the love letter of september 𓍼

And okay, there had been a handful of heated hookups after long nights of breastfeeding and soothing your daughter back to sleep in her crib, where you'd begrudgingly let him pry your thighs apart on the couch to bury his tongue inside of you or sleepily fuck you on the stained cushions with your face buried in the pillows. But you'd made it clear each time that you still couldn't stand him.

You were using him for sex.

The sad thing was he didn't mind.

Not when his skin was on yours, when your mouth was still saying his name instead of someone else's.

He tried to propose to you. Four times.

You called him a manchild for thinking a marriage would make the two of you magically work.

"Think she'd say yes if I asked her on a real date then?" Sukuna said, trying to piss him off today as he leaned back in his own chair and chuckled. He didn't like the way he said real. Like the two of you had been on something that could've qualified as a date before without him knowing.

God, the only reason that asshole even came was because he heard that you were dropping off her.

"Don't even think about it," Gojo groaned, tempted to reach across the table and throttle him for suggesting it.

Having a baby with someone he was hopelessly in love with was hard enough.

Did all of his friends have to fucking audition to be the stepfather?

Sukuna hadn't even known you until after he'd knocked you up.

Never met you until you begrudgingly showed up to the frat house with a pregnancy test in hand and a scowl etched across your pretty face.

"I mean, who would you rather have be the stepdaddy?" Sukuna dryly mocked, actively ragebaiting him as he snagged the muffin that had been meant for you, unwrapping it and taking a big bite before talking with a full mouth. "Me? Or Suguru?"

Gojo would actually rather die than watch either of them marry you.

What the fuck was he supposed to do to stop them from speaking to you though?

Especially when the latter had managed to end up firmly planted in your good graces with those irritatingly smooth lines of his? Cooking you meals and murmuring in your ear what a good mother you were?

All while he just fucking sat there and stumbled over his words, feeling shittier and shittier as they tried to steal you and his daughter right out from underneath his nose.

"Neither," he grimaced, turning his attention back to his baby.

She was awake, kicking her legs in her seat as he bent forward to unbuckle her, carefully picking her up before placing her in his lap.

His heart pounded in his chest, pressure pushing down and making his ribs constrict at the thought of fucking this up.

He didn't know how to be a father. Not really. He'd never even been anyone's boyfriend. Never had any pets growing up to take care of.

Becoming frat president was the first real responsibility he ever had.

And now he had an entire human that was half-him to raise.

Drunk idiots were a lot fucking different than a baby. Who needed to be fed and bathed and loved and a million other overwhelming things he was struggling to keep track of.

She blinked up at him, familiar blue eyes squinting at him before they started to well up with tears, face scrunching up like she was about to start wailing.

He tried bouncing her up and down, but it only seemed to make her more upset, panic bubbling up before Sukuna was getting up out of his seat.

"Here," he grunted, scooping her out of his arms and cradling her against his chest as if it came naturally. "I've got her."

Her tiny body relaxed, eyes softening as he murmured something under his breath - not to Gojo, but to her. Soothing her in a way that simply didn't come naturally to him.

Going from on the verge of bawling to batting her lashes in a matter of seconds.

His daughter didn't even prefer him.

And he only had himself to blame.

Maybe if he managed to make up with you sooner, actually make you his, he could actually be living with you full time. Sharing a bed, sharing breakfast, being there to handle all the dirty diaper changes and spilled milk instead of just stopping in and begging you to let him stay to do night shafts.

You didn't trust him. Thought he was just a temporary fixture. Someone who was here for now instead of forever.

Every time he got close to convincing you he was here permanently, he always screwed it up.

God, he almost missed you giving birth just because some goddamn sorority girl stole his phone at a stupid party Suguru had insisted he show up to for at least an hour. But he'd been the one to accept the first beer - and the second.

The shots were harder to excuse.

If it wasn't for you calling Suguru in between contractions, he probably wouldn't have gotten there minutes before you had to start pushing. You had glared at him, stray strands of hair sticking to your forehead as you studied the glazed over look in his eyes and scoffed that you could smell the alcohol on him.

All he'd done was stain the memory of meeting your baby for the first time.

Fucked it all up from that very first moment.

He overheard you on the phone a couple days later, muttering something about how you couldn't believe he couldn't just stay sober when he knew you were about to go into labor any day.

Gojo hadn't touched a drink since.

He still had to show up to parties sometimes, had frat duties he couldn't exactly dodge, but he didn't let it interfere with him being a dad anymore.

"You're lucky she looks like you," Sukuna muttered, reaching up to scruff up her hair.

"Yeah," he swallowed, although part of him still wished she had more of you.

"No one would believe she's actually yours if she didn't," he dryly commented, picking out the the stitches of wounds Gojo was still licking.

"Can you stop being a dick for like, a day?" Gojo grumbled, rubbing his eyes as he glanced away from his daughter out the window at the people passing by on the street.

Staring a little too long at the happy families, his mouth twitching down at the tiny kids chattering to their parents, struggling to accept the fact that one day his own would be that be that big.

"I'm just sayin'," he shrugged. "How'd you even get her to fuck you?"

Sheer luck?

Pure chance that you somehow found his stupidity cute when you weren't sober?

He had etched the night in his head, held onto the memory with the worry that it could somehow be ripped from him too.

One of the few moments he'd gotten with you that was relatively untainted by everything that happened since.

Playing it back like a movie in his head, convinced that if he closed your eyes, he could smell the perfume you wore that night, feel your skin on his again.

He'd barely been brave enough to work up the courage to come over to you, jittery as he made an awful joke about running into you here while you tilted your head to the side and replied that you were surprised he even recognized you.

It wasn't like he'd even spoken to you before.

Not technically.

He'd bumped into you once after class, too distracted on his phone to pay attention to what was actually in front of him. In his defense, you weren't looking either, leaning against the wall to rummage through your bag for something with one hand and a coffee clutched in the other one.

The collision spilled your drink, mostly onto the floor as he immediately stopped and gawked at what just happened while you huffed an insult under your breath.

He opened his mouth to apologize, but you just glared up at him like he was worse than gum getting stuck on the soles of your shoes, nose scrunching up as you rolled your eyes and sarcastically thanked him for wasting the one treat you'd gotten yourself this week.

Gojo was pretty sure he fell in love with you from the first scowl.

Clumsily shoving his hands in his pockets and fumbling for a fifty from his wallet, holding it out as he tried to convince his tongue to move and tell you to take it. But you just shook your head and mumbled that you were going to find a janitor to mop up the mess.

His crush hadn't ended there.

Not when he couldn't stop himself from picking you out every time you passed by him on campus, feeling like a creep when he tried to come up with some way to casually run into you again.

So, yeah, when you showed up to his frat house, wearing a pretty little dress and sipping shitty beer out of a solo cup, he was rushing over before any of his brothers could notice how cute you looked when you frowned.

"Come to spill my drink?" You sarcastically asked, arching up an eyebrow when he inserted himself in the space next to you.

"That was an accident," he pouted, pushing out his bottom lip and hoping you didn't find it completely cringy. "Can't I make it up to you?"

He couldn't fucking believe it when your mouth curled up in a soft smile instead of an automatic scoff, his heart slamming so hard against his ribs he was sure it was going to burst before he even got your number.

"What do you have in mind?" You asked.

He was ready to get on his knees then.

More with every second you spent by his side, giggling at his awful attempts of flirting as you kept him at arm's length, forcing him to try harder than he had with any other girl before just to take a single body shot off of you.

