s a g e d r e a m s - r e c

The silence in Megumi Fushiguro’s apartment had never felt like a weapon before. It had always been a soft, comfortable thing. The quiet of shared space, the peace of two people who didn’t need to fill every moment with noise. But tonight, the silence it felt different.

Megumi had come home late, later than usual, his shoulders hunched and his jaw tight. You’d watched him shrug off his jacket, his movements jerky and exhausted, and your heart had clenched with sympathy. You knew he’d had a brutal week. A mission had gone sideways, leaving him with a concussion and a civilian casualty that wasn’t his fault but weighed on him anyway. Then there had been the endless debriefings, the paperwork, the sidelong glances from the higher-ups who always seemed to be waiting for him to fail. You’d seen the dark circles under his eyes deepen with each passing day, watched him pick at his food without eating, and felt him toss and turn beside you in bed long after the lights went out.

So you’d done what you always did. You’d tried to help. You’d made his favorite tea, the ginger one that stung the nose and warmed the throat. You’d set out his comfortable clothes, the soft sweater with the frayed cuffs he loved. And when he’d sunk onto the couch with a bone-deep sigh, you’d settled beside him and started talking, hoping to pull him out of his head, to distract him from the darkness you could see swirling behind his eyes.

“I was thinking about time today,” you’d begun, your voice soft and meandering, the way it always was when you were trying to soothe him. “Not like, clock time, but geological time. Did you know that if you compressed the entire history of the Earth into a single year, humans wouldn’t show up until like, eleven-forty PM on December thirty-first? And the entire recorded history of human civilization would be the last few seconds before midnight? It’s wild, right? All of our wars and art and love and everything, just this tiny little blip. And it made me think about how when you’re in the middle of a bad week, it feels like it’s going to last forever, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not even a fraction of a fraction of a—”

“Can you just be quiet?”

The words weren’t loud. They weren’t even particularly harsh. But they stopped you cold, your mouth still half-open around the next syllable, your hands frozen mid-gesture. You stared at him, waiting for the punchline, the softening of his eyes, the small quirk of his lips that meant he was teasing.

It didn’t come.

He wasn’t looking at you. His head was tilted back against the couch, his eyes closed, and there was a furrow between his brows so deep it looked carved there. The words hung in the air between you, ugly and final, and for one bizarre, disorienting moment, a single thought cut through your shock: This isn’t Megumi.

The thought was so strong, so visceral, that your eyes darted around the room, half-expecting to see the shimmer of a veil, the telltale distortion of a curse’s technique. Because this couldn’t be real. Your Megumi—your sweet, quiet, secretly tender Megumi who let you put face masks on him and once sat through a three-hour documentary about nudibranchs because you’d said they looked like tiny sea dragons and you loved them—your Megumi would never, ever say that to you. This had to be a curse. Some vile, parasitic thing wearing his skin, twisting his voice, using his exhaustion as a doorway in.

You didn’t realize you were holding your breath until your lungs started to burn. Your hands were trembling in your lap, but you kept them still, kept your face as neutral as you could manage, while your mind spiraled through every exorcism you’d ever studied, every curse you’d ever encountered. You searched his face for some sign of the supernatural, some glint of something that wasn’t him.

Megumi’s eyes opened, and you searched them desperately. But all you saw was exhaustion. Bone-deep, soul-crushing exhaustion, and underneath it, a flicker of irritation that made your stomach drop.

He must have seen something in your expression—the wide-eyed horror, the desperate scanning—because his brow furrowed further. "Nothing is wrong, I just… I can’t right now. I need quiet. Please.”

Please. He’d said please, like it was a reasonable request, like he hadn’t just taken the thing you were most vulnerable about—the thing you’d been terrified of your entire life—and confirmed it was true. You talked too much, you shared too much, you were too much, and the one person you’d trusted with all of it had finally gotten sick of pretending otherwise.

You didn’t remember standing up. You didn’t remember walking to the bedroom. All you remembered was the click of the door closing behind you, the sound of your own heartbeat thundering in your ears, and the slow, creeping horror of a new thought slithering into your mind.

What if he’s been holding this back for our entire relationship, and tonight he just… slipped?

You pressed your back against the bedroom door and slid down until you were sitting on the floor, your knees drawn up to your chest. The tears came hot and silent, and with them, the spiral.

Because the thing was, it made sense. It made terrible, perfect sense.

You’d always known you talked a lot. You’d been told so your whole life—by teachers who moved your desk to the back of the classroom, by friends who slowly stopped returning your texts, by family members who smiled tight smiles and said, “Don’t you ever run out of things to say?” You talked when you were happy, when you were nervous, when you were sad, and when you were excited. Talking was how you processed the world. It was how you connected, how you loved, how you breathed.

And Megumi… Megumi was so quiet. He spoke in glances and small gestures, in the brush of his fingers against yours, in the way he’d make you tea without being asked. You’d always thought—hoped—that your talking was the yang to his yin, that you filled the silences he didn’t want to fill himself, that he liked it, that he liked you.

But what if he didn’t? What if every story you’d ever told him, every random observation, every excited ramble about sea slugs or cloud formations or the socioeconomic implications of ancient Roman plumbing—what if every single word had been sandpaper against his nerves? What if all those little hums and nods, the ones you’d interpreted as listening, had actually been him just… enduring?

You thought back through your entire relationship, and the memories shifted and warped before your eyes, taking on a sinister new shape. The time you’d spent forty-five minutes explaining the plot of a book he’d never read, and he’d just sat there, silent. You’d thought he was being a good listener. What if he’d been wishing you would stop? The time you’d made him watch a video essay about the history of buttons, and he’d fallen asleep halfway through. You’d teased him about it, thinking it was cute. What if he’d been so bored, so exhausted by your endless stream of words, that his body had just given up?

Every memory became evidence. Every silence became a verdict. And you, who loved him so much, realized with a sickening lurch that your love might have been a burden. That the very thing you’d been offering him—yourself, unfiltered and enthusiastic and overflowing—might have been the thing he’d secretly wished he could escape.

You didn’t sleep that night. You lay in bed, still and silent as a stone, listening to Megumi’s breathing on the other side of the mattress. He didn’t reach for you. He didn’t say anything. And that, too, felt like confirmation.

───

The next morning, you woke up with a new resolve. If Megumi needed quiet, you would give him quiet. If your talking was a burden, you would set it down. You would become smaller, neater, easier. You would be the girlfriend he deserved, not the one he’d been saddled with.

It was the hardest thing you’d ever done.

The first day, you caught yourself a dozen times. You’d open your mouth to tell him about the weird bird you’d seen outside the window, and you’d snap it shut again. You’d pick up your phone to text him a thought that had just occurred to you, and you’d set it back down. Every suppressed word felt like a small death, a little piece of yourself that you were burying alive.

But you did it. For him, you did it.

“Morning,” you said when he stumbled into the kitchen. One word. Neat. Contained. You placed his coffee in front of him—black, no sugar, the way he liked it—and turned back to the sink.

Megumi grunted in response, rubbing his eyes. He didn’t seem to notice anything different. Why would he? This was probably what he’d always wanted. A quiet morning. A peaceful coffee. A girlfriend who didn’t assault him with trivia before he’d fully woken up.

The second day was harder. You saw a dog on your walk home that looked exactly like his Divine Dog, a big black shaggy thing with soulful eyes, and your first instinct was to take a picture, to send it to him, to say, “Look! It’s your son! He’s working at a café now apparently, very distinguished!” You had your phone out, the camera app open, before you remembered. You put the phone away. You walked home in silence. And when Megumi asked, “How was your day?” you said, “Fine,” and nothing else.

The third day, the fourth day, the fifth day—they all blurred together into a haze. You’d never realized how much of your life was made of words until you had to swallow every single one. You’d never realized how lonely silence could be until you were drowning in it.

You didn’t have a lot of close friends. It wasn’t that people didn’t like you—they did, or at least, they seemed to. But friendships required maintenance, and you’d always poured so much of yourself into your relationship with Megumi that there hadn’t been much left over. He’d been your person. The one you texted at 2 AM when you had a thought that couldn’t wait. The one whose shoulder you shook when you saw something beautiful or weird or funny, because sharing it with him was what made it real.

Now you had no one. The thoughts piled up inside you, a tower of unsaid words growing taller every day. You started a journal, but it wasn’t the same. The journal didn’t hum in the right places. The journal didn’t roll its eyes fondly or call you an idiot with that particular soft inflection that meant I love you. The journal was just paper, and you were so, so lonely.

Megumi didn’t notice.

Well, that wasn’t entirely fair. He noticed something. He noticed that you were quieter, but he chalked it up to mood swings. You’d always been emotional, up and down, sunshine and rain. He figured you were going through something personal—maybe family stuff, maybe hormones, maybe just the general weight of being a sorcerer in a world that never stopped needing saving. He’d ask, “You okay?” and you’d say, “I’m fine,” and he’d accept it, because Megumi was not, by nature, a person who pushed.

A small, petty part of you wanted him to push. You wanted him to grab you by the shoulders and say, “You’re not fine. You haven’t told me a single fact about marine biology in five days. What’s wrong?” But he didn’t. He just drifted through the apartment like a ghost, and you drifted with him, two silent ships passing in a fog of your own making.

Weeks passed. You got very good at being quiet. You learned the precise number of words required to get through a day without arousing suspicion: “Good morning.” “Do you want dinner?” “I’m going to bed.”

And through it all, the thoughts kept coming. They never stopped. Every moment of every day, your brain was churning out observations, questions, connections, jokes, stories. Did you know that octopuses have three hearts? Did you know that the moon is slowly moving away from the Earth? Did you know that I love you so much it’s killing me not to tell you? The words pressed against the inside of your skull and you had nowhere to put them.

Until Yuuta.

───

You’d gone to the sorcerer headquarters to drop off some paperwork for Gojo—a favor you’d agreed to in the morning. You were walking across the training grounds, head down, already composing the text you wouldn’t send Megumi about the interesting moss pattern on the path, when you literally ran into someone.

“Oh! I’m so sorry, I wasn’t—” You looked up into a pair of kind, worried eyes, and your brain short-circuited. “Yuuta?”

Yuuta Okkotsu smiled at you, that gentle, slightly awkward smile that made him look like a startled puppy. “Hey! It’s good to see you. I feel like it’s been forever. How are you? How’s Megumi?”

And something in you, something that had been wound tight for weeks, just… snapped.

“Did you know,” you said, the words tumbling out before you could stop them, “that there’s a species of jellyfish that’s biologically immortal? It’s called the Turritopsis dohrnii, and when it gets injured or stressed or just old, it can revert back to its polyp stage and start its whole life cycle over. It’s like hitting the reset button on your own existence. Scientists are studying it to see if there are applications for human aging, but honestly, I think the jellyfish is onto something. Imagine if every time you made a horrible mistake, you could just turn back into a baby and try again. Megumi would probably appreciate that, right? A do-over button for relationships? ‘Oh no, I’ve been a terrible boyfriend, time to become a polyp!’ Though I guess that’s not really fair. He’s not terrible. I’m the terrible one. I’m the one who talks too much. That’s literally what he said. Well, not literally, but implied. He said, ‘Can you just be quiet?’ and I’ve been trying, I really have, but it’s so hard because I have all these thoughts and nowhere to put them and I can’t tell him because he doesn’t want to hear it and I don’t have anyone else because he was my person and now I’m just—I’m just full. Do you ever feel full? Like you’re going to burst if you don’t say something, but if you say something, the person you love most in the world is going to look at you with that exhausted, annoyed expression, and you’ll die a little inside? No? Just me? Okay. Okay, I’m sorry. I’m doing it again. I’m talking too much. I should stop. I’m going to stop now.”

You stopped. You were breathing hard, your heart pounding, and you realized with a distant sort of horror that you’d just verbally vomited all over Yuuta Okkotsu, a man you barely knew, a man who was probably just trying to be polite and was now trapped in a conversation with a lunatic.

But Yuuta didn’t look trapped. He looked… concerned. And interested. And maybe a little bit sad.

“The jellyfish thing is really cool,” he said quietly. “Tell me more about that.”

