#toji angst

Megumi looked between them, already hearing the fault line.

Toji wiped his hands on the dishcloth and hung it over the oven handle. “Put the pan down.”

Megumi set it on the counter.

Tsumiki leaned back with her arms folded, one leg tucked under her. She had her mother’s mouth when she was holding herself in, and her temper too.

Megumi asked again. “Was it the university?”

“No.”

“Money?”

A brief laugh left Toji. “Your mother stopped plenty of things over principles. It was never about just the money.”

That pulled the corner of Megumi’s mouth.

On the fridge, under a university bookstore magnet, her faculty schedule hung with committee meetings circled and narrow notes running up one side. She had left before dawn that morning with one heel in her hand, her bag half open, muttering about first-year essays and a dean who thought poetry could be merged into media studies and sold back to parents as modern communication skills.

There had been a time when half the papers in this kitchen had been hers: drafts, proofs, galley copies, thin little journals with editors’ names on the backs, and matte covers. She used to write at this table after both children slept. Megumi had grown up with her pages under his palms.

At five, he had carried one of her paperbacks around upside down because it had his name in the dedication.

At six, he had demanded the dinosaur poem again, then the Yu-Gi-Oh! one, then the ridiculous Minecraft one she had written after he spent three days trying to build a house.

She had made his blocky little world sound noble. “She wrote because she meant it.”

Megumi frowned. “That doesn’t answer it.”

“It does if you let it.”

Tsumiki pushed her chair back an inch. “People lifted her work.”

Toji’s eyes stayed on the dishcloth.

She kept going. “They took the shape, cleaned it up, and sold easier-to-digest versions.”

Megumi frowned. “They stole it?”

“Close enough,” Toji sighed.

“To anyone with eyes,” Tsumiki snapped.

“Tsumiki.”

“What do you want me to call it? Borrowing? Influence? Market conversion?”

Megumi looked at Toji again. “She told them to stop?”

“A couple of times.”

“And?”

“And a few people pretended they got there on their own.”

Tsumiki laughed once, ugly and brief. “Same staircase, same broken lightbulb, same damn family photo in the hall.”

Toji stayed quiet.

Megumi’s face had gone hard in the way it did when wrong simplified itself inside him. At his age, he still believed a crime should have a visible owner and a visible consequence. Part of Toji hoped he would keep that. Another part knew better.

“They got bigger from it,” Tsumiki continued, head tipping back against the wall. “Because they cut out the money trouble, the class stuff, the parts where people had to clean up actual messes. They left the pretty parts in and made it easier to clap for.”

Toji should have stopped her sooner.

But he was tired of pretending nothing had changed.

“And Mom just let that happen?”

The lane light reached the table legs.

“She fought where she could.”

“That means nothing.”

“It means some damage leaves scars; some you just live with and never have proof to show for.”

Megumi’s fingers moved over the edge of the speech sheet, fixing and flattening the same corner. “She was good.”

“Yeah.”

A dog barked twice beyond the wall, and Tsumiki looked at the cupboard where her mother kept tea, then away from it.

Toji rose and opened the lower cabinet of the sideboard.

The books were still there.

He kept them in two neat rows because she wouldn’t. She shelved everyone else’s work carefully and treated her own books like spare copies from the printer. First editions from small presses. One anthology with a ribbon still hanging out of it. Three slim volumes from before he met her.

And the fourth book.

The one he had bought the day before the launch, then read at the kitchen table until two in the morning with cold tea at his elbow and toddler Megumi breathing softly down the hall.

He pulled it out.

The spine was creased in two places. His old receipt still sat between pages forty-three and forty-four.

Megumi straightened. “I remember this one.”

“You chewed the corner off when you were six.”

“It was once, Dad."

“You were concentrating really hard.”

Megumi’s mouth twitched, unwilling.

Toji set the book between them and opened it to the receipt.

“When your mother first met me,” he said, “I had maybe six proper sentences in me.”

Tsumiki smiled despite herself. “That many?”

Toji’s lips twitched, but he continued.

“Publishing was different in the 2000s from what it is now. She had a poem in the paper one Sunday. Someone left the arts section in the staff room. I read it over a stale bagel because the break was ten minutes, and I was pretending that it counted as lunch.”

He paused.

“By the time I finished, I was sitting down, and I didn’t remember deciding to. So I folded the page into my planner and went back to teaching.”

Megumi watched him with full attention.

Toji rarely gave them whole stories, so they knew not to interrupt when he did.

“Your birth mother had been gone for a few years,” he said, not looking at Megumi. “You were still waking up at night and coming into my room with your blanket dragging behind you. I was sleeping badly, eating worse, doing a decent impression of someone who had things handled.”

He tapped the book once.

“Then I bought this because the poem annoyed me.”

Megumi looked scandalized. “Annoyed you?”

“It knew too much about kitchens.”

Tsumiki laughed.

“I read half the book after you went to sleep. The rest, I carried around for lunches and free periods. A week later, she was doing a book launch near the station, and I wanted more of her books signed because she was funny in a morbid way. So I put you in a purple sweater, bribed you with orange juice, and took the train.”

Megumi’s mouth softened.

He remembered it in pieces: the table stacked with books, the woman in the black dress kneeling to ask if he wanted the dragonfly bookmark or the plain one, and his father standing too straight beside him with a paperback in one hand and the boy’s mitten in the other.

“She signed my sticker book first,” Megumi recalled quietly.

“She did.”

Tsumiki reached for the sticker book tucked next to the old diaries and flipped through it. Their mother’s old handwriting tilted across it in black ink.

For Megumi, who loves dragonflies.

He remembered that too.

