depressiondiaries - Tumblr blog

depressiondiaries · 8 months

Text

BAD HABIT

hitman!tōji fushiguro x reader | 17k

story summary; tōji wasn't expecting to find himself in the stairwell of an apartment complex after a hit went bad. you weren't expecting to take care of a handsome, wounded man in your bathroom. it was perfect alignment for very bad things to happen, especially once he started getting cozy on your couch and refused to leave. neither of you expected feelings to intertwine. for tōji, it was a waste of time; for you, it'd get in the way of caring for your young nephew. there's a steep price for loving a man like him.

story warnings; dark content, hitman!au, there is a plot, tōji is tōji 💀, implications of past negligence, tōji smokes, gunshot wound, descriptions of wounds, some graphic details, mc is a stand-in guardian for their nephew, mc makes bad choices but tries their best, parental abandonment, mention of institutionalization, tōji hittin' it from behind, implied stalking, guilt tripping, depression, tons of sex, prose + detail heavy, unpleasant names used (bitch, psycho, whore). dividers are used to break up scenes.

thank you, @ceruleansol for the wonderful proofreading. you're always a joy to work with 🩷

read the warnings above. events in this story are not indicative of personal viewpoints. mdni!!

if you enjoyed this piece, please reblog it!!

"Hey. There's a dead guy in the stairwell."

At first, there had been silence when Tōji walked in through a mangled-up door. He wasn't thinking about where it would lead him, only that it was pockmarked all over with indentations from someone's knuckles—a long history of them. He had put his fist into doors like that before. They weren't built as solidly as they used to be and collapsed with enough force.

He realized then, with some wrench of disgust, that the dents resembled the craters in skin. Those deep ones that some of his brokers had—ugly little men who sweat too much and smelled as bad as they looked. The sight of it no longer enchanted him, taking him from his trance to walk inside and look around.

Where he stood was lit dimly yellow, a sort of throwback to all of the sleazy hostels he had afforded a night or two in. A second or two later, contemplating it more as he backed himself into a wall and sunk down the length of it until his bottom hit the floor and knees split open, this murky lighting was just like all those backrooms where he made all his deals.

Another look around—he saw a staircase descending into darkness. The shift from hazy yellow to complete black was not a perfect gradient. The air just simply turned inky. Above him, more staircases climbed into a dark oblivion, perhaps even more ominous than the one that led down.

With spotting a couple of doors on the upper floors, numbers embellished into metal plaques that had lost their luster a long time ago, tarnished with speckles of rust as though water had sat on its face too long, he understood he had wandered into an apartment complex.

"This is fucking embarrassing." His voice reverberated back at him. It sounded as lonely as it did bitter. "Guess that's what I get for pissing off that slimebag."

Tōji had antagonized the wrong man this time, a hit gone awry. The order had been received in the backroom of some dirty bar in Shibuya. After catching an eyeful of some women nursing cheap drinks, some men crowding the billiards table while dropping yen into their pockets, he had made it through to the back at the end of a long hallway.

Whoever was hiring for this kill was too much of a coward to show his face and sent some shifty-looking guys in black suits to conduct business instead. One was broad-shouldered, bald, and wore blackout sunglasses in a scarcely lit room, while the other was a scrawny bastard with bleached hair put into cornrows. It wasn't a good look.

Either way, they said a few words—asking him who he was and who was sponsoring him before being handed a crisp envelope ready to burst at the edges.

With half the money in his hands, he didn't give a shit about any of the other details. He got a name, Morimoto Kazuma, and a couple of rendezvous spots to stake out.

He walked out while they were still talking, and now, after the fact, Tōji conceded they probably had something valuable to say. Because that sweaty jackass ended up coming with an entire army ready to grovel and suck his dick when he snapped his fingers.

What a joke. I can't believe that piece of shit managed to catch me off-guard. Now, Tōji was on the run, sitting in some decrepit stairwell with black and purple blooming beneath his clothes. He cradled thick fingers over his side, blood oozing through every crevice of his hand, filling the seams of his fingernails.

That was when he heard it—a kid's voice stirring life into the ghostly stairwell like the blare of a car horn. It was sharp and sudden, jolting him to attention, dark eyes tracking down the sound of it.

The brat was seven or eight at best, probably around the same age as—

Shit, what was his name? I keep forgetting. Hiromi? Kenji? Yuki? Nah, none of those sound right.

"Oh"—the kid frowned, tongue tutting as though disappointed by Tōji's movements—"never mind! He's not dead! He's just some bum sleeping in the stairwell!"

"Hey, who are you talking about?" Tōji still had enough left in him to put a kid six feet under. It wouldn't be the first time. "Little shit."

Heavier footfalls echoed around him, obliterating whatever semblance of quiet there once had been. Your feet moved hastily down the steps, body winding tight against the railing, hands pulling up flakes of black paint that had come loose with decay.

Tōji only looked at you once you slowed, coming to a stop on the same stair as the kid for a pulse before descending the rest of the way down to his side.

Maybe it was just the blood loss or the fact he hadn't eaten or slept in three days, but you were a sight for sore eyes. The air around him turned cold, a breeze sweeping his bangs around his face as the scent of you wafted under his nostrils.

He liked the way you smelled.

"You've had a rough go, haven't you? Holy shit—" You had scoured his body fast, suddenly keen to the crimson leaking through his fingers. His black shirt had adhered to the wound at that point, doing some little part in stifling the worst of his bleeding. "You need a hospital. You need an ambulance. Hinata, call an ambul—"

Tōji pulled you back to the floor when you tried to get up, large fist wound tight in your clothes. "No. I don't need a hospital. I need a bathroom, some antiseptic, and some food."

You sat back down to pry his dirty fingers off of your ironed blouse, surprising him by your agreeability when you lifted his armpit on your shoulder, waving down Hinata to come assist you.

"We don't need the neighbors calling the police," you said.

"I don't want to be late for school again." Hinata was two steps from the landing, palms wringing his backpack straps.

You sighed. "I'll buy you ice cream."

Tōji watched him lean his head a little to the left, just like a dog attuned to particular trigger words. Had it not been for the gaping hole nestled in his ribs and a surge of hard static filling the inside of his head, it might've been cute.

"I want cheesecake."

It was non-negotiable.

Your back teeth clicked anxiously, unprepared for the attempted bribery to go awry as it had. In the end, you agreed to get him what he wanted while gesturing viciously for him to take Tōji's other side.

There wasn't a lot an eight-year-old could do except use what little weight was in his body to push against Tōji's back. Hinata was average sized, teetering on bigger than his peers, so that leverage propelling Tōji forward kept him from stumbling back down to the beginning when his hand slipped on the crumbly railing a time or two.

"The bathroom is just over here." You grunted, barely able to keep yourself upright with the bulk of Tōji's weight now on you. He walked his palm along the adjacent wall as though it did something to help.

It was better than admitting he was at the mercy of some nobodies in their apartment.

"Hinata! Antiseptic!" you bellowed.

The front door shut and small feet shuffled across wood, a muffled thump, thump, thump following his motions until he appeared behind you with a frosted plastic bottle. "Antiseptic! Can I watch?"

You took the bottle, told him no and he obeyed, staying on the other side of the door that you nudged with your toes. Soon, Tōji was situated on the toilet seat. "Can you take off your shirt?"

He thought about making a comment; you had a nice face, so you probably looked good even when your expression twisted all around. But, instead, he followed your order and let you help slowly peel the second skin off of him. The black fabric had been so tight, gripping to sweat in every curvature, especially to where blood had seeped through and stuck to him like wet paper.

"Just about, just about"—your teeth were on show, gnashing until balls of lint were stragglers amongst a faint tint of red—"okay good. We got it."

He took a breath and picked up a pair of tweezers you had next to the sink. "Mind if I use these?"

Your teeth were dry behind your lips, licking them came naturally. "Is there something inside? Glass?"

"A bullet." Tōji smiled when you winced. "Make me feel better later. You should step out if you don't want to see this."

"I do!" Hinata cried, using his head to push the crack in the door wider. "You got shot?! What did you do? I wanna see!"

A surge of heat shot to your face, amazed by his lack of tact. All it took was a couple of flicks to his forehead and the door was slammed shut by the full force of your foot. "You're getting a day off from school and cheesecake. Chill out."

"Ugh!" he whined, weight folding against the paper-thin door. For a second, you thought it might actually collapse.

Tōji had ignored the exchange between the pair of you, background noise he found somewhat soothing in that moment. The bullet hadn't struck anything vital; that much was obvious from the fact he was alive and not spurting a geyser of rust red everywhere or vomiting it. It still went deep.

"How did you get shot?" You were coming at him with an old hand towel, fingers covered as you held it flush below the hole in his body. It wept blood and something viscous and tinged yellow. "I really think you need to get this looked at."

He kept reaching, face unflinching. "Nah."

After several minutes, the bullet was extracted and abandoned in the sink along with your tweezers. It left splatter against the white porcelain, reaching the drab beige backsplash behind the faucet and rectangular mirror just above that. You didn't want to think about cleaning it up later.

"Shouldn't you get stitches?" You weren't dissuaded yet, keeping the towel secured until it felt heavy and damp.

Tōji didn't like how much you were nagging, but this beat rotting away in a stairwell. "You got a sewing kit?"

"Wha—well, yeah," you hesitated, calling out for Hinata to get supplies from the utility cupboard in the kitchen. His bare feet padded away and returned in seconds; the door pushed ajar so he could wedge the convenience store kit through the slim gap.

"Cheesecake?" Hinata whispered into the slot, arranging his face against it so one of his eyes could peer inside. "Cheeeeeeesecake?"

Tōji took the kit from your hands, digging through it for the largest needle. "Hey, kid, you got any fishing line?"

You stared blankly. "Fishing line? No, he wouldn't—"

"Yeah! I do!" Hinata thrust himself away from the door with his arms, feet stomping all the way across the apartment to his bedroom where a greater commotion made you flinch. You were sure he was turning over totes of things in his closet, ripping them open, and spilling them out onto the floor.

