sugarplum

He finds you one afternoon as ordinary as any other. It's raining when he reaches the port town of Havso—a steady patter that turns the cobblestones slick and darkens the wood of every dock and doorway. For all the precision Qifrey has honed over water, getting wet remains an irritation he's never quite outgrown, and the sound of rain prickles at his awareness like a thousand fine needles, impossible to ignore. He hurries through the narrow streets, searching the shops—for a new cast iron pot to replace the one that had cracked last week, some twine for binding dried herbs, other small sundries—when he sees you.

The canvas awning you're huddled beneath is doing almost nothing at all—not to protect you from the cold spring rain, or from the sharp, biting winds sweeping in from the coast. Water drips steadily from the hem of your smock, your hair plastered in wet strings to your narrow cheeks. Despite this, you don't move.

Qifrey doesn't mean to stop. But he does.

You look up when his shadow falls over you. He takes the edge of his cloak, the water dispelling spell inked discretely beneath its hem, and sweeps it in a gentle arc above your head. The rain above you curves away. Your eyes widen ever so slightly, your gaze tracing the water trickling off the air as though sliding off an invisible dome, before you look back at him again.

"I don't like getting wet," Qifrey says, in manner of explanation.

You simply stare. For a moment, Qifrey wonders if you speak the common tongue at all—it's not uncommon for sailors from foreign kingdoms to abandon unwanted children in port towns like this—or if you're simply mute.

"You're soaked," he tries again, more gently this time. "Do you have anywhere to go?"

Silence stretches in the space between each of his heartbeats. The rain patters, fingertips dancing along the boundary he's drawn. Then, you shake your head.

So you do understand him. Qifrey should have guessed—children like you are a dime a dozen here, orphans, strays, the overlooked and unclaimed. No one would notice if one or more vanished from the edges of the docks.

Convenient, a colder part of him supplies. You are old enough to comprehend, young enough to be malleable, and compared to an apprentice born into a family of witches, you won't know enough of magic—and by extension, the silverwood—to ask questions that he doesn't want or know how to explain.

He takes you in.

The first few weeks are easier than he expects. You come to him with no poor habits to unlearn—no stubborn rune-drawing tendencies, no theoretical 'shortcuts' circulated by some of the lazier professors in the Great Hall. Teaching you is like working on a blank sheet of parchment. You simply watch what he does and try to do the same. And when you fail—which is often—you do not seem to be affected or frustrated. You simply do it again.

The only real issue is that you have never learned to write. Qifrey watches your hand wobble across the parchment—leaving dark splotches in some places, lines breaking off in others. Your fingers wrap around the ink wand like a stick you've picked off the ground, all knuckles and no finesse.

Qifrey lets out a quiet sigh.

"Your grip is wrong."

You look up at him, uncomprehending. Qifrey sighs again and hesitates, just briefly, before he steps closer and leans down. His hand slides over your fingers, carefully adjusting each one until the wand rests properly between them, the tip hovering just above the parchment.

"Like that."

The moment he releases you, however, your grip tightens again reflexively. The wood of the ink wand creaks faintly in protest. He quickly takes your hand again.

"Gently," he murmurs. "Like holding a robin's egg."

Qifrey guides your hand across the parchment. A straight line. A square. A circle. Your hand relaxes under his, just a little.

"Just like that," he says, and lets go. You look at the ink wand in your hand. "Now, try again."

You practice until the sun goes down.

He teaches you the basics. The three basic components that make up every spell, the five elemental sigils for fire, wind, water, earth and light. The keystones that govern a spell's direction and strength and purpose, how the sizes of the rings can affect its range and potency. Everything he says, you memorise. And everything he teaches you, you practice until you can reproduce it by heart.

After only about a few months of training, Qifrey dares to say that you've reached the standard that most witches your age who've grown up around magic would be at. The rate at which you're learning is… unexpected, to say the least. He should be pleased. Any decent teacher would be.

Qifrey tells himself this as he watches you inscribe a heating spell along the belly of a copper kettle. It's a reasonably complex problem for a beginner—the spell must conjure heat but not fire, be stable enough to maintain an even boil, hot enough to warm but not so fierce as to warp or melt the metal. It's a careful balance of precision and power that tends to elude most newcomers to spellcasting.

You hand him the kettle when you finish. Qifrey pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and lifts it up to his good eye, turning it slightly in the flickering light coming from the fireplace. The dispersion keystones are neatly drawn, arranged around the central fire sigil in two concentric circles. The limiting keystones sit where they should, too—balanced on either side, ready to dampen the spell the moment the heat climbs too high.

"Good," Qifrey says at last. The word feels thinner than it should be. He lingers a moment longer than necessary, as if searching for some flaw to justify a correction, but finds none. "We'll be able to use this to brew tea in the mornings, now."

You nod once at his assessment from where you're watching him by the kitchen table, then ask, "What next?"

There is no flicker of pride. No satisfaction in your work, no pause to take in what you've done. Just a simple what next, as if each perfected spell is nothing more than a marker on a long road you don't care much to tread on.

The first thin root of worry pushes through the soil of his chest.

Qifrey tries to keep his distance at first. He really does. A master-apprentice relationship only needs to go so deep for one to learn and the other to worry, and too much closeness would be counterproductive in his attempts to keep the silverwood at bay. He buys you all sorts of magical books and supplies you with wands and ink when you need it. He cooks, too, warm and filling meals that nourish the body and are rich in nutrients, until the hollowness in your cheeks softens, replaced by a healthier, rounded plumpness. He corrects your glyphs when he spots mistakes and guides your hand when your lines falter. It barely assauges the guilt in his chest.

You don't make it easier for him. Through no fault of your own, he knows, and yet somehow, that only makes it worse. You don't seek him out for any needs outside of your magic studies, never ask for anything, and eat exactly what he puts in front of you without comment. You wake up at dawn to start the tea kettle, and from there you start practicing magic without ceasing until he has to firmly tell you to go to bed.

There are no tantrums, no complaints, no childish demands for attention or affection. Surely, even children must have their preferences. Trinkets they like, foods they refuse to eat. But you are quiet and serious and wrong in a way that he cannot name, and Qifrey finds himself watching you much the same way Beldaruit had once watched him.

"You don't have to keep doing that," he tells you one evening. You're hunched over the kitchen with a half-empty cup of water, the parchment in front of you crowded with dozens of identical glyphs. The fire sigil that you'd just traced over in water glistens for a moment, then fades as the parchment slowly dries. You must have drawn the same glyph at least a hundred times now.

You don't look up, dipping your wand in water again. "My circles aren't perfectly round yet."

"You don't have to master everything in a single day. You could take a break."

"Why?"

Qifrey doesn't have an answer for that. Or rather, it's perhaps that he has too many. Because you look tired but refuse to admit it. Because your hands will cramp if you keep going. Because watching you work yourself into the ground makes me feel something too similar to what I used to feel for Olruggio, and that scares me.

"It was only a suggestion."

You consider it for a moment, and then turn back to your parchment. Qifrey sighs, pushing aside his robes to lower himself into the chair across from you.

"Do you have any reason for learning magic?"

You rotate your wrist once in the air before setting the wand's nib to parchment. "You asked me to."

"That's my reason, not yours."

"It's the only one I have."

Qifrey watches your hand move across the paper, and something in his chest tightens. This arrangement is supposed to be simple—selfish, yes, but simple. You are supposed to ask things of him, to need him in small, manageable ways that keep him worried just enough about your progress and studies without causing him too much concern. You have done exactly just that.

And yet here he is, worrying about you constantly for a completely different reason.

He thinks of Beldaruit's gentle gaze, the soft curl of smoke illusions coaxed into being on nights when sleep proved treacherous, when the memories of darkness and rain pounding unceasingly against metal and claustrophobia set in. He remembers Olruggio's warm smile and even warmer eyes, the ribbon on his hat that Qifrey still touches sometimes in the dark, tracing the multiple preservation sigils he's inked onto the silk.

His reminder to never forget, to never grow complacent.

"Take a break," he says again, and this time, there's something in his voice that makes you stop.

You look at him for a long moment, head tilting slightly to the side. It reminds Qifrey vaguely of a sparrow. Finally, you speak.

"You're worried," you say, as though you're making an observation. Qifrey forces a smile.

"I'm your master. It's what I'm supposed to do."

You glance down at your parchment once more. For a moment he thinks you might refuse, ignore his words and go right back to practicing, but then you set your wand down next to the paper and push your chair back, legs scraping along the slate flagstones.

"I'll continue tomorrow," you announce, without looking at him.

"Good," he says in response, and the two of you sit in silence at the kitchen table, undisturbed except for the crackling of the fireplace, and Qifrey has to remember how to breathe without counting the spaces between each one.

Hearthglen Village is about a few furlongs from the atelier, more often than not in need of small, persistent fixes, and thusly, the ideal place for you to practice using magic after passing the Pentacle of Proving's second test. Qifrey walks beside you through the small handful of thatched cottages scattered through the patchwork quilt of farmfields, returning the villagers' greetings with easy familiarity. It's always good to maintain good relations with the unknowing, especially those living nearby.

Eventually, the two of you arrive in front of the client who'd requested Qifrey's services. The problem is simple: a farmer's irrigation ditch has gone haywire somehow, and now his turnips are drowning in mud. Qifrey could fix it alone in ten minutes, but that isn't the point. He nods towards the field, giving you an encouraging pat on the shoulder.

"Go on."

You hesitate only for a moment before you go, hovering tentatively over the knee deep muck with your sylph shoes as you float out to the irrigation ditch. Your expression is reminiscent of a wet cat's—vaguely displeased, faintly affronted, as though the world has committed a personal offense by being this unpleasant. Qifrey has to hold back a smile.

In the meantime, Qifrey chats with the farmer as you work—something about the summer heat this year, the stubbornness of the soil—but he makes sure to never let you slip from his sights. You're already at the ditch, hat bobbing as you hover over the mud. He can almost picture your hand beneath the shelter of your cloak: fingers wrapped around the wand, drawing those precise lines that you've practiced over and over again with unswerving confidence.

He's listening to a rundown of this year's cabbage harvest when a faint rumble echoes across the field. The earth shifts, groaning as though rousing from a long slumber, and then the water starts to move. Mud loosens and starts to drain from the fields, revealing the green leaves of the turnips peeking out through the soil once more. It's quickly replaced by a steady stream of clear water.

The farmer's face brightens with relief. He claps his hands together with a delighted laugh, already turning to call out his thanks as you drift back over to the solid ground of the path, the hem of your cloak splattered with drying mud. You don't smile back; instead you wipe the faint sheen of sweat from your brow and look to Qifrey for approval.

He pushes his glasses up and nods once. "Well done."

You accept his verdict the same way you accept everything else—quietly, without visible pride or disappointment. The farmer tries to press a basket overflowing with all variety of squash into your hands and your eyes find Qifrey's like you aren't sure what to do with gratitude. He takes it for you.

"They're a natural," the farmer nudges Qifrey as he moves to leave. "Where'd you find a talent like that?" Despite the surge of pride that races through him, he hesitates.

"They found me," Qifrey says, instead.

More villagers request your help over the course of the afternoon. A family's goat wandered into a small ravine, a child's kite got stuck in a tree. You lift the frantically bleating animal to safety with a levitating spell, and coax the wind into tugging the kite loose from an elm's tangled branches while the village children gather to watch you work with eyes full of wonder. The girl bounces on her heels as the toy finally drifts down into your waiting hand, and you hand it over without a smile.

She hugs your legs anyway. You stand there awkwardly, arms glued to your sides, and Qifrey has to look away before he laughs.

Hours later, after the last request has been fulfilled and the sun is low enough to turn the clouds a warm ombre-ochre, you and Qifrey decide to walk home, the path stretching before you like a pale ribbon through the fields. You walk next to him in silence, as you always do, fingers stained with smudges of black ink and clay soil.

"You did well today," he says.

"Thank you."

"But."

You glance at him then. Just a slight flicker of the eyes, darting sideways and upwards. You've learned, by now, that your master is far from straightforward around topics that are necessary but difficult to broach.

"But?"

"But magic doesn't seem to make you happy," he finishes.

You neither deny nor confirm it. Your steps just slow slightly against the gravel scattered on the path, stones crunching beneath the soles of your boots. For a while, there is only the sound of the wind moving through the wheat fields.

Eventually, you speak.

"Does it have to?"

Qifrey thinks about that. About the way you've perfected every spell he's taught you but never once asked to learn any out of your own desire. About how you can spend hours, days, drawing circles and lines over and over again simply because he tells you to. About how quickly you've become good at magic—and how little of it seems to belong to you.

"It doesn't have to," Qifrey says, at last. He's cast all sorts of magic in his life, spells that have burned and hollowed, ones that have scarred and pained him beyond what any physical wound can. Not all of it was joy. Not all of it was kind.

Yet.

"But you should find a reason. To desire magic, I mean."

You glance at him, eyes briefly searching, as though weighing the shape of his words, their meaning. He licks his lips, suddenly dry.

"Magic is meant to grant wishes of the people," he says, more gently now. "To bless them. That includes yourself." His lips press together, smile half-formed before faltering, and the wind moves through the fields, rustling restlessly through the long grass. "I—I hope you can learn magic not because I tell you to, but because you want to."

The last sentence escapes him in a rush, as though forced from his lungs with some sort of wind dispelling spell. The thought settles heavy in his chest again, the silverwood shuddering. For all his care—for all the effort he's poured into teaching you properly, responsibly—one truth remains unchanged: Qifrey had taken you in because he needed an apprentice. Not out of kindness. Not out of any noble intent he can comfortably name.

He doesn't know what he would say if you ever asked him why. Any lie would feel too great a disservice to the one person he'd thrust this fate upon, and the truth feels brittle, insufficient—something that would fracture the moment he speaks it aloud.

But you never have. Sometimes, he suspects that you already know.

The remainder of the walk back passes in silence. The sky fades from sienna to lavender before deepening to a dark indigo. One by one, the first stars emerge at the very top of the firmament, their light faint and trembling. You say nothing, and Qifrey tells himself to give you time—you need space to process things, and pressuring you would only make you retreat further into yourself, like a snail hiding in its own shell.

The atelier comes into view at the end of the lane, its windows dark. Qifrey steps ahead, undoing the sealing glyphs on the door. It swings open with a soft creak, and he pauses, holding it ajar for you to step through.

You don't.

He turns back to see you standing a step behind the threshold, gaze lowered to the path at your feet, as though something he cannot see there has snared your attention and taken it captive. Qifrey frowns, head tilting.

"Apprentice?"

You don't answer immediately, hands in your pockets, the tip of your boot scuffing the ground. Then, quietly—

"I want to cure Master."

For a moment, Qifrey forgets how to breathe. He can only stare at you, mouth slightly parted. The words fail to catch despite him having nothing to say. Your voice had been small, careful—like you'd been turning the words over in your mouth for miles, smoothing their edges so they wouldn't cut your tongue on the way out. Of all the things he'd imagined you might say, this had never even been within his considerations.

He grips the door handle a little more firmly for support. The brass carvings bite its patterns into his skin of his palm.

"Cure me," he repeats, dumbly.

"Yes." You nod, the movement slow, as if hesitant in your admission. "The headaches that you try to hide from me. And your right eye, too," you add, pointing at the side of his face covered by his hair, as if he might not know the one. "You touch it when you think I'm not watching, but it seems like it hurts."

Qifrey didn't realise you'd noticed. He thought he'd been careful.

"I thought I asked you," he says, more quietly, more unsteadily now, "to want something for yourself."

"I don't like seeing Master in pain."

Qifrey’s grip on the door falters. Something tightens in his chest—perhaps the silverwood, perhaps something else, so sharp it cuts him open like a blade, and yet he doesn't know whether he wants to let go. For so long, he's been waiting—for you to want something, to reach beyond instruction, to claim even the smallest piece of magic for your own.

And you have.

Qifrey exhales slowly, the sound thin against the quiet of the evening. For once, there is no ready answer waiting behind his teeth. He thinks of Olruggio's face, the path to salvation he'd offered Qifrey paved with the pieces of his own memory. He thinks of the tree growing inside of him, its roots tangled in his ribs, its branches seeking the sun through where his eye once used to be.

Healing magic is a direct alteration of the body, and every form of body alteration is forbidden—banned on the Day of the Pact, enforced by the Knights Moralis with iron and fire. And even if it wasn't, the silverwood is not merely an illness. There is no cure for what grows inside of him.

But you don't know any of that.

So Qifrey smiles softly. Releases his death grip on the door, pulling away to rest a hand on top of your head, the same way Beldaruit used to do for him.

"That's very kind of you," he says.

Your expression doesn't change, but the tautness in your shoulders loosens just a fraction, as if you'd been bracing for him to laugh at you, to dismiss your dream as a fool's flight and fancy. Instead, he pushes the door open wider and gestures you inside.

"Come on," Qifrey tells you, swallowing the sudden thickness lodged in his throat. "Wash up. I'll make squash stew for dinner."