“She thought you were handsome,” Tsumiki told Toji.

“I doubt that.”

“She told Aunt Uro that she thought you looked like you had wandered into the wrong century and should have been a lumberjack in the 1800s. Basically gave her Arthur Morgan vibes in the 2000s."

Megumi let out a surprised half-laugh.

Toji looked down at the page.

He could hear her too clearly all at once.

At the signing table, she had asked his name. He’d told her.

Then, she had asked whether he wanted the inscription addressed to him or his son for his own copy.

Megumi had been leaning against his leg by then, glassy-eyed with boredom and sleep.

He had said, “Both, if you don’t mind.”

She had glanced up at him then.

Later, when he tried to explain why he liked her first book and did a poor job of it, he told her one poem had made a room in his house easier to stand in after Megumi’s mother died.

That was the most he’d managed without feeling like crawling out of his skin.

She had not smiled in that soft, pitying way people did when men reached for language and came up short. She only nodded, sincere, like being spoken to as a person, and she had answered him the same way without comfort or pity.

Just words that left him less alone with the grieving.

That night, he went home and finished the book in two hours.

A week later, he found her Twitter because the handle was printed on the back flap, followed her mainly to keep up with her future publications.

She used to post like someone who had accepted the world was rotten but still found parts of it funny. Some joke about grief, grocery store flowers, and the particular violence of university coffee made him laugh once into his hand in the staff room, which was embarrassing enough that he put his phone away for the rest of lunch.

A month later, she reblogged a post about a summer seminar at the university where she taught.

He thought nothing of it until an email arrived from the department coordinator the next morning, polite and plain, asking whether he wanted the registration form.

Toji stared at it for the whole one-hour lunch break.

Because in what world??

Then he wrote back.

Hello,

Thank you for sending the form.

I teach mathematics to fourteen-year-olds for a living, so I’m not sure I have any business sitting in a poetry room. Most of my day is spent explaining fractions to boys who don’t believe in deodorant and arguing with children who think “show your work” is a reason for a panic attack.

I read her book because it was good, and that is probably the extent of my qualification.

Regards,

Zen’in Toji 

The reply came three days later during Megumi’s pizza night, not from the coordinator.

From her.

Mr. Zen’in,

You read like someone who would keep the exits clear during a fire and still remember what color the burning curtains were.

That is useful in a poetry room. Slightly concerning in a civilian world, but useful.

You do not have to write anything if that sounds unbearable. Just come to listen, drink bad coffee, judge us silently, and learn what language is capable of when it is not being used to fill forms, argue with parents, or make condolences sound formal.

If you want the form, I’ll ask the coordinator to send it again.

He read that twice.

Then he printed the registration form before he could talk himself out of it.

During one of his mundane classes, a boy in the back of his classroom was trying to stab an eraser with a compass. Another one had written 80085 on his calculator and was wheezing into his sleeve.

Toji looked at the form again.

Then he filled it out before the bell rang.

“So you went?” Megumi asked.

“I went.”

He was bad at it.

For twelve days, he sat in a lecture room with old desks, a noisy fan, and people who brought special pens to write about suffering. He wrote ugly sentences, then crossed most of them out, then drank burnt coffee from the vending machine and learned that poets could argue for forty minutes over where to put a comma, which made thirteen-year-olds look reasonable.

“Your mother was there most days. Never hovered or tried to save me. Just sitting two rows ahead with ink on her fingers and Tsumiki’s hair tie around her wrist.”

Tsumiki tried to hide a smile.

On the fourth day, she found him revising the same line for the sixth time.

She looked at the page, then at him.

“Mr. Zen’in,” she said, “I promise no one is grading your masculinity.”

He had found her annoying for about five whole minutes.

Then he fixed the line.

By the end of the seminar, Megumi knew her as the lady who kept emergency dino cookies in her bag. Tsumiki knew Toji as the quiet man from her mother’s poetry thing who did not talk to children like they were stupid.

By autumn, Megumi and Tsumiki were fighting over crayons in her office while she met students.

By winter, dinner for two adults had become dinner for four if the timing worked out and sometimes even when it didn’t.

And by the next winter, Toji was signing school forms with a name that no longer belonged to the Zenin family.

Megumi looked at the book again. “You married her because of the poems?”

“I married her because she wrote about death like someone who’d actually had to clean up after it,” Toji answered. “No moonlight nonsense the way they soften the pain. It was incense smoke in your shirt as the relatives ate rice in the next room while counting condolence money at the table. Convenience-store rice balls because nobody had the energy to cook. A kid asleep in the corner because crying for his dead mother wore him out.”

Megumi’s hand tightened on the book.

Tsumiki looked out of the window. “And then people made her work ‘corporate friendly.’”

He looked at her.

This time, he didn’t correct her.

Megumi stared at the page. “So she quit because they ruined it.”

“She stopped publishing,” Toji said. “She stopped putting work out where strangers could sand it down and call the softer version theirs.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“It isn’t.”

Megumi’s head came up.

Toji nodded toward the fridge, the marked speech, the stack of essays she had brought home to grade, and the old notebook visible through the half-open drawer by the phone.

“She writes on grocery lists, in margins, on envelopes, in your lunchbox notes when she thinks you’re having a bad week, in birthday cards that make your sister cry and pretend it’s allergies, and in feedback on student work. She wrote a whole lullaby because you spent a month building that block dinosaur enclosure and I accidentally broke it.”

Tsumiki covered her face with her hand, laughing into it.

Megumi looked offended by the memory. “That was good.”

“It was excellent,” Tsumiki hummed.

“It ended with the T. rex forgiving him because Mom said even dinosaurs had to be bigger people than dad.”