It wasn't something you needed to worry about because Hinata was an impressively self-sufficient child; he liked to keep his space tidy and organized. When he was six, he had already started arranging his dinosaurs and animal toys by species. When he started school, he tucked away everything on his little desk so he could lay out his workbooks and pencils.

"He's pretty handy." Tōji said, impressed, when Hinata trotted back in. He steadied against your shoulders, hand outstretched with a spool of translucent thread that Tōji took and fixed through the eye of his needle.

He tied it off at the end, stopping short of piercing through layers of skin and subcutaneous tissue. You and the kid were observing with quiet anticipation, the whites of your eyes showing, breaths paced.

Tōji didn't think it was possible to be self-conscious, but now he felt the need to draw the shower curtain over himself.

"Weren't you getting cheesecake or something?"

Hinata used you as a launch pad and bounced upright, small fists bunched into the back of your shirt. "Yeah! You promised! I've been helping out all morning!"

"Oh my god, you're so impatient," you drawled, flicking him on the forehead again. "This is why your dad dumped you here with me and took off."

"Well," he said and puffed up, chest and cheeks inflating as he backed out the doorway, "Dad said he almost left me with Grandma and Grandpa because you have bad taste in men!"

He swiveled on his toes and sprinted away before a roll of toilet paper made contact. You had half the mind to chase him all the way into the streets, but you were already nursing a flush of heat in your face and neck when you noticed Tōji leering at you.

"Cute kid." He said, needle unsullied.

You tucked your lower lip inside your mouth, slowly letting it roll back out moistened. "I'll just—I'll just go. Do you want cheesecake?"

His shoulders sank forward, elbows perched across his knees. "Nah. I want real food. You got anything?"

"If instant noodles and fried cabbage are your thing." You expected the weird look he gave you. It wasn't the most orthodox combination to have sitting around, stinking up your fridge. "I work two jobs. I just haven't had the time to go lately. I usually just give Hinata money to grab what he wants from the convenience…"

Tōji twirled the needle between pinched fingers, dark eyes that same kind of lackluster Hinata's got when he had stopped listening to what you were saying.

"Anyway"—you got to your feet and pretended to dust off your knees—"it’s there if you want it."

"I'll take it."

A lull drifted in between you and Tōji. He had nothing else to say to you; meanwhile you were taking in the sight of everything for the first time. One thing you had always lacked in life was a sense of discernment, a simple wiring in your brain to know what to prioritize and what would inevitably put you in a corner. It made more sense to be on your toes, to act first, think as you go, try to haggle with repercussions later.

You still did it, even now, as an adult thrust into the workforce, and bills, and taxes, and looking after a kid who could already do arithmetic well beyond his age group.

A man was bleeding at the bottom of the stairs, and now he was waiting for you to leave so he could stitch shut a gunshot wound. Knowing that you had made a grave mistake by bringing him into your home—with a mouthy boy—was obvious, but now what were you supposed to do to rectify it?

"When you're finished doing that," you said, motioning to the oozing hole next to his ribs when he looked up, "It'd be best if you left."

Tōji didn't feel any conviction behind your words. There was an inexplicable attraction, like gravity pulling you towards him because you were curious—because he was something different, something fresh, something you hadn't seen before.

Life with kids meant getting swept into the endless cycle of mundane and menial things that always aged people faster. Tōji, in these moments, felt grateful he had gotten out of that mess before those kids—shit, he still couldn't remember their names—turned any of his hair gray.

You were ensnared, and all it had taken was a bleeding on your bathroom floor a little bit.

"You want me to leave?" Tōji smoothed two fingers along the length of the fishing line, tip of his tongue peeking out his lips. "Sure. I'll do that."

━━━━━━━━━━━

The whole of two weeks might as well have been consolidated into two days because you felt like you hadn't been able to take a breath. Between the demands of your jobs, and the tribulations following a school-age boy through life, you didn't have the energy to constantly confront Tōji about still being camped out on your living room furniture weeks later.

He rotated through an unpredictable schedule that had him asleep on your couch at odd hours and ambling out the front door right when you put Hinata to bed.

Some days he was a set fixture in your apartment, a lamppost equivalent meant to decorate the space between two seats—except for your couch. Other days, it felt like he had never been there to begin with, a figment you had dreamt of to take up space so you'd feel less alone.

"If you're going to stay here, you need to chip in with chores." It was a reasonable request, and Tōji must've thought so too in spite of a disdainful curl in his lip because he took the mop handle you shoved at him. "Hinata already does a lot because I'm always busy. Earn your keep."

That sort of talk went over two ways with Tōji—either he complied because it kept you from nagging him, and in turn, you'd pick up the odds and ends he asked for, or he tried flirting with you and pouted around all day when he'd be shot down.

"You need to find somewhere else to go, Tōji." At any chance you got, you'd remind him that his time in your home was short-lived, a blessed respite from whatever brought him to you in the first place. "I'm serious. You can't just keep hanging out on my couch. You're gonna make it sag."

He let his head loll sideways, arms sprawled out over the back of it. You were behind him, pinned by his eyes when he lifted his face to see you.

"You have a big enough bed to share." His smile was salacious, cheeky, even, but you doubted there was any real intent there. "It helps having me around to look after the place, right? It's not like I make it into a pigsty."

For how boorish Tōji turned out to be, you would give him the credit that he didn't dirty up things very much. Your bathroom had been an isolated incident, and one evening within the past two weeks, he left a few beer cans on the floor that Hinata picked up for recycling.

His only other offense was hovering like a vulture on the nights you'd cook dinner.

"Can't you make him leave? I want to watch cartoons but he's always hogging the remote." Hinata was telling you during an outing on one of your scarce weekends off. "He watches stupid stuff, too."

You sighed, scraping frosting from your slice of cake. It was a nice afternoon out with your nephew at a cafe some blocks from the apartment. A mellow breeze caressed the back of your neck, whipped around the hair over Hinata's eyes, and weaved through trees nearby, making the leaves whisper and tremble.

It was all beautiful, yet both of you were stuck on Tōji being a wedge in your lives.

"Why won't he leave?" Hinata tried again, fork plowing through thick layers of his strawberry cake. "Have you actually tried?"

You believed that if Hinata were ever tested, he'd probably qualify as a genius—or gifted, at the very least. His mother had been that way too, once, in her moments of clarity: smart and quick, eager to find patterns and problem-solve.

He was everything that his father and your entire side of the family never quite was.

It was hard, sometimes, to keep it in your mind that he was only eight. No matter where he was developmentally, he was still a child and still saw the world through the lens of one—not an adult, not a genius, not a boy with wisdom beyond his years—

A child.

This entire ordeal with Tōji was proof of that. It was hard enough for you to process on your own, let alone explain the complexities of it to an eight-year-old whom you asked to do basic addition and subtraction for you at the grocery store.

All he saw was a bulky, mean man who wouldn't let him watch cartoons—not the intricacies behind why that man had to pull a bullet out of his own body instead of getting help at a hospital.

"I think he's hiding." Hinata surprised you with that comment, teeth bearing down as he smiled around his fork. "I think that's pretty cool. He's like a secret agent or something."

It was an obvious angle. You weren't sure why you hadn't considered it before. "Why do you think he's hiding?"

"Well"—Hinata pulled a piece of his own hair from the next forkful he grabbed. He pocketed the cake in his cheek—"he’s super secretive and if you ask him about stuff, he'll act like he doesn't hear you. Sometimes, I get up in the middle of the night for some water, and he's leaving or standing in the kitchen eating."

You rolled a glazed strawberry to one side of your plate. "It is kinda weird, isn't it?"

"Really weird." Hinata nodded. "Do you think he's a bad guy? Do you think he's part of a gang?"

The one time you had seen Tōji's chest to help cover his wound, there had been no tattoos. It'd be lying if you said you hadn't tried grabbing eyefuls of him when you could. How often was it that you got to see something like that?

"I think we can rule out a gang." Your certainty seemed to reinvigorate Hinata as he slumped into his chair and took more eager bites from his dessert. "He doesn't really have the look or attitude. Whatever he does, I think it's solo."

"Oh, so like a hitman!" Hinata said.

Your utensil went cold as it lay abandoned next to the slice of cake you had barely carved a dent into. This was all some pretty heavy stuff you were discussing with a kid, but the insight he was giving you wouldn't have crossed your mind otherwise.

Tōji was a strange man—strange in ways that made you uneasy, made you wonder whether it'd be worth sticking Hinata into some extracurriculars, lodge him up with friends during longer shifts. That would be ideal, albeit unfair to him.

Hinata liked to play with his own toys, sleep in his own bed, and do things on his terms without your intervention into everything. He'd always been that way.

Some part of you felt so sure that Tōji, whoever he actually was, wouldn't dream of putting a hand on a child he playfully bullied with a television remote.

A week later, that conversation with Hinata still replayed in your mind while lapping your way through a tall can of beer. The door leading onto the balcony was wide, letting the brisk night air gush in, kept within earshot of the happenings inside. It was all muffled television chatter from a show Tōji had grown partial to and an occasional slosh of bathwater from Hinata capsizing ships because he was a kraken tonight.

Your apartment was on the sixth floor, a good spot just above the tree lines, so when you looked out, a glittering nightscape awaited with stuttering neon signage and warm light falling out like slanted pillars from buildings with windows. The tops of trees were thick, black silhouettes dancing fluidly with the wind, and you could hear sounds drift along with it as though ghosts whispered around you.

"Hey." Tōji's voice came with the acrid punch of smoke swirling under your nose. The wind took the smell away as fast as it had come, but you were already alert to him stepping out barefoot onto the balcony with you, the door sliding shut. "You've been out here forever. It's never a good sign if someone's thinking that deep about something."

You took a swig from your beer. "Keeping tabs on me now?"

