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The first time he remembers visiting his uncle’s office, Yuuji was six and dizzy with excitement.
The lady at the desk greets him and his mother, but he doesn't pay attention to her. Rather, he peers at the door at the end of the hall, the one bearing his uncle’s name: Sukuna.
He soon learns to love coming here. To love when his uncle lifts him on the exam table, big hands certain when they check his pulse, his temperature, when they bend his skinny knees and elbows. “Let me see,” Sukuna says every time, pushing up his clothes to inspect a fresh scrape, or a new bruise from climbing trees or racing down the sidewalk and tripping over his own feet. His attention makes Yuuji feel important.
His dad would play doctor sometimes back home, wrapping bandages around teddy bears, making silly diagnoses in a funny voice, but it’s never as good as the real thing. It’s Sukuna’s authority that matters and makes these visits so satisfying, Yuuji believes.
He watches the way his uncle moves, the way he adjusts his glasses before making notes in his file. He never rushes, never scolds him for fidgeting around or kicking his feet. His hands are steady, his voice is smooth.
At six, at eight, at ten, it's become a ritual. Getting weighed, getting measured, Sukuna’s fingers pressing into his skin, directing his limbs, coaxing his mouth wide to inspect the inside with a critical eye. “You’ve grown,” he says, every time, as if he is the only one who notices.
At twelve, Yuuji starts noticing other things. How Sukuna’s grip tightens when Yuuji describes the events that had led to whichever injury he presented him. His uncle’s voice, usually so composed, flattens. But nonetheless, Sukuna absorbs everything Yuuji offers.
“You should be more careful.”
Then he starts realizing that his uncle actually remembers everything. That if Yuuji brings up a cold from a few years ago, Sukuna will correct him on the month, the day, even what he prescribed.
It's a little unsettling, but Yuuji decides not to pick on it, lets it scab and fade. If he were forced to dwell on that impulse, he would say it's what Sukuna would have instructed him to do. Don't disturb it.
Whatever unease sprouts in his chest gets smoothed over the moment Sukuna's attention is fixed on him again and he starts showing up at Sukuna’s office almost daily after school, coming up with excuses that vary in credibility until they both quietly drop the pretenses.
Sukuna never tells him to leave. Not when he’s buried in paperwork, nor when his jaw is tight with exhaustion. Yuuji makes himself comfortable, like it's his room at home, sits on the edge of the exam table kicking his feet or spins in the chair across from Sukuna’s desk. An incessant stream about school, about his friends, about his video game exploits pours from his mouth, but once it gets too much for Sukuna, he sends him a chilly look, and that look makes sure his homework is always done by the time he comes home, so his parents never think to ask questions.
Other than that, Sukuna barely looks up from his work. But Yuuji knows he’s listening. When he offhandedly mentions a test coming up, Sukuna will say, weeks later, “You never told me how that test went,” in that unreadable tone of his.
Yuuji grins. “Didn’t think you cared.”
Sukuna gives him another one of his looks, a quick one, and adjusts his reading glasses. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”
It’s easy, being around his uncle. The scratch of Sukuna’s pen is a comfort in his ears.
Behind his desk, Sukuna wonders how long that will last.
*
Yuuji is sixteen when it’s late. The clinic has long since emptied, the streets outside are slick with rain, and the skies are swallowed up by night. Like usual, Sukuna offers him a ride home.
Yuuji slides into the passenger seat, stretching out with a lazy yawn. He’s tired, full from the convenience store snacks he scarfed down under Sukuna’s disapproving glances while waiting for him to finish his paperwork.
The car is warm. Sukuna drives with one hand, the other resting easily on the gear shift. It’s comfortable and familiar, the same as0 every other time.
Until Sukuna’s hand drifts. His palm settles heavily on Yuuji’s thigh.
Yuuji freezes, wide-eyed. He doesn’t react. He can’t.
The weight of it is grounding in a way that makes his stomach turn over on itself, trapped in the wrongness of it.
It’s nothing, he quickly tells himself. Sukuna is tired, he isn’t thinking. It's just an unconscious touch. He doesn’t mean it.
But his skin burns beneath it.
Sukuna's gaze remains fixed on the road as he drives, not acknowledging it verbally. But he begins to squeeze, thumb rubbing just as naturally and absent-mindedly as before.
