#gojuna

Satoru drifts close and slides a palm across the topography of Sukuna’s torso, thumb pressing the soft give at his side where muscle melts into warmth.

A smack, precise.

“Hands off the merchandise.”

Satoru grins.

“I’m assessing quality.”

“It’s premium. Buy or get out.”

He buys, a kiss pressed to Sukuna’s shoulder while the cashier pretends not to see and Sukuna pretends not to care. Outside, Sukuna slings all the bags in one hand and offers the other — Satoru takes it without a joke, he doesn’t need to say anything when the street is ordinary and alive and his boyfriend is, too.

In the morning, Sukuna trains in the courtyard until the air is a wet cloth — Satoru sits on the steps, chewing an ice pop and trying not to narrate what he’s seeing.

Sukuna moves like a man who owns his shape, no apology in his footfalls, his shadow is wide and steady on the flagstones, and when he drops into push-ups, his back becomes a stacked map — muscle ridges and river valleys.

He breathes easy, rhythm unbothered.

“Counting for you,” Satoru calls. “One. Two. Two again — no, I like this two better. Three if you flex your back for me.”

“Stop talking, or I’ll make you hold my ankles.”

“Promises, promises.”

Satoru wanders down and sits on the curve of Sukuna’s hip, because he can.

Sukuna doesn’t look up, just adjusts to the extra weight and keeps going.

There’s a kind of reverence in Satoru’s touch when he leans forward and presses his forehead between Sukuna’s shoulder blades — salt, warmth, the heartbeat of a man who decided his body would be a fortress and then built it brick by brick.

After, when Sukuna stands and rolls his shoulders, Satoru wraps arms around his middle from behind and squeezes. It’s a greedy hold. Sukuna’s hand finds Satoru’s wrist, not to push it away but to anchor it where it is.

“Happy?” Sukuna asks.

“I like my view,” Satoru says into his spine. “And the view likes breakfast.”

“Good,” Sukuna answers, already turning toward the kitchen. “I’m starving.”

Height jokes happen whether Satoru tells them or not.

People measure him with their eyes and then glance up, up, up to Satoru like that’s the natural order of things. Sukuna doesn’t bend to be more photographable. He doesn’t angle himself into a picture to make a pair that makes sense — the only compromise he makes is choosing shoes that feel like he can sprint in them.

It has nothing to do with height and everything to do with not wasting energy.

They pass a mirrored window, Satoru pauses, does that shameless little preen he always does, head tilted, sunglasses low. Sukuna catches their reflections, a stretch of white and a column of red, broad where Satoru is long, both of them built to take up space.

“Hey,” Satoru says, angling his chin onto Sukuna’s shoulder. “You see the couple there? The handsome one with the excellent shoulders and the other handsome one with the devastating face?”

Sukuna snorts.

“You saying my face is devastating?”

“I’m saying I needed the Six Eyes to survive that first smile you pretended wasn’t a smile.”

Sukuna’s mouth twitches.

He plants his feet like he’s drawn a line under himself.

“I’m exactly this tall,” he says, nodding to the glass. “And not a millimeter less.”

“Mm.” Satoru leans down and kisses the jut of Sukuna’s cheekbone.

“Works for me.”

It’s not defiance — it’s a declaration.

Sukuna doesn’t need to reach for anything to be enough.

In the kitchen he’s efficient.

Not delicate, not careless.

He doesn’t make a performance of it for Satoru’s benefit, though Satoru obviously watches like it’s television.

The cutting board thunks in a steady tempo, oil murmurs, the first sizzle hits and Satoru swears he sees Sukuna’s posture relax, like warmth is a language he never learned to read until now.

Satoru snakes a hand around Sukuna’s middle again, palm splayed over the softness that only he is permitted to appreciate out loud.

Another slap — the back of Sukuna’s wrist this time, quick and warning.

“Hot pan.”

“I know,” Satoru says unrepentant. “So are you.”

“Get plates.”

He does. He sets the table, then returns with chopsticks tucked behind his ear, a rash decision waiting to be teased.

Sukuna plates with surprising neatness and slides Satoru the heavier portion anyway.

“You need it,” Sukuna says, as if Satoru doesn’t inhale sugar by the metric ton.

Satoru taps his chopsticks against Sukuna’s.

“I love you when you feed me.”

“You love me when I threaten to throw you off the balcony.”

“Same vibe,” Satoru agrees, and means it — the care looks like violence from a distance.

Up close, it’s just care.

Shopping, of all things, exposes Satoru’s worst habits.

He drifts to extremes and then forces himself to be practical and then changes his mind.

Sukuna walks in with a list in his head and leaves with exactly the list plus the heavy thing Satoru forgot they needed because he was distracted by a neon toaster.

At the tailor, the measuring tape doesn’t lie, Satoru’s are numbers like radio towers, Sukuna’s are numbers like load-bearing beams.

The tailor fusses, eyebrows jumping at the distribution of mass on Sukuna’s frame.

Sukuna’s mouth curls, he presses his palm low to his belly, not to hide it but to claim it, and says to the tailor,

“Make it fit me, not a mannequin.”

When they step out with pick-up slips, Satoru is quiet, which is suspicious.

He waits until they’re half a block away to say, low,

“You looked so good in that shirt I almost paid extra to steal the sample.”

“You? Pay extra?” Sukuna scoffs.

“I know. True love.”

Satoru lifts his hand then, slow and visible, aiming for Sukuna’s side.

Sukuna lets him land it.

Lets him knead.

