Chapter Text
summer solstice. overheated
Summer, for one thing, is incredibly overrated.
The city that languidly hums with relentless daylight around its bystanders is full of life by nightime, humidity making moisture palpable under an overheated palm against a pleather steering wheel. Perhaps it’s only sweat.
Like any other summer, Tokyo’s streets are bathed in pale moonglow, harmonized with the footsteps and laughter of every other passerby. An occasional breeze driven forward by buildings reaching for starless skies over the greed of warm city lights is the closest to mercy Choso will get tonight.
The exudation coming out of every pore feels like gasoline against the gunpowder of the artificial lining of the car seat. In a way, the heat is a lot like divine punishment for yet another broken promise to respect the independence of one of his little brothers.
Just as brutalist structures may enclose dissonant interiors in architecture, a stoic face paired with a taciturn demeanour is a façade that allows Choso to hide from his one and only priority, there is nothing he wouldn’t do for them, for those who share his blood.
After all, big brothers must be the cornerstone of a household, providing shelter and stability, especially when parents cannot or simply will not fulfill their roles as pillars.
Regardless of the many changes that came with every passing season, time is a mother, and trustworthiness is a quality that Choso - no longer Kamo, but Itadori - ensures Eso, Kechizu, and Yuuji always associate with him. Both figuratively and verbatim, as the car parked near the sidewalk near an apartment building in the Takadanobaba District on a summer evening begs to prove.
In the raw emptiness of the turned-off car, loneliness forges forward like the sore sight of the pixeled LED-lit ‘3%’ on the top right corner of his phone screen with the same discomfort of the cotton t-shirt sticking to his back. Boredom is a multifoliate hyacinth when forced to be confronted.
Yeah. Summer is only nice when it’s followed by the word ‘vacation,’ but that’s a privilege he cannot indulge in so close to being done with university and an honours thesis yet to be started.
Entire species have gone terminally extinct with clamorous bangs like a meteorite, others by the seamless whimper of genetic phenomena. The hollow concept of peace in Choso’s life is shattered with a knock on the passenger window.
On the outside, a woman with long blonde hair asking him to lower the crystal barrier between them with a smile that could be as polite as it is fake.
“Move your car. I can’t get my bike out,” she says, leaning with an odd comfort against a stranger’s vehicle.
Most first conversations begin with a greeting, at least a polite nod. But the first time Choso sees her, neither of them says ‘hello.’ Instead, her request carries a hint of overbearingness entwined into the humid summer air of Tokyo.
Choso’s first impression of her is that she is rude beyond repair.
When he does nothing but raise an eyebrow, the stranger mimics him. The smile on her face grows wide, finally seeming genuine. It’s as if she finds immense mirth in his reaction, even if he can’t recall doing anything with such intention.
It might very well be a mistake, an unconscious impulse, or, simply put, a moment carved out by a stroke of fate of the serendipitous twist that’s about to waltz into his life what makes Choso, too bewildered to stare at anything other than the idiot reclining in his car, press the pads of his fingers against the wrong buttons on the steering wheel.
The window does not close. Instead of the glass gliding upwards like he intended, a crisp click reverberates, unlocking all doors.
Before he can voice an objection, the stranger is sliding into the passenger seat with no invitation. The sound of her mouthing a curse echoes as her long legs slam into the glove compartment in hurried uncouthness.
Choso blinks. Her boldness, perhaps even stupidity, leaves him baffled.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Did no one ever teach you about stranger danger?” He also wonders if no one ever taught her about the most basic manners.
“Yeah, well, it was either that or you closing the window on me, wasn’t it, stranger?” she fires back, tone sarcastic yet lighthearted.
Choso glares at her, trying to process the nonchalance with which she casually stretches her arms overhead and rests them behind her head like a makeshift pillow.
“Get out,” he snaps.
“Dude, just move the damn car,” she retorts.
Even after the old motor rumbles to life at the turn of the key, and he ignites the vehicle to move it out of a supposed entry he can’t really see, the woman doesn’t seem interested in leaving. Au contraire. She sinks deeper into the black leather of the passenger seat and grins when it clearly annoys him.
