words with punches to his chest, which makes it rumble with a chuckle. “And I’m even more stupid because I…”

“Yes?” Breathless.

“I love you even more, Ryo.”

He sighs with his entire soul and collapses in on his world—you.

A few minutes later.

What feels like absolutely no time later.

You’re finding your back laid flatly against your single bed - a humble compartment in your dorm room. But now it had you sprawled out across it and reaching for your rickety headboard to hang onto dear life, Sukuna kneeled at the foot of the bed and clawing at your tear-stained sweatpants.

Pulling at it.

Tearing through it.

Your whines intermingle with the rip-rip-riiiip of fabric once he’s exposing your naked legs. You were wearing nothing underneath it, and Sukuna’s fucking groaning as he opens up your thighs to take the heavenly sight in-between.

“Fuh-fuck…” You swear you see a line of glittering drool fall down the side of his mouth, one that Sukuna’s gulping back as soon as it comes. “Holy fuck, sweetheart, how do you look even tastier every time I see ya?”

You’re huffing, unable to stop yourself. “Maybe you’re just mixing me up with-”

“Don’t say that.” And though his voice was quiet, it was stern. It meant every word he was saying, “Never say that.”

Gliding his roughened hands down the tender inner parts of your thighs- you’re shivering as you feel every line and callus from his palms. Remnants of wrestling. The softness of holding you. It makes something in your heart lurch, “I-I just-”

“You don’t need to explain yourself.” Sukuna looks away with a light blush as he cuts you off, “But I do. We have much to talk about…but the one thing I need you to know is that ever since I met you, I have never, and will never, so much as look at anyone else.”

“Ryo—” You whimper, feeling the thick crowned edges of his thumbs inch towards your drippin’ core.

“And I want you to know that m’yours.” He nudges his handsome head closer, until he could breathe in the sultry scent of your pussy. You could feel the cold breeze of his inhale- “Soul…and body.”

And then he’s lavishing his loooong tongue out to lick a wet stripe at your clothed pussy.

Sluuuuuurp—! Such a greedy taste of your cunt. Before Sukuna’s drawing his muscle back in just to do it all over again - flick after flick where you were most tender. With the tip of his tastebuds he’s outlining your glistening crevice, and pinpointing them right where the knob of your clit was located.

You’re twitching as you feel him enter his lengthy tongue juuuust underneath the drenched fabric of your panties, before fishing it back out whenever he feels he got too close to your pussy. 

“P-please-” You’re grabbing onto Sukuna’s head of pink hair, trying to move him even closer. “Want you even closer- stop teasing now.”

He rolls his eyes rudely, “Teasing? You think this is me teasing, sweetheart?” And before you can register it, he’s reeling his tongue all the way back into his mouth. Leaving your poor cunt all throbbing and completely untouched. “This is me teasing.” As you buck your hips pathetically with the desire for his ridged texture, “What I was doin’ earlier was just savoring, mama.”

You throat was thick with need, “But- but what is there to savor-”

“What the fuck are ya talking about?” One of his pink brows raise.

“I mean-” You hasten to explain, your entire body radiating pure heat and need. “You’ve already had me like this before-”

“Oh—” And suddenly, the most lecherous smile plasters across his attractive face - already slicked with copious amounts of wadded slick that sticks to him like some sort of adhesive. “Girlie, you don’t even know the half of what m’capable of.”

And before you know it—Sukuna’s rugged fingers come down to spank! right on top of your pussylips. 

Before you know it, he’s clasping the side of your ass cheeks and flipping you right over as if you weighed nothing more than a feather. With one finger hooking onto your panties- you can distinctly sense when the wrestler seems to think better of it and instead bites his pearly white canines down on your soaked underwear.

You’re muffling out with your face pushed into your pillows, “Wh-what are you-”

Before he’s teeeeeeearing your panties right down with nothing but his mouth.

Exposing your quivering pussy all for him to see, smearin’ apart your folds with both his thumbs. He takes a few seconds to admire the slick that splashes out of your entrance, before spitting vertically down your slit.

Simply to add onto the mess.

It’s the only warning you’re getting before Sukuna completely surges in and shoves himself nose-deep between your puffy folds. Just the tip of his nose drags down the middle of your cunt from behind, and before you know it- his tongue is zig-zagging at your hole wiiiiiildly—

He’s like a madman. He’s like a man starved.

Gulping at the excess of your leaking sap and then munching himself even close to lap at the dewdrops of slick just about to fall out of you. They don’t even have to be pouring out of you for your greedy Sukuna to be gluing himself to your cunt.

Shovelling his tongue even deeper. 

And when your tight orifice can’t take any more of him, he’s grunting out into your cunt and spitting.

“Fuck.”—He’s clenching his jaw and spitting out once more at the slight resistance of your hole. Just the way that Sukuna’s wet muscle was oh-so-thick, and he kept having to pry apart your pussy folds even further just to inch inside. Until you’re shivering at the feeling of his knobbly tastebuds dragging down your walls, “C’mon c’mon c’mon- just fucking take it my girl, I know you want to.”

“I swear your tongue got even bigger, Ryo-”

Your velvety walls close in on him, keeping his slippery tongue hostage while he only tries to ebb even deeper. He’s clenching his jaw at the slight resistance of your tight hole. “S’only been a day and she’s forgotten me this much?”

Fisting at the pillows, “I didn’t, it’s just you’re too big.”

“Appreciate the flattery, mama.” You could feel his grin against your softened flesh. “But it’s my fault.”

Instinctually, you’re raising your head off of the spit-drenched pillows to ask just what he meant-

“But I guess I hafta eat her out so she remembers this time, hm?”

But you didn’t have to ask for the answer.

You didn’t even have to think—honestly, you don’t think you can even, well, think by the time he’s got a hold of you.

Because Ryomen Sukuna was going to do well on his promise—Ryomen Sukuna was going to do well on all his promises.