You nod and disappear up the steps to the second floor. Your footsteps fade quickly, and soon Qifrey's ears pick up the sound of running water, of the bath being filled.

He remains in the doorway a moment longer, one hand braced against the frame, the other lifting—almost unconsciously—to brush over where his right eye used to be, featherlight. The motion is familiar, thoughtless. Almost habitual.

But he's been exposed, now. A deprecating laugh escapes him, the wisps of it slipping between his teeth. It's only now, Qifrey thinks, that he's beginning to realise just how foolish he'd been.

He's fallen into the pit that he'd dug with his own two hands.

Sleep eludes Qifrey that night.

He lies on his back, one arm thrown over his forehead, the other resting on his chest. Beneath skin and bone, the cage of his ribs, the silverwood pulses its slow, patient rhythm, waiting. The ceiling above him is indistinguishable in the dark, but he's stared at it so many sleepless nights that he can recall to memory the grain of every plank, the small water stain in the corner that faintly resembles a bird in flight.

Just above him, in the room upstairs, you are sleeping soundly—or he hopes so, at least. Belly full of squash stew, dreaming of pleasant things. That you are warm and resting, and that, for once, you are not pushing yourself past the point of sense simply because he asked it of you.

I want to cure Master.

Qifrey turns onto his side, facing the wall. His pillowcase smells faintly of lavender—scented sachets you'd made last week, making use of some aromatics a village herbalist had given you for your help. He'd accepted one when you'd offered it, almost without thinking, assuming that it was thoughtful but practical gesture.

Now, the scent lingers like smoke.

Beldaruit used to say that the best apprentices were the ones who could surprise you. Qifrey always assumed he meant talent, insight, some brilliant intuition that no one else could replicate. Someone who could make teachers lean forward in their seats and think, that's the one.

But here, lying in his bed, your words from hours ago still sitting warm in his chest, he wonders if the old man had meant something else entirely.

Qifrey pushes out a breath, the tip of his tongue pressing behind his teeth. You will learn about the forbidden magic, eventually. Every witch does—and as your master, it will be his responsibility to teach you about it. Some things are too dangerous. Some lines cannot be crossed. All magic that is drawn on the human body or affects the human body is outlawed.

And that includes healing magic.

You will learn that, and then you will not ask too many questions about why his eye cannot be fixed. Eventually, you will move on and find another, better wish.

But for now, Qifrey takes your words and folds them carefully, tucking them away into the furthest corner of his heart where the silverwood cannot reach. He closes his one good eye and waits for the sun to rise once again. And when it does, Qifrey will greet you in the kitchen downstairs with a cup of hot tea and a smile, he will teach you combination sigils and binding spells, and he will never bring it up again.

Because some wishes are too heavy to be said aloud, and some teachers are too selfish to let them go.

Summer slips unnoticed into autumn, and autumn, in turn, yields to winter. Qifrey teaches you to crochet, then to knit—awkward at first, fingers too stiff around the slumbersheep yarn until Qifrey takes your hands and guides you through the movements, much in the same way he does when teaching you spells. He shows you how to tend to the heating spells that keep the house warm without burning it down, how to summon precise gusts of wind to blow snow off the atelier's sloping roofs. And the months pass just as the weather changes—gradual, inevitable, marked only in hindsight by the shift in the air, the thinning of light.

And as you grow older, Qifrey finds the distance he once tried so carefully to maintain eroded by the same unrelenting tide. Bit by bit, day by day—until one morning he wakes up and realises he cannot quite remember what it feels like to not have you there.

It's not something that changes overnight. Instead, it is a thousand small, mundane things—the way his hand moves without thinking to drop two cubes of sugar into your teacup, the copper kettle with your heating spell whistling behind him on the stove. You're at the basin with your sleeves rolled up to your elbows, washing a skillet faintly smelling of bacon while a brushbuddy dozes on your shoulder. Everything is good, and everything is warm.

This is dangerous, Qifrey thinks. And then he thinks it again, because the first time hadn't been enough to make him stop.

The morning he's forced to confront it comes without warning. Quietly, unassumingly, a thief in the night.

Qifrey notices that something is different the moment he steps into the quiet of the kitchen. The kettle is cold, and the matching cups that a travelling potter had made for you sit upturned on the counter, untouched from where you'd set them aside to dry last night. He stands in the doorway for a moment, listening. The atelier breathes around him like an extension of his own body—the soft creak of timber settling, the low whisper of wind along the eaves—but beneath it, nothing. No quiet patter of footsteps in the floor upstairs. No water running in the washroom.

Perhaps you're sleeping in, he tells himself. The idea is almost pleasant. You never do; you're always awake before him, tea already steeped, moving around the kitchen to prepare breakfast—presence slipped so easily into his morning routine that he'd stopped noticing it altogether.

Qifrey sets the kettle to heat, before rummaging for the battered tin of tea leaves in the overhead shelf. He prepares a cup for you, placing it at the chair that has become yours in all but name, and sits across it with his own. The brew's a little more astringent than he's used to—steeped a touch too long, perhaps—but he drinks it anyway, idly sorting through the neglected stack of mail from the council.

The sun climbs higher in the sky. Light spills through the kitchen window, between the gap in the curtains, inching slowly across the table to catch on the rim of your untouched cup. Qifrey looks through the latest spell you've been working on: an attempt at replicating his Palm Dragon Teacup. He makes small suggestions in the margins, noting down more efficient arrangements and combinations of keystones, ideas for refining its precision. Still, it's good work. Your work is always good.

More time passes. He finally completes drafting a letter to the Great Hall—something about independent ateliers and watchful eyes—and sends it off before picking up a book about complex fire spells. Qifrey thumbs through the pages slowly, more out of idleness than focus, pausing every now and then when something catches his eye. A variation making use of the stabilising keystone. A more efficient heat-dispersal glyph. He dog-ears about six different pages with the intention of showing them to you later, when he looks up and realises that your tea has long gone cold.

Qifrey closes his book, sets it aside, and heads for the stairs.

Your bedroom door is closed.

That isn't surprising to Qifrey. You've always been a private person by nature, and you're even moreso protective of your few possessions, your personal space. Qifrey learned early on not to intrude without invitation or cause.

But your diversion from routine is… odd. Surely you will forgive his worry.

Qifrey hesitates, knuckles hovering over the wood of your door, before he knocks. "Apprentice?"

No answer.

He knocks again, a little sharper this time. "It's past noon. If you want to sleep in, just let me know, alright? You deserve the rest."

Still no answer.

The thin thread of unease tightens around his chest.

"I'm coming in."

The door swings open easily beneath his hand. The room that he steps into is familiar and empty. Your blankets are carefully folded at the foot of the bed, your traveling cloak absent from its hook by the window. And your sylph shoes, the ones that he'd helped you mend just last week, are missing from their place next to the dresser.

Qifrey stands in the center of the room, the air suddenly going very, very still. The silverwood in his chest trembles.

Calm down, he tells himself firmly. Your bed is made—your absence must be deliberate. There must be some sort of explanation. Perhaps you wanted a taste of mischief, to act your age for once. Perhaps you snuck out to one of the nearby villagers, Hearthglen or Azmar, to meet people, make friends. Be normal. You mentioned the daughter of Azmar's baker last week. He recalls a girl your age with flour on her apron who'd been fascinated with your magic. Perhaps you've gone to pay her a visit.

He turns slowly, forcing his gaze to move along with him. Your ink wands are in a little cup on your table, textbooks sitting in rows on the shelf where they belong. Encyclopedias, histories, grimoires he'd deemed safe for for your learning. Nothing out of place. He's about to leave the room, fetch a guidance orb just to make sure that you're alright, when—

Something small and furtive shifts between a gap in the books. The brushbuddy's tail twitches into view before it darts back into the narrow space behind, as though caught somewhere it shouldn't be.

Qifrey frowns.

He reaches up and pulls the entire front row of volumes aside, setting them down on the table with a heavy thump. Dust stirs in the air. Behind them sits another, shorter stack of books, tucked neatly out of sight. Aside from him, there isn't another occupant in this atelier for you to hide things from. Which means you meant to conceal this deliberately. From him.

Why?

Qifrey ignores the cold uncertainty in his chest, picking up the first book. Medical journal. Second. Herbal remedies of the Southern Continent. Third, an encyclopedia on human anatomy, although only the section on ophthalmology is bookmarked, annotated so densely that barely any margin is left untouched. The rest of the books are of a similar vein.

Only the last one is different—a notebook, worn pages filled with a cramped but script that he would recognise anywhere. The rest are filled with sketches—plants that even he doesn't recognise at first glance, roots and leaves and bulbs rendered with careful attention to detail. Analgesic properties. Toxic in high doses. Antispasmodic. Causes hallucinations.

He flips through more rapidly, pulse quickening, but the later pages only get worse.

Burn, left forearm. Applied tincture from ground monoceros horn and milkwort. Moderate pain reduction, mild nausea. Bruise, right knee. Poultice from steeped elderwood and nightpoppy. Significant pain relief, but results in complete loss of sensation and movement in area. Lasts three hours. Burn—

Qifrey's vision blurs. His other hand grips the edge of your chair, knuckles white, breath coming out sharp and shallow as he forces himself to breathe. You've been hurting yourself. On purpose. Testing remedies for… for—

He doesn't dare to let that thought complete itself. He turns the pages quickly, skimming past entries until he reaches the last one. The ink is smudged where the parchment presses together, as if you'd jotted it down and closed it in a hurry. It's still faintly wet.

There is a rough sketch of silvery stems and thin, needle-like leaves. Spineneedles, you've labelled them. Your notes crowd the margins: potent pain-relieving properties. Possible long-term restorative effects. Grows only in steep valleys inhabited by winged serpentines, venom necessary for germination. And below it—

Kestrel's Maw, eight furlongs north of atelier. Serpentines least active at dusk and dawn.

Qifrey feels his blood turn to ice in his veins. Outside the window, the sun hangs high in the cold winter sky, almost at its zenith—long past dawn, past any reasonable margin of safety. It's far too late. You should have been back hours ago. No, worse—you should have never gone at all, risking your life for such foolish, pointless endeavours. You should have been in this very room, sleeping soundly beneath the blankets, unharmed and safe and under Qifrey's protective eye. Instead—

He'd flown over Kestrel's Maw once, years ago. He still remembers the way the cliffs drop away into nothing, wind screaming through the narrow ravines, strong enough to throw even an experienced witch off balance. And the serpentines there are especially aggressive—great, winged creatures with beaks like drawn swords—nesting in the crevices where the spineneedles grow.

And that's where you've gone.

I'm responsible for this, Qifrey thinks numbly, and the words are a realisation as much as an accusation aimed at himself. I did this. I made you this way. I wanted someone to worry about, and now—

The image comes to him, unbidden: your body, broken at the base of the ravine. Impaled by sharp spikes at the bottom, limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Cloak ripped and dark with blood, flesh torn from your bones by monstrous beaks. And your face—that quiet, serious, earnest face—pale, chest still, eyes open yet blank and vacant and unseeing and—

No.

No.

Qifrey runs. He doesn't think. He doesn't allow himself to. The door is too far—he shoves your shutters open and throws himself out of the second floor window, into the harsh midday sunlight. For a second, wind rushes up to meet him, flailing, falling—before the sylph seal beneath his feet flares. And then he's airborne, rising too fast but not fast enough, the wind tearing at his hair, the fragile control he's forcing himself to hold together.

Please, not them, is all he can think as he hurtles through the sky. Not my apprentice. Not them. I'll do anything. Please, please, please—

He doesn't know who he's begging, only that he'll beg anything, bargain everything—if it means that you're still alive when he arrives.

Even from a distance, the ravine makes for an unnerving sight. The karst pinnacles spear upwards as though they seek to pierce the sky, like the vicious teeth of some enormous, long-dead beast. Qifrey had forgotten how sharp they were, every edge honed to a hostile point. Even the light falls strangely, splintered by stone so that shadows fall where they shouldn't, fractured into shifting planes that make depth and distance difficult to judge.

He clears the plains beneath him with unmatched speed, wind tearing past him—

—and then, he sees you.

You're clinging to a narrow outcropping perhaps fifty feet below the cliff's edge, body pressed close to the rock wall as though trying to become one with it yourself. Your sylph shoes are missing from one foot, and there's a long rend in your cloak. You aren't moving—only holding on, just barely—feet perilously close to the edge of a fatal, yawning drop below.

Above you, three winged serpentines circle patiently in the air. Their beaks hang slightly open, tongues flickering you as if tasting the air—your blood, your fear, the inevitability of what's next. The only mercy here is that they're not attacking. They are waiting, drawing it out. The same way a cat toys with a mouse it already knows cannot escape.

Qifrey doesn't stop or slow. He dives.

The wind screams past his ears, rising to a fever pitch as he plummets. His palm quire slips into his hand by instinct alone, wand flying over the paper in sharp, practiced strokes before he can even spare a thought as to who might be watching.

The spell takes shape in a single breath. Water wrenches itself from the air, the thin moisture caught in wind and stone, surging upwards into a coiling mass until it takes shape—a great, fluid dragon, its body twisting through the open air with a roar that echoes throughout the entire length of the gorge.

Two serpentines are caught in its jaws almost immediately, their cries cut short amidst the sound of snapping wing and bone. The third shrieks, veering sharply away before wheeling back, beak gaping in fury—but Qifrey is already moving, one arm wrapping around your waist and tearing you off the cliff face, hauling you bodily into the open air. You make a quiet sound in the back of your throat—the closest to afraid he's ever heard you—fingers gripping at the front of his shirt.

"Master—"

"Don't call me that right now."

The serpentines shriek behind him, rallying. Qifrey presses the sylph seal on his boots together, the weight of you unwieldy and palpable in his arms, and flies home.

You don't speak on the way back. Neither does he.

The atelier rises into view at the edge of the fields, its familiar shape cutting through the blur of wind and motion. He lands harder than he intends, knees buckling for a second before he forces himself forward—half-carrying, half-dragging you through the front door. Your cup remains where he left it, untouched on the kitchen table, and he sets you down onto the chair—the same one he'd been sitting in just an hour prior, drinking tea and so, so oblivious—more roughly than he intends.

You don't complain. You never do. The same way you never protest, never ask, never tell him anything—

Qifrey turns away. His hands are shaking. He wrenches open the drawers, rifling through them with none of his usual care, yanking out bandages, salves, clean gauzes. Something clenches in his chest like a fist, squeezing, tight, so tight.

"What were you thinking?" he snaps. He almost doesn't recognise his own voice—low and taut and cutting. "Going to such a dangerous place—alone—without telling anyone—without asking—"

He finds the antiseptic, shoved into the back of a drawer. His fingers slip on the stopper, trembling faintly.

"You could have died. Do you understand that? You could have died. Those creatures—they could have—" Sent you plummeting down the cliff. Eaten you. Torn you to pieces. He can't bring himself to finish the sentence. The images they conjure are too much to bear.

He whirls around again, still not quite looking at your face, and takes your left arm. The cuts are worse up close—long, ragged scratches that split skin, dried blood flaking at the edges. Your palms and fingers are raw and abraded from where you must have clung to the sharp rock.

Qifrey dabs at them with more force than necessary. You flinch just once, before going still again.

"Rash. Reckless. Stupid." The words spill out of him like water from a broken dam. They're sharp enough to wound, meant to hurt, and he knows this even as he says them but cannot bring himself to stop. "I didn't teach you that. I taught you to think, to assess, not throw yourself off cliffs for—for worthless plants—"

"Master—"

"I said don't." Hearing that title alone makes him want to scream. "Don't call me that now. You don't have any right to when you—"

"It's Master's fault."

The words land like a slap. Qifrey turns to look at you—one hand frozen over a roll of bandages, the echo of them stinging—only to find your mouth drawn taut in a stubborn line. And your eyes, those quiet, watchful eyes that have always followed him so carefully, are hard with something he's never seen in them before. Not guilt. Not shame. Something closer to accusation.

As though he is the one who has wronged you.

"Oh, it's my fault," he repeats, his voice rising sharply on its own, an unpleasant mixture of anger and incredulity. "I didn't tell you to sneak out without telling me. I didn't tell you to seek out winged beasts you have no experience fighting. I didn't tell you to—"

"Yes, because Master never tells me anything—"

"For good reason!" He throws his hands up, the dishcloth—stained with your blood—twisting taut between his white knuckled fingers. Qifrey wants to shake you. Maybe tear his hair out. Another part of him—a smaller, quieter part—wants to lock you in this atelier and throw away the key forever, just to make sure that you are safe. "There are things I don't tell you because they are dangerous, things that I am trying—I have been trying—to protect you from—"

"I don't need to be protected like a child—"

"Then stop acting like one!" Qifrey is shouting now. He knows that he's shouting. He can't stop. "Sneaking around behind my back, hiding books in your room, burning and cutting yourself, putting yourself in mortal danger for a cure that doesn't exist!"

