Chapter Text
Suguru didn’t understand the type of murderers that chose methods like strangulation or stabbing.
Why get so close if it isn’t necessary? Unless, of course, one was, say, backed into a corner, with no way out but through. That he could rationalize. Beyond that, the serial killers of the world made no sense to him. The biting, the choking, the trophies. He wasn’t cut from the same cloth. Suguru Geto preferred his violence distant, whenever possible. He didn’t like the desperate noises, the injuries you could cause yourself in such close quarters, the filthy monkey blood that would splatter his otherwise pristine condition. No, not when it was so easy for him. He had to exert almost no energy at all. Most of the time, he felt nothing when considering taking a life, much less the anger it would take to keep your victim close.
Until now.
The sound that’s escaping you is probably supposed to be some combination of his name and some sort of plea, but really all that's coming out is gurgling. A desperate, pathetic attempt to find much needed oxygen as he squeezes your throat in the crook of his elbow between his forearm and bicep, the fingers on his opposing hand gripping the locks of hair at the crown of your head with force, holding your head up as he pounds into your quivering cunt from behind.
And there it is; that feeling he thought he’d never understand, that white hot anger that seemed to fester in his abdomen along with the tightening coil of his own release. Because even though he was moments away from choking you unconscious, even though he had complete and total control over your body in the present moment– you, too, held control of him. You, a pathetic fucking monkey, draining every rational thought from his brain via his cock, every grip and pull and squelch of your pussy taking little bits of his nature, his purpose and completely obliterating them, just by existing. Just by the way he can feel you trembling, quivering beneath him, your body ready to fall apart for his expert conduction again , like the weak little bitch you were.
Your nails come up to claw at the arm wrapped around your throat desperately, and he laughs as you wound him, hissing as the searing pain reverberates throughout his body. He does loosen up, though, just enough for you to gargle out his least favorite word:
“Blue!”
Stupid fucking monkeys and their stupid fucking rules. He did agree to them, though, and so immediately he stops, releasing you from his hold and pulling out of you immediately.
You scramble forward frantically, curling in on yourself, your nude frame doing its best to protect all the most important parts of yourself, your forehead tucked into your knees, hiding from the world, hiding from him . He waits patiently for a moment, and then two, before he realizes that you’re not going to let him get back to his game that night. It wasn’t any fun if you weren’t interested, desperate for him as well, and it doesn’t take long for his cock to soften along with his pride.
He re-dresses himself, and then grabs you a pair of pajamas from the closet, throwing them across the corner of the bed in stride as he leaves the room, returning with a warm, wet cloth and kneeling by the bed in front of your frame. The thought that he would service a monkey in such a way was laughable, something that his associates would shame him for. The man who disinfected himself every time a monkey dared to touch him, knelt at the bed of one, fully ready to provide comfort, to fix what he broke–
“Just leave.”
What?
His face is blank as his mind spins, eyes flicking back and forth as your words swirl around in his head. Him? Leave? At the request of you ?
In all fairness, you didn’t know the danger, the sheer power that you had bending to your will right now. This relationship was not one of love, there was no need for learning each other beyond common niceties. You knew nothing of the world that you lived in everyday, nothing of curses or jujutsu, nothing of his following or defection. Conversations between the two of you were short and sweet, an understood unimportant preamble to the sex you’d have a few times a week.
“Suguru,” You absolutely refuse to leave your armadillo shell posture “I’m not doing this anymore. Just go.”.
What was this feeling? This crushing tightness that was forming in his chest? He hadn’t felt anything similar since the disaster of a mission he’d taken on with Satoru as a teenager. Desperate, frantic beating of his normally metronomic heart.
“Y/n, I swear I didn’t–”
Yes he did. Do it, mean it, whatever the absolute lie he was about to spit was gonna be. He did. But you couldn’t know that. If you did, you’d never let him see you again, and for some reason he doesn’t like the thought of that.
“ Leave !!”