Lets him be ridiculous on a public sidewalk because the city is loud and life is short and if someone can call you beautiful with their fingers, maybe you let them.

The day is mean — wet wind, a sky the color of old paper.

They don’t fight any curses, they do laundry and eat too early and then eat again. Satoru sprawls on the couch like a cat that discovered central heating, Sukuna brings him a bowl of sliced oranges and wedges one into Satoru’s mouth when he starts to say something smug.

“Mm,” Satoru says, juice on his lip, eyes smiling. “So cruel.”

Sukuna settles his weight carefully beside him, the couch forms around him like it’s relieved. Satoru’s hand migrates immediately, confident as a homing pigeon, back to Sukuna’s stomach.

This time, no slap — Sukuna’s eyes slit closed, not asleep, just resting in a house that stays standing even when he isn’t holding it up.

“Do you ever think,” Satoru starts, then pauses, because thinking is dangerous and he knows it. “Never mind.”

Sukuna nudges his knee.

“Say it.”

“Just… I didn’t know I’d be good at this part. The being happy part.”

He pops another orange segment into his mouth, decides to tell the truth.

“You make it easy.”

Sukuna’s laugh tumbles out, low and genuine.

“I’m the definition of not easy.”

“Exactly,” Satoru says, pleased. “The most difficult man alive. And still… easy, here.”

He taps the spot under his ear, where the tension usually lives.

“That’s your fault.”

Sukuna’s hand comes over Satoru’s, covering it, warmer, heavier.

“Eat your oranges,” he says, like an order.

Satoru obeys because he likes when Sukuna tells him what to do in small, stupid ways that mean everything.

They spar in the evening because that’s church for them.

A half-broken shrine, cicadas screaming, light like molten honey slipping between leaves.

They move until the day sweats out of them, Satoru’s grin gets feral, Sukuna’s patience gets thinner and sharper and somehow kinder.

No one else sees it but Satoru knows it’s there — the way Sukuna pulls him back from the edge even as he pushes him toward it.

When Satoru fakes left and actually goes nowhere, Sukuna lunges anyway, catches Satoru around the waist and lifts with embarrassing ease.

Satoru whoops, upside down for a breath, and then lands on his feet because of course he does.

“Show-off,” Sukuna mutters.

“Pot, meet kettle,” Satoru sings, and because he can’t help himself, he squeezes Sukuna’s side again on the reset.

This time he gets a flat palm to the forehead.

“Enough,” Sukuna says. “You’re distracting yourself.”

“From your beauty? Impossible.”

“From not getting your teeth knocked in.”

Satoru blows him a kiss, then raises his guard.

The next exchange is cleaner, less hungry.

They end with Satoru’s back to the shrine and Sukuna’s chest flushed and gleaming, Satoru leans forward and puts his mouth at the base of Sukuna’s throat and just breathes, it’s almost a bow.

Sukuna’s chin comes down the tiniest bit, not to hide — never — but to meet him where he is.

“Dinner?” Satoru asks.

“Already marinating,” Sukuna answers, like the day planned itself and he simply agreed.

There’s a doorway in their apartment with a mesh of pencil marks.

Satoru sometimes adds one, a fake, just to see if Sukuna notices.

He always does.

Once, Satoru caught him adding a mark for himself — almost imperceptible, a whisper of graphite at the exact same height as last time.

“You checking if you grew?” Satoru teased.

“Checking if I’m still me,” Sukuna said, without a smile, and then turned the pencil and drew another line in the opposite direction, the width of his palm.

“And if I got wider from last month’s festival.”

Satoru crowds him, mouth warm with affection.

“You did,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss into the side of Sukuna’s neck. “And I love it.”

A beat.

Sukuna’s breath leaves him in something like a quiet.

“Good,” he says, softly enough that the hallway takes it and keeps it. “Me too.”

On a night when the power blinks out, Satoru lights a candle with a flick like a party trick. Sukuna rolls his eyes and brings blankets.

They end up on the floor by the balcony door with the city muted and somehow closer.

Satoru’s hand drifts, as it always does, smoothing over the curve of Sukuna’s abdomen, tracing the long scar that slants like a comet across it.

He hums. He kneads. He is shamelessly content.

Sukuna catches his wrist, for a second Satoru braces for the slap, but there isn’t one.

Sukuna pulls Satoru’s hand up instead and presses it to his mouth — not a kiss — Sukuna is too himself for tenderness to look like anyone else’s.

It’s a compression, a seal, a thank-you that refuses to be soft.

“Hey,” Satoru says into the hush, like the word just wants to be near Sukuna’s name.

“Hey,” Sukuna returns, as if he’s answering to it.

Satoru rests his cheek where his hand was a moment ago and listens.

The sound is ordinary and enormous, breath moving in a body that has survived everything, the small creak of floorboards, the city’s unimportant sirens, a heart that sounds like work well done.

He smiles, eyes closed.

There are a thousand versions of both of them in the world’s mouths — monster, savior, king, calamity.

Here is the version Satoru will fight to keep.

Here is the man who eats well and trains hard and never bows to the measuring tape.

Here is the man Satoru cannot pass without touching, as if to remind the day that he exists.

Sukuna shifts under him — no flinch, no slap, just a steadying palm between Satoru’s shoulder blades. It says, more than anything, that he’s not going anywhere.

It says he is exactly this tall, exactly this broad, exactly this loved.

“Sleep,” Sukuna tells him.

“Tyrant,” Satoru murmurs, already obeying. “And perfect.”

“Annoying,” Sukuna corrects, and lets the candle burn all the way down.

@ossifrageyes requested and I just delivered.