Tōji had hijacked one from your supply as well, despite all the times you had told him not to. He pulled the tab and let it froth up. "Nope. I kept asking you to get me a beer, but you didn't hear me. Figured I'd see what was holding you up."

Your tongue probed along the back of your teeth in an act of restraint. Tōji was the type that got off on purposely antagonizing you just to see your reaction. He baited you with comments like that in his inflectionless drone—it drove you up the walls.

"How's that gunshot wound?" you challenged. "Healed up enough for you to find your own place soon?"

Tōji's eyes caught the shine off of the white fluorescent kitchen light spearing out through the glass doors, but they were still so dark—abysmal, almost. Two of his fingers were positioned weirdly around a cigarette, pinched like he didn't want the smell to seep into his skin. He kept his fist tight on that beer can.

"Still hurts like a bitch." He gave you an oily smile, a look that fit his face. "You gonna kick out a man still on the mend? That's pretty heartless."

It amazed you that he could unleash clapbacks like that without pause like he had memorized them from a book cover to cover and could recall them on command.

On rare occasions, you could do that too, be dealt a nasty comment about your child-rearing techniques from quiet tongues and sling back venom that was equally as unkind. With Tōji, on the other hand, you never could quite meet him in the middle—you'd sting with a rubber band, and he'd bring out a hammer and make you flinch.

That was how he kept getting away with using your beer to wash away the taste of smoke sticking to the roof of his mouth, how he still commandeered your living room and pantry—

You gave in.

He didn't take you seriously.

"I didn't know you smoked." Gray wisps and bright orange flickers sat right outside the corner of your eye, a good opportunity to change the topic. "Just don't do it inside."

"Yeah, yeah." Tōji's agitation was expelled with the smoke from his lungs. Despite how dark it was on the balcony, you saw the peaks of his chest sink inward as though he had been holding that breath for a while and finally needed to let it out.

Just then, he flipped the cigarette around with more of the brown filter exposed to you. He flicked ashes onto the floor. They dropped near his feet. "Here. You'd benefit from a few smokes with how uptight you are."

He wasn't holding it out to you like he wanted you to take it. You realized he was waiting for you to take a puff from his fingers, put your mouth over whatever he'd left behind.

"I'm good. I have my vice." Beer raised, you forced a smile.

Tōji pressed his lips back around the cigarette and shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Men like Tōji were plenty in the world, used to getting their way, relentless until they did. You knew this because you had already lived it before many times.

Bottom of the barrel, selfish men only looking out for their own interests. They came to you, not unlike gods descending to earth for those sad, wretched, and dying souls wanting to cling onto the fine fabric of anyone who'd save them.

You were desperate to be whisked away from the repetitious everyday grind. Their independence was revolutionary, eccentrism enticing like a starving rat lured to food molded around poison. You believed you could love them out of their egotism, and they'd give you the world because they had promised it.

But, in the end, you could bleed out on the floor while they watched red seep into grout in tile, and they would still demand more from you until your insides were dry and hollow and you were a husk.

"So, what's the story with the kid—"

"Hinata." you corrected him.

Tōji knocked ashes off over the railing. "Sure. What's the story there? He isn't yours, right?"

For a moment, you contemplated whether it was worth dredging up the past like that, especially with your audience of one being Tōji.

He had never cared before, so why now?

"My brother's kid." You said.

There was nothing better going on.

He seemed to want conversation.

Might as well.

"He showed up here one day, all dressed up in a suit with a briefcase. He said he had been promoted to an office overseas, and he couldn't afford to take Hinata with him.

"I don't know how much of it was actually because of that new job, and how much of it was to actually escape his family. Sometimes, people are willing to abandon everything to get away. He had been really good about sending money to me to help out with Hinata—in the beginning."

Tōji was hunkered down against the railing, his hulking size crunched sideways on one arm, cigarette snuffed on chipped paint. "Isn't that how it always goes?"

"Yeah, I guess"—you put your back to the railing and leaned hard—"that money was basically extra. All I had to do was work my regular job, make sure Hinata did okay, and that was it. My brother even made a point to talk to Hinata on the phone almost every night for a couple of months.

"Hinata had just turned six. He was already picking up after himself, getting dressed, making sandwiches when I'd sleep in. He was basically raising himself. I just had to handle the adult stuff." You continued, "I started wondering why a kid his age could already do all those things. Where was his mother? Why didn't he go to his grandparents instead? My life is shit; why is my brother forcing his young kid on me?"

Tōji wasn't looking at you anymore, but unlike other times, you could tell with how he paced his drinks that he was still tuned into the story. That felt good.

"The money stopped coming in about six months after I took over as Hinata's guardian. My brother stopped calling him around that time, too. I haven't been able to get in contact with him at all—phone, video calls, text, email, socials, our parents, his friends—nothing. He just… poof."

"He hardly looks bothered by it." Tōji meant Hinata, about how aloof he appeared to be to something that big looming over your lives.

You agreed. "He stopped asking about his dad a year ago. Hinata's a really smart kid, I think he knows—"

"—Dad's not coming home," Tōji finished for you. "Where's Mom during all of this? She dead or something?"

This time, you shrugged. "Last I heard, she was institutionalized somewhere. I think it started out as postpartum depression that just spiraled out of control after ignoring it for years. I don't know what the final straw was that put her in there, but I do know that Hinata does not speak about her."

Tōji had his cheek in hand. "Ah, another psycho bitch out traumatizing kids."

You didn't like how he said it but let the lukewarm bitterness from your beer settle on your tongue. "I wish her the best. It isn't easy."

"Right." He was staring at you now, a suggestive sort of look crawling up along his face. The sight of it made your stomach bunch and flutter, giving you the need to shuffle your feet around, tighten that area between your thighs to ease how much it ached. "Got any questions for me?"

"Do you have kids?" Clearly, it wasn't what he had anticipated you asking because it cleaned the expression right off his face. "The way you handle Hinata isn't the same as some other guys I've met. You have experience, don't you?"

Tōji settled back into an easygoing smile, confirmation enough.

"How old are they? What are their names?"

"He's around eight, maybe nine now. Lives with his mom outside Tokyo." If it hadn't been for him standing at full height and coming closer, you might have pressed for more. "I had a stepdaughter, but that's a mess I don't feel like getting into."

You considered widening the gap again, a wordless declaration to keep things cordial, appropriate for the sensitive situation he was in. He exuded more than an average man's mediocre confidence—this was power from knowing he had influence over you, having caught your eyes on him a few too many times lately for it to be a coincidence.

Tōji saw your longing and your discomfort sitting with it, a part of yourself you tried to deny for the sake of giving Hinata a good life—a better life than you had led for yourself up to that point. That was the thing about kids: It was no longer just about you and it never would be again. Some people couldn't reconcile that reality.

"Wait, Tōji." You couldn't look at him, the intensity of his eyes simultaneously too much to bear and electrifying. He was setting you on fire like a match to flame. "This isn't a good idea."

He had leaned down to your face, head stooped between his shoulders, lips so achingly near it would be nothing to drag him in. Hot air stirred across your skin, dampening it and smelling of stale smoke.

"So, what?" he said, echoing your thoughts aloud. "Push me away if you don't want it."

You didn't know if you wanted to be ravished by him or to assert yourself and shove him out of your space. One would lead to the ideal outcome, a solid boundary that let him know his place, but the other was what you really had your heart set on. You missed being wanted by someone.

Hinata made the decision for you by throwing open the sliding door so hard it rattled, dressed in clean nightclothes with a towel draped over his wet hair like a massive hood. That motivated Tōji to glance over, but he wasn't out of your face.

"You're not allowed to do that." Hinata said, brown eyes made smaller by a heavy brow and accusatory glare.

Tōji almost grinned. "Oh, yeah? Says who?"

Hinata stomped his foot and blurted, "The police! Kissing is illegal." He, of course, withered at the ridiculousness of his words after the fact.

"Wow." Tōji whistled, loud and slow. "That's a new one to me. You sure you're not just being a brat?"

Hinata simply bunched up his face while tossing his short hair with the towel, pieces of it defying gravity once he was finished.

He wasn't looking at Tōji anymore.

"I set three alarms for you tomorrow because I don't want to be late for school." This was a normal thing with him. Once, he had set six just to make sure you had no hope of getting that extra fifteen minutes. "I packed myself some curry for lunch. Can I get strawberry milk at the store tomorrow?"

He could ask you for water melted from the snowcaps of Mt. Fuji, and you would let your fingers turn frostbitten and black to get it for him.

"I'll think about it. I don't need the dentist to ask me why you're eight with a bunch of cavities."

Hinata spit through tightly cinched, vibrating lips, head hanging dejectedly, and led the way from the patio door and down the hallway to his bedroom. All at once, the arrest he had caused was lifted, and Tōji's weight and warmth pushed the bars of the railing deeper into your back.

His eyes lingered at the open space, maybe anticipating Hinata would come charging back to that spot. "Ballsy kid."

Your entire body flinched from the sensation of his large hand climbing along your spine, fingers squeezing together between your shoulder blades and splaying wide again to cradle the roundness of your head. He reeled your face back to him when you tried to turn away, struck with the same unease and excitement as before.

"What're you gonna do?" He could kiss you now, but your eyes were stuck to the sides, suddenly imbued with all the shyness of someone with far less experience. "Hey, you gonna look at me? You're not gonna tell me you've never been kissed, are you?"

Of course you had, just never by someone like Tōji. Something about his size, his confidence, his attitude—it just made you feel small, made you want to be malleable for him. Useable may have been a more daring word to apply here.

Tōji made a noise in his throat. It rumbled so hard you were convinced it coursed his arm and ran through his fingers on your head.

"It's pretty cute, not gonna lie." And then his lips were between yours. Your eyes shut, hands finding and gripping his strong biceps when more of his body pressed into you. Nothing about how he kissed you was gentle or clean; it was meant for him to convey how he wanted you, and that way wasn't chaste or wound in an embrace.