****
There were times when he felt his body wasn’t made to swallow the things he did. Namely, curses. The taste was indescribable, a special type of hell everytime he shoved one of those god forsaken balls of death and chaos past his lips. He’d gotten better about it since he was a teenager, or at least better at ignoring the after effects. If he had a nickel for every minute of his life spent retching into the toilet after absorbing a curse, he’d have no need for the money collecting monkeys he kept around.
There were other things he shouldn’t swallow that he did. Sip after sip of bourbon when the day had been too long, until his face burned and the world spun sideways as he crawled into bed. His pride, occasionally, when a particularly rich monkey would think himself useful enough to exert some sort of control over him. Of course, he could remedy this later when the money ran dry, but in the moment it was tough.
Of all of these though, he found he couldn’t swallow the aftertaste of you . It was the worst late at night, in the cool dark of his room, as he tossed and turned and tried his damndest to get comfortable. A younger, more innocent, more ignorant version of himself spoke to him everytime he choked on the shattered glass of your memory.
You shouldn’t have been so rough with her.
That isn’t how you treat women, you know better.
I would never do such a thing. This isn’t me, this isn’t you.
He didn’t understand. You weren’t a woman, but a monkey. A lesser being than himself or his associates. A body for him to use as he saw fit. It most certainly was not his fault that you were so weak as to be affected by a bit of manhandling. If you were stronger, if you were a real person, you’d simply have fought your way out of it. Or, even better, you never would’ve given him the opportunity to put you in such a position.
You wouldn’t have caught his eye leaning on that lamppost outside the bar, laughing with your friends over a cigarette, the artificial amber light practically glowing against your all too exposed skin. When you noticed him staring, you wouldn’t have flushed a deeper shade of red than you already were from the alcohol. You wouldn’t have been enamored by the way he took your hand and pressed it to his lips, like some old-world prince. His refusal to sleep with you that first night wouldn’t have been the endearing actions of a man that cared about consent.
You wouldn’t have met at a coffee shop a week later to discuss boundaries and limits. His very clear communication wouldn’t have been a green flag. You wouldn’t have been grateful for him laying out the rules;
“Just sex. No feelings, no strings, no expectations.”
You certainly wouldn’t have agreed. Wouldn’t have let him invade your life, your space, your body. You would’ve known him, would’ve known the truth. No one on his side of the world didn’t .
But you and your ignorance. Always smiling, always willing, always pliant, always trusting. He wasn’t sure why you let him get away with as much as he did before he’d last seen you four months ago. You didn’t know what he was capable of, how much darkness he held in his hands, in his heart– but even so, you worshiped him all the same. Perhaps it was the nature of monkeys, to automatically bow to the stronger species. Something instinctual and primal, not fight or flight per say, but something akin to Darwinism. Survival of the weakest when tucked under the arm of the fittest.
It used to be, on nights like this, he’d call you up. Fuck you silly. Fall asleep with your pitiful frame sandwiched between himself and the mattress, his ear pressed against your chest to listen to your heartbeat. As insane of a thought as it was, sometimes it’s timing matched his own. He’d always come to his senses in the morning, but nothing put him to sleep quite like you. It was disgusting, really.
Call her. Apologize.
His teenage self should realize that he died at the hands of Toji Zenin circa 2006 and shut the fuck up .
He most certainly would not be calling you. He would rather die than let a monkey have such control over him. No, he’ll find a new you. Monkeys had no distinctive features, just respective piles. Curse collecting monkeys, money collecting monkeys, monkeys to fulfill your primal needs. It would be fine .
He goes back to the source. That same bar that he met you at one year, six months and four days ago. Not that he’s counting. With his hair pulled half up and his faux-religious gear tucked away in his closet, instead dressed in a black t-shirt with cuffed sleeves and olive toned cargo pants, silver adorning his neck and fingers in excess. It feels strange to walk in leather boots after all this time, his feet accustomed to the flat surface of his sandals. He only ever dressed like this for you .
He has to stop that, he decides. His thoughts that constantly returned to you. He didn’t come to this bar to find you, but an adequate replacement. If he kept circling back to the plush of your lips, the curve of your waist, the scars on his right arm left by your nails , he’d only leave dissatisfied.
