Archive of Our Own

"Trouble in paradise already?" A gruff voice asked, pausing Yuuji's unfocused typing. He blinked to reality, and realized that he's been typing and deleting the same sentence over and over again.

Wasuke took a seat beside him, groaning at his old bones as he sunk into the sofa.

"No," Yuuji clicked the button that turned his screen black, but kept it face-up and glanced at it for a message from Kuna <3.

"Yuuji."

"Maybe," the boy shrugged, a finger touching his nape, seeking that assurance the real Sukuna wasn't here to give. "He got… uhm, spooked."

"Good." Wasuke rolled his eyes, "he should be spooked, I caught him practically eating my grandson's face off."

"Grandpa."

"Don't 'grandpa' me, you're lucky it was me who saw and not your brother." Yuuji had the sense to agree, imagining his brother's face contorting and the knife that would undoubtedly be drawn from the block.

"Are you going to make us separate?"

There's a hefty silence, as Wasuke pondered the question.

"No."

"Why…?"

"Because I am old, Yuuji. I've robbed Choso of a life with Yuki, I do not have it in me to rob you of a life with Sukuna."

"That's if he even comes back," Yuuji mumbled dejectedly. Drawing his legs to his chest to hug them, "he was supposed to come here around dinner time, so I could cook for him but he said he got caught up in work and needed to attend to it over call."

"Well, he might've."

"Yeah but he also cut our texts off before midnight! And he was so-… so, I don't know? Polite?"

"Is he not usually?" Wasuke questioned, his wrinkled skin didn't betray a hint of his indifference, but Yuuji knew it was there, that protectiveness.

"He's… not a polite person, but he isn't unkind, at least not to me."

"Yuuji, Sukuna is a grown man, the possibility of him being caught up in work is very real. He cannot drop everything at the drop of a hat for you—"

"But-"

Wasuke flicked Yuuji's head to silence him, the boy shot an annoyed look to his grandpa, Wasuke shot one back. "This isn't fantasy, it's real life. Sukuna has lived an entire life outside of you that he has to maintain."

Furrowed, wispy brows that slot into wrinkles like lock and key. "And now your entire life will be Sukuna."

"Gramps…"

Wasuke waved Yuuji off, continuing himself. "I don't think that man himself understands what it is to love, either. Do you know if he has friends? Siblings? Parents?"

Yuuji hesitated, "he has an Uraume?"

Wasuke did not seem impressed. "You need to slow down, Yuuji. The both of you, you're both caught up in this fantasy. To learn you're no longer an outcast from society and the other to think he's in a story where subjectivity doesn't exist simply because you're 'soulmates.' You're both barreling down a path where you'll lose each other because you're so desperate to cling."

The two sit there silently, Yuuji with a heavy feeling in his gut. Eventually, Wasuke raises a hand and pets his hair.

"He'll come, he may be restrained but he'll come. I think it will take a lot to scare him away."

Yuuji's heart struggled to envelope those words, he worried his bottom lip. "Do you ever think about dad?"

Wasuke's hand stills. Dropping from Yuuji's pink tussled locks as his eyes closed.

"I think about Jin every day."

Sukuna rubbed his sore temples and hoped the bruises under his eyes weren't too prominent.

After staying up for hours reading the articles Uraume had sent, there was a knot in his stomach.

Itadori Kaori, 19XX, attempted to kill her two children in a murder-suicide; claiming that she would reunite her family with her recently deceased soulmate and husband, Itadori Jin.

Itadori Kaori was fought off by her oldest son, Itadori Choso as Itadori Kaori tried to kill the youngest son, Itadori Yuuji first.

Itadori Yuuji and Choso both sustained injuries but none were life threatening.

Itadori Choso inflicted life threatening wounds on Itadori Kaori, she was rushed to the hospital where she then succumbed to her wounds.

Sukuna thought of a smaller version of Yuuji, huddled in a corner as he clutched at his throbbing face while a teenage Choso wrangled a blade from his mother's hands. Looked into the eyes of the woman who once brushed back his hair and kissed his bloody knees and saw nothing but a shell of her.