You let him maneuver your head however he pleased, let the strings of saliva linking your mouths snap and feel cold on your skin before he was back in for more. His tongue carried more of the smoke smell than the rest of his mouth, but you let him in eagerly and felt yourself stirring in your groin from how lewd the sounds were.

It was when your hands started to roam, sinking between your bodies to sneak the tie of his sweatpants loose that he withdrew from you altogether and took all his heat with him. He didn't care that you were cold in the dark without him, only that he was able to finally have your eyes on him, the shine of them gone as though covered by a veil.

"You have to work in the morning, don't you? Better get to bed." The tip of his tongue came out to put a gloss over his lower lip, tasting where you had been. "Don't let me keep you."

You'd never wanted a man so much in your life as much as you wanted Tōji right now. Maybe, after all his patience to kiss you, it was the same for him.

"Tōji"—you watched him turn back around, hands bulging from his pockets—"you never told me your son's name."

His face never changed. "I forgot, sorry."

━━━━━━━━��━━

One particular weekend had initially left you beside yourself in boredom because Hinata had gone to stay with a friend, and you were off from work. You experienced some distress knowing how enmeshed Hinata had become in your life, how nearly every waking thought was of him—where he was, was he having fun, was he eating, getting good grades, taking long enough baths, going to bed on time—everything always was for concern over him.

He had been with you right after turning six, right after you had emerged from the trenches of another relationship where you had been trodden over, proved to be unlovable, lost another job, failed your parents spectacularly, and regressed to every slovenly habit you had struggled to correct for years.

And then, you got a knock at your door and saw your brother standing there in an ironed suit and stiff-gelled hair, a shiny leather briefcase in one hand, and his other resting atop the crown of your very young nephew. You hadn't seen him since his third birthday party, which had quickly erupted into family politics, long-held grudges souring the mood instantaneously.

Hinata didn't care because he had cake. They had taken the feud outside and left you with him. All you did was wipe his face when he got too dirty, and he did the same to your clean cheeks in return, already displaying those heartbreaking signs of self-reliance.

You were sad for him but didn't do anything about it at the time. Because you had turned into the family disappointment who no one believed would amount to much, stuck in that perpetual cycle of self-loathing so debilitating from somewhere so deep within, you wanted to flay yourself alive to make it stop.

"I can't take him." Your brother didn't have much of an explanation at the time. You wished you had been able to pull the wool off of your eyes to see it had been a lie.

He blathered on, "My job won't pay to support him and me. You understand, right? He needs to stay here. I can't lose this opportunity or the money. It'll be good for everyone."

You didn't know his wife had been admitted to a psychiatric unit in Yokohama until much later.

You didn't know it had been because she had a complete mental collapse and wept and screamed until her throat and eyes swelled. She had planned to take herself and Hinata to the Shuto Expressway in Greater Tokyo with determination to find a way onto it one way or another.

You didn't know that your brother would never be coming back.

You didn't know how to take care of a child or how loving one would be so different from loving horrible men.

Six months in, you were so scared you wouldn't be able to survive caring for a broken boy and a broken adult, too. Before, you could get by for days without food in your stomach, weeks barely bathing, haggard and fatigued by doing something as simple as putting together a cup of coffee.

It wasn't the same for Hinata. He needed more than you did, and some days, he had to provide for himself. Something that still made you shudder in shame to this day. He navigated your messy kitchen and washed the dishes, threw away bad food if it looked funny or fluffy to him, tried to wrestle trash bags half his size, and learned your microwave so thoroughly that he always had something warm.

You had lain on the couch—the same one Tōji now occupied—most times, only moving to your bed with those random spurts of energy or when you needed to use the bathroom.

It wasn't like you didn't know what was going on around you because you certainly heard him struggle and cry, drag things across the floor, and break dishware because he had to climb on countertops to reach the cabinets.

You made sure he ate and didn't stink, used the wire transfers from your brother to keep food in the apartment and lights and water on, but not much more than that.

Everything changed when Hinata realized you weren't eating and made a bowl of soup for you (instant noodles). He sat on the floor, on the carpet next to where your head rested on some stacked pillows on the couch. You had been asleep all day and only roused because he called out meekly:

"Are you hungry?" He had hot noodles wrapped around chopsticks. "I can feed you. You're always feeding me."

His perception of what always meant split your heart in half, eyes feeling red all the way around as they burned, and your chin trembled taking those first bites of cheap cup noodles.

He smiled at you, and you cried. It sounded so horrid that it scared him, and he didn't know what else to do but bawl too. That had been your breakthrough moment, what finally made you uncover your eyes and put your arms around him, apologizing with a crackly voice.

Maybe it's what he had needed all along as well because he laid his body on you, holding tight, and only let your quiet shushing while rocking him against you calm him down.

In those minutes of stillness with his little heartbeat feeling less aggressive on your chest, head under your chin, eyes closed, you realized that the world had failed you both, but he was the one worth fighting for the most.

━━━━━━━━━━━

It was that very same weekend Hinata was absent from the apartment that Tōji kissed you again, right there on the couch after bringing you close to him. This time he held you flush for a while, giving you that luxury of melting into his body, hands covering every curve, valley, and peak through his clothes until he started taking them off.

You broke the kiss with him to, one, take in all his bareness and the expanse of him, reveling in the pleasure that he was everything you imagined he would be. His chest and shoulders were broad, so strong you got too wound up thinking he could handle your weight on top of him, on his face. Further down, his abdomen was just as defined, his waist that waspy taper, and you could see the angle of his hip bones offering a tease from under his sweatpants.

Second, you leaned over him to see the wound he had faux surgically closed himself. It was better than it had been, anything would've been honestly, but the fishing line had grown a brownish crust, and parts of the wound itself were thick with scabbing and swelled and red with the profundity of infection beneath the sutures.

Tōji saw your expression change and didn't want to hear about it, so he clenched his fingers around your jaw to steer you back to his lips, to touch him, worshiping how he felt under your fingertips.

"You up for it?" He gave you agency to tell him no, well aware that you wouldn't.

He liked that bashful look of yours, one steeped in inner turmoil and uncertainty, yet unequivocally wrapped in lust. You knew that you wanted him and were fighting it every step of the way. Maybe because of the kid, maybe from something else you hadn't told him about yet.

It didn't really have anything to do with him, so he didn't care what it was. Good for you, however, was that he was patient and had all the time in the world—between now and his next target, at least—so if you wanted to play coy, he'd let you.

"Come here"—Tōji took you by one hip and then through your thighs to hoist you onto his lap to straddle him—"this is a better view for me, especially if you take off your shirt. You've been giving me peeks since we've met, but I wanna see."

The way he spoke to you was unoriginal and reminiscent of recent comments you never believed were honest. He had been easing you into it—how courteous.

You still couldn't muster a full smile. "So, you want a show?"

"Sure do, sweetheart. Want help?" His fingers beat yours to the raw edges of your shirt, lifting it up and over your head without any difficulty. Everything else covering you went with it except your pants. "Much better. I like this."

Parts of sex always felt like a blur, some sort of innate, dreamlike fog that shut down your brain for a while. You liked it because life didn't seem all that bad in those moments when you were focused on the feelings, the pressure, the heat on your skin, and boiling in your veins. Tōji liked it because sex felt good, and he liked when the people he slept with were high off him—any part of him.

It got his mind off of the whole bullshit situation hunting down all of Morimoto's incompetent fleshlights. He'd managed to eradicate more than half of them, dwindling that impressive army down to the protected few that couldn't save themselves for shit.

Tōji fondled your body, led your hips over the rise in his pants over and over until he was hard, and could tell you needed yours off just as much as him by the way you sucked on your lips.

He really liked the sheen your saliva left behind, kissing you again to taste you with his tongue, laying you down on your side beneath him as he worked away those final layers on both your bodies.

"Got a condom?" On second thought, it was dumb that he asked because of course you didn't. That kid was always around, and you were too uptight to drop him at someone's house just to get fucked. "I'll pull out. It’s safe enough if you do it right."

You weren't convinced, not with how your eyebrows flattened out. "Tōji, you have a kid."

He smiled, dismissing you with a shrug. "Second time’s a charm. It isn't something we need to worry about here."

You were easy to convince right now, unusually so, given your history with him over the past few months. The transition had been interesting to observe—your suspicion and distrust of him softening into taste-testing your meals from a wooden spoon, glassy and hot stares from the room, evenings on the balcony with two beers and a cigarette, and sometimes charging him with packing lunch for Hinata in the morning.

Tōji watched you fall apart the second his cock hitched up inside of you. It was cute that you were so moldable for him, doing whatever he asked, holding positions for him like armature for a sculpt. It was annoying that, after this, he probably wouldn't be able to fuck you again until after he showed up on Morimoto's doorstep ready to blast his brains out.

"O—oh, shit, Tōji—" you whimpered from your side, torso twisted toward the cushions to hide your face from him, smothering your moans so you didn't sound like a loose whore getting something good for once. "Fuck—fuck me harder."

"You're into some stuff, aren't you?" He was halfway inside you, too big to fit all the way without rearranging you. "Bet you're the type who likes being tied up? Or do you just like being fucked out of your mind?"

Your noises snagged in your throat; he already had you figured out.

He moved your leg from his arm to the nice little seat on top of his shoulder, opening you wider for him, making sure you felt every bit of his cock stretching you, sinking in until your pelvises knocked together and skin clapped.

After the dry spell he'd had over the months, even before meeting you, this was total bliss to him. He wanted to go wild, plow into your hole so hard that you screamed, maybe cried a little, bruised up where the edges of his hip bones smacked into you repeatedly. It'd be nice to see you wobbling around the apartment for a while, too embarrassed to look at him.

He was halfway to achieving that now, listening to you go from performative, loud moans anyone could get from the streets to hard breaths and panting, your sounds mostly stolen away unless he hit a spot in you that made you gasp and writhe.