His cock throbbing and aching in his jeans when your lips softly pressed against his collarbone, drifting up to drink the vodka you poured in the divot above it. His hands had been on your waist, fingers sinking in like he couldn't quite tell if you were real or just some dizzyingly beautiful hallucination his drunk brain had conjured up.

It wasn't until he managed to pull you back into his room, bending you over the bed and shimmying your dress down that he let himself believe this was actually happening.

"So you fuck every girl you take body shots with?" You teased, out of breath while he felt his own get caught in his throat at all your exposed skin.

"Just you," he lied.

Although, now that he was with you, he couldn't remember a single one that had come before.

"Uh-huh," you muttered, not believing it for a second.

He wished you had.

"You're the prettiest girl at this party," he purred, although he was already thinking that maybe he should've said planet as he dragged his tongue over the inside of your thigh, up to where your lace panties were still bunched between your legs. Leaving a damp patch as he greedily tried to eat you out through the thin fabric, acting like a desperate loser in love with someone leagues above him.

Gojo always thought he was a catch.

Cocky enough to find confidence in his position as class president, in his body and his brains, in his financial and social status.

But he couldn't shake the fucking feeling you thought he was beneath you.

It only made him crave you more.

It wasn't good enough to have you writhing underneath him, chest heaving when he finally buried his cock inside of you, hastily just grabbing a random condom from the closest drawer and carelessly sheathing himself in it. It wasn't enough to make you moan his name as he bottomed out again and again, focused more on your pleasure than how tight the condom was as his fingers sloppily played with your clit.

Gracelessly grinding as deep as he could inside you, gritting his teeth as he watched every tiny flicker of your face, searching it for a tiny inkling of passion, of hunger that wasn't just primal.

Gojo wanted you to want him for him.

Not just a quick fuck that you'd forget about sooner rather than later.

Still, he never meant for the condom to break.

He'd known from the second he saw it register on your face that you weren't going to give him a second chance. That he'd totally fucking blown it as he stammered out apologies and spread your thighs further apart to fish out the broken bits of condom from inside you, cum leaking down your thighs as you bit your lip and stared at the ceiling.

"Are you on birth control?" He asked, his voice thin and strained as he pulled out the last piece, a funny feeling settling in the pit of his stomach at the sight of his own cum dripping out of you, the way the panties he'd forgotten to fully take off of you had gotten soaked as you stared at him with unfettered irritation.

"No," you spoke quietly, a hint of embarrassment shining in your eyes as you looked away from him to the state of his messy room. "I don't really do...this."

"Oh," he swallowed.

He didn't know what to say.

What to do. How to fix something he'd never had before.

So he just awkwardly threw away the condom, chewing the inside of his cheek as he tried to put on a casual grin. "Do you, uh, wanna shower or something? Stay the night?"

"Fine," you muttered, the mood still ruined no matter what he did to lift it again. Anxiety creeping in and making his usual aftercare routine awkward and tense until you were both laying on different sides of the bed, him staring at your back while you faced away from him.

He hoped that you would be there the next morning.

That the next day would be the start of a different story. He'd take you out for breakfast and reassure you that you probably wouldn't get pregnant anyway.

Really, what were the chances of it even happening?

He fell asleep fantasizing about ways to make you fall for him too.

But you were gone when he got up, rolling over to find a cold place where your body should be.

The bed was empty, your clothes missing from the floor and no note left behind.

No phone number for him to call or text to beg for a date. He stopped seeing you around campus too.

In some sick way, he felt a fucked-up sense of satisfaction when you showed back up to tell him you were pregnant.

He thought that it'd mean you were stuck with him.

Not that he'd be spending the next year scrambling to keep your attention to himself.

And away from them.

Sukuna reclined back more in his chair, his hard features softening as he dragged his thumb to wipe away the drool from his daughter's mouth.

"You're kind of a shitty dad, dude," Sukuna grunted, not even glancing up at him.

Was he?

He didn't know what a good one looked like.

His dad had barely been there for him growing up. Too busy to be at the dinner table or attend his soccer games.

"Can you stop talking like you're her stepdad?" Gojo grumbled, exhaling as he held out his arms, ready to take her back just for his baby to betray him again, clinging onto Sukuna's shirt with her tiny fists.

"I'm not the one you should be pissy with," Sukuna shrugged, a little glint in his eyes that made his stomach churn. Already aware that something he wouldn't want to hear was about to leave his friend's mouth. "Suguru's the one taking her out to dinner tonight."

Since when?

His jaw locked, fist clenching under the table at the thought of you and Suguru sitting at a table together at some fancy place, his hand sneaking out to brush over yours as he ordered you wine and wooed you.

How the hell was he supposed to let his best friend fuck his baby momma?

"Do you know where?"

a/n: i'll let you guys name their baby, drop suggestions in the comments!!

at least that’s what people say.

that he’s a notorious playboy or fuckboy — or some other term people would call him every week or whatever — known for incredible and mind-blowing one night stands. his eyes are so damn captivating people go crazy over it the moment he bats it.

people fawn over him. they love him — people practically offer themselves to him willingly, just one look from his ocean eyes and yup, hearts around him remember to beat just to break, burst, collapse.

he’s a heartbreaker, a damn good one at that.

at least that’s what people say.

GOJO satoru is an arrogant asshole who doesn’t give a fuck because he has everything. those cold piercing eyes are just portals of his own apathy.

that he’s a snob, a power tripper; loud and annoying. that since he knows he’s good looking and rich he just takes advantage of the people around him. he’s a know-it-all. boastful. insensitive and apathetic. people say he doesn’t even have a heart that’s why stepping over people is so easy for him.

that GOJO satoru is devoid of emotions — cold hearted.

his eyes reflect hollowness.

at least that’s what people say.

he doesn’t bat an eye when someone offers him chocolates and flowers, how everyday he receives tons of love letters; he doesn’t even show any remorse when he rejects someone that lays bare their heart on their hands, stripped raw just palpitating his name, willingly devout at the mercy of his affection that just doesn’t seem to exist.

it just fucking doesn’t — he’s cold hearted.

not the one to commit. reckless beyond reparation. just another conceited and affluent man who grew up always, always getting what he wants. just another insufferable, maddeningly beautiful man with beautiful eyes that feels entitled to everything around him because, for some reason it does.

that’s what people say.

and he thinks it’s true. hard cold fact burning bright red on his skin full of scratch marks. the curses that slip off the lips of the people he’d been with, tears full of disdain and hatred; lockers and mailboxes overflowing with love letters. maybe he really doesn’t care. maybe he does.

he’s just there… like a mere bystander of what people say about him that each time feels and becomes real. maybe it is.

like a water that takes up the shape of any container it’s in.

the audience of his own mind; the passenger of his own car — never entirely present nor complete. drifting over his hazy waking days full of indulgence and reckless youth. why not?

he’s just there to experience and for so long; he just became desensitized by everything people threw at him.

people want him.

they either want him or want to be him.

but fuck does it also fucking sting so bad, like his skin ripped apart from part by part, nerves from the veins from the tendons from the bones until he’s messily undone by everyone that surrounds him.

a masked vulnerability. they gave him the tools, the cutting edges, ‘you shape it,’ and maybe that’s what love is — to be guided..? but does it actually involve shedding your flesh for the people’s satisfaction?

because deep down he knows the difference between being wanted and being loved and he knew damn well none of it was love at all but over time, over his measly life decisions, over his sins and broken lineage, maybe it is. maybe to be loved is be broken.

condemned.

offered and tainted.