He was latching one ruthless hand onto the side of your hips and manhandling your hips to start gyratin’ down onto his open maw. Angling you in just the right position so that his swollen lips can latch onto your throbbing clit-

“Bet’cha didn’t know that m’a good multitasker.” He’s gurgling out, wads of slick n’ spittle clogging up his throat. And the thing was—Sukuna didn’t care how much he had to suffocate on your pussy, he fucking loved that shit.

“I-I don’t think I did.” You’re replying.

“And bet’cha didn’t know that I- fuck, I can reach in so deeeeeep.” The large muscle of his tongue swipes in so deeply inside of you- you can’t even fully comprehend whether he’d plunged inside all the way up to his chin because of how dumb he was fucking you.

Rough, hard strikes at all your most delicate spots inside.

Finishing off with the most sinful noises - it’s like the deeper he gets, the louder those noises get. “Bet’cha didn’t know that I r-reach yer- hah, g-spot this fast, hm?”

You’re furrowing your brows. Sure, you were slowly getting more and more dazed on his cock - but surely you weren’t that mindless that you wouldn’t notice? “Wait, but I don’t think you ever actually—oh.”

And then you’re feeling it.

And you’re realizing that Sukuna had timed it precisely for the middle of your sentence, when he can hear the effects of you stumbling and falling apart on his very tongue.

Mazing all the way inside as if searching for treasure, his thorough inches are spreading out your walls so well. Not leaving a single crevice unturned, a single drivelling orifice, a single bundle of nerves- that he’s honing in on and darting straight against.

Pushing down on the area of your g-spot, you’re suddenly jolted by the electricity of your pleasure. He snickers, “There it is.”

Crying out, “Th-that’s just mean, Ryo.”

“Th-th-that’s just mean.” Mocking, in a lilting pitch that was most certainly not reminiscent of your own. With a tough roll of his eyes, he’s only unfastened his maw to take you even deeper from behind. “Bet’cha didn’t know that I could be meeeeean—fuckin’ meaner than you even even thought.”

“I-I think I know too well.” Or so you claim - but shit, Sukuna had never eaten you out like this before.

With his pointed chin jutting against the base of your treacly cunt, and his nose curving against your slit. Sukuna isn’t just thrusting his tongue inside you, he’s also making sure to flick and linger his tastebuds into any orifice he knew you were fragile at.

Again. Probing.

Again and again and again.

And with a smug chuckle, Sukuna claims. “Bet’cha didn’t know that I could go reeeeeal fast.” Until you’re hanging your head down to stare between your slick-sheened legs and all you could see was a pink blur intruding at your folds. “Or reeeeeeal slow.”

“F-fuck, that feels so good.” Your back arches into the perfect curvature when his velveteen tongue starts slowing down into an agonizing pace.

It was just so slow that you could feel each line and crevice of his rows of tastebuds, and just so thorough that speckles of your syrup were darting from your orifice and splattering! down onto the mattress. It starts forming a puddle on the sheets beneath you- one that Sukuna was certain not to go to waste.

His free hand skids down the insides of your thighs, layering his fingers in a thin glaze of your pussy’s slick. And whence his fingertips were all done and coated, the pink-haired man was raising them up to his mouth and sucking the sweetness off.

Not. A. Single. Drop. Wasted.

With a groan, he’s not letting his time go to waste, either. And he’s back funneling your snug channel with his tongue—in and out, in and out, in and out. “Take yer pick- s’all for you, mama.”

“Sh-shit, but I like both.” You didn’t even know whether he was talking to you or your pussy by this point - but you were too gone on his tongue to even care. Slightly bucking your hips into his mouth, “But I- ngh, do like it a bit better when you go…faster…”

A sudden spank down on your clit once more, “Atta girl.”

Nose pressed up against your slit, tongue lashing ruthlessly inside.

Ruthlessly.

If you thought you were ruined on the movements of his tongue just earlier, then this sudden sloppy cadence has you seeing fucking stars. 

The gooey end of his tongue swabs against every tender spot at your innards, somehow forking at your luscious g-spot and attempting to reach even deeper. Perhaps your cervix. Perhaps your womb. And Sukuna’s permanently patterning his tastebuds against your walls. Swirling and swirling and swirling right on time with the caresses at your clit.

He didn’t care how much you bucked and trembled at the sheer pleasure of it, the frat leader’s fingernails dig deep into your flesh every time you lurch away.

“Ah ah-” Only to be hauled back down in mere seconds by one of his strong arms. Back and forth, back and forth, baaaack and forth. With an unceremonious squelch! your pussy’s being plastered back down onto his mouth. And Sukuna tongues your folds back open to start jutting in between your lips, “Don’t- haaaah, fuck, don’t fucking run away…how m’I supposed to eat out my girl’s pussy if yer fucking running away?”

“I don’t know, you’ve never- hck!” Before you can open your mouth with your next few words, Sukuna’s showing you what it means to be his girl.

To have his knobbly fingertips pinch at your clit and start drawing—“H-heh…can ya spell it?” He rovers his thumb even harder on top of it like a button, “Bet’cha didn’t know I could do that. Spell it. Or are ya fucked dumb on m’mouth already?”

You’re replying crossly, “M’not fucked-”

“Then spell it.”

With a pitiful moan, you’re throwing your head in a downward direction to try and see exactly what he was-

Smack!

Yet another mean swatting on top of your puffy pussylips, and Sukuna’s tutting against them. It was as if his lips were glued to your pussy using the slick adhesive of your juices, and he didn’t want to detach himself even to speak—even to speak. “Ah ah- no cheating now, mama. Noooo cheating.”

“Fuh-fuck—” He angles his fingertips as if he was about to strike you once more. “Fine- I meant fine! The first letter is, mmm…”

“Yeeeees?” Drawling out.

