Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

College suits you.

You walk through it like it was designed for you.

In the very literal sense.

Wide green lawns that never get muddy enough to ruin your shoes, old brick buildings with just enough ivy to look expensive in pictures, polished gym floors that squeak beneath your sneakers, air-conditioned lecture halls, coffee that costs too much and somehow still tastes acceptable when someone else pays for it.

Your life has always had that same quality to it — comfortable, clean, buffered from anything truly ugly. Even the inconveniences arrive softened around the edges. A delayed flight becomes an amusing story. A bad grade becomes a brief annoyance. A twisted ankle becomes a reason to be fussed over.

You have never had to become hard to survive. You get to be soft because the world has, so far, made room for it.

It suits your face, your body, your last name, your schedule, your easy confidence, the way people make room for you without making it obvious they are doing it.

It suits the clean sweep of your life so far, all the doors already half-open before you even put your hand on the knob.

You have a nice scholarship for volleyball because of course you do, because you are good and disciplined and photogenic enough for the athletic department to love putting you on brochures, but the scholarship is more a pretty line to add to your life than a necessity.

If you lost it, your parents would pay. If tuition doubled, your parents would pay. If you changed majors three times and decided to spend a semester abroad only because you liked the city in the pictures, your parents would pay and ask whether you wanted the nicer apartment.

You know this. You are not ashamed of it. You do not pretend you fought for your place in the world with bleeding hands. Life has been generous to you, and you have learned to move through that generosity like you were born to it.

You are pretty. Not in a way you have to convince yourself of while staring too long at mirrors, but in the way other people decide for you before you even open your mouth. It smooths paths. It buys patience. It gets smiles from professors and free drinks from boys and longer looks from girls.

Add the volleyball scholarship on top of that, the expensive shampoo, the nice posture, the family money nobody sees unless they know where to look, and your life fits together in a neat, enviable little arrangement.

You train. You go to class. You flirt when you feel like it. You complain when things annoy you. You call your mother and half-listen while she talks about charity dinners and somebody’s second divorce. You study exactly enough to keep the grades that make everyone think you are more disciplined than you really are.

It is a good life.

Easy, even.

So when literature class assigns a joint project worth a disgusting amount of your final grade, your first reaction is not panic.

Your first reaction is annoyance.

You are sitting near the window in that stupid room with the bad air conditioning, one leg bouncing under the desk while Professor Hayashi reads out pairs with the tone of a woman who enjoys academic suffering more than is strictly professional. Around you there is the usual scrape of chairs, the rustle of notebooks, the quiet groans from students who already know they are going to get trapped doing all the labor while someone else contributes a title page and a smile.

You intend to be the latter, but not even a title page to add, just the smile.

You are only half listening until you hear your name.

Then his.

You look back at the same time half the room does.

Sukuna is exactly where he always is, sprawled in the back like he owns the worst seat on purpose. He is impossible not to notice and somehow still manages to make people avoid noticing him directly. He is enormous, unfairly so, shoulders wide enough to make the chair look undersized, body built like he should be carrying kegs or throwing people through walls instead of sitting in a literature elective with a pencil between his fingers. The tattoos climb from under his collar up the side of his neck and face in a way that adorn his jaw and cheekbone in dark deliberate lines that end on the drawing of a pair of eyes right under his own eyes, which make him look even less approachable than he already is. He has piercings on his eyebrows, lower lips and bridge of his nose. His eyes have that strange reddish cast that keeps catching the light in a way you never quite get used to.

He always looks vaguely irritated to be alive and specifically irritated that other people insist on being alive around him.

You have noticed him all semester, obviously.

Everyone has.

He writes during lectures when he is supposed to be listening, except then he opens his mouth during discussion and casually says something so pointed and specific that it becomes clear he heard every word anyway.

Once he spent ten minutes arguing with Professor Hayashi about floral symbolism in a poem none of the rest of you had even finished reading properly, and he did it with that low, clipped voice of his, like he was insulting the text and worshiping it at the same time. You were only half-paying attention until you hear him mention camellias, then spider lilies, then funerary symbolism in a poem you barely skimmed.

He says it like he is annoyed to have to explain something obvious. Your professor, who scares half the class, actually smiles.

Another day he called a classmate’s interpretation “the kind of insight produced by a lobotomized squirrel,” and when the room went silent he did not even look embarrassed, only bored.

He is, in your private opinion, a big weird nerd.

A very mean weirdo.

A weirdo who writes tragic poetry about loneliness and humanity and otherness in the margins of his notes like he is a nineteenth-century exile trapped in a public university. A weirdo  who might genuinely love flowers because he speaks about them with more patience than he uses for actual human beings. A weirdo who is also almost two meters tall, built like violence, and handsome enough to make the whole situation profoundly irritating.

You turn in your seat just enough to catch his face.

He is already looking at you.

There is nothing friendly in it. No curiosity either. Just a flat, assessing stare that makes it feel, for one brief second, like he is trying to figure out whether this is an inconvenience or a punishment.

Then he looks away.

That annoys you a bit too much.

After class, while everyone starts shuffling toward the door and complaining about schedules, you take your time putting your things away. You are already planning how little effort you can get away with.

Literature is not hard, exactly. You are not stupid. You can write when you have to. But your week is full, you have practice, lifting, game footage, two other classes with actual deadlines, and a dinner your mother wants you to attend because some family friend’s son is “promising” and apparently that should matter to you.

And besides, you have eyes.

Sukuna is the sort of person who has probably already thought about this project more deeply in the ten seconds after the assignment than you ever intend to.

You catch up to him in the hallway.

He walks with the same stripped-down efficiency he does everything else with, like he has no wasted movement in him. You have to take three quicker steps to match one of his longer ones, and that alone makes you mildly resentful. He glances down when your shadow falls beside his.

