Chapter Text
She wanted to look good. Not the safe, sentimental kind of good she’d leaned into yesterday. Not the heavy, black draped mourning silhouette she’d worn the night before. Not the half faded glamour of an ex call girl turned casino wife from that restless morning. No. Today she wanted beautiful, but without trying. Effortless. Like she’d woken up that way and the world had no choice but to agree.
She wanted to cause avalanches and set hotel lobbies on slow fire, she wanted half the resort to wake up and realize they’d been collateral in her mood.
She wanted the kind of people who could register her long before she arrived. Who’d catch the shift in the air, the faint press of her presence in the floorboards, and know it meant something. Not everyone, just the rare few with antennae fine tuned enough to feel it. The quietly intelligent ones. Porous to the world, attuned without posturing. Not the types who flew to Thailand once, snapped a photo with a saffron robe in the background, and mistook it for spiritual arrival.
No, she meant the ones clever enough to sneer at that performance, yet still felt unsettled by the tug in their chest they couldn’t measure, couldn’t diagram, couldn’t reduce to neurons firing. To expect it from all of them would’ve been a kind of madness.
She was still towel drying her hair when she crouched in front of her duffle, damp strands sticking to her cheeks, and for a second she realized she was the happiest girl in the world. She hadn’t felt like that since who even knows when. Maybe that one stupid night, years ago, when the phone lit up with a number she didn’t have saved but knew by heart. The call she’d prayed for, memorized like scripture.
It had ended exactly how those things end. A few words, a laugh, a knife twist. Only called to check if the hook was still in. And she sat on her bed afterwards, staring at the ceiling, thinking about not existing at all. But still telling herself she was the happiest girl alive because for five minutes, it had felt like oxygen.
She remembered it clearly, the moment she crowned herself. But now? Now it felt almost funny. That girl, the one who mistook a breadcrumb for a feast, had no idea. That was self proclaimed happiness. This wasn’t. This time she didn’t name it, didn’t post it, didn’t even dare whisper it. The universe had already done the naming for her. The world had. Everything had. All she had to do was lean back and watch it happen.
She yanked her black skirt out of the duffle like muscle memory, like her hands were performing some ancient ritual her brain wasn’t even invited to. She laid it next to the tights she’d rinsed in the sink that morning after her shower, because of course she did, she had dignity. Basic human dignity. Meanwhile he had the audacity, the spiritual illness to tell her not to wash him off. Like an actual decree. Like Moses came down the damn mountain with stone tablets and one of them said thou shalt marinate in Sukuna forever.
He was out of his fucking mind. Certifiably gone. As if she was going to walk around all day with a crime scene drying between her thighs like it was a fashion statement. Insane man. Absolute delusional demon uncle.
How many times had she actually worn this skirt? Once. Once. On that car drive. The day everything in her brain split open. She couldn’t even remember if it looked good back then, she’d been too busy having a full scale psychological unravelling beside a man whose jawline could trigger religious revivals. And it definitely wasn’t about to make sense now. In November, in the alps, with snow threatening to ice pick her kneecaps.
Structured? Sure. Thick? Technically. But still criminally short, an affront to winter, to common sense, to the laws of thermodynamics. And the worst part was that yesterday she’d had a meltdown about how mortifying it was to admit she was a virgin in a car named after another woman. Literally confessing her entire sexual résumé or lack thereof inside a vehicle with a dead ex’s ghost lingering in the upholstery. And today, she decided to wear the exact same skirt.
The exact one.
She tugged at the hem like it might magically grow two inches. It didn’t. It never would. It was her. Her chaos. Her curse. Her skirt. And would march into the cold with it anyway.
Because who cared? Sukuna would be there. And Sukuna wasn’t just warm. He wasn’t even man who runs hot warm. He was geological event warm. He didn’t radiate heat, he issued it like a warning from nature. Every time he stepped near her, her internal thermostat didn’t just shift, it obeyed.
Let the Alps laugh. Let the cold chew at her kneecaps. Let her look clinically unwell in this microscopic skirt. None of it mattered. Not the frost, not the wind, not the fact that her bare thighs would probably turn the same color as a raw salmon. Because he’d be there. Because she’d walk through a blizzard barefoot just to stand in his orbit for thirty seconds. Because some part of her, some reckless, gullible, wildly romantic part trusted his heat more than her own common sense.
She eased the tights on with the kind of care usually reserved for detonating bombs, pulling slow, slow, slower. Inch by inch, terrified they’d betray her with a rip. They’d already survived so many anomalies. They didn’t deserve more trauma. And if they tore now? Skirt plan obliterated. Hadn’t these tights been through enough already? They’d survived things no hosiery should ever have to survive. If they had feelings, they’d be filing lawsuits.
Still, black tights were non negotiable. A skirt in the snow without them wasn’t a look, it was a breakdown. Black tights were the great equalizer. A sleeking agent, a diplomatic compromise between sexy and sensible, casual and severe. They gave nothing practical in return. No insulation, no protection. But they were the rule. And she obeyed the rule.
Then came the sweater, the decision that felt both inspired and deeply unserious. A boxy, cropped knit cardigan style thing, long sleeved and slightly oversized in that intentional way that only works if you commit. Reindeer marched across the chest and upper arms. Reindeer. Like she was auditioning for a very specific alpine folklore. The color was dusty periwinkle, that impossible, perfect in between where blue, grey, and lavender stop arguing and agree to be beautiful. Soft beige and muted brown threaded through the pattern, grounding it just enough to keep it from tipping into costume.
It buttoned down the front with large wooden buttons, the kind that looked like they’d been carved by someone’s grandfather who lived in the mountains and hated modernity. Ribbing cinched the waist just slightly, holding the cropped shape in place. It was relaxed, but not sloppy. Cute, but not childish. A little touristy, sure. But she didn’t care.
She looked authentic. Handcrafted. Rustic. Like she belonged to a postcard from 1974. At least, that was the story she sold herself, and she sold it well. She was delusional, yes. But it was a committed delusion. The best kind.
Before slipping into her new white fur boots, she tugged on her dark brown thigh highs over sheer black tights, a combination she’d loved for years and refused to explain to anyone. The tights were translucent, barely there, just enough to soften the skin underneath. The thigh highs were smooth, thin wool, edged with the most beautiful lace pattern she’d ever seen, delicate, almost old fashioned, like something meant to be hidden and therefore more powerful for it.
She loved how they sat on top of the black tights. Dark over darker. Practical and quietly unhinged.
Then came the leg warmers. Cream colored, thick, knitted and slouchy. She scrunched them down around her calves without overthinking it. They absolutely did not belong. In fact, they clashed with the fur boots in a way that screamed stylist’s rejected mood board. But she wasn’t about to tempt frostbite just to preserve the integrity of an outfit.
Some lines could be crossed. Cold feet were not one of them.
Yes, Sukuna was there. Yes, she always burned around him, like her whole body turned into a furnace the second he breathed in her direction. But her toes were not negotiable. They demanded their own survival kit, their own peace treaty, their own diplomatic immunity from frostbite. She was terrified of getting sick, she always had been. And there were some things in life even Sukuna, in all his heat and danger and impossible presence couldn’t fix.
Fucking frozen toes for example.
God, she was such a hypocrite. Seconds ago she’d been acting like his stupid impossible body heat could singlehandedly solve climate change, and now she couldn’t even trust him with her circulation.
Was this it? The final, devastating confirmation that love was a scam, a myth, a government funded hallucination? That all her long, dramatic, borderline PhD level monologues about “love is just hormones, attachment wounds, and the human urge to be percieved” weren’t just coping mechanisms forged in the fiery hell of that man but actual, legitimate, Nobel worthy theories?
No. Love was real. It had to be. Because there was no other logical or earthly explanation for why her body, mind, spirit, and every microscopic cell in between was willing, eager to accommodate that thing he carried.
“Dick” felt too small a word. What he had wasn’t a dick, it was a geological event. A natural disaster. A weapon of mass internal displacement. Something that could indent a cervix, rearrange a rib, cause a chartable seismic reading in a 30 km radius. She knew, knew that if he ever actually put that monstrosity inside her, she’d probably rupture something vital, go into shock, maybe briefly die and see Mallory greeting her at the pearly gates.
She would die. On the spot.
And yet she still wanted it. Craved it with a devotion that could only be described as holy, which was insane, because nothing about that appendage was holy. It was Old Testament wrath, a plague, a divinely punitive measuring rod that could’ve parted the Red Sea by accident. So yes. It had to be love. Some stupid, illogical, evolution defying chemical malfunction. Because no sane woman, no rational woman, no woman with even a basic grasp of her own pelvic anatomy would ever look at something like that and think, “Yes, put that in me. I believe in us.”
She padded into the bathroom, and the bathwater was still there. Cloudy, faintly perfumed, touched everywhere by him. She wanted to keep it. Gallons of it. Bottled, labeled, stacked like vintage wine back home. She wanted to drink it, drown in it, baptize herself in it again and again until it curdled black.
A low groan slipped out of her chest as she yanked the plug anyway. No way was she letting the cleaning staff walk in and find that evidence. They’d think she was feral, beyond saving. Still, she stood there, looming over the tub as it emptied, watching every last swirl funnel down the drain with unnerving devotion. Hair half damp, towel clutched, eyes fixed like she was personally supervising the erasure of her own crimes. Like if she stared hard enough, maybe her sins would vanish too.
When her hair was finally dry, down to the last rebellious strand that refused to cooperate, she curled the ends of her layers inward, fluffing and puffing until it all looked intentional. The black silk scarf was in her hands. The same one she’d looped around her neck the day she vanished into the woods. The same one that had hidden the bite. Sharp. Wrong. Ugly. Impossible to explain without sounding unwell.
She smoothed her fingers over it, marveling at how it still felt like butter, how the light glanced off its surface, shifting shades with every tilt. It was too pretty to leave in her bag. Today, it wouldn’t be a bandage. Today, it would be a headband. Because bangs in snow were a nightmare. Wet, clumpy, tragic. She wasn’t about to look like a drowned duckling in front of him.
So she tied it at her nape, smoothing the last stray piece flat with the edge of her palm, and stepped back from the mirror. It worked. More than worked. It looked... Chic. Almost French if you squinted, though not the café cliché kind. No. More like Brigitte Bardot in her late Roger Vadim years, when she still carried that pout carved by the God Himself, her hair had been bleached and fried into a permanent beehive so chaotic it looked like cotton candy matted with hay. That messy, dangerous kind of beautiful.
If you believed it, of course. And she did.
God. She’d been so obsessed with saving herself from tragic, soggy bangs she’d completely forgotten about her other eternal nemesis, her forehead.
That damn, cursed forehead. An open forehead meant a whole circus of compensations. Eyes and lips cranked up to theatrical levels so no one would immediately clock it. And she wasn’t in the mood. She swore she wasn’t going to do makeup today. But here she was, backed into a corner by her own head shape.
She let out a dramatic sigh at her reflection and stared down her bare face. Then she went in, scooping every moisturizer, cream, serum, basically anything within arm’s reach, and slathered it on in fat blobs. It wasn’t skincare, it wasn’t prep, it was spackle. She looked like she was frosting a cake.
Still, it was necessary. She couldn’t risk her skin cracking under makeup. The foundation might not go full Broadway, but she needed her face to scream dewy and alive. Like she’d just stumbled out of some tropical greenhouse, sunlight dripping off her. She was in the Alps, yes, but her skin was going to lie and say she was on a humid island carrying the goddamn sun in her pores. A glow that wasn’t optional, but compulsory.
She wanted drama. Not loud drama. Eye drama.
Black pencil dragged along her lash lines, then shoved right into the waterline like a bad decision she wasn’t apologizing for. She smudged it out with her fingers until it stopped being a line and started being a feeling. Brown shadow followed, pressed and blurred until the edges gave up entirely. No wings. Wings would’ve been too intentional. If her hair was Bardot, then her eyes had to follow suit.
A wash of matte gray went over her lids, soft, cigarette smoked shift, the kind that looks like it’s been there all night. It melted into the black, hazy and lived in. That half asleep, partly undone Bardot look she wore like a second skin. The kind that suggested she’d stayed up too late, thought too much, kissed someone she shouldn’t have, and didn’t regret it. She curled her lashes and added her mascara. Just enough.
But this needed the (y/n) edge. The part that always slipped in sideways.
She grabbed her cream highlighter, the one that made her look like a deepwater creature, all shimmer and strange beauty whenever she overdid it, and tapped it onto her lids. Subtle. Almost nothing. Except when she moved. Then it caught the light and shifted, smooth sparks sliding over her eyes like something alive. It was stupidly beautiful. She paused, tilted her head, watched it move. Yeah. That was it.
Not goth. Not raccoon. Not a black eyed disaster. Just right. Retired Bardot. Slightly tamer. Slightly wiser. The version who donated to baby seals and saved wild horses now, who wore oversized knits at Switzerland and drank coffee too late, but still remembered how to seduce a man with nothing but a glance across a room.
She smeared on a shiny gold luminizer, warm and soft, using her hands because brushes felt like lies. No foundation. No concealer. No skin tint. Bardot never looked like she owned a brush. Bardot never looked like she tried to erase herself. Skin stayed skin, freckles, shadows, whatever came with it.
Then a whisper of cool toned bronzer, almost gray, barely there. She swore it was drifting into the air before it even touched her cheekbones. Just enough structure. Just enough bones.
She lined her lips with a toffee pencil. Not quite brown, not quite orange. Suspended somewhere deliciously in between, like indecision turned into a personality trait. Then a soft nude pink lipstick, gold flecked, tapped on with her fingertips. And suddenly, oh.
She hadn’t lined her lips in years. Forgotten how it changed the whole architecture of her face. How it made her mouth take up space. Claim attention. Practically steal the scene from her own forehead. And it still looked natural somehow. Thanks to that ridiculous pencil that cost more than the monthly food budget of an economically failing country. Exactly the point. Exactly what she wanted.
No blush today. Absolutely not. Bardot didn’t do blush. Bardot didn’t blush. Blush was for ingénues, for little lambs with wide eyes and trembling lashes. Brigitte lured men with smudges, the imperfect liner, the lived in pout, the tousled hair that looked like it dared you to touch it and would punish you if you did. Innocence was never her currency and (y/n) wasn’t about to trade in it either.
Thick gold hoops would’ve been the crowning moment, the period at the end of her Bardot sentence. But no. No time. No patience. And honestly, she didn’t care enough to wrestle with them. She reached for the only thing that mattered. Her necklace. The one he’d touched, fixed, secured, upgraded. Made indestructible, like a promise disguised in gold. Perfect. She toyed with the pendant as if it would steady her, thumb flicking over it like it could slow her pulse. It didn’t.
She considered her mother’s beret. And then she decided absolutely not. She wasn’t going to make it more French.
French was fine with a filter. French was acceptable when it was accidental, soft focus, unintentional. French was good when it didn’t scream. A beret screamed. A beret meant budgeting for months for a weekend visa, romanticizing poverty, waiting an entire season just to stand in line for hours and order French onion soup like it was a personality achievement. It meant aesthetic suffering. Curated longing. A performance of Europe for people who didn’t actually care about Europe, only how it looked on them.
And yes, she was poor, a little trashy, yes. But she had standards. And dignity. And zero interest in cosplaying an Instagram version of Paris.
Besides, she didn’t want to look like she thought she was Bardot. Bardot worked because she didn’t try. She never begged for Frenchness. She was it. Because she looked like she’d rolled out of bed, smoked a cigarette, and accidentally invented sex appeal. Eyes half lidded like the world was already asking too much of her. Effortless. Accidental. Cruel in the way only beautiful women were allowed to be. You couldn’t manufacture that. You definitely couldn’t buy it for forty euros and a dream.
So the beret stayed where it was. She chose cold ears and self respect instead.
And she wasn’t it. So she grabbed her blush, the coral one, with the soft gold shimmer that caught the light just enough, and pressed it into the high points of her cheeks with a little too much conviction. Pretending she could exist without blush was idiotic. Delusional, even. A lie she told herself every time she wanted to feel untouchable and failed five minutes later.
It lasted a couple of minutes. The resolve, the dignity. And it felt good while it did, grounding, almost. Like control. Like choice. But she wasn’t going to lie to herself.
She liked color. She liked being seen. She liked looking alive, a little feverish, a little dramatic, like she’d just stepped out of something emotional and hadn’t fully recovered yet. The blush stayed. She exhaled, softer now, calmer.
She shrugged into her wool coat, that buttery yellow flirting with soft camel, the kind of color that always felt like it had been borrowed from an old photograph. Very doll who accidentally grew up. The silhouette was loose and straight, mid length, skimming her upper thighs, slightly boxy. It had a wide lapel collar, lined with pale faux fur, light, fluffy, indulgent and thick enough to frame her neck and face like a secret. The fur didn’t match the fur on her boots. She noticed. She didn’t care. She loved pressing her cheek into it, tilting her head, breathing warmth back into herself like a small animal.
The front buttoned down with big, matching buttons. Polite, almost formal, the kind of coat that said clean while quietly admitting to being a mess underneath. It made her look sweet. A little adult. A little childish. Exactly that uncomfortable in between she lived in. The side pockets were deep enough for elegance. When she slid her hands into them, she could pretend she knew what she was doing.
It was slightly wrinkled, abused by a week on her suitcase, crumpled deeper in her duffel, but she let it be. That felt honest.
She grabbed yesterday’s little handbag and bolted. Her stomach was doing full gymnastics, a violent floor routine with no warning. Her heartbeat drummed an uneven setlist. Fast, then faster, then wrong. Her hands froze. Her throat tightened. Was she dying? It felt suspiciously like dying, or like something very old and very familiar pretending to be death.
The hallway hit her like theater, gold lighting warm and overdone, the hush of thick carpet beneath her boots. People everywhere, strolling, laughing, murmuring. The noise stacked up in her head until it was all too much. Then came the elevator. It was packed. She wedged herself in, balanced on the edge of her sanity, trying not to combust, trying not to breathe too deeply.
Because the perfumes. God, the perfumes. Too musky, too leathery, too syrupy. All of them expensive and all of them aggressively hideous. Her nose burned. Her eyes watered. If suffocation by bad, expensive fragrance was a crime scene, she was the victim.
Finally, the doors opened to the lobby and she practically fled, bursting out like a survivor of some great disaster.
Air. At last.
Now, where was he?
He’d left her this morning, all sleep starved and wrecked around the edges yet somehow sharper than she’d ever seen him. Beautiful in that way exhaustion makes dangerous things glow. Like his body refused to power down, no matter how heavy his limbs were. Like an animal forced to stay alert. Not some stray cat twitching at shadows, but something bigger. All strength, all menace, yet still cursed with the same animal truth. Survival never stops. Even tired, he terrified. Especially tired, maybe.
And he hadn’t said a word about where to meet him. No “wait for me here.” No “I’ll come get you.” Nothing. He could very well be dead asleep right now, sprawled across his sheets, taking his well deserved nap. She wouldn’t even be mad. She’d crawl right in, press her head to his chest, and fake sleep while her heart banged around like it had lost its rhythm.
Instead she walked. Slowly. One step, then another, until the doors loomed. Those ridiculous, oversized glass doors dripping with grandeur. She pushed through anyway.
A sudden howl of wind hit her like a slap. She wrestled her coat on mid breath, hopping against the chill, her bag slipping down her arm like it was in on the joke. Then the snow. The white everywhere, bright enough to sting.
She’d call him. Yes, she’d call. Demand he come out, come down, drag himself from wherever he was hiding. She wanted to explore, to drift around in the cold like it was hers, to peer at everything quietly, then bolt without explanation the second anyone so much as asked, “Excuse me, miss?”
She crouched down, scooping a handful of snow into her palm like it was treasure. Held it there, watching the little flakes dissolve into nothing against her skin. A private science experiment, except instead of learning anything she just liked the way it disappeared. Like proof the world wanted to melt for her.
She kept walking, eyes fixed on her damp hand, partly dreaming and hoping the rest of the day would stay exactly like this. No frostbite. No misery. Just her, untouched by the cold.
When she finally lifted her head, she dragged her wet palm across her skirt without thinking, blotting a dark patch into the fabric she’d so carefully chosen. Didn’t matter. Snow wasn’t falling yet. The air was sharp, clean, crystalline, the kind of cold that didn’t belong to anyone. It just was. It smelled like ice. Pure, endless cold.
People flitted past her in glossy ski gear, helmets clamped tight, goggles reflecting the white around them. Poles clicking against the pavement, boards and skis clattering together on their shoulders. Everyone was so purposeful, like the mountain had sent them assignments.
And then, pink. A stupid, unmistakable head of pink. Yuji, fumbling his way across the snow packed ground. He was juggling skis under one arm, poles clattering, his boots squeaking with every stomp. His gloves looked wrong, like he’d put them on in a rush, and his goggles dangled uselessly around his neck. He looked both annoyed and frantic, muttering at the uncooperative mess of gear in his arms. Big, angry, pink chaos.
And just past him, Sukuna.
She hadn’t expected him to be here, out in the open, now. She’d really, genuinely convinced herself he was upstairs in his room, passed out cold, draped like some enormous thing finally giving into sleep. But no. He was right there, standing in the middle of all that white, alive in it, looking like he was deliberately making Yuji’s life hell.
They were bickering over something, probably ski gear, probably nothing. And Sukuna looked like he’d just been handed a personal comedy show. He was grinning, wide and merciless, those black Ray Bans slicing his face in half. The kind of grin that made his jaw look even sharper, his teeth even whiter. Not as undone as he’d been this morning, when she’d demanded face down raspberries and he’d actually lost it, laughter spilling from him like he couldn’t catch it back, but it was close. Almost as bright. Almost as easy.
And it wasn’t hers. And that was a problem. She was used to being the sole audience, the sole reason for that expression, the sole orbit his laughter circled around. Seeing it redirected, even casually, even briefly, even for Yuji, her fists curled at her sides before she realized it. Mouth curling like she’d just bitten into something sour but refused to spit it out, stubborn and pouty at once.
Angry didn’t even cover it. She wanted to march over there, rip those sunglasses right off his smug face, snap them clean in two and bury the shards in the snow like a petty little crime scene.
She jerked suddenly, all instinct. A sharp breath, a forced exhale, and she smoothed her palms down her jacket like that would iron the ugly feeling out of her. Pushed her hair back too, as if a neater parting could disguise the fact she was two seconds away from throwing a toddler fit in the middle of the Alps.
Really, was she serious? What was next, dropping to her knees, crying hot little tears, and kicking her feet in the snow like some tragic brat with frozen ankles?
What the hell was wrong with her? Why this? Why him? Why did it get under her skin so fast, so deep, that he had a life outside of her? That he could laugh at other things, not just her face down raspberry antics? That he could torment other people, prod at them, take joy in their misery, and flash those teeth, the very same teeth she thought she’d copyrighted, at someone else? That he had a whole arsenal of smiles and good graces and could hand them out like samples at a grocery store?
Her eyes refused to let go of him. Not for a second. She didn’t move an inch, only let her gaze crawl over every piece of him like a scanner, as if she studied hard enough she’d catch him cheating with reality itself.
And he, god. He looked refreshed. As if he’d actually gotten his nine hours. Like he hadn’t peeled himself out of the bathtub with that very obvious, very denied hard on that he tried to pass off as nothing. As if his erection was just a background character. Just scenery. Him stomping out, pretending it wasn’t happening, and her pretending she wasn’t watching.
Her eyes dragged over him, like her brain wanted to immortalize every detail. That jacket. God, that jacket. A gray brown fur bomber that looked like it should’ve been displayed in a museum, not slung over the shoulders of a man. It was too gorgeous, too architectural, too designed.
Men shouldn’t be allowed to wear things that beautiful, they stained them. They ruined fine art with their existence.
But he wasn’t just any man.
His shoulders stretched it wide, the slightly oversized, boxy cut exaggerating his already impossible frame. The collar was broad and plush, lined with a softer, lighter fur that begged to be touched, stroked, maybe even buried into. The whole thing looked engineered to announce his presence before he even spoke.
The design was almost infuriatingly rich, fur panels contrasted with wool tweed sections at the hem, pocket flaps, sleeve cuffs. That mix of textures gave it depth, dimension, an arrogance you couldn’t peel off even if you tried. The front zip gleamed, the chest pocket sat too perfectly reinforced, too functional to be real. And inside, he had to wear a gray ribbed turtleneck. Snug. Smooth. Sleek under the bulk. Harmonious layers, tonal perfection. He looked curated. Styled. Deliberate.
And then the pants. Black, wide leg, pleated high at the waist, falling heavy. The fabric had that structured elegance that draped with intention. They were dusted at the hem with snow, like even the Alps wanted to touch him. And she hated it. She hated him. Hated how much he cared about looking good. These weren’t survival clothes. These weren’t “I needed pants so I bought pants” pants. These were statements. Statements with tailoring and cost per wear calculations and smugness woven into every seam.
Men didn’t need good clothes. They needed three interchangeable uniforms in three different colors, end of story. What business did he have looking like this when he was supposed to be her uncle, a man, a category that should’ve disqualified him from aesthetic pleasure altogether? She could almost forgive him if he’d shown up in a fleece jacket and jeans.
But no. He had to be infuriatingly beautiful. He had to ruin misandry.
He was supposed to not care about these things. He was supposed to own nothing. Not even a toothbrush. He was supposed to shower when the mood struck, not step out of a cologne ad with his hair catching the sun like that. What the hell was this? Was he asking for something? Fishing for attention? Trying to lure some very beautiful tourist woman? Some long legged, glossy haired blonde with artful balayage, or maybe a chestnut brunette with understated wealth radiating from her pores, to spend the last two days of the trip locked up in his suite together, only to return to the mountain house arm in arm with her, grinning like an idiot, announcing a surprise wedding?
That was such an uncle thing to do. To unexpectedly marry a woman who always looked perfectly tanned, who had those subtle lip fillers that whispered money, not desperation. Who skied at dawn and drank champagne at lunch, who would smile politely at you before asking if you could take the photo again, this time from a higher angle.
Was that what this was? Him dressing for her? For some fantasy tourist wife? Was he really trying to look good for… What?
And then the boots. She could’ve forgiven him everything if he’d at least kept the boots. His boots. His big, black, heavy leather boots, those monsters she adored, scuffed and dirt engraved, worn down with stories she’d never hear. She loved those boots like they were part of him. But now? Gone. Replaced with new ones that gleamed with a formal shine, polished like they’d never even touched soil. Strangers. They weren’t his.
Her stomach twisted with rage. Who the hell did he think he was, retiring his boots for these imposters? It was like he’d amputated a part of himself. A betrayal. A crime against his own mythology. She wanted to scream, demand answers, stage a protest right there in the snow.
She was still there, rooted to the same spot like the snow had iced her ankles in place. It probably had melted under her boots from her own body heat by now. And still, he hadn’t noticed her. He was busy leaning toward Choso, head tipped low, sunglasses slid halfway down his nose.
She had honestly believed, sworn on her life, that her arrival would cause avalanches. That the mountain would rumble just from the sheer drama of her stepping out of the hotel. That people would feel her before she even spoke. But no. He was there, so completely unaware of her existence that it almost felt like a parody.
For a second, not even in some theatrical, self pitying way, she thought maybe this is what it looked like before. Before she came back. Them, like this. Every winter, probably every summer too. Just the same picture, swapped out for the right season. She imagined her name floating across the table once or twice over the years. Someone saying, “Hey, maybe we should invite her,” and someone else immediately going, “She’d rather die.”
Or worse. Maybe it wasn’t even that dramatic. Maybe no one said a damn thing. Maybe they just looked at her mom’s Facebook, saw a picture of her and thought, Ah, she’s alive. Great. And went back to their quiche or whatever.
The air burned her eyes dry though she felt so much like crying. She gnawed at her thumbnail, scraping off the polish, chewing it to bitter little flecks. They dissolved uselessly on her tongue, and she spat onto the snow, a pathetic pink streak against the white.
No one noticed that either.