And your pupils are swirling in time with the sultry motions of his digits. It was a pattern that makes every hair on your body stand on end - too curly to be a particularly pointy letter like ‘A’ or ‘K’ and yet not even half as curly to have been an ‘S’ that might mean his name. “Is it…R?”

“Atta girl.” Yet he plants another slamming of his fingertips that makes you throw your head back and whine, “Whoops- accident, sweetheart, accident.”

“F-fu—” Fuck you, is what you meant to say.

But Sukuna’s roughly bashin’ away at your sweetest orifice a few more times, leaving a big bruise against the side of your walls with his tongue. And it simply leaves you speechless, “Mmmm, nope! The next letter isn’t ‘F’, try again.”

“Y—!” You’re bawling out, your jaw falling agape at the sheer incredible speed at which he was drawing out all those whines and noises. It was simply unbearable in the best way. Unbearable. 

You could tell that he had so-very-clearly been holding back at your previous…hangouts. And you could feel the burning sensation of bliss start up at the pit of your stomach, “And is the rest of the word ‘Ryomen’?”

“Mmm, three correct.” He answers, to which your hazy mind guesses that the first letters were R-Y-O…“Quite the sneaky lil’ thing, aren’t you? And ah- here’s a little hint, this next one’s an apostrophe.”

“Fuuuuuck, m’close.” You’re whimpering out in response- and his response, he’s only slashing at your g-spot at a faster rhythm. Only plucking at your tender clit—“S, and the next letter is- ngh, P.”

“Good, goooood—”

“U.” You gulp, and you’re unsure whether it was because of your oncoming high or because a lecherous part of you already suspected what the rest of what he was writing may be. “S…S…” Your entire body shivers, limbs unravelling - and you’re not quite sure whether you’d make it until the end of-

“Final letter.”

“Y!”

“And wha’s that spell—?” Sukuna grins out, “Her pretty lil’ name.”

Your lips wobble as you try to enunciate, “Ryo’s pussy…”

“That’s my girl.”

You’re seeing a split-second of flashing lights before you’re suddenly pushed onto your high - hard, overtaking waves of pleasure that leave you all boneless against Sukuna’s eating mouth. But that worked just alright for him- he’d simply white-knuckle onto the side of your hips and lavish your tight entrance with his entire tongue.

Probing, again and again.

The cushy edge of his tongue swipes forwards to strike your g-spot right on time with the peaks of your euphoria. Like a perfect button for him to press on and increase your pleasure until you were simply shaking, “And my girl feels so goooood on her Ryomen’s mouth, doesn’t she?” He pants, fingers pinching your clit now and rolling between the roughened pads of his index and thumb. “Feels so nice cumming on Ryo’s tongue- bet’cha didn’t know it could feel this good, huh, sweetheart?”

Furiously shaking your head, “Didn’t- didn’t know- hck!”

And with a few more moans you’re just splashin’ your clingy wads all down Sukuna’s throat, all across his handsome lower half. “Ooooo- aaaaaatta girl—”

“C-can’t stop cumming.” You shake, tears sparkling at the edges of your eyes. “It just feels so good-”

“Leave some for m’cock, alright?”

But he was the one that wasn’t leaving anything, that wasn’t showing you any mercy.

Even once the sparks of your startling orgasm have bated, he’s plunging his wide tongue in and out. Scouring the inside and outside of your treacly pussy. Licking up every single ounce of slick sploshed down your front. 

Dripping wet.

Only once you’re well and thoroughly overstimulated does Sukuna actually falter his movements, “Mmmm, there ya go, girlie~” He’s pulling his prolonged muscle out of your hole with a sloppy squeeeeeelch! He looks down at your mindlessly clenching pussy and admires his handy-work. “And now for the real deal.”

“Th-that wasn’t the real deal?” You’re asking through a whimper.

“That? That was just my appetizer, y’know?” The pink-haired man snickers at his own joke - though it really didn’t sound like a joke to you.

You attempt to flip yourself over- but Sukuna keeps you firmly in place with a hand at your hips. “Ah ah- don’t you think of running from me. Not now. Not ever.” And while you’re still draped across your front on the bed like this, Sukuna’s starting to tug off your hoodie—

Before he realizes just which one it is - his, his name on the back - and he stops immediately. 

“Actually…” Sukuna stands, and you know that tone of voice didn’t bode anything good for you. “Why don’tcha keep it on, hm?”

Instead, he’s the one that’s stripping now.

That skin-tight shirt.

Those baggy pants.

Those boxers that were—oh.

Your eyes widen, “Is it just me or did…grow even bigger since last time, Ryo?”

“Mmm- why don’t we ask my pussy about it later, hm?”

And with that said, you’re getting to turn around and admire all of Ryomen Sukuna’s toned, tanned muscles. They ripple as he discards his clothes somewhere over his shoulder, making those tattoos of his look as though they were moving by themselves.

Greedily, your eyes follow the circles on either of his deltoids. The snake-like patterns down his pecs. The rings around his beefy biceps. The rings around his wrists. All the way down to the rings around either of his meaty thighs.

Shyly, you’re realizing that you’d skipped over one spot in particular.

And you drift your eyes back up—Sukuna’s erection was hard and hot between his legs. The most furious red at his mushroom tip that made him look as though he was so achingly needy he might as well fall off.

That you might as well count each one of his throbs.

Biting down on your lower lip, you’re impatient as you follow a bead of milky pre that dollops on top of his thick tip. Smearing just a bit. Travelling down, down, dooooown the veiny length of his shaft- until it ends up at the unruly tufts of pink at his base.

His tattooed base.

One more ring around his hilt, and next to that—you gasp.

“Oh…oh my god.” Without a second thought, you’re leaning in to get a closer look at that irritated patch of skin next to Sukuna’s v-line. And if your eyes weren’t deceiving you - that part of his skin had a swirling black calligraphy of none other than your fucking name on him. “Don’t tell me you’ve-”

“I did.”