“Were you at the party? I don’t think I saw you inside,” she asks before taking a drag from a small, lilac vape. At least she has the courtesy to exhale the flowery-scented smoke out through the small opening of the window before sticking her tongue out with over-exaggerated disgust.
“I’m waiting for someone,” Choso says too soon, before rationality seeps in to remind him no explanation is owed to strangers.
The blonde lets out a soft hum as she checks the expensive-looking sports watch on her wrist. “To get laid? It’s kinda late to be waiting for someone.”
There is some truth in her words.
It’s late, and there are a hundred different things that Choso would rather do with his time instead of being locked in an old car with this stifling heat.
He wonders if at least he’s having fun.
If Eso, who until tonight had never been invited to a big-shot party in the year he’s spent in college, is finally dancing in a room with real bodies instead of doing it in the ghostly hollowness of their apartment.
If he is singing so loud, his voice will be but a cracked whisper in the morning. If by the time he walks out and is met with the sight of his older brother parked right where he dropped him off, it will make him smile gently and not have him rolling his eyes because overprotectiveness has always been one of Choso’s biggest flaws.
He settles for a huff that should equate to a warning that casts a ‘that’s none of your business’ between them. The blonde doesn’t say a thing, although the delight on her face does not disappear.
She examines the tidy interior of the old car as her long fingers, adorned with thin golden rings and slightly chipped merlot-polished nails, gently brush against the plastic and dark pleather lining.
The low whistle she lets out makes him self-conscious.
It isn’t the best car in the world. In fact, it’s not even a good one. Despite needing more trips to the mechanic than most, he holds on to it because it was hers, and now it is his, and that’s all that matters.
Very little remains of the only woman who has truly loved him, so he clings to every small piece of her that still exists.
“Why are you still here?” he asks, turning to see her studying his features.
“You looked lonely…” The way she says it has him expecting to hear a seductive ‘I can fix that,’ just like the Blade Runner 2049 audio haunting his TikTok For You Page. “And I was bored. Might as well be bored and lonely together, don’t ya think?”
She swivels around and makes her way to the back of his 2009 Suzuki Jimny, imprudently slipping into the snug confines of the back seat. After a soft, satisfied sigh, she lowers the windows just enough to invite the humid air and the lively noises of what seems like another wasted summer night.
“Ever heard of minimalism?” Choso gestures with an annoyed shrug. The motion sends a jolt of discomfort around the knots of stress sunk painfully at the base of his neck. “Maybe I like my social interactions like that: minimal.”
He chances a glance in the rearview mirror as the tall woman shifts to find a comfortable position in the narrow confines of the small SUV. Choso doesn’t miss how her lips curl upwards with cheekiness at his answer.
Their eyes lock for a fleeting moment in the mirror. Although a glare is drawn to Choso’s light brown eyes, he is the one to look away. Despite the absurdity of the scenario he’s in, Choso is the utterly embarrassed one.
“Ooh, a smart ass. I like it,” she quips, voice tinged with entertainment. “C’mere, stranger. Let’s have a chat.”
He takes a deep breath, the air filled with the mingling scents of salty sweat and street food overwhelming his sensitive nose with something else, something that can only be described as danger.
The crescent stuttering of his heartbeat echoes loudly against the hollow bits of his ribcage.
“Will that make you leave?” he asks, voice tinged with acquiescence.
She smirks slyly.
“Gimme ten minutes and I’ll be off your ass.”
On a night filled with many peculiarities, Choso ignores all the alarms signalling that indulging a stranger is a terrible idea. Yet, he goes against his better judgment.
He ensures the handbrake is engaged and mirrors the exact movement of the woman who has made herself comfortable in the empty seat next to him.
As Choso shifts to fit into the reduced space, a giggle is proof enough that she’s noticed before him the way the corners of his mouth are slowly but surely curving upwards. He grows shy at how he can’t stop grinning as he wonders how Kechizu, with his lanky limbs and bony knees, can sleep in such a constricted space.
Choso knows small talk is to be expected when it comes to strangers. He tries to meticulously craft an answer to any potential question, bracing himself to avoid the nervousness that can tangle his tongue and leave him stuttering.
If she asks for his name, he will only go as far as to say the three syllables he’s memorized of a borrowed last name.