GOJO satoru is a unreal. a divine being. too damn ethereal that most people think he’s carved and molded by the gods themselves and sent him as a touch of blessing and grace in this unruly world; that the closest you could ever get to heaven is through his vastly deep, striking blue eyes.

at least that’s what people say.

more and more years that piles up on his being; he felt much more of a concept rather than a human. he’s smart enough to see the patterns, recognize the botched notions, but what does it change?

awareness doesn’t equate to freedom when you weren’t given a chance to be free in the first place.

so damn untethered. hazy. he’s everywhere but home.

hollowed blue. he’s a concept of damnation and salvation based from what they say. his eyes — always his fucking eyes — that looks like the exact replica of his parents, his father mainly and he’d laugh — his laugh sometimes scares him; its mechanical, a practiced response rather than a genuine reaction — “i know.”

his parents doesn’t know how to raise a child but they’re that damn good at raising hell.

and maybe that’s what he’ll ever be. irredeemable.

never home.

revered as divine by many, abhorred down to his guts by the world, all while he burns skin deep, superficial marrows all dented. fractured. sticking out.

until he met you.

maybe it’s a cruel punishment waiting to strike him down to ashes again. you looked at him in a way that nobody ever did; him as a human not as a concept or rumor or narrative people plastered everywhere.

to you, he’s satoru. just satoru and good-fucking-god that unraveled something within him. something rustic. decaying and withered nursed back to life. slowly.

for so long, he felt like he’s just constantly drowning from everything that his lungs just blown blue and purple until you.

for the longest time, he finally learned how to breathe without suffocating.

not from the contact of air in his nostrils. in his lungs. just... breathing. he noticed how his shoulders drop whenever you’re around, with him. how his tense and monitored breathing becomes even and comes down with a long, freeing sigh.

your presence feels warm. dangerously and tenderly warm sometimes the voices and fatigue from his cracked bones tell him to pull away; its dangerous, until you’d reach out to him and brush his hair away from his face and everything just falls into the most perfect places.

apparently this is what it feels like to be loved. not just wanted. not as a flesh to be used, a vessel to be trained, a figure to blame and hate - just human. humane. loved dearly so, he could feel the adoration for him just from the feather light brush of your fingertips. that was enough.

his eyes that he grew to hate, most times devoid of emotions, peels its sclera and holds the most venerating love that he wish he can say but sometimes the letters couldn’t really trace the complexity of his affection that swells not just within his heart and chest but in his whole being. it runs deeper than his existence.

funny how most of his life he felt like a bystander of his own being, his own lifeline, just drifting but now that he has you…

he feels tethered. grounded. like a body one with the mud and ground and grass, all yours to nurture.

he never learned how it feels to come home for he never was home, but to you it felt somatic. like everything about him just knows your existence like a familiar path to gravitate towards to — path to safety. as if his atoms and cells knew you before he could ever know your name and existence.

he’s already imprinted himself unto you and yours to him.

he’s not cold-hearted. maybe his heart just doesn’t know how to warm itself up. it was a defense mechanism from the piercing criticisms because back then if he let himself feel, he’ll erode. too much of a burden and responsibilities placed on his shoulders. he'll disintegrate.

he’s not a heartbreaker. he was the one who stood before all the people who cursed him with an already broken heart. he just happened to bleed all over others too. and believe me when i say he's utterly sorry for that.

and most of all? maybe he was a whore. all the body counts? yeah fuck he can’t ever undo that. he knows that well enough.

he’s just looking for a home maybe he can carve himself unto. even if it was definitely temporal. to be skin to skin with someone was the closest thing to what feels like home back then.

because maybe if he did it enough it’ll fill the gaping void within him. if he did it enough someone’ll crave him for who he really is rather than just a concept or a flesh.

just him.

he’s not what people say. you reassured him enough for him to believe it… most times. he tries his best because sometimes your love terrifies him — how can such a sinner like him deserve a love so fucking genuine it washes away his dubious doubts and fears?

how?

why?

he knows he’ll never ever be kind enough to himself. just doesn’t seem right. he’ll push you away once the burns that were embedded on his soul sears again. he just doesn’t want you to get caught in the crossfire of his wrongdoings. sins. damnations. he’ll never ever be the angel people make him out to be.

irredeemable.

at least that’s what people say.

but you taught him that to love isn’t to burn. that it doesn’t have to shout. it’s not turbulent and just blue. that to love is to hold space and hold his hand in the process of you understanding things.

that to love is to finally let yourself be seen. held. loved. even with the edges he thinks is too unlovable. it's not. never will be, because if someone loves you?

they'll witness. they'll hold you, see you for who you are — flesh and imperfections, wrong decisions and just you. already enough, always has been. just made forgotten by the cruel voices outside. you taught him all that and god, it always takes his breath away whenever he knows he's loved. he can't believe he has you. too damn lucky.

he’s undone, but he’s yours. that may be all he ever needs to hear.

or know.

for him to finally be a human and be humane with a home.

to just be satoru.

and that’s the greatest divinity of redemption he'll forever be grateful for.

──★ ˙

and when you’re on his lap, straddling him, your lipstick stains on his lips, tracing his jaw, down to his neck where his perfectly white collar gets smudged, faint classic red, he lets it. in fact, he wants you to mark him yours, for everyone to know he’s off limits, always had and will always be.

your nail scratches on his back, nails desperately scraping his uniform as he pounds in you, deep and delirious. each thrust was rough, grazing that spongy spot that makes you breathless and a babbling mess beneath him. the necklace you gifted him on his birthday years ago clinks erratically, hitting the pins on his uniform matching his merciless pace, as he grunts and whisper sweet nothings next to your ear, “6 minutes, love. be a good girl and — fuck, take all of me, yeah?” before slamming back in, the coffee table creaking beneath the weight of your sweating bodies.

his uniform was still intact, messy yes, but still on—as you insisted. who was he to say no to you?

he pulls back to watch you—your furrowed brows, your mouth hanging open, repeating his name like a mantra, how you arch your back, and boy oh boy it was enough to send him over to the edge but he does his best not to, not yet— not when you look so good beneath him like that, your hands reaching out to tug on his hair, his neck, pulling him closer, like you need him the way he aches for you.

he grips the edge of the table above your head as he rubs circles on your clit, now desperate and feverish—his mouth finds yours in an instant, swallowing both your moans, tongues colliding and tangling messily—desperate to chase yours, before going down to place sloppy kisses down to your throat.

“i’m coming, caleb— fuck,” you gush, pulling his hair when his phone rings loud and sharp, your body jolting from the sudden loudness.