You gape up at him, “Ryomen Sukuna, you’re fucking crazy-”

“I know.” He shivers as you reach out to touch it. Sukuna was fully unclothed now and prowling towards you on the bed, like a predator closing in on his prey. “But I couldn’t just name that pussy of yours ‘Ryo’s pussy’ and not contribute my part, too, could I? I had to show my dedication too, mama.”

“But putting it permanently on your skin-”

“Is the best decision I’ve ever made.”

You knew there was no talking him out of it, and Sukuna’s eagerly smoothing his calloused palm on top of your stomach. Caressing you. Drinking you in with his eyes.

Flipping you onto your stomach once more-

“Now face down, ass up- I wanna fuck my girl right.”

You’re barely managing to let your sweaty scalp hit your pillow before Sukuna suddenly has his obtuse tip squeezed between your pussylips and pushing and pushing—

“Oh—”  Your eyes are scrunching as tight as they could close, and the only thing you can do is utterly melt into Sukuna’s carnal desire. You don’t think you’d ever get used to his sheer size. “Oh my god- oh my fucking- ngh, I always love h-how you feel-”

“For now-” And it’s a damn miracle that the man could speak - especially when your tender walls were squeezing him like that. “F-for now just pretend it’s the first time.”

Did he just stutter? What was he even…“Wh-what- oh.” You’re being shut up by Sukuna’s rugged, ravenous tip once more. He’s swabbing every treacly spot of your insides without even trying - simply just attempting to fit and fit and fit—

“Just- hah- just pretend s’the first time.” He kisses his lips to his teeth, both clammy hands plastered onto the side of your hips to help him funnel his massive cock inside.

His flared slit lodges against the roof of your cunt, and you’re arching just so beautifully into him- that he can’t help but lean down and bite at the side of your throat. Humming in satisfaction at the way the marking is just covered by his hoodie, it gives him the courage he needs to say those next few words. “Pretend s’just you and I. Pretend s’our first time- ngh.”

“You mean to say—oh.” You’re dizzy on the way his honed tip was perfectly opening up your hidden spots, and every time he’s reeling his hips back it’s just a constant back and forth. “Don’t think I even knew I had a spot there…”

“Good- good, jus’ like that.” He grunts out, holding you even tighter to his muscular body. “Pretend s’like we’ve never fucked before. You’re my girl- always have been. M’your Ryo- always have been. Always will be.”

“A-always will be-”

“And right now s’our first time, I’ve never fucked you before- oh, forget about all those fucking times in my room and in the car.” He whispers out, something desperate cracking primally at the back of his throat as he eases his way inside. “S’our time now—and I get to finally, finally fuck you as mine.”

All his.

And you’re finding that when Sukuna’s fucking you as just his…it means he’s so much more ravenous than you’ve ever known him to be.

So much more ruined.

So much more out-of-control—

It’s like he’s truly realized his full potential. “Since yer mine I get to- hah! stop you from running from my cock whenever I like.” Hauling you down like a ragdoll with both hands on your waist, you shrill at the slamming contact of his hips against your hips. His thighs against the backs of your thighs. His large cockhead against your ready cunt. “I get to fuck you raw for the first time. I get to fuck you so much- s-so fucking much n’ I don’t even have to worry about the marks I leave.”

“What marks?”

A slam so hard that you swear you can feel the globular end of his shaft right near your throat—“These marks.”

And you’re almost about to repeat your question in search of an answer once more- before you’re realizing what exactly Sukuna means.

Marks.

The marks he was leaving on every gooey orifice inside your cunt, on the globes of your ass being pummeled by his hips, on the sides of your body under the mercy of his grip.

Using that very same grip, he’s folding you on all fours underneath him. Tighter and tighter. Closer and closer to his hulking body. Before your muddled brain can register it, Sukuna’s reaching over his meaty right leg to plant right on top of your sweaty scalp.

Yes—on top.

The heel of his foot ends up on your head, and your eyes snap open in- perhaps shock, perhaps at the sheer audacity of him. You jolt.

“Ah ah-” The only thing you hear before one of his hands clasp ‘round the cottony fabric of your hoodie and tugs it down - it seems that your sudden lurching movement had made his uniform bunch up by your head. 

And the famed wrestler wasn’t just bringing it down to take a good look at your pretty self. No—he was also bringing it down to read the name - his name - emblazoned across your back and jostling to and fro while you were being fucked by his ruthless hips. “Theeeeere we go, gotta rep the name, mama. Especially the first time.”

“Rep the set? You’re already fucking me- ngh, senseless.”

“And yet I already get to have you- fuck, wear this f’me. My girl. My lovely, lovely girl.” His toned figure leans down and he’s sloppily kissing at the name. 

His name—fuck, how he loved this position. That was why he’d purposefully chosen it, to have his name peak up at him as he ploughed himself into you like a madman. Grunting out once your sopping lips squeeze him at the stretch, “The girl with my- hck! last name-”

“Ryo!”

“Whoops- too soon?” He doesn’t even sound the least bit regretful. And you can’t even answer, because then he’s only fucking your surprised whines out of you, “Mmm, and don’t forget that I also get to do- heh, this.” And as if it was even possible, his vicious hips accelerate their tempo against you. “I get to do whaaaatever I want with my girl’s pretty pussy- ah, apologies, my pretty pussy just to fit my thick cock inside.”

“I-inside-” You mindlessly babble out, “Want it inside-”

“Yeah? Want it all the way until my tattoo? Never been fucked like this before, have ya?”

Well, he has fucked you like this before. But that coherent part of you realizes that that wasn’t exactly the answer that Sukuna wanted right now—“No- no, never. You’re the first to fuck me like this, Ryo, mmm.”

“Good.”

Whether he was praising you for keeping up with his conversation - or whether he was praising you for taking his cock until he’s bottoming out - you’re not quite sure. Either way, the curly pink hairs at his base finally reach your folds—and they scritch-scratch at your pussy in such a carnal way you never knew you needed.