You stared at him. “What?”

“The immortal jellyfish. How does it work, exactly? Does it remember its previous life, or is it a blank slate every time?”

It was like someone had opened a floodgate. You couldn’t stop yourself. You didn’t want to stop yourself. You told him about the cellular transdifferentiation process, about the way the jellyfish’s cells could change from one type to another, about the implications for regenerative medicine and the philosophical questions it raised about identity and consciousness and what it meant to truly die. And then, because he was still listening, still nodding, still asking questions with genuine curiosity in his dark eyes, you told him about octopuses and moon phases and the time you’d gotten lost in a museum and accidentally attended a lecture on medieval grain storage, and it had been the most fascinating hour of your life.

You talked for two hours. Two solid hours of uninterrupted, uncensored, gloriously rambling. You told Yuuta things you hadn’t even realized you’d been holding in. You told him about the specific shade of gray the sky turned before a storm, and the way Megumi’s hair fell over his eyes when he was concentrating, and the dream you’d had about flying whales, and the theory you’d developed about pigeons being government drones, and—

And through it all, Yuuta listened. He didn’t endure. He listened. He laughed at your jokes. He gasped at your revelations. He leaned in when you got to the good parts, and he shook his head in wonder when you finished a particularly convoluted tangent. He was, you realized with a pang, everything you’d been missing. Not a romantic prospect—you were too in love with Megumi for that, even now, even after everything—but a friend. A real, true friend who didn’t seem to mind that you talked too much. Who maybe even liked it.

“That was incredible,” Yuuta said when you finally wound down, your throat hoarse and your heart lighter than it had been in weeks. “You’re like a living Wikipedia, except way more entertaining. Megumi’s a lucky guy.”

The mention of Megumi’s name was like a splash of cold water. “I should… I should probably go. I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

“You didn’t take anything,” Yuuta said firmly. “I offered. And honestly?” He ducked his head, a little shy. “It was nice. I enjoyed learning so much, and if it made you feel better, then I am even more glad. So thank you. For talking to me.”

Something in your chest cracked open. “You’re welcome, thank you too for hearing me.” you whispered. And you meant it.

───

The afternoon sun was slanting through the trees of the training grounds, casting long, golden shadows across the grass, and Megumi Fushiguro was worried.

Something was wrong with you. He’d noticed it in the small things—the way you’d stopped texting him random facts in the middle of the day, the way the apartment had become so painfully quiet, the way you’d answer his questions with one-word responses and tight, brittle smiles that never reached your eyes. He’d told himself it was a mood swing, or stress, or something personal that you’d share when you were ready. He’d told himself to be patient, to give you space, to be the steady, silent presence you needed.

But today, the worry had sharpened into something sharper. You hadn’t answered your phone. Three calls, straight to voicemail. You were supposed to drop off paperwork for Gojo, a simple errand that should have taken an hour at most, but three hours had passed and you still weren’t home. Megumi had tried to ignore the cold knot forming in his stomach. He’d tried to reason with himself—maybe your phone died, maybe you got caught up talking to someone, maybe you just needed time alone. But the image of your face that morning, pale and drawn and so terribly quiet, had pushed him out the door.

He found you on a bench near the old training fields, a secluded spot dappled with light and shadow, the kind of place you used to drag him to for “cloud-watching dates” where you’d spend an hour narrating the lives of the cumulus sheep and their stratus shepherds. The memory hit him like a punch to the chest, a reminder of everything that had been missing, everything he’d somehow let slip away.

But you weren’t alone.

Yuuta Okkotsu was sitting beside you on the bench, his body angled toward you in a posture of complete, undivided attention. And you were talking. You were talking the way you used to talk to Megumi, your hands flying through the air, your face alight with an animation he hadn’t seen in weeks, your voice carrying across the grass in a bright, effervescent stream that made his heart seize in his chest.

"—And that’s why I’m convinced pigeons are actually government surveillance drones,” you were saying, your voice breathless with laughter. “I mean, think about it, Yuuta. They’re everywhere. They never migrate. They have that weird red eye thing that looks exactly like a camera lens. And have you ever seen a baby pigeon? No. You haven’t. Because they’re not born. They’re manufactured.”

Yuuta laughed—a real, genuine laugh, warm and surprised—and Megumi watched him shake his head in wonder. “That’s the most unhinged wild I’ve ever heard,” Yuuta said, but his voice was fond, almost admiring. “I love it. What else do you have? What’s your take on squirrels?”

“Oh, squirrels are just tree spies,” you said immediately, and you launched into another tangent without missing a beat, your whole body leaning toward Yuuta like he was the sun and you were a flower desperate for light.

Megumi stood frozen at the edge of the treeline, hidden in the shadows of a large oak, and watched.

He should have walked away. He should have announced himself, or texted you that he was there, or done anything other than stand there like a ghost, eavesdropping on a conversation that was never meant for his ears. But he couldn’t move. His feet were rooted to the ground, and his eyes were fixed on you, on the way you sparkled, on the way you came alive in a way you hadn’t around him in weeks.

Look at her, a voice whispered in the back of his mind, cold and insidious. Look at how happy she is. Look at how she’s glowing. You haven’t made her look like that in weeks. Maybe ever.

He tried to push the thought away, but it clung to him like a curse, sinking its claws into the softest, most vulnerable parts of his heart. He watched Yuuta lean in slightly, his dark eyes soft with genuine interest, and something bitter and acidic rose in Megumi’s throat.

Of course. Of course it’s Yuuta.

Yuuta Okkotsu, the prodigy. The special grade sorcerer who had overcome a curse born of love itself. The one everyone admired, the one everyone trusted, the one who was unfailingly kind and gentle and everything Megumi knew, deep in his bones, he could never be.

He’s perfect for her.

The thought was a knife twisting in his gut. Yuuta was everything you deserved. He was affectionate. He was emotionally available. He probably knew how to say “I love you” without choking on the words, without hoping his actions could speak loudly enough to drown out his silence. He would never snap at you after a hard week. He would never make you feel like your voice was a burden. He would listen—really listen, with his whole heart, the way he was listening now—and he would make you feel seen, cherished, adored.

And what did Megumi do? He grunted. He nodded. He made tea and hoped you understood that the steam rising from the cup meant you are my whole world. He was a coward, a man made of silences and shadows, and he’d always known, somewhere deep down, that it was only a matter of time before you realized you deserved more.

This is it, he thought, and the cold certainty of it settled over him like a shroud. She’s found someone who can give her what I can’t. Someone who can listen. She’s going to leave me.

He watched you laugh again, your hand reaching out to touch Yuuta’s arm in a gesture of easy familiarity, and something inside him cracked. You used to touch him like that. You used to look at him like that, like he was the only person in the world who mattered. And he’d thrown it away. He’d thrown it away with two stupid, careless sentences, spoken in a moment of exhausted weakness.

“Can you just be quiet?”

The memory of that night crashed over him like a wave of ice. He remembered the way your face had crumpled, the way you’d frozen, silent and terrified, before retreating to the bedroom without a word. How you’d looked at him like he was a stranger wearing a familiar face. And he’d been too tired, too wrapped up in his own misery, to follow you. He’d let you go. He’d let you think, for weeks, that your voice was a burden, that your beautiful, bright, overflowing self was something to be endured rather than cherished.

And now here you were, blooming under someone else’s attention, because he had starved you of his own.

She deserves this, he thought, and the resignation was so heavy it made his knees weak. She deserves someone who doesn’t make her feel like she has to be small. Someone who doesn’t need weeks to notice she’s dying inside. Someone like Yuuta.

Yuuta said something that made you laugh again—a full, unrestrained, head-tilted-back laugh that Megumi hadn’t heard in so long he’d almost forgotten the sound of it. The joy in it was a blade, and it cut him to the bone. He wanted to be the one making you laugh like that. He wanted to be the one you leaned toward, the one you touched, the one you trusted with your wild theories and endless curiosities. But he’d forfeited that right, hadn’t he? He’d pushed you away, and you’d found someone else to fill the space he’d left.

If you love her, you’ll let her go. The thought was noble, self-sacrificing, the kind of thought the heroes in your stories would have. But Megumi wasn’t a hero. He was a jealous, terrified, broken man who couldn’t stand the idea of losing you, even if it was exactly what he deserved.

He watched Yuuta stand up from the bench, saying something that made you smile and nod. You stood too, and for one horrible, heart-stopping moment, Megumi thought you might hug him, might press yourself against Yuuta the way you used to press against him. But you didn’t. You just waved, a cheerful, grateful wave, and Yuuta walked away, leaving you alone on the path.

Megumi should have waited. He should have let you walk home, should have given himself time to compose his thoughts, to find the right words, to be calm and rational and mature about this. But he’d spent his whole life being calm and rational and mature, and look where it had gotten him. Standing in the shadows, watching the love of his life light up for someone else because he’d been too stupid, too silent, too scared to tell her how much she meant to him.

He stepped out from behind the tree.

You saw him immediately. Your head turned at the sound of his footsteps, and the smile—the beautiful, radiant smile you’d been wearing for Yuuta—froze on your face and then slowly, painfully, died. It was like watching a door slam shut, and Megumi felt the impact in his soul.

“Megumi,” you said, and your voice was flat. Neutral. Nothing like the bright, bubbling stream he’d just been eavesdropping on. “What are you doing here?”

He opened his mouth to say something reasonable—“I was worried about you,” or “Your phone was off,” or “Let’s go home and talk about this calmly”—but what came out instead was: “So that’s it, then. You’re going to leave me for him.”

Your eyes widened. “What?”

“Yuuta.” Megumi’s voice was shaking, and he hated it. He hated the way he couldn’t control it, the way all the fear and jealousy and self-loathing he’d been swallowing for weeks was spilling out of him like poison. “I saw you. Just now. You were so happy, talking to him. You were so… you were yourself again. And you haven’t been yourself with me in weeks. So I get it, okay? I get it. He’s better than me. He’s everything I’m not. And you deserve someone like him.”

The words hung in the air between you, ugly and raw and desperate. Megumi watched your face cycle through shock, confusion, and then—slowly, devastatingly—understanding.

“You were watching us,” you said quietly.

“I came looking for you.” He couldn’t meet your eyes anymore. He stared at the ground, at the grass, at the ants marching in a neat line across the path. “You weren’t answering your phone. I was worried. And then I saw you with him, and you were talking the way you used to talk to me, and I just… I knew. I knew you’d finally realized I’m not enough.”

“Megumi—”

“Do you know what I was thinking the whole time I watched you two?” The words kept coming. His hands were shaking at his sides. His chest was so tight he could barely breathe. “I was thinking, ‘Of course. Of course it’s Yuuta.’ Yuuta is kind and gentle and he probably never forgets to tell you how much he loves you. He probably listens to every word you say and tells you you’re brilliant and doesn’t just grunt and hope you understand. He’s affectionate and he’s sweet and he’s exactly what you need, and I’m just… I’m just me. I’m dark and quiet and broken, and I’ve always known, deep down, that someday you’d wake up and realize you could do better.”

He finally looked up at you, and the expression on your face made his heart shatter into a thousand pieces. You were crying. Silent tears were streaming down your cheeks, and you were looking at him with something that wasn’t anger or confirmation—it was heartbreak. Pure, aching heartbreak.

“Oh, Megumi,” you whispered.

He couldn’t stop. The dam was broken, and everything he’d been holding in for years was pouring out in an uncontrollable torrent. “He’s better for you. Everyone knows it. Gojo, Nobara, probably even you. Yuuta is the kind of person who deserves someone like you—someone bright and warm and full of life. I’m just the guy who told you to shut up when you were trying to help me. I’m the guy who didn’t notice you were dying inside for three whole weeks because I was too wrapped up in my own head. I’m the guy who can’t even say ‘I love you’ without feeling like I’m going to choke on it. So go ahead.” His voice cracked, and he felt the hot sting of tears in his own eyes, tears he’d been fighting for weeks, for years, for a lifetime. “If you’re going to leave me for him, just do it. I won’t stop you. I won’t fight. I just… I need to know.”

