#trust(issues)

You don't.

"Tell me," he murmurs against your hair.

"Rough," you whisper into his shirt. "Please. Don't hold back."

He stills. You feel him exhale, feel the subtle tension enter his shoulders. Then he nods once and leads you to the bedroom with hands that don't tremble but could, if he let them.

He lays you down on sheets that smell of him, of sleep, of the life he keeps trying to build around you both. The blindfold is silk, cool against your heated skin as he ties it with precise, unhurried fingers. You want to protest — to say you don't need the theatricality, not tonight — but then his mouth is at your ear and he's speaking low and serious.

"Trust me."

You do. That's the problem. You trust him enough to let him see this, all of it, the jagged edges you hide from everyone else.

His hands move over you like he's memorizing terrain. He unbuttons your blouse with methodical patience, spreading the fabric open like petals unfurling from a bud. His palms glide over your ribs, your waist, the curve of your hip. Each touch is deliberate, present, even as you feel yourself trying to float away from your own body.

He doesn't let you.

When he cups your breast, his thumb traces your nipple in slow, concentric circles until it stiffens under his touch, until you arch involuntarily into the sensation. His mouth follows, hot and wet, tongue swirling in patterns that make your toes curl. He lavishes attention on each peak until they're both flushed and sensitive, glistening with the heat of his mouth, dewy and swollen like blooms after rain.

You feel him shift lower, his shoulders spreading your thighs. He presses a kiss to your hipbone, then lower, his breath warm against your most intimate skin. When he parts you with his thumbs, you feel exposed, vulnerable, seen in a way that makes you want to hide and weep simultaneously.

He doesn't rush. He opens you like a flower coaxed into bloom, his tongue tracing slow, deliberate paths through your folds. He finds your center and circles it with maddening patience, pressing just hard enough to make you gasp, then retreating to lick through your softness again. You're wet for him, embarrassingly so, and he makes soft sounds of approval that vibrate through you.

"So lovely," he murmurs against you, the words barely audible.

His fingers join his mouth, one sliding into your tight heat with ease, curling to find the spot that makes your back arch off the mattress. He works you open with careful, relentless attention, adding a second finger when you're ready, scissoring them to stretch you for what's coming.

You feel the pressure building, the sweet ache of approaching release, but you push it away. You don't want to come like this — soft and treasured. You want the roughness you asked for. The forgetting.

"Now," you gasp, reaching for him. "Please. I need—"

He rises over you, shedding his clothes with efficient movements. You feel the heat of his skin as he settles between your thighs, the thick weight of him pressing against your entrance. He captures your wrists in one hand and pins them above your head, his other guiding himself into you.

He pushes in with a single, forceful thrust.

The stretch burns, delicious and overwhelming, and you cry out at the sudden fullness of him. He doesn't pause to let you adjust. He sets a hard, driving rhythm, each stroke bottoming out with a force that sends the headboard knocking against the wall.

You asked for this. You wanted to be overwhelmed, to have no room for thought or memory or grief. He gives you exactly that, his body working over yours with athletic precision, his hips snapping forward to meet yours again and again.

But your mind betrays you.

Even as your body responds to his, even as pleasure builds sharp and insistent at your core, you feel yourself drifting. The roughness becomes mechanical, a physical sensation without emotional anchor. You're floating somewhere above yourself, watching your own body move in response to his thrusts, feeling nothing.

The tears start silently, tracking down your temples into your hair. You don't make a sound. You don't want him to know, don't want him to stop, don't want to face what it means that even this — the most intimate act, the person you trust most in the world — can't reach you.

Satoru stills.

Not gradually, not with the slowing rhythm of someone sensing discomfort. He stops mid-thrust, his hips freezing against yours, his breath catching in a sharp, wounded sound you didn't think he was capable of making.

"Don't," he whispers, and his voice is raw, stripped of everything theatrical, everything performative. "Don't do that. Don't leave me here alone. Sweetheart, please, look at me."

You can't. The blindfold is still on, but even if it weren't, you couldn't meet his eyes. Shame curls hot in your stomach, mixing with the arousal that still lingers, making you feel sick and confused.

You don't understand. You haven't moved, haven't spoken, haven't asked him to stop. But then you feel his hand at your face, trembling as he removes the blindfold, and you open your eyes to find him staring down at you with an expression that stops your heart.

His Six Eyes are uncovered.

His gaze has always been present, attentive, but now it pierces through you with devastating clarity. His pale eyes, usually warm with affection, are brimming with something that looks like grief.