God. If Sukuna ever, ever saw the pictures on her mother’s Facebook, she’d have no choice but to walk straight into the nearest body of water and stay there forever. No resurrection arc, no dramatic rebirth, just a quiet little death by embarrassment. Let the fish take her.
Her soft grunge era alone was a public execution. Those ribbed white H&M tops that clung like a confession, showing off her tragically overdeveloped boobs she weaponized at thirteen, always cropped just high enough for plausible deniability. Boobs she made damn sure were in every selfie like some kind of low budget, post ironic Lolita reboot shot. Paired with those light blue mom jeans that did absolutely nothing for anyone, ever. Not even models. And the lace chokers. God. The lace chokers. Like she was about to recite Ultraviolence and cry over a boy who didn’t know how to spell cigarette. And she was.
And the gray highlights. God, the gray highlights. Which turned the color of dishwater within a week. She'd sworn it was ashy blonde because some YouTuber in LA said so, and she believed in that woman more than in God.
And when the braces came off. Oh, when the braces came off… She smiled like she’d just invented teeth. Every photo.
If Sukuna had ever, even once clicked through Ayame’s Facebook albums just to check on her over the years, which knowing his self destructive tendencies, wasn’t completely impossible, she’d have to enter witness protection. No, worse. She’d have to fake her death and move to a mountain monastery. No, better. She’d have to vanish. Delete herself. Move to a cave in Tibet. Change her name legally to No One, meditate on her sins, and hope enlightenment came fast enough to erase the memory of those 2014 selfies with the dog filter.
She spat again, quick, because there was still that bitter chemical taste of nail polish on her tongue.
Except this time the fleck didn’t land in the snow. It landed on a boot. A very specific boot. The shiny black leather ones she’d just been seething about.
Her head jerked up. And there he was, impossibly close. He’d come beside her without her noticing, towering and wide shouldered, his shadow spilling over hers. The smug bastard had probably been standing there long enough to watch her chew herself like a nervous hamster.
“Oh my god.” She croaked, already trying to cover her mouth with her sleeve like that would undo the crime.
She was already embarrassing herself enough in the present, no need for her tragic past to RSVP to the humiliation party. She didn’t need ten year old screenshots resurrecting her posing in front of the neighbor’s blue hydrangeas, pretending she was on the unreleased alternate cover of Old Money.
Sukuna glanced down at his boot, then back at her, Ray Bans sliding lower on the bridge of his nose. His mouth curved into something caught between a sneer and a grin, like even his face couldn’t decide whether to bite or kiss.
“You just. Spit. On me.” His voice came out low, clipped, edged with annoyance.
“No… I didn’t mean to.” Her eyes blew wide, head shaking so violently the makeshift headband slid halfway down her hair. She scrambled to push it back up again with trembling fingers, looking utterly pathetic.
“Didn’t mean to?”
The laugh that followed was quiet, almost a growl in his chest, the kind that carried more threat than humor. The lines carved into the corners of his mouth deepened, sharp, merciless.
“You’re standing here gnawin’ at your nails like some stray chewin’ scraps, and then you spit it on my boots, huh? Cute.” He tilted his head, eyes running over her like she was some fresh disaster.
“It wasn’t! It was nail polish, not spit spit! That’s different!” The words tumbled out in a rush, her voice pitched way too high, way too fast, like she was testifying for her life.
For a second, he just stared. Then that grin sharpened, fond in the cruelest way, like he couldn’t believe how stupid she was for thinking this explanation helped her case.
“Ah. Much better then.” He drawled, voice low and edged with mock satisfaction. The toe of his boot carved slow through the snow, grinding over the tiny splatter she’d left there. His tongue clicked once against his teeth, a faint smirk tugging at his mouth, something darkly amused sparking behind his eyes.
“Still, girl wants t’get my attention, she don’t gotta spit on me.” He said it like it was nothing. Like weather. Effortless, infuriating, godless in that casual way men like him had, men who never had to try because the world bent first.
Her knees felt weak, not in a literal way, but in that dizzy, cinematic sense, like the ground had tilted and she was suddenly aware of her body as a thing that could be undone. Reduced. Rendered stupid by a look, a voice, a sentence said too well.
God, he was unbearable.
“What makes you think I want your attention?”
Her cheeks were already burning. She felt stupid, painfully stupid. Bardot didn’t blush. Bardot didn’t spit nail polish on boots either, but still. She wished for an avalanche now more than ever.
“What makes me think?” His voice dipped low, vowels half chewed, lazy with amusement.
His gaze dragged over her with infuriating patience, like he’d decided the world could wait while he took inventory. Not features, time. Like he was counting seconds instead of skin.
He started at the crown of her head. Hair fluffed with intention, dramatic, half wild, deliberately ruined. The kind of mess that takes effort. Caught beneath the black scarf she’d knotted like an afterthought but absolutely wasn’t. Casual in the way only something carefully planned could be. A dare disguised as negligence. Then lower. The reindeer. God help her, the reindeer. Earnest little things marching proudly across her chest, festive to the point of offense. Soft. Ridiculous.
Lower still, to the hem of her skirt. That criminal hemline she’d sworn wasn’t too short until the cold and his eyes exposed her. Thighs wrapped in brown lace, black climbing higher, clinging like it had been poured onto her skin and told to behave. The fabric caught the pale winter light, glossy and sharp, the skin beneath flushed, by the air, by the moment, by him, she couldn’t tell anymore. Too soft for the Alps. Too intimate for a place built on snow and distance.
Then the boots. Fur lined, white, nearly swallowed by frost. Blurring into the ground like she belonged there in the most wrong, fairy tale way. A princess who’d missed the survival memo and dressed for trouble instead.
And then, unhurried, he went back up again. As if he needed to be sure. As if something might’ve changed in the few seconds it took him to look her over the first time. He stopped at her eyes. Darkened. Smudged. Messy. Black shadow worked in like bruises, not neat, not innocent. Done with intention. The kind of eyes you don’t accidentally give yourself before noon at a ski resort unless they’re remnants of last night, or you’re a little unwell, or you want to be seen.
He didn’t say anything at first. Which, somehow, made it worse. The cold gnawed at the line of his jaw, metallic air sharp enough to split skin, but he stood there like it was nothing. No shiver. No rush. As if weather was just another thing that happened to other people.
A single click of his tongue cut the quiet, the sound he made when something didn’t sit right. Not annoyance. Not anger. The kind of irritation reserved for his own mistakes. Not the cold. Not her. Himself.
“Jesus. Thank fuck.” He muttered, not loud. More like an instinct. A reflex he hadn’t bothered to train out of himself. Automatic, low, already gone.
“What for?” She asked, eyes searching and dumb. Too open.
“For that.” He said flatly, gesturing at her with his chin like he was identifying a weapon, or a mistake, or a mercy he hadn’t expected to be granted.
He pushed the sunglasses down just enough to look at her properly. Really look. His eyes narrowed, not in displeasure, but in focus, like he was trying to place her in a memory and failing because she didn’t belong to just one anymore. Like she didn’t match the girl he remembered. Or maybe she matched too many versions at once. The overlap made his jaw tense.
“And not one of those inflatable disaster puffer things. Hate those. Everyone looks like they’re about to roll downhill and never recover.”
There it was, the edge, the dry humor like a blade dragged lazily across the moment. He said it like he’d thought about it before. Like this opinion had history.
He reached out without asking, fingers catching the edge of her coat, tugging her a step closer so he could fix the collar properly. Big hands, careful. Familiar. The motion was practiced, not hesitant, not gentle in the way people pretend to be gentle. This was precision. The kind that came from correcting posture by force if needed. The tug was firm enough that her balance shifted before her brain caught up.
She had this stupid, dizzying thought that he wouldn’t even need effort, just two fingers at her collar, a casual tug, and she’d be weightless, off the ground. It was awe. The kind that comes from realizing how effortless his strength was.
She laughed despite herself, a small, relieved sound that slipped out before she could catch it, fogging in the cold as it left her mouth. Her shoulders loosened like something inside her finally unclenched. He looked back at her then. There was a pause, microscopic, but real. Like the sound had reached him somewhere it wasn’t supposed to. His eyes lingered on her face, searching, recalibrating. For half a second, he looked almost caught off guard.
Then his mouth curved. Lazy, yes. Dangerous, always. But there was something else tucked underneath it. The kind of softness he’d never name and would probably deny under oath. It sat wrong on him, that warmth. And yet it fit like it had always been there.
Her chest tightened at the sight of it. Dull. Persistent. Just enough to remind her that some things don’t disappear simply because they’ve been complicated and dirtied by appetite, by lust, by the wrong kind of longing. Some things don’t rot all the way through.
Time could blur the edges. Neglect could starve the details. But the center stayed. Stubborn. Intact.
It made her remember, against her will, that she had once been small and tucked into his shadow. That she had been his baby before she ever learned how to be angry, or ashamed, or self sufficient. That truth didn’t loosen its grip. It sat there, heavy and undeniable, offering comfort and grief in the same breath.
The worst part was that it soothed her. The worst part was that it broke her heart.
“This? This I can live with.” He went on, smoothing the faux fur flat, squaring it just right. Fingers brisk but not harsh.
He finished the adjustment like he was correcting a stance, once, twice, done. Stepping back only after he was satisfied. Like leaving her crooked would’ve been an insult.
“That’s the bar?” She asked, cheeks were already feverish, eyes avoiding his carefully. She couldn’t meet his gaze anymore. Couldn’t afford to. Her body had already decided too much.
“That’s the blessing.” He corrected, quieter this time, like the thought amused him after the fact. His gaze dragged over her coat without haste. Assessing and deliberate. Judging it.
“I’m sick of seeing women drown themselves in those. Turn around.”
Her eyes widened just a fraction. She hesitated, weight shifting in her boots. She hated performing. Hated feeling looked at like this, suspended in it.
He clicked his tongue softly, impatient but not unkind.
“Come on, darling. Don’t get shy on me now.”
She froze for half a heartbeat, nerves buzzing, stomach tight with that stupid, fizzing mix of embarrassment and thrill. Then she did it anyway.
She pivoted on her heels with exaggerated care, skirt fluttering just slightly in the cold air. Her shoulders loosened as she turned. At the end, she added a small half spin, playful, unserious. Like she was five again, showing off a new coat she’d been obsessed with. Her boots crunched against the frost, and she laughed when she almost slipped.
His reaction wasn’t verbal. Just a low sound in his throat. Something thoughtful. Measured and approving. He watched like this mattered. Like he was filing it away.
“Careful. You break something, your mother’ll have me buried under this mountain before sunset.” His hand came out on instinct, fingers closing around her elbow before she could even wobble properly.
She turned back to face him, eyes bright and wide, almost glassy with it, expectant in a way she couldn’t quite control. Her lashes fluttered, too fast, betraying her. She was slightly breathless from the spin, from the way the cold bit at her lungs and flushed her skin.
His mouth curved, just barely.
“Yeah. You’re good enough to eat.” He murmured, almost thoughtfully, like it pleased him on a different level. As if this were a result he’d predicted.
She swallowed.
He hummed as she faced him again, nodding once, as though confirming a private conclusion. His hand moved up from her elbow to the side of her neck, warm against skin gone numb from the cold, thumb scraping the line of her jaw with a roughness that made her breath hitch before she could stop it.
“Like a doll someone forgot on a train. Too soft for the terrain. Too pretty for the weather. Makes people look at you and think you’re misplaced. Makes ’em wanna take you somewhere warm. Put you on a shelf. Tell themselves it’s protection.”
His voice dropped on the last words, turning instructive. The kind of tone used to explain rules no one ever bothers to write down. Like he was deliberately scaring a little girl about the dangers of wandering alone while looking neat, while looking worth keeping.
The wind picked up, lifting loose strands of her hair, stinging her eyes. She didn’t blink.
His mouth curved again, slow and dangerous. He dipped his head, closer now, close enough that his breath cut through the cold and warmed her face, close enough that she could smell leather, coffee, something iron deep and unmistakably him. His eyes glinted with something sharp and cynical, the look that meant he was in the mood to talk like this. To unsettle. To teach.
“Or do somethin’ worse. Sink their teeth in just to see if you’re real.”
He stepped back and grinned. She wanted to kiss it. That smile. That mouth. That wry grin carved by years of knowing better and doing it anyway. The way he could see her every day of the week and still make it feel like he was discovering her again, like she’d been mislaid for fifteen years and finally returned, blinking, to his line of sight.
“You ain’t dressin’ like that for the snow, girl. You’re not struttin’ out in thigh baring bullshit and funeral paint so strangers can admire the view.”
Her lips parted, half outrage, half that traitorous throb of satisfaction she despised and fed at the same time. Her eyes were wide, dark, unguarded. She didn’t get a word out. He didn’t give her the chance.
“You come out here dressed like you’re pickin’ a fight with the weather. And with me.”
Snow creaked under his boots as he closed the distance again. The space between them folded in on itself, the cold had nowhere left to live. His presence swallowed it whole. He lifted a hand. Slow. Unbothered. Fingers caught the edge of her collar again, tugged it up, then smoothed it down. Once. Then again, as if the first hadn’t been enough.
The touch wasn’t greedy. That would’ve been easier. This was worse. The small, precise adjustment of a man who’d already decided he wasn’t moving away. A man who could’ve kept his hands to himself, and didn’t. As if not touching her had started to feel unnatural, like holding his breath too long.
“You wanted my eyes on you, and don’t get it twisted, you got ’em. So tell me, what the hell d’you think I’m supposed to do with that?” He said it quieter now. Almost kind. The words sank instead of struck. Like he was paying her the courtesy of a question he already owned the answer to, an almost politeness, a razor thin pause of consent before the hunt began.
She let out a theatrical breath, eyes narrowing as she dragged her gaze from his sunglasses down to his shoes like she was inspecting contraband.
“Okay, fine. I want your attention. Sue me. I want your everything. But why do you look so good today? So annoyingly handsome. It’s confusing. I’m already struggling, you didn’t have to make it worse.” She blurted it out before she could stop herself, before she could tuck it back into her chest. But when it left her mouth, it didn’t sound bold or sharp like she meant it to.
It came out small. A little breathless. Soft around the edges in a way that surprised even her. Honest in that embarrassing, unwanted way that made her throat tighten right after.
And instead of backpedaling, she dug in.
“That’s actually unacceptable. I demand you march back inside, change into something hideous, preferably tragic, and return looking like a washed up accountant or a tired plumber. Something forgettable. Something invisible.” Her voice pitched up on purpose, a little too sharp, like she grabbed it halfway to her mouth and yanked. Sweet, but brittle. Bratty, but defensive. She refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing she felt like shit just because he looked that good.
Absolutely not. She still had dignity. Some. Enough.
“Because this? This is a problem. You attract way too much attention and I don’t do attention. I hate it. I have social anxiety. I get nervous when people look at me!”
Her brows pulled together, nose scrunching like she was physically offended by his existence. The frustration sat just beneath her skin, hot and restless, begging to spill. She pointed at him, not quite a point, more like a fluttering accusation, and immediately lost the plot of her own sentence.
She let out a sharp groan, hand slicing through the air like she could carve the words into shape if she tried hard enough. It was dramatic, uncontained, very much on purpose. Her shoulders hitched up toward her ears as if she might crawl out of her own body from the sheer absurdity of him standing there like that.
“And when they look at you, because I’m standing next to you, they’re gonna look at me too. By association! I don’t want to be perceived. I don’t want to be evaluated. I don’t want strangers forming opinions about my face, my outfit, my vibe, my mental stability. And you just exist like that. Do you see the issue?”
She stopped, exhaling hard. Eyes bright and a little wild. It all came out rushed, accusing, unbearably stupid. And halfway through she realized she sounded insane. Instead of owning it like a normal person, she twisted it into a performance about herself. Her nerves, her cursed hysteria, her tragic little heart. Because God forbid she just admit she was… Jealous.
Sukuna’s laugh broke loose, low and delighted, cutting through the cold like something alive. It was the kind of laugh that tasted the moment and decided it was good. He slipped an arm around her shoulders without ceremony, without asking. Solid, familiar weight. Drawing her into his side like she was his brat to corral.
“Jealous. Fuckin’ adorable.” He said easily, pleased.
His hand gave her shoulder a single squeeze, firm, grounding, warm even through layers. And she felt it travel straight down her spine, settling somewhere inconvenient.
“I’m not… I’m not jealous. I don’t want anyone looking at me.” She protested, breath puffing white in the air.
She shook her head as they moved, boots skidding a little on the packed snow, struggling to keep up with his long stride. Her steps went quick and clumsy, breath coming faster, the cold biting her lungs.
Without comment, his pace eased. Not abruptly. Not obviously. Just enough. His walk turned lazy, exaggerated. The arm around her shoulders stayed put, steady as a rail, subtly guiding her so she didn’t slip again.
“Mm. You’re jealous. Say you’re not, but you are. Gonna whine ’bout my jacket now too? Boots? Should I roll in the snow ‘til I’m ugly enough for you?” He said it like a diagnosis, not an accusation. His head tilted a fraction, sunglasses glinting as he looked down at her.
She scoffed, too fast. She waved a hand vaguely at him, the coat, the stupid shoulders, the way the whole world seemed to frame him on purpose.
“You look… Like that. People stare.”
A low, amused sound rolled out of his chest as he slowed further, the kind of sound that meant he’d already decided he was right. He dipped his head just enough that she had to look up at him. Not cornered. Captured.
“Cute excuse. But you got it twisted, sweetheart. I’m in the spotlight ‘cause you put me there. Not the other way around.”
He stated like it was a fact of physics and not an argument. And the thing was… He wasn’t convincing because he was good at it. He was convincing because he was bad at everything else.
Sukuna couldn’t manipulate to save his life. He didn’t know how to lace words with comfort or bend truth into something pretty. He didn’t bait, didn’t charm, didn’t pretend. When he wanted something, he stood there until the world rearranged itself around him. When he had to lie, he either went silent or told the truth in such a brutal shape it sounded false.
This, this wasn’t a trick. Which meant he meant it.
Her mouth opened on instinct. A reflexive no, maybe. A shut up. Anything to break the way his words had landed straight in her chest and stayed there. But he clicked his tongue before she could speak. A sound that said the conversation wasn’t slipping out of his hands, it was ending because he decided it had reached the point.
Oh. She loved him.
He kept guiding her by the shoulders, firm but easy. She went easily, almost gratefully, letting herself be placed, directed, held in that small orbit around him. Her thoughts were already racing ahead of her feet, little rehearsals, half formed lines, tiny offerings. Something clever. Something warm. Anything that might earn a smile, or a laugh, or just that look, the one that said she’d done something right.
She wanted to be light for him. Pleasant. A small, bright thing he didn’t regret bringing along.
“Can I–“ She began, then changed course mid sentence like she always did when she got shy.
“Can I put my hands in your pocket?”
The question slipped out before she could babysit it. She had pockets of her own, deep, practical, sensible ones, the kind her mother liked. She could’ve buried her hands in there and pretended she was normal. But that wasn’t the point. She wanted his. The absurd warmth of them. The childish, unreasonable comfort of being even closer without having to explain why. Like a cat deciding, very seriously, that this lap was now occupied.
She glanced up at him, mouth tilting into something almost shy, almost smug. As if he was a place she could rest in for a second.
He glanced down at her, one brow lifting behind the sunglasses.
“I don’t have gloves.” She added quickly, like that explained everything. Her voice softened on purpose, sweet and testing. She smiled, full, hopeful, so hard that her dimples showed, eyes flicking up to his face without tipping her head back. Bold, but not too bold. Practiced innocence.
He snorted.
“You’re tellin’ me you came here in November without gloves?” He said, slow and unimpressed. Head tipped back, eyes flicking down to her hands. Knuckles already red, skin pale and angry from the cold.
She sighed, theatrical. A little wounded. Her shoulders dipped just enough to be deliberate, hands lacing together in front of her chest, fingers rubbing for warmth, or attention. Probably both.
“No one ever reminds me of these things. I just assumed I’d be supervised. I’m very neglected.” She said mournfully. Shaking her head as if the weight of the world lived there. Her mouth tilted into a pout she didn’t even try to hide.
His mouth twitched. Almost a smirk.
“Supervised. You think I’m your coat rack now?”
She bit the inside of her cheek.
Right.
Because this man. This man absolutely would disappear for five minutes and come back with a pair of leather gloves that absolutely did not belong to him. Probably stolen off some poor tourist woman near the lift. Probably while maintaining eye contact. Probably leaving her confused, flustered, and somehow apologizing to him.
And he’d justify it. You were cold. As if that explained felony level behavior. If she actually started shaking, someone out there was losing their gloves.
She rocked on her heels, leaning closer by half an inch. Possessive in the way small animals are, convinced proximity is ownership.
“I think, that if I lose a finger to frostbite, you’ll feel morally responsible.” She said lightly, tilting her head. She pressed her lips together, fighting a smile, then went for it anyway.
He scoffed, pushing his tongue against his cheek as he looked her over again, slower this time.
“That so. What else you forget? Hat? Scarf? Common sense?”
He studied her like a problem he didn’t want solved. There was a flicker of amusement there now, the sharp kind. She’d hooked his attention, and she knew it. That was half the point.
“Sometimes dignity.” The words left her soft, almost lazy. Her shoulders slumped with the breath, like she was letting the cold have her for a second. She looked down at her boots, nudging the toe against the ground, small and deliberate. A performance, just enough to entertain him.
That did it. A low, unwilling huff of laughter slipped out of him. Brief, surprised, real, before he could bite it back. He scrubbed a hand over his mouth, then sighed like a man resigning himself to something inevitable.
“Jesus. Fine. C’mere.”
He hooked a finger into the edge of his pocket and tugged it open, the motion casual, practiced. He leaned close enough to block the wind, close enough to loom. His body angled instinctively between her and the cold, like he’d done it a thousand times before he ever thought to question why.
She didn’t hesitate. Slid her hands in carefully, like she was afraid he’d change his mind, fingers curling into the warmth. She relaxed instantly, shoulders dropping, a quiet little sound leaving her before she could stop it.
“Comfortable, doll?”
She nodded immediately, chin tucked inside the fur, eyes half lidded. Boneless and content, the way a cat looks when it discovers a warm radiator and decides it has never known suffering in its life.
“So comfortable, I could live here.” She murmured softly, like it was a secret meant only for the wind and his jacket.
She shifted her hands just enough to nestle deeper into the lining, fingers curling into the soft inner seam as if she were testing whether the coat might close around her permanently.
“You’re already gettin’ ambitious.”
“No, listen, If I were tiny, like… Thumb sized, pocket sized, I’d just live in there. You wouldn’t even feel the weight. I’d bring a blanket. Maybe a little lamp.” She said it seriously, tilting her head, eyes unfocusing as her imagination sprinted ahead of her mouth.
She was doing it again, building a world mid sentence, trusting him to keep up.
“A lamp.” He repeated. From the way his shoulders shifted, the way his jaw tightened just slightly, it was obvious he was holding back a laugh. Not the polite kind. The kind that wanted to escape and bite.
“Mhm. A very small one. Warm light. Cozy. You’d go places and I’d just be there. No forgetting me. No leaving me behind. I’d travel. I’d see the world. From your pocket.” Her fingers curled deeper into the lining, absent minded, affectionate, as if she was already checking for space, already making herself at home.
“I think I’d have wings. Not big ones. Useless ones. Decorative. Like a bug. Or a fairy that never learned to fly.”
She paused, considering it with genuine care, as if the wings mattered. As if they explained something essential. Thumbelina hadn’t had wings, and look what it cost her. She’d almost lost her life over it. So she had to have them. She just did.
He went still. Not stiff. Not alarmed. Just attentive. The kind of stillness that meant he was listening harder than he wanted to admit. He looked down at her slowly, deliberately, eyes dark with amusement and something quieter underneath.
“So you’d haunt me. Live in my clothes. Whisper opinions. Probably steal my change.”
“I’d reorganize it. For efficiency.” She corrected sweetly.
And the smile she gave him after, small, satisfied, a little smug, made it clear. This was all intentional. The nonsense. The whimsy. The way she filled the silence with softness until he had no choice but to meet her there.
He snorted, quiet, air pushed through his nose like a restrained laugh that never quite made it out. The kind he did when he was trying, and failing, not to enjoy himself.
“If you were that small, first of all, you’d last five minutes before pissin’ me off.” He said it slowly, indulgent, like he was weighing a proposal he already knew he’d accept.
“That’s generous.” Her body shook with laughter, bright and satisfied.
“You’d argue with me about routes. Tap my ribs when you disagreed. Claim moral superiority from inside my jacket.” He spoke like he was drafting a list in his head, ticking points off one by one. His chin dipped, eyes briefly on the ground, already picturing it, already doomed.
“I would be right.” She said it calmly, a shrug to it, like it was a universal truth.
“Exactly. Unbearable. I’d have to check my pockets before I sat down. ‘Hold on, don’t crush the tinker bell.’” He adjusted the jacket in his hand, shifting it a little with exaggerated care, as if he could already feel her imaginary weight.
She laughed again, softer this time, breathy, her cheek pressed to him.
“And, no wings. Absolutely not. You’d try to fly. You’d fall. I’m not dealin’ with pocket sized injuries.” He went on, dead serious, warming to the bit like it mattered. Like this was a rule he’d enforce.
“What if I had a helmet?” She lifted her head as she asked, eyes bright, genuinely considering it.
“Now you’re unionizing.”
She giggled. Her shoulders lifted with quiet delight, pleased not just with the joke, but with how easily he followed her into it. And he let her.
“And don’t think I wouldn’t notice you. I’d know you were there. You’d be warm. Annoyingly so. I’d pretend not to care, but I’d still reach in my pocket before I left a room. Just to check.”
The words landed too gently for her childish hypotheticals. Something said offhand, but meant. She went quiet for half a second, just enough time for it to catch. Her mouth parted, then closed again. She bit her lip and looked down, lashes brushing her cheeks.
Why did she want to cry? It was ridiculous. Thumb sized. Imaginary. And still it pressed somewhere tender.
“I want cat ears too.” She murmured, low and a little lost.
The thought had already run away with her, herself small enough to curl up in the safety of his pocket, warm and tucked away, dozing while the world moved around him. Him checking, every now and then, fingers brushing fabric just to be sure she was still there. Like she mattered. Like she was something precious or valuable enough to count.
“Yeah, yeah. Congratulations. You’ve successfully imagined a life where you’re even harder to get rid of. Permanent residence.”
He said it like she was an inconvenience, like she’d wandered into his space on purpose just to test him, but his arm tightened anyway. Just a notch. Enough to pull her in, enough to turn his body so the wind took him first. The cold snapped uselessly against his back, slipped past her instead. His mouth tilted. That lazy, crooked curve that meant he was enjoying this far more than he’d ever admit.
“You’d like it!”
She beamed, completely unbothered. The seriousness cracked right off her. She giggled, bright and sudden, and bounced on her feet once, a tiny squeak escaping her before she could stop it, enough to jostle him, almost knocking him off balance.
“Baby, I’d never get rid of you.”
The words slipped out on an exhale, unarmed. And suddenly it wasn’t about the pocket, or the wings, or the stupid little fantasy at all. He was looking straight at her now. Really looking. His gaze heavy, steady, burning with something that didn’t joke. It landed like a vow.
The world seemed to quiet around them, cold air and passing seconds held at bay by the weight of his presence, the heat of him, the way his eyes stayed on hers as if leaving wasn’t an option.
She just smiled into his jacket, cheek pressed to the worn leather, eyes slipping shut. Content. The kind of contentment that sneaks up on you. The kind that surprises you with how much you needed it.
“I swear to god, by the time you leave this place, you’re gonna own enough gloves to last you a lifetime.” He said it low, almost to himself. Like the decision had already been made somewhere deep in his head, long before the words ever reached his mouth. As if thought was a formality. Because once his mind locked onto something, it didn’t negotiate, it executed.
“You say that like it’s a threat.” Her voice was sleepy, loose at the edges, a small snort caught in it like she hadn’t fully woken up yet.
“It is, I’m serious.” He replied firmly.