“Hi,” you say, in your pleasant voice, the one that gets used when you are trying to make someone else easier to deal with. “Looks like we’re partners.”

His gaze drops over you once, not in any admiring way, just taking stock.

“So it seems.”

Well. Charming.

You keep smiling anyway.

“We should probably talk about how we want to split it up.”

“Probably,” he says.

He makes no move to continue.

You wait a beat.

“Okay. So?”

He lifts one shoulder in a shrug that is more dismissal than gesture.

“So talk.”

Something hot and annoyed flickers across your nerves.

You are not used to having to drag conversation out of people. Not when you are being perfectly reasonable. Not when you are being nice.

“I have practice most afternoons this week, and we’ve got an away game on Friday, so I’d rather get a plan down now. We can divide the reading, maybe split the research, then put it together next week.”

He stares at you for one silent second too long.

Then he says,

“You say that like I care about your schedule.”

Your smile goes thinner.

“Excuse me?”

“I said,” he replies, as if you are slow, “you listed your commitments as though they should mean something to me. They don't.”

You blink at him.

Not because you do not understand. Because nobody says things like that out loud.

Most rude people still bother to dress it up. They give it a little polite wrapper, a soft laugh, a fake apology. Sukuna just hands it to you naked and sharp-edged and waits.

You straighten.

“Okay,” you say, tone sweeter now, which usually means danger if someone knows you at all. “Then let me simplify. We have a project. I do not want a bad grade because you’re insufferable. So let’s figure this out, shall we?”

He slings his bag over one shoulder.

“Figure it out yourself.”

And then he starts walking away.

For one stunned second, you just stand there.

Then offense catches up with you and you spin on your heel and go after him.

He gets halfway down the hall before you catch him near a row of windows where late afternoon sun spills across the floor. Students drift past in clusters, but there is enough space, enough noise, enough movement around you that it still feels oddly private when you step in front of him hard enough to make him stop.

He looks down at you.

“Can I help you,” he says, and even that sounds like an accusation.

You smile at him with easy sweetness.

“You can, actually. As I said… we should probably figure out how we’re dividing the project.”

“We are not ‘dividing’ anything until I know whether you are capable of reading without injuring yourself.”

You blink once, then laugh because that is genuinely rude enough to be funny.

“Oh, you’re one of those,” you say.

“One of what.”

“One of the deeply unpleasant people who thinks being smart is an excuse to act feral and uncivilized in public.”

He stares at you.

You stare back, because you have forced that much at least.

He looks down at you in a way that should probably be intimidating. It is, a little. Not enough to matter.

“If this is your version of charming,” he says, “I see why you rely on being pretty.”

That lands hard and scorching, because how dare him.

It doesn't hurt you, exactly, but it is pointed in a place most people never dare aim. Most people are too busy reacting to the obvious surface of you.

They like you, want you, want things from you, want proximity to you, want your attention, want your smile after games, want your number, want you at their parties.

They do not usually look past all that in the first three minutes.

You tilt your head.

“And yet you’re still the one I got paired with.”

“Sucks for both of us.”

You huff a laugh.

“Look, I’m busy. You’re obviously not.”

A pause.

Then his eyebrows lift, barely.

“Did you just decide that for me.”

“You sit in the back of the room writing moody poetry and picking fights with people over dead authors. That doesn’t scream packed social calendar. Screams weird nerd. Loner.”

His mouth twists in a humorless little curve.

“I also have practice.”

You look him over. The height, the dense muscle under the dark shirt, the thick forearms, the way his hands look like they could close around a throat as easily as around a pen.

“What sport?”

“Why.”

“Because now I’m curious.”

“Then stay curious.”

There it is again, that immediate resistance, like every question is something to be swatted away. It should put you off. Instead it makes you more interested, because people usually either soften for you or perform for you.

Sukuna does neither.

Sukuna looks at you like he would gladly leave you standing here mid-sentence if you became annoying enough.

It does something ugly and bright in the middle of your chest.

You decide not to inspect that too closely.

“Fine,” you say. “Whatever mysterious life you lead outside class, the point stands. You’re the big literature brain here, and I would prefer not to get a bad grade because Professor Hayashi thinks collaborative work builds character.”

“And I would prefer not to carry a decorative idiot across the finish line because she bats her eyelashes and assumes the world arranges itself around her preferences.”

There are a few heads turning now. Not many, just enough for you to become aware that the conversation has heat.

You step closer.

His eyes drop to the movement.

“You are extremely dramatic,” you tell him, frowning a little already. “All I’m saying is that you are better at this, you know you are better at this, and I have zero desire to spend my week pretending otherwise.”

He leans slightly, not toward you but down, enough to make it clear he heard every word and is choosing his response.

“Then let me save us both time. No.”

You stare at him like he spoke some thing in other language.

“No?”

“No, princess. You will read, annotate, contribute, and speak when needed, or I will happily let you fail on your own merit.”

It is the princess that does it.

Not because it is just demeaning. Because it is demeaning on purpose, and because he says it like he expects you to either pout or retreat.

You do neither.

Instead you plant a hand on the wall beside him when he moves to step around you.

You do it almost without thinking.

A fucking kabedon.

The hallway is narrower here, near the stairwell, and with his size he should have no trouble moving you if he wants to.

He could pick you up and set you somewhere else, probably with one arm. But he stops.

Maybe because you catch him off guard. Maybe because he wants to see what you think you are doing. Maybe because, at some level, this amuses him.

He looks from your hand on the wall to your face.

It is ridiculous.

You know it is ridiculous — better yet, it would be ridiculous if it were not working.

