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#I have only started needing more yellow a day or two ago so I haven’t been doing this for a super long time

sickophantic · 4 months

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𝘴𝘶𝘨𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘵 ˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚

pairing. stalker!leon / afab! reader

warnings. stalking, kidnapping, noncon, probably other stuff but idkk, read at your own risk

word count. 4,644

note. i like, haven't written anything for ummm half a year,, but i'm super excited about this fic!! started it almost two months ago and i finally finished it :33

Poor baby, haven’t been taking care of yourself for weeks; haven’t been eating or sleeping and barely going out for groceries, always staying inside except for work, leaving the house early in the morning and returning home at 2 a.m. Poor girl’s been coming back so late just for a shower, a quick, shitty dinner or a cup of tea, and after that straight to bed, day after day after day. And of course, Leon noticed what it was doing to you immediately: your sunken eyes from the late hours and the graveyard shifts, the dull skin from all your forgotten skincare, God, all those products collecting dust in your little bathroom, and the way your flesh was starting to cling to your bones, oh you poor thing. He couldn’t have that happen to his angel, absolutely not.

Sitting on the bed, watching you, something broke in him every time he saw you all teary eyed and tired, scrolling through your phone, looking through all your contacts. It’d happen almost nightly, after work and after a shower, all of you but your face hidden in the cold cover of the darkness, your quivering lips and your matted eyelashes limned by the blue light of your phone, your finger hovering over your friends’ numbers as you debated with yourself. He’d see the way your brow furrowed as you weighed the risk of opening up to people who should care about you, but fuck if it actually felt like it. So you’d just sigh, suck in a breath, and set your phone on the bed table and fumble in the darkness to find its charger, before shutting your eyes, preparing for next day’s hell.

He’d watch you breathe for a little while, his own eyes intent on his screen, before he’d shut the app and set his phone down. It was like a nightly routine at this point. He’d come home from the R.P.D., and every day, his heart would soften when he’d check on you, watch you through the cameras he installed and see how lonely and apathetic and pathetic you were. Poor baby had no one. Just made it even more obvious how much you needed him.

When you’d skipped dinner for the third time that week, he decided enough was enough. He didn’t want to, of course he didn’t, but he’d have to take drastic measures. Just, take you away for a little bit. Temporary, of course. Just until you got your things together. He was helping you. You’d see that. That’s why today, he slipped into your apartment with a copied key and stirred something special into your tea.

Sweet thing came home late, rubbing your bleary eyes and yawning, throwing your keys somewhere by the door, slipping your coat off and heading to the kitchen, wanting to microwave your day-old tea. Waited thirty seconds for the microwave to beep. He watched on his phone as you put creamer and sugar in your tea and downed it quickly. You always liked things sweet. You took a shower and stumbled into bed, all sluggish and soft, falling asleep almost immediately.

A few minutes later, the front door opened, letting in the dim, yellow light from the hallway and a pair of silent footsteps. He took his coat off, setting it gently on the rack, slipping his shoes off quietly before stealing into your room. His heart fluttered when he saw you, the only sound in the room your soft breathing and the only movement the light rises and falls of your chest.

He sat next to you on the bed, feeling the way the mattress dipped beneath him, and placed a hand on your cheek, rubbing small circles into your skin. He watched you for a while, resting his arm on your shoulder and gazing down at you, fingers playing with your hair or knuckles grazing across your face, before he smiled. He’d be good to you, real good. Treat you like a princess, just the way you deserved. No more stress, no more hard work. Just smile and look pretty. He wanted you so bad, fuck, even right now, but he promised himself to take it real soft, real slow, real sweet. Just for you, his perfect girl.

His heart almost stopped when he saw your eyes open, eyelashes fluttering, cheeks flushed. He’d been sitting on his bed, admiring your sleeping form, lightly rubbing small circles onto your cheeks with the backs of his knuckles, just like last night. Except, now you were really here, in his bed, with him. Made him want to kiss you and hold you and fuck you, all at once. Couldn’t do that yet, though. But God, he was so excited to see you, couldn’t stop himself from thinking about you, had to pull himself away from work cause he couldn’t get anything done, even made you breakfast in bed. But seeing your waking face not be that of immediate adoration, even though that’d be a little insane to ask for, broke his heart. Seeing your eyes widen and your brows furrow as your mind raced to explain where the hell you where and how this happened made his chest tighten with guilt. Poor baby. He’d make it better, make it all better, pinkie promise.

“Hi, hi.” He cooed, still caressing your cheek. Immediately, you flinched backwards, finally noticing him. But he kept going, keeping his voice quiet, low, like he was talking to a frightened, injured animal. “‘m Leon, okay? Don’t be afraid, just gonna take care of you, sweetheart.”

You opened your mouth to speak, to scream out, to cry for mercy, to beg to be let go, he couldn’t tell, but instead, with a small, cracked voice, you asked, “What?”

He moved his hand upwards, rubbing circles with the pad of his thumb on your temple. He saw the way your eyes were glossing over and the way your eyebrows scrunched and the way your lips trembled beneath him and he felt so terrible for doing this to you but at the same time you looked so fucking pretty he wanted to do it over and over again. Shit. He didn’t mean to think that way, that was so mean. Didn’t mean to, not at all. It was an accident, honest. He sucked in a breath, realizing he’d been visibly hesitating for a few seconds. Remembering what he was trying to do, he reached behind him, grabbing a fork and a plate, still a little warm, bringing a piece up to your mouth. “Just wanna take care of you, baby.” He spoke softly, trying to hide all his earlier thoughts. “It's just French toast. Nothing else in it.” He promised.

You grimaced. "No."

He opened his mouth to try to reason with you, explain that he just made it and there really was nothing in it and you needed to eat, but he could tell you were scared. He swallowed, setting the plate aside. He scooted a little closer on the bed and kept talking, all soft and sweet, “Haven’t been looking after yourself for the past month, have you?” He asked. “Just wanna help you, angel. Don’t need anything in return. No work, no chores, nothing, okay?” He murmured.

He watched your face for a few seconds, expression twisting from panic to confusion to disbelief. “What the fuck are you talking about?” You whispered, all hissy and teary eyed and confused and scared. “Oh my God, what, you can’t, fuck, what are you talking about?” You repeated, almost incoherent.

He just shushed you gently, placing a thumb to your lips. “Shhh. I told you. 'm just gonna take care of you.” He cooed.

You squirmed uncomfortably beneath him, trying to escape out from under him only to have his wrap land around your throat, pressing lightly enough to hurt only a little but enough to warn you to stop squirming. He hated squirming. He felt bad, really bad for threatening his poor girl, but your reaction was starting to be a little frustrating. He sighed. “C’mon, it’s not that bad. Just gonna keep you here for a little, unless you wanna stay more,” he smiled. “Get you back on your feet, sweetheart.”

For some reason, you suddenly stilled. He noticed, and he also noticed the way your entire expression grew dazed, but he just kept on talking, almost rambling, enjoying your silence and your stillness, kept murmuring sweet nothings to you, his perfect, perfect girl. He was telling you how much he loved you and how long he’d been waiting to take you home and just how God damn excited he was when you interrupted him.

“I’m gonna,” you stuttered. “‘m gonna throw up.”

The sounds of your dry heaving over the empty toilet were the only sounds in that bathroom, echoing, bouncing off the walls. Sick, pitiful noises. Leon leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, as you gripped the sides of the toilet like your life depended on it, knuckles turned white from the pressure and the rest of your appearance disheveled. He knew what you were thinking, knew that you were panicking about the fact you’d never met him before and who the hell was he and Jesus was he a psycho? And was he in love with you? Oh God, what was he saying about you not taking care of yourself? Was he watching you? Must’ve been watching you, or how else would he know? He saw you wretch even harder. Nothing came out. He grimaced.

“It’s not that bad, baby. Promise.” He said, approaching slowly. You were sobbing now, not even trying to vomit anymore. Not like you could, anyways. “C’mon,” he asked, tone dropping a little. Your chest rose and fell faster. Frightened little thing.

“Fuck,” you whispered, voice cracking, and he couldn’t tell if it was because he just kidnapped you or because nothing was coming up. You sat back from the toilet, crawling backwards into the corner farthest from Leon, mumbling, begging, crying something like go away go away please please please. You kept on repeating yourself, sometimes stopping to swallow and bringing a hand up to your chest or your throat because it hurt so bad or maybe you just couldn't breathe. He was trying to comfort you, let you know he wouldn’t hurt you and he loved you and it was okay and you were okay, but you just kept curling further in to yourself, crying now replacing the sounds of your dry heaving, face all red and eyes a little puffy and voice completely broken as you begged about something, but at this point you were just incoherent.

Leon stepped forward and you flinched back, and he let out a little sigh, leaning against the bathroom wall and staring at your poor, shivering form, brushing his hand through his hair, completely exasperated, and thinking What am I going to do with you?

- A few hours earlier, he was stirring coffee in the breakroom, absently glancing up at the television, when he recognized a familiar pair of tired eyes. Huh, he thought. He sipped his coffee as he watched your parents crying on live television, almost incoherent, recounting all the details he already knew about you. He felt a little pang in his heart, knowing that he took away these people's only child, only daughter, but it was for the best, wasn't it? He was taking such good care of you, and though you would never admit it, he could see the way you were slowly brightening up, the way life was returning to your drained body. He was doing a good thing. He was a good person.

Now, a little later, with keys jingling in his finger, he whistled softly, listening to the small click as the door unlocked and he slipped inside quietly. It’d been about two weeks since he’d… kidnapped? you. He wouldn’t say kidnapped, maybe taken instead. It’d been two weeks since he’d taken you. Sounds a little better. He pulled his shoes off by the door, debating whether or not to call out to you that he was home. It was dark already, so you were probably hiding, shivering under his blankets and clutching that little bear he’d bought you, as if that’d stop him from finding you. He sighed a little. This was taking longer than he thought it would. Would’ve thought you’d have at least warmed up to him by this point.

There were only two lights on, one above him and the other a little farther away by the dining table, leaving the rest of the room in a semi-darkness. He saw your half eaten bowl on the kitchen counter. He yawned, setting his coat on the rack and slipping his keys into his back pocket. He’d have to hide them later. Remembering an earlier text from Chris, he leaned against the wall, taking out his phone to check his messages. He watched the loading sign, watched it swirl and swirl and swirl around nothing. Finally loaded. He tapped on Chris’s icon and skimmed something about a work party. He yawned again. He’d deal with it tomorrow. He was slipping his phone into his other pocket when he heard your voice, soft and strangely deferent. “Leon?” you asked.

He looked up, a little surprised to see you standing there, your silhouette outlined by the light behind you. He was surprised to see you in one of his shirts, completely oversized on your frame. He realized it’d already been a few seconds, passing by with him just staring at you. It wasn’t a bad thing, though. You were just so pretty, how could he not? When he finally snapped himself out of his daze, he yawned again, “Yeah, baby?”, finding himself walking instinctively towards you.

You were fidgeting with your fingers. Your eyes darted from him to the door, from him to the door. Can’t be asking to leave now, can you? Or maybe you were asking for something. He was about to prompt you to finish what you’d started when you finally spoke up.

“I felt…felt really lonely today.” You murmured, looking down at the floor, at your bare feet on the cold ground. Kicked at the ground a little. “Missed you. Didn’t um…” you trailed a little, eyes wandering slightly upwards. “Didn’t know what to do.”

Huh, he thought. His heart fluttered a little at your words, making his chest feel warm and light. He smiled at you. “That’s sweet. Missed you too, missed you so much.” He said. “Was thinking of you the whole day, angel.” He was standing right above you now.

For some reason, he thought he saw you grimace a little. But it was a momentary thing. He probably imagined it. You finally looked up at him, finally made eye contact for more than a split second. He could tell you wanted to say more, that what he said wasn't exactly what you hoped for. What you did want? He didn’t know.

Looking down at you, he stared in silent anticipation, in absolute adoration. His heart fluttered. Just as he lifted his hand up to brush away a stray hair on your cheek, you leaned into him, wrapping your arms around his torso and burying your face in the dip between his neck and shoulder. He huffed in surprise a little, holding you against him as you shivered.

"Really missed me, huh?" He laughed, rubbing circles against your back. He was so happy. So happy he could die.

He held you against him until you pulled away, looking up at him with your perfect doe eyes, asking him to come to bed with you. Nothing sexual, you just wanted someone near you. His heart jumped, and so did his dick, but he nodded, willing to ignore his needs for yours. He promised to join you soon, watching you pad off to his bedroom, needing to go finish some nightly chores. He headed to his office, brain so full of rushing, giddy thoughts that he didn't notice the unusual quietness when he walked or even the strange emptiness in his back pocket.

You were dragging your nails down his skin like some feral animal, nose red and cheeks flushed and eyelashes all wet and matted, tears freely flowing down from your pretty doe eyes. He grabbed you from behind, placing a hand over your mouth to muffle your cries as you sobbed and weakly writhed against him. He held you close to him, hand on your face and an arm wrapped around your waist. He was about to say something, to tell you just how disappointed, how pissed off he was, when his voice caught. A minute ago, maybe two, he'd found you at 3 a.m. in the morning, fucking with his front door and his keys, you ungrateful idiot, yet here he was now, tongue tied. He barely got a syllable out before he stopped himself, cursing you when he realized he was getting all breathy, his face flushing a little, his pants growing tighter. Fuck, was he getting off to this? That’s sick. He was sick. He was getting off to the idea, no, to the sight of you choking. Made him feel all warm and fluffy inside for all the wrong reasons. Actually, he was getting off to the idea of raping someone. Jesus, Leon. Fuck. He was getting off to the idea of raping you. Damn.

He held you against his chest, staggering backwards to lean against the wall for support. He hissed curses under his breath next to your ear, warning you to keep still. He couldn't stand squirming. Made things so much more difficult. It was hot though. God damn. Fuck. Fuck. He wanted to scream. Shout at you, maybe. He didn't know. Hearing your muffled pleas, something stirred within him, pent up and tired and angry, and for some sick reason, he didn't lift his palm from your mouth, instead wrapping his arm around your neck, pressing your windpipe in between his forearm and bicep, hissing in your ear, "Shut the fuck up."

He sucked in a breath, closing his eyes, ignoring your begging and yet at the same time reveling in it. He needed to think. Needed to think about what the fuck he was doing. He felt you hiccup against him, felt your warm tears drip onto his cold skin, and Jesus Christ his dick was harder than ever. He loosened his grip on your throat, hearing you gasping for breath, not even trying to beg him to stop. He slumped a little, guilt climbing up from the depths of his wretched soul. He was still breathing hard.

When did you get his keys? He heard you sobbing apologizes now. How the fuck did you manage to snatch them without him noticing? He was running through all his interactions with you recently, unable to pinpoint when, where, how, until he remembered what happened just a couple hours ago. Oh. Oh.

"Feeling sorry, angel? Or feeling guilty?" He murmured into your ear, fighting to keep his tone flat. He was irritated enough that he had to stumble out of bed at three in the fucking morning, pissed that when he was still rubbing the blurriness from his eyes he found you trying each of his keys and still somehow failing at unlocking a fucking door, but at the same time, he was hurt, betrayed that you had tried to leave him, even entertained the passing thought of escape.

"Sorry, sorry, 'm so, so sorry," you sobbed against him, breathing erratic and your entire body shaking. What a mess. You could barely stand.

"Really?" His voice dropped. "Sorry for waking me up at three in the fucking morning? Sorry for stealing my keys? Sorry for lying to me, for betraying me?" For some reason, he couldn't feel anger at your escape attempt. Not like he wasn't angry, though. No, he was angry, but not because of that. You lied to him. Said you missed him in that sweet voice, looked up to him with those big, innocent eyes, shivered against him and said you missed him, all just for some bigger plan. He was almost disgusted.

He heard your incoherent, pathetic pleas for mercy. He wasn't hearing you out, though. He grabbed you, tossing you over his shoulders and headed to his bedroom.

He kicked the door shut and threw you down onto the mattress, watching you cry and shiver and open your mouth to scream. Nothing would come out, though. He felt his hands fumble with his belt, with his jean's zipper. He dimmed the lights. Maybe he wouldn't feel as bad if he couldn't see your face. Maybe.

He found himself crawling on top of you, slipping his hands up your shirt. He wanted to be mad, wanted to be able to take out his anger on you, choke you and slap you and bruise you and bite you, mark you as his, fuck you so hard you wouldn't ever think of escaping again, but he couldn't. He couldn't bring himself to hurt you, even when you deserved it. At least not that way. He cursed you under his breath as his hands found your breasts, kneading and grabbing and even twisting your nipple between his thumb and index. You cried out, all pathetic, squirming beneath him. His heart softened, just a little.

"Shh, don't cry. Don't cry." He murmured against your ear. He heard your loud swallows, and looking at you, looking into your eyes, he saw your lovely, naïve face twisted into one of pure terror. Maybe even disgust. He felt so bad, but it wasn't his fault. He tried to be so good to you, treat you all soft and sweet, take it real slow, make it romantic, make it easy. But he was just a man. You committed the crime. It wasn't his fault. Not his fault. He heard himself groan a little, even as your hands pitifully shoved against his chest, even as you tearfully begged him to stop. He was just a man.

The bed creaked, and you cried, and his breathing just kept getting heavier and heavier. He tried to ignore the slight tightening of his throat, the just noticeable watering of his eyes. He couldn't hurt you. He couldn't. But he was, he was hurting you in the worst way possible. His heart broke as he watched you flinch, but his dick somehow hardened every time you sobbed, as you somehow tightened with every wince.

He gripped your hips to pull you up against him with each thrust, and at the same time tried to ignore the way you gripped the sheets, knuckles white, face frozen in pain and pleasure and fear. He had to stop himself from crying a little. You felt so wonderful, though, looked so pretty, even now. He leaned his forehead against yours, felt you rock beneath him. "Sorry, 'm so sorry," he murmured with each thrust, voice clouded by lust, apologetic even as he raped you. He still loved you. Really did. But still, he didn't stop, shutting his eyes instead as if that would make all his guilt disappear.

You'd been acting nicer for the past two weeks. Compliant, deferent, soft and malleable. Your voice was always low, sometimes to the point he'd have to ask you to repeat. You didn't say much anymore, not like you did before. There was a heaviness in your movement, like everything you did was a struggle. He'd notice it when you woke up, with the morning light streaming in through the window, his arm wrapped around you, holding you close to him, and you just wouldn't move. He'd brush his nose against your neck, murmuring soft Good morning's and How're you feeling?'s, but you just wouldn't move. You'd sit there like a corpse, cold and apathetic, yet your flesh was still so warm and your skin so soft.

He'd wonder about that while he brewed your morning tea, watching you slump against the dining room chairs, staring out the window, staring into stillness. He'd talk to you the whole time, trying so hard to coerce some sort of response other than your one word answers or your quiet hums, but nothing would come out. Your eyes were constantly glazed over, like an unending cloudy day. It wasn't all bad, though. All those jokes about women existing to be looked at, not to be heard? You were just that. He was just a man, you know.

He came home from work a few hours ago, whistling, keys jingling as he spun them on his fingers. Now, you were curled up together on the couch, your back to his chest, engulfed by the darkness of the early winter night like a heavy blanket, your form illuminated only by the blue light of the TV. He had some random local channel on. It didn't matter. Only you mattered.

After that incident, you stopped squirming in his arms, stopped trying to escape his grip or lose his touch. Instead, you just sat there like a pretty doll, just like you were meant to. You let your entire body weight slump against him, let your head rest in the crevice between his neck and shoulders. He pet your hair, brushing his fingers through each strand, gently detangling. He wrapped his arms around your torso to hold you close to him, and he hummed in contentment. "Missed you, baby." He watched your head slowly perk up to look at him, expression all dazed and dumb. So pretty. "What'd you do today?" he murmured quietly, looking into your glassy eyes and brushing away a stray hair.

You had a neutral expression on your face as you thought the question over. It took you a few seconds to respond. "Slept."

The TV, which he vaguely recognized to be playing a news channel, buzzed in the background. He laughed a little at your response. It made him so happy that you even spoke. "Really? Slept all day, but you still look so tired." He teased, almost commenting on the growing bags beneath your eyes but holding himself back. You just nodded in response, laying your head back down on his shoulders.

One hand rubbing soothing circles on your back and the other still playing with your hair, his mind started to drift. Not to anything in particular, though. He wondered what that secretary at work was writing down, what Chris and Wesker were talking about, just little, curious things. He felt your breathing slow, and he suddenly felt so warm inside, knowing that you could fall asleep against him. His breath right against your ear, he murmured, "Night, sweetheart," and looked up at the TV, noticing a missing person's report.

A random boy returned his gaze. The camera panned to shots of a forest, and a news reporter recounted all the details. Name? Jack Reed. Age? Seven years old. Last sighting? Three days ago, heading into the woods for some reason, somewhere. Leon didn't care. What he did care about, though, was that this meant that the world had already moved on. Everyone had stopped looking. Or at least, the public gaze had already shifted. Now, they were looking for someone new. And the week after that, someone else. And with each passing week, the world would forget about you, and that just left more for him. So he just kept on brushing his fingers through your hair, humming quietly to himself. You were his girl now, his perfect, perfect girl, and maybe he hadn't made it real soft, hadn't taken it real slow, maybe even the opposite, but at least now, he could make it real sweet.

#sicko's #leon kennedy smut #leon kennedy x reader #stalker leon kennedy #kidnapper leon kennedy #resident evil x reader #resident evil smut #leon kennedy #leon s kennedy #leon kennedy x y/n #writing ೃ⁀➷

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nerdieforpedro · 2 months

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Day Two - Butterflies with Marcus Pike and Female Reader

Word Count: 648

Warnings: one curse and Marcus Pike in plaid

Notes: I remember painting a butterfly in an art class years ago (like 10+ maybe). It was fun and then the professor went into the symbolism behind them in art, which was pretty cool Reminded me of that - hope and transformations which can happen in therapy or outside of it.

Main Masterlist / March Spring Prompts 2024 / Writing Challenges

It was an exercise in capturing beauty. That’s what the therapist told you at least. You’ve never excelled at drawing, painting or any type of art that has to do with manipulating materials. Give you a pen, piece of paper and you’ll make some magic happen on a page, but not with watercolors. Your therapist who you’ve been seeing for the last few months encouraged you to try something new – out of your comfort zone, but not too crazy. They asked you to pick something and bring in what you had created, no matter what appearance it took on. Your art isn’t great, but you and your therapist talk about the colors, what it means to you to have made it. You told them that you were happy to have physically made something and didn’t expect to use such bright colors with the reds, oranges and yellows. Usually, you’re more in the cool color family. It feels good and you have a pep in your step once you leave the office. So much of a pep that you nearly drop your artwork in the hallway while you’re on your way out.

A tall man in a plaid shirt with a white t-shirt underneath and jeans catches it. You might have started at him a bit too hard to have noted what he was wearing head to toe. He asks if you’re alright and smiles, why did he do that? His mere presence is already making your brain malfunction.

“Christ on a fucking cracker…” It’s said loud enough that you see him blink. It would be wonderful if you could fade away right now. “I-I am so…it was a rough appointment.” A lie would work right now. Blame it on therapy, you’re in a great mood you just need a logical reason for staring and cursing at this very handsome nice man.

“Ah, I’m sorry you’re having a rough day. Did you do the art exercise too? Oh wait..” His smile went to a frown, “you don’t have to answer that. Your day is bad enough without reliving it right?” He scratches his arm, he might be nervous too, though he likely thinks you’re an unhinged woman. If he does, what’s to lose now?

“I did. I don’t mind sharing. It was my favorite part. It’s always the debriefing and deconstruction that takes the fun out of things.” Turning your piece around, you proudly showed it off. Two orange butterflies are on a blade of grass near a daisy (the only flower you can draw and still tell what it is). The upper one had more red in it and the lower one had more yellow. It’s simple, but the first thing you’ve painted since high school. He appeared to be giving it careful consideration and it made you giggle. It’s not like a museum piece or even talent at a high school or college art show. It’s from your one-time painting class. He clapped his hands and you jumped; it was louder than you expected.

“Sorry about that. It’s beautiful. Do you know why the therapists keep asking us to paint butterflies?” It appeared he may have an answer that you therapist didn’t cover, and even if he didn’t, you’re listening because he called your art beautiful. No matter if he’s just being nice or not, it was sweet. You shook your head.

“My therapist said it was a good exercise for trying new things. I haven’t really been too open to doing so.”

He thinks for a moment. You were expecting the answer right away. Maybe he’s building tension. “My name’s Marcus. Maybe we should discuss it over some lunch? It might take a little while. Do you have any plans?” None that can’t be done another day.

“No, where were you thinking of eating lunch?” Looks like the butterfly painting is leading to new experiences indeed.

#pedro pascal characters #fanfiction #pedro pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #Marcus pike #marcus pike x reader #Marcus Pike x you #marcus pike fanfiction #day two #March Spring Prompts #A Nerdie fic #butterflies

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amgk22 · 1 month

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“She’s Gone Mad”

Hi! You might know me as the person who’s obsessed with who’s in the lead of fics between rajbow/bowraj and mkulia. However, I’m also a writer, and I thought I’d publish the first chapter of my story onto here since a03 is down :(

the story’s an AU if Lauren/Scary Girl never competed in total drama and is instead a sheltered but slightly creepy new student at a school. Hopefully you enjoy the first chapter!

little girl, little girl

whatever path you take

I’ll be here through thick and thin

See what your future makes

==++==

My eyes are baggy. My lips are chapped. My legs feel frozen. I just can’t sleep.

Tomorrow starts a new day at school.

School…other people.

I haven’t interacted with people much.

I’m more of an inside person.

But my mom wanted me to make friends.

I reach over to the edge of the table next to my bed, and grasp my hands on the record player. Turning it on, my favourite record plays.

It’s my moms voice. She’s singing a lullaby. My dad said that she was going to sing this to me every night as soon as I was born.

But she never got the chance.

I lay back, and take a deep breath. The music calms me.

I wonder what would happen if mom was here right now.

==++==

I pull up my left knee sock, my right sock already on. “Needs a bit of decoration,” I mumble. Looking at the clock, I see there’s still thirty minutes until the bus is supposed to come. Enough time to add some sparkle.

My dad’s already at work. Usually I don’t like this, but now it works in my favour. Opening the door, I walk down my hallway to the kitchen.

I step up on the ball of my feet, reaching up to the cabinet. I look for the purple food colouring. It’s right in the front, a bit of it is dried onto the lid. “Perfect,” I say to myself, grabbing the food colouring. Maybe I should put it in my water and tell people at school it’s poison. They’d all think it’s cool.

I lay my knee socks flat on the table, as I take off the lid of the food colouring. “Gone goes the boring socks, here comes the unique design,” I mutter as I squeeze the bottle and the food colouring drips out.

Drips on the top.

Drips on the bottom.

Drips on the left.

Drips on the right.

I still leave some white space, because plain purple socks is no better than plain white socks.

The food colouring dries quickly, so I turn the socks around to colour the other side.

Drips on the top.

Drips on the bottom.

Drips on the left.

Drips on the right.

As the socks dry, I go to the bathroom and look into the mirror. I practice my normal smile. It looks really good! I still don’t have any makeup yet. Only some concealer for when I had lots of acne two years ago. Now that my face is clear again; there’s really no need for the concealer.

Grabbing my hair brush, I quickly stroke the brush through my dyed purple and pink hair. My dad freaked out when he saw it. But eventually, he embraced it and told me it looked amazing.

I tie my hair up into pigtails, giving myself a satisfactory grin. I look very pretty, if I do say so myself. Checking the clock on the wall, there’s fifteen minutes left until the school bus arrives. What can I do in fifteen minutes?

I adjust my uniform anxiously as I stand in the bathroom, continuing to look at myself. Everyone’s gonna love my hair. Everyone’s gonna love my socks. Everyone’s gonna think I’m so pretty.

I’m gonna be the most pretty girl at the entire school.

==++==

I’m standing right by my driveway. The bus is about to arrive. It’s very yellow (dad showed me pictures) and has four wheels. Will the school be yellow too?

I’ve never seen a yellow building before. It would look very nice.

rrrrrrrrrrrr. The bus is coming up my road. It’s finally time. I adjust my backpack, making sure it doesn’t fall off as I walk over to the other side in order to enter.

“Hi bus driver lady!” I exclaim, waving and hugging the lady sitting, arms on the wheel. The lady does not look impressed. She gives me a look, first of annoyance, then of slight terror, before pointing to the seats emotionless.

“Okay! Not in the mood for hugs,” I say, walking down to find a seat. I’m about to sit next to a blonde girl, but she slams her hand down.

“This seats saved,” The blonde girl said, chewing her gum.

“For who?” I ask.

“It’s saved,” the girl repeats. I get the message. I go over to another seat, but the boy does almost the exact same thing as the girl.

And so does the entire bus.

“Hurry up and find a seat! We have school to get to!” The bus driver yells. I’m startled, and quickly run to a spot in the back. It’s empty, and I sigh of relief. Nobody can tell me not to sit here.

“Sorry: but my friend’s sitting there,” a girl says, looking back.

“Ugh!”

==++==

The bus parks. We all get off. As I walk towards the entrance, I notice people looking at me. Their faces are scared. Or grossed out. I don’t like it.

“Excuse me Ma’am,” the principal says, holding a clipboard. “What happened to your socks?”

“I painted them!” I say. “They felt too..boring.”

“Well, we don’t want your socks to be a distraction to our other pupils, so I’ll have to ask you to take them off and spend today with no socks,” The principal tells me, placing her hand out.

“What? But,” I look down at my socks. They don’t look distracting. The principals a meanie. A big meanie. However, she is the principal. I take off my socks and hand them to her as I hear giggles. Some people have been watching.

I turn my head around, and glare at them. “Anything you’d like to say?” I ask, frustrated. The two don’t respond. “That’s what I thought,” I say, smirking. I put back on my shoes, and look one more time to the principal. “Sorry, miss.”

“Hopefully you’ll learn from your mistakes,” the principal says. “I’ll have some struggles with Lauren,” I hear her mumble. My name. Lauren. It’s always felt a tiny bit wrong. My mom wanted to name me something different- like Scarlett or “Scarlie” Gayle. My dad sometimes still calls me Scarlie, or Scary Girl. Cause Scarlie Gayle sounds like Scary Girl. How do I change my name?

“I will,” I say quietly, looking down as I walk down the hall to find my locker. As I glance to people, I notice things. They’re all friends. They’re all talking. They all have their hands making a C motion around their face, as if they’re whispering. Some are glancing at me. Some don’t even know I exist.

If I join a group, I won’t be targeted. Right? I find my locker combination, and there’s a girl leaning on the side of my locker. She has blonde, curly, short hair, and I can’t keep my eyes off of her. Maybe it’s because I want to go into my locker, but I’m too scared to ask. Why am I too scared to ask?

“Can I get into my locker,” I mumble, as the girl and her friends talk. I repeat, “Can I get into my locker!” They still don’t respond. Now I’m getting mad. “CAN I GET INTO MY LOCKER!” I yell, covering my mouth immediately after I say that.

A couple of people are looking my way, and the blonde girl looks completely terrified. “S-sorry,” she says, running off with her friends. I grin in satisfaction, as I open up the locker, and stare into my locker. It’s small, cold, and a bit of the paint is chapped off…

But it’s perfect.

==++==

It’s the first day of school for everyone. The teacher just told us. Of course, I should’ve known- but how is everyone friends already?

They must have been in the same junior high.

I was homeschooled, so I’m not surprised people don’t know me. But they will soon. The teacher is getting everyone to say their names and 3 things they like. I’m almost up.

I wanna tell everyone my name is Scarlett, so they call me Scarlie Gayle. Would the principal hate me if I did that?

You know what, I’m gonna do it. She took away my socks. “You, can you stand up and tell us your name and three things you like?” The teacher asks me. She has a very soft voice. And a nice smile. I get up, and walk over to the front. Here it goes.