He thought about Yuuji as he is now, and Sukuna felt himself faced with something he's never been faced with before: uncertainty.

All of his life has been a constant momentum, one path. Sukuna was denied something everyone was owed, so he would take anything he wanted to fill that hole. He was greedy, he was violent, he was lustful, he was self centered. Now, it's all come back to bite him in the ass.

It's an undeniable truth that Sukuna will die before Yuuji.

Soulmate Hysteria and Heartbroken Syndrome were a given, in most cases. It was extremely rare to pull yourself from the gutters. Kaori hadn't, could Yuuji?

Sukuna wondered if it would be best to let him go, to leave while Yuuji is still young. That hopefully his presence hasn't been that impactful yet. That the Sukuna-sized part of him could be mended.

But could he? Sukuna doesn't understand selflessness, only selfishness.

He needed time to think, to clear his mind. But then Uraume had called him to gloss over details that couldn't wait. And Sukuna had shot a short and clipped message to Yuuji, inadvertently ignoring the prior messages from his soulmate that he was going to be late.

But promised he would be there for the movie night that had been planned since last week.

Sukuna thinks he could do it, consume the hurt in him. In Yuuji when he told him he was leaving and wasn't coming back, it would make Sukuna more cynical, crueler than he already was.

But if Yuuji lived a long life, wouldn't it be worth it?

It's easy to think that all in theory, until Yuuji opens the door with a kind greeting.

"Kuna!" Yuuji chirps, eyes crinkling on the side. Sukuna's gaze drag over him, struggles to beat down the euphoria that rises in his chest. "Missed you."

"I was only gone a few hours." He ruffles Yuuji's hair, friendly. Affectionate, like a friend would.

Maybe, if Sukuna can't leave. He can become something else.

Yuuji hums, nuzzles his head into it. Without meaning to, Sukuna's hand drops to his nape.

And he knows that can't be true.

"How was… uh, what came up?" The absence of Itadori Kaori pinned to the walls was now more haunting, Sukuna had glossed over the article. Read the large emboldened words before the sadistic vision in his head rolled his stomach so much to picture Yuuji in such a situation.

His throat bobs with a swallow, did it happen in this house? It was in Sendai. So Yuuji either lived in the home his mother tried to kill him in or it was down the street, mocking him each day.

"A client of mine was throwing a fit, Uraume tried to handle it but was unable to. There were… words exchanged between the two of us. And I cut our deal in half completely."

Sukuna rolls his eyes and continues, "he's childish, and has a bone of sadism in him he hides behind art. I was intrigued by his creations at first, but, it slowly became apparent that he was in it for shock value. Not expression."

"I kinda know someone like that." Yuuji cringes, "I don't like him."

"You? Not liking someone?" Sukuna offers him a wryly smile, the air was palpable between them. Strained. Their easy banter was forced.

"Believe it or not, yes. He's… he sucks. He used to sorta- I don't know? Pick on me? But always phrased it as a joke." Yuuji scratched his neck, Sukuna wondered if it was for the comfort the owner of the name was hesitant to extend.

"I could handle him picking on me, but he hurt someone I really cared about so I…" he smiles and it pinches the scar. "Beat him up?"

Now, both of Sukuna's brows raise. "You beat somebody up?"

"I've beaten a lot of people up." Yuuji points to a jar. "See that? That's all loose change from grandpa and Choso-nii and my friends betting on how long I'd go without getting into another fight. There used to be a whiteboard that said: it has been whatever amount of days since Yuuji last got into a fight."

Sukuna has noticed the scraps and bumps and bruises on his soulmate, but he never thought they came from anything more than boyish clumsiness and careless behavior.

He thinks of others putting their hands on Yuuji, bruising him, making him bleed more than he already has. Sukuna knows what he would do if he saw that — but Yuuji doesn't.

"What was your longest streak?" Sukuna asks instead, Yuuji laughs like a songbird breaking fast. "I think it was like a week, they let me stay up and watch movies until midnight as a reward."

He can't help the laughter that slips past him.

