Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When your eyes flutter open the next morning, dawn has barely broken through the horizon. Birds chirp merrily from outside the windows, welcoming another sunrise as night steadily simmers into daylight. There’s a rotten slickness between your legs and an awful pain in your gut.

You find yourself alone; in the bed, in the room and, as far as you can predict, perhaps even in this quarter of the house, just as you’d ordered them to leave you. Alone and free to do and decide whatever you so choose.

In your rush to discover the cause of the dampness, you forget to turn on the lights in the lavatory, and it’s as if the dim onset of daybreak is taunting you in the dark. But alas, the metallic stench fills your airways, and still you sit there on the toilet long enough to bruise your behind; long enough for light to come in through a window and illuminate your emancipation from this dreadful nightmare: blood.

Your period has come, and not a moment too soon—and while it is particularly disturbing to your pelvic floor and all the muscles and nerves in your body from below your chest down to the beds of your feet, still—it is simply an honour on this day. An answered prayer and a second chance.

Too late do you realize that you are completely alone and have nothing to quell the flow of blood; you doubt you’ll find anything of use across a property where no women have lived for who knows how long. Helpless and incapacitated by surges of cramping pain, you sit in the bathtub, doubled over its side and desperately counting seconds until a single footstep should pass near the threshold to your room.

Chills come over you in blanketing waves, highlighting the discomfort of your state and prolonging the suffering. You want to call out for someone but know that your hoarse voice won’t carry past the sinks, let alone across the mansion.

Someone. Please.

A faint knock on the dark wooden doors of the bedroom outside—or is it your wishful thinking?

It comes again, louder, and you mentally curse yourself, unsure if you locked the dungeon doors last night. If you did, no one’s getting in unless they have the capacity to break through—

Shimmery white hair pokes through the opening of the bathroom, sunlight glinting off of it like spun gold. “Red?”

You wait for his eyes to meet your twisted face and get the hint, clutching both arms around your abdomen as if it will hold all your churning organs in place.

“Are you—?” He stops short for a second upon seeing you curled up in the tub, shining with sweat and blood dripping from the pantseams between your legs. “Jesus—are you okay?”

“...hurts,” you mumble, followed by a sharp breath to compensate for all the effort it requires per syllable pronounced.

“What’s happening?” He’s starstruck and scattered and clearly hasn’t cared for a menstruating person before. He’s sure as shit never dealt with any form of miscarrying—if that’s what this God forsaken bloodbath is.

“I…I don’t know.” Your face crumbles with tears. “It hurts. I think…my period…it’s really bad…”

“Okay.” He swallows and blinks rapidly, hands hovering over you like metal detectors before they finally settle on your head and shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay. We’ll take care of it—I think. I hope.”

“Cold,” you sigh. “Too cold.”

“You’re cold? Oh, yeah—” he feels around your face and hands “—you’re a fucking popsicle. Let me run you some hot water—”

“No, the blood—”

“It’s just blood, Red. It’ll wash away—here, I won’t fill the tub all the way. Just a little, okay? Just for a little until you get some body heat back.”

The submersion helps relax you enough to nod off, half your weight on the porcelain ledge and your head on Satoru’s shoulder. He doesn’t let go of you even as the water seeps through your clothes and trespasses his own.

At some point, Suguru pops in, instantly taken aback by the scene he discovers. He sees the towels on the floor; Satoru’s white tee tinged pink and coiled wet on the floor; the blood in the tub water, and it clicks into place. He hesitates to enter, unsure of how it’ll be taken.

“Can you call a doctor?” Satoru calls behind him without budging an inch. “I left my stupid phone in the room.”

The same doctor that tended to you days ago makes his way through a second time, somehow finding bleaker circumstances than he’d left you in—so much so that he cusses out the two young men and threatens to contact local authorities.

“We’re just trying to take care of her,” Satoru explains in a language he seldom uses anymore. “I don’t know what’s happening. I found her like this.”

“You’re the friend? He said she was yours but frankly, I don’t trust either of you,” he mutters under his breath. 

“Please believe us. She was fine yesterday,” Suguru promises. “We’ve been taking care of her.” While it’s only partially true, you were fine twenty-four hours ago (physically, at least). 

You wake up in bed hours later, wearing fresh clothes and covered in blankets. The pain is almost all gone, but your head and limbs now feel like lead and there are no real thoughts in your brain. The room is empty and quiet besides the muted sounds of a monitor, but the floor seems to be spinning around you and the only thing that helps is closing your eyes.

It takes a while to defeat the medication and regain clarity, but eventually you emerge victorious. They’re both in the room when you come to, groggy and disastrously tired. There’s a hunger raging like fire in your stomach and another pain hammering between your temples.

Suguru stays to a corner with crossed arms and a vapid expression. He’s watched you stir in and out of focus for hours, mumbling and gasping to yourself but it doesn’t seem like you remember any of it now. He wishes you could. You said Satoru’s name a few times; twice, you whispered his, too—though, that could have just been the last few days’ events tunnelling through your subconscious.

Satoru’s by your side on the bed, his back against the headboard and his legs spread forth, one crossed over the other. He’s been checking you for a fever every now and then. At some point, he left his hand resting, and the steady stream of heat soaking your head is what jerks you awake.

“How’re you feeling?” he wants to know.

You lick your lips and try to swallow. “Thirsty. Hungry.”

He offers you a cup of water, helping you tilt your head back to sip—this part doesn’t make so much sense, because you can move just fine despite his disabling actions.

“You wanna eat?” Suguru offers from across the room, already halfway out the door. “I’ll get you something.”

You’re actually sort of glad he stepped out. You need to speak to the other one alone. With a deep breath, you turn your stiff neck to look at him.

“Have you two talked?”

“What would we talk about?” he returns, truly clueless.

“About—” You purse your lips, brow dipping in thought. “About everything.”

“We haven’t talked about anything,” he relays. “I don’t think we have anything to say to each other.”

“Almost three decades of friendship,” you hum, “and you have nothing to say to him?”

Satoru shrugs. “I hate him? I can’t stand the sight of him? When I look at him I hear…this sound in the back of my head—like…like roaches scattering against each other trying to escape the bottom of my foot—”

“Okay,” you scoff, “that’s plenty. You can’t be serious.”

“I wanna strangle him with my bare hands,” he summarizes, pupils small and unblinking.

You sigh deeply, studying him with careful disconcert. “I thought…from that last conversation we all had, it seemed like…

“Well.” Your sore eyes close briefly, head tilted. “Do you think you can forgive him?”

“That depends on what he took from me,” he counters. “Are you ever going to forgive me?”

You absorb the scrutiny in his icy gaze and set your jaw. “Maybe. If you make up with him—”

“Oh, don’t do that!” he shirks. “No way—that’s so unfair. How can you go out on a limb for him? He fucked you over, too—you should hate him—”

“And I don’t!” you sigh, exhasperated but ready to laugh about it. “I don’t hate him. I don’t hate you. I just…I feel so… blocked up.”

“Great,” he mutters. “That’s good. ‘I love you, Red. How do you feel about me?’ ‘I block you, Satoru. I block you so much.’”

You do huff a chuckle despite the weight of his confession. “Right, yeah…you love me. Well—he loves you. Try to feel sorry for him, at least.”

“That’s different—”

“No,” you shake your head quickly. “It’s not. He loves you. All the things you feel for me—he’s felt them for you all his life. Imagine that, Satoru. Imagine what that’s like.”

“I can imagine what it’s like,” he mocks, “because that’s how I’ve felt for most of my life, too. And I did try to be there for him, but he was too scared to open up to me about things—too scared of labels—oh, ‘ what will my family think? What will the world think of me if it finds out about us?’ See? It’s all his fault, anyways. Fine—we were young, and stupid—but he was just downright selfish and weak, and he didn’t have the guts to do something about it.

“So, I moved on,” he shrugs in conclusion, pouting to the side. “Wasn’t gonna wait for him all my life.”

“Why don’t you move on from me, then?” you throw back, and from the puzzled look that breaks his face, you know you’ve got him in a pinch. “If it’s something you can do, after all—why don’t you just do it?”

Satoru’s lively features morph into an unimpressed sneer of consideration. “You know—you can be really annoying sometimes. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Yeah,” you nod. “You have. A few times.”