“Hi!” I say. “I’m Scarlett, Scarlett Gayle. But you guys can call me Scarlie.” So far, so good. Nobody’s told me my real name is Lauren. And that’s how it’s gonna stay. “I like painting, paper mache, and horror movies!”

“That’s amazing Scarlett,” the teacher says. I sigh in relief. She doesn’t know I’m Lauren. “Why do you like horror movies?”

“Because everyone has such a distinct scream,” I reply. “I’ve seen them all. Saw, scream, human centipede..” I list off all the horror movies I’ve watched, and I notice that a couple of people are startled by my interest in horror movies. Did I say too much?

“Hey, that’s the scary girl on the bus!” One of the guys in the background say. He has brown hair. I think he was someone who rejected me from sitting with him.

“Yeah!” I say. “I was on the bus! Why didn’t you let me sit with you?”

This just makes people chuckle. What did I do wrong? “Was it something I said?” I ask. “Why are you laughing! Tell me!” I feel myself getting angrier as they keep away the secret on why they’re laughing at me. They’re meanies! They’re all meanies!

“Come on you guys, give Scarlett a break,” The teacher says, but they don’t listen.

Why aren’t they listening?

What did I do?

Is it all my fault?

“Stop!” I exclaim, frustrated again. “Why are you laughing!” I stomp my foot in anger, and clench my fists.

“Everyone, seriously, stop,” the teacher says, finally dying down the laughter. “Scarlett, I’m sorry about that. You may sit.”

“Thanks teacher!” I say, sitting down. However, now that I hear everyone better, it’s clear they’re still giggling. And laughing.

What did I do wrong?

#total drama #total drama 2023 #tdi 2023 #total drama reboot #total drama island 2023 #totaldrama #td scary girl #td lauren #writing #writers on tumblr

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sunscreenstudies · 1 year

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Iconic Things My Coding Professors Have Said (Part 7)

"we'll be using a very heurisitc method today called ‘lets just try our best’”

“by using this model, you might come up with a solution that is sub-par but... hey, thats life"

"some people are cruel and use a blind man in their drawings to explain this graph, but i'm nice so i'll use a blindfolded man instead"

“there was actually a very interesting study done not so long ago where scientists claimed that on days when more ice cream was purchased, more murders occured as well. now, i know what you’re thinking, i’d kill someone for limencello and ferrero rocher ice cream as well BUT in this case, that correlation was wrong and it was just scientists being dumb”

"now so, we’re all off next thursday, but i also have an extra days holiday on friday, so if you're trying to email me then... yeah. good luck”

"this example illustrates why we cannot repeat this exercise on more complex DOM trees because their visual representation gets too big and inaccessible too quickly. In other words: we will not be using a more complex example in a potential exam exercise because the tree would quite simply, not fit on the exam paper”

"you know, there's a little secret that we haven't told you about before... please don't hate us, but we are about to tell you about one of the best kept secrets in the Python universe and it would have made your homework SO much easier"

Prof: “does anyone know what mistake the dumb scientists made? i’ll give you a hint; correlation is not the same as causation, so what else do you think would increase the amount of ice cream bought and also increase the amount of murders committed?” student: “being human” prof: “... the correct answer is hot temperatures, but technically, you’re not wrong”

"then we'll be looking a linear model, which is the most important part of this course. you can look at it as... the swiss army knife, if you will, of data models"

"we use the pearson correlation method which is the, uh... vanilla method"

“first of all, you can immediately see that the p-value for gender has changed. why? because i made it like that. why did i make it like that? god only knows"

"we'll be looking at the titanic dataset which is a really funny data- no, wait, i shouldn't say that, it's not a funny dataset, it's a... nice dataset to- nope, it’s not nice either. entertaining? wait, no, people died. i’m not a pyschopath, i swear"

prof: "so here’s your blindfolded man on top of the curve of the graph" student: "that’s quite a dangerous place for him to be" prof: "very dangerous for him, yes, but machine learning is very dangerous... for you especially"

"so it was actually doctors who first created the earliest version of this algorithm by using a nearest neighbors set up. so instead of looking at a new patient and trying to come up with what's wrong with them, they based their diagnosis on similar past cases. for example, if someone came in with blue hair and purple eyes and yellow skin and- wow. this is starting to sound more like a carneval than a hospital. i mean, both places are a joke, but still..."

"this is the way we solved this issue for a lot of people. it seems a bit hacky, but hey, as along as it works"

prof1: "that wasn't too difficult" prof2: "speak for yourself" prof1: "i am. i don't know what’s going on with you, but i want nothing to do with this"

"you need two predictors, or more. three way interactions can be... messy, but still possible, much like other three way activites that i could mention, but i won't, because you're still children"

#coding #compblr #computer science #data analytics #machine learning #seriously you guys #this will never end

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suprgamr66 · 4 months

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Writer’s comment: this is a part 4 of the “timelines collide storyline” if you haven’t seen part two the link is here

The infinitewatch chronicles:Timelines collide part IV

As Infinite walked through the rift he said, “Eren you’re coming with me. Accident or not you killed a kid. You’re going to be put in a cell where you’re powers will be nullified and unusable. I’ll help to train you soon. But for now you must be punished.” His visor finally changed to yellow and he escorted Eren to a cell block where each cell was blank white with a button to activate a light blue forcefield to contain the prisoners. Eren could see many people and creatures. One appeared to be made from a black hole and another appeared to have some gold gauntlet and was purple. Infinite said, “Your cell will be right right here.” They stopped at the cell on the left of the purple creature. “It’s only temporary,” Infinite continued. “You’ll be here for about a week. I’ll take you to the training room every day for this duration to help perfect your abilities. You’ll probably have a couple visitors. After looking at Mikasa’s file i’m certain of that. However looking at Amity’s file she’s probably gonna visit you for much different reasons. Good luck.” Before leaving he looks at the cell next to Eren and says, “Hey Thanos, your stones are still powering my armor, if you’re done with genocide you can join Infinitewatch. It would be a great honor if we had the mad titan going to war with us.” Thanos just looks at Infinite and says, “No. I stand by my belief. I won’t give up on it.” Infinite shakes his head and walks away. Titan starts walking to the cells and Infinite stops Titan while saying, “You didn’t have a hand in this, did you? I remember your early rebellion days.” Titan shakes his head saying, “Why would I risk my great position here.” Infinite coldly responds by saying, “Because you want to change infinitewatch and take mine.” Titan’s visor turns red as he says, “That was a long time ago and I still think infinitewatch could benefit from some of those you consider forbidden. Like shin Godzilla, its adaptive capabilities could help improve infinitewatch greatly.” Infinite’s visor turns red too and says, “We’ve been over why that wouldn’t work. Now shut up.” Titan’s fists clinch but he walks away and his visor slowly shifts back to yellow. When infinite exits the cell block he reaches Eren’s cell and says, “Good work soldier. You still want to flatten the earth? Well I can help with that.” Eren says, “I can’t believe I just killed a kid. This has gone to far.” Titan’s visor turns red as he bangs on the forcefield hard and says, “You will continue the mission. I need a distraction to get a shin Godzilla dna sample but I need chaos to do that.” Eren says, “Get it on your own, I’m done with the rumbling. I just want to do good here.” Eren lays down on the floor of his cell as Titan walks away. He hears a deep voice from the cell next to his which he recognizes as Thanos from when he responded to Infinite. The voice asks him, “Why are you here.” Eren responds, “Titan told me to sabotage the next mission so he could do something although I’m not sure what. He promised me I could complete the rumbling and he’d help me if I did that. All I wanted was to cause a little more damage to distract Infinite. But instead when I accelerated what was happening they got to close to where one of the locals were that were helping us. She was crushed.” Eren’s voice starts to tremble as he says, “She was just a kid. She didn’t need to die.” Thanos sighed before saying, “Look, we all do things we aren’t proud of. When we’re trying to complete our mission. I’ve wiped out half the population of multiple planets and nearly killed half of the universe. I still want to, it’s how I solve the population problem of the universe.” Eren says, “I still feel like shit about that girl dying but I’m now realizing there’s much worse atrocities committed by others.” Meanwhile, Infinite is giving the others their orientation when Mikasa leaves the group to visit Eren. She looks around for a little bit until finally finding the cell block where she yells out, “Eren!?” Eren yells back, “Over here!”

Mikasa runs to the cell and says, “Don’t worry! I’m gonna get you out of here.” Eren responds, “No, let me serve my time. I killed that kid. I deserve to be here.” Mikasa says, “Is this really what you want?” Eren responds, “Yes. I need to be punished for this.” Mikasa nods and walks away. Amity walks in the cell block and Mikasa says, “He’s over there by that purple thing.” Amity walks over and asks Eren, “Were you in control of those things?” Eren responds, “Those things are called wall titans and I wasn’t in control the whole time.” Eren struggled to say the rest, “But from the moment of the first scream I’d had some form of control. I just haven’t fully trained my ability yet.” Amity said, “Have you any idea who you killed? She was my girlfriend. We’d been trying to get her home. Back to the human realm but then Belos started and evil plan that would wipe out the boiling isles. I assume teleporting us to that place was part of the plan. His plan was to make us weak with the draining spell and then crush us with those giants. But Luz, she wasn’t supposed to die. Her blood is on your hands. So now…” Amity pulls out some sort of vile with dark purple goo. “So now, your blood will be on my hands” she opens the vile and the goo flies to her hand making a giant fist with spikes on the front she goes to punch the blue force field keeping Eren in the cell and separating the two of them. Before the first punch can land Infinite seems appear from nowhere and the red ring glows Amity freezes in place. Infinite says, “If you have a grievance against Eren why don’t you fight him in the training room. I strongly advise against it though. He’s a god class being and you’re not gonna survive for long in an arena against him.” Amity asks, “Where’s this training room.” Infinite says, “Right this way.” He let’s Eren out of his cell and they walk to the training room. When they get in the training room Eren says, “For what it’s worth I’m sorry about what happened on the mission.” Amity says, “Too little too late.” The room turns into shiganshina and Eren get’s a small grin as he looks around and sees the walls still standing. The grin disappears as he bites his hand and transforms into his 200 meter titan. He screams and all the walls fall. Hundreds of millions of walls titans go behind Eren. Amity gasps in shock. She creates as big a circle on the ground as she can and a giant creature made of purple goo rises. Amity yells out, “ABOMINATION MAKE THE ONE IN FRONT SUFFER AND KILL THE REST! THE FINAL KILL WILL BE MINE!!!!!!” Eren screams again and the wall titans begin marching forward. Amity creates more abominations of the same size as the first and they seem to understand the situation and and run towards the wall titans and fight them. But the wall titans push forward due to the abominations not knowing the weak spot of the nape of the neck. Eren screams again and the wall titans part, making a singular opening. Eren and Amity stare at each other for a moment before Eren slams his fist into the ground and spikes of titan hardening begin flying from the ground Amity dodges out of the way before she could get impaled by a spike. Eren runs to Amity and picks her up and holds her in the air. There appears to be sorrow in his titan body’s eyes as he squeezes and kills amity. The training room goes back to normal and Eren leaves his titan body and Amity comes back. She looks surprised and says, “How am I alive?” Eren says, “It had something to do with this room. I don’t understand it myself but I know if you die in a combat simulation here you live.” Amity nods and says, “I can’t kill you now. I don’t have the power to right now. But I promise I will be the reason you draw your last breath. Mark my words.” Eren nods and says, “So it’s back to my cell right?” Infinite walks into the room and says, “Yes, you don’t get off that easy by winning a vengeance fight.” Infinite escorts Eren back to his cell and reactivates the force field, sealing Eren in.

When Infinite leaves Thanos asks, “How’d it go. I imagine you won. Didn’t realize you were a god class being.” Eren asks, “How do you know so much about this place.” Thanos responds, “I’ve been here a while. I’m one of the first prisoners infinitewatch brought in since the current Infinite took control. He believes in redemption. It’s why he keeps offering me a place here. But if you do something really extreme, and your considered irredeemable or too dangerous to live he’ll kill right then and there. Nobody’s immortal as long as there’s an Infinite.” Eren goes silent. Thanos says, “I was apart of infinitewatch at a time. The previous Infinite was a little unhinged. He commanded mass genocide. Luckily for him that’s what I specialized in back home. That’s why I lead the marvel division. They’re the most used so they’re rarely here. They’re one of the biggest divisions here too.” Eren says, “The previous Infinite and I would’ve gotten along. I planned to kill everyone except my people back on my home island.” Thanos says, “Impressive. A waste of life but impressive. How did you plan to do it?” Eren says, “I have the founding titan, attack titan, and warhammer titan. But as long as I used the founding titan the others didn’t matter as much. I’m pretty much a god back home. I planned to do something called the rumbling where I would command hundreds of millions of titans which would emerge from the walls that protected my home. They would march out from the island and flatten the earth.” Thanos is taken aback and says, “Why would that be your option?” Eren responds, “The world hated my people for what we’d done in the past. Happened 2000 years ago but we were still persecuted for it. None of us were safe when the outside world still stood.” Thanos says, “Look at it this way, you’re only here for a week. These cells keep you alive so you can serve your sentence. I’ve been here centuries. I should count myself lucky. One other has been here since his birth. He’s a last resort option for Infinite, his name is black hole. Hell, he could even takeover infinitewatch if he broke out of here. But Titan would probably do it before him. If he doesn’t leave us and make his own organization. Titan has been obsessed with something Infinite calls restricted titans.” Eren is surprised and says, “There’s more powerful titans than mine?” Thanos responds, “I’ve heard others talk of creatures so uncontrollable or so potentially self destructive to infinitewatch for use to even attempt to use. One called shin Godzilla can adapt to anything. Titan wants to put their its dna samples in specially designed armors to mimic its abilities. Another is ghidora the planet eater. He believes he can trap it into a pocket dimension and use it’s abilities to stretch it’s necks to great effect. That titan is more of a god than you are. It can create gravitational forces that crush planets, warp time, and can even prevent physical damage to itself by warping reality. There’s a couple others but you know it’s bad if Infinite doesn’t want to risk it.” Eren says, “Why hasn’t infinite removed Titan?” Thanos says, “He believes in redemption. After the titan containment incident Titan redeemed himself by fixing the whole problem. He killed all the titans with a new armor he’d made and he went into the monster multiverse to tame new ones and brought them back. It is the nature of infinitewatch to eventually change leadership through civil war. It works sometimes. It’s how our current Infinite gained his position.” Titan runs into the cell block and says, “Eren, did you take belos out of the capsule infinite put him in.” Eren responds, “I didn’t even know he was contained. I was on top of the titan skull at that point.” Titan says. “Shit, then he must’ve escaped.” He opens the force field and Eren says, “Why waste your time here? It seems like you’ve got your chaos. Go get your dna sample if your so determined.” Titan says, “I will in one moment,” suddenly, he pulls out some kind of scepter with a pointed in and a glowing blue ball.

Thanos gasps and says, “Eren! Don’t let him touch you with that. He’ll be able to control you if he does!” Before Eren can react Titan touches the the pointed end of the scepter to Eren’s chest. Eren appears to change suddenly and he runs to the rift room where infinite already gathered his friends and the new recruits. Amity stared him down but Eren didn’t react. Infinite said, “Alright! Belos escaped his containment on the titan skull. He could be anywhere on the boiling isles but intelligence of the boiling isles says he will most likely head to the heart of the titan and attempt to…” Infinite is cut off when Eren uses the rift technology to create a giant rift outside the base and he sprints out of the room and out of the base. He bites his hand and screams out when he transformed into his 200 meter titan. The wall titans begin walking through the rift. Infinite runs out and says, “Piek, go find Titan, Zeke, you’ll find boulders you can use behind the base, Reiner, Annie, Armin, you guys catch a ride with Hunter, Amity, and Willow, two people a staff, one shifter and one witch, once you’re high enough to get Eren you jump off, transform and pull him from the nape, and Gus, you get recon on what’s going out there so we can adjust strategy if we need to! Go go go!!!!” The wall titans begin pouring through the rift and Gus reports this to Infinite. He uses the mind stone in his power core to speak to everyone in their minds, “Everybody from the Attack on Titan universe and The Owl House universe need to leave the base and kill as many wall titans as you can. Anyone else help with protocol heat and force reinforcement!” Eda turns into a harpy and flies out with king on her back. Infinite’s voice appears in their heads again as he says, “Aim for the napes of the necks of the titans! They won’t die from any other injury!” As they all run out they see something come out in a ball covered in markings and they hear it yell out, “I’m back!” Amity gasps and whispers, “Luz?”

#attack on titan #armin arlert #colt grice #eren yeager #falco grice #piek finger #porco galliard #emperor belos #amity blight #zeke yeager #the owl house #eda the owl lady #king toh #luz noceda

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purplesurveys · 1 year

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1662

Was there anything that you planned to do today, but didn’t? More like couldn’t. I had a really terrible craving for kwek-kwek and went to two different places I knew served them, but apparently the universe thought I didn’t deserve street food today because said two places were both not open, lol.

Is there anyone you interact with often on social media but not in person? Sure. Mostly people from high school or college that I’m close enough to exchange banter with online, but not close enough to actually hang out with in real life. Also, a pandemic changes people. Most people I know have become more reserved in the last three years.

What colour box does your favourite cereal come in? I don’t have a favorite cereal.

Do you have any plates, dishes, mugs etc. with pretty illustrations on them? Mugs, sure.

Does anywhere on your body currently hurt, or feel sore? God my shoulders and lower back are just going THROUGH IT. I realize it’s from sleeping on my foldout sleeping bags/mattresses under my loft bed which has been a major contributor to my strained neck and back – and I didn’t even realize it was being so until in my whole body just started to hurt all at once. Anyway, I’ve since made adjustments to the room and I’m back to sleeping on my actual bed now and I really hope this resolves the issue.

What is your favourite snack to eat with a hot beverage? I don’t like hot beverages and will do anything to avoid having to drink them.

Is there any advice you have been given, that sticks in your mind? Don’t ever rush healing. That’s been my mindset since the day Andi shared the advice; if you’re hurting, then just grant yourself the time to be hurt.

What’s the nicest advice you have ever been given about love/relationships? Idk and can’t remember if there’s been any. Again, I’ve Eternal Sunshine-d myself when it comes to every single memory from my previous relationship lol.

Do you own any adult colouring books? What kind(s) do you like? Yeah I have several but it’s the same ones I got like 5-6 years ago and don’t really use/color on anymore. I used to like the really intricate city-themed ones.

When was the last time you got some new headphones? It was around six months ago when I bought my current *earphones. Don’t have headphones.

Is there a lamp in your living room? What colour is its shade? No lamp there, but we have two ceiling light fixtures and both give off a yellow hue.

Do you know anyone whose name starts with the letter X? I do.

Have you eaten any rice or pasta today? I had rice today when I ate a few rolls of sushi; now I feel like getting pasta at 2 AM since you mentioned it hah. Mom made a batch of anchovy pasta earlier tonight, so I’ll just have to microwave it.

Name a food that you dislike the texture of. Gelatin. Only time it’s acceptable is if it comes in the form of pork belly lol.

Which of your friends do you confide in the most? Definitely Angela, but sometimes I’ll also end up oversharing with Andi.

Have you ever fallen out of love with someone? If so, why do you think that happened? I have, but it happened well after the breakup. I was finally starting to move on and allowing myself to encounter new things and people that can contribute to a new chapter of my happiness, so falling out of love was just letting nature take its course at that point.

If you have pets, do you talk to them? I very much do. I think it’d be weird to have a pet and just...never...talk to them? Are there people who really don’t?? Hahaha.

Are there any TV shows that you strongly dislike, but others seem to love? This is me with Game of Thrones and Grey’s Anatomy. And shows that my generation loved to love when we were teenagers like Supernatural, Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, Glee hahaha.

Is there anything you haven’t done lately, that you’d like to do soon? Shopping for clothes. I’ll definitely need to have a spree soon what with my upcoming Thailand and Malaysia trips PLUS I need a concert outfit too. Do you own any T-shirts with brand logos on them? Yeah, a few like adidas.

Have you experienced any kind of food cravings lately? Kwek-kwek :/

Have you watched or read the news today? Have not. I mean I always see glimpses of top news on social media – the bar results are especially a hot topic these days – but I don’t ever, like, actively seek a rundown of the day’s main headlines.

Describe the cover illustration of the book closest to you. There aren’t any books at the dining area.

Are there any take-away or fast food places close to your house? If so, do you ever order food from any of them? Yeah we have a McDonald’s, Burger King, Chowking, Wendy’s, Jollibee, Starbucks. If anything we mostly order from McDo.

Is there anything happening tomorrow, that you’re looking forward to? Not really, no.

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yeslieutenant · 2 years

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WINTERFOLD PROLOGUE

Alright, guys. Here is the prologue to my new story! I am super nervous about this one, but here goes nothing!

A/N: I have two versions of this story. One is a reader insert, and the other is my original character. The x Reader version will be here on tumblr, and the OC version is on AO3. (This chapter is like the tutorial in the games, so none of the main characters will be in it, including the reader)

Series Warnings: Some serious violence, swearing, gore (not too horrible but it could get gross for some, so if that squicks you out, probably best to avoid), slow build-up to horror, maybe some smut (not til the Epilogue), character death, drinking, panic attacks, PTSD, if there is anything I miss, please let me know!

Chapter Warnings: Violence, GORE, swearing, character death

Word Count: 1,260

October 23rd, 2000

2:12PM

Winterfold Forest Research Facility

Dr. William Green

The halls were pristine, the memorandum clasped tightly between my fingers as I began my trek towards the makeshift post office. It’s a pity about Subject #12, but it’s clear she wasn’t the one. After Jax scans her DNA, I guarantee we won’t find the genome discovered in Subject #9.

“Will!” Speak of the devil and he shall appear. I gradually come to a stop, waiting for the eager geneticist to catch up. He’s out of breath, his loose blonde hair falling into his face as he bends to place his hands on his knees. His breaths come out in pants, evident that the geneticist may need to hit up the in-house gym more often.

“What do you need Dr. Brewer?” My voice comes out harsh and impatient, and the blonde immediately recoils, standing up to his full height.

“What’s up with the ‘Dr. Brewer’ stuff?” He asks, confused.

“What do you need Jax?” I repeat. I need to get this memo sent out, and all Dr. Brewer is doing is holding me up.

“We just received notice from Dr. Brenner that Subject #1 is to be terminated. I figured you’d want to be present.”

“Terminated? Already? They only just began showing signs of aggression two days ago.” I can’t contain the frustration in my voice. Subject #1 may be aggressive, but they also showed the most promising signs when passing on the genome. If they want Project Killzone to be successful, terminating Subject #1 is the worst course of action we could-

“Dr. Green?” He looks at me, cautious, watching my face for evidence of an oncoming emotional outburst. I take a steadying breath before speaking.

“Lead the way, Dr. Brewer.” He sighs in relief, turning on his heel and walking towards the containment area. I follow behind, the memo still clutched between my fingertips.

The containment room for Subject #1 is filthy. We haven’t been able to sedate them long enough to be able to clean the excrement off the floor, and it's starting to pile up. The room is dimmed, as all the chambers are, and Subject #1 is laying down, seemingly in defeat, next to a pool of some liquid that is most definitely not fecal matter.

“What is it laying in?” I ask, moving closer to the glass.

“We’re not sure, sir. Want us to run some tests once the subject is dead?” Jax turns to me, his green eyes searching as I begin to chuckle.

“You’ve clearly never seen a termination of one of the subjects have you, Dr. Brewer?” He shakes his head nervously. “There won’t be anything left to test.” I exchange a look with the tech on my right. He nods wordlessly, and I respond with a nod of my own. Then he presses the button.

The room in front of me lights up in an orange and yellow symphony as the subject is incinerated. Or starts to be. The creature curls in on itself as it lets out a high-pitched cry so loud, that we all cover our ears in response. That’s when all hell breaks loose. Glass shatters behind us, and we all turn to see Subject #19 racing towards us, teeth bared, eyes feral. This subject never displayed any aggression! How the hell did it break through 6 inches of solid glass?! Before any of us can react, the technician is screaming, his deathly cries echoing through the busy halls as Subject #19 tears into his abdomen, ripping innards out and beginning to feast. I feel a hand on my arm, quickly realizing Dr. Brewer is screaming at me.

“WE NEED TO GO WILL!” He tugs and I am set in motion. We bolt down the halls, away from the pained wails from the tech, onlookers showing confusion and concern at the outburst. Jax yells in response. “Containment Breach! Lock it down!” Some of them react, running towards their designated stations, others, most likely new hires, glance around, their eyes scanning, hoping someone will tell them where to go. As we run, we pass the make-shift post office, and I vaguely remember that I left my memorandum outside Subject #1’s containment chamber. It’s useless now, considering I’ve got bigger problems to report in the next memo.

We all but fly into the surveillance room, the low-res cameras showing the chaos that has unfolded within the lab. Subject #19 is running down the hall, its speed faster than it takes for me to look to the next screen. It’s headed this way. The door pounds and Jax looks at me pleadingly.

“What do we do, Will?” I grab the machete off the wall and glance up at him. He’s so young. He’s got a wife at home. They’ve only been married 6 months, I think is what he told me, one late night after too many glasses of whiskey. Dr. Brenner said incineration would work just as well, and I suppose it did on Subject #1, but I suppose Dr. Brenner didn’t consider these hell-spawns to be strong enough to break through 6 inches of bullet-proof glass. The door begins to cave, the dents becoming more and more pronounced every second that passes.

“We’re gonna decapitate that sorry son of a bitch.”

“But Dr. Brenner said-”

“Dr. Brenner isn’t here, is he?” I cut him off, the door creaking on its fragile hinges. It’s holding on by a theoretical thread now. Jax looks terrified, tears pooling in those emerald eyes. Then the door bursts open. Subject #19 looks at me, its eyes matching the look of a feral animal.

It lunges, not at me, and before I can react, it has Jax on his back, his white button-down stained red as he begins to bleed. He lets out a cry, garbled and wet, his own blood bubbling up his throat to mute the sound. I lift the blade above my head and bring it down hard on the creature’s neck, severing its head from its body in one swift swing. It cries out, not nearly as loud as Subject #1, but it’s almost ear-splitting. I shove it off of Jax, his hand coming up to grasp mine as the blood stains his lips red. He chokes, a cough attempting to break out of his blood-filled throat.

“My wife.” He gargles out.

“I’ll tell her,” I assure him, and I watch tears stream out of his eyes, down over his temples into his blonde locks. He nods, no longer attempting to speak. He closes his eyes, squeezing them tightly, and when he opens them, the playful Dr. Brewer I knew is gone. He gives me one more barely noticeable nod before he goes limp, his hand slipping from mine as it drops noiselessly to the floor. His green eyes are lifeless as I stand. How many casualties are we going to see today? I ask myself before I hear a growl to my left. I spin on my heel, blade at the ready. The sight before me makes my blood run cold.

The creature. Its fur is matted and singed, blackened from the attempted incineration. Subject #1. Dr. Brenner was wrong. I raise my weapon, but it’s all in vain. Its teeth rip into my gut before I even have a chance to react. It’s over before we even sent in the memo about isolating the genome. I have but one thought before the pain stops and I feel myself slip into unconsciousness. Just another casualty, right?

Chapter 1

Tags: @kawaiiwitch224 @yellowroseskolchek @house-of-kolchek @lorebite @buttermykolchek @katsufairies @kassiekolchek22

#house of ashes fanfic #house of ashes #jason kolchek #jason kolchek fanfiction

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robert-j-t-wilson · 2 years

Text

Chapter 11

Word Count: 975

The paramedics arrived a few minutes after, Mr. Holmes kept pressure on my wound to prevent myself from bleeding, all I could see was Gustav on the floor, he was still alive but in a very delicate state, my family was already there, Mycroft was the one that came with me in the ambulance

"You are not allowed to die, not today Admiral, that's an order, you need to fight this", he was nervous, I felt him holding my hand

"I'm not sure if I will survive Mr. Holmes", I was feeling extremely dizzy and just wanted to sleep

"No, you have no authorization to die, you can't leave your family", we arrived at the hospital, "you can't leave me Admiral". I couldn't hear that clearer

"I have to tell you something Mr. Holmes, in case I don't make it", I was being send to the O.R. for an emergency surgery

"I know it, I know everything Admiral", he had gone to see me then to clarify it, he had heard that bit

"I love you Mycroft Holmes"

That was the last thing I manage to say to him, I don't remember much, I entere the O.R. and the doctors started the procedure

·MYCROFT HOLMES POV·

He said it to my face, he loved me, I couldn't help but to cry, I was sobbing at the thought that he might die and all because he wanted to be a hero. The hours went by, the storm had gotten worse, Lisa told me that they would not be there in at least 2 hours more, the doctor came out

"How is he? please tell me he made it" I stood up as fast as I could

"He needs a blood transfusion, but we need it to be as compatible as possible, we have our reserves but they are frozen and also is always better if a family member is the one that donates the blood"

"Which type is he?"

"O RH+, has the family arrived?"

"They haven't but I have the same blood type, can I donate mine?"

"Sure thing, this way Sir"

I was in debt with him that any act I could do to save his life was little compared to what he did, I saw him in the table when I passed by, he looked horrible, the worst state I had ever see him, the doctors sent me to a room so I could rest due that i had donated 2 pints of blood, I was there for almost 4 hours when I heard Lisa speaking

"How are you Mr. Holmes?", she was soaking wet that she had been given a towel so she could dry, "they told me you donated blood for my brother, thank you very much"

"It was the less I could do, your brother saved my life, it seemed right to help him and do not worry about me, you have news of your brothers health", I was a bit nauseous

"He came out of surgery 20 minutes ago, he is still asleep but they will inform us when he wakes up, do you want me to arrange so you can be moved to the same room a him?"

"No, no thank you, I will only stay here a few more hours, after that I have to go and get some rest"

I really wanted to stay but the doctor said that I had to go from the hospital due that they were receiving many patients and having people use rooms they don't need was unnecessary, I arranged my papers to see where I was going to stay at, found a hotel that wasn't that far from the hospital and booked myself for a few days

·ROBERT WILSON POV·

A few days after my surgery I was allowed to go back to the house, everyone greeted me, even some members of the Royal Family were there, including Her Majesty, I was moved to my room where I spent a week, in that period of time I received the visit of him

"May I?", there he was, in a grey 3 piece suit and a blue tie except that, this time, he didn't had his umbrella, instead, he was holding a bouquet of Daisies and White with Yellow Roses, "I hope I'm not interrupting anything Admiral"

"For god's sake, call me Robert", I couldn't believe that the man I had in front of me was the love of my life and still was calling me by my Military rank

"Alright, but I have two conditions, first, you call me Mycroft so we can finally stop these formalities", he was putting the bouquet in my night stand

"And what is the second condition", he sat in the opposite side of the bed

"That we talk about what happened that day", I knew the moment had to arrive

"What do you want to know, Mycroft", I was ready to answer any question he could make

"Why me?". Alright, maybe not every question

"What do you mean?"

"Why did you fell in love with me, I have nothing special, as a matter of fact, I am more of an Ice Man than anything, so why me?"

"To be honest, I have no fucking idea why I fell for you but I don't regret it", he turned to look at me, those blue eyes were like the sea and I was getting lost in them, the distance between us started to reduced until there were only a few centimeters that were keeping us apart, I wasn't sure if I should give the first move but he caught me off guard and kissed me, he kissed me in a very passionated way, it was something new for him, I was sure of that, and although he was the one that started it, I was the one handling the situation, it sure wasn't his first kiss but I could say that it was the very first he had gave it to someone he cared and possibly loved

@anonymoussherlockandmarvelgeek

#bbc sherlock #mycroft bbc #mycroft holmes #original male character

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msbarrows · 1 year

Photo

So yesterday @genginger tagged me in a “three things that you’re proud of in 2023″ thing, and I had to think a lot to come up with things - being long-term unemployed means my days (and weeks, and months) tend to be very sameness-of-a-same.