“don’t, ahh— just focus on me pipsqueak.” his pace staggers, driving him closer to the edge and when you finally came, clenching on him like a fucking vice, clinging on him, on his uniform like your life depended on him that moment he follows just after you, burying himself so deeply as he spills inside you.

when he pulls out, wincing from sensitivity, he kisses your temple gently before picking his phone up and answering it.

damn. he might wear that uniform even on his day-offs now. who knows?

author’s note 𓍼ོ him in that damn colonel uniform lives in my head rent free dang it bro anw just a quick upload its midterms week… and i’m still testing how to write filths like this lol lmk your thoughts! to all the experienced smut writers out there… tell me the hows to improve my craft lol thankies luvies!! <33

── .✦

his white lashes flutter, too drunk from pleasure, eyes lidded and heavy—once ocean blue in color, now gray and dark, peering down at me. sweat traces his defined torso, his own warmth that he lends me whenever he pummels deep in me, hands wrapping around my neck. “satoru,” rolls off of my tongue, sounding less like a name and more of a litany i choke on to, as i cross and fade between consciousness and exhaustion.

when my body smells more of him, the smell of sex and sweat lingers beneath my nostrils, i find my appetite appeased when i devour his own spit, my own stomach churns—whether its the carnal hunger for him to merge and stay inside me, or if its the undoing i could never undo anymore— i do not know.

it starts off as subtle—lingering and missing items (toothbrush, perfume, undergarments). then the shadows in the corners of my room in the dead of the night.

until his own hunger became my own. i need more of him.

his voice behind my eyes. his breath behind my ears. his hands under my shirt. his mouth on my skin. his tongue dragging across my neck, down to my chest, down to my stomach, down to my core.

and him, inside of me.

each piston, each thrust—each grappling of my flesh, his eyes on me, begging, pleading, dark and all time consuming.

he takes more of me and i consume more of his, and sometimes, i wonder, when i’m faced down, all my screams and pleasure muffled on the pillow, bathing from my own sweat and saliva—am i consuming me or him?

i can no longer distinguish where my flesh starts and where his ends.

yna’s footnote 𓍼ོ a little something i tried. hehe

You should’ve known something was up when he specifically bought only two first-class tickets to Las Vegas and your flight was at midnight. He’d insisted the two of you sneak out of the Kyoto Jujutsu Tech compound where you’d stayed for the duration of his visit to the Gojo clan, and hadn’t bothered to inform Shoko or Utahime or Yaga.

And so, again, you reiterate firmly and resolutely: none of this is your fault.

Your predicament—standing in a parking lot behind a Denny’s at nine in the night with a small fire going in a trash can nearby—is entirely, absolutely, positively Gojo Satoru’s fault.

“I want a divorce,” you tell him.

“We’ve been married for forty-seven minutes.”

“Forty-seven minutes too long.”

“You’re burning our wedding certificate!” Satoru says. “How are we supposed to file for divorce if there’s no proof we even got married?”

“I’ll figure it out,” you say, poking at the certificate with a stick you found on the ground. The corner of it curls and blackens satisfyingly. “I’m very resourceful.”

“You’re committing a crime is what you’re doing,” he says.

“You committed a crime first.”

“Getting married isn’t a crime—”

“Fraud is.”

Satoru opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again, at a loss for words. This is a rare and precious occurrence—Gojo Satoru, speechless! You would be savouring it more if you weren’t currently a married woman in a Denny’s parking lot in Las Vegas at eleven o’clock in the night.

Satoru had told you it was a vacation. He’d shown up at your room in the Kyoto compound at half-past ten with a bag tucked under his arm and said, simply, “Come on. We’re leaving.”

“Leaving where?” you’d asked.

“Somewhere that isn’t here,” was his cryptic reply.

You’d been in Kyoto for six days. Six days of watching Satoru navigate the Gojo clan and their elders with their careful smiles and careful words. Nearly a week of watching something tight and unhappy lodge itself behind Satoru’s eyes while he pretended, convincingly, that everything was fine. You knew he wasn’t; you’d watched him perfect his act for years, after all.

So, you went. You told yourself it was because you’d never been to Las Vegas. This, at least, is true.

You’d grabbed your bag and followed him out through a side entrance of the compound at nine forty-five, and you didn’t inform any of your friends or superiors. Because of this, your phone has been periodically buzzing in your pocket for the last several hours and you’ve been ignoring it, which is a problem that is also, for the record, Satoru’s fault.

The flight was actually wonderful. First-class seats entailed warm socks and warm food and a window seat, because Satoru had graciously sat by the aisle. When you were flying over the Pacific, he’d fallen asleep with his head tipped back and his sunglasses still on. He looked younger when he was sleeping, you’d thought. More like the version of him you’d met when you were both too young and foolish to understand what being a sorcerer actually meant.

After you landed, Satoru took you to a casino and then to a fancy place for lunch, and then to another two casinos—if he wasn’t careful, he’d turn into a gambling addict soon—and then he took you to a chapel on the Strip with fake flowers zip-tied to the pews and an officiant named Francis who had red hair and smelled like cigarettes and convenience store chewing gum.

Francis had cried a little during the vows, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. Satoru had found this enormously gratifying. You, however, had been in something of a dissociative state.

“It’s not fraud,” Satoru says now, in the parking lot, watching you cremate your marriage certificate. “We did actually get married. Francis witnessed it. There are photos.”

“There are photos?”

“Francis had a camera.”

“What?”

“I think it’s just something he keeps on him professionally.”

You stare at him. He has the grace to look slightly sheepish. His sunglasses are still on. His suit jacket is open, and his tie, which had been done up neatly for the ceremony (clearly he’d planned far enough ahead to wear a nice tie) is now loosened and slightly crooked. The cheap gold ring on his finger—wrong hand; he’d fumbled it in the moment and jammed it on before either of you could correct it—catches the light from the parking lot fluorescents.

“That’s it!” you say, snapping your fingers at him. “That’s our proof to file for divorce! Take me back to the wedding chapel, Satoru.”

“No way,” he says. “I’m taking you to dinner first. We need to commemorate our first night of being married.”

“We’re behind a Denny’s,” you point out.

“I know,” Satoru says. “Denny’s is a perfectly acceptable dining establishment, but I meant somewhere nice. There’s a steakhouse on the Strip that has a three-month waitlist.”

“Then we can’t go there.”

“I called ahead.”

You gape at him. “Three months ago?”

“No,” he says. “I called ahead on the plane. You were asleep.”

“I wasn’t asleep for that long—”

“Yeah, you were asleep for, like, four hours. You even snored a little.”

“I did not—that’s not the point! The point is, you planned this. You planned all of it, the chapel, the restaurant, the—” You gesture at the ring on his finger, the ring on yours, the dying fire in the trash can—“everything.”

“Not everything. I didn’t plan for you to burn our wedding certificate in a fit of rage.”

“That’s your fault by proximity.”

“That’s not a legal standard.”

“I’m making it one.”

Satoru smiles, quick and bright. You have a long and storied history of making Gojo Satoru laugh when he isn’t expecting to, and it used to feel like winning something. It still does, if you’re being honest.

“Come on,” Satoru says, nodding towards the street. “Dinner first, Francis later. We can get the photos after and then you can file for divorce. I won’t stop you.”

“You’d better not,” you say.

“I said I won’t.” He holds his hands up, the picture of innocence. “I’m a man of my word.”

“You’re really not.”

“I’m a man of some of my word,” he amends.

The steakhouse is situated on the upper floor of one of the larger casinos on the Strip, lined with dark wood and low, hushed lighting. You are seated by a window. The Strip sprawls below you in every direction, extravagant and relentless, all that light going nowhere at tremendous speed.

“Were you really that confident I’d say yes?” you ask once the menus have been set in front of you.

“I was… hopeful,” Satoru says. It’s not a word you can recall him ever applying to himself before, in all the years you’ve known him; it sounds odd. You pick up your own menu and look at it without reading it.

What you’ve learnt about Satoru and what most people tend to miss is that underneath all the grinning and grandstanding and carelessness, there is someone who wants things very badly and has learned not to show it. You’ve known this for years. You’ve watched him want things, and watched him bury it under layers of grandiosity until it’s almost invisible. Almost.