He is nearly two meters of muscle and impatience built like a mythological punishment, and yes, you are smaller than him by enough to make the whole thing almost comedic, but there is something about the sheer audacity of it that makes him pause instead of simply stepping around you. Your forearm could fit inside one of his. If he breathes too hard you might tip backward. Maybe he stops because most people would not dare. Maybe you continue because you are too irritated to care.

And yet.

You lift your chin and smile at him like this is an entirely reasonable position for the two of you to be in.

“Let’s not be difficult,” you say softly, with that sweet, poisonous smile. “You are not walking away from me,” you tell him, final.

One pierced brow lifts.

“Or what?”

You put your other hand against the wall too, caging him in as much as someone your size can cage someone like him.

His mouth twitches like he is deciding whether to laugh in your face.

Students pass behind you. Someone glances over, then quickly looks away.

“Or,” you say, “I will make this the most annoying semester of your life. You know I can.”

He gives you a look so flat it would be insulting if it were not almost impressive.

“You overestimate yourself.”

“No, I think I estimate myself perfectly. I also think you are a huge asshole, and since I am stuck with you, I need this project done well.”

“And?”

“And,” you say slowly, like you are talking to a stubborn animal, “you’re clearly the kind of person who already knows half the material before it’s assigned. So you can stop pretending you weren’t going to be good at this.”

His eyes narrow, not offended exactly, but watchful now.

He goes still in a way that is more noticeable than movement. The sound of conversation keeps rolling through the hall, somewhere a locker door slams. None of it seems to touch the space between the two of you.

His gaze lowers, deliberate, to your mouth for one second.

Then comes back to your eyes.

“You seem to be under the impression that sweetening your voice changes the content of what you’re saying.”

“It makes it nicer to hear.”

“For people with weak minds.”

You grin.

“Then good thing you’re strong enough to survive it.”

His jaw shifts. Not with anger, with restraint.

You are absurdly pleased by that.

“Here is what I think,” you continue, keeping your voice light. “I think you are fully capable of doing this entire project alone and doing it better than the two of us could together. I think you know that. I think you also know I am not going to let my grade sink because of some principled little stand on academic fairness. So now the only interesting question is what you want in return.”

You half expect him to laugh in your face.

Instead his expression changes in a way you cannot read at first. Not surprise, exactly. Not interest either. It is more like he was prepared for one version of you and you have wandered off-script.

“What I want,” he says slowly, “is not usually offered by girls who sound like they are negotiating for a manicure.”

“Try me.”

His stare lingers. You feel it on your skin.

“You have a very inflated sense of what you bring to the table.”

“Oh, definitely,” you say. “But I’m also right a lot, which helps.”

A breath leaves him through his nose, almost a laugh and not kind enough to count as one.

He is quiet a moment, gaze lingering on your face in a way that prickles the back of your neck. Not flirtatious. Evaluating. Like he is trying to decide what exactly you are and whether it is worth the trouble of finding out.

Then he finally says,

“You know what." He kisses his teeth. "You try me. What do I get?”

You frown at the sudden shift.

“What?”

“If I do all the work you are clearly trying to manipulate me into doing,” he says, voice low and edged with contemptuous amusement now, “what do I get?”

You should probably answer with money.

Money would be the easiest answer.

Clean. Simple. Safe. Something you know how to use.

If he is as unimpressed by everyone as he acts, cash might at least be practical.

But something about the way he is looking at you makes you veer off instinctively into something stupider.

More reckless.

Risky.

Your shot lands in your mouth before you can reconsider it.

“If you do it,” you say, “I’ll teach you how to kiss.”

The silence after that is immediate and thick.

You are suddenly very aware of everything. The warmth from the sunlit window. The distant clatter of voices from downstairs. The way his shoulders go still.

You decide, because you have already committed to being an idiot, to commit harder.

“And,” you add, tilting slightly your head, “I can probably teach you how to talk to girls too.”

There.

It is out.

It sounds even more insane in the open air.

Because you do not actually know if he is inexperienced.

He is handsome as fuck, offensively so if you bother to look for longer than a few seconds.

Not pretty, not soft — nothing easy.

He is all severe lines and brute physicality, deliberate ink and piercings, and those unnerving eyes and that permanent expression like everyone in the world is wasting his time. Plenty of people would find that hot. You are not blind. You just assume he scares off every opportunity by acting like Sukuna.

Still, he never talks to anyone. Never flirts. Never lingers. Never seems interested. So the offer jumps out of you half as a joke, half as bait, half because you want to see if you can get a real reaction out of him.

That is too many halves, but your brain is not especially useful right now.

He looks down at you.

You keep going before he can cut in.

“Come on. You’re handsome, obviously, and huge, and mysterious in a way some people are into. But you sit in the back glowering at everyone like human connection gave you food poisoning once and now you’re cautious. You never flirt with girls. You never even try to be liked. I’m offering a valuable service of tutoring you into behaving like a normal person.”

“Your confidence would be impressive if it were attached to a functioning brain.”

“You are not denying it.”

“I am deciding whether to let you continue embarrassing yourself.”

“Please do,” you say. “I’m invested now.”

That does it for him.

Not a laugh, exactly. More like his mouth pulls into a sneer because the idea is either offensive or funny or both.

Now he's looking at your face, carmine eyes bored into yours.

His gaze is unreadable for the span of one breath, two.

Long enough that a tiny, humiliating thread of uncertainty starts unspooling in your stomach. Maybe you pushed too far. Maybe he is going to tell you to fuck off and walk away. Maybe he is going to say he has kissed plenty of people and that the offer says more about you than it does about him. Maybe he is going to call you ridiculous and leave you standing here feeling like a child who mistook daring for charm.

