#tsumimi

The time you spend with Tsukasa was strictly supposed to be educational when it began - a necessity if you were to be part of this growing community, where you’d learn to speak at least a conversational level of Japanese to best deal with the warriors’ aches and pain. Yet, as the better part of a year came and went, it’s become clear to the two of you (and probably the rest of the kingdom to be quite honest), that the quiet evenings in which you slip into Tsukasa’s cave, a reserved hour or so not to be interrupted unless in emergency, have much less to do with grammar and vocabulary, and more to do with intimacy. 

And today, yes, you are closely entwined, but not in the scandalous way the rumors have suggested, but because you sit between his thighs, tracing kanji with your fingertips into the fur peeking before you from the rug you sit on, as his fingers tease purposefully through your hair.

“Am I hurting you?” 

Tsukasa’s been passing the teeth of a surprisingly finely crafted wooden comb through your hair so gently for the past few moments that you’ve almost forgotten he was there, save for the warm presence of another person’s body. His voice is as soothing as how he works through your curls, his tender side surprising you as always whenever it breaks through his toughened exterior to the surface.

“Not at all,” you mumble. You let a hand rest on his knee as he continues to work, working his way up your curls to the roots, and you sigh.

“I would ask you how you’re so good at this, but this is probably why your hair is so much prettier than mine.”

He pauses for a moment. “Not true.”

You scoff.

“Tsukasa, you have the kind of hair people make expensive wigs from.”

He shifts behind you, just for a moment, and you can feel him press his chin atop your head for just a moment.

“I’m just too lazy to cut it. The protein probably helps.”

“ThE PrOtEiN PrObAbLy HeLpS,” you mock gently, but you squeeze his knee again. “Just admit you’re blessed.”

“A relative statement,” he replies, but decides not to press on it any further, accepting the compliment with grace and a slight warmth in the apples of his cheeks. You feel him part your hair down the middle, before tying each side into bushy tails with a bit of soft cloth.

“Actually, if you must know, the reason is because of my little sister, Mirai.”

He’s done with your hair now, and pulls you carefully against him, enough that his fur cloak brushes past you, and you pull that around yourself as well.

You give a hum of assent, waiting for him to continue. He pauses for a moment, and you can feel his heart thump against your back, strong and steady and grounding. 

“The nurses tried to do her hair, but she was always sensitive to combing, so I would always do it.”

The arm that wrapped loosely around your waist tightens ever so slightly, and you press your hand over his.

“She probably loved being taken care of by you.”

Tsukasa presses a kiss to your neck gently.

“I suppose.”

You sit together in silence for a bit longer, eyes focused on the crackling fire ahead that somehow appears to hold memories of a past now thousands of years forgotten. Even if things are different now - your technology limited, no hair straightener or deep conditioner in sight, and your relationships lost and reforged - you still have to live for quiet moments like these, with skills formed out of love burned into muscle memory.

The quiet of the night is when it dawns on Tsukasa that his slow descent into falling in love with you is no longer something he can ignore.

You spent hours with him in his chambers tonight, fire crackling and bathing your face in warm light. He watched you warm your tired fingers by the flames, stretching each of them patiently while speaking. Genuine laughter bubbled out of him at your jokes and stories, gratefulness searing through him at every smile you cast his direction.

It’s why he can’t sleep, instead pushing at the embers of the fire that has been slowly dying every moment since your departure. The absence of your voice and your broken attempts at Japanese that give way to joyous English have left him with too much alone time to ponder how he ended up here. 

Do I even know what love is? 

The question weighs him down where he sits, his arms resting against his knees that are pulled up and toward his chest. He probably looks far more childlike than he ever has sitting in this position, head slumped to the side and hair spilling down his shoulders. Does he know what love is? 

There has never quite been an abundance of it in his life, his parents too preoccupied with their own struggles and demons to concern themselves with his. They may have loved him at one point but those days are so far passed now, it doesn’t make him feel hurt or happy to think of them. It simply doesn’t matter if they loved him or not, they can never make amends for it now. 