Your obstinate expression only darkens further. "Master can't know for certain—"

"I do!" His hands come down hard on the tabletop, and you flinch. Your teacup jumps, porcelain clattering as it tips. Cold tea spills across the gingham patterns. "I know because—" Because he's already been to the Tower of Memories, and he knows that what ails him is no illness or curse. "—because I've already read every book, tried every remedy—I know that there is no cure! There is no cure, and there will never be, so stop trying to throw your life away for something so—"

"I won't!"

Something in Qifrey snaps.

"If you're so unwilling to listen to me," he says, his voice suddenly cold and flat in a way that doesn't belong to him, "then maybe you should no longer be my apprentice."

The moment those words leave his mouth, Qifrey knows at once that he would do anything to take them back—tear them out of the air, swallow them whole even if they cut his throat to ribbons—but the damage is already done.

You go very still. The anger doesn't leave you, not entirely, but something beneath it fractures—hairline cracks spiderwebbing across thin river ice. Your mouth works soundlessly, shaping around words that don't make it out, before pressing into a thin, bloodless line.

When he dares a glance up again, your lashes are wet. You're not crying—you never have, not in front of him, at least—but your eyes are bright, too bright now, in a way that feels dangerously close. Your lower lip wobbles only once before you sink your teeth into it and force it still.

Qifrey hates water. The sound of rain makes his chest tight, and the feeling of being wet makes his skin crawl. He hates the way it blurs the fading remnants of his vision, the way it soaks through his clothes and leeches the heat from his bones, the way it reminds him of things he's forgotten and things he wishes he could forget.

But this—this—is worse.

Qifrey's hands falter, then drop back to his sides. Why had they even been raised in the first place? The kitchen is too quiet now, empty except for the phantom ghosts of your anger and his, the steady drip of tea from the table's edge, forming a puddle on the flagstones beneath. He feels exhausted all of a sudden—wrung dry and scraped hollow.

It's only then that he notices the bag. Your hand—the other one, still dirty and bleeding—is curled around a small pouch of cloth, pressed so tightly against your chest that your knuckles have gone white. Even after everything, you are still clinging to it. Still trying, desperately, to keep it safe.

"Give me the bag," he says.

Your eyes jump to Qifrey's face. You glance down at the bag, as though just only remembering thtat it's there, before your fingers tighten around it again, spine curving over it protectively. Hesitation flickers across your expression for a brief second, before you give a small, stubborn shake of the head.

No.

Qifrey sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth, patience fraying, before he reins himself in forcefully. He's done more than enough damage, today. "I won't—I'm not going to do anything to it," he says, trying to sound reassuring, more gentle. He doesn't know if he succeeds. "Just—please. Give me the bag."

You stare at him for a moment longer, as though wordlessly weighing whether you can trust his words. Then, slowly, reluctantly—you loosen your death grip on the pouch and hold it out.

It's surprisingly light in his hand, once he takes it. Almost as though it holds nothing inside at all. His fingers, still faintly numb and tacky with your blood, fumble with the drawstrings as he pulls them loose. He looks inside.

A handful of silver leaves lie scattered across the bottom of the pouch. Thin and gleaming, each one shaped like a sewing needle. Spineneedles. Carefully gathered, but so few of them—barely enough to brew a single thumb-sized vial of tincture.

Yet the mere sight of them is enough to strip all the anger from him in an instant. Qifrey stares down into the pouch, the thin scatter of silver leaves there glinting faintly like stars in the night sky, and feels something inside him give way.

He isn't angry with you. He's never been angry with you. The one whom Qifrey is so unbearably angry with, so deeply ashamed of—is himself. Because the only reason you did any of this—pushed yourself to such lengths, put yourself in harm's way—is because he let you believe he could be cured. He'd smiled and selfishly kept the words you'd uttered that day close to his heart, like a precious treasure, and in doing so, he'd unwittingly sent you hurtling straight into danger's embrace.

A slow, quiet breath escapes him. Qifrey slowly lets himself sink to his knees in front of your chair, suddenly weary in a way that he cannot quite name. You shift at the movement, glancing down at him with something uncertain in your expression, unsure of his moods.

"…Master?"

He sets the pouch on the table and carefully takes your hands in his. You try to tug them back to your chest on instinct but he holds on to your wrists, gentle but insistent. Qifrey turns them over, palms out, your fingers curling slightly, and looks at the small, round marks he's never looked close enough to notice before. Burn scars. Old and new, layered together, a wordless record of every time you had pressed pain into your own body in search of something that might help him.

His throat closes around the words he doesn't have.

"Thank you," is all he can say, in the end. Even then, it feels inadequate. "For trying to cure me. For going to such lengths to ease my pain." Qifrey pauses, his thumb brushing over a half-healed scab on your knuckle. "But it… it won't work."

You look at him, then. The defiance has receded from your eyes, leaving behind a thin, wavering uncertainty in its place. "How can Master be so sure it will not work?"

Because I've already tried everything. Because I read about it in the Tower, and I know the truth. Because the problem isn't my eye or the headaches—it is the tree growing inside of me, the parasite that will kill me if I stop worrying, if I stop hurting, if I let myself be happy for even a moment.

But Qifrey cannot say that. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. His fingers drift down unconsciously to brush the ribbon trailing from the top of his hat.

"Because, like I said, I've tried every remedy in existence." He shakes his head with a defeated smile, squeezing your hands. "Nothing works. And it only hurts me more—more than my eye or any headache—to see my beloved apprentice put themself in danger for my sake."

You go still, fingers curling loosely under his own.

"I should be the one protecting you," he continues. "Not the other way around. That—that's the whole point of having an apprentice." Qifrey almost laughs at that, the line of his mouth twisting into the shape of a half-formed, self-deprecating smile. Oh, he was so, so foolish. "I'm supposed to keep you safe. And yet, here you are, throwing yourself into danger for me."

His gaze drops back to your hands, the small scars scattered across your skin.

"I'm content," Qifrey says quietly. "With what I have now. The atelier. You." And as the words leave him, he realises that they are not merely for your sake—they are true, plain and simple. "The pain is small in comparison."

You don't speak for a moment. The afternoon light has shifted, turning golden and syrupy, pooling on the floor between you like liquid honey. Qifrey can hear the sound of his own heartbeat in the silence, a slow, steady march in his ears.

"But I don't like to see Master in pain."

Your voice is small, but matter-of-fact. You say it in the same way you might state an obvious truth, such as fire is hot and water is clear and the sun rises in the east. As if it's simply a fact of the universe that you dislike seeing him in pain—and therefore, you must do something about it.

Qifrey's heart clenches, a sharp and sudden thing. Before he can think better of it he's already leaning forward to gather you into his arms. It's the first time he's ever hugged you, he realises distantly. He's held you when you were learning to use sylph shoes for the first time, guided your hand and wand through careful strokes, rested a light hand on your head once or twice—but never anything like this. Never returned even a fraction of the quiet comfort you've given him simply by being there. Some master he's been.

You go stiff for a moment against his chest, caught off guard by the suddenness of the gesture. A few breaths pass before your shoulders loosen, ever so slightly, and then your forehead dips, coming to rest slowly against the line of his collarbone. And your hands, one half-bandaged and the other still dirty with smeared blood and dirt, come up to grip tentatively at the back of his shirt.

When had you become so precious to him?

He closes his one good eye and presses his face into the top of your head, ignoring the way his glasses push up on the bridge of his nose. Your hair smells faintly of lemon verbena and soap. "Don't do something so dangerous again, alright?" His voice comes out muffled, even to his own ears. "Promise me."

There's a long pause. Then: "I don't want to give up, Master."

Qifrey sighs, something between an amused sigh and weary acceptance. Clearly, it'd been wishful thinking at best to hope otherwise, and the fault for it lies squarely with him. He draws back just enough to look at you. Your fingers tighten in his shirt.

"If you have any ideas," he says at last, the words coming together with reluctant resignation, "tell me first. Before you do anything. We'll experiment together—here, in the atelier, where it's safe." His eye narrows slightly, a faint edge of sternness threading through the softness. "I won't stop you from trying. But I'm not going to lose you to a cliff face or anything else, and there will be no forbidden magic. Do you understand?"

You hold his gaze. For a moment your expression is unreadable—eyes too much like mirrors, reflecting too much of him back at himself, too clearly, too honestly. Then, slowly, you nod.

"Okay."

"Good." The word leaves him more easily than expected, as though some heavy weight has finally been lifted from his shoulders. Qifrey pulls you in again, a brief but quieter second embrace, before he lets you go and leans back. Even with the space between you now, the residual warmth of you lingers, settling into the hollow places between his ribs like sunlight.

"I'll make dinner tonight," he announces, getting to his feet. "You should get some rest. But first—let me finish treating your arms."

"Okay."

You hold your arms out obediently. He takes them, careful as though he's handling some priceless, irreplaceable magical artifact, tutting softly under his breath at the state of you. The cuts, the burns, the bruising—he tends to each with attentive hands, and insists on drawing you a bath of milk and herbs as he works, all while you squirm and offer half-hearted rejections in protest.

Somewhere in his chest, the silverwood stirs.

𝜗𝜚 ⊹ ࣪ ˖momo.yaoyorozu 🥀

Momo kisses like everything she does—with elegance, precision, and an intensity that takes your breath away.

There's a certain refinement to the way Momo approaches intimacy. She's been trained in etiquette, in proper behavior, in maintaining composure at all times. But when she kisses you, all that careful control becomes something else entirely—not restraint, but rather a focused, deliberate passion that's somehow more intense for being so precisely applied.

She'll take your hand first, always. Her fingers intertwine with yours, and you can feel the slight calluses from training, the strength in her grip despite the delicacy of her touch. She steps closer, and there's confidence in the movement, in the way she tilts her head to look down at you (or up, depending on your height), her dark eyes holding yours with unwavering focus.

"May I?" she asks, because Momo is nothing if not polite, even in this. Especially in this. And there's something incredibly attractive about the way she asks permission, the way she makes you feel respected and desired in equal measure.

When you nod, her free hand comes up to rest at the side of your neck, thumb brushing along your jawline, and then she closes the distance with measured grace. The first touch of her lips is soft, controlled, testing. She's learning you, understanding what you like, cataloging your responses with that brilliant mind of hers.

But don't mistake control for lack of passion. Momo feels everything deeply, perhaps too deeply, and when she kisses you, all that carefully contained emotion begins to surface. Her lips part against yours, and her tongue slides out to trace the seam of your mouth with deliberate slowness, a request couched in elegant execution.

When you open for her, the kiss transforms. Her tongue slides against yours with purposeful strokes, each movement calculated for maximum effect. She's studied this, you realize—not from books or videos, but from every time she's kissed you before, learning what makes you gasp, what makes you press closer, what makes your fingers tighten in her hair. Momo is a quick learner, and she applies that considerable intellect to kissing you absolutely senseless.

Her hand at your neck is steady, fingers pressing against your pulse point where she can feel your heartbeat quicken. It grounds her, connects her to your physical response, and you feel her smile against your lips—satisfaction in knowing she affects you this way. The hand holding yours tightens, pulls you closer, and suddenly you're pressed against her tall, athletic frame, feeling every curve, every breath.

There's something incredibly sensual about the way Momo kisses. It's not rushed or frantic, but it is intense—thoroughly, completely, overwhelmingly intense. She kisses like she creates: with absolute focus and attention to detail. Every stroke of her tongue is deliberate, every shift of her lips purposeful. She's composing a masterpiece, and you're the canvas.

When she breaks the kiss to trail her lips along your jaw, down your neck, her breath is warm against your skin. "You're exquisite," she murmurs, and her voice has dropped to something lower, richer, almost husky with want. "Absolutely exquisite."

And then her mouth is on your pulse point, lips and tongue working in combination that makes your knees weak. She's precise even in this, knowing exactly where to kiss, where to apply pressure, where to use teeth just gently enough to make you gasp. When she returns to your lips, she's smiling—that rare, genuine smile that transforms her entire face—and she kisses you deeper, harder, with more passion than before.

Momo's control is exquisite, but it's not absolute. When you do something she particularly enjoys—bite her bottom lip, tangle your fingers in her long dark hair, press against her just right—that composure cracks. Her breath hitches, her grip tightens, and suddenly the kiss is more urgent, more desperate. Her tongue strokes against yours with increasing fervor, and you can feel the want radiating from her, the need she usually keeps so carefully contained.

"Please," she'll whisper against your lips, and there's something incredibly vulnerable about hearing Momo Yaoyorozu—confident, capable, brilliant Momo—asking for something, needing something. "Don't stop. Please don't stop."

And you don't. You kiss her until she's breathless, until her perfect posture falters and she's leaning into you for support, until those dark eyes are hazy with desire and her lips are swollen and her hair is mussed from your fingers. You kiss her until the elegant, refined Momo gives way to something more raw, more real, more utterly devastating.

When you finally part, she takes a moment to compose herself, smoothing down her hair with trembling fingers, straightening her clothes. But she can't quite hide the flush on her cheeks, the brightness in her eyes, the small smile that plays at her lips. And she doesn't want to—because with you, she doesn't have to be perfect. She can just be Momo, and that's enough.

"Again?" she asks, and there's hope and heat in those dark eyes. And you pull her close and kiss her again, because kissing Momo Yaoyorozu is an art form, and you intend to spend a lifetime perfecting it.

𝜗𝜚 ⊹ ࣪ ˖tsuyu.asui 🪷

Tsuyu kisses like the first rainfall after a drought.

Tsu doesn't do pretense. She doesn't play games, doesn't hide behind false modesty or manufactured shyness. When she wants to kiss you, she tells you directly, in that straightforward way of hers that's become so endearing. "I want to kiss you now, ribbit," she'll say, and it's not a question, but there's always a pause where she waits for your response, respects your consent even as she states her desire plainly.

When you smile and nod, she closes the distance with unhurried purpose. Tsu never rushes anything—she's patient, methodical, thorough. Her large hands come up to rest on your shoulders, and there's strength in that grip, power contained in those deceptively delicate-looking fingers. Then she leans in, and her lips meet yours with warm pressure.

The first thing you notice is how soft her lips are. The second thing you notice is her tongue.

Tsu's quirk affects more than just her appearance, and her tongue is long, prehensile, incredibly versatile—and she knows exactly how to use it. When the kiss deepens, when her lips part and her tongue slides out to meet yours, it's an experience unlike any other. The length of it, the dexterity, the way she can wrap around your tongue and stroke it with muscular precision—it's overwhelming in the best possible way.

She makes this soft "ribbit" sound when she kisses, a quirk (no pun intended) that's entirely unconscious and absolutely adorable. It vibrates through the kiss, adds another layer of sensation that makes your head spin. Her tongue explores your mouth thoroughly, reaching places others couldn't, tasting you with clear enjoyment, and all the while she's making these quiet amphibian sounds that shouldn't be hot but absolutely are.

Tsu's kisses are wet—not unpleasantly so, but noticeably. Her quirk means she's always slightly damp, and there's something primal about the slickness of her tongue as it slides against yours, the moisture of her lips, the way she tastes like fresh rain and something uniquely Tsuyu. She kisses like a storm rolling in, intense and natural and impossible to resist.

Her hands aren't idle during this. They slide from your shoulders down your arms, and you feel the slight suction of her fingertips—another quirk trait, the ability to stick to surfaces—leaving tingling sensations in their wake. When she presses her palms flat against your back and pulls you close, you feel that subtle adhesion, the way she's literally sticking to you, claiming you as hers.

"You taste good, ribbit," she says matter-of-factly when she pulls back, her large eyes studying your face with that characteristic directness. "Like home."

And then she's kissing you again, her long tongue delving deeper, stroking along yours with deliberate, thorough movements. There's no technique borrowed from movies or romance novels—Tsu kisses purely on instinct, doing what feels good, what makes you gasp, what makes her ribbit with satisfaction. And her instincts are excellent.

When things get more heated, Tsu's composure remains largely intact. She doesn't become frantic or desperate; instead, her methodical nature applies itself to taking you apart piece by piece. Her tongue does things that should be impossible, wrapping around yours, stroking the roof of your mouth, exploring every inch of available space with thorough attention. Her hands grip you tighter, the suction of her fingertips increasing slightly, and you're effectively pinned against her, held in place by quirk and desire as she kisses you breathless.

She'll pull back occasionally to check in, to make sure you're okay, to gauge your reaction with those perceptive eyes. "Good?" she asks, and when you nod frantically, desperate for her to continue, she smiles—that wide, genuine smile—and murmurs, "Good, ribbit," before diving back in.

There's something grounding about kissing Tsuyu. She's so honest, so present, so entirely herself that it makes you feel safe to be entirely yourself too. Her kisses don't demand anything except your genuine response. She doesn't need you to perform or pretend—she just needs you to be there, with her, in the moment, genuine and real.

When you finally part for real, lips swollen and breathing heavy, she rests her forehead against yours and ribbits softly, contentedly. Her hands are still stuck to your back, and she makes no move to release them, enjoying the closeness, the connection. "I love you," she says simply, because Tsu doesn't complicate things with flowery language or dramatic declarations. She just tells you the truth, plain and simple and perfect.

Tsuyu Asui kisses like the most honest thing in the world, and in a society full of facades and performances, that honesty is the most refreshing thing you've ever tasted.