If she inquires about the weather, he will only complain instead of pointing out how the high temperature is causing small droplets of sweat to gather in the hollow of her collarbones, where the tiny golden star of her necklace glints whenever the streetlight caresses her skin.
And if she insists on what exactly he is doing here, Choso is confident that kicking out a nameless woman from his car would not be the most questionable thing he’s ever done.
There is no need for that, though.
Choso relaxes in his seat as the stranger fills the silence with her own voice about yesterday’s scientists’ dreams and today’s astronauts’ and astrophysicists’ discoveries.
The only bittersweet certainty about life is that it must come to an end, regardless of whether that’s an obnoxious human on a blue planet orbiting around the sun or what lies glinting behind clouds as stars were they set their wishes.
With a smile, she points out that the cosmos is the closest humans will ever be to time travel, and no one can convince her otherwise. When a massive star’s time has come, she swears, its shockwaves ripple outward, buzzing in a way almost reminiscent of fireworks at summer festivals.
As she goes on about how stars may appear distorted due to something called the Doppler Effect, she adds that it isn’t always motion alone that paints them this way. Near a black hole, she says, gravitational redshift impacts light, stretching or compressing it until stars seem to change colour. But the bright shade blue belongs to the incandescent giants born from bursts of activity, telling the tales of the universe.
When she asks for his hand and names it a horizon before tracing circles onto his open palm, she explains how the edge of a black hole is called ‘event horizon.’ Then, spiralling her finger inward, she sketches a whirl of matter collapsing, twirling faster and faster before it spaghettifies and falls toward the dark core.
If the first thing Choso noticed about this stranger was her lack of manners, the second is her astounding beauty.
“Isn’t it amazing? There is so much we don’t know about the universe,” she whispers, licking her bottom lip before meeting his gaze. “But one thing is for certain: no matter how hard you try, if you fall past the event horizon, you can’t escape a black hole.”
The way her tongue rolls with every word indicates she is no longer discussing dying stars.
It all unfolds so rapidly that his mind struggles to comprehend the hows, whens, and whys. Perhaps this is what matter goes through when the unforgiving wrath of a black hole seals its fate.
One moment, she is tracing constellations that seem to dance across his skin, marvelling at the beauty of chaos in the universe. The next, her hips come crashing down onto his lap with the force of an asteroid.
The heat radiating from her body sizzles through the cotton of his sweatpants, igniting his skin and his entire nervous system.
“Do you want this?” The oxymoronic needy demand in her voice makes his body stiffen at the realization of the position he’s in, as if an unknown host had trespassed on his own flesh and bones.
He wants to say no, he doesn’t even know her name. Yet, the same universe she speaks of with such devotion must understand that he is thoroughly touch-starved, that he craves this sort of attention, no matter how much he stifles it.
All he can do is gaze at her, mouth agape, as if she were a shooting star, shining bright and fast but tangible at the same time.
A slight nod is all the cue she needs to grind down on his treacherous anatomy, leaving a fair set of nebulae on the junction where his neck meets broad shoulders.
It is not the first time he’s been under a woman like this. But it is, without a doubt, the first time that said woman is a complete stranger.
Her hands are bold, greedy, demanding, mapping with feeble-earned certainty the rises and dips of the muscles underneath his oversized t-shirt.
A single finger is all Choso needs to number the women he has slept with over the last twenty-two years, two if he considers the girl in his biology class who gave him a handjob on prom night. If there is one thing that links all encounters, it is that he felt something for all of them.
It’s not that he strictly needs love or affection to make sex work, but he has never been curious or careless enough to have sex with no strings attached.
This stranger, however, doesn’t even give him much room to think. Her cold digits sink on the plush skin of his pecs as he squeezes down at the curve of her ass against the solid tent between his legs.
If it weren’t for the way she turns her head in refusal to meet his lips but holds tight to his hands, no longer horizons but simply hands, before fishing them down the smooth fabric of her tight-fitting crop top, he would have probably forgotten that, at some point, his body was able to produce something more than heavy breaths and grunts.
Choso swallows against the dryness in his throat. “Wait - wait. I don’t even know your name.”