Shame and thrill contort inside Yuuji like twins.
His pulse hammers, and he tries to breathe around it, tries to convince himself that his body is overreacting, that this is just some misplaced response to what amounts to absolutely nothing.
Just his hormones misfiring. That’s all.
He swallows thickly. Tries to focus on the sound of the rain against the windshield, the click of the turn signal as Sukuna changes lanes.
The hand on his thigh is still there.
Yuuji waits for it to finally leave.
But he doesn’t know why part of him hopes it won’t.
*
Days pass, but the touch doesn’t. It clings to the crevices of his brain like molasses, leaving its sticky tracks where thought should be dissolving into nothing.
He zones out in class with his fingers curled unconsciously around his thigh, like he can summon it, replicate the weight and warmth of Sukuna’s hand, dissect the moment, turn it over and over in his head where no one can see. WHere it can stay secret. And contained.
Later, he’s sitting with his friends, a soft drink in his palm. Fushiguro is scowling at his phone while Kugisaki chatters away unhindered in spite of the takoyaki she shovels into her mouth.
“Oi,” she says suddenly, like she’s sniffed out a wrongness in the air. She violently jabs a chopstick in Yuuji’s shoulder, making him jolt and hiss like a startled cat. “You spacing out ‘cause you’re late to your date with your uncle, or what?”
Yuuji chokes. “What?”
Fushiguro barely looks up, but his lip hikes up in something that can only be described as polite disgust, which is as much backup as Kugisaki requires. She sneers, and twirls her chopsticks at him.
“C’mon, he’s basically your sugar daddy at this point. You hang out in his office every day, and I bet he still gives you those dumb little head pats when you nail a test.” She narrows her eyes. “Something starting to poke at you when he hugs you close to his bosom?”
It’s a joke, easy to laugh off and turn it on Kugisaki instead (why was she paying attention to Sukuna’s ‘bosom’?), and yet Yuuji feels he has to defend himself. “Shut up,” he mutters, snatching Kugisaki’s chopsticks and angrily spearing one of her takoyaki. “Nothing’s poking. And he’s not my sugar daddy.”
Fushiguro makes a noise, still scrolling and still too aloof to fully engage, but clearly not above adding fuel to the fire. “Didn’t he buy you a new phone last month?”
“It was my birthday,” Yuuji snaps.
Kugisaki hums, unconvinced. “And what about those ‘oh no, I’m so sleepy’ car rides home?” She yawns with exaggeration, flopping theatrically against an invisible car seat. “‘Oh nooo, Ojisan, I’m sooo tried, guess I’ll just pass out and let you drive me home every night like a doting boyfriend.’”
“That’s not what happens.”
“Really?” Her eyes glitter. “You don’t even have sexy doctor roleplay—”
“Ew, gross!”
*
More days pass, and Sukuna watches.
Yuuji has never been the kind to hide things well. He carries his thoughts too close to the surface, and Sukuna is fluent in the language of Yuuji’s body. Yuuji wears shame like a child wears a fever, with a flushed face, uncomprehending of what truly ails him.
There’s a hesitation in the way he moves now. Small pauses when he speaks, his eyes darting away too fast when they land on Sukuna’s face, breath hitching when Sukuna looks back.
Foolish thing. Did he think Sukuna wouldn’t notice?
Yuuji begins to avoid his office for another few days, as if distance could smother the slow-burning ember Sukuna had pressed into his skin. A predictable attempt, pathetic in its execution. The squirming amuses Sukuna, and he is pleased that he is capable of eliciting more than innocent adoration from the boy.
He imagines Yuuji lying awake at night, trying to reason it away, trying to hate the way it made him feel.
Inevitably, Yuuji returns.
He hovers in the doorway, uncertain whether he wants tto be coaxed inside. Sukuna doesn’t look up from his paperwork right away.
He keeps his pen moving as the awkward, expectant silence thickens. Yuuji shifts his weight from one foot to the other, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, clearly feeling guilty because he understands avoiding Sukuna is a horrible offense.
At last, Sukuna takes pity.
“You’re late,” he says without looking up.
Yuuji startles, the shame immediate. He nods once, his throat bobbing before he coughs, realizing Sukuna hadn’t seen him nod.
“Yeah, I, uh… school ran long. Thought I’d drop by.”