As he’s fully inside of you, the wrestling superstar hunches his entire body over and shivers. And pants. And throbs his entire length deeply inside of you in a way that makes your head pound with a rapid ba-thump! Ba-thump! Ba-thump!

“H-here….” One of his hands lifts off of your hip to caress down the front of your stomach. Sukuna feels for where his swollen tip was pulsating against your womb, and presses doooown against that lil’ bump. “S’my first time kissin’ my girl over here, isn’t it?”

“It- it is—”

And Sukuna truly is fucking you like it’s the first time - he’s fucking you like he’s angrier he didn’t have you earlier, he’s fucking you like he’s making up for all the lost time.

Just roughened, piercing bashes against your g-spot- he doesn’t even have to try to locate that bruised n’ battered little area on your channel. The rounded orifice of it gets pummeled by his shaft, and you’re seeing stars due to the sheer pressure of him. “It feels so- ngh- fuck.” You could barely even string together a sentence, head feeling all airy. 

“Feels soooo—?”

“I don’t- I don’t even…” He doesn’t even have to be fully inside to let his curvaceous tip poke into your cervix. Purposefully angling his hips, Sukuna’s rub-a-dubbing the door to your womb with his puckered tip. “Th-think m’cockdrunk, Ryo.”

And if you were in any better state of mind, maybe you’d have noticed the way that his rude cadence seemed to stutter. “C-cockdrunk?”

Nodding through your tears, “I am, I am—oh.”

But of course, never let Ryomen Sukuna be known as the man that doesn’t take care of his cockdrunk partner. 

Never. 

Because in a split-second, he’s lifting his rude foot off of your head and you jolt at the sudden rush of blood to your scalp. “Oh- oh my…”

Only mere moments of mercy before you feel your entire limp body be hoisted off of the mattress.

Your eyes damn-near bulge out of your scalp, and you’re flailing at the feeling before- “Shhh, shh sh- be a good girl f’me before you make me put that foot atop your head again, mama.” Sukuna grunts, and suddenly you’re feeling one of his strong arms look around your neck.

You could feel all those developed biceps of his bulging against your throat once Sukuna cradles your neck and squeeeeezes. Spittle flowing out of you and down his veiny forearm like a fountain, “D-did you just put me in a fucking- ngh, headlock?!”

“Mhm.” He shows absolutely no remorse, “And I don’t hear her complaining.”

In fact, he could only hear the most sopping wet squelches emanating from your cunt.

And so Sukuna keeps holding you in this treacherous headlock whilst he’s pummeling you from behind. All those veiny inches of his cock being slurped right up between your pussy lips. Again. And again. And again and again and again—

It feels like hours have passed before you’re jolting at the sudden feeling of Sukuna’s warm fingertips slithering down between your sheeny legs once more. Your clit throbs like it’d missed his touch- and never one to leave you wanting more anymore, he’s twisting his rugged fingers on the nub.

Letting the patterned edges of his digits start twistin’ and turning that swollen knob in his hand. Your cunt squelches out a wet splash of slick at the sudden pleasure, “I-it just feels so good-”

“I know.” Sukuna hums, all smug with himself. “She’s told me- heh, think about thaaaat—I get ta speak with her for the first time tonight.” Before you can say anything else, he dips his head down to look at your cunt from underneath you and coos. “Hey, girlie, how are ya~?”

“Y-you’re unbelievable-” And yet he’s rovering his thumb all over your clit in a way that just has you gasping for more, and your cunt squelching out even louder.

“Mmm, m’doing good, thanks for asking.” He continues…a fucking conversation with your pussy. And at your widened stare, he shrugs. “What? M’only having a chat with- hah, my pussy. Wha’s wrong with that?”

“N-nothing…” You suppose.

“Exactly.” And then he times the ministrations of his thick thumb just right to roll over your clit in synchronization with his cock. You’re feeling one incredible thud! at your g-spot, and then you’re feeling another drag on your clit. This time…a pattern that you’re finding strangely familiar- “Can you spell, mama?”

“Are you asking—” Smack! A rude spank on your cunt, “F-fuck…”

“Apologies ‘bout that. S’my first time with you, remember? And I hafta get to know you. Get to do this.” He hums, and it’s not to you anymore. He’s completely and utterly devoted to keeping all his concentration on giving your pussy the utmost pleasure possible - from two different places of origin. “So about that spelling—”

“Fuck, Ryo, what are you trying to…”

This time, he’s not cutting you off. This time you’re trailing off out of your own volition, your ears listening for the sequences of letters that Sukuna calls out.

A sequence that sounds oddly familiar.

A sequence that spelled out your name.

He drag-drag-draaaaags your clit and it lets out a particularly loud lecherous sound that the larger man beams at, “Mmm, exactly. Perfect pronunciation and all- now let’s see if you can spell the rest.” And without further ado, Sukuna’s expert fingertips start outlining a different set of letters on your throbbing clit.

Making you shake with pleasure, “W-wait that spells…” Silently mouthing along.

S—he’s accelerating the thumps all the way at the back of your cervix, until you’re feeling dizzy.U—K—just the sheer amount of tears that streamed down your cheeks already told you that you were getting close to your high. U—

Your eyes widen, “Y-you’re not seriously-”

“Shhhh.”

N—but oh, he was. As if he was reading off of that sports hoodie on your back. And he was letting you tremble uncontrollably in the aftermath of his constant strikes and thumps at your greedy orifice, drilling into you with a hunger that never satiates. A hunger that tells you he’s wanted to do this for a long, long time. A—

You whisper what exactly it spelled out.

Your name, with the last name of-

“-Sukuna.” The man himself finishes off, before leaning down to leer at your drivelling cunt. The very same that was slurping and squelching away maddeningly at your gushing slick—“S’gonna be your name very soon, my girl.”

You don’t quite know which one of you he’s talking to - you or your pussy.

