#mae.writes

you've already closed your eyes again, blindly grabbing for the edge of the comforter, all the while feeling the way your movements are outlined in the dark. "you're being a creep." you tug it over your lips. then, beneath the fabric, you mutter, "watching me in my sleep..."

(you weren’t awake for it, but—

there was a slump in his shoulders when he got home that night. a long, long sigh stretched itself out as he tilted his head back, hassled by phantom cricks. he shut the door behind him. he can’t ever really get tired, not with his rct at work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 4 weeks a month... his mind was always fresh and new and functioning. but fuck.

sometimes that was the problem; one that could never get fixed. never should get fixed, and never ever would. his sigh stretches all the way from the front door to all the way down the hall.

he doesn’t know how many curses’ heads he sent flying today. he doesn’t really care. he couldn’t care less for it, or for the higher ups yabbering in his ears, or for the pile of paperwork on his desk. and gojo’s perfectly healthy, fresh and new and functioning, but his head throbs anyway and he thinks it’s time for him to send his own head flying. his eyes hurt even with the damn blackout blindfold.

but when he gets to the door to your room, he tugs it down. his eyes land on you, automatic like he’s fixed his eyes on you 24/7 the same way his rct worked around the clock. then he scans your surroundings, changes out of his clothes if only for your voice in his mind pissed off and scowling at the thought of day clothes anywhere near the bed (“they haven’t touched anything—”/“change.”), and slides into bed next to you. he doesn’t bother slipping under the covers. he doesn’t think he’s gonna sleep tonight. he doesn’t care for it.

he watches you, the ebb and flow of your cursed energy, all the little fluctuations that are so much more alive in his eyes now that he’s close to you, close enough to really see you. he watches how your chest expands and contracts, how you turn a little in your sleep, how you shift closer to the warmth of another body. to him.

—it was routine.)

his eyes haven't left you once.

you feel the weight, sixfold, blanketing over your half-asleep figure. it's not unlike the comforter you've settled under. maybe it’s just a little heavier, a little more secure.

"i prefer the term monitoring," he hummed. you know he could go on and on, talking about surveilling the night for potential threats and you never know what could happen (not like the unpredictability of danger is a concern for him but—you’re not him) and about curses in closets. he doesn't do that tonight.

"same thing," you mutter, words buried beneath the sheets.

"were you scared?"

no, he's not talking about curses in closets tonight.

“no,” you hum, eyes closed. you turn your back to him, getting comfortable. then, “never of you.”

it’s so quiet, stuffed beneath the blankets, caught in the dark of night—almost quiet enough for him to miss. but he can’t, not when it’s just you two in the space of this room. when it’s only you in front of him. he doesn’t answer. just breathes.

“…get some sleep, satoru.”

you feel it when he huffs—barely catch his amused little ‘hah.’

he slips under the covers anyway, snaking an arm around your waist.

then he’s tucking his face against the back of your neck, and you’d almost say it was eager if he wasn’t being so gentle. he breathes you in—actually touches you, feels you after however-long of just watching, of drowning himself in your essence in the way that came most naturally.

his infinity wraps around you, just another blanket to add on the list. it was a strange sensation—something like a thin layer of air pressed just between you and the rest of the world. it was like a film cast over you, or a sort of pressure. it was oddly cold the first time you’d felt it, that untouchable space between you and the rest of the world—except for satoru. and then, it wasn’t that cold at all.

actually, he’s quite warm right now.

like this, it was just you and satoru in his own little bubble. he presses his forehead to the back of your neck, feeling your pulse, counting each beat. he feels your back against his chest, how your breathing evens and steadies out, how your heart expands and contracts again when he shifts a little closer to you. he breathes in time with you—still, his heart’s beating just a fraction faster. he huffs. how unfair of you.

he closes his eyes.

just as he’d drawn the curtains back, the sun hid behind passing clouds, bathing the room in a faint, more muted grey. you tried not to laugh at the blank, dampened expression on his face as he tied back the drapes. he hadn’t really complained, but you could see it—narrowed eyes, a sigh before grabbing his broom. his agitation was communicated well enough. amused, you continued to watch him, the subtle shifts in his expression becoming your morning reading of the day.

you’ll read the lines, the slope of his nose, the curve of his lips. the nuance in the set of his brows, his eyelids and his lashes, the way his hair falls.