For whatever reason, though, he can’t stop. Not when he steps into the dimly lit space, absolutely filled with his pick of desperate, disgusting, degenerate monkey women. Not when they approach him, in various states of sobriety, cooing over his hair, his muscles, his smile. Not when he settles on one who has a particular eye color, wears her hair a certain way that reminds him of you. Not when he buys her a drink and can’t help but internally groan when she orders a Long Island Iced Tea like some sort of petulant brat with something to prove. Despite himself, he stays there, does his best to smile pretty for her, loving the moments that her mouth is attached to the rim of her glass, not for the same reasons he’d love it with you. No, there’s no fixation there, no automatic imagery of her lips pressed like that to his skin, but when she does that she’s fucking quiet , and he can look into those eyes, and if he squints and tilts his head, he can pretend she’s someone else. Someone smarter, someone sweeter, someone he once knew.
Fuck.
This was pointless. He felt no different.
****
What if he kidnapped you? Hypothetically, of course.
You wouldn’t be happy about it at first, sure. But he could teach you. Get you some glasses imbued with cursed energy and show you the fear that other people have for him. You’d obey him without question, and eventually you’d come around.
He doesn’t– Fuck!
He doesn’t want that, though. He doesn’t want your fear, your unwilling obedience. He wants it the way it was, but he can’t even rationalize what made it so different in the first place. It was a give and take. You trusted him with your body, no matter how he wanted to take you. You trusted him when he bent you in positions you’d never been in before, when he wanted to explore kinks you hadn’t touched, when you fell asleep against his battle worn frame and never once questioned the scars or the bruising.
Two weeks had passed since he gave up on finding a replacement for you, and humanity had felt your absence whether they knew it or not. Whether you knew it or not. He’d been more volatile than usual, somehow. Even the girls had grown quiet in his presence, all their typical demands squashed under the weight of his sharp gaze.
He’d never before felt this out of control. Even at his most vile and violent, he’d never been reckless. Every portion of his life was planned, calculated. So to be hit with such a wave of… whatever this emptiness you’d left him with was had him acting out in ways no one could’ve possibly predicted. Just that day he’d foregone using his curses for execution and simply beat a monkey to death with his fists, just to do something, anything with whatever it was he was holding. In the day it presented as anger; hot, sharp glass tearing at his chest from the inside out. But at night…
It seemed it was grief that had him pacing the halls of his temple, hands clasped behind his back, the moonlight from the large windows painting his face in flashes as he walked. Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and–
You care about her, idiot.
Was it possible to kill one’s own inner child? He’d like to uncover the secret to that. That pretentious little dickhead had all sorts of stupid things to say. How could he care about someone that caused him to feel like this? It was an emotion so strong, so heavy that it threatened to buckle his knees. He was a special grade sorcerer, dammit. There was no logistical reason for a simple monkey to be able to buckle him simply by doing– well, nothing . The sick twist of his stomach wasn’t coming from you, but from your absence.
His phone rings, sharp and shrill, cutting through the late night air like a blade, and when he fishes it out of his pocket he feels like he just took a black flash to the throat.
It’s you.
He answers without thinking, without pausing to consider the intricacies of his own values, without giving his ego a moment to relish in the victory.
“Hello?”
“ S’g’ru- ”
Suguru Geto knew fear. He knew fear like an old friend. He’d fought fear, exercised it, used it, swallowed and tasted it. Fear was typically comforting, familiar, but not this kind of fear. Not the palpitations that rattled his chest the minute he heard you sounding like that. You were injured, or broken somehow, or drunk– no, you would never get that drunk. You weren’t that sloppy.
“Where are you? I’m coming to pick you up.” He doesn’t ask permission.
“No, m’home- don't come. M’okay, pro’bly.”
Little lying ass monkey, you were. You hadn't spoken to him in months. You wouldn't call if you didn't need him.
“Y/n. Why would you call if you're okay?”
“ ‘M gonna die. I love you.”
The world stops turning. You're not making a lick of sense, and the logical part of his brain tells him you can't possibly mean either of those things, but that doesn't stop him from immediately producing his rainbow dragon.