One thing I got done at the end of the year (but have yet to deploy) is putting together a skills-based resume. Sooooo much anxiety over finally tackling it, as I’ve been unemployed for over a decade now and haven’t job searched in years. Thankfully some online friends did supportive hand-holding while I tackled it. Now I just... need to figure out some applications. Write some cover letters (UGH!!!). Probably make some more versions of the resume, to cover skill sets relevant to specific jobs (DOUBLE UGH!!!).

Been working my way through the big box of old family photos from the basement, plus my personal large file box of photos, and scanning all of them. Have the former finished but am still working through the latter. At some point I need to burn a bunch of them to DVD to send around to my brother and sister’s households (all the family ones, plus some of my personal ones).

One of the biggest projects I tackled in late summer of last year was to finally put together an emergency go-bag for myself (see photo above), inspired in part by katy-l-wood’s Evacuation Prep chart having crossed my dash earlier in the year, plus us here in northern Ontario having had several bad fire summers recently, including the fire by the old ski hill in 2020. Thankfully small, thankfully put out rapidly, but it came right down to the yards of the houses along the base of the ridge. We were on edge for a few hours on whether or not things might go bad and force us to evacuate (not to mention we’ve had bigger fires only a little further away that took 2-3 days to put out), and I’d found myself thinking several times since about what I’d grab if we got that sudden automated phone call or banging on the door. More about the go-bag contents under the cut (it’s long).

Anyone else interested in posting their three things, consider yourself tagged :)

So... go-bag contents! This is still a WIP, I plan to add additional food items to it for one, but at present, from left to right this includes:

couple of foldable water containers. It there’s enough warning before having to leave, those would be filled from the tap and go out to the truck separately, otherwise will be filled at whatever first stop with potable water we* reach.

box of assorted Cliff bars, to be replaced every 6-8 months. I also plan to add a box of assorted fruit bars and/or nut bars and/or sesame snaps. Stable foods with some nutrition and a good energy hit, basically.

the opened out red bag is a first aid molle pouch, it includes EMT shears, bandaids, adhesive mesh, polysporin, and a ton of assorted gauze pads and packing gauze leftover from when I was have a large cyst treated a year or two ago (yay for daily nurse visits to inspect and repack the wound).

the yellow drawstring bag contains a large rain poncho

mess kit, normally stored in the round purse with the raffia flamingo on it (protects it, plus doesn’t hurt to have an extra bag in my bag)

the large black duffle bag that everything fits inside

to the right of that is a dark green electronics storage bag, in front of which are what it normally holds - a solar power bank, my old 7″ android tablet, my old android cell phone (the sim card for which is in my new phone, but it’s still usable for emergency calls and means I have a backup handy if I accidentally break the new phone), red external backup drive, my original bluetooth speaker in its lime green carry case - all of these get their batteries topped up at the start of each month, plus updated (OS, apps, backup files). Also a couple of USB charging bases and cables.

stainless steel thermos

LifeStraw personal water filter (in case the only water source is questionable)

folding umbrella

from in front of that over to right is all small things I store inside a purse organizer, which I have tucked inside a clear vinyl storage bag that some sheets came in, so its protected from collecting dust or lint, plus if anything escapes the organizer it’ll remain in the bag. Contents include: small coin purse holding a small roll of bills, can opener, makeup mirror (as a mirror and for flash signalling), tums, safety razor, comb, hair elastics, USB rechargeable flashlight, soap, tooth floss, toothpaste, toothbrush, ibuprofen, packet of tissues.

the lumpy blue things at back right are compression packing cubes full of tshirts, socks, underwear, a pair of jeans, flannel shirt, light hoodie, plus hiding between them and the clear vinyl bag are a drawstring cloth bag holding pyjamas (so it’s easy to grab just sleepwear), and a zippered pouch of more socks and more underwear. Figure I’ll remove, wash, and repack the clothes on the same 6-8 month rotation as replacing the food in the bag.

Basically it’s aimed mostly at getting to and remaining at an evacuation centre or motel for a couple days sort of goal, but I have also put a bit of consideration into what if we’re unable to reach such a place and end up stuck temporarily outside somewhere, so things like how the poncho can double as a small shelter (which reminds me I should add some paracord or light rope), the LifeStraw can be used to more safely drink from untreated water sources, and I have at least a few days worth of food on hand. Also there’s a sleeping bag stored in the same closet as this kit, so close to hand. And a second, much larger duffle to stuff as many clothes into as possible.

Most of the other small things I’d want to grab, such as ID, keys, and more cash, are in my purse, which is an arm’s length away from where I sit at my computer.

* - I say ‘we’ because I don’t drive, so if there’s an evacuation I’d be going with my brother or waving down a neighbour’s vehicle.

#Three Things in 2022 #Resume Rewritten #Family Photos #Emergency Preparedness #Go Bag

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stegrossaurus · 4 months

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Blue Stop Signs

What would you do if you saw a blue stop sign? It would probably be weird and a little off-putting to the point where you’d find yourself puzzling out how such a thing could exist. And then you’d shrug and move on with your life. Blue stop signs: weird but not a big deal. That’s what I call the things in the forest near my home.

I’d just moved to town when I saw my first blue stop sign. I was exploring the forest and I was willing to ignore or rationalize the glassiness of the trees or the sounds that couldn’t possibly have been cackling from between the black smeared rocks. But the lizard, sunbathing on a horribly malformed tree and staring at me with a hairy human-like face, was too much. I decided to avoid the forest. I didn’t know what that thing was and I didn’t want anything to do with anything like it.

But I couldn’t stay away for long. My parents were always fighting, school was stressful, and I needed any kind of distraction. So I went back into the forest where you can see your reflection in some of the tree trunks and hear harsh laughter in some of the stones. I was a good mix of curious and cautious, so I learned how to enjoy the forest safely. I stopped trying to figure it out or look it up early on and just let it be a little patch of fun weirdness.

Like I said, the blue stop signs are harmless. A shallow pool of crystal blue water that dries up when you get close, leaving a small depression filled with spiky black grass. Red and yellow mold that engorges when it senses your strong emotions until something like eyeballs start to bud. A silvery thread binding a group of leaves together into a child-sized dress. On an average day I can see these and more. Strange, interesting, maybe a little ominous, but harmless.

As long as you don’t touch them. I’ve only tried once which is probably why they haven’t hurt me. I said the blue stop signs are safe and I stand by that, but come on. You wouldn’t eat a normal mold or touch a normal spiky plant you found in a normal forest, would you? Things are safe if you let them be safe.

If a tree's branches lower or secrete something that smells like glue when I get close, I don’t get close. If I see a pig-shaped pendant laying in a circle of dead grass, I don’t go near it. I don’t bother the pink and black butterflies nibbling on a squirrel carcass or the foxes that creak as if they’re full of metal gears. When the floor of dead leaves and dirt under my feet is suddenly dotted with slivers of asphalt and I see a street lamp out of the corner of my eye, I give it one glance and I keep moving. I don’t answer the voices.

A month ago, I was feeling brave and I touched a bright yellow flower growing out of a dead tree. It closed up and the sun immediately went out. I bolted for the path, begging for nothing to wake up in the freezing darkness. The voices started to get louder. By the time I got out a minute later, the sun was out again and, of course, no one else had noticed anything strange. That was the first and only time I’d deliberately touched one of the blue stop signs.

The knife came a bit earlier.

My parents were giving me such a headache that day. I stomped into the forest, too angry to enjoy or look for blue stop signs. Until my foot sank in a patch of mud. I’d seen boulders with inky black figures drawn on them make awful sounds as they sank in mud pits, so I quickly yanked my foot loose. It came away caked in yellowish mud and followed by two things bubbling to the surface. A red candle and a gray knife. So average and normal and way too perfectly red and gray for things that were at the bottom of a mud pit. I went back home immediately, not believing for a second that their appearance had nothing to do with my anger at my parents. The mold was proof enough that the forest responded to my emotions. I try not to go into the woods when I’m too worked up now.

Just like going to the zoo; everything’s safe if you stay on the right side of the enclosures.

But that’s not what you want to read about, is it? You want to read about the things that don’t want to be ignored or avoided. The ones that make me run for home or for the dirt path where the blue stop signs are less likely to appear. You want to know why I don’t want to be in the forest at night.

Once, and only once, I went into the forest in late afternoon. The sun was setting, crickets were starting to buzz, and the trees were starting to develop a pressure, something like being in an elevator that isn’t moving. The voices became louder and more frequent, as they seem to do when it gets dark, but I ignored them. I heard a hooting sound behind me, so loud and sudden that I couldn’t ignore it. I turned around and saw a monkey-shaped bundle of dead leaves dissolve off of a tree branch into an unformed clump of the forest floor. Its curled up leaf of a finger was a few inches from my head. Would it have touched me if I hadn’t turned or was it even moving in the first place? I’ll never know. Would it have hurt me if it was moving? I can guess.

I turned and headed for home, keeping the pile of leaves in my sight for as long as possible as I scooted backwards. The sky grew darker, the pressure grew heavier, and the buzzing (most decidedly not from crickets) got closer. Not louder; closer. Right behind me.

My entire body shook as my foot tried to step on open air. I jolted myself forward and turned around before I could fall into a small, shallow valley that I knew wasn’t there the day before. The buzzing, pitiful and ugly as a dying fly, paired with the struggling neon signs on a dilapidated minimart. It wasn’t in any language I could read and plenty of letters were missing anyway. But the purple sign I’d just noticed leaning on the tree next to me was in plain English: Dinner. Something shifted in the flickering fluorescent lights inside the crumbled ruins of the mart. I ran, not stopping until I was at my front porch.

It was almost a week before I went back into the forest. As you can imagine, I have an out-of-there-by-5:00 policy now. Yes, I said the blue stop signs are odd but harmless. I just never said they were the only things in the forest. After all, a stop sign isn’t meant to be dangerous; it’s meant to warn you of danger.

Does anyone else know about the blue stop signs? No idea. I’ve never brought anyone with me and I’ve never told anyone about them, not directly. Every now and again, I’ll drop my forest walks into conversation. I’ll mention that there are some weird, cool things in the forest and I’ll scan for narrowed eyes or quiet gulps or some other sign that I’m seeing and talking about things I shouldn’t. But I never see them; people just assume I’m talking about a normal forest.

You probably want to see some blue stop signs for yourself now. You might be lamenting that your neighborhood forest doesn’t have them because you would solve the mysteries and fight the monsters and keep a mechanical fox as a pet. Well, you might have your chance. Because those voices that I sometimes hear in the dark corners or the dark hours, they’re yours.

From a shadowy interior of a willow with branches that look like hung clothes I hear you asking your sister to borrow some pants. From the perfectly rectangular opening under a black bush I hear you grumbling about dropping your phone under your bed. From the dark corner lit only by an incongruous streetlamp I hear you assuring your friend that the alleyway is safe to walk through. So many ages and languages but they always get stronger and closer in the dark.

Maybe the forest near my home is where all the scary and unnatural things you hear about come from. Maybe every spooky laugh behind you or unexplained face in the mirror leaks out from the darkest parts of the forest. Maybe you can leak right back in if you want. You’ll have your own chance at adventures and exploration if you just keep looking.

As long as it’s dark.

So come on by if you can. Maybe I’ll see you in the forest and we can compare notes. It would be nice to talk to someone about all of this. There are plenty of blue stop signs for everyone and they’re all a lot of fun.

Don’t worry, they’re harmless.

#magic #short story #forest #anonymous narrator #weirdness

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thetruthaboutnolan · 4 months

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SHORT Q&A

Since I have enough asking in the last couple of hours here is another short one. And hello again to my stalkers. According to the algorithm 90% of you aren’t following my blog, change that today by hitting the follow button, leave a like, and subscribe. 😘

DID YOU CHANGE YOUR INFO?

Duh I said I was going to changing it in a couple of weeks a couple of weeks ago. I know I know I know. It’s impossible to change the ‘personal info’ you put in all your bios and person info sections on all these websites. It’s also impossible to use someone else’s email who gives you express permission to do so, it’s so unheard of especially when you say that’s what you are going to and people let you do. Just can’t change that damned TikTok name since they have that 30 days rule *snaps fingers*

I know that’s what goes on in Stalker #8’s mind everytime they submit ‘I can verify that’s their …..’ to Stalker #9. As if that pattern wasn’t predictable from Stalkers#7 and #6 that tried this back in 2020. I would have asked someone named Jacob just to complete the triad but figured that would have been a little on the nose.

HAVE YOU SEEN ANY OF THE POSTS ON YOU AND THE OTHERS?

I only read the posts of that person obsessed with that shadow hunter and that treasure trove of an accountability blog that my lawyer was basically drooling at. I guess I would be to. After all, straight up made up crap with zero supporting evidence is a lawyer’s wet dream.

Other than that naw. I only interacted with the stalkers from 2020 and bothered keeping track of them. That was when my knowledge of how they think got cemented. I don’t have to acknowledge them and read their blogs. I just have to block them and post ANYTHING and they will go off and give me everything I need. They’re get mad senpai isn’t paying attention and take any little thing you do as a sign I do pay attention to them. Although they advice legally to either block a stalker for piece of mind and if they don’t contact you directly anyway, or don’t block if they send you direct messages. These people are to yellow lantern to do the latter so the former it is. So just let them give you prize real estate in their mind and be their sole reason to live and only think of that situation when you need to be reminded that you are ‘that bitch’. Seriously whenever I let anything start to get me down I remember I have stalkers on tumblr and remember I’m that powerful bitch and instantly feel better about myself again.

Besides, I got people that come to me with a screenshot of posts or DMs or messages on discord servers so I really don’t have to bother when people bring them to me. Some wanna help, others want to be active move parts in taking down these people and some are just trolls that wanna see the world burn and all are helpful and welcomed.

ARE YOU ON ANY ACTIVE GROUPS?

Other than the two I made and have been running since 2021, I staff on two groups now and I’m in two others all on tumblr. Save one which is a discord group, figured I’d give them a shot. My work got switched to more remote work so I’ve dedicated half the extra time to chilling with my friends and starting to think I might move Sequence back to jcink. You know, my abilities roleplay that I stole everything from other groups that came into existence at least 2 years AFTER the original Sequence group on jcink was made? Yeah that one. But we’ll see. I’d love to come up a new skin and everything. But at the same time I’ve restructured the discord OOC into something that could be its own group server complete with a shop bit and everything. Saves me a lot of time not needing to code anything and I can easily pre ban certain crazies.

Other than those I am coding a couple of skins for people for their jcink roleplays that I might join. It’s been 10 years since I was last on a jcink group though so we’ll see.

One of the trolls did find one of the groups I was in though but indirectly. Someone was using a face claim I haven’t used in 8 years then checked the OOC list. Don’t know if they revealed the group though since shortly after they sent me a ‘find you’ message they sent another showing me Stalker #9’s deranged post. Just saved the screenshot in one of my portable hard drives and went back to posting with my character.

WHY DO THEY PANIC PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY SIDING WITH YOU AND PRETEND NO ONE IS LISTENING?

It’s whatever suits their narrative at the time. These people were convinced that just because they run an RPT blog and follow/befriend people who think and act the same way they do believes something they do then it has to be the opinion of ‘everyone’. It’s a common tactic of the narcissist to reinforce their version of reality to only surround themselves with people that will make an echo chamber for them. Even they know that saying it’s impossible for someone to ‘suddenly’ change their pronouns is transphobic. Even they know making fun of someone’s English when it’s a second language is racist. Even they know pretending to be someone’s dead friend is disgusting. Even they know revealing what they think is someone’s real info is doxxing. Even they know stealing photos from family members facebooks and claiming (rather a lie or not) to be stalking the house of said family member is psychotic. But they have been told it’s ok so long as it’s against this person who is ‘all these things’ they made up in their head. They even know what they think that person is according to them is made up especially since even they have no evidence to back these claims it’s just something someone sometime ago said and it helps justify the behavior.

Every now and again it breaks through to them that ‘oh shit, I may be going to far, this person is still allowed on groups and has friends in the community still. Maybe not everyone is believing me.’ Then they freak out for a while. Then it’s right back to ‘well everyone I talk to who thinks like I do and says what I say keep saying I’m right so everyone must agree’.

Funny thing is, they don’t realize that the currently 20 conversations on this accounts DMs about half of them come from people that had been supporting them then stopped and/or deleted their own posts about me who are telling me actually what they are saying and doing along with others. Hell, they amounts of ‘I’m so sorry it’s gotten to this stage’ type DMs I’m getting even from those that claim to hate my guts (for no reason and from people I’ve never heard of I might add) is shocking.

WHAT ABOUT THAT DRAMA WITH THAT PEDOPHILE STALKER?

No clue I don’t follow it. All I know is the pedo leaked the info on that guys’ real name like they did in the past when trying to get him to have sex with them. Then she sicced her friend on him since she couldn’t be caught engaging anymore since it was getting out she was stalking, bullying, and attacking him just to play the victim and how that has happened for years. And to think, it all started over the pedo wanting to ship their north star character with someone’s colossus on an x-men evolutions RP haha.

Now he did give me a small thing to put so I’ll put it here:

Basically, they decided to switch who is coming at me especially since it was realized that the JCC team supported pedophiles so long as they were being pedophiles on their server. RPGD’s admin hasn’t been fully exposed yet but even before I started to talk to them there where quite a few people gathering evidence against her for support pedophiles an other problematic people provided it benefits her.

As for that jaded person, her name says it all doesn’t it? Just plain jaded. But I honestly just ignore them now. I mean, there are only so many times someone can contradict themselves and change their story with their whole chest out and look like a complete dumb ass. Let’s just see how many times they did so.

1) was it not her who said ‘their friend’ never joined any site of mine?

2) was it not them that said later that they did join a few but I instantly started to bully her?

3) was it not them who tried to say she never interact with me or joined sites I was on but heard all about me?

4) was it not her who said we had been on the same sites but never interacted?

5) wasn’t it not her who said we had interacted only after I stated I didn’t know them?

6) was it not them who tried claiming their friend never blackmailed me or tried to groom me but I was doing that to the friend?

7) was it not them who later said oh it wasn’t their friend but someone named holly or something that I’m confusing for their friend?

8) was it not them that later said I admitted to them that it was someone named Hannah?

9) was it not them who said we never talked and it was another friend that told them I mentioned a Hannah.

10) was it not them who faked an entire convo with someone claiming to be from the RPGD staff around the time I was a kid and going through all this?” Claiming it was the early 2000s?

11) was it not them that also said it was later the early 2010s after it was revealed the person they ‘spoke to’ was only staff during that time.

12) is this not the same person that acknowledge their friend was playing northstar and they know their friend. Along with their being insane amounts of evidence this friend was obsessed with northstar.

13) are they not the same person who later claims their friend was well known to playing colossus and shipping only with their GF when they didn’t have a GF during the time I knew them and again, northstar is the character the friend is known for playing. She even still has Johnathan meters art for him up.

14) is she not the same person who heard someone she thinks is me is engaged and suddenly she’s engaged? While I’m also very vocal on being happy single?

15) is this not the same person who has fourteen contradictory statements I could think of off the top of my head claiming there are so many contradictions from me despite how my story has never once changed?

16) is this not the same person that can see that my thread on RPGD is still up that talks about an admin making racist comments to me regarding a face claim. Her friend’s post is up where she defends herself saying some member didn’t like they had to have a face claim change. Then in the comments and another thread states how she did t say anything racist, oh no she just didn’t know it was racist and will do better?

17) isn’t she now claiming the racism thing is a new claim despite those threads being almost 2 years old?

She’s pissy because she’s consistently falling into every trap set for her. Each one specifically set for her as it’s known she will change her story completely if something is happens. I mean girl I get it, I’m your ‘real’ fiancée and you either wanna be me or wear my skin but seriously, get some help. You can only spin a story so many times before getting tangled in your own webs. Oh and account sharing isn’t new. It was done specifically to put us where we are now and all the people that have been show had deranged you and our friend are. And protect my actual accounts. My real info was already doxxed years ago so seeing ya’ll go psycho with it now is only helping in many many ways and great for documentation.

0 notes

castielhoney · 1 year

Text

ok so here's a bunch of poetry/prose cut up and stitched back together for a class project, themed on stanford-era dean. (none of these are mine, but i don't have credits for all of them. let me know if it's yours and i'll credit you!) @lovelikesomethingholy @angelsdean @magdaclaire @davyperez

So. So I’m a kid and the furthest I’ve gone is to a store in the city an hour away, small hands tucked tight into Momma’s sundress. I’m a kid and the world is as big as a two-story house and a four-door car and that’s good because that’s all I need.

I’m 4 and my mother is telling me that angels are watching over me. It isn’t long after the words leave her lips, that she dies in a house fire.

And then maybe I’m not a kid anymore and the furthest I’ve had to run is now barefoot across my front lawn carrying my brother in my too-small arms. My house-not-a-home-anymore is blazing behind me. I am not a kid and the world is as small as my hands, as small as a baby only six months old.

I know the smell of motel mold more intimately than I know the smell of my father’s cologne. He’s never been much for affection. The pitfalls of his fingertips litter the hand, bruises painted black, purple, yellow, green.

My father is a man who bastardizes himself enough that what remains is neither a man nor a father, a dog starved for scraps.

So it goes.

I’m 10, and I’m making mac and cheese again, keeping it interesting for my baby brother. He keeps looking up at me like I’m something important.

First thing I remember most days, it seems like, is flames.

Tongues of fire, licking me up, swallowing big and greedy,

Like my momma always taught me not to be.

Guess it don’t matter anyhow.

Momma’s the same memory now, blond hair trailing into that blazing gold.

Sometimes I wonder if the fire started inside her, somehow,

If she was always burning up.

Even when she held me;

Even when she tucked me into that bed.

Sometimes I wonder if she passed that fire to me,

Pressed it quick into my arms, for me to hold,

Same way Dad did with Sammy.

Take it and burn;

Take him and run.

I did.

Gathered everything into my greedy arms and held tight.

Guess I’ve always been holding too tight,

Burning grasp waiting for it all to go up in smoke.

Seizing the flickering lights like if I

Could just keep it from slipping away this time–

But what else can you do when home feels like a family on fire?

So it goes.

The thing about me is that I will bite the hand that feeds. What has it ever done for me that I can’t do for myself? Fed food into my hungry mouth, run its fingers along my wolf’s teeth, and for what? Soft hands cut the flesh from my baby-soft skin years ago, fed it back to me slowly, reminded me of my youth the entire time they were making a weapon of me.

So it goes. I am a soldier, a machine, an instrument as sharp as the blade in my hand and I haven’t been a kid since four years old.

A gun in the hands of a child is still a gun.

A child made into a weapon is still a child.

The size of the world has grown six feet, but hey, my hands have grown too and I can carry it.

So it goes.

Daddy’s jacket, old,

Cracked at the joints in its gasoline-n-soot smell,

safety in the leaving,

safety in the stealing and keeping,

blanketing your lonely covetous soul in

the spirit of a man you can emulate,

choke up on

and hyperventilate.

I have nothing to say to you

Because if I did,

I could tell a thousand tales

Broken dreams

And broken promises

I could tell tales of too-big shoes,

Too-big leather jackets.

Of lonely nights,

A gapping space

That I had no business filling.

But I have nothing to say to you

because I don’t want to tell those tales.

I don’t want to believe

That those shoes were too big,

That those jackets were too large,

That those rationed goods,

Were your fault.

Because that too–big jacket is armor

Even if it digs into my side

Even if it’s a weight that makes me almost cry

That filling those too-big shoes

With skipped meals

And carefully-played tricks

That those cuts

Were from a different kind of monster.

I’d rather have nothing to say.

So it goes.

I worked 3 jobs through 4 years of high school to save for Sammy to go to school, and though it’s paying off, I am 22 and I’m saying goodbye to the only easy love I’ve ever known.

I’m 26 and I’ve seen what hate does to good people; I am only 26, and I don’t think I deserve to be saved.

I’m a man on the run, and isn’t that fitting? I’ve been running for my whole life, I’m gonna run for the rest of my life. Running from the fire, running towards someone else’s revenge story, running wheels, running ragged.

The size of the world is a U.S. interstate highway map and a four-door car and even if it’s not all I need, it’s all I get. So I take the motels that won’t burn down behind me, and the shelters that have no lawns to run across, and it doesn’t matter how much further I go.

I will never go far enough to find my way back home, but I will try, and I will try, and I will try.

And so it goes.

The road opens up and swallows me down into the dark pit of a hot night. No one around, I feel unreal, unraveling. My body sits like a sack behind the wheel, and I’m under no one’s eyes, no one’s hands. Nothing to pin me down and hold me in place.

I stop when I need a fill-me-up, when running on empty’s not enough, when I need to crawl into someone else to remember my body – blunt and bone and blood, bruising like a peach in the sun.

I shout, writhing. And anonymous fingers pry me open, mouth full, hair pull. And I am fed and filled and my Baby rumbles, gas paid in exchange.

And the road rolls out, a long tongue licking, eager to tease me down and forget my body. And I slide back into the nothing space where there is no body and blood, only ghost, and it ain’t holy.

There’s a certain sort of sound;

Comes along with the scrabbling of small, bare hands

On gas station restaurant formica.

Sounds kinda yellow and warm around the edges.

Something liquidy in my chest,

Puffed proud ‘cause I’ve just made Sammy smile

Like he hasn’t in ages,

And seven-year-olds have that kinda face.

Faces meant to be smiling as often as

Their older brother can manage to make them.

Grin cracking and peeling open like the orange on the tabletop.

He asks—

All wild in that childish delight,

That fits so keenly on his round apple-cheeks—

How I even managed to get the tickets,

I decide then, not to tell him what those tickets

Will cost me in about two-weeks time,

When dad’s still not back.

‘Cause seven-year-olds get real hungry sometimes

And real guilty too

And it’s better not to worry him about it when he’s smiling like this.

I guess the thing they don’t really tell you–

Between all the Fridays and blood and a-hundred-miles-to-empty–

Is that there’s nothin’ lonelier than the Road.

No one ever told me.

No one ever told me what happens when your daddy leaves,

And your baby brother leaves,

And you’re leavin’ too.

It’s easy to want things, most of the time. Easy to get hungry and stay hungry, belly rumbling like that chest-deep, lung-aching laughter, the kind you let out when you’re feeling the most lonely you’ve ever been.

Like a pillow propped up under your neck, and you know you’re gonna get a crick, and it’ll piss you off for a few days after.

But just like that pillow, you’ll fluff up all over again, it’s just comfy enough that you think to yourself,

Maybe it’s worth it this time.

Maybe when I’m hungry and I eat the food I know is gonna turn my stomach, but won’t make me full, maybe it won’t bother me as much this time.

Maybe when I get hungry and don’t let myself eat for a full two days

(gotta get to California, gotta buy the gas), maybe the hunger will mellow out until my body remembers it don’t need it.

I try to sleep without a pillow now.

I try to taste the feast in a two a.m. gas-station coffee.

My neck ain’t sore when I check left and flip the turn signal on. My stomach ain’t sore either; just like me, it knows when to shut the hell up about wanting things.

A man is a backbone

An island alone

Forged in fire and brimstone

His patience thin as ozone

Rage a garden, overgrown

All men are sons of Cain

Hardened flesh stitched together with echoes of pain

Carry themselves numb as novocaine

To be a man,

You must wear down the boy, become estranged with childlike joy

No time for toys and cowboys

A man is a warrior of Troy.

Kept thinking,

On our way out of that

Two-lane town,

Head pressed all tired against

The cold glass of the window where I,

reflected back half-formed,

Like maybe I was just as real

As that ghost my daddy was chasin’ after.

Kept thinking

About that oak standing,

Uncertain guardian,

In the courtyard of some

No-name school,

That won’t remember me come next semester,

Though I fit right in, with no name.

There had been a storm,

Like there often is, in these sorta towns;

Ripped up chunks of the very asphalt

We traveled in on, and tossed them bodily

All over the place.

But that tree,

That big, aching thing

That watched me during recesses

And stood, solemn, when I beat my knuckles bloody

Against a boy older ‘n me

For daring to call my dead momma ugly.

That tree, that did not judge me,

For all my bones and blood and history,

Was no paved road, and did not break

Under the onslaught of the storm.

And I,

Forehead cool with the damp condensation

Of that ghost-mirror window,

Father beside me and

Brother behind me and

Baby all around and everywhere about me,

Kept thinking, as we drove outta those town’s far limits.

Spinning wheels don’t grow roots

And neither does the spinning barrel of a loaded pistol,

And neither does a house burned down

And neither does

A nameless boy who sits shotgun,

Father beside him chasing a ghost.

I kept thinking,

Leaving that town and

Leaving that courtyard oak.

I’ve never seen roots like that before.

0 notes

legendaryhappiness · 2 years

Text

15 minutes sat on the floor, my bum going numb

1. Insect repellent that I invented called 'Mosquito Massacre'. It's not a roll-on or anything, but a battery you need to wire up to your skin. It electrocutes mosquitoes as they take a bite. I guess it's less of a repellent and more about revenge than anything else.

2. Floor tiles that have a bit of give in them, so that when I sit on them, they don't make my butt go numb.

3. A cream you can put onto your numb parts to bring the feeling back. So many creams are about removing sensitivity – making things numb – how about something that makes it hypersensitive

4. A beer that you drink that doesn't make all the demons go away, but that brings them into your mind at 10x intensity.

5. Some batteries don't seem to last very long. Others last a very long time indeed.

6. At home a few weeks ago I picked up the TV remote and it wasn't working. I opened the back cover to replace the batteries and they'd gone all leaky. But it wasn't a fluid. It was a powder. It was like pollen. For a few moments I was quite confused.

7. Carpets that don't harbour dust mights. Instead they're home to snakes.

8. A ringtone that's pleasant.

9. A phonecall that's not like getting a parking ticket.

10. A parking certificate that rewards your fantastic parking.

11. A glass made out of plastic but you can't tell that it's plastic. It feels exactly like glass. Including when you smash it and try to pick up the pieces.

12. My child is so incredibly hungry all the time. She will eat all the food. All the vegetables. Then the cutlery and the chopsticks. Then the plate and the bowl and the cup. After that she starts on the table, the chairs. Then the floor and walls and down the street. I haven't seen her for quite a long time, but then I haven't seen anything. There's nothing left.

13. In the garden there's a plant growing that looks a bit like a tomato plant. But it's not. It doesn't smell like one either. It's definitely not a tomato plant.

14. Blinds.

15. Blinds that cover your window but that don't block out the light.

16. Blinds that block the light, but still allow outsiders to know what's going on inside the room by translating all the action into a commentary and broadcasting it to the outside world.

17. In the village there's a shop. It's empty apart from one huge LCD TV on one wall, the sort you get in football pubs, and a tiny camera in one corner. When you go into the shop you can see yourself on the TV, and in the corner two small talking heads appear. They commentate your actions back to you, but as if you're not there. There's nothing to buy in this shop, but you still get charged on your way out.

18. Colours all mixed together.

19. Colours don't stick to surfaces, they're not sticky anymore. They just flake off and onto the floor like dust, and all swirl together. Everything is invisible apart from a swirl of brown dust. If you pick up some of the dust and look carefully, gently, you see a rainbow.

20. Furniture that's designed by children with an overestimation of adult forms. Chairs are low, but seats are enormous. My dads pants always used to look gigantic to me.

21. Yellow fruits on a tree. You don't know what they are, but they taste good. You pick one and enter it into the local village show. But you don't know what to write onto the label, or which category to enter it into. You call it BOB fruit. No-one else has ever seen one of these before either. It takes second place in the stonefruit category. Later on in the day you go back to find the tree it was growing on, but it's not there anymore. Instead there's a pub. So you go in and have a pint.