You brace for the rejection. For a cutting remark. For him to call you pathetic, insane, spoiled, whatever else.

Then he sighs and drags his hand down his face.

It is not a polite sigh.

It is the kind of sound someone makes when agreeing to something ill-advised because the alternative has become even more tedious.

“Fine.”

You stare.

“Fine?” you repeat and try your best not to sound shocked or hopeful.

“I’ll do it,” he says and if you didn’t know any better, you’d think there’s a little bit of dark amusement under his tone. “And then I’m having my way with you.”

The words hit low in your stomach, swift and hot and mortifying.

You do not let it show.

You refuse to let it show.

So you fold your arms and tilt your chin up like this is exactly the outcome you wanted and not one that just made your skin go electric.

“Very bold for a man I just accused of not knowing how to kiss a girl.”

“Keep talking,” he says. “I might decide to make you regret having a mouth sooner.”

Your pulse gives one ugly, delighted jump.

You hate that.

You hate that your body is so immediate and traitorous.

You hate that some ugly little part of you likes being spoken to that way by someone who very clearly does not bend for anybody.

But you are not about to hand him that knowledge.

So you only scoff.

“You still have to do the project.”

“I will,” he says. “But you’ll be there with me.”

Your eyebrows pull together.

“What? Why?”

“Because if I’m doing all of it, princess,” he says, “you can at least sit there and be useless where I can see you. Every time I work on this project, you will be present. Even if your contribution is limited to sitting down and wasting oxygen, you will be there.”

“That sounds controlling.”

“That is because I am.”

“That defeats the entire point.”

“The point,” he says, “is that I don’t trust you not to vanish and then show up at the end smiling like you participated.”

“That is exactly what I was planning to do.”

“I know.”

You make a face at him. He does not look moved.

“You are unbelievably annoying.”

“And yet here you are begging me to carry your ass in this and then kiss you.”

He makes no sign of finding you charming. You don't dignify that with a comment.

“Tomorrow,” he says. “My dorm. Seven.”

You groan before you can stop yourself.

“Tomorrow? I have practice.”

“Then come after.”

“You’re infuriating.”

“You’re lazy.”

“You don’t even know me.”

He leans down just a little bit more, enough that the air between you changes. He smells good, you think, like winter pine.

“I know enough.”

Then, because apparently he has decided this conversation is over, he steps out of your little trap as if it was never there to begin with and walks off down the hallway without looking back.

You stand there for a full second.

Then another.

Then you press your lips together so hard they almost disappear, because if you smile right now you will feel deeply stupid about it.

By the time the next evening comes around, irritation has burned down into curiosity.

You stand in front of your mirror longer than you need to, you took a quick shower after your practice and you’re trying to look normal, not because you care what he thinks — you refuse to frame it that way — but because being seen by Sukuna feels more specific than being seen by other people.

Most men look at you and you can tell what they want from the first second. With him it is harder. He notices too much and reveals too little. That makes dressing strangely strategic.

In the end, you settle on fitted leggings, an oversized sweatshirt in a color that looks soft against your skin, gloss on your lips, hair up and then down again because down looks less like you tried.

You tell yourself the choice is for comfort. You do not interrogate that lie either.

You’re not going there because you are eager. Obviously not.

Because you are practical, and you would rather supervise your grade than leave it fully in the hands of a malicious giant with an attitude problem.

You feel mildly out of place walking through it carrying nothing but your phone and a charger in your bag, because bringing your laptop would imply effort and you are committed to the bit now.

His dorm building is older than yours, farther from the prettier part of campus, all brick and dim hall lights and linoleum that has seen decades of student misery.

You find his number and knock once, twice.

He opens the door almost immediately, as if he was already standing there.

He is wearing a dark t-shirt and loose gray sweatpants, nothing remarkable, except on him even plain clothes look deliberate. There is a book in one hand. His hair is damp, pushed back carelessly.

The sight of him inside his own space does something strange to your sense of balance. It is intimate in a way that should not matter and yet does a little bit.

“You’re on time,” he says.

“You sound surprised.”

“I’m adjusting to the possibility that you are only insufferable, not incompetent.”

You smile sweetly and step past him into the room before he can invite you in.

The first thing you notice is how clean it is.

His dorm is not what you expected.

You thought it might be messy in an absentminded way, or sterile in a hostile way, or maybe full of dark pretentious nonsense because you already built a version of him in your head and your imagination has never been especially modest.

Instead it is just... him, in ways you do not yet understand.

You turn slowly, taking it in.

It is tidy, but not obsessively so. The bed is made with military sharpness that does not match the scattered stack of books on the desk. There is a small shelf with paperbacks and marked-up hardcovers crammed together two rows deep. A secondhand kettle sits on top of a mini fridge. The desk itself is clean except for his laptop, notebooks, a ceramic mug, and a vase.

You stop at the vase.

There are flowers in it.

Not decorative little grocery-store things either. Real flowers, arranged with enough care to prove intent. White chrysanthemums, maybe, and something purple you do not know, with a few clipped stems of greenery.

You glance at him.

He notices.

“Say something stupid about them,” he says, shutting the door behind you, “and I’ll throw you back into the hallway.”

You grin despite yourself.

“So you do love flowers.”

“I don’t love anything.”

“That sounds healthy.”

“It is healthy when people are disappointing.”

You set your bag down by the bed and walk further in, letting your eyes travel over the room in a way you do not bother hiding. There are notes pinned above the desk. A printed page with lines highlighted in three different colors. A sketchbook half-shoved beneath a pile of articles. A heavy old anthology on the nightstand beside a charger and a glass of water.

His room smells faintly like laundry detergent, coffee, paper, and something clean and dry beneath all that, maybe his cologne, maybe that winter pine smell, or something that you abruptly decide is just him.