But you don’t quite care at this moment, either. Because in almost no time, you’re bursting into your nth high of the night - it’s no longer simply your second anymore.

Because as soon as you’re crashing into the white-hot wave of your second, you’re plummeting into your third. Your fourth. Your fifth. Seemingly dragged out of you as if it was oh-so-easy by none other than Sukuna’s ruthless cock.

You shake as it explodes through you, harder than any other orgasm you’ve experienced in your entire life.

Toes curling.

Lashes staining with tears.

The only thing you can do is arch your back into Sukuna’s sculptured one and let him thoroughly bash you through your zaps of euphoria. Over and over.

He lets his veiny shaft glide down your gooey insides, caressing every inch of you that seemed to explode with pleasure any time he was pistoning into you. “Yeah-” He grunts, feeling you uncontrollably clench around him. “Yeah, yeah, yeah- cum around my cock, sweetheart. Only around my cock—” His headlock on you tightens, “-got it?”

“Got it-” You babble out stupidly, your cheek slipping along the sheen of saliva you’d created on his forearm. “I got it, I got it- but…”

One pink brow raises, “But…?”

“But I also want you to do o-one thing f’me.”

He nuzzles the crook of your neck, “Anything.”

“Cum inside?”

And, well, Sukuna did say ‘anything’—didn’t he?

Because with a few more vulgar thrusts, the infamous frat leader is tipping his head back and emptying himself out inside you. You could feel the way that his thiiick balls clench from behind you, each of those wadded webs of ivory sap being poured out into you.

Each and every single one.

Stuffed and stuffed inside of you.

Your eyes roll to the back of your head as you take in the second skin that he’s layering on top of your insides. Something so warm and filthy feeling heavy inside of your orifice—fuck, you’re discovering that a primal part of you loved the feeling.

It sploshes! out into your deepest depths and create a lil’ puddle that you can feel even at your cervix. Just swirled around by his thickened tip, “C-cumming—” The man rasps out, voice botched with a primal sort of hoarseness. He stutters as he cums. He shakes as he cums. Crimson eyes shuttering at the most blissful feeling in the world, spurting his seed inside your needy pussy. “And then there’s that- hah! I get to cum inside you for the f-first time…”

And it really was the first time he was filling you up like this. All the way up to the brim and fucking those pearly beads of cum right back inside you, “Kinda- ngh, always wan’ you to cum inside me.”

He pecks the side of your temple, hips still shifting filthily. “Hey then we’re gonna have a- mmm, mini-Sukuna before you’re even Mrs. Sukuna, girlie.”

“M-maybe I don’t mind…” Bucking your hips back into his for more friction.

“Talkin’ outta that pussy, I see.”

With yet another sudden spank! on top of your sultry folds, you’re being flipped over once more and stuffed right back up to your womb with Sukuna’s thickened inches. All of them shoved right up until you can feel them at your very throat- “We might have to dumbify her too, I’m afraid.”

“S’gonna be a long night.” You’re commenting with a shiver.

Sukuna grins, “How’d you spell ‘the first of many’?”

.

.

.

The tournament was in an uproar by the time you’re running into the stands.

Well, more bowing and apologizing as you scramble to your seat past rows of other supporters- but you stand by it nonetheless. You’re letting out a pant of relief as you finally plop unceremoniously down onto the only empty chair in the stands, placing down your bag and pulling on the collar of Sukuna’s wrestling hoodie in an attempt to fan yourself. 

“You’re late, my dear.” Utahime hisses from the row behind you, flipping off the middle-aged man that grumbles at her.

“I know, I’m sorry!” You whisper back - ah, so that’s where they were. A few more rows behind her were some of the Curses Epsilon brothers - including Choso - that you had been starting to get to know, little by little. They wave happily at you and you wave back with a grin. You’d been wanting to get seats next to all of them, but it seems they’d filled up faster than you’d hoped.

At the very least you were lucky to have your friends so close by you, and you’re shooting them an apologetic smile - after all, you were the one that’d bugged your two best friends to join you watching Sukuna’s wrestling match. You mouth, “Whole story. Explain later.”

“Traffic?” Shoko asks from next to your purple-haired friend, looking up from her anatomy textbook. For what reason she had that, you weren’t quite sure…and you weren’t brave enough to ask, either.

Choosing the short story, you’re nodding at her suggestion.

You’d run all the way here, truth be told.

Sukuna was already halfway through his final match of the tournament, one more and he’d win this collegiate title. And though a part of you was upset that you’d missed out on so much (sure, you could watch them later on the recordings, but it was the principal that counted!), it made you so-very-proud to see so many of the recruiters with their eyes locked on Sukuna and Sukuna only.

Your boyfriend of just shy of a month.

You couldn’t blame them—fuck, you just wished you hadn’t had to wait so long at the dry cleaner’s! Apparently there had been some sort of mix-up that’d resulted in you being quite delayed while you actually waited to claim the hoodie you knew and loved too much.

Sure, it’d been slightly stained from some of last nights…activties (somewhat of a good luck ritual, he claimed, though you knew what he really wanted to do was fuck you in the hoodie with his name), but beloved nonetheless! 

Anyways—after falling behind your schedule, you’d been hit by traffic, and then there was the issue of actually trying to navigate the stadium, and then- well, here you were!

Evidently, it seems that Sukuna is sensing the same thing.

Because in the middle of an ankle lock, Sukuna’s crimson eyes flick upwards towards the stands- and they’re meeting yours instantly.

A charged tension only the two of you could feel.

Squirming slightly in your seat at the intensity of his stare, his realization, you give him a wave.

In mere split-seconds, Sukuna has the other man slammed down onto the floor and his sweaty body struggling to even move. You cheer, that had to have at least been two points.

“We’re lucky you’re here, my dear.” Utahime leans down to whisper to you. “You won’t believe what that boyfriend of yours was like before the game- moping around, calling you, staring longingly at his phone wallpaper of you—eugh! I didn’t even know that a man of that size and strength could act like a lost puppy.” She shudders.