22. Your head is a swirling mess made worse by sunken eyes and a whooshing feeling when you move your head. The sound of lightsabres accompanies the whooshing. It's kind-of fun.

23. Sweating, through the night. You wake up in a puddle and your bed has dissolved. You're back on the floor tiles.

24. Fingertips that don’t leave fingerprints.

25. Gloves that only fit your hands.

26. Hands that only fit your gloves, but they're not your hands, you have to try and find them.

27. You find the hands that fit your gloves. They belong to a 15th century Belgian monarch. You found out their hands fit your gloves from analysing a painting in the National Gallery, carefully measuring the width and length of the fingers, then the head and body size to get an accurate idea of the size of their hands.

28. You get rid of your gloves at a charity shop because they're not really of any use for you. The next week you walk past a guy wearing them in the village.

0 notes

bump1nthen1ght · 3 years

Text

Late Night Favor (Shadow Monster x Reader)

Genre: Fluff, Urban Fantasy

Warnings: Explicit content up ahead (18+ ONLY), Oral, Fingering

Word Count: 4000 Words

Summary: A couple of small good deeds leaves you with a late night visitor, looking to repay a debt.

Request: "You unknowingly rescue a shadow monster and bring it home with you, after a couple days of lurking in the shadows of your home and recuperating it shows you just how thankful it is." I had this idea forever ago but was never able to execute it. My opening idea was that a few kids are shining flashlights at something, tormenting it, and you swoop in to save it and chase the kids away. You thought they were hurting a cat or something, but find nothing and head home.

What do you think? Would you like to take it on? I'd be honored if you would 😊

A/N: *Throws this into the street to appease for the fact I haven’t updated Out of the Woods in THREE MONTHS IM SORRY*

It was the perfect weather for a lazy day inside. The pitter patter of the rain on your window had almost lulled you back to sleep during breakfast, and the thunder had provided great ambiance for reading. You hadn’t bothered changing out of your pajamas and we’re enjoying a soap opera binge on the coach when the peace was disturbed.

At first it was just the sound of clattering trash cans, not uncommon from the alley outside your window. But then it was followed by the raucous laughter of teenagers, rocks being thrown against the concrete, and a sharp hissing.

You hoist yourself up and off the couch, meandering toward the balcony, expecting to see a bunch of kids fucking around; Maybe using the cover of the fire escape to hide from the rain and smoke some weed.

Ah, memories.

But instead, you see a huddled group of boys pointing a flashlight into the pile of garbage right by the dumpster. One of them picks up a pebble and throws it into the light beam, causing another hiss and a jerk of movement. The boys laugh even louder, the one on the right nudging the one with the flashlight.

“Dude, do it again!”

Flashlight agrees, quickly moving the light into another corner as the one on the left throws a rock in the opposite direction. A shape of pitch black hisses again, deterred by the rock and scared by the brightness. Your brow furrows.

“Hey!”

The boys jump, looking in all directions.

“What are you three doing down there?” They finally look up at you, messy-haired and bleary-eyed. They shrug and ignore you, one even throwing another rock, bigger than before. There’s a sad yelp as it collides with the blackness.

You grit your teeth, grabbing your jacket off a nearby shelf and yell again.

“Fuck off! Leave the poor thing alone!”

They all laugh insufferably, the way most stuck up teenagers do.

“Or what?”

You shrug on your raincoat, picking up the baseball bat you keep strategically placed by your couch.

“Or I’ll come down and make you, jackass!”

You kick open your fire escape, slippers already damp, and start marching down the staircases. The boys get the message and run away, still jeering and laughing. Seems you weren’t as intimidating as you’d like.

You shuffle down the fire escape, slowing down as you approach the poor creature. You lower your back and peak under the dumpster.

“It's okay, little guy, I won’t hurt ya.” You set down your bat and crouch, kissing your lips as you hold out your free hand. All you see is a hint of glowing eyes, nervously peering out, before the dark shape disappears completely, hidden by the shadow of the dumpster. You’re tempted to sit down and wait for it, hoping to check if the poor stray was injured, but the wet concrete looks unappealing. The bottom of your sweats are already drenched.

You stand up, sigh, and go back up the fire escape. You unlatch the dusty pet door on your sliding glass balcony and make sure to leave a hot thing of milk and some water just outside. You ponder going out to get cat food, but the well-timed weather report tells you to stay off the streets. Slumping back down on the couch, you keep on eye on your fire escape, hoping that whatever it was, it’s okay.

--------------

The next day is sunny, the rain clearing away any air pollution and leaving blue skies to shine down through your window, waking you up extra early. As you sit down with a cup of coffee, switching on the news before starting work, you notice the empty bowls on your balcony.

You set down the mug, walking over to the door and checking the bowls. Seems that little stray had needed the refreshment, as both were licked clean.

You refill them, making sure to add cat food to your grocery list.

--------------

After a long day of work, you’re feeling particularly domestic and decide to bake some cookies. Your brain is sore after staring at a screen for eight hours straight, a simple task like this is the perfect thing to keep it from melting completely.

You open up your window, letting the cool night air into your kitchen as you check on your baking cookies. Wiping flour off your pants, you turn on the radio and throw a glance to your living room.

You had set up a tiny blanket pallet right next to your pet door, the weatherman’s warning of another thunderstorm tonight having you worried for your stray. Hopefully a full belly of milk will convince them that your house is safe enough to find shelter in.

But the afternoon is beautiful, not too cold and not too hot, only the slight tang of metal in the air hinting to rain. With a ding from the oven, you take out the cookies and set them on a cooling tray on your window. The smell of cinnamon and sugar wafts over you as you take a sip of your tea, staring out into the city streets. Small puddles still speckle the pavement, catching the headlights of nearby cars and flashy billboards.

A quick sound, something hitting your balcony door, that jerks you out of your reverie. You set down your mug and slowly peek out from your kitchen, wondering if you should’ve grabbed a kitchen knife. But it’s just your pet door, flapping back and forth in front of two, now empty, bowls. Aww, seems your stray took a step inside. Too bad you missed it.

The gurgle of your stomach convinces you to take a crack at the cookies. If they were too hot, you could just wash them down with a nice glass of milk anyway. Maybe even put on a sitcom while you snack.

You lightly tap the top cookie; Warm, but not unbearable. Steam rises as you break it open, blowing in the middle and taking a tiny bite.

Fuck, good job _____.

They’re perfectly done, just soft enough to melt in your mouth. You grab two more, holding them in between your fingers as you hold the other half in your mouth. Maybe you could bring the batch into work tomorrow, give your coworkers a nice surprise. That is if you didn't have 10 tonight. But 20 should be just enough-

Huh, that’s weird. There's only 19, including the one still dangling out of your mouth.

You could’ve sworn you baked 20.

Well whatever. Your coworkers can handle not coming back for seconds tomorrow.

--------------

“Ow! Fuck!”

You bite your lip, trying not to yell out more curse words as you rub your stubbed toe. You limp to your kitchen, fumbling for the light switch to avoid another incident. All you had wanted was a midnight sweet snack, was that so difficult? You’d thought you could navigate your apartment pretty easily in the dark, but the pain in your foot says otherwise.

The light flickers as you finally find the switch, reminding you that you’re going to need to change the bulb sometime soon. But that's a problem for another day; Right now, it’s cookie time.

You don’t bother pouring yourself a glass or getting a plate, devouring the treat in three bites and throwing back a quick swig of milk. It’s almost midnight, not like anyone’s watching-

Oh, wait.

You slowly close the fridge door, trying to make as little noise as possible so as not to wake the little stray curled up, asleep. The little ball of black was snuggled into the pallet, tossing and turning. A flash of lightning cracks outside your apartment, washing your living room with light. The ball jerks in shock, the thunder afterwards only frightening it more, forcing it to curl up even tighter.

You take small and light steps towards the tiny bed, not wanting to approach the scared beast too quickly. The room is lit up again by another lightning strike and the little stray forces it’s body backwards and away from the window. You crouch down real low, the small bits of light helping your eyes adjust to the layout.

“How are you doing, little guy?” You whisper, mostly to yourself, tapping your fingers against your carpet. Part of you wants to pet it, but think it might be better not to. No need to startle it. “Is the lightning scary? You can come to my room if you want, I’ll protect ya.”

Midst the black, you see two little eyes, little blips of light that open with another flash of lightning. But they aren’t yellow, nor are they slitted, nor are they anything remotely animal.

They're like the headlights of a car, blinding white with no definition at all. Not even pupils. You're startled, eye’s widening as the creature lifts it’s head. A long smile runs across their face, full of razor sharp teeth.

“Oh my, that sounds delightful.” They purr, and you find yourself losing your footing and falling back on your ass. Your fingers dig into the carpet as their body slowly begins to unfurl out of a ball and stretch into a massive form, as if their whole size had been hidden away somewhere else; Like it had been literally in the shadows.

You scramble backwards, breath picking up as the creature stretches it’s long limbs, colorless eyes still locked onto you as it stands up and up. It rolls back its shoulders as it sits on its haunches, its form still towering over you even when crouched. You notice the shades of huge antlers sticking out from the side of their head, only adding to their intimidating height.

The creature still has that terrifying smile, all canines and no molars, it’s unblinking eyes still staring deep into your soul.

You’ve heard people do weird things in times of high stress, of strong emotions, good and bad. Like the wires in your brains get crossed when trying to find the right response.

“Uh, do you want a cookie?”

You think you get that now.

The creature chuckles, a soft timbre that echoes unnaturally.

“No, dearie, I have already indulged in your confections. You see,” They creature leans forward, falling to its knees to crawl towards you. If it weren’t for the overwhelming fear constricting your heart, you’d almost think it was seductive, “You’ve done so much for me these past days, I think it’d be only fair if I helped you indulge in a far-” The creature’s face looms over yours, their arms caging your sides as they lick their lips, “-sweeter treat, yes?”

Your eyes search their face, trying to find signs of trickery or malice, maybe even some demonic sense of humor.

As if I’d even know what that looks like.

“Are you-” You catch a breath, now noticing the fine musculature of their shoulders, and the definition of their arms, “Are you propositioning me, like, for sex?”

The creature laughs again, their eyes crinkling up as they throw their head back. But when they look back down at you, you can almost feel the lust radiating off their gaze, details be damned.

“Yes, lovely, I am.”

You take your eyes off their face, a little too overwhelmed to stare directly into their blistering expression. Not to mention the blinding light which has begun to put red spots into your vision.

Instead, your eyes fall upon their thick thighs, the small tail waving behind them, and how unnervingly sexy you find the way their claws are digging up your rug.

You slowly move your head, catching the creature’s eyes.

“I-uh-I guess? Yeah, yeah I guess that sounds good. Um, what was your name?”

The creature smirks, a single claw tipped finger tilting up your chin, as they whisper,

“Nocter.”

--------------

Well, this is definitely the weirdest way I’ve gotten someone into bed.

Nocter’s antlers brush against your stucco-ceiling as it pushes you down on the bed, their shining white eyes staring deep into yours. Their lack of pupils is almost unsettling, but when they run their claws down your chest and pinch your nipples, you find it hard to care. You bite your lip, fighting back an embarrassing whimper as they trace one finger around the bud, pebbling the skin.

“Aww, has it been a while, sweetling?” You roll your eyes, but let out another squeak as they flick their thumb across your other nipple, the palm of their hand pressing against your ribcage.

“M-maybe.” You mutter, digging your finger into your bed sheets as their hands dance across your skin. One pulls up the bottom of your pajama shirt as it nudges one of their legs in between your thighs, pushing their knee up against your crotch.

“Don’t worry,” They push the fabric up to your neck, laying a kiss on the center of your stomach, then your chest, and then your jugular. When they plant one on your jaw, they lean in real close, “I’ll make sure to treat you right.”

Nocter’s long tongue splays against your jaw, licking a stripe up your cheek as one of their hands moves from your chest to the waistband of your shorts. They slip a couple fingers underneath, lightly petting the area right above your crotch. They’re such a tease, and you love it.

Nocter pecks the side of your face, over and over, while their hand moves further and further down your body at an agonizing pace. Their hot breath sends goosebumps down your neck, washing over your face as they exhale with every kiss. You catch them off guard when you turn your head toward them, catching their lips-mid peck and eagerly sticking your tongue outward. They purr with delight, their thin almost-lips quickly devouring you.

A long string of saliva connects the two of you as you detach, taking the time to shimmy out of your shirt. You pull them closer, your hands digging into their shoulder muscles and fingers just brushing over the long ridges on their back. They chuckle once again, pulling their fingers out your shorts and merely digging their palm into the fabric of your crotch.

“Eager, huh?”

“Shut up,” You mumble in between kisses, “This is for me, isn’t it?”

“Ohoho,” kiss, “Someone’s showing their feisty side a little early.” kiss, “What happened to my benevolent, saintly saviour?” kiss.

You pull away from their lips, quickly latching onto the crux of their neck and taking a nip. “S’not fair.” You say, taking a deep whiff of their skin as you suck and bite. They smell like brimstone and a bonfire, not quite what you 're expecting, but not unpleasant. “You can’t tease me like that and not-” Your cut off as the pad of one Nocters fingers presses up against your entrance, the fabric only amplifying the sensation as they begin to tease it.

“Deliver?” Nocter finishes, sinfully smug. You throw them a glare. “I’m a good guest, scout’s honor.”

You roll your eyes right before they lock you into another kiss, rubbing the pads of their fingers up and down your crotch. They use their hand to push you backwards, sinking deeper into the mattress as they situate their knees under your thighs. One they pull back from the kiss, your face and lips thoroughly debauched, your legs are splayed up on their pelvis and they easily slip off your bottoms. Nocter takes a whiff of your underwear, the crotch now slightly damp, giving you a wink before they throw it over their shoulder.

You jerk your hips slightly upward, and Nocter tuts.

“Patience, sweetling.” They roll a hand down your abdomen, fingers splaying onto your stomach, nails just teasing the skin. With a kiss to your inside calf, Nocters hand ghosts across your entrance. You can’t help biting your lip, the heat and their touch sending your mind into a frenzy.

They continue a path of kisses down your leg, now pressing their finger right up against your hole. They only pause to suck on their index and middle fingers, coating them with a heavy and blue-tinted saliva. Once they’ve reached the middle of your thigh, nipping at the apex, they sink into you.

Nocter’s fingers are long, articulated and move with sure movements. They start off slow, scissoring you open, simpering as you dig your nails into your bed sheets. The pads of their fingers push against your walls, just grazing sensitive spots as they make a slow ‘come hither’ motion. Your hips jerk forward, humping into their palm. They smirk against your skin, nipping another love bite as they retract their fingers until only the tip remains. You catch your breath, holding it until they sink back into you, shoving their fingers forward with far more force.

You whimper as their fingers pull back, only to follow with quicker thrusts. Nocter’s aim is pin-point in finding the most pleasurable spots inside you, the feeling only amplified by the pinpricks of their teeth into the fat of your thigh. The tip of their tongue licks hot trails of spit tantalizingly close to your hole, which clenches around their bony fingers. The slick sound of your juices, the skin of their palm slapping against yours, is downright pornographic.

Your legs try to clamp around their shoulders, the overwhelming stimuli triggering an instant reaction, but Nocter pins your right leg down to your bed easily, never losing focus on fingering you. The tips of their claws trace the inside of your leg, the hard edge of their wrist digging into fat. Your fingers reach to grip around something, anything to keep you grounded as the knot in your stomach grows tighter and tighter. They find their way around Nocter’s left wrist; You’re almost afraid you’ll leave bruises, before remembering how sturdy every part of their body seems to be.

You let out a whimper as the crests of an orgasm seem to overwhelm you, nearly gasping as Nocter quickly removes their fingers. In any other state of mind you might have made a comment, look down and wonder why they’ve stopped. But the heat in your belly compels you to grip their wrist tight and to throw your hips upwards. With a desperate breath, you plead,

“P-please! Please, don’t stop.”

Nocter doesn’t chuckle, doesn’t make a sly remark about your neediness or your lewd movements. They lean forward, giving another kiss right below your navel, and pet your wrist.

“Of course, dearie.”

With a wink, they lean down a lick a long stripe up your hole, giving one last kiss to your leg before plunging their tongue inside.

You didn’t think it was possible for them to reach even deeper inside you with their tongue than their fingers, but the sparks which fly in your core say otherwise. The ridges of Nocters tongue brush against your walls as they flick the appendage back and forth, the tip pressing forward with controlled motions. It doesn’t thrash back and forward haphazardly, but reaches for those sensitive spots and plays with them.

“Oh, f-fuck!” You yelp, feeling an icy-cold liquid run down your ass. From the sound of smacking lips and muffled moans, it must be Nocter’s saliva. They let out a groan, pushing their jaw forward as their eyes clenched shut. The hand on your leg pinches skin as it tightens up, the other pressing your hips down, but the pressure they apply is phantom at best. Nocter seems to revel in your pleading humps for more, meeting each movement with a thrust of their jaw, the base of their tongue stretching you open.

The two of you keep that rhythm for what feels like an eternity, but is probably only a couple of minutes. Sweat drips down your chest and off of your belly, your legs muscles on fire as you continue to push upward and into Nocter’s face. You start feeling that impending wave begin to crest again, with your limbs shaking and your throat hoarse.

“Nocter, I’m gonna cum. I’m gonna-I’m so close!”

This time, Nocter doesn’t let up on their pace, reaching one hand down to deliver a hard slap on your ass and forcing a yelp out of you. Your speech devolves into slurred curses and your hands move to touch them, to find some grasp in reality. Nocter continues to suck and tongue-fuck your hole as your thighs clench around their head. Your humps are tiny and weak, your lower half barely holding itself up.

The knot gets tighter, a firecracker fuse about to blow in your abdomen. In the heat of the moment, your hands find their way to Nocter’s scalp and grab onto the base of their antlers. Their moan rumbles through you, right before you yank their head forward, their tongue hitting the deepest part of you as you shutter and-

“I’m cumming!”

Another moan vibrates against your hole as your body shudders and jolts, your hips still pressed firmly against Nocter’s face. But in the next moment, a heavy weight falls over your body, slumping you down onto the bed. Your chest heaves, eye’s fuzzy as Nocter’s tongue ‘pop’s out of you.

Your gaze wanders over your stucco ceiling, droplets of sweat rolling down your neck as you try and catch your breath. You can feel Nocter’s large hands rolling a massage into your thighs, their own heavy breathing brushing over your crotch.

A fuzzy shape of pure black comes into your vision as Nocter hovers over you, their body hovering just an inch above yours. They give you a small peck on the cheek.

“Feel good?” They whisper.

All you can do is nod, your shaky hands wandering over their back. There’s no sign of sweat on their skin, but you can feel the heat running off of it as they nuzzle into your neck.

As your fingers dance over the ride of their back, you can hear the rumble of a low purr coming from their chest, but they stay hovering over your body. You press your hands into their back, applying weak pressure to encourage them to relax.

“It seems I’ve repaid my debt.” Nocter murmurs into your ear, pushing themselves up onto their hands, pulling even farther from you as their eye’s look around your room. You keep your hands wrapped around their waist, stopping them from fully getting up. They look back to you, white eyes slightly widening.

“Would you-” You take another deep breath, “Want to stay? For the night?”

Nocter stares at you, the black void of their face almost unreadable. But when they run a claw down the side of your face, it burns with affection and longing.

“Would you want that?”

Your room is nearly pitch black, only the lights of the street peeking in between your curtains. Nocter’s body seems to absorb all light near it, their hot body like a heating pad. But their eyes are so bright, so full, so mesmerizing; Like a full moon on the dark city sky.

“Yes, I would.”

Nocter’s nods, their expression barely changing, but you think you can see a hint of a smile amidst all the black. They let their body relax, pressing their chest against yours as they sink into the sheets and nuzzle back into your neck.

You can smell the sweat coating your body and feel the way you stick to the sheets. Frankly, the both of you kind of smell.

But it doesn’t stop you from snuggling into Nocter’s body, eye’s heavy as you peacefully fall into sleep.

#my writing #gender neutral reader #shadow monster #monster/human #monster x reader

1K notes · View notes

kashimos-hajime · 3 years

Text

the colour yellow | jjk

summary: “You once said love manifests the most twisted curses. I never thought of it that way before, but I’m starting to think you’re right.”

WARNINGS: ANGST!! hanahaki disease but not an au, HOSPITALS, DEATH, DESCRIPTIONS OF DISEASE, UNHEALTHY WEIGHT LOSS, pining, unrequited love, complicated feelings, its just sad. there are some light-hearted moments, and happier/softer aspects in the ending but it is generally sad in the ‘what could have been’ department pairing: gojo satoru x fem!reader, past geto suguru x fem!reader, mentions of satosugu word count: 29.9k lmao

a/n: i just needed to get the hanahaki out of my system. it did not work. i took liberties w the timeline because idc about actual jjk canon in this fic thanks.

playlist for this fic

crossposted on ao3 x

Your Innate Technique always gave you a green thumb. Meaning, similarly enough to Yaga, you could plant cursed energy into objects.

Where it deviated, Satoru knows, is the type of object. Plants—trees, leaves, flowers.

Ironic, he thinks numbly as he walks through the hospital. Shoko had told him that at this point it was palliative care until you died—nothing else would work. Cursed energy only fed your sickness, and even her technique could not heal the damage fast enough. Stupid. Idiotic. Cruel.

Cruel. That was the word.

He hadn’t seen it himself but from how his old friend had described it, it could only be cruel.

His footsteps tap along the linoleum floors, urgent, but not too fast. A part of him dreads what he will see—his mind swirls with the possibilities, and of guilt.

Why didn’t he just come sooner? Why did he think it was okay to wait, to dismiss Itadori when he said you’d been checked in for your coughing fits?

“She’s strong. She’ll be fine,” he had said. Itadori’s small frown. “A little feather in her throat isn’t going to knock her down.”

Why? Why? Why? Why did he say that?

Because it had to be serious to put you in the hospital. For fuck’s sake, you were still that teenage girl who stood outside his dorm window in the middle of a thunderstorm to bring Fushiguro a birthday present before you left for a curse expedition a thousand years ago, and the woman who welcomed him into your home unprompted on December 24th, your cheeks dry, lips pressed in a brave smile.

You had held him tight enough he could not see the blood, scrubbed him in a bathtub, ran your fingers through his hair until the sweat and grime was gone. You took care of him because he knows the belief that no one should be left behind to suffer alone has been engrained in you since the day he’s met you.

He should’ve known. A girl abandoned for being cursed had turned into woman with a saviour complex who’d barely even think about telling him you were dying.

Dying, of all things, from a disease no one knows how to cure. And you’re a sorcerer.

He could’ve laughed. The irony is enough to make him smile.

Your room’s in a tiny corner of the hospital, down the hall from a nurse’s station, and as he walks through, he can see the grey sunlight streaming through the window, glaring against his glasses. He lifts them to rub the heel of his hand into his eye.

He doesn’t want you to worry when you see him, and mostly, he needs to stall. His heart is in knots in his chest, and he spots a chair beside the door with your name in the plastic slate, so he sits down. His knees feel gummy and he leans forward, the visitor’s pass clipped to the front of his shirt hanging.

Satoru tugs the glasses off his face, fits his palm over his brow and squeezes his eyes shut. It’s chilling in this dead end, and he swallows tightly. Everything tastes so dry as he looks up and shoves his hand underneath the sanitizer dispenser, rubbing it all over his hands just so he has something to do.

After a few minutes, he gets up and sets a hand on the knob.

It can’t be as bad as he’s imagining. At most, you’re a bit sick, but you’ll still be spritely, warm in the lips and with arms outstretched and, “Satoru, finally!”

He opens the door.

You’re sitting hunched over in bed. Silhouette outlined by the white-grey sunlight from outside your hospital room, you’re trembling as you hold onto a receptacle. An IV is hooked to your arm, a hospital gown is barely hiding anything, and it feels immoral to even look so Satoru doesn’t. Instead, he pauses by the doorframe and closes his eyes for a moment as your gaze flashes to him.

He feels it, to be honest. The heat of your stare until it is wrenched away by a violent cough you instinctually muffle by your palm, blood splattering over your hand, soft, velveteen purple petals falling from your lips and into the receptacle in your lap.

You’re supposed to have a green thumb.

Vines bend to your will if you command it, you can summon forth thorns to impale your opponents, send thick creeping ivy to barricade a doorway. It doesn’t matter if there is no greenery in your immediate area. At the sweep of your hand, the ground could rumble with the sound of trees twisting their gnarled roots into feet to march at your command.

Just as long as they’re within range and you’ve touched them in the past few hours, they’re yours.

So, why can’t you stop this?

Plants are supposed to listen to you, right? As he stares at your shaking body on the bed, curved over the plastic tub, thick globs of bloodied spit drip from your lips and soaked purple blossom petals entwine with your life essence. His heart plummets to his chest. You retch, spit, choke, and every sound stabs him in the chest as he takes a weak step forward, hand stretched out limply.

Your name flutters, barely leaves his lips before you’re looking at him again, a bit of a mortifying image but nonetheless.

Even so, you smile, despite the blood painting your face, the exhaustion morphing your body. You look like you haven’t slept in weeks, and your hands shake around the receptacle. You look battered, bruised along the arms where the needles keeping you filled with antibiotics, medicine you need, had punctured you.

And still, you’re beaming at him. He thinks he’s going to be sick.

“Hi, Satoru.”

His hand falls. Eyes wide, he cannot take another step. You wipe at your lips, tossing the tissue into the trash before pushing the plastic receptacle onto the table and swinging your legs off the bed.

“Don’t—“ he croaks but you don’t listen, sliding your feet into slippers and grabbing your IV stand to take a step towards him. Your knees nearly give in but you stick out a hand before he can rush to catch you. Then, you’re pushing yourself up and walking over to him. It’s more of a shuffle, but Gojo finds he can’t care as you land on his chest, hands pressing into his back.

You’re a bit cold in his arms, and he wraps himself around you, trying to rub the heat back into your skin as you shudder, but your heart is still racing as it always does around him, and you…

You’re the type of person who can shift how the air feels and looks to his Six Eyes with your smile or your tears or your frown, and in that moment, the air bleeds yellow with your joy. It’s so bright in his soul that it makes his heart skip as you shift on your feet against him, hands sliding down so your arms can circle his waist and haul him closer.

“Gojo Satoru turning off his infinity for little ole me,” you murmur, voice raspy, as he closes his eyes, cradling your head. Without another word, he sinks into you. “Talk about the world ending.”

Why didn’t you just call him? Why did you let him stay away for so long? He doesn’t want to ask why it’s happening, or how. He already knows you’ll just lie. But he wants to know if you think so lowly of him that you thought you didn’t matter to him.

After Suguru…

How could you think that? He’s screaming inside his mind as he touches your back, feels the faint protruding ridges along your skin when he pushes down. It makes your spine a bit more pronounced along the knobs, your shoulder blades a bit bumpy, but otherwise, it’s almost normal. One wouldn’t even be able to tell without touching you and actively searching for it. How could you think I don’t care?

This isn’t the work of a cursed spirit, that much he knows. It seems much more seductive, sneaking yet unhurried in its nature. This is agony in effigy. There’s something rotten inside you, but he can’t tell what it is. The energy is everywhere.

You pull back to look up at him with a soft smile, then tap his nose and tell him to join you before turning around and climbing back into bed with energy that betrays your earlier fits. You grab your robe that you’ve left on your bed before getting up again and walking around, shrugging the fabric back onto your shoulders.

He sits down in a visitor’s chair that is still cold.

“It comes and goes,” you explain first with your new, croaky voice, stretching your arms above your head and rubbing your neck. It doesn’t look painful, but you clear your throat a lot to see if it helps. So far, nothing. “So, it’s just like a really bad coughing fit, to be honest.”

“How long has it been going on?” Your hip cracks and you let out a relieved sigh. Satoru arches an eyebrow as you animatedly stretch your face. “What are you doing, silly?”

“It got worse a few weeks ago, enough that Nanami insisted I check myself in around two weeks ago?” you say, after counting on your fingers. Satoru’s heart plummets. “But it’s levelled out since I’ve been moved here and off-campus. And I’m stretching. When I get back out there, I have to remember how to emote.” You flash him a bedazzling grin and a bit of the weight lifts off his shoulders as you swallow down another cough. This time, it’s successful and you only let out a short, raspy breath before shaking it out.

You aren’t even doing that bad.

The blood, the flowers, that must’ve been just a bad bout, but otherwise, you seem quite normal.

That’s what he tells himself, and he believes it.

With relief, he stretches out his legs, leaning his head back on his hands. Your room’s pretty nice—much nicer than an average hospital room. Plants on the windowsills, some get-well-soon cards and a desk in the corner filled books that you look like you haven’t even begun to read, some paintings hanging off the walls.

You wave a hand to grab his attention again.

“Don’t look,” you chastise, tying the robe around your waist. “Some of these are works in progress.”

“So Itadori and Shoko were just exaggerating,” he assumes. You look up at him, quirking an eyebrow. “If you’re attempting to paint, I know all that’s happened is that you’ve lost your mind.”

“Shut up.”

“Well, they made it out as if you were dying. If it’s just a lung issue, they could probably just fix it and we can get back to exorcising curses and making fun of Fushiguro’s teen angst,” he says, crossing his legs at the ankles. You step over them to go to the window and examine your plants, and he eyes you in his peripheral, watching you inspect one of the leaves before looking next at some blooming flowers. You don’t answer, and the grey light makes you look melancholy until you shrug.

“The doctors say I need to rest, save my strength and all that,” you finally say vaguely. “And don’t make fun of Fushiguro.”

“I’d never do that.”

You tilt your head and arch an eyebrow skeptically before flicking his forehead with a sharp donk. “I’m not above slapping the shit out of you.” He opens his mouth to argue and you hold up a finger, shutting him up. “And you can’t hit back as revenge. Ill hospital patient rights.”

“You can’t take the moral stand. Vengeance has no gender bias,” he exclaims, sitting up but you merely smirk, leaning over and shoving your face into his space before turning your head to present your cheek. His eyes widen as you poke your own face tauntingly.

“Do it, then.”

Gawking for a moment, Satoru stares but you only wink and he pushes you away lightly. You stumble a bit and he jumps to his feet to catch you but you manage to right yourself up, shooting him a foul glare. He glares back in response.

“Well, obviously, I wasn’t going to actually slap you,” he says, indignant.

“So you pushed me instead? Gojo, in your words, you are the strongest. You never know how to control the strength you push out.”

“Yes, I do!”

“One time, you patted Megumi on the back and you sent him into the pavement.”

“He was nine.”

“It still happened!” you cry, although an impish smile is already curling at your lips and it isn’t long before it spreads to Satoru, warm bright yellow and enough that it absolves any of the remaining pain in his body as you straighten up, holding onto your IV stand for support. The metal rattles a bit as the wheels roll. Your feet brush the ground. You lift your head up wretchedly.

It’s almost like that weakness sobers you.

The expression that overtakes you frightens Satoru to fucking death.

His face feels like it numbs, staring at the darkness that seeps the light away. You stare at the metal pole your fingers are wrapped so tightly around, and then you look at the bag hanging there, clear and round and soft to your touch as you straighten up.

“Satoru,” you say softly.

“Yeah?” His voice is so quiet he’s not sure he even speaks. He can’t remember the last time you had looked so dispassionate at anything in his life. Even death had left its mark—black frowns, long streaks underneath your eyes.

Your apathy is dark purple, an endless void colour.

“When I die, make sure Shoko’s the one who cuts me open to find out what’s wrong with me.”

Something prickles at his fingertips. He touches your shoulder and half-thinks his fingers will go right through you.

“You’re not going to die,” he insists firmly. “It’s just a bad cough.” You look up at him and blink. Then you touch your lips and shudder down another cough.

“We all die.”