𝜗𝜚 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ mina.ashido 🌸

There's never any warning before Mina kisses you.

She doesn't do the slow build-up, the careful approach, the asking permission with words. She just sees you, decides she wants to kiss you, and suddenly she's there, bouncing on her toes, grinning that brilliant smile, pink skin glowing with excitement. "Babe!" she squeals, and then her arms are around your neck and she's pulling you down (or bending down) and kissing you like she hasn't seen you in years instead of hours.

Her enthusiasm is absolutely infectious. Mina kisses with her whole body—pressing against you, arms tight around your neck, one leg sometimes hooking around yours for balance as she stretches up. She's all warmth and energy and joy, and kissing her feels like mainlining pure happiness. Her lips are soft and always taste like whatever fruity lipgloss she's wearing that day—strawberry, cherry, watermelon, pineapple, something sweet and distinctly Mina.

She smiles while she kisses. You can feel it, the way her lips curve against yours, the way she sometimes pulls back just to grin at you before diving back in. "You're so cute," she'll say, or "I missed you so much," or "One more, just one more!" and then she's kissing you again, giggling between pecks, covering your face with quick, affectionate kisses before returning to your lips properly.

When Mina deepens the kiss, when it shifts from playful to passionate, it's like a switch flips. Suddenly all that energy focuses, concentrates, becomes laser-targeted on making you lose your mind. Her tongue slides against yours with surprising skill, and she kisses like she dances—with rhythm, with enthusiasm, with moves that shouldn't work but absolutely do.

Her hands are everywhere. In your hair, on your shoulders, sliding down your chest, cupping your face—she can't stay still, can't stop touching you. Every touch is warm (her quirk keeps her body temperature slightly elevated), and you can feel that warmth seeping into your skin, making you feel flushed and dizzy and desperately wanting more.

"Is this okay?" she asks breathlessly between kisses, and without waiting for an answer, "Can I—?" and her tongue is stroking yours again, deeper this time, more insistent. She makes these happy sounds when she kisses—little hums and sighs and occasionally full-on delighted giggles when you do something she particularly enjoys.

Mina is vocal during kissing. She tells you exactly what she likes, what feels good, what she wants. "Yes, like that!" or "More, please more!" or just your name, gasped against your lips with such affection it makes your heart squeeze. There's no shame in her desire, no embarrassment about wanting you so obviously, so completely.

When things get really heated, when you're both breathless and grabbing at each other with increasing desperation, you have to be a little careful. Mina's quirk responds to her emotions, and when she's really aroused, really excited, her skin starts producing very dilute acid. It's not enough to hurt—she has too much control for that—but you can feel it, a slight tingle where her hands rest on your skin, a small burn that's more pleasant than painful, that marks you as thoroughly as any hickey.

She notices when it happens, always pulls back with wide golden eyes, worried. "Sorry! Did I—are you—?"

"I'm fine," you assure her, pulling her back, and the relief and desire that floods her face is beautiful. She kisses you harder then, more carefully, channeling all that energy into the kiss itself rather than her quirk. Her tongue does absolutely sinful things, stroking and swirling and doing this flicking thing that makes your knees buckle.

Mina kisses like dancing, like music, like the best party you've ever been to. She kisses like joy personified, and being the focus of that joy, being the person she wants to kiss like this, is intoxicating. When she finally pulls back, she's grinning breathlessly, pink skin flushed darker with pleasure, golden eyes sparkling with mischief and affection.

"Love you!" she chirps, and kisses you one more time, quick and sweet. "Best kisser ever, by the way. Just so you know. I'm keeping you forever, no take-backs!"

And you wouldn't want to take it back anyway, because kissing Mina Ashido is like bottled sunshine, and who would ever want to let that go?

𝜗𝜚 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ kyoka.jiro 🎸

Getting Jiro to kiss you the first few times requires patience. She's not good with vulnerability, doesn't like feeling exposed, tends to hide behind sarcasm and deflection when emotions run too high. She'll roll her eyes at romantic gestures, scoff at cheesy lines, maintain that cool, slightly aloof exterior that keeps people at a distance.

But when she finally lets those walls down, when she decides she trusts you enough to show you the passionate, feeling person underneath the defensive exterior—god, it's worth the wait.

Her approach is hesitant at first, uncharacteristically uncertain. Her fingers, usually so confident on her instruments, fidget with the hem of her shirt or the ends of her hair jacks. "This is stupid," she mutters, not meeting your eyes. "I don't know why I'm so nervous. We've kissed before. This is dumb."

You take her hand, and she finally looks up, and there's vulnerability in those dark eyes that makes your chest tight. "Shut up," she says, but there's no heat in it, and then she's pulling you down by your collar and kissing you like she's afraid if she thinks about it too long she'll lose her nerve.

The first touch is a bit awkward—noses bump, angles are wrong—but then Jiro adjusts with that same precision she applies to her music, and suddenly everything clicks into place. Her lips move against yours with increasing confidence, and you realize she's been paying attention, learning, understanding the rhythm of kissing you just like she'd learn a new song.

When she deepens the kiss, her tongue sliding against yours, she makes this soft sound—pleasure and relief mixed—and her hands slide up to cup your face. Her earphone jacks, which usually hang at her sides, curl around you, wrapping loosely around your arms, your waist, adding another point of connection. They're incredibly sensitive, you've learned, and she shivers when you carefully touch them, running your fingers along their length.

Jiro's quirk adds a unique dimension to kissing. Those jacks can conduct sound, and when she's really into it, when she's losing herself in the sensation, they start picking up the rhythm of your heartbeat, the sound of your breathing, and somehow feeding it back, amplifying the experience. It's hard to explain—like kissing with surround sound, like every sense is heightened, like you can literally feel the resonance between you.

"Is this—" she gasps against your lips, pulling back just slightly, and her cheeks are flushed, her carefully maintained cool completely shattered. "Is this okay? The jack thing, I mean. It's not weird?"

"It's perfect," you tell her, and kiss her again, and she melts into it with a relieved sigh.

When Kyoka really gets going, when her initial shyness gives way to genuine passion. She kisses like she plays guitar—with rhythm and skill and an intensity that builds and builds until you're both left shaking. Her tongue strokes against yours in tempo, sometimes slow and deep like a bass line, sometimes quick and teasing like a riff. She's creative with it, trying different patterns, different pressures, paying attention to what makes you moan, what makes you grip her tighter.

Her hands slide from your face into your hair, and she pulls—not hard, but firm enough to make you gasp, to angle your head exactly where she wants it. There's control there, confidence growing with every passing second, and the realization that she can affect you like this clearly thrills her.

Her jacks wrap tighter around you, and you can feel them vibrating slightly—not sound exactly, but sensation, adding a buzz that makes everything more intense. When you run your tongue along hers in a particular way she likes, the vibration increases, and she makes this choked sound of pleasure that goes straight through you.

"Fuck," she gasps when she breaks for air, and her carefully cultivated punk image is completely demolished—lips swollen, hair mussed, eyes dark and wanting. "You're—that was—"

She can't even finish the sentence before she's kissing you again, more urgently this time, like she needs it, needs you, needs this connection that goes deeper than sound or touch or anything she can explain. Her tongue delves deep, stroking against yours with increasing desperation, and her jacks are definitely vibrating now, sending pleasant shivers across your skin wherever they touch.

When things get really intense, Jiro loses all her carefully maintained composure. She's pressing against you, hands grabbing, jacks wrapped tight around you like she's afraid you'll disappear. She's making sounds—breathy moans and gasps and your name, broken and wanting—and it's the most beautiful music you've ever heard.

Finally pulling apart, she rests her forehead against yours, breathing hard, a small smile playing at her lips. "You're pretty good at that," she says, trying for casual and completely failing. "For a dork."

"Yeah?" you tease, and she laughs, genuine and bright, and kisses you again, softer this time, sweeter, her jacks loosening to a comfortable embrace rather than a desperate grip.

Kyoka Jiro kisses like a symphoy and you'd happily spend forever learning every note.

𝜗𝜚 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ toru.hagakure 🔎

Toru Hagakure kisses like the best secret you've ever kept.

Dating someone you can't see presents unique challenges, but Toru has never let her invisibility stop her from living life to the fullest. If anything, it makes her more bold, more mischievous, more determined to make her presence known in ways that don't rely on visibility. And when it comes to kissing, she's developed an art form all her own.

You never see her coming. That's part of the fun, part of the game she loves to play. You'll be standing somewhere, minding your own business, and suddenly there are hands on your shoulders, a giggling voice in your ear, and then lips pressing against yours before you can even react.

"Surprise!" she laughs against your mouth, and you can hear the grin in her voice even if you can't see it. "Did I get you? I totally got you!"

Her kisses always start with laughter. Toru is sunshine personified, all energy and joy and mischief, and that bubbling happiness carries into every physical interaction. She kisses you and giggles at the same time, delighted by your surprise, by your willing participation, by the fact that she can affect you so completely even when you can't see her.

The invisibility adds a unique dimension to kissing. You have to rely on other senses—touch, sound, taste. You feel her lips against yours, soft and warm and enthusiastic. You hear her breathing, the small sounds she makes, the whispered words between kisses. You taste her lip gloss (she wears it religiously, says it helps people know where her mouth is, though you suspect she just likes the flavors).

"Close your eyes," she whispers, and when you do, suddenly it's not about the invisibility anymore. You're both just two people kissing, and the lack of visual input somehow makes everything else more intense. Every touch of her lips registers more strongly. Every slide of her tongue sends sharper sensations through your system. Every brush of her fingers against your skin makes you shiver.

Toru's hands are constantly moving when she kisses, and you have to track them by touch alone. They cup your face, slide into your hair, trail down your neck and across your shoulders. She's tactile, needs to touch and be touched, uses her hands to communicate presence and affection in ways her invisible body can't. When she frames your face with both palms, you know she's looking at you even though you can't see her eyes, and somehow that makes it more intimate, more real.

"You're so pretty," she murmurs between kisses. "I love your face. I love looking at you. Sometimes I just watch you and you don't even know I'm there and you make these faces when you're thinking and it's so cute I could die."

"That's a little creepy," you tease, and she gasps in mock offense.

"It's not creepy! It's romantic! I'm being romantic!" She bites your bottom lip in retaliation, gentle but firm, and then soothes it with her tongue. "Take it back or I'll stop kissing you."

"No you won't."

"You're right, I won't." And she's kissing you again, deeper now, her tongue sliding against yours with practiced ease. "I like kissing you too much."

When Toru really gets into kissing, when the playfulness settles into something more heated, her presence becomes overwhelming despite—or perhaps because of—her invisibility. You feel her everywhere. Her body presses against yours, and you map her shape by touch alone—the curve of her waist, the soft warmth of her chest, the way she fits perfectly against you. Her legs tangle with yours, and you feel the smooth skin of her thighs, the flexing of muscles as she rises on her toes or pulls you down to her level.

Her breathing gets heavier, audible in the quiet of the room, and you use the sound to orient yourself, to know where her mouth is before you capture it again. When you kiss her neck, you have to find it by touch, trailing your lips along invisible skin until she gasps and you know you've found the right spot. She makes the best sounds—breathy moans and surprised gasps and your name, whispered like a prayer.

"There," she breathes when you find a particularly sensitive spot. "Right there, yes, oh my god—"

Her invisibility means she can be bold in ways others might not. She'll kiss you in public, and no one knows except the two of you. She'll press against you in crowded spaces, her lips finding yours in stolen moments where you're surrounded by people but completely alone in your bubble of secret affection. It's thrilling, this private intimacy in public spaces, and Toru loves pushing those boundaries.

But there's vulnerability too. Sometimes, in quiet moments after passionate kissing, she'll press her forehead to yours and whisper, "Do you wish you could see me?"

And you tell her the truth—that you see her in every smile you hear in her voice, in every enthusiastic gesture you feel, in every moment of joy she brings into your life. That she's the most visible person you know, invisibility be damned.

When she kisses you after you say things like that, it's different. Slower, deeper, more emotional. Her lips move against yours with tender reverence, and her hands hold your face like you're precious, like you're the one who's rare and special and magical. Her tongue slides against yours in long, sweet strokes that speak of gratitude and love and bone-deep affection.

"I love you," she whispers, and you feel tears on her cheeks even though you can't see them. "I love you so much. Thank you for seeing me. Really seeing me."

And you kiss her again, tasting salt and sweetness, feeling her smile return, hearing her giggle as the melancholy passes and joy reasserts itself because that's who Toru is—resilient, happy, determined to find brightness even in invisibility.

Later, she'll ambush you again with surprise kisses. She'll leave lip gloss prints on your cheek. She'll whisper teasing comments during class and then kiss you breathless in empty hallways. She'll make you laugh and gasp and occasionally walk into walls because you're trying to kiss her while walking and spatial awareness is difficult when your girlfriend is invisible.

Loving her teaches you that the most important things—joy, affection, connection—have never needed to be seen to be real.

𝜗𝜚 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ nejire.hado 🌀

Nejire doesn't approach anything casually, and kissing is no exception.

She asks a million questions first. "Is now a good time? Should I use chapstick first? Do you prefer soft or firm pressure? What about tongue—do you like tongue right away or should we work up to it? Oh, but I guess we've kissed before so you know what I like but do you think I know what you like? Should I ask more questions or is that killing the mood?"

"Nejire," you laugh, cupping her face to stop the flood of words. "Just kiss me."

"Okay!" she beams, and then she does, and it's like being hit by a wave of pure enthusiasm.

Nejire kisses with total commitment. Her arms wrap around your neck, pulling you close, and her lips press against yours with firm, warm pressure. She hums happily into the kiss, this pleased, melodic sound that makes you smile against her lips. When you smile, she pulls back just enough to grin at you, her periwinkle hair floating around her face in that perpetual spiral, eyes bright with joy.

"That was nice!" she announces. "Let's do it again!"

And she does, and this time it's deeper, more exploratory. Her tongue slides against your lips, and when you part for her, she makes this delighted sound of discovery, like she's finding something wonderful and new even though you've kissed like this before. Her tongue strokes against yours with curious enthusiasm, testing different pressures, different movements, cataloging what makes you sigh, what makes you press closer.

Her quirk, the wave motion, responds to her emotions. When she's really happy, really excited, you can feel this pleasant vibration radiating from her—not strong enough to move you, but enough to feel like humming energy against your skin. It's like kissing someone while standing next to a purring cat, this constant pleasant buzz that makes everything more intense.

"Is this good?" she asks, pulling back to study your face with those wide, expressive eyes. "You look flushed. Is that good flushed or bad flushed? Should I do something different? What if I—"

You kiss her again to stop the questions, and she melts into it with a giggle. "Okay, okay, less talking, more kissing. I can do that!"

And she does, with remarkable focus once she gets going. Nejire might seem scattered, but when she's interested in something, she gives it her complete attention. And right now, she's very interested in kissing you absolutely senseless. Her tongue does complicated things—swirls and flicks and long, dragging strokes that make your toes curl. She's creative with it, trying new techniques, seeing what works, what makes you moan, what makes your fingers tighten in her floating hair.

Her hands aren't idle either. They roam across your shoulders, down your arms, along your sides, exploring with the same curiosity she brings to everything. When she finds a spot that makes you shiver—the sensitive skin just below your ear, the dip of your collarbone—she focuses there, kissing and licking and occasionally using teeth, delighted by your reactions.

"You're so responsive!" she says happily against your neck. "I love how you react to me. It's like a science experiment but way more fun and also I get to kiss you which is the best!"

Even in the middle of making out, Nejire can't help but comment, observe, process out loud. But somehow it's not annoying—it's endearing, quintessentially her, and you wouldn't change it for anything. Besides, between the commentary, she's kissing you so thoroughly, so enthusiastically, that you can barely think straight.

When things get really heated, when her breathing quickens and her cheeks flush and that vibration from her quirk intensifies, Nejire becomes almost aggressive in her enthusiasm. She presses closer, kisses harder, her tongue stroking against yours with increasing urgency. Her hair floats more wildly around both of you, creating this bubble of spiraling periwinkle that feels private, intimate, like you're in your own world.

"I love you," she says between kisses, and then immediately, "Did you know your lips get exactly 3.7% fuller when we've been kissing for more than five minutes? I timed it! Well, estimated. It's hard to time things when your brain feels fuzzy. You make my brain feel fuzzy. Is that normal? That's probably normal. Oh, that thing you just did with your tongue—do that again!"

You do, and she makes this beautiful sound of pleasure, high and sweet, and kisses you so hard you stumble backward. She follows, never breaking contact, until you're pressed against a wall and she's pressed against you and there's no space left between your bodies. Her hands frame your face, and she kisses you deeply, thoroughly, with surprising skill hidden beneath all that scattered energy.

When you finally break apart, you're both breathing hard. Nejire's eyes are sparkling, her smile radiant, her hair a wild spiral around her flushed face. "Again?" she asks hopefully, already leaning in, and you laugh and kiss her again because how could you ever say no to Nejire Hado?