The silence that followed was deafening. Megumi stood there, trembling, his heart laid bare in the ugliest possible way, waiting for the axe to fall. He’d said it. He’d said all of it—every fear, every insecurity, every dark thought that had ever whispered in the back of his mind. And now you knew. Now you knew exactly how broken he was, exactly how little he thought of himself, exactly how terrified he’d been from the very beginning that you would leave.

You took a step toward him. Then another. And then you were right in front of him, your hands reaching up to cup his face, your thumbs brushing away the tears he hadn’t even realized had fallen.

“You absolute walnut,” you said, your voice thick with tears. “I’m not leaving you for Yuuta.”

Megumi blinked. “You’re… you’re not?”

“I’m not.” You tightened your grip on his face, forcing him to meet your eyes. “I’m not in love with Yuuta. I don’t want Yuuta. I want you, you emotionally constipated disaster of a man. I have always wanted you.”

“But you were so happy with him,” Megumi whispered, and the words came out small and broken. “You were laughing. You were talking. You were… you were yourself. And you haven’t been yourself with me in weeks. I thought… I thought you’d finally found someone who could make you happy.”

Your face crumpled. “I haven’t been myself with you because you told me to be quiet,” you said, and the words were gentle but they hit him even harder. “You told me to be quiet, and I thought… I thought you’d been holding that in our whole relationship. I thought every story I’d ever told you, every random fact, every ramble about clouds or sea slugs or whatever—I thought you’d just been enduring it. I thought my voice was a burden to you, the person I loved most in the world. So I tried to be less. I tried to be what I thought you wanted. And it was killing me, Megumi. It was killing me because I have all these things I want to tell you, all these thoughts and ideas and questions, and I couldn’t, because I was so terrified you’d look at me the way you did that night. Like I was exhausting. Like I was too much.”

Megumi felt the ground tilt beneath him. Everything you were saying—it was so much worse than he’d imagined. He’d thought you were pulling away because you’d outgrown him. He’d thought you were preparing to leave because you’d found someone better. But the truth was so much more devastating: you’d been trying to stay. You’d been contorting yourself into someone smaller, someone quieter, someone you thought he wanted, and it had been destroying you. And he’d been so blind, so self-absorbed, that he hadn’t even noticed.

“I talked to Yuuta today because I was desperate,” you continued, your voice breaking. “I’ve been drowning in silence for weeks, and he was there, and he listened. That’s it. That’s all it was. He was a life raft in the middle of an ocean I’ve been trying not to drown in. He’s not you. He’ll never be you. I don’t want a life raft. I want my person back. I want the man who makes me tea without being asked and lets me put face masks on him and sits through documentaries about nudibranchs even though he’s probably bored out of his mind. I want you, Megumi. Just you. But I need you to talk to me. Actually talk to me. With words. Out loud. So I don’t have to guess what’s going on in that beautiful, overthinking brain of yours.”

Megumi stared at you, his heart pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat. “You want… me? Still? Even after everything?”

“Even after everything.” You smiled, a watery, trembling smile that was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “I’m still mad at you, by the way. Very mad. ‘Can you just be quiet?’ What kind of thing is that to say to the love of your life?”

“I’m sorry.” The words came out in a rush, desperate and sincere. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I was exhausted and I was taking it out on you, and that’s not an excuse, it’s just… it’s the truth. I was drowning in my own head, and you were trying to help, and I pushed you away because I’m an idiot who doesn’t know how to accept love. I should have apologized the next morning. I should have apologized every single day for the past three weeks. I should have noticed. I should have seen that you were hurting and asked you what was wrong instead of just… assuming.”

You shook your head, still holding his face in your hands. “Don’t blame yourself. I know you love me, Megumi. But sometimes I need the words too. Sometimes I need you to tell me, out loud, that I’m not too much. That my voice isn’t a burden. That you like listening to me.”

“You’re not too much.” The words came out fierce, almost angry in their intensity. “You’ve never been too much. You’re exactly enough. You’re more than enough. Your voice is—it’s the best part of my day. Every day. When you talk to me about clouds or jellyfish or the socioeconomic implications of Roman plumbing, it’s like you’re chasing all the shadows out of my head. I’m not bored. I’m never bored. I’m just… quiet. I’ve always been quiet. But that doesn’t mean I’m not listening. That doesn’t mean I don’t love every single word.”

You were crying again, but you were smiling too, and Megumi realized with a jolt that these were good tears. Relief tears. The tears of someone who had been holding their breath for weeks and was finally, finally allowed to exhale.

“I’m sorry I compared myself to Yuuta,” he said quietly. “I just… I saw you with him, and you looked so happy, and I thought… I thought maybe he could give you something I can’t.”

“He’s not you,” you said simply. “And I don’t want someone who isn’t you. Yuuta is sweet. He’s kind. He’ll probably make some other rambling disaster of a person very happy someday. But he’s not my person. You are. You’ve always been my person.” You paused, and a mischievous glint flickered in your tear-bright eyes. “Now, I have approximately four hundred more facts to tell you, and I’ve been holding them in for three weeks, and I’m pretty sure my brain is going to explode.”

Megumi let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob, and he didn’t kiss you—not yet. Instead, he pulled you into his arms and held you as tight as he could without breaking you, burying his face in your hair and breathing you in like you were oxygen and he’d been drowning for weeks.

“Tell me,” he whispered against your temple. “Tell me everything. I’m listening. I swear I’m listening.”

“Did you know that wombats have cube-shaped poop?”

He laughed, a real laugh, startled out of him by the sheer absurdity of it. “…What?”

“It’s true! It’s so they can stack it to mark their territory without it rolling away. Nature is amazing and also deeply weird, and I have so many more where that came from. Are you ready?”

“I’m ready,” he said, and he meant it. He was ready to listen. He was ready to learn. He was ready to spend the rest of his life proving to you that your voice was the most precious thing in his world, that your words were never a burden, that he would never, ever make you feel small again.

He pulled back just enough to look at you, to take in the way the setting sun caught the tears still drying on your cheeks and turned them to gold. “I love you,” he said, and the words didn’t choke him the way they usually did. They felt right. They felt necessary. “I should have said it more. I love you and I love your voice and I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to be quiet.”

Your smile, when it came, was the sun breaking through the clouds after a storm. “I love you too, you absolute walnut.”

And then you kissed him, and he kissed you back, and the silence between you wasn’t a weapon anymore. It was a soft thing. A comfortable thing. A thing you could share together, without fear.

Later, you would walk home together, your hand in his, and you would tell him everything—the immortal jellyfish, the medieval grain storage, the flying whales, the specific shade of gray the sky turned before a storm. He would listen to every word, and he would ask questions, and he would make the right hums in the right places, and he would silently vow to spend the rest of his life being the kind of partner who deserved the gift of your voice.

But for now, there was just this: the two of you standing in the golden afternoon light, holding each other like you’d found your way home after a long and lonely journey. The sky overhead was doing that thing you loved—turning that specific shade of gray before a storm—and you’d tell him about it later. You had time. You had all the time in the world.

He stuttered mid sentence, eyes widening in surprise as your thumb traced the shape of his mouth. The soft pink color, the perfect curve, it held you there longer than you meant. Satoru stopped talking altogether, letting you have your way like the good boy he could be when he wanted.

You pressed a little firmer. "Open for me please toru..."

He did. Those pretty lips parted without hesitation. You slowly pushed your thumb inside, feeling the wet heat of his mouth close around it. His tongue gave an experimental lick, soft and curious. Then he started sucking, willingly, pulling you deeper with gentle pressure.

You smiled wide, then giggled, the sound bubbling up as your thumb sat fully in his mouth. The sight of Satoru like this, eyes locked on yours while he sucked, sent a warm thrill through you.

Feeling the semi-sharp press of his teeth around your thumb as well, he could definitely take chomp of your thumb right now with those huge teeth of his... Well, that's kinda morbid, you realized. You shook the thought away a millisecond after.

Eventually, you figured that was enough of your shenanigans and began to withdraw your thumb, slow and careful.

A whine left his lips the second you tried to pull away. Before you could react, his hand grabbed yours, holding it in place.

Your face screwed up in disbelief. "Uhh satoru let me have my thumb back please," you begged, voice half laugh, half protest.

He shook his head, that mischievous glint already sparking in his eyes. He took a deep pull, sucking harder, constricting the blood flow just enough to make it throb.

You winced, the pressure sharp and sudden. You slapped his chest with your free hand and huffed out, "Wtf."

Satoru smiled around your thumb, eyes crinkling with pure mischief. Oh he was doing this on purpose. You could see it all over his face.

You groaned softly at the mix of sensations, and he moaned in response, the vibration travelling straight through your thumb. That was when you froze up. "You're hurting me toru..." A little frown tugged at your lips, genuine now.

He stopped immediately. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he pulled off your thumb, releasing it with a wet pop. The digit was red and throbbing, sensitive from his attention.

You stared at the state of it, turning your hand to inspect the mark he left. Satoru chuckled low, voice teasing. "Now you know what it feels like when I tell you to stop sucking my dick and you don't..."

You side eyed him hard, then turned away completely, holding your abused thumb close to your heart. "You've lost getting your dick sucked privileges," you murmured under your breath, dramatic and playful all at once.

But Satoru was already cuddling up behind you, long arms wrapping around your waist as he pulled you back against his chest. He peppered soft kisses along your cheek, warm and insistent, murmuring sweet little apologies between each one. His breath tickled your skin, making it hard to stay fake mad.

"I know...He started, "Let me do that to your clit next time baby... I'm sure you'd love that..."

Your cunt throbbed at the lewd thought now building in your head, heat rushing through you so fast it left you blushing deep. He laughed softly, knowing he was right, the sound rumbling against your back like a promise.

You shifted in his hold, trying to hide the way your body reacted, but Satoru just held you tighter. His fingers traced lazy circles on your hip now, dipping lower every few passes, teasing the edge of where you wanted him most. The room felt warmer, the air thicker with that familiar tension only he could spark so easily.

He nuzzled into your neck, lips brushing your ear. "C'mon, don't be like that. You started it with your little... game." His voice dropped lower, playful but edged with heat. "Fair's fair, right?"

You bit your lip, fighting a smile even as your thighs pressed together. The ache between them was growing, undeniable after his words and the way he still smelled so good, felt so solid against you. His hand smoothed over your hips now, with more intent, squeezing firm and pulling your ass back against his growing boner, just enough to pull a soft gasp from you.

Satoru hummed in satisfaction, kissing along your jaw now. Every touch built on the last, turning the lazy cuddle into something hungrier. You could feel him getting harder against your backside, the evidence pressing insistently as he rocked closer.

"See? Your body's already saying yes," he whispered, nipping lightly at your earlobe. His free hand slid up under your shirt, palm warm on your stomach, inching higher until his fingers brushed the underside of your breast.

You arched into it without thinking, breath catching. The earlier playfulness mixed with this new heat left you dizzy in the best way. Your thumb still tingled, a reminder of his mouth, and now all you could imagine was that same mouth somewhere much lower.

He rolled you gently onto your back, hovering above you with that signature smirk. Blue eyes sparkled with mischief and want as he looked down at your flushed face. "Gonna make it so good for you, baby. Just like you did with my mouth... only wetter."

His head dipped, lips claiming yours in a slow, deep kiss that stole your breath. Tongues tangled, and you tasted a hint of yourself on him from earlier. It made everything feel dirtier, hotter. Your hands found his hair, tugging lightly as he kissed you like he had all the time in the world but wanted to devour you anyway.

When he pulled back, both of you breathing heavier, he trailed kisses down your neck, your collarbone, pushing your shirt up as he went. Every inch of skin he exposed got attention, soft licks and gentle bites that left you squirming.

Lower and lower he moved, until his shoulders settled between your thighs. He looked up at you through those white lashes, eyes dark with promise. "Tell me if it's too much," he murmured, but the grin said he already knew you'd be begging for more. Hooking his long fingers into your shorts and tugging it down along with your panties. The cotton sticky as he peeled it off your cunt, messy with your slick.