She smiled to herself, a quiet, private thing, warm and pleased. She liked how he said things like that. Like her future came with footnotes and practical add ons she never asked for. She didn’t need gloves. Or scarves. Or hats. She didn’t need coats piled on chairs or drawers full of things meant to keep a body functioning through winter. She didn’t even need the basics, really, not food, not water, not any of the polite requirements of being alive.
She just needed him.
The way he walked half a step ahead of her. The way he checked the ground before she did. The way his presence bent the air slightly, made everything feel handled.
And she had him.
The thought bloomed too fast, too full.
And then, she stopped dead.
Boots skidding faintly over the powder, the sound too loud in the quiet. Her heart kicked hard against her ribs, sharp and sudden. For a split second she wanted to bite back, tell him he was the worst liar she’d ever met, that he was full of shit, that standing next to him she looked like a shaking, underdressed fool who should’ve stayed inside with her dignity and a scarf.
But then something in her head slipped sideways. The words he’d just said looped back, clear as dialogue she’d memorized without meaning to. A stupid giddiness bloomed in her chest. Like he’d just handed her a loaded sentence and trusted her to know what to do with it.
“You know what? If you actually cared about me, you’d roll in the snow right now.” She said suddenly, tilting her head like she’d just had a perfectly reasonable thought.
His brow twitched.
“Ruin the jacket. Mess up your hair. Get it all wet. Look disgusting.” She went on, calm and precise.
Her eyes narrowed, sharp and bright, too bright. Not playful. Not teasing. The kind of look gods gave mortals right before demanding something obscene and irreversible. The kind of look that said this isn’t a joke, even if everyone involved pretended it was.
Like God, probably, staring down at Abraham and thinking, Let’s see how far you’ll go. Knife raised. Hands shaking. Loyalty measured in blood. It wasn’t drama. It was a test. A primitive one. Old as bone and fire.
And the ridiculous part, the part that made it almost funny, if she let herself laugh, was that she wasn’t even asking for anything impossible. No mountains moved. No sons sacrificed. Just… Attention. Presence. Proof.
He didn’t move.
“Come on. Make yourself ugly for once.” She said, quieter now, almost coaxing. Her mouth betrayed her, the smallest curve at the corner, a grin she tried and failed to suppress. She bit her lip. Challenging him. Absolutely enjoying herself.
She looked ridiculous and powerful all at once. Like she knew exactly how absurd the request was. Like that was the point.
And she waited.
“Is that so?”
The brow lifted behind the dark glass, slow and deliberate, like he had all the time in the world and she had just volunteered to spend it badly. The grin came after, unrushed, pulling at one corner of his mouth.
His hands slid into his pockets as he leaned back, not retreating, just stretching himself into the moment. Lazy. Controlled. The kind of movement that made it clear he knew exactly how much space he took up. His shoulders rolled once, loose, unbothered, the fabric of the sweater pulling tight across his chest like it was complicit. Like his body had its own agenda and he wasn’t interested in stopping it.
He tipped his chin higher, throat bared just enough to look like an invitation and a warning at the same time. A dare written clean into bone and tendon.
“Yes. Roll. Right. Now.”
She nodded hard, reckless, punctuating every word. Her own chin lifted, stubborn and proud, pretending she wasn’t already standing exactly where he wanted her.
The sound that left him wasn’t quite a laugh, more a dark, low snort, all amusement stripped of warmth. Dismissive. Entertained. A sound that said he’d seen this kind of courage before and buried it gently.
“If I get ugly, you’re comin’ with me.”
“What?”
A clean, bright crack of sound that split her composure straight down the middle. Horror flashed across her face in real time. Brows pulling tight, eyes blown wide, mouth falling open as if her brain had tripped over its own translation and never quite landed. Her head even tilted, instinctive, helpless, like she was trying to listen harder to reality and failing.
“S–“
She didn’t finish it. He didn’t bother answering.
One second he was beside her, solid and unmoving, a dark shape against the white. The next, he moved. Fast in that lazy in that predatory way that never looked like effort. His hands closed around her waist, warm through layers, impossibly sure. She made a sound she didn’t recognize, maybe a shriek, maybe a laugh as her boots left the ground entirely.
Then the world tipped.
In two long strides he veered off the packed trail, straight into untouched snow. The drift swallowed them whole with a soft, violent whump. Powder burst up around them, cold and blinding, the sound muffled like the world had been wrapped in cotton. They sank together, uneven and breathless, snow seeping instantly into every gap it could find.
“Sukuna!”
She gasped, but it came out wrong, tangled in laughter, lungs burning, heart racing so hard she couldn’t tell if she was panicking or having the time of her life. Probably both.
Snow clung to her hair, melted against her lashes. Cold kissed her cheeks, slid down her collar in wicked little rivers that made her shiver hard. Stealing her breath in quick, shocked gasps. Burning her skin like a fire in reverse. Her skirt had ridden up, tights already soaked through, the chill sharp and shocking against her legs. His jacket, his jacket, the one she’d admired like it belonged behind glass, was ruined now. Darkened with wet patches, snow packed into the seams, sullied because of her.
The white caught them both, clinging, until they looked like creatures carved out of the same winter.
“You’re insane!” She squealed, voice thin and bright, kicking at his shin and clawing uselessly at his arm like she could actually overpower him.
He laughed, low, deep, right against her ear. Warm breath, steady hands, the calm center of all that chaos. He shifted them easily, rolling just enough to keep her unbalanced, snow crunching beneath his weight.
“You came all this way just to stand there lookin’ pretty. Said you wanted me ugly. Ugly’s a two person job.” His voice rumbled, rough with amusement, unbothered by the cold, by the mess, by anything at all.
Her fists thumped against his chest, half hearted, more protest than force, and he let her do it, a deep laugh breaking loose from him, rough and amused, vibrating straight through her ribs.
White sky, white ground. And then they were rolling again, the slope carrying them in a clumsy, laughing drift. He moved like a landslide, huge, inevitable, but never reckless. Every turn of his body, every redistribution of weight was deliberate, instinctive, leaving just enough space so she could kick and flail, so her boots could scrape uselessly at the packed snow, so her breath never caught in panic. His presence filled everything, but he never crushed her. Never once.
Even like this, lungs burning, cheeks stinging, hair full of ice crystals, he was careful. Always careful. The danger was theatrical, all bluff and bravado. Beneath it was something steady, almost reverent. That was what undid her. Not the cold, not the tumble, but the care. It hit harder than the wind slicing across the slope.
They finally stilled, half buried in snow, her pinned beneath his weight but never trapped. She stared up at him, breathless, lashes damp with melted flakes. His face hovered above hers, flushed from the cold, eyes bright and alive, a grin tugging at his mouth like he’d gotten away with something felonious.
She should’ve been furious. Mortified even. Ready to scramble away. She was supposed to be annoyed. She was annoyed. This was childish, inappropriate, absolutely against whatever unspoken rules she’d decided existed. But instead, her body hadn’t decided to panic yet.
Her resolve was gone. Because it didn’t felt like him at all, or maybe it felt too much like him. Like the version that existed before everything went wrong. A boyish mischief flickering through the sharp edges. And somehow she was the one forced into being the adult now, standing guard over rules she didn’t even fully believe in.
She pushed at him again, stubborn hands braced against something immovable. Snow slid off his shoulders in a glittering cascade, smacking her in the face like divine retribution. straight down onto her face, cold and shocking.
She sputtered, shaking her head like she was drowning. He laughed, really laughed, and the sound echoed down the slope, warm and wild against the winter air.
She had spent her whole life dodging scenes like this. Mess. Noise. Attention. Bodies colliding where they shouldn’t. She liked control, liked distance, liked knowing exactly where to stand so nothing could spill.
And yet here she was.
He was leaning over her fully now, one arm buried in the snow beside her head, the other braced against her ribs. A human barricade against the the cold. Not gripping, not pressing, just holding space, making sure she hadn’t slid any farther.
His weight was heat. Real, impossible heat, bleeding through layers of wool and leather and fur. The cold screamed everywhere else, but where he hovered, the world felt paused. Shielded. Like the wind had decided to give them a second.
Snow dusted his hair, caught in the strands like tiny stars of light. It clung to his lashes, melted slowly along the hard line of his cheek, tracing paths down skin already flushed red from the cold. He looked wrong for this, too composed, too striking. A grown man tangled in snow like a mistake. And somehow, unfairly, he looked devastating.
She hated that.
“This was supposed to make you ugly.”
She murmured, just a breath, almost swallowed by the wind, like she was confessing something to the mountain instead of him.
Her palms came up to his chest again. Not pushing anymore, not really. Just checking. Proof that he was solid, that she hadn’t imagined the weight or the warmth or the way the world had narrowed down to this ridiculous, breathless moment.
He huffed a laugh, low, rough, unmistakably him.
Snow slid from his jaw as he shifted, a few cold drops landing against her lip, her cheek. His eyes flicked over her face, sharp and assessing, not amused so much as alert. Making sure she was okay. Making sure she was still here.
That wolfish edge curved his mouth, not a grin, not quite. Something quieter.
“Ugly, huh? Tell me where you want it ugly, brat. The face? The hair?” His voice came low and rough, almost thoughtful.
“Or right here. Where you’re feelin’ it throb even in the fuckin’ cold, like it wants me t’take you in the snow.”
His hips rolled once, slow and unapologetic, grinding his weight into her through the layers. The drag was heavy, undeniable, all mass and intent, enough to knock the breath clean out of her chest. She gasped despite herself, toes curling tight inside her boots, thighs locking as if her body could decide for her.
The belt buckle bit into her bare skin, a cruel kiss of metal against the soft strip of belly her sweater had betrayed. Steam curled between them with every breath, her lungs stuttering as if the air itself had turned hostile.
“Sukuna–“
She felt helpless. Desperate even. The sound that escaped her wasn’t a word at all, just a small, fractured thing. Snow stung everywhere it touched. Her scalp, her thighs, the curve of her back. The cold was so sharp it felt surgical, like it could split her open if it wanted to, and still, still it barely registered now.
Her hips arched up into him before her mind could catch up, before it could even form the thought don’t.
Her gaze snapped instinctively to where Yuji and Choso had been moments ago. Empty. Just snow, blinding white, the flat glare of winter. It should have calmed her. It didn’t. If anything, it made her pulse race harder. Empty didn’t mean safe. Empty meant exposed. It meant anyone could walk into this scene without warning.
Her mother could be anywhere.
And the thought of being seen like this, pressed into the snow beneath him made her stomach twist. Anyone could have seen them. Someone might already have.
And she hated him. She really did. Hours ago, she had offered him something fragile and unguarded, handed it over with shaking hands like an idiot who still believed in timing, and he had refused her with the composure of a man who knew exactly how righteous he looked doing it.
Very good morals. Very good control.
And now, now he wanted to be himself again.
He always did this. He had a talent for it, cornering her when the world was suddenly too open, too visible. Denying her when there was nothing but four walls and silence and maybe a moth battering itself stupidly against a lamp. Maybe a spider tucked into the corner, patient and unseen. Private moments, safe moments, where nothing could interrupt them but breath.
Sukuna loved thresholds. He liked the wrongness of timing, the vulgar poetry of almost. He liked deviance with rules. Liked wanting and not taking. He liked depravity best when it wore a respectable face, when it looked accidental, deniable, when it could be passed off later as nothing at all. He loved control dressed up as restraint. Loved temptation with witnesses nearby.
She hated that about him. She hated that he waited until the world was wide open and watching. Exactly how much he liked it. And she was standing in it again, heart pounding, knowing exactly who he was, and furious that it still worked.
Her fingers curled weakly into the thick fabric of his jacket, clammy despite the cold. She swallowed, breath hitching, and tried to sit up in a sudden, panicked motion, her body reacting before she could reason with it. In the same breath, he held her there, broad palm settling at her sternum, firm and unyielding, pressing her back into the snow.
She gasped, a soft, offended sound slipping out as she wriggled instinctively, trying to reclaim space, dignity, control, anything. But his weight didn’t shift. Not even an inch.
She opened her mouth to tell him to stop, to be reasonable, to have some sense. But the words tangled in her throat. Her eyes darted anywhere but his face, because God help her, if she looked at him she’d do it. She’d climb him right here, in front of the tourists, the ski lifts, her family, God Himself.
Fear was real. It should’ve ruined everything, should’ve soured the air, snapped her back into herself, reminded her of consequences and mirrors and shame. But it didn’t. Not fully. The sick truth settled warm and heavy in her chest anyway. Fear was sharpening it. Making it glow. Making it feel unreal.
She’d never been this kind of person. She liked predictability. Soft landings. She liked knowing where things ended. That was the lie she told herself.
What she wanted was this. Him, the cold, the quiet, and an invisible curtain pulled tight around them. A pocket of the world folded inward, sealed off, where no one could see and nothing could touch. A place where time stalled and names didn’t matter.
Her fingers stayed fisted in his jacket, palms damp and freezing, clinging to leather and fur like it was the only solid thing left. Her heart battered her ribs, wild and frantic, like it was trying to escape before she could change her mind. She told herself this was dangerous. That if anyone saw, if anyone knew, it would ruin her, collapse everything she’d built and bury her under it.
But maybe that was the point. Maybe that was why it felt like this.
“I don’t want to be anywhere else. Please just hide me.” She whispered, the words trembling apart as they left her mouth. She tipped her head back to look at him, eyes bright, pleading and unflinching all at once. Afraid and certain in the same breath.
The sound that left him wasn’t neat. It scraped its way out of his chest, low and unguarded, something caught between relief and restraint, as if the same breath carried both hunger and surrender. Because she’d finally said it. Not with words, not even with courage, but with stillness. With the way she didn’t step back. She never had, really.
It wasn’t about claiming. It was about recognition. About the quiet, dangerous understanding that she had always known where she stood.
He let out a slow breath against her hair, almost a laugh, almost a vow.
“Hide you? That’s not how this works. If you’re with me, nothing gets to you. Nothing.” He murmured, voice roughened down to its bones.
One of his hands slid to her thigh, broad and groping, hard enough to promise damage. His fingers pushed beneath the lace, bunching the tights, knuckles pressing into the nylon like he meant to tear straight through it, and then he stopped.
Not gentle. Controlled. Like he caught himself at the edge of something sharp. Like he felt the cold biting into her skin and decided, deliberately, not to make it worse.
She reacted without thinking, her leg hooking tight around his waist, pulling him closer, dragging a spray of snow up his back as if she could anchor him there by force alone.
His other hand came up to the back of her head, fingers threading through her thick waves with care, with adoration. He drew her in, closing the distance until her breath stuttered against his throat, until the world narrowed to the quiet space they shared. His mouth brushed her temple. Just a kiss so gentle it felt unreal, like something remembered instead of done. Warmth against cold. Anchor against drift.
“Let them come. Let the whole fuckin’ world set itself on fire tryin’ to drag you from me. I’ll cut ‘em down. I’ll cut down every hand, every eye, every parasite that thinks they can touch what’s mine. You hear me? I’ll erase them. All of them. I’ve got you now. That’s where you stay.”
His breath left him sharp, cracked at the edges, like sweetness itself was breaking him open.
His touch on her thigh lingered. His thumb shifted, slow now, smoothing instead of taking, tracing small, absentminded arcs through the fabric beneath her skirt. Frustrated. Grounded. A man very aware of what he wanted, and exactly why he wasn’t taking it.
He stayed there, hand warm and steady, working heat back into her thigh, caressing where skin should’ve been, soothing where he’d almost hurt her. Like a promise deferred.
When he leaned back, it was only the barest inch, enough to bring those eyes down on her. Crimson, heavy, all heat and hunger and something she couldn’t name, couldn’t survive. They didn’t just look at her, they searched her. They opened like wounds, spilling every jagged piece of the inside of him across her face. Glinting like burnt cinnamon caught in sunlight, reflecting back everything he wouldn’t say out loud. An open wound of a man, laid bare in two impossible mirrors.
“Stay. Right here. Let me keep you. Don’t fuckin’ move from me. Ever.” The words tore out of him softly. Soft only in the way an earthquake is soft. Inevitable, absolute, the kind of danger that doesn’t let you run, doesn’t let you hide. You could stand clear of the fault line, lock every door, swear you were safe, but the tremor would still reach you.
Her hand drifted up, until her palm rested at the very center of him. The sweater was almost ridiculous. Cashmere so fine it felt alive, like the fur of some spoiled, perfectly bred silver cat who never knew hunger, only silk cushions and fresh cream. She pressed against it softly, dizzy with the idea that beneath all that luxury lived something brutal, caged and beating like it resented the bars. His heart.
“Here?” She breathed, the word slipping out so quiet it almost froze in the air between them. Her lashes, powdered faintly white from the cold, lifted just enough to catch him. Not fully, never fully. Just the barest glance from under a veil of doe eyed reverence. But it wasn’t harmless. Not at all. It was deliberate, sharpened, her softness pulled like a blade across the tender skin of his patience.
“Here. Right here with me. Where you fucking belong.”
He pressed her hand harder against his chest, his own covering it, pinning her there. Like he was daring her to try and pull away. Daring her to peel back the cashmere, the skin, the bone, and slip inside his ribcage if she thought she could. Replace the frantic thud beneath her palm with herself.
It wasn’t careful, not really. But it wasn’t sudden either. No gasp of surprise, just his mouth pressing down against hers like a force of nature. Hot, unbearably hot against her glossy lips chilled from the winter air. And it was steady. Certain. A kiss that didn’t hesitate, didn’t ask, didn’t grant her the mercy of second thoughts. He kissed her like he was draping his entire shadow over her trembling frame and growling into her bones that she was his, no matter who the hell sees.
She froze for one suspended second, long enough to feel the earth tilt, to hear the crunch of ice shifting beneath her coat, before her hands clawed into the leather at his sides. She had no choice but to kiss him back. Or maybe she did. Maybe she just didn’t want one. Because God, she wanted this. And if he gave her a lifetime’s ration of these kisses every early morning until the sun collapsed, it still wouldn’t be enough. Not with the way his mouth pressed down harder, not with his breath gusting hot against her frigid skin.
It was sticky, deliciously, desperately sticky. Her lip gloss smeared messily across both their mouths, slicking his chin, the corner of her jaw, streaked over her own skin. Every drag of his tongue carried the taste with it, every wet roll a blend of artificial vanilla and chemical sweet shimmer, the bitter edge of his spit and the almost metallic crisp of snow melt on his lips. Sparkle particles from her gloss clung to him, on his tongue, in the scrape of his teeth, scattered like tiny constellations across his mouth.
And the sounds. They were unbearable. The wet smacks when their lips parted, the low rasp of his breath vibrating against her, the helpless little noises caught in her throat when he angled in harder. The faint crunch of snow shifting as his knee dug in closer to her hip. Her muffled gasp when he caught her lower lip between his teeth, dragging it slow, letting it snap back glossy and ruined.
He pulled back just enough for breath, their mouths were still tethered, strings of spit glinting faintly in the pale winter light, glimmering like glass before snapping. His tongue darted once, slow, to lick the mess from the corner of his mouth. And his eyes, dark, sharp, unsparing, never left hers.
“Still runnin’ that mouth about me bein’ too handsome?” He muttered, voice low and rough. His fingers brushed through her hair slow, knocking loose a clump of snow with more care than he had any right to.
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Her breath hung white in the air, each little cloud shaking with the tiny tremors running through her body. His face was so close it nearly hurt to look at it, the sharp bridge of his nose touched pink by the cold, the tips of his ears the same, but it didn’t soften him. It didn’t make him human. If anything, it made him look hotter, like the frost outside only existed to prove there was a fire inside him that nothing could touch.
She wanted to say it.
That nothing could ever stain him.
Not the snow biting at his boots, not the wind cutting his face raw, not time, not cruelty, not the rot that clung to everything else in her life like damp. He could be dragged through mud and blood and come out the other side still unmistakably himself. Still sharp. Still standing. Still unbearably real.
It terrified her, the way her mind insisted on polishing him into something untouchable. Like the world could throw its worst at him and he would only look more like a god for it. Ruined things were supposed to lose their shine. He didn’t. He absorbed damage and wore it like proof of survival.
She ached with it, this stupid, swelling worship.
Her hand was still splayed against his chest, fingers splayed over the slow, steady thud of his heart. She moved before she could think. Sliding up, tracing the hard line of his jaw, feeling the muscle clench beneath her fingertips, tendon straining like it resented her touch and wanted more of it all at once. She dragged lower, thumb pressing against the corner of his mouth, wiping the gloss and spit they’d left on each other’s lips.
She lifted that same thumb like she was offering herself a secret sacrament. Her lips parted, and she slipped it in, tongue curling against her skin as she sucked it away. Her lashes stayed lowered, but her eyes flicked up through them, shining, almost guilty. Almost.
Because guilt wasn’t the whole truth. Not even close. She wasn’t just guilty, she was starved. She was trying everything now, everything her fevered little brain could conjure, throwing it all at the wall just to see what would stick. Every flutter of her lashes, every soft sigh, every holy innocent move laced with filth. She was gambling. She was begging without words.
If she could just tilt the scales. If she could just crack his resolve for one second, just one, he’d have no choice but to give in. To drag her inside by the arm, shut the door on the rest of the fucking world, and finally, finally do what he should have done that morning in the woods. If she hadn’t passed out like a stupid little sinner, maybe she wouldn’t be here now, biting down on her own pulse, chasing the ghost of his touch like it was air.
It was desperate. Pathetic. Brave. It was everything at once. And she didn’t care. She wanted his ruin. She wanted to surrender.
He barked out a laugh. Low, sudden. It wasn’t polite. It was mean, full of teeth and satisfaction that scraped right down her spine. He looked at her like she’d just handed him the best joke of the decade, eyes dropping to her gloss stained mouth before climbing back up to her gaze, pinning her in place.
She didn’t even have time to breathe before the world spun. His grip shifted and suddenly, effortless, inevitable, he flipped her. The snow slapped cold against her thighs, her knees bracketing his sides now, her breath caught in her chest as she realized she was on top of him. Like a ragdoll thrown and rearranged, except every inch of it was controlled, orchestrated.
He never lost his grip on her. The snow that had clung to her coat rained down between them like powdered sugar, dusting his fur collar, catching in his hair, melting against his jaw. Her hands pressed into the hard plane of his chest, and the heat radiating off him bled through every layer she wore. He was too solid, like she’d landed on a rock hidden under wool. He dwarfed her completely even in this reversed position.
One of his hands stayed locked around her back, heavy and absolute, the other slid up until his palm cradled the base of her skull. His thumb dragged across her lower lip, pressing into the slick shine, not wiping it away but lingering.
“That what you want? Taste me? Then taste me. Not my shadow. Not my mark. Me. You want a taste so bad, then quit licking at scraps like a stray and kiss me instead.” His drawl lingered. His thumb pressed harder, tugging at her lip.
Just a kiss. That was all it would be. And even that felt like a dare big enough to crack her open. She could explain the position if she had to. She was already rehearsing it in her head. They’d been rolling in the snow. He’d been mean about the cold, about the skirt, about her stupidity, Sukuna being Sukuna, proving a point with bruised humor and frozen hands. Teaching, always teaching. Nothing obscene. Nothing that couldn’t be smoothed over with tone and timing.
That was the thing, wasn’t it? Everyone in the family knew what Sukuna was. They’d always known. They spoke about it in warnings and jokes, in looks exchanged across tables, in the way conversations shifted when he entered a room. Hyperaware, all of them. And yet, when it got too close to the truth, when the danger stopped being theoretical and became visible, they turned their heads. Not because they didn’t see it. Because seeing it meant admitting something they had no language for.
She swallowed.
Was she really willing to risk more than this?
“And if you’re bold enough to swallow me down, girl, do it where it counts. Don’t waste your appetite on your own fuckin’ thumb.” The words hit low, too honest. Like every second her mouth wasn’t on him was some unbearable waste, an insult to the fire clawing at his chest.
He didn’t misunderstand her. He saw it for what it was. Not confidence, not seduction, but that small, humiliating instinct to offer herself up, to make herself smaller, prettier, easier, just in case it would keep him close. As if she believed affection had to be earned that way. As if she thought that was all she had.
“You… Want me to kiss you?” She hadn’t meant for it to sound so small. But it slipped out like a secret she’d never thought would matter to him.
Her chest squeezed tight, like she’d said something too obvious, too stupid. But his eyes didn’t mock. They burned. Was this normal? She wondered. Could a man like him really want something as basic as a kiss? Not just her begging, not just her body stripped bare, but something simple, something sweet?
The people she grew up around, her friends, the films she watched too young, the songs that played on repeat, had taught her that this was nothing. That kisses and laughter and warmth were just background noise. Filler scenes. Things you outgrew. They made it sound like love was supposed to hurt in a very specific way. Like the real proof of devotion was letting yourself be emptied out. Letting him take until there was nothing left to give. Choke you on his want, let him get off on your humiliation. Because that was what they swore counted as love.
Had she been wrong? Were they? Because right there, with him, a kiss didn’t feel basic. It didn’t feel small. It felt like the most dangerous thing she could give. Like it was harder, braver, riskier than anything else. Maybe she’d been taking it for granted. The little things, the gentle ones that looked easy from the outside.
Something she could give without breaking herself open, without gambling pieces of herself she might never get back. Something that didn’t feel like bleeding just to keep him near. Something that couldn’t be weighed or measured, couldn’t be found lacking. A kiss wasn’t a risk when they were alone. Now, a kiss wasn’t a test. It was hers to give, simple, unhurried. Enough. Enough for him to take. Enough for him to stay.
The words tumbled out. Not soft, not secret. Loud. Reckless. Like she’d accidentally shouted her diary in a crowded room.
“I’ll kiss you so much you’ll hate kissing. You’ll hate me for it. You’ll put out a restraining order, ban me from your mouth. I’ll kiss you so much you’ll never want another–“
She cut herself off mid sentence, snapping her mouth shut, eyes darting around like she could stuff them back in. It was supposed to stay in her head. Her private little epiphany. Not out here in the air where it sounded deranged. But once it broke loose, it was gone.
Her heart was hammering, breathless, eyes wide like she’d just discovered fire, or invented kissing itself. And then she leaned down and did it. Pressed her mouth to his with all the chaotic sincerity she had no business carrying in her chest. No hesitation. No shame. Just wild delight, like she’d just won something nobody else had even known was a prize.
Her laugh cracked out against his mouth mid kiss, ridiculous and bright, bubbling up like she couldn’t keep it in. Too stupidly happy. She kissed him again, harder, harder, until his sharp bones dug into her skin, until she was practically mauling herself. Her palms flattened against his shoulders, not clinging but pressing, bracing, like she was the one pinning him down. As if that was even remotely possible.
“See? I’ll do it. I’ll ruin you. You’ll be sick of me.”
Her words fell out in a rush, breath cutting short as she pressed her mouth to his chin, his jaw, frantic and almost sloppy with it. Spit shining in the gold of the low light. She dragged warmth and want across every line of his face. Her kisses tumbled lower, desperate, until she found the hot place where jaw met neck, the softest, warmest part of him.
He caught her there. His palm clamped around her jaw so quick she barely swallowed the gasp. The pressure was rough, but his thumb stroked the hinge of her jaw with an almost unbearable gentleness, like he couldn’t decide if he meant to cage her or cradle her.
His mouth curved sharp, disbelieving.
“You’re outta your fuckin’ mind. Kiss me ‘til I hate it? You don’t even know what you’re promising, brat.” He said, drawl roughened, low, almost ruined already.
He hauled her back down to him by the back of her hair. Firm and decisive. Mouth colliding with hers, his teeth catching her lower lip with a feral snap of want. A growl pressed into her mouth, a taking. Like biting into fruit still clinging stubborn to the branch, tearing off what he wanted and leaving the rest alive, bleeding sweetness on his tongue.
She hissed into his mouth, sharp and breathless, but the sting only bloomed into something bright and unruly inside her. A laugh threatened to spill out anyway, reckless and breathless, her thighs trembling where they locked around his hips. He swore back against her, the sound torn straight from his chest, raw and stunned. Like her laughter had slipped past bone and lodged itself somewhere vital.