Author's Note: You guys loved the boys so much, I had to write the girls too! Thanks to @amyisgay123. They each have such distinct personalities, and writing how their quirks would influence their affection was REALLY fun (Ochaco making you float? Yes, please. I feel like that’s already canon. Toru being a menace? Absolutely.

But more than that, however, he's even been spending more time on the toilet!

Again, something that isn't new to you considering how he's always had a bad history with constipation, but still!

Isn't someone dealing with the discomfort of constipation supposed to at least throw a fit in their bout of frustration?!

But— but that hasn't been the case at all!

If anything, he's been so much calmer.

Calmer!

Him, Michael Kaiser, the man whose fury rivalled that of Zeus himself being calm?!

Outrageous, right?!

You just couldn't wrap your head around it no matter how hard you tried to.

What the hell is it that's been putting him in such a jolly good mood?

It surely wasn't your ass responsible for this, you haven't been doing anything different with him as far as you can remember, and if it wasn't you…

If it wasn't you, then, who was it…?

"…."

God, it almost feels like you're going insane, drawing vivid conclusions without consulting him first, but were you really to blame here?

The evidence was basically all there, staring at you right in the goddamn face!

How lately, he's always wearing his blue light glasses around the house and how he's constantly hogging the charger for himself, as if recurrently in front of a screen, perhaps, texting some random chick behind your back…!

Your baseless thoughts were practically confirmed as well, when you'd tried to take sneak a quick peek at his phone during one of his ridiculously long shitting sessions, only to find that he'd taken his phone with him to the bathroom.

To the bathroom!!

Sure, most people had their phone accompany them to cure their boredom while they took shit, but in your case, everything was starting to add up!

It was just so blatantly obvious, and you'd only be a foolish moron to deny it further, to deny what he was trying so desperately hard to hide from you.

"Hey." His voice, dry and relaxed, snaps you out of your spiralling thoughts, pulling you back to reality by the taut thread your sanity was clinging to. "I'll be back later, yeah?"

You don't grace him with a verbal response, barely guarding him with a stare of acknowledgement as he stands across from you by the apartment door, waiting for your usual farewells and wishes of safe returns.

"[Name]?"

Kaiser sounds uncertain as he addresses you, and you're not sure what spurs your destructive curiosity, whether it's that last bit of confirmation you need before confronting him, or some innate desperation that blooms after hearing the slight waver in his tone, but you seek it out for yourself.

"Can I— uh, can I check your phone..?"

The silence that ensues has your pulse falter and your heart flatline.

You're positively sure your nervous system's shutting down too, the dread from the sudden stillness entirely to blame for the way your stomach lurches to your congesting throat. There's even a tremble in your hands as you press them close to your side, hoping to contain the fear that overwhelms you.

If he refuses, then he's definitely hiding something… If he doesn't want me seeing his phone, then he's definitely—

"Sure."

"Huh?"

The noise of your confusion is almost comical as you raise your head with alarm, your earlier fright seemingly for nothing when the sight of his phone greets you teasingly.

"My phone?" He tilts his head jadedly, not at all bothered by what any normal person would be bothered by.

"…uh, thanks." You take it from him with mild hesitation, fingers briefly brushing against his warmer ones during the exchange.

What the hell? He just gave it to me? No questions asked…? No! He just wants me to think that way! This calculating bastard's probably deleted all the evidence!

You huff mockingly, guarding him with a glare of growing suspicion, something he doesn't pay attention to, not when he's too busy yawning away the fatigue from his lack of sleep doing God knows what at the heinous hour of dawn.

The phone almost feels like a ticking time bomb in your hands, and perhaps it is, considering how you were about to find some real sketchy shit on it. A moment passes as you calm your haywire nerves with quiet breaths, then, you're switching his phone on, gulping cautiously as the screen lit up with a… horribly pixelated image of a puddle?

Huh?

Your puzzlement barely lasts a second, not when the phone just unlocks by itself, without you having to input a code or anything into it.

"…."

This- this idiot doesn't have a password on his phone?!

"You… you don't have a password on your phone..?" The utter disbelief in your tone goes ignored by the athlete.

He only blinks at you owlishly, brow raising with genuine confusion. "Do I need one?"

"I mean," you exhale deeply, pinching the bridge of your nose with unbridled bewilderment, questioning how nobody's tried to steal his phone yet, "most people have one…"

"Oh," Kaiser hums deeply, like he's considering your words for a brief minute before shrugging them off carelessly. "It's not like there's anything important on it."

I'll see that for myself, alright!? Hmph! Only people with things to hide say stuff like that…

You glance at him dubiously, before your gaze falls back on his unlocked phone with beguiled intent, your brows furrowing in thought as you internally debated your options.

I'd like to see his messages… but maybe it's better if I just check his screen time instead..?

And you do just that, your fingers move with the expertise of a veteran, pulling up his settings app to check his screen time, a stat that greets you in its full glory.

Twelve- TWELVE FUCKING HOURS ON WEB BROWSER??? WHAT THE FUCK IS HE DOING ON IT FOR SO LONG???!!

Your eyes near bulge out of their sockets at the number, before you rub at them furiously, hoping the comical endeavour clears your vision of the bullshit you're hallucinating. But instead of it reducing to a more appropriate number like you'd quietly expected, the absurd double digits remain, large and mocking as they stare back at you with mirth.

"Oi- oi…!" Your finger trembles against yourself as you point to the screen accusingly, tapping on it frantically to get his attention. "Explain!"

"Oh." He offers no further explanation, only scratching his head in response, none the wiser to your skyrocketing concerns. "Uh, well, I found this website and can't seem to get off it."

"Website!?" You repeat, your mind flying a mile a minute as he nods noncommittally, a gesture that has dread pool in your stomach.

A website??? And he can't get off it?? Oh my God- don't tell me, it's—

"P-porn hub?!"

"Pinterest."

"Huh."

"What."

"…."

The silence is unbearably loud, and you nearly shit yourself when he guards you with a look of mild offence, clearly felling very insulted by your baseless accusation.

"What did you just say?" His brow arches as he guards you with disbelief, looking a minute away from decking the life out of you.

"….Haha! P-pinterest!" You try to collect yourself, hoping he drops the subject before you explode into a pile of mush from humiliation. "Pinterest, huh?"

"…yeah." Kaiser eventually gets the hint and lets the topic go, giving up on trying to figure out whatever bullshit of a misunderstanding you ended up conjuring with your vivid imagination — a trait he was rather fond of.

You can only grin with relief when he doesn't inquire further about your ridiculous thoughts, though the relief is only momentary, for the reminder of his screentime resurfaces, urging you to investigate further. "But what about your screentime?! Why the hell is it at twelve fucking hours?!"

"Well, they have lots of pretty pictures," he admits quietly, fiddling with the ends of his bangs as he tried explaining his reasoning behind that absurd screentime. "It takes me a while to decide which to have as my wallpaper."

"Wallpaper?" You perk up, that explained his odd wallpaper you couldn't help cringe at earlier, it was so badly grainy and blurry, you thought you'd end up suffering an aneurysm.

"Yeah, look." He says, taking the phone from you while keeping it in your line of sight as he pressed on the screen a couple of times to open the website.

"If I click on this pretty picture, I can screenshot it and have it as my wallpaper." He talks you through each step, following along with them as he presents to you the abomination of a pixilated wallpaper he foolishly thought was pretty. "Helps calm me down when I look at it after some idiot's pissed me off."

Kaiser throws you a smug grin, feeling prideful for finally being able to teach you something 'techy' when it was usually him being the technologically inept boomer. You have to resist the disrespectful urge to scoff in his face when he keeps glancing at you with a puppy-ish glint in his eyes, searching for you approval and compliments.

"That's not… sigh, that's not how you use pinterest." You nearly roll your eyes with distaste, snatching the phone away from him to show him how it's really done. "You have to download the app first."

"There's- there's an app…?" He looks distraught at your comment, complexion comically paling with horror as the earlier aura of cockiness surrounding him wilted in an instant at your bluntness.

"Yes, and you can just download the images while keeping its resolution instead of taking screenshots."

"Huh?" The guy doesn't follow, his spinning expression a telling sign of his growing confusion.

You can only sigh while shaking your head, it looked like he had a lot to learn, and given how he was already running late to practice, a few more minutes spent on teaching him how to use the software wouldn't hurt.

"Sit down," you fall to the ground with a huff, tapping the space beside you for him to follow along, something he does immediately with no complaints. "I'll teach you."

And that's exactly how your crash course on 'Beginners Tutorial For Using Pinterest Like a Pro, No Glue, No Borax' shortly began. You taught him how to navigate around the app, how to make boards and how to pin certain posts into those categorised boards, while also teaching him the correct way to download images instead of whatever abomination he thought was right.

"It looks prettier…" Kaiser admits reluctantly, eyes bright with awe as he admired the resolution of his new wallpaper, something he always struggled to achieve with his pathetic screenshots.

"Right?" It's your turn to be smug now as you guard him with a humoured grin, finding immense delight in his quiet joy.

"Yeah." He nods softly, the tufts of his hair bouncing along in agreement, a sight that has your heart clench.

You stare at him for a little while longer, quietly endeared by his boyish wonder, before pulling your own phone out and holding it up proudly in his line of sight. "But not as pretty as my wallpaper!"

"Hm?" Kaiser looks up with mild curiosity, pretty blue eyes landing on the way your screen lit up with an image of himself. "It's me…"

"Yep!" You cheer, before tapping on the screen relentlessly, the lockscreen changing to different candid pictures of him that you must've taken when he was too distracted to notice.

"…oh." He offers no further response, or rather, he's unable to even think of one, the flush on the tip of his nose a telling sign of his quaint shyness.

There's silence following your quiet show of affection, filled with warmth and tenderness, a moment that lasts for a short while, until it's later disturbed by Kaiser who finally gains his senses.

His gaze is fixed intently on his phone, tapping away at it with the concentration of a scholar and the speed of a grandma, before he shoves it right in your face with a prideful huff.

You squint, pulling back and gently taking the device from him to see what he desperately wanted to show you. It's his wallpaper, but instead of it being an image of the aesthetic puddle you helped him find earlier on pinterest, it was a selfie of the two of you. One you'd absentmindedly taken during one of your many trips to the library down the neighbourhood.

It was a horrible composition, zoomed in awkwardly on your face and blurry to boot, but… but it was sort of cute… if you were as blind as a bat and grew up around dis-formed behemoths.

"Mine's…" He starts off competitively, head turning away from you with growing embarrassment as his voice cracked ungainly, "…prettier."

"…."

Ah, to think this easily flustered guy was the same guy you'd thought as unfaithful… shame on me.

the thought of my angel listening to audio books as he scrolls on pinterest 🥹🥹

anyway i told two close friends that kaiser likes to have pretty wallpapers bc it helps calm him down, one of them said "omg he has a pic of ur face on it" 🥹🥹🥹✌️, and the other said he needs therapy 😡😡😡. now which of the two do you think has been subject to my kaiser rants for longer?

Sukuna found himself in another’s body in his mid-twenties, awakening one morning in complete darkness, even though he’d been certain his eyes were open. It was a strange feeling at first, a resignation to a suspicion he’d held all his life that there was no destined person for him, giving in to the belief that he’d spend a day floating in nothingness with no other half for his soul to cling to.

His assumption was broken swiftly, at the realisation that he still held some manner of awareness even if his sight was impaired. There was a breeze blowing against his body, chatter sounding off in the distance, and soft sheets were pressing up against skin which surely wasn’t his.

This person, whoever they were, had a body that was exhausted. He ached in places he’d never ached before, his shoulders and upper back straining, like their owner had been carrying a weight beyond their capability. He felt desperately weak in that form, suddenly aware that he only had a human number of limbs to control, and lacked the strength and size he was used to commanding.

In the darkness clouding his vision, he was surprised to find that the blackness wasn’t as deep as he’d originally thought, able to make out fuzzy shapes in the dark which he could only assume made up his surroundings. His hand reached for his eyes, setting his lips into a grim line at the confirmation they were open.

His destined lover was blind.

Disappointment settled into his chest. He had never taken much stock in soulmates in the first place, didn’t really believe in love, but this just furthered his confirmation that the whole matter was a farce. He found respect for the strong - strength was the only thing that truly mattered to him, and yet here he was, in the body of a blind woman.

A feeble little thing hardly able to fend for herself.

What good was she to a man like Sukuna?

A knock on the door startled him. “Are you awake? The madam wants me to help you get ready.”

Sukuna said nothing, trying to figure out why it felt like your body wanted to draw in on itself, your pulse quicking in a seemingly innate reaction to the voice at the door.

“Please, I know you’ve been ill but he’s been calling every day for the past week, the madam doesn’t want to keep him waiting any longer. He’s been bringing forth all manner of threat, and if you’re not careful he’ll buy you out. I know that isn’t what you want. Just let me tend to you and allow him a visit. Keep his temper at bay.”

Sukuna frowned, attempting to piece together what was happening. It was hard without the visual clues of his surroundings, but based on the snippet of conversation he concluded that you were likely a courtesan of some form. Once again, his view of you, and the soulmate system in general, dropped through the floor.

Blind and a whore.

Perfect.

“One moment.” He called out, taken aback by the lovely feminine voice that fell from his lips. It was a soft, delicate sound, one which wouldn’t sound out of place accompanied with a harp. He found himself shocked at how much he enjoyed it, considering saying something else just to hear it again.

Finding the door proved to be a more difficult task than he’d been expecting. He’d already stumbled standing up from your bed, thrown off by his lack of vision and by feet that were ridiculously small compared to what he was used to. His centre of gravity felt all wrong, and his body felt generally unbalanced without his lower set of arms.

Moving at a snail's pace, he made it across the room, impressed that he didn’t run into anything on his journey over. He was grateful for the shadowy outlines present in your visionless gaze, certain that the situation would be made harder without even that as a guide.

Fumbling for the handle, he slid open the door. “Morning. Oh honey, you look like a ghost.” A hand pressed against his skin, and he was ushered over to another part of the room, grateful for the guidance. There was the sound of a chair being moved. “Take a seat.”

Sukuna hesitated, not quite sure where the chair was. He reached out nonchalantly with his hand, trying to feel for it while the other woman’s focus was elsewhere, seemingly rifling through a bag of something. Able to just about make out a black splodge in the centre of his vision, Sukuna took a seat, only to thud down onto the floor.

It hurt. It hurt significantly more than pain Sukuna was used to enduring. He’d experienced all manner of injury - he’d had his blood and guts pouring out onto the floor in the midst of a fight, but somehow this was worse. How fragile was this body of yours? He was glad that he wasn’t born as some weak human, grateful that the abominable aspects of his body increased his strength rather than weakened it.

How could you live like this?

“My lady?” The woman seemed immediately panicked, reaching down and easily hoisting you up by the arm, aiding Sukuna onto the chair. “I’m sorry, you usually tell me you don’t need assistance, I wasn’t expecting-” she cut herself off for a moment, leaving Sukuna in silence and struggling to read the room with no visual cues. “You don’t seem like yourself at all this morning. You’re being very quiet.”

Sukuna said nothing, certain that he could hear the hint of a smile in the woman’s tone.

It was said that when soulmates swapped bodies, you could not under any circumstance tell someone that you were a different inhabitant to usual, else the spell would be broken and you’d both be immediately sent home.

It was an option Sukuna had contemplated the moment the woman walked in, eager to return to his own healthy form. However, he was also a man of great curiosity and it wasn’t like he had much going on at his estate that day anyway. So he opted for silence, figuring he’d at least see, or hear, how the day played out.

There was no harm in that.

Regardless, the woman had seemingly sensed it immediately based on her sudden change of demeanor, but being likely as aware of the rules as Sukuna was, she kept her suspicions silent.

“It's Officer Sugawara who’s set to see you today,” she explained, soft hands running through your hair with a comb, giving Sukuna a shiver of pleasure. “You usually play shogi with the guy for a while and let him get drunk. He’s a proud man who’s desperate for a legitimate win, so you always give him your best and he refuses to give up until he’s too pissed to think anymore. So be on your best game, or he might want to pass his time in another way.”

The warning was clear and Sukuna found himself disgusted. If that man tried to lay a single hand on you while he was inhabiting your body, he’d make sure Sugawara wouldn’t walk out of the establishment alive.

Fortunately, Sukuna was an avid shogi player. He held a great love for the game and was self-assured where his skill was concerned. No one in his estate could beat him, so he was certain he could beat some Officer of the Shogun.

Although, he’d never played it blind - a fact that mildly concerned him.

He hoped the pieces were skillfully made with deep indents, else he’d be completely lost.

“Even though you’re usually talkative with me, you’re not all that chatty with regulars, so it’ll be fine if you stay quiet. On account of you not feeling yourself and all,” she said with a knowing giggle.

It took an ungodly amount of time for that woman to get you ready, and Sukuna wondered how you could bear experiencing such a thing day after day. It seemed such a waste to have so much effort devoted to doing your hair and make-up, and dressing you up, when you couldn’t even see the end result.

For all you knew you could look like a clown.