"And at the end of the year grandpa or Choso will divide the money up and we'll take it and splurge, either with my family or my friends. So really, I'm doing us and the world a favor."

"Yeah, yeah. Okay hero complex, just don't forget to fight for yourself too." Sukuna lightly tugs on Yuuji's ear. Too quick and ambivalent for Yuuji to melt it to something else. "Your coach or assholes at school, don't let them overrule you."

Don't let me overrule you.

Yuuji swats the air, huffing. "I don't wanna hurt them too bad, either. I'm strong so I have to be mindful of that."

"Oh yeah? How strong?" Sukuna plays along, watching humorously as Yuuji pats his bicep.

His soulmate puffs, eyeing Sukuna from root to tip. "I could take you."

Sukuna's eyebrows slacken, Yuuji's face lights up furiously even though his expression remains lax.

"In a fight."

"Mm, we'll see about that."

"I could!"

"Yuuji, I'm over a foot taller than you."

"Underestimating me will be your undoing." Yuuji sticks out his tongue, Sukuna resists pinching it.

Sukuna considers himself a man of culture.

Yuuji does too, as a man of pop culture.

"I wish we could have eaten dinner together, movie nights are always so much more fun when you're full and still eating popcorn or desserts." Yuuji notes absentmindedly as he rummages through a container of films, there's some that Sukuna is familiar with such as: Perfect Blue, Spirited Away, Wolf Children. Films he could appreciate.

Then some others: Jaws, Donnie Darko. He could appreciate foreign films as well, but Sukuna hoped he wasn't about to sit through Napoleon Dynamite because that unfortunately seemed right up Yuuji's alley.

"I'm sure it is," Sukuna bounced his leg on the sofa, avoided his reflection in the black screen of the TV. In truth, he was sort of glad that he was able to avoid a dinner with Yuuji. Of course in his fantasies — Yuuji is there, watching Sukuna's hands dice with precision. Explaining the dish in intricacies, even settling back and watching Yuuji cook. Sweat from the flames rolling down his chin as he concentrated on the flames that made him look more like a fire lily than a sakura bloom.

Fantasies that tipped into reality was a dangerous thing, and Sukuna needed to be careful to remember reality had consequences.

"Well, maybe next time." Yuuji smiles sadly. And Sukuna feels a well earned pang of guilt.

Yuuji seems satisfied with his collection of films for the night, though. His lower lip curves in thought. "Hmm, it's kinda early. Maybe we should wait until it gets a little darker before watching something, especially if we do horror."

A second later, his eyes light up. "Oh! We could play video games? I bet I could kick your ass in Mario Kart."

"Mario kart?"

"Yeah, you know. Like," Yuuji made a motion of a steering wheel. "Letsa Go?"

"I've never played video games before." He never had the time, the luxury. As a child, Sukuna can remember looking at the consoles his classmates would show off at school. In their clean clothes that fit while his were dirty and a size too small. He even stole one, once. But the controls were confusing and the game too boring.

He ended up smashing it, and smiling when his classmate cried that it was lost.

As money begun to flow, Sukuna had found interest in other things. Video games were a childish thing of the past, he had cooking, he had art.

Sukuna supposed Yuuji is blessed to have never known something like that, and cursed to know something far worse.

"What?!" Yuuji cries, scrabbling to lurch for the handheld device docked by the TV. "Oh my god, we have to fix this."

He plops down on the sofa, leans into Sukuna's space so their shoulders are touching.

Sukuna's hand flexes, doesn't wrap around Yuuji to pull him closer.

"You know what a Nintendo switch is right?"

"I've heard of it." The older man shrugs. "Never paid too much attention to it."

"Hm okay, well. There's a game I think you might like because you're so into like, art. It's more about decorating though? It's called animal crossing." The screen boots up and Yuuji clicks on the aforementioned game. A soft little tune begins to play as a dog? Speaks into a microphone, her tone sweet and pitched.

The dog and her microphone fades away and Sukuna watches as a small Yuuji-like character exits a house, messy pink hair and tanned skin. It lacks his scars and freckles. Yet, Sukuna thinks it is still cute.

