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Their apartment was quiet, nothing but the hum of cicadas out the window to break through the easy quiet brought on by the summer heat.
Toji sprawled on the couch, half-heartedly flicking through movies on the TV. Even curses weren’t immune to summer afternoon drowsiness; Sukuna sat at the other end, top set of arms flipping the pages of a worn book, the other holding Toji’s feet in his lap. He looked ridiculous, with his seven-foot build and four arms holding his book, leaning against a throw pillow. If only they could see you now, Toji mused. “They” could be a number of people. The sorcerers of the Heian era, maybe. The ones who had tried to measure up to Sukuna, and failed. Toji never really asked about the before, but Sukuna would mention it sometimes; like when he and Toji were sparring, and he made a comment about how much more fun he would have had if Toji had been among those challenging him.
“We’d have been enemies, then?” Toji had asked.
Sukuna had thought for a moment. “No,” he decided. “But we’d still fight like this.”
It was their song and dance, the fighting. It was too integral to both of their beings; so ingrained into their nurture they categorized it as nature. Each blow one managed to land on the other was proof of their place by each other’s side. Somewhere along the road, you are strong came to be interchangeable with I love you.
The fact that Sukuna was clingy had surprised Toji. The curse didn’t like Toji going beyond his reach, always holding or touching some part of him. Toji chalked it up to being a possessive control freak, but sometimes Sukuna’s hands would wander, settling on his wrist, or foot, or neck, or knee. He would stop there, a faint pressure as he felt Toji’s human heart beat beneath his fingers. Toji never asked about it, and Sukuna never brought it up.
As Toji read the blurb for some B-rate action flick, he felt a familiar pressure start to dig into his ankle. He attempted to kick out, but Sukuna’s hold didn’t let him do much more than flail. “Ass.”
Sukuna didn't give any indication he heard him. He just flipped a page, resuming little circular motions on Toji’s feet. He thought about putting up a fight, but it was hot, he was comfortable, and Sukuna’s little ministrations were actually starting to feel good.
He relaxed more into the cushions, going boneless under Sukuna’s hands. When had the asshole learned how to do that, anyway?
“Enjoying yourself?” The curse teased, voice low and rumbly.
Toji sighed into a pillow, making a show of getting comfortable. “Mm, no, not really.”
Sukuna huffed a soft laugh. This wasn’t a fight. There was no thrust and block here, no claws meeting halfway or fangs bared. This was easy comfort, blades exchanged for glances, blood stains for lingering touches.
Though, Toji amended, this was still a push and pull. It wouldn’t be them if it wasn’t. Sukuna was testing how hard he could pull Toji’s tail before he bit. He wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
In fact, Toji could return the favor. TV thoroughly abandoned, Toji crawled down the couch until he could flop over Sukuna’s lap, interrupting his reading by stretching out, obnoxiously bumping the curse’s jaw and pushing into his chest.
Sukuna glared down at him. Toji just sent a lazy smirk, as if to ask what are you going to do about it?
A wicked gleam entered Sukuna’s eye, dropping the book and leaning over Toji. His blood ran cold as a newly free hand started wandering, leaving a scorching trail as it traveled up his calf and thigh until digging into his waist. “You little minx.”
Turns out, Sukuna could do a lot about it. Toji considered his tail thoroughly pulled by the time Sukuna was satisfied.
“What are you doing?”
Toji glanced up from his phone, coming eye-to-eyes with Sukuna. Toji had been gone nearly all day, Shiu having sent him the details for a small-fry hit early in the morning. He’d been settled on the bed for barely a minute after leaving the shower and changing into new clothes when Sukuna had slunk into the bedroom, pushing up between Toji’s legs and settling with his face pressed into his lap.
“Scrolling Facebook marketplace,” Toji answered truthfully, just to see the furrow appear on the curse’s forehead that meant Toji was speaking nonsense.
“What is a faced-book?” He asked, lifting up to peer at Toji’s small smartphone screen. It wasn’t a fancy model—just something Shiu had shoved in his hands after Toji conveniently “lost” his third burner of the week.
“Social media,” he said. Sukuna gave him a deadpan look. “Where people share things, like pictures or whatever,” he amended. “And where I can shop for cheap things—hey, look, a bookshelf.” Toji tilted the phone over to show Sukuna. The screen was open to a listing for a small bookshelf made of dark wood, no higher than their bed. “Would this be big enough for your nerd books?”