But Sukuna quickly became certain that wasn’t the case when he was led into another room, your helper grasping his arm in a steadying manner and making sure he was settled down on a pillow before introducing him to a man sitting opposite him. Sugawara wasted no time with greetings, letting out a gasp of awe at your radiant appearance and reaching out to kiss your hand.

Sukuna wanted to reel away at the feeling but remained still all the same. He hoped he didn’t have too much of a scowl on his face.

Even if he didn’t have any interest in you, he didn’t really want to ruin the life of some random blind girl. He loved cruelty, but even for him that felt like an unnecessary slight to a person who was supposed to hold the other half of his heart.

“You look gorgeous. Not sickly at all, might I add. I hope the madam hasn’t been telling lies.”

You were sick - outside of the blindness - Sukuna could feel it. At first he’d brushed off your frailty as something normal for puny little humans, but since rising from your bed he’d become aware that your quivering legs, aching bones and hummingbird heart were far from normal.

“I haven’t been well,” he said simply.

“Oh you poor thing, it's always the most beautiful ones who suffer the most.”

Sukuna found himself wondering what you looked like. He had a vague knowledge of Official Sugawara - he wasn’t an ugly man, certainly not one lacking in prospects by any means. He was powerful in his position in the government, and wasn’t the type who would visit some woman out of pity.

You must’ve been genuinely gorgeous to earn such affection from him.

It was a shame Sukuna would never know.

He wouldn’t look for you once he was back in his own body. He’d move on with his life and that would be that, leaving this day as nothing more than some distant dream.

The games of shogi went by quickly, and Sukuna found that it was easy to slip into your body without arousing suspicion. Once he’d gotten over the original barrier of having to feel each piece for their indents as he picked them up, he fell easily into the flow of it all.

This man across from him seeked little conversation once the games had started, and Sukuna was pleased at how well he was playing that afternoon. He didn’t let the man win once and, as your attendant had mentioned, Suguwara filled himself up with more and more drink. It felt nice to play someone outside of his estate, most of his servants were too afraid to face Sukuna in any sort of test.

It was equally nice to completely destroy a government official with his skill. He was certain this man was having the worst game of his entire life, unaccustomed to this treatment from the lovely courtesan he’d frequent.

But it was at the end of the seventh game, when Sukuna was feeling at his highest, that a disastrous hit would come to his ego.

“You’re really off your game today. I see you really aren’t feeling well,” Sugawara said. There was the sound of shuffling fabric, as if the man had leant forward.

“What?” Sukuna asked, the low disbelief coming out strange in your small voice.

“Your plays are much sloppier than usual. It feels like you’re going easy on me, given you usually destroy me before I can even think about what to do next. Today you’ve been giving me proper games. I don’t like it. You know I hate being pitied.”

Sukuna had to stop his mouth from falling agape.

He wasn’t playing bad games by any means, on the contrary, he was certain that he was playing better than he had in a while, happy to have a new opponent for once. Was this man really saying that you, the normal you, was more skilled at shogi than he was? He really found that hard to believe.

What would some blind courtesan know of tactics?

“Perhaps you’ve simply improved,” Sukuna mumbled bitterly, unwilling to accept that your mastery was greater than his.

Sugawara laughed. “How polite of you, my dear. I can assure you that isn’t the case, and we both know it.” There was some shuffling, and Sukuna sensed that the man was climbing to his feet. It was frustrating to have such limited vision, and he was glad to know that he’d wake up the following day able to see the world once more - he couldn’t imagine living like that all the time. “I’ll leave you to rest. When I return in a few days you best have returned to form, or perhaps the nature of our meetings will need to change.”

A heavy hand rested on your shoulder, wet and clammy against the silk you were draped in. Sukuna wasn’t sure if the disgust was born from his own thoughts on the matter, or from an impulsive response from your body. From your attendant’s words it was clear that you would never sleep with the man, likely keeping your shogi skills sharp to ensure he never won.

Once he was gone, Sukuna sat there in silence, thinking on the man’s parting words.

Were you really so talented?

Part of him wanted to convince himself that he’d been playing worse than usual on account of not being able to see the board, making it difficult for him to think out moves in advance, taking more time than normal while he grazed the pieces with his fingers.

But deep in his soul he knew that wasn’t the case.

He’d played expertly, and still that man knew his opponent wasn’t the real you. All on account of how amateur Sukuna’s ability had seemed compared to yours.

And as his day drew to a close in your body, he realised that he had to know. He had to play you, had to see firsthand just how dramatically your skill exceeded his. He wouldn’t believe it until he’d seen it.

The soulmate thing didn’t matter.

But he needed to meet with you all the same.

Just to sate his interest. That was all.

—

Months had passed since the day you’d swapped with your soulmate. Since the morning you’d awoken to a world of light of colour you’d never seen before, and would never see again.

It was a day you’d never be able to forget - the image of the grand estate you’d awoken in seared permanently into your mind, just like the face of your soulmate who had stared back at you in a bronze mirror. You’d gazed upon his body for longer than you should admit to, wondering for a brief moment if you’d misunderstood how humans looked.

That thought didn’t remain for long. It took no expert to understand that the man you’d been paired with was something unique - the very four armed monster who had half of Japan living in fear.

And as such, you wished you could forget your experience in his body, wished you could see anything but his oddly charming face, because your promised beloved was a monster of the highest calibre. But with only one singular day of vision under your belt, what you’d seen wasn’t so easily displaced, and you found yourself thinking of him often with a longing that you knew to be wrong.

You had told no one of the experience, not even your handmaid, who had outright asked what your body swap experience had been like, what your soulmate had been like, claiming that whoever they were had presented themselves as rather reserved when possessing your body. You’d brushed her off with a shrug, claiming him to be some soldier and nothing more.

No one could know the truth. If they knew you to have any link to such a terrible man they might view you as an associate, and someone deserving of death for something you hadn’t asked for.

The workings of fate seemed strange to you. Was it not enough punishment to be born blind? Why would you also be paired with a monster who seemed to view the human race with general disdain? You were certain he cared little for love, his servant had made that clear when you were in his body, so any hopes of having a soulmate had been stolen from you as a result of this pairing.

Part of you wondered if a man so vile as him might even take things a step further and track you down to put an end to your life, insulted by fate to suggest that it could control him in any capacity. Perhaps he would be further insulted to be paired with someone so damaged rather than some untarnished beauty.

You’d always heard he held great hatred for weakness.

Even so, despite your fear and desire to conceal yourself from him, you couldn’t forget him, couldn’t stop the flicker of longing in your chest you were certain all people held for their destined lovers. Because while he was unquestionably a monster, with a throne of skulls you had witnessed through his very eyes, he also seemed to be more than that.

He was a man of great loneliness, living in grand halls with only a handful of servants for company - and all but one of them would scuttle out of the way when he approached. He seemed to hold a great love for art, with his estate packed with paintings and tapestries and great vases, all kept in pristine condition. For a cannibal, he seemed to take great pride in the cleanliness of his surroundings, in the neat nature of his gardens and springs.

Even in his own appearance, he seemed to take great care, for there was no denying him to be a handsome man even with his unique features. He had a voice to match that beauty, one that you could hardly peel from your mind any more than you could forget his image.

His body was hard to maneuver, too big and confusing to control his many hanging limbs. In a way, it felt akin to your blindness, something different to the way humans were built to be, leaving him to struggle with an issue that no one else could relate to. You wondered how it had been for him in childhood - if he’d felt as isolated and scared as you had to know that everyone else was normal in a way you’d never been.

You pitied him, even through all his sins. You felt you could understand at least a piece of him from a day buried within the confines of his skin.

But still, you would never reach for him - wouldn’t poke the bear even if you could understand why it might bite. You were certain that someone like him would be unwilling to hear you out, unwilling to love or reflect on how he became the way he was - he would swipe your head from your shoulders just like everyone else, and that would be that.

So you would stay away, keep your dreams of him locked deep within your chest, and accept that distance was for the best.

There was more to life than soulmates.

Unfortunately, that choice wasn’t yours alone to make.

The madame had knocked on your door early that morning, with the golden light of the sun only just starting to peek in through your window. Lately you’d been having longer lie-ins and taking less clients as the cold of winter gripped the region. Along with the blindness, you’d been born with a particularly feeble body as a result of complications with your mother during her pregnancy, ailments which were always worse for you in the colder months.

Your bones strained as you pushed yourself up to a sitting position, calling for the woman to enter. As much as you longed to slip back into your dream of red eyes peering back at you with fiery desire, you were still beholden to the will of your employer, even in your months of weakness.

“How are you feeling, my dear?” She asked, as she slipped in through the door. You felt her weight dip the bed as she took a seat beside you, a gentle hand coming to rest on your shoulder.

“Mornings are always the worst but I can manage once I’m up and about. Has Sugawara come calling again?” Most regulars were understanding enough of your condition, and those that weren’t would generally be chased off by the madame or unloaded onto another of the courtesans. Sugawara was one of the few that generally wouldn’t accept such treatment, with only eyes for you.

It didn’t matter too much since the man only ever wanted to play shogi, and that was manageable enough even on your worst days. It seemed that he had no intention of laying with you until he’d beat you in a game fair and square, claiming that if that ever happened he’d buy you out and take you home for he would’ve earned your heart.

That talk always made you uncomfortable, for you had little interest in the man, but you were more than certain he had no chance at ever defeating you at shogi, and could therefore never lay claim to you - assuming he kept his word.

“Not Sugawara…” There was hesitation in her voice. “We’ve received a request for our finest shogi player to be sent to the mayor’s home this evening. Apparently the other courtesan houses have received the same request.”

“I didn’t think the mayor cared much for shogi.”

Again, there was a moment of silence. “No, he doesn’t. A rather unwanted guest has taken up residence in his home, and this is the demand that has come of it.” Immediately your blood ran cold, thoughts drifting away from the madame’s continuing chatter to the red eyes that sat so prominently in the darkness of your mind.

There was no question in your mind as to who this guest was.

And to call for shogi players had you certain he was looking for you. Would he execute you when you walked into a room so clearly lacking in vision? Put an immediate end to the one person who could potentially stir his cold heart if fate were to be believed?

It seemed like the only reasonable explanation

The request to send another in your place died on the tip of your tongue as you once again tuned in to what the madame was saying. “...make sure you’re in top form, I’ve heard any who lose to him are immediately disposed of, but I’m sure that man will be no match for you.”

You wouldn’t send another to face their death. You were the only courtesan in the house who was any good at shogi, anyone else would certainly perish. This was a meeting dictated by fate and you had no opportunity to run from it. You would face him head on and deal with your death graciously, greet your end alone in the dark just like everything else you’d ever faced.

“I’ll do my best,” you said to the madame, and that was the final moment you had for yourself, your sacrifice sealed by your words.

The rest of the morning was spent in a frenzied rush, dressing you up and perfecting your makeup, turning you into a sparkling beauty ahead of your presentation to a monster. Based on the quiet nature of your handmaid, the experience felt more like she was dressing your corpse for burial.

Neither of you spoke such a thing aloud, but tears dripped from sightless eyes all the same when she led you out to the carriage, the madam trailing behind her, sending you off with a soft farewell filled with a sense of finality.

—

Sukuna had undergone an annoying few months.

Steadily, he had made his way, region by region, up to the north of Japan in search of a blind shogi player whose skill allegedly eclipsed his own. In each area, he would call upon all shogi-playing courtesans to meet with him and join him in a game, in the hopes that one day it would be you sitting across from him.

So far, he’d been unsuccessful, and had left a growing pile of bodies and burnt villages in his wake, utterly irritated that the thing he was seeking still evaded his grasp. No one had beaten him. A few had come close but none of them had been blind, so he could be certain that they weren’t you.

He was beginning to wonder if you’d gone into hiding somewhere, forsaking your courtesan life entirely in a bid to avoid him. It wouldn’t surprise him - you’d been in his body, you’d seen he was a monster, a fragile little thing like you was probably terrified at the idea of ever crossing his path.

Either way, he’d still persevere. He’d kill every shogi player if that was what it took to get to you.

He’d recently found his way into the mountainous region of Miyagi, where winter was in full spring. Taking up residence in the mayor’s home in one of the more populous towns in the prefecture, he once again started his usual process of gathering the shogi players. Word spread fast and droves of them appeared swiftly, waiting to be called before him.

It went much as usual, with boring girls presenting themselves before him and providing him with equally boring games of shogi. These people were painfully predictable with no appreciation for the art of the game - really it was a gift for him to steal their lives from them, because he couldn’t imagine living while being so pitifully unskilled.

The pool of Miyagi courtesans was gradually running dry and Sukuna was preparing himself for another disappointing journey further north when his luck finally shifted.

He knew he’d found you the moment you walked in through the door.

You’d stumbled in meekly, eyes averted down to the floor as you bowed low and shuffled towards the centre of the room. You were taking care not to raise your head for him to look upon, and he quickly realised you were making your best effort to conceal your blindness from him, like you could keep your identity secret that way.

It was a futile attempt, for the very atmosphere around you felt charged, his heart picking up inexplicably at the very sight of you.

To say you were beautiful was an understatement. Everything about you was gorgeous, from your soft hair to the striking intensity of your unseeing eyes. You wore the finest silks and they hung off you well, complimenting your figure. He found himself eager to touch you, to rid you off your lovely gown and have his fingers against your smooth skin.

But that wasn’t the reason he had come, and he would play you before entertaining any other matter.

“Sit,” he ordered, taking great amusement in the shiver that seemed to run through you at the sound of his voice.

You dropped to your knees on the cushion before the board, hands pressing against the edge of the table. It was the first chance he got to take a proper look at your eyes, expecting them to be clouded over, but taken aback by the lovely colour your irises still held beneath that mist.

“You’re blind.” He observed aloud, taking note of the way your teeth caught your lower lip anxiously.

“I see more than enough,” your response was guarded.

He hummed, a sly grin settling on his face. Idly, he wondered if you could sense it, because you seemed to tense up a little, fidgeting across from him in a way his traitorous brain seemed to register as endearing. “Is that so? Do you see enough to know my strategy before we commence? Or will you disappoint me like the others?”

“You tell me.”

Your words had his heart stirring against his will, impressed by your serenity before him, still sitting up straight and calm despite the fear he could sense within you. You were a woman who held confidence despite it all, harboured strength even in the face of your obvious weaknesses. He wondered what you were thinking, if you believed he was there to execute you for the mere transgression of being his soulmate.

It wasn’t a foolish assumption.

He would kill you without a second thought if you were uninteresting to him.

But he’d reserve that judgement until after you had played. He had been promised someone exceptional and that was what he wished to see, anything less and your blood would stain the floor just like every other woman who had sat before him. Would you still be so calm if you could see the bodies littering the room? He assumed not.

He wondered if you hated him, if you cursed fate itself to be paired with a man like him. Nothing about you gave anything away, all your focus fixed on the board in front of you, your hands moving steadily against the wood of the board, as if centring yourself.

“Shall we begin?” He asked.

“Yes.”

Sukuna couldn’t quite comprehend what had transpired in that first game he played against you.

He had approached things in much the same manner that he always would when playing shogi - opening strong and attempting to completely overwhelm his opponent, and yet somehow he found opportunities snatched from him at every turn.

Nothing seemed to catch you off guard. Any attempted play was greeted with an easy answer from you, as though you were battling a child. You were always three steps ahead of him, never hesitating in the shifting of a piece, moving with a certainty that had him transfixed.

He found that he couldn’t draw his eyes away from you, his struggle on the board forgotten at the realisation he’d been well and truly defeated. There was no point in struggling further - you had swatted him aside in the way that he usually defeated others, and you had done it with no glee or brag, nothing more than passive indifference once the games finally came to an end.

Your shoulders were raised, as if awaiting something you wouldn’t be able to see coming. A strike from him, perhaps? Or the neat removal of your head from your shoulders? The same fate of all others he’d played across the last few months.

But he wasn’t in the position to do anything at that moment, lashes fluttering as he stared at you, his heart hammering against his ribcage.

There had been no lie told about your skill - on the contrary, you had exceeded his expectations spectacularly. He wanted to play you again and again, wanted to witness the beauty of the way you played, wished to spend hours lost deep in thought considering how he could even begin to pick you apart in a match.

He could spend years sitting across you, gazing upon your lovely form while you worked away in silence with such unquestionable mastery.

No wonder Sugawara had been disappointed in Sukuna’s ability. He couldn’t hold a candle to what you were.

“How?” He asked, unable to think of another word to offer.

Your head was still lowered, eyes fixed elsewhere. He wished you’d look at him, allow him a clearer view of your face, but it occurred to him that such a request may not be easily granted with your lack of vision. You would never be able to lock eyes with each other - it would be something entirely meaningless for you.

“You aren’t all that good,” you spoke softly, a smile playing on your lips.

Sukuna disagreed with your sentiment, considering he’d never been beaten before, but perhaps you’d consider all his previous opponents to be genuinely pitiful at the game.

“So, will you take my life now? Or is that reserved for the losers?” You asked.