Shoko states plainly, “What she means to say is that your boyfriend missed you.”

And you’re just about to open your mouth to answer- when right beside you, a jittery voice speaks up.

“P-pardon me.” The three of you turn your heads in the direction of the man that’d been seated to your left, you hadn’t paid much attention to him considering the frantic state you’d been in when you first got here. “Did you say ‘boyfriend’?”

And now, you almost wished you did.

Because the man beside you looked exactly like Sukuna only…softer. Quieter. Calmer. With an air about him that told you that perhaps he was the type that grew up with quite a bit of responsibility. He wore a sweater with the shapes of some marine animals sewn into it. He didn’t have any of Sukuna’s tattoos or the chiselled look of a recent athlete or the gruffness he wore like a cloak - but the resemblance was uncanny. 

The bespectacled man adjusts his glasses and your jaw drops—this must be his older brother that he told you so much about! “You must be his girlfriend that he’s told me so much about.”

“Y-yes!” You snap out of your little reverie at his words, and you’re immediately reaching out your hand for a handshake. “You must be his older brother, Jin?”

Jin pulls you in for a hug, sighing out against you. “Thank you so much for taking care of him.”

“No- not at all! The pleasure’s all mine, and he’s the one that takes care of me most of the time.” You’re sheepishly admitting, “Thank you for taking care of him all this time, I know he looks up at you so much.”

The other pink-haired man blushes, scratching behind his neck. “W-well I wouldn’t say that…” He glances to his left, “Oh! And silly me- I forgot to introduce you to our father.”

You’re beaming at the gruff old man seated next to Jin, a furrow between his brows that you could’ve recognized anywhere on his younger son. “It’s a pleasure to meet you!”

The introductions between you and Sukuna’s family go swimmingly (if there was a wrestling alternative then you’d have said it), and you’re finding that they were the absolute sweetest. Jin was soft and compassionate, the polar opposite of Sukuna and yet so similar to him at his deepest core. Wasuke was more like Sukuna on the outside, and you swear you could feel your sides splitting at the quips he’d comment about his son while you all watched the match.

Eventually, the three of you along with your friends in the latter rows are chatting up so much of a storm that you almost don’t notice—“He’s about to win.”

At the sound of your voice, the rest of your group looks over at the ringed boundaries of the match.

Instantly, you’re all up on your feet and cheering at the top of your lungs. 

All of you.

Jin and Wasuke.

Shoko and Utahime.

The Curses Epsilon boys.

You.

And when Ryomen Sukuna finally defeats his tough opponent, you can’t decide which one of you cheered the loudest.

But what you do know is that he’s sauntering up past the boundary the minute his win is announced - all sweat-streaked and spitting out his mouth guard, all panting and toned with his muscles, all uncaring whether or not his coach is talking to him right now.

He doesn’t care

He doesn’t care.

Sukuna’s breaking into a sprint once he sees you getting off the stands—and scoops you into his arms whilst you yelp in delight. 

You knew you must look such a sight, you and this hulking man.

You feel him bury his face into the crook of your neck, whispering. “Could you all have been any louder?” And you could feel the way his face burns against your skin.

“What- the King of the Court fan club?” You’re innocently questioning, “Yes, that is our name and you can thank Jin for that. And no, we don’t show signs of stopping any time soon- we actually plan on expanding to the rest of the campus by the end of semester-”

He peeks up at the group behind you, here just for him - his brother and father, your friends, his fraternity brothers - and groans. And you can only laugh.

“You all are insufferable.” Sukuna says, baritone dramatically pained. “Especially you.”

“You’re obsessed with me.”

He presses his lips to yours, “That, I am.”

A/N. A MAN WHO YEARNS IS A MAN WHO WHAT??

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. 

He never thought much of it, other than appreciative responses anytime someone compliments it. It's an attractive trait, but he's Bruce Wayne. Being attractive is nothing new. The kids know that, although they would never admit how hugging Bruce could throw them off sometimes.

This, unfortunately, is not nothing new to the JL (pre-identity reveal). Batman's cape is constantly draped around his frame, and the only time his figure is revealed is when they're in the middle of battle or a situation where their attention is solely needed somewhere else. So to anyone else who's made no connection between Bruce and Batman, they would have no idea of how that mf is actually built.

Now picture a scenario, one where they (anyone of the JL, I didn't really choose who) thought Batman was gravely injured only for the man to walk out of the danger fine. They're filled with relief after seeing Batman in one piece, and they run to wrap the man in a firm hug. Except they ended up stumbling a bit because there was a lot less frame to hug than they expected. That's when they pause, their arms frozen and completely capable of double-wrapping around Batman's waist. It took his's grumbly "you can let go now" for them to scramble away, trying their best to hide their surprise (or the blush in their cheeks) as they force a normal act.

The others noticed. How the Dark Knight's cape drastically narrowed down when it was squeezed in a hug, how the specific JL member pulled away clumsily while trying to force on a poker face. But the bat instantly demanded a post-mission debrief and so the topic was dropped... for now.

Over the next few months, the others discreetly tried to find ways to hold Bruce. Some managed to during missions, seeing the spur of the moment as an opportunity. Flash dragged Batman away from an explosion and was dazed after.

Both Wonder Woman and Superman has had to catch Batman mid-air and took the opportunity, the only hint of their success being a pleased smile or a slight flush respectively. Others followed suit, and soon enough all of the founders have had the discovery of just how small their specific comrades waist could be. See, it wouldn't have been such a revelation had Batman himself not been so closed off and secretive. And what do they do with this knowledge? Absolutely nothing. The discovery itself is considered an achievement, that's enough for them. Maybe a little gossip here and there.

But Bruce noticed. The subtle staring at his frame, the way the gazes almost feel like they're trying to pierce through his cape. But they try so hard to play oblivious about it, and he finds it hilarious. Not to mention the sorry attempts at trying to gauge his frame. He'll hand it to them for the effort, though he'll never admit how most of those efforts even happened because they allowed them to.

