#uservolkova

it all started back when you were just study partners and people, especially your new girl friends, expected someone lanky (their words, not yours) whenever you mentioned him, and then gojo showed up in a fitted black shirt with forearms that made your brain stop working for a second.

since the very moment you realized how well built gojo was, every moment he was explaining some ridiculously complicated theory while you absent-mindedly rested your head against his shoulder, fingers tracing the outline of his bicep beneath his sleeve. just like today.

"you're not listening to a single word i'm saying, are you?" he asks, already smiling because the answer is obvious. neither of you could recall when this started to be more frequent, the touching, sitting closer and closer every time, but both of you liked it to the point of not giving the people around you any thought and it was getting... uncomfortable, for them only, of course. not you, definitely NOT you.

for someone who spends most of his time buried in books, his arms are unfairly distracting, and you've made a habit of nudging or leaning against them whenever you're sitting together. he pretends to not notice every time you squeeze his arm during movie nights, but the way he flexes a little afterward gives him away instantly.

"you know, normal friends don't do this," he mutters when you shamelessly use his bicep as a pillow. he acts like he hates the attention, yet somehow always ends up sitting close enough for your legs to touch and your hand to find his arm without even thinking about it. the worst part isn't how attractive he is, which he is a LOT like his face is perfect, it's how he keeps talking about videogames, physics, or whatever topic he's obsessed with at the moment while looking completely unaware of the effect he has on you. there's something deeply unfair about someone being able to solve calculus problems, carry three grocery bags in one hand, and still blush when you compliment him.

everyone else sees two friends studying together; nobody notices the way your fingers linger on his arm for a second too long or the way he never moves away.

you softly sink your teeth into his bicep while reading over his notes, and instead of pulling away, he simply turns the page and asks if you've finally understood the chapter. the little bastard enjoys that as much as you do. "you're doing that thing again," he murmurs, glancing down at where your head is resting against his arm. the sleeves of his shirts never survive around you; they're always rolled up because somehow you've convinced yourself that touching his forearms helps you concentrate. he's trying to explain a formula, but you keep squeezing his arm every time he says something smart, and by the end of the evening he's forgotten what he was talking about entirely.

"you know, most people use stress balls during exams."

"you're literally built like one."

sometimes you catch him flexing unconsciously whenever you grab his bicep, and the smug smile and blushing he tries to hide afterward makes you want to bite him again just to prove a point.

he studies for six hours straight, lifts weights four times a week, and still somehow turns bright red when you casually kiss his shoulder goodbye. your friends have stopped questioning why you're always draped over him during movie nights; apparently, watching you use his arm as a pillow has become completely normal. as if they wouldn't do the same, pffftt.

he claims he doesn't understand flirting, yet he lets you trace the veins on his hands while he reads beside you. you call him your study partner, but nobody believes you when they see the way his hand automatically lands on your thigh whenever you're sitting next to each other. he smells like old books, laundry detergent, and the hoodie he lent you three months ago and never asked to get back.

"we're just friends," you insist, literally chewing on his arm while he scrolls through his lecture slides. oftentimess, tho, for someone built like that, he's embarrassingly easy to fluster. all it takes is a "you look pretty today" and suddenly he's pushing his glasses higher up his nose, cheeks and ears tinted pink as he hides behind his laptop screen.

"don't say stuff like that out of nowhere."

"why? are you shy?"

"shut up."

and some other days it's even worse, which makes teasing him even more fun.

"your arms look huge in that shirt."

silence.

gojo stares at his textbook for a solid ten seconds before muttering, "you're literally impossible."

but you can already see the redness from blushing down his neck

He remembered the sound of you before he remembered your face. Three autumns now, and still your footsteps found him through the noise of the fair, through fiddle strings and drunk laughter and the creak of wagon wheels.

You never asked him for anything. That was the thing that undid him first.

Everyone else came starving. Widows with their hands shaking before they even reached the stall. Fathers who couldn't look him in the eye while they begged. Old women who left offerings at the wheel of his wagon like he was something to be prayed to instead of spoken with. Villages three valleys over knew his name the way they knew the names of saints and plagues, with the same hushed, careful reverence, the same refusal to say it too loudly after dark.

They said the fog brought him. That the wagon rolled in on a road that hadn't been there the night before, no horse dragging it, no wheel-ruts left behind in the mud to prove it had ever come at all. Only those haunting lanterns were there as proof. Just that low amber glow bleeding out through the mist.