“don’t your bangs get in the way?”

“ah?”

you watch him go about his room from where you’re perched on his bed, watching the sway of his fringe as it covers his eye. clasping one hand over the other, he leans against his broom and gives a sidelong glance at the dark strands.

“oh,” he hums, pinching his bangs between his fingers before tucking them behind his ear. “well, i’ve gotten used to it.”

whatever cloud that was blocking the sun finally leaves, but suguru doubts that’s where the gleam in your eye comes from.

“wait—wait just a sec.” you rush off to your room.

when you come back, there are big, bright, and patterned hair clips in your palms.

you are met with a blank stare.

“come here.”

he’s planted in his place, opting to sway against his broom. ignoring your demand, he gives a genial smile and muses, “i’ve never seen you wear those before.”

it doesn’t deter you. “i haven’t. they were a gift from a friend years ago. now, come here.”

his bangs slip from behind his ear, and you take it as a sign. it’s fortune. it’s fate.

his smile strains.

he acquiesces.

propping the broom against the wall, he surrenders to your whims. you ignore (what he thinks is) his subtle sighing in front of you and indulge yourself in decorating his hair with childish accessories.

as if he’d ever really deny you.

(he’ll indulge in you even if it’s at his expense. he’d do anything for you, if you’d let him. he’d do anything for you, regardless.

his belief only cements itself further when he watches the way you light up while you tuck and clip his bangs back—you’re practically beaming at him with that smile you unwittingly grace him with, sun be damned.)

your hands are careful, the way your fingers brush and press at the silky strands of his hair. you murmur something about it being soft beneath your breath, and your eyes are nothing short of adoring—the way they always are. it was in your nature to hold things with care, to hold everything with love. interesting, he thinks, how that same care of yours, those cradling hands, could bring so much destruction.

he catches every second of your gaze sliding to his—the slight way they widen, the little breath that gets caught and the way your shoulders freeze just a fraction higher. the way you look away and blink and blink again and adjust a clip that doesn’t need adjusting.

(yes, he’d do anything for you. he knows it.)

you forget your blunder quickly enough. it’s easy when suguru’s right in front of you with pretty clips in his pretty hair.

“so cute,” you murmur. suguru manages a humbled smile, head cocked to the side.

“cute?”

“what’d you do to piss them off this time, hm?” he asks, jutting his chin, your hand retracting from his face. a scoff presses through your teeth. he tilts his head when you give up on that general area and take his hand instead, watching the way you grimace at the blood and dirt.

it reminds you of how one of the guys from earlier came at him with brass knuckles—left with broken knuckles.

idiots. fucking idiots.

you’re too preoccupied with the mental checklist of medical supplies lined up on your countertop to consider replying to him. you busy yourself with rinsing the rag and pumping some soap on it before lightly wetting it again, cleaning around the wounds on his hands. out of your sight, his face falls a little, left with his own thoughts.

“they could’ve seriously hurt you, you know,” seongje says, voice dropping a little flatter, a little less teasing. he states it like a fact and not a what-if. his tone grazes the single-minded state you’re in, enough to derail you for just a moment to spare a glance at him.

“you were there, weren’t you?” you reply, gaze dropping again as you fall back on track.

“are you stupid?” he murmurs, not missing a single beat. “you think i’m going to be there every time you need saving?”

“you said so yourself,” you murmur back, all too assured, all too focused on his hands, and he stares back at the top of your head like you’ve grown a second one. you continue dabbing at his skinned knuckles, eyes hardening when you come to bits of blood that are too dry. he really couldn’t care less about how precise you are about disinfecting and cleaning something this minor, to him, but you were nothing if not particular. the damp and soapy rag makes his wounds sting but he can’t even bother making a snarky, halfhearted remark about it—not when you’re standing there in front of him, knees knocking against his, tending to him like this. it doesn’t bother him when you press down a little harder to get rid of the stubborn clots, but you clench your teeth anyway.

tense brows press down on narrowed eyes and he finds himself mirroring you. seongje’s lip curls—not in contempt, though the expression was almost identical to the one he wore when some piece of shit got on his nerves.

that look could never be directed at you. he was just… confused.

he guesses he did say it, before. it was around three months ago, the first time you’d really witnessed the damage he could cause, beginning to end.