“The elders have been at it for two years,” he says finally, without looking up from the menu. “The meetings, the candidates. They’re all very suitable women from very respectable families. Good for the clan’s interests.”

“You never told me it’d been going on for that long.”

“Didn’t want to make it a thing.”

“Satoru—”

“It’s fine. It’s just—” He sets the menu down and looks out at the Strip, all that light below. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life performing for someone who sees me as a resource. I do enough of that already. I knew it was going to happen eventually and that they were going to stop asking and start insisting. So. Vegas.”

“Vegas,” you echo.

“You were the obvious answer,” he says matter-of-factly. “You already know what you’re getting into with me. You don’t have any illusions. You—you’re my best friend. There isn’t anyone I’d rather be stuck with.”

“Stuck with,” you repeat. “Incredibly romantic.”

“I said what I said.”

The waiter arrives and Satoru orders for the two of you. You look down at the ring on your finger and think about how it came from the little rotating display by the chapel door, five dollars American. It fits almost perfectly except for being on the wrong hand.

“Er. You fumbled the ring,” you say.

“I was nervous,” he says.

Gojo Satoru, nervous. Gojo Satoru, who treats most of human experience as something happening at a slight remove, who has never, to your knowledge, shown up to anything in his life uncertain of the outcome—nervous!

“Were you,” you say.

“Briefly,” Satoru says, with great dignity. “It passed.”

“Of course.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Of course.”

The fountains in front of the Bellagio are in the middle of their routine, water arcing up in great pale columns against the dark. The light from them moves across the window in slow, repeating patterns. Satoru’s eyes catch the shifting light. You swallow hard.

“We’re not arguing about the divorce, by the way,” you tell him.

“We’ll see.”

“Satoru.”

“We’ll see,” he says again pleasantly. You’re going to say something else, something firm and unambiguous, but he’s already put his cutlery down and is walking out, and you’re already following.

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #2 – BREAKING AND ENTERING.

The supposed 24/7 active wedding chapel has a sign tacked onto the front door when you arrive later, which reads, Under maintenance. We apologise for the inconvenience!

“Fuck,” you groan.

“Language,” Satoru says. “Maintenance at midnight. Huh. That’s strange.”

“That’s what I’m focusing on right now, yes, thank you.”

You press your face briefly against the chapel door’s small window. The lights inside are off. Through the glass you can just make out the shape of the pews, the flowers zip-tied to their ends, and the little altar at the front where Francis had stood several hours ago and wept openly into his handkerchief. How are you supposed to get the photographs of your husband—you are using that word provisionally under extreme protest—looking at you like you’re the only fixed point in the room?

“He might live here,” Satoru says.

“Francis?”

“Some of these places have a back apartment for the officiant. We could knock.”

“We’re not knocking on a man’s door at midnight,” you say.

“It’s nearly one.”

“That makes it worse!” You step back from the door and look at the sign again. There’s a narrow alley running along the left side of the chapel, squeezed between the chapel building and the 24-hour tattoo parlour next door. You only notice it because Satoru’s already walking towards it. “What are you doing?”

“Recon,” Satoru says. “Just looking.”

He disappears around the corner. You stand on the pavement with your hands on your hips before deciding to follow him. The alley is cramped and smells stale. There’s a dumpster and a stack of plastic chairs leaning against the chapel wall. Satoru stands with his hands in his pockets, looking upward with his head tilted back.

“No,” you say.

“There’s a window.”

“I see that.”

“It’s open!”

It appears to be a casement window on the chapel’s ground floor, propped out at an angle, about eight feet off the ground and just wide enough for a person to fit through.

“That could be a bathroom window,” you say. “We’d be breaking and entering.”

“The window’s already open,” Satoru says. “Technically we’d just be entering. The photos Francis took are currently somewhere in that chapel developing in a back room, unattended.”

“If we get arrested,” you say, “I’m blaming you entirely.”

“Obviously.”

“I will give a statement to the police and it will contain your full name and a detailed account of everything that’s happened tonight, starting with the chapel and working backwards to Kyoto.”

“Sure. Boost or be boosted?” Satoru asks, turning to the chairs. “I’d say I’ll boost you, but I want it to be on record that I think you’d make a better lookout.”

“I’m not being a lookout.”

“You just said—”

“I’m coming with you.”

He pauses, glancing at you, his expression softening just a little bit. Warm and amused—gone before you can fix it in place.

“Obviously,” he says, smiling, and starts stacking chairs.

The window is, in fact, not a bathroom window. It opens into a small storage room at the back of the chapel, with folding tables against one wall, boxes of artificial flowers stacked against the other, and a mop in a bucket in the corner. Through a door on the far side, you can see the chapel proper. The dripping you can hear means the maintenance situation is a ceiling problem, probably towards the front.

“There’s a whole back operation,” Satoru says, impressed.

“We need to find the darkroom,” you whisper.

“Why are you whispering?”

“Because we’re trespassing.”

“Right, yes,” he says, lowering his voice. “The darkroom will need ventilation, so it’s probably towards the back.”

“How do you know anything about darkrooms?” you ask.

“I went through a photography phase in my second year of middle school. It was a whole thing.” He opens the storage room door and peers through into the chapel. “All clear.”

You follow him through. The chapel at night, empty and dim, is a different place entirely from what it was several hours ago. Smaller, somehow. Without Francis and the lights, it’s just a room with cheap flowers and worn carpet.

“Back room’s through here,” Satoru says softly; he’s already at the door behind the altar. You cross the chapel quickly, not looking at the pews or the aisle, not doing anything so foolish as standing in the dark and sentimentalising about a five-dollar ring and a laminated vow card.

The back room is small and smells sharply of chemicals—developer and fixer, mostly. There’s a red safelight along the wall that Francis has left running, bathing everything in a dim glow. A long workbench runs along one wall, and on it, clipped to a line strung above the bench, are your photographs.

Four of them, hanging in a row, damp and gleaming slightly under the monochromatic light. Even from across the room, you can make out the chapel and the altar. Neither of you says anything for a moment, until Satoru walks to the bench and stands in front of the photographs. You make your way and stand beside him.

The first one is mid-ceremony. You’re both facing Francis, and you can see Satoru in profile—head tilted, shoulders set. The second one is the ring exchange; you can see immediately why it’s blurry. You’d both been laughing, actually, you remember that now, because Satoru had fumbled the ring and said something under his breath, and you’d bitten down on a laugh and not entirely succeeded. Francis had captured exactly that, the two of you with your heads slightly bent towards each other.

In the third one, Francis had asked you to face each other for a photo, and while you’re looking at the camera, Satoru’s looking at you. You look—Francis had said surprised, and yes, there is that, but there’s also something else, something you would rather not name.

Satoru is looking at you the way he was looking at you in the chapel, the way he’s been looking at you in these odd unguarded moments all evening.

“We look like idiots,” Satoru says.

“Francis was right,” you say. “We both look surprised.”

“Were you?” he asks.

“Yes. Were you?”

“No,” he says, then adds quietly, “Maybe. About—about other things.”

In the fourth photograph, you are outside the chapel, looking at the ring on your hand, and Satoru is looking at you looking at the ring. Francis had captured the angle so cleanly that you can see Satoru’s full expression, soft in a way his face almost never is in front of other people, private. You realise you’re holding your breath.

“We should take them,” Satoru says.