Tōji kept a hand on your ankle so you'd stay put, the other gripping the back of the couch hard enough that his knuckles turned colorless, fingertips deepening red. The most important parts were on display for now, giving him a show with how they bounced and your skin rippled when he'd slam you down on him.

That's how he fucked you for a bit—into the couch cushions where he slept, on top of the blankets you let him borrow from the kindness of your heart, sheathing himself so deep inside your body that your jaw looked permanently unhinged from how long you left it hang.

"Breathe." he reminded you, leg now off his shoulder as he took you by the ass and picked you up. His cock slipped out of you, a sensation that made you jolt. "Take five."

Your limbs surrounded him, thighs filling the notches in his hips, hands curtained by tousled black hair that glistened blue in the midday light. Tōji leaned into the little scratches on his scalp, flexing his fingers across your ass cheeks in pulses mirroring the cold static racing parallel down his spine.

He nearly bumped you into furniture trying to navigate your cramped bedroom, kiss full of fervor, spurred on by your own deprived desperation.

"Spread out." He said it to you after putting you on the bed, mattress bending to the weight of your knees as you went down on your arms. "Better bite something. Actually, on second thought, I wanna hear how loud you get."

His cock was a better fit the second time, girth filling you deliciously. It made your entire body shudder when he started thrusting again. There was just something about having a real person fucking into you that toys just couldn't achieve, no matter what shockwave orgasms made your toes curl and eyes roll white in their sockets.

This kind of vulnerability was one you missed, being under the tutelage of someone else's hands guiding you in ways they liked—groping, stroking, testing your body to see how you'd respond. The novelty of a new partner trying to find your sweet spots, what made you moan, drew up goose pimples and raised the hairs in your skin. You loved it.

"Shit—" Tōji's thrusts turned savage and sloppy, a man beginning to unfurl, one step closer to regrasping clarity. He watched the fat in your ass jiggle, muscles in your back clenching to secure you on your forearms. You whimpered at the thick fingers circling your throat, levering you up onto his thighs that twitched under your palms.

He was in your ear, still masking his pleasure and how close he was to bursting with nonchalance. You saw through it; he didn't try too hard to hide it. "Touch yourself. I don't need to see you moping around because you didn't cum."

You weren't fast enough to stroke yourself before his hand was already there. He started to slow, pushing hard so his cock reached greater depths inside of you; the strength of his hips and thighs rolled your body like being aboard a boat crashing through waves. You rode his rhythm, bringing him closer to his orgasm while he brought you to yours none too gently, the glide of his hand slick and wet and rapid.

It was so good, so familiar, so disgusting how all of it sounded together—moist pattering of his palm on you, hips beating you raw until he coaxed out that final moan, a crescendo above all the rest. He kept you seated on his thighs through every lurch, every husky breath, every way your hands pushed down on his when it became too much. His release was a subdued groan against your neck, nose in your skin while hot ropes of him moved in a sluggish stream from your back into the seam of your ass.

"Sometimes I worry if I'm doing a good job raising Hinata." Sober thoughts had returned in full force, and Tōji lay partially covered by the sheets you had burrowed under. "It's scary taking care of a kid on—"

"Not to be a buzzkill, but pillow talk really isn't my thing." He sat upright, thinking about the red and white pack of cigarettes he left on the coffee table. "This is the kind of stuff we save for the balcony."

You frowned. "Then, get out of my room."

Tōji actually rather liked the idea of taking sleep into a proper bed again, secured by four walls and a door that locked instead of being at the mercy of a vengeful eight-year-old who'd probably try to suffocate him to get the television remote. A warm body waiting for him under the covers after a long night had its appeal too.

The tiny slither of fabric fell off him as he stood from your bed, another chance to admire him. He was hewn from marble, articulated and ambulant art that you'd never be able to forget the feeling of. You immersed in sore disappointment when he walked out, tracking his whereabouts through confident heel strikes that made the floorboards vibrate back to you.

He came back a few minutes later, gray sweatpants over an arm, cigarette in his lips, and a lighter ready to go.

Your perking up was diffused by agitation that followed him across the bedroom, just another one of those things he acted like he didn't see. There was a small window you never opened that he did, raising it so his entire hand and wrist could fit through it.

"Why didn't you dump him with his grandparents?" Tōji blew smoke out through the gap. He was asking because it would've made sense to do so, given it sounded like it had been an option before. "You could still do that. Drop him off and walk away. You'd be rid of him, probably be happier."

There was cold indifference in his voice. He wasn't saying it from the mind of a lover but rather a man who didn't see the point in making things harder than they needed to be, a man who had managed to forget his own son's name and showed no remorse for it.

Hinata would be safe. He’d be in a financially stable household, given anything and everything without begging. He'd be loved by his grandparents—

"Because no one loves him more than I do." It was an easy answer. Tōji smiled like you'd given the right one. "If, someday, he says he wants to live with them, I won't stop him. If he asks about his parents, I'll tell him the truth. Right now, I'm all that he needs and he deserves—he deserves a chance to just be a kid."

Tōji flicked off ashes with his thumb, head turning to look out the window with nothing left to ask.

You did, though, stewing in transient silence for all of a few seconds. "Are you a hitman?"

He left a black smear on the outside wall when he extinguished his cigarette, dropping it wherever it landed six stories below before making his way back over to the bed. You tried not to move, not when you caught a whiff of smoke next to you when the mattress dipped and faked not noticing that he was erect again.

"How'd you guess?" Tōji shucked the sheets off of you, not particularly petulant that he didn't tell you first. "That kid's sharp. He's gonna be a pain in the ass in a few years."

The next moment his tongue was in your mouth, one leg hiked up his bicep and jostled your body with every thrust. He figured that fucking you out of your mind would soften the blow of reality—that you were sheltering a hitman, keeping one fed, drinking beers and swapping spit, memorializing how it felt to be split on a murderer's cock.

"T—Tōji, more…"

He put you on your stomach, fist wrapped up in your hair. "Come on, you can do better than that."

━━━━━━━━━━━

Hinata had the run of the living room again by that Sunday evening, an event both jarring and euphoric because it had been impossible to tear him away from cartoons for half the night. He went to school Monday morning exhausted and dazed, a self-satisfied grin stuck on his face all the way down the stairwell and even when he spilled out onto the sidewalk.

Tōji became a frequent guest in your bedroom, usually emerging in the early evenings around the time Hinata's favorite shows aired. Nothing came from it. He never asked, only studied the traffic to and from your door with inquisitive, furtive looks before he was hopelessly entangled by chaos on the screen—bright colors, loud noises, kooky shenanigans, all his favorite things.

"Stop letting him have the run of things after I'm asleep. I got a call the other day from his school." You managed most of what you wanted to say before Tōji's hips lunged from behind, throwing your chest into the wall your bed was nestled against. "A—Ah, Tōji, seriously, listen to me."

He came down onto his arms, using them to hold his weight off of you. The tips of his hair were a microscopic touch and akin to something crawling on your cheek.

"I'm listening." He didn't stop rutting his cock into you, a leisurely smile inching onto his face hearing your breaths splinter, moans suffocated behind the meat of your hand. Sex first thing after a good sleep was always rewarding, especially when there was something at stake—

Like another noise complaint from the neighbors.

"I can't hear you. You're gonna have to talk louder." Tōji said, balancing with one arm and tight core muscles to grope the front of you with his other hand. "You just wanna focus on getting fucked out instead? You've been bitching a lot lately. You could use it."

You weren't going to get anything in wordwise right now, at least nothing that mattered to him.

When Tōji was buried up to the hilt inside you, all he wanted were your moans that hit a certain pitch he liked. The kind that he had to work for, couldn't be fabricated and kept him bricked up for as long as he needed to get it out of your lungs.

His appetite for you like this had started to wane, however, because he couldn't see you. From this side, sweat beaded and slid down the length of your spine like dewdrops after morning fog, your fingers clasped and unwound like a blooming bud, and all your noises might as well have been from some peepshow whore's cunt on the opposite side of the wall.

"Screw this." He put you down on your back, not twisted sideways or thrown onto his shoulders—simply where your thighs could hold his waist while he knelt between them and pushed the curve of his cock back in, studying how your eyebrows sank inward and teeth gnawed color back into your lips. "Now this is what I want to look at."

That had been his unmaking, one of few times in his life where he had experienced genuine regret for something he had done. It had been a bad idea to see the inside walls of this apartment, to kiss you on the balcony back then, and feed false truths to the kid over pints of ice cream at 2:00 a.m. because he had more questions than common sense to be afraid of him.

"You just gonna lay there like that?" It was a different night, one less goon Morimoto could hide behind.

Tōji had showered the carnage off his body, smelled clean climbing into your bed, and pulled down your pants. It didn't take many strokes for him to get hard once he pushed your legs open and felt you kiss him back. "At least make it worth my while and take off your shirt."

It was late. You were both tired, but you registered his request and slipped the airy fabric from your body so you were as bare as him, a curated masterpiece behind velvet barriers that only he could touch, grooves in his pads rising and dipping and bumping textures that felt intentional, belonged there and made up the wholeness of you.

What had happened was he laid down on you with most of his weight, jarring you into greater wakefulness—this sort of closeness wasn't something he did.

He liked a ruthless fuck, a good time, and something nice to look at while pounding into it.

That's what he had believed, that's what you had learned—this wasn't that.

"What's wrong with you?" It could've been a rhetorical question had Tōji not known why you were asking it.

"Does it bother you?" He was on his forearms to look you in the face, still pinning you underneath while languid strokes rocked your bodies in unison. "I'm not really in the mood to bend you over the dresser, but if you need to be dicked down that bad—"

"Tōji, stop." That got a laugh out of you, the sort of sound he realized he was liking more and more as the days went on. "I don't know why, but it's embarrassing. Stop staring, it's weird."

"Nah"—his thrusts picked up speed and depth, finally shaking something good out of your mouth—"just deal with it and lay there."