“It’s not your time, yet.” His fingers dig into your shoulder. You don’t even wince even though you’re clenching his jaw but he can’t find it in himself to loosen his hold. It feels like the Jaws of Death. A crocodile’s bite.

So much for not being able to control his own power.

“It’s just a bad cough.” He ignores everything Shoko had said. Sometimes she’s wrong—sometimes, it’s not even that bad. He’d just seen it, hadn’t he? You were stretching, jumping onto your bed, acting like nothing was wrong.

Palliative care? As if you needed it—

You blink, then, and look at him. Stare at him as if you’d never said those words, and he had never reached out.

You jerk your shoulder out of his grip. It stings more than it should.

“Right. But I’m just saying. You know how you always say I’ve got a few screws loose. It just makes sense someone will wanna crack me open to see what was going on up there and I want it to be her.”

You smile, and the yellow cancels out the purple.

Colour theory.

But Satoru doesn’t smile back.

“What about the flowers?” he asks after a while. You’ve climbed back onto bed and he’s sat back down. You’re blowing into a spirometer, and every time, without fail, the ball shoots up to the top, clattering against the plastic. He watches, hoping that the next time, it’ll do the same thing again.

You stop and look at him. “What about them?”

“Is it some optical illusion? Why are they in your throat?”

“That’s a harder nut to crack,” you muse. “I don’t really know. It’s like when you’ve got food in your esophagus and you’re trying to cough it up so it doesn’t feel stuck anymore except it keeps building up. That only started a few days ago, though, so maybe, someone drugged me or something.” He doesn’t laugh and you frown. “Not funny?”

He shakes his head. “It’s freaky.”

He sits on the bench on campus.

He’s cancelled classes because he didn’t come up with a standard lesson plan and his students are glad to have a Monday afternoon off, even if they’d never say it to his face. In truth, he’d spent the whole weekend at the hospital until he reeked of antiseptic and pollen.

You coughed up five petals, and without fail, a nurse would come in hourly intervals to collect them. Shoko came once, to check up on you and to collect the samples. If she was surprised Satoru was sitting in the corner on his phone, she didn’t voice it.

“She’s not even doing that bad,” he says to the air, more accusatory than anything. The woman standing by him doesn’t answer and sits down beside him uninvited. Turning to look at her, his eyes narrow behind his blindfold. “You said she needed palliative care until she died. The doctor said she could leave tonight.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive concepts,” she informs, not looking at him. Shoko looks a bit out of place in the warm colours of the garden. Half a corpse herself. Waif-like. “The doctor’s letting her relax in the comfort of her own home before she dies. That’s all.”

“She’s not going to die.”

She snorts. “Denial isn’t a good colour on you.” The words could’ve been delivered colder. Satoru is grateful that they weren’t.

Shoko rests her hands on her knees, tilts her head up, and sighs. Her long hair is like warm chocolate in the sunlight, spilling down her arched back from the knot she tied. “If you have any idea on how to fix this, I’m listening with both ears.”

“I don’t even know what it is,” he says. “Coughing and flowers? I’ve never heard of a sickness like that before.”

“Nanami pointed out that it could be a curse someone placed on her. I don’t know why, but it’d be an explanation.” Satoru spreads his legs, plants an elbow on his knee and leans forward to look at the ants travelling along the cobblestone before his shoe. “It manifested on some negative emotion lingering inside her and it’s growing every day, but she won’t budge.” Shoko sighs. Her purple eye bags look worse in the sunlight, but he would never tell her that. “Maybe you’d have a better chance digging into her. With Geto gone, there’s no one else to ask, is there?”

“What about you? What happened to girls and their little secrets?” he jokes, trying to ignore the ache that begins to bloom in his chest. Shoko eyes him wryly.

“I have suspicions, but there are some things girls don’t ask other girls,” she retorts. “It’s never been my business anyway. My job is to treat her, and I’ve given her options. It’s up to her to take them. Grief is a birthing ground for curses, and if she’s letting them feed on her freely, you know what fate is waiting for her.”

With that, she gets up and leaves as quickly as she arrived. Satoru swallows the smell of flowers and feels sick.

Monday night, Satoru pulls up his laptop and looks through, searching up words he can string together in a coherent sense to get the answers he wants. As rare as it probably is, some research wouldn’t hurt, would it? Some curses had a trademark affliction—maybe this one does, too.

So he searches up flower coughing to see if there has ever been a record of strange deaths that have made the news. If not, he’ll go to the jujutsu databases, but for now, maybe some publicity could put some answers to this question.

He is surprised when one of the first results is flower coughing disease.

When he hits enter, the white screen blasts into blue irises with numerous results all repeating the same two words.

HANAHAKI DISEASE

And Satoru reads, and reads, and reads. He reads two weeks to three months, he reads unrequited love, and removal, and disappearance of romantic feelings and capacity for romantic love.

He reads fictional disease and wonders how much of it really is fictional.

His phone pings with a text, and he grabs at it, tilts it just enough to get a glimpse of the screen. It’s from you, and he hasn’t read a text from you in so long he almost doesn’t recognize who it’s from except he does because… who else could it be?

[Greenbean] 11:02 PM

hey!!! guess whos finally fucking free oh my god

ugh out of the hospital and forgot how actual air smelled like lol bitch im so hungry i could eat a zoo

Letting his phone clatter, he sighs and rubs his face roughy, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment before snapping his laptop shut and getting up. His phone buzzes again and he reaches for it blindly, the screen lighting up as he goes to bed.

[Greenbean] 11:03 PM

we should get smth to eat!! i wanna go to that new ramen place in ikebukoro

[Satoru] 11:03 PM

fine but you good???? who picked you up from the hospital? still insulted you didnt let me tbh

also what did the doctor say???

[Greenbean] 11:04 PM

bc ur a menace who doesnt know how to drive

he said itd get worse before itd get better so still gotta go for checkups but yeah dont worry and nanami came bc he didnt trust me not to try and walk home lol but he did buy me dinner

wasnt enough though!!!

…

[Greenbean] 11:06 PM

ok but fr does he think im insane

clearly id flash some skin and hitch a ride duh

…

[Greenbean] 11:10 PM

youre just gonna leave me on read? yikes

[Satoru] 11:12 PM

i was getting ready to sleep silly

and yeah ill come pick you up on saturday for lunch?

[Greenbean] 11:15 PM

sorry making instant noodles rn but yeah that sounds fine

wait youre sleeping so early lmfao

[Satoru] 11:16 PM

im old :/

[Greenbean] 11:18 PM

u sure are

(image sent)

look!!! my babies are still alive!!! idk how but miracles do exist im tellin ya

[Satoru] 11:24 PM

inumaki, maki, and fushiguro broke into ur home to water them but dont tell them i told u

[Greenbean] 11:24 PM

wtf

[Satoru] 11:25 PM

yeah idk when but i think u teaching inumaki how to pick locks has opened up too many possibilities but also its really funny thanks

now go to sleep u need to rest

[Greenbean] 11:28 PM

whos gonna make me lol youre not my dad

[Satoru] 11:29 PM

lol

remember how i can teleport

lol so cool

[Greenbean] 11:30 PM

dude

wtf

fine

goodnight hoe </3

[Satoru] 11:31 PM

goodnight knock off poison ivy <3

“You’ve looked better,” Shoko says. Satoru raises his head wearily as he pushes off the wall. Shoko’s holding a cup of coffee, her lab coat fresh on her shoulders and eye bags looking more printed on rather than natural swelling. Satoru can’t help but feel the same exhaustion. “Definitely looked worse. What do you want? It’s early.”

“Have you ever heard of Hanahaki disease?” he asks. She shakes her head, and he pulls up the page on his phone and hands it to her. She takes it from him and her eyes scan the screen as he continues, “It’s this fictional disease, something that stems from unrequited love, and I think it could be related to whatever she’s experiencing.”

“I thought you were set on willing her to survive,” she replies dryly, shooting him a quick look and adjusting the coffee in her hand. “But this is definitely one of your stranger theories.”

Satoru ignores that last part. “It’d make sense. With her Cursed Technique, maybe it manifested in a way that links to it.”

She pushes into the office, setting the coffee on her desk and sitting down. Satoru sits down on the exam table closest and leans forward eagerly as she continues to read the page, scrolling down occasionally before scrolling back up and sighing. “This is a stretch. The timeline doesn’t match up to what this is saying.”

“This is a curse. It doesn’t have to follow fiction.” His body feels sore, janky even, everywhere. He barely got a wink of sleep last night and he knows he’s paying for it, now. “Hell knows life rarely does, anyway. But the symptoms matches too well, doesn’t it? The flowers—you’ve done scans, haven’t you?”

She deliberates his words carefully as she looks to the file cabinet and pulls out a binder. Satoru catches a flash of your name on the spine before she moves her coffee and his phone out of the way to flip it open.

“The scans we’ve taken have only just begun to show small growths in her trachea,” she allows, “and we don’t fully understand how cursed energy affects our bodies, so I suppose it could be something like Hanahaki, if the negative energy stemming from December 24th was what brought this on or if these symptoms started when we were still students, but she’s been experiencing shortness of breath a few months before Christmas.” Satoru’s lungs squeeze the last of the air out of them at that, and a cold sweat drops down his spine as she hands his phone back to him. “It only started getting worse Suguru’s death, which meant there had to have been a trigger before that.”

In the back of his head, he hears your voice, light and yellow, saying a few weeks. It got worse a few weeks ago.

“Worse?”

“The first petal fell some time after Christmas. It’s been a slow, but steady progression since then. Sometimes, it’s two or three. When it’s not a good day, there can be as many as seven to ten.” Shoko switches on the lamp on the corner of her desk and adjusting the direction of the white light before flipping the page. “But if we can find the original trigger and alleviate that pressure it’s putting on her, we could buy her more time.”

“So it’s been nearly six months since the first petal,” he says. Shoko nods. Satoru is grateful for the blindfold—she can’t see how blank everything looks on his face. “It said sometimes, the disease can last for eighteen months.”

“As you said, this isn’t a fairytale.” She half-spins on her chair to face him and leans back into it, crossing one leg over the other and jiggling her knee. “I saw that one of the solutions is excise the growths at the cost of the attachment. That was one of the options I gave her when the growths first appeared. She said she wanted more time before she could decide.”

He frowned. “Why?”

“Because she’s smart, and likes to push her damned limits. And if this is truly the basis of the curse”—she gestures to Satoru’s phone. Her expression flickers—“those flowers are feeding off cursed energy. Cutting them out would remove those negative emotions, but at a cost of something else. Maybe whatever feelings she has regarding the trigger.”

Satoru looks down at his phone. It feels heavier than a thousand cinderblocks in his clammy hands. His fingers are numb as his screen dims and finally locks itself. Pressing the button, it illuminates again to reveal a picture of a cactus you gave him for his birthday years ago, blooming with delicate purple petals.

His heart rends. That cactus is long dead now.

“But, Suguru’s dead.”

“That’s why I asked you to ask her,” Shoko mutters.

Turning to her binder again, she picks up a pen and clicks it, lowering it to the paper before pausing, and Satoru looks up as she stares at whatever words are printed into the page distantly. A strange affliction is on her face, almost tormented, and Satoru is not-so-kindly reminded that before Suguru and Satoru, Shoko was your best friend first.

“Tell her how idiotic she’s being,” she enforces quietly. “The longer it lives, the more permanent damage is inflicted. With the unpredictable nature of curses, that won’t take long and by then, it’ll be too late to consider removing it.”

Saturday comes too fast, yet not fast enough. By the end of the week, Satoru is all but finished with teaching, and is waiting outside your apartment, leaning against the car as he scrolls through his phone. He’s done a bit more research on this Hanahaki disease, but even the word makes him shiver with the implications.

“Satoru!” Turning, he catches you loping easily towards him. You’re dressed in billowy, wide-legged dark mint green pants and a pretty white top that makes you look more nymph than human, with a canvas tote bag hanging off your shoulder. You flash him a smile as you fiddle with the fabric tie at the waistband of your pants nervously. “Hi.”

“Hey. Hope you don’t mind I brought Ijichi along for the ride since someone claims I can’t drive.”

“You don’t have your license, sir,” Ijichi says wearily as you bend over to wave through the window. "It would be illegal for you to be on the road in any capacity—oh, hello, ma’am. It’s nice to see you doing so well.”

“Thanks, Ijichi. I think I’m doing better after getting out of there,” you say as Satoru opens the car door for you and he smirks, eyes crinkling behind his sunglasses. You straighten up, looking at him before poking his chest and it’s almost just like the good ole days as you break out into a grin that crinkles your entire face. “What’s with you being a gentleman? It better not be because I was in the hospital.”

“Of course not,” he admonishes. “I wouldn’t dare dream of being polite to you of all people.” Still, he sidesteps and sweeps his arm, gesturing for you to climb in first which you do, exhaling a bit shakily as you settle in and slide over. By the time he’s settled in beside you, you have a fist over your lips and you’re clearing your throat testily.

A worm of unease wriggles into his stomach as he clips in his seatbelt, pulling the lapels of his unbuttoned green shirt free from the strap. Legs spreading, he lets his hands fold in his lap as Ijichi begins to drive them to their destination. You’ve lowered your hand by now, looking out the window, and it’s not bright enough that Satoru can read your expression on the glass.

It’s clear you don’t want to talk about it, but still, that nagging feeling bites at him as he rolls the divider up between the backseat and the front—a mock of privacy.

“The place we’re going to gives me the same vibe as that family-owned restaurant we went to when we were students. The one in Kagurazaka,” you say after a while, turning back to look at him. You’re wearing a bracelet that jangles when you move your hand to adjust the seatbelt across your chest. “I think you’ll like it.”

“Have you been?”

“One time, before I checked in,” you tell him, smiling still. “It was really good. The perfect last meal.” Satoru does well enough to hide his frown at your choice of words as you meet his eyes. “You know, you can ask. I’m not fragile.”

“I don’t have anything to ask,” he lies. “I’m just glad you’re out of the hospital.”

“Me, too. I’ve missed so much and it drove me insane. Yaga-sensei insists that I don’t work until I’m sure I’m feeling better,” you add. “But to be honest, there’s nothing much that can be done to make me feel better.”

“I see. So you’re still coughing up flowers?”

“Petals,” you correct, “and a bit. Don’t worry. It’ll get better soon.” You wave a hand and turn to look out the window and Satoru’s appetite all but vanishes. He doesn’t know why you’re so intent on lying to him about the severity of your condition, but as your knee jiggles relentlessly the whole car ride with unbridled excitement, he wonders if you’re even aware of how sick you could be.

His Six Eyes scan your body for signs of a curse. Normally, those plagued have their little burdens hanging off their shoulders, prying their head open, biting into an arm or leg, but he finds yours lives inside your chest, just barely hidden by the yellow light brimming from your body as you reach forward to lower the divider and talk to Ijichi.

They reach Ikebukuro before they’re dropped off after Satoru insists on walking the rest of the way.

“Give us some privacy, Ijichi! We both know you’ll just eavesdrop for the juicy details,” he exclaims loudly, leading to the man to blush furiously, stuttering that he’d do no such thing, and earning Satoru a smack on the back of his head, knocking his sunglasses askew.

“Thanks for the ride, Ijichi,” you say warmly as if you hadn’t slapped a concussion into Satoru. The Assistant Director dips his head. “See you later!” With that, he drives off and the two sorcerers are left in the busy street. Satoru looks around curiously, but you tug him along up the main road of the district and immediately turn right into one of the smaller streets. A few cyclists race past, as well as cars, but the traffic seems relatively slow despite it being the weekend. There are people walking along the white lines separating the lanes, chatting merrily as you lead him to the restaurant.

“I forgot how actual sunlight felt,” you sigh, stretching your arms high above your head as if to touch the wind breezing through. Inhaling deeply, you close your eyes. Satoru waits for you to begin to cough, and you hold it in, throat tensing a bit.

He looks away, and pretends he doesn’t hear your sharp exhale, the soft cough you try to muffle with your hand. Instead, he looks at their surroundings, traces the green roads, watches a man park his bicycle and take the plastic bags out of the basket before rushing into a store. The air smells faintly of smoke, and Satoru waves in front of his face to see if it’ll help dispel the scent, but it’s so engrained with the hint of meat, honey, sweets, and flowers, that he can’t.

“I saw Suguru here once,” you tell him suddenly. He blinks, head snapping to you, and you’re already regarding him with a faint smile, eyes a bit dimmer. The warm yellow energy has faded to a burnt orange as you look ahead. “A year or two after he left. It’s why I moved closer a few years ago. I guess I had this weird hope that I’d see him again, but I never really did.” A faint grin graces your lips again, as if you’re not even aware you’re smiling. Fondness overtakes you. “I think about him a lot these days.”

“Me, too.”

“Of course,” you chuckle a bit, rubbing at the back of your neck. “I’m being insensitive.”

“No, you’re not. He meant a lot to you, too. I don’t own him, or his memory.”

“I know, but he was still your best friend.” Unbidden, a voice in Satoru’s voice finishes it for you. My one and only.

“Did you guys talk about anything?”

“Not really anything important,” you say, shrugging, but by the way your eyes shift in the light, glimmer differently, he knows you’re lying. He knows it’s none of his business, but a part of him hungers for new parts of Suguru and it’s powerful enough to take control of his tongue.

“Nothing’s not important. He was a wanted criminal.”

“I think we both know somehow that part never mattered to us.” You look at him, and run a thumb under the strap of your bag. “To any of us. But…” You tilt your head to him and your smile grows tender. “…since you asked, we talked about us. He told me about what he wanted, the kind of world he was determined to create. He paid for my dinner, kissed me goodnight like it was normal, and then he was gone. Never saw him again until last December.”

It shouldn’t sting as much as it does.

He remembers that day ten years ago in Shinjuku. The coldness in which Suguru had looked at him. He can’t imagine that same poison directed at you. He couldn’t even imagine Suguru looking at him like that in the first place until he did.

“Are you the strongest because you’re Gojo Satoru or are you Gojo Satoru because you’re the strongest?”

“I used to have nightmares about it,” you continue distantly. “Because I could’ve left with him, but I didn’t. And I could’ve killed him, but I didn’t do that either.”

“If you want to kill me, kill me. There’s meaning in that, too.”

Satoru’s chest tightens. His heart feels rotten to the core. “I didn’t, either, until I did.” You smile a bit more, at the irony. “Would you? Have gone with him, that is.”

“I didn’t, so what’s the point in debating it?” you ask before shrugging thoughtlessly and answering anyway. “I think tackling curses at the source is important. I just didn’t like the way he was doing it. If I thought I could somehow change his mind, just a bit, on his methods, maybe, but by then, he was too far gone.”

Your eyes, chips of glinting sunstone, mellow as a cyclist trills at them with a bell to get out of the way. You step out of the way, away from Satoru for a moment, before returning to him, and when the back of his hand brushes yours, he’s startled at how cold your skin is.

Satoru is quiet as he absorbs all of this. He doesn’t really know what to say, and you don’t prod him for a reaction as they turn the corner again.

“It’s just over there,” you say, pointing to a small restaurant, people milling by the door. There’s a sign hanging over the door, off-white with black kanji painted on and your arm falls. “There’s a line. Huh.”

“We can wait,” Satoru says when they stop at the edge of the crowd. “I don’t mind.”

“Okay. I’ll go put our names in then come back.” You disappear into the crowd for a moment before resurfacing and joining his side again, something in your hand. “It should be, like, fifteen minutes. I said the bar was okay.”

“That’s fine.” Shoving his sunglasses up into his hair, he cracks his knuckles and migrates to the wall. You follow, and he slouches against the concrete pillar. You adjust the tote bag against your body and lean against the other side just around the corner. Their elbows brush, and you tilt your head to look at him, smiling. Your face has caught the sun perfectly, and Satoru can’t help but smile back.

He wonders how to bring up this Hanahaki disease theory. You look so perfect, so happy in this moment where their eyes meet, that he can’t bring it up. Maybe it’s selfish, but it feels like it’s been so long since the two of them even managed to see each other for more than an hour. With how overworked jujutsu sorcerers are, it’s hard to recall the last time they both had downtime at the same time that wasn’t spent catching up on sleep.

You look away, shoulders shaking, as if that’s enough to hide your coughing, and he thinks, Later. There’ll be time for that later.

“Here’s the menu,” you tell him once you’ve calmed down, extending your hand. He takes the paper, unfolding it as you cross your arms and tilt your head back on the concrete. Reading down the list, he keeps an eye on you out of the corner of his vision, and your fingers play at your lips as you swallow. Reaching into your bag, you twist the cap of a water bottle and chug half of it down.

“Do you have any medicine? For your coughing?” he asks casually. You hit your chest with a firm fist, clearing your throat and looking at him in surprise. The water bottle returns to your bag.

“Oh, uh, no. It doesn’t work. Just gotta keep hydrated and avoid any possible triggers,” you inform. You turn up the street as you speak, crossing your legs at the ankles and sinking against the concrete.

“And what are those triggers?”

“And you say Ijichi is the one digging for gossip,” you snort with short, choked huff. Satoru rolls his eyes, but keeps looking at the menu. “Don’t worry about it. I’m avoiding them.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“If I wanted your dry wit, I would’ve gone to the original.”

“I don’t copy off Shoko. I take bits of everyone’s personality and twist it to make it my own.”

You shake your head. “Whatever you say.”

Your name is called a few minutes later and the pair push off the concrete pillar, heading through the crowd and into the small restaurant. It’s not too dimly lit, a bunch of natural light from the street streaming in through the open windows, and the air is rich with the smells of the kitchen as they sit down at the bar.

It’s not long before they’ve ordered, and Satoru has gone through his first bowl and is well into pouring his second into what remains of his broth before he remembers to even check up on how you’re doing. You’d been right—he loves this place. The atmosphere isn’t overly loud, but the mumbling of nearby patrons is enough to make him feel like he isn’t quite alone. It’s sheltered away from the world, and although he’s used to girls staring, no one has gone up to him which is giving him time to his own thoughts and food. Everyone here seems to mind their business—everyone likes to stay in their own bubble.

Here, he isn’t the strongest, or quite so special. It honestly feels kind of nice.

You’re sipping on your broth, tilting the spoon towards your mouth and your lips are pulled into the warmest smile he’s seen since they were kids. The light’s hitting you just perfect again, more cool than warm, but it’s got you on the cheekbone, illuminated your lips. Satoru wonders if you know how to manipulate light, or if that’s just your natural blessing as you tilt your head towards him, eyes squinting from your own joy.

For a moment, another image flashes in his head. Him along the end of their group of four—you and Shoko, Suguru and Satoru. It’s almost poetry how much of a glimpse he can see in your smile. You would always be laughing, and Suguru’s cheeks would always be red, and Shoko would charm the guy over the counter to hand over a bottle of shochu. Satoru would tease his stupid best friend, and pay for their meal because “I’m friends with a bunch of goddamn freeloaders.”

But that moment ends as quickly as it came, and it’s so fucking heartbreaking that Satoru never thought their last meal together would be their last meal together. He would’ve cherished it more—done anything to make them stay in that ramen shop in Kagurazaka.

“Do you like it here?” you ask.

He blinks. You’re studying him behind that smile of yours. Watching. Always watching. “It reminds me of when we were kids,” he replies. When he realizes that didn’t answer the question, he adds, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

You grin, delighted. “If I knew how stupid you’d look sucking up these noodles, I would’ve brought my camera like when we were students. I still have it, you know.”

“Next time, then.”

“Yeah, next time.”

Satoru pays. He insists despite your protests, and snatches the bill from you anyway, swiping his card as quickly as he can.

After, they walk slowly around the district, looking at the other restaurants and stores for desserts or souvenirs to bring back, and it makes him so nostalgic, his heart wilts a bit in his chest.

He is saying something about buying some soymilk for Megumi when you stop suddenly, deviating to the side of the road to cough. It grows so intense so quickly that your eyes widen as if you’re surprised, too, and you place a palm flat against your chest as he comes to your side. You wave him back, and he frowns, running a hand down your back as you finally manage to dislodge the petals in your throat and spit them into your palm.

Satoru sighs, staring at the cursed things. The energy emitted from the petals are raw, potent, and his nose wrinkles at the stench that comes from powerful curses as he softly asks, “Do you know what Hanahaki is?”

“Flower vomiting?” you whisper through your raw vocal cords. You shake your head, slamming your sternum with a tight fist and flinging the drenched petals to the ground with a wet slap. “Itadori… said something about it, once. Never really paid attention, I—”

Satoru squeezes the back of your neck gently. “Whatever this curse is, it could be something like that.“

“You don’t want to open that can of worms, Gojo, of what is causing this.” Straightening up, your eyes widen and your cheeks puff up as you choke down another bout. Wobbly, you spit out, “It’s under control. I swear.”

“Are you sure?” His fingers brush your chin to turn your face towards him so he can look at it more clearly, and the instant their eyes meet, you lurch over, slapping his hand away and succumbing to the wracking. Hands shooting out to grab your elbows, Satoru barely eases you to the ground as your legs give in.

You collapse to your knees, hard. A hand is slapped over your mouth but your whole body shakes with the seizing of your lungs. Eyes widening, your cheeks puff up as Satoru grabs your shoulders, falling to his knees beside you.

“Hey! Hey, breathe!” His fingers dig into your shoulders and your nostrils flare, trying to follow his instructions. Bloodshot eyes and blueing lips, your inhales are shaking and incomplete, gasps for air that do not take in any oxygen before you’re kneeling over, hand falling from your lips. Blood splattered over your palm, you let out a low noise of pain. Satoru’s hand glides down your spine, rubbing in soothing circles as red spit falls to the pavement in thick globs.

People all around stop to stare, eyes masked with concern, but he can’t care less at that moment despite the burning scrutiny. He shoves a hand into his pocket, speed-dialling one of the top numbers of his list.

“Ijichi, I need you to take us to the hospital, now!” Letting his phone drop with a clatter, he scoops you close but you slam your bloody hand against his chest, pushing him away. You throw yourself away, hands twisted tight in the fabric of your white shirt and Satoru looks down at the red handprint on his tee before blinking. “What are you doing? We need to get—“

“I’m—I’m fine!” Your voice, broken, is drenched with ice as you continue to wheeze, grasping at your chest as if you could reach and tear out the growths with your own hand. “Gojo, I’m fine!”

“No, you’re not!” Grabbing his phone, he hears a loud car horn, and looks up to see Ijichi leaning out of the driver’s seat, waving his arm frantically. Without another thought, he scoops you up and runs out into the street, ignoring the tires screeching, the cars horns blaring at him and the angry shouts as he jumps into the car and slam the door shut.

Ijichi sets off at a drive, no directions needed. Satoru is sure he’s breaking as many laws as he can as he pushes you back against the seat to buckle you in. Blood dribbles down your lips in bubbles as a thick, gurgling sound begins to grow in your throat and he wipes at your chin with his sleeve, clicking the buckle into place just as you pitch forward. He jerks back just in time as you retch, and, slowly, torturously, you gag out three petals, one after another. Your fingers claw at your own throat, panicking and desperate as you struggle to breathe.

The petals fall in wet pools between your feet, landing on the carpet, and he spares them not even a glance before forcing your head between your knees. You’re still hyperventilating and as Satoru sweeps a hand down your back and up to your neck, his fingers come into contact with something sticky.

Sweat. It drenches through your shirt so suddenly that Satoru reels at the wet marks spreading through your shirt, making the fabric translucent. Your heart is racing, tripping over itself. When you finally stop coughing, you breathe in harsh pants as he keeps your head between your knees.

Your fingers lace at the back of your head and he grabs them firmly, reassuring that he’s still beside you.

“She’s stable,” Shoko announces to the waiting Satoru and six students. The latter came when their teacher had told them of what happened, and Itadori still clings to Fushiguro’s arm by an iron hand, fingers clawlike into his friend’s bicep. Kugisaki chews on her thumbnail, a bit paler than usual and there are crescent indents along her forearm where she had dug her nails in. Maki’s hand rests on her shoulder. Inumaki’s on the phone with Panda, and he turns the screen around so he can see the Strongest Sorcerer who does not feel quite so strong.

Satoru’s assurances that you would be fine had done nothing but send them into a quiet that scared even him.

“Is she okay? When can she get out?” the kids demand suddenly.

“We’re waiting for the updates on her scans from the doctors, but she’ll need to stay here under observation.”

Satoru runs a hand through his hair, smiling in a way that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Guess that means she gets a few more days off while the rest of us are working our asses off,” he teases. Maki shoots him a glare and his eyes close in a way he hopes arranges his expression in one of joy as he shrugs helplessly. “Well, that means I have another girl I have to spoil.”

“Aren’t you too busy with the four already blowing up your phone?” Kugisaki mutters sourly. Satoru pretends not to hear. His phone has been silent without your texts, and it’s cold and heavy in his pocket.

“Can we see her?” Fushiguro asks. Shoko nods, but holds up a hand and the kids skid to a stop.

“She’s resting. I’m unsure if you know, but certain topics of conversation or trains of thought can lead to more attacks, so stick to talking about your curriculum. Topics you think are safe.” The woman shifts on her feet, a wisp of brown hair swaying in front of her eye. “It’s unavoidable, but use your judgement.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The students walk off down to the dead-end hallway, and Satoru turns to Shoko who has her arms crossed over her chest. She steps up, scanning him like he’s got contraband, and he raises his eyebrows innocently.

“What?”

“It’s getting worse. I hope you managed to get answers,” she says. At once, Satoru’s facade drops, and a sober sensation overtakes his face.

“No, I didn’t. She’s heard of the disease, at least. We talked about Suguru, but it wasn’t like it was under lock and key.” The brunette shakes her head at his words, gesturing for him to sit down beside her. Doing so, he leans back into the uncomfortable chair as she crosses a leg over the other. “She said she thinks about him a lot.”

“She still loves him,” Shoko says bluntly. “She gets that far-off look when she talks about him. You two should trade secrets some time.” A shake of her head, and she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I healed what damage I could, but I can tell those growths inside are expanding. The attack only seems to have agitated and prompted them to take root.”

“How…” It’s hard to formulate the question. Luckily, Shoko knows him well enough.

“Without seeing the scans, I won’t know. Based on her last ones, I thought at least four months. Now?” Her lips press into a thin line. “She’ll be lucky if she gets two.” Shoko’s eyes flicker down Satoru’s front, and her lips press into a wry line. “And change you shirt. You look like a murder suspect.”

Glancing down, he looks at your dried bloody hand print, stark against white, and he gets up abruptly. Shoko doesn’t stop him.

He walks down to the dead-end hall. He can hear Itadori through your open door cracking jokes, Kugisaki relaying every detail of her shopping trips, and you’re wheezing your laughter despite Maki scolding you to save your strength. Satoru stops just outside your door, out of sight, and rests his head against the frame, content to just listen.

“Tuna mayo.”

“Is that right?” you ask Inumaki. “Lay it on me.”

You sound exhausted, beaten to the bone, but still, when Fushiguro says something too quiet for him to make out, you still have the strength to tease him for worrying.

The night is warm, and he sets the last plant back into its place on your window sill before cracking the window a bit at your request. He’s busied himself making this place as homely as possible as quickly as possible, and in the process, had walked in on you staring at your own scans on the lightscreen mounted on your wall.

“Thanks, Satoru,” you say over your shoulder. He joins you by your side to stare at the scans. Granted, Satoru didn’t cheat his way through medschool like others have, so he doesn’t understand much, but he can tell what is and what isn’t supposed to be there. The floral-like growths situated right where the main bronchi meet the trachea, for one.

The roots spreading across your chest like cracks in concrete, for another.

“The doctors want to monitor this,” you explain, pointing at the roots, “to see whether or not it’ll grow around my lungs or continue outward, around the ribs and spine. If it’s the former, I’ll slowly suffocate and die. If it’s the latter, I’ll slowly suffocate, become paralyzed, and die.” You smile grimly. “Not quite a win-win.”