Yuuji explains the purpose of the game, inviting villagers in, kicking them out when they're too ugly to look at. The inherent beef some players have with certain villagers that spans generations of games. (His nemesis is apparently a green hippo named Hippex that is always his 'campsite villager'), completing the museum, the crafty fox named Redd.

"I have like, over a thousand hours on this game."

"Then where are your decorations?"

"Huh?"

Sukuna points to the barren landscape, full of sticks, weeds, and rocks. "If it's about decorations, then where are yours?"

"Oh, ah. I just like fishing on the game."

"Right…"

"Just try it!" Yuuji urges, a sparkle in his eye that's too captivating to deny. And Sukuna withers himself a sigh and settles in to play a juvenile video game.

Except an hour later, he belatedly realizes he's having fun.

"I picked up all your sticks, rocks, and fallen fruit." Sukuna notes, dragging the mini Yuuji across the now field as the real Yuuji who had been preoccupied with his phone and leaning his weight on Sukuna's side, now peered over.

"Oh! It's so clean now!" The boy clambered impossibly closer, with no care whatsoever of personal space to smush his cheek against Sukuna's. "Thank you."

"Why didn't you tell me there was a Michelangelo statue in this game?"

"The ninja turtle?" Yuuji's brow furrows, Sukuna heaves. Correcting himself to put it in terms a teenager would understand.

"The statue with his dick out and a book."

"Oh!" Yuuji's mouth parts in a small 'o' way that irritably looked too kissable. "Like I said, Redd has a lot of things in his pirate boat."

"You never said he had mockery of real life art," Sukuna may or may not have snooped through Yuuji's inventory and promptly wondered why he didn't decorate.

"If I did, would you have said it's fun sooner?" Yuuji grinned.

Sukuna rolled his eyes and turned the switch off. Smothering a smile when more of Yuuji's giggles bubbled up.

"It was… entertaining." Sukuna concedes, glancing sideways at Yuuji.

"Next we'll have to play Mario Kart, but not tonight."

"Why not?"

"I take Mario Kart extremely seriously." Yuuji said sagely. "And I don't want you to see the dark side of me."

"Oh I'm sure it's so dark, let me guess you prefer kitties over puppies?" The older gave a languid expression, bemused.

"Something like that." Yuuji grinned again, heistant and pulled at the sides like a marionette. And shuffled off the couch to collect his picked out movies.

Sukuna's mouth twists, had it been the day before. He would've been slightly curious, but now. With all those details from Itadori Kaori's attempt of a murder-suicide, it didn't take much to glean that Yuuji was thinking of that day.

And yet, how could any of that have been his fault? He was a boy, a small child attacked by someone who was meant to love and cherish him.

These thoughts, as well as many others. Sat heavily on Sukuna's shoulders as he watched Yuuji's back.

"Have you ever made a pillow fort?" Yuuji tilts his head up. Catching Sukuna's reflection in the black screen of the TV.

Not that he couldn't feel Sukuna's gaze burning holes in the back of his skull.

"No." His soulmate stirs after a second.

"We have to fix this." Yuuji breathes, partly desperate to change the somber mood he accidentally inflicted and excited to just… spend time with his soulmate. He wasn't stupid, they may have not spent an exceeding amount of time together. But Yuuji could sense his soulmate was conflicted, could feel it in his soul as if it the tangled emotions were his own.

"I'll be right back." He rushes the words and it sounds more like: berightback. And heads towards his room, pausing to check on his gramps who looked fast asleep in a nap before collecting an assortment of blankets and pillows he could barely see over the top of.

"This seems excessive." Sukuna noted dryly.

"But it's going to be fun. I haven't made a pillow fort since I was a kid! Nobara and Megumi never want to do movie nights with me because they say my taste in film is terrible." The blankets and pillows crumple to the floor, Yuuji idly wished he had some fairy lights but then was immediately confused on how he would get that to work.