Sukuna hears the lie in his breath. He allows his silent displeasure to speak first, and then cuts him with his gaze.
And the sight alarms him.
A bruise, unmistakably fresh spreads over his temple. His lower lip, split and pink with healing blood, is an insult.
Sukuna takes it personally. He locks his jaw as he chews his rage down, remaining seated to let the wounds on Yuuji’s face throb and address his own instead.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“No! I just—” Yuuji’s voice trips, stumbles, tries again. “I wasn’t.”
Sukuna arches a brow, and Yuuji wilts.
“Close the door.”
The boy scrambles to obey, seemingly grateful to be granted permission to turn his back, even if it meant trapping himself in the same room as Sukuna.
When Yuuji turns again, Sukuna moves. “Up,” he says curtly, motioning to the exam table.
Yuuji moves on instinct, and then hesitates. Then, he obeys. That brief pause is the only protest he’s capable of mustering, and even that folds quickly under Sukuna’s displeasure.
The vinyl creaks beneath him as he climbs onto the table, the thin paper crinkling and announcjng his every shift.
Sukuna watches him try to settle. Dines on his shallow breaths and darting eyes with patience. As he moves even closer, stepping between his legs, Yuuji’s breathing changes before he tips his chin up with his knuckle.
“You let someone put their hands on you,” Sukuna scolds, gaze skimming over Yuuji’s face once more. He scans the cut and the bruise. There is a mark on his neck that is, perhaps, the result of a fist, or worse, a mouth—either one would be intolerable. “You think I spent years takkng care of your body so you could let some idiot use it like a punching bag?”
And before Yuuji can objject, saying something noble and undoubtedly irritating, Sukuna cups his face. Palms broad and warm, his fingers splay with false benevolence, flexing around the cheeks he’s held through fevers, toddler pouts and teenage sulks.
But the boy is a little older now, and Sukuna’s thumbs move slower, and with a purpose ridden of the guise of professional concern, leaving pure, unadorned possession. He wonders if the boy knows how visible he is; how eas y it is to read his half-formed desires.
He strokes slowly over the crests of Yuuji’s cheekbones, smearing his heat into the skin. Yuuji’s eyes screw shut as if the darkness can protect him from what he already feels, that a new meaning is being carved into Sukuna’s touch. A whimper nearly breaks through the boy’s clenched jaw.
Beautiful.
He lets his fingers travel lower, tracing the path of tension. Down to the mouth he’s watched form words for years, smiling, stammering, laughing, lying. That same mouth now sealed and trembling.
He strokes over Yuuji’s split lips and the boy flinches like he’s been struck, not touched.
Any other time, Sukuna would ask if it hurts.
Instead, his voice drops lower, darker. “They are unaware of what they touched, are incapable of appreciating its worth," and then quieter, “but I am not.”
“Sukuna…”
His name lights something wicked in his chest, a plea that makes his pants tight.
“Open wide,” Sukuna says.
Sukuna is utterly charmed by the way the boy tenses before his mouth drops open, his brows knitting and lashes fluttering in protest against what his body already consented to. Sukuna places his thumbs in the soft wet heat of that open mouth, and for a moment, just holds him there.
He luxuriates in his quiet advance into the reclamation of his ownership. Too long, he thinks. Too long has Yuuji been away from him.
The press of his tongue under Sukuna’s thumbs makes a hum blossom in his throat, warped by the chords of his ravening appreciation.
“Gone so long,” he says, letting a touch of disappointment manipulate his voice. “I have to check if you caught something.”
His eyes narrow, hands steadily exploring and reaping every inch of discomfort his ministrations inflict. “Those damn brats you run around with—they touch you too freely. Think I don’t notice? They probably got you into trouble too... Not that you would admit it.”
His thumbs ease deeper, and Yuuji’s mouth remains parted as his breath dampens Sukuna’s skin. It’s obedience, but also fear that keeps his jaw pried open, yet he offers it because a part of him is used to being consumed by Sukuna’s attention.
“They think they know you, don't they? But only the parts of you that don’t ache. You only share those with me."
Yuuji recoils within the confines of his hands with a helpless sound, and it sets off something volcanic in him. No one else knows Yuuji like he does. No one else remembers the soft belly of childhood giving way to long planes of lean muscle. Not like he does.