He told the kids about it thinking they would find it funny, even suggesting that he should one day lead a meeting without wearing his cape and have all their reactions recorded on hidden cameras in the Watchtower.

So it was a bit weird when the day of the prank arrives and suddenly all the kids are at the Watchtower, put of nowhere so engrossed in his "boring" meetings and the members of the JL.

The same members who would not stop gawking at Bruce, at their dad.

The Watchtower will soon turn into a war zone but hey, Bruce thought it was fun while it lasted.

~~~~

“man, i’m soooo bored,” he announced, flopping dramatically across the entire couch so his head landed in your lap. his ears flicked against your stomach as he nuzzled into your thighs. “we should do something fun. like… build a blanket fort. and then maybe stay in it for nine months, or whatever.”

you blinked down at him. “nine months?”

“long game, baby. commitment builds character.” he grinned up at you, zero subtlety, tail thumping the cushions like an excited drum.

you snorted and poked his forehead. “weirdo.”

hint number two came after dinner. satoru had been extra clingy all evening, tail constantly brushing your calves under the table. now he was “helping” you load the dishwasher, which mostly meant crowding you against the counter and watching what you were doing with his chin hooked on your shoulder.

he leaned in close, voice dropping into that silky purr he knew made your knees weak. “you know what would be really relaxing after a long day? some deep, thorough stretching. the kind that leaves you all warm and full and glowing. i’m excellent at stretching, by the way. top tier. its practically in my dna.”

you raised an eyebrow, handing him a mug. “yoga again?”

“something like that,” he said, ears perking hopefully. his tail curled around your thigh for half a second before loosening again. “very… intimate yoga. private lessons only.”

you laughed and ducked under his arm to grab the dish soap. “pass, last time we tried yoga you complained about muscle cramps for a week.”

hint number three arrived near midnight. you were brushing your teeth innocently when he appeared in the bathroom doorway wearing nothing but sweatpants slung dangerously low on his hips. the fluffy tip of his tail kept flicking back and forth like a metronome set to “horny.”

he held up a little bottle of massage oil he’d clearly just bought when he went outside with the excuse of grabbing mail, shaking it with way too much enthusiasm. “heard this stuff is great for sore muscles. especially lower back and… inner thighs. thought we could test it. you’ve been looking a little tense lately. i could work it in real slow. make sure every inch gets taken care of.”

you spat toothpaste and gave him a look in the mirror. “satoru.”

“what? i’m being helpful! boyfriend of the year material right here.” he wiggled the bottle, ears doing that cute little twitch they always did when he was trying too hard. “maybe that yoga idea from earlier could work well with this too!”

“is there something you’re trying to tell me, toru?”

“no! not at all. why would you think that?”

you rinsed your mouth with a short laugh and patted his cheek on the way out.

hint number four was subtler, or at least he thought it was. the next morning he made breakfast— pancakes shaped like little hearts, because he was nothing if not extra. but the real giveaway was the way he kept “accidentally” bumping his hips against yours while you reached for syrup, his tail sneaking around your waist to pull you closer.

“these pancakes are pretty good, right?” he asked, voice casual. too casual. “soft. warm. perfect for filling up on. you should eat more, actually. gotta keep your strength up for… activities. lots of energy needed later.”

you forked a bite and eyed him over the table. his ears were practically vibrating.

“activities,” you repeated. “care to share what you’ve planned?”

he nodded so fast his white hair flopped into his eyes. “mhm. cardio. endurance training. maybe i can pin you down and—”

“satoru.”

he stuffed an entire pancake in his mouth to shut himself up.

by day three he was a mess. you came home from running errands to find a sheet of paper stuck to the fridge with a heart-shaped magnet. in a sparkly bright blue gel pen, obviously, were two neat columns written his familiar handwriting.

you read it twice, lips twitching.

soft footsteps padded behind you. satoru leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, ears flat against his snowy hair like he was bracing for rejection. his tail betrayed him completely, swishing in hopeful little figure-eights across the floor.

you folded the list neatly and turned to face him.

he swallowed. “so… verdict?”

you stepped closer, sliding your hands up his chest until your fingers brushed the soft base of his ears. they flicked under your touch, then angled forward, greedy for more.

“you’re the most ridiculous boyfriend on the planet,” you told him, voice soft.

his shoulders drooped. “that’s a no—”

“it’s a yes, satoru.”

the change was instant. his ears shot straight up, pupils blowing wide, and that massive tail exploded into full fluffed mode before wrapping around your waist so fast it nearly lifted you off your feet.

“finally,” he breathed, scooping you up like you weighed nothing. the purr that rolled out of his chest was loud enough to rattle the fridge magnets. “three whole days, baby. i was running out of hints. i almost resorted to writing it on the ceiling in glow-in-the-dark stars.”

you laughed as he carried you down the hall toward the bedroom, legs wrapped around his hips. “you could’ve just asked like a normal person.”

“where’s the fun in that?” he nuzzled into your neck, sharp teeth grazing skin in a promise. “though i really thought you’d get the hint much earlier.”

“the nine months in a blanket fort gave it away, actually,” you held back a laugh when he looked so surprised, unable to stop yourself from planting a kiss on his part lips. “you’re not exactly james bond, babe.”

he kicked the bedroom door shut behind you, the click of the lock sounding very final. when he laid you down on the bed his eyes were practically glowing, ears forward, tail curling possessively around your ankle.

“gonna take such good care of you,” he murmured, already tugging your hoodie over your head with reverent hands. “fill you up nice and deep, just like you need. keep you warm and full until that sweet scent goes away… or maybe a little longer. who knows.”

you reached up to scratch behind his ears, watching them flutter in bliss. “my stubborn kitty.”

“your stubborn kitty,” he agreed, grinning and leaning down to kiss you again.