"None of the ones you picked looked bad." Sukuna leans forward, poking the nest materials with his foot. Yuuji shoulders scrunch a bit — scrunch enough for Sukuna to notice.

"Unless," his soulmate grinned, infuriatingly handsome. "You picked ones you thought would impress me?"

"Shut up and help me make the fort." Yuuji blushed.

The fort is constructed with minimal effort, with Yuuji doing most of the work with apparent experience and Sukuna mostly handing him the blankets and pillows for Yuuji to lay and adjust as he wanted.

"Maybe… it's a little small?" The teenager's head swivels, eyeing the fort and eyeing Sukuna.

"I think I'm just big."

Yuuji grins.

"Get inside, brat." Sukuna shakes his head, wishing he could bite back the words.

Sukuna does in fact nearly knock down the entire fort with his body. Giving a pointed look to Yuuji who just laughs and presses play on the remote so that the intro to: Perfect Blue can play.

The first thirty minutes is a comfortable silence, idle chatter, paying attention to the movie. Sukuna grins at the grotesque scenes while Yuuji hides behind splayed fingers.

But there is a restlessness inside of Yuuji, sneaking glances at Sukuna who politely pretends not to notice. Desperate, frenzied, to trap Sukuna with him in this pillow fort forevermore.

He blurts these next words without thinking:

"What was it like growing up for you?"

Sukuna's jaw grinds, pointedly watching the TV screen although his gaze has gone unfocused.

"Harsh." He says, hoping Yuuji will leave it at that and knowing he won't.

"Kuna…"

"It was harsh, Yuuji. I grew up in poverty and foster care, aged out of the system and spent more years in poverty."

Hungry nights and cold nights, huddled under overpasses next to a trash can on fire with all the other abandoned, unwanted, and forgotten scum of the earth. Thin and dirty, salivating at the smell of restaurants and staring with a poisonous envy at those who left plates still full of food.

"Your p-parents?" Yuuji asks, his voice small. Sukuna shrugs as much as he can while laying flat on his belly.

"My father was always unknown because my mother was a prostitute." He couldn't recall her face, not anymore. He thinks they might've shared the same pink hair, or perhaps the same taste for food. But mostly, Sukuna could only remember the sounds of men coming and going. His mother's sobs turning to rage when she was reminded of her parasitic wretch.

Eventually his bruises became one too many, his body too small for its age. A soul took pity on him, but only pity because once Sukuna was taken from his mother. The world's kindness and sincerity ended there.

Well, it gave him Uraume and Yuuji, so perhaps not all of it had ended.

Yuuji's expression falls to something saddened, and he tries not to be angered. But he hates it — that frown of pity, that curled up look in the eye that made people look at him differently, when they learned of his hardened past, when they learned of his nameless body.

"So I didn't have video games or pillow forts or movie nights." Sukuna continues, trying to keep his voice light but the threads of anger are too tightly woven to be pulled loose. "I had nothing."

"You have me now." Yuuji whispers.

"Yuuji…"

"You do, Sukuna. You do."

"I've done bad things, Yuuji. To get where I am now," Sukuna's eyes darken. "Things you wouldn't be able to accept."

"Maybe." Yuuji concedes, much to his shock. "But I've done bad- I've done bad things too." He gnaws his bottom lip in worry. "My mom tried to kill me and Chousou."

"I know." Sukuna says, and withers the look of hurt and shock in Yuuji's eye, that he's stolen this vulnerability away. "I know, Yuuji."

"Everyone does." The boy mumbles dejectedly.

"What your mother did wasn't your fault, it wasn't because of you. It was because-" Sukuna's eyes close. "It was because the death of your father."

"Yeah, I know." Yuuji snaps, more harsher than he intended. It's jarring to hear his soulmate angry. "I was there, Sukuna."

"And you know if we continue to do what we do, then it's likely you'll meet a similar fate as your mother?"

The air turns frigid and ice cold, Yuuji reels as if Sukuna has physically struck him.

Waves of hurt cross Yuuji's expression, anger, bitterness. But the tide of it recedes, leaving an almost somber acceptance. "I do."