“To take the life of someone I could not best would be cowardly and pointless,” he said with a snort. “How would I ever grow to be better than you if I extinguished you from the world? Don’t be foolish. We will play again.”

And again you played.

Game after game until the sun began to rise in the sky, and Sukuna could sense exhaustion drifting through your fragile form. You were shivering from the cold, and he had Uraume bring in a robe to wrap around you, keenly aware of how sickly you seemed to look beneath all the beauty. You were setting up the board for your tenth match when Sukuna finally put an end to things.

“Enough. I would take no joy in defeating an exhausted opponent.” He rose to his feet, stretching as he moved. He wasn’t keen on remaining still for long periods of time, but you seemed accustomed to it, staying deathly still upon your cushion, uncertainty evident in your posture.

“Then, you will send me to my home?” You asked.

“No.” The word escaped him before he could stop it.

He did not wish for you to go anywhere, lest you slip from his grasp never to be found again. It was because he wanted to play you more, that’s what he told himself, but there was more to it than that, and in his soul he knew it.

He never wanted the image of you on your knees before him to slip away, never wanted to lose the pleasurable feeling of warmth that swelled in his chest with you there within his gaze.

“You’ll accompany me to my home, and we’ll play until I’m satisfied.”

—

Weeks had passed since you’d arrived at Sukuna’s estate in the Hida Mountains.

You’d been given no time to bid goodbye to the women at the only home you’d ever known, swept off in a carriage down south where you had to relearn your surroundings in a totally new environment.

Of course, it wasn’t the first time you’d been in the estate, but that experience made little impact on the ease of traversing around with no vision. You had to move slowly, fingers brushing on blurry objects shadowed in the darkness, hoping you didn’t trip over something or walk into a screen door.

For the most part, you were left to your own devices. Sukuna had spoken little to you on the journey home, opting to ride on his horse rather than in the carriage with you, and he’d been equally elusive in his own estate, leaving you in isolation for days at a time.

You couldn’t complain, for your days were spent in peace and serenity.

You would take long walks in the breeze of his garden, have his servants read aloud to you, and practice playing the erhu. On days where it was particularly cold and the chill seeped into your bones, you would remain in the grand bed he had provided and find greater comfort than you ever had in the old bed you’d laid upon in the courtesan house.

The only obligation you ever had to fulfill were shogi games. And during the times that he wasn’t absent from the estate, those would take place every evening, in Sukuna’s own private quarters.

It was an odd decision, considering that the servants played shogi out in the garden, where a proper table was set up for that purpose. But it seemed that Sukuna took care in ensuring your meetings were private - a decision you didn’t dare read into too deeply.

You didn’t dare read into any of his behaviour too deeply, lest you rip your own heart from your chest.

That first meeting with him had been like nothing you’d ever experienced - genuine desire overcoming you at the deep tone of his voice. Even knowing that he could cause your death with little effort, you couldn’t bury the lust within you, a fire that only burned stronger with each encounter with him.

It was hard to hold it together, to pretend that you wouldn’t fling yourself into his arms given the chance, but you tried all the same, keeping yourself distant and cold, like you didn’t dream of him between your legs each night, imagining the sound of his voice whispering sweet nothings against your ear.

Whether he felt the effect to the same extent you did, you weren’t sure. You were certain you’d never know. His interest in you was surrounding shogi, and shogi alone.

One evening, you were sitting across from him having played a handful of games, finding victory had fallen into your hands even more easily than normal. Sukuna seemed distracted by something, the sound of fidgeting settling in your ears. He hadn’t moved to start a new game, and based on the shadowy shapes in your vision, you could only assume he was leaning forward upon the table, bringing him close enough for his breath to fan your face.

“I killed today,” he said. Those were the first words he’d spoken to you that evening - you always followed his example with conversation, if he was feeling chatty you would indulge him, if he wished for silence you would give him that too.

You weren’t exactly sure where he was going with that statement, nor were you certain what type of response he was seeking, so you offered him a hum of acknowledgement and little more. You didn’t wish to think of the death that stained his hands, but nor did it build your animosity towards him.

To some extent you could understand lashing out at the world when you were someone so desperately lonely as he was. Part of you believed that if you hadn’t been so frail perhaps you’d lash out at the world for your own condition. His primary servant had told you he’d been despised throughout his life, and when you find only cruelty in humans it's difficult to cling to kindness.

Sukuna wasn’t so simple as a mere monster. You’d understood that in the day you’d spent in his body, and had only further confirmed it by the intelligence he displayed when you’d speak over games of shogi. He had a great admiration for art and skill, and had seemed rather taken when you’d recited poetry, responding with verses of his own.

He was a multi-faceted man, and much of what you saw only seemed to further your attraction to him, even knowing it was wrong, even knowing you’d be hated for it. For once, you felt you’d found someone who understood what it was like to be you, to be cut off from the easy lives lived by most others.

A soul that entwined so perfectly with yours, even if he’d never be aware of such a thing.

“Do you wish to know who I killed?” He asked.

“I know few people, my lord. I doubt a name would mean anything to me.”

“This one might. I’ve heard you’re familiar with Officer Sugawara? He’s one of the Shogun’s men?”

Thoughts of your regular flickered through your mind. If you were being honest with yourself, you were glad to not have to see him anymore - him or any of the other clients you’d been forced to take. Courtesan life had been difficult for you, forced into it thanks to the conditions of your birth and kept there by a disability that made it hard to escape the life for something better.

Life in Sukuna’s estate had been easier, especially as the weeks passed and you grew more comfortable in the belief that Sukuna wasn't going to steal your life from you. You’d lived in fear of Sugawara buying you out, of being forced to live like some doll in the house of a terribly boring man whose voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard to your ears.

“I know him.”

“Knew him, would be more apt. His body lies at the foot of the mountain.” Sukuna spoke matter-of-factly. “He came to claim you from me. I refused and we couldn’t reach an amicable agreement, so I dealt with it another way.”

You weren’t sure how to react, struggling to process the words. That Sugawara would follow you down to Hida already came as a surprise, you hadn’t known how deep his devotion ran. But somehow, you found yourself rather taken by Sukuna’s decision, by the certainty in his choice to keep you.

To kill a man whose death could cause him issues with the Shogun might as well have been an outright confession of love.

Sugawara’s death meant little to you. Men like that died all the time, and they saw women as little more than pretty objects to own. Sugawara had seen you as an impressive party trick, a clever cat rather than a human with depth and desires of her own. You hadn’t wanted to be his, wouldn’t have liked for Sukuna to surrender you to him.

“Are you irritated with me? When I controlled your body you seemed repulsed at his presence. Perhaps you have a heart too soft for blood and death.”

“No- I-” You hesitated. “Did you do this to protect me?”

There was silence for a moment, and you longed to see his facial expression, but were forced to settle for the hint of confusion in his tone. “Of course. I’ve protected you since bringing you here. You can hardly protect yourself.”

You couldn’t find it in you to be offended - he’d been in your body, he knew of your frailty better than anyone.

“Why? Just because you enjoy shogi so much?”

“Somewhat. Though I must confess, lately I have been losing interest in the game. I feel I’ve come up against an insurmountable wall.” Panic filled you immediately, mind running at a million miles a minute as you analysed his statement. If he was growing bored of playing would he cast you aside? What use did he have for you if not shogi?

But then again, why would he kill Sugawara if he was moments from disposing of you?

“Perhaps it is the fault of my own discipline, for I’ve found it hard to focus on the game for quite some time now.” He hesitated, and you found yourself flinching at the feeling of a soft hand caressing your cheek, leaning into it once you overcame the initial shock of touch. “It is difficult when you have a beautiful woman sitting across from you. It’s even harder when my soul calls for you whenever you're near, drowning out any thoughts I might gather of strategy.”

“Oh.” You weren’t sure what to say, wondering if you should pinch yourself, for many of your dreams centred themselves around such a confession. But the touch had never felt so real before, large fingers brushing against the soft skin of your face.

“I wonder if I’d be more focussed if I admitted fate might make some sense after all. I have never denied myself anything before now, and I’m tired of denying myself you. You have captivated me thoroughly, and I believe the hole in my chest was carved out to allow you to one day settle there.”

The words were by far the most romantic statement anyone had ever uttered to you. In your time as a courtesan you’d heard plenty of cheesy and affectionate lines, ones you’d brush off and forget by the time the client was done with you. Sukuna’s words would burrow into your heart and remain there for as long as you drew breath.

Could anyone fault you for loving a monster who would speak such beauty to you? Could you be hated for finding one who had been cursed by the world just like you had?

“I have no care for the Shogun’s men,” Sukuna continued, “in my eyes they are little more than flies most of the time, an annoying thing to be ignored unless they brush too close. Would it amuse you to know I killed Sugawara out of jealousy? To hear that my chest tightened at the idea of you being taken from my side?”

“Because you enjoy having such a capable rival in intelligence?” You asked, a wry smile creeping onto your face.

“Because I enjoy you.”

It was clear he was waiting for you to say something. The words that had poured from his mouth were unlike any he’d spoken before, and although you couldn’t see him, you could feel the sense of restlessness that gripped his body.

You would not leave him in uncertainty.

“I have only ever seen the world through your eyes,” you confessed shyly, “the only face I see in the endless darkness is yours, and I dream of it every night.” Sukuna’s fingers twitched against your face. “If you’ll have me, I am yours.”

“Even though I’m a monster?” He asked. There was no remorse in his tone, nothing to suggest that he was pained over who he was, it was just an honest question for you to answer as you wished. “You were scared of me when we met. I know you hid yourself from me after discovering our connection, eager to ensure our paths would never cross.”

“Because I believed you would kill me. I thought you to be a man who would stamp out any notion of love and eliminate me along with it.”

He hummed in acknowledgement, failing to deny your statement. You knew it to be true - if you had lost your shogi game on that first meeting, he would’ve done exactly that. It was in his nature to love only that which piqued his interest.

“Especially to be paired with someone so weak, I thought you would consider it an insult.”

He scoffed. “You are far from weak, I’ve found it impossible to best you.”

“I meant physically,” your voice went small. “I did not imagine the King of Curses would favour a sightless woman, nor one so easily broken.”

He was silent for a moment, seemingly processing your words. “I was small and frail once. Perhaps frailer than you. I wish someone had valued me then for my other virtues. I’m big enough and sharp enough to make up for your failings and you are clever enough to cover mine.”

Your mind was reeling at the idea of him admitting to having failings. Your heart stirring at his affection, and his easy desire despite your condition.

“I had not imagined a soulmate to be so well suited to me, for my tangles with fate have always been cruel,” he said. “But you’re something different, something I need at my side, and I will be your eyes, your protector, whatever it is you want in order to keep you there.”

“Oh.” You were positively blushing, whole body trembling beneath the weight of lovely words spoken in that deep voice of his.

Your soulmate wanted you.

A man hated by the world and filled with hatred in return had a space carved out for you, a space for love you hadn’t known him capable of.

You’d loved him from the first time you’d met him, drawn to him by an inexplicable force which seemed to grip him just as hard.

Soulmates really were wonderful.

Silence had settled between the two of you, only broken as the table screeched across the floor, the barrier between you removed. Sukuna shifted forward and an arm came to rest around your smaller body, pulling you towards him. His lips pressed against yours in a kiss you could only describe as sweet.

He didn’t dominate you in the manner you believed a man like him would, instead he took his time, mapping out your lips and drawing you closer to him, letting you bathe in the warmth of his body against yours. It was almost like he was trying not to scare you, aware that you couldn’t see anything he was doing and trying to move slowly as a result.

You wouldn’t have minded either way, your fingers clinging to the biceps of his upper arms, desperate for more of a touch you’d only ever dreamed of.

People always said that to finally touch your soulmate was a euphoria like nothing else, and you truly believed them to be right. Your head felt like it was swimming, chest swelling as if Sukuna’s own soul had wriggled beneath your skin to intertwine with your own.

It was a little overwhelming.

“How I long for you,” he murmured against your ear, breaking the kiss. “I was foolish to have not had you the moment I laid eyes on you, I’ve ached for your touch longer than I care to admit.”

His fingers moved down to your robes, and your breath hitched at the touch. You were no stranger to sex, your job had required it, but the feeling as he undressed you wasn’t like any previous encounter you’d had. What regulars thought of your body was insignificant to you, sex was nothing special with them, just something you had to do if you wished to make a living wage.

This was the first time you’d ever been touched for free by someone you desired, and you felt suddenly nervous at your frail body being judged beneath his crimson gaze - especially when you couldn’t look upon him in the same moment. There was no distraction in the darkness to keep you from worrying about how his gaze might burn through you, imagining discontent on his handsome face.

A cold chill caught you once your robes fell, leaving you kneeling and exposed in front of him. A soft breath fell from his lips, fingers moving delicately from your shoulders down to your breasts, as if checking you were truly real and there before him. More heat flooded you as his finger brushed over your peaked nipple.

“Beautiful. If I didn’t despise the idea of sharing you with another I would paint you like this. Your body is worthy of that reverence.”

“I think my mind is probably more splendid.” You confessed. You had no eyes for awareness of your appearance, and had subsequently never really relied on it. People had said you were lovely, but you could never quite believe it, assuming that they were taking pity on you for your blindness.

“Your mind is exceptional. If I cannot beat you at shogi soon I have half a mind to ask you to assist me with real life strategy,” he said with a chuckle, fingers still trailing a slow path down your body. “But it doesn’t make your body any less lovely, and you cannot deny such things since you’ve never seen yourself. Let me be your eyes and tell you that you are breathtaking.”

A shyness overcame you at those words, head angled downwards as if it would hide your blushing state from him. He raised your chin with a finger, his nose bumping yours before capturing your mouth in a kiss once more, bringing you close against his bare chest. You were so lost in the comfort of the kiss, that you found yourself completely caught off guard when something wet swiped against your stomach and breasts.

Flinching in surprise, you drew yourself back in an attempt to understand what was happening. Sukuna laughed, a hand moving into your hair comfortingly. “It's my tongue,” he spoke easily.

Frowning, you found that his answer didn’t make sense, because still the wet appendage explored your breasts, sending your heartrate flying as it flicked against your nipple with impressive accuracy. How could he be speaking but also doing that?

“There’s a mouth on my stomach. Perhaps you didn’t notice when you controlled my body.”

You were ashamed to admit you hadn’t noticed such a thing. Sukuna had been naked when you’d awoken in his body, and you’d been quick to dress him up in robes, feeling rude to intrude upon the body of another without consent. You’d very intentionally not paid too much attention to the workings of his body, not when the first thing you’d seen was the oddity he sported between his legs.

The memory that he had two of what most men only had one, suddenly had you feeling a little nervous in your position. You had no time to voice such nervousness before he was picking you up, allowing his second tongue to continue its onslaught while he carried you over to the bed, depositing you down upon the silk.

His weight moved on top of you, and he swallowed a gasp with his lips as his monstrous tongue shifted its attention from your breasts down to between your legs, dexterously finding a path between your things and lathering your pussy with attention while Sukuna consumed your mouth. Tears pricked in your eyes at the sensation, unaccustomed to a feeling like that.

In all your years as a courtesan, you’d never been eaten out. Men didn’t come to brothels to serve women, they came to have their own needs attended to, and you’d done that in whichever manner they desired. You were grateful to have never experienced that feeling before, because it was a blessing to have Sukuna be your first.

Pressure built in your stomach over a series of minutes, overwhelmed by the way he seemed to be everywhere. A tongue between your lips, another between your thighs, hands squeezing your breasts, tweaking your nipples, more hands gripping your hips, pulling you up onto his secondary tongue to allow it a better angle to overwhelm you.

For the first time, you started to understand how Sukuna must feel whenever he played you at shogi - stumbling blindly in the dark whilst overcome from all angles with no means of knowing what was going to come next. It was pleasure in its highest form, and you were quick to cum with a yelp of his name, tears dripping from the corners of your eyes.

Sukuna broke the kiss, breathing heavily against your ear. It was a sound you enjoyed, one you could listen to all day if he’d allow you. “I have imagined you beneath me like this every night this week,” he mused, “my imagination is hardly as pleasant as having the real thing. You taste much sweeter than my mind could conjure.”

Again, you were flushing red. “Y-you can taste me through…that?”

“Of course.” You were certain he was grinning, “And I’m glad that I can.” His secondary tongue was still moving slowly through your folds, lapping up the remnants of your first orgasm, teasingly flicking against your clit and making your shudder.

The two of you stayed like that for a while, breathing quietly together. You weren’t sure what Sukuna wanted to do next, but for a moment you were happy to savor the warmth of his heavy body, twitching while he lazily continued his attention to your body. How you longed to see him, eager to witness the expression he was wearing while he attended to you.

All you had to go off was the erratic beating of his heart where his chest was pressed against you.

“Let me have you,” he murmured against your ear. “Let me make you mine.”

“I’m already yours.”

“Is that so? Then let me make it official.”

He shifted atop you, withdrawing his secondary tongue. In the absence of that heat between your thighs, you grew suddenly aware of a heavy pressure against your leg. Your mind jumped to the image of his cocks that you’d filed away in the back of your mind, gut twisting at the thought of either one of them pressing into you.