Suguru returns with a platter of variety and places it before you; a bowl of rich, salty broth, seared and seasoned fish, steamed and fluffed rice as well as hearty green vegetables that comfort your grumbling organs.

“Did you make all this?” Your words are distorted through mouthfuls of savoury delight.

He squeezes the back of his neck sheepishly. “Yeah, I…was trying to stay busy, I guess.”

You swallow one bite to make room for the next, famished like you haven’t eaten in years. “It’s really good—oh, wow.”

“Or you’re just really hungry.” Satoru rolls his eyes despite the aromas that taunt his own appetite.

“I made a ton,” Suguru informs, “in case you want more.”

This revelation brings Satoru to his feet. He stretches leisurely, bending backward and forward as if a corpse that’s crawled out of its crypt after centuries. Grumbling something about needing some air, he shuffles oh-so-casually from the room, turning at the doors in the vague direction of the kitchen.

You haven’t been alone with Suguru very many times across the span of knowing him, but especially not since finding everything out. A blanket of tension tents over and between you; eyes swerve and slide to avoid meeting, hangnails are unrooted from their respective beds by gnawing teeth, and you manage to throttle through the rest of your meal in complete silence.

But once the plates are cleared, there’s nothing to busy yourself with. You sit on the bed with crossed legs and fingers, eyes cast towards the floors that flooded merely days ago, yet no sign of the wreckage remains. You wish your life could be capsuled in such marvel that no exposure to calamity would ever dare scratch the surface.

“Did you like it?” He proceeds to collect the dishes, keeping his gaze strictly lowered. You glimpse the guilt that bubbles in his throat yet he swallows it down, the shame that fans his lashes downturned with humility yet he doesn’t blink it away.

“Mhmm.” Watching the back of his head float further across the room, your mouth opens and closes a few times. What are you supposed to say here? Are you supposed to speak to him? His friend is vexed over his supposed conviction in ruining your lives—but you know, in your heart of hearts, that nobody in the universe is as skilled at sabotage as Satoru is, especially when it comes to the self.

“Suguru—” 

It comes up like vomit before you can stop it, catching him by the collar to turn back around. He wills his ligaments to still and calm, waiting for you with slightly rounded eyes. 

What he’s waiting for is to be cursed a little, at least, if not a whole lot. He’s waiting for you to find the meanest, nastiest, shrivelled up words in your belly and roar them like fire at his face. He’s waiting for you to wrap his hair around your knuckles and mop the floor with his mug, dragging him all the way past the property line with the help of Satoru. Maybe you both bury him alive in the dirt together—who knows? You could get up to all kinds of things as newly acquainted partners in crime. Maybe—

“I get it” you utter quietly, like it’s a secret no one will believe.

His fixed face falters a little as his comprehension buffers. “What?” And again, he’s being improper. You tend to bring this out in him.

“I understand how you feel.” You take a breath and blink slowly. “I don’t forgive what you did—but I get it. I think.”

Suguru stares at you, dumbfounded. Alas, his expression sours, and his eyes take their leave. “I don’t even know what I feel anymore. Don’t bother.”

He hurries away to the comfort of isolation, once again swimming laps in the poison of his own making. What am I doing? Pointless. Completely pointless—you’re completely fucking pointless, Suguru. Nobody needs you here. Not yours. Not for you. Nothing here for you—

Stomping across the kitchen threshold, Suguru halts abruptly at the sight he stumbles into: his friend, white hair poking out in a hundred different directions, hunched over the industrial stovetop with chopsticks midair and a mouth stuffed full to the brim. A stray grain of white rice sticks to his stubbled jaw, and the blue saucers in his skull are rounded like the ghosts of his ancestors have come themselves to exact punishment.

“‘m jus’ tasting,” Satoru deadpans around the unchewed bite in his gullet.

Suguru regains his step finally, wanting to laugh and then wanting to cry and scream and punch him into a puke-fest all at once. Instead, he drops the emptied dishes in the sink and pulls a fresh plate from the cabinets, holding it in the other’s face at arm’s length. “Satoru. Don’t eat out of the pot. You’ll ruin the rest of the food.”

Gojo rolls his eyes but takes the China. “‘s my house, anyway.”

Suguru sets his jaw and turns away. “Of course. I know that.”

An inescapable silence placates the room. The walls push away further and further each second, growing space around the two and leaving them impossibly close to one another. Though, with how busy he is horking back lukewarm helpings, it would seem Gojo’s dining under a rock. Once again, it’s Suguru suffering all alone while everyone else seems to be—

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Gojo’s voice smacks him in the back of the head.

“Tell you what?” his friend wonders after a moment of nothing.

“That you lo—” Satoru stops himself. After a long gulp of water to wash the starch off his tongue, he turns around to rest his ass against the stove. “That you wanted her, too.”

Suguru sighs. He’s tired of himself. He doesn’t have the words to story tell for the biggest airhead-slash-narcissist in the world.

“She wasn’t anyone’s to have once you picked her.” He turns partially to brave a peek at the other. “That’s not what it was about.”

Round sapphires beam at him, contemplative, yet they see nothing. “Then what was it about?”

A similar wonder captures Geto’s features at being addressed in their mother tongue. They barely even spoke Japanese for a while after heading to the States, and the last time they exchanged it properly with each other was probably third semester in college.

It takes a brief eternity for the muscle memory of language to kick in. “You. Us.”

“You hurt me for me? ” Satoru frowns, perturbed. 

“I didn’t know how badly I was hurting you.”

Now, he scoffs, shaking his head. “You’re still lying—”

“I’m not lying,” Geto insists. “You hurt me so I thought I was punishing you—just enough to make it equal.”

“I told you how I felt about her,” his friend recalls. “You could tell I was serious.”

“You fell in love with a new person or thing every week!” Suguru exclaims, plagued with fatigue. “You’ve lived all your lives in this one!”

“It was different with her—”

“Satoru!” he hisses, pressing fingers to his temples and switching back to the harsher language of the two. “It was different with me, too—remember? All the things you said when we first—”

He exhales, tucking a stray lock of ebony hair behind his ear. “You really know how to sell it. Until you don’t.”

Satoru clenches every muscle in his body. “You think I lied about my feelings for you?”

Suguru scrunches his sly features, tasting something incredibly bitter in his mouth that he wish hadn’t come back up.

“How could I know? Satoru. You never said anything about your feelings for me. I was just supposed to know—guess—learn—find out—whatever. Everyone else is always supposed to do the work for you, so you never have to be wrong or ashamed or embarrassed—if it doesn’t work out, I mean.”

Well, if that isn’t the truth—hitting Gojo face-first like a no-hands bicycle stunt into a brick wall. 

“Go on,” Suguru sulks, turning his back again. “Save your honour another day. See where it leaves you.”

***

A litany of silent battles ensues over the next few days: over breakfast, the two men turn their heads in opposite directions and chew their food as if gnawing through rubber. At lunch, they huff and mutter under their breaths, never quietly enough that it doesn’t reach down the length of the table and splash the other in the face. By dinner, one of them usually no-shows (Suguru), while the other scrapes and cuts the food on his dish in such a degenerate manner that it makes your ears bleed (Satoru).

“Cut it out!” you snap one night, dropping your cutlery mid-air. “What did the plate do to you?”

Satoru’s nostrils scrunch and flare in warning. “It’s my stuff. I’ll do whatever—”

“Oh my God,” you groan. “How old are you? And what are you mad at me for?”

He tightens his jaw and drops his shoulders. “I’m not mad at you.”

“Then why are you taking it out on me?”

With no answers and no further questions, dinner comes to another discourteous end. You both split ways at the staircase and head to your respective corners. You’re always surprised, each night he chooses to board himself up in solitude rather than beg for your forgiveness or search for your company—both things he made it seem like he would do.

Little do you realize, Satoru is aching for your attention, both literally and figuratively. Behind closed doors all he does is drive himself up the walls thinking of ways to get it all back to how it was—or to how it never was, but should have been? Yeah, he’s losing it. He doesn’t even know what to do.