“That took skill.”

The laughter left quietly. Megumi looked down at the green notes on his speech again. “She should still publish books.”

Toji leaned back. “Maybe.”

“That sounds stupid.”

No one answered.

The front door opened.

All three heads turned.

Her footsteps came down the hall with the tired drag of late faculty hours. Keys touched the bowl by the entrance, her bag hit the bench, and then she appeared in the kitchen doorway with loose hair, glasses still on, and a stack of stapled papers clamped under one arm.

She took in the open book, the scholarship papers, the three faces turned toward her, and the particular silence of people who had been talking about her.

“What happened,” she asked slowly, “and if this is about the leftovers—"

Megumi moved first.

He grabbed one of the old books from the table and crossed the kitchen before anyone else spoke. He held it out with both hands respectfully, stiff and embarrassed.

“I still like the dinosaur one,” he explained. “And the Minecraft one. And you fixed my speech better than dad could have. That’s all.”

She looked at the book, then at him.

For a second, Toji saw the old caution pass over her face while Megumi stood there with his shoulders too square, his hair falling into his face, and her whole face changed.

“Oh, baby.”

Megumi’s eyes widened. “What?”

She put her papers down on the counter and took the book from him carefully, but her other hand was already reaching for his sleeve.

“Did I forget Mother’s Day?” she asked, tugging him closer.

“It’s not—”

“Come here.”

“I’m standing right here.”

She pulled him down by the back of his hoodie.

Megumi went rigid the second she hugged him.

He was taller than her now, all long bones and awkward, his arms hovering uselessly at his sides while she wrapped one arm around his middle and held the book against his back with the other hand. She pressed her cheek to his chest.

Toji watched Megumi’s face go through several emergencies at once.

Tsumiki covered her mouth.

“Don’t laugh,” Megumi said, staring at the ceiling.

“I am not laughing,” Tsumiki shot back, already laughing.

His mother squeezed him once, firm and delighted. “You have gotten so sweet buba.”

“I’m not being sweet.”

“You’re being awful,” Tsumiki said, cringing.

Megumi’s hand twitched, then landed lightly on their mother’s shoulder.

Toji’s wife went still for half a breath.

Then she spared him the embarrassment and patted his back twice as if this happened every day. “I am glad you still like the dinosaur one.”

Megumi’s face changed at once. “He broke the enclosure.”

Toji leaned back. “It was one block.”

“It was the load-bearing block.”

“You had too many triceratops in one place. The zoning was bad.”

“You never said that before.”

“I was being generous.”

Megumi looked wounded. “You were wrong.”

“That too.”

The room loosened around them.

Toji’s wife finally let Megumi go, although her hand stayed at his elbow for another second. He stepped back and busied himself with a nick in the table edge.

She looked down at the book again, thumb moving over the worn cover.

The smile took effort.

“Wash up,” she told Megumi, voice steady again. “Then let’s eat.”

Megumi brightened so fast Toji had to look away. He turned toward the sink at once, bumping his hip against the chair on the way.

She shifted the book against her chest and turned to her husband.

Across the kitchen, Toji caught the tired shine in her eyes. She was pretending it had nothing to do with the boy washing his hands too fast at the sink.

He stood and took her bag. “You ate?”

“A biscuit from my desk that may have been older than Tsumiki.”

“Lunch’s still warm.”

“Bless you.”

“It’s miso.”

“It’s hot, and I didn’t make it. Bless you.”

Toji huffed a laugh, set her bag on the chair, and reached for the pot.

Behind him, water ran at the sink. Megumi wiped his hands with intense focus, still red at the ears. Tsumiki’s laptop keys picked up again. Toji's wife opened the book to the dedication and stood there, reading her own old blue ink.

Toji stirred the miso, lowered the flame, and gave her the privacy she needed.

Then Megumi cleared his throat from the sink.

“You still have to listen to the speech,” he said, too quickly. “Since you said you would.”

She looked up, and this time the smile reached properly.

“Of course,” she said. “Bring it here, baby.”

Megumi made a face at the word, but brought the speech.

---

By the next morning, Hajime called while she was packing store-bought sandwiches into a cooler bag.

She had the phone trapped between her shoulder and ear, one hand writing on the lid of a plastic container because Tsumiki did not eat tomato and Megumi claimed he did not care about capsicum but picked it out every time.

“No, Kashi, I heard you,” she grumbled. “The practice match is today. You told Tsumiki, not me. Yes, there is a difference because Tsumiki tells me things based on whether she thinks I will make her bring sunscreen.”

Toji stood by the table, drinking coffee from the chipped mug Megumi had bought him on a school trip. It said World’s Okayest Dad in English. He claimed he hated it but used it every morning.

From the hallway, Tsumiki yelled, “I don’t burn!”

“You burn,” Toji’s wife called back.

Tsumiki appeared with her kit bag over one shoulder, hair tied back, shin guards sticking out of the side pocket. “That was one time.”

“You cried because the convenience store stopped selling the pudding you liked.”

“I was looking forward to it.”

Megumi came in behind her, still buttoning his shirt, face flat with the effort of being awake before noon on a Saturday. “It was three puddings.”

Tsumiki pointed at him. “Scholarship boys are banned from speaking.”

Toji’s wife covered the phone and looked at Toji. “Kashimo says he’ll meet us at the field with wife number…”

“Don’t,” Tsumiki said.

“Current,” his wife corrected pleasantly. “His current wife.”

Toji snorted into his coffee.

Kashimo was not a bad man, which made the arrangement more annoying. He was loud, competitive, late to most things, generous at strange times, and hard to speak to for longer than four minutes. Kashimo and Toji’s wife had married too young and divorced with more exhaustion than hatred. Now they spoke with the careful politeness of people who knew which topics could wreck a day.