“You’re fuckin’ sick. Crazy little brat. You’ll kill me one of these mornings.” His voice was wrecked, softer than it had any right to be, but still dangerous, like he hated how much he meant it.
She tucked her face into the hinge of his jaw, nose brushing, rubbing there like she didn’t know where else to put all that feeling. Small, insistent movements. Her forehead nudging, a quiet, animal insistence. Breath coming uneven against the warmth of his skin.
Her body slackened over his in that unmistakable way, the way a body folds when it’s finally allowed to stop holding itself up. Just heavy, trusting, exhausted. The kind of collapse that comes after too many years of staying braced. She breathed out, long and shaky, and stayed there, restless at first, then still, as if cold and safety had blurred into the same thing, and she didn’t care which one took her first.
The cable car lurched, slow at first, then smooth as it lifted off the platform. The station noises thinned into a hum. The shouts of tourists, the scrape of skis dragged across the floor, the quick rattle of the gates clanging shut. Now it was only the steady mechanical thrum beneath them, the faint squeal of cables tightening above their heads, and the wind outside, muffled by glass but still there, endless.
Inside was warmer than she’d expected, cozy almost, though the chill clung stubborn to their damp clothes. Her boots were a mess, white fur clumped, darkened at the edges where snow had melted into water. Her legwarmers sagged, damp and pitiful, like they’d been wrung out. She hated how they looked but wasn’t taking them off.
The faint scent of wet wool and leather clung to both of them, heavy in the tight air. Her hair was a mess, flyaways sticking to her temples where the cold had kissed her skin pink, damp strands curling in little spirals. Her lipstick was long gone, smeared somewhere on his jaw, a ghost of sugar and shine she was too embarrassed to think about now.
She shoved a fistful of caramel popcorn into her mouth. He’d bought it for her. Not because she asked, not because she pouted, he just saw the paper bag at the counter of the tiny station café and paid for it like it was nothing, sliding it into her hands without a word. The popcorn was ridiculous. Sickly sweet and sharp with salt, clinging to her teeth, sticking in little honeyed shards between her molars. Her fingers shined faintly with sugar glaze, warm from where it had been freshly scooped, though it was already cooling in the bag. Each time she reached in, the waxy paper crinkled loud against the hush of the cable car.
He was next to her, sunk deep in the molded plastic seat, long legs stretched shamelessly, one knee crowding into her space because of course it did. His hair was still damp, thick strands pushed back from his forehead, curling at the edges where the water had refused to dry. The fur collar of his jacket had soaked patches, darkened to an almost bronze sheen, the tips spiked where melted snow had dripped down into it. He looked both ruined and perfect in it, like someone had dressed a god up in wet winter clothes as a joke.
He was bored. Utterly. His head tilted back against the glass, eyes half lidded, mouth set in that flat line that meant he wasn’t amused. A muscle ticked in his jaw, slow, deliberate, like even enduring this was an act of restraint.
The silence between them pressed close, heavier than the heated air. Outside, the world unfolded, vast and brutal and white. Peaks carved sharp, slopes running jagged into valleys shrouded in forests so dark they looked black against the snow. The sun made the ridges glow, crystalline, blinding. Below, tiny figures dotted the mountain trails, skiers and hikers, ants moving across a paper white canvas. The cable car kept climbing, swaying gently, every shift of the wind nudging it like a reminder of how high they were.
She chewed slowly, savoring, eyes wide, not just at the view but at the absurdity of sitting there, high above the world, next to him. The hum of the machinery was steady, constant, a lull against the pounding in her chest.
And him. Warm, massive, drenched, bored out of his skull, right there.
And then it hit her.
Not all at once, not like panic usually did, but slowly, creeping in through the back of her skull.
She was up.
Suspended inside a machine she hadn’t vetted, hadn’t researched, hadn’t argued with herself about for three nights straight. Steel and glass and cable, humming softly like it trusted gravity more than she ever had. The sky stretched too wide outside the windows, pale and endless, and the ground… The ground was far enough away that it barely felt real.
She couldn’t even walk down the stairs of her second floor apartment without fixing her eyes straight ahead. Couldn’t lean out a window unless the street sat neatly at her eye level, obedient, visible. Heights didn’t scare her in the dramatic way people expected, it was subtler than that. A sudden conviction that her body would forget how to be hers. That the floor would simply stop agreeing with her feet.
And yet here she was.
In the fucking sky.
She’d been thinking about this for a couple days. A cable car ride. Something simple, touristy, ridiculous. And before that, it was a small, ordinary dream she filed away under maybe, if I’m better one day. And she’d stepped into it without thinking. No mental rehearsals. No bargaining. No counting exits.
That was what startled her most.
She could look outside.
The glass was cold near her knuckles, faintly fogged where her breath brushed it. Wind rattled something overhead, a low metallic sigh, and the cabin swayed again, sharper this time.
Her mind stayed quiet.
No rush of nausea. No spinning. No sharp internal commands. When the realization finally reached her body, it came as a small tremor, a slight shiver, like her nerves tapping her shoulder and asking, Are we sure about this?
She was. Somehow, she was.
And that was when it landed, soft and unsettling. She hadn’t forgotten her fear. She hadn’t conquered it. She’d simply set it down somewhere without noticing. Like a coat shrugged off at the door of a place that felt warm enough.
She knew why, even if she didn’t want to admit it yet.
She reached into the bag, pulled out a few caramel coated popcorns and lifted them to his mouth. He didn’t turn his head, didn’t even glance at her, just parted his lips and took them like it was nothing, like it was obvious she should feed him. Her gaze locked on the movement of his jaw, the slow, heavy grind of his teeth, the ripple of muscle under his skin. It was hypnotic.
So she offered him more.
This time, he didn’t just take the popcorn. His mouth closed over her fingers too, heat and wet catching against her skin before he released them unhurriedly. She almost gasped, almost, but bit it back, the sound lodging somewhere deep in her chest. A jolt of panic of giddy shock burned straight through her, but he stayed the same. Still, unreadable, chewing like nothing was out of place.
There were people in the car. Families, couples, children, strangers packed close, chattering low. But none of them mattered. None of them knew her. None of them knew him. Maybe it was indecent, maybe it was reckless, but she didn’t care. The absurdity of it, the sweetness of popcorn, the press of his mouth on her fingers, the way he kept eating like she was just another thing he’d take without hesitation, made her lightheaded with delight.
Her hands hugged the crinkling popcorn bag like it was some tragic prop in a melodrama, and she let out this long, dragging sigh, eyes dropped to her lap. It wasn’t awful, nothing with him ever was. But it wasn’t how she pictured it, either. Not that glittery, silly thing she’d built in her head. And she didn’t want to keep shoving it if he wasn’t enjoying it too.
“I wish you could at least pretend you like this.”
She mumbled, voice small, pitched halfway between sulk and tease. Her shoulders slouched like a kid scolded for coloring outside the lines, lips tipping into a pout so soft it was practically engineered to wreck him. She flicked her gaze up sideways, all lowered lashes and wounded girl charm.
His head turned, sharp, deliberate, finally on her. His look was flat, unimpressed.
“Pretend? Brat, I been ridin’ these damn things since I was five years old. Same fuckin’ view, same ride, up and down, year after year. Ain’t shit to me now. So, no, I ain’t gonna sit here and clap like a tourist.”
Her pout deepened, just to spite him. She turned her head toward the glass, cheek resting against the seat.
“I’ve never been on a cable car before. Never been in the Alps. It’s the first time for me.” She whispered with a kind of quiet honesty that wasn’t dramatics, wasn’t self pity. Just the truth.
Something in him stilled. She felt it, even if she couldn’t see his face at first. The way the heat of his arm against her side went solid, unmoving, the way his breath caught sharp before evening out. She turned her head, and his eyes were on her, heavy, unflinching, making her chest squeeze.
For a beat, he didn’t move. Just watched her, eyes narrowed, like he was measuring something he couldn’t quite name. The cable car groaned, pulling them higher, and the silence stretched between them until it felt like a wire drawn too tight.
Then he shifted. Big hand sliding down the length of his thigh, over the seat, until his fingers brushed hers. He didn’t ask, didn’t wait, just took her hand and folded it into his palm like it belonged there. His grip was warm, rough, and tight, like he was holding back from crushing her bones.
“You’re right. Shouldn’t’ve brushed it off.”
She blinked up at him, lips parting, but he kept going, words rolling slow, deliberate, like he had to force them out against instinct.
“Wasn’t there for the firsts. Not a single one. Not your school shit, not the trips, not a goddamn thing. Left your mom t’do it all. And now you’re sittin’ here, makin’ me realize it. And I fuckin’ hate it.” His jaw flexed. He looked away, out the glass, like the sight of the mountains might cool the sting in his chest.
“I didn’t–“
“Nah. Listen. From here on out? Every first is mine. You hear me? You don’t step on a cable car without me standin’ beside you. You don’t try some dish that looks like a crime without me takin’ the first bite, makin’ sure it doesn’t kill you. You don’t see a ruin, a goddamn opera, a painting, a mountain, a foreign streetlight without me next to you, watchin’ the look on your face when it hits. That’s mine now. All of it.”
Her throat worked, but nothing came out.
“You don’t get to go huntin’ wonder in this world without me. Not anymore. Not ever. You want firsts? You want all the big, stupid, beautiful things? You take me with you. I’ll make sure you don’t miss a goddamn thing again.”
“Every first?” She whispered. Her lips wavered into the faintest smile, dimples cutting into her cheeks. Her eyes shone, soft and nervous.
“Every. Fucking. First.”
His mouth curved into a smirk that was sharp at the edges but impossibly warm beneath it. His thumb dragged slow across her knuckles, like an oath sealed not with ceremony but with touch.
The car jolted slightly, cables creaking, but all she felt was the heat of his hand locking her in place.
Her eyes flicked up at him sideways again, the corner of her mouth almost tugging at a grin she couldn’t quite control. Then, without warning, she slipped her arm around his, curling into him. Her cheek rubbed against the thick fur collar at his jacket, a slow nuzzle, greedy for his warmth, for his scent.
When she tilted her face up again, eyes still glimmering beneath her lashes, the words came out soft, lilting, but sharp enough to gut him.
“Every first?” Not a whisper this time. Clear. A dare.
The air inside the car changed. His smirk faltered, jaw cutting tight. A muscle ticked beneath his temple, once, twice, before his gaze locked on her.
“Don’t.”
He said it low, almost even. But his hand tightened around hers, like he might actually crush her delicate little bones if he wanted. Which was unfair. She wasn’t built for this shit. She had vitamin D deficiency. She was soft and mineral deficient, basically a walking glass vase. One wrong squeeze and she’d shatter right there against him.
It startled her. And it thrilled her.
“Don’t what?” Her smile widened a fraction, soft, playful, devastating.
He didn’t answer. Not right away. His hand slid from hers only to catch her chin, tilting it just enough to trap her in that gaze. For a moment, it looked like he might crush her jaw in his palm. For a moment, it looked like he might just swallow her whole, bones and all.
“Every fuckin’ first. Don’t make me say it twice.”
There was no teasing left in his face now, no warmth, just that dangerous quiet that lived in his bones, the kind that promised ruin. Because the mere suggestion, that she might give her body, her first, to anyone else, was enough to make him picture blood on his hands. And he couldn’t hide it.
Every first.
She had always collected them in her head like postcards she never sent. Austria, for one. Not for Apfelstrudel or Erdäpfelsalat, not for Vienna cafés filtered through beige influencer lenses, but for the dissonance of it. For the way a country that looked like a watercolor could carry so much blood beneath the varnish. She wanted to stand somewhere green and impossibly polite and feel the weight of what came before, of uniforms and marches and borders drawn with shaking hands.
She wanted Austria because of Romy Schneider, because of Sissi, because of that almost painful prettiness. She wanted to hear Julie Andrews singing with the von Trapp children and think, yes, this is lovely, and then think of everything that made that loveliness necessary. The ache mattered to her. How the land that raised waltzes and fairytale princesses could also hold wars, orders, silence. She wanted to stand there and feel the contradiction in her bones. Beauty meant nothing to her without the bruise underneath.
She had always wanted the Celtic shores. Black rocks slick with salt, cliffs chewed down by wind, a stubborn land that looked tired of surviving. She wanted to crouch by the water and turn over small, round stones with her fingers, hoping for fossils. Proof that something had lived there once and left a mark. Proof that time didn’t erase everything, only most things.
And Greece.
That one was complicated now. Tainted, bruised, tangled in images she hadn’t asked for. But she had wanted it long before any of this. She wanted to eat the food out of spite and scholarship, to taste every dish the Greeks claimed was theirs and decide, with a private, petty satisfaction, whether it was better than the originals. Wanted ruins and heat and women carved in stone mid suffering, mid rage. Wanted to stand somewhere sacred and feel messy instead of enlightened.
There were smaller firsts too. Quiet ones. Ones she never admitted because they sounded childish. She had wanted a pet fish before she learned better, before she understood how cruelty could be gentle looking, how captivity could be decorated and sold. She let that one go, eventually. Some wants matured into grief.
She always wanted to see Stonehenge because Tess had been there. Because it existed in her favorite book like a punctuation mark at the end of something tragic. Because Hardy had placed her beneath something ancient and indifferent and let the sky watch her suffer. Because there was something devastating about standing in a place that had outlived every woman who had ever been wronged. She wanted to go simply because it existed. Because endurance mattered to her.
She had wanted all these things alone. For years. Wanting them had been an internal activity, like daydreaming or dissociating. Safe because no one could take them away.
And then there was this one, the one she never said out loud because it hurt too much in its simplicity.
She had always wanted someone to read to her.
Not a grand novel. Not a love letter. Anything. A newspaper article from five years ago. Instructions. Weather reports. She remembered the nights when loneliness stopped responding to distraction, when none of her usual numbing tricks worked anymore, and this was the thing her body asked for instead.
A voice, steady and human, filling the space. Someone choosing to sit there and speak just for her. She had wanted that more than safety. More than proof. More than being understood.
And now he was saying, casually, impossibly, that she wouldn’t have to do these firsts alone. That she had him.
But they didn’t have books with them now.
“Tell me something. Anything. Just… Something.”
Her cheek found its way back to his arm, her hold on it snug like she’d tether herself there forever. Her voice wasn’t demanding, more like a sigh dressed as a question, floating up into the cramped little cabin. Her breath fogged faint against his sleeve.
“The fuck kinda request is that?”
Sukuna shifted, the cables groaning outside as though the world itself leaned with him. His gaze dropped to her, brow cutting low.
“The kind you answer. Humor me. Doesn’t have to mean anything.” She murmured, voice stretched soft, languid, almost drunk on the air itself. Her eyes dropped like the weight of them might pull her under.
“You’re fuckin’ strange.” He muttered, but there was something loose in it this time, an almost smile he didn’t bother to hide.
“But fine. I’ll give you somethin’. You ever hear the story about Jin’s chicken?”
“That’s the worst setup I’ve ever heard.” Her brow jumped, an incredulous little noise escaping.
“Shut up. You wanted a story. You’re gettin’ one.” Sukuna said easily, the sound closer to a chuckle than a scold. Settling deeper into the bench, arm flexing under her cheek like he knew exactly how heavy it felt, how close she was.
She tilted her head, cheek resting against the hard line of his arm, warmth seeping through fabric and bone. She watched his mouth, waiting for it, already halfway there, already stupidly invested. Like whatever he said next would settle something in her chest.
Without really thinking about it, she drew closer. Her leg slid over his, a quiet, instinctive thing. She didn’t stop to question whether her skirt rode up too much, or if her boot looked clumsy hooked there. It didn’t matter. She just draped her calf over his leg, like she needed every point of contact she could get, like distance was unbearable.
He shifted too. His thigh pressing more firmly against hers, grounding her there. Not pushing her away. Not calling it out. Just accepting it, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“We were kids. Jin, Shuhei, me. Seven, eight, ten. Somewhere in that mess.” He scratched at his jaw, eyes drifting past the window, up toward the white peaks like they might answer him back.
“And we had this chicken. White hen. Ugly as hell. Beady little eyes, walked like she was permanently drunk. And Jin loved that fuckin’ thing like it was his firstborn. Every morning before school, rain, snow, typhoon, didn’t matter, he’d sprint out to that coop barefoot like some brainwashed farm wife. Came back cradling her eggs in his hands like he’d struck goddamn gold.”
His mouth twitched. He scoffed under his breath.
“And he talked to her. Sat there babbling like she was a person. Fed her rice balls. Stuffed her under his shirt when it rained. Brushed her feathers like she was a Barbie doll. Called her ‘princess.’ A goddamn chicken. Like she was royalty. Not livestock.”
His gaze drifted back the white peaks outside the window. Rubbing a hand over his face like he couldn’t believe she was making him dredge this shit back up.
“Livestock? You’re out of your humanity! I hope when you die, some big, scary god looks down at you and says, ‘he was just livestock.’” Her voice went high with real outrage, not playful, not teasing, offended on a cosmic level.
Animals were never just animals to her. They were witnesses. Innocents. The only creatures in the world that didn’t deserve a damn thing they got. After women.
She realized a moment too late that she’d said it too loud, cheeks heating as a few heads turned. Suddenly she felt like a loud kid at a grown ups table. So she ducked her chin, clutching his arm tighter like she could make her smaller.
His chest cracked open with a laugh. Real, low, brutal. Shaking through his shoulders until he had to tilt his head back, teeth flashing under the lights. Heads turned, but unlike her, he didn’t give a single damn. If anything, it looked like he liked it. Liked the way people looked. Liked that they could all see her tucked against his arm like some little activist about to weep over poultry while he sat there grinning like the devil who set the coop on fire.
“Christ, you’re funny when you’re mad. Gonna cry for the chicken, sweetheart? Write a fuckin’ elegy?” He wheezed, a grin splitting wide across his mouth as he glanced down at her.
“Not just a chicken. She was princess.” She glared, correcting proudly, clutching his arm harder.
He snorted again, quieter this time, breath still uneven, then shook his head like he was trying to dislodge the image of it.
“Jesus. You two are the same kind of fuckin’ disease.”
“Excuse me?” Her tone went cool on instinct, distance snapping into place like a shield. One brow arched, precise and practiced, the look she used when she refused to be small about something she believed in.
“That righteous animal saving bullshit. Jin used to get like that. Chest all puffed out, ready to throw hands with God himself over a limping cat or a bird with one wing. Drove me insane. Still does.” He tipped his chin toward her as he spoke, eyes cutting sharp. Not cruel, not mocking, just observant. Entertained. Like he’d stumbled onto something familiar wearing a new face.
She narrowed her eyes, offended on principle alone. Jin was kind in a way that bordered on naive. The kind of man who still believed the world could be reasoned with. Too idealistic. Too untouched by the very obvious truth that men were, historically, a disappointment.
She was not like that. She refused to be.
“I am nothing like him.” She delivered it like a verdict. Final. Almost insulted that it even needed saying, as if the distinction should have been glaringly obvious.
“Yeah? You just yelled at me in public about the moral worth of a dead chicken and then tried to disappear into my sleeve. That’s exactly like him.” His gaze dropped then, to where her fingers were still curled around his arm, knuckles white, grip unconscious. His mouth twitched, the hint of a grin threatening to surface.
Her mouth fell open. Then she stuck her tongue out at him. Quick. Sharp. Entirely unapologetic.
He barked a laugh, loud and surprised, the sound escaping before he could stop it. It softened as it faded, like he’d caught himself enjoying it too much.
“I hate humans, I’d trade myself in a second to bring back extinct cats. Any of them. Sabertooths, cave lions, those stupidly huge ones with the ridiculous paws. But it wouldn’t even work. They wouldn’t survive. The world’s not built for them anymore. We ruined everything and then act surprised when nothing fits back into place. Humans should be the ones to go extinct. It’s only fair.” She said it too fast, the words tripping over each other like they’d been caged behind her teeth all day, clawing to get out. Her gaze dropped to the floor, jaw tight, shoulders stiff, stubborn in the way grief makes you stubborn. Like if she looked up, something might spill.
Sukuna glanced at her sideways, quick and assessing. He rolled it around in his head for half a second. The corner of his mouth twitched despite himself, the faintest betrayal.
“You’d last about four hours in a world run by saber toothed cats.” His voice flat as hell, deadpan to the point of cruelty.
She snapped her head up, eyes flashing, the hurt flipping cleanly into heat.
“That’s not the point!” She hissed between her teeth, jaw clenched so hard it ached, eyes narrowing with that familiar, feral mix of offense and righteousness.
“Shut up, I’m not done.” He drew a breath, half chuckling now, the sound leaking out whether he wanted it to or not. His eyes glinted, mean, amused, sharp, like this was serious business and also the funniest thing that had happened to him all morning.
She inhaled through her nose, visibly forcing her face to soften, smoothing herself back into the seat with exaggerated calm. Chin lifting just a touch. Deliberate restraint. The kind that promised she wasn’t done, just postponing.
“So one day, Shuhei, fucking dumbass Shuhei, decides he needs cigarette money. He’s eight. Eight. Already chain smoking those little contraband packs. Mild Sevens. Sneakin’ into Wasuke’s coat pocket like a rat. Little delinquent bastard had talent, I’ll give him that.” Sukuna continued, he huffed a quiet laugh through his nose, not amused so much as resigned. Like this was a fact of nature. Like rain.
The cable car rocked gently as it climbed, a soft mechanical sigh filling the space between his words. His eyes stayed forward, unfocused, fixed somewhere years back.
“So what’s he do? Takes Jin’s hen. His beloved hen. The stupid thing slept in a crate by his bed, I’m serious. Jin cried when it laid eggs.” He went on, voice lazy but edged, like the story lived under his tongue.
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Marches her down the road like he’s on some righteous mission. Trades her off to a guy by the vending machines. Half a pack of Mild Sevens and a can of soda. Didn’t even get change.”
Silence settled, thin and stretched. Somewhere behind them, tourists murmured in Italian, soft, liquid, beautiful. Laughter, footsteps, a guide explaining something ancient and important. It all washed past her like background noise in a film she wasn’t in. Someone else’s vacation. Someone else’s life.
She sat there, breathing, realizing she had nothing prepared for this part. No practiced reaction. No script.
Her father. Her fucking father. A menace even back then, when men like him were still supposed to be harmless. When they were meant to be soft, stupid, redeemable boys. He’d already been hollow. Already itchy in his skin. Already bargaining pieces of his life away for the promise of smoke in his lungs and relief in his veins.
It almost made her want to laugh. Not a giggle. Not humor. The kind of laugh that claws its way up your throat because screaming would draw attention. Because crying would mean you cared too much. Because absurdity was the only thing left that didn’t hurt worse.
“He sold princess? For cigarettes?” She whispered.
Her eyes went wide, lips parting, the words slipping out before she could decide how they were supposed to sound. Horror sat there, naked and stunned, but hysteria wasn’t far behind, buzzing under her skin, tapping insistently.
She could feel herself tipping. Not falling yet. Just that sickening tilt where your brain starts spinning stories faster than you can stop them.
God. Of course he did. Of course that was the exchange rate.
Her chest tightened, but not the way it usually did. Not with the familiar spike of rage, or the old grief, or that endless, gnawing what the fuck, you left me. No, this was different. Lighter. Almost unbearable in its softness. Because suddenly he wasn’t him. He was eight. A small boy with nicotine itch before he even knew what hunger really was. Empty pockets. No language for what was already rotting around him. A stupid, desperate, doomed kid growing into a man shaped mistake.
And for the first time in her life, she couldn’t summon anger for him. Not even a spark. It scared her more than the hate ever did. All that came was the sharp, humiliating absurdity of it, how unfairly human it all was.
Which made no sense. Men were born wrong. All men born evil. She knew this. She’d built a whole worldview on it, brick by brick. He was proof. Walking, breathing evidence.
So why couldn’t she hate him now?
If even this man, this failure, this absence, this ghost could fracture her certainty, then what the hell was she supposed to do with the rest of it? With herself? She hated that the anger wouldn’t come. Hated that pity crept in instead. Hated that understanding felt so close to forgiveness it made her sick.
“Damn right he did.” Sukuna’s grin cut wide, mean and delighted, like the memory itself amused him more than it should.
“Jin cried like his wife just died. Lost his fuckin’ mind. You’d think someone slit his throat from the way he carried on. Snot, fists, rollin’ in the dirt like a toddler. Neighbors probably thought we were slaughterin’ him alive. And he wouldn’t shut up. He wailed so loud Wasuke came stormin’ out with his belt. Didn’t even ask what happened. Just laid into Shuhei right there in the yard, tore him bloody. Then he beat Jin too, for cryin’ like a little bitch. Said he was embarrassing the family.”
He told it like something inevitable. Like he was describing a dog fight he’d seen once, or a fence that needed fixing. His tone never dipped. Never faltered. If anything, there was a lazy amusement threaded through it, the way people talk about stories they’ve repeated so many times they’ve lost their edges.
Her body reacted before her brain did. A sharp, cold drop in her stomach. Her throat tightened, breath snagging halfway in. This wasn’t strict. This wasn’t old fashioned. This was criminal. This was the kind of thing people go to prison for. The kind of thing documentaries are made about. The kind of thing that ruins a nervous system permanently.
And he was smiling. Not cruelly. Not proudly. Just casually. Like he was recalling a childhood prank that went a little too far. Like it was funny now, in hindsight. Like it had happened to someone else.
Her hand flew to her chest, fingers digging into fabric as if to anchor herself to the present, to this moment, to the fact that she was grown and alive and not standing barefoot in some dirt yard waiting for a belt to come down.
“And what were you doing while your father was casually committing human rights violations in broad daylight?” She blinked at him, genuinely stunned.
Sukuna leaned his head back against the glass as the cable car rocked, stretching his spine like this was some campfire anecdote, not a family autopsy. Like he was telling a story you were meant to laugh at if you were decent company.
“Oh, I got mine too. Didn’t matter I wasn’t even fuckin’ home when it went down. I was the oldest, so it was my fault. I should’ve been watchin’ ‘em. So Wasuke made sure I couldn’t sit right for a week. Bastard didn’t even blink.”
Her chest tightened into something small and cruel, a knot cinched too hard, pulled too fast. She knew this pattern. Had always known it, even before she had the language for it. Shuhei doing something reckless, stupid, selfish, because that was what he did. Because he couldn’t stop himself, even as a boy. Even when there were consequences. And someone else paying for it. Someone sturdier. Someone older. Someone who could take the hit.
Someone like Sukuna.
Her father hadn’t just ruined her life. Or her mother’s. He had carved pieces out of his brothers too, whittled them down slowly, thoughtlessly, like it never occurred to him that other people bled. Out of this man beside her, telling it like a joke because that was safer. Because if he named it for what it was, it might start hurting again.
Jin probably wore his damage openly, scraped knees, red eyes, crying in the dirt, humiliated, his precious hen gone. That kind of pain left marks people recognized. But Sukuna carried the quiet ones. The ones that didn’t announce themselves. The ones you buried under muscle and discipline and an ego sharp enough to keep everyone at arm’s length. The kind of scars that didn’t fade because no one ever acknowledged they were there.
But they were. God, they were.
And she couldn’t stand it.
She couldn’t stand that he’d been made to pay for her father’s failures. For Shuhei’s carelessness. For a man who had walked out of her life and died dirty and broken while she was still small enough to need him. And worse, so much worse, somewhere deep and shameful, she felt implicated. Like the debt had been passed down. Like whatever Shuhei had left unfinished had quietly settled on her shoulders instead.
The thought was sick. Twisted. Wrong. And it still pressed down on her chest until breathing felt like work.
She wondered if he felt it too. If this was the thread between them. Both of them trying, in their own ways, to shoulder responsibilities that were never meant to be theirs. Both of them paying for a man who never paid anyone back.
“So basically… Jin loses his princess, Shuhei gets cigarettes, and you get your ass kicked for nothing?” Her voice came out small, thick with something she couldn’t swallow down. She pressed her nails into her palm until it burned, grounding herself in the sting. She needed it. Needed something real to keep from splintering.