And then there’s Suguru, who’s doing nothing active to appease your mercy and yet you continue to bestow it upon him. Satoru loathes this incongruous soft spot you hold for the Evil currently stewing in some abandoned nook of his childhood home, festering like a parasite. He wishes he could find the open wound where you hide it and dig his thumbs right through the flesh to see how deep it runs; see if the poison that comes out is black or white or some lowly mixed-breed of grey.

The truth is that he’s pent up, too, and the physical turmoil of keeping everything in is winding his gears so tight that he might launch right into the outer sphere of Earth if someone so much as grazes his thigh just right. Sure, it may sound pathetic—he’s never gone this long into abstinence since he first participated in sexual activity—but it is fact. He wishes you needed someone as badly and he wishes that he were the one you would seek out if the occasion rose—not The Other Guy.

All he can think about is you. How much he wants you—needs you. Needs to be a part of you. Melt into you. Crawl into you. Live inside of you for eternity and never leave. Become a part of you—an extension of you. Have you see nothing but him—think of nothing but him. Touch him, caress him, love him—exist for him. Live for him.  

Die for him—

“Fu—” He stutters, arching against the bed when a heavy stroke of his hand and a particularly decrepit mental image nearly brings him to completion—but he’s not ready to finish yet, growing greedier by the second.

Not die. I don’t want her to die, he backtracks. But oh, what he wouldn’t risk to have you look at him with just that kind of devotion—the kind that would have you swallowing the muzzle end of a gun, all just to please him. The kind of devotion that would have you trembling for him—crawling on your hands and knees for him—begging him—grovelling naked at his feet—

“Oh—shit!” He knows it’s coming; he can feel it pulsing through him, weighing him down and lifting him up, higher and higher and down he drops like a bird with clipped wings, sputtering and gasping for air while both hands pump desperately up and down his unrelenting shaft. “Shit, shit, no—”

More! More, more, more. He can keep going—he has to keep going—it’s not enough; he hasn’t had enough yet—

The bedroom door swings open, flooding a beam of candlelight from the hallway to between Satoru’s legs and he jerks back, sitting up in surprise.

“The fuck—?” he hisses (rhetorically), scrambling for sheets. “Get out!”

Suguru continues onward, closing the door behind him. Lately, he’s had too much to think about and far too little to drink. His head hurts, as does his heart, and somewhere under all the stoic layers of indifference and aptitude, so does his conscience. 

“I said get out—”

“Shut up.” He crawls up the bed, pants riding a bit low on the waist with no shirt to cover his sculpted top. Damp tendrils of long, black hair stick to his neck and back, indicating that he’s either just finished showering or spent an obscene amount of time in a sweat lodge. The scent drifting off his skin points at the former.

While Suguru is fully prepared to get kicked in the mouth, he’s also familiar with how needy Satoru gets. The ache between his legs overrides all rationality. This has always been the case, and Suguru has always known how to use it to his own advantage.

“Don’t touch me,” Satoru warns, but he doesn’t lash out.

“So noisy,” Suguru chides, this time in an alternate language. “Obnoxious.”

“Stop it.” Satoru isn’t doing much to prevent it, though. For a second, he’s fifteen again, wondering what it means when your best friend stares at your lips all the time. 

As Suguru yanks the sheets and tugs him by the hips to lie flat, Satoru feels sixteen years old again: his best friend is kissing him for the first time, so sure and confident and practiced—as if they’ve been doing so for eons.

Suguru pins his wrists down by his head and their bodies are seventeen: the first time they dared to have intercourse, the first time they realized it could all be this simple.

“Don’t,” Gojo whimpers, but he’s always been a little late and Geto’s always been more than patient.

“I can’t hurt you anymore.” Suguru wipes the stray tear Satoru didn’t catch before it spilled and licks it off his thumb. Steadily, he starts shuffling down to bow between his open legs. “Let me help, at least.”

He had forgotten how good it felt. A segment of Satoru’s soul parts from him when Geto’s tongue envelopes the reddened tip of his cock, crying and throbbing for relief. They both hum and hiss in unison, one at the sensation of defying the laws of gravity and the other at the familiar, sticky sweetness that coats his mouth, always budding and plenty with excitement.

“S—” Satoru bites down on his lip, eyes clenched and fists balled even tighter.

Geto knows he’s trying not to say his name. Determined to make it happen, he takes more of the stiff length into his mouth, letting the head hit the back of his throat and giving it a retaliatory swallow.

Satoru gasps, his heels driving against the sheets. His hands find their way to Suguru’s neatly combed locks, now scattered like string between long, pale fingers.

He rubs his tongue along the base, swallowing again and again until the muscles in his throat are sure to hurt—until Satoru’s moaning like a wounded animal but covering his own mouth with the back of one hand to keep it together. Growing increasingly competitive and equally annoyed, Suguru cups the tightened sac of skin beneath his base with one hand, intermittently applying gentle squeezes. Meanwhile, his head is bobbing up and down, from tip to base like he’s pumping air, pausing at the top to dig his tongue along the frenulum as well as at the bottom to suction and swallow.

Satoru can only take so much—out of the two of them, Suguru was always better with his mouth, and that was never up for debate. He holds it back for only a few more seconds before the sparks of ecstasy are flooding through him, powering up every cell in his body for those priceless few seconds.

He doesn’t even care that he’s saying Suguru’s name in this way and in this pitch and with this much heightened need after so long—part of his hearing is gone for the duration of the orgasm, too, and he’s ready to deny and gaslight anyone to any length once it’s all done.

And Suguru swallows it like a reward, because he’s always taken it like a champ. He’s never spat Satoru’s cum out, and that hasn’t seemed to change. 

He comes up again briefly—nothing more than to kiss the man’s cheek and whisper against it. “I’m cursed to lose when it comes to love… One curse is enough, Satoru. Don’t let it ruin you, too.”

As his friend retreats, Gojo silently voices a thousand questions into the darkness between them. He wishes he could see his expression—see if his slender eyes are glazed with pain or as phlegmatic as ever. Where are you going? Are you going forever? Is this it for us? What in the world are you thinking?

“Suguru,” he pants, scrambling to sit up. He can’t have gone that far. The door hasn’t opened yet. “Suguru!”

He’s scolding him now, waving his arms through thin air to catch just a corner of him, because if he doesn’t in this moment then he just knows it’s all over. There’s a sick feeling crashing down around him and—

“Suguru!”

He brushes something—a wrist! An arm?—and grabs again, this time managing to catch it and pull hard enough with all his might that the other man’s weight comes crashing back down on him. Luckily, the bed cushions them both, though Satoru’s not too sure they didn’t just put a crack in its foundation while trying to heal the one in their own.

“What are you—” Suguru’s spitting hair from his mouth, trying to regain his balance and simultaneously feeling for broken bones “—doing?”

“Suguru—” Gojo rolls him onto his back, pinning him down in victory. He doesn’t even stop to catch his breath, instantly falling over to kiss his darling crazy and stupid. “I’m sorry—I love you.”

“Don’t say it now,” Suguru pants even as he accepts his lips wherever they collide. 

Satoru pauses, staring at him through the dark. He brushes half-dried hair back from Geto’s ear and strokes his angular jaw in praise. “I love you—I always did—even if…you don’t feel the same way—I love—”

“Shut up.” Suguru yanks him back down by the collar, snuffing the words before they can fall out. He’s never had the sentiment dedicated to him, no matter how much he yearned. Geto fears that if he receives it too much all at once, it may just overstimulate and demolish his brain.

Satoru, on the other hand, feels the urgent doom to make up for all the lost opportunity. Hence, if his tongue cannot speak it, his hands and lips and limbs desperately try to convey it any way they can. He’s determined to kiss and suck and fuck the message into him, and there is so much in reserve that he isn’t sure when it will be enough.

They exchange the confession a few more times over the next couple of days, though always in secret and behind closed doors. You couldn’t have any idea of what they’re up to, seeing as they couldn’t even look at each other without pickling. It just so happens that you go searching for Satoru one morning after noticing his suspiciously elevated spirits, even after a complete lack of effort on your part.

As you approach his door, an explicit medley of sounds stops you in your tracks: the smack! smack! smack! of skins and the creaking of a bed frame, and whimpers and moans unbecoming of grown, adult men.

“So tight, Satoru. Why are you so excited?”