Tsumiki loved him, so that counted.

Tsumiki loved Toji too, though she showed it mostly by stealing his fries and insulting his goalkeeping skills.

They took the bikes because the field was close enough, and Tsumiki said arriving by car made her feel ten. Toji rode ahead with Megumi behind him. His wife followed on the smaller bike with Tsumiki, who spent the first five minutes giving directions nobody needed.

The field was already crowded when they arrived.

Parents clustered under umbrellas and patchy shade. Players in matching kits ran drills near the touchline. Someone had brought a cooler full of sports drinks. Someone else had brought a younger sibling crying because his ice pop had cracked in half.

Kashimo was not there.

His text arrived five minutes before kickoff.

Running late. Traffic. Tell Tsumiki best of luck.

Toji’s wife read it, looked up at the sky, and said, “May all divorced men who say traffic face one parking attendant they can’t bribe.”

Tsumiki sighed, bending over with her hands on her knees.

Then the whistle blew, and Toji became unbearable. “Left side is open.”

“Tsumiki, stop letting number eleven cross.”

“Good. Again.”

“Ref, if that was clean, I’m a dentist.”

Toji’s wife sat under a tree with Megumi, passing him an egg sandwich from the cooler. “Your father is going to be asked to leave.”

“He’ll say the other team started it.”

On the field, Tsumiki stole the ball from a taller girl, cut left, and sent it clean past the keeper.

For half a second, there was only the bright, stupid shock of it.

Then Toji stood with both arms in the air, proud enough for three benches to cover their ears.

“That’s my kid,” he said. “I taught her that.”

Tsumiki turned away from him, embarrassed and glowing.

Their mother clapped with both hands over her head. Megumi, who had been pretending to eat with dignity, smiled into his sandwich.

“She’s going to yell at him,” he said.

“She enjoys it.”

Megumi considered that, then took another bite.

Kashimo arrived near the end with his current wife, a pretty woman in sunglasses who carried bottled drinks and waved at Tsumiki with determined cheer. Kashimo apologized too loudly, blamed traffic, blamed roadwork, blamed a cyclist, and then cheered violently when Tsumiki assisted in the final goal, so Toji took it as a personal challenge.

After the match, Tsumiki came off the field flushed and sweaty, grinning.

Her girlfriend Hana followed two steps behind, holding Tsumiki’s water bottle and bracing herself for Toji Fushiguro.

Toji folded his arms. “So.”

Tsumiki narrowed her eyes. “No.”

Hana straightened. “Hello, sir.”

“Sir?” Tsumiki echoed, appalled. “You don’t need to do that.”

Toji gave Hana the same flat stare he used on repairmen. “What are your intentions with our daughter?”

"Toji," his wife tried.

“What? I’m asking.”

Tsumiki put both hands over her face. “I can't wait to get into college to get away from you.”

Hana turned red to the tips of her ears. “I like her very much.”

“That’s not an intention.”

“Toji,” his wife warned, but she was laughing now.

Kashimo watched this with unholy glee.

Megumi looked over from the shade, deadpan. “Ask if she can defend a lead in the last ten minutes.”

Toji pointed at him. “Good question.”

Tsumiki threw her towel at Megumi’s head.

Megumi ducked.

Toji’s wife caught it one-handed, passed Megumi the second half of his sandwich, and went back to watching the argument. Soccer, interrogation, thrown towels, egg salad on white bread, Kashimo arguing with Toji about the ref, Tsumiki trying not to smile too hard while Hana stood close enough for their shoulders to touch.

Megumi leaned back against the tree trunk.

His mother looked at him. “You have mayonnaise on your sleeve.”

He checked. “No, I don’t.”

“Made you look."

He ate the last bite instead of answering.

For a while, they watched Tsumiki laugh at something Hana said. Kashimo was taking pictures now, bossing everyone into frame. Toji stood beside Tsumiki with one hand on her head, ruining her hair on purpose while she yelled at him to stop. Kashimo’s wife adjusted Tsumiki’s collar for the photo, gentle and careful, and Tsumiki let her.

Toji’s wife’s smile softened.

Megumi saw it.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That means something.”

She looked down at the sandwich wrapper in her lap and folded one corner over with her thumb. “I was thinking I should buy more of these next time. You ate two.”

Megumi gave her a flat look.

She held out for about three seconds.

Then she sighed. “I was thinking you were going to leave sooner than I expected.”

Megumi looked away.

Across the field, Toji was now interrogating Hana about whether she knew how to change a tire. Tsumiki was threatening to disown him in front of both her biological father and the woman currently married to him.

“I haven’t decided yet,” Megumi said.

“The scholarship papers say otherwise.”

“I can still say no.”

“You can,” she said.

He looked at her then, suspicious of how easily she had said it.

She smiled a little. “I am your mother, not your monk.”

He went still.

She had not made a performance of the words. She had not asked for it, corrected him into it, or tried to climb into the place his first mother had left behind. She had stayed long enough that the house learned her footsteps. His lunchbox notes had her handwriting. His fever memories had her cool hand in them, too.

Megumi picked at the sandwich wrapper. “You think I should go?”

“I think you should have the kind of life where you get to choose hard things because you want them, not because the house needs rescuing.”

His mouth thinned.

She bumped his knee with hers. “And I think I am allowed to be proud and miserable about it at the same time.”

“That sounds inconvenient.”

“It is. Motherhood is mostly snacks and inconvenient emotions.”

Megumi looked back at the field. Tsumiki had finally escaped Toji and was taking a picture with Hana, both of them laughing too much to pose properly.