You used your hands to bring him down to your lips instead, giving him every opportunity to change the pace of things, fuck you how he normally did. It would've been easier for you to deal with than this, an indescribable thing that you were too hesitant to put an actual term to.

"Do what you want." Your lips were wet, smacking every time they met his. "I'm awake now. I can roll over."

"I didn't take you for some one trick pony," Tōji quipped. "Leave that to the professionals."

Nothing else came to mind after that, finding all the tension in your muscles and bones ebbing, mind melting away those apprehensions as you concentrated on how heavy and good he was on top of you. Easing more under him, your arms circled around the width of his back, wondering whether or not to put your nails in his skin or keep them retracted.

You liked the firmness of his muscles against your palms, focusing on how they moved with his hips pushing into yours, joggling your body in a quickening sequence. His face never went away, kisses frequent and deep, taking your moans into his throat, and purposefully angled himself to get more of them out of you.

When he got close enough, he tucked his face between your neck and the pillow, the confined space left a hot, moist film as his breath jerked, and he finished with one last, very jarring thrust.

It made you gasp, feeling a foreign warmth shoot inside of you similar to a hot drink down your throat amidst the coldest December day in Japan.

That was the first time Tōji hadn't pulled out to finish, and his first time making love to you.

More often after that night, he left an arm open for you to shuffle onto, and he'd use it to cram you into his side. Slow, intimate sex didn't become his norm, and he was never particularly gentle, but that sort of mood seemed to strike him more as the weeks went on.

"I wish I could give Hinata more than this." It was weird that you were always ready to dissect the more unsavory facets of your life to him, despite every instinct telling you he probably wasn't the right person for that. "I've been saving money. I could probably scrape together enough to move us somewhere better. But, then, what happens if I do, and I can't afford the monthlies? I don't want to lose him… He's everything to me."

You still hadn't confessed the worst parts of yourself to Tōji for any other reason than he never confided in you about his. There was a looming itch in the back of your head, distant and insistent that everything about this was wrong, and you needed to stop before it happened again—before you were sucked in so deep you were lost without a light, before Hinata had to suffer through something once again.

"Where would you go?" Tōji had an unlit cigarette in his lips, a new habit he started right after lovemaking became his new interest. It was that point of compromise where he still had the feeling of something there, but you didn't have to smell anything.

"I'm not sure," you went on, "just something a little bigger. Maybe a kitchen with more cabinets. Somewhere on a lower floor, I guess? I want—I want him to bring friends over, instead of him always going to them. Not all the time, mind you. I'd lose my mind looking after a bunch of kids. But, maybe, they could study together? Play games?"

"Didn't take you for the type who wanted a cookie-cutter fantasy." Tōji said, dark eyes on the ceiling, cigarette now loosely rolling inside his fingers. "That kid could live in a box, and as long as you were with him, he wouldn't complain about it."

You shifted in his arm, feeling it stiffen around you as though to stop you from leaving had that been your intention. Instead, you flopped toward your stomach, chin digging into one of his built breasts, legs threading.

"Hinata hardly complains, and when he does, it's just because a lot is going on." You looked at his face, trying to gauge something from it. He just kept staring up. "I want to meet your son."

That brought him back around. "Say that again?"

"Your son. I want to meet your son." This was unsafe to say. The implications of it were steeper than just letting him live here and fuck you and occasionally be made to help out with Hinata. "I'd like for him and Hinata to become friends. They're a similar age, right? Kids aren't too different from each other when they're that young. They just go along with stuff."

Trying to integrate a more permanent piece of Tōji's life into yours was exactly what you shouldn't have been doing. You knew it, thought it with painful bursts in your chest, a rush of guilt that felt cold and clogged up your ears like you had dunked your head in a river.

Tōji, to your astonishment, smiled lazily and began with long strokes on your arm. "I don't think his mom is gonna give him up. That is not a mess I'd put myself in the middle of."

You frowned. "That's not what I'm saying, Tōji. I just want them—"

"—To be friends." He flicked away the unmatched cigarette somewhere on the floor, took his arm back, and eclipsed your view of the ceiling with his mass. "I heard you. Now, I just keep thinking about how I'd have to see you and my ex in the same place. That doesn't really get me off."

"I'd really hope not."

There were certain superstitious people there who believed that the longer you focused on all the good happening in your life, taking it for granted and trying to shape it into new normalcy, the more devastating the reverse would be to happen. You hadn't had much luck in your arguably short lifetime, and it wasn't until you picked up your second job that the folds began to smooth a bit, and routine felt less tiresome and less like an assault on your freedom and more like a necessity to keep things in order.

━━━━━━━━━━━

All for Hinata and giving him the best possible chance to get somewhere in life that you'd never been able to—never would be able to. You had squandered enough of yours to know it wasn't fair to do it to him, a child who'd probably had it worse from the very beginning. His path hadn't diverged yet. Meanwhile, yours had a long time ago and by choice, however unfavorable your upbringing had been.

Tōji, sometimes, felt like a test for you—divine intervention as though meant to really try your mettle, rattle your conviction a little bit to see if you'd just cave inward like you always had in the past. Surrendering yourself to misplaced love and lust, losing everything and everyone to the great delusion because it always, always felt so right in the moment to love unfalteringly because it'd be all that mattered on your deathbed.

That you loved fiercely.

That you were loved in return.

You couldn't take the rest with you. Not money. Not prestige. Not even ashes you turned into when you'd be cremated. But those moments of final fading consciousness swathed in arms and warmth and tears—love?

It's everlasting.

But then, Hinata came into your life, and it was no longer about your pain. Suddenly, you had a purpose bigger than yourself, a purpose that actually meant something, not some desperate wish. You had been channeling every bit of your anguish, longing, anger, fear, and love into that dream to help him escape what you never could. Maybe someday, by some miracle, you'd be able to join him.

Tōji hadn't become a wrench but rather a missing oil can that slowed the gears and made them grind a little harder. The effects of him were inconspicuous, gradual, not really anything you'd believe would hinder you. In actuality, he probably had you wrapped up by the first night and completely ensnared by the first kiss on the balcony.

"We should do this more often." Tōji had both hands on your waist, helping you to ride a rough rhythm on his cock. You left prints of your teeth into the thumb-side of your hand, stifling moans so they wouldn't seep through the paper-thin walls. "It's sexier when you're loud."

You'd made it years without any noise complaints, and now you had three. The last one had been delivered not by letter or phone, but in person from property management. It had been a sheepish conversation for everybody that ended with them pointing out that's why people usually went to Kabukichō where love hotels ruled the strip.

Tōji had been standing in the doorway with you, arm over your head with a casual lean. He made sure to tell them he'd been to Kabukichō many times, and the quality there wasn't anywhere on par with what you gave.

Management scampered away, flushed and aroused, and you wanted to fucking kill him. But Hinata was at school and you weren't due for work at your second job for a few hours—so you just fucked again.

Now, you were straddling him, a sack of pudge in his hands kneading your waist, hips, thighs, gripping your ass to control how hard his cock rutted up into you.

He carried one of his hands up your spine, slow and lazy as though it were too much for him to do, circled your nape, and brought your chest down on his so he could kiss you, tease you with the stiffened point of his tongue.

Everything stuttered to a halt when Hinata's scream ripped into your bedroom from the slit under the door and made the walls tremble before you realized it was you and your heart lunging from adrenaline.

Tōji let you climb off of him, clumsily and hurriedly, to throw a discarded robe on the floor around your body and throw open the door without considering that the man was lying naked in your bed.

"What is it?! What is it?!" you tried shouting above the boy's cries. They had turned wild and dissolved into wails. The kind that only happened in response to true terror or pain.

You'd never heard him like this.

"Hinata, what is it?!" It was hard not to take hold of his shoulders and shake him. That was the first impulse, the reaction to quiet something making so much noise. But you simply crouched low, keeping your fingers tight in case he tried flailing. "What happened?!"

He sucked in greedy breaths, still crying in between them and hiccuping. Snot glistened down his nose, lips, and chin, turning the reddest you had ever seen possible in someone with his complexion. With a short finger, he turned and pointed to a brown box on the floor.

It looked like a normal parcel, just like something you'd receive from the post office that had a new toy or school supplies in it. Clearly, he had thought that was the case because he'd found a pair of scissors and opened it, all four flaps spread wide, insides speckled red. Some darker splotches had been absorbed into the tan cardboard.

"What—what the hell is that?!" You couldn't keep the quiver out of your voice. "Hinata, go to your room."

"No!" he hiccuped, wiping under his nose with a fist. "No! Don't make me!"

Your heart pulsed through you like a hammer that sent vibrations ricocheting off your bones and made your intestines squeeze. You thought you could hear the organ squelch in your ears, dampening Hinata's tantrum the closer you got.

The inside of the box was what you imagined red food dye exploding inside a microwave would look like, though darker, blacker like it'd had time to sit and settle into all the layers. In the center of it was something small, just as black as the blood and had that charred, shriveled quality to it.

You had to stare at it for a long time to figure out it was a human ear attached to a flayed chunk of flesh, likely where all the blood had originated.

"Hinata"—everything you had eaten in the past three days was journeying up your esophagus, mouth already salivating—"go to your room."

"No!" He choked through a sob.

Tōji came out of the bedroom in sweatpants and no shirt, having decided that whatever was happening was a big enough deal that he needed to be there.

He asked, gratingly, "What's all the screaming about?"

Anger rushed up your core all the way to your chest, neck, and to every last strand on your head. You thought you could sling the box at him, pick up a chair and gouge him on one of the legs, and filet him with the scissors Hinata had taken from the kitchen.

The funny thing about love is that just as fast as it could be ignited, it could be snuffed just as easily—especially when there was someone to protect, someone you loved more than you ever could him.

You were on fire. "This is your fault!"

With a forceful thrust from your toes, the box made a scuffing sound as it skidded across wood floors to him where he stopped it with his foot and glanced in at the macabre contents. He must've stared at it for almost thirty seconds, the light in his eyes never changing, never once wincing or reeling like he was appalled.