She wanted to scream. Or cry. Or apologize until her throat split open, even though she knew, knew she hadn’t done a damn thing wrong.
And still, some broken, desperate part of her thought, If I could, I’d take those belt lashes for you now. Every single one.
Sukuna’s mouth tugged like he wanted to laugh but refused. Not yet. His jaw worked like he was chewing the grin down before it could escape him. A habit. Self control learned the hard way.
“You don’t know the half of it. Couple days later, Wasuke shows up with that same goddamn chicken. Guess the man gave it back after Shuhei tried to trade more shit he didn’t own. Chicken comes home, everyone’s relieved. Jin thinks it’s a miracle. Starts singing to it like it’s a Disney movie.”
She froze for half a second, then cracked.
“Stop. Please. I can picture Jin singing to a chicken.”
The sound that came out of her surprised even her. Light. Unrestrained. It burst from her chest like it hadn’t had to ask permission first. She pressed her fingers to her mouth too late, laughter spilling through anyway, eyes shining as the image took shape too vividly, Jin earnest, off key, fully committed.
“Oh, he did. Like a lullaby. Idiot.”
Her shoulders shook, knees knocking together as she leaned forward, caught in it, warm and small and unguarded. For a moment, it felt almost safe to laugh like that. Like nothing bad could follow.
Then she noticed his gaze.
It drifted, not dramatically, not fast. Just slid past her, past the dashboard, out toward the white stretch of mountains ahead. His mouth twisted, the smirk faltering, then rebuilding itself crookedly, like he was deciding whether the truth was worth the damage it might cause. Like he always did.
“What?” Her laughter quieted, settling into a soft breath. She tilted her head, curious in that way she had, open, trusting, a little too gentle.
“Forget it.” He clicked his tongue, leaned back against the seat, posture loose but eyes sharper now.
“No, tell me.” She nudged his leg with hers, not hard, just enough to remind him she was there. That she wanted in.
“You’re too fuckin’ soft about animals. You’ll cry.”
“Now you have to say it.” Her cheeks puffed, stubborn.
“Fine.” He said it like a man stepping onto thin ice, knowing it might crack, choosing to do it anyway.
His tongue ran slow along his teeth, like he was tasting the memory. He let the silence sit there, stretched it thin, pulled it until it rang in her ears. Her pulse started to beat too loud, right behind her eyes.
“Two weeks later, Wasuke snapped its neck and threw it in a pot. Sunday dinner.”
Her body jolted upright, sharp and instinctive, like if she moved fast enough she could rip the reel backward, run barefoot into some dirt yard, scoop that stupid, gentle bird into her arms before it ever met a blade. Her eyes went wide and glassy, searching his face for mercy. For a crack. A grin. Anything that would tell her this was a joke.
Sukuna didn’t laugh.
“Whole table sat there eatin’ chicken stew while Jin cried into his rice. Shuhei swiped the drumstick, swore he didn’t know. But I saw the bastard smirkin’ into his bowl.” His voice stayed even, pitched careful, like he knew if it tilted too far, too sharp or too kind, she might scream. Or break.
“Jin wouldn’t eat for three days. Kept yellin’ he could still hear his hen cluckin’ in his dreams. I told him it was fate. Circle of life. He called me a bastard.”
His shoulder lifted in a shrug that meant nothing and everything, like he was talking about bad weather or a missed train.
“You people ate his best friend.”
It came out quiet. Flat. But her whole body was vibrating with it, holding back not tears, but a full blown manifesto. One that absolutely included slurs, curses, and at least one detailed plan involving setting an old man’s bed on fire while he slept.
“Life lesson. Don’t love somethin’ that can end up in a stew.” He went on, unmoved.
She swallowed. Hard.
“So that’s how you learned it? That was the day you understood?” Her voice was careful now, softened. Not accusing. Just trying to touch the shape of it without breaking it.
His eyes stayed on her a second too long. His tongue pressed to his teeth. For a fraction of a breath, the mask slipped.
“Old man never had to spell it out. You grow up under Wasuke, you fucking learn quick.” He said finally, voice low, flat. His gaze narrowed, not angry. Weighted. Like he could push her back with it if she got too close.
His mouth curved, but it wasn’t a smile. It was something meaner. Tired. Protective of a thing he refused to name.
“Nothing you love is safe. Nothing you hold stays in your hands. Not animals. Not brothers. Not kids. That’s the real lesson. Don’t get soft. Don’t expect shit. You care too much, he’ll take it apart just to prove he can.”
The words hung there, frostbitten, cruel on the surface, but hollow underneath, like something spoken only because silence would’ve been worse. She didn’t answer. Didn’t dare. The air between them felt brittle, ready to crack if she breathed wrong.
Her arm slipped carefully from his, like easing away from a flame she’d leaned too close to. She straightened, cautious, spine stiff, her head turning toward him inch by inch, as though her body was negotiating terms her heart had already broken. When she finally looked at him, fully, she felt the regret bloom instantly.
“I was the idiot who believed him.”
It landed heavy. Not thrown. Not aimed. Just released.
He just sat there, still for a beat too long, like he’d said more than he meant to and less than he should’ve. His face was caught in that merciless alpine light, shadow and sun slicing him apart without mercy. The pale sun didn’t soften him. It sharpened him. It carved deeper into the planes of his face, drew hard lines where gentler ones might’ve existed once, pulled beauty out of him until it felt punitive. Like he wasn’t meant for this world at all, just dropped into it wrong, already weathered, already ruined, already perfect.
Her gaze fell without permission. Her lashes lowered as if her body knew before she did that looking was dangerous. Looking hurt. Looking was both relief and wound, joy braided tight with ache, so entwined it made her chest feel too small to hold it all.
Then his hands were there.
They came up and caught her jaw with a certainty that stole the air from her lungs, palms closing in, rough skin warm and unyielding against the cold blooming across her face. He didn’t just hold her, he claimed the space of her, fingers spreading, curving, fitting like he already knew the shape she’d take under pressure.
He dragged his hands higher, broad fingers engulfing her cheeks, thumbs pressing firm beneath her eyes. Not to hurt. To stop. Like he was grinding the ache out of her before it could spill. Like even her tears had no right to exist unless he allowed them. His thumbs lingered there, steady and insistent, a wordless command. His grip didn’t waver, almost violent in its care. As if he was anchoring her to him by sheer force of will, daring the world to try and pull her apart again.
Every nerve in her sang, aching, alive, suspended in that brutal, terrible tenderness. She was caught. Seen. Held too closely to escape and too carefully to break.
“Look at me.” It wasn’t a request. It never was, not from him.
Her lashes fluttered, resistance melting into something smaller, softer, until her eyes lifted to his. She was trapped there instantly, caught in the depth of his gaze.
“When I look at you, I lose the rules. The ones that kept me alive. The ones that say don’t get attached, don’t linger, don’t open your damn hands.”
He exhaled through his nose, sharp, irritated, like the words themselves annoyed him for existing.
“I was raised to keep my hands empty. I spent my whole life learning how not to care. How to keep shit light enough it can’t be taken from me. And you stand there, and suddenly I’m forgetting all of it. Forgetting what I’m supposed to be. I start thinking about things that don’t fucking last. About protecting instead of leaving. About staying put.”
His eyes never left hers. He didn’t blink. There was no apology in them. No attempt to soften the truth. Just something bare and ugly and honest, left to breathe between them.
“World shuts up. Old man shuts up. All that noise about losing things, about keeping your hands empty, gone.”
His mouth twisted. Frustration turned inward, gnawing.
“That’s not strength. That’s a mistake. And I keep makin’ it anyway. And I fucking hate that it’s you who does it.”
The whole damn cable car could’ve dropped out of the sky, cables screaming as they snapped, glass bursting into winter air, tourists crying out like startled birds, and she still wouldn’t have moved. Not an inch. Not if it meant peeling herself out of his hands. She would’ve stayed right there, locked into him, fingers clenched, breath caught, like his arms were the last solid thing left in a world that had finally decided to give way.
Her lashes dipped, then lifted again, slow and uncertain, until her eyes found his. She met his stare head on, and that was it. She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t even breathe properly. Cat got her tongue? No. The fucking cat had devoured the whole damn thing. Tongue, throat, heart. Left nothing behind but a hollow ache and a tremor she couldn’t stop. She was gone. Skinned raw without a single touch, undone by nothing but his voice and the way he was looking at her now.
All that escaped her was a sound so small it barely deserved to exist. A breath. A sigh. Maybe a whimper. Something soft and helpless, like her body had quietly stepped in to speak when her mouth failed her entirely.
His eyes shifted then. Not much, barely a flicker, but she felt it anyway. The steel in them loosened, just a notch. He blinked once, the way a cat narrows its gaze when it decides not to bite. Almost lazy. Almost gentle. It wasn’t much. From anyone else it wouldn’t have been anything at all. But from him, it was mercy.
Her head dipped. Her shoulders followed. Her whole body folded into him without resistance, instinct taking over. Her face disappeared into the fur lining of his jacket, breath pulling in deep until her lungs ached with it. Leather. Smoke. The metallic bite of ice thawing on his skin. And underneath it all, so faint it felt like a secret, the soft, clean trace of this morning’s soap still clung to his throat. Sweet. Ordinary. At war with everything else he was.
The caramel corn gave up. Crunched once, then spilled from her loosening grip, kernels bouncing uselessly against the ground. Sugar dust clung tacky to her skirt, caught in the wool, sticking against her thighs like evidence. Like shame. She registered it distantly, vaguely embarrassed, and then not at all. She couldn’t care. She only breathed him in, greedy and desperate, like the jacket might swallow her whole and take her somewhere quieter, somewhere she wouldn’t feel so stupidly, painfully alive.
His arm came around her instantly. No hesitation. Quick and sure, pulling her in like he’d been waiting for this exact moment. His chest rumbled beneath her cheek, a low sound more felt than heard, vibrating straight through her ribs, as if he was cooing at her without meaning to. His hand slid to the back of her head, broad fingers threading into her hair, catching briefly on the knot of her makeshift headband, scratching lightly at her scalp in a way that made her breath hitch.
“Tch. There she is. Little lamb. Always clingin’ like this when you got nothin’ to say. Just curl up and let someone else hold the weight. Still think you can hide like this. You can. I’ve got you.” He murmured, voice low and indulgent, like he was humoring a stubborn kitten that had finally crawled into his lap.
Her breath stuttered, the sound swallowed by his collar. Her fingers tightened in the fabric of his jacket, clutching like if she let go for even a second, she’d float off into nothing.
He huffed a quiet laugh above her head. Low. Rough.
“Sensitive thing. You wear yourself raw, then act surprised when it hurts. You’re gonna wear me down at this rate.” His lips barely moved against her hair now, the edges of his voice softened only for her, dulled and careful.
His chin rested against her hair for just a moment. His palm slid slow down the back of her head, heavy and deliberate, the weight of it settling her before his fingers pushed into her hair. They parted the strands with unhurried intent, nails grazing her scalp. Not a grab. Not a hold. Something gentler than either. Something that soothed so well it scared her. Something dangerously close to being rocked.
The cable car jolted to a stop, sharp and sudden, metal groaning as it locked into place. Bodies around them shifted, boots scraping, fabric brushing, voices rising as people stood and reached for the doors. None of it reached her. The world narrowed to the solid rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek, the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing, the absentminded drag of his thumb circling behind her ear like he had nowhere else to be. She didn’t move. She didn’t even think about it. She wanted another ride. She wanted the doors to stay shut forever.
“Look at you. Got me pinned down in front of half the city, hangin’ off me like I’m your damn life raft. You keep this up, I’ll have a bald patch in my jacket and a permanent dent in my ribs.” His voice cut low, rough with amusement, threaded with something warm and dangerous all at once. He dropped his head, nose brushing lazy through her hair, close enough that she could feel the heat of him without seeing his face.
She made a muffled sound against him, something caught between a half hearted protest and a sigh, shoulders lifting in a shrug far more dramatic than necessary. Her smile pressed faint and helpless into the knit of his sweater, like she was trying to leave proof she’d been there.
Sukuna’s laugh rumbled deep in his chest, vibrating steady under her cheek. One hand slipped beneath the edge of her coat, palm dragging slow down the length of her back before settling at her waist. Like he knew exactly how much pressure she could take before she unraveled.
“Don’t look so damn wrecked, kitten. I got you. I’ll always fuckin’ have you. You feel good here, don’t you?” His voice sounded too sure of itself. Too sure of her. Like there was no version of this where she didn’t melt straight through. Like he was dangling the idea of her saying no just to watch how easily she’d fall into yes.
Her head bobbed before she could stop it, nodding too fast, too eager. Embarrassingly obvious. Her fingers curled tighter in his jacket like she needed something solid to hold onto or she’d drift apart entirely. Then she tilted her chin up and pressed the faintest kiss to the stretch of his throat. Soft, quick, barely brave enough to exist.
“That so?”
His hand came up immediately, sliding slow over her nape, heavy fingers curling into her hair, pinning her exactly where she’d kissed him.
“Thought so. Go on, then. Stay a while. Let me carry the weight for a minute. I’ll shoulder it. I’ll take it all.” He murmured it quiet, mouth brushing her hairline, breath warm and steady, like he meant every word and more.
“Only a minute?”
She shot it back with a frown already forming, sharp and petulant, like she was daring the universe to try her. Every syllable promised trouble. Promised she’d make noise about this. Promised she was one wrong move away from biting God himself if she had to.
“Keep kissin’ me like that girl, I might make it longer.”
Back in her room, the sky had turned that offensively pretty orange pink. Like one of those overpriced cocktails served in tall, thick glasses. Artisanal ice, a rosemary sprig, a name you can’t pronounce, and a taste suspiciously close to sour tap water. The kind that makes you wonder why you didn’t just order an Americano and keep your dignity intact. The resort was easing into evening. Lights blinked on one by one, hesitant at first, then confident. Snow caught the last scraps of daylight and threw it back like it was performing just for anyone still paying attention.
Inside, she stood at the bathroom sink, quietly undoing herself.
She wiped away the smudged remains of her eye makeup slowly, carefully, like it deserved respect for the effort it had put in this morning. It had tried. It had really tried. Now it was migratory, tragic, halfway down her face like it had attempted escape and failed. Cotton pads piled up in the sink, blackened and soggy, multiplying like evidence. Proof of intent. Proof she had, at some point today, wanted to be perceived.
She looked at her reflection and sighed. She really, truly needed to learn how to love her forehead. Or at least tolerate it. Make peace. Sign a ceasefire agreement.
Her hair looked questionable. Not dirty. Not styled. Just there. Just flattened. Existing in a way that felt vaguely hostile, like it had its own agenda and none of it involved helping her. She ran her fingers through it and immediately regretted it. Rookie mistake. Now it looked worse.
Dinner. She had to go downstairs for dinner.
She didn’t have time for a shower, not unless she wanted to arrive halfway through dessert and be remembered forever as that girl. The one who disappeared and came back smelling like soap and shame. So this would have to be a quick refresh. Warm water on her wrists. A splash on her neck. A quiet, mental funeral for the mascara casualties. Mourned, acknowledged, buried without ceremony.
She straightened, took a breath, and looked at herself again.
Okay. Presentable. Questionably stable. But present. That would have to do.
She was starving. Not even in a cute way. Like viscerally. The kind that lived low in her body. That absurd raspberry cream breakfast, the one that looked like it belonged on a magazine cover and tasted like a personality trait was long gone. Her body had moved on. Her patience had not.
And she couldn’t afford to disappear again. Not tonight. Not with everyone here, breathing the same air, pretending time hadn’t passed and damage hadn’t calcified into personality.
She picked up the parting tool and puffed her hair with careful, practiced violence, like she’d meant to be born this way, and not like she’d been spiraling in front of a mirror for ten minutes, negotiating with her reflection. Not trying to recreate this morning’s madness, no, but to add dimension. Something real. Something that didn’t scream effort.
The cold had done her a favor. The moisture in the air, the snow, whatever curse lived in ski towns and expensive mountain silence, the real texture of her hair was back. The one that only showed up when the weather decided to either bless her or punish her gently. Soft, uneven, a little feral at the ends. It made things easier. Less forcing. Less lying.
She tried not to think about what the snow probably carried. Dirt. Ash. Microscopic horrors. The sins of rich people who’d skied here before her and called it healing. She decided it was romantic instead. Chose aesthetic delusion over scientific reality. Growth.
She pulled two loose sections to the front. Not braided. No. Not today. These were just gathered low pigtails, barely held together, like she might change her mind halfway through the day and rip them out dramatically. She left the strands closest to her face untouched. Soft. Uncommitted. Letting them fall wherever they wanted, mingling with her bangs like they’d planned it together behind her back. White ribbons tied around the stupid, colorful elastics into careful bows, hiding the crime beneath.
It was romantic. Accidentally so. And that annoyed her deeply, because she hated whimsy, despised it, really. But kept embodying it anyway like some cosmic joke.
Natural waves. Textured ends. Feather light, airy, alive. Nothing stiff. Nothing overworked. The kind of hair that made people assume you belonged in places like ski resorts. Like you hadn’t grown up feeling vaguely out of place everywhere.
The dress she chose was ivory. Not bridal. But that old, softened shade. Ivory that had already lived, already been handled and folded and forgiven. A maxi cut from light, floating chiffon, semi sheer in the way vintage clothes always are. Honest about fragility. Soft about it. Practical enough to survive.
It had a lining. She wasn’t deranged. She wasn’t about to walk into a restaurant full of relatives and ski tourists dressed like an exhibitionist ghost with opinions.
Still, when she moved, the fabric caught the light and breathed. It didn’t cling, it responded. Translucent only in motion, ethereal without trying. She loved that. Loved knowing the restaurant lights would be low, amber, merciful. Dim light was loyal to this dress, and she was loyal to it right back.
She wasn’t greedy for attention. Truly. She didn’t care if the rest of the world saw her in an oversized hoodie and stiff, unwashed denim that added ten imaginary pounds and a personality disorder. But for him, for Sukuna, she liked the idea of looking like this. Comfortable. Soft. A little unreal. The fantasy of appearing like an out of place river nymph in a ski resort, Alpine wood, stone floors, frost webbing the windows, delighted her. Like she’d wandered in from the wrong century and decided to stay for dinner.
The dress was vintage. Her mother’s. Ayame had owned it forever and somehow never truly worn it, like she’d been saving it without knowing for whom. As a child, she’d wait for the day it might fit her, dragging it from the closet with ceremony, stepping into it like it was a ritual, letting the hem pool around her feet. She used to walk through the house like that, tripping, catching the fabric under her heels, pretending not to hear her mother laughing.
She hadn’t worn it much. Mostly she’d photographed herself in it. Tested it against mirrors. Once, only once she’d taken it outside, on a day she felt thin enough to deserve it. Like clothes were rewards you unlocked after suffering correctly.
It was timeless. Not seasonal so much as architectural. Something that belonged to a room. To warmth. To walls. To being seen by someone who mattered.
The bodice was slim, fitted just enough to feel intentional, then softened into a gentle flare at the hem. The fabric gathered lightly from the bust down, creating that column like drape that made her feel sculptural. Less dressed, more placed. There was a faint stain on the skirt, she arranged the folds carefully so it wouldn’t show. She liked that about it, that it wasn’t perfect, that it required a little strategy.
The neckline dipped into a deep V, edged with thin emerald green piping. It wasn’t meant to show cleavage. It wasn’t that kind of dress. But she was smaller than her mother, with a shorter upper body, and geometry had never been kind to her. It simply… Happened.
Not vulgar. Not inviting. Just there.
She’d never been comfortable with the top of her chest exposed. There was something about that specific openness that unsettled her. Nipples felt less obscene. Those were functional, honest, anatomical. Cleavage was interpretive. A blank page people loved to scribble on. She tolerated it here because the dress earned it. Because it wasn’t trying. Because it wasn’t begging to be read.
And then, her favorite part. The reason she’d fallen in love with it as a child. Four bows from the same green, perfectly spaced down the center of the bodice, like a false button line. Decorative. Deceptive. Sweet in a way that felt almost improper. Very late ’70s, early ’80s lingerie adjacent without ever tipping into sleepwear. That strange era where softness was allowed to be odd, where femininity could be playful and unsettling. She’d always been weak for that. For clothes that looked gentle but knew better.
The short flutter sleeves skimmed her shoulders, trimmed with the same piping. It made her think of Snow White. But not the sanitized kind, but the slightly eerie storybook version. The one that knows about poison and mirrors and women who get punished for being pretty.
Because was shorter than her mother, shoes were almost an afterthought. The dress swallowed them whole. She slipped on her usual creamy white ballet flats. Reliable, forgiving. Her small saints.
She lingered in front of the mirror a second longer than necessary. Not out of vanity exactly, more like acknowledgment. It felt good. Sentimental. Slightly chaotic. Very her. She knew she was beautiful. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was deciding what to do with it.
She wasn’t doing her makeup. Not really.
She deliberately didn’t wipe it all away, only the streaks that had surrendered. The mouth he’d kissed and ruined. The under eyes that had watered and stayed that way. She loved a smoky eye best when it was half gone, lived in, like evidence. Especially paired with something almost virginal. The contrast mattered. It always had. Ruin against restraint. A soft white dress and eyes that looked like they’d seen something they weren’t supposed to.
So no, she wasn’t doing makeup. Not twice in the same day like some deranged bridal rehearsal. She refused to curl her lashes again just to snap them off later out of spite. This was her face. This was enough. She tapped on a little lip tint, pressed balm over it, blurred it with her finger until it looked bitten instead of painted.
She stared at herself anyway. Of course she did. Long enough to consider rebellion.
Lost.
The day she stopped wearing blush would be the day she’d die.
She reached for her usual light pink, the one that gave her that delirious look, like she’d just run somewhere important. Just a little. Practical rebellion. She dabbed it onto her cheeks, brushed what remained across the bridge of her nose, then pressed the excess into her lips to melt the color together. Her blood was drawn out. The dress was white. There were rules to these things, even when you pretended not to believe in rules.
Now she looked flushed. Awake. Like she’d been returned to her body and decided to stay.
She stepped away before she could overthink it and ruin it.
When she stepped into the restaurant, the cold followed her in, obedient for half a second, clinging to her ankles like it wasn’t ready to let her go yet, before the warmth swallowed it whole.
Wood everywhere. Dark beams, overworked tables, stone floors polished by decades of boots and impatience. Scarves piled on chair backs like molted skins. The air smelled of wine and wet wool, butter melting into something rich, and sugar just barely burning somewhere in the back. Crowded, but not loud. A soft, civil hum. Like everyone inside had silently agreed to behave. Like this place demanded manners.
She saw them immediately. It wasn’t hard. It never was. They didn’t blend. They didn’t soften at the edges the way the tourists did. Those faceless, colorless figurines in matching puffers and rented boots, all beige, all temporary, all pretending they belonged to the mountain for the week. Her family didn’t pretend. They sat wrong. Stood wrong. Took up space like they’d paid for the air itself.
They were chaos with posture. Familiar noise folded into human shapes. Too sharp to be background, too alive to disappear. A little excessive. A wrongness that felt right.
Her heart kicked hard like a startled horse the second her eyes found him.
Sukuna sat at the round table with the others as if the room had organized itself around him by mistake. No, worse than that. As if the hotel had been built for him, walls raised and floors laid only after he chose where to sit. Like an ancient, protected thing left standing while centuries rearranged themselves out of respect. A tree too old and too stubborn to cut down. A statue no one remembered commissioning, yet no one would dare move. Everything else in the room felt temporary by comparison. Chairs, voices, even people, while he sat there solid and inevitable, bearing the quiet authority of something that had survived wars, winters, and its own sins.
And the most unsettling part was that it wasn’t imagination.
One arm slung lazily over the back of his chair, posture loose in a way that read territorial without effort. The rings caught the amber light even from across the room, brief flashes of silver and gold. He didn’t turn his head when she stepped inside. He didn’t have to. His gaze lifted anyway, already there, already waiting, like he’d clocked the cadence of her steps on tile before she crossed the threshold.
Still in the cashmere from that morning. That thick, luminous gray that looked less like clothing and more like a statement of intent. Loudly expensive. Sleeves shoved up his forearms, skin exposed without apology. No jacket. No attempt to soften himself for public consumption. No interest in looking rested.
He looked wrecked. And worse, unashamed of it. Sleep deprivation sat openly on his face now, worn like proof of life. Dark crescents bruised beneath his eyes, mouth pressed into that familiar, unyielding line that never quite gave anything away.
The low lights of the restaurant were meant to be forgiving, meant to blur edges, warm people up, make everyone look kinder and smaller. They did the opposite to him. The planes of his face looked more carved, more deliberate, as if the light itself had chosen him as something to test its limits against and lost. He didn’t glow under it. He resisted it. Broad shoulders filling the chair without slouching, spine long, presence dense enough that the table felt slightly tilted toward him.
She realized she was overdressed the instant she stepped fully inside. Not extravagantly, just enough to feel exposed. Just enough to feel chosen by the room. And she hated that reflexively, because it made her want to fold inward, to become smaller than she felt.
So she didn’t look anywhere else. Didn’t look at the curious skiers lingering near the bar, or the empty chairs meant for cousins who hadn’t shown yet, or even her mother’s profile in the warm light. She locked onto him and stayed there. If she looked away, she’d have to exist fully in the room. And she wasn’t ready for that.
Neither was he, apparently.
He kept watching her. Elbow now hooked over the back of the chair, forearm thick and corded, veins ghosting beneath the skin. His hand shifted, unhurried, knuckles settling against his temple. That look on his face. Bored, imposing, perfectly composed. The kind of stillness that didn’t come from peace, but from certainty. Like nothing in the room could touch him, could register, could even exist, except her. As if surprise itself had grown tired of trying, and she was the last remaining possibility.
Her mom. Jin. Kaori. Him.
Two chairs sat empty, pulled back just enough to show someone had risen in a hurry. She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t scan the room. Didn’t consider distance, optics, or decorum. She went straight for the chair beside him. She lowered herself into it slowly, deliberately, as if the act itself required intention. As if the room might crack if she moved too fast. The wood creaked softly beneath her weight. And when she nudged the chair closer to the table, her knee brushed his. Light, accidental, unmistakable. A quiet slide inward. Subtle. Careful. Like she could still pretend it wasn’t on purpose.
“Oh my God. You wore it.” Ayame said immediately, hand flying to her chest, eyes lighting up so brightly it was almost embarrassing to witness. The room seemed to tilt toward that reaction alone.
(y/n) winced, a soft, helpless laugh slipping out of her before she could stop it. She should have known. The dress had been a mistake. A beautiful, stupid mistake. She’d put it on thinking no one would notice but him. She forgot she had a mother.
Her eyes flicked, quick, traitorous, to Sukuna.
He hadn’t moved. Not a muscle. Not even the lazy shift he usually gave when bored. His gaze was already on her, settled, like she’d stepped directly into something he’d been holding open. There was no smirk. No heat. Just something steady and unreadable. Recognition, maybe. Or posession’s quieter cousin.
“That dress, I knew it would fit you right one day. I told you, didn’t I? I said, ‘This dress is just waiting.’” Ayame continued, already rising from her chair, fingers smoothing imaginary creases from (y/n)’s shoulder like the fabric had feelings that needed reassurance.
The touch was familiar. Muscle memory. Maternal and a little emotional. Her eyes shone with the very specific pride of a woman who still remembered tying her daughter’s shoes too tight before school.
“Waiting for what? The right century?” Kaori cut in dryly, lifting her wine glass. The merlot swirled dark and slow, catching the amber light like blood in crystal. Her silk black blouse angled sharp against the room’s soft wood and wool, a woman built for contrast.
Ayame didn’t even look at her.
“You look so beautiful. Don’t slouch like that, sweetheart. You’re not hiding anything.” She said, voice softening. There was pride there. And something wounded. As if she couldn’t believe her baby had walked into this room looking like this without announcing.
Jin cleared his throat, smiling openly now, no restraint, no irony.
“No, really. You look stunning. We’re very lucky to have you back.” He said warmly, eyes kind and certain.
The room absorbed it. Let it sit.