“I’ll come home,” he said.

His mother turned toward him.

He kept his eyes on the field. “Not every weekend. But some.”

She smiled and nodded. “I’d love nothing more.”

Then, she reached into the cooler bag and pulled out the pudding Tsumiki had sworn she was over.

“Eat,” she said, setting it in his hand. “Your father will pretend he does not miss you and become impossible to live with.”

Megumi looked down at the pudding. “This is Tsumiki’s.”

“I bought multiple.”

He huffed, almost a laugh.

A whistle blew from another field. Kashimo shouted something triumphant and wrong. Toji told him to stop giving tactical advice to children. Tsumiki’s towel flew again and hit Kashimo in the shoulder this time.

Under the tree, Megumi opened the pudding and handed her the first spoonful without looking at her.

She accepted it the same way, without making it bigger than he could stand.

Across the grass, Toji glanced over and caught them sharing it. Toji's wife raised the spoon in his direction.

Toji looked at Megumi, then at her, then back at Kashimo and Hana and the whole loud, tangled mess of them.

He said nothing, only stood a little easier in the sun.

---

A night ago, the house had been noisy—Tsumiki laughing too hard over Hana’s messages as Megumi pretended he hated being fussed over while eating half the food you packed for him before the trip. Toji carrying boxes with one hand and insulting campus parking under his breath.

You hated how quiet the house was now.

A towel slipped off the pile and hit the floor.

You bent to pick it up, and a hand closed around your wrist before you touched it.

Toji stood behind you in his work shirt, collar open and raised, hair damp from the shower. He smelled of soap and his morning coffee, which meant he was getting ready to leave for work.

“You were staring again.”

You tried to pull your wrist back.

He didn’t let you.

“They’re fine,” you said.

“Didn’t ask that.”

Your throat worked. “I’m fine too.”

His mouth twitched with no belief.

The sadness sat low in your chest—you had wanted them to go, to build lives so wide they came home with stories you had to Google. You wanted Megumi to argue with professors and Tsumiki to stay out late, eat bad cafeteria food, fall asleep on Hana’s shoulder, win things, lose things, and grow.

You wanted all of that.

But your arms still ached when you passed their rooms.

Toji took the laundry basket from you and set it on the floor. His hand moved to your waist, turning you until your back touched the hallway wall.

“Toji.”

“Mm.”

“I had plans.”

“To fold towels?”

“Very important plans.”

His knee nudged between yours. “So sad.”

You looked up at him, ready to be annoyed, and lost the thought at his stupidly handsome face.

He had been watching the rooms too. It was there in the hard line of his mouth, the old ache he treated as a private injury. He had done this once before with a smaller child and a dead woman’s empty side of the bed. Then he had done it again with you and two teenagers who stopped needing rides, stopped needing lunch packed, stopped yelling for a missing sock.

He dipped his head and kissed you.

It started slow.

His mouth came down hard, warm and rough lips slotting over yours, heavy hands dropping to your hips to wrench you flush against him.

You made a small sound and grabbed his shirt.

He took the sound, tongue sliding in, body crowding you until the wall met your shoulder blades and his thigh pressed high between yours.

Your body reacted before your mind caught up, hips grinding against him.

Toji felt it.

His hand slid down, gripped your thigh, and hitched it over his hip. “That fast?”

“Shut up.” Your arms circled his broad shoulders.

He smiled against your mouth. “Miss having a full house, wife?”

Your breath caught.

He kissed your jaw, then the side of your neck, teeth catching the skin there until your toes curled. His palm moved under your shirt and spread over your stomach.

“Don’t.”

His voice dropped. “Don’t what?”

“Look at me that way.”

His thumb dragged under the waistband of your leggings. “What way?”

Your throat made a low sound.

He pulled back just far enough to see your face. His attention dropped to your mouth, then to your hand pressed over his, and stayed there until your fingers curled.

“Say it.”

You shook your head.

His hand moved lower—under the cotton underwear. Fingers sliding through you, making your knees soften.

“Toji.”

“You’re so wet.”

Your cunt clenched around nothing.

His jaw worked.

Your face burned—you tried to look away, and he caught your chin between his fingers, making you face him while his other hand kept stroking you open.

“Use your words.”

You wanted him so badly your hips moved against his hand.

“I miss them,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“And I hate this hallway.”

“I know.”

“And I hate cooking for two.”

His fingers pressed harder over your clit.

Your mouth fell open.

He watched it happen with that ruined little focus that made him look half-starved.

“Keep going.”

Your nails dug into his forearm. “I hate how clean the table is, the extra food. I hate—”

He pushed his fingers inside you.

Your head hit the wall.

“Say what you really want.”

Your body clenched hard around him. The words came out broken. “I want a baby.”

For a second, Toji forgot how to breathe.

Then his mouth crashed into yours.

It turned rough at once.

His fingers fucked into you while his tongue pushed past yours, and you grabbed his shirt with both hands, dragging him closer, needing his weight, his heat, the brutal comfort of being handled.

He pulled his fingers away, and the loss made your hips twitch. 

“Say it again. Without moaning.”

You stared at his wet hand, at the shine of you on his skin, and your voice came out wrecked.

“I want your baby.”

Toji groaned and pushed his fingers into your mouth.

You sucked them clean, tongue sliding between them, tasting yourself off his skin while his eyes stayed fixed on your mouth. It got worse the longer you looked up at him.

You pulled off with a wet pop.

He didn’t give you room to breathe.

“You don’t have to go to work?” you muttered, still dazed enough to ask something that stupid.

Toji was already fishing his phone from his pocket.