His breath ghosted over your dripping pussy, making you twitch. Then his mouth was on you, tongue tracing slow and savouring, just like he'd done with your thumb. The wet heat, the suction, the way he groaned against your folds like he was the one being spoiled. It was overwhelming in the best way.

You moaned his name, hips lifting, and Satoru held you down gently, one arm draped over your waist. He took his time, licking and sucking with that same focused intensity he'd used earlier. Every flick sent sparks up your spine. Your fingers tightened in his hair, guiding him without words.

He pulled back just enough to speak, voice husky. "Taste so fucking good. Could do this all night." Then he dove back in, adding a finger, curling it perfectly while his lips sealed around your clit, nursing your clit with ferocity, sucking it till it throbbed.

The build was fast and intense. Your thighs shook around his head, breath coming in short gasps. He hummed in encouragement, the vibration pushing you closer to the edge. That mischievous glint never left his eyes as he watched you fall apart for him.

When you came, it hit hard, pleasure crashing through you in waves. Satoru didn't stop, licking you through it until you were whimpering and oversensitive, gently pushing at his shoulders.

He finally pulled away, lips shiny and swollen, looking far too pleased with himself. Climbing back up your body, he kissed you again, letting you taste yourself on his tongue. "Told you you'd love it," he whispered against your mouth, settling between your legs with clear intent.

You wrapped your arms around his neck, still catching your breath, heart racing from the high. The playful fight from earlier felt like a distant memory now, replaced by this warm, needy closeness. Satoru pressed against you, hard and ready, but he waited, nuzzling your cheek with more soft kisses.

"Love messing with you like this," he admitted quietly, voice full of affection. "But mostly... love making you feel good."

You smiled, pulling him closer, ready for whatever came next in this lazy, heated afternoon together. His thumb brushed your lip this time, mirroring your earlier move, and you both laughed softly before the kisses deepened again.

your knees were a mess, scraped raw and beading with tiny drops of blood. there was dirt on your palms and you had tears welling in your eyes, but you weren’t sad. not even in the slightest. you stood there, swaying slightly and pointed a trembling finger at him.

“you pushed me,” you glared at him, lips quivering as you made the demand that sealed his fate, the one that’s been echoing in his head for years “you have to get me a hello kitty bandaid or i’m telling on you.”

he didn’t have a hello kitty bandaid. he didn’t have any bandaids on him actually. but he really, really wished he did. he wished he had a whole box of them, a whole factory of them, just to give to you. he wanted to patch up the bruises he’d made. he wanted to wipe the tears from your eyes before they even fell. he wanted, for the first time in his life, to take care of someone else.

his feelings for you grew through awkward school dances, late-night study sessions, and the disastrous first dates he had to rescue you from.

they blossomed in the spaces between your laughter, in the comfortable silences you shared. they grew until they became so big he can barely contain them.

he’s supposed to be playing mortal kombat xi with suguru, but his mind is miles away. he’s waiting — he’s always waiting — for your text, your call. anything that says you need him. anything that says he’s the one you want. even if it’s just for a ride home from a date with someone else.

the blue light of the screen paints patterns on satoru’s face, highlighting the sharp line of his jaw as he squints at the game. suguru’s character lands a critical hit, and satoru’s health bar plummets.

“fuck,” he curses, his fingers move over the controller, but he’s too scatterbrained to come back from this. he always is when you’re out with someone else

“you’re playing like shit tonight,” suguru comments, not looking away from the screen.

“shut up,” satoru mumbles. his phone sits face down on the cushion beside him. he imagines it buzzing, imagines your name lighting up the screen, and his stomach does that stupid flutter it always does. he hates it. he hates feeling like this when he knows you’ll never feel the same.

suguru lands another hit. game over. “told you,” he says, leaning back. “so who’s she with tonight? what’s his name?”

“don’t know,” satoru says, tossing the controller onto the couch. it bounces off a cushion. “don’t care either”

“bullshit,” suguru laughs, “you care more than anyone.”

( of course he cares. loving you is all he’s ever known and he’s terrified that one day, you won’t need to reach out. you won’t need him to pick up the pieces anymore because your date went great and you’ve fallen in love. the mere thought of it makes him sick to his stomach )

satoru doesn’t answer. he just reaches for his phone, heart thumping hopefully against his ribs. he tells himself he’s checking the time, but his thumb swipes the screen open anyway.

nothing. no messages. no missed calls. radio silence.

he’s about to put it down, to tell suguru to go fuck himself. to suggest they order some doordash and pretend tonight isn’t happening. pretend you’re not out there with some stranger who doesn’t deserve to be breathing the same air as you.

and then his phone buzzes. the screen lights up and there it is. your name. and five words that make his heart race.

can you come get me? [ 10:26 pm ]

that’s it. you offer him no explanation. zero context. but he can hear the shake in your voice, see the tears in your eyes, and he hasn’t even heard you speak yet. he’s on his feet before he’s fully processed it.

“what is it?” suguru asks, sitting up straighter.

“nothing,” satoru says, already moving towards the hallway. “i gotta go. don’t wait up for me”

“again?”

“shut up,” he throws over his shoulder, grabbing his keys from the bowl by the door. his shoes are by the doormat, and he’s shoving his feet into them, not even bothering to untie them first. “you’d do the same for shoko.”

“shoko doesn’t make a habit of dating assholes, and i’m not in love with her. don’t compare apples to oranges” suguru calls after him, but satoru’s already out the door.

the drive to you is a blur of streetlights and angry horns. his foot is heavy on the gas. he’s drawn to you like a moth to a flame.

the restaurant you’re at tonight is fancy. all warm lighting and valet parking. there’s no spot, of course there’s no fucking spot, and he circles the block twice before finding a space three streets down.

he’s out of the car before the engine’s fully off, jogging down the sidewalk until he sees you through the window.

he pushes the door open and makes his way towards you. the closer he gets, the more details he can’t unsee. your shoulders are shaking and the champagne flute in front of you is empty. just how much have you had to drink?

you finally lift your head. your eyes find his impossibly blue ones, and the vulnerability in your expression is a physical blow to his chest.

( it’s the same look you had on the playground all those years ago, after he’d pushed you off and you’d scrambled to your feet, demanding he fix everything. you’re still demanding it with every breath you take. and he’s still here, doing everything in his power to make you feel better. )

“toru,” you frown, and the sound of his name on your lips makes him weak. it always does.

“i’m here,” the only comfort he has to give is himself. his arms wrap around you, pulling you flush against his chest.

you’re soft and warm. you smell like expensive champagne and your vanilla perfume. your hands fist desperately in the material of his t-shirt, clinging to him like he’s the only solid thing in a world that’s tilting on its axis. you bury your face in his chest and he can feel the tremors running through your entire body.

he holds you tighter, one hand splayed across the small of your back, the other coming up to cup the back of your head. he rubs slow circles against the silk of your dress. he wants to absorb your pain into himself and shatter it into a million pieces.

( he wishes you were clinging to him because you wanted him, not because someone else had thrown you away. )

he waits until your grip on his shirt loosens. he keeps one hand on your back, leaning back just enough to look at you. but you don’t lift your head, you keep your face hidden against the damp fabric of his shirt.

“look at me,” he murmurs, you can feel his words rumbling through his chest.

it takes a moment, but you slowly, reluctantly, pull back. your face is a mess but you’ve never looked more beautiful to him. he wants to kiss you, to taste the salt of your tears and the champagne on your lips. but he’s here to fix this. he’ll save the wanting for later, for the quiet hours of the night when he’s alone on your couch with nothing but the ghost of your warmth and the ache in his chest.

for now, he just has to be your friend. your best friend.

he gently cups your face, his thumbs stroking your cheekbones, wiping away the dampness. “what happened?”

you take a shaky breath, and your gaze darts away from his, landing on the empty champagne flute. “he was just. . .” you hiccup, swallowing hard. “he was just awful from the beginning, ‘toru. he wouldn’t let me talk. he just kept going on about himself, about his job, his car, his. . his stupid rolex.”

“i thought. . . i don’t know what i thought. i just kept ordering champagne because he was supposed to be paying and i was bored. and then. . .then he said he was going to the bathroom and he never came back.”

“one of the waitresses,” you continue, your voice dropping to a whisper, “came over and said she saw him leave. she said he left with. . . with some girl he was talking to at the bar. and then they brought the bill a-and i didn’t have enough because he ordered the most expensive thing on the menu”

rage courses through his veins, so potent it makes him dizzy. he’s not just angry at the nameless, faceless asshole who did this. he’s angry at the fact he lives in a world where someone could have you, could sit across from you, look at you, and then . . leave. how? how is that remotely possible? how could anyone be so blind, so stupid? he can’t wrap his head around it.

“he’s a fucking idiot,” he snaps, “and you’re way too good for him, he never deserved you or time”

( satoru wishes you would finally see that he’s the one who does. if you gave him a chance he would worship the ground you walk on.

in retrospect he already does. he patches up the wounds left by other men, cleans up their messes, holds you while you cry over them. he remembers your café order and brings a cup that’s more creamer than coffee to your first lecture of the day. he sits through rewatches of ‘ten things i hate about you’ and the fear street trilogy without complaining. he pays for your gas and groceries. he does everything a boyfriend should do and more. but he’s not your boyfriend.

if you’d let him take you out on a date. he wouldn’t just sit across from you talking about himself. he would hang onto your every word.

he’d never leave you waiting, not for a second. he’d move heaven and earth to make you happy, to make you his. he just needs you to give him the chance to )

he knows you don’t believe him. you never do. you always think it’s your fault, that you weren’t pretty enough, or smart enough, or interesting enough. and it kills him, because he knows the truth. he knows you’re too good for a world full of mediocre men who can’t appreciate what’s right in front of them.

“yeah” you nod and he knows you’re just agreeing with him because that’s what he wants to hear. he lets his hands fall, but he doesn’t step away. he can’t. not yet.

he pulls out his wallet. he doesn’t even bother to look at the bill. he sifts out a thick wad of cash, the crisp edges digging into his palm, and drops it down onto the polished wood of the bar.

( it’s more than enough to cover the ridiculously expensive lobster and the multiple bubbly glasses of dom perignon. more than enough to cover a tip that’s so generous it’s obscene. but satoru doesn’t care.)

“let’s go,” he says.

you slide off the barstool and for a terrifying moment you wobble precariously. the ridiculously high heels you’d worn for a man who didn’t deserve them betray you. satoru’s there before you can even register your knees buckling. his hand wrapping around your upper arm, “i’ve got you,”

your body molds to his like it’s the most natural thing in the world. satoru has to physically force himself to breathe, to focus on the simple act of walking and not the way his heart is trying to beat its way out of his chest.

he guides you to his car, opens the door, and helps you in. he buckles your seatbelt, fingers brushing against your side, just below your ribs. you shiver and it has nothing to do with the cold.

“cold?” he asks. you shake your head, lolling back against the leather headrest.

“no ‘m just tired,” you mumble, eyes already drifting shut. long lashes casting shadows on your cheeks. but he drapes his hoodie over your frame regardless

the drive to your apartment is quiet. satoru glances over at you at every red light, at the way streetlights tinge patterns across your face, at the way your lips are slightly parted. he wants to reach over, to brush a stray strand of hair from your forehead, to trace the line of your jaw with his thumb, but he doesn’t. he can’t.

he white-knuckles the leather steering wheel and forces himself to focus on the road.

when he finally reaches your apartment and he kills the engine. he just sits there watching you sleep for a moment. he hates the thought of waking you, hates the thought of this night ending.