"I can see it," he breathes, and his voice breaks. "Your cursed energy, it's— you're hollow, you're not here, you're somewhere else and you won't—" He swallows hard, his jaw tight with the effort of control. "I thought I was helping. I thought if I gave you what you asked for, if I made it enough, you would—" He laughs, a broken, ugly sound. "I'm the strongest sorcerer alive and I can't even make you feel present."

He pulls out with a care that borders on desperation, his hands moving over you with frantic gentleness, checking, reassuring himself you're still whole, still here, still his to protect.

"I'm sorry," you choke out, because you are, for so many things.

"Don't." He gathers you into his arms, lifting you easily into his lap. He arranges you against his chest like you're something precious, something fragile, and maybe you are. Maybe you've been pretending to be strong for so long you've forgotten how to be anything else.

You feel it then — the tremor running through his entire body, the way his heart hammers rabbit-fast against your cheek.

"Come back," he murmurs into your hair, and he sounds like he's begging. "Please, darling. Come back to me. I'm here. I'm right here."

His hand cups the back of your head, pressing your face into the hollow of his throat. You can hear his heartbeat, steady and strong, can smell the clean scent of his skin. He rocks you slightly, and you feel the tremble in his arms, the effort of holding himself back from crushing you close.

"You're safe," he murmurs, his voice vibrating against your cheek. "I've got you. You're safe."

The sobs break through then, the ones you'd been holding back for hours, for days, for weeks. You cry for everything you haven't said aloud, for the weight you've been carrying alone, for the person you pretend to be when the world is watching.

You cry because he stopped, because he saw you, because someone finally asked what you needed instead of what you could endure. You cry because Satoru saw through you, because he stopped, because he's holding you now with such gentleness it makes your chest ache.

He doesn't shush you. He doesn't tell you it's okay or that everything will be fine. He just holds you, one hand stroking down your spine in slow, unhurried lines, the other cradling your head like he'll never let go.

When the worst of it passes, he doesn't rush to fill the silence. He simply breathes with you, his chest rising and falling beneath your cheek until your rhythms match. Then, slowly, he begins to press kisses to your skin with such deliberate tenderness it makes your throat tight all over again.

Your forehead first, his lips warm and lingering.

Your eyelids, tasting the salt of tears he helped you shed.

The tip of your nose, where he pauses to breathe you in, to anchor himself to the fact that you're here, you're real, you're his to care for.

Each one is reverent, tender, a benediction spoken without words.

"Never again," he whispers against your temple, and you feel the vow settle into your bones, into the hollow spaces you thought would stay empty forever. "Not like that. You don't get to use me to hurt yourself, understand? I won't be your escape from feeling." He pulls back just enough to meet your eyes, his own soft and infinite and yours, completely yours. "I want to be where you feel safe enough to fall apart. Where you don't have to fall apart alone."

You nod, hiccupping, your fingers finding his hair, tangling in the soft white strands like you're holding on to the only solid thing in a world that keeps shifting beneath your feet.

"I love you," he says, barely audible, like the words cost him something, like he's laying his heart in your hands and trusting you not to crush it. "I love you, and I need you here with me. Not just your body. You."

The tears well fresh, but different now, warm instead of hollow. "I love you more," you whisper, and it feels like a confession, like a promise, like the first true thing you've said in days. "I'm sorry. I'm here. I promise I'm here."

He makes a soft sound, something between relief and aching amusement, and presses his forehead to yours. "That's not possible," he breathes, but you hear the smile in his voice, the lightness that comes after surviving something together. "I love you more."

"Impossible."

"Fact."

He tucks you closer, arranging you against him with the same care he might use handling something newly mended, something precious that survived breaking. He pulls the blanket up around you both, cocooning you in warmth and weight and the faint scent of his soap. His hand finds yours under the covers, lacing your fingers together with a deliberateness that feels like another promise.

"Now sleep," he murmurs. "I'll be here when you wake up."

He pauses. You feel him press another kiss to your hair, so light you might have imagined it.

"I'll always be here," he whispers, and his voice carries the weight of every tomorrow he's already decided to give you. "Even when you don't ask. Even when you try to hide. Even when you think you don't deserve it." His thumb traces slow, senseless patterns against your palm. "Especially then. I love you more."

"I love you more," you whisper back, because it bears repeating, because you need him to know it wasn't just the moment, because you feel it settling into your chest like something you can finally keep.

You drift off to the sound of his heartbeat, steady and certain, to the gentle stroke of his thumb against your wrist, to the warmth of his body curved around yours like a promise he intends to spend his life keeping.

A/N. i'd like to apologize for not posting too much recently, life's been a mess and school is starting again so 🥹💔 i hope you enjoyed this !! next post will be part 1 of my "Take What's Mine" series, i hope you're excited!! (～￣▽￣)～