"I made a mistake." Why did it have to take something like this to see it? Why was it always so awful? "I can't believe I did it again. I can't believe I was stupid enough to let you in here."

"Calm down." Emptiness sat behind those words, neither comforting or threatening. It was one of those things you'd probably do in a room by yourself.

Hinata had never seen you flare in anger, so he stayed away but never considered going anywhere near Tōji. You didn't like that he was standing in the open.

"Go to your room." Third time.

He cried. "No! I don't want to!"

"Hinata." You never took your eyes off Tōji, and he never took his eyes off you. "Go to your room."

"No!"

That was the final prod to send your temper cascading, ears burning the hottest you'd ever felt them, and that uneasy stillness within the apartment shook with the sound of your screams. "I said go to your room!"

He shrank and obeyed, feet pounding away on the wood floor to let you know he was going. A door slammed, reassuring you that the only people left in your living room were you and Tōji, an unequal standoff.

"That's a bit harsh, don't you think?" Tōji had shoved aside the box with the ear, standing a little closer to you than he had been before. This wouldn't have a fair outcome—he was twice your size and strength, what could you do? "He's just a kid. He didn't understand what he was looking at."

"You're explaining child psychology to me now? Don't act like you give a shit." you said, walking backward to keep the space. "I should've kicked you out, Tōji. I should've kicked you out when you told me it was a gunshot. I should've kicked you out when you said you were a hitman."

Tōji's pockets protruded, round with his thick hands moving around inside. "Yeah, you really should've. You didn't, though. We're all selfish sometimes."

"You could've left on your own," you continued, "you could've healed and walked right out and left us alone. There was never anything for you to gain by staying here."

"I needed a place to stay." he said, shrugging one arm to his ear and kept advancing on you. "I could come and go how I wanted. Could sleep when I wanted. Free meals. Free beer. Eventually, good sex. Why would I leave?"

It wasn't like you to cry anymore, not like how you used to when there were days getting out of bed was too laborious. A permanent indentation of your shape had molded into the mattress from how long you'd lay there sometimes, dried tears tight streaks on your skin while staring out that little window in your bedroom where Tōji liked to frequent to smoke out of.

Once Hinata came along and fed you cup noodles from the floor, that overflowing well behind sore red eyes suddenly sucked dry, and there was no time for you to wallow, no time for you to try to stop to remember why it had hurt so bad to begin with. You had a sweet, gentle soul who needed strength and reliability.

Something, in the end, you now understood you weren't able to give him because you had relented to Tōji, likened sex as the only way to have love reciprocated. Nothing had changed from the last man you loved to Tōji, except for your desperation making you turn a blind eye to everything he was, all the danger you were bringing into that boy's life.

How utterly, disgustingly selfish.

"You're crying?" Tōji's expression rearranged as though startled, possibly the only time you'd ever seen it. "Is it because of what I said? What if I told you it was only half true?"

Each tear that wetted your face felt like it was burning an imprint into your flesh. "It doesn't matter. I should've put you out the second you finished stitching yourself up."

"That would've been the smart way to go about it, yeah." He smiled, though not confidently. "You love me."

If he had said that to you an hour ago while you were on top of him, stifling moans while being fondled by his rough hands, you would've fallen apart and confessed everything. You would've been stupid enough to kiss him again and again, gasping through raspy breaths that you'd never loved any man more than him.

And that was every bit true even now.

"I do, Tōji, I really do." You wouldn't give the luxury of a shallow smile but rather a dour look with eyes glaring determination through him. "But, I love Hinata more. More than I ever could you. It's time for you to leave."

His head leaned a touch to the left, still unperturbed by it all. "You gonna be okay?"

It was an unexpected response, not one you had an easy time holding a stiff upper lip to. "For him, I'll find a way to be. Goodbye, Tōji."

Once you walked away, you didn't stop to check what his reaction was, if it had even changed at all. Somehow, you doubted he did much besides follow you with black eyes and a swiveling neck, and that was fine. You left no room for him to doubt you this time, no chance to believe that he was still welcome in your bed, your and Hinata's apartment, or your lives.

"I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have yelled at you." To be safe, you locked Hinata's door after you entered and pushed into the floor with your knees to sit on them. "You were scared. I was scared. People who are scared sometimes do things they shouldn't. It doesn't make it okay, but it happens."

His face was completely dry, a damp washcloth twisted in his fingers as he peered down at you from his bed. They were still watery and red, but the worst of his fear had passed. Now, you guessed, he just wasn't sure what was going to happen next.

"Where’s Tōji?" He didn't ask fearfully, more bewildered since you had accused him of the ear in the box earlier. "Is he a bad guy?"

The impulse was there to paint him as the villain of this story, an effortless way to weasel yourself back into Hinata's good graces because children generally understand things were either all good or all bad. However, your nephew wasn't like them and could gather some of those more nuanced things, though still with much less perceptibility.

He would believe you, but your words were not gospel to him. That's the way it should be.

"Tōji's gone. I told him it was time to go." you said. A couple hairs on his head had fallen into a strange arrangement. You wanted to reach out and move them but stopped yourself and sat still. "I love him, so I'm not sure if he's all a bad guy. Tōji lives a different kind of life from us. It’s not meant for us. He's not meant for us."

Hinata put his feet on the floor and came over to sit on your lap. You crossed your legs so he had a spot, fingers already at work on his head.

"But, you love him. Shouldn't he stay?" he asked kindly. You prayed to whatever existed out there in the universe that he'd lever lose that part of himself to cynicism or cruelty. "We keep people we love close, right?"

"Maybe"—you nuzzled him, forehead to forehead, feeling that hot pressure build behind your eyes again—"but I love you so much more, Hinata."

"You're not mad at me?" He asked so hopefully, so brittle that you had to inhale sharply through your nostrils. "I'm sorry if I made you mad because of the scissors or opening the box. I know you said not to touch them."

You let out a laugh equal parts pained and humored, arms coming up to tuck him against your chest, and just cradled him there. He was almost too big to fit against you like that now. "No, baby, I'm not mad at you. I couldn't be mad at you. I just still have a lot of work to do on myself."

His head shifted away from your chin so he could see your face. It was a relief to see him smiling. "You're doing a good job. I'm really proud of you."

It took you a good, long while to stop crying after he said that to you. He fit awkwardly in your arms. Soon, he wouldn't be able to sit like this with you, and, almost as close as that, he wouldn't want you to hold him at all. Teenagers were just that way, pretending to be too jaded to be loved.

"He really left." Hinata walked into the living room with you later on, hand holding yours, a needed comfort at that moment. "Do you think he'll try to come back?"

"Maybe," you said. The possibility wasn't zero. "If you see him, just tell me so I can run him off."

"Okay—" He noticed something on the coffee table a few feet away. "What's that?"

You approached it first, getting a good look before giving Hinata the chance to come up along your side to also see it. On the table in front of your eyes was a clip of ten thousand yen banknotes. Even folded up and clamped with a piece of smeared metal, you could tell that's what they were. They were that shade of light yellow-green that reminded you of vintage photographs from the sixties or seventies with much less yellow and no curled edges or water stains.

"Holy shit!" Hinata darted from your side to pick it up, removing the clip to count through them all, missing a piece of white scrap paper that fluttered off of it. "This is so much money!"

You glanced uncomfortably at him, unsure of whether that money was safe to touch given the only person whom it could've come from was Tōji. But why?

Hinata counted while you looked around the apartment as if taking it in for the first time. The most important thing was that the box with the roasted ear was gone, and your front door was locked with the spare key in the doorknob. A certain look about it was a blow to your chest, crushing your heart in a vise as the finality of what it meant settled over you.

Tōji really wasn't coming back.

It was odd knowing there'd be one less person to pad around the floor, open the refrigerator, or even flush the toilet. Tōji had come into your life with nothing but the clothes on his back and a bullet in his ribs, and he had left much the same way.

"Oh my god!" Hinata's heels drummed into the wood underfoot with glee. Next, the money was shoved in your face. It smelled brand new. "There's two million yen! That's so much money! We're rich!"

"Not quite." You didn't want to deflate his enthusiasm, but this was not something you wanted him boasting about outside these walls. "We should really turn it in to the police. We don't know where Tōji got it, or if it's real."

Hinata spun around to a window filtering in the golden glow from midmorning light. Pulling a banknote taut in his thumbs, he held it up and, sure enough, all three vertical watermark bars appeared. "It's real! We're so rich!"

"I don't believe it…" You looked at the ground after finding a chair to lean on. It was then that you saw the scrap paper below, torn from the corner of an envelope, you assumed, and picked it up. "Did this come off the clip, Hinata?"

He was on your arm, gawking at it. "Uh, I guess? I dunno. What's it say?"

You flipped it to the side with black scrawl on it, finding that you couldn't read it aloud because of a snag in your throat.

Hinata did it for you. "'For the cookie cutter fantasy.' What's that mean?"

It was all you could do not to cry again.

━━━━━━━━━━━

No one ever said that raising a kid would leave you without time to spare forever. For you, that came much sooner than expected, and you hadn't been prepared for it to happen. Hinata was nine years old now, going through a growth spurt, and wanted more to do with after-school extracurriculars with his friends than he did sitting at home or exploring a new town with you.

It wasn't anything you blamed him for. You were old and grounded in reality, plodding through the monotony of adulthood and sticking to things you knew now instead of always reaching out for everything—everyone that was different. People liked to say that, to thrive, you needed variety and change in your life, that next big move to circumvent stagnancy.

The thing about it was that your life had been in such constant motion you never learned how to slow down until the brakes were put on for you and forced you to sit in the unpleasantness of yourself and things from the past until you saw the patterns, the behaviors, and the thinking that always kept the wheels spinning.

Now, you were just lonely and comfortable in an apartment that felt too big for you most days. Hinata was still home every night for dinner, waved groggily in the morning before heading out the door for school, and brought his friends around to play games—it just wasn't the same.