Sukuna chuckled from above you, a hand coming to stroke your hair. “You’ve seen them, haven’t you?”

You nodded.

“I can tell, you’ve got that scared little look on your face. It’s fascinating, when you play shogi you’re unreadable, but outside of that? You’re practically an open book with your emotions always written across your face.”

Pouting, you let humiliation wash over you. Nobody had ever told you that before. It was hard to guard one's emotions when you had no measure of how the faces of others looked. That was something you’d have to work on. At least you had the good sense to give nothing away when you played shogi.

Another laugh echoed from his lips. “Even now I can see your panic. It’s very endearing.”

Any protest or response you had for him faded away into the recesses of your brain as he shuffled on top of you. He maneuvered you carefully into a new position, raising your legs and placing them up atop his broad shoulders. You were grateful for your flexibility in that moment, because the size difference between the two of you made that no easy task.

Sukuna was watching you from above while he positioned one of his cocks between your legs, running it steadily through your wet folds in a way that had you shivering with desire, still not fully recovered from the actions of his tongue. You were quick to discover that his focus was on his lower cock, as the upper one bumped pleasurably against your clit.

“You know,” he mused, stilling his movements. “I’m surprised you struck no deal with me. It is what I had imagined you would do.”

“What?”

“I’d assumed I would ask for more and you would refuse me. I’d thought your respect was tied to shogi, that you would refuse anything from me unless I was capable of beating you.” Your mind moved to Sugawara as you connected the dots. Sukuna believed you’d made that deal before, as if that tiresome Official hadn’t dictated those rules of his own choosing.

Shogi was a game you adored, mainly because it was an activity you could excel at even without sight, unlike many other courtesan pastimes such as painting, which would forever be an impossibility for you. But it was by no means something you made all your decisions on, nor were you particularly interested in the skill of others.

If someone could defeat you, you would congratulate them for their win and move on, it would ultimately mean little.

To you, it was little more than a game. To various men, it seemed to be something held in much higher regard - a true mark of intelligence rather than a game for which one could learn and remember strategies to allow them a win.

It mattered little to you whether Sukuna could defeat you or not. Your affection for him wasn’t tied to it in any manner.

“To make such a demand would be wasting my own time. Why would I turn down a man I desire over something so trivial? Besides, my bet with Sugawara was made to ensure I never had to lay with him, that is not the fate I want for us.”

“So you believe I am incapable of winning?” He asked, with greater disappointment than you’d been expecting.

“I do,” you said with a giggle, “just as I am incapable of emerging victorious in a battle. We all have our strengths.”

A yelp fell from you as he pushed the tip of his cock into you, catching you unawares. “Yeah?” He asked, pressing deeper into you, his fingers tangling tightly into your hair. “Rather sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

You couldn’t help but laugh again - even in the midst of the dull pain of him driving into you, there was something so endearingly pathetic about his words.

“I am. But you’re free to challenge me whenever you like.”

He was silent as he bottomed out inside of you, his face falling to your neck and leaving a trail of kisses and bites along your skin while he allowed you some time to adjust. You were grateful for his consideration of your wellbeing, fingers digging into his skin, your gut aching as he leaned forwards over you, pushing your legs higher on his shoulders.

There was no question that he was the largest man you’d ever had inside you, practically tearing you apart with his intrusion, but after a few minutes of stillness you found yourself able to relax, the panic exhibited by your body slowly dissipating as you accommodated his size.

“I will challenge you whenever I like,” he whispered against your ear. “After this, the cloud of lust you’ve placed in my mind will be thinner, and I will beat you with ease.”

“Oh, I’m sure-”

Your snarky response was promptly cut off as he withdrew himself from you, only to swiftly fill you up once more, pulling a desperate cry of his name from your lips. There was no second adjustment period given, instead you found yourself clinging on for dear life as he filled you over and over again with swift and deep thrusts that had your eyes rolling back.

One of his hands moved to your stomach, pressing down against the bulge where his cock would press up inside you. It was clear he was fascinated by it, finding great enjoyment in you being claimed by him. You were certain he was no virgin, but it seemed that you were the first woman who meant something to him, the first one who was worth something beyond carnal pleasure.

Legs quivering beneath the weight of his thrusts, you appreciated the way two of his hands came to rest on your thighs, keeping you steady with each brutal snap of his hips. You were crying and whining, your hands blindly reaching for him but finding him just out of range in this position. Seemingly to appease you, he leant further forward, really testing the flexibility of your legs as he practically folded you in half.

Lips pressed against your forehead affectionately, and you enjoyed every single second of his attention, mind floating off on a cloud as your gut tightened with each careful stroke, your walls flexing around his cock. Your whole body felt like it was on fire, a feeling only heightened by the erratic contact of his higher cock rubbing up against your clit.

“You feel so good, fuck. I can’t last like this,” he grumbled, never losing pace. It stroked your ego to know of his desire, to understand just how much he’d been holding back since your first meeting. It was everything you imagined the joining of two soulmates would be - desperately euphoric and overflowing with pleasure.

Sex had never felt so good, it had never really felt good at all, and yet you could spend eternity with Sukuna buried inside of you, your bodies and souls joined just as they were always meant to be.

He was yours and you were his. It was just as fate had decreed.

There was nothing stopping the scream that ripped through you as you finally teetered over the edge, your body convulsing in pleasure and clamping down on Sukuna’s thick cock, eager to milk him for all he was worth. You were sobbing his name and writhing against the silk sheets, your hands gripping them desperately in an attempt to anchor yourself to something in the throes of pleasure.

Sukuna couldn’t hold on long after that either, spilling into you with a warmth that only heightened your pleasure. His other cock found its release at the same time, cum dripping down onto your stomach in a manner that you’d usually find disgusting, if it weren’t your soulmate who was doing it to you. He groaned your name quietly, and let your legs fall from his shoulders.

Without the barrier of your thighs, he settled himself down on top of you, pressing kisses all over your face, his cock still twitching inside your exhausted pussy. You let him lather you with affection, still trying to come to terms with this side of Sukuna. It had been what you’d wanted, what you believed he was capable of, but you hadn’t dreamed it would truly happen.

The most you believed you’d get from him was a lifetime of shogi matches, in which the two of you would remain close but never cross the line you’d been so desperate to leap across.

“Has the fog of lust lifted?” You teased. “Do you believe now you can defeat me?”

Sukuna let out a low, rumbling chuckle. “Perhaps we will have to do that a few more times for it to fully ease.”

“Oh is that so?” You giggled, reaching out for his hair. He gripped your wrist and moved it into position, allowing you to play with the soft locks you’d been so eager to touch since the first time you’d seen them upon his head.

You wished you could gaze upon that lovely shade of pink once more, but it was enough to know he was there before you, yours to touch as you pleased.

“Mmm, I think it would help,” he purred.

“I’m sure that can be arranged.”

You’d give him whatever he wanted. You were his and he was yours for as long as he’d have you.

a/n: I had so much fun writing this one! thinking about doing one soulmate au for each of the jjk men because I find them so enjoyable to play with <3

anyway, for any crazy in love fans, the next chapter will be out towards the end of this week!

perma taglist: @calicatzz @suzunu @winkii @sukubusss @bobis-notmylover @tetsuski @torupilled @brattyxackerman @r0vena @chaos-4baby @moonlitreveri3 @feyrinnn @strawberryrosey @creamofsneky-blog @zeeseekay @p1nkfl0wers @apricityn @keiiiluv @dogggggggblog-kaye @duckie3801 @lav4mpira @seellove @cutesytwt @gojodickbig @yuujispinkhair @somos-things @yeagersss @paradisestarfishh @jennilynn63 @tthhaattgguuyy27 @bexxli @being-blue-is-better @tisuruxx @juliarchiv3s @dishs0pe @plutoxxxworld @5kkalara @serenadesvt @00frenchfries00 @warriorofenlightenment @scarlet-issilly @himbosexual @pousivuitton @ksjtozaki @certainfanpoetry @gojoscumslut @ynishalee @nakiich

blank period!eren , who sometimes woke up from fragmented memories of the future looking genuinely shaken, only calming down once you pulled him back into reality and rested your forehead against his, littering delicate kisses across his face to his collarbone lazily , as you drifted back to sleep.

blank period!eren , who started saying things like "i want you to live a long life" , "i can't give you the life you need" so often it almost became routine. at first it sounded sweet, until you noticed the sadness underneath it every single time. making you dwell on the countdown that eren had with him being a titan shifter , sometimes you caught yourself estimating how long you had left with him.

blank period!eren , who pulled away slightly whenever he realized he was getting too attached , because loving you made him selfish enough to want a future he knew he couldn’t have.

blank period!eren , who held your hand tightly while visiting Marley for the first time, eyes constantly scanning the crowded streets while you excitedly looked around. for everyone else it was a new world to explore — for him, it felt like walking through a graveyard only he could already see.

blank period!eren , who looked strangely distant during your nights in Marley, especially after seeing the refugees and children there. you’d catch him staring at people with this awful sadness in his eyes, like every interaction was engraving something deeper into him.

blank period!eren , who clung to you more subtly after Marley. lingering touches. sitting closer. pulling you to the side to kiss you , to which sometimes became slow , passionate make out sessions. letting his hand rest over yours for just a second longer than usual. like part of him was already grieving the life he was about to destroy.

s4!eren , who changed so drastically it almost felt like watching someone fade away right in front of you. his voice calmer, his expressions emptier, every soft part of himself buried beneath layers of determination and grief.

s4!eren , who still loved you desperately despite how cold and cruel he acted, but convinced himself that pushing you away was kinder than making you watch him become a monster.

s4!eren , who looked exhausted whenever the two of you were alone together , the weight of the future and the rumbling slowly crushing whatever remained of the boy you first fell in love with.

s4!eren , who physically froze whenever you touched him unexpectedly after he returned from Marley , like affection itself had become something painful he no longer knew how to hold onto. at that point it didn't feel as of you to were together no more , you were just looking at the shell of the person you once knew.

s4!eren , who wanted to beg you to stay with him while simultaneously wanting you as far away from him as possible. everyone around you could see this relationship was toxic , especially for you , but no matter how much you were told you didnt have the heart to accept it.

s4!eren , who sat alone thinking about the rumbling for hours at a time, carrying the unbearable knowledge of what he was about to do while still remembering the children laughing in Marley, the crowds in the market, the life beyond the walls.

s4!eren , who loved you enough to want you to survive him, even if it meant letting you hate him forever.

— jean kirstein

blank period!jean , who took forever to confess because every single time he worked up the courage, he’d start overthinking everything halfway through. connie said he looked like he was preparing for execution instead of asking someone out.

blank period!jean , who eventually asked you to go stargazing with him after a full night of Sasha and Connie aggressively hyping him up beforehand, only to spend the actual confession staring at the ground and tripping over half his words.

blank period!jean , who internally thought he came across incredibly charming during that moment, meanwhile you could physically see how nervous he was by the way his ears turned red and how the back of his neck must be on fire by the amount of scratching he was doing.

blank period!jean , who loved the quieter routine of helping build the railway because for once it felt like everyone was working toward something hopeful instead of simply surviving.

blank period!jean , who always tried to pick the heavier work during railway construction so you wouldn’t overexert yourself, then immediately acted casual about it whenever you noticed.

blank period!jean , who absolutely adored sitting beside you on the unfinished tracks during breaks, shoulders pressed together while the others argued nearby. those moments became some of the few times he genuinely felt peaceful.

blank period!jean , who started imagining impossible futures during those years. little things — teaching you how to ride horses more skillfully, buying a home somewhere quieter someday, growing older without constantly preparing for death.

blank period!jean , who noticed Eren changing long before he knew why, and sometimes caught himself watching him with this growing unease in his chest whenever the group was together. he would confide in you to check if he was going crazy or not.

blank period!jean , who got weirdly protective during the Marley trip, constantly keeping track of where you were in the crowds even while pretending he was 'totally relaxed.' he ended up being quite handsy, occasionally squeezing you waist to get a reaction out of you.

blank period!jean , who looked completely fascinated wandering through Marley with you despite himself. the food, the lights, the technology — he kept making little sarcastic comments to hide how overwhelmed he actually was.

blank period!jean , who couldn’t stop staring at you after you tried ice cream for the first time in Marley because your excitement made the entire terrifying trip feel normal for a few minutes.

blank period!jean , who loved you so passionately as he got more comfortable , he never pushed you into to doing anything , though if you communicated you didn't mind him initiating things he would do it like the gentlemen he is. "is this okay?" , "you know you don't owe me anything, right?" he said between breaths as your tongues swirled around each other.

blank period!jean , who slowly realized during those years that loving you made him more afraid of dying than ever before.

s4!jean , who became the kind of person everyone naturally leaned on without even realizing it, carrying responsibility so quietly that most people forgot how exhausted he actually was underneath it all.

s4!jean , who loved you through actions more than words now — adjusting your harness before missions, making sure you ate first and were taking care of yourself, instinctively standing closer whenever things became dangerous.

s4!jean , who looked older after Marley and the rumbling began, grief and stress settling heavily into his features despite still trying to keep everyone grounded.

s4!jean , who argued with himself constantly over Eren because part of him still missed the reckless idiot he grew up beside, while another part couldn’t forgive what Eren was becoming.

s4!jean , who held you especially tightly after learning about the rumbling because suddenly the possibility of losing everything didn’t feel distant anymore — it was happening.

s4!jean , who secretly hated how much he still dreamed about a peaceful life with you even while the world was ending around him. loosing sasha chipped away at him , he didn't speak that night in bed with you , so wound up in his own thoughts.

s4!jean , who would rest his forehead against yours after particularly horrific days, eyes closed while you held onto each other in silence because neither of you really had words left anymore.

s4!jean , who still found himself thinking about those scout days constantly during the rumbling — the sunsets , the loud dinners , the silly chaos with you , sasha and connie , everyone laughing together before everything fell apart.

— levi ackerman

pre-s4!levi , who shows love in the smallest , faint ways imaginable. refilling your teacup before you notice it’s empty , adjusting your cloak when it slips off your shoulders , making space for you beside him without saying a word.

pre-s4!levi , who isn’t huge on PDA, but absolutely will steal quick kisses when nobody’s paying attention — especially during quieter moments in empty hallways or late nights in the office. kissing you like he’s trying to memorise you. one hand against your jaw , slow and thorough , lingering for a second longer every single time before pulling away.

pre-s4!levi , who is deeply touch starved without fully realizing it himself , instinctively relaxing whenever you rest against him after long days. even though he acts mildly annoyed whenever you interrupt him while he’s working , yet the second you lean down to kiss him he’s already pulling you closer by the waist without even looking up from the paperwork.

pre-s4!levi , who loves when you sit in his lap while he’s drinking tea late at night, one arm naturally wrapping around your waist like it belongs there. and i assure once that tea cup is finished he gets surprisingly handsy , which turn into makeout sessions, and despite how composed he usually is , his fingers are pressing into your hips or sliding beneath your shirt almost absentmindedly while kissing you deeper.

pre-s4!levi , who absolutely notices every tiny habit you have despite pretending not to. the way you stir tea, how you fidget when nervous, the exact expression you make before realising his naughty insinuations.

pre-s4!levi , who trusts you enough to let you patch him up after missions , even if he still complains the entire time about how much it stings , and how youre not doing it 'right'.

pre-s4!levi , who lets very few people see him vulnerable , but eventually starts allowing himself to visibly lean on you after difficult missions instead of carrying every burden alone.

pre-s4!levi , who kisses you differently depending on his mood. exhausted kisses against your forehead after difficult missions. lazy morning kisses before either of you gets up. desperate ones after almost losing you.

s4!levi , who became even quieter than before during the rumbling , carrying grief so deeply that sometimes the only indication of it was the way his expression seemed just a little more tired whenever he looked at the people he still had left. this lead levi to become far clingier after nearly losing everything , pulling you into deep exhausting kisses whenever he returned safely because surviving no longer felt guaranteed anymore.

s4!levi , who hated needing help after being injured , yet slowly stopped resisting when it came from you — letting you help him sit up , clean wounds , or steady him while walking even if it bruised his pride a little.

s4!levi , who had nightmares more frequently after everything fell apart , though he rarely talked about them directly. you’d only know because sometimes you’d wake up to him already sitting awake beside the window before sunrise.

s4!levi , who looked emotionally drained by the end of the rumbling , yet still softened immediately whenever you touched his face or rested your forehead against his. he also found himself holding onto you more tightly after losing so many comrades , grief making the thought of losing one more person unbearable.

— mikasa ackerman

blank period!mikasa

s4!mikasa ill get to it </3

— reiner braun

s1-3!reiner

s4!reiner ill get to it </3

a/n ; this may be ooc since i rushed it a bit srry lol and its been a while since i fully rewatched aot. later on i might add s1-3 or js more hcs for the rest but i aint so bothered/so tired AND ILL FINISH MIKASA AND REINERS IN A BIT my mind is js blank/tired. im gonna make another post for post!war hcs!!