He knows what's going on before he even enters your apartment. The cursed energy floods from underneath the crack of your door. Experimentally, he turns the knob, and is a little horrified when your door swings open with ease.
He finds you on the couch, remnants of your attempts to soothe your ailments spread across the surrounding area. Empty bottles of cough medicine, countless cough drop wrappers, tissues, sleeping pills. You thought you were sick. What you didn't know is no amount of Nyquil would fix the curse that was wound around your body, feeding off your life force.
It was humanoid in shape, but lacked almost any distinctive muscle mass, with gaunt white skin and a sort of permanent smile almost gauged into it's otherwise blank face, revealing row after row of razor sharp teeth. It's legs are locked around your hips, one arm hugging you from behind, the other wrapped around your throat, your tender neck wedged between what would be its forearm and bicep.
He feels sick. Some curses were inexplicable, or abstract. This was not that.
He wanted to be mad at you, he wanted so badly to hate you, but the truth was smiling back at him, and as egotistical as he was, he liked to think he wasn't stupid. You may have made this, with your lack of ability to hone your cursed energy, but he had given you the emotion in the first place. This was a monster of his own creation.
It's nothing to absorb it. A single outstretched hand is all it takes for its figure to tear to shreds, those shreds drawn into his palm and blended together into a glowing sphere. It's a silver sort of color, prettier than most, almost as if he'd carved it out from the surface of the moon. That doesn't change anything about it's taste, though.
He's disgusted by the way it settles in his stomach, perturbed by how violently it seems to land. Heavy and restless, fighting it's way back up, but he won't vomit. Not here, not now.
He makes his way to you, leaning over you with one hand supporting his weight on the arm of your couch. The other does some preliminary checking. Onyx painted fingers hover in front of your parted lips to ensure you're breathing, and then make their way down to your jugular to check your pulse. It's there, a little elevated, but persistent as ever. He lets out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding before speaking your name, low and authoritarian in tone. You don't respond, most likely exhausted from the curse.
How long had you been living with it? Surely not the entire time he’d been gone. Most monkeys would have succumbed to a curse like that in days, sometimes hours. Stubborn girl.
He gives up on waking you, opting instead to lift you from the place where you’d cemented yourself to the sofa, cradling your form to his chest. You're limp in his arms, flushed and sweat-soaked head and arms lolling back without even a modicum of protest, so he shifts you until he's cradling you like an infant, the same way he used to rock Nanako and Mimiko when they couldn't sleep.
You've lost weight.
He thinks to himself as he carries you through your apartment to your bedroom and tucks you in, positioning you on your side the way he knows you're most comfortable, opting to cover you with only your sheet while the fever fades.
She's hurting. We can help.
That petulant fucking brat inside him that never fully went away. He, too, has lost weight. He blames it on heat fatigue when Satoru asks. He wants someone to push, to call him out on the lie, but no one ever does. He wants someone to carry him to bed, to help him, but he's too strong in the eyes of the world around him. So he dies, and rots, and returns to dust, into some sort of sustenance for the most deadly of carnivorous plants. Until he's nothing but a hazard and a disembodied voice living in the head of a man who's… evil? Misguided? Cruel? He isn't sure.
But we can help.
He leans against your doorframe, arms folded taught across his torso, dark eyes watching the subtle rise and fall of your chest, the fever flush painting your cheeks, the slight flickers in your expression as you sleep. Eventually, he can't take it anymore and his eyes flutter shut, head leaning back against the wood of your open bedroom door, frustrated.
It wasn't fair, the way you had him wrapped around your little finger. He’d spent the majority of his life serving monkeys, using his superior talents for their happiness and well being. Until he hadn't anymore, decided to reach up and flip the moon, turn the tides in his own favor. The question was no longer what he could do for monkeys, but what they could do for him . Until you came along. Now, here he was, back in the same position, just wrapped in different packaging.
“Blue.”
The quiet word shocks him out of his spiral, and an inquisitive hum escapes him as his gaze snaps back over to you. You're still sleeping, your eyebrows furrowed and face twisted up in pain, twitching ever so often. A nightmare, he presumes.