She puts distance between them and stares at his parted, spit-glistening lips with a wolfish grin. “Do you have a condom?”
Despite the way his erection starts aching for release under the fullness of her weight, Choso finds a small, breathy cackle leaving his lips out of shock as he shakes his head from side to side. Of course he doesn’t. What were the odds of something like this even happening?
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” she says before removing one of the big palms cupping her breasts and bringing it to the lips that Choso is still bitter he didn’t get to taste. The other crosses the waistband of his sweatpants and boxer briefs in a swift motion that punches a needy groan out of him as she sighs contentedly, praising something as innocuous as the size of the cock in her hand.
He tries to breathe deeply so his voice does not come out as needy and affected as he probably looks beneath her. But when no word seems coherent enough, he settles for an interrogative huff.
His wordlessness makes her grin wider, her nose crinkling as a bit of pink gum appears endearingly. The sight is nothing short of adorable, but an absolute contradiction of their current situation as she sucks on his middle and ring finger with eyes closed, seemingly putting on a show for him alone, before shoving the digits past her cargo pants and placing them right at the wetness of her cunt, leaving no room in his thoughts other than to suppress the aching need to orgasm on the spot.
“If you make me cum first, you get my name,” words tumble out as she sinfully mouths the sharp edges of his jaw.
It’s a ridiculous thing to say, a part of him thinks. This entire situation is steeped in what can only be called utter absurdity. The voice of logic, deep within this searing need, urges him to stop, not to give her this. But his resolve breaks at the first pull of her hand.
Choso doesn’t dare to voice anything other than a breathy curse, fearing his tongue will let loose over the grip the strange woman now has on the most sensitive bits of his anatomy.
He tries to think back to all the times he’s been in a different position but a similar rendezvous as the one he is in now. He attempts to recall the way his ex liked to be touched, the right way to scissor his fingers and pet a woman’s insides to get her to reach her peak in no time.
Choso may be quiet, no-nonsense and straightforward to a fault. Yet, he knows damn well he excels when it comes to being a reliable big brother, an artist committed to his craft, and a generous lover, no matter if his ministrations are with his hands, lips or cock.
His thighs burn, joints aching with discomfort over awkward angles and long limbs locked in narrow spaces. Still, the stranger sees the zenith of her climax first, half-lidded lids finally closing as all the control she once exerted is finally used up, forgotten over primal instincts.
Choso follows soon after, not only because her touch is cruelly skilled in a way that he hasn’t had the privilege of being met with in years, but because, even if it was for a fleeting moment, a celestial body collapsed under his touch.
He is very much tempted to try kissing her again, but he’d much rather savour the sweet rush of euphoria than risk another blow to his self-esteem from her rejection.
“Yuki,” she breathes with an amused giggle Choso mirrors before grunting when she licks the shell of his reddened, double helix-pierced ear. “Yuki’s the name you will moan the next time you jack off.”
She wipes the semen coating her hand with his t-shirt, tying a denim jacket around her rounded hips in an attempt to cover the evidence of their orgasms and, lastly, jumps off his lap after a complacent (and sticky) pat on his cheek.
“Well, that’s it. Goodbye.”
“G-Goodbye?” Choso gapes foolishly as she steps out of the vehicle. His expression of bewilderment only deepens her amusement. The flirtatious snickers transform into loud cackles as she climbs back into the copilot seat and swings the door wide open.
Choso doesn’t get to say another word. Perhaps it is for the best. Either way, anything he might have said would be interrupted by a surge of emotion that is the perfect blend of both anger and embarrassment.
As he attempts to hide the drying white spot on his inconveniently dark clothes and the dying hard-on on his sweatpants as he stretches his limbs to close the car door, he follows with his eyes how she walks past the street en route to the building.
At that moment, Choso realizes he was never blocking an entryway, nor was a motorcycle waiting to be moved out of the way.
The only thing he sees is a tall, white-haired man wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night, sporting an achingly wide grin on his face by the entrance of the building. He raises his hand to give her a high-five when she finally climbs up the short flight of stairs.
Unmannered. Gorgeous… Whatever.
The third and final impression Choso gathers about a strange, blonde woman supposedly named Yuki is that she is a raging fucking asshole.