"And is that a choice you want to make?" Sukuna swallows, his throat as dry as sand and sharp as glass. "With me?"

"Yes, Sukuna."

"Why?"

"Because," Yuuji cups his face in his hands and scrubs it, a low sound of frustration as he faced a situation that needed years of experience in a sixteen year old mind and body. "Because maybe when we first met, we should have decided to let things just play out, maybe we should have aimed for something familial, maybe we should have tried to see where the wind takes us."

He sighs. "But we didn't, because I know what I want from my soulmate. I've known what I wanted my entire life, Sukuna." His honeyed eyes raise, blazing with conviction to meet Sukuna's. "And you do too, or else you wouldn't have agreed. You talk all the time about being the adult in our situation but you're just as hungry as me, in fact. I think you're starved."

"That isn't a good thing." Sukuna says lowly, "I may eat you alive, Yuuji."

"And if I want you to?" Yuuji challenges.

"Careful what you wish for."

"No, I don't think I will be. Because I'm tired of this dance, I want you. I want to spend my life with you and- and when you get to be an old man, then we'll cross that bridge when we get there."

Sukuna wondered if this is what it felt like to be loved, weighted, sacrificial, and idiotic. "There's nothing I can do to change your mind, Is there?"

"If you tried, then I might eat you alive instead."

Sukuna barks a laugh, it almost sounds like a sob.

"Please, don't leave me Sukuna." Yuuji wiggles closer and breaks the thin glass of their carefulness, brushing his arm against his soulmate's. It's such a childish seek for comfort and security that it makes Sukuna's stomach knot itself into ribbons. "Don't let me live the life you've lived."

Then, quieter. "Don't let me be unwanted."

"There's never a day I don't, you don't know how much I want you, Yuuji."

"Then show me."

Gently pulled apart by Yuuji's hands. Sukuna's weak resolve has come apart. The older man presses a chaste kiss into the whorls of pink hair, allowing himself this selfish touch.

Yuuji melts as if it is a soothing balm to a deep ache.

"Okay, but we have to… take it slow."

"But-"

"Listen to me." And Yuuji's jaw snaps shut. "I want to be with you too, but the footsies under the table?"

"That wasn't—"

"Don't lie to me." Yuuji's skin turns red, and he lowers his gaze, exactly like a teen who got caught red handed.

"The footsies, the flirting, it has to stop and take a step back. You're right, I am starved. I'm trying—" Sukuna heaves tiredly. "—I'm trying to be good for you, Yuuji. Even though there's parts of me that don't want to be good."

"I make it hard to be good?"

"You do."

A muscle in Yuuji's jaw jumps, like he wants to say more. To add the fuel to Sukuna's flame, but wisely he stays silent, allowing Sukuna the grace to speak.

"We'll keep seeing each other, but there are stakes here, Yuuji. Choso, your grandfather." Sukuna ducks his head to catch Yuuji's eyes. "The law, they won't care that we're soulmates. Just that I was older than you, and then instead of minimal contact it'll be none."

"I don't want that…" the younger boy whispers, frightened.

"I don't want it either."

"I- okay, you're right. We'll… I'll reel it back."

"Thank you."

"But you'll stay?"

"I'll stay." Selfishly, lovingly.

"Good." Yuuji's eyes water, the boy brushes them away before Sukuna can.

"And, about my mom…"

"Tell me another day." Sukuna pressed another kiss to Yuuji's hair. "We've got time, tonight has been a lot."

"Yeah… yeah okay, you're right."

Their attention turns back to the movie that's now more than halfway over, the air is a mix of sharp and stagnant. The numbness that comes with a heavy conversation but the subsequent freedom of it too. Sukuna keeps his touches trained to be light, Yuuji doesn't wiggle for something more.

Perfect Blue ends, and Yuuji wordlessly puts on Spirited Away. Seeking something much more lighthearted for his heart.

"Can I… uh." Yuuji gnaws his bottom lip, kneeling before the fort but not crawling in yet. "Can I hold you?"

"Yuuji." Sukuna intones with a warning.