“We can’t just take them,” you say. “They’re developing.”

“They look pretty developed to me.”

“Satoru, they’re damp—”

“They’ll dry.” He’s already carefully unclipping the first photograph from the line. “Francis has the negatives. He can print more.”

“You don’t know that Francis has the negatives, and besides, we’re stealing from him.”

“We’re borrowing from Francis.” Satoru holds the first photograph carefully by its edge and looks at it in the red light before setting it down on the workbench. “Hand me something to put these in. There should be a folder or an envelope on the bench somewhere.”

There’s a paper envelope at the end of the bench, brown and flat. You pick it up and hold it open. Satoru slides the photographs in one by one.

“We need to leave Francis a note,” you say, “and money. For the printing. For—everything.”

“How much do you think midnight darkroom theft runs these days?”

“What?”

“I’m asking genuinely.”

“A lot,” you say. “Leave a lot.”

You find a notepad on the workbench next to a jar of pens. Francis, you write. We’re sorry for the unauthorised visit. We needed the photos tonight, so please print yourself copies. Enclosed is payment for the developing, the breaking-in, the trouble, and your time. Thank you for everything. It was a beautiful ceremony.

You fold the note and put it on the workbench. Satoru takes his wallet out, removes a quantity of cash that makes your eyebrows go up, and weighs it down with the jar of pens.

You go back through the chapel and through the storage room and back out the window into the alley. Satoru drops down behind you and lands easily on the ground. The night air is warm, and the Strip is still brightly lit not thirty feet away. You hold the envelope against your chest. The photographs inside are still slightly damp.

“For the record,” you say, “this is also your fault.”

“The chapel was closed,” Satoru says reasonably. “I didn’t plan that part. Plus, we have the photos, so. Seems like it worked out.”

You look at him with his loosened tie and ruffled hair and think, He’s going to be completely insufferable about this for years. You are going to have to hear about the Vegas chapel break-in for the rest of your natural life and possibly longer.

“Come on,” you say. “You said the hotel’s three blocks away.”

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #3 – VANDALISM.

There is only one bed. It’s not, on its own, an unusual situation. You’ve shared sleeping arrangements with Satoru before—field missions and overnight calls that left two sorcerers and one room. You’d use a pillow wall, most of the time.

The difference is that you are currently married to him.

“You booked a room with one bed?” you ask.

“They may have assumed, given that I made the reservation under a recently married couple’s names, that we would want,” Satoru says, gesturing at the bed, “the one bed.”

The bed in question is enormous, dressed in white linen and piled with decorative pillows. There’s a bowl of strawberries on the bedside table. The whole room smells faintly of roses.

“Did you request the honeymoon setup?” you say.

“The woman on the phone seemed very enthusiastic about it.”

“That’s not an answer!” You look around the room, hands on your hips. “Well, there’s a couch. You can use that.”

It’s one of those small, decorative couches present in hotel rooms to fill a corner, hold throw pillows, and look tasteful in photographs, but not to sleep on.

“I’m not going to sleep on it, but noted,” Satoru says, striding towards the minibar, shrugging his jacket off and draping it over the back of the chair by the window. “Whiskey or gin?”

“Whiskey,” you say. “We can put a pillow wall down the middle.”

“We’re married,” he says, crossing the room with two small bottles. He sits down on the other side of the bed. “It seems a bit prudish.”

You take the whiskey from him and twist the cap off. Satoru has his own bottle balanced between both hands, still unopened, and he’s looking out the window at the city below. You’ve spent enough years watching him, but it doesn’t seem to change anything; the flutter in your heart remains the same, as does the contentment you feel in your chest.

“I want to see them again,” you announce.

Satoru looks at you. “The photos?”

You reach for the envelope on the nightstand and slide the pictures out carefully, holding them by the edges. They’re drying, stiffening slightly. You hold them in your lap and he leans in slightly.

“You should’ve warned me,” you say quietly.

“About which part?”

“All of it.” You tap the third photograph’s edge, gently. “This.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “If I’d warned you, you’d have said no.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you,” he says, not unkindly. “You’d have thought about it too long and decided it was too complicated, and then you’d have spent months being strange about it, and then we’d have gone back to normal, and—” He stops, turning the bottle in his hands. “…I didn’t want to go back to normal.”

“It’s still a bad idea,” you mumble.

“Probably,” he agrees. His hand shifts on the duvet between you, the tip of his little finger coming to rest against the back of yours. “Hasn’t stopped being true, though. Whatever it is. You know what I mean.”

You do. That’s the problem: you’ve always known what he means, even when he’s being deliberately oblique about it. You’ve known him too long and too well for any of it to not make sense anymore. Which means, you understand now, that you’ve also known you’re in love with him for longer than you thought.

You look at the fourth photograph—Satoru, standing outside the chapel, watching you look at the ring on your hand.

“You could’ve just said something,” you tell him. “At any point. Like a normal person.”

“I took you to Las Vegas and married you,” he says. “That’s me saying something directly.”

His hand turns over and covers yours, warm and assuaging, and whatever reservations you’d been carefully maintaining for years simply crumble.

You close the remaining distance. Satoru’s free hand comes up to your face before you’ve fully moved, which means he was thinking about it too—has been thinking about it, probably, for longer than tonight, longer than Vegas—and he’s kissing you.

He kisses you decisively. There’s a certainty to it that shouldn’t surprise you—this is Satoru, who does nothing halfway—but it does, a little. But what surprises you more is how easy it is. How it doesn’t feel like a change in anything so much as a long-overdue acknowledgement of something that’s been there all along.

When you pull back, his forehead drops to yours. His sunglasses are still pushed up on his head, and you reach up and take them off without asking. He lets you.

“Hi,” Satoru says.

“You’re still wearing your sunglasses indoors at midnight,” you chide.

“I said hi.”

“Hi,” you say.

He smiles; it reaches his eyes. “So,” he starts.

“Do not say ‘I told you so.’”

“I wasn’t going to. Probably.”

“Insufferable,” you say, and kiss him again, which is both a rebuke and a surrender but mostly just because you want to. He makes a sound against your mouth that might be a laugh, and his arms come around you properly this time.

The decorative pillows go first. There are seven of them, and they go in ones and twos without either of you paying much attention—one knocked off when his arm comes around you properly, two more when you shift closer, the rest sliding off the edge in a soft succession of thuds. One of the small whiskey bottles, empty now, rolls off the mattress and lands on the carpet. You don’t notice any of it; you’re somewhat preoccupied by Satoru taking your face in his hands and tilting it and kissing you until you forget what you were arguing about.

You suspect that he’s thought about this for a long time, the same way you have.

“You’re thinking,” Satoru says against your mouth.

“I’m not.”

“You are. I can tell. You get this little—” He pulls back just enough to look at you, and traces something between your brows with one finger. “Here.”

You stare at him. “I hate that you know that.”

“No, you don’t,” he says. He’s right, and you hate that too, so you tell him so by pulling him back down by the front of his shirt.

He lets you tug at him willingly—more than willingly, with an enthusiasm that sends you back against the pillows and makes you laugh, briefly, before his mouth finds your jaw, your throat, your collarbone, and the laugh turns into a gasp. His hands are at your waist, warm through the fabric.

His tie joins the pillows on the floor; you get the knot loose while he’s working on the matter of your buttons. His shirt is untucked and you run your hands on his waist, his ribs, the warm plane of his stomach. Satoru groans against the side of your neck, and you shiver. He tosses your shirt aside, too, and his eyes darken when his gaze lands on your chest. He takes his time with your nipples, rolling them around with his thumbs, before taking one of them in his mouth.