It is deeply inconvenient how aware of him you are in here.

“This is much nicer than I expected.”

“What did you expect.”

“Something moodier. Candles. Evidence of a tortured soul. Maybe a single black towel hanging dramatically from a chair.”

“You have the investigative instincts of a dead raccoon.”

“See, that is exactly why you need me to teach you how to talk to girls.”

“I do talk to girls.” He moves past you toward the desk. “I just don’t waste charm on them.”

You drop onto his bed on purpose, shoes off, body sprawling across the blanket in a way that is at least a little provocative and mostly very comfortable, just to see if it annoys him.

“That sounds like something a man says when girls don’t like him enough.”

“And you sound like someone who has never had to distinguish between being wanted and being tolerated by someone.”

That one makes you go quiet for a second.

He notices. Of course he does.

He then plugs his laptop in like he did not just sink something small and sharp between your ribs.

You narrow your eyes at the back of his head.

“You are rude in a way that suggests unresolved issues.”

“And you are lying on my bed wearing lip gloss while I do the work for both of us. One of us is clearly making better choices.”

You shift onto your stomach and prop your chin on your hand, phone already in the other.

“Yeah, me, obviously. And I already paid the first installment by showing up.”

“Your attendance prevents murder. It doesn’t qualify as payment.”

“You are so full of shit.”

“You keep saying that as if it will become a meaningful criticism.”

He sits at his desk and opens his laptop finally, just like that. No fuss, no scene, no attempt to make you feel welcome. You expected none, but there is still something oddly refreshing about how little he tries to perform politeness.

He starts working.

Actually working.

Not pretending, not tapping around aimlessly, not wasting time complaining. He opens documents, flips through notes, pulls up articles, cross-references passages from the assigned reading with outside sources, and types with brisk, irritated efficiency.

You watch him for another minute because there is something irritatingly compelling about the way he works. No hesitation. No preening about his own intelligence.

He just gets on with it, pulling up journal databases, opening tabs, building an outline with the kind of speed that makes it clear he already has a shape for the project in his head.

The muscles in his forearms tighten and shift under tattooed skin every time he moves his hands. He sits upright, all concentration and contained impatience.

Occasionally he mutters under his breath when a source is useless or a website loads too slowly.

You meant to stay detached.

Really, you did.

The whole point was to let him be the big nerd while you sat there and benefited.

You even get your phone out and scroll for a while, half replying to texts from teammates, half liking pictures you do not care about, half listening to the soft clack of his keyboard and the occasional scrape when he reaches for a notebook.

Again, too many halves.

The problem is that after twenty minutes, curiosity starts gnawing at you.

Because he is not just smart in the boring, dependable way some students are smart.

He is quick. Razor quick. He sees links between texts and themes and historical context fast enough that it almost feels unfair.

When he gets annoyed, which is often, his annoyance sharpens him rather than blunting him.

He reads like he is trying to catch the author in a lie.

At one point he says, mostly to himself,

“If this critic uses the phrase feminine melancholy one more time I’m going to assume he’s illiterate.”

You snort.

His eyes flick toward you.

“Was that noise necessary?”

“Yes. That was funny.”

“It was just a fact.”

“That too.”

He goes back to typing and ignoring you as if he didn't force you to be there while he works, before muttering,

“Then try not to sound shocked. You’ll offend me.”

You stare at the side of his face.

It comes to you then, slowly and against your will, that he is funny.

Not in a broad, obvious way. Not charming, not playful, not warm. But dry enough to make you want to needle him again just to see what comes back.

His sarcasm is precise. His remarks have bite because there is so much thought behind them.

It is not meanness for its own sake, though he has plenty of that too.

It is the meanness of somebody who is tired of being surrounded by people who say flimsy things and expect them to hold.

You do not want to pay attention to any of this.

You find yourself doing it anyway.

An hour in, he says without turning around,

“Read this abstract.”

You blink and scoff.

“No?”

He swivels slightly, enough to glance back at you.

“Then get off my bed.”

“You said I just had to be here.”

“I said you could sit there doing nothing. I did not say you could become decorative clutter.”

You groan loudly, dramatically, and flop onto your back.

“You are revising the contract in real time.”

“Welcome to dealing with someone smarter than you.”

“You know, normal people would try to be a little nicer to the person who is eventually going to put her mouth on them.”

This gets a pause.

Not big. Just long enough.

Then he turns more fully in his chair and looks at you.

Carmine eyes boring into you in that lazy, predatory way.

Your legs are stretched across his bed. The hem of your sweatshirt has ridden up slightly. Your hair spills over his pillow. Gloss catches the lamplight when you talk.

You know what picture you make.

You are not naive enough to miss the effect of it.

His expression stays unreadable.

But his eyes linger.

“Read the abstract,” he says.

It should not feel like a victory that his voice is lower than before. Yet.

You sit up with a sigh that says you are being grievously overworked and hold out your hand. He passes the laptop back without letting your fingers touch his. Petty.

You scan the abstract, frown, then read it aloud. Halfway through you stop.

“This is unbearably boring.”

“That is because academic writing is mostly produced by cowards trying to sound really objective.”

“You say that like you aspire to something nobler.”

“I aspire to sentences that do not wheeze and die halfway through their own premise.”

You snort despite yourself.

“That is… annoyingly well phrased.”

“I know.”

He takes the laptop back and starts typing again while you keep talking, because you are not used to anyone around you being so consistently uncooperative and that makes him impossible to leave alone.

“What sport do you play?”

“No.”

“You said you do play one.”

“I said enough.”

“What if I make it part of your tutoring. Interpersonal openness. You have to disclose basic facts about yourself.”

He glances at you.

“You are not tutoring me.”