"Not anything like that!" The boy squeaks with eyebrows that touch his hairline. "Just, innocent, I promise."

"Shouldn't it be the other way around?" The older man joked lightly, not at all opposed to holding Yuuji in his arms, it would be innocent as Yuuji put it, nothing that scuffs a line.

"For another day," Yuuji echoes his earlier words, "I think you've had a severe lack of hugs in your life and Doctor Itadori is gonna fix this."

"Oh? Is he now?"

"Yup, now roll over."

Sukuna huffs, but obeys. Yuuji quickly scrambles close, looping an arm over Sukuna's side and settling his forehead against the nape of his neck.

"Just for a little bit, I'm not staying the night."

"M'kay." Yuuji hums, and snuggles closer.

The difference in their bodies is all the more apparent with Yuuji straining to properly hold all the mass that is Sukuna. He surely cannot see the movie, blocked by his soulmate's head. But evidently doesn't care by the rhythmic squeezes to hold Sukuna closer.

He must admit… it felt rather nice. A little weird, with each shift in his body stirring Yuuji or knocking into him. But still, not unpleasant. Just, nice.

Nice enough that his tightly wound body gradually begins to soften, that his weight sags into the nest of pillows and blankets that smelt distinctly of laundry soap and Yuuji's faint sweet scent. Enough that his eyelids are drooping shut, Yuuji's soft snores a lullaby in the shell of his ear.

Enough that Sukuna falls asleep before he realizes it.

His mouth is dry.

That's the first thing Sukuna registers, his hand searching for a drink that isn't there to soften the parched texture of his tongue.

The second thing, is that there's a body behind him. His mind traverses its memory, trying to recall which sex on legs he brought back home to use for the night to fill that void in his hollow body.

"Don't leave me."

Ah, right.

"Fuck." Sukuna mumbles, voice thick with sleep. Yuuji stirs behind him, a leg has been thrown over his hip and his arm is still over his rib cage. He's got a koala grip.

Gently, Sukuna unglued Yuuji from his body. Smiling softly at his sleeping soulmate who only groaned a little at the disturbance before rolling over and back into a deep sleep. He notes that Yuuji rolls into his spot to seek his warmth.

"Cute, despite being so annoying. Ain't he?" Wasuke says, and Sukuna jolts as he goes ice cold.

"C'mere." The old man beckons him, Sukuna wonders if he sees a glint of humor in his whiskey colored eyes. "I wanna talk to you."

Sukuna follows, trying to recall the last time he felt proper fear.

Wasuke sits at a small table, two cups of tea already brewed. He doesn't offer sweeteners, not that Sukuna would have himself.

"You know about Yuuji's mother, don't you?"

"Yes."

"And do you remember the first thing I asked you when you came to our home?" Wasuke idly asks, with the aged serenity that came from a life long lived.

"If I would protect your grandson."

"Correct, and what did you say?"

"That I would." Sukuna stares down into his cup, watches the ripples dance as Wasuke's leg shifts under the table. "Let me guess, you're going to ask that I stop seeing Yuuji?"

"You and my grandson are like two peas in a pod." Wasuke heaved somewhere in between humor and exasperation. "No, I am not."

"Why?"

"Because I am not like Choso, I do not believe there is anything I can to do to tear you apart. And even if I wanted to, I wouldn't."

Wasuke pauses, glancing out the yellowed curtain windows. The light outside is soft and white, the world is stirring with Monday blues.

"You two have been dealt an impossible choice: separate and kill yourselves slowly, or kill Yuuji by loving him."

"And you would have me kill him?" Sukuna is not one easily shocked, but in truth. Itadori Wasuke has stirred his soul with it, he halfway thought the old man simple, his mind too decrepit, too lost in years gone by.

He was incorrect in his assumption.

"I would." Wasuke says. "The world is made up of selfishness and curses. I want my grandson to die an honorable death, surrounded by his loved ones. But what good does it do if he only wants you?"

"I'm ruining him."

"You are, but isn't that what love is?"