"You should get a boyfriend and stop working so much." he told you during a train ride home from the sea, Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture, a nice weekend getaway to get some distance from an endlessly bustling town and the emptiness of the apartment. "Akio's dad is single. Maybe…"

"He's, like, ten years older than me!" You flicked him on the forehead. "What are you trying to say? I'm old? That I should get together with old men?"

"No! No!" Hinata laughed, leaning out of your reach. "I just feel bad because you're home by yourself a lot. It makes me sad that all you do is work."

There was no simple, cheerful way to tell him it was better than the alternative. To regress into old habits.

"That money isn't infinite, Hinata. It got us someplace nice, but it's my job to keep us in it." you said, briefly glancing at another passenger walking the narrow aisle closer to the front. "I take that seriously. I plan on keeping us ahead."

His chest collapsed with a sigh, feet touching the floor even when he sat back in his seat. You didn't think you'd ever get used to it, nor just how suddenly kids can grow. It was torturous to think that one day, sometime soon, there'd be another adult sitting across from you.

"Whatever, I guess." He looked at you like he had something else to say. You could anticipate what it was about. "Do you think Tōji is doing okay?"

It was inevitable that he'd be brought up when the money was mentioned. Life had improved thanks to him, and in that way you were grateful he had come into your lives. He took a piece of you with him when he left. Hopefully he knew that and treated his memories of you kindly rather than embittered.

"I don't really know, Hinata. It's been six months." Hardly any time had passed, yet the seasons had turned several times, and it felt like years of wear had settled into the knobs of your joints. "What do you think?"

He shrugged all the way to his ears, peering out into the aisle hearing squeaky wheels on a food trolley approach. "Probably good. Oh, can I get a taiyaki? Please? Pleeeeease?"

You smiled at him, opening your wallet for a couple of banknotes so he could pick a few things he wanted. It made you happy to do things for him that made him resonate with such joy.

A six hour train and forty-five-minute taxi ride later, you were handing off a duffle bag to Hinata to take on ahead up the stairs to the second floor where your apartment was. The fact that you had an easy climb up and down from your front door was probably one of the best perks of a new place, slightly second to a fully remodeled kitchen and bathroom.

You had your own bag in tow, plus a few totes with souvenirs and snacks from the sea that made some pretty ugly scuffing sounds, drowning out the echo of your footsteps on the stairs.

Hinata's voice came barreling down to you, incoherent at first but in that high-pitched intonation that kids usually had. "He's back!"

You didn't miss the urgency. "What?"

"The freeloader is back!"

Just then, your heart gave a jolt as if renewed with vigor, thrashing to escape its confines behind your ribs, hurting for all of the five seconds it took to trudge up the stairs with your baggage. You stopped breathing once you reached the next landing.

Tōji stood there in front of your door, a much shinier one with gleaming numbers that caught too much light from fluorescent bulbs descending from above. This was entirely familiar to you yet completely different all the same.

"Hey." His smile was a little bit off and looked so handsome on him, just like you remembered it. A plastic bag rustled at his side as he lifted it into view, bringing your and Hinata's eyes to it. "There's a place here in town that has good takoyaki. Want some?"

"Oh, yesssss!" Hinata snatched it from Tōji, ducking around his large body to wiggle a key in the doorknob and burst inside.

All had been forgiven. All was well to a nine-year-old boy that evening.

Tōji held a hand out horizontally at about waist height, then raised it a few inches higher. Puzzlement moved his face around.

"Did he get bigger?"

You could do nothing except nod. What was the right thing to do here? Run him off or scream for help? This wasn't the kind of place where people turned a blind eye to ruckus. It wasn't an affluent area, just another company concerned about appearances and meeting the standards of everything they stuck in a brochure. They touted a safe and quiet neighborhood.

Tōji looked comfortable in a black sweatsuit several sizes too big, fabric hanging off him in a way that was slouchy but not unattractive. His hands ballooned in the pockets, something else that hadn't changed about him.

When you found the courage to speak, you did so cautiously. "What are you doing here, Tōji?"

"Morimoto's dead, so I decided to take a vacation." He said it like it was the most obvious thing, gave a little shrug in the same way you'd tell someone a friend had gone off somewhere.

None of it made sense to you right away. That name had never made an appearance in any conversation. A few seconds later, you understood that whoever Morimoto had been, he was the one who shot Tōji all those months ago and delivered the burnt ear to your doorstep.

It didn't alleviate all of your anxieties, but the swell of it in your chest abated somewhat. Looking at Tōji now felt less of a daunting task and more of an unwanted interaction between an ex you'd had less than an amicable ending with.

"That doesn't answer my question." The bags on your shoulders were beginning to feel like lead pulling you down into the floor. This needed to end quickly. "Never mind, it doesn't matter. Just get out of here, Tōji."

"I need someplace to stay." he said.

You bristled. "No, you don't. You left two million yen sitting on my coffee table. Stop trying to make me look stupid."

Tōji shifted then, hands still burrowed deep in his pants as he curled his back slightly for a quick peek past the front door that Hinata neglected to shut. He wouldn't be able to gauge much of the inside from that view, but even that was too revealing for you.

"Looks nice. Is that what you used the money for?" His eyes were back on you, his form growing in size as he came closer. "I want to hear about it."

You wondered how much it would stroke his ego if you told him that his money had truly been what afforded you and Hinata this modicum of comfort. A part of you worried that he'd try to weaponize it, use it like ammunition to wedge his way back into your lives.

"It's comfortable. Hinata has a bigger room, and his friends come over to play games." You didn't think it was necessary to tell him anything. It was simply a courtesy. He had invested and wanted to know what that investment went to. "I actually have enough kitchen space for my pans; remember how they'd have to stack on top of the oven?"

His lips were dry, pulling up tight and pale with the easy sprawl of his smile. "Yeah, that was a pain in the ass."

"Do you remember how small the bathroom was at the old place? Your knees would basically touch the wall when you sat on the toilet," you continued, "It's double that size now. Not the biggest, but Hinata and I can brush our teeth at the same time now."

Tōji stood inches away, hip braced against the railing that was made of stainless steel and glowed under all the lights. It was always cold beneath your fingertips, worse in the wintertime.

He didn't seem to notice it, though. "What's the view like?"

"Not my favorite thing about the place, but there's a lot more light that comes in. The patio is pretty small, but I have a folding table out there and a couple chairs. I like to sit out there and drink coffee in the morning, beer at night."

You let the bags slide from your shoulders down the length of your arms. "There's not a lot to see from the second floor, but it's nice to people-watch, I guess."

"It sounds like you got that dream life after all." Tōji reached for the totes on your arm and took them onto the bulk of his. "Good for you. Good for Hinata."

Hearing him use your nephew's name so casually with a sort of softness you had never known from him sent ripples down your spine. It was hard to navigate yourself through the tempestuous storm of thinking of how much you'd missed him this entire time versus reasonably distrusting his intentions with flashbacks of everything that had happened playing like flickering reels of cinema in your head.

"Mind if I come in? That takoyaki was expensive." Tōji had the nylon shoulder strap of your duffel bag wrapped in his hand now. He wouldn't be giving it back.

You told him he could.

The real answer was much more nebulous and complex, filled with uncertainty and waning courage and exhaustion from a life that had just never gone according to plan.

Tōji didn't go inside immediately, instead turning to block it with his body and the bags. You were just now taking notice of a dimming red scar over the corner of his lips, maybe from a knife of some kind. It was new enough to still have color, old enough to be completely healed.

"Ah, I almost forgot. I want you and Hinata to meet Megumi." he said, giving his temple a tap with two fingers. "Should be soon, I think."

"Wait. Who?"

Tōji guided you inside with a hand on your back, door clicking shut after him.

"My son. His name is Megumi."

━━━━━━━━━━━

a/n: alrighty, story notes time:

this was a challenging piece for me for a lot of reasons. the biggest was probably including a child character and giving him actual significance to the storyline. I've written kids in the past, but usually only in passing or very briefly. arguably, most of mc's personal growth came from wanting to give their nephew a better life, but I also believe that hinata becomes somewhat of a coping mechanism for mc. sort of, like, mc drops one bad habit (bad men) for another (obsessed and worried about hinata's wellbeing).

my idea for tōji in this one-shot was keeping some canon elements (forgetting about megumi and his name), but also diverting quite a bit (e.g. megumi's mom is alive and well; tsumiki and her mother are a part of his past, but there's no current involvement with them. the scar on his lip resulting from morimoto and not something earlier on in his life.

I left the ending a bit ambiguous and slightly concerning bc I really wanted to drive home that progress and change are not linear. I think, for a character like mc with their history, being able to think more critically about the decisions they make vs acting impulsively as they had in the past is growth. it's all very nebulous and uncomfortable bc the ending doesn't imply something overly good, or overly bad. it sits in the middle where you know it could feasibly just turn back into a cycle, or it could be a chance at something better.

the door clicking closed could be as damning as a funeral bell, could be as hopeful as church bells during a wedding. it's up to you.

there are, obviously, some morals and ethics that go into this, namely the idea mc should let tōji around at all because of what he does—despite him never once causing (physical) harm to mc or hinata. could even be debated that the money he left for them was a way to keep his foot wedged in the door to get back in when he thought it'd be a good time, that may be giving too much credit to tōji tho lmao.

if y'all enjoyed this tho, please consider reblogging it so it gets around!!!❤️

#this is the best jjk fic ive read in my life #op.....youre crazy for this #the writing the storyline the pacing its all so so so good it made my heart burst #perfect ending if you ask me #i was also imagining hinata looking like a younger version of hinata from hq and it made him even cuter i love him thats my son #i also love how toji is lowkey an ass which is canon #I don't reblog on here but comments were turned off and i just needed op to read my comments because i cant just enjoy this masterpiece and #be on my way #thank you

664 notes · View notes