He held up one finger, called someone, and said, “Can’t come in. Use someone else.”

A pause.

“No, it’s not negotiable.”

He hung up and looked at you.

“Bedroom.”

You let out a breathless chuckle.

“Stop laughing.”

He caught you at the doorway, spun you around, and bent you over the foot of the bed before you could get your balance.

Your hands hit the blanket.

Behind you, his belt came loose with a rough metallic clink.

Your leggings were dragged down hard enough to catch at your knees.

“Toji—”

His hand cracked across your ass, making your hips buck.

“Don’t start acting shy now.”

“I’m trying to get my pants off.”

“You’re slow.”

He pushed your underwear aside and dragged the head of his cock through you.

The words died.

He was already hard, thick, and already leaking at the tip. Toji slid against your cunt in lazy strokes that made you push back.

He laughed. “Look at you.”

“Put it in.”

“Ask nicely.”

You gripped the blanket until your knuckles hurt. “Fuck me.”

He slapped your ass again, hand rubbing the sore spot, then leaned over your back, chest pressing you into the bed. His mouth brushed your ear.

“Ask for what you really want.”

Your breath shook.

“I want you to breed me.”

He finally pushed in.

The stretch punched the air out of you.

Your mouth opened on a broken cry, body pulled tight around him.

He stayed buried, hips flush to yours, breathing hard against your neck while your cunt struggled to take him.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “You’re so hot, baby. Feel so fucking good.”

You pushed back, greedy and shaking.

He caught your hips and started fucking into you.

Toji was hard and deep with it—each thrust drove you into the bed, sheets bunching under your fingers. He kept you pinned exactly where he wanted you, one hand on your hip, the other sliding under you to cup your stomach.

“Gonna fill this house again,” he said, voice raw. “You want that?”

“Y-yes.”

“Want me doing school runs with a baby seat in the back?”

Your cunt squeezed him so hard he cursed.

“Oh, you want it bad, huh?”

“Yes, fuck, yes.”

He drove in harder, making the bedframe hit the wall.

Your face pressed into the blanket, and you bit down on it to muffle the sound crawling out of you.

Toji’s hand slid up to your throat, holding you there rather than squeezing, pulling you upright against him. Your back met his chest. His cock rammed through deep, hips driving up into you from behind, each stroke squelching now, rougher, angled so he hit the spot that made your legs go weak.

You reached back, grabbing at his hair. “I want another kid with you, Toji.”

His teeth sank into your shoulder through your shirt. One of his hands slid down between your legs and found your clit, rubbing in hard, messy strokes that matched his hips.

“Mine?”

You sobbed. “Yours.”

“Mine to put in you?”

“Yes.”

“Mine to keep you full?”

Your head dropped back against his shoulder. “Yes, yes, please.”

Toji groaned into your neck.

He pushed you down again, manhandling you higher onto the mattress.

Your leggings dragged off your knees.

He spread your thighs wider with his own and fucked you into the bed until every thought went stupid. The room filled with the bed hitting the wall, his breathing, your choked little noises, the wet sound of him driving into you.

You reached for him behind you. He caught your hand and pinned it to the blanket near your head.

“Taking it so well,” he rasped. “This cunt missed me making decisions for it?”

Your pussy fluttered around his cock.

He laughed, breathless and mean. “Yeah. Thought so.”

The next thrust shoved a sound out of you that caught in the blanket.

“Gonna buy a nice crib,” he grunted in sync with his thrusts, breath hot against your neck. “One of those dinosaur ones, or galaxy."

Your cunt clenched hard around him.

He felt it and laughed once, wrecked. “Yeah?”

“What else—”

“And the little bottle rack to put by the sink. Fuck it, I’ll make one.”

You saw it for half a second—plastic drying rods beside the soap, a tiny shirt hooked over the bathroom door. Toji half-asleep with a baby tucked against his chest, one huge hand covering their whole back.

Your hips pushed back into him.

He rubbed faster, cock driving into you deep, making your knees shake.

“Megumi’ll act like he doesn’t care,” he groaned, voice breaking against your ear. “Then carefully hold it when no one's looking.”

A sob slipped out of you.

“Tsumiki’ll take fifty pictures.”

Your fingers twisted in the blanket. The pressure in your navel pulled tight, hot and low, every dirty little plan hitting you harder.

You whimpered into the bed.

“Toji, I’m close.”

“I know.” His fingers sped up, rough little strokes that made your legs shake. “Give it to me first.”

The order dragged a broken sound out of you.

Your cunt clamped down hard, orgasm ripping through you in tight, hot pulls. Toji cursed behind you, hips stuttering once before he drove back in deeper.

He kept touching you through it.

“Toji, wait—”

“You wanted my baby.”

His gruff voice made your head cloudy. You grabbed at his wrist weakly, body jerking away from his fingers and then grinding back onto his cock in the same breath.

He caught the feeble movement with a wrecked laugh, his teeth scraping your ear. “That’s it. Run from it and take it anyway.”

You sobbed his name.

“Take it, wife.” His grip crushed your pinned hand into the blanket, hips turning rough, each thrust dragging a wet sound out of you while his fingers kept you shaking. “Milk my cock. Then I’ll give you what you asked for.”

“You…ngh—”

He buried himself deep and came with a broken groan against your shoulder.

His cock pulsed inside you, hot bursts filling you until your body went loose under him. He kept moving in short, filthy grinds, deep breaths tearing out of him, one hand sliding back to your stomach like he could press it all into place.

His cum slipped out around his cock from your pussy.

Toji saw it and shoved it back in deeper.

You laughed weakly.

He pulled out just enough to see the mess, then shoved back in.

You cried out his name, oversensitivity taking over.