“Suguru, blue! Please!”
Fuck you for being able to do this to him. He straightens in the doorway, rolling his eyes at your inability to let that go. So dramatic that it had seeped from your body, amalgamated into a grade two curse and damn near killed you. Try pulling a white sheet over one underclassman’s corpse while the other tries to find reasons to live in the cold isolation of the morgue at your highschool. Try finding two girls, two babies beaten and battered and locked in a cage. Try getting your chest slashed clean open by a fucking monkey, the same one that just murdered your best friend, and then cry to him about how rough he was.
Even still, when he turns to leave, he feels an unholy pain in his chest, a sickness turning in his gut, a feeling he knew all too well; guilt .
So, despite himself, he doesn’t leave. Instead, he settles into subservience, kicking himself with every passing minute. It wasn’t you he was serving, anyway. Not really. No, every cleared bit of trash and wiped surface and completed dish– he’s only doing that to satisfy that monstrous guilt that plagues him. He doesn’t run to the store upon finding your refrigerator empty for you . He does it to make up for his transgressions. He doesn’t wash, dry, and fold your laundry for you, you stupid fucking monkey. He does it so the scars you left on him would stop aching. He doesn’t sweep and mop for you. He does it so he can finally kick off his shoes without stepping in your weird dirty monkey squalor. And that pot of coffee he makes as the sun rises? The eggs and fresh spinach he tosses into a hot pan? The toast he makes and smears with avocado and sprinkles with salt and pepper? That’s for him. He’s hungry, and tired. He only tosses a second plate on the counter and fills a second cup because he accidentally made extra. Nothing less, nothing more.
If it was any other ‘monkey’, you’d throw it in the trash.
Satoru should’ve killed that kid when he had the chance, but he doesn’t have time to ponder on it before you’re padding around the entryway to your kitchen. He thinks, only for a moment, that you sound so small sleepily meandering into your home. The word ‘cute’ bounces around his mind and he internally stomps it out.
“Oh. Uhm, Goodmorning.” You hum.
“Same to you.” He spares you a glance as he sets your– the extra plate on the dining table for you. The fever is gone from your cheeks and the dark circles under your eyes seem to have alleviated a bit. You’re still a mess, with your hair knotted up in a bird’s nest and your clothes wrinkled and bunching around your waist and thighs. One balled fist paws at your eyes in an attempt to wipe away the sleepiness. He’d never stayed to have breakfast with you before, but had he known what he’d been missing…
“Here, eat.” He orders as he pops your cup of coffee in the microwave to reheat.
You’re still for a moment, but he knows you won’t fight him. You had to have been starving; god knows how long it’d been since your last meal. There’s no sound at all as you make your way over to the table, climbing up into one of the high top chairs and nodding a silent thank you to him as he passes you a fork. He’s beginning to realize he knows a little more about you than he’d like to admit. When the microwave beeps he immediately adds milk and a heaping teaspoon of sugar to the cup before delivering it to you, as if it was common knowledge; second nature. He hadn’t ever been a part of your morning ritual, but he’d seen your disposable coffee cups in the trash, their insides coated with leftover whipped cream and caramel drizzle. It was a miracle your teeth hadn't rotted out of your head yet. He settles opposite of you, digging into his own plate and trying not to feel nauseated by the fact that he was eating food from the same plate a petty monkey frequently used.
As he chews, he watches you pick at your plate, your eyes scanning your surroundings between bites, trying to piece together a puzzle of muddled memory, most likely. It was a bit amusing, like watching a dog try to get the last of the peanut butter from the tail end of her kong toy.
“Is it not good?” He questions from behind the rim of his mug. Of course, he already knows the answer.
“No, it is.” You nod, trying to hold eye contact with him for a few fleeting seconds before returning your gaze to your plate, pushing around your eggs with your fork. You had told him once he had a hell of a stare, one that was almost overwhelming. “Great, even. I just…”.
You drop your fork, leaning forward to rest your chin against your clasped fingers, looking around you with more animation to the spotless surfaces, your eyes dancing from the counter, to the sink, to the fridge– looking anywhere but directly at him.