“They get your time,” Sukuna breathes. “Your energy. ANd what do I get?“
His voice darkens, caustic with unrestrained bitterness, and he tightens his hold on Yuuji’s face, making sure he’s pressing into the bruises.
“You dare to come back here with nothing for me but that guilt in your eyes and someone else’s claim on your face.”
A sliver of some long-buried decency lights up in opposition to the urge that rises within Sukuna. He should let the boy go; he seems sufficiently scared, chastised enough to not allow this to happen again.
But he doesn’t let go. That insult of the red cut across his lip stares him in the eyes and Sukuna can't stand it.
An insignificant wretch caused that pain, a dirty little reprobate who thought they had that right and left their mark to prove it, to provoke him.
He watches the boy and within the length of a heartbeat, Sukuna’s restraint snaps.
He releases Yuuji’s jaw only to seize the back of his neck, fingers threading into the soft hair there. He pulls him in hard with the force of his possessiveness and kisses him.
The kiss lands directly on the split in Yuuji’s lip, drawing out a gasp that shudders through his whole body. Copper and spit flares i his mouth, but Sukuna swallows it down, drinking it like he’s owed it.
Yuuji jerks in his hold, and Sukuna deepens the kiss in response, tongue prying past the resistance not to soothe but to overwrite. He wants to burn himself into the ache, to rebreak what someone else tried to fracture.
As though his kiss could undo the stupidity that led Yuuji into someone else’s hands. As though he is the antidote to whatever filth got too close. Yes, he fancies that.
A sudden burst of resistance shakes Yuuji out of his shock. His hands fly up and land flat on Sukuna’s shoulders, attempting to push him away. But the pressure of them is unsteady, not so much as pushing as it is pleading for a measure of space and breath. None of which Sukuna intends to offer.
He doesn’t relent. His weight, his want, the force of years spent restraining his every impulse, he crashes over Yuuji like a wave.
He bites. Right at the split, his teeth sink in and tear it open even further. Blood wells as Yuuji cries into his mouth, and Sukuna swallows that, too, with the absolute certainty that it belongs to him.
After all, they share that blood. It’s only natural that he demands his due. His tongue laps at it with obscene satisfaction, and a low sound escapes him, a moan buried under laughter.
The more Yuuji struggles, the more blood spills forth, brighter and fresher over Sukuna’s chin and into the seams of space between their faces. Yuuji shakes and whimpers beneath him, poor thing, heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Sukuna presses against him until there’s no space left between them. “Don’t flinch away from me,” Sukuna murmurs against Yuuji’s mouth. “Don’t avoid me again. Only bad things happen if you do.”
His words ignite something in Yuuji. His hands fist in the fabric of Sukuna’s shirt, knotting with trembling fury, and before Sukuna can laugh again, the boy bites him back.
A flash of pain rips through Sukuna’s lower lip, and for a moment, he is stunned. The warmth of his own blood hits his tongue, not that he could actually distinguish it in the first place, and yet, he knows it is his.
He cracks open with pleasure and madness. A full-bodied laugh erupts from him, thrilled with Yuuji’s show of defiance. His head tips back and he drinks in the boy’s face with the reverence of a man finally recognizing his god.
“Oh,” Sukuna breathes lovingly. “There you are.”
“Fuck you,” Yuuji spits. A snarl twists his face, and Sukuna is momentarily taken aback by how mature he looks when he’s angry. For the first time, Sukuna sees the shape of the man Yuuji is becoming, and it delights him. “What the fuck—”
Sukuna collapses forward again and their mirror wounds collide. Their lips drag wetly over each other, blood smearing across chins, teeth knocking together, breath panting between licks of copper and spit. Yuuji pushes back with everything he has, and Sukuna matches it effortlessly.
But in Sukuna’s hands, defiance doesn’t last forever. A moan breaks between, pulled from a place in YUuji that Sukuna knows desires without his permission.
All at once, Yuuji’s strength folds inward. He sags, and as his grip falters and his jaw slackens, the kiss grows slow and hushed. Sukuna soothes what he’s just broken and forced into submission.
When Yuuji comes apart, Sukuna knows what to do with every piece. Because everyone else only ever saw what didn’t ache.
But he cultivates that ache. He places desire in him, and pain if he wills it.
When Sukuna pulls back, it is with worshipful indulgence. His tongue chases the blood along Yuuji’s lip, his proof of ownership, and when he retreats at last, the string of saliva connecting their mouths is scarlet red.