Your eyes widen but your hands move faster, wrapping around the carved metal handle to check if the doors will give.

They do. Leave it to Satoru to never use a perfectly good lock.

You can only peer through a crack, but the scene is unforgivable: Satoru, spread apart across tousled sheets with his wrists bound to the headboard. His pale skin is flushed everywhere and every inch of him glitters, either with sweat or tears or other bodily fluids. His lips are swollen and puckered from teeth diving into them in an attempt to keep the munitions at bay, and his eyes are covered in white bandages to keep the world hidden.

He’s a fantasy and a dream. The blindfold that pushes all his thick, silvery locks up and away from his face adds an ominous touch. Somehow, it suits him perfectly.

Suguru is just as nude and glistening with sweat, except his skin is a few shades darker than usual when it sits so close in direct contrast to Gojo’s. His long hair is tied back and looped around in a thoughtless bun, revealing the scraped and scratched expanse of his detailed back. The depth of some cuts explains why he felt the need to tie those hands down.

He knows you’re there, somehow. He turns his raven head just enough to look at you from the corner of one eye.

Come here, he beckons with a finger and a wicked curve to his lip.

You leave your slippers outside the door, putting around silently while your heart has started hurdling out your chest. Suguru’s hips are rippling back and forth in trained movements. You remember just the way they replicated these motions for you not long ago.

You haven’t seen it up close like this before, but it is fascinating: Suguru’s entire length is buried between the man’s buttocks, pulling out secondarily before he shelves it, again and again. Satoru’s legs are nearly wrapped around his hips, clinging for support while he’s fucked steadily into oblivion.

“Doing so well, Satoru,” Geto extols, running his open palm up the front of his pale body. Satoru’s cock twitches each time he punches forward, translucent syrup dribbling from the tip at about the same frequency as he gasps and whimpers for mercy. “Taking it like a good boy.”

“Suguru—!” His arms tug in reflex, once again unsuccessful against their binds. His wrists are rimmed scarlet where you can see the exposed bits. “How—how much—longer—ugh!”

Geto smirks at you while leaning down to hiss in his ear, “What’s the rush?”

“R-Red,” he hiccups, and you can see damp spots in the blindfold where his tears are soaking through. “She—”

“She might see you getting folded in half?” Suguru grips his hips with both hands, sitting back on his heels to apply more power. “What if she does? What would she think?”

He beckons you over with a jerk of the head.

Me? You mouth it and point to yourself. What are you supposed to do here, exactly? You’re nothing more than intruding on their intimacy, but somehow you can’t tear yourself away—weren’t these two just trying to kill each other?

“Sug—I’m—!” Satoru whines, his neck longer with each second his back arches deeper. “Fuck—untie—please! Oh, fuck—Suguru—touch—!”

“Can’t you come without touching your dick?” Suguru mocks. His brows poke up in your direction, then his eyes glance down at the flushed, heavy cock bobbing against his stomach, indicating for you to—

Oh.

You tread forward slowly so as not to make a sound. The secrecy is exciting; the anticipation is, too. You realize you want to be a part of this. Oh, how you want to be a part of this—and as much as you would love to be the focal point of this threesome…well. Watching Satoru melt and burn in pleasure is nearly as great as experiencing it for yourself. Seeing him ruined can serve as some vindication, you quickly decide, and mount the bed carefully.

“...Suguru?” he whispers, and his arms pull again.

He can feel extra weight dipping the mattress to his right. He thinks he catches your scent surge in with it. In all his cluelessness and stupidity, Satoru retains an immaculate sixth sense.

Suguru runs his hands up Gojo’s milky inner thighs, raking his nails along the dense muscles as he deepens his movements and renews his intentions. “Shhh,” he soothes, and you would know by his tone even if you couldn’t see him that he’s absolutely gloating, grinning like a jackal who’s just cornered its prey.

All things considered: you’re lucky to be done menstruating, and you’re even luckier to be feeling more normal than you have in weeks, both mentally and physically. Although you’re not all too sure where this is headed, or what your life could look like a month from now—at this very moment, with the buffet of possibility before you, everything else pales in comparison.

You get rid of the stringy mesh that’s supposed to be underwear and ball it up in one hand. Leaning over the pristine sculpture of his being, you bring your mouth close to his ear and your fist up to his jaw.

“Sato.”

“What—”

Before he can say much, the lace is in his mouth, pushed deeper by your fingers. “That’s the blue piece you love so much,” you reveal, raising one leg to throw it across his chest. Now straddling it, you face Suguru, who scans you up and down with a challenging bloodlust.

“Take that off.” He tips his head at the sundress, an expensive yet flimsy thing you’d managed to score on that shopping haul with Gojo. It’s been one of your most worn articles for the coverage it provides while also being comforting, breathable material, but the way Suguru looks at it now—it may as well be constructed of poison ivy.

“Are you sure?” you deliberate, loud enough for the man behind you to hear. “I’m not wearing anything underneath.”

Another creak from the headboard; Satoru’s hips wiggle off the bed and Suguru has to push him back down, leaning between spread thighs to reach your lips. You’re instantly engrossed, humming around his slithering tongue while his hands travel under the soft cotton and all across your frame. You don’t mean for your hips to be rummaging the way they are against Gojo’s chest, and the sensation of your folds rubbing on his hot skin, spreading the lather of love—it all adds to the madness, melting the marrow in his bones right there.

He’s huffing and groaning all he can around the underwear in his mouth, trying level best to push it out with tongue while yours is occupied elsewhere. He can hear you making out with Geto, lips smacking almost as loud as his skin was moments ago. Suguru’s far too distracted now, and his manhood sits like a heavy weight inside of Gojo, torturing him to no end.

If he could just get his hands untied—

“Satoru.” Geto swallows the sight of your naked body atop the man’s—how your heat spreads flat and vulnerable but oh so lonely and vacant. He should see to it that you’re filled soon, and fucked deliriously hard. “If you’re a good boy, we’ll let you free.”

Satoru raises his head and slams it back against the pillow, exasperated. It doesn’t stop him from whining loudly and squirming beneath your weight. You raise a finger to ghost it from centre of his sac all the way up his length and watch it bob in ardent need, tip flushed angry and veins protruding like an intricate web of twine. 

“If you wait to come until I say you can,” you trill smoothly, “maybe then I’ll untie your hands.”

So it begins: your teasing and pestering Gojo’s pretty cock while Suguru demolishes his insides via spectacularly inconsistent pace, rhythm, and force. You don’t know how he’s holding back since your hand is soaked and stained with shimmery fluid that fills your nostrils with a savoury scent.

To be fair, you don’t know how much longer you’ll be able to keep up with this without being on the receiving end. Sure, Suguru consistently makes out with you and gropes your body, tweaking your breasts—sometimes even leaning down for a cheeky suckle. However, it’s only making you feel more restless and left out by the second.

“Satoru,” you complain, inching back until his chin is wedged against your ass. Turning partway, you reach back and withdraw the undergarment previously left behind, which is now soiled with saliva.

He gasps and sputters, and all the sentiments that were jailed until now come spilling out one after another: pleads for mercy, requests for cooperation, and threats of retribution. Finally, he ends with a wispy, quiet, “Sit on my— please —sit on my fucking face—”

Not a beat missed and he’s gorging on you—feasting, sucking, gnawing with desperation at times, his whole mouth licked and locked to your lips. He’s consuming and consumed with delirium, and you’re willing to scrape a knee and elbow that there isn’t a single thought in his head right now besides come and make come, come and make come, come and make come.

“Fuck, you’re wet.” It’s Suguru who says it. Though his movements haven’t stopped, his eyes are strapped to your heat and his lips are parted in awe. “How does she taste?”