“Which is a miracle, because that dress has survived three moves, two closets, and Ayame’s emotional attachment issues.” Kaori added smoothly.
“I do not have emotional attachment issues.” Ayame replied at once, chin lifting, shooting Kaori a glare over the rim of her wine glass.
Kaori still hadn’t looked at her. She was inspecting (y/n) now. Slow, deliberate, unapologetic. Like a buyer at an auction who already knew the price.
“You kept a dress for twenty five years like it was a prophecy. Folded. Protected. Waiting for the correct reincarnation.” Affectionate venom. Delivered perfectly. She was that woman, loving hard, calling bullshit louder.
Ayame opened her mouth. Closed it. Then reached for her fork instead, muttering something under her breath as the cutlery clinked against porcelain.
Kaori reached across the table and tugged the sleeve without asking, testing it between her fingers, professional, reverent. Her teasing softened, just a notch.
“Still, good chiffon. Real silk blend. Proper lining. Look at that weave, dense, but it breathes. They don’t make this anymore unless you’re paying obscene money or robbing an archive. I approve.” She said finally, eyes narrowing in interest.
Her touch was light but decisive, like she handled expensive things for a living and expected them to behave. The sleeve slid back into place with a whisper. Candlelight caught on the fabric and made it glow faintly, pearled and soft, almost alive. Kaori looked pleased in that particular way she reserved for objects that justified their existence.
(y/n) laughed despite herself, a quiet, surprised sound, the kind that escaped before she could stop it. Gratitude loosened something in her chest. She settled fully back into her chair at last. She smoothed the skirt once, more out of habit than need, fingers pressing along the hem like a grounding ritual, then glanced at the empty seats across from her.
“Where are the boys?” She asked, casual, genuinely curious, eyes dropping to the trim of the white tablecloth like it held the answer.
“The boys are dead. Collapsed. Both of them. Skiing all day like idiots, then acting shocked when their bodies betrayed them.”
Kaori waved a hand toward the empty chairs. The rock on her ring finger caught the light mid gesture, obscene and unapologetic, throwing sharp flashes across the tablecloth and briefly into her eyes as she rolled them. That couldn’t be real. (y/n) wanted to believe that. And she wanted to try it on so bad it almost made her dizzy. Kaori’s nails were immaculate as always, glossy and deliberate, each finger an argument for discipline. (y/n) wondered, not for the first time, if she’d ever get less lazy, less tired, enough to keep her nails like that. Or do them herself. It felt like a future belonging to a calmer version of her.
“They were tired. It was a long day.” Jin said gently, already rubbing his temple like a man who had lived a full week before noon.
His voice had that soft, frayed patience to it, the sound of someone who had mediated three conversations, carried bags that weren’t his, and smiled through all of it. His shoulders slumped just slightly, coat still on the back of his chair.
“They were dramatic, Yuji announced he was ‘actively dying’ on the couch, and Choso sat perfectly still staring at the wall like God was whispering spoilers to him. I told them to go to sleep before they embarrassed us in public. Someone has to parent the emotionally unwell men in this family.” Kaori cut in smoothly, not even looking up. She adjusted her napkin, reached for her glass, already done with the subject.
“They’ll join us tomorrow.” Ayame added fondly.
(y/n) nodded, a little relieved. Fingers tracing the embroidered trim, calming herself in the texture, the coolness of the fabric, the steadiness of the moment.
“Shame. They’d have hated missing this.”
She wasn’t sure if he’d actually said it or if her mind had supplied it for him until she turned toward him on instinct, like her body had heard it before she had. Not because the words were wrong, or cruel. But because he’d been so quiet since she stepped in, so carefully unreadable, that she’d started filling in the blanks for him without meaning to. His pauses. His silences. The things he might say if he loosened, the way his mouth might tilt if he didn’t bother hiding it.
She’d been doing that for days now.
When she was alone, under the shower, water beating too loud against the tile, or lying flat on her back before sleep, she rehearsed him. Rehearsed herself. Whole conversations played out in her head like fragile scenes she was terrified to forget. What she’d say the next time she saw him, how casual she’d sound, how brave. And then she’d imagine his answers, his tone, the smallest shift of his body when he paid attention. That was always the part that ruined her.
She’d end up biting the inside of her palm, embarrassed by her own devotion, or muffling a sound into her pillow like it might give her away to someone. To herself, mostly.
He didn’t look away. Those eyes, sleep deprived, sharp in a way that felt defensive, softened in a way that felt almost dishonest, stayed on her. Not the volatile kind. Worse than that. The kind that made her feel like she’d misstepped without ever being told the rules. Like she’d done something wrong again and somehow missed the moment it happened. Like existing, exactly as she was, had tilted the room out of balance.
Not shame. He didn’t humiliate, didn’t scold. It was subtler than that. More precise. The kind of weight that settled without touching.
The feeling bloomed anyway, familiar, unwelcome, that thin ache behind her sternum, the quiet pressure that suggested her presence was slightly incorrect. Misaligned. She’d felt it with him before. Rarely. Briefly. And every time, she laughed it off, told herself he just liked to perform misery, that he acted like he’d personally invented suffering and expected applause for the commitment.
But even when she softened it with humor, wrapped it in language and theory, tried to make it small enough to manage, it didn’t disappear. It lingered. It always did.
She swallowed. Her heart misbehaved, thudding too loud in places it had no right to be loud, pulse fluttering like it had something urgent to confess and no vocabulary for it. She shifted in her chair with care, as if a sudden movement might fracture something delicate and unnamed between them. Something she couldn’t see, couldn’t define, but felt with an intimacy that made her nauseous.
“Where is your girlfriend?”
She didn’t even register herself saying it at first. Didn’t know what tone it carried. Curious, maybe. Casual. Light enough to pretend it meant nothing. Or petty in that quiet, delayed way that would come back to humiliate her later, when she replayed the moment in the shower. Or when she was baking.
She was looking straight at him when it happened, which somehow made it worse. It must’ve sounded like something private, something slipped just for him, when it very much wasn’t. It hung there instead, exposed and stupid and hers, a reckless little thing she couldn’t take back.
Too late now.
Asking her uncle where his girlfriend was. Just like that. It could’ve been nothing in front of a normal family. This was a woman no one liked. The girlfriend whose existence somehow sanded Sukuna down into something almost respectable by comparison. A woman so unapologetically glossy, sexy, and a little stupid, that she committed the ultimate sin. Making a monstrous man look reasonable.
She asked it in front of her mother. At the dinner table. In public. A social suicide wrapped in curiosity.
Ayame’s head snapped toward her immediately.
Not angry. Not shocked. Just that sharp, instinctive moral alarm. Why is my daughter suddenly participating in grown people’s mess? Written clean across her face. Her brows drew together, lips parting like she was about to intercept something mid air.
“Hey.” She said, firm and low. The kind of tone she used when (y/n) was little and about to touch something hot.
Jin stiffened. Just a little. The kind of reaction you only notice if you’re already watching him too closely. His hand paused halfway to his glass, fingers tightening around nothing. He didn’t look at Sukuna. He didn’t look at her. He stared at the table like it had suddenly turned hostile.
Like it might bite. Or worse, like it might remind him of something. Maybe of the time his emotional support chicken got its neck snapped and served for dinner because nobody thought a seven year old’s attachment to a bird was worth preserving. The silence had that same texture. Domestic. Violent. Completely normalized.
Kaori, meanwhile, blossomed. She leaned back in her chair, wine glass tilting lazily between two fingers. Her smile was slow, bright, unmistakably pleased. Eyes gleaming with the thrill of impending disaster.
“Oh. Good. We’re doing this now.” She said, practically purring.
(y/n) felt heat crawl up her spine, a slow, mortifying burn. This was the moment to laugh. To retreat. To say I didn’t mean it like that or I was just asking or never mind. Any of the polite exits people used when they accidentally kicked a hornet’s nest.
She didn’t take it. She stayed quiet instead, eyes still on the tablecloth. Not defiant. Not fragile. Just there. Owning it without quite meaning to.
Not when Sukuna finally shifted.
He didn’t rush. Didn’t react immediately. Just turned his head toward her with deliberate laziness. Eyes dragging over her profile with an intimacy that would’ve been inappropriate even if the question hadn’t detonated like that. His arm stayed draped over the back of his chair. His body remained open, relaxed. Fingers slack, posture careless, the ease of someone who never feels cornered.
That look. The one that made her feel like she’d stepped half an inch too far forward and discovered the floor dropped away there.
Like she was Delilah, standing there with scissors she didn’t remember picking up.
He exhaled through his nose, slow. Something almost like a laugh, if laughter had been stripped of warmth and left to dry in the sun. Just breath. Controlled. Amused.
“Girlfriend.” He repeated, rolling the word once, like he was deciding whether it deserved a second bite. Like it offended him on principle, not taste.
The corner of his mouth lifted, not a smile. A correction.
“That’s generous.”
The words themselves were light, almost careless. The way he said them wasn’t. Lazy. Unbothered. Utterly disinterested. As if Yorozu, the woman who’d arrived with them, slept with him, funded things, tangled herself into his life had already stepped out of the room, out of relevance, out of memory. As if whatever she’d been to him had expired quietly, without ceremony, like a season ending.
“Oh, I knew it.”
Kaori laughed outright, vicious and bright, the sound sharp enough to cut through the hum of the restaurant. It rang against the wooden walls, too alive for the hour, too pleased with itself. (y/n) blinked, startled, fingers tightening around her napkin. It struck her, belated and faintly humiliating, that for all her own spiraling curiosity about where Yorozu had gone, when, why, how, Kaori hadn’t bothered asking at all. Of course she hadn’t. Kaori never asked questions she already had answers to. She thrived on conclusions.
Ayame inhaled sharply.
“Sukuna–“
The sound of her voice carried worry the way it always did now, tight, practiced. He cut her off with a lazy flick of his hand, not even turning his head. Not dismissive of her exactly, dismissive of the warning itself. That careful tone she wore like armor. He’d heard it his whole life. It had never worked on him.
“I don’t keep women on a leash. Don’t stack ’em up like trophies neither.” He said flatly.
The words landed heavy on the table, heavier than the clink of cutlery, heavier than Kaori’s laughter. Not defensive. Not explanatory. A statement of fact.
“I take what wants me, and I let go when it’s done. That’s it.” He went on, voice low, rasped, rough around the edges like sleep had lost the right to him.
She focused on the grain of the table, the smell of wood polish and melted cheese, the crackle of the fire somewhere behind her. Count the senses. Don’t disappear.
His gaze flicked to the empty chair across the table. Not searching. Not annoyed. Just registering absence the way one might notice a door left ajar in a familiar house.
“If Yorozu ain’t here, means she got bored. Or busy. Or pissed. Happens.” He said, shrugging.
The inevitability of it all felt louder than the words themselves. No bitterness. No nostalgia. No justification. Just cause and effect. Then, finally, his eyes shifted, landing on Ayame for half a second. A recognition that lived beneath conflict, respect without agreement, history without apology.
“And don’t start looking at me like I wronged her. She knew what she was walking into.”
Jin cleared his throat. The sound was small and careful. His expression wasn’t shocked. Jin rarely did shock. It was concern, folded neatly into patience. The kind that came from loving people who made messes and deciding, again and again, not to abandon them for it.
“She did come with you.” He said evenly. Mild. Reasonable.
Sukuna finally looked at him. Just a glance, slow, sideways. One brow lifting a fraction. There was something closer to contemptuous curiosity on his expression, as if Jin had just said something deeply uninteresting or gross.
“And?” He asked. One syllable. Flat. Mean.
“So did the car. You don’t see me marrying that either.”
The room seemed to stiffen around the sentence. Even the fire popped once, sharply, like it had an opinion.
He reached for his knife. He didn’t rush it. Fingers closed around the handle with practiced ease, wrist angling just so as he cut through the meat. Clean. Precise. Surgical. The motion was almost calming, ritualistic in a way that made (y/n)’s stomach twist for reasons she didn’t want to unpack.
He brought the bite to his mouth, chewed slowly. Jaw working, muscle shifting beneath skin like it was all excess restraint, all pressure waiting for release. He swallowed without hurry.
Silence followed. Dense. Offended.
Kaori had to set her glass down before it tipped over. Her shoulders shook as a laugh slipped out of her. Soft, breathy, scandalized. Thrilled too, in a way she didn’t bother hiding.
“Jesus Christ. You really are feral.” She said, wiping at the corner of her mouth.
It wasn’t an insult. Not really. There was something like approval in it. Or at least pure entertainment. Probably the best dinner she’d had since the early 2000s.
(y/n) watched her carefully, trying to read the shape of it. She still didn’t know exactly what had happened between them back then, how serious it had ever been, only that Kaori had once opened her mouth about it out of nowhere, like you’d mention a car accident you survived and never quite healed from. The wars at the dining table. The way her name and Sukuna’s could still electrify a room.
But maybe Kaori’s loud delight right now wasn’t just about disliking Yorozu. Maybe it wasn’t even about hating her. Maybe it was about this, Sukuna’s total dismissal of the idea of a serious relationship, the way he spoke about it like it was a habit he’d never picked up. Maybe that gave Kaori something back. A sense of pride. A reclamation. A reminder that whatever had happened between them, it hadn’t been because she wasn’t enough.
(y/n) tried, genuinely tried to put herself in her shoes. To be desired. To be sharp and beautiful and unapologetic. To be the kind of woman who made rooms turn. And then to be rejected by a man like him. Not cruelly, not dramatically, but casually, like commitment was just another thing he didn’t believe in. To sit across from him at every holiday after that. To marry his brother. To live with the gravity of that pull still in the air.
It must’ve been mortifying. And also… Clarifying.
It wasn’t jealousy. Not competition. Just relief. A petty, human joy in knowing he hadn’t softened. Hadn’t changed. Hadn’t suddenly become someone else’s better man.
And Jin, Jin didn’t say a word. He never did. He didn’t look surprised when Kaori and Sukuna snapped at each other, didn’t intervene, didn’t smooth it over. He ate, listened, existed like this was just part of the furniture. Like this tension had always lived in the house. Like it was weather.
(y/n) realized then that maybe it wasn’t just women. Maybe it was everything.
Everything tilted toward Sukuna. Conversations, conflict, the world itself. His magnetism wasn’t just romantic or immoral, it was physical, inevitable. Like heat. Like pressure. Like a law of nature you couldn’t argue with. You didn’t dress it up with tradition. You didn’t fix it with decency. You just learned to live around it.
She wondered then, quietly, guiltily, whether Kaori would hate her if she knew. Not in a dramatic way. Not with shouting or scenes. Just that cold, feminine recalibration where love turns into distance. Where something is withdrawn and never offered again. Not because of lust. Not because of competition. But because he was her better man now. Kinder in a way that mattered. Present in a way he had never been before. Not softened, not redeemed, just aimed. And that thought made her stomach twist, because she recognized the symmetry too clearly. She hated Yorozu for less.
For far less.
The realization made her feel small. Exposed. Like a child standing in the middle of a room where adults were still carrying old wars in their bones. She was afraid. Afraid of how little armor she had against this family, against history, against him. Afraid that wanting him near already meant she was losing something she didn’t know how to name. Afraid that love, or whatever this was pretending not to be, would make her easy to wound.
Sukuna didn’t react. Didn’t look up. He ate slowly. Broad forearms resting easy on the table, hands steady, unhurried. A man who had never once rushed a decision in his life. His presence filled the room without effort, too solid, too loud even when silent. The fire caught in his hair, turning it a deep, burnished gold, like a lion’s mane dulled by age and weather, something feral made civilized only by force.
Jin took a slow sip of his wine, eyes still on Sukuna. Buying time. Choosing words the way you do when the man across from you is your older brother and also a walking natural disaster.
“So, she’s not your girlfriend. Then what exactly is she doing in our father’s house?” He said at last, voice calm but edged now, stripped of pleasantries.
He didn’t say it, but it sat there anyway. You don’t bring your women here. Not like that. Not where your niece eats breakfast.
Sukuna paused mid motion. Not fully. Just a hitch. Like a machine recalibrating around a bad input. It was subtle, blink and you miss it. His jaw flexed once. The fork hovered a fraction too long over the plate. He tilted his head, nose scrunching briefly, sharp and irritated, as if the words had offended him on a linguistic level.
“She’s here because she pays. She’s an investment. One with money, poor taste, and a fixation problem. Funds the dojo. Keeps the lights on. Likes pretending that means something.”
He let the fork clink back onto the porcelain when he finally looked up. His eyes were flat now. Unapologetic. Almost bored. The kind of boredom that came from having already decided he didn’t owe anyone softness.
Jin frowned, instinctively, the way people did when they sensed a collision and thought they might still redirect it. He opened his mouth. Sukuna didn’t give him time.
“She’s not confused. And I’m not leading anyone on. She knows exactly what she’s buying. Proximity. Access. The fantasy. And if she wants to play house in Wasuke’s place for a few days, that’s the price of her obsession. Not my conscience.” His voice didn’t rise. That was the worst part. It sharpened instead. Clean, metallic, deliberate. No remorse. No audible shame. Nothing to soften the edges.
“And don’t start with the morality lecture, If anyone in this family wants to pretend they’ve never benefited from something they didn’t respect, they can do it without me at the table.”
He flicked his gaze toward Kaori first, then Jin, slow, measured, warning threaded beneath the calm. A blade shown just enough to be understood.
Silence dropped hard. The kind that made the crackle of the fire obscene, the clink of glasses too loud. Outside, the wind pushed snow against the windows, relentless, unbothered.
She just sat there, still as a held breath.
Had she learned something profound by asking that stupid question?
Yes. God, yes.
She saw it now, too clearly. The way they all relied on him. Not loudly. Not gratefully. But absolutely. Like infrastructure. Like something you only notice when it stops working. Kaori, sharp, eternally unimpressed, was silent now. Shrunk inward. Staring into her empty wine glass like it might offer absolution if she looked long enough. Jin leaned back, gaze unfocused, that familiar dissociation setting in.
They relied on Sukuna like he was an unmovable mountain. Ancient, brutal, dependable. Something that would always be there beneath their feet. And when the weather turned cruel, when the ground lay dead and nothing dared to grow, when the rivers ran dry and it refused to carry water it never held, when the air cut their lungs and avalanches threatened, they blamed the mountain. For being steep. For being cold. For existing at all.
Sukuna wasn’t forgiven. Wasn’t tolerated. He was used. Needed. Condemned. All at once.
She hated them for it.
Hated the way they leaned on him and still flinched at his shape. Hated the way they demanded warmth from something built to endure winter. Hated that she’d only just noticed, soft, spiraling idiot that she was, how alone he’d always been at the center of it all.
Ayame inhaled sharply. Her eyes moved once, quick and precise, from Sukuna, to (y/n). Then she stopped, holding her daughter’s gaze. It wasn’t blame. It wasn’t rescue either. But it was ensuring. Her mouth pressed into a thin line. Protective in the quiet, practical way. Not forgiveness, just acknowledgment. Like she knew whatever mess this was, it belonged to the adults. And her daughter would not be made the offering.
Sukuna rolled one shoulder in a slow, careless shrug, the kind that looked lazy only because it had never known uncertainty. The fabric of his shirt pulled tight across his back, stretching over wide muscle that shifted beneath it, heavy and feline, like a big cat resettling its weight before going still. He occupied space the way some men breathed, instinctively, without permission, confidence pressed so close to menace it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
A low growl slipped out of him, meant to pass as a yawn and failing miserably. It rumbled through his chest, rough and unfiltered, vibrating against the table, against her, straight into bone. The fine hairs along her arms lifted in quiet surrender. He dragged the heel of his palm over his eyes, careless, worn down enough that the exhaustion softened him, just a fraction despite all that mass. The chair creaked under his weight as he shifted. His arm fell back over the rest again, claiming it.
She shouldn’t have done this. She knew that now, with the kind of clarity that came only after the damage was already done.
Not when he was already too much for her, too present, too attentive, too there. Not when he had been giving her every hour of every day without complaint, letting her sprawl into his life with all her mess and noise and half formed thoughts. Putting up with her unfiltered words, the stupid things she said without thinking, the way her mouth moved faster than her sense. Accepting her as she was. Unfinished, uneven, still bleeding at the seams.
Not when he endured her panic spirals without flinching. Her mood swings. Her unpredictability. Her anxiety, her inexperience, her dumb, soft wants. Not when he was becoming the thing she had needed for years without admitting it. Not when he was filling spaces she hadn’t even known were hollow, patching cracks, smoothing dents, holding together pieces she’d convinced herself were fine on their own.
She wasn’t good with guilt. Not really. Especially not with him. With him, guilt had always been brief, convenient, easy to dismiss. He left. He disappeared. He didn’t call. She could always circle back to that and feel justified in her sharpness, her careless little cuts.
That ledger had always balanced itself. But now it felt different.
What he was doing for her didn’t redeem him. She knew that. It didn’t erase the years. But how long was she going to keep using that absence as permission to be reckless? As an excuse for her own smallness, her own immaturity? She didn’t know where that line was. She didn’t know if she’d already crossed it.
He didn’t fold, didn’t shrink, didn’t look uncomfortable even when the room turned invasive. It wasn’t in him. Even when Yorozu’s presence was thrown around like bait. He hadn’t even looked at her. Had dismissed Yorozu openly, coldly, in front of everyone. Degraded her, resented her, made it clear where she stood, or didn’t.
And still. Something in (y/n) twisted. As if she’d crossed a line she hadn’t meant to. As if he were… Too much for this. Too regal, too singular, too important in his own strange, immovable way to be dragged into casual interrogations about his life. He was tired. Strung out. Running on too little sleep. And they were picking at him, asking for explanations, for neat answers, for pieces of him he hadn’t offered.
And she was the one who started it. She had made herself another demand. Another noise. Another careless pull at someone who had already given her more than she knew how to hold. For the first time, she didn’t feel justified. She felt small.
She only realized then that she still hadn’t got her food. The restaurant was thinning out around them, the evening loosening its grip in small, ordinary ways. Chairs scraping back, boots thudding softly against wood, scarves shaken out, coats lifted and slipped into with the tired choreography of people who’d had a long day on the mountain. Outside the tall windows, the snow reflected the amber glow of lanterns, the world blue black and hushed, like it was holding its breath.
The low murmur of tourists washed over her in waves. Languages overlapping. Laughter drifting and fading. It all blurred together into a soft static that settled under her skin, made her feel slightly unreal, like she was underwater and everything else was happening above the surface.
Her stomach turned, sharp and unsettled, but it didn’t feel like hunger anymore. Not really. It was something tighter. Higher. Like a knot pulled too close to the ribs. She swallowed once. Then again.
“I…”
Her voice caught, soft. Too soft. She hated that about herself, how her voice always betrayed her before she could brace it. She cleared her throat, tried again, quieter this time, like volume itself could keep her safe.
“I’m sorry.”
That made him look at her.
She didn’t lift her eyes right away. She couldn’t. Her gaze stayed fixed on the table between them, the stem of his glass, the faint wine stain blooming into the white tablecloth like a bruise, his unfinished steak cooling at the edge of the plate, untouched now. Solid things. Harmless things. Anything that wasn’t his face. Anything that wouldn’t undo her on the spot.
“I shouldn’t have asked like that. It wasn’t my place. I didn’t mean to make it a thing.” Her voice moved slowly, deliberately, like she was placing each word down by hand. Even so, it stole the air from her chest. When she breathed in, it shuddered through her, thin and uneven, the kind of breath that came right before tears if you weren’t careful.
She pressed her lips together to stop them from trembling before they even tried.
“I was just curious. And maybe a little stupid. I didn’t want to corner you. Or make you explain yourself. I know you don’t owe anyone that.”
She added the last part too quickly, like she needed it out of her mouth before doubt could grab it and drag it back in. Her heart was beating too fast now, shallow and frantic, heat creeping up her neck, settling into her cheeks, sweat gathering between her shoulder blades despite the cold pressing in through the windows.
God, it was humiliating. She was humiliating. She felt like an exposed nerve, too much, too loud inside her own head, an embarrassment for even having the impulse.
But it had to be now. In public. In front of her mother. In front of strangers. Without the softness of privacy, without the buffer of later explanations or quiet gestures. She needed it to be real. Unpretty. Plain. Honest. She needed to say it where it could sting, where she couldn’t edit herself afterward and pretend she’d been braver than she was.
She needed to show them that the girl he’d left behind, the one who’d been forgotten, the one everyone tiptoed around with guilt and assumptions, could still forgive him. That she had already forgiven him. And if she could do that, then who were any of them to pull him apart, to scrutinize him like a crime scene, to demand explanations she herself wasn’t asking for?
Her fingers twisted together in her lap, knuckles whitening, skin drawn tight over bone.
“I just… I feel so guilty all of a sudden. I didn’t like the idea of people pulling at you when you’re already tired. I didn’t think before I spoke.” Her voice wavered, just for a second, then steadied through sheer force of will. Unpolished. Awkward. Earnest.
Her eyes stayed down. She didn’t dare look at anyone. Her cheeks burned, brows pulled together in that familiar expression she wore when she felt wrong for existing too loudly, for taking up space she wasn’t sure she was allowed to have. She knew she looked miserable. Small. A little undone.
This was the longest she’d ever spoken to him like this with other people around, and she felt off balance, like she’d stepped onto ice without knowing how thick it was. Her ears burned, thank God her hair hid them. She pressed her knees together, folding herself inward, neat and contained, like if she made herself small enough the feeling would pass.
She didn’t know why she felt so sinful.
They’d been close when she was a kid. Everyone knew that. Sukuna loved her, adored her, really. More than her own father ever had. That was the version the family remembered when they looked at them together. The old photos, the stories, the abandonment too. So why? Why was her heart hammering like this, loud and painful, when no one else at the table could possibly know what was happening between them?
She could feel the weight of his stare before she ever looked up. It landed on her the way heat does when you get too close to the fire, not sudden, not aggressive, just there, undeniable. It made her shoulders draw in, her breath shallow, not because it overwhelmed her, but because it noticed. Sukuna never looked at anyone halfway. When he focused, it was total.
She wasn’t scared of what he’d say. She was scared of her mother.
Mothers noticed things. They felt them before they were visible. Would Ayame hear something wrong in his voice? Would she see the way his gaze held her daughter a second too long, not hungry, not improper, just too careful, too aware, like he was measuring something fragile and precious at the same time?
Slowly, reluctantly, she lifted her lashes.
Something in his jaw shifted. A muscle ticked, brief and restrained, like he’d been caught mid thought. He leaned back slightly, one arm draping over the back of her chair now, casual to anyone else, familiar even, but the space changed instantly. He wasn’t touching her yet, but she could feel the perimeter of him, the quiet claim of closeness, the way his body angled without thinking.
Her gaze dropped again. She couldn’t hold it. Not like this. Not with her chest tight and her thoughts running ahead of her.
“Hey. Look at me, pretty thing.” His voice cut in, low and sudden. Not sharp. Not teasing. It slid under the noise of the room like it belonged there, like it had always belonged to her.
The crease between his brows deepened. Worry, unmistakable and unguarded for half a second. His hand reached for her the way it always had, certain. He lifted her chin, a gesture as old as memory itself. Something he’d done a thousand times before. But never like this. Never with witnesses. Never with this stillness in his eyes.
The pad of his thumb brushed her skin, rough and warm, not pressing, just there. A pause. Her pulse jumped against her throat so hard it startled her. She swallowed, the sound loud in her own ears, and finally met his eyes.
“There you go. That’s my girl.”
He said it low, rough edged, threaded with restraint. The fondness was there, unmistakable, but buried under grit, under years, under the knowledge that too much softness would tip her over. Like he didn’t want anyone to hear it too clearly. Like he knew if he softened it any more, she’d flinch.
“You didn’t fuck anything up. You were curious. That’s allowed. You weren’t wrong to ask. You never are.” His voice wasn’t soft, but it wasn’t distant either, not the flat, closed tone he’d used with everyone else tonight. This was closer. Anchoring. Meant for her alone, even with the room full.