“Gotta make sure it takes.”

He leaned down and kissed the back of your neck, slower now, though his cock twitched inside you again.

“Don’t hide after begging me to knock you up.”

He stayed there after, heavy over your back, breathing like he had run himself into the ground.

You were still shaking when his palm found your stomach again.

“Toji.”

“Mm.”

“You’re crushing me.”

“Good.”

You laughed into the blanket, ruined and breathless, and felt him smile against the back of your neck.

A second later, his phone buzzed on the floor.

He ignored it.

“Toji, work.”

He reached down, grabbed the phone, and tossed it farther away without checking the screen.

Then he pulled out because there was no clean way to turn you while staying buried, and the loss made you whine before you could stop it.

Toji saw the mess spill out of you.

He shoved three fingers into you, trying to push it back in.

You muffled your moan into your fist, eyes rolling back.

You barely had time to glare before his hands moved to catch your hips and rolled you onto your back. His cum leaked onto the sheet between your thighs, warm and obscene, and his eyes stayed there for a second too long.

Your eyes followed his gaze a little dumbfounded.

His hands went to your shirt next—shoved it up, got impatient halfway, and dragged it over your head. Your ruined panties followed, peeled from where they stuck wet against your skin and tossed somewhere near the fallen blankets.

You reached for him on instinct, fingers catching the open front of his shirt.

It was already ruined—damp at the collar, wrinkled from your hands, buttons hanging wrong where you had pulled too hard earlier. He shrugged it off and dropped it on the floor, then pushed his trousers down with the same rough impatience, kicking them aside before crawling back over you.

Your eyes widened.

He caught it, and a slow, filthy kind of pride moved over his face. “What?”

You swallowed, staring at him, at the way he was still hard and heavy, making your thighs press together even after he had already filled you.

He hooked one hand under your knee and spread you back open. “Don’t act surprised. You like me so much more after I’ve already made you come.”

Heat hit your face.

His mouth curved. “Yeah. Keep making that face.”

He settled between your thighs, bare skin hot against yours now, one hand pressing your knee higher while the other slid over your stomach. His cock dragged through the mess he had left there, wet and heavy, rubbing against your swollen cunt until your hips twitched.

“You okay?” he asked, low.

You nodded too fast.

His hand squeezed your thigh. “Words.”

“I’m okay.”

“Want me to stop?”

Your arms locked around his neck. “Don’t you dare.”

His eyes had gone wrecked and dark green. He kissed you again, teeth biting your tongue, before lining himself up again. The push back in was slow only because both of you were too sensitive. You felt every inch, every slick vein, every pulse of him forcing his own cum deeper as your body opened around him again.

Your nails dug into his shoulders.

“Fuck, baby.”

“Right there?”

“Yes.”

He folded your knees back until your thighs pressed against your ribs, cock driving deep.

By the third thrust, he had his mouth at your ear and his hips moving with that harsh, uneven hunger that meant he had stopped pretending he could pace himself.

“Gonna keep you like this today,” he said, voice wrecked. “Open, full, leaking all over the sheets.”

You moaned and dragged him closer.

His hand slid down between your legs, thumb finding your clit through the mess. Your whole body jerked.

“There,” he murmured. “Knew you’d take it.”

“Toji—”

“Whole day,” he said, hips snapping harder now. “College kids call on Sunday. I’ve got time to make sure it takes before then.”

Neither Toji nor you had really believed that you guys could get pregnant in your forties.

---

A few months later, the room was dead silent around the box of tiny socks.

Tsumiki stared at them.

Megumi stared at you.

Toji looked at the ceiling, already useless.

You had meant to hide the gift bag before they came in. Dinner first, tea after, then the announcement when everyone had food in them and fewer escape excuses.

Then Megumi opened the wrong drawer looking for a charger, and the blue dinosaur socks rolled out.

Tsumiki picked one up. “Please tell me this is for someone else.”

Your throat tightened. “No…”

Megumi went still.

“Toji,” you slapped his arm.

The man exhaled deeply. “Your mother’s pregnant.”

Tsumiki shut her eyes. “Oh my god.”

Megumi dragged a hand down his face. “I’m gonna be sick.”

Tsumiki sat down slowly. “How far?”

“Fourteen weeks.”

Megumi counted, horrified.

“That was drop-off week.”

Toji looked away.

Tsumiki made a wounded sound. “You couldn’t even wait until we unpacked?”

Toji folded his arms. “Everyone was already moved in.”

Megumi stood. “I’m going to Itadori’s.”

“You just got here.”

“I made a mistake.”

Tsumiki still held the sock. Her mouth twisted, embarrassed and too soft for half a second. “Dinosaurs?”

You nodded toward Megumi. “Your brother’s fault.”

Megumi looked offended. “Do not put this on me.”

Tsumiki’s phone was already in her hand, snapping pictures.

Then she looked down, frowning.

“What?” Megumi said.

“Mom, you didn’t tell Dad?" Tsumiki’s face drained of color, guilty and horrified. “I sent Dad a picture of the sock.”

Megumi stared at the screen. “He’s asking where you are.”

Your phone buzzed on the counter.

You picked it up, already afraid.

Kashi: YOU’RE PREGNANT?

Your fingers froze.

Another message came in.

Kashi: WHY?

You turned away from the table.

Behind you, Tsumiki whispered, “Mom?”

“It’s nothing, baby,” you said, too fast.

Kashi: WHY WOULD YOU LET HIM KNOCK YOU UP

Kashi: CALL ME. NOW.

Dividers by @uzmacchiato.

A/N: What's Kashimo's deal?

You left hair ties around his apartment. A blue, green and two black ones. Who needed that fucking many?