“hey,” he whispers, his voice barely perceptible. he reaches out, shaking your shoulder gently. “we’re here.”

your eyes flutter open. they’re heavy-lidded, and hazy with sleep and alcohol. you’re too pretty, even like this

“c’mon let’s get you inside,” he murmurs. he practically carries you through the foyer and into the elevator, his body pressed against yours, your head lolling against his chest.

the elevator ride is torturous. he’s drowning in you and it makes your head spin. his weakness is exacerbated the second he steps into your apartment. it smells too much like you. it makes his chest ache with longing.

he lays you down on your bed, carefully turning you onto your side —the way he knows you like to sleep.

your heels are a nightmare — all delicate straps and tiny buckles — and his fingers are clumsy as he works them free. he tries not to wake you, tries not to linger too long on the warm skin of your ankles.

your dress looks like it’ll be uncomfortable to sleep. he hesitates, hand hovering over the zipper at the back. he’s seen you in less — during those endless shopping trips you’d dragged him on, trying on lacy bras for your dates and asking his opinion. completely oblivious to the way his throat would close up.

but this feels different. more intimate. a line he’s not sure he’s ready to cross

“fuck it,” he mutters and turns away, heading for your bathroom. he finds your makeup wipes where he knows they’ll be, in the little wicker basket by the sink.

he grabs the small trash can from under the counter, setting it by your bedside, just in case you wake up sick. then he kneels beside you, heart pounding against his ribs.

your skin is warm beneath his touch as he gently wipes away the concealer, the mascara, and the lipgloss that’s smeared at the corners of your mouth.

he’s careful, touch light as a feather. he does this because he knows you’ll complain in the morning —about waking up with makeup on, about the inevitable breakouts — and he can’t stand the thought of you being unhappy, not even about something so small.

you stir, murmuring something unintelligible, but don’t wake. he trashes the soiled wipes and clambers to his feet. he’s almost at the door, hand on the doorknob, ready to retreat to the couch, to be the good friend he’s supposed to be. when he hears you call out to him.

“don’t go.” you sigh. he freezes, his breath catching in his throat. he turns slowly, heart hammering against his ribs.

your face is illuminated by the moonlight filtering through your curtains. your lip is quivering and he can make out the tortured expression on your face. satoru wants to wrap you in his arms and never let go.

“please,” you whisper, voice thick with sleep and alcohol and something he can’t quite place a finger on. he hopes it’s affection.

something inside him breaks. something that’s been held together by sheer willpower. by the conscious effort to keep his distance, to be what you need him to be. “okay,” he practically whimpers

he crosses back to your bed hesitantly. you shift, making room, so, so trusting. “need a shirt,” you mumble, pointing a shaky finger at your dresser. he grabs the first one he finds, cotton worn thin from a hundred washes. it smells faintly of detergent and you.

you sit up, swaying and he’s there in an instant, his hand cupping the back of your head, steadying you against the headboard. “careful”

satoru focuses on the wall, on the ceiling, on anything but the sound of fabric rustling. the glimpse of skin he catches in his peripheral vision — the delicate curve of your spine — makes his cheeks flush. you toss your dress on the floor in a heap of silk and sequins and you pull the shirt on.

“bra,” you say, your voice muffled. you fumble behind your back, your fingers clumsy, useless. “. . . help”

( satoru knows you’re trying to kill him, he just can’t prove it yet )

“okay,” his voice is a strangled whisper. he’s not sure he can manage more than a syllable. his hand trembles as he reaches behind you, fingers trailing up your back, brushing against your warm skin as he finds the clasp.

it’s a piece of fabric with tiny pieces of metal, he knows it’s not going to bite him. but he’s still shaking because this feels too monumental. you shiver at his touch when he finally gets it loose. he pulls back as if he’s been burned.

“thanks,” you murmur, pulling your straps beneath your t-shirt and shrugging your bra off. you settle back against your pillows, and after a moment’s hesitation, satoru lies beside you, the mattress dips beneath his weight.

you shift closer, until you’re pressed against his side, your head on his shoulder, body fitting against his like it was made to be there. beside him.

“you’re too good to me,” you whisper, “you’re the best friend i’ve ever had.”

satoru can’t respond. can’t trust his voice not to crack. he just hums, a short, pained sound that gets lost in the darkness of your room.

best friend.

the words echo in his head. he’s perpetually stuck in the friendzone. and the absolute worst part, is he’d rather be here than anywhere else in the world. he’d rather suffer like this, than not have you at all.

he listens as your breathing evens out, as you drift deeper into sleep, your body growing heavy and limp against his. his arm’s gone numb from your weight but he wouldn’t move for the world.

in the morning, you’ll wake up embarrassed, make jokes about how you owe him one, and satoru will smile, will pretend it doesn’t hurt, will go back to being just your best friend.

but right now, he lets himself pretend this is normal, pretend that he gets to have you like this always. deludes himself into thinking that when you wake up, you’ll see what’s been right in front of you all along.

The chaos of the back row didn’t bother him as much anymore. It still existed—the overlapping conversations, the crinkling wrappers, the glow of phone screens—but it didn’t pull at him the way it used to. It bent around him instead, like he had learned how to stand still in the middle of it.

There was only one problem: he still didn’t know your name.

And somehow, it kept not mattering.

Not when you showed up late every lecture and dropped into the seat beside him like it was reserved. Not when your presence had become so expected that he found himself glancing at the door if you were more than five minutes behind. Not when you spoke to him like you had already skipped past introductions entirely.

It should’ve bothered him more.

It did bother him. Just not enough to stop any of it.

So when you said, “C’mon,” at the end of class—already halfway out of your seat, already assuming he would follow—he did.

The café wasn’t far from the lecture hall, just across the quad, tucked into the corner of one of the older campus buildings. It was warm in a way the rest of the university wasn’t—smelling faintly of coffee grounds and sugar, the air thick with overlapping conversations and the clatter of dishes that never quite stopped.

You didn’t ask what he wanted. You didn’t wait for him to decide where to sit.

You just picked a table and dropped into the chair like you belonged there.

Like he did too.

And now you were sitting across from him, using his laptop like it was yours. The faint smell of coffee and warm croissants, the sound of dishes clattering and people chatting fills the air.

You furrow brows and groan loudly when you check your recent test in your zoology class. "Dude, I got a fifty-nine on the exam."

Megumi grimaces. His drink has remained untouched this whole time as he just listened to you talk. He's been watching you instead of doing work, again. Granted, he can't really do much since you have his laptop, but still.

You peak at him from behind the laptop. "You're staring again."

He immediately looks away like he got caught doing something he wasn't supposed to.

You don't tease him. You just go back to looking at the laptop. "You know, you do that alot."

Megumi's grip tightens slightly around his pen. "No I don't," he mytters, even though it was very obvious that he does.

You hum like you don't believe him, but you don't push it. That's what throws him off more than anything. You usually push, or tease him about it. You poke at him until he reacts. But now, you just…let it go.

The cafè noise swells in the silence between you. The milk steaming somewhere behind the counter, a chair scraping loudly against the tile, someone laughing.

Megumi clears his throat, trying to redirect. "A fifty-nine isn't that bad if the curve—"

"It's out of a hundred," you cut in flatly.

He pauses. "Oh."

You sigh, leaning back in your chair, letting the laptop screen tilt forward slightly as your fingers drum against the keyboard. "I don't even know how I managed that. I don't even know half the words."

"Seriously?" He glances at you.

You nod. "I mean, I knew 'mammal' and was kinda hoping that would be enough."

Megumi exhales through his nose, something dangerously close to a laugh slipping out before he can stop it. He quickly disguises it with a cough, bringing his hand to his mouth.

Your eyes flick up from the screen, narrowing slightly. "Did you just laugh at me, window boy?"

"No."

"You did."

"Did not."

"You definitely did," you say, sitting up a little straighter now, fully focused on him instead of the laptop. "Wow. That's crazy. I didn't know you were capable of doing that."

"I'm not," he replies automatically, but there's a faint heat creeping up the back of his neck.

"Yeah, I can tell," you murmur, studying him for a second longer than necessary.

Megumi shifts slightly in his seat. His drink is still sitting untouched near his hand, condensation pooling beneath it. He reaches for it just to have something to do, taking a quick sip.

He scrunches his nose. The coffee had gotten warm already.

"You weren't gonna drink that anyway," you say, not even looking up

"I was."

"Mhm."

You reach over without asking, sliding the cup a few inches toward yourself before taking a sip like it belongs to you.

Megumi watches the movement.

He catches himself this time, but only after a second too long.

"You're doing it again," you say, softer now.

He exhales, setting his pen down. "You're hard no to look at," he says before he can stop himself.

The words land between you, heavier than anything else that's been said so far.

Your fingers still against the laptop.

"That was…weird," you say finally, but there's no real bite to it.

"I know," he mutters, shrinking into himself, already regretting it. He rubs the back of his neck, gaze dropping to the table. "Forget I said that."

"I'm not gonna forget it," you say, absentmindedly.

You close the laptop halfway, not fully shutting it. Your attention shifts completely to him now, chin resting lifhtly in your palm.

"You always say things like that?" you ask.

"No."

"Good," you say. "Because that would be a problem."

Megumi frowns slightly. "Why?"

You tilt your head, studying him again with that same sharp, dissecting look from the basement.

"Because people might start thinking you're not as boring as you look."

He rolls his eyes, but it doesn't land the same way it usually does. At least not when you're looking at him like that.

The silence stretches again.

Megumi hesitates.

"If I'm boring, why do you sit with me?"

The question comes out quieter than he expected.

You blink once, like you weren't expecting it. For a second, you don't answer.

Megumi notices. He's never seen you pause like this, you were always so quick with your words, always so witty, but now it seems like he's stunned you.

"You don't have to answer," he adds quickly, even though he wants you to. "I was just asking."

"I know," you say.

Your gaze drops briefly to the table, tracing the faint ring left behind by his drink. You finger follows the edge of it absentmindedly.

"You're easy," you finally say.

It's casually. Like it doesn't mean anything, but it does.

Megumi stills.

He clings to the word immediately, turning it over, analyzing it.

Easy.

"What does that mean?" he asks.

You glance back up at him, like you didn't realize it would matter. It was just your honest answer.

"Nothing bad," you say. "You're just consistent."

He doesn't respond right away.

"You don't get weird about things," you continue, leaning back in your chair again. "You don't ask a million questions. You don't try to make everything into…something."

Megumi almost laughs at that. Because that's exactly what he's doing. Right now. Constantly.

"You just…are," you finish with a small shrug.

Megumi looks at you.

"You don't even know my name," he says.

You blink. Then, very slowly, you smile.

"I do."

He goes quiet for a second, realizing he didn't say that right.

He frowns. "No, that's not what I meant. I meant I don't know yours."

You don't answer immediately. You reach for his pen, rolling it between your fingers as you look at it instead of him.

For a second, Megumi thinks you're not going to say anything again—that you're going to dodge it like you dodge everything else.

"You'll figure it out," you say.

He frowns again. "That's not an answer."

"It's more fun this way."

"For who?"

You glance up st him, that same small, effortless smile from the basement returning.

"For me."

Megumi leans back in his chair, exhaling slowly. "That's annoying."

"I know."

You say it like you're proud of it.

A notification buzzes on your phone.

Your expression shifts, subtly but noticeable. Your shoulders straighten slightly, eyes fixated on your screen.

Megumi catches the change in your demeanor. "Everything okay?" he asks.

"Yeah," you say quickly, already closing the laptop all the way and sliding it back to him. "I have to go."

Megumi blinks. "Oh."

You stand, grabbing your bag and your—well, Megumi's—drink in one smooth motion.

"I'll see you in class," you add.

He nods, even though it feels unfinished. "Yeah."

You hesitate for half a second, then turn and walk toward the door, weaving through tables without looking back.

The bell above the café door jingles as it closes behind you.

And just like that, you’re gone again.

Megumi sits there for a long moment, staring at the empty seat across from him.

His laptop is still warm where your hands were. His notes are untouched. And somehow, he knows less about you now than he did when you first met.

He exhales, running a hand through his hair. “Easy,” he mutters under his breath.

Yeah. Right.

His eyes flick toward the door. Then back to the table. Then back to the door again.

He opens his laptop. Stares at the blank screen. Closes it.

He’s not getting any work done today.

Again.

—————————————————————————

"You're doing that thing again," Yuji says, not even looking up from where he was aggressively trying to unknot a pair of running shoes. "The thing where your eyebrows look like they're trying to fight each other."

"I'm studying," Megumi says flatly, his pen hovering over his legal pad.

"Man, you haven't turned a page in twenty minutes. You're just staring at the words like they personally insulted your family." Yuji finally got the knot free and kicked his shoes off, leaning back against his desk. "Is this about the basement girl?"