“I chose to sit there. If I wanted out, I’d have left. Ask me whatever you want, sweetheart.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, an almost smile. His fingers loosened, his palm opening as he released her chin. The last two brushed the side of her neck, deliberate, unhurried, grazing her pulse like an afterthought before he finally pulled away.
That was the part that undid her. Not the reassurance. Not the authority.
Her mother moved first. Like she always did, quietly, decisively, like instinct had already chosen the shape of the moment before thought ever got a vote. Her fingers found her daughter’s hand on the table without asking permission, without ceremony. Warm palm over knuckles. Solid. Claiming.
“You did good, sweetheart.” Ayame said quietly. That calm, immovable tone she had, the one that didn’t rise, didn’t sharpen, didn’t demand attention, yet landed anyway. The kind of voice built from years of being the only adult in the room.
Her hand closed around hers for a second. One firm squeeze.
“I liked that you spoke up. You said what you meant and stood by it. That matters. If something feels wrong to you, then it is wrong. We don’t swallow those things. We deal with them.”
Her gaze drifted, just briefly, across the table. Not accusatory. Not wary. Just observant. Sukuna caught in the periphery of it, didn’t flinch, but he noticed. Then she looked back at her daughter, steady and soft, pride held carefully between the words.
Something in (y/n)’s chest eased. Loosened enough to breathe around. Enough that the tight coil behind her ribs unwound by a fraction, enough that the room stopped feeling like it was tilting.
Across the table, Jin let out a soft, theatrical sigh and leaned back in his chair. The wood creaked under his weight. His glasses slid down the bridge of his nose as he tilted his chin, peering at her over the rims with that open, uncomplicated fondness he’d always had for her, the kind that never tried to fix, never tried to claim, only saw.
“Well, that was the most emotionally mature thing that’s happened in this family in the last thirty years.”
It landed half as a joke, half as a horrifyingly sincere assessment of the people sitting around this table. The kind of truth you laughed at because otherwise you’d have to sit with it. Jin smiled, tired but genuine.
“You don’t need to be perfect here. None of us are. Especially not on vacation.”
(y/n) flushed anyway. She stared a little too hard at the table. Her brain already doing that thing where it replayed everything she’d said, cataloguing it for later punishment. “God. Was I dramatic? Was I too much? Should I have said less? More? Different?” Her foot bounced under the table, barely noticeable. Barely.
Kaori had been watching the entire exchange in silence. Arms crossed. Back straight. Expression tight, not hostile, not suspicious exactly. Measuring. Always measuring. She never missed a thing, she simply decided later what to do with it. Finally, she exhaled. A slow, deliberate release. Her shoulders loosened, not fully, Kaori never fully did, but enough to signal a decision had been made.
She reached for her glass, paused, then turned her attention to (y/n).
“For the record, curiosity isn’t a crime. Mais le timing… Timing matters.” Her french slipped just enough to soften the edge, a shrug following, sharp, elegant, final. There was no apology in her voice. No guilt. Just truth stated cleanly, without frills or comfort. And somehow, that made it funnier than it had any right to be. (y/n) almost laughed. Almost. Instead, she bit the inside of her cheek.
“Careful. You’re projecting.” Sukuna said mildly.
His eyes never left (y/n). His brows lifted just enough to crease his forehead, open disgust written there, not cruel, not explosive, but unmistakable. The kind that didn’t bother dressing itself up.
Kaori mimicked it instantly. Exaggerated. Theatrical. Like a child mocking an adult who annoyed her. She wrinkled her face, lifted her chin, widened her eyes just enough to make Jin choke on a laugh.
Jin let out a short huff, somewhere between amusement and exhaustion, rubbing at his temple like this was all deeply on brand for his life.
Kaori lifted her glass in a mock salute, lips curling.
“À la princesse.”
Sukuna leaned in. He shifted his weight first, slow, deliberate, the chair creaking just enough to announce intent. His forearm still hovered over her chair, solid and warm without touching, muscle at ease like it knew it didn’t need to prove anything. He bent at the waist, just barely, mouth finding the edge of her ear. His breath brushed her skin. Wine, warm air, something darker underneath, something lived in.
“Next time you get curious, don’t do it at a table.” He murmured, voice low and lazy, the words stretching like they had all the time in the world.
He glanced sideways, catching her reflection in the polished silverware, watching the way her throat bobbled before she ever answered.
“Ask me later. Somewhere quieter. Somewhere I don’t gotta pretend I’ve got manners.” He went on, softer now, closer, the corner of his mouth lifting.
Her skin flared instantly, heat blooming up her neck and settling hot in her cheeks. Mortified wasn’t it. No, this was worse. Better. She dropped her gaze to the table, bit her lip hard, fighting the grin tugging at her mouth like it had its own agenda. Her cheeks actually hurt from holding it back.
She felt light. Dizzy. Caught, but not ashamed. Just joyous. Like she’d been chosen for a secret.
Across the table, Jin dragged a hand down his face and groaned like a man seeing history repeat itself.
“Jesus Christ. Again?”
Ayame shot Sukuna a look sharp enough to slice glass, pure warning, no softness left in it.
There was something sitting at the tip of her tongue now, impatient and refusing to be swallowed. She could feel it pressing there, demanding air. Maybe she was using the softness of the moment, the table, the warmth, the almost lie of domestic peace, for leverage. Or maybe it was for survival. Sanity. She wasn’t sure anymore. But she knew this much, asking here, in front of everyone would be a kind of quiet violence. But her motives were never clean, never had been.
It would tether him. It would make him answer.
And maybe this was the part she didn’t want to admit, it would give her permission. An explanation. Something solid enough that no one would look twice when she stayed close. She didn’t want to trap him, she just wanted it to stop looking strange when she stood beside him, like that’s where she’d always been meant to stand.
And she needed that. She needed it said out loud. She wasn’t letting him slip away again, not now, not with witnesses, not when she was finally strong enough to stay standing.
She turned her head toward him. He was still close. Not looming now, not pressing into her space the way he had earlier, but his arm stayed hooked behind her chair all the same. Loose, unassuming, an ease that functioned like a barricade. She studied his face, searching for something. A boundary. A warning. Any sign that this was where it stopped.
There was nothing. Just him.
His head tipped slightly to the side, throat open, posture relaxed in a way that felt earned. His gaze had slipped downward, not to her eyes, not even to her mouth, but to the small green bows at the front of her bodice, as though they’d pulled his attention without asking. His fingers brushed the side of her bare arm. Barely a touch. Almost nothing. The kind of movement that could be dismissed as accidental if anyone wanted to lie about it.
She swallowed.
“Can I ask something real?”
Her voice came out calmer than she expected, steady in a way that surprised her, like something inside her had finally stopped flinching. As if the room itself had receded. As if the walls, the time, the consequences had politely stepped back and left only this narrow, precarious space where it was just the two of them. Him watching, waiting. And her finally brave enough to speak.
His eyes lifted to her face.
He dipped his head slightly, instinctive, almost reverent, lowering himself into her line of sight until the distance between them thinned into something sharp. His face was too close to be accidental. Close enough to feel chosen. His gaze didn’t wander. It didn’t soften, didn’t offer mercy. It locked in, focused with a precision that made her chest draw tight, not like being admired, but like being examined. Not seen. Read.
It was terrifying in its certainty. As if he already carried the answers to every foolish question she’d ever swallowed whole. As if language was unnecessary, like her mouth was only a formality and her eyes were doing all the talking. As if he needed nothing from her except to look back.
Her wants. Her doubts. Her small, half formed curiosities she never trusted herself to finish thinking, laid bare in her pupils, stripped of defense, open and legible. Not to the world. Not even to herself. To him.
She glanced sideways, just a flicker. Her mother, the table, the way the room was already thinning out, chairs scraping, voices drifting away. Then back to him. Her cheeks were warm, her mouth curving in a way that said she already knew how foolish this sounded, and still couldn’t stop herself.
“When this ends… Are you going to come for me?”
There it was. No armor. No humor to soften the fall. She didn’t dress it up or step around it. It took effort to say, but once it left her mouth, it came out clean. Direct. Precise.
“I mean… I know you’re busy. And I know we live far apart. And I know you disappear sometimes. I just… I want to know if this is a holiday version of you. Or if you exist back home, too.” She spoke faster now, like if she didn’t keep moving she’d lose the nerve entirely.
The breath she took afterward was small and unsteady, like she hadn’t realized she’d been holding it. Her fingers twisted together, restless, her head dipping slightly, eyes refusing to demand anything.
It was bold. And shy. And painfully sincere.
And so unlike her that it almost hurt.
She knew, with that dull, seasoned certainty that never bothered announcing itself anymore, that if her mother was listening, she’d be at least a little mortified by her. Not cruelly. Not loudly. Just enough. A daughter who flinched from people. From closeness. From the rituals of family. From bonds you didn’t choose but inherited anyway, wrapped in duty and repetition and renamed love. She hated that kind of intimacy. Hated its design. The way it was built to trap you gently and call it care. She hated men. God, she hated men.
And still, here she was. Asking him.
Her uncle. The man who had vanished from her life for nearly fifteen years without so much as a backward glance.
Asking if he would come find her. If he would show up. If when the suitcases were packed and the house exhaled and everyone returned to the lives they’d neatly paused, he would step out of that familiar pattern and choose her instead. Because suddenly, painfully, she didn’t want the usual. As if the usual had never held her in the first place.
He had told her, more than once, that he wasn’t leaving again. That he was here now. That this wasn’t guilt. Wasn’t penance. Wasn’t about standing in for his brother’s absence or cleaning up a dead man’s mess. He’d said it simply. Repeated it. Like repetition could build permanence.
And she believed him.
A little.
Maybe the doubt was hers. Maybe it was the old injury speaking, the one that never healed clean. The fact that he hadn’t stayed when staying would’ve been effortless and pure. And the quieter, uglier truth that men always seemed to vanish once things stopped being uncomplicated. Once tenderness required effort. Once purity cracked.
Her foot shifted beneath the table, restless, exposing her. This wasn’t fair. She could feel it even as she did it. This was turning him into something accountable. Something bound. Asking him to remain not because he wanted to, but because she needed him to.
And that made it something else entirely. Heavier. More dangerous than the already tangled, already unforgivable, reprehensible thing that had already been living between them.
His hand shifted. Not on the table, under it.
A small movement. His fingers found hers and closed, firm and warm, like he’d already decided she wasn’t going anywhere. The cold bite of his rings pressed into her skin as she held on in return, harder than she meant to. Her knuckles stung, cracked raw from the morning, from rolling in the snow with him, from letting her hands stay bare despite the cold, despite the way his pockets had been right there. Despite the heat that radiated off him, misleading, unreliable.
He burned her the way a candle does when it’s tilted wrong. Flame leaning too far, wax spilling, the wind catching it too fast. Something meant to give warmth shortened instead. Fate, maybe. Or just physics.
She felt everything in fragments, the weight of his thumb settling, the faint scrape of metal when he adjusted his grip, the quiet steadiness of his pulse against her wrist. The tablecloth brushed her thigh. Someone laughed down the table. A fork clinked. Ordinary sounds, cruel in their normalcy.
Anyone watching would’ve seen nothing at all. Just two people seated too close. Shoulders almost touching. Family. Familiar. Harmless.
He leaned back first. Not away from her, away from everything. His spine yielded to the chair like he’d stepped out of the room without moving, like the noise, the table, the family had all gone dim around the edges. For half a second she thought she’d said too much. That she’d finally crossed some invisible line and the punishment would be distance again. Silence. That familiar vanishing act.
Then he looked at her.
Crimson eyes narrowing, not in anger, not exactly. Something sharper. Appraising. Almost affronted, not her words, but the wound underneath them. As if the question offended him, not because it challenged him, but because it revealed how long she’d been carrying it alone.
“You think I came all this way, just to remind you I exist and then disappear again?” He said it quietly, like he didn’t like the premise of it at all. The words still carried, low, edged, weighted with something old and territorial that had nothing to do with want and everything to do with history.
“You think I’d let you ask me something like that if the answer was no?”
It wasn’t anger. It was refusal. A flat denial of the premise itself. The words landed between them and stayed there. Like he wanted them to be overheard, but understood only by her.
Under the table, his thumb moved.
Slower now. Intentional. He felt the roughness of her skin, the fine cracks she’d ignored all morning. And instead of pulling back, he pressed there, smoothing, grounding, like he’d decided that discomfort was negotiable but distance wasn’t.
Her fingers tightened instantly, defensive. Too hard. As if she could prove something by enduring it. As if pain, when it came from him, could be turned into proof instead of damage. As if pain might make the moment real enough to keep. Her knuckles burned. She didn’t let go.
His jaw flexed once. Controlled. Contained.
She didn’t speak.
Her mouth stayed slightly open, breath shallow, eyes too bright in the low light. The room felt suddenly too vivid. Anxiety hummed under her skin, loud and familiar, making her aware of every inch of herself, every sound, every second ticking forward.
“I know what you were asking. And I’m telling you this once. So listen.”
He leaned a fraction closer. Not enough to be noticed. Enough to be felt.
“You don’t need to wonder if I exist somewhere else, I exist where you are.”
His voice dipped, smoothing out, losing its edge. There was something almost careful in it now. Something close to a lull. The kind of tone that belonged to nights she didn’t talk about, the unbearable ones, when existing felt like a chore she hadn’t agreed to.
The rest of the table blurred. Laughter, movement, time itself, all of it receded, like the world had politely stepped back to give them space. His gaze didn’t waver. He held her eyes like he expected resistance, unwavering. Like he was prepared to stay right there until she understood, really understood that absence had never been indifference. That silence hadn’t been forgetting. That whatever he’d failed at, leaving her behind hadn’t been one of them. Not in the way she’d learned to believe.
Her eyes burned.
She blinked fast when sound rushed back into her ears all at once, too loud, too real. A thin, breathy laugh escaped her before she could stop it, more reflex than humor. She lifted a finger and tapped lightly at the corner of her lashes, like she could trick the moment into passing. Crying in public wasn’t still illegal according to her private, unforgiving rules after all.
“I love you.”
She didn’t say it. She shaped it. The words left her mouth without sound, slow and careful, like she was afraid they might shatter if she rushed them. Her lips trembled on the last one. She sniffed, quick and embarrassed, then wiped at her nose with the heel of her wrist, no grace, no manners, like some scrappy little orphan who never learned how to be delicate when it mattered.
Her eyes never left him.
They were too bright. Wide. Wet in that way that wasn’t crying yet but was already past stopping. She felt ridiculous and blessed all at once, pitiful for needing him this badly, happy in a way that made her chest hurt.
His thumb stilled. Not pulling away. Not loosening. Just stopping mid motion, holding her exactly where she was, as if freezing her there mattered more than comfort.
“Easy, sweetheart. You’re fine. Don’t start shaking on me now.” He murmured, low and immediate, the words landing before she’d even realized her breath had gone shallow.
It wasn’t a command. It was a warning. Soft in tone. Absolute in implication.
His eyes flicked to her lashes, too wet, too bright, the shine gathering there like a threat. He clocked the way her mouth betrayed her, the way she chewed on it like she could punish it back into obedience, the way the corners refused to behave and curled down anyway.
Something shifted in him. Not irritation. Not anger. Something darker. Possessive. Old.
He adjusted in his chair, subtle but unmistakable, broader now, closer, a presence that crowded her space without touching it. A wall forming at her side. His knee brushed hers beneath the table, deliberate this time, a quiet nudge that said I’m here, I’m heavy, I’m not moving.
His thumb resumed, slower now. Purposeful. A measured stroke over her knuckles, again and again, calming and maddening all at once. Like easing a skittish thing he didn’t fully trust not to bolt.
He tilted his head, just slightly. The expression that followed, God, it was devastating. Not gentle, not cruel. Focused. His gaze locked onto hers and didn’t waver.
“If you start crying, I’m taking you out of here. I don’t care who notices.”
It brushed too close to a threat to be mistaken for comfort.
Would she even protest if he grabbed her hand and hauled her away? Past her mother, past the table, past God Himself if He bothered watching? Would she even bother pretending she wasn’t complicit? Would she make a sound at all that could be mistaken for refusal, or would her body betray her first, stepping into him like it had been waiting for permission its whole life?
She wondered if he’d ever considered that. If it crossed his mind, even once, that she couldn’t live like this. That every second without his hands somewhere near her, on her wrist, her back, the nape of her neck, felt like a small, controlled suffocation. Little eternities.
As if wanting him hadn’t rewired her entirely. As if her body hadn’t learned his absence as a kind of pain it now mistook for normal. As if every breath she took wasn’t already shaped around the idea of him. Where he wasn’t, where he could be, where he should have been.
“Do you think I don’t want that?” She mumbled, low, a small, aching sound that barely made it past her lips. Every syllable offered something and asked for something in return, a quiet plea disguised as stubbornness.
She swallowed, loud, eyes wide and shining, brows drawn tight like she was bracing herself against the feeling instead of running from it. Chin dipped, defiant and wanting all at once. And for once, just once, she didn’t look away. She held his gaze with an ease that surprised even her, wild and untrained.
His eye twitched, sharp, involuntary. She almost missed it. Not nerves. Not fatigue. Something deeper. Something old. He inhaled through his nose, slow and heavy. His jaw tightened. The muscle jumped once, hard, like a crack in stone. Whatever animal lived under his skin had pressed forward, impatient. Teeth behind a smile that hadn’t formed yet. His hand shifted without warning, pure instinct, sliding from where it rested to her upper arm. It closed there firmly. Fingers pressing into warmth, into proof. Holding. Claiming space. Squeezing until the pressure turned white hot and then numb. Until it hurt. Until it grounded.
She didn’t pull away. She didn’t even think to.
If this was the cost of keeping him here, if this was the price of his attention, his staying, she would pay it in pieces. An arm. A hand. A tongue. Something expendable. Something she could live without. She would give and give, quiet and willing, just to make the moment last a second longer.
“I’m not disappearing. Not tonight. Not after this. Not like that. So breathe. Wipe your eyes. Sit pretty.” He spoke through clenched teeth, his voice stripped down to bone. There was something in his eyes she had never seen before. Never, not even in the moments she thought she knew him best. Wild, not unfocused, not frantic. Controlled. Terrifyingly so.
Fear flickered through her, but it tangled instantly with something else, hotter, sharper.
His gaze broke from her for a split second, dragged unwillingly toward the table, the noise, the clatter, the family arranged in their ordinary shapes. Plates, voices, the choreography of normal life. Then his eyes snapped back to her, sharp and fixed, as if the world had narrowed to this single, unbearable point.
Something was playing in her mind now. Not quite a fantasy. Not a memory either. A déjà vu that felt older than her own thoughts, like a scene she’d already lived once and misplaced.
Him hauling her up from a chair, sudden and impatient, fingers closing around her wrist before she could ask anything at all. The shock of cold right after, air biting her ankles, her feet unready, flats sinking into snow, white swallowing the soles for a heartbeat too long. No coat. No warning. No preparation. No protection. Just him and the sound of her breath leaving her all at once.
And then she was in Himiko. Already moving. Engine low and metallic, alive under her ribs. The world narrowing to speed and heat and the dark stretch of road ahead, somewhere she didn’t know and strangely didn’t care to know. And her mind snagging on the smallest, stupidest worry.
Would I ever go back to get my things?
Her things.
Mafi. Her toothbrush. The chipped white mug with the polar bear’s face, the one she reached for without thinking, muscle memory more than choice. Her books, spines broken and softened from rereading, margins crowded with angry notes, underlines pressed too hard, little arguments she’d had with the text and never finished. Dresses she adored but rarely wore, because they asked for a kind of ease in her own skin she didn’t always have.
The tiny gold butterfly earrings he’d bought her when she was little, so small they’d barely felt real. She’d forgotten them entirely, until recently when the memory surfaced on its own. Quiet. Unannounced. Like her mind handing her something fragile because it sensed she could finally hold it. They were probably still with her mother. Tucked into a jewelry box. Safe. Untouched. Waiting the way some things did. Patient, without accusation.
The donkey. The cow. The bunny.
Childhood things. Her horse riding Barbie. That ridiculous horse. Plastic and loud and miraculous, the one that walked, that actually neighed if you pressed the right spot. She’d loved it with a seriousness that felt embarrassing now, but hadn’t been then. She’d brushed its stiff mane carefully, like it could feel gratitude. Like it could remember.
Mallory’s fur. Soft. Orange. Impossibly bright, even in memory. Cut and tucked into a small tin she only opened and touched when the ache grew too sharp, when she needed proof, tangible, undeniable, that something gentle had once loved her back.
She saw all of it, one by one, like objects left behind in a burning house.
And the thought arrived, quiet and terrifying in its calm.
I think I’d let them go.
Not because they didn’t matter. They mattered so much it hurt. But because the idea of staying, of being placed beside him, carried forward without looking back, felt heavier and truer than the weight of everything she owned. The loss didn’t scare her as much as it should have. What scared her was how beautiful it felt to imagine it.
As if leaving wouldn’t be abandonment this time, but devotion. As if choosing him meant choosing motion, heat, a life that didn’t ask her to keep proof of the past in small metal tins. As if being with him might finally quiet the part of her that was always counting what she’d lose.
Her lashes fluttered. Her vision slipped, stuttered, couldn’t decide where to land. On his face, his eyes, the line of his mouth. Like something irreversible had just happened in her head, some quiet fracture setting in. Her breath came wrong now, shallow and broken, little gasps that caught on themselves, bordering on hiccups. She hated it. She couldn’t stop it.
His grip didn’t loosen. It took her a moment to realize he didn’t know he was holding her. He wasn’t aware of anything. There was only this.
Him, tipped into that thing he always flirted with but rarely let surface. That edge. That feral, dangerous intensity he kept leashed by habit and age and consequence. And her, sitting there, not flinching. Not shrinking. Not looking away.
That was what did it. And he looked at her like that realization terrified him.
And then it broke.
Not gently. Not with a sigh. Just gone.
His fingers loosened like they’d finally remembered where they were. The pressure on her arm vanished all at once, heat lifting, blood rushing back so fast it made her dizzy. He pulled his hand away as if it had burned him, rubbing his thumb once against his palm like he was shaking something off. A habit. An exit wound.
“Christ.”
He exhaled through his nose, sharp, clipped. Looked away. Not far. Just enough to rejoin the room.
The spell didn’t shatter so much as it receded, snapping back into the shape of plates and voices and clinking china. Someone laughed too loud. The buffet announcement chimed faintly from somewhere near the windows, cheerful and obscene.
He leaned back in his chair, posture resetting into something familiar. Annoyingly normal. One elbow hooked over the back, the other hand reaching for his glass like he needed something cold and solid to anchor him.
“You’re hungry.”
He didn’t look at her when he said it. His gaze stayed fixed on his wine glass, jaw set, brow pulled into a faint, permanent crease like the world had offended him sometime in the late ’90s and never apologized. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t concern dressed up nicely. It was an observation. A verdict.
She blinked. Once. Twice.
Her body caught up with itself all at once. Shoulders dropping. Jaw unclenching. Fingers curling and uncurling like they’d just finished gripping something too hard for too long. Her breath came rushing back in a way that felt almost embarrassing. Deep and shaky.
Her thighs actually trembled. Like she’d just climbed five flights of stairs while having a panic attack, or stood up too fast after sitting on the floor too long. The aftershock of something that almost happened. It felt like a very delayed orgasm that promised to be earth shattering and instead arrived limp and useless, a sad little balloon without helium bumping uselessly against the ceiling of her nervous system.
“I’m fine.”
Her voice betrayed her anyway, cracking clean through. She worried the skin beside her thumbnail with her teeth, a small, unconscious violence, her hand trembling against her mouth.
He snorted under his breath and finally looked at her. Not sharp. Not indulgent. Something steadier than either. Something that hadn’t been there before tonight. Stripped bare of something she realized she took for granted before. It startled her, how much she’d been relying on the old version without realizing it.
“Eat first before you pass out.” He said, dry and practical, nodding toward the buffet without bothering to turn his head.
Eat first.
That was it. Two words. Nothing dramatic. Nothing final.
Which meant nothing was over. Right? He hadn’t changed his mind. He wouldn’t. He would’ve just said eat. Or nothing at all. He would’ve walked off.
Eat first meant there was an after.
Her chest loosened around it. Just a little. That stupid, reckless spark of hope. Too bright. Too quick. The kind you’re not supposed to trust. She swallowed it anyway. Nodded like she got it. Like she was fine. Like this was all very normal and not quietly rearranging something in her ribcage.
The words stayed lodged behind her brain, clumsy and unformed. She didn’t dare let them out. What would she even say if she tried?
Don’t leave again. Please don’t decide this was a mistake.
Did you actually mean that, or did I imagine it? Was that look real, or was I just starving enough to see things?
She didn’t trust her mouth with any of that.
When she stood, her knees dipped like they might fold completely. She caught herself on the edge of the table, heat rushing up her neck, her face. God. It really did feel like she’d sprinted, like something inside her had been running flat out for miles and had only just hit a wall.
He shifted on instinct. Too fast to be thought through. His hand came to the small of her back, not gripping, not claiming, just there. A quiet brace. The kind of protection that didn’t announce itself, didn’t ask to be noticed. It hovered for half a second. Then it was gone, withdrawn as if he’d reconsidered the cost of the gesture.
She stayed upright. Barely. And somehow, that felt like its own small victory.
She drifted toward the buffet on legs that didn’t feel fully registered to her body, like the floor was doing most of the work. Her pulse was still loud in her ears, a dull rushing, the aftermath of something almost happening and then being very deliberately locked away again. Her muscles ached. Not from use, but from restraint. From the absence. From the way something fundamental had shifted and then been deliberately put back in its cage. Told to sit. Stay. Behave.
She wanted sweet potatoes. Not negotiable.
Roasted until the edges collapsed into themselves. Split open, steaming. Drowned in real butter, French butter, pale and obscene and soft even in the cold. Sea salt, flaky, not that powdered nonsense. Nothing else. Maybe a little thyme bud if they had it. The good kind, green and sharp. Toasted peppers would’ve been divine. Charred just enough to taste like fire and sugar. She could already feel it in her mouth, like her brain had queued it up and was now furious it wasn’t being delivered.
The buffet gleamed under warm hotel lights, all polished wood and brushed steel, the faint smell of pine drifting in from the lobby every time the doors opened. Silver chafing dishes lined the counter like obedient soldiers. Tiny white placards with elegant serif fonts announced things she didn’t want right now.
Truffled polenta. Veal medallions. Salmon en croûte.
She grabbed a plate anyway. White. Bone china. Crisp and thin and probably imported. The kind that made a polite little sound when you stacked it, like it was asking not to be dropped. Gentle. Breakable. Expensive. She held it by the edge, fingers already cold.
Her eyes scanned the buffet with growing suspicion.
Where were the sweet potatoes.
There were roasted baby potatoes, smug and uniform. Fingerlings slicked in oil. A gratin drowning in cream. Mashed potatoes whipped into submission. But no sweet potatoes. None. Not a single caramelized orange edge in sight.
She frowned at the food.
The tongs were warm from other people’s hands, metal clicking softly as guests served themselves. Someone had dropped sauce on the marble counter and wiped it away badly, leaving a streak. The air smelled like butter and wine and rosemary and something faintly meaty she refused to emotionally engage with.
She didn’t know if she should go back to the table.
She hovered there, plate empty, debating like it was a moral issue. She could just go back to her room. Order room service. Sweet potatoes had to exist somewhere in this building. This was a ski resort, for god’s sake. People needed carbs to survive the mountain. Surely the kitchen would understand.
She was late anyway. The buffet had that picked over look now, food still abundant but tired. Sauces congealing slightly. Garnishes wilting. The good bits already taken. She had weekly, sometimes daily fixations on specific foods, and right now her brain was locked in. If it wasn’t that, it was nothing. She didn’t want presentable. She wanted correct.
She stared down at her empty plate, sighed softly, and adjusted her grip on it like it might comfort her.
Sweet potatoes or nothing, apparently.
God, she was exhausting. And starving. And cold. And spiraling a little.