Then his shirts randomly disappeared, only to show up after you showered. “Because they smell like you,” you had said like a sweet angel. Fuck.

In the same breath you complained about his cleaning habits. Laughed at terrible movies and cried during romantic movies.

You touched him with love, softly. You peeked behind the facade of muscles and liked what you saw.

Unbelievable. Toji got used to it.

Fuck, he liked coming home to you and your food and warm kisses. Got used to the excited gasp in your voice when you said his name.

He learned to need your body curled against his warmly at night.

It terrified him. And it fucking terrified him more what it did to him.

“Text me when you get home.”

“Call me if you’re out late.”

“You goin’ alone?”

At first you thought that was so sweet of him. Your big, protective man always worried about you and interested in what you did and when you did it. Until it wasn’t so sweet anymore.

Suddenly Toji needed to know everything. Who you were with. Where you were going. Why you took thirty minutes to answer his messages.

If someone looked at you too long on the street, his jaw locked. If a man got too friendly with you, Toji appeared at your side like a threat carved from muscle and shadows.

Every time you pushed back, he pushed fucking harder.

“You don’t need to go,” he said one evening when you grabbed your jacket.

“It’s Mina’s birthday.” Mina was a coworker who became a dear friend.

“You saw her last week.”

You stared at him from across the apartment. “Toji.”

“What?”

“You’ve been weird for months.”

He scoffed and leaned against the kitchen counter. “Weird.”

“Yes, weird.” You crossed your arms. “You act like I need permission to leave the apartment.”

His expression darkened immediately as he gritted out, “didn’t say that.”

“Wasn’t necessary,” you muttered.

You grabbed your bag anyway, but before you could pass him, his hand caught your wrist. This… You didn’t like this at all.

Of course it didn’t hurt, but your breath caught and your heart stuttered.

Toji had the manner to freeze too, like he realized what he’d done a second too late.

“Don’t go tonight.”

Your brows pulled together. “Why?”

“Just don’t.”

“That’s not an answer.”

His grip tightened slightly. Now you weren’t a meek little mouse and neither you were afraid of your man. He never gave you a reason to fear him.

So, the irritation was a logical consequence.

“Stop acting like you own me, Toji.”

The words hit him hard. Something cracked behind his green eyes. His fingers slipped from your wrist like he’d burned himself.

For a long moment he said nothing. He stood there frighteningly still, and you didn’t know - didn’t know how hard his heart pounded, screamed.

He dragged a hand down his face and laughed once, bitterly, under his breath. “My wife died.”

“Wh-What?”

Toji looked away toward the dark apartment window. “She left for a few hours and never came back.”

The room suddenly felt too small. Tears filled your eyes as his words settled so fucking heavy in your chest.

You had known almost nothing about his past. Toji avoided personal conversations like they physically pained him. Every question about his life before you ended with a shrug or a dismissive grunt. But now the words were spilling out of him like blood from a wound he couldn’t close.

“I kept thinkin’,” he muttered roughly, “if I’d gone with her that day… maybe things would’ve been different.”

Your anger dissolved instantly. And no, no, no. You had suspected that someone hurt him in the past, but that hurt.

“Toji…”

“She was the only good thing I ever had.” His jaw tightened violently. “Then she died.”

There was the real reason. Fear. Raw, ugly fear.

He finally looked at you, and it startled you more than shouting ever could because Toji Fushiguro looked terrified. On the brink of loosing his mind, because he could loose you.

“I know I’m screwin’ this up,” he admitted quietly. “I know that.”

His hand flexed at his side, because he wanted to reach for you but didn’t think he deserved to.

“But every time you walk out that door…” He swallowed harshly. “My head keeps tellin’ me you won’t come back either.”

Your chest ached, because suddenly all the controlling behavior made horribly sense. Oh, this hurts. This hurts so much.

Toji wasn’t trying to cage you. He was trying to outrun grief, trying to hold fate by the throat before it could steal from him again.

Maybe that didn’t excuse the way he acted, but oh fuck, you understood it now.

Slowly you stepped towards him and Toji stiffened warily. This is it, huh, his expression seemed to scream.

“Toji,” you cupped his cheeks softly and kissed the scar on his lips. “You can’t love me like I’m already dead.”

“I don’t know how not to.”

Oh, this man - your man - was in emotional pain and it nearly broke you. You hugged him, clung to his chest where you always felt the safest.

One second passed. Then two, three.

And then his strong arms wrapped around your middle as he pulled you close. The world might fucking rip you away if he loosened his grip. That’s what his brain and scared heart told him.

For a long time he stayed still in your arms. So still that you could hear the uneven rhythm of his breathing against your shoulder. Feel the tension trembling through him beneath the weight of your hands.

He was holding himself together by force alone.

You brushed your fingers through his black hair patiently until some of the tightness left his body.

“We’ll figure it out,” you whispered against his temple. “We’ll fight when we need to fight. We’ll talk when things get bad. And when you’re scared, you tell me instead of trying to control everything by yourself.”

Your hand slid down to his cheek, guiding him back to look at you.

“I’m not asking you to stop loving me, Toji. I’m asking you to trust that loving me doesn’t mean losing me.”

Toji shattered. A tiny, broken sound trapped somewhere deep in his chest and he buried his face into the crook of your neck.

Nothing could’ve prepared you for the warm wetness spilling from his eyes right onto your skin. Your heart cracked open at the feeling because this man - this wonderful man - would rather bleed out than cry in front of someone.

Yet here he was, holding you like you were the only thing keeping him alive. You tightened your arms around him immediately.

“It’s okay,” you murmured softly. “I’m here.”