(some group of boys you’d never seen before were following you—they knew your name, knew your school, knew about how you’d been ‘hanging around seongje.’ you think it was some idiot trying to get one up on him for revenge. it’s a shame they obviously didn’t think it through enough. his glasses are loosely held at your side, folded in your palm.

you watch as he stands in the middle of a wreckage, tracing the rise and fall of his shoulders, his uneven breaths. the foggy street lights cast in front of him, showing nothing more than his silhouette. you can’t see his expression like this, head hung low over battered bodies, but your vision of it is clear all the same. wild eyes, a storm behind a smile.

he smiles like he’s off on a high from the metallic smell of blood that permeates the air surrounding him, smiles like a warning siren. danger, danger. you watch the shadow of his back as he lets out a ragged breath, and you catch the tail end of an even rougher laugh. his shoulders roll back, relaxing, a brief second spent to look at the darkened sky.

“if you ever come near her again,” he starts, languid as he drops his gaze, foot prodding at the side of a limp body. “i’ll know. you got it?”

it’s a silent declaration. you want to see me? fine. wherever she goes, i go.

he huffs, pulling a pack out his pocket. a cigarette slips out with a flick of his wrist, and he takes it between his lips as he turns to you, stepping over an arm, a leg. a pause, and the flash of his lighter illuminates his face, long enough for you to see faint specks of blood. he takes a drag.

“are you hungry?” he asks, wisps of smoke slipping between his words. he comes to you, palm open, and you silently hand him his glasses. he sighs and walks past you, glasses quietly clicking as they unfold. “i’m fucking hungry.”

you’re still staring at the wreck he’s left behind in his wake, a reminder of the whirlwind that waits inside of him. you think you count five bodies, knocked out on wet cement—one of them tried running away as soon as the first guy was out. you sigh. just another mistake to add onto their list of grievances:

1. coming near you, 2. laying a hand on you, 3. thinking they could beat geum seongje, and 4. trying to run away from geum seongje.

oh well. they’ve learned their lesson.

seongje turns around, eyes landing on you like there’s nothing else to look at. “are you coming?”)

times like this, he remembers you’re not exactly right in the head.

“you trust me that much?” seongje scoffs, recovering quickly enough, voice lifted by the almost mocking smile he wears.

“you trust me, don’t you?” you offhandedly return like a kick to his shin, reaching for petroleum jelly. the thin layer you spread across his knuckles is soothing, but he finds that his hands still burn hot under your touch.

he stares at you, letting out an amused breath. sometimes you shoot him down like a sedative and the chaos that runs rampant through his mind slows for half a second, the corners of his lips losing a fraction of their edge. (almost like he fades a little into something soft, maybe—but soft doesn’t seem to suit seongje.) his eyes flicker but despite that familiar glint, that brief dilation, the sharpness of his glare dulls when he’s directing it at you. (he manages to fit into it, anyway, that softness, or something close to it. as long as you’re the one holding him.)

he can’t look away—he never looked away from the face of someone challenging him—but your words hit him somewhere he didn’t feel like dissecting. he realizes he does trust you, more than he should. more than he thought he’d let himself. granted, you’ve gotten to know a lot about each other these past few months, but seongje still finds himself at a loss.

he hands a little bit of himself to you without realizing it every time he shows up at your door knowing you’ll patch him up, with every step he takes in front of you, knowing you’re right behind him.

he laughs, derisive, dry like there’s something biting at his throat.

“why should i trust anyone?” he responds instead, his gaze fixed on you. you suppose there are things he still can’t trust you with, but that’s okay. there are things you don’t tell him either. the two of you are still here, anyway, his hand in yours as you wrap gauze around and between his fingers with set practice.

you don’t say anything after that. you don’t have to. his lack of a real answer is an answer in itself.

maybe you also trust him more than you should. you’ve come to expect a degree of mutuality from him. but there’s one truth that hangs above the both of you like a promise scarred in your palms, held in bloody-knuckled fists: seongje was never going to leave you. he would never think to.

that’s enough trust for the two of you.