He moves lower, pressing kisses to the underside of your breasts, moving down to your navel. When he reaches the waistband of your jeans, he looks up, pupils blown wide and asks, “May I?”

“Yes, yes, please.” You nod frantically, helping him pull your jeans and panties off when he unbuttons it. You’re already wet and needy.

“You’re so beautiful,” Satoru says, gazing up at you before littering kisses on your inner thighs, so close to where you want him. 

“Satoru, please,” you say. “I need you.”

He blows on your wet core, making you shiver. “Need me to what?”

“I need you to, hah, just—”

Satoru latches onto your clit, sucking and swirling his tongue around the bud. You moan, your hands flying to his hair and gripping the silver-white strands. He alternates between quick flicks and long, broad strokes, keeping your folds spread apart with two fingers while his other hand traces patterns along the underside of your thigh.

“Fuck, fuck—” You curse when his tongue moves in a circle right around your clenching hole. Satoru doesn’t stop. If anything, the sound of your voice breaking, the way you curse his name, only spurs him on. He knows exactly what he’s doing to you. He’s always known how to push your buttons. But this is different; this isn’t a playful tease during a mission.

He dives back in, his tongue flattening out to lap at you with broad, wet strokes that cover everything from your clit down to your opening. You arch your back, your hips lifting off the mattress instinctively, trying to press yourself harder against his mouth.

“Satoru… please, I’m—”

“You’re what?” he mumbles against your skin. He doesn’t wait for an answer, sliding two fingers deep inside you. You let out a strangled cry, your toes curling. His fingers are thick and warm, and he curls them, hooking them upward to find that sensitive spot that makes your vision blur. His thumb remains locked into your clit, rubbing circles on the engorged bud.

The sensation is overwhelming. It’s too much and yet not nearly enough. You can feel the tension building in your lower belly, a tight, simmering coil that winds tighter and tighter with every second.

“Right there,” you moan, your fingers knotting into his hair. “Right there, Satoru, don’t stop, please don’t stop.”

Your breath comes out in short, jagged gasps, your chest heaving. Just as you are about to orgasm, Satoru stops. He doesn’t just slow down; he pulls his fingers out of you with a sudden, wet pop and removes his mouth from your heat entirely. You freeze, your eyes snapping open. “Satoru, what the hell—”

He’s hovering over you, braced on his elbows, his hair messy and falling over his forehead. A slow, smug smile spreads across his lips, though his breathing is just as heavy as yours.

“Not yet,” he whispers.

“I hate you,” you groan, your hips twitching involuntarily, searching for the friction he just stole from you. “I actually hate you so much.”

“Liars don’t get to come,” Satoru teases, though his hand reaches down to gently stroke the skin of your inner thigh. 

He shifts, moving upward to kiss you. He tastes like you, and you moan into his mouth, before he pulls away just an inch, his gaze dropping to your drenched core. “I want to feel you,” he murmurs. “I want to feel how tight you are around me.”

Satoru slides backward, just enough to strip off his trousers and underwear in one hurried motion. His cock springs out, thick and flushed. Your mouth waters simply looking at it, while he pumps it once, twice, thumb circling the tip. He doesn’t lie back down. Instead, he sits up, leaning his back against the headboard of the enormous bed, his legs spread wide. He reaches out, grabbing your waist with those large, strong hands and pulling you forward until you are hovering over him.

“Ride me?” he asks.

The need for friction, for fullness, for him overrides any lingering frustration. You shift your weight, guiding his cock to your entrance. As you slowly lower yourself down, the feeling of his cock filling you, stretching you open, sends a fresh wave of pleasure through you. You let out a long, shuddering moan as you sink down completely, inch by inch, your pelvis flushing against his. Satoru lets out a choked sound, his head hitting the headboard with a thud, his eyes screwing shut.

“Fuck,” he moans. “You’re—you’re so tight. I can’t—”

“Shut up,” you whisper, though there’s no heat in it.

You begin to move, a slow, grinding rotation of your hips. You watch his face—the way his jaw clenches and his nostrils flare, the way he looks at you with warmth and wonder. You quicken your movements, bouncing on his cock. Satoru’s hands move from your waist to your hips, fingers digging into your skin, helping you ride him. He thrusts upwards, tilting his hips and dragging his cock against your walls.

“Look at me,” he groans. You look down, your eyes locking onto his. “I love you,” he says.

You feel the coil in your belly snap. Your orgasm washes over you as you clench around his cock, milking him. Satoru moans, his back arching off the bed as he thrusts upwards one last time. “I’m going to come,” he says. “Let me—”

You slide off his cock and he comes, his release spurting onto his stomach, a little bit on your thighs. You collapse against his chest. He wraps his arms around you tightly, pulling you into the crook of his neck.

For a long time, neither of you speaks. Eventually, Satoru shifts slightly, kissing the top of your head.

“So,” he whispers. “Shower?”

You lift your head slightly, looking at him with tired, happy eyes. “Already?” you say with faux innocence. “I thought you’d want to fuck me on that stupid couch first.”

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #4 – EMBEZZLEMENT.

Hopefully Satoru didn’t mind you swiping his credit card from his wallet while he was fast asleep, one arm thrown over his face while the other was stretched out beside him. You’d wriggled out of his grasp carefully, pressing a gentle, barely-there kiss to the tip of his nose, before digging through his jacket’s pockets for his wallet and pulling out his black card.

It’s for a good purpose, you console yourself, hurrying through the streets of Las Vegas with a jewellery shop’s location pulled up on your phone. 

Las Vegas in the early morning is a different city entirely from the one that had swallowed you whole last night. It’s not quiet, exactly—it’s never quiet, you suspect—but it’s quieter, the frenetic energy of the Strip mellowed into something slower. The crowds have thinned, at least.

You walk with your hands in your pockets, Satoru’s black card tucked safely between two fingers. The morning air is warm and dry, and the sky above the glow of the Strip is beginning to lighten from black to the deep bruised blue that comes just before dawn.

The jewellery shop is three blocks from the hotel, according to your phone. It’s a small, well-lit place that stays open through the night, catering to those Las Vegas visitors who find themselves in need of jewellery at unusual hours, which you now understand is a larger demographic than you’d previously considered.

You walk and think about the rings. The ones currently on your fingers are not adequate. They’re soft metal, the gold already slightly scuffed from one night of existence, and they’ll tarnish in a week. You’d noticed this morning, while Satoru was still asleep: the way your rings sat a little loose, the way it had already lost some of its shine. It’s more of a placeholder than anything else.

The thought of replacing them had arrived while you’d lain in Satoru’s arms, listening to him breathe and looking at the ring.

You aren’t scared, though you’d expected to be. You’d expected to wake up this morning with the full weight of what’s happened landing on you like a dropped beam, and to spend the subsequent hours dealing with the considerable wreckage of your own panic. It seemed like a reasonable response to having been married to your best friend in Las Vegas by a crying man named Francis and then having the matter become rather more settled than a marriage certificate alone would suggest.

But when you’d woken up with Satoru’s arm around you and the photographs on the nightstand, what you’d felt was something almost irritatingly simple: you’d felt like yourself.

The jewellery shop is small and bright, jewellery arranged in lit display cases along the walls, a pudgy man behind the counter. He looks up when you come in, takes in the look of you—your clothes from last night, slightly slept-in, your hair not fully combed—and nods pleasantly.