“Exactly the opposite.” He inspects the growths and through the blue-white-black imaging, he spots the tiny stems emerging from the main growth, sprouting into your lungs. He guesses, with time, those will grow into flowers of equal size before sprouting more shoots.

He wonders…

As if sensing his hesitance, you scratch your collarbone and look at the scans with a new glint.

“The doctors say if I avoid another attack like today, I’ll probably have two months, three if I’m blessed, but because of how big the growths have gotten already and its volatile nature, it’ll be impossible, so we’re looking at a month. Maybe a month-and-a-half?” You smile at him, throat bobbing. “Guess it’s good to have a number,” you add shakily, a short puff coming at the end of each breath as you struggle to fight the cough. “Being a sorcerer, too much uncertainty, I think.”

“You should tell Nanami that. Maybe this time, it’ll convince him to stay away,” he retorts, turning away from the scans. They’re burning his eyes and he doesn’t want to look at the real thing for much longer. You turn with him, walking back towards bed and climbing in. “Are you sure you don’t want the operation? Shoko could do it so fast you wouldn’t feel a thing.”

“No, not yet. There are some complications that’ll definitely occur and I don’t want that to happen.”

“But it would save your life,” he argues. “What risks are frightening enough that you’d even consider not having it?” Your gaze flickers as you take another wheezing breath. The strength seems sapped from your limbs—you’re a scarecrow hanging off its pole as you swallow tightly. Satoru leans against your window sill and crosses his arms over his chest so you can’t see the frustrated fists he wants to make. “If this is about Suguru…”

Resolutely: “It isn’t.”

“You’re going to die if you keep going down this road. I don’t understand why you’re hesitating.” In the back of his mind, klaxons begin to scream.

“Satoru, some things are just beyond logical reason.” He jerks his gaze away, pushing his glasses up his nose pointedly. You sigh. “I know it’s hard, but this is my choice. I just want you to be here so you know it’s okay.”

Your hand stretches out. Blue eyes flash to your outstretched fingers and he takes it before he can stop himself. Your fingers curl over his palm, tugging him closer and he lets you, sneakers dragging over the tile until he’s sliding into the chair by your bed. It squeaks against the tile.

“Please don’t be angry with me.” That’s all. That’s all I ask.

A hard, heavy sigh, this time from his end. He tightens his hold on you as you sit there, smiling hopefully. His heart thunders in his chest. “I’m not angry.”

You perk up a bit, and his index finger unfurls to rub your wrist. It feels colder than normal. “Promise?”

He wishes he could lie half as well as you. Either way, he tries his hardest: “Promise.”

By the time it’s quarter past nine, you’re already getting ready to sleep. You have enough pillows to surround your entire body, and he fluffs them up, helps you arrange them until you’re sighing against the white sheets, burrowing in with a sedated smile on your face.

Satoru sits down again on his visitor’s chair and you watch him lazily through the dim orange light stemming from behind your bed.

“You don’t have to stay here and watch me, creep,” you mumble, turning your face away to stare at the ceiling. You cough dryly, but it subsides moments later. Your voice is nothing but a croak as you let out a tired groan, and Satoru smiles to himself, cheek to his fist.

“I feel robbed of our afternoon together. Making up for it now.”

You look at him again incredulously. “We’re not even doing anything.”

“I don’t know when you were told that every second of us being together had to be us doing something,” he huffs. “I like being in here. Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s too much. You’re annoying me.” Even so, your voice turns fond as you roll onto your side, away from him to settle in to sleep and Satoru’s warm gaze lands on your shoulder gently rising and falling as you slowly drift off.

He already knows you’re gone by the time he’s standing up and gathering his jacket. Walking around the bed, he glances at the bathroom to check the light’s off and catches a glimpse of his shirt. A coil wraps around his gut at the muddy red handprint pressed into the fabric and he turns away to look at you instead.

Your face is in perfect peace, half-buried into a pillow you’re hugging into your chest, and he only soaks in those features. His hand twitches, and his infinity wavers as he raises his hand as if to touch you. Your eyelids flutter and he freezes, fearing he might’ve woken you up, but you only mumble incoherently and turn into your pillow.

Satoru watches on silently just as a breeze sweeps into the room and he looks up where the window he had cracked open. The breeze takes hold of the plants, uplifts them until they sway like a tender dance.

His chest begins to hurt. The smell of the antiseptic is starting to sting, so he moves his hand to the light switch instead. Flicking it off, he turns to leave.

Every time Satoru walks down to the end of the hallway, a different memory will play in his head until he’s playing a movie over and over every single day. Of the first time he met you, although that one is blurry. Your sixteenth birthday when the four of them had piled into your dorm room to drink themselves stupid.

One-and-a-half weeks go by before he realizes that he only replays the moments where you feature. Like his brain is preparing him, reminding him. For what, he doesn’t know.

He can’t come every day—considering the low number of sorcerers has been taken down by one more, it means besides teaching, he still has to work for the Higher Ups as well as his own personal agenda—but when he does make it, he always makes sure that he soaks in every second. Even the horrible parts. Maybe, especially the horrible parts.

You have scans taken every other day to monitor your progress, so when he arrives at an empty room, he isn’t surprised. It’s when there’s movement in the bathroom that sends his nerves prickling until he catches a slab of golden hair and reading glasses flashing in the sunlight.

“Nanami,” he greets.

“Good afternoon.” His jacket’s off and his sleeves are rolled up. With a quick sweep of the room, Satoru notes that the windows are cracked open and the aforementioned jacket is folded over a chair sat in a square of sunlight.

“Do we need to be so formal?” he complains, bypassing the bathroom and searching for another chair. The one Nanami’s taken by the plants is still warm and Satoru isn’t keen on the idea of sweating so soon. During his search, he stops by the windowsill and his eyebrows rise curiously at the new plants and trash bin pressed up right underneath. “What’s happening here?”

“We were planting new seeds when she had to be taken for her scans. She insisted I finish potting the plants.” Noting the empty terracotta, Satoru bends over and prods at the moist dirt. “I have to go soon, though. I had hoped it wouldn’t take as long as it did and she would be back by now.”

“They started taking MRI scans when the branches continued to grow outward rather than inward,” Satoru informs. “It takes around forty-five minutes, on top of the CT scans they’re taking, too. That’s if she doesn’t start coughing in the middle of it.”

“I’m guessing she does.” Nanami adjusts the glasses on his nose, wiping at his hands free of the last of whatever dirt might’ve been clinging to his hands.

“Yup.”

“I see.” Satoru looks at the plants again. The blond man across the room throws the towel into the dirty clothes basket.“Has she… spoken to you of what to do with her effects?”

Gaze hardening, he doesn’t move at the question. Of course, he’s thought about it, but those bouts of weakness have never been longer than a few minutes. There’s no use in wasting time on a reality that won’t come until it does.

Hopefully, it never does.

“I’m so sick of everyone talking like she’s signed a death sentence,” Satoru murmurs, turning around to look at the blond man at the door to the washroom. “She still has time. Not a lot. It’s not convenient, but it should be enough.”

“She’s already considered the benefits of taking the surgery, and yet she actively decides to postpone it. You know she’s stalling,” comes the steady reply.

“And what about you?” Satoru asks. His words are biting, icy, but Nanami seems unfazed as he begins to loop the tie around his neck. “Would you do it?” Blue eyes meet a stoic face, and the coldness seeps into Satoru’s body. Nanami sighs.

A part of Satoru wonders why he even bothered asking. He already knows the answer—

“No.” Eyebrows shoot up. His mouth drops open and a strangled noise escapes his throat. Nanami merely continues on, quiet as death. “Perhaps it’s because I’m willing to accept my death, but, to be honest, I don’t know how to let any part of Haibara go. I’ve accepted it, but he’s still in my heart and my head.” Lips parting, Satoru takes a step forward as Nanami slants his body away, continuing to fold the fabric into a tie. He looks statuesque, unmovable, and something tightens in Satoru’s throat at the stone-like mask taking over his face. “I’m unwilling to do anything to taint that memory.”

Wordlessly, the blond walks over to Satoru to take his jacket from the chair, rolling down his sleeves and slapping his watch back onto his wrist. Standing less than two feet apart, the two men finally meet eyes.

“Gojo,” Nanami murmurs. “I can’t say I understand your burden, but I am by your side. I do not always agree with your choices, but I still respect them. As your kouhai and as your colleague.” His lips pull in a facsimile of a wry smile and there’s an understanding Satoru doesn’t understand haunting his handsome face. “However, she is your friend before mine. I think your opinion matters much more than mine. Don’t abuse that power.”

Satoru’s eyes nearly reflect in the lenses of Nanami’s glasses. He wishes his friend would take the damn pair off.

In truth, the reason he’s so irritated is because he knows. If he insists enough, begs enough, there will always be a chance that he can convince you. That you will give in, not because you are selfless, but maybe because you’re too selfish to let him stay mad at you.

An unstoppable force meets an immovable object, and sometimes, the force wins.

But he’d promised, hadn’t he? To not be angry with the choices you’ve made?

“Jeez, it’s somber in here. Who died?” you tease as Shoko pushes the wheelchair in after you. Both men look away from each other. You’re still walking steadily, but an IV is hooked into your chest now, and it’s so obvious you’ve lost unhealthy weight that looking at you is hard sometimes. Satoru does, anyway.

Noting Nanami, you straighten up. Surprised, but pleased: “You’re still here.”

“I was just leaving,” he says. You frown, but don’t protest. A jujutsu sorcerer’s work is never finished until one stops breathing. “I finished planting the seeds you asked me to, and watered them.”

“Thank you.” He dips his head to you, then to Shoko, before departing, and you watch him go for a moment before your eyes land on Satoru and you smile. The air around you shifts immediately to a vibrant yellow.

“You’re early, Satoru.” You head towards the bed as Shoko parks the wheelchair by the door. “It took way longer than I thought.”

“That’s because you threw up pistils today,” Shoko replies dryly. Satoru straightens up and looks at Shoko more carefully. Placid lookimg—usual for his mortician friend in the jujutsu world—but there’s a blanching in her knuckles that isn’t usual. “The CT wasn’t good. You know that.”

“Well, it’s still more time than I could’ve asked for, you know.” Shoko shakes her head, and meets his eyes before leaving the room, presumably to talk to your doctors. “Party pooper.”

“First day knowing Shoko?”

You laugh sarcastically, adjusting the hospital gown on your body before climbing into bed slowly, as if your joints ache. Satoru’s feet shift on the tile when he realizes his body moves to help and he freezes. You’re breathing audibly by the time you settle in and you meet his eyes, wondering if he’s noticed.

Of course he has, he wants to tell you. He notices everything about you.

Then, you sigh, and the yellow energy around you flickers into something darker, something grey, something that reminds him of summer thunderstorms.

“The roots have reached the edge of my rib cage and are encroaching on my stomach now,” you inform bluntly. “I probably won’t be able to keep food down in the next couple of days so they’re going to up the ante on this thing.” You gesture to the catheter by your clavicle. “So that’s not really fun. And, they want to start taking scans every single day because the growth is increasing exponentially. The doctors think something triggered the flowers to begin blooming in earnest. Like spring has come to my body, and I’m having the worst fucking time of my life.”

Despite your admission, your smile only falters in that it no longer reaches your eyes. Satoru shoves his hands in his pockets because he doesn’t know what else to do.

The word Hanahaki still burns, whispers coyly in his ear. It teases the tip of his tongue as he watches you look to your windowsill where your new plants are and get up, walking over to inspect your friend’s work.

He wonders if he can bring it up again. If he can insist that there’s a way to save you—

But Nanami’s words linger, too, and he bites his tongue until he tastes iron.

“Oh, look.” He blinks at your voice, turning to look. Your fingers sink into one of the pots and before he can ask, blue energy flares up around your hand and into the soil and a shoot breaks through the dirt, unfurling as it grows higher and higher into the air.

“What is it?” Petals are beginning to form, the shade of a warm, gentle red that fades in shade as it reaches the stem. Satoru comes up next to you as the first flower blooms and his eyebrows rise. “Tulips. Huh.”

“I used to love them,” you tell him, picking it off and extending it to him. Eyebrows furrowing in surprise, he takes it as you sink your fingers deeper into the soil, sending more cursed energy into the seeds. More stems to replace the one you had picked continue to grow and you pull your hand out, wiping at your fingers with a towel.

Satoru tilts the flower towards his nose, taking a whiff.

“Used to?” he repeats, and you nod.

“Trees and flowers have their own language.” Your eyes do not meet his as you watch the plant continue to grow. Your muscles go slack, and your fingers touch the petals, mind not quite aware of how you’re moving. “Red tulips mean eternal love, and fame.”

Blinking, he looks down at his own bloom.

Suguru. He hears you say his name, even in the silence, and remembers years ago, walking through Tokyo. A neighbourhood he doesn’t remember, his best friend looking at the florist’s shop and immediately perking up to head inside and buy a bouquet after something had caught his eye.

“For a girl,” he had admitted sheepishly.

“Only one?” Satoru asked, horrified. “You can’t settle down! We’re meant for so many more women than just one!”

A sharp nudge to the ribs. Raucous laughter. “Shut up!”

Quietly, Satoru’s fingers tighten around the stalk as you tilt your head to the sun, inspecting something he won’t understand. He doesn’t have a green thumb, and although you say you aren’t the smartest, he’s seen you grow the college’s gardens in a way that has amplified the beauty already lingering on the grounds. You had dismissed it as a little side project, but seeing you water your plants dutifully, spread feed and root out weeds, makes him wonder if you know how to put half-efforts into anything.

When you garden, you never take the easy route. You labour for the satisfaction, and pour sweat and tears into the soil.

When you love, you love with all of yourself and more.

It’s what makes whatever he wants impossible.

Because he is the same, and they will never change.

When Satoru goes home, he places the tulip in a vase and the cursed energy prickles at his fingertips.

You get worse and worse with every visit.

Each day brings him another raw wound, salt on blood. You slowly grow more and more ragged, even though you stay in the hospital, confined to your room.

There are days Satoru walks into your room to you hunched over the toilet, spitting blood and flowers into the bowl and vomiting all you ate the night or day or hour before and he already knows what he has to do. A cold, damp rag to your forehead, a crouching stance beside you as your grip on the toilet seat becomes rigid like steel.

Other days, you’re still asleep because the night before, you’d been hacking up half a lung and half a bouquet. Sometimes, you’re curled around a plastic receptacle already full of your half-attempts to dislodge the pressure building in your chest.

Or, you’re crying into your hands, breath coming in rapid bursts as you try to force your head between your knees to stop the world from spinning and Satoru holds you when you beg him to, and stands in the corner of the room when you push him away.

Afterwards, you always grab onto his sleeves, his arms, and sink against him, shivering. For hours after, he’ll curl around you on your hospital bed, no matter how much his body cramps, until you insist you’re fine.

“It’s a little like touching death,” you told him once, voice raw and fatigued. “When it’s a pretty bad day, and I think I’m going to die alone, it happens, so all I have to do is not think about it.”

There’s a flawed logic there, but Satoru was too busy pressing his nose into your hair and feeling the warmth of your body to reply any more than, “I’ll be there. I promise.”

Two weeks pass (fourteen sets of scans, a different pair hanging from the lightscreen every day tell him that) and Satoru watches as the branches spread through your body, past the reaches of your ribs, and the flowers have spread to your lungs so quickly he’s sure the time for you to decide is running out.

You’re near-passed out against him on the bathroom floor one evening, and although it’s not closet-sized, it doens’t make the arrangement any less awkward. He’s up against the bathtub, legs sprawled all around you as he holds you in his arms. On the edge of the tub, there is a bar of bodysoap and a bottle of lotion he recognizes as the same one Shoko used to buy when they still had time. Your sink counter is filled with your toothbrush and cup, handsoap and a microfibre towel hanging off the edge smeared with lipstick, foundation, and black streaks of who knows what.

Shoko must have spent the night while he was out hunting a curse in Sendai. Good. He doesn’t like the nights when you’re alone and he can’t be there.

His fingers brush over your shoulder blade, and he travels over something rigid cloaked by your skin. Your eyes are closed, and you’re nearly asleep as you curl deeper against him. Looking down at you, he presses curious fingers into your shoulder blade only for you to let out a soft groan.

“Did that hurt?”

“No. It just feels like you pressed down on a big sore muscle,” you mumble slowly. He trails his fingers over, feels the bumps of the roots curling around your bones before following it towards your spine. It disappears the closer it reaches the trail of knobs that go down your back, and he moves back to your shoulder again. “Doesn’t hurt, though.”

“Does anything?”

“Mostly my stomach,” you tell him. “I’m so hungry all the time, but I can’t eat.” He glances at the IV stand, the only other witness to the events in this bathroom. It leads down through your gown and past your clavicle. Monitored every day in case the growths dislodge it, it’s one of the only things keeping you alive. “And my throat. It feels like I’ve scratched it out until it’s bleeding.”

He tilts his head. His lips barely brush your sweaty scalp despite how cold you feel in his arms “No surgery?”

You shake your head, what remains of your strength slowly coming back. “They say the flowers and roots have taken up sixty-five percent of my chest cavity. It’s not only inhibiting my lungs, but my heart and stomach, too, so it’d be kind of hard to get rid of it all. Not impossible, but it’s really risky. That, on top of the already-present consequences—”

“So let’s say we start with the lungs,” he cuts off, trying to not sound too desperate but these past few weeks have worn him down to the bone. Although he thinks he’s managed to hide it from his students, Shoko has offered multiple times to prescribe him sleeping pills just so he can shut his mind down.

He said no every time.

Your legs draw up and he squeezes your shoulder carefully, looking down. “Are you ready to get up?”

You nod. “I think so.” He wipes at your lips with the rag he left on the counter and you roll your eyes as he makes sure no blood is left on your face before throwing it back up and carefully adjusting you against him.

“Do you want my help?”

“My answer does not matter to you,” you shoot back teasingly and he lets you pull away from him before reaching up with one hand to push yourself up. Your arm wobbles, your feet kicking back underneath you and slowly finding theirselves on the floor. Satoru withdraws, ducking underneath and back up so he can stand, hands floating around your body as you draw the IV stand towards yourself and grab on. When he’s sure your knees might give in, he grabs your elbow, but you shake your head. “I think I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay,” you breathe, raising your head to look at him. Your lips curl in a soft smile, and you clasp his shoulder. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t even do anything this time,” he says.

“Not everyone stays for the pathetic girl on the floor of the bathroom floor,” you quip. Turning around, you begin to head back to bed and he trails behind you carefully.

“If the girl’s you, then I think exceptions can be made.”

“Hospital bonus.”

“It adds that you’re in the hospital, too,” he agrees. “My morals are just.”

“Isn’t that a relief?”

It is. It is a relief that you still have the strength to joke with him.

You climb back into bed. Satoru returns to the bathroom to make sure the bathroom is flushed and it’s clean before returning and perching on the edge of your bed. Pulling out his phone, he shuffles his shoes off and tucks his legs to his chest, leaning against the foot of your bed and scrolling through his messages.

Not much to miss, to be honest.

“There’s supposed to be a lunar eclipse on the morning of the 28th,” you say suddenly. Satoru looks up. You’re leaning back on the mountain of pillows, exhaling and inhaling measuredly in a way he now knows is your way of fighting off another bout. Squinting against the orange glow of the sunset, there’s a longing in your gaze. “I want to see it. Outside and everything.”

“You’re not supposed to leave the hospital.”

You don’t miss a beat. “Oh, we’re abiding by rules, now?”

“If it keeps you around, yes, we are.”

“When did my best friend turn into such a party pooper?” Looking at him, an impish glint lives in your eyes. He balks.

“Don’t you dare insinuate that I’m not fun.”

“Then… take me to see the eclipse.”

“No. There’s nothing to even see.”

“I want to see the moon disappear, Gojo,” you declare. “And if you won’t take me, I will definitely sneak out.”

It paints a pretty pathetic picture, and he can’t help but arch his eyebrows at your determination. The air purifier drones on. The nurse turned it on after dinner, he guesses, and he has the strange urge to kick it as you fix him with a fierce stare.

“You probably won’t be able to walk by then,” he says.

“That won’t stop me.” He knows it won’t. The corner of his lips pulls into a slight smile as you continue, “I just want to go outside one last time. Is that really too much to ask?” Your words are tinged with a fine dusting of humour, and he shakes his head.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Big word for you, Satoru.”

“I still mean it.”

“And I learned that from you.”

He rolls his eyes and sighs. “Fine,” he caves. Your face lights up, and he sets down his phone, legs unfolding to brush the floor as he leans over to flick your forehead. Your eyes squeeze shut at the contact and you slap his arm away sluggishly before he soothes the smarting spot over with a smear of his thumb. “I’ll come by, and we’ll sneak out.”

You beam and he slips his feet back into his shoes and pockets his phone so he can focus his attention on you.

When visiting hours end, the nurses offer to set up the cot for him like they always do. You pretend not to look at him out of the corner of his eye, awaiting his answer behind your laptop screen, and he spares you a quick glance before saying yes.

“She likes you,” you tell him after one particular nurse with dyed purple hair who always wears a fishtail bids them goodnight. Satoru fluffs up his pillow ceremoniously, having shed his jacket and taken off his jeans to hide underneath the blankets. The fabric is cold against his bare chest, and he pulls his glasses off, sets them on the stand right behind him.

The black frame holding up his mattress rattles a bit as he punches his pillow one last time and lies down. He turns on his side and looks at you. You’re turned on your side, too, and your brow is furrowed as you fight the sleepiness.

“Is that so?” he asks carefully. “What do you think about it?”

“I think if you wanted someone with a hectic schedule, you could pick someone else,” you say vaguely.

He raises an eyebrow. “Does she have a bad attitude or something?”

“I dunno.” There’s a subtle fire igniting in your words. You look a bit more awake, and your eyes are shifting the air into a smouldering red. He squints up. Your face is shadowed, but you’re still silhouetted by the orange light behind your bed as your shoulders rise and fall greatly in staggering, weighty breaths. “She wouldn’t understand. I guess.”

He hums. “So I should find someone who understands me but can’t be there for me? Sounds like the set up to every tragic love story ever.”

You laugh, and it’s the saddest sound in the world.

Friday, July 27th arrives in clouds.

Satoru scouted a spot before where they can watch the eclipse. He settles on one of the highest buildings on campus with a balcony where they can sit against the railing and watch the moon disappear. You can’t eat, but he still buys your favourite food from all over Japan, travelling to different prefectures in hopes that they still have your favourite dessert or drink that you mentioned once—he even gets you a new polaroid camera. He doesn’t know exactly how well the eclipse will show up on it, but, memories, right?

Maki makes a dry remark about how much he’s running around lately, probably to make amends to a girl he’s scorned. Satoru deflects and says he’s actually trying to impress one this time.

It’s been a five days since his promise to bring you. You lost your ability to walk steadily two days ago and to speak effortlessly only yesterday. The roots have extended through your body, pushing the muscle of your back and shoulders, and it’s made even moving painful, so he intends to carry you everywhere he can, holding your IV bags if he needs to.

The doctors say eighty-five percent of your chest is now occupied with foreign growth. Satoru wishes they’d just tell it how it is—you’ll probably be dead by next week.

He arrives at the hospital and walks the path he’s walked so often over the past few weeks that he is sure he could do it with his eyes closed. The nurse’s station, and there’ll be the purple-haired one and the one with a double helix piercing on call at this time. Then, twenty-five steps to the end of the hall where the window often lets a lot of natural light in. Today, it’s grey and not much, but it’s enough to cast his shadow long and blurry.

He stops in front of your door to sanitize his hands when he hears voices within and hesitates.

Your door is closed, which means you don’t want people to interrupt, and he moves away from the rectangular window, back pressing against the tiny slab of wall between the frame and the corner of the hallway. Glasses slipping down his nose, he tries not to listen but he can’t help of himself.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” you say weakly. You sound awful. Satoru wonders if he’s missed one of your panic attacks and curses himself. “If I don’t sound sure, it’s because I’m dying… and sounding like a fragile piece of shit… comes with the territory.” Your words are coarse, and a harsh anger grates his ears as you cough violently, a terrible retching sound ending with a splat following right after.

“I wasn’t doubting you,” Nanami replies calmly. “But this could be done in so many other ways.”

“Look, Nanami. I’m not… brave enough to say any of it. Now, sit down. Your standing… it’s making me nervous… Thank you.” Satoru’s legs feel numb as he sinks down to the floor, tilting his head just enough to listen clearer through the sliver underneath the door. Resting his elbows on his knees, he runs a hand through shaggy white hair. It feels dry and lifeless.

He can’t remember the last time he took a shower that was longer than ten minutes and more than ice-cold bordering on just beginning to warm.

“Take care of him for me,” you croak and his fingers tighten against his scalp. Nanami doesn’t answer, and you let out a sound that can only be described as pure agony as another bout grasps you tightly. You’re wheezing by the end of it, gasping painfully for air, and the monitors start beeping rapidly, a dinging that echoes in his head as Nanami’s low voice soothes you, tells you gently to calm down. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Breathe with me,” Nanami orders, and everything falls silent. Satoru stares at his lap. His head is beginning to pulse with the monitors when the beeping finally starts to fade. “Good. No sense to waste your strength.”

Wobbly, spitting: “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” A pause. “It’s not your fault.”

You laugh, as if Nanami’s cracked a funny joke, and it’s gut-wrenching. “Remember how… we can curse each other? Ourselves? True curses.”

Faintly amused, immeasurably strained: “I thought it was still a hypothesis regarding those who don’t have the correct bloodline and the ability to curse through their own will.”

“No…Not a hypothesis. Real, Nanami. Real. No one knows how cursed energy affects us. Not really. Since, in my opinion, it’s entirely based on how we process things… it’s so difficult to say but when you know someone…” You break off to clear your throat. “The curse of adulthood… some of us got that too early… but we can survive that and even if it’s not a curse by… definition, we still feel it, right?”

Satoru clasps his hands together just so he doesn’t rip the door open at the hinges.

“Right.”

“And… knowledge… can be a curse. Even if we can’t see it.” A ragged breath. Then, another laugh too loud for the grey light outside, too bright, a spark before it fizzles into, again, pained choking. “Nanami, remember last year… the job out in Yama… Yamaguchi?”

“Yes.”

“And we came back… Okkotsu was beginning his first year at the college… what I—what I told you?”

“…Yes.” A beat passes. A chair shifts on the linoleum floor and Nanami clears his throat. “I see.”

“I don’t want him to be so alone. I know I was never the strongest or the smartest or the most talented but I liked to think he let me in because I was there. Not because I understood. Maybe… Maybe because I didn’t. Nanami, please… he always try to stay so far away from the people he thinks he can’t love. Tell him… tell him—“

You break off and Nanami assures you with a steadfastness Satoru has counted on so many times before: “I will.”

“…thank you.”

Eyes shutting tight, Satoru rests his brow against the heel of his hand. His head is aching, and a hard fist grabs his chest, squeezes his heart until it feels like it’ll burst. So this is how you’re really feeling. When you’re not smiling, this is what you are. Angry at the world, and heartbroken.

So terribly heartbroken.

And you couldn’t trust him with it? Because you thought he couldn’t handle it?

He can take it. It’ll be okay because he’s the strongest. He has to be.

I’m the strongest. I should be okay. I’m the strongest.

I’m the Strongest.

The headache gets worse so he gets up from that corner in the dead-end hallway, all the while three words replay in his head like a goddamn gramophone.

Nanami doesn’t come out of the room for a while. When he does, Satoru walks down the hall with takeout and a smile plastered on his face as if he had heard nothing at all.

At just past one-thirty AM, Satoru sits up from his cot and rubs at his eyes. After dinner, the both of them had forced themselves to go to sleep in order to have enough energy for their little late night excursion. He glances at you, a slumbering shape on the bed, and gets up, slowly sliding on the lights. They burn a dim orange, glowing on your face, and your eyebrows furrow as he touches your cheek.

“What?” you mumble, vexed, and he smiles.

“Are you ready?” he asks. A backpack is situated at the end of his bedframe and he reaches for it, unzipping it carefully as you crack your eyes open. “We’re going to go see the eclipse, remember?” Pulling out clothes he robbed from your room in the staff facility from when you used to work full time, he grabs your shoulder and shakes you gently. The gnarled roots under your skin feel strange against his fingers as you groan weakly. “Do you want five more minutes, Sleeping Beauty?”

You don’t answer, burying your face into your pillow and he shakes his head to himself. It’s going to be all right, he thinks. I planned for this setback.

Slipping into a dark long-sleeve, he parts the black-out curtains to let light come in. He checks his reflection in the bathroom mirror before running a hand through his hair and washing his hands with a cold stream of water. By the time he leaves the bathroom, you’re sitting up already, heel of your hand rubbing against your brow as you groan. In your other hand in your lap, there’s a splash of blood and a lone petal, and he rushes to your side instantly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t even hear—“

“It came out easy,” you assure as he grabs a tissue to pick it off your hand and throw it into the receptacle at the table just beyond the foot of your bed. Wiping at your mouth roughly, he hears your complaints and your hand shoves against his shoulder to tell him to quit it. “Ah, I can do it myself!”

“Shh! Do you want every nurse storming in here while we conduct our super secret getaway?” he whispers, and your eyes fix on his. Dark circles mark your face like bruises, but that light is still the same—glimmering, bright, like twin suns and just as warm. Making sure your hands are clean, he wipes the invisible streaks of blood just to be sure before grabbing your clothes and setting them at the end of the bed.

You glance around the place sluggishly, at the paintings you never got to finish, and the books you haven’t finished reading, before settling on him. “What are we going to do about the… about the machines? And my IV…”

“Oh, trust me. I may have bribed a nurse or two,” he confesses and you send him a scandalized look. He shrugs. “What? You told me a woman liked me and I couldn’t help but turn on my natural charm.”

“You’re awful,” you say without meaning it and he smiles as he moves your bed into a sitting position. You cough lightly, but sit up straighter as he carefully unhooks the huge bag and pump from your stand and gently slides it into the pocket in the backpack, resisting the urge to squish the pouch a bit. Strapping the pump in, he makes sure it’s secure as you peer around him to catch what he’s doing. “Is this… safe for me, you—you know, medically-speaking?”

“Nope.” He adjusts the tubing to avoid any kinks. “But, Purple gave me this backpack and she will come as soon as we come back to make sure you aren’t dying. And, if anything goes wrong, I promised her I’d come back as soon as possible.”

“Promised her?” you echo “I see. So that’s what Purple… was doing before my afternoon nap. I thought you guys traded suspicious looks.”

“Yeah. I’m pulling big strings. Now, c’mon, silly. Let’s get you dressed.”

You roll your eyes with a whistling breath. “Watch the tube… and c’mere, then, Gojo.”

He grabs the jacket first and does exactly as you order. Wrapping it around you, he helps you thread your arms through before zipping you up carefully as your shoulders begin to shake. Bending over, you reach blindly for the receptacle at the end of the bed and he hands it over to you.

A wad of saliva mixed with blood slips between your lips and you let out a low noise before forcing yourself to cough harshly again and again. Satoru watches. No matter how many times he sees you rip your throat up just to breathe with a bit less pressure in your chest, it doesn’t get any easier.

You manage to get up a whole magenta blossom. It blooms from your mouth like something out of a horror movie and lands in the receptacle before he’s wiping your mouth.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

They continue on.

Coat, next, zipped up, and a scarf, then he’s scooping up your legs to help you twist on the mattress until your feet are dangling off the edge. He weaves your legs through the sweat pants, careful not to let his gaze avert from his task even as the hospital gown trails up your legs. You shiver at the exposed skin and gooseflesh pimples your thighs as you lift up your hips to help with the effort. He pulls the hospital gown free from the waistband and lets it fall over the hem so you’re completely covered before falling back.