“Nerd books—they are priceless tomes- ”
“-That are littering our coffee table and nightstand. Whatever, I'm bidding for it.” Toji tilted the phone back to him, tapping rapidly.
“I do not want some other man’s trash in our bedroom,” Sukuna grumbled, but the complaint was mostly lost to the material of Toji’s sweatshirt.
“Uh huh.”
Toji continued his tapping. “What are you doing now?” Sukuna squeezed the arms around Toji’s waist.
“Negotiating a lower price, this dude is being crazy if he thinks I’ll pay fifty for it,” Toji said. The bedroom was enveloped once again in a comfortable silence, interrupted only by Toji’s tapping on his screen.
Sukuna nosed Toji’s abdomen, squeezing his arms around his waist in a silent bid for Toji’s attention. Toji didn’t respond to his wordless request, focused thoroughly on his phone. Sukuna’s other pair of arms tugged on Toji’s sweatshirt, and that act earned him a distracted swat from Toji.
Sukuna frowned. “Cease your negotiating ,” he said the word like a curse, “with this strange man at once.”
Toji paused, looking down at Sukuna’s indignant face before barking a laugh, dropping the phone into the sheets. “Oh my god, you can’t be serious.” Sukuna didn’t dignify that with a response, only bringing up his second set of arms to wrap around Toji’s waist alongside the other, thoroughly engulfing the man. Toji made a mocking cooing sound, threading fingers through Sukuna’s pink locks as he rambled ridiculous things like jealousy and clingy.
Toji teased him about it relentlessly, but the phone was lost in the sheets and the bookshelf man forgotten, so Sukuna considered it a win for himself.
Toji drifted to consciousness in waves of awareness. The slip of morning light poking through the curtains, the heavy weight of sleep still clinging to his bones, the firm chest his cheek was squished against. They all came to him between breaths, coming into focus as he blinked his eyes open.
Sukuna was laying around him, tucking Toji to his chest like Toji was some sort of teddy bear. Toji could just lean back enough to take in Sukuna’s face outlined by the orange rays of sun, hair set ablaze in a sunset of soft strands. His face was relaxed and unguarded in his sleep, marred only by the brief scrunching of his nose as Toji’s hair brushed against it.
Toji let himself take in the scene, safe in the knowledge Sukuna was asleep and couldn’t make fun of him for it. Sukuna, while not outspoken, was not quiet in his devotion. It was written in the way he sparred with Toji as an equal, then held him close with the same reverence. It was in every hold on his pulse or searing look. Toji was not so forward. It wouldn't make a difference if he were. Sukuna had claimed Toji as his, and there was nothing Toji could say or do, or not say or not do, that would change the fact.
But sometimes, in these stolen moments before Sukuna woke, Toji could be honest with his devotion. He could trace the tattooed marks on the curse’s skin up into peachy hair, brushing through the strands with a featherlight touch that never found its way into their tousling. He could smile unguarded, uncaring of its vulnerability and simply marvel in the fact that they were here , in this little pocket of the world they had carved with blood and broken bones.
Under Toji’s fingers, he felt the miniscule shifting that indicated Sukuna would wake soon. Toji didn’t mind that he’d had a short moment to himself this morning; he knew they had a lifetime ahead of them.
All four of Sukuna’s eyes blinked open blearily, squinting at the light like it had personally offended him. Toji moved to sit up and shut the curtain, taking some ounce of pity on his lover, but Sukuna didn’t allow him to move so much as an inch before pulling him back down, burying his face into Toji’s neck.
“You can’t stay there all day,” Toji grumbled.
Sukuna hummed, sending little vibrations down Toji’s spine. He nosed over a fading mark on Toji’s neck, giving it a little bite. “I can and I will.”
Toji relented his half-hearted struggles to get away, resolved to wait out Sukuna’s morning bout of clinginess encased in the curse’s arms. “I thought you wanted to spar today–I have a job from Shiu tonight-”
“Shh.” Sukuna squeezed Toji’s waist, earning him an elbow to the side. “They can wait.”
Toji sighed with a fond smile the curse couldn’t see. They could wait, couldn’t they?