Satoru groans in response, bucking his hips. “I…wanna come…” The words are muffled against your flesh. “Please, let me come—I need—”

“Not yet.” Your own will is waning, and you couldn’t move any faster if you wanted to without causing a fracture of some kind. If his hands weren’t tied, his fingers would surely be plunging into you—slithering, digging, curling against the bull’s eye—

“Satoru…” Your voice is hoarse, yet his tongue is thick and determined, saddling your clitoris from side to side. “I’m…close…don’t stop…”

Suguru can’t peel his eyes away from the sight of it: Gojo’s watermelon tongue, the sharp tip of it perfectly moulded against your clitoral hood, lolling and sliding against it with all the strength in his jaw, his Adam’s apple plunging and crowning each time he swallows down the nature’s blend that leaks out of you—

You, falling apart and drifting somewhere far away even as he can reach out and touch you—your hips grinding salaciously back and forth, riding on Satoru’s tongue for all intents and purposes. Your head is tipping back and your abdomen is stretched from the deepening of your spine—your breasts bounce in perfect tandem with each dribble of his own thrusts, your nipples agonizingly stiff and bullying Suguru to lean forward and bite one clean. Your lashes have fluttered shut but your lips are agape with a medley of battered breaths and whorish gasps of his name and his name, too—and Satoru’s cock is milliseconds from bursting in your diligent hand, his frenulum pulsating with the early vibrations of an orgasm he just can’t hold back anymore—

“Satoru!” you cry, lurching all the way backwards before doubling forwards, trembling and shaken to the core. “Fu—I’m coming!—Satoru—you can—”

But you didn’t even have to say it. The white puddle that’s coated your hand and managed to land a few stray drops across his own clenching abs and expanding ribs was the finale Suguru needed. The clench and pull of Satoru’s insides traps Geto’s cock deep within, deadly pelvic clamps hoisting and yanking him across the finish line. His own building focus had festered between his temples like a headache, a tension that he was dying to push out and when it finally snapped, everything unravelled all at once.

He whisper-moans both of your names a time or two before tumbling forward to rest his forehead in your neck, though his hips take a few more seconds to cessate. Satoru is practically in tears beneath you, at the overwhelming sensations of it all as well as the beauty of what the three of you have managed to accomplish—in tandem, no less. A single moment that stands out against the ever-expanding universe.

“Untie,” he sputters weakly when you dismount his jaw and crumble onto the rumpled sheets. “Please…untie me now?”

Suguru vacates carefully, examining his craftsmanship through laboured breaths before shuffling around to free his mate. He expected Satoru to spring instantly, but the man continues to lay defeated, chasing his own heart so he can bring it back to the human realm. You remain between them, dazed and quiet besides the exceptionally deep inhale and exhale. The bodies on either side of you are warm, but each carries a distinct identity—something you could scent out with your eyes closed, the smokey tobacco and cologne to your left versus the spice and aftershave to your right.

This doesn’t feel wrong.  

For once, you don’t feel an inch out of place, and no one present seems eager for your departure. You’ve yearned for years to experience a time where you don’t feel the crushing need to be gone.

Blue eyes glazed over with mesmerization find you a lifetime later. Satoru lays unblinking and still, afraid that if he moves a smidge too much that the mirage before him will go blowing away in the wind.

“What’s wrong?” you ask eventually, worried by the concern in his rounded eyes.

“Are you—?” He glances back at Suguru, lying on your other side with a dumbfounded serenity in his brown eyes that swallows the ceiling as he stares at it. “Okay?”

Geto turns and leaps from the bed suddenly, crossing to the bathroom on a few nimble strides. You both watch him in the distant mirror inside the room, taking the time to wash himself off in the standing shower.

“He’s always been like that.” Gojo rolls his eyes. “Has to be clean right away.”

You chuckle and nod after a moment. “I think I’m alright. How do you feel?”

“Not bad.” He swallows, glancing your way. “I…I’ve never…but you… We never…”

“Never had a threesome?” you wonder out loud. “But I thought you were a freak?”

“Never with people he cares about,” Suguru offers, emerging from the open doorway with a towel slung carelessly around his hips. “We’ve both had our fair share—just never together, really. Our taste was too different.”

Gojo pins him with a blank stare, revising all his reasons from the past and coming up short once he compares them to all the ways he can imagine the three of you indulging each other.

His body tingles slightly when he thinks about sharing you between them the way he was split between you moments ago. The semi between his legs grows to full length within seconds, gaining inches before your very eyes.

“Suguru,” he breathes, crawling onto hands and knees to blanket your nakedness. “You know where the lube is.”

Geto saunters off with a curious smirk. Equally beguiled, you watch him readjust his hair before dishevelled white snow banks block your view.

“You can say no if you don’t want to,” he reminds you.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what you want, even if the mere realization of it scares you shitless. Between the two enigmas, you couldn’t guess what they might decide. You only know that they move in perfect harmony, and this preface does nothing to calm your building nerves.

“I—I don’t—” You lift up on both elbows, scanning the room. “I’m not—um. I’m a bit…thirsty?”

Satoru hands you a cup to sip while Suguru stands by the foot of the bed, his italic features slanted in a pensive expression. It isn’t until you swallow the water that you realize how parched your mouth has become.

“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” Satoru’s fingers brush your calf, leaving shivers in their wake.

“I…” You look between them, one up close and the other in the distance. There’s no room nor need to back down now—you wanted this, and you know the regret after turning it down will far outweigh the lump of anticipation in your throat. “It’s been so long, and I… You’re both…”

Important. Cherished. Cared for.

“It’s okay,” Suguru settles, backing away from the bed to sit by the vanity. “We don’t have to do it. You’re clearly not into this.”

Intimidating. Psychotic. Undefeatable.

You sigh in mild relief, replacing the glass on its nightstand.

“Satoru. Make her come while I watch.”

The use of Japanese has your head snapping back in confusion. They both communicate in silence for a moment before Suguru bends his neck to the side.

“Come now. Show me how much you love her.” The facetious pull of his lips is wicked enough to have goosebumps pilling across your skin.

Satoru turns back to you with a helpless look, remarkably like one of a kicked puppy. “Is it okay if he just watches?” His eyes are trained on your lips, eagerly watching to see which shape they’ll take when you pronounce your answer.

It takes some punctual hesitation but you nod meekly, unsure of how to say no. Part of you expects Suguru to grow bored and leave the room in due time. After all, how much can one enjoy, being reduced to a spectator?

You end up at the edge of the bed, seated on Satoru’s lap with your back against his chest. Heat pours from his body in abundance, but you cower with chills each time he touches you and reminds you to open your eyes.

“I’m gonna make you come again,” he delivers in your ear. “We’re gonna show him how good I can make you feel.”

You can’t dare to face in that direction even when your eyes are closed, keeping them focused on Satoru’s stubbled jaw or the white pokes of hair beneath his pronounced clavicles. He can read hesitation in the bite of your lip and the stutter of your breaths but, frankly, it all comes off as quite adorable. In this moment, you truly are like a fawn, caught between the jaws and claws of two predators who are devoid of wholesome intention.

“Sato—!” Your voice catches in tandem with his hand reaching between your legs.

“Nice and wide, Red,” he mutters against the side of your head while his fingers spread the slick between your folds. “Show him how wet you are.”

His other arm is an iron rung keeping you in place. Your back arches against him at the lightest rub of the clitoris, hips digging over the cock wedged between your ass.

“Tease her more,” Suguru taunts, stretching his own legs out. 

Gojo tosses him a look from the corner of his eye, then bites down on your earlobe while parting your flesh with both hands. “Such a nice scent—isn’t it, Suguru? Her pussy smells like it’s begging to be fucked.”

“Seems like it,” Geto chimes, tongue in cheek. “The way it’s clenching…just like that—”

“Satoru,” you whine, letting your eyes fall closed again.

“What do you need, sweetheart?” You feel his nails raking against the plush of your thighs, and in exchange they tighten against his palms in anticipation. “Just tell us. We wouldn’t keep it from you.”

“Please…”

“You have to do better than that, doll,” Suguru tuts, rising to step up to the bed. He bends at the hip, face looming above yours. “You have to say it.”

Your eyes frown round with doubt. “I thought you were just watching.”

“How can I?” He tips your chin carefully, tugging at your lip with his thumb. “When you keep looking at me like that?”

“Like what?” 

He ignores the query completely, too fascinated by the rebuttal of your lip under his thumb. “Show me your tongue.”

Sensing some initial defiance, Satoru slithers his index and middle fingers against your heat and the split second of distraction is enough for Geto to poke his digit past your lips, coaxing an annoyed hum out of you.

“Show me your tongue, sweetheart,” he urges again, pressing down on your jaw to pry it open. “That’s it…let me see that pretty mouth.”