“I am absolutely tutoring you. You just happen to be doing all the homework too.”

“You keep talking like I need your expertise.”

“You agreed to the deal.”

“I agreed because I wanted to see whether you would actually say something that stupid to my face and then stand by it.”

You grin.

“And?”

“And I was not disappointed.”

You slide off the bed and wander the small room because sitting still while he ignores you becomes impossible after a while.

There are books everywhere, though not in cluttered stacks. Poetry, novels, theory, two field guides to flowers, one thick mythology compendium, a battered copy of The Brothers Karamazov with tabs sticking out from the top.

On the desk beside his laptop there is a notebook open to a page of dense handwriting. The lines are neat, angular, pressed hard enough into the paper to leave grooves.

You recognize one phrase from lecture.

Another is not for class.

You read it before you can stop yourself.

Something about mouths learning tenderness only after violence.

Your eyes catch on it. Then the next line. Then the next.

It is good.

Embarrassingly good.

Not in the cliché dramatic campus-magazine way some boys write when they want girls to think they are damaged. There is none of that pleading in it, none of that transparent performance of suffering.

It is precise and ugly and controlled, like whoever wrote it has feelings locked in a room somewhere and only lets them out one at a time to study their behavior.

“You write a lot,” you say.

He does not sound surprised when he answers.

“You mean you’re snooping.”

“You left it open.”

“In my room.”

“Well, yes. Where else would your notebook be?”

His mouth twitches and vanishes again.

“Put it down.”

You do, though not before reading one more line.

Then you turn and look at the flowers on his windowsill. Small white blooms, delicate without being fussy and go on with your annoying Sukuna program.

“What are these.”

He says the name without looking up.

You repeat it and get the pronunciation wrong on purpose.

He corrects you immediately.

You smile to yourself.

“Why do you like flowers?”

“They are less disappointing than people.” he says again.

“That is such an aggressively literature-student thing to say.”

“Coming from someone who thinks scholarship means she no longer has to read, I’ll survive the criticism.”

You sit back on the bed, this time cross-legged, and watch him type some more.

There is something almost peaceful about the room once you stop expecting it to entertain you. The whirl of the laptop’s fans. The occasional noise from the hallway outside. The lamp throwing a warm cone of light over his desk while the rest of the room settles into soft shadow. Your own body going loose with comfort because his bed is nicer than dorm beds have any right to be.

At some point he gets up to make tea.

He does not ask if you want any.

You ask anyway.

He makes you a cup without comment.

It is better than anything from the campus café.

“You are unexpectedly domestic, you know?” you tell him after the first sip.

“I can also do laundry and read multi-syllabic words. Try not to faint.”

You hold the mug under your chin and look at him over the rim.

“You know, under all the hostility, there might be a person.”

“There isn’t.”

“That sounds lonely.”

He does not answer right away. He goes back to the desk, sits, opens another tab, scans a source.

Then, without turning, he says,

“Only for people who think company is automatically a gift.”

The line lands heavier than the others.

You study the back of his head for a moment, suddenly more aware of the places where his sharpness is not just style. You have spent enough time around boys who perform hardness because they think it makes them interesting.

Sukuna does not perform. At all.

The distance in him feels chosen for practical reasons, like he looked at the world and concluded it was not worth the softness most people demand from each other.

Instead of asking anything that might make him close up further, you take another sip of tea and say,

“You are still coming off as someone who has absolutely never had a girlfriend.”

He leans back in his chair and finally looks at you again.

“And you are still talking like a woman who confuses access with skill.”

Your eyebrows go up.

“Excuse me.”

“You are excused.” he grins. “I’ve seen the men who orbit girls like you.”

“Orbit.” You narrow your eyes at him.

“They circle. They wait. They light up when you look their way. It is… not subtle.”

You stare, caught off guard not by the observation itself but by the fact that he noticed.

You did not think he paid that kind of attention. Not to you.

He continues before you answer.

“That does not make you an expert,” he says. “It makes you practiced at being received.”

“And what exactly is your expertise, then. Brooding in corners until women develop a savior complex?”

He almost smiles.

“No. My expertise is recognizing when people mistake being catered to for being compelling.”

It should piss you off more than it does. Instead you find yourself weirdly alert, like he keeps pressing on points no one else touches and your body does not know whether to bristle or lean in.

You choose bristling because it is safer.

“I am compelling!” you say.

“Oh, absolutely.” He turns back to the screen. “You’re vain, spoiled, physically graceful, socially efficient, and just self-aware enough to be interesting for a while. Men love that combination.”

You go very still, almost like he has thrown a glass of cold water right on your face.

But you don’t freeze because it is cruel, although it is. It’s because it is too accurate in some places and unfair in others and spoken like he has been watching you much more closely than you ever realized.

For a moment all you can do is stare.

Then you say,

“You forgot charming.”

“No,” he says. “I omitted it on purpose.”

That gets a laugh out of you before you can help it.

And that, maybe more than anything so far, changes the room.

Because he looks back when you laugh. Not in annoyance this time, not defensively either.

Just briefly, like he wanted to see what it sounded like when he caused it.

The next few days fall into a rhythm that should not exist.

Practice, shower, his dorm.

Sometimes you bring coffee. Sometimes he already has some. Sometimes you arrive grumpy and throw yourself onto his bed with a full-body groan and announce that he is ruining your college experience. Sometimes he tells you your presence is a tax on his patience. Sometimes you read over a paragraph and make a suggestion just to prove you can, and he narrows his eyes like the fact that it is a good suggestion irritates him more than if it were stupid.

Mostly, though, you lounge there while he works, phone in hand, legs kicked out across his bed, occasionally asking questions you pretend are only about the grade.

“What does that mean?”