Some said he'd cheated a god out of something it wanted back. Some said he was the last thing left of a kingdom that the forest had swallowed whole, still walking because the debt hadn't finished collecting. There wasn't a single villager with the same version of his story.

They only came down to one conclusion: you didn't want to be the one he noticed.

Because if the dealer offered you a pumpkin, something in you had already been marked as payable. You'd watched it happen. The widow, hollowed out with grief, walking away with a pumpkin pale as bone pressed to her chest, sobbing like a woman handed her own heart back. The hunter who came in shaking and left with steady hands. The boy, the poor small, gray around the eyes since the fever took half his family boy smiling for the first time anyone could remember.

They all left different. Lighter, some of them. Something loosened in their shoulders they hadn't known was tight. Others left wrong, something behind their eyes gone soft and unfocused.

He wrapped every pumpkin delicately. Both hands, always, careful.

His smile stopped just under his eyes, every time. He watched every single customer disappear back into the fog, didn't look away, didn't blink, until the last light of their lantern swallowed itself in the dark. And sometimes, when someone turned from the wagon without buying anything at all, his shoulders would drop. Just slightly. Just enough that you'd have missed it if you hadn't already spent two autumns learning the shape of him. Exactly like you did.

That wasn't in any story you'd ever heard. Neither was the way he looked at you.

You came to him with nothing in your hands, same as always, you were always entertained by the ambiance, the way the decorated streets showed a different version of the same old village you grew up in, and the fair thinning out into stray laughter and dying fiddle music behind you. The lanterns threw restless gold across the carved faces lining his shelves, grinning, sleeping, something that might have been screaming and across him, until the light made him look less like a man and more like a god you don't want to mess with.

He looked up before your foot found the last step toward the wagon. He always did. Like he could feel you arrive the way you feel weather change. Neither of you spoke first for a long moment. The bells started somewhere behind the square, marking an hour neither of you cared about. It was the first autumn you got this close to him.

His hand found the stem of the pumpkin nearest him, thumb dragging slow over the ridge of it, and you watched him decide something before he let himself say it.

"You've finally decided I'm worth your time."

No surprise in its voice. It sounded like the particular tiredness of someone who has run out of ways to be surprised by anything.

You looked past him, over the shelves, over every carved face catching fire from the inside and you thought, the way you thought every year, that none of them looked like relief. They looked like held breath.

"I never bought anything," you said.

"No." His fingers stilled. "You never did."

Behind you the merchants were folding their stalls into darkness, canvas snapping, coins clinking into pouches, someone's cart wheel screaming for oil. Somewhere off in the leaves, kids shrieked at each other, chasing something invisible. He didn't turn his head once. Didn't flinch when a burst of laughter cracked too close behind him. His hands just kept moving over the pumpkins, slow, like the whole fair was happening on the other side of the village.

"I thought you hadn't seen me, that I was too normal for you to recognize me," you said, and hated how much you meant it.

Something almost broke loose at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. The idea of one.

"I forget prices," he said. "I don't forget people. Less the only person here who hasn't made a deal with me... yet, I shall say."

This close, the lantern light didn't flatter him so much as expose him, too young in the mouth, too old behind the eyes. He had the mouth of someone who should've been reckless once. Stealing apples. Falling in love badly, the way boys are supposed to. And the eyes of someone who'd buried centuries and stopped bothering to count which ones. You wondered, not for the first time this year, how many autumns he'd already watched die before this one.

"You've spent three years trying to work me out," he added.

"I've spent three years trying to understand why everyone's so afraid of you and why everyone's so fond of you at the same time."

"They're not afraid of me." He reached up, adjusted the lantern swinging above the wagon, and didn't look at you when he said it, ignoring the other part. "They're afraid of what they'll end up asking me for and what I may askk for in return."

Quiet again.

"And you?" The question left your mouth before you'd decided to ask it. "What are you afraid of?"

His hand stopped moving. Just for a breath. The fair kept breathing behind you both. Someone laughed too loud somewhere in the dark. Somewhere else, farther off, someone was crying, and the wind carried both sounds past you without stopping. The laughter of those drunk men, the prostitutes walking by, the whole village kept moving. Neither of you did.

He had everything to offer you. A life without the weight you carried into every one of these autumns. A name people would still be saying long after you'd stopped being able to hear it. A future built out of whatever you wanted it built from. He just stood there with his hands empty against the wood, worn soft under a hundred years of other people's desperate palms.