Sukuna thinks of Yuuji as he is now, and what he will become. Molded under Sukuna's fingers that have only known blood and lust, wonders if he could wash it away. If he could truly become something good for his soulmate.

And if he could not, then he would reap what he sows.

"You would say all of this after what happened to Yuuji? Even if his father wouldn't want this?"

"You don't know Jin, he was foolish enough to like you because he believed that as long as someone is with their soulmate; they could conquer all."

That sounded eerily familiar, to Sukuna.

"And I loved him more than words could ever comprehend. He was so much like his mother," Wasuke smiles, the first one Sukuna has ever seen from the man. "Kind, gentle, sincere. All the things I never knew how to be, I tried to raise him rough, you know? Give him a man's hand. It never worked, and secretly I was glad for that; the world needs less men like me, and less men like you."

Sukuna's lips toy with a bitter smile.

Wasuke fiddles with a stained gold ring, "but Yuuji is not like my son, not one bit. He's kind and sincere, but bullheaded and arrogant, I don't have the proper hand to guide him. Neither does Choso as much as he says he does, he's still a young man, too."

Whiskey eyes cut to Sukuna, "but you do."

"There is," Sukuna rubs at his eyes, there's the grit of sleep and the tension he rolls out of his neck. No matter how hard he tries, though. It feels impossible to be awake enough for this conversation. "A lot of fucked up things in that."

The old man laughs, rustic and unused. "That, I won't deny. But it's what happens when a boy is without a father, or a mother, I suppose."

"What happened to him?"

"Car crash, could've happened to anyone and it had to happen to my boy."

Sukuna thinks it would be proper to offer his apologies, but he doesn't think Wasuke would want it.

"The world takes as it gives." The old man murmurs. "I've been holding out a long time since my Sachiko died, and I'm not sure how much longer I can wait. I hear her and see her in my dreams, that seventeen year old girl when I met her." Wasuke touches a part of himself hidden by fabric, that wistful smile still spry like a young boy's first love.

Sukuna can see Yuuji in his place, old and withered. But alive, waiting for Sukuna to come home.

"So I would say all of this, because I am proof that a soulmate can live a life after their soulmate's death, Choso and Yuuji are deeply scarred by what that woman did. That they forget I am here too. And I would say all of this because I love Yuuji, and selfishly. I want to see my grandson happy before I go."

Wasuke reaches across to pat Sukuna, in a shockingly friendly way.

"Thank you." Sukuna mumbles, unsure of what there is left to stay.

"I don't need your thanks, just that you give my grandson a happy life. Can you do that?"

Blue eyes lift, convicted. "I can."

"Good, I think I'll go sit outside for a while. The birds are singing and Sachiko liked to say their songs were for her. Perhaps I'll hear her voice in them."

Wasuke lifts with a few groaned cursed words, Sukuna stared into his untouched cup, feeling the weight of all words said today.

"He looks like his mother." Wasuke's fingers touch the doorway, the old man glances over his shoulder to gauge Sukuna's reaction.

"He looks beautiful." Sukuna replies.

Wasuke laughs, and then he is gone.

Feeling like he's crawling out of his skin, Sukuna sighs and stands as well. Running a hand through his mused hair as he returns to where his car keys are and where — where Yuuji is.

When he returns to the living room the pillow fort is deconstructed and Yuuji is sitting on the sofa, no phone or switch. Even the TV is off where it at some point automatically went to sleep after hours untouched. His knees are drawn to his chest, and his eyebrows are pinched.

the Itadori home is quaint.

There's no possibility he didn't overhear the words exchanged between two old men.

"Are you leaving?" Yuuji radiated anxiety, trying to force a calm, casual smile that didn't reach his eyes.

Sukuna glances toward his and picks up the jingling object.

"I have to go back to work tomorrow so I'll leave today, but as for right now." He spins the key on his finger. "How about you and I go for a ride before Choso is back?"

Yuuji grins, perking like a flower doused by sunlight as he shouts he just needs to brush his teeth quickly.

Sukuna watches him skitter past, a gangly mess with much growing up to do, but beautiful, but his.

He supposed, he had some growing up to do too.