He rubs the pad of his thumb around in circles, falling into a trance from the divots and ridges of the soft, wet muscle. Losing his patience, Suguru bends to bring his face closer before catching your parted lips in a messy kiss.

You’re a bit stiff at first but succumb eventually to the tender motions, losing your judgement little by little as he laps at your tongue while Satoru slips a finger past your entrance and curls it so perfectly that you melt against him.

Suguru cradles both of your heads with either hand. You don’t realize what’s happening until he parts with you and switches over to Satoru, exchanging heated kisses before returning. In no time at all it’s all three of you licking and biting and sucking on each other’s mouths, and it’s not long after that Suguru’s fingers are married with Satoru’s, deep within your fluttering walls that are moments away from caving with calamity.

“What’s got you so quiet?” Geto teases, rubbing your clit with the very thumb he had you sucking on. “You’re usually so…expressive.”

“Maybe she’s a little flustered,” Gojo snarks in your ear, licking stripes up the skin behind it. “What’s the matter, Red? This isn’t your first rodeo, after all.”

“That right, sweetheart?” Geto adds to the four digits digging into you, causing a small squeal to flitter past your lips. “Getting shy on us, are you? But we only just started—”

“I’m—!” Your head falls back on Gojo’s shoulder, leaving room for Geto to start feasting on your neck. “I’m close!”

“We didn’t say you could come yet. Did we, Satoru?” 

Their movements slow down tremendously and your eyes fly back open in frustration.

“No, we definitely didn’t,” the face to your right agrees. “Feeling good all by yourself…being so selfish, Red. We wanna feel good, too—”

“I think she’s more than ready to help out.” Suguru pulls his hand back and stands up to his full height. He loves how you glare at him while he pushes the towel off his hips—loves it more so when your lips seal in defiance as soon as he guides his tip forward.

“Come on, Red,” Satoru whispers, continuing to fuck you torturously slow with the fingers he’s kept buried inside your heat but they’re not quite enough to make up for the vacancy of a robbed orgasm. “Open up and take his cock. You know we wanna treat you good.”

You glance down the length once and return to glaring up at Suguru. Your lips part, but only to offer a single lick against his slit. The saltiness of precum spreads across your taste buds in tandem with the heat pooling within your belly.

“Be nice,” Gojo reprimands, using his free hand to guide your jaw into place. “I’ve seen you do this shit more than a few times. I know you like being treated this way.”

“Why are you pretending like you don’t want this?” Suguru scoffs. “It’s written all over your face.”

“I was so close,” you grumble, hips wiggling with aching need.

“The night is—” Suguru gasps when your mouth envelopes his head, quickly welcoming more and more of his length with the warmth of your throat. “Shit—keep that up and I’ll make sure you come a dozen times at least—fuck!”

“Take him in as far as you can, baby.” Satoru wraps your throat to feel the outline against his palm. “Down—all the way down, just like that…good girl—just like that, Red—”

“That’s our girl,” Geto exhales through clenched teeth, gathering your hair atop your skull with one hand while the other ventures down to squeeze your chest. “Take me down until you can’t fucking breathe—shhhh, be good now—”

“You’re doing so well, baby,” Satoru hums. “I’m getting jealous…how come I don’t get to feel good? Hmm?”

“You want him too, don’t you, pretty girl?” Suguru pulls you up with a small step backwards, just enough of a maneuver for Satoru to rise off the bed and line himself up with your entrance. “You want him to fill you up with his cock?”

When Geto pushes you back down, you’re impaled by the entirety of Gojo’s length. An eerie yelp escapes the corners of your mouth along with dribbles of spit and other fluids that streak down your tits and stomach. Tears pool along your waterline and break past the rims of your lashes, streaking across your hot cheeks in ribbons of pleasure and struggle.

“Fuck—”

Satoru hides his face in your hair, indulging in the sensation of your body adjusting around his girth. The suction of your pelvic muscles and the jitter of your weakened body has his toes curling in anticipation of just how crazy they can both drive you.

He squeezes your hips both sides, bruising them with prints for days to come. You’re too preoccupied with the weight tunneling down your gullet to be able to complain much. There isn’t even enough feeling in your limbs to resist with your hands.

“This is what you wanted?” Geto mutters, a sadistic glee pulling apart the ends of his mouth. “Spit roasted like a fucking animal? You enjoy this, don’t you? The way you’re swallowing my dick—guzzling my cum—oh, sweetheart! You’re so fucking precious and you’re so fucking pathetic.”

“What else can we do with you?” It’s a slithery murmur in your ear and rhetorical in every sense, of course, for they can both think of many creative ways to up the ante. Satoru’s already imagining you tucked between them, one in your ass while the other takes the front; one pulling out while the other piles in— both thrusting in at once, maybe, and you becoming a broken, trembling, drenched mess in the middle—

“Fuck,” he groans, forcing you to buck back against him, chasing a pleasure so mutative in nature that he can’t quite categorize it yet. “Ride it—fuck me, baby—fuck me harder—faster, Red—yeah, atta girl! So fucking tight—your pussy is so fucking good, baby—”

“Oh, she’s crying Satoru,” Suguru chirps, wiping fat drops of ecstasy from your lashes with his thumbs, holding your head in his hands like a trophy while his balls smack against your slobbering chin. “She’s sobbing! Does it feel that good? Does it make you wanna come?”

You try to nod, eyes blurry and nostrils flared to transport any available air to your burning lungs. Your hands are preoccupied with Geto’s legs, pushing back against the severity of his thrusts so he doesn’t just crush your nose bone with his pelvis.

“Breathe,” he commands, pulling out to let you recollect your shame for a moment. “Breathe, it’s okay—you’re okay, right? You’re a good girl.”

The fingers raking through your hair make you believe it. The corners of your eye senses white tufts of hair falling forward, and Satoru shocks you completely when his lips wrap around the frenulum bobbing in your face, quickly hollowing his cheeks around it.

Suguru hisses his name in sinful praise, unraveling one hand from your hair to bury it in the head next to yours. Satoru’s legs fall still under you while he immerses his focus into the task and you watch in awe as he wholeheartedly drinks down at least half the endowment.

You act hastily, attending to the rest of the base with your own tongue, using your hands to cup and tug the sac underneath. Suguru momentarily loses both breath and balance, not just from the impact but the mere sight of two different tongues tracing the ridges of his manhood and two different pairs of eyes, both equally drunk with lust and affection, watching him part ways with sanity.

Satoru steadies him with one hand, breaking away to sloppily kiss you, tasting the man above all over your tongue, then returns to gorging on the cum leaking off his flushed tip.

“F-fuck—oh, fuck I’m gonna—” 

You hear his breath catch and hitch on thin air, chest caving and expanding with the force of a mountain crushing it. His head tips a little but he doesn’t let his eyes fall completely shut for fear that this may just be a dream. No—no, it can’t be a dream, and if it is then he absolutely can’t wake up. 

His jaw unhinges to an uncomfortable capacity as pleasure pours through him and departs from his flesh in hot, white ribbons that leak from Satoru’s strawberry-pink lips, dripping a mess down your shoulder and chest.

“Coming!” he whispers inaudibly, shocked and gasping for life. “Fuck—fuck me! Fuck me!”

You need it, too—it isn’t fair anymore how long it’s been since you got to have an orgasm. Geto stole it from under your nose and took it for himself instead.

As soon as he heaves his last breath, you turn your attention back to Satoru, giving him the most pleading eyes ever witnessed by man.

“I need you,” you plead, knowing how to get him in your corner. “Satoru… Satoru.”

He cradles your head and folds you up snugly against himself, falling back on the mattress with all your weight in tow before rolling over so that you’re lying face-first against the mattress.

“Ass up,” he instructs through barely caught breath, hips already setting into motion. “All yours now, baby.”

He wishes he could see your face, but this view is quite priceless, too: your head smeared against the sheets, fists gripping onto them for dear life as you maintain the strict arch in your spine—so deep that he swears it may snap and spill like a pearl necklace at any second—and your body bounces and ripples each time he pummels forward, your raw flesh stretched taut around his girth, the rings of muscular wall pulling him back in more and more again and again.