Megumi stiffened. "No."

"It totally is!" Yuji grinned, pointing a finger at him. "You've been weird for like a month already. Wait. You cane back from the cafè looking like you drank sour milk. Did she reject you?"

"We aren't—It's not like that," Megumi says, his gaze dropping back to the legal pad. He hated how easily Yuji could read the room, mostly because Yuji didn't overthink things; he just observed reality as it was. And he envied him for that. "She didn't reject me. Nothing happened. She just left."

"Classic," Yuji nodded sagely, as if he were an expert on campus romance instead of a guy who spent his weekends trying to see how many grapes he could fit in his mouth at once. "So, what's her name?"

The silence that followed was heavy, long, and honestly embarrassing.

Megumi didn't say anything. He couldn't.

Yuji's grin slowly faded, replaced by a look of profound, genuine confusion. "Wait. Megumi. It’s been a month. You sit next to her every single Tuesday and Thursday. I literally saw her take your hoodie out of your bag last week and wear it to the dining hall."

"It was raining," Megumi defended himself, his voice dropping an octave. "She was cold."

"Okay, fine, she was cold—but you don't know her name?!" Yuji threw his hands up in the air. "How is that even possible? What do you say when you want her attention?"

"I don't," Megumi said, and for the first time, the reality of it felt incredibly heavy in his chest. "She just starts talking. I don't have to ask."

“You'll figure it out,” you had said, rolling his pen between your fingers with that little smirk that suggested the entire universe was an inside joke between you and yourself. “It's more fun this way.”

Megumi closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wood of his desk. It wasn't fun. It was a nightmare. He was a person who needed labels. He liked taxonomy. He liked knowing that a Canis lupus was a wolf and a Felis catus was a cat. He needed to know what to file you under in his brain, because right now, you were just an unauthorized anomaly occupying a permanent residence in his thoughts.

—————————————————————————

By the time Thursday morning rolled around, Megumi sat in the back row of the zoology lecture hall at 9:55 AM, five minutes before the bell.

The room was a low hum of shuffling backpacks, dragging chairs, and the heavy smell of damp umbrellas. Megumi had his laptop open, his notebook aligned perfectly parallel to the edge of the desk, and his black gel pen resting exactly in the center crease. His heart was doing that small, erratic dance again, the one he couldn't control.

10:00 AM. The professor walked up to the podium, adjusting his microphone with a loud, painful screech of static.

10:03 AM. The door at the back of the lecture hall clicked open.

Megumi didn't look. He kept his eyes fixed on the green chalkboard, but his ears picked up the sound instantly: the distinct slosh of a plastic cup filled with ice and sugar.

A second later, a canvas tote bag dropped onto the desk next to him with a familiar, disorganized noise. You slid into the seat, your oversized jacket brushing against his arm, radiating the cold, crisp air of the September morning.

"Hey," you whispered, not even looking at him as you reached over and immediately pulled his pencil pouch toward yourself. Your fingers unzipped it with a smooth, practiced motion, searching for the specific blue highlighter you liked to ruin.

"You're late," Megumi said, his voice level, keeping his eyes on the front of the room.

"The line at the kiosk was entirely out of control," you murmured, pulling out the highlighter and popping the cap off with your teeth. "Some freshman was trying to pay for a matcha latte with pennies. I almost committed a felony, Fushiguro. You should be glad I'm here at all."

Without asking, you reached into the side pocket of his backpack, your hand brushing his thigh for a split second as you extracted a small package of fruit gummies he’d bought at the convenience store the night before. You tore the top off with your fingers and dropped two red ones into your mouth.

Megumi didn't move. He didn't blink. He just watched the professor write on the board.

"You can have them," he said quietly.

"I know," you replied easily, chewing thoughtfully. "That's why I took them."

This was the pattern. The smooth, frictionless rhythm of your intrusion into his life. You didn't ask for permission because you didn't think you needed it, and Megumi didn't give it because he had already surrendered the territory the moment you walked into the basement that day.

For the next fifty minutes, Megumi tried to execute his plan. He kept his phone on the desk, the screen illuminated, showing his student portal page. He shifted his notebook a little to the left, trying to create a visual bridge between his notes and his identity.

You didn't notice. You spent twenty minutes drawing a very detailed, very ugly caricature of Professor Yaga in the margins of your syllabus, and the other thirty minutes falling asleep with your chin resting on your fist, your long lashes casting soft shadows over your cheekbones.

Megumi spent the entire lecture taking incredibly neat, hyper-detailed notes, mostly because he knew your phone screen would be recording them in less than an hour.

The bell rang with a sharp, electric buzz that made half the back row jump.

Immediately, the lecture hall erupted into the chaotic noise of eighty people trying to leave a room at the same time—the zipper pulls, the scraping chair legs, the rustle of heavy coats.

You blinked your eyes open, shaking your hair out of your face with a small, groggy sigh. "Is it over? Did we survive?"

"Barely," Megumi said, his fingers working quickly to cap his pen and stack his handouts. He left his notebook open. This was the moment.

You reached into your jacket pocket, pulling out your phone. The screen was cracked in the lower left corner—a spiderweb of fractured glass that Megumi had been wanting to fix for three weeks. You leaned over him, your shoulder pressing firmly against his, the warmth of your body cutting through his black sweater. You held the phone up, positioning the camera over his neat handwriting.

Click.

"Perfect," you said, already sliding back into your own space and shoving the phone away. "Your handwriting is honestly a public service, Fushiguro. They should pay you for this."

Megumi didn't close his notebook. He looked at your phone, then up at your face. You were already pulling your tote bag over your shoulder, your eyes scanning the crowd at the exit like you were already calculating your next escape route.

"The café," Megumi said before he could think about the consequences.

You stopped, your hand hovering over the strap of your bag. You looked down at him, your eyebrows raising slightly in surprise. "What?"

"Are we...going back to the café?" he asked. His voice was a little too stiff, a little too formal. He hated how much he wanted the answer to be yes. He hated how much he dreaded the alternative.

You stared at him for a second, your sharp gaze moving over his face, looking for the catch. Then, a slow, small smile crept onto your lips—the one that made his chest feel like it was being compressed by a hydraulic press.

"Can't today," you said, tossing your empty iced coffee cup into the small recycling bin at the end of the desk row. "I have a group project meeting for a class. We have to discuss human sacrifice. It’s very on-brand for me."

"Oh," Megumi said. The word felt small. Heavy.

You slid past him into the aisle, but you didn't leave immediately. You stood there for a brief second, looking down at him as he sat in the empty row. You reached out, your index finger lightly tapping the top of his closed laptop.

"Don't look so tragic, window boy," you murmured, your voice dropping to that low, easy register that always made the rest of the noisy lecture hall fade into static. "I'll see you Tuesday. Don't forget my blue highlighter."

You turned and melted into the crowd of students pouring out the double doors.

Megumi sat alone in the back row for a long time, until the professor turned off the projector and the lights automatically dimmed to save power. He reached into his bag, pulling out the blue highlighter you had left on his desk. He turned it over in his hand, feeling the smooth plastic casing.

He didn't know your name. He didn't know your major. He didn't know anything.

But as he slid the highlighter into his pouch, right next to his neat rows of black pens, he knew one thing with absolute, terrifying certainty: He was never going back to the third row by the window.

a/n: i hope yall enjoyed this chapter💗

აTAGLIST ა

@p1excin9g, @b-bitter, @bumbums2, @gardenofwhom, @grenadehearts, @kaybae12, @angelbabybelle, @love-d-luxe, @loloncookies, @ag-zio, @megumiimeow, @megumisnumber1glazer, @meikozzus, @astromoon9, @salad85, @michestic, @mootersun, @cierra-207, @kaemaybae, @notsoslightlysexual, @pawwwginaaa, @megs1acrux, @saiki-kei, @sydlsm, @diabolicaldinosaur, @sassconvict, @angelynxs, @swaliaa, @lula-lux, @torusangelface, @ophisstuff, @ttoxicity, @v4mp1r3b4tzz, @velvetycherry, @voidst4r, @isaxbellevs, @tobecringeistobeme, @sunnyfieldsz, @maiddr3ss, @theogmamaguro, @malaccah, @skeletaldynamolegion, @yourlocalcatscammer, @anayayaluvly, @pillowprincess4him, @sugerfilled, @lilfluffybunny, @megumimi, @fushigurlfriend

SERIES TAGLIST SIGN UP ა

PERM TAGLIST SIGN UP ა

"Mhm." You nod, tears brimming at the corners of your eyes from the sheer pleasure. "Kept it tight for you, Cho."

Choso's eyes darken with lust at your words. "Open your mouth. Tongue out."

You obey like a puppy at his command. When he slips two fingers into your mouth, you obediently suck on them with your eyes closed, making sure to coat them with your warm saliva.

His fingers are soon replaced by his mouth, skillfully slipping his tongue past your lips while his wetly prepared fingers find your ass.

Your whimper comes out broken when he pushes a finger inside. "Cho—"

When your walls tighten around his cock, he lets out a deep grunt.

"Fuck, baby." Choso winces at the tightness while continuing to roll his hips into yours. "You might push me out like that."

You immediately shake your head and whine.

"No— no! Don't pull out!" You crash your lips against his, fervently leaving open-mouthed kisses while you beg. "I love you so much— oh my god— want you in me all the time."

He returns your hungry kisses as his arms flex tighter around you, holding you even closer than he already is. "I know, baby. I know. I love you too— I... fuck—"

Choso's lips find your neck, and he leaves marks across your skin that make your eyes roll back. Just the thought of having something visible that proves he owns your body makes you even hornier.

"You're doing me so good." Your mouth parts soundlessly as you gasp for air. "So, so good, Cho."

"This pussy's made for me, huh?" He looks at you through a half-lidded gaze and gives you a tired smirk.

Your tongue flicks across his lips before you smile at him.

"And you're mine." Choso's brain goes haywire when you start fucking yourself senseless on his cock. "Mine mine mine."

"Baby." The word leaves him through gritted teeth. "You're gonna milk me dry."

Your hand cups his jaw as you talk him through it. "Dump all that cum in me, alright?"

It's not only the look on your face or the way you talk that loosens his screws. What's driving him even more insane is the way he can feel himself bulging against your lower stomach.

With every stroke, he feels himself moving in and out of you, and it's pushing him right to the edge of his wits. If it hurts you, he supposes a cute little apology will work. It always does anyway.

"Choso, slow down!" Your nails dig into his shoulders as he continues to jackhammer his cock into your pussy.

"I can't— my hips won't stop." He explains frantically through heavy breaths. "Your pussy feels too good."

"Baby—"

As if your pleas are falling on deaf ears, Choso starts finger fucking your ass deeper, making your tongue fall from your mouth at the overwhelming pleasure your body is receiving.

"Fuck fuck fuck— you like that?" He takes your open mouth as an invitation to spit inside. "M'gonna make you cum so hard, baby."

You swallow his spit and open your mouth again. "Again."

So he spits into your mouth once more. Only this time, his eyes grow wide when you start flicking his nipples. At this point, both of you are fucking each other stupid through pure overstimulation.

"Jesus." He squeezes his eyes shut and rests his sweaty forehead against yours.

"M'gonna suck you clean after you cum," you say, almost sounding innocent.

He nods frantically. "And I'm gonna eat you out so I can remember how we taste."

Choso's embrace tightens around you, and both of you completely lose it as you fuck each other in a greedy pace.

"M'gonna cum, Cho." You mumble, almost in a whisper, and your eyes roll back.

"I might– shit. Might fill you up." His response comes out hoarse as he continuously fucks your already puffy pussy.

Your head spins and your vision turns white when you finally reach your climax. On the other hand, Choso sinks his cock even deeper until the tip kisses your cervix as hot ropes of cum spill from him.

As if that isn't enough, you press your hips further down onto his cock and spasm around it.

"So much... cum," your body shivers as you try to feel how warm his cum is inside of you.

Choso doesn't pull out yet. Instead, he slips his finger from your ass and starts caressing your legs before his hand eventually finds its place on your hip.