With a physician’s detachment, Sukuna tilts his head and studies the mess he’s wrought. He measures the flush across Yuuji’s cheeks, his red-slick chin, the trembling lashes and glassy eyes, and diligently files it away.
Sukuna’s voice is barely a breath when he speaks again. “You feel that?”
His thumb strokes the bite. “That’s mine.”
*
Unhurried, Sukuna moves through the room and gathers gloves, gauze and antiseptic with a spring in his step and Yuuji’s blood staining his chin, drying like he means to wear it home.
Yuuji’s body is still weak and full of static. His mouth throbs. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. Time stopped inside that kiss.
When the antiseptic touches his mouth, he snaps out of it. The soothing cotton mercy hurts more than the bite did. “Why…?”
Sukuna hums under his breath, dabbing at the wound like he hadn’t just made it worse moments ago. His hands are steady. Pleased with himself. “I wanted to taste what they took.”
“No, that’s not what I—why? You're… we are…” He can’t finish it because he doesn’t know where the line is anymore, or if there ever was one. ANd there’s no word he can grab that doesn’t feel ridiculous in the wake of what they’ve done. You’re my uncle, he wants to say. I love you.
But he is powerless as he is forced to watch the stones of betrayal sink in his chest. Helpless as recognition forms, how being known too clearly inspires terror in its intimacy.
Apparently, Sukuna had never needed to interrogate that conundrum himself. “We are exactly what you’ve always let us be.”
Yuuji blinks. His brain needs a few moments to register the words and perform the necessary associations on them. But he begins to see it now, how insidious Sukuna is. When had he first mistook his obsession with care?
Briefly, he thinks of calling Sukuna a bastard. He thinks of making a scene. He thinks of telling his parents.
But he was complicit, wasn’t he? Did he not seek out Sukuna’s attention and proximity?
His hand curls on his thigh, and suddenly, he remembers the ghost of desire that had haunted him all the weeks he’s stayed away from Sukuna.
The weeks he had laid awake, craving the weight of his hand on his leg, like that night in the car.
No, he had been too young and naive and vulnerable to understand what Sukuna truly wanted. But it is too late now, the damage is already done. The only thing left to do is—-
Yuuji looks up with quiet determination and sees the wound he left behind. Bright and blooming, the bite on Sukuna’s mouth is shaped like his own teeth. The only evidence that he existed in Sukuna’s world as more than a plaything to devour.
He intends to make himself, too, a disease in that man’s life, eat through the layers of him, match him nerve by nerve. That is the only way to deal with him.
A slow, molten heat crawls through Yuuji’s veins. He feels territorial and utterly unhinged. Without warning, his hand darts out and catches Sukuna’s jaw firmly. And Sukuna startles, as if surprised his lamb remembered it had teeth.
His uncle should have known better, Yuuji thinks bitterly. They share the same blood, after all.
He presses his thumb against the imprint on his lip as if to remind him.
“Mine.”
*
Yuuji doesn’t avoid his office anymore.
But it is obvious that a paradigm has been taken and inverted, birthing a new stage of development. The delicate nature of their relationship has been fractured, anf they have taken the parts and assembled a silent game: passing control back and forth like breath.
Sukuna’s kiss had torn down the pretenses around them.
Yuuji’s presence is no longer adoring and oblivious. He enters with awareness now, and with calculation.
He’s wary, and yet drawn to Sukuna. And Sukuna doesn’t bother disguising the pleasure it brings him. Yuuji had mutated under his hands, grown teeth because he fed him his blood.
Yuuji speaks with a snideness that makes Sukuna’s pulse quicken. His disdain means Yuuji is thinking of him. And resistance is more intimate and deeper than compliance.
But it’s his eyes that Sukuna treasures most.
Yuuji stares at him now like he yearns to unmake him. Like he’s trying to dig his way inside Sukuna’s chest and excavate whatever dead thing lies buried in the center of his being and press himself in its place. His look is searching, direct and challenging. As though he threatens to penetrate Sukuna down to the entrails with his eyes alone.
And Sukuna bares himself to it. He wants to document it all. The angle of his spine when he sits with unguarded posture, the width between the insolent sprawl of his thighs, the new confidence in his gestures.
Every glance reveals gold.