Your eyes are blurred and your brain is too coated by the fog of need to heed the sounds overflowing from your own mouth, brisk moans and lazy sobs filling the room, a sprinkle of Satoru’s name here and there to chase down the blizzard of pleasure rupturing through your veins.

“Right—right there!” He discovers a brilliant angle and pace and has you swallowing your own fingers, looming on the brink of insanity. “Satoru—don’t stop—keep going! Please!”

“I’m not gonna stop,” he promises, spitting on his fingers and reaching around to rub them into the swollen gumdrop between your legs. “I wouldn’t stop if you begged me to—not gonna stop until I can’t go anymore—”

“Sato!” You grip his wrist with nails, overwhelmed by the stimulation vibrating through your core. “Satoru I’m—oh, shit—”

“Come,” he grunts, the smack of his pelvis against yours becoming less humane each second. “Come on—come, come you fucking slut—come for your master—”

You don’t expect it to hit you as quickly or all at once, yet it does: it breaks you, reducing you to near nothing, leaving your body and your toes curling inwards all the same. You sputter and sob, calling out to him as if across verses.

Suguru has been fixated on the scene before him, drinking it in to memorize every second. He can appreciate both of you enough individually, and when you come together how you are now it only results in utter magnificence. He’s in awe at how well Satoru does his job and how obediently you concede to his every word—his every movement. How you light up at each touch like a festival of lanterns; how you melt between his hands like liquid gold and let him become a part of you; how irresistible Satoru looks in this moment, his milky skin flushed pink and scarlet and his silvery white hair like a crown falling into his eyes—aquamarines and indigos glazed wet with love and worship and ribbons of pure ecstasy drooling from his parted lips. It’s the way he ordains himself as your master and even though it has no real meaning to anyone outside of this room it holds so much weight between the three of you, for you both truly do kneel for him in every sense of the word.

“My turn,” Gojo hiccups, only to pull out briefly and flip you over as easily as one does a pillow. The reinsertion of his cock makes you keel against him and yelp for mercy, but by the haste of his movements Suguru can tell this moment in time is devoid of any such thing.

He’s all over you like a plague, smothering you into a different world with starved hands and lips. One second his fingers are gripping your hair and the next they’re in your mouth, and again they move to hold down your trembling arms and legs, folding you into yourself like a flimsy game board. The man simply doesn’t have enough limbs to take in as much of you at once as he desperately needs, and he doesn’t have enough eyes to see the entirety of your frame crumbling all at once, and he definitely doesn’t have as many cocks to fill every crevice of your body full of himself until you forget the rest of existence.

“Gonna come inside you,” he swears quietly in your ear, but it isn’t quite so inaudible. His hand is pressed down against your stomach now, holding your convulsing womb in its place while he feels the length of his manhood wreaking havoc on it. “You’re all mine—you know that, right? You can go anywhere and be with anyone and I can still make you mine in a second—”

“I know,” you comply weakly, and Suguru’s eyes widen to his own surprise.

“Because you and me—” he’s simply rambling now, the heat in his body reaching its boiling point in his mind, too lost to think straight and fucking far too fast and hard for a human being 

We’re like poison and antidote.

“Satoru!” You struggle to speak, and when his hand comes flying up to crush your face, you struggle to breathe as well. The punctuality of his thrusts is bruising you inside and you know instantly that this will hurt as soon as it’s over because it’s hurting you right now —a pain that’s so disguised as pleasure and so heavy that the blood in your veins is quickly becoming lead.

“Satoru—” Suguru steps forward but stays off the bed, letting himself become paralyzed by the viciousness of his friend’s nature. “She’s—I think you’re hurting her—”

“Am I?” He holds your face in one hand, pushing your cheeks together. “Am I hurting you, baby?”

“Keep—” but you can’t say much with the muzzle on your jaw, reduced to merely shaking your head a short centimetre side to side.

“See, Suguru?” Satoru smiles, his eyes glued to yours—to the tears streaming down your temples and cluttering your pretty lashes in wet clumps, to the crease in your brow, deepening in arch with the onset of another reckless high, to the roll of your eyes as he drags you closer and closer to the brink of hysteria. “She doesn’t mind…she’s our good girl, after all. Aren’t you, Red? You’re a good girl…good fucking girl…”

You don’t even hear anything anymore. The orgasm rocking through you bursts your eardrums, as if, and an eerie high-pitched tone is all that fills your mind the moment your vision blurs and you feel the splatter of cum leaking out of you, a mix of yours and his, and his face is in your neck, absolutely wordless for his teeth are sunk dangerously deep into the sore muscle of your trapezius. 

The next few days are just a blur of rabidly entwined limbs and irresponsible decisions. When they’re not eating or sleeping, both men are engrossed in finding ways to touch you and get new reactions. They become more creative, testing different positions and techniques. Then some days it’s just regular primitive work—a tale as old as time: one takes you for themselves while the other is busy or distracted, and you succumb to a fleeting moment of farcical infidelity. 

“If he could only realize,” Suguru sighs, rocking back and forth with you pressed up against the glass partition of the shower, through which you both watch Satoru in the next room, deep in the throes of afternoon slumber. “If he could just see that you don’t belong to anyone. Not him…not me…not anyone.”

It is perhaps these words that unearth a sort of snag in your heart at their utterance. Even though you know Suguru doesn’t imply them in a degrading manner—that he’s simply acknowledging your human right to liberty and autonomy—you can’t help but wonder if some part of you is lacking. 

Do you want to belong to someone?

It isn’t so much about if you do. Perhaps it’s more about if you can. If you can open yourself up to someone, if you can be vulnerable to someone ever again after having your heart broken. Can someone hold it without puncturing it?

Can you really be loved?

It’s a frightening question; it may carry a deadly answer. You don’t want to find out yet. You’re willing to swallow dirt before digging for it.

Satoru’s limerence knows no such defeat, growing more with every shared day or touch or glance. Each time you open your mouth he waits for you to return his feelings only for you to say something unrelated altogether. The shame and the guilt hibernate deep within layers of decorum, but you haven’t uttered a word about their betrayal since the day they confessed to you.

“Is she ever going to forgive me?” he asks Suguru one night after you’ve fallen asleep under the sheets between them. 

“Does she have to?” he responds, hoping Satoru understands what he means. Can’t you make do with this? Is this not enough, considering what we’ve done? Must you make a mile of every inch you’re given? Do you want to ruin this?

One afternoon—a week since the first time they split you between them—Satoru’s glare burns holes in your skin, harsher than the summering sun. You’re admiring the white lilies at the heart of the garden his mother started, now alive and thrumming greens of all shades. Suguru’s explaining to you the difference between pink roses and peonies, which look too similar just past peak bloom. As he laces you in latin terms and charming smiles, he tucks a flower in the hair above your ear, and you giggle like a child being serenaded by their favourite toy.

Satoru shoots from his seat and stalks forward, emerging behind you all at once. You can feel his heat and smell his scent before the sharp tone of his voice cuts you on the back of the legs like a serrated knife.

“How much longer are we gonna keep this up?”

Suguru falls eerily still. His disappointment isn’t quite as abundant as your surprise.

Your eyes round at Gojo, faltering just enough before you stare back. “What?”

“Stop it,” he shakes his head pitifully. “Stop doing that. You know what I mean.”

You look between them as if caught in a lie. “No,” you insist, “I don’t.”

From now on, if anyone has anything to say to you, they’ll have to say it clearly enough that a toddler would understand. You’ve just decided.

“How much longer are we gonna play fuck-around-the-rosie?” At this, Geto’s brow shoots up, amused. Satoru ignores him, completely serious . “You haven’t said anything about what’s going to happen.”

“Happen to what?” 

“Me!” He stops short, pursing his lips. “Us—whatever this is.”

“She doesn’t have to—”

“I’m not asking you!” Satoru snaps, shutting Suguru down.

“Why do you have to do this?” you ask, rather rhetorically. The answer is obvious: on any journey, Satoru has chosen to be one thing for certain, and that is the pebble in one’s sole.

“I’m tired of pretending,” he laments like a true victim. “I can’t do this anymore, Red. I need to know.”

“Satoru—”

“Suguru.” It sounds like a curse. “Not. Now.”