"I love you so much. I really do." He mumbles the words with a small, satisfied smile. "I don't think I'll ever get enough of you."

You giggle and tiredly run your hand along his arm. "I love you too, Cho." You smile softly at him, snuggling closer. "M'all yours."

wia says: to be loved is to overstimulate each other be known

This discovery is exactly what brings you to your plush cotton duvet, all dolled up in your cutest lingerie set, pressing your breasts together as you drag the planchette across the board.

“Toji? You there?”

Like clockwork, the wooden tool slides over to the ‘yes’ on the board—your mattress dipping under an invisible weight before you. And despite how many times you’ve seen it happen, it never gets old.

“Hey Ji! Uhm, I wanted to show you something I found online.”

You place your phone on the fluff of your bed, an article reading ‘how to make ghosts visible’ glowing on the screen.

“I was thinking, we could try it out? I really wanna see you. I mean, properly”

You’re not crazy. It's not like you blindly trusted this random ghost haunting your apartment. You had heard stories of the mean, rough assassin Toji Fushiguro—reigning fear and chaos upon every tenant of your unit.

But when your landlord gave you a Polaroid of the man so you could 'watch out for him"—your deposit was on her desk and your vibrator was fully charged.

The article scrolls under Toji’s transparent digits, pausing to read line by line, analyzing every step. “What do you think? Is it gonna work?”

And just as he spells out a simple ‘try’, you’re already dipping your manicured fingers into the pouch of sweet powder.

When you finally make contact, it feels like an entirely new, foreign sensation.

The barrier between life and death sat right on his surface—causing your skin to buzz pleasantly in a shaky mess of interdimensional contact.

The confectioners' sugar floated on what you imagined were his pecs—the shape of your shaky fingerprints moving with the rise and fall of his chest. “Woah, you feel all—fuzzy. It’s weird.” You continue feeling the plush of his muscles. “It’s, nice.”

Your fingers travel across his surface, occasionally dipping your prints in more sugar before caressing his skin.

His arms were huge—meaty biceps twitching under the warm touch of your live hands painting his muscles. And how the powder coated the veins running up his forearms—it had your thighs pressing together already.

How could anyone say he was ‘evil’ and ‘violent’ when he was being so patient with you? Sitting there quietly as you touched him all over, unveiling his every feature with the soft caress of your hands.

After finally mapping out his chest and arms, you began tracing the outline of his fingers. “You’re so big Ji.” You flirted, his powdery chest rumbling with a deep, unheard chuckle.

The moment you finished coating his hands, they were on you.

Sliding up the skin of your waist, toying with the lace of your bralette—who knew ghosts were such perverts?

“Toji, be patient.” And despite the fact that he was an immortal, deathly being bordering two planes of reality—he listened, compromising with a hand on your thigh.

“M’gonna do your head now, okay?”

Your thumbs caress the indent of his collar, tracing the skin pulled taut over invisible bone. You wander up his throat, coating his thick, dense traps forming a pronounced trail up to his jaw.

His Adam's apple bobs under your hovering digits, as if your touch were just as foreign, fuzzy and euphoric as his. But before you can get to his face, he leans over—laying you down onto your plush pillows and caging you in with his muscular arms.

"T-Toji, what’re you–”

He grabs your wrist, his icy-hot grip guiding your hand back into the bag of sugar—bringing your fingers over to his face before impatiently dragging your digits over his cheekbones.

He was mesmerizing.

Every curve and edge of his face looked sculpted from the gods themselves.

His plump, scarred lips.

His narrowed, sharp eyes.

He messily drags your hand up into the shag of his hair, the strands magically appearing under their powdery coating. Sugar falls in white clouds, ghosting over your sheets and landing sweet on your tongue.

“You’re so–”

You caress his cheek—hand travelling to his nape and pulling him closer.

“handsome.”

His lips meet yours in a heated buzz. The slow drag of his tongue exploring the inside of your mouth, slow sucks and bites tugging on your lips.

Calculated, confident, hungry.

Your buds spark from the sweetness of his maw—the mixture of your wet saliva dissolving the powder into a sugary paste.

As addictive as it was, the hot, resistant collision of your beings burned a euphoric heat against your lips, leaving you dizzy and lightheaded.

"Mph—T-Toji, slow down—"

Your hands push against his chest, sugar sprinkling down on you from his moving locks. The room turns white when he reaches over, grabbing a handful of powder and dusting it over himself—little clouds filling the air.

You finally get a better look at him in his entirety.

Sugar sprinkled down to his abs, revealing his dense muscles coated in a layer of plush. His gaze is low and heavy above curled lips, smirking as he watches you—sat back on his heels.

"Are you..naked?"

God, you're so cute, he thought

All spread out for him, traces of his white prints dancing atop your skin, lingerie riding up just enough for him to catch the wet patch forming on your cunt.

And when he nods, it's devilish.

He grabs you again, sprinkling more powder over your hand before guiding it to his pelvis.

He's such a tease, dragging your hand against the skin of his happy trail, fluffing up the hair as sugar falls lightly over his cock. And when his grip loosens, you palm him fully—revealing the details of his pulsing length.

His expression twists in pleasure as he hisses at the contact—the warmth of your touch making him impossibly more sensitive.

He's big.

A thick mushroom tip peaks out atop his heavy shaft, the sugar revealing every line and vein, as well as his slit leaking pearly pre. "Fuck, Toji."

He bucks up into your fist when you pull away, replacing your hand with the wet embrace of your gooey mouth. He's so impossibly sweet like this, his cock invading every surface of your leaky maw—a sticky mess of sugary saliva leaking down your chin.

Head bobbing rhythmically, you slurp up any evidence of the white powder from his length, sucking and swirling your tongue greedily around him.

And with a final suck! you pull back and swallow—the sugar water running smoothly down your throat. He twitches at the sight, his cock seemingly getting even harder—gazing down at you all messy and sweet, leaning back against the pillows.

"T-Toji, I want you inside."

And who was he to deny you—the first person to not look at him in horror and disdain? His rough hands hook under your knees, pressing them to your chest before eagerly pulling your panties aside. When you feel his wet tip peek into your entrance—it buzzes against you, the impossible friction so blissful—so perfect.

Looking down between you, his pelvis is messy and splotchy—traces and marks of your wet lips cleansing his surface. Just below, his cock is almost entirely transparent—the cloudy, milky white of saliva and sugar coating him.

Your cunt flutters around the stretch—leaking and twitching as he sinks into you, his large hands caressing you through every inch.

His pace quickens, the plap! of his powdered thighs echoing lewd squelches through the room. A fiery buzz of ecstasy surges through you with each heavy thrust—eyes rolling, hips jerking.

It's overwhelming, the scent of sugar and sweat heavy in the air, the dissonant buzz of his surface against yours.

And when he sucks the powder off his thumb, reaching down and rubbing lazy circles on your clit—that eager coil in your tummy curls tighter and tighter.

"Jiii–s'too m-much! haah—f-feels so good—"

Your sweet praise just sends him further over the edge, pinning your knees to your chest in an impossibly deep, intimate position.

"F-huck!" You choke on another pathetic moan, tears welling in your eyes from sensitivity—the distortion of your contact blurring as your orgasm begins.

The feeling is euphoric, the drag of his cockhead petting your insides in rough, passionate thrusts.

And when your back bows off the sticky sheets, you soak his thick cock in your release—gushing when his leaky tip hits your sweet spot over and over and over.

Your legs shake, your hands tremble, and you can barely even form a sentence when he finally cums, fucking his load back into you—grinding against your cervix.

He pulls out, a string of cum and sugar and ectoplasm bridging your wet heats. And in a haze of pleasure and desperation, you reach out—looping your arms around his neck and cradling the back of his head.

The things you’d do to see his skin—flushed pink and peach, His hair—like silk slipping between your fingers.

And when you kiss him—his scar buzzing and sugary sweet on your tongue—you can almost hear his groan echo between dimensions.

He holds you close, reveling in the affection—swimming in the warmth of your plush arms, inhaling the sweetness of your perfume. He buries his face in your hair, nostalgic for his human form when he feels your blood rushing against his palms.

After a warm shower—watching him disappear under rushing water—you find solace in still feeling his heavy hands against you, holding and kneading at your soft skin.

Ever since that night, your apartment feels ironically safer.

Maybe you’re foolish, blissfully unaware of how dangerous it is to harbor a vicious entity in your apartment—but he isn’t a vicious entity, he’s your Toji.

While some people dealing with ghosts and ghouls might fear the spirit's tricks—all he’ll ever do is grab your ass while you're cooking or open a window so you can enjoy the rain’s pitter-patter.

And despite how lucky you are to have a ghost with benefits, you're already wracking your brain on how to tell your friends that the best dick you've ever had came from a man you can’t even see.

He brought a stack of glossy, violently orange Welcome to campus! brochures down against the laminate tabletop to square the edges. He placed them into the "Humanities" pile. His hands were gray with ink dust. Outside, it was a perfectly good autumn afternoon, the kind where the shadows on the quad were long and the air smelled like crisp leaves, but Megumi was stuck five feer below sea level, watching a flickering bulb overhead give him a slow-building migraine. 

He hated the flyers. He hated the smiling, overly enthusiastic stock-photo students on the covers, pretending that choosing a major was a joy rather than a terrifying administrative sentence. Megumi had his life mapped out because deviation meant chaos, and chaos was dangerous. He liked order. He liked the predictable rhythm of A following B. 

The heavy fire door clicked open. The sound was sharp in the dead silence of the basement, a loud, metallic sound followed by the long, agonizing groan of a hinge that desperately needed oiling. Megumi didn't look up immediately. He was in the middle of alphabetizing the "Neuroscience" track, and he was stubborn enough to finish the letter N before acknowledging the rest of the universe.

But then came a noise: the distinct, rhythmic slosh of a massive, aggressively large iced coffee, followed by the dragging sound of a pair of tangled, wired headphones being hauled out of a tote bag.

"Is the copier in here still chewing up paper like a paper shredder with a grudge?"

The voice was light, slightly raspy, entirely unbothered by the heavy, academic gloom of the room.

Megumi paused. A half-sorted stack of Discover Your Path! brochures remained frozen in his hand, a mere inch above the table. He turned his head slowly.

You were standing by the ancient copy machine in the corner. Your hair was a little messy from the wind outside, you were holding a plastic cup fulled with a beverage that looked far too pale and sugary to legally be called coffee, and the aura around you was just complete, unbothered detachment. 

"It's dead," Megumi said, his voice flat, dropping the brochures onto the table. "It jammed twice twenty minutes ago, and I think it started smoking from the side vent. I wouldn't touch it if you value what you're trying to copy."

You sighed, a small, huffing sound. You walked over and leaned your hips against the heavy plastic casing of the machine, giving its control panel a cynical, affectionate little pat. "Figures. Nothing in this building actually works. I convinced myself that if I walked all the way down here, the universe would reward me with a working scanner, but I guess that's on me for having hope."

Then, you looked across the room.

Megumi felt a weird, sudden shift in his chest. It was a physical sensation—like walking down a flight of stairs in the dark and missing the bottom step, that momentary, stomach-dropping jolt where your brain hasn't caught up to your feet. You weren't doing anything spectacular. You weren't under a spotlight. But your eyes were incredible sharp. They were cool, steady, and entirely self-contained. You looked like someone who knew exactly where your boundaries were and had no intention of letting anyone cross them.

"Wait," you said, squinting slightly as you took a sip of your coffee through the green straw, the ice rattling musically against the plastic sides. "You're Megumi, right?"

Megumi's posture stiffened slightly. He shifted his weight, crossing his arms. "Yeah. How do you know that?"

"You're in my zoology lecture, You sit in the third row, by the window, and you always look like you're actively grieving someone." You set your iced coffee down on the edge of his sorting table, dangerously close to his neatly stacked piles. "Or like you're plotting the demise of the professor. It's hard to tell from the back row. Plus, your hair is really distinguishable."

A faint, hot flush creeps up his neck, disappearing under the collar of his black hoodie. He looked down at his piles, suddenly very interested in them. "I don't look like that. I'm just paying attention." He ignores the comment about his hair, but you can tell it affected him by the way he raises a hand to adjust it.