“Morning,” he says. “What are you looking for?”

“Wedding rings,” you say. “Two of them, please. Something that’ll last for a long time.”

He nods again. “Do you know the other person’s size?”

You think about Satoru’s hands—the ring sliding onto his finger in the chapel, his hand covering yours on the duvet last night, the warmth of his arm around this morning. “I can estimate,” you say.

He shows you to a case along the left wall. The rings inside are simple, for the most part—plain bands in gold and silver and white gold, some with small details, most without. You find two plain bands in white gold, clean-lined and unornamented, substantial enough to last. 

“These,” you tell the man behind the counter.

He nods. You produce Satoru’s black card and spend a figure that makes you wince slightly but not reconsider, because the point isn’t the cost and you’re sure Satoru will agree with you about this when he wakes up and finds both you and his credit card gone. You leave the ship with the rings in a small white box and stand on the pavement outside for a moment in the warming air.

You pull your phone out and type in the search bar, Chapel of Eternal Love, and punch in the number attached. 

“Hello, Chapel of Eternal Love, Francis speaking—”

“Francis,” you say, smiling. “I have a favour to ask.”

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #5 – MARRIAGE.

Francis, it turns out, is delighted. He’d gone quiet for a moment when you explained what you were asking, and then said, Give me an hour, and hung up before you could confirm the details. 

You make your way back to the hotel with your ring box in your pocket and the morning brightening steadily around you. The casino lobbies you pass are still going—slot machines, a scattering of determined gamblers, staff moving between stations—but the Strip itself is relatively peaceful, the night’s crowd entirely dissolved and the day’s not yet arrived. You have the pavement to yourself. It’s a strange and pleasant feeling, Las Vegas in the interstitial hour.

Satoru is awake when you get back, sitting up in bed with his hair in complete disarray and the duvet bunched around his waist. When you open the door he looks at you blankly.

“Morning,” you say.

“My credit card,” he says.

“Is fine.” You cross the room and hold it out. He takes it without looking at it, still watching you. “I needed it for a purchase.”

“What kind of purchase requires you to leave the hotel room at—” he glances at the clock on the nightstand—“six forty-seven in the morning?”

“The important kind.” You sit down on the edge of the bed and take the white box out of your pocket, setting it on the duvet between you.

Satoru picks the box up and opens it, and doesn’t say anything at all, which is the loudest thing Gojo Satoru can do. “You stole my credit card,” he says finally, “to buy us wedding rings.”

“I borrowed it,” you say. “To replace the ones we got from a spinning display rack for five dollars each.”

“I liked those rings.”

“They were tarnishing,” you say. “There’s more, by the way.”

You tell him about Francis. He looks surprised at first, and then warm, so utterly warm when he tugs you closer to him and kisses you again, and again, and once more for good measure. Satoru closes the ring box and holds it in both hands, the way he’d held the whiskey bottle last night before he’d covered your hand with his. 

“I thought you wanted a divorce last night, and now you’ve stolen my credit card and called Francis.”

“Yep.”

He looks at you for a long moment. The morning light filters through the curtains and he looks extraordinarily, unfairly beautiful, even just woken up.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” Satoru sets the ring box on the nightstand, next to the photographs. “Okay.”

Francis has decorated the chapel when you arrive. You’re not entirely sure when he found the time—it’s been barely two hours since your phone call—but the maintenance issue has apparently been resolved, because the lights are on when you arrive. The door is unlocked; when you step inside you find that Francis has replaced the zip-tied artificial flowers on the pews with fresh ones, white and small. There are candles lit along the windowsills. The worn carpet, in the warm light, looks less worn somehow, or perhaps you’re simply disposed to see it differently today.

Francis himself is standing at the altar in a clean shirt, his red hair combed and his camera in his hands. “You came back,” he says.

“We came back,” you confirm.

Francis looks at the two of you—Satoru in a fresh shirt with his tie done up neatly again, you in the best thing you could assemble from your bag on short notice—and grins. “The rings, did you—”

You produce the white box.

“Right,” Francis says. “Right, yes. Let’s—shall we?”

Here is what you think about, standing at the altar of the Chapel of Eternal Love for the second time in less than twenty-four hours:

You think about the first time, yesterday, and how you’d stood here in something close to a dissociative state, your brain running through the situation at high speed. You think about the parking lot behind the Denny’s and the small fire in the trash can. You’d meant it when you said you wanted a divorce, though you realise now that you were frightened of what being married to your best friend entailed.

Satoru had let you burn it, too. He hadn’t argued because he’d known you’d come around. Not from arrogance, but because he knew you, the same way you knew him, all the way down to the things you didn’t say aloud.

You think about the darkroom, the four photographs drying on the line in the red light. Climbing back out through the chapel window into the warm Las Vegas night and holding the envelope against your chest, the photographs still damp inside it. You think about the rings in the spinning display by the door—you can still see them from where you’re standing, the little rack with the remaining rings. They were the beginning, it turns out.

You turn to look back at Satoru. He’s smiling at you.

Francis clears his throat gently. “Shall we begin?”

The vows are the same ones from the laminated card. Francis offers alternatives—he has a small binder with options—but Satoru shrugs, so you use the same ones. When Francis gets to the rings you open the white box yourself. You take Satoru’s ring out and hold it; he holds out his right hand out of habit before catching himself and switching to his left, and you both laugh helplessly. Francis gulps and pulls out his handkerchief. You put the ring on the correct hand this time.

Satoru takes yours from the box and looks up at you—there’s that expression, the one from the photographs, the one you have a name for now. He slides the ring onto the correct finger and holds your hand for a moment after.

Francis is fully crying now. He dabs at his eyes without embarrassment and beams at the two of you over his handkerchief with radiant approval.

“I’ve never had anyone come back,” he tells you. “In twelve years, you’re the first.”

“We forgot something the first time,” you say.

Francis tucks his handkerchief away and straightens up. Smiling, he announces, “You may now kiss,” and so you do.

his white lashes flutter, too drunk from pleasure, eyes lidded and heavy—once ocean blue in color, now gray and dark, peering down at me. sweat traces his defined torso, his own warmth that he lends me whenever he pummels deep in me, hands wrapping around my neck. “satoru,” rolls off of my tongue, sounding less like a name and more of a litany i choke on to, as i cross and fade between consciousness and exhaustion.

when my body smells more of him, the smell of sex and sweat lingers beneath my nostrils, i find my appetite appeased when i devour his own spit, my own stomach churns—whether its the carnal hunger for him to merge and stay inside me, or if its the undoing i could never undo anymore— i do not know.

it starts off as subtle—lingering and missing items (toothbrush, perfume, undergarments). then the shadows in the corners of my room in the dead of the night.

until his own hunger became my own. i need more of him.

his voice behind my eyes. his breath behind my ears. his hands under my shirt. his mouth on my skin. his tongue dragging across my neck, down to my chest, down to my stomach, down to my core.

and him, inside of me.

each piston, each thrust—each grappling of my flesh, his eyes on me, begging, pleading, dark and all time consuming.

he takes more of me and i consume more of his, and sometimes, i wonder, when i’m faced down, all my screams and pleasure muffled on the pillow, bathing from my own sweat and saliva—am i consuming me or him?

i can no longer distinguish where my flesh starts and where his ends.

yna’s footnote 𓍼ོ a little something i tried. hehe