In a crouch, he pats your knees and makes the mistake of looking up only to find your eyes already on him, searching, nearly mystified. Satoru’s throat tightens. The faint light streaming from the window catches half of your face, as if half-divine. There’s a curiosity there, lingering, and the way you look at him makes him freeze in his spot.

Is this how Suguru saw you a thousand times before, a thousand lifetimes ago? Is this what he felt?

Did he see the way your pupils dilate, the flare of your nostrils as you exhaled so quietly that it felt like a feather against his lips despite the distance between them? Did he see galaxies in your irises, home in the softness of your stare? Is that why he kissed you the last time he saw you? To memorialize their love for himself, to remember what it looked like when you loved him?

Did he feel like he could fight dragons, crush demons, rip their world apart at the seams and rebuild it again with bloodied nails if it meant you would never cry again? Is that part of why he did it? So you would never be lonely again?

Because if so, Satoru understands.

Because if so, Satoru would do the same.

Because he always saw you as just pretty, because you had always been just his friend, and then his best friend’s girlfriend, and then his best friend, so there were always lines drawn in salt, scuffed and distorted over the years, but…

But in the light, tired and lost in his gaze, you’re nearly ethereal. The only reason he knows you’re not a goddess is because he’s still touching your knees, and your breath quivers, as if you’re just as disconnected from the world as he is in this moment.

Lips pressing together, he looks away, and the moment’s gone.

He glances at the clock.

How long has it been since he moved? It feels like hours.

Twenty-seven seconds.

Twenty-seven seconds of temptation, and then Satoru turned away.

He slants to grab a pair of thick woolly socks to give himself something to do. You’re still watching him, head tilted down just so, and he carefully takes hold of your ankle.

He focuses on the little things: the iciness of your skin, the way you pick at the fabric of your sweatpants absently as you watch him work, the way you shiver a bit when he touches you.

He rubs heat back into the arch of your foot as you reach into your jacket slowly to carefully remove the nodes monitoring your vitals. You seem stiff to the bone, and your fingers are rigid with anticipated pain as you peel off the stickers. In the back of his mind, he remembers the days that feel like yesterday when you weren’t hooked up to so many machines to assure both you and him that you’re still alive.

Removing the cap for the oximeter from your finger, you shake yourself out a bit, clearing your throat. He slides one sock on, and then the other.

“How’re you feeling?” he finally utters.

It takes you a moment to answer. “Bottom half feels tingly. Usual these days. My body feels like a big giant bruise,” you inform quietly. Your voice is nothing more than a rasp. “Very warm and toasty, though… Thank you.”

“Just gotta get the shoes on and then we’ll teleport there.”

“Okay.” He helps you slip your feet in, something straight out of Cinderella, and then he stands up to take your hands. Your fingers slip into his palms, and he holds you so tightly as you slide off the bed. The instant your feet hit the floor, your grip intensifies and your head snaps down to the floor. You find your footing after a moment, and he lets go to crack open your window. Moving your plants aside, he climbs out to glance around.

The air is crisp and cold, but not too bad for him. Even so, he’ll probably slip on a hoodie before they leave and he ducks back in to your room to do so, tugging it down his waist before grabbing the backpack.

“Arms through,” he instructs, slipping the backpack onto your shoulders. Guiding you closer, he helps you shuffle as close as possible towards him before turning around and bending over. “Alright, climb on. We’re going.”

Your arms touch his shoulders, his hands shoot out behind him, and you fall.

Fingers hooking on your thighs, he boosts you up and your arms wrap around him, your own fingers wrapped so tightly around his collar that it nearly chokes him. Haphazardly stepping through the windows, his fingers sink into the fabric of your sweats. Your breath is warm against the shell of his ear, and he can feel your heart pulsing against his back as he turns to look at you.

He smiles. “How’s it feel?”

“I’m still not sure if you’re going to let me die.” You press your face closer to his head and your arms tighten. “But the wind feels so good. So, so good.”

“That’d be too undignified,” he teases, and then he jumps. Time seems to slow as it always does when he’s about to teleport. He imagines the staff facility on the campus, quiet as a cemetery at this time of night, and his heart lurches forward. For a moment, his senses leave him all at once. He can’t taste or feel or see anything for a fraction of a second, then it comes to him in blinding speed. His hearing, as always, is first, then his eyes, smell and then touch and smell.

His foot lands on stone, as if he’s just finished a small skip, and he grins as he sweeps the courtyard. No one, as planned. The building’s to his immediate right, and he climbs the steps, using your knee to nudge the door open.

“That was fun,” you comment. “Convenient, too. Blink of an eye, and you’re somewhere else.”

“You can’t even begin to imagine how many lines I’ve skipped because of it,” he comments. The lights are all off, and he heads for the kitchen immediately to grab all the food he’s bought. Setting you down on the kitchen counter, he takes out another canvas bag and stuffs all of the food in.

Daifuku with of all kinds of fillings in the fridge, fresh dorayaki, canned coffee and aloe drinks, sweet soymilk and other wagashi they used to feast on when they were younger. Mostly because Satoru would buy enough to feed a kingdom so he always had something on hand for his overactive brain. You watch him with wide eyes as he moves around with such purpose one could think he was preparing to fight an army, but as soon as he finishes, he flashes you a smile.

“I think you’re going to like where we’re going a lot, silly.”

“Didn’t have to buy stuff,” you mutter, fingers playing with the tube leading into your backpack for a moment.

“You haven’t eaten in weeks. I thought maybe we could at least try. Maybe not now, but at the end of the night, before we go back. Just in case.”

“I can’t eat, though.”

“Don’t know until I stuff it down your throat,” he replies cheerily, and you smile at him so brightly it’s almost like you aren’t sick. Then, that smile turns into a cough, a fist in front of your lips, and your expression is frozen into one of exasperation before it flickers into strained. He sets down his bag, already knowing what comes next.

You make a hacking sound, deep in your throat, and he shifts you closer to the sink so you can lean over and throw up. Gagging, it comes in red and clear torrents, the cursed energy spilling out of your body nearly making it incinerating to even touch you as you clutch the edge of the sink basin.

You fall to your elbows, and Satoru eases you off the counter so he can hold you up instead of the cramping body contortion you sink into. Cupping the juncture of your shoulder and neck, his thumb sweeps soothingly over your root-invested spine, tossing the ends of the scarf over your shoulder and out of the way.

Settling a hand on your hip, he presses you against the countertop so you don’t fall, and hopes your legs can hold you up long enough for him to reach for the hand towel. You spit just as he manages to grab it, snapping back into position and peering over your shoulder to inspect how much you’ve coughed up. You shudder and a tortured moan wrenches out of your throat as you sink, forehead against the cool metal.

You’re scorching to touch, but he tightens his hold on you anyway, setting the towel aside for just a moment. Carefully, he pulls you back up and you let out an drained whine, but he shushes you quietly, turning you around and guiding your head over his shoulder so you don’t stare at the rot any longer.

Satoru knows you would, even if you pretend like you aren’t plagued with morbid, self-destructive curiosity.

Looking into the sink, he counts a few petals and three whole flowers, and you’re quivering against him as he wraps his arm around you.

“Alright, lean back for me,” he whispers into your ear, and you obey. His arm around you crooks so he supports your head, the other grabbing the towel again. Exhaustion seems to have sluiced through you, and your eyes are nearly unfocused as he dabs at your mouth carefully. His blue eyes focus on the gentle curve of your lips, and your cheeks puff up before you swallow tightly and let out a shaking breath.

“You’re really close,” you mumble in that exhale. He tilts your chin to the light to make sure he hasn’t missed a spot, and your eyelids flutter as the corners of his lips quirk up. His Six Eyes pick up a muted yellow emanating from you, and it’s so warm against his skin that he can’t help but relish in the feeling. “You smell nice.”

“Good. I took a shower before I came today. Well, yesterday,” he amends softly. “Alright, let’s go before you hack up your other lung.”

“Funny.” Nonetheless, he scoops you back up onto his back and he rinses down the sink as you rest your head against his. He feels you breathing steadily, much easier now than before. Red swirls down the drains, and he watches the magenta petals slowly reveal their true colours. There’s a flash of white in the center of each one, and he wonders silently what flower it is and what it means.

Maybe he’ll find out some day.

When the kitchen’s back to the state they entered, he grabs the bag of food and holds onto your legs tightly as your arms around his neck shift and pull him closer.

This time, when he teleports, it’s not as jarring. Walking around the balcony, he makes sure no one’s in the area before checking that the door to the roof is locked and heading back out into the night air, towards where they can see the moon clearest.

“Hey, open your eyes,” he whispers over his ear, and your head shifts.

“Hm? Oh!” He feels you wriggle, but he doesn’t let you go as he walks closer to the spot he’s set up. Near the railing, a blanket surrounded by pillows is laid out surrounded by a few space heaters. The moon is hanging perfectly in front of them, and the light illuminates the forests in silver as a gentle wind whistles through. Tranquil, the only sound is his footsteps on wood as you manage to pull your legs free with a harsh twist of your torso. Your hand slaps against the railing and he whirls around to hold you up but you grit your teeth. “I can do it.”

Breathing in deeply, you pull yourself past him using mostly your arms. Your feet drag as if they’re not really attached to a living body but you still move steady onward, and he walks ahead to turn on the heaters and set the food down as far away as he can so it doesn’t spoil too quickly.

“Satoru,” you breathe as if for the first time,” it’s so fucking beautiful up here.” Looking up, his heartstrings twinge. Your face is bathed almost entirely in silver, and it drapes down your body like silk, illuminating the cord of your throat he can see above the scarf, the strength of your hands. A smile brighter than even the most blinding sun rays comes across your face and he finds that the moon pales in comparison as your knees begin to give.

Reaching forward, he helps you sink down slowly, and then sit down, legs hanging off the edge and then you’re leaning to rest your elbows on the middle bar of the wooden railing. You can’t stop staring at the moon, and Satoru can’t stop staring at you as he opens the box of daifuku and pops one into his mouth.

“The eclipse should be starting in a few minutes,” he says, checking his watch. 2:10. Four minutes to go. You finally tear your eyes away from the moon to look at him.

“I forgot…” you muse. “I forgot how bright… the moon was.”

He settles in beside you and offers a canned coffee, but you shake your head. He cracks it open for himself.

“We’re about to watch the moon change,” he notes. “But I read that it’ll last six hours.”

“Really?” Excited, you look up at the moon again. The lunar rays outline your already-pronounced eye bags but it also makes you look more beatific. “That’s just proof… our time here on Earth is so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. It really makes you—makes you think how much we really matter. Which doesn’t seem like a lot, compared to things like a… fucking lunar eclipse.”

The moon’s opinion doesn’t matter more than mine, he thinks. “Well, while we’re waiting for your next epiphany to hit you,” he says instead, “you never answered my question.”

You smile, intrigued. “What’s that?”

“What if we removed the flowers bit by bit, rather than all at once?” he asks. Your gaze snaps to him, but he only regards you honestly. “That gives you a fighting chance.” Your eyes widen imperceptibly, and he grabs another mochi ball and takes a bite.

“The roots and flowers are too entangled in my chest to be removed safely. It’s either they remove my lungs completely, or not at all, and finding a… match for one lung is hard enough, much less two perfect lungs…” You trail off and shrug. “Well, that’d take forever… and I wouldn’t get much… longer, anyway. I’m a sorcerer. I always knew… I was going to die, so why not die on my own t-terms?”

He frowns. “Why not try?”

“Give me your phone.”

He does so, and watches you type in a query you must’ve typed before with how quick your lethargic fingers fly over the screen before you’re shoving it back towards him and leaning forward on the railing, chin to your forearms. You don’t even look at him, as if you don’t want to watch him crumble.

He reads: The first year after the transplant is the most critical period wrought with surgical complications, chances of rejection, and infection… Although there are some reports of some people living for 20 years post-transplant, many people do not make it past 10 years and only half make it past 5…

His stomach curdles. “Five years is better than nothing.”

“Five years worrying when my lungs are going to… kick it,” you correct. “Besides, my ribs are mangled by the roots. And my heart. My stomach. My spine. I’m undernourished, exhausted, and everything in here”—you gesture slowly around your abdomen—“is doing overtime. My body’s too weak to handle any kind of surgery that wouldn’t heal me… immediately.”

Your eyes find his, and it’s as if lightning strikes through him like a spear—piercing cold and electrifying. You’re beginning to blue in the lips like you’re freezing to death, but he’s sweating under the blast of the heaters.

Pulling off his hoodie, he drapes it around your shoulders. You don’t react anymore than: “Sucks, but that’s how it is.”

A few more minutes pass by in silence. Their knees knock into one another, and Satoru can’t stop looking at you as you breathe in the home you left months ago, head lifted to the inky universe.

“You know I can tell when you’re—when you’re angry with me,” you utter, not looking at him. “No matter how much you smile at me, you’re still too passive aggressive to cover it up.”

The words spill out of his mouth as you lower your gaze to him. “I’m sorry.” No sense in lying.

“That’s okay.” You smile for a moment, like he hasn’t said something worth ruining a night over, but when you look up at the stars, it fades. Wistful, you cock your head at the moon that hasn’t gone away just yet and lower your chin to your arms again. “It’s not really something that was… fair of me to ask anyway.”

Just as the moon turns yellow, he remembers something. Bending back to root through your backpack, he excuses himself. You frown. “What are you—“

“I got a camera for this occasion,” he announces, withdrawing the camera and a plastic bag, leaning back to snap a quick picture of you. You squint at the flash, mouth opened in an incredulous smile and face half-turned away, before the photo rolls out. “Like the one you used to carry around.”

“Some memories to hold on to, huh.” You reach for the camera and your fingers wrap around it, aiming it right at him. A flash and two peace signs later, another image joins the one of you Satoru slides into the plastic zip bag. “Hold on. I want to take another one.”

“We should do one of both of us.”

“Ugh, fine… I don’t look good at all, though.“

“Too late.” He snatches the camera from you and sticks out his hand, dragging an arm around your shoulders and you lean into him, temple against his cheek as he snaps another photo, and then another of him making a stupid face. Another of you mid-laugh. You’re wheezing for air as he keeps grabbing the polaroids as fast as he can with the arm that’s around your shoulder, leading to a bunch of jostling that has you in stitches at his frantic panic whenever the new photo chugs out of the slit.

When he’s had his fill of making you laugh, Satoru leaves you alone to look at the moon. He can’t stop grinning stupidly with every photo and while you watch the moon slowly descent into the earth’s shadow, he shuffles through the photos he just took of them together, trying to brand them to memory.

The way he looks at you in these photos makes him believe in something. In something that could’ve been there if they had more time, and he could convince you to open your heart up to a new possibility.

Another hour passes. The moon hangs a strange transition between black and blood red and a paler peach orange. A glimmering yellow dot sparkles below it, and he wonders if that’s Mars.

The forests seem almost hauntingly quiet, and no one has spoken in the darkness. You regard the moon, so enraptured, and more photos have joined the zip bag, but they’re mostly of you. He’s managed to sneak them in by turning off the flash and upping the brightness settings so it’d still be visible, and he hopes you never realize that he’s got them.

Satoru has never been interested in astronomy, but the stars in your eyes are changing his mind.

He’s dug his hand into the bag of dorayaki already. He remembers it’s supposed to be for you, too, but his hands are too empty without the camera, his brain going a mile a minute and the air absolutely quiet with nothing.

Twenty minutes ago, you asked him to help you take off your coat so you can pull on his hoodie, and haven’t moved since zipping yourself back up. The air smells only of canned coffee and the stinging wind carrying the scent of cedar. Feet swinging, he drapes his arms over the railing and looks up at the red moon.

It is pretty. Magnificent, and ominous, almost. The night is so much darker without the moon. Sheesh, colder, too. I wonder if you’re feeling okay. Maybe I should check, but you don’t seem to be shaking. Worst comes to worst, I could up the level on the space heaters…

“I don’t think I ever got to hear his last words,” you muse quietly, voice cracking, rousing him from his monologue. His head swings to you. Your eyes are barely open as you rest your cheek against your forearm, and you don’t look at Satoru despite your head turned towards him. Instead, he can watch the pieces of you fall apart without your scrutiny. “I used to think… that I didn’t care.”

“Do you want me to tell you?” he asks slowly as you continue to stare blankly over his ear. Your chest stutters in its inhale and the exhale is just as shaky as you smile a bit to yourself. He takes that as answer, and as he speaks, he sees Suguru’s smile—bright against the darkness of the alleyway, and a reminder of a simpler time. Satoru’s heart quickens from the memory “‘At least curse me a little at the very end.’”

You’re quiet for a moment, as if soaking that in. Then, you draw yourself up and sigh. “That sounds like him.”

You say it fighting off a laugh, even though it wracks your body with such intense pain you can barely breathe. You begin to wheeze not even a second in, and still, your face is cracked into an agonizing smile as you blink, tears slipping down your cheeks. Your eyes squeeze shut and your body goes stiff as you cough, hands flying over your lips. Your shoulders shake so uncontrollably it’s like an earthquake in your body, but Satoru cannot find it in him to calm you down as you hunch over yourself.

It comes in its own course, until you’re nothing but a gasping body, crying into bloodied palms cupping purple flowers, and the low sobs that spill and stutter out of your throat makes Satoru wish he never told you.

“‘At least curse me a little at the very end,’” you repeat to yourself, voice raw and iron-like, and your eyes finally rise to meet his. Nothing but hollow purple pierces through him once more. “Yeah… Yeah, that sounds like him.”

An apology bubbles at his lips, but you continue before he can even begin. Your hands fall to to your laps, and you look at the decaying flowers, thumbs stroking the petals. “I could never make him truly happy… could I? Just like he said… nothing would’ve been good enough for him while we lived in this kind of world. No matter how many times I sat by him while he swallowed… swallowed those curses, held his hand, held him, I would have never been… enough to make him laugh from his heart.” Your tears cast dark shadows. “I held him, Satoru, with all my might… and I still felt him slip away between my fingers.”

That’s how Satoru learns you were there that day, December 24th, not a snowflake in sight. Just a few metres away, you stood for only a moment before you walked away from the man you loved so he could die without any regret, at the cost of your own guilt eating you alive.

No one speaks after that. Satoru cleans your hands slowly, carefully, giving attention to each finger, before swiping your lips, and then he wipes your tears away but you’re not crying anymore.

You just look up at the moon emptily and he scoots closer in hopes to keep your returning trembling at bay.

“Ten years is a very… long time to love someone.” You break the silence. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. Fifteen, thirty minutes? He looks at you, and your lips press into a thin smile. He lifts his arm so you can scoot up close next to him. Your eyes never leave his face, regarding him with new clarity. “I just… realized.”

“Ten years is a very long time for anything,” he replies quietly, their faces very close. Their noses brush, and a warmth spreads through his cheeks as he presses the tip of your nose against his. You don’t pull away. Instead, you almost lean closer. Your nose is cold against his hot face, and he rubs it slowly with his own, trying to send heat back into your skin.

“A very long time to… wait.” Your eyes flutter shut, and your breath is warm over his lips as you slowly tilt your head so their foreheads meet. His hand squeezes your waist. You smell like the hospital, but there’s still the fragrance of the fresh-cut grass and herbs clinging to your skin as he moves his head just to the side so his nose presses into your frozen cheek. Your arm moves as if dragging through honey until it’s wrapped around his neck, palm flat against his shoulder, just as their brows press against one another.

Something ignites inside his chest, incinerating the rot that seems to grow inside his own chest—it’s his dread, he realizes a moment later. An ugly knot of dread for what’s to come, the guilt, the cold grief that’s just out of reach.

It’ll unfurl soon, he knows, but for now, he welcomes the relief you bring him.

In this moment, you are his, and he is yours, and that is all that matters.

His eyes close. His cheeks are burning hotter than the heaters surrounding them, and he feels a smile pulling at his lips as your fingers curl against the back of his neck.

“When will people… stop waiting?” you ask him, hushed like a secret.

Eyes opening, he answers you in the same soft voice, “Probably when they die.”

Your eyes crack open once more and he catches a sliver between your heavy lids. You’re so close he sees every detail of your irises, the pores of your eye bags, the way memories flicker through your pupils like fish in a river.

Your exhausted smile grows more genuine—something inside you seems to rear its bright little head, but it’s sad, and he realizes, then, what you must’ve been thinking. Words fumble at his mouth, but he doesn’t let anything slip as you lift your face away to rest your head against his shoulder.

You’re dozing against him. Satoru is staring up at the moon in your stead. It’s nearly fully that famous shade of dark blood red, but not quite. He can’t hear anything except the buzz of the space heaters and your breathing. His arm is still wrapped tight around you, holding you flush against him. He’s wished he’d done it so many times before that now, he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.

You’re dying. Even as you rest against him, he feels it. The weakness in your body, the way you’ve turned ghost-like. The strength of your Cursed Energy has become more prominent now that you don’t have the energy to channel it properly, and it’s centred so strongly in your chest that he can feel it poking curiously at him, leaving little marks, a souvenir for when you’re gone.

His fingers dig into your side. You let out a noise, head shifting, and he rips his gaze away away from the sky as your hand falls away from where it had rested around his neck into his lap.

“Satoru?” you whisper brokenly, and he nods, smiling. He pulls you closer, but their bodies are so pressed against each other that it only serves to make you huff a bit.

“Hey. You’re still with us, don’t worry,”

“Not worried,” you mumble, lifting your head with difficulty. “Just glad you’re here.” You tilt your face to the moon. “It’s still… red, huh…” You shake, your hand at the hem of his shirt twisting tightly. He reaches to squeeze your arm and hopes it’ll be enough now. “Pretty.” Throat dry, he does not answer. His white hair falls into his eyes as you look up at him, and he decays at the vulnerability in your gaze. “Aren’t you glad… that we saw the eclipse?”

Jaw clenching, he nods and tries his best to smile. Your hand lets go of his shirt and you shuffle up close enough that your other arm sneaks around his waist. Touching his chin with trembling fingers, your eyes glitter in the darkness of his shadow.

“I’m going to miss this. The moon, stars, how… fucking short… ’n’ beautiful life is,” you finally whisper, throat tight. “Makes shit worth living for. Maybe… won’t miss it… the most… but, top three.”

“Top three?” he echoes. “Top three sounds pretty good to me.”

“And, y’know what, Satoru?” you continue in the same low, husky tone, as if you’re about to change his world one more time.

He drops to the lowest, quietest voice he can manage and moves his head closer. Their noses nearly bump into each other again, and you smile as he quirks an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“You’re… going to miss me… more.”

Your hand on his waist travels up his shoulder and he feels the last of your strength in your muscles as you pull him towards you. Letting you, his arms wrap around your waist as your other arm shoots around his neck, clinging on so hard that he’s sure his spine might break.

Flattening his palms against your uneven back, he closes his eyes and slides a hand to cradle your head close.

“And promise… me something,” you breathe into his ear. Your lips brush the shell of his ear, and a shiver shoots down his spine.

“Anything.”

“When I kick it,” you whisper, “take my body, and bury me… yourself.”

Throat swelling shut, Satoru’s glad you can’t see the way the blood drains from his face as he nods and holds you tighter. “I will.”

“One more photo for the road?” he asks. You lift your head from his chest, and he looks as you reach to sweep his lips with cold, trembling fingers. He smiles, his hand on your thigh squeezing meaningfully even though you can barely feel it now. Your arms are bundled between your chest and his, and he hauls your legs on his thighs more securely up his lap, arm tightening around your torso.

“Satoru,” you murmur, tilting your head to him. His eyes never move from yours as he picks up the camera, and your hand falls from his lips. “I’m glad… that it was you.”

He snaps the shot and the only sound that fills the silence is the camera chugging out the polaroid. Your eyes are dark, murky and unfocused, and he feels your stammering inhale in his very lungs as he presses his forehead against yours.

“I’m happy it was you, too,” he whispers. You search his gaze for only a moment, and then turn your head to the moon once more.

Lowering the camera to the floor, he sneaks his other arm around you and rests his chin atop of your head, eyes sliding shut.

Nanami, Yaga, and Ijichi approach, dress shoes tapping against linoleum floors. Satoru and Shoko say nothing to them as they join in watching through the glass doors.

Satoru doesn’t like the room they’ve moved you to. It’s too full of machines, too open to passersby who could just look in if the curtains aren’t drawn, and even then…

It smells too clinical here. Too full of artificial light. The ICU is a mechanical sort of silence than the quiet peace of the dead-end hallway. There is no warmth, no books, no paintings. Your plants have been removed, and Nanami has taken all of them into his apartment except the red tulips which rest on the dinner table in Satoru’s kitchen.

You stopped being able to breathe on your own only a day after the eclipse. That was two days ago, and the ventilator is doing nothing more than prolonging your agony. Soon, the growths will block your lungs entirely, suffocating you from the inside out.

The doctors have stopped taking scans.

“It’s only a matter of time, now,” Shoko had said. “Her directive says we let her go as soon as she can’t come back.” Quieter: “Her pulse ox has been dropping. It won’t be long.”

Ijichi’s face is stony. Satoru doesn’t know why he focuses on him out of everyone. Leaning against the nurse’s station, he stares blankly at the Assistant Director’s. Maybe because he thought he’d be a wreck. Out of all of them, Ijichi’s the most emotional, but his lips are set firm from where he stands between Nanami and their principal.

Maybe Satoru’s just looking for permission to fall apart, but that’d be stupid.

I’m the strongest. I’ll be fine.

“I’m going to go in,” he announces. No one protests. Nanami sits down and crosses one leg over the other, fingers steepled and eyes indecipherable. Shoko sits beside him. There’s the faint scent of smoke clinging to her lab coat.

Ijichi dips his head, but doesn’t sit and Yaga excuses himself to talk to the nurse about your condition.

Satoru sanitizes his hands, approaches the door, and pulls it open before stepping in and sliding it shut behind him.

Click. Hiss.

The sound of the ventilator is the only thing that occupies the room. That and the monitors. It’s very dark, despite it being the middle of the day. Mostly because you can’t open your eyes wide enough to withstand the sun anymore, so Satoru had asked the nurses to bring the same blackout curtains from your room here. The lights are dimmed until it’s only an orange glow right behind your bed.

Click. Hiss.

Sitting down, he doesn’t take hold of your hand just in case you’re sleeping. The intubation tube rests on a pile of towels on your chest, and it takes a long time before your eyes open and your head tilts just enough to look. Your hand twists on top of the covers until your palm is tilted open.

He slips fingers in, takes hold. The feel of your skin making everything worse. You’re colder than you should be—it’s sweltering in this room, enough that Satoru is already beginning to sweat even through his short-sleeve—and your fingers just barely twitch against the back of his hand, tracing strange shapes.

You blink, tapping his knuckle, and he frowns.

“What’s up?” Withdrawing, he feels your nail scrape against his flesh and he looks down. Curiously, he takes your hand and places it on top of his so your fingers can touch the lines of his palm. “Are you spelling something out?” he asks, amused, glancing up again.

Another blink, slower this time.

He leans forward on his elbow to touch your cheek before resting his cheek against his fist.

“Alright, give it your best shot.”

Your eyelids flutter, lips trembling in a weak smile. Your index finger begins to trace shapes, kanji, into his palm. Your chest rises and fall slowly, pumped full of air by a machine hooked to your lungs, forcing breath into you as your writing grows sloppy by the passing second but you still persist.

ANGRY?

“Angry?” he repeats, and you blink slowly again, fingers insistent on grabbing his palm. Folding his fingers over yours, he arches his eyebrows. “If I was angry at a terminally ill patient, that’d make me the asshole here.” Your eyes squeeze shut, eyebrows rearranging in what he recognizes as your laugh in silence. More seriously, his hold on you tightens and he lifts his head to brush his fingers over your brow. You tilt your head more to him, gaze murky warm. “How’re you feeling?”

It takes a while, but he feels your hand shuffle back to trace your answer on his hand.

BETTER

“Better. Yeah?”

Another lethargic blink. Yes.

“It’s because of me, right? I knew it. I knew it. We should tell Shoko—I’m the newest medical innovation in town,” he proclaims, and his smile begs to slip off his face but he only forces it back on, shoves it into place. Your eyebrows move again, like you’re struggling to hold back your laugh. Your eyes slip shut and do not open again.

Your face goes lax a moment later, and your fingers loosen a bit, but he doesn’t let go. He just wants to touch your face and trace the lines into his memory.

Satoru stretches his thumb along the swell of your bottom lip while carefully avoiding the tube. He runs his knuckles down your cheek. His fingers brush your pulse point along your neck, and he feels the slow, weak beat.

Click. Hiss.

He thinks you’re asleep for a while, until your finger drags over the flesh of his palm and he looks down, hand lifting from your face.

“Hey, I’m still here,” he whispers, and your face turns towards him slightly, the tube in your mouth shuffling. He reaches forward, cupping your face and holding you still. “Hey. Don’t move. Your lungs are weaker than the rest of you and I’m not about to watch you die.” Something grabs onto the front of his shirt near his stomach and he looks down to see your fingers hooking on the cotton of his tee, twisting it weakly. “Oh, sorry.”

He draws back and slips his palm back into yours. Your index finger taps against the heel of his hand before your nail drags deliberately. One stroke. Then another, and another. Gojo wishes your eyes were open, because then he would be able to determine what the rest of the sentence could spell out before you’re done, but he’s patient.

HERE

“Here?” You tap on his hand. Yes. “What’s here?”

YOU AND ME

“You and me,” he repeats thoughtfully. “Yeah, I get that. At least… now you can see Suguru again, right?” Your hand goes still and he looks at your face, reaching to touch your cheek again. You’re placid—doll-like, eyes shut, living dead. “I’m a bit jealous of that, but you should rest easy. It’s been a hard few months, hasn’t it?”

Another weak twitch of your finger on his hand.

“No matter what happens, don’t think I’m angry at you, or the choices you’ve made,” he continues. “As long as you let me stay here, I won’t waste a single second of it, okay?” Tap. He squeezes your hand so tightly your eyebrows twitch, even as you slip away from him. “For all your saying that you’re weaker than me, I never thought that. Not really.” Satoru raises your hand to his lips and he closes his eyes. “Being the strongest is pretty lonely. Used to be so fucking cocky about it, huh. Thought no one could touch me or the people I cared about because everyone would be too scared.”

Your fingers curl against his palm and he lowers his head to press your knuckles against his brow.

“I was wrong. I’d give anything to have you both back, but I can’t, and I hate it. You’re supposed to be with me at the top. I don’t want to be alone again.” His eyes are burning from the strain of keeping them open, but he refuses to miss a second of you being alive when the time is trickling like sand in an hourglass. He feels it like a heavy stare on his back, wondering if this next breath will be the last one before your brain finally decides to shut down. Your organs have been shutting down for nearly weeks now. He knows it’s out of pure selfishness that they’re dragging precious moments into agonizing hours.

He knows you’re exhausted.

Resting his chin on your fingers, he swallows. “I don’t know how to let you go. I wished I’d come sooner. I was careless. I know that. We could’ve had more time…”

Your fingers squeeze his as tight as you can before letting go. Somehow, he hears your voice in his ear. Something about being grateful for the time they did have.

“You were right, silly.” He chuckles to himself, bitter, anguished, and lowers your hand back to the bed, not letting go yet. “Ten years is a long time to wait. I let you down, but I’ll make sure you go easy. I promise.”

Satoru lays his head down on his forearm and he swears he catches your lips pull into the faintest smile. He stays there for hours, watching your face, stretching up to touch your unmoving face. The only sound is his steady breaths, the beep of your monitors and the click-hiss of your ventilator.

It’s 1:04 PM when he falls asleep to the sleepy circles you trace into his wrist

It’s 6:22 PM when only one of them wakes up.

At 11:00 AM the next morning, during one of the hourly tests, they declare you brain-dead. With the announcement of your directive being honoured by your chosen proxy, Satoru himself, classes are cancelled and they are scheduled to take you off life support at six.