“Exactly,” the man echoes, jaw tight and eyes agape. “Not now.”

“You’re tired of pretending?” You squint at him in ridicule. “What exactly are you faking?”

“You act like everything is fine,” he heaves, blue eyes glossed like frosted glass. “Like this is normal. As if this will go on forever. All we do is fuck, and when we fuck everything is fine but apart from the fucking you won’t look me in the eye—”

“How am I supposed to look at you?”

You didn’t mean to shout. Definitely not so loud—or shrill. The calls of birds and critters around the garden scape seem to fall off a bend and a heavy, wet silence festers within the high walls of the estate.

Satoru blinks away what can only be tears. His jaw is locked into place but his heart is beating outside of its limits.

“How am I supposed to look people in the eye after they treat my life like a freak show?” You rip the flower from your hair and fling it to the ground—as if this single action can rid you of the weight crushing your spine. “You think this is fun for me? I feel like a clown. I feel like I’m betraying myself.”

“Why don’t you tell us how to fix it—”

You cut Suguru short with a glare dedicated his way. “How to fix it?” you bellow. “You’re going to fix this? How? Why don’t you tell me how so I can do it myself—without either of you!”

“Without us? So that’s it, then?” Satoru croaks, his mouth twisting into a most pathetic pout. “This is all we are… It’s never going to be more than this?”

You clutch your head and breathe deeply, relearning how devoid of reasoning he truly is. “Is it fair to Suguru for us to frolic into the sunset together? Is it fair to me—to sweep everything you both did, under the rug? Is it fair to you? If I just lie to you about everything being okay?

“Do you really want me to lie to you for the rest of our lives? Is that what you want us to be?”

Satoru passes a battered glance over his friend. “How can you let us touch you if you can’t even look at us?”

The corner of your mouth twitches bitterly. The poison coats your tongue, turning it heavy and limp. You swallow it with difficulty.

“Because that’s the only time either of you treat me like an equal,” you spit out. “It’s the only time you don’t see me as some poor, pathetic girl that you get to puppet around and decide things for. Neither of you have ever treated me like a real person outside of when I fuck you. 

“So, forgive me for extorting the situation. But we can put an end to this right now.”

“Don’t let him push you to a premature decision,” Suguru tries, not ready for the curtain to fall before he’s seen his arc. This can’t possibly be his story—not even the bad guy anymore; simply a bystander to the demise of love.

“I didn’t need this today.” You shake your head in contempt, mostly at the shag of white hair to your right. “Why couldn’t you just let me feel like an equal for a little longer? It’s like any time I start to feel even a tiny bit normal you have to ruin it! You have to remind me what you did—remind me of how I don’t belong anywhere between you! Why couldn’t you just go along with this until it couldn’t go anymore? Is it really so hard for you to not have everything you want immediately? You piece of shit! You ruined everything!”

“Red, I—” 

“Don’t call me that!” you snarl.

Gojo presses his mouth closed, breathing deeply through his red nose, clogged by tears and snot and some other side-effect of having one’s world fall apart.

“You know I love you.” His voice belongs to the smallest person in the world. “I can’t help it. No matter what happens—I can’t change it. I really can’t. I’m sorry—I can’t change that I love who I love—”

“I can,” you state flatly. “I can help it. I can help you. I can leave you and everything you did behind.”

“Let’s just take a break here,” Suguru suggests, trying to step between you. “Maybe you should get some air—”

“We’re literally outside, you idiot,” you point out. 

“Why are you doing this?” Satoru cries, honestly aghast. “Why do you keep doing this to me?”

“I told you!” you snap back, pushing past Suguru’s barricade of tanned arms and chest. “I said you wouldn’t get to call the shots anymore! I told you that you would have to let me decide! You had to follow along for one week and it broke your brain? Do you have any idea what it was like for me for four years? Pull and push and pull and push! All your swings and flings and schemes! All the insults you hurled at my face—all the open threats! How much you made me question my worth—how much you controlled me! How much gravity you had over me? Doesn’t it just hurt your head, Satoru? Because you broke my fucking heart! And I can’t move on with you in my face every fucking day—nagging at me to get over it! It makes me want to ruin you! It makes me want to tear you apart with my bare hands, limb for limb! I hate you as much as I ever loved you.”

Suguru’s holding you tightly, afraid that you’ll unravel at the seams if he lets go. He knows you need someone right now. He knows Satoru needs more. Alas, even though he played an equal part initially, he can’t bring himself to step into the spotlight ever again. He’s forever stuck in a venn diagram of Seeking Redemption and Dying a Repentant Sinner. 

“You have to let me hate you,” you blubber, defeated. “You have to let me hurt you back. I’m sorry—I’m not better than you. I’ll always be waiting to get my lick back and get even. We can’t move on until we break even. You have to let me breakeven, Satoru.”

“Do it,” he bawls. “Do whatever you want—if it makes you—feel better—if it—if it—” he chokes on his words and the frog in his throat “—if it helps you—forgive—”

“You know I have to break your heart, right?” You try to iron out the creases in your voice.

“I—I know. I’m just scared—I’m scared of losing—I already had to let go— both of you—”

You feel bad. With a sunken heart, you tell them, “I need to go.”

“Don’t—!” Satoru chokes, forcing composure even as his blood runs cold and pours from his eyes. “Please…please—just a chance—please, don’t go!”

“Keep begging,” you chew, and there are tears in your own eyes, yet you have to seal the deal. You have to get this hatred out before it grows even worse. “Grovel at my feet—go ahead. You deserve to. You deserve to feel what you do to other people.”

“Please!” he sobs, and folds over onto his knees at your mercy, arms wrapping around your legs and tears smearing against your bare legs as if holding you in place for eternity is a realistic possibility. “I can’t do this— please don’t do this to me!”

Suguru, having resumed his position as the ever loyal lapdog, joins Satoru on the ground, only to hold him for comfort though his gaze remains upon you, awestruck. His surrendering eyes are a cross between How dare you? and How could you not? Having never seen his one and only in such a predicament ever before, he feels utterly powerless and incompetent. The erratic rhythm of Suguru’s heart is enough to signal that this is ultimately the end of many things: the end of a reign of terror, the end of a mutually shared one-sided love (ironic) , and in a way, the end of a suffering that’s stayed long past its welcome.

“We shouldn’t have,” he whispers, offering the gentlest I told you so while he clutches the man to himself, desperate to shield him from your scorching wrath. Satoru cannot for the life of him tell if Suguru is referring to the past or present or everything in between.

It hurts to hurt either of them, and yet this hurt feels so necessary. If hurting each other is what bonded the three of you together then pain is what will break these bonds. You have no intention of staying here, but you have no real intention of leaving them for good, either. If they can receive even half as much the torture you experienced and still accept you after? Well, you’d be damned if you let them self-actualize and didn’t rise to the achievement yourself.

You turn away, wishing to hide your anguish—the new as well as the old, resurfaced and polished up. What would have become of you, had either of them done better? If not better—at least differently. If either of them had the soul to be honest, if either of them had thought to stop and consider what they were doing when they played fiddle of a silly girl who was none the wiser to their manipulative wants and ways.

Would you have found true love? Unlikely— maybe. Maybe, you would have actually found something close to it—perhaps with neither of them and some other option. Maybe you would have had options. Maybe you would not have lost your best friend after she played her unwilling part in your demise. Maybe your first relationship would not have been a farce. Maybe you would not have felt unworthy and unloved, nor been cheated on and led to develop trust issues and relationship anxiety. Maybe you would not have searched for comfort in all the wrong places and people and things.

Maybe you would have been able to love yourself.

You hate what a privilege it is. Love yourself! the world screams. But they don’t have to live with the voice in your head that can’t spell the word or even say it without a sarcastic cringe. They don’t know the burden of being the girl standing in the centre or the Garden of Eden at this very moment, with the man and the serpent who tarnished her story forever. 

Which is which? 

Hard to say.

There will never be an instance when one is mentioned without bringing up the other two; tied to each other by causality and curse for all of time to come. Similarly, you three are doomed to be a part of each other’s lives. You will have to make room for this tragedy and all the others that follow. Perhaps some will be grand enough to be defined as love. You sure hope they feel like love when they happen, because they haven’t, so far.