Her gaze drifted, unanchored, toward the table by the windows. Kaori and Ayame were laughing too loudly at something, the kind of laughter that came with shared history, with names and years she didn’t have access to. Something that happened twenty years ago maybe. Before funerals. Before rehab brochures. Before she became a concept instead of a person.
They leaned toward each other, wine glasses tilted, shoulders loose. Comfortable. Settled.
Her eyes slid past her mother’s shoulder automatically.
Sukuna.
He wasn’t there.
Her stomach dropped so fast it almost hurt. A sharp, animal jolt. She turned her head too quickly, scanning the room, the buffet line, the bar, the heavy wooden doors leading to the terrace dusted in snowlight. Nothing. Just strangers in knit sweaters, flushed cheeks, ski boots clomping faintly somewhere above them. A laugh too shrill near the dessert station.
He was gone.
Her breath caught, embarrassingly so, and for half a second the panic flared hot and stupid and immediate.
Where did he go?
Stop it. Of course he was gone. He was exhausted. Thin mountain air, too much talking, too many eyes on him. He might’ve gone for a cigarette. Or back to his room. Or nowhere important at all.
She had no reason, none, to panic like this.
Still, the feeling didn’t listen.
She stood there frozen with her empty plate, the heat lamps humming softly above the food. Her chest felt tight, like she’d swallowed cold water too fast. She exhaled slowly, deliberately, the breath rattling a little on the way out.
It’s fine, she told herself. You’re fine. You’re just hungry. You’re cold. You’re being weird. She steadied herself the way she always did when her brain started sprinting ahead of her body.
She needed to trust him. He was here. He was in the hotel. Him not being in the room didn’t mean he had vanished, didn’t mean he’d left her again, not really. He told her to eat first. That mattered. That was care. That was structure. That was him saying stay alive for five more minutes and I’ll still be here when you’re done.
He was hers. He’d said it himself. He existed where she was. That he didn’t disappear from her. He just stepped aside sometimes.
So why did her chest feel like this. Why did the memory of his voice shift when she replayed it now?
Eat first.
It sounded different in her head the second time. Slower. Measured. Like a line he’d used before. Like something practiced. A gentle redirection. A small, reasonable instruction that moved her just far enough away.
So he could breathe. So he could think. So he could leave the room without her following. Or wailing.
She hated herself for noticing. For dissecting something that had felt kind only minutes ago. She hated that her brain did this, took warmth and peeled it apart until it found the bone underneath. But she’d learned to listen for exits. Learned to hear the shape of them before the door even opened.
Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe it meant everything.
Maybe he really did want her to eat. Maybe he just needed her occupied. Fed. Quiet. Not looking at him with those eyes that asked for more than he was ready to give.
She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, counting breaths like she’d been taught. This didn’t mean he’d abandoned her. This didn’t mean anything. This was just a moment. Just a pause. Just a man who stayed nearby instead of running.
Still.
Okay. Name things.
The buffet was quieter now, late evening tired. Sauces had started to skin over. The glossy finish on the roast vegetables dulled just a touch. Someone had opened a chafing dish and not closed it properly, steam escaped in a thin, impatient hiss. The scent of browned butter clung to everything, mixed with rosemary, garlic, something faintly sweet, maybe roasted squash. Or carrots pretending to be dessert.
She picked up the tongs again. Faintly slick. She winced and told herself not to be dramatic.
Eat something. Anything.
Because if she didn’t eat now, her stomach would turn on her later, loud, swollen, punishing. She hated feeling bloated. Hated feeling too full or not full enough. Her body liked precision. Her brain demanded it.
She hovered over the options like they were trick questions.
She swallowed, jaw tightening, and scooped a small, reluctant portion of something safe, rice pilaf, flecked with herbs, raisins and toasted almonds. She added a few roasted vegetables she didn’t fully want, arranged them carefully anyway. Control where you can get it.
Her breathing evened out, slowly.
She glanced back at the table once more, quick, almost involuntary, half expecting him to have reappeared like nothing had happened. He hadn’t.
She’d just set the tong down, finally, reluctantly, when a voice slid in at her shoulder.
“Oh. There you are.”
She flinched.
Not fear. Not really. Just the sharp, humiliating jolt of being pulled out of her head too fast, like someone snapping their fingers inches from your face. Her shoulder jumped, the fork clinked softly against the plate, and she had to consciously stop herself from swearing.
She turned.
Yorozu stood there like she’d been placed.
Tailored gray wool, heavy and structured, cut so clean it bordered on arrogant. The coat sat on her shoulders like it had been measured down to the millimeter, cinched just enough at the waist to read as intentional, not trying. Dark buttons marched down the front in a military rhythm, flap pockets flat and sharp, tweed dense and expensive enough to make your teeth hurt. Underneath, a black turtleneck, simple, severe, deliberate. No skin. No softness. Just line and control.
Black tights, matte and perfect, disappearing into long leather boots that ran up her calves and stopped just below the knee. High. Unfunctional. Fitted like a second skin. The leather caught the light just slightly, supple, glossy in that quiet way that said it had never been scuffed by anything real. Black leather gloves. Indoors. Which felt like a choice. Or a diagnosis.
Her hair was teased at the crown, seventies volume without collapse, feathered at the ends like it had never known humidity or regret. Inky black, long, shining. Her makeup was immaculate in that effortless way that took an hour and a very specific mirror. Her signature smoky eyes, soft but dark. Bare lips. Hazel eyes that skewed almost yellow under the lights, sharp and assessing, like they were always measuring the room for weaknesses.
She was annoyingly beautiful. The kind that made you want to either stare or look away immediately. The kind that felt expensive to exist near.
(y/n) felt her stomach twist, an old, familiar sourness creeping up. It didn’t matter how many times she told herself it was stupid. It didn’t matter that she’d looked in the mirror and liked what she saw today. Around this woman, her confidence always felt like it had been borrowed and was about to be reclaimed.
“You startled me.”
(y/n) said, her voice came out weaker than she intended. A little breathless. Like it had scraped its way up instead of being offered. Her throat felt hollow, stomach gnawing in on itself, the kind of weakness that came from forgetting to eat and forgetting to matter at the same time.
Yorozu smiled. Thin and exact, like she’d been waiting for that response and was quietly pleased to receive it.
“I didn’t see you at dinner, we thought you’d vanished.” (y/n) added, softer now, a polite little addendum, eyes dropping back to her plate as if embarrassed by the attention.
Yorozu’s gaze moved over her anyway. Quick. Thorough. Clinical.
Low pigtails tied with white ribbons, too innocent, too deliberate. The chiffon dress that looked like it had survived twenty five years of closets and careful hands, and it did. Emerald velvet bows, rich and out of place. Fingers red and cracked from the cold, knuckles dry, skin split in places she’d tried to hide. A plate with too little food on it. Too neat. Too controlled. Everything noted. Everything filed.
There was a pause. Just a beat too long to be accidental. Then Yorozu tilted her head, eyes lighting with something sharp and amused.
“How quaint, I almost forgot you existed. Perhaps you should stay forgotten. It’s easier for everyone.”
The air left her lungs. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just gone. Like someone had opened a window inside her chest in winter.
(y/n) didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. Her brain lagged a second behind the words, scrambling to assemble them into something reasonable, something survivable. Surely she’d misheard. Surely no one said that. Not like that.
“What?” Her voice came out wrong, off guard, exposed. Her brows pulled together before she could stop them, the expression automatic, humiliatingly honest.
Yorozu’s smile didn’t move. If anything, it softened. Public facing. Approachable. Poison wrapped in cellophane. Her arms crossed over her chest, shoulders lifting as she inhaled a little too deeply, chest rising in a way that felt performative. Everything about her posture was bubbly, cheery, wrong. Like she was playing at kindness from memory, not instinct.
“Oh. Don’t look so startled. I just mean, families like this, they work best when old patterns aren’t disrupted.” She lifted a gloved hand, waved it lightly, dismissively, brushing the moment aside like lint, like something inconsequential. Her eyes flicked, just briefly, toward the round table by the windows. Toward her family. Toward the people around it.
(y/n) stared at her.
Her heart had started racing now, a sharp, uneven thing, panic blooming hot and fast under her ribs. Was this a warning? A threat? A joke meant only for her? Was Yorozu cruel for the game, or was this calculated? Because cruelty she could handle. Cruelty was simple.
But this, this felt informed.
Something pressed heavy deep inside her chest, the familiar ache of knowing she wasn’t innocent enough to be shocked anymore, but still stupid enough to hope. Like there was damage so dirty and settled inside her that no one even bothered pretending it could be fixed. Just managed. Minimized. Kept quiet.
Stay forgotten.
The words lodged deep. Right where all the other things lived.
“I’m not disrupting anything. I’m family.” She said carefully. Her eyes were moistening, lashes fluttered once, twice. Too fast. Too harsh. Squeezing the tears back into her sockets. She didn’t want to cry. Not in front of her.
She slid her plate toward the far corner of the buffet like it suddenly embarrassed her, fingers curling around the edge as if it might anchor her. The wood was cool. Solid. She leaned into it without realizing, shoulders rounding, body folding inward in a way she’d sworn she’d unlearned.
She didn’t notice how boxed in she was. Didn’t notice how small she’d made herself.
Yorozu hummed exaggeratedly, lips pursed, brows knitting together in theatrical concern, an expression so overdone it felt rehearsed. Like she was indulging a child who’d just said something earnestly stupid.
“That’s what everyone says.”
The mock sadness in her voice was almost gentle. Almost kind. Her lashes fluttered hard and deliberate, too precise, too timed.
And it hit (y/n) with a sharp, humiliating clarity.
She was mimicking her.
The words landed heavier than they had any right to. The mimicry landed worse, like a mirror held too close to her face, showing her every nervous tic she hated herself for.
That old, ugly reflex kicked in immediately, the need to apologize, to soften, to shrink until the air around her felt less crowded. She felt herself doing it even as she despised it. Hated that Yorozu could pull it out of her without raising her voice. Without even touching her.
Her eyes flicked instinctively toward the room, searching, too quickly, for something familiar. Something solid. Someone. But there was nothing. No heat. No weight. No sharp voice to cut through this syrup thick tension.
She tightened her grip on the buffet edge, knuckles paling.
“I didn’t realize my presence was such an inconvenience.” Her tone came out even, but fragile in a way she hadn’t intended. The words barely registered in her own head. Her fingertips tingled, numb and burning, and it scared her how fast her body had decided this was danger.
Why was she so scared? Why did she feel so weak, so stupid over this?
Yorozu’s eyes sharpened just a fraction. Interest. Not anger. That would’ve been honest.
“Oh, sweetheart. You’re such a perceptive girl aren’t you? But I don’t have no interest in you. I only worry for those who need their reputations to stay tidy.” Her voice softened on the last part, honeyed and intimate, the smile on her lips so polished it felt like it had been practiced in front of a mirror a hundred times before being released into the world.
She leaned in just enough to be invasive, just enough to steal space. Her perfume hit immediately, expensive, heavy, unmistakably intentional. Something floral and sharp underneath, like crushed petals and money. It clogged (y/n)’s lungs, scrambled her thoughts, made it harder to remember what she’d meant to say in the first place.
What did she say?
All she could think, horribly, desperately, was that she needed Sukuna here. Now.
(y/n) forced herself to breathe. In through the mouth. Out through the nose. Slow. Like the therapist had taught her. Like she never listened.
“I should go sit.”
She said mostly to herself. Her voice sounded far away like it had traveled through water to reach her ears. Her heart was pounding so hard she wondered, distantly, if it could bruise her ribs from the inside. Sweat traced a slow, humiliating line down her spine beneath the light chiffon, clinging where it shouldn’t.
Yorozu stepped aside with practiced grace, the kind that came from never having to rush for anyone. She moved like royalty granting passage, chin lifted, shoulders loose, smile pre approved.
“Of course. Do enjoy your meal.”
(y/n) didn’t even grab her plate as she passed. Heat crawled up her neck, sharp and prickling. Not embarrassment. No. Something closer to anger. Or resolve. Or that awful, sickening clarity that she wasn’t even angry at Yorozu.
That was the worst part.
She was either fishing, doing that overly fixated, obsessive, desperate worshipping thing and cornering (y/n) on purpose for some private, idiotic sense of superiority, or…
No. She wouldn’t entertain that thought. She refused it like a bad omen.
Behind her, Yorozu’s voice followed. Soft. Amused. Intimately placed, like a hand at the her back without ever touching.
“Oh, and darling?”
(y/n) froze. Her body betrayed her before her mind could catch up. She paused, then looked back over her shoulder.
Yorozu smiled. It was too bright. Too delighted. There was something girlish about it, something rehearsed and cruelly kind. For a split second, (y/n) felt ten years younger, small, wrong footed, caught without armor.
“Je t’avertis comme une amie. Mais les amis ont des exigences.”
The words landed wrong. Not because of what they meant, but because of how they were said. Perfectly. Casually. With that faint, Parisian tilt that didn’t ask permission.
Her breath caught, sharp and humiliating, like she’d missed a step on the stairs. The room tilted, not visibly, but inside her head, where things started to slide.
French.
Her mind raced, frantic, tripping over itself.
She knows French. She understands.
She heard.
The car. The drive. The stupid, reckless, vulgar intimacy of it, how she’d leaned toward Sukuna, voice heated, careless, wrapped in the safety of thinking Yorozu was decorative. Ignorant. Harmless. Something ornamental you spoke over.
Things she’d said. Things she’d meant.
Why didn’t Sukuna tell her?
Why didn’t he stop her?
No.
He probably wasn’t even aware. He never listened to Yorozu. Not really. He’d always treated her voice like ambient sound, something that existed in the room but never demanded attention. That had been obvious from the start. He skimmed past her.
And that was the terrifying part.
To think Sukuna of all people could be deceived by Yorozu made her stomach twist. Not because Yorozu was clever in some grand, admirable way, but because Sukuna could usually smell rot from a mile away. But here he’d lowered his guard so completely it bordered on stupidity. Ego, maybe. Comfort. The laziness of a man who’d never had to worry about being scrutinized by someone who dressed like that.
It wasn’t that he trusted Yorozu. It was worse. He hadn’t considered her worth watching at all.
But they’d whispered. Yes, it was reckless. But it was careful. She had raised her voice at the end, snapped sharp enough to cut through the car noise, but still. Yorozu had been talking to Yuji. Laughing. Distracted. Not looking at her. Not watching.
So how did she…
Her vision pinched inward, the world shrinking to a tunnel. The edges of things fuzzed, smeared like wet paint. Sound dropped out first, as if someone had packed her ears with cotton, thick and suffocating. Her hands began to buzz, pins and needles, numb and electric all at once, like they didn’t quite belong to her anymore.
Her pulse slammed in her throat. Too fast. Too present. God. No. Not now.
She dragged in a breath, then another, shallow and uneven, trying to anchor herself to something solid. The floor. The cold. Her own body. Anything.
Not a panic attack. Please.
Yorozu watched her with naked satisfaction, the kind you get when you press exactly where it hurts and the other person flinches just the way you hoped. Pride flickered across her face, sharp and pleased. Her eyes widened, exaggerated surprise playing across them, as if she hadn’t expected the reaction to be this good. As if she were a little drunk on it now.
She stepped closer and set a hand on her shoulder, fingers light but deliberate, head tilting in mock thoughtfulness, lips pursed like she was weighing something trivial.
“Sweetness, I don’t mean to pry. But you should ask yourself who benefits when certain stories get told, then decide if you want to keep living with that answer.” Her voice was smooth and merciful. Voice lowering into something almost maternal.
Stories. Certain stories.
“Love, obsession, desire. I understand all of it. This, however? This is something else. Some things… Even I wouldn’t touch. And I touch plenty.” Her nose wrinkled, almost imperceptibly, the faintest flare of distaste. Not shock. Disgust. Clean and final. The last words came easy, like a confession that cost her nothing at all.
Her breath came too fast, shallow and ugly. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t even look at her properly without something in her chest tearing open. Thoughts slipped right through her fingers uselessly.
Yorozu tilted her head, assessing.
“Are you feeling faint, darling? Don’t. Men like your grandfather can smell panic. He’ll know. And when he asks himself who the whore is, I promise you, he won’t point at me.”
Her gaze snapped to Yorozu, too quick, too sharp. Wide eyes. Locked jaw. Lips pressed so tight they almost shook. She swallowed hard, fists curling at her sides, nails biting into her palms like she needed pain to keep herself here. Present. Standing. Not breaking.
No. She couldn’t take it from her. She couldn’t take this. She couldn’t take something she’d never even known she was missing, something she hadn’t had the language for as a child, something her body had learned to live without like a phantom limb, now suddenly real, warm, hers, finally within reach.
Not this. Not now. Not the one thing she’d found by accident after years of telling herself she didn’t need it. After years of swallowing the absence and calling it independence. After years of pretending family was just a word people used to trap you.
She needed Sukuna. Right now. Stupidly. Pathetically. Desprately. She needed him like oxygen, something solid to pull her back into her body before she drifted completely apart.
Yorozu smiled again. Not wide. Not cruel. Just finished. Sweet, satisfied, already elsewhere. And then she stepped back, like the interaction had concluded cleanly, like she hadn’t just cracked something open and walked away from the mess. Leaving (y/n) standing there.
Her heart kicked once, hard enough to hurt, and then began to race, uneven, reckless, like it was trying to outrun her body. Her thoughts splintered, sharp little shards flying everywhere, none of them landing long enough to make sense. The foreign syllables Yorozu had murmured still rang through her, not in her ears but deeper, in her bones, in that soft, private place where confessions lived before they were words.
She didn’t remember deciding to follow her. In fact, she didn’t remember deciding much of anything at all.
Her head felt light and heavy at the same time, like she’d downed half a liter of tequila on an empty stomach. Buzzing, unsteady, too warm. There was a purpose there, unmistakable and urgent, a pull so strong it made her stomach ache, but the reason had slipped clean through her fingers. Want without logic. Motion without thought.
One second she was standing still, frozen in place, heart ricocheting against bone, the echo of French still tolling inside her like a bell she couldn’t unhear. The next, her feet were moving. Fast. Clumsy. Entirely undignified.
She didn’t glide. She didn’t hesitate. She lurched forward, breath coming shallow as panic finally caught up with her body. Her dress swayed too much around her legs, suddenly too long, too noticeable, so she gathered the hem in her palms without thinking, fingers bunching fabric tight like it might anchor her. She cut through the restaurant with zero grace and even less patience, narrowly avoiding chairs, brushing past startled bodies, aware of every look and unable to care.
“Yorozu–“
Her voice cracked on the name. Too loud. Too bare.
Heads turned. A couple near the dessert station stalled mid laugh, forks hovering uselessly over porcelain. Someone at the bar glanced over their shoulder, then didn’t bother looking away. The low, expensive hum of the room shifted, attention snagging like silk catching on a nail.
“Come back here!” Her voice came out shrill and too noisy, a tone she’d be embarrassed about if this wasn’t life or death.
Yorozu didn’t look back. She just walked on. Fast, but never rushed. Precise. Unbothered. Even her hair barely moved, as if even gravity knew better than to interrupt her.
That was what did it. Not the threat. Not the French. Not even the implication hanging in the air like a blade waiting to drop. It was the speed, the ease of it. The quiet, casual certainty that she could leave. That this exchange was over simply because Yorozu had decided it was.
Breathing hurt. Her steps faltered, then accelerated, adrenaline flooding her limbs so hot it made her dizzy, clumsy with urgency. The lobby doors loomed ahead now, tall glass panes breathing in cold blue evening light. Snow and pine slipped through the seams like a reminder that the world was larger than this moment and she was about to be ejected from it.
“Stop!” The word tore out of her, hoarse, wounded.
Yorozu didn’t.
People were staring now. Openly. A man in a puffer jacket slowed, interest sharpening his face. The concierge lifted his head. Someone whispered something she couldn’t hear but felt anyway, like static under her skin.
(y/n) surged forward and grabbed her. Hard. Her fingers closed around Yorozu’s arm just above the elbow, instinctive, careless, the grip clumsy with panic. The fabric beneath her palm was expensive, smooth, unyielding. She felt muscle there. Real. Conditioned. Memory snapped into place with vicious clarity.
She was Sukuna’s student. For a time. And for a split second, the awareness cut through her haze like ice water.
She could break (y/n) if she wanted.
The realization landed at the exact moment Yorozu stopped. She turned slowly, precisely, like this had been anticipated. Like the contact hadn’t startled her in the slightest.
She was completely breathless, shoulders folding inward, head dipping on instinct as if gravity had suddenly doubled. The edges of her vision fuzzed, darkened, tunneled. She stayed there, lungs stuttering, the kind of breathlessness that wasn’t dramatic, just ugly and real, the aftermath of running longer than she should have.
Her grip tightened instead of easing, fingers curling hard, almost numb with it. Fear made her reckless, gave her a strength she didn’t recognize as her own. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t violence. She wasn’t trying to threaten her. She just needed to know.
“How far are you willing to go?” Her voice rose despite herself. Something raw and needy. The kind that shows bone.
A hush crept through the lobby, subtle but unmistakable. Eyes skimmed, stalled, pretended to be busy with marble floors and glass doors and nothing at all. The polished walls caught everything and gave it back doubled, reflected them back at themselves. The bloodless, translucent girl in ivory chiffon clutching the arm of a woman in heels and immaculate wool, faces too close, bodies angled wrong.
Yorozu glanced down at the hand on her arm. Then back up at (y/n). Nothing in her face shifted, just the faintest lift of her brows. Not irritation. Not fear. She looked unimpressed. Amusement would’ve been kinder. As if there wasn’t a single molecule in her body that felt threatened.
“How far? That depends entirely on how loudly you keep asking.” She leaned in just enough that only (y/n) could hear her, voice perfectly steady. Almost bored.
“I’m not afraid of you. I just want to know what you think you’re doing.”
She hated how hollow it sounded the moment it left her mouth. Like a lie she hadn’t meant to tell. She wasn’t fearless. Fear was everywhere, loud and buzzing, crawling up her spine and settling behind her ribs. Maybe the part about not being afraid of her wasn’t entirely false. Maybe it was just incomplete. But her legs were trembling anyway, and she was grateful for the long dress that hid it, grateful for anything that let her keep a fragment of dignity.
Yorozu smiled.
Up close, it was devastatingly composed. Skin flawless under the lobby lights. Not one blemish. Eyes bright, alert. Not a hair out of place. She gently reached up and peeled (y/n)’s fingers from her arm, one by one. No struggle. No rush. Just inevitability.
The loss of contact felt like falling.
“I think that you’re confusing proximity with protection.”
Yorozu smoothed the sleeve where she’d been grabbed, as if erasing evidence.
“And I think you should be very careful about assuming who will step in when things become inconvenient.” She tilted her head, voice dipping into something almost affectionate.
Was she projecting?
The thought flickered weakly, a last attempt at mercy toward herself. But it didn’t hold. It never did.
No. She wasn’t projecting. She was finally telling the truth. Yorozu hadn’t trusted him. Hadn’t leaned on him. Hadn’t waited for him to become something else. Yorozu stood where she stood because she chose to, because she could afford to. Because she had leverage. Money. Distance. A spine made of contracts and contingency plans.
It was her who had waited. Her who’d carried that small, humiliating hope like a secret organ. Quiet, vital, easy to wound. The hope that he’d just appear. Like men do in stories told to girls who need saving. That he’d see her standing there, exposed and shaking, and decide she was worth the trouble. That he’d take her away from this.
She felt ridiculous for it now. Ancient and infantile at the same time. She wasn’t a woman being cornered. She was something much smaller.
A newborn animal, legs still trembling, mother gone so early she couldn’t even remember the sound of her breathing. Standing in tall grass that offered no cover. No warning. No escape.
And Yorozu.
Yorozu was not hungry.
That was the worst part. She didn’t need her meat. Didn’t need her blood. She circled anyway. Slow. Curious. Amused. A lion with nothing to lose, batting at something fragile just to feel it move. Just to prove that it could.
“You’re not the only woman in this family who learned how to survive quietly.”
The words landed soft. That was the cruelty of it. Her hands hung uselessly at her sides, fingers slowly curling in on themselves, numb at the tips like her body had decided to abandon her first.
Stupid, she thought. Stupid woman. For ever believing, earnestly, embarrassingly, that she belonged here. That she was from this family in any way that actually counted, beyond blood on paper and old photographs nobody looked at anymore.
She knew it now. It wasn’t really about her. Maybe it wasn’t even about Sukuna. She’d felt it before. That day she’d disappeared into the woods and come back reborn. She’d seen Yorozu by the banisters, already placed, already fluent in the rhythm of the house. She’d wanted to be one of them. God, how humiliating. She didn’t even know what kind of one she wanted to be. His wife? Probably not. The kind of fantasy that collapses under direct eye contact. Maybe she just wanted quiet acceptance. A seat that didn’t feel borrowed. Or maybe this was just untreated childhood grief in an expensive coat, walking around pretending to be desire.
She didn’t care enough to diagnose it.
Yorozu didn’t belong here. Who the hell was she to feel entitled to belonging, when she herself had never quite fit anywhere? Not here, not before, not even inside her own head half the time.
And the worst part was, she didn’t hate her. She felt something closer to grief. Not pity, never that. If Yorozu needed defending, she would defend her without hesitation. That was the kind of person she was. Gentle to a fault. Always making room. Always trying to understand. But understanding didn’t mean swallowing the truth whole, and the truth was sharp enough to hurt going down.
He had never respected her. Not once. And here Yorozu was, standing in the wreckage of that fact, claiming her place in it with such calm authority. As if she had always known where she fit. As if fitting was ever the same as belonging.
(y/n) swallowed, her throat burning. Her lips trembled despite her effort to still them. She bit the inside of her cheek hard, grounding herself in the sting, forcing her mouth to behave.
“What do you want from me?” She asked. The question came out smaller than she meant it to. Frayed. Honest in a way she hated.
Yorozu’s gaze flicked away, just once. Toward the restaurant behind them. Toward the tables, the noise, the life continuing uninterrupted. Toward the man who wasn’t here, who never was when it mattered. Then her eyes returned to (y/n), composed again, lips curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“I already have what I want. What I’m offering you is a chance to leave with something intact.” She said calmly.
“You don’t get to decide that.”
(y/n) shook her head, disbelief breaking through the panic like a crack in glass. A short, shaky laugh escaped her before she could stop it.
“No. You do.” She said, agreeing easily.
She stepped back then, creating distance with something close to surgical precision. The space between them snapped open, and the lobby air rushed in to occupy it, too cold, too bright, merciless. Her heel clicked once against the stone floor. A single, decisive sound.
“But ask yourself, how much you’re willing to lose just to prove you were here first.” Yorozu said lightly, already halfway turned, her voice smooth and careless.
Then she was gone. The doors swung shut behind her with a soft, indifferent thud.
(y/n) stood there, frozen in the aftermath, shaking so hard it felt like her bones were rattling against each other. Every stare in the lobby pressed in at once, curious, embarrassed, vaguely entertained. Her skin burned and prickled all at the same time, cold seeping through the chiffon while heat crawled up her back in waves of humiliation.
It took her a moment, too long, to understand what was happening.
She was crying.
Not the kind you can swallow down. Not the quiet, dignified kind that waits for privacy. This was sudden and ugly and out of her control. Her breath fractured into sharp, broken sounds that ripped out of her chest before she could stop them. Little, animal noises. Her shoulders folded inward instinctively, like her body was trying to shield something already bruised beyond repair.
Someone nearby murmured something, too soft to hear, too intrusive to matter. Someone else turned away, pretending not to see. She scrubbed at her face with the heels of her wrists, fast and frantic, smearing tears without really wiping them away, and hurried toward the elevators like she might actually outrun herself.
She didn’t care.
She didn’t care if people stared. She didn’t care if she caused a scene so memorable it lodged itself in strangers’ minds forever. None of it mattered. All she knew, all her mind could latch onto, was that she couldn’t stay here. Not tonight. Not like this. And for the first time in her twenty years, leaving didn’t register as something cruel. It didn’t feel like punishment, or failure, or running away.
It felt necessary.