Ijichi brings them lunch and dinner. Satoru doesn’t eat. Only sits by your side, leaned back into the chair and looking at you while he still can until the clock ticks and ticks and ticks towards doomsday. The kids come to say final goodbyes while he watches on. Inumaki, as always, brings Panda through his phone, and Satoru wishes there could’ve been some way to sneak Panda into a high-class hospital just so their last moments together aren’t cheapened by a screen.

Shoko enters five minutes before it’s time, hand finding his shoulder and he looks up just long enough to catch her blank stare resting on your face.

She doesn’t say anything, only moves to the other side of the bed and sits down in the other chair.

The doctor pumps you full of sedation drugs, so you won’t feel any of the pain, unhooks the machines, and extubates you, explaining all the while what he’s doing just to fill the silence. As he pulls the tube from your throat, something in Satoru turns icy when a purple petal is plastered to the side of the plastic, but the doctor does not acknowledge it any more than murmuring that he will give them privacy.

Your rattling breaths echo in his ears as he watches the numbers slowly drop, but even your inhales fade to nothing more than soft, slight wheezes. The tape has left a strange mark around your mouth, and you’re unmoving otherwise. Shoko gently reaches and touches the eye bags that are, for once, worse than hers before shaking her head and pulling back. Everyone else waits outside.

Hours pass by in torturous years.

Satoru wears the same stony expression the whole while, finally surrendering into his desire to hold your hand.

His heart hardens. He goes completely still. Shoko talks but he can’t really hear anything except the slow beeps of your monitor once you pass certain thresholds.

There are nurses waiting outside. They’ve grown used to the company, he thinks. He thinks one or two are crying. Soon enough, they’ll come in to turn off the machines tracking your vitals so the sounds don’t drive them crazy, banging in home that you’re dead, dead, dead.

After a while, Satoru realizes you aren’t quite breathing, although your chest moves. Sometimes, there’s a gasping sound, like someone surprised the breath out of you and you’re inhaling sharply to replace it, and he imagines your fingers twitching against his hand one last time.

It’s very slow. Much slower than he imagined it to be. Maybe you’re still fighting. Maybe you don’t want to go.

Satoru can’t imagine why. Where you’re going, there’s no pain, or exhaustion, or blood. Where you’re going, Suguru waits.

He leans against his hand, elbow on the slight incline of your bed. Letting go of your hand, he touches your face, feels the soft puff of your breath, the curve of your jaw. You’ve lost so much weight from the sickness you barely look like yourself, but you’re still you. The cursed energy is still yours. His Six Eyes sees it. His soul feels it.

It tangles with his own where he touches you, and a wave of exhaustion washes over him.

He wants to sleep, let time pass, and wake up to you dead.

It seems a much better alternative to watching you slip away, but he’s always been selfish when it came to personal affairs.

You die two hours later.

Shoko closes her eyes and leans back into her chair as the nurse comes in to turn off the droning monitor. Her face is dry and she takes long, measured breaths as if trying to temper something swirling inside her. Satoru’s hard heart cracks as he squeezes your hand to see if you’ll wake up. It doesn’t quite sink in, even though he can hear someone crying outside, and when your limp hand doesn’t react at all, he shakes his head and gets up, pulling his sunglasses off the collar of his shirt and sliding them back onto his face.

He shoves his hands into his pockets and rakes his face over your body, your face.

He’s seen a dozen dead bodies before, maybe more. You look just like he did on December 24th. At peace, younger. Like you’re glad the suffering is over, and Satoru turns his face away sharply and leaves the room. He doesn’t know what to say and he’s not sure if his voice is still here.

Everything feels dry and dull and grey.

“Sensei,” Itadori whispers wetly, reaching out a hand, making him stop. The students are all sitting in a small area, but they stand upon seeing him leave the room, and he gives them a plastic smile that makes all of them flinch. Maki is scowling furiously at the ground as Inumaki takes hold of her bicep but she flings the hand off and stalks away, hiding her red face.

“It’s going to be okay,” he tells them as Kugisaki runs after Maki. He watches the two go before turning his attention back on the students. “The important thing is that she didn’t suffer. Arrangements will be made, but there won’t be any rush, alright?” The words feel lacking, but he still manages to smile. “It’s been a long day. Go home. Rest, shower, eat. Let’s remember that she doesn’t want us to be here, slumping around looking like idiots. She wants you to all to take care of yourselves.” He arches his eyebrows insistently at his students, but they don’t seem to hear him.

They’re only looking through the glass doors at your coolling corpse, at Shoko who stands, and speaks to the doctor when he comes back in.

Fushiguro is the only one really looking at him, and the teenager has a silent question in his stare.

Satoru shakes his head, and Megumi nods.

“Classes are cancelled for the rest of the week,” Yaga adds. “Ijichi will drive you all back to the college in thirty minutes. Make sure you tell the girls.” He directs this to Inumaki, who nods.

“Salmon.”

Later, Megumi finds him smoking a cigarette leaning against Shoko’s car. Satoru’s never liked the taste of the stuff so he doesn’t really know why he’s smoking other than the fact he doesn’t know what to do.

Up is down, left is right, and you’re dead.

Nothing seems right, but Megumi gives him a good excuse to stop. Flinging the cig to the ground, he stomps out the ember and re-arranges his expression into that shielded smile of his, but it feels a bit weaker. Sharp, janky, wrong.

“Why haven’t you gone home yet? Ijichi should’ve taken you all back by now,” Satoru says wearily as Fushiguro stops before him, hands shoved in his pockets.

“I stayed behind to look for you,” informs Megumi. He looks a bit fractured, but the boy’s never been one to wear his heart on his sleeve. Satoru makes a mental note to dig into his psyche at a later date, and stretches an arm out to wrangle the boy into a hug against his side.

For all of his complaints and mumbles and scowls, Megumi’s body still relaxes a bit against his, and even though he doesn’t hug him back, when he tells him, “You should go home and get some sleep, too. These past few months haven’t been easy on you, either,” Satoru feels a part of his old self raise its bloody head.

Glancing down at a head of spiky hair, he knocks his knuckles into his student’s skull. “Have you been keeping an eye on me?”

Megumi crosses his arms, glares over Satoru’s elbow, but even his voice is quieter. “You need to take care of yourself.”

Satoru smiles again. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “But you’re not worried about me, are you, Fushiguro?”

Megumi ducks his head and doesn’t answer any more than, “Someone has to pick up the slack, now.”

“Thanks, Ijichi,” Satoru says with a huff, digging the shovel into the ground and stepping on the metal edge. “Not every day you help me carry a dead body and dig a grave, huh.”

“No, sir,” Ijichi replies. He sounds a bit hoarse and tired as he wipes at his brow.

It’s been two days since you’ve died. The college grounds feels a lot less lively. He took a walk in the gardens yesterday, and saw Yaga planting new flowers. He had strode past and ignored the tears on his sensei’s face, and absently wonders now why he hasn’t cried yet as he grabs the shovel and yanks it out of the dirt, tossing it to Ijichi.

It feels kind of stupid, but despite how eviscerated everything inside him feels, he just can’t.

Either way, he’ll deal with it when it becomes a problem.

Satoru wipes at his brow, too, with a heavy sigh, and heads to where a cloth-covered shape is resting on the ground. Your corpse is light in his arms as he bridal carries you to the hole he’s just dug into the grass. It looks suspicious as hell, but it’d probably be even worse if he’d been walking around with a dead body over his shoulder, stitched back together after an autopsy by your best friend.

Good thing they’re only in the forests outside the college campus. There won’t be any civilians for miles.

“You can go,” he says over his shoulder, setting you down by the hole they’ve dug. He takes in a deep breath to calm himself and Ijichi’s footsteps hesitate before beginning and fading away moments later. Falling to his knees, Satoru begins to carefully unfold the cloth just enough that he can see your face and chest.

He squints behind his blindfold at the ripples of energy still seeping from the stitches along your chest. Sinking his hands into the lush, cold grass, he twists the blades with rigid fingers at the stench of rot coming from the curse before he draws back.

Hands on his lap, he stares at your face. You look frozen in time, eyes closed, skin clean, and there’s that unnatural stillness about you that only comes with the dead. It’s strange. He probably couldn’t have imagined someone so vivacious could be so motionless if he hadn’t seen it first with Suguru.

He had asked not to hear the results of your autopsy. Not now, maybe not ever. It’d be fresh lemon juice in a weeping wound. All he knows is that the curse clings to your corpse, and Shoko could only remove the growths that were no longer being fed for examination.

“Weird that this is where we’ve found ourselves,” he begins humourlessly. “With how we were living, Suguru always said I’d die first. Doing something stupid, being too cocky.” He slides a hand into his pocket and withdraws something he’d snipped this morning from the last plant you had grown with your Technique. A red tulip with a short stem that’s a bit crushed, and beginning to decay, but… everything can’t be perfect.

“I never thought I’d outlive you.”

Reaching forward, he places the tulip gently on your chest, takes your cold arms that are just beginning to loosen up again from rigor mortis, and folds your hands over the stem.

“Eternal love, and fame,” he repeats to himself. The energy nearly swallows up the tulip, but as it radiates from your chest, flickers in the slight breeze, Satoru sees flashes of red and green, much brighter than everything else around him, and knows that it won’t be consumed. Sitting down, he hugs his legs to his chest and stares at your dead body blankly, chin on his knees.

He had had a plan. He was going to just… put the flower there, exorcise the curse inside you, and bury you so you could finally rest. He wouldn’t hesitate because this is something you entrusted him to do.

But this is the first time in months he hasn’t had a cloud hanging over his head, and his body feels so much ligher without the burden of your disease hanging off his shoulders, that he can’t help but relish in it. Speak to you without worrying about saying the wrong thing, of people overhearing. He’s finally… free.

It feels fucking awful.

“You were right, by the way.” His voice is dull, resonating deep in his chest. There is no August sun breaking through the trees above, only from behind him, and the golden beams touch your chin, down your throat and chest. It sets the red of the tulip on fire. “I miss you. And I wish I could’ve said so many things, but we ran out of time.” A faint smile. “No matter what you think, Suguru loved you. It’s why he came to see you one last time. I knew him better than I knew myself, and I know he was happiest knowing you were at his side.” Closing his eyes, the ache in his heart swells as he utters out, “So was I.”

Burying his his face in his forearms, a cup inside him seems to tip over and everything feels too hot for him to breathe in. Ripping his blindfold off and tossing it away from him blindly, his eyes snap open wide as he tries to breathe. His ribs constrict his lungs, and he presses his eyes into his arms, hands shaking as he sinks his nails into his biceps.

Harsh pants puff against his face as he tries to reign in his shuddering, but he can’t. The knot in his heart twists until he thinks he might die, and distantly, he hears soft footsteps so faint he’s not sure if he imagines it. Gritting his teeth, he stifles the bruising feeling welling up in his throat.

Gentle hands brush down his shoulders soothingly, sending a wave of nausea through his body, and he jerks away.

“Damn it, Ijichi, leave me alone!” Wrenching his head up, his eyes widen at the figure crouched in front of him.

Arms falling lax to the grass and his knees widening, his jaw drops as a thumb teases his parted lips. You step between his legs and crouch down, limber and strong. You look healthy again, bright eyes and full cheeks, young like spring, and when you smile, it fills him utterly with light. In your hands is his blindfold, and you ruffle his hair, tilting your head curiously.

“I’m not Ijichi, but… do you really want me to go so soon?” you ask as he rakes his gaze up and down your body. There is still a purple shell encasing your legs, but as you shift your weight on your feet, it falls like fragile eggshells to the ground and sinks into the dirt, disappearing for good. Peering around you, his eyes widen when he sees shards of a purple shell in shatters all over your corpse.

He’d only seen this once before, eight months ago, with a certain student of his and the cursed spirit of the girl he loved and who loved him.

Face burning, his gaze snaps back to you as you poke his cheek and continue to grin. Leaning back on his hands, he tries to stop the intense shattering of his walls by clenching his jaw, but the shudders overtake his body, his chest, his throat until he’s letting out an ugly sound and blinking hard as if that’ll hide it away from you. Something devastatingly warm immediately shoots down his cheeks. Covering his mouth with the crook of his elbow, he turns his face away but your warm hands cradle him carefully, thumbs brushing underneath his eyes.

“Yuuta, you’re right. Rika isn’t cursing you.”

“No,” he whispers, arm falling. His fingers sink into his shoulder as if that would be enough to wake him from this nightmare. “No. I can’t—Did I—Did I kill you?” You squint studiously, not letting go of his face as he lifts the hand from his shoulder and reaches to touch you. It shakes, and he snaps it into a fist to stop it, looking at his fingers that have done so much harm—shed so much blood. “Did I do this to you?”

“You cursed Rika.”

You chuckle fondly, like he’s said something silly, and set a hand on his fist, pushing it down firmly. “You can’t control how other people react to your words, Satoru.” Your voice changes, and your eyebrows draw together in something bittersweet. “And you can’t change something you didn’t know. The chances of you cursing me and me cursing myself are irrelevant. It doesn’t change anything about where we are, now.”

Satoru watches you, lips parted, as you tie the blindfold around his neck. You feel so real, so close, and as you slide your hands down his shoulders, to his chest, he jerks his head down to stare at your shoes in the grass.

So he did.

“I see,” he murmurs.

That’s it, then.

“Satoru, please look at me,” you whisper, fingers stretching to his chin. With the gentlest of pressures, you prompt him up and he finds your face, your smile, where all colours begin and end. For a moment, the world seems to inhale all of its life back into its core—the leaves whistle, the sun is warm and golden, and he lifts his hand to touch you again, but you pull back before he can.

“I can only thank you for being my friend. For staying with me until the very end.” You laugh quietly to yourself and lift your hand from his face. “I would make a joke about a curse, but I know it still hurts, so I’ll save it for when I see you on the other side, okay? When it heals a bit more.”

“It’s never going to hurt less,” he croaks. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know how much you mean to me.”

Your smile softens. Satoru tries to eternalize that expression forever. “I’m honoured, but, I hope it does heal. I don’t want you to learn how to carry so much pain around. I don’t want you to be numb.” You touch his cheek again, as if you’re trying to soak in as much of him as you can, too.

“Do you have any last words?” he manages to ask raspily, and you chuckle, tilting your head and running your hand through his hair again. His eyes flutter shut at the scratch, the sensation of your nails against his scalp, and then there’s your hand at his jaw, holding him all together. He wants to hold you so badly he thinks his muscles might cramp into stone at the desire.

“What does it matter?” you ask curiously. “You already know how I feel. That will never change. And if you ever want to know what I think, or what I’d do, you can just ask Shoko and think about it yourself. You know me well enough to not need me nagging about it.”

“But, it won’t be enough.”

“It never will be,” you agree. “But isn’t it wonderful that we even got to know each other at all?” You lean forward, and his eyes flutter shut as you hold him to your chest. He can’t hear your heartbeat anymore, but your warmth is almost the same. The echo of your voice rumbles in his head as you speak, and maybe that is enough. “If you want my last words, you already have them.”

You draw him back, and give him one last smile. The air shifts golden yellow to his Six Eyes, for the last time.

“Until we meet again, my Satoru.”

You fade without giving him a chance to answer, taking all the colour with you.

Staring at the empty air where you had been just a moment before with wide, burning blues, he whispers your name brokenly before burying his hands in the dirt, squeezing his eyes shut, and letting boiling tears scald his face red.

“If you want my last words, you already have them.”

Spinning the key ring on his finger, Satoru looks dully at the door knob he had just unlocked. There’s no one in the hall, and he debates whether or not he should turn around, but Shoko had insisted. There’d been something left for him in your old apartment, and according to her, it would be spoiled soon if he didn’t go.

“Oh, what the hell,” he mutters, catching the key in his palm and shoving it into his long coat. Tugging it tighter around himself, he twists the knob and pushes it open. He can’t remember the last time he was in here. Maybe five or six months ago, when they both had a day off that didn’t need to be spent at the college.

There aren’t any plants anymore. He supposes Nanami, Ijichi, maybe even Yaga have taken them. He swears he’s seen a few in the gardens lately, but who is he to say? Toeing off his shoes, he makes his way down the hall.

Everything is just as you left it, with clean counters and empty tables. The curtains are spread, letting in so much September sunlight. It hits random display pedestals of different sizes, all the surfaces big enough to fit a pot on. Your watering can sits by the sink. There are photos hanging on the walls, propped up on the desk, on your shelves, polaroids taped to the walls.

Reminders that someone did live here. That there is a whole life unknown to strangers but evidence enough that whoever used to be here, they had people who would miss them.

Walking up to the counter, he drags his fingers along the surface, feeling the dust collect up to a square of pale light. A clean circle is all that’s left as a clue that there used to be something there, and his heart twists.

Who knew he could miss fucking plants of all things?

Sweeping his gaze around, he brushes off the dust on his jacket and hooks a thumb on his blindfold, sweeping the area with an eccentric eye. The TV is off, your bookshelves are in their usual untidy state, but even the reaching vines of the bean plant is gone from the highest shelf.

“They really scooped this place dry,” he muses dryly to no one. He can still hear the music you’d play for late nights, the smell of dumpling soup. He walks down the hall and still remembers how many steps it takes to reach the bathroom that guests would use.

He had hunched over that bath on December 25th, and let water soak through his hair as strong fingers worked the sweat from his scalp and skin.

Four more steps to the guest best room on the right, and another three to the end of the hall where a door leads to your room. It’s already open, and he steps in easily, tugging his blindfold all the way down off his face. Hair falling over his eyes, he sweeps it aside and surveys the room. The walls are still that pretty shade of cream, and your bed is made carefully, dark olive blankets resting atop your white sheets. He smiles to himself, despite the twang in his chest.

Walking deeper, he approaches the cabinet by your bathroom, and picks up the photo you have by your jewelry stand.

A smile curls his mouth. He remembers this one. First year, their first September. All four of them had gone together to Sapporo for the autumn festival.

He sets the photo back down and looks into the bathroom. Your toiletries are all lined up, waiting for their next use, and he swallows as he raises his gaze up to the mirror. His blue eyes look a big too big on his face from the past month alone, and there are red-purple half moons printed onto his face that have only just started to fade. He swears it only looks worse because of how much pale light is streaming in from the windows, and he tugs at his collar uncomfortably, clearing his throat.

Turning around, he looks at the offenders for making him look so awful, and finds a medium-sized pot sitting on the window seat. It’s the only thing sitting on the flat, wooden surface, in partial shade and almost unfurling before his very eyes.

Satoru frowns, walking around your bed to inspect the plant.

The flowers are a warm magenta colour, and his eyes widen at the flash of white he can see leading to the center of each bloom. Brushing a thumb over the petals, his jaw sets as he tilts his head to get a better look at the plant. So this is what was growing inside of you. Huh.

There’s another slip of white near the dirt, and his eyebrows furrow, fingers seeking the thing. It crinkles when he touches it, and his frown deepens as he manages to grasp it, pulling it free underneath the leaves and stems of the plants. Sitting down beside the pot, he dusts off the dirt clinging to the paper, and reads his name along the front in your print before flipping the envelope around. There’s something sticking out of it, a sloping shape that’s hard but not too big.

Curiosity peaked, he tears the envelope open carefully and peers inside. A binder clip is inside, holding something together, and he flips it upside down, letting everything fall. The letter slides out first, followed by whatever the binder clip is holding together and he squeezes his thighs together so it doesn’t fall to the floor.

Setting the letter aside, he picks the bundle up.

Polaroids.

They’re polaroids of different sizes that have him smiling despite the heavy sorrow twisting his entire chest.

Various pictures of Satoru, Suguru, Shoko, and you together, and he finds most of them are of him and you. Pictures of him hiding behind plants of various sizes, a picture of him drinking soju, because Suguru liked it the most and insisted he try, while leaning against Shoko who was knocking back a shot of tequila. There is a shot of Suguru, wet with mud and smiling like sunshine, while a drenched Satoru was in the background, flipping the camera off in the middle of a storm.

More and more pictures, enough to spill out of his lap, and he picks up each one, desperate to remember when or where you took them.

And, sometimes, he can’t. Sometimes, they are just moments that he’s lost because he never thought they’d be important, and now moments he’d give anything to remember.

There are pictures of a fern he had named their first year, little annotations on the bottom of some others. Dates, but with no context otherwise. Names scribbled in black ink.

You’re in a lot of them, your smile timeless, your joy infectious even through film.

Arms slung around Suguru, face smushed against his, artfully blurry perhaps on accident, and annotated with scrawl that read: I call this masterpiece “Dumb Sweethearts” by Gojo Satoru :)

A picture of him and Shoko and Suguru, of them in one of Tokyo’s night markets, you behind the camera, the lights flashing and warm and pink, making them all look like they’ve transported to some other kind of cyberpunk world.

You and Shoko lounging in the gardens, having a tiny picnic at your insistence, and in Suguru’s handwriting in black: JUST GIRLS BEING PALS

Satoru stares at Suguru’s writing the longest, not even at his words, just the strokes of his pen. This is a new part of him Satoru thought had been destroyed, and he starves for it. It’s like his one and only lives and breathes in the ink, in those snapshots of him caught in eternal youth. When they’d been happy and unaware and not innocent, but cocky enough to think they could rule the world.

It’s hungry, the way he goes through each photo, searching for another glimpse of you, of him, of them together, until Satoru is all out of moments to feed on, and still, he feels empty, flicking through the last few photos.

You in a pool, arms wrapped around Shoko and beaming like the sun.

A shot of Satoru and Suguru climbing trees shot from below, your eyes and skeptically raised eyebrows in frame, captioned big dumb monkeys

And the last one…

He holds it to the sunlight and his gaze softens.

A selfie of you kissing Suguru on the cheek. It’s mostly dark, but they were definitely in the bathroom, and the flash made Suguru’s outstretched arm look pale as a ghost, but even so, there’s no mistaking the happiness captured there. He was sticking out his tongue, winking, and red as a beet so he was either drunk or you had said something or both. Your arms were wrapped around his neck, nose squished against his cheek, eyes squeezed tight as he took the shot.

Turning it over, Satoru’s heart plummets into his chest. In Suguru’s clean, blocky writing:

THE GIRL IM GOING TO MARRY ONE DAY <3

And crossed out is your reply followed by a little note:

dummy doesnt have the nerve to propose SHHH!!!! ONE DAY C:

One day.

It sounds so much emptier now.

He lowers the photo back to his lap, and glances around him, at all these scattered moments captured forever. Gathering them up again, he relives them all over again, looking at each photo for longer to see if he’s missed anything, but mostly his stare lingers on your face, and on Suguru’s, and his own, too, because he can’t remember what it felt like back then, but he is sure it feels so much better than now.

The polaroids come together a neat stack and he is careful not to scratch any of them when he clips them together. The top photo is of you with your arms wrangled around Suguru and Satoru, your face split in a maniacal laugh, their mouths open in shock, eyes bulging in how you must’ve scared them witless.

Shoko’s messy writing at the bottom, for it must’ve been her who had taken the photo: BREAKING NEWS: Japan’s Strongest Conquered by a Woman.

A smile cracks his weary face and he runs a thumb over their faces before sliding the photos back into the envelope for safe-keeping.

Then, he grabs the letter. His name is written again on the first flap, and he reads it three times over before unfolding the paper, not quite ready but also not sure if he ever will be.

Immediately, a faint, herbal-like scent slashed with antiseptic flows from the page and his stomach curdles as your script pours down the page.

Swallowing, Satoru shifts and leans against the wall, hiking a foot up onto the seat and holding your inked characters to the light. There’s a date inscribed at the top.

Thursday.

The first Thursday after you had been released from the hospital. Your last Thursday before you were back in for good.

“Shit.”

He folds the letter again and tilts his head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling.

Does he want to read this? Does he really want to fucking read this?

Taking a deep breath, he clears his throat and lowers his gaze to stare determinedly ahead of him. The purple flowers greet him warmly and he shakes the shiver out of his body before tightening his grip on your letter and unfolding it again, forcing his eyes on the page.

My Satoru,

I sent all the pictures I had of Shoko to her, and she has some of Suguru, too. Now that I’m gone, there’s no use if I keep them. Maybe you two could share some time, laugh it up over these old memories. I know she says she can’t stand you, but to be honest, who else is there that will remember us now? Who else is there to remember Suguru for more than his bloody hands and me as more than that girl too sick to do anything but die?

Some legacy we said we’d leave, huh.

I don’t think I told you this, but with this disease catching up to me, it’s hard not to form hypotheses on why it’s happening or how. I have quite a few theories, and, unfortunately, none of them are pleasant or unriddled with angst. By now, you’ve probably figured out it’s a curse, and if you’re smart enough to ignore how much I’ll probably deny it, that it’s some love bullshit. If you didn’t know, now you do.

I know it’s weird. Suguru is dead. It shouldn’t be happening, right?

That’s what I thought, too

You once said love manifests the most twisted curses. I never thought of it that way before, but I’m starting to think you’re right. I don’t want to curse you by dying, but I can’t help but wonder if we can control who we curse. If I hadn’t heard you say that, would I still be here? Healthy? Okay?

I don’t know. I can’t predict alternate timelines, because I got to live one life, and that’s more than most people get. But, because I know you, you want me to entertain you. I’m sighing as I write this.

Look, I know the pain would still be there. I know I still wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for what I did, even if it was what had to be done. I know I would still miss him. I know that I would still long for the day I didn’t feel guilty for loving someone else.

If you didn’t curse me, I cursed myself. It drives me crazy that this is how the die was cast, even now, even after months where I could’ve accepted this, but at least this physical manifestation almost makes me… calm. Like seeing what this life has done to me makes me brave enough to fight it. If anything at all, the curse brought me a greater understanding of how powerful our world is in comparison to people who… are normal. The people we have to protect.

I’m sorry. Reading this back, it sounds like I’m the one cursing you now; telling you all this knowledge that can only bring you more anguish. I promise, this isn’t what it is. I just want you to understand. You couldn’t have saved me, Satoru. I couldn’t have given you the absolution you wanted, and if that’s how it is, then I just hope that one day you can look back on this and it won’t hurt anymore.

It’s always been so complicated between us, after what happened to Suguru, and after what he did, even ten years ago. What we couldn’t stop and what we had to do that day. There was always a line that I thought I couldn’t cross, or a line you didn’t want to cross, and it was shaped a lot like him. I don’t know if it was just in my head, but there was something holding us back, and I was fine dancing around it because I saw how you felt about him and I understood. Your eyes always changed when you looked at him. When you spoke of him. Even after.

Always after.

Don’t think I’m angry. I’m not blind. I know how much you two meant to each other, and I could never be angry that Suguru is so cherished. Missed. It makes everything so much harder, so much more painful.

Look, in the end, I loved him, and you did, too. And if we both still do, that’s okay. He deserved love.

I guess it just feels like a stab in the back that it wasn’t enough.

But life isn’t a fairytale. None of it really matters. To be honest, I wouldn’t trade any of it for a second, and I hope you wouldn’t either.

Maybe life isn’t supposed to be lived happily, but lived contently. And I did. I am satisfied with what I’ve done, even if I wanted to do so much more.

I’m so grateful to have known you, to have had you by my side. I hope you can say the same.

Don’t regret my death. Remember how much fun we had when we were stupid kids, and smile. Because I don’t want you to think your best years are behind you. I want you to be happy, even if I can’t be there to see it. I want you to be excited for your future, even if I can’t be in it.

I’ll always be watching over you, so smile for me every once in a while. Even if it seems like you’ll never feel anything again. One day, I promise you will, and it won’t feel so bad.

Yours forever and ever and ever,

(Name)

Throat crushed, he reads one line over and over the most. He’s memorized your letter heart, but he still carries it around with him, anyway.

“I know that I would still long for the day I didn’t feel guilty for loving someone else.”

Sometimes, he just wants to imagine your hand whispering over the page, the pen tapping against your chin, your face as you wrote, the sigh that you said you heaved. Because he’ll never hear you laugh again, see your smile. Your voice will never tease his ear, your fingers will never touch his face. There is no more laugh-wrinkles set in a face always perfectly hit by sunlight, and this is all he has left. His memory, and what you’ve left behind.

It makes him laugh how almost lovestruck stupid he’s being, but… he doubts anyone blames him. As long as he’s still doing his job, as long as he’s still the Strongest, what does it matter if he carries a dead woman’s letter in his pocket everywhere?

“Warm weather, even in the evenings. That’s a bit unusual,” Nanami observes, startling Satoru and he looks up at the blond who stops by him in the gardens. The man is wearing his grey suit, as always, and his watch glimmers in the fading gold light. “How are you?”

Satoru’s fingers tighten around the letter in his hands. As usual, the urge to crumple it up, throw it into the garbage to never see it again, has reared its head after his latest re-read, but he’ll stave it off. He always manages to.

“Fine,” he replies, glancing at the startling blood red and burnt orange leaves casually. Colours seem a bit brighter, and Satoru still squints a bit against them, despite the soft light of the sunset. He doesn’t know when his Six Eyes got so sensitive to that kind of stuff, but it almost feels good to be distracted by something so trivial as sensitive eyesight. “It is a bit warm for October.”

Nanami hums. “How are your plants doing?”

“Mine are doing good,” he says, smiling. “The tulips have gone dormant, so nothing to worry about there. The one with purple flowers, though. It’s a tough one. It took me a while to figure out what it liked, but it didn’t go dormant or anything as long as I gave it enough water and paid attention to it.”

“That’s good.” Nanami adjusts his green lenses and sighs like he’s bracing himself for something difficult. “Gojo,” he begins, but Satoru merely folds your letter up and slides it into his breast pocket, holding up a hand.

“Whatever you’re going to say, Nanami, I don’t need to hear it.”

“Are you sure?” he asks skeptically, gaze following as Satoru stands, patting his jacket. Adjusting the lapel, he turns to his friend and when he grins, it feels like it reaches his eyes behind his sunglasses for the first time in two months.

“I’ve done this before, Nanami. I’ll be fine.” He waves it away. Nanami frowns. “I’m gonna get some dinner, though. Care to join? There’s a real good ramen place in Ikebukuro that you have to try.” The blond man observes him for a moment, before shaking his head, saying he had dinner already. “Suit yourself. Next time, I’m treating you, though.”

Lips puckered in a whistle, Satoru turns around and begins to walk away.

A breeze sweeps through the gardens, rustling the leaves in a discordant harmony, and sneaking into his jacket, sending a slight shiver up his spine as Nanami’s voice follows after him.

“The flower she left you is the sakurasou.” Satoru stops, hands in his pockets, but he doesn’t turn around as Nanami continues, “I wasn’t certain if if you knew.”

“Nope, I didn’t. Thanks for the info.” Lifting a hand, he barely looks over his shoulder before saluting with two fingers and smiling cheekily. It’s not as forced as it used to be. In fact, it comes quite easy as he reaches into his pocket for his phone. He knows what he has to find out now. “See ya later, Nanami.”

“Good evening,” he replies, and in a blink of an eye, Satoru is gone.

On the windowsill of his empty apartment, the sakurasou soaks in the last remnants of the day before wilting against two photos.

One of four students, arms entangled, and faces framed in eternal youth.

And another immortalizing what could’ve been longer than a few shaky months if someone had been just a bit braver.

a/n: satoru’s google search result: the meaning of sakurasou - desire and long-lasting love.

and yes, there was an actual lunar eclipse on july 27th, 2018 (28th in japan time). it was very pretty. i researched a bit about both the lunar eclipse and the medical stuff, but excuse any inaccuracies! tis but a work of fiction <3 also, fun fact: the polaroid camera is supposed to be the instax mini 90 but ive never used it so excuse those inaccuracies as well SKNDALSDKN

ngl i did wanna write an alternative ending, but i can’t see this ending any other way. this is it. this is the canon, and we got a bit of happy feelies at the end as a treat. thank you for reading!

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