You had never reached for him. Not once, in three years.

You were starting to understand that this, this, more than anything was exactly why he couldn't stop looking at you like you were the one thing at this fair that might actually hurt him. The scar at his collar caught the lantern light and then didn't, swallowed back into shadow before you could look at it too long. When he finally spoke again, his voice had dropped low enough that the wind almost took it before it reached you.

"You don't make a deal with me yet you keep coming back." It wasn't a question. It didn't sound like one. "What are you waiting for?"

you’ve been dumped… again and at this point, heartbreak feels like muscle memory. the bar knows your name, your friends know your sad “I’ll show them I’m fine” rants, and you definitely know your liquor. somehow, in the blur of tequila shots and unwise confidence, you grab your phone and scroll through your contacts like a greatest hits album of bad decisions... without realizing you start dialing: Ex #1… Ex #2… Ex #3…

your thumb finds him. ex #4. the one who deserves every unfiltered word sitting on your tongue.

so you call.

“hello?”

and you don’t let him speak. not even a word. because this is ex #4 and you have a lot to say.

“oh don’t you hello me, asshole. i’ve been meaning to say this for months, and now? now i’ve got the liquor courage. you were terrible. yeah. in bed, out of bed, everywhere in between—just. terrible. i’ve faked enthusiasm for ramen noodles longer than our relationship lasted.”

there’s a pause on the other end. but you’re in rant mode. unstoppable.

“and don’t think i didn’t notice you ghosting me when i tried to talk about my feelings. like, poof, magician’s act. except without the hot assistant, because god knows you didn’t have the stamina for that either.” you hear a sound. a low laugh. but you brush it off, steamrolling forward. “and communication? zero. zip. nada. i could’ve had a deeper conversation with my cat. at least he meows back when i say hi.”

another chuckle. louder this time.

you frown. why does he sound so… amused?

“what, you think this is funny? i’m baring my drunk little soul here and you’re—”

“uhhh… sorry, sweetheart, hate to break it to you, but… i’m pretty sure i’m not your ex.” he’s trying not to laugh. okay, failing spectacularly.

silence.

the bar noise fades. your tipsy brain hiccups mid-thought.

“wait… what?”

“yep. wrong number. but don’t stop on my account. honestly, i’m kinda invested now. tell me more about how terrible i was in bed?” you could hear the grin on the other end.

your jaw drops. your face burns. you nearly choke on your own words. he’s not your ex.

“you—you’re not—oh my god.”

he laughs, smooth and shameless.

“don’t sound so horrified. i gotta say, though… i’ve never been insulted so thoroughly by a stranger before. ten out of ten performance. don’t stop on my account. you’re entertaining me.”

you groan into the phone, covering your face even though he can’t see you.

“i want to die. right now. immediately.”

“don’t. you’ve got too much material left. besides… a voice this cute? you’re wasted on breakups.”

he tells you it’s a wrong number. and you should hang up. you really should.

but his laugh—low, unbothered, curious—has you curling tighter on your barstool, phone pressed to your cheek like it’s suddenly keeping you alive. you stay quiet, telling yourself it could be a grown ass man, a creep, anyone. but your brain doesn’t follow, marinating in its own tequila haze.

your heart stutters. cute? cute?

suddenly the haze lifts just enough for reality to sucker punch you. this isn’t ex #4. this isn’t any of your exes.

this is a stranger.

you choke on air, mortification slamming into you harder than the tequila ever did.

“oh my god.”

“mhm?” you can still hear he's having fun at your cost, and the idea of the creepy man gets stronger.

“oh my god, i’m gonna die. i’m literally going to die. strike me down, tequila gods, i can’t live like this.”

your thumb fumbles at the screen. he’s saying something—teasing, amused, wanting to draw it out—but you don’t let him. you hang up with a click, staring at your reflection in the backlit screen like it’s laughing at you too.

the tequila, the breakup, the shame—everything burns. but under it all, there’s the echo of his laugh. low, unbothered, curious. and the dangerous thought you can’t shake:

what if he calls back?

the age gap is an afterthought. people whisper about it at first, but honestly… compared to everything else between you two (power imbalance, dangerous loyalty, questionable morals, tangled fates), it’s the most boring issue in the room.

sett doesn’t give a damn about years. he cares about usefulness and obsession. the second you prove yourself indispensable,,, whether it’s through wit, cunning, or just refusing to back down,,, he latches onto you.

you can’t tell if he’s protecting you out of some warped affection or because he’s already decided you belong to him. spoiler: it’s both.

the way he talks to you? patronizing pet names, but with a bite.