“I’m sorry, I don't know how to say this in a way that sounds kind. What are you doing here?”
He shoves another bite in his mouth to avoid smirking. Always so concerned about your own perception, you were. It would be an admirable quality in a sorcerer. It was one he used to possess himself, when he was separated from Satoru, of course. It got him pretty far, before it didn’t.
“You called me.”. Another sip of coffee.
“Oh.”.
He hums affirmatively, setting his cup down on the table. “You sounded bad off, so I came to check on you and you were burning a fever. I figured if you hadn't slept if off by morning I’d take you to the hospital.”.
Partial lies, partial truths. It didn’t matter. If he told you the full story you wouldn’t believe him anyway.
“…Yeah. Thanks, I guess.” You murmur, returning your focus to the task at hand; eating. He knew how hard it was after fasting for days, or weeks. Getting over the initial hump of that first meal was always the worst part for him. When you wanted something so bad , and yet the very act of indulging yourself nauseated you. Not because it’s bad, or gross, but because you’d denied yourself the pleasure for so long it felt unnatural, like it should be wrong–
He focuses instead on cleaning up after himself while you eat, washing dishes as they’re abandoned. The pan, the coffee pot, his plate, his cup, and then your own. All the while, he does his damndest to ignore the thick, heavy tension that settles in the air. There was a time when his presence didn’t cause your shoulders to tense like that, when you were comfortable enough to tease him, to tug at his hair playfully and flirt with him like he was some random man you met in a coffee shop. All of that seems to have washed away with his borderline violent plunder, and he missed it.
In those moments, he could forget. The blood splatter and the taste of curses and the ear splitting applause of religious nutjobs celebrating the premature death of a child. He could forget the hurt on Satoru’s face as he split from his path. He could forget that you were lesser than him, pretend that the two of you were cut from the same cloth, pretend that his intentions were pure as his hands and tongue explored the sweetness of your skin, and kiss away the sweat and the tears. He could pretend he was still good.
This version of you wouldn’t let him do that.
“Suguru, I appreciate your help, but I think it would be better if we didn't see each other anymore. I’m sorry for calling and disturbing your peace, I should've deleted your number months ago. I wasn't in the right headspace.”
You hadn’t moved from your seat, your legs nervously giggling with your feet planted on the wooden stretcher of the chair and your hands white knuckle gripping the seat.
“Y/n, you are my peace. Don't apologize.”. Another half lie as he finishes drying your coffee cup and places it on the rack, hanging your dish towel over the handle of your cabinet to dry.
“I–” You fidgeting stops as he turns to look at you, your brow furrowing as you caught him in the midst of his game. Usually, you wouldn't. A comment like that would leave you reeling, overthinking, pondering what he meant. But things were different now.
“Don't ignore my boundaries. I said we should cut contact.”
He purses his lips, locking eyes with you from across the room. You had no idea how badly you needed him. You’d only continue to produce curse after curse. You’d go to the doctor, and they'd diagnose you with some sort of nonsense. Idiopathic angioedema of the throat and airways. A bunch of latin derivative bullshit to say “we’re incompetent monkeys and we don't know why your throat keeps closing”.
It shouldn't matter to him, and yet–
We can help.
He crosses the distance until he's close enough to touch you, but doesn't cross that bridge yet, apprehensive that he may end up burning it instead. He leans against the dining table, his hands falling to his sides so that his fingers could swipe against the polished wooden surface, “Fine, but I think you're wrong.”.
Your mouth falls open as you chuckle incredulously, as if he was being ridiculous, “Dude, you hurt me. I couldn't breathe, I thought you were gonna–”.
“Thought I was gonna what ?” He challenges you to say it, to call him out on the rage that had escaped him that night. When his narrowed eyes meet your gaze, for the first time, you don't look away, holding him there with the same lead-heavy stare he was famous for. It was unlike a monkey to challenge him. He almost respected it.
“Whatever happened that night, whatever was going on in your head, I didn't like it.”. When you finally speak, your words are monotone, even, not a hint of fear or submission in them.