"You totally do," you declared, leaning forward slightly, resting one hand on the edge of the table. You smelled faintly of vanilla, laundry detergent, and a cold autumn air. You smiled then—a small, effortless, devastating smile. It wasn't a sweet smile. It was just a casual acknowledgment of his existence, which made it a thousand times more dangerous to a person like him. "But it's fine. It suits you. Very…brooding. Very 'I have a dark past but I excel at lab reports'."

He rolls his eyes, picking up a stack of pamphlets. "So what are you up to?" you ask. 

"I'm sorting these," he said, his voice coming out a little rougher than usual. "By major. Gojo wants them done by five, and I'm only on the M's."

"Boring," you say, stretching the word out. Before he could stop you, you reached out with your thumb and forefinger, plucking a bright pink Fine Arts department brochure right out of the middle of his carefully organized stack. You flipped it over, skimmed the bullet points with an amused expression, and then tossed it back down. 

Except you didn't put it back where it belonged. You dropped it right on top of the "Computer Science" pile, completely ruining the organization he had created. 

Megumi stared at the pink paper lying like a wound on his perfectly neat blue stack. His chest tightened. "You just messed up the C's."

"Live a little, Fushiguro. A little chaos will keep the advisors on their toes." You pick up your iced coffee, the ice rattling against the cup. "Besides, who says a computer scientist doesn't wanna paint? You're stifling their potential." 

"I'm executing a task," he mutters, though he didn't move to fix the pink brochure. His eyes were glued to the way your hand wrapped around the plastic cup. 

You lean your back against the table, looking around the basement with a critical eye. "How long have you been down here anyway? You look like your developing a disease from this moldy air." 

"Two hours," Megumi says, adjusting his sleeves. "And I'm not developing anything." 

You grimace and check your phone, the bright screen illuminating your face for a second. "Well, I hope you don't. I gotta go now before my roommate whoops me for not helping her move a ridiculously heavy mini-fridge."

You didn't move towards the door immediately. Instead, you lingered, shifting your weight from one foot to another. You looked wt his piles again, then back up at him, your eyes trailing over the sharp like of his jaw, the dark mess of his hair. Megumi felt like he was under a microscope, his breathing turning shallow under your gaze.

"You know," you say, tapping your fingernails against your coffee cup, "you should really sit somewhere else in Zoology. The window seat makes you look too dramatic. It's distracting." 

Megumi blinked, his analytical mind immediately going into overdrive, dissecting the sentence from every possible angle. Distracting? Why was he distracting? Were you always looking at him during lectures? How often?

"Where should I sit then?" he asked, the words leaving his mouth before he could stop them.

You offered a casual shrug. "I don't know. Somewhere closer to the back. That's where all us slackers live. And we have better snacks." 

Megumi blinks. Were you really asking him to sit with you? Why? 

"Yeah…okay," he mumbles.

"Cool." You turned around then, your sneakers making a soft shuffling sound on the old floor as you walked toward the door. You didn't look back, you just pushed the door open, the yellow light from the hallways cutting across the basement floor for a second, highlighting the dust particles in the air, before the door swung shut behind you with a dull, heavy thud. 

The silence of the library basement rushed back in to fill the space you had just vacated, it was heavier and colder than it had been five minutes ago. 

Megumi stood perfectly still. He looked down at the table. His fingers hovered over the brochure you had dropped into the wrong pile. He could've picked it up. He could've put it back in the section it belonged in less than three seconds. He was a person who took comfort in order, a person he hated when things were out of place. 

But he didn't fix it. 

He just stood there, fingers lingering over it, but never daring to touch it. 

To anyone else, it was a four-minute interaction in a basement. It was a completely forgettable exchange between two classmates who barely knew each other. 

But Megumi Fushiguro did not function like anyone else.

For the rest of the afternoon, the alphabetized piles lost their meanings. He finished sorting the brochures, stamped them with the university seal, and boxed them back up, but his hands were moving on autopilot. His brain was stuck in a loop, replaying the specific cadence of your voice, the way you dragged out the word boring, the faint click of your nails on the iced coffee cup.

When he finally left the library at around 6 PM, the sun was setting over the campus quad, casting long amber streaks across the brick paths. The air was cool, forcing him to pull the drawstrings of his hoodie a little tighter.

He walked toward his dorm room, but his eyes kept wandering. He looked at the steps of the humanities building. He looked at the outdoor seating of the campus cafe. He looked at every tote bag, every flash of messy hair in the crowd of students rushing toward the dining halls.

He was looking for you. He didn't even know your name yet, but he was looking for you.

When he reached his room, his roommate, Yuji, was sprawled out on his bed, frantically pressing buttons on a controller while some loud game blared from the TV.

"Yo, Megumi!" Yuji shouted without looking away from the screen. "You look beat. Did Gojo make you do the entire department's laundry or something?"

"No," Megumi said, dropping his backoack onto his desk chair with a heavy sigh. He sat down on the edge of his messy, unmade bed, staring at his shoes. "Just flyers."

"You've got ink on your nose," Yuji pointed out, his character dying on the screen with a dramatic explosion. "Awh, dammit." He finally dropped the controller and turned around, squinting at Megumi. "Seriously, man, what's wrong? You look…weird. Well, weirder than usual."

"Nothing's wrong," Megumu muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb, only smudging the ink further.

He leaned back aaginst his pillow, staring up at the ceiling of his dorm. He thought about his schedule. Tomorrow was Wednesday. No zoology lecture on Wednesday. He would have to wait forty-eight hours to see if you would actually ntoice him sitting by the window again. 

Forty-eight hours. It felt like an eternity.

Megumi closed his eyes, the image of your casual, unbothered smile burned into the back of his eyelids.

He's so fucked.

On Wednesday, Megumi sat in his usual seat by the window again. He wasn't sure if your invite to sit in the back with you was for real, so he decided to play it safe. Better that than get embarrassed, right? 

He was lost in thought, looking out the window, too busy to even notice when you tapped his shoulder. You snap your fingers infront of his face. "Hello? Is anyone home?" 

He blinks, shaking his head slightly, like he was shaking himself out of whatever trance he'd been in. "Sorry," he mutters, rubbing his eyes. "I guess I'm just tired." 

"You know, the back is the best place to nap," you say, smiling slightly. 

He looks up at you from his seat, then looks towards the empty seats in the back. "Are you sure?"

You nod. "Of course! Why would I invite you twice if I wasn't sure?" 

Megumi hesitated for a second. 

It wasn't obvious to anyone else. To you, it probably just looked like he was thinking. But inside his head, there was a full-scale war going on. He was calculating every angle, every outcome. 

If he said no, you might not ask again. 

If he said yes, he might say/do something stupid. 

If he stayed here, he could pretend none of this mattered. 

If he moved—

He was already standing. 

"Okay," he said, a little too quickly, grabbing his things before he could overthink this again. 

You smiled, satisfied, like this was the most predictable thing in the world, and turned around without waiting for him. "C'mon, window boy." 

He frowned slightly at the nickname but followed anyway, weaving between desks as the low hum of the pre-lecture chatter filled the room. The furthur back he went, the louder it got—people talking over each other, snacks crinklin, music playing faintly in the corner, someone laughing a bit too hard at something on their phone. 

It was…chaotic. 

And Megumi doesn't do chaotic. 

But then you dropped in your seat like you belonged there—like the noise bent around you instead of suffocating you—and suddenly it didn't feel as overwhelming. 

You kicked the empty chair next to you lightly. "Here." 

He sat down, setting his bag carefully at his feet, more aware of his movements than he had ever been in his life. His knee brushed the side of your chair for a split second before he adjusted, pulling back like he’d touched something he shouldn’t have.

You noticed but you didn’t say anything about it. You just reached into your tote bag and pulled out a slightly crushed pack of something that looked like chocolate-covered espresso beans, shaking it once before holding it out to him.

“Peace offering,” you said. “For ruining your precious alphabet system.”

Megumi blinked at it.

“You didn’t ruin it,” he muttered, even though you definitely had.

“Wow,” you deadpanned. “Personal growth. I’m proud of you.”

He ignored that, but after a second, he took one. His fingers brushed yours just barely and he immediately looked away, like the contact had been accidental. Which it had been. Probably.

“You always sit back here?” he asked, mostly so he wouldn’t have to think about the way your hand had felt for even a fraction of a second.

“Yeah,” you said, leaning back in your chair, stretching your legs out under the desk. “Better view.”

“Of what? The back of people’s heads?”

“Of everything,” you said vaguely, tilting your head toward the front of the lecture hall. “You see who’s paying attention, who’s pretending to pay attention, who’s about to fail the next exam. It’s like people-watching with academic consequences.”

Megumi glanced toward the front, then back at you.

“You don’t seem like you care about that,” he said.

“I don’t,” you replied easily. “But it’s entertaining.”

There it was again—that detachment. Like nothing really got under your skin. Like everything was just something to observe, not something to get tangled up in.

Megumi didn’t understand it.

He wanted to.

The professor walked in then, shuffling papers and immediately launching into a lecture about animal behavior patterns, his voice blending into the background noise as students scrambled to pull out notebooks.

Megumi automatically reached for his pen.

Then he paused.

You hadn’t taken anything out. No notebook. No laptop. Nothing. You were just sitting there, chin resting lightly on your hand, staring toward the front with a calm, almost bored expression.

“You’re not taking notes?” he asked quietly.

You shook your head. “I’ll get them later.”

“From who?”

You turned your head slightly, looking at him out of the corner of your eye. “You, probably.”

Megumi’s pen hovered over the page.

He had that feeling again. That sudden drop, like missing a step in the dark.

“Why me?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

You studied him for a second. “Because you look like the type of person who writes everything down,” you said simply. “And because you won’t say no.”

He opened his mouth to argue that but stopped. Because you weren’t wrong. He wouldn't say no. 

“Fine,” he muttered, finally putting pen to paper.

“Thanks,” you said, already looking back at the front like the conversation was over.

But it wasn’t over. Not for him. Because now he was hyper-aware of everything. The way your shoulder shifted when you adjusted your posture, the quiet rhythm of your breathing next to him, the faint scent of vanilla that hadn’t quite faded since the basement.

He tried to focus on the lecture. He really did. But every few minutes, his attention drifted to the side. And once, when he glanced over, he caught you already looking at him.

You didn’t look away immediately. You just raised an eyebrow, like you’d caught him doing something mildly embarrassing.

Megumi snapped his gaze back to his notes so fast his pen scratched a crooked line across the page.

You didn’t laugh. But he could feel your amusement, quiet and contained, sitting right next to him. 

And for some reason, that was worse.

—or maybe better.

He couldn’t tell anymore.

All he knew was that the next forty-eight hours after this didn’t feel like an eternity anymore.

They felt like a countdown.

a/n: decided to leave the letters big for this since its a lot of reading💔 i hope yall enjoy

აTAGLIST ა

@p1excin9g, @b-bitter, @bumbums2, @gardenofwhom, @grenadehearts, @kaybae12, @angelbabybelle, @love-d-luxe, @loloncookies, @ag-zio, @megumiimeow, @megumisnumber1glazer, @meikozzus, @astromoon9, @salad85, @michestic, @mootersun, @cierra-207, @kaemaybae, @tearsnkissess, @notsoslightlysexual, @pawwwginaaa, @megs1acrux, @saiki-kei, @sydlsm, @diabolicaldinosaur, @sassconvict, @angelynxs, @swaliaa, @lula-lux, @torusangelface, @ophisstuff, @ttoxicity, @v4mp1r3b4tzz, @velvetycherry, @voidst4r, @isaxbellevs, @tobecringeistobeme, @sunnyfieldsz, @maiddr3ss, @theogmamaguro, @malaccah, @skeletaldynamolegion, @yourlocalcatscammer, @anayayaluvly, @pillowprincess4him, @sugerfilled, @lilfluffybunny, @megumimi, @fushigurlfriend

SERIES TAGLIST SIGN UP ა

PERM TAGLIST SIGN UP ა