Thinking of his parents makes him think of his sister, a thought he accepts with a defeated sigh. He knows he loves Mirai and that in all likelihood she’s probably the only thing that has ever really loved him back and now that he’s thinking, he saw love even when she was looking thinner and paler by the day in her hospital bed. 

Love was stored in the machines that kept her alive, he thought, despite science truly being the key to keeping her body capable of existing. Love was stored in the bouquet he’d bought from the flower shop on the corner outside of the hospital, something beautiful for her to look at on the off chance she arose. Love was the doctor reassuringly patting his forearm every time he visited, a gentle reminder that they were there to help. 

So he does know what love is yet he still agonizes over being in love. 

This is where he feels blindsided, knowing love lives in the musical notes of your laugh and the curls in your hair. The shape of your hands when you curl them around one of the tea cups he only drags out for you and when you use them to gauge the temperature of your patients by touch. Love is your smile, the wrinkle of your nose, the natural set of your eyebrows…

Love is everything you are. It makes him ache to wonder if he could ever be worthy of this same agony from you. Are you stoking a fire sadly in your own home, wondering how it would feel to jump feet first into love instead of wondering if you’re deserving of it? 

Surely not you, the woman most worthy of love he can imagine.

The embers further burn out and Tsukasa resolves to turn in for the night but not before hoping, wishing, perhaps even praying in the way he has seen the herbalist on a few occasions, that you intrinsically know how loved you are. How you are the reason the world turns, as far as he’s concerned. That the only thing worth being depetrified for, aside from his sister, is the hope of spending another day near you. 

Your subtle gift of premonition truly never fails you, and you realize so once more when you're crowded around Senku's laboratory with the remainder of Yuzuriha and Taiju's closest wedding guests and staring up at the monstrous contraption Senku is designating as a time machine.

While the remainder of the party is in curious astonishment, the uneasy feeling that's been sitting heavily in your chest since the morning of the wedding only solidifies further. 

Now you know why you woke up sick to your stomach on what should be a happy day.

Tsukasa stands close to you, pensive as always, thinking before he adds his own commentary, ever so careful with his words. There's a small smile on his face, and you read that as awe and amusement at Senku's relentless pursuit of scientific advancement; something he had once tried to suppress, he's come to appreciate, and while you'd normally be pleased with how far he's come in that respect, in this very moment it feels like a betrayal. 

A time machine would change everything.

Truly everything, and the selfish part of you scorns it. 

Tsukasa finds your hand besides him, still mulling over the details as Senku explains his roadmap to the group, and squeezes it gently without looking. Your corsage of pink flowers brushes against the sleeve of his suit, and you watch a few petals fall. Suddenly you are far too overwhelmed, and would much rather run of the room, but when you see hope warm Tsukasa's brown eyes, you hold in your unease as best you can. 

"Senku really is amazing, isn't he?" you say through a smile that should come easier than it does. Tsukasa hasn't turned to return your smile yet, still watching the machine, eyes wide. 

"He really is."

---

That evening, Tsukasa in his contrarily roundabout but very direct way of speaking, reaffirms his intention to marry you someday. In a small way, you might as well be married - you're inseparable, you live together with Mirai who calls you big sister and means it every single time, and he makes you feel his love every time he holds you in the dark, and presses deep into you, relishing in the sound of his name as it falls off his lips.

Something big if you want it. Something small will also suffice. Something that makes everything even more real, he says to you, pressing his face into the crook of your neck. Pillow talk should make you feel warm, warm as the liquid seeping between your legs. Warm as his arms. Warm as the sensation of his tongue in your mouth, on your skin. 

"Tsukasa," you finally speak up in the dark.

He pulls you closer, and you pause before the words bubble up inside you and force their way out -

"I don't want to lose you."