“You didn't give me a chance to remedy it, either.”. He's just as resolute.
“I was afraid! You– it’s like you fucking snapped !”, You grab his forearm, four fingers lining up perfectly with the scarring you’d left there. Come to think of it, he didn’t know why he hadn’t used RCT to heal them. If he had, they wouldn't have left any marks, but at the time, he knew you might never speak to him again. In some inexplicable way, it felt like that may be the only part of you he got to keep .
He tries to deny it, the thought that he wants to keep you. Any part of you. All of you, if you’d let him. It’s a yearning that cuts deep, somewhere down in the recesses of his chest. In his dreams, sometimes, he’s back at Jujutsu High in his sweats and his t-shirt, and instead of Yuki Tsukumo rounding the corner, it's you. You chat with Haibara and wave him off and then it's just the two of you. You don’t prod him about what's wrong, you certainly don’t tell him it’s his choice to make, whether or not he wants to be a monster. In fact, you don’t say anything. You settle into his lap and his hands, more skin toned than red, find the small of your back and your lips, more glossy than bruised, find his forehead. In his dreams, it’s nothing but you and him and the idle hum of the vending machines and the rain doesn’t sound so harsh. Not when he’s wrapped up in you.
“Suguru.”, You sigh, effectively pulling him out of his thoughts, “I don’t know you that well, and I’m not gonna pretend like I do. You show up, we exchange pleasantries, we fuck and then you go home. But I’m not stupid, and there is something in you… that hates something in me.”.
His tongue swipes against his bottom lip, finally breaking eye contact to find solace by way of peering through the window above your sink. Fitting that the day would be beautiful, the sun would be lighting up the leaves and grass in vibrant verdant hues while he stood on the edge of losing the one escape he had left. The sky was the most vibrant shade of blue.
“Y’know, I kind of feel the same way about you sometimes.” He mutters, dejected.
Silence paints the room for a moment, and then, just as melodic and beautiful as your voice ever was:
“I don't understand.”.
So, he elaborates. “There's something in you that loves something in me.”.
He doesn’t miss the sharp gust of air you suck through your teeth. Finally, it seemed, he was making some headway. He turns to look at you, allowing a somber smile to grace his lips.
“That's the opposite of what I just said, actually.” You insist, but you can’t hide from his observant eyes. Everything about your body language tells him he’s successfully made the first play of backing you into submission.
“Is it?” He questions, his voice dropping an octave as he turns to face you, one large palm splaying out on the table, the other reaching forward to brush a thick strand of hair behind your ear, revealing the plush curve of your cheek to him. A shaky breath passes your lips, and he begs himself not to smirk.
“I-” You stumble across your words as his fingers continue from the shell of your ear to the curve of your jaw, landing just below your chin and tilting your head up to look at him. It’s a silent reminder. I will always have control. I will always call the shots. Now hold your head up, show me your face.
“You’re being mean , Suguru.” You breathe.
“No,” His thumb tugs at your pouty bottom lip, manipulating the flesh there to his pleasure, watching the way it bounces back when he lessens the pressure, “I’m being selfish .”.
Your eyes bounce around his face, searching for answers he knows you’ll never get. Answers you couldn’t comprehend even if you did manage to find them.
“If you can honestly look at me and say you want me to leave, then I will.” He almost whispers, his thumb swiping across your lip once more before his fingers leave your face entirely. “But don’t lie to me, y/n.”.
You turn your face away from him, eyes holding hard onto the wood grain of the dining table, tracing the shapes and patterns there as you try to calm the flush of your cheeks. “It doesn’t matter what I want. It’s about what’s good for me.”.
Your voice wobbles when you say it, and he adds another mental point to the board for himself.
“What would be good for you is a shower and some more rest.” He takes on his spiritual healer tone with a lack of effort that almost scares him, “How about we start there and circle back to this conversation later, hm? You shouldn’t make big decisions with an unclear head.”.
He frames it expertly, careful wording chosen to let you feel like the power was in your hands, but he knew the truth; the battle had already been won, and the war was his for the victory.