“What’s pathetic fallacy again?”

“Why are you making that face at that article?”

“Why do men in old literature hate women and also want them dead and worshiped at the same time?”

His answers vary between clipped, mocking, and surprisingly thorough.

“Because weather reflecting mood is easier than writing nuance.”

“Because this scholar is compensating.”

“Because they wanted women symbolic enough to desire and voiceless enough to control.”

That one makes you look at him.

He does not look back. Just keeps typing, expression unchanged.

You become, against all good sense, more curious.

About him. About the room. About the life implied by the strange little details he leaves lying around.

He gets up to make tea another night, and you are already moving before you decide not to. You slide off the bed and drift to his shelf, pretending maybe that you are just stretching your legs.

A cheap notebook with black pages and silver gel-pen scribbles inside the cover is there on his shelf. You lean closer to read the title of a spine in Japanese and hear his voice from behind you.

“Touch that and I’ll break your little fingers.”

You turn your head. He is standing by the kettle with two mugs, staring at you like he regrets letting you in here unsupervised.

“I was just looking!”

“You were being nosy again.”

“That’s a rude way to phrase intellectual curiosity.”

“You are in my room,” he reminds you.

“And I’m expanding my worldview.”

He sets one mug on the desk and strides over. You are still half-bent toward the shelf when he reaches you, one big hand closing around your upper arm, not painful, just firm enough to make your balance tip.

Before you can protest, he steers you backward with humiliating ease and deposits you onto the bed again.

Deposits is the exact word for it, which makes it worse.

You bounce once on the mattress, staring up at him in outrage.

“Did you just manhandle me?”

“Yes.”

“You are unbelievable.”

“And yet here you are, prying on my shit.”

He returns to the desk like nothing happened.

You sit there, affronted and weirdly thrilled, adjusting your shirt and scowling at the back of his head.

It becomes a thing after that.

You snoop.

He catches you.

He physically removes you from wherever you should not be.

Sometimes by the wrist. Sometimes by the elbow. Once by the waist, which leaves you silent for a full ten seconds after because his hand nearly spans the width of you there and you hate how much that fact lingers in your body.

He never lets you get far.

“Don’t touch my notebooks.”

“Then stop leaving them where I can see them.”

“That is my desk, in my room, are you being dumb on purpose?”

“That sounds like a you problem then.”

“I’m gonna make it a you problem soon enough. Keep trying me.”

“You keep inviting me back.”

“I’m containing a bigger problem.”

“You’re obsessed with me.”

That earns you a look over his shoulder, flat and scathing and very nearly entertained. You blow him a little kiss and he sneers like it offended him.

You start learning his habits.

He reads faster when irritated.

He taps his ring finger against the desk when he is thinking.

He drinks coffee too hot and tea too strong.

He has a tendency to go very still when listening carefully, as if all his size disappears into focus.

He swears with creativity when technology fails him.

He likes being right so much it borders on a religion.

He is vain in odd, specific ways — not about the obvious things, not his face or body, but his mind, his taste, his ability to see what other people miss.

He notices more than he should.

The first time he points that last one at you, it annoys you.

You are sprawled on his bed, half-reading an article he made you look over, when he says without turning around,

“You only pretend not to care about this because you don’t like working unless you’re immediately good at it.”

You look up sharply, offended, shocked maybe.

“What the fuck?”

He keeps typing.

“You heard me.”

“That is not true!”

“It is absolutely true.”

“You know nothing about me, nerd.”

“I know,” he says, “that every time you don’t understand something right away, you either joke about it or call it boring. Same defense mechanism, different dress.”

You sit up.

“Wow,” you say. “You really are judgmental.”

“Yes.”

“No, I mean clinically.”

“And yet I’m still correct. Funny how that keeps happening.”

You want to snap back, but the worst part is that he kind of is.

So instead you throw a pillow at him.

He catches it one-handed without looking and drops it on the floor.

“You throw like someone with sponsorship deals.”

“I play volleyball, asshole.”

“And still.”

There are moments, too, when he says things that do not fit the version of him you started with. That first impression, the Sukuna that you made up in your head before you even talked to him.

You come in one evening complaining about a teammate who keeps trying to play through a shoulder strain because she is terrified of losing her starting position.

Sukuna listens in silence longer than expected, then asks precise questions about how she serves, where it hurts, whether the trainer taped it correctly, whether the coach is pushing too hard.

He ends up explaining the mechanics of overuse injuries in a way that is so detailed you stop halfway through taking off your earrings and stare.

“How do you know that?”

He shrugs.

“I have interests.”

“You’re secretly a hundred years old,” you half whisper in feigned awe.

“You’re not so secretly undereducated,” he just deadpans.

Another night you notice the arrangement in his vase has changed. The chrysanthemums are gone, replaced by dark red carnations and a stem of eucalyptus.

“You really do know your flowers,” you say, softer this time.

He glances at the vase, then at you.

“They’re useful.”

“For what?”

“For saying things when words would waste time.”

You roll onto your stomach, chin propped on crossed arms.

“That is the most dramatic and borderline romantic thing anyone has ever said in a dorm room.”

“That is because most people in dorm rooms are profoundly dull.”

He says it so matter-of-factly that you laugh.

The sound makes him look at you again.

Something in his face shifts, very slightly. Not softened. Just less armored for a second than you are used to.

You look away first.

By the second week you bring snacks because it feels rude not to and because you are not as useless as you pretend to be for convenience. He eyes the expensive packaging, says nothing, and eats half of them while reviewing the material.

Once you arrive after practice with damp hair, sore legs, and no patience, and he takes one look at you and tells you to stop sighing like you’re dying because athletes are the most self-congratulatory people on earth.