“careful, little one. i might start to believe you actually think you’re untouchable.” yet his hand lingers at your waist, guiding, claiming.

arguments are violent, not necessarily physical but emotionally scorching. sett doesn’t do gentle confrontation, he’ll corner you, force you to spit out the truth, demand you pick a side. somehow, you always choose him, even when you swear you won’t.

there’s a dangerous thrill in being the only one who can look him in the eye when he’s furious and not flinch. he respects it. he hates it. he craves it.

nights with him feel like walking a razor’s edge: half passion, half power struggle. you never know if you’ll wake up tangled in his arms or with a blade against your throat just because he wants to remind you how fragile you are in his world.

people ask if you ever feel unsafe with him. the answer? yes. constantly. but it’s not the kind of unsafe that drives you away but the kind that hooks deep into your veins, keeps you running back because danger has become synonymous with desire.

sett is possessive in ways that don’t feel like love—at least not the healthy kind. it’s obsession, control, addiction. and yet, when he cups your jaw after a fight and murmurs, “i wouldn’t let anyone else get this close,” you believe him. you hate yourself for believing him.

if anyone else tries to point out the toxicity of it all, you laugh.

him being older? the issue? no, the problem is that you’ve tied yourself to a man who could burn entire kingdoms just because you looked at someone else too long and you don’t know if you’d stop him.

sett doesn’t see you as his equal. not at first. you’re a challenge, a toy, a pretty little thing to bend until you break. the age gap is just another lever of control he can pull.

“sweet thing, i was cutting throats before you even knew how to lace your shoes.” says with a smirk, while his hand traces your thigh.

his affection is calculated cruelty. he withholds tenderness on purpose, watching you squirm, desperate to prove you deserve it. when he finally gives in—kisses bruising, words low and sharp—you feel like you’ve won. but it’s never enough.

jealousy? lethal. it doesn’t matter if it’s a stranger glancing your way or a friend lingering too close—sett makes sure they regret it. in public, it’s a casual threat disguised as charm. in private, it’s his hand gripping your jaw while he hisses:

“You’re mine. Don’t make me remind you in ways you won’t like.”

arguments spiral into dangerous games. you slam doors, he breaks them. you throw words, he throws daggers into the wall beside your head. and then, minutes later, he’s kissing you like you’re oxygen, muttering, “don’t you dare leave me.” arguments escalate into hands gripping, voices sharp. then, later, he drags you into bed, making you beg while his obsession hums through every move.

you’ve stopped asking yourself if you love him. it doesn’t matter. what you feel is stronger than love,,, it’s dependency, obsession, the kind of sick devotion that rots at the edges.

sett is manipulative in ways that make you doubt your own mind. he’ll twist your anger into guilt, your victories into his generosity, your defiance into his triumph. and when you finally cave, he kisses your tears away like he’s the only one who can soothe the pain he caused.

he doesn’t let you forget the power imbalance. every once in a while, he’ll whisper something soft like, “you’d be nothing without me,” in a tone so intimate it almost sounds like a vow.

danger is the glue binding you two together. he drags you into his messes, pulls you close when the world is burning, and tells you it’s safer at his side,,, even when you know he’s the danger.

sett doesn’t want a partner. he wants possession. and the sickest part? you want to be possessed. you want to drown in the toxicity, because nothing else feels as consuming as him.

the age gap is the least problematic part. the real problem is that you’re not sure whether you’d survive if he ever let you go. and worse,,, you’re not sure if you’d want to.

he doesn’t make love, he conquers. every touch reminds you who holds the power. hands on your throat, nails down your back, bites marking your skin… you’re his, in every sense, and he knows it.

anyone daring to glance your way earns your body later. he drags out your pleasure and your desperation just to remind you who owns you. "bet they couldn’t touch you like I can."

sett calls you pet, little girl, plaything... mocking, possessive, intoxicating. you repeat it back, admitting you belong to him while he ruins you, and you love that you do. after breaking you down, he holds you close, kisses your tear-streaked face, murmuring things no one else would ever hear: "no one else touches you. only me."