A lamp flickers on and Tsukasa takes in your tear-stained face with as much alarm allotted for someone so naturally stoic. His palm takes your cheek and rubs it gently, the other arm pulling you in closer to press against him. Your face buries into his chest, and there you let yourself really cry.

He lets you tremble in his embrace for a few more moments, pressing soft kisses to the top of your head. He has no idea what you're talking about, because how can he when you've remained in your head all day?

Once your sniffles have slowed, he pulls back so that he can look at you in the eyes again, making sure you're still within an arm's reach.

"How can you lose me when I've never left?" he asks. 

You swallow, and then decide if you must sound awful, now is the time.

"Without de-petrification, there's no way we would have met."

Tsukasa tenses for a moment, which makes your heart sink, but then he pulls you closer, then on top of him. Sliding upwards so that his back is propped up by the headboard, he strokes your forehead. He mulls the thought over for a moment, and you look up into his beautiful face, your heart pounding in anticipation. 

"I'd find you," he says, confidently, and you're stunned practically silent. Simple as that.

You blink for a moment, surprised by his answer, then find your face growing hot.

"What do you mean, 'you'd find me'? We lived on the opposite sides of the world? You would have been famous and I just... some girl with some normal job, and-"

He kisses you again to interrupt you, then presses his forehead to yours.

"Trust me. I'd find you."

You can feel your breath halt and he smiles.

"You don't believe me, do you?" he says. His gaze is soft, and he grins wider, confident, flipping you over so that he's over top of you. You can feel your face growing hot again but for a different reason now. Sucking in a breath, you wrinkle your nose.

"Were you gonna pluck me from my grad school classroom?" you ask him.

"If I must," he says. He kisses your neck, then parts your legs to wrap them around his waist. Your eyelashes flutter.

"Unrealistic," you reply. 

"I'd find you," he says again. His fingers intertwine with yours as he rubs against your center. You sigh, but he's taken all of the worry out of you and replaced it with playful jest. He's so good at this, the way he validates your fears, but doesn't allow you to feel afraid because he lacks that fear, and is always strong enough, good enough, brave enough to protect you. Even from yourself.

"Would you send me special signals through MMA's greatest knockouts montages on Youtube?"

This time he actually laughs, falling back on his heels.

"Yes," he answers. "Whatever it takes."

He's hard again, and the heavy thickness slaps on your pubic bone, and you tense, your heartbeat quickening, your mouth drying in want. He runs his hand through his hair to free the strands sticking to his face before he descends on you again, the other hand gripping the base of his cock to line up with your entrance.

He blows air from his nose, then pulls one of your legs over his shoulder. His teeth flash at you - he is your perfect, sweet, confident love of your life, and all of your worries cease.

"You should be less worried about universes where we don't meet and more concerned about the fact that you can't escape me in any timeline."

He fills you up, your back arching as his hands grip around your waist.

ngl i feel like he’s fjjfkffjfj just baby to me i think he’s so inexperienced for the most part, needs a lot of coaching and very vanilla

hmmm wahhh okay so!

in some iteration of the american colony au tsukasa thinks that ryusui has a crush on me because ryusui is doing what ryusui does (simply talking in the forward way he does everyone) and it like stresses him out so bad cuz poor old lion king hasn't had a crush before so he doesn't know what to do or what is even happening

so he ends up trying to basically just ask ryusui what's going on but it like. ends up looking like a confrontation like essentially tsukasa is saying some shit to him that doesn't make sense like 'why are you close what do you want with her' and it truly is meant to be normal but tsukasa is like yk... That so ryusui is like ??? and he's like OH you have a crush eventually bc tsukasa looks uncharacteristically embarrassed

anyway basically he sets up a blind date but it's kind of messed up conceptually bc i think i'm meeting ryusui to talk about something pertaining to the colony but then tsukasa is there instead of ryusui and i'm like ? what's going on but then francois brings the nicest meal ever and i'm like. this is fine. and tsukasa apologizes for deceiving me and i'm like eating garlic bread so i don't care who is sitting across from me