You tell him literature students are worse because they turn every inconvenience into identity.

He says at least his field knows it is pretentious.

You end up laughing again.

That becomes a problem.

Because you are not supposed to enjoy this arrangement.

You are supposed to tolerate it, maybe find it amusing, maybe keep count of the hours until he turns in your completed project and you pay him with one calculated lesson in kissing that lets you walk away having won, then never talking to him again, probably.

Instead you start knowing what his room smells like at different times of day.

Tea at night. Laundry soap in the afternoon. The sharp clean air after he opens the window because the heat gets stuffy.

You start noticing the tiny furrow between his brows when he edits a sentence and hates the rhythm.

You start recognizing the look he gets when he is about to say something mean enough to be memorable.

You start learning which topics make him speak more — poetry, mythology, certain flowers, training, the stupidity of institutional authority, the way language gets flattened by people who want every text to mean one safe thing.

Sometimes he makes you read sources aloud because he says hearing them helps him sort useful ideas from dead weight.

Sometimes he asks what you think just to insult the first answer and then unexpectedly build on the second.

Sometimes he ignores you for twenty minutes straight while you lie on his bed with your legs kicked up against the wall, only to suddenly ask whether your coach is still using the same defensive structure she screamed about last month.

The first time he mentions volleyball unprompted, you stare at him.

“You know my coach’s name?”

He does not even glance away from the article he is skimming.

“You post the schedule on your story like it’s wartime intelligence, hard not to.”

“That does not explain why you know what she yells about,” you raise your eyebrows, considering that he sees your stories.

“You are loud outside after practice.”

“That is invasive.”

“That is campus housing.”

You narrow your eyes.

“You pay attention to me.”

He clicks to another tab.

“Unfortunately.”

You hate how pleased that makes you.

In class, things get stranger.

Not visibly, maybe. Not enough for anyone else to comment.

But now you know what it feels like when Sukuna’s attention lands on you intentionally, and that makes every small glance from the back row feel weighted.

Once Professor Hayashi asks a question and you answer poorly because you only half read the poem, and before she can move on Sukuna speaks from behind you and cleaves your answer open in front of everyone.

He does it with surgical contempt, the bastard, and by the end of his response three people are staring at you in sympathy.

You turn in your seat and mouth, You are evil.

He mouths back, Then read better.

Later, after class, you catch him by the door and say,

“You did not have to make me look stupid.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No, you did not!”

“You were wrong in public. I corrected the problem in public.”

“That is not how human interaction works.”

“For most people, maybe.”

“You realize this is why you have no social life.”

He leans against the wall near the door while students flow around you.

“And yet you keep seeking me out. That says deeply unflattering things about your judgment.”

You open your mouth, close it, then smile because he is right in a way you refuse to explore.

“I do it because you're making me stand by your side while you work for me.”

“I am carrying the project and dragging your attention span behind me like roadkill.”

“Still counts.”

“You are very committed to your own delusions, brat.”

“And you are very committed to pretending you do not enjoy having me around.”

That makes his gaze settle on your face in a way that sends a little current through your skin.

“Enjoy is not the term I’d use here.”

The air shifts.

You should probably step back from it.

Instead you say, in that sweet teasing way,

“No?”

“No.”

“What word would you use?”

He looks at you for a beat too long.

Then he says,

“Stand. You’re useful.”

You laugh because that is safer than admitting how that answer twists inside you.

“Useful for what?”

His eyes flick to your mouth again, and it's just a flick of a second.

This time you notice with painful clarity.

“For now,” he says, pushing off the wall, “for staying where I put you.”

And then he is gone down the hall before you can decide whether to be offended or thrilled by his lack of social skills when talking about you.

By the second week, your friends start asking why you disappear so often in the evenings.

You tell them you are stuck on a project with a nightmare.

They ask if the nightmare is hot.

You say yes, but in an academic way.

They laugh for a full minute.

You do not mention the whole deal you got going.

You definitely do not mention that every time you go to his room now, the first thing your body notices is whether he is close enough to touch.

You do not mention that you have started arriving with your hair done even on days you were planning not to care.

You do not mention that one night you catch him stepping out of the shower shirtless with a towel around his neck and damp hair pushed back from his face and nearly forget the sentence you are saying mid-word.

He notices that too, of course.

“Careful,” he says, drying his hair while you sit frozen on his bed pretending your brain works. “You’ll start giving the impression you have a thought happening behind those eyes.”

“Shut up, weirdo”

“There it is, I was worried the sight had taken your last braincell,” he smirks and that sight it still does something very weird to you.

You throw a pillow at him. He catches it one-handed without looking, drops it back on the bed, and keeps toweling his hair dry like this happens every day.

Maybe it does now.

Oh, when it's cold
I get warm just thinking of you
When I'm alone
I stare at stars and hope dreams come true

You're probably not aware
That I'm even here
Well you might not know I exist
But I don't even care

Sweet talk
Everything you say
It sounds like
Sweet talk to my ears
You could yell
Piss off! Won't you stay away?
It'll still be
Sweet talk to my ears

Oh, when you laugh
I forget that it's about me
But it's alright
Yeah, cause being your punchline
Still is something

Yeah well I'm not scared
I'm not going nowhere
Yeah, you might want me to drop dead
But I don't even care

Sweet talk
Everything you say
It sounds like
Sweet talk to my ears
You could yell
Piss off! Won't you stay away?
It'll still be
Sweet talk to my ears

Ooh, everything you say
It sounds like
Ooh, to my ears
Ooh, won't you stay away?
It sounds like
Ooh, to my ears

Sweet talk
Everything you say
It sounds like
Sweet talk to my ears
You could yell
Piss off! Won't you stay away?
It'll still be
Sweet talk to my ears